18000 !G15 !GCAT  Committee on Budgetary Control [[ Wednesday 25 September 1996 ]] ***The room number will be displayed on the notice board*** 0.1 ===] Wednesday, 25 September 1996 at 3 p.m. 1.   Adoption of draft agenda (PE219.150 ) 2.   Approval of minutes of meeting of: (PE219.147 ) 3.   Chairman's announcements 4.   Decisions on procedure 5.   Integrated administrative and control system for certain Community aid schem es (amendment of Regulation 3508/92) (T04839) CNS96122 COM(96)0174 C4-0313/96 + CONT Fond R GARRIGA POLLEDO S. (PPE) (PE218.055 ) - Consideration and adoption of a draft report 5.1 * * * ===] In the presence of Mr Jo t o PINHEIRO, Member of the COMMISSION 6.   1994 discharge - 6th and 7th EDF (T04171) (T04171) DEC0065 COM(95)0180 C4-0198/96 + CONT Fond R WYNN Terence.   (PSE) (PE215.702/DEF) + CONT Fond WYNN Terence.   (PSE) (PE215.702/DEF) - Exchange of views 6.1 * * * 7.   On-the-spot checks and monitoring by the Commission for the detection of fra uds against EC financial interests (T04630) CNS95358 COM(95)0690 C4-0115/96 + CONT Fond R THEATO Diemut.   (PPE) (PE218.052 ) - Consideration and adoption of a draft report 7.1 * * * ===] In the presence of Mr Jan O. KARLSSON, Member of the COURT OF AUDITORS 8.   Presentation of the special report of the Court of Auditors, No 1/96, concer ning the MED programmes - Member responsible: Juan Manuel FABRA VALLES - Exchange of views 8.1 * * * 8.2 * * * * * * * * ===] Thursday, 26 September 1996 8.4 *** In private *** ===] In the presence of Mr Michael GEUENICH, chairman of the Budget Group and me mber of the Bureau of the ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL COMMITTEE 9.   Transfer of appropriations 26/96 - NCE - Economic and Social Committee/ Comi tee of the Regions (GBD2696 ) - Member responsible: Joaquim MIRANDA 9.1 * * * 10.   Sound and efficient financial management (SEM) in the approach to the year 2000 (T04942) INI0523 INI0523 + CONT Fond COLOM I N. (PSE) - Consideration of Working Documents Nos 3, 4 and 5 11.   Control and implementation of the current budget (T04932) PE219.152 ATT1232 + CONT Fond ELLES James E. (PPE) - Exchange of views and - Adoption of motion for a resolution 12.   1997 budget - Section III (T04556) PE219.151 (T04556) BUD0074 COM(96)0300 C4-0350/96 + CONT Avis A ELLES James E. (PPE) F BUDG Fond R BRINKHORST Laurens J (ELD) (PE219.042 ) - Consideration and adoption of draft opinion - Consideration of amendments 13.   Any other business 14.   Date of next meeting (PE/XV/OJ/96-12 ) - FIN - END OF DOCUMENT. 
18001 !G15 !GCAT  Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Consumer Protection [[ Tuesday 24 September 1996 ]] 0.1 ===] Tuesday, 24 September 1996, 3.00pm 1.   Adoption of draft agenda (PE219.107 ) 2.   Approval of minutes of meeting of: - 2/3 September 1996 (PE219.108 ) 3.   Chairman's announcements 4.   Consideration of common positions (possibly) 5.   Quality of drinking water intended for human consumption (Directive 80/778) (T02663) **I (T02663) SYN95010 COM(94)0612 C4-0199/95 + ENVI Fond R COLLINS Kenneth D. (PSE) (PE218.671 ) - Consideration of draft report 6.   Bathing waters: adaptation of Directive 76/150/EEC (scientific knowledge) (T02124) **I (T02124) SYN94006 COM(94)0036 C4-0036/94 + ENVI Fond R EISMA Doeke.   (ELD) (PE219.109 ) - Consideration of draft report 7.   Assessment of the effects of certain public and private projects on the environment - amendment of 85L0337 (T02659) **II (T02659) SYN94078 COM(95)0720 C4-0371/96 + ENVI Fond R LANNOYE Paul.   (V ) (PE219.111 ) - Consideration of draft recommendation for 2nd reading 8.   Universal service for telecommunications in the perspective of a fully liberalized environment (T04802) (T04802) COS0399 COM(96)0073 C4-0205/96 + ENVI Avis A DE COENE P. (PSE) (PE219.113 ) F ECON Fond R BERES Pervenche.   (PSE) - Consideration of draft opinion ===] Wednesday, 25 September, 1996, 9.00am-1.00pm 9.   Appointment of rapporteurs and draftsmen - decisions on procedure 10.   Towards sustainability: Community programme of policy and action in relation to the environment (T03713) (T03713) COD96027 COM(95)0647 C4-0147/96 + ENVI Fond R DYBKJ R Lone.   (ELD) (PE217.883 ) - Adoption of draft report 11.   1997 budget - Section III (T04556) (T04556) BUD0074 COM(96)0300 C4-0350/96 + ENVI Avis A FLORENZ Karl-Heinz.   (PPE) (PE219.106 ) F BUDG Fond R BRINKHORST Laurens J (ELD) (PE218.328 ) - Adoption of draft opinion 12.   Community Action Programme on health data and indicators, to provide information back-up (cancer, AIDS, etc.) (T03748) (T03748) COD95238 COM(96)0222 C4-0354/96 + ENVI Fond R POGGIOLINI Danilo.   (PPE) (PE218.544 ) - Adoption of draft recommendation for 2nd reading 13.   Towards a new maritime strategy (T04818) (T04818) COS0405 COM(96)0081 C4-0237/96 + ENVI Avis L (PE218.664 ) F TRAN Fond R DANESIN Alessandro.   (UPE) (PE218.415 ) - Consideration and adoption of draft opinion in a form of a letter 14.   Competitiveness of the shipping industry (T04389) (T04389) COS0402 COM(96)0084 C4-0211/96 + ENVI Avis L   (PE218.665 ) F ECON Fond R KATIFORIS Georgios.   (PSE) - Consideration and adoption of draft opinion in a form of a letter ===] Wednesday, 25 September 1996, 3.30pm 15.   Green Paper: Towards fair and efficient pricing in transport - internalizing the external cost of transport (T04560) (T04560) COS0349 COM(95)0691 C4-0610/95 + ENVI Avis A RUBIG Paul.   (PPE) (PE218.667 ) F TRAN Fond SCHMIDBAUER Barbara.   (PSE) (PE218.428 ) - Consideration of draft opinion 16.   Eighth European Parliament and Council directive on summertime arrangements (T04829) (T04829) COD96082 COM(96)0106 C4-0252/96 + ENVI Avis A BLOKLAND Johannes (.   (PE219.110 ) (EDN) F TRAN Fond R BELLERE S. (NI ) (PE218.712 ) - Consideration of draft opinion 17.   At 4.15pm - Meeting with Mr Howlin, President-in-Office of the Environment Council 18.   Appointment of EP representatives on Management Board of the European Agency for the Evaluation of Medicinal Products (PE219.114 ) - Consideration of draft report to the Bureau 19.0 19.   Encrypted radio broadcasting: Green Paper (T03911) (T03911) COS0395 COM(96)0076 C4-0190/96 + ENVI Avis L   (PE218.543 ) F JURI Fond R ANASTASSOPOULOS Geor (PPE) (PE217.902 ) - Consideration of draft opinion in a form of a letter 19.1 ===] Thursday, 26 September 1996, 9.00am 20.   Network for surveillance of communicable diseases in the European Community (T04784) (T04784) COD96052 COM(96)0078 C4-0189/96 + ENVI Fond R CABROL Christian E. (UPE) (PE218.210 ) - Adoption of draft report 21.   Community water policy (T04766) (T04766) COS0387 COM(96)0059 C4-0144/96 + ENVI Fond R FLORENZ Karl-Heinz.   (PPE) (PE218.545 ) - Adoption of draft report 22.   Consumer access to justice and the settlement of consumer disputes in the internal market (T04803) (T04803) COS0398 COM(96)0013 C4-0195/96 + ENVI Avis A KUHN Annemarie.   (PSE) (PE218.666 ) F JURI Fond R FLORIO Luigi A. (UPE) (PE218.241 ) - Adoption of draft opinion 23.   World Trade Organization (T03463) (T03463) INI0268 INI0268 + ENVI Avis A PIMENTA Carlos.   (ELD) (PE218.546 ) F RELA Fond R KITTELMANN Peter.   (PPE) (PE218.565/A ) F RELA Fond S KITTELMANN Peter.   (PPE) (PE218.565/A ) - Adoption of draft opinion 24.   Trade and environment - Commission communication (T04781) (T04781) COS0391 COM(96)0054 C4-0158/96 + ENVI Avis A PIMENTA Carlos.   (ELD) F RELA Fond R KREISSL-DORFLER Wolf (V ) (PE218.562 ) - Consideration of draft opinion 25.   Any other business 26.   Date of next meeting in Brussels (PE/XI/OJ/96-16 )   [FOOTNOTES]1.)   Coordinators meeting to be held on Tuesday, 24 September 1996 at 6.00pm END OF DOCUMENT. 
18002 !G15 !GCAT  Committee on External Economic Relations [[ Tuesday 24 September 1996 ]] P U B L I C M E E T I N G ===] Tuesday 1.   Adoption of draft agenda (PE218.818 ) 2.   Chairman's announcements ===] In the presence of the Council and Commission 3.1 Information from the Commission on work in progress, including - a market access strategy for the European Union 3.2 Question Time - 1996 China textile export licences (Mr PEX) (PE218.814 ) - Adaptation of external agreements to EU enlargements (Mr DE CLERCQ and Mr IMBENI) (PE218.817 ) 4.   Reciprocal recognition of approval for motor vehicle equipment and parts - EC accession to 1958 Agreement (T04728) AVC96006 COM(95)0723 C4-0186/96 + RELA Fond R KITTELMANN Peter.   (PPE) (PE217.860 ) - Consideration of draft report 5.   Delegation to Guimaraes from 30 September to 2 October 1996 - Presentation of the programme by Mr MONIZ 6.   The impact of international developments on the Community's textile and clothing sector (T04225) (T04225) COS0315 COM(95)0447 C4-0460/95 + RELA Fond R MONIZ Fernando.   (PSE) (PE218.816 ) - Consideration of draft report - Deadline for tabling amendments 7.   Future financing of the European Union in respect of enlargement (T04589) F BUDG Fond R CHRISTODOULOU Efthym (PPE) (PE218.268/ADD) - Draftsman: Mr WIERSMA - Exchange of views ===] Coordinators' meeting: at 6.15 pm 7.2 - oOo-===] Wednesday 8.   Appointment of rapporteurs and draftsmen - decisions on procedure (see addendum) 9.   Approval of minutes of meetings of: - 26/27 June 1996 (PE218.555 ) 10.   The European Union and Latin America: the present situation and prospects for closer partnership, 1996-2000 (T04237) (T04237) COS0321 COM(95)0495 C4-0489/95 + RELA Avis A VALDIVIELSO DE C. (PPE) (PE217.863 ) F POLI Fond R BERTENS Jan W. (ELD) - Adoption of draft opinion 11.   Agricultural relations between the EU and the associated countries in view of their future accession (T03913) (T03913) COS0365 CSE(95)0607 C4-0023/96 + RELA Avis A NOVO Honorio.   (GUE)   (PE218.558 ) F AGRI Fond R REHDER Klaus.   (PSE) (PE218.441 ) - Adoption of draft opinion 12.   The Commission's report on the consideration of cultural aspects in European Community action (T04825) COS0414 SEC(96)0686 C4-0249/96 + RELA Avis A VALDIVIELSO DE C. (PPE) (PE218.548 ) F JEUN Fond R ESCUDERO LOPEZ J. (PPE) - Consideration of draft opinion - Deadline for tabling amendments 13.   Protection against effects of application of certain third-country legislation (Helms-Burton Act) (T04951) CNS96217 COM(96)0420 + RELA Fond - Exchange of views 14.   Armenia - partnership and cooperation agreement (economic and trade aspects) (T04811) INI0497 INI0497 + RELA Fond R DIMITRAKOPOULOS Geor (PPE) - Exchange of views 15.   Communication on EU-Canada relations and their development (T04513) ATT1135 SEC(96)0331 + RELA Avis A MANN Erika.   (PSE)   (PE218.569 ) F POLI Fond R GRAZIANI Antonio.   (PPE) - Exchange of views 16.   Framework procedure for implementing Article 366a of the Lome Convention (T04769) AVC96050 COM(96)0069 + RELA Avis A SMITH Alex. (PSE) (PE217.862 ) F DEVE Fond R AELVOET Magda G. (V ) (PE218.074 ) - Exchange of views 17.   Any other business 18.   Date of next meeting (PE/VI/OJ/96-21 ) END OF DOCUMENT. 
18003 !G15 !GCAT  COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS, SECURITY AND DEFENCE POLICY SUBCOMMITTEE ON HUMAN RIGHTS Monday, 23 September 1996 1.   Adoption of draft agenda (PE 218.640) 2.   Adoption of minutes of July 1996 (PE 218.634) 3.   Exchange of views on the draft report on Human Rights in the World in 1995/6 and EU human rights policy (rapporteur: Mrs Lalumiere) PE 218.638 4.   Exchange of views on the Annual Memorandum on human rights submitted to Parli ament by Council PE 218.635 5.   Exchange of views and decision on a draft programme for the public hearing on 30/31 October on impunity PE 218.639 6.   Exchange of views on the outcome of the conference in Stockholm on the commer cial sexual exploitation of children, on the basis of statements by Mrs Banotti and Mrs van Bladel, who represented Parliament at the conference 7.   Possibly, exchange of views on the situation in Irian Jaya/ West Papua 8.   Other business 9.   Date and place of next meeting END OF DOCUMENT. 
18004 !G15 !GCAT  EP Petitions Committee agenda - Sept 23-24 30.   No 354/95, presentee par M. Renato TAVANTI, au nom de l'association "Italia Nostra-Sezione Intermelia" de Bordighera (Italie), sur des travaux d'assainissem ent cotier (public) (PE 215.910/rev.) 31.   No 392/95, presentee par M. Dieter BREUER, de nationalite allemande, au nom de l'Association pour la preservation de la qualite de la vie dans la commune de Titz, concernant le projet d'extension de la mine rhenane d'exploitation a ciel ouvert de lignite de Garzweiler (public) (PE 215.838/rev.II, PE 217.661/def.)   No 584/95, presentee par M. T. CLEMENS, de nationalite allemande, sur le projet d'extension de la mine de charbon de Garzweiler dans la vallee du Rhin (public) (avis - ENER) 32.   No 645/95, presentee par M. et Mme Andrew STEVEN, de nationalite britannique, sur le developpement intempestif de l'exploitation des carrieres de Blaydon (T yne et Wear) (public) (PE 216.471/rev.) 33.   No 746/95, presentee par Mme Angela Kelly, de nationalite irlandaise, sur la construction d'une usine de traitement des engrais uses a Middletown (Irlande) (public) (PE 218.482) 34.   No 865/95, presentee par Mme Josephine CARTER, de nationalite britannique, s ur le projet de construction d'une rocade autour de Newbury (A 34) (public) (PE 217.629) No 972/95, presentee par Mlle Helen Anscomb, de nationalite britannique, sur le contournement de Newbury par l'autoroute A34 No 90/96, presentee par M. Paul CARTER, sur la route de contournement de Newbury No 387/96, presentee par Mlle N.J. NOKES, de nationaltie britannique, sur le con tournement de Newbury 35.   No 863/95, presentee par M. Norman HELME, de nationalite britannique, sur la therapie "Chelation" (public) (PE 217.600) 36.   No 1020/95, presentee par M. Claude GRISOLET, de nationalite francaise, au n om de l'Association "Collectif Meuse", concernant l'enfouissement de dechets rad ioactifs dans son departement (public) (PE 217.638) Sujets divers 37.   No 148/91, presentee par M. Sylvain DE WEERDT, de nationalite belge, au nom de l'IAOPA, concernant un probleme d'aviation civile (importation de marchandise s) en Belgique (PE 209.143/rev.II, PE 217.624) No 235/91, presentee par M. Charles VANDERMEULEN, de nationalite belge, au nom d e la Federation belge d'aviation micro-legere asbl (F.B.A.M.), sur la libre circ ulation des produits dans la Communaute (PE 153.224/rev.VII) 38.   No 523/94, presentee par M. Georg Stefan GERNETH, de nationalite allemande, sur le traitement discriminatoire reserve a un guide allemand en Italie (public) (PE 212.554/rev.) 39.   No 872/95, presentee par M. Willi ROTHLEY (depute au Parlement europeen), de nationalite allemande, sur le repostage de lettres allemandes en France (PE 217 .632) 40.   No 994/95, presentee par Mme Dimitra Xypolytou, de nationalite grecque, sur des discriminations liees a la nationalite a l'encontre d'etudiants grecs en Ita lie (public) (PE 217.635) 41.   No 995/95, presentee par M. Norbert Mischung, de nationalite allemande, conc ernant les contraintes que representent, pour les petites et moyennes entreprise s, les nouvelles normes de management de la qualite et d'audit environnemental ( public) (PE 217.636) B. AUTRES PETITIONS 42.   No 285/95, presentee par M. Jan MULLER, de nationalite allemande, concernant le refoulement, a l'aeroport de Barcelone, de sa compagne colombienne (public) (PE 215.856/rev.) 43.   No 740/95, presentee par M. Edward Johnson, de nationalite britannique, sur l'abolition de la condition d'age a l'embauche au Parlement europeen (public) (P E 217.612) No 360/96, presentee par M. Andrew DUNDAS, de nationalite britannique, et par 67 autres signataires, sur la discrimination exercee en fonction de l'age lors du recrutement du personnel des institutions europeennes 44.   Questions diverses 45.   Date et lieu de la prochaine reunion (La prochaine reunion est prevue pour l es mercredi 9 octobre 1996, a 15 heures et jeudi 10 octobre 1996, a 9 heures a B ruxelles) END OF DOCUMENT. 
18005 !G15 !GCAT  *   (Note - contents are displayed in reverse order to that in the printed Journal)   * volonte, le titre n'est pas encore disponible *** *** Due to technical reasons, the title is not yet available (1813/96 to 1819/96) *** COMMISSION REGULATION (EC) No 1812/96 of 18 September 1996 amending representative prices and additional duties for the import of certain products in the sugar sector   COMMISSION REGULATION (EC) No 1811/96 of 18 September 1996 suspending the preferential customs duties and re-establishing the Common Customs Tariff duty on imports of small-flowered roses originating in Israel   COMMISSION REGULATION (EC) No 1810/96 of 18 September 1996 suspending the preferential customs duties and re-establishing the Common Customs Tariff duty on imports of multiflorous (spray) carnations originating in Israel   COMMISSION REGULATION (EC) No 1809/96 of 18 September 1996 amending the import duties in the cereals sector   COMMISSION REGULATION (EC) No 1808/96 of 18 September 1996 fixing representative prices and additional import duties in the poultrymeat and egg sectors and for egg albumin, and amending Regulation (EC) No 1484/95   COMMISSION REGULATION (EC) No 1807/96 of 18 September 1996 establishing the standard import values for determining the entry price of certain fruit and vegetables   COMMISSION REGULATION (EC) No 1806/96 of 17 September 1996 establishing unit values for the determination of the customs value of certain perishable goods   COMMISSION REGULATION (EC) No 1805/96 of 18 September 1996 fixing the representative prices and the additional import duties for molasses in the sugar sector   COMMISSION REGULATION (EC) No 1804/96 of 18 September 1996 fixing the maximum export refund for white sugar for the seventh partial invitation to tender issued within the framework of the standing invitation to tender provided for in Regulation (EC) No 1464/96   COMMISSION REGULATION (EC) No 1803/96 of 18 September 1996 altering the export refunds on white sugar and raw sugar exported in the natural state END OF DOCUMENT. 
18006 !G15 !GCAT  *   (Note - contents are displayed in reverse order to that in the printed Journal)   *   Technical support Restricted procedure (96/C 273/08)   Amended proposal for a Council Regulation amending Regulation (EEC) No 1107/70 of the Council on the granting of aid for transport by rail, road and inland waterway (96/C 273/07) (Text with EEA relevance) COM(96) 381 final - 95/0204(SYN)   Prior notification of a concentration (Case No IV/M.821 - Baxter/Immuno) (96/C 273/06)   Non-opposition to a notified concentration (Case No IV/M.730 - IP/Reuters) (96/C 273/05)   STATE AID C 22/96 (ex N 702/95) Italy (96/C 273/04)   Information procedure - technical regulations (96/C 273/03)   Average prices and representative prices for table wines at the various marketing centres (96/C 273/02)   Ecu (1) 18 September 1996 (96/C 273/01) END OF DOCUMENT. 
18007 !E51 !E512 !ECAT !GCAT !GDIP !GPOL  Canadian International Trade Minister Art Eggleton said on Thursday he expected a retaliatory bill against the U.S. Helms-Burton law to pass quickly, but he hoped the bill would never be needed.   "These are ugly measures," Eggleton told reporters at a meeting.   "I hope we will never be implementing it.   It's an antidote legislation."   Eggleton and Canadian Foreign Minister Lloyd Axworthy will defend the bill in parliament on Friday.    The two ministers introduced the legislation on Monday.   It must be approved in the House of Commons, the Canadian parliament's lower chamber, before going to the Senate for final approval.   The bill was introduced in direct retaliation against the Helms-Burton law, which aims to curb foreign investment in Cuba by penalizing companies doing business in the Communist-ruled Caribbean island.   The legislation, whose details were revealed in June, let Canadians countersue in Canadian courts to recover damages awarded by U.S. courts under Helms-Burton.    It would also allow Canada to issue "blocking" orders declaring that judgments handed down under any objectionable foreign law would not be enforced in Canada.   Under one of Helms-Burton's provisions, U.S. citizens and companies are allowed to sue foreign firms using property confiscated after the 1959 Communist revolution in Cuba.   Senior executives and shareholders of such companies, as well as their families, can be denied entry into the United States.   In July, U.S. President Bill Clinton signed Helms-Burton and suspended for six months the measure allowing suits against foreign firms. 
18008 !E12 !ECAT !GCAT !GPOL  Alberta treasurer Jim Dinning, who announced on Thursday he was leaving politics when his current term ends, said he made the decision for personal reasons.   "I came to this conclusion on and off for the last number of months," Dinning told reporters after a speech to Calgary business audience.   "This is a personal decision that's right for Jim Dinning in 1996.   I leave with a tremendous sense of accomplishment behind me."    Dinning, who has been a member of Alberta's ruling Conservative government representing a Calgary district since 1986, had been touted has a possible successor to current Premier Ralph Klein.   He has been the oil-rich province's treasurer since 1992.   Dinning, who has been called an architect of Alberta's economic recovery over the last four years, brought down two annual surplus budgets after a series of deep government cutbacks and reorganizations.   He said he had no current job offers from the private sector.   Dinning worked in the oil industry before entering politics.   High oil prices and a strong economy are expected to allow Dinning to leave politics after forecasting another major budget surplus in 1997.   -- Reuters Calgary Bureau 403 531-1624 
18009 !C42 !CCAT !E41 !ECAT !GCAT !GJOB  The deadlock between Inco Ltd and its 1,400 locked out workers in Manitoba reached its fourth day on Thursday, with no talks scheduled.   Inco shut down its facility in Thompson, Manitoba on Sunday night after the United Steelworkers rejected the company's latest contract offer.   Inco produces about 100 million pounds of nickel a year from the Thompson area in northern Manitoba, representing 20 percent of total output for the Western world's largest nickel producer.   Wages and shift scheduling are the main issues blocking a new agreement.    A government negotiator tried to draw the parties closer on Tuesday, but gave up because the two sides were too far apart.   -- Heather Scoffield, Reuters Toronto Bureau 416 941-8104 
18010 !GCAT !GPOL  Alberta Treasurer Jim Dinning, known as the architect of his oil-rich western province's economic recovery, said on Thursday he would not seek re-election when the government's current term ends.   "Today, I am announcing this will be my last season as a politician," Dinning said in a speech to the Calgary Chamber of Commerce.   The Conservative government of Premier Ralph Klein is widely expected to call an election before next spring.   -- Reuters Calgary Bureau 403-531-1624 
18011 !E21 !E211 !ECAT !GCAT !GHEA !GPOL  Congressional leaders and the White House agreed Thursday to improve health coverage for new mothers and infants, mental health patients and children with spina bifida born to Vietnam veterans.   Sen. Christopher Bond, chairman of the Appropriations Subcommittee on Housing and Veterans' Affairs, said the legislation has the support of the White House and is expected to pass the House and Senate next week.   The health care provisions were added to an $80 billion funding bill for housing, veterans' affairs and environmental agencies.   New mothers would be guaranteed at least 48 hours in the hospital after childbirth, if they chose to use it.   Many insurance plans would be required to cover mental illness with the same level of benefits as provided for physical ailments.   Some 3,000 children with spina bifida born to veterans exposed to Agent Orange in Vietnam would become entitled to disability benefits and health care.   The reforms will put an end nationwide to so-called "drive-through deliveries" -- hospitals that force women to leave with their infants sometimes as soon as 10 hours after a normal delivery.   The three health care changes are to be added to a must-pass spending bill providing money for federal housing programs, veterans' health care, environmental protection and space research.   The maternity and mental health rules will take effect Jan. 1, 1998 while the spina bifida provision will start Oct. 1, 1997.   "This bill will require insurance companies to allow up to 48 hours when women go to the hospital for a normal birth and 96 hours in the hospital for women who have a Caesarean section," said Sen. Bill Bradley, a New Jersey Democrat who sponsored the maternal health insurance reform.   To cut costs in recent years many insurance plans limited coverage to 24 hours or even less for a normal birth and 48 hours for a Caesarean-section.   Women and doctors protested that not all women were ready to be discharged so quickly.   Bradley credited a unified front of outraged doctors and the public with forcing Congress to accept the change.   The insurance industry was divided on the issue with major health plans such as Kaiser Permanente supporting the change.   Bradley said he received 84,000 letters on the issue.   The expansion of mental health coverage was expected to benefit 75 million Americans with group health insurance and those covered by government-funded Medicaid.   While health plans will not be required to cover mental illness, those that do will no longer be permitted to set lower maximum payment amounts for mental health treatment.   If the health plan has no lifetime limit on physical care, none will be permitted on mental health care.   The compromise exempts companies with 50 or fewer employees, rather than 25 or fewer employees as sponsors had wanted.   Democratic Sen. Paul Wellstone of Minnesota and Republican Sen. Pete Domenici of New Mexico fought side-by-side for the mental health changes.   "Mental illness touches an awful lot of people out there," said Domenici whose daughter is one of 5 million Americans with severe mental illness.   He fought for the expanded coverage when other senators told him he could not succeed.   To meet congressional budget rules, the provision was set to expire Sept. 30, 2001.   All three provisions passed the Senate with broad bipartisan support but had not cleared the House, where Democrats this week forced a non-binding vote endorsing the Senate plan.   An estimated 3,000 children of Vietnam veterans, many of whom are now adults, stand to share in about $44 million disability benefits, job training support and health care provided by Veterans' hospitals.   The benefit was provided after studies showed a link between children born with spina bifida and exposure to Agent Orange while the father served in Vietnam. 
18012 !C13 !C24 !CCAT !GCAT !GENV  Vicki Allen   The Senate unanimously passed a bill on Thursday to try to reverse a trend of overfishing and wasteful practices that has led to the near collapse of many U.S. fisheries.   But with time running out in this congressional session, the bill faces a tight deadline for being meshed with the House version and sent to President Clinton.   "We applaud them for passing it, but the challenge now is for the two houses to come together, because the fish can't wait another two years," Gerry Leape of Greenpeace said.   The bill transforms the 20-year-old Magnuson Act from a law that blocked foreign exploitation of fisheries but encouraged domestic exploitation to one geared to preserving the declining resources.   While most conservation groups preferred the stricter language in the version the House passed a year ago, they said the Senate bill still would greatly clamp down on overfishing and the amount of bycatch -- commercially unwanted marine life that is netted, then dumped dead or dying back into the sea.   In the north Pacific alone, as much as 750 million pounds of fish is dumped overboard annually and Gulf shrimpers dump nearly that much.   The bill also has provisions to restore degraded fish habitats and to reduce fishing capacity through measures such as scrapping or buying back vessels.   The Commerce Department has said restoring fisheries will have a $25 billion economic impact and create 300,000 jobs.   The bill was held up in a dispute between fishing interests in Washington and Alaska, who compete in the North Pacific.   Washington has most of the big factory trawler fleet.   After the vote, Alaska Republican Sen. Ted Stevens said trawlers accounted for 75 percent of the North Pacific bycatch.   If they do not cut waste, he said, he will push a bill "that will eliminate these vessels that are destroying the reproductive capabilities of the North Pacific."   But Sen. Slade Gorton, a Washington Republican, said in floor debate on Wednesday that the bill allocated resources in favor of Alaska over his state.   While Gorton said he still had objections to the bill, he and Sen. Patty Murray, a Washington Democrat, wrested compromises that some environmentalists said weakened it.   At their insistence, a moratorium on issuing transferable fishing rights was shortened.   Critics say the rights are amassed by big enterprises pushing out the small operations, but advocates say they are effective measures to slow the rate of fish take.   The House bill dropped the transferable fishing rights.   Another sticking point is a provision pushed by Gulf shrimpers to bar shrimp imports from foreign countries that do not use devices to reduce bycatch that meet U.S. standards.   While the White House said in a statement it generally supported the bill, it opposed the shrimp import provision, saying it could create trade conflicts, and opposed the moratorium on transferable fishing rights. 
18013 !E12 !ECAT !GCAT !GPOL  Assistant Treasury Secretary Darcy Bradbury, the Treasury's point person in dealing with Wall Street, will resign her post early in October to return to the private sector, the Treasury said Thursday.   Bradbury was appointed assistant secretary for financial markets in 1995.   Her duties include advising Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin and other senior department officials on federal debt management.   She also projects the government's short- and long-term borrowing needs, helps set Treasury auction rules and the types of securities to be sold.   Bradbury has been commuting since the beginning of the year from New York, where her husband and two young sons live.   A Treasury official said Bradbury, a former investment banker, "will pursue opportunities on Wall Street."   No replacement has yet been named but Roger Anderson, deputy assistant secretary for federal finance, will assume her duties.   Bradbury serves as Treasury co-ordinator for the President's Working Group on Financial Markets, which is chaired by Rubin and includes the chairman and vice-chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodities Futures Trading Commission.   Bradbury was deputy assistant secretary for federal finance at the Treasury from 1993 until 1995 when she was promoted to assistant secretary.   Prior to that, she served as New York City deputy comptroller for finance from January 1990 until joining the Treasury Department.   She was an investment banker from 1982-89 with First Boston and with Kidder, Peabody and Co. 
18014 !C13 !C31 !C33 !CCAT !GCAT !GHEA  Metra Biosystems Inc said Thursday Amersham International Plc is to market Metra's bone metabolism immunoassays to the research community.   Metra also said in a statement that Chiron Corp unit Ciba Corning Diagnostics Corp has filed a 510(k) premarket notification with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for clearance to market Metra's Pyrilinks-D bone resorption technology for clinical use on Ciba Corning's ACS:180 automated immunoassay system. 
18015 !C12 !C15 !C151 !CCAT !GCAT !GCRIM !GDIS  Exxon Corp is working on a letter of credit to guarantee payment of the $5 billion fine assessed against it as punishment for the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill, a company spokesman said.   A federal judge on Wednesday ordered Exxon to issue a letter of credit after rejecting alternative guarantees offered by the oil giant.   "Exxon is developing a letter of credit with a syndicate of banks that will satisfy the concerns of the court," Exxon spokesman Ed Burwell told Reuters by telephone.   "That's under way."    Burwell gave no further details and said he was not sure how long it would take to get the letter of credit lined up.   U.S. District Court Judge H. Russel Holland on Wednesday turned down Exxon's proposal that it issue a letter of credit assuring payment of the fine only if total shareholder equity falls below $20 billion or if its debt-to-capital ratio exceeds 50 percent.   He also rejected a proposal to place some of Exxon's commercial paper in escrow to guarantee payment of the verdict, saying the company should provide a simple letter of credit with no caveats.    Plaintiffs wanted a letter of credit because it effectively insulates them from any financial problems for Exxon in the future.   The $5 billion punitive fine was ordered in 1994 to Alsaka fishermen and Natives by a U.S. District Court jury, which ruled that Exxon and its former supertanker captain, Joseph Hazelwood, were reckless in their actions leading to the 1989 oil disaster.   It also ordered Exxon to pay $287 million to compensate an estimated 10,000 commercial salmon and herring fishermen for spill-related losses.   Exxon has vowed to appeal the fine.   The Exxon Valdez supertanker grounded on a reef in Alaska's Prince William Sound on March 24, 1989, and spilled 11 million gallons of oil. 
18016 !C12 !CCAT !GCAT !GCRIM  Attorneys representing 29,000 employees of Burlington Industries Inc said on Thursday that the settlement reached in July in a class action suit against the company has been approved by the U.S. District Court in Greensboro, N.C.   The settlement calls for $27 million to be paid into the employees stock ownership plan to compensate for alleged overpayment for company stock in 1989, the attorneys said.   A Burlington spokesman pointed out the settlement calls for equal $8.8 million payments by Burlington, Morgan Stanley Group Inc and NationsBank Corp. 
18017 !C12 !C13 !CCAT !GCAT !GCRIM  New York's Public Service Commission will seek an expedited review of the lawsuit challenging its electric industry deregulation order, spokesman Dave Flanagan told Reuters Thursday.   The suit was filed in state court in Albany Wednesday by the Energy Association of New York State and its eight member companies, which said they had to act no later than this week to preserve their right to appeal the decision.   In a statement, Chairman John O'Marra said the "commission is dissappointed that the utilities have filed this lawsuit."    He went on to say "they rejected a commission proposal that would have preserved their legal rights and allowed collaboration to proceed without this distraction."   Flanagan said the commission proposed an agreement to preserve the utilities' right to appeal.   Energy Association President Howard Shapiro said "there was some discussion in that area," but the proposal was "viewed as inadequate...(and) minimal" by utility lawyers.   He said it was "great" that the commission would seek an expedited review of the suit.   O'Mara's statement concluded "We are confident that the court will uphold our order.   Meanwhile, we will continue implementation of (the decision) according to the schedule in the order."   The association's member utilities are Brooklyn Union Gas Co, Central Hudson Gas & Electric Corp, Consolidated Edison Co of New York Inc, Long Island Lighting Co, New York State Electric & Gas Corp, Niagara Mohawk Power Corp, Orange and Rockland Utilities Inc and Rochester Gas and Electric Corp.    -- Jim Brumm 212-859-1710. 
18018 !C12 !C18 !C181 !CCAT !GCAT !GCRIM  The tug-of-war over who will win mobile home park operator Chateau Properties Inc may have to be settled in court, analysts said Thursday.   In fact, at least two lawsuits have already been filed in Maryland courts.   One alleges that suitor Manufactured Home Communities Inc violated security laws with its tender offer for Chateau, and the other charges that the Chateau board violated its fiduciary duty by not accepting the offer.   "I see no reason for the Chateau stockholders not to buy into the MHC tender," said BT Securities analyst Kevin Comer.    "Then it's up to the courts to see what happens in the Chateau/ROC merger," Comer said.   Chateau and ROC Communities Inc have agreed to a revised "merger of equals", pegging annual revenues at $125 million.   But the tender offer of $26 a share by competitor MHC, a company run by investor Sam Zell, remains in place through October 1.   Zell said Thursday he is still committed to acquiring Chateau, a deal estimated at about $400 milion.   In the revised ROC deal, each Chateau share in effect represents 1.0316 shares of the resulting company, up from one share in the previous deal.   ROC's ratio is unchanged at 1.042.    Chateau rejected a merger offer from Sun Communities Inc and urged shareholders not to buy into the MHC tender.   Whichever ends up merging with Chateau, the resulting company will be the industry's largest mobile home park operator.   In the Chateau/ROC merger, analysts said the next step is a ROC shareholder vote.   ROC chief executive Gary McDaniel said in an interview the company hopes to hold a vote in the next 45 to 60 days and close the merger by the end of 1996.   A two-thirds majority is necessary for the merger to move ahead and analysts are split on which way the vote will go.    The merger is seen as attractive for ROC shareholders, but some analysts pointed out that many who hold ROC stock also hold Chateau.   "If those folks are unhappy with the transaction, the way they can make their interest known is to vote against the ROC deal," said Burland East, an analyst for EVEREN Securities.   Chateau filed a suit against MHC in a Maryland U.S. District Court on September 17, charging MHC made material misstatements and failed to disclose other material facts.   Chateau said a takeover would mean the company waives a seven percent maximum ownership rule, which it has not agreed to do.    Most analysts say the rule was drawn up to ensure that the company keeps its tax-preferred status as a real estate investment trust (REIT), not to fight off a hostile takeover.   Zell said the lawsuit has no merit.   "I think the courts will have to decide on the seven percent rule, but more important the court will have to decide if Chateau was keeping its fiduciary duty and whether it allows the Chateau/ROC merger to go ahead," Comer said.   A class action suit was filed in the Circuit Court for Montgomery County, Maryland, by certain Chateau shareholders.   The case charges the directors violated their fiduciary duty by not accepting the MHC offer which analysts said in the near term is more valuable than the Chateau/ROC merger.   Jeff Kellogg, chief executive of Chateau, said the company's stock was trading at $26.50 the day the suit was filed -- $0.50 a share above the MHC offer.   "No one in their right mind would have taken that offer," Kellogg said, adding that if the company were for outright sale, it would be worth more than $26 a share.   --Chicago newsdesk, 312-408-8787 
18019 !C42 !CCAT !E41 !ECAT !GCAT !GJOB  Acclaim Entertainment Inc, in a bid to reduce costs, said on Thursday it would cut its Long Island, N.Y. headquarters workforce by about 20 percent, to cut costs.   It was also reducing staff at other facilities, Acclaim said.   There were 342 full-time employees at the company's   headquarters, it said.    "We've reduced our workforce as part of cost-management initiative," Acclaim President and Chief Operating Officer Robert Holmes said.   "Our immediate objective is to work aggressively to return the company to consistent profitability through both ongoing cost control and focusing our attention on producing and promoting the 30-plus games for a variety of hardware platforms that we'll be releasing in the next several months," he said. 
18020 !C13 !CCAT !E21 !E211 !ECAT !GCAT !GENV !GPOL  More than 100 members of the U.S. House of Representatives signed letters to President Clinton and House leadership calling for them to end funding for the salvage timber rider in a spending bill, Rep. Elizabeth Furse, Oregon Democrat, said Thursday.   Furse said 105 congressmen signed the letter, urging that a measure to stop the salvage logging funding be included in the continuing resolution or omnibus spending bill that is expected to replace the stalled Interior spending bill.    In June the House defeated a similar measure on the salvage rider, which stepped up logging in national forests, by 211-209.   The salvage logging rider, pushed by the timber industry, was passed last year as part of a broad spending bill.   "This measure has proven to be one of the most environmentally damaging and divisive statutes passed in recent history," Furse said in a statement.   "Stopping the last months of the rider will make a critical difference to our national forests and restoring the trust of the American people," she said.   The letter to Clinton called on him to terminate any rider sales in ancient forests, critical fisheries and wildlife habitat, roadless areas or other environmentally sensitive areas.   It also urged Clinton to negotiate with Congress to halt funding for the stepped-up salvage logging program. 
18021 !C12 !CCAT !E51 !E512 !ECAT !GCAT !GCRIM !GDIP !GPOL  A bill to make the theft of U.S. trade secrets by foreign governments and companies a federal crime was heading for final congressional action after approval by the Senate.   The Senate version of the bill, passed Wednesday night, must be reconciled with a different House version passed by the House Tuesday.   Final action is expected by next week, a House Judiciary Committee staff member said.   Sponsors of the bill said U.S. companies were losing $24 billion a year from the theft of computer software, advanced technology and other intellectual property.   They said current federal laws did not cover such crimes.   The FBI and CIA have said that several foreign countries, including France and Russia, try to steal U.S. trade secrets. 
18022 !C13 !C22 !CCAT !GCAT !GHEA  Ventritex Inc said the U.S. Food and Drug Administration granted it premarket approval for commercial distribution of its Contour implantable cardioverter defibrillators, the V-145D and the LT V-135D, to treat abnormally rapid heart beats.   It said its defibrillators are the smallest available and are designed to enhance patient comfort and facilitate implantation.   The company said availability will be limited initially, but "we are working to increase production to accommodate anticipated demand." 
18023 !C42 !CCAT !E41 !ECAT !GCAT !GJOB  Maine Gov. Angus King, who is trying to save 145 jobs at the Gerber Childrenswear factory in Fort Kent that is being closed, expects to meet on Friday with its chairman, Ed Kittridge, in New York City.   "We don't know what's going to come from the discussion but the governor called the chairman and they were more than willing to discuss the situation," said Dennis Bailey, a spokesman for the governor.   He added that the state will not know what strategies, such as tax incentives, to pursue, to help keep the plant open until after the meeeting.    But the Greenville, South Carolina-company, which is owned by GSIH, did not appear to leave much leeway to alter its decision to close the factory by the end of January, 1997, and shift those operations to a Ballinger, Texas, factory.   "It's our intention to move our operations out of the state of Maine," said Ray McManus, a spokesman for Gerber Childrenswear.   He added that the Ballinger factory, which employs about 250 workers, can absorb the work, making this a more cost-effective approach.   The company did not say whether it would seek tax benefits from the state or try to help smooth the way for Maine to find new investors to buy the factory.   "It was a meeting reqested by his (Governor King's) organization to try and determine what options may be available for that facility," McManus said, adding the company will not know what those options might be until it talks with the governor.   --Joan Gralla, 212-859-1654 
18024 !C21 !CCAT !GCAT !GHEA  CONFIDE, the first FDA-approved home collection HIV testing and counseling service, is now available to consumers throughout the United States, Johnson & Johnson said Thursday.   CONFIDE can be purchased in pharmacies, mass merchandisers, clinics and college health centers, the company said.   CONFIDE provides access to HIV testing for people who might be reluctant to test in other settings, Johnson & Johnson said.   In June, following the May 14 FDA approval, CONFIDE became available in Texas, and by mail order only in Florida.   The national expansion is based on the experience gained in these pilot markets, the company said.   CONFIDE was developed by Direct Access Diagnostics, a Johnson & Johnson company, in conjunction with Chiron Corp. 
18025 !C12 !C13 !CCAT !GCAT !GCRIM !GENV  Ferro Corp said on Thursday that it, along with two other companies, have signed a $5.3 million settlement agreement with the U.S. Department of Justice and the Indiana Department of Environmental Management for further cleanup of the Grand Calumet River. 
18026 !C12 !C18 !C181 !CCAT !GCAT !GCRIM  Buffets Inc said Thursday that its shareholders at a meeting approved issuance of Buffets common stock as part of a proposed merger with HomeTown Buffet Inc.   Buffets said it expects the merger with HomeTown would be completed September 20, 1996 provided that no adverse ruling is received to legal motions seeking to block the transaction.   Earlier today, Buffets said it expects a U.S. District Court Judge for the State of Utah Central Division to rule September 20 on motions to block the merger by plaintiffs Summit Family Restaurants Inc and CKE Restaurants Inc.   The proposed merger, announced in June, will combine Buffets' 258 restaurants and HomeTown Buffets' 95 units.     Chicago newsdesk 312 408 8787 
18027 !C23 !CCAT !GCAT !GHEA  Ion Pharmaceuticals, owned by Sheffield Medical Technologies, said on Thursday it began Phase I/II trials of its proprietary topical form of Clotrimazole, a treatment for precancerous skin conditions.   Ion had just received a key patent covering the use of clotrimazole for the treatment of this condition, called actinic keratosis, it said.   Ion said it was developing a new class of compounds, with the aim of treating several types of cancer, sickle cell anemia, intestinal disorders and restenosis.   -- New York newsdesk 212-859-1610 
18028 !GCAT !GWEA  Typhoon Willie is a major risk to shipping in the northwest South China Sea with winds up to 75 mph.   Willie is also tracking into the coast of Hainan China.   This island can expect rains of 5-10 inches which would causing flooding and mudslides.   Damage should be at least moderate.   Winds and a storm surge may also add to damage estimates for the northeast coastal locations.   Winds weaken as the system moves over the island which should decrease the risk to shipping in the area.   When the system moves back over water later in the period it will likely strengthen again.    Typhoon Violet is mainly a major risk to shipping in the region southeast and east of Okinawa during the next 48 hours, however the forecast track of this system is uncertain, and there is some chance it may turn more to the north, threatening Japan.    Tropical Storm Tom, about 1000 miles east of Japan, will accelerate into the open western Pacific with top winds decreasing from 60 mph to 45 mph during the next 48 hours.   Tom will be a moderate risk to shipping.   Tropical Depression 01C will be a minor to moderate threat to shipping as it tracks westward well south of Hawaii the next few days.   This system has top winds near 35 mph and weakening. 
18029 !E12 !E41 !ECAT !GCAT !GJOB !GPOL  Assistant Treasury Secretary Darcy Bradbury, Treasury's point person in dealing with Wall Street, is expected to leave her post in October to return to the private sector, government sources said Thursday.   Bradbury was appointed assistant secretary for financial markets in 1995.   Her duties include advising Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin and other senior department officials on federal debt management.    Bradbury projects the government's short- and long-term borrowing needs, helps set Treasury auction rules and the types of securities to be sold.   She serves as Treasury co-ordinator for the President's Working Group on Financial Markets, which is chaired by Rubin and includes the chairman and vice-chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodities Futures Trading Commission.   Bradbury was deputy assistant secretary for federal finance at Treasury from 1993 until 1995 when she was promoted to assistant secretary.   Prior to that, she served as New York City deputy comptroller for finance from January 1990 until joining the Treasury Department.   She was an investment banker from 1982-89 with First Boston and with Kidder, Peabody and Co. 
18030 !C12 !CCAT !GCAT !GCRIM  PITTSBURGH, Sept. 19 (Reuter - Westinghouse Electric Corp said on Thursday it has reached an "amicable" settlement with Commonwealth Edison Co related to the dispute involving steam generators supplied by Westinghouse to the Braidwood, Byron and Zion nuclear power stations.   Westinghouse said it would not need to establish additional reserves to cover any associated costs from the pact.   Terms of the settlement were not disclosed, the company said.   Commonwealth Edison is controlled by Unicom Corp. 
18031 !C13 !C21 !CCAT !GCAT !GHEA  A Food and Drug Administration advisory committee unanaimously recommended on Thursday that the agency approve Israel's Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd's Copaxone drug for treating Multiple Sclerosis.   After a nearly all-day hearing, the FDA advisory panel concluded that the drug is safe and effective when used to reduce exacerbations of the disease.    The panel's recommendations are not binding but the regulatory agency typically follows the advice of its advisory committees.   The panel's support for Teva's Copaxone clears a major hurdle for the company as it expands its focus to research-based drugs.   It has been known as a leading generic drug company.   FDA panel members expressed some concerns about the absence of carcinogenic studies and about such reported side effects as chest pain.   But none of those concerns were enough to keep any of the panel members from recommending the drug be approved by the FDA.    If the FDA ultimately approves the drug, the Copaxone label would be limited to a claim of reducing exacerbation of the disease.   Some 250,000 to 350,000 people in the United States, the vast majority of which are young women, suffer from the central nervous system disease.   There are no cures for the disease, which results in patients slowly losing control of their movement, speech and bodily functions.   While two other FDA-approved MS treatments are already on the market, the Copaxone drug takes a different approach toward mitigating the disease. 
18032 !C13 !C15 !C152 !C21 !CCAT !GCAT !GHEA  Shares in Israeli drug maker Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd jumped over 10 percent on Thursday after a U.S. Food and Drug Administration advisory panel voted to back its multiple sclerosis drug Copaxone.   After hovering around Wednesday's closing levels, Teva's shares were up 4-1/2 to 48 in afternoon Nasdaq trade on news the advisory panel had voted to recommend the drug's approval.   Advisory panel votes are not binding on the FDA, but are typically followed.   Analysts said the drug could get final approval by late 1996 or early 1997.    "It really lifts a cloud that's been hanging over (Teva's) head for a while," Gruntal Investment Research analyst Adam Greene said of the panel vote.   The FDA advisory committee voted unanimously that the drug was safe and effective when used to reduce flare-ups of MS.   The recommendation fell short, however, of saying the drug slows the progression of multiple sclerosis, a central nervous system disease in which people slowly lose control over their movement, speech and bodily functions.   There is no cure for MS.    In May, Biogen Inc began selling in the U.S. its multiple sclerosis drug Avonex with a label that said it slows the progression of MS along with reducing flare-ups.   Some industry analysts have said that label gives the Biogen drug a sales advantage over Copaxone, as well as over Chiron Corp and Schering AG's Betaseron, launched in 1993.   But few Wall Street analysts had expected Copaxone to be recommended as slowing the progression of MS because of the design of its clinical trials.   "It would have been a great bonus if they did get it," Greene said.   Instead Copaxone's draw will be that it fights MS flare-ups using a different approach than either Betaseron or Avonex, analysts say.   Copaxone could have $300 million in annual worldwide sales by the year 2000, analysts estimate.   Hoechst AG's Hoechst Marion Roussel drug unit is Teva's marketing partner for Copaxone.   -- R. Jacobsen, 212 859-1733 
18033 !C12 !CCAT !GCAT !GCRIM  Physician Reliance Network Inc said Thursday the class action lawsuit filed against it in Corpus Christi, Texas, and a federal class action lawsuit filed against it in the Northern District of Texas are without merit.   The company said each of these lawsuits apparently asserts that the company's relationships with Texas Oncology P.A. and other affiliated physician groups and related disclosures violate federal and state health care and securities laws.   The company said it intends to vigorously defend itself. 
18034 !C12 !C13 !CCAT !GCAT !GCRIM  Mesa Air Group Inc has agreed to make substantial organizational changes to address Federal Aviation Administration safety concerns, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Larry Risley said.   The carrier, based here, was also fined $500,000 "as a result of past inspection findings," Risley rold Reuters in a telephone interview.   "The agreement (with the FAA) is intended to ensure the carrier meets or exceeds regulatory requirements during its planned growth and expansion," he said.    "We have agreeed to improve methods to verify that all our aircraft meet airworthy regulations," he said.   Of the fine, Risley said, "We'll pay $250,000 up front and the other $250,000 will be waived -- not forgiven, but waived.   And when Mesa has complied with all the parts of the agreement, that remaining $250,000 will be forgiven."   He said the FAA would announce details of the agreement in Washington later today or on Friday.   Mesa Air Group operates under the names Mesa Airlines, America West Express, United Express and USAir Express.   Its fleet has more than doubled to 175 planes in five years.    It came under FAA investigation last year and several maintenance problems were found.   They were reportedly similar to those found with ValuJet Airlines after one of its planes crashed in the Everglades on May 11, killing 110 people.   But Risely said the FAA found no safety dangers in Mesa's air services.   "There is not a concern with the safety of the airline relative to the existing day-to-day operations.   The concern that the FAA has expressed is our ability to maintain that level of safety going forward as we continue to grow the airline," he said.    Risley said the "substantial" organizational changes in the agreement with the FAA include increasing the numbers of flight maintenance and ground personnel, opening a single maintenance control center and implementing new training and internal audit programs.   Some of the changes are already under way and all will be carried through within 12 months.   "There will be additional costs associated with some of restructuring processes but it will primarily be personnel costs and we have not at this time measured that in dollars...We don't believe it is going to have a real impact on the cost of the business," Risley said.   Mesa Air Group operates 115 19-passenger planes, five 37-passenger turbo-props and 32 30-passenger turbo-props as well as two Fokker 70 jets, which each carry 78 passengers.   It also ordered 16 50-passenger regional jets and is waiting for their delivery.   They will be used for the launch of Mesa's jet service at Meacham Airport in Fort Worth, Texas next May. 
18035 !C12 !CCAT !GCAT !GCRIM !GHEA  A Dallas County court jury has returned a verdict in favor of Baxter International Inc's Baxter Healthcare Corp in four silicone breast implant lawsuits consolidated for trial, the company said Thursday.   The jury of six women and six men deliberated for nearly two days before returning a 10-to-2 verdict on Wednesday in favor of Deerfield, Ill.-based Baxter.   Baxter said it has won defense verdicts in 20 breast implant lawsuits it has tried to conclusion.   The company said two cases have ended in mistrials and it has lost two.   Of the two lost cases, one is on appeal and Baxter was granted a new trial in the other. 
18036 !C13 !C24 !CCAT !GCAT !GSCI  The Federal Aviation Administration on Thursday licensed what it called the world's first private commercial space launch facility, to be located about 150 miles (241 km) northwest of Los Angeles.   Called the California Spaceport, the 106-acre (43 hectares) site is located on Vandenberg Air Force Base and is leased from the U.S. Air Force by Spaceport Systems International, a limited partnership of ITT Corp and the California Commercial Spaceport Inc.   The spaceport will provide commercial launch services to those with occasional need for access to space, such as university researchers, said the FAA's Frank Weaver in a statement.   "Traditionally, such users found the cost of obtaining adequate facilities and services difficult because they could not justify the cost of constructing and maintaining the required building and personnel," Weaver said.   "California Spaceport will eliminate this concern by providing these facilities to the single user at a low cost." 
18037 !C12 !C18 !C181 !CCAT !GCAT !GCRIM  Airgas Inc has filed suit against Praxair Inc, alleging breach of contract in connection with Praxair's acquisition of CBI Industries Inc, Praxair said.   The suit alleges that Praxair-CBI deal violated an oral agreement that Praxair would not acquire CBI without the participation of Airgas, Praxair said.   In a Securities and Exchange Commission filing, Praxair said the lawsuit was filed on September 9 in the Philadelphia County Court of Common Pleas.   Praxair said the suit seeks unspecified damages.   It said it believes the suit is without merit, and it intends to fight it.   Praxair acquired CBI in January. 
18038 !C42 !CCAT !E41 !ECAT !GCAT !GJOB  Electrochemical Industries Ltd said Thursday employees at its Acco plant stopped all production during the night.   "The management is unable to estimate, at this stage, the duration of the dispute," a statement from the company said.   The statement did not say describe the issues at the heart of the dispute.   The company said it is prepared to continue to supply its main products for the near future. 
18039 !C12 !CCAT !GCAT !GCRIM  Diversified Corporate Resources Inc said a former employee filed a lawsuit against it and two subsidiaries for breach of contract, conspiracy and torts.   The lawsuit, filed on September 13 by Billie Jean Tapp, alleged damages of about $29 million, Diversified said in a statement.   It also claimed to be a shareholder derivative suit on behalf of the company against three company officers for alleged mismanagement, misappropriation of corporated assets and self-dealing, the company said.    Diversified said in a statement the claims were unfounded and without merit.   The three company officers -- J. Michael Moore, M.Ted Dillard and Donald A. Bailey -- intended to vigorously defend themselves, Diversified said.   The two subsidiaries were Management Alliance Corp and Information Systems Consulting Corp, it said.   Diversified is a permanent, temporary and contract employment placement service.   -- New York newsdesk 212-859-1610 
18040 !C12 !C33 !CCAT !GCAT !GCRIM  Unilab Corp said Thursday it has agreed to pay the U.S. Government roughly $4 million and California regulators $160,000 to settle claims over billing issues.   The deal is part of a joint settlement with Corning Clinical Laboratories, a Corning Inc unit.   The dispute arose over government claims Unilab billed Medicare, other federal entities and MediCal, a state program, for certain hemogram indices though they allegedly had not been properly ordered or were not medically necessary.   Unilab said the settlement is not an admission of guilt.    A charge of roughly $4.8 million is expected in the third quarter covering the settlement, legal fees and expenses.   Under the settlement, payments to the federal government will be made in semi-annual installments over three years, with about $500,000 due in the current year.   In addition, Unilab has agreed to pay MediCal about $160,000 on October 1.   Unilab said the government has given it a full civil and administrative release from all claims over the billings through the date of the settlement. 
18041 !GCAT !GSPO  Struggling PGA Tour veteran Brian Claar showed signs of life on Thursday by shooting his lowest round of an otherwise miserable year.   Claar fired a five-under-par 66 in the first round of the B.C. Open for a one-stroke lead over a group of six players, including last year's runner-up Jim McGovern.   Tied with McGovern at four-under 67 were Brad Faxon, Tommy Tolles, Wayne Levi, Peter Jordan and Larry Rinker.   Another nine players, including fledgling professional star Tiger Woods, were two strokes off the pace at 68.   The B.C. Open marks Woods' fourth start since his much heralded decision to turn pro.   The amateur champion has improved his finish in each of his previous three events and has already earned more than half the money he needs to secure his 1997 PGA Tour playing privileges.   Claar's six-birdie, one-bogey round offered him some hope of a decent finish to what has been the worst stretch of his career.   Claar missed seven of his last eight cuts last year and has made just 10 cuts in 28 starts this year to languish in 153rd place on the 1996 money list.   "I've got a ways to go.   I want a job next year," he said.   Four of Claar's birdies came on putts inside 15 feet.   He also had a chip in and a 35-footer.   In a nice change from his current form, Claar hit 15 of 18 greens with his only bogey coming on the par-five fifth hole, when he sent his 9-iron approach over the green.   "I've shown signs of a pulse lately," said Claar.   "You just have to tell yourself that it's no big deal.   Everyone has crummy years, but it's tough to erase nine months of bad golf.   "The good thing about this tour is that you're only one week away from a good year."   Woods, who finished fifth last week at the Quad Cities Classic after squandering a final-round lead, birdied his last two holes to get to three-under-par.   The only blemish on his round was a three-putt bogey on the 14th hole.   Still, Woods was not satisfied with his performance.   "I didn't capitalise on my opportunities.   I can be a lot more aggressive here," Woods said.   "I played a few loose shots, but they weren't that bad." 
18042 !GCAT !GSPO  Leaders after the first round of the $1 million B.C. Open golf tournament on Thursday (U.S. unless noted):   66 Brian Claar   67 Brad Faxon, Jim McGovern, Wayne Levi, Tommy Tolles, Peter Jordan, Larry Rinker   68 Grant Waite (New Zealand), Joe Daley, Tiger Woods, Jay Delsing, Bruce Fleisher, Patrick Burke, Fred Funk, Ted Tryba, Jeff Hart   69 Mike Standly, Mike Heinen, Jeff Sluman, Kelly Gibson, Joel Edwards, Tray Tyner, John Maginnes, Scott Dunlap, Craig Parry (Australia), Mike Hulbert, Joey Sindelar, Carl Paulson, Gary Rusnak   Add non-U.S. scores:   72 Steve Rintoul (Australia)   73 Jarmo Sandelin (Sweden), Alexander Cejka (Germany), Lucas Parsons (Australia)   79 Denis Watson (Zimbabwe)   80 Stuart Appleby (Australia) 
18043 !GCAT !GSPO  France's Limoges, the 1993 champions, suffered a setback on their return to the European championship after a year's absence when they lost 62-69 at home to Maccabi Tel Aviv.   The loss of the Group A tie was all the more chastening for Limoges as Maccabi were, amongst others, without playmaker Guy Goodes.   "We were scared and repeatedly ran into their defence.   We were unable to impose our game," said Limoges playmaker Frederic Forte.   Despite a strong performance by American veteran Vern Fleming, who scored 17 points, Limoges led only briefly after the break but managed to level the scores at 60-60 with two minutes left.   Americans Randy White and star scorer Oded Katash, who scored 19 points in all, then settled the issue as the clock ticked away. 
18044 !GCAT !GSPO  Leading first   round scores in the Loch Lomond World Invitational golf   tournament on Thursday (British unless stated):   67 Jamie Spence   68 Jose Coceres (Argentina), Nick Faldo, Darren Clarke   69 Michael Campbell (New Zealand), Robert Allenby (Australia),   Peter Baker, Ross Drummond, Pedro Linhart (Spain), Barry   Lane   70 David Howell, Thomas Gogele (Germany), Peter O'Malley   (Australia), Thomas Bjorn (Denmark)   71 David Gilford, Eamonn Darcy (Ireland), Roger Chapman,   Jonathan Lomas, Pierre Fulke (Sweden)   72 Domingo Hospital (Spain), Paul McGinley (Ireland), Retief   Goosen (South Africa), Colin Montgomerie, Glen Day (U.S.),   Costantino Rocca (Italy), Ricky Willison, Richard Green   (Australia), Ignacio Garrido (Spain)   73 Diego Borrego (Spain), Ian Woosnam, Ronan Rafferty, Miles   Tunnicliff, Miguel Angel Martin (Spain), Peter Mitchell,   Andrew Sherborne, Mark McNulty (Zimbabwe), Jim Payne, Ian   Pyman   74 Michael Jonzon (Sweden), Lee Westwood, Andrew Coltart, Jon   Robson, Rolf Muntz (Netherlands), Stuart Cage, Gordon    Sherry, Andy Magee (U.S.), Derrick Cooper   75 Brian Marchbank, Mark Mouland, Andrew Oldcorn, Gary Clark,   Peter Hedblom (Sweden), Gary Nicklaus (U.S.), Des Smyth   (Ireland), Jean Van de Velde (France), Gordon Brand jnr,   John Morgan, Sandy Lyle, Frank Nobilo (New Zealand), Sven   Struver (Germany), Richard Boxall, David Carter   Add scores:   77 Eduardo Romero (Argentina) 
18045 !GCAT !GSPO  Fun-loving Laura Davies has no plans to follow Greg Norman and join the jet set.   Davies and Norman are frequently compared -- and not just because they are both world No. 1s.   Both have a zest for life which extends far beyond the golf course.   Davies loves racing around in her Ferrari and regular passes with the bookmakers have cost her an estimated 500,000 pounds sterling ($775,000) over the past 12 years.   Norman has a fleet of fast cars as well as a custom-designed yacht, four other boats, a jet plane and two helicopters.   "I am light years behind Greg Norman.   He has all the toys, I just play at it," said Davies on the eve of the Solheim Cup.   "He's the real thing.   But I'm content with what I've got.   I'll just take the Solheim Cup, then I'll be happy.   Davies will be in the forefront of the European bid to regain the trophy from the United States when the biennial three-day, Ryder Cup-style event begins Friday at the St Pierre course.   The inspirational Davies has played on all four European Solheim teams since the event's inception in 1990, helping Europe win the trophy at Dalmahoy in Scotland in 1992 and suffering defeats in 1990 and 1994, both in the United States.   "We didn't have a chance at Lake Nona in 1990 and no one gave us a chance in 1992 either," she said.   "The home galleries have been huge and we need a noisy crowd this week.   It's always going to be tougher winning on the other team's soil."   Davies, winner of seven titles already this year, said the outcome would depend on "putting, pure and simple."   "When we won at Dalmahoy we holed everything.   Then at The Greenbrier in 1994 the Americans holed all the putts and I could not make any.   "It comes down to a putting contest.   We are the best players in the world and everyone hits a lot of fairways and greens.   "It's who makes the putts, and when, that counts.   There's no point making a 40-footer at the first.   You have to do it at the 14th or 15th, when it matters," Davies said.   The big, blonde-haired Davies, well-liked by all the Americans who play against her on the U.S. Tour, was called "awesome" by one of them, Brandie Burton, this week.   Though Davies has been one of the world's top players for a decade, American Beth Daniel paid tribute to her improvement this year.   "She is swinging better than I've ever seen her swing.   Technically she has tightened it up and she has never been given credit for how good her short game is.   "She has a wonderful touch around the greens and is a wonderful putter," Daniel said.   Davies will have her stamina tested in the expanded format with five matches in three days after having to play only three in past years.   But European captain Mickey Walker is not worried.   "Laura is probably stronger and fitter than anybody," Walker said.   "If she weren't playing in the afternoon fourballs, she would probably be having a game of football (soccer) followed by a game of cricket followed by a game of tennis.   "To play 18 holes in fourballs after 18 holes in foursomes is probably an easy day for her." 
18046 !GCAT !GSPO  Colin Montgomerie, European golf king for the past three years, was outshone by Ryder Cup colleague Nick Faldo in the first round of the inaugural Loch Lomond World Invitational tournament on Thursday.   While Montgomerie was happy enough to shoot a one-over-par 72, Faldo, a regular on the U.S. Tour, was round in 68, just one shot behind the leader, England's Jamie Spence.   Faldo had a tidy round with four birdies and just one bogey.   That came at the 14th where he hit a wedge over the back of the green and could only chip and two-putt for a five.   "This is a very demanding course and there are certain places at each hole where you cannot go," he said.   "I played very solidly but what pleased me most was that I was bunkered at both four and five and got up and down at both for par.   I was scrambling well and that made me feel good."   Irishman Darren Clarke and Argentine Jose Coceres matched Faldo's score but on an exacting course designed by American Tom Weiskppf, winner of the British Open in 1973, many players failed to break 80.   Ryder Cup player Mark James had a six-over 10 at the 15th as he struggled to an 83.   Coceres was two over after 10 holes but he played the last eight holes in five under to move on to the leaderboard with an inward 31.   Montgomerie, leading European moneywinner again this year, admitted he had not played well but said: "My 72 is not a disaster and tomorrow I may get back on track." 
18047 !GCAT !GSPO  Leading placings   in the 188-km 12th stage of the Tour of Spain between Benavente   and Alto del Naranco on Thursday:    1.   Daniele Nardello (Italy) Mapei 4 hours 30 minutes 19   seconds    2.   Andrea Peron (Italy) Motorola same time    3.   Peter Meinert (Denmark) Telekom 14 seconds behind    4.   Angel Canzonieri (Italy) Saeco 22    5.   Alex Zuelle (Switzerland) ONCE  2:26    6.   Laurent Jalabert (France) ONCE  2:31    7.   Tony Rominger (Switzerland) Mapei  2:33   8.   Roberto Pistore (Italy) MG    9.   Laurent Dufaux (Switzerland) Lotus  all same time    10.   Davide Rebellin (Italy) Polti  2:39   11.   Mauro Gianetti (Switzerland) Polti    12.   Marcos Serrano (Spain) Kelme all same time    13.   Axel Merckx (Belgium) Motorola  2:48    14.   Massimo Apollonio (Italy) Scrigno  2:59   15.   Stefano Faustini (Italy) AKI   16.   Bobby Julich (USA) Motorola   17.   Fabian Jeker (Switzerland) Lotus   18.   Javier Mauleon (Spain) Mapei   19.   Georg Tostching (Austria) Polti    20.   Angel Luis Casero (Spain) Banesto  all same time   Overall classification:    1.   Zuelle 52 hours 17 minutes 32 seconds    2.   Jalabert  1:17 seconds behind    3.   Miguel Indurain (Spain) Banesto  2:04    4.   Melchor Mauri (Spain) ONCE 3:09    5.   Neil Stephen (Australia) ONCE 3:55    6.   Pistore  4:07    7.   Dufaux  4:31    8.   Faustini  5:47    9.   Mikel Zarrabeitia (Spain) ONCE  6:30    10.   Julich  6:43    11.   Rebellin  6:55    12.   Vladislav Bobrik (Russia) Gewiss  7:10    13.   Tostching  7:29    14.   Rominger  8:08    15.   Apollonio  8:09    16.   Maarten Den Bakker (Netherlands) TVM 8:39    17.   Nardello  8:58    18.   Peron  9:05    19.   Juan Arenas (Spain) Lotus 9:38    20.   Canzonieri 10:32 
18048 !GCAT !GSPO  U.S. captain Judy Rankin sprang a surprise Thursday by naming the injured Brandie Burton to play in Friday's opening foursomes of the Solheim Cup women's team match against Europe.   Burton twisted her right ankle in practice at St Pierre Tuesday and was still riding in a cart for most of a warm-up round Thursday, yet Rankin had no hesitation in naming her.   "It is a no-risk situation as far as Brandie is concerned," Rankin said after pairing her with Dottie Pepper in the fourth foursomes against Sweden's Helen Alfredsson and world No. 3 Liselotte Neumann.   Rankin was expected to give Burton until Saturday to recover from her injury but the captain was confident of her choice.   "They have been very successful at this.   It was not rocket science to put them toegther," she said.   The match will be a repeat of the opening foursomes in the 1994 event which the U.S. pair won 3 and 2 as the team went on to regain the trophy they had lost two years earlier.   The only concession Rankin gave to Burton was to put her out last "to give her the most chance to get loosened up."   Pepper shared Rankin's optimism about Burton.   "She only walked seven holes today but she could have walked the whole round.   She was fine and it was just a precaution," Pepper said.   World No. 1 Laura Davies and English compatriot Alison Nicholas, unbeaten in three previous Solheim Cup foursomes, will face Patty Sheehan and Rosie Jones.   Rankin said she had a hunch Davies and Nicholas would be first or second on the European order but added that the choice of the Sheehan and Jones, 39 and 36 respectively, did not mean she had gone particularly for experience against the English pair.   "All of my players know Laura well.   They all know they would have to play very well to beat her," Rankin said.   The opening match will pit Kelly Robbins and Michelle McGann against the other Swedish pairing of Annika Sorenstam, winner of the 1995 and 1996 U.S. Opens and ranked second in the world, and Catrin Nilsmark, who sank the winning putt for Europe in 1992.   The third match will have veteran Beth Daniel and newcomer Val Skinner against Marie-Laure de Lorenzi of France and Dale Reid of Britain.   Pepper, the top-ranked U.S. player at No. 5 in the world, said she excited about the competition.   "I don't approach the Solheim Cup or cleaning my bathroom with anything less than full intensity," she said.   "In June I was something like 30th on the list and falling.   I was having technical and mechanical problems.   But I went back to what I knew worked and to clubs that I knew worked and I found the missing link." 
18049 !GCAT !GSPO  Alex Zuelle stretched his lead in the Tour of Spain on Thursday after leaving rival Miguel Indurain over a minute behind in the final kilometres of the first mountain stage.   With Italy's Daniele Nardello already celebrating his breakaway victory at the top of the hill, Zuelle split the group of favourites with an explosive burst in the 5 km climb to the finish.   Laurent Jalabert, who stuck close to his ONCE teammate Zuelle, moved up to second just over a minute behind, while Indurain slipped to third, more than two minutes off the lead in provisional timings.   "Indurain's very good, we'll have to be alert," said Zuelle afterwards.   Earlier Nardello had sprinted to take the stage victory ahead of Andrea Peron, one of his companions in a group of four who broke away at the midway point of the 188 km stage.   With Angelo Canzonieri and Peter Meinert left behind, Peron was pushed aside by Nardello as the two riders jostled for position in the final metres, and made an angry gesture as Nardello crossed the line ahead of him.   Amongst a dozen riders retiring on Thursday were Frenchman Armand de las Cuevas and Fabio Baldato, the Italian sprinter who led the overall standings after winning successive stages earlier in the Vuelta.   Swedish rider Michael Anderson is also out after being taken to hospital with minor injuries following a fall early in the stage.   Friday's 170 km 13th stage takes the riders from Oviedo to another classic mountain finish at Lagos de Covadonga. 
18050 !GCAT !GSPO  Daniele Nardello of Italy won the 12th stage of the Tour of Spain over 188 kms between Benavente and Alto del Naranco on Thursday.   Alex Zuelle of Switzerland retained the overall leader's yellow jersey. 
18051 !GCAT !GSPO  Draw for the first set   of Solheim Cup women's team event foursomes to be played on   Friday:   (U.S. names first, times GMT):   0700 - Kelly Robbins/Michelle McGann v Annika Sorenstam/Catrin   Nilsmark (Sweden)   0715 - Patty Sheehan/Rosie Jones v Laura Davies/Alison Nicholas   (Britain)   0730 - Beth Daniel/Val Skinner v Marie-Laure de Lorenzi   (France)/Dale Reid (Britain)   0745 - Dottie Pepper/Brandie Burton v Helen Alfredsson/   Liselotte Neumann (Sweden) 
18052 !GCAT !GSPO  Solheim Cup records of the players contesting the trophy at St Pierre this weekend:   Europe:   Helen Alfredsson (Sweden), aged 31.   Played 1990-1992-1994.   Overall match record - won 4, lost 4, halved 1.   Laura Davies (Britain), 32.   1990-92-94.   6-3-0.   Lisa Hackney (Britain), 28.   Debut.   Trish Johnson (Britain), 30.   1990-92-94.   1-7-1.   Marie-Laure de Lorenzi (France), 35.   Played 1990.   0-3-0.   Kathryn Marshall (Britain), 29.   Debut.   Joanne Morley (Britain), 29.   Debut.   Liselotte Neumann (Sweden), 30.   1990-92-94.   4-4-1.   Alison Nicholas (Britain), 34.   1990-92-94.   5-4-0.   Catrin Nilsmark (Sweden), 29.   1992-94.   2-2-0.   Dale Reid (Britain), 37.   1990-92-94.   4-4-1.   Annika Sorenstam (Sweden), 25.   1994.   1-2-0.   Overall team record - 27-33-4.   United States:   Pat Bradley, 45.   1990-92.   2-3-1.   Brandie Burton, 24.   1992-94.   3-1-1.   Beth Daniel, 39.   1990-92-94.   6-2-0.   Jane Geddes, 36.   Debut.   Rosie Jones, 36.   1990.   2-1-0.   Betsy King, 41.   1990-92-94.   4-4-1.   Meg Mallon, 33.   1992-94.   4-2-0.   Michelle McGann, 26.   Debut.   Dottie Pepper, 31.   1990-92-94.   5-3-1.   Kelly Robbins, 26.   1994.   1-2-0.   Patty Sheehan, 39.   1990-92-94.   3-5-1.   Val Skinner, 35.   Debut.   Overall record - 30-23-5. 
18053 !GCAT !GSPO  COLOMBO, September 19 - A fifth wicket century partnership   between left-handers Asanka Gurusinha and Hashan Tillekeratne    put Sri Lanka on the way to a big first innings lead on the   second day of the second test against Zimbabwe on Thursday.   Gurusinha made a solid 88 and Tillekeratne was unbeaten on   55 at tea on the second day when Sri Lanka were 220 for five in   reply to Zimbabwe first innings 141, an overall lead of 79.   Resuming at 86 for three, Sri Lanka lost captain Arjuna   Ranatunga for six in the seventh over of the day but the two   left-handers then comfortably took the home side into a first   innings lead by lunch.   Gurusinha looked on course for his eighth test century,   which would have put him level with Aravinda de Silva with the   highest number of test hundreds for Sri Lanka, but after batting   for almost six hours, he fell five minutes before tea.   Going for a pull off left-arm bowler Bryan Strang, Gurusinha   looked to be caught in two minds and merely lobbed a simple   catch to Craig Wishart at short square leg.   Gurusinha faced 238 balls and hit one six and eight fours   and put on 114 runs with Tillekeratne.   Tillekeratne completed his 13th test half-century in 170   minutes having hit six fours shortly before the interval. 
18054 !GCAT !GSPO  Damon Hill returns to the circuit where his Formula One career took off this weekend, hoping to to clinch his first world drivers' championship with a victory in the Portuguese Grand Prix.   Hill, who has been told he is not wanted at Williams next season, needs to perform well to boost his hopes of securing a competitive drive next year.   Jacques Villeneuve, Hill's team mate, is his only rival for the title but in the last races of the season the Canadian requires a victory and at least a podium finish -- with Hill failing to score a point -- to claim the title.   It was at Estoril, in 1992, that Hill was put through a series of tests to find out whether he was fast enough to make the transition from Williams test driver to Frenchman Alain Prost's team mate for 1993.   He passed, and helped Prost to win the championship.   Later he partnered Ayrton Senna and became the team's unexpected leading driver after the the Brazilian's death in 1994.   Since then, Hill has improved steadily to emerge as a world championship challenger and the winner of 20 Grands Prix.    He hopes to make it 21 on Sunday to ensure he can take the world drivers' title to his new team next year.   Hill, who was 36 on Tuesday, has spent the last week training flat out at his home in Dublin in readiness for what he expects to be one of the toughest physical challenges of the season.   But, with a 13-point lead in the title race he knows the pressure on Villeneuve is greater.    Hill will also enjoy the advantage of having more experience of Estoril than probably any other driver in the 71-lap race.   Villeneuve, however, is not a fan of Estoril.   "We have done millions of miles there and I actually got pretty bored with the place in testing," he complained.    "It is not a good race track because you are out of a quick corner and into a long straight line then a quick corner and that makes it difficult to stay close to someone and overtake as you don't really brake hard."   Hill said that he felt the Estoril track did not match the safety standards at other modern circuits.    "Although it is now relatively dangerous compared to some of the other circuits, I have to say I enjoy the track as it is challenging even though there are a few fast corners without much run-off," he said.   Hill, who has been linked with a move to the Jordan team, has deliberately kept a low profile, preferring to concentrate on winning the title before considering any offers.   Speculation is rife, however, that he will join Jordan and team up with Ralf Schumacher, the 21-year-old younger brother of double world champion Michael Schumacher, Hill's greatest rival.   The young Schumacher may be confirmed by Jordan this weekend.   Both Hill and Villeneuve will need to watch for Michael Schumacher who hopes to complete a hat-trick of victories for Ferrari to help their chances of overhauling Benetton in the chase for second place in the constructors' championship.   Benetton currently have 61 and Ferrari 58 points.   Hill's former Williams team mate and fellow-Briton David Coulthard is also likely to be a strong challenger in the race as he won his first and only previous victory at Estoril, in a Williams, last year.   Coulthard and his McLaren team mate Mika Hakkinen of Finland have been improving noticeably in the second half of the season and have been confirmed by the team for 1997. 
18055 !GCAT !GSPO  If experience of captaincy is a decisive factor in this weekend's Solheim Cup, the United States will have a battle on their hands to retain the trophy against Europe.   The European team have never had a captain other than Mickey Walker, who has led them in two defeats and a victory in 1992 in the three previous editions of the biennial women's team event.   Judy Rankin, by comparison, is a raw rookie.   "I have never captained anything but already this is very much fun, very interesting and something I am happy I did not miss in my life in golf," she said on Wednesday.   Rankin, 51, had an illustrious playing career in the 1970s, her best year being 1976 when she won seven titles.   Her career was curtailed by back trouble but she has stayed close to the game and the players as a television commentator.   "What is is like being a captain?   There is a certain maternal aspect, a certain nursing aspect, a certain coaching aspect.   "And there are the mind games you play with yourself in the middle of the night about pairings.   I have not slept well for several nights."   In contrast, Walker, 43, is an old hand at captaincy and feels she has grown with her experience of the job.   "At Lake Nona I had not captained anything and I did not know what to expect," said Walker, hugely popular with the members of her team.   "After six years, the advantage is that I have done it before and know what to expect.   "If someone convinces me that something is for the good of the team, then I will do it.   If I think there is a better way, I will make that decision.   "Three of the European players are ranked the top three in the game.   They certainly know a thing or two and I can rely on them all the time.   We discuss tactics and pairings but if I disagree with them I will do it my way."   She believes she holds one advantage over Rankin.   "I have learned that you can't get to know your players well enough.   I think it's absolutely crucial to know their personalities and characters really well.   Then you can eliminate mistakes before they happen.   "I suppose that during the six years I have spent a lot of time with the players.   Judy obviously knows her players' games well from commentating but perhaps she has not been as close to them as individuals." 
18056 !GCAT !GSPO  Ralf Schumacher, younger brother of Germany's double world champion Michael, is expected to sign a two-year contract with British team Jordan Peugeot on Friday.   The Silverstone-based outfit have called a news conference with Schumacher set to be announced as one of their drivers for next season.   The 21-year-old would be following in the footsteps of his illustrious brother, who made his Grand Prix debut with Jordan in 1991, but switched to Benetton after just one race. 
18057 !GCAT !GSPO  Welsh manager Bobby Gould has again omitted record goalscorer Ian Rush from the national squad for the World Cup qualifier against Holland on October 5.   Gould has stuck with Dean Saunders and Mark Hughes as his first-choice strikers, and has also included Arsenal's John Hartson who skippered the under-21 side against San Marino.   "I'm bored of the Rush situation," said Gould.   "It's been going on a year.   I haven't even bothered to telephone him to tell him he's not in the squad this time because last time it just caused problems.   "But I've seen Ian play twice for Leeds, he's been working very hard and I am sure he will come good again under George Graham.   "There's no way you can say at this stage he hasn't got an international future.   Gould, lacking the suspended Ryan Giggs, has also been irritated by the reluctance of clubs from below premier league level to release their players for training and matches.   "They want to be successful, but so do I. I want to take this country to the World Cup in 1998.   I feel like I'm banging my head against a brick wall."   Squad: Neville Southall, Andy Marriott, Mark Bowen, Steve Jenkins, Chris Coleman, Kit Symons, Andy Melville, Marcus Browning, Mark Pembridge, Andy Legg, Barry Horne, John Robinson, Dean Saunders, Mark Hughes, Gary Speed, Rob Savage, Gareth Taylor, John Hartson, Jason Bowen, Deryn Brace, Wayne Phillips. 
18058 !GCAT !GSPO  Results in the men's EuroLeague   basketball championship on Thursday:   Group A   In Athens: Panionios (Greece) 72 CSKA Moscow (Russia) 67   (halftime 37-30)   Leading scorers:   Panionios - Gerd Haming 17, Mitchel Wigins 16, George   Bosganas 12   CSKA - Sergei Panov 19, Marcus Webb 11   Attendance: 5,000   Group D   In Moscow: Dynamo Moscow (Russia) 70 Pau-Orthez (France) 65   (34-28)   Leading scorers:   Dynamo - Dmitry Shakulin 20   Pau-Orthez - Laurant Paure 17   Group D   In Istanbul: Efes Pilsen Istanbul (Turkey) 75 Virtus Bologna   (Italy) 60 (35-33)   Leading scorers:   Efes Pilsen - Petar Naumaski 17, Ufuk Sarca 15, Tamer Oyguc   10   Virtus Bologna - Arijan Komazec 15, Zoran Savic 10, Prelevic   10   Attendance: 5,000   Group A   In Istanbul: Ulkerspor (Turkey) 67 Stefanel Milano (Italy)   73 (26-37)   Leading scorers:   Ulkerspor - Dan Godfread 20, Harun Erdenay 13, Orhun Ene 10   Stefanel Milano - Bowie 18, Portaluppi 15   Attendance: 5,000   Group A   In Limoges: Limoges (France) 62 Maccabi Tel Aviv (Israel) 69   (33-28)   Leading scorers:   Limoges - Vern Fleming 17, Yann Bonato 13   Maccabi - Oded Katash 19, Randy White 17   Atttendance: 3,500   Group B   In Athens: Olympiakos (Greece) 64 Alba Berlin (Germany) 67   (32-38)   Leading scorers:   Olympiakos - David Rivers 18, Dragan Tarlac 15   Alba - Sasa Hupman 20, Hening Harnish 11   Attendance: 7,000   Group B   In Zagreb: Cibona Zagreb (Croatia) 81 Estudiantes (Spain) 66   (30-39)   Leading scorers:   Cibona - Davor Marcelic 22, Damir Mulaomeruic 18, Slaven   Rimac 17   Estudiantes - Juan Aisa 13, Ignacio De Miguel 13   Attendance: 4,000   Group C   In Leverkusen: Bayer Leverkusen (Germany) 66 ASVEL Basket   (France) 79 (30-36)   Leading scorers:   Bayer - Kevin Pritchard 21, Tony Dawson 11, Denis Wucherer   10   Asvel - Brian Howard 20, Delany Rudd 16, Jim Bilba 14   Attendance: 1,500   Group B:   In Bologna: Bologna (Italy) 87 Charleroi (Belgium) 78   (34-38)   Leading scorers:   Bologna - Crotty 21, Myers 22, McRae 15   Charleroi - Ellis 21, Cleymans 14   Attendance: 4,500 
18059 !GCAT !GSPO  Leicestershire tightened their grip on the English county championship on Thursday as their rivals endured a frustrating start to the final round of championship matches.   Second-placed Surrey spent the entire day in the pavilion as rain washed out the first day of their match against Worcestershire and Kent were bowled out for a paltry 154 by Gloucestershire, virtually killing their mathematical title chances.   Leicester, in contrast, enjoyed a positive day's cricket against Middlesex, bowling out the visitors for 190 in 56.4 overs to claim maximum bowling points and then reaching 36 for one before bad light intervened.   David Millns, regarded as the fastest English bowler in the country behind Devon Malcolm, began Middlesex's slide before England left-armer Alan Mullally took over.   Mullally dismissed Peter Wellings, Mike Gatting and Owais Shah in a three-over spell and finished with figures of four for 53, with only Mark Ramprakash's smooth 71 delaying the home side.   The former England batsman was finally halted when he offered a simple return catch to Gordon Parsons having hit two sixes and 10 fours off 127 deliveries.   Leicestershire, whose only previous title was claimed in 1975, now need only 214 more runs to secure sufficient bonus points to eliminate Kent from the title equation and leave Surrey as their only challengers.   Kent were undone by West Indian fast bowler Courtney Walsh who took four for 50, with only Trevor Ward able to rise to the occasion with a battling 86.   Graham Gooch and Nasser Hussain both hit unbeaten half-centuries as Essex, their sights set on second place, reached 148 for one from 40.2 overs against Glamorgan.   But rivals Derbyshire are already looking good for maximum points against bottom-placed Durham, bowling them out for 142 and replying with 136 for two on a day of five interruptions. 
18060 !GCAT !GSPO  Draw for the semifinals of the   Scottish League Cup made on Thursday:   Dunfermline v Rangers - Tuesday, October 22 (at Celtic Park)    Hearts  v Dundee - date and venue to be decided 
18061 !GCAT !GSPO  Close of play scores on the first   day of four-day English county championship cricket matches on   Thursday:   At Chelmsford: Essex 148-1 (G.Gooch 62 not out, N.Hussain 60   not out) v Glamorgan.   At Southampton: Hampshire 213-2 (J.Laney 76 not out, G.White   73) v Nottinghamshire.   At Northampton: Yorkshire 213-3 (M.Vaughan 95 not out,   M.Moxon 47) v Northamptonshire.   At Edgbaston: Warwickshire 233-7 (M.Burns 61) v Lancashire.   At Bristol: Kent 154 (T.Ward 86; C.Walsh 4-50).   Gloucestershire 9-0.   At Leicester: Middlesex 190 (M.Ramprakash 71; A.Mullally   4-53).   Licestershire 36-1.   At Derby: Durham 142 ((P.DeFreitas 5-60).   Derbyshire 136-2   (C.James 77 not out).   At Hove: Sussex 141 (A.Caddick 5-58, S.Lee 4-52).   Somerset   45-1.   At The Oval: Surrey v Worcestershire - no play possible   because of rain. 
18062 !GCAT !GSPO  English premier league club Chelsea on Thursday signed Norwegian international goalkeeper Frode Grodas on loan from Lillestroem until the end of the year.   Chelsea boss Ruud Gullit needed to bring in cover because first-choice goalkeeper Dmitri Kharine is sidelined by a knee injury.   He fell awkwardly during the 2-0 league win at Sheffield Wednesday earlier this month.   Kevin Hitchcock has taken Kharine's place. 
18063 !GCAT !GVIO  Sports sponsors are increasingly targeting "ambush marketing" in Europe by companies that muscle in on events without paying sponsorship fees, a legal expert said on Thursday.   The top lawyer at ISL Marketing AG, a Swiss-based marketing and sponsorship company, said sports sponsorship was becoming a huge business and sponsors wanted to protect their investment.   "Ambush marketing is very much foul play," Meena Sayal told an annual conference of the Incorporated Society of British Advertisers, a trade body with 300 members.   She said ISL, which works with sports federations on sponsorship deals, got help from lawyers, local police and trading standards officers to prevent companies from "hitchhiking a free ride" at the Euro 96 football championship this spring.   The ISL also launched a pan-European campaign to raise awareness of the official sponsors of Euro 96.   Sayal described Nike Inc , the world's biggest athletic footwear maker, as a case study of a company that wrongly targeted consumers outside Euro 96 games, since it was not an official sponsor.   She said Nike had committed an "own goal" because of criticism it subsequently received for its alleged ambush marketing.   "What are the risks to a company that wants to see itself as a global player when federations see it as an ambush marketer?   We see it for Nike as an own goal," Sayal said.   But Nike was unrepentant.   A spokesman for Nike UK Ltd, the UK subsidiary of U.S.-based Nike Inc, told Reuters there was nothing wrong with targeting consumers near Euro 96, as long as Nike didn't claim to be a sponsor.   "It's really a more cost-effective way to reach the consumer, rather than paying through the nose to become a sponsor," Graham Childs said on Thursday.   "Sometimes we do the official route (and become sponsors) and sometimes we don't...If consumers go to an event, they're fair game," Childs said in a telephone interview.   -- London Advertising Newsdesk +44 171 542 2792 
18064 !GCAT !GSPO  Britain's rugby league squad depart for the southern hemisphere on Friday with a patched-up squad lacking both familiar names and the opportunity to meet old rivals Australia.   The 32-man Lions party are due to play tests against Papua New Guinea and Fiji before moving on to New Zealand for a three-test series, bypassing Australia in the wake of the dispute between Super League and the Australian Rugby League (ARL).   If the rift is healed, though, there are contingency plans for Britain to fly on to Australia at the end of their six-week tour, according to tour manager Phil Lowe.   "It's all in the hands of the courts," he said.   "Everybody wants to play Australia, especially from a financial point of view."   Whatever happens, the lack of eight first-choice players through injury and unavailability has left the Lions with an inexperienced squad with an average age of just 24.   Two key men, Wigan pair Jason Robinson and Gary Connolly, are playing rugby union after being prevented from touring by their contracts with the ARL, and injury to centre Paul Newlove has also reduced their options.   The switch to summer rugby league has meant the top players have been playing non-stop rugby for 13 months and coach Phil Larder admits some of his squad are tired men.   "We've had two seasons back-to-back and the players are feeling mentally and physically shattered.   "Because we have played so much football, it has left us very vulnerable, as can be seen by the number of cry-offs and people needing operations."   The first leg of the tour in Papua New Guinea, where the Lions play their first match in Mount Hagen next Wednesday, is also worrying Larder.   "PNG are a lot stronger than they were...they played very well in the World Cup and nearly beat New Zealand at St Helens.   "Our biggest problem though, will be the tremendous heat and the bone-hard pitches.   In the players' absence, rugby league chiefs in England wil be considering how to deal with the newly-professionalised rugby union clubs, currently waving chequebooks at a number of league players.   Chris Caisley, chairman of the newly-formed Rugby League (Europe) Limited who aim to represent the 12 Super League clubs, said: "One of the things we will want to address very shortly is the threat, if indeed it is a threat, of rugby union.   We want to discuss whether we want to liase with them or not.   "At a time when the Rugby Football Union are running around like headless chickens, signing everybody in sight and spending vast fortunes they can never recoup, we want to be moving forward.   "We in rugby league believe what union are trying to do is the road to ruin." 
18065 !GCAT !GSPO  Britain's Labour Party has no plans to restrict corporate sponsorship by tobacco companies of sports events if it wins the next election, a Labour MP said on Thursday.   "Labour has no plans for the restriction of tobacco sponsorship in sport...," Kate Hoey, Labour's Member of Parliament for Vauxhall, told a business conference in London. 
18066 !GCAT !GSPO  Fast bowler Ed Giddins, barred from first class cricket for 20 months after testing positive for cocaine, is to appeal against the ban, Lord's officials said on Thursday.   Richard Little, the Test and County Cricket Board's spokesman, said Lord's had received a letter stating simply that the cricketer would be appealing.   No further detail was included in it.   Giddins, who toured Pakistan with England A last winter, was sacked by his club Sussex after the TCCB's discipline committee cancelled his registration last month and banned him until April 1998.   The 25-year-old player has refused to comment on his decision, other than to confirm he has taken legal advice.   Giddins had hoped to rebuild his career by playing abroad during the suspension, but he has been unable to find a club so far.   "In the light of the ban I have found it extremely difficult to get a club overseas," he said.   "I'm a cricketer, that is my trade, that's how I earn a living and it's something I want to do." 
18067 !GCAT !GSPO  British pub culture, celebrated in prose, song and soap opera, exposed its darker side last weekend.   Former England soccer captain Tony Adams, who had already endured a spell in prison for driving while drunk, confessed he was an alcoholic and admitted he was attending meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous.   Presumably no longer anonymous, Adams added a novel twist to a familiar story by blaming his plight on the Germans.   The Arsenal defender said he went for a "quiet drink" after England lost to Germany on penalties in their Euro 96 semifinal.   A day later he was still drinking.   Drink and British sportsmen have combined with unfortunate results before and since Leicester City lost 12-0 to Nottingham Forest in 1909 after a night on the town.   Former Pakistan cricket captain Imran Khan, now pursuing a political career in his homeland, included the county professional's love of the pub in some acerbic observations on the game in England.   "Their two great loves were horse racing and the suspension of play due to rain," he said.   "Without any doubt the best hours of the day for them were spent in the pub after the day's play."   Viv Richards, the former West Indies' skipper who unlike Imran was certainly no teetotaller, also found it difficult to adapt to English social life when he arrived in England from Antigua in the early 1970s.   "Drinking was a particular problem," he said.   "Some of the British we mixed with just seemed to live for the pub...English guys would go the pub, maybe at midday, and get stuck into pints of lager."   Adams's admission makes him the latest in the line of British footballers who have succumbed to the temptations of alcohol.   Jimmy Greaves, the wonderful Tottenham and England striker, is as well-known now for his battle with the bottle as his goal scoring prowess.   Greaves came into the game during the 1950s when a maximum wage was imposed on British footballers.   "In those days footballers just couldn't afford to go on the razzle," he said.   All was to change for soccer and Greaves, now with Tottenham, when the maximum wage was abolished in 1961.   The Tottenham team would drink in either the White Hart or the Bell and Hare public houses after matches, with Dave Mackay presiding.   "He would sit up at the bar like a king on his throne and invariably get the first order," Greaves said.   "Pints all round.   We would dissect every move in the match.   Pints all round.   Then we'd look forward to the next match.   Pints all round.   Then we would swap the latest jokes and gossip.   Pints all round.   It didn't seem to be doing any harm and we knew we could run it off next day in training."   Greaves stopped when he realised drink was slowly killing him.   Northern Irishman George Best, possibly the best footballer produced in the British Isles, has never stopped, although he has evidently come to terms with his alcoholism.   "I went from club to club at night just drinking myself silly," he recalled.   "The drinking was unbelievable."   Two days after Adams's confession, the Football Association announced they were to conduct random breath tests.   Risibly they announced the tests would be conducted after matches and training sessions to counter the hitherto unknown danger of players tanking up before matches as well as after.   "If a player is drinking enough to produce a positive test after a game it would indicate a serious drink problem," explained a spokesman. 
18068 !GCAT !GSPO  The customs men of Sierra Leone's Ports Authority attempt to break new ground for the impoverished and battered west African country in continental club competition on the weekend.   The unfashionable side will attempt to become the first from Sierra Leone, still suffering from an intermittent civil war, to reach the semifinal of an African club competition when they meet Kenya Breweries in a Confederation of African Football (CAF quarter-final, second leg tie at the National stadium in Freetown on Saturday.   Ports Authority trail by just one goal from the first leg in Nairobi two weeks ago.   The match is one of 11 quarter-final ties scheduled for continent's three club competitions at the weekend.   Sierra Leonean sides have three times before threatened to reach the final four but have been hampered by a lack of finance.   Two years ago, Diamond Stars had to withdraw from their CAF Cup quarter-final tie because they were unable to pay for their the flights.   But Ports Authority's coach Abu Yamfay said he was optimistic of stopping the trend, overturning the deficit and seeing his team progress into the next round.   This comes in spite of the fact the team have had little competitive practice with the local league having been suspended earlier this year.   Just one round of the championship had been completed before clubs went on strike in protest at the government's suspension of the football association in the wake of the country's poor performance at the African Nations' Cup finals in January.   The winner of the tie is likely to be joined in the final four of the CAF Cup by holders Etoile du Sahel of Tunisia, who have a handy 4-1 lead over Unisport Bafang of Cameroon, Kawkab Marrakesh of Morocco and Algeria's Mouloudia Oran.   In the African Champions' Cup, holders Orlando Pirates of South Africa take a slender 1-0 lead to Nigeria on Saturday for their return leg against Shooting Stars.   The South Africans will also be without suspended striker Jerry Sikhosana, who scored the winning goal in last year's final.   Other Champions Cup ties see JS Kabylie (Algeria), Zamalek (Egypt) and Tunisia's CS Sfaxien handily placed for the semifinals.   African Cup Winners' Cup favourites Arab Contractors of Egypt are also well positioned for a semifinal berth after forcing a goalless draw away against second division FUS Rabat of Morocco earlier this month.   The Egyptians, who won the cup in 1982 and 1983, are expected to win the second leg at home in comfortable fashion.   But another former winner Canon Yaounde of Cameroon face elimination after a 0-0 draw at home in the first leg against Costa do Sol of Mozambique.   Sunday's return game at Maputo's Machava stadium is expected to attract a 50,000-strong crowd to roar on the Mozambican favourites. 
18069 !GCAT !GSPO  South Africa will field a youthful and inexperienced team against Ghana in Pretoria on Saturday as coach Clive Barker continues to experiment with his squad.   The two countries meet in the final match of the Four Nations Cup tournament with South Africa needing just a draw to win the week-long tournament.   Barker, whose team won their first two matches against Kenya and Australia, said on Thursday he would start with several of the fringe players who had not had an opportunity to play in the friendly international tournament so far.   Only a heavy defeat would deny South Africa the trophy, even if Australia beat Kenya handsomely in Saturday's other match on Saturday.   South Africa top the standings with six points from two matches with Australia and Ghana tied in second place on three.   Kenya have lost both their matches and are out of contention.   "It's the perfect opportunity to give some of the others a run.   There should be a few more new caps," said Barker, who has used seven new players in the tournament already.   "If anything this tournament has made it a lot more difficult for me when I have to pick my squad for the World Cup qualifiers.   I won't know who to leave out.   I think I might just take the selection announcement week off," he joked.   South Africa meet Zaire in the opening World Cup qualifying match in Johannesburg in November and the Four Nations Cup is designed as a warm-up for that game.   Ghana coach Sam Arday said on Thursday he was hoping to reinforce his team for Saturday's match but would not disclose any details.   His squad at the tournament has been without almost all Ghana's leading European-based professionals.   Australia will be without defender Tony Popvic, sent off against South Africa on Wednesday, for their match against Kenya.   Tournament rules stipulate a one-match suspension for a dismissal.   Kenya are also depleted with the early departure of three key players who will be in action for club side Kenya Breweries in a Confederation of African Football (CAF) Cup match in Sierra Leone this weekend. 
18070 !GCAT !GSPO  Stefan Edberg, in the final year of his distinguished career, on Thursday declared himself fit for Sweden's Davis Cup semifinal tie against the Czech Republic starting in Prague on Friday.   Edberg, 30, has been plagued recently by an Achilles tendon injury sustained at the U.S. Open earlier this month where he was knocked out in the quarter-finals of his last grand slam appearance by Goran Ivanesevic.   The Swedish veteran told Reuters he did not practice on Wednesday but, after consulting doctors, decided he was fit to play.   "It (the tendon) has gotten better all week and I took yesterday (Wednesday) off.   While it is still not 100 percent, it feels better than when I was playing in New York," he said.   Edberg's team mate, world number 14 Thomas Enqvist, will kick off the tie for Sweden on Friday against Czech number two Petr Korda, while Daniel Vacek, the highest rated Czech player at 37th in the ATP rankings, will meet Edberg in the day's second match.   On Saturday, the Swedish pair of Niklas Kulti and Jonas Bjorkman are scheduled to play Jiri Novak and Bohdan Ulihrach in the doubles portion of the tie, although Czech non-playing captain Vladislav Savrda has not ruled out pairing Korda and Vacek, as he did in the quarterfinal win over the U.S..   "I put Ulihrasch and Novak in the draw, but I expect they may be replaced unless there is some extraordinary circumstance," he said.   The two teams are no strangers to each other, having met 12 times, and being even at six wins apiece.   The Swedes will be hoping for a repeat of the last time the two teams met, when Edberg won an epic five set battle in Prague in the 1988 quarter-finals against Milos Mecir to give his team the victory in the final match.   Korda, who said he was free of injury after more than a year of nagging groin and back ailments, and Edberg are no strangers to each other's style of play and earlier this year teamed up to win the Australian Open doubles title.   The two are slated to meet in the fifth and possibly deciding match on Sunday in the final reverse singles.   "Stefan is a good friend, but I have to put that aside and go out there and win on Sunday.   I am sure he will do the same and then afterward we put it behind us," said Korda.   Just as in the Czechs surpise 3-2 victory against defending champions U.S., the fast Supreme hard court at Prague's Sports Hala will be the venue, a choice by the Czechs that appears to favour the serve and volley games of hard-hitting Swedes.   Edberg won six major titles and a reputation as the best volleyer in the game during a career which included 10 consecutive years in the world's top 10.   Enqvist, who earlier this year reached a career-high ranking of sixth in February, has had most of his success on hard courts.   "I like the faster courts better, but both Korda and Vacek are strong players, and we have to remember that they beat the U.S. on the same surface.   We just have to go out and concentrate on playing our game," said Enqvist. 
18071 !GCAT !GSPO  Sweden's top player Thomas Enqvist on Thursday drew Czech number two Petr Korda in Friday's opening match of their Davis Cup World Group semifinal.   Czech number one Daniel Vacek will then face Swedish veteran Stefan Edberg in the second singles on the opening say on the fast surface at Prague's Sports Hall.   On Saturday, the Swedish pair of Niklas Kulti and Jonas Bjorkman will play Jiri Novak and Bohdan Ulihrach in the doubles portion.   Vacek will face Enqvist in the first reverse singles match on Sunday while Korda will play his Australian Open championship doubles partner Edberg in the final match of the tie. 
18072 !GCAT !GSPO  Sweden's top ranked player Thomas Enqvist drew Czech number two Petr Korda in the first match of their Davis Cup World Group semifinal tie on Friday.   Czech number one Daniel Vacek will then face Swedish veteran Stefan Edberg in the second singles match on the first day of play on the fast Supreme surface at Prague's Sports Hall.   On Saturday, the Swedish pair of Niklas Kulti and Jonas Bjorkman are scheduled to face Jiri Novak and Bohdan Ulihrach in the doubles portion of the tie.   Vacek will then face Enqvist in the first reverse singles matchup on Sunday, while Korda will square off against his Australian Open championship doubles partner Edberg in the final match of the tie. 
18073 !GCAT !GSPO  Venezuela beat El Salvador   1-0 (halftime 0-0) in a friendly soccer international on   Wednesday.   Scorer - Rafael Castellin (69th)   Attendance: 6,000 
18074 !GCAT !GSPO  Results of midweek   matches in South American club soccer competitions:   Played Wednesday:   Supercup first round, first leg   In Porto Alegre: Gremio (Brazil) 3 Velez Sarsfield   (Argentina) 3 (halftime 2-1)   Scorers:   Gremio - Saulo (31st minute), Francisco Arce (44th), Ailton   (48th)   Velez Sarsfield - Patricio Camps (23rd), Guillermo Morigi   (62nd), Mauro Galvao (65th, own goal)   Attendance: 17,000   Supercup first round, second leg   In Medellin: Atletico Nacional (Colombia) 2 River Plate   (Argentina) 1 (1-1)   Scorers:   Atletico Nacional - Juan Pablo Angel (37th), Luis Carlos   Perea (60th)   River Plate - Guillermo Rivarola (18th)   Attendance: 40,000   Atletico win 4-3 on aggregate   Conmebol Cup first round, first leg   In Asuncion: Guarani (Paraguay) 3 Fluminense (Brazil) 1   (1-1)   Scorers:   Guarani - Celso Gonzalez (45th), Derlis Soto (53rd),   Arisidis Rojas (72nd)   Fluminense - Barata (6th)   Attendance: 2,000   Conmebol Cup first round, second leg:   In Buenos Aires: Lanus (Argentina) 4 Bolivar (Bolivia) 1   (1-1)   Scorers:   Lanus - Jose Serrizuela (44th and 77th, penalty), Oscar Mena   (63rd), Claudio Enria (86th, penalty)   Bolivar - Fernando Ochoaizpur (3rd)   Lanus win 4-2 on aggregate   In Buenos Aires: Rosario Central (Argentina) 4 Cobreloa   (Chile) 1 (3-0)   Scorers:   Rosario Central - Rodolfo Arruabarrena (8th), Ruben da Silva   (13th and 22nd), Martin Cardetti (58th)   Cobreloa - Fabian Vazquez (60th)   Rosario win 4-2 on aggregate   In Montevideo: River Plate-Montevideo (Uruguay) 6 Porongos   (Uruguay) 0   Scorers: Daniel Rosello (19th and 49th), Hebert de los   Santos (55th), Jorge Cubelo (61st), Rodrigo Lopez (70th), Raul   Salazar (71st)   River Plate win 8-2 on aggregate   In Guayaquil: Emelec (Ecuador) 2 Alianza (Peru) 1 (0-1)   Scorers:   Emelec - Ivo Ron (36th), Carlos Alberto Juarez (82nd,   penalty)   Alianza - Marcial Salvador (18th, penalty)   Aggregate 3-3.   Emelec won 4-3 on penalties   Attendance: 15,000   Played Tuesday:   Supercup first round, first leg   In Montevideo: Nacional (Uruguay) 1 Cruzeiro (Brazil) 1   (1-1)   Scorers:   Nacional - Juan Gonzalez (23rd)   Cruzeiro - Ailton (33rd)   Attendance: 15,000   Conmebol Cup first round, second leg:   In Manaus: Vasco da Gama (Brazil) 4 Deportes Tolima   (Colombia) 0 (2-0)   Scorers: Edmundo (12th and 52nd), Nelson (28th), Cassio   (87th)   Vasco da Gama win 4-1 on aggregate 
18075 !GCAT !GSPO  Argentina and Canada won their second-round matches in the four-nation Pan American championships on Wednesday, ensuring that when they play each other next Saturday it will be the tournament decider.   Argentina trounced Uruguay 54-20 in the first match of the evening while Canada had a tougher battle in beating the United States 23-18.   Next Saturday, Argentina and the United States meet in the third match of the league-style tournament with the winner assured of the trophy.   Uruguay look doomed to taking last place with the United States almost guaranteed victory over a noticeably unfit South American team.   The Argentina-Uruguay match saw two tries from both Diego Giannantonio and Pueblo Carmerlinkx, plus tries from Gonzalo Queseda, Christian Barrea, Omar Hassan and Jose Orgengo.   The man of the match was undoubtedly Queseda who converted all of his side's tries -- bringing his personal score for the game, with his try, to 19 points.   For Uruguay, Mauricio Mosca and captain Diego Ormaechea scored a try each.   Santiago Silva converted both of them and scored one penalty while Fredrico Sciarra kicked one penalty.   The meagre crowd of just 1,500 was treated to better competition in the Canada-United States half of the double-header.   The United States led at half-time, thanks to four penalties by Matt Alexander, who kicked another two penalties in the second half.   But that was the Americans' only scoring and the lack of tries by the Eagles proved the deciding factor.   Courtney Smith put the Canadians into the lead with two tries, both converted by Bob Ross who also kicked three penalties.   U.S. coach Jack Clark admitted to being disappointed saying: "The game swung on a few movements and Canada took advantage of them."   But Canadian coach Pat Parfrey insisted it was a well-deserved win.   "Our forwards rucked outstandingly and we tried to play open rugby and it worked."   Argentina and Canada now top the four-nation league with a maximum eight points, with the United States in third place with two consolation points and Uruguay at the bottom with just one consolation point.   Each team gets four points for a win and a consolation point if it loses by seven points or less. 
18076 !GCAT !GSPO  Argentina (corrects from Canada) beat Uruguay   54 -20 in the Pan American series rugby championships on   Wednesday.   Scorers:   Argentina - tries: Gonzalo Queseda, Christian Barrea,   Diego Giannantonio (2), Pueblo Camerlinckx (2), Omar Hassan,   Jose Orgeno.   Conversions: Quesada (7)   Uruguay - tries: Mauricio Mosca, Diego Ormaechea.   Conversions: Santiago Silva (2).   Penalties: Silva, Fredrico   Sciarra   Canada beat the United States 23-18 (half-time 6-12).   Canada - tries: Courtney Smith (2).   Conversions: Bob Ross   (2).   Penalties: Ross (3)   United States - Penalties: Matt Alexander (6) 
18077 !GCAT !GSPO  Kimberly Po of the U.S. upset sixth seeded hometown favourite Ai Sugiyama 6-2 6-7 6-4 on Thursday to become the only unseeded player to reach the quarter-finals of the Nichirei international women's tennis tournament.   Po will now face defending champion and fourth-seed Mary Pierce of France who struggled before beating unseeded Park Sung-hee of South Korea 7-5 6-2.   "I think (Sugiyama) plays similar to how I play, so I was kind of covering what I would hit and I happened to be right most of the time," said Po, who beat Kimiko Date of Japan in the first round of the U.S. Open.   Second-seeded Arantxa Sanchez Vicario, the 1994 champion, advanced when she beat Italy's Rita Grande 6-2 6-2 and will face eighth-seeded Wang Shi-ting of Taiwan who won 6-1 7-5 against Germany's Andrea Glass. 
18078 !GCAT !GSPO  Second round results in the Nichirei international women's tennis tournament on Thursday (prefix number denotes seeding):   8-Wang Shi-ting (Taiwan) beat Andrea Glass (Germany) 6-1 7-5   Kimberly Po (U.S.) beat 6 - Ai Sugiyama (Japan) 6-2 6-7 (3-7) 6-4   2-Arantxa Sanchez Vicario (Spain) beat Rita Grande (Italy) 6-2 6-1   4-Mary Pierce (France) beat Park Sung-hee (South Korea) 7-5 6-2 
18079 !GCAT !GSPO  World squash champion Jansher Khan contradicted recent claims he is in decline with a convincing 17-16 9-15 15-2 15-9 win over world number three Peter Nicol of Scotland in the semifinals of the Gezira Open on Thursday.   On a hot and humid night, Jansher resisted a courageous opening from the 23-year-old Scot to claim his seventh win in succession over his opponent since a shock defeat two years ago.   "Peter has improved over that time and he is a worthy world number three now," said Jansher.   "But I am regaining my fitness now and expect to go on getting better through to the World Open championship in Karachi in November."   Australian Rodney Eyles, who beat Jansher in the final of the Hong Kong Open earlier this month, will meet him again in the final after defeating Zubair Jahan Khan of Pakistan 15-13 15-8 15-8 in just 48 minutes. 
18080 !GCAT !GSPO  Semifinal results in the Gezira   Open squash championship on Thursday (prefix number denotes   seeding):   1-Jansher Khan (Pakistan) beat 3-Peter Nicol (England) 17-16   9-15 15-2 15-9   2-Rodney Eyles (Australia) beat Zubair Jahan (Pakistan) 15-13   15-8 15-8 
18081 !GCAT !GSPO  George Foreman said he would gladly fight Tommy Morrison again, but others were less enthused to see the HIV-positive heavyweight announce plans Thursday for a comeback fight.   "I'll fight him, I sure would and I would try to knock him out," said Foreman, who lost by decision to Morrison three years ago.   "He's not going to get past me because someone said that he's got the virus."   Former heavyweight champion Foreman made his comments in Miami where he is part of the television broadcast team for Friday's World Boxing Council welterweight title fight between champion Pernell Whitaker and Wilfredo Rivera.   Morrison, in a prepared statement at news conference in Tulsa, said a fight would be the best way to raise money for Knockout AIDS, the organisation he founded to benefit children suffering from the disease.   Morrison does not have a date, site or an opponent for his return.   Foreman offered another reason as to why Morrison would want to fight again after announcing his retirement eight months ago after testing positive for the virus which causes AIDS on the eve of a fight in Las Vegas.   "He makes the announcement, but the credit card companies don't say you no longer owe us.   Bills go on," Foreman said.   "He has to continue to make a living."   Foreman said that with proper research, the possibility of contracting the HIV virus inside the ring could be reduced as in other occupations where there is likelihood of bleeding.   "They found ways for doctors to go in and do surgery with people who have HIV," said Foreman.   "It's time for the research community to find a way for a boxer to get in the ring with another boxer and be protected."   Undefeated heavyweight prospects David Tua and Darroll Wilson -- who are fighting each other on Friday -- said there was no way they would fight Morrison.   "If he wants to come back, let him come back, but I tell you one thing, I'm not going to be part of it," said Tua.   "I don't want to have anything to do with it.   "Boxing is a contact sport, guys do bleed and the worst thing that you need is the guy bleeding to have the virus and you come in contact with him," said Tua.   "I'm just scared thinking about it."   Even the lure of a big pay day wouldn't be enough for him to fight Morrison, said Wilson.   "If I know he's got it, I wouldn't get in there with him," Wilson said.   "I don't care if it was for millions of dollars.   That's how I'm going to protect myself."   Said Tua:"I think it is scary just thinking about it.   There is more to life than money." 
18082 !GCAT !GSPO  George Foreman said he would gladly fight Tommy Morrison again, but others were less enthused to see the HIV-positive heavyweight announce plans on Thursday for a comeback fight.   "I'll fight him, I sure would and I would try to knock him out," said Foreman, who lost by decision to Morrison three years ago.   "He's not going to get past me because someone said that he's got the virus."   Former heavyweight champion Foreman made his comments in Miami where he is part of the television broadcast team for Friday's World Boxing Council welterweight title fight between champion Pernell Whitaker and Wilfredo Rivera.   Morrison, in a prepared statement at news conference in Tulsa, said a fight would be the best way to raise money for Knockout AIDS, the organisation he founded to benefit children suffering from the disease.   Morrison does not have a date, site or an opponent for his return.   Foreman offered another reason as to why Morrison would want to fight again after announcing his retirement eight months ago after testing positive for the virus which causes AIDS on the eve of a fight in Las Vegas.   "He makes the announcement, but the credit card companies don't say you no longer owe us.   Bills go on," Foreman said.   "He has to continue to make a living."   Foreman said that with proper research, the possibility of contracting the HIV virus inside the ring could be reduced as in other occupations where there is likelihood of bleeding.   "They found ways for doctors to go in and do surgery with people who have HIV," said Foreman.   "It's time for the research community to find a way for a boxer to get in the ring with another boxer and be protected."   Undefeated heavyweight prospects David Tua and Darroll Wilson -- who are fighting each other on Friday -- said there was no way they would fight Morrison.   "If he wants to come back, let him come back, but I tell you one thing, I'm not going to be part of it," said Tua.   "I don't want to have anything to do with it.   "Boxing is a contact sport, guys do bleed and the worst thing that you need is the guy bleeding to have the virus and you come in contact with him," said Tua.   "I'm just scared thinking about it."   Even the lure of a big pay day wouldn't be enough for him to fight Morrison, said Wilson.   "If I know he's got it, I wouldn't get in there with him," Wilson said.   "I don't care if it was for millions of dollars.   That's how I'm going to protect myself."   Said Tua:"I think it is scary just thinking about it.   There is more to life than money." 
18083 !GCAT !GSPO  Former heavyweight contender Tommy Morrison, who seven months ago retired from boxing after testing positive for the HIV virus, said Thursday that he plans to return to the ring.   Morrison does not have a date, site or an opponent for his return.   He told a news conference at the Tulsa Marriott Hotel that the return fight would be a benefit for children with HIV and AIDS.   The 27-year-old Morrison, who has a 45-3-1 record, still has to be licensed.   Some states have in place rules that prevent HIV-positive fighters from boxing.    "Since February I've kind of withdrawn myself, to get my thoughts together and decide what I could effectively do," said Morrison, who tested positive for HIV just days before a Las Vegas fight.   "I've talked to some of the best doctors in the world, and that and other research has convinced me HIV cannot be spread in the ring."   In a prepared statement, Morrison said a fight would be the best way to raise money for Knockout AIDS, the organisation he founded to benefit children suffering from the disease.   "I have decided to reenter the ring for one last fight," he said.   "I hope and pray people will understand why I feel the need to do this."   Morrison and his attorney, Stuart Campbell, said they are optimistic about arranging a fight.   But several state boxing commissions, including those in Nevada, New York and New Jersey, prohibit HIV-positive boxers from the ring.   New Jersey began testing boxers in February, in response to Morrison's announcement.   "There is a great deal of argument over issues like this," New Jersey boxing commissioner Larry Hazzard said in an interview Thursday.   "We feel we're dealing with a blood sport, and even if the chance of spreading the virus is minimal, that's too great."   Hazzard and Nevada boxing commissioner Marc Ratner, the first to suspend Morrison, said there is no chance of Morrison boxing in those states, regardless of the circumstances.   "In the state of Nevada, he is suspended," Ratner said Thursday.   "I expect any state that has a boxing commission to honour our suspension."   Campbell said "several quality fighters" have expressed interest in fighting Morrison, including Ross Puritty, who fought Morrison to a draw in New Jersey in July 1994.   "If the money is right, I'll fight anybody," Purrity said.   "I don't think HIV is as easy to catch as everyone thinks it is." 
18084 !GCAT !GSPO  Pernell Whitaker gets a second chance to do it right when the WBC welterweight champion fights Wilfredo Rivera Friday in a mandatory rematch following his questionable win over the Puerto Rican five months ago.   "I just want to go in there and re-right the wrong," Whitaker said of his lackluster split decision win April 12 in St. Maarten that was considered close enough by the WBC to order a second fight.   "Those who remember the Pernell Whitaker of the late '80s and the 90s get ready because that is what you are going to get," Whitaker said of the scheduled 12-round bout at the James L. Knight Centre.   The card will also feature the professional debuts of Cuban defectors Ramon Garby and Joel Casamayor, who both bolted from their Olympic team just before the Atlanta Games.   Garby, a two-time world amateur light heavyweight champion, fights Kerry Parks in a scheduled four-rounder while Casamayor, the 1992 Olympic junior lightweight champion, fights Javier Garcia in another four-round bout.   Whitaker, whose only blemishes in a 38-1-1 record are a loss to Jose Luis Ramirez in 1988 and a controversial draw with legendary Julio Cesar Chavez three years ago, has held world championships in four different weight classes.   "I'm going to be quick and I'm just going to perform," said Whitaker, 32.   "I'm going to perform like Hollywood.   I have that kind of feeling."   Those around the charismatic Whitaker sense his urgency in making amends for his last fight and reclaiming the mythical crown of world's best "pound for pound."   Whitaker controlled the opening rounds of the first bout but the 27-year-old Rivera, 23-1-1, rallied at the end.   "I went in and did what I had to do to win the fight,"said Whitaker.   "I don't think it was as close as people say."   Rivera disagrees.   "I was very sure I won and I was even more sure after I watched the tape," said Rivera.   Whitaker said he was weakened by a virus when he fought Rivera.   "I went in at about 70 percent," he said.   "I couldn't do the things that I normally can do.   I didn't have the power, I didn't have the zip in my punches."   "He knows that he wasn't in his top form back in April," Whitaker's promoter Dino Duva said.   "He is ready to redeem himself and prove to everyone that he's still on top, that he is the best in the world and not ready to give it up yet."   Said his trainer Lou Duva: "He was embarrassed.   He's learned his lesson.   Watch.   They are going to see Pernell Whitaker, still pound for pound the best fighter in the world." 
18085 !GCAT !GSPO  Rookies gave the New York Yankees a key win over the Baltimore Orioles Wednesday while veteran Boston Red Sox pitcher Roger Clemens tied his own major-league strikeouts record by whiffing 20 Detroit Tigers.   Ruben Rivera's soft single to right field scored fellow rookie Derek Jeter with two out in the bottom of the 10th and gave the Yankees a thrilling 3-2 victory over Baltimore.   The Yankees scored single runs in the ninth and 10th and opened a four-game lead over the Orioles in the American League East.   Both teams wasted scoring chances and solid performances from their starters in the opener of a crucial three-game set.   In the 10th, Alan Mills (3-2) yielded a single to Jeter, who advanced to third on a sacrifice and ground-out.   Rivera swung and missed badly at a pair of breaking balls before sending a soft liner to right just over the glove of second baseman Roberto Alomar.   "I was a little nervous," Rivera said with teammate Bernie Williams interpreting.   "This is my most important at bat and most important hit."   "I don't think I was that close, I don't know," said Alomar.   "I just jumped and I didn't look up.   Tomorrow's another day.   We both played great baseball.   It was a great game on both sides."   Rivera entered the game as a pinch-runner in the ninth and scored the tying run on a single by Williams.   The Yankees have won seven of their last eight games and are 9-2 against the Orioles, who lost for just the second time in 10 games.   Baltimore still leads the A.L. wild-card race.   Mariano Rivera (7-2) relieved starter Andy Pettitte and retired all five batters he faced to get the win.   Pettitte, who has 21 wins, allowed five hits in 8 1/3 innings but left trailing 2-1.   Pettitte struck out six and walked two.   Orioles starter Scott Erickson allowed one run and seven hits in seven innings, and Jesse Orosco worked the eighth before Randy Myers walked two and Mills yielded Williams's game-tying single before ending the ninth inning.   In Detroit, Clemens pitched a four-hitter to lead the Boston Red Sox to their third straight win, 4-0 over the woeful Tigers.   Clemens had 19 strikeouts in eight innings.   Alan Trammell popped out to open the ninth and Ruben Sierra singled.   Tony Clark flied to deep left before Clemens struck out Travis Fryman on a 2-2 pitch to equal the mark he set on April 29, 1986, when he fanned 20 Seattle Mariners.   Clemens did not walk a batter in either 20-strikeout game.   Asked if he was disappointed he did not break the record, he responded: "You can't even count on striking out 20 big-league hitters.   I'm just happy to tie it."   He added: "I mean that's all but seven guys in the game."   Clemens (10-12) also tied pitching legend Cy Young atop the all-time Boston list for shutouts (38) and wins (192).   The Tigers have lost 11 straight.   In Chicago, Albie Lopez combined with three relievers to scatter nine hits and Geronimo Pena hit his first homer in more than 15 months as the Cleveland Indians held on for a 4-3 victory over the White Sox.   The Indians, who clinched their second straight Central Division title Wednesday, used a lineup that featured six players who spent most of the year at Triple-A Buffalo.   Chicago has lost four straight and seven of its last nine, but remained 3 1/2 games behind Baltimore in the wild-card race.   In Seattle, Jay Buhner homered and drove in four runs as the red-hot Mariners continued their mastery of the Texas Rangers with a 5-2 victory, closing the gap in the A.L. West.   Seattle pulled within three games of first-place Texas, defeating the Rangers for the 30th time in the last 37 meetings from September 21, 1993.   The Mariners also pulled within two games of Baltimore in the race for the wild card.   Seattle, which has won seven straight, hosts the Rangers for the final time Thursday.   Texas has lost seven of its last eight games, dropping six games in the standings.   At California, Chuck Finley allowed one run over 6 2/3 innings and Tim Salmon's RBI triple broke a sixth-inning tie as the Angels snapped a seven-game losing streak with a 3-1 victory over the Oakland Athletics.   Finley (14-15) gave up five hits, walked four and struck out 10.   Troy Percival allowed one hit, walked three and struck out two in two scoreless innings for his 35th save.   In Kansas City, Chuck Knoblauch tripled twice and scored three times as the Minnesota Twins snapped a five-game losing streak with a 7-4 victory over the Royals.   Knoblauch's 13 triples lead the American League and are seven behind Lance Johnson of the Mets.   In Milwaukee, Jeff Cirillo's two-out single in the bottom of the ninth scored Turner Ward with the winning run as the Brewers rallied past the Toronto Blue Jays 2-1.   It was the first time in 70 games this season Milwaukee won when trailing after eight innings. 
18086 !GCAT !GSPO  Major League Baseball   standings after games played on Wednesday (tabulate under won,   lost, winning percentage and games behind):    AMERICAN LEAGUE    EASTERN DIVISION    W L PCT GB    NEW YORK  86 64 .573 -    BALTIMORE  82 68 .547 4    BOSTON  78 73 .517 8 1/2    TORONTO  68 84 .447 19    DETROIT  51 101 .336 36    CENTRAL DIVISION    X-CLEVELAND  92 59 .609 -    CHICAGO  80 73 .523 13    MINNESOTA  75 77 .493 17 1/2    MILWAUKEE  75 78 .490 18    KANSAS CITY  71 81 .467 21 1/2    WESTERN DIVISION    TEXAS 84 68 .553 -    SEATTLE  80 70 .533 3    OAKLAND  73 80 .477 11 1/2    CALIFORNIA  66 85 .437 17 1/2   X--CLINCHED DIVISION TITLE   THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 19 SCHEDULE   BOSTON AT DETROIT    BALTIMORE AT NEW YORK (doubleheader)   TEXAS AT SEATTLE    KANSAS CITY AT CLEVELAND     MINNESOTA AT CHICAGO      NATIONAL LEAGUE    EASTERN DIVISION    W L PCT GB    ATLANTA  90 61 .596 -    MONTREAL  84 67 .556 6    FLORIDA  73 80 .477 18    NEW YORK  67 85 .441 23 1/2    PHILADELPHIA 62 90 .408 28 1/2    CENTRAL DIVISION    ST LOUIS  82 70 .539 -    HOUSTON  78 75 .510 4 1/2    CHICAGO  74 76 .493 7    CINCINNATI  74 77 .490 7 1/2    PITTSBURGH  66 85 .437 15 1/2    WESTERN DIVISION    LOS ANGELES  86 66 .566 -    SAN DIEGO  86 67 .562 1/2    COLORADO  80 73 .523 6 1/2    SAN FRANCISCO 61 91 .401 25   THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 19 SCHEDULE   LOS ANGELES AT SAN DIEGO     CINCINNATI AT PITTSBURGH     NEW YORK AT PHILADELPHIA     MONTREAL AT ATLANTA     CHICAGO AT ST LOUIS     COLORADO AT SAN FRANCISCO 
18087 !GCAT !GSPO  Results of Major League   Baseball games on Wednesday (home team in CAPS):    American League    MILWAUKEE  2 Toronto  1    Boston  4 DETROIT  0    NEW YORK  3 Baltimore  2 (in 10)    Cleveland  4 CHICAGO  3    Minnesota  7 KANSAS CITY  4    CALIFORNIA  3 Oakland  1    SEATTLE  5 Texas 2    National League    ATLANTA  6 Houston  2    COLORADO  6 Los Angeles  4    San Diego  8 SAN FRANCISCO 5    MONTREAL  4 New York  3    PITTSBURGH  5 Cincinnati  3    PHILADELPHIA 8 Florida  6    ST LOUIS  5 Chicago  3 
18088 !GCAT !GSPO  Jody Reed's single snapped a tie and triggered a three-run eighth inning as the San Diego Padres beat the San Francisco Giants 8-5 Wednesday ahead of their critical four-game series with the Dodgers.   The Padres kept the pressure on Los Angeles, moving within one-half game of the Dodgers for the National League West lead after L.A. lost to Colorado earlier in the day.   "I'm glad to leave winning two out of three," said Padres starter Andy Ashby.   "We played three tough games with the Giants.   We battled hard and this was a big win.   Now we go home right where we started, a half-game back."   Doug Bochtler (2-4) pitched one inning for the win, his second win in seven days.   Tim Worrell allowed a run in the eighth before Trevor Hoffman pitched a scoreless ninth for his 37th save.   The Padres have won eight of their last 10 games.   Rich DeLucia (3-5) took the loss.   Ken Caminiti hit his 37th home run for San Diego.   The Padres and Dodgers will meet seven more times, including a season-ending three-game set at Los Angeles.   "This is as big a series as we've been in in a long time, that's a bit of an understatement," said Padres manager Bruce Bochy of the Dodgers' visit to San Diego starting Thursday.   "This is what the game is all about.   It's the pennant race."   In Denver, Andres Galarraga's league-leading 46th homer snapped a fifth-inning tie and the Colorado Rockies kept their flickering playoff hopes alive with a 6-4 victory over the Los Angeles Dodgers.   Rookie Neifi Perez added three hits and an RBI for Colorado, which bounced back from Tuesday's no-hitter by Hideo Nomo and is within six games of San Diego for the wild-card spot with nine games to go.   John Burke (2-0) pitched three hitless innings, striking out the side in the sixth, in the longest outing of his career.   Bruce Ruffin got his 23rd save.   In Montreal, F.P. Santangelo was hit by a pitch from reliever Dave Mlicki (6-7) with the bases loaded in the eighth to snap a tie and Moises Alou went 3-for-3 as the Expos edged the New York Mets 4-3 for their sixth win in seven games.   Ugueth Urbina (9-5) allowed one run and two hits over two innings of relief for the victory and Mel Rojas struck out two in the ninth for his 33rd save.   Montreal is one game behind San Diego for the wild card.   The Expos also stayed six games behind the first-place Braves in the N.L. East.   Montreal opens a five-game series in Atlanta Thursday and hosts the Braves for three games next week.   Carlos Baerga and Roberto Petagine hit solo homers for the Mets, who have lost four in a row.   In Atlanta, Greg Maddux pitched a six-hitter for his fifth complete game and Fred McGriff hit a pair of two-run homers to lift the Braves to their fourth straight victory, 6-2 over the fading Houston Astros.   Maddux (14-11) won for the fourth time in five decisions.   The four-time National League Cy Young Award winner struck out three and did not go to a three-ball count on any batter.   He threw 90 pitches, 65 strikes.   He lowered his ERA to 2.76.   Houston has lost five in a row and is 0-9 on the road this month.   The Astros are 4 1/2 games behind first-place St. Louis in the N.L. Central.   They are also eight games behind the Padres in the wild-card race.   In St Louis, Royce Clayton and Ron Gant hit solo homers and Todd Stottlemyre allowed two runs over seven innings as the Cardinals held off the Chicago Cubs 5-3.   Stottlemyre (13-11), who left his last start at Los Angeles on Friday when he was hit on the right knee by a line drive, gave up four hits with three walks and seven strikeouts.   Tony Fossas worked a scoreless seventh and Dennis Eckersley surrendered a two-out home run to Scott Servais in the ninth but notched his 29th save.   In Philadelphia, Kevin Stocker had a two-run triple in the sixth and snapped a seventh-inning tie with with an RBI single as the Phillies rallied from a four-run deficit for an 8-6 victory over the Florida Marlins.   Devon White hit a three-run homer and drove in four for the Marlins.   In Pittsburgh, Jay Bell's RBI single snapped a fifth-inning tie and Jason Schmidt allowed three runs over seven innings as the Pirates defeated the Cincinnati Reds 5-3 for their season-high seventh straight win.   Schmidt (5-5) posted consecutive wins for the first time since winning his first two starts when he was with Atlanta in April. 
18089 !GCAT !GSPO  Boston Red Sox right-hander Roger Clemens tied his own 10-year-old major-league record with 20 strikeouts against the Detroit Tigers Wednesday in a 4-0, four-hit shutout victory.   "I feel very fortunate and very blessed," the 34-year-old pitcher said.   "I've been doing it for 13 years and I can't believe I had 20 again.   I knew I had a lot, but this is incredible."   Clemens had 19 strikeouts through eight innings, but Alan Trammell popped out to first base to open the ninth and Ruben Sierra singled up the middle.   Tony Clark flied to deep left for the second out before Clemens struck out Travis Fryman on a 2-2 pitch to equal the mark he set on April 29, 1986, when he fanned 20 Seattle Mariners.   As in his record performance a decade ago, Clemens did not walk a batter.   Clemens, who is now only 10-12 for the season but 6-1 since Aug. 1, twice struck out five successive batters.   He had seven strikeouts by the end of the third inning.   "It's been a tough year for everyone, but the bottom line is just trying to win," Clemens said.   "I know I'm winding down and the wins haven't fallen my way this year like I would've hoped to," he added.   "I'm trying my best to make it worthwhile."   Clemens struck out the side in the second, fifth and sixth innings and allowed only singles to Trammell, Brad Ausmus, Phil Nevin in the eighth and Sierra in the ninth.   Fryman struck out in all four plate appearances, while Clark fanned three times.   Clemens also tied pitching legend Cy Young atop the all-time Boston list for shutouts (38) and wins (192).   Clemens posted his 67th game with 10 or more strikeouts. 
18090 !GCAT !GSPO  The Cincinnati Reds suspended slugger Kevin Mitchell without pay for the final 13 games of the season Wednesday after he failed to report for the team's past two games at Pittsburgh.   The move is retroactive to Tuesday.   In a statement issued before Wednesday night's game, Reds general manager Jim Bowden said: "Kevin failed to report to Pittsburgh in time for last night's 7:05 p.m.   EDT game and did not report to the club in time for tonight's game.   Since he has not communicated his situation with me, I felt this was the most appropriate action to take at this time.   "This team needs to know that this is not acceptable behaviour," he continued, "and violations of club rules and regulations will not be tolerated."   Bowden said he is aware Mitchell has been sidelined with a sprained ankle, but noted Mitchell told his agent, Joe Sroba, he would be available to play Tuesday night.   "All players on this club have to be treated the same, regardless of ability," Bowden added.   "Therefore, Kevin has been suspended without pay for the rest of the 1996 season."   According to a team spokesman, the Reds do not know where Mitchell is, but suspect he may be at his San Diego home.   The 34-year-old outfielder was hitting .325 with six homers and 26 RBI in 37 games with the Reds.   He was acquired July 30 from the Boston Red Sox, where he hit .304 with two homers and 13 RBI in 27 games.   The Red Sox signed Mitchell as a free agent after he left his Japanese League team amid a contract dispute.   Mitchell won National League Most Valuable Player honours in 1989 with the San Francisco Giants, leading the N.L. in homers (47) and RBI (125).   But he was plagued by an assortment of injuries and was traded to Seattle in December 1991.   Mitchell spent only one year with the Mariners, who dealt him to Cincinnati in November 1992. 
18091 !GCAT !GSPO  Alba Berlin made a triumphant start in the re-vamped European clubs' championship on Thursday by beating Greece's Olympiakos, finalists in 1994 and 1995, 67-64.   Alba trailed 38-32 at halftime in the group B clash but recovered in the second half.   Forward Sasa Hupman was dominant inside the D with a total 20 points and 13 rebounds.   The Germans managed to force a slow pace with a zone defence which confused the fast Greek guards in the dying minutes, while Olympiakos's towering pivots Dragan Tarlac and Panayotis Fasoulas were kept in check by Hupman and fellow forward Stefan Arigbabou.   Olympiakos playmaker David Rivers collected 18 points and Tarlac 15.   Former NBA player Willy Anderson, who joined the Greeks this season, managed only eight points and clearly needs time to adjust to European play. 
18092 !GCAT !GSPO  French first division soccer   result on Thursday:   Auxerre 2 (Laslandes 19th, Diomede 37th) Nantes 2 (N'Doram   30th, 44th).   Halftime 2-2.   Attendance: 7,000   Leading standings (tabulate under played, won, drawn, lost,   goals for, against, points):    Paris SG  7 5 2 0 8 0 17    Bordeaux  7 4 3 0 10 3 15    Bastia  7 4 2 1 10 5 14    Metz 7 4 2 1 8 4 14    Auxerre  8 3 4 1 8 4 13    Lens 7 4 2 1 10 9 13    Monaco  7 3 3 1 12 5 12 
18093 !GCAT !GSPO  The Italian soccer federation said on Thursday it had written to the English Football Association asking for Fabrizio Ravanelli and Roberto Di Matteo to be released by their clubs for World Cup qualifiers next month.   Italy play Moldova in Kishinev on October 5 and Georgia at home in Perugia on October 9 in qualifying games for the 1998 tournament.   Under FIFA norms, Ravanelli's club Middlesbrough and Di Matteo's Chelsea must allow the players to be available to national coach Arrigo Sacchi five days before the first match.   Italy have yet to announce their squad for the two matches but Sacchi said last week he intended to recall most of the players he took to England for Euro 96. 
18094 !GCAT !GSPO  Milan said on Thursday that George Weah, the FIFA world player of the year, was not for sale and attempts to sign him would be rebuffed.   "Weah has a contract with Milan until June 30, 1999, and at least until that date he belongs to Milan," club vice-president Adriano Galliani said after a league meeting.   "Therefore there is no point trying to ask us for him."   British tabloid newspapers have reported that premier league Blackburn, with money in their pockets after selling England striker Alan Shearer to Newcastle for a world record 15 million pounds ($23.2 million), wanted Weah.   Galliani said English clubs had approached Milan for Weah but he did not know anything about a Blackburn offer.   Udinese's German striker Oliver Bierhoff, also linked with Blackburn by the newspapers, ruled out any move.   "It's been doing the rounds of German newspapers for a week but I don't know anything.   I have a contract with Udinese that I intend to honour," he said.    Galliani said he was concerned about English football's growing financial muscle.   "The gap between England and Italy will grow next year," he predicted.   "With the arrival of digital television, English soccer will have even more money and will be even more attractive to champions.   "We must get ourselves moving, seek out and find other resources to increase our soccer's competitiveness." 
18095 !GCAT !GCRIM !GSPO  Johan Cruyff lost the first case he brought against Barcelona on Thursday but is set to appeal in what promises to be a lengthy legal battle between the coach and his former employers.   Cruyff, whose eight years at the club ended on May 18, had claimed nearly 100 million pesetas ($789,000) for unfair dismissal.   Announcing the decision to appeal, lawyer Conrad Recha said the verdict was not all bad because it recognised that Barcelona had renewed Cruyff's contract until 1997.   The Dutchman will nevertheless receive more than 30 million pesetas ($236,000) because the club failed to give him three months' notice.   On Wednesday, Cruyff brought further action to recover seven million pesetas ($55,000) in what he claims are unpaid wages and bonuses. 
18096 !GCAT !GCRIM !GSPO  Steffi Graf's father Peter will remain in jail at least until Tuesday after a state court said on Thursday it was still considering his appeal to be freed on bail.   A spokesman for a court in Karlsruhe said the court had reviewed objections from the prosecution to release Graf on bail and was now waiting to hear the arguments from Graf's attorneys.   Graf, on trial in a lower court in Mannheim for tax evasion, has spent the last 13 months in investigative custody.   He is accused of evading 19 million marks ($12.58 million) of tax on his daughter's earnings between 1989 and 1993.   The Mannheim court judge, Joachim Plass, said he ordered Graf to be released from detention for the rest of the trial because even if he is convicted, it was unlikely his sentence would be much longer than the 13 months he has already served.   Plass agreed to release Graf on bail of three million marks, but Graf has been kept in detention because of the appeal by prosecutors who want him to stay in prison, fearing he might flee the country.   Graf submitted a personal declaration to the court pledging to report to police twice a week and do nothing to endanger the course of the trial, such as giving interviews.   Steffi Graf remains under investigation, although she says she left her financial affairs to her father from an early age.   Peter Graf maintains tax authorities signalled their approval of his schemes to reduce tax on his daughter's earnings by channelling the money abroad, rather than see Steffi join an exodus of German sporting tax exiles.   ($1=1.5103 Mark) 
18097 !GCAT !GSPO  The International Baseball Association (IBA) will vote on Saturday whether to allow professionals to compete in Olympic and world championships.   The vote by the IBA's 101 member countries will have to pass by a two-thirds majority if baseball is to follow the same route as basketball and ice hockey.   Professional basketball players made their Olympic debut at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics.   Professional hockey players will take to the Olympic ice for the first time at the 1998 Winter Games in Nagano.   A `yes' vote could see professional baseball players included in Olympic competition as early as the next Summer Games in 2000 in Sydney.   While the United States would automatically become gold medal favourites, an American Dream Team is not expected to dominate the same way their basketball counterparts have done.   Cuba, gold medallists at the Atlanta Olympics, has dominated the amateur game and would remain a threat while the sport ranks among the most popular in Japan.   The Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico and Mexico would also benefit from the inclusion of professionals having produced much of the talent playing in the North American major leagues. 
18098 !GCAT !GSPO  The away team Italy may hold an edge going into their Davis Cup semifinal against France starting on Friday because they prefer the surface.   French number one Cedric Pioline faces Andrea Gaudenzi in the first singles at the Palais des Sports de Beaulieu.   The Italians are happy with the new surface, but Yannick Noah's French team were surprised to find it slow for a synthetic surface.   "The court is better than we expected," said Italy's number one Renzo Furlan, who meets Arnaud Boetsch in the second singles.   "It's a good court, not too fast, and the balls are not too fast either," added Furlan, who on slow red clay in Rome helped Italy beat 1995 finalists Russia and South Africa on the way to their first semifinal since 1980.   "If they wanted a faster court, they should have chosen an older surface rather than a brand new one," Italian captain Adriano Panatta said.   Noah said: "On Monday we were surprised, but today is Thursday and we have been preparing in relation to the court.   "We have been able to adapt and should stop talking about it."   Veteran doubles player Guy Forget said that with constant use over the past few days, the surface, the same as that at Bercy for the Paris indoor tournament, had become faster.   Noah kept his choice of second singles player -- between off-form Boetsch and Forget -- a secret until Thursday's draw.   Then he opted for the younger man.   "They both had similar performances at the U.S. Open and they are at present more or less on the same level," he said.   "I've had easier choices.   I opted for Arnaud on some small points and, besides, Guy is a stalwart in doubles."   Forget and Guillaume Raoux will play the doubles -- against Gaudenzi and Diego Nargiso -- in a team unchanged from the quarter-final victory over Germany.   Panatta said: "I'm not surprised.   If I'd been the (French) captain I'd have done the same thing.   Boetsch gives France more possibilities."   France last met Italy in a Davis Cup tie in Rome in 1977, losing 4-1 to the then holders.   Italy lead France 5-4 overall. 
18099 !GCAT !GSPO  French league leaders Paris St Germain hope the absence through injury of goalkeeper Bernard Lama does not mean the end of their unbeaten run when they host Lens on Friday.   The French international was carried off with a knee injury in the 1-0 victory at Cannes on Sunday and could be out for up to two months -- missing 11 league matches and two internationals.   He was hurt in the 86th minute after saving a penalty and underwent surgery on Monday.   Lama had been instrumental in PSG's great start to the season.   He had not been beaten in seven league and one European Cup Winners' Cup games.   "He is the player to thank for our start to the season.   Bernard had played unbelievably well since the league resumed," said international libero Alain Roche.   Young prospect Vincent Fernandez, who substituted for Lama in Cannes, now faces his first start for PSG.   Born in St Germain-en-Laye, the only true local player in the side played for second division amateurs Chateauroux -- considered by many to be PSG's reserve side.    "I'm only 21 and I have a lot to learn but against Lens, I'll try to be myself and relax," said Fernandez.   "I've already played in the Parc des Princes with PSG's reserves but my only pro match was against Real Madrid in a friendly."   Good news for Fernandez is that Lens have not scored in their last three outings.   PSG will also be without striker Julio Cesar Dely Valdes, on international duty with Panama.   Patrick Mboma replaces him.   Lens will be missing injured captain Jean-Guy Wallemme but gifted Cameroon striker Marc-Antoine Foe returns from suspension.   Second-placed Bordeaux, the only other unbeaten team in the first division, play mid-table Guingamp at home.   Bordeaux also had goalkeeping problems last week when Belgian Gilbert Bodart was forced out of a league match against Lille with a groin injury.   But he recovered well and remains in the line-up. 
18100 !GCAT !GSPO  French number one Cedric Pioline meets Andrea Gaudenzi in the opening singles of their Davis Cup semifinal against Italy on Friday.   In Thurday's draw, the second singles put Italian number one Renzo Furlan against Arnaud Boetsch, whom France's captain Yannick Noah preferred to veteran Guy Forget.   Forget and Guillaume Raoux will represent France in Saturday's doubles against Gaudenzi and Diego Nargiso, while world number 17 Pioline faces Furlan in the first of Sunday's reverse singles.   The winners meet either Sweden or the Czech Republic in the final. 
18101 !GCAT !GSPO  Only a month after the innauguration of their new stadium, Ajax Amsterdam will be refunding 1,400 season ticket holders who have difficulties seeing the pitch from their seats, the Dutch news agency ANP reported on Thursday.   The first division club's financial director Maarten Oldenhof said those with seats in the first five rows behind the goalposts would receive a 25 percent refund.   The stadium has been plagued with problems since its opening and players have complained the pitch is patchy and lacks natural bounce.   The surface was also damaged by a Tina Turner rock concert before the start of the season.   The unhappy team's form has suffered since the move to the new venue.   The champions are currently seventh in the league standings. 
18102 !GCAT !GSPO  Result of Austria first division   soccer match played on Wednesday:    Rapid Vienna 3 Linzer ASK 1   Standings (tabulated under played, won, drawn, lost, goals   for, against, points):    SV Salzburg 9 6 2 1 13 3 20    FC Tirol Innsbruck  9 5 3 1 15 7 18    Rapid Vienna 9 3 6 0 15 8 15    Austria Vienna 9 4 3 2 11 12 15    Sturm Graz 9 2 4 3 9 9 10    GAK 9 2 4 3 10 12 10    Linzer ASK 8 2 3 3 10 13 9    SV Ried 9 2 2 5 12 15 8    Admira Wacker 9 1 4 4 9 16 7    FC Linz 8 0 3 5 2 11 3 
18103 !GCAT !GSPO  League champions Porto beat Portuguese cup holders Benfica 5-0 (halftime 2-0) in their second leg match to win the Supercup on Wednesday.   Porto won the Supercup 6-0 on aggregate after winning the first leg 1-0 a month ago.   Scorers:   Artur Oliveira (3rd min), Edmilson Pimenta (43rd), Jorge Costa (46th), Arnold Wetl (57th), Ljubimko Drulovic (85th).   Attendance: 30,000. 
18104 !GCAT !GSPO  Hashan Tillekeratne hit a maiden   home test century as Sri Lanka took command of the second test   against Zimbabwe on Thursday.   He made 100 not out and guided his team to a second day   total of 317 for seven, 176 ahead.   Tillekeratne completed his fifth test century, his first in   Sri Lanka, in the final over of the day.   The left-hander batted for 335 minutes and faced 254 balls   in his chanceless innings.   He struck 12 fours.   Tillekeratne arrived at 102 for four after captain Arjuna   Ranatunga fell cheaply to left-arm fast bowler Bryan Strang.   Ranatunga lasted only seven overs before mistiming a drive   to mid-on with his score on six.   Asanka Gurusinha and Tillekeratne added 114 for the fifth   wicket to 
18105 !GCAT !GSPO  Scoreboard on the second day of   the second cricket test between Sri Lanka and Zimbabwe on   Thursday:   Zimbabwe first innings 141 (G.Flower 52; J.Silva 4-16,   M.Muralitharan 4-40)   Sri Lanka first innings (overnight 86-3)    R.Mahanama c A.Flower b B.Strang 3    S.Jayasuriya c A.Whittall b P.Strang  41    A.Gurusinha c Wishart b B.Strang 88    A. de Silva c and b P.Strang 16    A.Ranatunga c Wishart b B.Strang 6    H.Tillekeratne not out 100    R.Kaluwitharana c A.Flower b G.Whittall 27    C.Vaas st A.Flower b P.Strang 8    R.Pushpakumara not out 17    Extras (lb-4 w-3 nb-4) 11    Total (for 7 wickets, 114 overs)  317   To bat: M.Muralitharan, J.Silva.   Fall of wickets: 1-19 2-58 3-86 4-102 5-216 6-267 7-276.   Bowling (to date): Olonga 23-4-77-0, B.Strang 20-6-63-3,   A.Whittall 27-6-70-0, P.Strang 28-7-58-3, G.Whittall 14-4-32-1,   G.Flower 2-0-13-0. 
18106 !GCAT !GSPO  Sri Lanka were 317 for seven wickets at the close of play in reply to Zimbabwe's first innings total of 141 on the second day of the second cricket test on Thursday. 
18107 !GCAT !GSPO  Sri Lanka were 220 for five wickets at tea in reply to Zimbabwe's first innings total of 141 on the second day of the second cricket test on Thursday. 
18108 !C12 !CCAT !GCAT !GCRIM  A hearing into a wave of violent outbreaks at three Goldfields of South Africa Ltd mines is set for Friday, when all interested parties will submit statements, the inquiry commission said on Thursday.   The commission said the urgency of the case meant that the statements should be handed in by 0900 (0700GMT).   Each document should contain a statement of facts as that particular party sees it, their theory on the cause of the violence and a list of steps that have been taken to reduce or avoid violence and their success.   Each party should also propose methods of putting a stop to the violence.   Last week Goldfields said recent violence at its Driefontein Consolidated Ltd and Kloof Gold Mining Co Ltd mines had cost 50 million rand in lost output.   East Driefontein had seen 34 workers killed since July 18.   At Kloof's Leeudoorn division five workers have lost their lives and operations were halted from August 20-28, it said.   -- Johannesburg newsroom +27 11 482 1003 
18109 !GCAT !GDEF !GDIP  South Africa is likely this year to approve the purchase of four second-hand British Upholder class submarines, the biggest post-apartheid weapons purchase, government and political sources said on Thursday.   The acquisition programme, dubbed "Project Wills", is amongst 145 listed in a secret military capital expenditure programme, which Reuters has seen.   The purchase is expected to cost 2.07 billion rand over the next decade and will overtake an alternative plan to revamp the country's three small and aged French Daphne class vessels.   The project is described as "the opportunistic purchase of second-hand submarines" from the British navy.   Tony Yengeni, chairman of parliament's powerful standing committee on defence, said his committee had asked the defence ministry for a special briefing on the project on October 9.   He said legislators wanted capital projects delayed until the completion of a defence review next year, but accepted that some deals might need to be decided sooner.   "The question is whether we should wait until the review process is finished, in which case these subs would have been sold to someone else, or whether we should go ahead now.   "I understand we would get them relatively cheaply because they are second-hand," he said.   A source in the ruling African National Congress (ANC) told Reuters that the deal would be approved and that the navy would be told to go ahead immediately.   "In this case, the decision is not to wait, but to go for it," the source said.   An opposition party source confirmed that the defence committee was likely to give the defence department permission to go ahead with the deal.   The sources said government would also restart a stalled 1.6 billion rand project to buy four naval corvettes in time for its inclusion in the March 1997 budget.   The diesel-electric submarines were built by VSEL for the Royal Navy in the early 1990s at a cost of around one billion pounds, but saw only brief service.   They are now laid up in VSEL's Barrow yard awaiting sale.   They were initially offered to Chile and to Canada at around the same price that South Africa expects to pay.   Helmut Roemer Heitman, correspondent in South Africa for Jane's Defence Review, said the price was good and that their purchase would significantly bolster South Africa's navy, which has been reduced to a few old mine-sweepers, a handful of Israeli fat patrol boats and two supply ships.   "They are not the world's sexiest submarines, but South Africa would be getting four for the price of one," he said.   An ANC source said that though the party remained opposed to heavy defence spending, re-equipping the navy was seen as a priority to defend the coast against drug and weapon smuggling and to protect the country's fishing waters. 
18110 !GCAT !GCRIM !GDIP  South Africa and Canada on Thursday signed a 20 million rand ($4.1 mln) agreement on training and administration assistance for South Africa's courts.   "This will help us to ensure that there is a systematic programme of training for judges, magistrates and prosecutors," said South African Justice Minister Dullah Omar.   He said the main effect of the aid programme would be to cement the independence of South Africa's post-apartheid judiciary.   South Africa is revamping its judicial administration in a bid to eliminate backlogs and crack down on escalating crime, which is undermining the country's economic recovery after centuries of white rule.   Canadian Deputy Minister of Justice George Thomson said his country would second staff to help South Africa develop its judicial training system.   "We have a wealth of experience and resources to share with you," he said.   -- Brendan Boyle, Parliament newsroom, +27 21 403-2502 
18111 !C24 !C42 !CCAT !E41 !ECAT !GCAT !GJOB !GVIO  Phase one of the 14 billion rand Lesotho Highlands Water Project would be completed on schedule despite the weekend deaths of four people in labour unrest, a South African government minister said on Thursday.   Water Affairs and Forestry Minister Kader Asmal told reporters in Cape Town he had written to Minister of Natural Resources S.R. Mokhehle in Lesotho to offer assistance, which could include advice on dispute resolution.   Lesotho police on Saturday shot and killed four people when about 2,000 dismissed workers refused to honour a court order to leave the site about 110 km (70 miles) from Maseru.   "The tragic events which took place at Butha Buthe and the current work stoppage will not deter the resolve of South Africa and Lesotho to complete phase one of the Lesotho Highlands Water Project successfully and on schedule," he said.   Asmal said the strike triggered by allegations of racism against a contractor could set the project back about four weeks, adding:   "We have suggested a period of concentrated overtime to make up the delays...and get the project back on track."   The 10 billion rand first phase should see water piped from the mountains of Lesotho to the Johannesburg industrial region from January 1998.   The first South African royalty payment of 100 million rand was made in October after the water level in the main reservoir reached a trigger level of 1,993 metres above sea level.   A four billion rand addition to phase one has already been agreed, but Asmal repudiated a South African official who said in a newspaper interview published on Thursday that the 10 billion rand phase two would go ahead after the year 2003.   "As I have stated repeatedly in the past, no decision is possible before the conclusion of extensive water resource studies, which are currently underway," he said.   Asmal said he probably would seek a foreign assessment of departmental recommendations on phase two.   He said he had ordered the official, Hans Pettenburger, to return to South Africa and explain his statements, which included criticism of law and order in Lesotho.   -- Brendan Boyle, Parliament newsroom, +27 21 403-2502 
18112 !GCAT  These are the main stories reported in the Angolan press on Thursday.   Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.   - - - -   JORNAL DE ANGOLA   - Angola will come under the spotlight during a special session of the United Nations Security Council on October 11 to review the U.N. peacekeeping mandate in the country.   - Angola's recently reshuffled government completed on Thursday 100 days in power since President Jose Eduardo dos Santos sacked his previous government under former prime minister Marcolino Moco.   - United States Secretary of State Warren Christopher is due to visit Angola during a tour of five African countries between October 7 and 15, the state department said. 
18113 !GCAT !GCRIM  Zimbabwean police said on Thursday they were investigating an unregistered Harare-based get-rich-quick savings club promising members huge returns on deposits into its and a chain of other bank accounts.   "We have no comment, except to say we are investigating," a police official said in answer to queries about the club which has drawn the attention of Zimbabwe's financial markets.   Zimbabwe's Central African Building Society (CABS) has closed the club's account where thousands of people had deposited their subscriptions.   Organisers of the Richer 2000 Club were unavailable for comment on local press allegations that the club was dubious.   To register, reports say, a person must deposit a total of Z$300 into six accounts of Z$50 each, including the Richer 2000 Club, before being given five certificates to sell to new members who must continue the chain.   A member could reap Z$68,000 in two months in return, the report said.   -- Cris Chinaka, Harare Newsroom: +263-4 72 52 27/8/9 
18114 !GCAT  These are the leading stories in the Zimbabwe press on Thursday.   Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.   - - - -   THE FINANCIAL GAZETTE   - The Zimbabwe Electricity Supply Authority (ZESA) board and management are surprised at a decision by President Robert Mugabe's government to sell off 51 percent of ZESA's Hwange Thermal power station to a Malaysia's YTL Corporation Berhard for Z$6 billion through private placement.   Some Western companies who were vying for stakes are seeking government clarification.   - Zimbabwe's year-on-year inflation rate dipped to a three-year low of just under 18 percent in August, surprising many economic analysts who were expecting it to track upward on a spate of price rises.   August's rate consumer price index (CPI) stood at 17.7 percent compared to 22 percent in July, largely due to a fall in food prices, the analysts told Reuters this week.   - - - -   BUSINESS HERALD   - Two major state revenue collection agents, the departments of taxes and customs and excise, will be merged and become one semi-autonomous Zimbabwe Revenue Authority soon, according to a proposal being discussed by the government.   - Zimbabwean (indigenous) black business people have entered into 148 joint ventures with foreign investors worth close to Z$1 billion and created over 5,000 jobs over the last two years.   - - - -   THE HERALD   - Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe leads an investment promotion delegation to Germany next week, his latest stop on a campaign that began four years ago to woo foreign investors.   - Zimbabwe's government hopes to give a second licence to a private cellular phone services operator in the next three to four months after recently awarding the first to the state Posts and Telecommunications Corporation (PTC) and telecommunications giants Siemens .   ---Harare Newsroom: +263-4 72 52 28/9 
18115 !GCAT  These are the leading stories in the South African press on Thursday.   Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.   - - - -   BUSINESS DAY   - The Independent Broadcasting Authority has granted the licence for lucrative SABC raio station Highveld Stereo to Africa On Air.   - Mining house JCI Ltd is investigating restructuring to refocus on gold operations throughout Africa and beyond.    - Industrial holdings group Safren lifted earnings after exceptional items 38.8 percent to 535.8 million rand for the year to June as the performance of international associates offset a subdued domestic showing.   - Parliament's public accounts committee has decided to take drastic action on the massive leakage in the tax collection system and is to ask Finance Minister Trevor Manuel to account for progress on restructuring the SA revenue service.   - - - -   BUSINESS REPORT   - A powerful group of minority shareholders will decide on Thursday whether to take legal action that could stop the acquisition of Kagiso Publishers by Perskor .   - The Independent Broadcasting Authority approved the sale of Highveld Stereo for 320 million rand to Africa On Air.    - RMB Holdings said its net income surged 40 percent to a record high in the year to June 30 because of a strong performance from Momentum Life.   - The government indicated for the first time it was prepared to press ahead with the second phase of the controversial Lesotho Highlands Water Project, but warned that security around the project would have to be guaranteed.    - - - -   THE STAR   - Former president F.W. de Klerk was guilty of involvement in police hit-squad activities, convicted murderer Eugene de Kock said in the Pretoria Surpreme Court.    -- Johannesburg newsroom +27 11 482 1003 
18116 !GCAT  Here are highlights from Polish newspapers this morning.   RZECZPOSPOLITA   - Deputies from the Polish Peasant Party (PSL) want the lower house of parliament to issue a special resolution specifying how the cabinet would be rebuilt under the ruling coalition's government reform programme.   - The Finance Ministry has no plans to increase excise tax for cigarettes this year after a rise last April.   NOWA EUROPA   - Annual revenues of video rental outlets in Poland are estimated at 50 million zlotys.   The number of video rental outlets fell to 5,000 from more than 35,000 a few years ago.   - Agriculture Minister Roman Jagielinski expects this year's crops to be worse than in 1995.   - Plus GSM, a cellular telephone network managed by Polkomtel SA consortium, is set for launch on October 1.   The prices charged by the network are likely to be lower than its competitor's Era GSM.   GAZETA WYBORCZA   - Despite earlier pledges by the ruling leftist coalition to lower personal income taxes next year, tax rates may remain unchanged after parliamentary committees voted to keep the present rates of 21, 33 and 45 percent.   - In the January-August period new car sales in Poland reached almost 260,000, 36 percent more than in the same period of last year and only slightly less than in the whole of 1995.   PARKIET   - Polish Bank Przemyslowo-Handlowy (BPH) has signed a contract with the National Investment Funds No. 9 to cooperate in investment banking and commercial banking activities.   - The Polish Investment Bank (PBI), controlled by the central bank (NBP), is likely to be privatised this year, PBI president said.   The NBP wants to privatise the bank together with an ailing Prosper bank.   - France Telecom plans to bid in a tender to develop DCS modern cellular telephone network.   The telecommunications minister may open the tender this year.   -- Warsaw Newsroom +48 22 653 9700 
18117 !GCAT  IZVESTIA   - Michael Jackson has struck a blow to Russian people's health, says the daily, referring to the fact that 40,000 fans had to wait in freezing wind before the rock star emerged on the stage at his concert on Tuesday night.   - St Petersburg wants very much to host the 2004 Olympic Games.   - Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin has taken control of Russia's arms trading.   SEVODNYA   - President Boris Yeltsin met chief of staff Anatoly Chubais on Wednesday to discuss the mechanism of handing over his powers when he has surgery.   At the same time, Chernomyrdin was receiving Alexander Lebed with no details of the meeting available for the press.   - The chairman of the Georgian parliament accuses Russia of encouraging separatism in the region.   - Alija Izetbegovic's victory in Bosnia-Herzegovina has been indirectly inspired by Belgrade, says the paper.   - Generally we support all central bank operations, but the bank should coordinate its own activities, says deputy finance minister Andrei Vavilov.   NEZAVISIMAYA GAZETA   - Differences over the budget and funding between the government and the army are getting worse and are encouraging the growth of social tension in society.   - Russia's security chief Alexander Lebed does not seem to be happy with the obstacles to peace in Chechnya.   ROSSIISKIYE VESTI   - Moscow's policy in Chechnya has come to a critical turning-point again and a common plan for further actions is more then important, says Emil Pain, a presidential aide.   - Unhappy with the governments financial policy the military have come to a dangerous point when they are capable of any unpredictable actions.   SOVIETSKAYA ROSSIA   - Izetbegovic's victory in the Bosnian election might push the country towards another bloody spiral, the newspaper says, because a 43-month war in the region was started in 1992 under his presidency.   MOSKOVSKY KOMSOMOLETS   - Lebed understands that without Chernomyrdin's assitance peace will not come to Chechnya -- only the prime minister, who is in charge of the distribution of state funds, can guarantee a lasting peace in the region.   -- Tatyana Ustinova, Moscow Newsroom, +7095 941 8520. 
18118 !GCAT  Radio Romania new headlines:   * Lower Chamber of Deputies starts debates on bill on staff employed in education system.   * Senate passed a bill on hospitals.   * Romanian President Ion Iliescu had talks with Canadian Industry Minister John Manley and discused on results of bilateral economic ties.   Manley also met Prime Minister Nicolae Vacaroiu.   Manley said Canada would to suport Romania in developing its communications sector and aircraft industry.   * The Constitutional Court rejected contestations lodged against candidatures of Ion Iliescu, Emil Constantinescu, Constantin Mudava and Tudor Mohora for presidential polls.   -- Bucharest Newsroom 40-1 3120264 
18119 !GCAT  Radio Romania new headlines:   * Romania's Health Ministry reported 482 meningitis cases and.   So far 38 people died because of the disease.   The virus has yet to be identified.   * Signing of Romanian-Hungary treaty has marked a turning point in bilateral ties, said Traian Chebeleu, spokesman of President Ion Iliescu.   * Senate passed a bill on hospitals.   It has also ratified the Romanian-Yugoslav friendship treaty signed earlier this year.   * Lower Chamber of Deputies starts debates on bill on staff in education system.   * Industry Ministry said 85 percent of furniture output is exported.   -- Bucharest Newsroom 40-1 3120264 
18120 !GCAT  These are the main headlines on Hungary's Kossuth Radio midday news.   Reuters cannot vouch for their accuracy:   - The social partners of the government reject the tax law amendments that was introducted to them.   - The minister of Welfare promised to do all efforts to avoid the crisis of the National Ambulance service.   - Forty Russian-made armoured transporter military vehicles arrived in border station Zahony, as the first part of Russian debt repayment.   - German police found heroin worth one billion forints with a Hungarian citizen.   - Hungarian President Arpad Goncz continues his round trip in the Benelux countries and started today his official program in Luxemburg.   -- Budapest newsroom ++36 1 327 4040 
18121 !G15 !G158 !GCAT !GDIP  Swedish Prime Minister Goran Persson on Thursday offered Poland advice on how to forge a strategy for negotiating European Union membership.   "We have agreed to have a very close dialogue with Poland about how to negotiate.   We in Sweden have recent experience of negotiating with the European Union," Persson told reporters after meeting his Polish counterpart Wlodzimierz Cimoszewicz.   Persson, begining a two-day visit, said Sweden fully backed Poland's goal to join the EU by the year 2000, which has also been recently supported by German Chancellor Helmut Kohl and French President Jacques Chirac.   The European Commission says Poland and other former Soviet bloc countries can start membership talks in early 1998 but the actual entry is unlikely to take place before 2002.   Cimszewicz said that apart from discussing ways to boost economic exchange and cooperation in the Baltic region he and Persson talked about Sweden's plans to sell fighter jets to Poland's armed forces.   Poland needs to replace about 100 of its communist-era, mostly outmoded, fighters and a consortium of Sweden's Saab and British Aerospace is offering its own aircraft, Jas-Gripen to compete against offers from the United States and France.   "We invited all interested sides to present their offers...There are no decisions taken," Cimoszewicz said.   Cimoszewicz said the Swedish company should promote its offer more actively because U.S. Lockheed-Martin and McDonnel Douglas, proposing their F-16 and F-18 respectively, are already well-known in Poland with their investment bids.   "American companies are offering their aricraft, they are present in Poland and they present their arguments...I believe that Swedish producers should do the same," he said.   France's Dassault, offering its Mirage 2000, has also made an offer, backed by President Chirac during his recent visit.   Persson, who is scheduled to meet President Aleksander Kwasniewski and top parliamentary officials on Friday, also said Poland and Sweden agreed on a closer cooperation to fight international organised crime.   Cimoszewicz urged Swedish companies to increase their investment in Poland, which reached about $250 million since 1990, and to further boost economic exchange, which soared 43 percent to $1.5 billion last year. 
18122 !C12 !CCAT !GCAT !GCRIM  From the "sucking blood from a stone" file:   A gunman on Thursday robbed a branch of Czech Agrobanka, put under forced administration by the central bank two days earlier due to a liquidity crisis.   Agrobanka's central-bank appointed administrator Jiri Klumpar told reporters the theft of 200,000 crowns from a branch in a southern Czech village proved official intervention to solve the liquidity crunch was working.   "On one hand it is a pity that we lost some money, but on the other hand it is clear that (the robber) had confidence of finding some money here, which showed to be a correct expectation," Klumpar told reporters.   The Czech agency CTK quoted police as saying a dark-haired man, aged 20-25, threatened bank employees with a gun at about noon on Thursday at the branch in Kardasova Recice, 120 km (75 miles) south of Prague, and demanded the money from tellers.   Police are still searching for the suspect.   Klumpar said that initial reaction after the central bank's decision made clients to withdraw several billion crowns, but added that Agrobanka's liquidity problems should be stabilised by the end of the week.   -- Prague Newsroom, 42-2-2423-0003 
18123 !C13 !C24 !CCAT !GCAT !GENV  Bulgaria's nuclear power plant at Kozloduy on Thursday started safety tests on its oldest Soviet-made reactor after closing it in May amid international safety concern, the plant's chairman said.   Kiril Nikolov said Westinghouse Electric Corp had started taking samples from the vessel's metal of reactor number one earlier on Thursday.   "The procedure of taking the samples will last about a week and we expect the preliminary results by the end of the year," Nikolov told Reuters by telephone.   He said the final report of the condition of the vessel's metal would be expected early next year.   Westinghouse delayed the taking of the samples by a month due to technical difficulties, officials said.   The delay will also prolong the completion of the final results of the metal's tests, which were initially expected to be finalised by the year-end.   If the analysis of the samples prove that the metal is in a good condition to continue operating, Bulgaria will restart the reactor, atomic officials said.   They said the samples of reactor number one would be analysed by Russian experts from the plant's designer -- Korchatov's Institute under the quality control of Germany's Siemens AG.   Bulgarian experts will also participate in carrying out the tests.   Bulgaria switched off its oldest reactor on May 15 under pressure from the EU, which is concerned about its safety.   In July Bulgaria signed a financial memorandum with the EU for receiving a grant of 10 million ECUs as compensation for switching off its 440-megawatt reactor and buying alternative energy resources and saving energy.   Bulgaria, currently suffering an acute economic crisis, imports some 80 percent of its energy resources and relies for half of its energy on the Kozloduy plant, which has four 440-megawatt reactors and two more modern 1,000 megawatt reactors.   -- Liliana Semerdjieva, Sofia Newsroom, 359-2-84561 
18124 !C13 !CCAT !E51 !E512 !ECAT !GCAT !GDIP  Czech National Bank Governor Josef Tosovsky departed on Thursday to join President Vaclav Havel for a tour of South America, a trip delayed to handle a crisis at Agrobanka a.s. , a CNB press aide said.   CNB spokesman Pavel Palivec told Reuters that Tosovsky left this afternoon to fly to South America and join Havel.   Tosovsky was supposed to leave with Havel for the trip last Saturday but stayed behind to handle talks about a liquidity crisis at the largest fully-private bank Agrobanka.   The next destination of Havel, who is travelling with a business delegation throughout South America, was scheduled to be Rio De Janeiro on Thursday evening.   Tosovsky is to complete the remainder of official visits on the South American trip before going on to next week's International Monetary Fund meeting in Washington.   The central bank, after an all-night meeting of the cabinet, on Tuesday put Agrobanka under "temporary" forced administration of an undetermined duration, guaranteeing all its existing obligations.   It said the move was taken due to poor liquidity caused by the fall of another bank Kreditni Banka a.s..   Tosovsky said on Tuesday that the central bank requested "large banks" to set aside up to six billion crowns and place them in Agrobanka to help it through the liquidity crunch.   A central bank administrator said on Thursday that the immediate liquidity crunch at Agrobanka should be solved by the end of the week.   -- Prague Newsroom, 42-2-2423-0003 
18125 !GCAT !GENT  Bucharest cinema list:   The Quest - SCALA 2110372    0900 1100 1300 1500 1715 1930    - FESTIVAL 6156384    0900 1100 1300 1500 1700 1900    - GLORIA 6474675    1000 1215 1430 1645 1900   Hellbound - BUCURESTI 6156154    0845 1100 1300 1500 1700 1900   Diabolique - SALA PALATULUI  6157372    1730 2000 (Sept 23-26)   The Rock - PATRIA 2118625    0900 1130 1400 1645 1930    - LUCEAFARUL  6158767    0900 1130 1400 1630 1900    - FAVORIT 7453170    1000 1230 1515 1800   Le housard sur le doit - STUDIO 6595315    1000 1215 1430 1700 1930   Cable Guy - CORSO 6151334    0900 1100 1300 1500 1700 1900    - CULTURAL 6835013    0900 1130 1400 1630 1900    - FLOREASCA 2122972    1500 1700 (Sat, Sun-also 1300)   Primal Fear - STUDIO MARTIN  2123242    1400 1615 1830    - EXCELSIOR 6654945    1600 1815 (Sat, Sun-also 1400)   The Craft - FLAMURA 6857712    1000 1230 1500 1730   Gaddaar - AURORA 6350466    1200 1430 1700 1915   Last Dance - DRUMUL SARII  4102344    1100 1500 (Sun); 1500 1700 (Mon-Thu)   Vampire in Brooklyn - OLYMPIA PALLAS  2223085    1000 1200 1400   Black Cat - LUMINA 6147416    1000 1200 1400 1600 1800   Excessive Force 2  - DACIA 6503594    1000 1200 1400   Jai-Kishen - DACIA 6503594    1600 1830   (Source: Romaniafilm distribution company) 
18126 !C12 !C18 !C181 !CCAT !GCAT !GCRIM  A Slovenian district court said on Thursday it had temporarily prohibited the transfer of paper maker Videm to its Czech buyer after two competitors filed a suit asking the sale be declared void.   Videm was sold to International Consulting Engineering & Contracting (ICEC) for 35.5 million marks in March.   The company went bankrupt and was liquidated in 1993.   The complaint against the sale was filed last month by paper producer Videm Papir d.o.o., which used to be a part of Videm until 1993, and is currently majority-owned by cellulose maker Vitacel d.d., another ex-unit of Videm.   "We asked the court to prohibit the transfer of Videm because we believe the company should not have been sold to a foreign entity as Slovenian legislation prohibits foreigners to own real estate in the country," Stojan Zdolsek, the legal representative of Videm Papir and Vitacel, told Reuters.   The court in the town of Krsko will have one month to decide whether to uphold its verdict or give the go-ahead to the transfer of Videm to its Czech buyer.   Representatives of Videm said the legal manoeuvering was motivated by Vitacel's and Videm Papir's desire to shut out foreign competitors.   "ICEC has a registered branch in Slovenia and thus is a proper Slovenian entity," said Branko Ogorevec, Videm's chief liquidator.   "I believe Vitacel and Videm Papir, who are currently renting Videm's production facilities, want to reverse the sale in order to be able to buy Videm at a lesser price," he added.   ICEC's bid for the company in March topped the only rival offer, jointly submitted by Videm Papir and Vitacel, by 500,000 marks.   Payment is due on September 24.   The sale angered some members of Slovenia's parliament who said it was a sell-out of a strategically important company to a foreign group at too low a price.   Pressured by parliament, the government in June asked state-owned creditors of Videm to file a lawsuit to reverse the sale.   In July the government asked the same companies to drop the suit after ICEC agreed to pay an additional 10 million marks for a production permit.   Videm started piling on debts in 1989 when it took on loans at unfavourable rates.   The situation was exacerbated after the break-up of Yugoslavia in 1991.   Videm used to export as much as 60 percent of its production to other ex-Yugoslav republics.   -- Marja Novak, Ljubljana newsroom, 386-61-125-8439 
18127 !E14 !E141 !E21 !E211 !ECAT !GCAT !GPOL  Three Polish parliamentary committees voted late on Wednesday to uphold current personal tax rates in 1997 despite an earlier government pledge to cut the rates from next year, PAP news agency said.   It said the budget, economic policy and legislative committees, working on a personal income tax bill, turned down the government proposal to cut the rates to 20, 31 and 43 percent in 1997 from the present 21, 33 and 45 percent.   The parliamentarians also rejected several alternative proposals including an opposition proposal of a deeper cut.   In its first 1997 budget draft presented in July, the government proposed to lower the personal income tax rates while limiting several tax deductions to prevent a drop in revenues.   The committees' recommendations have yet to be approved by the whole house, which is scheduled to vote on the bill at its three-day session beging on October 23.   -- Warsaw Newsroom +48 22 653 9700 
18128 !C13 !C21 !CCAT !G15 !G153 !GCAT !GHEA !GPOL  The British government on Thursday decided to put its full-scale beef cattle cull on hold in a move certain to spark a clash with the European Union over the mad cow crisis.   "The new scientific evidence available means that further work is needed on appropriate culling strategies," a spokesman for Prime Minister John Major said after a two-hour meeting of ministers at his Downing Street residence.   Major acted after reviewing the latest evidence from a group of Oxford University scientists who argued that the disease would die out naturally within five years and that mass culling was unnecessary.   "For the present, the governmment is not proceeding with the selective cull but will return to cull options in the light of the developing science and of discussions on the certified herd scheme," Major's spokesman added.   But the European Union has refused to budge on the issue.   It says Britain should carry out an agreed plan to slaughter up to 147,000 cattle most at risk from the debilitating disease.   At a European Union summit in Florence in June, Major agreed with other European leaders that Britain would impose a cull and other measures in return for a gradual lifting of the worldwide ban on British beef exports.   After Major met with Agriculture Minister Douglas Hogg, Finance Minister Kenneth Clarke and other ministers, the premier's spokesman was at pains to stress that the Florence agreement had not been broken.   "This is not a departure from the Florence framework which states that the UK eradication plan "shall be adapted if necessary in the light of scientific and epidemiological developments'."   The export ban was imposed in March after Britain admitted a possible link between Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE) and Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease, a deadly human equivalent.   After the Florence deal, Major had said he expected the EU to start lifting the ban within five months but this confident prediction found little backing from other EU countries.   Officials said Hogg returned from talks with EU farm ministers in Brussels this week once again convinced they would not lift the ban any time soon.   The pressure Major is under was illustrated earlier on Thursday when he met a delegation of Northern Irish legislators who called for exemption from the export ban for quality beef herds in the province which have never suffered from BSE.   They came away without getting a clear answer from Major who, with a majority of just one in parliament, may shortly be relying on some of them for support in key House of Commons votes. 
18129 !E12 !ECAT !G15 !G154 !G155 !GCAT !GPOL  Conservative grandees firmly committed to the European Union on Thursday launched a counter-offensive against "Eurosceptics" who threaten to split Britain's ruling party asunder.   Six elder statesmen of the party that has ruled Britain for the past 17 years joined forces to appeal to Prime Minister John Major not to rule out membership of a single European currency.   Former Prime Minister Ted Heath, three ex-foreign secretaries, European Commissioner Sir Leon Brittan and Margaret Thatcher's righthand man, Lord Whitelaw, joined forces in a blunt letter to the Independent newspaper.   "To countenance withdrawal from the European Union would be to court disaster," the six said in a sternly worded missive certain to reopen old wounds with party right-wingers who fiercely resist what they see as interference from Brussels.   "For us to rule out British membership of the single currency would be to betray our national interest," they wrote in a letter that could herald bitter wrangling in the runup to the next general election, due by next May.   After firing their broadside at the Eurosceptics, they returned to the fray with a string of individual attacks.   Heath, who led Britain into the European Union, angrily condemned what he called "the dangerously out of date little Englanders" who wanted to return Europe to the past.   He was delivering in London the anniversary lecture to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Winston Churchill's speech in Zurich in which he called for a united states of Europe.   The letter was published the day after Foreign Secretary Malcolm Rifkind delighted Eurosceptics by warning that the single currency could split the EU for the foreseeable future.   Rifkind's predecessor Douglas Hurd, once a model of cautious diplomacy, said pro-Europeans in the badly divided party would now speak up more forcefully.   "I think you will find from now on that those who believe that we should, in the national interest, take a positive view of Britain in Europe will be less inclined to keep quiet simply because we might be accused of rocking the boat.   "That phase is over," Hurd told BBC radio.   The opposition Labour Party, overwhelming favourite in opinion polls to win the next election, also pitched into the fray over Europe.   Peter Mandelson, a key aide to Labour's centrist leader Tony Blair, said a Labour government would want to decide sooner rather than later whether to join a single European currency.   Mandelson, Labour's campaigns strategist, told the Foreign Press Association that if Labour wins power it will decide on economic grounds whether to join monetary union.   Brittan, one of Britain's commissioners in Brussels, dismissed as "fair old nonsense" accusations that the letter by the six had split the party when unity was desperately needed.   "For us to restate what has always been the mainstream view of the Conservative Party I do not regard as rocking the boat," he said. 
18130 !C13 !C21 !C31 !C312 !CCAT !G15 !G153 !GCAT !GDIP !GHEA !GPOL  British ministers on Thursday reviewed the possible slaughter of up to 147,000 cattle most at risk from mad cow disease but reached no new decisions.   The European Union has insisted that Britain must carry out an agreed plan to slaughter up to 147,000 cows, but a spokesman for Prime Minister John Major after the two-hour meeting: "There will be no statement at this stage."   An EU spokesman rejected British media reports that Brussels had backtracked by asking scientists to review a British Oxford University study suggesting the cull was unnecessary because the epidemic would die out in five years regardless.   "Suggestions in the British press today that there has been a U-turn by the Commission...are not true," European Commission agriculture spokesman Gerard Kiely said in Brussels.   Roger Freeman, the British minister in charge of seeing measures to eradicate the disease are implemented, welcomed the Commission's decision to review the new study.   But he said Britain was still looking for a fast easing of an EU ban on British beef exports, adding: "We are fulfilling our side of the bargain and in return we wanted an early lifting of the ban in stages."   The British government has expressed anger that a deal hammered out by Major with his partners at an EU summit in June has not led to a rapid lifting of the ban.   After the Florence deal, Major said he expected the EU to start lifting the ban within five months but his confident prediction found little backing from other EU countries.   Officials said Agriculture Minister Douglas Hogg returned from talks with EU farm ministers in Brussels this week convinced that they would not lift the ban at any time soon.   Major earlier met a delegation of members of parliament from Northern Ireland who called for exemption from the ban for quality beef herds in the province which have never suffered from mad cow disease.   The legislators, both Protestant and Catholic, came away without getting a clear answer from Major, who, with a majority of just one in parliament, may shortly be relying on some of them for support in key House of Commons votes.   Professor Sir William Stewart, who advised the government for five years on scientific matters, upset ministers by dismissing the new Oxford study.   "How do we know for sure that the Oxford evidence will be standing up in five years' time?   You can't be sure about that," he said.   "What you can be sure about is that if you cull, the problem will not be there." 
18131 !GCAT !GPRO !GREL  The Roman Catholic Church on Thursday confessed that runaway Scottish bishop Roderick Wright, who resigned after vanishing with a divorcee, is the father of a 15-year-old son by another woman.   In a revelation that shook the church to its foundations, Joanna Whibley said her affair with the Bishop of Argyll started when he was a priest instructing her in the Catholic faith.   Their embittered son Kevin said he had only seen his father for a total of two months in his life.   Close to tears as he finally revealed the guilty secret he has carried since birth, the boy told BBC Television he had turned his back on his father, who resigned last week after vanishing at the same time as divorcee Kathleen Macphee.   "I feel angry at the loss of a father and it's too late now.   I don't even want him if he comes, it is too late," he said.   Joanna Whibley, her voice breaking as she finally revealed her past, said: "I must unburden myself and put an end to Kevin's feeling that he shouldn't even exist."   Feeling angry and spurned, she said of Wright: "I have lived a lie and so has he."   She said he refused to acknowledge being the father and threatened to go to Peru to avoid the scandal.   The Scottish Roman Catholic Church confirmed that her story was true, admitting in a statement that they knew about the bishop's past when he tendered his resignation on Sunday.   It has now been accepted by the Vatican.   Cardinal Basil Hume, the leader of Catholics in England and Wales, was clearly deeply shocked when told the news.   "I am very, very shocked and saddened about this recent revelation.   My heart goes out especially to Kevin and his mother and all those people who will feel let down by this.   I find myself very distressed indeed," he told Channel Four News.   The case eerily echoed the Irish saga of Eamon Casey, the bishop of Galway who resigned four years ago after it was revealed that he had a love child with an American divorcee.   Joanna Whibley said she decided to go public after hearing Wright's resignation statement which made no reference to them.   Kevin Whibley was equally upset as he told the interviewer from his home in southern England: "I haven't seen him for more than two months all put together in my whole life and it was useless then because I have been awkward talking to him.   "He didn't speak to me, but that's probably because I was cold towards him."   Kevin, born when his father was still a parish priest in a remote part of Scotland, said of the shock revelation: "I would like it for a start if it got rid of the whole celibacy rule for the church."   Cardinal Hume complained after Wright's resignation that his country was obsessed by sex and said the church could relax its centuries-old insistence on the celibacy of priests.   He said the Catholic church was losing many excellent candidates for the priesthood because they wanted to be free to marry.   "It is not divine law.   It is Church law, so any Pope or General Council could change it," he said. 
18132 !C13 !C24 !CCAT !G15 !G153 !GCAT !GHEA  British ministers met on Thursday to review a cull of up to 147,000 cattle most at risk from mad cow disease after new scientific evidence suggested the mass slaughter was unnecessary.   Fearing a parliamentary rebellion from ruling party members opposed to the full cull, Prime Minister John Major and his colleagues were expected to cut back on the slaughter programme or introduce measures to protect the domestic beef market.   Major's London office expected to be able to give some details of the ministers' discussion later on Thursday.   If they decide to cut back on the cull, Britain could once again come into conflict with its European Union partners who introduced an export ban on British beef in March to reassure panicky consumers.   The European Commission, the EU executive, denied British press reports that it had backtracked by asking scientists to look at a study by British scientists saying the cull was unnecessary because the disease -- Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE) -- would die out naturally in five years.   "Suggestions in the British press today that there has been a U-turn by the Commission...are not true," said commission agriculture spokesman Gerard Kiely.   Kiely said the Oxford University study on the disease had been passed to the EU's scientific veterinary committee 10 days ago and should not serve as an excuse to delay the cull.   Roger Freeman, the minister in charge of seeing measures to eradicate the disease are implemented, welcomed the commission's decision to review the new study.   But he said Britain was still looking for a fast easing of the ban, adding: "We are fulfilling our side of the bargain and in return we wanted an early lifting of the ban in stages."   There is anger in London that a deal hammered out by Major with his partners at the EU summit in Florence last June has not led to a rapid lifting of a ban on British beef exports.   After the Florence deal, Major said he expected the EU to start lifting the ban within five months but this confident prediction found little backing from other countries in the bloc.   Officials said Agriculture Minister Douglas Hogg returned from talks with other EU farm ministers in Brussels earlier this week once again convinced they would not lift the ban soon.   The pressure on Major was illustrated earlier on Thursday when he met a delegation of Northern Irish legislators who called for exemption from the export ban for quality beef herds in the province which have never suffered from BSE.   The MPs came away without getting a clear answer from the prime minister who, with a majority of just one in parliament, may shortly be relying on some of them for support in key House of Commons votes.   Professor Sir William Stewart, who advised the government for five years on scientific matters, upset ministers by dismissing the new Oxford study.   "How do we know for sure that the Oxford evidence will be standing up in five years' time?   You can't be sure about that.   What you can be sure about is that if you cull, the problem will not be there," Stewart said. 
18133 !G15 !G154 !G155 !GCAT !GPOL  Britain's ruling Conservatives faced the prospect of bitter infighting in the run-up to an election as supporters of the European Union vowed on Thursday to battle a growing anti-Brussels tendency in the party.   Former foreign secretary Douglas Hurd said pro-European Conservatives had been reluctant to join a debate over EU integration for fear of deepening the divisions in the party.   But with Prime Minister John Major under increasing pressure from right-wing "Euro-sceptics" opposed to closer integration, Hurd said they would now speak out more forcefully.   "I think you will find from now on that those who believe that we should, in the national interest, take a positive view of Britain in Europe will be less inclined to keep quiet simply because we might be accused of rocking the boat," Hurd told BBC radio.   "That phase is over," he said.   Hurd was one of six Conservative elder statesmen who wrote to the Independent newspaper saying it would be a betrayal of Britain's national interest if Major bowed to the Euro-sceptics and ruled out joining the EU single currency planned for 1999.   Hurd, who piloted the controversial Maastricht treaty on economic and political union through parliament, urged all Conservatives to back Major's position that Britain should keep its options open about monetary union.   "All those of us who signed that letter are prepared to do that.   But when that policy is attacked, or when the government is constantly being pressed to go beyond it or behind it or to retreat from it, then we will find our voices," Hurd said.   In the letter the six so-called grandees, headed by former prime minister Sir Edward Heath, wrote: "To countenance withdrawal from the European Union would be to court disaster."   The letter was published the day after Foreign Secretary Malcolm Rifkind delighted Eurosceptics by warning that the single currency could split the EU for the foreseeable future.   Party officials rushed to deny that civil war was about to break out again over the EU, an issue that has dogged Major's six years as prime minister.   With the election no more than eight months away, Conservative chairman Brian Mawhinney insisted the party was united.   "Both Mr Rifkind and the grandees as you call them were reaffirming and being supportive of the government's position," he told a questioner at a news conference.   Another signatory of the letter, former foreign secretary Lord Geoffrey Howe, denied he and his colleagues were causing splits in the party.   "We are not creating the division.   The truth is that all those who have led the Conservative Party from the days of (World War Two leader Winston) Churchill onwards have been clear about the need for Britain to be involved in Europe," he said.   The other signatories were Lord Peter Carrington, another ex-foreign secretary, Lord William Whitelaw, who was deputy prime minister under Margaret Thatcher, and Sir Leon Brittan, a British member of the European Commission, the EU executive.   Thatcher is flag-bearer for the Euro-sceptics.   John Redwood, one of the leading right-wing contenders to succeed Major, applauded Rifkind for his speech.   "I think the foreign secretary has looked at the damage this scheme is now doing and has looked at the strong opinion in the Conservative Party, which is that we want a common market and not a common government," he said. 
18134 !C12 !CCAT !GCAT !GCRIM  Kevin Maxwell, youngest son of media tycoon Robert Maxwell, whose death in 1991 led to the collapse of his business empire, will not face a second trial on fraud charges, a judge ruled on Thursday.   Judge John Buckley said a further trial "would be unfair, so unfair as to amount to an abuse of power of the court", adding that he had come to the clear view that the proceedings served no further public interest.   The judge later agreed verdicts of "not guilty" should be recorded on all outstanding charges against Kevin and his three fellow defendants.   He ordered their costs -- around 30 million pounds ($46 million) in Britain's most expensive criminal case this century -- paid from state funds.   The judge's ruling ended five years of controversy over hundreds of millions of pounds which were found missing from Maxwell company pension funds after Robert Maxwell disappeared from his yacht in the Atlantic Ocean.   "It is an enormous victory for commonsense and humanity.   I'm enormously relieved, immensely relieved and delighted," an ecstatic and clearly stunned Kevin told a pack of reporters outside the court.   "It's a hell of a moment.   Quite clearly this was a very powerful and uncompromising judgement.   Thank God he stopped it."   In January, Kevin, his brother Ian Maxwell, and former Maxwell director Larry Trachtenberg were acquitted of conspiring to defraud pension funds after an eight-month trial.   "My immediate reaction is not one of anger or bitterness and I don't want to use words like vindictive or vendetta -- let other people do that," said Kevin.   Britain's Serious Fraud Office (SFO) sought to bring charges in a second trial against Kevin Maxwell, Trachtenberg, and two former Maxwell executives, Albert Fuller and Michael Stoney.   All had proceedings stopped against them under the ruling.   The judgement brings into question how the SFO, set up to deal with major financial fraud, will act in the future.   "We have reached the end of the legal process," said SFO director George Staple in a statement.   "The law does not provide any avenue of appeal.   There are serious implications for the prosecution of the largest and most complex criminal cases."   Sources close to the SFO said the judge's decision would put it in an impossible position when it came to tackling the largest and most important frauds and reopen the debate over whether juries are qualified to hear complex fraud cases.   The judge said that the factor that had influenced him most was, "(that) the essential criminality of the prosecution's case was before the jury in the first trial."   "Broadly speaking, if any jury was going to convict in this case, surely it would have been on the pension counts (at the first trial)," he told the court.   Kevin Maxwell, 37, had taken his case before the judge to argue that the impending second trial was "oppressive".   At a news conference, Kevin thanked the judge and said he would not consider a lawsuit against the prosecutors.   "I have an absolute horror of litigation," he said.   "I have no intention of going into a court of law."   Lawyers expressed surprise when the SFO said it wanted a second trial and many said the organisation was trying to salvage its own reputation but, on Thursday, the judge said the verdict in the first trial must now be accepted.   "In a notorious case, people looking on will have their own theories, some better informed than others.   But, since we have a jury system we should all accept their verdicts," Buckley said.   "In the Maxwell case that is overdue.   I accept the jury's verdict.   These proceedings are stayed."   Kevin became Britain's biggest bankrupt in 1992 with debts of over 400 million pounds ($630 million at current rates).   He was released from bankruptcy in 1995.   Kevin -- whose ambition in life had been to follow his father -- always denied conspiring to defraud by misusing pension fund money to prop up the indebted companies.   He said his father, whom he has described as as bully, used pension funds just like any other assets in his corporate empire -- as a source of cash to be moved from one company to another.   Kevin told the first trial that he and his brother had merely obeyed their father's orders. 
18135 !GCAT !GHEA  Studies on African villagers have confirmed the value of eating fish -- but it takes a lot of fish to affect health, Italian researchers reported on Friday.   The study, by Dr Paolo Pauleto and colleagues at the University of Padua, found that Tanzanian villagers who ate a fish-based diet had lower blood pressure and lower cholesterol than their mostly vegetarian neighbours.   They said their findings confirmed controversial research in the 1980s that found "Eskimos" in Greenland had low rates of heart disease despite a diet consisting almost entirely of meat and fish.   The Eskimo results gave birth to a Western obsession with fish oil.   Pauleto's group compared two groups of about 1,200 Bantu villagers living in Tanzania.   "One group live on the shores of Lake Nyasa and their diet includes large amounts of freshwater fish; the other group live in the nearby hills and have a vegetarian diet," they wrote in the Lancet medical journal.   "After adjustment for age, sex and alcohol intake, the fish-consuming group had lower mean blood pressure."   Only 2.8 percent of fish-eaters had high blood pressure, compared to 16.4 percent of those who did not eat fish.   Cholesterol levels were also lower in the group that ate fish and the fish-eaters had higher levels of omega-three fatty acids, which are linked to lower rates of heart disease.   Fish is a rich source of omega-three fatty acids.   Other sources are soya oil, linseed oil and nuts -- all rare in the African diet.   They said the communities were very similar, so that comparisons would be scientifically accurate.   Obesity was unusual in both groups and both ate about 2,100 calories a day.   The vegetarians had less fat and protein in their diet and got most of their energy from grains like maize or rice.   They also drank more beer.   The fish-eaters ate three to four fish a day -- between 300 and 600 grams (10 and 20 ounces) compared to an average of 400 grams a day of meat or fish eaten by Greenland natives.   The fish supplied 60 percent of all fat eaten by the Bantus.   The researchers said their findings were surprising as other studies have shown that people who take fish oil supplements may actually have higher blood pressure.   But they noted that the Bantu villagers were being tested on a lifelong diet, while the supplement studies reflected a short-term change in diet.   "Our findings confirm that the favourable risk factor profile originally described for Eskimos living on a diet rich in omega-three polyunsaturated fatty acids is real, and not overestimated," they concluded. 
18136 !GCAT !GHEA  Cancer patients want to know as much as possible about their disease and do not appreciate being "spared" the truth, British doctors said on Friday.   Dr Paul Symonds and colleagues at the Western Infirmary in Glasgow surveyed 250 patients and found that 79 percent of patients wanted as much information as possible, 96 percent wanted to know they had cancer.   "Most patients also wanted to know the chance of a cure (91 percent) and about side-effects of treatment (94 percent)," they wrote in a report in the British Medical Journal.   They found a trend for patients from more affluent areas to want more information and those from deprived areas to want less.   Only 15 percent did not want any information and six percent wanted only good news.   "Not being told what is wrong with them is the most common complaint that patients make about the medical profession," they said.   "There is evidence that many doctors in Britain fail to tell patients if they have cancer."   Such good intentions were aimed at not alarming or depressing the patient, they said.   "Using the word "cancer', with all its implied connotations, is stressful for both doctors and patients and there may be many reasons why doctors avoid communicating bad news," they added.   A second study said patients did not appreciate efforts by their families to keep bad news from them, either.   John Benson, a general practitioner in Cambridge and Nicky Britten of Guy's Hospital in London interviewed 30 cancer patients about what doctors should tell their families.   They found that although sometimes relatives ask the doctor to keep a cancer patient in the dark about his or her illness while keeping the family quietly informed, the patients themselves would not want this.   "All subjects wished doctors to respect their views rather than those of their family, should they differ," they wrote. 
18137 !GCAT !GHEA  A decline in the proportion of Danish boys being born could be due to chemicals that affect male fertility, a researcher reported on Friday.   Henrik Moeller of the Danish National Research Foundation checked Danish birth records as part of an investigation into theories that hazards to male reproduction were increasing.   He said in a letter to the Lancet medical journal that fewer boys than girls had been born in recent decades.   The proportion of boys to girls peaked at around 1950 and fell precipitously after that.   Moeller noted that many pesticides produced chemicals that mimicked the effects of the female hormone oestrogen, while others suppressed the production of male hormones.   "It is possible that environmental or other agents with toxic properties on the male reproductive system could lead to low male:female ratios," he wrote.   "One such agent, the nematocide dibromochloropropane, is known to reduce the sperm count and lead to an excess of females in the offspring of exposed men."   Researchers have found conflicting evidence of the effects of chemicals on men and their fertility.   Studies over the past four years found declining sperm counts in Denmark, Paris and Scotland, but no decreases in Finland, the French city of Toulouse and New York. 
18138 !GCAT !GHEA  Go ahead and have a big piece of chocolate along with that glass of red wine -- they're both good for you, U.S. doctors advised on Thursday.   Both treats contain phenols, chemicals believed to help stop arteries from clogging up.   "The pleasant pairing of red wine and dark chocolate could have synergistic advantages beyond their complementary tastes," Andrew Waterhouse and colleagues at the University of California at Davis wrote in a letter to the Lancet medical journal.   Phenols are antioxidants that prevent the "rusting" of low-density lipoproteins (LDLs), which are the so-called bad fat component of cholesterol.   When LDLs oxidise they turn into a plaque that can block arteries, causing heart disease.   Waterhouse's group, knowing that chocolate has natural preservatives that stop the fat in it from going rancid, tested chocolate to see how it compared to red wine, known to contain high levels of phenols.   They found quite a lot.   "A cup of hot chocolate containing 7.3 grams (two tablespoons) of cocoa could have 146 mg total phenol, whereas a 41 g (1.5 ounce) piece of chocolate would have 205 mg total phenol," they wrote.   "For comparison, a standard 140 ml (five ounce) serving of red wine contains about 210 mg total phenol."   They said the effects would need to be proven in people, but if they did, chocolate could be a significant source of the healthful chemicals. 
18139 !C12 !CCAT !GCAT !GCRIM  Kevin Maxwell, spared a second fraud charges trial, launched a scathing attack on Britain's Serious Fraud Office, saying it was "fixated with the desire to secure a conviction."   The youngest son of media tycoon Robert Maxwell, whose death in 1991 led to the collapse of his business empire, said he had lived in fear of prison for five years.   Judge John Buckley ruled on Thursday that a further trial "would be unfair, so unfair as to amount to an abuse of power of the court."   He said verdicts of "not guilty' should be recorded on all outstanding charges against Kevin and his three fellow defendants.   He ordered their costs to be paid from state funds.   Costs were estimated at around 30 million pounds ($46 million), making it the most expensive criminal case in Britain this century.   The ruling ended five years of controversy over hundreds of millions of pounds found missing from Maxwell company pension funds after Robert Maxwell disappeared from his yacht in the Atlantic Ocean.   Kevin Maxwell, interviewed by the London Independent newspaper, said the Serious Fraud Office was an investigator and a prosecutor.   He said it had been determined "to clean up the City, to use terror and every weapon at its disposal."   "If you look at the SFO's annual report how do they measure themselves...It is solely (by) their conviction rate."   Maxwell said with the threat of prison now lifted from his shoulders for the first time in five years "I can say to my children I will be coming home.   I will be around which is marvellous." 
18140 !GCAT  Following are some of the major events to have occurred on September 26 in history:   1087 - King William II, son of William the Conqueror, crowned King of England.   1580 - Francis Drake sailed into Plymouth after sailing "The Golden Hind" on its journey round the world in 33 months.   He was the first Briton to circumnavigate the globe and was knighted by Queen Elizabeth in April, 1581.   1687 - The Acropolis in Athens was attacked by the Venetian army trying to eject the Turks.   The Propylaea (entrance hall) and Parthenon were badly damaged.   1820 - Daniel Boone, U.S. frontiersman and legendary hero, died.   Best remembered for helping to establish a passage through the Cumberland Gap in the Appalachian Mountains, opening the route to Kentucky and the west.   1907 - New Zealand, which had been a colony of Great Britain, became a dominion.   1918 - The Battle of the Argonne, the final major battle of World War One, began when a combined force of French and Americans attacked along a 40-mile front.   1934 - The British liner "Queen Mary" was launched from Clydebank, Scotland.   It went on to break the Atlantic crossing record four times.   1937 - U.S. blues singer Bessie Smith died following a car crash.   1945 - Bela Bartok, Hungarian composer of many orchestral and piano works and the opera "Bluebeard's Castle", died in New York.   1957 - The first performance of "West Side Story" by Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim took place in New York.   1960 - Vice-President Richard Nixon and Senator John F. Kennedy held the first nationally televised debate between U.S. presidential candidates.   1961 - Peter Dawson, Australian baritone who sold more than 25 million records, died.   1977 - Entrepreneur Freddie Laker began his "Skytrain" service of cut-price flights to the U.S. from Gatwick Airport.   1980 - In West Germany, 13 people were killed and more than 200 injured in a terrorist bomb explosion at the Munich beer festival.   1984 - China and Britain reached an agreement under which Hong Kong would revert to Chinese sovereignty in 1997.   1989 - Vietnam withdrew its troops from Cambodia, leaving the government it installed to fight alone against Khmer Rouge guerrillas.   1990 - The UN Security Council imposed an air embargo against Iraq in an attempt to resolve the Gulf crisis by increasing economic sanctions.   1990 - Japan and North Korea agreed to open governmental contact to improve relations between the countries.   1990 - East German Prime Minister Lothar de Maiziere presided over the last cabinet meeting before unification with the west.   1994 - President Clinton lifted most of its sanctions against Haiti.   1994 - Algerian security forces shot dead Cherif Gousmi, alias Abou Abdallah, the leader of the country's most feared armed fundamentalist group, the GIA.   1995 - Former prime minister Giulio Andreotti, a symbol of post-war Italy, went on trial in a blaze of publicity, charged with membership of the Mafia. 
18141 !GCAT !GREL  A runaway Scottish bishop who fled his diocese with a divorcee has rocked the Roman Catholic Church in Britain with the revelation that he had a love child with another woman 15 years ago.   Fifteen-year-old Kevin Whibley broke down in tears before millions of television viewers on Thursday night when revealing he is the secret son of Roderick Wright, the Bishop of Argyll.   "I feel angry at the loss of a father but it's too late now.   I don't want him if he comes here," the weeping child said of the father he had seen for a total of two months in his life.   His mother Joanne said she had emerged from the shadows to tell her story because she wanted to "put an end to Kevin's feeling that he should not even exist."   The Scottish Catholic Church confirmed her story and said they discovered the bishop's guilty secret when he tendered his resignation last weekend which the Vatican has now accepted.   The scandal heightened controversy over the celibacy of priests.   Pope John Paul, currently visiting France, is implacably opposed to any change.   But there was no doubting the profound shock in the ecclesiastical establishment.   "This does an enormous amout of damage to the credibility of the church.   I am absolutely sure Catholics will be the butt of jokes and smart talk," said Father Tom Connolly of the Catholic media office.   Cardinal Basil Hume, spiritual leader of 4.4 million English and Welsh Catholics, was visibly shocked by the revelations and said he felt deeply sorry for the boy and her mother   "My heart goes out to people who feel let down and disillusioned," he said, recognising the blow to the church.   Bishop Wright was a priest in a remote area of Scotland when he first met Joanne Whibley.   He was instructing her in the Roman Catholic faith.   When Wright resigned and disappeared at the same time as mother-of-three Kathleen Macphee, the parishioners of the popular 55-year-old bishop felt sympathy for his plight.   That evaporated after the revelation of his earlier affair and the child he had refused to acknowledge.   "Previously people here were willing to forgive and to say a prayer for him, but tonight they feel let down," said one irate parishioner.   Whibley's tearful revelations in a heart-rending BBC interview put celibacy under the harshest spotlight since Irish Bishop Eamon Casey resigned four years ago after admitting he had a love child with his American mistress.   Joanne Whibley, her voice breaking with a mixture of anger, hurt and relief, said: "I am quite sure there are other women in relationships with priests who would want to end the secret lives.   "I would not want this trivialised, this pathetic story.   I would want it to serve some purpose." 
18142 !C13 !C21 !CCAT !G15 !G153 !GCAT !GDIP !GHEA !GPOL  The British government on Thursday decided to put its full-scale beef cattle cull on hold in a move certain to spark a clash with the European Union over the mad cow crisis.   "The new scientific evidence now available means that further work is needed on appropriate culling strategies," a spokesman for Prime Minister John Major said after a two-hour meeting of ministers at his London residence.    "For the present the government is not proceeding with the selective cull but will return to cull options in the light of the developing science and of discussions on the certified herds scheme," the spokesman said.   Major, Chancellor Kenneth Clarke, Agriculture Minister Douglas Hogg and other ministers met to review evidence from Oxford University scientists that mad cow disease would die out naturally and in the context of a framework agreed at an EU summit in Florence in June.   The spokesman stressed: "This is not a departure from the Florence framework which states that the UK eradication plan "shall be adapted if necessary in the light of scientific and epidemiological developments'." 
18143 !GCAT !GREL  Leaders of the Welsh Anglican church on Thursday voted by the narrowest of margins to lift the ban on women becoming priests.   The Church in Wales, which was the only Anglican church in Britain still barring women from the priesthood, approved the move by just one vote at a tense meeting of its governing body held in Lampeter, south Wales.   A bill to allow women priests just reached its necessary two-thirds majority among lay members and the clergy.   The six Welsh bishops were all in favour of the reform following changes made by the Church in England, Scotland and Ireland.   The Church of England approved the ordination of women in 1992.   The vote will allow nearly 80 Welsh women deacons to become priests.   Of the Anglican communion's 37 self-governing churches around the world, 17 ordain women priests.   These churches account for about half of the world's 80 million Anglicans.   Earlier, the Archbishop of Wales, the Rt Rev Alwyn Rice-Jones, said continued opposition to women priests would leave Welsh Anglicans isolated and split within the Church.   "We will simply slide backwards and nobody will be prepared to listen to us.   We will just be a forgotten province of the Anglican Church."   Outside the meeting, jubilant women deacons hugged one another as they celebrated the breakthrough.   Many had threatened to leave the Welsh Church and move to England because of their frustration at not being ordained.   Many have been deacons since 1980, when the Church in Wales first opened its doors to women clergy. 
18144 !GCAT !GENT  London's most controversial art exhibition of the year, featuring graphic works by photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, opened on Thursday with first-time visitors convinced it was art and not pornography.   Art critics rounded on the Hayward Gallery for dropping a photo of a scantily clad girl after complaints from child protection agencies that it could encourage paedophiles.   Mapplethorpe's most notorious photos of sado-masochistic homosexuals were intermingled with portraits of stars Arnold Schwarnegger and Susan Sarandon in the largest exhibition of his work ever staged.   He died of AIDS in 1989.   A sign at the door warned visitors the photos were sexually explicit and not suitable for viewing by children.   Acting on police advice, gallery director Susan Brades excluded a picture of a three-year-old girl named Rosie.   "There is enormous concern about the way in which images of children are used or might be used or understood," Brades said.   But the subject of the controversial photo, Rosie Bowdrey, now 22.   thought the fuss ridiculous.   She told reporters: "It is a very, very sweet picture, it captures childhood innocence."   Art critic Brian Sewell said: "There is nothing pornographic about the Rosie picture.   I don't think anybody would have noticed anything about it if the gallery hadn't made such a fuss and expunged it."   The state-funded gallery expects up to 100,000 visitors to the two-month-long exhibition by Mapplethorpe.   Queues quickly built up on day one but no visitors fainted with shock at the graphic images.   Self-portraits abounded with Mapplethorpe depicting himself as a devil with horns.   Another notorious shot showed him with a bull whip handle up his anus.   "This is definitely art," said Swiss visitor Mattheuz Benz from Zurich.   "These photos are about beauty.   The ones that are supposed to be shocking are next to ones of flowers."   "It has been a very cleverly marketed gimmick," said Paul Hudson from the northern English town of Liverpool.   "People coming here know what to expect.   It is not shocking at all.   It is art as it provokes a reaction."   German visitor Sebastian Engenhoffer from Cologne said: "It doesn't shock me at all.   I don't especially like it.   It's far too aesthetic to me." 
18145 !GCAT !GENT  All you needed was money.   But that fell short when the earliest known snatch of film of the Beatles playing together went under the hammer on Thursday.   The 35-second film of the Fab Four playing at Liverpool's Casanova Club on Valentine's Day 1961 failed to sell after bidding reached just 15,000 pounds ($24,000), well under the 70,000 pounds expected, a spokesman for auctioneers Sotheby's said.   The film was shot as the Beatles began their historic rise to pop stardom and 18 months before a black and white television film of the band at the Cavern Club in 1962, which until recently was thought to be the earliest footage.   But Paul McCartney's recording notes for the song Hey Jude did go to a mysterious private buyer for 25,300 pounds at the sale of rock memorabilia, Sotheby's said.   Disappointment over the film was more than made up for by the record 66,400 pounds paid for handwritten lyrics by John Lennon at the first part of the auction on Wednesday.   An unnamed private British collector paid the record amount for the words to the song "Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite" from the Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band album, Sotheby's said.   It shattered the previous record for handwritten Lennon lyrics, the 45,400 pounds paid for "I Am The Walrus" in 1993.   But the price was short of the overall record for lyrics by members of the Fab Four, held by Paul McCartney whose "Getting Better" sold for 161,000 pounds last year.   Individuals vied with institutions and anonymous purchasers for a slice of rock history at the auction, the first day of which was held at London's Hard Rock cafe as part of its worldwide 25th anniversary celebrations.   The guitar strap used by legendary guitarist Jimi Hendrix went for 11,500 pounds, a Les Paul guitar played by Pete Townshend of the Who went for 14,950 pounds and a pair of John Lennon's glasses fetched 6,325 pounds.   In another disappointment, the lyric for the Beatles' "With a Little Help From My Friends" was withdrawn from the sale after it failed to reach its estimated price of around 80,000 pounds.   But the sale did prove once again that, for wealthy rock fans, oldies are still goldies.   An acoustic guitar signed by the Gallagher brothers, Liam and Noel, from the British pop band Oasis -- who have claimed to be bigger than the Beatles -- fetched just 1,092 pounds.   ($1=.6412 Pound) 
18146 !GCAT !GREL  Runaway Catholic bishop Roderick Wright, who resigned after vanishing with a divorcee, is the father of a 15-year-old boy by another woman, his church said on Thursday.   In a startling development certain to rock a church facing calls for an end to the celibacy of Roman Catholic priests, authorities confirmed he was the teenager's father.   The boy's mother, Joanna Whibley, said she wanted to make the matter of her son Kevin public to end the secrecy of her relationship.   Wright offered his resignation from the post of Bishop of Argyll and the Isles, Scotland, after disappearing from his home last weekend at the same time as divorcee Kathleen Macphee.   The scandal echoed the case in Ireland of Eamon Casey, who resigned as the Bishop of Galway after it was revealed that he was the father of a child born to his American mistress.   Joanna Whibley was close to tears when she confessed in an interview with BBC television: "I must unburden myself and start my life and put an end to Kevin's feeling that he shouldn't even exist."   "Although Kevin knows it's his dad, I know it's his dad, and Roddy knows he's his dad, although he has been an absent father, Kevin still needs the fact to be known."   Kevin Whibley was equally upset as he told the interviewer from his home in southern England: "I haven't seen him for more than two months all put together in my whole life and it was useless then because I have been awkward talking to him.   "He didn't speak to me, but that's probably because I was cold towards him."   The Roman Catholic church in Scotland confirmed in a statement that the story of his secret life was correct and that they had failed to disclose it when they announced his resignation on Monday.   "The church authorities were made aware of the fact that Roderick Wright was the father of a child known as Kevin Whibley, born in 1981," they said a statement on Thursday.   "This was in fact one of the main reasons given for his resignation and was communicated to the Vatican with his resignation.   "It was not for the Church authorities to make such confidential information public."   There was no disguising the bitterness in the teenage boy's voice when he told the BBC: "I feel angry at the loss of a father and it's too late now.   It's too late now.   I don't even want him if he comes now, it is too late."   He said: "I would like it for a start if it got rid of the whole celibacy rule for the church."   Britain's leading Roman Catholic cardinal complained after Wright's resignation that his country was obsessed by sex and said the church could relax its centuries-old insistence on the celibacy of priests.   Cardinal Basil Hume, who said he had known nothing about Wright's love child, said the Catholic church was losing many excellent candidates for the priesthood because they wanted to be free to marry.   "It is not divine law.   It is Church law, so any Pope or General Council could change it," he said. 
18147 !GCAT !GCRIM  British fraud trials are set for a radical shake-up after the failure of a second trial against Kevin Maxwell, youngest son of late media baron Robert Maxwell, a source close to the Serious Fraud Office said on Thursday.   Judge John Buckley's closed the final chapter in the five-year Maxwell saga by refusing the SFO's attempt to press ahead with a second trial against Kevin Maxwell.   George Staple, director of the SFO, said after the ruling that it had "serious implications for the prosecution of the largest and most complex criminal cases".   Kevin and his brother Ian were acquitted in January after an eight month trial and Judge Buckley said that to continue with a second trial against Kevin would "serve no further public interest".   He later recorded a not guilty verdict.   "To pursue them (these proceedings) in the face of the jury's unanimous (not guilty) verdict in the first trial would test both the public's confidence and the integrity of the system," he said.   Staple said the charges relating to alleged faud against pension funds, banks and other institutions had been split to make them more manageable for a jury but the ruling meant "very serious charges will not now be heard".   While the SFO is expected to lobby for a change in the way large fraud trials are conducted, calls for radical changes to the SFO and even its disbanding are likely following the ruling.   Britain's opposition Labour party said "serious questions must now be asked about the future operations of the SFO".   Among the options under consideration are modifying the jury trial system for complex fraud trials, with either specially selected jury members or a tribunal which could assess a large, complex case in one go, the source close to the SFO said.   The practice of severing, or dividing up charges into separate, more manageable, trials, would have to be reviewed in the wake of the Maxwell trial, the source said, adding that in deciding to go ahead with the second trial, Staple had weighed up all the views and had made a "brave decision".   But the judge said he could not allow it to proceed because of the cost involved, the strain on the defendants and their families and for fear of suggesting to the public that the authorities did not accept the verdict of a jury.   The SFO was set up in 1988 to prosecute serious or complex financial fraud, but has been widely criticised for failing to secure convictions in some notable cases.   It has strongly defended its record and says its overall conviction rate is around 63 percent.   Of 150 trials to date, involving 338 defendants, 213 have been convicted.   "We feel that our conviction record speaks for itself, it is a respectable record.   We are dealing with some of the most difficult and complex cases in the criminal justice system," an SFO spokeswoman told Reuters.   But despite the SFO's record the public perception of the SFO rests with its high-profile failures.   These include the acquittal of George Walker in 1994 for an alleged fraud against creditors and shareholders in leisure group Brent Walker and the Blue Arrow trial which lasted a year and ended with acquittals for all the defendants.   The SFO maintains it has had some high-profile successes, citing the conviction of Peter Clowes in the Barlow Clowes case and four trials which have led to convictions in the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) fiasco.   But concerns over the cost of such cases are likely to rouse most public condemnation when the final bill for the Maxwell trials, including more than 20 million pounds ($31.19 million) in legal aid, is finally known.   (Legal aid is taxpayers' money provided to poor citizens to fund a legal defence).   The SFO spokeswoman on Thursday confirmed its own investigation and prosecution had cost in the region of 11.3 million pounds, with 300,000 pounds spent since January.   ($1=.6412 Pound) 
18148 !GCAT !GDIP !GPOL  A Labour government would end Britain's growing isolation in world affairs by taking a positive lead in Europe and boosting the Commonwealth, Robin Cook, the party's foreign affairs spokesman, said on Thursday.   In a speech to businessmen in Leeds, northern England, Cook promised an end to the "narrow nationalism" of the ruling Conservatives, which he said was making Britain the odd man out in world forums and costing it opportunities in global business.   "Increasingly the Conservative Party speaks not with the voice of a great party that once understood Britain's place in the world, but with the whine of little England," Cook said.   Labour could provide a fresh start because it understood the real world better than the Conservatives and wanted to be part of it.   "We want to get Britain back to the heart of Europe, leading in Europe, leading reform in Europe, putting an end to the marginalisation which has done so much damage to our country's interests," Cook said.   He said the priorities for the EU were to open up to the emerging democracies of central and eastern Europe and, in the economic sphere, to realise the full potential of the single market and tackle unemployment.   Cook called for a new European stategy to combat unemployment, improve competitiveness and promote growth.   He also said Britain would use its presidency of the EU in the first half of 1998 to put new impetus into the development of Trans European Networks in the fields of transport, telecommunications and energy.   A European Recovery Fund should be established to harness the top-notch credit rating of EU institutions to raise finance for infrastructure and training projects to generate jobs and improve skills, Cook added.   "The aim should be to operate the fund at a deficit in periods of recession and in surplus in periods of growth, with balance over the long term," he said.   At the biennial summit of the Commonwealth that Britain will chair in autumn 1997, Cook said he would propose measures to improve economic cooperation and dialogue among the 53 members of the group, which links Britain to its former colonies.   He also promised to push for effective mechanisms to ensure all Commonwealth members were committed to good governance and political and civil rights.   In addition to a six-month stint as EU president and hosting the Commonwealth summit, whoever wins the election, due by May, will also host the second Asia-Europe summit in spring 1998 and then the annual summit of the Group of Seven industrial nations.   "There has never been such a rich series of opportunities for Britain to take the lead in world affairs.   We cannot afford to fumble them," Cook said.   "That is the Millenium Challenge for the next government.   Labour is ready to face that challenge." 
18149 !C42 !CCAT !E41 !ECAT !GCAT !GJOB  The British railway workers' trade union said on Thursday that strike action at five train operating companies planned for Friday or Monday had been called off due to either settlement or postponement.   Late on Thursday afternoon the RMT union said that action planned on the trunk InterCity West Coast line on Friday and Monday had been suspended.   Earlier it had announced the postponement until September 28 of action planned for Monday on lines run by ScotRail in Scotland, pending new talks.   A ScotRail spokesman told the PA news agency the company was happy that passengers would not be inconvenienced on Monday and hoped the dispute could be resolved.   This morning strikes planned on Anglia Railways, Cardiff Railways and Stagecoach Holdings Plc's South West Trains were all called off following settlement with the RMT.   The threat of industrial action remains at three companies where ballot results are expected next week, however.   These are Central Trains and two London suburban companies, South Central and South Eastern, which are operated under franchise contract by France's Generale des Eaux.   -- London Newsroom +44 171 542 7717 
18150 !C42 !CCAT !E41 !ECAT !GCAT !GJOB  British postal workers on Thursday called off two one-day strikes when union leaders decided to re-ballot members on whether to continue industrial action, the Press Association news agency reported.   The executive of the Communication Workers Union will urge 130,000 sorting office and delivery staff to back a new series of strikes in the long running dispute over pay and working practices.   The strikes had been called for Friday and next Monday.   The government had threatened to suspend the Post Office's monopoly for a further three months if the strikes went ahead.   "I welcome this move by the unions, which is long overdue," said Ian Lang, President of the Board of Trade.   "I am glad that the disruption to business and the public which these strikes have caused has been stopped."   The managing director of DHL International (UK) Ltd, Nick Butcher, said the company welcomed the decision by the CWU.   He also called for the deregulation of the postal market, underpinned by the protection of the universal postal service.   "DHL has consistently called for a level playing field, where fair and even competition can take place," Butcher added.   "The provision of a universal postal service at a uniform rate must underpin any such liberlisation.   If there is a serious intention to change the nature of postal services in Britain, the progressive way must be to open the market completely," he added. 
18151 !GCAT !GDEF !GDIP  By Nicholas Doughty, Diplomatic Correspondent   NATO Secretary-General Javier Solana said on Thursday he was confident that the Western alliance and Russia could close a troubled chapter in their relations and build a real European security partnership.   Preparing to meet Russian Foreign Minister Yevgeny Primakov in Vienna on Friday, Solana said the alliance would offer a real and substantial formal relationship with Russia, to try to ease its concerns about the expansion of NATO into Eastern Europe.   "Our relationship with Russia will not be an optional add-on," he said in a speech to the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London.   "By being institutionalised, increased stability and predictability will be given to this relationship and we will hopefully avoid the ups and downs of recent years.   "And at long last, we will begin to enjoy the strategic benefits of Russia and NATO working together."   Russia has objected to NATO plans to take in countries from Eastern Europe but has welcomed a French suggestion that it should take part in the alliance summit next year which is expected to open negotiations with potential new members.   There have also been differences over Bosnia, the Gulf and other areas, although Russia has contributed troops to the NATO-led peace force in Bosnia.   The United States has proposed a formal "charter" to enshrine the new relationship between NATO and Russia, which could be ready in time for the NATO summit.   "I think that after talking to Russian leaders for a long time...we will achieve what we want," Solana told Reuters in an interview.   "I do think we'll be able to do it.   He said any charter or agreement with Russia would contain provision for closer political and military cooperation, although it was too early to say how exactly it would work.   "What is important is for the Russians to know that we are prepared to go quite far," he said.   Next year's summit would, he hoped, start the process of NATO expansion, seal agreement with Russia and offer enhanced military cooperation for those countries unable or unwilling to join the 16-nation alliance.   Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic are widely viewed as the front-runners in the race to join NATO.   "I do think we will be able to come out with something that will satisfy just about every country," Solana said.   "I do not guarantee that 100 percent, but we are making an enormous effort." 
