Washed It!

Pakistan on Sunday reopened a key Afghan border crossing used by trucks and tankers ferrying fuel and supplies to NATO troops in Afghanistan, ending an 11-day blockade imposed after a NATO helicopter cross-border incursion that killed two Pakistani troops.

The first of hundreds of trucks and tankers stranded at the Torkham checkpoint at the Khyber Pass since Sept. 30 began moving across the border early afternoon Sunday. The border reopening should ease the massive bottleneck created by the blockade, which was followed by a series of militant attacks on parked NATO oil tankers and trucks across Pakistan.

More than 150 NATO trucks were set ablaze or damaged in those attacks. At least six people were killed in the attacks.

Although U.S. officials hailed the border reopening as a welcome development, relations between Islamabad and Washington remained palpably tense. The killing of the two Pakistani border soldiers by NATO helicopters on Sept. 30 was seen in Pakistan as an intolerable violation of the country’s sovereignty and came at a time when the U.S. had dramatically stepped up its drone-missile campaign against Taliban and Al Qaeda militants hiding out in Pakistan’s largely lawless tribal areas along the Afghan border.

In September, the U.S. carried out 22 drone-missile strikes in Pakistan’s tribal areas, most of them directed at the Afghan Taliban wing known as the Haqqani network in the North Waziristan region. Pakistan has balked at moving against Haqqani network fighters, a reluctance that has exasperated officials in Washington because Haqqani fighters use North Waziristan as a base for launching attacks on U.S., NATO and Afghan forces in Afghanistan.

Pakistani officials decided on Saturday that they would reopen the Torkham crossing. That decision came four days after the U.S. government and NATO formally apologized for the deaths of the Pakistani soldiers, saying the helicopter crews mistook the men for insurgents they had been pursuing across the Afghan-Pakistani border.

Pakistan plays a vital role in keeping supply lines open for U.S. and Western troops battling Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan. About 40% of NATO’s non-lethal supplies bound for Afghanistan move by truck from the Pakistani port city of Karachi to either the northwestern border crossing at Torkham or the southern crossing at Chaman. The Chaman crossing, located in Balochistan province, was not shut down after the Sept. 30 NATO helicopter incursion.

In recent years, U.S and NATO forces have established northern routes through former Soviet republics in Central Asia as alternate supply lines, which has allowed NATO to reduce its reliance on Pakistan as a transit nation. At one point, 80% of NATO’s non-lethal supplies moved through Pakistan.

alex.rodriguez@latimes.com
Pakistan reopens border crossing to NATO trucks

The highest-ranking North Korean official to defect from the isolationist regime was found dead from a suspected heart attack here Sunday — his death from apparent natural causes coming despite numerous assassination attempts from Pyongyang, officials here said. He was 87.

For more than a decade, since his defection in 1997, Hwang Jang-yop was North Korea’s public enemy No. 1, repeatedly referred to as “human scum” in the regime’s state-controlled media.

Hwang, a former senior member of North Korea’s ruling Workers’ Party who taught ideology to leader Kim Jong Il, was known as the chief architect of North Korea’s guiding “juche” philosophy of self-reliance.

He graduated from Pyongyang’s top Kim Il-sung University, and studied in Moscow in 1949. One of the country’s most powerful officials when he fled during a visit to Beijing, Hwang’s vocal criticism led to numerous threats and assassination attempts by Pyongyang.

In December 2006, Hwang received a package with a picture of him sprayed with red paint and a hatchet. Last April, South Korean authorities arrested two North Korean spies reportedly sent to kill Hwang. They both received 10-year prison sentences.

North Korea denied making any murder attempts, accusing South Korea of staging the arrest to intensify anti-Pyongyang sentiment.

Ironically, Hwang’s death came on the same day that his arch enemy North Korea held a massive military parade to commemorate the 65th anniversary of the foundation of the Workers’ Party. Kim Jong-il and his son, heir apparent Kim Jong Eun, appeared together at the parade broadcast live on North Korean state TV.

Police in Seoul said that while there appeared to be no evidence of foul play, the coincidence of the death meant they would perform an autopsy.

