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Protesting Pakistani lawyers, police clash

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Nov. 6 (UPI) -- Riot-equipped Pakistani police in Multan took to picking up stones thrown at them and hurling them back at the lawyers, Alalam Satellite TV reported.

Witnesses said at least three lawyers were injured, and the same number were arrested, the report said.

In Islamabad, deposed Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammed Chaudhry spoke to more than 20 lawyers at the Islamabad Bar Association headquarters by someone holding a cell phone up to a loudspeaker.

He said he his fellow justices ruled President Pervez Musharraf's weekend emergency decree of martial law as unconstitutional, and called on civil servants and members of the military not to obey the emergency order, Voice of America reported.

Soon after he spoke, cellular telephone service was cut off, the report said.

Benazir Bhutto, the leader of the country’s largest opposition party flew to Islamabad Tuesday from her home in Karachi, and told reporters she would meet with other political leaders but would not meet or negotiate with Musharraf, a New York Times correspondent reported.

Musharraf has promised to restore democracy, but there was no clear indication of when when elections would be held, the reports said.

Report: U.S. border security lacking

WASHINGTON, Nov. 6 (UPI) -- Security lapses at U.S. border crossings last year allowed entry to thousands of people who should have been denied, a government watchdog reported.

Richard Stana was the author of the Government Accountability Office report made partially public Monday, CNN reported. While the public version didn't indicate a number of illegal entries, a source who saw the whole report told the network the figure was estimated at 21,000.

Stana wrote that not all of the illegal entries at the country's 326 land, sea and air ports of entry were cause for terror concern.

"But as we saw in the recent past, it doesn't take too many people getting through the ports of entry to cause some real trouble," Stana wrote. "And not everyone who comes in and is a danger needs to be a terrorist. It could be someone connected with a criminal enterprise."

The report cited numerous factors as the cause of the lapses, including understaffing and turnover at Customs and Border Protection, weak management controls, complacency and inattentiveness by some officers.

Mass grave found northwest of Baghdad

BAGHDAD, Nov. 6 (UPI) -- Iraqi and U.S. troops on an anti al-Qaida mission northwest of Baghdad found a grave containing at least 22 corpses, the military said Tuesday.

The find was made in the Lake Tharthar region, which straddles Anbar and Salaheddin provinces, CNN reported.

A statement from the Iraqi army said it was "investigating the mass grave to determine the identities of the deceased and the causes of death for notification of their families."

The al-Qaida mission began Sunday and has resulted in 30 arrests and the dismantlement of two car-bomb assembly sites, the report said.

In Baghdad, two bombs targeting a U.S. convoy went off within minutes Tuesday, Kuwait's KUNA news agency reported. Three civilians were injured but there was no indication that U.S. troops were injured, the report said.

Elsewhere, a member of the regional government of Nineveh, 250 miles north of Baghdad, was assassinated by gunmen in an attack Monday, officials said. The official's convoy came under fire north of Mosul, killing him and wounding a bodyguard, KUNA said.

Disabling of nuclear facilities begins

PYONGYANG, North Korea, Nov. 6 (UPI) -- A U.S. team has begun disabling North Korea’s nuclear facilities as part of the next step in the Communist country’s denuclearization effort.

U.S. State Department spokesman Tom Casey said the process under the six-nation agreement, which includes the United States, began Monday,Yonhap news agency reported Tuesday. “This is a positive first step in this process, and (we) certainly hope to see it continue,” Casey said.

The U.S. team is working at the Yonbyon facility near Pyongyang, where North Korea’s main nuclear facilities are located.

Yonhap reported the experts hope the facility will be disabled to the point where restarting it will be difficult and cost prohibitive. Other parties in the effort are the two Koreas, China, Russia and Japan.

The current agreement also requires North Korea to disclose all its other nuclear programs in exchange for extensive aid. The entire process is expected to be completed by year-end.

China’s Xinhua news agency reported the current effort will involve disabling the 5 megawatt experimental reactor, the reprocessing plant and the nuclear fuel rod fabrication facility.

Saudi king meets pope at the Vatican

VATICAN CITY, Nov. 6 (UPI) -- Pope Benedict XVI became the first Roman Catholic leader Tuesday to host talks with a Saudi monarch, as King Abdullah and he discussed interreligious dialogue.

Abdullah arrived in Rome Monday night and hinted as to the talks' purpose at a dinner hosted by Italian President Giorgio Napolitano, the Saudi newspaper Okaz reported.

"All religions encourage people to love the next person," Abdullah said. "If everyone followed the principles of their religions, and that which Allah ordered, the world would be free of clashes."

Vatican sources said the pope was expected to bring up the Arabic ban on public Christian worship as well as the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, A BBC correspondent reported.

Benedict infuriated Muslims in a September 2006 speech at Regensburg University in Germany when he associated Islam with violence but he later apologized and launched a campaign of improving interreligious dialogue.