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Reuters
Conn. Marine mourned
Connnecticut Gov. Tom Rowland pays his respects as the casket of U.S. Marine Staff Sgt. Phillip A. Jordan, 42, is carried by a Marine honor guard from his funeral in Enfield, Conn. Jordan was killed March 22 in fighting near Nassiriya, Iraq.
ANKARA, Turkey - Turkish leaders and Secretary of State Colin Powell agreed Wednesday to have Ankara consult Washington if tensions heighten with Iraqi Kurds, an "early warning" system designed to prevent Turkey from sending forces into northern Iraq.
Washington fears friction between Turkey and the Kurds could disrupt the U.S.-led war against Saddam Hussein. Iraqi Kurds, who are fighting alongside U.S. troops, have warned of clashes if Turkish troops enter their autonomous region in northern Iraq. Turkey has said it wants to send troops to block any independence bid by the Kurds.
Turkey also agreed Wednesday to let the United States send food, fuel and medicine - but not weapons - through its territory to U.S. soldiers in northern Iraq.
MOSCOW - Russia called in the U.S. ambassador to Moscow Wednesday to protest against airstrikes it said hit Baghdad's residential districts and endangered the lives of diplomats still working at its embassy in Iraq.
Russian President Vladimir Putin rammed home Moscow's sharp criticism of the Iraq campaign, saying deaths in the campaign justified its position. But he said it was not to Moscow's advantage to see a U.S. defeat and repeated his call for the matter to be placed again before the United Nations.
SEOUL, South Korea - Ending several days of bitter stalemate, South Korea's Parliament on Wednesday approved the sending of 700 soldiers to Iraq to help in the country's reconstruction effort.
The approval was blocked last week. It was won only after a remarkable speech by President Roh Moo-hyun, in which he pleaded with members of his own Millennium Democratic Party, saying that "realism" required his country to support the United States.
"In order to resolve the North Korea nuclear issue peacefully, it is important to maintain strong cooperation with the U.S.," Roh said in his speech to the National Assembly.
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. - Despite the dramatic rescue of captured Army Pfc. Jessica Lynch in Iraq, prisoner of war advocates and ex-POWs fear the worst for the remaining seven prisoners who appeared before Iraqi television cameras nearly two weeks ago.
Part of the problem is the prisoners aren't getting the same consideration as the approximately 4,500 Iraqi prisoners now held by U.S. troops. The International Committee of the Red Cross began visiting the Iraqi prisoners this week to ensure they're properly treated, but has not yet been allowed access to the American POWs.
"I think they're going to have a hard time," said Mel Pollack, a Delray Beach, Fla., aerospace executive and fighter pilot who spent more than five years as a prisoner of war in the "Hanoi Hilton" during the Vietnam War. "Based on previous history, it doesn't look promising."
DOHA, Qatar - The Arab satellite channel Al-Jazeera announced today that Iraqi officials are expelling one of its reporters from Baghdad and barring another from reporting.
The station interrupted a regular newscast to announce that Iraq's Information Ministry had informed it that correspondent Diar al-Omari, an Iraqi, could no longer report for the network and that visiting correspondent Tayseer Allouni must leave the country.
Al-Jazeera said the ministry did not give a reason for the action, which the station called "sudden and unjustified."
"Al-Jazeera channel announces that it has decided to suspend until further notice the work of all its correspondents in Baghdad, Basra and Mosul, while maintaining the broadcasting of live and recorded images received from its office in Baghdad," it said.
SAN FRANCISCO - A 20-year-old Marine reservist seeking to be discharged as a conscientious objector has given himself a second way out - he's told military leaders he's gay.
"I believe that as a gay man, someone who is misunderstood by much of the general population, I have a great deal of experience with hatred and oppression," Lance Cpl. Stephen Funk wrote in his application for a conscientious objector discharge.
Funk turned himself in to the Marines on Tuesday after being absent without leave since mid-February, when his support battalion was sent to Camp Pendleton near San Diego. He has been assigned desk duty in San Jose while his case proceeds.
Funk, whose father served in Vietnam, said he grew uncomfortable with the military when he was made to shout "Kill! Kill! Kill!" during a basic training exercise. Since his training, he said, he has gone to every major anti-war rally in the San Francisco Bay area.
Funk's lawyer, Stephen Collier, acknowledged that if the Marine Corps refuses to grant him conscientious objector status, Funk probably will be discharged for violating the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy by declaring his homosexuality.
WASHINGTON - The United States is working to speed the dredging of the Iraqi port at Umm Qasr so it can be opened for humanitarian relief deliveries within days and not weeks, a senior U.S. official said Wednesday.
"We have contracting mechanisms to dredge the port. We're trying to speed those up now," Andrew Natsios, administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development, told a news briefing.
An Australian ship carrying 50,000 tons of wheat has been unable to unload its cargo because it is too big to go into the port without dredging, Natsios said.
Wire reports
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