His body was found by a security guard in the bathroom of his home in Seoul, where he lived under tight police protection as he continued to write books and deliver speeches condemning Kim’s government as authoritarian. There was no sign of a break-in, officials said.

A former South Korean intelligence official who met Hwang last week was surprised by the news. “His sudden death is a surprise. His voice was a little frail, but he spoke with great clarity and intelligence,” said the official who asked not to be named.

“Hwang Jang-yop was a symbol of the tragic divide between South and North Korea. It’s hard to imagine the torment he likely felt inside. After defecting, he gave numerous speeches on the harsh reality of North Korea, which was not overlooked by Pyongyang.

“Despite his strong outward appearance, it must have taken a toll on him living in such a constant state of tension,” he added.

john.glionna@latimes.com

Kim is a researcher in the Times’ Seoul bureau.
North Korean defector found dead in Seoul

The increasingly contentious Nevada Senate race between Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and his ultra-conservative Republican opponent, Sharron Angle, took an ugly turn last week when the candidates accused each other of going easy on child molesters — and campaigning isn’t expected to get any more pleasant between now and election day.

“It’s not much fun to live through,” said political scientist David Damore of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. “It’s about 95%, if not 100%, negative.”

In a surprise move on Saturday, Angle softened some of her harsh stances on government benefits such as Social Security and unemployment insurance that have led opponents to characterize her as extreme, according to the Associated Press. Her remarks came during an interview before an audience with a conservative radio host in Las Vegas.

While Nevada has the highest unemployment rate in the nation at 14.4%, and the highest foreclosure rate, Reid and Angle concentrated on ratcheting up the fear factor with their new spots, a sign that the race remains uncomfortably tight. Three polls released in the last week showed Angle with a slight lead over Reid, but within the margin of error.

“I would say that the ramping up of the rhetoric indicates that the internal polling of the candidates shows they have no clue who is winning this race,” said Eric Herzik, a political science professor at the University of Nevada, Reno. As a result, the candidates are scrambling to demonize each other.

“Reid’s goal isn’t to get people to like him,” Herzik said, “it’s to scare people about Sharron Angle. He’s got very high unfavorables and he knows he can’t change that, so what can he do? Make people like Sharron Angle even less, or be afraid of her.”

In a 30-second spot, Angle accused the incumbent of voting to allow taxpayer dollars to pay for Viagra for convicted child molesters and sex offenders. “What else,” it asks, “could you ever need to know about Harry Reid?”

Her charge is rooted in political maneuvering around the healthcare reform bill that became law this year. Reid voted against an amendment that would have barred the use of federal funds to buy Viagra for sex offenders. Democrats opposed the amendment for procedural reasons. Politifact, a website that evaluates claims in political ads, rated Angle’s charge as “barely true.”

Reid blasted Angle for a vote she cast in 1999 while a member of the Nevada Assembly opposing background checks for people who volunteer with youth and church groups. “Sharron Angle voted to protect the privacy of sex offenders,” says the star of the spot, a Las Vegas family therapist who works with abused kids. A rating for Reid’s ad could not be found on Politifact.

The Las Vegas Review-Journal reported that the bill, which passed the Assembly, would create a fund to pay for the screening of volunteers. The newspaper quoted minutes from the discussion in committee, which reflected that Angle was concerned with “the possible invasion of privacy and liability issues included in the bill.”

Angle has been dogged by other issues, as well.

Last month, she seemed to suggest in a town hall meeting that Dearborn, Mich., which has a large Arab population, is operating under Islamic law, which drew a denunciation from the mayor of that city.

An account by the online news site, Mesquite Local News, said that in response to a question about whether “Muslims are taking over the U.S.,” Angle replied: “Dearborn, Michigan, and Frankford, Texas, are on American soil, and under constitutional law. Not Sharia law. And I don’t know how that happened in the United States. It seems to me there is something fundamentally wrong with allowing a foreign system of law to even take hold in any municipality or government situation in our United States.”

On Thursday, the Reno News and Review published an interview with Angle’s one-time pastor, an evangelical Christian, in which he slurred Reid’s Mormon faith, calling it a “cult” and “kooky.” The Rev. John Reed of Sonrise Church in Reno said he was alarmed by Reid’s “allegiance to Salt Lake City,” where the Mormon religion is based.

