Reuters World News Highlights 1415 GMT July 27. (WORLD-HIGHLIGHTS-1415) 2005-07-27 10:15:20

Reuters World News Highlights 1415 GMT July 27. (WORLD-HIGHLIGHTS-1415) 2005-07-27 10:15:20

From Foreign wire stories (w/summaries):

LONDON - Police arrested four men in central England while hunting for those behind last weeks failed London bomb attacks, and media reports said one of the men was a suspected bomber.

Police declined to say whether a prime suspect had been captured in the dawn raids in the city of Birmingham, but one of the four was taken to the British capital for questioning at a high security detention centre.

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DUBAI - Al Qaeda in Iraq said it killed the two Algerian envoys it had kidnapped last week, according to an Internet statement.

The statement was posted on a Web site often used by the group led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

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BAGHDAD - The United States hopes to sharply reduce its forces in Iraq by the middle of next year, its top commander on the ground said.

The remarks by General George Casey appear to have been the first time since the insurgency worsened sharply in April that top Pentagon officials have suggested a timeline for withdrawal.

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BEIJING - North Korea staked out a tough position on the second day of six-party talks on its nuclear weapons programmes, demanding U.S. concessions as the other five outlined proposals for resolving the crisis.

But with an unusually high level of one-on-one contacts between the North and the United States and a new, open-ended format, the mood at the long-delayed fourth round of talks also including South Korea, Russia, Japan and China remained hopeful.

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TEHRAN - Iran will resume some key work on its nuclear fuel cycle regardless of what European diplomats propose to defuse a dispute over Tehrans atomic ambitions, Irans president said on Wednesday.

Mohammad Khatami said the nuclear fuel work would fall short of actually producing enriched uranium, which Washington fears Tehran will use in atomic bombs, but stressed that Iran would also ultimately resume its enrichment programme.

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KERBALA, Iraq - Iraqi commandos have captured an Egyptian said to be an associate of Ayman al-Zawahiri, al Qaedas number two, police sources said.

Police named the suspect as Hamdi Tantawi and said he was detained in a raid on a farmhouse near the town of Yusufiya, south of Baghdad. They said Tantawi was suspected of financing insurgent operations in the area.

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SHARM EL-SHEIKH, Egypt - Egyptian police have taken DNA samples from four Sinai families as they search for the bombers who killed at least 64 people in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh, security sources said.

Police are trying to match the DNA from the families with the DNA from remains found at the bomb site, on the assumption that some of the bombers were killed.

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BEIJING - About 2,000 disgruntled farmers have clashed with hundreds of policemen in Chinas northern region of Inner Mongolia in a land dispute that injured dozens in fighting one government official described as anarchy".

The July 21 clash in Qianjin village, a part of Tongliao city about 725 km (450 miles) northeast of Beijing, was one of a growing number of protests across China, most of which go unreported in the tightly controlled state media.

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VIENTIANE - A major Asia-Pacific security forum suffered another serious setback when Chinese Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing said he would skip the meeting for a surprise trip to Myanmar.

His Indian counterpart, Natwar Singh, also pulled out of the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) annual meeting on Thursday and Friday, dealing yet another blow to a security institution already struggling for relevance after no-shows by top diplomats from Washington and Tokyo.

REUTERS Reut14:15 07-27-05

Copyright: (c) TWP, AP, Reuters, others as appropriate

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