Shiite bloc holds off OK to U.S.-Iraq pact

BAGHDAD -- Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's ruling Shiite coalition withheld support Sunday for the proposed security pact that would keep U.S. troops here for three more years, dealing a setback to American hopes of a speedy approval of the agreement.

The statement by the United Iraqi Alliance called for unspecified changes to the draft agreement, which parliament must ratify by the end of the year when the U.N. mandate expires.

The group's move comes a day after tens of thousands of demonstrators, mostly Shiites, took to the streets of Baghdad to show their opposition to the agreement.

The Shiite alliance holds 85 of parliament's 275 seats and al-Maliki needs its solid support to win approval of the agreement by a strong majority.

The 30 lawmakers loyal to anti-American Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr have already said they will vote against the agreement, and some Sunni lawmakers have spoken out against it too.

Police in South Ossetia ordered to return fire

MOSCOW -- Police in South Ossetia have been ordered to shoot back if they come under fire -- a directive that increases the threat of new violence between Georgia and the Russian-backed separatist region.

South Ossetia's top police official issued the order after a police post came under automatic weapons fire Saturday from the ethnic Georgian village of Nikozi, the separatist government said.

Acting Interior Minister Mikhail Mindzayev said no one was hurt by the gunfire, which he called a provocation by Georgian forces.

"We will not allow our people and our officers to be killed," Mindzayev said in a statement.

Georgian Interior Ministry spokesman Shota Utiashvili denied that Georgian forces fired at a South Ossetian post and said Nikozi came under fire early Saturday from South Ossetian-controlled territory.

Chinese official gets death sentence

BEIJING -- A former Beijing vice mayor in charge of overseeing Olympic construction projects has been given a suspended death sentence for corruption, a court said Sunday, in a stern warning to wayward Communist officials.

The Intermediate People's Court in Hengshui, a city outside Beijing, delivered the sentence Saturday after finding Liu Zhihua guilty of taking bribes, said a court clerk who would only give his surname, Ma. The sentence will be commuted to life in prison in two years if Liu shows good behavior.

Before his sudden dismissal in 2006 for unspecified corruption, Liu was in charge of urban development in the Chinese capital and headed the office overseeing the $40 billion being spent by the city on Olympics-related infrastructure projects.

The government squelched all reporting on Liu's high-profile prosecution in the months leading up to the August Olympic Games to avoid tarnishing its image on the global stage.

Officials said Liu's misdeeds had nothing to do with Olympic projects, but his dismissal put a cloud over preparations for the games and prompted authorities to ratchet up anti-corruption efforts.

30 militants killed in clashes in Pakistan

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan -- Pakistani forces killed at least 30 militants near the Afghan border, as the region's provincial chief called for "peaceful dialogue" in a meeting with a U.S. State Department official.

The U.S. Embassy would not comment on U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Richard Boucher's meeting with North West Frontier Province Chief Minister Amir Haider Khan Hoti, other than to say his trip had been planned for some time and that he was meeting a range of government officials.

Pakistani soldiers are battling militants on three fronts in the northwest of the country. In the past, the government has tried unsuccessfully to make peace deals with the insurgents, drawing criticism from the United States.

In the latest fighting, Pakistani fighter jets bombed a miliant camp and munition storage facility, killing at least 20 insurgents and causing extensive damage, army spokesman Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas said.

In nearby Bajur district, seven more insurgents were killed when jets bombed their positions, said Muhammad Jamil Khan, the No. 2 government official there.

Security official Fazl Rabi said three militants were killed in other parts of Bajur when they tried to attack security posts.

Al-Qaida Web sites are still down

CAIRO, Egypt -- The main Web sites that normally carry messages from the al-Qaida terror group remain inoperable more than a month after they went down just ahead of the seventh anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks.

The Associated Press first reported in September that the Web forums that typically carry messages and videos from Al-Qaida and its allied groupings had ceased functioning around Sept. 10, just as the group said it was set to release a new video message.