Angle disavowed Reed’s remarks, but it is unclear what effect they will have on the 11% of Nevada’s voters who are Mormon. Some political observers believe the pastor’s remarks could prompt Mormons, who generally vote Republican, to choose “none of the above,” which is an option on the Nevada ballot.

In the last week, Reid has garnered the endorsements of two prominent Nevada Republicans — the state Senate’s Republican leader Bill Raggio and former First Lady Dema Guinn, whose late husband, Kenny Guinn, was governor from 1999 to 2007.

It wasn’t tough decisions on California’s ailing schools, or the prison crisis or the direction of healthcare reform that kept lawmakers locked in chambers for more than 20 hours before they finally passed the latest budget in state history Friday morning.

What bedeviled the process of approving the $125-billion spending plan was such matters as whether electronic highway billboards should have advertisements, whether a big political donor should be appointed to a state commission, whose name should adorn a disaster-relief bill, and whether the state needs a paid secretary of volunteerism.

The vote was supposed to be easy, a bipartisan election-year feint that pushed tough decisions into the future, papering over the deficit with clever accounting.

The budget lawmakers passed would keep state services at the status quo, with a freeze on school spending, modest trims to healthcare programs and some new money for universities.

It assumes billions of dollars in federal aid that most experts agree will never materialize and relies on loans and bookkeeping maneuvers such as transfers and funding shifts.

Yet the approval process became an all-night affair, with tens of millions of dollars in transportation spending lost because lawmakers had a spat over electronic billboards and DUI checkpoints.

Some Democrats disliked a provision to sell advertising space for soft drinks, automobiles or other products alongside the flashing alerts about abducted children and hazardous road conditions on the more than 700 state-owned electronic freeway billboards. The proposal was pushed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

“Who thinks it’s a good idea to give drivers one more reason to take their eyes off the road?” said Sen. Joe Simitian (D-Palo Alto). He chairs a budget subcommittee that initially rejected the plan, which was later reinserted into the budget by legislative leaders.

Sen. Gil Cedillo (D-Los Angeles) sought to make the multi-provision bill more palatable by adding a new measure. It addressed an element of alleged corruption in Bell, where the city was reported to be making money by towing the cars of sober immigrants from DUI checkpoints if they did not have proper ID.

Without a provision banning such a practice, Cedillo was refusing to vote for it and other parts of the budget, which was contained in 21 bills. Democrats added it. Some Republicans said the proposal could interfere with legitimate law-enforcement actions, and the bill failed to garner enough votes to pass. So the Senate killed the entire $112-million transportation bill.

Just after dawn, an impromptu hearing was needed to get a bill authorizing schools funding back on track. GOP senators were refusing to put up the votes for it, and the measure came up short. Senate leader Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento) abruptly announced there would be a 120-second hearing, stopped business on the budget and conducted a confirmation proceeding that took just slightly longer.

Senators approved a Schwarzenegger nominee to the California Transportation Commission whom they had refused to confirm through the normal committee process. Steinberg, with a hint of sarcasm, declared the nominee, Fresno developer and GOP donor Darius Assemi, “eminently qualified.”

Sen. Jeff Denham (R-Atwater) spoke in praise of Assemi and changed his vote. The education bill passed.

Over in the Assembly, meanwhile, lawmakers were annoyed by a demand they said came from the governor. It called for the state to create a “Secretary of Volunteerism,” a paid post. The idea was heavily mocked in side conversations and during floor debates.

“I would like to volunteer to be the Wizard of Adjournment,” Assemblyman Roger Niello (R-Fair Oaks) said after 3:30 a.m., when the legislation finally passed the lower house

Ultimately, the full Legislature approved the post, with some lawmakers expressing worry that the governor might otherwise use his line-item veto authority to retaliate.

“This was the governor’s thing — or else his blue pencil came out,” said Sen. Fran Pavley (D-Agoura Hills).

Other last-minute side issues included a bid by Republicans to secure a tax break for online travel companies such as Orbitz and Expedia. It didn’t survive. A proposal to help San Diego use more redevelopment funds in a way that could help facilitate construction of a new NFL stadium made it to the governor’s desk.

