Deutsche Welle
English Service News
August 30th, 2001, 16:00 UTC
Former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic made a second defiant
appearance before the U.N. tribunal on Thursday, refusing to accept
legal counsel and complaining about discrimination and not having
access to the world's press. Proscutors, meanwhile, said Milosevic
will be indicted for genocide in October, for crimes committed in
Bosnia Hercegovina during his rule. Croatia was still open. Carla
del Ponte, the U.N. chief prosecutor made the announcement as
Milosevic continued to denounce the U.N. International Criminal
Tribunal for former Yugoslavia as an illegal tool of his Western
enemies and challenged its jurisdiction. Milosevic already faces
three charges of crimes against humanity, including mass murder and
deportation, and one for violations of the laws or customs of war
during Serb "ethnic cleansing" against Kosovo Albanians in 1999.
NATO says it has collected more than 1,400 weapons from ethnic
Albanian guerrillas in the first phase of its mission in Macedonia,
well above its target figure for this stage of the operation. NATO
officers had said they aimed to collect 1,100 weapons in the first
phase of Operation Essential Harvest, a 30-day mission which began
on Monday and is part of an international effort to avert a wider
war in the former Yugoslav republic. Meanwhile the first contingent
of 100 German soldiers has arrived in Skopje after the German
Bundestag voted in favour of sending Bundeswehr troops to Macedonia.
According to the last data from the Macedonian Red Cross, there are
total of more than 70,000 displaced persons in Macedonia. Most of
the displaced persons are from the Tetovo region, followed by
villages in Kumanovo area, Aracinovo and Skopje regions.
Israel withdrew tanks and troops from the West Bank town of Beit
Jala under world pressure on Thursday, saying Palestinian President
Yasser Arafat agreed to stop gunmen shooting at an Israeli
settlement. Israeli Defence Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer said the
peace is being kept so far and there is a commitment by Arafat to
maintain it. Meanwhile two Palestinians and one Israeli were killed
in other parts of the West Bank, while Palestinians raised doubts
over whether they had consented to end the attacks on the settlement
of Gilo, on the edge of Jerusalem. The European Union said it had
brokered a deal for Israeli forces to leave Beit Jala if
Palestinians stopped firing at Gilo, which was built on land
occupied by Israel after the 1967 Middle East war.
German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer said he was cutting short a
trip to France on Thursday to prepare for a meeting with Palestinian
leader Yasser Arafat during a summit on racism in South Africa.
Fischer told reporters after talks with French counterpart
Hubert Vedrine in Paris he was returning immediately to Berlin
to make preparations for the meeting. No details were given on the
planned meeting with Arafat at the summit in Durban, South Africa,
which is due to be opened by U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan on
Friday. Earlier this month, Arafat and Israeli Foreign Minister
Shimon Peres agreed at separate meetings with Fischer that they
could meet under his auspices to discuss a ceasefire in the
11-month-old Palestinian uprising against Israeli occupation.
Fischer and Vedrine said mediation by both the United States
and Europe was vital to bringing peace to the Middle East.
U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson has said
Australia would be flouting a Geneva Convention if it refused to let
a Norwegian ship carrying more than 400 asylum seekers to dock.
Speaking to reporters from Durban, South Africa, she said the Geneva
Convention on Refugees stated clearly that the boat people should be
allowed into the nearest port -- Australia's Indian Ocean territory
of Christmas Island -- so that they could put their case for asylum.
It is not clear whether they would all be entitled to refugee
status, said Robinson, but they are all entitled to have their case
examined. Meanwhile conditions aboard the Tampa, which is carrying
434 mostly Afghan asylum seekers, are detiorating fast. Many of the
refugees are women and children. Despite mounting international
pressure, the Australian government has said that it will not accept
them because it fears that it could only encourage other would-be
immigrants to try and reach its shores.
French police said on Thursday they had intercepted 44 illegal
immigrants in the Channel Tunnel overnight as they tried to walk to
Britain. The group evaded guards and high-security fencing around the
Eurotunnel terminal at Coquelles, about two km (1.2 miles) from
a Red Cross camp housing some 1,200 refugees, mainly Afghans,
Iranians, Iraqi and Turkish Kurds. Thousands of refugees try to
cross illegally into Britain from France every year, running a
gauntlet of barbed wire and guard dogs to stow away on cross-channel
trains or lorries.
