Iraq Iraq announced plans to roll out an arms-for-cash programme across the country as hopes of fresh talks to avert a US military showdown in the Iraqi rebel hub of Fallujah rose with the release of a key negotiator. US President George W. Bush and rival John Kerry traded sneering diatribes on Iraq and fighting terror, as the US election took another bitter turn two weeks before polling day. Britain Britain said it was considering a US request to move some of its troops in Iraq from their base in the relatively peaceful south and into US-controlled areas, potentially placing them in far greater danger. India India's most wanted criminal Koose Muniswamy Veerappan, who was accused of more than 100 murders, has been shot dead after decades on the run, police said. US US President George W. Bush signed a law that paves the way for providing humanitarian aid to North Koreans and making refugees from the Stalinist state eligible for asylum in the United States. Mideast sraeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon battled to dissuade members of his own party from pushing for a referendum on his Gaza pullout plan as he conceded elections may be needed to end divisions in the country. US A dispute over a shortage of US flu vaccines grew but Canada indicated it might send some of its innoculation surplus to help. Belarus Voters in Belarus agreed to change the constitution to allow autocratic President Alexander Lukashenko to retain power indefinitely in a referendum denounced Monday by foreign observers as biased and distorted. EU Interior ministers from the five largest western European states said they had agreed to set up a common "watch list" of terrorist suspects but they remained split over a controversial plan to create migrant holding centres in Africa.