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Bush urges world support on Iraq amid new reports of bloodshed
US President George W. Bush  called on the international community to help rebuild Iraq , brushing off criticism of the US-led ouster of Saddam Hussein , but failed to win over key war opponent France. 

Bush's address to nearly 200 world leaders at the UN General Assembly was sandwiched between scathing attacks on the war from UN Secretary General Kofi Annan and French President Jacques Chirac. 

But Bush -- who used his appearance last year to warn the world body that it risked becoming irrelevant by not backing the war to oust Saddam -- said the war's aftermath had shown the United States was right to act. 

"As we discover the killing fields and mass graves of Iraq, the true scale of Saddam's cruelty is being revealed," he said. "By helping the Iraqi people build a stable and peaceful country, we will make our own countries more secure." 

And in a rebuke to opponents of the war, such as France, who are pushing for a fast handover of power to the Iraqis and a larger UN role in the nation's political future, Bush said the transition to democracy could not be rushed. 

"This process must unfold according to the needs of Iraqis, neither hurried nor delayed by the wishes of other parties," he said. 

Facing new challenges, UN hosts meeting of world leaders
World leaders will meet at the United Nations to open days of talks that will focus on the future of Iraq and how to hold together the UN's ailing system of global cooperation. 

The UN General Assembly's annual session will bring together presidents and ministers from across the globe at a time when the bitter divisions over the Iraq war have cast doubt on the fate of the nearly 60-year-old United Nations. 

On Monday, the second suicide attack on the UN's Baghdad headquarters in as many months added to the despair and uncertainty at the world body, which UN Secretary General Kofi Annan says is now at a crossroads. 

One year ago, US President George W. Bush came here to say the UN risked being irrelevant if it did not back the war. Bush on Tuesday will try to convince fellow leaders they should offer cash and troops to rebuild Iraq. 

France, Germany and Russia -- the war's staunchest opponents -- have said they want a quicker return of Iraq's sovereignty and more of a UN role in the nation's political future. 

But US national security advisor Condoleezza Rice on Tuesday again said that Washington believes French President Jacques Chirac's desire for a speeded-up handover of power to Iraqis was not "workable." 

The standoff over Iraq will be just one of many pressing topics covered at the session, which will close on October 3 with an address by Iraq's delegation, led by members of the US-anointed Governing Council. 

Annan is urging world leaders to try to find solutions to the HIV/AIDS epidemic, poverty, terrorism, the Middle East crisis and other sweeping themes which have become fixtures on the UN's agenda. 

Singapore Says Lab Accident Caused New SARS Case
An investigation led by the World Health Organization  says the world's first SARS  case in three months was the result of an accident at a government-run laboratory in Singapore that was researching the disease. 

The man, a 27-year-old Singaporean medical student, tested positive for Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome on September 9, initially baffling the government after the World Health Organization declared the world's SARS outbreak over in July. 

A panel of 11 experts from Singapore, the WHO and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention  found that the man had caught SARS at an Environmental Health Institute lab where research on the virus is done and where the man had studied the West Nile virus . 

Genome sequencing on the lab's strain of SARS coronavirus matched a sample from the researcher, the panel said in a 31-page report released by Singapore's health ministry on Tuesday. 

It said bio-safety standards were below those necessary for handling infectious diseases such as SARS, which killed more than 800 people worldwide this year, including 33 in Singapore. 

"It's obvious the labs put in enormous effort and did a fantastic job during the SARS outbreak, but it led to some inconsistencies where labs were not really prepared to handle organisms at that level," said Antony Della-Porta, a WHO biosafety expert and chairman of the panel. 

The panel cited "inappropriate" procedures at the laboratory, where live samples of the virus had been kept. The lab has since been shut and the SARS samples to be destroyed. 

"Inappropriate laboratory procedures and cross-contamination of West Nile virus samples with the SARS coronavirus in the laboratory led to the infection of the post doctoral student," Khaw Boon Wan, acting health minister, told reporters. 

The man has since recovered and left hospital. Health authorities say his case was isolated and posed no significant risk, but it put Asia on alert for a much-feared winter revival of the virus. 

The WHO's Della-Porta said Singapore needed to adopt stricter guidelines for handling SARS and other infectious viruses. 

"The main thing we want to emphasize is that safety is about a culture, where people willingly talk about any problems they have and there is good communication and they are willing to address issues that relate to safety," he said. 

Many experts, including WHO scientists and Singapore's junior health minister, had said the lab was the most likely source of the infection, and the confirmation could prove an embarrassment as Singapore promotes itself as regional medical research hub. 

Khaw said he would take up the panel's recommendations that Singapore enact legislation to ensure international standards in bio-safety in all its laboratories. In the past, labs regulated themselves, partly because so few handled infectious viruses. 

Singapore now has three laboratories which operate at bio-safety level three (BSL3) required for SARS research, but the panel found that there were divergences in safety standards within these labs.