Special tax breaks for a timber company, cable companies and software firms made it to the governor’s desk too. So did a provision that could help boost the bottom line of an ethanol company founded by former Secretary of State Bill Jones, an ally of and contributor to Schwarzenegger.

Not all of the bickering was partisan. Sen. Leland Yee of San Francisco, a Democrat, refused to vote with most of his caucus on many elements of the budget. He paid a price: Disaster-relief legislation that he wrote for families affected by the San Bruno explosion and fire was killed, and Democrats later moved to Schwarzenegger an identical measure without Yee’s name on it.

Lawmakers sweat the small stuff

The Courier-Times–Telegraph arrives on driveways in Tyler, Texas, on Sundays with a pleasant thud. It can be thicker than a rib-eye steak and flecked with the sort of small-government red meat that satisfies the palates of its conservative readers.

So the paper startled some readers last weekend when it ran a rare front-page editorial, one that took aim at the state’s Republican governor. The piece urged Rick Perry to reverse his “unacceptable and undeserved silence” to debate his Democratic opponent and to meet with newspaper editorial boards, as he has in years past.

Publisher Nelson Clyde said he’s disturbed by a trend in the current midterm election in which some politicians hide out or speak only through a few friendly news outlets. “For me, from a journalist’s point of view, I think this is really going to polarize us and the media further,” Clyde said in an interview. “It’s a regrettable circumstance.”

Regrettable, but maybe the new normal. Politico has declared this the “Year of the Missing Candidate,” with politicians disdaining debates, appearing rarely in public, declining to release public schedules to reporters and shunning interviews with all but the most compliant journalists.

Many Americans may believe the media are biased. Politicians are wielding that notion, still not true most of the time, to excuse their pronounced absence from the public arena. The ref’s being banished from the ring, while the boxers tell us they wouldn’t think of throwing a sucker punch.

Candidate Barack Obama alienated the national press corps during portions of the 2008 campaign, making himself scarce for questions and shrinking away when reporters pulled out their tape recorders. During one notable period of more than a month before election day, he took few questions and held no formal news conferences.

But Obama’s campaign plane seems like a cozy welcome wagon compared to the chilly vehicles plying the trail in Campaign 2010. The duck-and-dodge has been primarily, but not exclusively, a tactic among Republicans, according to Politico and several other news outlets. But more than one Democrat has gone to lengths to minimize unscripted moments too.

It would be nice to think we’re passing through a brief era of absentee candidates. But don’t count on it. The profusion of news outlets, many calibrated to a particular ideology, enable candidates to shop for preferred messengers. Or they can take to the Internet to cut out media intermediaries altogether.

In Wisconsin, reporters from many media outlets have complained about trying to cover U.S. Senate candidate Ron Johnson, who won’t put out his daily schedule. The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reported Thursday that a campaign spokeswoman said the Republican Johnson would take his message, “directly to the people.” It’s a little better with incumbent Russ Feingold, the Democrat, who doesn’t give out an advance schedule either, but will at least confirm dates after they have been set.

In Delaware, “tea party” favorite Christine O’Donnell has made herself so invisible in the U.S. Senate race that she faced questions about whether she had gone into hiding. A CNN reporter chased after her in one report this week, but O’Donnell slipped out the back door after an event. As an SUV whisked her into the night she promised to answer questions. Some day.

In Colorado, Senate hopeful Ken Buck went nine consecutive days without a public event. But the Republican promised to show his face more this month, now that a crucial fundraising period has passed.

Marco Rubio, the frontrunner for U.S. Senate from Florida, launched a bus tour this week but one group was noticeably not on board: the media. Reporters can chase the bus if they like. But the Republican candidate has a substantial lead. So he’s following a time-honored tradition in both parties of sitting on his advantage and avoiding pesky reporters, who present considerable risk and little potential reward.

In the tight Nevada senate race, reporters can’t get much love from either incumbent Harry Reid, the Democrat, or GOP challenger Sharron Angle. Reid has a history of spouting malaprops, while “tea partyer” Angle has preferred to speak through friendly outlets like Fox News. Veteran political reporter Jon Ralston of the Las Vegas Sun told Politico the scant access to the candidates was “unprecedented.”