18152 !C12 !C13 !C42 !CCAT !E41 !ECAT !GCAT !GCRIM !GJOB  The legal side of the Maxwell saga may have finally closed on Thursday with the release of Kevin Maxwell from any further charges, but British pension fund experts say the case has left indelible marks on the industry.   Both Kevin Maxwell and his brother Ian, sons of tycoon Robert Maxwell who disappeared from his yacht in 1991, were cleared in January this year of conspiracy to defraud the Maxwell group pension funds.   More than 400 million pounds ($600 million) went missing.   "The whole occupational pension movement in the UK has been deeply affected by the Maxwell affair," said Anne Robinson, director general of the National Association of Pension Funds (NAPF).   "The Pensions Act was subsequently designed to ensure that such problems would never happen again."   The saga has had most effect on occupational or company-run pension schemes, but the Financial Services Act, which regulates the selling of private pensions and pension advice, was also affected by the Maxwell affair.   The exact implications of the Pensions Act will not be known until April next year when it comes into force.   A spokesman for Legal & General noted that the Maxwell scandal "kickstarted the Goode Committee and Report, which looked at what could and couldn't be done by pension fund managers and what various roles and responsibilites were".   Robinson added that since the Goode Report, the Minimum Funding Requirement (MFR) and the rule that one third of company scheme trustees must be member-nominated had been introduced.   A new pensions Ombudsman and an Office of Pensions Regulatory Authority (OPRA) are stll to be set up in 1997.   Fund managers said that pre-Maxwell, neither companies nor employees paid much attention to in-house pension schemes.   Companies took on the investment risk, effectively promising employees a certain return at retirement, without realising what it was costing them or exploiting the facility to attract staff.   Employees knew that to leave a company scheme early jeopardised full final payment but accustomed to state support, they hardly realised how important pension provisions were.   Nor did they imagine how company funds could be so mis-used.   Now, with less government social support and greater labour mobility, employees are being forced to take greater responsibility for their investments and financial future.   "The balance has shifted from the company to the trustees of pension funds," said Robinson.   "There is quite a complex system of checks and balances which they are required to monitor and understand.   It can't be taken as lightly as before -- trustees can be personally fined or sent to jail if they are negligent."   The Legal & General spokesman said increased costs following the new legislation, especially for smaller firms, had made many review their current pension schemes and possible alternatives.   Ideas like group personal pensions, a collection of individual personal pensions, are being considered.   They are a type of money purchase arrangement where final pension depends on defined contributions (what the employee puts in) rather than defined benefit (relation to final salary).   Kenneth Inglis, chairman of Fleming Investment Management, confirms new interest in this area.   "Following the recent Pensions Act, businesses are increasingly concerned about controlling the costs of managing their pension schemes...more and more are looking to money purchase pensions rather than traditional final salary pensions."   Money purchase assets could reach 50 billion pounds in the next 10 years, providing cover for more than one million people.   But the NAPF's Robinson said the new legislation was only half the battle.   "We are most concerned that some provision for independent custody of assets is included, which it is not at present," she said.   She would also like greater simplicity and clarity in the rules.   "We have all the legislation but the way it has been enacted is very prescriptive.   We want more people to come in to occupational pension schemes but they need simple, clear explanations of what they have to do."   ($1=.6412 Pound) 
18153 !E12 !ECAT !G15 !G151 !G154 !GCAT !GPOL  Former British Conservative Prime Minister Sir Edward Heath is to use a speech on Thursday evening to distance himself from criticisms made by Foreign Secretary Malcolm Rifkind of the plan for a single European currency.   An aide said, however, that Heath was anxious that his speech in London to the European Movement should not "fan the flames of disunity" within the ruling party.   "He is critical of what Malcolm Rifkind said in his Zurich speech about EMU (economic and monetary union) being divisive.   He doesn't believe that is the case," the aide said.    "But there are aspects of Mr Rifkind's speech he is quite happy with," the aide added.   Heath disputes Rifkind's contention, expressed in a speech in Zurich on Wednesday that since some EU countries will be unable to join a single currency because of their economic shortcomings, it will divide the bloc for the foreseeable future.   The aide said EMU has been agreed by all EU states and is open to all of them.   He said Heath sees it as "another great leap forward in the process of European integration".   -- London Newsroom +44 171 5427767 
18154 !C42 !CCAT !E21 !E211 !E41 !ECAT !GCAT !GJOB  British profit-related pay schemes should not have tax relief removed from them, Confederation of British Industry director-general Adair Turner said on Thursday.   "We would not like to see a curtailing of the current tax relief," Turner told a news conference in London.   "We think PRP is one of a set of mechanisms that has helped to link pay to performance."   A report in the Financial Times newspaper last week said the government was considering axeing tax relief on PRP.   The UK Treasury dismissed the report as speculation.   -- Mike Peacock, London Newsroom +44 171 542 5109 
18155 !E12 !ECAT !G15 !G151 !G154 !GCAT  As Finland hovers on the brink of entry to Europe's exchange rate mechanism, many analysts here believe the perceived medium-term economic or political benefits of bringing the markka into the current ERM regime are illusory.   The luxury of huge 15 percent ERM fluctuation bands makes the chosen central exchange rate little more than a symbolic target.   As a result, there is little or no exchange discipline or currency-risk reduction inherent in the existing system.   Moreover, many analysts believe that maintenance of 15 percent ERM bands alone will not be sufficient to satisfy the Maastricht criterion on exchange rate stability prior to European monetary union.   Hence, the political imperative of entering the ERM quickly is also notional at best.   "An ERM with 15 percent bands is of no practical value and and it's not even clear whether its necessary or sufficient for qualification for EMU," said Peter Von Maydell, senior currency economist at UBS Ltd.   Finnish Prime Minister Paavo Lipponen is pushing for a peg, in a bid for tight links with the EU to ensure closer political connections with the west for Finland, which joined the EU in 1995 after decades in the shadow of the former Soviet Union.   But the central bank has been reluctant, with officials voicing concerns that a link may expose the markka to speculative pressures and fuel volatility.   The markka rallied to 2.99 per mark early on Thursday, its strongest level in nine months, as speculation about the exact timing of ERM entry intensified.   The chairman of the Bank of Finland's board of parliamentary supervisors IIkka Kanerva said ERM entry was unlikely this month, putting the market focus on early October as likely date for a joint lira and markka ERM fixing.   Yet, analysts questioned the logic of trading on back of speculation about the entry level.   "The focus on the central rate in a 15-percent-band system is a little misplaced," said Paul Meggyesi, senior currency strategist at Deutsche Morgan Grenfell.   "With such wide margins of error it's hard to see why ERM entry would change anyone's investment decision within Finland or toward Finland."   Even if Finland attempts to informally target narrower 2.25 percent bands, that some analysts believe will be necessary to satisfy the EMU criteria, the chances of holding the erratic markka in those bands over two years is slight, they said.   "In our view, the 2.25 percent rule will be used by the EU as a way of identifying the countries who will have the least problem with fixed exchange rates and moving to EMU in 1999," said Joe Prendergast, currency strategist at Merrill Lynch.   That would exclude Spain and Italy, for example, from the first move to EMU, even if they do manage to meet a relaxed interpretation of the other Maastricht criteria, he said.   "Finland would have severe problems holding a narrow band regime for long, mainly because it is subject to strong exchange rate shocks that do not effect the rest of the European core," said Prendergast.   The Finnish economy, and hence the competitiveness of the markka, is heavily dependent on volatile commodity prices, with paper and pulp products accounting for about 40 percent of its export revenue.   This is a stark contrast to the core European currencies to which Finland intends to peg the markka closely.   In 1994 and 1995, for example, the markka was one of the strongest currencies in the world, in contrast to exchange rate weakness against the German mark elsewhere in Europe.   Conversely, the markka's devaluation against its European currency unit peg in 1992, prior to its later flotation, was a precursor to the exit of sterling and the lira from the ERM later that year.   Moreover, neighbouring Sweden is Finland's biggest trade competitor for pulp products and it is currently deeply divided about the merits of joining either the ERM or EMU.   "Finland is to Sweden what Ireland is to the UK, for example, and it is hard to imagine the markka not being heavily influenced by the swings of a floating Swedish crown given such trade interdependence," said Meggyesi at Deutsche.   Even as Finnish industry chiefs protest the recent rise of the markka, analysts say Finland's strong current account surplus, balanced budget and low inflation argue for an even stronger markka right now.   Deutsche argues for an equilibrium level as low at 2.85 per mark, for example.   But Von Maydell at UBS said that while there may be a good case for saying a central rate about 3.00 per mark is fair value right now, that may not be the case over the full course of the economic cycle.   --London newsroom +44 171 542 6762 
18156 !GCAT !GSPO  (Compiled for Reuters by Media Monitors)   THE AUSTRALIAN   The break into stardom may never come for Phil Donahue as he is in the next position to centre after Andrew Ettinghausen.   Since ET came to the Sharks club 10 years ago the club has had a clear central player, one who will have more and more of the spotlight as Cronulla gets closer to the finals.   Page 20.   --   Tony Popovic was cautioned at yesterday's Simba Four Nations Cup defeat to South Africa for deliberately handling the ball when a Craig Foster corner went into a crowded South African goalmouth.   Page 21.   --   Tony Lockett, star of the Sydney Swans, has declared himself fit for tomorrow night's preliminary final against Essendon but did not train.   This announcement has ended much speculation over whether Lockett would play with his groin injury.   Page 22.   --   THE SYDNEY MORNING HERALD   If the Bears look like they are losing at tomorrow's semi-final against St George, test winger Brett Dallas will be sent on with a pain killing injection.   The move will only be caused by a desperate situation as Dallas has quite a severe foot injury.   Page 44.   --   Michele Timms is one of the first of the 32 international basketball stars to be offered a contract to play in the new Women's National Basketball Association in the United States.   Potential earnings from such a signing are said to be around the A$100,000mark.   Page 44.   --   The two semi-finals rivals Bob Fulton of Manly and John Lang of Cronulla have more in common than competing against each other in a rugby league semi-final - they were coach and player respectively for Eastern Suburbs in 1980.   Page 42.   --   THE AGE   Sydney has named Tony Lockett in tomorrow night's preliminary AFL final against Essendon, but has conceded that the champion will not be close to fully fit and as a result will not be kicking a bag of goals.   The Bombers have named half-forward Mark Mercui but the Swans think he will not play as he has two broken ribs.   Page 1.   --   The club to be formed from the proposed merger between Melbourne and the Hawks is said to have looked to Kevin Sheedy as its first coach.   Sheedy was coy about answering this allegation yesterday, saying he had signed for another two years with Essendon.   Pge C8.   --   When Croatia meets Australia tomorrow in a Davis Cup World Group qualifying tie, the eyes of a nation will be on world number four Goran Ivanisevic.   The question remains whether the support of his country will lift or be a burden to the tennis great.   PageC6.   --   HERALD SUN   Four players suffering from injuries have been selected for tomorrow's AFL preliminary finals matches.   The four are: Tony Lockett of the Sydney Swans with a groin injury, Matthew Clarke with a bad ankle, Michael Voss also with a bad ankle and Essendon's Mak Mercuri who has rib problems.   Page 120.   --   Kevin Sheedy has signed on as the coach of Essendon for his nineteenth year.   Sheedy has been signed for two more years with the option of extending for a further year at the end.   Page 116.   --   Tony Jensen, North Melbourne's Olympic guard, will quit the Giants and will more than likely play basketball for Newcastle next year.   It is believed that settling into the big city of Melbourne has been the reason for his return to the calmer waters of the Falcon's team.   Page 113.   --   THE DAILY TELEGRAPH   If Terry Hill of Manly plays against Cronulla in Sunday's rugby league elimination final he may miss out on a place in the grand final, as even yesterday he suffered a major setback by running on his suspect ankle.   Page 120.   --   Rugby union officials are pushing Channel 7 to show live TV action of Super 12 games on Saturday nights in an attempt to boost the popularity of Super 12 games.   Page 114.   --   With the Australian Socceroos suffering a 2-0 loss to South Africa in the Four Nations Tournament last night, coach Eddie Thomson may make as many as four player changes to the final line up for the Socceroos final game against Kenya.   Page 112.   -- Reuters Sydney Newsroom 61-2 9373-1800 
18157 !GCAT !GSPO  All tickets available to the public for Saturday's Australian Football League (AFL) semifinal between the Sydney Swans and Essendon at the Sydney Cricket Ground have been sold, AFL officials said on Thursday.   Only 160 tickets were left for sale on Thursday morning and those had gone quickly, the AFL said in a statement.   The AFL had just over 28,000 tickets available for sale to the public.   The SCG's capacity is 44,000, a spokeswoman for the AFL said, with the remaining seats available for Sydney Cricket Ground Trust members.   -- Sydney Newsroom 61-2 9373-1800 
18158 !GCAT !GSPO  National soccer league club UTS Olympic will play home matches this season at Belmore Sports Ground after agreeing to share tenancy with rugby league side Sydney Bulldogs, Olympic officials said on Thursday.   Olympic had used six different grounds for home matches in recent years, including Leichhardt Oval, the Sydney Football Stadium and St George Stadium.   Olympic manager Steve Darby told reporters the move was part of a trend where he expected clubs from different sports to combine and share facilities as "super sports clubs".   Darby said Belmore was central to Olympic's base of supporters, had more corporate boxes and better parking and access to public transport than other grounds the club had used.   "There are many economic advantages and it makes sense to have different sports combining to make maximum use of a ground's facilities," Darby said.   Olympic coach David Ratcliffe said the club would not be able to train on the ground but hoped to come to an agreement with the local council to find an alternative training venue.   -- Sydney Newsroom 61-2 9373-1800 
18159 !GCAT !GSPO  LEVIN, Sept 19 - It would be a rarity for the Horowhenua rugby team to play a home game before a crowd of almost 40,000, but that prospect is on the cards for Saturday's National Provincial Championship (NPC) third division clash with Marlborough, NZPA reports.   That matchup will be the curtain raiser to the first division meeting between Wellington and Auckland.   The arrangement has arisen from an offer by the Wellington Rugby Union for Horowhenua to play a home game at Athletic Park as a curtain raiser to an NPC first division match, in return for a percentage of the gate.   The Wellington Rugby Union is    expecting a near-capacity crowd.   In accepting the offer, the Horowhenua Rugby Union took into account the success of a match involving North Otago as a curtain raiser to a first division fixture at Carisbrook last season, deputy chairman Eion Hicks said.   "It will be a big buzz for the (Horowhenua) players," he said.   Former All Black and Wellington lock Chris Tregaskis will return to his old stomping ground when he takes the field for top-of-the-table Marlborough.    At 2.04m, Tregaskis will have a 12cm height advantage over the tallest of Horowhenua's lineout jumpers.   Other players on loan to Marlborough, or who have moved to the province to continue their representative careers, named for Saturday's match include former Canterbury captain Rob Penney, fellow Cantabrian Kelvin McDowell and Wellington products Jason Adamson and Matt Kerr.   Horowhenua coach Jim Barker has made only one change to the team which lost 24-10 to Wanganui last week.   Promising halfback Wearemu Putaka has been relegated to the reserves, with the more experienced pair of Robert Hakaraia and Joe Karauria bracketed    in his place.   Teams -   Horowhenua: Andrew Lovatt, Tia Aiono, Paul Hirini (vice-captain), Riki Te Tomo, Moses Saafi, Kyle Williams, Robert Hakaraia or Joe Karauria, Jack Noble, Luke Saulbrey, Slade Sturmey (captain), Jarrod Parlato, Dwayne Jackson, Dean Baoumgren, Jesse McMillan, Jeremy Hapeta.   Reserves: Wearemu Putaka, Dave Tiraha, Vaughan Cook, Adam Cooper, Mark Morrison, Blair Fitzgibbon, Chris Putaka.    Marlborough: Craig Forsyth, Ra Pomare, Steve Crockett, Simon Breeze, Paul Phillips, Leon McDonald, Kelvin McDowell, Rob Penney, Cory Holdaway, Chris Tregaskis, Matt Kerr, Mark Mains, Paul Nicholson, Jason Adamson, Bevan Johnson. 
18160 !GCAT !GSPO  Scoreboard in the third limited overs international between Pakistan and India for the Sahara Cup played at the Toronto Cricket, Skating and Curling Club on Wednesday.   (India won toss).   India    Nayan Mongia lbw Akram 2    Sachin Tendulkar c Sohail b Akram 2    Rahul Dravid c Elahi b Saqlain 46    Mohammad Azharuddin st Moin b Sohail  38    Vinod Kambli st Moin b Mushtaq 29    Ajay Jadeja b Akram 23    Sunil Joshi run out 31    Javagal Srinath c Saqlain b Akram 3    Ashish Kapoor c Mushtaq b Saqlain 0    Venkatesh Prasad not out 0    Anil Kumble run out 2    Extras (8lb, 7w, *1nb) 15    Total 191   50 overs.   Fall of wickets: 5-1, 14-2, 88-3, 103-4, 133-5, 179-6, 187- 7, 189-8, 189-9, 191.   Bowling: Akram 9-0-35-4 (*1nb 5w), Younis 7-1-15-0 (1w), Mahmood 5-1-28-0, Mushtaq 10-2-29-1, Sohail 9-1-31-1 (1w), Saqlain 10-0-45-2.   * Batsmen scored run from Akram nb.   Pakistan    Saeed Anwar c Tendulkar b Kumble 28    Salim Elahi c Kambli b Srinath 4    Aamir Sohail c Mongia b Prasad 1    Ijaz Ahmed c Mongia b Prasad 0    Salim Malik lbw Kumble 27    Azhar Mahmood bowled Kumble 10    Wasim Akram st Mongia b Kumble 0    Moin Khan c Mongia b Srinath 42    Saqlain Mushtaq c Tendulkar b Prasad  9    Mushtaq Ahmed st Mongia b Joshi 1    Waqar Younis not out 0    Extras: (1b, 10lb, 3w) 14    Total 136   42.4 overs   Fall of wickets: 9-1, 12-2, 16-3, 63-4, 66-5, 66-6, 91-7, 124-8, 131-9, 136.   Bowling: Srinath 7.4-0-20-2 (1w), Prasad 9-3-22-3 (1w), Kapoor 6-0-27-0, Joshi 9-1-27-1, Kumble 7-2-12-4, Tendulkar 4- 0-17-0 (1w).   India won by 55 runs.   Player of the match: Rahul Dravid.   Umpires: Dave Orchard and David Shepherd.   India leads the five-match series 2-1.   Matches four and five will be played on Saturday and Sunday. 
18161 !GCAT !GSPO  Aided by some gritty batting, fine bowling and poor umpiring, India swept to a 2-1 lead in the Sahara Cup cricket series with a 55-run victory over Pakistan in Toronto on Wednesday.   The match, played on a deteriorating wicket at the Toronto Cricket, Skating and Curling Club, favoured the bowlers from the outset and produced the lowest scores of the series -- India all out for 191 off their 50 overs and Pakistan managing just 136 from 42.4 overs.   India's Anil Kumble enjoyed the turning track, picking up four for 12 to cut a swathe through the Pakistani middle order, but it was batsman Rahul Dravid's gritty innings of 46 which won acclaim as the performance of the match by judge Sir Garfield Sobers.   While Dravid, who has amassed 175 runs at an average of 58 in the series so far is quickly making a name for himself, English umpire David Shepherd, considered one of the best adjudicators in the world, smudged his fine reputation with two poor decisions which had Pakistan reeling after just six overs.   "We lost the game when we lost the first three wickets," Pakistan captain Wasim Akram said later.   Two of the three dismissals to leave Pakistan 16-3 came from, at the very least, questionable decisions.   Aamir Sohail (1) and Ijaz Ahmed (0) both appeared to miss deliveries from paceman Venkatesh Prasad by the proverbial mile, but when wicketkeeper Nayan Mongia gloved the ball and the Indians went up to appeal, they got the caught behind decision they wanted from Shepherd.   While Pakistan were never really in the match during their innings, India, skilfully captained by 23-year-old Sachin Tendulkar, made the most of their good fortune.   India had struggled early after winning the toss and deciding to bat as Akram and his opening partner Waqar Younis bowled with clever variation, managing to move the ball in the air and off the seam.   At 14-2 in the fifth over, the situation looked awkward, but Dravid and his partner Mohammad Azharuddin (38), who had constructed a record 161 run partnership in match two, added 74 to steady the rocky boat.   Akram picked up four for 35 as the last four Indian wickets fell for just four runs (corrects from two runs), but 191 was going to be a challenging target on the Toronto turf.   The controversial umpiring decisions did not detract from India's exceptional bowling performance.   Tendulkar had command of three spinners in the match, with Kumble rushing back to top form.   But India's pacemen, particularly raw youngster Venkatesh Prasad (three for 22), bowled a perfect line and prvented any Pakistan revival.   Only Moin Khan (42) offered real resistance.   "We wouldn't want to relax but we are very happy about today's performance," Tendulkar said.   The final two matches of the series will be played on Saturday and Sunday with organisers expecting full houses of around 5,000 at the pretty Toronto club. 
18162 !GCAT !GSPO  Hamilton, Sept 19 - Waikato and King Country will lose their Fiji rugby representatives for key National Provincial Championship (NPC) division one fixtures next week, NZPA reports.   But the impact has been softened to one competition game rather than two for each side.   Fiji's two-test tour to Hong Kong would normally have removed Fiji skipper Joe Veitayaki and Phillipe Rayasi from the King Country team and Aisea Tuilevu and Greg Smith from Waikato for two consecutive NPC games.    However, negotiations have enabled Waikato to get their men back in time for the Ranfurly Shield clash with Auckland on Friday, October 4, while King Country have a bye the second weekend Fiji are away and are due to play only a "friendly" against Northland.   In naming a tentative King Country team today to play Taranaki at Te Kuiti on Saturday, coach Stan Meads said Veitayaki was reluctant to miss King Country's game next weekend (September 28) against North Harbour at Takapuna, but felt obliged as captain of Fiji to make the trip.    "We have the bye the following weekend, but it's still quite a nuisance as far as we're concerned," Meads said.   "I don't know why a trip like this has to be made at this stage."   Waikato team manager Steve Gilbert said Tuilevu and Smith would fly out to join Fiji on Sunday (Waikato has a bye this weekend), but would return on Tuesday, October 1, in time for the Auckland game.   "We've come to an agreement with Brad Johnstone (Fiji coach) whereby those players will miss the second test against Hong Kong in order to play for us," Gilbert said.    That means the pair will only miss Waikato's game against Wellington in Wellington on Sunday, September 29.   Meanwhile, Meads said second five Frank Walker had only a 40 percent chance of coming back this weekend from a knee injury for King Country's first home game at Te Kuiti in a month, while flanker Romana Graham has a head cut suffered against Otago.   Both are bracketed with other players.   Meads is also undecided whether to play Rayasi or Guy Curtis at fullback.   Most of those matters will be resolved at training tonight.    King Country: Guy Curtis or Phillipe Rayasi, Dion Matthews, Eddie Robinson, Sam Davis, Frank Walker or Eric Henare, Michael Blank, Chris Wills, Richard Coventry, Dean Anglesey, Glenn Stanton, Dion Waller, Romana Graham or Glen Corbett, Phil Coffin (capt), Paul Mitchell, Joe Veitayaki.   Reserves: Rayasi or Curtis, Regan Sue, Lee Peina, Corbett or Graham, Tanirau Manawaiti, Glen Mulgrew, Cameron Herbert. 
18163 !GCAT !GSPO  It's spring and sports pages are dominated by groin strains and hamstring injuries, so that must mean it's finals time.   The Sydney Swans bandwagon has gathered pace and the big showdown this weekend pits the Swans against Essendon at the Sydney Cricket Ground on Saturday night.   The winner goes through to the grand final and Sydney, who topped the AFL regular season standings for the first time, are favourites to down Essendon in front of a sellout crowd.   Star full-forward Tony "Plugger" Lockett dominated the headlines throughout the week after missing the Swans' previous match with a groin injury.   Lockett trained lightly through the week and coach Rodney Eade said his main attacking player would take the field.   The other semifinal sees North Melbourne take on Brisbane at the Melbourne Cricket Ground on Saturday afternoon.   North Melbourne, who finished second behind the Swans on the AFL table, must win to avoid the very real possibility of the AFL final being played without a team from Melbourne for the first time.   Monday sees the annual Brownlow Medal awards ceremony for the best and fairest player in the AFL.   Rugby league is also one week away from its grand final, with two relative bolters through to the semifinals this weekend.   St George have performed well beyond expectations after the club lost several key players in the Super League battle and barely survived a possible merger with Sydney City at the start of the season.   Last Saturday's upset win over Sydney City put the over-achieving St George through to a semifinal against North Sydney on Saturday.   Bookmakers have Norths as slight favourites although the possibility of another giant-killing performance by the confident Dragons can never be discounted.   Sunday's semifinal sees minor premiers Manly up against Cronulla, who disposed of Brisbane last weekend.   TENNIS   It's also do-or-die time for Australia's Davis Cup tennis players, who take on Croatia in Split starting on Friday.   Australia must win to make it back into the elite world group of the Davis Cup after being relegated to the regional section of the tournament for the first time when they lost to Hungary last year.   Non-playing captain John Newcombe has hinted he'll stand down if Australia lose.   His cause wasn't helped when doubles specialist Todd Woodbridge pulled out with an unspecified illness, breaking up his very successful partnership with Mark Woodforde.   Jason Stoltenberg and Mark Philippoussis will play singles while Pat Rafter will partner Mark Woodforde in the doubles.   With Croatia fielding world number four Goran Ivanisevic, Australia must win the doubles to have a realistic hope of taking the tie.   CRICKET   An important development in Australian cricket will take place in an unlikely place when the Victoria state side travel to Darwin for a 10-day session of practice matches from Friday.   The tour will be the first prolonged hit-out for leg-spinner Shane Warne since Australia's main strike bowler had surgery on the ring finger of his bowling hand in May.   Warne was included in Australia's squad for the tour to India which starts on October 1, as was captain Mark Taylor, who is recovering from surgery to correct a back problem.   Australian Cricket Board officials have said Warne and Taylor must prove their fitness before they go on the tour.   -- Sydney Newsroom 612 9373-1800 
18164 !GCAT !GSPO  Australia have threatened to cancel a test against Wales in December unless England are added to the Wallabies' European tour, a newspaper reported on Thursday.   The Australian Rugby Union (ARU) issued the ultimatum after a request to play England at Twickenham was rejected by their British tour hosts, the four home unions.   ARU chief executive John O'Neill has adopted a tougher stance after suggesting two alternative dates, November 2 or 16, for the test against England in a bid to resolve the dispute.   "The ARU would reserve its position as regards its commitment to other matches currently on the itinerary," O'Neill was quoted as saying in The Australian on Thursday.   Australia added a test against Wales in Cardiff on December 1 to their original tour schedule after a request from Welsh officials, The Australian said.   Originally, the eight-week tour only involved tests against Scotland, Ireland and Italy.   "It would have to be a board decision but we'd look at cancelling the Wales test and going back to the original programme.   I don't think we're being unreasonable," O'Neill said.   Australia first suggested December 7 as the date for playing England at Twickenham.   The Four Home Unions Tour Committee refused the idea, saying it was too late to re-schedule a match against the Barbarians at Twickenham scheduled for the same day.   By adding England to the fixture list, Australia would complete their first grand slam tour of Great Britain since 1984.   O'Neill said financial considerations lay behind the push to include England on the itinerary.   "We're not ashamed to say there are financial objectives and I just think these people need a big jolt.   We all have enormous challenges to face in the professional era," he said.   O'Neill said Australia had been caught out by the deterioration in relations between the home countries after England broke ranks by signing an individual television deal.   Their stance, which infuriated the Welsh, Scottish and Irish unions, threatened for a time the future of the annual Five Nations competition.   "The others don't want to help England at all, even if that means they get hurt (financially) in the process," O'Neill said.   Australia's tour begins in October in Italy, where the Wallabies will play a one-off test against their hosts, before heading to Britain. 
18165 !GCAT !GSPO  Results of South Korean pro-soccer games played on Wednesday.    Chonan  2 Suwon  2 (halftime 1-2)    Pusan  2 Ulsan  0 (halftime 2-0)   Standings after games played on Wednesday (Tabulate under won, drawn, lost, goals for, goals against, points):    W D L G/F G/A P    Puchon 5 2 1 13 7 17    Pohang 4 2 1 16 13 14    Chonnam  3 3 1 10 7 12    Suwon 2 5 0 10 5 11    Chonan 3 2 2 18 16 11    Anyang 1 5 2 12 14 8    Pusan 1 4 4 11 17 7    Ulsan 2 0 6 13 18 6    Chonbuk  1 1 5 6 12 4 
18166 !GCAT !GSPO  Results of South Korean pro-baseball games played on Wednesday.    Haitai 5  Hyundai  0    Hanwha 3  OB 1    Lotte 13  Samsung  2   Note - LG and Ssangbangwool did not play on Wednesday.   Standings after games played on Wednesday (tabulate under won, drawn, lost, winning percentage, games behind first place)    W D L PCT  GB    Haitai  71 2 49 .590  -    Ssangbangwool 69 2 53 .565  3    Hanwha  69 1 54 .560  3 1/2    Hyundai  67 5 54 .552  4 1/2    Lotte  55 6 61 .475  14    Samsung  54 5 66 .452  17    LG 49 5 71 .412  22    OB 47 6 73 .397  24 
18167 !GCAT !GSPO  Morocco's 10,000 metre world record holder, Salah Hissou, said on Thursday he was determined next year to break the 5,000 metre record held by Ethiopian Haile Gebreselassie.   Hissou told the Moroccan news agency MAP that his time of 12:50.80 in the 5,000 metres this year motivated him to go for the record of 12:44.39 set by the Ethiopian in Zurich in 1995.   The 24-year-old Moroccan, who took the bronze medal in July Olympic Games in Atlanta, set his 10,000 metres record in Brussels last August with a time of 26:38.09.   Hissou, dubbed the "New Prince of the Desert" and seen by national coach Aziz Daouda as having even more potential than Said Aouita who set five world records in the 1980s, was attending a reception given in his honour in his native province of Beni-Mellal, at the foot of Morocco's Atlas Mountains. 
18168 !GCAT !GSPO  Haarlem, The Netherlands, Sept 19- Canterbury tennis professional Alistair Hunt faces his biggest ever test tomorrow when he meets Wimbledon champion Richard Krajicek in his opening match of the Davis Cup tie between New Zealand and Holland here.   It will be a giant leap for the 23-year-old to make on the indoor court here in Haarlem.   Hunt is more used to facing players with three digits in their rankings, rather than the single figure of Krajicek -- now ranked eighth in the world.    But Hunt is in the best form of his career, having risen to 294th in the world after winning both the singles and doubles of the British satellite circuit last month.   However he knows facing Krajicek will be a different world.   "He's a great player, no doubt about it," Hunt told NZPA.   "But you can't look at that, all I have to really do is play the best I can.   "You can't think about who the guy on the other side of the net is.   If you have to do it, you have to do it sometime, and now is the best time."    Hunt will face Krajicek, the Dutch No 1 in the second match tomorrow, hoping that New Zealand's No 1 Brett Steven will have given the Kiwis the best possible start.   Steven, now ranked 81st after a two-month lay-off following the birth of his son Ryan, will play Dutch No 2 Jan Siemerink in the opening rubber.   That would appear to give Steven an advantage, but Siemerink, ranked 29th, will be no pushover.   And Steven admits his own lead-up form is not good.   "My form has been terrible this week,'' said Steven, who has particularly struggled with his serve.    "I haven't played much so I can't get too uptight about it.   I just hope it clicks on the day."   Steven has not played since losing to Frenchman Arnaud Boetsch in the first round of the Olympic tournament in July.   But he had other things on his mind -- on the eve of the match he was told his wife Heather was about to give birth.   After losing his Olympic match, he raced home for the birth and had not played since, even missing the US Open.   Now his family life has settled a little, Steven has his mind back on tennis.    "It's not a worry any more," he added.   "You get to the stage where you just want to play.   "It's frustrating not to be in great form, but hopefully it will come together."   New Zealand's chances of upsetting the Dutch hinge on Steven, although non-playing captain Jeff Simpson doesn't want more pressure on his top player.   "I don't want him to think like that," Simpson said.   "He hasn't played much this year but when he has, he has played well.   "I just want him to go out and play as well as he can."    New Zealand arrived in Haarlem by beating South Korea to win their Asia-Pacific qualifying zone in April.   The Dutch came into this world group qualifying tie courtesy of a surprise loss to India.   The winner of this tie will progress to the elite world group.   Dutch non-playing captain Stan Franker is cautiously confident of his side's chances, but won't be experimenting outside the Krajicek-Siemerink combination, who will also play Saturday's doubles against Steven and Hunt.    Krajicek will also be playing his first match in Holland since winning Wimbledon in June to become a national hero, but Dutch eyes will be on him. 
18169 !GCAT !GPOL  CAMEROON GOVERNMENT LIST (960919)    *************************************************************    * 19 Sep 96 - President Biya sacked Prime Minister Achu and *    * named Peter Musonge Mafani to replace him and *    * form a new government.   *    *************************************************************    President...........................................Paul BIYA    (Sworn in for a five-year term 3 Nov 92)    - - - - - -    Prime Minister (Apptd 19 Sep 96).........Peter MUSONGE MAFANI    - - - - - -   OUTGOING CAMEROONIAN PEOPLE'S DEMOCRATIC MOVEMENT COALITION   GOVERNMENT (Formed 27 Nov 92, Reshuffled 21 Jul 94)    Prime Minister (Apptd 9 Apr 92)...........  Simon Achidi ACHU**    (** Sacked 19 Sept 96)   Deputy Prime Minister in charge of    Territorial Administration..........Gilbert Andze TSOUNGUI   Deputy Prime Minister in charge of    Town Planning and Housing................  Ahmadou MOUSTAPHA    - - - - - -   MINISTERS:    Agriculture..........................  Augustin Frederic KODOCK   At the Presidency in charge of    Defence..............................Edouard Akama MFOUMOU   At the Presidency in charge of relations    with Parliament.............................Saidou MAIDADI    Civil service & Administrative Reform...........  .  Dahirou SALI    Communication.....................  .  Augustin KONTCHOU Koumegni    Culture...........................................Mangan TOKO    Environment and Forestry........................Djingoer BAVA    Foreign Affairs.......................Ferdinand Leopold OYONO    Economy & Finance...............................  Justin NDIORO    Health...........................................Joseph OWONA    Higher Education...................................Agror TARI    Justice........................................Douala MOUTOME    Labour and Social Security........................Simon MBILA   Livestock, Fisheries and    Animal Husbandry.......................Hamadjoda ADJOUDJI    Mines, Water Resources & Energy..................Mbelle BELLO    Minister Delegate at External Relations........Francis NKWAIN   Minister Delegate in charge of Planning, Stabilisation &    Economic Recovery.............................Nana SINKAM   Minister of State in charge of Posts    and Telecommunications.....................  Dakole DAISSALA   Ministers at the Presidency in charge    of Special Duties..............................Peter ABOTY    National Education.......................Robert Mbella MBAPPE    Public Works..............................Jean Baptiste BOKAM    Scientific and Technical Research................  Joseph MBEDE    Tourism.........................................  Pierre SOUMAN    Trade and Industrial Development.........Mani Pierre MLOUNDOU    Transport...............................  .  Issa Tchiroma BAKARY    Welfare and Women's Affairs.....................  Aissatou YAOU    Youth and Sports..........................  Joseph Marie BIPOUN    - - - - - -    Central Bank Governor....................Jean-Felix MAMALEPOT    (Central Bank of Central African states)    - - - - - -     NOTE: Any comments/queries on the content of this    government list, please contact the Reuter    Editorial Reference Unit, London, on (171) 542    7968.    (End government list) 
18170 !GCAT !GPOL  BOSNIA-HERZEGOVINA GOVERNMENT LIST (960919)    *************************************************************    * 18 Sep 96 - Moslem President Alija Izetbegovic narrowly *    * defeated hardline Bosnian Serb rival Momcilo *    * Krajisnik to become the first head of the *    * new collective presidency.   *    *************************************************************    President...................................Alija IZETBEGOVIC    (See note above)    Vice President....................................  .  Ejup GANIC    - - - - - - -   CENTRAL GOVERNMENT (Formed 30 Jan 96):    Prime Minister...............................  .  Hasan MURATOVIC    - - - - - - -   MINISTERS:    Finance......................................Mirsad KIKANOVIC    Foreign Affairs...............................  .  Jadranko PRLIC    Foreign Trade & International Communications......  Neven TOMIC    Justice............................................Himo PASIC    Refugees & Displaced Persons...................Nudzeim RECICA    Without Portfolio..........................  Dragoljub STOJANOV    - - - -.  - - -    National Bank Governor.........................Kasim OMICEVIC    - - - - - - -   MOSLEM-CROAT FEDERATION GOVERNMENT (Formed 31 Jan 96):    Prime Minister....................Izudin KAPETANOVIC (Moslem)    Deputy Prime Minister................  Drago BILANDZIJA (Croat)   (Also Finance Minister)    - - - - - - -   MINISTERS:    Defence...............................  Vladimir SOLJIC (Croat)    Energy, Mining, Industry................  .  Enver KRESO (Moslem)    Environment.........................Ibrahim MORANKIC (Moslem)    Finance.............................See Deputy Prime MInister    Health....................................  Bozo LJUBIC (Croat)    Internal Affairs..........................  Avdo HEBIB (Moslem)    Justice....................................  Mato TADIC (Croat)   Science, Education, Culture &    Sport.....................  Fahrudin RIZVANBEGOVIC (Moslem)   Social Politics, Refugees & Displaced    persons...............................  Ferid ALIC (Moslem)    Trade.................................Nikola GRABOVAC (Croat)    Transport & Communication...........  .  Rasim GACANOVIC (Moslem)   Waterpower Engineering, Agriculture    & Forestry.........................Ahmed SMAJIC (Moslem)    Without Portfolio........................Martin RAGUZ (Croat)    Nedeljko DESPOTOVIC (Serb)    - - - - - - -   NOTE: Any comments/queries on the content of this     government list, please contact the Reuter     Editorial Reference Unit, London, on (171) 542     7968.    (End Government List) 
18171 !GCAT !GDIP  Canada and China on Thursday signed an understanding that Canada will retain its consular presence in Hong Kong after the British colony reverts to Chinese rule next July.   "Our continued presence in Hong Kong ensures that we can keep on providing consular services to Canadians who live, travel or do business there," Canadian Foreign Minister Lloyd Axworthy said at a meeting with China's Foreign Affairs minister Qian Qichen.   He also said the two countries agreed in principle on a deal to grant Hong Kong residents visa-free access to Canada after the handover.   He said he hoped to have a final agreement in a matter of weeks and there was an indication that once an agreement is in place the Chinese government will support it.   "In my discussion with the minister we agreed in principle about the visa-free access and the freedom of movement," Axworthy said.   "The only issue that really remains is what we need to establish as a procedure for removals and we are presently negotiating that with the Hong Kong government."   Qian was scheduled to meet Canadian Immigration Minister Lucienne Robillard on Thursday to discuss the agreement.   The so-called "right of removal" would guarantee Canada the right to send people with Hong Kong passports back to Hong Kong if Canada had to deport them.   Later, in a luncheon speech at the Institute for International Affairs and the Alliance of Manufacturers and Exporters of Canada, Qian said China's policy toward Hong Kong will remain unchanged.   "The long-term stability and prosperity of Hong Kong are fully guaranteed," he said.   He said China would strictly fulfil the commitments it made in the Sino-British Joint Declaration.   "The current socio-economic system and way of life in Hong Kong will remain unchanged.   Likewise, the laws previously in force in Hong Kong will basically be maintained."   Qian said foreign economic interests in Hong Kong "will be taken care of."   Earlier in the day, Qian said Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien will make a brief visit to Shanghai this autumn, during which the two governments will sign a contract on the introduction of the Candu heavy water nuclear reactor technology from Canada in a Chinese nuclear power plant.   "This is a new beginning for the economic, trade and technological cooperation between the two countries," he said.   Canada and China also signed an understanding that provides for the extension of the consular territories of Canada's diplomatic representation in China and the Chinese representation in Canada. 
18172 !C11 !C42 !CCAT !E41 !ECAT !GCAT !GJOB  Canada's venerable public broadcaster, the CBC, announced on Thursday it was cutting 2,500 jobs and eliminating all U.S. programmes in an attempt to reinvent itself with a much smaller budget.   The Canadian Broadcasting Corp. released long-awaited details on how it would cope with the hundreds of millions of dollars shred from its government subsidies.   "We must move quickly," CBC President Perrin Beatty told reporters.   "The bulk or our reductions must be implemented within the next six months or our checks will bounce."   The CBC said the drastic new measures would reduce its operating budget by C$127 million ($92.7 million) by 1998.   The CBC, with its sprawling television and radio broadcasts in French and English, has already announced a series of other measures that would pare more than a third from its C$1.4 billion ($1 billion) budget by 1998.   The Canadian government has contributed nearly two-thirds of the CBC budget in the past, but the government's scramble to rein in its own troubled finances has led to deep cuts in funding for the CBC.   The CBC, once similar in makeup to Britain's BBC, has turned increasingly to American situation comedies as well as big name sporting events to make up for lost federal revenues.   As CBC became more commercially oriented, some have called for abolishment of the public broadcaster as it appeared to be competing with private broadcasters to stay on the air.   Others sought CBC to return to its roots.   It was established as an act of Parliament in 1936 with a mandate to protect and promote the fragile Canadian identity from the American cultural giant to the south.   CBC developed programmes such as its classic "Hockey Night In Canada" on television and its public affairs show "As It Happens" on radio to tell Canadians what was happening in their own country.   Beatty said the new plan would return it to its roots with elimination of American shows.   But it will also include more advertising.   For the first time, the CBC's flagship evening news show, the National, will run advertisements.   CBC did not announce the closing of any local television stations, but instead spread the cuts across the board, forcing all departments to deal with substantially reduced resources.   American programming will be gone from both prime time and day time schedules by September, 1998 and will be replaced by other shows created in-house or with more co-productions with private firms.   "In the future we will live or die on our Canadian productions."   Beatty said. 
18173 !C13 !CCAT !GCAT !GENV  Canadian Transport Minister David Anderson introduced amending legislation on Thursday which would double the potential liability for oil spills.   "The amendments introduced today will substantially raise a shipowner's liability in the event of an oil spill or other maritime incident," Anderson said in a statement.   "And in the case of a spill, shipowners will also be responsible for the costs of reasonable measures to repair oil spill damage to the environment."   The legislation would amend the Canada Shipping Act to more than double the amount available to Canadian claimants in an oil pollution incident to C$270 million from about C$120 million.   The statement said current provisions are based on a 1957 convention but the liability limits set out then have been eroded by inflation.   Canadian rules for maritime liability would now be harmonized with those of other maritime nations, it said.   Anderson also introduced into Parliament's House of Commons a bill which sets a clear legal framework, for the first time in Canada, for compensating passengers involved in a marine accident.   -- Randall Palmer, Reuters Ottawa Bureau (613-235-6745) 
18174 !GCAT !GDIP !GENV  Countries bordering the Arctic Ocean inaugurated a joint council on Thursday to protect the region's fragile environment from tundra to polar bears while allowing sustainable economic development.   "The Arctic and its future are too big for one country, one government or for one conference every few years," Canadian Foreign Minister Lloyd Axworthy, chairman of the conference, said in a statement ahead of a signing ceremony.   The vast Arctic lands are sparsely populated but some environmental experts suggest they suffer disproportionately from pollution and other activities of man.   "The Arctic is an environmental early warning system for our globe," Canadian Environment Minister Sergio Marchi said.   "The Arctic Council will help deliver that warning from pole to pole."   The group links Canada, Dennmark (responsible for Greenland), Finland, Iceland, Norway, Russia, Sweden and the United States.   It seeks to build on the joint Arctic Environmental Protection Strategy, providing a permanent forum for governments to draw up common guidelines and strategies to protect the environment in the face of development.   Norwegian Deputy Environment Minister Bernt Bull said governments cannot just say no to all economic development -- whether mining or oil exploration -- but environmental issues must be considered simultaneously.   Otherwise, he told Reuters, "the pressure for short-term profits might limit the alertness on environmental issues."   The World Wide Fund for Nature, known in North America as the World Wildlife Fund, said it welcomed the council but would closely monitor its activities to ensure environmental protection is strengthened.   WWF's Norway-based Arctic specialist Peter Prokosch said that despite a higher polar bear population as a result of an international protection treaty, scientists were worried that it might be starting to face risks of sterilisation.   "Scientists have found PCB levels on a level which bring gray seals in the Baltic to sterilisation," he said, referring to the poisonous pollutant polychlorinated biphenyl.   In the North Atlantic, the bowhead whale population has been reduced to 200 or 300 from thousands early in the century, requiring particular vigilance and study, he added.   One challenge is to encourage environmental protection in Russia, which circles half the Arctic but which poses enormous risks as the country plunges into less-regulated economic development.   "They (previously) had the notion that nature was able to withstand anything," Bull said.   The environmental group Greenpeace urged the group to work with natives to tackle potential catastrophic climate change.   "There are more striking climate changes taking place in the polar regions than any other place on the planet," Greenpeace spokesman Kevin Jardine said in a statement.   The group said it was concerned about international transport of toxic pollutants and threats to northern fisheries.   The chair and the secretariat of the council will rotate every two years among the eight states, beginning with Canada.   Ministers will meet every two years. 
18175 !GCAT !GPOL !GVIO  A crank caller claimed he had delivered a bomb to the residence of Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien, police said on Thursday.   "We are quite satisfied that the security of the prime minister was not jeopardised," said Sergeant Andre Guertin of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), the federal police force, adding that no bomb was found after Wednesday's call.   An RCMP statement said: "The caller is known to the RCMP, who is investigating this matter."   Guertin said the caller was not Andre Dallaire, a Quebec man who entered the prime minister's residence with a knife after Quebec separatists lost an independence referendum last October.   Dallaire has since been freed. 
18176 !GCAT !GPOL  Cameroon's president, Paul Biya, sacked Prime Minister Simon Achidi Achu on Thursday and named another anglophone to replace him.   A decree signed by Biya gave no reason for the move but named technocrat Peter Musonge Mafani, managing director of the Cameroon Development Corporation, as the new prime minister.   Musonge Mafani named a government which kept all but seven of the previous 33 ministers, shuffled several portfolios and created a new post -- minister for higher control of the state.   Edouard Akame Mfoumou moves from defence to economy and finance and Justin Ndioro moves from economy and finance to trade and industrial development.   New face Menye Memve takes over at defence.   Another new face Laurent Esso takes over the justice ministry.   Hamadou Ali takes over the key post of secretary general at the presidency.   The previous incumbent Edzoa Titus takes over as health minister from Joseph Owona, the new minister for higher control of the state.   Both Achu, who was appointed in 1992, and Musonge Mafani are members of Biya's Cameroon People's Democratic Movement (RDPC).   The ruling party emerged as the loser in municipal elections in January in Achu's English-speaking home region in the north west.   Musonge Mafani comes from the less militant southwest.   France and Britain administered separate parts of Cameroon before independence.   Majority French-speakers dominate government.   Anglophones feature prominently in the opposition.   Biya, who took office in 1982, won a five-year term, his third, in October 1992. 
18177 !GCAT !GVIO  Burundi buried its slain archbishop on Thursday while the military-led Tutsi government called on neighbouring countries to lift their economic sanctions, which it said were helping Hutu rebels.   African leaders imposed sanctions on landlocked Burundi to put pressure on Tutsi military leader Pierre Buyoya, who seized power in an army coup on July 25, to agree to peace negotiations with rebels of the Hutu majority.   "Genocidal armed groups and their political leaders who move freely outside the country have been encouraged and are intensifying its destruction from within as much as from without," Foreign Minister Luc Rukingama told journalists and diplomats in the capital Bujumbura.   He said the sanctions were having a major impact in all spheres and would have to be lifted soon to avoid Burundi sinking deeper into the mire of hunger, unemployment, high inflation and civil disorder.   His appeal came a day after Hutu rebels killed three civilians in an ambushe on a minibus taxi near Rumonge, 75 km (45 miles) south of the capital, according to an army spokesman.   Archbishop Joachim Ruhuna, whose body was found by troops on Tuesday after he was said to have been killed in a rebel ambush last week, was buried in Gitega in central Burundi on Thursday.   State radio reported his burial but gave no further details.   The army and the military-appointed government have blamed Hutu rebels for the murder, but they have in turn accused the Tutsi-led army of carrying out the attack.   Ruhuna, a Tutsi who had criticised extremists on both sides of Burundi's ethnic divide for perpetuating violence, was the most senior cleric killed in three years of massacres and civil war between rebels and the military.   More than 150,000 people, most of them civilians, have been killed since renegade Tutsi soldiers killed the country's democratically elected president, a Hutu, in 1993.   Buyoya was installed by the army after the overthrow of Hutu president Sylvestre Ntibantunganya in July.   The ex-president has been holed up in the U.S. ambassador's residence since then.   Rukingama said the military government had offered talks to the rebels but had been rebuffed with vows of intensified armed struggle. 
18178 !GCAT !GCRIM !GODD  A Nigerian bus driver set his wife on fire during an argument over the monthly food allowance of 200 naira ($2.50) he gives her, a local newspaper reported on Thursday.   PM News said the driver, who claimed his wife was using the money for buying cosmetics, got furious when he arrived home and discovered there was no food for him.   The woman was rescued from burning to death by neighbours but is now in critical condition at a hospital in Benin city. 
18179 !C13 !C24 !C31 !C311 !CCAT !GCAT !GHEA  The Kenyan government on Thursday revoked the trading licence of a leading supermarket chain after it imported 3.2 tonnes of corned beef from Britain without clearance from relevant authorities.   The commerce and industry ministry said the beef imported by Nakumatt Holdings Ltd from Britain had been impounded by Kenyan customs officials at Mombasa port.   Customs officials have asked that the beef be re-exported to Britain.   "The minister for commerce and industry has with immediate effect revoked the trading licence for Nakumatt Holdings...until the matter is fully investigated," a ministry statement said.   Nairobi newspapers reported on Thursday that beef which may be contaminated with mad cow disease may be in Kenyan shops.   The East African Standard said that such beef had been found in shops in Mombasa, Kenya's second largest town.   It added that customs officials had seized 3.2 tonnes of such beef last week as well but supermarkets appeared to have plenty in stock.   In April, the Kenyan agriculture ministry warned all its ports against letting through cheap meat and meat products and told health officials to guard against businessmen who may import them from Britain.   Kenya has not banned imports of British beef.   Kenyan health officials have previously warned that the country may be a dumping ground for meat products infected with bovine spongiform encephalopothy (BSE) which scientists have discovered may have a lethal human equivalent. 
18180 !E21 !E211 !ECAT !GCAT !GPOL  The Mali government has drawn up a 1997 budget foreseeing a slightly reduced provisional deficit reflecting a marginal rise in state revenue, a government statement said on Thursday.   The draft finance bill adopted   after a cabinet meeting on Wednesday put government revenue at 367.2 billion CFA francs ($710 million) and spending at 400.3 billion CFA.   The revenue represents a 10 percent rise over the 1996 budget figure of 333.8 billion CFA.   The provisional deficit of 33.6 billion compares with 46.5 billion last year.   "The 1997 state budget conforms with macro-economic objectives of the financing programme concluded with the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund which foresees a real GDP growth rate of 5.0 percent and an inflation rate ceiling of 3.0 percent as well as a reduced external current account deficit," the statement added.   Education and health top the priority sectors, taking 24.7 percent (previous 22.5 percent) and 9.5 (8.3 percent) respectively.   The government expressed satisfaction with the performance of the 1996 budget in the first half-year period to June 30, 1996.   It confirmed a tendency towards improved revenue and tight spending control already evident in the year-before budget.   Government receipts during the half-year period were up to 48.5 percent of the annual forecast while spending was at 40.5 percent.   Mali's economy is traditionally dependent on cotton, of which it is Africa's second producer after Egypt, but gold mining is assuming an increasingly strategic place.   The government has been pursuing reform measures that have lured an increasing number of foregin investors in recent years.   $ = 514 cfa 
18181 !E51 !E512 !ECAT !GCAT !GDIP  American ambassador Prudence Bushnell put trade at the top of her agenda in Kenya on Thursday in her first formal function and Kenyan officials told her to limit her political involvement only to an advisory role.   Kenyan government officials have peristently criticised Smith Hempstone, U.S. ambassador in the run-up to multi-party polls in 1992, for what they perceived as interference in Kenya's internal affairs and taking sides with opposition groups.   Bushnell's predecessor, Aurelia Brazeal, was hailed in government circles as a career diplomat who tried to improve relations between the U.S. and Kenya but attacked by opposition groups for allegedly doing little to discourage the government from human rights violations and political oppression.   Bushnell told a gathering of the American Business Association (in Kenya): "It must be improved trade that we must look at, to improve opportunities for growth for Kenya."   But she also spoke of good governance and accountability.   Central Bank of Kenya Governor Micah Cheserem told Bushnell her emphasis should be trade between the two countries and a focus on governance to be on accountability and transparency.   "The relations (between Kenya and the U.S.) on political issues should be of advisory nature," Cheserem said.   Cheserem said Kenya's annual per capita income of $250 was the highest in the East African region but was a trickle compared to $25,880 in the United States.   He said that despite poor intra-African trade, 49 percent of Kenya's exports were to African countries, mainly Uganda and Tanzania.   The second largest market was the European Union which bought 32 percent of Kenyan exports.   "The U.S. buys a dismal 3.0 percent of our exports compared to the 4.0 percent share it has in our imports," he said.   Cheserem said gross domestic product (GDP) growth had picked up from a low of 0.2 percent in 1993 to 4.9 percent in 1995 and was now estimated at 6.0 percent in 1996, 7.0 percent in 1997 and 8.0 percent in 1998.   "Kenya's economic prospects have never been better.   We invite the U.S. business community to seriously consider investing in Kenya," Cheserem said.   Bushnell said that for real growth to take off, Kenya's GDP growth needed to reach a sustained level of up to 9.0 percent.   Cheserem said Kenya's reform agenda included reduction of the budget deficit and its eventual elimination, limiting government borrowing from the central bank, rehabilitating and upgrading infrastructure and privatisation of state companies.   He said current investor concerns were dilapidated and inadequate infratructure, especially power supply, poor roads, inefficient railways and inadequate water supply.   He said investors were also wary of insecurity, corruption at many levels in government, weak and corrupt judicial system and uncertainty caused by frequent political tensions.   "But we are doing something about this," he said. 
18182 !E51 !ECAT !GCAT !GVIO  The U.N. World Food Programme (WFP) confirmed on Thursday it owed money to Somali businessmen who may have ordered the kidnapping of an American aid worker freed on Wednesday.   Somali gunmen seized Daniel Suther, on contract to the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), in north Mogadishu on Tuesday but released him a day later, saying his abduction was the result of mistaken identity.   North Mogadishu faction leader Ali Mahdi Mohamed said businessmen had hired the gunmen to abduct Suther in order to force the WFP to pay its debt.   He said the kidnappers grabbed Suther on the mistaken assumption that he worked for WFP.   The WFP said on Thursday it owed a total of $275,000 to sub-contractors in Somalia for shipping and transporting food to the Somali capital and said $135,000 of the total would soon be paid.   "The exact amount owed (immediately) to the sub-contractors is $135,000, which is a partial payment of the overall $275,000 owed covering costs for shipping and transporting food," said WFP spokeswoman Brenda Barton in the Kenyan capital Nairobi.   "The $135,000 will be paid imminently," she added.   Suther arrived in Nairobi late on Wednesday from Mogadishu after being freed by his kidnappers.   He declined to comment on his abduction, saying he was tired.   An official at USAID in Nairobi said on Thursday Suther had no plans to speak to reporters about his abduction.   Kidnappings and extortion, especially involving staff of foreign aid agencies, are common in Mogadishu where weapons are easily available and unemployment has run high since the departure of the U.N. peacekeeping operation in March 1995.   International aid agencies pulled all foreign staff out of southern Mogadishu, controlled by forces loyal to faction leader Hussein Aideed, earlier this year, but kept some staff in north Mogadishu. 
18183 !GCAT !GPOL !GVOTE  President Jerry Rawlings of Ghana will face two challengers in December when he stands for a second and final four-year term as president, the deputy head of the Electoral Commission said on Thursday.   David Kanga told reporters that by the close of nominations on Wednesday only three of the six who had said they would run in the December 7 presidential election had filed the necessary registration papers.   John Agyekum Kufuor of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) and Edward Mahama of the Peoples National Convention will take on Rawlings, who will represent his ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC).   Rawlings, a former air force flight lieutenant, seized power in the former British colony in a coup in 1981 before becoming a politician.   Political sources suggest that Rawlings has a large enough personal following to win re-election, despite discontent among many ordinary Ghanaians who say they have little to show for years of economic reform and associated belt-tightening.   The sources predict that opposition parties are likely to provide a much stronger challenge to Rawlings' party in the legislative elections.   Opposition parties boycotted the 1992 parliamentary polls, accusing Rawlings of manipulating the presidential vote earlier that year.   Commonwealth observers had declared the conduct of the presidential poll free and fair.   The presidential poll, to be held simultaneously with legislative elections, is run along U.S. lines with candidates for the presidency naming vice-presidential running mates.   Kufuor's running mate is Rawlings' estranged vice-president Kow Arkaah.   Antagonism between the two former allies exploded into a much publicised scuffle during a cabinet meeting in December.   Arkaah pulled his National Convention Party out of an alliance with the NDC and is now a member of the "Great Alliance" with Kufuor's party and the Peoples Convention Party.   Rawlings's running mate is income tax chief and former schoolmate John Atta Mills.   Kanga said that Ebo Tawiah of Arkaah's NCP party, Dan Lartey of the Great Consolidated Popular Party and Ahoma Ocansey, who had planned to run as an independent, had missed the registration deadline. 
18184 !GCAT !GCRIM !GVIO  Apartheid-era defence minister Magnus Malan's lawyers admitted on Thursday he helped set up paramilitary units, but said he could not have foreseen they allegedly would massacre 13 people.   Malan and 15 others are are on trial for the slaughter of the people -- six of them children aged between four and 10 -- in 1987 KwaMakutha township near the east coast city of Durban.   Defence counsel Sam Maritz said Malan admitted having helped establish the military training of 206 Zulus, which was requested by Inkatha leader Mangosuthu Buthelezi in the mid-1980s.   "(But) there is no suggestion in the evidence that General Malan could foresee that the KwaMakutha murders would take place, or that there would be a causal link between his actions and the murders," Maritz said in his closing argument for Malan's aquittal.   Malan, a senior minister in the white government, acted legally to help Inkatha defend its nominally independent homeland goverment against attacks from its fiercest rival, the African National Congress (ANC), Maritz added.   He said the training was done secretly because Buthelezi had asked the previous government that such politically sensitive help should be conducted clandestinely.   The seven-month-long trial has heard evidence that Military Intelligence officers planned the attack on an ANC sympathiser's home -- using a 10-man hitsquad drawn from the paramilitary group -- to warn of further retaliation for attacks on Inkatha.   Malan is on trial with three generals, a vice-admiral, a senior policeman, two military officers, six Zulus and a top Inkatha official.   Malan has repeatedly proclaimed his innocence and has declined to request amnesty from the country's "truth commission" that is probing human rights abuses committed during 30 years of apartheid government.   The seven defence teams have completed arguments for 11 of the accused and presiding judge Jan Hugo is expected to pass judgement early in October. 
18185 !E51 !E512 !ECAT !GCAT !GDIP  Burundi's Foreign Minister Luc Rukingama called on regional African governments to lift their economic sanctions, which he said were helping Hutu rebels fighting the military-led Tutsi government.   Regional leaders imposed sanctions on landlocked Burundi on July 31 in an attempt to force Tutsi military leader Pierre Buyoya, who seized power in an army coup on July 25, to agree to peace negotiations with rebels of the Hutu majority.   "Genocidal armed groups and their political leaders who move freely outside the country have been encouraged and are intensifying its destruction from within as much as from without," Rukingama told journalists and diplomats in the capital Bujumbura.   He said the sanctions were having a major impact in all spheres and would have to be lifted soon to avoid Burundi sinking deeper into the mire of hunger, unemployment, high inflation and civil disorder.   His appeal came a day after Hutu rebels killed three civilians in an ambushed on a minibus taxi near Rumonge, 75 km (45 miles) south of the capital, according to an army spokesman.   Archbishop Joachim Ruhuna, whose body was found by troops on Tuesday after he was said to have been killed in a rebel ambush last week, was due to be buried in Gitega, in central Burundi, later on Thursday.   Ruhuna was the most senior cleric killed in three years of massacres and civil war between Hutu rebels and the Tutsi-led military.   More than 150,000 people, most of them civilians, have been killed.   Buyoya was installed by the army on July 25, after the overthrow of Hutu president Sylvestre Ntibantunganya, who has been holed up in the U.S. ambassador's residence since then.   Rukingama said the military government had offered talks to the rebels but had been rebuffed with vows of intensified armed struggle. 
18186 !E51 !ECAT !GCAT !GDIP  Donors at a pledging meeting in Geneva agreed to give Sierra Leone $212 million for post-war reconstruction and rehabilitation, state radio said on Thursday.   The amount meets the target set by the government for Sierra Leone's short-term needs to cope with the ravages of a five-year civil war that has wrecked its mining economy.   Economy Minister Nat Wellington, quoting a U.N. study, put long-term post-war financing needs at $1.2 billion.   "We will be requesting at this stage for only the short-term reconstruction and rehabilitation programme," he said before leaving for the meeting on Tuesday and Wednesday.   "The rest of the required funds -- the one billion U.S. dollars -- we will appeal for at the end of the year."   The radio said countries that pledged short-term assistance included Canada, France, Germany, Italy, India and Japan.   The civilian government of President Ahmad Tejan Kabbah who took over from military rulers last March acknowledges that foreign aid is dependent on a peace accord with rebels.   Negotiations between the government and the rebels broke off in dispute in May over the presence of South African mercenaries backing the government army.   Kabbah's senior aides said he had maintained contacts with the rebel United Revolutionary Front and a comprehensive peace accord could be signed this month or in early October. 
18187 !GCAT !GCRIM !GPOL !GVIO  An apartheid killer, who has labelled himself South Africa's most effective assassin and implicated former presidents in dirty tricks, said on Thursday he wished he had never lived.   "There are times I wish I had never been born.   I can't tell you how dirty a person feels," Eugene de Kock told the court where he was convicted last month of six murders and scores of lesser crimes.   He was pleading for leniency, saying he had only been doing his job as leader of a notorious death-squad unit that hunted down black liberation guerrillas.   "What we did was supposed to be in the interests of your country.   In the end we achieved nothing...All we did was hurt people," he told the Pretoria Supreme Court judge.   "We left bodies, injuries...children who will never know their parents."   De Kock, who has left a 20-year litany of murders, maimings and bombings, has implicated officials as high up as apartheid-era presidents and cabinet ministers.   On Wednesday he accused F.W. de Klerk, leader of South Africa's opposition National Party, of ordering a bloody attack and said the former president knew of covert state military units which operated during his rule.   De Klerk replied that there was nothing new in the allegations.   Earlier this week de Kock accused de Klerk's predecessor, P.W. Botha, of knowing a great deal about apartheid dirty tricks and even ordering a civilian bombing on the offices of a black trades union federation.   De Kock hit out on Thursday at the leaders and senior officials who gave orders to kill.   "The people who give orders never live with death.   But if you live to be 1,000...the dead will never go away," said the bespectacled de Kock.   He said he suffered years of nightmares.   After four days of revelations in a courtroom tightly guarded by police armed with automatic rifles, de Kock said he knew of other apartheid death squads whose deeds would leave his "in the shade".   He did not elaborate.   "Prime Evil", as de Kock has been dubbed, said his work was more important than spending time with his wife and two sons, who have been sent abroad for their own safety.   "I know my own people," said de Kock, who told the court of his strict Calvinist Afrikaner upbringing.   "I could not have...said what I have said if my wife and children were here and certain members of the security branch had access to them."   He said he used to find it unfitting to accompany his family on some outings.   "Yesterday you killed someone, tonight you are sitting listening to opera." 
18188 !E51 !E512 !ECAT !GCAT !GDIP  Kenyan economic reformer Micah Cheserem on Thursday said improved trade with the West, not aid, was needed if Africa's starving were to be fed.   Speaking at a meeting of the American Business Association, Cheserem said: "While America's target is to land a man on Mars, our target in Africa is more humble but noble: to land food in the stomachs of many of our starving people, land clothes on their backs and provide them with basic necessities of life."   Cheserem, governor of the central Bank of Kenya and credited with Kenya's pursuing radical economic reforms since 1993, said the continent had become accustomed to Western aid and the result was an unsustainable external debt: "We do not want aid that we cannot pay back, we need to improve two-way trade."   Africa's external debt is estimated at around $317 billion.   "We strongly believe our mission will only be accomplished through accelerated economic growth rates.   External aid has not eradicated and will not eradicate poverty in Africa," he added.   "We have great potential and opportunities.   What is needed is investors from the West, from America," Cheserem said.   He said Africa was rich in natural resources but sadly its people remained among the poorest in the world.   He saw the root cause of civil unrest and power struggles mainly as poverty.   "Many of the Africans who have left to live in the West are economic refugees.   They are largely victims of failed economic policies: The challenge for policy makers is to sustain reforms to create the right conditions for Africans," Cheserem said.   "The prospects for Africa's 700 million people can only get better," he said, referring to economic reforms in much of the continent and sustained economic growth rates averaging 5.0 percent recorded last year in the continent.   Africa's people make up 12 percent of the world population but the continent's gross national income of $410 billion is only about 2.0 percent of the world total.   Africa's per capital income of around $586 is disappointing compared to $25,880 for the United States, Cheserem said.   Cheserem said 20 of the 30 poorest countries in the world were in Africa where infrastructure such as roads, hospitals, schools and social facilities were inadequate and dilapidated.   Cheserem also spoke of Africa's follies and failures.   "Many African countries and institutions have collapsed due to poor leadership; too many cases of greed, corruption and tribalism, economies based on excessive controls, extraction of natural resources with very little added value," he said.   "Many African countries have high population growth rates which outstrip economic growth and overstretch existing services, economic and political problems lack homegrown solutions, leadership pays attention to politics more than economics, media cherishes negative publicity," Cheserem said.   Cheserem said privatisations and launching of stock exchanges raised avenues for trade while liberalisation removed avenues of corruption for which the continent was infamous.   "As a result of liberalisation, private investment is becoming an important factor in investment and therefore in fostering growth," Cheserem said. 
18189 !E41 !E411 !ECAT !GCAT !GJOB  There are no signs that South Africa is overcoming its most acute economic problem -- unemployment -- with big job losses in the first quarter of 1996 undoing all the good of 1995, the Reserve Bank said on Thursday.   On a seasonally-adjusted an annualised basis, employment in the non-agricultural sectors of the economy fell by three percent in January-March, the latest period for which figures are available.   "This effectively means that all employment opportunities created in 1995 were destroyed in one quarter," the central bank said in its Quarterly Bulletin.   While real gross domestic product had increased by 8.8 percent between the second quarter of 1993 and the first quarter of 1996, the number of workers employed in the non-farm economy had actually declined by 0.2 percent, the Bank said.   "The tepid response of formal-sector employment to the current recovery in overall economic activity has to be seen as one of the most pressing problems facing policy-makers," the Bank said.   President Nelson Mandela has made denting employment, estimated to afflict a third of the workforce, a top priority.   Finance Minister Trevor Manuel's macro-economic strategy, unveiled in June, aims to double growth to six percent a year by 2000, leading to the creation annually of 400,000 new jobs.   -- Johannesburg newsroom +27 11 482 1003 
18190 !GCAT !GCRIM !GVIO  The International Criminal Tribunal on Rwanda said on Thursday it expected to postpone the start of the trial of its first Rwandan suspect charged with genocide.   Beatrice Lacoste, head of information for the tribunal, said the president and members of the court would start hearing preliminary motions next Thursday, the opening date for the trial of Jean-Paul Akayesu.   "It is almost certain the trial will be postponed.   The judges will hear preliminary motions in camera but some may be open to the public.   I have no idea until when the trial will be postponed," she said.   "If the first trial is postponed then there is a very good chance the other two will be postponed," added Lacoste, speaking to Reuters by telephone from tribunal headquarters in Arusha, Tanzania.   Defence lawyers have said they plan to present preliminary motions to the tribunal but it was also possible the court or the prosecution would request a delay in the start of the trial.   The only three accused in the tribunal's custody pleaded not guilty in May to charges of crimes against humanity and genocide.   The tribunal then said the trial of Akayesu would open on September 26, the trial of Georges Rutaganda would start in October and the trial of Clement Kayishema would begin in November.   The Arusha-based international tribunal has been dogged by poor organistion, communications and a shortage of funds in its attempt to bring to justice leaders of Rwanda's genocide of up to an estimated one million Tutsis and Hutu moderates by Hutu militia and mobs in 1994. 
18191 !GCAT !GDIP !GVIO  A U.N. mission met Nigeria's foreign minister on Thursday to try to ease tension between the country and Cameroon over their rival claims to a peninsula in the oil-rich Gulf of Guinea.   The two African nations have clashed sporadically on the Bakassi peninsula with heavy loss of lives on both sides.   Foreign Minister Tom Ikimi told the team Cameroonian troops were attacking Nigeria even as the U.N. mission was in progress.   "Reports reaching us now and in the past one day or two is about hostilities being unleashed on our people by Cameroon," he said, adding: "We wonder whether these hostilities were meant to abort your visit here."   "This mission is not a fact-finding mission," Omar Alim, the Indonesian leading the four-man team told the Nigerian side at preliminary talks in Abuja.   "It is a goodwill mission...to find out from leaders of Nigeria and Cameroon if there is any specific measures which could be proposed to improve their relationship," Alim added.   He said his mission was seeking ideas from Cameroon and Nigeria on how to reduce tension in Bakassi.   The team arrived in Nigeria on Wednesday from Cameroon where it met Cameroonian Foreign Minister Ferdinand Leopold Oyono and senior officials.   The mission is the most serious on-the-spot bid yet to end the row that has on occasions brought the two countries to the brink of war.   Both sides have troops entrenched in the impoverished islands where the people are mainly fishermen and speak Efik, the main language in the southeastern Nigerian states of Akwa Ibom and Cross River.   Cameroon took its case to the World Court in 1994 but the court's ruling in March forbidding further fighting did not prevent clashes a month later.   U.N. Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali proposed sending a mission after those clashes.   The dispute centres on agreements between former British and German colonisers in Bakassi.   Prior to the U.N. initiative, Nigeria had always maintained that the dispute should be settled within the Lake Chad Commission which links Nigeria with Chad and Cameroon.   The U.N. team is due to meet Nigerian officials in Abuja, Cross River and Akwa Ibom over the next two days before visiting Abana and Ibaka in Bakassi where Nigerian troops are stationed.   They will be received by military ruler General Sani Abacha on Sunday and will leave Lagos on Monday to return to Cameroon. 
18192 !GCAT !GPOL !GVIO !GVOTE  Gambia's United Democratic Party, whose candidate is widely seen as the main election rival to military coup leader Yahya Jammeh, said on Thursday that 12 of its supporters had been arrested in the past three days.   Sidia Sagnia, UDP senior administrative secretary, told Reuters that party members campaiging for lawyer Ousainou Darboe in the September 26 presidential election had been harassed and intimidated by the army and security forces.   He also accused military personnel of distributing campaign material on behalf of Jammeh, who is running as a civilian against Darboe and two other candidates.   Jammeh, 31, is candidate of the Alliance for Patriotic Reorientation and Construction which he formed with military associates.   Darboe, 48, is widely seen as his main rival.   Vice-president of Gambia's Bar Association, he has drawn strong support from followers of ousted civilian president Sir Dawda Jawara.   Jammeh toppled Jawara in 1994 accusing him of corruption.   He barred any politicians who served under Jawara from election.   On Monday, the UDP accused the military government of arresting its supporters and of sending soldiers after Darboe.   The government has accused Darboe supporters of erecting road blocks and assaulting Jammeh supporters.   Other contenders are Sidia Jatta of the small People's Democratic Organisation for Independence and Socialism, who stood against Jawara in 1992, and hotel manager Amath Bah. 
18193 !GCAT !GDIP  At least 2,000 Nigerians have been deported from neighbouring Benin for entering the tiny French-speaking country illegally, the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reported on Thursday.   It said the deportation exercise was carried out in batches last weekend by the local authorities following recent cases of armed robbery attacks in the capital Cotonou.   Many of those deported were traders.   Three people including a Lebanese trader were killed in the robberies, NAN reported.   Some of those deported said they were picked up from their homes and places of business, adding that some were detained for about three days before being deported.   "I was one of many arrested at the Topa market in Cotonou and bundled into a waiting gendarme lorry," Jude Okoye, a trader who was deported said.   The immigration controller at the Nigerian-Benin border post of Seme confirmed the deportations but said he had not been officially informed by Benin, NAN reported. 
18194 !GCAT !GHEA !GPOL  The South African parliament's portfolio committee on health on Thursday called for a rethink on two controversial proposals championed by embattled Health Minister Nkosazana Zuma.   The committee declined after two days of hearings to approve a proposal to restrict the right of doctors to dispense medicines, and another to add two years of community service to the curriculum for medical students.   Health committee chairman Abe Nkomo said in a statement after two days of hearings that the process had shown parliamentary democracy at its best.   "Difficult issues were tackled in a rational and considered manner and we hope we have been able to point a way forward," he said.   Nkomo said his multi-party committee had decided that the proposal to severely limit the right of doctors to dispense should be reconsidered by a working group representing public and private practitioners, pharmacists, government and patients.   He said the group should assess the legal and technical aspects of the proposal and consider policy issues including who should have the say over dispensing, should doctors lose the right and how should equal access to medicine be assured.   The Department of Health argued during the hearings that doctors dispensed from limited and sometimes outdated stocks.   Critics of the proposal said it would both reduce doctors' earnings and impose additional burdens on patients in rural areas.   About 300 doctors and health care workers marched on parliament earlier this week to protest against the proposal to remove their right to sell medicines.   On the proposal to deploy medical students in rural areas, Nkomo said the Interim Medical and Dental Council should report back to the committee after proper consultations with all affected parties.   National Party spokesman on health Willem Odendaal welcomed the committee's refusal to rubber-stamp the proposals, saying the government's handling of the issues was a further example of Zuma's "high-handedness".   "It's no wonder that the wheels of health care in South Africa are coming off," he said.   Zuma has been under fire for several months over her handling of the 14 million rand AIDS-awareness musical Sarafina 2, which was illegally financed out of European Union funds, which had to be returned.   -- Brendan Boyle, Cape Town newsroom +27 21 403 2502 
18195 !GCAT !GVIO  Rebels killed three civilians when they ambushed a minibus taxi in southern Burundi on Wednesday, the army said on Thursday.   Spokesman Lieutenant-Colonel Isaie Nibizi said three people were killed and three wounded when rebels opened fire on their minibus near Rumonge, 75 km (47 miles) south of the capital, on Wednesday.   "It was definitely rebels who attacked," he said.   He had no further details.   He was unable to confirm a state radio report that another person was killed in an ambush near Bugarama, northeast of the capital, on the road to Burundi's second biggest city, Gitega.   The Roman Catholic church in Gitega, in the centre of the country, was preparing on Thursday to bury murdered Archbishop Joachim Ruhuna, whose body was found by troops on Tuesday.   Ruhuna, Burundi's senior Catholic prelate, was killed on September 9 when gunmen ambushed a four-wheel-drive vehicle north of Gitega town.   Two nuns were also killed.   Witnesses said they saw the Tutsi archbishop's body burning in the shell of his vehicle just after the ambush.   But the body was removed from the scene and found with the body of a nun in a shallow grave eight days after the ambush.   Cardinal Jozef Tomko, Pope John Paul's special envoy to the country, told a memorial service in Gitega on Tuesday that ethnic killers in Burundi might evade justice on earth, but they would not escape God.   Four people in the vehicle survived the attack, which the army and military-appointed government blamed on Hutu rebels.   The rebels said the Tutsi-dominated military was responsible.   Ruhuna was the most senior cleric killed in three years of massacres and civil war between Hutu rebels and the Tutsi-led military.   More than 150,000 people -- most of them civilians -- have been killed.   Burundi has been struggling against sanctions imposed on July 31 by regional leaders in an attempt to force Tutsi military leader Pierre Buyoya, who seized power in an army coup on July 25, to agree to peace negotiations with Hutu rebels. 
18196 !GCAT !GVIO  At least seven people died in clashes between Shi'ite Moslems and police in the northern Nigerian city of Kaduna on Wednesday during protests against the detention of a radical Moslem leader, police said on Thursday.   "Those who fell in the riot were a police inspector, a soldier and five of the rioters," a senior police officer in Kaduna said.   Some local newspapers said as many as 15 people may have died in the clashes which erupted during street protests by Shi'ites over the detention of their leader Sheikh Ibrahim Yakub El-Zak-Zaky.   The Shi'ites on Wednesday put the number of their dead at three while the police said two of their men were killed.   Kaduna state police commissioner Yakubu Shaibu was quoted by The Guardian newspaper as telling reporters after a meeting of security officials in the city on Wednesday night that five Shi'ites, one policeman and one soldier were killed.   He said 14 Shi'ites were arrested, adding that the situation had been brought under control.   Residents of Kaduna said the city was calm and the market had reopened.   "The market is open, shops are open.   There is some unease but definitely not fear," travel agent Amina Audu said.   She said police were patrolling the streets and people driving into Kaduna had reported that there were many police checkpoints along the roads.   Police in the mainly Moslem north, scene of bloody religious riots in the past, have been on alert over an ultimatum given by a Shi'ite group after Sheikh El-Zak-Zaky and several others were arrested for what police called security reasons.   El-Zak-Zaky was arrested for operating an unlicenced radio station in the university town of Zaria north of Kaduna which broadcast what the authorities said were inciting religious sermons.   He is reportedly held in the southeastern oil city of Port Harcourt and his followers say they fear for his health.   Until recently he was virtually unheard of in Nigeria, Africa's most populous nation which has been in turmoil since 1993 when the army annulled a vote to restore civilian rule.   The Shi'ite Moslem Brotherhood said 14 people were killed in clashes with police last Friday, a day after El-Zak-Zaky's arrest.   Wednesday's demonstration followed an ultimatum from the brotherhood for the police to free the Sheikh.   Police have dismissed the threat and vowed to crush any protests but diplomats fear the riots may not die down easily.   "The situation is very unpredictable," said one European diplomat in Lagos, who was considering putting off a trip to northern Nigeria on Friday.   Nigeria's political crisis and a severe economic downturn has swelled the number of jobless and poor people who could be used to foment trouble.   Last month three people were killed in a clash between rival Moslem sects in Kano, the region's biggest city.   Moslems, predominantly Sunni, make up roughly half of Nigeria's 100 million people. 
18197 !GCAT  These are significant stories in the Nigerian press on Thursday.   Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.   DAILY TIMES   - Federal government launches economic recovery campaign code-named "Vision 2010."   - Government to boost food production with eight billion naira, says finance minister Anthony Ani.   THE GUARDIAN   - Seven killed as Shi'ites Moslems riot in Kaduna, northern Nigeria.   - Nigeria Airways plans joint venture operation with foreign and local airlines, says aviation minister Air Commodore Ita Udo-Imeh.   - Benin deports 2,000 Nigerians for illegal entry.   THISDAY   - Central Bank to stop retail banking from next January, military ruler General Sani Abacha says at economic summit in Abuja.   DAILY CHAMPION   - Fifteen killed in riot by radical Moslems in Kaduna, northern Nigeria.   -- Lagos newsroom +234 1 2631943 
18198 !GCAT  These are significant stories in the Ivorian press on Thursday.   Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.   FRATERNITE MATIN   - Education Minister Pierre Kipre says in an interview a record 94,000 children will start school for first time in Ivory Coast when the new academic year begins on October 1; Ivory Coast's main national dialects will be taught as an experiment in certain primary schools in regions where they are the majority dialect.   - West African Monetary Union officials consider state of banks in Benin, Burkina Faso, Ivory Coast, Mali, Niger, Senegal and Togo; 1994-95 report shows marked improvement in trading accounts of banks in the grouping since 1994 devaluation of its CFA franc currency   - Prime Minister Daniel Kablan Duncan returns from world solar energy summit in Zimbabwe, saying it offers a cheap source of energy and that Ivory Coast will press ahead with solar energy projects in remote rural locations.   LA VOIE   - Head of agricultural union SYNAGCI, which is close to the opposition Ivorian Popular Front, calls in an interview for increases in price paid to farmers for cocoa, coffee, cotton, palm nuts and other farm products; Martin Yao also says subsidies may be needed to help Ivorian rice growers establish a strong base against competition from cheap rice from Asia.   LE JOUR   - Industrial development minister, Theophile Ahoua N'Doli, says during visit to sack maker Filtisac that Ivory Coast has opted for free trade but talks of "major differences with the World Bank" about response to protectionism by trading rivals.   - A government advertisement invites tenders for two more blocs of agro-industrial giant Palindustrie which is being divided up and privatised; the latest offerings concern oil palm plantations and oil producing factories at Bolo-Soubre-Okrouyo in the centre-west and Boke-Blidouba-Neka in the southwest.   October 30 deadline for submission of tenders.   ($1=514 CFA francs) -- Abidjan newsroom +225 21 90 90 
18199 !GCAT !GVIO  At least seven people died in clashes between Shi'ite Moslems and police in the northern Nigerian city of Kaduna on Wednesday, local newspapers on Thursday quoted Kaduna state police commissioner as saying.   Some newspapers said as many as 15 people were feared to have died in the clashes which erupted during street protests by the Moslems over the detention of their radical leader Sheikh Ibrahim Yakub El-Zak-Zaky.   The Shi'ites on Wednesday put the number of their dead at three while the police said two of their men were killed.   Kaduna police commissioner Yakubu Shaibu told reporters after a meeting of security officials in the city late on Wednesday that five Shi'ites, one policeman and one soldier were killed, The Guardian newspaper reported.   He said 14 Shi'ites were arrested, adding that the situation had been brought under control and the central market where the clashes took place would reopen on Thursday.   Shaibu was not immediately available on Thursday to comment but residents of Kaduna said the city was calm.   Police in the mainly Moslem north, scene of bloody religious riots in the past, have been on alert over an ultimatum given by the Shi'ite group after its leader Ibrahim Yakub El-Zak-Zaky and others were arrested for what police called security reasons.   The Shi'ite Moslem Brotherhood said 14 people had been killed in clashes with police last Friday following El-Zak-Zaky's arrest.   Last month three people were killed in a clash between rival Moslem sects in Kano, the region's biggest city.   Moslems, predominantly Sunni, make up roughly half of Nigeria's 100 million people. 
18200 !GCAT !GCRIM !GVIO  Sudan has charged six of its nationals with helping Iraqis hijack a Sudanese airliner to Britain last month, the privately-owned Akhbar al-Youm reported on Thursday.   Charges against the Sudanese, most of whom work for private tourism companies, include abetting a crime and possessing weapons without a licence, the daily said.   Seven Iraqi men have been charged in Britain with air piracy after they commandeered the plane with 199 people aboard.   They used knives and false explosives to divert the plane which was flying from Khartoum to Amman.   The Iraqis claimed political asylum in Britain, saying they were persecuted while in Iraq.   Akhbar al-Youm said the Iraqis paid the Sudanese to slip weapons through customs at Khartoum airport and onto the plane.   But the Iraqis had to use two false bombs during the hijack when the Sudanese did not provide the arms, the daily said.   It said the main Sudanese suspsect fled to Syria after the hijacking but was arrested when he returned to Sudan two weeks later.   All six men have confessed to investigators, it added.   The paper said the Iraqis were not residents of Sudan but had come from Libya and Jordan.   They resorted to hijacking a plane after they failed in their attempt to enter Britain with false visas, it said. 
18201 !GCAT  These are the leading stories in the Kenyan press on Thursday.   Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.   DAILY NATION   - Journalists walk out on opposition FORD-Asili party chairman Kenneth Matiba when he accuses journalists of corruption and dishonesty.   - Sabotage is ruled out in one of Kenya's worst aviation disasters that killed several senior government officials and a clergyman in Marsabit, northeastern Kenya, last month.   - Opposition FORD-Asili secretary-general Martin Shikuku accuses party chairman Kenneth Matiba of ignoring meetings called by national officials.   EAST AFRICAN STANDARD   - Kenya Bureau of Standards officials seize a container of British corned beef and pet food at Mombasa port.   - Parliamentarian challenges his Langata counterpart Raila Odinga to tell the people the truth about the purchase of the Kisumu molasses plant.   - Dairy farmers from five major milk producing districts tell ruling party politicians to leave Kenya Cooperative Creameries alone.   KENYA TIMES   - Foreign Affairs Minister Stephen Kalonzo Musyoka says Kenya will not tolerate foreign ambassadors on political crusades meddling in Kenya's internal affairs.   ($1=56.75 Shillings) 
18202 !GCAT !GPOL  Divisions between Serb and Moslem leaders have already begun to emerge in Bosnia's peacetime collective presidency only a day after election results were announced.   International mediators are struggling to forge an agreement about where the three-member presidency should meet, the wording of an oath of office and other basic issues.   The Serb member of the newly-elected collective presidency, Momcilo Krajisnik, said on Thursday he wanted joint institions to work but staked out positions in clear opposition to his Moslem rival, Alija Izetbegovic.   Krajisnik finished second in the presidential voting behind Izetbegovic, who will serve as the chair of the presidency after winning the largest number of votes in Saturday's poll.   The hardline Serb nationalist told a news conference he rejected a ruling by international election organisers that Izetbegovic should serve a two-year term as chairman.   "You have noticed that one of my partners in the presidency has already shown bad will and tried to represent himself as the chief of a body in which he is only first among equals," Krajisnik said.   The Serb leader insisted the post should rotate between the three members every eight months.   He also said the three members should discuss whether the candidate with the most votes should hold the post first in the rotation.   The exact oath Krajisnik would take as a presidency member had not been resolved either, he said.   On Thursday, Izetbegovic said no official meeting of the presidency could take place until Krajisnik took an oath to Bosnia's constitution.   "The approach I should take to my duties is still not agreed," he said.   Carl Bildt, the international High Representative to Bosnia, had discussed the issue with presidency members, Krajisnik said.   "There should be definitive statements which will oblige the members of the presidency to act according to the law."   Krajisnik, who has openly opposed reunifying Bosnia, repeated his demand that the presidency convene in industrial suburbs straddling the boundary separating the Serb and Moslem- Croat federation.   He also mentioned Pale, the mountain village 16 km (nine miles) outside Sarajevo that serves as the Serb government seat, as a possible site.   "It should be in Sarajevo but in a place where the security of all the participants can be guaranteed."   Bosnian Moslems have ruled out the Serb proposal, saying meeting on the inter-entity boundary line would symbolise the division of Bosnia, violating the spirit of the Dayton treaty.   Sworn enemies during 3-1/2 years of war, Izetbegovic and Krajisnik have yet to meet since election results were reported but the Croat member, Kresimir Zubak, held talks with both men on Thursday.   Asked if the Bosian Serbs had given up their goal of sovereignty, Krajisnik said Serbs had settled for a "realistic" compromise.   Krajisnik acknowledged the Bosnian Serbs had wished for independence or union with neighbouring Serbia, but insisted they were satisfied with the "limited sovereignty" granted by the Dayton peace agreement.   "We have been working for future generations.   We created peace and the Serb republic, and what future generations will do -- that is their right." 
18203 !E51 !E512 !ECAT !GCAT !GPOL !GVOTE  Peace coordinator Carl Bildt said on Thursday he would welcome authorisation from the U.N. to apply sanctions if needed to push nationalist factions into sharing power in post-election Bosnia.   The three main Moslem, Serb and Croat parties who led their communities through war won clear victories in Saturday's general elections run under provisions of the 1995 Dayton peace treaty signed by all sides.   Bildt said it may take more than moral persuasion to get communal leaders genuinely committed to joint rule.   "We need to beef up the structures of civilian implementation of the Dayton accords and we are having a dialogue on that," Bildt, the international High Representative in Bosnia, told a news briefing.   "Will there be some sort of sanctions instrument given by the Security Council for the next few years?   I don't know.   But I would certainly be in favour of that, a wider or more graduated sanctions instrument.   "I need to have in our arsenal some additional measures," he said, to rebuild Bosnia's multi-ethnic society torn apart by the very nationalist factions that were re-elected on Saturday.   Bosnian President Alija Izetbegovic, leader of the Moslem Party of Democratic Action (SDA), Momcilo Krajisnik of the Serb Democratic Party (SDS) and Croat HDZ party leader Kresimir Zubak won the three seats on a new collective presidency.   The SDA, SDS and HDZ will also dominate a new Bosnian parliament and assemblies in two semi-autonomous entities, the Federation (Moslem-Croat) and Serb Republic, according to near- complete returns released on Thursday.   The Bosnian presidency is to govern by consensus while quorum majorities will suffice in the assemblies.   But legislation can be blocked by one national faction perceiving "a threat to the vital interests of its people".   This provision was written into the Dayton treaty to prevent domineering by one side -- but could be exploited by separatists to paralyse joint government, critics say.   Once the elections are certified, expected next week, the presidency must convene to start appointing a cabinet.   Bildt said that in talks he had earlier this week, Izetbegovic, Krajisnik and Zubak had all pledged to work together.   But disputes over crucial symbolic issues broke out ominously on Thursday.   Krajisnik told Bildt he wants the presidency to convene right on the boundary line between the RS and Federation, a line the Serbs treat as an international border.   Moslem leaders want the venue in Sarajevo, the Bosnian capital besieged but not taken by Serb forces in the war, accusing Krajisnik of trying to nip unity in the bud.   In the Serb "capital" Pale, Krajisnik told reporters Serb leaders could not feel safe in downtown Sarajevo.   He also said he had never agreed to Izetbegovic serving as head of state in the presidency -- as the top vote getter -- for the first two years, instead of rotating with Serb and Croat members earlier.   The Bosnian oath of office was also problematic, he said.   Earlier, Moslem-led Bosnian state radio quoted Izetbegovic as saying formal talks within the new presidency would begin when Krajisnik was prepared to "swear on the Bosnian constitution".   Zubak said on state television he had already had informal talks with Krajisnik.   Asked if Krajisnik was ready to join the presidency, Zubak said: "That's indisputable.   He's ready to work on something he signed up to and he told me that."   With counting almost finished, the SDA was polling 54.3 percent of the vote for two-thirds of the 42 seats in a new House of Representatives reserved for candidates from Federation territory, or half of Bosnia.   The HDZ, the SDA's uneasy partner in a pre-election Federation government, had tallied 23.4 percent.   In the race for seats allotted to parties running in the Serb Republic entity, the separatist SDS was way ahead with 54.4 percent.   Biljana Plavsic of the SDS was elected Serb entity president with 65.1 percent of the ballots. 
18204 !C11 !C33 !C331 !CCAT !GCAT !GDEF  Lockheed Martin Corp. said Thursday it would invest in Hungary an amount equal to the purchase price of its F-16s, should the country opt for the jet fighters.   "We would offer Hungary a 100 percent offset deal," Dain Hancock, president of Lockheed's tactical aircraft systems, told a news conference.   He said the details would be worked out later.   Hancock also confirmed that the fly-away purchase price of an F-16 is $24 million, but the actual price would depend on the size of the order.   Lockheed Martin is competing for post-Cold War business in central Europe against McDonnell Douglas Corp., maker of the F-18 "Hornet," Sweden's SAAB, which makes the "Gripen," France's "Mirage" and other European builders.   Hungary has an air wing of 28 MiG-29s that would be operational well into the next century, but its older MiG-21, MiG-23 and Su-22 airplanes need replacement.   Defence ministry sources said Hungary -- depending on the timescale of NATO membership -- is looking to buy some 30 fighters. 
18205 !C42 !CCAT !E41 !ECAT !GCAT !GDEF !GJOB  Civilians servicing Russia's nuclear submarines went on strike for the day on Thursday as part of a series of protests against chronic wage delays, Itar-Tass news agency said.   The actions follow a long build-up of tension in the military, which is owed billions of dollars by the state.   "The armed forces of the Russian Federation seem to be reaching a critical point in their overstretched patience," the presidential newspaper Rossiskiye Vesti said on Thursday.   "Sociological surveys show that...the military is extremely unhappy with its current situation and is sliding towards the dangerous state where it could take unpredictable actions."   Tass said employees of the Northern Fleet logistics services and enterprises providing technical support to the nuclear submarine force had staged a one-day warning strike.   State Radio Russia said about 20,000 workers took part in protests in the region, halting work at three major shipyards around the Arctic port of Murmansk.   Tass said many workers had not received their wages since April.   Tass said in a separate report that civilian employees of the Pacific Fleet, based in Vladivostok, also staged a one-day strike on Thursday.   It quoted a trade union leader as saying about 1,500 workers who supply the Russian navy in the Far East blocked the main entrance to the Fleet's headquarters in Vladivostok.   In Moscow civilians working in the armed forces demonstrated in front of the White House government building.   Some of their placards said, "Give us a piece of the pie!"   or "Russia needs an army".   Tass quoted union leader Spartak Orzhavin as saying that the government owed the army more than six trillion roubles ($1.2 billion) in overdue wages.   The liberal opposition daily Nezavisimaya Gazeta said this was only a fifth of the state's debt to the armed forces.   Security Council secretary Alexander Lebed has drawn attention to the crisis and lobbied for funding to be increased in next year's budget.   "The armed forces are in a financial crisis.   If measures are not taken urgently it could have irreversable consequences for national security," he wrote in a letter to President Boris Yeltsin which was published last Friday. 
18206 !GCAT !GPOL  Russian President Boris Yeltsin, clarifying doubts about the chain of command during his planned heart operation, said in a decree published on Thursday that the prime minister would take over during the surgery.   "The temporary fulfilment of duties of the president of the Russian Federation...will be carried out by head of government Viktor Chernomyrdin to the full extent, including the power to control strategic and nuclear weapons," the decree said.   "He will be given the corresponding technical means (the nuclear button) to do this."   But Yeltsin must still sign a second decree formally handing over his powers just before the planned surgery, a heart bypass operation aimed at improving blood supply to Yeltsin's heart.   "This decree has been issued to make this politically clear and end all speculation over this topic," Yeltsin spokesman Sergei Yastrzhembsky told a news briefing.   "The mechanism will be put into action after the president issues the next decree."   Yeltsin has already given some extra responsibilities to Chernomyrdin, who would take over under the constitution if the president is incapacitated.   But the constitution does not specify the circumstances of a handover, and Russian media have speculated hard about the chain of command during Yeltsin's operation, and specifically about who will hold the button which could launch a nuclear strike.   The press office said on Wednesday that Yeltsin was considering mechanisms for handing power to Chernomyrdin temporarily but gave few details.   Chief-of-staff Anatoly Chubais said in a newspaper interview that he expected the president to hand over his duties to Chernomyrdin for a maximum of two days.   Yastrzhembsky said Yeltsin's doctors, assisted by top U.S. surgeon Michael DeBakey, were due to meet on September 25 to decide when to operate on the president, who aides say is undergoing tests at Moscow's Central Clinical Hospital.   "After this we hope the doctors will issue some recommendations," the spokesman said.   Yeltsin said earlier this month he had agreed to have an operation after doctors said this was the only way to avoid being reduced to a sedentary lifestyle, but several questions remain unanswered.   An extended stay in hospital this week -- the Kremlin first said the president would stay two days and then that he would be there all week -- prompted speculation that Yeltsin needed more medical attention than was initially thought.   There is still no clear explanation of what happened at the end of June when, after four months of energetic campaigning for re-election, Yeltsin suddenly disappeared from public view.   Some doctors and media say his problems might be more complex than the clogged cardiac arteries cited by the Kremlin.   They speculate about liver or kidney problems, diabetes, or the need to wean Yeltsin off a course of stimulants or drugs.   Recent television pictures of Yeltsin have carried no sound. 
18207 !GCAT !GCRIM !GVIO  U.N. war crimes experts on Thursday started removing bodies from an alleged mass grave on a farm in Serb-held north-east Bosnia, believed to contain the remains of Moslems executed last year.   William Haglund, chief of the investigations team, said they had taken out seven bodies by the end of Thursday.   The 28-metre (92 ft) long grave is dug into a hillside in the remote and mountainous region.   Investigators dressed in blue overalls worked amid the overpowering stench of rotting flesh, to clear away topsoil and uncover the pile of corpses.   War Crimes prosecutors believe the bodies are those of Moslems killed as they fled the Serb conquest of Srebrenica last year.   The town had been declared a U.N. "safe area" for Moslems, although Serb forces siezed it in a major offensive and forced the population to flee into the hills.   While thousands of women and children survived, some eight thousand Moslem men and boys are missing.   The investigators believe conquering Serbs forces either cut them down as they tried to sneak to safety, or rounded them up and executed them before burying the bodies in mass graves.   In Pilica, the unearthed bodies had been randomly thrown on top of one another to form a heap some 3 metres (10 ft) deep.   The investigators zipped the remains into body bags before storing them in refrigerated containers for transport to a makeshift morgue in Moslem-controlled Kalesija.   There, forensic scientists will try to identify the victims and determine the cause of death in their hunt for clues to convict the people accused of ordering the alleged massacres.   Haglund said there was evidence that the bodies had been bound with cloth.   "So far it looks like most of the bodies were male", he said.   According to Haglund, the team expected to finish the exhumation in three days unless they find more bodies.   "We are one-third of the way now," he said.   Haglund's team, from the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, has finished exhumations at three other grave sites -- Cerska, where they found 160 bodies, Nova Kasaba which contained 33 bodies, and Lazet which had 160.   Haglund refused to be drawn on the number of bodies there may be in the Pilica grave before the exhumation was completed.   Autopsy and examination were expected to continue for another month and a half, he said adding that "Pilica may well be the last site that we will look at in this form this season." 
18208 !GCAT  These are some of the main stories in Sofia newspapers today.   Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.   24 CHASA   -- The European Union has approved wheat exports to Bulgaria to alleviate the country's grain shortage, an agriculture ministry official said.   -- Bulgaria's state railways (BSR) will face a sharp fall in subsidies next year and railway traffic may suffer, BSR director Angel Dimitrov said.   The budget will provide some 1.1 billion levs to BSR which is three times less than this year's subsidies.   -- Bulgaria's central bank should strengthen its fiscal policy by creating a stable banking and monetary system, an International Monetary Fund official said before leaving Bulgaria.   -- Bulgaria's metallurgical firm Technoimpex said it would start a joint project with the Japanese company Ebara worth seven million dollars for the clearance of sulphur and nitrogen oxide from Maritsa-Iztok power station.   -- Bulgaria's electricity and central heating prices are expected to rise by 14 percent in October and thereafter frozen until the end of the winter, deputies said.   STANDART   -- Bulgaria's parliament ratified a $30 million loan extended by the World Bank.   -- Bulgaria's inflation by the end of 1997 will be 60 percent and the dollar will trade at around 341 levs, an Economic Development Agency report said.   -- Bulgaria's National Electricity Company (NEC) said it hoped to supply ex-Yugoslavia with electricity if Belgrade agrees to pay in foreign currency.   PARI   -- Bulgaria's gas monopolist Bulgargas said that Greece had started receiving its first supplies of Russian natural gas via Bulgaria.   TRUD   -- A hand-made bomb exploded in one of Sofia's central squares early on Wednesday but nobody was injured, police said.   -- Bulgaria's cabinet and Deutschebank are negotiating the extention of a loan worth one billion dollars.   The newspaper gave no source or further details.   -- Sofia Newsroom, (++359-2) 981 8569; 981 4145 
18209 !GCAT  SME - Slovak Prime Minister Vladimir Meciar will meet his Hungarian counterpart Gyula Horn by the end of this year.   NARODNA OBRODA - Slovak state-run postal monopoly Slovenska Posta (SP) expects to post losses of around 90 million crowns this year, compared to a gross profit of 12 million in 1995.   SP's turnover is expected to increase to some 3.2 billion crowns, from last year's three billion.   - The opposition said they would demand that parliament again vote on the dismissal of culture minister Ivan Hudec at the next parliamentary session.   - Brigita Schmognerova, an economic expert from the opposition Democratic Left (SDL) party said planned bank privatisation would signicantly weaken Meciar's postition.   - Steel producer VSZ said it was not, at present, planning to build its own car assembly plant, but admitted that it had considered the move in the past.   - The state fund of market regulation (SFTR) has set a minimum price for the purchase of grain from next year's harvest at 3,500 crowns.   HOSPODARSKE NOVINY - The SFTR has so far bought some 150,000 tonnes of grain from this year's harvest, less than half the planned amount of 400,000 tonnes.   -- Bratislava Newsroom, 42-7-210-3687 
18210 !GCAT  DELO   - Slovenia's Chamber of Economy said the government should cut corporate taxes to help boost the economy's competitiveness.   - Parliamentary commission recommends a planned electoral referendum should be held on November 10, the same day as the country's general elections.   - Management board of troubled machine producer Litostroj is expected to nominate a new chief executive soon after the former manager resigned earlier this week.   - Slovenia's only petrol refinery Nafta Lendava said it would have to report a loss this year unless petrol prices are increased soon.   - Foreign investment is welcome, Slovenian government officials told potential investors during an international conference in the northern city of Bled.   DNEVNIK   - Only 29.9 percent of Slovenians believe the electoral referendum should take place on election day, while 46.4 percent say a different date should be set, a poll shows.   REPUBLIKA   - Air-traffic controllers cancelled a strike planned for Friday after negotiations over increased salaries and better working conditions started on Tuesday. 
18211 !GCAT  HOSPODARSKE NOVINY - Czech Prime Minster Vaclav Klaus will have dinner on Thursday with the heads of the four largest Czech banks - Ceska Sporitelna a.s., IPB a.s. Komercni Banka, Ceskoslovenska Obchodni Banka a.s. They will discuss issues arising out of the crisis at the largest fully private Czech bank, Agrobanka.   - The Czech National Bank (CNB) has approached the European Bank For Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) with a view to finding a strategic partner for the troubled bank.   Czech EBRD representative Jiri Huebner said that nothing greater than a 10 or 20 percent stake in Agrobanka was being considered for the purposes of strategic partnership.   - The government on Wednesday approved a proposed balanced budget for 1996.   The proposed budget must now pass through parliament.   The opposition Social Democrat leader, Milos Zeman, has said he would also favour a balanced budget.   - M2 money supply growth fell to 17.6 percent in July.   MLADA FRONTA DNES - The paper says that the governemnt's main aim in becoming involved in the Agrobanka crisis was to expel the Motoinvest investment firm from the Czech bankng sector.   Government institionshas have huge deposits in Agrobanka and the withdrawal of some of these funds contributed to Agrobanka's liquidity crisis, Mlada Fronta adds.   - The government approved the privatisation of the Vitkovice and Nova Hut steel mills.   - Czech gross domestic product (GDP) rose buy just 4.0 percent in the second quarter of 1996 after 4.6 percent in the first quarter.   - The Czech Republic thrashed Malta 6:0 in their first World Cup soccer qualification match.   -- Prague Newsroom, 42-2-2423-0003 
18212 !GCAT !GPOL  Russian President Boris Yeltsin has moved to quash speculation about who will stand in for him during his forthcoming heart surgery by saying his prime minister will temporarily assume all his powers.   Yeltsin, who announced on September 5 that he would undergo bypass surgery at the end of the month, will sign a decree transferring his authority just before he goes into the operating theatre, his spokesman said.   The president's powers are legion in Russia's Kremlin-weighted political system and include control over its nuclear weapons.   "This decree has been issued to make this politically clear and end all speculation over this topic," Yeltsin's spokesman Sergei Yastrzembsky told a news briefing on Thursday evening, after reading out Yeltsin's decree naming Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin.   The 1993 constitution, which gave Yeltsin huge powers to run the country, states that the prime minister should step in if the president is impeached or permanently incapacitated.   But it does not specify how a temporary handover might take place -- something which has not happened in Russia since the 16th century rule of Ivan the Terrible.   Yastrzembsky's remark was the latest in a series of attempts by the Kremlin to stop the rumour mill, which has been grinding relentlessly since Yeltsin dropped out of sight in June, just before the end of his successful campaign for reelection.   A top Kremlin cardiologist tackled a different front on Thursday, dismissing reports that the length of time it was taking to prepare Yeltsin -- who had two mild heart attacks last year -- meant he might be too sick for surgery.   Interfax news agency quoted Sergei Mironov, head of the presidential medical centre, as saying there was no question of the operation on the 65-year-old president being cancelled.   "It's another thing that the period of preparation of Boris Yeltsin for the operation is being slightly extended," it quoted Mironov as saying, without elaborating.   "But the opportunity to examine the patient in the Central Clinical hospital, where he will stay until the end of the week, has allowed a significant acceleration of the necessary tests."   Under a separate order, Yeltsin, who has already boosted Chernomyrdin's powers, made the prime minister responsibile for receiving the credentials of foreign ambassadors to Moscow.   "It looks as if Yeltsin is giving Chernomyrdin a trial period before signing the order actually handing over his powers," said a reporter for a Russian newspaper attending the Kremlin briefing.   Yeltsin's absence from the political scene comes amid a build-up of tensions among millions of workers who have gone for months without pay in Russia's crumbling state industries.   Civilians servicing nuclear submarines in the Far North went on strike for the day on Thursday as part of a series of protests by military workers against chronic wage delays.   The power vacuum has also left Chernomyrdin and security chief Alexander Lebed embroiled in a struggle over the rebel Chechnya region, where Lebed has secured a shaky peace deal.   Lebed briefed Chernomyrdin this week on his efforts to iron out problems with the deal but has complained he is not getting enough support from Moscow for his efforts to end its disastrous 21-month military campaign against Chechen separatism.   Interfax news agency said the withdrawal of Russian troops foreseen by the August 31 deal with the rebels would resume on Saturday after a hitch caused by a row over a prisoner exchange.   Rebel leader Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev was also expected to come to Moscow on Monday for more talks with Lebed, it said. 
18213 !G15 !G158 !GCAT !GDEF !GDIP  Poland and Lithuania pledged on Thursday to co-operate in the drive for European Union and NATO membership.   They will also step up efforts to make their armed forces compatible with those of NATO states.   Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski and his Lithuanian counterpart Algirdas Brazauskas issued a joint declaration after meeting on board a Polish navy vessel.   "The Republic of Lithuania and the Republic of Poland will continue to support each other in the processes of integration into the European Union and NATO and will cooperate closely by holding regular consultations.  .  ," it said.   Kwasniewski told a news conference the two countries also planned to form a joint military unit for international peace operations in mid-1997.   Lithuania, which left the Soviet Union in 1991, sees European integration as a guarantee of its independence.   "Membership in NATO and EU will allow Lithuania to keep the freedom it has regained so recently," Brazauskas said. 
18214 !GCAT !GDIS !GENV  A minor earthquake shook eastern Romania on Thursday, but no damage was reported,the state news agency Rompres said.   Rompres said the tremor, measuring 3.9 degrees on the Richter open-ended scale, occured at 5.44 p.m. local (1444 GMT) in the mountain region of Vrancea, 300 km (190 miles) northeast of the capital.   It said the tremor was not felt in Bucharest. 
18215 !GCAT !GPOL !GVIO !GVOTE  The newly-elected head of Bosnia's collective presidency, Alija Izetbegovic, said on Thursday his Serb rival would have to swear an oath to the Bosnian constitution before the body officially convenes.   "Official talks (in the presidency) will begin when Mr (Momcilo) Krajisnik is ready to swear an oath to Bosnia's constitution," Izetbegovic told reporters.   "Unofficial talks might begin sooner, but actually everything depends on this first thing.   That (swearing in) can take place only in Sarajevo," he said.   Izetbegovic, a Moslem, spoke a day after election supervisors declared him the winner in a race for the chair of the peacetime collective presidency.   Krajisnik, a hardline nationalist, won the Serb seat and Kresimir Zubak will be representing the Croat community in Bosnia, comprised of Serb and Moslem-Croat territories.   Izetbegovic rejected Krajisnik's demands to convene the presidency in a building straddling the boundary between the Serb and Moslem-Croat territories on the outskirts of Sarajevo.   "We do not accept that," the Moslem leader said.   Izetbegovic said Krajisnik's stance reminded him of nationalist obstruction before the war but he said there were now "different circumstances".   Bosnia, he said, was no longer threatened by its powerful neighbours in former Yugoslavia -- Croatia and Serbia.   "The idea of Greater Serbia was defeated in a political and military way," Izetbegovic said.   "In the future we see one very weak Serbia, weak for a long time and weak enough not to be able to embark on the kind of adventure it tried in 1991," said Izetbegovic.   In that year, Izetbegovic served as the head of the pre-war collective presidency and led Bosnia's break from Serbian-led Yugoslavia in 1992.   Serbia and later Croatia backed ethnic kin in Bosnia against Izetbegovic's government in a bid to carve up the republic.   Izetbegovic said he expected Croatia to develop into a democratic country, which would prevent similar intervention in the future.   "What we have there now is not democracy but in the future I see Croatia as a democratic country and that is inevitable.   A democratic Croatia will not interfere in Bosnia's affairs."   He said Bosnia would grow "stronger" over time as well.   The 70-year-old president who led the Sarajevo government through 3-1/2 years of war attended a meeting of his Moslem nationalist Party of Democratic Action (SDA) on Thursday, saying the party would play a constructive role in rebuilding Bosnia.   He denied accusations that his party was trying to create an exclusively Islamic state in a country where Moslems, Roman Catholic Croats and Orthodox Christian Serbs have lived together for centuries.   "Women here walk around with scarves but they also wear mini-skirts.   We want a normal state where Islam too will have freedom." 
18216 !C13 !C24 !CCAT !GCAT !GDIP  Bulgaria and Greece on Thursday exchanged accords on the use of strategic water reserves, ending a decades-old dispute between the two Balkan neighbours.   Bulgaria's Foreign Minister Georgi Pirinski and his Greek counterpart Theodoros Pangalos met at the Bulgarian town of Smoljian, next to the Greek border.   They exchanged the pacts ratified by the parliaments of the two countries on joint use of the waters of the Mesta River, flowing through the two countries and on opening three new border checkpoints.   Under the accord Bulgaria will guarantee 29 percent of an average annual natural flow of 1.5 million cubic metres (53 million cu ft) to Greece.   Three new border checkpoints will start operating by end-1998. 
18217 !GCAT !GODD  A Russian man who offered to kill his goat and cook it after it attacked a motorist's car got his come-uppance when traffic police fined him for the animal's behaviour, Itar-Tass news agency said on Thursday.   The owner offered the motorist goat "shashliki" (kebabs) in compensation after the driver hit the goat as it crossed the road and the creature responded by jumping onto the bonnet, smashing the windscreen and walking over the roof.   The driver refused and traffic police near Samara in southern Russia decided the goat had committed an offence.   The owner, identified only as N, was fined 300,000 roubles ($60).   Tass did not say when the incident occurred. 
18218 !GCAT !GPOL  President Boris Yeltsin on Thursday named Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin his full- scale stand-in for the time of his heart surgery, filling in one of the blanks in Russia's rudimentary power transition rules.   "The temporary fulfillment of duties of the president of the Russian Federation...will be carried out by head of government Viktor Chernomyrdin to the full extent, including the power to control strategic and nuclear weapons," Yeltsin's decree said.   "He will be given the corresponding technical means (the nuclear button) to do this."   Yeltsin's sudden disappearance from the public eye in late June, right in the middle of his re-election campaign, has prompted speculation about who controls Russia.   The president's announcement earlier this month that he would undergo bypass surgery to improve the blood supply to his heart only fuelled that speculation.   One of the most urgent questions raised by the annoucement was who would look after the nation's huge nuclear force while its leader is unconscious in the operating theatre.   "This decree has been issued to make this politically clear and end all speculation over this topic," Yeltsin spokesman Sergei Yastrzhembsky told a news briefing.   The Russian constitution says that the premier replaces the president if the latter is impeached or if his health does not allow him to serve the rest of the term.   But it gives no clue as to who carries out presidential duties if the national leader has to surrender them temporarily.   Yeltsin, 65, rushed to hospital with mild heart attacks twice last year, has hitherto insisted that he was in charge and did not need a substitute.   Yeltsin ordered Chernomyrdin earlier this month to take up some of his powers including coordination of the so-called "power ministries", mainly the Defence and Interior ministries and Federal Security Service, who report directly to president.   But the mandate was limited and Chernomyrdin was not given the right to chair the policy-making Security Council.   The temporary handover of all powers by the national leader will probably be the first such act in Russia since tsar Ivan the Terrible, who in the late 16th-century kept a little-known nobleman as a formal ruler for several years.   The decree said that closer to the operation Yeltsin will sign a separate decree handing over powers to Chernomyrdin and take them back by yet another decree.   "The mechanism will be put into action after the president issues the next decree," Yastrzhembsky said.   He gave no further details.   Chief-of-staff Anatoly Chubais said in a newspaper interview that he expected the president to hand over his duties to Chernomyrdin for a maximum of two days.   NTV commercial television has quoted Kremlin sources as saying that Yeltsin would probably hand over his powers for just the few hours of the actual operation.   The sources say Yeltsin would sign a decree naming Chernomyrdin acting president just before going to the operation and will take back the reins immediately after the operation, when the doctors bring him out of the anaesthetic.   Yastrzhembsky said Yeltsin's doctors, assisted by top U.S. surgeon Michael DeBakey, were due to meet on September 25 to decide when to operate on the president, who aides say is undergoing tests at Moscow's Central Clinical Hospital. 
18219 !GCAT !GDIP !GPOL  Peace coordinator Carl Bildt said on Thursday U.N. sanctions may be needed to goad the Moslem, Serb and Croat nationalists who won Bosnia's elections into sharing power.   The three nationalist parties who led their ethnic communities through war won clear victories in Saturday's elections, run under the provisions of the Dayton peace accord.   "We need to beef up the structures of civilian implementation of the Dayton accords and we are having a dialogue on that," Bildt, the international High Representative in Bosnia, told a news briefing.   "Will there be some sort of sanctions instrument given by the Security Council for the next few years?   I don't know.   But I would certainly be in favour of that, a wider or more graduated sanctions instrument.   "I need to have in our arsenal some additional measures," he said, to rebuild Bosnia's multi-ethnic society torn apart by the very nationalist factions that were re-elected on Saturday.   Candidates of the Moslem Party of Democratic Action (SDA), Serb Democratic Party (SDS) and Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) captured the three seats on a new collective presidency.   The three main nationalist parties have also built up unbeatable margins to dominate a new Bosnia-wide parliament and two regional assemblies, according to near-complete returns released on Thursday.   Izetbegovic's SDA was polling 54.3 percent of the vote for two-thirds of the 42 seats in the Bosnian House of Representatives reserved for candidates from Moslem-Croat Federation territory, which comprises half the country.   The Croat HDZ, the ruling Moslem party's uneasy partner in a pre-election Federation government, had tallied 23.4 percent.   In the race for seats allotted to parties running in the Serb Republic, the ultra-nationalist SDS was way ahead with 54.3 percent.   The presidency of the Bosnian Serb republic was sewn up by hardline Serb nationalist Biljana Plavsic of the SDS who had 65.1 percent of the vote.   Under Dayton the national presidency is to govern by consensus while quorum majorities will suffice in the assemblies.   But legislation can be blocked by any faction perceiving "a threat to the vital interests of its people".   This provision was written into the Dayton treaty to prevent domineering by one side -- but could be exploited by separatists to paralyse joint government, critics say.   Bildt said he had extracted pledges of cooperation in earlier talks with presidency members Alija Izetbegovic of the Moslems, Momcilo Krajisnik of hardline separatist Serbs and Kresimir Zubak of nationalist Croats.   Bildt's team, complemented by Contact Group envoys now in Sarajevo, has its work cut out for it in coming weeks.   Once the elections are certified, expected to happen by September 25, the presidency must convene for the first time to start appointing a cabinet.   But the Moslems and Serbs are already at loggerheads over where to meet.   Krajisnik has told Bildt he wants the presidency to convene in a building that straddles the boundary line between the Serb Republic and the Federation, a line the Serbs treat as an international border.   Moslem and Croat leaders want the venue in Sarajevo, the Bosnian capital besieged but not taken by Serb forces in the war, and accuse Krajisnik of trying to nip unity in the bud.   Bosnia's Moslem-run state radio quoted Izetbegovic as saying official talks within the new joint presidency will begin when krajisnik is prepared to "swear on the Bosnia-Hercegovina constitution".   But he said unofficial talks to resolve their differences could start earlier. 
18220 !GCAT !GPOL !GVOTE  Bulgaria's anti-communist opposition, helped by the country's deep economic crisis, is on course to win the next presidential election due on October 27, an opinion poll showed on Thursday.   "Latest poll results show the opposition's candidate, the lawyer Petar Stoyanov, is well ahead of the ruling Socialist Party's candidate, Culture Minister Ivan Marazov," the head of the MBMD agency Mira Yaneva told reporters.   Some 30 percent of the 1,448 people surveyed said they intended to vote for Stoyanov, of the main opposition Union of Democratic Forces, while 24 percent said they would back Marazov.   The poll was conducted between September 9 and 15.   Other contenders, including the flamboyant head of the minority Business Bloc party George Ganchev and former prime minister Reneta Indzhova -- Bulgaria's self-styled "Iron Lady" -- were a long way behind the two main candidates.   Yaneva attributed Stoyanov's relatively strong showing to Bulgaria's economic woes, which have sparked protests and demonstrations against the leftist cabinet of Prime Minister Zhan Videnov.   "Some 54 percent of people polled consider the Socialist Party incapable of governing the country and of tackling the economic crisis," Yaneva added.   Under Bulgaria's post-communist constitution the president is a largely ceremonial figure but the post carries considerable symbolic importance.   Incumbent Zhelyu Zhelev, also a strong critic of the current government, will not be seeking reelection. 
18221 !GCAT !GPOL !GVIO  Chechen separatist leader Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev will probably come to Moscow on Monday to negotiate with Russian security supremo Alexander Lebed, Interfax news agency said on Thursday.   Interfax, quoting an unnamed source in Moscow, said Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin might also take part in the talks on trying to seal a shaky peace in the breakaway republic.   Asked to comment on the report, a spokesman for Lebed, who signed a deal with the rebels on August 31, said: "We do not deny it."   But Interfax quoted a separate source close to Chernomyrin, who has given Lebed's peace deal his cautious approval, as saying that the prime minister had not invited the rebel leader to Moscow.   Lebed reported to Chernomyrdin on the peace deal on Wednesday.   The former paratroop general said the meeting had smoothed over a number of issues.   But he has complained that he has not received much backing from Moscow for his mission to end the 21-month-old conflict, which has killed tens of thousands of people.   Analysts say Lebed and Chernomyrdin are caught up in a power struggle over the Chechnya deal, with President Boris Yeltsin taking a back seat ahead of a planned heart operation.   The agreement, which involves the withdrawal of Russian troops and a postponement of the issue of Chechnya's political status for five years, has become mired in difficulties.   The troop pullout was suspended a day after it began on September 8 in a row over the exchange of prisoners of war, although Interfax quoted a military official in Chechnya as saying the withdrawal would resume on Saturday.   Military officials and many politicians in Moscow feel that the deal is a sell-out to the rebels, who were until recently dubbed bandits and terrorists in the capital.   A breakthrough came in late May when Yandarbiyev came to Moscow for negotiations with Yeltsin on the eve of June's presidential election.   But it proved short-lived and fighting resumed after the vote and continued until a ceasefire officially agreed on August 21. 
18222 !GCAT !GPOL !GVOTE  The Slovenian parliament on Thursday voted in favour of holding a referendum on electoral reform on December 8, a month after the ex-Yugoslav republic's third multi-party general elections.   Parliament was responding to a ruling by the Constitutional Court last week, which called for the referendum to take place as soon as possible.   Deputies backed a referendum on electoral reform in August but only after the November 10 general election had taken place.   But the main opposition Social Democratic Party appealed to the Constitutional Court, arguing for the referendum to be held before the general election.   Slovenians will be asked in the ballot to choose among three proposals for a reformed electoral system, including an increase in the number of voting districts and the introduction of a first-past-the-post system.   Slovenia currently has eight electoral districts.   Candidates are chosen from party lists, with parliamentary seats allocated according to the percentage of votes received.   Some 1.5 Slovenes are eligible to vote for the 27 political parties expected to contest the November election. 
18223 !GCAT !GPOL !GVOTE  Hopes of many moderate Bosnian Serbs for renewed contacts with the outside world were dashed by Saturday's elections which brought nationalists to power, and some now fear retaliation.   "That's it.   The reign of darkness continues for the next two years.   I still cannot believe that the people really wanted that," Djuro, a mechanic in Banja Luka, said.   "You cannot even imagine just how profound is my despair now.   We have no future."   The moderate opposition, rallied around the Democratic Patriotic Bloc (DPB) and leftist Union for Peace and Progress (SMP), had urged voters to open the region to the world and cooperate with former foes.   They were pitted against the ruling Serb Democratic Party (SDS), which campaigned for Saturday's elections on an ultra-nationalist platform.   Some moderates say they are worried the SDS will waste little time in cracking down on the Serb opposition.   "What we now fear is retaliation," said a senior Serb political analyst who asked not to be named.   "If the international community allows that to happen then the budding opposition could easily be decimated at the next elections."   But some Western diplomats say the SDS will have to watch its step and curb nationalist rhetoric or risk international sanctions.   They point out that the SDS, thought before the elections to be virtually impregnable in its Bosnian Serb homeland, actually faced more opposition than leading candidates of the rival Moslem and Croat communities.   Bosnian President Alija Izetbegovic, leader of the Moslem Party of Democratic Action (SDA) won the right to be Bosnia's head of state.   He was followed by Momcilo Krajisnik of the SDS and Kresimir Zubak of the Croatian Demoicratic Union (HDZ) in the race for the chairmanship of a new Bosnian three-man presidency.   While Izetbegovic and Zubak had little real competition within their communities, Krajisnik surprisingly lost 30 per cent of the Serb vote to independent candidate Mladen Ivanic.   The same ratio of opposition was reflected in parallel votes for regional parliaments in the Moslem-Croat federation and the Bosnian Serb Republic.   Some opposition politicians say their strong support, despite a campaign fraught with irregularities and a virtual media blackout, provides a good starting point for the next elections due in two years time.   However, some of the more prominent moderate Serb leaders are preparing for a possible backlash from the SDS.   Predrag Radic, the DPB's candidate for the Bosnian Serb seat on the collective presidency, told Reuters he expected to be dismissed as mayor of Banja Luka, the biggest Bosnian Serb town, within days.   "It would be a shame if the international community allows the SDS to squelch such a promising movement against separatism," one political analyst said.   "If it does not keep an eagle eye on the political scene here, that is surely what will happen." 
18224 !C24 !CCAT !GCAT !GENV !GHEA  Ukrainian officials said on Thursday that neutron radiation readings had risen considerably inside the Chernobyl nuclear plant's ruined fourth reactor and called for new efforts to rebuild the "sarcophagus" housing it.   Viktor Baryakhtar, vice-president of Ukraine's Academy of Sciences, told Ukrinform news agency that readings of neutron activity in the cracking steel and concrete "sarcophagus" covering the reactor had risen by five to 110 times this week.   Independent experts said even those readings posed no immediate danger, 10 years after the reactor caught fire and exploded in the world's worst civil nuclear disaster.   President Leonid Kuchma, who has pledged to close Chernobyl by the year 2000, expressed concern over the state of the sarcophagus at talks with an envoy of the G7 wealthy countries, one of the chief paymasters in financing the shutdown.   Baryakhtar, Kuchma's top nuclear adviser, described the increased readings as a "chain reaction" which had lasted from four to five hours on Monday.   "This is a rather dangerous phenomenon which has been observed three times this year," he told Ukrinform.   "The main reason is leakage under the sarcophagus of rainwater, which speeds up neutrons.   The only way to avoid these instances is to build a new structure around the sarcophagus without delay."   One independent report this week said neutron radiation readings twice normal levels had been recorded inside the "tomb" hurriedly erected around the reactor after the 1986 disaster.   But it said rises of tens of thousands times the norm would be required to cause a new nuclear reaction.   Baryakhtar's statement, and its appearance on Ukraine's official news agency, appeared aimed at pressing for quicker action in replacing the sarcophagus.   "Such levels are still well below anything constituting a danger but it is important to understand just what is happening inside there.   It all must be explained," Patrick Michaille, a French nuclear safety expert in Ukraine, told Reuters.   "If levels continue to be abnormal that makes the problem of the sarcophagus more urgent.   The Ukrainians are clearly trying to draw attention to this.   But even if more money is allocated that does not necessarily deal with the problem."   Ukraine's top negotiator on closing Chernobyl, Environment Minister Yuri Kostenko, initially suggested on Wednesday that the readings were caused by faulty equipment.   But he later said that, if the levels proved correct, they required quick investigation which Ukraine could not afford.   At a meeting attended by G7 ambassadors, special envoy Claude Mandil handed Kuchma a letter from French President Jacques Chirac, the current G7 chairman, responding to Kiev's plea to speed up promised aid and grants of about $3 billion.   A spokesman said Kuchma expressed concern to Mandil about delays in financing construction of two unfinished reactors at other power stations "and the 200 tonnes of nuclear fuel under the sarcophagus.   I expect clear decisions on this from G7."   Kuchma was also meeting a senior official of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, which is negotiating a separate financing accord on Chernobyl.   Ukraine has complained that Western efforts have focused on restructuring the former Soviet republic's energy sector and do not recognise a new sarcophagus as an urgent priority.   A Franco-British plan devised three years ago to build a new structure has been all but abandoned as too expensive and the winner of a new tender for a less complex project is expected to be announced next month. 
18225 !C16 !CCAT !GCAT !GCRIM !GPOL  An amendment to the Slovak bankruptcy law approved by parliament on Wednesday preventing state firms and those officially marked as strategic from going under is unconstitutional, the opposition said on Thursday.   "We will apply to the Constitutional Court, immediately as this law comes into effect," Gabriel Palacka, an economic analyst for the opposition Christian Democratic Movement (KDH) told Reuters.   The law, approved by parliament Wednesday night, effectively scuttles the possiblity of initiating bankruptcy procedures against state companies, municipalities or joint-stock companies marked as strategic by parliament last year.   It also cancels any bankruptcy procedures already started against these companies.   "The amendment clearly prefers some state subjects, or those owned by state, against other economic subjects," Palacka said.   Therefore, he said, the law violates the constitution, which provides for free economic competition and equal legal conditions for all subjects.   Last year, parliament passed a list naming dozens of state strategic firms, including ST, energy monopoly Slovenske Elektrarne, oil refiner Slovnaft and steel producer VSZ, either excluding them from privatisation or guaranteeing the state will retain a veto right over key company decisions.   Earlier this year, the private holding company Sipox claimed it was owed some 112 billion crowns by the state-run telecom monopoly Slovenske Telekomunikacie (ST).   A district court suggested initiating bankruptcy procedures against ST, but the government rejected the proposal and later drafted the amendment, to prevent any further legal action.   "The ST-Sipox case was probably the last drop for the government, but what's even worse, this law is fully in line with its strategy of creating a two-tiered environment in the economic sphere," Palacka said.   The Constitutional Court recently found several economic laws unconstitutional after they had been approved by parliament.   It also rejected some parts of the controversial law on the strategic companies.   -- Bratislava Newsroom, 42-7-210-3687 
18226 !E51 !ECAT !GCAT !GDIP  Slovenia's parliament will probably debate a proposed split of ex-Yugoslav assets between successor republics next week, central bank governor France Arhar said on Thursday.   "I expect parliament will start a debate on the issue next week," he told a news conference in Ljubljana.   Parliament has to approve the central bank's suggestion to accept a proposal by the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) for the division of pre-1991 Yugoslav assets.   The Basle-based BIS suggested the assets, held by the BIS and estimated at about $660 million, should be divided according to a plan introduced by the International Monetary Fund (IMF).   That would give Slovenia a 16.39 percent stake, while Croatia would get 28.49 percent, Bosnia 13.2, Macedonia 5.4 and rump Yugoslavia 36.52 percent of the assets.   Governors of central banks of Macedonia, Croatia and Bosnia have all said they supported the BIS proposal.   The Belgrade-based National Bank of Yugoslavia did not attend meetings of the central bank heads in July and September, claiming it was not authorised to discuss the division of assets.   Arhar said another meeting of the Slovenian, Croatian, Bosnian and Macedonian central bank heads was scheduled to take place in Washington on September 29.   Sharing out the ex-Yugoslav assets is seen as a key condition for individual republics to settle their respective shares of the former Yugoslavia's outstanding commercial debt of about $4.3 million.   Slovenia was the first republic to reach an accord with its creditors, shouldering 18 percent of the debt and completing the deal in spite of a legal challenge by rump Yugoslavia.   Croatia concluded a similar agreement, taking on 29.5 percent of the debt.   -- Marja Novak, Ljubljana newsroom, 386-61-125-8439 
18227 !E41 !ECAT !GCAT !GDEF !GJOB  Civilians working in the cash-strapped Russian armed forces and the defence industry launched a series of protests on Thursday against chronic wage delays.   The actions, which Itar-Tass news agency said included a one-day warning strike by workers servicing Russia's nuclear submarines, follow a long build-up of tension in the military, which is owed billions of dollars by the state.   "The armed forces of the Russian Federation seem to be reaching a critical point in their overstretched patience," the presidential newspaper Rossiskiye Vesti said on Thursday.   "Sociological surveys show that...the military is extremely unhappy with its current situation and is sliding towards the dangerous state where it could take unpredictable actions."   Tass said employees of the Northern Fleet logistics services and enterprises providing technical support to the nuclear submarine force staged a one-day warning strike.   Many workers had not received their wages since April, Tass said.   It did not say how many employees took part in the action, which was organised by a local trade union.   The agency had said on Wednesday that a trade union conference in the northern naval base of Severodvinsk decided to launch a strike at docks servicing nuclear submarines next Monday.   It was not clear whether Thurday's labour action was a substitute for the announced strike which the union had said would involve up to 15,000 workers.   Tass said in a separate report that civilian employees of the Pacific Fleet based in Vladivostok also went on a one-day strike on Thursday.   In Moscow civilians working in the armed forces held a protest action in front of the government headquarters, carrying placards saying, "Give us a peace of the pie!"   or "Russia needs an army".   Tass quoted the union's leader Spartak Orzhavin as saying that the government owed the army more than six trillion roubles ($1.2 billion) in overdue wages.   The liberal opposition daily Nezavisimaya Gazeta said this was only a fifth of the state's debt to the armed forces.   Security council secretary Alexander Lebed has drawn attention to the crisis and lobbied for funding to be further increased in next year's budget.   "The armed forces are in a financial crisis.   If measures are not taken urgently it could have irreversable consequences for national security," he wrote in a letter to President Boris Yeltsin which was published on Friday. 
18228 !GCAT !GPOL  Russian Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin will be named acting head of state while President Boris Yeltsin undergoes heart surgery, according to a presidential decree issued on Thursday.   The decree said Chernomyrdin would have full presidential powers, including control of the "nuclear button" which can launch Russia's nuclear missiles.    "This decree has been issued to make this politically clear and end all speculation over this topic," Yeltsin spokesman Sergei Yastrzhembsky told a news briefing.   But he said Yeltsin must still sign a second decree formally handing over his powers just before the operation, aimed at improving blood supply to his heart.   "The mechanism will be put into action after the president issues the next decree," Yastrzhembsky said.   He said Yeltsin's doctors, assisted by U.S. surgeon Michael DeBakey, were due to meet on September 25 to decide when to operate on the president, who aides say is undergoing tests at Moscow's Central Clinical Hospital.   "After this we hope the doctors will issue some recommendations," the spokesman said. 
18229 !GCAT !GPOL !GVOTE  The battle for the presidency of the small Baltic state of Estonia will come to a head on Friday as incumbent Lennart Meri faces four challengers before a specially-convened electoral college.   The assembly was called to break a deadlock after parliament three times last month refused to back Meri, 67, for a second term as head of the country, which regained its independence from the former Soviet Union in 1991.   Political commentators said the vote was too close to call although Meri is seen as the favourite.   Meri's closest rival is Arnold Ruutel, 68, a silver-haired former senior Communist and one of the leaders of the country's drive to win back its independence.   Ruutel was Meri's only rival through the three rounds of parliament voting in what was a rerun of the 1992 election, when Meri beat Ruutel although the latter won a national vote.   "There are five candidates and it seems to me that there will be a second round of voting," said Rein Toomla, a political scientist at Tartu University.   The electoral college includes 101 members of parliament and 273 local government representatives.   It has two votes on Friday.   If both are inconclusive, parliament will vote again.   "If Meri and Ruutel win through to the second round, it seems that Meri has the better chances," Toomla said.   Right-winger Tunne Kelam, 60, like Ruutel a deputy parliament speaker, is seen as the strongest new challenger.   His pedigree is as a pro-independence nationalist who worked outside the Soviet system rather than within as Ruutel did.   Kellam says Meri may be the president today but he is the leader of the future while Ruutel is yesterday's man.   Meri, a charismatic former film director, is seen as an eloquent spokesman for Estonia but has earned the anger of parliament for over-stepping the bounds of what is supposed to be a largely ceremonial role.   The main criticism is that he signed a deal with Russia in 1994 on the withdrawal of Russian troops from Estonia without consulting parliament.   Critics say the agreement left too many former Soviet military pensioners in Estonia.   The Estonian media has also been working itself into a frenzy over allegations that Meri worked with the KGB, the feared Soviet security police.   The allegations were given new impetus on Wednesday when high-profile opposition politician Edgar Savisaar, a former prime minister and interior minister, urged Meri to step down and said he had proof the president worked with the KGB.   Meri has consistently denied the allegations.   Critics also say Meri has interfered with legislation affecting Estonia's large Russian minority, resented by some Estonians as remnants of a colonising power.   But Western diplomats have applauded Meri for being more liberal than some of his nationalist colleagues.   The only female candidate in the presidential race, Siiri Oviir, is deputy leader of Savisaar's left-leaning Centre Party and is remembered as a good former social affairs minister.   Estonian-Swede Enn Tougu is the fifth candidate and a rank outsider.   He has little political profile and lives in Stockholm where he is Professor of the Swedish Royal Technical University. 
18230 !GCAT !GDEF !GDIP  German Defence Minister Volker Ruehe on Thursday praised the role played by troops from Albania, which only a few years ago was virulently hostile to the West, in the NATO-led Bosnian peace mission.   Ruehe met his Albanian counterpart Safet Zhulali at an airbase in the Croatian port of Zadar where 34 Albanian troops are serving with a German unit of the NATO-led peace Implementation Force (IFOR).   "We can see today that our plans for cooperation have become very concrete and very successful," Ruehe told reporters.   Communism fell in Albania only in 1991.   Before then the country was isolated with almost no allies in the world, hurling abuse at the West, NATO and even other communist countries over its radio broadcasts.   The two ministers, dressed in camouflaged jackets, watched joint training before Ruehe set off for a helicopter tour of the former Krajina, Croatian territory held by rebel Serbs until Zagreb forces regained it last year.   With memories of World War Two still fresh in Serb minds, German IFOR units are based only in Croatia and provide only support services such as transport and engineering.   But Ruehe said in Sarajevo on Wednesday that Germany was keen to send peacekeeping troops to Bosnia if NATO allies decided to deploy a follow-up force after IFOR's mandate expired on December 20. 
18231 !G15 !G154 !G158 !GCAT !GDEF !GDIP  Swedish Prime Minister Goran Persson arrived in Poland on Thursday for two days of talks on bilateral ties, European Union enlargement and economic and military cooperation.   "Sweden supports our efforts to join the European Union and it is an interesting partner for talks on the EU expansion because of its negotiation experience," foreign ministry spokesman Pawel Dobrowolski said.   Persson met his Polish counterpart Wlodzimierz Cimoszewicz and was scheduled to meet President Aleksander Kwasniewski and top parliamentary officials on Friday.   Dobrowolski said that apart from discussing ways to boost economic exchange and cooperation in the Baltic region, Persson is likely to promote Sweden's plan to sell fighter jets to Poland's armed forces.   Poland needs to replace about 100 of its communist-era, mostly outmoded, fighters and a consortium of Sweden's Saab and British Aerospace is offering its own aircraft.   The government is likely to open a fighter tender next year, in which U.S. Lockheed-Martin and McDonnel Douglas are expected to offer their F-16 and F-18 respectively with France's Dassault offering its Mirage 2000. 
18232 !GCAT !GHEA  A World Health Organisation official on Thursday said Albania should urgently start an immunisation campaign for adults to ensure against the polio virus spreading further through the Balkan country.   "It's obvious now that it is spreading in that group (adults) and we need to immunise the older people in this country.   It will need to be done within the next month," said Dr. Bruce Aylward, a WHO officer in Albania.   The polio outbreak has so far killed seven people, with another 59 Albanians reported to have contracted the virus.   The outbreak started in April in the northwestern part of Albania and then fanned out to the capital Tirana and the rest of the country.   Initial Albanian press reports linked it to a drive sponsored by the Geneva-based WHO and the U.N. Children's Fund UNICEF to immunise 350,000 children under the age of five against polio -- one of the main childhood killers in poorer countries.   Aylward said the campaign had clearly protected children during the outbreak and was surprised to find that the majority of polio victims were teenagers and adults.   "What we are seeing here is a very unusual outbreak because most of the cases are in older people."   One round of the campaign would need about 3.2 million doses at a cost of $300,000.   "An immunisation campaign like this is a massive undertaking and it will require the assistance of the population of Albania," he said.   WHO said two agencies, UNICEF and the business organisation Rotary International, partners in a global campaign to eradicate polio by the year 2000, were seeking international support for a mass immunisation campaign in Albania.   "We have to get the vaccine into the country," Aylward said. 
18233 !E21 !E212 !ECAT !GCAT !GCRIM  Russia will tighten procedures for registering MinFin bonds before it launches its first post-Soviet Eurobond later this year, a top finance ministry official said on Thursday.   The authorities froze $24 million of missing and stolen MinFin bonds earlier this summer, and police say up to another $7 million of stolen bonds may be frozen.   The move undermined confidence in the market for MinFin bonds, which are dollar-denominated bearer securities, and which are traded heavily outside Russia.   But First Deputy Finance Minister Andrei Vavilov told a news conference the action reflected shortcomings in Russian law.   "The problem appeared as Russian law has never dealt with such cases -- when securities are frozen and investors did not get enough protection," Vavilov said.   "The major problem was that deals were not registered in the depository and we plan to increase the depository's obligations.   We hope to do that before the Eurobond issue."   Russia will change procedures for working with frozen bonds, providing protection to investors who bought the securities in good faith, Vavilov said.   The bonds were frozen despite the statement in the Russian civil code which says bearer bonds may not be seized from people who bought them in good faith.   It is still not clear what will happen to the frozen bonds.   Earlier this month ING Bank Eurasia said the Russian authorities had unfrozen $51,000 of about $71,000 nominal of its bonds which had been frozen.   Vneshtorgbank is the main depository for MinFin bonds.   Vavilov added the Eurobond would be launched this year.   Deputy Finance Minister Mikhail Kasyanov said last week that the Eurobond would be launched at the end of October, or start of November.   --Julie Tolkacheva, Moscow Newsroom, +7095 941 8520 
18234 !GCAT !GPOL  Russian President Boris Yeltsin's announcement that he is to have heart surgery broke a long tradition of secrecy over Kremlin leaders' health -- but only to a degree.   There is still no clear explanation of what happened at the end of June when, after four months of energetic campaigning for re-election, Yeltsin suddenly disappeared from public view.   Some doctors and media say his problems might be more complex than the clogged cardiac arteries cited by the Kremlin.   They speculate about liver or kidney problems, diabetes, or the need to wean Yeltsin off a course of stimulants or drugs.   Recent television pictures of Yeltsin have carried no sound.   His stay for tests in the Central Clinical Hospital has been extended twice without explanation.   It is not clear why he is there when the operation is expected be take place at another venue -- probably the Cardiological Centre headed by academician Yevgeny Chazov.   The search for clues takes some analysts back to Soviet history and a book by Chazov, even though it was published in 1991 and does not mention Yeltsin.   Chazov, who was in charge of the treatment of the Soviet elite for 23 years, describes what he calls "the system of political Jesuitry under which a person has to conceal his illness, his disability just because he is a political leader".   The biggest worry for Chazov, as head of the Fourth Directorate which combined a family doctor's practice with the best clinics and recreation facilities for ailing officials, was the treatment of then Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev.   "For the sake of calm in the country and the (communist) party, for the well-being of the people, we have to keep silence now and try to conceal Brezhnev's weaknesses," Yuri Andropov, who eventually succeded Brezhnev in 1982, told Chazov.   "If a power struggle begins...it will result in the destruction of both the economy and the system."   Chazov describes how Brezhnev rapidly turned from an energetic leader into a man who would fall asleep at any place and time of the day, could not concentrate his attention for more than a few seconds and was totally withdrawn from reality.   Doctors had to go through tremendous efforts to bring Brezhnev to a semblance of normality for short public appearances, deemed necessary by the ruling politburo.   Special television coverage was set up.   "This opinion -- that the leader has to "show up' from time to time, regardless of his health, which applied not only to Brezhnev but to many other state and party leaders -- has become nearly official and was in my view both hypocritical and sadistic," Chazov said.   "Sadistic to those poor things, overwhelmed with political ambitions and craving for power who were trying to overcome their illnesses to look healthy and able to work."   It started in 1973, Chazov says, when a nurse turned Brezhnev into an addict by freely delivering sleeping pills and sedatives which ruined his central nervous system.   For years, doctors were unable to force Brezhnev to part with the nurse, indentifed in the book only as N. But even when they forced her out, his addiction remained and he would sometime beg for the drugs and got them from close aides.   When there was a shortage of pills, he drank.   "The ruinous influence of nurse N which accelerated his degradation is an objective fact which helped to destroy the leadership of the country more than dozens of dissident groups actions," writes Chazov. 
18235 !GCAT !GCRIM !GDIP !GVIO  NATO said on Thursday it wanted Bosnian Serb authorities to remove a Serb police chief by midday on Friday or its troops would take "remedial action".   Admiral Joseph Lopez, commander of the NATO-led peace implementation force (IFOR) has demanded that acting Bosnian Serb President Biljana Plavsic sack the Prijedor police chief for "intolerable and dangerous behaviour".   Simo Drljaca, police chief in the ultra-nationalist Serb district of Prijedor, refused to hand over an MP-5 machine pistol to a Czech IFOR patrol on Monday and fired a shot into the air.   When the Czech patrol refused to leave, Drljaca called in 10 of his own policemen armed with banned AK-47 rifles to surround the Czechs.   Admiral Lopez's ultimatum also insisted Plavsic ensure that Prijedor police turn over to IFOR unauthorised assault rifles used in the incident.   "President Plavsic has been given until noon 20 September," Captain Mark Van Dyke, a spokesman for Admiral Lopez, told a news conference.   "If Republika Srpska (Serb republic) does not provide a prompt and effective response by Friday noon, IFOR will take remedial action to remove this threat to our troops," Van Dyke said.   Asked if IFOR would mount an operation to seize Drljaca, Van Dyke said: "It's our policy we don't discuss our future plans and operations."   He added: "No one should underestimate IFOR's commitment to protecting the lives of our troops."   Drljaca, police chief in the ultra-nationalist Serb district of Prijedor in northwest Bosnia, led a brutal "ethnic cleansing" campaign against local Moslems and Croats early in the war, according to human rights monitors.   International prosecutors say some of the conflict's worst atrocities occurred in the Prijedor area, where Serb forces set up detention camps for Moslems and Croats.   Senior NATO officers and the commissioner of International Police Task Force, Peter Fitzgerald, have made clear in talks with Bosnian Serb Interior Minister Dragan Kijac that Drljaca must step down, spokesmen said.   "Our feeling and our hope is that minister Kijac will comply in the next 24 hours and remove the police chief of Prijedor," said Alex Ivanko, spokesman for the International Police Task Force. 
18236 !C24 !CCAT !GCAT !GDIS !GENV !GHEA  Ukrainian officials have acknowledged that neutron radiation readings inside the Chernobyl nuclear plant's ruined fourth reactor have risen significantly, the Ukrinform news agency reported on Thursday.   Viktor Baryakhtar, vice-president of Ukraine's Academy of Sciences, told the agency that readings of neutron activity had risen by between five and 110 times this week in the "sarcophagus" covering the reactor.   One independent report this week said neutron radiation readings twice normal levels had been recorded inside the cracking steel and concrete tomb hurriedly erected around the reactor after it exploded and caught fire in April 1986.   But the report said much higher rises -- tens of thousands times the norm -- would be required to cause a new nuclear reaction.   "This is a rather dangerous phenomenon which has been observed three times this year," Baryakhtar, President Leonid Kuchma's top nuclear adviser, told Ukrinform.   "The main reason is leakage under the sarcophagus of rainwater, which speeds up neutrons.   The only way to avoid these instances is to build a new structure around the sarcophagus without delay."   Baryakhtar described the latest incident as a "chain reaction" which had lasted between four and five hours on Monday.   The admission, and its appearance on Ukraine's official news agency, appeared aimed at pressing for quicker action in replacing the sarcophagus.   Ukraine's top negotiator on closing Chernobyl by the year 2000, Environment Minister Yuri Kostenko, initially suggested on Wednesday that the readings were caused by faulty equipment.   But he later said that, if the levels proved correct, they required quick investigation which Ukraine could not afford.   Ukraine has complained that Western efforts to finance its pledge to shut down Chernobyl's two working reactors do not recognise a new "sarcophagus" as an urgent priority.   A Franco-British plan devised three years ago to build a new structure has been all but abandoned as too expensive and the winner of a new tender for a less complex project is expected to be announced next month.   Kuchma was meeting on Thursday Claude Mandil, French head of a G7 nuclear safety group, who was expected to bring a reply from President Jacques Chirac to Kiev's plea for faster financing. 
18237 !E41 !E411 !ECAT !GCAT !GJOB  Polish unemployment reached its lowest level since June 1992 in August due to fewer job losses in rural areas and fewer industrial group lay-offs, Labour Minister Andrzej Baczkowski said on Thursday.   Earlier in the day the Central Statistical Office (GUS) said registered unemployment fell to 13.8 percent of the workforce in August from 14.1 percent in July and 15.5 percent in August 1995, the biggest fall this year.   But Baczkowski said it may prove difficult to keep unemployment at its current level for the rest of the year.   @   "I want to defend the situation at the end of August...if we do not continue our active policy on the labour market then unemployment can grow," he told a news conference.   Earlier this year employment office staff and labour police launched an action against those dishonestly using the limited budget funds devoted to the unemployed.   The action involves hunting down those employed illegally and contiuously checking if those registered as unemployed are willing to take a new job.   @   Baczkowski also said fewer graduates than in the past were registering as unemployed because of recent changes in regulations forcing school-leavers to actively seek jobs to get unemployment benefits.   He said that in the next two weeks the cabinet would submit to parliament new draft legislation aimed to help fight abuses concerning the receiving of unemployment benefits.   -- Steven Silber +48 22 653 9700 
18238 !GCAT !GPOL !GVIO  Russian security tsar Alexander Lebed clasped rebel commander Aslan Maskhadov's hand in a firm, friendly handshake at the end of his latest peace mission to breakaway Chechnya.   Back in Moscow on Wednesday, Lebed got an altogether more frosty reception.   Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin appeared reluctant to see him, said little about the meeting to reporters and Lebed grumbled about the lack of support he is getting.   Three months after President Boris Yeltsin appointed Lebed his security supremo, the ambitious former paratroop general has doused the fighting in Chechnya but his reward has been the cold shoulder in the Kremlin.   Isolated in a power struggle as Yeltsin prepares for heart surgery, Lebed is now demanding a helping hand from Chernomyrdin to consolidate the truce in Chechnya.   Without an alliance with his power rival, a lasting peace looks unlikely.   "Unfortunately, representatives of the organs of the state have taken up a strange position," Lebed, a 46-year-old Afghan war veteran, told reporters on his return to Moscow.   "They do nothing constructive and are trying to occupy themselves with criticism," he said, demanding that Chernomyrdin "give a push" to peace efforts by getting directly involved in negotiations by the end of this week.   Lebed signed a deal with the rebels on August 31 which made a Russian troop withrdawal and a five-year delay in settling the region's political status the cost of a ceasefire.   That was too much for many Moscow politicians to swallow.   Yeltsin and Chernomyrdin gave the deal only grudging support and Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov, another potential presidential rival, was openly hostile.   One reason for the cool response is the jostling for power as doctors prepare Yeltsin for a heart bypass operation, the date of which is to be decided next week.   Open praise for Lebed's deal would give the gruff security chief a boost in the struggle for power with Chernomyrdin and Kremlin chief-of-staff Anatoly Chubais, who wants to strengthen his position but is an unlikely presidential challenger.   Many politicians are anxious to avoid close ties with a deal which highlights Moscow's failure to win the 21-month-old conflict and fails to silence rebel demands for independence.   Tens of thousands of people have been killed in the conflict.   Making the agreement last will be difficult.   Without Chernomyrdin's help, it will be even harder.   Lebed's brief trip to Chechnya this week was needed to patch up differences over forming an interim coalition government before elections in the region and because of lack of progress over prisoner exchanges and a halt to the troop withdrawal.   "Being a realist, Lebed cannot fail to understand that without the indirect involvement of the prime minister, the peacemaking process can hardly be successful," the daily newspaper Moskovsky Komsomolets wrote on Thursday.   Emil Pain, who has advised the Kremlin on Chechnya, said the August 31 agreement was not as beneficial for Moscow as earlier deals which failed, but he called for joint efforts to shore it up.   "The fate of peace in Chechnya cannot depend on one man alone," Pain wrote in the pro-Yeltsin Rossiiskiye Vesti daily.   "Now the hardest period of negotiations has begun, offering no great victories or successes but requiring painstaking and carefully-considered decisions, a unified position by all branches of power, collective good sense and mutual responsibility for the decisions are needed more than ever."   Itar-Tass news agency said Chernomyrdin was ready to join talks if necessary.   But despite reassuring comments by Chubais in an interview published on Wednesday, the three main power rivals seem to have no agreement on how to work together.   The liberal Sevodnya newspaper suggested such a deal was needed and would have a bearing on many aspects of Russia's political life, but was proving hard to reach.   "Anatoly Chubais, Viktor Chernomyrdin and Alexander Lebed appear not to have concluded a gentlemen's agreement yet to avoid political losses.   You can assume it will not touch only on Chechnya," the daily said. 
18239 !GCAT !GPOL !GVIO !GVOTE  Diplomats will be working overtime to ensure that Moslem, Serb and Croat nationalists who won Bosnia's elections do not end up drawing battle lines as they did after their previous victory in 1990.   Many of the leading party figures then -- the Moslems' Alija Izetbegovic and Ejup Ganic, the Serbs' Momcilo Krajisnik, Biljana Plavsic, and others -- remain in place today.   Six years ago they captured the first free elections staged in Bosnia, then a republic in multinational federal Yugoslavia, by forming a loose coalition to topple long-ruling communists, only to split and go to war soon afterwards.   The three sides were still waging rhetorical war when they breezed to victory in their respective fiefs in Saturday's elections, devised by the U.S. authors of the 1995 Dayton peace treaty to put Bosnia on track to gradual reunification.   But despite the mutual loathing left over from 43 months of siege, slaughter and mass expulsions, these elections are seen as less likely to spawn war, at least in the near term, for one crucial reason -- international engagement.   In 1990-91, world powers were so preoccupied by the Gulf Crisis and the dissolution of the Soviet Union that they hardly noticed the disintegration of Yugoslavia's multi-national state and society until it was too late.   Today, however, there are NATO peacekeeping troops and an army of international peace agencies stationed in Bosnia to spur its factions into the kind of power-sharing arrangements they once discarded at such terrible cost.   In 1990, three parties crystallised around the constituent nations of Bosnia -- Christian Orthodox Serbs, Roman Catholic Croats and Slav Moslems -- as Yugoslavia's communist system yielded to democratic pressures.   Moslems founded the Party of Democratic Action (SDA) under Izetbegovic, a former prisoner of conscience under communism.   The Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) formed as the Bosnian branch of Croatia's ruling national party.   The Serb Democratic Party (SDS) appeared as the sister of a party seeking statehood for rebel minority Serbs in Croatia.   The SDA, HDZ and SDS coalesced for short-term political ends, upsetting a reform League of Communists bloc in the November 1990 elections.   The victorious bloc formed a collective presidency of two members for each community and one for everyone else.   But the need for consensus rule had become a euphemism for political stalemate, as in the Yugoslav federal government after the death of strongman communist leader Josip Broz Tito in 1980.   The SDS and, less openly, the HDZ, were fixated on one goal -- autonomy for Bosnia's minority Serbs and Croats en route to union with "Mother Serbia" and "Mother Croatia".   They wanted to pre-empt what they claimed would be tyranny exerted by the more numerous Moslems as the balancing framework of Yugoslav socialism crumbled in an explosion of long-repressed nationalist movements.   The SDS emerged as little more than the paramilitary vanguard for the president of Serbia, Slobodan Milosevic, in his campaign to group all Serbs scattered through then-Yugoslavia in one "Greater Serbia".   In April 1991 the SDS declared an autonomous entity in north Bosnia where most Bosnian Serbs lived.   Six months later, the SDS bolted from the Bosnian presidency and parliament.   With the Milosevic-controlled Yugoslav federal army (JNA) arming a Bosnian Serb takeover of parts of Bosnia where defenceless Moslems and Croats also lived, the HDZ found temporary common cause with the SDA.   The SDA and HDZ sponsored a referendum for the independence of Bosnia.   Bosnian Moslems and Croats, almost two-thirds of the 4.3 million population, voted yes, while Serbs boycotted.   Serb forces, bristling with JNA weaponry, reacted by laying siege to Sarajevo, overrunning wide swathes of Bosnia and beginning a systematic expulsion of non-Serbs.   The war began.   At the end of 1992, the Croats dropped their political mask and declared a sovereign entity in Croat-populated southwest Bosnia, driving out its Moslem minority.   Bosnia is still at odds with itself today.   Separatist Serb and Croat agendas have not changed, while the Moslems, squeezed in the middle, are less secular and pro-unity than they were.   International authorities have the uphill task of ensuring history does not repeat itself after last weekend's elections. 
18240 !C24 !CCAT !GCAT !GWEA  No closures of airports in the Commonwealth of Independent States are expected on September 20 and September 21, the Russian Weather Service said on Thursday.   --Moscow Newsroom +7095 941 8520 
18241 !C13 !C17 !CCAT !E12 !ECAT !GCAT !GDIP  Czech National Bank Governor Josef Tosovsky will travel on Thursday to join President Vaclav Havel for a tour of South America, a trip delayed to handle a crisis at Agrobanka a.s., a CNB press aide said.   The aide told Reuters Tosovsky would join Havel at his next destination -- scheduled for Rio De Janeiro -- and complete the remainder of official visits on the trip before going on to next week's International Monetary Fund meeting in Washington.   Tosovsky was supposed to leave with Havel for the trip last Saturday but stayed behind to handle talks about a liquidity crisis at the largest fully-private bank Agrobanka.   -- Prague Newsroom, 42-2-2423-0003 
18242 !C24 !CCAT !GCAT !GENV !GSCI  Ukraine's top nuclear scientist has acknowledged that neutron radiation readings inside the Chernobyl nuclear plant's ruined fourth reactor have risen significantly, the Ukrinform news agency reported on Thursday.   A statement by Viktor Baryakhtar, Vice-President of Ukraine's Academy of Sciences, said readings of neutron activity had risen by between five and 110 times this week in the "sarcophagus" covering the reactor.   But independent experts say much higher rises - tens of thousands times the norm - would be needed to cause a new nuclear reaction.    "This is a rather dangerous phenomenon which has been observed three times this year," Baryakhtar, President Leonid Kuchma's top nuclear adviser, told Ukrinform.   "The main reason is leakage under the sarcophagus of rainwater, which speeds up neutrons.   The only way to avoid these instances is to build a new structure around the sarcophagus without delay."   The admission, and its appearance on Ukraine's official news agency, appeared aimed at pressing for quicker action, with foreign support, in replacing the cracking steel and concrete structure hurriedly erected after the explosion and fire at Chernobyl in 1986.   Ukraine's top negotiator on closing Chernobyl by the year 2000, Environment Minister Yuri Kostenko, initially suggested on Wednesday that the readings were caused by faulty equipment.   But he later said that if the higher levels proved correct they required quick investigation which Ukraine could not afford. 
18243 !GCAT !GPOL !GVOTE  Newly-elected members of Bosnia's collective presidency are already arguing over where they should meet in a dispute charged with political symbolism, diplomats said on Thursday.   Momcilo Krajisnik, the hardline nationalist Serb elected to the presidency, has told international mediators he wants the body to meet right on the boundary between the country's Serb republic and Moslem-Croat federation, in the outskirts of Sarajevo.   Krajisnik openly advocates the division of Bosnia and views the dividing line as an international border.   "They want the building right on the boundary with one entrance on the Serb side of the line," said one Western diplomat.   Officials in the Moslem-Croat federation have condemned the proposal as an attempt to undermine the post-war government even before it has a chance to function.   Mohammed Sacirbey, the Bosnian ambassador to the United Nations, told reporters on Tuesday the Serb proposal to place the presidency on the Inter Entity Boundary Line (IEBL) violated the spirit of the Dayton peace agreement signed in December.   "To set up some buildings in a bombed-out warehouse, on something called the IEBL, certainly conveys a very different message than what was intended by Dayton, and certainly what, I think, the international community had in mind," he said.   Sacirbey said one option under discussion was to have the presidency meet in the city centre in a newly-created central district under the rule of the Bosnian union.   "It is being considered but we are not about to create a new (demilitarised zone).   This is one country and the IEBL should be nothing more than driving from Ohio to Pennsylvania."   He added: "Dayton confirms Sarajevo as the capital.   How that capital is arranged in terms of the internal structure, the city, the canton, the country is an issue that is still open to discussion."   Alija Izetbegovic, a Moslem, defeated Krajisnik as the head of the collective presidency in general elections held on Saturday.   Kresimir Zubak was elected as the third member representing Bosnia's Croat community.   The presidency is supposed to govern by consensus. 
18244 !GCAT !GPOL !GVOTE  (Corrects paragraphs 12 and 14 to make clear the SMP is not in coalition with the Democratic Patriotic Bloc.)   By Mark Heinrich   The main nationalist parties that led Bosnia into war four years ago have won elections for federal and regional parliaments, according to returns released by international scrutineers on Thursday.   Candidates of the Moslem Party of Democratic Action (SDA), Serb Democratic Party (SDS) and Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) also won the three seats on a new collective presidency with ease in Bosnia's first postwar vote on September 14.   With 122 of 148 counting centres reporting in the divided country, the SDA, SDS and HDZ had built up unbeatable margins to dominate a new Bosnia-wide parliament and two regional assemblies.   The presidency of the Bosnian Serb republic was also won handily by Biljana Plavsic of the SDS.   Critics said the renewal of parallel nationalist powers would be a recipe for the sort of manoeuvring and stalemate that degenerated into war in Bosnia in 1992.   But Western coordinators of Bosnia's peace process, including U.S. architects of the Dayton peace treaty, say they will insist that the factions honour commitments to share power and reunify the Balkan state.   Counting at 75 of 87 tabulation centres on Federation (Moslem-Croat) territory and 47 of 61 centres on Serb Republic (RS) territory was complete by Thursday morning.   Final results were expected later in the day.   Izetbegovic's SDA was polling 55.3 percent of the vote for 28 of 42 seats in the Bosnian House of Representatives reserved for candidates from (Moslem-Croat) Federation territory, which comprises half the country.   The HDZ, the SDA's uneasy partner in the pre-election Federation government, had tallied 23.4 percent and the Party for Bosnia-Herzegovina led by moderate, pro-unity former prime minister Haris Silajdzic, trailed at 8.4 percent.   The ultra-nationalist SDS looked sure to take most of the 14 House seats allotted for parties running in the RS with 54 percent.   SDA candidates, presumably backed by Moslem refugees from what is now the RS, followed at 20.6 percent.   In third place with 12 percent was the Union for Peace and Progress (SMP), a left-wing coalition offshoot of Serbia's ruling socialist Party, led by President Slobodan Milosevic.   Plavsic, who became acting president of the Serb entity after indicted Serb war criminal Radovan Karadzic was forced to step down, was in line for the new RS presidency with 66.1 percent of the vote.   Far behind was Zivko Radisic of the Union for Peace and Progress with 16.3 percent.   The SDA candidate, Abid Djozic, polled 10.1 percent, presumably from Moslem war refugees.   In the race for the 83-seat National Assembly of the RS, the SDS gained an absolute majority as expected with 62.5 percent based on returns from 44 of 61 centres.   The Democratic Patriotic Bloc had 13.2 percent, the far rightist Serbian Radical Party 7.6 percent and the SDA, backed by Moslem refugees registered in RS territory, 6.4 percent.   For the Federation's 140-seat regional House, the SDA led with 56.2 percent followed by the HDZ with 22.2 percent and Siljadzic's SBiH with 7.6 percent.   On Wednesday, Izetbegovic won the right to be Bosnia's head of state for the next two years by outpolling SDS separatist Momcilo Krajisnik and the HDZ's Kresimir Zubak for the chairmanship of a new Bosnian three-man presidency. 
18245 !GCAT  The following are the main stories from Thursday morning's Albanian newspapers.   Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.   KOHA JONE   - The Koha Jone editorial has called for the resignation of the ruling Democratic Party, blaming it for the recent high rise in crime under its government.   - Health staff are to be the first in Albania to be given World Health Organisation vaccines against polio.   - The opposition Socialist Party has nominated its electoral commission members for the local elections on October 20, following an agreement with the ruling Democrats who had previously obstructed the inclusion of the left on the bodies.   - The electoral struggle in the capital Tirana is seen as the most important issue in the local elections.   - The problem of immigrants in Greece, of which Albanians make up over half, has become a bone of contention between the two main parties ahead of the upcoming elections.   - Public security, political stability and bureaucracy are the main issues concerning foreign investors in Albania, despite the state's recent liberalisation laws.   - Public institutions have not paid up to one million dollars owed to state-owned Electro Energy Corporation.   - The Socialist Party said the government was breaching the electoral law because it had not provided funding for the parties' campaigns.   - Villagers in the northern district of Kukes have started a hunger strike, asking for credits to rebuild houses destroyed or damaged due to natural disasters.   The police say the strike is illegal.   - Albanians cannot afford to buy personal computers due to a 40 percent customs tariff which has caused prices to soar.   - The number of publishing houses and books published in Albania has increased but profits remain relatively low.   - Ukrainian volleyball player Igor Finapatov and Bulgarian basketball player Kostandin Papazov have been bought by Albanian teams.   GAZETA SHQIPTARE   - Two people have died in the northern district of Mat because of heavy rain over the past few days.   - Albanians is putting luxury cars and speedboats at the disposal of competitors for the Miss Europe 96 beauty contest, to be held in Albania at the end of September.   - A young Albanian has been sentenced to life in jail by the supreme court for the massacre of a family near Tirana.   - As a result of a health inspection of over 10,000 shops in Albania, the health ministry has fined 531 and closed 273.   RILINDJA DEMOKRATIKE   - Albanian writer and ambassador to Paris Besnik Mustafaj was elected a correspondent member of the European Academy of Sciences. 
18246 !GCAT  These are the leading stories in the Skopje press on Thursday.   Reuters has not verified them and does not vouch for their accuracy.   NOVA MAKEDONIJA   - Skopje airport to be closed for reconstruction until November 15, traffic to be rerouted to Ohrid airport.   - Macedonian Foreign Minister Ljubomir Frckovski said Macedonian relations with all neighbouring countries are good.   Macedonian constitution to recognise Serbs as a minority.   - Macedonia to open diplomatic missions in Austria and Canada.   - Macedonia presented in Brussels its report on cooperation with NATO within the Partnership for Peace programme.   - Macedonia received within the Mediterranean group of countries at the Interparliamentary Union conference in Peking.   - Macedonia and Switzerland signed an air traffic agreement in Skopje on Tuesday.   DNEVNIK   - Results of talks between opposition IMPRO-DPMNY and Democratic Party on possible coalition in the local elections to be known on Saturday.   -- Mircela Casule, Skopje newsroom +389 91 201 196 
18247 !E41 !E411 !ECAT !GCAT !GJOB  Registered unemployment in Poland   fell to 13.8 percent in August from 14.1 percent in July and   15.2 percent in August 1995, figures from the Central   Statistical Office (GUS) said.    POLISH UNEMPLOYMENT  AUGUST  JULY  AUGUST 1995    number of jobless million  2.401  2.466  2.690    pct of workforce 13.8  14.1  15.2   -- Warsaw Newsroom +48 22 653 9700 
18248 !GCAT  Here are highlights of stories in Romania's press on Thursday.   Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy:   Business:   ADEVARUL   - Transport Ministry got $450,000 in U.S. government grant to fund feasibility study for transport in Black Sea port of Constanta.   AZI   - Foreign investors cautious about injecting money in Romania due to red tape, lack of data on the economy, hefty customs duties and bad signals from capital market.   - South Korea's Daewoo Heavy Industries Ltd is largest single investor in Romania with $209.1 million worth of investment.   ZIUA   - Consortium including Romanian, Canadian and U.S. companies announced intention to bid for Romania's GSM licence.   - Bucharest commodities exchange will auction off 25,000 tonnes of scrap iron on Sept 25.   CURIERUL NATIONAL   - Romania's Chamber of Commerce and Industry asks parliament to reduce taxation, which is seen discouraging development.   General:   ROMANIA LIBERA   - A virus which caused country's worst meningitis epidemic with more than 400 pacients and 38 dead may be transmitted by mosquitos and sheep ticks, military doctors said.   - Central Electoral Bureau has registered nine contenders for presidential race in November 3 elections.   - Lower Chamber of Deputies adopted bill to amend penal code, but opposition politicians say they could rediscuss the bill in future parliament after elections, when opposition parties will hold a majority.   - Nicu Ceausescu, late Stalinist dictator's youngest son was flown to hospital in Vienna for liver surgery, after being hospitalised for three days in Bucharest with internal bleeding caused by a varicose oesophagus and severe liver cirrhosis.   - Only 70 houses in Bucharest were restored to their owners under law on houses nationalised by ousted communists.   - Pensions expected to rise by 13,000 lei after government indexations for fourth quarter.   ADEVARUL   - Foreign Minister Teodor Melescanu to run for Senate on ruling Party of Social Democracy's (PDSR) lists.   - Real cause of viral meningitis epidemic is bad hygiene.   - December 1989 events during which late dictator Nicolae Ceausescu was ousted can be considered revolution, senator Valentin Gabrielescu, head of parliament commission investigation the events, said in interview.   - Group of second-rank communists were ready for coup and seized power during Romania's revolution, Gabrielescu said.   - PDSR launched 21 programmes for Romania's economic recovery as part of campaign for November 3 elections.   EVENIMENTUL ZILEI   - American film director Steven Spielberg has been invited to attend Yiddish theatre festival in Romania in mid-October.   - Reform was slowed down by opposition refusing to cooperate in adopting laws to speed up the process, President Ion Iliescu said in speech to launch PDSR campaign.   - Italian homosexuals dressed as Dracula vampires staged protest in Milan slamming Romanian government and President Iliescu for recent jail punishments voted against homosexuals.   LIBERTATEA   - Young families will get 20-year housing soft loans with 15 percent interest rates.   - Romania welcomes international observers for November 3 elections, foreign ministry spokesman said.   - Romania ranks first in central and East Europe in terms of cable television users and shares third place across Europe with Switzerland.   CURIERUL NATIONAL   - NATO's eastward expansion means repairing errors of 1947 Yalta treaty, Defence Minister Gheorghe Tinca said.   VOCEA ROMANIEI   - U.S. supports Romania's efforts to establish mature democracy, U.S. president Bill Clinton said in message to President Ion Iliescu.   ZIUA   - Opposition Democratic Convention bloc estimated at 10 million lei costs for election campaign of each candidate MP.   JURNALUL NATIONAL   - Former Prosecutor General Vasile Manea Dragulin to be appointed ambassador to Czech Republic.   ($=3,226 lei) -- Bucharest Newsroom 40-1 3120264 
18249 !E21 !E211 !ECAT !GCAT !GPOL  Three Polish parliamentary committees voted late on Wednesday to uphold current personal tax rates in 1997 despite an earlier government pledge to cut the rates from next year, PAP news agency said.   It said the budget, economic policy and legislative committees, working on a personal income tax bill, turned down a government proposal to cut the rates to 20, 31 and 43 percent in 1997 from the present 21, 33 and 45 percent, respectively.   The parliamentarians also rejected several alternative proposals including an opposition proposal of a deeper cut.   In its first 1997 budget draft presented in July, the government proposed to lower the personal income tax rates while limiting several tax deductions to prevent a drop in revenues.   The committees' recommendations muist still be approved by the whole house, which is scheduled to vote on the bill at its three-day session beging on October 23.   -- Warsaw Newsroom +48 22 653 9700 
18250 !GCAT  These are the leading stories in the Belgrade press on Thursday.   Reuters has not verified them and does not vouch for their accuracy.   POLITIKA   - Serbian parliament passes laws to reduce income taxes and social security contributions.   - The new laws will directly unburden the economy, by which the Serbian government fulfils its promise to trade unions, says parliament speaker Dragan Tomic.   - The Yugoslav-Croatian agreement on diplomatic recognition is of historic importance, says Croatian Foreign Minister Mate Granic.   - Exhumation of suspected mass grave in Ovcara in Croatia's eastern Slavonia region will last longer than planned, say international experts.   - Yugoslavia and China sign in Belgrade a protocol on scientific and technical cooperation.   - Yugoslav National Bank deputy governor Bozidar Gazivoda received a visiting German parliament economics committee delegation headed by Ernst Schwanhold.   - Inflation in September expected to be half the August figure of 2.3 percent and would have been zero without meat price hikes, says director of federal statistics office Milovan Zivkovic.   - Average August wage was 701 dinars, which is nominally up by 6.9 percent on previous month but its real increase (due to inflation and living cost increases) is 4.2 percent, says federal statistics office.   - Reconstruction of Belgrade airport starts Friday, all take-offs and landings rerouted to Batajnica airport until September 26.   - Two main goals will be realised with the Bosnian elections, that Bosnian Serb Republic will be recognised by the international community and sanctions aginst Yugoslavia will be lifted, says secretary general of the Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS) Gorica Gajevic.   NASA BORBA   - New round of talks with the London Club announced for mid-September has been postponed indefinitely, the paper learns from sources close to the Yugoslav negotiating team.   - Reintegration of eastern Slavonia region in Croatia will probably be completed by next summer, says U.S. Ambassador to Croatia Peter Galbraith after visiting the region.   POLITIKA EKSPRES   - The 30th Belgrade international theatre festival (BITEF) opens.   - Yugoslavia's agreements with Macedonia and Croatia to be submitted for ratification to the federal parliament at its September 27 session.   VECERNJE NOVOSTI   - Closing statements read at the libel trial of opposition leader Zoran Djindjic, the court to announce its ruling on Friday.   -- Belgrade newsroom +381 11 2224305 
18251 !GCAT  Lithuanian newspapers carried the following reports in their Thursday editions.   Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy:   LIETUVOS RYTAS   - The government issued 76.4 million litas payment guarantees to Metal Impeks, Mineral Rohstoff Handel GmbH and Hatren Investments Ltd, which won an international bid to supply Lietuvos Energija with 220,000 tonnes of heating oil.   - Lithuanian Lina Kavaliunaite, 21, was among 15 finalists of the most prestigious model contest 'The look of the Year-96' in Nice and will sign a contract with the Elite agency.   - President Algirdas Brazauskas will have an official meeting with Polish President Alexander Kwasniewski in the ship Warszawa in Gdynia port today.   - The cabinet of ministers approved a suggestion to draw up a special anti-damping law in Lithuania.   - The ruling Lithuanian Democratic Labour Party (LDLP) attacked the agricultural reforms of former prime minister Gediminas Vagnorius in 1991-92 in a special parliamentary session.   The LDLP accuses Vagnorius of ruining the sector by a rapid dismantling of the collective farm system.   The LDLP said the policy caused 35 billion litas of damage to farming.   RESPUBLIKA   - The negotiations with Latvia over their disputed sea border in the Baltic Sea are deadlocked.   - Byelorussia will repay a $1.8 million debt for electricity before October 15.   - 600 workers from a machine tools factory Zalgiris in Vilnius who have received no salary for more than 10 months started a strike yesterday.   - Interior Affairs Minister Virgilijus Bulovas in an interview acknowledges a story published in an investigative article on September 12 about intrigues and an inner conflcit between high-ranking ministry officials is correct.   LIETUVOS AIDAS   - The leader of the Women's Party, former prime minister Kazimiera Prunskiene, will have to inform about her cooperation with the "secret services of foreign countries", meaning the KGB, on her election posters, the electoral commission decided yesterday.   -- Riga Newsroom +371 7 22 66 93 
18252 !GCAT  These are the leading stories in the Sarajevo press on Thursday.   Reuters has not verified them and does not vouch for their accuracy.   OSLOBODJENJE   - President Izetbegovic says his political goal is integration of the country and justice in it.   - According to election results we still live in 1990, Social Democratic opposition party says.   Results are almost the same as those in the last elections in 1990.   - Paper asks who will clean the city of thousands of pre-election leaflets and posters.   DNEVNI AVAZ   - Results for the opposition joint list parties were disastrous.   - Former Yugoslav army barracks in Sarajevo will be turned into university centre.   -- Sarajevo newsroom, +387-71-663-864. 
18253 !GCAT !GPOL !GVOTE  If Armenian President Levon Ter-Petrosyan loses his bid for re-election in Sunday's first round ballot, it will not be because voters didn't buy his pre- election promises.   In fact, Ter-Petrosyan doesn't promise much of anything.   "The president doesn't believe in propaganda.   He doesn't believe in promising people things that he can't deliver, just because it might sound pretty," said Hamlet Gasparyan, his campaign press secretary.   His main opponent, former prime minister Vazgen Manukyan, has pledged to raise living standards, but Ter-Petrosyan has told his countrymen to expect no miracles.   "There are people who are promising to make your lives better.   If you believe them, then please vote for them," he told one group of rural voters recently.   The 50-year-old academic and former Soviet-era dissident, cuts an aloof image unusual for Caucasus leaders.   Television in Azerbaijan is a daily soap opera of President Haydar Aliyev's activities, while Georgia's Eduard Shevardnadze keeps in touch with live weekly radio interviews.   But the wavy-haired, chain-smoking Ter-Petrosyan was never a member of the Soviet Communist Party.   He rarely addresses the nation on television or radio.   He has given one press conference in two years, and almost never agrees to press interviews.   "He is a man of science.   He doesn't speak empty words.   It is just not his nature," said Tigran Mansuryan, a famous Armenian composer and a longtime Ter-Petrosyan confidante.   Political scientist Suren Zolyan says Ter-Petrosyan came to prominence in Armenia largely on his strength as an orator.   "By keeping a cool distance, he portrays himself as above politics, as above party institutions.   So although he is the president, he thus creates an aura of a tsar or king who can't be blamed for problems and without whom Armenians cannot live."   There is ample evidence the recipe works.   Many of his rank-and-file backers seem more enamoured with his charisma than with his programme.   "I love him very much.   He is our president, he is a real man," said 26-year-old accountant Gazancha Goyan, who admitted she didn't know much about Ter-Petrosyan's politics.   Ter-Petrosyan has survived five years in power despite an unresolved war with neighbour Azerbaijan and biting economic problems in the landlocked country which also borders Iran, Turkey and Georgia.   He is on his fourth prime minister over that time span.   Three, including Manukyan, left office at least in part as scapegoats for one economic, political crisis or another.   Manukyan has won popularity with an aggressive campaign which promises to relieve the poverty affecting most Armenians.   Ter-Petrosyan has kept a low profile, although worried advisers have stepped up his schedule in advance of the vote.   But the enigma won out again at a big election rally in central Yerevan on Wednesday.   Dancing girls performed and one ally after another stood on a lighted stage to sing his praises.   His government members stood at attention, applauding enthusiastically.   But the president leaned passively up against a back wall and puffed on a cigarette, almost oblivious to the fanfare.   "Unfortunately I cannot see your faces in the glare of the lights, my friends, but please consider that I am speaking with each one of you as an individual," he began. 
18254 !GCAT !GDIS  Four Russian fishermen died when their boat collided with a passenger ship on the River Ob in western Siberia, the Emergencies Ministry said on Thursday.   The private fishing boat crashed with the passenger ship when it tried to cross in front of it on Wednesday.   It was not clear if the passenger ship was damaged or whether it had passengers on board at the time.   All those aboard the fishing boat were killed. 
18255 !GCAT !GPOL !GVOTE  Incumbent Levon Ter-Petrosyan is asking Armenians to return him to office for a second five-year term in Sunday's presidential election, and says he will offer them a "step-by-step" approach to a better life.   The 50-year-old academic, at the helm of the rugged Transcaucasian country since it gained independence in 1991, is trying to fight off a spirited challenge from his former ally and prime minister Vazgen Manukyan.   Manukyan has gained steam by winning the support of several other candidates who have dropped out to back him.   Communist Sergei Badalyan and Ashot Manucharyan from the Party of Science and Industry are also on the ballot, but neither are expected to do well.   Observers hold little faith in Armenian opinion polls.   But most say Ter-Petrosyan, known for an at times aloof approach to governing, has an excellent shot at clearing a 50 percent hurdle to win and avoid a second-round runoff with Manukyan.   "It would certainly be a big surprise if Ter-Petrosyan didn't take it in the first round," said a Western diplomat.   A second round between the top two candidates will be held in two weeks if no candidate wins 50 percent of the vote.   Landlocked Armenia became a textbook case of chaos and misery when the Soviet empire began to break up, going to war with neighboring Azerbaijan over the enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh and suffering near total economic collapse as Soviet-era trade ties collapsed and Azerbaijan closed the frontiers.   But battlefield defeats in the enclave forced Azerbaijan to accept a ceasefire which has held for more than two years, although there is no sign of a lasting solution to the conflict.   Most of Armenia's 3.5 million people are still poor, but the economy has began to recover from a dismal base and a once-notorious power shortage has been somewhat alleviated.   The wavy-haired Ter-Petrosyan, who disdains what his aides call "election propaganda," has run a campaign which portrays him as a guarantor of peace and stability but emphasises the many difficult problems ahead.   "All of our economic and social problems are temporary and one day our nation will overcome them," he told a rally of 10,000 supporters in Yerevan's central square on Wednesday evening.   "Step by step we will build our country."   Manukyan has been appealing to discontented Armenians with low living standards, promising to revive heavy industry and raise the wages of state workers 10 fold.   The bespectacled physicist has accused Ter-Petrosyan of tolerating corruption in his government.   He dismisses the president's economic reforms and says it is impossible for anyone not directly linked to Ter-Petrosyan's "clan" to do serious business or invest in Armenia.   "Oh, you can open an ice cream parlour if you want, that they will tolerate," he said earlier this week.   "But try anything bigger and immediately you will begin having problems."   Some 2.4 million people are elegible to vote on Sunday.   Several dozen international observers, coordinated by the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe, will monitor polling.   Parliamentary elections held last year were criticised by as unfair by international monitoring groups. 
18256 !GCAT  The following are the reports carried by Estonia's newspapers on Thursday.   Reuters has not verified these reports and does not vouch for their accuracy:   ALL NEWSPAPERS   - Centre Party leader Edgar Savisaar sent a letter to President Lennart Meri urging him to stand down before the electoral college vote tomorrow.   SONUMILEHT   - Seven politicians issued an appeal to the electoral college, expressing the hope it will reach an agreement and make a decision respecting the opinion of the Estonian voters.   A recent opinion poll showed 57 percent support for Meri.   - Arnold Ruutel rejected claims that a court challenge against Meri's oath of office was done to better his chances at the election.   EESTI PAEVALEHT   - Five candidates - Lennart Meri, Arnold Ruutel, Tunne Kelam, Siiri Oviir and Enn Tougu - have been registered as presidential candidates for the electoral college round on Friday.   - Estonian-Russian border negotiations begin in St.Petersburg today.   The Estonian delegation head, Raul Malk, said the agreement will depend on a political decision, which the negotiations cannot influence.   The talks have been deadlocked by disagreement over the 1920 Tartu Peace Treaty, which Russia has refused to recognise.   - Representatives of the second largest bank, Savings Bank, said a shareholders meeting to authorise the bank board to issue new shares was invalid.   The shareholders should have approved the share issue themselves.   A new meeting will be held at the end of the month.   POSTIMEES   - Narva city council will pay 30,000 kroons for information helping the police to arrest the killer of four women in August and September.   - The fire in the Oru peat field in northeastern Estonia has been spreading and threatens the forests.   Fire-fighting is hampered by a lack of fuel for fire engines.   ARIPAEV   - The state-owned company Saarte Liinid, which operates ferries between the mainland and the western Estonian islands, will sell its ferries to private operators.   - 14 Baltic insurance forms will form a pool in October for insuring Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian aircraft.   - Tartu Brewery launched a bottling line for filling 1.5 litre plastic bottles.   -- Riga Newsroom +371 7 22 66 93 
18257 !GCAT  These are the main stories in Latvian newspapers on Thursday.   Prepared for Reuters by the Cooperation Fund.   Reuters has not verified these reports and does not vouch for their accuracy:   ALL NEWSPAPERS   - The government has approved next year's draft budget, which is deficit-free.   A first reading is planned for October 7 and the second and final reading for November 13.   - Deputy Valdis Krisbergs suspended his membership in the Democratic Party Saimnieks pending the results of an investigation into the case of the company Auseklitis.   - Parliament approved at the first reading a bill which allows 203 non-citizens, mostly Russian-speakers, to continue as civil servants.   Under the existing law, they would have to leave their jobs, unless naturalised as Latvian citizens.   - Finance Minister Aivars Kreituss announced that pensions given out so far would not be taxed.   DIENA   - The State Revenue Service said it owed some 20 million lats to people in wrongfully collected taxes.   - Prime Minister Andris Shkele is on his first official visit to Iceland.   He signed a protocol on cooperation in the agriculture sector.   On Friday he leaves for New York to deliver a speech at the U.N.   - On September 23 President Guntis Ulmanis will leave for Strasbourg to deliver a speech to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe for the first time since the country was admitted to the body.   NEATKARIGA RITA AVIZE   - The head of the Lithuanian delegation in talks with Latvia over their sea border, Rimantas Shidlauskas, announced that the talks have reached deadlock.   BIZNES & BALTIYA   - On September 16 police officially accused Viktor Gusev of having forged documents and smuggled goods into Latvia.   Gusev is president of Eksi International, the largest importer of fruits to Latvia.   SM   - Parliament speaker Ilge Kreituse defends her decision to quit the Democratic Party Saimnieks and says she is not ready to obey a "dictatorship".   -- Riga Newsroom +371 7 22 66 93 
18258 !GCAT  Following are the main stories in Croatian newspapers on Thursday.   VJESNIK   - Session of the National Defence and Security Council (VONS): Elections in the Croatian Danube region to be held on December 15.   - 25 to 30 bodies recovered from the Ovcara mass grave.   - Croatian and Bavarian governments sign agreement on the construction of the Croatian section of the Pyhrn road.   VECERNJI LIST   - World Bank to inject $1,5 million in an environment protection project aimed at dealing with waste threatening the Adriatic.   - Decision on the return of Bosnian refugees to be made in Bonn today: Forced repatriation "possible and acceptable" according to some German ministers.   - Armed robbers steal 300,000 German marks from a central payments bureau branch in a sleepy town 40 kilometers south-east of Zagreb.   SLOBODNA DALMACIJA   - Foreign minister Mate Granic's foreign policy report: There are no disputes over the Prevlaka pensinsula.   -- Zagreb Newsroom, 385-1-4557075 
18259 !GCAT  Here are highlights of stories reported by Hungary's press, based on information by Nepszabadsag's Hungary Around the Clock service.   For further details on how to subscribe to Hungary Around the Clock, please contact Monica Kovacs at (361) 351 2440 or fax your request to (361) 351 7141.   ALL PAPERS   - During a day of political debate on the first two years of the present cabinet in Parliament Prime Minister Gyula Horn said that Hungary's international prestige has been restored and the country's state of intebtedness has improved.   @   - Hungarian Foreign Minister Laszlo Kovacs and his Slovak counterpart Pavol Hamzik agreed that the two countries would continue to make efforts to seek an out-of-court settlement over the issue of the controversial Gabcikovo hydroelectric power plant.   - Democratic Forum leader Sandor Lezsak said that with Young Democrat and Christian Democrat presidents had agreed that their parties would resume coordination of programmes and election preparations in October.   @   - Indications are that certain organised criminal interests have had little difficulty in their attempts to "infiltrate their own people into state administration", said Jozsef Bencze, deputy state secretary.   - The retail trade sector registered a sudden upswing in July, with sales 6.6 per cent higher at comparative prices than a year earlier.   @   - Termektarolo Rt, one of the two companies which oversee the stockpiling of the nation's petroleum reserves, signed a $50 million long-term agreement with a consortium led by Holland's ABN Amro Bank to finance the building of a storage site.   NEPSZABADSAG   - Minister of Culture Balint Magyar announced that his ministry is initiating negotiations with Slovakia as the change of regime has not brought about any improvement in the lot of ethnic minorities in Slovakia.   @   - The State Privatisation and Holding Co. decided on Wednesday to issue an open tender by November for purchase of a 100 per cent stake in the cab company Fotaxi.   MAGYAR HIRLAP   - President Arpad Goncz met Robert Collignon, prime minister of the French-speaking region of Wallonia, on the last day of his visit to Belgium.   - German companies operating in Hungary will henceforth see faster refunds of VAT as the German-Hungarian Chamber of Commerce has undertaken to carry out refund application procedures.   @   - International lawyers and financial experts began Wednesday to look into whether gold was moved by the Nazis to Swiss banks during World War II.   - The director of the Hungarian Human Rights Defence Centre claimed that Hungarian authorities fail to guarantee the basic human rights of foreign refugees.   NEPSZAVA   - This paper reports that undercover officers will be sent to more than 100 companies in majority state ownership under the law on national security services, in order to prevent possible espionage.   @   MAGYAR NEMZET   - Well-informed sources said that little substantive progress is expected when Hungarian trade officials meet today in Geneva with WTO representatives over the level of Hungary's agricultural export subsidies.   VILAGGAZDASAG   - A Hungarian team will fly to Washington next week to hold further negotiations with the World Bank on a loan for restructuring of companies and the banking sector.    -- Budapest newsroom (36-1) 327 4040 
18260 !E12 !ECAT !GCAT !GPOL !GVIO !GVOTE  Armenians often refer to their country as "our much-suffering land".   A journey across the small, landlocked former Soviet republic from north to south leaves no doubt why.   The winner of Sunday's presidential election faces the herculean task of ending a devastating war with neighbouring Azerbaijan and lifting most Armenians out of miserable poverty.   Four candidates are on the ballot, but only two, President Levon Ter-Petrosyan and former prime minister Vazgen Manukyan, have a real chance of victory.   "I don't know anything about politics, but I know that life here is bad.   No money, no jobs," said 42-year old Ashot, manning a kebab stand along a dusty road in the north of the country, just over the border from Georgia.   "At least I have the pigs," he says, pushing chunks of pink meat on to greasy metal skewers and placing them on a makeshift grill.   Workers in state jobs often receive salaries of as little as 4,000 dram ($10) a month.   The minimum pension is 2,000 dram.   Ter-Petrosyan, a 50-year-old academic known for his aloof, intellectual approach to government, is regarded by political observers as the favourite to win a new five-year term.   But he faces a stronger than expected challenge from Manukyan, who accuses him of running a "mafia-clan type country" and promises to raise living standards quickly.   Manukyan has won the backing of three other candidates who dropped out of the race.   "If the vote isn't falsified, then Ter-Petrosyan will lose in the first round," physicist Manukyan, 50, told Reuters in an interview at his campaign headquarters in central Yerevan.   He said it was impossible for anyone not directly linked to Ter-Petrosyan's "clan" to do serious business or invest in Armenia.   "You can open an ice cream parlour if you want, that they will tolerate," he said, puffing on a cigarette.   "But start anything bigger and you will have problems immediately."   Ter-Petrosyan, who has dominated Armenia's political landscape since independence five years ago, has generally shrugged off Manukyan's broadsides as populist electioneering.   "Manukyan just tells people what they want to hear.   The president does not believe in lying to people, so he tells them the truth -- that things will continue to be difficult," said Hamlet Gasparyan, the president's campaign press secretary.   Both will be trying to clear a 50 percent hurdle to claim a first-round win.   If neither does, they will face a run-off.   The drive towards the capital Yerevan, along desert roads bordered by parched mountains, is a trek through towns lined with darkened, dilapidated buildings and dormant traffic lights.   Armenia, with few domestic power resources, has suffered a chronic power shortage since the Soviet Union collapsed and other republics began charging hard currency for gas and oil.   People are without electricity for days on end.   One town on the road is Spitak, epicentre of a giant earthquake in December 1988 which killed more than 25,000 people.   Most were entombed in shoddily built high-rise apartment buildings that collapsed like packs of cards.   Eight years on, new apartment blocks dot the town's skyline but the government has still been unable to build new housing for around half of the survivors of the disaster.   Weeds poke out from leftover rubble bulldozed into piles years ago.   The Metsamor nuclear power plant, closed after the quake, is visible on the city skyline.   Officials reopened it this year, saying they had no choice, given the desperate power situation.   Cranes tower over the capital Yerevan itself, but most of the giant arms have been motionless since Armenia was dumped into deep economic crisis by war with Azerbaijan for control of the Armenian-populated region of Nagorno-Karabakh.   Armenians now control the enclave, which was part of Azerbaijan under borders drawn up in Soviet days.   The result of Sunday's election is far from clear.   Khachik, a father of three hawking blocks of butter and bags of coffee in Yerevan's central bazaar, is characteristic of people who blame Ter-Petrosyan for the economic mess.   "I was a specialist in a jewellery factory here, and now I sell this junk to buy bread.   Look at this market.   Lots of these people have higher education.   Now we are a people with no future.   If it isn't the president's fault, then whose is it?"   Ter-Petrosyan can point to improving economic indicators as evidence that life is getting better.   Inflation is under control and industrial production has been rising for months, albeit from a low level.   Yerevan is full of private shops and restaurants.   But observers say the key to truly reviving the economy lies in ending the long-running conflict with Azerbaijan.   The conflict was already under way over Nagorno-Karabakh in 1988 and the Christian Armenians achieved stunning victories against the Moslem Azeris until a ceasefire came in 1994.   The war has closed off traditional export and import routes through Azerbaijan and Turkey, which has supported its fellow Moslems by sealing the Turkish-Armenian border.   Mediation and negotiations to find a lasting solution to the conflict have led to no concrete results.   Azerbaijan says it will use future revenues from huge new offshore oil projects to rearm and retake the territory unless a solution can be found to preserve its territorial integrity.   "This is without a doubt absolutely the most crucial problem facing the country.   Without a real settlement to the war there is no way to get the economy going," said one Western diplomat.   Armenia's only open borders are through Georgia, whose infrastructure is in poor shape, and Iran.   "Unfortunately there is no way that we are going to see a resolution of Karabakh in the next year," the diplomat said.   "In 18 months they may agree some sort of framework, but the prognosis is not optimistic," he said. 
18261 !GCAT !GCRIM  Venezuela's former President Carlos Andres Perez tasted his first day of freedom in over two years on Thursday relishing the return to the public limelight.   Drummed out of office in May 1993 to face corruption charges shortly before the end of a second five-year presidential term, the charismatic Perez gave early warning that he intended to make the most of his new-found freedom.   "I am not going to be written off or buried.   I am not going to become one of those library books which are taken out occasionally to be consulted," he told a news conference.   The first Latin American leader to be convicted of corruption, Perez maintained that the charge that he misappropriated $17 million in state funds was politically motivated.   But he said he would waste no time dwelling on the past.   "I don't have any intention to seek revenge ... my conscience is clear," he said.   Hundreds of cheering supporters swamped the Social Democratic leader early on Thursday morning when he stepped from the luxurious colonial residence that had been his jail since July 1994.   He previously spent two months in a prison.   Perez had breakfast with Central American leaders, including former Honduran President Rafael Callejas, and visited the grave of his daughter, Tais, who died while he was under house arrest.   Perez, 73, whose second government was rocked by price riots and two military coup attempts, heads to his home state of Tachira on Friday to "renew my contact with the people."   An apparently unquenchable thirst for publicity saw Venezuela's most famous ex-convict give at least 60 interviews on Wednesday.   Even during the relative seclusion of house arrest Perez maintained a high public profile through regular press interviews and, more recently, chats on the Internet.   But his plans to renew his international profile were put on ice by Attorney General Ivan Dario Badell, who said he would seek to have him barred from leaving Venezuela while investigations go on into alleged joint foreign bank accounts with close friend Cecilia Matos.   In a political career spanning five decades, Perez was no stranger to controversy and he still provokes polarised reactions among Venezuelans.   But while his every move on Thursday was accompanied by a small band of fervent supporters, most bystanders appeared unmoved by his return to the limelight.   "He just likes the publicity.   It's a show, that's all," said security guard Hernan Guzman as he watched Perez's supporters cheer their leader. 
18262 !GCAT !GCRIM  Former President Carlos Andres Perez, Venezuela's most controversial politician, completed two years of house arrest on Thursday and received a jubilant welcome by hundreds of supporters outside his Caracas home.   Drummed out of office in May 1993 to face corruption charges for misuse of public funds shortly before completing a second five-year presidential term, the flamboyant and charismatic Perez said he planned a quick return to public life.   "I feel happy among this crowd that shows how Venezuelans feel", he told hundreds of friends and cheering supporters at the gate of the luxury colonial residence above the capital which had been his jail since July 1994.   He had previously spent two months at the Caracas low security Junquito prison.   "I'm back on the streets and that's on the streets that we shall seek peace for Venezuela and solutions to the country's woes", the 73-year-old social democrat leader said.   The first Latin American leader to be convicted of corruption, Perez has maintained that he was wrongly convicted for misappropriating $17 million in state funds.   The first Venezuelan to win two presidential elections, Perez has survived jail, exile and two coup attempts during a political career spanning five decades.   No stranger to controversy, Perez provokes polarised reactions from Venezuelans.   An oil boom during his first government from 1974-79 brought unprecedented wealth to the South American country and raised his international profile as a champion of Third World interests.   But his dramatic fall from grace left his reputation in tatters.   Perez's first taste of freedom, officially set to begin at midnight, was brief and chaotic as he was literally swept out by a tide of supporters and journalists surrounding him.   He only took two paces from his front gate and though obviously determined to explore his new-found freedom was turned back by the sheer weight of the crowd estimated at nearly 1,000.   "Out of the way, let me get out," he shouted, as photographers and TV cameramen jostled for the best spot.   His appearance was greeted with spontaneous renditions of the national anthem and cries of "freedom, freedom".   Supporter Armando Medina, who travelled nearly seven hours from the central city of Barquisimeto to witness Perez's return to freedom, said he was convinced the former leader would quickly spring back onto the political arena.   "This is only the beginning, this man is not going to stay idle", he said.   Perez's path to political redemption will start on Friday with a tour of western Venezuela, beginning with his home state of Tachira on the Colombian border, where he still commands considerable support. 
18263 !C18 !C183 !C42 !CCAT !E41 !ECAT !GCAT !GJOB  Ecuador's energy sector workers Thursday said they would go on strike Friday against the government's plans to privatize the electricity system.   "Tomorrow we will paralyze all activities at the (Quito) electricity company and the Electrification Institute of Ecuador," workers' spokesman Edgar Ponce told a radio station.   He said employees would also start a hunger strike and would distribute pamphlets explaining consumers how they would be affected by the new energy law passed Thursday.   Under the law, the newly elected administration of President Abdala Bucaram plans to sell off 39 percent of the company's shares to private investors and another 10 percent to company employees.   Ponce said energy employees will meet next week with workers from other sectors to seek their support.   They will also seek to meet with Government Minister Frank Vargas to discuss their objections.   -- Quito Newsroom +5932 258433 
18264 !C42 !CCAT !E21 !E211 !E41 !ECAT !GCAT !GJOB  Argentina's biggest union group, the Central Labor Confederation (CGT), said Thursday its 36-hour general strike on September 26-27 would go ahead as planned.   CGT Secretary-General Rodolfo Daer, who will lead a march on President Carlos Menem's Casa Rosada government house in Buenos Aires, vowed that workers would "take the Plaza de Mayo by storm," referring to the landmark plaza where the planned demonstration will take place.    The CGT, in the past an ally of the Peronist government, is staging its second general strike in two months to protest the country's 17 percent unemployment rate, government austerity measures and Menem's attempts to make labor laws more flexible.   In a speech to regional unionists, Daer said workers would "no longer put up with austerity for austerity's sake."   "There are starvation pensions, poverty-line salaries and no stability or security for workers," said the new CGT chief.    Menem's labor bill, which is expected to be sent to Congress this week, proposes scrapping collective pay deals and swapping redundancy payments for an unemployment insurance scheme with employer contributions.   Menem threatens to push it through by decree if Congress puts up a fight.   The union protests escalated this week after Labor Minister Armando Caro Figueroa said he wanted pay deals to make a proportion of workers' wages variable, "taking into account the economic conditions of each company."   The minister said Thursday he would also like the bill to include modifications in working hours and vacations.    A World Bank report published Thursday in the Clarin newspaper said Argentine unemployment could drop to single digits if the government succeeded in implementing labor reforms.   "Unemployment in Argentina could fall eight percentage points...if the government moves ahead with a reduction in labor costs and new compensation schemes that are included in the latest government labor flexibilization plan," it said.   The World Bank said a 10 percent cut in labor costs could foster five percent job growth and that less costly redundancy rules could help employment grow by three percent. 
18265 !C42 !CCAT !E41 !ECAT !GCAT !GJOB  Annual salary talks between Petrobras and the United Oilworkers Federation (FUP) broke down after the state oil giant refused to negotiate its pay offer and other union demands, an FUP spokeswoman said.   The breakdown in talks sharply increases the likelihood of a 24-hour warning strike by Brazil's oilworkers on September 26.   The FUP and Petrobras are deeply divided over proposed pay increases, with the FUP asking for a 46.64 percent salary hike and Petrobras only offering 8.8 percent.    FUP spokeswoman Leila Costa said Petrobras flatly refused to improve its pay offer, to give any contract guarantees of job security or to rehire oilworkers fired during the October 1994 and May 1995 strikes.   "We cannot accept this attitude of either you accept our offer or nothing," Costa said.   "We are looking to find a middle ground between the two positions but Petrobras doesn't want to negotiate."    She said the FUP has asked for further talks to be held September 24, but Petrobras rejected the idea, saying it would not budge from its position.   Costa said the FUP would hold votes next week to decide how to proceed next and whether to hold a strike September 26 or on a later date.   "There will be some form of worker mobilization on September 26," she said.   Oilworkers had voted in favor of a warning strike earlier this week provided further talks with Petrobras did not advance.   -- Simona de Logu, Rio de Janeiro newsroom, 5521 507 4151 
18266 !GCAT !GPOL  Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori named Thursday his Prime Minister Alberto Pandolfi to the vacant post of energy and mines minister, according to government news agency Andina.   Pandolfi will leave his current parallel post of fisheries minister, where he will be replaced by fishing expert Carlos Ernest Boggiano Sanchez, Andina added.    Previous energy and mines minister, Daniel Hokama, left that post last week to take over at the powerful presidency ministry, which supervises social programs.   The presidency post was left vacant by the earlier resignation of Jaime Yoshiyama for personal reasons.   Despite this month's changes, Pandolfi has insisted in recent days that there is no crisis in the cabinet.   Analysts say the changes maintain Fujimori's tight control over a mainly loyalist cabinet.   -- Andrew Cawthorne, Lima newsroom, 511 221-2134 
18267 !GCAT !GCRIM !GVIO  One man was killed and four wounded on Thursday when about 40 armed, masked men assaulted a prison in the southeast Mexican state of Chiapas, officials said.   "Seven criminals were freed in the attack, which the police managed to repel," a spokeswoman for the state prosecutor's office said.   "One of the attackers was killed and three were wounded, and one policeman was wounded."   The attack took place in the early hours of Thursday in the town of Bochil, on a north-south highway near the state's second city of San Cristobal de las Casas.   The attackers wore bandannas and ski-masks and were armed with firearms and sticks, the spokeswoman said.   Officials did not say whether they thought the attackers were linked to the state's Zapatista rebels or to the newer Popular Revolutionary Army (EPR), which appeared in several states earlier this year.   The Zapatistas have asked the EPR to stay out of Chiapas.   A similar incident several months ago in the nearby town of Simojovel, in which several prisoners were freed by armed men, was blamed by officials on radical members of the leftist Democratic Revolution Party (PRD).   Police were searching for the escaped prisoners, who were serving sentences for rape, murder and robbery. 
18268 !GCAT !GDIP !GREL  Amid rumours that President Fidel Castro could meet Pope John Paul if he travels to Rome this year, the Cuban government hinted on Thursday that relations with the Roman Catholic Church had improved.   Foreign Ministry spokesman Miguel Alfonso, asked at a regular weeekly news briefing about prospects for a meeting this November between Castro and the pope, said it was too early to speculate.   He said it was not even known yet if Castro would travel to Rome for a world summit on food organised by the Rome-based U.N. Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO).   Castro never announces his travel plans in advance.   But Alfonso said relations with the Catholic Church were currently "nearer normality than abnormality."   Also fuelling rumours of a possible meeting was the fact that the 70-year-old Cuban leader spent time talking to Vatican envoy Beniamino Stella and senior Cuban cleric Carlos Manuel de Cespedes at a reception on Wednesday.   A meeting between Castro and the pope would raise speculation about a papal trip to Cuba, the only Latin American country the pope has not visited.   For such a visit to take place, Cuba would have to extend a formal invitation.   Cuba's communist authorities have sought in recent years to ease relations with Christian churches and ties with the Catholic Church have improved somewhat.   But there have been moments of tension, generally over calls for political change by the island's Catholic bishops. 
18269 !C21 !C24 !CCAT !GCAT !GWEA !M14 !M141 !MCAT  Brazilian coffee growers in Minas Gerais and Espirito Santo states are banking on forecasts for strong rains from the end of this month through October to improve the blossoming of coffee trees.   "We are expecting an improvement in blossoming if October rains are strong," said Vilmar Donizetti Rosa, a technician at Patrocinio's co-operative, in Minas Gerais state.   According to Brazil's meteorology institute, IMNET, rains are likely to intensify in October.    Although rainfall so far this month is seen as satisfactory for the key coffee producing states Minas Gerais and Sao Paulo, they have not yet helped blossoming of trees in Espirito Santo, the main conillon coffee producing state.   In September, it rained only half of the usual 60 mm, said Dario Martinelli, president of Espirito Santo's main co-operative at Sao Gabriel.   Espirito Santo accounts for 20 percent of Brazil's coffee production and 90 percent of the country's conillon coffee.   "We hope that October rains will help us.   The state has been in a drought for almost seven months," Martinelli said.    Although it is too early for crop forecasts, Martinelli said he expects conillon crop in 1997/98 to be 50 percent lower than the current crop of 3.2 million 60-kg bags.   Meanwhile, the Minas Gerais cerrado region, known for producing the best Brazilian arabica coffee, has forecast a normal blossoming.   "We are not expecting an excellent blossoming because most of our trees are 'stressed' due to high production this year," Rosa said.   He noted coffee trees usually do not yield good crops in two consecutive years.   Rosa said he expects production to fall in his region during the next crop.    Despite forecasts for strong rains through October, the overall sentiment among growers is a smaller 1997/98 crop, but trustworthy crop forecasts will only be released in December.   In the domestic market Escritorio Carvalhaes on Sept 19 quoted fine-to-extrafine Mogiana Minas green beans at 118/120 reais per 60 kg.   On the export market, Santos brokers Wolthers & Associates quoted specialty 17/18s at 13 over New York for October shipment.   Fine 17/18s was quoted at three under and Swedish qualities were quoted at nine under.   -- Sao Paulo newsroom, 55-11-2324411. 
18270 !E51 !E512 !ECAT !GCAT !GDIP  Cuba on Thursday sought to set the record straight on its tense relations with the United States following comments by a Cuban diplomat who underplayed the importance of new U.S. sanctions against Havana.   The Foreign Ministry issued a statement that denied comments attributed to Tomas Misas, a diplomat recently assigned to Cuba's Interests Section in Washington, in a report on Monday by the Mexican news agency Notimex.   "These opinions and judgments on the relations between Cuba and the United States and the Cuban situation were at no moment authorised and are totally removed from reality and from the positions of the Cuban government," the statement said.   It did not suggest Notimex had wrongly quoted Misas.   The statement said that while Cuba was prepared to normalise relations with the United States, this could only be on the basis of Cuba's "independence and sovereignty".   The statement said it was Washington that did not want normal relations and blocked such normalisation with its economic embargo and with the new Helms-Burton law that tightens the sanctions.   "That is the real obstacle and its total elimination is the only possible route (forward)," the statement added.   Misas was quoted as saying relations and communications with the United States had been at their best for 20 years but changed when Cuba shot down two small U.S. planes in February.   "The problem is not the Helms-Burton law, it is the difficulty in continuing the communication that we had up to the incident with the small planes," he said.   While the incident led President Bill Clinton to sign the Helms-Burton law, Havana maintains it was not to blame for downing the planes, which it said were violating its airspace.   Misas was also quoted as saying that Cuba thought that the Clinton administration had been prepared to lift the U.S. embargo until the planes were downed.   While there had been a certain easing of tension prior to February, no Cuban official had publicly stated such an optimistic view.   Misas arrived in Washington earlier this month following the expulsion in August of the diplomat who had served as spokesman at the Section, Jose Ponce, in retaliation for the expulsion from Cuba of a U.S. diplomat.   But a Foreign Ministry official said Misas was not the spokesman at the Cuban Interests Section in Washington, but was on a temporary mission and did not have a fixed post. 
18271 !E21 !E212 !ECAT !GCAT !GVIO !M12 !MCAT  Top Colombian business leaders have endorsed a government plan to require rich Colombians to buy bonds next year to help finance its running battle with leftist guerrillas, a senior official said on Thursday.   Finance Minister Jose Antonio Ocampo said the heads of several of Colombia's most powerful economic groups backed the plan in a meeting this week with President Ernesto Samper.   "They're willing to support the proposed security bond law," Ocampo said of legislation unveiled in Congress this month.   The proposal would require individuals or businesses with a net worth of more than $85,000 to use the equivalent of 0.5 percent of their capital above that amount to purchase five-year bonds, which would be issued in denominations of $480 and carry an annual interest rate of 6 percent.   More than 100 soldiers and police have been killed since Aug. 30 in one of the most dramatic rebel offensives since the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and National Liberation Army (ELN) -- Colombia's two leading guerrilla groups -- were founded in the mid-1960s.   The offensive, and the capture of more than 60 soldiers as prisoners of war, has humiliated military leaders and sparked complaints by Army chief Gen. Harold Bedoya about a dire shortage of manpower and equipment to wage an effective counterinsurgency campaign.   The military would receive nearly $900 million in financing next year with the war bonds and the funds already budgeted for defence, Ocampo said.   He did not identify by name the economic leaders who backed the war bond proposal. 
18272 !E51 !E512 !ECAT !G15 !G158 !GCAT !GDIP  Chancellor Helmut Kohl promised Mexico on Thursday that Germany wanted a European Union open to trade with the world, and not a "Fortress Europe" with closed frontiers.   Kohl, on the final stop of a tour of Latin America which took in Brazil and Argentina, also told his host President Ernesto Zedillo that Germany wanted closer business ties with Mexico, the region's second-biggest economy.   Mexico, in common with other Latin nations, has expressed fears that the European Union is putting up barriers to trade with Latin America, forcing the region into excessive economic dependence on the United States.   Mexico sees Germany as an important ally in keeping the EU open to trade, and Kohl reinforced that impression during a meeting with Zedillo in the National Palace in the historic heart of Mexico City.   "What we don't want to build is a European fortress with closed frontiers.   We are supporters of free world trade," Kohl said in a speech.   Mexican officials said Kohl and Zedillo were discussing ways to boost trade and business between the two nations during a morning meeting at the Palace.   Both leaders paid each other effusive compliments, with Zedillo saluting Kohl as "the architect of German unification and the great promoter of European integration" and the German leader dubbing his encounter "a visit between friends."   Zedillo noted that Germany was the third-biggest foreign investor in Mexico and Mexico was Bonn's second-biggest trading partner in Latin America.   German-Mexican trade totalled $3.2 billion last year, with a $2.17 billion deficit for Mexico -- a gap the Mexicans are keen to plug.   Zedillo thanked Kohl for helping convince Brussels to open negotiations with Mexico on a possible trade pact next month.   German investment rose to $3.15 billion last year and Mexican officials hope some 490 German firms established in Mexico will announce big new investments during Kohl's visit.   Kohl's two-day official programme includes a visit on Friday to the best-known German name in Mexico -- Volkswagen.   Its huge plant at Puebla, an hour and a half's drive east of the capital, has been chosen as the production site for the "Concept One" car that will replace the long-selling Beetle.   Kohl leaves Puebla on Friday afternoon for a private visit to the tourist areas of the Yucatan peninsula, where he will visit the Maya ruins at Chichen Itza and the beach at Cancun before leaving for Bonn on Saturday night. 
18273 !E41 !E411 !ECAT !GCAT !GJOB  Argentine unemployment could drop below 10 percent from its current 17.1 percent in two to three years if the government implements its planned labor market reforms, the Economic Ministry's labor advisor said Thursday.   Carola Pessino, a senior labor market expert at the Economy Ministry, told reporters that "other countries such as New Zealand and Malaysia had managed that kind of performance" with similar labor reforms.   Pessino also said that a loosening of the labor legislation would resolve a problem of undeclared labor, which she estimates at 40 percent of total workforce.   On Wednesday, a World Bank report said that more flexible labor laws in Argentina could bring unemployment below 10 percent.   -- Daniel Helft, Buenos Aires Newsroom + 541 318 0663 
18274 !C12 !C13 !CCAT !GCAT !GCRIM  The Peruvian government announced Thursday a five-day ban from September 21 (corrects from September 26) on sardine fishing in waters off the northern Grau region.   The ban, detailed in the official daily El Peruano, is intended as a punitive measure against fishermen for catching sardines smaller than the legal limit.   The Grau region covers the northern departments of Piura and Tumbes, which include the ports of Paita, Talara and Zorritos.   -- Renzo Pipoli, Lima newsroom, 511 221-2134 
18275 !GCAT !GPOL  Activists have forced several uncomfortable topics onto the agenda of Mexico's ruling party at a key convention this weekend, including complaints about the lack of progress in investigating a big political murder, party officials said on Thursday.   The Institutional Revolutionary Party's (PRI) convention, was slated to discuss how to modernise the party's structure and policies to halt a series of crushing electoral defeats.   Those topics are still up for discussion, but party activists in the states have pushed more controversial issues before the 3,731 delegates expected to attend.   The PRI, which has governed Mexico without a break since 1929, opens its 17th National Assembly on Friday evening.   The gathering ends on Sunday.   PRI president Santiago Onate has confirmed to reporters that the party assembly will now discuss the case of one of its least popular former members, Carlos Salinas.   Salinas ended his 1988-94 presidential term in glory as Mexico entered the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and economic reforms took hold.   But a month later the economy fell apart, the peso plunged and revelations broke of rampant corruption involving Salinas's brother Raul.   PRI militants, who blame many of their electoral woes on the Salinas clan's alleged misdeeds, succeeded in expelling Raul -- now in jail on murder charges -- from the party last December but Carlos was let off the hook.   Now they want the party to reconsider expelling him.   Some PRI state leaders even suggested in pre-convention meetings on Wednesday that Carlos Salinas was behind the 1994 murder of the PRI's presidential candidate, Luis Donaldo Colosio -- a theory for which there is no evidence but which has much support among ordinary Mexicans.   PRI leaders from Colosio's home state of Sonora have won a commitment from the assembly's organisers to allow discussion of their complaints at the lack of results from the official investigation into his killing.   President Ernesto Zedillo, who hopes the convention will ratify his government's free-market policies, also faces discomfort because activists have insisted on a discussion of the government's plans to privatise part of the petrochemical industry -- one of Mexico's most sacred state cows.   And hardliners from one of the party's most orthodox wings, the Peasants National Confederation (CNC) have circulated their own document demanding their share of political power and candidacies for elections. 
18276 !GCAT !GCRIM !GODD  Petrified pedestrians dare not take their eyes off the ground in Bogota these days since the start of a new crime fad -- stealing manhole covers.   The city water company calculates 14,000 of the steel and concrete covers were stolen between January and July alone.   Thieves sell them for as much as $50 each and do not think twice about leaving a potential death trap gaping underfoot, El Espectador newspaper reported on Thursday   One 60-year-old woman and her weekly shopping fell more than 30 feet (10 meters) through an uncovered manhole into the labyrinth of the city's drains last week.   A policeman saved her but only after she had been swept several hundred feet through fetid torrents of waste water.   Now El Espectador, one of Colombia's leading dailies, is striking back.   It said it was launching a campaign to put the lid on the problem, inviting citizens to warn fellow readers if one of the lethal black holes is lurking around the corner. 
18277 !GCAT !GCRIM  Cuban police are investigating two Bahamanians and a Jamaican who apparently turned up in Cuba after their plan to fly a cargo of drugs from Jamaica to the Bahamas went wrong, official media said on Thursday.   Ruling Communist Party daily Granma said Bahamanians Preston Rolle and Reginald Dunbard and Jamaican Denis Mitchell were arrested in the central Cuban city of Ciego de Avila on Aug. 28 because they did not have valid entry papers for Cuba.   Granma said the three men told police they had been flying a cargo of marijuana from Jamaica to the Bahamas the previous day but their small plane had developed mechanical problems and they had had to land in Cuba.   Police subsequently located the small Piper plane and a cargo of about 610 pounds (280 kg) of marijuana, the newspaper said.   It was not clear how the plane landed without being spotted immediately.   Granma said the three were being investigated but did not say if they had been charged with any offence yet. 
18278 !E51 !E512 !ECAT !G15 !G158 !GCAT  The Caribbean Community has decided to appoint a chief negotiator for trade talks to help bring the 14-member regional bloc into free trade agreements with its neighbors by the end of the decade.   "Never before as a region have we had to undertake so many complex negotiations simultaneously," said Jamaica's prime minister P.J. Patterson after the two-day meeting ended on Wednesday night.    Five of Caricom's member countries gathered in Kingston to lay out a plan that includes searching for someone of ambassadorial rank to act as chief negotiator and coordinator of Caricom's numerous trade talks.   Caricom also plans to name an advisory council of private sector and government officials to provide support.    Patterson said Caricom will participate in a half-dozen trade talks including the Free Trade Agreement of the Americas (FTAA); efforts to obtain NAFTA parity for Caribbean Basin exports to the United States; talks with the European Union on the Lome V trade and aid accord; and negotiations at the World Trade Organization over banana export preferences with Europe.   Guyana President Cheddi Jagan said the region must begin lobbying for a lengthier transition period to free trade for Caricom as part of the FTAA.   He said the Asian Pacific Economic Council (APEC) allows a 10-year period for developed countries and 20 years for less developed economies.    Trinidad and Tobago's prime minister Basdeo Panday said that Caricom's intention, announced earlier this year, to sign free trade accords with blocs in south and central America by December is "not possible."   Caricom has also agreed to proceed with an accord with Venezuela to be signed within the next two months, Panday said.   Talks with the Central American Common Market should begin by year-end, and Caricom is also targeting a trade deal with South American trade bloc Mercosur.   Five years ago Caricom and Venezuela signed a trade deal that gave Caricom exports duty-free access to Venezuela.   Panday said the new trade deal would allow for "two-way free trade, with the exclusion of certain Venezuelan exports that would be detrimental to smaller Caricom countries."   -- Miami news bureau, 305-374-5013 
18279 !E51 !E511 !ECAT !GCAT !GDIP  The Mexican Senate on Thursday is expected to approve a so-called "antidote" to the U.S. anti-Cuba law known as Helms-Burton, a Senate spokesman said on Thursday.   "It will be discussed today and it is expected that the law will be approved and sent to the Chamber of Deputies (the lower house)," Senate spokesman Victor Hugo Figueroa told Reuters.    The antidote law would fine Mexican companies that allow themselves to be sanctioned by the U.S. Helms-Burton law, which seeks to discourage investment in Cuba, a Senate bulletin said.   Mexico, along with other U.S. allies like Canada and the European Union, have condemned Helms-Burton as a violation of international law because it seeks to punish third countries for investing in the Communist-ruled island.    Helms-Burton allows U.S. firms to sue foreign companies that "traffic" in properties that were confiscated by Cuba after Fidel Castro came to power 37 years ago.   U.S. officials say there are only a handful of companies worldwide in that category.   The Mexican consortium Grupo Domos, which plans to operate telephone service in Cuba, has been identified as one of those companies.    According to modifications in the antidote law made by the Mexican Senate on Wednesday, Mexican companies would be fined the equivalent of 100,000 days of the minimum wage for submitting to any sanctions from foreign countries.   At the current minimum wage of 22.60 pesos per day, that fine would be 2.26 million pesos, about $300,000.   The proposed Mexican law applies to any foreign countries but was written in direct response to the United States and its Helms-Burton law.    Mexican companies would be fined 50,000 days of minimum wage (1.13 milion pesos, about $150,000) for providing information about themselves to U.S. courts in cases related to Helms-Burton.   They would be fined 1,000 days of minimum wage (226,000 pesos, about $3,000) for failing to inform the Mexican foreign ministry that they are being targeted for sanctions by the U.S. law.   -- Dan Trotta, Mexico City newsroom, (525) 728-9507 
18280 !E41 !E411 !ECAT !GCAT !GJOB  Argentine unemployment could fall below 10 percent from its current 17.1 percent if the government implements its planned labor market reforms, according to a World Bank report published in the Clarin newspaper on Thursday.   "Unemployment in Argentina could fall eight percentage points...if the government moves ahead with a reduction in labor costs and new compensation schemes that are included in the latest government labor (law) flexibility plan," it said.    The World Bank also said a 10 percent reduction in labor costs could foster five percent growth in jobs, and different, less costly compensation legislation could help employment grow by three percent.   Labor law flexibility has become one of President Carlos Menem's top policy priorities.   Labor Minister Armando Caro Figueroa is working on legislation that includes new pay schemes.   Caro Figueroa said on Wednesday he wants future pay deals to make a proportion of workers' wages variable according to economic conditions.   Menem said his reforms will soon go to Congress.   He said he would resort to presidential decrees if Congress dragged its feet.   -- Daniel Helft, Buenos Aires Newsroom 541 318 0663 
18281 !GCAT  These are the highlights of the main Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro newspapers this morning.   - - -   GAZETA MERCANTIL   -- LOW INFLATION THREATENS TREASURY   Low inflation may deepen the imbalance in Brazil's Treasury accounts and in part put into risk efforts to reduce the fiscal deficit this year.   August inflation at 0.004 percent as measured by the IGP-M index has raised real interest rates on internal debt to 1.67 percent last month from 0.68 percent in July.   -- SALE OF KOLYNOS APPROVED WITH LIMITS   The Administrative Economic Defense Council (Cade), Brazil's antitrust agency, approved Wednesday the acquisition of Kolynos by Colgate-Palmolive, formalized in January 1995 for $760 million.   However, the Cade conditioned the approval to three alternatives to be chosen by Colgate.   -- LEADERSHIP IN THE AUTOMOBILE INDUSTRY CHANGES   At the same time the Brazilian automobile industry gets ready to rank as the world's fifth largest, a series of changes is taking place in the leadership of Volkswagen, General Motors, Fiat and Ford.   - - -   FOLHA DE SAO PAULO   -- PITTA FALLS AND CONTEST FOR SECOND POSITION INCREASES   Celso Pitta, from the Brazilian Progressive Party (PPB), who is running for Sao Paulo's mayor office fell to 37 percent from 40 percent, according to a poll conducted by Datafolha institute.   -- TRAIN CRASH IN RIO KILLS 15, 39 PEOPLE INJURED   Fifteen people were killed and at least 39 were injured at the biggest accident involving trains of the federal railway network.   A federal railway official said the accident was caused by faulty brakes on a freight train, which slammed into the back of a passenger train.   -- LANDLESS THREATEN TO RESUME LAND INVASIONS   Landless people will resume invading lands in Pontal do Paranapanema in response to the dismissal of Incra superintendent in Sao Paulo.   - - -   O GLOBO   -- CPMF TAX DEFEATED AT SUPREME COURT   Judge Marco Aurelio de Mello, from the Supreme Federal Tribunal (STF), has voted in favor of an injuction against the CPMF check tax.   -- Reuters has not verified these stories and cannot vouch for their accuracy.   -- Fatima Cristina, Sao Paulo newsroom, 55-11-2324411 
18282 !E51 !E512 !ECAT !G15 !G158 !GCAT  The European Commission and Mexico are likely to start negotiations in the second half of October in a bid to free trade barriers, the Commission's ambassador to Mexico, Jacques Lecomte, said.   Small and medium-sized exporters stand to gain the most from such a deal, he said in an interview on Wednesday.   "The big businesses don't need help," Lecomte said.   "If they have problems with tariffs, they can negotiate bilaterally, trilaterally or globally.   It's not that way for a small company."   Mexican exports to the European Union grew 20 percent in 1995 over 1994 to $3.38 billion, according to Mexican government statistics.   At the same time, Mexico imported $6.72 billion worth of goods from the European Union.   The European Union will seek to become more competitive with the United States and Canada in trade with Mexico during free-trade negotiations with Mexico, Lecomte added.   "Right now we're not in a good position to compete," Lecomte said "There's the problem of duties, that of the distance and the value of the U.S. dollar compared with the European currencies."   The United States remained the most important trading partner for both Mexico and the European Union, doing more than $120 billion in trade with Mexico alone.   Lecomte said an important part of the trade between Mexico and the United States involves European comapanies.   He cited the example of German car-maker Volkswagen AG, which sells many of its Mexican-made cars in the United States.   The Mexican-European talks also will include the topic of battling drug traffickers, Lecomte said.   "It's a key element in economic and trade relations," Lecomte said. 
18283 !GCAT !GDIP  German Chancellor Helmut Kohl arrived in Mexico on Wednesday for a four-day visit on the last leg of a tour of Latin America.   Kohl arrived at Mexico City's international airport shortly before 10.30 p.m. (0330 GMT) and was greeted by Mexican Foreign Minister Jose Angel Gurria.   Kohl, who was accompanied by 14 government officials and 11 top businessmen, made no statement to waiting reporters.   As his plane was approaching Mexico, a passenger jet of German airline Lufthansa had to return to Mexico City after authorities received a bomb threat, an airport official said.   No bomb was found after the plane made a safe landing, the official told Reuters.   There was no indication of who had made the threat, although the government has attributed a spate of bomb threats in several cities in recent weeks to the leftist rebel Popular Revolutionary Army (EPR).   The EPR denies making the threats and says they are part of a government disinformation campaign against them.   Kohl was due to meet President Ernesto Zedillo on Thursday and to receive the keys of Mexico City from Mayor Oscar Villareal before visiting on Friday the central city of Puebla, where German auto firm Volkswagen has a large production plant and will make its new Beetle car.   Kohl was then scheduled to travel to the eastern Yucatan peninsula to visit the city of Merida, Maya ruins at Chichen Itza and the holiday resort of Cancun before leaving Mexico on Saturday.   High on Kohl's agenda was the issue of free trade talks due to begin in October between Mexico and the European Union, which Mexican officials hope will allow their country to diversify its trade links, now heavily weighted towards the United States.   "Germany has been an important motor for seeking the accord with the European Union," Mexico's deputy Foreign Minister Juan Rebolledo said earlier on Wednesday.   Bilateral trade between the two countries in 1995 was $3.2 billion, making Germany Mexico's biggest EU trading partner, although Mexico is keen to reduce its trade deficit of almost $2.2 billion with Germany.   Despite the Mexican peso crisis of late 1994 and ensuing deep recession, German investment in Mexico last year rose to $3.15 billion from $2.61 billion in 1994.   "For us it is not only important that the established companies have expansion plans, but also to attract new companies," Rebolledo said. 
18284 !CCAT !GCAT !GVIO  A passenger jet of German airline Lufthansa returned safely to Mexico City on Wednesday after authorities received a bomb threat, an airport official said.   The incident took place as German Chancellor Helmut Kohl was approaching Mexico on a separate flight from Brazil.   "It was the 8:30 p.m. (0130 GMT) flight of Lufthansa, it returned at about 10:30 p.m. (0330 GMT)," the official, who declined to be named, told Reuters.   Asked whether the plane returned to Mexico City because of a bomb threat as reported by a Mexican TV station, he replied:   "Yes, but there was nothing.   It is being checked now, there is nothing to report."   Kohl arrived safely shortly before 10:30 p.m. (0330 GMT) at a special section of the airport.   The official could give no details of where the Lufthansa flight was headed.   Lufthansa representatives could not immediately be reached for comment.   There was no indication of who made the bomb threat.   Mexico has been racked by such threats in several cities in what officials say is a propaganda and intimidation campaign by leftist rebels of the Popular Revolutionary Army. 
18285 !GCAT !GCRIM  Former Venezuelan President Carlos Andres Perez walked free on Thursday from his Caracas home after more than two years under house arrest.   Forced out of office in May 1993 to face corruption charges eight months short of completing a second five-year presidential term, the flamboyant Perez said he planned a quick return to public life.   "I am happy", he told hundreds of friends and cheering supporters on the doorstep of the luxury colonial residence above the capital which had been his jail since July 1994.   He had previously spent two months at the Caracas low security Junquito prison.   "I'm back on the streets and that's on the streets that we shall seek peace for Venezuela and solutions to the country's woes", he added.   The first Latin American leader to be convicted of corruption, Perez has maintained that he was wrongly convicted for misappropriating $17 million in state funds.   A 73-year-old social democrat and the first Venezuelan to win two presidential elections, Perez has survived jail, exile and two coup attempts during a controversial political career spanning five decades. 
18286 !C24 !CCAT !GCAT !GENV  Three multinational logging companies from Asia have moved into the Brazilian Amazon, raising fears that the already growing rate of deforestation in the planet's largest rainforest may be about to speed up.   Malaysia's WTK Group, one of the world's biggest timber firms, is completing its purchase of 741,300 acres (300,000 hectares) of forest up the remote, winding Tapua River, seven days by boat from the city of Manaus.   An official said the firm was also doubling capacity at a Manaus sawmill it owns.   "We are very hurt by the criticism.   We haven't cut down a single tree yet," said WTK representative Tu Twang Hing in response to claims that his and other Asian firms plan to log on a scale not yet seen in Brazil.   Environmentalists say the arrival of the multinationals, combined with government plans to pave a highway to Venezuela to bring goods to the Caribbean and overseas markets, shows development of the Amazon is shifting into top gear.   "This is test of the government," said Carlos Miller of the environment group Vitoria Amazonica.   "Brazil must advance with sustainable development and strengthen its regulatory ability."   Logging is a major force driving destruction of the Amazon.   Eleven percent of Brazil's Western Europe-sized chunk of the forest has been cleared and the rate is speeding up.   During 1994, 5,750 square miles (14,896 square km) were cut down, up from 4,298 square miles (11,130 square km) in 1991.   The government's Environmental Institute (Ibama) admits its efforts to control the notoriously negligent local timber industry have been flawed.   A recent survey of 34 logging sites in Paragominas, the Amazon's biggest timber center, found that not one met requirements of the International Tropical Timber Organization, to which Brazil has agreed to comply by 2000.   A swoop this year by Ibama found 31,000 cubic metres (1.095 million cubic feet) of illegally felled timber floating down the Purus River towards waiting sawmills.   "Multi-million-dollar investments in the Amazonian logging industry would spell disaster as things stand," Ibama chief Eduardo Martins said.   "We don't want that kind of invesment."   Martins said that as well as WTK, Samling Corporation also of Malaysia, and Fortune Timber, owned by the Chinese government and Hong Kong investors, have bought bankrupt local companies.   Other deals have been stalled when the would-be buyers discovered they were being offered Indian lands.   An Ibama document put at 11.1 million acres (4.5 million hectares) the amount of Amazon land now owned by the multinationals and said the Asians' upgrading of local sawmills would lead to a five-fold jump in timber felled to produce plywood.   "We're extremely worried because (the Asians) work with very powerful technology," Miller of Vitoria Amazonica said.   WTK and Samling have logged massively in Malaysia's Sarawak region where critics say massive ecological damage has been inflicted on tropical forests.   Both have concessions across the Far East.   But, as Asian governments tighten their forestry laws and local forest resources dwindle, the multinationals have inevitably turned to the Amazon rainforest, which is estimated to hold a third of the world's tropical timber but accounts for only two percent of the international tropical timber trade.   The World Resources Institute, a New York policy research center, warned in 1995 that concessions offered to Asian loggers in Surinam, on Brazil's northern border, meant between 25 and 40 percent of that nation's land could be logged.   The report said Surinam risked losing "its forests and getting shattered biodiversity, ruined fisheries, eroded soil, displaced populations and perhaps ethnic strife in return."   Richard Bruce, a forest economist hired by WTK to draw up its application to log Jurua, argued the levels of concern caused in Brazil over the arrival of the Asian logging firms might lead to improvement in enforcement of forestry rules.   "You'd be crazy to think we won't have government inspectors all over us after all the uproar," he said.   And that is precisely what the government intends to do, Martins of Ibama said.   Every existing logging permit-holder in the Amazon region is being checked to see if their timber really does come from areas authorized for logging and not from protected Indian lands.   So far, 80 percent of permits have been found to be "irregular."   Martins pledged that timber produced by the Asians would be inspected.   He also said stricter new laws on forest clearing, combined with a two-year ban on new projects to fell rare mahogany and virola trees, would slow deforestation.   But environmentalists said they were waiting to see if the government lives up to its promises to get tough with loggers.   "The problem is a lack of enforcement," said Garo Batmanian, head of the World Wildlife Fund in Brazil.   "Just changing the law without a systematic and comprehensive strategy will simply not work." 
