Official: U.S. envoys to meet with Chen
BEIJING, May 4 (UPI) -- U.S. envoys planned to meet with Chen Guangcheng Friday, a day after the Chinese dissident said he might wish to live in China but after a U.S. visit, an official said.
The U.S. diplomats' visit to a Beijing hospital, where Chen is being treated for a foot injury he received while fleeing house arrest April 22, would be part of a deal the United States and China worked out that led to the United States releasing Chen from protective custody in the U.S. Embassy in Beijing, the official told CNN.
U.S. Ambassador to China Gary Locke said in a series of interviews with U.S. news organizations U.S. officials would sit down with Chen, a self-taught lawyer who is blind, to explore his desires and "review all the options."
Asked by NBC News if Washington would agree to Chen's request to leave the country, even temporarily, Locke said he could not make a commitment.
"We're not about to make promises we cannot keep," he said.
Chen proposed in an urgent phone call played on speaker during an emergency U.S. Congressional-Executive Commission on China hearing Thursday that he and his family be allowed to visit the United States temporarily, rather than seek permanent U.S. asylum.
"I want to come to the U.S. to rest. I have not had a rest in 10 years," Chen said.
U.S. lawyer Jerome Cohen, who has advised Chen this week, told The New York Times the proposal could be a face-saving solution for China, defusing a situation that threatens relations between the two countries.
North Caucasus blasts kill 13, injure 100
MOSCOW, May 4 (UPI) -- Two explosions at a police checkpoint in Russia's North Caucasus region killed at least 13 people and injured more than 100, authorities said Friday.
Investigators said at least one of the blasts at the checkpoint in Dagestan, a mostly Muslim area bordering Chechnya, was a suicide bombing, The New York Times reported.
The first bombing at the post near a highway outside of Makhachkala, Dagestan's capital, Thursday night was followed by an explosion set off after police and rescue workers arrived to aid victims, Russia's Investigative Committee said in a statement.
No one had claimed responsibility for the attack.
Russian media reports said the explosions tore through a natural gas pipeline, touching off a fire that prevented rescue workers from reaching many of the injured.
The attack occurred just days before the presidential inauguration of Vladimir Putin, who launched a war in Chechnya while he was prime minister in 1999, a move instrumental in his rise to power.
Russian Interior Minister Rashid Nurgaliyev said security measures will be tightened in the volatile North Caucasus region during World War II Victory Day celebrations Wednesday, RIA Novosti reported.
White House: Syria cease-fire not working
WASHINGTON, May 4 (UPI) -- A Syrian cease-fire is not working and government and other groups may need to make new decisions to seek an end to the bloodshed, the White House said.
"If the regime's intransigence continues, the international community is going to have to admit defeat and work to address the serious threat to peace and stability being perpetrated by the Assad regime," White House spokesman Jay Carney told reporters Thursday, after Syrian security forces stormed an anti-government protest at Aleppo University, killing at least four students -- including one heaved out a fifth-floor window -- and forcing the state-run school to close, activists and opposition groups said.
If the international community admits the peace plan brokered by U.N.-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan last month has failed, Washington will work with the Security Council and countries and groups outside the Security Council to find a "political transition," Carney said, adding such a transition was "urgently needed."
"It is clear, and we will not deny, that the plan has not been succeeding thus far and that the regime has made no effort to take any of the steps required under the Annan plan, including moving toward the implementation of a full cease-fire," he said.
The Obama administration hopes the Annan plan succeeds, Carney added. But "based on the evidence," the administration remains "highly skeptical of Assad's willingness to meet the conditions of that plan because he has so clearly failed to meet them thus far."
France's centrist Bayrou backs Hollande
PARIS, May 4 (UPI) -- A centrist who was a minister with French President Nicolas Sarkozy in the 1990s said he would vote for Francois Hollande in Sunday's presidential runoff.
Francois Bayrou, who was education minister when Sarkozy was communications minister from 1993 to 1995, said he was voting for the Socialist candidate because of Sarkozy's rightward shift after the first round of elections, Radio France Internationale reported Friday.
Bayrou, who polled fifth in the first round April 22, said his decision was personal and he did not urge his supporters to vote for Hollande.
"I, personally, will vote for Francois Hollande," he said. "After a good result in the first round, Nicolas Sarkozy set off in chase of an extreme right within which we do not recognize our values and in which our deepest and most precious beliefs are battered and denied."
Sarkozy called Bayrou's decision "illogical," RFI said.
Recent polls indicate Hollande leads Sarkozy going into the runoff.
