LAST 24 HOURS

Kidnapped archbishop , freed today

Photo: Basile Georges Casmoussa, 66, Archbishop of the Syrian Catholic Church, after he arrived back to the church in Mosul, north of Baghdad, Tuesday.

VATICAN CITY - A Catholic archbishop kidnapped in Iraq was released Tuesday without payment of ransom, the Vatican said. The prelate said his kidnappers didn't realize who he was when they abducted him a day earlier in the northern city of Mosul. Archbishop Basile Georges Casmoussa was back resting in his home shortly after his 19-hour-long kidnapping ended and told Vatican Radio he had not been mistreated. "I suspected that they kidnapped me thinking I was another person," Casmoussa told reporters in Mosul. "They were kind with me and told me that I will be released very soon." It was not immediately clear if Casmoussa was wearing clerical garb when he was captured just after he came out of the home of a parishioner Monday evening in Mosul. Casmoussa was quoted as telling the Italian news agency ANSA that he thought Pope John Paul's strong appeal on his behalf was a "decisive factor" in his release. The Vatican had called the abduction a "despicable terrorist act" and demanded that the kidnappers free him immediately. "I am truly, and, like a son, grateful to the Pope, by whom I felt strongly supported in this very new situation for me," Casmoussa was quoted as telling ANSA. "The kidnappers themselves told me this morning about his appeal, which I maintain was a decisive factor in my liberation." The pontiff, who had prayed for the bishop's release, was informed immediately of the good news, said papal spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls. "He changed his prayer to one of thanks," he said. The kidnappers initially demanded a $200,000 US ransom but then released the bishop without any payment, the Vatican said. Casmoussa, a 66-year-old Iraqi, is from the Syrian Catholic Church, one of the branches of the Roman Catholic Church. A priest in Iraq said on condition of anonymity that the archbishop was walking in front of the Al-Bishara church in Mosul's eastern neighbourhood of Muhandeseen when gunmen forced him into a car and drove away. Mosul, in Iraq's north, has been a hotspot for the violent insurgency in recent months. "I think that my kidnapping was a coincidence," the archbishop told Vatican Radio. "It doesn't seem to me that they wanted to strike at the Church per se." Navarro-Valls said the Vatican didn't view the kidnapping as an anti-Christian act but part of the general climate of violence in Iraq. He said the archbishop was well-loved in the community. Nevertheless, Christians - tens of thousands of whom live in and around Mosul - have been subjected to attacks in the past. Officials estimate that as many as 15,000 Iraqi Christians have left the country since August, when four churches in Baghdad and one in Mosul were attacked in a co-ordinated series of car bombings. The attacks killed 12 people and injured 61 others. Another church was bombed in Baghdad in September. Christians make up three per cent of Iraq's 26 million people. The major Christian groups in Iraq include Chaldean-Assyrians and Armenians. There are small numbers of Roman Catholics.

India accuses Pakistan of firing mortar shells across ceasefire line

NEW DELHI, INDIA- India accused Pakistani soldiers Tuesday of firing mortar shells across the dividing line in Kashmir in the first violation of a 14-month ceasefire between the South Asian nuclear-armed rivals. The ceasefire was the longest since an insurgent campaign in the divided Himalayan province began in 1989. Both countries claim the mainly Muslim, former princely state in its entirety and have fought two wars over it. A senior army official said there were no casualties on the Indian side, and Indian troops had not retaliated. "It certainly is a violation of the ceasefire. This is the first time this has happened. We have exercised full restraint," Maj.-Gen. Deepak Summanwar told the private NDTV news channel. "Seven to eight rounds of mortars were fired. All our patrols . . . have been alerted." The reports of firing came hours after another setback to the ties between the traditional South Asian rivals, which are now pursuing peace. Islamabad accused New Delhi of deliberately scuttling talks on a disputed dam that India is building on its side of Kashmir and appealed to the World Bank to help resolve the issue. Pakistani Foreign Ministry spokesman Masood Khan said the dispute will cast a "bad light" on the peace dialogue.

For decades, India and Pakistan regularly fired at each other across the ceasefire line, killing soldiers and civilians and damaging homes and farmland. However, they agreed to a ceasefire in November 2003 along the disputed Kashmir frontier and international border. Indian military officials in Kashmir said Tuesday's firing may have been carried out to provide cover to a batch of Islamic militants crossing into the Indian side of Kashmir from the Pakistan-controlled part of the Himalayan region. Rebels based in Pakistan routinely cross over to India to wage attacks as part of their campaign to carve out a separate homeland or merge the Indian-controlled area into Pakistan. Five such rebels were killed Monday night in the mountainous Achhar sector, said B.D. Sharma, inspector general of the Border Security Force. India accuses Pakistan of allowing militants to train in camps on its territory and supporting attacks that kill civilians, police and soldiers. Pakistan denies the allegations. Nearly 66,000 people, mostly civilians, have died in the conflict. India and Pakistan are holding regular talks on a series of disputes that have marred their relations since 1947, when British colonialists left the subcontinent and the new Islamic nation of Pakistan was carved out of Indian mainland. They have since fought three wars, two of them over their rival claims over Kashmir.

UN to check Iranian site of possible nuclear experiments

VIENNA, AUSTRIA- The UN nuclear watchdog agency is pushing for a fresh look at an Iranian military complex linked by the United States to possible atomic arms research just days after being granted limited access, diplomats said Tuesday. The International Atomic Energy Agency is interested in testing another part of the sprawling Parchin complex just outside Tehran in its search for radiation that could point to such research, the diplomats said. The Bush administration has accused Iran of being part of an "axis of evil" with North Korea and prewar Iraq. The United States alleges Iran may be testing high-explosive components for nuclear weapons, using an inert core of depleted uranium at Parchin as a dry run for a bomb that would use fissile material. The request by Vienna-based IAEA comes just days after its inspectors were given partial access to the site and were allowed to take environmental samples for analysis in the agency's European laboratories.

The diplomats, who are familiar with the agency's investigation of Iran's nuclear programs, said that as far as they knew the IAEA experts were not impeded beyond the limitations placed on where they could take their samples. But one of the diplomats said the fact that the agency had requested fresh access to another part of the site suggested there were continued open questions about the nature of the work conducted at Parchin. Iran insists its military is not involved in nuclear activities, and the IAEA has found no firm evidence to the contrary. The agency also has not been able to support U.S. assertions that nearly two decades of covert nuclear programs discovered 2½ years ago were aimed at making nuclear weapons and not at generating electricity, as Tehran claims.