World Highlights

¤ Iran yesterday offered more access to UN inspectors if their watchdog agency, not the UN Security Council, dealt with its nuclear dispute with the West. But top negotiator Ali Larijani gave no ground on Western demands that Iran stop trying to produce fuel that can be used in nuclear power stations or, if highly enriched, in bombs. Russia and China called for a peaceful solution to the standoff with Iran, while the US said diplomacy must succeed to avert a confrontation with the Islamic Republic.

¤ Israel's seizure of radical Palestinian leader Ahmed Saadat pushed interim Prime Minister Ehud Olmert further ahead in opinion polls published yesterday ahead of a March 28 election. In fresh violence in the occupied West Bank, Palestinian gunmen killed an Israeli soldier involved in a raid in which the army said five militants were captured in the city of Jenin. Gunmen elsewhere in the West Bank wounded two Israeli motorists.

¤ A woman who helped finance immigrant smuggling schemes including the "Golden Venture" freighter was sentenced to 35 years in prison yesterday for running a multimillion-dollar ring using violent Chinese street gangs. Cheng Chui Ping, 57, ran an enterprise that crammed immigrants into planes, cars and trucks with fake floors and ships with dungeon-like conditions where one bathroom served hundreds of people, trial evidence showed.

¤ Two gunmen attacked a compound of the UN refugee agency UNHCR in southern Sudan, killing a local guard and wounding an Iraqi logistics officer and another guard, the agency said yesterday.

¤ A Russian court yesterday began trying three local policemen for failing to stop the 2004 Beslan school massacre but victims' relatives said they were being made scapegoats for the mistakes of their superiors.

¤ A US lawyer hired to track down hidden assets of Augusto Pinochet yesterday said that he had identified more than $100 million in bank accounts linked to the former Chilean dictator.