All this has not stopped the media from needling, cajoling and pleading for more face time. And shame can still bear its rewards. Witness the fallout from an incident last March in the California gubernatorial race.

The episode began with Republican candidate Meg Whitman inviting reporters to an event at the Port of Oakland. The journalists waited a couple of hours in a holding pen at a Union Pacific rail yard. When the time finally came for questions at the “open press” event, Whitman staffers instead shooed away the reporters. Video of the Whitman’s uneasy silence aired widely on Bay Area television. The candidate called reporters to apologize. She has gotten more accessible since then.

Whitman opponent Jerry Brown could be held up as Exhibit One by nervous campaign managers who want to minimize contact with the media. During an unscripted moment last month, the attorney general managed to raise the adulterous past of Democratic icon Bill Clinton. Caught on a jogging path by a reporter one weekend in June, Brown uncorked a doozy — comparing Whitman to Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels.

Those are the kinds of remarks that have candidates apologizing and back-pedaling for days, instead of delivering the message their campaigns want to harp on.

Longtime Republican political strategist Dan Schnur said he doesn’t see any slowing of the trend toward candidates hiding out or facing only friendly media. News outlets will likely enable the process, he said, by hunkering down into increasingly isolated ideological corners.

And the perception of a biased media will give politicians the excuse to shut out even the many reporters who still try to be honest arbiters.

The result will be candidates able to remain, more and more, “on message.” And a public that knows less and less about who the politicians really are.

james.rainey@latimes.com

Twitter: latimesrainey
On the Media: Candidates are MIA during 2010 elections campaign

Democrats and their allies, moving to counter millions of dollars flowing to Republican campaigns from groups such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, have accused the international business organization of using foreign money to influence American elections.

The effort to paint conservative political groups as fronts for multinational corporations and foreign billionaires gathered steam this week after an affiliate of the liberal-leaning Center for American Progress charged that the chamber was using funds from foreign corporations to finance its political operations in Washington.

Foreign spending in U.S. elections is against the law. Tita Freeman, vice president of communications at the chamber, called the Center for American Progress report “unfounded and completely erroneous.” The foreign companies cited in the report “pay nominal dues” that “do not support U.S. chamber political activities,” Freeman said.

The liberal group MoveOn.org planned a rally outside the chamber’s Washington headquarters Thursday to bring attention to the charges.

The issue of campaign fundraising is casting a shadow over this year’s races after a Supreme Court ruling in January allowed unlimited campaign spending by corporations, labor unions and interest groups — some of which are not required to disclose their funding sources.

Corporations and interest groups, operating outside official political party committees, have provided a potent source of cash for Republicans. Democratic-allied groups have attempted to match the spending but lag far behind.

The liberal organization Think Progress said on its website that an investigation found that dues and fees collected from the chamber’s overseas chapters and foreign business members goes into the same account used to fund its political activities.

Freeman called the allegation “an attempt to silence businesspeople, to silence those who support free enterprise, and an intentional diversion in advance of the midterm elections.”

The chamber and two new groups cofounded by Republican strategist Karl Rove — American Crossroads and its affiliate, Crossroads GPS — are expected to spend more than $100 million on media campaigns in the final month before election day. Allies of Democrats have attempted to counter the overwhelming budgets of right-leaning groups with their own meager but pointed ad buys.

On Wednesday, Campaign Money Watch, a Democratic-leaning group that advocates for public financing of elections, took out a $750,000 ad to oppose the Republican candidate for governor in Colorado. The move came a day after American Crossroads spent about the same on ads opposing the Democratic incumbent.

Also Wednesday, the National Education Assn. committed to spending $15 million this cycle and began airing television ads for Democratic incumbents in Arizona and Ohio.

But with less than one month to go, the big money still trended in Republicans’ favor.

On Tuesday, Crossroads GPS spent more than $1 million on advertising against Alexi Giannoulias, the Democratic candidate for President Obama’s former Senate seat in Illinois, according to records filed with the Federal Election Commission.