18287 !GCAT  (Compiled for Reuters by Media Monitors)   THE AUSTRALIAN FINANCIAL REVIEW   The Essendon and North Melbourne Australian Football League clubs owe their strong performances this year to the personal computer as much as to players' skills.   Essendon revised its tactics earlier this year after seeing a spreadsheet analysis of its players' performances, which breaks down the achievement of every AFL player according to key indicators and gives them a rating.   --   In a bid to reassure Japanese business leaders about a sharp rise in industrial militancy, which is damaging Australia's reputation as a reliable export supplier, Prime Minister John Howard yesterday deleted a paragraph from a prepared speech which indicated there would be "short-term transition costs" associated with his new industrial relations legislation.   Page 1.   --   Maritime workers in the offshore oil and gas industry are set to vote on a new industrial agreement which would give them an immediate 11 per cent pay rise and provide for a historic shift from industry-level wage bargaining to company bargaining among firms providing maritime support services to the offshore oil industry.   Page 4.   --   In the wake of the Hindmarsh Island bridge controversy, the Federal Government is proposing a reform to the Aboriginal Heritage Protection Act which would see decisions about the "sacredness" of Aboriginal sites threatened by proposed developments handed over to the States.   Page 5.   --   THE AUSTRALIAN   In Tokyo, Prime Minister John Howard has assured Japanese industry his sweeping changes to Australia's industrial relations system would produce a more efficient workforce with fewer costly strikes.   Howard's assurances came in a speech to Japan's business elite and was designed to allay concerns that recent industrial unrest could impede exports to Japan.   Page 1.   --   Industrial Relations Minister Peter Reith has acknowledged the easing of wage pressures, saying increases under enterprise agreements had shown "no acceleration" in the three months to June.   These comments have backed the optimistic view of senior Reserve Bank officials, bolstering views that a further interest rate cut might be foreseeable in the near future.   Page 2.   --   A HIV-positive man who was harassed by neighbours was awarded A$50,000 compensation yesterday in a decision by the New South Wales Equal Opportunity Tribunal, upholding the nation's only homosexual and HIV vilification laws.   A Sydney pensioner and his estanged wife were ordered to pay the HIV-positive man A$25,000 each for subjecting him to verbal abuse, threats of physical violence and harassment for a year.   Page 3.   --   A member of the team investigating the Black Hawk helicopter tragedy which claimed the lives of 18 servicemen near Townsville in June, was told by Group Captain Gary Lee that mid-air near-collisions were common knowledge in the army but rarely reported to army command.   Page 3.   --   THE SYDNEY MORNING HERALD   Rising domestic industrial unrest has prompted Prime Minister John Howard to delete a reference to "short-term transition costs" in a crucial speech selling an industrial reforms package to Japanese business.   Howard claimed his reforms would deliver a more efficient and flexible labour market.   Page 1.   --   Following the presentation of evidence to the inquiry into the army Black Hawk helicopter collision which claimed 18 lives, Defence Minister Ian McLachlan has pledged immediate action to rectify safety problems identified before waiting for the inquiry's final report to be tabled in December.   Page 1.   --   In a landmark case in which homosexual and AIDS vilification laws have come before a tribunal for the first time since the legislation was passed in 1994, a Sydney couple has been ordered to pay A$50,000 after an Equal Opportunity Tribunal concluded that they vilified their homosexual neighbour.   Page 3.   --   With travellers able to choose either an Australian or New Zealand airline on domestic flights from November, Transport Minister John Sharp yesterday predicted that the single aviation market between Australia and New Zealand would lead to falls in domestic air fares.   Page 3.   --   THE AGE   Keen to assure Japanese investors on his industrial relations changes, Prime Minister John Howard deleted from a prepared speech a line that suggested unemployment might go up and productivity worsen in the short term before the speech was delivered at a lunch of the Japan-Australia Business Cooperation Committee.   Page A1.   --   Retail group Coles Myer is likely to be sued by its director, largest shareholder and former chairman Solomon Lew, with Lew and his associates keen to prevent Coles reading transcripts of evidence he and his company lawyer Monica Vinson gave during the Australian Securities Commission's investigation of the Yannon transaction this year.   Page A1.   --   Winds of up to 105 kph ripped through Melbourne's outer south-eastern suburbs late on Wednesday night, leaving a trail of destruction and a multi-million-dollar repair bill.   Thousands of homes experienced electricity blackouts and power surges and widespead damage was reported to homes and other buildings in Frankston, Seaford, Cranbourne and Langwarrin.   Page A1.   --   Transport Minister John Sharp yesterday announced a single aviation market worth A$5 billion a year will be open to Qantas, Ansett Australia and New Zealand's two domestic carriers from November, clearing the way for reductions in air fares of at least five per cent.   Page A1.   -- Reuters Sydney Newsroom 61-2 9373-1800 
18288 !GCAT  ** BIRTHDAYS **   ALEXANDER THE GREAT was born in 356 BC.   He conquered Greece, Persia, Egypt and most of India before he was 33.   ARTHUR, Prince of Wales, was born in 1486.   He died before attaining the throne and therefore deprived England of having it's own King ARTHUR.   His younger brother HENRY VIII (8th) got the throne and ARTHUR's widow CATHERINE of Aragon.   Australia's Sister ELIZABETH KENNY was born in 1880.   She was a pioneer in the treatment of polio and cerebral palsy by the use of physiotherapy.   She was a heroine in the United States and was portrayed on film by ROSALIND RUSSELL.   She made breakthroughs in the treatment of diseases even though she had no formal medical training.   Australian writer ION IDRIESS was born in 1889.   His 47 books reflected his early bush life as a rabbit poisoner, pearler, explorer, buffalo hunter, soldier and opal miner.   Leader of Australia's building workers trade union, the BLF, NORM GALLAGHER, was born in 1931.   Italian film actress SOPHIA LOREN (SOFIA SCICOLONE) was born in 1934.   Her sensual appeal was promoted by her husband, producer CARLO PONTI.   Her work included "Aida" in 1953, "The Key" in 1958, "Two Women" in 1960, "Judith" in 1965 and "Firepower" in 1979.   UK singer and guitarist with 'Manfred Mann's Earthband' MICK ROGERS was born in 1946.   He was replaced in 1975, then played with 'Aviator' and from 1983 with the 'Dave Kelly Band'.   UK synthesizer player and singer with the 'Thompson Twins' JOE LEEWAY was born in 1949.   The Twins weren't twins but a trio.   UK drummer with the 'Housemartins' DAVID HEMMINGWAY was born in 1960.    ** EVENTS **    1440 : Eton was founded by HENRY VI.    1519 : FERDINAND MAGELLAN set sail for Seville in Spain   in an attempt to circumnavigate the world.    1580 : FRANCIS DRAKE returned to England becoming the   first captain to sail round the world.   His ship the "Golden Hind" was laden with treasure and spices.   The haul included tons of silver and gold from Spanish galleons in the Americas.   DRAKE landed at San Francisco Bay and claimed it for England then crossed the Pacific to trade in the Spice Islands before heading home via the Indian Ocean and the Cape of Good Hope.    1902 : Collingwood (9.6) defeated Essendon (3.9) in the   VFL Grand Final before a crowd of 35,502 at the Melbourne Cricket Ground.    1912 : Australia's first maternity allowance was   introduced by a bill in the House of Representatives.   The five pound a year allowance was for white women only.    1921 : A major mining disaster in North Queensland   claimed 75 lives.   The miners at the Mount Mulligan coal mine, about 150 kilometres from Cairns, were trapped underground after a series of explosions.   Gas reportedly escaped from the mine preventing rescue workers from entering the site for several hours.   A special train was sent from Cairns with police, ambulance, mines officials, media and coffins on board.   The disaster stopped the supply of coal for the Einasleigh and Chillagoe smelters and the Cairns railways.    1926 : AL CAPONE's Chicago headquarters were sprayed with   machine-gun fire in daylight hours.    1932 : The Australian Taxpayers' Association said   Australia had the second highest taxation in the world, behind Britain.    1946 : The first Cannes Film Festival opened.    1950 : The New Zealand government approved the setting up   of the TAB.    1959 : America's Disneyland refused a visit by Soviet   Prime Minister KHRUSCHCHEV for security reasons.    1961 : Rhodesian premier IAN SMITH banned the black   opposition party.    1984 : Forty died as a suicide bomber attacked the US   Embassy in Beirut.   The driver slammed into the embassy with a truck ladden with explosives.    1991 : Continuing violence threatened South Africa's hard   won peace accord.   President F.W. DE KLERK, ANC leader NELSON MANDELA and head of the Zulu Inkatha movement CHIEF MANGOSUTHU BUTHELEZI signed the "peace accord" amidst nation-wide violence and hundreds of deaths.   Extreme right-wing White extremists were threatening a new "Boer War".    1994 : Major bushfires swept across New South Wales and   Queensland, fanned by strong winds and tinder-dry conditions.    1994 : United States forces landed in Haiti without a   shot being fired.   The peaceful landing was made possible by negotiations involving former US President JIMMY CARTER, aimed at restoring democracy in the nation.   (Compiled from ABC ARCHIVES, ABC RADIO NATIONAL, "On This Day" published by REED INTERNATIONAL BOOKS LIMITED, "The Chronicle Of The 20th Century" published by PENGUIN BOOKS and "Rock And Pop (Day By Day)" published by BLANDFORD BOOKS)   -- Sydney Newsroom 61-2 373-1800 
18289 !GCAT  (Compiled for Reuters by Media Monitors)   THE AUSTRALIAN FINANCIAL REVIEW   Department of Industrial Relations figures have shown an annual jump in wage rises per employee of more than one per cent on the previous quarter.   Private-sector workers are gaining a 6.6 per cent a year wage rise through enterprise bargaining, a level far above the Reserve Bank's danger level for inflation and interest rates.   Page 1.   --   Optus has surprised the telecommunications industry by releasing it has over 100,000 pay-TV subscribers hooked onto Optus Vision.   Optus Vision chief executive Geoffrey Cousins also stated yesterday that he would stand down from the top job, but not before saying that Foxtel had hurt itself by saying it was far ahead of Optus Vision in the pay-TV market.   Page 3.   --   Treasurer Peter Costello said yesterday that the consumer watchdog the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission would in future be restricted to investigating markets where there were competitive pressures that were insufficient to protect consumers.   The move he said was based upon the facts of increased competition and the high cost of scrutiny that the ACCC placed on businesses.   Page 3.   --   Colonial Mutual's proposed float will bring with it a renaming of the company's banking arm and plans for demutualisation.   The plans for these moves and the number of shares to be offered when the company lists on the Stock Exchange should be released today in a memorandum.   Page 31.   --   The ever increasing gaming market has halved Casinos Austria International Ltd's share price from the beginning of the year and the picture looks worse with a damaging report suggesting the company had breached its bank covenants and was unlikely to get new management contracts.   Page 31.   --   Centennial Coal Company Ltd has almost assured itself of a takeover bid for Allied Queensland Coalfields Ltd with an offer of 60 cents per share.   The offer has already been accepted by Allied Queensland Coalfields' major shareholder, Crusader Ltd, in the absence of a higher offer.   The takeover offer is valued at A$16.6 million.   Page 33.   --   THE AUSTRALIAN   Sydney engineering giant ANI Ltd has begun an internal investigation into its disastrous Holter environmental engineering acquisition in Germany in a bid to recover losses of more than A$200 million.   ANI directors Tony Palmer and Fred Smith yesterday announced the investigation would see if there was a case to recover the losses from the vendors.   Page 23.   --   In the same day Optus Vision announced it had over 100,000 subscribers for its pay-TV network, chief executive Geoff Cousins announced he was stepping down from the position to remain as chairman.   The Optus Vision subscription numbers came in above market estimates and compare favourably with the rival Foxtel subscription base of 115,000.   Page 23.   --   The promised stock market re-rating of Normandy Mining Ltd has failed to materialise, forcing the group's executive chairman Robert Champion de Crespigny to admit it was too early to know if international investors would support the newly forged gold giant.   Defying market expectations, North American investment funds passed by the gold producer.   Page 23.   --   According to Westpac Banking Corp's general manager for economic strategy and planning, Bill Evans, prospects are improving for an interest rate cut of half of one percentage point by November.   Evans claimed there was a 75 per cent chance of an easing in rates and a 25 per cent chance there would be no change and no chance of a tightening.   Page 24.   --   The Australian Broadcasting Authority has announced the auction of two new commercial TV licences next month.   The Darwin and Mildura licences will be the first allocation for more than 10 years.   The ABA said several applications had be received for each of the A$10,000 reserve price licences.   Page 25.   --   Although worldwide media empire News Corp Ltd announced a six per cent reduction in net profit to A$1.26 billion for the 1996 financial year, chief executive Rupert Murdoch said the film Independence Day, lower paper prices and strong advertising bookings pointed to a substantial budgeted profit increase for the coming year.   Page 25.   --   THE SYDNEY MORNING HERALD   Pay TV operator Optus Vision has announced that it had signed over 100,000 subscribers, a figure which was higher than expected by most stockbroking analysts and will remove some of the major concerns of Optus Visions' value which has plagued parent company Optus Communications' upcoming float.   Page 25.   --   With Colonial Mutual Life Assurance Society's listing on the stock exchange set for the first half of next year, the company will today list its planned details of its demutualisation and share allocation.   The company is also said to probably raise extra capital before or at the time of the listing.   Page 25.   --   Japanese trading giant Sumitomo Corp said yesterday that its copper trading loss caused by a rogue trader was expected to blow out to about A$3.16 billion - the blow out caused by a sharp decline in the world price of copper.   Page 25.   --   As part of their submission to the Wallis Inquiry into the financial system credit unions are asking that their State-based regulatory structure be completely replaced with a national system, further stating that the current system should go as it is not uniform across Australia.   Page 27.   --   Two directors of Australian National Industries have released an unauthorised statement about their investigation into the losses at ANI's Holter waste management business.   The two directors said they had broken ranks with the rest of the ANI board to see if ANI could recoup the loss suffered by Holter.   Page 27.   --   Seven Network chief executive Gary Rice said yesterday that the company was performing slightly ahead of what it was at the same time last year, but that confidence in the television market was low at the moment.   Page 29.   --   Orogen Resources, a Papua New Guinean resources holding company, yesterday released a profit forecast for the 1997 calendar year of 41.6 million kina, ahead of its A$261 million float on the Australian Stock Exchange.   The Papua New Guinea Government will retain 51 per cent of Orogen.   Page 29.   --   THE AGE   Coles Myer is reported to be heading into interesting waters, with Solomon Lew and his senior associates threatening legal action against the group and stories that chief executive of Coles Myer, Peter Bartels, is fighting for his job after a meeting of the non-executive directors decided to accelerate plans to remove him.   Page C1.   --   Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Trade Tim Fischer yesterday offered industry the chance of reviewing Australia's current policy of five per cent tariffs with a view to cutting them by 2000, and was sharply criticised.   Page C1.   --   The United Nation's Conference on Trade and Development has announced in its annual survey that world growth had stalled and that anti-inflationary policies in richer countries could spark protectionism.   The survey also found that while Asian economies wee still the fastest growing they faced greater challenges from lower-wage countries.   Page C1.   --   Since BHP's purchase of the A$3.2 billion Magma Copper company last year, the price of copper has dropped from US$1.42 a pound to below 90 US cents a pound, a factor that is feared will impact on BHP's first-quarter profit results released today.   Page C1.   --   Sumitomo Corp has announced that it is filing a law suit against the man responsible for getting the company into a massive copper trading scandal, which has cost the company a soaring bill of $US2.6 billion compared with the first estimate of $US1.8 billon.   Page C1.   --   The future of Optus Communications Pty Ltd is looking firm for its A$4.5 billion float later this year, announcing yesterday that it had signed up over 100,000 pay-TV subscribers to its offshoot Optus Vision.   Page C2.   -- Reuters Sydney Newsroom 61-2 9373-1800 
18290 !GCAT  THE NEW ZEALAND HERALD   Front page - Judge takes swipe at Government    Jail for twice as long for gang members-Moore    Ex staff putting Telecom in dock    Business - Ceramco slips into red as troubles compound    Commission will not act on tipping claim    Sky soars on promotion gamble   Editorials - Love's Labours not lost    Back at the other election    Sport  - Endacott wants Nikau for Kiwis    Rain tests on injured Jones   THE DOMINION   Front page - Judges prosecuted for fraud    Aviation deal may cut fares    Separatism for Maori creepy creed' - Peters    Business - More gloom for troubled Ceramco's shareholders    Pension giant bets on market crash    Blue Star continues acquisition spree   Editorials - Bureaucracies for busybodies    Moral choice on poverty splits clergy    Sport  - Morrison, Pocock probable    Brooke passed fit to confront Wellington   -- Wellington newsroom 64 4 4734 746 
18291 !GCAT !GDIP  U.S. President Bill Clinton and his wife Hilary are scheduled to visit Australia in November, two weeks after the November 5 U.S. presidential election, Australian Deputy Prime Minister Tim Fischer said on Friday.   "This will be the prime minister's first meeting with the president and is an opportunity for John Howard to discuss with the president how Australia and the United States can further strengthen and expand our substantial relations," Fischer said.    Clinton will be in Australia from November 19 to 23 and is expected to address parliament in Canberra, Fischer said in a statement.   He will also visit Sydney and the northern tropical resort city of Cairns, he said.   The visit will take place before Howard and Clinton attend the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation (APEC) forum in Manila in late November.   George Bush was the last U.S. president to visit Australia.   The former president was in Australia from December 31, 1991 until January 3, 1992.   -- Canberra Bureau 61-6 273-2730 
18292 !GCAT !GDIS !GENV  Three earthquakes jolted New Zealand's lower North and upper South Islands overnight but there were no reports of damage, seismologists said on Friday.   The biggest was a moderate quake of 5.6 on the Richter scale near the South Island spa town of Hanmer -- just 20 km (12 miles) from where a 5.5 tremor was recorded on August 29.   Small tremors measuring 3.5 and 3.7 were measured near the capital, Wellington, on Thursday evening.   New Zealand is part of a belt of earthquake around the Pacific Rim, and a quake of six or higher on Richter occurs on average once a year. 
18293 !GCAT !GSPO  It's spring and sports pages are dominated by groin strains and hamstring injuries, so that must mean it's finals time.   The Sydney Swans bandwagon has gathered pace and the big showdown this weekend pits the Swans against Essendon at the Sydney Cricket Ground on Saturday night.   The winner goes through to the grand final and Sydney, who topped the AFL regular season standings for the first time, are favourites to down Essendon in front of a sellout crowd.   Star full-forward Tony "Plugger" Lockett dominated the headlines throughout the week after missing the Swans' previous match with a groin injury.   Lockett trained lightly through the week and coach Rodney Eade said his main attacking player would take the field.   The other semifinal sees North Melbourne take on Brisbane at the Melbourne Cricket Ground on Saturday afternoon.   North Melbourne, who finished second behind the Swans on the AFL table, must win to avoid the very real possibility of the AFL final being played without a team from Melbourne for the first time.   Monday sees the annual Brownlow Medal awards ceremony for the best and fairest player in the AFL.   Rugby league is also one week away from its grand final, with two relative bolters through to the semifinals this weekend.   St George have performed well beyond expectations after the club lost several key players in the Super League battle and barely survived a possible merger with Sydney City at the start of the season.   Last Saturday's upset win over Sydney City put the over-achieving St George through to a semifinal against North Sydney on Saturday.   Bookmakers have Norths as slight favourites although the possibility of another giant-killing performance by the confident Dragons can never be discounted.   Sunday's semifinal sees minor premiers Manly up against Cronulla, who disposed of Brisbane last weekend.   TENNIS   It's also do-or-die time for Australia's Davis Cup tennis players, who take on Croatia in Split starting on Friday.   Australia must win to make it back into the elite world group of the Davis Cup after being relegated to the regional section of the tournament for the first time when they lost to Hungary last year.   Non-playing captain John Newcombe has hinted he'll stand down if Australia lose.   His cause wasn't helped when doubles specialist Todd Woodbridge pulled out with an unspecified illness, breaking up his very successful partnership with Mark Woodforde.   Jason Stoltenberg and Mark Philippoussis will play singles while Pat Rafter will partner Mark Woodforde in the doubles.   With Croatia fielding world number four Goran Ivanisevic, Australia must win the doubles to have a realistic hope of taking the tie.   CRICKET   An important development in Australian cricket will take place in an unlikely place when the Victoria state side travel to Darwin for a 10-day session of practice matches from Friday.   The tour will be the first prolonged hit-out for leg-spinner Shane Warne since Australia's main strike bowler had surgery on the ring finger of his bowling hand in May.   Warne was included in Australia's squad for the tour to India which starts on October 1, as was captain Mark Taylor, who is recovering from surgery to correct a back problem.   Australian Cricket Board officials have said Warne and Taylor must prove their fitness before they go on the tour.   -- Sydney Newsroom 612 9373-1800 
18294 !GCAT !GTOUR  Visitor arrivals rose 9 percent in August compared with August 1995, Statistics New Zealand said on Friday.    During the year to August, visitor arrivals totalled 1.48 million, up seven percent against the August 1995 year.   Short-trips by New Zealanders overseas rose 4 percent in August vs August 1995.   Trips over the year rose 17 percent against the August 1995 year.   After adjusting for seasonally variations, overseas visitor arrivals in August 1996 were 3 percent higher than arrivals in July.   The July figure was 9 percent lower than recorded in June.   There was a net gain of 1,970 permanent and long-term migrants in August vs August 1995.   The net gain in the August year was 28,380, up 15 percent, on the August 1995 year.    -- Wellington newsroom 64 4 4734 746 
18295 !GCAT !GPOL !GVOTE  Just three weeks out from a general election the governing National Party is picking up support, a poll released on Friday showed.   National jumped four percentage points to 38 percent in the latest National Business Review-Consultus poll.   National's likely coalition partners had mixed fortunes with the Christian Coalition up almost two percentage points to 5.5 percent while free-market Act New Zealand slid 0.7 percentage points to 2.7 percent.    The Christian Coalition in recent polls has regularly topped the five percent mark at which parties who do not win one of the 65 constituency seats qualify for seats from the party list.   But this is the first time the NBR poll has put them at that level.   Among the main opposition parties Labour was steady on 20 percent support but the five party Alliance grouping was down three at 13 percent and economic nationalist New Zealand First shed two to 19 percent.   National's coalition partner in government United New Zealand registered only 0.5 percent support.    If the result was translated into seats on election night, National would win 48 seats and the Christian Coaltition seven.   Even adding United's Peter Dunne, who on current polling is likely to win the Ohariu-Belmont seat, that would leave a National-Christian Coalition government short of the 61 seats needed to secure the Treasury benches.   The poll would deliver at least 25 seats to Labour, 24 to New Zealand First and 16 to the Alliance.    However Labour's support is higher in the vote for constituency MPs, suggesting it may win more than 25 seats.   In that case the size of the 120 seat House would be increased by the size of Labour's "overhang".   National's rise was more pronounced in the volatile poll of support in the 65 constituency seats.   National gained seven to 36 percent, Labour eased three to 27 percent and New Zealand First slipped one to 16 percent.   The Alliance firmed one to 14 percent.    The poll of 750 respondents was taken between September 13 and 15 when New Zealand First was in the headlines over the resignation of two Wellington candidates and deputy Tau Henare's statement that he would not work with National.   The margin of error was 3.5 percent.   -- Wellington newsroom 64 4 473 4746 
18296 !GCAT  NIHON KEIZAI SHIMBUN   Sumitomo Corp said its estimate of losses stemming from unauthorised copper trading by former chief copper trader has increased to $2.6 billion from an earlier estimate of $1.8 billion.   Sumitomo's chairman Tomiichi Akiyama is expected to resign to take responsibility for the copper trading scandal.   It is also to press authorities for criminal charges against trader Yasuo Hamanaka who was responsible for the copper deals.   ----    Nomura Securities Co Ltd plans to provide 371 billion yen financial assistance to its non-bank affiliate Nomura Finance Co Ltd.   Nomura Finance is to write off 415 billion yen worth of bad loans.   Nomura is expected to see a loss of about 340 billion yen in the half-year to September 30, 1996.   It is also expected to see a loss of more than 300 billion yen in the year to March 1997.   ----    Toyota Motor Corp plans to list its shares on the New York Stock Exchange by the year of 1999, in line with its plans to expand manufacturing and marketing operations in North America.   Toyota will be the second Japanese car maker to list shares on the NYSE following Honda Motor Co Ltd.   ----   Toray Industries Inc plans to set up a wholly owned company to produce raw materials for polyester in China.   The company, to be capitalised at around between 30 and 40 billion yen, plans to produce 85,000 tonnes of raw materials annually.   ----    Iomega Corp plans to expand production of its "zip" floppy disk drive in cooperation with Matsushita Communication Industrial Co Ltd.   Iomega has sold around three million of the drives worldwide as of the end of July, and hopes to increase the sales to at least six million units by the end of the year.   NEC Corp and Toshiba Corp also plan to use the "zip" for notebook-type laptop personal comupters they will produce.   ----    Sharp Corp and Sony Corp plans to jointly develop plasma-addressed liquid crystal displays, which are cheaper than thin-film transistor LCDs panels, for wall-mounted televisions, aiming to put the products on the market in early 1998.   ----   Pioneer Electronic Corp plans to sell digital video disc (DVD) players in November, hoping for big sales in the Christmas season.   Other electronic companies, including Toshiba Corp and Hitachi Ltd, are also planning to sell DVDs at the same time.    Altmann Co Ltd, a Tokyo-based marriage planner, had decided to go into liquidation early next year, with liabilities of 2.6 billion yen. 
18297 !GCAT !GDIP !GPOL  The jousting for power in Hong Kong intensified on Thursday while in Beijing, signs emerged of a thaw in Sino-British relations in the countdown to the handover of the British colony to China next year.   British and Chinese diplomats in Beijing said agreement had been reached over a Hong Kong container terminal delayed since 1992 by bickering over the terms of the contract.   In Hong Kong a billionaire businessman declared he was making preparations to run for the leadership and would make his final decision known within three weeks.   Shipping tycoon Tung Chee-hwa, considered a front runner to become leader of Hong Kong when the British depart next year, told a news conference he was close to making a decision.   "I am very actively considering it and actively preparing for it," he said.   The 59-year-old businessman, chairman of shipping giant Orient Overseas (International) Ltd, said he was preparing to make "suitable arrangements" for the running of his commercial empire to enable him to concentrate fully on the task ahead.   Tung, considered a frontrunner because he is known to be admired by the departing colonial sovereign, Britain, but is also believed to be highly regarded by China, urged more candidates to stand in order to provide a greater choice.   Two other candidates have declared an interest, although the China-appointed panel responsible for selecting the future leader by a November deadline has yet to be established.   Opinion polls indicate none of those named as contenders -- former chief justice Sir Ti Liang Yang, solicitor and former cabinet member Lo Tak-shing and Tung himself -- would win if ordinary people were permitted to elect their future leader.   Polls conducted regularly by the Hong Kong media routinely point to Hong Kong's Chief Secretary, Anson Chan, as firm favourite of the rank and file.   But Chan's role as Governor Chris Patten's deputy is believed to rule her out of the race in Beijing's eyes.   Over a century and a half of British rule ends at midnight on June 30, 1997 when Hong Kong is handed over to China under the terms of a 1984 treaty signed without reference to the inhabitants of the tiny but economically vibrant territory.   The intervening 12 years have been turbulent ones for the colony of just six million people.   They have watched helplessly as Britain and China clashed repeatedly over the running over the territory, unable even to agree on the form of next year's the handover ceremony.   But with 285 days to go until the transfer, China and Britain signalled a truce by settling the container terminal dispute, an ordinary commercial project which became entangled in the political tug of war when China refused to endorse the project which straddles the handover.   British diplomats, speaking in Beijing, also expressed cautious optimism that an accord on a joint handover ceremony would be reached before long.   The dispute over a ninth terminal for Hong Kong's container port, the world's busiest and a source of pride in the economically-vibrant colony, flared up when China objected to the award of the contract by private treaty rather than tender and the role of a British controlled firm as leader of the consortium responsible for developing the facility.   Beijing has shown clear signs of adopting a less combatative approach in recent months, dispensing with the verbal attacks on Patten and offering a dialogue with the pro-democratic lobby it previously cold-shouldered. 
18298 !GCAT !GPOL  Hong Kong shipping tycoon Tung Chee-hwa said he would make a decision within two to three weeks on whether he would enter the race to be Hong Kong's first China-appointed chief executive.   Tung, at the centre of intense speculation that he is a front runner to become leader of Hong Kong when the British depart next year, called a news conference on Thursday but left the vital answer dangling.   "I am very actively considering it and actively preparing for it," the billionaire told a news conference.   Tung, 59, chairman of shipping giant Orient Overseas (International) Ltd, said he was preparing to make "suitable arrangements" for the running of his business empire so that he could give his full attention to the task ahead.   He said he would relinquish his business responsibilities if he does decide to proceed.   "I think to be chief executive of Hong Kong is a huge responsibility.   It's not a decision to be taken lightly."   He said he would canvass a wide range of opinion to prepare himself should he decide to stand.   "The purpose of this statement is there has been so much speculation I thought it only right to make my position clearly known," Tung told the news conference.   Tung urged more candidates to put themselves forward to provide a greater choice.   Two candidates have committed themselves so far, although the China-appointed panel responsible for making the decision has yet to be established.   It is expected to be formulated in time to choose the Chief Executive-designate by November.   Sovereignty of the British colony of Hong Kong reverts to China at midnight on June 30, 1997.   Public opinion polls put Governor Chris Patten's deputy, Anson Chan, far ahead of the field, although Chan's name has not been put tossed into the ring.   Declared candidate, former Chief Justice Sir Ti Liang Yang, ranks second in the popularity stakes ahead of Lo Tak-shing, a solicitor and the first to declare an interest. 
18299 !GCAT !GPOL  Thai Prime Minister Banharn Silpa-archa rejected opposition accusations during a censure debate on Thursday that had amassed land during his tenure and was guilty of plagiarism while writing his master's thesis.   "My family and I own not more than 1,200 rai (about 500 hectares).   But if you can prove that I own more than that I will give it to you," Barharn told parliament.   He had been accused by the opposition of amassing thousands of hectares of land.   The no-confidence motion against Barharn, which opened on Wednesday, is set to last until Friday.   The opposition has also accused Barharn of mismanaging Thailand's economy, charges he has previously denied but not yet responded to during the debate.   Banharn's six-party coalition has been in power for 14 months.   His coalition controls 209 of the 391 seats in parliament.   Political analysts say Banharn would survive the no-confidence vote unless some coalition partners were swayed by the accusations and abandoned him.   Banharn also told parliament that Ramkamhaeng University, which awarded him the masters degree in law, had repeatedly confirmed it accepted his work.   "Under a standard practice for writing theses, the papers can be similar in general but their summaries must be unique," he said during the televised debate.   Earlier, MP Surin Pitsuwan of the main opposition Democrat Party, had accused Banharn of plagiarism, lacking ethics and copying a thesis on the same subject written by a government minister Pokin Polakul.   "Everything is the same as in the research of your advisor (Pokin).   The only thing that is different is the cover which carries the name Banharn on it," he said.   The opposition also raised doubts about Banharn's nationality on Thursday.   An opposition MP claimed, waving documents, that the premier's father emigrated from China to Thailand in 1937, while Banharn's birth certificate indicated he was born in his hometown of Suphan Buri in 1932.   Thai law states that only Thai citizens can stand for elections to parliament or be prime minister of the country.   Banharn has yet to respond in parliament but said earlier this year when similar questions were raised that registration officials may have filled in the documents incorrectly.   The Thai stock market and baht were firmer despite the accusations made against Banharn.   The stock index closed up 9.83 points at 1047.86 while the baht firmed against a weakening U.S. dollar to 25.361-25.364 in late Thursday trade from 25.365-25.368 in the morning.   Banharn's administration has been hurt by an economic slowdown, sluggish export growth, a battered stock market that sank last week to near three-year-lows and a run on the baht by offshore investors after devaluation rumours. 
18300 !GCAT !GVIO  South Korean troops killed seven more North Koreans on Thursday as one of the deadliest infiltration dramas since the early Cold War drew to a close in a hail of bullets.   An estimated 20 North Koreans came ashore on a beach in the enemy South from a submarine on Wednesday, authorities said.   Altogether 18 have now been shot dead -- 11 in an apparent mass suicide -- and one was captured after a ruthless manhunt by thousands of troops and police.   One more is still on the loose.   The search through mountainous terrain was likely to continue because of uncertainty about the exact number of communist agents dropped near the east coast city of Kangnung.   Political fallout from the episode threatened to further sour relations between the two Koreas.   South Korean president Kim Young-sam declared the submarine adventure an act of military provocation, but Pyongyang was unrepentant and refused to accept a protest note on the heavily-fortified border.   South Korean security forces took no chances with the heavily-armed North Koreans as they reportedly fled for their lives towards the fortified border that has split the Korean peninsula since the 1950-53 war.   Three were cut down by automatic fire as they crouched by a stream to drink water, military sources in Kangnung said.   Television pictures showed bullet-riddled corpses splayed on the ground.   They were dressed in blue jeans and sneakers made in South Korea, suggesting an espionage mission.   Security forces were led to several of the fugitives by alert villagers.   In the latest gunfight, two members of the South Korean security forces were wounded, officials said.   On Wednesday, the bodies of 11 North Koreans were found huddled together on top of a mountain situated close to a beach where they landed.   All had been shot through the head in what was initially described as mass suicide.   However, state television speculated the 11 could have been sacrificed to enable others to travel more quickly.   The placing of the fatal bullet wounds suggested the 11 had been executed, it said.   Kim denounced the most serious infiltration since the 1960s at a cabinet meeting.   "This is not a simple spy case.   I regard it as a kind of military provocation," an aide quoted Kim as saying.   "Despite food shortages, the reason why North Korea sent armed infiltrators is that they still have not given up their ambition to reunify Korea by force," Kim said.   Impoverished North Korea is on the brink of famine.   North Korea rejected a protest by the U.S.-led United Nations Command in South Korea, a command statement said.   The U.N. Command attempted to hand the message to the North through the border crossing village of Panmunjom, but a Northern military duty officer would not take it, the statement said.   The U.N. Command was the supreme headquarters for international and South Korean forces which repelled North Korean invaders in the Korean War.   It now helps supervise the armistice that ended the war.   "I strongly demand that your side immediately take the necessary steps to prevent recurrence of these serious Armistice Agreement violations," said the letter signed by South Korean general Cha Ki Moon.   "If you fail to do so, the responsibility for the unfortunate consequences will be yours."   Security forces with sniffer dogs have combed the Kangnung area since the vessel was spotted early on Wednesday wedged on a reef.   Helicopters and a reconnaissance plane were also used.   Security was also beefed up around Seoul, with manned checkpoints on bridges leading into the capital and armed police posted conspicuously in busy shopping districts. 
18301 !C12 !C15 !C152 !CCAT !GCAT !GCRIM  Sumitomo Corp said on Thursday that losses from a massive copper trading scandal have soared to $2.6 billion from the $1.8 billion it originally estimated and said it is pressing authorities for criminal charges against the man it holds responsible.   The statement came in a revision of the trading group's earnings forecast.   The company said it revised its group net forecast for 1996/97 to show a loss of 147 billion yen ($1.34 billion) from a profit of 24 billion yen ($220 million).   The trade house announced on June 13 that it had suffered huge losses from unauthorised copper trades and blamed the long-time head of its copper trading division Yasuo Hamanaka, whom it promptly fired.   The company said on Thursday it planned no further changes to the copper loss estimate and said it had closed out most of the loss-making copper positions.   "As a result of our liquidation up to now, there still remain some positions, including both short and long positions, but the liquidation of uncovered positions is nearly complete," Sumitomo president Kenji Miyahara told a news conference.   "Accordingly, there is almost no risk remaining and it is our judgment that we will not again revise the estimated loss we have announced today," he added.   Traders and financial analysts had questioned Sumitomo's previous loss estimate, saying it appeared to be much too low given the company's huge exposure in the market and a sharp fall in copper prices since the scandal broke.   Sumitomo said Hamanaka had for more than a decade deceived the company, his losses snowballing more than 40-fold as he tried to cover an initial 6.5 billion yen off-the-books loss with more secret trades.   At the current exchange rate of 109 yen to the dollar, that would be $59.6 million.   Miyahara said Hamanaka conducted as many as 2,000 unauthorised deals in a single year and forged or doctored documents to cover his tracks, according to an in-house investigation by a 60-strong task force that was still sifting through 2,000 cardboard boxes full of documents.   He declined to comment on whether Hamanaka had cooperated with the company's investigation.   Investigators from Britain and the United States are also looking into the affair, the biggest financial scandal in history.   In Washington, congressional hearings into the affair opened on Wednesday.   An official with the U.S. Federal Reserve said the crisis appeared to be confined to Sumitomo and had not spread to any other financial firms.   Japanese authorities, meanwhile, have been reluctant to step into the case, arguing that since all of the questionable trades took place overseas, there would have been no violation of Japanese law.   Sources said recently that a criminal investigation has been launched into whether Hamanaka broke any laws by defrauding the company.   But some of those allegedly linked to his trades say the accounts in question were fully authorised by senior Sumitomo officials.   "What we want to prove most at the moment is that the company was not involved with Hamanaka's unauthorised copper trading," Miyahara said.   Hamanaka, a 26-year veteran of Sumitomo, has kept largely silent about his activities since his dismissal, staying at his modest suburban house near Tokyo and saying only that he would give his side of the story at a later date. 
18302 !C12 !C15 !C151 !CCAT !GCAT !GCRIM  Sumitomo Corp said on Thursday that losses from a massive copper trading scandal have soared to $2.6 billion from the $1.8 billion it originally estimated and said it is pressing authorities for criminal charges against the man it holds responsible.   The statement came in a revision of the trading group's earnings forecast.   The company said it revised its group net forecast for 1996/97 to show a loss of 147 billion yen ($1.34 billion) from a profit of 24 billion yen ($220 million).   The trade house announced on June 13 that it had suffered huge losses from unauthorised copper trades and blamed the long-time head of its copper trading division Yasuo Hamanaka, whom it promptly fired.   In a statement in English, confirmed by a Sumitomo spokesman, the company said it was seeking criminal charges against Hamanaka.   An earlier statement in Japanese said it would take legal action, indicating a civil complaint.   The spokesman said it was considering a separate civil lawsuit but had reached no decision.   The company said on Thursday it planned no further changes to the copper loss estimate and said it has now closed out most of its long copper positions.   "As a result of our liquidation up to now, there still remain some positions, including both short and long positions, but the liquidation of uncovered positions is nearly complete," Sumitomo president Kenji Miyahara told a news conference.   "Accordingly, there is almost no risk remaining and it is our judgment that we will not again revise the estimated loss we have announced today," he added.   Traders and financial analysts had questioned Sumitomo's previous loss estimate, saying it appeared to be much too low given the company's huge exposure in the market and a sharp fall in copper prices since the scandal broke.   Sumitomo said Hamanaka had for a decade deceived the company, setting up bogus accounts to conduct his improper dealings.   Miyahara said the losses snowballed over the years as Hamanaka tried to cover up a 1985 trade that went bad with more speculation in the market.   He also alleged that Hamanaka forged documents to cover up his dealings.   Investigators from Britain and the United States are looking into the affair, the biggest financial scandal in history.   In Washington, congressional hearings into the affair opened on Wednesday.   An official with the U.S. Federal Reserve said the crisis appeared to be confined to Sumitomo and had not spread to any other financial firms.   Japanese authorities, meanwhile have been reluctant to step into the case, arguing that since all of the questionable trades took place overseas, there would be no violation of Japanese law.   Sources said recently that a criminal investigation has been launched into whether Hamanaka broke any laws by defrauding the company.   But some of those allegedly linked to his trades say the accounts in question were fully authorised by senior Sumitomo officials.   "What we want to prove most at the moment is that the company was not involved with Hamanaka's unauthorised copper trading," Miyahara said.   Hamanaka, a 26-year veteran of Sumitomo, has kept largely silent about his activities since his dismissal, staying at his modest suburban house near Tokyo and saying only that he would give his side of the story at a later date. 
18303 !GCAT !GVIO  A North Korean infiltrator signalled he was ready to surrender after a fierce gunbattle with Southern troops on Friday, possibly ending a drama that began when about 20 agents landed by submarine, television news said.   The Korea Broadcasting System said the man had waved white clothing to indicate he wanted to give himself up.   "I heard gunfire all night and grenades exploding," said local resident Chang Choon-taik.   Five or six helicopters were flying over the area, which was saturated with armed troops.   So far 18 infiltrators have been killed -- 11 in an apparent mass suicide -- and one captured alive in the rugged mountain area around the east coast city of Kangnung where they came ashore on Wednesday.   However, there is some uncertainty over the exact number of North Koreans that slipped into the country.   South Korean authorities have described the most serious infiltration since the 1960s as a military provocation.   North and South Korea have been technically at war since the 1950-53 Korean conflict ended in a truce.   Thousands of troops and police have been combing undergrowth and tall grass to try to flush out the last of the North Koreans.   On Thursday, troops shot dead seven agents and displayed their bullet-riddled bodies dressed in South Korean-made blue jeans and sneakers.   In Washington, U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher urged "all parties" to avoid further provocative action.   The United States has 37,000 troops stationed in the South.   "We wish that all parties would refrain from taking further provocative actions," Christopher told a news conference.   Asked if the incident could affect efforts to provide Pyongyang with nuclear technology and humanitarian aid, he said: "Obviously the episode is a matter of concern but the facts are so murky."   Christopher said it was impossible to assess the long-term impact of the incident.   He seemed to be cautioning both North Korea and South Korea from doing anything which might further inflame tensions on the Korean peninsula.   North Korea is on the brink of famine following devastating floods and has appealed for international aid.   The United States is part of an international consortium providing the North with nuclear power plants as part of a deal to end the country's suspected nuclear weapons programme. 
18304 !GCAT !GWEA  The weather will be cloudy with occasional squally showers and isolated thunderstorms, the Royal Observatory said.   The maximum temperature will be 29 C with fresh gusty easterly winds, occasionally strong offshore and on high grounds.   The number one tropical cyclone warning is in effect.   At 7 am the centre of tropical storm Willie was estimated at about 400 km southwest of Hong Kong and was seen moving slowly northwesterwards in the general direction of Leizhou Peninsula.   The temperature was 26 C at 7 am and the relative humidity was 96 percent.   -- Hong Kong Newsroom (852) 2843-6441 
18305 !GCAT !GVIO  A North Korean infiltrator on Friday signalled he was ready to surrender to South Korean troops, possibly ending a drama that began on Wednesday when about 20 agents landed in a submarine, state television said.    The Korea Broadcasting System said the infiltrator had exchanged gunfire with South Korean security forces before waving some white clothing to signal surrender.   Witnesses said five or six helicopters were flying over the area, which is saturated with armed troops.   So far 18 infiltrators have been killed -- 11 in an apparent mass suicide -- and one captured alive in a rugged mountain area around the east coast city of Kangnung.   However, there is some uncertainty over the exact number of North Koreans that came ashore. 
18306 !E51 !E512 !ECAT !G15 !G154 !G158 !GCAT  U.S. economist C. Fred Bergsten said on Thursday that the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation Forum (APEC) should take the lead in pushing for global trade liberalisation.   Bergsten, who was in Singapore to deliver a lecture to students at the National University of Singapore, noted that the European Union (EU) and the United States had political elements "who want backslide" on free trade.   "The alternative and most promising source for global trade liberalisation is APEC," he added.   He noted that the APEC grouping consists of half the world economy which is responsible for at least half of world trade.   "APEC has the capability...to initiate the next major (step) to global trade liberalisation," he said.   "It's in an ideal position to offer leadership."   Bergsten said that APEC should address the subject at its forthcoming summit in November at Subic Bay in the Philippines.   The summit is shortly before the World Trade Organisation (WTO) ministerial meeting in Singapore.   "What the Subic summitt needs to do is reach...agreement on full trade liberalisation in a key sector," he said.   He noted that APEC is currently discussing an information technology (IT) agreement in which the member countries would elimnate trade barriers in the IT sector.   In Subic, APEC should agree to eliminate all barriers in this sector.   And then, in Singapore three weeks later, it should propose the same to WTO members, he said.   Bergsten added that this would help keep up the momentum of trade liberalisation.   -- Singapore newsroom (65) 870-3080 
18307 !GCAT !GDIP  China said on Thursday Taiwan's most recent failure to regain membership in the United Nations was evidence the island could not buck the trend of history.   "The Taiwan authorities ... will surely be spat on for going against the trend of history," the official Xinhua news agency said in a commentary.   Beijing has regarded Taiwan as a rebel province since the end of the Chinese civil war in 1949 and sought to push the island into diplomatic isolation.   Beijing ousted Taipei from the United Nations in 1971.   "Taiwan is not qualified at all to join the United Nations," Xinhua said.   For the fourth consecutive year China and its supporters on Wednesday blocked moves in the General Assembly to consider U.N. membership for wealthy but diplomatically isolated Taiwan.   "The Taiwan authorities ... are trying to make permanent and legal the temporary separation of China through attempts to 'rejoin' the United Nations," Xinhua said.   Both Beijing and Taipei agree to reunify one day, albeit on different terms.   China has threatened to invade if Taiwan declares independence.   Taiwan's attempt to rejoin the United Nations was "obsolete and unjust", Xinhua said, adding that the island's efforts to buy support from countries would be futile.   China regards any bid to give the island U.N. membership as an intolerable encroachment on its sovereignty and interference in its internal affairs.   It suggests the sponsors are motivated by economic inducements.   As in previous years, Wednesday's move to put the issue of U.N. membership for Taiwan on the agenda was defeated without a vote after a long debate in the assembly's steering committee.   The move was sponsored by 16 countries, mostly from the Caribbean, Central America and Africa.   A total of 159 countries in the world recognise Beijing, while 30 have diplomatic relations with Taiwan. 
18308 !GCAT !GPOL  Two members of Hong Kong Governor Chris Patten's powerful inner cabinet said on Thursday they had joined the contest for seats on a China-controlled body to choose Patten's successor.   The pair, businessman Raymond Ch'ien and banker Vincent Cheng, declined to say whether their action would lead to a conflict of interest between the present and future governments as forecast by Hong Kong's pro-democracy lobby.   "Ch'ien and myself have applied to join the Selection Committee.   As Ch'ien is currently out of Hong Kong he has asked me to release this on his behalf," Cheng said in a statement.   Patten said he was relaxed about the decision.   "I don't think that there is any inherent conflict of interest but obviously it is up to individual members to work out from time to time whether they think there is a conflict of interest," the governor told reporters.   Cheng did not say if he and Ch'ien planned to resign from Patten's Executive Council to vie for places on the 400-strong Selection Committee.   The committee will name Hong Kong's post-1997 leader and, controversially, a provisional legislature which China plans to install upon the handover.   Hong Kong reverts to Chinese rule at midnight on June 30, 1997 after 150 years of colonial rule.   The British colonial government strongly opposes China's plan to dismantle the existing elected legislative council returned under the auspices of democratic reforms introduced by Patten to Beijing's fury.   China's plans to replace it with an appointed interim chamber have been denounced as undemocratic by Hong Kong's pro-democracy lobby.   Nominations for Selection Committee seats closed last weekend and work is under way on choosing the 400 successful candidates.   They in turn are expected to name Hong Kong's future chief executive by November to give the candidate time to prepare for the handover -- and choose his or her own inner core of advisers. 
18309 !E51 !E512 !ECAT !GCAT !GDIP  North Korea on Thursday dismissed as a "groundless rumour" a report that it had invited South Koreans for a tour of its Rajin-Sonbong free trade zone after Seoul representatives boycotted a weekend investment forum.   "Now the South Korean authorities are spreading a groundless rumour through mass media that the North 'proposed a briefing for South Korean businessmen on investment in Rajin-Sonbong zone in October'," said the official Korea Central News Agency (KCNA).   South Korea said it would not send government and business representatives to its communist rival's historic investment forum after a dispute over North Korean visas.   The South's boycott was initially seen as a blow to Pyongyang's effort to lure cash to revive its moribund economy, but international observers called the forum a success.   The forum attracted $840 million in the accommodation and tourism sector, light manufacturing, oil processing and infrastructure upgrade -- mostly from Chinese and overseas Korean companies who dominated among participants.   South Korea, whose firms missed the forum, spread rumours of a renewed invitation because it was embarrassed and "isolated" by North Korea's success, said the KCNA report, which was monitored in Tokyo.   "They needed to deceive the South Korean people and international community into believing that they have extricated themselves from the plight of international orphans," the KCNA report said.   "With the international forum held successfully, we do not feel it necessary to arrange a briefing for South Korean businessmen."   KCNA was apparently referring to a faxed invitation inviting 150 South Koreans to the Rajin-Songbong zone for a four-day forum that was faxed on Tuesday by the Hong Kong office of North Korea's Committee for the Promotion of External Economic Cooperation to South Korean Foreign Minister Gong Ro-myung.   North Korea's denunciation coincided with an announcement by South Korean security forces that they had killed at least 18 North Korean infiltrators in one of the deadliest dramas on the Korean peninsula since the early Cold War.   The dead North Korean were among an estimated 20 soldiers who came ashore on a beach in the enemy South from a submarine on Wednesday, Seoul authorities said. 
18310 !C24 !CCAT !GCAT !GDIP  China and Britain have reached an agreement allowing a major container terminal project in Hong Kong to proceed after years of delays, officials of the two sides said on Thursday.   The two sides failed to reach a final agreement on ceremonies that will mark the transfer of power in Hong Kong next year, although Britain voiced cautious optimism an accord would be achieved soon.   The agreement on the container terminal, seen as vital for Hong Kong's continued role as a major port, was reached at a meeting of the Sino-British Joint Liaison Group, formed to handle issues related to the transfer of power in Hong Kong, which reverts to Chinese rule on July 1, 1997.   "This is excellent news for Hong Kong, not only because of the economic benefits that will flow from this agreement, but also because of the positive signal it sends to the international investment community," Hugh Davies, Britain's chief representative at the talks told reporters.   Development of Hong Kong's ninth container port has been held up for four years by Chinese objections to the way the contract was awarded and to the presence of the Jardine Matheson Holding Ltd group in the consortium.   Beijing had refused to give the project its approval, needed because the contract straddles Hong Kong's handover.   Davies said he was cautiously optimistic an agreement on the handover ceremonies could be reached at a meeting between the foreign ministers of the two countries next week.   Chinese Foreign Minister Qian Qichen and his British counterpart, Malcolm Rifkind, are scheduled to meet in New York next week. 
18311 !C41 !C411 !CCAT !GCAT !GPOL !GPRO  Hong Kong shipping tycoon Tung Chee-hwa said he would make a decision within two to three weeks on whether he would enter the race to be Hong Kong's first China-appointed chief executive.   Tung, at the centre of intense speculation that he is a front runner to become leader of Hong Kong when the British depart next year, called a news conference on Thursday but left the vital answer dangling.   "I am very actively considering it and actively preparing for it," the billionaire told a news conference.   Tung, 59, chairman of shipping giant Orient Overseas (International) Ltd, said he was preparing to make "suitable arrangements" for the running of his business empire so that he could give his full attention to the task ahead.   Sovereignty of the British colony reverts to China at midnight on June 30, 1997. 
18312 !GCAT !GCRIM  A senior Philippine police officer shot dead a fellow motorist after their cars nearly hit each other during one of Manila's frequent traffic jams, police said on Thursday.   The shooting occurred on a busy street on Wednesday after cars driven by Colonel Absalom Piedad, 51, and a businessman were in a near-collision and then caught up in a huge traffic snarl.   Piedad told investigators the businessman hurled insults at him and appeared to reach inside his car for what he thought was a gun, police said.   At that point, Piedad shot the man twice.   The colonel, described by officials as normally mild mannered with 26 years of police experience, broke into tears after he was arrested.   He said the shooting could have been avoided if he had not been trapped in the traffic.   "I wanted to get away but there was no opening and I could not move my car," he told reporters.   Police said they plan to charge him with homicide. 
18313 !C42 !CCAT !E41 !ECAT !GCAT !GJOB  Thousands of taxi drivers in the eastern China city of Jinan have ended a three-day work stoppage to protest government plans to raise fees on vehicles, officials said on Thursday.   Drivers of "bread taxis" -- mini-vans shaped like loaves of bread -- in Jinan city in Shandong province ended the strike after the municipal government agreed to lower fees on all vehicles, a city official said by telephone.   "We lowered the charges and the taxi drivers were satisfied and have resumed normal operation," the official told Reuters from the provincial capital Jinan.   "The hike was not big but bread taxi (drivers) became emotional because of difficult times... They could not bear it," he said, adding that the hike was reasonable and would be used on traffic facilities.   An American businessman who had returned from Jinan said the stoppage had disrupted his schedule.   "You couldn't get a cab anywhere," he said.   "I asked what the problem was and people said they were on strike."   Heavy fees are imposed on taxis in many Chinese cities. 
18314 !C12 !CCAT !GCAT !GCRIM  The Philippine Supreme Court has ruled that the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and its officers are immune from lawsuits except in respect to transactions with banks and financial institutions.   "Being an international organisation that has been extended diplomatic status, the ADB is independent of the municipal (Philippine) law," the court said in a ruling released on Thursday.   It overturned a decision by a Labour Department arbiter that directed the Manila-based ADB to reinstate a dismissed Filipino worker and pay him 42,750 pesos ($1,640) in back wages.   The court said the ADB charter and its headquarters agreement with the Philippines "are treaty covenants and commitments voluntarily assumed by the Philippine government which must be respected."   It said the charter and headquarters agreement mandated that the ADB "shall enjoy immunity from every form of legal process except in cases arising out of or in connection with the exercise of its powers to borrow money, to guarantee obligations or to buy and sell or underwrite the sale of securities."   The immunity extends to ADB officers "in respect of their words spoken or written and all acts done by them in their official capacity," the court said. 
18315 !GCAT !GCRIM  Thai anti-narcotics police said they had arrested three suspects from Ghana in a northern town on Thursday on charges of heroin trafficking.   Michael Adjei, Godrey Arhenluff and Doris William were arrested after police raided their rented rooms in Nakorn Sawan province about 240 kms (150 miles) from Bangkok and seized 1.54 kilogrammes of heroin from them.   The suspects were being detained for furthur investigation, pending formal charges, police said.   Drug trafficking carries the death penalty in Thailand, but usually sentences are commuted to long jail terms.   There are now nearly 400 Africans serving jail term in Thailand for drugs offences, according to prison authorities. 
18316 !GCAT !GCRIM  An American businessman and a woman companion, also an American, were found shot dead in the man's house in the Manila suburb of Paranaque, Philippine police said on Thursday.   Police Major Alfredo Buraga identified the victims as Ronald Baecher, 50, and Susan Jane Kukowski, 49, according to passports found at the house.   The passports showed Baecher was from Massachusetts, and Kukowski from Pennsylvania.   Investigators said the killer or killers apparently broke into the house through the kitchen.   The house had been ransacked, they added.   Buraga said they had not established the motive for the killings.   Bruce Byers, press officer of the U.S. embassy in Manila, declined comment on the incident.   "I cannot confirm anything," he said. 
18317 !C24 !CCAT !GCAT !GDIP  Hong Kong welcomed a big boost to the British colony's port business on Thursday when China and Britain reached a deal in Beijing on a new container port terminal, breaking a four-year political impasse.   "Resolution of the matter has been complex," Financial Secretary Donald Tsang said after the agreement on the CT9 terminal was announced by Chinese and British negotiators.   "This agreement will enhance the capacity of the terminal, while reducing the negative environmental impact," Tsang said.   The government hoped construction could start by the end of the year, he added.   The agreement allows Asia Container Terminals (ACT) Ltd, previously known as Tsing Yi Consortium Ltd, to exchange its share in the ninth container terminal for two existing berths in CT8, owned by Modern Terminals Ltd (MTL).   It also provides for CT9 to be shared by MTL and Hong Kong International Terminals Ltd (HIT).   The development of Hong Kong's ninth container port has been held up for four years by Chinese objections to the way the contract was awarded and to the presence of the Jardine Matheson Holdings Ltd group in the consortium.   Until now the issue had been a major stumbling block in the Sino-British Joint Liaison Group handling details of Hong Kong's transfer to China in mid-1997.   Beijing had up to now refused to give the project a nod of approval, needed because the contract straddles the 1997 handover, citing the lack of an open tender.   After protracted negotiations, China decided in January it would accept the award of the contract in line with the wishes of the companies involved. 
18318 !GCAT !GDIP  Britain and China buried a festering four-year dispute over Hong Kong on Thursday, signalling an eagerly awaited thaw in their frosty relationship in the countdown to the handover of the colony next year.   British and Chinese diplomats told reporters at the conclusion of three days of negotiations in Beijing that agreement had been reached over a container terminal delayed since 1992 by bickering over the terms of the contract.   Signs that the two sovereign states were finally putting their differences behind them were sure to be greeted with relief in Hong Kong, which has been forced to watch from the sidelines as its future is determined in far-away capitals.   British negotiators said no accord had been concluded on another high profile issue -- arrangements for the ceremonial handover of Hong Kong -- but team leader Hugh Davies expressed cautious optimism that it was only a matter of time.   Asked by reporters whether he thought remaining differences over a Sino-British ceremony could be reached next week, Davies said: "I am cautiously optimistic an agreement can be achieved."   Chinese Foreign Minister Qian Qichen and his British counterpart, Malcolm Rifkind, were scheduled to meet in New York next week.   In 285 day's time -- at midnight on June 30, 1997 -- Britain is to return its colony to China under the terms of a treaty reached by London and Beijing in 1984 without reference to Hong Kong's six million people.   The ensuring 12 years of transition have been turbulent ones for Hong Kong with Britain and China frequently at loggerheads to the dismay of the tiny but wealthy community.   The dispute over a ninth terminal for Hong Kong's container port, the world's busiest and a source of pride in the economically vibrant colony, flared when China objected to the award of the contract by private treaty rather than tender.   More ominously for Hong Kong's sophisticated business sector were Beijing's political objections to the inclusion of Jardine Matheson Holdings Ltd in the consortium.   Beijing accused the Hong Kong government of rewarding Jardine, a pillar of the British establishment since the colony was founded, for supporting Governor Chris Patten's electoral reforms, the object of bitter Chinese opposition.   Patten's reforms, announced shortly after his arrival in 1992 as Hong Kong's 28th and last governor, caused an already cool relationship to deteriorate dramatically.   But the container terminal settlement, aided by Jardine agreeing to give up its role as consortium leader, will be regarded as the latest in a series of signals suggesting that China is seeking cooperation rather than confrontation.   Beijing's hardline stance is perceived to have eased in recent weeks, beginning with Foreign Minister Qian's surprise announcement last month that China was prepared to tolerate dissenting views within the Selection Committee being formed to choose Hong Kong's future leaders.   The signs of a more moderate line were reinforced when China said it was willing to consider a dialogue with Hong Kong's Democratic Party, which Beijing has cold-shouldered.   In what was regarded as the final clincher, the Chinese official in charge of Hong Kong affairs said publicly he would be willing to shake Patten's hand at the handover.   The official, Lu Ping, had pointedly snubbed Patten, whom China has dubbed a criminal for ten thousand years and a political prostitute, for sponsoring the democratic reform. 
18319 !GCAT !GDEF !GVIO  By slipping undetected into South Korean waters, a North Korean submarine has highlighted the country's vulnerability to attack by its arch enemy, Seoul defence officials said on Thursday.   News media criticised the failure of Southern armed forces to detect the small submarine, found grounded on rocks on the east coast early on Wednesday morning.   On board were around 20 North Koreans.   "We humbly accept the criticism," a South Korean navy officer, who declined to be named, said in an interview.   "In reality, however, it is almost impossible for our navy to detect such submarines."   Only five or six naval vessels normally keep watch around the South Korean coast, he said.   They are backed by maritime police boats without any electronic anti-submarine equipment.   The navy has 180 combat vessels, 60 support vessels and five submarines, according to defence ministry figures.   "Detecting such a small-sized submarine is like searching for a needle in a big river," the navy officer said, adding each naval vessel on coastal patrol watches over a sea block almost 300 miles (482 km) long and 200 miles (321 km) wide.   "North Korea's situation is similar to ours," he said, noting North Korea has about 760 combat and support ships and some 90 submarines, including 50 midget-class submarines.   Wednesday's infiltration was made easier by the removal of barbed wires barricades along the coast designed to keep out North Korean frogmen.   "The majority of our ground forces are deployed in the frontline," an army officer said.   "It is somewhat difficult to keep perfect vigilance along coastal areas with the remaining forces.   In this context, barbed-wire barriers are a big help in preventing such infiltrations."   Since 1991, South Korea has removed some 248 miles (400 km) of barbed-wire barriers from its beaches for the convenience of residents and beachgoers.   More barriers are scheduled to be removed.   Wednesday's submarine infiltration is the second time in recent months that defence planners have been embarrassed.   In May a North Korean air force captain who defected in an old-fashioned Soviet-made fighter exposed gaping security holes in the South's air defences.   A series of security lapses allowed Li Chol-su's Mig-19 to scream towards Seoul without raising any alarm in the capital.   He was intercepted by several Southern fighters, which guided him to a military air field.   Seoul's mayor apologised for the failure and stripped three civil defence officials of their positions.   The country has since staged elaborate civil defence drills.   Seoul is just a few minutes flying time from the border, and within range of North Korea artillery.   North and South Korea have been technically at war since their 1950-53 conflict ended in a truce that sealed the division of the Korean peninsula.   South Korea's 655,000 armed forces, backed by 37,000 U.S. servicemen, confront a 1.1 million strong North Korean military across a 155 mile (250 km) barbed-wire border.   It is the largest concentration of enemy forces anywhere in the world.   But U.S. officials say the combat readiness of North Korea, its economy devastated by shortages of food and fuel, is at a low point. 
18320 !E51 !E512 !ECAT !GCAT !GDIP  Indonesia on Thursday warned Australia against mixing trade with domestic politics after that country's unions imposed shipping bans in protest over Jakarta's arrest of labour leaders.   "Do not mix up trade between Indonesia and Australia with domestic political problems," Transport Minister Haryanto Dhanutirto said in response to Wednesday's ban by Australia's powerful Maritime Union on Indonesian shipping.   Dhanutirto was quoted by the official Antara news agency as saying that he was studying the issue as it concerned the political relationship between the two countries.   The report said he made no further comment.   The ban coincided with the end of a three-day visit by Australian Prime Minister John Howard.   The visit focused on economic ties and skirted political issues.   The Australian union said on Wednesday the bans were to protest against the recent arrests of independent labour leaders Muchtar Pakpahan and Dita Sari and what it said was continuing repression following riots in Jakarta in July .   The riots erupted after police raided the headquarters of the Indonesian Democratic Party (PDI) and evicted supporters of ousted PDI leader Megawati Sukarnoputri.   The rolling bans were also a response to Howard's failure in Jakarta to press Indonesia on the issue of human rights and democracy, the union said. 
18321 !GCAT !GCRIM !GPOL !GVOTE  Megawati Sukarnoputri, the ousted Indonesian minority party leader, will take her bid to run in next year's general elections to court, the head of her legal team said on Thursday.   R.O. Tambunan told Reuters that she would sue the General Election Institute (LPU), which conducts the polling, in a bid to have her list of candidates accepted.   The LPU "refused the candidates from Megawati's executive board while Megawati's executive board is the legal leadership of the PDI," he said.   "The refusal of the LPU is a challenge to the law.   We will ask the judge to order the LPU to receive our list of candidates.   "The suit will be submitted maybe next Wednesday or Thursday to the State Administrative Court at Halim (in East Jakarta)," Tambunan said.   Officials from the LPU on Monday refused to accept a list of candidates submitted by the Megawati faction in the name of the Indonesian Democratic Party (PDI) as part of the preparations for next year's general elections due in late May.   In an official ceremony earlier on Monday, the institute accepted the list submitted by Megawati's rival, Surjadi, who ousted her as party leader at a government-funded congress of a rebel faction in June.   It also received lists of candidates for the national parliament from the ruling Golkar party and Moslem-orientated United Development Party (PPP), the only other officially sanctioned groups allowed to participate in the election.   Interior Minister Yogie Memet, who heads the government's election supervisory committee, said the body would not accept the candidate list from Megawati's faction.   The government recognises Surjadi as the head of the PDI.   Megawati's supporters said the LPU should not have accepted Surjadi's list while she is challenging the rebel faction in court.   Earlier this month, Megawati's lawyer asked the Central Jakarta Court for an injunction to stop Surjadi from acting as PDI leader while they are suing him.   The suit also names Surjadi's supporters, Interior Minister Yogie Memet, armed forces chief General Feisal Tanjung and police chief Lieutenant-General Dibyo Widodo, who it says backed the rebel congress.   The court has reserved its decision until September 26.   Police expelled Megawati loyalists from PDI headquarters on July 27, sparking the worst rioting in Jakarta in more than 20 years.   At least five people died and 149 were injured. 
18322 !E21 !E212 !ECAT !GCAT !GHEA  The Asian Development Bank approved on Thursday a $43 million loan to Vietnam to strengthen family health and family planning programmes in 15 Vietnamese provinces, the ADB said.   The loan, to be drawn from the bank's Special Funds, is repayable in 40 years with a grace period of 10 years and an annual service charge of one percent, it said.   -- Manila newsroom (632) 841 8913 Fax (632) 817 6267 
18323 !C12 !C15 !C151 !CCAT !GCAT !GCRIM  Sumitomo Corp said on Thursday that liquidation of unauthorised long copper positions accumulated by dismissed trader Yasuo Hamanaka was carried out after its announcement of the trades and Hamanaka's dismissal.   In a news conference, Sumitomo president Kenji Miyahara denied allegations that some of the unauthorised positions were liquidated before the announcement.   He said it had taken some time to liquidate the positions as the market was highly sensitive to Sumitomo's activities.   In the 1 1/2 weeks following Sumitomo's June 13 announcement, the price of benchmark three-month copper on the London Metal Exchange fell nearly 20 percent to a 2 1/2-year low of $1,745 a tonne.   The market had managed a modest recovery and in recent months had held mostly to a range of $1,850 to $2,000.   Sumitomo announced on Thursday that it had revised upward its estimated unauthorised trading losses to $2.6 billion from $1.8 billion.   It also said it had liquidated most of the unauthorised positions and that it believed there would be no further revisions to the loss estimate.   -- Tokyo Commodities Desk (81-3 3432-6179) 
18324 !GCAT !GPOL  A senior Chinese official jumped 15 floors to his death from a building in the southern city of Guangzhou, newspapers in Macau reported on Thursday.   Zhong Zishuo, 53, formerly a senior official with China's mission in Portuguese-administered Macau, jumped from a building in front of his Guangzhou office earlier this week, pro-Beijing newspapers reported.   The papers said the reason for Zhong's suicide was unknown.   Officials at China's de facto embassy in Macau, the Xinhua News Agency, confirmed Zhong's death but declined further comment.   Zhong headed Xinhua's education, publicity, culture and sports section in Macau for almost four years until July, when he moved to Guangzhou after being appointed president of the city's Federation of Literary and Arts Circles.   Before his Macau posting, Zhong headed the Guangzhou provincial government's culture department. 
18325 !C13 !C24 !CCAT !GCAT !GENV  Mining companies said on Thursday they will oppose proposed changes in the implementing rules of a new Philippine mining law designed to liberalise the entry of foreign investments in the industry.   The Chamber of Mines of the Philippines said in a position paper that the proposed amendments to the implementing rules, which gives preference to ecological protection and conservation and small scale mining, were biased against the commercial mining industry.   "These proposals are obviously contrary to the letter and spirit of the Mining Act of the Philippines," the chamber said.   "We will exhaust all legal efforts to block proposed amendments on the implementing rules and regulations on the new Philippine mining law as discussed in several public hearings by the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR)," an official from the chamber told Reuters in a phone interview.   The DENR said it will conduct another public hearing on Friday to finalise amendments to the implementing rules of the Philippine Mining Act, which was signed into law by President Fidel Ramos in June 1995.   "I suggest that the local firms voice their proposals in the public hearing," an official of DENR said when asked to comment on the position of the local mining firms.   On Wednesday, foreign mining companies attending a forum in Hong Kong expresssed concern that amendments on the Philippine Mining law would render it inappropriate and impractical.   -Manila newsroom (632) 841-89-36, fax 817-62-67 
18326 !GCAT !GPOL !M11 !M13 !M132 !MCAT  Thai stock and money markets may continue to be turbulent if prime minister Banharn Silpa-archa survives a no-confidence vote, market analysts said on Thursday.   "The stock market would either continue to retreat or at best be trapped in its current doldrums if Banharn survives," Patira Dilokrungthirapob of Crosby Research told Reuters.   Political analysts expect Banharn to win an opposition-launched no confidence motion against him with the backing of his coalition partners.   Banharn's six-party coalition has been in power for the past 14 months.   During its tenure, the stock market has plummeted to near three-year lows and the baht has been hit hard by devaluation rumours.   Patira said Banharn's coalition, which has a 13-vote majority in the 391-seat House of Representatives, may help him win the no-confidence vote.   But it would be premature to speculate if they would back him as leader next week.   Banharn faces the daunting task of holding his coalition together if he manages to survive the vote, analysts said.   The opposition has accused him of condoning corruption and of economic mismanagement.   Banharn, who has denied the accusations, is expected to defend himself later on Thursday.   Opposition leaders said on Thursday that Banharn chose unqualified men to fill cabinet posts, greatly eroding public confidence.   They said this was a factor that contributed to a 20 percent loss of the Thai stock index so far this year.   The country has seen two different finance ministers and two foreign ministers in the past 14 months.   The opposition demanded that Banharn take responsibility for weak Thai exports, which contributed to the slowest projected economic growth in a decade.   Some private economists see Thailand's economic growth slowing sharply in 1996 to about 6.2 percent from 8.5 percent in 1995.   Sorrayuth Meenaphant of Book Club Finance and Securities Plc said he expected Banharn to be forced to quit or call snap elections after the no-confidence vote.   "The market would go down further if he insisted on staying on.   I think he is in a difficult position," he added.   Prakorn Limyothin of SITCA Finance and Securities Plc urged Banharn to call new elections, saying he would not be able to restore public support with a new cabinet that he had pledged to form after the parliament vote.   The analyst said the opposition Democrat Party, led by former Prime Minister Chuan Leekpai, would likely outperform other major parties if an election were held, and that could produce a better reaction from the market. 
18327 !GCAT !GDIP  Taiwan, defeated in a fourth bid to join the United Nations, on Thursday denounced rival China's efforts to make it a global pariah and vowed to fight on for a U.N. voice for its 21 million people.   China and its supporters on Wednesday blocked moves in the General Assembly to consider U.N. membership for Taiwan, scuttling Taipei's bid for a fourth straight year.   "Communist China's negative attitude toward our efforts to expand our room for advancement in the international community is unacceptable to us," Taiwan's foreign affairs vice minister Cheng Chien-jen said on state television.   The proposal to put the issue on the agenda was introduced by the Solomon Islands and strongly opposed by Beijing's U.N. ambassador.   Delegates from 38 countries opposed the item while 17 spoke in favour.   Cheng, noting that more countries spoke on the issue during Wednesday's session than in previous years, said he remained hopeful that Taiwan would succeed eventually.   "It is obvious that this case is gaining more attention and understanding from more countries," he said.   "I believe that as long as we keep pushing, our chances will be even better in the future."   The Nationalist Republic of China government, which fled to Taiwan in 1949 after defeat by the communists in a civil war, held China's U.N. seat for two decades.   Taipei was expelled by the General Assembly in 1971 and the China seat given to Beijing, which considers Taiwan a renegade province that must eventually be integrated into the People's Republic of China.   China regards any bid to give Taiwan U.N. membership as an intolerable encroachment on its sovereignty and interference in its internal affairs.   Beijing's U.N. ambassador Qin Huasun told the world body that Taiwan had been part of China since ancient times.   Qin assailed what he called a "very small number of member states instigated by the Taiwan authorities" striving to create "two Chinas" or "one China, one Taiwan" in the United Nations.   Taiwan's Cheng shrugged off China's accusations.   "Our efforts at the U.N. are not to challenge communist China's seat, and are not to push for two Chinas," he said.   "What we want is to fight for the survival and advancement of the 21 million people in the Republic of China in the Taiwan region."   Taiwan has diplomatic ties with only 30 countries despite being the world's 14th largest trading nation.   Beijing refuses to recognise those countries that maintain official ties with Taiwan. 
18328 !C12 !CCAT !GCAT !GCRIM !GHEA  Japanese prosecutors on Thursday arrested the current president and two former presidents of a major drug firm on suspicion of professional negligence resulting in death for their roles in a decade-long scandal involving the sale of HIV-contaminated blood products.   Green Cross Corp president Takehiko Kawano is suspected of having allowed the sale of unheated blood-clotting agents even though he knew there was a risk they could cause infection with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, prosecutors said.   Kawano's predecessors, Renzo Matsushita and Tadakazu Suyama, were also arrested on the same charges in a widening investigation of 1980s health industry wrongdoings that have claimed the lives of some 400 haemophiliacs, police said.   The arrests follow nationwide raids last month of offices of Osaka-based Green Cross which were spurred by a murder complaint filed by the family of a deceased AIDS patient.   The investigation took a new turn on Wednesday when the family filed a similar complaint against a former Health Ministry official -- the first such formal complaint against a public official.   The move could open the way for investigations into the alleged role of the government in the scandal, analysts said.   A lawyer for the family asked prosecutors in Osaka to act against Akihito Matsumura, who headed the ministry's Biologics and Antibiotics Division from 1984 to 1986.   Matsumura, 55, resigned from the ministry in July and has now retired.   The complaint said Matsumura failed to order the recall of untreated blood products after official approval in 1985 of the production and sale of heated blood products, even though he knew unheated products could be contaminated with HIV.   In a separate development, prosecutors said they had indicted the former head of a ministry AIDS research team who was arrested last month.   Takeshi Abe was charged on Wednesday with professional negligence resulting in the death of a haemophiliac patient knowing that products he was treated with could have been tainted with HIV.   Abe is believed to have influenced the team's conclusion in March 1984 to favour the use of unheated blood products, instead of using the safer heated products.   The Health Ministry, after maintaining for years it could not find documents, in February made public files from the 1983 study group Abe chaired, which indicated authorities were aware of the danger of HIV infection from unheated products.   In March, Japanese haemophiliacs accepted an out-of-court settlement in which the plaintiffs agreed to a one-time payment, putting an end to a seven-year legal battle against the state and five pharmaceutical firms.   Health Minister Naoto Kan became immensely popular because of his pivotal role in forcing his ministry to accept responsibility for the 1980s scandal, which infected some 1,800 haemophiliacs with HIV.   Recent Health Ministry figures show there are 1,154 people with AIDS and 2,942 infected with HIV in Japan, a nation of 125.6 million. 
18329 !GCAT !GDIP !GPOL  China and Britain discussed arrangements for the handover ceremony of Hong Kong next year but did not reach any final agreement on the issue, a British official said on Thursday.   But Hugh Davies, chief British representative to the Sino-British Joint Liaison Group, said he was cautiously optimistic an agreement could be reached at a meeting between the foreign ministers of the two countries next week.    Asked by reporters whether he thought remaining differences over a joint Sino-British ceremony could be reached next week, Davies said: "I am cautiously optimistic an agreement can be achieved."   Chinese Foreign Minister Qian Qichen and his British counterpart, Malcolm Rifkind, were scheduled to meet in New York next week.   China and Britain set up the Joint Liaison Group to handle issues related to the transfer of power in Hong Kong next year when the British colony reverts to Chinese rule on July 1, 1997.   The group held three days of meetings in Beijing. 
18330 !C13 !C24 !C33 !CCAT !GCAT !GDIP  China and Britain have reached agreement allowing a major container terminal project in Hong Kong to proceed, officials of the two sides said on Thursday.   The two sides said in a joint statement they had reached an agreement on Container Terminal Nine that would allow the project to proceed without further delay.    The British colony of Hong Kong is due to revert to Chinese rule on July 1, 1997.   Development of Hong Kong's ninth container port has been held up for four years by Chinese objections to the way the contract was awarded and to the presence of the Jardine Matheson Holding Ltd group in the consortium.   Beijing had refused to give the project its approval, needed because the contract straddles Hong Kong's handover next year. 
18331 !GCAT !GPOL !GVIO  The Cambodian government is willing to create a new province around a key town held by Khmer Rouge rebels, but must review their demand for top military and police posts, a national leader said on Thursday.   First Prime Minister Prince Norodom Ranariddh, speaking at a school opening in southern Cambodia, also said nominal Khmer Rouge leader Khieu Samphan wanted to leave hardline Khmer Rouge forces loyal to Pol Pot but was under arrest.   Guerrilla forces in northwest Cambodia loyal to Ieng Sary, the foreign minister and deputy premier during Pol Pot's brutal 1975-79 Khmer Rouge regime, broke from the mainstream movement last month and forged a ceasefire with the government.   Commanders of that group met top military officers in the rebels' Pailin stronghold on Tuesday and asked that the gem mining and logging town be removed administratively from Battambang province and placed under their control.   They also demanded the faction be given one armed forces deputy chief of staff position, a regional military chief post, three regional deputy chief posts and a deputy chief of staff job in the Interior Ministry, which controls the police.   Ranariddh quoted Lieutenant General Nhek Bun Chhay, one of the negotiators, as saying the guerrillas also wanted unspecified posts on the general staff and in the police.   He said the government must consider these requests, adding: "They must have some positions in the Royal Cambodian Armed Forces and national police."   Ranariddh said he and Second Prime Minister Hun Sen agreed on Wednesday night that they must complete the merger of their forces with the dissident guerrillas as soon as possible.   The prince said the request to create a new province around Pailin would pose "no problem."   But the government must work out which districts and how many people would be included in the Pailin zone, which is close to the border with Thailand.   Referring to charges by Pol Pot loyalists that Ieng Sary had embezzled 450 million baht ($18 million) from gem and log sales and hidden it away, Ranariddh said that if there was any money it should be used to build roads and schools in the northwest.   "If he brings money to build roads and schools -- congratulations to him," he said.   Ieng Sary has denied these accusations.   He has said that it was these attacks by Khmer Rouge radio that led him to leave the hardliners and set up his Democratic National Union Movement on August 15 to work for reconciliation with the government.   He has also tried to distance himself from the atrocities of the Pol Pot regime, and earlier this month demanded his legal status be clarified before further peace talks.   King Norodom Sihanouk signed an amnesty for Ieng Sary.   Ieng Sary and Pol Pot were sentenced to death in absentia for their roles in the genocide of more than one million people during the Maoist Khmer Rouge's late-1970s rule. 
18332 !C13 !C21 !CCAT !GCAT !GENV  Japan's big machinery makers have seen the environmental light and the huge profits to be made from recycling, and are rushing to tap into the booming market for recycling technology and equipment.   "Big companies have now realised that recycling has become a profitable business in light of a series of government policies, such as the product-packaging recycling law expected to go into effect next April," said Katsuhiko Sugiyama, an independent analyst.   These companies include NKK Corp, Ishikawajima-Harima Heavy Industries Co Ltd, Hitachi Ltd and Ube Industries Ltd and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd.   Pressured by ever increasing amounts of garbage and limited space for waste sites, central and local governments have passed measures to promote recycling.   For example, the law coming into force in April stipulates that all consumer goods packaging must be sorted out from the garbage and recycled.   Currently, of the 50 million tonnes of household garbage the 125.6 million Japanese produce every year, about 75 percent is burned with the rest mostly going straight to dump sites.   In Japan, where excessive packaging is considered a good service to the customer, opening a box of chocolates often requires some work.   Each piece is individually wrapped, then placed in a tray, and then wrapped several more times before the outer cover is put on.   The government has earmarked 553.4 billion yen ($5.07 billion) for the next five years to build more than 500 facilities nationwide to recycle glass, plastic, paper and other materials.   "Despite some remaining uncertainties, the new recycling code could eventually create new demand worth at least several trillion yen (billions of dollars)," said Ippei Hagiwara, deputy general manager of the Industry Incubation Center at the Japan Research Institute.   The domestic market for waste management, including recycling, is expected to grow from 10.9 trillion yen ($100 billion) in 1994 to 16.2 trillion yen ($148 billion) in 2000, and to 22.8 trillion yen ($209 billion) in 2010, according to a report by an advisory committee to the Ministry of International Trade and Industry.   NKK Corp hopes to sell a system that sorts plastic and glass bottles as well as steel and aluminum cans from noncombustible household garbage.   NKK has sold about 70 billion yen ($642 million) worth of waste management equipment a year in the last three fiscal years, and expects its sales to grow in the future.   Later this month, Ishikawajima-Harima plans to introduce a system capable of sorting six tonnes of glass bottles into five different colours in one hour.   The company set up a new environment business division in April and increased its sales staff.   "We hope to double our environment-related sales from 100 billion yen ($917 million) in the 1995/96 fiscal year over the next five years," a spokesman said.   Ishikawajima-Harima also belongs to a 19-firm consortium that hopes to sell its garbage collection and sorting system to local governments.   Other members of the consortium, started in April, include Hitachi and Ube Industries.   However, some analysts said there are obstacles for the companies to overcome.   Kazunori Kitagawa, a researcher at the Green Marketing Institute, said it would be difficult for the companies to sell one garbage sorting system to local governments, because each municipality has a different garbage collecting system.   Mitsubishi Heavy expects to complete a pilot custom-made recycling plant in Yokohama by next spring.   "The plant will be used to demonstrate to local governments that we can build order-made recyling facilities to match their different needs," a spokesman said.   Mitsubishi Heavy Industries plans to raise its annual sales in environment-related equipment from the current 200 billion yen ($1.83 billion) to about 300 billion yen ($2.75 billion) in 1999/2000.   And Mitsubishi Materials Corp agreed in June with Karita in southern Japan to burn the town's combustible garbage for power generation.   The enterprise in the town of 35,000 people is expected to become profitable by selling the electricity to the local power company. 
18333 !C12 !C15 !C152 !CCAT !GCAT !GCRIM  Sumitomo Corp. admitted on Thursday that losses from a massive copper trading scandal have soared to $2.6 billion from the $1.8 billion it originally estimated and said it is pressing authorities to bring criminal charges against the man responsible.   (Corrects to make clear Sumitomo is not suing Yasuo Hamanaka but is asking for criminal charges to be brought against him).   The statement came in a revision of the trading group's earnings forecast.   The company said that it revised its group net forecast for 1996-97 to show a loss of 147 billion yen ($1.34 billion) from a profit of 24 billion yen ($220 million).   The trade house announced on June 13 that it had suffered huge losses from rogue copper trades and blamed the long-time head of its copper trading division Yasuo Hamanaka, whom it promptly fired.   Traders and financial analysts had questioned Sumitomo's previous loss estimate, saying it appeared to be much too low given the company's huge exposure in the market and a sharp fall in copper prices since the scandal broke.   The company said on Thursday that it planned no further changes to the copper loss estimate and said that it has now closed out most of its long copper positions.   "As a result of our liquidation up to now, there still remain some positions, including both short and long positions, but the liquidation of uncovered positions is nearly complete," he said.   "Accordingly, there is almost no risk remaining and it is our judgement that we will not again revise the estimated loss we have announced today," he added.   Sumitomo said that Hamanaka had for a decade deceived the company, setting up bogus accounts to conduct his improper dealings.   Investigators from Britain and the United States are looking into the affair, the biggest financial scandal in history.   In Washington, Congressional hearings into the affair opened on Wednesday.   An official with the U.S. Federal Reserve said the crisis appeared to be confined to Sumitomo and had not spread to any other financial firms.   Japanese authorities, meanwhile have been reluctant to step into the case, arguing that since all of the questionable trades took place overseas, there would be no violation of Japanese law.   Sources said recently that a criminal investigation has been launched into whether Hamanaka broke any laws by defrauding the company.   But some of those allegedly linked to his trades say that the accounts in question were fully authorised by senior Sumitomo officials.   Hamanaka has kept largely silent about his activities, staying at his modest suburban house near Tokyo and saying only that he would give his side of the story at a later date.   The company said that despite the huge loss that it would maintain its 1996-97 dividend at eight yen (7.3 cents). 
18334 !C12 !CCAT !GCAT !GCRIM  Sumitomo Corp said on Thursday it would ask prosecutors to bring criminal charges against its former trader Yasuo Hamanaka over massive copper losses.   (Corrects headline and text to make clear that Sumitomo is not suing Hamanaka but asking that criminal charges be brought against him).   It made the announcement when it said the losses from the scandal had soared to $2.6 billion from the $1.8 billion it originally estimated.   Sumitomo said it was proceeding with preparations for the filing of charges in the case.   It said the losses were initially incurred as Hamanaka had conducted unauthorised trading in the copper market in around 1985.   It said the losses snowballed as Hamanaka tried to recover the losses by building up a large amount of market positions without the company's knowledge.   Hamanaka has declined to comment on the losses. 
18335 !C12 !C15 !C152 !CCAT !GCAT !GCRIM  Sumitomo Corp. admitted on Thursday that losses from a massive copper trading scandal had soared to $2.6 billion from the $1.8 billion it originally estimated.   The statement came in a revision of the trading group's earnings forecast.   The company said that it revised its group net forecast for 1996-97 to show a loss of 147 billion yen ($1.34 billion) from a profit of 24 billion yen ($220 million).    The company also announced that it would ask prosecutors to bring criminal charges against the man it said is behind the scandal, fired copper trader Yasuo Hamanaka.   (Corrects to make clear Sumitomo is not suing Hamanaka but asking for criminal charges to be brought against him).   The trade house announced on June 13 that it had suffered the huge losses from unauthorised copper trades.   It also said that despite the huge loss it would maintain its 1996/97 dividend at eight yen (7.3 cents).   Traders and financial analysts had questioned Sumitomo's previous loss estimate, saying it appeared to be much too low given the company's huge exposure in the market and the sharp fall in copper prices since the scandal broke. 
18336 !GCAT !GDEF !GDIP !GVIO  U.S. Cavalry troops flew into Kuwait and a second American aircraft carrier entered the Gulf on Thursday to boost a military buildup aimed at deterring trouble from Gulf War foe Iraq.   "We are here to deter war...We are trying to send a signal and that signal is 'We are ready'," U.S. Army Colonel Robert Pollard told reporters.   About 230 soldiers from the U.S. Army 1st Cavalry Division, some looking tired and jet-lagged, prepared scores of tanks, armoured fighting vehicles and self-propelled howitzer artillery guns at an arsenal north of Kuwait City after a long flight from Fort Hood army base in Texas.   A U.S. officer said 28 main battle tanks as well as support vehicles would move out of the Camp Doha arsenal and into the desert later on Thursday evening.   "There are a lot of Kuwaitis who are going to sleep better tonight because the First Cav is here," said U.S. ambassador to Kuwait Ryan Crocker.   "This is a tremendously important deployment for the Kuwaitis."   Three thousand more troops were due to arrive overnight and over the next three or four days and deploy rapidly on a desert firing range 40 km (25 miles) from the Iraqi border where the heat can exceed 50 degrees Celsius (122 Fahrenheit).   All are carrying chemical and biological warfare protective suits, overgarments and masks, officers said.   The aircraft carrier Enterprise turned into the Strait of Hormuz to join another carrier battle group, U.S. Navy spokesman Commander T. McCreary said.   The U.S. Navy now has seven ships in the region capable of firing Tomahawk cruise missiles.   The latest Iraqi-U.S. confrontation erupted in late August when President Saddam Hussein's forces intervened to help a Kurdish faction in northern Iraq against a rival Kurdish group.   Washington retaliated by firing 44 cruise missiles at air defence targets in south Iraq on September 3 and 4.   A Kuwaiti official said tension with Baghdad had subsided slightly but Kuwait's "crisis" with Iraq was not over, noting Iraq was still believed to have Scud missiles.   "The threat will stay as long as Saddam Hussein is in power," the official said by telephone.   Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990 and was driven out seven months later by a U.S.-led coalition of international forces.   Western diplomats said that without serious provocation from Baghdad the likelihood of a strike on Iraq was now slight.   "You cannot have a fixed game plan that is rigid," one said.   "But the coalition is not itching for a fight ... The option is there for this to de-escalate without Iraq having to do anything humiliating."   The new troops will reinforce 1,200 already in Kuwait to form a more than 4,000-strong Task Force, Kuwait, that will exercise for several months with Kuwaiti forces and other allies, U.S. officers said without elaborating.   "Iraq has violated the no-fly zone.   He (Saddam) continues to flex his muscles," said Pollard, task force chief of staff.   "Therefore we have to continue to deploy our forces .... first to keep the peace in the region, secondly to protect (U.S) national interests in the region."   At Doha, which houses 1,600 tanks and 70 armoured fighting vehicles among other weaponry, soldiers began loading bottled water into tanks and vehicles and laying out green kit bags.   The buildup also includes the deployment in Kuwait of eight Stealth bombers, over 20 other U.S. warplanes and Patriot missiles and B-52 bombers on an Indian Ocean island. 
18337 !GCAT !GVIO  The medical relief group Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) on Thursday urged Iran to move refugee camps away from the border after it said 10 Iraqi Kurds were killed in cross-border shooting a day earlier.   MSF project manager Stephan Oberreit, speaking from Sanadaj in northwestern Iran, said doctors from the group confirmed that 10 people, who were among 57 wounded refugees evacuated after the fighting near the Siranband camp, died in hospital.   The Iranian news agency IRNA said on Thursday the death toll in the attack had risen to eight from four.   It said the Iraqi army and Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) forces shelled the camp near the Iran-Iraq border.   But the KDP has denied involvement.   Spokeswoman Judith Melby of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees said earlier in Geneva that UNHCR officials had been unable to confirm any fatalities.   But they said there had been a shooting incident at the teeming camp that holds the largest number of Iraqi Kurds who fled fighting in northern Iraq.   MSF's Oberreit urged Iran to move refugee camps away from the border, joining a call voiced by the UNHCR.   "These camps are sometimes only 150 metres (yards) inside Iran, so refugees can be caught in cross-fire," he told Reuters.   IRNA said the Siranband camp was home to some 35,000 Iraqi Kurds.   UNHCR has registered slightly more than half that number, although refugees continue to spill over the border.   Melby told Reuters: "This incident in this camp is further proof of the need to relocate the camp further inland.   We have not yet reached agreement with the Iranian authorities to get it moved."   She said: "There was shelling toward the camp on the Iranian side, aimed from across the border...It definitely started on the Iraqi side.   "The Iranian authorities responded with fire.   It was a situation of total panic and tents caught on fire," she added.   The incident at Siranband followed shooting on Tuesday on the Iraqi side across the border from Tilehkooh camp in the heavily-mined Kermanshah region of western Iran.   After shooting on the Iraqi side of the border, some 2,000 people rushed the border to cross over to Tilehkooh, already home to some 5,000 Iraqi Kurds, according to the UNHCR.   Iranian authorities have now moved the 7,000 people to a new camp some six kilometres (four miles) inside Iran. 
18338 !GCAT !GDIP !GVIO  The United States moved a second aircraft carrier into the Gulf and flew more troops into Kuwait on Thursday in a military buildup aimed at deterring any threat from Iraq.   More than 200 soldiers from the U.S. Army 1st Cavalary Division were bused from a Kuwaiti airport to an arsenal near Kuwait City where they began drawing tanks, armoured fighting vehicles and self-propelled howitzer artillery.   Three thousand more troops were due to arrive in the Gulf Arab state overnight and on Friday and deploy rapidly on a desert firing range 40 km (25 miles) from the iraqi border.   The aircraft carrier Enterprise turned into the Strait of Hormuz to join another carrier battle group, U.S. Navy spokesman Commander T. McCreary said.   The U.S. Navy now has seven ships in the region capable of firing Tomahawk cruise missiles.   The buildup is the latest of several mounted by Western forces in the region since the 1991 Gulf War ended Iraq's seven-month occupation of Kuwait.   The fresh tension with Iraqi President Saddam Hussein started in August when Baghdad's forces intervened to help a Kurdish faction in northern Iraq.   Washington retaliated by firing 44 cruise missiles at air defence targets in south Iraq on September 3 and 4.   United Nations observers said some of the missiles violated the terms of a U.N.-created demilitarised zone on the Iraq-Kuwait border.   A Kuwait official said on Thursday tension with Baghdad had subsided slightly but Kuwait's "crisis" with Iraq was not over.   "The threat will stay as long as (Iraqi President) Saddam Hussein is in power," the official said by telephone.   But Western diplomats said that without serious provocation the likelihood of a strike on Iraq was now slight.   "You cannot have a fixed game plan that is rigid," one said.   "But the coalition is not itching for a fight.   We are not looking for the slightest, thin pretext for a fight."   "The option is there for this to de-escalate without Iraq having to do anything humiliating," he added.   U.S. Army spokesman Captain Tim Raymond said that under a well rehearsed procedure newly-arrived troops would deploy at the Kuwaiti military's Adera Range desert exercise area after drawing weapons at Camp Doha arsenal north of Kuwait City.   "The troops hit the ground running, draw equipment and deploy in the desert," said Raymond, adding the troops were equipped with gas masks for protection against poison gas.   "They don't stop until they're in the desert and in secure positions."   Two more flights are expected to take 700 troops from Texas early on Thursday.   The 3,500 U.S. troops will reinforce 1,200 already here.   The buildup also includes the deployment in Kuwait of eight Stealth bombers, over 20 other U.S. warplanes and Patriot missiles and B-52 bombers on the Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia.   The formal mission of the Fort Hood troops is to provide training for Kuwaiti forces, but officials said they could be used in any new military action against Iraq.   Like the USS Carl Vinson already in northern Gulf waters, the Enterprise carries 55 combat aircraft plus 20 helicopters and fixed-wing warplanes including electronic warfare aircraft. 
18339 !GCAT !GDIP !GVIO  Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu tried on Thursday to ease tension with Syria over troop movements in Lebanon and reassure Palestinians he was committed to peace.   But his comments came against a backdrop of violence in south Lebanon, a fight in Jerusalem's Old City between Arabs and Jewish settlers and news that 2,000 new Jewish homes can be built in occupied West Bank areas.   In Marjayoun, south Lebanon, militia sources said two Israeli soldiers were killed and two wounded in an ambush by pro-Iranian guerrillas.   Hizbollah, which is fighting to oust Israel from a 15-km (nine-mile) -deep border occupation zone, said its fighters clashed with an Israeli force trying to advance out of the zone and into the Iqlim al-Toufah highlands near Sojoud.   Israeli warplanes pounded Hizbollah targets in response.   Israel says Hizbollah is armed via Syria that it believes can rein in the Shi'ite fighters if it chooses.   Netanyahu, who met U.S. peace envoy Dennis Ross in Jerusalem, said relations with Damascus were "under control".   He also said Israel was committed to implementing a stalled self-rule agreement with Palestinians in an attempt to dispel the impression in the Arab world that his right-wing government was backtracking on Middle East peace.   "Calming messages were sent by one side to the other and I think that it's important that in this case the United States assisted," Netanyahu told reporters.   "For now, things are under control."   At a news conference later Netanyahu said he and Ross had discussed ways to revive peace talks with Damascus and the Palestinians.   Syria has redeployed up to 12,000 troops in Lebanon, moving some to within striking distance of a key Israeli position on the occupied Golan Heights, causing war jitters in the Jewish state.   Syrian President Hafez al-Assad, the main power broker in Lebanon, began the redeployment after Netanyahu visited south Lebanon last month and said Hizbollah attacks against Israeli soldiers were "not good for Syria".   Netanyahu had said Syria was trying to pressure Israel into unilateral concessions on the Golan, a strategic plateau Israel seized in the 1967 Middle East war.   Syria wants back all of the Golan in return for peace with Israel.   The two countries have failed in five years of sporadic peace talks to agree.   "The crucial question right now is what is Syria's intention vis-a-vis the talks.   We are in any case watching the situation, we are proceeding with the Palestinians, it is now up to President Assad if he is interested or not interested in resuming peace talks," he said.   Netanyahu, who ousted the centre-left Labour government of Shimon Peres in May, has angered Arab peace partners by rejecting the land-for-peace formula that provided the basis for previous talks.   "I think there is a real effort on the part of Israel and the United States to resume the peace talks.   I don't think anyone seriously expected the new Israeli government to assume the positions of the previous Israeli government especially since they were never cemented in written contracts," Netanyahu said of Labour's understandings on a Golan withdrawal.   He said, however, Israel would honour the Oslo self-rule agreement Labour signed with the Palestinians.   Palestinians fear Netanyahu wants to rewrite parts of the accord, citing as evidence his delay in redeploying Israeli troops in the West Bank town of Hebron as already agreed, and his decision to expand settlements.   Israel's military administration has approved plans to build about 2,000 new homes in Jewish settlements in occupied West Bank lands, a settler spokeswoman said on Thursday.   The decision, which was immediately condemned by Palestinian and Israeli peace activists, still needs approval from Defence Minister Yitzhak Mordechai, who has already approved another plan for 1,800 units.   Also on Thursday Jewish settlers briefly occupied an East Jerusalem house they said they had bought from its Arab owners, igniting fresh violence in the holy city.   Witnesses said guards hired by the Ateret Cohanim settlement group, which claimed to have bought the house for $5 million, broke into the house at dawn. 
18340 !GCAT !GCRIM !GPOL !GVIO  Jewish settlers on Thursday briefly occupied an East Jerusalem house they said they had bought from its Arab owners, igniting fresh violence in the holy city, witnesses and police said.   Witnesses said guards hired by the Ateret Cohanim settlement group, which claimed to have bought the house for $5 million, broke into the house at dawn.   Israeli police evicted the guards and locked the house after the settlers failed to show documents proving they had bought the building, situated on the main Nablus road opposite the U.S. Consulate, a police spokesman said.   "We asked for documents from the guards of Ateret Cohanim, but they didn't have any in their possession," the spokesman Shmulik Ben-Ruby said.   "We cleared out the house and turned the sides to court," he said.   Later, Ben-Ruby said a Jerusalem court issued an order banning the guards or those who sent them from re-entering the house until another hearing is held on September 26.   "To keep the peace and public order, the Jerusalem district police chief decided to prevent the entry of Arabs as well until the date of the hearing," Ben-Ruby said.   No Ateret Cohanim spokesman was immediately available to comment.   The group has championed settling Jews in the Arab half of Jerusalem which Israel occupied in the 1967 Middle East war and annexed shortly after.   Palestinians say Ateret Cohanim has used pressure to buy houses from Arabs, establishing footholds for Jews in the city.   Witnesses said the guards struck Issam Rashed, whose family owns half of the house, when he tried to force his way into the building.   Rashed was wounded in the head and taken to hospital.   The Palestinian Information Ministry condemned the attempted takeover as "irresponsible".   "We strongly condemn this irresponsible act and hold the Israeli government fully responsible for such crimes," a statement issued by the ministry said.   Palestinians said the house, shared by two Arab families from Jerusalem, had been rented out to an expatriate Palestinian now living in Sweden who had used it as a weight-lifting club.   Both families denied selling the property.   Kamal Rashed, one of the owners, said Arab middlemen acting on behalf of the settlers had offered up to $1 million for the property.   "We rejected all the offers and we have no intention of selling the house," said the 60-year-old barber.   Jerusalem is at the centre of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.   Israel regards the city as its capital, while Palestinians want the eastern half to be the capital of a future independent state.   Under an interim peace deal signed in 1993, Israel and the PLO are to discuss the fate of Jerusalem during negotiations, now stalled, on a final peace settlement. 
18341 !GCAT !GDIP !GPOL  An Iraqi Kurdish leader who made a military pact with the Baghdad government has asked the West not to abandon him to President Saddam Hussein, a source close to talks held with a senior U.S. official said on Thursday.   The source said Kurdish leader Massoud Barzani had urged the West not to scrap a no-fly zone over northern Iraq or pull out any more humanitarian aid from the impoverished region.   "He was emphatic about Provide Comfort staying.   He was emphatic about the aid continuing," the source told Reuters.   Barzani, leader of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), met U.S. assistant secretary of state Robert Pelletreau in Ankara on Wednesday.   Barzani's military alliance with Baghdad against a Kurdish rival last month undermined the U.S.-led air patrols, known as Provide Comfort, and brought Saddam's influence in northern Iraq to its highest level since the 1991 Gulf War.   "Now (Barzani) has woken up to the fact that he has opened the cage door and the lion is out," the source said.   He said the Kurdish leader, previously a staunch opponent of Saddam, had indicated his flirtation with Baghdad was temporary and that it would go no further.   "The doors are still open between us and the KDP," he said.   CIA Director John Deutch told the Senate Intelligence Committee in Washington that Barzani had approached Western allies "for protection in an effort to hold Saddam Hussein at arm's length."   "Saddam Hussein is putting increasing pressure on Barzani to negotiate a framework for autonomy under Baghdad's overall control," Deutch said.   Deutch said Barzani's KDP controls nearly all of the Kurdish part of northern Iraq, with only isolated pockets held by the opposition Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) which combined KDP and Iraqi forces drove out of the city of Arbil on August 31.   Baghdad's involvement prompted U.S. missile strikes against Iraqi military targets in southern Iraq and an expansion of a southern no-fly zone up to the edge of Baghdad.   State Department spokesman Nicholas Burns described the meeting between Barzani and Pelletreau, also attended by British and Turkish diplomats, as "very productive".   He said Barzani had been asked to stay clear of Saddam from now on.   "We don't see that the Iraqi Kurds can profit in the long term from an association with Saddam Hussein.   In fact on the contrary, we think that such a relationship would be detrimental," Burns said on Wednesday.   Barzani has been at the forefront of the decades-old Kurdish fight for autonomy from Baghdad which has often singled out members of his powerful clan for executions and internal exile.   The KDP has said it only invited the Iraqi army to help it take Arbil last month because Washington did not halt alleged Iranian backing for a rival militia.   Tehran warned Barzani against seeking U.S. support.   "One should be aware that the Americans would interfere in the Kurdistan region only if they have direct interests.   Even then, they would easily turn their backs on their commitments and accords once their needs are met," Iranian state radio said.   Washington has called for the two Kurdish militias to make peace but the source said the Ankara meeting "was not a mediation effort".   A Turkey-based European Union representative is to meet Barzani in northern Iraq soon to ask him to protect aid workers.   Diplomats say the number of Kurds and their family members working for EU-subsidised aid agencies who have asked to leave the region is around to 6,000.   More than 2,000 pro-U.S. Kurds and their relatives fled Iraq to Turkey last week on their way to asylum in the United States. 
18342 !C42 !CCAT !E41 !ECAT !GCAT !GCRIM !GDIP !GJOB  The first boat hired to repatriate illegal foreign workers in the United Arab Emirates has set sail for India as an expatriate exodus continues ahead of a tough new immigration law, the Indian Association said on Thursday.   Embassies are flooded with applications for exit permits as tens of thousands of foreigners rush to leave the country by sea and air during a two-month amnesty period granted to illegal workers that expires on September 30.   The law, which comes into effect on October 1, imposes stiff penalties on illegal aliens or workers who violate labour laws.   "The first launch left yesterday with 200 people on board," said K.V. Shankar, the secretary general of the privately funded association in Dubai.   Originally five small, open-decked cargo boats had been hired to make the four-day trip across the Arabian Sea.   But after the first launch left on Wednesday, with a bucket as its toilet, the association pulled the plug.   "For humanitarian reasons there will be no more launches, but a ship holding 2,000 people is due to leave on September 28," said Shankar, whose group organised Wednesday's sailing.   "The boats were not in very good condition," said Shankar, adding: "It is torture travelling with the open deck, the toilets, everything."   Many illegal expatriates have been leaving the UAE by air for weeks, but no figures on their numbers are available.   Diplomats expect up to 200,000 expatriates will have left by the end of the August-September amnesty period, in which violators can legalise their stay or leave the country.   The UAE has said foreigners who do not have permits to reside in the emirates or who work for employers other than their sponsors -- a widespread practice -- would be severely penalised and deported.   The practice has always been illegal but the new law imposes harsher punishment.   From October 1, illegal workers and their employers face hefty fines and jail sentences if they are caught.   Foreigners, mostly from the Indian subcontinent but also from the Philippines and other southeast Asian states, make up 75 percent of the UAE's 2.4 million population.   UAE officials have said illegal aliens pose a security threat to the country.   But business executives and newspapers say the departure of large number of labourers could take its toll on businesses, which rely on low-paid foreign workers.   India's Ambassador, Murladhir Menon, said over 30,000 Indian nationals had applied for so-called "out-visas" and "the stream of people applying for these permits to leave is continuing".   But he said that because many could not afford the 800 dirham ($220) airfare, he had asked the Shipping Corporation of India to send boats to help bring the workers home.   Joseph Angeles, charge d'affaires at the Philippines Embassy in Abu Dhabi, said some 3,500 people had sought help from the embassy since the amnesty began, but said it could just be the tip of the iceberg.   "There might be a huge number of people who come in when the deadline draws nearer," he said. 
18343 !GCAT !GDEF !GDIP  U.S. ground troops belonging to a 3,000-strong force were deploying in Kuwait on Friday under orders to head into the desert with battle tanks close to the Iraqi border to deter threats by Baghdad.   "There are a lot of Kuwaitis who are going to sleep better tonight because the First Cav (U.S. Army 1st Cavalry Division) is here," said U.S. Ambassador to Kuwait Ryan Crocker.   "This is a tremendously important deployment for the Kuwaitis."   The first 230 of the U.S. troops arrived on Thursday in oil-rich Kuwait, where the United States has already deployed eight hi-tech Stealth bombers and Patriot launchers for fear of Iraqi Scud missile attacks against neighbours.   They are part of Washington's huge military build-up in the Gulf where the aircraft carrier USS Enterprise arrived on Thursday to join another carrier battle group.   Seven U.S. ships in the region are capable of firing Tomahawk cruise missiles.   The latest Iraq-U.S. confrontation erupted in late August when President Saddam Hussein's forces intervened to help a Kurdish faction in northern Iraq against a rival Kurdish group.   Washington retaliated by firing 44 cruise missiles at air defence targets in southern Iraq on September 3 and 4 -- a move which most 1991 Gulf War Arab allies failed to support, describing it as a violation of Iraq's sovereignty.   The U.S. troops are making the long flight to Kuwait from Texas on commercial aircraft equipped with chemical and biological warfare detectors, protective suits and masks.   "We are here to deter war...We are trying to send a signal and that signal (to Iraq) is 'We are ready'," U.S. Army Colonel Robert Pollard told reporters on Thursday night.   He flew in with the first batch of soldiers.   A second flight was expected in Kuwait late on Thursday night with the rest of the 3,000 arriving over the next few days, U.S. officers said.   The first contingent, some looking tired and jet-lagged, were to drive 28 U.S. pre-positioned main battle tanks (MBT) and other military hardware stored at a facility in north Kuwait, Camp Doha, into the desert late on Thursday night.   Over the next few months, U.S. officers said, the troops will join 1,200 U.S. soldiers, who came to Kuwait before the current standoff erupted, in exercises just south of Iraq.   A total of 4,000 U.S. soldiers, including 150 women in combat support units, 1,600 MBTs, armoured fighting vehicles (AFV) and other heavy weaponry will take part in the war games.   If Washington orders more troops to come to Kuwait they will draw similar pre-positioned heavy armour from U.S. warships in the region and other storage facilities in Gulf Arab states.   The MBTs and AFVs are not air conditioned, a tropicalised specification which most Gulf Arab states include when ordering such hardware mainly from Western arms makers.   "They just asked how hot is this compared to Texas," Pollard said of the first question posed by arriving soldiers as they loaded their vehicles with hundreds of boxes of bottled water.   "God, I wish," said one soldier when asked if his M1A1 MBT was air-conditioned.   Some of the soldiers fought in the 1991 U.S.-led coalition which freed Kuwait of a seven-month Iraqi occupation.   Officers said the temperature inside MBTs and AFVs when in the desert reaches 65 degrees Celsius (150 Fahrenheit) in September.   Western diplomats said that without serious provocation from Baghdad the likelihood of a strike on Iraq was now slight.   "He (Saddam) continues to flex his muscles," said Kuwait-based Pollard.   "Therefore we have to continue to deploy our forces... First to keep the peace in the region, secondly to protect (U.S) national interests in the region." 
18344 !C24 !CCAT !GCAT !GENV  Control of aircraft noise and pollution will dictate airport development in future, an expert from Europe's Airports Council International (ACI) told a seminar in the Moroccan city of Casablanca on Thursday.   Dr Callum Thomas told the international meeting the airport industry faced increasing environmental pressures which would continue to mount and influence future development of airports around the world.   "This could in theory result in all travel between a number of major cities in Europe being made by TGV (high speed) trains and not aircraft...," Thomas, president of ACI's Swiss-based environment committee, told delegates.   "Environment is therefore seen as the key to future development," he said, adding: "Disturbance caused by aircraft noise is the single most important issue of concern to European airports.   "The standard of living amongst residents of Europe is very high with the result that their tolerance of noise is low and accordingly aircraft noise has created some of the most marked constraints upon airport development."   Some European airports had to close at night, with a further 50 having restrictions on their use then.   Other pollution, particularly in densely-populated Europe, included that of the air, water and soil, while airport waste management was becoming increasingly important.   He said "at least 18 European airports regularly measure air quality with a further eight planning monitoring programmes in the near future."   Pointing to costs involved, he said a $15 million drainage strategy had been recently completed at one British airport.   "Over 40 airports have or are about to undertake major surveys of waste management systems," he said.   Despite social and economic development coming from airport expansion, and increasing demands for air travel as people became more affluent, there was less tolerance of disturbance and pollution.   "This is a paradox which senior managers at major airports across Europe have to understand and resolve...," he added. 
18345 !GCAT !GVIO  The Israeli army, confirming reports from south Lebanon, said two of its soldiers were killed on Thursday in clashes with pro-Iranian Hizbollah guerrillas.   The announcement, held up for hours by the army pending notification of the dead soldiers' families, also said Israeli troops killed three Hizbollah gunmen.   "An Israeli army officer and a soldier were killed and eight wounded in encounters with Hizbollah terrorists this morning," the army said, giving the officer's rank as lieutenant.   "In the encounter, three Hizbollah terrorists were killed and numerous others were hit.   In response to the incident, Israeli aircraft attacked Hizbollah targets...to silence the source of mortars that fired at Israeli army and SLA positions in the western and eastern sectors of the security zone.   "The pilots reported good hits on their targets.   The planes returned safely to base."   It was the most serious attack against Israeli troops inside their border occupation zone since five soldiers were killed and six wounded in a Hizbollah attack on June 10. 
18346 !E12 !E51 !E512 !ECAT !GCAT !GDIP  Industry and Trade Minister Natan Sharansky said he doubted Israel and the Palestinians would agree to create West Bank and Gaza industrial parks in time for a Middle East conference planned for Cairo in November.   "That was the idea -- to have serious progress and a serious agreement before Cairo.   I don't think it's very realistic.   But if it is possible -- we will do our best," he told reporters.   U.S. Undersecretary of Commerce Stuart Eizenstat said last month he hoped the first of several industrial parks, aimed at creating Palestinian jobs at the border, would be set up between Gaza and Israel before the economic conference.   At a meeting in Washington in July, Sharansky and World Bank President James Wolfensohn agreed the three sides would hold discussions over three months to arrange for creating a park that could serve as a model for future parks.   The conference itself appears to be in doubt.   Egypt has linked holding the economic conference to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's right-wing government making progress towards peace with Syria and the Palestinians.   Sharansky, a former Soviet Jewish dissident, said one obstacle to progress was knowing who was his counterpart in the Palestinian Authority responsible for the industrial parks.   "You cannot discuss it forever between ourselves and the Americans and the World Bank.   At some moment there must be serious discussions with Palestinians," Sharansky said.   He said on the Israeli side the main questions were not economic at all.   "There are questions which have to be discussed and solved and first of all there is a security question, the question of legislation which is mainly between the Palestinian Authority and international bodies...and the question of what kind of infrastructure has to be brought from our side," he said. 
18347 !C13 !CCAT !E51 !E512 !ECAT !GCAT !GDIP  Iran has accused Iraq of hoisting the Iranian flag on its ships to smuggle goods in violation of United Nations sanctions, a newspaper said on Thursday.   The daily Kayhan quoted foreign ministry spokesman Mahmoud Mohammadi as saying Iraqi ships using the Iranian flag were smuggling goods on the Shatt al-Arab, a border river which Iran calls Arvand.   "We will not allow acts against international laws to be carried out under the flag of the Islamic Republic of Iran," Mohammadi was quoted as saying on Wednesday.   Iran last month denied a United States accusation that Iranian forces were collecting protection money to allow the illegal movement of Iraqi gasoil through Iranian Gulf waters.   The U.N. imposed sanctions on Iraq following its 1990 invasion of Kuwait.   Iran and Iraq fought an eight-year war from 1980 to 1988. 
18348 !GCAT !GODD  A Jordanian farmer has named his son after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu because the hardline premier shook the hand of Jordan's King Hussein, a newspaper said on Thursday.   Shihan Weekly said Ibrahim al-Abadi infuriated his wife and family by naming his baby Netanyahu al-Abadi, but said the proud father was not changing his mind.   "(Netanyahu) is an honourable guy because he put his hand in Abu Abdullah's (King Hussein's)," Abadi told the paper.   "It's not the lack of Arabic names but my love of King Hussein which led me to choose this name."   Shihan said Abadi first heard about the birth of his son on August 5 as Netanyahu was flying back to Israel after meeting King Hussein.   He rushed home, muttering "Welcome Netanyahu" as he hugged his newborn.   When relatives asked what he meant he said the baby would be named after Jordan's "friend and guest, Netanyahu."   Jordan officially ended 46 years of war with Israel in 1994 when King Hussein signed a peace treaty with former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.   But few Jordanians share Abadi's enthusiasm for peace with the Jewish state.   A Jordanian who named his son after Rabin following his assassination last year ended up fleeing to Israel to escape what he called a smear campaign in the Jordanian media.   Netanyahu, blamed by Arabs for grinding Middle East peace talks to a halt, is likely to prove even less popular a name.   Netanyahu in Hebrew means "given by God".   Abadi's wife complained that he rushed to register the baby's name without telling her.   The baby's aunt withheld a traditional christening gift, and his grandmother begged that he be given "anything but this Zionist name", the paper said.   Local reporters who tried to track the baby down in a town outside Amman said they were kept away by angry neighbours.   One relative said he thought he saw a growing resemblance between "Jordan's first Netanyahu" and his older namesake.   "He is always agitated...and since his birth he hasn't smiled once," Shihan quoted his uncle as saying. 
18349 !GCAT !GDIP  Sweden will reopen its Beirut embassy in November after it was closed for 16 years due to Lebanon's 1975-1990 civil war, a Swedish envoy said on Thursday.   "The government of my country has decided to reopen its embassy in Beirut as of coming November," Damascus-based Swedish ambassador in Lebanon Jan Norlander was quoted as saying by Lebanon's official National News Agency.   In July 1995, Australia reopened its Beirut embassy after an 11-year gap. 
18350 !C13 !CCAT !GCAT !GPOL !GVIO  Jordan's Islamist opposition party accused the government on Thursday of violating free speech by arresting the editor of a weekly pro-Islamic magazine.   Deputy Bassam al-Amoush, a senior member of the Islamic Action Front (IAF), said in a statement that the arrest of Hilmi al-Asmar, editor of the political weekly Al-Sabil, late on Wednesday was a "threat to freedom of expression" and called for his immediate release.   Officials were not immediately available to comment.   Amoush did not give say why Asmar was arrested but other Islamist sources linked his arrest to a published article accusing the intelligence services of torturing a supporter of the Moslem militant movement Hamas.   "Hilmi al-Asmar was arrested by the intelligence for publishing the story of a Jordanian sympathiser of Hamas who was arrested and tortured at their hands," an Islamist official, who requested anonymity, told Reuters.   Al-Sabil alleged in its last Tuesday issue's front page that the unnamed man was "physically and mentally tortured," adding that this disproved repeated government statements denying torture in the kingdom.   The Islamic Action Front (IAF), which holds 16 seats in Jordan's 80-seat parliament, had earlier protested the arrest of the Hamas sympathiser, named as Essam Najjar, saying he was summoned by officials on August 31 and held for weeks before the intervention of two IAF parliamentarians.   The weekly newspaper repeated IAF allegations that Najjar was beaten on the stomach, throat and on the soles of his feet and guards cursed him and wiped excrement in his face.   Jordan denies that it has any official Hamas representation on its territory but many Jordanians have strong sympathies with Hamas and see it as a symbol of opposition to Israel. 
18351 !ECAT !GCAT !GDIP  Most of the Egyptian cabinet met on Thursday to prepare for the Middle East economic summit in Cairo in November, in a gesture publicised to show that Egypt still has hope that the conference will take place.   Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak has linked the fate of the summit to progress towards Middle East peace, saying it will be irrelevant if Israel does not do more to satisfy the Palestinians and the Syrians in peace talks.   Egyptian Information Minister and government spokesman Safwat el-Sherif, speaking to reporters after the ministerial meeting, noted that Mubarak has said that he is keen to see the conference take place but that the atmosphere must be right.   He said the meeting discussed some of the projects on the agenda for the conference, which is meant to integrate Israel into the regional economy.   They include 52 Egyptian-sponsored projects worth a total of $16 billion, he said.   The conference, which follows similar gatherings in Casablanca in 1994 and Amman in 1995, is meant to take place from November 12 to 14, with 85 states and more than 25 international organisations taking part.   The World Economic Forum is the main organiser. 
18352 !E51 !ECAT !G15 !G158 !GCAT !GDIP  Turkey slammed on Thursday a European Parliament decision to freeze European Union aid to Ankara worth hundreds of millions of dollars because of its shaky human rights record.   "I would like to strongly condemn the decision that the European parliament took today, because this decision expresses a completely biased point of view," Foreign Minister Tansu Ciller told reporters.   "Turkey has made serious progress in human rights in the past two years of its own free will," Ciller said.   "Those who expect us to act according to Europe's biased ideas are mistaken."   Euro-MPs said in a resolution they would freeze European Union aid destined for Turkey next month when they begin discussions on the 1997 EU budget.   The budget must have parliamentary approval.   Thursday's call renewed the parliament's war of words with Turkey.   Last year the assembly threatened to thwart a customs union between Ankara and the 15-nation EU.   "Since the establishment of the (EU-Turkey) customs union, the human rights situation in Turkey has noticeably deteriorated and no appreciable progress has been made towards democratisation," the parliament said in a resolution.   Deputies added that since January 1996, when the customs deal came into force, Turkey had fomented tension by actions such as "provocations in the Aegean Sea and Cyprus and aggression in northern Iraq".   The parliament approved the creation of the customs union last December only after Turkey had given explicit guarantees that it would take positive action on human rights, democratisation, Cyprus and the plight of Kurds.   Ciller said the foreign ministry and the justice ministry would soon begin work on new human rights projects, but she did not elaborate.   Parliament wants all EU aid to Turkey to stop immediately, bar funding for projects to promote democracy and respect for human rights.   The EU plans to set aside 375 million Ecus ($470 million) between 1996 and 2000 to help Turkey implement the customs pact.   Turkey is also eligible for substantial financing from the EU's MEDA programme, through which 410 million Ecus have been earmarked for the bloc's Mediterranean neighbours in 1996.   The EU could allocate as much as 842 million Ecus to this group of countries in 1997.   ($1 = 0.80 Ecu) 
18353 !GCAT !GPOL !GVOTE  Seven losing opposition candidates in Lebanon's parliamentary polls, citing vote-rigging and abuses by pro-government candidates, have appealed to the high court to overturn their rivals' results and declare them winners.   The defeated candidates -- four Christians and three Moslems -- submitted their appeals to the Constitutional Council before the Wednesday midnight deadline set by the high court to accept appeals on the August 18 Mount Lebanon polls.   Pro-government candidates crushed the opposition in all five rounds of voting.   In Mount Lebanon, the first round of the elections, they won 32 out of 35 seats.   The 10-member council, created last year gives for the first time losing candidates the chance to appeal to an independent body.   The council's decisions cannot be appealed against. 
18354 !C13 !C17 !CCAT !GCAT !GPOL  Finance Minister Dan Meridor submitted to the parliamentary finance committee a proposal enabling banks to renew credit to debt-ridden Israel Aircraft Industries, the ministry said.   Under the accord the banks will reschedule $330 million in IAI debt for up to eight years and provide the state-owned company with $120 million in new credit, part of which will be backed by government guarantees, the Treasury said.   At the same time the government will increase the company's equity by $122 million and the banks will release $180 million due IAI and frozen in closed accounts because of the company's debts.   The ministry did not say when the committee would vote on the accord.   "IAI is facing temporary difficulties in cash flow because negotiations with the banks over a debt accord has lasted over two years.   This is longer than expected," an IAI spokeswoman said.   The accord, hammered out between the government, banks and IAI, wiil enable the company to pay off its debts to local suppliers, the IAI spokeswoman said.   She would not disclose the size of the company's debts TO its suppliers.   - Tel Aviv newsroom, 972-3-537-2211 
18355 !GCAT !GDIP !GVIO  Israeli jets and gunners bombarded villages held by the pro-Iranian Hizbollah in south Lebanon after two Israeli soldiers were killed in an ambush on Thursday, witnesses said.   The bloody flare-up on the last active Arab-Israeli warfront coincided with a visit to the region by U.S. peace envoy Dennis Ross to help jump-start stalled Middle East peace talks.   The witnesses said Israeli jets fired 10 rockets in three raids into the Iqlim al-Toufah hill country used by Hizbollah (Party of God) guerrillas as a springboard for attacks on Israeli forces occupying a south Lebanon border zone.   There was no word on casualties in the raids.   The air strikes and concurrent artillery shelling began shortly after machinegun-firing Hizbollah fighters ambushed an Israeli patrol on the edge of the, killing two soldiers and wounding two others, pro-Israeli militia sources said.   It was the worst attack against Israeli troops in south Lebanon since five soldiers were killed and six wounded in a Hizbollah attack on June 10.   Thursday's casualties raised to 20 the number of Israeli soldiers killed by Hizbollah this year.   Hizbollah, which is fighting to oust Israeli troops from a 15-km (nine-mile) deep border occupation zone, said its fighters clashed with an Israeli force trying to advance out of the zone and into Iqlim al-Toufah near Sojoud village.   The pro-Israeli South Lebanon Army sources said guerrillas fired machineguns and anti-tank rockets on the patrol near Sojoud and Rihane villages shortly after a hail of mortar bombs fired by another group of fighters rained down on the Israelis.   Immediately after the ambush, Israeli gunners opened up with heavy artillery fire for hours into Hizbollah-controlled hills and villages in Iqlim al-Toufah, witnesses and SLA sources said, firing more than 800 shells in several hours.   At least 50 shells slammed inside the villages of Ain Bouswar and Jba'a, wounding a civilian woman in Jba'a who was hurt by flying debris, witnesses said.   Lebanese security sources said sporadic shelling on Iqlim al-Toufah continued in the late afternoon and said the Israelis also lobbed shells near villages north of another sector of the border zone running from Mount Hermon to the Mediterranean.   The fresh shelling followed a mortar bomb attack by Hizbollah fighters against a fortified Israeli army outpost at Braachit.   No casualties were reported in that assault.   Hizbollah fighters responded to the earlier bombardment and air strikes with mortar bombs into the zone and fired at least two shoulder-held SAM-7 rockets at the attacking jets, which targeted mainly rugged mountain hideouts and roads.   The Israeli army comfirmed two air strikes, saying that some of the Hizbollah targets hit in Jabal Safi in Iqlim al-Toufah "served as firing positions for terrorists".   A Hizbollah spokesman in Beirut charged that Israel's targeting of villages and wounding of a civilian woman was a breach of the U.S.-brokered ceasefire agreement that ended a 17-day Israeli blitz on Lebanon in April.   A senior foreign ministry official in Beirut told Reuters that Lebanon was planning to file a complaint over the Israeli shelling of civilian areas to a five-nation committee monitoring the ceasefire agreement in south Lebanon.   Thursday's fighting came a day after Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri said increased Israeli military action in south Lebanon was unlikely.   Some 200 Lebanese, mostly civilians, were killed in Israel's bloody 17-day blitz against Hizbollah guerrillas after tit-for-tat bombardments of civilian areas by the two sides.   The ceasefire agreement barred both sides from targeting civilian areas but allowed guerrilla raids on Israeli forces. 
18356 !GCAT !GDIP !GVIO  Iranian state radio on Thursday warned an Iraq-backed Kurdish group against seeking U.S. support, saying Washington was more unreliable than Baghdad.   "The (Kurdistan) Democratic Party (KDP), which caused its present troubles by relying on Iraq, is trying now to seek the support of America which is even less trustworthy," Tehran radio said in a political commentary.   It was referring to talks between KDP leader Massoud Barzani and senior U.S. diplomat Robert Pelletreau on Wednesday in Turkey.   "One should be aware that the Americans would interfere in the Kurdistan region only if they have direct interests.   Even then, they would easily turn their backs on their commitments and accords once their needs are met," the radio said.   The radio said the KDP was isolated among Kurds because of its cooperation with Baghdad and faced the prospect of its opponents building a wide coalition against it.   The KDP joined with Iraqi forces in late August to capture the Kurdish capital, Arbil, from the rival Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK).   Iran has blasted U.S. diplomatic moves in northern Iraq, saying the area's problems should be solved by regional states.   Tehran has denied backing the PUK which lost control of much of northern Iraq in the recent fighting.   Baghdad said that its attack on Arbil, which drew U.S. missile strikes on Iraq, was aimed at backing the KDP against the PUK and Iran. 
18357 !E21 !E211 !ECAT !GCAT !GPOL !GWELF  The Clinton administration Thursday unexpectedly rescinded a controversial waiver that would have let the District of Columbia bypass a five-year limit on benefits under a new welfare reform law.   Officials at the Department of Health and Human Services insisted they had been forced to withdraw the waiver after discovering the District had not met technical requirements.   But Republicans, angry about President Clinton's decision to grant the waiver just three days before he signed the sweeping welfare measure, had threatened to bring legislation to the floor of Congress to overturn it.   The welfare law, signed by Clinton last month, ends a six-decade federal guarantee of aid, limits most benefits to five years and requires recipients to work after two years.   It gives states block grants to design their own welfare systems.   "I think on further reflection they (the administration) probably determined that it wasn't a very good idea for several reasons," said Florida Republican Rep. Clay Shaw, a main author of the welfare measure.   "It was sort of an 'in your face' to the Congress: after we passed the bill and before the president signed it they let the District of Columbia opt out of the work provisions for 10 years, absolutely gutting the bill," he said.   Michael Kharfen, a spokeman for the HHS, said that after reviewing the waiver, officials discovered the District had not complied with a requirement for a public comment period.   He said the decision was not a response to Republican complaints, adding, "there's certainly been a lot of discussion about the D.C. waiver and we reviewed it again and then identified this flaw."   But in a one-sentence statement released through his press secretary, Washington Mayor Marion Barry said it was politics at work: "HHS succumbed to pressure from the Republicans on Capitol Hill."   More than half of the children in the District get some public aid.   The percentage of the population receiving welfare is one of the highest nationwide.   The 10-year waiver would have let the District exempt welfare recipients from the five-year limit on benefits if they were trying to find work and could not.   At the insistence of Republicans, states with waivers already in place were allowed to continue running their welfare programs under the new law.   Shaw said Republicans will take a close look at the other waivers.   The law already allows states to exempt up to 20 percent of their population from the time limit.   Unlike a majority of states, the District had not moved aggressively before the law was passed to implement a welfare reform plan.   It submitted a waiver in August, which was granted by the administration in a matter of days.   There is concern that the District may become a magnet for welfare recipients as nearby states like Virginia and Maryland pass tough welfare reform plans.   Because the new law provides block grants, rather than automatically increasing funding when case loads rise, that could spell problems for the financially strapped District. 
18358 !GCAT !GPOL !GVOTE  Republican presidential candidate Bob Dole, unruffled by either a tumble from a campaign stage or polls showing him trailing President Bill Clinton, said on Thursday he was confident of rebounding to win the election.   "The bottom line is, we're going to win the election.   You've got to have confidence," Dole told a meeting of U.S. newspaper editors, where he had been asked his assessment of the state of the campaign.   This comment came after Dole sought to enlist the news media in his fight against drugs and crime.   Dole said the media needed to focus more on the personal implications and pervasive extent of drug abuse.   "I believe that some in the news media are missing a very important story," Dole said.   "It is my view that soaring teen drug abuse and resurgence of a drug culture is one of the important news stories of our times."   "When you tell the story of drug use, bringing us ... into emergency rooms and schools and shooting galleries, it's not just good journalism, it's genuine community service," he said.   Dole's speech continued an anti-drug theme he began to promote heavily on Monday, and sharpened on Wednesday with criticism of the entertainment industry for what he said was a glamorization of drug use.   But he also told the editors group he aimed to make trade policy a theme of his campaigning next week.   "Next week we'll talk about the seven-point trade policy," Dole said.   Dole took a couple of questions from the group, a relatively rare event for a candidate who has shied away from press conferences.   He was asked about polls showing him behind Clinton and whether his message was getting through.   "Don't worry about all these polls you write about," he said.   "I think our message is getting out ... we have a good solid message."   "It could be down to the wire, unless we break it open here," he said.   Earlier on Thursday, at a rally in Las Vegas, Dole joked about his spill on Wednesday from a stage in Chico, Calif.   "Don't be afraid of standing close to the stage.   I'm not going to dive off today," Dole quipped as he addressed a rally at a ballroom in the MGM Grand casino hotel.   In Chico, a piece of decorative stage railing, which had not been nailed down, had given way as the candidate leaned over to shake hands.   Dole bruised his eye in the incident, but was otherwise unhurt.   Witnesses said Dole was saved from far more serious injury by two wire-service photographers who broke his fall and caught the candidate's head as he landed face-up on the fallen railing. 
18359 !GCAT !GDEF !GDIP  Defence Secretary William Perry, aiming to honour a pledge to reduce the controversial U.S. military presence on Okinawa, said on Thursday his preferred solution was a floating airbase off the Japanese island.   After five hours of U.S.-Japan talks, Perry renewed the U.S. commitment to make a decision in November on relocating the Futenma airbase in southern Okinawa.   He joined Secretary of State Warren Christopher and their Japanese counterparts -- Foreign Minster Yukihiko Ikeda and Defence Minister Hideo Usui -- in formally launching a joint working group to explore three options for Futenma's future.   U.S. officials said the group would begin very soon to assess the technical feasibility of the three alternatives.   "The visionary in me hopes this floating facility will be the solution to the problem but I'm also an engineer and the engineer in me recognises there are difficult technical problems," Perry said.   Following the rape last year of an Okinawan schoolgirl by three American servicemen, a case that re-ignited protests against the presence of the U.S. military on the island, Okinawa Governor Masahide Ota refused to sign orders to renew leases for the facilities.   But in a visit to Tokyo in April, President Bill Clinton announced consolidations of bases on Okinawa that cut the area they occupy by about 20 percent.   Last Friday, Ota agreed to renew the leases for the bases on the island.   In a Sept. 8 referendum, Okinawans voted overwhelmingly for a further shrinking of the U.S. military presence, which is resented for noise, accidents and crime by U.S. troops.   The floating offshore facility is risky and would be difficult but has significant advantages, say U.S. officials.   The option would not require excavation and new building on Okinawa, which was "not a very large island (and) already bears a significant burden" of military bases, said Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defence Kurt Campbell.   He said Japan had studied the idea for months and the United States had also considered it.   Now the two sides would join efforts.   The goal is to "come up with an option that meets our operational requirements, but also meets as many of the needs and the desires of the Okinawan people as possible," he said.   He said fundamental work on the basic offshore platform technology was at an advanced stage.   "Probably the two leading countries in terms of developing this kind of technology had been the United States and Japan over the last 25 years ... This would be a new application, but it would be built on a firm basis of experience in the past," Campbell said.   Several models are being looked at.   The two other options include incorporating a helicopter port into Kadena air base and constructing a heliport at Camp Schwab, a marine training camp in nothern Okinawa.   Campbell said building a heliport in Kadena, also on Okinawa, would involve much construction and moving a large number of people to the base.   "We are a bit concerned that if we put too many things from Futenma into Kadena then we will create the preconditions for the surrounding communities to be dissatisfied with the congestion and the noise associated with increased operations," he said.   The United States is committed to the defence of Japan under a 1960 treaty.   Ikeda said the two sides agreed to deepen security cooperation between the two countries.   They are also looking at ways to work together in new missions, like peacekeeping and humanitarian efforts, officials said. 
18360 !GCAT !GDIP !GVIO  The deployment of U.S. ground troops to the Gulf reached full speed on Thursday as hundreds of soldiers flew out from the Fort Hood army base with sophisticated satellite and radar equipment.   More than 1,200 soldiers left on commercial jets and C-5 military cargo planes throughout Thursday and hundreds more were expected to leave early on Friday morning.   Defence officials said all 3,000 1st Cavalry Division soldiers being deployed to boost U.S. forces massed in the Gulf should be in Kuwait or on the way by Saturday.   Most of the tanks and heavy equipment to be used in the mission are already in place in Kuwait but the departing troops took key satellite communications gear with them.   Maintenance and medical units were also being deployed.   The first group of 219 soldiers arrived in Kuwait on Thursday after a 20-hour flight and were to deploy quickly at a desert exercise area about 25 miles (40 km) from the Iraqi border.   At Fort Hood, the departing soldiers held emotional farewells with their families before boarding planes.   Some were veterans of the 1991 Gulf War or previous training missions to Kuwait and were looking forward to going back.   "The mood is real good.   Soldiers go through this routine quite a bit, and the 1st Cavalry Division is certainly no stranger to the Kuwaiti desert," Lt. Col. Randy Schoel said.   "I'll tell you also they are humans.   There are certain anxieties there.   Although they look at it as a great training opportunity, they wonder if it will evolve to something else.   But they're not worried," he said.   About 1,200 ground troops were already in Kuwait before the latest Gulf crisis began and they have stayed.   They and the new troops are formally providing training for Kuwaiti forces but could be used in any military action against Iraq.   It was Iraq's invasion of Kuwait that sparked the 1991 Gulf War.   Some soldiers' wives said on Wednesday that President Bill Clinton had not adequately explained the reasons behind the mission.   They said many family members wondered whether the deployment was dictated more by election-year politics than the needs of foreign policy.   Fort Hood is the U.S. Army's largest base.   It holds about 45,000 troops and lies just outside Killeen in central Texas, about 120 miles (190 km) south of Dallas.   The U.S. military launched cruise missile strikes against air defence facilities in southern Iraq two weeks ago after Iraq moved against Kurds in the north.   Clinton also ordered expansion of a no-fly zone excluding Iraqi warplanes in southern Iraq, saying his goal was to "keep Saddam Hussein in a box and limit his ability to threaten his neighbours." 
18361 !GCAT !GPOL !GVOTE  President Bill Clinton and Vice President Al Gore rumbled through the Pacific Northwest on a bus tour on Thursday, urging voters who helped give control of Congress to Republicans two years ago to throw them out on Election Day.   Increasingly confident of their chances of being re-elected Nov. 5, Clinton and Gore unleashed a litany of attacks on House Speaker Newt Gingrich in hopes their coattails will be long enough to give Congress back to Democrats.   Their message, from rain-slick Seattle to tiny roadside towns, was that Washington state voters who tossed Democrats out of six congressional seats in 1994, including then-House Speaker Thomas Foley, should look at what two years of Republican control had produced.   "Two years ago the state of Washington in this congressional district and others led the country in embracing Mr. Gingrich's Republican revolution," Clinton said in Yelm, where it seemed nearly all of the town's 2,000 residents were on hand to listen.   He said Gingrich told people his Contract With America "would make America a better place," but "then they shut the government down when we refused" to go along with their budget plans to slow the growth in spending for medical insurance plans for the poor, elderly and disabled.   Accusing Republicans of being arch-conservatives out of step with mainstream America, Clinton added: "When we said no to that, you knew that there was no revolution, that it was a reaction, and we didn't like it and we weren't going to put up with it."   To a large crowd in Centralia, he said: "Now folks, right here in Centralia, you're going to be looked to all over America.   People are going to ask, 'Did the people in Centralia, Washington, really vote for that Contract With America?'   They're going to be looking to you for answers."   Republican freshmen elected in 1994 showed signs of vulnerability in Washington's primary vote on Tuesday.   Clinton campaign officials saw the results as a possible sign Democrats will do well Nov. 5.   The 14-bus caravan led by Clinton and Gore and their wives, Hillary and Tipper, rolled from Seattle to Tacoma and beyond under low-hanging gray clouds.   It nosed through the mist, past big fir trees swathed in fog, until the sun finally shone brightly in Centralia.   They were headed south through western Washington state to the Oregon city of Portland, 175 miles (280 km) away.   It was the second bus tour of this campaign for Clinton and Gore, who made it a staple of their 1992 race.   Clinton has big leads over Republican Bob Dole in Washington and Oregon, two states he won in 1992, and White House officials say Dole is not challenging them there.   Big crowds turned out for the two leaders, including 20,000 who ignored a steady drizzle outside the Tacoma Dome exhibition hall.   Clinton told them that it had never rained on him during previous visits to this normally rainy area, but now that it had, "I can tell that you have finally accepted me as one of your own."   Hundreds lined the highway in rural communities and many people waved signs.   There was a festive mood among people who rarely get to see a president.   "Hey Bill, We Need A Sax Player," said one sign.   "Free Puppy For Chelsea," said another.   Near a development called Whitewater Estates, however, there was a more serious sign at the Calvary Baptist Church: "Even President Clinton Must Repent Or Perish."   In Yelm, the Clintons and Gores admired a children's choir who sang a song called, "It Takes A Village," named for Mrs. Clinton's controversial book about child-rearing.   Afterward, Clinton invited the group to sing at his second inauguration should he win re-election. 
18362 !C12 !CCAT !GCAT !GCRIM  A Texas jury decided in favour of Baxter International Inc. in lawsuits over breast implants which four women said left them with "silicone poisoning," lawyers and company officials said Thursday.   The Dallas County jury of six women and six men deliberated for nearly two days before returning Wednesday with a 10-2 decision in favour of the company, a unit of Baxter International Inc.   The four plaintiffs, whose cases were consolidated for the four-week Dallas trial, underwent implant surgery between 1977 and 1981.   All said their implants later ruptured and had to be removed.   They alleged they have "silicone poisoning" and suffer from fatigue, joint pain, rashes and muscle aches.   The jury rejected those claims after reviewing the women's medical records during deliberations.   Baxter has never made or sold breast implants but its alleged liability stemmed from its 1985 merger with American Hospital Supply Corp, which once owned implant manufacturer Heyer-Schulte Co.   Heyer-Schulte no longer exists.   Plaintiffs' attorney Zoe Littlepage said she and her four clients were disappointed by the verdict.   She told jurors during the trial that the women were given implants without adequate testing.   "The truth is that breast implants are harmful," she said.   "This company made these four women an experiment."   Thousands of women have sued Baxter and other silicone breast implant makers, saying the implants led to connective tissue diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis.   A settlement was reached in a class-action lawsuit involving hundreds of thousands of women last fall, but many recipients dropped out to file individual lawsuits.   Baxter, which is based in Deerfield, Ill., said in a statement it has won 20 breast implant verdicts and lost two.   Of those two, one is on appeal and Baxter was granted a new trial in the other.   Two other cases have ended in mistrial.   The Dallas jury in the four-week trial decided that breast implants made by Heyer-Schulte were properly manufactured, designed, tested and inspected and that adequate warnings about the products were given. 
18363 !GCAT !GCRIM  A man angry about the outcome of a worker's compensation case shot two people and held hostages at a law office Thursday, police and a friend of the gunman said.   Police found the gunman dead when they entered the offices 4-1/2 hours after the standoff began.   Investigators believe he took his own life, said West Palm Beach Assistant Police Chief Rick Bradshaw.   A lawyer with the firm was wounded and another employee, believed to be a lawyer, was killed when the gunman opened fire, police said.   The incident began when the gunman entered the law firm of Donaldson, Danielson, Pumpian, Clark and Ford, which specialises in worker's compensation cases, police said.   Authorities cordoned off a half-mile area around the scene and SWAT team members staked out the building as negotiators tried to talk the man out.   The gunman was "upset over an issue that he was discussing with these individuals, and once inside the confrontation took place and that's when he decided he was going to shoot some people," Bradshaw said.   The gunman allowed two members of the law firm to carry the wounded lawyer, Art Pumpian, from the building, according to police.   He was taken to St. Mary's Hospital for treatment of an arm wound.   A man who said he was a close friend of the gunman said the man had been injured while working at a condominium complex and had gone to the law offices because he was unhappy with the outcome of his worker's compensation case. 
18364 !GCAT !GDIP !GVIO  Secretary of State Warren Christopher on Thursday urged "all parties" to avoid further provocative action following an incident in which South Korean troops killed seven North Koreans who came ashore from a submarine.   "We wish that all parties would refrain from taking further provocative actions," Christopher told a news conference after talks involving U.S. and Japanese foreign and defence ministers.   Asked if the incident could affect efforts to provide Pyongyang with nuclear technology and humanitarian aid, he added: "Obviously the episode is a matter of concern but the facts are so murky ... it's impossible to assess" what the long-term impact of the incident might be.   Christopher seemed to be cautioning both North Korea and South Korea from doing anything which might further inflame tensions on the Korean peninsula.   But later, State Department spokesman Nicholas Burns told reporters Christopher did not intend to criticise Seoul but only meant to warn Pyongyang against further provocations.   "The secretary was certainly referring to North Korea," the spokesman insisted.   "And it's very clear, I think, that North Korea is the provocative party here, clear to the secretary and the rest of us, and that's the way it is."   Burns called the incident "bizarre" and said "the fact that the submarine was where it was is provocative."   South Korean troops were reported on Thursday to have killed seven North Koreans who were among an estimated 20 who came ashore on a beach in the Kangnung area of South Korea from a submarine on Wednesday.   Eleven died in an apparent mass suicide, and one was captured after a manhunt by thousands of troops and police, authorities in Seoul said.   One more is still on the loose.   "We do not disapprove of their actions in defending their territory," said Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Charles Kartman, referring to South Korea.   South Korean President Kim Young-sam declared the submarine intrusion an act of military provocation.   But Pyongyang was unrepentant and refused to accept a protest note from the U.S.-led United Nations Command in South Korea on the heavily fortified border.   The U.N. Command was the supreme headquarters for international and South Korean forces which repelled North Korean invaders in the 1950-53 Korean War.   It now helps supervise the armistice that ended the war.   Christopher and other U.S. officials said they were eager for more information on the incident and had confidence in the ability of their ally, South Korea, to determine the facts.   Japanese Foreign Minister Yukihiko Ikeda, at the news conference with Christopher, said he shared the U.S. secretary's views on the incident.   Japan and South Korea have joined with the United States to implement a U.S.-negotiated deal under which North Korea would receive $4 billion in new nuclear energy technology in return for Pyonyang freezing its nuclear programme.   All three countries have also responded in recent months to North Korea's appeals for international food aid to cope with shortages exacerbated by devastating floods. 
18365 !GCAT !GDEF !GVIO  In a growing military controversy, the Pentagon said on Thursday it was notifying 5,000 more U.S. Gulf War troops that they may have been exposed to chemical weapons in the destruction of an Iraqi ammunition dump.   The announcement vastly expanded the search for possible victims after the military said in June only 150 U.S. troops could have suffered exposure as they destroyed the Kamisiyah ammunition depot in southern Iraq in March 1991.   Defence Department spokesman Ken Bacon denied on Thursday that the government was trying to cover up the incident, but conceded that the Pentagon might have to expand its search to include thousands of additional troops.   "There is a possibility that the number will grow," Bacon told reporters, while stressing that medical experts had found no illnesses among U.S. soldiers in the area forming a pattern consistent with exposure to chemical nerve agents such as Sarin.   "It is painful and yet ironic that we are being accused of a cover-up for information which we have released," he said when reporters complained that initial word of the new search was not released until 8:30 p.m.   Washington time on Wednesday after early deadlines for many newspapers and prime time television news shows had passed.   "I can't tell you about the past, but I can tell you that we are listening now," Bacon said of complaints from many Gulf War veterans that their illnesses had not been given adequate attention.   The new advisory said the expanded notifications were being made because deadly chemical nerve agents Sarin and Cyclosarin might have spread from 122mm rockets destroyed in a pit area of the big arms complex.   "The Defence Department will begin notifications immediately to about 5,000 service members who were in the possible dispersion area," the announcement said.   "Information currently being evaluated suggests low-level exposures may have taken place out to 25 kilometres (15 miles) from the Kamisiyah complex on March 10, 1991."   Initial reports in June indicated that only a small number of troops from a U.S. engineering battalion were involved in destroying weapons in a bunker, but the new report included the pit several kilometres from the bunker.   Bacon said he could not confirm reports that thousands of troops from the 24th Infantry Division might have been in the region at the time.   The U.S. government, on orders from President Bill Clinton, last year mounted a major effort to resolve medical complaints from as many as 60,000 U.S. Gulf War veterans.   The complaints range from numbness to memory loss, but no common cause or "Gulf War syndrome" has been found.   The Defence Department and the Central Intelligence Agency are already working on a computer model that will estimate the possible dispersion of the chemical agents to troops that may have been anywhere near the Kamisiyah complex.   The Pentagon denied last month that it intentionally quashed a 1991 classified report suggesting that U.S. troops were exposed to Iraqi chemical weapons.   But it conceded that "the full relevance of the report ... was not recognised at the time" and it was not investigated until this year, providing indications that perhaps 150 soldiers were exposed to chemical agents when they blew up the Kamisiyah site.   Defence Secretary William Perry said the secret document was circulated within the government and to U.S. military officials at the time.   But the document, based on a visit by U.N. inspectors to Kamisiyah in 1991, was not provided to the U.S. engineer battalion involved or to the public.   The report was circulated to U.S. military commanders worldwide and then filed away even as the Defence Department repeatedly suggested it had no evidence that large numbers of U.S. troops might have been exposed to chemical arms. 
18366 !GCAT !GDIP  Secretary of State Warren Christopher on Thursday urged North and South Korea to avoid further provocative action following an incident in which Seoul troops killed seven North Koreans who came ashore from a submarine.   "We wish that all parties would refrain from taking further provocative actions," Christopher told a news conference after talks involving U.S. and Japanese foreign and defence ministers.   Asked if the incident could affect efforts to provide Pyongyang with nuclear technology and humanitarian aid, he added: "Obviously the episode is a matter of concern but the facts are so murky ... it's impossible to assess" what the long-term impact of the incident might be.   Later, State Department spokesman Nicholas Burns said Christopher did not intend to criticise South Korea but only meant to warn North Korea of further provocations.   "The secretary was certainly referring to North Korea," the spokesman insisted.   South Korean troops killed seven North Koreans on Thursday as one of the deadliest infiltration dramas since the start of the Cold War drew to a close in a hail of bullets.   They were among an estimated 20 North Koreans who came ashore on a beach from a submarine on Wednesday, authorities in Seoul said.   Eleven died in an apparent mass suicide, and one was captured after a manhunt by thousands of troops and police.   One more is still on the loose.   South Korean troops mounted a massive manhunt for the North Koreans who landed after their submarine went aground on a beach south of the border between the two hostile states.   A taxi driver spotted the submarine stranded on some rocks.   South Korean President Kim Young-sam declared the submarine intrusion an act of military provocation, but Pyongyang was unrepentant and refused to accept a protest note on the heavily fortified border. 
18367 !C13 !C21 !CCAT !E21 !E211 !ECAT !GCAT !GHEA  Congressional leaders agreed Thursday on two important health care reforms to expand insurance coverage for mental health and allow new mothers to stay in the hospital at least 48 hours after childbirth.   The reforms will put an end nationwide to "drive-through deliveries"-- hospitals that force women to leave with their infants sometimes as soon as 10 hours after a normal delivery.   The two health insurance changes are to be added to a must-pass spending bill providing money for federal housing programmes, veterans' health care, environmental protection and space research.   Both will take effect Jan. 1, 1998.   "This bill will require insurance companies to allow up to 48 hours when women go to the hospital for a normal birth and 96 hours in the hospital for women who have a Caesarean section," said Sen. Bill Bradley, a sponsor of the maternal health insurance reform.   To cut costs in recent years many insurance plans limited coverage to 24 hours or even less for a normal birth and 48 hours for a Caesarean-section.   Women and doctors protested that not all women were ready to be discharged so quickly.   Bradley credited a unified front of outraged doctors and the public with forcing Congress to accept the change.   The insurance industry was divided on the issue with major health plans such as Kaiser Permanente supporting the change.   The New Jersey Democrat said he received 84,000 letters on the issue.   The expansion of mental health coverage was expected to benefit 75 million Americans with group health insurance and those covered by government-funded Medicaid.   While health plans will not be required to cover mental illness, those that do will no longer be permitted to set lower maximum payment amounts for mental health treatment.   If the health plan has no lifetime limit on physical care, none will be permitted on mental health care.   The compromise exempts companies with 50 or fewer employees, rather than 25 or fewer employees as sponsors had wanted.   Democratic Sen. Paul Wellstone of Minnesota and Republican Sen. Pete Domenici of New Mexico fought side-by-side for the mental health changes.   Wellstone told reporters it would raise premiums by only a fraction of a percent.   Both provisions passed the Senate with broad bipartisan support but had not cleared the House, where Democrats this week forced a non-binding vote endorsing the Senate plan.   Some Republicans in the House said Thursday they would seek to change both next year, but as one Democratic Senate aide pointed out, President Clinton would not sign into law any bill rolling back either provision.   A third health issue remained unresolved.   The Senate had sought to provide veterans' health benefits to children born with the birth defect spina bifida.   There have been studies linking the defect to Agent Orange exposure of fathers who served in Vietnam. 
18368 !E51 !E512 !ECAT !GCAT !GENV !GPOL !GSCI  President Bill Clinton, Vice President Al Gore and their wives hit the highway on Thursday with a Pacific Northwest bus tour emphasising environmental protection, Pacific trade and space exploration.   A 14-bus caravan led by Clinton and Gore rolled out of Seattle under low-hanging gray clouds and nosed through the mist, past trees swathed in fog, to Tacoma for the first in a series of campaign rallies aimed at buttressing their re-election bid in this region.   A crowd of about 20,000 people wearing rain gear braved the weather to gather outside the Tacoma Dome exhibition hall.   The White House duo emphasised two themes of central interest to the Pacific Northwest -- protecting the environment from Republican budget-cutters and expanding trade with the Asia-Pacific region.   "They want the lobbyists for the polluters to rewrite the environmental laws, but we won't let them," Gore said of Republicans.   Clinton believes he has burnished his record on the environment after getting mixed reviews earlier in his term.   He reminded the crowd that just Wednesday he signed a proclamation declaring 1.7 million acres in southern Utah a national monument free from coal mining.   Agreements to protect salmon and old-growth forests in the Northwest have also been announced recently.   Even as America's trade deficit was reported this week to have expanded dramatically, Clinton expressed pride that this region was able to export everything from computer software and airplanes to apples.   On a new space policy under which America will emphasise space exploration by robots instead of people, Clinton said it would be good for space-related industries here.   He said an unmanned mission to Mars leaving in December would land next July 4.   He joked that that was the day on which the White House was blown up by space aliens in the popular summer movie "Independence Day."   "We thought we'd go visit them first to try to get around them blowing up the Capitol and the White House," he said.   Clinton, in side remarks to reporters, declined to take any advantage of the age issue raised by Republican Bob Dole's fall in Chico, California on Wednesday or his calling the Los Angeles Dodgers the Brooklyn Dodgers.   The Dodgers left Brooklyn in 1958.   "I hope he's OK," Clinton said of Dole.   "I understand he is."   On the Dodgers, Clinton said only, "I like Duke Snider and Pee Wee Reese," two of the team's star players when it was in Brooklyn.   The bus tour was billed as being "on the road to the 21st century," a Clinton campaign metaphor second only to the president's countless appeals to voters to help him "build a bridge" to the new century.   The day-long trip south through western Washington state to Portland, Oregon, 175 miles (280 km) away was the second bus tour of the campaign for Clinton and Gore, who made such trips a staple of their 1992 campaign.   Last month they toured parts of Illinois, Kentucky and Tennessee by bus.   Clinton has big leads over Dole in Washington and Oregon, two states he won in 1992, and White House officials say Dole seems to be conceding them to the Democratic incumbent since he is spending no noticeable advertising money there.   Clinton and Gore hoped to energise the campaigns of Democrats trying to gain seats in the U.S. House of Representatives.   Six Democratic seats were lost to Republicans in Washington state elections for the House two years ago. 
18369 !GCAT !GPOL !GSCI  The White House on Thursday unveiled a new national space policy that calls for sustained robotic exploration of Mars by the year 2000 and greater U.S. commercial involvement in extraterrestrial activity.   In Tacoma, Washington, where he was stumping for re-election, President Bill Clinton called it "the first new space policy since the end of the Cold War" and said it assured that the United States would "continue our leading role in space.   "We're going to continue to expand our knowledge of the universe.   In December, we're going to launch a long-planned robotic mission to the surface of Mars ... This will help us to determine whether and how and when we should send human missions there," Clinton said.   The policy was the product of a year-long review conducted by the National Science and Technology Council and National Security Council, and formally shelved a Bush-era plan to put an American on Mars by 2019.   Playing up its potential economic benefits to the Pacific Northwest, where Boeing Corp. and other high tech firms are big employers, Clinton said the policy would "tear down the barriers that block the development of our space industries.   "Boeing recently announced an innovative proposal to work with Russia, Ukraine and Norway to launch satellites at sea.   We're going to continue to move forward," he said.   Clinton said a third element of the policy, some details of which are secret, would "make sure we use space to protect our national security, to maintain our freedom, to monitor threats and compliance with our arms control treaties."   Its promulgation followed Clinton's announcement earlier this year that a team of scientists had found tantalizing evidence that primitive life once existed on Mars, and foreshadowed the launch of two U.S. probes to the red planet.   Mars Pathfinder, the project referred to by the president, is expected to touch down on Mars on July 4, 1997 and begin scouring the surface of the planet for signs of life.   Mars Global Surveyor, a mapping satellite that will begin orbiting the planet in March, 1998, transmitting high-resolution images of its topography back to Earth, is scheduled for a Nov. 6 launch.   At least eight more robotic probes are likely to follow, U.S. officials said.   The Clinton administration scrapped President George Bush's commitment to a manned mission to Mars because of cost -- an estimated $400 billion over 30 years -- and the belief that cheaper unmanned probes could achieve similar results.   "We think it's a great idea, but it's just not economically feasible," a White House official said of the Bush plan.   "We've testified to that (before Congress) about 15 times over the last three years."   The only manned operations the United States would conduct under the policy are space shuttle flights and the development of an international space station with other nations.   The official, who asked not to be identified, said the one ground-breaking element of the policy was its call for greater private-sector involvement in space activity.   "The policy seeks to stimulate private-sector investment by committing the U.S. government to purchase commercially available goods and services, and by offering stable and predictable access to federal space-related hardware," A White House statement said.   Clinton called on Aug. 7 for a bipartisan summit on the future of the U.S. space programme, and the White House said the policy was "an important milestone in the preparation for the summit."   Dr. Jack Gibbons, Clinton's science advisor, said defence aspects of the policy were also important.   "Our use of space is critical to preserving peace and supporting U.S. national security objectives," Gibbons said in a speech to the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics.   "That is why the policy establishes as key priorities the need to improve our military operations worldwide, monitor and respond to strategic military threats (and) monitor arms control and non-proliferation agreements." 
18370 !GCAT !GDEF !GDIP !GVIO  The head of the CIA said on Thursday the Kurdish faction that took control in northern Iraq with President Saddam Hussein's backing is now asking western allies for help in holding Saddam at bay.   Central Intelligence Agency Director John Deutch said Kurdistan Democratic Party leader Massoud Barzani "is now approaching the (anti-Iraq) coalition for protection in an effort to hold Saddam Hussein at arm's length."   Barzani and senior U.S. diplomat Robert Pelletreau met on Wednesday at a secret location in Ankara.   It was Barzani's first meeting with U.S. officials since he joined with Iraqi forces to defeat a rival Kurdish group earlier this month, undermining U.S. efforts to contain Saddam and prompting a confrontation between Washington and Baghdad.   "Barzani is playing an enormously dangerous game," Deutch told a hearing of the Senate Intelligence Committee.   He noted that after the 1991 Gulf War, when the Kurds gained territorial advances as Saddam's army was defeated by a U.S.-led coalition, "Saddam showed no reluctance to massacre Kurds and members of Barzani's family."   Deutch said that after Barzani's faction, the KDP, used Baghdad backing to beat its rivals, the Iranian-backed Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, in the mountainous northern region, Barzani feared becoming too dependent on Saddam.   "Saddam Hussein is putting increasing pressure on Barzani to negotiate a framework for autonomy under Baghdad's overall control," the CIA chief said.   He said the KDP controls nearly all of the Kurdish-populated northern part of Iraq, with only isolated pockets held by its rival, the PUK.   Before the Iraqi-backed KDP advance, the United States had tried to bring together the two Kurdish factions as a northern bulwark against Saddam.   The advance of the joint KDP-Iraqi force in the north devastated a network of international aid stations set up to help the Kurdish people as well as a U.S.-backed organisation that was working against Saddam.   More than 2,000 pro-U.S. Kurds and their relatives fled to Turkey last week on their way to asylum in the United States.   State Department spokesman Nicholas Burns said on Wednesday Barzani had been asked to stay clear of Saddam from now on.   "We don't see that the Iraqi Kurds can profit in the long term from an association with Saddam Hussein," he told reporters.   "In fact, on the contrary, we think that such a relationship would be detrimental."   Deutch said Saddam's military incursion into the North strengthened him politically in the region, even though allies have weakened him militarily since the 1991 Gulf War.   "On capabilities over the long term, he has gotten significantly weaker," Deutch said.   "In the last six weeks he has gotten stronger politically in the region."   When asked if Saddam might yet be toppled by his own people, Deutch said, "I cannot predict it in the near term."   Deutch said tensions with Iraq had eased.   The United States has bolstered its air and naval forces in the region after firing cruise missiles at Iraqi military targets two weeks ago and reporting missile attacks on its warplanes.   The CIA director said Iraq had not threatened allied planes enforcing northern and southern no-fly zones for several days, and mobile anti-aircraft missiles have been returned to their bases. 
18371 !GCAT !GPOL !GSCI  The White House on Thursday unveiled a U.S. space policy aimed at robot exploration of Mars and greater commercial involvement in extraterrestrial activity.   The revised policy was the product of a year-long review conducted by the National Science and Technology Council and National Security Council and formally shelved a Bush-era plan to put an American on Mars by 2019.   It followed President Bill Clinton's announcement this year that scientists had found tantalizing evidence that primitive life once existed on Mars and foreshadowed the launch of two U.S. probes to the red planet -- Mars Pathfinder and Mars Global Surveyor -- in November and December.   The United States will undertake "a sustained programme to support a robotic presence on the surface of Mars by year 2000 for the purposes of scientific research, exploration and technology development," the space policy statement said.   Mars Pathfinder is expected to land on Mars on July 4, 1997 and begin scouring the surface of the planet for signs of life.   It will be followed by Mars Global Surveyor, a mapping satellite that will begin orbiting the planet in March, 1998, transmitting high-resolution images of its topography to Earth.   At least eight more robotic probes are likely to follow, U.S. officials said.   The Clinton administration decided to scrap President George Bush's commitment to a manned mission because of the cost, an estimated $400 billion over 30 years, and the belief that cheaper unmanned probes could achieve similar results.   "We think it's a great idea but it's just not economically feasible," a White House official said of the Bush plan.   "We've testified to that (before Congress) about 15 times over the last three years."   The only manned operations the United States would conduct under the policy are space shuttle flights and the development of an international space station with other nations.   The official, who asked not to be identified, said the only new element of the policy was its call for greater private-sector involvement in space activity.   "The policy seeks to stimulate private sector investment by committing the U.S. government to purchase commercially available goods and services and by offering stable and predictable access to federal space-related hardware," A White House statement said.   Clinton called on Aug. 7 for a bipartisan summit meeting on the future of the U.S. space programme.   "The policy announced today is an important milestone in the preparation for the summit and will serve as the blueprint for future efforts to maintain a balanced and robust national space effort," the White House said.   Meanwhile, the Federal Aviation Administration on Thursday licensed what it called the world's first private commercial space launch facility to be located 150 miles (241 km) northwest of Los Angeles and called the California Spaceport.   The 106-acre (43 hectare) site is at Vandenberg Air Force Base and is leased from the Air Force by Spaceport Systems International, a limited partnership of ITT Corp and the California Commercial Spaceport Inc. 
18372 !GCAT !GPOL  Telephone records show that President Clinton's former political adviser Dick Morris was in regular contact with Senate Republican Leader Trent Lott, the New York Post reported Thursday.   "I talked to Dick Morris earlier this year," the Mississippi Republican told reporters when asked about the story.   "We talked about budget discussions, I think that's been common knowledge.   The president knew that."   "I don't think there's anything sinister about that.   In fact, I think this whole city would be better if we had a lot more communications between the Congress and the White House.   I just think that's the way to do business, lay it open."   Morris resigned in August after a supermarket tabloid reported he had had a year-long relationship with a call girl and had allowed her to listen to his phone conversations with Clinton.   The Post said Morris kept a back channel open with Lott even after he was reprimanded last February for leaking secret budget polling data to the presidential election campaign of Clinton's Republican opponent, Bob Dole.   Lott said he also talked to Morris about welfare reform and defended his calls.   "When people call, I try my very best to take their calls," he said, adding, "I might say I'm not sure I actually talked to him on all those calls."   He said he was "willing any time to talk to anybody in the adminstration, out of the administration, Democrats or Republicans or independent Americans," to solve deficit, budget and welfare problems.   The Post quoted an unidentified source familiar with telephone records from the Jefferson Hotel in Washington, where prostitute Sherry Rowlands said she visited Morris, as saying he called Lott at least 27 times between January and July.   "They pitched back and forth (proposals) from here when we were trying to get a budget," Lott's spokeswoman, Susan Irby, was quoted as saying.   She told the newspaper some of the calls might have been made to Lott's aides and not the senator.   By contrast, only one call was made to the Democratic Senate leader, Tom Daschle of South Dakota, the Post said. 
18373 !GCAT !GODD  In some parts, ants covered in chocolate are a culinary delicacy.   Donnie Tucker of Jacksonville, Ala., prefers his ants steamed like Lobster Thermidor.   Hold the butter.   Tucker is not out to tempt palates with his ant steamer, however.   The 49-year-old entrepreneur bills his invention as an environmentally friendly way of controlling one of the southeastern United States' most troublesome beasties -- the red fire ant.   "We're cooking them in the ground," says Tucker.   "I love killing them -- especially when you kill 100,000 at one time."   Tucker sold his plant nursery in 1995 to purchase Cherokee Manufacturing Inc., in Centre, Ala., where he has produced a dozen fire ant steamers.   The red machine is powered by a 12-volt battery charged by a kerosene burner.   It looks like an industrial-sized cappuccino maker on wheels.   Most people living in the Southeast and Puerto Rico where the ant is rife would agree with Tucker that the only good fire ant is a dead one.   A cousin of bees and hornets, the fire ant sting emits a painful formic acid and proteins that can produce a fatal allergic reaction in the unlucky few.   Alabama state Sen. Finis St. John died in 1984 from bites sustained while working on his Cullman County farm.   In addition, the ants' mounds, some a foot high, can damage hay mowers and other equipment.   Each year the ants do millions of dollars of damage to the agriculture industry, killing calves, chickens, even prize emus and ostriches that can cost their owners $10,000 each.   Both the red (solenopsis invicta) and black (solenopsis richten) fire ants arrived in the port of Mobile in 1918 as stowaways from South America, where disease and predators kept their numbers low.   The red ant hails from Grosso, Brazil, while the less ubiquitous black variety left behind relatives in Uruguay and Argentina in the 1930s.   Demonstrating his device on a mound in a neighbour's backyard, Tucker uses a metal probe to pump boiling hot water into the bowels of the ants' cavernous colony.   Larvae that look like grains of rice bubble to the top.   Several dozen female worker ants try to climb the probe to sting Tucker but the hot metal makes them hop off.   Because disturbing the mound tells the ants to move their immobile queen, "you try to go right down to the bottom and fill it up as quickly as possible," says Tucker.   "If the mound is rebuilt within two days, we know we didn't get the queen."   A few days later, workers are still stacking thousands of their dead cohorts in piles on the top of the mound, now a mere sinkhole.   Similar piles of ant corpses reveal other previously hidden entrances to the colony.   The patent for the steam method of killing ants was actually obtained by a Kentucky man in 1994.   Tucker heard about the process from his uncle Zack Taylor, who built a prototype machine.   In December 1995, Tucker and business partner John Dorsett made improvements on the device and signed a licensing agreement so they could begin offering Zacks's Fire Ant Control System.   Tucker and Dorsett don't consider the ants their main enemies in this project.   They're more concerned about their business rivals -- manufacturers of fire ant pesticides.   "We're taking on the wealth of the world, the chemical people," says Dorsett.   He hopes people will see the device as an environmentally safe alternative to chemicals, which can kill birds, crabs and other wildlife along with the ants.   Though the two industrial models will cost about $2,500, Tucker plans to offer a $400 version that a homeowner can store right next to the backyard grill.   Steve Hill, with the United Industries Corp. in St. Louis, which manufactures Spectricide fire-ant pesticide, said his business was yet not running scared from the steamer.   "It sounds a little far-fetched.   It sounds too unwieldy and too expensive for the average Joe," Hill said. 
18374 !C42 !CCAT !E41 !ECAT !GCAT !GJOB !GPOL !GWELF  Gov. George Pataki of New York on Thursday predicted the state would meet new federal requirements on putting welfare recipients to work, adding the state could reap as much as $120 million extra through early planning.   New York is already two-thirds of the way toward full compliance with the new federal rules, which require an average of 25 percent of those receiving welfare benefits to hold jobs or be enrolled in a work program during the first year of the program.    In prepared remarks, Pataki said New York was "already well within range of the first year's federal work goals."   While noting his administation had cut the state's welfare rolls by 200,000 people, Pataki warned that the new federal rules become stricter in subsequent years.   "But more must be done in the area of welfare to work.   Work requirements for the second and subsequent years, as dictated by the federal legislation, become even more stringent," he said.    By meeting the first year's goals, the state expects to maximize a $2.4 billion block grant from the federal government and avoid penalties, which could amount to more than $100 million in the first year.   The state also should receive extra funds because its welfare rolls have fallen since 1995, which is the base to be used to determine benefits.   The states must submit their welfare reform plans to Washington by July 1, Pataki said.   For each month a state's plan is in place before the deadline, it could reap a $20 million benefit, he said. 
18375 !E21 !E212 !ECAT !GCAT !GCRIM !GENV !GPOL  A lawyer who has filed a number of suits against New York state on Thursday told reporters he had filed suit in state supreme court to stop a $1.75 billion environmental bond act.   Robert Schultz, who is president of the All County Taxpayers Association, said he was asking the court to declare parts of the act unconstitutional and strike it from the November 5 ballot.   Noting the act was billed as a way to raise money to clean the state's air and water, he argued that as it raises funds for "multiple purposes" from protecting farmland to preserving historic sites, it violates state law.   New York's constitution law only allows for debt to be raised for one purpose, he said.   The lawyer, who has filed a number of suits against the state, also wants the court to stop two officials, who have taken leaves from their jobs with the Pataki Administration to campaign for the act, from doing so.   Mike McKeon, a spokesman for New York Gov. George Pataki, noted that Schultz failed to persuade the court to grant a temporary restraining order.   He forecast the lawyer would fail in the rest of his battle because the bond act and the Pataki Administration are not breaking any laws.   --Joan Gralla, 212-859-1654 
18376 !GCAT !GCRIM  America's first female chain gang hit Phoenix streets on Thursday, drawing curious glances from passers-by and protests from prisoners' rights groups.   Clad in bright orange jumpsuits and caps, 15 shackled women prisoners were taken from their jail cells and put to work cleaning up a rundown area of downtown Phoenix.   The chain gangs are the idea of Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, known for his hard-nosed tactics.   Arpaio introduced male chain gangs a year ago and says women inmates should get equal treatment.   "Why should they be any different?"   Arpaio said.   "I'm an equal opportunity incarcerator."   The women are to spend the next 30 days doing much the same things as they did on Thursday -- digging up weeds, raking lots and collecting trash for eight hours a day under the watchful eyes of county detention officers.   A handful of protesters stood nearby, carrying signs reading: "Prisoners should not be exploited for Joe Arpaio's ego."   People driving by stared at the sight.   "The only reason I'm doing this is to get out of lock down," said inmate Dana Stanley, 29, pausing for a drink of water.   "This isn't going to help me at all, or anyone else."   Under the programme, county inmates like Stanley can get out of so-called "lock down" -- where inmates who misbehave are placed -- by volunteering to be on the chain gang.   The alternative is spending virtually all day in a small, dark cell shared by three or four women.   Authorities said 34 of 50 such inmates volunteered to join the programme, which is limited to Maricopa County.   "I'm doing it, but I don't agree with it," said Stanley, who is in jail on prostitution charges.   "It's degrading."   Arpaio said he hopes to teach the women inmates and potential ones a lesson.   "What will the mother say to the daughters when they come home after seeing this?"   he asked.   "I'll tell you what: 'Never commit a crime.   See what happens if you do.   You may be on a chain gang.'"   The idea of putting women prisoners to work has proved controversial in Arizona and across the country, drawing sharp criticism from civil rights and prisoner advocates. 
18377 !C31 !C42 !CCAT !E41 !ECAT !GCAT !GJOB  The New York state transportation agency on Thursday promised that it would not have to raise fares due to a new labor pact, which also assures bus and subway workers that there will not be layoffs.   "With the agreement, the riding public will be assured of no fare increase for the remainder of the century, the Metropolitan Transporation Authority will have financial stability and union members will not face the prospects of layoffs," said the agency chairman in prepared remarks.   The state agency, which had been under severe pressure to cut costs, with estimates running as high as $350 million, also won the union's agreement to hire about 500 people who now are collecting welfare to clean buses and subways.   The agency, which has been considering privatizing some of its operations, will make room for these new workers through attrition, transfers, and promotions.   How the program will be put in place and how many welfare recipients eventually will be hired now must be worked out, but these talks are not expected to be difficult.   The Giuliani Administration is proud of its workfare program and the chairman said the mayor "vigorously supported" the agency's plan, according to Tom Kelly, an agency spokesman.   There was speculation that the agency might use its new contract as a model in its negotiations with its other unions, but it declined to disclose its strategy.   "We're not getting into that," the spokesman said.   While the transit workers contract had another year to run, they negotiated the new contract ahead of time, which expires on December 15, 1999, mainly due to the agency's cost-cutting drive.   Noting that his mother "needed welfare to survive," the president of the Transport Workers Union of America, Local 100, Willie James, said the contract was agreed one year early because of the workers' concerns about job security.   "...for the past year, this union and the 30,000 city transit workers we represent have been faced with constant threats of wholesale layoffs and privatization of our jobs," he said, in prepared remarks.   The new labor accord, which still must be approved by the union's approximately 30,000 members, would give them a one-time, lump sum payment of two percent in December 1997.   This would be follwed by a 3.75 percent general wage increase in November 1998.   For about two-thirds of the workers covered under a new pension plan, the state agency also pledged a one-percent contribution to the welfare benefit trust, which covers a range of items.   --Joan Gralla, 212-859-1654 
18378 !GCAT !GCRIM  Composer Andrew Lloyd Webber testified in Manhattan federal court on Thursday that he was irreperably harmed by a 1978 religous song he claims was stolen from his score for "Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat."   His testimony capped the hard-fought, six-year legal battle between the composer of "Cats" and "Jesus Christ Superstar" and Ray Repp, who developed the Catholic folk mass.   Repp sued Lloyd Webber in 1990, claiming that the theme from 1987's "Phantom of the Opera" was based on his song "Till You."   Repp lost that case, but Lloyd Webber proceeded with a counter-suit contending that "Till You" was stolen from the song "Close Every Door," written by Lloyd Webber and then-partner Tim Rice for "Joseph" in 1967.   LLoyd Webber sued for $500,000 in damages, but later records revealed "Till You" earned only $75 in the years the suit covers.   Repp's attorney William Coulson asked Lloyd Webber whether, as one of the most successful composers in the world, he had been "irreperably harmed" by the $75 song.   "Why, yes," Lloyd Webber responded.   Jane Stevens, lead trial attorney for Lloyd Webber, contends the case is over authorship, not money.   They no long are seeking damages, but want to forbid Repp from playing "Till You" in public.   Court records show Lloyd Webber's attorneys asked a Catholic priest who helped publish Repp's work if he was having a love affair with Repp.   Stevens defended the question as showing possible bias.   She also said she sent a private investigator to take pictures of the same priest's house to only determine his financial status.   But Coulson said the purpose was to intimidate his clients "to convince them to go away."   He said opposing attorneys offered to drop their case if Repp did not appeal his suit.   Lloyd Webber said he counter-sued on his lawyers' advice, but did not listen to "Till You" until 1992, a year later.   He said he was "struck immediately" by the similarities.   "Good heavens", he recalled having said after he heard a particular part of the song.   "That's the thing these three songs have in common." 
18379 !C12 !C41 !CCAT !GCAT !GCRIM  Pacific Telesis Group said a judge dismissed a class action suit charging it wrongfully terminated employees in its management downsizing program.   The company said the U.S. District Court for the northern district of California ruled the case, "Amus vs. Pacific" should not proceed as a class action and granted summary judgment to the company against all plaintiffs.   The company was not immediately available for further comment, but in a statement, senior counsel Mary Lu Christie said, "We're extremely pleased with this decision.   We believe that few companies have tried as hard as we have over the years to offer fair severance programs and other benefits designed to reduce the size of our work force."   Last week the company was granted summary judgment in state court in lawsuit that made similar charges.    The company said about 1,600 management jobs were eliminated as part of a late 1995/early 1996 restructuring and that about 25 percent of those employees found other jobs in the company.   It said the suit that was dismissed Thursday had been filed by about 60 former employees. 
18380 !C18 !C183 !CCAT !GCAT !GWELF  Experts Thursday touted the benefits to the Chilean financial system of the privatization of the nation's pension funds, and noted benefits similar privatization could have in the hemisphere's other economies.   Alvaro Clarke, a commercial engineer in the Chilean Ministry of Finance, told a Latin American Pension Funds conference that the nation's pre-privatization pension system was riddled with problems, including inefficiencies, poor service, a low rate of return on investments, and an inequitable distribution system in which some workers did not receive pensions.   Today, Chile's pension funds have assets of about $24 billion, or about 40 percent of GDP, holding about 10 percent of the nation's stock market.   "The pension funds are indisputably an important component of the financial system," he told the World Research Group conference.   Clarke noted Chile's government retains controls over the pension system, which is managed by private firms.   Among other things, the state guarantees a minimum pension and collective disability and survival insurance and dictates that funds be invested in a wide range of instruments.   "Diversification is the key," said Augusto Iglesias Palau, a senior partner at the consultancy PrimAmerica Ltda - Chile.   Experts cited the high return on investments of Chile's privatized pension system -- returns have average 13-14 percent per year for the past 14 years.   "In the past four years between '91 and '95, more than 60 pct of the growth of the funds corresponds to return on investment," Iglesias Palau said.   Chile's pension system has provided more money for investment in infrastructure development and increased the availability of funding for mortgages.   It has also stimulated private savings and boosted an overhaul of the national insurance system, the experts said.   But they cautioned that privatization should be undertaken carefully, with tight regulations to minimize the risks of corruption and said it is important that governments throw their weight behind privatization to encourage employee participation.   In Chile, the first workers who opted to participate in the new, privatized pension system was a 7 percent increase in their take-home pay, Iglesias Palau said.   Experts said they expected more Latin American nations would follow Chile's lead.   Among others, Argentina began a private pension system in 1995 and Colombia began one in 1993.   Privatization has also spread to Peru and Mexico. 
18381 !GCAT !GDIP !GVIO  The Clinton administration struggled again on Thursday to speak with a single voice on Iraq, with the CIA chief giving a contrasting view to the defence secretary on the success of the U.S. policy.   CIA Director John Deutch said Iraqi President Saddam Hussein had become politically stronger in the Gulf after his military advance in Kurdistan earlier this month and that the European allies were weary with the U.S. containment strategy.   Deutch told the Senate Intelligence Committee that although Saddam had been weakened militarily in a stand-off with U.S. forces, which included two attacks by U.S. cruise missiles, the Iraqi leader was boosted politically.   "On capabilities over the long term, he has gotten significantly weaker," Deutch said.   "In the last six weeks he has gotten stronger politically in the region."   On Tuesday Defence Secretary William Perry gave a different assessment.   On the U.S.-led coalition of European and Gulf states formed against Iraq in 1990, he said: "The bottom line ... is that the coalition is alive and well."   At a press briefing after talks with allied leaders on a trip to the Gulf and Europe, he said: "They offered complete agreement on the (U.S.) containment policy (of Iraq), which I described to them."   Perry and President Bill Clinton have called the U.S. policy, which has involved beefing up air, naval and ground forces in the Gulf and extension of a no-fly zone in southern Iraq, a success.   "We did the appropriate thing in the appropriate way and we've gotten the results that we sought," Clinton told reporters on Wednesday, saying the U.S. military actions had put Saddam in "a tighter box."   Deutch said in his testimony: "I think it is not possible to argue that he is not stronger today than he was six weeks ago -- and I think that is very bad."   White House spokesman Mike McCurry, travelling with Clinton on a campaign tour in Washington state, said Deutch's remarks did not conflict with Clinton's assessment.   "The president feels, and I believe director Deutch feels, that there has been a diminished military capacity on the part of Saddam Hussein," McCurry said.   He said Deutch had "indicated that he (Saddam) has over the last six weeks strengthened his political position in the region by exploiting factional divisions between the Kurdish population."   In his Senate testimony Deutch said Saddam was stronger politically because he had secured better contacts with Turkey, Washington's NATO ally to the north; because feuding among Kurds in northern Iraq had weakened that internal threat to his rule, and because the subsequent confrontation with the United States revealed "weariness among our European allies with the containment strategy."   The U.S. response to Iraq had been marked by apparent stumbles in the last 10 days.   The Pentagon released a statement last Friday saying 5,000 extra troops were being deployed to Kuwait to act as a further deterrence to Saddam, who initiated the Gulf conflict with his invasion of the oil-wealthy emirate in 1990.   It quickly became apparent that that Pentagon statement was premature, and that Kuwait's leaders, sensitive to any suggestion of their being U.S. vassals, had not been fully consulted.   It was not until Monday that the Kuwaitis gave their formal go-ahead for the deployment, which is now underway and in fact involves 3,500 troops. 
18382 !GCAT !GHEA  Can't quit smoking?   Maybe it's time to see a psychiatrist.   The American Psychiatric Association on Thursday released its first guidelines on helping smokers who have tried and failed to quit on their own, or even after getting the help of their regular family doctors.   "The people who find it easy to quit are quitting.   The rest need a new approach," said Dr. John Hughes, a University of Vermont psychiatrist who helped develop these guidelines.   Smokers, said the APA's deputy medical director Dr. Deborah Zarin, are "repeatedly engaging in life-threatening behaviour."   That itself should be reason enough to get a specialists' help, she said, adding that it is not all that different from a car owner seeking a transmission shop when the auto breaks down despite repeated trips to the regular mechanic.   Family doctors themselves got new clinical guidelines on smoking this year.   Physicians, researchers and health administrators gathered in Washington for a conference this week on how to make sure they are really put into practice to help the 25 percent of U.S. adults who still smoke despite decades of warnings about heart disease and cancer.   That two-day conference, sponsored by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, stressed research that shows that doctors can improve the "quit smoking rates" by spending as little as three minutes counselling a smoker.   "Patients report that the personal input by their clinician often is the element to sustain them through the first critical weeks after quitting," said Dr. Michael Fiori of the University of Wisconsin, who helped draft the doctors' guidelines for the U.S. Agency for Health Care Policy and Research.   "A doctor can help with the simple problem solving skills and techniques that will help a smoker quit, and understand what went wrong the last time," Fiori added in an interview.   Psychiatrists agree with that.   Their guidelines start out with the recommendation that people try to quit on their own, through widely available self-help programmes or with nicotine patches and gum, now available without a prescription, or with the help of their doctor.   But even after all that, some smokers will not be able to give up cigarettes.   Psychiatrists believe that with their extra training and experience in addiction, substance abuse and behaviour patterns, they are well-positioned to help.   In addition, many smokers who have the most trouble quitting actually have undiagnosed psychiatric problems such as alcoholism or depression that may make giving up the tobacco habit even more difficult, the APA said. 
18383 !C12 !C13 !CCAT !GCAT !GCRIM  A federal judge has issued a permanent injunction against Comparator Systems Corp., a fingerprinting technology company charged in May with fraud and accounting violations, the Securities and Exchange Commission said Thursday.   The SEC had called untrue claims of the company that it owned certain patents and licenses and had developed a new generation of fingerprinting technology.   The SEC's also accused executives of stealing a prototype of a fingerprinting device developed by another company that had been seeking the return of the device.   Federal Judge Lourdes Baird of the U.S. district court in Los Angeles permanently barred Robert Reed Rogers and Gregory Armijo, former chairman and former director and vice president, respectively, from serving in the future as an officer or director of any public corporation.   Comparator agreed to the judgment to settle the SEC charges, without admitting or denying the agency's allegations, which were brought in a civil complaint in May.   The injunction enjoins Newport Beach, Calif.-based Comparator from committing fraud and violating the SEC's reporting and recordkeeping rules.   A Comparator spokeswoman said both Rogers and Armijo resigned their positions in the company as of Thursday.   Gary Sundick, SEC associate director for enforcement, said the amount of penalties that Rogers and Armijo will pay will still be determined by the agency.   The court order continues to freeze Rogers' and Armijo's assets, he added.   No monetary penalties were assessed against Comparator.   The court order allows Comparator's new management to hire Rogers and Armijo as consultants for a limited period but restricts their compensation.   The order forbids the company from transfering any asset to Scott Hitt, a former executive vice president who is also charged in the case and against whom the litigation continues.   The SEC had accused Rogers and Hitt of stealing the prototype of a fingerprinting device.   In its civil complaint, the SEC charged the company with selling its stock to investors while grossly inflating its assets as disclosed in financial statements filed with the SEC.   Trading of Comparator's stock was suspended by the Nasdaq market on May 9 after several days of heavy trading in which the share price rose as high as $1.875 and then fell to 56.25 cents.   The stock was eventually delisted.   In a related proceeding, the SEC said it barred Eli Buchalter, Comparator's former auditor, and his company from practicing before the SEC as accountants.   The SEC issued the ruling after finding that Buchalter and his company engaged in improper professional conduct in the audit of Comparator's financial statements.   Comparator President Armond Schroeder, who was hired in July amid the litigation with the SEC, said the settlement "brings to an end a most difficult time in our company's history."   "This matter is now behind us.   It is a good feeling to once again concentrate our efforts on the execution of plans that we hope will bring the company to success and profitability," he said in a statement. 
18384 !GCAT !GCRIM !GDIP !GPOL !GVIO  The chairman of a House of Representatives committee said on Thursday he was issuing a subpoena for White House documents he believed would shed light on administration efforts to conceal activities of Haitian death squads in 1994.   Representative Benjamin Gilman, a New York Republican, said a year-long inquiry by his International Relations Committee into political murders in Haiti had been spurred by the apparent re-emergence of death squds run by the U.S.-backed government in Haiti.   "The American people have a right to know whether U.S. officials have tried to conceal some two dozen murders in the hope of sparing President Clinton political embarrassment," he told a news conference.   He said he was issuing a subpoena because of the administration's failure to produce required documents.   He said he believed the documents would disclose information about administration efforts to conceal death squads run by key aides of former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide beginning shortly after the U.S. military intervention in Haiti in 1994.   Last week the administration sent about 40 State Department security agents to Haiti amid allegations that members of President Rene Preval's personal security unit were involved in two killings.   Gilman said that whether they were sent to purge the palace guard, protect Preval from his own U.S.-trained guard or carry out both missions, "this is a very serious developent."   "After spending $2 billion since the U.S. intervention two years ago this month, it is shocking that 40 American bodyguards are the only thing that stand between Haiti and political disaster," he said. 
18385 !E21 !E212 !ECAT !GCAT  New York State education officials, whose surveys have found that a large number of schools badly need repairs, plan on Friday to propose a roughly $5.5 billion bond act to raise the needed money.   Bill Hirshen, a spokesman for the state Education Department, said that the bond act is not expected to go before the voters until November 1997, assuming that the legislature approves the act.   A spokesman for the state budget office was not immediately available to respond to the proposal.   The Regents Chancellor, Carl Hayden, and the Education Commissioner, Richard Mills, plan to announce their proposal on Friday.   The Education Department said the bond act is needed because it estimated that 700 buildings in upstate New York and 500 buildings in New York City need "major improvements."   --Joan Gralla, 212-859-1654 
18386 !E21 !E211 !ECAT !GCAT !GDEF !GPOL  Republican congressional leaders bowed to President Clinton's re-election agenda Thursday and agreed to give him billions of dollars more for education and other domestic priorities.   Their decision presented both good and bad news for the White House, as Republicans agreed on a legislative strategy that could force Clinton to accept some Republican proposals that he did not want, including about $10 billion in extra defence spending.   With the Oct. 1 start of a new fiscal year and the Nov. 5 election both near, the pressure is on all sides to compromise on spending to keep the government running.   Last year's two government shutdowns were politically embarrassing, particularly for Republicans who were in charge of Congress for the first time in 40 years.   "We believe we can reach an agreement which will provide for keeping the government open," House Speaker Newt Gingrich said at a news conference with Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott and the Republican chairmen of the appropriations panels.   Lott and Gingrich said they planned on bringing a massive appropriations bill, known as a continuing resolution, to the House and Senate floors for a vote next week.   Under the procedure they outlined, no amendments would be allowed.   The House-Senate compromise bill for $245 billion in defence spending would carry 1997 funding for domestic programmes.   It could also carry Republican initiatives Clinton would have preferred not sign into law.   Clinton stands to gain about $4 billion for education, job training and other domestic programmes.   Another $2 billion would be provided for new efforts for counter-terrorism, to fight forest fires in Western states, and for anti-drug efforts.   "The chances are the president is going to get a lot of what he's asked for.   That is in the interest of getting out of here, but that is not a capitulation," said House Appropriations Committee chairman Bob Livingston, R-Louisiana.   To meet Clinton's spending request, Congress is prepared to sell radio spectrum and require thrift institutions to add more funds to their deposit insurance fund as suggested by the administration.   However, Republican members of Congress said they will not agree to cut defence to pay for domestic programmes.   "It seemed to us that this was not an opportune time to tell the people in the Armed Services ... that he wanted to cut back on money to support them.   We have chosen not to deal with the defence budget as he would have us do."   Some of the anti-terrorism funding, about $200 million, will come out of the defence budget.   Education funding, of which the federal government's major role is in pre-school and in loans for college students, has become a political football in recent weeks.   Democrats Thursday accused Republicans of "a death-bed conversion" to the education issue and held a news conference to charge that Republicans had repeatedly tried to cut school funds.   Clinton vetoed education cuts for 1995 and 1996 funds.   Republican leaders offered earlier this week to restore $2.3 billion for education, but Clinton had asked for $3.1 billion. 
18387 !C13 !C22 !CCAT !GCAT !GHEA  A new drug to help treat multiple sclerosis won unanimous backing from a U.S. Food and Drug advisory panel Thursday, a major step toward reaching patients.   The panel recommended approval of Israel's Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd.'s Copaxone drug for treating MS. There is no cure for MS, but if approved this would be the third drug available in the United States to treat flareups of the disease.   An advisory panel's recommendations are not binding but the FDA usually follows them.   About 250,000 to 350,000 people in the United States have MS. It is more common among women, and usually first strikes between the ages of 20 and 40.   The disease can be mild or it can cause successive flare-ups, each causing more deterioration of movement, speech and basic bodily functions.   In ways that are not fully understood, MS leads to the degeneration of the sheath of myelin protecting the nerves in the brain and spinal cord.   The other two drugs on the market, Betaseron and Avonex, are forms of proteins known as interferons.   But Copaxone is made up of four amino acids that work by inhibiting the destruction of the myelin sheath.   Betaseron carries a claim on its label that it reduces flare-ups of MS, while Avonex carries an additional claim that it slows the disease's progression.   Copaxone is expected to have a label saying it could reduce the exacerbations or flare-ups. 
18388 !C13 !C22 !CCAT !GCAT !GHEA  A Food and Drug Administration advisory committee recommended Thursday that the agency approve a drug developed by Teva Pharmaceutical Industries for treating multiple sclerosis.   The move boosted the Israeli drugmaker's stock, which closed at $47, up $3.50, on Nasdaq.   The stock rallied after the FDA advisory committee recommended the agency approve the company's Copaxone drug that is used to reduce flareups caused by the disease, for which there is no known cure.   The panel's recommendations are not binding but the FDA typically follows the advice of its advisory committees.   Teva, Israel's largest pharmaceutical company, has been known as a leading generic drugmaker.   Copaxone is key to the company's drive to become a full-fledged drug maker, analysts said.   They estimated the drug could have worldwide sales of $300 million by the year 2000, given a late 1996 or early 1997 final FDA approval.   Teva had 1995 sales of $668 million.   "Copaxone clearly changes the nature of the company," Dillon Read analyst Jerry Treppel said.   Final FDA approval in the fourth quarter could send the stock to over $60, according to NatWest Securities analyst Jack Lamberton.   Hoechst AG's Hoechst Marion Roussel drug unit is Teva's marketing partner for Copaxone.   The National Multiple Sclerosis Society estimates there are between 250,000 to 350,000 people in the United States with the central nervous system disease.   If approved, Copaxone will go up against two FDA-approved MS treatments.   Chiron Corp.'s Betaseron, marketed by Schering AG and launched in July 1993, and Biogen Inc.'s Avonex, introduced in May.   Betaseron carries a claim on its label that it reduces flare-ups of MS, while Avonex carries an additional claim that it slows the disease's progression.   Analysts said they expected Copaxone's labeling to be limited to a claim of reducing flare-ups of the disease.   The FDA committee recommendation did not say the drug slows the progession of MS.   MS leads to the degeneration of the sheath of myelin protecting the nerves in the brain and spinal cord, leading to patients slowly losing control of their movement, speech and bodily functions.   Unlike Betaseron and Avonex, which are forms of proteins known as interferons, Copaxone is made up of four amino acids that work by inhibiting the destruction of the myelin sheath.   This new approach could boost Copaxone's chances for approval as well as a marketing angle, analysts said. 
18389 !GCAT !GPOL !GVOTE  The presidential campaign took a Western swing on Thursday as Bob Dole pushed his anti-crime message in Las Vegas and Bill Clinton focused on the environment and world trade in the Pacific Northwest.   The Republican challenger, apparently unfazed by his tumble off a stage in Chico, California, on Wednesday, made light of the incident to a campaign audience at the MGM Grand casino, saying, "I'm not going to dive off today."   The only aftereffects of the fall were a bruise on Dole's ankle and some redness around his left eye.   He told Las Vegas supporters he felt "great."   After speaking on his preferred anti-drug and anti-crime themes, the 73-year-old Dole told the crowd that former first lady Nancy Reagan had sent him a letter endorsing the new "Just Don't Do It" anti-drug slogan, which is reminiscent of Reagan's "Just Say No" campaign in the 1980s.   Asked what voters might think of media images of the Chico fall, Dole replied, "They ought to think, boy, that guy's agile, he's young, he goes after 'em, he's tough."   Dole has strong support in Nevada, though Clinton won the Western state in 1992.   In Washington state, Clinton and Vice President Al Gore began a bus tour of the Pacific Northwest, drawing a crowd of 20,000 in Tacoma to hear a message of environmental preservation and expanded trade with the Asia-Pacific region.   Underlining his concern for the environment, Clinton reminded the rally that on Wednesday he had declared 1.7 million acres in southern Utah a national monument free from coal mining.   Agreements to protect salmon and old-growth forests in the Northwest have also been announced recently.   Even as America's trade deficit was reported this week to have expanded dramatically, Clinton expressed pride that this region was able to export everything from computer software and airplanes to apples.   On a new space policy under which America will emphasise space exploration by robots instead of people, Clinton said it would be good for space-related industries in the Pacific Northwest.   He said an unstaffed mission to Mars leaving in December would land next July 4.   While Clinton got a warm reception on the campaign trail, he was under attack in Congress, where Republicans pointed to increased drug use during his administration.   "The administration has very much been a Johnny-come-lately on this," Representative William Clinger of Pennsylvania said at a hearing of the House Government Reform subcommittee.   Arrangements for campaign debates between Dole and Clinton are still in flux, and officials at Washington University in St. Louis said on Thursday that the first debate would not be held on Sept. 25, as had been tentatively scheduled.   The college, which had been selected by the Commission on Presidential Debates as the site of the first debate, said it would host the first debate on some other date.   The cancellation of the date of the first debate came as no surprise, since Clinton's campaign had said the president would not debate that day because he is due to address the United Nations the day before and wanted more time to prepare. 
18390 !E21 !E212 !ECAT !GCAT !GPOL  California State Treasurer Matt Fong Thursday urged municipal finance professionals and public officials to support legislation that would increase state oversight over localities seeking bankruptcy protection.   "I'd like your help," Fong told a California Debt Advisory Commission conference.   "I would ask for those of you who agree (with the legislation) to fax a note or something to the governor's office."   The legislation would require local agencies that intend to file for federal bankruptcy protection to obtain approval from a state panel.   The measure would establish the Local Agency Bankruptcy Committee.   Local governments that intend to file for bankruptcy would seek the committee's approval before petitioning the courts.   The committee would be comprised of the state Treasurer, controller, and the director of the Department of Finance.   The Department of Finance said earlier this week it opposed the legislation because it would "usurp" power from local elected officials.   Gov. Pete Wilson was expected to act on the measure by the end of September.   Though his office declined to comment, government sources said Wilson was leaning toward vetoing the legislation.   Fong asked officials at the Debt Advisory Commission conference here to help him lobby the governor to sign the bill.   "I am a great advocate and protector of counties and local governments," Fong said.   "I don't see this as taking away anything from local government."   Fong said the legislation, if signed, would help to lower issuance costs in the state.   "Every time that I go back to Wall Street, they're still scared to death that somebody out here is going to pull the trigger and go file for bankruptcy," Fong said.   "There is a payment that's being made because, in California, we still have the right to pull the trigger unilaterally."   The legislation was introduced in the wake of Orange County's bankruptcy filing in December 1994.   --Adam Entous, 415-677-2511 
18391 !E21 !E211 !ECAT !GCAT !GDEF !GDIP  Expanding NATO is likely to add only "modest costs" to the alliance's budget, not the huge sums some analysts have recently predicted, the U.S. ambassador to NATO said on Thursday.   The presumption behind recent studies, including one by the RAND Corp, was that "within a short period of time new members would have to be ready to undertake Article 5 responsibilities -- defence against aggression -- in circumstances not so dissimilar from what we saw during the Cold War," said envoy Robert Hunter.   But "in the absence of a Cold War threat we see those assumptions to be unrealistic," he told defence writers.   Hunter agreed expansion would mean new "costs to the alliance -- modest costs" for new offices at Supreme Allied Command Europe headquarters in Belgium, communiciations and possible start-up costs for headquarters in new countries permitted to join NATO in its first post-Cold War enlargement.   But he stressed that countries joining NATO would have to pay for their own national security, "as we all do."   NATO foreign ministers are expected to set a date in December for an alliance summit next year that would issue formal invitations to countries selected to join NATO.   Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic are expected to be the first new countries to join the 16-member alliance.   RAND, in its recent study, said expansion of NATO -- whose core is a promise to defend member nations if they are threatened -- could cost an extra $42 billion over 15 years.   That sum would rise to $100 billion if NATO troops were stationed in eastern and central Europe.   Some believe those costs will make it harder to persuade legislatures in NATO-member countries to ratify expansion.   Hunter could not predict a more realistic cost of NATO expansion, but said the Defence Department was studying the issue. 
18392 !GCAT !GDIP !GVIO  The United States is not trying to get rid of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein and recognises "that we're not in the business of overthrowing foreign governments," President Bill Clinton says in a television interview to be shown on Friday.   In a wide-ranging interview with Barbara Walters on ABC's "20/20," Clinton said: "We are not trying to get rid of him.   We're trying to make sure he complies with the United Nations resolutions that bind him and that he does nothing that threaten his neighbours."   He added, "We recognise that we're not in the business of overthrowing foreign governments.   If someone within his country wants to do it, they have the perfect right to try."   In the interview, Clinton defended his decision to sign the controversial welfare bill and rebuffed criticism that his opponents have made about his character, his associates and his refusal to release all of his medical records.   He said "Americans should be troubled" by the Whitewater prosecutors efforts to force his convicted former business partner Susan McDougal to testify before a grand jury about him.   "The reason she's reluctant to testify is that she believes they don't want her to tell the truth.   They only want her to say something bad about me.   And Americans should be very troubled about that," he said.   On the medical records issue, Clinton said he did not care if the records were released but he said he was "heavily influenced" by his doctor not to release them fully.   "It's an issue made up out of thin air.   And unfortunately certain people are trying to make something out of this," he said.   "I'm apparently as healthy as a horse and I'm going to stay that way."   In a joint section of the interview with his wife, the president surprised first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton by saying he wanted her to be an advocate for children if he wins a second term, especially with respect to how the new welfare bill affects poor children.   "When I signed the bill, I said it was the beginning not the end, and I think the real advocates of children, including the first lady, have to weigh in here," he said.   "I think the business people will listen to her, I think child advocates will listen to her, I think people at the state level will."   Mrs. Clinton agreed but said she was hearing the idea for the first time.   Both Clintons said they were apprenhensive about their daughter Chelsea going away to college next year, with Mrs. Clinton saying, "This is probably the hardest challenge facing him next year."   The president added, "I told her (Chelsea) she could get married at 30, leave home at 25, that would be fine.   We're going to miss her terribly when she leaves, that's what we are really worried about because we're such a small family ... we're kind of grafted to one another."   Asked about the resignation from his campaign of chief political strategist Dick Morris after a tabloid newspaper reported Morris had an affair with a prostitute, Clinton said: "The only thing I can say ... for him and his wife, and I've known them a long time, I wish them well."   "I hope they can deal with whatever they have to deal with and go on with their lives," he added. 
18393 !C12 !C34 !CCAT !GCAT !GCRIM  Microsoft Corp. said Thursday the U.S. Justice Department has notified the company that it will seek additional information regarding the software giant's competitive practices.   In a statement, Microsoft said the request was part of the department's "continuing examination of software industry issues."   The last requests to Microsoft were issued in the summer of 1995.   Microsoft said it intends to cooperate with the department. 
18394 !GCAT !GCRIM !GREL !GVIO  One-third of the suspects arrested since January 1995 for the burning of predominately black churches in the South were black, federal officials investigating the recent wave of fires said Thursday.   They also disclosed one case where a black, in retaliation, burned down a white church in a Southern state.   The spate of widely publicised church fires initially revived memories of Ku Klux Klan firebombings of black churches in the 1960s during the civil rights movement, but the new arrest figures painted a different picture.   "We know from the evidence and from the arrests made that race is driving many of these fires.   We know that race is not driving all of these fires," Deval Patrick, head of the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division, said.   "Our responsibility as prosecutors and investigators is to follow all the leads where they lead us and to get to the bottom of each one of these fires, regardless of what the motivation is," he told a news briefing.   More than half of the 100 suspects arrested since January 1995 for church fires or bombings appear to be motivated by racial hatred or bigotry, said federal officials who declined to be identified.   But they said they have found other motives as well, including pranks, internal disputes within the congregation and attacks carried out by mentally ill individuals.   They were unable to cite any evidence of a national conspiracy behind church burnings but said a small number of fires in South Carolina and Tennessee may have been related.   "The evidence does not suggest, based on the arrests we have, that there is one plan that connects all these dots around the South," one official said.   Since January 1995, there have been arsons or bombings at 100 predominantly black churches and 130 mainly white churches nationwide, the officials said.   In just the South, about half of the 150 fires occurred at black churches.   At the mainly white churches, black suspects were arrested in seven percent of the incidents, they said.   Investigators found that more than 40 percent of those arrested were under age 18 and most of the fires took place on weekends and in rural areas, the officials said.   They said the most vulnerable churches were not used regularly during the week or every Sunday.   Treasury Assistant Secretary Jim Johnson emphasised that special training for federal agents had helped address concerns by some black congregations about the investigations.   Black officials initially complained that investigators unfairly made church members targets of their questioning.   The fires received national attention this summer, with President Clinton in June visiting a black church in South Carolina that had burned down.   Republicans in Congress charged he was trying to score political points with the visit. 
18395 !GCAT !GHEA !GPOL  The House of Representatives voted on Thursday to override President Bill Clinton's veto of a bill to ban what opponents call "partial birth" abortions, sending it to the Senate where backers appeared shy of the two-thirds majority to follow suit.   The House voted 285-137 to override the April veto, narrowly garnering the needed two-thirds.   The Senate was expected to take up the bill next week but Republican Majority Leader Trent Lott did not expect to prevail.   Opponents of the override effort charge it is largely a political exercise designed to focus voters' attention on the highly emotional election-year issue.   Republican presidential nominee Bob Dole has attacked Clinton for vetoing the bill, promising conservative groups to sign it if elected.   The Catholic church has mounted an aggressive effort for the bill.   "As more and more Americans have learned the details of this procedure, the president has been left almost alone, defending the indefensible," Dole said on Thursday in Las Vegas, calling on Congress to overturn the veto.   "Partial birth" abortion, properly called dilation and evacuation, is a relatively rare late-term procedure under which a foetus is partially delivered feet first until just the head remains in the birth canal.   The brains are then removed, the skull collapsed and the foetus removed.   Clinton said he had concerns about the procedure but could not sign the bill because it did not contain constitutionally required protections for a woman's health.   The debate was graphic and emotional, as it has been since the Republican-led Congress first took up the issue last year.   The legislation marks the first time Congress has voted to ban a specific abortion procedure since the Supreme Court's landmark 1973 Roe vs. Wade decision making abortion legal.   The vote came one day after the Food and Drug Administration said the French "abortion pill" mifepristone, or RU-486, was safe and effective and could be approved after its sponsors provide additional information. 
18396 !GCAT !GDIP !GVIO  The leader of the opposition Iraqi National Congress charged on Thursday that U.S. policy in northern Iraq was an open invitation to Baghdad and Tehran to intervene there.   Ahmad Chalabi, President of the London-based INC, took issue with statements by Defence Secretary William Perry and other officials that U.S. interests lay in the oil-producing states south of Iraq, not in the northern Kurdish region.   Perry was defending the U.S. decision to attack defence installations in southern Iraq on Sept. 3 and 4 after Iraqi troops moved into the Western-protected Kurdish zone in support of one of the feuding Kurdish factions.   "The United States has signalled that its strategic interests lie in the south and not in the north," Chalabi said.   "This is a message both to (Iraqi President) Saddam Hussein and to Iran that the region is free for them to intervene."   "I fear a continued civil war and a continued conflict in northern Iraq if the situation is left to stand like this," he told the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.   Iraq's intervention on Aug. 30 in support of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) against the Iranian-backed Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) left the KDP in control of most of northern Iraq and virtually wiped out Western influence there.   The move also crippled the INC, an umbrella group of Iraqi opposition factions created with Western backing a year after Iraq's defeat in the 1991 Gulf War.   The INC had been active in northern Iraq, until now a no-go area for Saddam's forces.   Although Chalabi said the INC was still operating in Iraq, he said about 500 Iraqi opposition figures were gathered at Zakho, on the border with Turkey, attempting to flee the country.   "We are working to get them out.   We have some assurances that the United States will help us do so," he said without giving details.   The United States this week evacuated more than 2,000 employees of its aid programmes in northern Iraq to Turkey and flew them to the U.S. territory of Guam in the Pacific.   But INC members were not included.   U.S. media reports have said that the Central Intelligence Agency and other Western spy organisations decided this year to switch support from the INC to another opposition group, the Iraqi National Accord, based in Jordan.   Chalabi blamed the Kurdish fighting on the failure of Washington and its allies to fund adequately an INC peace-keeping operation in northern Iraq or to take seriously the Kurdish administrative structures put in place there.   He suggested that the U.S. reaction to the Iraq crisis put in question whether the United States remained committed to the struggle against Saddam.   "We need clarification about policy towards Saddam Hussein," Chalabi said.   "There have been several important developments in United States policy towards the region, and we want to know if one of those policies still is the continuation of opposition or confrontation with Saddam Hussein and helping Iraqis who are ready to risk their lives to fight Saddam Hussein," he said. 
18397 !GCAT !GCRIM  A psychiatric report requested by a Delaware County judge found chemicals heir John E. du Pont was probably unable to assist the defence in his murder trial, the Philadelphia Daily News reported Thursday.   Du Pont is charged with murdering Olympic champion wrestler David Schultz, but the trial has been held up while authorities determine whether the defendant is competent.   "There is a significant probability, based on the totality of the evidence, that John E. du Pont lacks the capacities consistent with competence to stand trial," said the report written by Drs.   Thomas Guthetil of Harvard University and Theodore Barry of Philadelphia.   They said du Pont was not faking his condition, the newspaper said.   The report was sealed by the judge but obtained by the Daily News.   The doctors reported to Judge Patricia Jenkins that du Pont had been uncooperative so they could not make findings with "medical certainty" and concluded only on probability.   This is likely to be enough for the defence team to seek postponement of a hearing on du Pont's competence scheduled for Friday, the newspaper said.   Another legal development is a petition by family members to assume control of his $80-million estate.   The guardianship petition seeks to have the Orphans Court name du Pont's sister, Jean Shehan, 73, of Coral Gables, Florida, and his nephew, James McConnell Jr., 43, of Rapidan, Virginia, as guardians.   The petition notes that du Pont has inherited $88 million.   The relatives say du Pont has exhibited signs of incompetence, claiming to be the Dalai Lama for North America.   A further complication is the withdrawal of lead lawyers Richard Sprague and William Lamb.   They had said that du Pont saw them leave a psychiatric examination two weeks ago in the company of a prosecution expert and accused them of plotting against him.   He said they were part of a CIA plot.   With Thomas Bergstrom, a former federal prosecutor, now the lead defence lawyer, the trial may not start Sept. 30 as scheduled.   It may also delay Friday's competency hearing.   Du Pont had been a coach and wrestling enthusiast at Villanova University and later built an Olympic-scale training centre on his estate, Foxcatcher Farm.   He hired Olympic champion Schultz to be his coach.   Prosecutors already have decided that du Pont, 58, will not face the death penalty for the January shooting of Schultz.   Du Pont remains in Delaware County Jail after defence lawyers lost an attempt to move him to a psychiatric hospital. 
18398 !GCAT !GSCI  NASA launched an investigation on Thursday after a six-inch (15 cm) wrench was found rattling around inside one of the booster rockets used to launch Shuttle Atlantis on Monday.   The twin rockets, which peel away from the shuttle about two minutes after blast-off, were being inspected at Cape Canaveral, Florida, following their recovery from the Atlantic Ocean.   The tool was located in an electronics compartment at the nose of the right-hand rocket.   "It's not proper for us to be flying things like this," said NASA spokesman Bruce Buckingham.   "So far we have not been able to pin-point the source of the tool."   Engineers found no immediate sign of damage in the compartment, which houses critical electronic components.   The rockets performed as expected in Monday's pre-dawn blastoff.   The investigation team will determine how the wrench came to be left inside the top of the 149-foot (45 metre) rocket and why the tool was not reported missing, Buckingham said.   The rockets replaced a set that NASA feared might have the same flaw that damaged crucial seals in the boosters that launched shuttle Columbia in June.   It will be late next week before the booster's seals can be inspected, space agency spokeswoman June Malone said.   Atlantis is on a mission to pick up U.S. astronaut Shannon Lucid from Russia's Mir space station and drop off her replacement John Blaha.   It arrived at the Russian outpost late on Wednesday and was to remain docked for five days.   Atlantis is due to end its mission with a landing at Florida's Kennedy Space Centre on Sept. 26. 
18399 !GCAT !GHEA !GSCI  The unconscious human brain is capable of registering subliminal messages flashed on a screen but not well enough to follow commands like "Eat popcorn," research psychologists said on Thursday.   The experiments established that the brain can perceive a simple subliminal message, which can very briefly influence subsequent conscious perception.   But from what the researchers have learned so far it appears the message must be an extremely simple one and the effect lingers for about a tenth of a second, not long enough to influence or manipulate behaviour.   "'Think' is too strong a word for what the unconscious can do -- it can analyse meaning of a single word," said University of Washington psychologist Anthony Greenwald, whose findings appear on Friday in the journal Science.   His research also fits into the larger ongoing debate between cognitive psychologists like himself and the psychoanalytic ones.   Cognitive ones believe the unconcious mind is rather limited, if not downright dumb.   The psychoanalytic ones share Sigmund Freud's belief that the unconscious mind is capable of complex and powerful mental operations.   Greenwald's experiment involved flashing a string of 15 consonants, followed by a word or name, and then another string of consonants across a computer monitor, forming what Greenwald called a "subliminal sandwich."   Then a word or name -- without the accompanying nonsense letters -- was flashed on the screen.   The subject in the experiment had to determine whether it was a male or female name or a pleasant or unpleasant word.   When the "sandwiched" word was in the same category as the single word display, the subject recognised and categorized the word more quickly than if it was not.   The subliminal "priming" sped up the recognition of subsequent words.   For instance, if "David" was in the sandwich, the subject was quicker to recognise the category of "Kevin" than to do the same for "Sarah."   The mind was "primed" to see and recognise a boy's name.   When names or words were presented without the sandwich preceding them, response time was 0.5 or 0.6 second.   With the "priming," subjects could respond in 0.4 second, he said.   "It's like swinging at a fast ball -- you do better when you know where it's coming from," Greenwald said.   "The subliminal sandwich is like a hint of where the fastball is coming from.   They can't see it but they get that subliminal hint and they start leaning, male or female."   In his experiment, the priming effect was too brief to lend itself to any significant conditioning or manipulation.   If further research shows such subliminal responses could "accumulate and work like a conditioning procedure," it could have some potential for advertising or influencing behaviour, but Greenwald said he doubted it would go undetected in an era when videos could be viewed frame by frame.   "It is potentially usable for manipulation but not in the 'Drink Coca-Cola,' 'Eat popcorn' sense," he said.   He said his prior research also showed that self-help tapes that boast of subliminal messages do not work, although they might have a placebo effect.   People who think they are being taught subliminally to lose weight or concentrate may, in fact, lose weight or concentrate better, he said. 
18400 !C42 !CCAT !E41 !ECAT !GCAT !GJOB !GPOL  Maine reached a tentative agreement with one of its two state employee unions that have been without a contract for more than a year, state and union officials said Thursday.   The agreement with American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees covers 1,200 workers in the corrections, food service and mental health workers.   Negotiations continue with Maine State Employees Association, which represents the bulk of the state's public employees.   The AFSCME agreement takes the form of two contracts, and must be funded by the Legislature to take effect.   The first of the AFSCME contracts covers July 1995 to December 1996 with no pay increase.   The second contract runs from January 1997 to July 1999, gives workers a one-time payment of 2.25 percent of salary, and two percent wage hikes in July 1997 and July 1998.   Maine will also buy back hours from some corrections employees who were forced to work without pay during several state shutdowns and furlough days in the early 1990s, when the state was in the midst of a budget crisis.   --U.S. Municipal Desk, 212-859-1654 
18401 !GCAT !GHEA !GPOL !GPRO  Houston heart surgeon Michael DeBakey on Thursday said he will join a team of physicians consulting on a heart bypass operation planned for Russian President Boris Yeltsin.   DeBakey, who performed the world's first successful heart bypass operation, said he will meet Yeltsin's personal physicians next week but does not expect to be in the operating room during the procedure.   "They've just asked me if I would act as a consultant, which is what I will do," he said in an interview.   The 88-year old heart specialist had planned to be in Moscow next week for a medical meeting and expects to review information on Yeltsin's condition after he arrives there this weekend, he said.   Yeltsin, 65, disappeared from public view in late June after four months of energetic campaigning for a second term in the Kremlin.   Aides say he is undergoing tests this week during an extended stay at Moscow's Central Clinical Hospital.   Yeltsin spokesman Sergei Yastrzhembsky said Yeltsin's doctors planned to meet on Sept. 25 to decide when to operate on the Russian president.   "Right now I have no medical information at all" on Yeltsin's condition, said DeBakey, who pioneered the coronary bypass operation, a procedure that uses vein tissue to create an alternative blood passage around constricted arteries near the heart.   DeBakey has operated on several Russian dignataries and trained surgeons around the world, including Rinatt Akchurin, the chief cardiac surgeon at the Moscow heart centre.   Despite his age, DeBakey continues to maintain a grueling schedule in and out of the surgical arena.   His medical practice is based at Houston's Methodist Hospital and he is chancellor emeritus of the Baylor College of Medicine. 
18402 !GCAT !GHEA  Two tickborne diseases first recognised in the past decade have struck more than 600 people, killing more than a dozen of them, federal health officials said Thursday.   The U.S. Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said the two emerging illnesses, transmitted through the bite of an infected tick, have caused at least 13 deaths.   The diseases can cause fever, headache, muscle aches, chills, sweating, nausea and vomiting.   There have been more than 400 known cases of human monocytic ehrlichiosis (HME) since it was first identified in 1986 and about 200 cases of human granulocytic ehrlichiosis (HGE), first recognised in 1993.   Not all state health departments track the new diseases, so the actual number of cases is probably much higher.   "The diseases are remarkably similar" but are caused by slightly different species of erhlichia bacteria, epidemiologist James Childs of the CDC's National Centre for Infectious Diseases said.   "The infection affects blood cells and blood chemistry but also takes up residence in other organs," he said.   The CDC estimated that HME was at least as common as Rocky Mountain spotted fever, which affects about 800 people every year.   HME has been confirmed in 30 states, mostly in the southeastern and south central regions.   HGE has been confirmed in Connecticut, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Wisconsin and New York.   The two new ailments can usually be treated with antibiotics, "but it sometimes becomes more complicated," Childs said.   "In a few cases we've seen chronic or persistent infection," he said.   People infected with the diseases do not always develop a rash.   When they do, it is not necessarily at the site of the tick bite by which the infection was spread, the CDC said.   The most common tickborne ailment is Lyme disease, which causes 10,000 to 11,000 cases per year and is not generally considered life-threatening.   The CDC said tick bites could be prevented by wearing light-coloured clothing to make it easier to see crawling ticks, tucking pant legs into socks, conducting regular body examinations and using insect repellent.   Attached ticks should be promptly removed using forceps.   Removing ticks by hand carries the risk of infection through cuts in the fingers.   After a tick is removed, the bite site should be cleaned immediately with a disinfectant, the health agency said. 
18403 !GCAT !GENT !GPRO  Frederick Forsyth, one of the Cold War's most famous thriller writers, has decided to retire, he said in an interview to be published next month.   Forsyth, 58, a former Reuters and BBC correspondent who shot to fame 25 years ago with the publication of "The Day of the Jackal" about an attempt to murder Charles de Gaulle, told Sky magazine his ninth thriller, "Icon," will be published this month and "I just feel this is it."   "I've done nine books, add to that the anthology of short stories, 'No Comebacks,' which is 10 books, a nice round figure," he told the magazine.   Sky, the in-flight magazine of Delta Airlines with a readership of more than two million a month, made a copy of the article available to Reuters on Thursday.   The magazine will not be distributed until Oct. 1.   Forsyth, whose other thrillers include "The Odessa File," said he plans now to concentrate on farming and raising sheep on his 170-acre (69-hectare) farm in Hertfordshire.   "There are some writers who literally need to write.   It's like breathing for them.   After 25 years, I've gotten rather tired of it.   It's less fun.   I've made enough money, so the financial incentive is no longer there and over the years I've come to dread starting up another book," he told interviewer Charles Dubow.   Forsyth added, "Frankly, it cuts into the time I can spend on the farm.   Now that's all I want to do." 
18404 !C13 !C22 !CCAT !GCAT !GHEA  A breath test for the bacteria that cause peptic ulcers was approved on Thursday by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, the test's maker said.   The test, manufactured by Nashville, Tennessee-based Meretek, involves drinking the diagnostic drug Pranactin and exhaling into a collection device, which is then sent to the company's laboratories for analysis.   The test detects the presence or absence of Helicobacter pylori, the bacteria shown to cause peptic ulcers, so that patients can be appropriately treated.   Other tests for the presence of the bacteria have involved endoscopy with stomach biopsy, which involves sedating the patient, placing a tube into the stomach and taking a sample of the stomach lining for analysis, the company said.   There are also blood tests for the bacteria. 
18405 !GCAT !GWEA  The National Weather Service on Thursday said it expects below-normal temperatures during October for the upper Mississippi Valley and New York and central New England.   The service made no predictions for above- or below-normal precipitation in October.   The next 30-day outlook will be issued October 17.   -- Washington Commodities Desk (202) 898-8317 
18406 !E21 !E211 !ECAT !GCAT !GCRIM  North Carolina Supreme Court will hear arguments Oct 17 on a request to revive a lawsuit challenging the way the state distributes school funding revenues, Cumberland County's School Board attorney said.   Five poor counties -- Cumberland, Hoke, Robeson, Halifax and Vance -- challenged the distribution formula in a lawsuit against the state.   They said the formula was inequitable and unconstitutional because it did not consider poor counties' inability to pay for education.   An appeals court dismissed the lawsuit in March, ruling that the state constitution only mandates equal access to education but does not set a quality standard.   The plaintiffs appealed in July, and the Supreme Court set the October hearing, said Cumberland school board attorney Maynette Regan.   If the state Supreme Court reinstates the lawsuit, it would be referred to a lower court for trial.   Other counties have expressed an interest in joining as plaintiffs if the lawsuit proceeds, Regan said.   Attorneys for the state argued previously that the funding formula is fair because it is based on student population.   --Jane Sutton, 305-374-5013 
18407 !C13 !C24 !C42 !CCAT !E41 !ECAT !GCAT !GJOB  Georgia's Fulton County Commission unanimously voted to withdraw support from a new $215 million arena for the Atlanta Hawks until Turner Broadcasting System Inc agrees to give jobs to more than 200 county residents during construction, the Atlanta Journal and Constitution reported Thursday.   Several commissioners referred to the action as a potential dealbreaker but voted for it anyway, the newspaper said.   Fulton County is one of the parties that must sign off on the arena construction contract, which calls for a combination of taxable and tax-exempt bond financing via the Atlanta-Fulton County Recreation Authority.   Commissioner Emma Darnell proposed the hiring and training of one Fulton County or city of Atlanta resident per $1 million of construction for the arena.   But county officials said Turner Broadcasting, which owns the Hawks, had refused to support it.   Steve Labovitz, who is chief of staff for Atlanta Mayor Bill Campbell and has been leading the city's effort to keep the Hawks downtown, said he was "very hopeful" something could be worked out.   "The Turner organization has shown a willingness to work with the city and county right from the beginning of this project," Labovitz said.   "I'm sure the (county) commission will want to look at the totality of the entire project.   This is going to be a wonderful project for the entire metro area."   --Jane Sutton, 305-374-5013 
18408 !E21 !E211 !ECAT !GCAT !GPOL  A new Vermont property tax law that sets how municipalities and the state split the cost of preserving open space has pit neighbor against neighbor, while a panel set up to help resolve the issue has clashed.   "That's the whole riff, who's going to pay the bill," said Edward Hasse on Thursday.   He is Vermont's Commissioner of Taxes and chairs the panel, which was set up by Gov. Howard Dean.   The current use tax program helps ensure that the owners of open spaces, such as forests and farms, are assessed at low rates, though on an across-the-board basis the state's property taxes are fairly high.   The problem of how much the state and municipalities should pay was brought to a boil by a bill approved by the legislature on its last day in May, which Dean signed into law.   Two towns, Darnard and Bridgewater, have refused to put it into effect, and state officials said it is a major campaign issue.   Under the legislation, the state makes a contribution to towns whose tax rates rise more than 1.8 cents per $100 of assessed value in 1995.   However, the law obliges all property owners in towns -- from mobile home owners to businesses -- to pay the shortfall left after the state makes its contribution.   Previously, the landowners who elected to participate in the current use tax program made up the difference.   Last year, the state paid $9.7 million for the program, about 68 percent of its cost.   Vermont's annual budget is about $700 million.   The tax rates in 1996 are expected to rise above the 1.8-cent limit in many towns because their budgets have climbed, and property values have been reappraised.   And enrollment in the current tax use program likely will climb.   While a number of landowners, who represent 44,000 acres, opted out of the program this year, the tax department is seeing a lot of of new applications for 1997.   Landowners figure that if they will have to pay for part of the taxes on their neighbors' open land, they might as well participate in the program.   "So the impact is going to be felt even greater for the 1997 tax season," Snow said.   However, the new law also has encouraged some owners of open spaces, like forests and lands, to drop out of the current tax use program because they find it hard to incur their neighbors' wrath.   "They said they want to walk down the street holding their head high, they don't want their neighbors to pay their taxes," Snow said, saying that was the reason some landowners told the tax department they were leaving the program.   And some towns and landowners who are not in the program might wish to encourage development as a way to lower the property tax burden.   "So it behooves everybody to develop their town...nobody will get a (tax) break," Snow said, explaining that was a worst-case scenario.   The governor extended the deadline for the task force's recommendations by about two weeks to September 30, although local officials want to be sure the voters have a chance to make their views known in the November 5 elections.   Despite the clash among the panel members, with state officials seeking greater contributions from municipalities, which their representatives are resisting, the Commissioner predicted that it would find a way to resolve the issue.   "We're going to decide one way or another on September 30," Hasse said, explaining he anticipated that it would take until around October 10 to draft the final report for Dean.   --U.S. Municipal Desk, 212-859-1654 
18409 !GCAT !GCRIM  An attorney was shot and wounded by a former client who held several others hostage inside a law office Thursday, police and a friend of the wounded man said.   The gunman allowed two members of the law firm of Donaldson, Danielson, Pumpian, Clark and Ford to carry the wounded lawyer, Art Pumpian, from the building, according to police.   He was taken to St. Mary's Hospital for treatment of unidentified injuries.   Police said the gunman remained inside the law office three hours later.   They were talking to the man by telephone to try and persuade him to release his hostages.   Dena Peterson, a spokeswoman for the West Palm Beach police department, said authorities were called to the office building just before lunchtime when shots were fired.   "We know there is a person in there and that he has an unknown number of hostages.   He is armed," Peterson told reporters.   No other information about the shooting was immediately available, according to police.   Charles Williams, another attorney and a friend of the wounded man, said the gunman was a former client of Pumpian's and was upset about the outcome of a workers compensation case. 
18410 !GCAT !GCRIM !GPRO  O.J. Simpson, temporarily thwarted in a legal battle with his slain ex-wife's parents for custody of his two children, was again absent from the courtroom on Thursday as jury selection continued in his wrongful-death civil trial.   He had been expected to show up since the custody hearing in Orange County, some 40 miles (65 km) south of Los Angeles, that he attended the last two days was adjourned on Wednesday.   Lawyers in the child custody case were barred from commenting on the case in which Simpson is trying to regain custody of Sydney, 10, and Justin, 8, the children he had with Nicole Brown Simpson.   But the Orange County Register newspaper reported the hearing to determine whether the ex-football star gets temporary custody was adjourned at the request of the Brown family pending a Nov. 4 trial to consider permanent custody.   Simpson, a football Hall of Famer who became a TV celebrity and bit-part movie actor, was acquitted on Oct. 3 of murdering his ex-wife and her friend Ronald Goldman, who were found slashed to death on June 12, 1994.   The families of the victims filed a wrongful-death civil suit against him alleging he is responsible for the deaths.   If they win, he might have to pay millions of dollars in damages.   On the third day of the civil trial, Judge Hiroshi Fujisaki resumed questioning potential jurors who for financial or personal reasons said they were unable to serve on the case, which is expected to last four months.   On Wednesday, he was unsympathetic to excuses from people who cited medical emergencies or a reluctance to serve in such a high-profile case, but he excused some people who said their employers were unwilling to pay for their time in court.   Of a total of 169 possible jurors who reported to the Santa Monica Superior Court on Wednesday, 85 went on to the pool from which the final twelve and eight alternates will be chosen.   Court officials said the other 84 were either excused or sent back to serve on other trials.   Once the final pool is established, Fujisaki and lawyers for both sides will begin questioning them about personal attitudes and opinions in an attempt by each side to seat a jury it believes will be able to render a fair judgment.   Among questions they must answer are whether they believe a person has the right to pursue a civil action against a defendant acquitted in criminal court of the same conduct, whether they believe the case is an "unfair attack upon an African-American" and if they think Simpson is a victim of racial discrimination.   The questions, suggested by Daniel Petrocelli, the attorney for Goldman's father Fred, were approved by Fujisaki and will be included on the general questionnaire potential jurors must fill out. 
18411 !GCAT !GCRIM !GPOL !GVOTE  President Clinton came under renewed attack Thursday from congressional Republicans for increases in drug use during his administration.   Taking their lead from Republican presidential nominee Bob Dole, Republicans at a House Government Reform subcommittee hearing on increased heroin use accused Clinton of a lack of interest in the war on drugs.   "The administration has very much been a Johnny-come-lately on this," Representative William Clinger of Pennsylvania said.   "I think you see the results of this administration," added Florida Representative John Mica, holding up a newspaper headline reporting increased drug use in his district.   Dole has made the drug issue a centrepiece of his campaign.   Wednesday in Los Angeles Dole said Clinton had set a bad example for American teenagers by making light of his own past experimentation with marijuana.   "A president is supposed to show the light, and this president has shown his moral confusion," Dole said.   He also renewed criticism of cuts the Clinton administration had made in anti-drug programmes.   Dole also attacked the entertainment and fashion industries, saying they were making drug use fashionable, and urged teenagers to adopt the slogan, "Just don't do it", a variation on former first lady Nancy Reagan's anti-drug message "Just say no".   Hilary Rosen, president of the Recording Industry Association of America, conceded at the hearing that some records and artists may have glamorized drug use, but said most members of the music industry opposed drugs.   "Every single major record company has clear policies condemning and discouraging drug use," Rosen said.   "Groups such as Fugazi, the Cranberries, Indigo Girls, Natalie Merchant, Neil Young, the Eagles, De La Soul, TLC, Metallica and Public Enemy, to mention just a few, all have songs which discourage or negatively depict drug use."   Barry McCaffrey, Clinton's director of drug control policy, said world opium production has doubled in the past decade.   He said heroin users had increased from 500,000 to 600,000 in the United States compared to at least 1.5 million users in Europe and 2 million in Pakistan.   "We need an international drug control strategy.   We simply can't do it ourselves," McCaffrey told the hearing.   He said he had asked Clinton to speak about the problem when he addresses the United Nations next week.   Earlier McCaffrey and Health and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala outlined efforts to reinforce drug abuse prevention programmes at a Washington conference.   Shalala said her department and Scholastic Magazine would distribute anti-drug materials to 73,800 third-through-sixth graders. 
