NORWICH, Conn. (AP) — A fast-moving fire destroyed a large apartment complex early Saturday, and authorities were looking for one person unaccounted for. Authorities have confirmed the locations of all but one of the nearly 150 residents, said Fire Battalion Chief Tracy Montoya. The wreckage was still too hot by late morning to allow the use of arson dogs or cadaver dogs, Fire Chief Ken Scandariato said. The cause of the fire remained unclear, but officials were treating the blaze as suspicious. The fire was reported at 1:30 a.m. in a 12-building apartment complex with a common roof. Two of the buildings were fully engulfed by the time firefighters arrived and tenants were calling for help, Scandariato said. Firefighters and police officers ran door to door to alert anyone still inside, he said. Alarms were working, but the complex didn’t have a sprinkler system because that wasn’t required when it was built in 1976. The entire structure was engulfed in flames within minutes, and all but about eight of 120 apartments were destroyed. “It got ahead of us,” Scandariato said. “It was just too much fire to mount an attack to stop it.” Mohammad Sundal, 43, was spending his first night in his one-bedroom apartment when he awoke to the smell of smoke. His living room was already on fire, he said. “It was so intense, the fire,” Sundal said. “If I stayed for two more minutes, trust me, it was going to burn me.” Tenant Beverly Creed and her son, Travis, 17, were awakened by a downstairs neighbor. The complex’s courtyard was already on fire as they ran to safety. “It was scary,” she said. “I just grabbed my purse and pair of sandals to put on.” Another tenant, Carol Rice, said she heard an explosion. “Then I opened my glass sliding door and the flames were just flying everywhere,” she said. She escaped wearing a bathrobe and slippers. “Oh, my God. I’m a total wreck,” she said, sobbing. “My pills, all my medications are burnt.” Tenants were being taken to a nearby school set up for use as an emergency shelter. Norwich is about 40 miles east of Hartford.

ISLAMABAD (AFP) — Pakistan will purchase equipment from China to fight terrorist activity, Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi said.

China is one of the closest allies and largest arms supplier of Pakistan, which has been hit by a wave of suicide bombings in which more than 1,000 people have died in the past year.

“Pakistan has expressed the desire to purchase some anti-terror equipment from China,” Qureshi told a joint press conference with the visiting Chinese foreign minister Yang Jiechi after their talks in Islamabad.

“China has indicated that it will be more than happy to supply this equipment to us, which will strengthen our arms in dealing with terrorist activities.”

He did not disclose when and what type of equipment Pakistan would purchase from China.

“We expressed our great desire during the talks to build the bilateral relations to new heights,” Qureshi said.

Jiechi said his visit to Pakistan “was another step towards forging even better relationship between the two countries in the fields of defence, economy, investment, energy and security.”

“Beijing will further cooperate with Pakistan in dealing firmly with terrorists,” he said.

He said that “cooperation between the two countries in peaceful uses of nuclear energy is a great success, as we have undertaken some good projects in Pakistan.”

“We think that Pakistan has a right to peaceful uses of nuclear energy,” Jiechi added.

Asked if China will participate in a multi-billion-dollar gas pipeline project with Iran and Pakistan, he said, “we are seriously studying China’s participation in the project.”

“But we need to have more information from Pakistan side about the project,” he said.

OTTAWA (AFP) — Toronto’s metro and bus workers launched a surprise strike Saturday after rejecting a tentative labor agreement, forcing residents of Canada’s biggest city to drive or walk.

About 65 percent of the members of the union representing 9,000 public transit workers voted against the three-year, tentative agreement with the Toronto Transit Commission, which moves 1.5 million commuters per day.

Union chief Bob Kinnear said the strike was launched at midnight without giving a 48-hour warning, as it had last week, to keep transit workers from facing anger from commuters.

The union had warned that it would go on strike last week until it reached a last-minute agreement, which included a three-percent salary increase per year and unspecified benefits.

Toronto Mayor David Miller called on Ontario province lawmakers to quickly adopt legislation to force the transit workers to resume work.

