In the World

DUBLIN, Ireland - Three masked Irish Republican Army dissidents fired a volley of gunfire over a comrade's coffin yesterday in the most public display of paramilitary defiance Northern Ireland has seen in years.

The militant tribute was paid to John Brady, a 40-year-old IRA veteran who hanged himself last weekend in police custody. Such funeral displays by outlaws were once common in Northern Ireland but had disappeared during the last decade of peacemaking.

Leaders of the British Protestant majority complained that police should have tried to arrest the gunmen, but officers said they kept a distance to ensure no conflict with the 400 or so mourners.

Brady's family, friends, and past colleagues from various factions of the IRA gathered outside his sister's home in Strabane, a hard-line and overwhelmingly Catholic border town in Northern Ireland.

- AP

TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras - Diplomats pushed the two sides of the Honduran political conflict into direct talks for the first time in nearly three months but left the country yesterday with no commitment from the coup-installed government to reinstate ousted President Manuel Zelaya.

Members of the delegation sponsored by the Organization of American States characterized the result of their one-day visit - the establishment of a "table of dialogue" and an agenda for the talks - as a positive step even though the rivals appeared as far apart as ever.

Costa Rican Foreign Minister Bruno Stagno said representatives of Zelaya and the government of interim President Roberto Micheletti agreed to discuss the main international proposal for resolving the crisis and will have "logistical" support from OAS staff left behind. Any resolution, however, will be in their hands. - AP

BUCHAREST, Romania - Romania yesterday unveiled a monument in memory of the 300,000 Jews and Gypsies killed during the Holocaust in the country, which at times denied that the extermination had happened.

President Traian Basescu said it was Romania's duty to "recognize the genocide during World War II" and to honor the victims. Basescu was joined by Holocaust survivors, both Jewish and Gypsies, and other leaders during the unveiling of the marble and concrete tomblike monument.

Romania today has only 6,000 Jews. The country's role in the Holocaust and the deportation of Jews were ignored by the Communists and minimized by subsequent governments after communism collapsed in 1989.

- AP

The ringleader of a homegrown plot that officials said targeted Canadian government buildings and the stock exchange pleaded guilty yesterday. Zakaria Amara, 24, who faces a life sentence, is the fourth member of the so-called Toronto 18 to plead guilty since 2006 when the group was arrested and accused of planning to detonate truck bombs.