Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas said that no amount of international pressure or last-minute concessions, including a settlement freeze in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, would stop him from bringing the Palestinian statehood plan to the U.N. Security Council later this month.

In a briefing with foreign journalists in the West Bank city of Ramallah, Abbas brushed aside warnings he said he had received this week from American officials about a possible "confrontation" with the United States.

"To be frank with you, they came too late," Abbas said. "If they come now, in this short time, and say, 'OK, we have a package and don't go to the U.N.,' I think it would be a game."

EGYPTIAN OFFICIAL TESTIFIES

A former high-ranking security official testified that forces loyal to Hosni Mubarak were ordered to use excessive force to crush protests in the early days of a revolution that would topple the Egyptian president.

The police general's testimony said the order came from then-Interior Minister Habib Adli, an accusation that suggests the highest levels of the Mubarak government plotted the crackdown that killed more than 800 people between Jan. 25 and Feb. 11.

The comments were a boost to the prosecution, which in recent days has been embarrassed by police witnesses who recanted earlier statements that had implicated the regime.

BRITISH ABUSES DETAILED

An inquiry into the abuse of detainees by British soldiers in Iraq described "a very great stain on the reputation of the army" in its report, detailing a series of gruesome abuses by servicemen in a regiment with a 300-year history of battle honors abroad. It concluded that one Iraqi, a 26-year-old hotel worker, died from "an appalling episode of serious gratuitous violence."

Prime Minister David Cameron issued a statement immediately after publication of the report, condemning the "truly shocking and appalling abuse" uncovered by the inquiry.

The report found that a pattern of "violent and cowardly assaults" by "a large number of soldiers" from a unit of the Queen's Lancashire Regiment had resulted in 93 separate injuries that fatally weakened the hotel worker, Baha Mousa. He ultimately died on the floor of an abandoned toilet cubicle. It also criticized a military doctor and a Roman Catholic chaplain for not reporting the abuses after they had seen the injuries to Mousa.

NEWS SERVICES