TBILISI (AFP) — Russia’s warning that it could intervene militarily if war breaks out in two separatist regions of Georgia is a “direct threat of aggression,” Georgia’s deputy foreign minister told AFP Saturday.

The statement issued in Moscow on Friday “represents a direct threat of aggression and a violation of international law, namely the UN Charter,” Deputy Foreign Minister Nicoloz Vashakidze said.

Vashakidze was refering to a warning by senior Russian foreign ministry official Valery Kenyaikin that if war breaks out in Abkhazia or South Ossetia, “then we will have to react, including with military means.”

“We are ready to defend our citizens,” Kenyaikin told journalists.

Abkhazia and South Ossetia lie on Georgia’s side of the border with Russia in the Caucasus mountains.

They broke from central Georgian rule after wars the early 1990s that saw the mass expulsion of ethnic-Georgians by the Abkhaz and Ossetian ethnic groups.

Moscow officially recognises Georgia’s sovereignty in the regions, but also provides strong financial and diplomatic backing for the separatist authorities there.

Most people in Abkhazia and South Ossetia now have Russian passports. Georgia accuses Russia of trying to annex the territories by supporting rebel forces there and encouraging residents to take up Russian citizenship.

PESHAWAR, Pakistan (AP) — Pakistan’s new government and Taliban militants said Friday that they would press ahead with peace talks despite American skepticism and a militant bombing that killed three people at a police station.

A spokesman for an umbrella group of Pakistani militants defended the car bombing by saying the militants maintained their right to carry out revenge killings, a glaring exception to a cease-fire declared by the group in response to the peace talks.

Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan spokesman Maulvi Umar also insisted the group would continue to support attacks on U.S. forces in Afghanistan, even though a senior Pakistani intelligence official said the proposed peace deal would forbid them.

A U.S. State Department spokesman compared the talks to previous deals between militants and President Pervez Musharraf, deals that broke down last year amid sharp criticism from U.S. officials that militants were only regrouping and plotting more attacks.

“We’ll see what this policy proposal yields,” State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said. “There have been attempts in this regard that have not succeeded.”

After the deals broke down, Musharraf used heavy firepower against Taliban militants and their al-Qaida allies. Pakistan’s five-week-old civilian administration is seeking to distance itself from that U.S.-backed approach, which many here argue only fueled militancy.

The Pakistani government says its envoys are talking with elders of the South Waziristan region’s Mahsud tribe. The tribe is accused of sheltering militants involved in attacks inside Pakistan and across the border in Afghanistan. One member of the tribe, Baitullah Mehsud, leads Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan and is considered the country’s top Taliban leader. He has been accused of links to al-Qaida and responsibility for a wave of suicide bombings, including the assassination of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto. Bhutto’s own party has not blamed Mehsud for her killing. One of the failed deals under Musharraf was with Mehsud.

The senior official told The Associated Press that a draft of a 15-point deal under negotiation included a commitment from the Mahsud tribe to stop attacks on Pakistani government targets and to prevent their territory from being used for terrorism in Afghanistan.

The official, who asked for anonymity because of the sensitivity of his job, said it also included a commitment to evict foreigners from their area.

In return, the government would gradually withdraw the army, deliver development projects, create jobs and discuss any conflicts that arise with the tribal elders.

There would also be an exchange of prisoners, the official said.

Government officials say publicly that their talks with the Mahsud tribe in South Waziristan and groups elsewhere in the tribal areas are an attempt to isolate al-Qaida elements in the border region, considered a likely hiding place for Osama bin Laden.

The intelligence official said the government knew that elders were discussing the draft accord with militants.

He said the outcome of the talks was uncertain. He wouldn’t say whether the government had received any response from Mehsud.

Umar claimed militants across the region were ready for peace if the government met their demands to withdraw the army and release 200 militant prisoners in exchange for as many as 100 people, mostly security forces, held captive by the militants.

