STOP NATO: �NO PASARAN! - HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK --------------------------- ListBot Sponsor -------------------------- Start Your Own FREE Email List at http://www.listbot.com/links/joinlb ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Deutsche Welle English Service News June 20th, 2001, 16:00 UTC Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon held crisis talks with his cabinet ministers on Wednesday under pressure from ultra nationalists to end a week-long ceasefire with the Palestinians. Israeli sources said the cabinet decided to stick to the declared truce, but warned it reserved the right to react to attacks. Israeli troops shot dead a Palestinian at a checkpoint on the border between Israel and the West Bank on Wednesday and Palestinian gunmen critically wounded a Jewish settler in a separate shooting. Israeli and Palestinian security experts are slated to review implementation of the CIA-brokered disengagement plan later today. NATO has said after a meeting in Brussels on Wednesday that under certain circumstances it would deploy up to 3,000 troops in Macedonia to monitor the disarmament of ethnic Albanian rebels. A statement said the alliance was prepared to act quickly, but only on condition that Macedonia's ethnic Slav and Albanian political parties agreed on a peace plan. NATO stressed that the mission, which it views as short-term, could begin in early July. Macedonia's President, Boris Trajkovski, however, said that peace talks were deadlocked for what he said were unreasonable Albanian demands. Initial cheques worth 10,000 marks have been sent to 10,000 ex-Nazi- era slave labourers in 25 countries by the Jewish Claims Conference, acting as one of seven distributors for a German compensation fund. A partner agency in the Czech Republic also began payments on Tuesday, amid controversy over large fees paid to lawyers and ageing survivors' outrage at six decades of delay since World War Two. The German industy-government fund began payments indirectly last Friday after legal wrangles in which German firms sought the Bundestag's indemnity from further Holocaust lawsuits in U.S. courts. Victims will get up to 15,000 marks for their slave labour under Nazi rule. Up to 1.5 million elderly claimants are thought to be still alive, including other victims in Poland, Belarus and Russia. Leading U.N. officials have urged the world to open its arms to the world's 21 million refugees, instead of rejecting them, and that rich nations donate more funds for relief work. The calls from Secretary-General Kofi Annan and Ruud Lubbers, the head of the cash-strapped UNHCR coincide with World Refugee Day, which falls today, 50 years after the adoption of the U.N. Refugee Convention in 1951. Currently war-torn Afghanistan is the largest source of refugees - 3.1 million - followed by Burundi and Iraq. The list of host nations is topped by Pakistan, followed by Iran and Germany, with 900,000 refugees. Annan, visiting Oxford University, criticised Europe's selective policies on refugees and warned that xenophobic prejudices were the greatest enemy of democracy. A river barge chartered by United Nations observers has reached the eastern Congolese city of Kisangani, re-asserting traffic along the River Congo for the first time in three years of war. Rebels had guaranteed the boat's safety during its 12-day voyage. It brought supplies for U.N. peacekeepers, including fuel. Elated Kisangani residents and U.N. mission head, General Mountaga Diallo said they hoped the barge's arrival would help revive civilian boat links with DRC Congo's capital Kinshasa. As a next step, the U.N. plans to send a boat with humanitarian aid in July. Until the outbreak of war in 1998, the river Congo was a major transport route. Pakistani television has said that military ruler General Pervez Musharraf will be sworn in shortly as president, replacing Rafiq Tarar, ahead of Musharraf's summit trip to India next month. Tarar had already resigned, state television said. Musharraf seized power in October of 1999, becoming chief executive, and abolishing Pakistan's elected legislatures. Under a high court ruling, Pakistan is supposed to return to democracy by October next year. Musharraf is due to visit India in mid-July for talks with Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee on disputed Kashmir. Ousted Pakistani politicians had questioned whether Musharraf as chief executive alone had the legitimacy to make formal agreements with India. Police squads are escorting another rail consignment of German nuclear waste, across northern Germany, destined this time for the Sellafield re-processing plant in Britain. Two so-called Castor containers from the German nuclear power plant at Unterweser in Lower Saxony state are headed first for a French North Sea port, where they will be loaded on to a ship. Anti-nuclear Greenpeace members unfurled banners en route. Earlier this month the German government and energy companies signed an agreement to phase out nuclear power generation over two decades, including a decision to cease shipments to Sellafield and La Hague in France by 2005. ______________________________________________________________________ To unsubscribe, write to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
