MEXICO
10,000 migrants kidnapped in Mexico
MEXICO CITY | Mexico and Honduras have agreed to create a high-level group to combat all-too-common attacks on undocumented Honduran migrants.
Honduran Assistant Foreign Minister Alden Rivera said an estimated 10,000 of the 75,000 Hondurans who cross Mexico each year to reach the United States are kidnapped or held for extortion.
Mr. Rivera said Wednesday the group will include officials of both countries and will focus on informing migrants about the risks they face and how to report such crimes.
The focus also will be on better investigating the crimes, which are often committed by drug gangs.
Mexico hopes to include other Central American countries in the group.
WEST BANK
Palestinians eye U.N. on settlements
RAMALLAH | The Palestinians plan to ask the U.N. Security Council in coming days to declare Israeli settlements illegal and demand a halt to their construction, officials said Wednesday, in a high stakes gamble aimed at increasing pressure on Israel.
A draft of the resolution obtained by the Associated Press calls the settlements obstacles to peace but does not ask for sanctions against Israel or any other concrete action.
This would be a key element in a Palestinian campaign to rally international support for independence, even without a peace deal. Officials said the strategy reflects their disillusionment with sputtering U.S. peace efforts and Palestinian distrust of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Israel blasted the measure as an effort to avoid negotiations.
The White House launched the latest round of peace talks on Sept. 2, but they broke down just three weeks later with the expiration of a limited Israeli freeze on West Bank settlement construction.
The Palestinians refuse to negotiate while Israel builds homes for Jews in the West Bank and East Jerusalem — areas the Palestinians claim for a future state.
GABON
Cable says late leader embezzled funds
MADRID | Gabon’s late president, Omar Bongo, allegedly lined his pockets with money from a $37 million bank embezzlement scheme and funneled some of it to French political parties, according to a classified U.S. Embassy cable published in Spanish daily El Pais.
A senior official at the Bank of Central African States made the accusation four days after Mr. Bongo’s death in June 2009, in an interview with a diplomat at the U.S. Embassy in Cameroon, according to the cable released by the anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks.
“Gabonese officials used the proceeds for their own enrichment and, at Bongo’s direction, funneled funds to French political parties, including in support of French President Nicolas Sarkozy,” the unnamed bank official was quoted as saying.
Asked who received the funds, the bank official said: “Both sides, but mostly the right, especially [former French President Jacques] Chirac and including [current French President Nicolas] Sarkozy.”
• From wire dispatches and staff reports
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