"Against terrorism, what's needed is not a war. It is, as France has done for many years, a determined fight based on vigilance at all times and effective cooperation with our partners."

"But we will only end this curse if we also fight against injustice, violence and these crises," he said.

Villepin's remarks, which came a day after U.S. President
George Bush admitted that the CIA had interrogated dozens of terrorism suspects in secret foreign locations, did not explicitly mention the United States.

But his rejection of language employed by Bush, who often uses the expression "war on terror" underlined the longstanding differences between Paris and Washington.

In separate remarks, Chirac stressed that France was committed to maintaining a nuclear arsenal of its own.

"In an uncertain world, facing constantly evolving threats, nuclear dissuasion guarantees our vital interests," Chirac said on a visit to France's Atomic Energy Commission nuclear simulation facility at Bruyeres-le-Chatel near Paris.

He stressed that France was committed to funding continuing research and development into nuclear weapons technology.

"There can be no great ambition without adequate means, that's clear," he said. "The position of countries is never guaranteed. In the 21st century, only those which make science a genuine priority will stay ahead."

Both France and the United States have played down splits opened by the Iraq war, pointing especially to cooperation on attempts by the West to contain Iran's nuclear ambitions.

But differences in tone and style have often resurfaced, notably during the Lebanon crisis, where France initially offered to send just 400 peacekeepers to Lebanon despite vigorously backing calls for an international force.

Villepin's speech in parliament made much of France's leading role in securing a peace agreement in Lebanon backed by the United Nations, which he said had shown the virtues of "listening and dialogue."

"It is the duty of France and Europe to show that the clash of civilizations is not inevitable," he said. "No one retains this wisdom, inherited from our history, as we, French and Europeans, do," he said.

Passengers will now be allowed to carry liquids and gels on board planes bound for Britain, though these remain banned on flights to the United States and Israel, according to the official, who declined to be named.

Travellers to Britain would no longer be systematically frisked, though all of their bags would still be manually searched, the official said.

"Let me say neither the government of Pakistan nor ISI (Directorate of Inter-Services Intelligence) is involved in any kind of interference inside Afghanistan."

Musharraf's speech, also attended by Afghan President Hamid Karzai, came a day after the two leaders resolved to cooperate to fight the "common enemy" of terrorism and extremism.

President Omar Hassan al-Bashir's government on Tuesday refused a plan for a UN peacekeeping force of about 20,000 troops in Darfur, calling any Western action in the area "a colonialist conspiracy."

An African Union force of about 7,000 strong is scheduled to withdraw from the region by Sept. 30.

UN humanitarian envoy Jan Egeland has said a "man-made catastrophe of an unprecedented scale" looms in Darfur without a security presence.

An estimated 200,000 people - mostly black Sudanese - have been killed in Darfur in the last three years, and another 2.5 million displaced to squalid refugee camps due to the conflict between government-backed Janjaweed forces and militant Muslim groups.

Accusations of genocide

Mark Hanis of the Genocide Intervention Network said there were good reasons from the government's point of view to spurn the international community.

"They're worried that the peacekeeping force is going to protect the Darfurian people that they're trying to eliminate in this genocide; and the second reason is they're afraid they're going to be held accountable and possibly sentenced in the international criminal courts," Hanis said.

Fighting in Darfur has spilled over to neighbouring Chad, according to CBC reporter David McGuffin and the instability is of critical importance in northeastern Africa, where nine countries share a border with Sudan.

McGuffin and his cameraman were attacked Wednesday when they returned to their Khartoum hotel.

The reporter said two truckloads of plainclothes policeman descended on the hotel and demanded the camera equipment, even after they produced their government-issued filming permits.

McGuffin was restrained while the cameraman was punched and thrown into one of the vehicles.

Cameraman bloodied in attack

He said it was only after hotel security staff became involved that the two men were released. The cameraman was bloodied and required medical attention at a local hospital.

"It's a good indication of just the level of violence and insecurity in this city," McGuffin reported.

The incident came on the same day that the decapitated body of kidnapped journalist Mohammed Taha was found on the outskirts of Khartoum.

Taha, kidnapped on Tuesday, had worked for Sudan's al-Wesaq newspaper and had been condemned by Islamic radicals, despite being acquitted of charges of insulting the Prophet Mohammad.

The killing of Taha is just one of a number of recent attacks on civilians. A local nurse was slain last week, while at least a dozen aid workers have been killed since May.

A warrant officer and a sailor died, likely from carbon monoxide poisoning, in the incident. Another sailor, who was helping evacuate people from the vessel, was injured.

The fire broke out during a planned mission in the Barents Sea as a result of short circuit in the power supply system in one of the bow compartments, and the submarine has been towed back to its base in Vidyayevo, the Interfax and Itar-Tass news agencies reported.

"The emergency shutdown system of the nuclear propulsion plant was activated," the spokesman was quoted by Interfax as saying.

