[PSC] Decision will ground superjumbo attempts to join Mile High club

[Abdul Salter]

The attack comes a day after a security official in Iraq's Salaheddin province said that a U.S. military operation Thursday night killed 20 civilians, most of them women and children. Full storyBut he stressed: "It will take some time before we are able to make public our estimation.""The indirect fire attack resulted in three large explosions near the Dora market," the military said.Turkey -- now a NATO member and a key U.S. ally in the war on terror -- accepts Armenians were killed but calls it a massacre during a chaotic time, not an organized campaign of genocide.The U.S. military estimated Thursday that 15 civilians were killed by coalition forces in the operation targeting senior leaders of al Qaeda in Iraq. The military said the terrorist group put the victims in harm's way."We hope that in the process of such complex and multifaceted talks you will not be forcing forward your previous agreements with Eastern European countries," Putin said.Putin set the tone early on when he hosted the pair and their Russian counterparts at his country home outside Moscow and delivered a stern rebuff to U.S. plans to push ahead with establishing missile defense facilities in Poland and the Czech Republic.A spokesman for Putin, Dmitry Peskov, told reporters in a conference call that "some of them are quite interesting and the Russian side will start examining this proposal."The wounded troops were transported to a military medical facility for "emergency treatment and further evaluation," the military said, adding the incident is under investigation.The recent rise in tensions between Turkey and the United States has led the military to increase its planning for alternatives, two military officials with direct knowledge of the ongoing assessment said."Events have triggered more detailed planning for the curtailment or closure" of access to Turkey, one official said. The key issue is to find ways to ship supplies and other critical equipment into Iraq."We may decide someday to put missile defense systems on the moon, but b
efore we get to that we may lose a chance for agreement because of you implementing your own plans," he told Rice and Gates in Russian, according to an Associated Press translation.Meanwhile, two U.S. soldiers were killed and five others were wounded in a mortar attack launched "in the vicinity of Baghdad" on Wednesday, the U.S. military said Saturday. The deaths put the total number of U.S. military personnel killed in the Iraq war at 3,827.The U.S. military already had been considering alternatives to Turkey because of the growing dependence on that country after the cutback of U.S. forces in central Asia in recent years.In combative comments that took the U.S. side aback during a photo session, Putin criticized Bush's pet project and threatened to pull out of a Cold War-era treaty that limits intermediate-range missiles.MOSCOW, Russia (AP) -- President Bush's top two Cabinet officials, expecting a polite photo op, were ambushed by a Russian leader who fears Eastern Europe may be turned into a U.S. staging point for a new Cold War.

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