Deutsche Welle
English Service News
September 23rd, 2001, 16:00 UTC
Two senior members of President George W. Bush's administration have
rejected assertions from the ruling Taliban in Afghanistan that the
USA's prime terror suspect Osama bin Laden had gone missing.
Bush's security adviser Condoleezza Rice said Washington simply did
not believe the claim, and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said the
Taliban knew where bin Laden was. Earlier, the Taliban had said it
had been unable to deliver to bin Laden an edict from religious
clerics asking him to leave. From northern Afghanistan there've been
reports of heavy clashes between the Taliban and opposition militias.
In a further move to build a coalition to respond to last week's
attacks in New York and Washington, the Bush administration has
lifted mainly trade sanctions on Pakistan and India. They were
imposed in 1998 when the countries staged underground nuclear tests.
Visiting the ex-Soviet republic of Kazakhstan, Pope John Paul-the-
Second has made a dramatic appeal that the world not slide into a
religious war.
Religion must never be misused to fuel conflict, he said. Moslems and
Christians should work together to build peace. He addressed 50,000
people in the capital of Astana. Among the crowd were many Muslims.
Exhausted rescue teams have probed deep beneath the ruins of New
York's World Trade Center, finding open spaces where they still hoped
to find miracle survivors of last week's devastating attack.
Some 6,333 people are listed as missing in the ruins of the World
Trade Center, and only 261 bodies have been recovered, with just 194
identified. More than 100 people from Germany are still registered as
missing on a German foreign ministry list.
Israeli premier Ariel Sharon has again vetoed talks between Foreign
minister Shimon Peres and Palestinian President Yasser Arafat,
prompting reports that Peres' Labour Party might quit government.
Peres called together eight ministers from his party who are in
Sharon's broad cabinet but made no immediate comment. Government
spokemen said a mortar attack on a Jewish settlement in Gaza on
Saturday had breached Sharon's demand of 48 hours of quiet.
Palestinian cabinet ministers said today's cancellation was
irresponsible. Both sides are under world pressure to cool their
conflict as the USA tries to build an anti-terror coalition.
A parliamentary election is under way in Poland, where surveys
suggest a swing to the Social Democratic party of reformed communists
and losses for Prime Minister Jerzy Buzek's centre-right coalition.
More than 29 million Poles were eligible to vote. At stake are 460
seats in the lower house of parliament, 100 seats in the senate, and
a political mandate for the next government that's likely lead Poland
into to European Union during its legislature. Analysts say many
Poles have turned away Buzek's Solidarity-led coalition because of
its internal quarrels and the mishandling of social reforms.
There's been a relatively high turnout for a communal election in
Hamburg, where Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's local Social Democrats
face a strong challenge from an opposition centre-right coalition.
Campaigning among 1.2 million voters was dominated by crimes issues,
pressed by Judge Ronald Schill and his populist Law and Order party.
The Social Democrats have ruled Hamburg for the past 44 years, the
last four with the ecologist Greens, in a coalition headed by SPD
Mayor Ortwin Runde. At stake are 121 seats in the city parliament.
A German held for nine weeks in Colombia has escaped from the rebel
group FARC, but the fate of his elder brother and a friend is
unclear.
Thomas Kuenzel had reached Germany's embassy in Bogota, according to
German diplomats. The Colombian newspaper "El Tempo" said Kuenzel
escaped last Wednesday and lay low until contacting a Colombian army
unit on Saturday. The two other captives are his brother Ulrich, a
German GTZ aid worker assigned to a farming project in Colombia's
southwestern province of Cauca, and a friend, Reiner Bruchmann.
Kidnappings are endemic in Colombia, a country gripped by civil war.
Pakistan has postponed indefinitely the South Asian Games that were
to be held next month in its capital Islamabad.
Pakistan's organising committee the games might be rescheduled for
February or March next year. The South Asian Games are contested
every two years between athletes of seven nations in the region.
The world-famous American violinist Isaac Stern has died in New York,
at the age of 81.
A hospital spokesman cited heart failure. Born in Ukraine, Stern
learnt the violin in San Francisco and first played publicly when 13.
He made a string of recordings, campaigned in the 60's to save New
York's Carnegie Hall, and gave concerts world-wide. He made one visit
to Germany in 1999, but did not perform, in protest at its Nazi past.
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