CHENEY EU NATO EXPAND

In Story 1-Vice President Cheney encourages the EU and Nato to Expand. In Story 2-Columbia Floods, And Story-3 2 undersea quakes in Indonesia Sunday.

Cheney backs Balkan Nato-EU bids

US support is seen as crucial for Nato membership US Vice-President Dick Cheney has supported the attempts of three Balkan countries - Albania, Croatia and Macedonia - to
join Nato and the EU. He told the leaders of the three countries that their membership would help rejuvenate the two blocs. Nato and the EU are seen as stabilising factors in the region, especially after the devastating wars of the 1990s. Mr Cheney is on the final leg of a European tour that also took him to Lithuania and Kazakhstan. In a speech in Vilnius, he accused Russia
of backsliding on democracy.

Praise

Croatia began accession talks with the EU in October and hopes to join by 2009. Croatia, Macedonia and Albania signed an agreement with the US in May 2003, called the Adriatic Charter, which is designed to facilitate their integration into the Nato alliance. The US vice-president attended a conference of the Atlantic Charter in the Croatian city of Dubrovnik. You who aspire to join these organisations help rejuvenate them Dick Cheney US Vice-President.

He praised the former Communist countries for their willingness to introduce democratic reforms - as well as for their involvement in US-led military operations in Iraq or Afghanistan. You who aspire to join these organisations [Nato and the EU] help rejuvenate them and help us re-dedicate ourselves to the basic and fundamental values of freedom and democracy," Mr Cheney told Ivo Sanader of Croatia, Sali Berisha of Albania and Vlado Buckovski of Macedonia.

We also believe that it's very important for both Nato and the EU to take in the new members. Membership of Nato and the EU have been key targets for many Balkan countries. Such high profile support from the US vice-president is very welcome, especially from governments which have sometimes been criticised domestically for their support of US foreign policy, says the BBC's Nick Hawton in Belgrade. On the first leg of his trip, Mr Cheney delivered one of the sharpest US rebukes to Russia in years during a speech at an eastern European regional summit in Vilnius, the Lithuanian capital. He accused Russia of using its vast energy resources to blackmail its neighbours, and said Moscow had a choice to make between pursuing democratic reforms and reversing the gains of the past decade. Russia rejected Mr Cheney's remarks as "completely incomprehensible.

102 dead after four months of heavy rains in Colombia 1 hour, 48 minutes ago

BOGOTA (AFP) - Heavy rains and flooding since the beginning of the year have killed 102 people and damaged thousand of homes across much of Colombia, according to state rescue agency Socorro Nacional. On Sunday, four more people died in a landslide in a poor Bogota neighborhood, and much of the capital remains under emergency warning due to elevated river
levels. Socorro Nacional deputy director Carlos Ivan Marquez said that in addition to the dead, the heavy rains since January have completely destroyed 943 homes and damaged more than 7,100 in the country, affecting about 82,400 people.

The rains have affected thousands of farms and infrastructure and families in remote and high-risk areas, hitting them hard economically," Marquez said. Max Henriquez, deputy director of the state hydrology and meteorology agency, said the rains will continue to batter much of Colombia, with the agency predicting another five weeks. There is an alert for all of the
departments in the center of the country for sudden rises in upland rivers and landslides," he said.

2 Undersea Earthquakes Rock Indonesia Mon May 8, 8:43 AM ET JAKARTA, Indonesia

Two undersea earthquakes rocked Indonesia's Sumatra island Monday, but caused no casualties or damage, an official said. A 5.6-magnitude tremor 20 miles undersea in the Indian Ocean struck at 8:43 a.m. (9:43 p.m. Sunday) about 25 miles south of Tapaktuan town in Aceh province, said Sahnan Sobri of the Meteorological and Geophysics Agency in Banda Aceh.

He said the second earthquake, of 5.4 magnitude, struck at 5:16 a.m. It was centered about 21 miles below the sea and 80 miles southwest of Bengkulu city on the southern Sumatra Island. Both tremors caused people run in panic but there were no reports of damage, casualties or tsunami, Sobri said. A 9.1-magnitude earthquake struck off the coast of Sumatra on Dec. 26,
2004, triggering a massive tsunami that left 216,000 people dead or missing in 12 countries around the Indian Ocean — three-quarters of them in nearby Aceh province.