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Last year, Midge Decter, wife of Norman Podhoretz, who has been howling for "World War IV" against the Arabs, published a mash note titled, "Rumsfeld: A Personal Portrait." The University of Houston's James D. Fairbanks began his review thus: "Neoconservative writer Midge Decter sets out to explain just what it is about Donald Rumsfeld that has well-educated, sophisticated women swooning over him. Those unaware that Rumsfeld mania has been sweeping the country have obviously not attended the same fashionable dinner parties as Decter. Her book begins with a description of one such party where women sat around gushing over the...

"If we have to make common cause with the more hawkish liberals and fight the conservatives, that is fine with me," William Kristol has told the New York Times. The Weekly Standard editor added that the neoconservatives may just abandon the Right altogether and convert to neoliberalism. Alluding to his father Irving's definition of a neoconservative as a liberal who has been mugged by reality, Kristol describes a neoliberal as a "neoconservative who has been mugged by reality in Iraq." Ranking his political preferences, Kristol added, "I will take Bush over Kerry, but Kerry over Buchanan ... If you read...

WASHINGTON (AP) - U.S. and allied forces have now taken in "excess of 3,500 Iraqi prisoners," Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said Tuesday. At a Pentagon briefing, Rumsfeld said humanitarian assistance "food, water and medicine" is already being delivered. Still, after five days of ground combat, he sought to minimize expectations of a swift end to the war. (Click link for rest of article)

Three men have been arrested under anti-terrorism laws, after two "home-made bombs" were discovered at a flat in Sussex. The men, who police say are European in origin, were taken into custody on Tuesday after the discovery at Langley Green in Crawley, not far from Gatwick Airport. Sussex Police said that the arrests were made under the Terrorism Act 2000 after two "viable improvised explosive devices" were found during a routine inquiry. Inspector Geoff Sharnock said: "They are effectively home-made bombs. "Three men have been arrested. One was arrested elsewhere and two were arrested at the flat." Inspector Sharnock refused...

KOSOVSKA MITROVICA, Yugoslavia - The head of a U.N. Security Council delegation on Sunday urged all citizens of internationally administered Kosovo to help turn it into a multiethnic society. Visiting this ethnically divided northern town, Ole Peter Kolby, Norway's U.N. ambassador who heads the delegation, called on both the ethnic Albanian majority and Serb minority to create "a more normal society" in order to bring peace and prosperity to the still tense province. Kosovska Mitrovica is divided — and territorially split by a river — between a Serb-dominated north and an ethnic Albanian southern part. It has been repeatedly the...

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Federal officials on Wednesday announced the indictment of the head of a U.S. Muslim charity, charging he used donations to fund terrorism around the world. Syrian-born Enaam Arnaout, who has been in custody since last April, engaged in a "multinational criminal enterprise that for a decade used charitable contributions of innocent Americans -- Muslims, non-Muslims and corporations alike -- to support al Qaeda" as well as turmoil in Chechnya and "armed violence in Bosnia," the Justice Department said. The indictment, announced by Attorney General John Ashcroft at a Chicago news conference, largely repeated charges made against Arnaout...

THE HAGUE (Reuters) - The first head of state to testify at Slobodan Milosevic's war crimes trial accused him on Tuesday of engineering the break up of Yugoslavia and using the army to seize Croat land in the pursuit of a "Greater Serbia." Croatian President Stjepan Mesic, who took over the rotating Yugoslav presidency in July 1991, said Milosevic invoked the threat of war in his plan to "restructure" Yugoslavia. The former Serbian president faces 61 charges, including genocide, in this key Bosnia and Croatia stage of the biggest international war crimes trial in Europe since Hitler's henchmen were tried...

ZAGREB, Croatia - Slovenia criticized Croatian police Monday after they charged a man living within a disputed strip of border land with civil unrest for flying the Slovene flag and playing loud Slovene national music. Sunday´s legal move against Josko Joras was the latest manifestation of tensions between Croatia and Slovenia. Slovene fishermen and Croatian police boats confronted each other several times last week in coastal waters each country claims as its own. The borders of Croatia and Slovenia were never clearly defined while both republics were federal partners in the old Yugoslav federation but became an issue after they...

BELGRADE, Yugoslavia - Yugoslav President Vojislav Kostunica will run in Serbia's upcoming presidential elections, splitting up pro-democracy votes and giving a chance to an ulranationalist candidate, a newspaper reported Thursday. The Blic daily, quoting sources from Kostunica's Democratic Party of Serbia, said he will announce the widely expected nomination for the Serbian presidency by Aug. 24. Kostunica, a moderate nationalist, is the frontrunner in pre-election polls for the vote set for Sept. 29. Kostunica's office refused to confirm the Blic report. The Serbian presidency is expected to gain power and prestige later this year after Yugoslavia is transformed into a...

BELGRADE, Yugoslavia - Writing from his prison cell at the U.N. jail in the Netherlands, former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic has urged Serbs to vote for an ultranationalist candidate in upcoming presidential elections, a party official said Monday. Zoran Andjelkovic, a top-ranking official of the Socialist Party of Serbia, said that in a "handwritten fax message" Milosevic advised his supporters to vote for ultranationalist leader Vojislav Seselj "as their joint presidential candidate." Earlier this month, Seselj's Serbian Radical Party nominated their chief for the post of Serbian president. Seselj declared his main objective was to beat Yugoslavia's deputy prime minister,...