Meanwhile, two nonpartisan groups that advocate stricter campaign finance controls urged the Internal Revenue Service this week to investigate Crossroads GPS. The Campaign Legal Center and Democracy 21 said the Rove group is organized in a way that “allows its donors to evade the public disclosure requirements” that otherwise would apply if the organization was registered differently.

kim.geiger@latimes.com
Liberal groups say foreign funds aid Republicans

The State Department issued a travel alert Sunday for American citizens in Europe in light of increased U.S. and European intelligence that a large-scale Al Qaeda attack may be imminent.

Intelligence officials in the U.S. and Europe have said an increase in activity in recent weeks suggests that a small cell of potential terrorists hiding in North Waziristan, a Pakistani tribal region, are preparing an attack that could be as spectacular as the 2008 raids in Mumbai, India, that killed 166 people.

Plotters could be planning to use “a variety of means and target both official and private interests,” the State Department said, adding that Americans abroad should be careful on trains, subways and other transportation systems, and in visiting hotels, restaurants and tourist spots.

“U.S. citizens should take every precaution,” the travel alert said.

It is thought that Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden is behind the plot, and that if successful, it could become the largest terrorist action since the Sept. 11 attacks nine years ago.

Hundreds of thousands of Americans are traveling in Europe at any given time — as tourists, college students and business professionals. But the State Department did not upgrade its alert to a warning, which could have led to widespread cancellations of airline and hotel bookings.

Nevertheless, many in Europe found themselves quickly aware of the situation.

With the Los Angeles Lakers and Minnesota Timberwolves in London preparing for a preseason game, the National Basketball Assn. promised to take “appropriate” measures to ensure their safety.

“The NBA is staying in contact with the U.S. Embassy, the CIA and Scotland Yard,” said Lakers spokesman John Black. “They are keeping us informed of the situation.”

European governments began warning of a possible attack last week.

In Britain, the threat of terrorism has been listed as “severe,” meaning an attack is highly likely. Britain’s Foreign Office also warned its citizens to be careful traveling in France.

French Defense Minister Herve Morin told Le Parisien newspaper that “the terrorist threat exists and could hit us at any moment.” But Morin said law enforcement officials were continuing to pursue would-be terrorists.

“Networks organizing themselves to prepare attacks are constantly being dismantled around the world,” he said. “It is good for the French to know this.”

The U.S. military in recent weeks has stepped up drone missile attacks on suspected hideouts in regions of Pakistan, and the U.S. is passing its intelligence to its European counterparts.

According to intelligence sources, the threat apparently arose after the arrest and interrogation of a German man of Pakistani origin who was being held at the U.S. air base in Bagram, Afghanistan. He is said to have provided information about the activities of half a dozen other men from Germany and England who were linked through Al Qaeda and were reportedly talking to other operatives in several European cities about upcoming strikes.

richard.serrano@latimes.com

U.S. issues travel alert for Europe amid threat of Al Qaeda attack

In the latest blow to Mideast peace talks, Palestinian leaders said Saturday that they had lost hope in U.S. efforts to find a solution to the settlement construction standoff and repeated their threat to quit direct negotiations unless Israel agrees to halt building in the West Bank.

After a three-hour meeting in Ramallah, the Palestine Liberation Organization’s Executive Committee and the Fatah party’s Central Committee stopped short of announcing their withdrawal from the discussions and indicated they would continue to talk in the coming days to U.S. Mideast envoy George Mitchell, who left the region Friday after making little progress in crafting a compromise.

A final decision could be announced after an Arab League meeting scheduled for Friday.

But in their bluntest terms yet, the Palestinians blamed Israel for refusing to renew its partial freeze on West Bank settlements and said they had no confidence in Washington’s ability broker a deal.

“The U.S. tried to find a formula, but it failed because Israel would not respond,” said Nabil abu Rudaineh, spokesman for Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. “All efforts have reached a deadlock. There is no breakthrough, and conditions will be at a stalemate for a long time.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has so far rebuffed calls from the U.S., U.N., European Union, Russia and Japan to extend the moratorium, which expired Sept. 26. Netanyahu, who is worried about a backlash from his conservative coalition government, has rejected a U.S. offer to provide advanced military equipment, the diplomatic backing in the U.N. and other concessions in exchange for a two-month extension, according to Israeli media.

In a statement Saturday, Netanyahu urged Palestinians to remain in the talks.