18412 !GCAT !GCRIM  Marion "Suge" Knight, the record executive in whose car "gangsta" rapper Tupac Shakur was fatally shot this month, said he would give up his lifestyle to bring Shakur back, a newspaper said on Thursday.   "I would give up Death Row, I would give up this lifestyle, I would give up a life to bring him back.   ... Me and Tupac was joined at the hip," the head of Death Row Records told the Los Angeles Times in his first published interview since the fatal shooting.   Knight suffered minor gunshot wounds in the Sept. 7 shooting, which occurred as he and Shakur were driving in Knight's BMW to his new nightclub in Las Vegas after watching the Mike Tyson-Bruce Seldon heavyweight boxing title fight.   The former football player who built Death Row into a multimillion dollar company denied that he was uncooperative with police, saying he delayed talking to them because he had to recover from his own injuries, the newspaper reported.   A Cadillac pulled alongside as the BMW stopped at a red light and a gunman inside fired at least nine bullets, four hitting Shakur.   Knight, 31, was driving the BMW and suffered a minor wound to the head.   Shakur died Friday after several operations, including the removal of his right lung, and was cremated the next day.   Police said they have few concrete leads in the investigation.   Knight refused to speak about the details of the shooting or speculate on reasons for it but said he had not stopped mourning since Shakur's death.   Theories include that Shakur took a bullet that was meant for Knight, who has said in the past that there were contracts out on his life.   Knight told the newspaper he is planning a memorial service in the next few weeks to celebrate the life of the rapper and plans to promote an upcoming record by Shakur. 
18413 !E21 !E211 !ECAT !GCAT !GPOL  House and Senate leaders said Thursday they are negotiating with President Clinton to give him around $6 billion in additional funds for 1997.   "The chances are the president is going to get a lot of what he asked for, but this is not a capitulation," House Appropriations Committee chairman Bob Livingston, R-Louisiana, told a news conference.   To meet Clinton's request, Congress is looking at sales of radio spectrum and at bolstering the undercapitalized thrift deposit insurance fund, Livingston said.   House Speaker Newt Gingrich and Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott said they expect to finish work on the fiscal 1997 appropriations next week.   The unfinished legislation will be wrapped into the 1997 defense appropriation and will be debated under procedures that do not permit amendments.   "We believe we can reach agreements that will provide for keeping the government open," Gingrich said.   Agencies must have 1997 funding by Oct. 1 or risk shutting down at least temporarily.   Republicans, who felt the brunt of public wrath for two government shutdowns last winter, are eager to keep the government running without interruption.    The only cuts in the defense budget are expected to be used to pay for about $200 million in programs related to fighting terrorism.   Clinton requested $1.1 billion in new anti-terrorism programs, $500 million to fight forest fires in Western states and $250 million for anti-drug programs. 
18414 !GCAT !GCRIM  The Florida Supreme Court ruled on Thursday that a British ex-socialite who faces the electric chair for murdering two business rivals deserved a new hearing because of possible prosecutor misconduct and a breach of judicial ethics.   In a unanimous ruling, Florida's high court ordered an evidentiary hearing to determine the validity of charges posed by attorneys for Krishna Nanan Maharaj that prosecutors withheld information and knowingly allowed perjured testimony.   Maharaj, once Britain's second-biggest racehorse owner and a millionaire fruit importer, was sentenced to death in 1987 for the murders a year earlier of Derrick Moo Young and his son, Duane Moo Young, who were gunned down during a meeting with Maharaj in a Miami hotel.   Maharaj faces death in Florida's electric chair for the slayings, which took place after a bitter dispute over a property deal between Maharaj and Derrick Moo Young in which each accused the other of extortion, bribery and theft of hundreds of thousands of dollars.   In addition to ordering a rehearing, the court criticised Miami Circuit Judge Leonard Glick, who presided over the case despite an apparent conflict of interest.   Glick, who was the supervisor of prosecutors handling the case, denied Maharaj an evidentiary hearing in 1995.   The high court ruled that he should have recused himself from the case because of his relationship with the attorneys.   The case will be returned to the Miami circuit court, where a different judge will hear evidence to determine if a new trial or sentencing hearing is warranted.   The hearing must be conducted within 90 days.   Jim Lohman, a Tallahassee attorney representing the Bar of England and the Wales Human Rights Committee in the Maharaj case, said Florida law generally requires an evidentiary hearing when a defendant raises disputed issues of fact that bear on the validity of the conviction.   "Those allegations were abundantly raised by Mr. Maharaj in the trial court," Lohman said.   "The trial court denied him an opportunity for an evidentiary hearing.   Obviously, the trial court was wrong in doing so."   Maharaj moved to Britain from Trinidad in 1960, driving a truck before building what would become "Chris Foreign Foods," a multi-million dollar fruit import and distribution business.   His appeal had received wide support in Britain, where his supporters included more than 100 members of Parliament. 
18415 !C12 !C13 !CCAT !GCAT !GCRIM  Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman said Thursday USDA had charged Greater Omaha Packing Inc of Omaha, Nebraska, and National Farmers Organization Inc of Ames, Iowa, with unfair trade practices.    USDA alleged that Greater Omaha and its president, Henry Davis, knowingly weighed carcasses at less than their true and correct weights.   NFO and two of its collections managers, John Peterson and Donald Ter Beest, were charged with paying livestock sellers on the basis of false weights, a USDA statement said.   "This is another in a series of ongoing actions being taken to ensure that America's cattle producers are being given a fair shake," Glickman said in the statement.   The charges were brought under the Packers and Stockyards Act.   USDA Grain Inspection, Packers and Stockyards Administration chief James Baker said the department was committed to enforcing the act agressively.   -- Washington Commodities Desk (202) 898-8394 
18416 !GCAT !GENV  Florida hopes a new publicity campaign will put some teeth into a longstanding message to tourists and residents alike -- don't feed the alligators.   With 14 million people and a million alligators, Florida is logging more and more complaints about gators that crawl into neighbourhood canals and lakes, backyards and occasionally swimming pools, a state spokesman said on Thursday.   Florida's information campaign, due to begin within two months, aims to teach people that alligators are a part of the landscape in the Sunshine State, said Henry Cabbage, spokesman for the Florida Game and Fresh Water Fish Commission.   "Gators belong in Florida," he said.   "The idea is to teach people how to peacefully coexist with alligators."   Under the slogan "Welcome to Our State.   You Might See Some Alligators Here," a campaign of posters, brochures and public service announcements will start in Florida and expand to eight other Southern states where alligators live and breed.   Florida records about 13,000 nuisance calls and averages 18 attacks on humans annually, Cabbage said.   There have been 220 documented alligator attacks, six fatal, since 1948.   Many of the people who call to complain about pesky alligators do not understand that the creatures are simply doing what alligators do, he said.   "Usually an alligator wouldn't be a problem if people would learn to treat them like a wild animal.   Don't feed them, don't try to pet them and don't get close to them."   Cabbage recalled the story of a Florida zookeeper who stopped a tourist who was lifting a little boy over a fence so he could set the child down on a 12-foot (3.5-metre) alligator and take a picture.   Alligator were declared an endangered species in 1966 but were removed from threatened lists in the mid-1980s after Florida populations were successfully regenerated. 
18417 !GCAT !GDIP  Secretary of State Warren Christopher on Thursday urged North and South Korea to avoid further provocative action following an incident in which Seoul troops killed seven North Koreans who came ashore from a submarine.   "It's obviously a matter of concern," Christopher told reporters, adding: "We wish that all parties would refrain from taking further provocative actions."    Christopher, asked if the incident could affect efforts to provide Pyongyang with nuclear technology and humanitarian aid, said: "Obviously the episode is a matter of concern but the facts are so murky ... it's impossible to assess" what the long-term impact of the incident might be.   South Korean troops killed seven North Koreans on Thursday as one of the deadliest infiltration dramas since the early Cold War drew to a close in a hail of bullets.   They were among an estimated 20 North Koreans who came ashore on a beach from a submarine on Wednesday, authorities in Seoul said.   Eleven died in an apparent mass suicide, and one was captured after a manhunt by thousands of troops and police.   One more is still on the loose.   South Korean President Kim Young-sam declared the submarine intrusion an act of military provocation, but Pyongyang was unrepentant and refused to accept a protest note on the heavily fortified border. 
18418 !E41 !E51 !E512 !ECAT !GCAT !GJOB  A number of international free trade agreements are likely to result in higher U.S. exports of agricutural products and healthy job creation in rural America, according to a U.S. Department of Agriculture senior economist.   "Recently, the weaker dollar and the U.S. support of multilateral trade liberalization, which worked to open other countries' agricultural markets, resulted in strong exports for U.S. products," Bill Edmondson, economist with the USDA Economic Research Service, said in a research paper.    "This trend of agricultural trade growth will likely continue in the future and will have economic impacts in rural America," Edmondson said.   Edmondson presented the paper on U.S. agricultural trade and the Midwest economy at a one-day conference held on Wednesday by the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago.   The conference is part of the Chicago Fed's year-long research project on various aspects of the Midwest economy.   Edmondson noted the research work on the agricultural exports/employment relationship has so far focused on the national level, leaving aside the specifics of the Midwest.    "Because the U.S. rural and general economy is extremely diverse, differences in various regions make broad generalizations difficult," Edmondson said.   "The mix of farm and processed food products produced in the (Chicago Fed) district, however, suggests that this district should be favorably affected by such an expansion."   Edmondson said trade ageements such as the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) or the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the creation of the World Trade Organization (WTO), should contribute to a more competitive agricultural sector.    Edmondson noted the economy and labor markets of rural U.S. regions have been affected in the 1980s by "volatility of export markets."   "During the 1990s, however, these markets have been expanding rapidly and prospects for more exports are good considering the GATT, WTO, and regional pacts such as NAFTA," Edmondson said.   The USDA economist estimated that if all agricultural products imported in 1995 had been produced domestically, "56,000 more workers would have been needed in the five states (of the Chicago Fed District)."    However, Edmondson's paper shows that "even if one takes the extreme assumption that all import-related jobs replaced domestic jobs, the Chicago Fed region was 87,700 jobs better off after agricultural trade in 1995."   Edmondson also expected the share of agriculture-related jobs to increase versus the region's average as the volume of high-value products -- such as poultry, processed foods or fruits -- increasec compared with basic commodities like grains.   -- 212-859-1666 
18419 !GCAT !GCRIM !GHEA !GPOL  The House Thursday voted to override President Clinton's veto of a bill to ban so-called "partial birth" abortions, sending it to the Senate where backers appear short of the two-thirds majority needed to follow suit.   The House voted 285-137 to override, narrowly garnering the needed vote.   Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott has said he will schedule a Senate vote next week, even while admitting bill supporters are unlikely to prevail in that chamber.    While Congress appeared unlikely to override the veto, the House action and expected Senate vote will likely accomplish what supporters of the legislation hope for -- once again focusing voters' attention on the highly emotional issue.   Republican presidential nominee Bob Dole has attacked Clinton for vetoing the bill, promising conservative groups to sign it if elected.   The Catholic church has mounted an aggressive effort in support of the measure.   Clinton said he has concerns about the abortion procedure, but could not sign the bill because it did not contain constitutionally required protections for a woman's health.   The legislation, vetoed by Clinton in April, marks the first time Congress has voted to ban a specific abortion procedure since the Supreme Court's landmark 1973 Roe vs. Wade deicsion making abortion legal. 
18420 !GCAT !GCRIM !GPOL !GVOTE  Republican presidential candidate Bob Dole appeared unruffled by a tumble from a campaign stage the day before as he took his anti-crime message into Nevada on Thursday.   "Don't be afraid of standing close to the stage ... I'm not going to dive off today," Dole quipped as he addressed a rally at a ballroom in the MGM Grand casino hotel.   "I was trying to do that new Democratic dance, the macarena.   I'm not going to try that anymore," he said before offering a speech on the anti-drugs and crime proposals he has made his theme this week.   Afterward, while shaking hands with supporters, Dole said he felt "great."   Asked by a reporter what voters might think of images of the fallen, 73-year-old senator flashed around the world, he replied "They ought to think, boy that guy's agile, he's young, he goes after 'em, he's tough."   The outside corner of Dole's left eye, bruised in the fall, was reddened, and Dole spokesman Nelson Warfield told reporters the candidate had noticed a bruise on his ankle in the morning, but that he had slept well and was feeling good.   "Obviously he's in good fighting form ... he's 100 percent up to speed," Warfield said.   President Bill Clinton, asked about Dole's fall, told reporters while campaigning in Seattle: "I hope he's ok.   I understand he is."   In his speech, Dole told the crowd former first lady Nancy Reagan had sent him a letter endorsing the new "Just don't do it" anti-drugs slogan he unveiled on Wednesday in California.   The slogan evoked Reagan's "Just say no" slogan which Dole said worked well in the 1980s.   In her letter, released in Washington, the former first lady said Dole's slogan "will be a tremendous rallying cry for millions of parents, teachers and young people as they try to stem this rising tide of drug abuse."   He also received the endorsement of the Law Enforcement Alliance of America, a group representing non-union police officers.   Dole fell from a stage in Chico, California, on Wednesday when a piece of decorative stage railing which had not been nailed down gave way under weight of the candidate as he leaned over to shake hands.   Dole quickly got up and began his speech and engaged in a vigorous round of handshaking afterward.   After travelling to Las Vegas on Wednesday evening, Dole was examined by a local opthamologist who said Dole had scratched a lining over the white part of his left eye and ruptured a blood vessel or two, but was otherwise unharmed.   "It's fairly noticeable, but essentially nothing more than ... a bruise," Dr. Rudy Manthel told reporters late on Wednesday.   "By tomorrow it'll probably feel a lot better and the next couple days it will go away completely," he said.   A witnesses to the incident said Dole was saved from far more serious injury by a photographer who caught the falling candidate.   Associated Press photographer Mike Green, who also helped break Dole's fall, told reporters the candidate had been saved from serious injury by photographer David Ake of Agence France Press.   Green said Ake cushioned Dole's head just as he was landing on his back, with the fallen railing under his neck.   "If he (Ake) hadn't caught his head when Dole came down, we'd still be in Chico, covering a different story," Green said.   Ake told Reuters he had reached out instinctively to catch Dole, who rolled away instantly and got up.   "I had a hand on his shoulder and a hand on his head, and he was lying on the rail," Ake said.   "If it lasted more than a second, I'll be amazed," he said.   Photos of the fall, showing Dole grimacing as he hit, were flashed around the world.   To a candidate whose age remains an underlying issue in the campaign, any sign of vulnerability can be potent, and Dole's aides quickly sought to put the accident in the best light.   "This should put to rest the age question once and for all," Dole spokesman Nelson Warfield said.   "If Bob Dole can take a tumble like that and hop right back up on his feet and deliver a great speech, he is strong enough to be president and go a couple of rounds with Mike Tyson too." 
18421 !E21 !E212 !ECAT !GCAT !GPOL  Voters will decide Nov 5 whether South Carolina's Lexington County should be allowed to use general fund revenues, including property tax money, to build and operate water and sewer systems, county officials said Thursday.   Voters prohibited the county from using general fund money for that purpose in a 1970 referendum.   The new proposal would restrict such expenditures to certain circumstances -- at the request of residents willing to form a special tax district to pay their own costs, to provide for economic development, to address health or environemntal problems, or if there is funding through grants or from revenues from opearting a water and sewer system.   Council Chairman Bill Banning said the county's involvment in water and sewer systems would boost economic development and aid large areas of the county where residents rely on septic tanks and wells.   --Jane Sutton, 305-347-5013 
18422 !GCAT !GPOL !GVOTE  Republican presidential candidate Bob Dole, who suffered a bruised eye in a tumble from a stage while campaigning, was saved from more serious injury by a photographer, a witness said on Thursday.   Dole fell from a stage in Chico, California, on Wednesday, when a piece of decorative stage railing, which had not been nailed down, gave way as the candidate leaned on it as he bent over to shake hands.   He quickly got up and began his speech.   Associated Press photographer Mike Green, who also helped break the fall, told reporters Dole had been saved from serious injury by photographer David Ake of Agence France Press.   Green said Ake managed to cushion Dole's head just as the candidate was landing on his back, with the fallen railing under his neck.   "If he (Ake) hadn't caught his head when Dole came down, we'd still be in Chico, covering a different story," Green said.   Ake told Reuters he had reached out instinctivly to catch Dole, who rolled away instantly and got up.   "I had a hand on his shoulder and a hand on his head, and he was lying on the rail," Ake said.   Ake, by virtue of being fallen on, missed the photo of the tumble but was in the photos flashed around the world.   His editors were understanding, he said.   "They said you can either be in the picture or take the picture, it's ok."   The photographers said Dole thanked both of them on his plane after the incident. 
18423 !GCAT !GPOL !GVOTE  If President Clinton beats Bob Dole in Ohio in November, as polls now indicate he will, the state's economic boom may be the deciding reason.   It is a boom that Bob Taft, Ohio's Republican secretary of state, says is Dole's biggest problem in a state that mirrors the U.S. electorate and has voted on the winning side in all but two presidential contests this century.   The good-times, don't-rock-the-boat feeling has Stacy Jarrett, a manager at the Hartville Elevator Co., planning to vote for Clinton even though he usually votes Republican and four years ago backed Ross Perot -- as did a million of his fellow Ohioans.   "The country does seem to be moving pretty good," he said.   "The economy is going to be the key issue.   Interest rates have been good.   As long as they're down, people are going to borrow and buy."   Ricky Tucker of Strongsville, a sales representative for a large company, said he would probably vote for Clinton because "the economy is the area where he's done a fair job."   But random interviews in recent days with Ohio voters indicate there is still a fair amount of indecision, along with a dose of none-of-the-above cynicism that could keep Ohio a battleground right up to the election.   The seventh most populous state, with a prize of 21 electoral votes, may mirror the country more than any other state with its mix of big cities and small towns, rich and poor, farms and factories, blue-collar and high-tech workers, and racial and ethnic diversity.   In every presidential election, its vote is a near copy of what happens nationally.   No Republican has ever won the White House without carrying Ohio.   In 1992 Clinton and then-President George Bush stopped in the state more often than any other, and this year it is again near the top of the list.   Clinton has made 15 Ohio visits since he took office, Dole 10 since he announced his candidacy in April 1995.   Four years ago, Clinton beat Bush in Ohio by only 90,632 votes out of nearly 5 million cast.   A Reuter poll conducted by John Zogby International and released Wednesday showed Clinton with a 13-point lead over Dole in Ohio, with a margin of error of plus or minus five points.   It also found more than 15 percent undecided and Perot's third-party effort trailing at less than 5 percent.   Zogby said the economy was a cornerstone of Clinton's strength, giving him a double-digit edge across almost all income groups in Ohio.   David Leland, chairman of the Ohio Democratic Party, said 411,000 jobs had been created in Ohio since Clinton became president and 140,000 people had become homeowners.   John Green, director of the Bliss Institute of Applied Politics at the University of Akron, said: "The economy is humming.   ... The feeling among voters is Bill Clinton's approach to shaking up the government seems to be working."   But he said the race would tighten in Ohio because votes in the state were close, even in a presidential landslide.   Taft, great-grandson of President William Howard Taft and the son and grandson of two U.S. Senators, told Reuters Dole had been focusing on his Republican base in the state, notably the conservative Cincinnati area, "but he's just getting killed in the northeastern part of the state," where the Cleveland area, a Democratic stronghold, is located.   "He ought to be doing better than he is in central Ohio too.   He's got to go after swing voters, He's got to go after some of the Republicans who supported Bush in '92 but they're not supporting him," he added.   Taft said economic well-being that seemed to breed complacency was "the No. 1 problem for Bob Dole in Ohio." 
18424 !GCAT !GCRIM !GPOL  Maine's highest court upheld a term limits law for state legislators Thursday, ruling it was not affected by a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision on congressional term limits.   The Maine Supreme Court unanimously rejected a League of Women Voters challenge to a 1993 citizen referendum law that restricted members of the Maine House and Senate to four consecutive terms in office.   The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1995 that any effort to impose congressional term limits required amending the Constitution.   The league argued Maine's state term limits were illegal because they had not been approved through a constitutional amendment.   But the Maine justices ruled voters were exercising the power given them by the state constitution when they enacted state term limits through a referendum and that the 1995 ruling dealt only with federal offices.   Maine will vote in November on a referendum that would require ballots to say if legislative and congressional candidates support federal term limits.   Opponents would be labeled as "violating the will of the people." 
18425 !GCAT !GCRIM !GENV !GPOL  The Clinton administration, trying to emphasise the environment as an election-year issue, proposed legislation on Thursday that would increase penalties and make it easier to prosecute environmental crimes.   The legislation was unveiled at a Justice Department news conference a day after President Clinton signed an order that ends new development on 1.7 million acres of federal land in southern Utah.   Attorney General Janet Reno brushed aside questions about the timing, saying the legislation had resulted from collaboration between the Justice Department and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.   "I didn't arrange the timing," she said.   Clinton had promised the legislation last month during a campaign appearance in Michigan right before the Democratic Convention, a Justice Department spokeswoman said.   Reno said she did not know if there would be enough time for hearings on the legislation before Congress adjourns, which is scheduled for late this month.   Assistant EPA Administrator Steven Herman rejected suggestions that his agency had not done enough to prosecute environmental crimes.   "I think our record is quite superb," he said.   "Our criminal programme has been very effective, very aggressive and very successful."   The legislation would allow for the prosecution of someone who attempts an environmental crime but is stopped before it can be completed.   It also provides for increased punishment when an environmental crime causes a serious injury or death.   The bill would extend the statute of limitations when the perpetrator has concealed the crime and would make clear that federal courts can order restitution and secure assets to pay for cleanups.   With the race for the White House heading toward its Nov. 5 conclusion, Clinton has sought to promote his concerns about safeguarding the environment -- something pollsters say ranks high in importance among voters, many of whom have doubts about Republican handling of the issue. 
18426 !GCAT !GPOL !GSCI  The Clinton administration is abandoning a Bush-era commitment to put a human being on Mars but is going ahead with plans for a robot mission to the Red Planet, a White House official said on Thursday.   "We are not espousing the goal of putting man on Mars but we are going full speed ahead with robotic programmes by the year 2000," the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.   The decision to scale back from earlier plans to send a human being to Mars by 2019 was based on the budget, the official said, adding that it was a question of "where we spend our R & D (research and development) dollars."   The official said the Mars operation was part of a comprehensive interagency report. 
18427 !E51 !E512 !ECAT !GCAT !GCRIM  U.S. Trade Representative Charlene Barshefsky said Thursday that China has made progress in enforcing a copyright protection agreement.   She told a House Ways and Means subcommittee that some 15 CD factories that had been churning out pirated music and computer software disks were shut by Chinese authorities and remain closed.   Authorities have also strengthened border enforcement and intensified raids against copyright pirates, she said.   Barshefsky also said that China has clamped down on the import of illegal CD presses and made progress in allowing opportunities in China for American music, film and software industries.   U.S. trade officials are currently in China reviewing Beijing's efforts to clamp down on copyright pirates and provide market access to legitimate products, she said. 
18428 !GCAT !GPOL !GVOTE  Telephone records show that President Clinton's former political adviser Dick Morris was in regular contact with Senate Republican Leader Trent Lott, the New York Post reported Thursday.   Morris resigned in August after a supermarket tabloid reported he had had a year-long relationship with a call girl and had allowed her to listen to his phone conversations with Clinton.   The newspaper said Morris kept a back channel open with Lott even after he was reprimanded last February for leaking secret budget polling data to the presidential election campaign of Clinton's Republican opponent, Bob Dole.   It quoted an unidentified source familiar with telephone records from the Jefferson Hotel in Washington, where prostitute Sherry Rowlands said she visited Morris, as saying he called Lott at least 27 times between January and July.   "They pitched back and forth (proposals) from here when we were trying to get a budget," Lott's spokeswoman, Susan Irby, was quoted as saying.   She told the newspaper some of the calls might have been made to Lott's aides and not the senator.   By contrast, only one call was made to the Democratic Senate leader, Tom Daschle of South Dakota, the Post said. 
18429 !C12 !CCAT !GCAT !GCRIM !GDEF  The CIA pulled the plug on its Internet site on Thursday after a hacker broke in and posted a message declaring it the "Central Stupidity Agency."   CIA officials said their World Wide Web home page was not linked to mainframe computers containing spy secrets or other classified national security information.   "There is no way to access internal CIA information from this home page," said Rick Oborn, an agency spokesman.   He said the site was tampered with on Wednesday night and had been shut down by the agency on Thursday morning while a task force tried to prevent another break-in.   The unidentified hacker turned the home page of the Central Intelligence Agency, a bastion of spy technology and computer wizardry, into a crude parody.   "Welcome to the Central Stupidity Agency," it read.   A picture of an unknown man replaced that of CIA Director John Deutch and fictional links offered "News from Space" and "Nude Girls."   The text also read "Stop Lying."   No stranger to covert action, the CIA played down the possibility that it was the victim of a cyber-era foe of the trenchcoat-and-dagger type that it had battled in Cold War back alleys.   "If there is any major enemy who wanted to do us damage, this is not anything that causes us great concern," the spokesman said, adding that he had no idea of the culprit's identity.   He termed the attack "malicious" and said he was not shrugging it off.   The site, visited about 120,000 times a week, would be restored when the agency's technicians were confident they had "cleaned it up," officials said.   The spy agency has formed a task force to look into how the page was penetrated and how to prevent a recurrence, they said.   The web site (http://www.odci.gov/cia) showcases spy agency press releases, speeches and other publicly available data including the CIA's World Fact Book, a standard reference.   The attack resembled one that forced the Justice Department to close its Web site for a few days last month after hackers turned it into the "Department of Injustice," inserting a swastika and picture of Adolf Hitler.   The incident highlighted the vulnerability of Internet sites and drove home the need for multiple layers of security to prevent manipulation of data.   "You want people to visit, you want them to interact, but you don't want them to leave anything behind," said Jon Englund of the Information Technology Association of America, a trade group of leading software and telecommunications firms.   Ben Brandenberg, the Justice Department's chief spokesman, said his department had reopened its home page (http://www.usdoj.gov) after taking unspecified "reasonable measures" to secure it from hackers.   But there were no guarantees that the fixes would prevent repeat attacks, he said, adding: "This is a hazard of the information age."   "If you make it bullet-proof, you make it useless to the public.   We are determined to keep it open," Brandenberg added. 
18430 !GCAT !GDIP  Defence Secretary William Perry leaves on Friday for Scandanavia on a trip that will include NATO talks on a new Bosnia peacekeeping force and the signing of an agreement to stop Soviet nuclear contamination of the Arctic.   He will go first to Finland, Sweden and Denmark for bilateral military talks, then to Norway for discussions with NATO and Russian defence ministers on whether an international peacekeeping force should be sent to Bosnia again next year.   Perry will wind up the 10-day trip on Sept. 29.   No final Bosnia decision will be made at the informal Wednesday and Thursday NATO meeting in Bergen, Norway, but defence chiefs will begin laying the groundwork for an expected go-ahead by political leaders in December.   Western officials say they expect a new international military force will replace a current NATO-led peacekeeping force of over 50,000 in Bosnia next year.   But Washington says it has made no decision on participation in such a force.   Russian Defence Minister Igor Rodinov will attend a special session at the NATO meeting.   On Thursday, Rodinov, Perry and Norway's Defence Minister Joergen Kosmo will sign an agreement under which the three nations will cooperate to halt and perhaps even clean up nuclear and other waste dumped by Russia's military in the vast Arctic.   A U.S. military spokesman, who asked not to be identified, said the Russian military had dumped 16 nuclear reactor compartments in the Arctic region, six with fuel on board.   "The principal purpose of the AMEC (Arctic Military and Environmental Cooperation) agreement is to change the environmental conditions in the Russian Arctic region," the official said, adding that Norway was especially concerned because of its close proximity to Russia.   The official said the contamination was not considered widespread or dangerous but the agreement was aimed at halting such practices as nuclear and oil dumping.   It will include joint development of containers for interim storage of spent nuclear fuel and work on technology for treatment of liquid as well as solid radioactive waste.   Although no final plans have been made, the signing is expected to be followed in the near future by a meeting with senior Russian military officials in Murmansk, Russia.   A senior U.S. defence official said Perry looked forward to private talks with Rodinov on continued U.S. bilateral and other cooperation with Russia that grew out of close ties between Perry and former Defence Minister Pavel Grachev.   Grachev was sacked by Russian President Boris Yeltsen this summer in a domestic shakeup over the military's handling of the bloody civil war in Chechnya.   The Perry-Rodinov talks will include "the general state of NATO-Russia relations, the continuation of Russian cooperation within IFOR (the Bosnia peace implementation force) and development of an expanded scope for bilateral military programmes and other activities involving Russia and the United States," the official added.   Before the NATO meeting, Perry will visit Helsinki on Saturday, Stockholm on Sunday and Copenhagen on Monday for bilateral talks with government and defence leaders.   In Copenhagen on Tuesday morning, he will take part in a Baltic defence seminar hosted by Danish Defence Minister Has Haekkerup and including Defence Ministers Michael Portillo of Britain, Volker Ruehe of Germany and others, U.S. officials said. 
18431 !GCAT !GDIP !GVIO  The head of the CIA said on Thursday the Kurdish faction that took control in northern Iraq with President Saddam Hussein's backing is now asking western allies for help in holding Saddam at bay.   Central Intelligence Agency Director John Deutch said Kurdistan Democratic Party leader Massoud Barzani "is now approaching the (anti-Iraq) coalition for protection in an effort to hold Saddam Hussein at arm's length."   Barzani and senior U.S. diplomat Robert Pelletreau met on Wednesday at a secret location in Ankara.   It was Barzani's first meeting with U.S. officials since he joined with Iraqi forces to defeat a rival Kurdish group earlier this month, undermining U.S. efforts to contain Saddam and prompting a confrontation between Washington and Baghdad.   "Barzani is playing an enormously dangerous game," Deutch told a hearing of the Senate Intelligence Committee.   He noted that after the 1991 Gulf War, when the Kurds gained territorial advances as Saddam's army was defeated by a U.S.-led coalition, "Saddam showed no reluctance to massacre Kurds and members of Barzani's family."   Deutch said that after Barzani's faction, the KDP, used Baghdad backing to beat its rivals, the Iranian-backed Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, in the mountainous northern region, Barzani feared becoming too dependent on Saddam.   "Saddam Hussein is putting increasing pressure on Barzani to negotiate a framework for autonomy under Baghdad's overall control," the CIA chief said.   He said the KDP controls nearly all of the Kurdish-populated northern part of Iraq, with only isolated pockets held by its rival, the PUK.   Before the Iraqi-backed KDP advance, the United States had tried to bring together the two Kurdish factions as a northern bulwark against Saddam.   The advance of the joint KDP-Iraqi force in the north devastated a network of international aid stations set up to help the Kurdish people as well as a U.S.-backed organisation that was working against Saddam.   More than 2,000 pro-U.S. Kurds and their relatives fled to Turkey last week on their way to asylum in the United States.   State Department spokesman Nicholas Burns said on Wednesday Barzani had been asked to stay clear of Saddam from now on.   "We don't see that the Iraqi Kurds can profit in the long term from an association with Saddam Hussein," he told reporters.   "In fact, on the contrary, we think that such a relationship would be detrimental."   Deutch said tensions with Iraq had eased.   The United States has bolstered its air and naval forces in the region after firing two salvos of cruise missiles at Iraqi military targets and reporting missile attacks on its warplanes.   The CIA director said Iraq had not threatened allied planes enforcing northern and southern no-fly zones for several days, and mobile anti-aircraft missiles have been returned to their bases.   He said the allies' extension of the no-fly zone in the south to Baghdad's outskirts and the dispatch of 3,000 U.S. troops to Kuwait have deterred Iraqi military activity.   Asked the likelihood tht Iraq, which sparked the Gulf War by invading Kuwait in 1990, would launch an attack on Kuwait now, Deutch said: "At present, we would estimate that to be very low, indeed."   But he said: "We should anticipate that Saddam will continue to challenge the coalition."   He added: "There will be no stability in the region or improved circumstances for the Iraqi people until Saddam Hussein and his regime is replaced."   "For all of these reasons, Iraq will continue to be and has been at the top of our intelligence priorities." 
18432 !GCAT !GPOL !GVOTE  By Alan Elsner, Political Correspondent   Republican presidential candidate Bob Dole thought the 1996 election campaign would centre on the twin issues of character and trust.   But most U.S. voters so far are focusing on other matters.   A recent Reuters poll found voters ranked the character and integrity of the candidates fourth most important on a list of 10 issues, behind education, the economy and crime.   Just over 50 percent agreed that President Bill Clinton lacked a firm core of beliefs, while 45 percent disagreed.   Still, in some three dozen follow-up interviews with voters who took part in the poll, many who expressed doubts about Clinton's character said they would vote for him anyway.   Questions about Clinton's character derive from such matters as extra-marital affairs alleged to have happened when he was governor of Arkansas, his entanglement in the failed Whitewater real estate deal of the same period and his evasion of the Vietnam-era military draft as a university student.   Those issues were all raised in the 1992 presidential campaign and did not seem to hurt him much then.   Dole supporters are bitter about this and say it shows the country's morals are in decline.   But Democrats and many independents say a man's private life is his own.   "I don't understand why the character issue is ignored.   I think it's a big deal.   I just don't know why people don't feel it's important," said Darryl Lee, a college instructor from Hilliard Ohio.   That reaction -- "I can't understand it" -- is typical of the feelings of many Dole supporters.   "I really don't know how to explain it," said Robert Williams, a retiree from Murphysboro, Illinois.   "I'm aggravated people aren't looking at Clinton's character.   It says something about America."   "This is the highest office in the country.   A man should have some kind of character even to be considered," he said.   Said Mary Bowen, another retiree from Columbus, Ohio: "I figure the American people will have lost if Clinton wins.   They will have lost their sense of honour.   We Americans sure have gone a long way down."   Several voters said Dole should attack Clinton's character more aggressively.   "I don't know why Dole can't attack Clinton and his administration, the number of his Cabinet members who have been under indictment," said Virginia Collins, a retiree from Benicia, California.   On the other side are those -- the majority, by every indication -- who call Clinton's character flaws irrelevant.   Their view is summed up in the phrase "nobody's perfect."   Gary Drys, an undecided voter from Southgate, Michigan, said he would be looking at several factors in making up his mind, but Clinton's character would not be one of them.   "I'm not bothered by the allegations and scandals," Drys said.   "Nobody's perfect, everybody makes mistakes.   As long as he hasn't done anything crooked, it has nothing to do with running the country."   Carole Baker, a factory labourer of Boyne City, Michigan, dismissed the Clinton character issue in a few terse words.   "He's just human.   It's nobody's business," she said.   Rosalind Reider, a legal secretary from Southfield, Michigan agreed.   "Most of the scandals have been overblown by the media.   His sex life should be private, between him and his wife.   It doesn't affect his presidency."   Some Clinton backers wish he would be discreet in his personal life and express doubts about Hillary Rodham Clinton's role in the complex Whitewater financial deals, long under investigation by a special prosecutor and Congress.   "Whitewater -- I think Hillary is the big cheese there.   She's always been an aggressive woman.   But I feel that as a public figure, Clinton should be careful with his personal life," said Joyce Sloder, assistant manager of a dry cleaner in Mahomet, Illinois.   In many ways Clinton's perceived character weaknesses are balanced by Dole's age of 73.   Sloder was one of many voters who said bluntly of Dole, "He's too old."   Susan Sosnowitz, a homemaker in the Bronx, New York, said she had backed Ronald Reagan, who was president well into his seventies, but worried about voting for someone Dole's age.   "I liked Reagan very much, but look what happened to him," she said, referring to the Alzheimer's Disease that has struck his since his retirement.   "The same thing might happen to Dole.   I think he's a little too old." 
18433 !GCAT !GDEF !GHEA !GVIO  The Pentagon said on Thursday it is notifying 5,000 more U.S. Gulf War veterans that they may have been exposed to chemical weapons during the destruction of an Iraqi ammunition dump.   That announcement vastly expanded the search for possible victims after the military said earlier that only 150 U.S. troops could have suffered some exposure as they destroyed the Kamisiyah ammunition depot in southern Iraq in March 1991.   The new advisory said the expanded notifications were being made because deadly chemical nerve agents Sarin and Cyclosarin might have spread from 122mm rockets being destroyed in a pit area of the big arms complex.   "The Defence Department will begin notifications immediately to about 5,000 service members who were in the possible dispersion area," the announcement said.   "Information currently being evaluated suggests low-level exposures may have taken place out to 25 kilometres (15 miles) from the Kamisiyah complex on March 10, 1991."   The U.S. government, on orders from President Bill Clinton, last year mounted a major effort to resolve medical complaints from as many as 60,000 U.S. Gulf War veterans.   The complaints range from numbness to memory loss, but no common cause or "Gulf War syndrome" has been found .   The Defence Department and the Central Intelligence Agency are already working on a computer model that will estimate the possible dispersion of the chemical agents to troops that may have been anywhere near the Kamisiyah complex.   The Pentagon denied last month that it intentionally quashed a 1991 classified report suggesting that U.S. troops were exposed to Iraqi chemical weapons.   But it conceded that "the full relevance of the report ... was not recognised at the time" and it was not investigated until this year, providing indications that perhaps 150 soldiers were exposed to chemical agents when they blew up the Kamisiyah site.   Defence Secretary William Perry said the secret document was circulated within the government and to U.S. military officials at the time and the "complex" issue was still being investigated.   But the document, based on a visit by U.N. inspectors to the Kamisiyah complex in 1991, was not provided to the U.S. engineer battalion involved or to the public.   The report was circulated to U.S. military commanders worldwide and then filed away even as the Defence Department repeatedly suggested it had no evidence that large numbers of U.S. troops might have been exposed to chemical arms. 
18434 !GCAT !GDEF !GDIP  U.S. and Japanese foreign and defence ministers met on Thursday to discuss U.S. military bases on Okinawa and general defence cooperation.   U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher and Defence Secretary William Perry conferred with Japanese Foreign Minister Yukihiko Ikeda and Defence Minister Hideo Usui at a meeting of the U.S.-Japan Security Consultative Committee.   State Department spokesman Nicholas Burns said the meeting would discuss work by a joint committee on Okinawa, review the two countries' defence relationship and consider ways of expanding an international security dialogue in Asia.   Following the rape last year of an Okinawan schoolgirl by three American servicemen, a case that re-ignited protests against the presence of the U.S. military on the island, Okinawa Governor Masahide Ota refused to sign orders to renew leases for the facilities.   But in a visit to Tokyo in April, President Bill Clinton announced consolidations of bases on the island that cut the area they occupy by about 20 percent.   Last Friday, Ota agreed to renew the leases for the bases on the island.   "We think we've made a lot of progress since April on the bases issue," Burns told reporters.   In a referendum Sept. 8, however Okinawans voted overwhelmingly for a further shrinking of the U.S. military presence, which is resented for noise, accidents and crime by U.S. troops.   The United States is committed to the defence of Japan under a 1960 treaty.   But during Clinton's April visit to Tokyo, the two countries signed a joint declaration that suggested a greater role for Japan in regional security after decades of post-World War II restraint.   Thursday's meeting at the State Department of the so-called "2+2" committee was to end with a working lunch and news conference.   At a separate meeting on Wednesday, Christopher and Ikeda agreed that their governments should work hard to try to resolve trade disputes over civil aviation and insurance.   But no formal decisions were reached.   Japanese spokesman Hiroshi Hashimoto said Ikeda urged the United States to resume talks to settle the dispute over civil aviation rights without any preconditions.   Negotiations on aviation rights and a 1952 agreement that Japan says favours the United States broke down last month.   Washington, which would like an "open skies" accord with Japan, blamed Tokyo for blocking resolution of the dispute.   The insurance discussion centred on a dispute over a 1994 trade agreement on insurance deregulation in Japan and negotiations taking place this week in Tokyo, Hashimoto said.   Burns said most of the Ikeda-Christopher meeting centred on Middle East peace efforts and the recent U.S. military action against Iraq.   The ministers briefed each other on their recent trips to the Middle East and agreed "this is a difficult time in the peace process," Burns said.   Ikeda reasserted Japan's understanding and support for U.S. air strikes against Iraq earlier this month and Christopher expressed his appreciation for Japan's quick public support, the spokesman added. 
18435 !C13 !CCAT !GCAT !GENV  U.S. House Agriculture Committee Chairman Pat Roberts, R-Kan, said Thursday he was "very disappointed" by Agriculture Department proposals to change the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP).   Roberts said a proposal unveiled Wednesday by Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman would jettison a decade of environmental benefits in the Great Plains, downgrade wildlife protection, and delay farmer crop planning.   "I am very disappointed," Roberts said at a hearing by his committee the day after the proposal was made.    USDA wrote the proposed regulation to implement requirements of the 1996 farm bill.   Glickman said the changes would put some of the less environmentally sensitive land back into production.   That land would be replaced in the program by more sensitive acreage.   "It is tryly disappointing that, after passage of the most environmentally sound farm bill in the history of this nation, the Clinton Administration would reverse its course and make drastic changes to a program that has so many positive benefits," Roberts said.    Roberts said he hoped Glickman would change the rule before the final version was published, saying he expected 8.3 million acres would be removed from the program under the proposal.   "It baffles me how a Secretary of Agriculture from Kansas could come to the conclusion that the erosion and wildlife benefits of the past 11 years should be discarded so easily over vast areas of the central United States," he said.   Deputy Agriculture Secretary Richard Rominger told the hearing the department hoped to keep the program at the 36.4 million acre maximum set by Congress by enrolling more fragile land to replace acreage that was removed.    Roberts slammed USDA for delay, saying that under the best circumstances, farmers would not know the contents of the final rule until January to March next year, too late for spring planted crops.   Rominger told reporters the department had written the regulation as fast as possible after the farm bill was passed, but faced other farm bill priorities such as implementation of the new law's market transition payments.   He said farmers who had CRP acres expiring at the end of this month were still able to extend their contracts, which he said gave them an extra year to decide whether to re-enroll the land. 
18436 !GCAT !GHEA !GPOL  House and Senate negotiators reached agreement Thursday on two key health care reforms -- to expand insurance coverage for mental illness and to give new mothers the option of a 48-hour hospital stay.   Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle told reporters the agreement provided for both to take effect Jan. 1, 1998.   But no agreement was reached on a Senate-passed plan to provide federally-funded health care for children of veterans with spina bifida, he said.    While health plans will not be required to cover mental illness, those that do will no longer be permitted to set lower maximum coverage amounts for mental health treatment.   If there is no lifetime limit on physical care, none will be permitted on mental health care.   The compromise exempts companies with 50 or fewer employees.   Health insurers will be required to offer new mothers and their babies at least a 48-hour hospital stay after a normal birth and a 96-hour stay after a Caesarean section.   They will also be banned from offering any cash or rebates to women who choose a shorter hospitalization.   Both provisions had passed the Senate with broad bipartisan support but had not cleared the House.   Earlier this week the House endorsed the health care reforms, but senior Republicans objected that the issues had not been thoroughly studied.   The delay in the effective date until January 1998 was designed to give Congress time to review the issues and possibly revise the laws next year. 
18437 !E21 !E211 !ECAT !GCAT !GPOL  Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott said Friday Congress will shift its sights to negotiations with the White House on a catch-all spending bill needed to avoid a partial government shutdown at the end of the month rather than keep working on separate money bills.   "We are going to make a serious effort to get a continuing resolution agreed to in Congress by next week.   We have got to focus on that.   That is a big job," Lott said.   The change of direction would give Congress a better chance of completing its work by the Sept. 30 deadline. 
18438 !GCAT !GDEF !GHEA !GVIO  The Pentagon said on Thursday it is notifying 5,000 more U.S. troops who served in the 1991 Gulf War that they may have been exposed to Iraqi chemical weapons agents during the destruction of such arms in southern Iraq.   The notification vastly expanded the search after an announcement earlier this year suggested that some 150 U.S. troops could have suffered some exposure as they destroyed the Kamisiyah ammunition dump in southern Iraq in March 1991.    The new advisory said the expanded notifications were being made because the deadly chemical nerve agents Sarin and Cyclosarin might have spread from 122mm rockets being destroyed in a pit area of the vast arms complex.   "The Defence Department will begin notifications immediately to about 5,000 service members who were in the possible dispersion area," the announcement said.   "Information currently being evaluated suggests low-level exposures may have taken place out to 25 kilometres (15 miles) from the Kamisiyah complex on March 10, 1991," it added.   The Defence Department and the Central Intelligence Agency are working on a computer model that will estimate the possible dispersion of the chemical agents, the Pentagon said. 
18439 !GCAT !GDIP !GVIO  CIA Director John Deutch said on Thursday that Iraq-supported Kurds hold nearly all of northern Iraq, but their leader has approached western allies "for protection in an effort to hold (Iraq's President) Saddam Hussein at arm's length."   "Saddam Hussein is putting increasing pressure on (the Iraq-support Kurdistan Democratic Party leader Massoud) Barzani to negotiate a framework for autonomy under Baghdad's overall control," Deutch told the Senate Intelligence Committee.    Deutch said Barzani's KDP controls nearly all of the Kurdish part of northern Iraq, with only isolated pockets held by the opposition Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK).   The Central Intelligence Agency director said tensions in Iraq have eased.   He said Iraq has not threatened allied planes enforcing northern and southern no-fly zones for several days, and mobile anti-aircraft missiles have been returned to their bases.   Deutch said the allies' extension of the no-fly zone to Baghdad's southern outskirts and the dispatch of 3,000 U.S. troops to Kuwait have deterred Iraq from further military activity.   When asked the likelihood of Iraq attacking Kuwait, Deutch said, "At present, we would estimate that to be very low, indeed." 
18440 !C13 !C31 !C312 !CCAT !G15 !G153 !G158 !GCAT !M14 !M141 !MCAT  The European Union reverted to granting subsidies to its main grain exporters for the first time in more than a year on Thursday, farm officials said.   It agreed to assist commercial exports of 237,470 tonnes of wheat to a world grain market where prices are now sagging below European levels after soaring to records earlier this year.   Subsidies were suspended in early 1995 and the EU even imposed a tax on exports for a while when global market supply tightened as grain stocks fell to 20-year lows.   But several regions including the EU have reported bumper harvests this year, prompting the return to subsides.   This time round, however, the EU has tried to steer clear of a trade spat by granting fewer subsidies than expected, after warnings of retaliation by the United States if it doles out too much.   "This is not as big a sale as we expected.   They obviously don't want to start undercutting the United States," a Geneva-based grain trader said.   The EU and U.S. are among the biggest suppliers of wheat and competed savagely up to the mid-1990s by throwing billions of dollars in aid to help exports, driving down world prices.   Each side blamed the other for starting a price war.   In a sign of how quickly even talk of grain subsidies can renew tensions, U.S. Senate agriculture comittee chairman Richard Lugar had urged his government early on Thursday to put pressure on Brussels to make sure the subsidies did not happen.   Washington has promised to "fight fire with fire" but is reserving judgement on whether to start subsidising its own exports again.   Washington had halted subsidies at the same time as the EU authorities in Brussels.   The decision to return to subsidies was made during weekly grain talks in Brussels to help dispose of the large new crop.   The EU may have a record grain harvest of up to 200 million tonnes this year, up more than 10 percent from 1995.   Bigger crops have also been reported in Australia and China.   This year's crops have already forced world wheat prices down to around $160 a tonne after an all-time high near $300 in April.   Guy Legras, director general for agriculture at the European Commission in Brussels, a veteran of past trade clashes with the United States, said this week he believed a new feud caused by undercutting each others' prices was in neither side's interest.   "We will align ourselves to wheat prices in the United States," he told Reuters in an interview on Wednesday.   Traders said the subsidies awarded on Thursday -- some eight dollars per tonne -- actually left the value of EU wheat slightly higher than U.S. prices at about $173 per tonne.   The EU subsidies are available in a grain auction held each Thursday in Brussels.   Traders bid for the refund they need to close the price gap between Europe and the rest of the world, where farmers are less protected and prices are usually lower.   The EU has the hard task of sifting the demands from those who will sell the grain to outside the EU to avoid being pulled into subsidising at levels dictated by speculation rather than real market needs.   In the secretive world of grain, the weekly ritual is seen as a game of cat-and-mouse between the EU and market middlemen over how much a subsidy should be worth.   If the Commission guesses the market wrongly and forks out a bigger subsidy than a trader needs to close a grain deal, the rest is pure profit.   -- Sydney Newsroom 61-2 9373-1800 
18441 !GCAT !GDIP  Germany's federal states, ignoring protests from human rights groups, said on Thursday they will start sending Bosnian civil war refugees home next month.   The interior ministers from the 16 federal states said that they would begin gradually repatriating some of the 320,000 Bosnians who fled to Germany during the last five years to escape the fighting in the Balkans.   "This decision does not mean that 320,000 Bosnian war refugees will be deported on October 1," said Hartmuth Wrocklage, the interior minister from Hamburg and chairman of the meeting.   "It is rather the beginning of the repatriation phase that should be completed by the middle of next year," he added.   Trying to calm fears of human rights groups and Bosnian refugees living in Germany, the ministers emphasised that special care would be taken to ensure the Bosnians were sent back only to regions where they would be safe.   Human rights groups had urged the state officials to delay their decision, arguing many parts of Bosnia are neither ready nor safe enough to take the refugees back.   But most of Germany's regional states, pressured by surging budget deficit and tight fiscal constraints, have been insisting on a prompt repatriation of the refugees.   Germany took in as many war refugees as the rest of the European Union combined.   The decision by the state ministers had the backing of the federal government.   "Now that the civil war is over and it is again possible to live in and especially rebuild the homeland, our temporary guests must return," federal Interior Minister Manfred Kanther said earlier on Thursday.   "We could never take in so many refugees again if we didn't always make clear that this is not a programme of immigration by the back door, but help in need."   The vast majority of the refugees are Moslems driven out of their homes mostly by Serbs but also by Croats.   The United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) has singled out 22 regions suitable for refugees to return to -- but added that this only applied to returnees from the ethnic group which was dominant in those areas.   By and large refugees from former Yugoslavia have been received sympathetically by ordinary Germans, many of whom remember the ravages of war.   The Bosnians, many of them staying with friends or relatives in Germany, have not aroused resentment in the same way as refugees from further afield who still apply for asylum at a rate of well over 100,000 a year and are often branded as spongers by hardline rightwingers.   However, even federal states which have until now urged that the Bosnians should be allowed to stay longer have started pushing for a definite timetable, under pressure from overstretched local and municipal budgets.   The states agreed tentatively in January that a gradual return should begin on July 1, starting with single people and childless couples, but then agreed with Bonn not to start before October 1.   Now a consensus appears to be emerging that the programme will not rigidly follow family categories, but instead focus more on returning specific ethnic groups to areas where they will be safe.   "We have to take account of individual personal circumstances and -- this is the most important thing -- be sure that people are only returned to areas where this is possible from the security point of view," said.   Max Stadler, interior policy spokesman of the liberal Free Democrats.   Politicians of all shades accept that the repatriation programme will take two years. 
18442 !GCAT !GREL  Pope John Paul, visiting a town where a crude anti-papal bomb was defused two weeks ago, on Thursday praised Roman Catholic martyrs who fought against the 1789 French Revolution.   On the first day of a four-day trip to France, the Pontiff hailed those who fought in the 1793-95 Vendee uprising in western France against the fledgling Revolution, but he said there was sin on both sides.   An estimated 100,000 people were killed when the revolutionary government crushed the counter-revolt, led by local nobles and clergy in alliance with peasants resisting conscription.   "You are the heirs of men and women who were courageous enough to remain faithful to the Church of Jesus Christ at a time when its freedom and independence were threatened," the Pope told about 3,000 youths in Saint-Laurent-sur-Sevre.   "In the terrible struggles, many actions were marked by sin, on both sides.   But it was in union with Christ that numerous martyrs offered their life here," he said in the so-called Garden of Cherries in a Saint-Laurent convent.   In 1984, the Pope beatified several dozen priests executed at Arleville by republican troops in the Vendee uprising.   The rural area remains among the most conservative of modern France.   After his speech, the Pope prayed at the Saint-Laurent basilica dedicated to an 18th century missionary.   A homemade bomb was found there early this month and the words "In nomine Pape-BOOM!"   were daubed on a wall.   The Pope's visit has stirred controversy in France about the separation of Church and State and opposition to his conservative moral teachings.   No one has been arrested for planting the bomb.   He prayed before the tomb of missionary Saint Louis-Marie Grignion de Montfort, where the bundle of dynamite was placed, and the tomb of Blessed Marie-Louise Trichet.   Both were 18th century founders of religious orders.   The Pontiff adopted Saint Louis-Marie Grignion de Montfort's Latin motto "Totus Tuus" (All Yours) as a symbol of devotion to the Virgin Mary.   As a student, he translated some of the saint's works into his native Polish.   "I am happy to begin my pilgrimage on French soil under the patronage of this outstanding saint, he said in a speech.   "You know that I am very indebted to him and his Treatise."   The 76-year-old Pope, looking alert and on form on his last trip before an operation in October to remove his appendix, shook hands with admirers in the crowd and even joked about a break in the rain.   In praising the Vendee rebels, the Pope urged young modern Catholics to assert their faith.   "I pray that the martyrs of other times will guide you on your way," he said.   He said the Vendee rebels had "desired sincerely the necessary renewal of society, but they could not accept being cut off from communion with the church."   In one atrocity, the republican military commander in the city of Nantes had nuns and priests bound together naked and thrown from a bridge into the Loire river to drown in so-called "republican marriages." 
18443 !GCAT !GCRIM !GPOL !GVIO  The Belgian Gendarmerie, stung into reaction by accusations in the media of blundering or worse in the country's twin scandals of paedophile porn and political murder, hit back on Thursday.   "These allegations are scandalous and totally without foundation," Colonel Willem Vanden Broeck told a news conference.   But no sooner had he spoken than Justice Minister Stefaan de Clerck told a special session of parliament that Liege Public Prosecutor, Ann Thily, investigating the Gendarmerie investigations had found a major breakdown in communications.   Belgian and international media have repeatedly suggested that the legal and judicial authorities were either incompetent or corrupt in the investigations into the kidnap and killing of four young girls by a gang led by convicted rapist Marc Dutroux.   Likewise allegations of incompetence and political meddling have surfaced in more than five years of investigations into the murder of influential Socialist politician Andre Cools.   "We do not pretend everything the Gendarmerie did in the Dutroux case was perfect.   But we have done all we could and more and have nothing to hide," General-Major Herman Fransen said.   Leaked documents show the Gendarmerie was running a covert surveillance operation codenamed "Othello" against Dutroux from 1993 to 1995.   There have been allegations that the information gathered was either supressed or not given sufficient urgency when it was passed on to investigators into missing children.   The Gendarmerie flatly denied these accusations.   But de Clerck, citing Thily, said information being passed to the Liege Gendarmerie by their colleagues investigating Dutroux in Charleroi was not passed to the local magistrate investigating the disappearance of two eight-year-old girls.   Fransen strongly defended the actions of his force.   "It is thanks to the work of the Gendarmerie that Dutroux was arrested...without this work and a vigilant witness Dutroux would still be at large," he said.   Vanden Broeck and Fransen admitted that Dutroux had simply outwitted the Gendarmerie investigators for years.   "Dutroux was extremely intelligent, cunning and malicious, and it was not possible to get evidence," Vanden Broeck said.   Julie Lejeune and Melissa Russo were kidnapped from their Liege homes in June 1995.   Their bodies were found on August 17 1996 buried on a property owned by Dutroux in Sars-La-Buissiere south of Charleroi.   They had been starved to death.   Eefje Lambrecks and An Marchal were abducted in August 1995 from Ostend.   Their bodies were found buried on another property associated with Dutroux in Charleroi on September 3 this year.   Police were led to the bodies by Dutroux himself, arrested on August 13 after an alert eyewitness remembered the colour, make and half the number plate of a van near the spot where Laetitia Delhez, 14, had disappeared four days before.   It was quickly traced to Dutroux who eventually admitted the abduction and showed police a secret dungeon in another of his Charleroi houses where Laetitia and another girl, Sabine Dardenne who had been missing since May, were found alive.   "I hope that one day we will have the opportunity to show you the cages that Dutroux built to illustrate to you quite how ingenious he was," Fransen said. 
18444 !C31 !C312 !CCAT !G15 !G153 !G158 !GCAT !M14 !M141 !MCAT  The European Union reverted to granting subsidies to its main grain exporters for the first time in more than a year on Thursday, farm officials said.   It agreed to assist commercial exports of 237,470 tonnes of wheat to a world grain market where prices are now sagging below European levels after soaring to records earlier this year.   Subsidies were suspended in early 1995 and the EU even imposed a tax on exports for a while when global market supply tightened as grain stocks fell to 20-year lows.   But several regions including the EU have reported bumper harvests this year, prompting the return to subsides.   This time round, however, the EU has tried to steer clear of a trade spat by granting fewer subsidies than expected, after warnings of retaliation by the United States if it doles out too much.   "This is not as big a sale as we expected.   They obviously don't want to start undercutting the United States," a Geneva-based grain trader said.   The EU and U.S. are among the biggest suppliers of wheat and competed savagely up to the mid-1990s by throwing billions of dollars in aid to help exports, driving down world prices.   Each side blamed the other for starting a price war.   In a sign of how quickly even talk of grain subsidies can renew tensions, U.S. Senate agriculture comittee chairman Richard Lugar had urged his government early on Thursday to put pressure on Brussels to make sure the subsidies did not happen.   Washington has promised to "fight fire with fire" but is reserving judgement on whether to start subsidising its own exports again.   Washington had halted subsidies at the same time as the EU authorities in Brussels.   The decision to return to subsidies was made during weekly grain talks in Brussels to help dispose of the large new crop.   The EU may have a record grain harvest of up to 200 million tonnes this year, up more than 10 percent from 1995.   Bigger crops have also been reported in Australia and China.   This year's crops have already forced world wheat prices down to around $160 a tonne after an all-time high near $300 in April.   Guy Legras, director general for agriculture at the European Commission in Brussels, a veteran of past trade clashes with the United States, said this week he believed a new feud caused by undercutting each others' prices was in neither side's interest.   "We will align ourselves to wheat prices in the United States," he told Reuters in an interview on Wednesday.   Traders said the subsidies awarded on Thursday -- some eight dollars per tonne -- actually left the value of EU wheat slightly higher than U.S. prices at about $173 per tonne.   The EU subsidies are available in a grain auction held each Thursday in Brussels.   Traders bid for the refund they need to close the price gap between Europe and the rest of the world, where farmers are less protected and prices are usually lower.   The EU has the hard task of sifting the demands from those who will sell the grain to outside the EU to avoid being pulled into subsidising at levels dictated by speculation rather than real market needs.   In the secretive world of grain, the weekly ritual is seen as a game of cat-and-mouse between the EU and market middlemen over how much a subsidy should be worth.   If the Commission guesses the market wrongly and forks out a bigger subsidy than a trader needs to close a grain deal, the rest is pure profit. 
18445 !GCAT !GPOL  French Prime Minister Alain Juppe, in an unusually harsh attack on far-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen, branded him on Thursday "deeply, almost viscerally racist, antisemitic and xenophobic".   The Front replied that Juppe was losing his mind.   The conservative premier, addressing young people after Le Pen said earlier this month he believed in racial inequality, called on the French people to combat his anti-immigration National Front which has won as much as 15 percent of the vote in recent national election.   Wading for the first time into the latest controversy over the outspoken Front leader, Juppe said his ideas had been incompatible with those of Le Pen ever since the Front burst upon the political scene in the 1980s.   "Any form of political agreement, indulgence or accommodation (with the Front) has always been foreign to the positions I have taken," he said, hardening up his prepared text.   "We must combat it, and I personally will combat it politically."   "One cannot live in a world where people tell us that races are unequal, or where someone says that the Jews have no place under the sun," he said.   It was not clear whether he was referring to innuendo about Jews by Le Pen, who denies being racist or antisemitic.   The prime minister said a National Front protest march in Marseille after a French youth of Arab origin confessed to killing a white teenager, was "an attempt at exploitation of the lowest human feelings".   "Racism is openly on display in the leadership of a political party which toys with the fears and anguish unleashed by the changes that our country is going through," he said.   "Juppe is losing his head," the Front snapped back in a statement.   "He fantasises, he is delirious, he shows a paranoid behaviour in the clinical sense."   Making a pun on a rude word for male homosexual sex, it said Juppe had his back against the wall because of the poor results of his ruling centre-right coalition in recent by-elections.   Le Pen, who wants to expel three million immigrants from France, has said repeatedly this month that racial inequality was "obvious" and "a fact".   Numerous politicians, rights groups and other civic leaders have denounced his remarks and urged that he be prosecuted under French laws banning the incitement of racial hatred.   But Justice Minister Jacques Toubon said Le Pen's statements fell through loopholes and urged parliament to tighten the laws.   Some leftist opposition politicians have accused Juppe's centre-right government of being soft on the Front so as not to antagonise ultra-rightists whose support would be needed in 1998 general elections.   Just before Le Pen's remarks on racial inequality, Juppe had proposed election reforms that could give the Front a foothold in the National Assembly, where it currently has no seats.   Le Pen, whose party's slogan is "France for the French" and who is no stranger to controversy over his public statements, called the recent slaying of a 15-year-old Marseille youth "a crime against France, committed by immigrant thugs of North African origin".   He once dismissed Nazi gas chambers as "a mere detail in the history of World War Two". 
18446 !GCAT !GDIP !GPRO !GREL  Pope John Paul, on the first day of a gruelling four-day trip to France, skirted controversy over the role of the Church and his moral teachings on Thursday to stress solidarity with the poor and the sick.   On his last foreign trip before entering hospital for an operation to remove his appendix next month, the 76-year-old Pontiff looked on relatively robust form -- he walked unaided, waved to crowds and joked about the rainy weather.   The Pope and French President Jacques Chirac, who met the Polish Pope on his arrival in Tours, both dodged French feuding over the separation of Church and State and criticisms of the conservative papal teachings such as against birth control.   After private talks with Chirac in Tours, he said: "I am mindful of the fact that French society faces many problems as, for example, an economic crisis which is also the case for many countries throughout the world.   "My thoughts go first to all those who are suffering trials of all sorts, particularly those who must bear with poverty, to those who are victims of prejudice, or bias, those who lack security and those who are ill," he said.   On his sixth visit to France, including a trip to the Indian Ocean island of La Reunion, the Pope praised French aid to developing countries in a "long tradition of solidarity and fraternity for their fellow men".   He also hailed French Catholics' dialogue with the country's large Moslem and Jewish communities.   Moslem leaders welcomed the Pope and wished him well in a mission to foster dialogue between all faiths.   Neither the Pope nor Chirac, accused of violating a 1905 law separating Church and State by helping fund the visit, used France's traditional Catholic title of "eldest daughter of the Church".   The Pope used the title on his first visit in 1980.   Chirac said France was "proud of its roots" as a nation that blended secular traditions of the 1789 Revolution, respectful of religious freedom, with a history of spirituality.   Most of France's 58 million people are nominal Catholics.   Chirac said the Holy See and France stood together to promote "tolerance, dignity, justice and peace", and praised the Pope as a "tireless pilgrim of the absolute".   After visiting Tours, the Pope made a helicopter pilgrimage to a shrine in Saint-Laurent-sur-Sevre where a crude bomb was defused two weeks ago.   Unknown attackers had scrawled "In nomine-Pope-BOOM!"   on the wall of the crypt.   In Saint-Laurent, he prayed at the tomb of Saint Louis-Marie Grignion de Montfort, an 18th-century missionary whose Latin motto "Totus Tuus" (All Yours) he has adopted as a symbol of devotion to the Virgin Mary.   He earlier praised Catholic "martyrs" from the Vendee region around Saint-Laurent killed in an uprising they launched against the 1789 French Revolution.   But he balanced the remarks by saying there had been sin on both sides.   "You are the heirs of men and women who were courageous enough to remain faithful to the Church of Jesus Christ at a time when its freedom and independence were threatened," the Pontiff told a crowd of about 3,000 mostly young people.   An estimated 100,000 people died when Paris's revolutionary government stamped out the Vendee uprising from 1793-95.   During the visit to Saint-Laurent, the Pope briefly shook hands and joked about a break in the rain.   "The earth needs rain but sometimes we'd like it to be a bit lighter.   This has happened right here, thanks to you," he said to applause.   Some 6,000 police, paramilitary gendarmes, bodyguards and marksmen are on duty to guard the Pontiff during the trip, which will also take him to Brittany and the eastern city of Reims.   He will spend three nights in Tours.   Sixty-seven groups including anarchists, freemasons and a police trade union are planning a rally in Paris on Sunday, when the Pope will be in Reims, to protest at the Pope and back the secular ideals of the Revolution.   The Pope will be in Reims for the 1,500th anniversary of the baptism of Clovis, the first pagan king in western Europe to convert to Roman Catholicism.   But he avoided suggesting the traditional Catholic view that Clovis's conversion was the baptism of France as a nation.   Opinion polls show many French citizens are indifferent to the visit, and to arcane disputes about Clovis. 
18447 !C12 !CCAT !GCAT !GCRIM !GDIP  The Swiss government promised a million Swiss francs to two Holocaust groups on Thursday in a gesture sought by Jewish groups after Switzerland apologised last year for turning back refugees from Nazi terror.   The cabinet, decision came as pressure from world Jewish groups mounted on the Swiss government and Swiss banks to pay back Nazi wealth and Jewish accounts left ownerless by Holocaust victims.   A government spokesman said the payment was not linked to recent controversy over allegations that Switzerland had hoarded Nazi gold after World War Two.   "We consider this part of our normal duty as a civilised nation, to be part of the common commemoration and keeping alive the memory of this chapter of history (Holocaust)...so that it is never repeated," a Foreign Ministry spokesman said.   "This decision is connected to last year's commemorations of the end of World War Two," a cabinet statement said.   Marking the anniversary of the war's end on May 7 last year, the Swiss government apologised for the first time for a secret 1938 deal with Hitler's Germany to turn back thousands of Jewish refugees seeking saftey in Switzerland.   Swiss Jews then asked the government to donate money to Holocaust groups "to underline their nice words with actions," according to Thomas Lyssy, vice-president of the Swiss Federation of Jewish Communities.   The government spokesman said the cabinet had agreed on the money last month but waited with an announcement until the expenditure was approved by a parliamentary finance committee.   The Federal Council, or cabinet, pledged half a million Swiss francs to an Israeli organisation called AMCHA that counsels Holocaust survivors and their children.   The other half a million Swiss francs goes to preservation efforts at the Nazi death camp Auschwitz-Birkenjau in Poland, now a memorial and museum which several countries are donating money to for restoration and maintanence.   The cabinet on Monday approved a decree to set up a historical commission to examine the fate of assets left in Switzerland by Nazis and their victims, parallel to a panel of Swiss and Jewish experts agreed by Swiss banks in May to search for lost Holocaust accounts.   Pressure continued to mount on Switzerland for restitution for wealth deposited in the neutral country by Nazi Germany and by Jews before and during World War Two.   Two leading Jewish spokesman from Britain and Germany staked claims in separate interviews on Thursday in Swiss weeklies.   One was British member of parliament Greville Janner, vice-president of the World Jewish Congress (WJC), who sparked a controversy by demanding the British Foreign Office issue a report last week that alleged the Swiss kept most of the Nazi gold demand by the Allies after World War Two.   Janner told the newspaper Weltwoche that Swiss banks and the government must do their best to find and return World War Two wealth or "face the danger of becoming a pariah in Europe."   Germany's leading Jewish spokesman agreed with estimates that of between 10 million and 20 million Swiss francs in private accounts of Holocaust victims and gold stolen by Hitler's forces from occupied countries and death camp victims.   "Maybe there really is less (cash and gold) there than many people assume, but it is certainly more than the Swiss claim," Ignatz Bubis, the head of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, told the newsmagazine Facts.   "I am distrustful because the Swiss banks always admit only as much as can be proven, and only act under pressure," he added. 
18448 !GCAT !GPOL !GVIO  Italian government ministers, seeking to calm a storm over heavy-handed police tactics against the separatist Northern League, on Thursday defended the state's right to search the party's headquarters.   While politicians cautioned that the search, which sparked scuffles between party members and police, only handed League leader Umberto Bossi fresh publicity, the party vowed to press ahead with the formation of a militia for its self-styled state.   Interior Minister Giorgio Napolitano told parliament that the government regretted Wednesday's clashes, in which a top League deputy and several police were hurt, but said police had been carrying out a legitimate search ordered by a magistrate.   It was part of an investigation into the League and its green-shirted security squad for alleged anti-constitutional activity following Bossi's declaration of "independence" for his would-be republic of "Padania" in northern Italy on Sunday.   "Nothing can be attributed to an intention on the part of the government and the forces of order to repress a movement which is trying to express its own ideas in accordance with the laws," Napolitano told the Chamber of Deputies, the lower house of parliament.   Justice Minister Giovanni Maria Flick told the upper house, the Senate, that opposition to legitimate judicial action was "inadmissable".   The League denounced the police tactics as "fascist techniques".   "Searches of political party headquarters have been carried out before and there has never been opposition of the type we saw yesterday," Flick said.   Roberto Maroni, interior minister in 1994, was punched and broke his nose in clashes which erupted when police pushed their way into the League headquarters after a lengthy stand-off.   Two officers were still in hospital with concussion.   Roberto Calderoli, a senior League deputy, told Italia radio the incidents were likely to speed up the creation of a "national guard of Padania", announced by Bossi as one of the first planned acts of his new "state".   "That is my impression," Calderoli said.   "But these are things to be decided by the government of the Federal Republic of Padania, which meets on Friday."   He said the self-styled government would inform its "parliament" of the decision on Saturday.   Pier Ferdinando Casini, leader of the centrist CCD party in Silvio Berlusconi's centre-right Freedom Alliance, said Italy "has shot itself in the foot and done the League a big favour".   Parliament was debating a message by President Oscar Luigi Scalfaro, who warned that the malaise of northern Italians should not be underestimated simply because the League's weekend demonstrations failed to draw the crowds it had predicted.   The Northern League won an unexpected 10.7 percent in Italy's general election in April but surveys show that despite deep frustration with high taxes and a perceived incompetent central bureaucracy, most northerners firmly oppose secession.   "The answer must come from a reform of the system," said far-right leader Gianfranco Fini, who said the episode could have given Bossi "a halo of victimisation" to exploit.   But one politician welcomed the judicial intervention.   "They are not secessionists.   They are dyed-in-the-wool traitors and they have to be tried and condemned as such," said Michele Bonatesta, a senator for Fini's party.   Bossi, who was celebrating his 55th birthday on Thursday, called a news conference in Milan on the dramatic events and a rally in Verona on Saturday evening. 
18449 !E51 !E512 !ECAT !G15 !G158 !GCAT  The European Union on Thursday ended a review of its trade policies with a call for further liberalisation of world markets to be linked to economic growth and job promotion.   EU trade ministers, gathered to agree a common position ahead of the World Trade Organisation's ministerial meeting in Singapore in December, said free markets must be seen to benefit individual Europeans.   They were meeting the day after German manufacturer Semperit AG -- citing cheaper production costs in Eastern Europe -- announced plans to close a tyre plant here that will put over 600 people out of work.   "It is very sad and nothing I can say will console those who lose their jobs, but in almost all cases liberalisation improves job prospects," said Trade Commissioner Sir Leon Brittan.   An EU source said Brittan had been forcefully told by ministers from the 15-nation bloc that trade liberalisation must be seen to give benefit.   Brittan, an unabashed champion of free trade, was seeking EU acceptance of a range of issues to be tackled at the Singapore meeting.   He was anxious to assure the ministers that he was not seeking a mandate to begin a new round of trade negotiations, rather take existing deals further.   An EU official said Brittan's proposals had been well received by the ministers, but it was clear they were concerned to protect their domestic industries and markets.   EU sources said Portuguese trade minister Fernando Freire Sousa warned that Lisbon was not prepared to jeopardise its textile and garment industries and urged the EU not to make further concessions to exporters from developing countries.   But his was a rare dissenting voice from an audience that generally embraced Brittan's philosophy.   Brittan told a news conference he was prepared to come up with a new European offer to try rekindle interest in a global agreement on telecoms.   Negotiations for an agreement, due to be settled next year, have stalled because of Washington's dissatisfaction at offers from Europe and Japan to open their markets to U.S. products.   Brittan said the EU was unlikely to make a big issue of labour standards at the Singapore meeting, believing instead that the International Labour Organisation was the best forum for dealing with the issue.   Developing nations, particularly those from Asia, are concerned that Western demands for international labour standards will reduce their competetive edge.   British Trade Minister Ian Lang urged the Commission to step up efforts to conclude the Information Technology Agreement between the EU, U.S. and Japan, saying this would benefit European jobs and growth.   But Brittan warned that progress on this was linked to the EU being included in a recently established U.S./Japan semiconductor council.   Brittan denied the EU was following the "letter but not the spirit" of the Uruguay round -- an accusation made by WTO Director-General Renato Ruggiero on Wednesday.   The EU has been criticised by trade partners -- particularly textile exporters -- who say it is expecting too much in terms of voluntary tariff reductions in exchange for obligatory European cuts. 
18450 !GCAT !GDIP  Palestinian President Yasser Arafat urged Germany on Thursday to pressure Israel to honour its Middle East peace agreements, warning the Jewish state's stance could plunge the whole region back into violence.   "Frustration and desperation are quickly increasing," he told the regional parliament in the central German state of Hesse.   "This drags the region back to extremism, violence and terrorism.   Enmity and war are appearing on the horizon."   Arafat, on a two-day visit to Germany, was speaking just hours after a late-night meeting with Israeli Defence Minister Yitzhak Mordechai.   They failed to reach agreement over a delayed Israeli troop redeployment from the West Bank town of Hebron.   Arafat said Germany and other leading members of the international community must try to persuade Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to respect commitments, such as the Hebron redeployment, made by his predecessor Shimon Peres.   Netanyahu is scheduled to visit Germany next week to hold talks with Chancellor Helmut Kohl.   "We have been surprised by the policy of the new Israeli government," Arafat said, speaking through an interpreter.   "It is their goal to impose a new and purely Israeli version to solve the conflict between Palestinians and Israelis."   German Foreign Minister Klaus Kinkel told reporters after meeting Arafat in Bonn that he had urged Israel to lift a blockade of the Palestinian territories which is preventing tens of thousands of Palestinians getting to work in Israel each day.   "The agreements which have been reached must be observed both in spirit and to the letter," he said.   He reiterated that Germany did not see itself as a mediator in the conflict but would try to make sure, through economic aid, that "people feel the peace initiative paying off".   Under peace deals with the PLO, Israel was due in March to hand over parts of Hebron, the only West Bank city where Jews and Arabs live together.   Israel has cited security concerns as the reason for the delay.   "We look with great hope towards Germany," Arafat said in Wiesbaden.   "Germany has great international status and effective influence in the Middle East, both through the European Union and through its direct relations with all the parties in our region."   Arafat was ending the first day of his visit with a dinner hosted by Hesse state premier Hans Eichel in the 18th century splendour of Wiesbaden's Biebrich castle.   Friday's schedule included talks with Ignatz Bubis, the leader of Germany's Jewish community, and meetings in Frankfurt, the country's financial centre, with industrialists and officials from Germany's top banks. 
18451 !GCAT !GDEF !GDIP  NATO planners are developing a "super" Partnership for Peace to embrace countries likely to be left out of the first wave of expansion of the alliance, its Secretary-General and Western diplomats said on Thursday.   With the Western alliance likely to accept some former communist countries into its fold next year, diplomats say some non-aligned nations and unsuccessful NATO candidates may join a tighter grouping of would-be members and affiliates.   Russia could also join this intensified Partnership for Peace -- dubbed "PfP-Two", "Enhanced PfP" or "PfP Plus" -- which aims to boost non-members' military cooperation and political contact with NATO, a U.S. diplomat told Reuters.   "Let's include the Russians," said Derek Shearer, U.S. ambassador to Finland.   The plan aims to demonstrate to Russia that NATO is not belligerent and ease the concerns of countries that may fall into a security "grey zone" after the alliance expands.   "A 'PfP Plus' should generate the necessary reassurance that the security of an enlarged NATO and its partners remains closely linked," said NATO Secretary-General Javier Solana.   Of the 27 current members of the PfP scheme aimed at uniting former European foes, Shearer said between 15 and 20 could join a super PfP, which could involve specific liaison officers and working groups and would be based on charters.   "It's just a notion of enhancing PfP to show where we're going in Europe," he said.   The scheme builds on a milestone speech by U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher in Stuttgart earlier this month in which he outlined a vision of a New Atlantic Community which would erase former Cold War barriers.   Christopher spoke of forming a New Atlantic Partnership Council based on a charter between NATO and Russia and said the alliance should involve non-members in the PfP programme.   NATO's Solana, in a speech to the international institute for strategic studies (IISS), said the current scheme was already the most successful military cooperation programme in Europe's history.   "But (it) has to be upgraded and deepened to reflect the new situation which will exist after NATO enlargement," he said.   "This could entail, among other things, offering interested partners greater involvement in NATO military planning, activities and structures as well as in consultations with the alliance."   Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Poland are widely regarded as top of the list for inclusion in an expanded NATO.   Other former Soviet Bloc states including the Baltic countries, Romania and Bulgaria are less likely to make it into the first round.   "You don't want them feeling this means 'no' forever," Shearer said.   The scheme could also embrace non-aligned and neutral countries -- Finland, Sweden and Austria -- which do not currently seek NATO membership, offsetting concerns that NATO expansion may be seen as re-creating "zones of influence".   For instance, Finland, Sweden and the three Baltic states, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, have said expansion in central Europe may leave former Soviet satellites in a security void which, under some circumstances, Russia could try to fill.   "We want to see the avoidance of the grey area by the development of a super-PfP," another Western diplomat said.   With Europe still in transition from the Cold War period, the plan aims to let countries address threats like terrorism and drug-trafficking, which are now more likely causes of instability than invasion, diplomats said. 
18452 !GCAT !GREL  Pope John Paul, visiting a town where a crude anti-papal bomb was defused two weeks ago, on Thursday praised the courage of Roman Catholic martyrs who fought against the 1789 French Revolution.   On the first day of a gruelling four-day trip to France, the Pontiff hailed those who fought in the 1793-95 Vendee uprising in western France against the fledgling French Revolution, but he said there was sin on both sides.   An estimated 100,000 people were killed when the revolutionary government crushed the counter-revolution, led by local nobles and clergy in alliance with peasants resisting conscription.   "You are the heirs of men and women who were courageous enough to remain faithful to the Church of Jesus Christ at a time when its freedom and independence were threatened," the Pope told about 3,000 youths in Saint-Laurent-sur-Sevre.   "In the terrible struggles, many actions were marked by sin, on both sides.   But it was in union with Christ that numerous martyrs offered their life here," he said in the so-called Garden of Cherries in a Saint-Laurent convent.   In 1984, the Pope beatified several dozen priests executed at Arleville by republican troops in the Vendee uprising.   The rural area remains among the most conservative of modern France.   After his speech, the Pope was to pray at the basilica of Saint-Laurent, dedicated to an 18th century missionary.   A homemade bomb was found there early this month and the words "In nomine Pape-BOOM!"   were daubed on a wall.   The pope's visit has stirred controversy in France about the separation of Church and State and opposition to his conservative moral teachings.   He was to pray briefly before the tomb of Saint Louis-Marie Grignion de Montfort, where the bundle of dynamite was placed, and the tomb of Blessed Marie-Louise Trichet.   Both were 18th century founders of religious orders.   The Pontiff adopted Saint Louis-Marie Grignion de Montfort's Latin motto "Totus Tuus" (All Yours) as a symbol of devotion to the Virgin Mary.   As a student, he translated some of the saint's works into his native Polish.   The 76-year-old Pope, looking alert and on form on his last trip before an operation in October to remove his appendix, shook hands with admirers in the crowd and even joked about a break in the rain.   "The earth needs rain but sometimes we'd like it to be a bit lighter.   This has happened right here, thanks to you," he said to applause at the end of his speech.   In praising the Vendee rebels, the Pope urged young modern Catholics to assert their faith.   "I pray that the martyrs of other times will guide you on your way," he said.   He said the Vendee rebels had "desired sincerely the necessary renewal of society, but they could not accept being cut off from communion with the church."   In one atrocity, the republican military commander in the city of Nantes had nuns and priests bound together naked and thrown from a bridge in Nantes to drown in the river in so-called "republican marriages." 
18453 !E51 !ECAT !G15 !G158 !GCAT !GDIP !GVIO  The European Parliament, angered by what it sees as Turkey's reneging on promises to improve its human rights record, said on Thursday it would block hundreds of millions of dollars of aid to Ankara.   Euro-MPs said in a resolution they would freeze European Union aid destined for Turkey next month when they begin discussions on the 1997 EU budget.   The budget must have parliamentary approval.   Thursday's call renewed the parliament's war of words with Turkey.   Last year the assembly threatened to thwart a customs union between Ankara and the 15-nation EU.   "Since the establishment of the customs union, the human rights situation in Turkey has noticeably deteriorated and no appreciable progress has been made towards democratisation," the parliament said in a resolution.   Deputies added that since January 1996, when the customs union came into force, Turkey had fomented tension by actions such as "provocations in the Aegean Sea and Cyprus and aggression in northern Iraq".   In Ankara, Turkish Foreign Minister Tansu Ciller criticised the parliament's move.   "I would like to strongly condemn the decision that the European parliament took today, because this decision expresses a completely biased point of view," she told reporters.   "Turkey has made serious progress in human rights in the past two years of its own free will.   Those who expect us to act according to Europe's biased ideas are mistaken."   The parliament approved the creation of the customs union last December only after Turkey had given explicit guarantees that it would take positive action on human rights, democratisation, Cyprus and the plight of Kurds.   The assembly said on Thursday that Turkey's failure to honour these obligations was "in conflict with the letter and spirit" of the customs union and other EU-Turkey accords.   Socialist Euro-MPs, who make up the 626-seat parliament's largest faction, denied having been hoodwinked into approval of the customs deal by promises from Ankara.   "As Socialists I think we have special responsibility here because it was our vote that made it possible for the customs union to get through," German Socialist deputy Jannis Sakellariou told a news conference earlier in the week.   "We voted in favour of the customs union as a kind of confidence building measure," he said.   "But we wanted them to fulfil (their) commitments."   Hans van den Broek, the European Commissioner responsible for relations with Turkey and Cyprus, promised deputies on Wedneday that the Commission -- the EU executive -- would produce a report on the customs union by October.   This would look at recent developments on democracy and the preservation of human rights, he said.   Parliament wants all EU aid to Turkey to stop immediately, bar funding for projects to promote democracy and respect for human rights.   The EU plans to set aside 375 million Ecus ($470 million) between 1996 and 2000 to help Turkey implement the customs pact.   Turkey is also eligible for substantial financing from the EU's MEDA programme, through which 410 million Ecus have been earmarked for the bloc's Mediterranean neighbours in 1996.   The EU could allocate as much as 842 million Ecus to this group of countries in 1997.   ($1 = 0.80 Ecu) 
18454 !GCAT !GDIP !GVIO  France's chief anti-terrorism investigator accused two Libyan secret service officials on Thursday of involvement in a 1989 airliner bombing, bringing to six the number of Libyans he wants tried in absentia.   Seven years to the day after the UTA airlines DC-10 crashed in the Sahara desert, killing all 170 people on board, Judge Jean-Louis Bruguiere spoke to relatives of the victims and showed them a painstaking reconstruction of the airliner.   One of the six he wants tried is a brother-in-law of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi.   Relatives said they sat in tense silence in the Paris lawcourts as the judge, who visited Libya for 12 days in July, showed them a U.S.-made Samsonite suitcase he found in Tripoli intelligence offices.   He allowed them to touch it, saying it was identical to one used to bring down the plane after being packed with explosives.   Later, 100 relatives were taken under police escort to the military airport at Le Bourget outside Paris where, away from the media, they walked around the plane reassembled from twisted fragments picked from the desert sands.   The bombing occurred at the height of tension between France and Libya over Chad, where the two countries' forces clashed repeatedly in the 1970s and 1980s.   "Bruguiere said his investigation is virtually completed.   He will quickly pass it on to prosecutors so that a trial in absentia can take place next year," lawyer Francis Szpiner said.   Francoise Rudetski, head of SOS Attentats, an association of the victims' families, told reporters two new international arrest warrants would shortly be issued against Libyans.   The new suspects are Abdesslam Issa Shibani, a colonel in charge of technical services at Libyan intelligence, and Abdesslam Hamouda, suspected of buying a timer in Germany for the bomb, justice sources said.   In 1981 Bruguiere issued warrants for the arrest of Abdallah Senoussi, a brother-in-law of Gaddafi identified as a senior Libyan intelligence official, Abdallah Elazragh, a diplomat working in Brazzaville at the time, and alleged secret agents Ibrahim Naeli and Musbah Arbas.   Libya has so far refused to turn over any of the suspects although the U.N. has slapped tough economic sanctions on Tripoli to encourage its cooperation in the probe into the UTA crash and that of the Pan Am flight over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988.   "We thought that the investigation would be buried.   The probe has been carried out and the guilty ones identified.   That's already a first step.   We have to continue fighting," said one civil plaintiff who declined to give his name.   According to Szpiner, Libyan authorities claimed that Arbas, one of the suspects, had died.   "They supplied forged death certificates," he said.   "In highlighting these lies, the judge put forward evidence the Libyan state is guilty."   Libyan officials told Bruguiere that the suitcase showed on Thursday to the victims' families had been found at the home of opponents of Gaddafi but the judge dismissed this, according to sources close to the probe.   The sources said that Bruguiere also found timers and detonators similar to those believed used in the bombing when he searched Libyan intelligence offices.   "It was nerve-racking.   He showed us the suitcase.   The way the pentrite high explosive was packed, the detonator, everything was identical.   His visit has brought new evidence that senior Libyan officials are implicated," Rudetski said.   The weekly L'Express reported that Gaddafi wrote to French President Jacques Chirac in March to offer help with the inquiries and to authorise Libyan officials to answer queries.   It said Gaddafi again refused to hand over any Libyan suspects but would accept a French court's verdict, hinting Libya might pay compensation to the victims' families. 
18455 !C24 !CCAT !GCAT !GWEA !M14 !M141 !MCAT  Low temperatures and rain are forecast in Germany over the next seven days, the DWD meteorological office said in a farm weather report.   This clouded the outlook for the last few days of harvesting.   Wet wheat and rye means lower quality and drying costs for farmers, as well as delaying maize harvesting.   Drying costs are estimated at 20 marks a tonne.   Barley winter sowings should also be disrupted by rain.   Maximum day termperatures should be 11-14 degrees over the next week after 15 degrees were measured on average over the last seven days, the institute said.   A grain analyst said some 10 percent of wheat in the north still needed harvesting and in eastern Germany some regions still had to bring in the last third of the grain crop.   If farmers incurred drying costs, they would be less willing to sell grain into intervention at the market floor, he said.   Sugarbeet weights and sugar contents were boosted by the rain, farmers in early harvest regions reported.   DWD said some winter rapeseed crops already in the ground suffered from pests.   Analysts said winter rapeseed areas at first count looked well below those a year ago.   --Vera Eckert, Hamburg newsroom, +49-40-41903275 
18456 !GCAT !GCRIM !GPOL !GVIO  Prime Minister Jean-Luc Dehaene opened a parliamentary debate about Belgium's child sex and political murder scandals with a vow that any serious errors in police investigations would be punished.   "If it appears that during early phases of the investigation serious errors have been made, they will be sanctioned," Dehaene told a specially convened session of parliament.   He said the conclusions of an inquiry into the investigations in both scandals would be presented to parliament's justice commission as soon as possible.   Dehaene also tried to calm popular anger with the slow progress of the investigations and the government's apparent inability to reform the police and judiciary.   "The people have lost confidence in the justice system, in the government and in the country's institutions," said Louis Michel, leader of the opposition Wallonia Liberal Party (PRL).   "The citizens of this country are furious about the government's inability to deal with society's most urgent needs, notably a reform of the judicial system," said Patrick Dewael, faction leader of the opposition Flemish Liberal Party (VLD).   Dehaene said the judiciary should do its utmost to make progress in the investigation into the 1991 mafia-style murder of politician Andre Cools.   "The investigation into the murder raised many questions and led to a general feeling of mistrust of our institutions.   The judiciary now must go to the heart of the matter," he said.   "We must also wonder what we have done wrong ourselves, each of us, in politics, in the judiciary, the police, in the media, and the population in general so as to prevent a repeat of these events."   Faction leaders of all parties were due to take the floor during the day in the extraordinary session convened at the request of the opposition, two weeks before the parliamentary year begins.   Parties were expected to back the setting-up of a committee of inquiry into judicial bungling in the investigations of the Cools murder and the activities of a paedophile ring which has killed four young girls in the past year.   There have been allegations of cover-ups in both cases.   In the child sex case, police officers are suspected of having been involved in a car theft racket led by paedophile gang leader and convicted child rapist Marc Dutroux.   There has also been harsh criticism about lack of communication between the country's various police services.   One part of the police force failed to pass crucial information about Dutroux to investigators of the child kidnappings.   In the case of the killing of Cools, a former Socialist minister, party-appointed investigators have attempted to divert inquiries leading to party members, judicial sources claim.   The police denied any wrongdoing.   "We do not pretend that everything the Gendarmerie has done in the Dutroux case was perfect," Gendarmerie General-Major Herman Fransen told a news conference.   "But we have done all we could and more and have nothing to hide."   He added: "If the Cools case has received new impetus recently it is thanks to the Gendarmerie investigating team."   The investigation into the Cools murder led to the discovery of high-level corruption in an army helicopters contract in the late 1980s, which triggered the resignation of four Belgian government ministers and of NATO Secretary-General Willy Claes, a Belgian former economics minister. 
18457 !E51 !ECAT !G15 !G158 !GCAT !GDIP  The European Parliament, angered by what it sees as Turkey's reneging on promises to improve its human rights record, said on Thursday it wwould block hundreds of millions of dollars of aid to Ankara.   Euro-MPs said in a resolution they would freeze aid destined for Turkey next month when they begin discussions on the 1997 EU budget.   The bloc's budget must have parliamentary approval.   Thursday's call renewed the assembly's war of words with Turkey, which last year saw it threaten to thwart a planned customs union between Ankara and the 15-country European Union.   "Since the establishment of the (EU-Turkey) customs union, the human rights situation in Turkey has noticeably deteriorated and no appreciable progress has been made towards democratisation," the parliament said in a resolution.   Deputies added that since January 1996, when the customs union came into force, Turkey had fomented tension by actions such as "provocations in the Aegean Sea and Cyprus and aggression in northern Iraq".   Parliament approved the creation of the customs union last December only after the Ankara government had given explicit guarantees that it would take positive action on human rights, democratisation, Cyprus and the plight of the Kurds.   Turkey's failure to honour these obligations was "in conflict with the letter and spirit" of the customs union and other EU-Turkey accords, parliament declared.   Socialist Euro-MPs, who make up the 626-seat parliament's largest faction, denied having been hoodwinked into approval of the customs deal by promises from Ankara.   "As Socialists I think we have special responsibility here because it was our vote that made it possible for the customs union to get through," German Socialist deputy Jannis Sakellariou told a news conference earlier in the week.   "We voted in favour of the customs union as a kind of confidence building measure...But we wanted them to fulfil (their) commitments," he said.   Hans van den Broek, the European Commissioner responsible for relations with Turkey and Cyprus, promised deputies on Wedneday the Commission would produce a report on the customs union by October.   This would look at recent developments on democracy and the preservation of human rights, he said.   Parliament wants all EU aid to Turkey to stop immediately, bar funding for projects to promote democracy and respect for human rights.   The EU plans to set aside 375 million Ecus ($470 million) between 1996 and 2000 to help Turkey implement the customs pact.   Turkey is also eligible for substantial financing from the EU's MEDA programme, through which 410 million Ecus have been earmarked for the bloc's Mediterranean neighbours in 1996.   The EU could allocate as much as 842 million Ecus to this group of countries in 1997.   ($1 = 0.80 Ecu) 
18458 !GCAT !GDIP  Bulgaria's U.N. ambassador on Thursday launched an attack on his own government, and alleged dirty tricks against anti-communists like himself who were still in key posts.   In an extraordinary account of diplomatic skulduggery, Ambassador Slavi Pashovski read a letter to his government in which he said pro-communist ministers were trying to sideline the constitution and stifle any kind of democratic reform.   He told reporters he did not fear for his life, but related an incident in which he said New York police confirmed that connectors to his steering wheel had been deliberately cut.   He also said the government had sent him a cook who did no visible work, collected his pay and could not cook.   "It would be cheaper to bring over a chef from Paris for a week."   And he told of a colleague with similar anti-communist views who was ambassador to Albania and was driven off a cliff by a Bulgarian driver in the Macedonian mountains on his way back to his post in Tirana.   He survived, although the driver left him on the mountainside to die.   "While the tears of the victims of communism have still not dried, we have been presenting new scenarios with a mafia plot," he said in the letter to Prime Minister Zhan Videnov and Foreign Minister Georgi Pirinski.   "Let us ... put an end to the infamy of the Bulgarian umbrella once and for all," he said in reference to the 1978 incident of a Bulgarian defector being fatally stabbed by a poison-tipped umbrella on the streets of London.   Pashovski has been on the outs with the current government since it was elected in January 1995.   But the government has not been able to revoke his U.N. accreditation because President Zhelyu Zhelev, a founder of the anti-communist opposition, must approve such appointments and he has not agreed to a substitute candidate.   Instead ministers have ignored him and refused to allow him to be a member of Bulgaria's General Assembly delegation.   The situation was particularly embarrassing at last year's 50th U.N. anniversary party when Pashovski, who was vice-chairman of the U.N. celebration committee, discovered he had been kicked off his country's delegation and had to wait outside the assembly's chambers.   He said he still signs checks at Bulgaria's U.N. mission.   "You are not satisfied with the provisions of the current constitution under which the president represents the country in international relations," Pashovski said in his letter.   "If you choose not to correct your policy, you will be outside of the law and the constitution," he added.   "The ghost of communism is looming over Bulgaria, which means also over the Balkans and over Europe," he warned.   He requested a dialogue and said the prime minister should write the United Nations to include its ambassador among the assembly's delegates, since he had to conduct most of the business at hand anyway. 
18459 !GCAT !GDIP !GPRO !GREL  Pope John Paul flies to Brittany on Friday on the first visit by a head of the Roman Catholic Church to this western region, a stronghold of religion and resistance to secularism in France.   The 76-year-old Pontiff, who looked relatively robust and walked unaided on the first day of his four-day trip, faces another gruelling schedule as he flies from Tours to Sainte-Anne d'Auray, 130 km (80 miles) northwest of Nantes.   He is to hold an open-air mass with 70 French bishops before some 150,000 faithful and address 3,000 young couples with their children.   He is expected to urge the faithful to spread the message of Christ and extoll family values before returning to Tours.   According to tradition, Sainte-Anne, the Virgin Mary's mother, appeared to farmer Yves Nicolazic in Auray in 1624, ordering him to rebuild a ruined chapel.   Wrecked again during the 1789 revolution, the chapel was later rebuilt into a basilica which became a focus of resistance to a 1905 Republican law to separate the state and the Church.   Thousands of Bretons gathered at the basilica in March 1906 to foil the official inventory of church property ordered under the law.   The government had to send in troops to Sainte-Anne to carry out the inventory later that year.   On his visit to Saint-Laurent-sur-Sevre on Thursday, Pope John Paul hailed those who fought in the brutally suppressed 1793-95 Vendee uprising against the French Revolution.   "You are the heirs of men and women who were courageous enough to remain faithful to the Church of Jesus Christ at a time when its freedom and independence were threatened," he said.   But he added there was sin on both sides.   The Pontiff appeared keen to skirt controversy over the role of the Church which marked preparations for his visit, stressing solidarity with the poor and sick rather than moral teachings.   Sixty-seven groups including leftists, anarchists and freemasons are planning a rally in Paris on Sunday to back the secular ideals of the Revolution and protest against the Pope's ban on condoms, birth control and abortion.   The Pope and French President Jacques Chirac, who has been accused of violating the 1905 law by helping fund the sixth papal visit to France, both dodged feuding over the separation of Church and State and criticism of the Pope's conservative teachings when they met in Tours.   The Pope spoke for those suffering from poverty, prejudice, insecurity and illness.   He praised French aid to developing countries and French Catholics' dialogue with the country's large Moslem and Jewish communities.   Conservative Chirac said France was "proud of its roots" as a nation that blended secular traditions of the 1789 Revolution, respectful of religious freedom, with a history of spirituality.   Most of France's 58 million people are nominal Catholics, but only six million attend mass, and many of these believe Pope John Paul's conservative teachings are out of date.   Opinion polls show most French people are indifferent to his visit.   Security was stringent after a crude bomb was defused two weeks ago at Saint-Laurent's basilica.   Unknown attackers had scrawled "In nomine-Pope-BOOM!"   on the wall of the crypt.   The Pope will be in Reims on Sunday for the 1,500th anniversary of the baptism of Clovis, the first pagan king in western Europe to convert to Roman Catholicism.   But he avoided evoking the traditional Catholic view that Clovis's conversion was the baptism of France as a nation, and using the country's traditional Catholic title as "the Church's eldest daughter". 
18460 !GCAT !GDIP !GVIO  Tanzanian Foreign Minister Jakaya Mrisho Kikwete said on Thursday he feared hundreds of thousands of Rwandan refugees would turn part of Tanzania into a barren desert.   The minister was quoted by Algerian state media as saying hundreds of thousands refugees in Tanzania had triggered tension and local people wanted them to go back home.   "Within an area of 10 km (six miles) harbouring a refugee camp, all trees have been chopped down.   If the refugees remain there, all the region will become desert," he was quoted as saying in Algiers where he arrived for a five-day visit.   He said 700,000 refugees from Rwanda and 200,000 more from Burundi were competing with local people for scarce resources and threatening the area with an environmental disaster.   "The climate is tense in (Tanzanian) regions where refugees are settling.   In three or four years, there will be no animals there such as gazelle and zebra," he said.   The governments of Tanzania, Rwanda and Burundi are working to repatriate the refugees but it would take time while local people were running out of patience, he said.   "The local people want refugees to go home because of insecurity stemming from rapes, attacks and burglaries," he added.   Rwandan refugees in Tanzania, like hundreds of thousands in Zaire, fled Rwanda during the genocide of up to an estimated one million people and three months of civil war in 1994.   Many of them said they fear reprisals if they go home.   Turning to the disputed Western Sahara, the minister was quoted by Algerian radio as saying Tanzania backed Polisario's right to gain independence in the territory.   A referendum on the territory's future has been delayed by a dispute between Polisario and Rabat over who is eligible to vote.   Polisario wants independence while Rabat claims the territory for its own. 
18461 !E12 !ECAT !G15 !G154 !GCAT  The finance ministers of France and Germany said on Thursday they were more convinced than ever that European Monetary Union (EMU) would be a great success.   Jean Arthuis and Theo Waigel said restraining public spending was the best way to ensure low inflation, stability and economic growth.   They also said exchange rate stability between the new Euro and currencies of European countries that would not be able to join from the outset was required to ensure a good start of EMU.   In a jointly-authored article in the Friday edition of the International Herald Tribune newspaper, the ministers said, "We are more than ever convinced that European monetary union will become a great success, and we have common views on all the important issues that remain to be resolved beforehand.   "The ongoing recovery of growth and the unprecedented efforts by our two governments to rebalance public finances will allow our two countries to fullfil the Maastricht criteria and enter European Monetary Union on Friday, January 1, 1999."   The ministers said that while growth came to a standstill at the end of 1995, it had now picked up and during the first half of 1996 the underlying economic growth trend in the two countries was about 1.5 percent, compared to a year ago.   "The pace of growth should accelerate further by the beginning of 1997," they said.   The finance ministers said a firm commitment to fiscal stability was required for succesful monetary union.   This concern led Germany to propose a so-called "Stability Pact," a proposal "fully supported by the French government."   "It has been endorsed by all member states," Waigel and Arthuis wrote.   They said a European Stability Council could meet on an informal basis to monitor implementation of the stability pact and allow for regular discussions of macroeconomic issues.   They said the European Council summit in Florence, Italy, in June had recognised that monetary union had to be based on strict and enduring budgetary discipline, and that each member state should aim for a budgetary position close to balance or in surplus over the medium term.   "The three percent (of GDP) reference value will remain the upper limit for a government deficit after the Euro is introduced, with provision for a safety margin for automatic stabilisers to work when necessary," they said.   The finance ministers rejected criticism that fiscal restraint to cut deficits was hurting growth and employment.   "Some concern may have been expressed about possible negative short-term effects of fiscal entrenchment.   That concern is unwarranted.   People have to stop believing that growing public expenditure is a stimulus to growth," they said.   "Fiscal consolidation has already been rewarded by a sharp decrease in short-term interest rates, to the direct and immediate benefit of households and businesses, thereby facilitating further growth," they added.   "We are making unprecedented efforts on public spending.   This will enable France and Germany to meet all the convergency criteria...and enter European monetary union on the date of its constitution."   They said the European Council would as early as possible in 1998 decide which countries would be selected to join the European Union from the start.   "We hope that as many member states as possible will be with us, and that the others will join as soon as possible," they said.   The ministers said a successful start of the Euro required maintaining exchange rate stability as one of the major goals of economic policy within the European Union.   "Proper functioning of the single market must not be endangered by exchange-rate misalignments or by excessive fluctuations between the Euro and other EU currencies." 
18462 !GCAT !GCRIM !GPOL  Belgium's political elite, led by Prime Minister Jean-Luc Dehaene, launched into an agonised public soul-search on Thursday, trying to restore public confidence devastated by scandals over child sex and murder.   "We must ask ourselve what we have done wrong -- each of us, in politics, in the judiciary, the police, in the media, and the population in general -- so as to prevent a repetition of these events," Dehaene told a special session of parliament.   Louis Michel, leader of the opposition Wallonia Liberal Party, told the house that "The people have lost confidence in the justice system, in the government and in the country's institution."   And Patrick Dewael, faction leader of the opposition Flemish Liberal Party, added: "The citizens of this country are furious about the government's inability to deal with society's most urgent needs, notably a reform of the judicial system."   Dehaene vowed that any serious police errors in the cases would be punished and promised more support in future for the families of victims, who have complained of the inhumanity of the law.   "We'll put the accent on the central place of the victims and their families and we'll provide the necessary means in terms of staff to let the judiciary attach more importance to this aspect," Dehaene told a special session of parliament.   Belgian police are trying to solve the murder of Belgian politician five years ago, and - separately - investigating the deaths of four girls at the hands of a paedophile gang where the chief suspect is a convicted child rapist, Marc Dutroux.   But in both cases, which have shocked the country in different ways, police have been accused of bungling and missing vital chances - incompetence or corruption.   "If it appears that during early phases of the investigation serious errors have been made, they will be punished," Dehaene told parliament of the so-called "Dutroux" affair.   He said the conclusions of an inquiry into both investigations would be presented to parliament's justice commission as soon as possible.   Justice Minister Stefaan De Clerck said a report by Liege Public Prosecutor Ann Thily confirmed there had been major communications breakdowns in the child kidnap investigation between different police divisions and levels of authorities.   The gendarmerie, however, has denied it is at fault.   The parents of eight-year-olds Julia Lejeune and Melissa Russo, who disappeared in June 1995 and were found dead in Dutroux's garden on August 17, have complained bitterly over the slow progress made by police.   They - and parents of other abducted children - say they have not taken seriously by the police, and add they were not even allowed to identify Julie's and Melissa's bodies.   As well as more support for victims' families, other judicial reforms have been promised including tougher rules on the early release of child sex offender prisoners from jail.   But some past law changes have still not been implemented.   Dehaene said the judiciary should do its utmost to make progress in the investigation into the 1991 mafia-style murder of politician Andre Cools.   "The investigation into the murder raised many questions and led to a general feeling of mistrust of our institutions.   The judiciary now must go to the heart of the matter," he said.   In the case of the killing of Cools, a former Socialist minister, party-appointed investigators have attempted to divert inquiries leading to party members, judicial sources claim.   "We do not pretend that everything the Gendarmerie has done in the Dutroux case was perfect," Gendarmerie General-Major Herman Fransen told a news conference.   "But we have done all we could and more and have nothing to hide."   He added: "If the Cools case has received new impetus recently it is thanks to the Gendarmerie investigating team."   Investigation of the Cools murder led to the discovery of high-level corruption in an army helicopters contract in the late 1980s, which triggered the resignation of four Belgian government ministers and of NATO Secretary-General Willy Claes, a Belgian former economics minister.   Until a few weeks ago, however, investigators did not learn much about the killing. 
18463 !E12 !ECAT !G15 !G154 !GCAT !M13 !M132 !MCAT  The Finance Ministers of France and Germany said they were more convinced than ever that European Monetary Union (EMU) would be a great success.   In a jointly-authored opinion article in the International Herald Tribune newspaper, Friday edition, Jean Arthuis and Theo Waigel said: "We are more than ever convinced that European monetary union will become a great success, and we have common views on all the important issues that remain to be resolved beforehand."    "The ongoing recovery of growth and the unprecedented efforts by our two governments to rebalance public finances will allow our two countries to fullfill the Maastricht criteria and enter European Monetary Union on Friday, January 1, 1999," they said.   The ministers said that, while growth came to a standstill at the end of 1995, it had now picked up and during the first half of 1996 the underlying economic growth trend in the two countries was about 1.5 percent, compared with a year ago.   "The pace of growth should accelerate further by the beginning of 1997," they said.    The Finance Ministers said a firm commitment to fiscal stability was required for succesful monetary union.   This concern led Germany to propose a so-called "Stability Pact," a proposal "fully supported by the French government."   "It has been endorsed by all member states," Waigel and Arthuis wrote.   They said a European Stability Council could meet on an informal basis to monitor implementation of the stability pact and allow for regular discussions of the macroeconomic situation.   They said the European Council summit in Florence, Italy, late June had recognised that monetary union had to be based on strict budgetary discipline and on an enduring basis, and that each member state should aim for a budgetary position close to balance or in surplus over the medium term.   "The three percent (of GDP) reference value will remain the upper limit for a government deficit after the Euro is introduced, which provision for a safety margin for automatic stablisers to work when necessary," they said.   The Finance Ministers rejected criticism that fiscal restraint to cut budget deficits was hurting growth and employment.    "Some concern may have been expressed about possible negative short-term effects of fiscal entrenchment.   That concern is unwarranted.   People have to stop believing that growing public expenditure is a stimulus to growth," they said.   "Fiscal consolidation has already been rewarded by a sharp decrease in short-term interest rates, to the direct and immediate benefit of households and businesses, thereby facilitating further growth," they added.   "We are making unprecedented efforts on public spending.   This will enable France and Germany to meet all the convergency criteria...and enter European monetary union on the date of its constitution."    They said the European Council would as early as possible in 1998 decide which countries will be selected to join the European Union from the start.   "We hope that as many member states as possible will be with us, and that the others will join as soon as possible," they said.   The ministers said a succesful start of the Euro required maintaining exchange rate stability as one of the major goals of economic policy within the European Union.   "Proper functioning of the single market must not be endangered by exchange-rate misalignments or by excessive fluctuations between the Euro and other EU currencies." 
18464 !E51 !ECAT !GCAT !GDIP !GREL !GVIO  The head of the United Nations "white helmets" progamme said on Thursday his organisation would work closely with Catholic non-governmental aid agencies to help refugees returning to Rwanda from Zaire.   "We agreed to work together in Rwanda," Octavio Frigerio, the roving ambassador who leads the programme, told Reuters after meeting senior Vatican officials.   "We would help build homes to house returning refugees from Zaire, one of the big needs," said Frigerio.   The organisation, made up of volunteers provided by individual member nations as a humanitarian counterpart to the military U.N. "Blue Helmets", already works closely with the Roman Catholic agency Caritas in Latin America.   The name is merely a tag.   Volunteers, trained to help in disasters such as floods, famines, earthquakes, epidemics and civil war do not wear white helmets.   More than a million Rwandans fled to refugee camps in neighbouring Zaire after the massacre of more than one million Tutsis and moderate Hutus in 1994.   Frigerio also met top officials at the U.N.'s Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) and World Food Programme (WFP) to discuss international cooperation and co-funding.   White Helmets volunteers are already working with WFP officials in Haiti and Armenia.   Frigerio earlier launched a joint Italian-Argentine operation to remove landmines in Angola.   He said the programme could be extended with volunteers from other countries.   In the Middle East, Saudi Arabia has given $3 million for helping Palestine and Rwanda with other Arab countries also expected to make donations soon.   Frigerio said projects in Palestine included town planning projects in Gaza, sports development and livestock health programmes to tackle brucellosis in herds.   Approximately 1,000 volunteers to the White Helmets programme have been recruited to date.   The concept, proposed by Argentine president Carlos Menem, was approved in 1994 by the U.N. General Assembly.   Frigerio said 100 were from Argentina and other Latin American countries, 600 from the recipient countries and the remainder from Argentina for domestic projects.   "The important thing now is that there are several industrial nations beginning to participate," he said, citing France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Israel and Spain.   He said France would participate in a mission to Haiti, where the White Helmets have been involved in food distribution, in October, while Germany would be involved in Rwanda. 
18465 !C13 !C24 !CCAT !G15 !G153 !GCAT !GHEA  Inadequate EU controls played a major role in the growth of mad cow disease in Britain, a European Commission official told the European Parliament on Thursday.   Lars Hoelgaard, a senior veterinary official, told a parliamentary commission of enquiry that no inspections had been carried out in Britain between 1990 and 1994 on trade in contaminated animal feed.   But he denied reports that Brussels had tried in the early 1990s to minimise the danger of mad cow disease, also known as Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE), so as not to disrupt beef markets.   "Such a mission would have been beyond the power of the CIA...The Commission is the most open institution on earth, it's impossible to keep information secret," he said.   Confidential Commission letters published recently in some newspapers revealed recommendations of a "disinformation" campaign so as to avoid upsetting the markets.   On Wednesday, Commission Director General for Agriculture, Guy Legras, deplored in Paris the fact that there were only 30 EU veterinary inspectors.   "It's impossible to carry out controls with only 30 people," Legras told a French National Assembly enquiry team, adding that up to four times more inspectors were necessary.   Legras warned that otherwise there was the risk of the spread of other animal diseases, notably foot and mouth disease in the Balkans. 
18466 !GCAT !GPOL !GVIO  Two leaders of Germany's reform communist PDS party were convicted of disturbing the peace and fined for a rowdy 1994 protest during which they had staged a hunger strike in a Berlin public building.   An administrative court ruled that PDS leaders Gregor Gysi and Lothar Bisky were guilty of disturbing the peace and ordered to pay 15,000 marks ($9,932) and 7,000 marks ($4,635), respectively.   The two led a sit-down strike and hunger strike that lasted several days in late 1994 in the offices of a government commission investigating the party's assets.   At the centre of the dispute were taxes due on profits made in the first half of 1990 by firms belonging to the PDS, founded as the successor to East Germany's ruling communist party.   The bulk of the PDS's wealth inherited from the ousted ruling communists was confiscated in May 1990 and passed to the Treuhand privatisation agency.   The PDS, backed by the Treuhand, said the firms' profits flowed into this fund and the taxes should be paid from it.   The PDS leaders went on hunger strike last Wednesday in protest at a 67 million mark tax bill and officials' refusal to allow it to be paid by funds held in trust by the Treuhand.   The bill was later cut to 8 million marks. 
18467 !GCAT !GCRIM  Belgian police said on Thursday their investigations into the alleged abduction of two teenage girls in the eastern city of Liege had found they simply ran away for the weekend.   "I will not comment on the motives for this trip which are private", assistant Liege Public Prosecutor Jean-Luc Lecrompe said in a statement.   Rachel Legeard and Severine Potty disappeared on their way home from a shopping trip on August 29 as the country was in the grip of the so-called Dutroux affair of child kidnapping, abuse and murder.   A major manhunt was launched and the girls were found asleep in a ditch near Cologne in Germany.   They claimed to have no recollection of their 48-hour ordeal.   But relief turned to suspicion when the girls were found not to have been sexually molested and to have German money in their pockets.   "The two girls are of the age of consent.   All I can say is that, with the parents very anxious, the investigating magistrate launched an inquiry and the girls were found," the statement said.   "It seems they had some difficult moments during their absence, and the investigations need to clarify certain points, notably in Germany," it added. 
18468 !GCAT !GDIP  The General Assembly's new President, ambassador Razali Ismail of Malaysia, hurled darts at the U.S. press and the U.N. secretariat on Thursday and said the Assembly should not meekly accept just anyone nominated by the Security Council to be secretary-general.   The fast-talking envoy fired off the barbs at his first news conference since his election by acclamation on Tuesday to head the 185-nation body.   In a performance that contrasted with the usual reserve of incoming U.N. presidents, he also said the Assembly's six main committees should be more focused in their work.   "I will be embarrased if this General Assembly cannot say something about promotion and protection of the (Middle East) peace accords in the context of developments now," he said, alluding to the slowdown in negotiations between Israel and its Arab neighbours.   If the Assembly's main political committee failed to act because of power politics and left the matter in the hands of just a few countries, "it should hang its head in shame when clearly one can find something to say about this."   Rejecting the view that the United Nations needed the United States but not the reverse, he said they "belong to each other, and there is nothing they can do about it.   "It is astounding that we are here in New York and ... despite all the cacophony of voice and sound and speeches that we make here, there is so little reporting in the American papers."   There were many misconceptions among Americans about "money being drained out from the U.S., from Fort Knox or something.   It's not like that at all," he added.   "Here the media has done themselves and the United Nations a disservice."   Repeating a line from his inaugural address that the days of leisurely diplomatic lunches and late meetings were over, he vowed: "Myself, I will not accept a lunch that lasts beyond 2.30 p.m.   Whose lunch it is, I do not care."   Taking aim at the U.N. secretariat, he said it was "so steeped in past traditions -- all the things that have been put together over 50 years...There must be another way of doing things."   Regarding the election of a secretary-general, appointed by the General Assembly on the recommendation of the Security Council, he said the Assembly should demonstrate its ability to play a constructive role.   The choice of a secretary-general is one of the hottest issues at the current Assembly since the United States has vowed to use its veto, if necessary, to prevent the re-election of Boutros Boutros-Ghali.   "We are not threatening anything," Razali said.   "But if a huge number of countries in the General Assembly feel that whoever is sent to us is inadequate for some reason or other...there is no reason why the General Assembly could not send it back to ther Security Council." 
18469 !GCAT !GCRIM !GWELF  Some 800 homeless people have been rounded up in the French Riviera capital Nice since it banned begging this summer, and 21 of them have now sued the city for violating their rights, lawyers said on Thursday.   The homeless were rounded up by city police and driven 16 km (10 miles) out of town to a municipal hostel in Mont Chauve, where they were questioned and released, attorney Jospeh Ciccolini told reporters.   He said he was one of a dozen lawyers defending the rights of the homeless through lawsuits accusing Nice of depriving them of their individual liberties.   An investigation was under way to determine whether one of the homeless individuals had died while trying to find his way back to Nice, lawyers said.   The city opened a probe after the body of an unidentified man was found near Mount Chauve.   Nice's right-wing mayor Jacques Peyrat announced in June a ban in the centre of the tourist mecca on begging, defecating in public and the consumption of alcohol in a way likely to trigger brawls.   Nice is just one of many French holiday cities and towns that have tried in recent years to discourage the poor and homeless from visiting, for fear they would scare off tourists.   Bans have been put in place in Cannes and Menton on the Riviera, La Rochelle on the Atlantic coast, and Pau and Carcassone in the southwest.   Some towns have even banned stray or unmuzzled dogs, on grounds they often accompany homeless people.   A French court in early August suspended begging bans in the southern cities of Montpellier, Beziers and Prades, ruling they were contrary to the principle of equality among citizens. 
18470 !GCAT !GDIP !GPOL !GVIO  Evidently not satisfied with Zaire's response to earlier protests, Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali on Thursday decided to send a special emissary to Kinshasa about the country's televised accusations against U.N. staff.   Zairean soldiers beat up two U.N. staff members last weekend after a television report said the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) was helping armed Rwandans infiltrate across the border.   Boutros-Ghali, rejecting the accusations, said the broadcast had caused "serious security problems for United Nations personnel working in the region."   Rwanda also has denied the charges.   On Thursday U.N. spokeswoman Sylvanna Foa said Boutros-Ghali was sending Assistant Secretary-General Ibrahima Fall, a human rights official based in Geneva, to Zaire as soon as possible.   UNHCR officials will be in his delegation.   Zaire said last Friday its troops clashed with armed groups of Banyamulenge Tutsi infiltrators and accused neighbouring Rwanda and Burundi of raising tension by backing the raids.   Zaire alleged that the Rwandan troops had travelled in UNHCR vehicles.   The Banyamulenge are mostly Tutsis originally of Rwandan origin who have lived in eastern Zaire for decades or more.   UNHCR officials in Kigali, Rwanda, said refugees were crossing into southwestern Rwanda from eastern Zaire, saying they had been robbed, jailed and deprived of food.   The already poor relations of the Banyamulenge Tutsis with local Zairean tribes and the Zairean army worsened with the arrival of more than a million Rwandan Hutus who fled Rwanda after the 1994 killings.   The massacres resulted in the deaths of up to one million Tutsis and moderate Hutus by Hutu extremists before the Tutsis took power. 
18471 !GCAT !GENV !GPOL  Germany's birth rate fell to a postwar low in 1994 for reasons such as women wanting to pursue careers or couples seeking to conserve cash for holidays and cars, the government and researchers said on Thursday.   Births slumped to an eight-year nadir in the west of the country and an all-time low in the east, the Federal Statistics Office said.   There were 769,603 Germans born in 1994, the last year for which complete figures are available, down four percent from 1993 and the lowest level since the 1930s, according to Juergen Dobritz of the Federal Institute for Population Research.   "There has been a clear downward trend in the number of German births since the 1960s," Dobritz told Reuters.   "The number of women who elect not to have children is steadily growing.   There is a trend of animosity towards children in Germany's social climate."   That, Dobritz said, is the primary reason for the declining birthrate.   The introduction of the birth control pill in the mid-1960s in Germany offers only a partial explanation.   He said there is widespread animosity towards children in Germany because of "institutional lack of consideration" toward families and parents with children.   Stunted careers, housing discrimination, coldness towards children in restaurants and other public places are all reasons why people elect not to have children, researchers said.   Many lower-income German couples elect to devote their resources to holiday trips and cars rather than on having children, Dobritz said.   In upper-income groups, many women choose not to have children because they do not want to put their careers on hold or change their lifestyles.   "They want to maintain their standards of living and don't want to give up their leisure time," Dobritz said.   "They balk at the high costs associated with having children."   The figures from the statistics office came as parliament was debating legislation to outlaw physical "mistreatment" of children that would make spanking children a crime.   "Spanks, whacks and other forms of physical abuse are not permissible means for raising children," said parliamentarian Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger.   The 770,000 children born in Germany in 1994 were half the number born 30 years ago.   In 1964, a total of 1.36 million children were born in West and East Germany.   Even though the German government grants generous tax breaks to people with children and pays a monthly 200-mark ($132) child-support subsidy known as "Kindergeld" for every child in the country, the birth rate continues its downward spiral.   The percentage of women who will never have children has risen to 32 percent for those who were born in 1970 from 25 percent for those born in 1960 and 10 percent for those women born in 1940.   As with many other aspects of life in united Germany, there are also considerable differences between the west and the formerly communist east.   There were 690,905 babies born in the west in 1994, but just 78,698 born in the east.   That was down from 200,000 in 1989.   The steep downturn in the east is generally attributed to the economic uncertainty and surge in unemployment that followed the collapse of East Germany.   ($1=1.5103 Mark) 
18472 !GCAT !GENT  The hilltop French Riviera villa where artist Pablo Picasso spent his last years is on sale for 26 million francs ($5 million), sources at the town hall of Mougins said.   Picasso bought the 35-room Mougins villa in 1961 and lived there until he died in 1973.   Some of his memorabilia are still stored there, including an old Hispano car which does not appear to have been driven since he died.   Picasso's plumber said recently he believed the artist had built a cache in the villa where he deposited a briefcase and works by masters such as Goya and Van Gogh. 
18473 !C21 !CCAT !GCAT !GVIO  Germany's Duesseldorf airport will halt all flights for about an hour next Tuesday to remove two unexploded World War Two bombs found near the airport, officials said on Thursday.   Officials at the airport, which was badly damaged by a fire earlier this year, said a total of 12 outgoing flights and nine incoming flights would be affected by the operation.   The unexploded 1,000-pound bombs were found on Tuesday during excavation work.   The airport will not be evacuated when explosive experts defuse the bombs and officials said it was up to the airlines involved whether they delay or divert flights.   Scores of unexploded World War Two bombs are found each year in Germany. 
18474 !GCAT !GPOL !GPRO  President Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire is convalescing after surgery for prostate cancer and is receiving outpatient chemotherapy treatment at a Lausanne hospital, sources close to his delegation said on Thursday.   The Swiss Foreign Ministry this week for the second time extended Mobutu's visa, granted on medical grounds, but a spokesman declined to say for how long.   Mobutu, who was operated on in late August for prostate cancer at the University and Hospital Centre of Switzerland's Vaud canton, is staying in a suite at a luxury hotel in Lausanne along Lake Geneva.   "He is doing fine," said a source close to his delegation.   Another source told Reuters: "He is being treated as an outpatient and getting some sort of therapy."   A hotel source told Reuters: "I heard he is pretty seriously ill and staying for some time.   Apparently he is having chemotheraphy here."   In Kinshasa on Wednesday, Zaire's government banned a leading opposition newspaper after it published a report saying that Mobutu would have an operation for throat cancer.   Mobutu's spokesman in the central African country said that the President was recovering well.   "We expect him to return home in three weeks.   He needs rests but to this day there is no cause for concern about him," the spokesman added. 
18475 !G15 !G153 !G158 !GCAT !M14 !M141 !MCAT  The European Union's sugar management committee on Wednesday cut the import duty on cane molasses to 0.04 Ecu per 100 kg from 0.05 Ecu, an EU official said.   "The tariff was based on a representative price of 8.17 Ecus per 100 kg," the official added.   The import duty on beet molasses remains suspended at zero based on a representative price of 11.23 ecus per 100 kg. 
18476 !GCAT !GCRIM !GPRO  Peter Graf, the father of tennis star Steffi Graf, will remain in jail at least until Tuesday after a state court said on Thursday it was still considering his appeal to be freed on bail.   A spokesman for a court in Karlsruhe said the court had reviewed objections from the prosecution to release Graf on bail and was now waiting to hear the arguments from Graf's attorneys.   Graf, on trial in a lower court in Mannheim for tax evasion, has spent the last 13 months in investigative custody.   He is accused of evading 19 million marks ($12.58 million) of tax on his daughter's earnings between 1989 and 1993.   The Mannheim court judge, Joachim Plass, said he ordered Graf to be released from detention for the rest of the trial because even if he is convicted, it was unlikely his sentence would be much longer than the 13 months he has already served.   Plass agreed to release Graf on bail of three million marks, but Graf has been kept in detention because of the appeal by prosecutors who want him to stay in prison, fearing he might flee the country.   Graf submitted a personal declaration to the court pledging to report to police twice a week and do nothing to endanger the course of the trial, such as giving interviews.   Steffi Graf remains under investigation, although she says she left her financial affairs to her father from an early age.   Peter Graf maintains tax authorities signalled their approval of his schemes to reduce tax on his daughter's earnings by channelling the money abroad, rather than see Steffi join an exodus of German sporting tax exiles.   ($1=1.5103 Mark) 
18477 !GCAT !GVIO  Explosives experts searched for World War Two land mines in a Norwegian town on Thursday, forcing the evacuation of 45 people from their homes, the national news agency NTB said.   It said an undetonated land mine containing up to 500 kg (1,100 lb) of TNT was discovered during roadworks in Holmestrand, a town about 100 km (60 miles) south of Oslo.   "TNT is an explosive that stays largely intact for years," a military spokesman was quoted as saying.   The mine, which elderly citizens said was dropped by a British bomber in 1944 when Norway was occupied by Nazi Germany, was recovered early on Thursday after inhabitants were evacuated.   The discovery of a second mine forced police to shut down A main highway while experts removed the explosive, NTB said.   Residents recalled a third mine could be lying unexploded in the ground, prompting police to consider closing off a larger area. 
18478 !E51 !E512 !ECAT !GCAT !GDIP  Libya has told the United Nations sanctions imposed in connection with the 1988 bombing of Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, caused it losses of more than $18.7 billion between mid-April 1992 and the end of 1995.   In a letter to Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali circulated on Thursday, it said losses to agriculture and animal husbandry totalled nearly $6 billion while more than $4 billion was lost by mining and industry and a similar sum in finance and trade.   It put damage to the energy industry at $3 billion and to transport and communications at more than $1 billion.   Libya said the effects on health and social welfare resulted in losses of more than $187 million in addition to death and suffering affecting thousands due, among other things, to the inability to import medicines by air and to fly patients abroad for treatment.   Sanctions, including an air embargo, a ban on arms sales and downgraded diplomatic relations, were first imposed in 1992 because of Libya's failure to extradite to Britain or the United States two men wanted in the Lockerbie airliner bombing that killed 270 people in the air and on the ground.   The sanctions were tightened in 1993 with the addition of a freeze on some of Libya's assets abroad and a ban on its import of certain types of equipment used in oil transport terminals and refineries.   REUTER 
18479 !G15 !G155 !GCAT !GCRIM  If European Union governments are really serious about fighting fraud, they should give the EU the powers to act, the European Commission and the European Parliament agreed on Thursday.   "We must organise our fight against organised crime in a far more effective manner," anti-fraud Commissioner Anita Gradin told Euro-MPs during a debate on ways of improving the fight against fraud.   She said that as part of their discussions on reform of the EU treaties in the inter-governmental conference (IGC) the member states should give the EU the powers to legislate on fraud, border controls, judicial affairs and other areas currently dealt with through government-to-government cooperation.   "The IGC therefore will have to determine a firm legal basis for fighting against fraud, not just fraud in European Union money but fraud in the member states' own resources as well," the Swedish Commissioner said.   "We have to be able to provide taxpayers with guarantees that their money will end up in the right pockets and won't be used to line the pockets of criminals."   The subsidiarity-conscious EU governments have agreed to cooperate through international conventions, such as the Convention for the Protection of the European Community Financial Interests, but these have not yet been ratified and do not cover important matters such as extradition for financial crimes.   Parliament adopted a report by Dietmut Theato, the German Christian Democrat chairwoman of the budgetary control committee, urging the European Commission and the member states to take action to make the fight against fraud more effective.   As well as demanding changes to the EU treaty to bring anti-fraud measures under Community competence, MEPs said the member states should bring their laws and judicial procedures into line.   They urged the member states to step up their existing judicial and administrative cooperation, and said the Commission's anti-fraud unit (UCLAF) needed a statute which would allow it to fight fraud at all levels.   In a separate report, by German Socialist Rosemarie Wemheuer, MEPs asked the Commission to check whether the complexity of certain EU laws made fraud easier.   It should also see whether certain EU subsidies and refunds should be replaced by mechanisms less open to fraud, the report said. 
18480 !E21 !E212 !ECAT !G15 !G158 !GCAT  The European Union should revise its Guarantee Fund mechanism because the current guarantee reserve is too small to cover current lending activities to third countries, Euro-MPs said on Thursday.   EU leaders agreed at the Cannes European Council in 1995 to extend EU lending to third countries, particularly those in Central and Eastern Europe, and the Mediterranean.   But the European Parliament warned in a report that there would be a 600-million-Ecu shortfall in lending capacity every year unless the Gurarantee Fund mechanism is revised.   The guarantee mechanism authorises total loans of 2,300-2,500 million Ecus but the actual volume of loan and guarantee operations is expected to be between 2,800 million and 3,100 million Ecus, warns the report, drafted by British Socialist John Tomlinson.   "If none of the present rules are changed, there will be a shortfall of some 600 million Ecus a year in the lending capacity required in order simply to maintain the financial allocations at their present level beyond 1996," it concludes.   Parliament asked the European Commission and the Council of Ministers to propose a revision of the mechanism.   Commissioner Christos Papoutsis told Euro-MPs during a debate on Wednesday that the Commission would seriously consider the call for an early revision of the mechanism.   Tomlinson's report responds to a Commission report on guarantees covered by the EU budget in the year to June 30, 1995 - COM(95)625. 
18481 !G15 !G155 !GCAT !GDIP !GPOL  The European Parliament condemned on Thursday the expulsions of illegal immigrants from several European Union states and recalled the need "under any circumstances" to respect human rights.   "Any return of irregular immigrants to their country of origin must be conditional on information which is known to be true concerning respect for their safety and basic rights in their country of origin," the EU assembly said in a resolution.   It said it was shocked that some of the immigrants expelled from the EU had been executed because of their beliefs on return to their home country.   The parliament's non-binding resolution, approved by 170 votes to 11, urged EU member states to deal with the question of irregular immigrants "on a case-by-case basis, avoiding any summary procedure and treating all cases equally from the outset".   The crisis sparked off in France by a series of protests by "paperless" immigrants came to a head on August 23 when police forcibly evicted a group of Africans occupying the St Bernard church in Paris.   Several were subsequently returned to their country of origin.   In their resolution, the Euro-MPs "deplored" the incidents in France, as well as others in Belgium and Spain.   They vigorously condemned "any statements which promote distrust towards immigrants and enhance the credibility of those who would encourage a demagogic policy of exclusion and xenophobia". 
18482 !G15 !G158 !GCAT !GDIP !GVIO  The European Parliament urged the United Nations on Thursday to look into the Indonesian authorities' crackdown on pro-democracy activists on July 27, during which at least five people died.   "The European Parliament requests that the UN Specal Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions be asked to undertake an investigation into the events of July 27 and the whereabouts of people still missing," deputies said in a resolution.   The directly elected EU assembly urged European Union member states to withold all military assistance and arms sales to Indonesia, which it accused of "violating the rights of peaceful critics and activists".   The non-binding resolution condemned the "violent seizure" of the Indonesian Democratic Party headquarters on July 27 by military and para-military forces and the subsequent wave of arrests.   Five people died, 149 were wounded and 74 went missing on July 27, according to the Indonesian National Commission of Human Rights.   The parliament reiterated its support for the Indonesian pro-democracy movement "in the struggle for a just, democratic and pluralist society". 
18483 !C42 !CCAT !E21 !E211 !E41 !ECAT !GCAT !GJOB !GPOL  France's Socialist CFDT labour union, the country's largest, criticised conservative Prime Minister Alain Juppe's 1997 budget on Thursday, saying it was unlikely to promote either economic growth or employment.   In a relatively subdued statement compared to union warnings in advance of the budget, the CFDT said: "It (the budget) will delight some and satisfy others, but it will not reassure the vast majority worried by unemployment".   "The economic logic which the government is wrapping itself up, in which the latest measure was the cut in income tax, could well produce neither of the results hoped for, neither on growth nore on employment," said the statement.   "This could lead to problems if unemployment rises and the social divide widens, confronting the state with the necessaity for new social measures which it will not have the ressources to provide," the brief statement said.   Wider union reaction to the budget, which was presented on Wednesday, has so far been relatively scarce, probably due to the need for the various professions, sectors and factions to sift through the budget detail before taking a firm position.   Nonetheless, the non-partisan Force Ouvriere union issued a statement after the budget presentation, saying:   "This budget proposal is part of increasing restriction to fall in line with a reading of the Maastricht treaty which is rigid and dogmatic to say the least."   FO leader Marc Blondel said the budget enshrined a "vision of an stock investors economy rather than an economy geared to growth", "one built on the desires of financial markets and not on goals of economic and social progress".   French unemployment is at a record level of 12.5 percent.   The budget announced on Wednesday limits central government spending in 1997 to the same levels as this year, effectively requiring cuts and savings of 60 billion francs to account for what would be an automatic rise through inflation and other mechanical spending increases.   Those savings include reducing civil service numbers by around 6,000 in 1997, many of them national teaching posts.   Separate defence sector reforms also involve job losses on a far bigger scale.   Several thousand people gathered on Thursday in the western port town of Brest to protest at defence cuts which will hit the neval dockyard there.   Prior to the budget, teachers unions called for a strike at the end of September and the Force Ouvriere non-partisan union has slated September 21 for a nationwide demonstration. 
18484 !G15 !G158 !GCAT !GCRIM !GDIP  Indignant Euro-MPs condemned on Thursday the Romanian parliament's decision to introduce stiffer penalties for homosexual acts and said the move should be repealed.   "The European Parliament expresses its profound indignation at these decisions by the Romanian parliament and condemns any attempt to criminalise sexual relations between adults of the same sex," Euro-MPs said in a resolution.   Homosexual acts are currently subject in Romania to prison sentences of between six months and three years.   The proposed revision of Romania's penal code would bring the penalty up to five years.   The EU's directly elected assembly urged the president of Romania, a country currently seeking membership of the 15-member bloc, to do all in his power to prevent the amendments to the penal code entering into force.   Parliament's resolution, which is non-binding, said the EU should exert pressure on Romania to repeal all laws discriminating against homosexuals. 
18485 !C13 !CCAT !G15 !G152 !GCAT  Municipal energy distributors said on Thursday the proposal for an EU directive to create an internal electricity market would lead to a divided marketplace, excluding small firms from the benefits of liberalisation.   CEDEC (European Confederation of Municipal Public Energy Distributors) said distributors should also be seen as eligible customers.   "In order to guarantee equal opportunities for the customers involved on the market, the directive must not allow a situation to arise whereby in some EU member states only certain (large) end users, to the exclusion of distributors, have the right to purchase electricity on national and international markets," it said in a statement.   In June, EU energy ministers agreed on a gradual opening up of national electricity markets, allowing mainly large companies to freely shop around for the best deal.   The agreement, which still needs to be approved by the European Parliament, was a compromise between countries seeking far-reaching liberalisation and countries which are wary of any dramatic opening up of markets.   "The effect of the current version of the directive will be to divide the single electricity market into two, on the one hand the privileged group of 'eligible customers' who will be able to negotiate their prices and on the other hand the group of other customers who will remain captive customers," it said.   "CEDEC considers that the achievement of the single electricity market must guarantee equal opportunities for all customers," it said.   CEDEC, founded in 1992, groups eight national associations from five European countries. 
18486 !E51 !E512 !ECAT !GCAT !GDIP  Swedish deputy Foreign Minister Pierre Schori said on Thursday his country's cooperation with Algeria would intensify after years of stagnation.   "Thanks to a new government in Sweden and friendly relations between the two countries, cooperation between Algeria and Sweden will go through a new start after a break of some years," Schori told the Algerian news agency APS.   He left Algiers after two-day visit in which he met Prime Minister Ahmed Ouyahia, Foreign Minister Ahmed Attaf and state secretary for cooperation and Maghreb affairs Lahcen Moussaoui.   He said Sweden favoured the European Union strengthening its cooperation with the North African country.   The European Commission gave the go-ahead in June to negotiate an association accord with Algeria.   The agreement, offering financial, social and cultural links, would replace another pact that has been in place since 1978.   Officials have said Algeria has completed preliminary negotiations on the pact with the European Union. 
18487 !GCAT !GPOL  Spaniards overwhelmingly back their King Juan Carlos, according to an opinion poll broadcast on Thursday, but are divided on whether Communist attacks on the monarchy should be allowed.   The poll, conducted for private radio station Cope, found 85 percent of respondents said the king carried out his duties well or very well and only three percent thought he did them badly.   Communist leader Julio Anguita, who caused an outcry on Monday when he said the king should "shut up" on NATO, got a mixed reaction from the general public.   The survey found 48 percent thought he had the right to criticise the king and 45 percent did not, although a majority believed that in general, it was a bad thing to do.   Anguita, who was interviewed on another radio station on Thursday, repeated his conviction that the king had stepped out of constitutional bounds in a speech in Brussels where he stated his support for Spain's full integration in the Alliance.   "The king has to speak in the name of all Spaniards, he has to speak in my name and on the issue of NATO, the public is divided," Anguita said.   "When he spoke on NATO he was taking a position that the public has not yet taken."   Spain became a member of the 16-nation NATO but not of its integrated military command after a 1986 referendum approved by 53 percent to 39 percent of voters.   Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar, who took office in May after 13 years of Socialist rule, was elected partly on a platform that he would bring the country fully into NATO.   But Anguita argues that the king should not espouse the government's view until it is ratified by another referendum.   He sparked a storm of abuse from other politicians earlier in the week for daring to criticise the king, whom Spaniards revere for his role in the transition to democracy after the 36-year dictatorship of General Francisco Franco.   The Communist chief, whose party dominates Spain's third largest political coalition, the IU, also suggested scrapping the monarchy and returning to the republican government in place before and during the 1936-39 Civil War.   Aznar dismissed the suggestion as absurd, saying he would not stoop to entering such an argument and former Socialist prime minister Felipe Gonzalez said it "seriously complicated" efforts to reach a Socialist-IU understanding on a left-wing opposition.   "Looking for agreements with the political group led by Anguita is complicated when there's not even consensus on the basic elements," Gonzalez told a party congress on Tuesday.   Anguita's outburst followed two weeks of harsh attacks on the government for defying court requests to declassify secret files on a 1980s "dirty war" which the former Socialist government is alleged to have waged against Basque separatists.   The Communists contend that Aznar's conservative government, like the Socialists before it, breached constitutional principles by refusing to hand over the documents. 
18488 !GCAT !GPRO  Daniel Ducruet, whom Princess Stephanie of Monaco is divorcing after he was snapped romping naked with a Belgian stripper, alleged in an interview out on Thursday that the stripper and a photographer were working together.   "They were in cahoots," Ducruet told the French weekly VSD.   But stripper Fily Houteman, a former "Miss Topless Belgium", denied in an interview with French television TF1 set for broadcast on Thursday evening that she plotted with photographers or even knew they were present during the poolside romp, according to the interviewer.   Ducruet said Houteman and photographer Stephane de Lisiecki had been seen together in a Paris hotel before de Lisiecki photographed him.   The divorce from Princess Stephanie is expected to become final in three to five weeks after Italian magazines printed page after page of explicit photos of Ducruet and the stripper cavorting at a Riviera villa in Villefranche, 15 km (nine miles) from Monte Carlo.   TF1's Jean-Marc Morandi told the daily Le Parisien that Houteman insisted that she fell for Ducruet after meeting him at a race in Belgium and met him on the Riviera after unnamed friends suggested they spend some time together.   Ducruet's lawyer Guillaume Carre said this week that his client was filing a suit in the Riviera capital Nice requesting a court investigation into whether he had been framed when he went to the villa with Houteman.   Houteman told TF1 she had no reason to suspect photographers were observing them because Ducruet's bodyguards were on the lookout for any interlopers.   Stephanie, 31, is the glamorous daughter of Prince Rainier and the late Hollywood star Grace Kelly who was killed in a car crash in 1982.   The princess launched divorce proceedings after an unsuccessful reconciliation meeting on Sunday.   The latest upheaval in the Monaco royal family came just before the Grimaldi family celebrates 700 years in power next year, claiming to be the longest-serving European royal dynasty.   Prince Rainier long opposed Stephanie's relationship with Ducruet but finally accepted him into the family last year for the sake of the couple's two children. 
18489 !GCAT !GDIP !GVIO  Iraq's deputy foreign minister quietly met French foreign ministry officials on Thursday to try to convince them that the no-fly zones imposed over his country were unjust.   Foreign Ministry spokesman Jacques Rummelhardt, confirming the visit, merely said Ryad Qeisi would call at the ministry to discuss implementation of U.N. Security Council resolutions.   "Within the framework of France's constant consultations following the latest developments, Ryad Qeisi's visit will provide an opportunity to remind him of our position," he told a news briefing.   Apparently keen to avoid publicity about the visit following France's disagreement with the United States concerning the extension of the no-fly zone over southern Iraq, the ministry refused to say when the meeting was taking place and said Qeisi would not meet the press.   A Ministry official later confirmed the meeting was over and had covered "implementation of the Security Council resolutions and Iraq's cooperation with the U.N. special committee" which monitors Baghdad's compliance with the resolutions imposed after its 1990 invasion of Kuwait.   Qeisi said during a visit to Moscow earlier this week that he wanted to give Paris Baghdad's views on the ban on flights by Iraqi warplanes over southern and northern Iraq which was imposed by the United States, Britain and France in 1991 after the Gulf War.   He said France's Middle east policies had changed since then and no longer had to keep helping its allies enforce the no-fly zones just because it had agreed to their imposition in 1991.   France earlier this month distanced itself from Washington's decisions to launch missile strikes against Iraq and extend the southern no-fly zone in retaliation for Baghdad's operation against separatist Kurds in the north. 
18490 !E12 !ECAT !G15 !G154 !GCAT !M13 !M132 !MCAT  European nations should not rush to deliver a firm interpretation of the entry criteria for Europe's planned currency union ahead of the official evaluation, a senior official warned on Thursday.   National Bank of Belgium governor Alfons Verplaetse, echoing many European policy-makers' calls, told a banking forum that requirements qualifying nations to join the planned currency union on January 1, 1999 must not be changed.   "The criteria should neither be relaxed nor become more stringent," Verplaetse said, noting the requirements would "become more stringent by the abolition of the evaluation possibilities which were explicitly provided for."   The comments were prepared for delivery this evening and a copy of the text was made available beforehand.   An evaluation process would benefit Belgium in particular as it meets many of the entry criteria but remains nowhere near the prescribed debt criterion.   The Maastricht Treaty on European Economic and Monetary union states the reference values for nations' planned or actual government deficit to gross domestic product as three percent and 60 percent.   Political leaders will determine in 1998 which nations will be eligible to join the union after reviewing their 1997 economic data.   Even though Belgium posted a public debt ratio of 133 percent of GDP at the end of 1995, Verplaetse was confident his nation will among the first to join the currency union in 1999.   "Belgium will be in the first group of countries to participate in Stage III of EMU," Verplaetse said.   He also expected Belgium will come within striking distance of the budget deficit criterion this year, saying, "In 1996 my country will once more reach a public deficit level close to three percent of GDP."   Arguing that the deficit level or the rate of change in the debt level is more important than the actual debt level, Verplaetse said: "That is undoubtedly the reason why ... the Maastricht Treaty gives more freedom with regard to the debt criterion than for the deficit criterion."   "More concretely, should a high but decreasing public debt inspire more or less confidence than a lower but increasing debt," Verplaetse asked, adding "with regard to the public debt, the notion of 'debt sustainability' seems to be much more important than the level itself."   To date, Verplaetse stressed, Belgium's high public debt ratio, which he said reflected the options of the past rather than those of more recent times, has not prevented a favourable macroeconomic performance.   Once the currency union has been launched, Verplaetse said that the desire for permanent consolidation of the public deficit at a maximum rate of three percent would allow the debt criterion to "lose its meaning."   Despite the hard work ahead, Verplaetse said the rewards of a currency union would make all worthwhile.   "The single currency will give the participating countries a guarantee of substantial internal stability, low inflation and sustainable economic growth," he said. 
18491 !GCAT !GDIP !GPOL !GVIO  Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams dismissed chances of an imminent ceasefire by his IRA guerrilla allies on Thursday but said a visit by prominent Irish-Americans this weekend could help bolster Northern Ireland peace.   Adams told An Phoblacht, Sinn Fein's weekly newspaper, that British and Irish media reports that the Irish Republican Army would hold a peace convention were "without foundation".   But he was upbeat about a weekend visit to Ireland by a group led by U.S. Congressman Bruce Morrison which helped broker a 17-month truce by the IRA that ended in February this year.   "This group has remained consistently involved and have continued to play an important role in the search for peace," Adams told An Phoblacht.   "This could help strengthen the international support for a real and meaningful process of negotiations," said Adams, whose party is excluded from Anglo-Irish peace talks in Belfast until the IRA restores the broken truce.   "The visit will allow Bruce and his colleagues to identify the causes of the collapse of the peace process and what is required to construct a new and credible peace process."   Irish media reports have linked the visit to a possible new IRA ceasefire, which would allow Sinn Fein to gain entry into the multi-party peace talks aimed at reconciling pro-Irish nationalists and pro-British Unionists.   But Adams, whose party seeks to end British rule of Northern Ireland, has dismissed such speculation and called on the British and Irish governments to completely rebuild their peace strategy for the divided province.   Britain and Ireland have excluded Sinn Fein from the talks until the IRA restores the ceasefire it broke with a string of attacks in Britain in February and the bombing of a British army base in Osnaebruck in Germany.   Adams predicted an eventual settlement of the divisions in Northern Ireland, where the 60 percent Protestant majority is determined to remain under London rule but the 40 percent Catholic minority seeks reunification with Ireland.   "My confidence is that we will get a negotiated peace settlement and that the tide is flowing in the direction of an all-Ireland character," Adams said. 
18492 !GCAT !GDIP  Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in an interview published on Thursday he accepted France's efforts to play a more active role in Middle East peacemaking.   The hardline Israeli leader, due to visit Paris next week, told the French magazine Valeurs Actuelles he was not sure the European Union had a coherent foreign policy or understood the dangers which the creation of a Palestinian state would imply.   Netanyahu, whose opposition to trading occupied Arab land for peace has been criticised by France, said he did not believe President Jacques Chirac's policy was "aimed exclusively towards the Arab countries to the detriment of other countries".   "It seems to me that France simply wants to play an active role in the region, commensurate with its real importance.   That is a healthy and normal ambition," he said.   Chirac, who will meet Netanyahu next Wednesday and tour the Middle East next month, has sought a bigger role for Paris alongside the United States in the peace process.   He sent his foreign minister to the region in April to help negotiate a ceasefire between Israel and Lebanese Hizbollah guerrillas, using France's good contacts with Syria and Iran.   The French Foreign Ministry said on Thursday it had reassured Israel about suspicious Syrian troop movements in southern Lebanon, boasting that its intelligence network had concluded the movements were a routine redeployment.   Asked about EU support for Palestinian self-determination, Netanyahu said: "I am not sure the European Union has really got a fully thought-out or coherent common foreign policy so far.   "I do not know either whether the EU has understood all the implications of the creation of a sovereign Palestinian state.   Such a state would control Israel's water resources and airspace, could invite the armed forces of Arab states or Islamic extremists on to its territory, could continue to formulate extremist demands towards the State of Israel."   Netanyahu, who will tour Britain, France and Germany next week, said it would not be logical for the Europeans to be more categorical about the final shape of peace than the parties involved in negotiations. 
18493 !G15 !G158 !GCAT !GDIP !GVIO  The European Union should refuse to recognise the new military regime in the troubled Central African state of Burundi, the European Parliament said on Thursday.   "The European Parliament calls on the...European institutions and the (EU) member states not to recognise the authority of the new regime in Bujumbura," the parliament said in a non-binding resolution.   The EU assembly said it supported the embargo imposed on Major Pierre Buyoya's regime by neighbouring African countries and urged them to extend the ban to weapons and ammunition.   The deputies condemned the coup d'etat of July 25 which brought Buyoya to power and called for the re-establishment of the rule of law and constitutional government in Burundi. 
18494 !GCAT !GCRIM !GPOL  Belgian politicians, speaking out for the first time in public on child sex and murder scandals, on Thursday catalogued causes for the crimes which have outraged the country and brought general mistrust of the authorities.   Suspicions of incompetence among investigators, corruption among policemen and jealousy among police forces have compounded the sense of shock among Belgians brought about by the deaths of four young girls in the paedophilia case.   When it emerged investigators of the 1991 murder of socialist ex-minister Andre Cools had failed to follow tip-offs -- apparently under party pressure -- confidence in the ability of the judiciary to deal with crime and in the ability of politicians to resolve society's problems dropped sharply.   The scandals have rocked mainly Roman Catholic Belgium.   Its image is now one of a seemingly lawless state where mafia corruption infects politics and paedophiles enjoy police protection and lavish social security benefits.   In a special debate on the cases, politicians called for reforms of the judicial apparatus and attacked the current system in which appointments to public posts are party matters and services are rendered in return for political favours.   "The people have lost confidence in the justice system, in the government and in the country's institutions," Louis Michel, leader of the PRL liberal opposition, said.   "The citizens of this country are furious about the government's inability to deal with society's most urgent needs, notably a reform of the judicial system," said Patrick Dewael, faction leader of the opposition Flemish liberal party VLD.   "We must stop (the system of political appointees) to prevent worse," he added.   Politicians not only blamed the political nepotism and the creaking judicial system -- in part left unchanged since the 19th century for whose society it was formed -- but also a general decay of morals and values.   Spreading intolerance, egotism, a growing display of violence in the media and in products such as video games and a lack of social responsibility were some of the social sores diagnosed.   "Laws are no longer respected.   Citizens are making their own laws now," liberal Dewael said.   Some politicians said this disregard for the law reflected the indifference which the government of Prime Minister Jean-Luc Dehaene was displaying for parliament, and for the requests and wishes of the opposition in particular.   Dehaene's coalition has been governing with special decree powers since the summer, obtained to ensure that measures can be introduced swiftly and smoothly to cut the state debt and budget deficit so that it can enter Europe's planned currency union.   "At all levels of state things are going wrong as a result of a government policy fully focused on achieving (the entry requirements for the single currency)," Dewael said.   "Citizens have nothing to fall back on."   The government's haughtiness was echoed by the judiciary's blunt refusal of external controls on the way it operated, politicians said.   "Now we must work on dealing with the new forms of crime.   It is time to put into place a structural reform improving (the judiciary's) dialogue with the people and parliament," said Claude Eerdekens of the francophone socialists.   Dehaene vowed any serious errors in the police investigations would be punished.   The conclusions of an inquiry into the investigations in both scandals would be presented to parliament's justice commission as soon as possible. 
18495 !C11 !C42 !CCAT !E41 !ECAT !GCAT !GJOB  The pilots' union at French airline Air Outre Mer has called a one-day strike on Friday in sympathy with other union protests over wage and work conditions as well as cooperation pacts with another airline, Air Liberte.   The strike announcement came in a statement on Thursday from the SNPL pilots' union.   The AOM airline said in a separate statement it would maintain long-haul flights with changes to flight times but cancel domestic flights except those from Marseille, Nice and Montpellier in the south and Paris. 
18496 !GCAT !GDIP !GPOL !GVIO !GVOTE  The OSCE troika of foreign ministers from Switzerland, Hungary and Denmark urged Bosnia's ethnic factions to ensure their new government works after Saturday's elections.   The foreign ministers of the current, former and next states to hold the annual chairmanship of the pan-European security body -- the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe -- also urged the international community to remain active in implementing the 1995 Dayton peace agreement for Bosnia.   "The ministers call upon the parties to the peace agreement (Bosnia's ethnic groups) to implement the results of the elections and ensure that the common institutions can begin to operate efficiently as soon as possible," the three ministers said in a statement.   The OSCE played a central role in organising the elections last Saturday for a collective presidency, a common federal parliament and regional assemblies in Bosnia.   The main nationalist Moslem, Serb and Croat parties which led their sides in the Bosnian war won the parliamentary polls and captured the three presidency seats.   Swiss Foreign Minister Flavio Cotti, current chairman of the OSCE, met Hungary's Lazlo Kovacs and Denmark's Niels-Helveg Petersen in the southern city of Bellinzona, near Italy, to issue the statement.   "The ministers appeal to the international community to continue its engagement in the achievement of the goals of the peace agreement," they said.   The troika said international involvement was especially needed for carrying out municipal elections that had to be postponed because of problems with voter registration.   The ministers said they hoped the newly elected institutions would take root and flourish, even though "the conditions for "fair, free and democratic' elections to which the parties to the peace agreement for Bosnia and Herzegovina had committed themselves have not been satisfied". 
18497 !GCAT !GDEF !GDIP  NATO secretary general Javier Solana will meet French President Jacques Chirac on Monday when he is expected to discuss future reforms of the Western alliance.   NATO said Solana, who is to meet Russian Foreign Minister Yevgeny Primakov in Vienna on Friday, will also hold discussions with French Defence Minister Charles Millon before giving a speech to a forum at the French senate.   Diplomats said Solana would discuss the reform of NATO with Chirac and Millon ahead of a NATO defence ministers meeting in Bergen, Norway, next week.   In particular, they were expected to discuss plans for a future European defence dimension to the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation.   NATO's role in Bosnia was also expected to be discussed.   On a visit to London on Thursday, Solana underlined a growing belief in Western capitals that NATO would have to remain engaged in Bosnia beyond the end of this year, probably with a smaller military force that would include U.S. troops. 
18498 !C13 !CCAT !G15 !G152 !GCAT  The European Parliament agreed a series of amendments on Thursday before adopting a report on rules governing access and interconnection rules for the EU's telecommunications networks.   The vote, to complete their second reading under the co-decision procedure, related to Commission proposal COM(95)379 for a Council Decision on interconnection in telecommunications to ensure universal service and interoperability of networks.   British Socialist Mel Read, the rapporteur, said the principle points in her report were to have a clearer definition of the term "interconnection", to float the idea of a future European telecoms regulatory authority, to clarify the cross-border disputes settlement procedure and to consider the future portability of users' numbers.   Deputies adopted all the amendments tabled by the committee on economic and monetary affairs and industrial policy, essentially reintroducing changes from the first reading which were not taken on up by the Council of Ministers.   These reinserted specific commitments to share universal service costs and a call for a separate proposal later this year on the costing and financing of universal services. 
18499 !G15 !G152 !G155 !GCAT  The European Parliament adopted on Thursday a report on the the next multi-annual programme to help the EU's small and medium-sized businesses, welcoming European Commission efforts to tighten up on previous programmes.   Parliament's vote, under the consultation procedure, completed the assembly's input to Commission proposal COM(96)98 for a Council Decision on the 1997-2000 programme for small and medium-sized enterprises.   The rapporteur, Belgian Christian Democrat Marianne Thyssen, welcomed improvements in the third multiannual programme over its predecessors.   She said the programme was more logically drafted and better targeted at SMEs themselves.   She said it would also benefit from the Commission's tighter definition of what constituted an SME and from a change in the comitology procedure to allow for a committee with advisory powers as opposed to a management committee.   In the report itself, Thyssen concentrated on measures to help SMEs such as simplifying the regulatory and business environment, improving the financial environment generally, aiding SMEs to construct cross-border strategies, helping them with training, research and development work, and supporting target groups.   Deputies adopted a string of amendments to the proposed text, namely 1 to 11, 13 to 15, 17 to 19, 20 to 37, 39 to 53 and amendments 55, 57 and 58. 
18500 !C13 !C24 !CCAT !G15 !G153 !GCAT !GHEA  Trade Commissioner Sir Leon Brittan said on Thursday that any decision to alter a cull of British cattle should be based on collective European scientific findings.   "The European Commission is a scientific organisation ... any decision to change the cull would be scientifically based," he told a news conference at the end of an EU trade ministers meeting.   Brittan was responding to a question which suggested the Commission had done a U-turn in its policy regarding British proposals to reduce a planned cull of 147,000 cattle as part of a plan to eradicate mad cow disease.   He said any decision to alter the cull should be made by European scientists, who should take advantage of all research available to them.   The European Commission, denying on Thursday that it was backtracking, said the new evidence, based on computer studies, showing mad cow disease -- Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy or BSE -- would die out naturally in five years, had been referred to its scientific veterinary committee.   Europe has been battling to restore confidence in beef since March when the British government created a massive health scare by saying that BSE could be transmitted to humans.   British ministers were meeting on Thursday to consider whether to stick with the cull programme or scale it back.   Fearing a parliamentary rebellion from ruling party members opposed to the full cull, Prime Minister John Major and his colleagues were expected to cut back on the slaughter programme or introduce measures to protect the domestic beef market. 
18501 !GCAT !GDIP !GPOL  The speakers of the French and Palestinian parliaments urged Israel on Thursday to relaunch the Middle East peace process, warning it against dragging its feet in implementing peace accords.   Ahmed Qorei, president of the Palestinian National Council, appealed to Western powers to put pressure on Israel to move ahead.   "Otherwise, we could lose control of the situation, which could lead to an explosion with negative consequences," he said at a Paris luncheon with French National Assembly speaker Philippe Seguin.   "Starting again down the path to lasting peace is urgent," Seguin echoed.   "International accords are signed by states, not by political parties," he said.   Qorei led a Palestinian delegation which was received on Wednesday by French Foreign Minister Herve de Charette.   Both Seguin and Qorei criticised Israel's plans to build more settlements in occupied territories as incompatible with peace.   "Colonisation and peace are roads that do not meet," Qorei said.   Seguin said "rampant colonisation and fait accompli policies are a disservice to the cause of peace, as is the Palestinian people's unacceptable economic and social situation".   Palestinian President Yasser Arafat, who has failed to reach agreement over a delayed Israeli troop redeployment from the West Bank town of Hebron, issued a similar warning on a visit to Germany on Thursday.   He said the Jewish state's stance could plunge the whole region back into violence.   He urged Bonn and other leading members of the international community to try to persuade Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to respect commitments, such as the Hebron redeployment, made by his predecessor Shimon Peres. 
18502 !C17 !C34 !CCAT !G15 !G157 !GCAT  The European Union is set to extend its rules allowing shipbuilding aid until the end of 1997, if an international deal to scrap most support to the sector has not come into force before then.   Senior diplomats from the 15 member states cliched a deal late on Wednesday, averting the need to hold a special meeting of EU industry ministers on Friday to settle the issue.   The formal EU decision is expected to be rubber-stamped at another ministerial meeting in September, diplomats said on Friday.   The diplomats failed to reach a unanimous decision on the controversial issue.   Germany, the Netherlands and Finland oppose the deal as they believe the rules -- which allow for construction aid of up to nine percent of contract value -- are being extended for too long, but they are unable to block it.   Finland did not want to see any prolongation at all.   "We think (shipbuilding aid) harms both the economies of the member states and the industry," a Finnish diplomat said.   The issue is a problem for the EU because the United States has so far not ratified an accord brokered in 1994 by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) to slash the amount of aid which may be granted to shipyards.   EU industry ministers decided in 1995 that current aid rules would apply in the absence of the OECD deal, but only until October 1, which is why a new decision now needs to be taken.   In July, the Commission proposed legislation to enable the EU to extend the directive until the end of 1998 or the entry into force of the international agreement.   But several member states believed such an extension would be too long, saying it would send the wrong signal about the EU's commitment to reducing shipbuilding aid, and instead opted to prolong the rules until December 31, 1997.   As soon as the OECD agreement comes into force, the EU's rules lapse automatically, diplomats said.   The OECD agreement would eliminate all direct shipbuilding subsidies except social aid and, within certain ceilings, aid for research and development.   But the deal, which was originally due to enter into force in January, faces ratification problems in the United States.   The Republican-controlled House of Representatives endorsed it on June 13, but adopted amendments that would delay key sections by 30 months, leading the Clinton administration to warn the agreement might not be ratified.   European diplomats fear there will be a price war and that thousands of jobs will be lost if the deal unravels.   But U.S. shipyards argue they have not had enough time to adjust to the commercial era after the loss of military contracts at the end of the Cold War.   The EU, which represents about 20 percent of the world shipbuilding market, ratified the OECD agreement in December, saying it would help improve market access for its shipyards.   It remained unclear what the EU would do if the OECD agreement had not come into force by the end of 1997.   "I think a number of member states would be very reluctant to see any further extension after 1997," one EU diplomat said.   Finland wants the Commission to tighten up the rules before that date, arguing that it could for example lower the amount of aid which is currently being allowed.   "We think nine percent (in aid) is too high," the Finnish diplomat said. 
18503 !E12 !E21 !E211 !ECAT !G15 !G154 !GCAT  Commissioner for Economic and Financial Affairs, Yves-Thibault de Silguy, said on Thursday the French budget probably conformed with Maastricht treaty provisions governing deficits but would be examined on its technical merits by the Commission.   "Probably the French Plan is in conformity with the rules," de Silguy told Reuters before he addressed an Irish parliamentary select committee on Finance and General Affairs.   "There are very strict legal rules and standards in the European system of economic accounts and we will apply on a technical basis the rule of these economic accounts."   Earlier the chairman of the German parliament's European Affairs committee Norbert Wieczorek voiced doubts about the French government's use of a one-off payment of 37.5 billion French francs from France Telecom to cut the central state deficit which he said was against the spirit of Maastricht.   "It is not a question of spirit or not spirit," de Silguy said.   "We will examine the details of the plan and we compare it with the rules and will apply it."   Some European analysts had expressed concern that the French budget might manipulate government finances to smooth France's entry into Economic and Monetary Union (EMU).   The Maastricht Treaty requires that countries proceeding to the single currency have a general government deficit not exceeding three percent of GDP.   French prime minister Alain Juppe unveiled a draft 1997 budget on Wednesday which indictated next year's overall public deficit would be at three percent of national output, the ceiling figure to gain entry to EMU.   De Silguy said the Commission had not yet seen the detail of the French plan but there was no room for political debate on whether the French budget was mere "window dressing".   Wieczorek said the decision to rely on the France Telecom payment diminished the French budget deficit by 0.4-0.5 of one percent, adding that this was a cause of concern to Germany.   "There is no room for a political appreciation.   It is purely a technical examination," de Silguy said. 
18504 !C13 !C24 !CCAT !G15 !G153 !GCAT !GHEA  The European Union is sticking to its demand that Britain carry out an agreed plan to slaughter up to 147,000 cows most at risk of developing mad cow disease, a European Commission spokesman said on Thursday.   He was commenting on British media reports that the EU's executive had backtracked on Wednesday by asking scientists to look at a British study suggesting the cull was unnecessary because the epidemic would die out by the turn of the century regardless.   "Suggestions in the British press today that there has been a U-turn by the Commission...are not true," agriculture spokesman Gerard Kiely told a news briefing.   The British reports said the request, which followed the intervention of Britain's senior EU Commissioner Sir Leon Brittan, contradicted the stony reception the Oxford University study received from EU Farm Commissioner Franz Fischler and farm ministers at a meeting on Tuesday.   Fischler had said he was disappointed that Britain was planning to revise the selective cull and at the lack of progress in stamping out the disease.   He said the report contained nothing new in that people knew that the disease would die out early next century.   Kiely said the Oxford evidence on the disease, known properly as Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE), had been passed to the EU's scientific veterinary committee 10 days ago and it should not serve as an excuse to delay the cull.   But some EU officials say that only a summary of the Oxford study published in Nature magazine had been circulated.   The committee is expected to report back later this month after which the Commission will decide if any action is needed.   The Commission decision to refer the report to the committee, which gave Britain a breathing space, showed that the EU's executive was anxious not to precipitate another crisis between London and European capitals.   Prime Minister John Major, afraid that the controversial cull would be rejected by the British parliament, had been expected to go it alone and reduce the number of cattle to be slaughtered and was discussing the possibility with ministers on Thursday.   But this would have broken an agreement reached between Major and other EU leaders in Florence in June under which Britain was to impose the cull and other measures to eradicate BSE in return for a gradual lifting of the ban on British beef exports.   But at the same time the Commission did not want to be seen to be faltering in its efforts to stamp out the disease which threatens to bring the European beef industry to its knees.   The export ban was imposed in March after Britain admitted a possible link between BSE and Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease, a deadly human equivalent.   The Commission's chief spokesman, Nikolaus van der Pas, stressed on Thursday that the Florence agreement remained in force.   "The Commission stated very clearly...that for the time being there was nothing new.   We have the Florence decision which is being put into effect and it remains in effect," he told the news briefing.   "So it's business as usual and nothing will change until further notice," Van der Pas said, adding however that if there was new scientific advice it was only normal that experts in the member states should look at it. 
18505 !E41 !E51 !E512 !ECAT !G15 !G158 !GCAT !GJOB  The European Union on Thursday moved to allay Asian fears that a row over labour standards will sidetrack efforts to liberalise world trade.   EU trade ministers -- meeting to review the 15-nation bloc's approach to the World Trade Organisation's ministerial meeting in Singapore in December -- agreed the issue would best be handled by the International Labour Organisation.   Many Asian countries fear that calls for trade liberalisation to be linked to Western-style labour standards are a thinly-disguised attempt to dilute their competetive edge.   "If it becomes an issue at Singapore, it won't be because of us," an EU source said.   "There is a general agreement to steer away from the matter."   WTO Director-General Renato Ruggiero, who on Wednesday urged the EU trade ministers not to press the issue, said on Thursday:   "The strong suspicion remains among many WTO members that this is a concern not so much to limit labour abuses as to limit competition from low-cost imports.   "While we cannot ignore this issue -- we can even discuss it in principle -- it should not be for the Singapore meeting."   An EU official said Trade Commissioner Sir Leon Brittan had made a case to the ministers for labour standards to be examined, but said it was not planned as part of the EU's position for Singapore.   The 15 trade ministers endorsed this, the official said. 
18506 !C31 !C312 !CCAT !G15 !G153 !G158 !GCAT !M14 !M141 !MCAT  The European Union is lining up export subsidies for its wheat for the first time in a year, but believes a return to grain price wars with the United States is unlikely.   Analysts said the EU might bring back subsidies as soon as Thursday when it holds a weekly grain auction, to dispose of a larger-than-expected crop which has made up for recent shortage.   "I think you will see Brussels sell some wheat today, maybe up to 300,000 tonnes, and to do this there will be some kind of export refund (subsidy)," a European grain trade analyst said.   Subsidies which once caused bitter trade clashes across the Atlantic have disappeared from the grain market for more than a year as warnings of scarcity drove prices to historic highs.   The subsidies were replaced in December with a tax, making it harder for exporters to sell and providing a windfall in revenues for the EU's Commission headquarters in Brussels.   But acknowledging that world wheat and barley prices have fallen sharply in recent weeks, the EU finally scrapped the export tax on Wednesday and is now offering the chance to bid for export subsidies to keep its grain shipments moving.   Uppermost in the Commission's mind is the fear that by exporting too little, a big crop this year could fill up the EU's near-empty grain silos too quickly.   The EU faces what could be a record grain harvest of up to 200 million tonnes this year, up more than 10 percent from 1995, after farmers expanded sowings to cash in on a price boom.   Wheat prices peaked near $300 per tonne in April, before sliding to their present $160 per tonne as harvests rolled in.   As a top supplier alongside the United States, the EU has signalled it wants to export more in the crop year to next June.   But it is drawing back from any hint of confrontation with its old trade foe.   Guy Legras, director general for agriculture at the Commission, a veteran of past trade clashes with the United States, believes a new spat caused by undercutting each others' prices is in neither side's interest.   "We will align ourselves to wheat prices in the United States," he told Reuters in an interview on Wednesday.   From the mid-1980s, Washington and Brussels competed savagely for wheat sales by throwing billion of dollars in subsidies at exports while encouraging their farmers to keep growing more.   Prices spiralled down to some $80 per tonne by 1994.   Each blamed the other for starting a price war.   Washington has promised to fight "fire with fire" if necessary to meet EU competition but is reserving judgement on whether to go aahead and subsidise its own exports once more.   But Republican senator Richard Lugar on Thursday urged the Clinton Administration to put forecful pressure on Brussels to make sure the European subsidies do not happen.   The EU subsidies are available in a grain auction held each Thursday in Brussels.   Traders bid for the refund they need to close the price gap between Europe and the rest of the world, where farmers are less protected and prices are usually lower.   But the 15 EU states -- in practice usually guided by the Commission -- can reject the bids if they think they are too steep.   In the secretive world of grain, the weekly ritual is seen as a game of cat-and-mouse between the EU and market middlemen over how much a subsidy should be worth.   If the Commission guesses the market wrongly and forks out a bigger subsidy than a trader needs to close a grain deal, the rest is pure profit. 
18507 !C31 !C312 !CCAT !G15 !G153 !GCAT  The European Union on Thursday reverted to granting subsidies to its grain exporters for the first time in more than a year.   Subsidies had been suspended and the EU even imposed a prohibitive export tax for a while when the global market tightened and grain stocks fell to 20-year lows.   But several regions including the EU this year reported bumper harvests.   A decision to return to subsidies was made during the weekly EU grain auction, to dispose of the larger-than-expected crop.   The EU may have a record grain harvest of up to 200 million tonnes this year, up more than 10 percent from 1995.   Bigger crops have also been reported in Australia and China.   Wheat prices peaked near $300 per tonne in April, before sliding to the present $160 as the bigger harvests rolled in. 
18508 !GCAT !GPOL !GVIO !GVOTE  Separatist guerrillas intensified attacks on security forces in Indian-ruled Kashmir ahead of the third phase of local polls in the Himalayan region, officials said on Thursday.   Militants attacked paramilitary troops in at least 10 places with grenades and automatic weapons in Srinagar, summer capital of Jammu and Kashmir state, police said.   Indian police fired shots in the air to break up a group of women who shouted anti-election slogans in the heart of Srinagar.   At least 15 women were injured when police charged them with batons before firing in the air.   Dozens were arrested.   Scores of women wearing black burqa, covering them from head-to-toe had taken to the streets.   They were led by Asia Andrabi, the head of the Dhuktaran-e-Milat (daughters of nation), a women's separatist group.   The police could not confirm her arrest.   Srinagar is one of three areas where polls are to be held on Saturday for 21 of the state assembly's 87 seats.   The first two phases of the four-stage elections were held on September 7 and 16, involving 60 seats.   The last round of the elections, seen as crucial to India's efforts to restore democracy in the region, will take place on September 30.   Results are expected in the first week of October.   At least 20 people, mostly political workers, have been killed during the month-long election campaign and several candidates have survived assassination attempts.   Officials said about 200,000 security personnel were in place for the third phase of the voting.   "These are the desperate attempts by militants to scare voters, but the militants have lost ground," military spokesman P. Purushottam said.   "We were expecting such attacks even earlier."   A bomb destroyed a school building in downtown Srinagar on Wednesday, police said.   No one was injured.   Dozens of separatist groups fighting Indian rule in Kashmir have opposed the elections, which are intended to end more than six years of direct rule by New Delhi.   The assembly elections are the first in Kashmir since 1987.   The last assembly was dissolved in 1990 after the start of the separatist rebellion, which has cost more than 20,000 lives.   The government says the first two phases of the elections were fair and peaceful.   Former chief minister Farooq Abdullah is widely tipped to win the polling.   His National Conference boycotted parliamentary elections in May, saying New Delhi was not serious about giving more autonomy to mainly Hindu India's only Moslem-majority state.   Current Prime Minister H.D. Deve Gowda, whose United Front alliance is seen as sympathetic to the National Conference, has pledged "maximum autonomy" to Kashmir after the elections.   "We have not said, and cannot say in the near future, that militancy has been removed from Kashmir," an official in charge of Kashmir's anti-guerrilla operations told Reuters this week.   "...Some level of pro-Pakistan feelings have always been there and will remain," he said, speaking anonymously.   "The elections are not going to change that equation very much."   India accuses neighbouring Pakistan, which disputes Kashmir, of training and arming separatist militants.   Islamabad says it gives only political support to some of the groups. 
18509 !GCAT !GPOL  Indian President Shankar Dayal Sharma sacked the government of Gujarat state on Thursday and imposed federal rule after Hindu legislators pushed through a confidence vote in a session marred by violence.   Federal officials said Sharma dismissed the government of the western state at the direction of Prime Minister H.D. Deve Gowda's cabinet after it held an emergency meeting on Thursday morning.   The moves came a day after the rightist Hindu Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government in Gujarat, one of India's most industrially advanced states, won a controversial vote of confidence in the state legislature.   Gujarat Chief Minister Sureshbhai Mehta secured a 92-0 vote in the 179-seat assembly.   But before the vote, the acting assembly speaker, a BJP member, suspended all opposition legislators as well as those from a rebel group of the ruling party.   Fighting broke out on the floor of the assembly after marshals tried to force the suspended legislators to leave.   Witnesses said lawmakers hurled pin cushions and microphones at each other, and officials said 23 reporters were injured.   Home (interior) Minister Indrajit Gupta said the cabinet was forced to act since it feared more violence in the house or outside.   "Frankly, we were not ready to take that risk," he told a news conference.   "They (deputies) may take to the streets.   "It was a painful decision taken reluctantly.   If normalcy and peace are restored, the assembly can be restored at a future date."   The state assembly has not been dissolved.   The dismissal was a sharp blow to the BJP, reeling under a split in its state unit which political analysts say stems from a clash of personal ambitions and corporate rivalries.   Chief Minister Sureshbhai Mehta's exit also could stoke tension between the BJP and Deve Gowda that began building earlier this month, analysts say.   The BJP paralysed the federal parliament for two days in early September, alleging a plot by Deve Gowda to dismiss the state government.   The BJP was the ruling party in Gujarat and is the main opposition party in the federal parliament in New Delhi.   It reacted vehemently to the sacking of its Gujarat government.   "I regard this as an outrageous assault on democratic institutions in the country," BJP president L.K. Advani said.   Senior BJP leader K.R. Malkani told Reuters: "I am ashamed of this prime minister.   Mr Rao also had a hand in it."   The state slipped into political chaos on September 3 when the assembly's deputy speaker, who is a Congress party member, recognised a rebel BJP group, threatening the BJP government's majority.   He was officiating for the speaker, who was ill.   The speaker died on Monday.   The deputy speaker was in hospital on Wednesday and was replaced by a BJP member.   After the trust vote, the Congress party asked the state governor to dismiss the BJP government, accusing it of using state police and smuggling in supporters to provoke violence. 
18510 !GCAT !GPOL  Indian President Shankar Dayal Sharma on Thursday dismissed the government of Gujarat state and imposed federal rule after Hindu legislators pushed through a confidence vote marred by violence, federal officials said.   Sharma sacked the government of the western state at the direction of Prime Minister H.D. Deve Gowda's cabinet, which held an emergency meeting on Thursday morning, they said.   The moves came a day after the rightist Hindu Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government in Gujarat, one of India's most industrially advanced states, won a controversial vote of confidence in the state legislature.   Gujarat Chief Minister Sureshbhai Mehta won the vote 92-0 in the 179-seat assembly.   Before the vote the acting assembly speaker, who is a BJP member, suspended all opposition legislators and those from a rebel group of the ruling party.   Fighting broke out on the floor of the assembly after marshals tried to force the suspended legislators to leave.   Witnesses said lawmakers hurled pin cushions and microphones at each other.   Several lawmakers and journalists were injured in the scuffles, newspapers said.   Ironically, the violence took place in Gandhinagar, the state capital named after Mahatma Gandhi, independent India's spiritual father and an advocate of non-violence.   The dismissal dealt a sharp blow to the BJP, which is reeling under a split in its state unit that political analysts say stems largely from clashing personal ambitions and corporate rivalries.   Chief Minister Sureshbhai Mehta's exit also could stoke tension between the BJP and Deve Gowda that began building earlier this month, the analysts say.   The BJP paralysed the federal parliament for two days in early September, alleging a plot by Deve Gowda to dismiss the state government.   Former Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao's Congress party, whose support Deve Gowda needs to retain power, is the main opposition party in Gujarat.   It was joined by a breakaway BJP group in a bid to oust the state government.   The BJP was the ruling party in Gujarat but is the main opposition party in the federal parliament in New Delhi.   It held power in New Delhi for 12 days in May but yielded to Deve Gowda's 13-party, centre-left coalition after failing to win a trust vote.   The BJP reacted vehemently to the dismissal of its government in Gujarat.   "I regard this as an outrageous assault on democratic institutions in the country," national BJP president L.K. Advani said.   Senior BJP leader K.R. Malkani told Reuters: "I am ashamed of this prime minister.   Mr Rao also had a hand in it."   The state slipped into political chaos on September 3 when the assembly's deputy speaker, who is a Congress party member, recognised a rebel BJP group, threatening the BJP government's majority.   He was officiating for the speaker, who was ill.   The speaker died on Monday.   The deputy speaker was in hospital on Wednesday and was replaced by a BJP member.   After the trust vote, the Congress party asked the state governor to dismiss the BJP government, accusing it of using state police and smuggling in party supporters to provoke violence and win a vote by force. 
18511 !C24 !CCAT !GCAT !GWEA !M14 !M141 !MCAT  SUMMARY- Scattered showers and thunderstorms favor southern and central areas, 0.08- 1.97 inches (2-50mm), 60-70 percent coverage.   Highs 81-97F (27-36C), coolest in the south.   CROP IMPACT- Mostly favorable conditions through the major cane areas at this time.   FORECAST-   TODAY...Variable clouds with scattered showers and thunderstorms of 0.25-1.50 inches (6-38 mm) in southern and central India, 50-60 percent coverage.   Partly cloudy to the north with isolated to widely scattered thunderstorms in the northeast.   Highs 83-97F (28-36C).   TONIGHT...Showers end over northeastern and central areas, lingering in the south.   Lows 70-80F (21-27C).   TOMORROW...Partly to mostly cloudy with scattered to numerous showers and thunderstorms of up to 1.25 inches (31mm) in southern and central areas.   Highs 84- 95F (29-35C).   OUTLOOK...Widely scattered to scattered showers and thunderstorms from northeastern and eastern India into the south, generally fair weather elsewhere.   Temperatures near to above normal.   Source: Weather Services Corporation 
18512 !C24 !CCAT !GCAT !GWEA !M14 !M141 !MCAT  SUMMARY- Scattered showers and thunderstorms favor southern and central areas, 0.08- 1.97 inches (2-50mm), 60-70 percent coverage.   Highs 81-97F (27-36C), coolest in the south.   CROP   IMPACT- Mostly favorable conditions for the development of rice across much of India at this time.   FORECAST-   TODAY...Variable clouds with scattered showers and thunderstorms of 0.25-1.50 inches (6-38 mm) in southern and central India, 50-60 percent coverage.   Partly cloudy to the north with isolated to widely scattered thunderstorms in the northeast.   Highs 83-97F (28-36C).   TONIGHT...Showers end over northeastern and central areas, lingering in the south.   Lows 70-80F (21-27C).   TOMORROW...Partly to mostly cloudy with scattered to numerous showers and thunderstorms of up to 1.25 inches (31mm) in southern and central areas.   Highs 84- 95F (29-35C).   OUTLOOK...Widely scattered to scattered showers and thunderstorms from northeastern and eastern India into the south, generally fair weather elsewhere.   Temperatures near to above normal.   Source: Weather Services Corporation 
18513 !C21 !CCAT !GCAT !GWEA !M14 !M141 !MCAT  SUMMARY- Scattered showers and thunderstorms of 0.20-1.97 inches (4-50mm) through minor areas of Madhya Pradesh and the Bihar Plains, dry in the major areas of the north.   Highs 84-96F (29-36C).   CROP IMPACT- Planting for winter wheat begins in October.   FORECAST-   TODAY...Partly to mostly sunny with a chance of an isolated to widely scattered thunderstorm in the south and east.   Highs 83-100F (28-38C), hottest in Pakistan.   TONIGHT...Mostly clear to partly cloudy.   Lows 68-80F (20-27C).   TOMORROW...More sun than clouds with isolated thunderstorms in far southern and eastern wheat areas.   Highs 85-99F (29-37C), hottest in Pakistan.   OUTLOOK...Generally fair Saturday-Monday with very little shower or thunderstorm activity.   Temperatures near to above normal.   Source: Weather Services Corporation 
18514 !C21 !CCAT !GCAT !GWEA !M14 !M141 !MCAT  (As on September 19, 1996)   SUMMARY- Scattered showers and thunderstorms favor southern and central areas, 0.08- 1.97 inches (2-50mm), 60-70 percent coverage.   Highs 81-97F (27-36C), coolest in the south.   CROP IMPACT- Mostly favorable conditions for sorghum, as well as the planting of rapeseed.   FORECAST-   TODAY...Variable clouds with scattered showers and thunderstorms of 0.25-1.50 inches (6-38 mm) in southern and central India, 50-60 percent coverage.   Partly cloudy to the north with isolated to widely scattered thunderstorms in the northeast.   Highs 83-97F (28-36C).   TONIGHT...Showers end over northeastern and central areas, lingering in the south.   Lows 70-80F (21-27C).   TOMORROW...Partly to mostly cloudy with scattered to numerous showers and thunderstorms of up to 1.25 inches (31mm) in southern and central areas.   Highs 84- 95F (29-35C).   OUTLOOK...Widely scattered to scattered showers and thunderstorms from northeastern and eastern India into the south, generally fair weather elsewhere.   Temperatures near to above normal.   Source: Weather Services Corporation 
18515 !C24 !CCAT !GCAT !GWEA !M14 !M141 !MCAT  SUMMARY- Scattered showers and thunderstorms of 0.20-1.97 inches (4-50mm) through minor areas of Madhya Pradesh and the Bihar Plains, dry in the major areas of the north.   Highs 84-96F (29-36C).   CROP IMPACT- Mostly favorable conditions through the major cotton areas of India and Pakistan at this time.   FORECAST-   TODAY...Partly to mostly sunny with a chance of an isolated to widely scattered thunderstorm in the south and east.   Highs 83-100F (28-38C), hottest in Pakistan.   TONIGHT...Mostly clear to partly cloudy.   Lows 68-80F (20-27C).   TOMORROW...More sun than clouds with isolated thunderstorms in far southern and eastern wheat areas.   Highs 85-99F (29-37C), hottest in Pakistan.   OUTLOOK...Generally fair Saturday-Monday with very little shower or thunderstorm activity.   Temperatures near to above normal.   Source: Weather Services Corporation 
18516 !GCAT  These are the leading stories in the Pakistani press on Wednesday.   Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.   DAWN   - Pakistan will not be forced to grant India Most Favoured Nation status under the World Trade Organisation agreement but could do so if it wants to, Indian High Commissioner Shri Satis Chondra told representatives of trade and industry.   - Some 47.911 billion rupees or half the total loan defaults of commercial banks were involved in litigation by March 1996.   - Two Iranian border force officials were arrested for entering Pakistan illegally, officials said.   - Foreign Secretary Najmuddin Sheikh's scheduled visit to Kabul has been put off.   - The Federation of Pakistan Chambers of Commerce and Industry has unanimously decided to revert to Sunday as the weekly holiday, instead of Friday, from October 6.   BUSINESS RECORDER   - The government plans to waive deduction of withholding tax on foreign currency deposits brought into Pakistan.   - Private sector exporters have fixed a target of $600 million for export of raw cotton.   - V.A. Jafarey, adviser to the prime minister on finance, ruled out any further devaluation of the Pakistani rupee against the dollar.   FINANCIAL POST   - The World Bank has approved a $28.8 million credit to improve Pakistan's financial reporting and auditing.   - The government is trying to raise gas output to 2.5 billion cubic feet per day from the current 1.8 billion.   THE NATION   - World Bank President James Wolfensen cancelled a visit to Pakistan on the advice of vice-president Shahid Javed Burki who told him that since the government was on the brink of collapse, his visit would be seen as a false note of confidence.   - The Sensitive Price Indicator rose to 188.96 points, 0.62 percent up from 187.80 in the previous week.   THE NEWS   - V.A. Jafarey, adviser to the prime minister on finance, ruled out waiving regulatory duty on imports before the next budget.   -- Islamabad newsroom 9251-274757 
18517 !GCAT  These are some of the leading stories in the Bangladesh press on Thursday.   Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.   ---   DAILY STAR   The government will investigate "permanent leasing" of two houses and land in Dhaka to former prime minister and opposition leader Begum Khaleda Zia.   Bangladesh opposition leader Begum Khaleda Zia has warned that her Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) will wage movement against what she called the ruling party's conspiracy to lease out the country to others.   "The ruling party is pursuing a subservient foreign policy," she said.   ---   THE INDEPENDENT   A senior leader of fundamentalist Jamaat-e-Islami party has expressed concern at the government's move to purchase electricity from India.   The move was a ploy to make Bangladesh's economy dependent on India, said Matiur Rahman Nizami, secretary general of Jamaat.   ---   BANGLADESH OBSERVER   High Court has granted an ad-interim anticipatory bail to former prime minister Khaleda Zia's son Tareq Rahman and her brother Saeed Iskander both facing corruption cases.   ---   FINANCIAL EXPRESS   The government would soon launch a move to detect defective buildings in Dhaka, demolish those and punish the owners, said chief of the agency responsible for the planning of the capital city.   The move followed collapse of an under-construction multi-sotried building in the city earlier this week that killed five workers.   -- Dhaka Newsroom 880-2-506363 
18518 !GCAT  Following is a summary of major Indian business and political stories in leading newspapers prepared for Reuters by Business News and Information Services Pvt Ltd, New Delhi.   Telephone: 11-3324842, 11-3761233; Fax: 91-11-3351006 Internet : biznis.  news@forums.  sprintrpg.  sprint.  com   Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.    -------oo0oo-------    TOP STORIES   The Hindustan Times   GUJARAT CHIEF MINISTER WINS TRUST VOTE   The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) ministry in Gujarat managed to scrap through the confidence vote amid violence and bedlam in the state Assembly.   The ruling BJP initiated the motion in the assembly against the agenda.   The deputy speaker had fallen ill, giving the BJP a chance to push it through.   The deputy speaker had previously denied chances to the BJP ministry to prove its strength.   BJP was allowed to carry on with the motion by the acting speaker.   Constitutionalists doubt whether such a vote of confidence, not listed on the day's agenda, would be considered valid.   There were reports the state Governor had called for central rule in Gujarat.   ----   Business Standard   DIVESTMENT NORMS FOR FOREIGN INVESTORS RECAST   Reserve Bank of India, the central bank, has revised the valuation method for disinvestment of unlisted and thinly traded shares by foreign investors.   Proposal for disinvestment of shares to the tune of two million rupees in both the thinly traded and the unlisted categories would henceforth be granted automatic approval.   However, for transactions exceeding two million rupees, the foreign investors in shares of unlisted companies would have fewer options.   ----   PRIVATE POWER UNITS TO DIRECTLY ACCESS MULTILATERAL LOANS   Private sector projects in infrastructure, especially in power, will now be eligible for direct loans from multilateral institutions.   The government has decided to extend sovereign guarantees to these ventures.   Individual power projects approved by the government will be eligible for direct funding from institutions like the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank.   Other infrastructure projects will have to continue to utilise financial institutions as the intermediary to access this funding.   ----   SWISS TELECOM TO HIKE EQUITY IN INDIAN JOINT VENTURES   The $8-billion strong Swiss Telecom is planning to hike equity in its two Indian joint ventures, Sterling Cellular and Aircel Digilink.   This is part of Swiss Telecom's long term strategy to consolidate its position in the north Indian Cellular market, company's country manager Gerard Wirz said.   The Swiss major plans to recast its holding in Aircel Digilink, the cellular licensee for Uttar Pradesh, Haryana and Rajasthan.   The company also has plans to increase its ownership in Sterling Cellular, the licensee for Delhi, from the present 30 percent to around 34 percent, Wirz said.   ----   LAW TO PROTECT LOCAL UNITS AGAINST IMPORTS PLANNED   The government is likely to bring new legislation to protect industry against sudden or massive imports.   The legislation would be in line with the World Trade Organisation agreement on safeguards.   The new legislation could be invoked if imports caused or threatened to cause injury to the domestic industry.   However, this would be different from the existing anti-dumping laws, sources said.   ----   BOMBAY BOURSE INDEX GAINS 67 POINTS   The pivotals staged a recovery with the 30-share Bombay Stock Exchange sensitive Index gaining 66.64 points over the previous close of 3,347.37.   Hectic activity was witnessed in the State Bank of India stock, largely on account of fresh buying support from key foreign institutional investors.   The 50-share National Stock Exchange opened at 973, touched a low of 970 but closed higher at 994 gaining 23 points over the previous close of 971.   ----   The Economic Times   TIRED OF WAITING, AMOCO SCRAPS $1 BLN PROJECT   U.S. based multinational AMOCO has scrapped its coal-bed methane (CBM) project in India.   This follows the government's failure to decide the contract terms.   The government has also dithered on a similar proposal put up by Reliance-Texaco due to lack of a clear policy.   AMOCO was to invest $25 million in the exploration phase.   If this had been successful, AMOCO would have invested a total of $1 billion for producing roughly 40 billion cubic metres of gas.   The U.S. company, which has pioneered CBM technology, had been awarded two sizeable blocks in the Damodar Valley in 1994.   ----    NOMURA MAY ACQUIRE 40 PCT STAKE IN UTI SECURITIES   Unit Trust of India (UTI), through its fully-owned broking arm UTI Securities, may offload 40 percent of its equity in favour of Japanese securities giant Nomura Securities.   The price of acquisition is yet to be worked out.   However, sale could take place at 30-35 rupees per share on a capital base of 300 million rupees, sources said.   UTI Securities hopes to leverage the tie-up to access global capital markets without creating additional costs.   The tie-up is also likely to give UTI Securities a leg-up in the potentially huge debt market, recently thrown open by the Government.   ----   TELECOMMUNICATION MAJOR PROPOSES 45 PCT DIVIDEND   The Videsh Sanchar Nigam Ltd (VSNL) has proposed a 45 percent dividend for fiscal 1995-96 (April-March).   VSNL registered a gross income of 44.72 billion rupees.   The company recorded a profit after tax (PAT) of 4.08 billion rupees compared to the previous year's PAT of 2.99 billion rupees.   VSNL emerged among the top 10 tax paying corporates in the country for 1995-96.   ----   Financial Express   JAPAN OFFERS RECORD $1,483 MLN AID   Japan has agreed to provide $1.483 billion (135 billion Yen) as official development assistance to India during 1996/97 (April-March).   This is the highest ever aid package from Japan.   Last year, the aid package worked out to $1.45 billion.   The aid quantum was conveyed to India's finance secretary by the head of the Japanese delegation Tsuneo Nishida in Tokyo.   ----   INDIAN AIRLINES PROFIT SHOOTS UP TO 1.57 BLN RUPEES   Indian Airlines (IA) improved its financial performance for the second consecutive year.   IA's operating profit shot up over four times to 1.57 billion rupees in 1995-96 from 362.4 million rupees in 1994-95.   The airline's net loss declined to 1.09 billion rupees from 1.88 billion rupees in the previous year.   IA's financial results overshot the projections made by the airline for 1995-96.   IA's operating revenue increased to 24.6 billion rupees in 1995-96 from 20.44 billion rupees in the previous year.   ----   INDIAN AIRLINES SHORTLISTS FOUR MAJORS FOR TIE-UP   Indian Airlines (IA) has short listed four jet engine majors for forming a technical collaboration for its jet engine overhaul complex.   These include Pratt & Whitney of US, Rolls Royce of UK, Snecma of France and Bangalore based Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd.   IA is yet to make final evaluation of the proposals.   IA has proposed the formation of a technical collaboration for the workshop rather than a joint venture.   The Civil Aviation Ministry had earlier favoured a joint venture.   However, IA felt a joint venture could be contemplated after acquiring the experience of a technical collaboration.   ----   TELECOM DEPARTMENT NOT TO SIGN DEAL WITH CELL OPERATORS   The Department of Telecommunication (DoT) has decided not to sign the controversial interconnect pact with prospective cellular operators.   The basic service operators are yet to sign the pact with DoT.   DoT's decision came after a series of meetings the department held with cellular operators.   DoT agreed not to insist upon the pact, as unlike the basic services segment where signing the interconnect pact was mandatory, the cellular licence agreement did not provide for any such precondition.   ----   Business Line   NEW POWER TARIFF POLICY ON THE CARDS   The government is formulating a comprehensive tariff policy for private power projects being implemented by independent power producers.   The policy, Power Ministry sources say, will take into account the tariff mechanism for competitive bid projects.   This also aims at rationalising the existing tariff formula for the projects being implemented by the developers in pact with the State Electricity Boards.   The Planning Commission is also said to be working out a comprehensive energy policy to provide guidelines for implementation of projects and the availability of fuel feedstocks.   ----   The Observer   BAT PLC TO INVEST 100 MLN POUND IN FOOD SECTOR   Britain's B.A.T plans to invest about 100 million pounds in the food processing sector.   B.A.T has already discussed its plans with the government.   The British firm hopes to send its proposal to the Foreign Investment Promotion Board next month.   However, B.A.T has not yet decided on whether to route its investment in food processing sector through its Indian associate ITC or set up a wholly-owned subsidiary for the purpose.   ---- 
18519 !GCAT  These are the leading stories in the Sri Lankan press on Tuesday.   Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.   ---   VEERAKESARI   TULF MP Neelan Tiruchelvam tells parliamentary advisory committee for ethnic affairs and national integration that representation of minority people in government and corporations is much below their percentage of national population.   ---   THINAKARAN   Government planning to give subsidy to low income people because bread and flour prices have been raised, Trade Minister Kingsley Wickremaratne says.   ---   DAILY NEWS   Amnesty International pulls up LTTE over massacre of 11 civilians in Aranthalawa.   AI asks members to write to LTTE protesting against killings of civilians.   Canada says contemplating legal and administrative measures to tackle problem of LTTE fund raising there.   ---   THE ISLAND   Tea export earnings rise to 3.5 billion rupees in first seven months of 1996 from 1.9 billion rupees in same period last year.   ---   LANKADEEPA   Examinations Department postpones marking of GCE advanced level answer scripts after boycott by examiners, Commissioner of Examinations says.   Police commandos recover cache of arms and explosives buried in premises of Kandasamy Hindu temple in Batticaloa along with maps of nearby army camps.   ---   DIVAINA   Government fails to pay full special allowances promised to servicemen deployed in operational areas in northeast war zone.   ---   DINAMINA   Police uncover Tamil Tiger rebel plot to stage suicide attack on high ranking police officers in Vavuniya after arrest of suicide bomber's accomplices.   --Colombo newsroom tel 941-434319 
18520 !C13 !CCAT !GCAT !GREL !MCAT  The Federation of Pakistan Chambers of Commerce and Industry said all its member businesses, shops and markets will observe Sunday as the weekly holiday instead of Friday.   Federation president Ilyas Ahmed Bilour told a news conference on Thursday the current Friday Islamic weekend was affecting trade because many parts of the world opened for business on Friday.   He said the move would take effect from October 6.   "We are cut off for three-and-a-half days from the United States and for three days from Europe with the present system," he said.   "This decision is neither politically motivated nor against anyone," Bilour said of the decision that will reverse a 20-year-old order by former prime minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto.   He said he had written to Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto's daughter, asking her to endorse the decision. 
18521 !GCAT !GHEA  The White Fly cotton pest in Pakistan's main cotton growing belt of Multan in the central province of Punjab is causing a health scare for humans, doctors and officials in the area were quoted on Thursday as saying.   The official APP news agency said this was the first time the pest had been found in the region's residential areas and said the authorities had "hardly made any headway in checking the problem which has so far proved to be an open threat to human health ".   It quoted Multan district health officer, Dr Mohammad Riaz, as saying the existance of the pest in residential areas was unusual and that health officials were discussing ways to fight it.   If the fly drops into a human eye, it causes inflammation with severe itching, APP quoted doctors as saying.   Riaz advised motorcyclists, cyclists and pedestrians to use sunglasses to protect their eyes from the small white insect.   Multan Municipal Corporation administrator Rana Naseer Ahmed said anti-fly and anti-mosquito spraying was being carried out in open spaces such as parks, green areas and ponds.   But APP quoted experts as saying such steps were insufficient as the fly was resistant to such sprays. 
18522 !GCAT !GDIP !GVIO  Pakistan accused the Afghan government on Thursday of breaking an agreement to end a war of words and spoiling the atmosphere for fence-mending talks.   A Foreign Ministry spokesman said renewed accusations from Kabul that Pakistan was helping the rebel Taleban militia flouted an agreement reached last month under which the Afghan and Pakistani governments had pledged not to insult each other.   "This agreement has been violated by the recent charges," the spokesman said.   Islamabad had repeatedly denied it assists Taleban forces, which burst onto the Afghan scene two years ago and now control more than half of Afghanistan's 33 provinces.   Pakistan Foreign Ministry secretary Najmuddin Sheikh was to have gone to Kabul on Thursday for talks with President Burhanuddin Rabbani's government, but has put off his visit.   He had also planned to reopen Pakistan's embassy in Kabul in temporary premises.   The mission was sacked a year ago by protesters angry at Islamabad's alleged support for the Taleban.   The spokesman said relations had seemed to improve after Afghan Interior Minister Mohammad Younus Qanuni led a delegation to Islamabad last month.   "But unfortunately the political atmosphere was spoiled by Kabul's allegations," he added.   Kabul resumed its verbal sparring last week after Taleban forces captured the eastern provinces of Nangarhar and Laghman without a fight.   It said Islamabad had helped the Taleban by allowing its supporters in Pakistan to join the battles and possibly by giving landing facilities to Taleban jets.   Pakistan denied the charges, but Kabul has kept up a daily tirade against Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto's government, singling out Interior Minister Naseerullah Babar for his alleged contacts with the Islamic rebels, often desribed by official Kabul radio as "Benazir Bhutto's Taleban".   The Pakistani Foreign Ministry said on Wednesday that Sheikh's visit would be rescheduled, adding the trip would not be useful in the present atmosphere.   Taleban forces have besieged Kabul for the past year.   They are widely expected to make a fresh attempt to capture the city, depose Rabbani and install a strict Islamic order throughout Afghanistan.   Pakistan says it has no favourites among the Afghan factions, most of whom it helped during their guerrilla war against Soviet occupation of their country in the 1980s. 
18523 !GCAT !GDIS  At least 17 people were killed and 55 injured on Thursday when a bus skidded off the road into a gorge in the northern Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir, police officials said.   Twelve died instantly, while seven of the injured are in a serious condition, police said.   The accident occurred in the Rajouri district, 146 km west of Jammu. 
18524 !GCAT !GCRIM !GPOL  A former Indian cabinet minister under arrest in a corruption case has been declared physically fit for questioning and will be shifted from a hospital to a jail cell, authorities said on Thursday.   Former communications minister Sukh Ram was taken to hospital in a wheelchair on Monday after he was arrested at New Delhi's international airport on his return to India from London.   Sukh Ram was out of the country last month when federal agents discovered more than $1 million in cash in raids on two of his homes.   The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has accused him of pocketing kickbacks from an Indian firm and amassing wealth far surpassing his known sources of income.   Sukh Ram, who has denied the accusations and said the money belonged to the Congress party, has said he is suffering from heart problems and had sought overseas care.   The Press Trust of India (PTI) quoted Dr P.K. Dave, medical superintendent of All India Institute of Medical Sciences, as saying Sukh Ram was suffering from chest pains, diabetes and high blood pressure.   But a CBI spokesman said an eight-member team of doctors had decided that Sukh Ram was fit enough to leave the hospital and undergo interrogation.   The spokesman said Sukh Ram was expected to be shifted on Thursday from the institute to a special CBI jail cell, where he would be questioned.   On Tuesday a Delhi court ordered Sukh Ram to be held in CBI custody until at least September 23, when he will appear before a special judge.   The CBI has filed a report with police.   Sukh Ram has said the cash, found stuffed in suitcases and bags strewn around his homes, belonged to the Congress party, which lost power in general elections ended in May.   Congress has denied the claim but acknowledged that the former minister's allegations had damaged the party.   As communications minister under former prime minister P.V. Narasimha Rao, Sukh Ram held the powerful post of supervising an ambitious drive to end the state's monopoly over telecommunications services.   On Thursday the Delhi High Court ordered an industrialist and a suspended senior civil servant, also accused in the case, to be released on bail.   The two were ordered to pay 100,000 rupees ($2,800) each in personal bonds and another 100,000 rupees in surety. 
18525 !GCAT !GDIP !GVIO  U.N. special envoy Norbert Holl said on Thursday that recent military moves in Afghanistan might make some factions less willing to talk peace.   "It's obvious that the military situation has damaged hopes we had that we had reached some kind of stalemate or 'balance of frustrations'," he told foreign correspondents in Islamabad.   He said it might be that only if all sides were equally frustrated could peace initiatives stand a chance of success.   "Now with the reinvigoration of military actions and the change in the political landscape in favour of the Taleban, it's easy to see that the Taleban for the time being feel less inclined to join any U.N. initiative," he said.   The Taleban captured the eastern city of Jalalabad last week, expanding their territory and tightening their grip on the Afghan capital, already under siege from the south.   Holl said the United Nations believed that progress towards peace was urgent, not least because foreign donors might prove unwilling to fund relief and reconstruction if they felt the Afghans preferred fighting to rebuilding their country.   Holl, a German diplomat who has spent two months in his post, said he hoped to expand contacts with the Taleban.   "I have a feeling there is a lack of dialogue with the Taleban.   We know too little about them," he said.   He said that Afghan political leaders were not keen on the idea of a federal solution for their fragmented land, divided increasingly on ethnic lines, preferring a loose central state.   The United Nations was committed to maintaining the territorial integrity of a founder-member.   "If Afghanistan fell apart, I can't predict the consequences for the region," he said. 
18526 !GCAT !GCRIM !GPOL  The opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) said on Thursday it would retaliate if the government pursued "politically motivated" corruption charges against the brother and son of former prime minister Begum Khaleda Zia.   "The cases are politically motivated and intended to tarnish the image of the former chief executive," one BNP leader said.   "If they (the government) go too far we will hit back strongly," said the leader, who asked not to be identified.   The BNP's policy making body also warned the government of similar consequences.   The Anti-Corruption Bureau filed charges on Monday against Khaleda's son, Tareq Rahman, and her brother, Syeed Iskander.   The bureau lodged the charges with Dhaka's Motijheel police station, saying Rahman and his uncle had taken a 153 million taka ($3.8 million) loan from state-owned Sonali Bank, using an overvalued piece of land as collateral.   Police said Rahman and his uncle had declared the value of the land at 1.8 million taka against an actual value of 120,000 taka.   Police referred the charges to the Chief Metropolitan Magistrate (CMM) on Tuesday.   Rahman's lawyer Moudud Ahmed, who has moved for bail, said: "It's a civil case, not a criminal one."   Rahman and Iskander filed petitions in the High Court on Wednesday for "anticipatory bail," while police said they were waiting for arrest warrants from CMM.   The High Court will hear the bail petitions on Sunday, but has told police not to take further action in the meantime, court sources said.   Bank officials said the loan had been used to set up a textile dyeing industry, which was listed with the Dhaka Stock Exchange.   "It was a transaction between a bank and a publicly listed company.   The bank's board approved the loan and my clients are regularly repaying it.   The bank itself does not have any complaint," said Ahmed, who also is on the BNP's policy making body.   The case was "absolutely politically motivated and aimed to harrass and humiliate my clients", he told Reuters.   K.S. Nabi, the government's chief attorney, told reporters on Wednesday: "Khaleda Zia's next of kin are facing clear corruption charges which have nothing to do with politics."   The bureau has also filed charges aginst the bank's former managing director and another senior official for approving the loan without proper verification, police said.   They gave no further details.   A Home (interior) Ministry official said the anti-corruption bureau had also filed charges against three former ministers in Khaleda's cabinet, alleging embezzlement of public funds while in office.   They are Hannan Shah, former jute minister, Lutfar Rahman Khan former state minister for relief, and Abdul Mannan, former state minister for religious affairs.   Exact charges against them were not available.   The accused could not be reached for comment. 
18527 !GCAT !GPRO  Mother Teresa may be released at the weekend from the hospital where she has been treated for a head injury suffered in a fall earlier this week, doctors said on Thursday.   "Mother Teresa's condition remains stable, but it has been decided to keep her under observation until the weekend," Calcutta's Woodlands Nursing Home said.   The Nobel Peace laureate was admitted to the hospital on Monday after she fell from a chair.   She spent 18 days in the same hospital in late August and early September for heart trouble, malaria and pneumonia.   Woodlands medical director Dr S.K. Sen said Mother Teresa had pressed doctors to let her go back to her religious order.   "When are you sending me home?"   Sen quoted her as saying.   Doctors said the revered nun was sleeping well and eating normally.   "She is praying, talking to the sisters and reading a magazine," Sen said. 
18528 !C41 !C411 !CCAT !GCAT !GPOL  The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) said on Thursday the federal government had reappointed C. Rangarajan as RBI governor for a fresh term ending on December 21, 1997.   Rangarajan has been RBI governor since December 22, 1992.   -- Bombay newsroom +91-22-265 9000 
18529 !GCAT !GPOL !GVIO  The rebel Islamic Taleban movement plans to impose the same strictures on women, music and drugs in Jalalabad, the latest Afghan city to fall into its hands, as it has enforced in other areas it controls.   "Whatever is in the sharia (Islamic law) will be implemented here, as our elders in Kandahar decide," Haji Ata Mohammed, security chief for Jalalabad, told Reuters on Wednesday.   He was speaking one week after the Taleban swept into Jalalabad, capital of Nangarhar province.   They met little resistance from neutral factions led by former governor Haji Abdul Qadir, who fled to Pakistan.   The Taleban, who burst onto the Afghan scene two years ago from religious Islamic schools in Pakistan, have barred women from working outside the health sector and stopped girls from going to school in areas where its writ runs.   The black-turbaned warriors have carried out executions and amputations according to their stringent version of Islamic law, as well as opposing music, football, television and drugs.   Mohammed, who was recovering from a chest wound in the gardens of the bomb-damaged Bagh-i-Shahi palace, said Jalalabad was completely calm and the Taleban were in full control.   "We have taken over from all the factions that were here before and we will bring peace here," he said.   "We have removed the checkposts and we are taking no money from drivers."   Mohammed said the Taleban would not prevent United Nations or other relief convoys from travelling to Kabul, but government forces had blocked the road with landmines to defend the town of Sarobi, about 130 km (80 miles) west of Jalalabad.   He said Taleban fighters were about 30 km (19 miles) short of Sarobi, awaiting orders to advance on the capital.   The Sunni Moslem rebels now hold more than half of Afghanistan's 33 provinces, with the rest split between the Tajik-dominated government of President Burhanuddin Rabbani and northern opposition Uzbek leader General Abdul Rashid Dostum.   Taleban land includes most areas populated by Afghanistan's traditionally ruling ethnic Pashtun group, but extends to mostly Tajik areas such as Herat in the west, captured a year ago.   The people of Jalalabad, most of them Pashtun, seem outwardly less disturbed by the advent of the Taleban than by Sunday's air raid, in which government jets bombed the former royal Bagh-i-Shahi palace, the airport and a hotel.   "This was not a military arsenal, but was used as a dining room and a depot to store 5,000 holy Korans," said Baz Mohammed, a Taleban commander, in a rubble-strewn domed room.   He stood near a large bomb crater in which cardboard boxes that had held Korans published in Saudi Arabia were scattered among mudbricks and fallen tiles.   The raid, which killed 12 civilians and wounded 50, was a new experience for Jalalabad, whose previous rulers kept the strategic city out of the factional fighting that has raged for the past four years elsewhere in Afghanistan.   Three days after the attack, many shops in Jalalabad were still shuttered, a rare sight in this trading town even during the Soviet occupation in the 1980s.   "People are afraid after the bombing," said 17-year-old taxi-driver Baghdad Shah.   He said he was pleased because the Taleban were exacting no tolls on the highway from Jalalabad to the Pakistani border.   "Before, different militias were stopping vehicles at every point, demanding money and sometimes stealing cars," he said.   "The Taleban are treating people very well.   They took three of my music cassettes and asked me to drive over them, but I don't mind that as long as they keep the road open," he said.   At the airport east of the city, boisterous Taleban fighters milled around outside the terminal, posing for photographs on armoured vehicles mounted with anti-aircraft guns before piling into pickup trucks and driving off in clouds of dust.   "We have not closed the airport.   There are flights to Kandarhar and we have no objection to international flights, but they have stopped for the moment because of the air raid," said a portly Taleban commander, Mullah Akhter Mohammed al-Mansoor.   Two Russian-made MiG fighters and a couple of captured helicopters stood on the otherwise deserted tarmac.   Pakistan denies Afghan government charges that it backs the Taleban, saying it has no favourites among rival factions.   The Taleban clearly face few difficulties in bringing fresh recruits across the porous border.   At Torkham, at the head of the rugged Khyber Pass, about 20 young would-be fighters were striding from Pakistan towards a Taleban office at the frontier. 
18530 !GCAT !GPOL  Indian President Shankar Dayal Sharma dismissed the government in Gujarat state on Thursday after Hindu legislators pushed through a confidence vote marred by violence, federal officials said.   Sharma sacked the government of the western state on the recommendation of Prime Minister H.D. Deve Gowda's cabinet, which held an emergency meeting on Thursday morning, they said.   The moves came a day after the right-wing Hindu Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government in Gujarat won a controversial vote of confidence in the state legislature.   Gujarat chief minister Sureshbhai Mehta won with 92 votes to nil in the assembly, which currently has 179 members.   Mehta won the trust vote after the acting assembly speaker, who is a BJP member, suspended all opposition legislators and lawmakers from a rebel group of the Hindu nationalist party.   Fighting broke out on the floor of the assembly after marshals tried to force the suspended legislators to leave, news agencies said.   Witnesses said lawmakers hurled pin cushions and microphones at each other.   Several lawmakers and journalists were injured in the scuffles, newspapers said.   After the trust vote, the Congress Party of former prime minister P.V. Narasimha Rao asked the state governor to dismiss the BJP government, accusing it of using police and smuggling in party supporters as plainclothesmen to provoke violence.   The BJP is the ruling party in Gujarat but the main opposition party in the federal parliament in New Delhi.   The Congress is a major supporter of Deve Gowda's 13-party centre-left coalition which assumed power in New Delhi in June.   It is also the main opposition group in Gujarat state.   The imposition of federal rule would follow two weeks of political turmoil in the state which was triggered when the assembly's deputy speaker recognised a rebel BJP group, threatening the state government's majority.   The assembly's speaker died earlier this week.   The deputy speaker, who is a member of Congress, was in hospital on Wednesday and was temporarily replaced by a BJP member.   The BJP emerged as the largest single party in the federal parliament after general elections in April and May, but fell short of a majority.   Hindu nationalists paralysed the federal parliament for two consecutive days earlier this month alleging a conspiracy by Congress to topple its government by forcing a split in the BJP. 
18531 !GCAT !GPOL  Prime Minister H.D. Deve Gowda's cabinet recommended dismissal of the government in Gujarat state on Thursday after ruling Hindu nationalists pushed through a trust motion marred by violence, the Press Trust of India (PTI) said.   The news agency said President Shankar Dayal Sharma was expected to impose federal rule over the state later on Thursday, a day after the Hindu Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government in the western state won a controversial vote of confidence.    The BJP-led government in Gujarat won the trust vote after the acting assembly speaker, who is a BJP member, suspended all opposition legislators and rebel lawmakers from the Hindu nationalist party.   Fighting broke out on the floor of the assembly after marshals tried to force the suspended legislators to leave, news agencies said.   Several lawmakers and journalists were injured in the scuffles, newspapers said.   The imposition of federal rule would follow two weeks of political turmoil in the state which was triggered when the assembly's deputy speaker recognised a rebel BJP group, threatening the state government's majority.   The deputy speaker was in hospital on Wednesday and was replaced by a BJP member.   The BJP emerged as the largest single party in the federal parliament after general elections in April and May, but fell short of a majority.   Deve Gowda's 13-party centre-left coalition assumed power in New Delhi in June. 
18532 !GCAT !GDIS  At least 17 people died in eastern India when spectators watching a cultural show fell from a tree onto a live electric wire, setting off a stampede, police said on Thursday.   S.I.S. Ahmed, a senior police officer in West Bengal state, told Reuters that at least 18 people were injured in the accident on Wednesday evening in Basirhat town, about 60 km (35 miles) northeast of the state capital Calcutta.   Ahmed said the branches of a tree holding some of the 5,000-odd spectators collapsed during the song and dance programme, throwing them on to the live wire.   An unknown number were electrocuted while the others were killed in the stampede, the police officer said. 
18533 !E12 !E21 !E211 !ECAT !GCAT !GPOL !GVOTE  India slowed down economic reforms ahead of recent general elections, boosting the fiscal deficit, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) said in its annual report on Thursday.   "The run-up to the general elections in mid-1996 was accompanied by a pause in efforts to strenthen ongoing reforms as well as in the initiation of new ones," the report said in a brief review of the Indian economy.   "In particular, while the regime of administered prices reduced inflation, it resulted in a larger fiscal deficit," the report said.   General elections were held in April and May.   Opposition parties accused the then Congress-led government of keeping a lid on state-administered prices ahead of the polls to boost the party's electoral chances.   Congress finished second in the elections, and the new 13-party centre-left government raised fuel prices shortly after taking power in June.   The fiscal deficit was 5.7 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) in 1995/96 (April-March).   The report said that in general the country's economic performance continued to be strong in 1995.   The eighth consecutive normal monsoon helped support GDP, which grew by seven percent in 1995/96 over the previous fiscal year, it said.   UNCTAD said the last half of 1995 was marked by turbulence in the foreign exchange and domestic money markets, which it said was countered through "several short-term policies".   It did not elaborate.   --New Delhi newsroom +91-11-301 2024 
18534 !GCAT !GDIS  At least 17 people died in eastern India when spectators watching a cultural show fell from a tree onto a live electric wire, setting off a stampede, police said on Thursday.   S.I.S. Ahmed, a senior police officer in West Bengal state, told Reuters that at least 18 people were injured in the accident on Wednesday evening in Basirhat town, about 60 km (35 miles) northeast of the state capital Calcutta.    Ahmed said the branches of a tree holding some of the 5,000-odd spectators collapsed during the song and dance programme, throwing them onto the live wire.   An unknown number were electrocuted while the others were killed in the stampede, the police officer said. 
18535 !C12 !CCAT !GCAT !GCRIM !GHEA  Baxter Healthcare Corp. said Thursday a Texas jury ruled in its favour in four lawsuits over silicone breast implants.   The Dallas County jury of six women and six men deliberated for nearly two days before returning a 10-2 decision for the company, a unit of Baxter International Inc.   Baxter said it has won 20 breast implant verdicts.   Two cases ended in mistrials.   The Deerfield, Ill.-based company lost two cases; one was appealed and Baxter was granted a new trial in the other.   Thousands of women have sued Baxter and other silicone breast implant makers, saying the implants led to connective tissue diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis.   A settlement was reached in a class-action lawsuit involving hundreds of thousands of women last fall, but many recipients dropped out to file individual lawsuits.   Baxter said that it never made or sold breast implants and that its liability in the case stemmed from its merger more than a decade ago with American Hospital Supply Corp.   American Hospital Supply once owned Heyer-Schulte Corp., a breast implant maker which no longer exists.   The four plaintiffs, whose cases were consolidated for the trial that ended Thursday, underwent implant surgery between 1977 and 1981.   All said their implants had ruptured and alleged they had "silicone-associated" disease involving a multitude of symptoms, including fatigue, joint pain, rashes and muscle aches.   The jury rejected those claims after reviewing the women's medical records during deliberations.   The jury in the four-week trial decided that breast implants made by Heyer-Schulte were properly manufactured, designed, tested and inspected and that adequate warnings about the products were given. 
18536 !C13 !CCAT !GCAT !GENV !GPOL  Vicki Allen   The Senate unanimously passed a bill on Thursday to try to reverse a trend of overfishing and wasteful practices that has led to the near collapse of many U.S. fisheries.   But with time running out in this congressional session, the bill faces a tight deadline for being meshed with the House version and sent to President Clinton.   "We applaud them for passing it, but the challenge now is for the two houses to come together, because the fish can't wait another two years," Gerry Leape of Greenpeace said.   The bill transforms the 20-year-old Magnuson Act from a law that blocked foreign exploitation of fisheries but encouraged domestic exploitation to one geared to preserving the declining resources.   While most conservation groups preferred the stricter language in the version the House passed a year ago, they said the Senate bill still would greatly clamp down on overfishing and the amount of bycatch -- commercially unwanted marine life that is netted, then dumped dead or dying back into the sea.   In the north Pacific alone, as much as 750 million pounds of fish is dumped overboard annually and Gulf shrimpers dump nearly that much.   The bill also has provisions to restore degraded fish habitats and to reduce fishing capacity through measures such as scrapping or buying back vessels.   The Commerce Department has said restoring fisheries will have a $25 billion economic impact and create 300,000 jobs.   The bill was held up in a dispute between fishing interests in Washington and Alaska, who compete in the North Pacific.   Washington has most of the big factory trawler fleet.   After the vote, Alaska Republican Sen. Ted Stevens said trawlers accounted for 75 percent of the North Pacific bycatch.   If they do not cut waste, he said, he will push a bill "that will eliminate these vessels that are destroying the reproductive capabilities of the North Pacific."   But Sen. Slade Gorton, a Washington Republican, said in floor debate on Wednesday that the bill allocated resources in favor of Alaska over his state.   While Gorton said he still had objections to the bill, he and Sen. Patty Murray, a Washington Democrat, wrested compromises that some environmentalists said weakened it.   At their insistence, a moratorium on issuing transferable fishing rights was shortened.   Critics say the rights are amassed by big enterprises pushing out the small operations, but advocates say they are effective measures to slow the rate of fish take.   The House bill dropped the transferable fishing rights.   Another sticking point is a provision pushed by Gulf shrimpers to bar shrimp imports from foreign countries that do not use devices to reduce bycatch that meet U.S. standards.   While the White House said in a statement it generally supported the bill, it opposed the shrimp import provision, saying it could create trade conflicts, and opposed the moratorium on transferable fishing rights. 
18537 !C12 !CCAT !GCAT !GCRIM  Mesa Air Group Inc. said Thursday it agreed to pay the Federal Aviation Administration a $500,000 fine for maintenance problems, and make major changes to improve airline safety.   The company, based in Farmington, N.M., operates under the names of Mesa Airlines, America West Express, United Express and USAir Express.   Its fleet has more than doubled to 175 planes in five years.   The FAA launched an investigation of the company last year and found several maintenance problems that were reportedly similar to those in ValuJet Airlines after one of its planes crashed in the Everglades on May 11, killing 110 people.   "The agreement is intended to ensure the carrier meets or exceeds regulatory requirements during its planned growth and expansion in the future," Chairman Larry Risley said in a telephone interview.   "We have agreeed to improve methods to verify that all our aircraft meet airworthy regulations."   Risley said Mesa will pay $250,000 of the fine up front, while the other $250,000 will be waived initially.   "And when Mesa has complied with all the parts of the agreement, that remaining $250,000 will be forgiven," Risley said.   Risely stressed that the FAA found no safety dangers in Mesa's existing air services.   "There is not a concern with the safety of the airline relative to the existing day-to-day operations.   The concern that the FAA has expressed is our ability to maintain that level of safety going forward as we continue to grow the airline," he said.   Under the settlement, Mesa will increase its flight maintenance and ground personnel, open a single maintenance control centre and implement new training and internal audit programmes.   Some of the changes are already under way and all will be carried through within 12 months.   Mesa Air Group operates 115 19-passenger planes, five 37-passenger turbo-props and 32 30-passenger turbo-props as well as two Fokker 70 jets, which each carry 78 passengers.   It has also ordered 16 50-passenger regional jets and is waiting for their delivery.   They will be used for the launch of Mesa's jet service at Meacham Airport in Fort Worth, Texas next May.   Risley said the FAA would announce details of the agreement in Washington later Thursday or on Friday.   Mesa's stock fell 25 cents to $9.375 on Nasdaq in late trading. 
18538 !C33 !C331 !CCAT !GCAT !GDEF  U.S.'s Lockheed Martin Corp. said it would invest in Hungary an equal amount to the purchase price of its F-16s, should the country opt for their fighters.   "We would offer Hungary a 100 percent offset deal," Dain Hancock, President of Lockheed's tactical aircraft systems, told a news conference, but said the details would be worked out later.   He also confirmed that the fly-away purchase price of an F-16 is $24 million, but the actual price would depend on the size of the order.   Lockheed Martin is competing for post-Cold War business in 
18539 !C12 !CCAT !GCAT !GCRIM  Kevin Maxwell, youngest son of media tycoon Robert Maxwell, whose death in 1991 led to the collapse of his business empire, will not face a second trial on fraud charges, a judge ruled Thursday.   Judge John Buckley said a further trial "would be unfair, so unfair as to amount to an abuse of power of the court."   The judge later agreed that verdicts of "not guilty" should be recorded on all outstanding charges against Kevin and his three fellow defendants.   He ordered their costs -- around 30 million pounds ($46 million) in Britain's most expensive criminal case this century -- be paid from state funds.   The judge's ruling ended five years of controversy over hundreds of millions of pounds found missing from Maxwell company pension funds after Robert Maxwell disappeared from his yacht in the Atlantic Ocean.   "It is an enormous victory for common sense and humanity.   I'm enormously relieved," an ecstatic and clearly stunned Kevin told reporters outside the court.   In January, Kevin, his brother Ian Maxwell, and former Maxwell director Larry Trachtenberg were acquitted of conspiring to defraud pension funds after an eight-month trial.   Britain's Serious Fraud Office then sought to bring charges in a second trial against Kevin Maxwell, Trachtenberg, and two former Maxwell executives.   Lawyers expressed surprise when the SFO said it wanted a second trial and many said the organisation was trying to salvage its own reputation.   Judge Buckley said the factor that had influenced him most was that "the essential criminality of the prosecution's case was before the jury in the first trial."   "Broadly speaking, if any jury was going to convict in this case, surely it would have been on the pension counts (at the first trial)," he told the court.   Kevin Maxwell said he would not consider a lawsuit against the prosecutors.   "I have an absolute horror of litigation," he said.   "I have no intention of going into a court of law." 
18540 !E51 !E512 !ECAT !G15 !G158 !GCAT  The European Union on Thursday ended a review of its trade policies with a call for further liberalisation of world markets to be linked to economic growth and job promotion.   EU trade ministers, gathered to agree a common position ahead of the World Trade Organisation's ministerial meeting in Singapore in December, said free markets must be seen to benefit individual Europeans.   They were meeting the day after German manufacturer Semperit AG -- citing cheaper production costs in Eastern Europe -- announced plans to close a tyre plant here that will put over 600 people out of work.   "It is very sad and nothing I can say will console those who lose their jobs, but in almost all cases liberalisation improves job prospects," said EU Trade Commissioner Sir Leon Brittan.   An EU source said Brittan had been forcefully told by ministers from the 15-nation bloc that trade liberalisation must be seen to give benefit.   Brittan, an unabashed champion of free trade, was seeking EU acceptance of a range of issues to be tackled at the Singapore meeting.   He was anxious to assure the ministers that he was not seeking a mandate to begin a new round of trade negotiations, rather take existing deals further.   An EU official said Brittan's proposals had been well received by the ministers, but it was clear they were concerned to protect their domestic industries and markets.   EU sources said Portuguese trade minister Fernando Freire Sousa warned that Lisbon was not prepared to jeopardise its textile and garment industries and urged the EU not to make further concessions to exporters from developing countries.   But his was a rare dissenting voice from an audience that generally embraced Brittan's philosophy.   Brittan told a news conference he was prepared to come up with a new European offer to try rekindle interest in a global agreement on telecoms.   Negotiations for an agreement, due to be settled next year, have stalled because of Washington's dissatisfaction at offers from Europe and Japan to open their markets to U.S. products.   Brittan said the EU was unlikely to make a big issue of labour standards at the Singapore meeting, believing instead that the International Labour Organisation was the best forum for dealing with the issue.   Developing nations, particularly those from Asia, are concerned that Western demands for international labour standards will reduce their competetive edge.   British Trade Minister Ian Lang urged the Commission to step up efforts to conclude the Information Technology Agreement between the EU, U.S. and Japan, saying this would benefit European jobs and growth.   But Brittan warned that progress on this was linked to the EU being included in a recently established U.S./Japan semiconductor council.   Brittan denied the EU was following the "letter but not the spirit" of the Uruguay round -- an accusation made by WTO Director-General Renato Ruggiero on Wednesday.   The EU has been criticised by trade partners -- particularly textile exporters -- who say it is expecting too much in terms of voluntary tariff reductions in exchange for obligatory European cuts. 
18541 !C21 !CCAT !GCAT !GCRIM  The Central Intelligence Agency, that bastion of spy technology and computer wizardry, pulled the plug on its World Wide Web site on the Internet on Thursday after a hacker broke in and replaced it with a crude parody.   CIA officials said their vandalized home page -- altered to read "Welcome to the Central Stupidity Agency" -- was in no way linked to any mainframe computers containing classified national security information.   The site was tampered with on Wednesday evening and the CIA closed it on Thursday morning while a task force looked into the security breach, CIA spokeswoman Jane Heishman said.   Part of the hacker's text read "Stop Lying."   "It's definitely a hacker" who pierced the system's security, she said.   "The agency has formed a task force to look into what happend and how to prevent it."   The CIA web site (http://www.odci.gov/cia) showcases unclassified information including spy agency press releases, officials' speeches, historical rundowns and the CIA's World Fact Book, a standard reference work.   The cyber-attack matched one that forced the Justice Department to close its Web site last month after hackers inserted a swastika and picture of Adolf Hitler.   The penetration of the CIA home page highlighted the vulnerability of Internet sites designed to attract the public and drove home the need for multiple layers of security.   "You want people to visit, you want them to interact, but you don't want them to leave anything behind," said Jon Englund of the Information Technology Association of America, a trade group of leading software and telecommunications firms. 