Only a site called Hesbah and a new one named Faloja now function intermittently, more than a month later, and carry messages from Al-Qaida and its allies in Iraq, Somalia, Pakistan and the Palestinian territories about recent operations.

Al-Fajr Media Center, the extremist group's communications wing, issued a terse statement on Sept. 29 blaming the problems on "technical reasons" and denying the sites had come under a cyber attack as has been widely speculated in the media.

"We deny reports published by the media of the tyrants regarding the fall of some of the headquarters of these networks into the hands of the enemy," the statement said, according to the U.S-based SITE Intelligence Group, which monitors extremist sites.

Contributors to the forums also have worried publicly that some kind of Western cyber attack targeted the sites.

One prominent jihadi poster, quoted by SITE, suggested extremists should strike back by infiltrating other, more-moderate Islamic discussion forums and flood them with extremist rhetoric to turn them into al-Qaida discussion groups.

Official: Thieves hacked Sarkozy's bank account

PARIS -- The French Cabinet's spokesman says "swindlers" have broken into the personal bank account of President Nicolas Sarkozy.

Spokesman Luc Chatel told France's Radio-J an investigation is under way and insists the incident "proves that this system of checking (bank accounts) via the Internet isn't infallible." He did not elaborate.

Weekly Journal du Dimanche reported Sunday that thieves seized Sarkozy's bank account information and swiped small sums of money.

The newspaper said Sarkozy reported the theft last month and that those responsible haven't been found. The report cited an unnamed official close to the investigation for its information. The press service for Sarkozy's office declined comment.

Chinese oil workers kidnapped in Sudan

KHARTOUM, Sudan -- A Chinese diplomat in Khartoum says nine Chinese oil workers have been kidnapped by unknown assailants in the southern Kordofan province.

The diplomat says the men were kidnapped Saturday and their vehicle was also taken. The kidnapping was discovered because several oil workers escaped and told authorities about it. The diplomat, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the press, says no further details were immediately available.

China is one of the largest investors in Sudan's oil industry.

Israel considers dormant Saudi plan

JERUSALEM -- Israeli leaders are seriously considering a dormant Saudi plan offering a comprehensive peace between Israel and the Arab world in exchange for lands captured during the 1967 war, Defense Minister Ehud Barak said Sunday. Barak said it may be time to pursue an overall peace deal for the region since individual negotiations with Syria and the Palestinians have made little progress.

Barak said he has discussed the Saudi plan with Prime Minister-designate Tzipi Livni, who is in the process of forming a new Israeli government, and that Israel is considering a response.

Saudi Arabia first proposed the peace initiative in 2002, offering pan-Arab recognition of Israel in exchange for Israel's withdrawal from Arab lands captured in 1967 -- the West Bank, Gaza Strip, east Jerusalem and the Golan Heights.

The 22-member Arab League endorsed the plan last year.

Mugabe's party rejects pressure

HARARE, Zimbabwe -- Zimbabwe will not bow to pressure but will seek advice from other African leaders on how it should form a power-sharing government, the chief negotiator for President Robert Mugabe's party was quoted Sunday as saying.

Patrick Chinamasa said Mugabe and opposition leaders are to meet Monday with the presidents of Angola, Mozambique and Swaziland in Mbabane, Swaziland. The three nations represent the Southern Africa Development Community, which has supported former South African President Thabo Mbeki's efforts to mediate Zimbabwe's political crisis.

A power-sharing deal signed Sept. 15 is deadlocked over which party gets control of the country's 31 ministries. The opposition Movement for Democratic Change narrowly won the March parliamentary elections and the June presidential runoff Mugabe claims to have won was derided by international observers as a sham.

"They can't impose anything on us, especially on such a small matter as the allocation of ministries," Chinamasa, who is also the justice minister, was quoted as saying by the state-run Sunday Mail newspaper.