ARIEL, West Bank — Acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, front-runner in Israel's March 28 election, pledged today to annex this Jewish settlement deep in the West Bank, a message aimed at appeasing settlers alarmed by his plans to withdraw from large parts of the West Bank over the next four years.

Olmert reassured the 17,000 residents of Ariel, the third largest Israeli settlement, that they and smaller neighboring settlements will eventually become part of Israel. A government official said the combined population of the sector to be annexed would be around 45,000 Israelis

"The Ariel bloc will be an integral part of Israel, whatever happens," Olmert said. "Ariel is Israel."

Olmert's trek to the hilltop settlement came two weeks before Israeli general elections, where his centrist Kadima party is seeking to prise votes from supporters of the dovish Labor Party without alienating hawks on the right. Kadima is still far ahead in opinion polls, but has been sliding in recent weeks.

His latest declaration was at odds with U.S. policy, which has blocked plans to include Ariel on the Israeli side of Israel's West Bank separation barrier.

SANTIAGO, Chile — Newly inaugurated President Michelle Bachelet said Monday that all Chileans older than 60 will immediately begin receiving free care at public hospitals."This will become effective immediately," the Socialist physician said at a news conference. "This is possible because it does not require a law."The benefit would be for those at least 60 who are registered with the federal insurance system known as Fonasa, Health Minister Maria Soledad Barria told Santiago daily La Segunda. The paper estimated more than 300,000 people would be eligible.According the last national census in 2002, 1.7 million people of Chile's 16 million people are older than 60. But there was no immediate word on how the Bachelet's program would affect the older Chileans not linked to Fonasa or if they could now join.

THE HAGUE, Netherlands — Slobodan Milosevic's son, alleging his father had been "killed," flew to the Netherlands today to claim the remains of the late Serb leader for burial, while the judges who conducted the former president's war crimes trial formally closed the landmark case."He got killed. He didn't die. He got killed. There's a murder," Marko Milosevic said on arriving in Amsterdam for the short drive to The Hague where his father's remains have been kept since his death was discovered Saturday.Milosevic, the Serbian strongman who presided over four Balkan wars and the breakup of Yugoslavia that cost some 250,000 lives, died of a heart attack, according to preliminary autopsy findings.But four Russian medical experts said they distrusted the findings and the care that Milosevic received from the U.N.