THE HAGUE, Netherlands - U.N. prosecutors called the former head of the Yugoslav security services — one of Slobodan Milosevic's closest aids — to the witness stand Tuesday but failed to draw a direct link with the former president in the wartime chain of command. Rade Markovic, who was brought from a Belgrade jail to testify at Milosevic's war crimes trial, said he gave Milosevic intelligence briefings, but his orders came from the interior minister, not the president. "When he (Milosevic) needed more information he would invite me for a briefing," Markovic said. He acknowledged that state policy was determined...

MOSTAR, Bosnia-Herzegovina - NATO ( news - web sites) troops in Bosnia seized computers from a Bosnian Croat army unit on suspicion they were used for illegal activities, a NATO spokesman said Wednesday. The seizure was made during an inspection of a Bosnian Croat military communication station on July 17 but was reported by the peacekeepers only on Wednesday. NATO troops were now investigating the computers to see whether they had been used in any "illegal activity," generally defined as a threat to a safe and secure environment in Bosnia, said Maj. Christopher de Lambert, a spokesman for the peacekeepers...

SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina - Forensic experts discovered a mass grave in northeastern Bosnia that may contain up to 100 bodies of Muslims killed at the end of the country's 1992-95 war, officials said Tuesday. Murat Hurtic, a member of the Muslim Commission for Missing Persons, said the mass grave was found Monday near the Serb-held village of Kamenica, some 70 kilometers (45 miles) northeast of Sarajevo. "We believe they were Muslim killed in Srebrenica in 1995," Hurtic said. Srebrenica was declared a U.N. "safe haven" during the end of Bosnia's war, and thousands of Muslims flocked there to escape Serb attacks....

LJUBLJANA (Reuters) - The tiny Alpine republic of Slovenia, often ruffled by being confused with Slovakia, took another hit when President Milan Kucan was welcomed to Romania with the wrong national anthem, officials said Thursday. Kucan stepped off his plane at the start of a state visit in Bucharest Monday to be greeted by the correct Slovenian flags but the wrong music, the president's spokeswoman said, confirming Slovenian newspaper reports. "Unfortunately, they really played the Slovak anthem," the spokeswoman said. Kucan ignored the slip, newspapers said. Confusing Slovenia and Slovakia at sporting events and political meetings has been a frequent...

ZAGREB, Croatia - Croatia's president said Monday that he has accepted an invitation from Moammar Gadhafi to visit Libya sometime in the near future. Stipe Mesic said the invitation was extended during a brief meeting Sunday with Gadhafi's son, Seif el-Islam, was was in Croatia on a private visit. A date for the visit has not been set yet, Mesic told Croatia's state-run radio. Mesic said that "good relations" with Libya — the first non-European nation to recognize Croatia as an independent state in early 1992 — should lead to greater economic cooperation. Mesic refused to comment on the U.S....

BELGRADE, Yugoslavia (Reuters) - Milan Popovic of Yugoslav weapons producer Krusik is desperately seeking an investor ready to help to revive and transform his company. "Our production is almost at a standstill," said Popovic, marketing manager at what was once the country's main manufacturer of 60-120 mm caliber ammunition and rockets. "Army orders are dwindling. The rocket line has been halted. Exports have been slashed tenfold from over $100 million a decade ago," he told Reuters. In the 1980s, Yugoslavia's arms exports averaged over $400 million a year and sometimes much more. Figures from the military trading firm Jugoimport SDPR...

<p>KUMROVEC, Croatia -- About 2,000 people have celebrated the 110th anniversary of former Yugoslav leader Josip Tito.</p> <p>Crowds gathered in his hometown of Kumrovec, Croatia, to honour the man who united federal Yugoslavia after World War II.</p> <p>Tito's ruled Yugoslavia as a dictatorship until his death on May 4, 1980, but often faced criticism from the West for ruthless policies against nationalists and human rights activists.</p>

Montenegrin President Milo Djukanovic is under investigation in Italy for involvement in a cigarette smuggling ring and links to organized crime, judicial sources said. Prosecutors in the southern city of Bari have formally opened an investigation of Djukanovic for links to mafia groups involved in cigarette contraband. The investigation was opened at the request of local authorities fighting organized crime in Bari, which is located near the Montenegrin coast where many of the vessels carrying the cigarettes depart. Once in Italy, the illegal cargo is unloaded and shipped throughout Italy and Europe. Several former associates of the Montenegrin president are...

Last week, Vice President Cheney and Secretary Rumsfeld warned that more terror attacks are a certainty and may involve the detonation of an atomic weapon on American soil. They have concentrated the mind wonderfully. Even a small, crude nuclear device, exploded in a U.S. port or city, could kill many thousands more than died on Sept. 11. Rightly, the U.S. government is focused on how to anticipate such an attack, prevent it, prepare for it. But there has been no debate over the most critical question. Why? Why do these Islamic radicals so hate us they are willing to commit...

Yugoslavia has unilaterally decided to suspend visas for Croatian citizens during the coming months, introducing instead one-month tourist passes to be issued at border crossings, Interior Minister Zoran Zivkovic said. Zivkovic said he had already instructed border police to issue tourist visas, costing 310 Yugoslav dinars (five euros, 4.5 dollars) starting from June 1. The measure would be valid until September 30, the Tanjug news agency quoted Zivkovic as saying. The liberalisation of the visa regime was aimed at boosting ties with the former Yugoslav republics after the conflicts which marred the past decade in the region, Zivkovic said. He...