World Scene

INDIA

Clinton urges India to expand influence

CHENNAI — Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton on Wednesday challenged India to expand its traditional sphere of interest from South Asia to neighboring regions to compete with increasing Chinese assertiveness.

Mrs. Clinton sought to nudge India to project its influence eastward, toward China’s backyard in Southeast Asia and the Pacific Rim, as well as boost engagement in Central Asia, on China’s western flank.

She said the U.S. and India shared values that made them powerful partners in promoting security, democracy and development in these areas.

She reassured India that the United States would not abandon Afghanistan or allow it to become a haven for terrorism again, and made clear that the U.S. has a vital, ongoing stake in ensuring stability in India’s archrival, Pakistan. But India should play a constructive role, too, she said.

SERBIA

Authorities arrest last war crimes fugitive

BELGRADE — The last fugitive sought by the U.N. Balkan war crimes tribunal was arrested by Serbian authorities Wednesday, answering intense international demands for his capture and boosting the country’s hopes of becoming a candidate for European Union membership.

Former Croatian Serb leader Goran Hadzic was taken into custody as he met a man delivering him money in a forest in a mountainous region of northern Serbia where many of his relatives live, authorities said.

An indictment accuses him of responsibility for the 1991 leveling of Vukovar, said to be the first European city destroyed since World War II.

In one of the worst massacres in the Croatian conflict, Serb forces seized at least 264 non-Serbs from Vukovar Hospital after a three-month siege of the city, took them to a nearby pig farm, then tortured, shot and buried them in an unmarked mass grave.

CHINA

14 extremists killed in Xinjiang attack

BEIJING — Ethnic religious extremists armed with homemade weapons attacked a police station in China’s restive far west this week in a planned siege that ended with 14 of the 18 attackers dead, China said Wednesday in a detailed account of the violence.

State media variously have blamed terrorists, rioters or thugs for Monday’s violence in the Xinjiang region.

An exile group that advocates for greater Uighur autonomy instead has said a peaceful protest turned into a bloody clash between police and demonstrators.

Xinjiang has been beset by ethnic conflict and a sometimes violent separatist movement by Uighurs, a largely Muslim ethnic group that sees Xinjiang as its homeland. Many Uighurs resent the Han Chinese majority as interlopers.

VENEZUELA

Chavez calls for clemency for ailing opposition prisoners

CARACAS — President Hugo Chavez, who is recovering from cancer surgery, has set clemency proceedings into motion for convicted opposition activists suffering from health problems.

Mr. Chavez on Saturday called for humanitarian measures to help infirm opposition prisoners, who include three convicted of involvement in a coup against him.

The gesture has brought some hope that his cancer will moderate his confrontational style even if it does little to bridge the divide between Mr. Chavez’s self-styled revolution and critics who call him a fledgling dictator.

But his apparent ability to free dozens of prisoners with a few words uttered in a live broadcast may revive criticisms that he controls the country’s justice system.

PHILIPPINES

Filipino lawmakers visit disputed isle, defy China

PAG-ASA ISLAND, South China Sea — A group of Filipino lawmakers flew Wednesday to a Philippine-occupied island in the disputed South China Sea to assert their country’s claim to the potentially oil-rich region in defiance of China’s protest that the visit threatens regional stability.

The daylong visit upset China, which has been trading accusations with the Philippines and Vietnam over territorial spats in some of the world’s busiest sea lanes.

But a senior Chinese diplomat, at a meeting of Asian security officials in Bali, Indonesia, said his country has agreed to draft guidelines for behavior in the disputed region with the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations.

Chinese diplomat Liu Zhenmin called it a “milestone document.”

Philippine Foreign Secretary Albert del Rosario, however, said that with no teeth, even such guidelines would be meaningless and that the Philippines still intends to bring the dispute to an international tribunal.

From wire dispatches and staff reports