“The way to achieve an historic peace agreement between our two nations is to sit around the negotiating table, seriously and continuously, and not to leave it, because that is the place where the divisions between us will be resolved,” Netanyahu said.

If talks collapse, Palestinians say they may appeal to the U.N. Security Council for a resolution calling for Israel to stop all settlement activities, said Bassam Salhi, a PLO member.

“The government of Israel bears full responsibility for the current impasse in the peace process,” said Yasser Abed-Rabbo, secretary-general of the PLO’s Executive Committee. “Stopping settlements is the tangible evidence of the seriousness of the negotiations and the entire political process.”

Special correspondent Abukhater reported from Ramallah and Times staff writer Sanders from Jerusalem.

Palestinian leaders threaten to quit Mideast peace talks

North Korean state media released a photograph on Thursday of the reclusive state’s leader-in-waiting Kim Jong Eun.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Il anointed his youngest son as successor this week, promoting him to senior political and military positions. The photograph showed senior North Korean leaders in a group.

North Korea publishes photo of Kim’s youngest son

The candidates vying to be California’s next governor had their first face-to-face debate Tuesday evening, a polite but contentious exchange in which Republican Meg Whitman and Democrat Jerry Brown largely stuck to their campaign stump scripts, questioning each other’s fitness to lead the state and accusing their opponent of being beholden to campaign contributors.

Whitman repeatedly hammered Brown for his union ties, saying he would be unable to renegotiate pension contracts after labor unions spent millions of dollars propping up his candidacy.

“He will bring people together — it will be a meeting of all of the special interests and the unions who are there collecting IOUs from the campaign they have funded,” she said before 750 audience members in the Mondavi Center for the Performing Arts at UC Davis. “I will not owe anything to anyone and I will do what is right for the people of California.”

Brown countered that Whitman has received $25 million from wealthy contributors who would directly benefit from her plan to eliminate the state capital gains tax, which he said would blow a $5-billion hole in the state budget.

“This is a little bit like the kettle calling the pot black,” he said. “That $5 billion comes right out of the general fund…. It’s from schools, from kids, from teachers … to the most powerful and big campaign contributors.”

Brown and Whitman are locked in a tight race, which is remarkable because of Whitman’s record-breaking spending and Democrats‘ double-digit voter registration advantage in California. Interest in their first matchup was intense, with more than 130 journalists covering the event, serving outlets as far away as China, Germany and Japan. A couple hundred protesters milled outside.

The most amusing exchange occurred when a moderator noted that Brown twice ran for president when he was governor previously and asked what would prevent him from doing so again.

“Age,” Brown said. Then he grinned and continued: “Hell, if I was younger, you know I’d be running again.”

But “I now have a wife, I come home at night, I don’t try to close down the bars in Sacramento like I used to do when I was governor of California. I’m going to spend more time in Sacramento and get it done,” he said. “So don’t worry about that; I’m in for the duration here.”

Much of the exchange focused on which candidate is best prepared to fix the state’s flawed government and to spur economic growth and job creation — the billionaire former corporate chief who says her business experience will help right California, or the longtime politician who says his decades in public service mean he alone can bring together the state’s dysfunctional legislators.

Brown said he thought long and hard before deciding to run, and chose to do so because he believes his political experience could help the state weather its current hardships.

“I care a great deal about public service. I think it’s honorable. I’ve lived in this state all my life, I love it, I voted here all my life,” he said. And “God willing,” he added, he would die in California.

Whitman responded that shaking up the status quo takes a new approach.

“My view is if we’re going to change the direction of the state, we have to do it very differently,” she said. “My approach is anchored in focus. I want to do three things really well to restore the faith of the people in California can have in their government.” She said she wanted to cut government spending, create jobs and fix schools.

They also discussed immigration, with Brown favoring a path to citizenship for those in the country illegally and Whitman opposing. And Whitman reiterated her apology for not voting for much of her adult life.

The meeting, sponsored by Capital Public Radio, NBC’s KCRA-TV in Sacramento, the Sacramento Bee and UC Davis, was the first of three debates scheduled before the November election. The next one is Saturday in Fresno.

seema.mehta@latimes.com

Brown, Whitman go head-to-head in first debate