Some in Taliban Are Offered Amnesty
KABUL, Afghanistan -- The top U.S. official in Afghanistan called on the Taliban to give up its three-year insurgency.
Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad pledged Thursday that most who surrender would be left in peace if they acknowledged the authority of President-elect Hamid Karzai.
An estimated 100 to 150 Taliban leaders -- including former head Mohammad Omar, commanders of the insurgency and those associated with al Qaeda -- are ineligible for the offer.
Previous offers of amnesty drew strong opposition from the armed factions that helped U.S. forces drive out the Taliban in 2001. Their influence could be diluted in Karzai's new government.
THE AMERICAS
• LIMA, Peru -- The top human rights court in Latin America has upheld a 20-year sentence for American Lori Berenson, who is imprisoned in Peru on terrorism charges, President Alejandro Toledo said.
The Costa Rica-based Inter-American Court of Human Rights ruled that Berenson's 2001 conviction was valid, Toledo told RPP radio.
Court officials were not immediately available for comment, but the ruling means the 35-year-old New Yorker will remain in prison until two weeks after her 46th birthday. She has been held in Peru since her arrest in November 1995 and has had two trials.
• HAVANA -- The Cuban government freed a jailed 59-year-old independent journalist after he spent nine months at a Havana prison hospital receiving psychiatric treatment.
Edel Garcia was the sixth dissident to be released this week -- 75 were jailed in March 2003 -- in what many see as a gesture from Havana to repair damaged relations with Europe. Twelve others have been released since the crackdown.
• BOGOTA, Colombia -- President Alvaro Uribe pardoned 23 jailed Marxist rebels as a goodwill gesture and said he hoped guerrilla leaders would respond by freeing hostages, though the leaders previously said they would not reciprocate.
EUROPE
• LONDON -- An American was sentenced to life in prison for murdering a wounded British policeman who was pleading for his life.
David Francis Bieber, 38, of Florida, was found guilty of fatally shooting Ian Broadhurst in Leeds on Dec. 26, 2003, in a bid to avoid arrest. The jurors at Newcastle Crown Court in northern England also convicted him of attempting to murder Broadhurst's two fellow officers.