18542 !GCAT !GSPO  Sports sponsors are increasingly targeting "ambush marketing" in Europe by companies that muscle in on events without paying sponsorship fees, a legal expert said on Thursday.   The top lawyer at ISL Marketing AG, a Swiss-based marketing and sponsorship company, said sports sponsorship was becoming a huge business and sponsors wanted to protect their investment.   "Ambush marketing is very much foul play," Meena Sayal told an annual conference of the Incorporated Society of British Advertisers, a trade body with 300 members.   She said ISL, which works with sports federations on sponsorship deals, got help from lawyers, local police and trading standards officers to prevent companies from "hitchhiking a free ride" at the Euro 96 football championship this spring.   The ISL also launched a pan-European campaign to raise awareness of the official sponsors of Euro 96.   Sayal described Nike Inc , the world's biggest athletic footwear maker, as a case study of a company that wrongly targeted consumers outside Euro 96 games, since it was not an official sponsor.   She said Nike had committed an "own goal" because of criticism it subsequently received for its alleged ambush marketing.   "What are the risks to a company that wants to see itself as a global player when federations see it as an ambush marketer?   We see it for Nike as an own goal," Sayal said.   But Nike was unrepentant.   A spokesman for Nike UK Ltd, the UK subsidiary of U.S.-based Nike Inc, told Reuters there was nothing wrong with targeting consumers near Euro 96, as long as Nike didn't claim to be a sponsor.   "It's really a more cost-effective way to reach the consumer, rather than paying through the nose to become a sponsor," Graham Childs said on Thursday.   "Sometimes we do the official route (and become sponsors) and sometimes we don't...If consumers go to an event, they're fair game," Childs said in a telephone interview.   -- London Advertising Newsdesk +44 171 542 2792 
18543 !GCAT  The following are top headlines from selected Canadian newspapers.   Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.   THE GLOBE AND MAIL:   - Canadian Broadcasting Corporation cuts to hit flagship shows: Changes will cost 2,000 jobs, bring more commercials, less regional production.   - Ontario to slash education budget: Education Minister John Snobelen plans major overhaul.   - Dole's luck goes from bad to worse: Trip of tongue, tumble from platform plague Republican on campaign trail.   - Mounting debt crisis shackles poor nations: Global trade boom brings no riches where revenue is drained by loans.   - Parents get life sentences for killing baby: 'People treat their pets 1,000 times better than either of you treated Sara,' Ontario judge tells pair.   Report on Business Section:   - Laidlaw cuts C$1.65-billion deal: To sell solid waste business and gain stake in North America's No. 4 garbage company.   - Auto workers eyeing General Motors as next target: After Chrysler deal, union girds for potentially tougher talks.   - Loewen may lack weapons to fight takeover: No apparent white knight in wings.   - Royal Bank of Canada says lower rates could create jobs: Not necessary for Ottawa to take lead.   THE FINANCIAL POST:   - Laidlaw in US$1.6-billion asset deal: With its large cash component, the sale of its solid waste business to Allied Waste leaves Laidlaw with massive warchest for acquisitions or a share buyback.   - Loewen won't concede defeat without exacting a high price.   -- Reuters Toronto Bureau 416 941-8100 
18544 !GCAT  The following stories were reported in Thursday's Daily   Variety:   NEW YORK - Chris Columbus' 1492 Prods.   and producer Ben Myron will remake the 1950 film "Cheaper By the Dozen," with Columbus possibly directing.   HOLLYWOOD - David Salzman and Quincy Jones are pitching to syndicators an updated version of the gameshow Name That Tune, which could be paired with a remake of the gameshow Treasure Hunt.   HOLLYWOOD - King World's top talkshow Oprah kicked into high gear in its premiere week ending Sept. 8, placing second to perpetual No. 1 Wheel of Fortune among all syndicated shows.   --New York Newsdesk (212) 859-1610 
18545 !C42 !CCAT !E41 !ECAT !GCAT !GJOB  International Business Machines Corp said on Thursday that it is offering a voluntary buyout program to an unspecified number of its U.S. employees, as it seeks to rebalance the skills of its workforce.   An IBM spokesman said that the company was offering a voluntary buyout plan to certain support staff in various businesses across the U.S. He said that employees who decide to accept the buyout will leave IBM by the end of the year.   "We are not giving any figures on the number of people we are offering the program to," said an IBM spokesman.   "We simply do not know how many will accept."    The spokesman pointed out that even with this buyout plan, IBM expects its U.S. personnel to grow in 1996, from 110,000 U.S. staffers in 1995, as the company adds staffers to its computers services business.   IBM's total worldwide employment was 225,000 at the end of 1995.   "The key is the total number of U.S. employees at the end of 1996 will be greater than the 110,000 we had at the end of 1995," the spokesman said.   Employees who are not eligible are those who have been with IBM for less than five years.   "We have been doing a lot of hiring in the last few years of experienced people with critical skills," he said.    The buyout package includes one week's pay for every six months of service at IBM, up to a maximum of 26 weeks and a minimum of eight weeks.   The plan also includes a transitional medical program for up to six months and a reimbursement of up to $2,500 for career transition and retraining programs.   The IBM spokesman said that the buyout plan was being announced by managers to employees in the various business units which are participating in the buyout.   He declined to specify which business units within IBM are participating.   Analysts said yesterday IBM may face more layoffs by the end of the year if not enough staffers take the buyout plan. 
18546 !C12 !CCAT !GCAT !GCRIM  New York law firm Bernstein Litowitz Berger & Grossmann LLP said Thursday it has filed a class action suit in New York State Supreme Court alleging fraud against underwriter and issuer Dean Witter Reynolds Inc and related parties.   The suit was filed on behalf of thousands of investors who placed funds in managed futures limited partnerships, the firm said.    The litigation alleges that the "defendants fraudulently marketed these managed futures limited partnership interests to unsuspecting investors nationwide as a safe mechanism to insure favorable portfolio returns, without sufficiently informing them of the high degree of risk and volatility associated with this type of investment," the firm said.   Dean Witter declined to comment.   "We have not yet seen the lawsuit.   We have no comment," said Dean Witter spokeswoman Suzanne Platenic. 
18547 !C13 !C22 !CCAT !GCAT !GHEA  Neurex Corp said Thursday it plans to file a new drug application with the Food and Drug Administration for it SNX-111 pain drug by the end of 1997.   The company said it modified its clinical trial strategy for the drug to include a submission for the treatment of cancer pain as well as neuropathic pain.   Previous plans called for a submission for cancer pain treatment only in 1997.    It said it modified its plan because patient recruitment in the cancer pain study has continued to be "challenging", and as a result this study would not be completed until 1997 instead of the end of 1996 as previously announced.   Also, the neuropathic pain study has recently been initiated.   With a target of 20 active centers and patient accrual already underway, this study should be completed in 1997.   "Therefore, these two studies should form the basis of an NDA filing by the end of 1997," the company said.    "Cancer patients tend to be closely monitored by their oncologists and this has inhibited referral to our investigator sites, which combined with the need for close monitoring in the SNX-111 study, has inhibited progress," Paul Goddard, chairman and chief executive of Neurex, said in a statement.   "By contrast, patients in the non-malignant study seem to be much more readily identifiable and we foresee access to a large pool of patients who have been under treatment at our investigator sites for many years," he added.    In response to this situation, the company has designed additional studies that will allow patient recruitment at or near the site they are being treated for their underlying disease and overcome resistance to patient referral by specialists.   Neurex said it expects these studies to be initiated soon, widening the clinical trial centers working on SNX-111 and providing further support for a filing with the FDA for chronic severe pain treatment with SNX-111. 
18548 !C12 !C18 !C181 !CCAT !GCAT !GCRIM  Buffets Inc said Thursday it expects a judge to rule September 20 on motions seeking to block its merger with HomeTown Buffet Inc.   Buffets said Judge Dee Benson of the U.S. District Court for the State of Utah, Central Division, heard motions on September 18 by plaintiffs Summit Family Restaurants Inc and CKE Restaurants Inc.   In August, HTB Restaurants, a franchisee of HomeTown Buffet, along with its parent entities, Summit Family and CKE Restaurants, filed suit against Buffets and HomeTown to block the merger.   The suit claims, among other things, that Buffets and HomeTown allegedly conspired to restrict competition and to prevent plaintiffs from developing additional HomeTown units.   Buffets said that, while the merger will not close pending the judge's ruling, it intends to hold its scheduled shareholders' meeting today to vote on the proposed merger.   Reuters Chicago Newsdesk - 312-408-8787 
18549 !C12 !C13 !C41 !C411 !CCAT !GCAT !GCRIM  Comparator Systems Corp, charged with fraud, accounting and reporting violations by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in May, has reached a settlement in the case in which it will pay no fines and continue to operate, the Los Angeles Times reported Thursday.   Two of the company's top executives, Chief Executive Robert Reid Rogers and Vice President Gregory Armijo, will resign as officers and directors and eventually will have to leave the company.   But they will not have to admit any wrongdoing, the article said.   Rogers has already resigned, however.   The company will not have to pay a fine, and it will have to agree to abide by securities laws, the newspaper reported, citing anonymous sources.   The article also quotes one source as saying the company will have to restate its balance sheet and get SEC approval before issuing any stock.   Trading in the company's shares was stopped when its shares were delisted by the Nasdaq National Market in June.   In a lawsuit filed in federal court in Los Angeles, the SEC alleged the company "sold tens of millions of shares of Comparator stock to investors while making material misrepresentations" about the company's financial status.   --New York Newsdesk (212) 859-1610 
18550 !GCAT !GDIS !GWEA  Tropical Storm Willie is expected to intensify during the next 48 hours.   Top winds, now near 65 mph, may reach typhoon strength in 24 hours.   The storm is expected to track slowly northward and may even turn a little more to the west with time.   This brings the threat closer to Hainan where heavy rains and flooding may result, along with gusty winds.    Typhoon Violet is mainly a major risk to shipping in the region southeast and east of Okinawa during the next 48 hours, however the forecast track of this system is uncertain, and there is some chance it may turn more to the north, threatening Japan.    Tropical Storm Tom, about 1000 miles east of Japan, will accelerate into the open western Pacific with top winds decreasing from 60 mph to 45 mph during the next 48 hours.   Tom will be a moderate risk to shipping.   Tropical Depression 01C will be a minor to moderate threat to shipping as it tracks westward well south of Hawaii the next few days.   This system has top winds near 35 mph and weakening. 
18551 !GCAT  The New York Times reported the following stories on its front page on Thursday:   * The drug that causes the early termination of a pregnancy, known as RU-486, received conditional approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration Wednesday.   * Reform Party presidential candidate Ross Perot railed at his exclusion from the upcoming presidential debates.   * South Korean troops combed the hills of Seoul by the thousands in search of armed North Korean infiltrators whose submarine became stranded 100 feet offshore of the town of Kangnung.   * Investigators in the crash of TWA Flight 800 are planning tests that would prove mechanical failure brought down the Boeing 747.   * Spiro T. Agnew, Richard Nixon's vice president from 1968 to 1973, when he resigned rather than face an indictment on an extortion charge, died Tuesday in Maryland at the age of 77.   --New York Newsdesk (212) 859-1610 
18552 !C12 !C15 !C151 !CCAT !GCAT !GCRIM  A federal judge on Wednesday ordered Exxon to provide a letter of credit to guarantee payment of the $5 billion fine assessed two years ago as punishment for the Valdez oil spill.   U.S. District Court Judge H. Russel Holland rejected Exxon's proposal that it issue a letter of credit assuring payment of the fine only if total shareholder equity falls below $20 billion or if its debt-to-capital ratio exceeds 50 percent.   He also rejected an Exxon proposal to place some of the corporation's commercial paper in escrow to guarantee payment of the verdict.   Instead, the company should provide a simple letter of credit, with no caveats, Holland said in his order.   "At this point, it is clear that the least complicated and least costly means of providing plaintiffs with some meaningful security for timely payment of their judgment is an automatically reneweable, irrevocable letter of credit" issued by one of more of the banks with which Exxon does business, he said.   The letter must assure payment of the fine within 60 days of a mandate issued by the court of appeals, Holland said.   "That's exactly what we wanted," said Dave Oesting, a lead attorney for thousands of fishermen, Alaska Natives, property owners and others who sued Exxon over the Valdez disaster.   A letter of credit issued by one or more banks insulates the plaintiffs from any future Exxon financial problems, he said, adding that was the security plaintiffs were seeking.   "I want a divorce from Exxon," he said.   Wednesday's order was one of the final steps in the complicated Exxon Valdez litigation, which involved trials in federal and state courts and settlements with various groups.   The $5 billion punitive fine was ordered by a U.S. District Court jury, which ruled in 1994 that Exxon and its former supertanker captain, Joseph Hazelwood, had been reckless in their actions leading to the 1989 oil disaster.   In addition to issuing the largest punitive fine ever assessed against a corporation, the jury ordered Exxon to pay $287 million to compensate an estimated 10,000 commercial salmon and herring fishermen for spill-related losses.   Oesting said he expected Holland to enter formal judgment on the verdicts and settlements soon, paving the way for payment or an Exxon appeal.   Exxon has vowed to attempt to have the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals overturn the trial outcome.   The disaster occurred on March 24, 1989, when the Exxon Valdez supertanker grounded on a reef in Alaska's icy Prince William Sound and spilled 11 million gallons of oil. 
18553 !E11 !E12 !ECAT !GCAT !GPOL !GVOTE  Senior economic advisor to conservative New Democracy   party leader Miltiadis Evert   THE GREEK ELECTIONS AND THE ECONOMY   The snap elections of September 1996 have been prompted by the fact that the economic policy of the ruling party has reached a dead end.   While the convergence program predicted a fall of inflation to 5.0 percent by the end of 1996, with concomitant falls in interest rates, the outcome is likely to be three percentage points higher, 8.0 percent at best.   This failure is extremely serious, as the main strategy of the convergence program was based on the fall of nominal interest rates, given that every fall in interest rates by one percentage point reduces the borrowing requirememnt of the general government by about 0.8 percent of GDP.   Given this year's overrun, a fall by more than 5.0 percentage points is actually required.   This amounts to 1.5 billion drachmas, and is clearly unattainable, even if taxation were to rise sharply and all margins for reductions in government reductions in government expenditure were exhausted.   Given this situation the government decided to go for early elections.   Having failed to bring about a substantial increase in the primary surplus of the general government, the PASOK government has exhausted all the margins that were created by the policy of 1990-93 period.   These margins have allowed inflation to fall from 23.9 percent in November 1990 to 10.2 percent in March 1994 and 8.5 percent in August 1996, the borrowing requirement of the general government to fall from 14 percent in 1989 to 11.2 percent in 1993 and about 9.0 percent in 1996 and the public debt to GDP ratio to be stabilised at about 111 percent of GDP in 1993.   New initiatives are now required after the lack of underlying progress in 1994-96.   New Democracy, the opposition party, has a program centred around reductions in primary expenditure, privatisations and better use of the EU Community Support Framework.   On the other hand, the socialist PASOK party promises to keep government expenditure roughly at the same levels.   Therefore, the only way to reduce the deficit with a PASOK government would be higher tax rates. 
18554 !GCAT !GCRIM  Peter Graf, the father of tennis star Steffi Graf, will remain in jail at least until Tuesday after a state court said Thursday it was still considering his appeal to be freed on bail.   A spokesman for a court in Karlsruhe said the court had reviewed objections from the prosecution to release Graf on bail and was now waiting to hear the arguments from Graf's attorneys.   Graf, on trial in a lower court in Mannheim for tax evasion, has spent the last 13 months in investigative custody.   He is accused of evading $12.58 million of tax on his daughter's earnings between 1989 and 1993.   The Mannheim court judge, Joachim Plass, said he ordered Graf to be released from detention for the rest of the trial because even if he is convicted, it was unlikely his sentence would be much longer than the 13 months he has already served.   Plass agreed to release Graf on bail but Graf has been kept in detention because of the appeal by prosecutors who want him to stay in prison, fearing he might flee the country.   Graf submitted a personal declaration to the court pledging to report to police twice a week and do nothing to endanger the course of the trial, such as giving interviews.   Steffi Graf remains under investigation, although she says she left her financial affairs to her father from an early age.   Peter Graf maintains tax authorities signalled their approval of his schemes to reduce tax on his daughter's earnings by channelling the money abroad, rather than see Steffi join an exodus of German sporting tax exiles. 
18555 !GCAT  These are leading stories in afternoon daily Le Monde.   FRONT PAGE   -- President Jacques Chirac welcomes Pope John-Paul II in Tours in the name of a "secular and republican France".   BUSINESS PAGES   -- Ailing appliance manufacturer Moulinex may use cuts in work hours to reduce planned layoffs.   -- Lagardere Groupe chairman Jean-Luc Lagardere says is not interested in Thomson Multimedia, a subsidiary of Thomson, for which his group is to make an offer, aiming to create a 70-billion-franc unit.   -- Air Liberte airline may file for bankruptcy on Monday as bankers may refuse to inject funds if issue of merger with AOM airline is not settled.   -- Banking sector astir pending restructuring.   -- Aerospatiale posts a 273-million-franc profit for the first half.   -- Paris Newsroom +33 1 42 21 53 81 
18556 !GCAT !GCRIM  Belgian Prime Minister Jean-Luc Dehaene said on Thursday serious errors in the investigation of the paedophile sex, kidnap and murder cases would be punished.   "If it appears that during earlier phases of the investigation serious errors have been made, they will be sanctioned," Dehaene said in a speech to parliament which convened early to discuss the twin paedophilia and political murder scandals which have rocked the country.   "The justice minister has ordered an inquiry into the investigation of the child kidnappings.   He has just received the report and will inform parliament about it," Dehaene said.   He said the conclusion would be presented to the parliament's justice commission as soon as possible.   He gave no information about the contents of the report.   Belgian media said on Thursday the report was highly critical of police cooperation and procedures.   Dehaene also said that the judiciary should do its utmost to make progress in the investigation into the 1991 mafia-style murder of leading socialist politician Andre Cools.   "The investigation into the murder raised many questions and led to a general feeling of mistrust of our institutions.   The judiciary now must go to the heart of the matter," he said.   Speakers of all parties will take the floor at 2 p.m. (1200 GMT) in this extraordinary session which was convened at the request of the opposition, two weeks before the parliamentary year had been due to start.   Parties were expected to back the setting-up of a committee of inquiry into judicial bungling in the investigations of the Cools murder and the activities of the paedophile ring which has claimed the lives of four young girls in the past year.   In both cases there have been allegations of cover-ups.   There have been indications of serious police bungling in the child sex affair and of possible high-level protection of the main suspect in the case, convicted child rapist Marc Dutroux.   The investigation into Cools's murder led to the discovery of high-level corruption in an army helicopters contract in the late eighties, which triggered the resignation of four Belgian government ministers and of former Belgian Nato Secretary-General Willy Claes.   "Together we must ask ourselves what has gone wrong.   We must also wonder what we have done wrong ourselves, each of us, in politics, in the judiciary, the police, in the media, and the population in general so as to prevent a repeat of these events," Dehaene said.   -- Brussels Newsroom +32 2 287 6810, Fax +32 2 230 7710 
18557 !E51 !ECAT !G15 !G158 !GCAT !GDIP  The European Parliament looked set on Wednesday to demand a freeze of European Union aid to Turkey worth hundreds of millions of dollars.   "My group will be making every effort to freeze all financial commitments to Turkey," said Pauline Green, leader of the largest political party in parliament, the 221-strong Socialists.   British Euro-MP Edward McMillan-Scott said the parliament's 173 Christian Democrat and Conservative members backed the call.   He said they were "profoundly concerned" about recent developments in Turkey, including the arrest of deputies, the treatment of political prisoners, government repression of the media and its stance on certain issues of foreign policy.   Seven of the parliament's eight political groups are backing a joint resolution, due to go to a vote on Thursday, which demands an immediate block on all EU aid to Turkey, bar funding for projects to promote democracy and respect for human rights.   The EU plans to set aside 375 million Ecus ($470 million) between 1996 and 2000 to help Turkey put in place a customs union with the 15-member bloc.   Turkey is also eligible for substantial financing from the EU's MEDA programme, through which 410 million Ecus have been made available for the bloc's Mediterranean neighbours in 1996.   The EU could allocate as much as 842 million to this group of countries in 1997. 
18558 !GCAT !GDIS  The pilot of a Swissair jumbo jet suffered two heart attacks over Russia on Wednesday night, forcing the plane to make an emergency landing in Helsinki, the airline said on Thursday.   The pilot of the Boeing 747 was taken to the Helsinki University Central Hospital while the 258 passengers spent the night in a hotel, a spokesman for the carrier said.   A hospital spokesman declined to specify the pilot's illness, but added he was in stable condition and in no grave danger.   The pilot suffered an initial heart attack some four hours after the plane left Zurich, bound for Beijing.   The plane's co-pilot took over the controls after the attack, while the pilot was attended to by a doctor on board.   After the pilot suffered a second heart attack, Swissair decided to make an emergency landing in Helsinki.   The passengers will continue their journey to Beijing later today with a new crew, the Swissair spokesman added. 
18559 !GCAT !GDIP !GVIO  By Nicholas Doughty, Diplomatic Correspondent   NATO Secretary-General Javier Solana said on Thursday the alliance would have to remain engaged in Bosnia beyond the end of this year, probably with a smaller military force that would include U.S. troops.   Solana's comments, in an interview with Reuters and in a speech in London, are the latest and clearest signal that a continued Western military presence will be needed to shore up the fragile peace in Bosnia -- despite last week's elections.   Under the terms of the Dayton peace agreement, the one-year mandate of the current NATO-led peace force of some 55,000 troops runs out in December.   While some Western countries have mentioned the possibility of leaving a smaller force in place next year, perhaps numbering 20,000 troops, the subject is sensitive in the United States ahead of presidential elections there on November 5.   "I believe that the international community, including NATO, must remain engaged in Bosnia beyond this first year...," Solana said in a speech to the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) in London.   "On the security side, there may well be a requirement for a continued military presence in Bosnia...albeit smaller and for a strictly limited term."   A new force would "assist progress towards stability in the region and provide an environment of security while durable institutions are established and the parties fully assume their responsibilities".   Solana told Reuters that the subject would be discussed at a meeting of defence ministers in the Norwegian city of Bergen next week, but that no decisions would be reached there by the 16-nation Western alliance.   Solana said he thought most countries would be "generous enough to continue" if a continued military presence in Bosnia were needed.   But the deployment would have to include U.S. forces and would be limited to no more than one year.   "I don't think if there is a follow-on force of some nature...it will be longer than a year.   The responsibility is now with the parties."   European allies insist that Washington take part in any continued deployment to avoid a repeat of the transatlantic rows that marred Western policy during the Bosnian war.   "I do think the countries which have been participating should continue," Solana said.   Asked if that also meant U.S. participation, he replied: "Sure".   President Bill Clinton originally promised that U.S. troops would be in Bosnia for no longer than a year but U.S. officials say privately that is almost certain to change -- although not before the November presidential election.   Britain and others have warned against an indefinite commitment of troops to Bosnia, saying that it is now time for the Serbs, Croats and Moslems to rebuild their country and work together after last week's elections.   Solana's comments suggested that Bosnia will get one more year of stability, enforced by Western troops, to give peaceful cooperation a chance.   The alliance has already agreed that it will not start major troop withdrawals until delayed municipal elections have taken place, probably in November or December.   NATO decided on Wednesday to set up a new headquarters in Bosnia, ostensibly to oversee the year-end withdrawal.   But it could also have the dual role of pulling out existing troops while coordinating a smaller replacement force. 
18560 !C12 !CCAT !GCAT !GCRIM  Kevin Maxwell, youngest son of media magnate Robert Maxwell, whose death in 1991 led to the collapse of his business empire, will not face a second trial on fraud charges, a judge ruled on Thursday.   Judge John Buckley said a further trial "would be unfair, so unfair as to amount to an abuse of power of the court", adding that he had come to the clear view that the proceedings served no further public interest.   His decision effectively ended five years of controversy over hundreds of millions of pounds (dollars) which were found missing from Maxwell company pension funds after Robert Maxwell disappeared from his yacht in the Atlantic Ocean.   "It is an enormous victory for commonsense and humanity.   I'm enormously relieved, immensely relieved and delighted," an ecstatic and clearly stunned Kevin told a pack of reporters outside the court.   "It's a hell of a moment.   Quite clearly this was a very powerful and uncompromising judgement.   Thank God he stopped it."   In January, Kevin, his brother Ian Maxwell, and former Maxwell director Larry Trachtenberg were acquitted of conspiring to defraud pension funds after an eight-month trial.   "My immediate reaction is not one of anger or bitterness and I don't want to use words like vindictive or vendetta -- let other people do that," said Kevin.   Britain's Serious Fraud Office (SFO) sought to bring charges in a second trial against Kevin Maxwell, Trachtenberg, and two former Maxwell executives, Albert Fuller and Michael Stoney.   All had proceedings stopped against them under the ruling.   The judgement brings into question how the SFO, set up to deal with major financial fraud, will act in the future.   "We have reached the end of the legal process," said SFO director George Staple in a statement.   "The law does not provide any avenue of appeal.   There are serious implications for the prosecution of the largest and most complex criminal cases."   Sources close to the SFO said the judge's decision would put it in an impossible position when it came to tackling the largest and most important frauds and reopen the debate over whether juries are qualified to hear complex fraud cases.   The judge said that the factor that had influenced him most was, "(that) the essential criminality of the prosecution's case was before the jury in the first trial."   "Broadly speaking, if any jury was going to convict in this case, surely it would have been on the pension counts (at the first trial)," he told the court.   Kevin Maxwell, 37, had taken his case before the judge to argue that the impending second trial was "oppressive".   At a news conference, Kevin thanked the judge and said he would not consider a lawsuit against the prosecutors.   "I have an absolute horror of litigation," he said.   "I have no intention of going into a court of law."   Lawyers expressed surprise when the SFO said it wanted a second trial and many said the organisation was trying to salvage its own reputation but, on Thursday, the judge said the verdict in the first trial must now be accepted.   "In a notorious case, people looking on will have their own theories, some better informed than others.   But, since we have a jury system we should all accept their verdicts," Buckley said.   "In the Maxwell case that is overdue.   I accept the jury's verdict.   These proceedings are stayed."   The investigation and first trial set the record for the most expensive criminal case in Britain this century with final costs estimated at around 30 million pounds ($46 million).   Kevin became Britain's biggest bankrupt in 1992 with debts of over 400 million pounds ($630 million at current rates).   He was released from bankruptcy in 1995.   Kevin -- whose ambition in life had been to follow his father -- always denied conspiring to defraud by misusing pension fund money to prop up the indebted companies.   He said his father, whom he has described as as bully, used pension funds just like any other assets in his corporate empire -- as a source of cash to be moved from one company to another.   Kevin told the first trial that he and his brother had merely obeyed their father's orders. 
18561 !E12 !ECAT !G15 !G154 !G155 !GCAT !GPOL  Six elder statesmen of Britain's ruling Conservatives united on Thursday to warn Prime Minister John Major to hold firm against increasingly vocal demands from the party's right wing to oppose European integration.   In a letter to the Independent newspaper, the six, headed by former Prime Minister Edward Heath, wrote: "To countenance withdrawal from the European Union would be to court disaster."   The letter was published the day after Foreign Secretary Malcolm Rifkind delighted the so-called Eurosceptics with a warning that the EU's plan for a single currency could split the bloc for the foreseeable future.   Party officials rushed to deny that the contrasting tone of the two contributions to the European debate signalled civil war had broken out again in the party over relations with Brussels.   Anxious to play down internal rows with a general election due by next May, party chairman Brian Mawhinney insisted all wings of the party were united.   "Both Mr Rifkind and the grandees as you call them were reaffirming and being supportive of the government's position," he told a questioner at a news conference.   Mawhinney was asked repeatedly by journalists whether the Conservatives might change their wait-and-see attitude and rule out joining a single currency in the next five-year parliament.   He declined to answer the question directly but insisted: "The position of the government is quite clear."   Three of Rifkind's Foreign Office predecessors -- Lord Peter Carrington, Lord Geoffrey Howe and Douglas Hurd -- signed the letter which said: "For us now to rule out British membership of a single currency would be to betray our national interest."   Howe denied on BBC Radio that he and his colleagues were causing splits in the party.   "We are not creating the division.   The truth is that all those who have led the Conservative Party from the days of (former war leader Winston) Churchill onwards have been clear about the need for Britain to be involved in Europe,"   The other signatories were Lord William Whitelaw, who was deputy prime minister under Margaret Thatcher, and Sir Leon Brittan, one of Britain's EU Commissioners.   Thatcher is flag-bearer for the Euro-sceptic right-wingers.   In an attempt to hold his party together, Prime Minister John Major has said he will decide whether to join a single currency when the full plan for it is developed -- after the next election.   He has also pledged a referendum on the issue.   John Redwood, one of the leading right-wing contenders to succeed Major, supported Rifkind's warning.   "I say three cheers for Malcolm Rifkind for beginning to set out our stall," Redwood, who last year challenged Major for the party leadership, told Channel Four television.   "I think the foreign secretary has looked at the damage this scheme is now doing and has looked at the strong opinion in the Conservative Party, which is that we want a common market and not a common government." 
18562 !C12 !CCAT !GCAT !GCRIM  Kevin Maxwell, youngest son of media tycoon Robert Maxwell who died after falling from his yacht in 1991, will not face a second trial on a charge of fraud, a judge ruled on Thursday.   Judge John Buckley said a further trial "would be unfair, so unfair as to amount to an abuse of power of the court".   His decision effectively ended five years of controversy over hundreds of millions of pounds missing from Maxwell company pension funds after Robert Maxwell's death.   "It is an enormous victory for commonsense and humanity.   I'm enormously relieved, immensely relieved and delighted," an ecstatic Kevin told reporters outside the court.   "It's a hell of a moment.   Quite clearly this was a very powerful and uncompromising judgement.   Thank God he stopped it."   In January, Kevin, his brother Ian Maxwell, and former Maxwell director Larry Trachtenberg were acquitted of conspiring to defraud pension funds after an eight-month trial.   "My immediate reaction is not one of anger or bitterness and I don't want to use words like vindictive or vendetta -- let other people do that," said Kevin.   Britain's Serious Fraud Office (SFO) sought to bring charges in a second trial against Kevin Maxwell, Trachtenberg, and two former Maxwell executives, Albert Fuller and Michael Stoney.   The judge announced his decision to stay any further proceedings before reading out his judgment.   He said he had been swayed by the decision of the first jury to acquit Kevin and the other defendants.   "If any jury were going to convict, surely it would have been at the first trial," he told the court.   But he added: "Of course in a notorious case people will have their own verdicts."   Kevin Maxwell, 37, had taken his case before the judge to argue that the impending second trial was "oppressive".   The decision to stay any further proceedings was a blow to the SFO, which came under fierce attack for failing to secure a conviction at the first trial.   Lawyers expressed surprise when the SFO said it wanted a second trial and many said the organisation was trying to salvage its own reputation.   Critics also said that cases of this kind should be decided by judges, arguing a jury could not grasp the financial complexities involved.   The investigation and first trial set the record for the most expensive criminal case in Britain this century with final costs estimated at around 30 million pounds ($46 million).   Kevin became Britain's biggest bankrupt in 1992 with debts of 406.8 million pounds ($631 million at current rates) after he lost a lawsuit filed by liquidators who were trying to recover missing pension funds.   He was released from bankruptcy in 1995.   Kevin, whose overrriding ambition in life had been to follow in his father's footsteps, always denied conspiring to defraud by misusing pension fund money to prop up the indebted private Maxwell companies.   He said his father, whom he described as as bully, used pension funds just like any other assets in his corporate empire -- as a source of cash to be moved from one company to another whenever he deemed necessary.   Kevin told the first trial that he and his brother had merely obeyed their father's orders.   Witnesses at the trial said Kevin had basically taken over running his father's businesses by 1991 as Robert Maxwell eased away from corporate matters and sought political status.   Robert Maxwell's body was found after he disappeared off his yacht in the Atlantic Ocean near the Canary Islands in November 1991. 
18563 !GCAT  Prepared for Reuters by The Broadcast Monitoring Company   EVENING STANDARD   INCHCAPE NEAR TO 380 MILLION STG SELL-OFF   Inchcape is on the verge of selling its Testing Services business for 380 million stg, in a deal with Charterhouse and Bankers Trust.   --   RACAL BATTLES BT FOR ON BILLION STG DEFENCE DEAL   Racal is campaigning hard to win a one billion stg contract from the Ministry of Defence in competition with British Telecom.   --   DIAMONDS IN THE PINK TO BREAK $4.5 MILLION RECORD   Pink diamonds, greatly in demand in the Middle East and Asia, are expected to earn much more this year than last year's record.   The best pink diamonds, the Argyle diamonds, come from a mine in Western Australia which is 60 percent owned by RTZ-CRA.   --   CHINA LAYS DOWN THE LAW ON FUNDS   China is to introduce a regulatory framework for its incipient fund management industry.   --   THE CREDIBILITY GAP THAT AIM MUST TRY TO BRIDGE   The credibility of the Alternative Investment Market, which has a value of 4.4 billion stg after 15 months of operation, has taken a serious knock following the resignations in the past six weeks of two Nominated Advisers, the brokers who scrutinise and sponsor flotations.   -- BMC +44 171 377 1742 
18564 !E12 !ECAT !G15 !G151 !G154 !G158 !GCAT  As Finland hovers on the brink of entry to Europe's exchange rate mechanism, many analysts here believe the perceived medium-term economic or political benefits of bringing the markka into the current ERM regime are illusory.   The luxury of huge 15 percent ERM fluctuation bands makes the chosen central exchange rate little more than a symbolic target.   As a result, there is little or no exchange discipline or currency-risk reduction inherent in the existing system.   Moreover, many analysts believe that maintenance of 15 percent ERM bands alone will not be sufficient to satisfy the Maastricht criterion on exchange rate stability prior to European monetary union.   Hence, the political imperative of entering the ERM quickly is also notional at best.   "An ERM with 15 percent bands is of no practical value and and it's not even clear whether its necessary or sufficient for qualification for EMU," said Peter Von Maydell, senior currency economist at UBS Ltd.   Finnish Prime Minister Paavo Lipponen is pushing for a peg, in a bid for tight links with the EU to ensure closer political connections with the west for Finland, which joined the EU in 1995 after decades in the shadow of the former Soviet Union.   But the central bank has been reluctant, with officials voicing concerns that a link may expose the markka to speculative pressures and fuel volatility.   The markka rallied to 2.99 per mark early on Thursday, its strongest level in nine months, as speculation about the exact timing of ERM entry intensified.   The chairman of the Bank of Finland's board of parliamentary supervisors IIkka Kanerva said ERM entry was unlikely this month, putting the market focus on early October as likely date for a joint lira and markka ERM fixing.   Yet, analysts questioned the logic of trading on back of speculation about the entry level.   "The focus on the central rate in a 15-percent-band system is a little misplaced," said Paul Meggyesi, senior currency strategist at Deutsche Morgan Grenfell.   "With such wide margins of error it's hard to see why ERM entry would change anyone's investment decision within Finland or toward Finland."   Even if Finland attempts to informally target narrower 2.25 percent bands, that some analysts believe will be necessary to satisfy the EMU criteria, the chances of holding the erratic markka in those bands over two years is slight, they said.   "In our view, the 2.25 percent rule will be used by the EU as a way of identifying the countries who will have the least problem with fixed exchange rates and moving to EMU in 1999," said Joe Prendergast, currency strategist at Merrill Lynch.   That would exclude Spain and Italy, for example, from the first move to EMU, even if they do manage to meet a relaxed interpretation of the other Maastricht criteria, he said.   "Finland would have severe problems holding a narrow band regime for long, mainly because it is subject to strong exchange rate shocks that do not effect the rest of the European core," said Prendergast.   The Finnish economy, and hence the competitiveness of the markka, is heavily dependent on volatile commodity prices, with paper and pulp products accounting for about 40 percent of its export revenue.   This is a stark contrast to the core European currencies to which Finland intends to peg the markka closely.   In 1994 and 1995, for example, the markka was one of the strongest currencies in the world, in contrast to exchange rate weakness against the German mark elsewhere in Europe.   Conversely, the markka's devaluation against its European currency unit peg in 1992, prior to its later flotation, was a precursor to the exit of sterling and the lira from the ERM later that year.   Moreover, neighbouring Sweden is Finland's biggest trade competitor for pulp products and it is currently deeply divided about the merits of joining either the ERM or EMU.   "Finland is to Sweden what Ireland is to the UK, for example, and it is hard to imagine the markka not being heavily influenced by the swings of a floating Swedish crown given such trade interdependence," said Meggyesi at Deutsche.   Even as Finnish industry chiefs protest the recent rise of the markka, analysts say Finland's strong current account surplus, balanced budget and low inflation argue for an even stronger markka right now.   Deutsche argues for an equilibrium level as low at 2.85 per mark, for example.   But Von Maydell at UBS said that while there may be a good case for saying a central rate about 3.00 per mark is fair value right now, that may not be the case over the full course of the economic cycle. 
18565 !C12 !CCAT !GCAT !GCRIM  The relief was clear on both Kevin and Ian Maxwell's faces as they tumbled out of court on Thursday to hugs and kisses from their delighted lawyers.   The five-year nightmare that started the day their millionaire father, Robert, plunged to his death from his yacht off the Canary Isles was finally over with a judge saying Kevin should not face a second trial on fraud charges.   "I well and truly feel vindicated and acquitted," Kevin, 37, told a news conference.   Maxwell said he would never forget the day of his arrest, seven months after his father's mysterious death.   Police had tipped off photographers and launched a very public dawn raid on the home he shared with his wife Pandora and five children.   Pandora, who had made clear her disdain of the media, was photographed leaning out of an upstairs window and shouting: "Piss off or I'll call the police".   "Madam, we are the police," came the calm answer.   Pandora's evidence in a preliminary hearing, when she spoke of the pressure the case put on her family, clearly swayed Justice John Buckley in his decision.   "Mrs Maxwell's bewilderment and anger at the decision to proceed to another trial were not feigned...no one could have been unmoved by her evidence," Buckley said.   "Her obvious distress was, I am convinced, entirely genuine."   "I am just immensely grateful to her for her courage," Kevin smiled.   "She gave evidence in a typically Pandora way."   More than 400 million pounds ($600 million) were found missing from the company pension funds after Robert Maxwell's death.   Kevin denied any involvement in misusing pension fund money to prop up Maxwell private companies.   He, Ian and associate Larry Trachtenberg were acquitted at their first trial in January.   On Thursday, Buckley said another trial would amount to a rejection of that jury's verdict.   "I had gone five years waiting to listen in a court in this country for anyone who could show some humanity and some common sense," Maxwell said.   Later Buckley ordered "not guilty" verdicts be returned in the case.   Ironically, Kevin's defence team had fought against the appointment of Buckley.   It wanted the trial overseen by the judge who had sat at his first, eight-month spell in the dock.   Kevin brushed aside talk of retribution, saying he would not consider a lawsuit against the prosecutors.   "I have an absolute horror of litigation," he said.   "I have no intention of going into a court of law."   Kevin, who was bankrupted in the corporate collapse, said he feared his large legal team, paid for by state legal aid, would be criticised for the enormous bill -- estimated at 30 million pounds ($50 million) -- run up over the five years.   "But ultimately justice and my freedom doesn't have a cost to me," he said.   "I am a recipient of state aid in a just cause -- proving my innocence."   He also said he felt no bitterness towards his father.   "What good does it serve?"   he asked.   "I certainly don't blame him."   But he said it would take years to come to terms with the whole drama.   "I don't think it is ever possible to close the books on the relationship between father and son, even when the father is dead." 
18566 !C12 !CCAT !GCAT !GCRIM  British Judge John Buckley ordered that verdicts of not guilty should be recorded on all outstanding counts concerning all defendants in the second Maxwell trial, which he halted earlier on Thursday.    Chief prosecuting counsel Richard Lissack said that having considered the judge's ruling, which allowed no right of appeal, he had decided in the circumstances to ask the judge to enter verdicts of not guilty, to which the judge agreed.   The judge also said that the costs of the defendants would be paid for from central funds, covering all the hearings in the Maxwell case.   The amount of the costs was to be fixed at a later date.   Lissack repeated in court an earlier statement by George Staple, director of the Serious Fraud Office (SFO), who said that the judge's ruling that halted the second trial would have "serious implications" for the prosecution of the largest and most complex criminal cases". 
18567 !C12 !CCAT !GCAT !GCRIM  Judge John Buckley ordered that verdicts of not guilty should be recorded on all outstanding counts concerning all defendants in the second Maxwell trial, which he halted earlier on Thursday. 
18568 !C12 !C13 !CCAT !GCAT !GCRIM  The head of the parliamentary Social Security select committee said his members might reopen their probe into the millions of pounds which went missing from Maxwell company pension funds after Robert Maxwell died in 1991.   "We now need to consider constructively where we should go from here," Frank Field told BBC Radio after a judge ruled that Robert's son Kevin should not face a second fraud trial.   "I think parliament has to return to the issue because we put our investigations into abeyance so there would be a trial in which no one could accuse us of trying to influence the outcome," he said.   "I hope we will do that constructively and look at what now needs to be done to protect people from serious criminal fraud."   Kevin and Ian Maxwell appeared before the committee in January 1992 but declined to say anything in what was an unprecedented challenge to the authority of parliament.   The committee -- which suspended its investigation later the same year -- found the two to be in contempt.   "People will be asking if it's fair, in a situation where the pensioners have been put through the horrors of the possibility of no pensions, at the end of the day for the finger to be pointed at nobody for what happened?"   said Field.   -- London Newsroom +44 171 542 7717 
18569 !GCAT !GDEF !GDIP  NATO Secretary-General Javier Solana said on Thursday the alliance would have to remain engaged in Bosnia beyond the end of this year, probably with a military force including U.S. troops through 1997.   Solana's comments, in an interview with Reuters and in a speech in London, are the latest signal that a continued Western military presence will be needed to shore up the fragile peace in Bosnia -- despite last week's elections.    "I believe that the international community, including NATO, must remain engaged in Bosnia beyond this first year...," he said in a speech to the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS).   "On the security side, there may well be a requirement for a continued military presence in Bosnia...albeit smaller and for a strictly limited term."   Solana told Reuters that any force would have to combine European and U.S. troops and that he did not think it would stay longer than one more year.   The mandate of the current force of some 55,000 troops runs out in December. 
18570 !C15 !C151 !C24 !C31 !C42 !CCAT !E41 !ECAT !GCAT !GJOB  Second-tier British supermarket chain William Morrison Group said on Thursday half-year profits rose eight percent and that it would create thousands of new jobs -- but a warning that sales could slow pushed shares lower.   "During the second half of the year we expect trading conditions to remain difficult and sales are unlikely to maintain the growth seen in the first six months," the company said in its results statement.   Morrison, which said it would create 3,200 jobs with four new store openings, turned in pretax profits for the six months ending August 4 of 55.2 million pounds ($86.05 million), up from 51.1 million pounds previously, on sales of 1.09 billion pounds.   It paid out a dividend of 0.325 pence per share, up from 0.275 pence.   The company said like-for-like sales in the six weeks since the end of the half year nudged up just 0.7 percent after rising 3.1 percent in first half, well below the growth seen by some of its rivals.   Market-leader Tesco announced on Tuesday with its half year results that current sales were climbing 7.5 percent after a seven percent rise in its first half.   "I would kill for 7.5 percent," Morrison finance director Martin Ackroyd told Reuters.   But he added that the group was comparing its sales with very strong year-earlier figures.   Morrison said in a statement that the sales rise in the first half was "extremely encouraging" given disruptions caused by refurbishments.   Ackroyd added that although sales growth was expected to slow in the second half from first half levels, "the 0.7 percent (rise) will be improved on, hopefully".   Morrison's shares had slipped 0.5 pence to 159.5 pence by 1150 GMT after touching a low of 152 pence, while Tesco's shares rose 2.5 pence to 301 pence.   "There is no doubt things are very difficult for the second line supermarket operators, they are finding it very tough," said one trader.   Ackroyd said Morrison felt its offer was second to none, with its focus on large superstores and low prices.   And, after a first half bereft of store openings for the first time in 20 years, Morrison will open four new stores in 1997 with an investment of over 100 million pounds, he said.   There will also be eight refurbishments, continuing the programme underway in the first half.   Analysts said it was not clear whether the sales growth slowdown was due to extensive refurbishments or competitive pressures.   "One concern is a decline in growth in the core business but how much of that is due to the refit programme is difficult to know," one analyst who asked not to be named said.   Morrison said the benefits of recent investments should continue to grow and prospects remained encouraging.   "It is a quality business -- but no more so than the others in the sector," one analyst said.   ($1=.6415 Pound) 
18571 !C12 !CCAT !GCAT !GCRIM  Britain's Serious Fraud Office (SFO) said on Thursday a judge's decision not to proceed with the Kevin Maxwell case had serious implications for the prosecution of large and complex fraud trials.   "We have reached the end of the legal process.   The law does not provide any avenue of appeal.   There are serious implications for the prosecution of the largest and most complex criminal cases," SFO director George Staple said in a statement.    Staple said the case illustrated the difficulties of large fraud cases.   He said it had been split up to make it manageable for a jury but very serious charges would not now be heard.   Earlier Judge John Buckley said a second trial against Kevin Maxwell, a son of media tycoon Robert Maxwell who died after falling from his yacht in 1991, would be "so unfair as to amount to an abuse of power" by the court.   In January Kevin, his brother Ian Maxwell and former Maxwell director Larry Trachtenberg were acquitted of conspiring to defraud pension funds after an eight-month trial.    Despite this, the SFO decided to press on with a second trial, this time against Kevin Maxwell, Trachtenberg and two former Maxwell executives, Albert Fuller and Michael Stoney.   The SFO said it had decided to go ahead with a second trial because of the seriousness of outstanding charges, because they related to completely different transactions to those previously tried and the evidence was not weakened by the acquittals.   It also said the defence had not been left in any doubt as to its wish to pursue the charge, although it conceded this had needed to be reviewed after the acquittals.   There was no reason to suppose the defendants would not get a fair trial, it added.    Finally, the SFO said the decision had been made because public confidence in the administration of justice "required that the full extent of the alleged fraud be brought before the court for adjudication".   But this view was overturned by Buckley who said "these proceedings serve no further public interest".   "To pursue them in the face of both the jury's unanimous verdict in the first trial would test both the public's confidence and the integrity of the system," he added.   -- Alexander Smith, London Newsroom ++ 44 171 542 7719 
18572 !E12 !ECAT !G15 !G151 !G154 !GCAT !GPOL  Pro-European members of Britain's ruling Conservative Party intend to speak out more forcefully in the months ahead, former Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd said on Thursday.   "I think you will find from now on that those who believe that we should, in the national interest, take a positive view of Britain in Europe, will be less inclined to keep quiet, simply because we might be accused of rocking the boat.   That phase is over," Hurd told BBC radio. 
18573 !C24 !C42 !CCAT !E41 !ECAT !GCAT !GJOB  British Airways said on Thursday that it was to close its Contract Handling unit at Heathrow Airport, with the loss of 750 jobs.   The Contract Handling unit provides ticketing, check-in, cargo and other services for other airlines at Terminals 2 and 3 at the airport.   British Airways said all the 750 staff would be offered voluntary redundancy, but some could be redeployed within the company.    As part of the company's three-year restructuring review and one billion pound efficiency drive, British Airways said it had been looking with its workforce at its businesses and trying to indentify where revenues could be increased and costs reduced.   A company spokeswoman told Reuters that this was the first unit that BA had identified as a closure target as part of a business review that the company said yesterday would cost 5,000 jobs to make way for new recruits with different skills.   She said it was too soon to detail which other units might be closed.   "We are looking to see where it is possible to make savings."    "We have examined at length both the opportunities to increase our prices to our customers and to reduce our costs of the operation but have reluctantly concluded that it is impossible -- at current pay rates -- to maintain BACH as a viable operation," said Robert Ayling, BA's chief executive.   Although staff at the Contract Handling (BACH) unit were only told today of the unit's closure, the spokeswoman said they had been aware of the possibility since before Christmas.   Existing contracts would be progressively discontinued over the next six months and BACH will close formally on March 31, 1997, BA said in a statement.   Some of the unit's business will be transferred to Terminal 4 and will continue to be handled by British Airways and its alliance partners.   The rest of the business will go to other handling companies.   British Airways said it own handling operation remained unaffected by the decision.   -- London Newsroom +44 171 542 7717 
18574 !C13 !CCAT !GCAT !GCRIM  The Labour party will include the Serious Fraud Office in a review of the regulatory structure of Britain's financial services industry if it wins power, economics spokesman Mike O'Brien said on Thursday.    O'Brien said a high court judge's ruling that Kevin Maxwell, the youngest son of media tycoon Robert Maxwell, should not face a second trial on a charge of fraud raised serious questions about the future operations of the Serious Fraud Office.   "Some of the decisions taken by the SFO and the way in which they have been implemented have raised concerns for some years.   This case will add to those concerns," O'Brien, Shadow Economic Secretary, said in a statement.   "Labour is considering whether a closer association between the prosecutors of serious fraud and the Securities and Investments Board would be appropriate," he added.    O'Brien said in the 18 months since it rejected amalgamating the SFO with the Crown Prosecution Service, the government had done nothing to allay concerns in the City about the adequacy of the SFO.   "Labour is already committed to reviewing the regulatory structure surrounding financial services and the SFO will be part of the review," he said.   In an interview with BBC radio, O'Brien added: "I think it's now time to ask very serious questions about the way in which the SFO operates and whether there does need to be substantial changes."   -- London newsroom 44-171-542 7767 
18575 !C12 !CCAT !GCAT !GCRIM !GPRO  Robert Maxwell was one of Britain's most powerful tycoons who built a media and publishing empire almost single-handed and dealt ruthlessly with enemies.   A bully at home, he made his large family suffer -- both before and after his death -- through his lust for deal-making and love of grandiose gestures.   Five years after his body was found floating in the Atlantic Ocean, mystery still surrounds the circumstances of his death and the loss of millions of pounds from Maxwell company pension funds.   On Thursday, Maxwell's youngest son Kevin was told he would not face a second trial on fraud-related charges, clearing his name and ending legal attempts to get to the bottom of one of the biggest corporate collapses in recent British history.   Robert Maxwell's reputation and business methods came under the microscope during and earlier eight-month fraud trial of Kevin and his brother Ian.   They were both acquitted in January of conspiring to defraud pension funds.   "Basically he was a man possessed by business.   It consumed his whole life," Kevin said of his father during the trial.   "He wasn't motivated by money, he was motivated by power."   Robert Maxwell was capable of being extremely charming, likeable and generous.   He also bullied his employees and family, the court heard.   "He was somebody for whom the law was a weapon to be used, like every other weapon in business.   He would stretch the law as far as it could go to achieve his business ends," Kevin said.   Robert Maxwell, born Jan Lodvik Hoch on June 10, 1923, was the son of Jewish peasants from the Czechoslovakian province of Ruthenia, one of the poorest parts of Europe.   He escaped the Nazi Holocaust which claimed his relatives, went to Britain and emerged from World War Two with a British army medal for gallantry.   Although he had little formal schooling, Maxwell's lack of education did not stop him from building and controlling an empire with two major public companies and 400 private firms.   In 1971 a Department of Trade and Industry report said Maxwell was "not a person who can be relied upon to exercise proper stewardship of a publicly quoted company".   But he clawed his way back.   By the 1980s he was a huge success, famous for his girth, big cigars and a flamboyant lifestyle including a luxury yacht and a helicopter.   "Given his weight and bulk he could and would dominate every meeting he attended," said Kevin.   Colleagues and associates claimed he controlled his directors and employees by shouting and pounding his fists.   "He was capable of dealing with complex issues one after the other very quickly and able to make decisions quickly.   He combined, I have to say, a bullying technique with a separate technique of enormous charm," said Peter Walsh, the chief auditor of the Maxwell companies.   Maxwell's long-suffering French-born wife and mother of his nine children, Elisabeth, described him as a power-crazy man who was particularly strict with his offspring.   Although he groomed his children to help him with his business he resented any initiative they took.   "Bob wanted to keep his finger on the pulse.   He couldn't bear to have any power taken away from him," she told the court.   Maxwell exercised unilateral control over his companies for years.   He used pension funds as liquid cash to invest in other businesses and invested funds from some of his companies into others, a practice called "self-investment".   In the year before he died at the age of 67, Maxwell had relinquished much of the running of his main businesses to Kevin, while he cultivated ties with heads of state and other dignitaries.   Maxwell's debt-laden businesses unravelled after he went over the side of his yacht on November 5, 1991, and was found floating dead off the Canary Islands.   A pathologist who conducted an autopsy said in a statement read in court it was unlikely he committed suicide and the cause of death was probably drowning.   "It is more likely that he fell involuntarily into the sea either as a result of accident accident or homicide," said Dr Jehuda Hiss.   London physiology lecturer Dr Jane Ward suggested that the death could have resulted from micturition syncope -- fainting while emptying the bladder.   Kevin said his father, a light sleeper, frequently relieved himself over the side of the yacht when he woke up during the night.   Maxwell was given a hero's funeral in Jerusalem before being buried on the Mount of Olives.   But weeks after his death fraud detectives discovered 400 million pounds ($632 million) in company pension fund assets were missing. 
18576 !E12 !ECAT !G15 !G151 !G154 !GCAT !GPOL  A strongly "Euro-sceptical" speech by British Foreign Secretary Malcolm Rifkind split the ruling Conservative party on Thursday, just two days before key European negotiations on a future single currency.   Rifkind's warning of the dangers of monetary union, in a speech to mark the 50th anniversary of Winston Churchill's vision of a United States of Europe, delighted Conservative right-wingers who want Britain to rule out membership of EMU.   But it drew an angry response from some of the party's most influential elder statesmen who have appealed to Prime Minister John Major not to turn his back on European co-operation.   In a letter in Thursday's Independent newspaper, six Tory grandees including three of Rifkind's predecessors at the Foreign Office wrote: "For us now to rule out British membership of a single currency would be to betray our national interest."   Up to now Britain has pursued a policy of delicate balance, refusing to say whether or not it will sign up to EMU (Economic and Monetary Union), but insisting on its right to join in the preparatory negotiations.   But the picture Rifkind painted on Wednesday of Economic and Monetary Union splitting apart the European continent has boosted the confidence of his party's right wing who now see Rifkind firmly on their side in a bid to keep Britain out.   The row is certain to surface again at the Conservative Party's annual conference in October and could weaken the stance of Major's pro-European finance minister Kenneth Clarke at EMU negotiations this weekend in Dublin, Ireland.   Britain was always going to be sidelined at Saturday's meeting of European finance ministers and central bank chiefs.   Britain is still arguing internally about the whole concept of monetary union, while the powerful Franco-German alliance is forging ahead towards EMU and just wants to clear up details.   Added to the furore over mad cow disease, with Britain now calling into question a pledge to kill off suspect cattle, Britain's position on Europe is looking increasingly isolated.   One of the main points on the Dublin agenda is to put the finishing touches to a Stability Pact, a scheme to ensure that EMU members stick to tough anti-inflationary policies not only before they sign up to union but afterwards as well.   The pact was originally inspired by German Finance Minister Theo Waigel and has now been firmly embraced by France.   Also on the Dublin agenda are plans to link a future single currency to currencies outside EMU, a further development of Europe's existing Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM).   After being unceremoniously ejected from the ERM in 1992 after a huge run on the pound, Britain will stress its view that countries cannot be forced to join "ERM II".   But Clarke and central bank governor Eddie George are also expected to assure partners that even if Britain stays out it will not seek competitive advantage by devaluing sterling.   George's deputy Howard Davies has stressed Britain will stick to tough anti-inflationary polices.   "Indeed our policy as an 'out' would be broadly the same as that of the European Central Bank," he said last week.   Another issue the Bank of England is likely to address at least informally at Dublin Castle is a growing row over plans for an interbank payments system once EMU has begun.   To the alarm of the British financial community, French and German banks are pushing for limits on the access banks in countries outside EMU can have to the system, known as TARGET.   But Davies this week demanded that all European nations should have equal access to market liquidity whether they sign up for EMU or not and said moves to prevent this may be illegal. 
18577 !C12 !CCAT !GCAT !GCRIM  A judge's decision to stop a second fraud trial of Kevin Maxwell, son of media tycoon Robert Maxwell who disappeared from his yacht in 1991, ends a mammoth legal battle over the collapse of the media empire.   Both Kevin and his brother Ian were cleared in January of conspiracy to defraud the Maxwell group pension funds.   But Britain's Serious Fraud Office (SFO) sought to bring charges in a second trial against Kevin.   Thursday's ruling finally ends five years of legal wrangling over money missing from Maxwell company pension funds after Robert Maxwell's death.   Here is a chronology of events:   Nov 5, 1991 - Maxwell, 68, dies after going overboard from his luxury yacht Lady Ghislaine off the Canary Islands.   Sons Kevin and Ian take over the debt-laden media empire.   Nov 18 - Britain's Serious Fraud Office launches investigation into $98 million loan by Swiss Bank Corp to a private Maxwell company named Adviser (188).   Dec 2 - Share trading in Maxwell Communication Corp (MCC) and Mirror Group Newspapers (MGN) suspended in London.   Dec 3 - Ian and Kevin Maxwell resign from boards of MGN and Maxwell Communication Corp.   MGN says it is probing reports of unauthorised loans from its pension fund.   Dec 4 - Serious Fraud Office starts probe into allegations of mismanagement at MGN pension fund.   Dec 6 - Fraud Squad detectives raid Maxwell headquarters.   Dec 9 - English High Court freezes Kevin Maxwell's personal assets and orders him and Ian to surrender their passports.   Liquidators to Bishopsgate Investment Management, the pension fund company, say they are suing Kevin Maxwell, alleging he fell short of his duties and standards of care as a director.   Dec 10 - Provisional liquidator Neil Cooper of Robson Rhodes says he has accounted for 400 million pounds ($623.5 million) in six Maxwell pension funds.   Around 327 million pounds is still missing.   Dec 11 - Leaked auditors report shows 970 million pounds in outstanding bank loans to Maxwell private companies.   Jan 13, 1992 - Kevin and Ian Maxwell refuse to answer questions in British parliament, claiming right to silence.   Jan 23 - Investigators allege Robert Maxwell moved money and assets around the world through web of companies.   Jan 29 - Appeals Court rules against Kevin Maxwell's claim of right to silence in answering questions from liquidators.   Feb 3 - House of Lords refuses appeal by Kevin Maxwell on his right-to-silence plea.   Liquidators schedule interviews.   Feb 20 - Provisional liquidator of Bishopsgate Investment Management says he safeguarded 237 million pounds of its assets out of a total 695 million pounds.   March 12 - Committee calls for Kevin and Ian to be charged with contempt of parliament for refusing to answer questions.   March 18 - Administrators uncover secret share purchases in MGN made on behalf of Maxwell private firms.   April 24 - Trustees of Maxwell-owned Headington pension plan freeze payments.   May 18 - Liquidators to Bishopsgate Investment Management say they are suing Ian Maxwell in connection with deals valued at more than 400 million pounds.   June 8 - London Stock Exchange officially de-lists MCC.   June 9 - Department of Trade and Industry launches probe into 245 million pound sale of shares in MGN in April 1991.   Social Security Secretary Peter Lilley announces 2.5 million pound fund to lend money to Maxwell pensioners whose payments have been cut.   June 10 - National Westminster Bank Plc asks English High Court to decide who owns the shares given as security two days after Robert Maxwell's death.   June 18 - Kevin and Ian Maxwell arrested and charged with conspiracy to defraud.   October 6 - Robert Bunn, former finance director of Robert Maxwell's private group of companies, arrested and charged.   Feb 10, 1995 - Trustees of Maxwell Communication Pension Plan reach out-of-court settlement for 276 million pounds.   May 31 - Fraud trial of Kevin and Ian Maxwell and two former company directors begins.   Aug 1 - Judge dismisses jury from returning verdict on fourth defendant, Robert Bunn, saying he is too ill to continue.   Jan 19 - Kevin and Ian Maxwell and other defendents acquitted.   Jan 26 - The Serious Fraud Office announces it will press ahead with further charges against Kevin Maxwell.   Sept 19 - Judge Justice Buckley halts further proceedings, saying any further trial "would be unfair, so unfair as to amount to an abuse of power of the court".   ($1=.6415 Pound) 
18578 !C12 !CCAT !GCAT !GCRIM  Kevin, Robert Maxwell's youngest son, had always dreamed of inheriting his father's empire and was regarded as a shrewd, cool and tough businessman.   But the dream and the wealth it brought carried a high price.   He was bullied by his father during Robert's lifetime and the media tycoon's legacy -- and ruined business empire -- has dominated Kevin's every waking hour following Robert's mysterious death at sea in November 1991.   Kevin, 37, twice faced fraud-related charges but left court on Thursday with his name cleared.   In January he and his brother Ian were found not guilty of conspiring to defraud Maxwell group pension funds after an eight-month trial.   On Thursday Kevin was told he would not have to face a second trial on charges of dishonestly using shares in a language company, Berlitz International, as collateral for loans.   A London High Court judge said he had decided to halt proceedings on the grounds that they "would be unfair, so unfair as to amount to an abuse of power of the court".   Kevin's ability was evident when, at the age of only 32, he was appointed chairman of Maxwell Communication Corporation (MCC), Robert's flagship.   He was a calm foil to his bombastic, explosive father -- a strategist while Robert enjoyed nothing more than making deals.   "Dad was a legend in his own lifetime.   There are very few of them and I think the myths surrounding him will continue to grow for many years," Kevin once said.   Tall and thin, Kevin acted and looked nothing like his heavily built, larger-than-life father.   But since he was a young boy, Kevin had aspired to follow in Robert Maxwell's footsteps.   "My childhood ambition from the age of 12 was to work with dad," he testified during his first fraud trial.   "I was in awe of him as a child and I was very frightened of him."   During his lifetime Robert Maxwell trusted Kevin enough to put him in charge of several of the family businesses including the New York Daily News newspaper and the Oxford United soccer club in England.   "Kevin was and is a finance man," a defence lawyer told the trial.   Peter Laister, a former non-executive director of MCC and a seasoned corporate chairman, described Kevin as "one of the most able young executives" he had ever met.   Witnesses at the trial said Kevin had basically taken over running his father's businesses by 1991, as Robert Maxwell eased away from corporate matters and sought new status as a statesman.   Bankers, accountants, auditors and lawyers said Robert maintained corporate power, but Kevin ran the day-to-day business and was their senior point of contact.   Kevin, Paris-born and Oxford educated, had his first real job in the family business in 1980 as a copy writer in the marketing and sales department of one of his father's companies.   In 1983 he was sent to the United States to launch a military and defence business but the enterprise ended badly.   "It finished with essentially my being fired by my father because he objected to my marriage to Pandora," Kevin said, referring to his wife and the mother of his five children.   Towards the end of 1984 he was asked to return to the family fold and accepted.   From 1985-1987 he was responsible for the publishing business.   "It was akin to being on a rocket," he said.   "It was tremendous, rapid expansion and growth at a tremendous scale and at a tremendous speed."   Kevin said his father, whom he described as a bully, used pension funds just like any other assets in his corporate empire -- as a source of cash to move from one company to another whenever he deemed necessary.   Robert Maxwell was the decision maker and risk taker, Kevin said, while he and his brother did what they were told.   "Ultimately the decisions were taken by him.   Our role was to implement the decisions that he gave us to deal with."   Witnesses at the trial agreed that Robert Maxwell was a domineering character, but they suggested Kevin also had some power and was far from timid.   Robert's body was found floating in the Atlantic in November 1991.   Kevin became Britain's biggest bankrupt in 1992 with debts of 406.8 million pounds ($616.1 million at current rates), after he lost a lawsuit filed by liquidators who were trying to recover missing pension funds.   He was released from bankruptcy in 1995. 
18579 !C12 !CCAT !GCAT !GCRIM  Kevin Maxwell, the son of media tycoon Robert Maxwell who disappeared from his yacht in 1991, will not face a second trial on a charge of fraud, a judge ruled on Thursday.   Judge John Buckley said a further trial "would be unfair, so unfair as to amount to an abuse of power of the court".   His decision effectively ended five years of controversy over hundreds of millions of pounds which were found missing from Maxwell company pension funds after Robert Maxwell's death.   In January, Kevin, his brother Ian Maxwell, and former Maxwell director Larry Trachtenberg were acquitted of conspiring to defraud pension funds after an eight-month, multi-million-pound trial.   Britain's Serious Fraud Office (SFO) sought to bring charges in a second trial against Kevin Maxwell, Trachtenberg, and two former Maxwell executives, Albert Fuller and Michael Stoney.   The judge on Thursday announced his decision to stay any further proceedings before reading out his judgment.   Kevin Maxwell, 37, had taken his case before the judge to argue that the impending second trial was "oppressive".   The decision to stay any further proceedings was a blow to the SFO, which came under fierce attack for failing to secure a conviction at the first trial.   Lawyers expressed surprise when the SFO said it wanted a second trial and many said the organisation was trying to salvage its own reputation.   Critics also said that cases of this kind should be decided by judges, since it was clear a jury could not grasp the financial complexities involved.   The investigation and first trial set the record for the most expensive criminal case in Britain this century with final costs estimated at around 30 million pounds ($46 million).   Kevin Maxwell, Trachtenberg and Fuller were then charged with dishonestly using shares in language firm Berlitz International as collateral for loans while Stoney faced charges of dishonestly falsifying accounts.   Kevin became Britain's biggest bankrupt in 1992 with debts of 406.8 million pounds ($631 million at current rates) after he lost a lawsuit filed by liquidators who were trying to recover missing pension funds.   He was released from bankruptcy in 1995.   Kevin -- whose overrriding ambition in life had been to follow in his father's footsteps -- always denied conspiring to defraud by misusing pension fund money to prop up the indebted private Maxwell companies.   He said his father, whom he described as as bully, used pension funds just like any other assets in his corporate empire -- as a source of cash to be moved from one company to another whenever he deemed necessary.   Kevin told the first trial that he and his brother had merely obeyed their fathers' orders.   Witnesses at the first trial said Kevin had basically taken over running his father's businesses by 1991 as Robert Maxwell eased away from corporate matters and sought new status as a statesman.   Robert Maxwell's body was found after he disappeared off his yacht in the Atlantic Ocean near the Canary Islands in November 1991. 
18580 !C24 !C42 !CCAT !E41 !ECAT !GCAT !GJOB  British supermarket chain William Morrison will invest over 100 million pounds ($156 million) in new store openings this year, creating some 3,200 full and part-time jobs, finance director Martin Ackroyd told Reuters.   The new stores will be opened during 1997 at Cheadle Heath, north west England, Sunderland, north east England, Northampton and Ecclesfield in the Midlands, the company said in a statement.   "These are over the next 12 months...it will be over 100 million stg," Ackroyd said in a telephone interview.   He added the company intended opening more stores in 1998.   The company said there would also be major refurbishments at eight of its existing stores, with further work planned for several other locations next year.   Morrison had 81 stores with a total retail space of 2.9 million square feet at August 4, 1996 and operates 60 petrol stations.   In a statement with half year results, chairman Ken Morrison said the period was the first time for 20 years that the company had no new store openings.   Morrison turned in an eight percent rise in first half pretax profits to 55.2 million stg and paid out a dividend of 0.325 pence per share, up from 0.275 pence.   -- London Newsroom +44 171 542 7717 ($1=.6415 Pound) 
18581 !E12 !ECAT !G15 !G151 !G154 !GCAT !GPOL  The chairman of Britain's ruling Conservatives on Thursday denied that the party was at war over Europe, but refused invitations to rule out a change in its stance on a single currency.   Brian Mawhinney was asked at a news conference whether a letter in Thursday's Independent newspaper from six elder statesmen of the party which contrasted with a speech by Foreign Secretary Malcolm Rifkind signalled fresh internal strife.   "I don't recognise your description of the Conservative Party," he told his questioner.    "Mr Rifkind and the grandees as you call them were both reaffirming and being supportive of the government's position."   In a speech on Wednesday in Zurich, Rifkind said the single currency would split the EU in two for the foreseeable future, and called on other EU states not to push forward with integration in advance of public opinion.   But in their letter, the six elder statesmen, including former Prime Minister Edward Heath and three former foreign secretaries, warned: "For us now to rule out British membership of a single currency would be to betray our national interest."    Mawhinney was asked repeatedly at the news conference whether the Conservatives might rule out joining a single currency in advance of the forthcoming general election, which must be held by next May.   He declined to answer "no" although he pointed to a policy document published earlier this year.   This said the party planned to make up its mind on a single currency when all the details of it had been hammered out, and would offer a referendum if the government believed it was in Britain's interests to abandon sterling.   "The policy of the government is absolutely clear," he said.   -- London Newsroom +44 171 5427767 
18582 !C21 !CCAT !GCAT !GWEA !M14 !M141 !MCAT  Canada's Prairies were free of frost on Thursday morning and were forecast to see rain and normal high temperatures, Environment Canada said.   Calgary was the coldest point on the Prairies with an overnight low of 4.0 Celsius with fog and no chance of frost, meteorologist Phil Wright said.   Alberta should see clouds, rain and highs of 13 to 16 Celsius.   Saskatchewan should see scattered showers and highs of 15 to 18 Celsius.   Manitoba should see some rain, highs of 18 to 22 Celsius.   -- Gilbert Le Gras 204 947 3548 
18583 !GCAT !GVIO  Two Israeli soldiers were killed and two wounded in an ambush by Hizbollah guerrillas on their patrol in south Lebanon on Thursday, pro-Israeli militia sources said.   It was the worst attack against Israeli troops in south Lebanon since five soldiers were killed and six wounded in a Hizbollah attack in the zone on June 10.   Hizbollah, which is fighting to oust Israeli troops from a 15-km (nine-mile) -deep border occupation zone, said its fighters clashed with an Israeli force trying to advance out of the zone and into the Iqlim al-Toufah highlands near Sojoud.   The pro-Israeli South Lebanon Army sources said Moslem guerrillas fired machineguns and anti-tank rockets on the Israeli patrol on the edge of the zone.   In retaliation for the ambush, Israeli jets and artillery bombarded Hizbollah guerrilla targets and villages controlled by the group in mountainous land north of the zone.   Witnesses said Israeli jets fired about 10 rockets in three raids into Iqlim al-Toufah, a mountain used by Hizbollah (Party of God) forces.   Hizbollah fighters responded with mortar bombs into the zone and fired at least two shoulder-held SAM-7 rockets at the attacking jets.   Thursday's casualties were the first Israeli deaths since August 29, when one soldier was killed and several were wounded in a Hizbollah ambush in the zone.   Hizbollah guerrillas have killed 20 Israeli soldiers this year. 
18584 !GCAT !GPOL !GVIO  Jewish settlers on Thursday briefly occupied an East Jerusalem house they said they had bought from its Arab owners, igniting fresh violence in the holy city, witnesses and police said.   Witnesses said guards hired by the Ateret Cohanim settlement group, which claimed to have bought the house for $5 million, broke into the house at dawn.   Israeli police evicted the guards and locked the house after the settlers failed to show documents proving they had bought the building, situated on the main Nablus road opposite the U.S. Consulate, a police spokesman said.   "We asked for documents from the guards of Ateret Cohanim, but they didn't have any in their possession," the spokesman Shmulik Ben-Ruby said.   "We cleared out the house and turned the sides to court," he said.   No Ateret Cohanim spokesman was immediately available to comment.   The group has championed settling Jews in the Arab half of Jerusalem which Israel occupied in the 1967 Middle East war and annexed shortly after.   Palestinians say Ateret Cohanim has used pressure to buy houses from Arabs, establishing footholds for Jews in the city.   Witnesses said the guards struck Issam Rashed, whose family owns half of the house, when he tried to force his way into the building.   Rashed was wounded in the head and taken to hospital.   The Palestinian Information Ministry condemned the attempted takeover as "irresponsible".   "We strongly condemn this irresponsible act and hold the Israeli government fully responsible for such crimes," a statement issued by the ministry said.   Palestinians said the house, shared by two Arab families from Jerusalem, had been rented out to an expatriate Palestinian now living in Sweden who had used it as a weight-lifting club.   Both families denied selling the property.   Kamal Rashed, one of the owners, said Arab middlemen acting on behalf of the settlers had offered up to $1 million for the property.   "We rejected all the offers and we have no intention of selling the house," said the 60-year-old barber.   Jerusalem is at the centre of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.   Israel regards the city as its capital, while Palestinians want the eastern half to be the capital of a future independent state.   Under an interim peace deal signed in 1993, Israel and the PLO are to discuss the fate of Jerusalem during negotiations, now stalled, on a final peace settlement. 
18585 !GCAT !GDIP !GVIO  Iraqi Kurdish leader Massoud Barzani headed back to Iraq on Thursday after Washington warned him against an alliance with Baghdad that helped his forces seize control of northern Iraq from a rival faction last week.   Barzani, leader of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), boarded a Turkish military helicopter in the southeastern city of Diyarbakir bound for the Habur border crossing, witnesses said.   Barzani and senior U.S. diplomat Robert Pelletreau held talks on Wednesday at a secret location in Ankara.   It was Barzani's first meeting with Washington since he joined with Iraqi forces to capture a key Kurdish city from a rival group last month, undermining U.S. efforts to contain President Saddam Hussein.   Details of the talks were thin.   State Department spokesman Nicholas Burns said the meeting had been "very productive" and Barzani had been asked to stay clear of Saddam from now on.   "We don't see that the Iraqi Kurds can profit in the long term from an association with Saddam Hussein.   In fact on the contrary we think that such a relationship would be detrimental," Burns said on Wednesday.   "We hope very much that Mr Barzani's alliance with Iraq is a one-shot deal," he said.   Barzani says he has not received further aid from Saddam and denies giving Baghdad anything in return its military help.   "We do not have an agreement with the Iraqi government.   Our policy is very apparent on this," KDP spokesman Dilshad Miran told Reuters from London.   "That has always been our position and I'm sure the message must have been relayed to the Americans," he said.   Burns said the United States looked forward to further contacts with Barzani in the near future.   It was also in touch with rival faction leader, Jalal Talabani of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) to try to arrange a meeting with him.   Washington fired missiles at Iraqi targets in response to Baghdad's attacks on PUK forces in the city of Arbil on August 31 but later pulled back military, aid and intelligence operations from the north in fear of Saddam's increased power there.   Barzani has been at the forefront of the decades-old Kurdish fight for autonomy from Baghdad which has often singled out his powerful clan for executions and internal exile.   The KDP accuses the United States of failing to stop Kurdish infighting that gave Baghdad an opening into northern Iraq, out of Saddam's hands since shortly after the 1991 Gulf War.   The Kurdish feud shattered a ceasefire brokered by Washington last year.   Barzani's dealings with Saddam cast doubts on the future of a U.S.-led air force that shields the Kurds from Baghdad.   But his militia urged the West not to abandon northern Iraq.   "We have said that we need the protection of American forces and that the aid programme should continue in northern Iraq," Miran said.   A Turkey-based European Union representative is to meet the Kurdish warlord in northern Iraq soon to seek guarantees that aid agencies will not suffer from the new power balance, EU officials said.   Diplomats say the number of Kurds and their relatives working for EU-subsidised aid agencies who have asked to flee the region in recent weeks reaches into the thousands. 
18586 !GCAT !GVIO  Israeli warplanes launched three air raids against Hizbollah guerrilla targets in south Lebanon on Thursday after four Israeli soldiers were wounded in a guerrilla ambush, witnesses said.   They said the jets fired several rockets in two back-to-back bombing runs into hills along the Iqlim al-Toufah ridge in the first of three strikes.   Iqlim al-Toufah is controlled by pro-Iranian Hizbollah (Party of God) guerrillas.   The air raids followed a Hizbollah ambush against an Israeli patrol in which four Israeli soldiers were wounded in the Jewish state's south Lebanon occupation zone, pro-Israeli militia sources said.   The guerrillas fired machineguns and anti-tank rockets from close range at the patrol between the villages of Rihane and Sojoud on the edge of the strip, the South Lebanon Army militia sources said.   Other guerrillas fired a hail of mortar bombs at the patrol before the attack began, they said.   Hizbollah said in a statement in Beirut that its fighters clashed with an Israeli force trying to advance out of the border buffer zone and into the Iqlim al-Toufah highlands near Sojoud.   After the ambush, Israeli gunners launched heavy artillery fire unto Hizbollah-controlled hills and villages facing the zone, witnesses and SLA sources said.   "The Israeli forces have fired about 700 to 800 shells of all calibres.   At least 50 shells slammed inside the villages of Ain Bouswar and Jba'a. Shelling was also concentrated on the Ain Bouswar-Jarjouh road," one witness near Iqlim al-Toufah said.   A Hizbollah spokesman in Beirut said one civilian woman was wounded in the shelling on Jba'a and charged Israel with breaching the U.S.-brokered ceasefire agreement that ended a 17-day Israeli blitz on Lebanon in April.   There was no independent confirmation of the report.   Some 200 Lebanese, mostly civilians, were killed in the bloody 17-day blitz, dubbed "Operation Grapes of Wrath", launched against Hizbollah guerrillas after tit-for-tat bombardments of civilian areas by the two sides.   The ceasefire agreement that ended the fighting barred both sides from targeting civilian areas but allowed guerrilla raids on Israeli forces in south Lebanon and granted both side the right to self-defence. 
18587 !GCAT !GCRIM !GVIO  Egyptian police on Thursday shot dead four suspected Moslem militants during a raid on mountainous areas in the southern province of Assiut, security sources said.   They said police believe the militants had taken part in recent attacks in the area and had used caves in the mountain as hideouts.   Security officials in Assiut believe the militants belonged to al-Gama'a al-Islamiya (Islamic Group), which is waging a low-level guerrilla war in the south as part of its anti-government campaign.   More than 1,000 people, mainly police and militants, have been killed in Egypt since armed Islamists launched a campaign in 1992 to overthrow the government and set up a strict Islamic state. 
18588 !GCAT !GPOL  Israel's military administration has approved plans to build about 2,000 new homes in Jewish settlements in occupied West Bank lands, a settler spokeswoman said on Thursday.   The decision, which was immediately condemned by Palestinian and Israeli peace activists, still needs approval from Defence Minister Yitzhak Mordechai.   "This is the final burial of the hope for peace," Peace Now spokesman Alon Arnon said of the decision.   "The Israeli government has now declared its position towards the peace process," he told Reuters.   The announcement came a day after it emerged that Mordechai has already given the go-ahead for another plan to expand a Jewish settlement in the West Bank by 1,800 units.   "The...administration has approved 15 projects amounting to some 2,000 housing units in Judea and Samaria (the West Bank)," a spokeswoman for the Yesha Jewish Settler Council told Reuters.   She said the projects would be privately funded.   A defence ministry official declined comment.   The Palestinian Information Ministry said the decision was tantamount to a "declaration of war against Palestinian land" and said that peace and settlements were incompatible.   "We address the Palestinian masses to firmly confront this fierce settling campaign and warn the Netanyahu government with the dangerous consequences of its current policy which inevitably generates more violence," the ministry said in a statement.   Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who ousted Nobel peace laureate Shimon Peres in May elections, in August won cabinet approval to overturn the previous government's building freeze in the West Bank.   Palestinians want to establish an independent state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, occupied by Israel in the 1967 Middle East war.   They view the 130,000 Jews scattered in settlement among nearly two million Palestinians as an obstacle to peace. 
18589 !GCAT !GPOL  Saudi dissident Mohammad al-Masari said in an interview released on Thursday that Saudi Arabia might benefit from a military dictatorship as a temporary stage between corrupt monarchy and constitutional government.   "Military dictatorships are not generally a positive thing, but in Saudi Arabia's case it might be a necessary transitional period.   The new generation of army officers are reform-minded... It would be the middle classes' day," he told the regional weekly newspaper the Middle East Times.   The newspaper had planned to print the interview in this week's edition but Egyptian government censors said in advance they would not let the edition into the country.   The newspaper made a copy of the interview available to Reuters.   Masari, head of the Committee for the Defence of Legitimate Rights in exile in London, has achieved fame as an irritant in Saudi-British relations.   The British government decided to deport him to Dominica but the courts overruled the decision.   In the interview he said he saw no prospect of the Saudi royal family reforming itself and its best bet was for the dominant Sudairi group to let Crown Prince Abdullah bin Abdul-Aziz succeed King Fahd, who has been seriously ill.   The seven Sudairis, sons of one wife of the late king Abdul-Aziz Bin Saud, include King Fahd, Defence Minister Prince Sultan and five other brothers.   Abdullah is their half-brother.   "There's no capability for reform, no strong character to stop the princes from corruption.   You'd need someone to line tens of them up against the wall and shoot them, they're so used to spending that amount of money," he said.   "It would be smart for the Sudairis to bring in Abdullah.   I hope they don't do it," he added.   "If Fahd dies, the situation may explode.   You may see internecine war in the next two years.   The other scenario, if things go smoothly, is that we would be able to make a real mass movement, maybe at the beginning of the next century," he said.   Masari, an Islamist academic, has conducted his campaign against the Saudi family mainly by bombarding the kingdom with subversive faxed messages but he said he had cut the faxes down to batches of 750 from 2,000 at a time.   "We've decided that 750 is enough to saturate.   We send them to government offices, Saudi Arabian airlines, which employ a number of dynamic young people, hospitals -- often they're not under supervision," he said.   "The level of popular disgust is massive.   Right now our support is passive, the antipathy is passive.   They're neither ready nor capable of mass action.   This is changing," he added. 
18590 !GCAT !GDEF !GDIP  The United States moved a second aircraft carrier into the Gulf and flew troop reinforcements into Kuwait on Thursday as part of its military buildup to counter any threat from Iraq.   The Enterprise turned into the Strait of Hormuz to join another carrier battle group, U.S. Navy spokesman Commander T. McCreary said.   The U.S. Navy now has seven ships in the region capable of firing Tomahawk cruise missiles.   A civilian aircraft carrying over 200 U.S. soldiers landed in Kuwait at about 2 p.m. (1100 GMT) after a long flight from Fort Hood, Texas, U.S. Army Captain Tim Raymond told reporters.   The troops from the U.S. Army 1st Cavalry Division were the first of 3,500 ordered to Kuwait to help deter potential trouble from Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.   The buildup is the latest of several mounted by Western forces in the region since the 1991 Gulf War ended Iraq's brief occupation of Kuwait.   The fresh tension with Iraq started in August when Baghdad's forces intervened to help a Kurdish faction in northern Iraq.   Washington retaliated by firing 44 cruise missiles at air defence targets in south Iraq on September 3 and 4.   United Nations observers said some of the missiles violated the terms of a U.N.-created demilitarised zone on the Iraq-Kuwait border.   Raymond said that under a well rehearsed procedure the troops would quickly deploy at Adera Range, a desert exercise area about 40 km (25 miles) from the Iraqi border.   "The troops hit the ground running, draw equipment and deploy in the desert," said Raymond, adding the troops were equipped with gas masks for protection against poison gas.   "They don't stop until they're in the desert and in secure positions."   Two more flights are expected to take 700 troops from Texas early on Thursday.   The 3,500 U.S. troops will reinforce 1,200 already here.   The buildup also includes the deployment in Kuwait of eight Stealth bombers, over 20 other U.S. warplanes and Patriot missiles and B-52 bombers on the Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia.   The formal mission of the Fort Hood troops is to provide training for Kuwaiti forces, but officials said they could be used in any new military action against Iraq.   Like the USS Carl Vinson already in northern Gulf waters, the Enterprise carries 55 combat aircraft plus 20 helicopters and fixed-wing warplanes including electronic warfare aircraft.   The Enterprise's complement includes F-14 fighters recently modified to deliver laser-guided bombs.   It is accompanied by a battle group including a submarine and other support ships.   The Enterprise was ordered from the Adriatic Sea, where it was part of the U.S. Sixth Fleet, last weekend. 
18591 !GCAT  Iran switches to winter time at midnight (1930 GMT) on Friday, September 20, turning the clocks back by one hour, Tehran radio said on Thursday.   Iranian time will then be three hours and 30 minutes ahead of GMT. 
18592 !GCAT !GPOL !GVOTE  Israel's Shimon Peres, who won the Nobel peace prize but lost five elections, says he won't run for prime minister in the next century after a political career spanning half of this one.   The 73-year-old Labour party leader took himself out of the next scheduled campaign in the year 2000 during a late-night television interview.   But Peres, an architect of accords with the PLO, said he would never abandon the battle for peace.   "I am not going to propose my candidacy for prime ministership in the year 2000 but I am going to remain very active in the political arena in support of peace," he told Reuters on Thursday.   "I am not resigning, I am not running away and I shall be very active in that direction," said Peres, groomed for leadership half a century ago by Israel's founding father David Ben-Gurion.   Peres remains leader of Israel's opposition until Labour party elections scheduled for next year.   In the Israel Television interview on Wednesday night, he said he would not stand again for the party leadership.   Speculation about a successor centred on Ehud Barak, a former army chief and protege of slain Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, who wants the job, and on trade-union reformer Haim Ramon, who has yet to say whether he will seek it.   Peres, who has so far avoided stating a preference, was meeting both men on Thursday.   Some still expect Peres to be drafted by the party faithful to lead Labour again or to take his party into a unity government with Likud party leader Benjamin Netanyahu, who ousted Peres in elections in May.   "Sooner or later masses of the members will rise and say: We can't let Shimon Peres go.   Not for his sake, for the sake of peace," columnist Nahum Barnea wrote in the leading tabloid Yedioth Ahronoth.   The announcement relieves Peres of growing pressure to step aside, making him appear free of ambition while allowing him to go on pulling strings in the party.   Asked why he chose to make the announcement now, Peres told Reuters: "Because they started to tell stories which are totally unfounded.   I am not seeking power.   I am supporting peace."   Peres failed five times -- in 1977, 1981, 1984, 1987 and 1996 -- to win an election outright.   In the last election he lost to Netanyahu by just 30,000 votes.   Four Islamic suicide bombings that killed 59 people over nine days in February and March sent Peres's popularity plummeting.   Israelis blamed him for thinking he could make peace with Palestinians.   He has twice served as prime minister -- from 1984 to 1986 as part of a power-sharing arrangement with Likud, the upshot of inconclusive elections, and again for seven months following Rabin's assassination by a right-wing Jew last November.   Peres did not rule out another unity government with Netanyahu despite their differences over how best to make peace with the Arabs.   "It doesn't matter where we shall be active...The only consideration will be what is good or what is bad for the peace momentum," he said.   In a Reuters interview in August, Peres said Sonia, his wife of 51 years, had wanted him out of politics for a long time.   "I have to convince her that I am doing a service, that I don't do it because, you know, I am seeking power, or seeking publicity, and it's not simple for her -- not simple," he said. 
18593 !GCAT !GCRIM !GVIO  An Egyptian state security court sentenced eight Moslem militants on Thursday to prison terms ranging from one year to life for massacring 13 Christians in 1992 at the start of an anti-government campaign.   The court in the southern province of Assiut acquitted four men.   Five were sentenced to life in prison with hard labour, one to five years, and two to one year with hard labour.   Thirteen Christians and one Moslem were killed when the militants launched an attack on Christians in two villages in the Nile valley in May 1992.   The convicted men belong to the Gama'a al-Islamiya (Islamic Group), which launched a bloody campaign in 1992 to overthrow the Egyptian government and set up a strict Islamic state.   The group has since targeted ministers, policemen, police informers, Christians and sometimes tourists.   More than 1,000 people have died in political violence in Egypt since militants took up arms. 
18594 !GCAT !GVIO  Israeli jets and artillery bombarded Hizbollah guerrilla targets and villages which the group controls in south Lebanon after four Israeli soldiers were wounded in an ambush on Thursday, witnesses said.   The fighting on the last active Arab-Israeli frontline coincided with a visit to the region by U.S. peace envoy Dennis Ross to help jump-start stalled Middle East peace talks.   The witnesses said Israeli jets fired about 10 rockets in three raids into Iqlim al-Toufah -- rugged mountainland used by pro-Iranian Hizbollah (Party of God) guerrillas to attack Israeli forces occupying a south Lebanon border zone.   The Israeli army comfirmed two air strikes, saying that among the targets hit in Jabal Safi in Iqlim al-Toufah some "served as firing positions for terrorists".   "All planes returned safely to base", it added.   The air raids and concurrent artillery shelling came shortly after Hizbollah guerrillas ambushed an Israeli patrol in the zone, wounding four soldiers, pro-Israeli militia sources said.   Immediately after the ambush, Israeli gunners opened up with heavy artillery fire for hours into Hizbollah-controlled hills and villages in Iqlim al-Toufah, witnesses and SLA sources said.   "The Israeli forces have fired about 700 to 800 shells of all calibres.   At least 50 shells slammed inside the villages of Ain Bouswar and Jba'a. Shelling was also concentrated on the Ain Bouswar-Jarjouh road," one witness near Iqlim al-Toufah said.   "The shelling is continuing but with less intensity than before," a pro-Israeli militia source said later, about an hour after the last raid at about 2 p.m. (1100 GMT).   Hizbollah fighters responded with mortar bombs into the zone and fired at least two shoulder-held SAM-7 rockets at the attacking jets, which targeted mainly rugged mountain hideouts and roads used by the Shi'ite Moslem fighters.   A Hizbollah spokesman in Beirut said a civilian woman was wounded in the Israeli shelling on Jba'a, charging that this was a breach of the U.S.-brokered ceasefire agreement that ended a 17-day Israeli blitz on Lebanon in April.   Security sources said a woman was wounded in Jba'a from flying debris caused by an exploding shell.   A senior foreign ministry official in Beirut told Reuters that Lebanon was planning to file a complaint over the Israeli shelling of civilian areas to a five-nation committee monitoring the ceasefire agreement in south Lebanon.   In the ambush, the guerrillas fired machineguns and anti-tank rockets from close range at the patrol between the villages of Rihane and Sojoud, the South Lebanon Army (SLA) militia sources said.   Other guerrillas fired a hail of mortar bombs at the patrol before the attack began, they added.   Hizbollah said in a statement earlier its fighters clashed with an Israeli force trying to advance out of the border zone and into the Iqlim al-Toufah highlands near Sojoud.   Thursday's fighting came a day after Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri said increased Israeli military action in south Lebanon was unlikely.   Some 200 Lebanese, mostly civilians, were killed in Israel's bloody 17-day blitz -- dubbed "Operation Grapes of Wrath" -- against Hizbollah guerrillas after tit-for-tat bombardments of civilian areas by the two sides.   The ceasefire agreement barred both sides from targeting civilian areas but allowed guerrilla raids on Israeli forces in south Lebanon and granted both sides the right to self-defence.   Thursday's Israeli casualties were the first since August 29, when one soldier was killed in a Hizbollah ambush.   Hizbollah guerrillas, who are fighting to oust the Israelis from south Lebanon, have killed 18 Israeli soldiers this year. 
18595 !GCAT !GDIP !GVIO  Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sought on Thursday to calm fears of a clash with Damascus over Syrian troop movements in Lebanon.   But shortly after Netanyahu met U.S. peace envoy Dennis Ross Israeli warplanes struck three Hizbollah guerrilla targets in south Lebanon in response to the wounding of four Israeli soldiers in an ambush, witnesses said.   "Calming messages were sent by one side to the other and I think that it's important that in this case the United States assisted," Netanyahu told reporters before meeting Ross.   "For now, things are under control," Netanyahu said.   At a news conference after the meeting, Netanyahu said he and Ross had discussed ways to revive peace talks with Damascus and the Palestinians.   Syria has redeployed up to 12,000 troops in Lebanon, moving some to within striking distance of a key Israeli position on the occupied Golan Heights, causing war jitters in the Jewish state.   Syrian President Hafez al-Assad, the main power broker in Lebanon, began the redeployment after Netanyahu visited south Lebanon last month and said Hizbollah attacks against Israeli soldiers were "not good for Syria".   Netanyahu had said Syria was trying to pressure Israel into unilateral concessions on the Golan, a strategic plateau Israel seized in the 1967 Middle East war.   Syria's official press on Wednesday said Israel's reaction to the redeployment was "taking the shape of a military threat."   Syria wants back all of the Golan in return for peace with Israel.   The two countries have failed in five years of sporadic peace talks to agree.   In Lebanon, Israeli aircraft fired rockets in three raids on hills along the Iqlim al-Toufah ridge, witnesses said.   The ridge is controlled by pro-Iranian Hizbollah (Party of God) guerrillas.   The raids followed a Hizbollah ambush against an Israeli patrol in which four Israeli soldiers were wounded in the Jewish state's south Lebanon occupation zone, pro-Israeli militia sources said.   "We are looking at developments on the ground, there's not been any new movement in recent days," Netanyahu told the news conference, called ahead of his visit next week to London, Paris and Bonn.   "We are very careful not to take any action that could escalate matters," he said.   "The crucial question right now is what is Syria's intention vis-a-vis the talks.   We are in any case watching the situation, we are proceeding with the Palestinians, it is now up to President Assad if he is interested or not interested in resuming peace talks," he added.   Netanyahu, who ousted the centre-left Labour government of Shimon Peres in May, has angered Arab peace partners by rejecting the land-for-peace formula which provided the basis for previous talks.   "I think there is a real effort on the part of Israel and the United States to resume the peace talks.   I don't think anyone seriously expected the new Israeli government to assume the positions of the previous Israeli government especially since they were never cemented in written contracts," Netanyahu said of Labour's understandings on a Golan withdrawal.   He said, however, Israel was commited to the self-rule agreement Labour signed with the Palestinians.   Palestinians fear Netanyahu wants to rewrite parts of the accord, citing as evidence his delay in redeploying Israeli troops in the West Bank town of Hebron as already agreed.   "There is, I think, a serious engagement that has begun on the outstaninding issues, including Hebron.   We intend to resolve all of these," Netanyahu added. 
18596 !GCAT !GDEF !GDIP  A first planeload of U.S. troop reinforcements landed in Kuwait on Thursday to boost an American military buildup aimed at deterring former occupier Iraq.   A civilian aircraft carrying over 200 soldiers landed at about 2 p.m. (1100 GMT), around two hours ahead of schedule, after a long flight from Fort Hood, Texas, U.S. Army Captain Tim Raymond told reporters.   The troops from the U.S. Army's 1st Cavalry Division were the first of 3,500 ordered to Kuwait at the weekend to strengthen a show of military might to help prevent any potential trouble from Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.   Raymond added that under a well rehearsed procedure the troops would immediately deploy at Adera Range, a desert exercise area about 40 km (25 miles) from the Iraqi border.   "The troops hit the ground running, draw equipment and deploy in the desert," said Raymond, adding the troops were equipped with gas masks for protection against poison gas.   Two more flights are expected to take 700 troops from Texas early on Thursday.   The formal mission of the Fort Hood troops is to provide training for Kuwaiti forces, but officials said they could be used in any new military action against Iraq.   About 1,200 ground troops were already in Kuwait before the latest Gulf tension began and they have stayed in place.   U.S. defence officials have said a C-5 military cargo plane will follow with 73 soldiers and key satellite equipment and two flights early on Thursday would take 700 more troops.   The Iraq crisis started in August when Baghdad's forces intervened to help a Kurdish faction in northern Iraq.   Washington retaliated by firing 44 cruise missiles at air defence targets in south Iraq on September 3 and 4.   United Nations observers said some of the missiles violated the terms of a U.N.-created demilitarised zone on the Iraq-Kuwait border. 
18597 !GCAT !GCRIM !GDIP  A Lebanese man convicted of bombing a Hizbollah stronghold on behalf of Israel's intelligence agency will be executed by firing squad on Saturday, officials said on Thursday.   They said President Elias Hrawi rejected an appeal for amnesty by Ahmad Hallaq, sentenced to death by Lebanon's military court on June 19 for a 1994 bombing in Beirut that killed three people.   Prosecutor-General Judge Adnan Addoum said in a statement: "Execution by a firing squad of the Lebanese citizen Ahmad Abdel-Badih Hallaq...will take place in Roumieh prison at 4 a.m. (0100 GMT) on Saturday September 21".   The execution will be Lebanon's first since January 1995.   The military court, which rejected Hallaq's appeal last July, said he was instructed by Israel's Mossad intelligence agency to carry out the bombing that killed Hizbollah security official Fouad Moughneyeh and two other members of the pro-Iranian group in southern Beirut.   A second man, Tawfiq Nasser, was sentenced to death in absentia last year for his part in the bombing but was retried after surrendering to authorities and given 10 years of hard labour.   The court sentenced Hallaq's wife Hanan Yassin and a Palestinian friend Wafiq Nasser last year to 15 years in jail.   Two other Lebanese defendants tried in abstentia were given life sentences and another man was acquitted. 
18598 !GCAT !GDEF !GDIP  A first planeload of U.S. troop reinforcements landed in Kuwait on Thursday, a U.S. military spokesman said.   The aircraft carrying more than 200 soldiers landed at a Kuwaiti airport at about 2 p.m. (1100 GMT) after a long flight from Fort Hood, Texas, U.S. Army Captain Tim Raymond told reporters.    The troops were the first of more than 3,000 soldiers being sent to Kuwait to help deter any possibility of military action by Iraqi President Saddam Hussein against oil-rich Gulf Arab states.   The troops from the 1st Cavalry Division would go in buses to Camp Doha military storage facility north of Kuwait City, draw their equipment and then deploy in the desert, U.S. officials said.   Two more flights are expected to take 700 troops from Texas early on Thursday.   The formal mission of the Fort Hood troops is to provide training for Kuwaiti forces, but officials said they could be used in any new military action against Iraq.   About 1,200 ground troops were already in Kuwait before the latest Gulf crisis began and they have stayed in place. 
18599 !GCAT !GDIP !GVIO  Iran has denied a charge by Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak that Tehran was involved in the assassination attempt against him in Addis Ababa last year.   The Iranian news agency IRNA quoted foreign ministry spokesman Mahmoud Mohammadi as saying on Wednesday: "Such allegations by heads of states simply suggest the unpopularity of governments...and unpopularity of those heads of state who try to draw attention away from the situation at home."   In an interview published on Wednesday, Mubarak said both Sudan and Iran took part in the plot to assassinate him in the Ethiopian capital in June 1995.   "There is information, the source for which is the confessions of the terrorists who were arrested.   They confessed that Iran was involved and that it helped Sudan organise this operation," Mubarak told the London-based newspaper al-Hayat.   Egypt, fighting a low-level guerrilla war against Moslem militants seeking to oust Mubarak and impose an Islamic state, has often accused Iran of trying to export its 1979 Islamic revolution to other regional states.   Iran has denied it. 
18600 !GCAT !GDIP  Iraq's official press on Thursday said the United States was trying to use the law of the jungle against Baghdad when it launched its recent missile strikes.   The official al-Thawra said:"The world should bemoan its civilisation ... in order that the law of the jungle would control the fate of humanity ... America is trying to impose that logic (the law of the jungle) by force and quarrelsomeness which has no boundaries in order to achieve its selfish and illegitimate interests."   "The U.S. with such policy (against Iraq) has become just like a wild monster committing destruction and sabotage wherever it goes," the paper said.   Thawra also lambasted the United States for statements that Washington was determined to do everything possible to secure the safety of its pilots patrolling areas off-limits to Iraqi aircraft in Iraq's south and north.   "America wants its planes and pilots to violate our airspace while we clap our hands for them ... as if they are flying over one of their (U.S.) states," the paper said.   Iraq said after the U.S. strikes it did not recognise the no-fly zones and would shoot down any foreign warplanes flying over it.   It later backed down on the threat, saying that it would not shoot at U.S. planes.   The U.S. fired 44 cruise missiles against air defence units in southern Iraq on September 3 and 4 as punishment for Baghdad helping the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) led by Massoud Barzani to fight against its rival the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK).   Barzani is now ruling much of Iraq's Kurdistan.   U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Robert Pelletreau urged Barzani at a meeting in Ankara on Wednesday to drop his alliance with Baghdad and make peace with the rival Kurdish faction.   There has been no mention of that meeting by Baghdad's newspapers, other media or officials   In another commentary the paper described the U.S. missile strike against Iraq as " a great loss for the American administration."   Thawra said: "(U.S. President Bill) Clinton's failed adventure is rather foolish, cowardly and shortsighted." 
18601 !GCAT !GPOL  Jewish settlers on Thursday entered an East Jerusalem house they said they had bought from its Arab owners, igniting fresh violence in the holy city, witnesses and police said.   Witnesses said guards hired by the Ateret Cohanim settlement group, which claimed to have bought the house for $5 million, broke into the house at dawn.   They later hit an Arab man who tried to force his way in, saying he still owned the building situated on the main Nablus road opposite the U.S. Consulate.   The man was wounded in the head and taken to hospital.   Police detained the guards to check the legal basis for the house takeover.   Israel's news agency Itim said police evicted the guards for lack of documents to support a claim to the house.   No police spokesman was immediately available to confirm the report.   No spokesman was immediately available either for Ateret Cohanim, a group that champions settling Jews in the Arab half of Jerusalem which Israel occupied in the 1967 Middle East war and annexed shortly after.   Palestinians say Ateret Cohanim has used pressure to buy houses from Palestinians, establishing footholds for Jews in the city.   Palestinians said the house, shared by two Arab families from Jerusalem, had been rented out to an expatriate Palestinian now living in Sweden.   Both families denied selling the property.   Kamal Rashed, one of the owners, said Arab middlemen acting on behalf of the settlers had offered up to $1 million for the property.   "We rejected all the offers and we have no intention of selling the house," said the 60-year-old barber.   Jerusalem is at the centre of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.   Israel regards the city as its capital, while Palestinians want the eastern half to be the capital of a future independent state.   Under an interim peace deal signed in 1993, Israel and the PLO are supposed to discuss the fate of Jerusalem during negotiations, now stalled, on a final peace settlement. 
18602 !GCAT !GVIO  Tension between the United States and Iraq is subsiding and Washington sees no immediate ground threat to oil-rich Kuwait from its Gulf War foe.   So why are American forces still pouring into the Gulf?   U.S. officials say the show of military muscle is a vivid reminder to Iraqi President Saddam Hussein that Washington remains committed to the defence of its Gulf Arab friends.   Without firing a shot, and with Kuwait almost certainly paying much of the bill, Washington can deter trouble from an unpredictable regional power at minimal cost, analysts say.   But some Western diplomats say the show of firepower displayed nightly on television screens around the region risks antagonising Arab opinion and making Saddam look to Gulf Arabs like a victim bullied by an alien superpower.   "I don't see a corresponding threat from Iraq," said one senior diplomat.   "I don't think the threat requires this deployment.   Even the Kuwaitis don't look that worried to me.   So it really could be see as an escalation."   It could also complicate Gulf Arab relations with Washington at a sensitive juncture following two deadly bomb attacks on U.S. forces in Saudi Arabia in the past 10 months, they say.   Others go further, saying the buildup appears excessive in relation to recent no-fly-zone skirmishes between Iraqi air defences and U.S. warplanes and can be explained satisfactorily only as an election campaign tactic by President Bill Clinton.   The buildup is the latest of several mounted by Western forces in the region during periodic skirmishes between Iraq and the victorious Gulf War coalition since the 1991 Gulf War.   The U.S. aircraft carrier Enterprise entered the Gulf on Thursday to join another carrier battle group as part of Washington's military build-up against Iraq.   Clinton has ordered 3,000 additional U.S. Army troops to Kuwait reinforce 1,200 others already here.   The build-up also includes eight Stealth bombers, B-52 bombers on the Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia, and extra Patriot launchers.   Critics of U.S. policy in the Gulf argue the buildup has less justification than the rapid deployment to the Gulf of U.S., British and French forces in October 1994.   Then, Iraq had moved several thousand troops near the Kuwait frontier in what some diplomats saw as a ploy by Baghdad to gain attention for its campaign to have Gulf War sanctions lifted.   But ploy or not, there was no question of taking chances with Saddam's intentions.   This time, some argue, there is no clear sign of an Iraqi ground force threat to Kuwait despite a verbal threat to Kuwait -- now retracted -- by Iraqi officials.   Iraq's main action this time has been against Kurds, hundreds of km (miles) away in the north of Iraq, they say.   Kuwait, still seething over Iraq's 1990-91 occupation, has warmly welcomed the buildup.   Some Kuwaitis, exasperated by what they call Saddam's cat-and-mouse game with Kuwait, hint that they would like the firepower to be used to topple Saddam now.   Other Gulf Arab states agree on the need to contain Saddam, but they have made it clear they would only support further strikes against Iraq if Baghdad made a serious provocation.   "In the some ways, the Saudis would prefer a once-and- for-all approach in tackling Saddam," said one diplomat.   "They think that just prodding him with a stick from time to time only makes things worse."   But the prospect of tough action seems remote for now.   "You know what they're going to do?   They're going to do diddly (nothing)," said a U.S. source of the newly arrived Patriots, a weapon that downed some Iraqi Scud missiles in the 1991 conflict.   "There are no Iraqi planes to shoot at, because of the no-fly zone.   And then you have Scuds, for which Patriots are now an unreliable defence.   So what are they there for?   For P.R. (public relations).   It's psychology.   It's politics."   Even some Kuwaitis caution against a new strike on Iraq.   "Any further military strike made within the framework of the limited American-Iraqi military skirmish would directly benefit and reinforce the Iraqi regime at the Arab and international level, without leading to a weakening of the (Iraqi) regime," wrote Shafiq Ghabra, political scientist. 
18603 !E41 !ECAT !GCAT !GDIP !GJOB  The first boat hired to repatriate illegal foreign workers in the United Arab Emirates has set sail for India as an expatriate exodus continues ahead of a tough new immigration law, the Indian Association said on Thursday.   Embassies are flooded with applications for exit permits as tens of thousands of foreigners rush to leave the country by sea and air during a two-month amnesty period granted to illegal workers that expires on September 30.   "The first launch left yesterday with 200 people on board," said K.V. Shankar, the secretary general of the privately-funded association in Dubai.   "The next boat leaves on Sunday morning and then there are two on Monday," he told Reuters.   About 1,000 people had already booked a place for the four-day journey and hundreds more were waiting in line at the association to book a ticket, he said.   Many illegal expatriates have been leaving by air for weeks but no figures on their numbers are available.   Diplomats expect up to 200,000 expatriates would have left by the end of the August-September amnesty period, in which violators can legalise their stay or leave the country.   Shanker said the boats, hired by the association, were a means to ensure low-wage foreign workers had a safe way of getting home, but added the solution was far from perfect.   "Because these are cargo ships, the toilet facilities are limited and not appropriate for ladies," he said.   "We can only take men on board.   The toilet is an open-air facility, just sort of a bucket kind of thing at the end of the ship."   The UAE has said foreigners who do not have permits to reside in the emirates or who work for employers other than their sponsors -- a wide-spread practice -- would be severely penalised and deported.   The practice has always been illegal but the new law imposes harsher punishment.   From October 1, illegal workers and their employers face hefty fines and jail sentences if they are caught.   Foreigners, mostly from the Indian subcontinent but also from the Philippines and other southeast Asian states, make up 75 percent of the UAE's 2.4 million population.   UAE officials have said illegal aliens pose a security threat to the country.   But business executives and newspapers say the departure of large number of labourers could take its toll on businesses, which rely on low-paid foreign workers.   India's Ambassador Murladhir Menon said over 30,000 Indian nationals had applied for so-called "out-visas" and "the stream of people applying for these permits to leave is continuing".   Menon said he had asked Air India to schedule additional flights to cope with the wave of expatriates leaving the UAE.   But he said that because many could not afford the 800 dirham ($220) airfare, he had asked the Shipping Corporation of India to send boats to help bring the workers home.   Joseph Angeles, charge d'affaires at the Philippines Embassy in Abu Dhabi, said some 3,500 people had sought help from the embassy since the amnesty began, but said it could just be the tip of the iceberg.   "There might be a huge number of people who come in when the deadline draws nearer," he said. 
18604 !GCAT !GVIO  A Libyan opposition group said three people were executed and others arrested in Libya after they tried to kill revolutionary leader Muammar Gaddafi during the second half of August.   The Libyan National Organisation, in a statement quoted by the London-based Arabic newspaper al-Hayat on Thursday, said one of the detainees was the brother of a security force officer close to Gaddafi.   The officer, Abdullah Mansour, has been removed from his post and his brother is being held by one of the "purification committees" set up by Gaddafi earlier this year to clamp down on corruption and black-market profiteering, it said.   Libyan opposition sources in Cairo say Gaddafi is using the committees to remove cohorts who have become too powerful.   The men who took part in the assassination attempt are from the coastal city of Sirte, the organisation said.   It did not give details of how the men tried to kill Gaddafi, who earlier this month celebrated 27 years in power. 
18605 !GCAT !GDIP  Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Thursday tension between the Jewish state and arch-foe Syria had been brought "under control".   "Important messages have been passed from one side to the other and I think that, for now, things are under control," Netanyahu told reporters before meeting U.S. Middle East peace envoy Dennis Ross.   Syria has in recent weeks redeployed up to 12,000 of its troops in Lebanon, moving some to within striking distance of a key Israeli position on the occupied Golan Heights, causing war jitters in the Jewish state.   "Calming messages were sent by one side to the other and I think that it's important that in this case the United States assisted," Netanyahu said.   Ross was in the region to help jump-start foundering Middle East peace moves.   Netanyahu had said Syria was trying to pressure Israel into unilateral concessions on the strategic plateau Israel seized in the 1967 Middle East war.   Syria's official press on Wednesday said Israel's reaction to the redeployment was "taking the shape of a military threat".   Syria wants back all of the heights in return for peace with Israel.   The two countries have failed in five years of sporadic peace talks to agree.   Netanyahu, who ousted the government of Shimon Peres in May, has angered Arab peace partners by rejecting the land-for-peace formula which provided the basis for previous talks. 
18606 !GCAT  These are some of the leading stories in the Saudi Arabian press on Thursday.   Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.   AL-RIYADH   - King Fahd appoints Major General Henedi as commander of the air force.   AL-YAUM   - King Fahd receives Pakistani president.   - Foreign Minister Prince Saud announces the formation of joint committees to develop bilateral relations with France.   ARAB NEWS   - The Saudi Credit Bank has extended 5.27 billion riyals in interest-free loans since its inception in 1971.   - The higher commission for collecting donations has provided financial assistance worth more than two million riyals to Bosnian Moslems. 
18607 !GCAT !GDEF !GDIP !GVIO  The U.S. aircraft carrier Enterprise entered the Gulf on Thursday to join another carrier battle group plus ground and air forces ranged against Iraq.   "It's made the turn" into the Strait of Hormuz, U.S. Navy spokesman Commander T. McCreary told Reuters.   The Enterprise, carrying about 75 warplanes including F-14 fighters recently modified to deliver laser-guided bombs, left the Adriatic Sea last weekend where it was part of the U.S. Sixth Fleet.   It joins the carrier Carl Vinson which is taking part in flights as part of Operation Southern Watch over southern Iraq.   The Enterprise's battle group includes a submarine and other support ships.   McCreary would not say whether the submarine had also entered the Gulf.   The first of 3,000 additional U.S. Army troops to reinforce 1,200 others already in Kuwait were due in the tiny oil state later on Thursday. 
18608 !GCAT !GPOL !GVOTE  Republican presidential candidate Bob Dole tumbled off a stage on Wednesday while shaking hands with a line of voters but a doctor said he suffered only a minor scratch and haemorrhage on his eye.   "It's fairly noticeable, but essentially nothing more than ...just a bruise," said Dr. Rudy Manthel, an opthamologist who examined Dole after he arrived in Las Vegas from Chico, California, where the fall took place.   "By tomorrow it'll probably feel a lot better and the next couple days it will go away completely," he said.   At a campaign rally in Chico, a decorative, unattached stage railing Dole had reached out to for support gave way and he fell to the ground, his tumble broken by a group of news photographers.   Dole grimaced as he fell from the platform, which was about 3 1/2 feet (100 cms) high, but quickly got to his feet with some assistance from security personnel.   Dole, who was given two Purple Heart medals for severe wounds sustained in the Second World War, then immediately began his speech, saying, "I think I just earned my third Purple Heart going over the rail, but you can always say I've fallen for Chico."   After the speech, Dole was greeting supporters when a reporter asked him if he was shaken by the fall.   He said, "Yeah, a little bit, it woke me up."   He told reporters travelling with him on his plane, "I'm really not stiff at all.   I thought I might be...It's a wonder I didn't get hurt there."   A reddening was evident in Dole's left eye, and the candidate later said he had poked the eye with a finger as he fell.   Dole continued as scheduled to Las Vegas, where he was to spend the night before a campaign appearance on Thursday, and was examined in his hotel room by Manthel.   Manthel told reporters he examined Dole for about half an hour and found that Dole had scratched the lining over the white of his eye, and ruptured one or two blood vessels.   The injury probably was caused by direct contact to the eye.   "There really was no other complaints," Manthel said.   There were no signs, for example, of fractures or injuries to the brain, he said.   Manthel said he had prescribed eye drops to relieve any pain, and also prescribed an antibiotic.   Dole spokesman Nelson Warfield said there were no signs of injuries elsewhere on Dole, who landed on his back on the right side of his body, where he was wounded in the war.   He said Sheila Burke, a longtime Dole aide and registered nurse, had examined the area and there was "no indication of any kind of damage."   Speaking of Dole's quick recovery, Warfield said of the 73-year-old candidate, "This should put to rest the age question once and for all.   If Bob Dole can take a tumble like that and hop right back up on his feet and deliver a great speech, he is strong enough to be president and go a couple of rounds with Mike Tyson too."   While Dole was travelling to Las Vegas, he went to the back of the plane to look at a Reuters photograph of his fall and re-enacted how he had leaned on the rail that gave way.   Studying the picture, he quipped, "My hair stayed alright.   I had enough hair spray on."   When asked by a reporter if the fall meant a bad campaign day, Dole answered, "I got up, didn't I?" 
18609 !GCAT !GPOL !GVOTE  Republican presidential candidate Bob Dole took a tumble off a stage on Wednesday while shaking hands with a line of voters but apparently suffered no serious injury.   A stage railing Dole was holding onto for support gave way and he fell to the ground, his tumble broken by a group of news photographers.   He grimaced as he fell, but quickly got to his feet with some assistance from security personnel.   Dole then immediately began his speech, saying, "I think I just earned my third Purple Heart going over the rail, but you can always say I've fallen for Chico."   After the incident Dole spokesman Nelson Warfield said there were no plans to seek medical attention even though Dole had "a little bit of blood on his left eye.   He might have broken a blood vessel but he feels great."   Referring to the reddening in his eye, Dole said later it didn't hurt, but added, "I'll probably have someone look at" just to make sure there was no problem.   Speaking of Dole's quick recovery, Warfield said of the 73-year-old candidate, "This should put to rest the age question once and for all.   If Bob Dole can take a tumble like that and hop right back up on his feet and deliver a great speech, he is strong enough to be president and go a couple of rounds with Mike Tyson too."   After the fall from the platform which was about 3 1/2 feet (100 cms) tall, Dole was greeting supporters when a reporter asked him if he was shaken by the fall.   He said, "Yeah, a little bit, it woke me up.   (I would) rather do it on my tread mill."   One supporter asked Dole how he liked Chico, and he answered, "not bad, I fell right in."   Later, leaving this northern California town on a plane with reporters, Dole went to the back of the plane to look at a Reuters photograph of his fall and re-enacted how he had leaned on the rail that gave way.   When asked by a reporter if the fall meant a bad campaign day, Dole answered, "I got up, didn't I?" 
18610 !GCAT !GSCI  Shuttle Atlantis edged ever closer to the Russian space station Mir on Wednesday to give space endurance champ Shannon Lucid a ride home.   The shuttle, carrying Lucid's replacement and thousands of pounds of supplies, was due to dock with Mir at 10:13 p.m.   CDT (0313 GMT on Thursday) as the two craft soar high above Russia.   The shuttle's final approach ended a three-day chase through space that began early on Monday with a pre-dawn blast-off from Florida's Kennedy Space Centre.   The astronauts caught their first glimpse of the sprawling Russian space complex from a distance of 52 miles (84 km).   "We can see Shannon smiling from here," joked shuttle skipper Bill Readdy.   The shuttle was running nearly seven weeks late on its promise to return Lucid to Earth.   The 53-year-old mother of three arrived at Mir in March and was due home in early August, but rocket problems, a threatening hurricane and a scheduling clash with an unmanned rocket delayed the shuttle's planned July 31 launch.   As the shuttle closed in, Lucid was tending a crop of wheat in a miniature space greenhouse when a ground controllers advised her the shuttle's docking was imminent.   "I sure hope so," was her response.   Lucid's mission, the second of seven planned U.S. astronaut tours of duty of Mir, is the longest ever by a woman and a record for an American.   The shuttle crew planned to hover 150 feet (46 metres) from Mir before inching in towards the station's 6.5 feet (two meters) diameter docking port.   Readdy will have to negotiate his way through the station's forest of delicate, electricity generating solar panels, including a newly installed panel that will hang 14 feet (four metres) from the shuttle's nose.   A final nudge from the shuttle's manoeuvring jets will link the two spacecraft.   Motors will then draw the craft together and seal the docking ports.   If all goes according to plan, the hatches between the two craft will swing open at about 12:39 a.m.   CDT (0539 GMT) on Thursday.   Joining Readdy on Atlantis are pilot Terry Wilcutt and mission specialists John Blaha, Tom Akers, Jay Apt and Carl Walz.   Blaha, a 54-year-old former fighter pilot, will remain aboard Mir with Russian cosmonauts Valery Korzun and Alexander Kaleri until Atlantis returns in January to retrieve him.   The two spacecraft, weighing 535,480 lbs (242,900 kg), will remain joined in space for five days while the astronauts transfer thousands of pounds of equipment and supplies to and from Mir.   Atlantis is due to return home on Sept. 26, ending Lucid's record-breaking 188-day stay in space. 
18611 !GCAT !GCRIM !GPOL  Republican presidential candidate Bob Dole on Wednesday accused President Bill Clinton of sowing "moral confusion" about drug use and criticised the entertainment industry for glorifying drugs.   Speaking at the Chaminade College Preparatory High School, a Roman Catholic school that uses drug-sniffing dogs to help keep the campus drug-free, Dole also unveiled a new anti-drug slogan -- "Just don't do it."   Dole was seeking to reignite a public crusade against drug use as well as his own struggling campaign.   Dole took a tumble later in the day while shaking hands at with line of voters before a rally in the northern California city of Chico.   A stage railing he was holding onto for support gave way and he fell to the ground, his tumble broken by a group of news photographers.   He grimaced as he fell, but quickly got to his feet with some assistance from security personnel.   Dole then immediately began his speech, saying, "I think I just earned my third Purple Heart going over the rail, but you can always say I've fallen for Chico."   After the incident Dole spokesman Nelson Warfield said there were no plans to seek medical attention even though Dole had "a little bit of blood on his left eye.   He might have broken a blood vessel but he feels great."   In Los Angeles, Dole said Clinton had set the wrong example for American teenagers by making light of his own past, non-inhaling, experimentation with marijuana -- citing an MTV interview in which Clinton said he would inhale the drug marijuana if he had it to do over again.   "Joke or no joke, teenagers may be struggling with the lure of drugs.   They have seen a United States president make light of his own experimentation," Dole said.   "A president is supposed to show the light, and this president has shown his moral confusion.   We will never have a firm, confident, national message against drugs when our leaders, any of them, are ambivalent themselves."   He also renewed criticism of cuts the Clinton administration had made in anti-drugs programmes.   The speech was the latest salvo in Dole's effort to win votes with an anti-drugs, anti-crime programme launched on Monday in Philadelphia.   The entertainment and fashion industries shared in the responsibility for shaping attitudes among teenagers, whose rates of drug use have more than doubled since 1992, Dole said.   "Take your influence seriously, you have a lot of it," he said, addressing the industries.   "Respect your talent and power.   Stop the commercialization of drug abuse.   Stop the glorification of slow suicide."   "The marijuana leaf and the heroin needle have become the symbols of fashionable rebellion, and two of the most widely praised movies of the past two years, 'Pulp Fiction' and 'Trainspotting' feature the romance of heroin," he said.   "Fashion magazines feature models with what is known as the 'junkie look.'   Rock musicians create and celebrate a culture of heroin.   And some have become role models, even in death," he said.   Dole has seen neither "Trainspotting", about Scottish heroin addicts living in squalor, or "Pulp Fiction", about American heroin addicts living the fast life, Warfield said.   But he has read reviews of both films, including one citing "Trainspotting" as a "funny, upbeat look at heroin addiction," Warfield said.   Dole harkened back to the 1980's anti-drug campaign of former first lady Nancy Reagan, with its slogan "Just say no," in leading the students in his new slogan, "Just don't do it."   The line also evokes Nike's shoe slogan, "Just do it."   In Chico, Dole said many people had mocked her slogan, but it worked nonetheless.   "I know the liberal media may not like it.   We ought to tell them 'Just don't do it.'   Just don't do it with some of the stories you write ... write nice stories about Bob Dole." 
18612 !GCAT !GPOL  The Bums of Brooklyn live.   Republican presidential candidate Bob Dole, who spoke at his party's nominating convention of his aim to build a bridge to America's glorious past, demonstrated that in an unexpected way Wednesday by moving the Dodgers major league baseball team back to Brooklyn.   "The Brooklyn Dodgers had a no-hitter last night," Dole told a crowd of prep school students at Chaminade College Preparatory School.   He was referring, seemingly mistakenly, to the hometown Los Angeles Dodgers, whose move from Brooklyn to Los Angeles after the 1957 season shocked millions of baseball fans and devastated the New York borough's spirit.   Dodger pitcher Hiedo Nomo pitched the no-hitter Wednesday night in a 9-0 victory over the Colorado Rockies in Denver.   "I'm going to be like Nomo.   I'm going to pitch a no-hitter between now and Nov. 5," Dole said.   Dole campaign spokesman Nelson Warfield said Dole had been aware of the Dodgers move and he was really trying to make a joke.   "It was a joke," Warfield said.   "He tried to inject a note of levity into a serious speech."   Word of the gaffe spread quickly.   "Welcome to Brooklyn, Bob," read a sign that greeted Dole on his way to a rally later in the day in the northern California city of Chico. 
18613 !GCAT !GDEF !GVIO  The U.S. Army on Wednesday began deploying more than 3,000 troops to the Gulf as part of the Clinton administration's latest moves to guard against further military action by Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.   Almost 300 soldiers from the 1st Cavalry Division and sophisticated satellite equipment were flown from the Fort Hood army base in central Texas for Kuwait on a commercial jet and a C-5 military cargo plane.   Two more flights were to take 700 troops out early on Thursday.   Officials said the staggered deployment of about 3,000 troops from Fort Hood, the U.S. Army's largest base, would be completed over the next two or three days, with each flight to Kuwait taking from 17 to 22 hours.   Most of the heavy equipment was already in place in Kuwait so the arriving troops would quickly get down to military exercises.   "They are ready, they are prepared and they are excited," said Maj. Mary Ann Cummings as the first group of 217 soldiers took off on Wednesday morning.   Seventy-three more went out on an afternoon flight with the satellite equipment.   But several family members were critical of President Bill Clinton's handling of the deployment.   They said he had failed to explain the deployment, unlike in 1991 when President George Bush sent hundreds of thousands of troops to the Gulf War.   "Bush told us why.   Clinton hasn't told us.   I know he can't tell us everything but he hasn't told us why," said Pauline Ketchum, just before her husband Steve, a radar specialist, left.   Ketchum said she was a political independent but would not now vote for Clinton.   Others said many relatives of the soldiers wondered whether the deployment was dictated more by domestic politics than security interests.   "A lot of people think this is a political thing because of the elections," said Edye Holman, who cooked up hot dogs and sausages at a dawn farewell event for the soldiers and their families.   Defense Secretary William Perry said on Tuesday the deployment was to augment enforcement of "Operation Southern Watch," which is the patroling by air of southern Iraq.   "We will not tolerate any threatening actions against our air crews and ... any that they take we will respond (to) very sharply," Perry told reporters.   But he said Iraq had in recent days stopped threatening allied warplane, reducing the chances that further U.S. military action would be taken soon.   The U.S. military launched cruise missile strikes against air defense facilities in southern Iraq two weeks ago after Iraq moved against Kurds in the north.   President Clinton said he ordered the new troop deployment last weekend.   The formal mission of the Fort Hood troops was to provide training for Kuwaiti forces, but officials said they could be used in any new military action against Iraq.   About 1,200 ground troops were already in Kuwait before the latest Gulf crisis began and they have stayed in place.   It was Iraq's invasion of Kuwait that sparked the 1991 Gulf War.   Clinton, who also ordered the expansion of a "no-fly zone" excluding Iraqi warplanes in southern Iraq, said on Tuesday his policy was designed to "keep Saddam Hussein in a box and limit his ability to threaten his neighbors."   The Fort Hood troops deployed on Wednesday hugged their spouses and children in emotional farewell ceremonies before being moved to a holding area and boarding their planes.   "I have faith in God and I'm just going to get over there and do what I have to do," said Staff Sgt. Dennis Garrett.   About 45,000 troops are stationed at Fort Hood, which lies just outside Killeen in central Texas, about 120 miles (190 km) south of Dallas. 
18614 !GCAT !GPOL !GVOTE  Ross Perot Wednesday blasted a commission's recommendation that he be excluded from the presidential debates, saying it was "a major setback" for democracy and voters' rights.   The Reform Party presidential candidate said his party would file a lawsuit in federal court against Tuesday's recommendation by the Commission on Presidential Debates and would ask the court for "a restraining order to delay the debates until a decision is made."   The bipartisan commission proposed that the Texas billionaire be excluded from debates between President Clinton and Bob Dole, saying only the Democratic and Republican candidates had a realistic chance to be elected the next U.S. president.   Perot said the commission's decision dealt a major setback to "democracy and the rights of the voters in our country."   He said the ruling made it impossible for a new political party to be successful.   "Surely that violates the voters' constitutional rights," Perot said in a speech to a large audience at the Commonwealth Club, a current affairs forum in San Francisco.   The commission's decision was seen as a victory for Dole, who feared Perot's participation in the debates would siphon votes from him.   Perot won 19 percent of the popular vote as an Independent presidential candidate in 1992.   This year, he formed his own Reform Party but has garnered only single-digit support in opinion polls.   Perot said the debates were important because 80 million people watch them.   He said he was included in the presidential debates in 1992 even though his standing in the polls was lower than it is now and his poll numbers "roared up after the debates."   Perot said the overriding factor in deciding whether he took part in the debates should be whether voters wanted him.   He said 76 percent of voters in a recent Harris Poll wanted him included, but their views were ignored by the commission.   Three or four debates were expected to be held.   The first has been tentatively set for Sept. 25, but almost certainly will be delayed.   Perot said that the major television network had refused the Reform Party's request to sell it 30 minutes of prime time each week until election day to explain the issues in depth.   Perot said "they" did not want voters to understand the problems facing the country.   "I don't think this is democracy as the framers of the Constitution intended, do you?"   he asked the audience, which often interrupted his speech with applause.   "This is a blatant display of power by the Republicans and the large donors who fund their campaign and then get rewarded handsomely."   "The primary reason for keeping us out of the debate and not selling us television time is to protect and preserve Washington's corrupt political practices," he said.   If he was excluded, issues such as campaign finance reform would not be discussed during the campaign, Perot said.   He said the political establishment did not want to talk about "one-sided, unfair, stupid trade agreements" and did not want people informed about the national debt, Medicaid and social security.   "So they freeze us out or they try to freeze us out.   Well just stand by, we will be there," he said.   Perot said Clinton and Dole already had a huge advantage because they had received hundreds of hours of free television exposure during the primaries.   "All of this just gets us excited.   I love being the underdog.   There's no place to go but up," he said. 
18615 !C42 !CCAT !E41 !ECAT !GCAT !GJOB  Penn Traffic Co said on Thursday its dairy processing division ratified a new five-year contract with union employees who had been on strike since August 1, 1996.   The company said in a statement Sani-Dairy ratified the contract with U.S. Steelworkers Local 12755, covering 203 plant employees and drivers.   The dairy would return to full operation on September 23, Penn Traffic said.   The company also operates 266 supermarkets in Pennsylvania, New York, Ohio and West Virginia.   -- New York newsdesk 212-859-1610 
18616 !C24 !CCAT !GCAT !GWEA !M14 !M141 !MCAT  Scattered frost appears likely in the northern U.S. Midwest crop areas Tuesday and Wednesday next week, but meteorologists doubt the weather system will produce a widespread crop-killing freeze.   "It doesn't have the makings of a killer freeze for the corn belt, it's going to be spotty," said Fred Gesser, meteorologist with Weather Express Inc.   Gesser said any frost next week should be similar to the frost September 13 and 14 that caused scattered crop damage in northern Iowa and southern Minnesota.    Gesser said temperatures in low-lying areas could drop to 28 to 32 degrees Fahrenheit early Wednesday in northern Iowa and southern Minnesota.   The cold then should move east across the northern Midwest Thursday and Friday.   Joel Burgio, with Weather Services Corp., said weather maps show a cool weather pattern next week that would make a frost or freeze "certainly possible".   He said the most likely areas for frost appear to be northern Iowa, southern Minnesota, southern Wisconsin and northwest Illinois.   Jon Davis, Smith Barney meteorologist, said there is a chance for isolated frost, "but no widespread frost is expected."    Rain was forecast for much of the Midwest Thursday through Sunday in the Midwest, with 0.25 to 1.5 inches likely Thursday to Saturday in the western Midwest and 0.10 to 1.0 inch in eastern areas, meteorologists said.   Shearson's Davis said the rain may benefit late-developing soybeans but may cause minor harvest delays of corn.   Weather Services Burgio said rain from Nebraska to Texas the next two days will further delay planting of hard red winter wheat.   High temperatures will average in the mid-70s F Thursday and Friday from Illinois to Ohio, before turning colder next week.   --Bob Burgdorfer, 312-408-8720-- 
18617 !GCAT !GPOL !GVOTE  President Clinton has been slowly building a lead over Republican challenger Bob Dole among Florida voters in recent months, according to a new poll, the Tampa Tribune reported on Thursday.   The poll of 809 Florida residents found that 47 percent favoured Clinton, 42 percent supported Dole and 9 percent said they were undecided.   Some political experts say Dole cannot win the November election unless he wins Florida.   Reform Party candidate Ross Perot, whose support has steadily declined in similar Florida polls since January, was favoured by 2 percent of those surveyed, the newspaper said.   The telephone poll was conducted by Mason-Dixon Political/Media Research between Sept. 15 and 17.   It has an error margin of 3.5 percent.   Clinton has campaigned heavily in Florida in the past month, unlike 1992 when he virtually conceded the state to Republican rival George Bush.   Florida has not voted for a Democratic presidential candidate since Jimmy Carter in 1976.   Dole and Clinton are scheduled to hold a televised debate in St. Petersburg, Florida, next month, and advertising blitzes by both candidates are expected to begin soon.   Similar polls conducted by Mason-Dixon earlier this year showed support for Clinton in the state has slowly grown.   A January survey showed him with 42 percent, Dole with 40 percent and Perot with 8 percent.   A June poll gave Clinton 44 percent, Dole 42 percent and Perot 4 percent. 
18618 !GCAT !GPOL !GVOTE  Democrat Sen. John Kerry holds only a slim lead over Republican challenger Gov. William Weld in a campaign marked by negative ads and heated debates, according to a poll released on Thursday.   Kerry had 41 percent to Weld's 38 percent and Conservative Party candidate Susan Gallagher's 6 percent with 15 percent of the voters still undecided, the Boston Herald reported.   The poll by the University of New Hampshire Survey Centre contacted 305 likely voters Tuesday and Wednesday and has a margin of error of plus or minus 5.6 percent.   It also found President Clinton leading his Republican opponent Bob Dole 62 percent to 24 percent with only 7 percent of the voters supporting Reform Party candidate Ross Perot.   Kerry's standing has improved but neither candidate has succeeded in winning support from the large number of undecided voters, R. Kelly Myers, the N.H. survey center's director, said.   "When these people decide to move, they will determine the race," Myers said.   Democrats outnumber Republicans 2 to 1 in Massachusetts and have held this senate seat since 1979.   The two senate candidates held a heated debate Monday, with Kerry comparing Weld to the "Budweiser frogs" and Weld saying Kerry's personal wealth had made him lose touch with "John Sixpack" voter. 
18619 !CCAT !GCAT !GDIS !GVIO  After two months of failure to find proof that a bomb or a missile destroyed TWA Flight 800, investigators are leaning toward mechanical failure as the cause, newspapers reported on Thursday.   The New York Times and the Washington Post quoted investigators as saying that the lack of explosive evidence lent credence to another theory that electrical failure or a fire in the center fuel tank destroyed the Boeing 747 over Long Island on July 17, killing all 230 people on board.   Officials from the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) were not immediately available for comment.   The NTSB and FBI have repeatedly stated since the tragedy that they were working on three theories -- a bomb, a missile or mechanical failure -- but had insufficient evidence to declare the cause.   "We are getting absolutely nothing as it relates to a bomb," the Washington Post quoted an unidentified law enforcement source as saying.   "Things seem to be pointing toward a mechanical malfunction and that is where investigators are concentrating now."   Investigators have discovered two microscopic traces of explosives on parts of wreckage salvaged from the Atlantic Ocean but they were found far apart and in the plane's interior, not blasted into them.   The New York Times report said investigators planned tests to show that the explosion of TWA Flight 800 just 11 1/2 minutes after taking off from New York en route to Paris, could have been caused by a mechanical failure alone.   "If you get a fuel-air explosion in that tank, how does it vent itself?"   the Times quoted an unidentified investigator as saying.   "That's what we have to come to grips with."   The investigators acknowledged they had no evidence pointing to a mechanical malfunction but that none of the physical evidence recovered from the aircraft proved that it was bombed out of the sky, the New York Times said. 
18620 !E41 !E411 !ECAT !GCAT !GJOB  The number of Americans filing initial claims for unemployment insurance edged lower last week, the Labour Department said Thursday, underscoring signs of strength in the labour market.   Jobless claims fell 2,000 to 329,000 in the week ended Sept. 14, the department said.   However, the closely watched four-week moving average of claims, which is considered a more accurate barometer because it smooths out weekly fluctuations, rose a slight 750 to 326,750.   Still, with the number of weekly claims filings continuing to hover at relatively low levels and with the unemployment rate at a seven-year low of 5.1 percent, many economists believe the labour market is continuing to thrive.   The latest jobless claims report showed greater strength than many Wall Street economists had expected.   A consensus forecast of U.S. economists pegged claims in the latest week at 335,000.   Labour said seven states reported decreases in initial claims exceeding 1,000 on an unadjusted basis in the week ended Sept. 7, the latest period for which the data are available.   Among the largest were California, with a drop of 2,744 initial jobless claims, Michigan, with 2,400, New York, with 1,621, and Tennessee, with 1,442.   Michigan reported fewer layoffs in all industries, while Tennessee saw fewer layoffs in the transportation equipment, food, textiles and apparel industries.   California and New York had no comment.   Labour said one state, Ohio, reported an increase in initial claims exceeding 1,000, unadjusted, in the Sept. 7 week.   Ohio, which reported a rise of 1,148, reported layoffs in the transportation equipment industry. 
18621 !C24 !CCAT !GCAT !GDIS  Texas Utilities Co said Thursday a lightning storm knocked off line its 1,150 megawatt (MW) Comanche Peak 2 nuclear power plant in Glen Rose, Tx.   Company officials could not confirm an estimated restart time for the unit.   The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), in its Thursday report, said the unit is set to restart Friday.    The unit is currently listed as being in hot shutdown mode, which means the reactor is still active but the plant is not putting power on the grid.   The neighboring power plant, Comanache Peak 1, was unaffected by the storm and is still producing at its full 1,150 MW capacity.   "Comanche Peak 2 tripped off line due to a lightning strike.   The main feed pump failed," said company spokeswoman Pat Nichols.   The plant tripped off line about 1245 CDT/1345 EDT Wednesday, she said.   She said that the company anticipated no problems meeting power demand, which has tapered off with the rain and cloud cover now blanketing much of the region.   Temperatures today in central Texas are forecast to ease back into the 80s F.   -- New York Power Desk + 1 212 859 1622 
18622 !GCAT !GDIS !GWEA  Typhoon Violet is mainly a major risk to shipping in the region southeast and east of Okinawa, Japan, during the next 48 hours, private forecaster Weather Services Corp. said.   The forecast track of this system is uncertain, and there is some chance it may turn more to the north, threatening Japan. 
18623 !GCAT  Hughes Electronics Corp could announce on Thursday plans to form a new satellite-services company after completing proposed $3 billion acquisition of PanAmSat Corp, the Wall Street Journal reported Thursday.   Other top stories included:   * Allied Waste agreed to buy the waste management services of Laidlaw for over $1.5 billion in cash and securities.   * The U.S. trade deficit widened by $3.49 billion in July to its worst level since 1992.   * The United Auto Workers showed flexibility in its talks with General Motors Corp and Chrysler Corp.   * Longshoremen are expected to reject a proposed labor contract again.   * PepsiCo Inc hired former RJR Nabisco Holdings Corp chief Karl von der Heyden as chief financial officer and vice chairman.   * Chateau Properties sued to block an unsolicited tender by an entity controlled by investor Sam Zell and sweetened the terms for its proposed merger with ROC Communities Inc.   * Tambrands Inc announced a restructuring that will close four plants, cut 600 jobs, and result in a $37 million charge.   * NationsBank Corp hiring of Stephens Inc to review the fairness of its $8.7 billion acquisition of Boatmen's Bancshares Inc is causing controversy, because the Stephens family will make a profit on its stake in Boatmen's.   * Bally Entertainment Corp Chief Executive Arthur Goldberg will named president of Hilton Hotels Corp's gambling operations after the expected approval by Hilton shareholders Thursday of the merger of the two companies.   * Hewlett-Packard Co said millions of printer cartridges shipped this year for ink-jet printers were defective.   * After lurching about on more speculation over whether the Federal Reserve will raise interest rates next week, bonds ended little changed yesterday.   - Credit Markets.   * Richard Blum, a prominent California money manager know for his marriage to Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein, is raising his firm's profile on Wall Street by rattling management's cage at Dexter Corp. - Heard on the Street   --New York Newsdesk (212) 859-1610 
18624 !GCAT !GSCI  A beaming Shannon Lucid on Thursday embraced the American crew of shuttle Atlantis, which docked at Russia's Mir hours earlier to make good on a promise to fetch her home.   The hatches between the shuttle and Mir swung open at 12:40 a.m.   CDT (0540 GMT) as the two craft soared 248 miles (399 km) above the South Pacfic.   Atlantis skipper Bill Readdy was welcomed to the orbiting outpost with a handshake and hug from his Russian counterpart Valery Korzun.   But the warmest greeting came when when Lucid was reunited with John Blaha, who will replace her aboard Mir.   The two U.S. astronauts, who have flown together in space twice before, floated in each other's arms, wearing wide grins.   Atlantis, with six astronauts and thousands of pounds (kilos) of supplies aboard, docked at Mir at 10:13 p.m.   CDT on Wednesday (0313 GMT on Thursday).   "Atlantis and Mir are shaking hands," said Readdy as the metallic petals of the two docking ports slipped together.   "You make that look easy," radioed mission control's Bill McArthur.   Electric motors then drew the two ports together, completing the docking process and making an air-tight seal.   Readdy had to negotiate his way through the station's forest of delicate, electricity generating solar panels, including a newly installed concertina-like array that hangs just 14 feet (4.2 metres) from the shuttle's nose.   The shuttle's arrival at Mir, its fourth visit, ended a three-day chase through space that began early on Monday with a pre-dawn blastoff from Florida's Kennedy Space Centre.   Lucid has been waiting for her ride home since early August.   The shuttle was running nearly seven weeks late because of rocket problems, a threatening hurricane and scheduling difficulties.   The 53-year-old mother of three was silent for most of the shuttle's approach, although her Russian crewmates, Valery Korzun and Alexander Kaleri, were heard chatting with Blaha by radio.   Lucid has been working aboard the Russian space outpost since March as part of a NASA effort to learn more about long duration space flights before starting construction of the planned international station.   When the hatches open, Blaha was to take Lucid's place on Mir, beginning a four-month tour of duty on Mir for the former Vietnam fighter pilot.   He is the second of six U.S. astronauts who will staff the Russian station into 1998.   Atlantis will be berthed at Mir for five days while supplies and equipment are transferred to and from the station.   The shuttle is carrying about 4,600 pounds (2,070 kgs) of supplies and equipment for Mir and will return to Earth with 2,200 pounds (990 kgs) of scientific samples and other gear from the station.   The shuttle is due back to earth on Sept. 26, ending Lucid's 188-day mission, a record for a woman and the longest by an American. 
18625 !GCAT  The New York Times reported the following business stories Thursday:   * The trade deficit surged in July to its highest level in four-and-a-half years.   * Lower inventories of heating oil point to the likelihood of higher retail prices ahead.   * A new method of sabotaging the Internet, in which attackers bombard a network server with hundreds of requests for service each second, is becoming more prevalent.   * Allied Waste Industries Inc said it agreed to buy the waste management operations of Laidlaw Inc for $1.34 billion.   * Swiss Bank Corp said it will cut 1,700 jobs, about one-quarter of its branches and take a $2.65-billion charge in an effort to boost earnings at home.   * The chief executive of Ing.   C. Olivetti & C. SpA resigned after only two weeks at the job.   * Northeast Utilities hired a retired admiral, fired two vice presidents and borrowed executives from three other utility companies in a management shuffle intended to improve its nuclear operations.   * The World Bank announced a plan to attract investment to developing countries that Western businesses have avoided.   * Chateau Properties Inc rejected two merger proposals and said it altered the merger deal it already had.   * The Fedeal Trade Commission approved changes to its own procedures for challenging corporate mergers.   * McDonald's Corp has sent memoranda to its franchisees defending the marketing of its Arch Deluxe hamburger.   * An appeals court is being asked to decide whether it is legal to buy the stock of a takeover target with inside knowledge of a secret takeover bid, as long as the information did not come from the target itself. 
18626 !GCAT  The Washington Post carried the following stories on its front page on Sept. 19:   - - - -   WASHINGTON - Republicans in Congress are angry that the city of Washington was granted a waiver from some of the toughest provisions of the new welfare reform law.   - - - -   GRAND CANYON, Arizona - President Clinton acted to protect 1.7 million acres of land from mininig and development.   - - - -   WEST HILLS, California - Republican presidential candidate Bob Dole criticized Hollywood for glorifying heroin.   - - - -   WASHINGTON - Federal regulators declared the French "abortion pill" effective.   - - - -   WASHINGTON - Investigators into the TWA Flight 800 disaster in which a 747 was destroyed off Long Island are turning their attention to the possibility that it was caused by a mechanical or electrical malfunction. 
18627 !GCAT  The Washington Post carried the following items on the front page of its business section on September 19:   ---   WASHINGTON - The Federal Reserve Board approved rules to increase the information that car leasing companies provide to consumers.   ---   WASHINGTON - The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms was looking for a more secure headquarters building.   ---   WASHINGTON - Ford Motor Co's agreement with the United Auto Workers union guaranteeing to keep 95 percent of its employees may set a precedent.   ---   WASHINGTON - The U.S. trade deficit grew by 43 percent in July to the highest level in eight years. 
18628 !GCAT !GPOL !GVOTE  President Bill Clinton and Vice President Al Gore and their wives are climbing aboard their bus again on Thursday for a Pacific Northwest tour stressing pro-environment policies popular in this land where the people love their outdoors.   They are calling it a bus tour "on the road to the 21st century," a Clinton campaign metaphor second only to the president's countless appeals to voters to help him "build a bridge" to the new century.   It will be the second bus tour of this campaign for Clinton and Gore, who made it a staple of their 1992 campaign.   It will take them from the busy port city of Seattle through rural towns in western Washington state southward about 175 miles (281 km) to the Oregon city of Portland.   Central themes of the day-long road tour are the environment, Pacific trade vital to this region and the economy.   Clinton, who earlier in his term got mixed reviews from environmental groups, told a large crowd in Seattle on Wednesday night that he has a strong record on the environment.   "We are working to save our national treasures," Clinton told thousands at a Seattle rally.   He had just come from Grand Canyon National Park in Arizona, where on a cliff overlooking the vast canyon he signed a proclamation declaring 1.7 million acres (688,000 hectares) of remote redrock land in southern Utah a national monument and thus protected against coal mining.   He also crowed about a deal his administration struck on Tuesday with 15 timber companies to protect several tracts of old-growth forests in Washington and Oregon in exchange for logging substitute trees in areas less critical to fish and wildlife.   There was also a recent agreement aimed at protecting and restoring salmon in the Northwest's Columbia River, and a tentative deal to keep a gold mine from being developed near Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming.   While Clinton boasts of achievements, Gore is taking on the role of attacking the Republican-led Congress for having "turned its back on the notion of stewardship" of the environment.   "They have broken faith with this vital American tradition," Gore said at the Grand Canyon.   "They've made a mockery of the notion of protection.   They've sought not to protect our health or that of the environment but rather to protect those who seek license to pollute."   Clinton has big leads over Republican challenger Bob Dole in Washington, and analysts say Dole seems to be conceding the states to the Democratic incumbent since he is spending no noticeable advertising money here. 
18629 !GCAT !GENT  A month after signing a record-breaking $80 million recording contract, R.E.M. have seen their latest release pipped for the number one position by the reunion album from R&B band New Edition.   "New Adventures In Hi-Fi", the first R.E.M. album since the chart-topping "Monster" two years ago, opened with sales of about 226,000 in the week ended September 15, according to its Warner Bros Records label.   However, it was not enough to beat New Edition's "Home Again", which opened with 227,000 copies.   "Monster's" first-week sales were 343,000 in September 1994 and it spent two weeks at number one.   The previous release, "Automatic For the People", debuted at number two in October 1992 with sales of 218,000.   The latest album marks the fifth the band has released at Warner Bros Records, a unit of Time Warner Inc.   The new contract covers six more albums.   Meanwhile, "Home Again" is the first release from New Edition since 1988's "Heartbreak."   The reincarnated group includes original members Ralph Tresvant, Ricky Bell, Ronnie DeVoe, Michael Bivins and Bobby Brown as well as Johnny Gill who joined when Brown launched a solo career in 1986.   It is released by MCA Music, a unit of Seagram Co Ltd, which is making up for a paucity of hits in recent years by handling three of the albums in the top 10.   "This is an incredibly gratifying moment for New Edition and our new team at MCA Records," MCA Records president Jay Boberg said in a statement.   "I believed in this project from the beginning and the staff took charge with a six-month set up campaign that culminated with the entry on the charts at No. 1."   MCA's 50 percent-owned label, Interscope Records, has the number three record with "Another Level", the second release from R&B group BLACKstreet, and the number 10 record with modern rock group No Doubt's "Tragic Kingdom."   Last week's number one, Pearl Jam's "No Code" (Sony Corp's Epic Records), slipped to seventh.   Its three-week total stands at just over 609,000, a disappointing sum by the group's standards. 
18630 !GCAT !GSCI  Shuttle Atlantis linked up with Russia's Mir late on Wednesday night, ready to bring home space endurance champion Shannon Lucid.   Atlantis, carrying Lucid's replacement and thousands of pounds of supplies, docked at Mir as they soared high above Russia at 10:13 p.m.   CDT (0313 GMT on Thursday).    The shuttle's arrival ended a three-day chase through space that began early on Monday with a pre-dawn launch from Florida's Kennedy Space Center.   Lucid has been awaiting her ride home since early August.   The shuttle was running nearly seven weeks late because of rocket problems, a threatening hurricane and scheduling difficulties.   When the hatches open between the two craft at about 12:39 p.m.   CDT on Thursday (0539 GMT), Atlantis astronaut John Blaha was to take Lucid's place on Mir, beginning a four-month tour of duty for the former Vietnam fighter pilot.   Atlantis will be berthed at Mir for five days while supplies and equipment are transferred to and from the station.   The shuttle is due back to earth on Sept. 26, ending Lucid's 188-day mission, a record for a woman and the longest by an American. 
18631 !GCAT !GCRIM  A judge Wednesday imposed a "gag order" in a battle between O.J. Simpson and his former in-laws for custody of his two children as one attorney said the court proceedings were over for now.   Lawyers for both sides were tight-lipped about what, if any, resolution had been reached in the case in which Simpson is trying to regain full custody of the children he had with his slain ex-wife.   "For now, the matter is concluded," said Saul Gelbart, attorney for Nicole Brown Simpson's parents, Louis and Juditha Brown, who have had temporary guardianship of Sydney, 10, and Justin, 8, since just after their mother's murder in 1994.   After a series of closed-door hearings at an Orange County family court, Gelbart told reporters no further sessions were scheduled for the rest of this week or next.   But he declined to say whether a settlement had been reached in the case.   Simpson, who was acquitted last October of murdering his ex-wife and her friend, was a no-show for the first two days of his civil trial in Santa Monica while attending the custody hearings 40 miles (65 km) away in Orange County.   Gelbart's comments and the decision by family court Commissioner Thomas Schulte to muzzle all participants in the case raised speculation that Simpson and the Browns had reached some kind of temporary agreement.   The Orange County Register newspaper reported Wednesday that the purpose of the confidential hearing was to decide whether to grant preliminary custody to Simpson pending a full trial.   Simpson turned the children over to the Browns in June 1994 after he was arrested on murder charges.   They have had weekend visits with him since his acquittal, but he now wants them back while the Browns want to keep them.   Simpson contends that since he is the biological father, he should get sole custody.   He is reportedly concerned that living with the Browns, who are white, the children are not learning enough about their black heritage.   Schulte's gag order showed that "the privacy of the children is paramount in the court's mind," Gelbart said.   Time magazine reported in its latest edition that Schulte believes the Simpson household is not the best place for the children and he has told both sides he would consider placing Sydney and Justin with a third party, even in a foster home, if a compromise was not reached.   But Gelbart said putting the children in foster care was "not an option." 
18632 !GCAT !GENV  In a patch of prairie ringed by refineries and dotted with oil wells, a dozen squat little birds walk gingerly out of their holding pen and into a world they have never seen.   They do not know it but these birds known as Attwater's prairie chickens represent the last, best hope for their nearly extinct species.   Raised in captivity, they are being released on a nature preserve here on Galveston Bay 40 miles (64 km) southeast of Houston to try to re-establish a wild prairie chicken population that is almost gone.   Their survival is crucial because scientists estimate that there are only 42 prairie chickens left in the wild and another 80 in captivity.   A century ago, an estimated one million of the birds ranged along the vast coastal prairies of Texas, Louisiana and northeastern Mexico.   The near-demise of the prairie chicken is primarily the work of man.   Once their natural range covered millions of acres (hectares) along the Gulf of Mexico but land development and degradation radically reduced the area where the birds can live, said Jim Bergan, a biologist for the Nature Conservancy of Texas, an environmental group that owns the Texas preserve.   Prairie chickens, which are members of the grouse family, need a lot of open, unspoiled prairie to survive.   They move about feeding on bugs and seeds and use different parts of the prairie during the year as they go through their annual cycle of breeding, nesting and raising their young.   Squeezed by man's encroachment, the birds are running out of both land and time.   Groups such as the Nature Conservancy, with help from the private sector, are in a pitched battle to save them, but the outcome is far from certain because no one knows if attempts to re-establish a wild population will work.   A year ago, 13 prairie chickens raised in captivity were released at a federal refuge near Eagle Lake, Texas, 50 miles (80 km) southwest of Houston.   Only two of them survived for last spring's mating season.   Early in August, seven of the birds were placed on the Texas City preserve.   Less than three weeks later, two were dead, one killed by a wildcat, another by intestinal problems.   Even under the best of conditions, the Attwater's prairie chicken does not live much more than three years.   "We've got a long, uphill battle.   There are so many things we don't know the answer to, so many things beyond our control," Bergan said.   The 12 birds released most recently, all three months old, appeared less than excited about their new home.   Staying low in the knee-high grass, they huddled near the opening of the pen where food pellets were spread to entice them out.   If the birds make it, they will join a wild population of 10 prairie chickens already on the preserve.   Only two other groups are known to exist in the wild, 14 on the refuge near Eagle Lake and 18 on private land near Corpus Christi, Texas.   The Attwater's prairie chicken, when full-grown, is about the size of a standard chicken but looks like a large quail.   Its brown and white feathers enable it to melt easily into the underbrush where only the most dedicated predator can find it.   The birds are a favourite of bird experts because of the elaborate mating ritual known as "booming" they perform each spring on the open prairie.   It is so named because of the long, low sounds -- akin to that of blowing into a soft drink bottle -- made by male birds trying to attract females.   The Texas City preserve is one of several that conservation groups and government agencies plan to string along the Gulf Coast.   They will not be contiguous, but the hope is that the birds will fly from one to the other, creating new populations along the way, and eventually establish themselves in larger wildlife refuges in the area.   The Texas City preserve would seem an odd place for an endangered species to make its last stand, given its proximity to the vast complex of refineries and petrochemical plants that line the banks of Galveston Bay and the Houston Ship Channel.   Pipelines transporting petroleum products to and from the plants crisscross the land.   The refuge was given to the Nature Conservancy last year by Mobil Corp., which ran cattle and pumped oil and natural gas on the land for many years.   But Bergan said the birds seem unruffled by the smoke-belching plants.   In fact, he said, Texas A&M University scientists said the prairie chickens here are among the most vigorous they have found.   "They start 'booming' earlier in the season and stay at it longer than birds in other places," he said. 
18633 !C33 !C331 !CCAT !GCAT !GDIP  The United States intends to go ahead with the sale of nine F-16 fighter jets to Indonesia despite concerns over Jakarta's human rights record, two senior U.S. officials said on Wednesday.   "Our relationship, as strong as it currently is, cannot reach its full potential until Indonesia improves its human rights performance," Assistant Secretary of State Winston Lord said at a hearing of the Senate East Asian and Pacific Affairs Subcommittee.   But Lord and Assistant Defence Secretary Kurt Campbell said the administration believed sale of the jets was in the U.S. interest because it would support regional stability.   "We remain convinced that this transfer is in the U.S. interest and should proceed, and that we intend to notify Congress of our intentions in January," Lord said.   "A regionally respected armed forces with credible defensive capabilities that trains and operates in a non-threatening manner is an important contributor to regional stability," Campbell added.   State Department officials said earlier this month they were delaying sale of the jets until the next session of Congress begins in January because of human rights concerns.   Lord said he had expressed U.S. concerns about recent events in Indonesia, especially the July 27 riot at the headquarters of the opposition Indonesian Democrat Party, to government officials during a visit to Jakarta last week.   "Our message has been clear.   Judging by my trip, I believe it has been heard," Lord said.   "The (human rights) record, while not satisfactory, is not without some positive trends," he added, citing limited freedoms for opposition parties and the press.   He said Indonesia was pursuing constructive policies with its neighbours and cooperating with Washington on military matters.   But Sidney Jones, executive director of Human Rights Watch/Asia, said Congress should block the sale of the jets because of what he called a government crackdown against opponents of President Suharto.   "Congress should continue to oppose the sale of F-16 fighter planes to Indonesia so long as the crackdown continues," said Jones, who has just returned from Indonesia where he met with members of non-government organisations.   "Many people in the pro-democracy movement suggested that more pressure, including economic pressure, was needed," he said, adding that the United States and other countries should press for the release of all political detainees. 
18634 !GCAT !GCRIM !GPOL  California Gov. Pete Wilson on Wednesday signed legislation giving judges the discretion to hold the parents of young graffiti vandals partly accountable for the crimes of their children.   The legislation, by Assemblyman Mike Sweeney, a Democrat, would allow a judge to order parents to participate in the graffiti clean-up with their children and would allow communities to charge parents for some clean-up costs.   The measure will also increase penalties for juveniles who scrawl graffiti.   "We will not only hold the juveniles responsible for removing the graffiti, but we will hold their parents accountable as well," Wilson said in a statement.   The graffiti legislation was the latest in a series of get-tough-on-crime measures signed by the Republican governor.   Wilson Tuesday signed a controversial measure making California the first state to force repeat child molesters to undergo "chemical castration." 
18635 !E51 !E512 !ECAT !GCAT !GDIP  U.S. and Japanese foreign ministers agreed on Wednesday that their governments should work hard to try and resolve trade disputes over civil aviation and insurance, State Department spokesman Nicholas Burns said.   But there was no formal decisions about how to go about that reached during a one-hour meeting between Secretary of State Warren Christopher and Japanese Foreign Minister Yukihiko Ikeda at the State Department, he told reporters.   At a separate briefing, a Japanese spokesman said Ikeda urged the United States to resume talks to settle a dispute over civil aviation rights without any preconditions.   Burns said the trade part of the meeting lasted about 10 minutes.   The two ministers "talked about civil aviation, insurance, some of the issues that have been difficult in our relationship with Japan," he said.   "There were some specific messages passed on both civil aviation and on insurance ... about the inclination of both to try to work hard to resolve some of these trade issues," he said.   But "there were no agreements made...This was not a negotiating session."   Negotiations on aviation rights and a 1952 agreement that Japan says favours the United States broke down last month.   Washington, which would like an "open skies" accord with Japan, blamed Tokyo for blocking resolution of the dispute.   Japanese spokesman Hiroshi Hashimoto said Ikeda told Christopher talks should resume but without preconditions.   The insurance discussion centred on a dispute over a 1994 trade agreement on insurance deregulation in Japan and negotiations taking place this week in Tokyo, Hashimoto said.   The two ministers met in preparation for Thursday's meeting of the U.S.-Japan security consultative committee, which also includes U.S. and Japanese defence ministers.   That meeting will focus on U.S. military bases in Okinawa and the U.S. military presence in Japan more generally.   Burns said the ministers only touched on these matters on Wednesday.   "We think we've made a lot of progress since April on the bases issue," he said.   Following the rape last year of an Okinawan schoolgirl by three U.S. servicemen, a case that re-ignited protests against the presence of the U.S. military on the island, Okinawa Governor Masahide Ota refused to sign orders to renew leases for the facilities.   But in a visit to Tokyo in April, President Bill Clinton announced consolidations of bases on the island which cut the area they occupy by about 20 percent.   Last Friday Ota agreed to renew the leases for the bases on the island.   Burns said most of the Ikeda-Christopher meeting centred on Middle East peace efforts and the recent U.S. military action against Iraq.   The ministers briefed each other on their recent trips to the Middle East and agreed "this is a difficult time in the peace process," Burns said.   Ikeda reasserted Japan's understanding and support for recent U.S. air strikes against Iraq and Christopher expressed his appreciation for Japan's quick public support, the spokesman added. 
18636 !CCAT !GCAT !GDIS  Chicago-bound Amtrak passengers were delayed for almost three hours on Wednesday after their train hit a dump truck at a rural private railroad crossing north of New Orleans killing the driver, authorities said.   No injuries were reported among the 101 passengers or the crew, but the train's lead locomotive was damaged, Amtrak spokesman Marc Magliari said.   The 63-year-old truck driver was killed instantly, local sheriff's deputies said.   According to witnesses, the dump truck exploded in flames when the train, travelling at about 70 mph, hit it.   Magliari said the "City of New Orleans" train runs between New Orleans and Chicago six times a week.   The tracks are owned and maintained by the Illinois Central Railroad, he said. 
18637 !GCAT !GCRIM  A 24-year-old man suspected of igniting a deadly July fireworks store inferno was ruled incompetent to stand trial, a judge said Wednesday.   Todd Hall of Proctorville had been charged with arson and involuntary manslaughter in the July 3 fire in Scottown, near the Ohio River, that killed eight people, including several children.   A 71-year-old woman died later of her burns.   He is suspected of lighting firecrackers inside the store that was crowded with shoppers buying fireworks for the Independence Day holiday, the Lawrence County prosecutor said.   Several years ago Hall had portions of his brain removed after a skateboarding accident, the prosecutor said earlier.   Hall will be sent to a psychiatric hospital's maximum security wing for 15 months, then be re-evaluted, a Lawrence County Common Pleas judge ruled.   If doctors then find him able to understand the charges against him and assist in his own defence, he may stand trial, the judge said.   Family members of the victims were unhappy with the ruling.   "Our kids died for nothing," said Linda Carmon, whose son, daughter-in-law and granddaughter died in the fire.   "Justice has not been done."   Hall, who in earlier court appearances shouted profanities and sang songs, appeared subdued although he smiled and winked at his own family members during the proceedings.   He was charged with nine counts of involuntary manslaughter and with multiple counts of arson. 
18638 !GCAT !GCRIM  A Texas construction worker who confessed last year to murdering a former boss was executed on Wednesday, ending the briefest stay ever on the state's death row, prison officials said.   Joe Fedelfido Gonzales spent nine months on death row after pleading guilty to capital murder charges in the shooting death of an Amarillo, Texas man and asking a jury to sentence him to die.   Gonzales died seven minutes after being injected with a lethal dose of chemicals shortly after 6 p.m.   CDT (2300 GMT) in the death house of the Huntsville, Texas state prison.   He was 35.   "I cannot find the words to express the sadness I feel for bringing this hurt and pain on my loved ones," he said in a statement released by his attorney after he was executed.   "I will not ask forgiveness for the decisions I have made in this judicial process, only acceptance.   God bless you all."   Gonzales confessed to the October 1992 murder of his former boss, William Joseph Veader, who was shot twice with his own gun during a dispute with Gonzales over money.   Gonzales said he went to Veader's house to collect on a debt, and saw two stacks of $100 bills in Veader's bedroom.   When Veader refused to pay, Gonzales pulled a gun out from under a couch, shot Veader in the head and stole the cash.   "I went and got the money and on the way back I shot him again 'cause he was begging for help," Gonzales said in his confession to police.   The conviction was automatically appealed to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, but Gonzales waived the appeal and the court upheld the conviction.   "As unusual as this case may seem, this is not a death wish or an individual seeking assistance in suicide," Gonzales said in a court filing.   "This is a case made clear and simple by a man who has committed the ultimate crime and is seeking the ultimate punishment."   Gonzales became the third Texas inmate executed this year and the 107th since the state resumed capital punishment in 1982.   Gonzales spent his final day on death row meeting with a prison chaplain and his attorney and speaking to his family by telephone before he was ushered into the death chamber.   Attorneys said he would have been eligible for an automatic stay of execution because the Texas Supreme Court is reviewing new laws adopted last year that shortened the appeals process in death-sentence cases.   That appeal, expected to be decided after the November elections, has virtually halted executions in Texas this year as inmates scheduled to die joined the suit. 
18639 !GCAT !GPOL  French Prime Minister Alain Juppe, in an unusually harsh attack on far-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen, branded him on Thursday "deeply, almost viscerally racist, antisemitic and xenophobic".   The conservative premier, addressing young people after Le Pen said earlier this month he believed in racial inequality, called on the French people to combat his anti-immigration National Front which has won as much as 15 percent of the vote in recent national election.   Wading for the first time into the latest controversy over the outspoken Front leader, Juppe said his ideas had been incompatible with those of Le Pen ever since the Front burst upon the political scene in the 1980s.   "Any form of political agreement, indulgence or accommodation (with the Front) has always been foreign to the positions I have taken," he said, hardening up his prepared text.   "We must combat it, and I personally will combat it politically."   "One cannot live in a world where people tell us that races are unequal, or where someone says that the Jews have no place under the sun," he said.   It was not clear whether he was referring to innuendo about Jews by Le Pen, who denies being racist or antisemitic.   The prime minister said a National Front protest march in Marseille after a French youth of Arab origin confessed to killing a white teenager, was "an attempt at exploitation of the lowest human feelings".   "Racism is openly on display in the leadership of a political party which toys with the fears and anguish unleashed by the changes that our country is going through," he said.   Le Pen, who wants to expel three million immigrants from France, has said repeatedly this month that racial inequality was "obvious" and "a fact".   Numerous politicians, rights groups and other civic leaders have denounced his remarks and urged that he be prosecuted under French laws banning the incitement of racial hatred.   But Justice Minister Jacques Toubon said Le Pen's statements fell through loopholes and urged parliament to tighten the laws.   Some leftist opposition politicians have accused Juppe's centre-right government of being soft on the Front so as not to antagonise ultra-rightists whose support would be needed in 1998 general elections.   Just before Le Pen's remarks on racial inequality, Juppe had proposed election reforms that could give the Front a foothold in the National Assembly, where it currently has no seats.   Le Pen, whose party's slogan is "France for the French" and who is no stranger to controversy over his public statements, called the recent slaying of a 15-year-old Marseille youth "a crime against France, committed by immigrant thugs of North African origin".   He once dismissed Nazi gas chambers as "a mere detail in the history of World War Two". 
18640 !G15 !GCAT !GCRIM  The European Parliament pressed the European Union on Thursday to act to curb child sex and trafficking rings, saying the fight against sexual abuse of children must be an "absolute priority".   "The scourge of paedophilia, trade in children and sexual exploitation is constantly increasing, not only in isolated cases but also through transnational networks and sex tourism, which involve extreme violence," the parliament said in a resolution.   "Combatting the sexual exploitation of children must be an absolute priority for all EU member states, and the European Union must support their efforts," deputies said.   The text urged EU governments to create the legal frameworks for police and justice departments to pool efforts to break up child prostitution networks and to pursue those EU nationals involved in child "sex tourism" outside the 15-country bloc.   Other suggested measures included the establishment of a central register of abducted children, more money for Europol -- the bloc's embryonic police force -- to fight such crimes and special training for those pursuing sex criminals.   But a last-minute amendment backing the creation of an EU register of convicted paedophiles was defeated.   Parliament's call to action follows Belgium's unfolding horror story of child kidnapping, sexual abuse and murder in which four girls have been found dead since August and another two have been rescued alive from captors' hands.   Belgian police have arrested nine people on a series of charges since finding the girls alive, including convicted child rapist Marc Dutroux.   The affair has revolted the country and raised questions of police bungling and political cover-up.   Euro-MPs also called for action to stop criminals using the Internet to disseminate pornography and to deal in women and children.   They urged the European Commission to look into technical and legal measures, at European and global level, to combat the use of the information superhighway for criminal purposes.   They said a strong regulatory framework for controlling the networks was needed to ensure that people's personal and social rights were enhanced by the advent of the new technology.   Parliament's calls came the day after Irish Prime Minister John Bruton pledged to use his country's tenure of the six-month EU presidency to push for coordinated EU action.   "Recent events brought home to us all the obscene and shocking crimes perpetrated against children on our continent," Bruton said in a speech to Euro-MPs.   His remarks followed those of European Justice Commissioner Anita Gradin, who urged last week that EU's 15 countries end their foot-dragging over the issue.   She said an urgent ratification of the Europol Convention to launch the Hague-based police agency was one concrete way they could fight the child-sex trade which has shocked the world.   Among the ideas Gradin will float at a Dublin meeting of EU justice and home affairs ministers on September 26-27 are that countries should try people who travel abroad to buy child sex. 
18641 !E51 !E512 !ECAT !G15 !G158 !GCAT  European Union trade ministers said on Thursday the EU must take the lead in driving global market liberalisation forward but urged its executive not to lose sight of Europe's interests.   Ministers reviewing the EU's trade policies urged Commissioner Sir Leon Brittan to press ahead with attempts to open markets as long as European industries and economies benefited.   Brittan is seeking support for the position the EU plans to take at the World Trade Organisation's ministerial meeting in Singapore in December -- the most important global trade gathering since the WTO's formation in January last year.   Although the Dublin gathering is informal, Brittan is seeking EU unity on issues ranging from U.S. trade legislation to labour standards in the developing world.   An EU official said Brittan's proposals had been well received by the 15 trade ministers, but as they began their responses it was clear that member states were concerned to protect their domestic industries and markets.   EU sources said Portuguese trade minister Fernando Freire Sousa warned that Lisbon was not prepared to jeopardise its textile and garment industries and urged the EU not to make further concessions to exporters from developing countries.   But his was a rare dissenting voice from an audience that generally embraced Brittan's unashamedly free-maraket philosophy.   Brittan indicated he was prepared to come up with a new European offer to try rekindle interest in a global agreement on telecoms, the sources said.   Negotiations for an agreement, due to be settled next year, have stalled because of Washington's dissatisfaction at offers from Europe and Japan to open their markets to U.S. products.   Brittan told ministers the EU was unlikely to make a big issue of labour standards at the Singapore meeting, believing instead that the International Labour Organisation was the best forum for dealing with the issue.   Developing nations, particularly those from Asia, are concerned that Western demands for international labour standards will reduce their competetive edge.   An EU official said Brittan also told ministers the Commission would press to be included in a recently established U.S./Japan semiconductor council.   British Trade Minister Ian Lang urged the Commission to step up efforts to conclude the Information Technology Agreement between the EU, U.S. and Japan, saying this would benefit European jobs and growth.   The ministers agreed the Singapore meeting should be viewed as an opportunity to review the progress of the WTO rather than the start of a new round of trade negotiations.   The EU's aims were "prudent", Brittan said, and were focused on looking for trade-offs that could eventually bring a new round of global talks.   Ministers were later expected to discuss proposed EU retaliation to recent U.S. legislation opposed by Europe.   Washington's Helms-Burton Act and D'Amaato Bill -- which seek to quash trade with Cuba and Iran and Libya respectively -- have provoked a furious response from the EU, which is threatening to escalate the matter with a WTO disputes panel. 
18642 !GCAT !GDIP !GVIO  France's chief anti-terrorism investigator accused two Libyan secret service officials on Thursday of involvement in a 1989 airliner bombing, bringing to six the number of Libyans he wants tried in absentia.   Seven years to the day after the UTA airlines DC-10 crashed in the Sahara desert, killing all 170 people on board, Judge Jean-Louis Bruguiere announced his findings to relatives of the victims.   One of the six he wants tried is a brother-in-law of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi.   Relatives said they sat in tense silence as the judge, who visited Libya for 12 days in July as part of his investigations, showed them a suitcase he found in intelligence offices in Tripoli.   He told them it was identical to one packed with explosives and used to bring down the plane.   The destruction of the DC-10 occurred at the height of tension between France and Libya over Chad, where the two countries' forces clashed repeatedly in the 1970s and 1980s.   "Bruguiere said his investigation is virtually completed.   He will quickly pass it on to prosecutors so that a trial in absentia can take place next year," lawyer Francis Szpiner said.   Francoise Rudetski, head of SOS Attentats, an association of the victims' families, told reporters two new international arrest warrants would shortly be issued against Libyans.   The new suspects are Abdesslam Issa Shibani, a colonel in charge of technical services at Libyan intelligence, and Abdesslam Hamouda, suspected of buying a timer in Germany for the bomb, justice sources said.   In 1981 Bruguiere issued four warrants for the arrest of Abdallah Senoussi, a brother-in-law of Gaddafi identified as a senior Libyan intelligence official, Abdallah Elazragh, a diplomat working in Brazzaville at the time, and alleged secret agents Ibrahim Naeli and Musbah Arbas.   "We thought that the investigation would be buried.   The probe has been carried out and the guilty ones identified.   That's already a first step.   We have to continue fighting," said one civil plaintiff who declined to give his name.   According to Szpiner, Libyan authorities tried to prove that Arbas, one of the suspects, had died.   "They supplied forged death certificates.   That shows the extent of their cooperation."   The United Nations has slapped tough economic sanctions on Tripoli to encourage its cooperation in the investigation into the UTA crash and that of the Pan Am flight over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988.   Bruguiere told the families the U.S.-made Samsonite suitcase was identical to that used in the UTA bombing.   "It was nerve-racking.   He showed us the suitcase.   The way the pentrite high explosive was packed, the detonator, everything was identical," Rudetski said.   "His visit has brought forward new evidence that senior Libyan officials are implicated," she added.   Sources close to the probe have said the judge also found timers and detonators believed similar to those used to destroy the airliner.   Libyan officials told Bruguiere the suitcase was found at the home of opponents of Gaddafi but the judge dismissed this.   The weekly L'Express reported that Gaddafi wrote to French President Jacques Chirac in March to offer help with the bombing inquiries and to authorise Libyan officials to answer Bruguiere's questions.   It said Gaddafi refused to hand over any Libyan suspects but that he would accept a French court's verdict, hinting Libya might pay compensation to the victims' families.   Later on Thursday, Bruguiere will take any relatives of the UTA disaster who wish to see a painstaking reconstruction of the airliner at the military airport of Le Bourget outside Paris. 
18643 !E51 !E512 !ECAT !G15 !G158 !GCAT  The head of the World Trade Organisation said on Thursday that the WTO was prepared to mediate in an international row over U.S. trade legislation, but added he hoped the issue never made it that far.   WTO Director-General Renato Ruggiero told a news conference that the row over Washington's Helms-Burton Act and D'Amato Bill -- which seek to quash trade with Cuba and Iran and Libya respectively -- was likely to go to the WTO to settle.   "I don't want to see it ... I don't like to see it, but I think it will happen," he said.   Ruggiero, attending a meeting of European Union Trade Ministers, said settling international disputes was precisely what the WTO was created for.   "Some think that if there is a dispute, you should blame the WTO.   But the fact that the WTO is where the disputes are heard shows that it is working," he said.   The EU and U.S. have been at odds for months over the Helms-Burton Act and D'Amato Bill, and the European Commission is considering escalating its grievances with the WTO.   If this happens, a WTO disputes settlement panel would decide whether the EU's complaints that the laws were extra-territorial are justified.   Outlining his ambitions for the WTO ministerial meeting in Singapore in December, Ruggiero said it was important to keep the agenda focussed on the progress the organisation had made in wrapping up global deals left over from its predecessor, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade.   He said the so-called "new issues" -- which include labour standards and environmental concerns -- should be put aside or tackled at a differant forum.   Ruggiero, speaking the day after a tyre-factory closure here was blamed partially on cheaper imports from Eastern Europe, said trade liberalisation almost always created rather than cost jobs.   The German rubber giant Continental AG announced on Wednesday that it was closing its Semperit tyre factory in Ballyfermot with the loss of over 600 jobs.   "This unfortunate matter is one for the Irish government or the EU," Ruggiero said.   "But normally multilateral trading and liberalisation is an engine for growth."   Ruggiero said erecting trade barriers was an outdated philosophy.   "The road (to trade liberalisation) is bumpy ... but it is a one-way street," he said.   "Anyway, people are not proposing anything else."   He called on the EU to send a "strong political signal" to developing nations at the Singapore meeting to encourage them to further open their markets.   But he cautioned the EU against pushing controversial issues too far, saying this could merely polarise the West from developing nations. 
18644 !GCAT !GCRIM !GDIP !GVIO  Thousands of Tamils demonstrated outside the United Nations European headquarters in Geneva on August 26 to appeal for U.N. recognition of their fight for independence from Sri Lanka.   The demonstrators, said by police to number 6,000, also urged the release of Nadarajah Muralidaran, the leader of the Tamil Tigers in Switzerland, from a jail in Zurich.   A public prosecutor in Zurich, Thomas Leins, told Reuters Muralidaran was being held in custody while investigations were under way into suspicion that he extorted contributions from Tamils for the Tigers and into whether the group could be classified as a criminal organisation.   But he said Muralidaran had not been formally charged.   The demonstrators also delivered an appeal to the U.N. human rights centre in Geneva demanding an immediate end to "state terrorism" against Tamils and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).   (In a report on August 26, Reuters erroneously reported that Muralidaran was held in jail "on charges of extortion"). 
18645 !CCAT !GCAT !GDIS  The pilot of a Swissair AG jumbo jet lost consciousness over Russia on Wednesday night, forcing the plane to make an emergency landing in Helsinki, the airline said on Thursday.   The pilot of the Boeing 747-300 was taken to the Helsinki University Central Hospital while the 253 passengers and crew of 16 spent the night in a hotel, a spokesman for the carrier said.   A hospital spokesman in Helsinki declined to specify the pilot's illness, but added he was in stable condition and in no grave danger.   "The cause of unconsciouness was a brain ailment," the Swissair spokesman said, adding he did not have any further details about the type of ailment.   The plane's co-pilot took over the controls after the pilot lost consciousness, while the 56-year-old pilot was attended to by a doctor on board.   The decision to make an unplanned stop in Helsinki was made after the doctor determined that the pilot's health was deteriorating and recommended that he be hospitalised as soon as possible.   Swissair said that all its pilots older than 40 years old are examined by doctors twice a year.   The passengers will continue their journey to Beijing this afternoon, the Swissair spokesman added.   -- Zurich Editorial +41 1 631 7340 
18646 !GCAT !GDIP !GVIO  France's chief anti-terrorism investigator met victims' families on Thursday to announce he had completed a probe into a 1989 airliner bombing and to demand a trial in absentia for Libyan secret service officials.   Seven years to the day after the UTA airlines DC-10 crashed in the Sahara, killing all 170 people aboard, representatives of the families said Judge Jean-Louis Bruguiere would call for the trial of four suspects including a brother-in-law of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi.   In an unconfirmed report, Europe-1 radio said the judge would also issue two more arrest warrants -- for a former senior official of the Libyan secret service and a suspect believed to have bought the timer for the bomb.   "The judge will say he will quickly wrap up his probe and pass it on to public prosecutors before a trial in absentia in an assize court," lawyer Francis Szpiner told reporters before the briefing at the Paris Palais de Justice.   "It is pretty frustrating that the trial will be in absentia but we feel comforted by the tenacious work of the investigators," said Francoise Rudetski, head of the victims' association SOS Attentats.   Sources close to the probe have said Bruguiere questioned 40 people during 12 days in Libya in July and brought back a U.S.-made Samsonite suitcase he believes is identical to one packed with pentrite high explosive and used in the bombing.   He also searched secret service offices in Tripoli and found timers and detonators believed similar to those used to destroy the airliner.   Bruguiere plans to recommend a trial in absentia for Abdallah Senoussi, a brother-in-law of Gaddafi identified as a senior Libyan intelligence official, Abdallah Elazragh, a diplomat working in Brazzaville at the time, and alleged secret agents Ibrahim Naeli and Musbah Arbas.   "We thought that the investigation would be buried.   The probe has been carried out and the guilty ones identified.   That's already a first step.   We have to continue fighting," said one civil plaintiff who declined to give his name.   The weekly L'Express reported that Gaddafi wrote to French President Jacques Chirac earlier this year to offer help with inquiries into the bombings of the UTA plane and the Pan Am flight over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988.   The United Nations has slapped tough economic sanctions on Tripoli to encourage its cooperation in the investigations.   Gaddafi wrote that he was ready to supply French investigators with evidence, and to authorise Libyan officials to cooperate with Bruguiere and answer his questions.   "I wish to assure you that (Libya) is anxious to cooperate with France, to determine the causes of the UTA plane accident and to ensure that the perpetrators are punished," Gaddafi was quoted as writing.   Gaddafi refused to hand over any Libyan suspects but said he would accept a French court's verdict, hinting Libya might pay compensation to the victims' families.   L'Express said Gaddafi decided to cooperate with the investigation to try to find a way out of the U.N. sanctions.   Later on Thursday, Bruguiere will take any relatives of the UTA disaster who wish to see a painstaking reconstruction of the airliner at the military airport of Le Bourget outside Paris.   The destruction of the DC-10, in which people from more than a dozen countries were killed, occurred at the height of tension between France and Libya over Chad, where the two countries' forces clashed repeatedly in the 1970s and 1980s.   Investigators have recovered 80 percent of the plane's wreckage and have worked out to within a square metre where the bomb went off in the forward cargo loading bay. 
18647 !GCAT !GREL  Pope John Paul arrives in France on Thursday in frail health for a four-day trip to a once staunchly Roman Catholic nation torn by controversy about the role of the Church and the Pontiff's moral teachings.   French President Jacques Chirac will greet the 76-year-old Pope when he lands at Tours airport in western France, the first stop of a gruelling trip that will take him to Brittany, Vendee and the eastern city of Reims.   On his first day, the Pope will travel with his Popemobile into a rainswept Tours, have talks with Chirac and make a helicopter pilgrimage amid tight security to a shrine where a crude anti-Pope bomb was defused two weeks ago.   Unknown attackers had scrawled "In nomine-Pope-BOOM!"   on the wall of the church in Saint-Laurent-Sur-Sevre.   About 6,000 police, paramilitary gendarmes, bodyguards and marksmen will be on duty to guard the Pontiff during his last trip abroad before he enters hospital in October for an operation to remove his appendix.   "I intend to launch a new appeal for solidarity with all those who suffer in their bodies and in their heart, those for whom life is precarious and threatened, both in France and beyond its borders," the Pontiff said on Wednesday.   Even though the Pontiff has avoided controversy in talking about his fifth visit to France, he has awoken unprecedented protests in a country that long vaunted its fidelity to Rome.   Apart from the homemade bomb, the most dramatic opposition was a group of custard-pie-throwing demonstrators who disrupted a service in Nantes cathedral last week.   Sixty-seven groups including anarchists, free-masons and a police trade union are planning a rally in Paris on Sunday, when the Pope will be in Reims, to protest at the Pope and back the secular ideals of the 1789 French Revolution.   They accuse Chirac of violating laws separating Church and State by partly funding the visit and celebrations of the 1,500th anniversary of the baptism of Clovis, the first pagan king in Western Europe to convert to Roman Catholicism in Reims.   "The Unwieldy Visitor", headlined the leftist daily Liberation.   Some moderate bishops felt concerned at the visit, and Chirac would meet the Pontiff for only 20 minutes so as to signal the state-Church divide, it said.   Paris Archbishop Jean-Marie Lustiger dismissed the controversy, telling RTL radio that it was "preposterous" to suggest the French republic was in any danger.   "France has always remained faithful to the Holy See, despite the revolution and the separation of Church and state," echoed the Vatican's "culture minister" Paul Poupard in an interview with the daily Le Parisien.   Opinion polls show many French citizens are indifferent to the visit, and to arcane disputes about Clovis.   A CSA poll published in Le Parisien showed that support for the Pope has waned since his last visit in 1988, reflecting French disaffection with the Pontiff's teachings against birth control, abortion or homosexuality.   Fifty-one percent had reserves or strongly disapproved of his actions during his papacy, up from 26 percent in 1988.   And only 22 percent of the 1,004 people quizzed from September 16-17 saw him as being "open to the world" against 46 percent in 1988.   The Pope's trip on Thursday afternoon to Saint-Laurent-Sur-Sevre is to enable him to pray at the tomb of Saint Louis-Marie Grignion de Montfort, an 18th century missionary whose writings the Pope has admired for decades.   The Pope, who personally asked to visit the tomb, adopted the saint's Latin motto "Totus Tuus" (I am all yours) as a symbol of devotion to the Virgin Mary. 
18648 !GCAT !GCRIM  Spain's government said on Thursday it had ordered the country's best known judge to probe allegations intelligence agents experimented on vagrants with drugs in the so-called "Operation Mengele".   In a clear signal the new government is taking newspaper reports on the gruesome 1988 experiments seriously, the state prosecutor said it told High Court judge Baltasar Garzon to investigate whether agents used beggars as human guinea pigs.   "...the Public Affairs Ministry, after studying the reports, has decided to involve the courts," the state prosecutor said in statement.   The daily El Mundo, quoting files and agents of the military intelligence agency CESID, reported on Tuesday that agents had kidnapped three vagrants, one of whom died, to test anaesthetics meant for use against Basque separatist guerrillas.   The drugs were meant to help security forces kidnap ETA (Basque Homeland and Freedom) guerrillas from hideaways in south France and smuggle them back to Spain, according to the reports.   El Mundo said the experiments had been so nicknamed within the service after Nazi death-camp doctor Josef Mengele.   The Defence Ministry disclosed on Wednesday that Garzon had been probing the affair independently since early August.   The prosecutor asked Garzon to incorporate El Mundo's reports into his probe.   The daily El Pais, quoting court sources, said on Thursday Garzon was searching for the body of an unidentified vagrant.   The judge was also said to be looking for two drug addicts, who are brothers, thought to have been used in the experiments.   The Defence Ministry said on Wednesday CESID had no documentary evidence of vagrants being kidnapped and used as guinea pigs for drugs but stopped short of an outright denial of the allegations.   The "Operation Mengele" accusations are the latest in a "dirty war" scandal implicating members of the former Socialist government in a violent campaign against ETA that killed 27 people from 1983 to 1987, one third of them by mistake.   The new conservative government of Jose Maria Aznar came to power in April after a rash of corruption scandals and the "dirty war" charges discredited the Socialists.   But Aznar's government has disappointed critics of the former regime by refusing to hand over secret CESID files and by insisting on looking ahead instead of investigating the past.   Former Socialist interior minister Jose Barrionuevo and Enrique Rodriguez Galindo, a top general in the paramilitary Civil Guard, are on trial on charges of creating and running the death squads that waged the illegal campaign. 
18649 !E51 !E512 !ECAT !G15 !G158 !GCAT !GDIP  Slovenia and the European Union agreed on Thursday to a temporary trade deal that will tide over their relations until a formal accord promising EU membership to the former Yugoslav republic has been ratified.   The European Commission said in a statement that delegates from both sides had initialled an interim agreement, which becomes effective on January 1, 1997.   Slovenia has already agreed and signed a so-called Europe Agreement with the 15-nation bloc, but this still has to be ratified by all the countries involved.   The interim agreement makes effective the trade provisions of the Europe Agreement, gradually establishing a free trade area over a maximum of six years.   "(The interim agreement) is a key instrument for further liberalisation and developemnt of trade and will promote further integration of Slovenia with the European Union," the Commission said.   Slovenia is the only former Yugoslav republic to have signed a Europe Agreement, which brings with it the promise of eventual EU membership.   Poland, Hungary, the three Baltic states, the Czech republic, Slovakia, Bulgaria and Romania have all signed Europe Agreements.   Cyprus and Malta have similar, but different sorts of pacts. 
18650 !E21 !E211 !ECAT !GCAT !GPOL  The Spanish government and its nationalist allies appeared on Thursday to have resolved key stumbling blocks to agreement on the hotly debated 1997 budget that must be presented to parliament in less than two weeks.   The Catalan Convergence and Unity (CiU) coalition secured in principle agreement on health funds which they had demanded in return for the votes of their 16 seats for the minority Popular Party government's first budget.   The Basque Nationalists, the five-seat junior partner in the loose coalition that makes up the Popular Party's 176-vote legislative majority, also appeared to have moved toward agreement on corporate taxes.   "There is no technical solution to resolve the problem yet (but) there is the will," Francesc Homs, Catalan economic spokesman in parliament told Spanish radio.   Separately, Economy Minister Rodrigo Rato told journalists that budget talks were going well and that the cabinet should approve the draft on September 27 as planned.   The central government apparently agreed at Catalan insistence that the disputed health funding to the region be based on real spending patterns, although specific amounts had not yet been determined.   "The formula is basically to recognise the real budget -- to incorporate real health spending in the 1997 budget over the 1995 and 1996 base," Homs said.   "The discussion is over this base."   In principle, both the Catalans and the Basque Nationalist PNV have pledged their agreement to a stringent 1997 budget that will whip Spain's finances into shape for the launch of the European single currency in 1999.   But the talks ran into blockages in the last few weeks as the parties struggled to get the most out of ever scarce resources.   The government is counting on solid economic growth in 1997 to boost receipts by six percent, while tight controls are designed to keep expenditures from exceeding two percent growth.   Even so, the PP must slash another 800 billion pesetas to ensure a reduction in the deficit to three percent of gross domestic product from a projected 4.4 percent this year and thereby meet one of the toughest common currency criteria.   The Basques said they had been given a guarantee that the government would indeed adhere to deals agreed to in the original pact that set up the Popular Party minority government.   These deals, part of which have never been made public, give the Basques manoeuvring room on taxing authority in response to taxation autonomy dating back to feudal times.   "(Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria) Aznar ratified the pact," Inaki Anasagasti, spokesman for the PNV told Spanish radio. 
18651 !GCAT !GPOL !GVOTE  Greece's socialist Prime Minister Costas Simitis called early elections expecting an easy victory but the opposition conservatives were snapping at his heels on Thursday and his move now looks like a blunder.   With just three days before national elections, Simitis, 60, and conservative challenger Miltiades Evert, 57, are locked in a see-saw race with less than a single percentage point separating them, public opinion poll analysts say.   "We all agree that we can't predict this election.   Anything can happen on Sunday," said Christina Badouna of the MRB polling company.   One point analysts agree on is that the socialist vote will fall from its 1993 level and Simitis will have a reduction of his party's 170 deputies in the 300-seat parliament.   Simitis took over as premier from ailing socialist founder Andreas Papandreou in January and then won a leadership fight.   He had hoped the early election would cement his grip on power but instead it has tarnished his image.   The fifth national election in seven years has been marked by widespread voter unhappiness, and often downright hostility towards the two major parties.   Badouna said the big question was whether socialist votes would return home on election day or be siphoned off by three other smaller leftist parties.   "This may be the key to who wins.   So far the socialists have mobilised only about 70 percent of their support from their 1993 win.   It remains to be seen whether they will benefit from a big surge on election day," Badouna said.   The biggest threat to the socialist vote is from Dimitris Tsovolas, a former socialist finance minister who set up a new party this year and has branded Simitis a neo-conservative.   "Current (socialist) economic policy is a one-way street to misery," Tsovolas told voters.   "Reform must be implemented with all Greeks and for all Greeks."   With his colourful denunciations of Evert and Simitis, and calls for a "patriotic foreign policy", he has stolen radical populists who were fanatical socialist supporters for years.   Polls indicate Tsovolas could decide the election.   If he hives off a large block of socialist voters, it could prove a deadblow to Simitis's re-election chances.   Tsovolas is the closest candidate to Papandreou, who died this year.   Unlike the deadpan Simitis, he launches easily into a fiery speech and delights crowds with his colourful oratory.   Three other smaller parties -- two on the left, one on the right -- have fluctuated in the opinion polls and could take desperately needed votes from Simitis or Evert, or they could collapse on election day.   "This is the first election of its kind in years.   Anything is possible.   There is no clear sense of what is going to happen," Badouna said.   Most polling experts expected the unusually large block of undecided voters, 15 to 20 percent, to make up its mind only on Saturday or in the polling booth on Sunday.   "We have rarely seen such intense voter dislike for the two major parties.   Voters are completely turned off and seem to feel they're hearing the same old promises," said another analyst.   Polling experts and political commentators said many voters seemed unhappy that an election had been called, and even more so that Simitis had called it during the August summer holiday.   Simitis also seems to have badly misjudged his own personal popularity.   When he called the vote his popularity soared but after his lacklustre campaign, it has fallen sharply. 
18652 !GCAT !GDIP !GVIO  Germany's 16 state interior ministers met on Thursday to set a date to start sending home 320,000 Bosnian civil war refugees who have taken shelter here.   Despite pressure from human rights groups who say many parts of Bosnia are neither ready nor safe enough to take the refugees back, the ministers appeared ready to agree on October 1 as the starting date for a gradual repatriation programme.   "Now that the civil war is over and it is again possible to live in and especially rebuild the homeland, our temporary guests must return," federal Interior Minister Manfred Kanther told Berlin's Info Radio.   "We could never take in so many refugees again if we didn't always make clear that this is not a programme of immigration by the back door, but help in need."   The vast majority of the refugees are Moslems driven out of their homes mostly by Serbs but also by Croats.   The United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) has singled out 22 regions suitable for refugees to return to -- but added that this only applied to returnees from the ethnic group which was dominant in those areas.   By and large refugees from former Yugoslavia have been received sympathetically by ordinary Germans, many of whom remember the ravages of war.   The Bosnians, many of them staying with friends or relatives in Germany, have not aroused resentment in the same way as refugees from further afield who still apply for asylum at a rate of well over 100,000 a year and are often branded as spongers by hardline rightwingers.   However, even federal states which have until now urged that the Bosnians should be allowed to stay longer have started pushing for a definite timetable, under pressure from overstretched local and municipal budgets.   The states agreed tentatively in January that a gradual return should begin on July 1, starting with single people and childless couples, but then agreed with Bonn not to start before October 1.   Now a consensus appears to be emerging that the programme will not rigidly follow family categories, but instead focus more on returning specific ethnic groups to areas where they will be safe.   "We have to take account of individual personal circumstances and -- this is the most important thing -- be sure that people are only returned to areas where this is possible from the security point of view," Max Stadler, interior policy spokesman of the liberal Free Democrats, told NDR television.   Politicians of all shades accept that the repatriation programme will take two years.   Even if permits allowing the refugees to stay are no longer renewed from October 1 onwards, many will not expire for another three months, and Bonn is unlikely to try to force refugees home in the depths of the Balkan winter.   But the setting of a date will provide a starting signal that means the refugees will be available for repatriation at short notice when conditions are considered suitable.   Politicians also admit that by sending refugees only into areas populated by their own ethnic group, they are in effect cementing the ethnic cleansing which last December's Dayton peace agreement was intended to counteract.   "The process of ethnic separation is regrettable, but I have met no one who has said it can be changed in the foreseeable future," Bavarian interior minister Guenter Beckstein told the Sueddeutsche Zeitung daily. 
18653 !E12 !E21 !E211 !ECAT !G15 !G154 !GCAT  The Chairman of the German parliament's European Affairs committee, Norbert Wieczorek, said on Thursday that he feared parts of the the French budget were against the spirit of the European Union's Maastricht treaty.   Wieczorek voiced doubts about the French government's use of a one-off payment of 37.5 billion French francs from France Telecom to cut the central state deficit and enhance its credentials for joining European Monetary Union (EMU).   "It is certainly unusual," Wieczorek told Reuters in Dublin after addressing an Irish parliamentary committee.   "It is a one-time item and to have included that in their calculations as a normal item is not in the spirit of the (Maastricht) Treaty."   Wieczorek, who is also currency union expert for Germany's opposition Social Democrats, said the decision to rely on the France Telecom payment diminished the French budget deficit by 0.4-0.5 of a percent and was a cause of concern in Germany.   Asked if this concern was shared in official circles, Wieczorek said the German government would have to debate that with the French in private.   But he pointed to comments by Bundesbank president Hans Tietmeyer on Tuesday, before the French budget was unveiled, that Germany and France had agreed to meet the 1997 deficit limit for entry into EMU without resorting to "window dressing" schemes.   The Bundesbank has not commented on the French budget but the European Commission said on Thursday that the plan to include the France Telecom payment appeared compatible with the Maastricht treaty rules "at first sight".   Some European analysts have expressed concern that the French budget is an accounting exercise to smooth France's entry into EMU without meeting the Maastricht criteria on their strictest terms.   The Maastricht Treaty requires that countries proceeding to the European single currency have a general government deficit not exceeding three percent of GDP although a small and temporary excess will be permitted.   Wednesday's French budget brings the deficit down from a targeted four percent of GDP this year. 
18654 !GCAT !GDIP !GPOL  Palestinian President Yasser Arafat urged Germany on Thursday to pressure Israel to honour its Middle East peace agreements, warning the Jewish state's stance could plunge the whole region back into violence.   "Frustration and desperation are quickly increasing," he told the regional parliament in the central German state of Hesse.   "This drags the region back to extremism, violence and terrorism.   Emnity and war are appearing on the horizon."   Arafat, on a two-day visit to Germany, was speaking just hours after a late-night meeting with Israeli Defence Minister Yitzhak Mordechai.   They failed to reach agreement over a delayed Israeli troop redeployment from the West Bank town of Hebron.   Arafat said Bonn and other leading members of the international community must try to persuade Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to respect commitments, such as the Hebron redeployment, made by his predecessor Shimon Peres.   "We have been surprised by the policy of the new Israeli government," Arafat said, speaking through an interpreter.   "It is their goal to impose a new and purely Israeli version to solve the conflict between Palestinians and Israelis."   Netanyahu is scheduled to visit Germany next week to hold talks with Chancellor Helmut Kohl.   Under peace deals with the PLO, Israel was due in March to hand over parts of Hebron, the only West Bank city where Jews and Arabs live together.   Israel has cited security concerns as the reason for the delay.   Arafat was scheduled to fly to Bonn later in the day to brief Foreign Minister Klaus Kinkel on the current state of attempts to bring a lasting peace to the Middle East.   He was also due to attend a reception held by President Roman Herzog.   "We look with great hope towards Germany," Arafat said.   "Germany has great international status and effective influence in the Middle East, both through the European Union and through its direct relations with all the parties in our region."   A dinner in Arafat's honour hosted by Hesse state premier Hans Eichel in the 18th century splendour of Wiesbaden's Biebrich castle was due to bring his first day to a close.   Eichel called on both Palestinians and Israelis to fulfil the agreements they had signed and urged them to take heart from the process of Franco-German reconcilliation.   "After three wars in the lifetime of one generation, a war between France and Germany is now unimaginable," Eichel said in his welcome speech.   "It is possible to follow the path of peace right to the end, even if it seems very distant."   Friday's schedule includes talks with Ignatz Bubis, the leader of Germany's Jewish community, and meetings in Frankfurt, the country's financial centre, with industrialists and officials from Germany's top banks. 
18655 !E21 !E211 !ECAT !GCAT !GPOL  Italy's 1997 budget will get through parliament but the government's text will be retouched in order to reach a compromise with its far-left allies, leader of the far-right National Alliance Gianfranco Fini said.   "I'm absolutely convinced the budget will get parliamentary approval but the package won't be that of (Prime Minister Romano) Prodi or that of Communist Refoundation leader Fausto Bertinotti," Fini told Reuters at parliament on Thursday.   Prodi's centre-left coalition controls the upper house of parliament, the Senate, but the hard-left Refoundation holds the balance of power in the lower house.   Bertinotti has said a pre-requisite for his party's support is that the government leaves health and pension spending untouched, adding recently that he gave the government only a 50 percent chance of getting the budget through parliament.   But Prodi has since announced that the package, designed to achieve 32.4 trillion lire in deficit cuts and which must be presented to parliament by September 30, would not include any revision of state pension reforms and that health care provision would not be reduced.   He said it would be the last annual budget to "comprise considerable sacrifices".   Fini said that neither Prodi nor Bertinotti "will have the courage to go right to the bitter end."   "They will therefore have to reach a compromise out of which will emerge a budget just to keep the country afloat and essentially useless," Fini added.   Both houses of parliament have until December 31 to approve the budget.   -- Rome newsroom +392 66129589 
18656 !GCAT !GDEF !GDIP  France said on Thursday it had reassured Israel about suspicious Syrian troop movements in southern Lebanon, boasting that its intelligence network had concluded the movements were a routine redeployment.   "We do not believe the situation justifies any particular alarm," Foreign Ministry spokesman Jacques Rummelhardt said of the movements.   "None of these movements appears to be of an offensive nature," Rummelhardt added.   After Israeli authorities expressed anxiety to France, Paris had determined through intelligence observations and contacts that the movements were routine, the spokesman said.   He appeared to be referring to the new Helios satellite, developed by France with Spain and Italy after the 1991 Gulf War to reduce dependence on U.S. intelligence-gathering resources.   If so, France got no public credit from Israeli Prime Minister Banjamnin Netanyahu, who earlier on Thursday thanked Washington for passing on information on the situation.   "Calming messages were sent by one side to the other and I think that it's important that in this case the United States assisted," Netanyahu told reporters in Jerusalem before meeting U.S. Middle East peace envoy Dennis Ross.   "Important messages have been passed from one side to the other and I think that, for now, things are under control," Netanyahu said.   Syria has in recent weeks redeployed up to 12,000 of its troops in Lebanon, moving some to within striking distance of a key Israeli position on the occupied Golan Heights, causing war jitters in the Jewish state.   Netanyahu had said earlier Syria was trying to pressure Israel into unilateral concessions on the strategic plateau seized by Israel in the 1967 Middle East war. 
18657 !GCAT !GENT !GOBIT !GPRO  French film actress Annabella, a star of the 1930s and the former wife of Tyrone Power, has died aged 86, relatives said on Thursday.   She died at her home in the chic Paris suburb of Neuilly on Wednesday.   Annabella, whose real name was Suzanne Charpentier, made her debut at 18 in Abel Gance's silent film "Napoleon".   After starring in several popular French films under director Rene Clair, she went on to Hollywood and married Power with whom she starred in "Suez" in 1938.   She returned to France to star in Marcel Carne's classic "Hotel du Nord", but was back in the United States through World War Two.   She separated from Power in 1945 and never managed to relaunch her career after returning home. 
18658 !E21 !E211 !ECAT !GCAT !GPOL  Economy Minister Rodrigo Rato said on Thursday that the preparation of the 1997 budget draft was on schedule and "going well".   Rato, speaking informally to journalists, said the budget draft would be ready for cabinet approval as planned on September 27.   --Madrid Newsroom +34 1 585 2167 
18659 !GCAT !GDEF !GDIP  NATO planners are developing a "super" Partnership for Peace to embrace countries likely to be left out of the first wave of expansion of the alliance, Western diplomats said on Thursday.   With the Western alliance likely to accept some former communist countries into its fold next year, diplomats say some non-aligned nations and unsuccessful NATO candidates may join a tighter grouping of would-be members and affiliates.   Russia could also join this intensified Partnership for Peace -- dubbed "PfP-Two" or "enhanced PfP" -- which aims to boost non-members' military cooperation and political contact with NATO, a U.S. diplomat told Reuters.   "Let's include the Russians," said Derek Shearer, U.S. ambassador to Finland.   The plan aims to demonstrate to Russia that NATO is not belligerent and ease the concerns of countries that may fall into a security "grey zone" after the allance expands.   Of the 27 current members of the PfP scheme aimed at uniting former European foes, Shearer said between 15 and 20 could join a super PfP, which could involve specific liaison officers and working groups and would be based on charters.   "It's just a notion of enhancing PfP to show where we're going in Europe," he said.   The scheme builds on a milestone speech by U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher in Stuttgart earlier this month in which he outlined a vision of a New Atlantic Community which would erase former Cold War barriers.   Christopher spoke of forming a New Atlantic Partnership Council based on a charter between NATO and Russia and said the alliance should involve non-members in the PfP programme.   His speech "was specific and important because the secretary made clear that Russia should be included in discussions of the European security architecture", Shearer said.   Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Poland are widely regarded as top of the list for inclusion in an expanded NATO.   Other former Soviet Bloc states including the Baltic countries, Romania and Bulgaria are less likely to make it into the first round.   "You don't want them feeling this means 'no' forever," Shearer said.   The scheme would also embrace non-aligned and neutral countries -- Finland, Sweden and Austria -- which do not currently seek NATO membership, offsetting concerns that NATO expansion may be seen as re-creating "zones of influence".   For instance, Finland, Sweden and the three Baltic states, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, have said expansion in central Europe may leave former Soviet satellites in a security void which, under some circumstances, Russia could try to fill.   "We want to see the avoidance of the grey area by the development of a super-PfP," another Western diplomat said.   With Europe still in transition from the Cold War period, the plan aims to let countries address threats like terrorism and drug-trafficking, which are now more likely causes of instability than invasion, diplomats said. 
18660 !GCAT !GCRIM !GPOL  The Belgian Gendarmerie, stung into reaction by accusations in the media of blundering or worse in the country's twin scandals of paedophile porn and political murder, hit back on Thursday.   "These allegations are scandalous and totally without foundation," Colonel Willem Vanden Broeck told a news conference.   Belgian and international media have repeatedly suggested that the legal and judicial authorities were either incompetent or corrupt in the investigations into the kidnap and killing of four young girls by a gang led by convicted rapist Marc Dutroux.   Likewise allegations of incompetence and political meddling have surfaced in more than five years of investigations into the murder of influential Socialist politician Andre Cools.   "We do not pretend that everything the Gendarmerie has done in the Dutroux case was perfect...but we have done all we could and more and have nothing to hide," General-Major Herman Fransen told the news conference.   "If there have been mistakes we will learn from them," he added.   Leaked documents show the Gendarmerie was running a surveillance operation codenamed "Othello" against Dutroux from 1993 to 1995.   There have been allegations that the information gathered was either supressed or not given sufficient urgency when it was passed on to investigators into missing children.   The Gendarmerie flatly denied these accusations.   "We passed on the information where it was appropriate, sometimes verbally, sometimes verbally and in writing, and sometimes on several occasions," Vanden Broeck said.   "We are confident we worked correctly."   Fransen too strongly defended the actions of his force.   "It is thanks to the work of the Gendarmerie that Dutroux was arrested...without this work and a vigilant witness Dutroux would still be at large," he said.   "If the Cools case has received new impetus recently it is thanks to the Gendarmerie investigating team," he added.   Both men admitted that despite their surveillance operation they still failed to stop Dutroux in time -- despite searching his houses several times -- but said he was highly adept at hiding his activities.   "Dutroux was extremely intelligent, cunning and malicious, and it was not possible to get evidence," Vanden Broeck said.   Julie Lejeune and Melissa Russo were kidnapped in June 1995.   Their bodies were found on August 17 this year buried on a property owned by Dutroux in Sars-La-Buissiere south of Charleroi.   They had been starved to death.   Eefje Lambrecks and An Marchal were abducted in August 1995.   There bodies were found buried on another property associated with Dutroux in Charleroi on September 3 this year.   Police were led to the bodies by Dutroux himself, arrested on August 13 after an alert eyewitness remembered the colour, make and half the number plate of a van near the spot where Laetitia Delhez, 14, had disappeared four days before.   It was quickly traced to Dutroux who eventually admitted the abduction and showed police a secret dungeon in another of his Charleroi houses where Laetitia and another girl, Sabine Dardenne who had been missing since May, were found alive.   "I hope that one day we will have the opportunity to show you the cages that Dutroux built to illustrate to you quite how ingenious he was," Fransen said. 
18661 !C13 !C31 !CCAT !GCAT !GHEA  The U.N.'s Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) called on Thursday for tighter controls on the use and trade of toxic pesticides and chemicals in Africa.   The Rome-based agency issued a statement to coincide with a meeting of officials from 100 governments in Nairobi for talks to prepare an international treaty on hazardous chemicals.   FAO said organo-chlorine pesticides, such as DDT, which have been banned or whose use has been severely restricted in Europe and North America, are still marketed and used in Africa.   Some African states have no approved pesticides legislation.   Niek Van der Graaf, chief of FAO's plant protection service, said that poverty, instability and unreliable rains meant that pesticide use in Africa was lowest overall of all continents.   But he added, "There are areas of intensive pesticide use... for example by large-scale commercial farms, vegetable production around cities and plantations producing export crops".   FAO says a better-applied Prior Informed Consent procedure, which lets countries know about toxic substances that may be shipped to them allowing them to choose to permit or ban future imports, would help reduce health and environmental risks.   "Considerable scope remains for technical assistance to improve pesticide regulations and pesticide management," Van der Graaf said.   "Restrictions on products that cannot be handled safely in developing countries should be considered by the industry and governments." 
18662 !GCAT !GDIP !GPOL  France on Thursday voiced support for U.N. Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali in the face of U.S. opposition to his re-election, recalling that the tradition was for United Nations chiefs to serve a second term.   "We recall the esteem and respect we have for Boutros Boutros-Ghali," Foreign Ministry spokesman Jacques Rummelhardt told a news briefing.   "It is customary for a U.N. Secretary-General to serve two terms," he said.   U.S. Ambassador Madeleine Albright has said Washington was prepared to use its veto to prevent Boutros-Ghali from staying at the helm of the world body.   She says the U.N. chief should be an administrator rather than a diplomat or statesman, and Boutros-Ghali, 73, should be replaced by someone who will not be dragged "kicking and screaming" into reforming the United Nations.   The United States has angered numerous diplomats, especially those from France, Russia and China, in announcing through the press it would block Boutros-Ghali's bid for re-election.   His five-year term ends this year and all four countries, as well as Britain, have veto power on the Security Council, which chooses the secretary-general. 
18663 !GCAT !GREL  In the latest of a series of scandals to rock the Roman Catholic Church, Pope John Paul on Thursday accepted the resignation of a Scottish bishop reported by media to have run off with a divorced woman.   The Vatican issued a one-paragraph statement saying the Pope, who is on a visit to France, had accepted the resignation of Roderick Wright, 55-year-old bishop of Argyll and the Isles.   Wright sparked a furore in Church circles when he disappeared on September 9 at the same time as divorced mother Kathleen Macphee went missing from her home in the Scottish Highlands.   He offered his resignation and apologies to the Pope on Monday.   The Vatican made no mention of the details of the case but said the resignation had been accepted under a Church law which says:   "A diocesan bishop who, because of illness or some other grave reason, has become unsuited for the fulfilment of his office, is earnestly requested to offer his resignation from office."   This is the rule used in particularly delicate cases involving bishops, such as sex scandals and theological dissent.   In a statement on Monday, Wright said he was "physically and spiritually" unable to sustain the responsibilities of his office.   British media say Wright counselled Macphee, a mother of three in her early 40s, after her marriage broke up.   The case has prompted fresh debate on the issue of celibacy, which the Catholic Church demands its priests and nuns live up to in a modern world filled with temptations.   Britain's Cardinal Basil Hume said the Church could stop losing many candidates for the priesthood if it relaxed its celibacy ruling.   "It is not divine law.   It is Church law, so any Pope or General Council could change it," he told BBC Radio on Tuesday.   Scandals involving priests and bishops who have had affairs with women have been a bane of the Pope's pontificate, partly because they are more difficult to hide than in the past.   Progressive Catholics say the Church is out of touch and that celibacy should be optional.   Wright is at least the fifth Catholic bishop to resign in the past six years over acknowledged or alleged affairs.   Last year, the Bishop of Basle Hansjoerg Vogel, Switzerland's youngest bishop, resigned after he got his girlfriend pregnant.   Archbishop Robert Sanchez of Sante Fe, New Mexico, resigned in 1993 amid allegations by five women that they had sexual relations with him.   Archbishop Eugene Marino of Atlanta, the first black bishop in the American Church's history, resigned in 1990 after officials learned of a two-year affair with a local woman.   Bishop Eamonn Casey of Galway in Catholic Ireland resigned in 1992 after American divorcee Annie Murphy revealed they had a child from a passionate affair.   At the time of Casey's resignation, which caused a huge scandal in the Church in Ireland, Wright said there should be more flexibility on the subject of celibacy and added that he did not see any conflict in a married man being ordained. 
18664 !GCAT !GCRIM  Austrian police on Thursday pounced on an international crime ring believed to have smuggled more than 5,000 immigrants into Austria in the past four years.   "This is the biggest operation against immigrant smugglers we've had in the last few years," Chief Inspector Robert Sturm told Austrian news agency APA.   Eleven people, including Austrians, Iranians, Syrians, Turks and Iraqis were arrested in a nightime police raid on their homes in northern Austria, he said.   A 36-year-old Iranian who ran a bar in town of Wels in Upper Austria province was believed to be the ringleader.   Police are hunting for a twelfth member of the gang and 20 other people suspected of having assisted the smugglers.   Desperate immigrants from Hungary and former Yugoslavia paid 100,000 schillings ($10,000) each to be transported over the Austrian border hidden in buses and trucks, Sturm said.   Once over the border they were left to fend for themselves.   "These poor people must have had to sell all their belongings in their homeland to make it to 'the golden West'," he added.   Police said they seized a stash of rifles and hand guns, and drugs with a street value of around three million schillings ($282,500) during the raids.   They also found forged passports and driving licences.   Austria has become a key transit point for illegal immigrants since border controls with Eastern Europe were relaxed following the collapse of communist regimes in the region seven years ago.   Austrian police have said Chinese and Iranian mafia-style gangs regularly smuggle thousands of illegal immigrants to the West through Austria.   Many immigrants make their way from Austria, a member of the European Union since January 1995, to seek residence in Germany, Italy, Spain and the Benelux countries.   ($1=10.62 Schilling) 
18665 !E12 !ECAT !G15 !G154 !GCAT !M13 !M132 !MCAT  Swedish central bank governor Urban Backstrom said on Thursday he personally found it hard to see Sweden remaining outside Europe's Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) in the long run if most other nations joined.   "Personally I find it hard to see Sweden in the end staying outside if a monetary union is created in Europe involving most of the other countries," Backstrom told Nordbanken's capital markets day.    He said discussions in Sweden should focus less on the project as such and focus instead on how Sweden should relate to a situation where many countries in Europe participate in EMU.   Backstrom said, to date, the work on preparations appeared to be going according to plan and most signs pointed at EMU being established on January 1, 1999.   "The countries that participate from the start may be a smallish group, but it is conceivable that the group will be larger," he said.   He said Sweden had consistently stressed that convergence of economic fundamentals was a basic prerequisite for exchange rate stability.   "Participation in an exchange rate mechanism is not a substitute for this," he said.   "Each EU country should be free to choose the way in which monetary stability is achieved."    Backstrom said Sweden's inflation policy was as important for stability as a fixed exchange rate target.   "An inflation target such as Sweden's stands for an ambition to align economic policy for stability that is just as great as that of a country with a fixed exchange rate target," he said.   He said Sweden needed to discuss whether a conflict could arise between its inflation target and participation in Europe's Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM).   "Considering the present parameters for ERM participation the risk of this should be slight as long as confidence in economic policy continues to improve," he said.   "But the inflation target should be as at present the paramount objective of monetary policy."   But he said Sweden should work its way towards a perception that an inflation target can be combined with ERM participation.   "Low inflation and good confidence in economic policy render the exchange rate stable and it should also be possible to generate this stability in the context of ERM participation and with the aid of Sweden's inflation target."   -- Stockholm newsroom +46-8-700 1017 
18666 !C12 !C13 !CCAT !G15 !G152 !GCAT !GCRIM  The European Parliament called on Thursday for action to stop criminals using the Internet to disseminate pornography and traffick in women and children.   The European Commission should look into technical and legal measures, at European and global level, to combat the use of the information superhighway for criminal purposes, the parliament said in a report on the information society.   MEPs also asked the Commission to investigate ways of restricting young people's access to pornography on the Internet and preventing the net being used to disseminate racist material.   They said a strong regulatory framework for controlling the networks was needed to ensure that people's personal and social rights were enhanced, not reduced, by the advent of the information society.   Their wide-ranging report, drafted by Belgian Christian Democrat Fernand Herman in response to a Commission discussion paper on the information society - COM(94)347, lists a whole string of areas where Euro-MPs think the EU should take action.   These include matters such as regulations, standards, industrial policy, intellectual property, social issues, employment, education, culture, regional development and research. 
18667 !GCAT !GREL  The substance superstitious Neapolitans believe is the blood of their patron saint liquefied on cue on Thursday in a repeat of the thrice-yearly "miracle" they believe brings good luck.   The ritual of San Gennaro's blood took place after some 4,000 worshippers prayed along with the city's archbishop, Cardinal Michele Giordano, in Naples cathedral.   Giordano urged the faithful to consider the miracle "an invitation to conversion and reflection on the moral ills which afflict our times".   He also prayed for the city, one of Italy's most crime-ridden and underdeveloped, and "above all for unemployment, which is reaching unsustainable levels".   The phenomenon of San Gennaro's blood is hailed as averting disaster which Neapolitans believe will strike the city if the substance held in a gold phial fails to turn to liquid.   The miracle has been recorded on set dates three times a year almost without fail for the past 600 years -- September 19, the fourth century saint's feast day, the first Saturday in May and December 16, the anniversary of a 17th century eruption of the nearby volcano, Vesuvius.   Calamity has struck on at least five occasions when the blood has failed to liquefy, including in 1527 when 40,000 died from plague and 1980, when 3,000 died after an earthquake.   Italian scientists have confirmed that the substance is blood but have not discovered why it liquefies regularly.   Historians say there is no known mention of a supposed blood relic before 1389, more than 1,000 years after Gennaro's death. 
18668 !C18 !C181 !C34 !CCAT !G15 !G157 !GCAT  The European Commission said on Thursday it was starting a routine inquiry into the acquisition by Baxter International Inc. of the United States of Swiss-based company Immuno International AG.   The deal announced at the end of August will create a global blood plasma company as Immuno is very strong on the European market and Baxter is also active in this biopharmaceutical product.   Immuno, whose main operations are in Austria, also makes vaccines while Baxter develops and markets products for heart and vascular diseases and renal care products.   The Commission said in a statement that at first sight the deal appeared to fall under the European Union's merger rules which ban creation or strengthening of dominant positions.   It has a month to clear the operation or start an in-depth investigation. 
18669 !C13 !CCAT !G15 !G152 !GCAT  Current rules on copyright and related rights do not adequately protect works disseminated through new services such as the Internet and need updating, the European Parliament said on Thursday.   The parliament warned that unless authors and holders of rights could be assured of equal protection in all European Union countries, they would be reluctant to use these new services to disseminate their works.   If EU governments wanted the information society to develop fully, they should consider harmonising their national copyright laws, Euro-MPs said in a report.   The Union could also sign bilateral deals with non-EU countries guaranteeing an equivalent level of copyright protection, they suggested.   The report responds to a European Commission green paper on copyright in the information society - COM(95)382.   It urges the Commission and the Council of Ministers to work on an international agreement on piracy.   At the same time, Euro-MPs said it was important to ensure maximum public access on the Internet to works and services of cultural and scientific value, by analogy with the rules applying to books. 
18670 !C13 !C24 !C42 !CCAT !E41 !ECAT !GCAT !GJOB  Around 1,000 tractors blocked a major highway in west Switzerland on Thursday as the nation's farmers protested government plans to cull 230,000 cattle.   The plan, proposed by the Swiss cabinet, aims to eradicate Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE), commonly known as "mad cow disease", in the country.   Scientists have linked BSE to Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease, a disease which afflicts humans.   Switzerland is second only to Britain in the number of BSE cases, with 223 reported since 1990 compared with 160,000 cases in Britain over 10 years.   According to the proposal announced on Monday, 230,000 of Switzerland's cows will be culled from a total population of 1.7 million.   The move also aims to reduce the nation's oversupply of beef, and its supporters say it would help to restore consumer confidence not only in Switzerland but also in neighboring countries, including Germany where Swiss beef is now banned.   But farmers are angry about the prospect tht they may have to pick up some of the cost of the 320 million Swiss franc ($258.6 million) plan through cuts in milk subsidies.   The farmers, from the Fribourg region, blocked a major roadway between the towns of Vaulrus and Rossens.   Swiss news agency SDA said farmers also gathered on overpasses above the highway to show their support.   The Swiss Farmers' Association (SBV) has said the mass slaughter was only one alternative for stamping out mad cow disease.   ($1=1.2375 Swiss Franc) 
18671 !GCAT !GDIP !GPOL !GVIO  The Swiss government on Thursday pledged a total of one million Swiss francs ($808,000) to two Jewish groups in connection with its formal apology last year for turning back Jewish refugees from the Nazi Holocaust.   The cabinet decision came as pressure from world Jewish groups mounted on the Swiss government and Swiss banks to pay back Nazi money and Jewish accounts left ownerless by Holocaust victims.   The Federal Council, or cabinet, pledged half a million Swiss francs to an Israel organisation called AMCHA that provides psychological counselling to Holocaust survivors and the other half to repairs at the Auschwitz death camp memorial in Poland.   A government spokesman said the money had been requested by Jewish groups after Swiss President Kaspar Villiger last year issued the first Swiss apology in 50 years for turning back German Jewish refugees from 1938 through the end of World War Two in 1945.   The spokesman said there was no link to the recent pressure over Nazi gold.   He said the decision was reached by the cabinet last month but that the expense had to be approved by a parliamentary finance commission before any announcement was made. 
18672 !C15 !C151 !CCAT !E21 !E211 !ECAT !G15 !G152 !GCAT  The European Commission reiterated on Thursday that "at first sight" a plan to include a 37.5 billion French franc payment by France Telecom in France's public accounts appeared compatible with Maastricht Treaty rules on public deficits.   "At first sight, it appears to us that the French ideas are based on principles that we recognise," a spokesman for Economic Affairs Commissioner Yves-Thibault de Silguy, said.   Some officials in the European Commission have raised questions about the plan, under which France would count the money -- payment for future pension obligations -- against its deficit as its seeks to reduce it to the single currency criteria of 3 percent of Gross Domestic Product.   - Brussels newsroom: +32 2 287-6830 
18673 !G15 !G155 !G158 !GCAT !GDIP !GPOL !GVIO  The European Parliament attacked on Thursday EU governments' inability to coordinate policies on developments in northern Iraq, saying their failure undermined the bloc's efforts to influence events.   The European Union was unable to have a major impact on the international community's reaction "because EU member states fail to agree a common position", the parliament said in a cross-party resolution.   But they rejected a text sponsored by the parliament's Greens which would have condemned the United States' bombing of Iraq's air defences in response to an armed incursion by Baghdad's forces to help a Kurdish faction in northern Iraq.   It was those troop movements in August which reignited the Iraq crisis, prompting Washington to retaliate by firing 44 cruise missiles at air defence targets in south Iraq on September 3 and 4.   The deputies called on EU governments to sort out their position so as to make Iraq meet its obligations under various U.N. resolutions.   They also urged the 15-country EU to contribute to refugee aid efforts and initiate mediation between the rival Kurdish parties in the region. 
18674 !E12 !ECAT !G15 !G154 !GCAT !M13 !M132 !MCAT  The governor of Sweden's central bank, Urban Backstrom, on Thursday said linking the Swedish crown to Europe's Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM) was not on the cards at the moment.    "I would like to make it clear that ERM participation is not on the agenda at the moment," Backstrom said in a speech to Nordbanken's capital markets day.   The Riksbank governor said it was both appropriate and practical that more thorough discussions on this issue should begin.   He said an ERM link could not replace economic convergence.   "From the Swedish point of view we have consistently emphasised that fundamental economic convergence is a basic condition for stable exchange rate development," Backstrom said.   "Every EU country should independently choose in which form economic stability will be reached."    Backstrom said Sweden had a good chance to meet the criteria to join Europe's Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) which is scheduled for 1999.   "In many ways the picture of the Swedish economy has obviously changed," Backstrom said.   "Sweden also has good possibilities to meet entrance requirements to the EMU when the union is established."   -- Stockholm newsroom +46-8-700 1017 
18675 !G15 !GCAT  Following are highlights of the midday briefing by the European Commission on Thursday:   Spokesman Nikolaus van der Pas said the British delegation to the Council had provided the Commission with a report on BSE prepared by scientists of the University of Oxford.   Van der Pas said the Commission would not make any conclusions nor change its policy before receiving the Scientific Veterinary Committee's opinion on the report.   Spokesman Patrick Child said the informal ECOFIN Council on Saturday in Dublin to discuss EMU would mainly focus on the legal status of the euro, the relation between ins and pre-ins and the stability pact on which there were good chances of a consensus, he said.   Child added that Commissioner Yves Thibault de Silguy would be available at 1530/1330 GMT on Friday in the press room in Dublin to discuss points on the agenda.   Spokeswoman Barbara Nolan said the European works council directive, signed in 1994, would come into force on Sunday.   Nolan said an about 200 European undertakings had already signed pre-directive/voluntary agreements to inform and consult employees on issues of transnational importance which affect the company.   She also said that even though it had an opt-out in this matter, Britain was in, de facto, because many British companies had already signed voluntary agreements and because British workers were included in most of the voluntary agreements signed in other member states.   In answer to a question on France Telecom's announcement that it is to give the French government a lump sum of 37.5 billion FFr to pay for the future pensions of former employees of the company, spokesman Child said the Commission could not yet take a definite position but that the French idea was based on accounting principles the Commission was familiar with.   Spokesman Gerard Kiely briefed on eradication of BSE in Britain (see separate story MADCOW-EUROPE-COW).   - - - -   The Commission released the following documents:   - IP/96/845: Belgium: European Social Fund Objective 4.   - Speech/96/217: Speech by Commissioner Yves-Thibault de Silguy at the Institute of European Affairs.   - Speech/96/218: Speech by Commissioner Anita Gradin on the fight against fraud.   - Speech/96/219: Summary of speech by Commissioner Anita Gradin, oral questions related to child abuse.   - Statement by Commissioner van den Broek on Turkey.   - ME96/19.9: Midday express. 
18676 !C31 !C34 !CCAT !G15 !G157 !GCAT  Major sporting, entertainment and scientific events should all be broadcast free of charge on European television, the European Parliament said on Thursday.   Worried that more and more events of major interest or particular value will be shown exclusively on pay TV, the parliament urged member states to introduce laws guaranteeing that "comprehensive" highlights will be broadcast on free terrestrial television.   The call is included in a report, adopted by 213 votes to 140, which makes a series of recommendations designed to guarantee a future in Europe for state-funded television.   The MEPs fear public TV will not survive the increasing competition from commercial channels.   According to the report, drafted by British Socialist Carole Tongue, the state-funded channels' share of European Union audiences has plummeted from 82 percent in 1984 to 46 percent in 1994.   The report says public service broadcasting should continue to receive support from the EU and national governments, so that it can continue to fulfil its role as a promoter of European culture and new talent, and a provider of unbiased information.   "We are in danger of witnessing a trend towards a society of those who can afford the privilege of impartial information and those who can't, those who can afford to watch our national sporting treasures and those who can't," Tongue said during a debate on Tuesday.   Euro-MPs demanded an increase in funding for public service channels with a pan-European remit, like ARTE and EURONEWS.   They asked the European Commission to sanction public funding for state channels "provided they strictly fulfil their public service obligations", and allow them to bid jointly for television rights without contravening new EU rules on media concentration.   For their part, public TV channels should make a commitment to improve their accountability to the public, become more independent from governments and strictly respect their obligation to broadcast a majority of European programmes, parliament said.   Industry Commissioner Martin Bangemann told MPs on Tuesday that the public could be informed just as well by the new, private TV channels as by public TV.   "If you have got a monopoly, you can't be serving the interests of democracy," he insisted, adding that if public service broadcasting was as good as Carole Tongue made out, then she need have no fears for its future. 
