WASHINGTON (AP) - Battles over national security policy may be more muted in 2000 than they were this year, even though it's a presidential election year. The pending hot issues just don't readily lend themselves to partisan wrangling.

The following editorial appeared in Sunday's Los Angeles Times:

ABIDJAN, Ivory Coast - Millions dead. Millions displaced. Millions faced with famine. These are some of the realities of life on a continent torn by war.

WASHINGTON - Criminal prosecutions of terrorism, while rarely nabbing the masterminds, can at least distract and sometimes deter future attacks, experts said Tuesday.

WASHINGTON - President Bush named former Senator John Danforth Thursday as a special envoy to help broker a peace agreement in Sudan's civil war, injecting the United States into one of Africa's most gruesome conflicts at a time when the administration has stepped back from high-level involvement elsewhere in the world.

WASHINGTON (AP) - Afghanistan is far on the other side of the world in a rough neighborhood where a superpower has tripped once before, and not long ago.

WASHINGTON - As America recovers from last week's terrorist devastation, there's this to ponder: "We are not prepared for the next attack," says former Sen. Gary Hart. "That's all I can say, and I'll keep on saying it."

WASHINGTON - As U.S. planes run out of the best bombing targets in Afghanistan, the military response to terrorism is moving into a much more delicate phase: trying to roust the al-Qaida terrorists from their hideouts and topple the Taliban regime sheltering them.

OTTAWA (AP) - With police filling downtown streets in anticipation of protests Saturday, finance ministers from around the world tried to work out international standards for cutting off terrorist funds to bolster the global response to the Sept. 11 attacks.

WASHINGTON - Anti-Taliban forces in Afghanistan have apparently captured their biggest known trophy to date, a top al-Qaida operative who is the son of an extremist Muslim cleric convicted in 1995 of conspiring to blow up New York landmarks, U.S. intelligence officials said Wednesday.