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INTERNATIONAL
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
>> IN FLIGHT
FRIDAY FEBRUARY 16.2007
Passengers, crew overpower hijacker
ASSOCIATED PRESS
MADRID, Spain — An armed man who hijacked a Mauritian plane to Spain's Canary Islands on Thursday was overpowered by passengers and crew before he was arrested by police who boarded the plane shortly after landing, government and airline officials said.
The man was overwhelmed by passengers and arrested when police stormed the Air Mauritania 737 shortly after the aircraft landed at Gando military base on Gran Canaria island. Spanish Interior Ministry official Carolina Darias said.
Air Mauritania director Mohamed Ould Aoufa said the crew was involved in overpowering the hijacker.
Twenty-one of the 71 passengers — mostly Spaniards and Mauritanians — were treated for slight injuries, a Las Palmas police spokesman said. The most seriously affected was a pregnant woman was treated for severe shock.
Police said the man had been carrying two loaded handguns. Police did not say when during the incident
passengers and the crew stepped in.
Mohamed Ould Mohamed Cheikh, Mauritania's top police official, said the hijacker was a Moroccan from Western Sahara who wanted to immigrate to France.
The Boeing 737, with eight crew, was hitacked after leaving Nonakchott at 4:30 p.m.
The man had tried many times to obtain a visa at the French embassy in the Mauritian capital, Nouakchott, where he had lived for a few months, Mohamed said. The hitacker's identity wasn't given.
Aouta said the hijacker demanded to go to France but after the crew refused because of a lack of fuel the plane turned toward the Spanish islands.
When it landed at Gando military airport shortly after 7 p.m., the plane was immediately surrounded by paramilitary Civil Guard police. The ordeal ended minutes later.
Moroccan authorities refused the hijacker's request to land in Moroccan territory, the North African kingdom's MAP news agency said. A spokesman for Morocco's Interior Ministry said he was not aware of the hijacking.
Angel Medina/ASSOCIATED PRESS
Family and friends of the passengers on an Air Mauritania Boeing 727 hijacked passenger plane wait for it to land at Gando military base, in Las Palmas city's international airport, on the Canary island of Gran Caraña, Spain, on Thursday.
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Crafting Carnival
Craftswoman Lorgia, above; craftsman Marcos Antonio, right and a painter, below, decorate an Imperio Serrano samba school float in Rio de Janeiro on Thursday. Rio de Janeiro's famous Carnival parade starts Sunday.
Joroe Saenz/Associated Press
>> CONFLICT
Koreas make relational progress
Korea News Service/ASSOCIATED PRESS
A giant flag of North Korea's ruling Korean Workers' Party hangs in the background while a ceremony to mark the 65th birthday of the country's leader, Kim Jong Il is held on Thursday in Penangville.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
SEOUL, South Korea — The two Koreas will hold talks late this month aimed at improving relations, a South Korean official said Thursday, the first sign of easing tensions between the countries after the North signed a nuclear disarmament agreement.
North Korea's top envoy to sixnation talks nuclear talks also said Pyongyang is ready to implement the accord reached earlier this week. Japan's Kyodo News agency reported.
"The talks went well," the agency quoted North Korean Vice Foreign Minister Kim Kye Gwan as saying after returning from Beijing. "We are ready to implement the results of the meeting."
The Cabinet-level talks between the two Koreas will be held in the North Korean capital, Pyongyang, from Feb. 27 to March 2, according to a statement adopted at a lower-level meeting Thursday in the North Korean border city of Kaesong.
South and North Korea have held 19 high-level meetings since 2000, but they have been suspended amid中斅 relations following North Korea's missile launches in July and its nuclear test in October.
The meetings have served as a forum for discussing Seoul's aid to the impoverished North, and could
lead to a resumption of the regular delivery of rice and fertilizer to the communist nation. South Korea suspended aid after the missile tests in July.
South Korean delegate Lee Kwan-se said the planned talks will help advance reconciliation and cooperation between the South and the North, and promote peace on the Korean peninsula"
"The North side, just as we did, wanted to restore South-North relations and resume dialogue to discuss pending issues." Lee said.
according to South Korean media reports.
The two Koreas remain technically at war since the 1950-53 Korean war ended in a cease-fire.
The disarmament pact reached Tuesday among the two Koreas, China, Japan, Russia and the United States is worth about $250 million in aid to the North.
In Washington, the Bush administration sought to ease concern
It requires North Korea to seal its main nuclear reactor, allow international inspections and begin accounting for other nuclear programs within 60 days. In return, North Korea will receive 50,000 tons of heavy fuel oil, a down payment on a promised 1 million tons in oil or aid of a similar value if it ultimately disarms.
among conservatives that the deal goes too easy on North Korea.
White House press secretary Tony Snow said Thursday that one of President Bush's deputy national security advisers, Elliott Abrams, had questioned whether North Korea could be removed from a list of terror-sponsoring states under the agreement.
Snow said he had assured Abrams that would not happen unless the North changes its behavior "The North Koreans don't get it for free," Snow said. "They've got to earn it, like everything else."
John Bolton, the former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, has also called the agreement "fundamentally flawed," saying it rewards the North for behaving badly.
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