An Australian diplomat has brought a doctor to the detention centre
where the ruling Taliban are holding two Australian and six other
foreign aid workers accused of promoting Christianity in Afghanistan.
It is not known if one of the the detainees is ill. Earlier a
representative of the International Red Cross had been allowed to
visit the eight jailed foreign aid workers. The jailed foreigners,-
four Germans, two Australians, two Americans and 16 Afghans, all
from the German-based Christian relief agency Shelter Now
International, were arrested more than three weeks ago. They face
charges of trying to convert Afghan Muslims to Christianity, which
could carry a death penalty under the Taliban's purist
interpretation of Islam. The fate of the 16 Afghan aid workers,
however, is not known.
East Timorese have kept what the United Nations has called a date
with democracy, voting in the first democratic election. After
centuries of foreign occupation, the death of a quarter of the
population and the near destruction of the territory, the election
of a constituent assembly will bring closer the independence for
which they have paid such a high price. Today, Thursday is also the
second anniversary of a U.N.-run ballot that rejected Indonesian
rule and unleashed a fury of killing and destruction by pro-Jakarta
militias backed by Indonesian troops. Informal results are expected
by about September 5 and a formal tally on September 10.
A train carrying spent German nuclear fuel has arrived at a
processing plant in France on schedule, despite pledges by
environmental protesters to block the shipment. Some 20 anti-nuclear
campaigners gathered on France's northeastern border with Germany as
the shipment crossed into France, but they did not try to physically
stop the train as protesters have done in the past. Germany's
transport of nuclear waste for reprocessing abroad resumed in April
after a three-year interruption. This followed an agreement between
the country's federal government and the power industry on the
abandonment of nuclear energy by 2020.
Western Europe's 143rd Ariane rocket has placed into orbit the
second in a new series of INTELSAT satellites after earlier
launching from French Guiana. The Ariane-4 rocket blasted-off from
the European Space Agency launch centre in Kourou, French Guiana on
the northeast coast of South America. The INTELSAT 902 satellite
separated from the rocket 20 minutes after the launch. The satellite
will provide telecommunications and television broadcasting to
Europe, sub-Saharan Africa, Central Asia, the Far East and Australia.
Cambodian authorities on Thursday warned thousands of villagers
fleeing floods not to swamp the capital after police used water
cannon and electric prods to disperse crowds of homeless people.
The tension is a sign of the growing desperation in the lower Mekong
region where floods have killed dozens, left hundreds of thousands
homeless and caused widespread damage. Distributing emergency aid in
southern Kandal province, 45 km from Phnom Penh, Prime Minister Hun
Sen said on Thursday that flood victims would only receive
assistance in their home areas in a bid to keep them out of the
capital. Officials in Cambodia said 35 people have been killed in
flooding this month, while around 400,000 had lost their homes.
British police said they stopped 12 men at airports and ports on
Thursday in a bid to prevent football hooligans from disrupting the
World Cup soccer match between England and Germany. The game will be
played in Munich on Saturday afternoon. Essex police were applying
for banning orders under the Football (Disorder) Act to stop nine of
the 11 men they detained from travelling to Germany. The act, which
gave police increased powers to stop known soccer hooligans from
travelling, was introduced last year after England fans were
involved in violent clashes at the Euro 2000 soccer championship in
Belgium and the Netherlands.
The European Central Bank unveiled the new Euro notes in Frankfurt
on Thursday which will begin circulating in 12 nations of the euro
zone from January 1 2001 to 300 million people. President Wim
Duisenberg described the unveiling of euro notes and coins as a
historic moment and the euro a symbol of European integration. He
said the euro was not just a currency integrating markets and
bringing to an end currency volatility within Europe, but also a
powerful symbol of European unity. About 14.5 billion euro notes and
50 billion coins are being minted for the launch.
The European Central Bank in Frankfurt has cut the key rate by 25
basis points to 4.25% in response to signs that the U.S. economic
slowdown is greater than expected. It's the second time interest
rates have been cut this year. Meanwhile ECB President Wim
Duisenberg has said the increase in gross domestic product from 2.2
to 2.5% forecast for Europe this year will not be achieved.
Serbian News Network - SNN
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.antic.org/
