Deutsche Welle
English Service News
June, 21st, 2001, 16:00 UTC
European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana has made an
unscheduled return visit to Skopje in a last-ditch effort to resolve
the conflict after Macedonian President Boris Trajkoski declared
that peace talks were totally deadlocked. NATO Secretary General
George Robertson warned that the Balkan country was on the brink of
a civil war. The western alliance on Wednesday said it was prepared
to deploy 3,000 soldiers to assist peacemaking efforts but said
substantial progress must be made by a Monday deadline. Diplomats
said Macedonian and Albanian negotiators had agreed to resume talks
on Thursday evening on finding a way to persuade Albanian gunmen to
lay down their weapons. Meanwhile the chairman of the body which
represents German soldiers, Bernhard Gertz, says the Bundeswehr is
fully stretched in Bosnia and Kosovo and doesn't have the extra
staffing and equipment to help with disarmament in Macedonia.
Police in Belfast called in British troops overnight as backup as
serious rioting overshadowed fresh diplomatic efforts by Britain and
Ireland to rescue Northern Ireland's peace process. Thirty-nine
police officers were injured in some of the worst unrest for years.
Up to 600 rival Protestant and Catholic radicals threw petrol bombs,
stones and bottles. Cars were set ablaze. Police said they responded
with rubber-coated bullets after shots were fired at them. Some
Catholic and Protestant politicians appealed for calm. The
British-ruled province's First Minister David Trimble, a Protestant,
recently threatened to quit if IRA guerrillas did not start handing
in weapons by July the 1st. Talks were held in London last Monday.
German leaders briefing the Bundestag on last week's EU summit in
Gothenburg have reiterated the hope that Poland will be among new EU
members in 2004 but also urged it to step up preparations.
The EU requires of series of economic and social improvements before
admitting up to 12 new members, mostly from eastern Europe.
Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder said enlargement was "irreversible"
despite the refusal of Irish Republic voters to ratify December's
Nice enlargement treaty in a recent Irish referendum. Opposition CDU
Bundestag deputy Peter Hinze said the Irish reluctance was indicative
of deficiencies in consultation and parliamentary sanctions.
The USA and Britain have vehemently denied accusations by Baghdad
that they killed 23 people in a missile attack. A leading Iraqi
newspaper blamed the U.N. Security Council on Thursday for what it
called the Western air raid and accused it of turning a blind eye to
U.S and British "aggression". In Washington U.S. Defence Secretary
Donald Rumsfeld said Iraqi anti-aircraft batteries may have caused
the casualties when they opened fire on U.S. and British warplanes
on routine patrol. The Gulf War allies set up a no-fly zone in
northern and southern Iraq in 1991 to protect Kurdish and Shiite
minorities.
The United States has said its Secretary of State Colin Powell will
visit the Middle East next week where the week-old Israeli-
Palestinian ceasefire has been shaken by more violence.
Israel says Palestinians fired a mortar bomb early today at a farm
just inside its border with the Gaza Strip, where its troops had
also come under fire at two locations. On Wednesday, Israel's
security cabinet said it would continue the truce, despite the past
week's killings of six Palestinians and four Israelis. Overnight,
U.S. President George W. Bush telephoned the Israeli and Palestinian
leaders, Ariel Sharon and Yasser Arafat.
Yugoslavia's reformist leaders said on Thursday they would withdraw
a bill on cooperation with the U.N war crimes court after they
failed to resolve differences over the measure with their partner in
government. The junior partner, the Montenegrin Socialist People's
Party (SNP), said it was sticking by its stance of opposing any law
allowing war crimes suspects like ex-president Slobodan Milosevic to
be transferred to the tribunal in The Hague. The law is widely
seen as crucial to securing Western funds for Yugoslavia at an
international donors' conference next week. Yugoslavia's reformist
Interior Minister Zoran Zivkovic said the ruling DOS Alliance would
now try to find other ways to cooperate with the tribunal.
Russia's parliament has given its final approval to a law on
political parties sponsored by President Vladimir Putin to
drastically reduce the number of groups running in elections. The
State Duma lower house voted by 238 to 164 in favour of the law
following fierce debate in earlier sittings. Under the law only
political parties are allowed to nominate candidates in elections and
parties must have a minimum of 10,000 members. There are currently
more than 50 political parties in Russian and 150 political
associations. The new law still has to be passed by the Fedaration
Council, the Russian parliament's upper chamber.
A car bomb blamed on the Basque separatist group ETA exploded
outside a bank early on Thursday morning in the northern Spanish
city of San Sebastian. A police spokesman said no one was hurt in
the blast. The area was cleared following anonymous calls to the
pro-separatist newspaper Gara and the local road safety organisation.
The Basque Interior Ministry said the bomb contained up to 25 kilos
of explosives and that the bank was clearly the target.
Opponents of the death penalty from more than 30 countries have
begun a conference in the French city of Strasbourg, sponsored by
the Council of Europe and the European Parliament.
At the event on Friday, the presidents of 18 national parliaments
are due to call for a worldwide halt to executions of convicted
prisoners. Eight-seven countries still use the death penalty,
predominantly nations in Africa, Asia and the Middle East, and the
USA. Last week it executed the Oklahoma City bomber, Timothy
McVeigh. Another 108 nations have abolished the death penalty,
including a wide swathe of European countries, led by France.
A 36-year-old Texan woman has confessed to drowning her five
children. Andrea Yates was reported to have been receiving
medication for post-natal depression. Police in Houston have already
charged the mother with multiple murder which is a capital offence
and carries the death penalty. Police said the four boys and a girl,
aged 6 months to 7 years, appeared to have been drowned in the
bathtub at the family's home.
Millions of people in southern Africa have witnessed the first total
solar eclipse in the new millenium. Tourists and scientists in
Angola, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Malawi, Mozambique, Madagaskar experienced
about five minutes of semi-darkness. In some regions, such as Angola,
aid groups distributed suitable sun glasses to the poor. Officials
warned that watching the eclipse with the naked eye can cause
blindness. People in Germany will have to wait 80 years for a total
eclipse.
High fees paid to lawyers who acted for ex-Nazi-era slave labourers
in a compensation settlement with Germany have been criticised by
Paul Spiegel, the head of the Central Council of Jews in Germany.
Spiegel said the millions paid to lawyers was not morally appropriate
given the maximum of only 15,000 marks being paid to each victim. He
called on the lawyers in New York, Washington and Munich to donate
some of their fees to charity. On Tuesday, two or seven organisations
picked to act as distributors for a German industry-government trust
fund began sending out cheques. The initial 10,000 or so recipients
are among an estimated 1.5 million ageing former forced and slave
labourers still thought to be alive, mainly in eastern Europe.
The German chemicals giant BASF says it plans to close ten of its
plants around the world in reaction to the broad economic downturn
and mothball equipment at other sites.
BASF did not specify where closures were planned, saying it wanted
to inform staff first. In total, BASF has 103,000 employees. Chief
executive Juergen Strube also said investment was being cut to ensure
profitability. He reported first quarter profits of 4.2 percent. The
news has triggered a five-percent fall in the value of BASF shares
to 42-and-half euros. Strube blamed the situation on high prices for
raw materials, and, in BASF's fuel business, the reluctance of
customers to stock up and instead wait for cheaper prices.
Serbian News Network - SNN
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http://www.antic.org/