18677 !GCAT !GDIP !GVIO  Iran told the International Court of Justice on Thursday the U.S. had a clear case to answer for attacks on Iranian oil rigs nearly 10 years ago, arguing a 1955 treaty between them covered redress for military actions.   Iran has asked the U.N. court to take jurisdiction over its claim for compensation for three offshore oil platforms destroyed by U.S. warships in two attacks in 1987 and 1988.   The U.S, which ran naval patrols in the Gulf to protect international shipping during the final stages of the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war, says the 1955 Treaty of Amity covers only commercial and consular affairs.   It says the attacks in October 1987 and April 1988 were legitimate military responses to attacks on a U.S. frigate and a Kuwaiti tanker sailing under the U.S. flag.   Mohammed Zahedin-Labbaf, leading the Iranian delegation, said the U.S. attacks had been groundless.   "It (the U.S. position) implies that attacks on the platforms were part of a series of hostile engagments between Iranian and U.S. forces, whereas it is Iran's position that these were unprovoked attacks on civilian, and commercial facilities."   He said the court's jurisdiction to rule on the matter was clearly established by the treaty.   "What Iran has brought before the court is purely a legal case arising out of very particular incidents - and one that is grounded in specific provisions of the Treaty of Amity, which Iran maintains the United States has breached by attacking the oil platforms," he told the court.   Seyed Mostafa Zeinoddin, head of legal affairs at the National Iranian Oil Company, rebutted remarks from U.S. navy commander Ronald Neubauer earlier this week that the platforms were being used as military facilities.   The U.S. in opening its submissions on Monday said the platforms were used to identify, track and target ships for attack, serving as staging and supply bases for the Iranian helicopters and small boats used in such attacks.   Zeinoddin said the platforms had been previously been targetted by the Iraqis and for that reason had small security detachments to support oil workers, adding that having bases on intallations packed with oil and gas made little military sense.   "The small number of security personnel on these platforms were simply there to act as lookouts, to provide early warning of attacks and to provide some comfort and support to the oil company personnel in the light of Iraqi attacks," he said.   "Such platforms are quite small and are packed with complex equipment.   It is not feasible to install missiles or any other sophisticated military equipment on such small areas and totally impractical to use them as a base for attacks," said Zeinoddin.   He said the attacks caused massive economic damage, not only in the immediate loss of oil revenues but also in the huge cost of rebuilding the platforms, the costs which were still being felt by Iran today.   The International Court of Justice, the main judicial organ of the United Nations which settles disputes between states in accordance with international law, is hearing submissions from Iran and the U.S. to determine whether it has jurisdiction in Iran's claim for compensation.   Iran dropped a case at the International Court of Justice over the shooting down in July 1988 or an Iran Air airliner by a U.S. warship after Washington agreed to compensate the families of the 248 Iranians on board who were killed. 
18678 !C15 !C18 !C181 !C34 !CCAT !G15 !G157 !GCAT  The European Commission said on Thursday it was starting a routine inquiry into the acquisition by Baxter International Inc of the United States of Swiss-based company Immuno International AG.   The deal announced at the end of August is to create a global blood plasma company as Immuno is a very strong European player and Baxter is also active in this biopharmaceutical product.   Immuno, whose main operations are in Austria, also makes vaccines while Baxter develops and markets products for heart and vascular diseases and renal care products.   The Commission said in a statement that at first sight the deal appeared to fall under the European Union's merger rules which ban creation or strengthening of dominant positions.   It has a month to clear the operation or start an in-depth investigation.   The Commission is the clearing house for all major mergers and takeovers that affect trade in the EU.   -- Brussels newsroom 322 2876841 
18679 !G15 !G159 !GCAT !GCRIM  The European Parliament pressed the European Union on Thursday to act to curb child sex and trafficking rings, saying the fight against sexual abuse of children must be an "absolute priority".   "The scourge of paedophilia, trade in children and sexual exploitation is constantly increasing, not only in isolated cases but also through transnational networks and sex tourism, which involve extreme violence," the parliament said in a resolution.   "Combatting the sexual exploitation of children must be an absolute priority for all EU member states, and the European Union must support their efforts," deputies said.   The text urged EU governments to create the legal frameworks for police and justice departments to pool efforts to break up child prostitution networks and to pursue those EU nationals involved in child "sex tourism" outside the 15-country bloc.   Other suggested measures included the establishment of a central register of abducted children, more money for Europol -- the bloc's embryonic police force -- to fight such crimes and special training for magistrates and police officers pursuing sex criminals.   But a last-minute amendment which would have backed the creation of an EU register of convicted paedophiles was defeated.   Parliament's call to action follows Belgium's unfolding horror story of child kidnapping, sexual abuse and murder in which four girls have been found dead since August and another two have been rescued alive from captors' hands.   Belgian police have arrested nine people on a series of charges since finding the girls alive, including convicted child rapist Marc Dutroux.   The affair has revolted the country and raised questions of police bungling and political cover-up. 
18680 !E51 !ECAT !G15 !G158 !GCAT !GDIP  The European Parliament demanded on Thursday an immediate freeze of European Union aid to Turkey worth hundreds of millions of dollars.   EU budget decisions cannot be taken without parliament's explicit approval.   "Since the establishment of the (EU-Turkey) customs union, the human rights situation in Turkey has noticeably deteriorated and no appreciable progress has been made towards democratisation," the parliament said in a resolution.   Euro-MPs said that since January 1996, when the customs union came into force, Turkey had fomented tension by actions such as "provocations in the Aegean Sea and Cyprus and aggression in northern Iraq".   Parliament only approved the creation of the customs union last December after the Ankara government had given explicit guarantees that it would take positive action on human rights, democratisation, Cyprus and the plight of the Kurds.   Turkey's failure to honour these obligations was "in conflict with the letter and spirit" of the customs union and other EU-Turkey accords, parliament declared.   All EU aid to Turkey should therefore stop immediately, bar funding for projects to promote democracy and respect for human rights, said the resolution, which was backed by six of the parliament's eight political groups.   The EU plans to set aside 375 million Ecus ($470 million) between 1996 and 2000 to help Turkey put the customs union in place.   Turkey is also eligible for substantial financing from the EU's MEDA programme, through which 410 million Ecus have been made available for the 15-member bloc's Mediterranean neighbours in 1996.   The EU could allocate as much as 842 million Ecus to this group of countries in 1997.   ($1 = 0.80 Ecu) 
18681 !E12 !ECAT !G15 !G154 !GCAT !M13 !M132 !MCAT  Sweden's Finance Minister Erik Asbrink on Thursday said linking the Swedish crown to Europe's Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM) was not on the agenda and a decision did not depend on other countries' moves.    "It is not on the agenda to link the Swedish crown to the European Exchange Rate Mechanism, ERM," Asbrink said in a statement released by the Finance Department.   "The government's opinion on this question is unchanged in other words."   Asbrink said he was reaffirming the government's position after recent speculation in the market about Finland's possible link to ERM.   "Every EU (European Union) country must decide on a possible ERM link regarding their own currency," Asbrink said.   "Sweden's actions will not be decided by what decision other countries make on this issue."   He said Sweden had since November 1992 floated its currency and followed a monetary policy directed at keeping inflation down at a low level.   "This direction of monetary policy has been successful and there is no reason to change this," he said.   He said active discussions on the issue were continuting.   -- Stockholm newsroom, +46-8-700 1017 
18682 !GCAT !GENT !GFAS  Florence flung open some of its most beautiful museums and palaces on Thursday when it unveiled shows to mark the start of a new cultural festival mingling Renaissance art with designer couture.   Scarlet evening gowns by Italian stylist Valentino, displayed on headless and armless white models, flanked Michelangelo's marble masterpiece "David" at the preview of the festival.   Giorgio Armani's trademark sleek designs were turned out in tones echoing a frescoed ceiling in the Uffizi gallery while mannequins were posed in a mock catwalk parade beneath glittering chandeliers at the Palazzo Vecchio.   Florence's first biennale, a two-yearly art and cultural show akin to the Venice Biennale, officially opens on September 21 and runs until December 15.   "The aim is to explore and relate reciprocal influences, the creative relationships between the world of fashion and visual arts, design, architecture, cinema, photographer, costume and history," the organisers said in a statement.   Florence's biennale will open with seven shows featuring top couturiers including Karl Lagerfeld, Jean-Paul Gaultier, John Galliano, Miuccia Prada, Calvin Klein and Vivienne Westwood.   Also featuring were controversial British artist Damien Hirst, who sparked outrage by showing a dead sheep in a tank in London, and an exhibition of the many spectacles of pop singer Elton John. 
18683 !C17 !C34 !CCAT !G15 !G157 !GCAT  Germany and the European Union tried on Thursday to smooth over a row over aid to carmaker Volkswagen AG in the ex-communist east, even though both sides have launched legal action against each other.   Economics Minister Guenter Rexrodt said the dispute over help for two VW plants in eastern Germany was over interpreting EU subsidy rules -- not the rules themselves.   "Naturally, the federal government and European Commission are continually in talks in parallel to their legal steps," Rexrodt told Germany's Federation of Chambers of Commerce.   European competition commissioner Karel van Miert replied that mounting resistance from western Germany meant EU-approved aid to the east could not be expanded -- although special help would still be needed into the next century.   "There is no disagreement in Brussels over the necessity for the new states (of eastern Germany) to receive aid well beyond the year 2000," van Miert said.   The eastern state of Saxony has clashed with the Commission after awarding 91 million marks in aid for two VW plants in Mosel and Chemnitz, to employ 23,000, which had been rejected by Brussels.   State premier Kurt Biedenkopf refused to repay the aid, but a face-saving compromise was eventually found.   Instead of paying back the cash, a similar sum of aid will be withheld by Bonn until a ruling on a clause in the EU treaty allowing aid to be granted to rebuild eastern Germany's run-down economy.   The European Union's Court of First Instance is to consider suits brought by both sides, but a final decision could take up to two years.   While reaffirming Germany's commitment to the principles of the European single market, Rexrodt warned it would not be easy to reconcile the interests of the Commission with those of eastern Germany in the "explosive" subsidy question.   "It would be irresponsible not to defuse this explosive as soon as possible.   For that we need politicians in eastern Germany to be ready to contribute to a solution," he said.   "We must not allow people to see a conflict between the completion of German unification and rebuilding Europe.   Enmity towards Europe would be as absurd as it would be fatal."   Saxony's position is based on a contested provision in the EU treaty that allows for subisides to be paid to areas of former East Germany.   The treaty calls for the payments to "compensate for the economic disadvantages" caused by the separation of East and West Germany after World War Two and for the region's rebuilding since unification in 1990.   The EU, meanwhile, argues that the aid has gone to the car industry, and should have been blocked due to overcapacity in the European auto sector.   -- Bonn newsroom, 49-228-26097150 
18684 !GCAT !GCRIM  Italian women on Thursday condemned a court ruling that said a man can occasionally hit his wife, but the victim whose case sparked the controversy said she was glad her "model husband" had been cleared.   The ruling by Italy's highest appeal court on Wednesday evening provoked across-the-board protests from prominent women politicians, academics and lawyers who said it was "diabolical", "scandalous" and "wrong".   "This ruling is dangerous because it legitimises violence," said right-wing MP Alessandra Mussolini, granddaughter of former fascist dictator Benito Mussolini.   Anthropologist Ida Magli echoed the criticism, saying all violence between humans should be outlawed.   The Court of Cassation annulled an eight-month sentence given to a man for hitting his wife during a fight in their home in the town of Capaci, near Sicily's capital Palermo.   She was treated at hospital after the incident.   The court sent the case back to the lower court for re-trial, saying his acts did not amount to abuse because his "occasional episodes" of wife-beating were "interspersed with moments of harmony between the couple".   It said the case at hand did not meet its definition of domestic violence -- "a series of acts harming the physical integrity or liberty or dignity of the passive subject, who suffers a conduct of systematic and deliberate overpowering".   The woman at the centre of the case, 40-year-old Anna Mannino, gave lengthy interviews to several newspapers on Thursday praising the ruling regarding her "model husband".   "He is a good man," she told Corriere della Sera.   "I'm happy with the ruling and hope the (lower court) absolves my husband."   Mannino said her husband, Francesco Lombardo, 42, hit her during an argument six years ago.   "He was a little jealous, his work wasn't going well and we were both very nervous."   Mannino said she went to the emergency room of the local hospital, where she was treated for bruises.   She returned home that night and was reconciled with Lombardo a few days later.   "Yes, he hit me that night but I forgave him," she said.   Mannino never pressed charges, but doctors reported the beating to police and Lombardo was charged with abuse.   "I wanted to tell the magistrates the truth, to tell them about our life, that it was the first time he had hit me.   But the magistrates never interviewed me," she said.   Mannino said she and Lombardo were still together, although he lived most of the time in the town of Arezzo near Florence because he could not find work as a bricklayer near home.   They have four children aged 11 to 20. 
18685 !GCAT !GCRIM !GPOL  Following are key excerpts from Belgian Prime Minister Jean-Luc Dehaene's statement to parliament on Thursday on the paedophilia and political murder scandals which have rocked the country:   The child sex and murder cases, which exposed "networks of extreme criminality", were "so revolting that words were hard to find".   They had caused "sadness and amazement" in the country.   "The dramatic events of the past weeks have touched us all profoundly...   "Together we must ask ourselves what has gone wrong.   We must also wonder what we have done wrong ourselves, each of us, in politics, in the judiciary, the police, in the media, and the population in general so as to prevent a repeat of these events...   "Now there must be clarity first.   The investigation into the murder raised many questions and led to a general feeling of mistrust of our institutions.   The judiciary now must go to the heart of the matter..."   "It must not be hindered in any way."   Dehaene pledged an extra 500 million francs ($16 million) for the Justice Ministry budget and 200 additional staff.   Reports on investigations into bungling by police and the judiciary "should not be allowed to affect the progress of the investigations" into the murder of socialist politcian Andre Cools and the paedophile case.   Any serious errors in the investigation of the child sex case would be punished.   "If it appears that during earlier phases of the investigation serious errors have been made, there will be sanctions."   Any cases of bungling that might be found should not be seen as evidence the whole system was corrupt or incompetent.   Belgium was reviewing its parole rules for sexual offenders, had begun a drive for international cooperation in the fight against paedophilia and would change rules on help for the victims of crime.   Services monitoring paroled sex delinquents would be reinforced.   Those engaging in or possessing child pornography or paedophilia abroad would now also be punishable at home.   A central body would be created to improve coordination among investigators.   ($1=31.14 Belgian Franc) 
18686 !E12 !ECAT !G15 !G154 !GCAT !M13 !M132 !MCAT  Spain's economic performance is unlikely to get it into the first phase of European Economic and Monetary Union (EMU), according to brokerage Merrill Lynch.   In a report presented to journalists on Thursday, Merrill Lynch's Spanish Equities Strategy Director Ignacio Gomez Montejo said he sees Spain joining EMU in the second phase, two years after the launch of the single currency in 1999.   This would avoid financial crises similar to those in October 1992 or in March 1995, the report argued.   Merrill forecast that inflation would fall below the all-important 3.0 percent barrier in 1997 and sees the public deficit at 4.2 percent of gross domestic product in the same year.   Spanish GDP growth is forecast at 2.5 percent in 1996 and at around three percent in 1997.   The report highlighted strong job creation as a key element in economic recovery.   --Juan Navarro, Madrid newsroom +341 585 2160 
18687 !C42 !CCAT !E41 !ECAT !GCAT !GJOB  Several hundred aircraft maintenance workers at the Air France airline invaded an employee committee meeting on Thursday, demanding the opening of pay talks, a trade union official said.   Workers at the Air France Industrie division detained managers attending the meeting at the head office at Paris Orly airport, where a strike started on Thursday, the CFDT union said in a statement.   "They are asking for the opening of pay negotiations," CFDT spokesman Francois Cabrera said.   It was too early to say how many of the 3,500 Air France Industrie workers based at Orly went on strike, he said.   An Air France spokeswoman confirmed that hundreds of workers invaded the meeting chaired by director Jean-Marie Leroy but denied the managers were being held against their will.   "The door is open, they are discussing questions of salary," she said.   Air France has frozen pay for the last four years, as part of a restructuring plan led by chairman Christian Blanc who aims to turn round the loss-making company by 1997 and prepare it for deregulation of European air transport.   Air France managers are drawing up a new plan, called the Pact for Competitive Growth, designed to maintain the gains made under the present restructuring round which expires this year.   The Air France group suffers from difficult labour relations, particularly its Air France Europe subsidiary, which was hit by a three-day strike in mid-August by workers at Nice on the Riviera.   That stoppage was resolved when managers agreed to pay workers a 1,090 franc bonus and a monthly salary rise of 102 francs.   Air France received in July the last payment of five billion francs ($972 million) of a 20-billion franc state capital injection which is being used to reduce its debt mountain.   The money was cleared by the European Commission on condition the company met its 1996 results forecast and that restructuring measures had been taken.   ($ = 5.145 French Francs) 
18688 !GCAT !GREL  France's Moslem leaders welcomed the Pope on Thursday at the start of his visit to France and wished him well in a mission to foster dialogue between all faiths.   The leaders of the main mosques in Paris and Lyon, France's second city, welcomed him "in the name of all France's Moslems" and praised what they called excellent relations in meetings with the Pontiff in recent years.   "Along with our welcome, we make the most fervent wishes for his good health and the pursuit of his spiritual mission in the service of dialogue between religions, peace among men and human fraternity," Dalil Boubakeur, head of the Paris Mosque, wrote in a statement.   The 76-year-old Pope, on his last trip abroad before going to hospital to have his appendix removed next month, arrived in Tours in western France on Thursday morning.   He is also to visit Brittany, Vendee and the eastern city of Reims.   About 45 million of France's 58 million inhabitants are nominally Catholic.   An estimated five million are Moslems. 
18689 !C13 !CCAT !G15 !G152 !GCAT !GDIS  The European Parliament adopted on Thursday its report on the European Commission proposal to tighten up test procedures for frontal impact vehicle crashes.   Euro-MPs' vote, to complete their second reading under the co-decision procedure, was based on amended Commission proposal COM(94)520 for a Council Decision on motor vehicles' frontal impact resistance.   British Socialist Alan Donnelly, the parliament's rapporteur, put forward a series of detailed technical amendments for vehicle test procedures as they concerned test dummies' ankles.   All 13 were adopted.   In his explanatory statement, Donnelly noted the Commission's apparent support for his amendments, which are based on the latest work of the European Experimental Vehicles Committee. 
18690 !GCAT !GPOL !GVIO  Italy's parliament on Thursday debated the country's political response to the Northern League's secession bid amid widespread denunciation of police for using heavy-handed tactics against the separatist movement.   The clashes on Wednesday evening at the League's headquarters in Milan brought the party dramatically back to the forefront of Italian politics after last weekend's declaration of independence for a northern "republic of Padania".   The scuffles dominated debate in both houses on a message by President Oscar Luigi Scalfaro, who warned parliament not to underestimate the malaise of northern Italians simply because the League's weekend demonstrations failed to draw big crowds.   Police seeking evidence of alleged anti-constitutional activity forced their way into the headquarters.   League leader Umberto Bossi was involved in the scuffles and top deputy Roberto Maroni was injured and taken to hospital on a stretcher.   Pictures of Maroni fighting with police he once commanded when he was interior minister in 1994 dominated news programmes.   "The decision to search the League headquarters was a mistake," MP Luciano Caveri of the northern Val D'Aosta region said during the lower house debate.   "The League is a threat to the republic because it seizes on this (northern) malaise," said Fausto Bertinotti, leader of the far-left Communist Refoundation.   "The failure of their demonstration does not reduce this risk...but the response must be political," Bertinotti said.   While polls show most Italians do not want the country to be split, many believe the fundamental grievances of many northerners -- high taxes and what they perceive as corrupt institutions -- have not been addressed properly.   Scalfaro urged parliament in his message on Wednesday to forge ahead with federalist reforms so that northerners opposed to secession did not join the League for lack of choice.   The scuffles in Milan followed a stand-off between police and League officials who had questioned the validity of a search warrant isued by a magistrate looking into complaints that the League's secessionist bid had violated the constitution.   Interior Minister Giorgio Napolitano quickly issued a statement saying the police were sent not by the government but by a magistrate acting independently.   Napolitano and Justice Minister Giovanni Maria Flick were due to answer questions in parliament later on Thursday.   The police action was condemned by politicians of every hue, many of whom said police should only enter political offices if there was overwhelming evidence of a crime being committed at that moment.   Others warned that the use of the police in a political question would only play into the League's hands.   "Maybe Bossi has been given the opportunity to get more publicity, even if he does not need it, and also to give himself a halo of victimisation," Gianfranco Fini, leader of the far-right National Alliance (AN), said on Wednesday night.   "Obviously this does not mean that police operations and investigations that the magistrates deem necessary should not be carried out, but there are ways of doing it," he said.   The League's Domenico Comino slammed the intervention as "fascist techniques" but at least one member of Fini's party welcomed the magistrate's hard line.   "They are not secessionists.   They are dyed-in-the-wool traitors and they have to be tried and condemned as such," said Michele Bonatesta, an AN senator.   Guido Papalia, the Verona-based magistrate who ordered the searches, was unrepentant.   "I don't take orders from anyone...the magistrature acts according to the law and that's it.   Fights and scuffles are not going to stop me," Papalia told La Repubblica newspaper. 
18691 !GCAT !GPOL !GPRO !GVOTE  Conservative opposition leader Miltiades Evert, popularly known as the "Bulldozer", may be a push away from his 20-year dream of becoming prime minister.   Evert, head of the New Democracy party, began the campaign for Sunday's vote as the outsider but his bold promises for more money to low-income earners seem to have paid off.   He has defied early "no hope" predictions by most political commentators and is now running neck and neck in opinion polls with socialist Prime Minister Costas Simitis.   "He's been waiting for this moment since he first got into parliament 20 years ago.   He honestly feels he can change the face of modern Greece," one of Evert's close associates told Reuters.   Called the "Bulldozer" for his roaring emotional outbursts and stocky build, Evert, 57, stands apart from other mainstream Greek political leaders.   He pounds his hand on the table to drive home a point, he has a pet monkey and is notorious for his misuse of the Greek language.   His verbal blunders frequently make headlines in the Athens press.   "I am a spontaneous man and I rarely read from prepared speeches.   All people make mistakes when they talk and I believe it is better to be spontaneous than to be held back to avoid making any mistakes," Evert said.   "I was never good in language courses ... one time one of my teachers returned a corrected composition of mine where everything had been crossed out except the word 'and'.   "But I was an A student in mathematics and I know how to achieve targets," he added.   Evert, an economist, tells voters he will change their lives for the better within 30 days of being elected.   He promises higher pensions for farmers, less taxes for small businesses, and severe cuts in excessive state spending.   He sees Greece's future firmly in the European Union and backs a harder line towards rival Turkey.   Evert was elected Athens mayor in 1986 when he took on the socialist government of late prime minister Andreas Papandreou and set up the first independent radio station in Greece.   "That radio station broke the monopoly of state controlled radio and television.   I said I'd do it and I did it.   The same holds now and nothing will stop me from fulfilling my campaign proclamations," he said.   Evert was elected New Democracy president in November 1993 replacing former prime minister Constantine Mitsotakis who had suffered a humiliating election defeat by Papandreou a month earlier.   He has served in many ministerial posts and took advantage of Mitsotakis' low popularity as premier from 1990 to 1993 to climb the party ranks and win support in the party.   His top advisers and potential ministers include some of Greece's brightest minds who do not mind serving under a leader characterised more by emotion than reason.   "His strong will has inspired us all," one of his economic advisers said.   "We are all convinced that besides numbers and economic targets Greece needs shock treatment, and Mr Evert is the only politician who has the guts to do it."   Evert does not come from a political family but his father was chief of police during Greece's 1941-1944 Nazi occupation and helped many Greek resistance fighters to escape arrest and flee abroad.   He is married to Lisa Vanderpool, a well-known American photographer, and has two daughters and three granddaughters.   He says his greatest pleasure is "a couple of plates of spaghetti, with lots of cheese and tomato sauce." 
18692 !GCAT !GDIP !GREL  A French old-age pensioner who has embarrassed monarchs and presidents by gatecrashing their parties is getting picky: He has no plans to meet Pope John Paul during a four-day visit to France from Thursday.   "The Pope does not interest me in the slightest," Claude Khazizian, better known in France as "Monsieur X", told Reuters as the Pontiff began his sixth visit to France.   "The Pope is the epitome of the human comedy."   Khazizian's main coup was to bluff his way into celebrations of the 50th anniversary of World War Two in Paris in May 1995, joining dozens of heads of state for lunch at the Elysee presidential palace.   Among other feats, he gatecrashed the wedding of Danish Prince Joachim and Alexandra Manley in Copenhagen in November.   The 64-year-old Khazizian insists he has had no inside help and merely bluffs his way in with a smart suit and a patrician air.   Khazizian said in an interview in December that one of his fantasies was to get a private audience with the Pope at the Vatican and to slip away and wave from the Pontiff's private balcony.   "I've dropped that idea," he said, adding with trademark irreverence: "If the Pope gets married or throws a big party, maybe I'll go." 
18693 !GCAT !GREL  Pope John Paul has accepted the resignation of Bishop Roderick Wright, the Scottish Roman Catholic prelate reported by media to have run off with a divorced woman, the Vatican said on Thursday.   Wright, the 55-year-old bishop of Argyll and the Isles, had turned in his resignation to the Pope last Monday.    Wright sparked a furore in Church circles when he disappeared on September 9 at the same time as divorced mother Kathleen Macphee also went missing from her Highlands home.   The Vatican made no mention of the details of the case but said the resignation had been accepted according to the norms of part two of Church canon (law) 401, which says:   "A diocesan bishop who, because of illness or some other grave reason, has become unsuited for the fulfilment of his office, is earnestly requested to offer his resignation from office."   In a statement released last Monday by the Catholic Church in Scotland, Wright said he was "physically and spiritually" unable to sustain the responsibilities of his office. 
18694 !GCAT !GREL  Pope John Paul, starting a four-day visit to France on Thursday that will test his shaky health, dodged controversies about his trip and said his thoughts were with the suffering and the poor.   On his last foreign trip before entering hospital for an operation to remove his appendix next month, the Pontiff walked unaided down the steps of his airliner after it landed at Tours, western France, to be greeted by President Jacques Chirac.   Amid heavy security, he left the airport in a bullet-proof car but switched to his Popemobile in central Tours to wave to sparse lines of wellwishers who braved rain to cheer him.   The 76-year-old Pontiff looked alert and more robust than on a visit to Hungary two weeks ago.   Tours is the first stop of a gruelling trip that will take him to Brittany, Vendee and the eastern city of Reims.   In his first speech on a trip including 21 public appearances, the Pope skirted controversies in France over the role of the Church in a modern secular state and opposition to his strict moral teachings on issues such as birth control.   "I am mindful of the fact that French society faces many problems as, for example, an economic crisis which is also the case for many countries throughout the world," the Pope said after meeting Chirac in Tours in the Prefecture building.   "My thoughts go first to all those who are suffering trials of all sorts, particularly those who must bear with poverty, to those who are victims of prejudice, or bias, those who lack security and those who are ill," he said.   On his sixth visit to France, including a trip to the Indian Ocean island of La Reunion, the Pope praised French aid to developing countries in a "long tradition of solidarity and fraternity for their fellow men".   "These gestures of friendship must be accompanied on the part of the Western world by a new attitude, refusing to take advantage of these poor nations simply for the goods they produce," he added.   He also hailed French Catholics' dialogue with the country's large Moslem and Jewish communities.   Neither the Pope nor Chirac, accused of violating a 1905 law separating Church and State by helping fund the visit, used France's traditional Catholic title of "eldest daughter of the Church".   The Pope used the title on his first visit in 1980.   Chirac said France was "proud of its roots" as a nation that blended secular traditions of the 1789 Revolution, respectful of religious freedom, with a history of spirituality.   Most of France's 58 million people are nominal Catholics.   Chirac said the Holy See and France stood together to promote "tolerance, dignity, justice and peace", and praised the Pope as a "tireless pilgrim of the absolute".   In the afternoon, the Pope will make a helicopter pilgrimage amid tight security to a shrine where a crude bomb was defused two weeks ago.   Unknown attackers had scrawled "In nomine-Pope- BOOM!"   on the wall of the church in Saint-Laurent-sur-Sevre.   Some 6,000 police, paramilitary gendarmes, bodyguards and marksmen were on duty to guard the Pontiff during the trip.   Sixty-seven groups including anarchists, freemasons and a police trade union are planning a rally in Paris on Sunday, when the Pope will be in Reims, to protest at the Pope and back the secular ideals of the 1789 French Revolution.   The Pope will be in Reims for the 1,500th anniversary of the baptism of Clovis, the first pagan king in western Europe to convert to Christianity.   The Pontiff avoided the traditional Catholic view that Clovis's conversion amounted to the baptism of France.   "By joining the Catholic faith, (Clovis) was able to guide different people towards the construction of a single nation," he said.   Opinion polls show many French citizens are indifferent to the visit, and to arcane disputes about Clovis.   A CSA poll published in Le Parisien showed that support for the Pope has waned since his last visit in 1988, reflecting French disaffection with the Pontiff's teachings against birth control, abortion or homosexuality.   Fifty-one percent had reserves or strongly disapproved of his actions during his papacy, up from 26 percent in 1988.   And only 22 percent of the 1,004 people quizzed on September 16 and just 17 percent saw him as being "open to the world" against 46 percent in 1988. 
18695 !GCAT !GPOL !GVOTE  Greece's soft-spoken socialist Prime Minister Costas Simitis, who successfully challenged his revered mentor Andreas Papandreou, faces his biggest political gamble in this Sunday's election.   The diminutive, mild-mannered technocrat led opposition to the late Papandreou, championing reform and democracy in his party, when most socialists thought this was sacrilege.   He succeeded the ailing Papandreou as premier in January after battling the old guard that had faithfully served the flamboyant leader and and his influential younger wife, Dimitra Liani, a former Olympic Airways stewardess.   After Papandrou died in June, Simitis, 60, issued an ultimatum to his orphaned Socialists that he would resign as premier if he was not also elected party president.   With only a year before scheduled elections, the gamble paid off.   The socialists chose the seemingly lacklustre professor of commercial law to lead them to the polls.   Simitis, one of the most academic members of his party, called Sunday's snap election confident he was well ahead in public opinion polls but the conservatives have been catching up, turning it into a neck-and-neck race.   His stocky, extrovert challenger, conservative leader Miltiades Evert, 57, embraces similar policies, mainly in line with European Union requirements for turning around the stumbling economy.   "The differences between the two are stylistic.   Greece has few policy options in dealing with its economic problems," an EU diplomat said.   Ironically, the socialist Simitis has managed to win over the business community, which usually supports the conservative party, with his pledges of economic stability.   But it remains to be seen whether his professorial looks and analytical speeches will prove inspiring enough for the voting public come Sunday.   A far cry from Papandreou's style of fiery oratory in village squares all over Greece, Simitis opted early for a media-oriented campaign.   The new method reflected his pro-European orientation both in substance and style, but when polls showed unprecedented voter indifference he took to the countryside.   "We realised that often people need to be mobilised in order to participate," he said in a TV interview this week.   The son of a Piraeus lawyer, Simitis grew up in a well-off and progressive family.   He studied law and economics in Germany and London, worked as a lawyer and taught law and economics in Germany and Greece.   "My political activism stems, I believe, from my family environment as a child," he told the weekly To Vima.   "At home there was always intense discussion about the country's political problems."   He opposed the military junta which seized power in Greece in 1967 and became a founding member of Papandreou's Panhellenic Socialist Movement (PASOK) when the dictatorship fell in 1974.   He served as Agriculture, National Economy, Education and Industry minister in all socialist governments since 1981, when Papandreou became Greece's first socialist prime minister.   Simitis is married to his college sweetheart, Daphne, and they have two daughters. 
18696 !GCAT !GCRIM !GPOL  Prime Minister Jean-Luc Dehaene said on Thursday that any serious errors in the investigation of Belgium's paedophile sex, kidnap and murder cases would be punished.   "If it appears that during earlier phases of the investigation serious errors have been made, they will be sanctioned," Dehaene told parliament which convened early to discuss the twin paedophilia and political murder scandals which have rocked the country.   "The justice minister has ordered an inquiry into the investigation of the child kidnappings.   He has just received the report and will inform parliament about it," Dehaene said.   He said the inquiry conclusions would be presented to parliament's justice commission as soon as possible.   The prime minister gave no information about the contents of the report.   Belgian media said on Thursday it was highly critical of police cooperation and procedures.   Dehaene also said the judiciary should do its utmost to make progress in the investigation into the 1991 mafia-style murder of politician Andre Cools.   "The investigation into the murder raised many questions and led to a general feeling of mistrust of our institutions.   The judiciary now must go to the heart of the matter," he said.   Members from all parties will take the floor at 2 p.m. (1200 GMT) in parliament's extraordinary session which was convened at the request of the opposition, two weeks before the parliamentary year had been due to start.   Parties were expected to back the setting-up of a committee of inquiry into judicial bungling in the investigations of the Cools murder and the activities of a paedophile ring which claimed the lives of four young girls in the past year.   There have been allegations of cover-ups in both cases.   In the child sex case, police officers are suspected of having been involved in a car theft racket led by paedophile gang leader and convicted child rapist Marc Dutroux.   In the case of the killing of Cools, a former Socialist minister, party-appointed investigators have attempted to divert inquiries leading to party members, judicial sources say.   The investigation into the Cools murder led to the discovery of high-level corruption in an army helicopters contract in the late 1980s, which triggered the resignation of four Belgian government ministers and of NATO Secretary-General Willy Claes, a former economics minister.   "Together we must ask ourselves what has gone wrong," Dehaene said.   "We must also wonder what we have done wrong ourselves, each of us, in politics, in the judiciary, the police, in the media, and the population in general so as to prevent a repeat of these events." 
18697 !GCAT  These are the leading stories in the Maltese press on Thursday.   Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.   THE TIMES   - Midland Bank opens branch in Malta.   It is the first overseas bank to hold a commercial licence in recent years.   - Police force restructuring under way.   Senior appointments made.   L-ORIZZONT   - Egyptian complains of injustices at government hospital.   IN-NAZZJON   - Government says 3,000 jobs created in seven months but 2,210 are part-time positions.   - Scotland Yard detectives in Malta to help in unsolved murders. 
18698 !C33 !CCAT !G15 !G155 !GCAT !GCRIM  The European Court of Justice found on Thursday Greece failed to implement the Council directive on review procedures for public contracts within the prescribed time frame.   The Commission told the court its complaint related only to the failure to transpose the provisions of the directive which related to the award of public supply contracts.   Greece admitted being late in transposing the provision, but argued that exisiting Greek legislation provided sufficient protection to meet the requirements of the directive.   Greece also told the court a draft presidential decree to transpose the directive was notified to the Commission and was at the final stage before signature.   The court rejected Greece's arguments saying the existing Greek legislation was of a general nature and could not suffice to secure the correct transposition of the directive.   "The court has consistently held that it is particularly important, in order to satisfy the requirement for legal certainty, that individuals should have the benefit of a clear and precise legal situation enabling them to ascertain the full extent of their rights and, where appropriate, to rely on them before the national courts," the court said.   ***   (Court translation into English.   Original lnaguage of the case: Greek)   "Failure by a member state to fulfil its obligations - Failure to implement directive 89/665/EEC within the prescribed period - Review procedures relating to public supply and public works contracts"   19 September 1996   Case C-236/95   Commission of the European Communities, applicant   v   Hellenic Republic, defendant   application for a declaration that, by not adopting or not notifying to the Commission within the prescribed period the laws, regulations and administrative provisions necessary to comply fully with Council directive 89/665/EEC of 21 December 1989 on the coordination of the laws, regulations and administrative provsions relating to the application of review procedures to the award of public supply and public works contracts (OJ 1989 L395, p. 33), the Hellenic Republic has failed to fulfil its obligations under the EC Treaty and that directive   ---   THE COURT hereby   1.   Declares that, by not adopting or not notifying to the Commission within the prescribed period the laws, regulations and administrative provisions necessary to comply fully with Council directive 89/665/EEC of 21 December 1989 on the coordination of the laws, regulations and administrative provsions relating to the application of review procedures to the award of public supply and public works contracts the Hellenic Republic has failed to fulfil its obligations under article 5 of that directive;   2.   Orders the Hellenic Republic to pay the costs. 
18699 !GCAT !GPOL !GVOTE  Italian ministers face questions in parliament on Thursday as politicians unite in warning that heavy-handed police action against the Northern League could play into the hands of the secessionists.   Police seeking evidence of alleged anti-constitutional activity forced their way into the headquarters of the Northern League in Milan on Wednesday evening.   The League's former interior minister Roberto Maroni was punched in the face and taken to hospital after scuffles followed a long standoff between police and League officials who had questioned the validity of the search warrant.   Interior Minister Giorgio Napolitano was due to address the lower house of parliament on the events at 1230 GMT.   The ministry said in a statement it had nothing to do with the police action, which was ordered by magistrates.   Justice Minister Giovanni Maria Flick will also answer questions in the Senate (upper house) at 1400 GMT.   League leader Umberto Bossi, who declared a "federal republic of Padania" in the north on Sunday and who is now being investigated by magistrates for undermining national unity, called the search "an act of pure fascism".   Around 100 green-shirted Bossi supporters gathered outside the building waving flags and shouting "freedom, freedom."   They later drove around the city shouting slogans.   Bossi was interviewed live on the main television news bulletins, where the story was a top headline.   Pier Ferdinando Casini, leader of the small centre-right CCD party, said crimes must be punished "but I hope that all, magistrates and police, are clever enough to avoid creating illustrious victims that we have no need of."   Other politicians, who have derided Bossi's "independence" ceremony as a flop, also voiced concern.   "Maybe Bossi has been given the opportunity to get more publicity, even if he does not need it, and also to give himself a halo of victimisation," said far-right National Alliance Ginafranco Fini after the police search had ended.   "Obviously this does not mean that police operations and investigations that the magistrates deem necessary should not be carried out, but there are ways of doing it," he said.   Fausto Bertinotti, leader of the hard left Communist Refoundation, warned that the police action could generate "a false sense of victimisation by the League that could even bring it support that it otherwise does not have."   The chief prosecutor in the northern town of Verona, Guido Papalia, said he ordered the searches on suspicion that League officials had broken the constitution.   Magistrates are also investigating claims that the Northern League had stirred up racial hatred and violated the ban on forming military associations.   The League said the investigations were directed against the "green shirts", an unarmed security squad formed by Bossi.   Walter Veltroni, the deputy prime-minister in the centre-left government, accused the League of deliberately creating an incident and expressed concerned about increased tensions following the "independence" declaration.   "I would have preferred what happened not to have happened," he said, blaming the League for resisting police.   "Just as the secessionist demonstrations failed, so the behaviour of Bossi and the League has become more radical and more extreme," Veltroni warned. 
18700 !E51 !E511 !ECAT !G15 !G158 !GCAT  Foreign investment in Austria surged in the first half of the year, propelled by a leap in European Union investment after the country joined the economic bloc in 1995, the Austrian National Bank said on Thursday.   Net foreign investment in Austria rose to 16.7 billion schillings, more than triple the 5.3 billion schillings registered for all of 1995.   Invesments by Austrians abroad fell to 5.2 billion schillings from 10.6 billion last year, the central bank said in a statement.   As much as 95 percent of the money was invested by other EU members, with neighbouring Germany accounting for around 80 percent of the total.   About two thirds of the total was accounted for by foreigners acquiring stakes in Austrian banks, it said.   Germany's Bayerische Landesbank last year bought a 15 percent stake in Bank fuer Arbeit und Wirtschaft (Bawag), taking its overall stake in the bank to 45 percent.   At the end of the year, Westdeutsche Landesbank acquired a 9.1 percent stake in Bank Austria, the country's biggest bank.   -- Vienna newsroom +431 53112 274 
18701 !GCAT !GCRIM  Belgian Prime Minister Jean-Luc Dehaene said on Thursday any errors made during investigation of the country's paedophile sex, kidnap and murder cases will be sanctioned.   "If it appears that during earlier phases of the investigation serious errors have been made, they will be sanctioned," Dehaene said in a speech to parliament which convened early to discuss the twin paedophilia and political murder scandals which have rocked the country.    "The justice minister has ordered an inquiry into the investigation of the child kidnappings.   He has just received the report and will inform parliament about it," Dehaene said.   He said that the conclusion would be presented to the parliament's justice commission as soon as possible.   He gave no information about the contents of the report.   Belgian media said on Thursday the report was highly critical of police cooperation and procedures.   Dehaene also said that the judiciary should do its utmost to make progress in the investigation into the 1991 murder of leading politician Andre Cools.   "The investigation into the murder raised many questions and led to a general feeling of mistrust of our institutions.   The judiciary now must go to the heart of the matter," he said. 
18702 !GCAT  The following are the main stories from Thursday morning's German newspapers:   FRANKFURTER ALLGEMEINE ZEITUNG   - Fifty members of parliament say government's move to Berlin should be delayed by five years   - Economic council criticises new anti-trust bill designed to bring German cartel law into line with EU law   - Senior official at east German privatisation agency BvS says size of task was seriously underestimated   - DIW economic research institute cautions against raising value added tax   HANDELSBLATT   - Engineering industry employers at odds with president of federal labour court over whether existing contracts can be changed to cut sick pay   - East German privatisation agency BvS says it faces tougher task than expected   - Newspaper publishers say they have no fear of online services   - Economic council criticises new anti-trust bill designed to bring German cartel law into line with EU law   SUEDDEUTSCHE ZEITUNG   - Bavaria continues to insist Bosnian refugees must start leaving Germany from October 1   - Employers warn workers against striking to prevent immediate cuts in sick pay   - Forty-eight members of parliament say government's move to Berlin should be delayed by five years   - Advertisers remain committed to newspaper market   - Economic council criticises new anti-trust bill designed to bring German cartel law into line with EU law   - Newspaper market stable despite economic weakness   - New detention order served on Thyssen boss Vogel   - Engineering union IG Metall welcomes VW idea of issuing securities to finance early retirement   DIE WELT   - Health minister Seehofer wants law to prevent contributions to health insurance rising   - East German managers still paid less than west German counterparts   - East German privatisation agency BvS plans to close down in 1998   - Judges criticise constitutional court   - Engineering industry employers at odds with president of federal labour court over whether existing contracts can be changed to cut sick pay   -- Bonn Newsroom +49 228 2609760 
18703 !C13 !C21 !C31 !C312 !CCAT !G15 !G153 !GCAT  The European Commission said on Thursday that it had not changed its policy on a plan to kill up to 147,000 cows in Britain most at risk of developing mad cow disease.   "Suggestions in the British press today that there has been a U-turn by the Commission...are not true," Commission agriculture spokesman Gerard Kiely told a news briefing.   The European Commission eased pressure slightly on Britain by agreeing on Wednesday to examine the new evidence, based on computer studies, showing mad cow disease -- Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy or BSE -- would die out naturally in five years.   But Kiely said the evidence by Oxford University scientists had been passed to the EU's scientific veterinary committee 10 days ago.   He added that the report would be studied but should not be used as an excuse for delaying the cull.   On Tuesday EU Farm Commissioner Franz Fischler told a meeting of EU farm ministers that he was disappointed that Britain was planning to revise the selective slaughter plan and at the lack of progress since the Florence EU summit in June.   The report contained nothing new in that people knew the disease would die out early next century, he said.   "That aspect of the information...is not new and is irrelevant to the purpose of the selective slaughter programme, which was never intended by itself to eradicate the disease," Fischler told the ministers.   "Its aim is to remove those animals most likely to develop BSE as quickly as possible thus sending an important signal to consumers that we are taking effective measures to protect their health and to restore their confidence in British beef," he added.   The ministers rejected a British bid to reduce the number of cattle to be killed.   Europe has been battling to restore confidence in beef since March when the British government created a massive health scare by saying that BSE could be transmitted to humans.   British ministers were meeting on Thursday to consider whether to stick with the cull programme or scale it back.   Fearing a parliamentary rebellion from ruling party members opposed to the full cull, Prime Minister John Major and his colleagues were expected to cut back on the slaughter programme or introduce measures to protect the domestic beef market. 
18704 !C31 !C312 !CCAT !G15 !G153 !GCAT !M14 !M141 !MCAT  The European Union is lining up export subsidies for its wheat for the first time in a year, but believes a return to grain price wars with the United States is unlikely.   Analysts said the EU might bring back subsidies as soon as Thursday when it holds a weekly grain auction, to dispose of a larger-than-expected crop which has made up for recent shortage.   "I think you will see Brussels sell some wheat today, maybe up to 300,000 tonnes, and to do this there will be some kind of export refund (subsidy)," a European grain trade analyst said.   Subsidies which once caused bitter trade clashes across the Atlantic have disappeared from the grain market for more than a year as warnings of scarcity drove prices to historic highs.   The subsidies were replaced in December with a tax, making it harder for exporters to sell and providing a windfall in revenues for the EU's Commission headquarters in Brussels.   But acknowledging that world wheat and barley prices have fallen sharply in recent weeks, the EU finally scrapped the export tax on Wednesday and is now offering the chance to bid for export subsidies to keep its grain shipments moving.   Uppermost in the Commission's mind is the fear that by exporting too little, a big crop this year could fill up the EU's near-empty grain silos too quickly.   The EU faces what could be a record grain harvest of up to 200 million tonnes this year, up more than 10 percent from 1995, after farmers expanded sowings to cash in on a price boom.   Wheat prices peaked near $300 per tonne in April, before sliding to their present $160 per tonne as harvests rolled in.   As a top supplier alongside the United States, the EU has signalled it wants to export more in the crop year to next June.   But it is drawing back from any hint of confrontation with its old trade foe.   Guy Legras, director general for agriculture at the Commission, a veteran of past trade clashes with the United States, believes a new spat caused by undercutting each others' prices is in neither side's interest.   "We will align ourselves to wheat prices in the United States," he told Reuters in an interview on Wednesday.   From the mid-1980s, Washington and Brussels competed savagely for wheat sales by throwing billion of dollars in subsidies at exports while encouraging their farmers to keep growing more.   Prices spiralled down to some $80 per tonne by 1994.   Each blamed the other for starting a price war.   Washington has promised to fight "fire with fire" if necessary to meet EU competition but is reserving judgement on whether to go aahead and subsidise its own exports once more.   But Republican senator Richard Lugar on Thursday urged the Clinton Administration to put forecful pressure on Brussels to make sure the European subsidies do not happen.   The EU subsidies are available in a grain auction held each Thursday in Brussels.   Traders bid for the refund they need to close the price gap between Europe and the rest of the world, where farmers are less protected and prices are usually lower.   But the 15 EU states -- in practice usually guided by the Commission -- can reject the bids if they think they are too steep.   In the secretive world of grain, the weekly ritual is seen as a game of cat-and-mouse between the EU and market middlemen over how much a subsidy should be worth.   If the Commission guesses the market wrongly and forks out a bigger subsidy than a trader needs to close a grain deal, the rest is pure profit. 
18705 !GCAT !GSPO  Britain's Labour Party has no plans to restrict corporate sponsorship by tobacco companies of sports events if it wins the next election, a Labour MP said on Thursday.   "Labour has no plans for the restriction of tobacco sponsorship in sport...," Kate Hoey, Labour's Member of Parliament for Vauxhall, told a business conference in London. 
18706 !E21 !E211 !ECAT !GCAT !GPOL  The Spanish government and its nationalist allies appeared on Thursday to have resolved key stumbling blocks to agreement on the hotly debated 1997 budget that must be presented to parliament in less than two weeks.   The Catalan Convergence and Unity (CiU) coalition secured in principle agreement on health funds which they had demanded in return for the votes of their 16 seats for the minority Popular Party government's first budget.   The Basque Nationalists, the five-seat junior partner in the loose coalition that makes up the Popular Party's 176-vote legislative majority, also appeared to have moved toward agreement on corporate taxes.   "There is no technical solution to resolve the problem yet (but) there is the will," Francesc Homs, Catalan economic spokesman in parliament told Spanish radio.   Separately, Economy Minister Rodrigo Rato told journalists that budget talks were going well and that the cabinet should approve the draft on September 27 as planned.   The central government apparently agreed at Catalan insistence that the disputed health funding to the region be based on real spending patterns, although specific amounts had not yet been determined.   "The formula is basically to recognise the real budget -- to incorporate real health spending in the 1997 budget over the 1995 and 1996 base," Homs said.   "The discussion is over this base."   In principle, both the Catalans and the Basque Nationalist PNV have pledged their agreement to a stringent 1997 budget that will whip Spain's finances into shape for the launch of the European single currency in 1999.   But the talks ran into blockages in the last few weeks as the parties struggled to get the most out of ever scarce resources.   The government is counting on solid economic growth in 1997 to boost receipts by six percent, while tight controls are designed to keep expenditures from exceeding two percent growth.   Even so, the PP must slash another 800 billion pesetas to ensure a reduction in the deficit to three percent of gross domestic product from a projected 4.4 percent this year and thereby meet one of the toughest common currency criteria.   The Basques said they had been given a guarantee that the government would indeed adhere to deals agreed to in the original pact that set up the Popular Party minority government.   These deals, part of which have never been made public, give the Basques manoeuvring room on taxing authority in response to taxation autonomy dating back to feudal times.   "(Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria) Aznar ratified the pact," Inaki Anasagasti, spokesman for the PNV told Spanish radio.   --Madrid Newsroom +34 1 585 2167 
18707 !E12 !ECAT !G15 !G151 !G154 !G158 !GCAT  As Finland hovers on the brink of entry to Europe's exchange rate mechanism, many analysts here believe the perceived medium-term economic or political benefits of bringing the markka into the current ERM regime are illusory.   The luxury of huge 15 percent ERM fluctuation bands makes the chosen central exchange rate little more than a symbolic target.   As a result, there is little or no exchange discipline or currency-risk reduction inherent in the existing system.   Moreover, many analysts believe that maintenance of 15 percent ERM bands alone will not be sufficient to satisfy the Maastricht criterion on exchange rate stability prior to European monetary union.   Hence, the political imperative of entering the ERM quickly is also notional at best.   "An ERM with 15 percent bands is of no practical value and and it's not even clear whether its necessary or sufficient for qualification for EMU," said Peter Von Maydell, senior currency economist at UBS Ltd.   Finnish Prime Minister Paavo Lipponen is pushing for a peg, in a bid for tight links with the EU to ensure closer political connections with the west for Finland, which joined the EU in 1995 after decades in the shadow of the former Soviet Union.   But the central bank has been reluctant, with officials voicing concerns that a link may expose the markka to speculative pressures and fuel volatility.   The markka rallied to 2.99 per mark early on Thursday, its strongest level in nine months, as speculation about the exact timing of ERM entry intensified.   The chairman of the Bank of Finland's board of parliamentary supervisors IIkka Kanerva said ERM entry was unlikely this month, putting the market focus on early October as likely date for a joint lira and markka ERM fixing.   Yet, analysts questioned the logic of trading on back of speculation about the entry level.   "The focus on the central rate in a 15-percent-band system is a little misplaced," said Paul Meggyesi, senior currency strategist at Deutsche Morgan Grenfell.   "With such wide margins of error it's hard to see why ERM entry would change anyone's investment decision within Finland or toward Finland."   Even if Finland attempts to informally target narrower 2.25 percent bands, that some analysts believe will be necessary to satisfy the EMU criteria, the chances of holding the erratic markka in those bands over two years is slight, they said.   "In our view, the 2.25 percent rule will be used by the EU as a way of identifying the countries who will have the least problem with fixed exchange rates and moving to EMU in 1999," said Joe Prendergast, currency strategist at Merrill Lynch.   That would exclude Spain and Italy, for example, from the first move to EMU, even if they do manage to meet a relaxed interpretation of the other Maastricht criteria, he said.   "Finland would have severe problems holding a narrow band regime for long, mainly because it is subject to strong exchange rate shocks that do not effect the rest of the European core," said Prendergast.   The Finnish economy, and hence the competitiveness of the markka, is heavily dependent on volatile commodity prices, with paper and pulp products accounting for about 40 percent of its export revenue.   This is a stark contrast to the core European currencies to which Finland intends to peg the markka closely.   In 1994 and 1995, for example, the markka was one of the strongest currencies in the world, in contrast to exchange rate weakness against the German mark elsewhere in Europe.   Conversely, the markka's devaluation against its European currency unit peg in 1992, prior to its later flotation, was a precursor to the exit of sterling and the lira from the ERM later that year.   Moreover, neighbouring Sweden is Finland's biggest trade competitor for pulp products and it is currently deeply divided about the merits of joining either the ERM or EMU.   "Finland is to Sweden what Ireland is to the UK, for example, and it is hard to imagine the markka not being heavily influenced by the swings of a floating Swedish crown given such trade interdependence," said Meggyesi at Deutsche.   Even as Finnish industry chiefs protest the recent rise of the markka, analysts say Finland's strong current account surplus, balanced budget and low inflation argue for an even stronger markka right now.   Deutsche argues for an equilibrium level as low at 2.85 per mark, for example.   But Von Maydell at UBS said that while there may be a good case for saying a central rate about 3.00 per mark is fair value right now, that may not be the case over the full course of the economic cycle. 
18708 !E51 !E512 !ECAT !G15 !G158 !GCAT  The head of the World trade Organisation said on Thursday that the WTO was prepared to mediate in an international row over U.S. trade legislation, but added he hoped the issue never made it that far.   WTO Director-General Renato Ruggiero told a news conference that the row over Washington's Helms-Burton Act and D'Amato Bill -- which seek to quash trade with Cuba and Iran and Libya respectively -- was likely to go to the WTO to settle.   "I don't want to see it ... I don't like to see it, but I think it will happen," he said.   Ruggiero, attending a meeting of European Union Trade Ministers, said settling international disputes was precisely what the WTO was created for.   "Some think that if there is a dispute, you should blame the WTO.   But the fact that the WTO is where the disputes are heard shows that it is working," he said.   The EU and U.S. have been at odds for months over the Helms-Burton Act and D'Amato Bill, and the European Commission is considering escalating its grievances with the WTO.   If this happens, a WTO disputes settlement panel would decide whether the EU's complaints that the laws were extra-territorial are justified.   Outlining his ambitions for the WTO ministerial meeting in Singapore in December, Ruggiero said it was important to keep the agenda focussed on the progress the organisation had made in wrapping up global deals left over from its predecessor, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade.   He said the so-called "new issues" -- which include labour standards and environmental concerns -- should be put aside or tackled at a differant forum.   Ruggiero, speaking the day after a tyre-factory closure here was blamed partially on cheaper imports from Eastern Europe, said trade liberalisation almost always created rather than cost jobs.   The German rubber giant Continental AG announced on Wednesday that it was closing its Semperit tyre factory in Ballyfermot with the loss of over 600 jobs.   "This unfortunate matter is one for the Irish government or the EU," Ruggiero said.   "But normally multi-lateral trading and liberalisation is an engine for growth."   Ruggiero said erecting trade barriers was an outdated philosophy.   "The road (to trade liberalisation) is bumpy ... but it is a one-way street," he said.   "Anyway, people are not proposing anything else."   He called on the EU to send a "strong political signal" to developing nations at the Singapore meeting to encourage them to further open their markets.   But he cautioned the EU against pushing controversial issues too far, saying this could merely polarise the West from developing nations. 
18709 !C13 !C24 !C31 !C312 !CCAT !G15 !G153 !GCAT  The European Commission said on Thursday that it had not changed its policy on a plan to kill up to 147,000 cows in Britain most at risk of developing mad cow disease.    "Suggestions in the British press today that there has been a U-turn by the Commission...are not true," Commission agriculture spokesman Gerard Kiely told a news briefing.   He said a report by Oxford University scientists suggesting that the disease, properly known as Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy, would disappear within five years without an extra cull being necessary had been passed to the EU's scientific veterinary committee 10 days ago.   Kiely added that the report would be studied but should not be used as an excuse for delaying the cull.   On Tuesday EU Farm Commissioner Franz Fischler told a meeting of EU farm ministers that the report contained nothing new in that people knew the disease would die out early next century.   The ministers rejected a British bid to reduce the number of cattle to be killed. 
18710 !E51 !E512 !ECAT !G15 !G158 !GCAT  European Union ministers were due on Thursday to give Trade Commissioner Sir Leon Brittan the go-ahead to pursue a wide range of liberalising policies, but diplomats said he would also be reminded to put Europe first.   Trade ministers from the 15-nation bloc were meeting to review the EU's policies ahead of a World Trade Organisation meeting in Singapore in December.   Although the Dublin gathering is informal, Brittan is seeking approval for policies to show EU unity ahead on issues ranging from U.S. trade legislation to developing world labour standards.   Diplomats said the Dublin meeting aims to focus on steps needed to extend world trade liberalisation but at the same time protect European industry.   "No-one is really against opening markets," said on diplomat, "but sometimes we need to be reminded that ministers have constituents to answer to." 
18711 !E12 !ECAT !G15 !G151 !G154 !GCAT !GPOL  A strongly "Euro-sceptical" speech by British Foreign Secretary Malcolm Rifkind split the ruling Conservative party on Thursday, just two days before key European negotiations on a future single currency.   Rifkind's warning of the dangers of monetary union, in a speech to mark the 50th anniversary of Winston Churchill's vision of a United States of Europe, delighted Conservative right-wingers who want Britain to rule out membership of EMU.   But it drew an angry response from some of the party's most influential elder statesmen who have appealed to Prime Minister John Major not to turn his back on European co-operation.   In a letter in Thursday's Independent newspaper, six Tory grandees including three of Rifkind's predecessors at the Foreign Office wrote: "For us now to rule out British membership of a single currency would be to betray our national interest."   Up to now Britain has pursued a policy of delicate balance, refusing to say whether or not it will sign up to EMU (Economic and Monetary Union), but insisting on its right to join in the preparatory negotiations.   But the picture Rifkind painted on Wednesday of Economic and Monetary Union splitting apart the European continent has boosted the confidence of his party's right wing who now see Rifkind firmly on their side in a bid to keep Britain out.   The row is certain to surface again at the Conservative Party's annual conference in October and could weaken the stance of Major's pro-European finance minister Kenneth Clarke at EMU negotiations this weekend in Dublin, Ireland.   Britain was always going to be sidelined at Saturday's meeting of European finance ministers and central bank chiefs.   Britain is still arguing internally about the whole concept of monetary union, while the powerful Franco-German alliance is forging ahead towards EMU and just wants to clear up details.   Added to the furore over mad cow disease, with Britain now calling into question a pledge to kill off suspect cattle, Britain's position on Europe is looking increasingly isolated.   One of the main points on the Dublin agenda is to put the finishing touches to a Stability Pact, a scheme to ensure that EMU members stick to tough anti-inflationary policies not only before they sign up to union but afterwards as well.   The pact was originally inspired by German Finance Minister Theo Waigel and has now been firmly embraced by France.   Also on the Dublin agenda are plans to link a future single currency to currencies outside EMU, a further development of Europe's existing Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM).   After being unceremoniously ejected from the ERM in 1992 after a huge run on the pound, Britain will stress its view that countries cannot be forced to join "ERM II".   But Clarke and central bank governor Eddie George are also expected to assure partners that even if Britain stays out it will not seek competitive advantage by devaluing sterling.   George's deputy Howard Davies has stressed Britain will stick to tough anti-inflationary polices.   "Indeed our policy as an "out' would be broadly the same as that of the European Central Bank," he said last week.   Another issue the Bank of England is likely to address at least informally at Dublin Castle is a growing row over plans for an interbank payments system once EMU has begun.   To the alarm of the British financial community, French and German banks are pushing for limits on the access banks in countries outside EMU can have to the system, known as TARGET.   But Davies this week demanded that all European nations should have equal access to market liquidity whether they sign up for EMU or not and said moves to prevent this may be illegal. 
18712 !E12 !ECAT !G15 !G154 !GCAT !M13 !M132 !MCAT  Investment bank Salomon Brothers expects the markka to join the EU's exchange rate mechanism at a central parity within a 3.02-3.07 range against the German mark.   "This week's Bank of Finland action and recent rhetoric suggests that a markka ERM entry will take place in coming weeks," Salomon economist Wike Groenenberg said in a newsletter published on Wednesday.   She said the Bank of Finland's repeated currency interventions suggested that Finnish authorities did not want to join ERM at a rate stronger than 3.0 against the mark.   She noted, however, that the real-trade-weighted markka is about seven percent below its long-term average.   "The average exchange rate over the last year is 3.06 markka per mark, while the average since January amounts to 3.08," she said.   The impact of ERM entry on the yield curve would probably be small, she said, as ten-year bonds already appear to be close to fair value with yields only 60 basis points above German yields.   -- Brussels newsroom +32 2 287 68 11 
18713 !C12 !C13 !CCAT !GCAT !GCRIM  Finnish bank group Merita Oy said in a statement on Thursday former top executives of KOP will be charged for violating the securities market act in connection with KOP's share issue in 1994.   Kansallis-Osake-Pankki (KOP) merged with Union Bank of Finland in 1995 to form Merita.    "The charges are linked to information about big investors' commitment to subscribe the issue given as part of the marketing of KOP's share issue," Merita said.   Charges will be raised against former KOP supervisory board chairman Tauno Matomaki, former CEO and chairman Pertti Voutilainen and former board member Kari Jordan, Merita said.   Voutilainen and Jordan are currently board members of Merita, it said.   The court proceedings are due to start on November 14, 1996, Merita said.   -- Helsinki newsroom +358-0-6805 0248 
18714 !E12 !ECAT !G15 !G154 !GCAT !M13 !M132 !MCAT  The Finnish markka will not be linked to Europe's exchange rate mechanism in September, Ilkka Kanerva, chairman of the Bank of Finland's board of parliamentary supervisors said on Thursday.   Speaking to reporters after a regular supervisory board meeting, Kanerva said that for various reasons it would not be possible to decide to link the markka to ERM during the coming September 21-22 weekend nor the weekend of September 28-29.   He declined further comment on the timetable.   Any decision to peg the markka to ERM must pass the board of parliamentary supervisors.   The markka has been floating since September 1992.    "(Any linkage) was never intended for this weekend," Kanerva said.   "The essential people are not around to make the decision," he added.   When asked whether a link would be possible the weekened of September 28-29, Kanerva said: "Actually it (that weekend) has been out of the question for a long time."   The International Monetary Fund and World Bank annual meeting is held in Washington from September 24 to October 3.   Asked whether it was possible that the markka would not be linked to the ERM at all, Kanerva said: "In principle that is possible."   The next regular Bank of Finland supervisory board meeting is scheduled for October 7.   -- Helsinki newsroom + 358 - 0 - 680 50 240 
18715 !GCAT  Leading stories in the Greek press:   ELEFTHEROTYPIA    --New Democracy leader Miltiades Evert does it his way, and tries to get the last word on television before the blackout on political appearances 24 hours before voting begins.   Parties furious at Evert's attempted coup, upstaging the ruling party PASOK's Athens rally tomorrow night by holding televised interview.   --Government replies to former chief of staff's threat to reveal all about handling of Imia stand-off between Greece and Turkey in January.   "If he talks, so do we," sources say.   --PASOK leader Costas Simitis calls Evert "dangerous" on foreign policy and ready to renegotiate Lausanne treaty on status of the Aegean.   --Tsovolas predicts lack of majority in Sunday's poll and the end of PASOK and New Democracy.   TA NEA    --Parties say no to Evert's attempted TV coup.   --Simitis appeals to left voters to plump for PASOK.   --PASOK pulls out ahead of New Democracy.   Conviction that PASOK will win Sunday's poll takes hold in both ruling party and main opposition.   ELEFTHEROS TYPOS   --Simitis responsible for the Imia humiliation: former chief of staff Lymberis fires the fatal shot and destroys Simitis's 'alibi', saying that political responsibility for the crisis's handling cannot be passed onto the armed forces.   --Evert predicts a great win and a strong government.   ETHNOS   --Simitis interview: Sunday's poll is an invitation to a great victory.   --Evert absurd to the end: isolated by the other parties, he seeks the final word on television, with "guest star" former premier Constantine Mitsotakis.   KATHIMERINI   --Former chief of staff Admiral Christos Lymberis's statement yesterday that he will reveal all about the handling of the Imia stand-off between Greece and Turkey last January has "opened a dangerous chasm in national issues".    --New Democracy leader Miltiades Evert on television tonight and tomorrow, in place of rallies.   --Deadline for settlement of debts to Social Security Foundation (IKA) end September 30 - only 1 percent take up invitation for a favourable resettlement.   --Prices on domestic fuel markets continue their rise.   --Elefsina Shipyards suppliers call for Prime Minister Costas Simitis's intervention for payment of outstanding debts.   --Bourse examines possibility of insider trading in Titan cement shares.   IMERISIA   -- First indications for wage rises in next year's budgets are 11 percent, sources say.   --Government leaning towards idea of hiring independent consultant to assess the course of the Community Support Framework, and course of major public works and absorption of EU funds.   --Elaid Oil registers profits of 1.49 billion in first half 1996.   --War in the insurance market as healthy firms turn against those struggling.   KEDROS   --Sunday's poll winner still uncertain, for majority of capital market and bank dealers.   -- Election campaign to continue until midnight Friday (when ban on political appearances 24 hours before voting begins).   EXPRESS   --Promises on taxation: PASOK finance minister Alekos Papadopoulos pledges that modernisation of ministry services will lead to abolition of objective tax criteria.   New Democracy deputy Mihalis Liapis calls for tax breaks for business.   --1997 public debt will be down by 400 billion, finance ministry says.   --Imminent elections cause slight pressure on stocks   NAFTEMBORIKI   --Finance ministry prepares new issue of "more flexible" state titles for small investors.   --Increased EU inflows improves balance of payments.   --Maria Petrakis, Athens Newsroom +301 3311812-4 
18716 !GCAT  Prepared for Reuters by The Broadcast Monitoring Company   -- SALES RISE FUELS INFLATION FEARS   According to figures from the Office for National Statistics, sales rose during the month of August at an annually adjusted rate of 4.4 percent, prompting concern that inflationary pressure could decrease the likelihood of further reductions in UK interest rates.   The increase in consumer demand was higher than had been anticipated in the City and resulted in share and bond price falls.   The news came as it emerged that the Chancellor had in July assured the Bank of England that he would increase interest rates on the first sign of inflationary pressure.   -- MORGAN GRENFELL DISMISSES YOUNG   Morgan Grenfell has dismissed Peter Young, the fund manager at the centre of irregularities discovered in the running of three of the company's investment funds.   Young, who had been suspended was being kept on in order to aid Ernst & Young in its investigations into the matter.   However, the dismissal comes after Young became less helpful to these inquiries.   It is thought that Morgan Grenfell could refer the case to the Serious Fraud Office as early as next week.   -- BBC AND ICL PLAN TO LAUNCH INTERNET SERVICE   It has emerged that the BBC in association with UK computer company ICL ICL.  L is planning to launch an Internet service.   The service, being spearheaded by BBC Worldwide, will include news, weather, travel information and educational and entertainment material.   Contracts have been signed between the two parties and an announcement is expected within the next two weeks.   ICL is believed to have secured the contract ahead of competition from Microsoft and marks the latest attempt by the BBC to capitalise on its extensive archive material.   -- C&W TO BRIDGE MERCURY DIVIDE   Cable & Wireless chief executive Richard Brown has revealed in an extensive press interview that he intends to develop the synergies that exist between the two units of its Mercury subsidiary - Mercury Communications and Mercury One-2- One.   He is also planning to boost Mercury's international profile and while planning to boost investment in the business does not envisage this impacting on the overall Cable & Wireless capital expenditure budget for this year.   -- ROVER WORKERS PRESS FOR 7 PERCENT PAY INCREASE   In what could mark a significant precedent in UK wage negotiations, staff at auto manufacturer Rover, a subsidiary of BMW, are demanding an increase in salaries of 7 percent.   An existing deal at the company expires on November 1 and talks on a new deal for the company's 40,000 staff have been scheduled for October.   Unions at Rover are reported to be determined to secure an increase that reflects improvements that have taken place in productivity.   -- DE BENEDETTI REGAINS REINS OF OLIVETTI AS CAIO QUITS   The board of Italian computer group Olivetti has voted to replace chief executive Francesco Caio with Roberto Colanino, currently chief executive of the automotive components group Sogefi.   A recent dispute between Caio and Carlo de Benedetti lead to the latter's resignation as chairman.   Olivetti has seen its share price plummet sharply in recent weeks amid concerns about the true state of the company's finances, brought into question by an outgoing senior executive.   The latest changes are seen as marking the regaining of control of the company by de Benedetti.   -- PM SAYS TAX CUTS ARE 'MORAL'   Speaking at a London lecture the British Prime minister John Major has stressed that the Conservatives have a moral obligation to reduce the tax burden and shrink the role of government.   He also re-stated his ultimate aim of abolishing inheritance as well as capital gains tax.   The speech led to an immediate and critical response from deputy Labour leader John Prescott, who described the statement as 'immoral' and pointed out that the overall taxation burden had increased under the Conservatives.   -- BA PLANS TO REPLACE 5,000 STAFF AND SAVE ONE BILLION STG OVER THREE YEARS   British Airways has announced plans to shed some 5,000 staff over the next three years in a move designed to reduce costs by one billion stg.   The company hopes to be able to achieve the reductions through voluntary redundancies and early retirement and expects to begin the process in November.   At the same time the company intends to begin a recruitment drive that will result in overall staff numbers rising to current levels by the year 2000.   -- ELECTRICITY CHIEF WARNS OF PRICE THREAT TO POOR   The chief executive of Yorkshire Electricity has warned that poorer sections of society could stand to lose out when the electricity supply sector is deregulated in 1998.   In a company newsletter, Malcolm Chatwin noted that a method needed to be found to subsidise consumption by these sections of society.   He noted that in order to meet the challenge of new competition, suppliers would be forced to reduce prices for 'preferred customers' and end the cross-subsidies that currently apply.   -- TRAINING FOR INDUSTRY TO BE IMPROVED   The government is expected next week to announce the creation of a network of new industrial training bodies in an effort to improve the country's skills foundation.   The system will result in the creation of new self-financing bodies to replace the 178 groups currently operating in the field.   The new groups are expected to be better placed to keep abreast of changes in technology and in industrial requirements and consequently boost the country's competitiveness.   For a full range of news monitoring services, phone BMC +44-171-377-1742 
18717 !GCAT  Prepared for Reuters by The Broadcast Monitoring Company   DAILY TELEGRAPH   -- TUG OF WAR ON INTEREST RATES   Hopes of lower interest rates were dashed yesterday following official confirmation of booming confidence in the high street and a warning from Bank of England Governor Eddie George of the need for action to prevent demand in the economy running out of control.   The latest figures show a 1 percent rise in the volume of goods sold on the high street in August.   -- HUNTING SETS ASIDE 37.5 MILLION STG   Defence and aviation company the Hunting Group has set aside 37.5 million stg to cover losses in its aviation division and appointed accountants Ernst & Young to review management procedures.   The group suffered a first-half loss of 14.2 million stg before tax, against 15 million stg profit last year.   -- COSTAIN LOSSES RISE TO 19.2 MILLION STG   Costain, the struggling construction group, reported losses of 19.2 million stg from 10.4 million stg as turnover fell from 458 to 360 million stg.   Delays in starting contracts, including the Newbury bypass and work on the M5 motorway led to an 84 percent rise in interim pre-tax losses.   The group said the second half would be brighter with Costain's order book increased to 636 million stg and the Newbury bypass and M5 contracts under way.   THE TIMES   -- MORGAN GRENFELL SACKS YOUNG OVER MISCONDUCT   Fund manager Peter Young has been sacked by Deutsche Morgan Grenfell.   Mr Young, who was manager of the top performing European Growth unit trust, was dismissed for gross misconduct.   Already under suspension, Mr Young is said to have become increasingly uncooperative over Morgan Grenfell's investigation into events that led it to suspend dealings in 1.4 billion stg of investment funds two weeks ago.   -- EUROPE MAY MAKE TAXMAN RETURN 100 MILLION STG TO SOCIETIES   It is expected that the European Commission on Human Rights will find the government in breach of the European Convention on Human Rights in a case brought by three building societies.   The government may be forced to pay back 100 million stg worth of taxes it collected from the building societies after it introduced new laws to stop the societies taking it to court over the taxes.   -- NEW LOOK FOR NUCLEAR INDUSTRY WILL COST JOBS   Streamlining British Energy since privatisation this summer and the state-owned reactors implementing a planned restructuring will cost up to 2,000 jobs over the next three years.   The job losses will be announced next month after talks with the five main unions involved.   THE GUARDIAN   -- GRANADA UPS ITS YTTV STAKE AS RULE CHANGE NEARS   Granada yesterday confirmed it had raised its shareholding in Yorkshire Tyne Tees.   The move comes after speculation that rival Carlton is considering a takeover bid for HTV, and coincides with predictions from Ulster TV that the fortunes of ITV companies will significantly improve in 1997.   Granada still maintains that it is undecided whether to make a takeover bid for Yorkshire.   -- ANIMATORS SIGN 1.5 MILLION STG TV CHARACTERS DEAL   The animation group Britt Allcroft, whose television version of Thomas the Tank Engine helped it make a pre-tax profit of 2 million stg last year, has signed a 1.5 million stg deal to develop a new range of children's characters for a worldwide television market.   Its partnership with Britain's largest independent video and publishing group, VCI, will allow promotion of the new characters through merchandising, books and audio CD.   -- PRICE OF A NEW FORD ESCORT: DOLE FOR 1,000   Ford's investment in the next version of the Escort is to cost 1,000 jobs at its Halewood car plant on Merseyside.   Ford wants to replace in-house production with outside suppliers to cut costs and boost productivity.   The company is hoping to persuade component companies to set up on a new industrial park, to supply Halewood.   The creation of the park is also being backed by local aid agencies as a way of creating new jobs and revitalising the region.   THE INDEPENDENT   -- PDFM DEFENDS 'DASH-FOR-CASH' STRATEGY   PDFM, the pension fund manager, defended itself yesterday against escalating concern among pension fund clients over its decision to put 7 billion stg into cash in anticipation of a stock market collapse.   The group said its decision was based on its view that both the US and UK stock markets would fall sharply, and that PDFM had been vindicated in the past when it had gone out on a limb.   -- STAFF MAY STRIKE AS BA CUTS 5,000 JOBS   British Airways decision to cut 5,000 jobs in an attempt to cut costs by 1 billion stg in three years was met last night with the threat of strike ballots by Unions representing BA staff.   The carrier has not ruled out compulsory redundancies but also pledged to recruit an extra 5,000 staff in other areas.   -- OLIVETTI CRISIS SET TO TRIGGER FURTHER EXODUS   Following an emergency board meeting last night, Olivetti remained in a state of crisis as reports of further top management changes emerged.   The speculation in Milan is that Francesco Caio, Olivetti's chief executive would be forced to resign after just three months in the job.   For a full range of news monitoring services, phone BMC +44-171-377-1742 
18718 !GCAT  These are some of the leading stories in two London-based Arabic-language newspapers on Thursday.   Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.   AL-HAYAT   - Gulf Arab states exempt Palestinian goods from custom duties for one year.   - Yemeni custom duties generate 17 billion rial income in eight months.   - Arabs form six-member committee to overlook the setting up of an Arab free trade zone.   ASHARQ AL-AWSAT   - Egypt's Al-Ahli Bank sets up a 300 million Egyptian pound project with banks and investment firms to build a 1.2 million tonnes a year cement plant.   - The World Bank lends Morocco $23 million. 
18719 !C12 !CCAT !GCAT !GCRIM  Kevin Maxwell, son of media tycoon Robert Maxwell who disappeared from his yacht in 1991, will not face a second trial on charges of alleged fraud, a judge said on Thursday.   The judge said a further trial "would be unfair, so unfair as to amount to an abuse of power of the court".   His decision ends five years of controversy over money which was found missing from Maxwell company pension funds after Robert Maxwell's death.    In January, Kevin, his brother Ian Maxwell, and former Maxwell director Larry Trachtenberg were acquitted of conspiring to defraud pension funds after an eight month, multi-million pound trial.   Britain's Serious Fraud Office (SFO) sought to bring charges in a second trial gainst Kevin Maxwell, Trachtenberg, and two former Maxwell executives, Albert Fuller and Michael Stoney.   The judge on Thursday announced his decision to stay any further proceedings before reading out his judgment.   Kevin Maxwell took his case before the judge to argue that the impending second trial was "oppressive". 
18720 !C21 !C24 !C31 !C312 !CCAT !G15 !G153 !GCAT  British ministers met on Thursday to review a cull of up to 147,000 cattle most at risk from mad cow disease after new scientific evidence suggested the mass slaughter was unnecessary.   Fearing a parliamentary rebellion from ruling party members opposed to the full cull, Prime Minister John Major and his colleagues were expected to cut back on the slaughter programme or introduce measures to protect the domestic beef market.   But such a move could bring Major once again into conflict with his European Union partners who introduced an export ban on British beef in March to reassure panicky consumers.   The European Commission eased pressure slightly on Britain by agreeing on Wednesday to examine the new evidence, based on computer studies, showing mad cow disease -- Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy or BSE -- would die out naturally in five years.   But the European Commission's chief spokesman said it was unlikely that the export ban could be eased quickly.   "The report is saying that the BSE disease will go away by itself in a number of years," Nikolaus van der Pas told the BBC.   "The ban is there because BSE is there, so as long as BSE is there it is unlikely that the ban will go."   The ban followed a British government admission that humans might contract the fatal CJD brain disease from eating BSE-infected beef.   Roger Freeman, the minister in charge of seeing measures to eradicate the disease are implemented, on Thursday welcomed the Commission's decision to review the new study.   But he said Britain was still looking for a fast easing of the ban, adding: "We are fulfilling our side of the bargain and in return we wanted an early lifting of the ban in stages."   At the heart of the debate is anger in London that a deal hammered out by Major with his partners at the European Union summit in June has failed to lead to a rapid lifting of a ban on British beef exports.   After the Florence deal, Major had said he expected the EU to start lifting the ban within five months but this confident prediction found little backing among other EU countries.   Officials said Agriculture Minister Douglas Hogg returned from talks with EU farm ministers in Brussels earlier this week once again convinced they would not lift the ban any time soon.   A top British scientist, Professor Sir William Stewart, who advised the government for five years on scientific matters, upset ministers by dismissing the new study by researchers at Oxford University.   "How do we know for sure that the Oxford evidence will be standing up in five years' time?   You can't be sure about that.   What you can be sure about is that if you cull, the problem will not be there," Stewart said. 
18721 !E12 !ECAT !G15 !G154 !G155 !GCAT !GDIP !GPOL  Six elder statesmen of Britain's ruling Conservative Party urged Prime Minister John Major on Thursday not to yield to increasingly vocal right-wing demands to oppose European integration.   "To countenance withdrawal from the European Union would be to court disaster," the six, headed by former prime minister Sir Edward Heath, said in a letter to the Independent newspaper.   The letter was published a day after a speech by Foreign Secretary Malcolm Rifkind in which he delighted the so-called "Eurosceptics" on the right-wing of the party with a warning that the EU's plan for a single currency could split the bloc for the foreseeable future.   Three of Rifkind's Foreign Office predecessors -- Lord Carrington, Lord Howe and Douglas Hurd -- also signed the letter, which said: "For us now to rule out British membership of a single currency would be to betray our national interest."   The other signatories were Lord Whitelaw, who was deputy prime minister under Margaret Thatcher, and Sir Leon Brittan, one of Britain's EU Commissioners.   "We have to find the confidence as a nation and as a people to make a success of our European destiny.   The British instinct is to lead, not walk away," the letter said.   The move by the six signalled that the long-running feud between pro- and anti-European Conservatives was set to continue despite the imminence of a general election, which must be held within the next eight months.   Earlier, John Redwood, one of the leading right-wing contenders to succeed Major, had lavished praise on Rifkind for his speech, delivered in Zurich.   Rifkind told his Swiss audience the single currency plan would split the EU in two since about half its nations would not qualify to join.   "We should not proceed down a path of integration faster or further than our people are prepared to go," he said.   "I say three cheers for Malcolm Rifkind for beginning to set out our stall," said Redwood, who unsuccessfully challenged Major for the party leadership last year.   "I think the foreign secretary has looked at the damage this scheme is now doing and has looked at the strong opinion in the Conservative Party, which is that we want a common market and not a common government," Redwood told Channel Four television.   Major's premiership has been dogged by internal party disputes over Europe which have helped to give the opposition Labour Party a lead of some 20 points in opinion polls.   In an attempt to hold his party together, Major has said he will decide whether to join a single currency when full details of how it would operate are clear -- after the next election.   He has also pledged a referendum on the issue.   His hesitancy is in marked contrast to the keenness with which most other EU leaders, especially German Chancellor Helmut Kohl and French President Jacques Chirac, are pressing for a single currency to come into force in 1999. 
18722 !E12 !ECAT !G15 !G154 !GCAT !GDIP !GPOL  Right-wing Conservatives on Wednesday heaped praise on Britain's Foreign Secretary for delivering a warning that a single currency could split the European Union.   "I say three cheers for Malcolm Rifkind for beginning to set out our stall," John Redwood, one of the leaders of the party's so-called Eurosceptic wing, said.   In a speech in Zurich earlier, Rifkind said if the planned single currency went ahead, the EU would be divided into two groups of members for the foreseeable future, since about half the existing members would not qualify to join in.   "We should not proceed down a path of integration faster or further than our people are prepared to go," he said.   Sensing that Rifkind's words marked a move towards his wing of the party, Redwood told Channel 4 television: "It is a very welcome speech."   "I think the foreign secretary has looked at the damage this scheme is now doing and has looked at the strong opinion in the Conservative Party, which is that we want a common market and not a common government."   Redwood last year resigned from Prime Minister John Major's government to challenge him for the leadership of the Conservative Party, with a call for tougher opposition to European integration a theme of his campaign.   But he said that following Rifkind's speech, "I live in hope that we will have a very good (election) manifesto on this subject."   A general election must be called in Britain by next May.   The opposition Labour Party is currently the favourite to win, with a 20 point lead in the opinion polls, helped by divisions within the Conservatives over Europe.   Major, in an attempt to hold his party together, has said he will decide whether to join a single currency when full details of how it would operate are clear -- after the next election.   He has also pledged a referendum on the issue. 
18723 !GCAT  Following are some of the major events which occurred on September 19 in history.   1356 - English army led by The Black Prince, son of Edward III, defeated King John II of France in the Battle of Poitiers at the end of the first phase of the Hundred Years War.   1551 - Henry III, King of France from 1574 and last king of the Valois dynasty, born.   1802 - Lajos Kossuth, Hungarian revolutionary and briefly Governor of Hungary, born.   After defeat by the Austrians at Temesvar, he fled to Turkey where he was imprisoned.   1839 - George Cadbury, British social reformer who took over the family's chocolate business, born.   1851 - William Hesketh Lever, British soap and detergent entrepreneur who built the international firm Lever Brothers, born.   1867 - Arthur Rackham, British artist and illustrator, best known for his drawings in children's stories, born.   1876 - The first carpet sweeper was patented by inventor Melville Bissell, of Grand Rapids, Michigan, who later formed his own company.   1881 - James Garfield, 20th U.S. president, died after being shot on July 2, 1881.   He had been president only since March 4 that year.   1888 - The world's first beauty contest took place at Spa in Belgium.   The first prize was awarded to Bertha Soucaret, an 18-year-old Creole from Guadeloupe.   1893 - New Zealand became the first country to grant all its women the right to vote.   1905 - Thomas Barnardo, British pioneer in social work and founder of more than 90 homes for destitute children, died.   1911 - Sir William Golding, British author, born.   His first published novel "Lord of the Flies" became an international bestseller and was later filmed.   1918 - Turkish forces In Palestine were decisively beaten by the British under Edmund Allenby at the Battle of Megiddo.   1922 - Emil Zatopek, Czech athlete and middle distance runner, born.   He set 18 world records and won all 69 of his races between 1949-51.   1941 - The German army captured Kiev.   1945 - William Joyce, who broadcast Nazi propaganda to Britain during the war as Lord Haw Haw, was sentenced to death by a British court for treason.   He was later hanged.   1955 - Encircled by revolutionary forces, President Juan Peron of Argentina resigned and fled into exile.   1961 - Jamaica voted in a referendum to secede from the West Indies Federation.   1983 - The Caribbean islands of St Kitts-Nevis became an independent state.   1985 - Up to 12,000 people were estimated to have been killed and 40,000 people injured when an earthquake hit Mexico City.   The quake measured 8.1 on the Richter scale.   1989 - A DC-10 belonging to the French airline UTA exploded over the Sahara on a flight from Brazzaville to Paris, killing all 170 aboard.   1991 - The newly independent republic of Byelorussia changed its name to Belarus.   1991 - An EC peace conference on Yugoslavia broke up in The Hague when Serbia rejected the idea of foreign troops being used in peacekeeping.   1993 - The Polish Democratic Left Alliance of former Communists took the largest number of seats in parliament in Poland's general elections.   1994 - Thousands of U.S. troops swept ashore in Haiti to launch an intervention aimed at restoring democracy. 
18724 !C15 !C151 !C42 !CCAT !E41 !ECAT !GCAT !GJOB  Britain's flag-carrier airline British Airways Plc said on Wednesday it aimed to slash one billion pounds ($1.56 billion) from its annual costs bill in what it called a "Step Change" efficiency drive.   BA said it would be seeking 5,000 voluntary redundancies or early retirements over the next 18 months but sugared the pill by saying it will also recruit a similar number of staff with different skills over the next three years.   "I don not expect wholesale job losses," said chief executive Robert Ayling.   "Jobs will also be created, and jobs secured.   We will grow and we will improve.   I am committed to a strategy of investment and improved profitability."   Earlier this year, Ayling had announced the intention to cut costs to offset continuing falls in average fare levels and the rising costs of handling more traffic.   Ayling said Wednesday's announcement marked a further stage on the company's "long journey from privatisation."   "The competition is getting better and more efficient.   Our customers expect more but our cost of providing a seat has risen faster than the price customers pay in a highly competitive marketplace," Ayling said in a statement.   British Airways shares were little changed by the announcement, standing 4.5p higher at 530.5p at 1300 GMT.   BA said it would consider selling or sub-contracting some of its services if they sould be done better or more cheaply that way.   It also said it would unveil new product, brand and customer service plans over the next few months and would confirm new plans for aircraft investment worth hundreds of millions of pounds, and for new sales and customer service technology.   ($1=.6415 Pound) 
18725 !GCAT !GCRIM  British police said on Thursday they had raided a Kurdish television station in central London as part of a money laundering investigation.   A police spokesman said documents were removed from the Med-TV station on Wednesday after a search warrant was issued in connection with money laundering activities.   Med-TV director Hikmet Tabak said the raids halted programmes and accused police of harassment.   Britain's Press Association news agency said Med-TV had been a constant critic of Turkey's treatment of Kurds. 
18726 !GCAT !GCRIM !GDEF !GDIP  Mordechai Vanunu might be forgiven for thinking the world had forsaken him.   Lauded by activists the world over for daring to reveal details of Israel's top secret Dimona nuclear plant, Vanunu now sits alone in a tiny cell with no prospect of early release from an 18-year sentence.   "The agent who helped end the Cold War is still in the cold," he lamented in a poem written last year.   But as the 10th anniversary of his arrest approaches on September 30, campaigners around the world are uniting in a bid to persuade Israeli authorities to free him.   In the forefront is veteran anti-nuclear activist Professor Joseph Rotblat, winner of the 1995 Nobel Peace Prize.   "I find it hard to understand that a civilised country like Israel could keep a man in solitary confinement for 10 years.   It is an act of barbarism," Rotblat said in an interview.   The Israeli technician was sentenced to 18 years solitary confinement in 1986 for spilling his country's nuclear secrets.   Friends worry about the effect of the incarceration on Vanunu and say he is showing signs of paranoia and depression.   Vanunu hit the headlines when he gave London's Sunday Times newspaper photos and details of Dimona, which foreign analysts say has produced at least 200 atomic weapons.   The enraged Israelis, who have never admitted they can make atomic weapons, hit back quickly.   In an episode which could have come straight from the pages of a lurid thriller, Israeli intelligence used a blonde agent to lure Vanunu from Britain to Rome, where he was kidnapped, drugged and shipped home to be tried.   Rotblat said Vanunu had been disproportionately punished, especially considering the treatment meted out to Soviet spy Klaus Fuchs, whose information enabled Moscow to detonate its first nuclear weapon in August 1949.   "Without his information the Russians simply could not have built the nuclear bomb.   Fuchs was sentenced to 40 years in jail, where he worked as a librarian, and was released after nine.   It was quite humanitarian," said Rotblat.   "Compare this to Vanunu: people knew about Israel's nuclear capacity in any case.   What he said did not damage anyone.   By comparison with Fuchs his treatment is unimaginable."   Rotblat appealed to Israel to release Vanunu when accepting his Nobel award last year.   Sources in Norway said Vanunu himself had been nominated for the Peace Prize over the last couple of years.   Israel says it cannot free Vanunu ahead of time because he has threatened to reveal more about Israel's nuclear programme.   But campaigners say the Israelis are worried Vanunu will give more details about his kidnapping and thereby prove the operation broke international laws.   The main focus of the September 30 campaign will be in the United States, where protests are planned in 10 cities from Los Angeles to Washington.   Coordinator Sam Day said a cage representing Vanunu's cell would be placed outside the Israeli embassy in the capital.   "There is a great feeling of outrage around world against Vanunu's continuing imprisonment.   We see him as prisoner of conscience and not a spy," Day said by telephone from Minnesota.   "We also want to send a message that it is by consent of the U.S. government that Israel has a secret nuclear weapons programme," added Day.   He said he was increasingly worried by Vanunu's recent letters.   "He is very impatient about efforts around the world (to free him).   He thinks we should be doing more to build a fire under the government of Israel.   The letters seem a little paranoid at times, as if the whole word is out to get him."   Protestors in Canada will hold vigils and collect petitions in Winnipeg and Toronto on September 30.   "I believe it is of importance for the world to know where nuclear weapons are and to eliminate them as soon as possible.   Vanunu provided a service to Israel and the rest of the world," organiser Mordecai Briemberg said from Vancouver.   "Any movement like this must depend on heightened public awareness and more awareness of the double standards which allow Israel to do things which other countries can't do."   Campaigners will also stage rallies in Britain and New Zealand, which has banned nuclear weapons from its territory since 1987.   "We believe he was just another peace worker following his conscience and would have hoped that most of us, if we'd had the same amount of courage, would have done likewise," event coordinator Arthur Quinn said from Wellington. 
18727 !GCAT !GPRO  Britain's Duchess of York used to pour out her unhappiness in four-hour counselling sessions with a psychic healer, the Daily Mirror reported on Thursday.   "She wanted lots of hugs, love and kisses.   She'd curl up in my arms and I'd rock her and say "It will be all right, my baby'," healer Vasso Kortesis told the tabloid.   "She'd ring from all over the world desperate for advice.   Freely -- I never asked for payment and it was never offered -- I gave it."   Kortesis, a Greek woman living in a modest north London home, plans to publish what the Mirror has described as "the most explosive book ever written about the monarchy".   The duchess, formerly Sarah Ferguson, unburdened herself to the healer over a three-year period in the early 1990s when her marriage to Prince Andrew, Queen Elizabeth's second son, was falling apart.   The Mirror has said the new book contains accounts about Princess Diana, the queen, her husband Prince Philip and the duchess herself.   The duchess, dubbed "Fergie" by the popular press, may try to ban the book before it appears.   Last month she won a court injunction preventing publication of a kiss-and-tell book about her relationship with American businessman John Bryan.   She has never been able to live down the worldwide publication in 1992 of pictures showing Bryan sucking her toes at a French villa shortly after her separation from Andrew.   The couple divorced earlier this year. 
18728 !GCAT  INFORMATION WITHHELD IN NATIONAL INTEREST   The Chairman of a public inquiry into a helicopter accident which killed 18 soldiers has withheld key information from the media in the interest of national security.   Fifteen Special Air Service soldiers and three airmen died when two Blackhawk helicopters crashed during anti-terrorism training exercises near Townsville in June.   Information regarding the formation in which the helicopters were flying prior to the accident was kept from the public by inquiry's Chairman, Brigadier O'Sullivan.   Brigadier O'Sullivan conceeded that the evidence was vital to the investigation, but said the lives of those still employed in the Service must be protected.   - - - -   MINISTER ON HEALTH FUND RISES   Federal Health Minister, Michael Wooldridge, has told parliament he's sought assurances from health funds they won't raise premiums in other areas to compensate for new products.   Dr Wooldridge says he won't allow health insurance funds to raise premiums for families if the increases are a result of lowering premiums in other areas.   The Minister has said he will allow funds to offer products with lower premiums tailored to childless couples and single parents.   - - - -   AIR DEAL COULD LEAD TO LOWER AIR FARES   The travelling public and consumers are set to benefit from the announcement today of a single aviation market between Australia and New Zealand.   Trans-Tasman airfares are forecast to fall when Australian and New Zealand airlines gain unrestricted rights from November.   The deal allows airlines unlimited access to domestic routes in each country, and gives them unrestricted rights to operate trans-tasman services.   The single market was set to take effect in November 1994, but the then Transport Minister Laurie Brereton pulled out of the agreement.   Mr Brereton's successor, John Sharp, says the single market will generate greater competition.   - - - -   HIV VILIFICATION CASE   In the first case to use New South Wales HIV sexual vilification laws, a gay man has been awarded 50-thousand dollars compensation for prolonged abuse.   The Equal Opportunity Tribunal ordered Elizabeth and Dobrivoje Marinkovic to pay 25-thousand dollars each to the complainant, for subjecting him to years of harassment.   Ruth Hennessy from the anti-discrimination board says it sends a clear signal to people that certain behaviour is unacceptable.   - - - -   DODSON SAYS CHANGES WILL DESTROY BALANCE   Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner, Mick Dodson, says the Federal Government's proposed changes to the Native Title Act reduce the property rights of indigenous people.   The Government wants to reduce indigenous negotiation rights on mining exploration, and allow pastoral leases to be renewed or extended indefinitely without the approval of native title holders.   Mr Dodson says the proposals the native title act rests on a vital balance of interests between indigenous and non-indigenous Australians.   He says by destroying that balance, the government will drive Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples away from the Act and into the courts.   - - - -   COSTELLO ANNOUNCES PRICES SURVEILLANCE REFORMS   Federal Treasurer Peter Costello says reforms to prices surveillance activity will remove red tape and allow businesses to focus on their real purpose -- doing business.   Mr Costello says in future prices surveillance activity will only be applied to markets where there isn't enough competition.   The price declarations for beer and cigarette manufacturers have been rescinded.   However the companies involved have entered into agreements with the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission to keep price rises below the general inflation rate for the next year.   Mr Costello says Government is still considering a recommendation to revoke the declarations for petrol, however he's written to motoring organisations encouraging them to work with the Commission to monitor petrol prices in country areas.   - - - -   DAME BERYL CONCERNED ABOUT MEDICARE ABORTIONS   One of the Liberal Party's most prominent members, Dame Beryl Beaurepaire, says one man holding the government to ransom over funding to abortions is democracy gone wrong.   Dame Beryl -- who was an integral player in obtaining the Medicare rebate for abortions -- says publicly funded abortions are at risk of being traded away for secure Senate votes on the part-sale of Telstra.   She's told a meeting of women's political groups in Canberra she's concerned Tasmanian Independent Senator, Brian Harradine's proposal to abolish the rebate is being seriously considered.   - - - -   NEW TURTLE SPECIES   In northern Australia, two new species of turtle have been discovered, close to the Katherine Gorge in Nitmiluk National Park.   The creatures were discovered by a team of scientific divers three weeks ago in a billabong close to a popular tourist spot.   Doctor Rod Kennett from the North Australia Research Unit says the turtles are a distinct, new species.   The two species are the long neck turtle, which has a much larger and flatter head, and the short neck turtle, which has a much larger plate inside its mouth for crushing food.   -- Sydney Newsroom 61-2 9373-1800 
18729 !GCAT  DOWNER DEFENDS ASIAN HUMAN RIGHTS EFFORTS   Foreign Minister, Alexander Downer, has defended the efforts of Asian nations to improve their human rights.   He told a political institute in Bonn differences between Asian and European values were overstated.   Mr Downer says many Asian countries are parties to United Nations instruments on human rights and are very committed to improvements in human rights.   He says while Indonesia is frequently criticised for its human rights record, it has set up its own Human Rights Commission.   - - - -   IR REFORMS WILL APPEASE ASIA - REITH   Industrial Relations Minister Peter Reith says anxiety in Asia over Australia's industrial unrest will be solved once the Workplace Relations Bill is passed.   Companies in Japan and South-East Asia are reportedly becoming increasingly anxious over industrial disputes under the Coalition Government.   The Prime Minister will today reassure business leaders in Tokyo that his Government's micro economic reforms will help.   Mr Reith says current industrial disputes are a small flurry before a lull that'll occur when his industrial legislation is in place.   But he says the disputes do make the reforms more urgent.   - - - -   FISCHER IN DEBATE WITH DALAI LAMA   Deputy prime minister Tim Fischer and the Dalai Lama are having words over whether the Chinese occupation of Tibet has helped the Tibetan people.   Mr Fischer said the Chinese occupation had led to improved social conditions in Tibet.   The Dalai Lama has responded suggesting Mr Fisher make another trip to Tibet, which he visited in 1993, and this time without Chinese interpreters.   But Mr Fischer says on his last trip to Tibet, he became quite adroit at getting away from his official minders.   He says while there are legitimate human rights issues which are of concern, he has seen some of the modernisatation which is taking place.   - - - -   BORBIDGE CALLS ON CJC TO PROBE CORRUPTION ALLEGATIONS   The Queensland Premier Rob Borbidge has called on the Criminal Justice Commission, to urgently launch a public inquiry into alleged Police corruption.   Mr Borbidge said CJC Chairman Frank Clair's comments to a Parliamentary Estimates Committee, implicating police in the drug trade, reflect adversely on every serving officer in the Queenslnad Police Service.   An Associate Professor in politics at Griffith University Doctor John Wanna told ABC Radio the Premier's announcement appeared to be a direct result of the row between the State Government and the CJC that's developed over the past week.   He says the Premier is telling the CJC chairman to put up or shut up.   - - - -   NEW SENATOR SWORN IN   New South Wales Liberal Party President, Bill Heffernan, has been sworn in as the State's newest Senator.   Mr Heffernan replaces veteran Liberal Senator, Michael Baume, who resigned last week to take up the post of Australia's consul-general in New York.   - - - -   ALSTON BACKS REJECTION OF HARRADINE'S TELSTRA IDEA   Communications Minister Richard Alston has backed the Treasurer's criticim of Independent Senator Brian Harradine's proposed alternative to the part sale of Telstra.   Treasurer Peter Costello yesterday described as unattractive Senator Harradine's plan to issue redeemable preference shares in Telstra, instead of selling a third of the carrier.   Senator Alston says all ministers agree on the issue and the Government is not attracted to proposals that would increase public debt.   He says he's still considering Senator Harradine's other suggestions and will talk with him before the Telstra bill is debated in the Senate.   - - - -   COUPLE FINED FOR SHOUTING ABUSE AT GAY MAN   A couple has been ordered to pay a gay man 50-thousand dollars for shouting abuse at him at the Sydney flats where they were neighbours.   The Equal Opportunity Tribunal has awarded the compensation in the first decision in New South Wales under the Anti-Discrimination Act.   The man told the Tribunal the couple who lived in the unit above him began repeatedly shouting abuse from their balcony when he moved in, in late 1993.   Outside the Tribunal, one of the defendants said he wouldn't be able to pay his half share of the compensation.   The Tribunal also ordered an apology be posted at the Housing Commission flats, in Surrey Hills.   - - - -   WA CONDONES VIOLENCE AGAINST GAYS: ACTIVIST   A representative of gay people in Western Australia says the problem of youth suicide will be exacerbated because the State Government has refused to outlaw discrimination on the basis of sexuality.   Coalition MPs voted against changes to the State's Equal Opportunity laws to end discrimination against gays in employment, housing and the provision of goods and services.   Brian Greig of the Gay and Lesbian Equality group says the government is condoning violence against gays, and the decision contravenes the Commonwealth's Youth Suicide prevention Strategy.   He says Federal anti-discrimination laws are needed to protect gay and lesbian people.   -- Reuters Sydney Newsroom 61-2 373-1800 
18730 !E21 !E211 !ECAT !GCAT !GPOL  The Labor Party is not doing well.   Treasurer Peter Costello had the hide on Thursday to goad the Opposition for not effectively attacking the budget.   And he was right.   "The Labor Party's attack on the budget has collapsed," Costello said in answer to a question time "dixer."   "In fact, if one sat through the question time over the last week or two weeks, it's almost impossible to get a question from the shadow treasurer (Gareth Evans) in relation to the macro-economic outlook.   "It is impossible to get any statement from the leader of the opposition (Kim Beazley) as to an alternative economic programme," he said.   It is now four weeks since the Liberal-National coalition announced the toughest Australian federal budget of the 1990s.   There has now been plenty of time to dig up all of the nasties in the documents, but little has emerged.   A week after the budget, commentators labelled it an undoubted success.   If that was a little premature then, it is not now.   The budget greatly exceeded the gains that former Labor treasurer John Dawkins clawed into government finances in 1983: about A$7 billion in tightening, compared with Dawkins' A$5 billion.   Yet Dawkins was vilified within his own party and quit a few months later, fed up with politics and all its works.   The country is in no uproar over this budget.   To the extent it is unpopular, there is no consensus that anyone (except perhaps the unemployed in training programmes) has been hit disproportionately.   The impression that is left is that the government had a fiscal mess and that it has taken firm but fair measures to clear it up.   Only Newspoll has published a voting-intention survey for this month, but it tended to confirm results from the weekend after the election: if the government's position was fading a little, it still had a thumping lead over Labor.   No political event since the budget makes us think things have changed.   Indeed, the Newspoll survey in Thursday's edition of The Australian shows the nuts and bolts of the government's strength.   The poll, taken last weekend, showed that voters preferred the Liberal-National coalition for nine out of 13 nominated policy areas.   Labor won only in the social-policy categories of health, welfare and aboriginal affairs, and in industrial relations, which was its only perceived economic strength.   The government won hugely on interest rates (44 percent to 26), inflation (45 to 25) and the balance of payments (46 to 21).   It was also a nose ahead on unemployment (just 35 to 33, perhaps reflecting voters' doubts that anyone has a solution).   What this means is that, if economics determines votes, then Labor hasn't got a hope at the moment.   As Costello said, the Opposition has barely laid a finger on the budget and, decisively, has no alternative plan.   What was Labor's solution to unemployment?   voters can reasonably ask, noting that the former government left office with joblessness at an apparent trough of 8.5 percent.   There is no answer to that question yet.   -- Canberra Bureau 61-6 273-2370 
18731 !GCAT !GODD  A bizarre 50-hour hospital siege in which a lovesick Australian tied himself to traction supporting his girlfriend's skull ended when the man fell into an "hypnotic trance", police said on Thursday.   Ivan Garvan, 31, who had not slept or had food or water since he began the siege on Monday, was overpowered by police as he began to collapse from fatigue on Wednesday night.   "He went into a hypnotic trance and went right into his own psychosis," said Perth police superintendent David Parkinson.   Garvan, who was unarmed, had used his jumper to tie himself to a traction rope which supports a metal ring screwed into the skull of 29-year-old Natalie Babic to keep her head still.   "He made no demands, no threats.   It's been a very unusual situation," Parkinson said.   "We can only assume he wanted to be with her because he tied himself to her."   By supporting her head, the traction equipment immobilises Babic's damaged spinal column.   Doctors at the Royal Perth Rehabilitation Hospital feared any sudden movement by Garvan could leave Babic paralysed.   "The negotiators covertly severed his jumper as he fell into the trance.   He realised this and he made an attack on the lady.   The negotiators threw themselves between the man and woman," Parkinson said.   A police special weapons team dressed in bulletproof vests then burst into the room and forced Garvan to the ground.   Babic, who was injured in a car accident, was unharmed and is expected to make a full reovery, Parkinson said.   Garvan was on Thursday undergoing psychiatric assessment before police decide whether to charge him. 
18732 !GCAT !GENV  An Australian state plans to give koalas vasectomies and a version of "the pill" in a move to curb runaway population growth.   Wildlife officials, who unveiled the plan on Thursday, said although koalas were not considered threatened in the state of Victoria, populations of the voracious eucalypt eaters were up to 10 times the normal size at some sites.   Leaf consumption was outstripping supply, they added.   "If we don't face up to this issue...then there are several areas across the state which will suffer long-term ecological damage and koalas will starve," state conservation and land management minister Marie Tehan said in a statement.   An adult koala eats about half a kilogram of leaves per day.   Koalas were hunted last century for their fur and were wiped out in much of Victoria and in the neighbouring state of South Australia.   They have since been successfully reintroduced to both states.   Earlier this year, proposals by South Australia to cull up to 2,000 koalas due to overpopulation sparked a national outcry from animal lovers.   The Australian government eventually resolved to move those animals but a shortage of suitable, unpopulated sites meant birth control was being promoted as the most viable option for Victoria's koalas. 
18733 !C42 !CCAT !E12 !E41 !ECAT !GCAT !GJOB  Australian Industrial Relations Minister Peter Reith said unions would jeopardise the July monetary easing if they did not pursue sustainable wage rises.   "Unions will serve their members' interests most effectively if they pursued sustainable wage increases underpinned by productivity improvements," Reith said in a statement.   "To do otherwise would jeopardise Australia's current low inflation, and the recent fall in mortgage interest rates." 
18734 !C31 !C311 !C42 !CCAT !E41 !ECAT !GCAT !GDIP !GJOB !GPOL  The Maritime Union of Australia's bans on Indonesian cargo and shipping would continue, Terry Buck, joint secretary of the Fremantle, Western Australia, branch, told Reuters on Thursday.   "The Bogasari Empat is loading today.   When it completes loading it won't sail for 24 hours," he said.   Bogasari Empat is schduled to carry 32,500 tonnes of wheat to Indonesia from Fremantle, Western Australia.   A container vessel due in Fremantle next week would meet with similar bans, Buck said.   A cattle vessel had been held up since Wednesday in Darwin, he added.    "Any other cargo vessel from Indonesia will meet with the same fate," Buck said.   "What we're going to do is determine case-by-case, issue-by-issue, vessel-by-vessel, cargo-by-cargo just how we're going to meet the bans," he said.   "It may well be, for example, next week a container vessel coming into port, we will not load it for 24 hours," he said.   "The vessels (also) require the services of mooring gangs and tug crews.   They just withhold their labour," he said, outlining the various ways the bans could be enforced.   Officials of the Darwin branch of the Maritime Union were not immediately available for comment.    The union has imposed bans on Indonesian ships to protest against the arrest of two independent labour leaders in Indonesia, Muchtar Pakpahan and Dita Sari.   Australian commodity exports likely to be affected by the bans include wheat, livestock, refined petroleum, cotton, aluminium and iron and steel.   -- Sydney Newsroom 61-2 9373-1800 
18735 !GCAT !GPOL !GVIO !GVOTE  A New Zealand opposition leader likened Maori separatists to the Ku Klux Klan white supremacist group on Thursday and called for racial harmony in a campaign speech for next month's general election.   New Zealand First Party leader Winston Peters, the country's most prominent Maori politician, said radical Maori protesters had set race relations back 10 years.   "New Zealand First rejects that creepy creed of racial separatism.   Because the separatists preach one great lie.   That following them into a never-never land of Aryan-like purity will save the Maori race," he said.   "They are every bit as wrong as the Ku Klux Klan and white supremacist skinheads and there can be no place for their thinking in any civilised society."   Peters was speaking in the North Island town of Wanganui, scene of a land protest by Maori radicals last year which highlighted racial tensions in New Zealand.   Maoris reached New Zealand by canoe from Polynesia centuries before European settlers and make up a disadvantaged 13 percent of the population.   They have lower life expectancy, suffering higher rates than non-Maori for a range of illnesses, from cot death to diabetes, heart disease and cancer.   They suffer higher unemployment and, proportionately, commit more crime.   They are also a key constituency as the country heads to its first elections under proportional representation on October 12.   Maoris will have five seats reserved for them in a new parliament of about 120 members.   They also occupy prominent places on most party lists, and political analysts see scope for Maori cooperation cutting across party lines.   Peters, who combines Maori and Scottish descent, has enjoyed a strong rise in the polls to run neck and neck with Labour for second place behind the conservative National Party government.   The new proportional set-up means National, though set to remain the largest party, could lose office if the parties of the centre-left can unite.   A key issue for the next government will be how to settle remaining Maori grievances over land seized from them by white settlers and early colonial governments.   Current government policy of capping total claims at NZ$1 billion (US$700,000) is seen by many Maori as arbitrary and unjust.   Both Peters and his New Zealand First deputy are Maoris, and his speech, titled "we are one nation", appeared partly aimed at reassuring conservative and elderly voters by distancing the party from the radical Maori fringe.   Peters was strongly criticised by his opponents and Asian community leaders earlier this year when he promised to "cut immigration to the bone".   He was also critical of Asian immigrants failing to commit to New Zealand.   But in his speech on Thursday Peters said the country took pride in Maori, Europeans, Pacific Islanders and "Asian New Zealanders bringing new honour and success to our nation". 
18736 !GCAT !GPOL  A leading aboriginal rights official on Thursday condemned the Australian government's planned reforms of native land rights as racist and unfair.   Aboriginal social justice commissioner Mick Dodson warned the planned changes would effectively wipe out native land title laws.   "The government is proposing racially discriminatory legislation," said Dodson, a member of the government's human rights commission.   The Liberal-National government, elected in March, plans to reform laws covering land rights for Australia's 260,000 native Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders.   The reforms remove aboriginal rights to negotiate with mining companies over exploration and prospecting activity, set tough conditions for eligibility to negotiate and extend some existing leases.   "We insist that our property rights are given the same protection as the property rights of other Australians -- that's just plain fair," Dodson said.   He also said the changes would force aboriginal groups to use courts more frequently and create uncertainty and delays for industry.   "It's not good for indigenous people, it's not good for industry and it's not good for the community as a whole," he said. 
18737 !C13 !C21 !CCAT !GCAT !GHEA  Australia has approved the drug Ritonavir, made by Abbott Laboratories Inc, for the treatment of HIV/AIDS, a government spokesman said on Thursday.   "This new class of antiretroviral drugs which are known as protease inhibitors act on the HIV virus in a different manner to other drugs and studies have shown them to be effective when used in combination with other medicines," said Bob Woods, parliamentary secretary to the health minister.   Ritonavir is the third product in the new class of HIV/AIDS drugs approved in Australia this year, he said in a statement.    Marketed in Australia by Abbott Australasia as Norvir, the drug was registered by the Therapeutic Goods Administration within six months, the statement said.   The Australian regulator is the fifth regulatory agency in the world to register the treatment.   "Approvals for Ritonavir have been granted in Australia, Switzerland, Canada and Europe within five weeks of each other and it was first approved in the United States in March this year," Woods said.   -- Canberra Bureau 61-6 273-2730 
18738 !GCAT !GPRO  WELLINGTON, Sept 19 - Police Minister John Luxton has had emergency surgery for a twisted bowel after being admitted to Wellington Hospital last night, the New Zealand Press Association reported on Thursday.   A hospital spokeswoman this morning said Luxton's condition was not available, however his office said he was recovering.   His election engagements have been cancelled in the meantime.   Luxton, 50, is currently MP for Matamata and is standing for election in the new seat of Karapiro.    He is widowed with three children and on Monday announced his engagement to Wellington barrister Mary Scholtens.   Luxton is also Minister of Maori Affairs, Minister of Commerce and Minister for Industry. 
18739 !GCAT !GPOL  New Zealand First leader Winston Peters on Thursday issued a categorical rejection of Maori separatism, saying its advocates preached the lie that "Aryan-like separatism will save the Maori race".   In a speech entitled "we are one nation" to a public meeting in Wanganui, he said Maori separatists were as wrong as the Ku Klux Klan or white supremacist skinheads.   Peters described the occupation of Moutoa Gardens in Wanganui last year by Maori activists as highlighting "a widening gulf between New Zealand society and a group within Maoridom who want to carve a separatist path".    He said leaders of the group had set the future of race relations back 10 years, and New Zealand First "rejects the hymn of hate that is sung by extremists, be they brown or white".   Peters singled out Moutoa Gardens protest leader Tariana Turia, who is in 20th place on Labour's party list, and attacked the Alliance's Mana Motuhake as a party where "racial separatism flourishes".   "New Zealand First rejects that creepy creed of racial separatism.   Because the separatists preach one great lie.   That following them into a never-never land of Aryan-like purity will save the Maori race.    "They are every bit as wrong as the Ku Klux Klan and white supremacist skinheads and there can be no place for their thinking in any civilised society."   Peters said his party wanted to promote the rights of all New Zealanders and rejected "the separatism so beloved of those Maori radicals who seek to use their own people for selfish gain".   "We embrace those New Zealanders who are secure and proud in their heritage, their native tongue and their culture but who want to build a united nation for the benefit of us all."    Peters and his deputy Tau Henare are both of Maori descent and New Zealand First has drawn a large slice of the Maori vote away from its traditional support for Labour.   New Zealand First's Maori policy released earlier this year describes the Teraty of Waitangi as "fundamental to a change in economic and social outcomes" adding it should "become a living document".   "It lives because a nation's hopes and fears are contained within the debates that it inspires and as the cornerstone of this nation's history it deserves nothing less," the policy document said.    But in his speech on Thursday Peters said the Treaty of Waitangi should not be seen as a "security blanket".   "It will not protect anyone from international trends nor from the future," he said, adding that education, health, secure employment and wise resource allocation would "properly arm our people for tomorrow".   He said the over-representation of Maori in all the worst statistics of child mortality, educational failure, unemployment, prison inmates, criminal offending, youth suicides and substance abuse gave "a certain currency" to those who "sing their anthems of anger".    He said the National government closed its eyes to the "human carnage" and if New Zealand tolerated these statistics "we will have permanent racial division".   Peters was strongly criticised by his opponents and Asian community leaders earlier this year when he promised to "cut immigration to the bone".   He was also critical of Asian immigrants failing to commit to New Zealand.   But in his speech on Thursday Peters said the blend that makes New Zealand included pride in Maori, Europeans, Pacific Islanders and "Asian New Zealanders bringing new honour and success to our nation".    -- Wellington newsroom 64 4 47374746 
18740 !GCAT !GCRIM !GREL  A doctor belonging to the doomsday cult accused of last year's Tokyo subway gas attack tearfully apologised to the victims and testified against his former leader on Thursday, becoming the first cult member to do so.   Ikuo Hayashi, testifying as a witness in the Tokyo District Court against Aum Shinri Kyo (Supreme Truth Sect) leader Shoko Asahara, said he played his part in the attack believing that the orders came from the cult's guru.   "My heart missed a beat when I received instructions (for the sarin attack)," said Hayashi, formerly the head doctor of a hospital run by Aum Shinri Kyo.   "I knew that the orders to spread sarin gas on the subways came from Asahara."   Hayashi, dressed in a grey suit, stood only several feet (around one metre) away from Asahara throughout his testimony, but did not once look at his former mentor in the face.   The long-haired Asahara, dressed in his usual blue shirt and trousers, sat impassively.   Asahara is accused of ordering his disciples to carry out an attack using deadly sarin nerve gas on rush-hour subways in March 1995.   Eleven people were killed and 5,500 became ill.   Hayashi is separately on trial for allegedly taking part in the gas attack.   Hayashi, who relayed the events leading to the gas attack passively, turned emotional when asked by prosecutors why he decided to leave the cult after his arrest.   It was only when he thought of killing himself to protect the cult that he realised the magnitude of the crime he committed, Hayashi said.   "I am a doctor and wanted to work for people, but instead killed people.   I'm so embarrassed.   I wished I could reverse time," Hayashi said in tears.   Hayashi said the aim of the plan to gas Tokyo subways was to divert the attention of the police, who were thought to be planning a raid on one of the cult's complexes.   He initially justified the crime by believing the act was out of compassion for the common people, but realised Asahara's teachings were wrong when the cult lawyer repeatedly urged Hayashi after his arrest to remain silent.   "If what Asahara told us to do was religiously, if not socially, correct, then why did he instruct us not to explain to society the true meaning of our acts?"   Hayashi said.   "Asahara was merely protecting himself and was hiding away like a coward.   That's when I realised what a shameful human he was," Hayashi said.   So far most of Asahara's followers, in court appearances at their own trials, have blamed the guru for ordering the gassings, production of weapons and murders which kept Japan in a state of near panic for months last year.   Asahara is on trial on 17 charges, including those of murder and attempted murder.   These include charges for the subway attack and an earlier sarin attack in the mountain resort city of Matsumoto, central Japan, in June 1994 which killed seven people and made over a hundred ill.   Asahara has refused to enter pleas to any of the 17 charges so far, and can be sentenced to death by hanging if convicted on any of the murder charges.   Other former Aum members, including one of Asahara's chief lieutenants Yoshihiro Inoue, will testify in the guru's trial in coming sessions. 
18741 !GCAT !GDIP  The foreign ministers of China and Japan will discuss their row over a group of disputed islands in the East China Sea at a forthcoming meeting, a Chinese government spokesman said on Thursday.   "The Diaoyu islands will be one of the major issues... (discussed) at this talks between the foreign ministers of China and Japan," Foreign Ministry spokesman Shen Guofang told a regular news briefing.   Chinese Foreign Minister Qian Qichen and his Japanese counterpart Yukihiko Ikeda are scheduled to attend a General Assembly meeting at the United Nations in New York next week.   The ministers will also discuss other issues related to bilateral relations, Shen said.   He did not elaborate.   The dispute over the islands, known as the Diaoyus in Chinese and the Senkakus in Japanese, flared in July after a right-wing Japanese group erected a lighthouse on the islands to buttress Tokyo's claim.   The row intensified this month after Tokyo, effectively supporting the rightists, sent patrol ships to repel private Taiwan vessels that tried to approach the islands.   Japanese rightists sailed to the islands this month and repaired the makeshift aluminium lighthouse, which was damaged by a typhoon last month, touching off anti-Japanese protests in Chinese communities in Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan and mainland China.   Shen repeated China's demand that Japan tear down the structures on the islands and stop Japanese rightists from setting foot on the islands again.   He said Japan had told China it attached great importance to bilateral relations and that it would no longer support and encourage Japanese rightists.   Japan has called for calm among Chinese in Taiwan and Hong Kong as nationalistic and anti-Japanese sentiment continued to simmer over the dispute.   Beijing and Taipei, rivals since the end of the Chinese civil war in 1949, agree the Diaoyus have been China's for centuries and dispute Tokyo's claim, which dates to 1895 when Japan defeated China and seized the Diaoyus and other territories.   The British colony of Hong Kong reverts to Chinese rule in mid-1997.   Japan says the dispute is not open for discussion with the other claimants. 
18742 !GCAT !GVIO  South Korean security forces killed seven more North Koreans on Thursday as one of the deadliest infiltration dramas since the early Cold War played itself out.   An estimated 20 North Koreans came ashore on a beach in the enemy South from a submarine on Wednesday, authorities said.   Altogether 18 have now been shot dead -- 11 in an apparent mass suicide -- and one was captured after a ruthless manhunt by thousands of troops and police.   The defence ministry labelled as incorrect an earlier report a second man had been captured on Thursday, saying he was still on the loose.   The search through mountainous terrain was likely to continue for some time because of uncertainty about the exact number of communist agents dropped near the east coast city of Kangnung.   South Korean security forces took no chances with the heavily-armed North Koreans as they reportedly fled for their lives towards the fortified border that has split the Korean peninsula since the 1950-53 war.   Three were cut down by automatic fire as they crouched by a stream to drink water, military sources in Kangnung said.   On Wednesday, the bodies of 11 North Koreans were found huddled together on top of a mountain situated close to a beach where they landed.   All had been shot through the head in an apparent mass suicide.   South Korean President Kim Young-sam denounced the most serious infiltration since the 1960s as an act of "military provocation" at a cabinet meeting.   "This is not a simple spy case.   I regard it as a kind of military provocation," an aide quoted Kim as saying.   "Despite food shortages, the reason why North Korea sent armed infiltrators is that they still have not given up their ambition to reunify Korea by force," Kim said.   Impoverished North Korea is on the brink of famine.   The head of the Agency for National Security Planning, Kwon Young-hae, was quoted as saying the incident amounted to "infiltration by armed guerrillas".   North Korea refused to accept a protest by the U.S.-led United Nations Command in South Korea, a command statement said.   The U.N. Command attempted to hand the message to the North through the border crossing village of Panmunjom, but a Northern military duty officer would not take it, the statement said.   The U.N. Command was the supreme headquarters for international and South Korean forces which repelled North Korean invaders in the Korean War.   It now helps supervise the armistice that ended the war.   "I strongly demand that your side immediately take the necessary steps to prevent recurrence of these serious Armistice Agreement violations," said the letter signed by South Korean general Cha Ki Moon.   "If you fail to do so, the responsibility for the unfortunate consequences will be yours."   Security forces with sniffer dogs have combed the Kangnung area since the submarine was spotted early on Wednesday wedged on a reef.   Helicopters and a reconnaissance plane were also used.   Security was also beefed up around Seoul, with manned checkpoints on bridges leading into the capital and armed police posted conspicuously in busy shopping districts.   Authorities said the submarine struck rocks while returning from a mission to drop off infiltrators, but one of the captured North Koreans was reported to have said the vessel went aground after drifting for a day with engine trouble.   Troops who boarded the abandoned grey craft found automatic guns and ammunition along with canned food and shoes.   Defence officials on Thursday shrugged off media criticism that South Korean defence forces had not managed to detect the 34 metre (111 ft) long submarine.   "Detecting such a small-sized submarine is like searching for a needle in a big river," a naval officer told reporters. 
18743 !GCAT !GPOL !GVOTE  Japan's ruling coalition agreed on Thursday to convene an extraordinary session of parliament on September 27, paving the way for widely anticipated general elections next month.   Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto, who is also president of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), won agreement on the date of the special parliament session from leaders of the two other coalition parties, Shoichi Ide of the New Party Sakigake and Tomiichi Murayama of the Social Democratic Party.   Politicians, in frequent leaks to the domestic media over the past two weeks, have said Hashimoto would dissolve parliament on the first day of the session and hold general elections on October 20.   But Sakigake head Ide emerged from the meeting saying Hashimoto did not specifically mention a parliamentary dissolution or election date.   Under the constitution, elections must be held within 40 days of a dissolution of parliament.   Most observers say the prime minister, who has the sole right to dissolve parliament, is balancing competing demands from the LDP, which is keen on early polls, and its coalition partners, who want to put off elections until next year.   Polls are not mandated until July 1997, but the LDP favours going before voters as early as possible before April, when an unpopular rise in the consumption tax, approved by the Hashimoto government, takes effect.   The Social Democrats and Sakigake want more time because they are locked in a bitter row over how to regroup for the coming polls, which will be held under a revised electoral system thought to favour large groupings.   A public opinion survey this week by the Nihon Keizai Shimbun, a leading financial daily, gave the LDP the highest approval rating with 22.4 percent, while Sakigake scored just 1.2 percent and the Social Democrats 3.7 percent.   "It is not proper to call a special parliament session just in order to dissolve it," Murayama said after the coalition meeting.   Hashimoto, who has said he will set an election date after settling a dispute with the southern island of Okinawa over U.S. military bases, is helping his junior partners save face by remaining non-committal about the poll date.   The Okinawa issue, Hashimoto's thorniest political problem, eased last week when the island's governor agreed to renew leases for U.S. military bases on the island in exchange for fresh efforts to cut back the bases and $45.8 million fund for Okinawa's economic development.   The main opposition Shinshinto (New Frontier Party), which has called for elections since the three-party coalition took power with Murayama as prime minister in 1994, indicated it was spoiling for a showdown at the ballot box.   "The New Frontier Party welcomes an early election and wants to make it clear that the government wants elections because it has run into a dead end in terms of policy-making," Shinshinto secretary-general Takeo Nishioka told a news conference on Thursday.   With all parties trying to lure voters with calls for cutting red tape and taming Japan's powerful bureaucracy, analysts have said the main focus of the contest will be the effect of electoral reforms introduced in 1994.   Designed to correct a system in which thinly populated rural districts enjoyed vastly more clout than urban areas, the new system features a mix of first-past-the post constituencies and proportional representation.   Many politicians predict a showdown between the LDP and Shinshinto over which can win an outright majority in the 500-seat Lower House and name the next government -- or win more seats than other parties then lure small parties into a coalition. 
18744 !GCAT !GVIO  South Korean security forces on Thursday killed six North Korean infiltrators as they ruthlessly hunted down the last of around 20 agents who slipped into the country on Wednesday by submarine.   Three were cut down by automatic fire as they crouched by a stream to drink water, according to military sources in the east coast city of Kangnung.   A fourth infiltrator standing guard for his colleagues slipped away, they said.   Later, another three were killed by security forces, a defence ministry spokesman said in Seoul.   He gave no details.   On Wednesday the bodies of 11 North Koreans were found huddled together on top of a mountain situated close to a beach where they landed.   All had been shot through the head in an apparent mass suicide.   Another was captured alive and was being interrogated over the most serious infiltration from the communist North since the 1960s.   The two Koreas have been technically at war since their 1950-53 conflict ended in a truce.   Long lines of troops cradling rifles snaked over rugged mountain terrain around Kangnung to hunt for the last two agents believed to be still on the run.   Helicopters clattered overhead as the troops poked through the undergrowth.   South Korean President Kim Young-sam denounced the infiltration as an act of "military provocation" at a cabinet meeting, a presidential spokesman said.   "This is not a simple spy case.   I regard it as a kind of military provocation," he quoted Kim as saying.   "Despite food shortages, the reason why North Korea sent armed infiltrators is that they still have not given up their ambition to reunify Korea by force," Kim said.   Impoverished North Korea is on the brink of famine.   The head of the Agency for National Security Planning, Kwon O-kie, was quoted as saying the incident amounted to "infiltration by armed guerrillas".   North Korea refused to accept a protest by the U.S.-led United Nations Command in South Korea over the infiltration, a statement from the command said.   It said the U.N. Command attempted to hand the message to the North through the border crossing village of Panmunjom, but a Northern military duty officer would not take it.   The U.N. Command was the supreme headquarters for international and South Korean forces that repelled North Korean invaders in the Korean War.   It now helps supervise the armistice that ended the war.   "I strongly demand that your side immediately take the necessary steps to prevent recurrence of these serious Armistice Agreement violations," said the letter signed by South Korean general Cha Ki Moon.   "If you fail to do so, the responsibility for the unfortunate consequences will be yours."   A defence ministry spokesman in Seoul said the remaining fugitives were apparently trying to flee home by land.   "Villagers have reported that some suspected infiltrators asked about roads leading to the Taebaek mountains," he said.   The mountain range straddles the frontier.   Thousands of troops and police with sniffer dogs have been combing the Kangnung area since the submarine was spotted early on Wednesday wedged on a reef.   Authorities said it struck rocks while returning from a mission to drop off infiltrators, but the captured North Korean was reported as saying it went aground after drifting for a day because of engine trouble.   Troops who boarded the abandoned grey craft found automatic guns and ammunition along with canned food and shoes.   Defence officials on Thursday shrugged off media criticism that South Korean defence forces had not managed to detect the 34 metre (111 ft) long submarine.   "Detecting such a small-sized submarine is like searching for a needle in a big river," a naval officer told reporters. 
18745 !GCAT  Following is a summary of major Chinese political and business stories in leading newspapers, prepared by Reuters in Beijing.   Reuters has not checked the stories and does not guarantee their accuracy.   Telephone: (8610) 6532-1921.   Fax: (8610) 6532-4978.   - - - -   CHINA SECURITIES   An editorial said August's rebound in inflation was not too large and that inflation in September and October would be stable   Experts suggest lowering land prices and reforming the financial system to promote the housing consumption.   Rubber prices are steadily falling due to a glut in the market.   China's rubber output.   - - - -   FINANCIAL NEWS   Vehicle output in the first eight months of 1996 was 1.025 million units, up 2.06 percent from the same period a year ago.   - - - -   ECONOMIC INFORMATION DAILY   China had reserves of 300,000 tonnes of sugar in July, boosting sugar prices.   - - - -   CHINA DAILY   Construction officials urged swift action to curb swelling energy consumption and pollution by construction projects across the country. 
18746 !GCAT  Following is a summary of major Indonesian political and business stories in leading newspapers, prepared by Reuters in Jakarta.   Reuters has not checked the stories and does not guarantee their accuracy.   Telephone: (6221) 384-6364.   Fax: (6221) 344-8404.   - - - -   REPUBLIKA   The Indonesian Capital Market Advisory Agency (Bapepam) has said it has not yet received any report of a change in the share ownership of PT Astra International.   The company's shares rose sharply on the market yesterday on rumours that founder William Suryadjaja will buy back into the company.   PT Astra manufactures cars in joint ventures with Japanese firms.   - - - -   JAKARTA POST   The executive boards of Indonesia's state-owned companies are to be given more power in the decision making process, Finance Minister Mar'ie Muhammad told parliament yesterday.   The government is currently trying to improve the efficiency of state-run companies and is considering listing firms on the Jakarta bourse.   The Director General for Customs and Excise Suhardjo said the government was witholding the clearance of around 4,000 of the controversial Timor national cars.   He said his department was waiting for a clear report on company plans to reach a local component content of 20 percent by the end of the first year of production.   At the moment the Timor car is the only car to be exempt from import duties and luxury taxes.   - - - -   KOMPAS   Indonesia will find it hard to produce top managers if it does not improve its education, parliament heard yesterday.   In the era of free trade and mobility of labour, Indonesia is likely to be at a disadvantage compared to countries with more developed education systems, like Japan.   - - - -   BISNIS INDONESIA   An Indonesian ship, Bogasari IV, was unable to load wheat as scheduled yesterday when the Australian Maritime Union's ban on Indonesian shipping came into effect.   The rolling ban is to protest against the Indonesian government's crackdown in the wake of riots in July.   A company owned by President Suharto's grandson, Ary Sigit, is set to build a bridge over the Sunda Straits between Java and Sumatra.   Sigit's company, PT Pakarti Trimitra, has been given priority in the bid for the project. 
18747 !GCAT  Following are the main stories in Thursday's Malaysian newspapers.   Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.   NEW STRAITS TIMES   - The Cabinet today approved the setting up of a complex of four Smart Schools where specially selected pupils will be taught to be innovative, creative and to develop an analytical mind.   - Razali Ismail began his first day as president of the United Nations 51st General Assembly with a stern reminder to delegates of their responsibilities and that the current "business as usual" attitude that prevailed in the world today would no longer be welcomed under his watch.   BUSINESS TIMES   - Transwater Corp Bhd, already a diversified outfit with interests in property development and sewerage treatment operations, has bought into more companies which could lead to it undertaking, among other things, the privatisation project to replace the Johor Baru-Singapore causeway with a bridge.   - Entrepreneurs must assume long-term risks and go global instead of taking the easy route through the stock exchange and property market, Tun Daim Zainuddin says.   SUN   - A private agency will be set up to keep tabs on the health screening process for foreign workers and collect data on them.   The foreigners must register with it and will be issued an identification card and code, says Health Minister Chua Jui Meng.   - Kuala Lumpur newsroom (603-230 8911) 
18748 !GCAT  These are some of the leading stories in the Hong Kong press on Wednesday.   Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.   -- ORIENTAL DAILY NEWS -- Six thousand anti-Japanese protesters took to the street to mark the 65th anniversary of Japan's invasion of China and to demand Japan quit the disputed Diaoyu (Senkaku) Islands.   -- Protesters clashed with guards of the Japanese department store Sogo when they entered it to urge people to boycott Japanese goods.   -- MING PAO -- Legislative Councillor Christine Lo recently proposed all present legislators should sign up as candidates for the provisional legislature, in order to put pressure on the 400-strong Selection Committee to accept them.   -- Chinese movie director Zhang Yimou has accepted an invitation from the Florence Opera House in Italy to direct Puccini's opera Turandot, opening next July.   -- HONG KONG ECONOMIC TIMES -- Preparatory Committee member Lo Tak-shing dodged the media while attending a meeting of the Committee in Beijing, using side doors and walking up the steps instead of taking the lift.   -- The Hong Kong government has decided there is no immediate need to set up a post of secretary of broadcast and telecommunications techonology.   -- Beijing-funded WEN WEI PO -- China's official People's Daily carried an article urging Japan to stop tolerating the actions of nationalist extremists and avoid doing anything else which might hurt China.   -- English-language SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST -- Fund manager Jardine Fleming was being forced to undertake a much wider restructuring than it previously admitted to meet minimum compliance standards.   -- Chief executive of the Hong Kong Monetary Authority Joseph Yam said the Bank of China would not take over the role of other financial institutions and the Hong Kong dollar would not disappear.   -- Any move to double fees at Chek Lap Kok airport could have a heavy impact on profits and margins at Cathay Pacific Airways, potentially wiping hundreds of millions of dollars from the company's bottom line.   -- English-language HONGKONG STANDARD -- Two of Governor Chris Patten's advisers, Executive Councillors Raymond Ch'ien and Vincent Cheng have signed up as candidates for seats on the Selection Committee.   -- A sudden shake-up of the MidCap 50 Index yesterday caused seven companies to lose their stature as growing companies and to be replaced by seven others that had quickly expanded their market capitalisation.   -- Experiencing improved operations in the United States, Regal Hotels International Holdings announced a healthy 26.67 per cent growth in first half net profit to $202.8 million.   -- Hong Kong News Room (852) 2843 6441 
18749 !GCAT !GPOL  Japan's three ruling coalition parties will finalise an outline on how to reform the country's powerful Finance Ministry next week, a senior coalition lawmaker said on Thursday.   "We hope the plan would be something that we can boast about ahead of widely expected general elections," said Shigeru Ito, head of the coalition's special task force on MOF reforms.   The special task force, which ended seven months of deliberations today, left the thorny issue of how to separate the inspection function from the ministry to senior policymakers to decide.    The senior policymakers, who are scheduled to meet on September 24, would also decide whether to separate the budget-forming function from the ministry.   The outline will be endorsed by the coalition parties on September 25, Itoh said.   "I personally feel the reforms must be drastic," he said.   The ministry, long viewed as the pinnacle of Japan's elite bureaucracy, has come under fire for its handling of problems in the nation's banking industry and has been urged to change its system of trying to deal with banking crisis internally.   The task force agreed to several options in separating the inspection function of the financial industry from MOF.    One option was to set up a body completely independent from the ministry while another was to set up an entity which the ministry would still have some influence over, he said.   "Many of the task force members said they did not want half-hearted reform (of separating the inspection function from MOF)," Itoh said.   However, the task force agreed to streamline the ministry's functions by merging its banking and securities bureaux into one.   The international finance bureau will remain as it stands now, but consideration should be given to incorporating part of its function to the newly merged bureau, he said. 
18750 !GCAT !GWEA  Japan should see average amounts of rainfall over the next three months, the Meteorological Agency said on Thursday.   The agency said October was expected to see many sunny days, with temperatures likely to be higher than average in northern and eastern Japan and average in western Japan.   In November, temperatures are expected to be lower than average in northern Japan, but average in other areas.   Rainfall is forecast to be average.   In December, coastal areas facing the Pacific are expected to see plenty of sunshine, however, areas facing the Sea of Japan will see many cloudy, rainy or snowy days, the agency said. 
18751 !GCAT !GPOL !GPRO  Indonesia's President Suharto was in good health and conducting business as usual on Thursday, palace officials said, following market speculation he had been admitted to hospital.   "He is fine and is fulfilling his schedule," an official told Reuters.   The Indonesian rupiah fell to a low of 2,325 to the dollar from an early level of 2,317 before stabilising at 2,321.    Dealers said rumours on Suharto's health had been recurring since he went to Germany for a medical check up in late July where he was given a clean bill of health.   The announcement of Suharto's departure for July's check-up sent the stock market and the rupiah plunging, but they later recovered all their losses.   The rupiah quickly recovered from Thursday's weakness to trade near the upper limit of the central bank's intervention band against the dollar.   At 0842 GMT, the rupiah was trading at 2,320.50 to the dollar. 
18752 !GCAT !GPOL !GPRO  Indonesia's President Suharto was in good health and conducting business as usual on Thursday, palace officials said.   "He is fine and is fulfilling his schedule," an official told Reuters.   They were commenting on rumours on the foreign exchange market that he had been admitted to hospital.   The Indonesian rupiah fell to a low of 2,325 to the dollar from an early levelm of 2,317 before stabilising at 2,321. 
18753 !C15 !C151 !CCAT !GCAT !GENT  Six months ended June 30   (in million HK$ unless stated)    Shr (H.K. cents)  7.5 loss vs 6.8 gain    Dividend (H.K. cents) nil  vs 3.0    Exceptional items  18.49 gain vs 10.80 gain    Net 83.31 loss vs 67.14 profit    Turnover 1,600.58 vs 1,574.31    Company name Wo Kee Hong (Holdings) Ltd    Books close N/A    Dividend payable  N/A   NOTE - Wo Kee Hong is an audiovisual equipment distributor.   Net is after an exceptional gain on disposal of investment properties and land and buildings held under fixed assets.   -- Hong Kong Newsroom (852) 2843 6368 
18754 !C24 !C33 !CCAT !GCAT !GDIP  British and Chinese negotiators have reached agreement in Beijing settling a four-year dispute over Hong Kong's ninth container terminal (CT9), Hong Kong Radio said on Thursday.    The agreement was signed in Beijing on Thursday, and construction was expected to begin early next year, Radio Television Hong Kong said.   The Hong Kong government has called a news conference for 5.15 pm (0915 GMT) to announce details of the agreement.   Government officials from relevant departments will attend along with representatives from the private-sector companies involved in the negotiations, a government statement said.   Development of Hong Kong's ninth container port has been held up for four years by Chinese objections to the way the contract was awarded and to the presence of the Jardine Matheson Holdings Ltd group in the consortium.   Beijing refused to give the project its approval, needed because the contract straddles Hong Kong's handover to Chinese sovereignty next year, citing the lack of an open tender.   After protracted negotiations, China agreed in January to accept the award of the contract in line with the wishes of the companies involved.   -- Hong Kong newsroom (852) 2843 6441 
18755 !GCAT !GDIS  Gushing flood waters still submerged villages in central Vietnam on Thursday, almost a week after tropical storms lashed the region.   The Central Committee for Flood and Storm Control said 33 people had been killed and more than 40,000 homes, schools and clinics submerged by flooding in seven provinces.   Initial estimates of the material damage caused in two of the provinces was put at $13.7 million.   As emergency supplies of food and blankets were rushed along damaged roads to the hardest-hit communities, meteorological officials warned that another tropical depression was due to arrive at the Red River delta in the north.   They said the latest storm, the sixth to threaten the country so far this year, was moving at about 10 km (6 miles) per hour with winds of up to 70 km (44 miles) per hour.   One of the areas worst affected by last week's flooding was the heavily deforested Huong Khe valley in central Ha Tinh province, where families, pigs, chickens and cows huddled together on rickety boats and rafts.   About 80,000 of Huong Khe's 130,000 residents, whose average income is $120 a year, were affected by the downpour.   "I am very proud of the way people have helped each other," Phan Van Quy, chairman of the local People's Committee, told Reuters.   "We need to plant more trees to stop this happening again.   We need money."   One elderly woman, 66-year-old Dinh Thi Hue, told Reuters how she and her husband had clung in the dark to the roof of their bamboo hut as water swirled beneath them.   "The house was shaking," she wailed.   "I fell into the water.   I shouted my husband's name, but there was no answer.   I never saw him again."   Hue clung to a tree for five hours before being rescued by neighbours.   Her husband's body was found the next day, seven km (4.4 miles) downstream.   The flood and storm control committee said 30,144 hectares (74,486 acres) of rice fields were submerged, more than one-third of which had been completely destroyed.   More pressing was the destruction of food stores.   "My whole family, five people, have lost everything," said Tran Van Thanh, a 33-year-old man in Duc Yen village.   "We will face starvation."   The latest disaster took to around 420 the number of people who have died in tropical storms and flooding in northern and central Vietnam since the beginning of July.   The country suffers a string of floods and storms every year, most between July and October.   Officials say damage to northern areas this year is the worst in a decade.   Storms and flooding usually arrive in the Mekong Delta, the country's southern rice bowl, around the end of September. 
18756 !GCAT !GVIO  Another North Korean infiltrator was killed by security forces in South Korea on Thursday and one captured, a defence ministry spokesman in the east coast city of Kangnung said.   The latest killing brought to 18 the number shot dead since a group of around 20 North Koreans landed by submarine on Wednesday.   Altogether two have been captured.    The latest infiltrator to die was killed in a shootout, the spokesman said.   A companion was captured nearby.   Earlier on Thursday six North Koreans were shot and killed, three of them cut down by automatic fire as they crouched by a stream to drink water.   Eleven others were found dead on top of a mountain on Wednesday in an apparent group suicide.   A massive hunt is continuing because there is still some doubt over the exact number of agents that landed on a beach near Kangnung in the early hours of Wednesday morning, military sources said. 
18757 !GCAT !GDIP  Japan urged calm among the Chinese on Thursday as nationalistic, anti-Japanese sentiment continued to simmer in Hong Kong over Tokyo's claim to disputed islands in the East China Sea.   "We put priority on Japanese-Chinese friendly relations and we hope people in both countries can deal with this situation calmly," Tsuguyoshi Hada, spokesman for the Consulate-General of Japan in Hong Kong, told Reuters by telephone.   "We hope this issue will not affect the relationship between Japan and China," Hada said.   Hong Kong, a British colony for more than 150 years, returns to Chinese rule next year.   Anti-Japanese protests have swept the territory in the past month, sparked by Japan's renewed claim over the islands, known in China as the Diaoyus and Senkakus in Japan.   Both countries have claimed sovereignty over the islands for centuries.   Thousands of Hong Kong Chinese waved candles and shouted "down with Japanese militarism" on Wednesday night as anti- Japanese protests hit a new high.   Japan occupied Hong Kong for almost five years during World War Two.   The candlelight vigil followed a series of rallies and scuffles that marked the 65th anniversary of Japan's invasion of China.   Some local newspapers on Thursday urged Tokyo to settle the issue immediately at the highest level.   But the demands were tempered with caution.   "To delay in embarking on such a course merely allows popular emotion to rise to a point at which it is in danger of leading to intemperate action," the mainstream South China Morning Post said.   The Beijing-funded Wen Wei Po warned against extremist anti- Japanese actions, which it said could lead to turmoil.   This would hamper China's economic development, it said.   The popular Apple Daily called for restraint.   "What we are fighting against is Japanese militarism, not the Japanese people, especially the majority who stand for peace, because they are innocent," it said. 
18758 !GCAT !GDIP  The foreign ministers of China and Japan will discuss their nation's dispute over ownership of a group of islands in the East China Sea during a forthcoming meeting, a Chinese spokesman said on Thursday.   "The Diaoyu islands will be one of the major issues... at a meeting between the foreign ministers of China and Japan," spokesman Shen Guofang told a regular news briefing.   He said the meeting would be in New York.    Chinese Foreign Minister Qian Qichen and his Japanese counterpart Yukihiko Ikeda are scheduled to attend a General Assembly meeting at the United Nations in New York next week.   The dispute over the islands, known as the Diaoyus in China and the Senkakus in Japan, flared after a rightwing Japanese youth group moved to buttress Tokyo's claim to ownership by building a lighthouse on one of the islands in July.   Japan has formally claimed sovereignty to the islands and insists the issue is not open for discussion.   Tokyo's claim dates to 1895, when Japan defeated China and seized Taiwan and other territories.   China says its claim dates back centuries. 
18759 !GCAT !GPOL  Members of Parliament waited on Thursday for Thailand's premier to reply to accusations during a censure debate that he condoned corruption, mismanaged the economy and even answer doubts raised about his nationality.   Banharn Silpa-archa has said little during the debate on the no-confidence motion against him, which entered its second day.   But he was due to rebut the opposition's accusations later on Thursday, some members of parliament (MPs) said.   Investors in the Thai stock and money markets were monitoring the debate closely and awaiting Banharn's response, dealers said.   Thai stocks were down 5.78 points in thin trade to 1032.25 at 0531 GMT.   The baht firmed against a weakening U.S. dollar, trading at 25.359-25.363 against the American unit near midday, from 25.390-25.395 late on Wednesday.   After opening the debate with the mismanagement charges, other opposition MPs questioned Banharn about possible irregularities in documents governing his Thai citizenship.   Waving papers he claimed to be official documents, opposition MP Chamni Sakdiset told the house that they showed Banharn's father emigrated from China to Thailand in 1937.   However, the premier's birth certificate indicated he was born in his hometown of Suphan Buri in 1932.   Thai law states that only Thai citizens can stand for elections to parliament or be prime minister of the country.   "It was such a surprise to learn that Mr Banharn was born in Suphan Buri in 1932 when his father emigrated from China in 1937.   He has shrewdly violated the law with regard to his nationality," Chamni said.   Banharn said earlier this year when similar questions were raised that registration officials might have made a mistake when filling in the documents, thus creating the irregularities.   The televised debate was expected to last until Friday.   The opposition motion also accused the prime minister, among other things, of incompetence and plagiarism related to his master's thesis.   Banharn, whose six-party coalition has been in power for 14 months, has denied the accusations.   His coalition controls 209 of the 391 seats in parliament, and political analysts saw Banharn winning the vote unless some coalition partners were swayed by the accusations and abandoned him.   As the debate progressed, there were behind-the-scene negotiations between coalition partners over whether Banharn should step down after the debate, political sources said.   After the debate, Banharn could reshuffle his cabinet to appease critics and satisfy demanding coalition partners, the sources added.   He could also resign and hand the post to a more acceptable politician in the coalition, or dissolve parliament.   Banharn's administration has been hurt by an economic slowdown, sluggish export growth, a battered stock market that sank last week to near three-year-lows and a run on the baht by offshore investors after devaluation rumours.   He has also been plagued by political infighting within the coalition over cabinet posts, factionalism within his core Chart Thai Party and a hostile local media. 
18760 !GCAT !GVIO  A South Korean defence ministry spokesman said the three North Koreans earlier reported as having been captured alive on Thursday had in fact been killed.   This brings to six the number of infiltrators shot dead on Thursday by South Korean security forces.    On Wednesday, 11 infiltrators dropped in South Korea from a submarine were found dead in an apparent mass suicide on top of a mountain.   One other was captured alive.   Authorities believe around 20 North Koreans were on board the submarine that grounded on rocks near the east coast city of Kangnung in the early hours of Wednesday morning.   Thousands of troops and police are combing rugged terrain around Kangnung for the final two agents believed to be still at large. 
18761 !GCAT !GPOL !GVOTE  Japan's ruling coalition agreed on Thursday to convene an extraordinary session of parliament on September 27, a move politicians have predicted will lead to general elections next month.   Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto, who is also president of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), won agreement on the date of the special parliament session from leaders of the two other coalition parties, Shoichi Ide of the New Party Sakigake and Tomiichi Murayama of the Social Democratic Party.   Politicians have predicted that Hashimoto will dissolve parliament on the first day of the session and call general elections for October.   "We have agreed to convene an extraordinary parliament session on September 27," Ide told reporters after a meeting of the coalition leaders.   Ide said Hashimoto did not specifically mention a parliamentary dissolution at the meeting.   The prime minister has the sole right to dissolve parliament.   Under the Japanese constitution, elections must be held within 40 days of a dissolution of parliament.   Polls are not mandated until July 1997, but Japanese media have reported that Hashimoto has already decided to call general elections on October 20.   Many in the LDP want elections as soon as possible, but the two smaller parties, embroiled in a dispute over how to contest the polls, want more time, analysts say.   "It is not proper to call a special parliament session just in order to dissolve it," Murayama said after the coalition meeting.   In the past week, Hashimoto has reiterated earlier statements that he would set an election date after settling a dispute with the southern island of Okinawa over U.S. military bases.   The Okinawa issue, the thorniest political problem his government faces, eased last week when the island's governor agreed to take steps to renew leases for U.S. military bases on the island, ending a bitter one-year standoff with Tokyo.   Hashimoto pledged fresh efforts to cut back the bases and set up a five billion yen ($45.8 million) fund for Okinawa's economic development if Okinawa governor Masahide Ota eased calls for a total pullout of U.S. forces, which are seen by Tokyo as a bulwark of regional security.   Analysts have said the main focus of what is likely to be a mostly issue-free election will be the effect of drastic reforms in the electoral system introduced in 1994 to balance a system in which thinly populated rural districts enjoyed vastly more clout than urban areas.   "I assume the public now want a stable government.   The LDP has now secured about 287 candidates for the general elections," LDP Secretary-General Koiichi Kato told reporters on Wednesday.   The LDP has 206 seats in Japan's 511-seat Lower House of parliament.   Meanwhile, the main opposition Shinshinto (New Frontier Party) looks ready for an early election.   "The New Frontier Party welcomes an early election and wants to make it clear that the government wants elections because it has run into a dead-end in terms of policy-making," Shinshinto Secretary-General Takeo Nishioka told a news conference on Thursday. 
18762 !GCAT !GDIP !GVIO  North Korea on Thursday refused to accept a protest by the U.S.-led United Nations Command in South Korea over its submarine infiltration, a statement from the command said.   It said the U.N. Command attempted to hand a protest message to the North through the border crossing village of Panmunjom, but a Northern military duty officer refused to take it.    The U.N. Command was the supreme headquarters for international and South Korean troops that repelled North Korean forces in the 1950-53 Korean War.   It now helps supervise the armistice that ended the war.   "I strongly demand that your side immediately take the necessary steps to prevent recurrence of these serious Armistice Agreement violations," said the letter signed by South Korean general Cha Ki Moon.   "If you fail to do so, the responsibility for the unfortunate consequences will be yours." 
18763 !GCAT !GDIP  The family which owns the small group of islands at the centre of an international dispute says it is just an observer in the controversy and that it is up to the Japanese government to assert itself.   Kunioki Kuribara, 54, has owned four of the five islands with his brother and sister for the past 20 years.   He told Reuters in a recent interview that he bought the land from a friend for about 30 yen (27 cents at current exchange rates).   A long-dormant sovereignty dispute over the uninhabited islands, called the Senkakus in Japan and the Diaoyus in Chinese, erupted in July after the right-wing Japan Youth Federation erected a lighthouse on one of the islands.   The move angered Taiwan and China, which each challenge Japan's claim to the islands, and sparked anti-Japanese protests.   Kuribara said his family did not give the group approval to build the lighthouse, and dismissed its presence as unnecessary to protect ships in the area.   He refused to say whether he would take any action against the group.   The head of the right-wing group said last week that there was a "tacit" agreement between the group and the Kuribaras.   "It has nothing to do with me," Kuribara said of the furore.   "I didn't have the faintest idea that it would become such a big issue."   Kuribara was speaking at his home outside Tokyo where he runs a hall used for wedding receptions.   China and Taiwan have condemned the construction of the lighthouse and demanded its immediate removal.   China has charged that Tokyo is conniving with the right-wingers.   Kuribara accused the Japanese government of failing to clarify its sovereignty over the islands to the international community.   "Unless the government takes a firm stand, our ownership of the islands will be jeopardised," he said.   "We can't let go of our hold on the islands," he said.   "If we do so, we will become traitors to the country."   Tokyo's claim dates to 1895, when Japan defeated China and seized Taiwan and other territories.   China has claimed sovereignty over the islands for centuries.   The Taiwan government also claims ownership of the islands, saying they are under the jurisdiction of the northeastern Taiwanese county of Ilan.   Japan was given control of the islands in 1972 by the United States, which had administrated the islands along with Okinawa since the end of World War Two.   Kuribara himself owns the biggest of the five uninhabited islands, His younger brother owns two other isles and his sister owns another.   Kuribara said he bought the islands for 30 yen (27 cents) from his friend about 20 years ago.   The family's ownership of the islands was confirmed by local government records.   The fifth island is owned by Japan's Finance Ministry although it was unclear how it came to hold title.   Asked why he was able to acquire the islands at such a low price, he said: "You see the islands are far more isolated than the Galapagos." 
18764 !GCAT !GENV  China is to set up 19 more panda protection zones as part of a drive to save the endangered species from extinction, the Economic Daily said on Thursday.   The Ministry of Forestry had already drawn up blueprints for the zones, to be set up in addition to 14 others already being established, the newspaper said.   About 95 percent of the nation's wild pandas would be covered by the zones when completed, it said without giving further details.   About 1,000 giant pandas exist in China's wilds, mostly in the bamboo forests of the southwestern province of Sichuan.   Their numbers have dwindled as humans encroach on their habitat and hunters illegally kill them for their pelts, which can fetch large sums. 
18765 !GCAT !GPOL  Leaders of the three parties in Japan's ruling coalition on Thursday agreed to convene an extraordinary session of parliament on September 27, Shoichi Ide, president of the New Party Sakigake, told reporters.    But Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto did not tell the other leaders of the coalition when he would dissolve parliament and call general elections, said Ide, whose party is the smallest in the coalition.   Japanese media reports have said that Hashimoto has decided to dissolve parliament immediately after the special session is convened and call general elections on October 20.   Tomiichi Murayama, head of the third coalition member, the Social Democratic Party, told reporters he had agreed to the convening of a special session of parliament, but said it was not proper to call parliament just in order to dissolve it.   Ide said the cabinet would confirm the date of the session at a meeting on Friday. 
18766 !GCAT !GCRIM !GVIO  A doctor belonging to the doomsday cult accused of last year's Tokyo subway gas attack testified against his former leader on Thursday, becoming the first cult member to do so.   Ikuo Hayashi, testifying as a witness in the Tokyo District Court against Aum Shinri Kyo (Supreme Truth Sect) leader Shoko Asahara, said he played his part in the attack believing that the orders came from the cult's guru.   "My heart missed a beat when I received instructions (for the sarin attack)," said Hayashi, formerly the head doctor of a hospital run by Aum Shinri Kyo.   "I knew that the orders to spread sarin gas on the subways came from Asahara."   Hayashi, dressed in a grey suit, stood only several feet (around one metre) away from Asahara throughout his testimony, but did not once look his former mentor in the face.   The long-haired Asahara, dressed in his usual blue shirt and trousers, sat impassively.   Asahara is accused of ordering his disciples to carry out an attack using deadly sarin nerve gas on rush-hour subways in March 1995.   Eleven people were killed and 5,500 became ill.   Hayashi is separately on trial for allegedly taking part in the gas attack.   Asked by the prosecutors on Thursday how he was involved in the case, Hayashi answered: "I spread sarin in the subway train of the Chiyoda Line."   Hayashi said the aim of the plan to gas Tokyo subways was to divert the attention of the police, who were thought to be planning a raid on one of the cult's complexes.   He said Asahara first confided in him on a plan to use sarin when the guru was planning to assasinate Daisaku Ikeda, head of lay Japanese Buddhist organisation Soka Gakkai in 1993.   So far most of Asahara's followers, in court appearances at their own trials, have blamed the guru for ordering the gassings, production of weapons, and murders which kept Japan in a state of near panic for months last year.   Asahara is on trial on 17 charges, including those of murder and attempted murder.   These include charges for the subway attack and an earlier sarin attack in the mountain resort city of Matsumoto, central Japan, in June 1994 which killed seven people and made 144 ill.   Asahara has refused to enter pleas to any of the 17 charges so far, and can be sentenced to death by hanging if convicted on any of the murder charges.   Other former Aum members, including one of Asahara's chief lieutenants Yoshihiro Inoue, will testify in the guru's trial in coming sessions. 
18767 !GCAT !GDIP !GVIO  Cordial one day, bellicose the next, North Korea's recent success in reaching out to overseas investors has suddenly been overshadowed by a deadly infiltration drama.   Over the weekend, Pyongyang officials were sweet-talking businessmen in the Rajin-Sonbong free trade zone.   The visitors were charmed; Pyongyang snagged deals worth $840 million.   But by Wednesday the cheerful smiles were gone.   An espionage submarine dropped a group of heavily armed Pyongyang agents on a South Korean beach in a haunting throwback to the Cold War.   Businessmen who thought detente had arrived were given a jolting reminder of the perils still lurking in the world's last Stalinist state.   Pyongyang's abrupt mood swings are often put down to warring factions within the communist leadership.   Sabre-rattling often follows peace overtures as security hawks counter reform-minded colleages in the foreign affairs and trade bureaucracies, North Korea watchers in Seoul say.   Provocations play into the hands of hardliners in Seoul equally determined to fan tensions between the enemy states.   Security scares in April when Pyongyang troops staged exercises in a border buffer zone prompted a peace overture by South Korea President Kim Young-sam and his U.S. counterpart Bill Clinton.   Since then, North Korea has appeared more conciliatory, although it has not responded to an offer of four-way peace talks that would also include China.   This month, U.S. negotiators in New York reported progress implementing an accord under which Pyongyang agreed to freeze its suspected development of nuclear weapons.   And, in a surprise concession, Pyongyang suggested it would open its skies to overflights by world airlines next month.   On Tuesday, Pyongyang seemed ready kiss and make up with South Korea after a row over invitations to the Rajin-Sonbong investment forum led to a Seoul boycott.   A faxed message to South Korean foreign minister Gong Ro-myung invited a southern delegation for an exclusive look around.   But on Thursday, Pyongyang seemed to have changed its mind again.   Its official Korea Central News Agency called reports of the invitation a "groundless rumour" floated for a "foolish political purpose".   Wednesday's submarine drama adds to pressure on President Kim to take a tough line on North Korea.   Kim, a former dissident leader, is vulnerable to rightwing attacks that he does not take the "Red threat" seriously enough.   A heavy handed crackdown on pro-Pyongyang students now underway is widely seen in South Korea as at least partly a sop to rightwingers in Kim's ruling New Korea Party.   Diplomats in Seoul describe provocations such as the submarine infiltration as theatrical stunts, rather than serious security threats.   "If they wanted to send spies to South Korea they could march them through the gates of Kimpo," said one Western envoy, referring to Seoul's international airport.   Nevertheless, they harden feelings in South Korea that North Korea cannot be trusted, however hard it tries to promote its experiments with capitalism. 
18768 !C15 !C152 !C24 !C42 !CCAT !E41 !ECAT !GCAT !GJOB  Shares of Siu-Fung Ceramics Holdings Ltd fell HK$0.07, or 6.73 percent, to a 52-week low of HK$0.97, after a newspaper reported the company was going to close a manufacturing plant in Germany and lay off 468 staff.   Fears that the company's plan to spin off its NHD International Ltd unit would be affected by the closure sparked the early selling, a sales manager at a regional brokerage said.   NHD unit Netzsch manages the German plant.   "NHD's reputation is expected to be affected by the sacking of so many employees and the involement of the labour union is likely to make the issue more complicated," one analyst said.    Volume was 16.98 million shares worth HK$17 million.   Siu-Fung officials declined to comment but said a statement would be issued later on Thursday.   The Hong Kong Economic Journal said the ceramics and machinery maker decided to shut a factory at Selb in Germany.   Siu-Fung announced plans in April to list its NHD International Ltd unit on the New York Stock Exchange.   -- Hong Kong News Room (8542) 2843 6370 
18769 !C42 !CCAT !E41 !ECAT !GCAT !GJOB  Matsushita Electric Industrial Co Ltd said on Thursday it is planning to increase the number of employees in its semiconductor business.   A company spokesman said the firm had not decided how many people it would hire, but the company would continue to invest 100 billion yen annually in this sector until 2000.   "It is generally believed that the semiconductor sector is sluggish, but we think high quality semiconductors to be used in multimedia devices such as DVDs will become necessary," he said.   The Japanese industrial daily, Nikkan Kogyo Shimbun, said on Thursday that Matsushita Electric plans to increase the number of employees in its semiconductor business by 500 annually until they year 2000.   Matsushita Electric expects to start operating a production line using 0.25 micron technology in Toyama Prefecture next spring and another at its subsidiary Matsushita Semiconductor Corp of America Ltd in Washington state in the summer of 1997, the spokesman said. 
18770 !GCAT !GDIP !GVIO  Japan's claim to small disputed islands in the East China Sea dates back to January 1895 when the government formally declared the Senkaku Islands, called the Diaoyus in Chinese, part of Okinawa Prefecture.   The territory lies in the East China Sea, west of Japan's Okinawa island, northeast of Taiwan and east of China's southeastern Fujian coast.   It is now uninhabited but until the 1940s could boast a dried fish factory on one of its larger islands.   With the signing of the San Francisco Peace Treaty in 1951, Japan was deprived of all of its territories seized since 1895, including Taiwan, Korea, and southern Sakhalin.   The U.S. trusteeship of the Ryukyu Islands, the current Okinawa Prefecture, was permitted indefinitely, and the Senkaku Islands, registered as part of Okinawa, were also under the jurisdiction of U.S. forces until Okinawa's return in 1972.   During the U.S. occupation of Okinawa, the islands were used for military drills by U.S. forces.   In 1971, Taiwan and China both officially claimed the islands as theirs, but neither China nor Japan brought up the issue in 1972 when the two nations issued the landmark China-Japan joint communique.   Japan ceased diplomatic relations with Taiwan following the communique, recognising only the communist government.   When Japan signed a peace treaty with China in 1978, Deng Xiaoping, the then vice-premier of China, said the territorial issue between the two countries "will be shelved until the next generation comes up with a solution".   But the Japanese government claimed there was no pending territorial issue regarding the Senkaku Islands.   In the same year, a first makeshift lighthouse was set up by a Japanese ultra-rightist group on the largest of the islands, called Uozuri-jima in Japanese.   The first major flare-up on the issue of sovereignty, which had been dormant for many years, came in 1988 when the same rightist group Nihon Seinen Sha (Japan Youth Federation) rebuilt the lighthouse and sought official recognition.   Taiwan had been particularly strong in voicing its protest, which made Japan back down and leave the application for official recognition of the lighthouse pending "out of diplomatic considerations", according to a Maritime Safety Agency spokesman.   Japan lodged a formal protest in 1992 when China claimed the disputed islands by enacting the Law of the People's Republic of China on its Territorial Waters and Their Contiguous Areas.   In the law, China claimed the South China Sea and much of East China Sea, which includes the Senkaku Islands, as "contiguous areas".   The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea -- adopted by the General Assembly in November 1994 to nudge countries with rival territorial claims to settle them -- only sparked renewed rivalry.   In July, the rightist group built its third lighthouse in the smaller of the islands, owned by a family in Saitama Prefecture north of Tokyo.   The Japanese government has continuously maintained that it was not involved in, nor would it endorse, any private activity taking place on privately owned property. 
18771 !GCAT !GDIP !GVIO  Three North Korean infiltrators were shot and killed by South Korean security forces on Thursday, a defence ministry official in the east coast city of Kangnung said.   They were among an estimated eight agents still at large after around 20 North Koreans landed by submarine on a beach near Kangnung on Wednesday.   The official denied earlier reports that other infiltrators had been captured.   On Wednesday, the bodies of 11 infiltrators were found huddled together on top of a mountain.   The men had all been shot through the head in what authorities said was a mass suicide.   One other North Korean was flushed out of hiding on Wednesday, leaving eight unaccounted for in the most serious infiltration drama since the 1960s.   Communist espionage agents from North Korean have in the past chosen suicide over capture.   A defence ministry spokesman in Seoul said the fugitives were apparently trying to flee home across the land border.   "Villagers have reported that some suspected infiltrators asked them about roads leading to the Taebaek mountains," he said.   The mountain range straddles the heavily fortified border, sealed since the 1950-53 Korean War.   South Korean President Kim Young-sam denounced the infiltration as an act of "military provocation", the domestic Yonhap news agency reported.   "This is not a simple spy case.   I regard it as a kind of military provocation," Yonhap quoted Kim as telling a cabinet meeting.   "Despite food shortages, the reason why North Korea sent armed infiltrators is that they still have not given up their ambition to reunify Korea by force," Kim was quoted as saying.   The head of the Agency for National Security Planning, Kwon O-kie, was quoted as saying the incident amounted to "infiltration by armed guerrillas".   Troops with sniffer dogs combed mountains and beaches around Kangnung after a dusk-to-dawn curfew was lifted on Thursday.   The submarine remained stranded on rocks.   The North Korean captured on Wednesday was quoted by local media as saying the vessel drifted into Southern waters after developing engine trouble.   His dead colleagues were members of the crew, not trained saboteurs, Lee Kwang-soo, 31, was quoted as saying.   Troops who boarded the abandoned grey craft found automatic guns and ammunition along with canned food and shoes.   The incident has further raised tensions between the two hostile neighbours who face each other across the world's most heavily fortified border.   Pyongyang has not commented on the drama, one of the deadliest since 1968 when 31 North Koreans reached the presidential Blue House in Seoul.   Twenty-eight were killed in a gunbattle in which 34 Southern troops, police officers and civilians also died.   Earlier this year, armed North Korean troops staged illegal exercises in a border buffer zone, and following that scare U.S. President Bill Clinton and South Korean head of state Kim Young-sam made a peace overture to Pyongyang.   They proposed four-way talks, also including China, but North Korea has yet to respond.   However, there had been hopeful signs that Pyongyang was being lured out of its hostile isolation in its desperation for help to ease a food crisis. 
18772 !C24 !C42 !CCAT !E41 !ECAT !GCAT !GJOB  Ceramics and machinery maker Siu-Fung Ceramics Holdings Ltd has decided to close a manufacturing plant at Selb in Germany, laying off 468 staff, the Hong Kong Economic Journal said on Thursday.   The closure was part of the company's restructuring plan and it would save about HK$100 million per annum, the journal said.   The plant is under the management of Netzsch, a unit of Siu-fung's subsidiary NHD International Ltd.   The portion of sacked staff represents about 50 percent of NHD's existing 902 employees, and the plan is being critised and opposed by German labour unions, the paper said.   Upon closure of the Selb plant, ceramics production will move to a plant in Thulligen in Germany, it added.   A Siu-fung official declined to comment but said an official statement on the issue would be issued later on Thursday.   Siu-fung had said earlier, in April this year, that it planned to list NHD on the New York Stock Exchange.   -- Hong Kong News Room (852) 2843 6370 
18773 !GCAT  These are some of the leading stories in the official Vietnamese press on Thursday.   Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.   VIETNAM NEWS   -- The Communist Party's Secretary General, Do Muoi, told visiting Cambodian Information Minister Ieng Mouly that Vietnam would always strive to preserve traditional friendship and cooperative ties with Cambodia and Laos.   -- Foreign Minister Nguyen Manh Cam has left for the 51st annual session of the United Nations General Assembly in New York.   -- The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) has committed over 75.874 million to Vietnam for the promotion of sustainable human development.   -- The Bong Sen (Lotus) sea port in Phu My commune in the Nha Be district of Ho Chi Minh City began operation last week.   The port is a joint venture between the Viet Tranh Company, VISA of Vietnam, the Ukraine's Blastco and Stevedoring Services America.   -- State budget revenue has increased rapidly in the first eight months of the year to meet 55.3 percent of the year plan, over 15 percent more than for the same period of 1995.   -- A new tropical storm has developed in the East Sea and is expected to move towards Vietnam's coast sometime this morning.   -- The $35 million Vital mineral water factory, with a capacity of 30 million litres per year, will be put into operation next month.   -- The Vietnam Bank for Foreign Trade (Vietcombank) has opened a representative office in Moscow.   - - - -   LE COURRIER DU VIETNAM   -- Australia has provided about $1.85 million for a project to control bacterial diseases in poultry and pigs.   -- A conference on the protection of the ozone layer was held in Hanoi yesterday.   - - - -   NHAN DAN   -- Opium plants were destroyed in 115 villages of 11 northen provinces.   The area under opium plant cultivation was reduced by 70-80 percent in the provinces of Son La, Lai Chau, Ha Giang, Lao Cai and Yen Bai.   -- A $6 million insurance joint-venture between the Vietnam Insurance Company, Britain's Commercial Union Insurance Company Plc and Japan's Tokio Marine and Fire Co Ltd has been licensed by the Ministry of Planning and Investment.   -- The government decided to limit imports of mechanical goods which can be manufactured domestically.   The ban aplies to second-hand cars, motobikes, fridges and washing machines.   - - - -   QUAN DOI NHAN DAN   -- Vietnam International Joint-Stock Bank began operations on Wednesday.   The bank has an initial registered capital of 50 billion VND ($4.54 million).   Vietcombank and the Bank for Agriculture are its biggest shareholders.   -- Last week's tropical depression caused serious flooding in the central provinces of Nghe An, Ha Tinh, Quang Binh, Quang Tri, Thua Thien-Hue, Quang Nam-Da nang and Binh Dinh and claimed the lives of 34 people.   Some 40,000 houses were flooded, 30,000 hectares of paddy fields were seriously damaged.   -- A new storm, moving at 5-10 kph and with winds of 70-80 kph, is moving west towards the country.   - - - -   HA NOI MOI   -- One thousand children have undergone the Operation Smile cleft lip operation free in Hanoi's stomatology hospital.   -- Hanoi's confectionery factory is preparing for the mid-Autumn Festival with 24 different kinds of cake. 
18774 !GCAT !GCRIM !GDEF  China's military authorities have blocked the promotion of a general after he was accused of sexual harassment by a woman soldier, Chinese sources said on Thursday.   General Qu Cong has been transferred back to the Guangzhou Military Zone in the southern province of Guangdong after the soldier, a member of the Uighur minority in restive northwestern Xinjiang, accused him of sexual harassment during a trip to North Korea, the sources said.   Qu and the soldier, whose identity was withheld in the rare expose of sexual harassment in China, were members of a Chinese military delegation that visited North Korea recently, said the sources who asked not to be identified.   Qu had initially been designated for promotion to chancellor of the Liberation Army Art Academy, the sources said.   His promotion was blocked after Jiang Zemin, chairman of the powerful Central Military Commission and general secretary of the ruling Communist Party, ordered commission member General Yu Yongbo to look into the scandal and placate Xinjiang.   "Xinjiang was very dissatisfied," one of the sources said.   The general tried to force the soldier to have sex with him, but she resisted, the sources said.   "If (the victim) were not Uighur and were Han Chinese, nothing would have happened," a second source said.   Uighurs are a Moslem Turkic people indigenous to Xinjiang, a region that borders Afghanistan, Pakistan and three former Soviet central Asian states of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan.   They speak a language closely related to Uzbek.   While China has no qualms about crushing a separatist movement in Xinjiang, it says it has poured billions of dollars to develop the region and that Uighurs are a privileged class, enjoying preferential treatment in school and employment.   Xinjiang has a long history of ethnic unrest and has been hit by sporadic pro-independence bombings and assassination attempts in recent months.   During a recent trip to Xinjiang, General Zhang Zhen, a vice-chairman of the commission, said soldiers should "serve as models for the unity of various nationalities".   "If the unity...of various nationalities is firm like a rock, there is no difficulty that cannot be overcome and any plot aimed at destroying the stability and development of Xinjiang is doomed to failure," Zhang was quoted as saying.   Chinese Premier Li Peng was in the restive region this month to break ground for the construction of a railway, which he said would boost the confidence in the Communist Party among ethnic minorities.   The railway would help to narrow the gap between the wealthy eastern and impoverished western parts of China, Li said at the ground-breaking ceremony in Korla city.   In May, China ordered tighter border controls in the region to prevent the smuggling of weapons and subversive materials from neighbouring Moslem states.   It also ordered a crackdown on campuses in the sprawling region.   In the same month, separatists wanted for an attack on a Moslem leader and a government adviser were shot dead in a gunbattle. 
18775 !GCAT  These are the leading stories in the Taiwan press on Thursday.   Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.   Newspaper headlines   CHINA TIMES - Vice speaker of southern Changhua county council detained for alleged involvement in several criminal cases.   Government plans to allow mainland Chinese to visit Taiwan for travel reasons.   UNITED DAILY NEWS - Changhua county's vice council speaker detained for involvement with gangsters.   Head of provincial Hsinchu hospital detained in bribery case.   COMMERCIAL TIMES - Eleven state companies to form alliance to stimulate domestic consumption power.   Central bank objects to opening of money market fund, saying current regulations are not sufficient.   ECONOMIC DAILY NEWS - Philippines and South Korea could replace Hong Kong if Taiwan-Hong Kong shipping route cannot continue after 1997.   Vice-President Lien Chan says Taiwan-China trade ties should not be controlled by Beijing.   -- Taipei Newsroom (2-5080815) 
18776 !GCAT !GDIP !GVIO  Three North Korean infiltrators were shot and killed by South Korean security forces on Thursday, a defence ministry spokesman said, and there were reports that other agents had been captured.    Police in the east coast city of Kangnung said they were checking reports that one infiltrator had been captured alive.   Television reports said up to four had been captured.   A massive manhunt was underway for an estimated eight infiltrators still at large after around 20 landed on a beach near Kangnung by submarine on Wednesday.   On Wednesday 11 infiltrators were shot dead in an apparent mass suicide on the top of a mountain. 
18777 !GCAT  The following are top stories from selected Singapore newspapers.   Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.   THE STRAITS TIMES:   - Eleven North Korean infiltrators put ashore in the South by a submarine found dead, a 12th captured alive and another eight or nine still at large.   - Finance Ministry advises Singaporeans who wish to sell their Singapore Telecommunications Ltd shares to dispose only of those which do not come with loyalty bonus payments.   - Research group ranks Singapore as second most profitable country for businesses to invest in.   - Malaysian-listed Hicom Holdings, a diversified conglomerate, top bidder for site at Tekka Corner.   - Singapore Telecom share price could be falling due to a queue system for selling the shares.   THE BUSINESS TIMES:   - Transwater Corp Bhd, Malaysian engineering and sewerage plant company whose share rose from Malaysian $15 to M$107 in a month, announces it has submiteed M$1.1 billion proposal to rebuild Singapore-Johor Causeway.   - Financial markets in Thailand hushed as Opposition, on the first day of a no-confidence motion in parliament, slams Prime Minister Banharn Silpa-archa for poor management of the economy.   - Frozen seafood distributor Pacific Andes (Holdings) Ltd launches intitial public offering of 61.25 million shares at 57 US cents each.   - Mainboard-listed Cam International Holdings says group profit would drop by a substantial 25 per cent as a result of sale of 52.5 per cent stake in Penang subsidiary Cam Precision Components (Penang) Sdn Bhd.   -- Singapore newsroom 65-8703080 
18778 !GCAT  These are some of the leading stories in the Thai press on Friday.   Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.   TOP STORIES   - Opposition attacks Prime Minister Banharn Silpa-archa on wide range of topics during first day of no-confidence debate against the premier in parliament.   Opposition said Banharn used his daughter as a front for a land deal which reaped enormous profit.   Opposition politicians also accused Banharn of lying about the nationality of his father so he could become an MP.   (BANGKOK POST)   - Opposition sources say they plan to focus Thursday's grilling of Banharn on his Chart Thai Party's alleged involvement with a former Thai bank official who was arrested on accusations of being involved in embezzling millions of dollars.   (THE NATION)   - Pollution Control Department will set up a public hotline by next June to provide information on and management of accidents involving chemicals.   (THE NATION)   - Thousands of supporters from 17 Chart Thai stronghold provinces gathered outside parliament to show support for Banharn during no-confidence debate, and presented flowers to Banharn before debate began.   (THE NATION)     + + + +   BUSINESS   - Chart Pattana Party leader Chatichai Choonhavan said Banharn was responsible for economic downturn because he did not try hard enough to find foreign markets for the country's products.   (THE NATION)   - Opposition claims Thai economy's crash landing will soon destroy local business.   Former deputy prime minister Supachai Panitchpakdi said mismanagement of monetary policies by the central bank during the current government was to blame for economic woes.   (BANGKOK POST)   - Government defends its strategy to boost exports.   Focusing export promotion drives on major trading partners makes sense and does not erode national bargaining power, export promotion department chief says.   (BUSINESS DAY)   -- Bangkok newsroom (662) 652-0642 
18779 !GCAT !GDIP !GVIO  One North Korean was killed and three were captured alive on Thursday during a massive manhunt for infiltrators who landed in South Korea by submarine on Wednesday, a police spokesman in the east coast city of Kangnung said.    Television reports said three infiltrators were killed and four captured.   A defence ministry spokesman said he could not confirm the reports.   Troops and helicopters have been hunting for eight North Koreans believed to be still at large.   Eleven were shot and killed on Wednesday, apparently in a mass suicide, and one was captured alive. 
18780 !GCAT !GPOL !GVIO  South Korean President Kim Young-sam said on Thursday the infiltration by armed North Koreans was an act of "military provocation", the domestic Yonhap news agency reported.   "This is not a simple spy case, I regard it as a kind of military provocation," Yonhap quoted Kim as telling a cabinet meeting.    "Despite food shortages, the reason why North Korea sent armed infiltrators is that they still have not given up their ambition to reunify Korea by force," Kim was quoted as saying.   North and South Korea have been technically at war since their 1950-53 conflict ended in truce that sealed the division of the Korean peninsula.   The head of the Agency for National Security Planning, Kwon O-kie, was quoted as saying the incident amounted to "infiltration by armed guerrillas".   Seoul authorities say around 20 North Koreans landed in a submarine.   Eleven were shot and killed, apparently in a mass suicide, one was captured alive and troops are now searching for eight or nine others. 
18781 !GCAT !GDIP !GVIO  Troops with sniffer dogs combed mountains and beaches in South Korea on Thursday for up to nine North Koreans after 11 of their companions were shot dead in the most serious infiltration since the 1960s.   A dusk-to-dawn curfew was lifted and thousands of armed troops and police who cordoned off the search area overnight began moving in on their prey.   Authorities believe around 20 North Koreans landed on Wednesday in a submarine, now stranded on rocks near the east coast city of Kangnung, in a flagrant breach of an armistice agreement that ended the 1950-53 Korean War and sealed the division of the peninsula.   Bloodsoaked bodies of 11 North Koreans were found huddled together at the top of a mountain on Wednesday, apparently shot by their leader who then turned the gun on himself.   Communist espionage agents from North Korean have in the past chosen suicide over capture.   No sightings of the fugitives have been reported since Wednesday night, when two of them burst into a villager's home and stole food and cigarettes after brandishing a pistol.   Soon after that, news reports said two North Koreans exchanged gunfire with their pursuers in a 15-minute skirmish near Kangnung's airport.   Rain lashed much of South Korea overnight, and with helicopters and a reconnaisance plane joining the search the capture of the North Koreas, dead or alive, appeared to be only a matter of time.   One infiltrator who was captured alive was quoted by local media as saying the submarine drifted into Southern waters after developing engine trouble.   His dead colleagues were members of the vessel's crew, not trained saboteurs, Lee Kang-soo, 31, was quoted as saying.   South Korean authorities maintain the incident was a deliberate provocation, and it has further raised tensions between the two hostile neighbours who face each other across the world's most heavily fortified border.   Troops who boarded the abandoned grey craft, now bobbing helplessly in the shallows, found automatic guns and ammunition along with canned food and shoes.   Pyongyang has not commented on the drama, one of the deadliest since 1968 when 31 North Koreans reached the presidential Blue House in Seoul.   Twenty-eight were killed in a gunbattle in which 34 Southern troops, police and civilians also died.   Earlier this year, armed North Korean troops staged illegal exercises in a border buffer zone, and following that scare U.S. President Bill Clinton and South Korean head of state Kim Young-sam made a peace overture to Pyongyang.   They proposed four-way talks, also including China, but North Korea has yet to respond.   However, there had been hopeful signs that Pyongyang was being lured out of its hostile isolation in its desperation for help to ease a food crisis.   Over the weekend several hundred foreign investors were feted at a North Korean free-trade zone.   South Korea boycotted the event in a row over invitations, but on Tuesday a faxed message to South Korean Foreign Minister Gong Ro-myung attempted to patch up the quarrel by inviting a Southern delegation to the Rajin-Sonbong zone for an exclusive look.   Previous bouts of North Korean sabre-rattling have been interpreted by North Korea watchers as deliberate attempts by Pyongyang hardliners to sabotage detente moves. 
18782 !GCAT !GDEF !GVIO  The U.S. aircraft carrier Enterprise entered the Gulf on Thursday to join another carrier battle group as part of Washington's military build-up against Iraq.   "It's made the turn" into the Strait of Hormuz, U.S. Navy spokesman Commander T. McCreary told Reuters.   Like the USS Carl Vinson already in northern Gulf waters, the Enterprise carries 55 combat aircraft plus 20 helicopters and fixed-wing warplanes including electronic warfare aircraft.   The Enterprise's complement includes F-14 fighters recently modified to deliver laser-guided bombs.   It is accompanied by a battle group including a submarine and other support ships.   McCreary, speaking by telephone from U.S. Fifth Fleet command headquarters in Bahrain, would not say whether the submarine, the Pittsburgh, had also entered the Gulf.   The Enterprise was ordered from the Adriatic Sea, where it was part of the U.S. Sixth Fleet, last weekend after a rapidly escalating U.S. crisis with Iraq.   McCreary would not say when the Enterprise would launch flights as part of Operation Southern Watch over southern Iraq.   The U.S. Navy now has seven ships in the region capable of firing Tomahawk cruise missiles.   A first group of 219 soldiers from the U.S. 1st Cavalry Division left their base in Texas on Wednesday and were due in Kuwait on Thursday to deploy in the desert just south of Iraq.   President Bill Clinton has ordered 3,000 additional U.S. Army troops to reinforce 1,200 others already taking part in regular exercises held since a U.S.-led coalition freed Kuwait of a seven-month Iraqi occupation in the 1991 Gulf War.   The additional U.S. troops, who will draw heavy armour from pre-positioned weapons stored in Kuwait, were flying into Kuwait aboard a commercial airliner.   U.S. defence officials said a C-5 military cargo plane would follow with 73 soldiers and key satellite equipment and two flights early on Thursday would take 700 more troops.   The deployment would be completed over two or three days.   U.S. forces on Tuesday deployed eight Patriot missile-launchers in Kuwait for fear Iraqi President Saddam Hussein would fire missiles at neighbouring oil-producing countries, mainly Saudi Arabia and Kuwait.   The U.S. military build-up includes eight radar-evading Stealth bombers, B-52 bombers on the Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia, and extra Patriot launchers.   The Iraq-Kuwait Observer Mission (UNIKOM), which controls a 15 km (10 mile)-wide demilitarised zone set up after the Gulf War, said on Wednesday no troop movements from either side were seen from UNIKOM observation points along the 207 km (130 mile)-long land border and a 40 km (25 mile)-sea border.   "It's all quiet.   It's going to be a normal day in the no-fly zone in terms of air activity," a U.S. Air Force spokesman told Reuters by telephone from Riyadh on Thursday.   There was nothing unusual to report from the Iraqis, he said, adding: "Most of the information I have still seems to suggest Iraqi Republican Guards remain above the 32nd parallel, which is where they are supposed to be."   The Iraq crisis started in August when Baghdad's forces intervened to help a Kurdish faction in northern Iraq.   Washington retaliated by firing 44 cruise missiles at air defence targets in south Iraq on September 3 and 4.   UNIKOM said some of the missiles violated the terms of demilitarised zone. 
18783 !GCAT !GVIO  Israeli warplanes launched two air attacks against Hizbollah guerrilla targets in south Lebanon on Thursday after four Israeli soldiers were wounded in a guerrilla ambush, witnesses said.   They said the jets fired several rockets in two back-to-back bombing runs into hills in Iqlim al-Toufah mountain ridge before striking again about 20 minutes later.   Iqlim al-Toufah is controlled by pro-Iranian Hizbollah guerrillas.   The air raids followed a Hizbollah ambush against an Israeli patrol in which four Israeli soldiers were wounded in the Jewish state's south Lebanon occupation zone, pro-Israeli militia sources said.   The guerrillas fired machineguns and anti-tank rockets at the patrol between the villages of Rihane and Sojoud on the edge of the strip, the South Lebanon Army militia sources said.   In Beirut, Hizbollah (Party of God) said in a statement that its fighters clashed with an Israeli force trying to advance out of the border buffer zone and into the Iqlim al-Toufah highlands near Sojoud.   After the ambush, Israeli artillery gunners opened up with heavy artillery fire unto guerrilla-held hills facing the zone, the militia sources said. 
18784 !GCAT  These are the leading stories in the Moroccan press on Thursday.   Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.   LE MATIN   - Visiting Congolese Prime Minister David Charles Ganao wants the Organisation of African Unity to withdraw recognition of Polisario.   - U.N. Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali urges in report settlement of differences over referendum in Western Sahara.   L'OPINION   - Moroccan exporters say EU measures to protect European markets contrary to association accord.   - Jewish businessmen Simon and David Chetrit jailed on smuggling charges in February to appeal against sentence on October 22.   LE QUOTIDIEN DU MAROC   - General Confederation of Moroccan Businesses pleads for global administrative reform.   L'ECONOMISTE   - Weekly newspaper L'Economiste to be available on Internet.   - Changes on car insurance tariffs look promising but bonus for good drivers will not be introduced for two years while an insurance surcharge is to take effect immediately.   AL-ITTIHAD-AL-ISHTIRAKI   - Agriculture Minister Hassan Abou Ayoub promised exporters to intensify efforts to persuade European Union to ease export licences. 
18785 !GCAT !GVIO  Israeli air force jets rocketed guerrilla targets in south Lebanon on Thursday after four Israeli soldiers were wounded in a guerrilla ambush, witnesses said.   They said the jets fired several rockets in two bombing runs into Mlita and Louwaizeh hills in Iqlim al-Toufah mountain ridge which is controlled by pro-Iranian Hizbollah guerrillas north of Israel's south Lebanon occupation zone.    The air attacks came shortly after four Israeli soldiers were wounded when Moslem guerrillas ambushed their patrol in the Israeli-held border zone, pro-Israeli militia sources said.   The ambush in which the guerrillas fired machineguns and anti-tank rockets at the Israeli patrol occurred in the area between the villages of Rihane and Sojoud on the edge of the strip, the South Lebanon Army (SLA) militia sources said.   In Beirut, the pro-Iranian Hizbollah (Party of God) said in a statement that its fighters clashed with an Israeli force trying to advance out of the border buffer zone and into the Iqlim al-Toufah highlands near Sojoud.   After the ambush, Israeli gunners opened up with heavy artillery fire unto guerrilla-held hills facing the zone, the SLA sources added. 
18786 !GCAT  These are the leading stories in the Tunisian press on Thursday.   Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.   LA PRESSE   - Central Bank Samurai bond issue in Japan successful.   LE TEMPS   - President Ben Ali confers with Prime Minister Hamed Karoui and recommends that information sources be opened to journalists.   - Foreign Investments in Tunisia seen increasing, International cooperation and Foreign Investment Minister Mohamed Ghannouchi said. 
18787 !GCAT  These are some of the leading stories in the official Iraqi press on Thursday.   Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.   THAWRA   - Iraq and the U.N. discuss means of hastening the implementation of the oil-for-food deal.   - Iraq's deputy foreign minister Riydh al-Qassi arrives in Paris to discuss with French officials the recent American aggression against Iraq.   - U.N. sources say Washington has violated the disarmament zone between Iraq and Kuwait.   - Iraq and Syria stress their keeness to make the Middle East free from nuclear weapons.   - The wrong U.S. logic - commentary.   - The failed (U.S.) adventure - commentary.   QADISSIYA   - Iraq protests to the U.N. against U.S. provocation against its vessels in the Gulf. 
18788 !GCAT !GVIO  Four Israeli soldiers were wounded in south Lebanon on Thursday when Moslem guerrillas ambushed their patrol, pro-Israeli militia sources said.   The attack occurred in the area between the villages of Rihane and Sojoud on the edge of Israel's south Lebanon occupation zone, the South Lebanon Army (SLA) militia sources said.    The SLA sources said the guerrillas fired machineguns and anti-tank rockets at the Israeli patrol.   In Beirut, the pro-Iranian Hizbollah (Party of God) said in a statement that its fighters clashed with an Israeli force trying to advance out of the border buffer zone and into the guerrilla-held Iqlim al-Toufah highlands near Sojoud.   After the ambush, Israeli artillery gunners opened up with heavy artillery fire unto guerrilla-held hills facing the zone, the SLA sources added. 
18789 !GCAT !GDIP  Baghdad-backed Iraqi Kurdish leader Massoud Barzani left Ankara on Thursday to return to northern Iraq after talks in the Turkish capital with a senior U.S. diplomat, Iraqi Kurdish sources said.   Barzani, head of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), flew to the southeastern city of Diyarbakir from where he was to travel to the Iraq border, the sources said.   U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Robert Pelletreau urged Barzani at a meeting in Ankara on Wednesday to drop his alliance with Baghdad and make peace with a rival Kurdish faction, State Department officials said.   Barzani's guerrillas joined forces with Iraqi troops and tanks to take a key northern Iraqi city from another Kurdish group last month, prompting U.S. missile strikes against Iraq.   Barzani has said he turned to President Saddam Hussein for help against alleged Iranian-backed rivals because the United States had failed to intervene to stop the Kurdish infighting. 
18790 !GCAT  These are the leading stories in the Turkish press on Thursday.   Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.   SABAH   - Interior ministry preparing to ban Turks from entering casinos in touristic areas.   - Foreign Minister Tansu Ciller meets Iraqi Kurdish faction leader Massoud Barzani in Ankara.   MILLIYET   - Separatist Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) opens fire on houses in southeastern town of Varto.   Five rebels and two policemen were killed and 11 people injured.   - International Monetary Fund (IMF) does not want to sign another stand-by accord with Ankara due to the unhealthy economic policies followed by Turkey.   HURRIYET   - Islamist-led government to unveil a second economic package on Thursday.   It hopes to raise $10 billion to quell budget deficit.   CUMHURIYET   - Istanbul breathes exhaust gas as the traffic intensifies.   DUNYA   - The cashpool for public enterprises and banks -- gathering all the state revenues in a single account -- aims to lower interest rates.   YENI YUZYIL   - The highest demand for pornographic publications comes from Konya, one of the most conservative and devout cities in the country.   ZAMAN   - International aviation and space fair opened in Ankara. 
18791 !GCAT  These are some of the leading stories in the Jordanian press on Thursday.   Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.   AL-RAI   - Postal services ministry stops accepting money transfers to stem gambling activities promoted by a company.   - Opposition deputies define their stand vis-a-vis the government and demand that Jordan back Iraq.   AD DUSTOUR   - Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak to visit Jordan soon to meet King Hussein.   Participation in economic conference in Cairo is only for businessmen.   - Opposition deputies threaten mass resignation, welcome idea of early elections and demand new elections law.   - Prime Minister Abdul-Karim al-Kabariti to visit refugee camps soon.   - Waheeb al-Shaer is appointed head of Amman Financial Market.   - Jordan rejects any plans to reduce UNRWA services in Jordan and asks the international community to tackle deficit in its budget.   AL ASWAQ   - Jordan will soon unveil investment programme for less privilaged sectors.   - Jordan and Britain end "Desert King" war games with a mock assault.   - Opposition deputies welcome early elections plan.   - Jordan formally becomes a member in conference on security and economic cooperation in Mediterranean basin.   - Supply minister tells al-Aswaq he cancelled all licenses to export olive oil.   - Jordan to switch to winter time at midnight tonight (Thursday).   JORDAN TIMES   - Opposition keep up demands.   - Regent says Jordan can achieve progress through parliamentary life, national dialogue and good management.   - Crown Prince opens industrial and table salt plant in Ghor Safi. 
18792 !GCAT  These are the leading stories in the Egyptian press on Thursday.   Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.   AL-AHRAM   - Cabinet cancels duties on products for local manufacturing and simplifies licences to boost industrial development.   Duties cancelled include those on equipment imported for new communities.   - Mubarak discusses the latest in the peace process with Dennis Ross.   - Prime Minister Ganzouri heads meeting today to prepare for economic summit.   - Cabinet approves changes in legislation on lawyers.   - Three terrorists being tried in Addis Ababa attack on Mubarak tell Ethiopian newspaper that Sudan gave them help and weapons.   AL-AKHBAR   - Cabinet says General Organisation for Industrialisation can offer its services for free to investors.   AL-GOMHURIA   - Social Development Fund considering raising the value of loans to graduates. 
18793 !GCAT  These are some of the leading stories in the United Arab Emirates press on Thursday.   Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.   AL-KHALEEJ   - The first ship to ferry immigrants back to India under a current special amnesty left the UAE on Wednesday.   - Dubai markets witnessed a lift in the first quarter of 1996.   Gold sales grew by 26 percent, car sales by 14 percent and electronics sales by 19 percent.   AL-BAYAN   - A delegation from the Dubai Chamber of Commerce and Industry begins a tour of five European countries on Thursday to foster industrial investments in the UAE.   - A high level Australian delegation will visit Dubai on October 21, the Dubai Chamber of Commerce and Industry said.   The Australian consul general in Dubai said trade volume between the two countries had risen by 65 percent in the first half of 1996 compared to the first half of 1995.   GULF NEWS   - The UAE on Wednesday affirmed its support for Kuwait in its efforts to preserve its security and stability.   - In a bid to boost business confidence in the UAE, the Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs is working to streamline its procedures and prevent any negative effects of visa delays on the economy.   The deputy head of the chamber of commerce ruled out a drop in business profits due to tougher immigration laws.   KHALEEJ TIMES   - The UAE and Bahrain completed a joint military exercise.   - The National Investor, an Abu-Dhabi venture capital and investment banking company, announced the formation of a joint venture with National Science and Technology and Battelle Memorial Institute, an international research and technology company in the United States.   - Some 50 new hotels are under construction in Dubai, the Dubai World Trade centre said. 
18794 !GCAT  These are some of the leading stories in Kuwait's press on Thursday.   Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.   AL-QABAS   - Kuwait Chamber of Commerce and Industry to hold a training program for young businessmen.   - Kuwait investments in Tunisia amount to $500 million, says Tunisian minister.   AL-WATAN   - Some 16 investment projects with Kuwaiti investors were approved, Egyptian industry minister says.   AL-RAI AL-AAM   - U.S. troops begin to arrive in Kuwait and Washington confirms deploying Patriots on Kuwaiti land.   - Communications Minister says no reservations on American-Kuwaiti joint ventures in line with agreed criterias.   KUWAIT TIMES   - Kuwait expects America and Gulf allies to share deployment costs.   - U.N. sees Iraqi violations to the Iraq-Kuwait demilitarised zone. 
18795 !GCAT  These are the leading stories in the Beirut press on Thursday.   Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.   AN-NAHAR   -A crisis among the top leaders is averted by the government's cancellation of a special permit to Hizbollah radio and television stations to broadcast news of the guerrilla war in south Lebanon.   -Maronite Patriarch Sfeir says: "What happened in the file of licencing the audiovisual media was political leaders splitting up the spoils amongst themselves".   AS-SAFIR   -An atmosphere of war in the region caused by threats to Syria and Lebanon from Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu; 125 Israeli tanks deployed in the area of Hasbaya in south Lebanon.   -Wide denouncement of the government's refusal to licence most of Lebanon's mass of audiovisual media.   -The deputy of wanted Palestinian faction leader Abu Mohjen is wounded in a clash in a south Lebanon refugee camp.   -The lawyer of Hallaq, a Lebanese convicted of a setting of a 1994 Beirut bomb that killed three people, appeals for an amnesty.   -British trade mission to visit Beirut on September 23.   AL-ANWAR   -Justice Minister Tabbara calls for a modern elections law in Lebanon.   -Lebanese man who is standing trial in Germany denies burning down a building.   -Beirut prosecutor charges leftist Lebanese singer Khalife with slandering Islam by using a Koranic verse in his song "Oh my father, I am Yusif".   AD-DIYAR   -The cabinet approves 1997 state budget draft.   NIDA'A AL-WATAN   -Prime Minister Hariri: "We reject any talk about curbing freedoms". 
18796 !GCAT  These are some of the leading stories in the Bahraini press on Thursday.   Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.   AKHBAR AL-KHALEEJ   - Formation of a new Shura Council will be declared next week.   The Emir, Sheikh Isa bin Sulman al-Khalifa, last week issued a decree increasing Shura Council members to 40 from 30.   GULF DAILY NEWS   - High-level delegation from the finance, economy and commerce ministries is expected to represent Bahrain at the Middle East-North Africa economic summit in Egypt. 
18797 !GCAT  These are some of the leading stories in Israeli newspapers on Thursday.   Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.   JERUSALEM POST   - Labour party leader Shimon Peres announces he won't run for prime minister in 2000, says: "It's time for a change".   - Israeli army chief Amnon Shahak: No dramatic moves by Syrian army.   - Israeli Defence Minister Yitzhak Mordechai, Palestinian President Yasser Arafat meet at Erez; steering committee to discuss Hebron redeployment.   - Arafat: Israeli approval of 1,800 housing units in West Bank breaches agreement.   U.S. Middle East envoy Dennis Ross says settlement policy complicates negotiations.   - U.S. Food and Drug Administration panel meets to discuss Teva Pharmaceutical Industries' petition for potentially lucrative multiple sclerosis drug Copaxone.   - Capital market reform ideas face fierce political opposition.   Experts: Proposals avoid fundamental issues.   - Interior Minister Eli Suissa says plans to expand Ben-Gurion Airport by the year 2000 should be brought forward.   - Maccabi Tel Aviv at Limoges tonight in Euro League basketball opener.   Game begins at 8.30 p.m. (1830 GMT).   YEDIOTH AHRONOTH   - Public doesn't expect the capital market reform ideas to be adopted.   - Suppliers abroad tell Israel Aircraft Industries they'll deal only in cash.   - Commentator Nahum Barnea says he wouldn't eulogise Peres politically as yet.   - Fury in the Israeli cabinet: Arafat knows more than the ministers know.   - Assassin Yigal Amir writes a book in his prison cell and tries to sell it in the United States, says New York agent.   - Government "moves" to the United States; No fewer than seven cabinet ministers to be there in next three weeks.   MAARIV   - Biggest deal in Israeli football history: English Premier League side Southampton want to sign international midfielder Eyal Berkowitz to three-year contract for 1.2 million pounds.   - Poll shows 52 percent of the Israeli public are secular; 33 percent traditional, nine percent religious, 5.2 percent ultra-Orthodox.   But 70 percent say in poll of 515 Jews for Meimad movement that religious-secular relations have deteriorated in the last year.   HAARETZ   - Netanyahu rejects demand of cabinet ministers to discuss the redeployment in Hebron before it's presented to Arafat.   - Netanyahu opposes taxation of savings plans.   - Defence establishment doesn't expect a Syrian attack on Israel or a deterioration in the north.   - Recommendation to sack 4,000 workers included in programme to privatise Israel Aircraft Industries. 
18798 !GCAT !GDIP  Palestinian President Yasser Arafat left the self-ruled Gaza Strip on Thursday for a one-day trip to Germany where he would meet German leaders, officials said.   (Corrects to delete reference to Chancellor Helmut Kohl)   They said Arafat, eager to boost the economy of the self-rule areas handed over to the Palestinians by Israel over the last two years, would also meet German businessmen.   On Wednesday night Arafat and Israeli Defence Minister Yitzhak Mordechai failed in four hours of talks to come to terms on the long-delayed Israeli troop redeployment from the West Bank city of Hebron.   Under peace deals with the PLO, Israel was due in March to hand over parts of Hebron, the only West Bank city where Jews and Arabs live together.   Islamic suicide bombings and Israeli security concerns have delayed the handover. 
18799 !GCAT  These are some of the leading stories in the Greek Cypriot press on Thursday.   Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.   ALITHIA   - President Glafcos Clerides reassures the public: there is no danger of military action by the Turks.   - The Irish presidency of the EU supports simultaneous accession of Turkey and Cyprus to the bloc.   - Shares on stock exchange drop amid rumours of escalation of tension with military action by Turkey on the island.   CYPRUS MAIL   - A decision will be taken to hike the defence levy by October, says the defence minister.   - Government launches new Cyprus site on the internet.   - Stock market officials expect influx of foreign investments.   HARAVGHI   - Finance minister criticises chairman of Popular Bank for his remarks on the course of the economy.   - Europe's unified left is on Cyprus's side at today's European Parliament debate on its relations with Turkey.   PHILELEPHTHEROS   - The crisis has been defused - now it is time for diplomacy to work on Ctprus.   - Clerides intention to run for the presidency in 1998 will become clear after his return from New York in October.   SIMERINI   - Increased state contributions to defence will occur only if it is established the economy can take it, say the defence and finance ministers. 
18800 !GCAT !GDIP  Iran insisted that South Africa did endorse a joint communique issued at the end of President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani's recent visit to the African state, the Iranian news agency IRNA reported.   It quoted Foreign Ministry spokesman Mahmoud Mohammadi on Wednesday as saying the Pretoria government has not yet informed Iran of its objection to the communique.   South Africa on Tuesday dismissed Iranian reports that it had praised Tehran's human rights record following talks between the two country's presidents.   The South African foreign ministry also denied that Nelson Mandela had joined Rafsanjani in calling for all foreign forces to withdraw from the Gulf.   It said in a statement that it strongly denied Iranian media reports that the two presidents had issued a joint communique after the visit, which ended on Saturday, expressing satisfaction with human rights and democracy in Iran.   "...The South African foreign ministry has not yet directly expressed its official view over that issue.   At present we are conducting the necessary discussions with the competent authorities in the South African foreign ministry," IRNA quoted Mohammadi as saying.   "...As far as the Islamic republic of Iran is concerned the joint communique issued by Iran had been concluded by the authorised officials of the two countries...Up to this moment we have received no official notice from South Africa on their retiring from this joint communique," he added. 
18801 !GCAT !GPOL  The fare at Ali's Restaurant, situated in a Cyprus territorial vacuum, reflects the main elements of the island's division; the food and beer are Turkish, the mineral water is Greek and the bill is in Cyprus pounds.   As you approach the restaurant on a barren plateau bright yellow lights strung on trees bounce eerily up and down in the breeze to the soft strains of Turkish music.   Waiters stand to attention in front of the arches of a converted house.   "You want jeans?"   asks an eager young Turkish Cypriot waiter.   "I get you some from there," he said, pointing towards a village discernible its lights about a mile north.   Few Greek Cypriots visit the restaurant, located between the mixed community village of Pyla in the United Nations controlled buffer zone, and the Turkish-held village of Pergamos in the south eastern part of Cyprus.   Located within the sprawling British military base of Dhekelia, seventy percent of Ali's clients are British servicemen.   The tasty dishes are prepared by a chef from the Turkish town of Adana.   Ali's Restaurant is perched on a rocky plateau overlooking Pyla, a village home to 850 Greek and 350 Turkish Cypriots, declared a UN-controlled buffer zone since the Turkish invasion in 1974.   Tension has risen considerably on the island in the past month following the killings of two Greek Cypriots in the buffer zone.   Last week a Turkish Cypriot sentry was shot dead at his post close to the ceasefire line.   Until then, Ali's was used as a pick-up point for hundreds of Turkish Cypriots taken to the government-controlled south every morning to work.   "After the troubles they are not going anymore," said Yousouf, the Turkish Cypriot waiter.   To its north is the breakaway Turkish Cypriot state, declared nine years after the 1974 invasion, which followed a short-lived coup in Nicosia inspired by the military regime ruling Greece.   The north, where some 30,000 mainland troops are based, is recognised only by Ankara.   To the south lies the government-controlled part of Cyprus.   Residents of Pyla, whether they are Greek or Turkish Cypriots, tend to view strangers with a liberal dose of suspicion.   They don't like to talk, and they do not like questions.   "We have never had any problems with the Turkish Cypriots," said one Greek Cypriot resident.   "If we do have problems they will start from the foreigners, the mainland Turks," he said.   Macedonia is the Greek Cypriot coffee shop in the village square.   Turkish Cypriots have their own coffee shop, apparently unnamed, on the other side of the square.   A group playing poker on the Turkish side were non-committal.   "I don't speak English," said one bearded Turkish Cypriot, trying to hide a grin, his eyes firmly fixed on the cards he was holding.   Another was more outspoken.   "No, we do not get on well.   I cannot work, I can't go to work," he exclaimed, throwing down the cards and walking off.   Minefields lie on either side of a narrow road leading to the village cordoned off with rusty barbed wire.   Taking photographs in the village is forbidden and, to preserve the peace, flags are only allowed to be flown at schools or on national holidays.   Being one of the few bicommunal villages on the Mediterranean island is not all it is known for.   Smuggling from the Turkish occupied north to the south is reported to be rampant in the area.   Activity in Pyla is monitored by Turkish sentries on the top of a rocky hill overlooking the village.   One of them never moves.   It is a plastic cut-out.   "People mingle and there are cases of intermarriage," said Chief Superintendent Liam Quinn, a member of the Irish Civilian police force stationed in Pyla.   "We do not have any problems."   In the privacy of their homes, some Greek Cypriot women sit and have coffee in the morning with their Turkish Cypriot neighbours.   "Nothing has changed for us, we still go to their house, they still come to ours," said one Greek Cypriot woman.   Greek Cypriot Kyriakos Karkides, 91, has lived in Pyla all his life.   "We haven't stopped talking to each other," he said.   "I have Turkish friends who come and see me all the time." 
18802 !GCAT !GDEF !GDIP  Kuwait will open its arms in welcome on Thursday to the first of some 3,000 U.S. ground troops sent to deter "threats" by former occupier Iraq.   A first group of 219 soldiers from the 1st Cavalry Division embarked on Wednesday on a long flight from Texas to deploy in the blisteringly hot Kuwaiti desert just south of Iraq.   Kuwait has approved the deployment in the oil-rich region as part of a huge U.S. military build-up which includes Stealth bombers, a second carrier battle group, and added Patriot launchers and warplanes.   "I do hope that common sense prevails," said Major-General Gian Santillo, Force Commander of the United Nations Iraq-Kuwait Observer Mission (UNIKOM) which controls a 15 km (10 miles)-wide demilitarised border zone set up after the Gulf War.   Saudi Arabia and France, two 1991 Gulf War allies which have not granted Washington clear and firm backing in the latest standoff with Baghdad, also voiced a similar call.   "We want to see wisdom and reason prevail, calm to be restored, and the integrity of Iraq to be protected," Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal said after talks with President Jacques Chirac in Paris on Wednesday.   Santillo, an Italian, told Reuters on Wednesday at the Iraq- Kuwait border: "If something happens we are military and I do hope that every party considers us to be like we are -- U.N. people."   But he said no troop movements from either side were seen from UNIKOM observation points along the 207 km (130 mile)-long land border and a 40 km (25 mile)-sea border.   Shortly after their arrival, the U.S. troops will draw heavy armour from pre-positioned weapons stored in Kuwait to join 1,200 U.S. soldiers participating in regular exercises held since a U.S.-led coalition freed Kuwait of a seven-month Iraqi occupation.   Kuwait, which produces about two million barrels of oil a day, has said it was ready to share part of the costs of the build-up.   Western sources said Kuwait and Washington were expected to pay for most of the costs as none of the other regional states other than less-wealthy Bahrain appear directly involved.   Arab and Western military sources said differences arose over cost in October 1994 when a much larger build-up was triggered by Iraq's massing of forces along the border.   The U.S. troops are flying on a commercial jet.   Defence officials said a C-5 military cargo plane would follow with 73 soldiers and key satellite equipment on board and two flights early on Thursday would take 700 more troops.   The deployment would be completed over two or three days, with each flight taking from 17 to 22 hours to Kuwait where the United States on Tuesday deployed eight Patriot launchers for fear Iraq's Saddam Hussein would fire missiles at neighbours.   A U.N. team in charge of scrapping Iraq's weapons of mass destruction says 16 of Baghdad's Scud missiles were still unaccounted for.   Western military sources say Iraq is believed still to have Scuds and a capability of developing chemical arms.   Kuwait's Crown Prince and Prime Minister Sheikh Saad al- Abdulla al-Sabah told the country's Supreme Planning Council: "We ask God to...make us victorious against our enemy.   "These developments emphasis a fact that should never abandon our minds, which is that the Iraqi regime did not give up its aggressive intentions and expansionist plans...," the Kuwait News Agency quoted him as saying on Wednesday.   "As long as this evil remained on our border we should not feel reassured or at ease," he added.   The current Iraq crisis started in August when Baghdad's forces intervened to help a Kurdish faction in northern Iraq.   Washington retaliated by firing 44 cruise missiles at air defence targets in southern Iraq on September 3 and 4.   UNIKOM said some of the missiles violated the terms of demilitarised zone. 
18803 !GCAT !GPOL  Palestinian and Israeli leaders failed to reach agreement over the long-delayed Israeli troop redeployment from the West Bank town of Hebron and handed the issue over to a committee.   Palestinian President Yasser Arafat and Israeli Defence Minister Yitzhak Mordechai met for nearly four hours on Wednesday at Beit Hanoun in the Palestinian Gaza Strip self-rule enclave.   The talks took place shortly after Arafat met U.S. envoy Dennis Ross, who is visiting the region in an attempt to keep the Middle East peace process alive.   Ross is due to meet Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday.   "We discussed in a business-like way, seriously, several issues," Mordechai told reporters after the meeting with Arafat.   "We decided that the (steering) committee will convene soon to discuss in a detailed way, and when it has in its hands a framework of the agreement we will meet again and discuss additional issues that are on the agenda."   Mordechai said he "presented different possibilities" to Arafat regarding the Hebron deal which could be a basis for the committee's work.   "When the committee reaches a conclusion we will convene, approve them, and proceed with other issues," he said.   Asked if the Palestinians had agreed to renegotiate the Hebron deal reached with Israel's previous government ousted in a general election last May, Arafat dodged the question.   "The steering committee will carry on with all these details," he said.   Asked the same question again, he said: "What I have mentioned is clear and obvious."   Palestinian negotiator Hasan Asfour, who attended the meeting, told Reuters the Palestinians had not agreed to reopen negotiations on the Hebron agreement.   He said the steering committee would discuss implementing the existing deal.   "They submitted a concept which violates the agreement...We have rejected any changes or modifications to the agreement.   The whole session was centred on discussing Hebron," said Asfour.   Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) official Mahmoud Abbas, also known as Abu Mazen, told Reuters:   "The steering committee will meet to discuss redeployment from Hebron and Israeli requests.   Any Israeli requests which are consistent with the Hebron agreement will be considered.   We do not accept renegotiating the Hebron agreement or changing it."   The committee would meet next Wednesday or Thursday, he said.   The Arafat-Mordechai meeting was held shortly after news that Mordechai had approved building an additional 1,800 housing units at a Jewish settlement in the occupied West Bank.   Ross said after his meeting with Arafat that settlement was a "problem...that complicates the negotiating process".   What was important now was "to work as quickly as possible to get tangible results" in peace negotiations, he said.   Arafat said the decision was another Israeli breach of signed peace deals.   Palestinians want final status peace talks, which have yet to resume under Netanyahu since he took office in June, to result in a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.   Netanyahu opposes that goal and supports Jewish settlement.   On Hebron, Netanyahu has said changes are necessary to ensure security for the 400 Jews who have settled among more than 100,000 Palestinians there.   Hebron is the last of eight West Bank towns to be handed over to Palestinians under interim PLO-Israel peace deals.   Israel has also missed a September 7 date for initiating further redeployments from parts of the West Bank. 
18804 !GCAT !GDIP !GREL  Amid fears for his health, Pope John Paul arrived in France on Thursday for a four-day visit that will test his stamina and his ability to rally the Roman Catholic faithful amid controversy over the Church's role.   The 76-year-old Pontiff, due to undergo surgery to remove his appendix next month, landed at the Saint-Symphorien air base near the western city of Tours aboard a special Alitalia flight, bearing the papal crest and the Vatican and French flags.   He looked much fitter and less exhausted than on a visit to Hungary earlier this month as he walked slowly but firmly down the gangway beneath a white umbrella and shook hands with President Jacques Chirac and his wife Bernadette.   Despite steady rain, the Pope reviewed a Republican Guard honour guard and shook hands with a long line of dignitaries before driving to a private meeting with Chirac in Tours.   The visit, packed with 21 public appearances, is the Pope's final foreign trip of the year before he enters hospital in Rome, probably in the second week of October.   French media highlighted controversy over his visit.   The left-of-centre Liberation called him "The Cumbersome Visitor" in its front-page headline, while the tabloid Le Parisien stresed disaffection between the French people and a Pontiff they increasingly see as out of touch with his times.   Tours is the first stop of a trip that will take him to Brittany, Vendee and the eastern city of Reims.   For security reasons and to enable the Pope to sit, a bullet-proof car replaced his Popemobile on the drive into a rainswept Tours.   He was to make a helicopter pilgrimage later to a shrine where a crude anti-Pope bomb was defused two weeks ago.   Unknown attackers had scrawled "In nomine-Pope-BOOM!"   on the wall of the church in Saint-Laurent-sur-Sevre.   About 6,000 police, paramilitary gendarmes, bodyguards and marksmen were on duty to guard the Pontiff during the visit.   "I intend to launch a new appeal for solidarity with all those who suffer in their bodies and in their heart, those for whom life is precarious and threatened, both in France and beyond its borders," the Pontiff said on Wednesday.   Even though he has avoided controversy in talking about his fifth visit to France, the Pope has awoken unprecedented protests in a country that long vaunted its fidelity to Rome.   Apart from the bomb attempt, the most dramatic opposition was when a group of anarchists disrupted a service in Nantes cathedral last week throwing cream pies.   Sixty-seven groups including anarchists, freemasons and a police trade union are planning a rally in Paris on Sunday, when the Pope will be in Reims, to protest at the Pope and back the secular ideals of the 1789 French Revolution.   They accuse Chirac of violating laws separating Church and State by partly funding the visit and celebrations of the 1,500th anniversary of the baptism of Clovis, the first pagan king in Western Europe to convert to Roman Catholicism in Reims.   The president, an occasional churchgoer, was to have only a 20-minute meeting with the Pope and attend none of the religious ceremonies, underlining the state-Church divide.   But Paris Archbishop Jean-Marie Lustiger dismissed the controversy, telling RTL radio that it was "preposterous" to suggest the French Republic was in any danger.   "France has always remained faithful to the Holy See, despite the revolution and the separation of Church and state," echoed the Vatican's "culture minister", Paul Poupard, in an interview with the daily Le Parisien.   Opinion polls show many French citizens are indifferent to the visit, and to arcane disputes about Clovis.   A CSA poll published in Le Parisien showed that support for the Pope has waned since his last visit in 1988, reflecting French disaffection with the Pontiff's teachings against birth control, abortion or homosexuality.   Fifty-one percent had reservations or strongly disapproved of his actions during his papacy, up from 26 percent in 1988.   And only 22 percent of the 1,004 people quizzed on September 16 and 17 saw him as being "open to the world" against 46 percent in 1988. 
18805 !GCAT  NEUE ZUERCHER ZEITUNG   - Swiss Bank Corp (SBC) announced Wednesday it will reduce its domestic workforce by 1,700, or 13 percent, over the next three years.   In addition, one-time expenditures totaling 3.3 billion Swiss francs will result in the bank's otherwise strong group profit showing a technical loss of 1.9 billion francs in 1996.   - U.K. Foreign Secretary Malcolm Rifkind visited Switzerland Wednesday.   At celebrations marking the 50-year anniversary of a speech by Winston Churchill on Europe, Rifkind warned about the dangers of creating a two-class society if European Monetary Union is not carried out properly.   TAGES ANZEIGER   - Swiss Bank Corporation announced their new radical restructuring plan which calls for cutting 13 percent of all jobs at SBC in Switzerland and the closing of 80 out of 325 branches over the next three years.   They will post a loss of 1.9 billion Swiss francs for 1996 because of a bookkeeping system change.   - E.U. Commissioner Mario Monti arrives in Switzerland today to put pressure on the government to finally set regulations on the free flow of traffic and to end its limitations on foreigner workers.   - Zurich Insurance Group's net profit rose by 32.7 percent to 576.4 million Swiss francs in the first six months of the year.   -   JOURNAL DE GENEVE   - The Swiss National Bank will issue a new 20-franc note next week, featuring composer Arthur Honegger, who died in 1955.   - Two government finance commissions declared Cargo Domicile's privatisation was done unprofessionally and with sloppy bookkeeping.   Swiss Federal Railways director general Hans Peter Fagagnini was responsible for the project. 
18806 !GCAT  Headlines from major national newspapers.   Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.   EL PAIS   - Nationalists pull out compromise from Aznar to fulfill pacts   - Serra says Spain lost out on key information because of Cesid debate   - Garzon looks for body of beggar used as guinea pig   - Football war reaches court   EL MUNDO   - Eduardo Serra declares that the government should "take on" the "dirt" of the past as it did at the end of the dictatorship   - Tax Ministry limits to 20 percent the capacity of the autonomous regions to raise or lower their portion of income tax   DIARIO 16   - Serra says that Spain should overcome Cesid case as it forgot Franco   - Aznar confirms salary freeze for state workers   ABC   - Eduardo Serra assures that CESID papers not declassified because of "enormous prejudice to national security"   - The queen calls on public authorities and families "to banish violence"   CINCO DIAS   - For Rojo, it looks gloomy - warns that slower activity will reduce corporate profits and says that unit labour costs threaten inflation   - Insurers will absorb the four percent rate the government imposes on the sector   - Bureaucrats will talk less by phone   EXPANSION   - Rojo in favour of interest rate decline - governor says there is margin but it is conditioned on stringent budget   - Industrial backing for King's role   - Lopez de Arriortua, new guru of Telefonica   GACETA DE LOS NEGOCIOS   - Salary freeze reaches loss-making state-owned groups   - Autonomous regions can raise or lower their 20 percent of income tax   - Juppe opts for "law of least effort" in the 1997 budget 
18807 !GCAT !GDIP  For the fourth consecutive year, China and its supporters on Wednesday blocked moves in the General Assembly to consider U.N. membership for Taiwan.   As in previous years, the move to put the issue on the agenda, sponsored by 16 mostly Caribbean, Central American and African countries, was defeated without a vote after a long debate in the assembly's steering committee.   The proposal was introduced by the Solomon Islands and strongly opposed by China's ambassador.   Delegates from 38 countries opposed the item while 17 spoke in favour.   Assembly President Razali Ismail of Malaysia ruled that because of the views expressed, the item would not be recommended for the assembly's agenda.   During the debate, a dirigible "blimp" with "Taiwan" inscribed on its side hovered near the United Nations.   A paddle steamer adorned with the slogan "Welcome Taiwan to the U.N." cruised New York's East River alongside the U.N. complex while a pro-Taiwan demonstration took place a few hundred yards (metres) away.   The United States also rejected a donation of $160,000 (2.5 million Taiwanese dollars) offered to the financially pressed world body by a group called "Taiwan International Alliance."   Hsiu-lien Annette Lu, its president, maintained the funds were raised by 40,000 Taiwanese.   It was not accepted because a U.N. spokesman said it was "not a bona fide donation" but an attempt to publicise the Taiwan cause.   When China's Nationalist government retreated to Taiwan in 1949 after defeat by the Communists in a civil war, it continued to hold China's U.N. seat.   But it was expelled by the Assembly in 1971 and the seat given to Beijing, which considers Taiwan a renegade province.   China regards any bid to give the island U.N. membership as an intolerable encroachment on its sovereignty and interference in its internal affairs.   It suggests the sponsors are motivated by economic inducements.   The sponsors of the move, which referred to "Taiwan, Republic of China," wanted the assembly to discuss the matter and set up a committee to consider it further.   They did not seek to unseat Beijing but said the present situation left the more than 21 million inhabitants of Taiwan, an economic powerhouse, without representation in international bodies.   Introducing the item in the committee, the Solomon Islands' ambassador, Rex Horoi, said much had happened since the 1971 decision which reflected "the passions of the Cold War."   "On Taiwan the Republic of China has been transformed into a vigorous democracy based upon a powerful trading economy -- 14th largest in the world -- that helps to produce a gross national product and a per capita income that rank 19th and 25th globally," he said.   "At this point in its history, can the United Nations afford to deprive itself of what the Republic of China on Taiwan would bring to the table?"   he asked.   China's ambassador Qin Huasun said Taiwan "has been a part of the Chinese territory since ancient time."   He blasted the "very small number of member states instigated by the Taiwan authorities" who he said were trying to create "two Chinas" or "one China, one Taiwan" in the United Nations.   "We wish to advise these countries to rein in at the brink of the precipice and refrain from further erroneous moves against international law and the U.N. Charter ... Otherwise, they are bound to be cast aside by the Chinese and all justice-upholding people in the world," Qin said. 
18808 !C24 !CCAT !G15 !G153 !G158 !GCAT !GHEA  European Commission President Jacques Santer kept up the pressure on Britain to fulfil a pledge to cull up to 147,000 extra cattle to eliminate mad cow disease more quickly.   At an EU summit in Florence in June, Britain reluctantly agreed to a package of measures, including culling cattle most at risk from the deadly disease, in return for a gradual lifting of a worldwide ban on its beef exports.   "I do think we should stick to that agreement as formulated by EU leaders," Santer told a news conference at the European Parliament.   Britain now believes that new scientific data has thrown doubt on the effectiveness of the cull, which would supplement a scheme to slaughter annually around one million cattle over the age of 30 months and to destroy the meat.   An Oxford University report last month suggested that the disease, known medically as Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE) would disappear within five years without the necessity of an extra cull.   But Santer said the agreed measures should be implemented.   "We should be taking all the necessary steps to eradicate this disease in order to restore consumer confidence and then stabilise markets.   Our over-riding concern is the protection of public health," he said.   Irish Prime Minister John Bruton stressed the Irish EU Presidency was committed to ending the beef crisis, which he believed could only be done through joint European action.   "What is clear is that the matter must be solved...on a European basis.   The place to do that is at a European Council (summit) and not unilaterally," he told the news conference.   But Britain increasingly believes that the ban is unlikely to be lifted soon, even if the cull is carried out.   British Prime Minister John Major said on Wednesday Britain had made no firm decision yet about scrapping or reducing it.   "I can tell you we will not delay a decision and when we take the decision we will take it on the basis of public health, on the basis of common sense and in the interests of the beef farmer but there are still discussions to be had before that decision can be finalised," Major said on BBC radio.   British Agriculture Minister Douglas Hogg failed on Tuesday to persuade other farm ministers or the European Commission to reduce the selective slaughter scheme.   On Wednesday, Hogg warned in London that the British parliament would strongly oppose the scheme, which needs parliamentary approval, unless the EU agreed "rapidly and substantially" to proceed with lifting the ban.   The EU banned British beef exports in March after Britain said that there could be a link between BSE and Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease, the deadly human equivalent. 
18809 !GCAT  These are the leading stories in the Algerian press on Thursday.   Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.   LIBERTE   - Referendum to amend the constitution might be held in November.   The changes focus on Islam, Arab and Berber languages, on the foundations of a multi-party democracy and on setting up a senate, high court and high Islamic council.   - Algiers' transport authorities to extend bus shuttles until 11.55 p.m.(2255 GMT) because of security improvement.   EL WATAN   - Government holds conference on a five-year-old economic and social strategy, September 29-October 3.   EL MOUDJAHID   - The authorities might allow opposition parties to participate in the government.   Those parties will also be represented in the Transitional National Council.   AL KHABAR   - Eighteen opposition parties will be invited to attend a government conference over economic strategy.   - Breaking ground for the gold mining project of Timesmissa in the southern Tamanrasset province to start next month. 
18810 !GCAT !GCRIM !GODD  A man with no legs tried to rob a bank in Frankfurt armed with a wooden stick but was overwhelmed by customers after assaulting a woman in the branch, police said on Thursday.   The 26-year-old rolled his wheelchair into the branch on Frankfurt's main shopping street, wielding a thick stick with two devil's horns carved at one end, a police spokesman said.   He demanded money from a cashier and knocked a female customer unconscious with his stick before astonished customers pounced on him, knocking him out of his chair.   "When we arrested him he shouted that he wanted to conquer Satan," the spokesman said.   "He's currently confined in a psychiatric ward on suspicion that he is not quite right in the head."   The man had a record of violent crime and burglaries. 
18811 !GCAT !GDIP !GVIO  Libya's Colonel Muammar Gaddafi wrote to French President Jacques Chirac to offer help with an inquiry into the 1989 bombing of an airliner allegedly by Libyan secret service officials, a French weekly said on Thursday.   France's chief anti-terrorism investigator is due to demand later on Thursday -- seven years to the day after the crash -- that four Libyan officials, including a brother-in-law of Gaddafi, be tried in absentia for the bombing of the UTA airlines DC-10 over the Sahara.   The magazine L'Express published the text of a letter it said was sent by Gaddafi in the spring following U.N. sanctions on Libya imposed to speed investigations into the UTA bombing and that of the 1988 Pan Am flight over Lockerbie, Scotland.   Gaddafi wrote that he was ready to supply French investigators with evidence, and to authorise Libyan officials to cooperate with the investigator, Judge Jean-Louis Bruguiere, and answer all his questions.   "I wish to assure you that (Libya) is anxious to cooperate with France, to determine the causes of the UTA plane accident and to ensure that the perpetrators are punished," Gaddafi was quoted as writing.   The Libyan leader refused however to hand over any Libyan suspects but added that he would accept the verdict of a French court, hinting Libya might pay compensation to the victims' families.   L'Express said Gaddafi decided to cooperate with the investigation to try and find a way out of the U.N. economic sanctions.   Sources close to the probe have said that Bruguiere, who was briefing some 200 civil plaintiffs on Thursday, questioned some 40 people during 12 days in Libya in July and brought back a U.S.-made Samsonite suitcase he believes is identical to that packed with pentrite high explosive and used in the bombing.   He also searched secret service offices in Tripoli and found timers and detonators believed similar to those used to destroy the airliner, killing all 170 people aboard.   Bruguiere plans to recommend a trial in absentia for Abdallah Senoussi, a brother-in-law of Gaddafi identified as a senior Libyan intelligence official.   The other suspects are Abdallah Elazragh, a diplomat working in Brazzaville at the time, and alleged secret agents Ibrahim Naeli and Musbah Arbas.   Bruguiere will also on Thursday take those families who wish to go to see a painstaking reconstruction of the airliner at the military airport of Le Bourget outside Paris.   The destruction of the DC-10, in which citizens of more than a dozen countries were killed, occurred at the height of tension between France and Libya over Chad, where the two countries' armies clashed repeatedly in the 1970s and 1980s.   Investigators have recovered some 80 percent of the doomed plane and have worked out to within a square metre where the bomb went off in the forward cargo loading bay. 
