ROME, March 5--Newspapers Saturday called for a swift explanation by Washington of the circumstances that led to the shooting of Italian hostage Giuliana Sgrena and the killing of a secret service agent by US troops in Iraq, AFP reported.
Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi “has made the alliance with the United States the cornerstone of his government’s foreign policy,“ said the conservative daily Il Messaggero.
“In many, even difficult times, Berlusconi did not hesitate to celebrate the friendship with the United States, beyond his own with (US President) George W. Bush. Very well, between friends things must be said straightforward: the ’regret’ of the White House is important but not enough.
“If he does not want the relationship to be marked by unforgivable hypocrisy, the government must insist that full light is shed, that the circumstances of Calipari’s killing are cleared up without the shadow of a doubt, that whoever made a mistake--even at senior level--be identified and brought to justice; that’s the minimum to be done.“
Italian secret service agent Nicola Calipari, 51, was killed late Friday when he threw himself in front of Sgrena to protect her from bullets fired by US troops on the convoy taking her to safety.
Berlusconi, a staunch ally of Bush, had told a press conference in Rome later there were “disquieting questions“ that needed to be answered about the incident.
“Berlusconi is furious because the dramatic end to ’the Sgrena affair’ is creating a domestic and foreign policy problem,“ said Corriere della Sera.
“Berlusconi realizes that moderates (of the opposition) center-left could also be driven to the extreme,“ which had adamantly opposed the invasion of Iraq in March 2003 and Berlusconi’s support for it.
Italy sent 3,000 troops to Iraq as part of a coalition of international forces following the ouster of president Saddam Hussein.

Opposition members hold pictures and placards during a picket in Moscow March 3, marking six months after the bloody school siege in Russia's southern town of Beslan. The text on the placards reads: 'We Need Truth!' and 'Enough of Lies! Enough of Blood!' (Reuters Photo)

MOSCOW, March 5--Russian authorities have killed five people and arrested four others suspected of aiding the hostage-taking attack on a school in southern Russia last year that killed 330 people, CNN quoted prosecutors as saying Friday.
Deputy Prosecutor General Nikolai Shepel said in a statement that those arrested were suspected of helping stage the hostage-taking in Beslan where assailants held more than 1,000 hostages for nearly three days. The siege ended September 3 in gunfire and explosions, nearly half of the 330 victims were children.
Shepel said that five other suspects were killed while resisting arrest. The statement did not say when or where the raid took place.
The suspects were accused of being involved in the school raid “at the stage of its preparation,“ Shepel said.
Chechen warlord Shamil Basayev has claimed responsibility for the school seizure and other latest terror attacks in Russia.
Anger has grown over the slow pace of the investigation, particularly among residents of Beslan. Many suspect authorities are hiding information about the attackers and how they were so easily able to slip into town with a huge quantity of weapons.
Officials say 32 people took part in the attack, and that 31 of them were killed and one detained.
Shepel said that the suspects arrested in the latest raid were also accused of involvement in an attack on police facilities in Russia’s southern region of Ingushetia near Chechnya in June, in which about 90 people were killed.
He added that a suspected Al-Qaeda liaison in Chechnya, Abu Dzeit, a Saudi Arabia national, who died in a Russian security sweep last month, was a key organizer of the school seizure and other terror attacks.
In a separate operation conducted by local police force in Chechnya, one rebel was killed and seven others were captured, Ruslan Alkhanov, the interior minister in Chechnya’s Moscow-backed administration, said, according to the Interfax news agency. One police officer was wounded.

WASHINGTON, March 5--More than three years after a pro-US government was installed, Afghanistan has been unable to contain opium poppy production and is “on the verge of becoming a narcotics state,“ a presidential report said Friday.
The 2005 International Narcotics Control Strategy Report (INCSR) said that the area in Afghanistan devoted to poppy cultivation last year set a new record of 206,700 hectares, more than triple the figure for 2003, CNN reported.
The country’s illicit opium/heroin production “can be viewed, for all practical purposes, as the rough equivalent of world illicit heroin production,“ the report said, and “it represents an enormous threat to world stability.“
Afghanistan’s opium production of 4,950 metric tons dwarfed that of second-place Myanmar by 17 times. Some 40-60 percent of Afghanistan’s GDP is attributed to narcotics, the report found.
Opium poppy is the raw material for heroin.
The massive study, covering the illicit narcotics situation in 2004 in virtually all countries, was transmitted to Congress by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on behalf of President Bush.
Colombia remains a major drug country, the report said, despite impressive progress against narcotics trafficking.
The report credited Colombia’s public security forces with preventing hundreds of tons of illicit drugs from reaching the world market through interdiction, spraying of coca and poppy crops and manual eradication.
The United States has been a major counter drug partner of Colombia, having contributed billions of dollars to the effort since 2000.
Colombia is the source of over 90 percent of the cocaine and 50 percent of the heroin entering the US, the report said. It is also a leading user of precursor chemicals and the focus of significant money laundering activity.
In Afghanistan, the United States military deposed the Taliban government in November 2001, and President Hamid Karzai has been in charge since then with strong American backing.
“Dangerous security conditions make implementing counternarcotics programs difficult and present a substantial obstacle to both poppy eradication efforts by the national government and to international efforts to provide related assistance,“ the report said.