Morning Brief, Wednesday, April 18

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Middle East

Peter Pace, the United States’ top general, told reporters that Iranian weapons had made their way into the hands of the Taliban. 

Saudi Arabia agreed to forgive 80 percent of Iraqi debt owed to the kingdom, a sum amounting to about $12 billion. 

Under pressure to back calls for a U.S. troop withdrawal, Iraqi PM Nuri al-Maliki declared that his government would have complete security control over all of Iraq by the end of 2007.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice met with Palestinian finance minister and former World Bank official Salam Fayyad, who later expressed his hope that the United States would loosen sanctions on the Hamas-dominated government. 

Europe 

New inflation data in Britain and the United States pushed the dollar sharply lower against the pound sterling and the euro, as traders expected to profit from future interest rate hikes in Europe. The Financial Times says there is “no end in sight for dollar weakness.”

Russian chess champ and opposition activist Gary Kasparov is under investigation for inciting “extremism,” although the Kremlin now admits that riot police overreacted to his weekend rallies. 

I’m a uniter, not a divider, French presidential candidate Nicolas Sarkozy says amid a tightening race. The first of two electoral rounds will be held Sunday.

Asia

More details are emerging about the family of Virginia Tech gunman Cho Seung-Hui as the South Korean media floods coverage of the tragedy.

Bangladesh’s military-backed caretaker government moved to bar ex-PM Sheikh Hasina, currently vacationing in the United States, from returning to her country. More on Bangladesh here.

A Japanese gangster assassinated the mayor of Nagasaki in broad daylight, but analysts say it’s not a sign of hubris but rather one of growing frustration for a weakening yakuza. 

Elsewhere

Sudan is secretly flying weapons to Darfur, according to a leaked United Nations report. The report also cites problematic behavior by rebel groups, but international reaction against the Sudanese government is likely to be harsh.

The New York Times all but accuses U.S. civil rights leader Andrew Young from profiting from his close ties with Olusegun Obasanjo, Nigeria’s outgoing president.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez says he’s got nothing against biofuels in general, just ethanol made from corn. Appearing to soften his position on the U.S.-Brazil ethanol pact, he nonetheless damned the United States for “taking corn away from people and the food chain to feed automobiles.”