18812 !CCAT !GCAT !GDIS  The pilot of a Swissair jumbo jet suffered two heart attacks over Russia on Wednesday night, forcing the plane to make an emergency landing in Helsinki, the airline said on Thursday.   The pilot of the Boeing 747 was taken to the Helsinki University Central Hospital while the 258 passengers spent the night in a hotel, a spokesman for the carrier said.   A hospital spokesman declined to specify the pilot's illness, but added he was in stable condition and in no grave danger.   The pilot suffered an initial heart attack some four hours after the plane left Zurich, bound for Beijing.   The plane's co-pilot took over the controls after the attack, while the pilot was attended to by a doctor on board.   After the pilot suffered a second heart attack, Swissair decided to make an emergency landing in Helsinki.   The passengers will continue their journey to Beijing later today with a new crew, the Swissair spokesman added.   -- Peter Nielsen, Zurich Editorial +41 1 631 7340 
18813 !E12 !ECAT !G15 !G154 !GCAT  The powerful Franco-German axis is all set to steamroller its way through this weekend's meeting of European finance ministers in Dublin, Ireland, forging a precise path to long-term fiscal stability in Europe.   German Finance Minister Theo Waigel and his French counterpart Jean Arthuis are heading for Dublin secure in the knowledge they hold the same position on all key agenda points.   After a preparatory meeting on Tuesday, the two countries made clear the lasting stability of the single currency was paramount and that every effort must be made to secure this.   Strengthened by the approval of controversial spending cuts by Paris and Bonn in recent days, the two ministers and their central bank heads will no doubt seek to inspire other European nations to rein in spending to approach the Maastricht ideals.   "The Franco-German position is sealed," said Alison Cottrell, international economist at PaineWebber in London.   "They have a few Ts to cross and a few Is to dot, but it is basically there.   Both want to keep the momentum going."   The officials agreed this week that the so-called stability pact to ensure fiscal discipline within Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) was essential for the Euro's success and that a second exchange rate mechanism was needed to group non-EMU currencies.   They also said the legal framework of the currency's launch should allow those who wish to transact in the Euro to do so from January 1, 1999, but force no one to do so until 2002.   Motivation to maintain convergence efforts is essential, as states which wish to join EMU in 1999 must meet the Maastricht Treaty's targets on interest and exchange rates, inflation, budget deficits and public borrowing in the decisive 1997 year.   But with that crunch year now drawing alarmingly close, observers have detected a subtle change in the hardline language used at Europe's core.   Germany, still insistent that the economic criteria in the Maastricht Treaty must not be softened, has nonetheless become wary of pushing its view that the Maastricht reference level of three percent of gross domestic product is an absolute maximum.   Responding to fears that nations will adopt wholesale window-dressing to make 1997 budgets look good -- whatever the consequences for 1998 and beyond -- the new buzzwords on fiscal discipline are 'long-term', 'durable', 'sustainable'.   "We are agreed that long-term budgetary discipline is seen as indispensible by both Germany and France if the stability of the Euro is to be guaranteed," Arthuis told reporters after Tuesday's Franco-German summit, echoing a comment from Waigel.   Both Cottrell and Thomas Mayer, senior economist at Goldman Sachs, saw this stance as an attempt to dim the spotlight which has been placed on 1997 alone, so going back to the spirit of the Maastricht convergence criteria rather than focusing exclusively on detail.   "It could well be that the politicians are seeing they are manoeuvring themselves into an awkward position...with some countries only trying to get the cosmetics right," Mayer said.   "This is a very important shift to emphasis on the Treaty.   I think they moved too far in stressing one particular year... which was almost counterproductive.   Looking at numbers alone cannot be consistent with the spirit of the Treaty," he added.   Cottrell added that too much emphasis on the numbers could pose problems if nations such as Italy and Spain -- which most economists say are not yet ready for EMU -- somehow managed to squeeze their 1997 budgets into a three percent straitjacket.   But Werner Becker, senior economist for European issues at Deutsche Bank Research in Frankfurt, said Tuesday's comments at least made clear that Europe's pacesetters did not themselves intend to cheat excessively to meet the Maastricht goals.   "Those worries have been largely dispelled," he said, welcoming that the two countries at the heart of European integration had obviously recognised that budget discipline was of no value unless it could be maintained long-term.   "A stability pact shows willingness to maintain these ambitious goals long-term.   It is needed primarily for psychological reasons...but it is nonetheless very important that its measures are effective," he said. 
18814 !GCAT !GVIO  The United Nations refugee agency said on Thursday that it was pressing Iran to move a camp holding 18,000 Iraqi Kurds further inland after at least 11 people were injured in cross-border shooting on Wednesday.   Spokeswoman Judith Melby of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees said UNHCR officials were unable to confirm any deaths in the incident.   But they had visited 11 injured people in hospital, including nine with bullet wounds.   The official Iranian news agency IRNA said on Wednesday that three Kurdish children and another refugee had been killed when the Iraqi army and Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) forces shelled Siranband camp in northwestern Iran.   The KDP denied involvement.   Melby said the circumstances of the incident were unclear, but shooting had started on the Iraqi side.   The Geneva-based agency was urging Iran to move the teeming camp -- which holds the largest number of Iraqi Kurds who fled fighting in northern Iraq -- back from the border.   "This incident in this camp is further proof of the need to relocate the camp further inland.   We have not yet reached agreement with the Iranian authorities to get it moved," Melby told Reuters.   "There was shelling toward the camp on the Iranian side, aimed from across the border...It definitely started on the Iraqi side.   "The Iranian authorities responded with fire.   It was a situation of total panic and tents caught on fire."   Officials of the UNHCR -- which is providing shelter and other relief materials to the Iraqi refugees -- were not in the camp at the time, but have visited since, the spokeswoman said.   "Our people have been in the hospital and seen 11 people who were injured, nine with bullet wounds, including one woman and a 10-year-old child.   I have no verification of fatalities."   The other Kurds in hospital suffered burns, UNHCR said.   IRNA reported on Wednesday: "Iraqi Kurdish refugees were killed or wounded in Siranband refugee camp in northwestern Iran on Wednesday by artillery shelling of the joined forces of Iraqi troops and Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP).   "The shelling by artillery...against the camp near the border city of Baneh started at noon during which four refugees, three of them children, were killed and 10 others were wounded."   IRNA said the camp was home to some 35,000 Iraqi Kurds.   UNHCR has registered slightly more than half that number, although refugees continue to spill over the border.   Dilshad Miran, a KDP official in London, said his group had no connection with the attack.   The UNHCR's Melby said: "It is hard to know whether people were hit by bullets from the other side or their side.   You would be hard pressed to find someone who could say."   The incident at Siranband followed shooting on Tuesday on the Iraqi side across the border from Tilehkooh camp in the heavily-mined Kermanshah region of southwestern Iran.   After shooting on the Iraqi side of the border, some 2,000 people rushed the border to cross over to Tilehkooh, already home to some 5,000 Iraqi Kurds, according to the UNHCR.   Iranian authorities have now moved the 7,000 people to a new camp some six km (four miles) inland at Tapeah Rash. 
18815 !E51 !E512 !ECAT !G15 !G158 !GCAT  European Union ministers were due on Thursday to give Trade Commissioner Sir Leon Brittan the go-ahead to pursue a wide range of liberalising policies, but diplomats said he would also be reminded to put Europe first.   Trade ministers from the 15-nation bloc were meeting to review the EU's policies ahead of a World Trade Organisation meeting in Singapore in December.   Although the Dublin gathering is informal, Brittan is seeking approval for policies to show EU unity ahead on issues ranging from U.S. trade legislation to developing world labour standards.   Diplomats said the Dublin meeting aims to focus on steps needed to extend world trade liberalisation but at the same time protect European industry.   "No-one is really against opening markets," said one diplomat, "but sometimes we need to be reminded that ministers have constituents to answer to." 
18816 !G15 !G155 !GCAT !GPOL  Consistency and continuity will be the watchwords for the Netherlands' presidency of the European Union, starting on January 1, 1997, the Foreign Ministry has said said in its 1997 budget memorandum.   "The six months of the Dutch presidency cannot and must not be viewed in isolation," the ministry said.   The document noted that the Dutch presidency coincides with several major EU projects: completion of the inter-governmental conference (IGC); the third phase of economic and monetary union (EMU); budget reform; changes in the agricultural and structural funds and negotiations on the admission of new members.   The ministry said the EU's internal agenda was likely to be dominated by the IGC, which it noted was scheduled to be concluded in mid-1997.   It said the IGC could conclude during the Dutch presidency or the Luxembourg presidency which follows it.   The ministry said the IGC should result in a balanced document which would enable the EU to take a step forward.   "The new treaty should, on the one hand, give the Union greater strength, effectiveness and democracy."   The text of the new treaty should also be written more clearly to make it more accessible to EU citizens, it added.   The European Union could not afford to stick with the status quo because yesterday's solutions could not be applied to tomorrow's problems, the ministry said.   Enlargement of the EU made changes in the composition of EU institutions essential, otherwise the EU would become less efficient with every new member.   The second and third pillars established under the Maastricht Treaty were not functioning well and also needed to be reformed, the ministry added.   Apart from the IGC, the Netherlands views preparation for the third phase of economic and monetary union as one of the key priorities during the Dutch presidency.   Negotiations on budget reform and reform of agricultural policy and the structural funds are not due to start until after the IGC, but initial, exploratory talks could be held during the Dutch presidency, the ministry said.   The creation of more jobs and the completion of the EU's internal market would also be important themes during the Dutch presidency, it added.   Cooperation with the countries bordering the Mediterranean would be given an important place on the agenda while peace and reconstruction in Yugoslavia would remain one of the most important concerns in the area of foreign and security policy.   Peace in the Middle-East, reforms in Central and Eastern Europe and transatlantic relations would also be high on the foreign and security policy agenda, the ministry said.   The government plans to send further details of its plans for the Dutch presidency to parliament in October. 
18817 !C17 !C34 !CCAT !G15 !G157 !GCAT  EU Competition Commissioner Karel Van Miert on Thursday gave little hope to Belgian steel maker Forges de Clabecq that its government-backed rescue plan would get EU clearance.   "It makes no sense to continue pouring taxpayers' money down the drain if there is no real chance to find viability for the company," he told Belgian RTBF radio.   "There is still overcapacity in the steel sector and other companies are threatened in other member states.   It makes no sense to paint a rosy picture."   He added that EU information showed that Clabecq losses seemed to be bigger than was thought a while ago.   On Wednesday the European Commission said it had asked Belgian authorities to provide details of their Clabecq rescue plan, which involves a planned 1.5 billion Belgian franc ($48.3 million) capital injection and the waiving of 500 million francs in debts.   The Commission also queried a 200 million Belgian franc loan granted by regional investment company Societe Wallonne de Siderurgie (SWS) to tide Clabecq over pending the result of the Commission investigation.   It was also SWS that undertook to waive the 500-million-franc loan given to the company in 1992.   The Commission said that although Belgium had taken the view that the rescue measures did not amount to state aid, it was difficult to imagine a private investor acting in the same way.   It stressed that the 1.5 billion capital injection, to be made by the Walloon region, had not been matched by an equivalent contributuion from the private shareholders.   -- Brussels Newsroom +32 2 287 6810, Fax +32 2 230 7710 ($ = 31.07 Belgian Francs) 
18818 !GCAT  Following are some of the leading stories in Norwegian papers this morning:   AFTENPOSTEN   - Norwegian state-owned oil company Statoil may export liquid natural gas on ships from the company's Snoehvit field on the coast of northern Norway.   Statoil will make a decision on developing the field within two years.   - The Foreign Ministry will evaluate Norway's financial aid to several developing countries after a report showing increasing military expenses in those countries.   Seven of Norway's 15 target countries had above-average military expenses for developing countries in 1991, according to a report by Statistics Norway on behalf of the ministry.   DAGENS NAERINGSLIV   - Bjoern Rune Gjelsten, who heads offshore and construction company Aker ASA, says it plans to buy several industrial companies in Norway and abroad.   - Broker firm Elcon Securities recommends buying shares in Norsk Hydro ASA and Saga Petroleum ASA.   Shares in Norsk Hydro are now sold at 301.50 crowns per share.   Elcon sees a potential of up to 375 crowns per share in 12-18 months.   Saga Petroleum's A share is sold at 102 crowns per share.   According to Elcon, the share has a potential of up to 150 crowns in two years. 
18819 !GCAT !GREL  Pope John Paul arrived in France under rainy skies on Thursday for a four-day pastoral visit that will test his stamina and his ability to rally the Roman Catholic faithful amid controversy over the Church's role.   The 76-year-old Pontiff, due to undergo surgery to remove his appendix next month, landed at an air base near the western city of Tours aboard a special Alitalia flight, bearing the papal crest.   President Jacques Chirac was waiting to greet him.    As French Replican Guards played a drumroll, the Pontiff wearing a red cape walked slowly but firmly down the gangway and shook hands with Chirac and his wife Bernadette.   The visit, packed with 21 public appearances, is the Pope's final foreign trip of the year before he enters hospital in Rome probably in the second week of October.   French media highlighted controversy over his visit.   The left-of-centre Liberation called him "The Cumbersome Visitor" in its front-page headline, while the tabloid Le Parisien stresed disaffection between the French people and a Pontiff they increasingly see as out of touch with his times.   Tours is the first stop of a trip that will take him to Brittany, Vendee and the eastern city of Reims. 
18820 !C13 !C17 !C34 !CCAT !G15 !G157 !GCAT  COREPER agreed a compromise on Wednesday to extend European Union rules allowing shipbuilding aid until December 31, 1997, in the absence of an international deal to scrap most support to the sector, an EU source said.   The agreement by the Committee of Permanent Representatives means there will be no extraordinary Industry Council on Friday.   "The Council will not take place," the source said, adding the issue would be an "A" point on the September 27 Telecoms Council.   No other details were immediately available.   The issue was a problem because the United States has so far not ratified an accord brokered in 1994 by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development.   The EU had to decide whether and for how long to extend its 7th shipbuilding directive, 90/684/EEC, which allows aid of up to nine percent of contract value.   The Council decided last year that current aid rules would apply in the absence of the OECD deal, but only until October 1, which is why the EU now had to take a new decision.   In July, the Commission proposed legislation COM(96)309 to enable the EU to extend the directive until the end of 1998 or the entry into force of the international agreement.   However, some member states believe that is too long while for example Finland would like the EU to scrap its aid now, even without ratification of the OECD deal.   Finland will vote against the compromise in COREPER, the source said.   Officials have earlier stressed that as soon as the OECD accord takes force, the EU rules would lapse automatically.   The OECD agreement would eliminate all direct shipbuilding subsidies except social aid and, within certain ceilings, aid for research and development.   But the deal, which was originally due to enter into force in January, faces ratification problems in the United States.   The Republican-controlled House of Representatives endorsed it on June 13, but adopted amendments that would delay key sections by 30 months, leading the Clinton administration to warn the agreement might not be ratified.   U.S. shipyards argue they have not had enough time to adjust to the commercial era after the loss of military contracts at the end of the Cold War.   The EU, which represents about 20 percent of the world shipbuilding market, ratified the OECD agreement in December, saying it would help improve market access for its shipyards. 
18821 !C11 !C42 !CCAT !E41 !ECAT !GCAT !GJOB  German sports car maker Dr. Ing.  h.c.F.Porsche AG said on Thursday that it would create a new engineering subsidiary with 120 employees in October, citing rising orders for engineering services.   Reflecting the broad industry dissatisfaction with Germany's trade associations, Porsche said the new unit would not join the employers' association and staff would have a 40-hour work week, not the 38.5-hour average for the engineering industry.   "We have to go in new directions in order to remain competitive," Porsche chairman Wendelin Wiedeking said in a statement.   The new company will be called Porsche Engineering Services GmbH and perform construction and development services.   Porsche's decision to sidestep shorter working hour agreements between German employers' associations and trade unions could restart a long-standing conflict between the associations and member companies as well as with unions.   But Wiedeking made clear that the alternative would have been for Porsche to decline to accept new orders.   "This would have cost engineering jobs," he said.   -- William Boston, Bonn Newsroom, 49 228 26097150 
18822 !GCAT  Following are some of the leading stories in the Swedish papers this morning.   Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.   DAGENS NYHETER   - The Swedish public sector is shrinking with more of its employees middle-aged or older and the workforce increasingly concentrated in Stockholm, a report by the State office said.   - The last remains of Sweden's oldest forest is not protected and risks going under the axe of forestry companies, said a report from Swedish environmental protection board.   - A Swedish government conference on the European Union is facing criticism in Sweden circles for being too slow and without direction, Dagens Nyheter said.   - Swedes are the European Union's hardest workers, with the longest hours per week and most intensive work, according to a survey by the European Foundation on the improvement of living and working conditions.   SVENSKA DAGBLADET   - Statistics Sweden's figures of rises in industrial wages for 1995 and 1996 are exaggerated and lack foundation, says the Swedish employers federation.   - The Swedish state is set this year to collect an extra two billion crowns because of improved tax collection schemes.   - This year's record grain harvest is set to cut bread and flour prices.   DAGENS INDUSTRI   - Over half of 500 Swedish small companies polled by the paper believed the government's new proposals to help small firms would encourage firms to employ more staff.   - Economists at two Swedish trade organisations are warning that 1996 will not be a good year.   Swedish Trade Council economist Mauro Gozzo and Federation of Swedish Industries economist Ola Virin say economic indicators for the second quarter are better than for the first, but only marginally.   -- Paul de Bendern, Stockholm newsroom +46-8-700 1006 
18823 !GCAT  The following are leading domestic stories in Portuguese newspapers.   DIARIO ECONOMICO   - The International Monetary Fund says Portugal's economic outlook improving but it still sees deficit next year above EMU target.   - The world's eighth-largest tobacco group Seita criticises the way Portugal's Tabaqueira is being privatised.   - GEC-Alsthom will give Sorefame train construction work if it wins the contract for a railway across the river Tagus.   PUBLICO   - Mobile phone company TMN to formalise in a few weeks a contract with banking services group Sociedade Interbancaria de Servicos.   DIARIO DE NOTICIAS   - Portugal's second-largest trade union UGT wants salaries one pct above the European Union average.   - Trade unions back government plans to tighten tax screw on the self-employed but employers are against Prime Minister Antonio Guterres' scheme.   --Lisbon bureau 3511-3538254 
18824 !E12 !ECAT !G15 !G154 !GCAT !M13 !M132 !MCAT  The Finnish markka will not be linked to Europe's exchange rate mechanism in September, Ilkka Kanerva, chairman of the Bank of Finland's board of parliamentary supervisors said on Thursday.   Speaking to reporters after a regular supervisory board meeting, Kanerva said that for various reasons it would not be possible to decide to link the markka to ERM during the coming September 21-22 weekend nor the weekend of September 28-29.   He declined further comment on the timetable.   Any decision to peg the markka to ERM must pass the board of parliamentary supervisors.   The markka has been floating since September 1992. 
18825 !C13 !C17 !C34 !CCAT !G15 !G157 !GCAT  The European Commission restated on Wednesday that a Spanish aid of 4.2 billion pesetas granted to textile firm Hilaturas y Tejidos Andaluces SA (Hytasa) in 1990 was illegal and ordered that it be repaid with interest.   The subsidies were declared illegal under European Union competition rules for the first time in 1992 on the grounds that the restructuring plan, designed to prepare the company for privatisation, did not guarantee its return to profitability.   But the European Court of Justice in 1994 overruled the commission saying it had not been convinced by its argument.   The Commission said in its latest statement, it had again concluded that the 1990 plan could not have brought Hytasa back to its feet.   This conclusion, it said, was backed by the Spanish authorities recent decision to liquidate the company located in Seville. 
18826 !GCAT  Here are the highlights of stories in the Danish press on Thursday.   Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.   BERLINGSKE TIDENDE   --- Danish Banks are now competing for new customers by offering them loans for which they do not have to provide security.   --- At a court case due to end this week, a group of Danish haemophiliacs is trying to prove that pharmaceutical group Novo Nordisk was responsible for selling blood products which it knew could contain HIV virus, which infected a number of haemophiliacs with AIDS in the mid-1980s.   POLITIKEN   --- Danish Justice Minister Bjoern Westh, the police and Danes at large are now calling for maximum penalties for drug crimes and urging the courts to tighten up their present lenient penalties.   JYLLANDS POSTEN   --- A survey based on 25 years of research shows that far more Danish children are mentally ill than previously assumed.   Between 5,000 and 10,000 youngsters suffer from severe mental problems often without their parents knowing.   BORSEN   --- Danish state railways (DSB) travel agency and other bureaux are refusing to handle sales of air tickets for British private discount airline Virgin Express, selling instead tickets for Scandinavian Airlines System (SAS), which is 50 percent state-owned.   --- A new international study conducted by accountancy firm Price Waterhouse and the Financial Times shows that Lego toy group is the most respected Danish company abroad, closely followed by pharmaceutical group Novo Nordisk and pump producer Danfoss. 
18827 !C11 !C13 !C34 !CCAT !G15 !G157 !GCAT  The European Commission said on Thursday it had started a routine probe into a proposed joint venture between steel companies Thyssen Stahl AG, which belongs to German group Thyssen, and Boehler Uddeholm AG of Austria.   It said in a statement that the joint venture, to be called Boehler Thyssen Schweisstechnik GmbH, will produce and distribute welding rods.   The deal apparently falls under European Union rules which prohibit creation or strengthening of dominant positions, the statement said.   The Commission has about a month to clear it or start an in-depth, four-month, investigation.   Brussels newsroom 322 2876841 
18828 !GCAT  The following are some of the leading stories in Finnish papers this morning.   HELSINGIN SANOMAT   - EU competition authorities will require changes in merger of Finnish wholesalers Kesko and Tuko to avert creation of market-dominating giant.   - National Board of Taxation planning 30-strong "strike force" to crack down on tax evaders.   - Opposition Centre Party leader Esko Aho opposes linkage of markka to ERM this autumn.   @   - Retired minister and former head of Valmet Oy Olavi J. Mattila suspected of forgery and fraud.   - Grassroots movement opposed to Finnish membership of EU delivered names of 45,000 supporters to central election board.   The group has put up 10 candidates for the October European Parliament elections.   - Children at eastern Helsinki day-care centre learn to dance the Macarena -- and a lot more.   @   KAUPPALEHTI   - New nationwide commercial television channel not expected to increase volume of advertising.   - Investment bank Morgan Stanley says forestry industry upturn will be delayed, lowers earnings forecast for all Nordic forest industry groups.   - Finnish investment in eastern Europe growing steadily -- last year Finnish companies invested 460 million markka there.   - Enso becomes main owner of prefabricated house builder Suomen Taloteollisuus.   @   AAMULEHTI   - Ministry of defence concerned about continuous decline in refresher military training.   Commander in chief says the trend could seriously weaken Finland's defence capability.   - Costs of health services in Finland highest in Nordic countries, Nordic social services committee says.   @   TURUN SANOMAT   - Former foreign minister Pertti Paasio, in new book of memoirs, reveals that President Mauno Koivisto prevented Martti Ahtisaari from becoming U.N. high commissioner for refugees at the end of the 1980s.   - Vocalist and two guitarists quit quirky Finnish band Leningrad Cowboys.   --Helsinki Newsroom +358-0-680 50 235 
18829 !GCAT  Following are some of the main stories in Dutch newspapers today.   Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.   FINANCIEELE DAGBLAD   - Amsterdam's options exchange, EOE, has proposed to its members that the new 'Switch' trading system be scrapped.   Switch would combine open outcry and screen trading in a single system (p1).   - Education minister Jo Ritzen raises concerns about the standard of Dutch education (p1).   - The government is to reconsider the age limit for corporate supervisory board member, currently 72 years (p5)   - Junior social affairs minister Frank de Grave is urging stronger regulations for the financing of pensions (p11).   - British Telecom and Netherlands Rail NS have each invested 100-150 million guilders in their Dutch telecoms joint venture, Telfort (p1).   - ING is to launch a "safe" product, allowing investors to profit from rises in the Amsterdam Stock Exchange index AEX, but also guaranteeing them the return of their initial investment (p11).   VOLKSKRANT   - Dutch employers are not keen on performance-related pay (p2)   - Dutch banks agree measures to safeguard the privacy of users of "chip-knip" electronic purses (p2).   - Dutch unemployment falls among men, but rises for women (p3).   DE TELEGRAAF   - Eco-tax on use of gas and electricity is to be extended to include large-scale companies (p35).   ALGEMEEN DAGBLAD   - Dutch social services predict a massive rise in the number of ecstasy users (p1).   - Power company Edon cannot claim damages estimated at tens of millions of guilders for faulty wind turbines from troubled Californian manufacturer KeneTech (p3).   -- Amsterdam Newsdesk +31-20-504-5000 (FAX 31-20-504-5040) 
18830 !E12 !ECAT !G15 !G154 !GCAT !M13 !M132 !MCAT  The Finnish markka will not be linked to Europe's exchange rate mechanism in September, Ilkka Kanerva, chairman of the Bank of Finland's board of parliamentary supervisors said on Thursday.   Speaking to reporters after a regular supervisory board meeting, Kanerva said that for various reasons it would not be possible to decide to link the markka to ERM during the coming September 21-22 weekend nor the weekend of September 28-29.   He declined further comment on the timetable.   Any decision to peg the markka to ERM must pass the board of parliamentary supervisors.   The markka has been floating since September 1992.    "(Any linkage) was never intended for this weekend," Kanerva said.   "The essential people are not around to make the decision," he added.   When asked whether a link would be possible the weekened of September 28-29, Kanerva said: "Actually it (that weekend) has been out of the question for a long time."   The International Monetary Fund and World Bank annual meeting is held in Washington from September 24 to October 3.   Asked whether it was possible that the markka would not be linked to the ERM at all, Kanerva said: "In principle that is possible."   The next regular Bank of Finland supervisory board meeting is scheduled for October 7.   -- Helsinki newsroom + 358 - 0 - 680 50 240 
18831 !GCAT  Following are the highlights of stories reported in the Irish press on Thursday.   IRISH TIMES   - Irish industrial development body IDA Ireland has been asked by the government to seek fresh investment after the loss of more than 900 jobs in two foreign-owned factories which are to close.   - The Irish government said a programme of six-monthly interviews to review people's continued eligibility for social welfare payments would be introduced.    - The third national television channel consortium, TV3, is seeking a new investor after partner UTV pulled out on Wednesday.   - State electricity company ESB is having advanced negotiations with the Department of Enterprise and Employment to discuss the introduction of a special levy on all electricity users from 1999.   - British retailing group Marks & Spencer will invest over 65 million stg developing new outlets in Ireland in the next five years.    - The board of Irish health insurance firm VHI is to ask chief executive Brian Duncan at a meeting today for his response to a recent report that recommended his contract be terminated.   - Dutch-owned drugs firm Organon is expanding its workforce by 170 at its Swords, Co Dublin plant.   IRISH INDEPENDENT   - Irish prime minister John Bruton criticised Britain's attitude to the European Union and said it was time some governments realised they needed the EU more than it needed them.   - Irish cement company Sean Quinn Grouup made pretax profits of 9.1 million stg for the year ended May 31, 1996.   - The Dublin equity market reached a new record high on Wednesday but slipped back slightly before the close.   The highest point reached by the ISEQ index was 2,596.03 before it receded to close at 2,593.49.   -- Dublin Newsroom +353 1 676 9779 
18832 !GCAT !GDIP !GREL  Pope John Paul left Italy on Thursday for a busy four-day trip to France amid fears about his health.   The visit is the Pope's final foreign trip of the year before he enters hospital in Rome for surgery to remove his appendix, probably in the second week of October.   The 76-year-old Pontiff departed from Rome's Fiumicino airport on a special Alitalia flight bound for Tours airport in western France.   He wil be met by French President Jacques Chirac.   Tours is the first stop of a visit that will take him to Brittany, Vendee and the eastern city of Reims.   The operation was announced by the Vatican last weekend when it finally said that an inflammation of the appendix was the cause of three fevers which have struck the Polish-born Pope since last Christmas. 
18833 !C13 !C17 !C34 !CCAT !G15 !G157 !GCAT  The European Commission restated on Wednesday that Spanish government aid of 4.2 billion pesetas to textile firm Hilaturas y Tejidos Andaluces SA (Hytasa) in 1990 was illegal and ordered that it be repaid with interest.   The subsidies were declared illegal under European Union competition rules for the first time in 1992 on the grounds that the restructuring plan, designed to prepare the company for privatisation, did not guarantee its return to profitability.   But the European Court of Justice in 1994 overruled the Commission saying it had not been convinced by its argument.   The Commission said in its latest statement, it had again concluded that the 1990 plan could not have brought Hytasa back to its feet.   This conclusion, it said, was backed by the Spanish authorities' recent decision to liquidate the company located in Seville.   Brussels newsroom 32 2 2876841 
18834 !GCAT  Following are some of the top headlines in leading Italian newspapers.   ----------   TOP POLITICAL STORIES   *Most politicians condemn the search ordered by Verona magistrates into Northern League party's headquarters in Milan, after clashes broke up between members of the secessionist party and the police (all).   *In a message to parliament, President Oscar Luigi Scalfaro urges a political answer to secessionist claims through constitutional reforms (all).   *After the arrest of state railway's managing director Lorenzo Necci in corruption probe, magistrates investigate up to 50 people.   Although they denied any politician was on the list of those under preliminary investigation, rumours circulate that six politicians are involved (all).   ----------   TOP BUSINESS STORIES   *Olivetti's chief executive officer Francesco Caio has been ousted after 76 days of office.   He will be replaced by Roberto Colannino, a long-standing associate of the group's former chairman Carlo De Benedetti (all).   *The International Monetary Found warns Italy to make further cuts in public spending, otherwise "the country will be punished by markets" (Corriere della Sera).   *Prime Minister Romano Prodi says "If we do not make a strong 1997 budget we are out of Europe.   It's our last chance" (all).   * Italy's industrial turnover fell by 7.5 pct in June (all).   * Banco di Napoli psted a 674 billion lire loss in first half 1996 and is expected to lose 1.4 trillion lire at the end of the year (Sole 24 ore ).   * Italian mobile phones business, waiting for the arrival of a third operator, is worth 10 trillion lire (Il Sole 24 ore).   Reuters has not verified these stories and cannot vouch for their accuracy.   --Milan bureau +39266129450 
18835 !GCAT  The following are the main stories from Thursday morning's Austrian newspapers.   DER STANDARD   - Austria's coalition government agrees on a new social security scheme for junior employees after months of intense debate.   - Austrian railways to modernise key east-west route by the year 2005.   - Austrian government urges inclusion of social clauses in international trade agreements.   - Austrian companies exported goods and services worth 8.9 billion schillings to south-east Asia last year, accounting for about 1.5 percent of Austria's overall foreign trade.   - Do-it-yourself chain baumax sees 1996 dividend steady at 19 schillings per share after reporting a slight decrease in first-half profits.   - Eastern and central European bourses will continue to boom, analysts at Investmentbank Austria say.   DIE PRESSE   - Trade union say they will resist any attempts to cut public servants' pensions.   - German supermarket chain Rewe denies reported acquisition of Austrian Loewa and familia supermarket chains.   - Austria's 250 environmental companies had a combined turnover of more than 21 billion schillings last year.   - German tyre maker Continental might shut down a plant in Ireland in order to save its ailing Traiskirchen plant in southern Austria.   - Troubled ski maker Atomic, owned by Finnish Amer group, is expected to report a full-year loss as liabilities mount and margins fall.   - Bank Austria, country's biggest bank, celebrates fifth anniversary amid news it will cut 1,000 jobs to cut costs.   KURIER   - Austria's state-owned telecoms monopoly is looking for a strategic partner to help beef up its problem-ridden mobile phone activities.   - Austrian spin-etch machinery maker SEZ plans initial public offering on the Zurich bourse before the end of the year. 
18836 !GCAT  These are leading stories in this morning's Paris newspapers.   The 1997 budget presented yesterday includes the following points:   - Total public deficit will be cut to or below three percent of GDP in 1997 from four percent this year, meeting the Maastricht Treaty criteria for a single currency.   Central government budget deficit will be cut to 283.7 billion francs, social security deficit is expected to reach 30 billion francs.   - Central government spending will be frozen at 1996 estimated level of 1,552 billion francs.   LES ECHOS   -- 1997 budget fits in nicely with Maastricht requirements.   Employers approve, unions and family associations disappointed.   -- Societe Generale posts a 2.73-billion-franc profit for the first half.   LA TRIBUNE DESFOSSES   -- Alcatel Alsthom chairman Serge Tchuruk confirms offer for the whole of Thomson, could seek partners in Asia for subsidiary Thomson Multimedia.   L'AGEFI   -- Compagnie de Suez considers selling a 11-billion-franc real estate portfolio in subsidiary Credisuez.   Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and Lehman Brothers may be interested.   LE FIGARO-ECONOMIE   -- Pinault-Printemps-Redoute posts a 748 million francs profit for the first half.   -- Aerospatiale chairman Yves Michot says he wants merger with Dassault to be implemented by June 1997, intends to privatise his group after the merger, says a 10-billion-franc recapitalisation of Aerospatiale may not be necessary, and expects 1996 yearly results to be in line with its 273-million-franc profit posted for the first half.   THE INTERNATIONAL HERALD TRIBUNE   -- Some economists say French budget partly relies on an accounting device, say cuts in spending are merely cosmetic and that it meets Maastricht criteria thanks to a controversial transfer of 37.5 billion francs from telecoms state monopoly France Telecom to the Treasury.   -- Paris Newsroom +33 1 4221 5381 
18837 !E51 !ECAT !GCAT !GDIP  Painting a bleak picture of life in Tajikistan, the United Nations said it intended to send a humanitarian relief mission to the former Soviet republic to increase the current level of assistance.   "The people of Tajikistan are faced with an acute crisis," said Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali in a report to the Security Council released on Wednesday.   Because of continuing heavy fighting in several areas, he said thousands of civilians have been displaced and many needed aid "to meet their basic survival needs."   Although the cereal harvest is expected to be larger this year than last, Tajikistan will continue to need foreign help for basic foods.   Diarrhoea outbreaks are common and typoid epidemics and malaria were reported totally out of control.   Since independence in 1992, the central Asian state of 5.7 million people, has suffered a mosaic of clan and regional rivalries, in which tens of thousands of people were killed, 600,000 were displaced and another 300,000 fled the country.   The report described a ceasefire agreement reached in July as a failure.   Fighting continued in the central Tavildara area and increased in the the Garm district to the north.   In addition tension was is high on the Tajik-Afghan border and U.N. military observers have been restricted by both sides from inspecting dangerous areas, it said.   Boutros-Ghali called on the government and the rebels to resume direct contacts and said his special representative, Gerd Merrem of Germany, would help set up such a meeting.   The U.N. Mission of Observers in Tajikistan (UNMOT) comprises 94 people, including 44 military observers.   Last month, after weeks of fighting with rebels, government troops took control of the strategically important town of Tavildara, 120 miles (193 km) east of the capital of Dushanbe.   Boutros-Ghali said that in Tavildara itself, about 15 percent of the town haf been completely destroyed and nearly all residents had fled. 
18838 !GCAT !GVIO  The United States wants to start discussions on a treaty to combat terrorist bombings as a key initiative in the current General Assembly session, U.S. Ambassador Madeleine Albright said on Wednesday.   "We will seek support for an initiative to draft, negotiate and conclude a convention against terrorist bombing, she told reporters at the Foreign Press Centre.   "Terrorism is a plague that has spread to every corner of the globe.   We must work together to deter, prevent and punish terrorist acts," she said.   "And we must make clear to those who contemplate committing such acts that the international community will be unified in combatting them should they follow through on that pernicious temptation," she added.   The United States has signed about 10 international treaties against terrorism, most of which require participating nations to prosecute or extradite suspected terorrists.   In addition the United States has extradition agreements with more than 100 countries.   But evidently the June truck bombing in Saudi Arabia that killed U.S. soldiers and the July explosion of a TWA Boeing 747, which may have been caused by a bomb, have convinced the administration that much more international action was needed.   Albright said the United States would work for an international declaration in the assembly on "citizens' security."   She said this would demonstrate "widespread resolve to combat transnational crime in all its forms."   U.S. President Bill Clinton in his 1995 address to the General Assembly forcused on international cooperation on terrorism, drugs, illicit arms sales and crime.   Next Tuesday, he was expected to include action against terrorism in his speech as well as be the first to sign the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, recently endorsed by the assembly. 
18839 !GCAT !GDIP  Prepared to use its veto, the United States insisted on Wednesday that Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali must be replaced by someone who will not be dragged "kicking and screaming" into reforming the world body.   U.S. Ambassador Madeleine Albright told reporters at the Foreign Press Centre that reports the Clinton administration might change its mind about Boutros-Ghali after the Nov. 5 election had no foundation.   "The administration will not change its mind, if re-elected," she said.   "We are prepared to use our veto."   Albright said reforming the world body needed to be a top priority for a U.N. chief, who should be an administrator rather than a diplomat and a statesman.   "In different periods, different emphasis is put on these jobs," she said, adding that it was essential at this time that a new secretary-general be foremost an administrator.   This did not mean electing a bookkeeper "but someone who has a vision about reform and is not dragged into it kicking and screaming but who sees reform as a very high priority."   The United States has angered numerous diplomats, especially those from France, Russia and China, in announcing through the press it would block Boutros-Ghali's bid for re-election.   His five-year term ends this year and all four countries, as well as Britain, have veto power on the Security Council, which chooses the secretary-general.   Albright emphatically denied a widespread belief among delegates that the U.S. campaign against Boutros-Ghali arose from presidential politics to meet Republican criticism of most activities of the United Nations.   Among Democrats in Washington, Boutros-Ghali also has few defenders, and payment of the $1.6 billion American debt to the United Nations has been delayed.   "The issue here is this is not an issue of presidential politics ... we want to make sure our tax dollars are spent properly," she said.   "I am sure my country is not alone."   In the past year, the United Nations has sliced off or left vacant 900 jobs, which Albright has credited to the American Undersecretary-General Joseph Connor, who in turn has supported and praised Boutros-Ghali for the programme.   But the latest debacle in the United Nations, which has angered Albright as well as British envoys, involves the dismissal of 37 employees who were given three months notice after their jobs were cut and they could not be placed elsewhere in the bureaucracy.   The General Assembly's budgetary committee directed Boutros-Ghali to delay the dismissals.   But Albright disagreed, saying it was "the job of the secretary-general to make those tough decisions."   If the 73-year-old Egyptian diplomat does leave his post, African nations, backed by China, insisted another African replace him.   Some delegates believe that is one key purpose of a forthcoming trip by U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher to several African nations.   Among the African candidates mentioned are Kofi Annan of Ghana, the U.N. undersecretary-general for peacekeeping, and Salim A. Salim, chairman of the Organisation of African Unity.   Hamid Algabid of Niger, the head of the Islamic Conference, has also announced his candidacy.   But U.S. efforts to belittle Boutros-Ghali's achievements have generated some sympathy for the secretary-general, prompting the Security Council last month to rebuff Albright's efforts to begin finding a replacement now. 
18840 !GCAT !GPOL !GVOTE  Greece's erratic foreign policy, which has often infuriated its allies, will keep moving towards a solidly pro-Western stance whoever wins elections on Sunday.   Extreme policy swings, unilateral ultimatums and maverick positions against prevailing Western policies will become relics of the past, diplomats and foreign policy analysts say.   Socialist Premier Costas Simitis and conservative challenger Miltiades Evert would both work to improve relations with Balkan neighbours, restore credibility with Western partners and keep troubled relations with Turkey from boiling over.   "I don't see any dramatic differences.   They have the same overall goals but would implement policies differently," said Thanos Veremis, director of the Hellenic Foundation for European and Foreign Policy.   The concerns of either leader would be EU relations, EU or U.S. initiatives on Cyprus and problems with Turkey, with whom Greece came close to war in January.   Both Simitis and Evert would try to see the world through EU eyes and separate foreign policy from the unpredictable populist antics which have dogged Greek politics since a military junta fell in 1974.   This would be especially true if Simitis, 60, a passionless law and economics professor, won.   He took over as premier this year from late party founder Andreas Papandreou -- the man the West loved to hate.   "Simitis has shown no interest in submitting foreign policy to the whims of the Greek mob.   He is determined and cool, and he has done almost everything right as far as the European Union is concerned," a Western diplomat said.   Evert has toyed with nationalism during the campaign but this was to steal votes from the tiny Political Spring party, and he would drop this approach quickly if elected, diplomats predicted.   For most of the past 20 years Greece has tweaked the nose of its EU partners and the United States -- its major arms supplier -- or uttered a flat "drop dead" in foreign policy disputes.   Papandreou, who ruled throughout the turbulent and fiercely anti-American, anti-EU 1980s, seemed to delight in infuriating his Western allies.   "The old man (Papandreou) was a great problem.   He saw the whole of foreign policy through the prism of domestic politics and left-wing populism," said Veremis.   Papandreou vowed to shut U.S. bases and to quit the EU and the NATO military alliance.   He never did, but many Greeks loved his David versus Goliath show.   On a more sinister note, he hobnobbed with Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi and communist dictators in Eastern Europe, and he refused to extradite Arab and Palestinian guerrillas to stand trial in Western countries for alleged attacks on civilians.   While his allies sat in muted fury, Papandreou explained he believed in a balanced foreign policy.   At home he told adoring crowds that Greece took orders from nobody.   When he returned to power in 1993, one of his first moves was to slap a trade embargo on the neighbouring former Yugoslav republic of Macedonia.   EU partners, already upset with Greece's out-of-step Balkan policy, erupted in rage and took Athens to the European Court to try to have the embargo lifted.   The 1990 to 1993 conservative government of former premier Constantine Mitsotakis fared little better with Western allies.   His foreign minister, young Harvard Business School graduate Antonis Samaras, set EU partners' teeth on edge with persistent and ponderous lectures on Greek and Balkan history.   He disrupted EU affairs for two years with demands that Macedonia, the only Yugoslav republic to win independence peacefully, change its name.   Whatever the merits of his case, his style led some EU allies to brand Greece a Balkan bully.   But diplomats say Greece appears to be entering a new era, leaving behind the outpouring of emotion of the 1980s after the military junta fell and the confusion in the Balkans in the early 1990s after communism crashed.   "The flamboyant, even reckless, go-it-alone approach was popular and emotionally satisfying for many but it left Greece isolated and weak internationally," another EU diplomat said.   Both Evert and Simitis have realised that nationalism, domestic populism or adventures in the region would hurt Greek interests and both believe careful lobbying of EU partners is the best way forward, the diplomats said.   A priority for either will be rearming the military.   Defence ministry officials have put a $10 billion price tag on the arms package they would like and both politicians have identified NATO ally Turkey as the potential enemy.   "Our defence policy is our ability to deter Turkish threats.   The main factor in this is our armed forces and upgrading our armed forces personnel, development and armaments," Simitis said during the campaign.   Diplomats said that if Simitis wins he might dump outspoken Foreign Minister Theodoros Pangalos and replace him with George Papandreou, son of the late premier and a key Simitis supporter.   Evert was likely to name Peter Moliviatis, a distinguished diplomat and former ambassador who helped steer Greece into the European Union in 1981. 
18841 !GCAT !GCRIM !GPOL  Belgium's parliament meets in early session on Thursday to consider urgent steps for rebuilding public confidence shattered by a shocking child sex abuse case and a political murder scandal.   Political parties were expected to back the setting-up of a committee of inquiry into judicial bungling in investigation of the 1991 mafia-style murder of a leading politician and the activities of a paedophile ring.   The scandals have shocked this mainly Roman Catholic country of 9.9 million people at the hub of western Europe and sullied its image as an untroubled backwater famed for good food and beers.   High-level corruption has emerged in both cases.   In the child sex case -- in which at least four young girls died after being abducted -- police officers are suspected of having been involved in a car theft racket led by paedophile gang leader and convicted child rapist Marc Dutroux.   In the case of the killing of former Socialist minister Andre Cools, party-appointed investigators have attempted to divert inquiries leading to party members, judicial sources say.   Faction leaders in parliament brought the start of the parliamentary year forward by almost three weeks to discuss urgent measures needed to restore people's shattered confidence in the judicial and political system.   Four ministers have lost their jobs so far in the five-year probe into the slaying of Cools.   But until recently investigators had failed to find any murder suspects.   The case came to life again a week and a half ago when four men were arrested in the wake of information from an anonymous witness.   They include former regional and federal minister Alain van der Biest and his former private secretary Richard Taxquet.   A francophone socialist, Van der Biest has been charged with Cools's murder.   He denies any involvement in the case.   Two more arrests have been made but many details are still murky.   But it appears clear that Cools was gunned down to prevent him from making embarrassing revelations about party funding.   On Wednesday another prominent Francophone Socialist official, former regional minister Guy Mathot, was again linked to the killing by newspaper La Libre Belgique.   He was named by three of those arrested.   Mathot told Belgian television angrily: "What a lie."   Tempers flared elsewhere with investigators in the eastern city of Liege -- the city where Cools was shot down at point-blank range -- accusing some Belgian media of having thwarted them by releasing the names of the two suspected killers.   International arrest warrants have been issued for the two, both Tunisian, named as Abdel Jielil Ben Regiel and Abdel Magid Bel Almi.   The two men are alleged to have been hired in Sicily.   Seven people have been arrested in the linked scandals of paedophilia, kidnapping and murder and car theft, the chief suspect being Dutroux, a father of three.   One of those arrested for car theft is a detective.   The bodies of young victims were found in properties owned by Dutroux.   Othewr properties owned by him are still being searched for clues possibly to the whereabouts of missing girls. 
18842 !GCAT !M11  Hughes Electronics Corp could announce on Thursday plans to form a new satellite-services company after completing proposed $3 billion acquisition of PanAmSat Corp , the Wall Street Journal reported Thursday.   Other top stories included:   * Allied Waste agreed to buy the waste management services of Laidlaw for over $1.5 billion in cash and securities.   * The U.S. trade deficit widened by $3.49 billion in July to its worst level since 1992.   * The United Auto Workers showed flexibility in its talks with General Motors Corp and Chrysler Corp .   * Longshoremen are expected to reject a proposed labor contract again.   * PepsiCo Inc hired former RJR Nabisco Holdings Corp chief Karl von der Heyden as chief financial officer and vice chairman.   * Chateau Properties sued to block an unsolicited tender by an entity controlled by investor Sam Zell and sweetened the terms for its proposed merger with ROC Communities Inc .   * Tambrands Inc announced a restructuring that will close four plants, cut 600 jobs, and result in a $37 million charge.   * NationsBank Corp hiring of Stephens Inc to review the fairness of its $8.7 billion acquisition of Boatmen's Bancshares Inc is causing controversy, because the Stephens family will make a profit on its stake in Boatmen's.   * Bally Entertainment Corp Chief Executive Arthur Goldberg will named president of Hilton Hotels Corp's gambling operations after the expected approval by Hilton shareholders Thursday of the merger of the two companies.   * Hewlett-Packard Co said millions of printer cartridges shipped this year for ink-jet printers were defective.   * After lurching about on more speculation over whether the Federal Reserve will raise interest rates next week, bonds ended little changed yesterday.   - Credit Markets.   * Richard Blum, a prominent California money manager know for his marriage to Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein, is raising his firm's profile on Wall Street by rattling management's cage at Dexter Corp .   - Heard on the Street   --New York Newsdesk (212) 859-1610 
18843 !GCAT  The following stories were reported in Thursday's Daily Variety:   NEW YORK - Chris Columbus' 1492 Prods.   and producer Ben Myron will remake the 1950 film "Cheaper By the Dozen", with Columbus possibly directing.   HOLLYWOOD - David Salzman and Quincy Jones are pitching to syndicators an updated version of the gameshow Name That Tune, which could be paired with a remake of the gameshow Treasure Hunt.   HOLLYWOOD - King World's top talkshow Oprah kicked into high gear in its premiere week ending Sept. 8, placing second to perpetual No. 1 Wheel of Fortune among all syndicated shows.   --New York Newsdesk (212) 859-1610 
18844 !C11 !CCAT !GCAT !GENT  Germany's Bertelsmann AG and its Luxembourg partner CLT have abandoned plans to launch a digital pay-television system, CLT said on Thursday.   Their pullout brings an instant chill to the once promising German digital TV market, where CLT and Bertelsmann have been investing vast sums of money for a showdown against the rival Kirch group.   "The CLT management will propose to its responsible supervisory boards that it concentrate on free TV markets," CLT said in a statement released late on Wednesday.   "The CLT management will thus advise the boards to cancel plans to bring a digital pay-TV programme bouquet known as Club RTL on to the market," added CLT, formally known as Compagnie Luxembourgeoise de Telediffusion.   Earlier on Wednesday, Bertelsmann board member Thomas Middelhoff told a news conference in Berlin that Bertelsmann was planning to delay its entry into the digital TV market until the company feels there is a market for it.   In its statement, CLT said its decision to abandon the digital TV market for at least the time being had the "full support" of Bertelsmann subsidiary UFA.   CLT and UFA are planning to merge later this year.   "The first experiences with digital TV in Germany show that free TV will remain the dominant form of TV for the medium term," CLT said.   Club RTL was to be the Bertelsmann/CLT answer to Kirch's DF1 system.   Based on the sluggish demand for digital TV recorded by Kirch, whose DF1 system has got off to a slow start since its July launch, the company said it saw no point in investing further in the system for the time being.   "Our analysis has found that the chances of a further pay-TV system are extremely limited and a launch for Club RTL would make little sense at the moment," CLT said, referring to pay-TV network Premiere, with 1.2 million subscribers in Germany.   Kirch's DF1 is believed to have no more than 3,000 subscribers and will fall well short of its goal to have 200,000 subscribers by the end of the year.   Earlier, Bertelsmann had hinted it was ready to abandon the digital TV technical platform alliance known as Multimedia Betriebs GmbH (MMBG).   Deutsche Telekom, the main driving force in MMBG, said earlier this week it was leaving the alliance.   MMBG shareholders will meet later on Thursday in Bonn to decide the fate of the collapsing consortium.   "Three months of digital television have shown that it is extraordinarily difficult to find subscribers willing to pay 1,000 marks for a decoder," Bertelsmann board member Thomas Middelhoff told reporters in Berlin on Wednesday.   "We will take cautious, clear steps in this market and will not invest billions."   Middelhoff was referring to the slow interest in Kirch's DF1, so far Germany's only digital pay TV service.   Kirch does not comment on DF1 subscriber levels.   Klaus Mangold, head of the Debis services division of Daimler-Benz AG, which is a minor shareholder in MMBG, also indicated that his company was planning to pull out.   MMBG was to market a common digital decoder and avoid a battle over technology standards in the new industry like the war between VHS and Betamax video recorders. 
18845 !C183 !C34 !G154 !G157 !GCAT  The following are the main stories from Thursday morning's German newspapers:   FRANKFURTER ALLGEMEINE ZEITUNG   - Fifty members of parliament say government's move to Berlin should be delayed by five years   - Economic council criticises new anti-trust bill designed to bring German cartel law into line with EU law   - Senior official at east German privatisation agency BvS says size of task was seriously underestimated   - DIW economic research institute cautions against raising value added tax   HANDELSBLATT   - Engineering industry employers at odds with president of federal labour court over whether existing contracts can be changed to cut sick pay   - East German privatisation agency BvS says it faces tougher task than expected   - Newspaper publishers say they have no fear of online services   - Economic council criticises new anti-trust bill designed to bring German cartel law into line with EU law   SUEDDEUTSCHE ZEITUNG   - Bavaria continues to insist Bosnian refugees must start leaving Germany from October 1   - Employers warn workers against striking to prevent immediate cuts in sick pay   - Forty-eight members of parliament say government's move to Berlin should be delayed by five years   - Advertisers remain committed to newspaper market   - Economic council criticises new anti-trust bill designed to bring German cartel law into line with EU law   - Newspaper market stable despite economic weakness   - New detention order served on Thyssen boss Vogel   - Engineering union IG Metall welcomes VW idea of issuing securities to finance early retirement   DIE WELT   - Health minister Seehofer wants law to prevent contributions to health insurance rising   - East German managers still paid less than west German counterparts   - East German privatisation agency BvS plans to close down in 1998   - Judges criticise constitutional court   - Engineering industry employers at odds with president of federal labour court over whether existing contracts can be changed to cut sick pay   -- Bonn Newsroom +49 228 2609760 
18846 !C12 !C13 !CCAT !E21 !E211 !ECAT !GCAT !GCRIM  British home shopping company Empire Stores Group Plc said it has started legal action against the government's tax body to contest its refusal to repay excess value added tax (VAT) paid by the company in the last six years.   In a statement, Empire Stores said a writ had been issued and would be served on customs and excise on September 23 contesting the refusal and the legality of a three-year rule limit on claims introduced retrospectively on July 18.   Empire said customs and excise had admitted that Empire overpaid 250,000 stg of VAT and agreed the company's claim.   -- London Newsroom +44 171 542 7717 
18847 !E51 !E512 !ECAT !GCAT !GDIP  Russia's U.N. envoy said on Friday that Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali should be able to establish quite soon whether conditions in northern Iraq were safe enough to begin implementing a delayed "oil-for-food" plan.   But Boutros-Ghali, in an interview with Reuters, was more cautious, saying that the situation in northern Iraq was still not clear and that technical problems remained in New York.    But Russia's ambassador Sergei Lavrov, in a separate briefing for journalists, said: "I believe that the secretary-general is well in a position to establish quite soon whether safe conditions exist in northern Iraq."   He said Security Council members, at a monthly lunch with Boutros-Ghali, had discussed the "oil-for-food" plan under which Iraq would be allowed to sell (corrects from buy) $2 billion of oil over six months to buy food, medicine and other necessities to offset the effects of U.N. trade sanctions in force since Iraq's 1990 invasion of Kuwait.    Lavrov said there were still reports of "isolated fighting in villages" in northern Iraq, but "the personnel which is required and the deployment of which has been delayed, we were assured could be there in a matter of a few days."   "The implementation process is under way, as the secretary-general assured us," he said, adding that some technical procedures still had to be completed.    Boutros-Ghali said he had received a long letter from Iraq's Foreign Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf saying he wanted "to send a delegation to discuss how we can accelerate the process."   He gave no date but said he was open to discussions with any group Iraq might send.   The U.N. chief pointed to the departure of foreign relief workers from the Kurdish north since the crisis, as well as so-called technical hold-ups in approving an escrow account for the the proceeds of oil sales and an oil-pricing formula.    "It is the continuation of what we have seen," he said in reference to delays that have plagued the talks since an agreement between Iraq and the United Nations was signed on May 20 following four months of negotiations.   Most diplomats believe there is little chance the plan would be implemented before the November 5 U.S. elections, with U.S. officials saying pointedly that conditions in Iraq made it difficult to proceed with the program at this time.    A final decision is up to Boutros-Ghali, not the Security Council.   But the United States can delay procedures and contracts through the council's sanctions committee and has done so on nearly every technical issue to date.   Last week the United States said it needed more time to study a formula for setting the price of oil, which had been worked out between Iraq and outside oil experts and approved by the other 14 members of the sanctions committee.    The U.S. Treasury Department also has not yet given its approval for an escrow account to receive the oil revenues set up at the New York branch of the French-based Banque Nationale de Paris.   The United States has to grant an exemption for Iraqi funds because of the trade sanctions imposed on Baghdad in 1990 after its invasion of Kuwait. 
18848 !G15 !G155 !GCAT  *   TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 24   COURT OF JUSTICE, PLENARY COURT (0930/0830 GMT)   - Opinion C-124/95 The Queen ex parte: Centro-Com Srl v/ H.M. Treasury and others: trade policy.   Request for preliminary ruling.   Interpretation of EC treaty article 113 and Council regulation 1432/92 of June 1, 1992, banning exchanges between the EU and the republics of Serbia and Montenegro.   National regulation banning the unblocking of funds belonging to a person established in Serbia or Montenegro to pay the citizen of another member state for products exported from that state towards Serbia and Montenegro.   Products approved for medical use in conformity with a United Nations resolution.   - Oral procedure C-183/95 Affish BV v/ Rijksdienst voor de Keuring van Vee en Vlees: agriculture.   Request for preliminary ruling.   Validity of Commission decision 95/119 of April 7, 1995, on certain protection measures on fishing products originating from Japan.   General ban on the import on lots of Japanese fish products following the finding of serious lapses in hygiene by a committee of Community experts.   Principles of proportionality and equal treatment.   Interpretation of article 19 of Council directive 90/675/EEC of December 10, 1990, laying down principles on the organisation of veterinary inspections for products from third countries introduced into the EU.   - (1100/0900 GMT) Oral procedure C-250/95 Futura Participation SA and others v/ Administration des contributions: free movement of persons.   Request for preliminary ruling.   Interpretation of EC treaty article 52.   National law on income tax making the application of provisions on the reported losses of non resident taxable individuals having stable concerns in the member state in question subject to the condition that the losses be in relation to indigenous earnings and that the accounts be regularly maintained and held within that country.   COURT OF FIRST INSTANCE, THIRD CHAMBER (0930/0730 GMT)   - Judgment T-485/93 Louis Dreyfus v/ Commission: external relations.   Action for annulment and damages.   Annulment of Commission decision of April 1, 1993, on an authorisation procedure on a delivery of wheat from Russia.   Non-contractual responsibility of the EU.   - Judgment T-491/93 Richco Commodities v/ Commission: external relations.   Annulment of the decision addressed to the VneshEconomBank in the framework of a medium-term loan granted by the EU to the Soviet Union and its republics and intended to finance the purchase of agricultural products.   Council decision 91/658/EEC of December 16, 1991, and Commission regulation 1897/92 of July 9, 1992.   Refusal to agree on a price increase.   EU's non-contractual liability.   - Judgment T-494/93 Compagnie Continentale (France) v/ Commission: external relations.   Annulment of the decision taken in the framework of a medium-term loan granted by the EU to the Soviet Union and its republics and intended to finance the purchase of agricultural products.   Council decision 91/658/EEC of December 16, 1991, and Commission regulation 1897/92 of July 9, 1992.   Refusal to agree on price increases agreed at the time of the contractual agreement on the sale of milled wheat.   - Judgment T-509/93 Richco Commodities v/ Commission: external relations.   Annulment of the decision taken in the framework of a medium-term loan granted by the EU to the Soviet Union and its republics and intended to finance the purchase of agricultural products.   Council decision 91/658 of December 16, 1991, and Commission regulation 1897/92 of July 9, 1992.   Refusal of a sale contract for milled wheat.   THIRD CHAMBER (enlarged) (0930/0730 GMT)   - Judgment T-57/91 NALOO v/ Commission: competition.   Annulment of Commission decision of May 23, 1991, on the provision of coal for the British electricity generating industry.   Fees on coal production collected by the British Coal Corporation.   THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 26   COURT OF JUSTICE, PLENARY COURT (0930/0830 GMT)   - Judgment C-241/94 France v/ Commission: state aid.   Annulment of Commission decision of June 27, 1994, taken on the basis of EC treaty articles 92 and 93 on measures concerning the Kimberly Clark corporation and implemented in the framework of the national employment fund.   - Opinion C-120/95 Nicolas Deckeer v/ Caissse de maladie des employes prives: free movement of goods.   Request for preliminary ruling.   Interpretation of EC treaty articles 30 and 36.   National regulation excluding the repayment of medical costs incurred in a member state without prior authorisation.   Purchase of glasses.   SECOND CHAMBER (0930/0730 GMT)   - Opinion C-105/94 Ditta Angelo Celestini v/ Saar-Sektkellerei Faber: agriculture.   Request for preliminary ruling.   Interpretation of EC treaty articles 30 and 36.   Interpretation of article 74, paragraph 2(c) of Council regulation 822/87 of March 16, 1987, on the common organisation of the market in wine and of Commission regulation 2676/90 of September 17, 1990, determining Community methods for the analysis of wines.   Isotopic 16/18 oxygen research.   FOURTH CHAMBER (0930/0730 GMT)   - Judgment C-230/94 Renate Enkler v/ Finanzamt Homburg: taxation.   Request for preliminary ruling.   Interpretation of article 4, paragraph 2 and article 11 A, paragraph 1(c) of the sixth Council VAT directive 77/388/EEC of May 17, 1977, on the harmonisation of member states' legislation on turnover tax.   Common VAT system: uniform basis of assessment.   Economic activities.   Renting of a "camping car" also used for private ends.   Qualification as the offering of a service or as the exploitation of a physical asset for the purposes of generating revenues.   Tax basis on a service.   - Judgment C-168/95 Luciano Arcaro: environment and consumers.   Request for preliminary ruling.   Interpretation of Council directives 83/513/EEC of September 26, 1983, on limit values and quality objectives for cadmium discharges and 76/464/EEC of May 4, 1976, on pollution caused by certain dangerous substances discharged into the aquatic environment of the Community.   Direct consequences of directives.   FIFTH CHAMBER (0930/0730 GMT)   - Opinion joined cases C-321/94 to C-324/94 Jacques Pistre and others v/ Ministere public: free movement of goods.   Request for preliminary ruling.   Interpretation of EC treaty articles 30 and 36 and of article 2 of Council regulation 2081/92 of July 14, 1992, on the protection of geographical indications and designations of origin for agricultural products and foodstuffs.   National law subjecting the indication of "mountain" products to ministerial authorisation.   - Opinion joined cases C-47/95 to C-50/95, C-60/95, C-81/95, C-92/95, C-148/95: membership of new states.   Request for preliminary ruling.   Interpretation of Commission regulation 3416/91 of November 25, 1991, on certain residual duties applicable in 1991 in the framework of successive reductions according to Spain's and Portugal's membership act.   Interpretation of article 5 of Council regulation 1697/79 of July 24, 1979, on the post-clearance recovery of import duties or export duties which have not been required of the person liable for payment on goods entered for a customs procedure involving the obligation to pay such duties.   Tuna in olive oil.   SIXTH CHAMBER (0930/0730 GMT)   - Judgment C-302/93 E. Debouche v/ Inspecteur der Invoerrechten en Accijnzen: taxation.   Request for preliminary ruling.   Interpretation of articles 3(b) and 5, paragraph 1 of Council directive 79/1072/EEC: eighth Council directive of December 6, 1979.   Interpretation of article 17, paragraphs 2 and 3(a) of Council directive 77/388/EEC: Sixth Council directive of May 17, 1977.   Conditions for reimbursement of VAT in favour of persons liable for payment not established inside a country.   VAT paid in the Netherlands by a Belgian lawyer whose services are exempt from VAT payments in Belgium.   - Judgment C-287/94 A/S Richard Frederiksen & Co. v/ Skatteministeriet: taxation.   Request for preliminary ruling.   Interpretation of Council directive 69/335/EEC of July 17, 1969, on indirect taxes on the raising of capital.   Granting of a loan without interest by a parent company to its unit (article 4, paragraph 2(b) of directive) - imposition of a flat rate interest on interest-free loans granted to a unit.   - Judgment C-327/94 Juergen Dudda v/ Finanzamt Bergisch Gladbach: taxation.   Request for preliminary ruling.   Interpretation of article 9, paragraph 2(c) of sixth Council VAT directive 77/388/EEC of May 17, 1977, on the harmonisation of member states' legislation on turnover tax.   Common VAT system: uniform basis of assessment.   Place where services are rendered.   Entrepreneur responsible for the sound system for artistic and recreational events.   Choice and use of equipment.   Provision of equipment.   Synchronisation of sound and visual effects.   - Judgment C-341/94 Andre Allain v/ Ministere public: free movement of goods.   Request for preliminary ruling.   Interpretation of EU provisions on customs matters.   Import policy on steel from the former East Germany.   Imports effected before the reunification of Germany under the cover of false declarations of origin.   Consequences of the adhesion of the former East Germany to West Germany.   - Judgment C-43/95 Data Delecta Aktiebolag and others v/ MSL Dynamics Ltd: principles of Community law.   Request for preliminary ruling.   Interpretation of EC treaty article 6.   Discrimination on grounds of nationality.   National law requiring a foreign legal entity to furnish a guarantee on legal costs.   - Judgment C-79/95 Commission v/ Spain: social policy.   Non respect.   Failure to have transposed within the prescribed period Council directive 89/391/EEC of June 12, 1989, on the implementation of measures intended to promote improvements in worker safety and health conditions at the work place, as well as particular directives within the meaning of article 16, paragraph 1 of Council directive 89/391/EEC.   - Judgment C-117/95 Commission v/ Italy: agriculture.   Non respect.   Failure to have transposed within the prescribed period Council directive 92/35/EEC of April 29, 1992, laying down control rules and measures to combat African horse sickness and Council directive 92/40/EEC of May 19, 1992, introducing EU measures for the control of avian influenza.   - Opinion C-69/94 France v/ Commission: agriculture.   Annulment of Commission decision 93/673 of December 10, 1993, fixing the flat-rate reduction to advances on the entry of agricultural expenditure in the accounts in the event of non-compliance with the provisions relating to the forwarding of the annual questionnaire on the application of the arrangements for additional levies in the milk sector introduced by Council Regulation 3950/92.   - Opinion C-150/94 United Kingdom v/ Council: trade policy.   Annulment of article 1, paragraph 2 of Council regulation 519/94 of March 7, 1994, on common rules for imports from certain third countries and repealing regulations 1765/82, 1766/82 and 3420/83.   Toys originating from China.   - Opinion C-284/94 Spain v/ Council: trade policy.   Annulment of Council regulation 1921/94 of July 25, 1994, modifying March 7, 1994 Council regulation 519/94 on common rules for imports from certain third countries.   Increased tariffs on certain toys imported from the People's Republic of China.   - Opinion C-69/95 Italy v/ Commission: agriculture.   Partial annulment of Commission decision on the clearance of the accounts presented by Member States in respect of expenditure for 1991 of the EAGGF, Guarantee Section.   Expenditure for acquisition of milk quotas in order to redistribute them to other producers.   - Opinion C-106/95 Mainschiffahrts-Genossenschaft eG (MSG) v/ Les Gravieres Rhenanes SARL: judicial competence convention/execution of decisions.   Request for preliminary ruling.   Interpretation of article 5, point 1 and article 17, first line of the Brussels Convention - contractual clause designating the chain of execution of the obligation.   Stipulation solely intended to establish judicial competence.   Prorogation of competence.   Convention attributing jurisdiction.   Formal conditions.   Form acceptable in international trade.   Silence pursuant to a trade letter of confirmation.   - Oral procedure C-134/95 USSL n. 47 di Biella v/ Istituto nazionale per Llassicurazione centre gli infortuni sul lavora (INAIL): free movement of persons.   Request for preliminary ruling.   Interpretation of EC treaty articles 48, 49, 54 and 90.   National law restricting the activity of job placement to a public monopoly.   Manual intermediary activity by a co-operative society.   Ban.   PROVISIONAL AGENDA FOR TUESDAY-THURSDAY, OCTOBER 1-3   TUESDAY, OCTOBER 1   THIRD CHAMBER (1530/1330 GMT)   - Oral procedure C-10/96 Ligue royale belge pour la protection des oiseaux ASBL and others v/ Region wallonne: environment and consumers.   SIXTH CHAMBER (0930/0730 GMT)   - Oral procedure C-80/95 Harnas & Helm CV v/ Staatssecretaris van Financien: taxation.   THURSDAY, OCTOBER 3   (1530/1330 GMT) - Oral procedure C-105/95 Paul Daut GmbH & Co.   KG v/ Oberkreisdirektor des Kreises Guetersloh: free movement of goods.   FIFTH CHAMBER (0930/0730 GMT)   - Opinion C-131/95 P.J. Huijbrechts v/ Commissie voor de behandeling van administratieve geschillen ingevolge artikel 41 des ABV in de provincie Noord-Brabant: free movement of persons.   - Oral procedure joined cases C-94/95 and C-95/95 Danila Bonifaci and others v/ Istituto nazionale per la previdenza sociale (INPS): social policy.   - Oral procedure C-261/95 Rosalba Palmisani v/ Istituto nazionale per la previdenza sociale (INPS): principles of Community law.   - Oral procedure C-373/95 Federica Maso and others v/ Istituto nazionale per la previdenza sociale (INPS) and others.   SIXTH CHAMBER (0930/0730 GMT)   - Judgment C-41/94 Germany v/ Commission: agriculture.   - Judgment C-126/95 A. Hallouzi-Choho v/ Bestuur van de Sociale Verzekeringsbank: external relations.   - Judgment C-380/95 Commission v/ Greece: approximation of legislation.   - Opinion C-29/95 Eckehard Pastoors and others v/ Belgium state: principles of Community law.   - Opinion C-181/95 Biogen Inc. v/ Smithkline Beecham Biologicals SA: approximation of legislation.   - Oral procedure C-171/95 Recep Tetik v/ Land Berlin: external relations.   - (1130/0930 GMT) Oral procedure C-285/94 Italy v/ Commission: agriculture. 
18849 !G15 !GCAT  ****   HIGHLIGHTS   ****   BRUSSELS - EU social affairs ministers meet (Tuesday); agenda includes first reading on the changes to "carcinogens" directive and continued discussion on equal rights between men and women in decision-making.   BRUSSELS - European Commission holds regular weekly meeting (Wednesday).   BRUSSELS - European Commission President Santer and Austrian Chancellor Franz Vranitzki hold joint news conference (Wednesday).   BRUSSELS - Economic and Social Committee holds plenary session (Wednesday-Thursday).   GALWAY, Ireland - EU culture and audiovisual ministers hold informal meeting (Wednesday-Thursday); main discussions focus on strategy for enhancing role of culture in the EU.   BERGEN, Norway - NATO defence ministers hold informal meeting (Wednesday-Thursday); main discussions focus on post-IFOR security arrangements and NATO external relations especially with Russia.   DUBLIN - EU justice and home affairs ministers hold informal meeting (Thursday-Friday); first broad discussion on trafficking in women and the problem of child abuse.   BRUSSELS - EU telecoms ministers meet (Friday); discussions cover telecoms licences and liberalisation of postal services.   MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 23   BRUSSELS (NEW ITEM) - IGC Working Party of EU foreign ministers' representatives meets to continue review of EU treaties (and Tuesday).   Statement to be delivered on the state of the EU.   European Commissioner Oreja attends.   LUXEMBOURG (NEW ITEM) - European Commissioner Pinheiro attends EU/ACP joint assembly (1500/1300 GMT) (and Thursday).   Agenda includes:   - The future of EU/ACP relations.   - Urban development in ACP countries.   - Regional cooperation in ACP countries.   - Fisheries in ACP countries.   - The situation in Burundi, Great Lakes Region, Liberia, Nigeria, Angola, Mozambique, Sudan, Somalia and the Western Sahara.   - ACP-South Africa relations.   - Results of the conference on the information society.   - The draft EU directive on cocoa and its consequences for the ACP countries.   - The EU regulation on bananas.   NEW YORK (NEW ITEM) - European Commissioners Marin and van den Broek attend U.N. general assembly (to Friday).   BRUSSELS (NEW ITEM) - Following EP committees meet:   (1500/1300 GMT) Foreign Affairs subcommitee on Human Rights;   Legal Affairs;   Regional Policy;   Youth;   Fisheries;   Petitions.   PARIS - Group of the Party of European Socialists presents report on "Public service television - the future of European television and cinema industry" (1130/0930 GMT).   Venue: Information office, 288, Blvd.   St. Germain.   Contact: Ambroise Perrin (322) 284 3062.   STRASBOURG (NEW ITEM) - Council of Europe parliamentary assembly meets (to Thursday).   Portuguese President Jorge Sampaio gives address.   BRUSSELS - Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS) holds seminar on "World competition rules" (1315/1115 GMT).   Speaker is Karel Van Miert, member of the European Commission responsible for competition policy.   Venue: Place du Congres 1.   Contact: CEPS (322) 229 3911.   TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 24   BRUSSELS (EXPANDED ITEM) - Social Affairs Council (1000/0800 GMT).   Agenda includes:   - Draft recommendation on equal participation of men and women in decision-making COM(95)593.   - Draft resolution on equal opportunities between men and women and the European structural funds.   - Proposal for a decision on the establishment of an employment and labour market policy committee.   - First reading on the modification of the "carcinogens" directive 90/394/EEC; principally to fix professional exposition limits to benzene.   - European Commissioner Flynn information to the Council on information and consultation of workers COM(95)547.   - Joint report on employment.   - Commission presents on new proposal for directive on the burden of proof in the event of discrimination due to sex.   - Green paper on living and working in the information society: priotiry to human dimension.   - Other:   - Commissioner Flynn communication on the amendment of directive 86/378/EEC on equal treatment in occupational social security schemes.   - "A" point:   - Adoption of the directive on posting of workers COM(91)230.   BRUSSELS - IGC Working Party of EU foreign ministers' representatives meets to continue review of EU treaties (second of two days).   BRUSSELS (NEW ITEM) - European Commissioner de Silguy meets Russian Central Bank Chairman Serguei Doubinine.   LONDON - European Commission hosts conference on "Private security industry in society: a European perspective" (and Wednesday).   Topics include: vocational training, regulation, standards of service and employment.   Venue: Forte Crest Hotel.   Contact: Nigel Greaves Associates, Andrew Mackay (44) 1886 833 034.   BRUSSELS (NEW ITEM) - Following EP committees meet:   (0900/0700 GMT) Legal Affairs;   Regional Policy;   Youth;   Fisheries;   Petitions;   Inquiry into Fraud in Transit;   (1500/1300 GMT) Agriculture;   Budget - European Commissioner Oreja gives address;   External Economic Relation;   Legal Affairs;   Social Affairs;   Transport;   Environment;   (1630/1430 GMT) Economic and monetary; European Commissioner Monti gives address.   BRUSSELS (NEW ITEM) - The International Planned Parenthood Federation holds news conference to launch "Charter of sexual and reproductive rights" (1500/1300 GMT).   Venue: International Press Centre (IPC).   Contact: Vicky Claeys (322) 230 9271.   BRUSSELS - The European Aviation Club holds symposium on "The impact of the third package" (0915/0715 GMT).   Speakers include: European Commissioner Kinnock Head of Cabinet Philip Lowe and Air Transport Policy Head of Unit Frederik Sorensen.   Venue: Amigo Hotel.   Contact: the European Aviation Club (322) 647 0760.   BRUSSELS - Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS) holds seminar on "The inter-governmental conference" (1315/1115 GMT).   Speaker is Michael Patijn, State Secretary for Foreign Affairs, The Netherlands.   Venue: Place du Congres 1.   Contact: CEPS (322) 229 3911.   STRASBOURG (NEW ITEM) - Council of Europe parliamentary assembly (second of four days).   Lativian President Guntis Ulmanis and Estonian Foreign Minister Slim Kallas give addresses.   ROTTERDAM, The Netherlands - Royal Dutch Jaarbeurs holds conference on "The European market for infrastructural projects - EMIP '96" (1400/1200 GMT) (to Thursday).   Venue: Erasmus Expo and Congress Centre.   Contact: Pieter Kannegieter (31) 30 2955 453.   WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 25   GALWAY, Ireland - Informal Culture and Audiovisual Council (and Thursday).   Main discussions focus on developing a strategy for enhancing the position and role of culture in the EU and debate the importance of the cultural element in the EU's audiovisual policy, particularly in the context of the vital position of public service broadcasting services in EU member states.   Venue: Galway University.   BRUSSELS (NEW ITEM) - European Commission holds regular weekly meeting (0930/0730 GMT).   No agenda available yet.   BRUSSELS (NEW ITEM) - European Commission President Santer meets Austrian Chancellor Franz Vranitzki; hold joint news conference at 1300/1100 GMT.   BRUSSELS (NEW ITEM) - European Commission President meets Palestinan Parlement President Ahmed Qurie.   BRUSSELS (NEW ITEM) - Following EP committees meet:   (0900/0700 GMT) Agriculture;   Budget - European Commissioner Pinheiro gives address;   External Economic Relations;   Legal Affairs;   Social Affairs;   Transport;   Environment;   (1500/1300 GMT) Social Affairs;   Transport;   Environment;   Budgetary Control;   Institutional Affairs.   BRUSSELS (EXPANDED ITEM) - Economic and Social Committee (ECOSOC) holds plenary session (1430/1230 GMT) (and Thursday).   Provisional agenda includes:   - Impact of EMU - Economic and social aspects of the convergence and sensibilisation of the single currency.   - Surveillance and control network for transmissible diseases COM(96)78.   - Community water policy COM(96)59.   - Legal, regulatory and administrative requirements in consumer credits COM(96)79.   - Community law in the protection of consumer interests COM(95)712.   - Green paper on the legal protection of encrypted services in the internal market COM(96)76.   - Accessibility to the establishment of credit and solvency ratio COM(96)183.   - Solvency ratio of credit establishment COM(95)709.   - Aid to shipbuilding COM(96)309.   - Multi-annual programme for European tourism (1997-2000) "Philoxenia" COM(96)168.   - Cohesion and environment policy COM(95)509.   - EU's role in urbanism.   - Towards an equal and efficient pricing in transport COM(95)691.   - Admission conditions for non resident drivers transporting passengers by road COM(95)729.   - Implementation of a Community policy in telecoms and postal services COM(96)45.   - Requirements for summer time COM(96)106.   - (possibly) Evolution of the telecoms universal service COM(96)73.   - Harmonisation of technical regulations and administrative procedures in civil aviation COM(96)186.   - Future of social protection: framework for a European debate.   - Equal treatment for men and women in employment, training and working conditions COM(96)93.   - Conservation of fisheries ressources in the Mediterranean COM(96)128.   - Technical conservation measures in fisheries COM(96)296.   - Agricultural problems in EU peripherical and insular zones.   - Marketing of sugar beet grain, durum wheat, cereals COM(96)127.   - Intervention conditions in the fisheries, aquaculture and product processing sectors COM(96)189.   - Marketing of lemon based processed foods COM(96)240.   - Protection of geographical indications and denominations of farm products and foodstuff COM(96)266.   - Technical conservation measures in fisheries COM(96)317.   - White paper "Internal market - central and eastern European countries" COM(95)163.   BERGEN, Norway (EXPANDED ITEM) - NATO defence ministers hold informal meeting (and Thursday).   Main discussions focus on post-IFOR security arrangements; NATO internal reorganisation and NATO external relations with Russia in the partnership for peace process.   STRASBOURG (NEW ITEM) - Council of Europe parliamentary assembly (third of four days).   OECD Secretary General Donald Johnston gives address.   ***   THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 26   DUBLIN (EXPANDED ITEM) - Informal Justice and Home Affairs Council (and Friday).   Discussions include widening the remit of the Europol Drugs Unit; first broad discussion on the Commission's forthcoming communication on trafficking in women and discussion on child sex abuse.   NEW YORK (NEW ITEM) - European Commissioner van den Broek addresses U.N. general assembly on "Is the EU's foreign policy taking shape?"   BRUSSELS (NEW ITEM) - Following EP committees meet:   (0900/0700 GMT) Environment;   Budgetary Control;   Institutional Affairs;   Economic and Monetary - European Commissioner Van Miert gives address;   (1500/1300 GMT) Institutional Affairs.   BRUSSELS (NEW ITEM) - The Greens in the European Parliament and EuroCommerce hold joint news briefing for the launch of a world-wide initiative for the protection of the consumer "Unlabelled gene-soya soon in every supermarket?"  .   EuroCommerce Secretary General Henrik Kroener and MEP Hiltrud Breyer jointly comment on: how can consumer-protection be guaranteed; how can the right of information be safeguarded and what action will the European retailers take?   Venue: International Press Centre (IPC).   Contact: EuroCommerce by fax (322) 230 0078.   BERLIN - The Kangaroo Group in collaboration with the Fondation Europe et Societe host European Parliament and Commission conference on "On the way to the European home market: the single currency" (to Saturday).   Agenda includes: role of the single currency in the development of the EU; priorities of the Irish Presidency regarding the single currency; preparation for the move to the single currency; impact on the French banking system; impact on financial services and policy; impact on business; single currency and social aspects; relations between the single currency and the currencies which will join the EMU later; single currency and political union.   Speakers include: MEPs Karl von Wogau, Giorgos Katiforis and Elmar Brok; Irish Finance Minister Ruairi Quinn; European Economy Commissioner Yves-Thibault de Silguy.   Venue: Steigenberger Hotel.   Contact: Kangaroo Group conference office (322) 284 4438.   BRUSSELS - Forum Europe holds conference on behalf of DG XIII on "Wide-screen television 16:9" (0900/0700 GMT).   Main topics discussed: Issues past, present and future; broadcasting beyond; the political challenges for 16:9.   Speakers include: European Commissioner Bangemann.   News conference at 1100/0900 GMT).   Venue: Albert hall, 651 chaussee de Wavre.   Contact: Forum Europe (322) 736 1430.   BRUSSELS (EXPANDED ITEM) - Club de Bruxelles holds conference on "The future of Biotechnologies in Europe" (and Friday).   Topics include: development and role of biotechnology R&D in the EU; innovation in health care: novel pharmaceutical products; new crops from plant biotechnology; the "greening" of industry: clean products and processes; biotechnology in Europe society: public perceptions; industrial competitiveness and biotechnological innovation.   Speakers include: European Commissioner Cresson.   Contact: Club de Bruxelles (322) 743 1520.   BERGEN, Norway (NEW ITEM) - NATO defence ministers hold informal meeting (second of two days).   NATO defence ministers meet Russia Defence Minister Igo Rodionov ("16 + 1").   STRASBOURG (NEW ITEM) - Council of Europe parliamentary assembly (last of four days).   Andorran government head Marc Forne gives address.   DUESSELDORF, Germany - Euromanagement holds conference on "The future of European thermal waste treatment - waste to energy" (and Friday).   Main topics include: how can you most benefit from the growing waste-energy market; how can you lower the costs of thermal waste treatment; strategic issues for waste to energy: opportunities v/ obstacles; the future of price policies for renewable energy across Europe; improving efficiency of waste power plants.   Venue: Radisson SAS Hotel.   Contact: Euromanagement, Michele Nichols (31) 40 2 974 944.   WARSAW - Euromoney Seminars holds third annual conference on "The 1996 Polish investment forum" (and Friday).   Venue: Bristol Hotel.   Contact: Euromoney Seminars (44) 171 7798793.   ROME - European Association of Advertising Agencies (EAAA) holds annual conference on "The future of brand-building across borders".   Contact: Paola di Discordia, EAAA (322) 280 1603.   FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 27   BRUSSELS - Telecoms Council.   Provisional agenda includes:   - Proposal for a European Parliament and Council directive on a common framework for general authorisations and individual licences in the field of telecommunications services COM(95)545.   - Proposal for a European Parliament and Council directive on common rules for the development of Community postal services and the improvement of services quality COM(95)227.   - Proposal for a European Parliament and Council decision on action at Union level in the field of satellite personal communications services in the European Union COM(95)529.   - Proposal for EP and Council directive on the application of Open Network Provision (ONP) to voice telephony COM(95)575.   BRUSSELS - Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS) holds workshop on "Completing the internal market for electricity: the meaning of the June 20th decision" (1300/1100 GMT).   Speakers include MEP Claude Desama.   Venue: Place du Congres 1.   Contact: CEPS (322) 229 3911.   STRESA, Italy (NEW ITEM) - Assembly of European Regions (AER) holds news conference on "AER-OECD: a new dynamic for east-west cooperation" (1200/1000 GMT).   Venue: Regina Palace Hotel.   Contact: Sylvie Gaschet by fax (33) 88 32 84 97.   SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 28   WASHINGTON (NEW ITEM) - European Commissioner de Silguy attends G7 Finance and IMF interim committee and World Bank development committee meetings (and Sunday).   SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 29   No events scheduled.   If you have items for inclusion in the Reuter European   Community diary, please contact:   Telephone: Cynthia Simpson (322) 287 6851   Fax: (322) 230 5573   For technical queries regarding   the service, please call (322) 287 6666   Reuters 61, rue de Treves 1040 BRUSSELS   - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -   EC Report (C)opyright Reuters Limited   Unauthorised copying prohibited. 
18850 !G15 !GCAT  *   (Note - contents are displayed in reverse order to that in the printed Journal)   *   Corrigendum to Commission Regulation (EC) No 1396/96 of 18 July 1996 fixing the minimum price applicable to dried grapes during the 1996/97 marketing year as well as the countervailing charges to be imposed where that price is not observed (Official Journal of the European Communities No L 180 of 19 July 1996)   COMMISSION DECISION of 6 September 1996 laying down the rules for technical and scientific measures concerning the control of classical swine fever and the financial contribution from the Community (Only the German text is authentic) (96/553/EC)   COMMISSION DECISION of 6 September 1996 approving the plan presented by Germany for the eradication of classical swine fever in feral pigs in Brandenburg and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, and repealing Decision 93/617/EC (Only the German text is authentic) (96/552/EC)   COMMISSION REGULATION (EC) No 1819/96 of 19 September 1996 amending representative prices and additional duties for the import of certain products in the sugar sector   COMMISSION REGULATION (EC) No 1818/96 of 19 September 1996 fixing the corrective amount applicable to the refund on cereals   COMMISSION REGULATION (EC) No 1817/96 of 19 September 1996 fixing the export refunds on cereals and on wheat or rye flour, groats and meal   COMMISSION REGULATION (EC) No 1816/96 of 19 September 1996 establishing the standard import values for determining the entry price of certain fruit and vegetables   COMMISSION REGULATION (EC) No 1815/96 of 19 September 1996 temporarily suspending the issuing of export licences for certain milk products and determining what proportion of the amounts covered by pending applications for export licences may be allocated   COMMISSION REGULATION (EC) No 1814/96 of 19 September 1996 altering the export refunds on milk and milk products   COMMISSION REGULATION (EC) No 1813/96 of 19 September 1996 repealing Regulations (EC) No 1749/95 and (EC) No 2900/95 fixing export taxes on cereal products END OF DOCUMENT. 
18851 !G15 !GCAT  *   (Note - contents are displayed in reverse order to that in the printed Journal)   *   TACIS - teaching equipment Notice of invitation to tender issued by the Commission of the European Communities financed in the framework of the TACIS programme (96/C 275/07)   Phare - pumping station and related works Within the framework of the European Union cross-border cooperation programme Phare: Poland - Germany 1995 Wojewodzki Zarzad Melioracji I Urzadzen Wodnych of Szczecin Invites eligible contractors with appropriate experience and references to tender in an open international tender for a contractor of the 'Jezioro Swidwie-Gunien' Rzedziny pumping station and the related works - Project No PL 950202-10-L001 (96/C 275/06)   European Social Fund interventions (1994-1999) Open procedure Invitation to tender No V/XXX/96 (96/C 275/05)   EUROPEAN ECONOMIC INTEREST GROUPING Notices published pursuant to Council Regulation (EEC) No 2137/85 of 25 July 1985 (1) - Completion of the liquidation (96/C 275/04)   Notice of the expiry of certain anti-dumping measures (96/C 275/03)   STATE AID C 30/96 (NN 44/96) France (96/C 275/02)   Ecu (1) 19 September 1996 (96/C 275/01) END OF DOCUMENT. 
18852 !C42 !CCAT !E41 !ECAT !GCAT !GJOB  Canadian Auto Workers union representatives for Chrysler Corp's Canadian unit voted unanimously on Friday to endorse the tentative deal reached by the CAW and Chrysler ahead of Sunday's ratification vote.   CAW president Buzz Hargrove and the union's master negotiating team met with about 250 union representatives from across Ontario to present the tentative deal, which was reached just hours before Tuesday's midnight strike deadline.   Representatives at the meeting vowed that "100 percent" of members would vote in favor of the deal.   They gave the leaders a standing ovation for negotiating the contract.    The deal gives members unprecendented security against outsourcing as well as increased wages and time off, improved benefits and guaranteed employment standards.   "They will absolutely accept it and get down to ratification," said union local 444 representative Jim Dunwoody.   "They trust the great leadership we've got."   Ratification votes are set for Sunday at the six southern Ontario union locals.   On Monday, the CAW will announce whether it will target General Motors Corp or Ford Motor Co, for the second round of bargaining.   -- Reuters Toronto Bureau (416) 941-8100 
18853 !GCAT !GDIP !GENT  A Canadian jazz star whose music is rooted in the sounds of Cuba begins an abbreviated U.S. tour on Saturday, saying her career is threatened by U.S.-Cuban political tension.   Toronto-based saxophonist and flutist Jane Bunnett, who has been playing in Cuba for more than a decade, said she is an indirect victim of the controversial U.S. Helms-Burton law, which seeks to punish foreign companies that invest in Cuba.   Helms-Burton, which was signed by President Bill Clinton in March after Cuban MiG fighters downed two private planes piloted by Cuban-Americans, does not target culture.   But Bunnett said in a telephone interview she is convinced fear of anti-Cuban sentiment prompted U.S. concert promoters to cancel five of her concerts at colleges set for this month.   All five were canceled shortly after the bill was passed.   The tour begins on Saturday in Wausau, Wisconsin, with the other U.S. dates set for Rochester, New York, and Chicago.   Bunnett will tour with the 16-piece Cuban band Oba-Ilu.   She had been slated to release a CD with Oba-Ilu but that plan was also scapped shortly after Helms-Burton became law.   "Helms-Burton isn't supposed to affect cultural and sports activities -- it's primarily dealing with business," said Bunnett, who won a Juno Award, Canada's version of the Grammy, for her 1992 recording "Spirits of Havana."   Her latest CD, "The Cuban Piano Masters," was released in August.   "I think people just panicked," she said.   She said she had to scramble to add Canadian cities to the tour to make up the lost revenue and the Chicago venue had to be changed after the Cuban-American promoter received bomb threats.   Martha Woods, who booked the tour for New York-based Jonathan Wentworth Associates, said it was impossible to link Helms-Burton with the cancellations.   She said promoters had not signed on the dotted line and two educational services that were part of a group planning to bring in the band got "cold feet."   The Canadian government has been a vocal opponent of the Helms-Burton law, which includes a provision to bar senior executives of foreign firms entry into the United States if they are found to be "trafficking" in property confiscated by the Castro government after Cuba's 1959 revolution.   The same week the U.S. concerts were scrapped, a record deal with Sony Music's Canadian division, which was to release a CD recorded in February by Bunnett and Oba-Ilu, fell through at the 11th hour, Bunnett said.   "It was pretty important for the deal to be working along with Sony in the U.S.," she said.   "The lawyers had come up with a mutual contract that was pretty much ready to be signed.   So I find it strangely coincidental."   But Randy Sharrard, Sony Music Canada's director of special marketing, said the company's abandonment of the deal was "a business decision" and not due to Helms-Burton.   "Basically it was a matter of numbers and it had nothing to do with politics," Sharrard said.   "It was basically a coincidence that it all happened at the same time." 
18854 !C13 !C31 !C311 !CCAT !E51 !E512 !ECAT !G15 !G158 !GCAT  Canada said on Friday it would ask the World Trade Organization (WTO) for a dispute settlement panel on the European Union's import ban on beef produced with growth promoting hormones.   "The ban is unjustified," International Trade Minister Art Eggleton said in a press release.   "We will take full advantage of the dispute settlement process to fight this trade restriction."   The formal request for a dispute settlement panel will be made on September 27.   Consultations between Canada and the European Commission failed to reach an agreement.   The EU imposed the ban in 1989.   Agriculture Minister Ralph Goodale said the ban effectively shut Canada out of the EU beef market.   -- Reuters Ottawa Bureau 613-235-6745 
18855 !C21 !C42 !CCAT !E41 !ECAT !GCAT !GJOB  The union representing locked-out Inco Ltd workers in Manitoba said Friday it hopes shrinking nickel production will pressure the company back into contract negotiations.   "There are some problems out there for Inco Ltd," Bob Desjarlais, president of local 6166 of the United Steelworkers of America, said in an interview.   With no production coming from the Thompson, Manitoba facility and production temporarily cut by a third in Indonesia because of a broken furnace, Inco will soon have to turn to the open market to buy nickel, Desjarlais said.    "They need some cash flow," he said.   "I'm cautiously optimistic here that cooler heads are going to prevail and that there's going to be pressure to bring them back to the bargaining table."   Desjarlais said the company is also facing refinery problems at its operation in Sudbury, Ontario, where Inco produces more than 200 million pounds of nickel a year.   Company officials confirmed they have had some problems but said that the refinery was now operating smoothly.   Inco produces 100 million pounds of nickel a year at Thompson.    In Indonesia, an expected eight-week shutdown of one furnace will mean the loss of between five and six million pounds of production, Inco spokesman Bob Purcell said.   The furnace was shut down almost two weeks ago after an explosion at the furnace killed one person.   The company has told customers that supply will not be disrupted.   Inco said it will make up for lost production by using products from other facilities or buying on the open market.   But open market purchases mean Inco makes no profit from that nickel.    Inco shut down its Manitoba facility last Sunday night after United Steelworkers members voted to reject the company's latest contract offer.   No talks were planned, spokesmen from both sides said in separate interviews on Friday.   "We have all the intention in the world to talk," said Desjarlais.   "We just need someone to talk to."   But the two sides are too far apart on issues involving wages and shift scheduling to make talks worthwhile, said Inco spokesman Dan McSweeney.   "Right now I'd say there's no indication of us getting together."   Inco produced 403 million pounds of nickel last year and controls about 30 percent of the world's nickel market.   -- Heather Scoffield, Reuters Toronto Bureau 416 941-8104 
18856 !C12 !C41 !CCAT !GCAT !GCRIM  A Massachusetts judge has dismissed sexual harassmant allegations against ousted Astra USA Chief Executive Lars Bildman by former female employee, his attorney said Friday.   Superior Court Judge Patrick King granted Bildman's motion to dismiss a complaint by Pamela Zortman, one of several former Astra workers who rocked the U.S. subsidiary of the Swedish pharmaceutical giant Astra AB with claims of wrongdoing.   "There was a witchhunt to get Bildman and with the dismissal of this allegation we have begun the process of restoring his reputation," Bildman's attorney Roderick MacLeish said.   The judge ruled that Zortman, a former sales executive, could not sue for monetary damages because she had already reached an out-of-court settlement of her claims against Astra and Bildman.   The judge ruled some of Zortman's allegations of sexual misconduct by Bildman were "scandalous and irrelevant" to her claim of wrongful termination and could not be included if she refiled an ammended complaint.   Attempts to reach Zortman and her attorney were unsuccessful Friday.   Bildman still faces a sexual harassmant lawsuit from another former employee, but has also moved to have that case dismissed.   Astra AB fired Bildman as CEO of its U.S. subsidiary in April, accusing him of "improper behavior" after several former employees alleged in lawsuits against the company that he engaged in sexual harassmant.   Bildman had denied any wrongdoing   A federal appeals court Sept. 6 dissmissed an injunction against Astra USA that had prohibited the firm from enforcing settlement agreements with at least 11 former employees who claimed their were victims or witness sexual harassmant.   The company paid the former workers from $20,000 to $100,000 cash settlements, but the agreement prohibited them from filing suit or helping others who filed suit against the company with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, according to court documents.   Astra's attorneys argued the workers were told they should cooperate with the EEOC in its investigation of the company, but the prohibition on filing suits allowed the company to put the allegations behind it. 
18857 !C17 !C42 !CCAT !E41 !ECAT !GCAT !GJOB  Union Pacific Resources Group Inc said on Friday it planned to institute two stock ownership programs for its employees.   The company said in a statement that on Oct 1, under a Broad-Based Stock Ownership Program, the company will grant to all eligible employees annual awards of retention stock or stock options.   The company also will establish an Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP).   This program will prefund the Company's matching contributions of UPR common stock under the Company's Employee Thrift Plan.   The size of the ESOP will be approximately $100 million of newly issued UPR common stock.   Union Pacific Resources Group Inc had approximately 250 million shares outstanding as of June 30.   The company is is majority-owned by Union Pacific Corp of Bethlehem, Pa.   -- New York newsroom, (212) 859-1610 
18858 !C11 !C24 !CCAT !GCAT !GENV  Dupont Co's Conoco unit, which has oil and gas leases in a Utah area designated as a national monument, on Friday called for a plan to allow the area's natural resources to be developed.   "We call upon the administration ... to work with Conoco to develop a plan where prudent oil and gas development of the area can co-exist with the environmental protection and preservation ideals that are imbedded in the formation of the Grand Staircase-Canyons of the Escalante National Monument," said Bob Irelan, regional manager for exploration and development at Conoco.   On Wednesday President Bill Clinton calling the area "some of the most remarkable land in the world," signed an order that ends new land development on 1.7 million acres of federal land in southern Utah.   Conoco said the majority of the leases on a quarter of a million acres it has in the region were bought from the federal government.   Conoco, in partnership with Rangeland Petroleum, had planned to drill two exploratory wells in the next six months to test the potential of the area. 
18859 !C11 !C24 !CCAT !GCAT  Columbia and Cornell universities said they planned to invest $100 million, or $50 million each, to strengthen faculty physician practices at their medical schools through new physician and management services organizations.   The Ivy League schools said the investment was a next step in the development of the physician alliance that the two institutions announced in July.   The alliance will create a network in the New York metropolitan area of the medical faculties of the two medical schools.   There are more than 2,800 physicians at the two institutions.   "The intention is to create a strong system of support services and practice sites to reduce practice overhead costs through economies of scale and improved management systems," the statement said.   Existing physician organizations at both Columbia and Cornell are the basis of the alliance.   A new physician organization and management services organization structure will be created to manage the alliance and determine how best to develop the systems to support the faculty practices.   -- New York newsroom, (212) 859-1610 
18860 !C12 !CCAT !GCAT !GCRIM  Biosensor Corp said a judgment of $325,000 has been awarded to Cardiosoft Inc in a court case over royalties.   Cardiosoft prevailed in its claims that Biosensor owed additional royalty payments under a 1988 software license agreement, the company said.   Biosensor said it is working with counsel to evaluate its legal options.   --Reuters Chicago newsdesk, 312-408-8787 
18861 !C41 !C411 !CCAT !GCAT !GPOL  California Gov. Pete Wilson on Friday said he appointed Kenneth Bosanko as deputy secretary for rail and transit at the state Business, Transportation and Housing Agency.   Bosanko, 66, has been the managing director of strategic planning for Southern Pacific Transportation Co since 1992.   He will receive a salary of $82,164 per year.   The appointment does not require Senate confirmation. 
18862 !C12 !CCAT !GCAT !GCRIM  PaineWebber LP said on Friday that it will appeal the ruling made by a judge earlier in the day saying the company must allow an investor in five of its real estate limited partnerships to see the list of all limited partners and the number of units they hold.   "We've learned of the decision and we intend to appeal," a PaineWebber spokesman said early on Friday evening.   He declined to say what arguments the company will make on appeal.   The court decision could affect 30 to 40 similar lawsuits filed this year in the Delaware Chancery Court against other investment companies including Dean Witter, Travelers Group's, Smith Barney, and Lehman Brothers, a Delaware attorney experienced in limited partnerships told Reuters. 
18863 !C12 !CCAT !GCAT  Rexall Sundown Inc said on Friday that a Florida court granted its request for a temporary restraining order against a former consultant and his company.   Rexall said in a statement that the Circuit Court of the Fifteenth Judicial Circuit in Florida granted its request on September 17 for an order against Matthias Rath and his company, Health Now Inc.   The company said Rath had made statements about Rexall and its subsidiary that were false and without merit.   It had previously launched an arbitration action against Rath and Health Now.   The company and Rath were not immediately available for comment.   -- New York newsdesk 212-859-1610 
18864 !C24 !CCAT !GCAT !GDIS  A Greek-flagged tanker that ran aground in the Mississippi River over two natural gas pipelines near here Thursday night was refloated Friday afternoon, the Coast Guard reported.   The river, which had been restricted to traffic bound upriver, reopened to traffic about 1700 EDT/2100 GMT, authorities said.   Initial Coast Guard reports said the M/V Pindar, loaded with 375,00 barrels of fuel oil, ran aground about 0200/0600 Friday, but later reports said the ship was grounded about 2200 Thursday.   The Coast Guard Marine Safety Office in New Orleans reported no damage to the vessel or the Texaco pipelines. 
18865 !C13 !C17 !C24 !CCAT !E21 !E212 !ECAT !GCAT !GPOL  U.S. Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, D-N.Y., said Friday that his bill barring use of tax-exempt bonds for stadium financings would have the date of first committee action as its effective date.   Moynihan said in a statement he would make the change when he reintroduces the measure in the next Congress, in the new year.    Moynihan orginally introduced the measure on June 14.   Following widespread criticism from bond groups he announced June 28 he would add language protecting projects that were far along in financing but he refused to drop the June 14 general effective date.   But an aide to the Senator told Reuters last week that there was a good chance the effective date would be revised when the bill was reintroduced.   Moynihan said Friday the legislation, along with a companion bill, was needed "...to correct a serious misallocation under present law of our limited federal resources.   "Together, the two bills would replace a tax subsidy that largely benefits wealthy sports franchise owners and their players with increased funding for higher education," he said. 
18866 !C13 !C22 !C31 !C312 !CCAT !GCAT !GENV  The American Soybean Association and Monsanto Co said they were concerned about Greenpeace opposition in Germany to U.S. genetically altered soybeans, but stressed that the soybeans were safe.   "Anything this is negative for our product we take seriously, especially when many of the charges are not accurate," Monsanto spokeswoman Karen Marshall said.   The European Union in March 1996 gave the green light to imports of Roundup Ready soybean seed, which has been genetically altered to allow U.S. farmers to spray Roundup herbicide without damaging the soybean plant.    Roundup herbicide is manufactured by St Louis-based Monsanto.   "The commercial interests in the business particularly in Germany are nervous about the effects Greenpeace and their small band of activists can have on the oilseed markets," said Jim Hershey, division director for Europe and the Middle East with the American Soybean Association in St Louis.   Environmentalist group Greenpeace plans to organise protests against genetically modified U.S. soybeans.    Earlier on Friday, Greenpeace issued a list of German firms opposed to the use of genetically altered soy in food products or in favor of special labelling.   Both ASA and Monsanto said Roundup Ready soybeans can be grown with less herbicide and noted that genetically altered crops are a valuable technology that saves resources in a world that is trying to feed a growing population.   ASA's Hershey said that Germany was the site of most of the controversy regarding Roundup Ready soybeans and transgenic crops.    "The issue is not only Roundup Ready soybeans but Greenpeace is attacking this specific product because it represents biotechnology at large," Hershey said.   Monsanto said it was working with many food organizations in Europe to ensure that accurate information was available on Roundup Ready soybeans.   "It would be a shame if someone would try to make an issue of something that has already been determined by regulatory agencies around the world (to be safe)," Marshall said.   "Roundup Ready is the equivalent of other soybeans," she said.   "These are just like any other soybeans in terms of composition, nutrition and function."   --Doris Frankel 312-983-7305 
18867 !C12 !C34 !CCAT !GCAT  The Federal Trade Commission said Friday it dismissed cases against six book publishers over antitrust issues related to discounts given large bookstore chains.   The cases dismissed were filed in 1988 against Harper & Row Publishers, Inc. ; Macmillan, Inc. ; The Hearst Corporation and William Morrow and Co., Inc. ; The Putnam Berkley Group, Inc. ; Simon & Schuster, Inc. ; and Random House, Inc.    The FTC said it did not reach any decision on whether there were any violations of antitrust law, but concluded that public interest would be best served by terminating the cases rather than expending resources to pursue further action.   At issue was whether the publishers had violated federal antitrust law by favoring large bookstore chains with price and promotional discounts that were not given to independent bookstores.   The FTC also said it closed its investigation of Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group Inc. concerning similar practices.   The FTC decided not to accept consent orders negotiated in 1992 against the six publishers because "the industry has changed appreciably since the consent agreements were signed," the FTC said.   The companies "generally have replaced the principal forms of alleged price discrimination that prompted the complaints..." the FTC said.   The FTC vote was 3-1, with Commissioner Mary Azcuenaga dissenting and FTC Chairman Robert Pitofsky recused, the FTC said. 
18868 !C12 !CCAT !E41 !ECAT !GCAT !GCRIM !GJOB  O'Charley's Restaurants said on Friday a proposed settlement of racial discrimination claims pending against the company may result in a monetary settlement for an unspecified amount.   The company said it may also update its plan for racial diversity among its employees.   Saul Belz, a lawyer for O'Charley's, said in a statement that every African American who has been turned down for a job, as well as current and former African-American employees, will be eligible for relief in the form of money or company stock.    To be eligible, the person must be black and must have been turned down for a job between March 31, 1992 and August 30, 1996, be a current employee as of August 30, 1996, or have worked at the restaurant between March 31, 1992 and August 30, 1996.   African Americans who worked at the former Shoex restaurant between June 1, 1994 and August 30, 1996, also are eligible.    A federal lawsuit was filed against the company in February 1994 alleging racial discrimination by the company.   O'Charley's has denied the allegations.   The lawsuit is pending in U.S. District Court in the middle district of Tennessee.   The company said it is seeking people who may be eligible for the settlement by publishing notices in cities where O'Charley's has restaurants. 
18869 !C12 !CCAT !GCAT !GCRIM  Guy Wyser-Pratte, president of Wyser-Pratte & Co Inc, said on Friday that he filed a complaint alleging that Wallace Computer Services Inc violated federal and Delaware law by disseminating false and misleading statements in preliminary proxy materials.   The suit, filed in Federal District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, alleges Wallace falsely declared that a by-law amendment Wyser-Pratte sought to submit to Wallace shareholders was invalid. 
18870 !C12 !CCAT !GCAT !GCRIM  Avitar Inc said on Friday that A.S. Goldmen & Co Inc and some holders of underwriter's warrants issued by Avitar had sued it seeking damages of $6.26 million.   The company, formerly known as Managed Health Benefits Corp, said in a statement Goldmen and the holders had filed a suit in federal court seeking damages based on the underwriter's warrant agreement between Avitar and Goldmen.   "Avitar believes that the anti-dilution and other provisions of the warrant agreement are unfair and unreasonable -- indeed unconscionable," the statement said.   It said the National Association of Securities Dealers' Corporate Finance Department had confirmed the underwriter's claims based on such anti-dilution provisions violated the NASD Rules of Fair Practice.   Avitar designs, develops, manufactures and markets health care products and services including Hydrasorb, a proprietary line of polyurethane wound care dressings.   Further details were not immediately available.   -- New York newsroom, (212) 859-1610 
18871 !C12 !CCAT !GCAT !GCRIM  Alcide Corp said on Friday the U.S. District Court issued a preliminary injunction against Babson Brothers Co, precluding them from from making, using or selling its INTERSEPT teat dip product.   The injunction is based on Alcide's suit, filed in the Western District of Wisconsin, alleging patent infringement by Babson's product. 
18872 !C12 !CCAT !GCAT !GCRIM  A judge has ruled that PaineWebber LP must allow an investor in five of its real estate limited partnerships to see the list of all limited partners and the number of units they hold.   The decision could affect 30 to 40 similar lawsuits filed this year in the Delaware Chancery Court against other investment companies including Dean Witter, Travelers Group's Smith Barney, and Lehman Brothers, a Delaware attorney experienced in limited partnerships told Reuters.    "Many such lawsuits are being filed now particularly by funds interested in obtaining a five percent position in limited partnerships", the attorney said.   He said the partnerships are considered undervalued "because there's no public market for LP units and they are sold at a very low price.   This provides an opportunity for speculative funds to acquire partnerships cheaply."    In a 16 page decision released on Thursday, Vice Chancellor Jack Jacobs said that Brent Donaldson, the president of the three Liquidity Fund LP plaintiffs, had "a contractual right to the lists under the applicable Partnership Agreements" but not a statutory right.   Jacobs said that contractual right overrode his finding that Donaldson did not have a "proper purpose" under Delaware law for wanting to seeing the lists.   According to court papers, Donaldson said he wanted to see the lists to determine whether to increase his investment in the partnerships through a tender offer.    But Jacobs said that in trial Donaldson admitted "that if any tender offer were to be made, it would be conducted not by the plaintiffs directly but rather by an as-yet-to-be-created $50 million investment fund."   Jacobs said Donaldson's funds were liquid but insufficient to mount a tender offer.   "The plaintiffs have no plans to use the lists to increase the value of their investments" but are using a combined five percent interest in the PaineWebber partnerships as a "legal vehicle to obtain the lists" and make them available "to the investment fund in return for an equity participation in that fund, should it ever be created."   A PaineWebber spokesman could not be reached for comment.    "We are reviewing the decision carefully," he later told Reuters.   -- New York newsdesk 212-859-1610 
18873 !C13 !CCAT !GCAT !GDIS  Insured property damage from Hurricane Hortense was estimated at $150 million, with those losses coming from damage done in Puerto Rico, an insurance industry trade group said.   Most of the damage was done by the torrential rainfall the hurricane dumped on Puerto Rico on September 10 and 11, said Property Claim Services, an industry-supported group that tracks catastrophic losses.   The estimate does not include damage from flooding, the group said.   Property Claim Services tracks losses in the United States and its territories.   The losses from Hortense come on top of an estimated $1.6 billion in insured losses from Hurricane Fran and an estimated $135 million in insured losses from Hurricane Bertha earlier this year.   -- Patricia Vowinkel 212-859-1716 
18874 !C13 !CCAT !GCAT !GCRIM !GENV !GPOL !GVOTE  A Superior Court judge Friday dismissed a lawsuit aimed at stopping voters from considering a compromise measure to overhaul Maine's forestry rules.   Judge Donald Alexander rejected the Concerned Forest Families' claim the measure's wording was too complicated and approved too late by the Legislature to legally qualify for the November election ballot.   Concerned Forest Families said it would appeal, but the Maine Supreme Court has already issued an advisory opinion rejecting several of the group's legal claims.   The forestry measure was put together by the paper industry and some environmental groups as a moderate alternative to a citizen-initiated proposal already on the ballot to ban a forestry practice known as clearcutting.   Concerned Forest Families opposes both measures and its leaders contend defeating the ban on clearcutting will be more difficult if the moderate alternative is also allowed on the ballot. 
18875 !C13 !C23 !CCAT !GCAT !GENV  The federal government and six New England states signed an agreement Friday speeding up the technical evaluation of new environmental technologies making them available for sale and use in the region more quickly.   With four of the six governors looking on, Environmental Protection Agency's New England chief John DeVillars inked the pact that rolls six independent state technical reviews into one.   "It will definitely save money for both the state and the companies," said Conn.   Gov. John Rowland, chair of the New England Governors Conference which met in this western Massachusetts town at the regional state fair.   "We'll save money because the efficiencies in getting these companies involved and the critical technologies not having to duplicate the process six different times," Rowland said.   Massachusetts Gov. William Weld said he had found that there was great interest in Latin America, Europe and Asia in environmental technologies that New England is developing and he is interested in trying to open offices abroad to promote the region and its environmental, biotech and hitech products.   Under the agreement, technology developers and vendors will now be able to petition a single, multi-state review panel rather than petition each state individually.   The agreement also sets a broad framework for interstate regulatory cooperation.   Under the first year of the agreement, which starts Oct 1, on-site wastewater treatment and disposal technology permitting will be streamlined.   Future agreements are being considered for drinking water and air pollution control.   --Leslie Gevirtz, Boston bureau 
18876 !C23 !CCAT !E12 !ECAT !GCAT !GSCI  New England governors heard Friday that the region's economy was undergoing a moderate expansion, but they should concentrate on their greatest resources -- research and education.   James Howell, head of a Boston consulting firm, told the governors that the "largest share of the nation's medial research" is done at New England medical centers and biotech companies.   "They are the wellspring of the nation's medical industry and in New England they are the sources of our jobs and our industry."   Howell noted the large federal grants and funding that comes to the region -- not just the Boston metro area -- through the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health.   He urged the urged the governors to meet with Dr. David Nathan, who is chairing a panel on research and development biomedical research funding.   He stressed that research goes on at 30 different facilities within the region and suggested that both Providence and Worcester, a Massachusetts city an hours drive west of Boston, were leading the way in obtaining funding and sparking growth.   He called the relationship Rhode Island hospitals had with Brown University "a nuturing strength" and noted a number of biotech firms had sprung up in Worcester   Howell told the governors to concentrate on academic endeavors, not skill training.   Pointing to a study of 198 firms that were started by MIT graduates he noted that 50 percent of them were created when the students were either still in college or shortly after their graduation.   "Concentrate on academic strengths...The companies will teach them skills," Howell said.   He noted that after the region had emerged from its lagging economy in the 1980s to have a moderate growth at the present time, but gave no specific numbers.   New England had become a knowledged based economy.   New England has medical, biotech, software and research facilities and venture capital that are "extraordinarily unique to our region, there is a solid basis for being optimistic about the New England future." 
18877 !C12 !CCAT !GCAT !GCRIM  American Express Co sued First USA Bank late Thursday alleging the rival credit card distributor infringed American Express's "Platinum Card" trademark.   In papers filed late Thursday in the U.S. District Court in Delaware, AmEx said it first used the "Platinum Card" name in 1984 and registered it in 1992.   American Express spokeswoman Emily Porter told Reuters that the company hopes to resolve the dispute out of court.   "We've sent them a letter and hope they respond to it," Porter said.    But First USA spokesman David Webster told Reuters "We believe that American Express' claim to the words 'Platinum Card' as we use them is without merit...We believe American Express should compete with us in the marketplace and not attack us in the courthouse.   They tried this same tactic in 1988 with the gold card and lost."   Webster said "Ours is a no fee card with competitive interest rates.   Theirs comes with a $300 annual fee and their customers must pay their balance in full each month."   When asked if American Express intended to sue MBNA America which launched a "Platinum Plus" card earlier this year, Porter said the two trademarks are not exactly the same.   "We have not sued MBNA, but we are watching them", Porter said.   The lawsuit seeks an injunction against First USA's continued alleged infringement and unspecified damages tripled for "willfulness." 
18878 !GCAT !GDIP !M14 !M143 !MCAT  Recurring rumors that Saddam Hussein is a big oil futures player are not backed up by the facts, according to U.S. intelligence and regulatory officials.   The theory, which has surfaced over the years when Iraq has been at the center of Middle East turmoil, is that Saddam Hussein and his Baghdad cronies play oil futures markets, particularly the New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX), via Swiss accounts controlled by third parties.    "We have looked into the rumor and found that there is no evidence to substantiate it," said a Langley, Virginia-based U.S. official familiar with government intelligence on Iraq.   The view from intelligence sources is backed up by futures market regulators and experienced brokers on the exchange.   Though there has long been light-hearted talk among oil traders and diplomats of how the inner circle in Baghdad could benefit financially from its political and military actions, that speculation has taken on a more serious tone in recent months as oil price volatility has run at its highest level since the end of the Gulf War.    In the wake of protracted negotiations between Baghdad and the United Nations over a limited lifting of oil sanctions, The New York Times' ran a 'Foreign Affairs' column in August, couched as an idea for a novel, which mused at length about how Saddam Hussein could use foreknowledge of his diplomatic positions to benefit from their effect on oil prices.    Last week, following the oil market turmoil caused by Baghdad's incursion into protected Kurdish zones and the U.S. military response, the respected Journal of Commerce quoted an unnamed United Nations official as saying that Baghdad "is believed to be playing the futures market for some easy money."   "They can play the oil futures market and make money out of nothing," the U.N. official told the newspaper.   But regulatory investigation of futures market activity both before and after major market-moving events in Iraq turned up nothing suspicious, according to officials.    "I can assure you that when Surveillance saw (the big Iraq-related price moves) they looked into it," said John Phillips, spokesman for the Commodities Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) in Washington, the regulator for U.S. futures exchanges including the NYMEX.    He explains that all NYMEX trades must be carried out by members of the exchange and they must report to the CFTC details of any futures position of 300 contracts or more in any one month, covering 300,000 barrels, or about $7 million worth of oil at current prices.   The CFTC's Surveillance committee meets weekly and examines closely any unusual activity.    The market and the firms trading in it the weeks prior to and following the latest crisis were examined closely and no suspicious trading was found, sources confirm.   There have been similar exercises previously when markets were roiled, they add.   To conceal trades of significant enough size to make it worthwhile to Baghdad "would be damn near impossible," said Phillips of the CFTC.   "There has never been an entity which has come up that you are not aware of who they are."    To make $1 million from the threshold reportable position would require a move of more than $3 a barrel in Friday's oil price, a huge move.   And Baghdad would have to get the direction right.   When it signed its deal to partially lift U.N. sanctions on May 20, an event which would be expected to result in lower oil prices, oil futures ended up nearly $2 a barrel that day.    "You are constantly hearing about conspiracy theories, whether it is Saddam Hussein having a trading account or whatever," said Tom Blakeslee, a trader at Minneapolis-based Cargill Investor Services Inc., one of the largest international commodities firms.   "For it to make any difference to him he would have to trade in such huge size that we would know.   Frankly, I don't believe it.   I don't think he is moving troops around and betting futures on it; I think he's got bigger goals," said Blakeslee. 
18879 !C42 !CCAT !E41 !ECAT !GCAT !GJOB  Titanium Metals Corp said hourly workers at its Henderson, Nev., plant voted to ratify a four-year labor agreement.   About 350 production and maintenance workers at the facility are represented by the United Steelworkers of America, the company said.   The new agreement runs until October 2, 2000, which is one year longer than the historical three-year agreement at the plant, the company said.   It said the contract provides for, among other things, increases in wages during each of the four years and enhancements in pension benefits over the course of the agreement, the costs of which are expected to be offset in part by an agreed-upon reduction in the level of profit sharing available to employees in certain years.   -- New York Newsdesk 212-859-1610. 
18880 !C12 !CCAT !GCAT !GCRIM  Pentech International Inc said Friday that a legal judgment of about $4 million was entered against it as a result of a previously announced adverse legal opinion dated July 30, 1996.   In a release issued Friday, the company said enforcement of this judgment, including legal fees as determined by the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, has been stayed.   Pentech said it was pursuing an appeal, obtaining a bond and exploring an out-of-court settlement possibility. 
18881 !C13 !CCAT !E51 !E512 !ECAT !G15 !G158 !GCAT  Acting U.S. Trade Representative Charlene Barshefsky said Friday the European Union appears to be backing away from its previous support for a global agreement to cut duties on information technology.   "Europe seems to be backing away now, which would be greatly dissappointing," Barshefsky told reporters.   U.S. trade officials had hoped that a global agreement to end tariffs on a variety of information technology products could be announced at the World Trade Organization ministerial to be held in mid-December in Singapore.    But Barshefsky said that would be impossible without Europe signing on to the pact.   "It is impossible to do a multilateral (Information Technology Agreement) without Europe," Barshefsky said at a news conference.   "We will not let Europe (take a ) free ride off of tariff reductions on this broad array of products.   Europe needs to be a part of this."   The agreement would cover a wide range of products, including semiconductors, computer hardware and software, and telephone equipment.    Barshefsky said that a technology accord would be an important demonstration of the WTO's ability to deal with market opening issues on an ongoing basis.   "Europe needs to demonstrate leadership here," Barshefsky said.   "This is not the time for Europe to be backing away from the multilateral process and backing away from the trans-Atlantic dialogue."   The trans-Atlantic dialogue involves a group of business leaders from both Europe and North America who are working to find ways to lower barriers, harmonize standards and reduce the cost of trade.    A global agreement eliminating tariffs on information technologies was one of the recommendations made by that group, Barshefsky said.   The idea of an information technology agreement had been endorsed this spring at a meeting in Japan of the trade ministers of the Euroepan Union, Canada, United States and Japan.   Barshefsky said the four ministers will take up the issue again next week when they meet in Seattle, Washington. 
18882 !C13 !C21 !CCAT !GCAT !GHEA  Hoechst Marion Roussel said Friday it has received approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to market its prostate cancer drug Nilandron in the United States.   The company, a unit of Hoechst AG, said the drug will be launched in the United States this autumn.    Hoechst said that Nilandron, or nilutamide, is an oral, once-daily antiandrogen therapy for men with advanced prostate cancer and is indicated for use in combination with surgical castration.   For maximum benefit, Nilandron must be started on the same day as or on the day after surgery, the company said.   Controlled clinical trials demonstrated patients receiving Nilandron immediately after surgical removal of the testicles experienced statistically significant improvement in bone pain, longer progression-free survival, and longer median overall survival time compared with patients receiving placebo.    Nilandron patients also experienced a statistically significant benefit in complete or partial disease regression, the company said.   In advanced prostate cancer, cancer cells have already spread to other parts of the body, usually the bones.   Consequently, bone pain becomes a major complication of the disease, Hoechst said.   "Nilandron offers men with advanced prostate cancer a safe and effective new therapy that significantly reduces bone pain," said Peter Ladell, president of Hoechst Marion Roussel North America.   Prostate cancer is the most common type of cancer among American men and the second leading cause of cancer deaths among men, Hoechst said.   According to the American Cancer Society, one out of every five men will develop prostate cancer over the course of a lifetime, Hoechst said.   About 317,000 new cases will be diagnosed in 1996.   The disease is found mainly in men aged 65 or older. 
18883 !C13 !CCAT !E21 !E211 !ECAT !GCAT !GDIS  New York State Gov. George Pataki said the federal government or TWA should pay for the help Suffolk County and the state provided for the continuing investigation into the crash of TWA Flight 800.   Pataki, who made the remarks Thursday evening during a radio talk show, said he had urged the state's two U.S. senators to press the federal government to help pay the expenses the region has incurred.   The governor said that if it is determined that the explosion which caused the jet to crash into Long Island Sound was caused by a bomb, the federal government should bear the costs, according to his spokesman, Mike McKeon.   However, if the investigation finds that Trans World Airlines was at fault, then the airliner should be asked to pay the costs, he added.   U.S. National Transportation Safety Board in late August asked for a total of $8 million from Trans World Airlines and Boeing Co, makers of the downed 747 jetliner, and United Technologies Corp's Pratt & Whitney Canada unit, which made the jet's engines, to help pay for the investigation's costs.   "The governor also said he feels that it is incredible that the federal government's response now has been thanks for the help and good luck with the bills," said his spokesman, Mike McKeon.   He had no estimate immediately available of how much the state's support efforts have cost, explaining it was focusing on the salvage effort and helping victims' families.   The investigation, which has been directed out of East Moriches, part of Suffolk County, cost the county $5.1 million, as of Sept 9, according to its budget director, Kenneth Weiss.   The budget director said he had no reason to believe that the county would not be reimbursed by the federal or state government.   "As far as we know, we haven't gotten that word."   The county's biggest expense by far was overtime and equipment for the police force, which totaled $3.9 million, he said, adding that Suffolk will seek approximately $5.1 million when it sends in its reimbursement claim on October 1.   After a large number of wildfires broke out last year, Suffolk County waited nine months to be reimbursed for the costs of firefighting, receiving $994,000 out of its $1.1 million claim, Weiss added.   --Joan Gralla, 212-859-1654 
18884 !C42 !CCAT !E41 !ECAT !GCAT !GJOB  Raytheon Electronic Systems said Friday that it is cutting 600 employees from its defense manufacturing operation and adding 650 engineers for research and development in other areas.   Raytheon said continued, severe reductions in the Department of Defense procurement budget, coupled with manufacturing program completions, require a reduction in its manufacturing employment.    At the same time, the company said it is substantially increasing jobs in its Massachusetts engineering and research and development operations due to recent contract awards and its improving competitive position.   Raytheon Electronic Systems, which accounts for 20 percent of Raytheon Co's total revenues, said it is adding 650 engineering and technical personnel this year, over 200 of which have already been added since January.   The company said the U.S. Department of Defense procurement budget, which directly affects the company's manufacturing workload, has been cut by more than 60 percent since 1990, and the President's proposed 1997 budget requested an additional 14 percent cut from the 1996 budget approved by Congress.   "We are not downsizing, we are being downsized," a statement from the company said.   As a result, the company said it will release by year-end about 300 salaried employees in staff areas that support defense manufacturing, as well as about 300 hourly manufacturing personnel. 
18885 !GCAT !GDIS !GWEA  Typhoon Willie has already caused very heavy rains, flooding and mudslides on Hainan island in the South China Sea.   Damage should become moderate to possibly severe.   Willie is now in the Gulf of Tonkin to the northwest of Hainan.   Willie will be a major risk to shipping as it tracks across the Gulf during the next 12-24 hours.   Shipping is at risk due to strong seas and strong winds.   Landfall is expected along the Vietnam coast near 19 north.   Winds up to 95 mph and strong seas will cause coastal damage near landfall.   Heavy rains will lead to flooding and mudslides as the system moves inland thereafter.   Damage could become moderate to severe.    Typhoon Violet is about 300 miles east of Okinawa, Japan at this time, moving very slowly to the north.   This system will begin to accelerate to the northeast over the next 24 hours.   Top winds, now near 105 mph, should be down to near 75 mph by 48 hours.   Violet is mainly a threat to shipping at this time, though high swells are expected to continue along south-facing and east-facing coastal areas of Japan.   Violet threatens Honshu late in the period.   Honshu can expect heavy rains which should cause flooding and may cause mudslides.   Coastal areas can expect strong winds and strong seas which would cause beach errosion.   If the system comes closer to the coast the conditions would be much more serious.    Tom is losing tropical characteristics.   The tropical storm, with top winds of 50 mph, is tranitioning to an extratropical weather system in the northwestern Pacific and should be fully converted to such by 12 hours. 
18886 !C13 !C18 !C183 !CCAT !GCAT !GPOL !GWELF  The transformation of retirement savings that has led to the spectacular growth of Chile's private pension fund industry is expected to spread further in Latin America, government and industry officials said Friday.   "Pension reform and efficient functioning of capital markets are essential components for increasing potential economic growth in the region," said Jose Antonio Villamil, senior consultant at Fiduciary Trust International, in remarks prepared for delivery at a World Research Group conference on pension reform.    Officials from Brazil, Ecuador and other countries said they felt workers would demand privately managed pension plans if only to provide an alternative to weak government social security systems.   "We had a bankrupt system," said Luis Viana Martorell, chairman of Uruguay's Republica AFAP S.A..   "We have every year one major scandal in the social, public system," said Jose Roberto Almeida, a director of the pension fund at Banco Central de Brazil.   Brazil's pension funds have grown strongly in recent years, he said, noting the nation's non profit managed pension funds' total assets were $23 billion, versus $66 billion last June, he said.   Almeida also said he expected a growing private sector would fuel the growth of pension funds and that growth would come from pension funds linked to local governments, as tax revenues are transferred from Brazil's central government.   Juan Eduardo Infante Barros, professor of social securities at the Universidad Catolica de Chile, and former Chilean pension fund administrator, said he could foresee a time when transferred money between pension funds in different nations, as when a worker moves from one nation to another, would be possible.   "When our countries all have harmonized laws, these flows of money... will be possible," he said. 
18887 !C24 !C42 !CCAT !E41 !ECAT !GCAT !GJOB  Rhone-Poulenc Inc, the U.S. subsidiary of Rhone-Poulenc SA, said it will discontinue manufacturing operatins in Dayton, N.J., effective April 1997.   The facility will continue to be occupied by Rhone-Poulenc for research or other support purposes.   Rhone-Poulenc employs 42 people in manufacturing positions in Dayton, where the company makes ingredients used in detergents, cleaning agents and personal care products, the company said.   Rhone-Poulenc said production will be transferred to other company manufacturing sites in North America, primarily to the company's Winder, Ga. facility, and it aims to find Dayton employees new jobs inside or outside the company.   In a release the company said that this is part of the overall strategy of Rhone-Poulenc's Surfactants & Specialties business to strengthen its focus on specialty surfactants, which includes consolidating production.   "Our actions in Dayton are part of an ongoing effort to consolidate and improve manufacturing processes in North America in order to obtain scale efficiencies," said Chuck Jongeward, senior vice president and general manager of Rhone-Poulenc Surfactants & Specialties in North America. 
18888 !C13 !C21 !CCAT !GCAT !GHEA  Biocontrol Technology Inc said Friday that a congressional subcommittee plans to hold a hearing next week to examine the way the Food and Drug Administration handled Biocontrol's filing for the Diasensor 1000 noninvasive glucose sensor for diabetics.   The company said the House Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations has scheduled a hearing for next Thursday.   Biocontrol said the hearing was scheduled as a result of investigations conducted by the subcommittee in the past several months.    Biocontrol submitted its 510(k) premarket notification for the Diasensor 1000 to the FDA in January 1994.   In January 1996, the company cited progress in its application with the FDA, saying the agency was seeking to resolve only one issue, which it declined to identify.   In April, the company said the FDA had asked Biocontrol to submit a new 510(k) notification with the data obtained from the Diasensor 1000 production model.   The company said at the time that this would "not be an overwhelming task."   In May Biocontrol was sued by a group of shareholders who alleged it had misrepresented or omitted material information concerning the effectiveness and reliability of the sensor.   The lawsuit also alleged that the company had falsely implied that FDA clearance to market the product was imminent.   Susan Taylor, a company spokeswoman, said Biocontrol was expected to submit the new FDA filing soon. 
18889 !C13 !C22 !CCAT !GCAT !GHEA  Aksys Ltd said Friday the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has notified the company that additional data is needed on its personal hemodialysis system to review its safety and effectiveness.   The company said that it would not be possible to respond to the request within the 30-day period standard in a 510(k) premarket notification request.   Therefore the company said it has withdrawn that request and will refile when data can be provided. 
18890 !GCAT !GSPO  Leaders after the   second round of the $1 million B.C. Open golf tournament on   Friday (players U.S. unless noted):   131 Pete Jordan 67 64   134 Tiger Woods 68 66, Fred Funk 68 66, Brian Claar 66 68   135 Patrick Burke 68 67   136 Craig Parry (Australia) 69 67, Sam Randolph 71 65, Hugh   Royer 70 66, Jeff Sluman 69 67   137 David Ogrin 70 67, Greg Kraft 70 67, Joey Sindelar 69 68,   Carl Paulson 69 68, Grant Waite (New Zealand) 68 69, Jim   McGovern 67 60, Mike Standly 69 68, Tray Tyner 69 68   138 Bruce Fleisher 68 70, Jay Delsing 68 70, Lee Janzen 71   67, Mike Hulbert 69 69, Jeff Hart 68 70, Scott Gump 70 68,   Kelly Gibson 69 69, Wayne Levi 67 71   Add non-U.S. scores   139 Bradley Hughes (Australia) 71 68   144 Alexander Cejka (Germany) 73 71   146 Steve Rintoul (Australia) 72 74   147 Lucas Parsons (Australia) 74 73   148 Stuart Appleby (Australia) 80 68   150 Jarmo Sandelin (Sweden) 73 77 
18891 !GCAT !GSPO  Buffalo Bills star quarterback Jim Kelly will be sidelined for two to three weeks after suffering a strained right hamstring during practice, the team said Friday.   Kelly apparently tripped on a seam in the carpet during one-on-one drills Thursday and had to use crutches to get around.   Results of an MRI exam taken Thursday night revealed the strain.   The 36-year-old Kelly, who led the Bills to four consecutive Super Bowl appearances, has been suffering through the worst start of his 11-year NFL career.   Kelly has completed 53-of-99 passes for 602 yards, just two touchdowns and eight interceptions for dismal passer rating of 45.1, lowest in the AFC.   Todd Collins, who appeared in seven games as a rookie last season, will start in place of Kelly.   Collins completed 14-of-29 passes last year for 112 yards and one interception. 
18892 !GCAT !GSPO  Defending Solheim Cup champions United States thrashed Europe in the early foursome play Friday and held on for a 5-3 first-day lead after the home side bounced back in the afternoon fourballs competition.   World No. 1 Laura Davies made amends for a dismal putting display in the morning by playing superbly with fellow Briton Trish Johnson to win their fourballs match 6 and 5 against Americans Kelly Robbins and Pat Bradley.   The powerful Davies was seven under par for her round when the match ended on the 13th green.   The Solheim Cup, being contested at St Pierre, is the women's golf equivalent of the more famous Ryder Cup men's competition, which pits a team of U.S. players against the top European golfers.   Europe led all four matches for much of the afternoon but the Americans clawed back 1-1/2 points in the final two contests.   Europe won the fourballs 2-1/2 points to 1-1/2, but the Americans's 3-1/2 to 1/2 victory in the foursomes left them in the driver's seat at the end of the day.   There are four more foursomes and four fourballs Saturday with 12 singles set for Sunday in the biennial contest between the women professionals from opposite sides of the Atlantic.   European captain Mickey Walker was full of praise for Davies and Johnson.   "Their golf was incredible.   It has been a wonderful afternoon," she said.   Davies had missed three short putts in the first eight holes of her foursomes with Alison Nicholas and a crucial putt of three feet at the 15th as they lost by one hole to Patty Sheehan and Rosie Jones.   But she missed nothing after a lunch which she said was pretty quiet until Scottish rookie Kathryn Marshall put on some rock music to cheer up the team after their morning disappointment.   "I did not practise putting during the break.   I hit maybe a dozen just before I started out.   Eventually they go in," said Davies.   "Obviously we made Laura mad," U.S. captain Judy Rankin said.   "I don't think any options I had this afternoon would have beaten Laura.   And Trish played well, too."   Europe's second fourballs win came when Marshall and Annika Sorenstam of Sweden beat Val Skinner and Jane Geddes by one hole.   American Dottie Pepper was the only player to win two points.   She and Brandie Burton came from behind to beat Swedes Helen Alfredsson and Liselotte Neumann 2 and 1 in the morning after the Swedish pair bogeyed four successive holes from the 14th.   Then Pepper and Betsy King scored a one-hole fourballs victory over Neumann and fellow Swede, Catrin Nilsmark.   Pepper holed a crucial 15-footer to halve the 15th after Nilsmark had made an 18-footer for birdie.   In the final fourballs Beth Daniel and Meg Mallon halved with Helen Alfredsson and Nicholas when Daniel made a 12-foot birdie putt at the last hole.   "Beth gave away a couple of holes earlier with her putting," Rankin said.   "It was a very big putt she made at the 18th."   Walker was impressed by the fifth-ranked Pepper, whose form for the first half of the year left her thinking she might not even make the team.   "Dottie played fantastic golf.   Whenever a European did something she equalled it," Walker said. 
18893 !GCAT !GSPO  Underdogs Italy were one match from reaching their seventh Davis Cup final when they took a shock 2-0 lead over France in their world group semifinal on Friday.   Italian number one Renzo Furlan came from 1-5 down in a fourth set tie-break to take it 7-5 and beat Arnaud Boetsch 7-5 1-6 6-3 7-6 in the second singles.   France must win Saturday's doubles to stay in the match.   Italy's second string Andrea Gaudenzi upset French number one Cedric Pioline, ranked 17th in the world, in four sets in the opening singles.   Gaudenzi, a clay-court specialist who came from behind to win 5-7 6-1 7-6 6-3, said: "It was probably the best match of my life on this surface."   With slow court specialists Italy coping well on the faster synthetic surface, Furlan served for the match at 5-4 in the fourth set only to miss the chance when Boetsch broke back immediately.   The Frenchman then held his service after a hotly-disputed call went against Furlan amid the loud cheering of a small but increasingly vociferous home crowd.   The Italian held his serve and took the set into a tie-break.   "It would have been a crime to lose the match after nearly taking it at 5-4," said Furlan, who is rediscovering his best form after a lean spell.   Italy's captain Adriano Panatta, who exchanged angry words with the umpire and referee over the disputed call, said: "I got cross because the umpire had made several mistakes, some that went against the French as well, and he knew it.   "I told him he was afraid to change the decision and that he was losing control of what was going on in the match.   "We're very happy but I know from experience in the Davis Cup that tomorrow it can all be different," added Panatta, who was in Italy's only winning team in 1976.   Gaudenzi, who has now beaten Pioline for the fourth time, said he was improving his net game, a key to his victory.   "I didn't often lose control of the court and maintained the pressure coming up well to the net," he said.   Gaudenzi broke the erratic Frenchman, whose success rate on his first serve was only 40 percent, nine times -- four in the decisive fourth set.   Pioline, who had never before lost when he had to open a Davis Cup tie, said: "I knew the match would be like this and I didn't play well enough to counter him."   The Frenchman, who often looked ponderous against the mobile Gaudenzi, said he was not used to playing long rallies and lost the majority against the patient Italian. 
18894 !GCAT !GSPO  The draw for the second   set of foursomes in the Solheim Cup women's team golf event   between the United States and Europe on Saturday (U.S. names   first, times GMT):   0700 - Patty Sheehan/Rosie Jones v Laura Davies/Alison Nicholas   (Britain)   0715 - Dottie Pepper/Brandie Burton v Annika Sorenstam/Catrin   Nilsmark (Sweden)   0730 - Meg Mallon/Jane Geddes v Liselotte Neumann (Sweden)/   Kathryn Marshall (Britain)   0745 - Kelly Robbins/Michelle McGann v Marie-Laure de Lorenzi   (France)/Helen Alfredsson (Sweden). 
18895 !GCAT !GSPO  Australian Robert Allenby launched a vitriolic attack on the pin placings at the inaugural World Invitational championship despite finishing just one shot off the lead after a second round 71 on Friday.   Denmark's Thomas Bjorn topped the leaderboard after a two-under-par 69.   While most players have heaped extensive praise on the picturesque Loch Lomond course, Allenby, joint second with Frenchman Jean Van de Velde on 140, said: "Some of the holes are just plain stupid where they have placed the flags.   "This golf course is tough enough as it is.   Seven or eight of the pin positions are just ridiculous with the greens as hard as they are."   Van de Velde would hardly agree for he had a best of the week 65 with seven birdies on his card.   And Colin Montgomerie, Europe's leading moneywinner for the past three years, was quick to shoot down Allenby's argument in flames.   "This course is fabulous," he said.   "The pins are not too tough if you are on the right side of the fairway.   "If anyone complains about this course they should go and play on another Tour."   Montgomerie made a late charge with three successive birdies from the 14th to shoot 70 for 142.   Only six players were under par after two rounds.   They included Nick Faldo, whose 73 for a 141 halfway total left him far from happy.   He dropped four shots in three holes early in his round and, though he then made a partial recovery, two late bogeys left him in a sour mood.   Northern Irishman Darren Clarke's day was even more depressing.   He went out in 32 to gain a three-stroke lead on the field but then the wheels came off.   He lost a ball at the 10th, took an eight at the 13th and dropped another shot at the 16th to come home in 41.   "I played only three bad shots all the way round and they cost me six shots.   But I'm only two off the lead and still right in contention."   he said philosophically. 
18896 !GCAT !GSPO  Leading second   round scores in the Loch Lomond World Invitational golf   tournament on Friday (Britain unless stated):   139 Thomas Bjorn (Denmark) 70 69   140 Jean Van de Velde (France) 75 65, Robert Allenby   (Australia) 69 71   141 Nick Faldo 68 73, Darren Clarke 68 73, Jamie Spence 67 74   142 Ian Woosnam 73 69, Peter Baker 69 73, Colin Montgomerie   72 70   143 Barry Lane 69 74, Pierre Fulke (Sweden) 71 72, David Howell   70 73   144 Jonathan Lomas 71 73, Retief Goosen (South Africa) 72 72   145 Andrew Sherborne 73 72, Pedro Linhart (Spain) 69 76,   Jose Coceres (Argentina) 68 77, Mark McNulty (Zimabwe)   73 72, Thomas Gogele (Germany) 70 75, David Gilford 71 74,   Richard Green (Australia) 72 73, Andrew Coltart 74 71   146 Roger Chapman 71 75, Ignacio Garrido (Spain) 72 74, Martin   Gates 76 70, Paul McGinley (Ireland) 72 74, Gary Clark   75 71, Miguel Angel Martin (Spain) 73 73, Glen Day (U.S.)   72 74, Costantino Rocca (Italy) 72 74   147 Des Smyth (Ireland) 75 72, Eamonn Darcy (Ireland) 71 76,   Miguel Angel Jimenez (Spain) 77 70, Marc Farry (France)   76 71, Lee Westwood 74 73, Stephen Ames (Trinidad and   Tobago) 76 71, Eduardo Romero (Argentina) 77 70   148 Peter O'Malley (Australia) 70 78, Adam Hunter 77 71, Greg   Turner (New Zealand) 78 70, Andrew Oldcorn 75 73, Ronan   Rafferty 73 75, Fernando Roca (Spain) 76 72, Rodger Davis   (Australia) 76 72, Ross Drummond 69 79 
18897 !GCAT !GSPO  Collated first day   results in the Solheim Cup women's team golf match between the   United States and Europe on Friday (U.S. names first):   Foursomes:   Kelly Robbins/Michelle McGann halved with Annika   Sorenstam/Catrin Nilsmark (Sweden)   Patty Sheehan/Rosie Jones beat Laura Davies/Alison Nicholas   (Britain) by one hole   Beth Daniel/Val Skinner beat Marie-Laure de Lorenzi   (France)/Dale Reid (Britain) by one hole   Dottie Pepper/Brandie Burton beat Helen Alfredsson/Liselotte   Neumann (Sweden) 2 and 1   Foursomes score: U.S. 3-1/2 Europe 1/2   Fourballs:   Kelly Robbins/Pat Bradley lost to Laura Davies/Trish Johnson   (Britain) 6 and 5   Val Skinner/Jane Geddes lost to Annika Sorenstam   (Sweden)/Kathryn Marshall (Britain) by one hole   Dottie Pepper/Betsy King beat Liselotte Neumann/Catrin Nilsmark   (Sweden) by one hole   Beth Daniel/Meg Mallon halved with Helen Alfredsson (Sweden)/   Alison Nicholas (Britain)   Fourballs score: Europe 2-1/2 points U.S. 1-1/2   Overall score: U.S. 5 Europe 3 
18898 !GCAT !GSPO  Sweden, taking advantage of the fast Supreme surface at Prague's Sports Hall, took a commanding 2-0 lead over the Czech Republic after the opening singles matches in their Davis Cup World Group semifinal tie on Friday.   Thomas Enqvist gave the Swedes an early 1-0 lead as he thoroughly dominated Petr Korda 6-4 6-3 7-6 (11-9).   Stefan Edberg then put the Swedes ahead 2-0 with a hard-fought 7-6 (7-2) 7-5 4-6 6-3 win.   Edberg, in the final year of a distinguished career, played nearly flawless tennis, using his deep spinning serve to keep Vacek, the Czech number off balance at crucial times in the match.   Neither player faced a break point in the first set, but it was Edberg who drew first blood in the tie break, jumping out to an early 4-0 lead before finishing off the set 7-2.   The two then slugged it out again from the service line until the 25 year-old Vacek flinched first, doubling faulting while down 5-6 in games, setting the match's first break point.   The wily veteran Edberg, who has played in 68 Davis Cup matches in his career, took the opportunity to send a sharply hit backhand up the line for the set.   Vacek fought back in the third set, taking advantage of his first break point to go ahead 4-3, and eventually take the set 6-4.   Edberg, who moves past the legendary Bjorn Borg into sixth place on the all-time Davis Cup winners for Sweden with his 46th victory, continued to press the world number 37, gaining an early break that proved to be enough to put the Swedes up 2-0.   "I served well and in the third set thought I was playing well.   But a couple of key points and the fact that Stefan was serving so well really proved to be the difference," said Vacek.    "It was a tight match, but I served and volleyed really well.   I wasn't sure what to expect but my timing was really good," said Edberg who fired only 11 aces to Vacek's 20.   Edberg had been plagued all week by a nagging Achille's tendon problem, but showed no signs of slowness on the court and said the injury was not a problem at all.   Nicklas Kulti and Jonas Bjorkman are slated to try and clinch a Swedish victory in the doubles portion of the tie on Saturday against Jiri Novak and Bohdan Ulihrach.   But it has become a public secret that Korda and Vacek, who paired to surprise the U.S. in what proved to be the turning point in the Czechs 3-2 upset of the reigning champions in the quarterfinals, will get the nod from non-playing captain Vladislav Savrda.   In the first singles match, Korda opened with an ace, his first of 14, but after that the Swedish number one dominated proceedings, taking advantage of unforced errors by his Czech opponent.   The Czech number two showed flashes of the brilliance which carried him to fifth in the world rankings in 1992 but committed 36 unforced errors and had a poor first-serve ratio of 47 percent.   Enqvist failed to convert his first match point at 6-5 in the third set when Korda fired a strong second serve to hold off the hard-hitting Swede.   Enqvist, who has lost to Korda only once in seven matches, needed three more match points during the tie-break before sealing the match.   Korda had himself squandered three set points after taking a 6-3 lead in the tie-break.   "It was not an easy win.   Even when I was up, he was playing well, but I felt I was playing extremely well," said Enqvist.   "I played agressively because it's important to take command on this fast surface and because when Korda dictates the play, he's very dangerous."   Added Korda: "I have never faced such strong hits before.   I think I served well, except when it was needed.   I think if Thomas plays on the tour the way he played today, he could be in the top five." 
18899 !GCAT !GSPO  British jockey Willie Carson, four times winner of the Epsom Derby, suffered a liver injury when he was kicked by his horse at a race course on Friday.   Carson was in stable condition in hospital, having been saved from much more serious injury by his body protector.   The 53-year-old Scot was about to mount the unraced filly Meshhed in the parade ring at the Newbury course when she suddenly veered round and lashed out with her near hind leg.   The blow caught the jockey in the stomach and catapulted him into a row of conifers surrounding the parade ring.   Carson was taken by ambulance to the North Hampshire Hospital in Basingstoke, southern England.   Mervyn Rees, consultant liver surgeon at the hospital, said: "Examination revealed that he had sustained an isolated injury to his liver.   He is in a stable but not critical condition.   "A body scan revealed that the capsule of the liver has had internal bleeding but this stopped by itself.   At this stage it is not envisaged that surgery will be required.   "The body protector he was wearing absorbed most of the impact and prevented more serious injury.   Carson will remain in the liver department for not less than two weeks."   Eye-witness Selena Drage said: "He was just approaching the horse when she suddenly swerved round and lashed out.   She must have flung him 15 feet into the trees.   "It was a tremendous kick, I've never seen anything like it.   He took the full force of the kick in his stomach."   Carson was conscious but was quiet for some time before exclaiming: "What a cow that is!"   He left with the best wishes of fellow jockey Frankie Dettori, who broke his elbow in the same parade ring in June and was out of action for two months.   Meshhed's trainer Ben Hanbury said: "It was the most incredible accident.   It happened so quick.   "I went to put him up when the filly cow-kicked and looked to catch him in the chest.   It was so quick but very painful for Willie.   He doesn't look good and I would be very worried."   Carson, five times champion jockey, has experienced a difficult season which has yielded just 52 victories, few big-race triumphs at home and a spell of injury.   In July he fell off his mount Mubhij when the horse broke its leg in a race at Newmarket.   Carson needed hospital treatment then and it was 2-1/2 weeks before he felt fit enough to return to action. 
18900 !GCAT !GSPO  Leading   placings in the 170-km 13th stage of the Tour of Spain from    Oviedo to Lagos de Covadonga on Friday.    1.   Laurent Jalabert (France) ONCE 4 hours 1 minute 48 seconds    2.   Alex Zuelle (Switzerland) ONCE same time    3.   Mauro Gianetti (Switzerland) Polti  15 seconds behind    4.   Tony Rominger (Switzerland) Mapei  25    5.   Georg Tostching (Austria) Polti     6.   Marcos Serrano (Spain) Kelme     7.   Davide Rebellin (Italy) Polti all same time    8.   Stefano Faustini (Italy) AKI 31    9.   Laurent Dufaux (Switzerland) Lotus  45    10.   Daniel Clavero (Spain) MX Onda  1:32    11.   Fernando Escartin (Spain) Kelme     12.   Axel Merckx (Belgium) Motorola  both same time    13.   Jose Maria Jimenez (Spain) Banesto  1:43    14.   Andrea Peron (Italy) Motorola  2:02    15.   Roberto Pistore (Italy) MG 2:39    16.   Bobby Julich (USA) Motorola    17.   Fabian Jeker (Switzerland) Lotus    18.   Oliverio Rincon (Columbia) ONCE  all same time    19.   Vladimir Poulnikov (Ukraine) TVM  3:34    20.   R.Gonzalez Arrieta (Spain) Banesto  same time   Overall classification:    1.   Zuelle 56 hours 19 minutes 12 seconds    2.   Jalabert  1:13 seconds behind    3.   Dufaux  5:24    4.   Faustini  6:26    5.   Melchor Mauri (Spain) ONCE 6:51    6.   Pistore  6:54    7.   Rebellin  7:28    8.   Tostching  8:02    9.   Rominger  8:41    10.   Neil Stephen (Australia) ONCE  8:46    11.   Julich  9:30    12.   Peron  11:13    13.   Mikel Zarrabeitia (Spain) ONCE  11:21    14.   Massimo Apollonio (Italy) Scrigno  12:40    15.   Daniel Clavero (Spain) MX Onda  13:11    16.   Vladislav Bobrik (Russia) Gewiss  13:22    17.   Maarten Den Bakker (Netherlands) TVM 13:55    18.   Merckx  14:40    19.   Inigo Cuesta (Spain) ONCE 14:50    20.   Escartin  14:53 
18901 !GCAT !GSPO  Miguel Indurain looks set to finish his career without winning his country's premier race after abandoning the Tour of Spain on Friday.   "These things happen in sport," said Indurain after being left behind in the mountains by Laurent Jalabert and Alex Zuelle for the second successive day.   Zuelle retained his yellow jersey after following team mate Jalabert in for a stage win in which the two ONCE riders left all their rivals trailing in their wake.   "It seems that Miguel wasn't well," said Jalabert, who trails Zuelle by one minute 13 seconds in the provisional overall standings.   Indurain had slowed to talk to the Banesto team doctor on several occasions after beginning to struggle 50 kms from home at the beginning of a tough mountain section.   Left adrift by the principal contenders, former team mate Herminio Diaz Zabala -- who now rides for the rival ONCE team -- tried to help Indurain.   He even put his arm around the Banesto rider in a gesture of support.   But Indurain slowed to a leisurely pace and dismounted in front of his team hotel, some 30 kms from the finish line.   Indurain had made his reluctance to race the Vuelta clear after a summer in which he had failed in his bid to take an unprecented sixth successive Tour de France before bouncing back to win the time-trial gold medal at the Atlanta Olympics.   The decision to drop out has prompted further speculation that Indurain will announce his retirement from competition soon.   "It's a sad sight to see a great champion like that," said television commentator and former team mate Pedro Delgado after seeing Indurain struggling in the mountains.   After a day marked by a number of failed breakaways, Zuelle and Jalabert broke for the line 15 kms from home and powered their way up the steep hills to Lagos de Covadonga.   "It was an important day.   Jalabert worked very well," said Zuelle.    Swiss rider Tony Rominger, out of contention overall after dropping nearly eight minutes in an early stage, was fourth, a further 25 seconds behind.   He trailed third-placed Mauro Gianetti by 10 seconds.   The riders face their third successive mountain finish on Saturday with the 150-km Cangas de Onis to Cabarceno stage. 
18902 !GCAT !GSPO  Australia took a 2-0 lead   over Croatia in their Davis Cup World group qualifying tie after   winning both singles matches on Friday.   Results:   Mark Philippoussis beat Sasa Hirszon 6-2 6-3 6-2   Jason Stoltenberg beat Goran Ivanisevic 3-6 6-3 3-6 7-6 6-2 
18903 !GCAT !GSPO  Switzerland took a   2-0 lead over Morocco in their Davis Cup World Group qualifying   round tie after winning the opening singles matches on Friday.   Results:   Jakob Hlasek beat Mehdi Tahiri 0-6 6-3 6-2 7-5   Marc Rosset beat Mounir El Aarej 6-0 6-1 6-3 
18904 !GCAT !GSPO  Laurent Jalabert of France won the 13th stage of the Tour of Spain over 170 kilometres between Oviedo and Lagos de Covadonga on Friday.   Alex Zuelle of Switzerland retained the overall race lead. 
18905 !GCAT !GSPO  Miguel Indurain retired from the Tour of Spain 30 km from the end of Friday's 13th stage after struggling to keep in touch with the pack in a tough mountain section.   The five times Tour de France winner, who started the section in third place overall after being left behind by leader Alex Zulle in Thursday's mountain finish, had slowed to talk to the Banesto team doctor on several occasions. 
18906 !GCAT !GSPO  COLOMBO, Sept 20 - The oldest member of the Zimbabwe team,   37-year-old left-hander Ali Shah, scored his maiden test   half-century to frustrate Sri Lankan hopes of winning the second   test inside three days on Friday.   Shah, going in with Zimbabwe on nine for one after starting   their second innings 209 runs behind, hit a dogged, unbeaten 62   in 287 minutes to help his side end the day on 162 for six.   It left them still needing a further 47 runs to avoid an   innings defeat after Sri Lanka had earlier taken their first   innings score to 350 for eight declared with Hashan Tillekeratne   hitting a personal test best of 126 not out.   Sri Lanka won the first match in the two-test series by an   innings and 77 runs.   Shah, whose previous highest score in two tests was 28   against New Zealand, batted with great determination to complete   his maiden half-century in 259 minutes off 232 balls.   At the   close he had hit five boundaries.   None of the other Zimbabwean batsmen could match Shah for   concentration.   Andy Flower with 31 in 102 minutes was the   nearest, helping Shah in a fourth wicket stand of 57 before   falling to a brilliant one-handed catch by Asanka Gurusinha at   square leg off spinner Muthiah Muralitharan.   Craig Wishart made a determined 25 and looked unfortunate to   be given out by South African umpire Cyril Mitchley caught   behind when the ball appeared to miss his gloves by inches on   its way through.   Only bowler Sanath Jayasuriya appealed.   Two wickets in successive overs by left-arm spinner Jayantha   Silva rocked Zimbabwe as they fell to 34 for three.   Silva sent back Grant Flower lbw for 13 with his first   delivery of the innings and off the last delivery of his second   over had skipper Alistair Campbell pushing the ball into forward   short-leg's hands.   Jayasuria, also a left-arm spinner, took two wickets late in   the day to finish with two for 16.   Tillekeratne's unbeaten 126 had earlier lasted 409 minutes   and he faced 326 balls and hit 13 boundaries.   Ravindra   Pushpakumara, who made 23, helped him in a eighth wicket stand   of 64.   The Strang brothers took all but one of the wickets,   leg-spinner Paul finishing with four for 66 and and left-arm   seamer Bryan taking three for 63. 
18907 !GCAT !GSPO  Double world champion Michael Schumacher offered a broad hint on Friday that he could again play a leading part in the outcome of this year's world drivers' championship when he clocked the fastest time in practice for Sunday's Portuguese Grand Prix.   Schumacher headed the times comfortably in his Ferrari with a best lap on one minute 23.554 seconds.   It was 0.7 of a second faster than championship leader Damon Hill in a Williams.   Hill's team mate Jacques Villeneuve, the only driver able to stop the Briton winning the title, was fifth fastest.   Schumacher, bidding for a hat-trick of wins after successes in Belgium and Italy, made a mockery of his own protests after the race at Monza 12 days ago that his car would struggle to be competitive at Estoril.   His performance showed that he has a very good chance of taking Sunday's race to make it much more difficult for Villeneuve to overhaul Hill.   Schumacher, who has worked strenuously in testing and private practice throughout the year to help turn his Ferrari F310 from an unreliabile and rarely-competitive chassis into a formidable racing machine, also demonstrated the standards against which his younger brother Ralf will be measured.   Ralf, 21, six years younger than Michael, signed a three-year contract with Jordan earlier on Friday.   He will make his Formula One debut in Australia in March next year.    After the sessions, Schumacher explained that he had clocked his fastest time on a set of new tyres but warned he did not expect to be as competitive again in qualifying on Saturday.   Hill and Villeneuve both said they were unsure of set-ups on a track where they -- in common with all the teams -- had done a lot of testing last winter.   "For a good 60 per cent of the time, I was not happy with the car," said Hill.   "We went through quite a lot of different set-ups and there was only one run I did where I actually felt the car was close to being what it should be.   "...but we have got the information that I think will help us do this for tomorrow." 
18908 !GCAT !GSPO  Leading times after   Friday's practice sessions for Sunday's Portuguese Grand Prix:   1.   Michael Schumacher (Germany) Ferrari one minute and 23.554   seconds (average speed 187.854 kph)   2.   Damon Hill (Britain) Williams 1:24.281   3.   Ukyo Katayama (Japan) Tyrrell 1:24.359   4.   Eddie Irvine (Britain) Ferrari 1:24.477   5.   Jacques Villeneuve (Canada) Williams 1:24.764   6.   Jean Alesi (France) Benetton 1:24.803   7.   Gerhard Berger (Austria) Benetton 1:24.832   8.   Mika Salo (Finland) Tyrrell 1:25.234   9.   Mika Hakkinen (Finland) McLaren 1:25.403   10.   Heinz-Harald Frentzen (Germany) Sauber 1:25.567 
18909 !GCAT !GSPO  Pairings for afternoon fourballs in the Solheim Cup women's team golf match between the United States and Europe at St Pierre on Friday (U.S. names first): Kelly Robbins/Pat Bradley v Laura Davies/Trish Johnson (Britain) Val Skinner/Jane Geddes v Annika Sorenstam (Sweden)/Kathryn Marshall (Britain) Dottie Pepper/Betsy King v Liselotte Neumann/Catrin Nilsmark (Sweden) Meg Mallon/Beth Daniel v Helen Alfredsson (Sweden)/Alison Nicholas (Britain) 
18910 !GCAT !GSPO  The U.S. holders came from behind in three matches and never trailed in the fourth as they built a lead of 3-1/2 points to half a point over Europe in the opening foursomes of the women's Solheim Cup on Friday.   Europe were let down by a woeful putting display from world number one Laura Davies as she and fellow English player Alison Nicholas lost by one hole to veteran Patty Sheehan and Rosie Jones, their first defeat in four Solheim Cup foursomes.   Beth Daniel and Val Skinner beat the French-Scottish pairing of Marie-Laure de Lorenzi and Dale Reid by the same margin.   Dottie Pepper and Brandie Burton overcame Swedish duo Helen Alfredsson and world number three Liselotte Neumann two and one after taking the lead for the first time at the 15th.   Europe's only undefeated pair were world number two Annika Sorenstam, double U.S. Open champion, and Catrin Nilsmark, who holed the winning putt for Europe in the 1992 contest.   The Swedes let a three-hole lead slip on the back nine before halving with Kelly Robbins and Michelle McGann in the opening match.   Four four-ball matches were scheduled for Friday afternoon, with the same schedule on Saturday and 12 singles on Sunday.    It was the best American result in foursomes since the inaugural match in 1990.   Captain Judy Rankin said: "I wanted us to play the alternate shot better than we have historically.   I wanted to finish at least level so of course I'm pleased.   "The half point in the first match was really crucial after Kelly and Michelle were three down.   The other pairs saw that."   Rankin made four changes for the afternoon four balls, meaning that all her 12 players will have had at least one match on the opening day.   "I didn't want anyone strung out with nerves going into tomorrow," Rankin explained.   Davies, winner of seven titles this year, smiled when she missed a putt of less that four feet at the first that cost them a win.   But it was the start of a struggle for her, although she rolled one from 30 feet to a foot at the second as the English pair took the lead.   Then a downhill 35-footer at the third raced nine feet past as the Americans squared with a birdie two after Jones hit her tee shot to four feet and Davies missed two more short putts over the next five holes.   Davies might have recouped at the 15th but missed crucially from three feet when they could have got back to one down with three to play.   The English pair won the 16th but could only halve the last two.   "We had our chances but I just didn't hole enough putts.   Besides the short ones I should have made a couple of others," Davies said.   Sorenstam and Nilsmark went three up after eight holes and when Robbins and McGann shot three successive birdies from the 11th but won only one of the three holes, the Swedes were still two ahead.   But Sorenstam missed the green with her second at the 15th and drove into a bunker at 16 and the match was level.   "From three down that was a great half (point)," Robbins said.   "We had to be patient.   That was the key," said McGann.   Daniel and Skinner trailed after four holes but took control when De Lorenzi and Reid hit successive drives into trees at the 14th and 15th holes for losing bogeys.   Pepper and Burton levelled four times in their match but surged ahead when Alfredsson and Neumann bogeyed four successive holes from the 14th.   "It wasn't pretty but we got the job done," Burton said.   Europe captain Mickey Walker said: "We were quite well up in two and halving one so it's very disappointing." 
18911 !GCAT !GSPO  Results on the first day of the Solheim Cup women's team golf match between the United States and Europe at St Pierre on Friday (U.S. names first):   Foursomes:   Kelly Robbins/Michelle McGann halved with Annika Sorenstam/ Catrin Nilsmark (Sweden)   Patty Sheehan/Rosie Jones beat Laura Davies/Alison Nicholas (Britain) by one hole   Beth Daniel/Val Skinner beat Marie-Laure de Lorenzi (France)/ Dale Reid (Britain) by one hole Dottie Pepper/Brandie Burton beat Helen Alfredsson/Liselotte Neumann (Sweden) 2 and 1   Foursomes results: U.S. 3 1/2 Europe 1/2    Fourballs: Kelly Robbins/Pat Bradley lost to Laura Davies/Trish Johnson (Britain) 6 and 5    Fourballs: Val Skinner/Jane Geddes lost to Annika Sorenstam (Sweden)/ Kathryn Marshall (Britain) by one hole Dottie Pepper/Betsy King beat Liselotte Neumann/Catrin Nilsmark (Sweden) by one hole    Fourballs: Beth Daniel/Meg Mallon halved with Helen Alfredsson (Sweden)/Alison Nicholas (Britain)   Fourballs score: Europe 2-1/2 points U.S. 1-1/2   Overall score: U.S. 5 Europe 3. 
18912 !GCAT !GSPO  Spain took a 1-0 lead over Denmark in their Davis Cup tennis World Group qualifying round tie after winning the opening singles on Friday.   Result:   Alberto Costa (Spain) beat Frederik Fetterlein (Denmark) 6-0 6-0 6-2 
18913 !GCAT !GSPO  Ralf Schumacher, younger brother of double world champion Michael Schumacher, has signed a three-year contract to race for Jordan.    Schumacher will make his Formula One debut in the first grand prix of the 1997 season in Australia next March.   "Ralf is a proven winner in karts, Formula Three and Formula 3000," said team owner Eddie Jordan on Friday.   "He has an abundance of raw talent, speed and commitment and I am extremely happy that we can be part of this young man's exciting future."   Schumacher, who leads the current Japanese Formula 3000 series, said: "I am more than pleased to start my Formula One career in such a competitive team.   "This is really an extraordinary stroke of luck and a big chance for a young driver like me."   Schumacher's partner next season has not been confirmed.   Current Jordan drivers Martin Brundle and Rubens Barrichello are on one-year deals.   The second driver is not to be announced until after Sunday's Portuguese Grand Prix.   There has been much speculation that Damon Hill, who could finally clinch the world crown at Estoril, will fill the seat following his departure from Williams.   Michael Schumacher, who raced just once for Jordan at the start of his career in top flight racing, said: "I am very pleased to see Ralf in Formula One next year.   "He has indeed surprised me with the results of his tests -- not only the lap times he showed -- but also by his professional approach.   I think that Jordan Peugeot will be an ideal team for him." 
18914 !GCAT !GSPO  Fun-loving Laura Davies has no plans to follow Greg Norman and join the jet set.   Davies and Norman are frequently compared -- and not just because they are both world number ones.   Both have a zest for life which extends far beyond the golf course.   Davies loves racing around in her Ferrari and regular flutters with the bookmakers have cost her an estimated 500,000 pounds sterling ($775,000) over the past 12 years.   Norman has a fleet of fast cars as well as a custom-designed yacht, four other boats, a jet plane and two helicopters.   "I am light years behind Greg Norman.   He has all the toys, I just play at it," said Davies on the eve of the Solheim Cup.   "He's the real thing.   But I'm content with what I've got.   I'll just take the Solheim Cup, then I'll be happy.   Davies was in the forefront of the European bid to regain the trophy from the United States when the biennial three-day, Ryder Cup-style event began on Friday at the St Pierre course.   The inspirational Davies has played on all four European Solheim teams since the event's inception in 1990, helping Europe win the trophy at Dalmahoy in Scotland in 1992 and suffering defeats in 1990 and 1994, both in the United States.   "We didn't have a chance at Lake Nona in 1990 and no one gave us a chance in 1992 either," she said.   "The home galleries have been huge and we need a noisy crowd this week.   It's always going to be tougher winning on the other team's soil."   Davies, winner of seven titles already this year, said the outcome would depend on "putting, pure and simple".   "When we won at Dalmahoy we holed everything.   Then at The Greenbrier in 1994 the Americans holed all the putts and I could not make any.   "It comes down to a putting contest.   We are the best players in the world and everyone hits a lot of fairways and greens.   "It's who makes the putts, and when, that counts.   There's no point making a 40-footer at the first.   You have to do it at the 14th or 15th when it matters," Davies said.   The big, blonde-haired Davies, well-liked by all the Americans who know her from her frequent visits to the U.S. Tour, was called "awesome" by one of them, Brandie Burton, this week.   Though Davies has been one of the world's top players for a decade, another American, Beth Daniel, paid tribute to her improvement this year.   "She is swinging better than I've ever seen her swing.   Technically she has tightened it up and she has never been given credit for how good her short game is.   "She has a wonderful touch around the greens and is a wonderful putter," Daniel said.   Davies will have her stamina tested in the expanded Solheim Cup format by five matches in three days after having to play only three in past years.   But European captain Mickey Walker is not worried.   "Laura is probably stronger and fitter than anybody," Walker said.   "If she weren't playing in the afternoon fourballs, she would probably be having a game of football followed by a game of cricket followed by a game of tennis.   "To play 18 holes in fourballs after 18 holes in foursomes is probably an easy day for her." 
18915 !GCAT !GSPO  Result of an English first   division soccer match on Friday:   Ipswich 2 Charlton 1   Standings (tabulated under played, won, drawn, lost, goals   for, against, points):    Bolton 7 5 1 1 17 9 16    Barnsley 6 5 0 1 14 6 15    Wolverhampton  7 4 2 1 11 6 14    Norwich 7 4 2 1 8 4 14    Tranmere 7 4 1 2 9 6 13    Ipswich 8 3 3 2 15 12 12    Queens Park Rangers 7 3 2 2 10 9 11    Stoke 7 3 2 2 10 12 11    Huddersfield  6 3 1 2 10 8 10    Crystal Palace  7 2 4 1 9 6 10    Swindon 7 3 1 3 8 8 10    Portsmouth 7 3 1 3 6 8 10    Manchester City  7 3 0 4 8 9 9    West Bromwich  6 2 2 2 9 9 8    Birmingham 5 2 2 1 8 6 8    Sheffield United  5 2 1 2 10 8 7    Oxford 7 2 1 4 9 8 7    Reading 7 2 1 4 9 14 7    Charlton 7 2 1 4 6 8 7    Port Vale 7 1 4 2 6 8 7    Bradford 7 2 0 5 4 10 6    Grimsby 7 1 2 4 8 16 5    Southend 7 1 2 4 7 14 5    Oldham 7 0 2 5 7 14 2 
18916 !GCAT !GSPO  Leicestershire coach Jack Birkinshaw hit out at Middlesex's spoiling tactics as his side moved closer to the English county championship title with a determined batting display on Friday.   Birkinshaw became embroiled in a fiercely-contested argument over the legality of Middlesex's defensive policy after lunch involving England spinner Phil Tufnell and wicketkeeper Keith Brown as the leaders claimed maximum bonus points by reaching 381 for eight when bad light halted play early.   Middlesex made 190 in their first innings.   The dispute, only settled by a ruling from Lord's, began when Brown, off the field all morning after dislocating a finger on Thursday, resumed his duties behind the stumps and Tufnell was introduced into the attack after lunch.   Instead of standing behind the stumps, Brown stood well outside the leg stump to nullify the sweep shot as Tufnell bowled a consistent leg-side line.   Birkinshaw twice came on to the pitch to question the legality of the tactic -- the Laws of Cricket state that the number of onside fieldsman behind the popping crease at the instant of the bowler's delivery shall not exceed two -- as Middlesex had already posted fielders at backward square leg and long leg.   But after being told the wicketkeeper did not qualify as a fielder, Birkinshaw insisted: "When an England bowler does that at this stage of the game it spoils it -- it's something that has to be looked at."   Test and County Cricket Board official Tim Lamb agreed the issue had to be addressed, adding: "It is not an edifying part of the game but as the laws stand it is perfectly legitimate."   The controversy failed to deflect Leicestershire from their championship target and, despite the negative tactics, they finished the day needing only a draw to remove Surrey, their only remaining challenger, from the equation.   Surrey's chances were again seriously undermined by the weather.   Less than three hours play was possible in their match at The Oval, Worcestershire reaching 134 for three in their first innings thanks to an unbroken stand of 102 between Tom Moody and Reuben Spiring. 
18917 !GCAT !GSPO  Close of play scores on the   second day of four-day English county championship cricket   matches on Friday:   At Chelmsford: Essex 367 (G.Gooch 170 retired not out,   N.Hussain 68, S.Law 66; A.Dale 4-52, S.Watkin 4-64).   Glamorgan   55-2.   At Southampton: Hampshire 513-4 declared (R.Smith 161,   W.Kendall 103 not out, J.Laney 97, G.White 73) v   Nottinghamshire.   At Northampton: Yorkshire 478 (M.Vaughan 183, C.White 66,   M.Moxon 47; A.Penberthy 5-92).   Northamptonshire 83-2.   At Edgbaston: Warwickshire 386 (A.Giles 106 not out, N.Smith   74, M.Burns 61; G.Chapple 4-85).   Lancashire 281-3 (J.Crawley 73,   G.Lloyd 63 not out, N.Fairbrother 55 not out).   At Bristol: Kent 154 and 21-1.   Gloucestershire 241 (M.Lynch   54; D.Headley 4-65).   At Leicester: Middlesex 190 (M.Ramprakash 71; A.Mullally   4-53).   Leicestershire 381-8 (P.Simmons 95 not out, J.Whitaker   89).   At Derby: Durham 142 and 206-5 (S.Hutton 85 not out, D.Cox   51 not out).   Derbyshire 256 (C.James 81, D.Jones 77; M.Betts   4-69).   At Hove: Sussex 141 and 63-0.   Somerset 354 (S.Lee 126,   R.Harden 78, M.Lathwell 56; I.Salisbury 5-91).   At The Oval: Worcestershire 134-3 (T.Moody 60 not out) v   Surrey. 
18918 !GCAT !GSPO  Belgium lead Romania 1-0 in their   Davis Cup World group qualifying tie after victory in the first   singles match on Friday.   Result:   Johan van Herck beat Adrian Voinea 6-7 (6-8) 6-4 6-2 6-1   The second singles match between Andrei Pavel and Filip   Dewulf was postponed until Saturday because of rain. 
18919 !GCAT !GSPO  A proposal to abolish the newly-introduced sudden-death "golden goal" concept is to be sumitted to UEFA by the Football Association of Ireland.   Instead they suggest the first goal scored in extra-time should be worth double in the event of a draw, so the team scoring first in extra-time would win.   If there were no goals the match would go to penalties.   Des Casey, Ireland's representative on UEFA's executive committee, said at UEFA's Euro 96 Round Table on Friday the system could be one way of reducing the risk of the unpopular penalty shoot-out in major competitions.   Although the system of the sudden-death "golden goal" winner, introduced for the first time in a UEFA tournament in June's European championship finals, was unpopular, Casey said: "The concept of the golden goal shoot-out to decide matches should not be discarded but looked at again.   "One idea is that the first goal scored in extra-time should count as double, that extra-time should be played for the full 30 minutes and that if the teams finish level at 1-1, for example, the team that scores first wins because their goal counts as double.   "It is the same principle as the away-goals rule already used in European club matches and means the team falling behind has to score twice to win.   "This system could help to ease the fear of the match being over as soon as a goal is scored.   "We need to change the ethos among coaches that to defend in extra-time and aim for penalties is a viable alternative."   Casey said the Irish soccer federation would formally present the proposal to UEFA's executive board as soon as possible.   Terry Venables, whose England team were eliminated in a penalty shoot-out in the European championship semifinals by Germany, backed the idea.   "We have reached the stage where we have to start experimenting with new ideas.   It is no longer good enough for us all to sit back and congratulate ourselves politely for a job well done.   I am all in favour of this and any other idea which encourages coaches to play to win."   The round-table discussion, following this week's national coaches convention in Copenhagen, featured UEFA president Lennart Johansson, UEFA secretary-general Gerhard Aigner and Euro 96 organising committee chairman Egidius Braun as well as Venables and top referee Serge Muhmenthaler of Switzerland.   Johansson said he welcomed Casey's proposal, which would be examined by UEFA in due course.   The future use of video technology in soccer was extensively discussed with Sir Bert Millichip, former president of the English Football Association, in favour of a "TV eye" helping referees while Muhmenthaler, who refereed the Croatia-Turkey match in Euro 96, was against it.   An idea from the panel that video replays could be used to help referees on borderline penalty decisions -- whether a foul was committed inside or outside the penalty area -- or whether a goal has been scored was welcomed by 82-year-old Millichip.   "There could be a camera on each goal-line for example and this could help the referee and stop mistakes such as we had in Euro 96 when Romania had a perfectly good goal disallowed."   But Muhmenthaler said: "It is not practical.   Every time you would have a controversial decision in the match players would be demanding to have the video replayed.   "The referee has to have courage and give a decision as he sees it.   No referee gives a decision unless he is 100 percent sure it is the right one."   Millichip, who retired from his position with the F.A. after 15 years earlier this year, said: "There are too many mistakes by referees and even more mistakes by assistant referees.   It is destroying the game, destroying the entertainment for the fans.   Anything that helps the referees must be considered." 
18920 !GCAT !GSPO  Britain lead Egypt 2-0 in their   Davis Cup Euro/African zone group two, third round tie after the   opening singles matches on Friday.   Results:   Greg Rusedski beat Tamer El Sawy 6-2 6-4 7-5   Tim Henman beat Amr Ghoneim 6-0 6-4 7-5 
18921 !GCAT !GSPO  Willie Carson, four times winner of the Epsom Derby, was taken to hospital on Friday after he was kicked by his horse in the paddock at Newbury race course.   The 53-year-old Scot appeared to be injured as he was about to mount Meshhed in preparation for the third race on the card.   The filly's trainer Ben Hanbury said: "I went to put Willie up on her when the filly cow-kicked and looked to catch him in the chest.   "It was very painful and didn't look good.   Thank goodness everyone was very quickly on the scene and he is now going to hospital in Swindon."   Carson has hinted that this may be his last season riding.   He spent two weeks on the sidelines earlier this year after sustaining injuries in a fall on the fatally-injured Mubhij at Newmarket.    Carson remained conscious while paramedics administered oxygen and set up a drip before the jockey was eventually taken by stretcher into an ambulance which drove him to the North Hampshire Hospital in Basingstoke, southern England.   Racecourse doctor Bruce Letham said: "He has a stomach injury and the worry always is to assess for bleeding into the stomach, which is why he needed stabilising.   "He never lost consciousness but was in pain, as one expects.   His spine was assessed which is why we put him on a spinal board but there was no evidence of injury there."   Carson left with the best wishes of fellow jockey Frankie Dettori, who broke his elbow in the same parade-ring in June.   "He doesn't look too good.   He is on a drip in case of internal bleeding.   We shall pray for him," Dettori said.   Eye-witness Selena Drage said Carson had been flung about five metres into a row of trees surrounding the parade-ring.   Carson's place on Sahm in the National Stakes at Saturday's Curragh will be taken by Richard Quinn. 
18922 !GCAT !GSPO  Former Arsenal manager Bruce Rioch was apppointed as Stewart Houston's assistant at Queens Park Rangers on Friday in a remarkable role-reversal for the two men.   Houston was Rioch's assistant at Arsenal until Rioch was sacked five days before the start of the season.   Houston then became caretaker-manager at Arsenal before taking over at QPR on Monday.   "People will talk about a reversal of roles but Bruce knows the situation," Houston told the London Evening Standard on Friday.   "I'm the boss and I envisage no problems.   We have full trust in each other."   Houston added he was confident that the season spent working with Rioch at Arsenal proved vital in the two developing an understanding.   "We established a great working relationship," explained Houston.   "We had a good rapport and I think that is important."   QPR, relegated from the premier league at the end of last season, are currently sixth in the first division. 
18923 !GCAT !GSPO  Arsenal defender Nigel Winterburn was on Friday charged with bringing the game into disrepute by the English Football Association.   The former England left-back was alleged to have made gestures towards Sheffield Wednesday fans after Arsenal's second and third goals in their 4-1 premier league win on Monday.   An F.A. spokesman said the player has been charged following reports by match officials. 
18924 !GCAT !GSPO  Liverpool hope Czech forward Patrik Berger will hope to extend his remarkable scoring spree when he makes his home debut in the English premier league top-of-the-table clash with Chelsea on Saturday.   Berger, signed from Borussia Moenchengladbach in the summer, scored twice last week when he came on after the interval as Liverpool went top by beating Leicester City 3-0.   He scored two more in a midweek World Cup qualifier as the Czech Republic crushed Malta 6-0 and is likely to hold his place in the Liverpool line-up at the expense of the striker he replaced last week, England international Stan Collymore.   Liverpool manager Roy Evans said: "Two goals in half a game isn't bad and it's given me an extra problem.   It's nice to have people competing for places but it's difficult to keep everyone happy as they all want to play."   Chelsea, two points behind the league leaders in third place, recall two of their foreign signings, Italian striker Gianluca Vialli and French sweeper Franck Leboeuf, who both missed a midweek League Cup game with niggling injuries.   Second-placed Manchester United, also two points adrift of Liverpool, face a tough away game against Aston Villa but will have the tough-tackling Roy Keane back in midfield after missing six matches with injury.   Like Evans, Manchester United manager Alex Ferguson has an embarrassment of strikers to choose from with Andy Cole staking his claim for a recall by hitting a hat-trick in a midweek match in the reserves.   Norwegian Ole Gunnar Solskjaer could make way for him.   Arsenal, managerless until Arsene Wenger joins them at the end of the month, travel to Middlesbrough where they face the highest-scoring team in the league.   Italian Fabrizio Ravanelli, top scorer with six league goals and with a further four in his first League Cup game, will be joined up front by Nicky Barmby who is back from injury.   Arsenal, fearful of a hangover, welcome back England centre-back Tony Adams who declared last week he was fighting alcoholism but the defender is likely to start on the substitutes' bench.   Former Arsenal manager George Graham, still waiting for his first victory with new club Leeds United, may have to continue to be patient as he has five first-teamers out with injury against Newcastle United.   "The challenge of this job is probably bigger than I anticipated," said a rueful Graham.   Kevin Keegan's Newcastle, fourth in the league, are at full strength and will entertain hopes of continuing their push towards the top of the table. 
18925 !GCAT !GSPO  Kenny Dalglish, master of the monosyllable, has lost none of his flair for understatement.   Now officially resting after resigning his job as Director of Football at premier league Blackburn, the former Celtic, Liverpool and Scotland striker launched his autobiograph in a blur of interviews and book signings on Thursday.   In a burst of hitherto unsuspected lyricism, "Dalglish My Autobiography" begins: "My adult life has simply been a time of trying to fulfil childhood dreams."   But in the flesh Dalglish remains Harold Pinter rather than Oscar Wilde.   Asked how he has succeeded in fulfilling his dreams, Dalglish examines the question from all angles, seeking hidden traps in a manner familiar to frustrated reporters who over the years have tried to extract post-match quotes.   "Not bad, not bad," he concedes finally.   At 45, Dalglish looks no different from the slight, spare figure who played with such distinction for Celtic and Liverpool before embarking on an equally memorable career in management with Liverpool and Blackburn.   Yet a vein of insecurity runs through a book which on the surface is a chronicle of continuous success interrupted only by the disasters of Heysel and Hillsborough.   "I have never been a confident person," Dalglish confesses after he was unexpectedly named as Celtic captain.   "Becoming captain of the most successful team in Scotland didn't make me And despite his determination to follow in the path of most ambitious Scots and try his luck south of the border, Dalglish never considered travelling abroad.   "I never fancied going abroad simply because I was afraid," he says.   "I was worried that I might be in the dressing room and hear team mates joking and think they were laughing about me because I had had a bad game.   That would have destroyed me."   Again he returns to the theme when describing his years at Liverpool in the 1980s, an era when the Merseyside team ruled Europe.   "If had had more self confidence, I would have been a better player and maybe a better manager as well.   Confidence, or rather the lack of it, was still an issue even when I felt well established at Liverpool."   At the height of his success as manager of both Liverpool and Blackburn, Dalglish walked away from the job, fuelling the media image of an enigmatic loner.   A hint of the pressures on the taciturn Scot as both player and manager comes early in the book.   "Everybody has a breaking point," he writes.   "It's a relentless pressurised cycle.   Every time I climbed a rung up the ladder, or tried to realise a target, it brought different stresses."   Dalglish says the Hillsborough disaster of 1989, when 96 Liverpool fans were crushed to death was the reason for his quitting Liverpool two years later.   "I was under pressure, I realised how much just before I left Liverpool.   I had become unpleasant company at home.   I was shouting at the kids."   Dalglish took Liverpool to the league and Cup double in 1985-86 in his first season as player-manager.   His success with Blackburn was even more astonishing, taking the club from the second division to the new premier league then to the league title in 1994-95.   Again he stepped down from the manager's job, this time to take the undefined role of Director of Football which came to an abrupt halt when he was sacked last month.   In an age of increasing insecurity for football managers who now rent rather than buy houses when they go to new clubs, Dalglish is certain to receive fresh job offers.   "I still enjoy going to matches," he said at the book launch.   "But I don't miss football that badly.   I am not in a desperate hurry to get back into football.   "I am perfectly relaxed about whether I get a job.   I want to be involved in football but whether it is in management or something else, who knows?   I have not got an advertisement out for a job." 
18926 !GCAT !GSPO  Veteran defenceman Kevin Lowe, a member of all five of Edmonton's Stanley Cup championship teams, signed a one-year deal Thursday night to return to the Oilers.   The 37-year-old Lowe had spent the last four seasons with the New York Rangers, where he earned his sixth Stanley Cup ring in 1994.   Last season, Lowe had just one goal and five assists in 53 games during an injury-plagued 1995-96 campaign.   "It's a family move more than anything," Lowe said at a news conference of his return to Edmonton.   "I'd like to contribute the same things that I did over the years in Edmonton, trying to help out with the defensive aspect," added the seven-time All-Star.   "They're a young, talented group and there's a bright future just around the corner for the Edmonton Oilers."   A 17-year veteran, Lowe broke into the NHL with the Oilers in 1979 and played alongside superstars Wayne Gretzky, Mark Messier and Paul Coffey on the Edmonton team that won five Stanley Cups in seven years beginning in 1984.   "I didn't see New York as being a long-term opportunity and I always looked at Edmonton as a place I'd like to come back to," Lowe said.   "I'd like to be a part of this organisation after my playing days are over, whether it's coaching or some other area." 
18927 !GCAT !GSPO  Zimbabwe lead Finland 2-0 in   their Davis Cup Euro/African zone group one play-off tie after   winning both singles matches on Friday.   Results:   Wayne Black beat Kim Tiilikainen 6-4 7-5 6-7 (3-7) 6-3   Byron Black beat Vilie Liukko 6-3 6-3 6-4 
18928 !GCAT !GSPO  With only one quarter final place still to be decided and almost certain to go to Boland, the spotlight will be on individuals rather than teams in Saturday's round of Currie Cup matches.   After six weeks out of the game Springbok captain Francois Pienaar returns to lead Transvaal in the toughest assignment of the weekend against Natal at Ellis Park.   Pienaar suffered vertebral displacement on August 10 in the match against the All Blacks at Newlands, but has been given the medical all clear to return to the side.   Without his guiding hand Transvaal have struggled and they will need to make a quantum leap in form from that which they showed against Eastern Province and South Eastern Transvaal to beat Natal, even with home advantage.   The other big game also features some interesting individual battles as Northern Transvaal travel to Newlands to take on a new look Western Province team.   Springbok left wing Jacques Olivier makes yet another comeback from knee injury.   Even a competent game should win him a place, injury permitting, in the 36-man touring squad to Argentina, France and Wales at the end of the season.   But the big changes are in the Province team where Joel Stransky is not even on the bench as 21-year-old Louis Koen grabs the number 10 shirt for a shot at the big time.   Many will view the selection of Breyton Paulse at fullback as overdue.   The gifted sevens player forced his way in ahead of another mercurial talent, Pieter Rossouw.    It is a completely restructured Province team which, if successful, could herald a new dawn at troubled Newlands.   Elsewhere the best match up is in Wellington where a rejuvenated Eastern Province side take on Boland.    The winefarmers in theory need one more point to ensure a quarter-final place, but nearest rivals Border would need to win their last three games to edge them out.   With the last being against Natal, it is not an option.   In addition Border take on South Eastern Transvaal in East London this week and will do well to win even that.   Free State should score a big win against South Western Districts in Bloemfontein and Griqualand West are tipped to do likewise against Eastern Transvaal in Brakpan. 
18929 !GCAT !GSPO  Uzbekistan lead Thailand 2-0 in   their Davis Cup Asia/Oceania group two final tie after winning   both singles matches on Friday.   Results:   Dmitri Tomashevich beat Narathom Srichaphan 6-0 6-3 6-1   Oleg Ogorudov beat Thanakom Srichaphan 6-1 6-3 7-6 (7-2) 
18930 !GCAT !GSPO  Result of a Polish first   division soccer match played on Friday:   Hutnik Krakow 0 Zaglebie Lubin 0 
18931 !GCAT !GSPO  Results of Russian premier league   matches played on Friday:    Zhemchuzhina Sochi  1 Lokomotiv Moscow  3    Spartak Moscow 2 Krylya Sovetov Samara 0    Dynamo Moscow 2 Tekstilshchik Kamyshin 0   The following games were played on Thursday:    Torpedo Moscow 3 Lada Togliatti 1    Rostselmash Rostov  0 CSKA Moscow 5    Alania Vladikavkaz  2 Chernomorets Novorossiisk 1   Standings (tabulate under games played, won, drawn, lost,   goals for, goals against, points).   Note - If more than one team has the same number of points,   precedence is given to the one with most wins.   If more than one   team has the same number of wins and points, precedence goes to   the side with the most successful record against the others.    Alania Vladikavkaz  28 18 5 5 53 30 59    Dynamo Moscow 28 17 7 4 48 24 58    Rotor Volgograd 27 17 6 4 48 20 57    Spartak Moscow 28 16 8 4 55 27 56    CSKA Moscow 28 16 6 6 50 29 54    Lokomotiv Moscow  28 12 9 7 38 26 45    Torpedo Moscow 28 10 9 9 35 36 39    Lokomotiv Nizhny Novgorod 27 11 5 11 29 38 38    Zenit St Petersburg  27 11 4 12 27 29 37    Baltika Kaliningrad  27 9 10 8 32 28 37    Krylya Sovetov Samara  28 9 8 11 22 33 35    Zhemchuzhina Sochi  28 9 4 15 30 45 31    Chernomorets Novorossiisk 28 8 5 15 29 42 29    Rostselmash Rostov  28 7 7 14 45 51 28    Kamaz Naberezhniye Chelny 27 6 6 15 29 44 24    Uralmash Yekaterinburg 27 4 9 14 28 48 21    Tekstilshchik Kamyshin 28 3 10 15 19 38 19    Lada Togliatti 28 4 6 18 16 45 18 
18932 !GCAT !GSPO  Result of a Yugoslav league   soccer match played on Friday:   Division A    Proleter 4 Borac  0 
18933 !GCAT !GSPO  Slovakia took a 2-0 lead over   Poland in their Davis Cup Euro/African Zone group two, third   round tie after winning the opening singles matches on Friday.   Results:   Jan Kroslak beat Bartolomiej Dabrowski 7-6 (9-7) 6-3 6-3   Karol Kucera beat Adam Skrzypczak 6-1 6-1 6-1 
18934 !GCAT !GSPO  Russia took a 2-0 lead over   Hungary in their Davis Cup World Group qualifying tie after   victories in Friday's opening singles.   Results:   Yevgeny Kafelnikov beat Attila Savolt 7-5 3-6 6-3 6-4   Andrei Chesnokov beat Jozsef Krocko 6-2 6-2 6-2 
18935 !GCAT !GSPO  Thomas Enqvist beat Petr Korda in 6-4 6-3 7-6 (11-9) to give Sweden a 1-0 lead over the Czech Republic in the opening singles of their Davis Cup world group semifinal on Friday.   Korda opened the match with an ace, his first of 14, but after that the Swedish number one dominated proceedings, taking advantage of unforced errors by his Czech opponent.   The Czech number two showed flashes of the brilliance which carried him to fifth in the world rankings in 1992 but committed 36 unforced errors and had a poor first-serve ratio of 47 percent.   Enqvist failed to convert his first match point at 6-5 in the third set when Korda fired a strong second serve to hold off the hard-hitting Swede.   Enqvist, who has lost to Korda only once in seven matches, needed three more match points during the tie-break before sealing the match.   Korda had himself squandered three set points after taking a 6-3 lead in the tie-break.    "It was not an easy win.   Even when I was up, he was playing well..." said Enqvist.   "I played aggressively because it's important to take command on this fast surface and because when Korda dictates the play he's very dangerous."   Czech number one Daniel Vacek was playing Davis Cup veteran Stefan Edberg in Friday's second singles. 
18936 !GCAT !GSPO  Results of the opening singles   matches in the Davis Cup world group semifinal between the Czech   Republic and Sweden on Friday (Czech names first):   Petra Korda lost to Thomas Enqvist 4-6 3-6 6-7 (9-11)   Daniel Vacek lost to Stefan Edberg 6-7 (2-7) 5-7 6-4 3-6   Sweden lead the tie 2-0 
18937 !GCAT !GSPO  Ukraine took a 2-0 lead over Norway   in their Davis Cup Euro/African zone group one play-off tie (corrects from World Group qualifying round tie) after winning the opening singles on Friday.   Results:   Andrei Medvedev beat Christian Ruud 6-2 6-2 6-0   Andrei Rubalko beat Helge Koll 7-6 6-4 6-4 
18938 !GCAT !GSPO  Brazil and Austria were tied   1-1 after the opening singles matches of their Davis Cup World   group qualifying tie on Friday.   Results:   Thomas Muster (Austria) beat Fernando Meligeni (Brazil) 6-3   6-3 6-3   Gustavo Kuerten (Brazil) beat Markus Hipfl (Austria) 4-6 3-6   7-6 7-6 6-1 
18939 !GCAT !GSPO  Pele, acting as Brazilian sports minister, has signed a decree that will allow Brazilian soccer players who are 26 or over to become free agents as soon as their contracts finish.   The new rule, which will take effect on January 1, means that clubs will no longer receive transfer fees when the players decide to leave, Pele's spokesman Helio Viana said on Friday.   Pele has long supported giving players freedom to move around, claiming that many were almost slaves, but some clubs fear it will ruin them.   Top players who could soon be on the market for nothing include Botafogo striker Tulio, the leading scorer in the Brazilian championship for the last two years.   Vasco da Gama's highly talented and highly explosive striker Edmundo will also be available when his contract expires in just over a year.   Vasco have just spent $5 million for him and are reported to be livid.   The age limit will be reduced to 25 in 1998 and 24 in 1999.   Flamengo director Michel Assef said that clubs needed more time to adapt themselves to the new rules.   He said that his club was not opposed to the measure in principle but added: "This could provoke a huge exodus of players to foreign countries."   Other clubs are reported to be finding ways of challenging the new rule.   Viana said the new ruling would force clubs to look for a more imaginative way of making money than by simply selling off their best players.   "It will improve Brazilian football because they (the clubs) will have to look for alternative sources of income," he said.   He said clubs had failed to push for alterations in Brazilian domestic football, in which the national championship is given less priority than loss-making state championships, because they knew they could simply sell off players.   "They allow the state championships to go only because they can sell one player here and another one there," he said. 
18940 !GCAT !GSPO  Results in the Davis Cup world group qualifying tie between Mexico and Argentina on Friday (Mexican names first):   Alejandro Hernandez beat Gaston Etlis 7-6 (7-5) 6-2 6-4   Leonardo Lavalle lost to Hernan Gumy 6-7 (5-7) 4-6 6-4 7-5   5-7   (Mexico and Argentine are tied 1-1) 
18941 !GCAT !GSPO  Rio de Janeiro's reputation as a city teeming with crooks and villains will not harm its bid to stage the 2004 Olympics, Brazil's sports minister Pele said on Friday.   "Anyone would think that there has never been violence at the Olympics before," said former soccer great Pele, who has lent his backing to the campaign to bring the Games to the "Marvellous City".   "Atlanta (1996 Olympic host) is a very violent city but the American press is more patriotic than ours and doesn't let that sort of information come out," he said.   "In this country there are things which get blown out of proportion.   We have to concentrate on the positive side of things."   In the last two decades Rio has become almost as famous for robberies, muggings, death-squad killings and kidnappings as it has for its stunning setting, beaches and carnival.   Residents of famous neighbourhoods such as Ipanema and Copacabana are often woken up at night by the sound of machine gunfire as rival drug gangs battle for control of hillside shanty towns only a few hundred metres away.   But many feel the situation has improved since 1994 when bandits became so audacious that they went as far as blocking road tunnels and robbing motorists trapped inside.   In the last year Sao Paulo appears to have outstripped Rio in the violence league.   "Violence is a problem of all 11 candidate cities but we don't have political terrorism or a domestic war," Ronaldo Cezar Coelho.   president of the Rio organising committee, said.   He said that to contain the drug war in the shanty-towns the same methods that were used for the 1992 Earth Summit -- when the army was brought in -- would be employed.   "In 1992 we had 114 heads of state here and there was no trouble.   On New Year's Eve two million people went to the beach and there was no incident," he said.   "We have to overcome the inferiority complex of the Brazilian elite.   We have everything you need to stage the best Games of the modern era."   Coelho said that staging the Olympics in Rio would require investment of $1 billion on sporting facilities plus $700 million on the operational side, in which he included accommodation and food.   The figure did not include investments in telecommunications and transport.   The island which currently houses the dilapidated Rio de Janeiro Federal University would be the centre of the project, containing the Olympic village and newly-built Olympic stadium.   The Maracana soccer stadium, which because of its circular design cannot accommodate an athletics track, would stage only soccer. 
18942 !GCAT !GSPO  Chile lead Peru 2-0 in their   Davis Cup American zone group one play-off tie after winning   both singles matches on Friday.   Results:   Marcelo Rios beat Americo Venero 7-5 6-2 6-4.   Gabriel Silberstein beat Alejandro Aramburu 6-0 6-4 6-3 
18943 !GCAT !GSPO  Ecuador and Uruguay were level 1-1   after Friday's opening singles matches in their Davis Cup tennis   American Zone group two final tie.   Results (Ecuador names first):   Nicolas Lapenti beat Federico Dondo 6-4 7-5 6-1   Pablo Campana lost to Marcelo Filippini 2-6 1-6 1-6 
18944 !GCAT !GSPO  Veteran striker Adriano Samaniego scored with his first touch to send Olimpia of Paraguay to a shock South American Supercup first round triumph on Thursday.   Substitute Samaniego went on just two minutes from time to fire home the 30-metre free-kick against Sao Paulo.   His effort squared the two-leg tie 3-3 on aggregate and his team then won a penalty shoot-out 5-3.   The Brazilian side, champions in 1993, appeared to have clinched a second round place when left-back Serginho scored with a deflected shot in the 86th minute to put them 2-0 ahead and 3-2 on aggregate.   Sao Paulo's defeat will increase the pressure on coach Carlos Alberto Parreira, who led Brazil to World Cup victory in 1994.   The team have not won any of their last three Brazilian championship matches.   Olimpia joined Colombia's Atletico Nacional, who eliminated Argentina's River Plate 4-3 on aggregate.   Argentine champions Velez Sarsfield face Brazil's Gremio at home next week, having forced a 3-3 draw in the first leg after trailing 3-1.   Cruzeiro of Brazil are favourites against Nacional, having held the Uruguayans to a 1-1 draw in Montevideo.   Penarol, Uruguay's other representatives, are in deep trouble after losing 2-1 at home to Brazil's Santos in another tie to be completed next week.   The Supercup is contested by past winners of the Libertadores Cup, the South American champions' cup, but some of the participants are well past their best.   Santos last won the Libertadores in 1963, while Argentinos Juniors have just been relegated to the Argentine second division. 
18945 !GCAT !GSPO  Results of South American   Supercup matches played Thursday:   First round, second leg   In Sao Paulo: Sao Paulo (Brazil) 2 Olimpia (Paraguay) 1   (halftime 0-0)   Scorers:   Sao Paulo - Victor Hugo Aristizabal (48th minute), Serginho   (86th)   Olimpia - Adriano Samaniego (88th)   Attendance: 3,000   Aggregate score 3-3.   Olimpia win 5-3 on penalties.   In Buenos Aires: Racing Club (Argentina) 0 Argentinos   Juniors (Argentina) 0.   Note: Racing and Argentinos are in a three-team group that   also includes Boca Juniors (Argentina).   All other first round   ties feature two teams playing on a home-and-away basis.   Standings (tabulate under played, won, drawn, lost, goals   for, goals against, points)    Racing Club  3 1 2 0 3 1 5    Boca Juniors  2 1 1 0 2 0 4   Argentinos Juniors 3 0 1 2 0 4 1 
18946 !GCAT !GSPO  Taiwan lead Indonesia 2-0 in   their Davis Cup Asia/Oceania zone group one play-off tie after   winning both singles matches on Friday.   Results:   Tsai Chia-yen beat Bonit Wiryawan 7-5 6-4 6-3   Chen Chih-jung beat Andrian Raturandang 6-4 6-0 6-3 
18947 !GCAT !GSPO  Kimberly Po continued her demolition of the seeds at the Nichirei international women's tournament on Friday as she beat fourth seed Mary Pierce of France to earn a place in the semifinals.   The unseeded American beat Pierce, last year's winner, 7-5 6-4 to line up a semifinal against second seed Arantxa Sanchez Vicario of Spain.   Po knocked out sixth seeded hometown favourite Ai Sugiyama in the previous round.   Earlier Sanchez Vicario struggled before beating Taiwanese Wang Shi-ting 4-6 6-1 6-1.   Japan's top player and number three seed Kimiko Date delighted the crowd with an easy 6-3 6-0 win over South African Amanda Coetzer and she will now face top seed Monica Seles who had little trouble eliminating Japan's Noako Sawamato 6-1 6-4.   Date, who lost to Coetzer in two previous meetings, allowed the number five seed to take a 3-0 lead before finding her form and winning the next 12 straight games for victory.   "I came into the match thinking I would score when the chance arose," said Date.   "But after she led 3-0 I changed my perspective and decided to play more aggressively." 
18948 !GCAT !GSPO  Quarter-final results at the Nichirei international women's tennis tournament on Friday (prefix number denotes seeding):   Kimberly Po (U.S.) beat 4-Mary Pierce (France) 7-5 6-4   1-Monica Seles (U.S.) beat 7-Naoko Sawamatsu (Japan) 6-1 6-4   3-Kimiko Date (Japan) beat 5-Amanda Coetzer (South Africa) 6-3 6-0   2-Arantxa Sanchez Vicario (Spain) beat 8-Wang Shi-ting (Taiwan) 4-6 6-1 6-1 
18949 !GCAT !GSPO  Three men were on Friday   charged with offering a Philippines soccer player a bribe during   the 10-nation Tiger Cup tournament in Singapore earlier this   month.   Malaysian businessmen Kandasamy Karuppanb and Yam Phung Fei   and Singaporean personnel manager Chong Thin Hoong were charged   with offering defender Saluria Bearneza Judy $50,000 on   September 6, a spokesman for the Corrupt Practices Investigation   Bureau said.   The three were alleged to have sought a 7-0 win for   Singapore.   The match ended 3-0.   The spokesman said the charge referred only to the offer of   money and did not say whether it was accepted.   The three had been granted bail and their passports   impounded, the spokesman said.   Last year, Singapore and Malaysia were both rocked by soccer   bribery scandals.   In Singapore, a former international player and a club   manager were jailed for offering a goalkeeper bribes totalling   nearly $100,000. 
18950 !GCAT !GSPO  World champion Jansher Khan avenged his defeat by Australian Rodney Eyles in the final of the Hong Kong Open earlier this month by defeating him in the Gezira Open final on Friday.   Jansher claimed his 74th major tournament victory in 65 minutes, winning 15-13 15-14 15-6.   World number two Eyles kept pace with Jansher in the steamy conditions in the opening two games, leading 13-12 in the first and reaching 14-14 in the second.   But the Pakistani upped the pressure in the third with a run from 5-3 to 14-3 and match ball in a single hand.   He ended the second game tiebreak with as sweet a wrongfooting, backhand crosscourt drop as he has played and finished the match by forcing the tiring Australian into a desperate attempt at a forehand kill that clipped the tin in the top left corner.   "It was like playing in Pakistan," said Jansher.   "Good, hot weather and good crowds.   I play well here and will come back every time they want me."   Said Eyles: "I needed the break in one of those early games but he lifted his game at the vital moments.   "We play the World Open in Karachi in November and that is the place to beat him.   I don't want him turning up there mean from losing twice or three times on the way." 
18951 !GCAT !GSPO  Result of the final in the Gezira   Open squash championship on Friday (prefix number denotes   seeding):   1-Jansher Khan (Pakistan) beat 2-Rodney Eyles (Australia) 15-13   15-14 15-6 
18952 !GCAT !GSPO  Qatar beat Sri Lanka 3-0 (halftime 1-0) in an Asian Group 10 World Cup qualifying match on Friday.   Scorers - Mohammad Soufi (36th minute), Mohammad Salem al-Enazi (51st), Mubarak Mustafa (81st).   Attendance: 1,500.   Next match: India v Philippines in Doha, Sept 21. 
18953 !GCAT !GSPO  The Los Angeles Dodgers drew first blood in a four-game showdown for the National League West lead by blanking the San Diego Padres 7-0 on Thursday.   Eric Karros and Mike Piazza belted two-run homers and Ramon Martinez pitched a six-hitter and drove in a run as the Dodgers opened a 1 1/2-game lead over the second-place Padres.   The streaking Dodgers have won five of their last six games and are 21-6 since August 21.   Martinez (14-6), who won his sixth straight decision, walked one and recorded a season-high 12 strikeouts.   "He threw very aggressively today and got ahead of the hitters," Piazza said of Martinez, who set down 11 straight batters during one stretch.   The shutout was the second of the season for Martinez, who also pitched his second complete game.   "He's our big gun along with Hideo (Nomo) and he had that look of determination in his eyes before the game," said Dodgers manager Bill Russell.   "Twelve strikeouts and a shutout was just tremendous."   Former Dodger Fernando Valenzuela (13-8) did not survive the second inning, ending his personal eight-game winning streak.   He gave up four runs and three hits with three walks in 1 2/3 innings.   Karros hit his 32nd homer in the first inning for a 3-0 lead and Piazza closed the scoring with his 35th.   In Atlanta, David Segui's two-run single snapped a ninth-inning tie and Moises Alou added a two-run homer to lead the Montreal Expos to a 5-1 win over the Braves in the opener of a five-game series between the top two teams in the East.   The Expos moved within five games of first-place Atlanta and are virtually tied with San Diego in the wild card race.   Segui broke a 1-1 deadlock with his single off Mark Wohlers (2-4).   Brad Clontz relieved, but Alou hit his first pitch over the left-field fence for his 21st homer.   Ugueth Urbina (10-5) allowed a hit and struck out two over two innings in relief of Pedro Martinez to get the win.   In St Louis, Tom Pagnozzi singled home pinch-runner Miguel Mejia with the winning run in the bottom of the 13th inning to lift the Cardinals to a 5-4 victory over the Chicago Cubs.   John Mabry led off the 13th with a double down the right-field line against Mike Campbell (3-1).   Mabry was replaced by Mejia, who was sacrificed to third by Gary Gaetti.   Pagnozzi then lifted a liner over shortstop Jose Hernandez, scoring Mejia with the winning run as the Cards reduced their magic number for clinching the Central Division to five with a five-game lead over the idle Houston Astros.   Cory Bailey (4-2), the seventh Cardinals' pitcher, worked two scoreless innings for the win.   In San Francisco, Glenallen Hill drove in five runs and William VanLandingham allowed five hits over 6 1/3 innings as the Giants dealt the Colorado Rockies's post-season hopes a blow with an 11-4 rout.   The Rockies lost for just the third time in 12 games, but remained six games behind San Diego in the wild-card race with just eight games remaining.   Hill singled in two runs in the first for a 2-0 lead, capped a four-run fourth with a two-run double off Rockies starter Kevin Ritz (16-11) and hit his 16th homer in the seventh off reliever Robbie Beckett.   In Pittsburgh, Nelson Liriano's pinch-hit single snapped a sixth-inning tie and the Pirates beat the Cincinnati Reds 6-4 for their eighth straight victory.   With the score 4-4 in the sixth, Jay Bell singled with one out off Reds reliever Tim Pugh (0-1).   He took third on a base hit by Keith Osik and scored on the single by Liriano, who was batting for pitcher Chris Peters (2-4).   Jermaine Allensworth capped the rally with an RBI single.   Peters allowed one hit in 1 2/3 scoreless innings for the win.   In Philadelphia, Mark Clark allowed one run over seven innings and Edgar Alfonzo homered twice to lead the New York Mets to a 7-2 win over the Phillies.   Clark (14-11) gave up five hits with five strikeouts and a walk.   Phillies starter Rich Hunter (3-7) surrendered six runs and seven hits over five innings.   Hunter allowed both homers to Alfonzo and also gave up the first major-league homer to Mets shortstop Rey Ordonez, who lined a shot into the left-field bullpen in his 484th career at-bat. 
18954 !GCAT !GSPO  Major League Baseball   standings after games played on Thursday (tabulate under won,   lost, winning percentage and games behind):    AMERICAN LEAGUE    EASTERN DIVISION    W L PCT GB    NEW YORK  87 65 .572 -    BALTIMORE  83 69 .546 4    BOSTON  79 73 .520 8    TORONTO  68 84 .447 19    DETROIT  51 102 .333 36 1/2    CENTRAL DIVISION    Y-CLEVELAND  93 59 .612 -    CHICAGO  81 73 .526 13    MINNESOTA  75 78 .490 18 1/2    MILWAUKEE  75 78 .490 18 1/2    KANSAS CITY  71 82 .464 22 1/2    WESTERN DIVISION    TEXAS 84 69 .549 -    SEATTLE  81 70 .536 2    OAKLAND  73 80 .477 11    CALIFORNIA  66 85 .437 17   Y - CLINCHED DIVISION TITLE   FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 20 SCHEDULE   KANSAS CITY AT CLEVELAND    TORONTO AT BALTIMORE     BOSTON AT NEW YORK     MINNESOTA AT CHICAGO     DETROIT AT MILWAUKEE     TEXAS AT CALIFORNIA     OAKLAND AT SEATTLE     NATIONAL LEAGUE    EASTERN DIVISION    W L PCT GB    ATLANTA  90 62 .592 -    MONTREAL  85 67 .559 5    FLORIDA  73 80 .477 17 1/2    NEW YORK  68 85 .444 22 1/2    PHILADELPHIA 62 91 .405 28 1/2    CENTRAL DIVISION    ST LOUIS  83 70 .542 -    HOUSTON  78 75 .510 5    CHICAGO  74 77 .490 8    CINCINNATI  74 78 .487 8 1/2    PITTSBURGH  67 85 .441 15 1/2    WESTERN DIVISION    LOS ANGELES  87 66 .569 -    SAN DIEGO  86 68 .558 1 1/2    COLORADO  80 74 .519 7 1/2    SAN FRANCISCO 62 91 .405 25   FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 20 SCHEDULE    HOUSTON AT FLORIDA      CHICAGO AT PITTSBURGH    ST LOUIS AT CINCINNATI    NEW YORK AT PHILADELPHIA    MONTREAL AT ATLANTA    LOS ANGELES AT SAN DIEGO   COLORADO AT SAN FRANCISCO 
18955 !GCAT !GSPO  Results of Major League   Baseball games on Thursday (home team in CAPS):    American League    SEATTLE 7 Texas  6    1st-NEW YORK  9 Baltimore  3    2nd-Baltimore 10 NEW YORK  9    Boston 8 DETROIT  3    CLEVELAND  9 Kansas City 1    CHICAGO 8 Minnesota  3    National League    Los Angeles  7 SAN DIEGO  0    PITTSBURGH  6 Cincinnati  4    New York  7 PHILADELPHIA 2    Montreal  5 ATLANTA  1    ST LOUIS  5 Chicago  4 (13 innings)    SAN FRANCISCO 11 Colorado  4 
18956 !GCAT !GSPO  The red hot Seattle Mariners are breathing down the necks of the swooning Rangers after completing a four-game home sweep of Texas in the battle for the West Division crown.   Ken Griffey Junior snapped a fourth-inning tie with a two-run single and Dan Wilson added a two-run homer as the surging Mariners edged the Rangers 7-6 Thursday to close within two games of first-place.   The win was the eighth in a row for the Mariners, who have made up seven games on Texas in a week and are just 1 1/2 games back of Baltimore in the wild-card race.   "Fortunately for us, we're playing good baseball at the right time," Mariners manager Lou Piniella said.   "It's up to us to keep playing good baseball."   Tim Davis (2-2) earned the win, allowing one run and three hits in three innings in relief of starter Bob Wolcott.   Norm Charlton retired the final four batters.   He has has given up just two runs in his last 24 2/3 innings over 19 games.   The Rangers scored three runs in the top of the fourth to tie the game, 3-3, but the Mariners answered with two in their half of the inning against reliever Dennis Cook (4-2).   Wilson's two-run homer came in the fifth off Matt Whiteside and extended Seattle's lead to 7-3.   In New York, the Yankees split a double header with the Baltimore Orioles to maintain a four-game lead in the East with 10 games left in the regular season for both teams.   Kenny Rogers pitched 5 2/3 scoreless innings and Derek Jeter and Mariano Duncan each had two-run singles as the Yankees whipped the Orioles 9-3 in the opener.   Rogers (11-8) scattered three hits and four walks.   "I feel great.   This was my most satisfying start this year," he said.   Jeter's two-run single keyed a three-run second that chased Orioles starter Mike Mussina (19-11), who had control problems with five walks in three innings.   The Yanks looked on their way to a sweep when they jumped to a 6-1 lead in the nightcap with the help of Cecil Fielder's 36th and 37th home runs.   But the Orioles stormed back.   Todd Zeile had three hits and four RBI for the Orioles, including an RBI single that snapped a 7-7 eighth-inning tie and sparked a three-run Baltimore outburst.   Cal Ripken's RBI double off loser Mariano Rivera made it 10-7.   His 483rd career double broke Hall of Famer Brooks Robinson's team record.   Terry Mathews (2-1) gave up one run and two hits over 3 1/3 innings in relief of starter David Wells for the win.   Bernie Williams hit his second homer of the game for New York in the bottom of the ninth to pull back to 10-9.   But Fielder and Tino Martinez struck out as Baltimore avoided falling six games back.   In Cleveland, Chad Ogea allowed one run over eight innings and Sandy Alomar and Omar Vizquel delivered big doubles in a seven-run eighth inning as as the Indians pulled away for a 9-1 rout of the Kansas City Royals.   Ogea (9-5) allowed just three hits.   His shutout bid was foiled by Craig Paquette's 21st homer in the eighth.   With Cleveland leading 2-1 in the eighth, the Indians erupted for seven more runs off starter Kevin Appier (13-11) and relievers Rick Huisman and Jason Jacome.   Albert Belle notched his 142nd RBI to start the rally.   Alomar picked up a two-run double and Vizquel added a three-run double in the big inning.   In Chicago, Ray Durham drove in three runs and Frank Thomas and Danny Tartabull each added two RBI as the White Sox beat the Minnesota Twins 8-3 to end a four-game losing streak.   Mike Sirotka (1-2) got the win in his third start of the season to help Chicago keep alive its wild card hopes.   The Twins lost for the sixth time in seven games, virtually ending their playoff chances.   Thomas hit his 38th homer, a two-run shot in the first inning.   Durham's two-run single in the fifth gave Chicago a 5-2 lead.   He added a sacrifice fly in the seventh.   In Detroit, Nomar Garciaparra had a two-run single in a four-run second inning and Bill Haselman homered in the seventh as the Boston Red Sox coasted to an 8-3 win over the Tigers.   A day after Roger Clemens mowed down 20 Tigers, Tom Gordon (11-9) struck out seven in seven innings and Mark Brandenburg added two more as Boston completed a three-game sweep.   The Red Sox have won six of their last seven games to stay alive in the hunt for the wild card playoff berth.   Gordon gave up three runs on nine hits, including a two-run homer by Raul Casanova in the sixth.   Trever Miller (0-3) took the loss. 
18957 !GCAT !GSPO  French captain Yannick Noah, whose team are one defeat from elimination by underdogs Italy in the Davis Cup semifinals, said on Friday there had been shortcomings in the run-up to the tie.   "I don't regret the defeats but I've got regrets about a lot of things before the tie, during the preparation," Noah said after France had lost both singles on the opening day.   "We'll talk about those things after (the tie).   We're still in the match and now the priority is to win tomorrow," said Noah, captain when France last won the Davis Cup in 1991.   The French were surprised when they arrived on Monday to find the brand-new synthetic surface laid in the Palais des Sports de Beaulieu was slower than they expected.   It became faster with each practice session but still suited the Italian slow-court specialists.   "There were mistakes that were not the players' fault.   They wanted to win.   They were hyper-motivated," Noah said.   French number one Cedric Pioline lost to Andrea Gaudenzi in four sets in the opening singles, then Italian first string Renzo Furlan beat Arnaud Boetsch, also in four sets.   "We became a bit relaxed before the first match, myself included," Noah said.   "Cedric did not play at his usual level."   "Things happened the way we feared.   The Italians are solid on the baseline and very hard to pass."   Noah is considering changing his line-up for Saturday's doubles from the pairing of Guy Forget and Guillaume Raoux, who have never played together, he named at Thursday's draw.   "We'll hold a council of war tonight," he said.   When France went 2-0 up against Germany in their quarter-final in April, Noah opted to drop Raoux and send Forget, a veteran of France's 1991 triumph, out with Boetsch to clinch the tie 3-0.   Noah may decide on the same pairing again on Saturday in a bid to secure France's survival. 
18958 !GCAT !GSPO  Result of an Portuguese first   division soccer match on Friday:   Sporting 3 Maritimo 0 
18959 !GCAT !GSPO  Result of a Belgian first   division soccer match on Friday:    Charleroi  1  Standard Liege 2   Standings (games played, won, drawn, lost, goals for, goals   against, points):    Standard Liege  7 5 0 2 11 8 15    Club Brugge  6 4 2 0 16 5 14    Anderlecht 6 3 3 0 15 3 12    Mouscron 6 3 3 0 13 8 12    Ghent 6 3 2 1 13 11 11    Lokeren 6 2 2 2 10 7 8    Aalst 6 2 2 2 7 7 8    Genk 6 2 2 2 8 9 8    Lommel 6 2 2 2 9 12 8    Antwerp 6 2 1 3 8 14 7    Lierse 6 1 4 1 9 6 7    Mechelen 6 1 4 1 11 11 7    Charleroi 7 2 1 4 10 12 7    Molenbeek 6 1 3 2 5 8 6    Harelbeke 6 1 2 3 7 10 5    Ekeren 6 1 1 4 7 11 4    Sint Truiden  6 1 1 4 7 15 4    Cercle Brugge  6 0 3 3 6 15 3 
18960 !GCAT !GSPO  Leading scorers in the French   first division after Friday's matches:   7 - Anton Drobnjak (Bastia)    6 - Alain Caveglia (Lyon)    5 - Miladin Becanovic (Lille)    4 - Stephane Guivarc'h (Rennes), Leonardo (Paris St Germain),   Japhet N'Doram (Nantes), Jean-Pierre Papin (Bordeaux), Stephane   Samson (Le Havre), Christopher Wreh (Guingamp) 
18961 !GCAT !GSPO  Paris St Germain, inspired by Brazilians Leonardo and Rai, crushed Lens 4-0 at the Parc des Princes on Friday to stretch their lead at the top of the French first division.   Leonardo, who has struggled to find his best form since joining PSG from Japanese club Kashima at the start of the season, was the undisputed star of the show.   He opened the floodgates with a tremendous volley in the 16th minute, set up Rai for the second goal in the 35th minute and wrapped up the match with the fourth after 86 minutes.   Nicolas Anelka scored PSG's third in the 83rd minute.   Bastia, enjoying their best season since the heady days of 1978 when they reached the UEFA Cup final, ousted Bordeaux from second spot by beating Caen 4-2.   Their Polish international Piotr Swercziewki scored twice, in the 34th and 69th minutes, and leading marksman Anton Drobnjak collected his seventh goal of the season with seven minutes left.   But there was a distinct Brazilian flavour to the night as Sonny Anderson struck twice for Monaco to earn his side a 2-1 away win over Le Havre.   The win lifted Monaco to fourth place on 15 points, five behind the leaders.   Bordeaux kept their unbeaten league record intact with a lacklustre goalless draw at home to Guingamp. 
18962 !GCAT !GSPO  Summaries of German Bundesliga matches played on Friday:   Duisburg 3 (Westerbeek 9th minute, Salou 70th, 77th) Werder Bremen 2 (Brand 50th, Pfeifenberger 88th).   Halftime 1-0.   Attendance 13,770   Hansa Rostock 2 (Beinlich 19th penalty, Studer 23rd) 1860 Munich 4 (Walker 36th, Maerz 45th og, Winkler 54th, Borimirow 90th).   2-2.   17,000 
18963 !GCAT !GSPO  Results of German Bundesliga   matches played on Friday:    Duisburg  3 Werder Bremen 2    Hansa Rostock 2 1860 Munich 4   Bundesliga standings after Friday's games (tabulate under   played, won, drawn, lost, goals for, goals against, points):    VfB Stuttgart 6 5 1 0 17 2 16    Bayern Munich 6 4 2 0 13 5 14    Borussia Dortmund  6 4 1 1 14 7 13    Bayer Leverkusen  6 4 0 2 13 8 12    Cologne 6 4 0 2 11 7 12    Werder Bremen 7 3 1 3 15 10 10    Karlsruhe 6 3 1 2 11 8 10    1860 Munich 7 3 1 3 11 10 10    Hamburg 6 3 0 3 10 10 9    Bochum 6 2 3 1 8 9 9    Hansa Rostock 7 2 2 3 9 9 8    Schalke 6 1 4 1 7 10 7    Fortuna Duesseldorf  6 2 1 3 3 10 7    Borussia Moenchengladbach 6 1 2 3 4 8 5    Duisburg 7 1 1 5 5 13 4    St Pauli 6 1 1 4 7 17 4    Arminia Bielefeld  6 0 3 3 3 6 3    Freiburg 6 1 0 5 7 19 3 
18964 !GCAT !GSPO  Summary of Friday's Dutch first division soccer match:   Heerenveen 1 (Wouden 74th minute) NEC Nijmegen 1 (Maes 66th).   Halftime 0-0.   Attendance 13,100. 
18965 !GCAT !GSPO  Result of Dutch first division   soccer played on Friday:    Heerenveen 1 NEC Nijmegen 1   Standings (tabulate under played, won, drawn, lost, goals   for, goals against, points):    Feyenoord Rotterdam  6 5 1 0 13 3 16    PSV Eindhoven 6 5 0 1 21 5 15    Twente Enschede  6 3 2 1 7 4 11    Heerenveen 7 3 2 2 14 9 11    Graafschap Doetinchem 6 3 1 2 11 7 10    Roda JC Kerkrade  6 2 4 0 8 3 10    Ajax Amsterdam 6 3 1 2 4 4 10    NAC Breda 6 3 1 2 4 7 10    NEC Nijmegen 7 2 3 2 9 12 9    Vitesse Arnhem 5 2 2 1 6 4 8    Fortuna Sittard  6 2 1 3 5 9 7    Utrecht 6 1 3 2 7 7 6    Sparta Rotterdam  6 1 2 3 5 8 5    RKC Waalwijk 5 1 1 3 7 12 4    AZ Alkmaar 6 1 1 4 2 6 4    Willem II Tilburg  6 1 1 4 5 11 4    Volendam 6 1 1 4 5 13 4    Groningen 6 0 3 3 5 14 3 
18966 !GCAT !GSPO  Summaries of French first division   matches on Friday:   Paris St Germain 4 (Leonardo 16rh, 86th, Rai 35th, Anelka 83rd)   Lens 0.   Half-time 2-0.   Attendance: 35,000   Bordeaux 0 Guingamp 0.   0-0.   15,000   Bastia 4 (Swierczewski 34th, 69th, Sebastien Perez 55th,   Drobnjak 83rd) Caen 2 (Mendy 27th, Bancarel 57th).   1-1.   5,000   Metz 1 (Traore 45th) Montpellier 1 (Lefevre 34th).   1-1.   15,000   Rennes 1 (Wiltord 64th) Nancy 0.   0-0.   10,000   Lyon 3 (Gava 5th, Caveglia 31st, 53rd) Cannes 1 (Bedrossian   85th).   2-0.   15,000   Le Havre 1 (Samson 57th) Monaco 2 (Anderson 68th, 90th).   0-0.   7,000   Lille 1 (Boutoille 29th) Marseille 1 (Lechkov 73rd).   1-1.   13,000   Nice 1 (Chaouch 50th) Strasbourg 1(Zitelli 10th).   0-1.   5,000 
18967 !GCAT !GSPO  Standings in the French first   division after Saturday's matches (tabulate under played, won,   drawn, lost, goals for, against, points):    Paris-SG  8 6 2 0 12 0 20     Bastia  8 5 2 1 14 7 17     Bordeaux  8 4 4 0 10 3 16     Monaco  8 4 3 1 14 6 15     Metz 8 4 3 1 9 5 15     Lyon 8 3 4 1 12 8 13     Auxerre  8 3 4 1 8 4 13     Lens 8 4 1 3 10 13 13     Marseille  8 3 3 2 10 8 12     Guingamp  8 3 3 2 6 5 12     Lille 8 3 3 2 9 10 12     Rennes  8 3 2 3 9 10 11     Cannes  8 3 2 3 6 8 11     Le Havre  8 2 2 4 8 9 8     Montpellier  8 1 4 3 7 11 7     Strasbourg  8 2 1 5 6 13 7     Caen 8 0 4 4 4 12 4     Nantes  8 0 3 5 7 14 3     Nice 8 0 2 6 6 13 2     Nancy 8 0 2 6 2 10 2 
18968 !GCAT !GSPO  Results of French first division   matches on Friday:    Paris SG 4 Lens  0    Bordeaux 0 Guingamp 0    Bastia  4 Caen  2    Metz  1 Montpellier 1    Rennes  1 Nancy  0    Lyon  3 Cannes  1    Le Havre 1 Monaco  2    Lille  1 Marseille 1    Nice  1 Strasbourg 1   Played Thursday:    Auxerre  2 Nantes  2 
18969 !GCAT !GSPO  FIFA, world soccer's governing body, is against a proposed move to Dublin by English premier league Wimbledon, the Football Association of Ireland (FAI) said on Friday.   The FAI, whose clubs oppose the plan, said in a statement: "FIFA has expressed its opposition in principle to the concept and will fully support the FAI's stance."   Wimbledon, a small south London club who share a ground with first division Crystal Palace, cannot compete with the big-name London sides for support.   Last November they were invited by Dublin's International Sports Council to set up base in the Irish capital.   The Irish federation said it had received interim replies to letters it had sent on the issue to soccer authorities involved.   It said the European Football Union (UEFA) intended to make its reply conform with that of FIFA.   The FAI said the English Football Association (F.A.) had said Wimbledon had not raised the issue with them.   The F.A. premier league had said its jurisdiction was England and Wales and any alteration would require a rule change, the FAI said.   "They have had no approach, formal or informal, for such a rule change and therefore had no need to have a policy on this matter."   The FAI said it was very pleased with the tenor of the replies it had received. 
18970 !GCAT !GSPO  Wimbledon champion Richard Krajicek was forced to retire from his Davis Cup match against New Zealander Alistair Hunt on Friday after injuring his right knee.   Krajicek, who was sidelined by a similar injury for a lengthy spell in 1994, led 2-1 in sets but trailed 4-1 in the fourth when he quit.   He had been allowed a three-minute break in the third set to have the knee strapped.   The world group qualifying tie was level at 1-1 after the opening day, Jan Siemerink having beaten Brett Steven 6-7 7-6 6-3 3-6 6-2 in the first singles match. 
18971 !GCAT !GSPO  The Netherlands and   New Zealand were level after sharing the opening singles matches   in their Davis Cup World group qualifying tie on Friday,   Results (Dutch names first):   Jan Siemerink beat Brett Steven 6-7 (4-7) 7-6 (7-2) 6-3 3-6 6-2   Richard Krajicek lost to Alistair Hunt 6-7 (5-7) 6-3 6-4 1-4,   Krajicek retired injured 
18972 !GCAT !GSPO  Andrea Gaudenzi gave Italy a shock 1-0 lead over favourites France when he beat the home team's number one Cedric Pioline in their Davis Cup semifinal on Friday.   The Italian second string came from a set down to win 5-7 6-1 7-6 6-3 in three hours 11 minutes at the Palais des Sports of Beaulieu in Nantes.   Pioline, at number 17 the highest ranked player in the tie, was broken in the opening set against a highly motivated and mobile opponent.   The Frenchman broke back immediately but from the moment he took the first set in 55 minutes he was on his heels.   He was swept aside in the second set and was outgunned 7-4 in the third set tiebreak.   Gaudenzi broke Pioline's serve nine times in the match, four times on his way to taking the decisive fourth.   The Italian's patience served him well in the long rallies.   He also had his share of winning volleys at the net on his way to a fourth successive win over Pioline. 
18973 !GCAT !GSPO  Results of the opening   singles matches in the Davis Cup World Group semifinal tie   between France and Italy on Friday:   Andrea Gaudenzi (Italy) beat Cedric Pioline (France) 5-7 6-1   7-6 (7-4) 6-3   Renzo Furlan beat Arnaud Boetsch 7-5 1-6 6-3 7-6 (7-5)   Italy lead the tie 2-0. 