He insisted that militants will continue to attack U.S. forces in Afghanistan, but suggested “if America wants peace in the area through negotiations and dialogue we are ready for talks with the Americans.”

Tehrik-e-Taliban distributed fliers this week urging its followers to observe a cease-fire to give the peace talks a chance and saying violators would be “strung upside down in public and punished.”

However, a five-week lull in violence was shattered at 6 a.m. Friday when the bomb went off between a police station and a market area in the northwestern city of Mardan, said Akhbar Ali Shah, a senior police official.

The bomb killed one police officer and two men working at a small restaurant near the police station. Twenty-six people, including 18 policemen, were wounded.

Umar said militants carried out the attack to avenge the death of a Taliban commander slain by police about 10 days ago when he came to Mardan for his brother’s wedding.

“We have a cease-fire with the government. But wherever the government will take action against us and will kill our friends, we will take revenge,” Umar told AP by phone from an undisclosed location.

He said the Taliban have given a “good response” to the government’s offer of talks, which were being carried out through tribal leaders. He also claimed a peace deal could be signed within a week after a proposed tribal jirga, or council of elders.

Mohammad Adeel, a leader of one of the parties in the new government, said the Mardan blast would not derail the talks.

“Even in the peace talks these things happen. Even after the agreement some people will come and they will break the agreement but we will be very patient,” Adeel said. He said he could not predict “how many days, how many weeks or how many months” it would take to reach an agreement.

DAMASCUS (AFP) — Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan held talks with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad on Saturday, amid efforts by his government to facilitate peace negotiations between Syria and Israel.

Assad and Recep Tayyip Erdogan examined “ways of activating the peace process” and “agreed to pursue the coordination between the two countries,” the state-run SANA news agency reported.

The Syrian president also “paid tribute to Ankara’s efforts” and stressed that “Syria is ready to pursue its cooperation with Turkey in order to guarantee the security and stability of the region,” SANA said.

SANA quoted Erdogan as saying he was “deeply satisfied by the positive and fruitful talks” he had with Assad and underscored “the importance of Syria’s role in reaching political solutions” in the Middle East.

Upon his return to Ankara after the one-day trip, Erdogan said Turkey would pursue its peace efforts and send an envoy to Israel, but did not say who the envoy was or when the visit would take place.

When asked whether he was hopeful of achieving a concrete result, he said: “One does not begin an effort of this kind without hope.”

Earlier this week Assad revealed that Turkey has been mediating between Syria and Israel since last year and had recently passed a message from the Jewish state expressing a readiness to swap the Golan Heights for peace.

Erdogan said improving ties with countries in the region has allowed Ankara to step up efforts to facilitate peace in the Middle East.

“The atmosphere of trust makes it necessary for Turkey to act as a mediator,” he said earlier in the day as he headed to Syria.

“God willing, our proactive peace diplomacy will contribute to expected developments between Syria and Israel.”

In remarks published Thursday in the Qatari daily Al-Watan, Assad said Erdogan “informed me of Israel’s readiness to withdraw from the Golan in return for peace with Syria” and said the message had been relayed a week ago.

“What we now need is to find common ground through the Turkish mediator,” Assad said, adding that any negotiations with Israel would be conducted via Ankara.

Assad said the administration of US President George W. Bush “has neither a vision, nor the will to (push forward) the peace process” but that direct negotiations might become possible under his successor.

Israel captured the Golan from Syria in the 1967 Middle East war and annexed it in 1981 in a move never recognised by the international community.

Syria has consistently demanded the return of the whole of the Golan right down to the shores of the Sea of Galilee — Israel’s main water source.

But Israel balked at the demand in the most recent peace talks brokered by the United States, which broke off in 2000.

A poll published in Israel’s daily Yediot Aharonot on Friday found that more than two-thirds of Israelis oppose a complete withdrawal from the Golan Heights.

Erdogan and Syrian Prime Minister Naji Otri meanwhile opened an economic forum attended by 700 businessmen to promote economic and trade ties between the two countries, SANA said.