Deutsche Welle English Service News 17.10.2002, 16:00 UTC ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Today's highlight on DW-WORLD: Germany's Bundestag Opens its Doors for First Session On Thursday, Interior Minister Otto Schily officially opened the new parliament for its inaugural session, which is due to be overshadowed by an angry dispute sparked by the conservative opposition. To read this article on the DW-WORLD website, just click on the internet address below: http://kleist.dwelle.de/english/current_affairs/currentaffairs1.html ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Britain urges citizens to leave Indonesia Britain advised its citizens on Thursday not to travel to Indonesia and told Britons already there to consider leaving. Foreign Secretary Jack Straw also said he had authorised the withdrawal of non-essential staff and their dependants from the British embassy in Jakarta. Those Britons who remained should be extremely cautious in public places, he said.Eleven Britons are confirmed dead in the Bali bombings,eight are presumed dead and a further 13 still missing. Earlier on Thursday, Australia urged all its citizens to leave Indonesia, saying it had received disturbing new information of threats to Westerners in the wake of weekend bombings in Bali which killed more than 180 people, of which over 120 are believed to be from Australia. Police order arrest of militant Muslim cleric Indonesian police have ordered the arrest of Muslim cleric Abu Bakar Bashir who is accused of links with terrorism, his lawyer said Thursday. The 64-year-old cleric is said to be the spiritual leader of the Islamic Jemaah Islamiyah regional terror network and there is growing suspicion that Saturday's devastating Bali car bombing was planned by al-Qaeda, possibly in conjunction with Jemaah Islamiyah. Earlier Thursday police said that an al-Qaeda operative detained by US authorities had given Indonesian investigators crucial information. Australian Prime Minister John Howard this week urged that Jemaah Islamiyah be added to the United Nations' list of terrorist organisations. North Korea has secret nuclear-weapons programme The United States said North Korea had admitted running a secretive nuclear-weapons programme, a disclosure which has sent shock waves around the world. The United States said that, confronted with U.S. evidence,the communist state had acknowledged it was operating a uranium-enrichment programme in violation of the 1994 non-proliferation pact. The assertion from Washington drew demands from Seoul and Tokyo that the reclusive communist state abide by all nuclear pledges and open its facilities to inspections. Analyists said that the disclosure was likely to prompt more concessions from North Korea towards normal relations with South Korea. Pakistan to withdraw troops from Indian border Pakistan said on Thursday it would withdraw its troops from the border with India to peace-time locations, as tensions between the nuclear rivals over the disputed Kashmir region began to ease. India on Wednesday announced a partial troop withdrawal from their common frontier, although both sides said that the pull-backs did not apply to Kashmir itself. The Himalayan region of Kashmir, which is claimed by both India and Pakistan lies at the heart of the military standoff between the neighbours, which led to up to one million troops being massed along their border. Having fought two of their three wars over Kashmir,both countries came to the brink of a fourth conflict in June, although tensions have eased gradually since. Ivory Coast rebels sign ceasefire Rebels in Ivory Coast signed a West African-brokered ceasefire on Thursday aimed at ending a four-week-old war, witnesses said. The agreement, which West African mediators say has already been approved by the government, provides for a ceasefire from midnight to be followed eventually by negotiations with the authorities. Rebels of the Patriotic Movement of Ivory Coast signed the agreement at their northern stronghold of Bouake, 360 km north of Abidjan. Israel to respond militarily if Lebanon pumps over the necessary minimum The Israeli Transport Minister on Thursday reiterated warnings that Israel would be forced to take military action against Lebanon, if it pumped more than the necessary minimum of water from a key border spring. His comments come following Beirut's inauguration of the water project near the border, which will provide much-needed water to border villages from the Wazzani river. It ultimately feeds the Sea of Galilee, Israel's main source of fresh water. The project was inaugurated on Wednesday in the presence of European and UN envoys, but notably no US representatives. Last week, Lebanon delivered a report to the UN Security Council saying the total amount of water diverted would amount to 10 million cubic meters a year, much less than the 35 million cubic meters granted to Lebanon under an unratified 1955 agreement. Croatia, Russia sign 32 million dollar mine clearing deal Croatia signed an agreement with a Russian firm on Thursday to help clear one million land mines left in the former Yugoslav republic after the 1991-95 war, state news agency Hina reported on Thursday. The 32 million dollar agreement with state-owned Emercom Demining is an effort to clear part of the Russian government debt to Croatia, the agency said. Croatia has more than one million land mines strewn across former battlefields and ranks among 10 countries with the highest level of mine danger in the world, it said. The mines pose a serious problem for the restoration of vital economic facilities, the use of farmland and the return of thousands of refugees to their homes. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For more information please turn to our internet website at http://dw-world.de/english Here you'll find out what's happening in Germany, Europe and the rest of the world. News and background reports from the fields of current affairs, culture, business and science. And of course the DW website also has information about DW-RADIO and DW-TV programmes: topics, broadcast times and frequencies. You can even listen to all programmes as audio-on-demand. Serbian News Network - SNN [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.antic.org/
