World briefs 081302

U.N. denies Iraq's request for money to pay dues

UNITED NATIONS -- Iraq said Monday it wants to use $12.4 million from the U.N. humanitarian program to pay its late dues to the United Nations, but the United States immediately said no.

In a letter Monday, Iraq's U.N. ambassador said Iraq's arrears could be paid from a fund that administers the oil-for-food humanitarian program.

He asked Secretary-General Kofi Annan to bring the request to the U.N. Security Council. The Council has rejected similar requests in the past.

The program was created in 1996 to alleviate the suffering of Iraqi civilians living under sanctions imposed on Iraq after its 1990 invasion of Kuwait. It allows Iraq to sell crude oil to purchase food, medicine and other humanitarian goods, compensate war victims and purchase oil spare parts.

Richard Grenell, a spokesman for the U.S. Mission, said the Security Council resolution that established the program "is clear on how oil-for-food money is to be spent and we think it should continue being used to feed and clothe the people of Iraq."

Failure to pay back dues has denied Iraq its vote in the U.N. General Assembly.

Russian government refuses Peace Corps visas

MOSCOW -- The U.S. Peace Corps program has canceled plans to send new volunteers to Russia this year because the government is refusing, without explanation, to issue visas, the program's acting director for the country said Monday.

Jeff Hay said he has received no explanation from Russian authorities for the refusal. A spokesman for the Foreign Ministry's operative affairs division said the ministry would have no comment.

The Peace Corps, which has had volunteers in Russia since 1992, had planned to send 62 new volunteers for two-year stints this fall, but has now abandoned the plans, Hay said.

In addition, 30 of the 64 volunteers who were halfway through their service periods have been refused visa extensions , he said. Seventeen volunteers had been waiting in China for extensions, but have returned to the United States. Thirteen others, who were working in western Russia, will depart by Aug. 21, Hay said.

Peace Corps volunteers previously had problems with Russian visas, but those difficulties were attributed to bureaucratic snags.

French funeral parlor discovers alive 'corpse'

PARIS -- A 68-year-old man was mistakenly declared dead last week and refrigerated for five hours at a funeral parlor before a worker noticed he was alive, a Bordeaux hospital said Monday.

The unidentified man, in the final stages of cancer, was declared dead Friday at a nursing home near Bordeaux. A doctor summoned to the home issued a death certificate.

The man was sent to a funeral parlor in nearby Macau, where he was refrigerated for five hours. An employee at the funeral parlor was preparing the man for burial when he noticed signs of life.

The man was transferred to the Bordeaux University Hospital and placed in intensive care, where he died Sunday night, a hospital statement said. It was unclear whether the refrigeration played a role in the man's death.

The head of the hospital's forensics department, Sophie Gromb, said such errors, while rare, are not improbable.

The identity of the doctor who signed the initial death certificate was not released.

NATO detains three for extremism in Kosovo

PRISTINA, Yugoslavia -- NATO-led peacekeepers detained three people Monday, accusing them of belonging to extremist groups that threaten Kosovo's stability.

Officials would not identify those detained or elaborate on the threat they posed.

The arrests came amid a string of detentions of ethnic Albanians in Kosovo accused of belonging to armed extremist groups, though NATO officials insisted that none of the arrests were linked.

The men Monday were detained in an operation carried out in the capital, Pristina, said Wing Cmdr. Drew Anderson, a NATOspokesman.

Anderson would not specify the men's ethnicity. "The operation was carried out as part of the global fight against terrorism," he said.

-- From wire reports