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Deutsche Welle English Service News 24th December, 2001, 16:00 UTC Israel stops Arafat's pilgrimage Israel has said it would stick to its decision to bar Yasser Arafat's annual Christmas Eve pilgrimage to Bethlehem unless he arrested the killers of a far-right cabinet minister. Israeli troops, apparently mindful of the Palestinian president's vow to defy the ban, stopped and attempted to search a convoy carrying Christian religious leaders to Bethlehem after a solidarity visit to Arafat in the West Bank city of Ramallah. Meanwhile Arab League head Amr Moussa has met Lebanese leaders to discuss what he called the "dangerous situation" in the Middle East following 15 months of bloodshed between Palestinians and Israelis. A Palestinian official said their security forces have shut down five factories used by the militant Islamic group Hamas to make rockets in the Gaza Strip. Dostum named Defence Minister Afghanistan's new leader Hamid Karzai has appointed ethnic Uzbek warlord Abdul Rashid Dostum as deputy defence minister in his two-day-old government. Defence Minister Mohammad Fahim said the appointment marked the start of the establishment of a national army for Afghanistan. In another development U.S. commandos have reportedly arrested a senior Taliban intelligence official in a raid on a central Afghan province. The Pakistan-based Afghan Islamic Press said the commandos surrounded the house where former deputy intelligence minister Abdul Haq Waseeq, was staying, and took him prisoner. U.S.-led forces, their anti-Taliban Afghan allies and security forces in neighbouring Pakistan have mounted a massive hunt for Taliban leaders and their cohorts,- Osama bin Laden and his militant al Qaeda loyalists who have been on the run since the collapse of Taliban rule. Cross border firing continues in Kashmir Indian and Pakistani troops have exchanged fresh fire as New Delhi expelled a Pakistani diplomat, raising already high tensions between the South Asian nuclear rivals. The two hostile neighbours have strengthened positions on either side of their border in Kashmir since a December 13 suicide attack on the Indian parliament which New Delhi blamed on two Pakistan-based militant groups. Meanwhile one of the groups named by India, the pro-Kashmir Lashkar-e-Taiba group, has decided to move its militant wing to Indian-held Kashmir from Pakistan following calls on Islamabad to arrest its leaders. The group has vowed to continue its militant activities against the Indian army in occupied Kashmir. Suspected suicide bomber investigated in the U.S. U.S. agents are trying to find out whether a suspected suicide bomber seized on a transatlantic airliner was part of a wider plot, as fears rose of a new wave of attacks over the holiday season. U.S. investigators established no immediate link between the man found with explosives in his shoes aboard an airliner and Osama bin Laden, whose whereabouts are a mystery following the defeat of his Taliban protectors in Afghanistan. Crew and passengers leapt on the man as he allegedly tried to set fire to the explosives, then bound and sedated him aboard an American Airlines flight from Paris to Miami on Saturday. The plane landed safely in Boston escorted by warplanes. Argentina's interim President cancels public debt payments Argentina has sworn in an interim president who immediately called new elections for March and canceled payment on a crippling public debt to try to ease the poverty behind riots that toppled the previous government. Peronist Adolfo Rodriguez Saa, who will lead the country for 99 days, declared a moratorium on the 132 billion dollar debt, which could herald the largest default in history. He told reporters the suspension included both principal and interest on the debt. Troops deployed in Nigeria after Minister murdered Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo has announced that he was deploying troops in southwest Nigeria to prevent a wider crisis in the region where justice minister Bola Ige was shot dead. Obasanjo met army, navy, air force and police chiefs and his cabinet to discuss Ige's murder and its connection to a crisis in southwest Osun State that has led to the death of two other politicians in the past week. Somalia signs peace accord Somalia's transitional government has signed a peace accord with some opposition factions and has vowed to cooperate in the fight against terrorism, but several warlords have rejected the deal. Somalia, without a central government since 1991, is carved up into clan-based fiefdoms and the new agreement calls for a single "all-inclusive government", sharing power between all clans, to be set up in the capital Mogadishu within a month. The German President's Christams address German President Johannes Rau has said the imminent deployment of German troops to Afghanistan was necessary. Speaking on Deutsche Welle in his Christmas address he said the mission would not undermine Germany's search for peace. Rau also paid tribute to those soldiers and aid workers serving in the Balkans and around the world. The German president also called for more integration in Germany of foreigners, saying this was a cause everyone had to contribute towards. Rau said peace would in future depend more and more on the peaceful co-existence of people of different nationalities. ==^================================================================ This email was sent to: [email protected] EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a84x2u.a9WB2D Or send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] T O P I C A -- Register now to manage your mail! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/register ==^================================================================