Navy Commander Admiral Vladimir Masorin said the navy command did not notify neighboring states of the fire "since there was no threat of a radiation leak."

The Daniil Moskovsky, a Viktor-3 class submarine, joined the Russian navy in March 1991 and has a crew of 96 submariners, and it is equipped with RK-55 Granat cruise missiles and Shkval and Vodopad torpedoes, according to Itar-Tass.

The worst accident involving the Northern Fleet in recent years was the sinking of the Kursk submarine. It sank during a military exercise in the Barents Sea on Aug. 12, 2000, after an explosion ripped through the vessel and all the 118 sailors on board died.

Last August, a British naval rescue ship helped lift to surface a small Russian submarine stuck on the Pacific seabed. All submariners onboard survived.

Authorities said the armed people included a male with a gun and five females with knives.

The incident happened in Ganado, where the school is located, around mid-afternoon when the school was bringing some students out by bus. It's not known how many students were inside the school.

Ganado, a community of 1,500 people, is about 55 miles northwest of Gallup, New Mexico, and 315 miles northeast of Phoenix, the largest city in Arizona.

Hunter College announced last month that it was abandoning its 3-year-old suicide policy as part of a settlement with the student. The student, who was allowed to continue attending class, claimed in a lawsuit that her 2004 ouster from the dorms violated federal law protecting disabled people from discrimination.

The school, part of the City University of New York system, also agreed to pay her $65,000.

Hunter spokeswoman Meredith Halpern said the college may still consider temporarily removing troubled students from its residence halls, but such evictions will no longer be automatic.

College officials say such expulsions are not punitive; Halpern said Hunter's policy was aimed at protecting students' privacy and shielding them from schoolmates' prying eyes. At George Washington University in the nation's capital, spokeswoman Tracy Schario said the idea is to give suicidal students a break from the stresses of university life and encourage them to seek help.

But some activists suspect such evictions are an attempt by colleges to avoid legal liability if someone commits suicide in the dorms.

Up until recently, the prevailing legal theory had long been that adult students were responsible for their own behavior, and that colleges could not be held liable. But that philosophy was undermined by a pair of court rulings involving the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Ferrum College in Virginia.

In both cases, judges ruled prior to out-of-court settlements that colleges might have a duty to prevent a suicide if the risk was foreseeable. The cases prompted some schools to be more aggressive about sending troubled students home.

Karen Bower, an attorney with the Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law, which helped litigate the Hunter College case, said she hopes the settlement will prompt other schools to rethink their policies.

"The real danger of these policies is that they discourage students from getting the help that they really need," Bower said. Students might be scared from speaking out about suicidal thoughts if they believe it would mean eviction, she said.

The chances that a student might be expelled from a dorm simply for talking about suicide with a counselor are considered slim. Conversations with mental health professionals are generally confidential and protected by privacy laws.

But universities can hear about a student's troubles and take action if he has been talking with friends or classmates, or does something that leads to a middle-of-the-night hospitalization, which might involve campus security or a housing official.

Elsewhere around the country, George Washington University is being sued by a former student who was barred from campus and threatened with expulsion after checking himself into a hospital for depression. The student, Jordan Nott, said he never tried to kill himself but had been thinking about it because of the suicide of a close friend, also a George Washington student.

The Bazelon Center is also representing a student at a Connecticut boarding school who was placed on a mandatory leave after seeking treatment for depression.

George Washington's Schario said the school's treatment of Nott was not an attempt to limit legal liability, but "to protect a life." She added that Nott's case was an unusual one. More than 200 students seek help for depression or suicidal thoughts each year at George Washington, and a majority are not asked to leave.

"It is always a case-by-case assessment of what is best for that particular student," Schario said.

She acknowledged, however, that the university's current practice of using its disciplinary system to handle some students with psychological problems "does appear insensitive" and said other procedures were being considered.

Joanna Locke of the Jed Foundation, a program aimed at preventing college suicides, said schools should have flexibility. Some schools, she said, may feel a need to send a student home if they cannot offer proper treatment, or if the student has become disruptive.

"There is no right answer, except that (the decision) should be made carefully, and the decision should be made kindly," she said.

Beverly Tapp and Jane Wright, both retired Newport teachers, died of their injuries, said Detective Patrick Weatherford.

The driver, Gary W. Nicholson, 44, was charged Wednesday with two counts of manslaughter, four counts of second-degree battery, one count of third-degree battery and one count of second-degree criminal mischief, authorities said.

He was originally held on drug and driving while intoxicated charges Tuesday and, after lab work was completed, he could face other charges, Prosecutor Henry H. Boyce said. An arraignment was set for Friday.

Most of the people injured were with a group of current and retired Newport teachers who met each Tuesday at the restaurant. Attorney Jim McLarty said the group was celebrating the 60th birthday of one of the teachers, Jane Parnell, who was injured.