18974 !GCAT !GSPO  Stuttgart's caretaker-coach Joachim Loew is finding that life is tough at the top of the German league as he waits patiently to be given the job his success merits.   Loew, former assistant trainer who took charge at the end of last season, has had a spectacular start with five wins and a draw in six league games, taking Stuttgart to the head of the table.   But he has been kept hanging on by club directors' hesitations to give him the top position on an official basis.   Club president Gerhard Mayer-Vorfelder is on Saturday expected to announce Loew has been awarded a two-year contract after the matter is discussed at a directors' meeting before Saturday's match with Fortuna Duesseldorf.   Fittingly for a man whose patience is already being tested by his employers, Loew has warned fans not to expect any fireworks against defence-minded Fortuna.   Stuttgart's aspirations will be weakened anyway by the absence of injured Bulgarian playmaker Krasimir Balakov.   "This is going to be a game of patience.   No one should expect us to put on a show," said Loew.   Stuttgart are at least free of the European distractions which beset many of their rivals and most notably second placed Bayern Munich.   As well as avoiding defeat at home to Karlsruhe, the UEFA Cup holders must overturn a 3-0 away defeat to Valencia or see the end of their title defence.   Bayern president Franz Beckenbauer has started turning up the heat on players by reminding them of the incessant public bickering which arguably cost the 13-times champions the title last season.   "I want players to stop all this whingeing that they're tired," he said.   "I wouldn't mind if the trainer left one or two European champions up in the stand...I hope he gets tough with them."   Bundesliga champions Borussia Dortmund, meanwhile, are wishing they had Bayern's worries.   Ottmar Hitzfeld is missing many key players including Portuguese midfielder Paulo Sousa, who needs a knee operation, and striker Karlheinz Riedle, who has a slipped disc in his neck.   Brazilian defender Julio Cesar has been told he can safely postpone a knee operation until the winter break but Hitzfeld will rest him on Saturday to keep him fresh for Wednesday's European Champions' League game against Steaua Bucharest.   Dortmund will confront arch-rivals Borussia Moenchengladbach, who despite smarting from a 4-0 defeat at Cologne last week are relieved midfielder Stefan Effenberg has signed a lucrative new contract until the year 2000. 
18975 !GCAT !GSPO  The Netherlands   took a 1-0 lead over New Zealand in their Davis Cup tennis World   Group qualifying round tie after winning the opening singles on   Friday (Dutch names first):   Jan Siemerink beat Brett Steven 6-7 (4-7) 7-6 (7-2) 6-3 3-6 6-2 
18976 !GCAT !GSPO  Local trainer Dermot Weld will seek to complete a hat-trick of 1996 domestic Classic wins when the Group One Irish St Leger is run at The Curragh on Saturday.   The Curragh-based trainer will be represented in the 150,000 Irish pounds ($241,500) race by Gordi, the mount of big race specialist Michael Kinane.   Weld saddled 20-1 outsider Zagreb to win the Irish Derby in June and landed the Irish Oaks with Dance Design the following month.   Gordi, a 6-1 chance, was heavily backed in the days leading up to last Saturday's English St Leger at Doncaster in which he finished last but one of the 11 runners on ground considered unsuitable after heavy watering.   "Gordi worked very nicely on Thursday morning for Mick Kinane and will run even though he was in the wars at Doncaster last Saturday when he was struck into," Weld said.   "He had cuts and bruises on his front legs when he came back from England and still has a scar."   John Oxx, who won the Irish Champion Stakes with Timarida on Saturday, will saddle 5-2 ante-post favourite Key Change, winner of the Yorkshire Oaks on August 21.   Trainer Kevin Prendergast will be double-handed for the 14 furlong (2.8-km) contest with Oscar Schindler (3-1) and I'm Supposin' (20-1).   Only three British-trained entries remained in the field of nine runners at Friday's final declaration stage.   Paul Cole, who won the race with Strategic Choice in 1995, will be represented by Princess of Wales Stakes winner Posidonas (6-1) while Michael Stoute saddles Sacrament (5-1) and Blushing Flame (10-1). 
18977 !GCAT !GSPO  The World Cup qualifier between former Balkan war enemies Bosnia and Croatia has been moved forward a day to October 8, FIFA said on Friday.   The Group One match, which will be played on the neutral ground of Renato dall'Ara Stadium in Bologna, Italy, was brought forward to avoid clashing with a Group Two qualifier between Italy and Georgia in Perugia.   Bosnia had hoped to stage their first home qualifier in Sarajevo but FIFA ruled their stadium was not yet up to standard after being damaged during the fighting.   The Under-21 European championship qualifier between Bosnia and Croatia to be played in Imola was also moved forward one day to October 8. 
18978 !GCAT !GSPO  Former Austrian international August Starek has been recalled to replace the disgraced Serbian Ljubo Petrovic as coach of first division club Casino Graz, the Austrian news agency APA reported on Friday.   Petrovic resigned last week after physically attacking one of his players in the dressing room.   The incident occured immediately after a first round, first leg UEFA Cup match against Belgium's Germinal Ekeren.   Starek, a 51-year-old Viennese, previously coached Casino Graz from 1981 to 1984.   His last training position was at German second division club VfB Leipzig. 
18979 !GCAT !GSPO  Brazilian strikers Ronaldo and Romario hope to silence their critics this weekend.   Romario is expected to return to the Valencia line-up on Saturday after being dropped.   Barcelona's Ronaldo hopes to shine in the top Spanish league clash with Real Sociedad on Sunday.   "They ought to talk to me before the press.   I want to continue with a goal a game," was Ronaldo's measured reaction to suggestions by Barcelona's assistant coach Jose Mourinho that he did not work hard enough for the rest of the team.   Few would deny that Bobby Robson's side are not still not working well together.   But even fewer would point to Ronaldo as a problem.   His superb individual effort against Racing Santander last week earned Barcelona the point that kept them in second place.   Barcelona trail Real Betis on goal difference, while Racing Santander and Real Sociedad also have seven points from three games.   Portuguese goalkeeper Vitor Baia, another costly close-season signing, has aggravated a leg injury, leaving him doubtful for the clash with Real Sociedad -- to be played on newly-laid turf at the Nou Camp stadium.   Romario looks likely to reappear for the home game with Tenerife after threatening to leave the club when he was dropped for the UEFA Cup tie against Bayern Munich.    But Romario has subsequently made his apologies, and limited his criticism of coach Luis Aragones.   "The bench isn't made for me.   If I'm not in the side, I get annoyed," said a tactful Romario this week.   Despite Romario's problems, Spain still cannot get enough of Brazilian forwards.   Deportivo Coruna -- who already have a goalscorer called Rivaldo -- are reportedly interested in acquiring another named Renaldo.   Real Madrid supremo Lorenzo Sanz has just returned from a scouting mission to Brazil.   Sanz's team are looking to set their championship challenge in motion after being saved from their first defeat of the season on Monday by another Brazilian, Roberto Carlos.   Analysis of the defender's blistering 25-metre equaliser against Real Betis showed that the ball left his boot at an incredible 162 kph.   Roberto Carlos made up for the deficencies of strikers Davor Suker and Predrag Mijatovic, who have only managed one goal between them since signing in the close season.   Both will be looking to put the record straight in the home game against neighbours Rayo Vallecano, traditionally regarded as Madrid's third team.   Atletico Madrid won their incessant battle against being labelled as the Spanish capital's second team by taking the league and cup double, but so far this season have struggled to find their form.   Coach Radomir Antic travels to Logrones after seeing his team lose consecutive games for the first time.   "The injury of a player hurts me more than a punch," said Antic, referring to knocks that could leave him without Kiko Narvaez, Radek Bejbl, Jose Luis Caminero and Leonardo Biagini.   After going top for the first time in a decade, Real Betis travel to Celta Vigo for a game that has been brought forward an hour to allow Celta midfielder Haim Revivo time to return home to celebrate the Jewish Yom Kippur holiday.   For Betis goalkeeper Toni Prats and opposite number Jose Luis Diezma the game will be a curious experience after switching clubs in the close-season. 
18980 !GCAT !GSPO  Newly-promoted Bologna's surge to second place in Italy's serie A will be tested throughly on Sunday when they face reigning champions AC Milan at home.   Whatever the outcome a 38,000 full house and a $1.1 million box-office are guaranteed.   Milan are still smarting after successive league and European Cup defeats -- a problem more mental than anything else, according to their Uruguayan coach Oscar Washington Tabarez.   "It's a psychological question that involves everyone," he said.   "When we take the lead, that's the moment to make the most of your psychological advantage.   "Instead, against both Porto and Sampdoria, we didn't do enough to wrap up the game immediately."   Milan captain Franco Baresi and schemer Roberto Baggio are both injured but Montenegrin forward Dejan Savicevic returns after suspension and injury.   Bologna, winners of their two games to date, expect to field their strong strike force of Russian Igor Kolyvanov and Swede Kennet Andersson.   Davide Fontolan and Giancarlo Marocchi add experience to midfield.   Internazionale, third and also with a six-point maximum, face a selection dilemma for their home game against lowly Lazio on Saturday.   With the return from injury of Dutch midfielder Aron Winter, Inter's English coach Roy Hodgson can call on a complete squad and may be tempted to field seven non-Italians.   Argentine Javier Zanetti and Frenchman Joceyln Angloma in defence, England's Paul Ince, France's Youri Djorkaeff, Swiss Ciriaco Sforza along with Winter in midfield and Chilean striker Ivan Zamorano are all expected to play.   Despite Lazio's poor start, captain Giuseppe Signori believes the side will perform well at the San Siro.   "A lot of us have had physical problems but things are better now.   I'm sure that we'll play very well in Milan," he said.   Early pacesetters AS Roma have a difficult home game against Sampdoria but can assemble their strongest side.   Juventus travel south to promoted Perugia, a side who have beaten them twice and held them to four draws in six home league games over the last 20 years. 
18981 !GCAT !GSPO  Zimbabwe were 162 for six in   their second innings at the close on the third day of the second   test against Sri Lanka on Friday.   Scores: Zimbabwe 141 and 162-6; Sri Lanka 350-8 declared. 
18982 !GCAT !GSPO  Zimbabwe were striving hard to   avoid the ignominy of suffering a second successive innings   defeat by Sri Lanka as they were reduced to 85 for three by tea   on the the third day of the second test.   Trailing by 209 on the first innings, Zimbabwe lost three   wickets with only 34 runs on the board before their fourth   wicket pair of Ali Shah and Andy Flower staged something of a   recovery with an unbroken partnership of 51.   Shah was unbeaten on 27 and Flower 28 but they have a tough   task ahead of them of trying to save the match.   With a session   and two days remaining Zimabwe still trail by 124 runs.   Sri Lanka earlier batted on for 75 minutes, adding 33 runs   to their overnight total of 317 for seven before declaring at   350 for eight with Hashan Tillekeratne completing his highest   test score of 126 not out.   He and Ravinda Pushpakumara took their eighth wicket   partnership to 64 before leg-spinner Paul Strang claimed his   fourth wicket of the innings by dismissing Pushpakumara for 23.   Paceman Chaminda Vaas quickly struck when Zimbabwe began   their second innings, trapping left-hander Mark Dekker lbw with   a ball that came back sharply off the seam for four.   Left-arm spinner Jayantha Silva then struck a double blow   when he removed Grant Flower and skipper Alistair Campbell in   successive overs.   Off his first delivery of the innings, Silva had Grant   Flower lbw for 13 as he shuffled across his stumps then had   Campbell caught off the last ball of his next over for four to   plunge Zimbabwe into desperate trouble. 
18983 !E12 !ECAT !GCAT !GHEA !GWELF  South Africa's macro-economic strategy suffered another blow on Friday when a senior African National Congress (ANC) member and Western Cape academic hospitals questioned its effects on social services.   Ebrahim Rasool, Western Cape health minister who is in the running for the provincial chairmanship of the ANC, said Nelson Mandela's government needed to rethink the new policy.   It aims to reduce the budget deficit to 3.0 percent by the year 2000, while creating 400,000 jobs a year.   "Not too much attention is paid to the social costs of this plan," Rasool said.   He said staff cuts and subsidies for the Western Cape academic hospitals would be affected because of the need for equity, as envisaged by the policy.   "The bottom line of all these cuts is that there will be less services in the Western Cape," he said.    The ANC's powerful ally, the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) has also been critical of the blueprint, calling it a betrayal of workers' needs.   Rasool said between 1996 and the year 2000 the Western Cape would lose 3,500 hospital personnel due to budget cuts.   His ministry's annual budget would be reduced from 2,5 billion rand in 1996 to 2,4 billion in 1997, he said.    This would translate to 500 hospital beds lost this year.   Finance Minister Trevor Manuel has repeatedly said the fundamentals of the policy are non-negotiable.   "The public who voted him (Manuel) into power will have to tell him what is non-negotiable or not," Groote Schuur Hospital head of surgery John Terblanche said.   "What it (policy) means is that there is going to be less money, less beds, but we won't have less patients."    He added that the government needed to cut the budgets of ministries that were less sufficient.    "My advice to Capetonians this weekend is don't get ill or have an accident...We will treat you badly, not that we want to, but because we don't have the staff to treat you effectively," Terblanche said. 
18984 !GCAT !GCRIM !GPOL  An apartheid assassin, who now likens President Nelson Mandela to Africa's first black Messiah, insisted on Friday he was not trying to curry favour with his former targets, the ruling African National Congress (ANC).   State lawyers accused Eugene de Kock, convicted last month of six murders and scores of lesser crimes, of calculatedly singing the praises of Mandela and his party in the hope of being rewarded with a lenient sentence.   "Only I can help myself -- and my God," de Kock, who led a notorious death-squad unit that hunted down black liberation guerrillas, told Pretoria Supreme Court.   He declined to say how many people he had killed.   "A person does not count.   It is unpleasant to do so.   It is something that you rather forget -- if that is possible."   Asked how he thought his former enemies would describe him, the neat, bespectacled 47-year-old said: "As a coldblooded, persistent, merciless operator."   In his four-day testimony for mitigation of sentence, de Kock implicated officials as high up as apartheid-era presidents P.W. Botha and F.W. de Klerk, now leader of South Africa's opposition National Party.   He accused them both of knowing about covert operations and of ordering attacks.   De Klerk has replied that there was nothing new in the allegations, Botha has stayed silent.   De Kock has hit out at the top officials who gave orders to kill, saying: "People who give orders never live with death.   But if you live to be 1,000...the dead will never go away."   He said he suffered years of nightmares.   In a court tightly guarded by police armed with automatic rifles, de Kock said he knew of other mysterious apartheid death squads whose deeds would leave his "in the shade". 
18985 !C12 !CCAT !E51 !E512 !ECAT !GCAT !GCRIM  Increased theft and a general lack of security at South Africa's ports was costing the country about 12 billion rand a year, Sihle Mbongwa, head of security at port authority Portnet said on Friday.   Addressing a meeting to seek support for new security plans for the country's six ports, Mbongwa said the new dispensation had led to increased shipping as the word scrambled to do business with South Africa.   "Democratisation of South Africa has created more business opportunities and made our ports busier than before.   "This has also led to increased theft and criminality which has now necessitated Portnet to critically review its security situation," he told the meeting.   Asked to put a value on the losses South Africa was suffering through the lack of proper access control mechanisms, surveillance and possible corruption among port, customs and excise control staffers, he told Reuters:   "Losses are quite high and are hard to quantify, but an independent study conducted on behalf of Portnet shows the country is losing about 12 billion rand a year."   He said the parastatal had committed itself to beefing up security at the ports.   Crimes highlighted at the meeting were theft of containers, forged cargo documentation, drug smuggling and the prevalence of stowaways, mostly from conflict-ravaged countries of central Africa.   Captain David Kinghorn of the South African Police Service said about 56 containers with goods worth nine million rand had been stolen from Durban's container terminal this year.   The port of Durban experienced one of the busiest periods over July and August this year when the port handled a record 2,014 cargo ships -- the highest number of ship movements since the Suez Canal crisis in 1971.   A total of 3,668 ships were handled in all South African ports, with Cape Town recording 1,043 and Richards Bay 304 ships over the same period, Portnet said earlier this month.   -- Ellis Mnyandu, Durban Newsroom: +27 031 306 8646 
18986 !GCAT !GDIS  Three sailors died in a fire on a Spanish trawler anchored off the harbour of Angola's capital Luanda, the daily Jornal de Angola said on Friday.   Spain's ambassador told state radio the nationality and names of the three crew members remained unclear.   Fiver other sailors on board survived.   The paper did not say when the fire engulfed the Tere Neli Huelva trawler. 
18987 !GCAT  These are the main stories reported in the Angolan press on Friday.   Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.   - - - -   JORNAL DE ANGOLA   - The United Nations special envoy to Angola Alioune Blondin Beye met with Prime Minister Franca Van Dunem in which he expresseed his confidence in Angola's peace process.   - Portugal's ambassador to Angola Ramalho Ortigao attended the opening of the new Banco Totta e Acores in Benguela, south of Luanda.   - Secretary for state for coffee, Gilberto Lutucuta said $243 million was needed to implement and finance the coffee industry in Angola in the next two years.   - Three crew members of a Spanish trawler died in a fire on board their boat in the Luanda port, a port official said. 
18988 !GCAT  These are the leading stories in the Zimbabwe press on Friday.   Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.   - - - -   THE ZIMBABWE INDEPENDENT   - Zimbabwe, whose first five-year flirtation with economic reforms produced a plethora of missed targets, has set itself ambitious goals forecast to fuel an average annual growth rate of five percent in the second phase.   - Air Zimbabwe has lost substantial revenue over the past few weeks due to massive flight disruptions caused by arbitrary "VVIP charters" of the corporation's aircraft to take President Robert Mugabe and his entourage on trips abroad, the Zimbabwe Independent has learnt.   - Zimbabwe risks turning away foreign investors unless it eliminates unnecessary bureaucracy in approving work permits for skilled personnel needed by investors, says German ambassador to the southern African country Dr Norwin Graf Leutrum.   - - - -   THE HERALD   - The Zimbabwean government has proposed far-reaching measures expected to transform the economic and social life of people by the turn century under a draft of the second phase of economic reforms to be launched next year.   - About 20,000 civil servants have so far been identified by the government as having taken part in a recent strike for salary increments and will not be paid for the two weeks they were not at work.   - Anglo American Corporation Zimbabwe has appointed South African Philip Baum new chief executive with effect from October 1.   -- Harare Newsroom: +263-4 72 52 28/9 
18989 !GCAT  These are the leading stories in Botswana's state-controlled Daily News newspaper on Friday.   Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.   - The Botswana Power Corporation (BPC) has electrified 76 villages since 1992 and another 20 are due for completion betefore mid 1997.   "The corporation has by far exceeded its target of seven villages a year," said a BPC spokesman.   - Botswana has signed an agreement with Norway for the funding of a Pula 6.2 million air pollution and monitoring project.   Under the agreement a national environmental laboratory will be constructed in Gaborone within the next three years.   - Gaborone newsroom (+267) 347182. 
18990 !GCAT  These are the leading stories in the South African press on Friday.   Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.   - - - -   BUSINESS DAY   - Anglo American Industrial Corp is to tap shareholders for 1.2 billion rand to finance a string of new projects and developments.   - Mining house Anglovaal lifted attributable income before exceptional items 18 percent to 496 million rand for the year to June as resurgent mining operations offset a flat performance from the industrial arm.   - The Reserve Bank's latest quarterly bulletin suggests the economy had a last gasp in the June quarter of this year which should not be seen as evidence of a second wind.   - The Crescent Consortium has beaten Highveld stereo owner Africa on Air in the race for Western Cape radio station KFM, the first private radio station in the province.   - - - -   BUSINESS REPORT   - High interest rates are here to stay for the time being and there is no political pressure on the Reserve Bank to lower them, bank governor Chris Stals said.   - Amic announced a massive 1.2 billion rand rights offer which company chairman Leslie Boyd characterised as a demonstration of confidence in the South African economy.   - Hong Kong firm VTech Communications has won the multi-million rand contract to supply SABC's Astrasat satellite-television service with encryption technology.   - The political and industrial crisis gathering over the $4 billion Lesotho Highlands Water Project deepened after reports of workers' bodies being found at Butha Buthe.   - - - -   THE STAR   - Former government assassin Eugene de Kock told the Pretoria Supreme Court he wished he had never been born and all his actions as head of the notorious Vlakplaas counter-insurgency unit had not worked.   - A minibus taxi driver shot three fleeing hijackers dead after they threw him from his car with a bullet lodged in the small of his back in Jeppestown, Johannesburg.   -- Johannesburg newsroom +27 11 482 1003 
18991 !GCAT  IZVESTIA   - A special "green corridor" passage at Moscow international airport Sheremetyevo II has been opened for Russians arriving from abroad.   - Who owned the sword presented to rock star Michael Jackson?   The antique sword, given to Jackson by former presidential bodyguard Alexander Korzhakov was confiscated by Russian customs.   - A 20-point fall the rouble's exchange rate against the dollar on Thursday is not a sign of catastrophe, central bank officials say.   SEVODNYA   - Russian firms will be encouraged to issue additional shares to cover their budget debts, First Deputy Prime Minister Vladimir Potanin is quoted as saying.   - Boris Yeltsin signed a decree promising to issue another decree on handing presidential duties over to Prime Mnister Viktor Chernomyrdin.   NEZAVISIMAYA GAZETA   - I am calling a November 7 referendum to avoid the situation which Russia survived in 1993, says Belarussian President Alexander Lukashenko, referring to the violent confrontation between president and parliament in October 1993.   - Chechen leader Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev is forming a government while the Russian military is leaving the rebel repubic with heavy hearts.   MOSKOVSKY KOMSOMOLETS   - Next time we will come in military uniforms and then with weapons and I am sure we will then get what we want, said a participant of a rally of military industrial workers in Moscow on Thursday.   The servicemen want the government to pay wages overdue for the last six months.   --Tatyana Ustinova, Moscow Newsroom, +7095 941 8520. 
18992 !C33 !C331 !CCAT !GCAT !GDEF  Poland is likely to buy anti-tank missles worth $500 million from Israel rather than from United States for its planned new combat helicopter, a senior government official said on Friday.   Cabinet chief-of-staff Leszek Miller said that the government's defence committee (KSORM) had tentatively agreed to conclude the deal with Israel but military experts needed to further examine the missle before a final decision is taken.   "KSORM discussed the issue on Thursday and it seems to have taken a decision that conculdes the matter (of buying Israeli missiles)," Miller told a news briefing after returing from a three-day visit to Israel.   He said a group of Polish military experts would go to Israel in November to examine technical details of the missle, called Raphael and manufactured by Elbit company.   "They need to evaluate how the missle functions in practice," Miller said, confirming that the purchase would be worth $500 million.   The missle would be installed on 150 Huzar combat helicopters, which the armed forces want to buy from the domestic PZL Swidnik firm.   The purchase is likely to spread over many years because of the Polish military's tight budget.   The defence committee's decision appears to bury hopes of the U.S. Rockwell arms manufactutrer, which wanted to sell Poland its remotely-piloted Hellfire missiles.   The government has said that Rockwell presented its offer when the official tender, in which France's Aerospatiale had also offered its Hot-2 missle, was closed earlier this year.   U.S. government officials pressed Polish authorities to let Rockwell join the tender and newspapers quoted analysts as saying that buying the missle from the United States would be advantageous considering Poland's plans to join NATO.   Some analysts also said Rockwell's missle is simply better but Miller said the Isreali one was not worse.   "The Israeli missiles are state-of the art and would be an effective weapon for our Huzar helicopter," he said. 
18993 !GCAT !GPOL !GVOTE  Socialist Premier Costas Simitis, in a tight race with opposition conservatives, went for broke in a final campaign speech on Friday, denouncing the right, vowing a strong Greece and praising the welfare state.   In what was perhaps the best speech of his political career, Simitis laid claim to the mantle of socialist party founder and legend Andreas Papandreou who died earlier this year.   Tens of thousands of socialists packed central Athans to hear his call to arms before Sunday's vote, unleashing a sea of balloons, blasting air-horns, blazing flares and waving green and white flags.   This is the first time the Panhellenic Socialist Movement (PASOK), founded in 1974 after the fall of a seven-year military junta, has fought an election without Papandreou at the helm.   Simitis, usually showing a drab academic facade, has run a lacklustre campaign and been criticised for over-confidence at the start and an inability to mobilise socialist core voters.   Friday night was his last chance to bring around a big block of undecided voters and he cast caution to the wind and embraced the "old" populist style of Papandreou.   "We represent the future of hope and progress; a strong, sound, more just Greece with a leading role in the Balkans and the Mediterranean," he told the cheering and chanting crowd.   Turning to neighbouring Turkey, which forced Simitis to back down in his first foreign policy challenge in January, he drew a line in the sand.   "Turkey is playing with fire from Thrace, to the Aegean, to Cyprus.   But Greece won't negotiate on our territorial rights and sovereignty," he said.   "Because of the success of our policies, Turkey is now isolated and has suffered a diplomatic defeat."   Although a flattering view of his handling of a dispute with Turkey over an outcrop of rock in the Aegean island, it showed him on the offensive for the first time.   Simitis, 60, was clearly embracing the more passionate tones of Papandreou, one of the country's most loved politicians this century, and unashamedly mimicking his gestures.   He launched a blistering attack on conservative party leader Miltiades Evert, saying: "We must remember whatever they give with one hand, they take away many times over with the other."   "The old tricks don't work anymore.   Greeks can see through his effort to buy votes.   Greeks can see he wants to lead us back to a past where we've already been," he said with his right hand pumping in characteristic Papandreou style.   The socialist throng packing the streets of Athens erupted in chants of "Don't forget what the right means".   Opinion polls show Simitis slightly ahead of Evert, 57, but well within the margin of error and leaving open the possibility of an upset on election day.   Simitis, who took over as prime minister from Papandreou in January, has never run a national campaign and has never been elected prime minister.   After saying repeatedly that he would serve out Papandreou's four-year term until late 1997, he called the surprise vote in August, clearly feeling he would have an easy win.   But Evert, the beefy former mayor of Athens who is popularly known as the "Bulldozer", has fought a vigorous campaign and has clearly sent panic through the ranks of the socialist camp.   Most striking has been the pervasive apathy of Greek voters, with more than 50 percent saying they have little interest in the outcome.   That has led opinion poll experts to predict that four smaller parties might put on a strong showing and produce an unexpected result. 
18994 !GCAT !GREL  Britain's Roman Catholic Church on Friday vented its anger on a runaway bishop who fathered a love child, saying he had assured church elders that stories about his secret relationship were untrue.   Bishop Roderick Wright, who vanished nearly two weeks ago from his Scottish diocese with a divorcee, dealt the church a second bodyblow when his 15-year-old son tearfully admitted to millions of television viewers he was the priest's secret son.   "We have been mistreated badly and that is regrettable.   I feel as betrayed as anybody in all of this," said Scotland's Cardinal Thomas Winning, who received Wright's resignation at the weekend.   The Vatican accepted it formally on Thursday.   The fact that Wright, 55, vanished at the same time as another woman finally prompted the mother of his child to go public about the guilty secret she harboured for 15 years.   "I have lived a lie and so has he," 48-year-old Joanne Whibley said in a BBC television interview on Thursday.   Winning said Wright had been confronted three years ago over allegations that he was having a relationship, but gave his superiors "cast-iron guarantees" that he was not guilty.   "We received a categorical denial and a guarantee not only was it untrue but it was scurrilous," said Winning.   "You live in fear of a nightmare, perhaps, but that seemed to recede because we had these guarantees.   But unfortunately the nightmare is on us now."   The son Wright denied, Kevin, sobbed over the father he had met for just two months in his whole life.   "It's too late now.   I don't even want him if he comes," Kevin said.   The revelations shook the Roman Catholic establishment to the core and again raised questions about the enforced celibacy of priests.   Church leaders were appalled by the heartache inflicted on mother and child by one of their clerics.   Winning said that although he understood how much Wright had suffered, others had also been hurt badly.   "I'm concerned more today about the people who have suffered as a result of this, beginning with the mother and child, beginning with the families of the bishop," he said.   "I'm concerned about the morale of our priests, who feel tainted by what has happened."   On Friday, Joanne Whibley pleaded with journalists to leave as they camped outside her house in the southern English village of Polegate.   She even blocked her letter box.   Wright was a priest in a remote area of Scotland when he first met Joanne, who sought guidance when she became engaged to a Catholic.   He instructed her in the Catholic faith, started an affair and threatened to flee to Peru if she exposed his secret.   Cardinal Basil Hume, archbishop to 4.4 million English and Welsh Catholics, said the scandal had gravely damaged the church and highlighted the need to give priests better training.   Father Tom Connolly, spokesman for the Scottish Bishops' Conference, appealed to the popular Wright to speak publicly to end the church's agony.   Whibley's revelation prompted another woman to speak out, fuelling speculation that many Catholic priests had a guilty sexual secret to hide.   Adrianna Alsworth, a 39-year-old widow, said she had given birth to two children by a Catholic priest who then refused to have anything to do with her.   "I found it exhausting.   The secrecy and deceit were very difficult," she said. 
18995 !C41 !C411 !CCAT !GCAT !GENT  Film producer Sir David Puttnam, whose successes include Midnight Express and Chariots of Fire, is to quit the board of Chrysalis amid rows over the running of the media group, the Times reported on Saturday.   Sir David's resignation is expected to announced on Monday and follows his public condemnation of the way Chrysalis, which owns television, music and ports interests, has handled its withdrawal from film production.   No immediate comment was available from the company.   -- London Newsroom +44 171 542 7717 
18996 !GCAT !GPRO !GREL  The anguished mother who kept a 15-year secret that she had a son by a runaway Catholic bishop said he is an honest, decent man and she still loves him.   Roman Catholic church leaders on Friday turned their anger on Bishop Roderick Wright, saying he had assured them that stories about his love affair with Joanna Whibley were untrue.   They also wondered if more scandalous revelations were in store.   The church was rocked when it emerged that Wright was the father of Whibley's 15-year-old son Kevin.   The disclosure came just days after the bishop resigned his post after going missing from his Scottish diocese with divorced mother Kathleen Macphee.   The fact that Wright, 55, vanished at the same time as another woman finally prompted the mother of his child to go public about her guilty secret.   But despite her bitterness at being forced to live a lie for 15 years, 48-year-old Joanna Whibley could not deny her love for the Scottish bishop.   "He is an honest, decent, genuine man and I still love him," she said.   "But he compartmentalises things in his head.   One day he would be loving, caring and the next day deny his son."   The bishop's brother, Donald Wright, said he was devastated by the revelations and appealed to Wright to contact him.   Wiping tears from his eyes, he told ITN television news that he could offer "to all my relations and friends, my nearest and dearest, my heartfelt sorrow and shame, and the same applies really to all the Catholics in Britain".   Church figures wondered whether there was more scandal to come, with Archbishop O'Brien telling BBC Scotland television: "I am very concerned, basically.   When one opens a can of worms, you don't really realise what's at the bottom of that can.   "If one has been involved over the years with ladies, then perhaps the same thing might have happened to other women and we would be worried about that -- that other people might have been hurt by Roddy Wright."   The Daily Mirror quoted a highly-placed church source as saying the bishop had been involved with at least another two women, while The Sun said two women made claims about improper conduct by Wright during the 1960s and 1970s.   Scotland's Cardinal Thomas Winning said Wright had been confronted three years ago over allegations that he was having a relationship, but gave his superiors "cast-iron guarantees" that he was not guilty.   "We received a categorical denial and a guarantee not only was it untrue but it was scurrilous," said Winning.   The son Wright denied, Kevin, sobbed over the father he had met for just two months in his life.   "It's too late now.   I don't even want him if he comes," Kevin said.   The revelations shook the Roman Catholic establishment to the core and again raised questions about the enforced celibacy of priests.   Church leaders were appalled by the heartache inflicted on mother and child by one of their clerics.   Wright was a priest in a remote area of Scotland when he first met Joanne, who sought guidance when she became engaged to a Catholic.   He instructed her in the Catholic faith, started an affair and threatened to flee to Peru if she exposed his secret. 
18997 !GCAT  Following are some of the major events to have occurred on September 27 in history.   1601 - Louis XIII, King of France 1610-1643 and one of the most powerful monarchs in Europe, born.   1783 - Augustin Iturbide, Mexican revolutionary leader, born.   He made himself Emperor Agustin I in 1822 but was forced to abdicate in 1823.   1825 - The world's first public railway to use steam locomotives was inaugurated when the George Stephenson-built "Active" pulled a train along the track on the Stockton and Darlington Railway in northeast England.   1862 - Louis Botha, South African soldier and statesman, born.   Premier of Transvaal 1907-1910 he was the first prime minister of the Union of South Africa (1910-1919).   1919 - Adelina Patti, Spanish-born Italian soprano, died.   1921 - Engelbert Humperdink, German composer of the opera "Hansel and Gretel", died.   1922 - King Constantine I of Greece abdicated.   He was king from 1913-17 and from 1920-22.   He proclaimed Greece neutral at the outbreak of World War One which led the Western allies and his Greek opponents to overthrow him in 1917.   A military revolt after Greece failed to defeat Turkey after the war cost him his throne for the second time.   1938 - British ocean liner "Queen Elizabeth", then the largest passenger liner ever built, was launched at Clydebank in Scotland.   1939 - Warsaw surrendered to the invading German army after enduring three days and nights of constant bombardment.   1940 - The Tripartite Pact between Germany, Italy and Japan was signed in Berlin, a 10-year military and economic agreement strengthening the Axis alliance.   1962 - Imam Mohammed of Yemen was overthrown in an army coup a week after succeeding his father and the Yemen Arab Republic was declared by coup leader Colonel Abdullah al-Sallal.   1964 - After a 10-month investigation, the Warren Commission issued its report concluding that Lee Harvey Oswald alone had been responsible for the assassination of U.S. President John F. Kennedy.   1968 - Antonio Salazar retired as prime minister of Portugal after suffering a stroke.   He had been in office for 36 years.   In 1932 he drafted a new constitution that established Portugal as an authoritarian state.   1979 - Gracie Fields, popular English music hall entertainer, died aged 81.   1990 - Carlos Melancia, governor of Portugual's Chinese territory of Macau, resigned after an official investigation found signs of his possible involvement in alleged corruption.   1990 - Britain and Iran resumed diplomatic relations, broken by Tehran in March 1989 over the issue of British author Salman Rushdie's novel "The Satanic Verses".   1990 - First Algerian president Ahmed Ben Bella, overthrown in a 1965 coup, returned to the country after nine years in exile.   1993 - Veteran politician Ange-Felix Patasse was elected president of the Central African Republic after years of periodic exile.   1995 - The European Court of Human Rights condemned Britain for the killings of three unarmed IRA guerrillas by British undercover soldiers in Gibraltar.   1995 - The Israeli cabinet overwhelmingly agreed to hand over to Palestinians control of much of the West Bank occupied by Israel for 28 years. 
18998 !C11 !C12 !C34 !CCAT !GCAT  British Airways Plc on Friday urged a United States judge to throw out claims made against it by USAir Group Inc, arguing that the U.S. airline was suffering from "corporate amnesia."   BA chief executive Bob Ayling said in a statement: "We regret that USAir has brought these proceedings against us.   "There is no basis for them and we believe that this is not an appropriate way to conduct business between members of an alliance."   USAir, in which BA has a 24.6 percent shareholding, has filed suit against a proposed alliance between BA and American Airlines.    USAir alleges the proposed deal would monopolise air travel between the U.S. and Britain and undermine USAir's standing with the British airline.   Ayling added: "We believe that a continued alliance between British Airways and USAir is in the interests of both airlines, their customers, employees and shareholders."   In a motion to dismiss the suit, filed in the U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, BA argues that "shorn of its rhetoric," USAir's claim only shows it is "disappointed" that BA has sought an additional partner in American Airlines.    BA said it is free to do this under its agreement with USAir and USAir is "frustrated" that the terms of the investment agreement between the two airlines permit it to do so.   BA's submission adds: "Disappointment and frustration, however, do not give rise to recognisable legal claims.   Indeed USAir has apparently -- and quite conveniently -- developed a case of corporate amnesia.   "Even modest scrutiny of the complaint reveals that, as a matter of law, all of USAir's claims should be dismissed."   BA said that USAir management "apparently hopes to escape its obligations under the investment agreement and aspires to a commericial agreement more favourable towards USAir.   "This complaint is a bold attempt to employ the court as an element of USAir's renegotion strategy." 
18999 !GCAT !GSPO  Rain and world number four Goran Ivanisevic are shaping as the two main problems confronting Australia's Davis Cup team before the elite world group qualifying tie against Croatia which begins in Split on Friday.   Australia's non-playing captain John Newcombe says persistent rain on Thursday has hampered his preparations although he remained confident his team would win.   Mark Philippoussis, Australia's highest-ranked player at 20, will lead off in the singles against Croatian number two Sasa Hirszon.   Jason Stoltenberg will then take on Ivanisevic in the second singles match of the tie, which is being played on clay.   Mark Woodforde will partner Pat Rafter in the doubles after Woodforde's regular doubles partner, Todd Woodbridge, withdrew from the squad last week with an unspecified medical complaint.   Stoltenberg defeated Ivanisevic in the quarter-finals at Wimbledon in July.   The winner of the tie will play in the 16-strong world group next year.   -- Sydney Newsroom 61-2 9373-1800 
19000 !GCAT !GSPO  Australia's Rodney Eyles will take on world squash champion Jansher Khan in the final of Gezira Open after both won their semifinals in convincing fashion on Thursday.   Eyles, who beat Jansher in the final of the Hong Kong Open earlier this month, set up a return match by defeating Zubair Jahan Khan of Pakistan 15-13 15-8 15-8 in just 48 minutes.   Jansher contradicted recent claims he is in decline with a convincing 17-16 9-15 15-2 15-9 win over world number three Peter Nicol of Scotland.   On a hot and humid night, Jansher resisted a courageous opening from the 23-year-old Scot to claim his seventh win in succession over his opponent since a shock defeat two years ago.   "Peter has improved over that time and he is a worthy world number three now," said Jansher.   "But I am regaining my fitness now and expect to go on getting better through to the World Open championship in Karachi in November."   -- Sydney Newsroom 61-2 9373-1800 
19001 !GCAT !GSPO  By Peter Campbell*   FLAG OFFICERS IN FINE FETTLE   Last weekend's Cruising Yacht Club of Australia ocean race from Sydney to Bird Island (south of Newcastle) and back produced winning results for the club's new Commodore PETER BUSH and Vice-Commodore ED PSALTIS.   Commodore BUSH, who in business life is general manager (sales and marketing) with Arnotts, took the biscuit with his Elliott-55, Rager, winning the Performance Handicap division.   Vice-Commodore PSALTIS, a partner with chartered accountants Hall Chadwick, produced the right bottom line figures in the International Measurement System (IMS) division with his recently acquired 40-footer, Midnight Rambler.   Sailing in fresh to strong westerly winds, Capital Properties director GEORGE SNOW steered his maxi yacht Brindabella to a record line honours win, sailing the 85 nautical mile course in 7 hours 42 minutes 15 seconds to slash nearly two hours off the race record set by ALAN BOND's Drumbeat in 1989.   - - - - - - -   HARBOUR TEST FOR OLYMPIC SAILING   GLENN BOURKE, the former world champion, Olympic competitor and coach, and winning helmsman of Ragamuffin at the recent Kenwood Cup, will be presenting a hard-sell for Sydney Harbour over the next couple of weeks in his new role as Sydney 2000 Olympic yachting competition manager for the Sydney Games organisers.   BOURKE, with the assistance of Royal Sydney Yacht Squadron and Middle Harbour Yacht Club, is organising the Sydney 2000 Olympics Test Regatta in a bid to convince the International Sailing Federation (ISAF) that at least some of the likely eleven yachting disciplines can be successfully sailed on the harbour.   The yachtsman he has to impress is Frenchman MICHEL BARBIER, chairman of the ISAF Working Party for Sydney 2000 which will decide which of the Olympic classes can race on harbour courses.   BARBIER is coming to Sydney specifically to watch the regatta and evaluate the courses, and also to have discussions with the Bureau of Meteorology Olympic weather team, Waterways and Port authorities, and with yachting administrators.   While there is no doubt that the yachting of the 2000 Games will be based in Sydney, with its base at Rushcutters Bay, realistically not all of the classes will be able to race at the one time within the harbour.   But BOURKE is convinced that the harbour can provide suitable course areas for several of the dinghy classes, such as the Lasers and the new high-performance two-person trapeze dinghy to be chosen by the ASAF annual meeting in London in November.   One of the strong contenders for this new class is the Australian-designed 49er, which has sailed impressively in evaluation trials held recently on Italy's Lake Garda.   The objective of putting on this special regatta is to demonstrate to the ISAF that Sydney Harbour has the capacity to hold at least some the Olympic classes and stage good competition, BOURKE told me yesterday.   After all, we've been sailing on the harbour for years and have enjoyed fine and fair competition.   The Sydney 2000 Test Regatta will be in two stages.   Next Friday, Saturday and Sunday, September 27, 28 and 29, Middle Harbour Yacht Club will run a series for 505s and 49ers on courses set in the Sound near Sydney Heads.   The following Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, October 1, 2 and 3, Royal Sydney Yacht Squadron, with assistance from Royal Prince Alfred Yacht Club, will run a regatta for Lasers and Laser Radials in the Rose Bay area.   - - - - - - -   GILMOUR'S WORLD TITLE BID   Ten of the world's top match race sailors, including Australia's PETER GILMOUR, are in Rovinj, Croatia, this weekend for the opening of the 1996 world championship of match race sailing.   The event, starting with round-robin racing, will continue through until next weekend.   GILMOUR, number three on the Omega world match racing rankings, has had a successful 18 months on the circuit, winning the Swedish Match Race Cup, the ICI Ronhill Cup (for the third consecutive year), the Brut Gold Cup of Bermuda and more recently the 1996 Eunos Australia on his home waters in Perth.   His main opposition in the world championship will be the two sailors ranked ahead of him, New Zealander RUSSELL COUTTS and American ED BAIRD.   COUTTS followed his 1995 America's Cup victory by winning three of the five international series in the Brut Sailing Series and collecting US$250,000, while BAIRD has had a string of top wins and placings, including winning the previous world championship.   - - - - - - -   SIGNING UP FOR KEY WEST   COUTTS and GILMOUR are among several prominent international sailors who have already signed up to sail in the 1997 Yachting Key West Race Week, the tenth anniversary of this popular U.S. winter yachting rendezvous.   The regatta, from January 19-24, will feature the Key West Trophy for competition based on cumulative scoring of national teams of three yachts competing in three different classes -- IMS Racing, Mumm 36 and Melges 24.   COUTTS will skipper a new ILC46, Numbers, which will be New Zealand's big boat representative at the 1997 Admiral's Cup in England, while GILMOUR will be at the helm of another ILC46, Swing, Japanese-owned and with an all Japanese crew.   Officials expect at least one Australian yacht to be among star-studded fleet.   - - - - - - -   20 YEARS FOR AUSTRALIAN SAILING   Talking of anniversaries, the 20th anniversary issue of Australian Sailing magazine has just landed on my desk, with its founding editor BOB ROSS featured on its cover, photographed at his favoured office -- at the helm of a yacht.   BOB has had a long and distinguished career as a yachting journalist, author and commentator -- and as an accomplished international sailor.   He was founding editor of Modern Boating but left that magazine and in 1976 launched Australian Sailing as the nation's first all-sailing magazine.   Fittingly, BOB has been awarded the Boating Industry Association's ROBERT GREAVES Achievement Award in recognition of his outstanding contribution to the boating industry.   - - - - - - - -   18-FOOTERS STORM CANBERRA   The Grand Prix 18-footer fleet provided some spectacular racing in last weekend's strong westerlies when they sailed a five-race series on Canberra's Lake Burley Griffin.   Overall winner was former Grand Prix 18-footer champion ROB BROWN, with an impressive performance sailing last year's Prudential and without his regular forward hand, DAVE SLENNETT.   Second place went to MICHAEL WALSH skippering Ella Bache but the most impressive performance came from MINDY MEEHAN, the only woman in the Grand Prix fleet, finishing third in Country Comfort.   This is her first season on the Grand Prix circuit after being a successful dinghy sailor in 420 and 470s.   The 1996-97 Grand Prix circuit gets underway in Melbourne on October 19-30, followed by regattas in Brisbane, Auckland, Adelaide and Sydney.   *Peter Campbell is editor of Offshore Yachting magazine.   -- Reuters Sydney Newsroom 61-2 9373-1800 
19002 !GCAT !GSPO  Britain's rugby league squad depart for the southern hemisphere on Friday with a patched-up squad lacking both familiar names and the opportunity to meet old rivals Australia.   The 32-man Lions party are due to play tests against Papua New Guinea and Fiji before moving on to New Zealand for a three-test series, bypassing Australia in the wake of the dispute between Super League and the Australian Rugby League (ARL).   If the rift is healed, though, there are contingency plans for Britain to fly on to Australia at the end of their six-week tour, according to tour manager Phil Lowe.   "It's all in the hands of the courts," he said.   "Everybody wants to play Australia, especially from a financial point of view."   Whatever happens, the lack of eight first-choice players through injury and unavailability has left the Lions with an inexperienced squad with an average age of just 24.   Two key men, Wigan pair Jason Robinson and Gary Connolly, are playing rugby union after being prevented from touring by their contracts with the ARL, and injury to centre Paul Newlove has also reduced their options.   The switch to summer rugby league has meant the top players have been playing non-stop rugby for 13 months and coach Phil Larder admits some of his squad are tired men.   "We've had two seasons back-to-back and the players are feeling mentally and physically shattered," Larder said.   "Because we have played so much football, it has left us very vulnerable, as can be seen by the number of cry-offs and people needing operations."   The first leg of the tour in Papua New Guinea, where the Lions play their first match in Mount Hagen next Wednesday, is also worrying Larder.   "PNG are a lot stronger than they were...they played very well in the World Cup and nearly beat New Zealand at St Helens," Larder said.   "Our biggest problem though, will be the tremendous heat and the bone-hard pitches.   In the players' absence, rugby league chiefs in England will be considering how to deal with the newly-professionalised rugby union clubs, currently waving chequebooks at a number of league players.   Chris Caisley, chairman of the newly-formed Rugby League (Europe) Limited who aim to represent the 12 Super League clubs, said: "One of the things we will want to address very shortly is the threat, if indeed it is a threat, of rugby union.   We want to discuss whether we want to liase with them or not.   "At a time when the Rugby Football Union are running around like headless chickens, signing everybody in sight and spending vast fortunes they can never recoup, we want to be moving forward.   "We in rugby league believe what union are trying to do is the road to ruin."   -- Sydney Newsroom 61-2 9373-1800 
19003 !GCAT !GSPO  AUCKLAND, Sept 20 - American heavyweight Darrell Wilson, who takes on New Zealand's David Tua at Miami tomorrow afternoon (NZT) in a make-or-break bout for both boxers, has labelled his opponent a "brawler", NZPA reports.   Wilson, quizzed by the American media on what he thought of the Aucklander said: "Tua just comes out brawling and he won't last the distance".   Tua's manager Kevin Barry jnr told NZPA the label suited his camp just fine.   "We're not worried, we're confident, David's done the hard work and we're happy and relaxed," Barry said.    Wilson goes into the fight as one of the brightest up-and-coming boxers on the heavyweight circuit.   He has an impressive record of 19-0, including 12 knockouts.   The result which has most boxing pundits predicting a big future for him was his third round knockout of world contender Shannon Briggs who stepped into the ring against Wilson with a 25-0 record.   Tua has a similar 25-0 record but has so far basically fought cardboard cutouts.   "This is the biggest fight of David's four-year career, he knows and he is ready for it," Barry said.    "David's sparred 100 rounds for this bout, he's weighed in at 102kg, a similar weight to that when he took out the promising John Ruiz in just 19 seconds flat.   "He has also promised to bring out the beast for this fight and we're very confident."   Tua himself has been relaxed and ready for his biggest fight to date as a member of the renowned Lou Duva camp.   "This is the biggest fight, this is everything," Tua said.   "I've spent four years of my life getting to this and now it is just a matter of hours and minutes away.    "I want to prove myself to all my supporters, my family and my friends who have been there for me."   Tua said he is in the best physical condition he has ever been in.   "I'm ready, I'm relaxed, and we don't have any jittery people around us because we don't need that."   The Tua-Wilson fight shares main billing with the world championship welterweight between his stablemate Pernell Whitaker, with whom he has often sparred with in training, and contender Wilfredo Riviera, ranked No 1 contender. 
19004 !GCAT !GSPO  Results of South Korean pro-baseball games played on Thursday.    Hanwha 3  Lotte 0    Ssangbangwool  3  Samsung  0   note - Haitai, Hyundai, LG and OB did not play on Thursday.   Standings after games played on Thursday (tabulate under won, drawn, lost, winning percentage, games behind first place)    W D L PCT  GB    Haitai  71 2 49 .590  -    Ssangbangwool 70 2 53 .568  2 1/2    Hanwha  70 1 54 .564  3    Hyundai  67 5 54 .552  4 1/2    Lotte  55 6 62 .472 14 1/2    Samsung  54 5 67 .448 17 1/2    LG 49 5 71 .412  22    OB 47 6 73 .397  24 
19005 !GCAT !GSPO  The Football Association of Ireland on Friday said that it had received interim replies from a number of relevant football bodies regarding the proposed move of English premier division club Wimbledon to Dublin.   According to a statement issued by acting secretary Brendan Menton, FIFA, the game's governing body, had expressed its opposition in principle to the proposed move and had vowed to support the FAI in its objection to the Wimbledon move.   UEFA said that its reply will be uniform with FIFA's stance, the FAI statement added.    According to the FAI, the English Football Association said that the issue of the proposed move had not been raised with them by Wimbledon F.C..   "The English F.A. will submit our letter to the next meeting of its Executive Committee, which is due to meet on October 1, and will reply shortly thereafter," the statement said.   According to the FAI, the F.A. premier league said that the jurisdiction of the Premier League is England and Wales and that any alterations to that would require a rule change at one of its general meetings.    "The F.A. premier league has had no approach, formal or informal, for such a rule change and therefore has no need to have a policy on this matter," the FAI statement added.   Menton said the FAI is very pleased with the tenor of the replies and had undertaken to keep the four football bodies fully updated on the matter.   He said FAI Chief Executive, Bernard O'Byrne, had scheduled personal meetings with senior personnel in the bodies concerned to fully brief them on all the ramifications of the issue.   -- Damien Lynch, Dublin Newsroom +353 1 6603377 
19006 !GCAT !GSPO  Scoreboard on the third day of the second cricket Test between Sri Lanka and Zimbabwe on Friday:   Zimbabwe first innings 141 (G.Flower 52; J.Silva 4-16, M.Muralitharan 4-40)   Sri Lanka first Innings (overnight 317-7) R. Mahanama c A. Flower b B. Strang  3    S. Jayasuriya c A. Whittall b P. Strang 41    A. Gurusinha c Wishart b B. Strang  88    A. de Silva c and b P. Strang 16    A. Ranatunga c Wishart b B. Strang  6    H. Tillekeratne not out 126    R. Kaluwitharana c A. Flower b G. Whittall 27    C. Vaas st A. Flower b P. Strang 8    R. Pushpakumara c B. Strang b P. Strang 23    M. Muralitharan not out 1    Extras (lb-4 w-3 nb-4) 11    Total (for eight wickets declared)  350   Did not bat: J. Silva   Fall of wickets: 1-19 2-58 3-86 4-102 5-216 6-267 7-276 8-240   Bowling : Olonga 26-6-81-0 (3nb 1w), B.Strang 20-6-63-3,   (1nb), A.Whittall 31-7-75-0, P.Strang 38-11-66-4,   G.Whittall 16.5-4-48-1 (2w), G.Flower 2-0-13-0   Zimbabwe second innings    G. Flower lbw b Silva 13    M. Dekker lbw b Vaas 4    A. Shah not out 62    A. Campbell c sub b Silva 4    A. Flower c Gurusinha b Muralitharan  31    C. Wishart c Kaluwitharana b Jayasuriya 25    G. Whittall c Gurusinha b Jaysuriya  3    A. Whittall not out 1    Extras (b-1 lb-4 w-1 nb-13) 19    Total (for six wickets) 162   Fall of wickets: 1-9 2-30 3-34 4-91 5-135 6-144.   Bowling (to-date): Vaas 15-9-8-1, Pushpakumara 5-0-17-0, Muralitharan 32-9-70-1, Silva 19-6-36-2, De Silva 5-1-10-0, Jayasuriya 7-3-16-2 
19007 !GCAT !GSPO  Sri Lanka captured a quick wicket to leave Zimbabwe struggling at 18 for one in their second innings at lunch on the third day of the second cricket test on Friday.   Left-arm fast bowler Chaminda Vaas achieved the early breakthrough for Sri Lanka, which had a first innings lead of 209 runs, by trapping left-hander Mark Dekker lbw with a ball that came back sharply off the seam for four.   This left Zimbabwe nine for one.   Grant Flower (four) and Ali Shah (six) carried Zimbabwe to 18 for one in the 35 minutes before the lunch break.   Sri Lanka earlier batted for 75 minutes, adding 33 runs to their overnight total of 317 for seven before declaring at 350 for eight wickets.   The overnight pair of Hashan Tillekeratne and Ravinda Pushpakumara carried their eighth wicket partnership for 64 runs before being separated.   Leg-spinner Paul Strang claimed his fourth wicket of the innings when Pushpakumara, attempting an ambitious drive, only succeeded in putting up a catch to Paul's brother, Bryan Strang.   Pushpakumara made a career best 23 in 79 minutes with three fours.   Tillekeratne also improved on his personal best score, reaching an unbeaten 126 before the declaration.   The left-hander, showing great concentration, batted for 409 minutes and faced 326 balls hitting 13 fours.   His previous highest score was 119 against Australia at Perth last year.   Sri Lanka lead the two test series 1-0. 
19008 !GCAT !GSPO  Scoreboard at the end of the Sri Lanka first innings on the third day of the second cricket Test against Zimbabwe on Friday.   ZIMBABWE 1st Innings 141   SRI LANKA 1st Innings (317 for 7 overnight contd.)    R. Mahanama c A. Flower b B. Strang  3    S. Jayasuriya c A. Whittall b P. Strang 41    A. Gurusinha c Wishart b B. Strang  88    A. de Silva c and b P. Strang 16    A. Ranatunga c Wishart b B. Strang  6    H. Tillekeratne not out 126    R. Kaluwitharana c A. Flower b G. Whittall 27    C. Vaas st A. Flower b P. Strang 8    R. Pushpakumara c B. Strang b P. Strang 23    M. Muralitharan not out 1    Extras (LB-4, W-3, NB-4) 11    Total (for 8 wkts declared, 133.5 overs) 350   Did not bat: J. Silva.   Fall of wickets: 1-19, 2-58, 3-86, 4-102, 5-216, 6-267,   7-276, 8-240.   Bowling : Olonga 26-6-81-0, (3nb, 1w), B. Strang 20-6-63-3,   (1nb), A. Whittall 31-7-75-0, P. Strang 38-11-66-4,   G. Whittall 16.5-4-48-1 (2w), G. Flower 2-0-13-0. 
19009 !GCAT !GSPO  Sri Lanka declared their first innings closed at 350 for the loss of eight wickets on the third day of the second cricket test against Zimbabwe on Friday.   Zimbabwe first innings 141 all out.   Sri Lanka 350 for eight declared. 
19010 !GCAT !GPOL  SAO TOME AND PRINCIPE GOVERNMENT LIST (960920)    *************************************************************    * 20 Sep 96 - The government fell when parliament passed a *    * censure motion against Prime Minister Almeida.  *    * Political sources said they expected President*    * Trovoada to approve a new coalition government*    * within a week.    *    *************************************************************    President....................................  .  Miguel TROVOADA   (Sworn in 3 Sept 96 for a second five-year term)    - - - - - - -   OUTGOING MULTI-PARTY GOVERNMENT (See note above)   (Apptd 5 Jan 96)    Prime Minister (Apptd 29 Dec 95)......  .  Armindo Vaz de ALMEIDA    - - - - - - -   MINISTERS:    Agriculture & Fisheries...................Julio Lima de SILVA    Defence & Internal Security.  .  Carlos Paquete Carneiro de SILVA    Education, Youth & Sport..................Guilherme OCTOVIANO    Employment & Social Security...........  Albano Germano de DEUS    Finance & Planning..............................Rafael BRANCO    Foreign Affairs & Cooperation......  .  Guilherme Posser da COSTA    Health.............................Fernanda Roncon de AZEVEDO    Industry, Trade, Tourism...........  .  Arlindo de Ceita CARVALHO   Justice, Administrative Reform    & Local Government............. Gabriel Ferreira da COSTA    Media, Culture..................Ladislau Frederico de ALMEIDA    Social Infrastructure & Environment..............Alcino PINTO    - - - - - - -    Central Bank Governor...................Adelino CASTELO David    - - - - - - -     NOTE: Any comments/queries on the content of this    government list, please contact the Reuter    Editorial Reference Unit, London, on (171) 542    7968.    (End government list) 
19011 !GCAT !GPOL  CAMEROON GOVERNMENT LIST (960920)   President (Sworn in for five-year term 3 Nov 92)....Paul BIYA    - - - - - -    Prime Minister (Apptd 19 Sep 96).........Peter MUSONGE MAFANY    - - - - - -   Deputy Prime Minister in charge of    Territorial Administration..........Gilbert Andze TSOUNGUI   Deputy Prime Minister in charge of    Town Planning and Housing................  Ahmadou MOUSTAPHA    - - - - - -    Secretary General at the Presidency................  Amadou ALI    - - - - - -   MINISTERS OF STATE:    Agriculture..........................  Augustin Frederic KODOCK    Communication.....................  .  Augustin KONTCHOU Koumegni    Economy & Finance.......................Edouard Akame MFOUMOU    Posts & Telecommunications....................Dakole DAISSALA    - - - - - -   MINISTERS:   At the Presidency in charge of    Defence..............................Philippe MENYE ME MVE   At the Presidency in charge of relations    with Parliament.............................Saidou MAIDADI    Civil Service & Administrative Reform...........  .  Dahirou SALI    Culture.............................Charles Mangan Isaie TOKO    Environment & Forestry..........................  .  Joseph MBEDE    Foreign Affairs.......................Ferdinand Leopold OYONO    Health............................................EDZOA Titus    Higher Control of the State.....................  .  Joseph OWONA    Higher Education.............................Tabi Peter AGBOR    Justice.........................................  .  Laurent ESSO    Labour & Social Security..........................  Simon MBILA    Livestock, Fisheries & Animal Husbandry....Hamadjoda ADJOUDJI    Mines, Water Resources & Energy.............Andre Mbele BELLO    Minister Delegate at External Relations........Francis NKWAIN    National Education.......................Robert Mbella MBAPPE    Public Works..............................Jean Baptiste BOKAM    Scientific & Technical Research................  .  Djingoer BAVA    Tourism.........................................  Pierre SOUMAN    Trade & Industrial Development..................Justin NDIORO    Transport...............................  .  Joseph ABANDA TSANGA    Welfare & Women's Affairs.......................Aissatou YAOU    Youth & Sports...................................Samuel MAKON    - - - - - -    Ministers without portfolio..................John NGOLLE EBON     Leopold Aristide Martin OKOUNDA    Peter ABETY    Amadou BABA    - - - - - -    Central Bank Governor....................Jean-Felix MAMALEPOT    (Central Bank of Central African states)    - - - - - -     NOTE: Any comments/queries on the content of this    government list, please contact the Reuter    Editorial Reference Unit, London, on (171) 542    7968.    (End government list) 
19012 !GCAT !GPOL  ESTONIA GOVERNMENT LIST (960920)    President........................................Lennart MERI    (Apptd 5 Oct 92, re-elected for 5-year term 20 Sep 96)    - - - - - - -   GOVERNMENT (Formed 5 Nov 95):    Prime Minister (Re-Apptd 17 Oct 95)...........  Tiit VAEHI (CP)    Deputy Prime Minister........................Siim KALLAS (RP)    (Also Foreign Minister)    - - - - - - -   MINISTERS:    Agriculture............................ Ilmar MAENDMETS (KMU)    Culture.......................................Jaak ALLIK (CP)    Defence....................................  .  Andres OOVEL (CP)    Economics...............................  .  Andres LIPSTOCK (RP)    Education..................................Jaak AAVIKSOO (RP)    Environment...............................  Villu REILJAN (KMU)    Finance......................................Mart OPMANN (CP)    Foreign.............................See Deputy Prime Minister    Interior......................................Maert RASK (RP)    Justice.......................................Paul VARUL (CP)    Social Affairs............................Toomas VILOSIUS (R)    Transport & Communication.....................  .  Kalev KUKK (R)    - - - - - - -   JUNIOR MINISTERS:    European Affairs.........................Endel LIPPMAA** (CP)    (**Resigned 6 Aug 96)    Regional Affairs.............................Tiit KUBRI (KMU)    - - - - - - -    State Chancellor............................Uno VEERING (KMU)    (NOTE: not technically in cabinet, but can vote)    - - - - - - -   PARTY AFFILIATIONS:    Coalition Party -- (CP)    Rural Union -- (KMU)    Reform Party -- (RP)    - - - - - - -    Bank of Estonia (Central Bank) President..........Vahur KRAFT    - - - - - - -     NOTE: Any comments/queries on the content of this    government list, please contact the Reuter    Editorial Reference Unit, London, on (171) 542    7968.    (End government list) 
19013 !GCAT !GPOL  COLOMBIA GOVERNMENT LIST (960920)   President (Sworn in 7 Aug 94).....Ernesto SAMPER Pizano (LIB) Vice-President....................Carlos Lemos SIMMONDS (LIB)    - - - - - - -   GOVERNMENT (Formed 7 Aug 94; reshuffled 21 Dec 95):   MINISTERS:    Agriculture.......................Cecilia LOPEZ Montano (LIB)    Communications..........................  .  Saulo ARBOLEDA (LIB)    Defence............................Juan Carlos ESGUERRA (LIB)    Economic Development...................Orlando CABRALES (CON)    Education..........................  Olga DUQUE de Ospina (CON)    Environment.......................Jose Vicente MOGOLLON (LIB)    Finance.............................Jose Antonio OCAMPO (LIB)    Foreign...............................  .  Maria Emma MEJIA (LIB)    Foreign Trade...............................  Morris HARF (LIB)    Government (Interior)...............Horacio SERPA Uribe (LIB)    Health..............................Maria Teresa Forero (LIB)    Justice.........................Carlos MEDELLIN Becerra (LIB)    Labour..................................Orlando OBREGON (CON)    Mines & Energy.......................Rodrigo VILLAMIZAR (LIB)    Transport..........................  .  Carlos Hernan LOPEZ (CON)    - - - - - - -    Central Bank Director..........................  Miguel URRUTIA    - - - - - - -   PARTY AFFILIATIONS:   LIB -- Liberal Party   CON -- Conservative Party    - - - - - - -     NOTE: Any comments/queries on the content of this    government list, please contact the Reuter    Editorial Reference Unit, London, on (171) 542    7968.    (End government list) 
19014 !E41 !ECAT !GCAT !GJOB !GWELF  Canadian Finance Minister Paul Martin on Friday said the federal government would cut the unemployment insurance premiums as quickly as possible.   "We are going to bring them down as quickly as we conceivably can," Martin told reporters after a parliamentary session.   Martin was asked if the government might cut the unemployment insurance premiums to offset a proposed rise in the Canadian Pension Plan contributions.   He said the two issues were separate. 
19015 !E12 !ECAT !GCAT !GPOL !GWELF  Canadian Finance Minister Paul Martin will meet provincial and territorial finance ministers on October 4, the Finance Department said on Friday.   Talks will focus on the urgent need to change the Canada Pension Plan which is in eventual danger of running out of funds.   A 1995 federal report said the CPP could run out of money by 2015 unless premiums rise and benefits drop more sharply than previously planned.   The ministers will also discuss the current Canadian infrastructure program.   The Canadian Pension Plan is in danger of running out of funds by 2015 unless contributions increase and benefits are reduced, the Liberal government has said.   The beleaguered pension plan will be the focus of discussions between Martin and his provincial counterparts when they meet here on October 4.   Canada's Unemployment Insurance fund, on the other hand, has a large surplus, and some economists said a cut in premiums would help create much-needed jobs.   -- Reuters Ottawa Bureau 613-235-6745 
19016 !C21 !C24 !CCAT !GCAT !GWEA  Alberta's central and northern grainbelt was forecast to see a risk of frost Saturday morning, Environment Canada said.   A high risk of frost was forecast for Alberta's foothills and Peace River Valley while a moderate risk was seen on the central grainbelt and a slight risk was forecast for eastern Alberta Saturday morning, Environment Canada said in its 10-day outlook.   A high risk of frost was forecast for the western half of Alberta Sunday and Monday mornings while a moderate risk was seen on the rest of Alberta.    The Alberta Wheat Pool Friday said overall, crops were 46 percent harvested in Alberta as of Sept. 20, with 41 percent of hard red spring wheat and 25 percent of Canada Prairie Spring wheat harvested as well as 48 percent of the province's canola crop.   Flax was 13 percent harvested.   A slight risk of frost was expected across western Saskatchewan Sunday and Monday mornings.   Forty-four percent of soft wheat had been swathed and 41 percent combined the week ended September 16, according to the Saskatchewan Wheat Pool.   Also, canola was 49 percent swathed and 41 percent combined and flax was 31 percent swathed and five percent combined.   A high risk of frost was forecast across Alberta Sept 24 and Sept 25 with a moderate risk across Saskatchewan then and a slight risk in western Manitoba.   A slight risk of frost was forecast for Alberta Sept 26 and Sept 29.   A moderate risk was forecast for western Saskatchewan then and a high risk was seen on eastern Saskatchewan and western Manitoba with a slight risk elsewhere in Manitoba.   -- Gilbert Le Gras 204 947 3548 
19017 !GCAT !GCRIM !GPOL !GVIO  An Ethiopian court on Friday sentenced three Egyptians to death for attempting to kill Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in Addis Ababa last year, the official Ethiopian News Agency (ENA) reported.   Mubarak escaped unhurt after Egyptian Moslem militants opened fire on his motorcade as he was on his way to an Organisation of African Unity (OAU) summit in the Ethiopian capital on June 26, 1995.   The agency said the three men sentenced to death were members of Egypt's al-Gama'a al-Islamiya (Islamic Group), which is fighting to set up an Islamic state in Egypt.   The prosecutor told the court that the three gunmen used false names and carried Yemeni, Sudanese and Ethiopian passports to enter Ethiopia in 1995 after receiving military training at a clandestine camp in Afghanistan, the agency reported.   Ethiopia has said that 11 members of al-Gama'a were involved in the plot to kill Mubarak, with two of the men directing the failed operation from neighbouring Sudan.   Egypt also accused Sudan of helping the gunmen and sheltering three of them after the attack, which Sudan denied.   Three other gunmen were apprehended in Ethiopia and five more were killed.   The state-run news agency, quoting a spokesman for the Central High Court of Ethiopia, said the three were also found guilty of killing two policemen, wounding seven civilans and smuggling arms into the country.   The trial was held in camera.   Ethiopia's president must approve the sentences before they are carried out, the agency said.   The United Nations Security Council last May imposed diplomatic sanctions on Sudan to pressure Khartoum into handing over the three suspects said to be there. 
19018 !GCAT !GDIP !GPOL !GVIO  An Ethiopian court on Friday sentenced three Egyptians to death for attempting to kill Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in Addis Ababa last year, the official Ethiopian News Agency (ENA) reported.   Mubarak escaped unhurt after Egyptian Moslem militants opened fire on his motorcade as he was on his way to an Organisation of African Unity (OAU) summit in the Ethiopian capital on June 26, 1995.   Egypt accused Sudan of helping the gunmen and sheltering three of them after the attack.   Sudan denied it.   Three other gunmen were apprehended in Ethiopia and five more were killed.   Ethiopian radio said the three men sentenced to death were members of Egypt's al-Gama'a al-Islamiya (Islamic Group) which is fighting to set up an Islamic state in Egypt.   The radio said three men were found guilty of several charges, including killing two policemen, entering the country with illegal weapons, and endangering the country's security, in addition to attempting to assassinate Mubarak.   Arguments by defence lawyers were rejected, the radio said. 
19019 !GCAT !GCRIM !GVIO  Nigerian authorities on Friday arraigned 35 Shi'ite Moslems before a magistrate court over riots this week in the northern city of Kaduna in which seven people were killed, court officials said.   "They have been charged with incitement, public disturbance, unlawful assembly and murder of two police officers," one court clerk told reporters.   He said the case was adjourned to October 28 and the accused persons remanded in prison.   Two police and five Shi'ites were killed when supporters of the fundamentalist Shi'ite Moslem Brotherhood group demanding the release of their arrested leader, Sheikh Ibrahim Yakub El-Zak-Zaky, fought police in Kaduna on Wednesday.   Witnesses said a house belonging to El-Zak-Zaky in Tudun Wada, a poor district of Kaduna metropolis, was destroyed on Thursday night when security forces stormed the building.   Journalists who visited the house saw a dead body inside but there was no indication whose it was.   Moslem prayers on Friday passed quietly amid tight security in Kaduna.   Groups of armed police were posted at strategic points such as roads leading to mosques and main junctions but violence appeared to have been averted.   "From latest reports we have there have been no complaints from the area of Kaduna or Zaria," a police spokesman said.   Earlier, police commissioner Yakubu Shaibu told journalists his men were ready for any trouble.   "If they are violent, we will be violent.   It is an eye for an eye."   Police say El-Zak-Zaky, a radical preacher, was arrested because of illegal publications and radio broadcasts.   He was also alleged to have imported arms.   The Shi'ite group says 14 people were killed in clashes with police last Friday, a day after El-Zak-Zaky's arrest.   Petty trader Ibrahim Musa said "The fighting is over for now.   The Shi'ites are only a small group and they can see that security is too tight."   But a local journalist said there could still be trouble.   "These guys are in hiding.   They are underground and they will regroup and strike when they are ready," he said.   Military administrators of the 16 northern states who met in Kaduna on Friday resolved to set up a committee to look into the question of security and religious violence in the area.   Shops and markets were open as normal in Kaduna, one of the main commercial centres of the arid north.   Police sources said there was also a strong security presence in Zaria, the ancient Moslem city to the north of Kaduna that is home to El-Zak-Zaky and many of his followers.   "This is a major crisis, and if it continues it will spread to Sokoto, Kano, Katsina, so many places," Sheikh Gumbi, a prominent Islamic scholar and Sunni Moslem, told Reuters.   "People will protest about anything right now, they don't have enough to eat.   Maybe the government is provoking the crisis to prolong its stay in power," he added.   Nigeria's army annulled a vote to restore civilian rule in 1993.   The mainly Moslem north has been scene of bloody religious riots in the past.   Last month three people were killed in a clash between rival Moslem sects in Kano, the region's biggest city.   Moslems, predominantly Sunni, make up roughly half of Nigeria's 100 million people.   Wednesday's demonstration followed an ultimatum from the Moslem Brotherhood for the police to free the Sheikh, who is reported to be held in the southeastern oil city of Port Harcourt.   His followers say they fear for his health. 
19020 !GCAT !GPOL !GPRO  Jean-Bedel Bokassa, former self-styled emperor of the Central African Republic, is in intensive care in an Ivory Coast clinic and undergoing tests, the head of the clinic said on Friday.   Professor William Djbo refused to confirm or deny suggestions from medical sources that Bokassa, 75, may need surgery to remove a brain tumour and was also suffering from kidney problems.   "He is in intensive care.   Since yesterday we have been carrying out detailed tests.   We are waiting for the results," Djbo told Reuters.   He declined to elaborate.   Bokassa entered the clinic in Abidjan on Thursday after being flown from the Central African Republic capital Bangui, where he was admitted to hospital last week.   Medical sources said Bokassa had kidney trouble, an old problem, but one said that he had a brain tumour which was more worrying and would need surgery to put it right.   "His condition is critical.   He has a brain tumour.   He is conscious but he is in great pain," the source told Reuters.   An official source said that the Ivorian government was paying Bokassa's medical bills.   Bokassa seized power in 1966.   He crowned himself emperor in a lavish ceremony in 1977, only to be ousted in a French-backed coup in 1979.   He lived in exile in Ivory Coast and France but in 1986 he suddenly returned to Central African Republic, where he had been sentenced to death for murder and embezzlement.   The military leader at the time, Andre Kolingba, commuted Bokassa's sentence to life in prison.   Kolingba released Bokassa in 1993 and the erstwhile emperor said he would return to power if public opinion supported him.   The government banned him for life from elections.   He has since lived quietly in Bangui but this year he asked President Ange-Felix Patasse for an amnesty so that he could stand as a candidate in presidential elections planned for 1999. 
19021 !GCAT !GPOL  The coalition government of the African twin island state of Sao Tome and Principe fell on Friday when parliament passed a censure motion against Prime Minister Armindo Vaz de Almeida, officials said.   Political sources said they expected President Miguel Trovoada to approve a new coalition government within a week after parliament cast 42 votes against Vaz's government, 13 votes in favour and one abstention.   The two main parties, the Movement for the Liberation of Sao Tome and Principe/Social Democratic Party (MLSTP/PSD) and the Party of Democratic Convergence (PCD), voted for the downfall of the nine-month-old government because of what they called "bad management, inefficiency, incapacity and corruption."   The national council of the MLSTP/PSD had named its secretary-general, Francisco Fortunato Pires, to replace Vaz, officials said.   Political sources said it was likely that Fortunato Pires, a lawyer in his 50s, would be appointed by President Trovoada.   Trovoada's position as head-of-state of the former Portuguese colony, 200 km (125 miles) off Gabon, was not directly affected by the vote.   He was sworn in earlier this month after being elected for a second five-year term.   Sao Tome and Principe, which has a population of 127,000 people, is one of the poorest countries in the world and is heavily dependent on foreign aid.   Sao Tome's public finances and inflation rate have deteriorated in recent months as it grappled with a series of strikes by health workers, teachers and civil servants. 
19022 !GCAT !GVIO  Moslem prayers on Friday passed quietly amid tight security in the northern Nigerian city of Kaduna after clashes earlier this week between Shi'ites and police in which seven people died.   Groups of armed police were posted at strategic points such as roads leading to mosques and main junctions but violence appeared to have been averted.   "From latest reports we have there have been no complaints from the area of Kaduna or Zaria," a police spokesman said.   Earlier, police commissioner Yakubu Shaibu told journalists his men were ready for any trouble.   "If they are violent, we will be violent.   It is an eye for an eye."   Supporters of the fundamentalist Shi'ite Moslem Brotherhood group demanding the release of their arrested leader, Sheikh Ibrahim Yakub El-Zak-Zaky, fought with police in the streets of Kaduna on Wednesday.   Two police and five Moslems were killed.   Police say El-Zak-Zaky, a radical preacher, was arrested because of illegal publications and radio broadcasts.   He was also alleged to have imported arms.   The Shi'ite group says 14 people were killed in clashes with police last Friday, a day after El-Zak-Zaky's arrest.   Petty trader Ibrahim Musa said "The fighting is over for now.   The Shi'ites are only a small group and they can see that security is too tight."   Military administrators of the 16   northern states were meeting in Kaduna.   "We will discuss...most importantly the security aspect which covers the states we govern," Kaduna state administrator Lieutenant Colonel Hameed Ali told his counterparts.   "Nothing is happening, nothing is going to happen so please let's relax," he said.   Shops and markets were open as normal in Kaduna, one of the main commercial centres of the arid north.   Police sources said there was also a strong security presence in Zaria, the ancient Moslem city to the north of Kaduna that is home to El-Zak-Zaky and many of his followers.   "This is a major crisis, and if it continues it will spread to Sokoto, Kano, Katsina, so many places," Sheikh Gumbi, a prominent Islamic scholar and Sunni Moslem, told Reuters.   "People will protest about anything right now, they don't have enough to eat.   Maybe the government is provoking the crisis to prolong its stay in power," he added.   Nigeria's army annulled a vote to restore civilian rule in 1993.   The mainly Moslem north has been scene of bloody religious riots in the past.   Last month three people were killed in a clash between rival Moslem sects in Kano, the region's biggest city.   Moslems, predominantly Sunni, make up roughly half of Nigeria's 100 million people.   Wednesday's demonstration followed an ultimatum from the Moslem Brotherhood for the police to free the Sheikh, who is reported to be held in the southeastern oil city of Port Harcourt.   His followers say they fear for his health. 
19023 !GCAT !GCRIM !GODD !GPOL !GREL  Kenya's government says it has evidence devil worshippers are sacrificing humans, drinking their blood and raping children and urges the public to shun such satanic cults.   But critics say the government in strongly Christian Kenya is blowing the problem out of all proportion to divert public attention from more pressing political and economic issues.   In a statement issued on Thursday, the government said a committee set up in 1994 and upgraded to a commission of inquiry last year had established that devil worship existed in Kenya.   "After carefully considering reports from individuals with personal experience in the cults and evidence from devil worshippers, whose submissions were confirmed by credible independent sources, the Commission found ample corroborative evidence of the existence of devil worship," it said.   "According to the testimonies, satanic cuts include the following in their rituals:   - human sacrifice   - drinking of human blood   - eating of human flesh   - black Mass and Wine   - nudity of the participants in the ritual   - incantation in unintelligible language   - sexual abuse and rape, especially of children and minors   - black magic   - narcotic drugs   - presence of snakes"   The government said the commission had received information of "horrifying criminal cases" including kidnapping, rape, child abuse, murders and the severing of body parts such as tongues, eyes and limbs.   "The government would like to assure the public that it has carefully studied the recommendations of the Commission which have far-reaching implications on our learning and other institutions," the statement said.   "While the government is taking firm actions to implement the recommendations and curb the evil practices, the public is advised to desist from abetting or getting involved in devil worship, which is in its formative stage in our country."   The government said members of devil worship cults used strange symobols and signs and engaged in "anti-social habits".   It said they were obsessed with sex, especially lesbianism and homosexuality, used nicknames such as cobra, scorpion and python and used signs such as witches flying on broomsticks.   But on Friday the Kenya Human Rights Commission rejected the government statement as diverting the attention of Kenyans from more urgent problems such as constitutional and economic reform.   "The constitution guarantees freedom of worship -- anyone has a right to worship anything," KHRC spokesman Njuguna Mutahi said.   "We are not governed by some kind of religiosity."   Mutahi said the commission had reported what amounted to serious criminal offences which ought to be punished as such.   President Daniel arap Moi created the committee in October 1994, ordering it to investigate allegations of devil worship, to establish its extent in school and universities and its links to drug abuse and other social evils.   The commission visited all of Kenya's eight provinces and took evidence from thousands of people, according to commission member Pastor Bonifes Adoyo of the Nairobi Pentecostal Church.   He said the commission saw people with severed body parts and had evidence cults were engaged in criminal activities.   "It is true that there is freedom of worship but when the rights of others are violated in the process, you really cease to possess that freedom as a right," Adoyo told Reuters. 
19024 !GCAT !GDIP !GVIO  Cameroon denied on Friday that its troops had attacked Nigerian positions in a disputed border area during a visit by a U.N. mission looking into hostilities.   Foreign Minister Ferdinand Oyono suggested Nigeria alleged hostilities in the disputed Bakassi peninsula in a bid to undermine the U.N. mission.   The "goodwill mission" began consultations in Nigeria on Thursday after talks in Cameroon and has planned a visit to Bakassi in the oil-rich Gulf of Guinea.   Nigerian Foreign Minister Tom Ikimi told the envoys that Cameroonian troops were attacking Nigeria even as the U.N. mission was in progress.   But in his statement on Friday, Oyono said: "One can say with near certainty that this (charge) is designed to compromise the work the mission as well as the planned visit to the peninsula."   He accused Nigeria of effectively obstructing a similar visit to Bakassi in April 1994 by an Organisation of African Unity mission.   The two African nations have clashed sporadically on the Bakassi peninsula with heavy loss of lives on both sides.   "This mission is not a fact-finding mission," Omar Alim, the Indonesian leading the four-man team told the Nigerian side at preliminary talks in Abuja.   "It is a goodwill mission...to find out from leaders of Nigeria and Cameroon if there is any specific measures which could be proposed to improve their relationship," Alim added.   Both sides have troops entrenched in the impoverished islands whose inhabitants are mainly fishermen.   Cameroon took its case to the World Court in 1994 but the court's ruling in March forbidding further fighting did not prevent clashes a month later. 
19025 !GCAT !GDIP !GVIO  An Ethiopian court on Friday sentenced three Egyptian gunmen to death for attempting to kill Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak last year, the official Ethiopian News Agency (ENA) reported. 
19026 !CCAT !GCAT !GPOL  Nigeria's Ministry of Petroleum resources and state-run Nigerian National Petroluem Corp (NNPC) will relocate to the capital Abuja from Lagos, the national news agency reported on Friday.   The movement, which would be in phases and is expected to be completed by October 25, is in compliance with the directive from military ruler General Sani Abacha that all ministries and government agencies should move to Abuja, the News Agency of Nigeria said.   Oil minister Dan Etete had directed NNPC to release funds for the movement, it said.   --Lagos newsroom +234 1 2630317 
19027 !GCAT !GDIP !GVIO  The Zairean government has suspended operations of an aid agency in eastern Zaire after accusing it of aiding Tutsi rebels fighting the Zairean army, aid officials said on Friday.   The Rwanda representative for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said Zaire's government on Thursday suspended operations of the International Organistion for Migration (IOM) across the country.   UNHCR representative Roman Urasa said UNHCR had therefore suspended its work in repatriating Rwandan refugees from eastern Zaire aboard trucks and buses provided by IOM until talks with Zairean authorities in the capital Kinshasa were completed.   "IOM handles our trucking operation for refugees returning to Rwanda.   Unless we find another implementing partner we therefore cannot repatriate anybody," said Urasa.   There are an estimated 1.1 million Rwandan Hutu refugees in camps in eastern Zaire.   IOM has two foreign and 100 local staff in camps around the eastern town of Goma for an estimated 760,000 Rwandan refugees.   In another development, the London-based human rights group Amnesty International condemned what it said were atrocities by Zairean security forces and officials against Tutsis in eastern Zaire.   U.N. Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali decided on Thursday to send a special emissary to Kinshasa because of the country's televised accusations against U.N. staff.   Zairean soldiers beat up two U.N. staff members last weekend in eastern Zaire after a Zairean television report said UNHCR was helping armed Rwandans infiltrate across the border.   The Zairean government said a week ago Banyamulenge Tutsis who had left Zaire had infiltrated back from Rwanda and killed dozens of Zaireans in the east since the start of the month.   The government quoted what it said were infiltrators as saying they were helped by UNHCR and the IOM to reach Zaire.   Amnesty International appealed on Friday to the Zairean prime minister and armed forces chief of staff to take immediate action to prevent human rights violations and bring perpetrators to justice.   "An entire ethnic group (the Banyamulenge) cannot be held responsible or persecuted for the alleged violent actions of some of its members," Amnesty International said in a statement.   The Banyamulenge are originally of Rwandan origin but have lived in eastern Zaire for many generations.   Their poor relations with local Zairean tribes and the army worsened with the arrival of Rwandan Hutus who fled during genocide in 1994.   Amnesty accused Zairean authorities of unlawful killings, disappearances, severe beatings and deportations and said the situation had deteriorated since the start of the month.   It said it was investigating allegations that on September 8 members of the Zairean armed forces extrajudicially executed more than 35 Banyamulenge and more than 50 had disappeared at the start of the month.   It said Zairean soldiers had subjected Tutsi Banyamulenge civilians to severe beatings and civilians held by the military were severely tortured, sometimes resulting in their death.   The human rights group said at the best of times the Zairean armed forces were undisciplined and poorly paid and the problem was being exacerbated by youths being enrolled to hold rallies against the Tutsis and to loot and destroy their property.   It said several demonstrations had been organised in the towns of Uvira and Bukavu in protest against alleged attacks by Rwandan Tutsis and suspected Tutsis had been severely beaten. 
19028 !GCAT !GDEF !GDIP  Eritrea said on Friday it had dropped plans to buy the remnants of the Ethiopian navy partly because critics said the warships would be used in its dispute with Yemen.   In an interview with Reuters, President Isayas Afewerki said he expected international arbitration over a territorial dispute with Yemen to start next year.   He also confirmed that Eritrea had a military training programme with the United States.   On the territorial dispute over the Hanish islands where Eritrean and Yemeni forces fought last December, Isayas said they had gone a long way toward resolving it despite complications.   "Now we need some fine-tuning.   By early 1997 we expect to have the arbitration tribunal in place," the president said.   Asked if he thought there was a risk of fighting following a final verdict over the islands, he said: "Both parties have committed themselves to abide by the verdict of the arbitration tribunal."   "If anyone violates the verdict they will surely be held responsible by the international community," he added.   Isayas said the Eritrean government had been interested in negotiating to buy 16 Ethiopian navy ships which were auctioned in the Red Sea port of Djibouti last Monday.   But it had decided against the move partly because of its dispute with Yemen.   "We were portrayed as if we wanted to use the boats in the conflict.   It was a naive insinuation.   We are not interested in solving the conflict by force", he said.   Ethiopia became land-locked, losing its 600-km (370-mile) Red Sea coastline when its northern province of Eritrea became independent in 1993.   The president said Eritrea had a military training programme with the U.S. army but denied Asmara was gaining much from it.   "It is for their benefit we agreed to the programme.   We are training their officers.   If that is cooperation it is cooperation for the benefit of the American soldiers," he said.   A U.S. diplomat said the U.S. was giving Eritrea $250,000 worth of military aid this year and American teams had given some infantry and naval training to Eritrean forces.   He said Eritreans went to the United States to study and there was no permanent U.S. military presence in Eritrea.   "There was a demining programme," the president said "They (Americans) had the resources.   Initially we were reluctant, we don't think we need the technical know-how from the Americans.   We have 20 years experience of this, mining and demining."   Isayas accused the Sudanese government of being the main problem that led to the breakdown in June last year of the organised repatriation of Eritrean refugees from Sudan.   He said Sudan's National Islamic Front (NIF) had a political agenda to expand its ideology in the region and had tried to recruit refugees to take up arms against neighbouring countries.   "The NIF has been an obstacle in every stage of implementing organised repatriation and the international community has not been successful in appealing to the NIF to restore it," he said.   Eritrea broke diplomatic relations with Sudan in December 1994, accusing Khartoum of sending guerrillas to destabilise it. 
19029 !GCAT !GCRIM !GDEF !GPOL  White South Africa secretly armed and trained blacks opposed to Nelson Mandela but never meant them to become assassins, the trial of ex-defence minister Magnus Malan heard on Friday.   Johann Engelbrecht, lawyer for one of Malan's 14 co-defendants who deny involvement in a 1987 massacre, also said police had unduly influenced prosecution witnesses.   The prosecution says Malan and eight senior security force officers were to blame for the deaths of 13 people in the attack, which the six other accused, former black policemen, allegedly carried out.   "It was not South African Defence Force policy to supply murder-squads when they trained the 200 Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) recruits," said Engelbrecht, defence lawyer for Brigadier Cornelius van Niekerk.   Van Niekerk headed the top secret operation to equip Zulu-based Inkatha with highly trained men to defend the IFP-dominated KwaZulu homeland government from attacks by its arch rivals -- Mandela's African National Congress.   Prosecutors say the operation created a monster in the shape of a ruthless death squad that killed mostly women and children in the attack on a black family home in KwaMakutha near the Indian Ocean port of Durban.   They say Malan and the others must be held responsible.   But Engelbrecht said the state's case was weak.   He said that a special police unit set up to probe hit squad activity and which arrested all the accused late last year had influenced evidence given by state witnesses.   "It was quickly noticeable that it appeared the witnesses were unduly influenced by the Investigation Task Unit," Engelbrecht told the Durban court.   Many of the seven separate defence legal teams have criticised the police for sloppy, rushed investigations and a general failure to follow basic policing procedures.   The prosecution, led by the province's Attorney-General Tim McNally, has also been criticised by Judge Jan Hugo for a lack of legal argument in summing up its case.   Judgement in the seven-month trial is expected early in October. 
19030 !C42 !CCAT !E41 !ECAT !GCAT !GJOB  Talks to end a two-week-long strike at Sappi's Saiccor mill would continue on Monday, the company said in a statement on Friday.   It said management had met union representatives on Friday in a bid to end the strike over wages and had agreed to meet again on Monday to try and resolve the strike.   The Pulp, Paper, Wood and Allied Workers' Union called a strike two weeks ago when wage talks failed.   Saiccor has offered to improve the minimum basic wage by seven percent to over 1,800 a month, while the union is demanding a 12 percent increase.   The company said that Saiccor mill's output continued at a level sufficient to meet customer needs.   -- Johannesburg newsroom, +27 11 482-1003 
19031 !C42 !CCAT !E41 !ECAT !GCAT !GJOB  Gold Fields Namibia Ltd said on Friday it hoped for mediation efforts to resolve a month-old strike by the end of next week at its Tsumeb Corp Ltd (TCL) unit.   "I would imagine it will be Thursday or Friday next week," a company spokesman told Reuters from Namibia.   The Mineworkers' Union of Namibia, whose members are striking over pay, is due to get back to mediators by the end of today, paving the way for full mediation next week.   Production at TCL's three mines and smelters remains at a standstill.   The company said the Tsumeb mine was flooding and underground equipment was being salvaged where possible.   At Kombat and Otjihase, pumping was satisfactory.   The company had started repairs on the copper smelter, damaged after strikers took over the site, before the compnay regained control.   Repair work was expected to take six to eight weeks.   The strike was costing TCL some 80 tonnes a day in lost copper production and a similar amount in lost lead.   The lead smelter appeared undamaged, but would still take two to three weeks to restart.   TCL produced just under 30,000 tonnes of blister copper last year and 27,000 tonnes of lead.   Most of the lead was produced from bought-in material while copper output was from TCL mines.   The mines and smelters have been shut down since August 23.   Since then 1,000 non-striking workers have returned to work, but some 1,500 workers are still out on strike.   --Johannesburg newsroom +27 11 482 1003 
19032 !GCAT !GVIO  Hutu rebels killed four people and wounded five in an attack on a minibus taxi in what appeared part of a stepped up campaign against Burundian civilians, the country's Tutsi-dominated army said on Friday.   Army spokesman, Lieutenant-Colonel Isaie Nibizi, said the four died when the rebels ambushed the minibus near Rutegama, about 65 km (41 miles) east of the capital on Thursday.   Another army spokesman, Lieutenant-Colonel Longin Minani, said sanctions imposed by regional states on the landlocked central African country were helping the Hutu rebels, who had stepped up their attacks on the civilian population.   "The rebels are increasing their activities because the sanctions are helping them... Why are they targeting civilians (and) avoiding where the military are?   Is this a political struggle, to kill innocent civilians," Minani said.   Minani did not elaborate but the generally held view in the Burundi army is that fuel shortages caused by the sanctions hinder the army's ability to fight the rebels.   More than 150,000 people -- most of them civilians -- have died in three years of violence between the army and Hutu rebels waging a war for a greater political stake in Burundi.   Burundi has been hit by sanctions imposed in late July by its neighbours trying to force Tutsi military ruler Pierre Buyoya to talk to rebels from the Hutu majority, which makes up 85 percent of the country's six million people.   On Thursday, Burundi's exiled rebel leader Leonard Nyangoma issued a statement saying he has taken over the leadership of the main Hutu party, a claim promptly denied by its president in exile in Tanzania.   Nyangoma heads the National Council for the Defence of Democracy (CNDD), the political wing of the main Hutu rebel movement in Burundi which has been waging the bitter civil war.   In Dar es Salaam, Frodebu president Jean Minani insisted he remained the party's leader but he left open the possibility of a vote to resolve the leadership dispute.   Buyoya was installed by the army on July 25 after the overthrow of Hutu president Sylvestre Ntibantunganya, who has been in the sanctuary of the U.S. ambassador's residence in the capital ever since.   Belgium, the former colonial power, announced last week it was preparing to help its nationals leave Burundi and called on those wanting to get out to register by mid-morning on Friday.   Embassy officials were unavailable to say what plans had been made or how many Belgian citizens had opted to leave.   Members of the expatriate community said there were up to 350 Belgian nationals living in Burundi, mainly in Bujumbura.   Regional states cut transport links and oil supplies to the landlocked country and blocked exports of coffee, the main cash earner, listing the restoration of the assembly and unbanning of parties among conditions for the lifting of the embargo.   Buyoya said he took power in an effort to prevent genocide and announced plans for three years of transitional rule.   His government has called for the boycotts to be lifted, saying the country faces economic disaster.   Consumers in Bujumbura's main market said supplies of flour were running low and fuel stations in the city centre were deserted on Friday afternoon, having no petrol to sell.   In a briefing to ministers on Thursday, Buyoya's Prime Minister Pascal-Firmin Ndimira painted a gloomy picture of Burundi's economy over the past few years, saying gross domestic product per capita had fallen to around $200 last year from around $230 before the civil war began in 1993.   Food production had fallen by between 15 and 20 percent, posing a major threat of malnutrition. 
19033 !E51 !E511 !ECAT !GCAT !GTOUR  Tourist arrivals in the tropical Indian Ocean island of Mauritius will rise by nearly 11 percent to 470,000 in 1996, the economic planning ministry said.   A report published on Friday said tourist arrivals increased by 14.7 percent during the first six months of 1996 to 218,395 compared with the first half of 1995, mainly thanks to a recovery of the South African and British markets.   Gross earnings from tourism for the first six months of 1996 grew to 4.25 billion rupees ($206 million) from 3.36 billion in the same 1995 period.   Gross receipts from tourism in 1996 were forecast to total 9.20 billion rupees from 7.47 billion in 1995.   Tourism is Mauritius' third largest hard currency earner.   ($1=20.64 Mauritian rupees). 
19034 !E12 !ECAT !GCAT !GCRIM !GPOL  Crime and the economy are likely to dominate the next session of South Africa's parliament which went into recess late on Thursday after approving tax holidays for new industries.   A law on tax holidays of up to six years for new industries is the first legislation arising out a macro-economic strategy released by Finance Minister Trevor Manuel in June.   The strategy calls for the abolition of remaining exchange controls, some privatisation of state assets, manufacturing incentives and a social pact on wage and price restraint to boost annual economic growth from under three percent now to six percent by the turn of the century.   Deputy Finance Minister Gill Marcus said economic policy reforms would steer "a very unequal society to sustainable, competitive industrialisation based on the development of human and technical resources in an equal society."   The recess began mid-way through the refinement of laws to help police and the courts crack down on organised crime that is undermining post-apartheid investment.   Measures likely to be adopted later this year include the state's right to seize proceeds of crime, easier extradition, streamlined court procedures and an obligation on banks and other institutions to report even a suspicion of crime.   "The country is experiencing the devastating tyranny of violent crime that is running rampant," said Constitutional Assembly (CA) chief executive Hassen Ebrahim.   "Armed villains appear to continue their trade in death and misery with such contempt that some citizens feel obliged to take the law into their own hands."   Ebrahim's CA must finalise the constitution that will cement South Africa's young democracy.   The draft adopted in May was returned by the Constitutional Court because it lacked protection for watchdog bodies, did not adequately define the shape of municipal government and unlawfully took powers away from provinces.   Both the ruling African National Congress and F. W. de Klerk's opposition National Party have promised not to reopen old debates when specialist committees start on Wednesday to revise the clauses rejected by the court.   But senior negotiators admit privately that if conservative Zulu chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi's Inkatha Freedom Party decides at a weekend congress to abandon its 18-month-old boycott of the CA, negotiators could face a long and difficult debate.   Inkatha quit the talks to protest the centralisation of authority in the hands of the national government, but some members say they must return and salvage what they can. 
19035 !E21 !E211 !ECAT !GCAT !GPOL  South Africa is struggling to plug holes in a leaking tax system that may be letting more than 20 billion rand ($4.45 billion) slip through the collection net each year.   Members of Parliament and top officials said this week that the situation had reached crisis proportions.   "As far as I am concerned, it is a matter of desperate urgency," Auditor-General Henri Kleuver told the parliamentary public accounts committee.   In a bid to boost efficiency, South Africa this year amalgamated inland revenue and customs and excise under the new South African Revenue Service (SARS).   But reform has yet to bear fruit with the SARS crippled by chronic skills shortage linked to a lack of autonomy and control over its resources.   Newly appointed SARS chief executive Piet Liebenberg said this week that a vast amount of tax was not being collected.   It was impossible to say just how much but Liebenberg guessed that it could be more than the 21 billion rand a year estimated two years ago by tax commission chairman Michael Katz.   Under-collection would not affect government's cash flow for the current year but posed a problem in the future.   "Collections for the purpose of this year's national budget are on line or even a little bit ahead," Liebenberg said.   Total revenue receipts for April to August 1996 were 12.8 percent ahead of last year at 55.56 billion, representing some 38 percent of the total 144.9 billion rand budget for 1996/97.   Analysts agreed the real crisis lies is in the future.   "If the system is not upgraded now it is very unlikely that tax morality will last.   You have to take a long-term view and maintain the integrity and efficiency of the department or it will decay gradually over time," said independent tax adviser Willem Cronje.   "The only way to effectively improve the service is to take in skilled staff from auditing and accounting firms and offer them competitive salaries," said Cronje, adding salaries should be increased by at least 50 percent to upgrade the service.   Liebenberg blames the service's inability to recruit freely under public service commission rules, resulting in an inability to offer competitive salaries to skilled chartered accountants.   He said talks were underway to gain administrative autonomy and the department was working on a draft bill to be discussed with Finance Minister Trevor Manuel.   South Africa has a history of non-payment arising from the apartheid era when black residents in townships embarked on rent boycotts as a form of registering their political protest.   ($=4.49 Rand) 
19036 !GCAT !GPOL !GVIO  Burundi's exiled rebel leader Leonard Nyangoma has issued a statement saying he has taken over the leadership of the main Hutu party, a claim promptly denied by its president in exile in Tanzania.   Seven members of the Frodebu party, including Nyangoma, said they made up a majority of the party's guiding committee and had appointed the rebel leader as president.   Nyangoma is in exile, although his whereabouts are unknown, and most senior Frodebu officials fled Burundi after the army dominated by the Tutsi minority staged a coup in July.   Nyangoma heads the National Council for the Defence of Democracy (CNDD), the political wing of the main Hutu rebel movement in Burundi which has been waging a bitter civil war that has killed over 150,000 people in the last three years.   In Dar es Salaam, Frodebu president Jean Minani insisted he remained the party's leader but he left open the possibility of a vote to resolve the leadership dispute.   "If it's necessary, Frodebu can examine this or consider it at an appropriate time.   We remind all members that Frodebu is a democratic party...and democracy must start among us and from our party," he told Reuters on Thursday.   Minani urged all Frodebu supporters to "consolidate their efforts to struggle against the common enemy" of Tutsi military ruler Pierre Buyoya, instead of working separately.   He said there was no formal coalition between Frodebu and Nyangoma's CNDD.   "Frodebu is Frodebu.   CNDD is CNDD," said Minani.   But he added there was constant liaison between the two groups with Frodebu spearheading political and diplomatic action against Buyoya's government and CNDD coordinating military action.   Minani called for a tightening of sanctions by regional states on Burundi to include refusals to meet any leaders of the military government and the freezing of their foreign bank accounts.   "Every day in the presence of the international community, a genocide is in the making in Burundi and nobody is saying anything," said Minani, who added there should be a total embargo of military supplies reaching the Tutsi-led army.   Twenty Frodebu members of parliament have declared their support for CNDD and armed struggle to oust Buyoya.   But two Frodebu parliamentarians in his government have condemned the calls.   Burundi's latest round of ethnic bloodletting erupted in 1993 when Tutsi soldiers murdered the country's first Hutu president. 
19037 !GCAT !GVIO  Security was tightened before Friday's Moslem prayers in the northern Nigerian city of Kaduna after clashes between Shi'ites and police in which seven people died.   Supporters of the fundamentalist Shi'ite Moslem Brotherhood group demanding the release of their arrested leader, Sheikh Ibrahim Yakub El-Zak-Zaky, fought with police in the streets of Kaduna on Wednesday.   Two police and five Moslems were killed.   Police say El-Zak-Zaky, a radical preacher, was arrested because of illegal publications and radio broadcasts.   He was also alleged to have imported arms.   The Shi'ite group says 14 people were killed in clashes with police last Friday, a day after El-Zak-Zaky's arrest.   "Hopefully nothing will happen, but we are ready if it does," police commissioner Yakubu Shaibu told journalists.   "If they are violent, we will be violent.   It is an eye for an eye."   Military administrators of the 16 northern states were meeting in Kaduna.   "We will discuss...most importantly the security aspect which covers the states we govern," Kaduna state administrator Lieutenant Colonel Hameed Ali, told his counterparts.   "Nothing is happening, nothing is going to happen so please let's relax," he said.   Shops and markets were open as normal in Kaduna, one of the main commercial centres of the arid north.   "If something is going to happen it will be just before, or after prayers," said meat seller Mohammed Garba.   "Everyone is concerned, the Shi'ites are a small group but they aren't afraid of anything."   Police sources said there was also a strong security presence in Zaria, the ancient Moslem city to the north of Kaduna that is home to El-Zak-Zaky and many of his followers.   "This is a major crisis, and if it continues it will spread to Sokoto, Kano, Katsina, so many places," Sheikh Gumbi, a prominent Islamic scholar and Sunni Moslem, told Reuters.   "People will protest about anything right now, they don't have enough to eat.   Maybe the government is provoking the crisis to prolong its stay in power," he added.   Nigeria's army annulled a vote to restore civilian rule in 1993.   The mainly Moslem north has been scene of bloody religious riots in the past.   Last month three people were killed in a clash between rival Moslem sects in Kano, the region's biggest city.   Moslems, predominantly Sunni, make up roughly half of Nigeria's 100 million people.   Wednesday's demonstration followed an ultimatum from the Moslem Brotherhood for the police to free the Sheikh, who is reported to be held in the southeastern oil city of Port Harcourt.   His followers say they fear for his health. 
19038 !GCAT !GHEA !GPOL  South Africa's parliament set the scene on Friday for the toughest moral debate of its 30-month democracy, canvassing views on a disputed proposal to allow abortion.   Abe Nkomo, chairman of the parliamentary committee on health, said his group would hold public hearings on the proposal in October and hoped to shepherd the bill into law before the end of the parliamentary session in November.   Though his committee's debate is likely to deal with the details of the plan to end South Africa's near total ban on abortion, Nkomo said he would consider submissions on whether to allow abortion at all.   "We don't want to repeat the nightmare of the past, when things were steamrollered through parliament.   We want the people to feel that they have made their input and have been taken on board," he told a news conference.   "We are going to produce, as a result of these hearings, the thinking of the people."   South Africa's Medical Research Council says close to 50,000 women report to hospitals every year after botched backstreet abortions from which over 400 die.   About 1,000 abortions are approved every year for rape victims or women whose health is seriously threatened by pregnancy, but unofficial estimates are that about 120,000 women procure illegal abortions every year.   Nkomo said the government would not consider a referendum to test public opinion and said the ruling African National Congress had not yet decided whether to join other parties and allow members a free vote.   National Party health spokesman Willie Odendaal said his white-led Calvinist party would do everything in its power to reverse the move towards legal abortion on demand.   "The NP believes that both pre-born and post-born South African citizens have the same constitutional basic human right to life," he said.   The Termination of Pregnancy Bill tabled by Health Minister Nkosazana Zuma this week plans free abortion on demand up to 12 week into pregnancy and under broadly defined conditions for a further eight weeks. 
19039 !GCAT !GENT  Youssou N'Dour of Senegal and Zaire's Papa Wemba shared top honours at the first All-Africa music awards, which organisers hope will become the poor continent's equivalent of the Grammies.   They beat Nigeria's "ju ju" traditionalist King Sunny Ade, Ivorian reggae star Alpha Blondy and other nominees to jointly take the Best African Artist title at the first Kora awards in Johannesburg on Thursday night.   The jury awarded a special Lifetime Achievement Award to South African singer Miriam Makebe, who spent most of the apartheid era in exile in the United States and Europe.   "I'm very happy to be back home now and to be honoured at home is one of the greatest feelings for me," she told Reuters.   "I never left here mentally, only physically."   The bilingual French-English event, named after a traditional West African string instrument, was broadcast live to 70 countries, two-thirds of them in Africa.   Organisers estimated that half a billion people watched the glitzy show.   Some in the audience complained it was a low-budget copy of the U.S. Grammy music awards or Hollywood Oscars, lacking a truly African style.   Algerian Rai singer Cheb Mami won as best North African artist and South African group Bayete won for their region.   The pan-African jury voted Ivory Coast popstar Meiway, Zaire's Awilo Longomba and female vocalist Khadja Nin of Burundi as the best from West, Central and East Africa.   The Kora Awards are backed by URTNA, the continent's association of broadcasters, with record company support.   "URTNA saw this as a wonderful opportunity to unite Africa through music," the Kora team said.   "Music varies widely across the continent but you sense something common underlies it.   Maybe one day we will find a pure pan-African sound," Longomba told Reuters.   Many of the musicians from Francophone countries like Zaire, whose rhythmic dance music has swept much of the continent, now live in Paris, widely acclaimed as the capital of African music.   But organisers insisted the awards belonged in Africa and chose Johannesburg, rapidly becoming the continent's most cosmopolitan city as economic migrants pour in.   Local Zaireans made sure Papa Wemba got most applause but the most raucous cheers came when fellow Zairean singer Tshala Muana gyrated her hips and hitched up her skirt.   Few other African states have the means to put on such a big show and, under a contract with local broadcasters, the Kora awards will stay in Johannesburg for three years.   South African reggae star Lucky Dube, who began his career singing "Zulu soul music" and is now Africa's top-selling artist internationally, said that would be a great thing for a country isolated for so long.   "We never knew Youssou N'dour here until he did that song with Neneh Cherry," he said, referring to his early 1990s hit "Seven Seconds" recorded with the British singer.   Wemba and N'Dour shared a modest $5,000 prize for their award.   Other winners included Zaire's Lokua Kanza (most promising) and South Africa's Bheki Mseleku (instrumentalist). 
19040 !CCAT !GCAT !GDIS  The railway line linking Senegal and Mali was closed after a train accident in which 15 people were injured, railway officials said on Friday.   They said the train travelling from the Malian capital Bamako to Dakar went off the rails on Thursday near the Senegalese village of Dialakoto, 600 km (375 miles) from Dakar.   "Rail traffic between Bamako and Dakar is currently interrupted and passengers have been transferred to road transport for the journey to Dakar," an official told Reuters.   The cause of the accident has not been established. 
19041 !GCAT !GDIP  Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni arrived in neighbouring Tanzania on Friday for a four-day official visit, officials said.   Museveni's visit was the first since he won "no-party" elections last May after ruling his East African nation for 10 years under a military-style government he formed when he seized power in 1986.   Officials said economic issues and the situation in ethnically-divided Burundi feature high on the agenda of talks between Museveni and his opposite number Benjamin Mkapa.   Landlocked Uganda relies on the Tanzanian port of Dar es Salaam and Kenya's Mombasa for shipment of all its imports and exports.   The two countries are close allies with a defence pact.   It was the Tanzanian army which helped end the rule of dictator Idi Amin when it invaded Uganda in 1979.   Amin fled to exile in Libya and later Saudi Arabia where he still lives.   The offcials said the two leaders would review the situation in the tiny central African nation of Burundi, at war between the country's Tutsi-dominated army and Hutu rebels, fighting for a greater political stake in its politics.   Regional countries, including Uganda and Tanzania, imposed an economic blockade on Burundi, to force the country's Tutsi military junta led by Major Pierre Buyoya to return the tea and coffee-growing nation to constitutional legality.   Buyoya seized power in a bloodless coup on July 25 when he ousted Hutu president Sylvestre Ntibantunganya. 
19042 !GCAT  These are significant stories in the Nigerian press on Friday.   Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.   DAILY TIMES   - Industrialist Madam Abisoye Tejuosho murdered in early hours of Thursday by unknown persons.   - Impressive half-year results push up Cadbury Nigeria Plc's capitalisation on the stock market by 165 million naira.   - Oil companies budget 960 million naira for environmental survey of Delta area where crude oil is produced.   THE GUARDIAN   - Economic experts say Nigeria has achieved macro-economic stability but poverty still ravages majority of Nigerians.   - Price of cooking gas falls in Lagos, Guardian survey shows.   - Participants at ecnomic forum in Abuja call for total privatisation.   THISDAY   - Foreign minister Tom Ikimi says Cameroon has renewed attack against Nigerian forces in Bakassi peninsula.   - Weekly auction of foreign exchange disrupted by relocation of some of the departments of the central bank to Abuja.   - A 60-member Nigerian trade delegation to visit Britain.   $ = 80 Naira   -- Lagos newsroom +234 1 2631943 
19043 !GCAT !GCRIM  An 80-year-old Nigerian industrialist was hacked to death in her home by unknown assailants, police sources said on Friday.   Four men forced their way into the sprawling home of businesswoman Abisoye Tejuosho on Thursday in the Surulere area of Lagos, firing shots in the air.   Police sources said the assailants tortured the woman with cutlasses and iron rods, mutilating her body.   Newspapers said that although police found spent shells and live ammunition on the scene, Tejuosho's body contained no bullet wounds.   They said torn pieces of a one million naira ($12,500) cheque the woman had apparently offered the assailants were also found on the scene.   Tejuosho, a pioneer businesswoman, owns -- among other things -- a firm that manufactures foam products such as mattresses.   Her murder is the latest in a series of brutal killings that have shocked Nigeria.   In June, the wife of detained presidential claimant Moshood Abiola was shot while being driven along a Lagos street.   Despite a high-profile police investigation the culprits have not been found.   Newspapers said Tejuosho's only son, the traditional ruler of Osile town in Ogun state, had not been informed of her murder because local customs did not permit such information to be passed to a king.   Tejuosho celebrated her 80th birthday in June and was toasted by many Nigerians as an exemplary mother and an outstanding achiever. 
19044 !GCAT  These are significant stories in the Ivorian press on Friday.   Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.   FRATERNITE MATIN   -- President Henri Konan Bedie signs decree modifying Ivory Coast's oil code, offering incentives to foreign operators, especially in deep water off-shore, but ensuring benefits for the West African country; inter-ministerial commitee to oversee application of the code and relations with partners in the industry.   -- Government and Elf Aquitaine sign six-month oil survey protocol allowing the French oil giant to search for signs of oil and gas in three off-shore blocs, CI-100, CI-101 and CI-103   -- Government and U.S. oil company Santa Fe Energy Resources of Texas agree framework for off-shore oil and gas production sharing agreement with state oil company PETROCI in bloc CI-24.   -- Government gives go-ahead for finalisation with South Korean firm Samsung of project to manufacture cooking gas bottles in Ivory Coast; bottles have been in short supply   -- Ivory Coast to ask World Trade Organization for special dispensation to allow it to use tariff barriers to protect its domestic sugar industry during future privatisation of state sugar company Sodesucre   -- China's import-export bank agrees to lend 3.2 billion CFA francs to help Sino-Ivorian joint venture build a commercial vehicle assembly plant in Ivory Coast LA VOIE   -- Ivorian government names new head of state television's main channel; Koffi Yobouet was previously a presenter with the network LE JOUR -- West African Monetary Union (UMOA) ministers meet on Friday to consider the performance and way ahead for the grouping of Benin, Burkina Faso, Ivory Coast, Mali, Niger, Senegal and Togo   ($1=516 CFA francs) -- Abidjan newsroom +225 21 90 90 
19045 !GCAT !GPOL !GPRO  Jean-Bedel Bokassa, former self-styled emperor of the Central African Republic, has been admitted to a clinic in Ivory Coast after falling ill with kidney problems, hospital sources said on Friday.   Bokassa, 75, went into hospital in the Central African Republic capital Bangui last week but was flown to Ivory Coast's main city Abidjan on Thursday for treatment in a more specialised clinic, they added.   Bokassa seized power in 1966.   He crowned himself emperor in a lavish ceremony in 1977, only to be ousted in a French-backed coup in 1979.   He faced trial upon his return from exile in 1986 and was sentenced to death for murder and embezzlement.   The military leader at the time, Andre Kolingba, commuted Bokassa's sentence to life in prison, later reducing it to 10 years.   After his release by Kolingba in 1993, Bokassa said he would return to power if public opinion supported him.   The government banned him for life from elections.   He has since lived quietly in Bangui but in July he asked President Ange-Felix Patasse for an amnesty so that he could stand as a candidate in presidential elections planned for 1999. 
19046 !GCAT  These are the leading stories in the Kenyan press on Friday.   Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.   DAILY NATION   - The mad cow disease beef scare forces the government to revoke the trading licences of Nakumatt Holdings Limited, the mother company of the Nakumatt chain of supermarkets.   - An opposition alliance launches a document calling for a coalition government to rectify what it calls "33 years of Kenya African National Union misrule".   - The governor of the Central Bank of Kenya Micah Cheserem urges the United States business community to have confidence in the government's ability to take long term measures to deal with inflation.   EAST AFRICAN STANDARD   - President Daniel arap Moi instructs the police to crack down on the brewing and consuption of ilicit liqour.   - A piece of land belonging to a Nairobi mortuary has been grabbed and re-allocated to a top civil servant at the treasury.   - The immediate former chairman of Nation Printers and Publishers Albert Ekirapa and three other directors of Kenya Finance Bank are charged with publishing a false statement of audited accounts.   KENYA TIMES   - Pope John Paul's envoy to Kenya Reverend Giovani Tonnuci expresses concern about the rampant road carnage in the country and calls on the authorities to start a road education programme.   - The Kenya Consumers Organisation cautions Kenyans to be wary of an imported brand of powered milk suspected to contain radioactive elements.   THE PEOPLE   - Concern grips the People newspaper following the petrol bombing of its Westlands offices and subsequent telephone threats to its senior editing officials.   ($1=56 Kenyan shillings) 
19047 !GCAT !GREL  The Kenyan government is urging the public to stop worshipping the devil through sacrificing humans, drinking their blood or eating their flesh.   In a statement issued on Thursday, the government said a committee set up two years ago and upgraded to a commission of inquiry few months later had established devil worship existed in Kenya.   "After carefully considering reports from individuals with personal experience in the cults and evidence from devil worshippers, whose submissions were confirmed by credible independent sources, the Commission found ample corroborative evidence of the existence of devil worship," it said.   "According to the testimonies, satanic cuts include the following in their rituals:   - human sacrifice   - drinking of human blood   - eating of human flesh   - black Mass and Wine   - nudity of the participants in the ritual   - incantation in unintelligible language   - sexual abuse and rape, especially of children and minors   - black magic   - narcotic drugs   - presence of snakes"   The government said the commission had received information of "horrifying criminal cases" including kidnapping, rape, child abuse, murders and the severing of body parts such as tongues, eyes and limbs.   "The government would like to assure the public that it has carefully studied the recommendations of the Commission which have far-reaching implications on our learning and other institutions," the statement said.   "While the government is taking firm actions to implement the recommendations and curb the evil practices, the public is advised to desist from abetting or getting involved in devil worship, which is in its formative stage in our country." 
19048 !GCAT !GPOL  In a short political career, South Africa's General Bantu Holomisa has risen from banana republic obscurity to embarrass first the apartheid government and now that of President Nelson Mandela.   Holomisa started out as an army officer in the nominally independent Transkei homeland, a creation of apartheid policies aimed at providing geographically separate areas for blacks, staging a coup in 1988 to gain control of the territory at the age of 33.   As head of government of the statelet, he came across a range of information that has since made politicians uncomfortable on both sides of the apartheid divide.   First Holomisa leaked to newspapers a secret message from a senior apartheid-era policeman ordering subordinates "to remove permanently from society" black activist Matthew Goniwe.   The leak resulted in the reopening of an inquest into the murder of Goniwe and a judge's finding that police had been responsible.   While leader of the Transkei, Holomisa made the territory available to Mandela's African National Congress (ANC) and other liberation movements as a base where they could organise, relatively safe from police harassment.   After the 1994 elections the ANC rewarded him with the post of deputy minister of environmental affairs and tourism.   But his relations with the party soured this year when he told the Truth and Reconciliation Commission that a member of the old Transkei government, Stella Sigcau -- now a member of the ANC -- had accepted tainted money from a gambling tycoon.   The party leadership leaped to the defence of Sigcau, who is minister of public enterprises, and Holomisa was fired.   Undaunted, Holomisa said the same tycoon had made a donation to the ANC ahead of the 1994 elections and had provided free hospitality at his hotels to ANC ministers.   Mandela acknowledged receiving the money but said there was nothing wrong with businessmen making gifts to the party.   The relevant ministers denied accepting the tycoon's hospitality.   Last month the ANC expelled Holomisa, accusing him of thinking he was still head of a "bantustan" and of putting himself above the party.   "A lot of us are rather annoyed," said Land Affairs and Agriculture Minister Derek Hanekom, one those whom Holomisa accused of accepting the tycoon's favours.   "If one looks at his own past, a person who was prepared to serve the apartheid government, he was given a good chance by the ANC and he really appears to have blown it rather badly."   But political analysts and commentators say the way Mandela and his ANC have handled the questions raised by Holomisa about party ethics has only aggravated the issue.   "What the ANC is saying, intentionally or not, is that it is more worried about the integrity of the movement than the integrity of the government," said Tom Lodge, professor of politics at the University of the Witwatersrand.   "That might not be what the ANC means, but that's the perception, and politics is all about perception."   The Johannesburg Sunday Times said in an editorial that Holomisa had fallen victim to the propaganda of his own party.   "He truly believed that he was entitled to speak out openly about colleagues and raise his unhappiness about policies.   He is now paying dearly for his naivety." 
19049 !GCAT !GPOL !GVOTE  Estonian president Lennart Meri was re-elected to head the former Soviet republic on Friday after a humiliating five-round battle against arch-rival Arnold Ruutel.   Meri, 67, said his victory was a vote of confidence in the pro-Western policy the Baltic state has followed since regaining independence in 1991.   The charismatic Meri was re-elected by a specially convened electoral assembly in the second of two rounds of voting on Friday.   Last month, he failed three times to get a clear mandate from parliament.   Meri's victory was a re-run of his 1992 presidential battle against his 68-year-old communist era predecessor Ruutel.   He finally got the backing of 196 of the 372 electoral members present on Friday, beating deputy parliamentary speaker Ruutel's 126 votes.   The rest did not cast votes.   "This vote means that Estonia has chosen the way of rapid integration with Western structures, which means first of all the European Union and then NATO and that Estonia will not abandon this direction," a radiant Meri told reporters.   Estonia, like its Baltic cousins Latvia and Lithuania, has followed a strong pro-Western path since the collapse of the Soviet Union, trying to rebuild links with a West from which it was cut off for 50 years.   Meri was forced to go through what some politicians said was a humiliating five rounds of voting after earning the anger of MPs who saw him overstepping the authority of a largely ceremonial position.   One of the main criticisms levelled against Meri was that he signed a 1994 agreement on Russian troop withdrawal without consulting parliament, which opponents say left too many former Soviet military personnel in Estonia.   Critics also said he unduly interfered with legislation affecting Estonia's large Russian community which makes up nearly one-third of the 1.5 million population.   He has, however, been applauded by the West for watering down rules on citizenship that many consider too harsh.   Meri tried to appease domestic critics by admitting he took the separation of power between president and parliament too seriously.   "All this was early on, let's forget it now," he told journalists of his tendency to act on his own initiative.   Foreign Minister Siim Kallas dismissed the notion that Meri's drawn-out battle for re-election was a humiliation for the president, saying this was due mainly to the difficult legislation regarding the presidential election.   "We now have a stable framework to go ahead," Kallas told reporters after the results.   "This is probably the best option for political powers as well as for the foreign ministry."   The presidential battle began before parliament last month but in three rounds of voting neither Meri nor Ruutel managed to win 68 votes from the 101-member house for a clear mandate.   The speaker was compelled to convene an electoral college, consisting of all MPs and 273 local government representatives.   Five candidates stood in the first round of voting before the electoral assembly on Friday morning including Meri, Ruutel, right-wing nationalist Tunne Kelam, left-of-centre MP Siiri Oviir, and academic Enn Tougu.   But no single candidate won a clear majority and the two top scorers, Meri with 139 votes and and Ruutel with 85, went forward to the fifth and final round on Friday afternoon. 
19050 !GCAT !GPOL !GPRO  Boris Yeltsin's doctors, in the frankest admission yet of the stakes in the Russian president's forthcoming heart surgery, said on Friday he faces a serious operation with a host of complicating factors.   Sergei Mironov, who heads the presidential health centre, said Yeltsin would stay in hospital for another three or four days -- extending for the third time a hospital stay which had originally been scheduled to end last weekend.   "We must understand that the person is preparing for a very responsible and a very serious operation," Mironov told a televised news briefing.   "A big and serious operation is ahead and it needs adequately large, balanced and serious preparations, because you all understand what is at stake."   It was the most revealing statement to date on the health of the 65-year-old Russian president, who said earlier this month he would have an operation on his heart.   Yeltsin had virtually disappeared between the two rounds of the presidential election, raising speculation that he had been taken ill and leaving talk of a power vacuum in Moscow.   Russian news agencies said on Friday that Yeltsin had drafted detailed rules on transferring power when he goes under the surgeon's knife and would fix to the minute when Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin is to take temporary command.   One decree lays down the rules to give power to Chernomyrdin and a second on says how to hand it back to the president.   "The (first) decree not only gives the exact day of the month, but even the hour and the minute at which the premier gets his temporary responsibilities," Interfax said.   Russian media have speculated hard about the chain of command during Yeltsin's operation, focusing specifically on who will hold the button needed to launch a nuclear strike.   A decree issued on Thursday confirmed that Yeltsin would hand power to Chernomyrdin during the surgery and that the prime minister would have temporary control over the nuclear button.   Yeltsin has already given some extra responsibilities to Chernomyrdin, who would take over under the constitution were the president to become incapacitated.   The president has been in Moscow's Central Clinical Hospital for the past week while doctors carry out tests aimed at determining the timing of the operation.   Mironov said doctors were looking at all possible problem areas.   "All of us during our lives acquire quite a lot of different problems with our organs and unfortunately Boris Nikolayevich (Yeltsin) has them too," he said.   He singled out blood circulation, kidneys, liver and lungs as areas which the doctors would watch.   Doctors say Yeltsin needs bypass surgery, in which veins are grafted on to coronary arteries to improve blood supply to the heart.   A team of cardiologists, including pioneering U.S. heart surgeon Michael DeBakey, will meet on September 25 to set the date for the operation.   Renat Akchurin, the Russian doctor tipped to lead the operation, told Reuters on Friday that success rates for bypass surgery were good, but much depended on how fit the patient was.   "Success rates are about 98 percent if you are dealing with an uncomplicated, generally healthy patient, if you have some problems with other systems and organs the percentage of success might decrease to 90 percent," he told Reuters.   Communist Gennady Zyuganov, runner-up to Yeltsin in this year's presidential election, told Reuters the race to succeed the president had already begun, although it mostly involved members of Yeltsin's own camp.   But Zyuganov said he was best qualified to succeed Yeltsin. 
19051 !GCAT !GPOL  Bulgaria's U.N. ambassador, who denounced his own government and accused it of dirty tricks against anti-communists like himself, was told by the Foreign Ministry on Friday that he ought to resign.   "Common practice is for a state official, especially a diplomat, to relinquish his office with dignity when he disagrees with the politics of his government," the Foreign Ministry said in a statement.   On Thursday in the United Nations headquarters in New York Ambassador Slavi Pashovski read a letter to his government in which he said pro-communist ministers were trying to sideline the constitution and stifle any kind of democratic reform.   "The ghost of communism is looming over Bulgaria, which means also over the Balkans and over Europe," he warned.   The Bulgarian Socialist government has divested Pashovski of his ambassadorial powers, but has not been able to revoke his U.N. accreditation without approval from President Zhelyu Zhelev, a founder of the anti-communist opposition.   Instead ministers have ignored him and refused to allow him to be a member of Bulgaria's General Assembly delegation.   "His (Pashovski's) conduct is worthy of pity and is another attempt to discredit Bulgaria before the international community," the Foreign Ministry said on Friday.   Pashovski has been at odds with the current government since it was elected in January 1995.   He said he did not fear for his life, but related an incident in which he said New York police confirmed that connectors to his steering wheel had been deliberately cut.   He also told of a colleague with similar anti-communist views who was ambassador to Albania and was driven off a cliff by a Bulgarian driver in the Macedonian mountains on his way back to his post in Tirana.   He survived, although the driver left him on the mountainside to die.   "While the tears of the victims of communism have still not dried, we have been presenting new scenarios with a mafia plot," he said in the letter to Prime Minister Zhan Videnov and Foreign Minister Georgi Pirinski.   "Let us ... put an end to the infamy of the Bulgarian umbrella once and for all," he said in reference to the 1978 incident of a Bulgarian defector fatally stabbed in Britain with a poison-tipped umbrella. 
19052 !GCAT !GPOL !GPRO  Boris Yeltsin faces a "very serious" heart operation and his prolonged stay in hospital is to ensure that problems with other organs do not complicate the surgery, the head of the Kremlin medical centre said on Friday.   In the most revealing briefing yet from the presidential team, which has been tight-lipped about the president's health, Sergei Mironov said there was much at stake.   "To prepare for such an operation one must naturally take into account the state of all the organs and systems of the patient, that's a must," Mironov told a news briefing.   "All of us during our lives acquire quite a lot of different problems with our organs.   Unfortunately Boris Nikolayevich has them too," he added.   "Since the operation is quite serious it obviously needs quite thorough preparation...that is why he is staying in hospital...(Yeltsin) is preparing for a very responsible and a very serious operation...you all understand what is at stake."   Mironov, who earlier announced that Yeltsin would remain in hospital for a further three or four days -- the third extension of his stay -- did not specify what kind of problems he had but gave some examples.   "One cannot just consider the operation as on one organ alone, of course it will touch upon many other organs and systems and we must be absolutely sure of preserving their functions.   This is blood circulation, kidneys, liver and lungs."   Since Yeltsin announced on September 5 that he would have heart surgery at the end of the month, attention has focused on the risks, which increase dramatically if there are problems with other organs.   Doctors had not explained the gap between the announcement and the operation, which they said would be a bypass, opening the way for speculation that they were trying to treat Yeltsin for other problems which could deteriorate during surgery.   Independent specialists have mentioned possible liver disease -- linked to Yeltsin's alleged heavy drinking -- or a need to bring him off a course of steroids which might have been used to treat another problem.   Mironov said he thought that, barring last minute changes, the operation would be lead by Renat Akchurin, who earlier told Reuters that open heart surgery was the only possible treatment for the type of problem Yeltsin had.   Other specialists have mentioned less interventionary techniques, which also fit into the catch-all term bypass, but Akchurin said these were just palliative.   Akchurin, who operated on Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin eight years ago, said he had done pre-surgical tests on Yeltsin but declined to give details.   He said much depended on a patient's general health, since circulation dropped dramatically when the patient was put on a heart-lung machine while surgery took place.   He said possible post-surgical complications included bleeding, pneumonia, circulation of blood to the brain and problems with the liver and kidneys.   Speaking in his office in the Cardiology Research Centre in western Moscow, Akchurin said Yeltsin had asked doctors not to reveal his health condition and he declined to comment on pre-surgical treatment the president might be undergoing.   "There are very different treatments for each individual...it can take months," he said.   Akchurin, who is head of the clinic's cardiovascular surgery department, said he would consult top U.S. cardiologist Michael DeBakey on Yeltsin's heart when he visits Moscow next week.   "We'll have to report the situation of Mr President to him, just for a second opinion," he said.   But he said his institute's success rate compared with U.S. institutes and was 98 percent a year, falling to 90 percent if patients' health was bad.   Akchurin said if the council of doctors due to meet next week chose him to lead the operation, he would do it willingly.   "Every day and with all patients I am really worried about responsibility but of course I understand the difficulty of such a personal case and I think that if necessary we will apply all our forces to make it successful." 
19053 !GCAT !GVIO !GWELF  Up to 1,000 Bosnian war invalids, veterans and families of dead soldiers halted traffic in the Moslem-controlled town of Tuzla on Friday to protest against the government's failure to pay war pensions.   Demonstrators, many on crutches, occupied all main junctions in the town and its outskirts.   Police watched the protest without trying to disperse the crowd.   "Families of dead soldiers and war invalids have organised this because of unpaid war and invalid pensions, which the government hasn't paid for six months," said Alija Muharemovic, 28, on crutches because he lost his right foot.   The government in Sarajevo had approved the funds but the money had never reached Tuzla, he said.   Civil unrest has been uncommon in Bosnia since more than three years of war ended in December.   But the war has shattered the country's industry and economy, and left the majority of people with virtually no income.   "I've been wounded three times.   How do you think I should feel now -- betrayed and deceived," said Muharemovic.   Only a few armoured vehicles of the NATO-led peace Implementation Force (IFOR) managed to drive through the crowd on their way to a nearby U.S. military base.   Demonstrators firmly turned all other cars back.   "I've lost four sons in the war and my wife died after we came here.   I get only five marks ($3.30) a month," said Munib Muminovic, a refugee from Srebrenica which was captured by Serb forces amid reports of massacres last year. 
19054 !GCAT !GPOL !GPRO  A top Russian doctor, in the most revealing official statements to date on President Boris Yeltsin's health, said on Friday the president was facing a big and serious operation, and a lot was at stake.   Sergei Mironov, who heads the presidential health centre, said Yeltsin would stay in hospital for another three or four days -- extending for the third time a hospital stay which had originally been scheduled to end last weekend.   "We must understand that the person is preparing for a very responsible and a very serious operation," Mironov told a televised news briefing.   "A big and serious operation is ahead and it needs adequately large, balanced and serious preparations, because you all understand what is at stake."   Yeltsin, 65, agreed earlier this month to have an operation to improve blood supply to his heart.   He has been in Moscow's Central Clinical Hospital for the past week while doctors carry out tests aimed at determining the timing of the operation.   Doctors say Yeltsin needs bypass surgery, in which veins are grafted on to coronary arteries to improve blood supply to the heart.   The Kremlin, pointing to occasional meetings between Yeltsin and top officials, says his health is not getting worse.   A team of cardiologists, including pioneering U.S. heart surgeon Michael DeBakey, will meet on September 25 to set the date for the operation.   Renat Akchurin, the Russian doctor tipped to lead the operation, told Reuters on Friday that success rates for bypass surgery were good, but much depended on how fit the patient was.   "Success rates are about 98 percent if you are dealing with an uncomplicated, generally healthy patient, if you have some problems with other systems and organs the percentage of success might decrease to 90 percent," he told Reuters.   Russian news agencies said on Friday that Yeltsin had drafted detailed rules on transferring power when he goes under the surgeon's knife and would fix to the minute when Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin takes temporary command.   One decree lays down the rules to give power to Chernomyrdin and a second on how to hand it back to the president.   "The (first) decree not only gives the exact day of the month, but even the hour and the minute at which the premier gets his temporary responsibilities," Interfax said.   Yeltsin has already given some extra responsibilities to Chernomyrdin, who would take over under the constitution were the president to become incapacitated.   The constitution does not specify the circumstances of a handover, however, and Russian media have speculated hard about the chain of command during Yeltsin's operation, specifically on who will hold the button needed to launch a nuclear strike.   A decree issued on Thursday confirmed that Yeltsin would hand power to Chernomyrdin during the surgery and that the prime minister would have temporary control over the nuclear button.   Communist Gennady Zyuganov, runner-up to Yeltsin in this year's presidential election, told Reuters the race to succeed the president had already begun, although it mostly involved members of Yeltsin's own camp.   But Zyuganov said he was best qualified to succeed Yeltsin. 
19055 !GCAT  Here are highlights from Polish newspapers this morning.   GAZETA WYBORCZA   - Parliamentary committees have decided that as of 1997 a one percent value added tax would be levied on books, now exempted from it.   They also recommended maintaining a 7-percent VAT for construction materials and services until 1999.   Parliament is likely to vote on the new tax regulations in October.   - About 33 percent of Poles think their living standards have deteriorated in the last 12 months.   Half of Poles believe their situation has not changed and 16 percent think it has improved.   - India-made Suzuki Alto passanger cars, imported in a low-duty quota, will be available at Polish dealers next week at a price of about 23,000 zlotys.   RZECZPOSPOLITA   - Ambassadors of 50 countries belonging to the Organisation of Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) backed Poland's candidacy to head the group in 1998.   - A second auction of 30,000 tonnes of diesel fuel from state reserves will be staged next week to stabilise the gasoline market.   PARKIET   - Foreigners are expected to spend about $6.5 billion in Poland this year, $500 million more than in 1995, according to the independent IBnGR think-tank.   - Raiffeisen's analysts forecast that the contruction company Mostostal Gdansk will net 1.7 million zlotys in 1996.   In the first eight months the company netted 832,000 zlotys.   -- Warsaw Newsroom +48 22 653 9700 
19056 !GCAT  DELO   - The parliament set a referendum for December 8 on the changes to the electoral system.   - The government said it would enlarge the capital of the Development Fund by 3.5 billion tolars ($25.9 million) in order to help out companies facing financial problems.   - In Slovenia, food is most expensive in the capital of Ljubljana and cheapest in the second largest Slovenian city of Maribor.   - Slovenia and the European Union on Thursday initialled a trade agreement that would enforce most important decrees of the association accord between Slovenia and the EU from January 1997.   The agreement was necessary because the association accord still has to be ratified by the EU and Slovenia parliaments.   - The mission of the International Monetary Fund to Slovenia said the country's primary task for the next two years should be decreasing inflation, which currently stands at 10.3 percent.   REPUBLIKA   - Workers' unions and the management board of troubled machine producer Litostroj have not yet succeeded signing an agreement on salaries.   FINANCE   - The newly listed shares of drug maker Lek managed to attract several foreign investment companies.   - Slovenian state-owned Highway Company plans to borrow another $100 million from 12 Slovenian banks this month.   The money will be used for the construction of highways. 
19057 !GCAT  These are some of the main stories in Sofia newspapers today.   Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.   STANDART   -- Bulgaria's central bank will possibly seek the closure of more local banks as part of a long-delayed financial stabilisation programme, central bank governor said.   -- Bulgaria's first voucher privatisation tender could be held on October 7, Mass Privatisation Centre director Kalin Mitrev said.   @   -- Bulgaria's ruling Socialist party seeks consultations with the opposition on all major issues, aimed at overcoming the current severe economic crisis, Socialist deputies in parliament said.   -- Bulgarian citizens' real income fell by 23 percent in July year-on-year, the National Statistics Institute said.   -- The Bulgarian-Russian gas jount venture Topenergy shareholders' meeting in Moscow today is expected to sack members of the supervisory board and the board of directors.   24 CHASA   @   -- Eleven voucher privatisation funds, which have not raised the minimum required capital of 70 million levs and were banned from participation in Bulgaria's voucher sell-offs said they would appeal the decision before the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the European Union.   -- Four big industrial enterprises, including the copper smelter in Pirdop, will be offered for sale to potential investors, the government decided.   @   -- Bulgarian cabinet officials and European Union representatives are expected to negotiate on September 25 the volume of Bulgaria's metal exports to EU in 1997, cabinet officials said.   KONTINENT   -- Bulgaria's former prime minister Reneta Indzhova is expected to apply for registration for participation in the country's presidential elections due in October, officials said.   @   -- Some forty days before the presidential elections the main opposition's candidate Petar Stoyanov leads the race with six points before the socialist nominee Ivan Marazov, a MBMD poll shows.   --The socialist majority in the parliament is expected to overrule today the president Zhelyu Zhelev's veto over the coat-of-arms law, which features a lion without a crown.   PARI   @   -- Greece's foreign minister Teodoros Pangolos and his Bulgarian counterpart Georgi Pirinski exchanged ratifications of bilateral agreements, covering the use of the Mesta river water resources and the opening of three new border check points.   -- Bulgaria's parliament tentatively approved the setting up of a State Bank for Economic Development, which would extend credits to small and middle sized businesses in the country.   -- Sofia Newsroom, (++359-2) 981 8569 
19058 !GCAT  NARODNA OBRODA - Volkswagen Bratislava plant has assembled 50,000 cars during its five years of operation.   The plant plans to complete 25,000 cars this year, but its current annual production capacity is about 35,000 cars.   - Slovak parliament on Thursday night, for the second time, voted against an opposotion proposal to dismiss Culture Minister Ivan Hudec.   - Steel maker VSZ, Slovakia's largest commercial bank VUB, and private firm Ferrimex will form a joint-venture to take over the troubled state-owned magnesite materials procucer Kosicky Magnezit s.p..   - Dutch insurer Nationale Nederlanden officially launched its activities in Slovakia on Thursday.   HOSPODARSKE NOVINY - The Supreme Control Bureau has said licences for grain export in 1995, issued by the agricultural ministry, exceeded the recommendation of the state licence committee by some 614,802 tonnes of wheat.   - The opposition said profits from last year's illegal grain exports totalled about one billion crowns.   - The Bratislava Stock Exchange (BSE), ING Barings and CSOB Bratislava will introduce a new index for bond trading at the BSE on October 1.   The SDX index will be issued daily and will have two separate parts -- one for state bonds and one for corporate issues.   - The state Slovak Guarantee Bank has extended guarantees for loans totalling around 863 million crowns in the first seven months of this year.   - Production of Slovakia's wood processing industry in the first half of this year totalled 6.6 billion crowns, of which goods worth some 3.2 billion were exported.   SME - Slovak sugar production is expected to total some 210,000 tonnes this year, which should fully cover the country's consumption needs.   -- Bratislava Newsroom, 42-7-210-3687 
19059 !GCAT  MLADA FRONTA DNES - The country's four largest banks, all partially state-owned, cut the largest private bank Agrobanka off the interbank lending market before the bank was placed under forced administration, contributing to its liquidity crisis, the central bank's administrator Jiri Klumpar said.   The biggest banks Komercni Banka and Ceska Sporitelna denied the accusations.   - The state budget showed a 2.7 billion crown deficit on September 18.   Finance Minister Ivan Kocarnik said the budget should still be balanced at the end of the year.   - The paper quotes unnamed sources as saying that the small coalition parties, the Civic Democratic Alliance (ODA) and the Christian-Democratic Union (KDU-CSL) do not firmly stand behind Kocarnik, a member of the senior coalition Civic Democratic Party (ODS).   Opposition leader Milos Zeman has called for Kocarnik's resignation in connection with the growing banking problems.   - Analysts are not concerned by the lower-than-expected second quarter GDP growth, saying the aims of economic policy cannot be high growth and low inflation at the same time.   They also praised investment into industry, which rose 18.3 percent year-on-year.   - Chairman of the National Property Fund, Roman Ceska, said there was no chance to privatise regional power distributors or large banks in several years due to opposition resistance.   HOSPODARSKE NOVINY - Prime Minister Vaclav Klaus said the privatisation of the big banks would be delayed because of the tense atmosphere in the sector following the Kreditni Banka failure and placing Agrobanka under forced administration.   - GSM mobile phones offered by Radiomobil will work in Austria, Italy and Germany once the service kicks off on September 26.   - Troubled steel maker Poldi Ocel said it would sue Komercni Bnaka for refusing to negotiate about immediate financing to cover the firms's workers wages.   - Social Democrat leader Milos Zeman agreed with coalition KDU's chairman Josef Lux that the planned parliamentary commission for the investigation of Kreditni Banka's failure should be chaired by a Social Democrat.   -- Prague Newsroom, 42-2-2423-0003 
19060 !E51 !E512 !ECAT !GCAT !GPOL  The Bosnian Moslems of Otoka have next to nothing.   Their once pretty riverside town lies in ruins -- but they are happy.   Down the road and across Bosnia's ethnic divide, the Serbs of Novi Grad have a town relatively undamaged by war and virtually "cleansed" of Moslems.   But sanctions have devastated the local economy and they seem demoralised.   The Bosnian conflict produced no winners except perhaps the war profiteers who cruise both sides of Bosnia's "Inter-Entity Boundary Line" (IEBL) in late-model German limousines.   Yet a casual visitor to Otoka and Novi Grad, 20 km (12 miles) apart either side of the IEBL, could easily believe that the Moslems were the winners and the Serbs the losers.   The Moslems, thankful only that the war is over after four terrible years, are in party mood.   The Serbs can only ruefully recall the pre-war good life that has gone.   Last Sunday the Moslems of Otoka held a street party to celebrate the anniversary of a battle which halted the Serb advance just short of their hometown two years ago.   A band blasted out Moslem pop music, a wailing mix of influences from Turkey, which once ruled Bosnia, and the West.   In a ruined building behind the stage, children danced and furtively swigged beer.   Bosnian Islam was never very strict.   A short drive away -- a drive which can be made safely only by foreigners -- Novi Grad is daubed with graffiti praising the feared Serb warlord Zeljko Raznjatovic, nicknamed Arkan.   Even the town's name reflects the divisions of war.   Formerly called Bosanski Novi, Serb nationalists renamed it Novi Grad ("New Town") to obliterate any reference to the Bosnian state they want to leave.   But on a Sunday afternoon there were few signs of defiant nationalism.   The place was almost deserted and ordinary townspeople seemed subdued, even depressed.   The prosperity they enjoyed before the war is gone, the economy ruined not by shells but by international sanctions.   Otoka, which for four years lay on the front line of the Moslem-held Bihac enclave, suffered enormous destruction as Serb shells rained down from surrounding hills.   Novi Grad escaped largely intact despite an artillery barrage last year as Moslem and Croatian forces advanced.   Yet morale seems near rock bottom.   The town's textile and lumber industries shut after the war began in 1992 and unemployment is high.   Most people now live off farming.   "Before the war you were not short of anything but now there is nothing," said 24-year-old Dragana Grab, who runs Cafe Kiss on the edge of town.   She hopes for better times following nationwide elections held on September 14, although it is difficult to see what immediate effect they could have on Novi Grad.   Grab has known much better.   She worked for two years in the German town of Detmold at a restaurant run by relatives.   She returned due to homesickness, a decision she now regrets.   "I'm sorry I left that job.   It's very difficult to get the papers (for Germany) now," she said.   The United Nations first imposed sanctions on Serbia and the Bosnian Serbs to punish atrocities early in the war.   Later Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic, desperate to end his country's isolation, blockaded the Bosnian Serbs under pressure from the West.   Grab's 28-year-old husband Zarko, who worked as a computer engineer in neighbouring Croatia before fighting in the war, says the effect was devastating.   "We were blockaded by Serbia and the rest of the world," he said as he sat with his wife on the cafe's terrace.   "A blockade is always unjust, no matter which people it is aimed against."   Back in Otoka, the Moslem mood is more buoyant even though their economy is in an equal mess.   One veteran of the battle, Dzemo Causevic, recalled how local people beat back the Serbs lodged on Mount Plavno overlooking the town on September 15, 1994.   Only 320 locals fought off 1,200 Serbs apparently commanded by General Ratko Mladic, indicted as a war criminal for massacring Moslems near the eastern Bosnian town of Srebrenica.   "They had artillery, tanks and helicopters.   We had only rifles but we were well dug in," said Causevic, who lost an eye later in the war.   "It was a battle of life and death.   Probably if they had entered the town, our children would have suffered the same fate as in Srebrenica."   But as the party went on nearby, he too expressed regrets.   "I never cared for war.   I had many friends on all sides," said Causevic, a 50-year-old former teacher who now runs a lumber business.   "The entire war was a very foolish thing." 
19061 !GCAT !GCRIM !GVIO  Bosnian Serb authorities have complied with NATO demands and sacked a police chief who had threatened Czech peacekeeping troops, an alliance spokesman said.   "We got what we wanted," NATO's Major Simon Haselock told Reuters late on Friday.   The commander of the NATO-led peace force (IFOR) in Bosnia, Admiral Joseph Lopez, issued a 48-hour ultimatum on Wednesday demanding the Serbs sack Prijedor police chief Simo Drljaca and turn over banned weapons used against Czech troops in a confrontation on Monday.   Bosnian Serb interior minister Dragan Kijac replaced him with Dusko Jankovic, who will serve in the post until a permanent replacement is found, Haselock said.   Earlier, the Prijedor police handed over 11 unauthorised submachine guns as demanded by IFOR.   The Serb interior minister assured General Michael Walker, the commander of NATO ground forces in Bosnia, that Drljaca will have no future role running the Prijedor police department, "even as an adviser", Haselock said.   NATO had warned it was prepared to take "remedial action" if the Serbs failed to comply by midday on Friday.   Drljaca refused to surrender an unauthorised M-5 machine pistol to a Czech IFOR patrol on Monday and fired a shot into the air.   Drljaca later called in 10 of his men armed with banned AK-47 rifles to surround the Czechs, who later decided to withdraw.   Human rights workers say that as police chief in the northwest district of Prijedor, Drljaca led paramilitary and police units in a campaign of terror and ethnic expulsions against local Moslems and Croats.   Some of the war's worst atrocities took place in the Prijedor area, where Serb forces destroyed mosques and set up detention camps for Moslems and Croats. 
19062 !GCAT !GPOL  Boris Yeltsin will spend a second weekend in hospital as doctors, who now admit a host of complications, prepare the Russian president for major heart surgery.   In a sign of new Kremlin openness, the head of Russia's presidential medical centre conceded on Friday that the 65-year-old leader had a variety of other problems that are making his planned heart bypass operation a complex proposition.   Sergei Mironov said Yeltsin would stay in Moscow's Central Clinical Hospital for another three or four days -- the third extension to a stay originally scheduled to end last weekend.   The latest dose of drip-feed frankness by aides who, less than three weeks ago, were insisting the president was just "tired" troubled Russian financial markets and may worry Western leaders who see Yeltsin as the guarantor of stability in Moscow.   The longer stay in hospital also means Yeltsin, scarcely seen since shortly before his reelection in July, will be well out of sight as nationalist and leftist opponents rally to mark Saturday's third anniversary of the president's dissolution of the Soviet-era parliament, which led to bloody armed clashes.   His 1993 victory over parliament handed Yeltsin the sweeping powers he now wields, raising the stakes for Russia if he should be kept out of action.   It ranked among the epic exploits of a man who has become the embodiment of a political survivor.   His doctors are making increasingly clear that he is facing another daunting test, this time on the operating table.   "(The president) is preparing for a very responsible and a very serious operation," Mironov said on Friday.   "A big and serious operation is ahead and it needs adequately large, balanced and serious preparations.   "You all understand what is at stake," he added.   Mironov singled out blood circulation, kidneys, liver and lungs as areas the medical team would be watching for possible complications.   Yeltsin needs bypass surgery, in which veins are grafted on to coronary arteries to improve blood supply to the heart.   Renat Akchurin, the Russian surgeon tipped to lead the operation, told Reuters success rates for bypass surgery were good, but much depended on how fit the patient was.   "Success rates are about 98 percent if you are dealing with an uncomplicated, generally healthy patient, if you have some problems with other systems and organs the percentage of success might decrease to 90 percent," he told Reuters.   A team of cardiologists including U.S. pioneer Michael DeBakey meets on September 25 to set the date for the operation.   On September 21, 1993, frustrated by parliament's opposition to his free market reforms, Yeltsin dissolved the assembly.   Deputies and parliamentary supporters barricaded themselves in the White House parliament building in an ironic reversal of Yeltsin's own stand against the hardline communist coup of 1991.   A fortnight later over 100 were dead after Yeltsin's order to shell the building and other armed clashes in Moscow.   A subsequent referendum approved a new constitution that gave sweeping powers to the president.   Speculation has focused on how that power -- including the "nuclear trigger" -- will be distributed during Yeltsin's operation.   A decree on Thursday confirmed Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin, Yeltsin's constitutional deputy who has already been given some other powers, would have the controls.   But other ambitious and powerful figures, including Kremlin security chief Alexander Lebed, are expected to continue asserting the importance of their own roles in the hierarchy.   Under Lebed's latest accord with Chechen separatist rebels, Russian troops are due to resume withdrawing from the region on Saturday, ending a suspension called by disgruntled generals. 
19063 !GCAT !GPOL !GVOTE  Councillors from the ruling Serb Democratic Party (SDS) in the northern Bosnian town of Banja Luka sacked its mayor on Friday in what he described as an illegal move.   The SDS-dominated council, at its first meeting since last Saturday's Bosnian elections, voted to "terminate the mandate" of five councillors, including Mayor Predrag Radic, for defecting to opposition parties.   Radic, who was elected mayor in 1990, broke away from the SDS last June to form the Democratic Patriotic Bloc (DPB) to contest the post-war elections.   Western diplomats and agencies had courted Radic as a more moderate alternative to the hardline SDS and as someone they could work with.   One senior SDS councillor said he had been dismissed for disloyalty.   "The only reason for replacing Predrag Radic and four other councillors is that they crossed over to other parties," said Branko Cvijic.   Radic said in a statement faxed to Reuters that he accepted the decision.   "I am not against the decision of the local councillors, whom I cannot criticise in any way.   I wish them all the best," he said.   But he added: One day someone will talk about the legality of the procedure of my sacking."   Bosnia's elections last Saturday excluded council polls for municipalities such as Banja Luka.   Election organisers said they had delayed local elections to give them time to deal with rigged voter registration lists. 
19064 !GCAT !GPOL !GVIO !GVOTE  Nationalist parties prevailed in elections for Bosnia's unified post-war parliament but no party gained a clear majority, according to preliminary results released on Friday.   In the 42-member House of Representatives, the Moslem nationalist Party of Democratic Action (SDA) won a total of 20 seats, just short of a majority, the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) reported.   The ultra-nationalist Serb Democratic Party (SDS) took nine seats, the Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) had seven seats, and opposition parties gained the remainder, said the OSCE, which supervised the elections.   The House of Representatives is supposed to govern a union of Serb and Moslem-Croat territories, along with an upper chamber chosen by regional assemblies.   Laws passed by the House of Representatives would have to be reviewed by the upper house, which is strictly divided according to nationality.   The country's constitution, drawn up as part of the Dayton peace treaty, allows any of the three national communities to block measures which it considers "destructive to its vital interests."   Political analysts say the arrangement will almost certainly produce paralysis among the three factions, led by the same men who plunged the country into 3-1/2 years of war.   The SDA won their 20 seats by securing 55.7 percent of the vote in the Moslem-Croat federation, and refugee ballots gave it 17 percent of the vote in Serb territory.   The vote closely followed ethnic lines.   Moslems comprise more than 40 percent of the population, followed by Orthodox Christian Serbs and Roman Catholic Croats.   Even as ballots were still being counted, figures showing an extraordinarily high voter turnout raised concerns of widespread fraud.   OSCE officials said they were reviewing election figures after an independent agency charged the numbers for voter turnout were "improbably high".   The parliamentary elections also chose two regional assemblies.   In the Serb republic's National Assembly, the main Serb nationalist party obtained a majority, winning 50 out of 83 seats, according to partial results.   Even with the support of their allies in the Radical party, who had seven seats, the SDS would still lack the two-thirds majority needed to change the constitution.   Refugee voters managed to provide the Moslem SDA with six seats in the Serb assembly, a result sure to infuriate Serb nationalists.   In the 140-member assembly for the Moslem-Croat federation, the SDA received a majority of 80 seats, the Croat HDZ 33 seats, and two main opposition parties won 21 seats.   As results from last Saturday's election filtered in, Carl Bildt, international High Representative to Bosnia, and other Western diplomats were trying to resolve disputes that have already emerged in the newly-elected collective presidency.   Serb and Moslem members of the three-member executive have publicly clashed over where the presidency should meet, the length of the term for the presidency chair and the wording for an oath of office.   A spokesman for Bildt's office dismissed a proposal from the Serb president-elect Momcilo Krajisnik to have the presidency meet in a suburb on the boundary line between the Serb and Moslem-Croat federation.   "Sarajevo is Sarajevo.   The idea of the IEBL (Inter Entity Boundary Line) providing a way out sounds a little implausible," Michael Maclay told reporters.   Krajisnik has also insisted that the term of the chairman of the presidency should rotate every eight months.   But Maclay said the Dayton peace agreement made clear that the term should last two years.   Alija Izetbegovic, the 70-year old Moslem who served as the wartime president for Bosnia, narrowly defeated Krajisnik for the chairman's post in Saturday's general election.   Izetbegovic worked out of his offices in the presidency building in Sarajevo throughout the brutal Serb siege of the city.   Serb gunners loyal to the SDS repeatedly hit the building with artillery, mortar and sniper fire. 
19065 !GCAT !GDIP !GPOL !GVIO  The Croatian parliament on Friday passed a new amnesty law for minority Serbs and ratified a normalisation agreement with rump Yugoslavia reached last month, state radio reported.   The House of Representatives had also agreed to suspend sanctions temporarily against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, comprising Serbia and Montenegro, in line with an earlier U.N. resolution.   The moves were expected to improve already warming relations between the two key Balkan powers which emerged from the violent breakup of the former Communist federation.   Zagreb and Belgrade established full diplomatic relations a month ago, five years after they severed links when Croatia declared independence from Yugoslavia.   After the 1991 declaration of independence, Serbia sent the federal army to support rebel Serbs fighting to stay with Yugoslavia.   The rebels later carved out their own enclave.   The Croatian army reclaimed three out of four rebel-held areas held in two blitz offensives in May and August, 1995.   Under the recognition agreement, Croatia committed itself to a new amnesty law, covering all Croatian Serbs who took part in the 1991-95 rebellion, not only those living in the fourth rebel enclave -- Eastern Slavonia.   That region is supposed to be reintegrated gradually and peacefuly with the rest of the country under the supervision of the U.N. Transitional Administration (UNTAES).   Last May, Croatia approved an amnesty applying to Serbs living in the enclave.   But UNTAES criticised it as "too vague" and "insufficient to create confidence among the local Serb population".   UNTAES also complained the government had published an inconclusive list of some 800 Serbs who were excluded from pardon.   The U.N. Security Council urged Croatia to endorse a comprehensive amnesty law covering everyone, including those who served in the rebel military either voluntarily or by coercion, apart from war criminals.   Croatia radio said the law was passed on Friday after a "heated debate" in the parliament.   UNTAES spokesman Phillip Arnold said they were "pleased that the Croatian government has taken into consideration the statement of the U.N. Security Council".   But he said it was too early to say if the new law corrected the flaws of the previous one, adding: "It is complicated and our lawyers are studying it."   Although details of the bill were not made public before the parliamentiary debate, Croatian newspapers have printed summaries.   Slobodna Dalmacija said the pardon covers all acts comitted in relation to the armed conflict except for the most serious violations of humanitarian law which can be characterised as war crimes.   It said the Article Three of the bill lists 21 offences excluded from pardon including genocide, war crimes against civilians and prisoners-of-war, desecration of religious sites and destruction of historical monuments. 
19066 !E21 !E212 !E51 !ECAT !GCAT !GDIP  Russia plans to grant a $50 million credit to the Bosnian Serb government to rebuild the economy after the civil war, Interfax news agency quoted a government source as saying on Friday.   The report, which could not be confirmed, said Russia would give $20 million this year and $30 million in 1997.   Moscow joined western governments in making peace in Bosnia, but has been more sympathetic than the West to the Orthodox Christian Serbs, with whom Russia shares historic and cultural ties.   Most Western aid has gone to the Moslem-Croat federation.   Interfax said Russian deputy finance minister Mikhail Kasaynov had invited the Bosnian Serbs' trade, supply and economic relations minister Spasoje Albijnic to visit Moscow on September 24.   --Julie Tolkacheva, Moscow Newsroom, +7095 941 8520 
19067 !C12 !C13 !C16 !CCAT !GCAT !GCRIM  The Czech government has asked for help from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to help probe the failure of Plzen-based Kreditni Banka a.s., Finance Minister Ivan Kocarnik said on Friday.   He said Czech National Bank Gov. Josef Tosovsky had said the FBI could help with its experience in unwinding the savings and loans failures in the United States in the 1980s.   "Gov. Tosovsky informed me, that FBI experts were invited because they had troubles with financial criminality with small savings banks in the U.S.," Kocarnik told a news conference.   "They managed to find a solution."   The minister said it was necessary to bring in specialists who could sift through the case, such as the probe of debt swaps where complicated derivatives, which bordered "on the edge of the law," were used.   "My opinion in this is, that there should be teams of specialists," Kocarnik said.   In August, the Czech National Bank rescinded the license of the insolvent bank with losses estimated at nearly 12 billion crowns ($450.6 million) after a complicated series of non-performing loans and debt swaps.   On Tuesday, the CNB put another bank, Agrobanka a.s. under forced administration, saying it had become illiquid partly because of its ties to Kreditni and the secretive investment group Motoinvest.   The Czech government, under heavy political pressure from the opposition, has set up a special commission of ministers to lead the investigation of Kreditni's failure. 
19068 !GCAT !GPOL !GVIO !GVOTE  Independent monitors said on Friday more than 100 percent of the maximum possible electorate apparently voted in Bosnia's elections and they demanded an investigation before results were certified.   After days of exhaustive number-crunching of preliminary figures provided by international election supervisors, the monitors concluded the voter turnout was "improbably high".   The three main Moslem, Serb and Croat nationalist parties that dismembered Bosnia in war and agreed to peace in late 1995 under Western pressure romped to election victories in their respective domains last Saturday.   Bosnian President Alija Izetbegovic, a Moslem, won the senior seat of a new tripartite presidency, narrowly defeating a Serb separatist who, with a Croat, took the other two seats.   The Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe, which organised the vote, and an OSCE-affiliated observer team reported that the elections -- for a presidency, parliament and regional assemblies -- were generally free of irregularities.   But the International Crisis Group (ICG), a respected private agency monitoring the peace process, said its own inquiry turned up discrepancies that cast serious doubt on the integrity of the elections.   "Something stinks big time here.   All three sides come out of these elections looking pretty black," a Western official familiar with the ICG probe told Reuters.   "The Moslems, in particular, may have stuffed ballot boxes big time because they were so desperate to have Izetbegovic beat (Serb candidtate Momcilo) Krajisnik."   OSCE official Nicole Szulc said its experts were examining their figures in view of the ICG report.   "We take these allegations very seriously.   Clearly something's wrong somewhere," she said.   U.N. figures used by OSCE planners put the total of eligible voters at 2.91 million -- 1.34 million in their original homes, 675,000 displaced within Bosnia and 900,000 refugees abroad.   Preliminary final OSCE figures said 2,431,554 ballots were cast.   But ICG deputy director John Fawcett said significant numbers of people did not vote, meaning there could not possibly have been 2.43 million valid ballots under the "one man-one vote" principle.   Quoting OSCE figures, he said only 641,000 of the potential 900,000 refugee voters registered to vote, reducing the maximum possible voter pool to 2.66 million.   In this case, if 2.43 million voters cast ballots for the presidency, turnout would have been 91.4 percent.   "To put these figures into context, turnout in the 1990 elections was 74.4 percent when only 2.33 million voted," he said.   This was before tens of thousands of war casualties and the displacement of more than 1.5 million people.   Fawcett said the initial calculation of a 91.4 percent turnout, a plateau historically equalled only in the rigged one-party elections of communist countries, rose to 103.9 percent when other key factors were considered:   -- Only 14,700 people crossed Bosnia's internal communal boundaries to vote in former home areas out of a potential of about 150,000 who did not register to vote absentee.   -- A maximum of 98,400 out of 123,000 Bosnian Serb refugees now in Yugoslavia returned to vote in person, OSCE figures said, although Bosnian Serb authorities estimated only 37,000 actually came back.   -- Of 260,000 Moslem and Croat refugees from Serb terrain, and now living in states other than Yugoslavia, who registered to vote absentee, only about 100,000 appeared to have voted.   "If these highly conservative assumptions are correct, the maximum number of voters should have been 2,341,100, which would give a voter turnout of 103.9 percent," said Fawcett.   He said the ICG calculations did not account for the estimated five percent of the electorate who tried to vote but could not because their names were missing from voter registers.   Diplomats said there was only one confirmed case of ballot- box stuffing but security and technical standards were so lax in some polling areas that abuses were inevitable.   ICG director Sir Terrence Clark said municipal elections planned for November would have no credibility unless the OSCE overhauled registration procedures for refugees abroad and corrected voter lists in Bosnia. 
19069 !GCAT !GDIP  Russian Foreign Minister Yevgeny Primakov will visit China by the end of the year, a ministry spokesman said on Friday.   He gave no further details.   Deputy foreign ministers from the two countries met on Friday in Moscow to plan details of the long-expected trip, the latest in a series of contacts marking considerably warmer relations between the two former communist rivals.   President Boris Yeltsin visited China in April, when Moscow and Beijing signed a number of economic and security agreements.   Russian officials look to China as a possible role model for a transition economy and a vast potential market for Russian products, notably defence hardware.   Representatives of the two countries will discuss further details of Primakov's visit on October 9 and 10 in Moscow, Russia's Itar-Tass news agency said on Friday. 
19070 !GCAT !GPOL !GVOTE  The Belarussian parliament appealed on Friday to President Alexander Lukashenko and opposition deputies to settle their differences and cancel a planned referendum on revising the constitution.   A resolution called on Lukashenko, who wants the new constitution to give him broader powers, and leftist deputies, who want to hold a vote on a draft which scraps the presidency altogether, to set up a joint commission to find a compromise.   Deputies voted 105 for the resolution and 28 against.   Lukashenko, nostalgic for the Soviet era, has called a referendum on a new constitution which he says will enable him to rule for 10 more years and appoint one third of the members of a new upper house of parliament.   He wants the vote in the former Soviet republic to take place on November 7, anniversary of the 1917 Bolshevik revolution, along with plebiscites on other issues -- upholding capital punishment, banning private land ownership and changing the national holiday.   Deputies, inspired by leftist agrarians and communists, called a referendum for November 24 on their own constitution -- abolishing the post of president.   "This is an attempt to find a wise compromise.   The parliament is trying to start a dialogue and end rivalry between the branches of power," said Mechislav Grib, a centrist deputy.   "There is no need for changes to the constitutional order, because this can cause a civil war."   But pro-presidential deputies were quick to denounce the parliamentary resolution and have said the president would not back the idea of cancelling his referendum.   "This 'zero option' would, of course, not satisfy the president," said deputy Vladimir Konoplyev.   "It is an attempt to deny the president's right to call a referendum on whatever issue he may want."   The chairman of parliament last week accused Lukashenko of dragging the country towards Nazi-style dictatorship.   Lukashenko became Belarus's first post-Soviet president two years ago on a platform of fighting corruption and pressing for a union with neighbouring Russia.   He has since suspended trade unions, hobbled the country's press and put the brakes on market reforms.   Up to 200 people were given short jail terms for attending mass demonstrations last spring against his signing of a pact to create a "community" with Russia. 
19071 !E21 !E211 !ECAT !G15 !G158 !GCAT !GWELF  Poland needs to reform its outdated pension system, a major hurdle in creating long-term sustainable growth that would help accession to the European Union, a World Bank official said on Friday.   "Poland has a (pension) system which over the medium- to long-term will get out of control," said Michel Noel, the chief of country operations in Central Europe for the World Bank.   Noel said if Poland did not reform its costly pay-as-you-go pension systems it would increasingly burden the budget and, over time, the country would not be able to meet fiscal requirements of EU entry, expected between 2000 and 2002.   He said pension reform would help clear the path for long-term economic growth as well as help in creating a strong capital and financial market, needed to accomodate huge cash inflows usually associated with EU accession.   "Deepening the capital market is one one of the most important things for Poland...and setting up private pension funds is one way to do this," he told Reuters in an interview.   The World Bank on Friday ended a two-week fact-finding mission on a report, due to be published in February 1997, dealing with the economic trade-offs that Poland must make on its road to the Union.   Noel said Poland was in a good situation because it had the assets to pay for a significant portion of the transition costs of pension reform.   "Through privatisation Poland has the assets to pay for a part of this cost...which should not exceed one to two percent of the country's gross domestic product in any year," he said.   He said Poland could also streamline the efficiency of its present system to ease the reform strain on the budget.   From the start of October, the Polish goverment will set up an office to tackle the complicated pension overhaul, which Noel said should put reform into an "operational mode."   Noel praised Poland for its economic growth, reaching a high of seven percent last year, which was the main task of a macro-economic policy aimed at bringing the formerly communist country closer to the European Union.   "The main objective of a macro-economic policy is a high rate of growth leading up to EU accession and from this perspective Poland is on the right track," he said.   He said the World Bank planned to aid the Polish economy with between $400 and $500 million per year in further development, including private sector, regional and infrastructure schemes.   -- Warsaw Newsroom +48 22 653 9700 
19072 !GCAT !GHEA  The mayor of Bucharest threatened on Friday to sue Romania's education ministry over a decision to start the new school year next week despite a meningitis epidemic which has killed 39 people.   "As long as the cause of the epidemic remains unkown and sanitary conditions in schools are bad the new (school) year must not start," Bucharest general mayor Victor Ciorbea told a news conference.   Education Minister Liviu Maior said earlier his ministry had decided that classes should resume next Monday.   The epidemic, which began at the end of July, has stricken more than 450 people including 53 children across Romania.   Ciorbea said Bucharest city hall would sue the education ministry unless it withdrew its order.   He said the decision was illegal and the city had issued a decree ordering schools to remain closed until October 1 to allow for thorough sanitation checks.   "The municipal laws are very clear: in case of a disaster or an epidemic it is for the mayor to decide on matters concerning public institutions, schools included," he said.   "Starting classes is a big risk as neither the cause nor the way the disease is spreading is known."   Meningitis is usually spread through poor hygiene.   Inquiries so far revealed that 55 schools in Bucharest had badly-damaged sewers and three had no sewers at all.   The health ministry sent test samples for identification to Britain's Collindale Institute after experts from Pasteur Institute of France failed to identify the virus which triggered the epidemic.   Ciorbea said Bucharest allocated 1.0 billion lei ($310,000) last week for an emergency programme to improve hygiene in schools.   The viral disease, which has spread to nearly half of Romania with most cases registered in Bucharest, affects the gastro-intestinal tract and causes high fever, headaches and vomiting. 
19073 !GCAT !GPOL !GVOTE  Armenian President Levon Ter-Petrosyan and his ally-turned-challenger Vazgen Manukyan have sharpened verbal attacks on each other as the campaign for Sunday's presidential election draws to a close.   Ter-Petrosyan, seeking five more years in office, said on Friday a Manukyan victory would bring back social upheaval after several years of relative stability following the break-up of the Soviet Union.   But he acknowledged Armenia's deep poverty.   "Many of our people live poorly.   There are demagogues who are fooling the naive and promising them the good life.   These people will bring the country war," he told a cheering crowd of several hundred on the steps of his official residence.   "We have achieved stability, security and we have a country that is respected in the world.   But there is a danger of losing everything," he said.   Just a month ago Ter-Petrosyan, an aloof 50-year-old academic, looked poised for an easy win in the Caucasus nation of 3.5 million he has led since independence from Moscow.   But Manukyan has waged an aggressive campaign and has clearly benefitted from the support of other opposition candidates who have dropped out of the race and backed him.   Once Petrosyan's prime minister, Manukyan has run on pledges of sharply improved living standards.   He has poured scorn on Petrosyan's criticism that this is populist rhetoric and says he would fulfill pledges to revive stalled heavy industry and spur investment.   Although Armenia's economy has shown marked improvement in the last year, most people in the rugged mountain nation are still mired in poverty.   The fragility of the peace achieved with neighbouring Azerbaijan after the war over the enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh also continues to cloud Armenia's future.   "We promise people what we can actually do.   The president has shown he doesn't take responsibility for anything," Manukyan, a 50-year-old physicist, told a news conference.   Manukyan also wants to throw out Armenia's new constitution, which he says gives too much power to the president.   He predicted he would unseat Ter-Petrosyan and win at least 60 percent of the vote on Sunday.   But a Ter-Petrosyan aide said the president was still optimistic of winning the 50 percent needed in the first round to avoid a head-to-head runoff a fortnight later.   "The president hasn't changed the way he feels.   He is still confident he will prevail in the first round," said Hovhannes Igityan, a top campaign official.   Armenian opinion polls are treated with caution.   They have shown Ter-Petrosyan leading but also indicate a definite surge in support for Manukyan.   Though he has been more visible in recent days, Ter-Petrosyan has run a generally low-key campaign which fits in with his enigmatic, aloof image.   Some of his closest associates have said he should have been more forceful earlier.   "Maybe we were wrong about our tactics, or maybe it was overconfidence.   Maybe it has cost us votes, but we don't believe in making populist promises or printing money before an election.   Our economy is too fragile for this," said Igityan.   Some 2.4 million people are eligible to go the polls and several dozen international observers are to monitor voting.   They say they are confident changes to electoral procedures will help maximise the chances for a clean contest.   A parliamentary vote last year was slammed by international monitors as "unfair" and plagued by irregularities. 
19074 !GCAT !GPOL !GVOTE  Estonian president Lennart Meri was re-elected to head the former Soviet republic on Friday after a humiliating five-round battle against arch-rival Arnold Ruutel.   A specially convened electoral assembly in the small Baltic state finally gave him its backing, with Meri winning 196 votes from the 372 assembly members present for the final vote on Friday afternoon.   Ruutel, a deputy parliamentary speaker, won 126 votes.   The others present did not vote.   The result was announced to polite applause in the Estonia concert hall in capital of Tallinn by Enn Markvart, chairman of the National Election Commission.   Estonia's Foreign Minister, Siim Kallas, said he was satisfied with the result as his party, the Reform Party, had backed Meri for president.   "We now have a stable framework to go ahead," Kallas told reporters after the result was announced.   "This is probably the best option for political powers as well as for the foreign ministry."   Meri's re-election ends what has been a humiliating struggle to win enough support to secure a second term, this time of five years, in the small country that won independence from the former Soviet Union in 1991.   Despite his high international standing as a spokesman for Estonia, the charismatic Meri, 67, has lost support in the 101-member parliament in recent years, accused of taking too much power for what is supposed to be a ceremonial role.   MPs have attacked him for acting without consulting other branches of government.   The main criticism is that he signed a deal in Moscow in 1994 for the withdrawal of Russian troops from Estonia without consulting parliament.   This agreement was also seen as leaving too many former Soviet military personnel in Estonia.   Nationalists have also criticised him for intervening with legislation that affects Estonia's large Russian minority although western diplomats have applauded his interventions as watering down laws that would have been too harsh.   The presidential battle began before parliament last month but in three rounds of voting neither Meri nor Ruutel managed to win the 68 votes needed for a clear mandate.   The speaker was then compelled to convene an electoral college, consisting of the 101 MPs and 273 local government representatives, to hold another vote.   Five candidates stood in the first round of voting before the electoral assembly on Friday morning including Meri, Ruutel, right-wing nationalist Tunne Kelam, left-of-centre MP and the one female candidate Siiri Oviir, and academic Enn Tougu.   No one candidate won a clear majority but the two top scorers, Meri with 139 votes and and Ruutel with 85, went forward to another round on Friday afternoon which Meri finally won.   The battle was a re-run of the 1992 presidential election when Ruutel, a silver-haired former senior communist and a leader of Estonia's drive to regain independence, won a national vote but was rejected in favour of Meri by parliament. 
19075 !GCAT !GVIO  Russian troops will resume their withdrawal from Chechnya on Saturday, in line with the latest accord between Kremlin envoy Alexander Lebed and separatist rebels, a military source told Itar-Tass news on Friday.   The general commanding Moscow's forces in the breakaway region had suspended the pullout almost as soon as it began last week because of a dispute with the separatists over the exchange of prisoners.   They accused him of dangerous brinkmanship.   Lebed, the Kremlin security chief who signed an ambitious peace accord on August 31, was forced to return to Chechnya on Tuesday to smooth over the tensions and persuade the army to resume the withdrawal, which he had pledged in return for a ceasefire.   Soldiers not regularly stationed in the military district which includes Chechnya are to leave in the first of a two-stage pullout which will last about two months, Tass quoted a source in the federal troops' Chechnya headquarters as saying.   The separatist leadership formally approved the outcome of Tuesday's meeting between Lebed and the president of their self-styled Ichkeria republic, Zelimkhan Yanderabiyev.   "The state defence council of the republic of Ichkeria ...completely approved the results of the meetings...with Lebed," spokesman Movladi Udugov told Tass.   Yandarbiyev may be shortly go to Moscow for further negotiations, he said.   Interfax news agency quoted an unnamed source on Thursday as saying Yandarbiyev would arrive on Monday.   Russian officials are due to meet on Saturday to discuss the next moves in Chechnya, but Tass said Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin, who chaired a similar session last weekend, would not attend.   It was also not clear if Lebed would be there.   Lebed and Chernomyrdin appear to be caught up in a power struggle over Lebed's Chechnya plan, with President Boris Yeltsin taking a back seat role ahead of a planned heart operation.   Lebed, Yeltsin's personal envoy to Chechnya, and Yanderbiyev agreed on Tuesday to the priniciple of forming a coalition government involving pro-Moscow Chechen factions and to the demilitarisation of the capital, Grozny.   But federal troops accused rebels of opening fire on them on Friday and an officer quoted be Tass accused separatist forces of breaking cooperation agreements by making their own patrols in Grozny, scene of at least one clash on Thursday.   The August 31 deal, intended to halt a 21-month-old conflict in which tens of thousands of people were killed, included a five-year deferral of the question of Chechnya's future status.   The latest plan calls for two, month-long pullouts.   Federal troops normally stationed in regions outside the North Caucasus military district, which includes Chechnya, will leave first.   North Caucasus troops will move beyond Chechnya's borders in the second stage, leaving behind only a few federal troops in the region, news agencies said.   The army makes no secret of its feeling that Lebed sold it short by agreeing to pull out without repeating the demand of previous peace deals that the rebels must disarm.   Officers say rebels will retake the entire territory after they pull out.   Lebed in turn has said he has not received much backing from Moscow for his mission -- many Moscow politicians are distancing themselves from the deal, which fails to silence rebel demands for independence.   Yeltsin, who has given Lebed only guarded approval, said on September 5 that a troop withdrawal should be done slowly. 
19076 !GCAT !GPOL !GVOTE  Estonian president Lennart Meri was re-elected on Friday after a specially convened electoral assembly finally gave him its backing.   Meri was forced to go through five rounds of voting in the small Baltic state before finally beating arch-rival Arnold Ruutel in the second of Friday's electoral assembly votes.   Meri won the backing of 196 of the 372 members of electoral college present for the final vote.   Ruutel, Meri's communist-era predecessor, won 126 votes.   The result was announced to polite applause in the Estonia concert hall.   It ends what has been a humiliating struggle for Meri to win the backing of parliamentarians and local government representatives who made up the electoral assembly.   This gives Meri, 67, a second term of office, extended to five from four years, to lead Estonia which won back its independence from the former Soviet Union in 1991. 
19077 !C42 !CCAT !E41 !ECAT !GCAT !GJOB  A distraught Russian miner who had not been paid for several months blew himself up with a grenade on a street in the Siberian region of Kemerovo, Itar-Tass news agency said.   The agency quoted an Interior Ministry spokesman as saying that no one else was injured in the incident.   Police found three more grenades at the home of the 38-year-old miner, who worked as a tunneller in the "Sibirskaya" mine.   It was the latest sign of desparation among millions of Russian workers who go unpaid for long periods.   Power workers in the Far East launched a strike on Monday and defence workers there and in the Far North began a series of protests on Thursday which included a one-day strike by workers servicing nuclear submarines.   Miners in various parts of the country went on strike in July over unpaid wages. 
19078 !GCAT !GCRIM  Albanian Interior Minister Halit Shamata said on Friday he would restructure the police force to better tackle an upsurge in organised crime in the small Balkan nation.   "We need to change, improve and coordinate all our structures...(to fight) organised crime," Shamata told a news conference.   The minister lambasted Albania's judicial system for being too lenient towards criminals.   "We simply ask the courts to apply the law," Shamata said.   He said that although there was a 20 percent fall in the number of crimes in the first eight months of this year from the same period a year ago the number of people killed in crime-related incidents had risen, as had the figure for those carrying weapons.   "The law on arms needs to be changed," he said.   A series of violent crimes has shocked Albania.   This month two people were killed in crossfire between rival gangsters.   Last month, two policemen who were brothers were killed in an ambush.   In July a police chief and a prison chief were shot dead, allegedly by gangsters. 
19079 !C33 !C331 !CCAT !GCAT !GDEF  Poland is likely to buy anti-tank missiles worth $500 million from Israel rather than the United States for its planned new combat helicopter, a senior government official said on Friday.   Cabinet chief-of-staff Leszek Miller said the government's defence committee (KSORM) had tentatively agreed to conclude the deal with Israel but military experts needed to further examine the missile before a final decision is taken.   "KSORM discussed the issue on Thursday and it seems to have taken a decision that concludes the matter (of buying Israeli missiles)," Miller told a news briefing after returing from a three-day visit to Israel.   He said a group of Polish military experts would go to Israel in November to examine technical details of the Raphael misile manufactured by Elbit Ltd.   "They need to evaluate how the missile functions in practice," Miller said, confirming the purchase would be worth $500 million.   The missile would be installed on 150 Huzar combat helicopters, which the armed forces want to buy from the domestic PZL Swidnik firm.   The defence committee's decision appears to bury hopes of the U.S. company Rockwell, which wanted to sell Poland its remotely-piloted Hellfire missiles. 
19080 !GCAT !GCRIM !GPOL  A Yugoslav opposition leader was given a suspended four-month jail sentence on Friday after a court found him guilty of libel over allegations he made against Serbian Prime Minister Mirko Marjanovic.   Zoran Djindjic, leader of the opposition Democratic Party, made allegations against Marjanovic involving a wheat and gas deal with Russia in a paid advertisement run in the Belgrade weekly Telegraf last January.   Belgrade district court sentenced him to four months' jail, suspended for two years.   It cleared the newspaper of any wrongdoing.   The court gave Djindjic 15 days in which to lodge an appeal.   His defence lawyer told reporters he would appeal, though Djindjic himself told Reuters he was not sure whether he would.   His laywer described the sentence as lenient, saying his client could have faced up to three years in jail under Yugoslav law.   Djindjic argued he had not intended to belittle Marjanovic but to warn the public about alleged abuses of power.   The Serbian government rallied to the prime minister's defence, saying all his dealings were in keeping with the law.   Djindjic called the decision politically motivated but said it would not stop him speaking out over what he regarded as government abuses of power.   He told a news conference after the ruling that he was grateful to the public prosecutor for bringing the trial since it had given the public an opportunity to see how the government operated "and see for themselves the extent of the despair that these authorities have brought us to".   Djindic described the court's ruling as a compromise "to the extent that a naive part of the public will believe the honour of Mirko Marjanovic has been saved while international public opinion will not be upset because members of the opposition are not being arrested". 
19081 !GCAT !GPOL !GPRO  Boris Yeltsin is not alone as he prepares for his heart operation.   His wife is receiving treatment in the same clinic and his daughter may be there too.   The Russian president's wife Naina, who had a kidney operation on August 24, has been in the Central Clinical Hospital ever since.   Sergei Mironov, head of the presidential medical centre, said on Friday she was staying on mainly to support her husband.   "Naina Iosifovna is a remarkable and unique person who clearly has an exceptional relationship with Boris Nikolayevich (Yeltsin) and, of course, the main reason for her stay is psychological support," he told a news briefing.   The weekly newspaper Argumenty i Fakty said that Yeltsin's elder daughter Tatyana, a key figure in her father's political entourage since his re-election campaign, was also being treated at the elite general clinic for a bout of influenza.   "But every cloud has a silver lining.   Apart from treatment she has the opportunity to be near to her father and mother and visit them more often," it said.   The newspaper report, which quoted "well informed sources" but did not say when Tatyana had been admitted, could not immediately be confirmed with the Kremlin. 
19082 !GCAT !GCRIM !GDIP !GVIO  Bosnian Serb police in the northern town of Prijedor handed over unauthorised submachine guns as demanded by NATO on Friday but their notorious police chief had yet to step down, an alliance spokesman said.   Major Simon Haselock said Serb police turned over the banned weapons an hour before a midday deadline set by the NATO- led peace implementation force (IFOR).   "At 11 o'clock this morning 11 weapons were surrendered to IFOR at the Prijedor police station," Haselock told a news conference in Sarajevo.   Admiral Joseph Lopez, NATO commander in Bosnia, issued a 48- hour ultimatum on Wednesday demanding Serb authorities turn over the guns and sack Prijedor police chief Simo Drljaca, who threatened Czech IFOR troops in an incident on Monday.   Shortly after the deadline expired at midday on Friday, NATO spokesman could not confirm whether Drljaca had stepped down.   Admiral Lopez and Lieutenant General Michael Walker, the commander of NATO ground forces in Bosnia, discussed the issue with Momcilo Krajisnik, the newly-elected Serb member of Bosnia's collective presidency, on Thursday evening.   The NATO officers made clear that the removal of Drljaca was "an urgent matter, of the utmost importance, that requires resolution," Haselock said.   Krajisnik appeared to grasp "the gravity of the situation".   Haselock said NATO would not discuss how it would respond if the Serbs failed to comply.   "What we are going decide to do if this (compliance) is not achieved is for us to call as far what we do, when we do it and how we do it."   A spokesman for Admiral Lopez on Thursday condemned Drljaca and his men for acting "like common thugs and criminals" after a confrontation between the police chief and Czech troops.   Drljaca refused to surrender an unauthorised M-5 machine pistol to a Czech IFOR patrol on Monday and fired a shot into the air.   Drljaca later called in 10 of his own men armed with banned AK-47 rifles to surround the Czechs, who later decided to withdraw.   NATO sources, who asked not to be named, said they still expected Serb authorities to remove Drljaca.   If the Serbs refused, NATO would probably not launch a "manhunt" immediately but would take steps to restrict movement on the roads around Prijedor as a first step.   As police chief in the northwest district of Prijedor, Drljaca led paramilitary and police units in a campaign of terror and ethnic expulsions against local Moslems and Croats, human rights workers say.   Some of the war's worst crimes took place in the Prijedor area, where Serb forces destroyed mosques and set up detention camps for Moslems and Croats. 
19083 !GCAT !GDEF !GDIP  Slovenian Prime Minister Janez Drnovsek said on Friday the ex-Yugoslav republic had a good chance of being among the first wave of eastern European states to join NATO.   He said senior government officials in the U.S., Germany, Britain, France and Italy had all expressed strong support for Slovenia's plans to join the 16-member Western military pact.   "Membership in NATO is very important because it would ensure greater political stability for Slovenia which is an important element of retaining economic stability," Drnovsek told a news conference.   The Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland are seen as front-runners for NATO entry, possibly as early as next year.   Drnovsek said Slovenia had lagged behind the candidates for early NATO membership primarily because of the crisis in the former Yugoslavia, and had only this year managed to catch up.   Slovenia, which faces its third mulit-party general elections on November 10, in June signed an association agreement with the European Union and hopes to become a full member of the EU by the year 2001. 
19084 !E21 !E212 !E51 !ECAT !GCAT  The World Bank said on Friday it had approved a $50 million loan for Romania to finance a higher education reform project.   "The project will assist in reforming the higher education system in Romania...promote better access to higher education for talented but needy students," a bank statement said.   It said the bank was funding about 60 percent of the total cost of the project estimated at $84 million.   The Romanian government and the European Union will provide the rest.   The 20-year loan, with a grace period of five years, bears the standard World Bank interest rate.   The higher education reform project aims to develop undergraduate and postgraduate education and improve the training of academic staff.   The World Bank had previously backed education reforms in Romania with a $50 million loan signed in 1994.   It now has under preparation some 12 projects focusing on Romanian infrastructure, agriculture, telecoms and school rehabilitation.   Romania, East Europe's second largest borrower from the World Bank, also expects the second tranche worth $80 million of a World Bank $280 million financial and enterprise sector adjustment loan in the four quarter of 1996.   -- Mirela Eremia, Bucharest Newsroom 40-1 3120264 
19085 !GCAT !GPOL  Communist leader Gennady Zyuganov, who lost the Russian presidency to Boris Yeltsin less than three months ago, said on Friday he was best placed to become the next Kremlin leader.   He accused allies of Yeltsin, who is in hospital preparing for heart surgery, of concealing health problems before the poll and said they were manouvering for an early election.   "Those who worked with Yeltsin and said he was in perfect shape and quite healthy knew quite well what was really going on," Zyuganov told Reuters in an interview.   "Their lies and hypocricy show they knew perfectly well he would not be able to work.   They viewed his election campaign as a chance...to run their own campaigns, which are now on show."   Zyuganov said other possible contenders for the Kremlin had "two or three times less chance than I do as the candidate of the National Patriotic Union".   The union, led by Zyuganov's Communist Party, unites all major opposition forces.   Zyuganov, speaking earlier at a news conference, listed as possible rivals Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin, powerful Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov and Russia's security chief Alexander Lebed -- all members of Yeltsin's team.   "It is quite obvious that there is a behind-the-scenes struggle on Yeltsin's own political ground among the three men who backed him so actively," he said.   Both Chernomyrdin, who will take over from Yeltsin during the operation, and Luzhkov campaigned heavily for the president.   Lebed opposed him in the first round but joined Yeltsin's team after finishing a strong third in the first round with nearly 11 million votes.   This helped Yeltsin to victory against Zyuganov.   The communist leader, who won over 30 million votes but still finished far behind Yeltsin in the runoff vote on July 3, has kept a low profile since then.   But now, with uncertainty over Yeltsin's ability to recover fully after the expected bypass operation, Zyuganov, 52, is increasingly vociferous.   He said he was the most "legitimate candidate", not least because he had made his medical record public before the poll.   "Being of Orthodox thinking, I think it is immoral to talk about (possible sucessors) while the person is healthy, is alive," Zyuganov said, adding he was ready for a broad political dialogue with different forces for the sake of stability.   He said it was too early to forecast Russia's political future before the outcome of Yeltsin's operation was clear, but issued a gloomy if somewhat vague warning.   "Let us wait.   It is just two weeks left but in any case we are on the brink of very serious changes," he told Reuters. 
19086 !GCAT !GPOL !GVOTE  Estonian president Lennart Meri was forced to take his battle for re-election to a second round of voting before an electoral college on Friday where he will again face arch-rival Arnold Ruutel in the fight to lead this former Soviet Baltic state.   The two fought through three rounds of voting in parliament last month when neither received the necessary backing of 68 of the 101 MPs to win a clear mandate.   The electoral assembly, of 101 MPs and 273 local government representatives, was called to break the deadlock but once again no candidate secured the majority needed in a first round on Friday morning.   Of the 372 electors present, Meri won 139 votes while Ruutel got the support of 85.   The two face each other in a second vote starting at 1600 local time, 1300 GMT.   The battle between Meri and Ruutel is a re-run of the 1992 presidential election battle when Ruutel, a silver-haired former senior communist and a leader of Estonia's drive to regain independence in 1991, won a national vote but was rejected in favour of the charismatic Meri by parliament.   Meri, 67, a former film director, faced Ruutel and three other candidates in the first round of the assembly vote.   Right-wing nationalist Tunne Kalam, 60, had been expected to do well but only secured 76 votes.   Left-of-centre MP and the only female candidate, Siiri Oviir, gained 25 votes while Estonian/Swedish academic Enn Tougu got 47 votes.   Ruutel, 68, was retiscent after the first round on Friday, limiting his remarks to saying his changes of election were good.   "I have already said it will be up to the assembly to decide and I have nothing more to say," Ruutel told Reuters.   Meri's failure easily to win re-election despite his high international standing as a spokesman for his small country came as MPs punished him for what they regard as an abuse of power in what is supposed to be a ceremonial role.   They have attacked him for acting without consulting other branches of government.   The main criticism is that he signed a deal in Moscow to withdraw Russian troops from Estonia in 1994 without consulting parliament.   This agreement was also seen as leaving too many former Soviet military personnel in Estonia.   Nationalists have also critised him for intervening with legislation that affects Estonia's large Russia minority, although western diplomats have applauded his interventions as watering down laws that would have been too harsh.   Some politicians on Friday said they thought that even a second round of voting by the assembly would not break the deadlock although newspapers have called for a decision to stop the election being dubbed a farce.   "If even the electoral college cannot elect a president then we might have a serious political crisis," leading newspaper Eesti Paevaleht said in an editorial on Friday.   If the assembly fails to give either candidate a majority in the second round, the election will revert to parliament and the whole process start again. 
19087 !GCAT !GPOL !GPRO  A top Russian doctor, announcing the extension of President Boris Yeltsin's hospital stay, said on Friday that the president faced a "big and serious" operation on his heart.   Following is a chronology of Yeltsin's heart problems, both real and rumoured.   October 1991 - Yeltsin is ordered to take two weeks' rest after aides said he had suffered minor heart problems.   February 1992 - Yeltsin tells French television: "I have never had any heart trouble.   Every day I have a cold shower -- I am in very good shape."   July 1995 - Yeltsin goes into hospital with an ischaemic heart condition -- a blood supply problem.   He spends two weeks in hospital followed by two weeks in a sanatorium.   October 26, 1995 - Yeltsin is taken to hospital and doctors say it is again an ischaemic heart condition.   He moves to the sanatorium a month later and leaves on New Year's Eve.   June 28, 1996 - Yeltsin misses a meeting with farmers between the two rounds of the Russian presidential election.   Aides say he has a sore throat.   August 2, 1996 - A Yeltsin aide says the president is suffering from "colossal weariness" after his election campaign and needs two months of peace and quiet.   August 9, 1996 - In his first public appearance since June 26, Yeltsin takes his oath of office.   He appears for just 16 minutes and speaks for only 45 seconds.   August 19, 1996 - Yeltsin's spokesman denies a report in U.S. magazine Time, which said that Yeltsin would go to a Swiss clinic for a heart bypass operation after suffering further heart problems in the second half of July.   August 23, 1996 - The Kremlin press office denies a press report that Yeltsin will have treatment at a special clinic.   Sept 5, 1996 - Yeltsin, in a shock announcement breaking with secretive Kremlin tradition, says he has agreed to have heart surgery, later announced to be a heart bypass operation, probably to take place at the end of the month in Moscow.   Sept 12, 1996 - NTV commercial television says foreign doctors will participate in Yeltsin's surgery.   Sept 13, 1996 - Yeltsin goes into Moscow's Central Clinical Hospital for a weekend of pre-surgery tests.   Sept 16-17, 1996 - The Kremlin twice says Yeltsin's hospital visit will be extended, initially for two days, then for the rest of the week.   Sept 19, 1996, Kremlin spokesman Sergei Yastrzhembsky says doctors will meet on September 25 to set the date for Yeltsin's operation.   Sept 20, 1996 - Top Kremlin doctor Sergei Mironov says Yeltsin's surgery will be "big and serious".   He extends the president's pre-surgery hospital stay for a third time. 
19088 !GCAT !GPOL !GPRO  Doctors preparing President Boris Yeltsin for heart surgery are looking at all possible problem areas and Yeltsin like other people has problems with other organs, a top Russian doctor said on Friday.   Sergei Mironov, head of the presidential medical centre, told a televised news briefing that all organs had to be taken into account during preparation for bypass surgery.   "All of us during our lives acquire quite a lot of different problems with our organs and unfortunately Boris Nikolayevich (Yeltsin) has them too," he said.    Mironov said coronary bypass surgery usually involved younger patients where the risk of complications was lower.   Yeltsin is 65.   He said Yeltsin was staying in hospital so that doctors could prepare thoroughly for the operation.   "One cannot just consider the operation as on one organ alone, of course it will touch upon many other organs and systems and we must be absolutely sure of preserving their functions," he said, listing blood circulation, kidneys, liver and lungs as areas which the doctors would watch.   Yeltsin agreed earlier this month to have an operation on his heart and said it would take place at the end of September.   He went into hospital last Friday for tests and his stay has already been extended three times. 
19089 !GCAT !GPOL !GVOTE  A vote by a specially convened electoral assembly to elect a new president for the Baltic state of Estonia was due to go into a second round on Friday afternoon.   Incumbent president Lennart Meri was forced into the second round after failing to secure more than half of the vote of the asembly on Friday morning when he was pitted against four other candidates.    Meri, 67, will face political arch-rival Arnold Ruutel, 68, in the second round.   The vote is due to take place at around 1300 GMT.   Meri received 139 votes from the 372 members of the electoral college present on Friday morning while Ruutel secured 85 votes.   The two top scorers go to a second round.   Right-wing nationalist Tunne Kelam, expected to be strong candidate, came third with 76 votes, academic Enn Tougu followed with 47, while the only female candidate, Siiri Oviir, came fifth with 25.   The electoral college was convened after Estonia's 101-member parliament failed three times last month to give either Meri or Ruutel the required 68 votes to secure the presidency. 
19090 !GCAT !GPOL !GPRO  President Boris Yeltsin's coming heart operation will be "very big and very serious", Sergei Mironov, the head of the Kremlin medical centre, said on Friday.   "We must understand that the person is preparing for a very responsible and a very serious operation," Mironov told a televised news briefing.   "A big and serious operation is ahead and it needs adequately large, balanced and serious preparations, because you all understand what is at stake."    Mironov said Yeltsin's stay at the Central Clinical Hospital has been extended for another three or four days in view of a doctors' council expected to take place next week.   Yeltsin went into hospital last Friday and doctors initially said the tests would last for only a weekend. 
19091 !GCAT !GPOL !GPRO  Russian President Boris Yeltsin will stay in hospital for another three or four days while doctors carry out pre-surgical tests, the head of the presidential health centre said on Friday.   "We have decided to prolong President Boris Yeltsin's stay in hopsital for another three or four days," Sergei Mironov told a news briefing.    Yeltsin, 65, went into Moscow's Central Clinical Hospital last weekend for a stay initially only expected to last over the weekend.   But doctors have twice extended Yeltsin's stay in hospital, a different medical centre from the one where doctors are expected to operate on the president.   Doctors say Yeltsin needs a coronary bypass operation to improve blood supply to his heart.   The prolonged hospital stay has prompted widespread speculation that more is wrong with Yeltsin than doctors have admitted.   The Kremlin points to occasional meetings with top officials as signs that the president's condition is not worsening. 
19092 !GCAT !GPOL !GPRO  The surgeon widely tipped to lead heart bypass surgery on Russian President Boris Yeltsin said on Friday that success rates were good but a lot depended on the patient's health.   Renat Akchurin, who operated on Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin eight years ago, has done pre-surgical tests on Yeltsin but he declined to give details.   "Success rates are about 98 percent if you are dealing with an uncomplicated, generally healthy patient, if you have some problems with other systems and organs the percentage of success might decrease to 90 percent," he told Reuters.   "It is the request of the president to have confidentiality about his health," Akchurin said in his office in the Cardiology Research Centre in eastern Moscow.   He declined to comment on pre-surgical treatment Yeltsin might be undergoing.   "When you prepare a patient for surgery you have to be sure that it minimises the risk of the surgery itself in general.   There are very different treatments for each individual."   Akchurin, who is head of the clinic's cardiovascular surgery department, said he would consult top U.S. cardiologist Michael DeBakey on Yeltsin's heart when he visits Moscow next week.   "We'll have to report the situation of Mr President to him, just for a second opinion," he said.   Akchurin declined to say whether he would lead the operation, but said if a council of doctors due to meet next week chose him, he would do it willingly.   "Every day and with all patients I am really worried about responsibility but of course I understand the difficulty of such a personal case and I think that if necessary we will apply all our forces to make it successful." 
19093 !GCAT !GPOL  The strongest Czech oppostion party, the centre-left Social Democrats (CSSD), have for the first time overtaken the senior party in the ruling coalition in popularity, according to an opinion poll released on Friday.   The survey for TV Nova by the independent agency STEM showed the CSSD edging ahead of Prime Minister Vaclav Klaus's Civic Democratic Party (ODS) with 26.3 percent to 26.2 percent, with all other parties in parliament polling less than 10 percent.   Two months ahead of elections to the mostly ceremonial Senate (upper house), potential voters were asked in the poll: "If the election to the Chamber of Deputies (lower house) were held next week, for which party would you vote?"   The survey, conducted in early September sampling 1,469 Czechs of voting age, showed a slump in popularity from the elections to the lower house for both top parties in June when ODS took 29.8 percent of the vote and CSSD 26.4.   The stronger-than-expected showing by CSSD in the elections cost the coalition its majority in parliament and caused observers to put new emphasis on the November Senate elections which should show if the trend toward CSSD is sustained.   Klaus's minority government was formed after the elections with the tacit but not very enthusiastic support of the CSSD and its leader Milos Zeman, who was awarded the chairmanship of the lower house in the deal.   Analysts have warned of potential early elections if one of the two top parties pulls away from the other in popularity.   The poll showed the two other governing parties in the centre-right coalition exchanging places from their election result.   The Christian Democratic Union (KDU-CSL) and Civic Democratic Aliance (ODA) scored 7.4 and 8.2 percent (8.08 percent and 6.36 percent in June).   The popularity of the two opposition parties at the extremes of parliament declined in the survey as the Communists (KSCM) fell to 9.7 percent from 10.33 in the elections and the ultra-right Republicans (SPR-RSC), fell to 4.4 percent from 8.01 percent in the elections.   The falling popularity of most parties was highlighted by the 8.6 percent who said they would not vote and the 5.9 percent who said they were undecided.   Unlike the lower-house elections which are conducted on a proportional system where votes are for each party, the 81 Senators will be elected to the newly-created upper house based on a first-past-the-post system in individual constituencies.   Polling agencies have yet to conduct a survey measuring potential results in individual constituencies in the Senate vote.   -- Prague Newsroom 42-2-2423-0003 
19094 !GCAT !GPOL !GVOTE  An electoral assembly began voting in Estonia on Friday to break the deadlock in a bitter battle for the presidency of this former communist Baltic state.   Incumbent Lennart Meri is facing arch-rival Arnold Ruutel and three other candidates to lead the country which regained independence from the former Soviet Union in 1991.   The Estonian parliament last month rejected Meri's re-election three times, a snub for what many parliamentarians see as Meri's abuse of what is intended to be a largely ceremonial position.   The electoral assembly of 374 members -- parliamentarians and local government representatives -- has two chances to choose the president on Friday.   If it fails the decision will revert to parliament.   Ruutel, a former senior communist and a leader of Estonia's drive to regain its independence, is seen as Meri's main rival in the vote.   Ruutel was Meri's only challenger in the parliament voting, which was a re-run of the 1992 presidental race.   Right-wing candidate Tunne Kelam, a strong pro-independence nationalist who was a dissident in the Soviet era, is expected to be another strong challenger and to take votes from Meri.   Newspapers urged the assembly to make sure a president was chosen on Friday to avoid the process being dubbed a farce.   "If even the electoral college cannot elect a president, then we may have a serious political crisis," newspaper Eesti Paevaleht said in an editorial.   The two other challengers to Meri are Siiri Oviir, the only female candidate and deputy head of the left-leaning centre party, and academic Enn Tougu.   They are both seen as outsiders. 
19095 !C17 !C174 !CCAT !E11 !E13 !E131 !E31 !E311 !E51 !ECAT !G15 !G154 !G158 !GCAT  Slovenia's slow productivity increases, inflation fears and pension problems could hamper economic growth, vital for its aim to join the EU by 2001, credit agency Dun&Bradstreet (D&B) said on Friday.   The U.S.-based agency gave Slovenia an unchanged DB3a credit rating for September, ranking it behind the Czech Republic and in front of Poland.   "The slow pace of productivity-raising restructuring of former "socially-owned" enterprises impinges on growth prospects, breeding inflationary expectations via labour rigidities," the agency said in its latest Risk and Payment Review.   "Key structural concern is that 25 percent of the population will be pensioners by 2020, doubling the burden of state pension payments under the existing scheme," it said.   Slovenia's annual inflation rate rose to 10.3 percent in August from 8.6 at the end of 1995.   In the first seven months of 1996 gross monthly salaries increased 14 percent on the year-ago period, while industrial output was down 1.7 percent on the same period after rising two percent in the whole of 1995.   But the agency said Slovenia still remains "one of the Central-East Europe's stars" with a strong cause to expect full EU membership at the same time as the region's other EU associated-countries.   Slovenia signed the EU association pact in June, joining nine former communist states -- Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Romania and Bulgaria.   -- Marja Novak, Ljubljana newsroom, 386-61-125-8439 
19096 !GCAT  These are the leading stories in the Skopje press on Friday.   Reuters has not verified them and does not vouch for their accuracy.   NOVA MAKEDONIJA   - Macedonia and Germany signed a defence cooperation agreement in Skopje on Thursday.   This is the second EU country with which Macedonia has signed such an agreement.   - Opposition IMRO-DPMNY and Democratic party are very close to reaching a coalition agreement for the local elections.   - Industrial output went up 3.3 percent in the first eight months of this year compared to the same period last year, according to official figures.   - Petar Dobroserdov to be appointed first Russian ambassador in Skopje.   His arrival is expected early in December.   VECER   - The U.N. Development Programme to extend $1.8 million to Macedonia for several projects, development minister Abdulmenaf Beget said Thursday.   - The Macedonian delegation at the Interparliamentary Union conference pointed out Macedonia's strong interest in integration in NATO.   -- Mircela Casule, Skopje newsroom +389 91 201 196 
19097 !GCAT !GDEF !GDIP !GPOL !GVOTE  NATO's mission in Bosnia may have finally answered the question: what is the alliance for now the Cold War is over?   In less than a year the alliance that won the East-West confrontation without firing a shot in anger has moved from peace enforcer to peace supervisor in a mission unthinkable during the Cold War.   When Bosnians voted last Saturday, NATO troops policed roads, patrolled polling stations and escorted ballot boxes to counting centres.   The 55,000 soldiers ensured the vote passed off smoothly.   In sharp contrast to the United Nations, which left Bosnia with its credibility in tatters, NATO has used the Balkans to enhance its reputation and confirm itself as the European continent's pre-eminent security organisation.   The only criticism stems from its failure to arraign indicted war criminals, particularly the Bosnian Serbs' wartime leader Radovan Karadzic and his army commander Ratko Mladic.   Supporters of NATO say that task was deliberately left out of its mission aims and will be fulfilled only when there is sufficient political will in national capitals.   Senior NATO officials say the challenge for the alliance now is to build quickly on the Bosnian experience, particularly links forged with former enemies who participated in the NATO-led peace Implementation Force (IFOR).   "We have to show IFOR was not just a one-night stand," said one senior NATO official.   "The challenge is not just getting Bosnia right, but making NATO a permanent feature of the new security landscape now taking shape in Europe."   That begins next week when NATO defence ministers gather in Norway for the first formal discussion of what sort of force to leave in Bosnia when the current mandate expires in December.   Western allies accept that a force has to stay in order to prevent conflict and give the Dayton peace accords time to take root, but its exact size, mandate, duration and composition are yet to be agreed.   Many countries, however, want it to take another step in the direction of a "new NATO".   Germany has indicated it may commit ground troops and a more flexible, less U.S.-dominated command structure, with Russian participation, could be used.   Former Warsaw Pact enemies, such as Poland and Hungary, see close cooperation in the force as a way of strengthening their case for full NATO membership early next year -- an issue which will require a new NATO-Russia deal on European security.   "We want the follow-on force to be as ground-breaking as IFOR," the official added.   Despite earlier warnings of "mission creep", officials say the most powerful military alliance ever assembled did far more than just provide the security blanket to allow Saturday's polls to take place.   It as good as ran the elections.   NATO's military were closely involved in the detailed planning process, making available its hi-tech infrastructure to poll organisers from the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).   Robert Frowick, the head of the OSCE mission in Bosnia, described NATO's effort as "brilliant" and said the polls would not have been possible without its presence.   Finally let off the leash in the summer of 1995, the alliance used air strikes to force the Bosnian Serbs to pull back their heavy guns and end the 3-1/2 year siege of Sarajevo.   Then it broke new ground, assembling the biggest ground force seen in Europe since the end of World War Two to police implementation of the Dayton peace agreement -- the alliance's first "out of theatre" operation.   Diplomats say the failure of the international community to head off the wars in former Yugoslavia and then stop them highlighted the importance of transatlantic unity.   For much of the fighting, western Europe and the United States were divided.   "When we spoke with one voice, we got things done.   That is, I think, the lesson," Carl Bildt, the international community's High Representative in Bosnia, has told Reuters.   NATO is the only organisation which formally brings the United States and the Western allies together and has the military capability to enfore its writ.   The critics who questioned its relevance after the collapse of communism now remain silent.   The alliance's high-profile role in Bosnia has coincided with the end of talk of a separate European security role outside the alliance, fashionable within the European Union until it failed to make any impact on the war on its doorstep.   "NATO is the only show in town, we are all now agreed on that," one alliance ambassador says. 
19098 !GCAT !GPOL  New decrees will determine to the minute when Boris Yeltsin hands power over to Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin during the Russian president's heart bypass operation, Interfax news agency said on Friday.   The agency, quoting Kremlin sources, said decrees on the temporary handover of power to Chernomyrdin and on Yeltsin's full resumption of his duties had already been drafted.   "The decree not only gives the exact day of the month, but even the hour and the minute at which the premier gets his temporary responsibilities," Interfax said.   A decree published on Thursday confirmed that Yeltsin, 65, would hand over power to Chernomyrdin during the surgery and that the prime minister would have temporary control over the button which could launch a nuclear strike.   But further decrees will be needed -- one to hand over power and another to take it back when Yeltsin recovers from the anaesthetic.   Interfax said it was possible that Yeltsin would hand over power for only a few hours.   "The structure of the three decrees gives the head of the Russian state the possibility to decide for himself on all these questions and links decisions of this kind to him alone," Interfax said.   Yeltsin has been in hospital for the last week and aides say he is having tests before the operation.   The doctors are due to meet on September 25 to fix the date of the surgery. 
19099 !GCAT  These are the leading stories in the Belgrade press on Friday.   Reuters has not verified them and does not vouch for their accuracy.   POLITIKA   - Yugoslalv Prime Minister Radoje Kontic starting visit to Romania today.   - Foreign Minister Milan Milutinovic to head Yugoslav delegation at the U.N. General Assembly session.   - Visiting German parliamentary delegation says Bonn supports Yugoslavia's speedy integration into the European Union.   - Federal government endorses reports from team negotiating Yugoslav succession from September 5 Brussels talks.   - Trepca realizes production worth one billion dinars in the 20 months since the introduction of the revitalization programme in February 1995.   - Yugoslav government sets guaranteed prices for basic agricultural products for 1996: corn is 0.72 dinars per kilo, sunflower 1.90 dinars, soybean 2.00 dinars, sugarbeet 0.27 and tobacco 13.50.   - All demands of the Zastava arms workers have been met, except for the one on holiday pay, said Aleksandar Ivovic, President of the Serbian metal workers' union.   - Announced lifting of sanctions against Yugoslavia and international recognition of Bosnian Serb republic are among the positive results of Bosnia's elections -- editorial.   NASA BORBA   - Sir Arthur Watts, the international mediator in succession talks on the former Yugoslavia, has invited all former Yugoslav republics to a joint meeting in Brussels on September 14 and 15, the paper learned from the Slovenian delegation head.   - Former Yugoslav governor Dragoslav Avramovic has agreed to be the head of the election list of the opposition coalition Zajedno at forthcoming November 3 elections, the paper unofficially learns.   - The Yugoslav government is examining Russia's offer to repay part of its debt with a fleet of MIG-29 planes, Victor Sokol of Russia's Foreign trade ministry said.   POLITIKA EKSPRES   - Yugoslav flag carrier JAT soon to resume flights to the U.S., says Yugoslav Transport and Communications minister Zoran Vujovic after U.S. delegation visit.   VECERNJE NOVOSTI   - Former Yugoslav National bank governor Dragoslav Avramovic might be the new Bosnian Serb Republic central bank governor if his health permits it, says Bosnian Serb Prime Minister Gojko Klickovic.   - Iraq owes Yugoslav construction firms around $950 million.   -- Belgrade newsroom 381 11 2224305 
19100 !GCAT  These are the leading stories in the Sarajevo press on Friday.   Reuters has not verified them and does not vouch for their accuracy.   OSLOBODJENJE   - Robert Frowick, head of the OSCE mission to Bosnia, informs Bosnian Prime Minister Hasan Muratovic that Bosnian Serbs cast more ballots than expected.   - Fikret Abdic, a controversal political figure, obtained 14,000 votes in Velika Kladusa.   His popularity, once great, has been reduced to local influence.   - World Bank pledged 300,000 German marks for food production in Bosnia while U.S. government has donated up to $1 million.   - The average monthly salary in Bosnia in August was 19,000 dinars (190 German marks), according to the state statistics office.   DNEVNI AVAZ   - The Bosnian federal government will provide 20,000 German marks of temporary aid for those wounded in the war.   - Local Electoral Commission in Tuzla says the Moslem Party of Democratic Action (SDA) prevailed in the race for the union House of Representatives but the opposition Joint List coalition won the most votes for the cantonal assembly.   -- Sarajevo newsroom, +387-71-663-864. 
19101 !GCAT  Here are highlights of stories in Romania's press on Friday.   Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy:   Business:   ROMANIA LIBERA   - Purchasing price for sugar beet from this year's crop will be around 100 lei per kilo, which will put production price at some 300 lei per kilo.   ADEVARUL   - Seven Romanian companies have applied for bourse listing.   LIBERTATEA   - Romania will try to stop imports of second-hand cars by lowering customs duties for imports of new, environment- friendly cars.   CURIERUL NATIONAL   - Samurai bonds which National Bank launched on Japanese capital market were subscribed, newspaper quotes central bank as saying.   General:   ROMANIA LIBERA   - President Ion Iliescu to agree on Sunday list of candidates of ruling Party of Social Democracy (PDSR) in parliament for the November 3 general polls.   - Report on dispute between former owners of houses nationalised by the ex-communists and present tenants willing to buy the flats under a recently adopted law.   ADEVARUL   - U.S. Republican Congressman Martin Hoke include Romania in his draft bill on NATO's expansion, along with other East European countries.   EVENIMENTUL ZILEI   - NATO chief commander George Joulwan to meet President Iliescu, Foreign Minister Teodor Melescanu and Defence Minister Gheorghe Tinca during visit to Romania starting on October 2.   CRONICA ROMANA   - Electoral campaign of opposition Democratic Convention (CDR) bloc would cost two billion lei, said Mircea Ionescu Quintus, head of National Liberal Party.   TINERETUL LIBER   - New parliament resulting from November 3 elections expected to start activity on November 23.   VREMEA   - New penal code is more repressive than the communist one, says Adrian Severin, a leader of opposition Democratic Party.   ($=3,227 lei) -- Bucharest Newsroom 40-1 3120264 
19102 !GCAT  The following are the main stories from Friday morning's Albanian newspapers.   Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.   KOHA JONE   - With just one month to go before the October 20 local elections, Albania's political parties have been distracted by infighting instead of focusing on their electoral campaigns, Koha Jone editorial says.   - An opposition alliance between the Social Democrats and Democratic Alliance has decided not to boycott the local polls.   - Five candidates of the ruling Democratic Party who had planned to run for the post of mayor in the local polls have been eliminated by a verifying commission which said their curriculum vitaes were not satisfactory.   - Seven small right-wing parties and associations will form an alliance for electoral campaigning.   - Germany has started returning ethnic Albanians to the Serbian province of Kosovo before an agreement has been reached between Bonn and Belgrade, a Kosovo newspaper said.   - Some 135,000 pensioners in the countryside receive a pension of just 875 leks.   - A British-Albanian team of archeologists is carrying out excavation work in the ancient town of Butrint in southern Albania.   GAZETA SHQIPTARE   - Albanians can be fined or jailed if they do not carry an identity card after October 10.   - Albania's health minister Maksim Cikuli said citizens under 35 will soon be vaccinated against polio.   RILINDJA DEMOKRATIKE   - Defence Minister Safet Zhulali inspected an Albanian peacekeeping unit in Zadar, Croatia and met his German counterpart Volker Ruehe to discuss further military cooperation between the two countries.   ZERI I POPULLIT   - A Socialist leader Pandeli Majko and his colleague from the Democratic Alliance Party Blendi Gonxhe called on the electorate to vote for their alliance if they want change in Albania. 
19103 !GCAT  Lithuanian newspapers carried the following reports in their Friday editions.   Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy:   LIETUVOS RYTAS   - Lithuania's foreign debt was 3.967 billion litas at mid-September, domestic debt was 1.23 billion litas.   Total debt constituted 17.85 percent of 1995 GDP on September 1.   - Chief Election Commission decided that 28 political parties and public organisations and 1,347 candidates have the right to participate in parliament elections in October.   Official campaign starts today.   - Lithuanian parliament decided to hold referendum together with October parliament elections.   So far three amendments to Constitution have been suggested -- cut the number of MPs to 111 from 141, establish permanent parliamentary election dates (second Sunday in April every four years); allocate no less than 50 percent of national budget to social needs.   - Lithuanian parliament set an obstacle for Valdas Adamkus, American environment protection expert, who plans to run for Lithuanian President in 1998 -- ruled that candidate must live for at least two years in Lithuania.   - Lithuania and Poland will continue to support each other in integration to European Union, Western European Union and NATO and will closely cooperate, says joint declaration signed by Presidents at official meeting in Gdynia.   RESPUBLIKA   - Ruling Lithuanian Democratic Labour Party faction condemned agricultural reform of ex-Prime Minister Gediminas Vagnorius, decided to pass material to Prosecutor's office.   Right-wing opposition boycotted parliamentary vote.   - Prosecutor Gintaras Starkus carried out third interrogation of war crimes suspect Aleksandras Lileikis.   Lileikis' main argument was, "if I felt guilty, I would have never returned to Lithuania," Starkus said.   LIETUVOS AIDAS   - An alleged member of the 'Vilnius Brigade' criminal gang, Juri Krukov, was seriously injured when a bomb exploded in his Ford Thunderbird.   It was the second attempot on his life.   VERSLO ZINIOS   - Lithuania's transport system accounts for 12 percent of the country's GDP and employs six percent of the work force .   Economists predict the system's share of Lithuania's GDP could rise to 18 percent in 1997.   -- Riga Newsroom +371 7226693 
19104 !GCAT  The following are reports carried by Estonia's newspapers on Friday.   Reuters has not verified these reports and does not vouch for their accuracy:   ALL NEWSPAPERS   - Tiit Madison, charged with attempted treason and planning a coup, claims to have attempted to scare authorities to get them to allocate more funds to Defence League.   - Tallinn City Court threw out case against Lennart Meri, accused of perjury when taking the oath of conscience; court said the case was beyond its competence.   SONUMILEHT   - The new chairman of the 'Estonia' disaster inquiry expected to be elected next Tuesday; Interior Minister Mart Rask recommended an experienced seaman.   EESTI PAEVALEHT   - Presidential candidates were passive in TV debate and avoided personal attacks.   - An outbreak of bacterial disease tularaemia has been confirmed in the small island of Prangli; authorities say there is no reason for panic.   - Estonian feature film "I am tired of hating" won special prize at Alexandria Film Festival in Egypt.   POSTIMEES   - Fire in Aware peat field continues, but situation is described as stable.   - Compensation agreed for crew members of sunken ferry 'Estonia' and relatives of the dead; a law office declared the amounts no lower than those for passengers and their families.   ARIPAEV   - Hotel management firm Finest Hotel Group is recovering from recent losses; plans to build hotels in Narva and Otepaa.   - Presidential officer claims 1.2 million kroons in compensation from travel agency, which organized tour in U.S. and Mexico last year and failed to meet some requirements.   - Estonia's admission to WTO will be postponed -- bilateral negotiations with members cannot be completed in time for congress to be held in December.   -- Riga Newsroom +371 7226693 
19105 !GCAT  These are the main stories in Latvian newspapers on Friday, prepared for Reuters by the Co-operation Fund.   Reuters has not verified these reports and does not vouch for their accuracy:   ALL NEWSPAPERS   - Two Latvians died on Wednesday when a Latvian-owned Neoplan double-decker crashed on a motorway near Magdeburg in Germany.   - Mass media have received letter referring to co-operation between deputy Celmins, co-chairman of Democratic Party Saimnieks, and KGB.   Letter believed to have been sent out by individual in Parliament in revenge against Celmins.   - Minister of Environment Protection and Regional Development overruled Riga City Council, which had asked non-citizens to present references on their right to receive an alien passport to be allowed to buy flats.   - Amendments to Constitution providing for extension of the parliamentary and presidential powers to four years adopted yesterday at the second reading.   - Latvian Parliament has granted citizenship to two Latvian national hockey team players, but a third has not been naturalised because deputies of three factions - Fatherland & Freedom, LNNK and For Latvia - left the hall, breaking quorum.   - Latvia chosen as one of vice-chairmen at the 51st session of the UN General Assembly.   DIENA   - The number of children not attending schools is growing in Latvia.   According to Latvian authorities, there are at least 2,500 illiterate school-age children in Latvia.   NEATKARIGA RITA AVIZE   - Riga district court declared bankruptcy of Latvian Airlines, Latavia, with a debt exceeding 13 million lats.   DIENAS BIZNESS   - Minister of Economics Guntars Krasts believes the failure of AMOCO project will be a major setback for investments in the Baltics, with Lithuania also losing out.   - Finance Minister Aivars Kreituss admits VAT could be lowered to 16 percent as of 1998, provided positive trends in the economy continue.   -- Riga Newsroom +371 7226693 
19106 !GCAT  Following are the main stories in Croatian newspapers on Friday.   VJESNIK   - Education Minister Vokic protests to UN administrator for Serb-held Eastern Slavonia Jacques Klein over his decision to dissolve a joint Croat-Serb education commission.   - Bavarian firm Walter Bau to be granted concession for the construction of a $193.5 million section of highway between Krapina and Slovenian border.   - Croatian Parliament expected to ratify agreement on the normalisation of relations with Yugoslavia and a law on amnesty for Croatian Serbs who participated in a 1991 rebellion.   - Bosnian refugees to leave Germany as of October 1?   VECERNJI LIST   - Bad weather in September expected to reduce this year's grape harvest by 20 per cent.   - Trading intensifies on the Zagreb Stock Exchange.   Several million German Marks worth of transactions reported daily in the last few months.   SLOBODNA DALMACIJA   - Croatian expatriots still reluctant to return to the homeland and invest heavily into the country.   A total of 155 million German Marks of diaspora capital has come so far.   - Finance minister says printing houses owe 56 million kuna of turnover tax to the state.   -- Zagreb Newsroom, 385-1-4557075 
19107 !GCAT !GPOL !GPRO  Russian President Boris Yeltsin, waiting for a heart bypass operation, has turned down a supporter's offer to donate her own heart if the president ever needed a transplant.   But Itar-Tass news agency said on Friday that Yeltsin had written to would-be donor Zinaida Ramazonovna Boliyeva thanking her for the offer.   "I was touched," Tass quoted the letter as saying.   "Of course there can be no talk of this, but the mere expression of your emotions is very dear to me.   I want to express my total gratitude to you, dear Zinaida Ramazonovna."   Tass had said that Boliyeva, 46, made her offer at the office of the government party Our Home is Russia in the autonomous region of North Ossetia, close to breakaway Chechnya.   "The Russian president must have a healthy heart and be able to work hard," Tass quoted Boliyeva as saying.   "He has to continue the course of democratic reforms and economic transformations which he has launched." 
19108 !GCAT  Here are highlights of stories reported by Hungary's press, based on information by Nepszabadsag's Hungary Around the Clock service.   For further details on how to subscribe to Hungary Around the Clock, please contact Monica Kovacs at (361) 351 2440 or fax your request to (361) 351 7141.   ALL PAPERS   - President Arpad Goncz held talks with Prime Minister Jean Claude Juncker and Foreign Minister Jacques Poos of Luxembourg during his first official visit to that country on Thursday.   - The commission probing conflicts of interest in Russian oil shipments to Hungary has established that former industry minister Imre Dunai and his son conducted oil trading activities incompatible with the former's post.   - Dain M. Hancock, president of Tactical Aircraft Systems, a division of the US company Lockheed Martin, said that F-16 fighter planes will be offered at a 30 percent lower price than those of its rivals, adding that every dollar obtained from sales would be refunneled to the Hungarian economy.   - A rail carriage with the first 40 BTR-80 armoured combat vehicles shipped to the Hungarian armed forces as part of Russia's repayment of its state debt arrived to Hungary.   - Thursday saw a high drama on the Budapest Stock Exchange as trading in compensation coupons was suspended.   On the OTC market, brokerage firms demonstrated considerable interest in selling but little in buying.   - The flights of all MIG-21s fighter jets have been stopped by the Hungarian Armed Forces after a MIG-21 plane crashed.   NEPSZABADSAG   - Donald Blinken, US Ambassador to Hungary and Alfred Moses, US Ambassador in Romania published a jointly written article in Thursday's editions of the Washington Post and the International Herald Tribune paying tribute to the Hungarian- Romanian basic treaty.   - The heightened administrative and other criteria for participation in the nation's money market, as set forth in the securities law now before Parliament, will be to the marked disadvantage of brokerage firms, said Zsigmond Jarai, chairman of the Stock Exchange Council.   VILAGGAZDASAG   - The cabinet today expected to discuss amendments to the tax laws, including reports on amendments to the VAT, the consumption tax, local taxes and the order of taxation.   MAGYAR HIRLAP   - The first NATO fighter jets flew through Hungarian air space Thursday en route to a military exercise due to start in the Mediterranean.   - Household savings rose by HUF 56.2 billion in August, the outcome of a HUF 535 billion rise in the savings level and a HUF 2.7 billion drop in the stock of credit, report the National Bank.   - A secret clause in the privatisation contract of Budapest Bank has thus far seen the state pay the purchasers - US company GE Capital and the EBRD - one-third of the amount they paid for the institution late last year, and the prospect that it will ultimately pay an amount equal to the entire purchase price cannot be ruled out, well informed sources said.   - The State Privatisation and Holding Co. announced yesterday that it is offering the remaining state-owned minority stakes of 25 per cent plus one vote in 80 companies to the majority owners.   - From now on the public will notice a perceptible decrease in the number of "repugnant" advertisements, said Laszlo Radnai, head of the Self-Regulatory Advertisement Association.   NAPI GAZDASAG   - Generali Budapest and Providencia Osztrak-Magyar Biztosito plan to establish a new travel insurance firm.   -- Budapest newsroom (36-1) 327 4040 
19109 !GCAT !GVIO  A rusted ferris wheel towers lifelessly over the ruins of Agdam, an Azeri city which exists on world maps but is almost devoid of normal life.   The city once had a population of 100,000 Moslem Azeris, but it was overrun by Christian Armenians in 1993 as part of a drive by the Armenian forces to create a huge buffer zone around the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh in western Azerbaijan.   Agdam was the base from which Azeri forces launched deadly missle attacks against Armenian-held towns and villages in the Karabakh enclave.   Its capture became a symbol of Armenian success on the battlefield over Azerbaijan.   The conflict, frozen for more than two years by a ceasefire forced on a reluctant Azerbaijan after military defeats, casts a shadow of uncertainty over the tinderbox Caucasus region, rocked by ethnic unrest since the Soviet Union began to fall apart.   Azerbaijan and Armenia have been fighting for eight years over mountainous Karabakh, which Soviet map-makers placed in Azerbaijan even though most inhabitants were ethnic Armenians -- traditional enemies of Turkic Azerbaijan.   The war started when the local Armenians demanded to be administered from the Armenian capital of Yerevan.   Thousands of people died before the ceasefire was declared.   No one disputes that Armenians from the Karabakh region did most of the fighting, but arms and logistical support from the Yerevan government were crucial.   The war is the most serious issue facing both countries and is a major factor in Sunday's Armenian presidential election, essentially a two-way battle between incumbent Levon Ter-Petrosyan and former prime minister Vazgen Manukyan.   The Armenians looted Agdam clean after capturing it, removing anything made of metal and selling it as scrap.   Now walls of worthless bricks line the town's wide, derelict streets.   An eerie silence hangs in the air, punctuated by Armenian soldiers racing by in military vehicles or the rumble of lorries full of the junk metal some still come to scavenge.   Armenians like Razim Tsaturyan, a 42-year-old who fought in Karabakh until the ceasefire, trek into Agdam only to look for salvage or to collect fruit.   "I'm just going down to gather some pomegranates for my kids," he said, hitching a ride with a journalist into Agdam from his home in the regional Karabakh capital of Stepanakert.   "There is almost nothing left to take here, right down to the nails and bolts."   Looting and burning has been the rule for all sides in the myriad Caucasian wars of the past few years.   Stepanakert also still shows the scars of the conflict.   Dozens of buildings were destroyed or damaged by shrapnel from the notoriously innacurate rockets.   Azerbaijan's government has made it clear it will use new oil revenues from lucrative offshore projects to rebuild its army and retake what it has lost by force if necessary.   "Time is not on the Armenians' side," said a Western diplomat in Yerevan.   Presidential candidates Ter-Petrosyan and Manukyan have been trying to take credit for successes on the battlefield, but neither has produced a clear idea of how to end the dispute.   Nagorno-Karabakh, home to 170,000 ethnic Armenians, has run itself as an independent state for five years, but its leaders make no secret of the fact that their real goal is union with Armenia.   "Every Armenian in their soul wants the two parts of our Armenian nation to be united... We understand that politically this is more difficult, so independence for us is a compromise," Karabakh "foreign minister" Arkady Gugasyan told Reuters.   Gugasyan accuses Azerbaijan of using the talks to buy time and rearm to try to start the war anew.   Azerbaijan says it is willing to offer Karabakh "autonomy" but Gugasyan says Baku has yet to say what this might entail.   "We are not going to give up our practical independence, including the right to have our own army.   Maybe we can find some sort of mutual cooperation, but we will never agree to be ruled by Azerbaijan.   That would be suicide," he said.   Thousands died during the fighting and many Azeri refugees face the prospect of yet another winter in tents.   But even if Azerbaijan eventually agrees to some sort of autonomy for Karabakh, it will never agree to the loss of the territories around, including cities like Agdam.   Gugasyan says there is no intention of holding the towns forever but says his government wants security guarantees before giving them up.   Political analysts say Armenia, whose trade routes have been severed by the conflict and an Azeri blockade, will be severely handicapped unless it can find a way out of the war.   But they say both Manukyan and Ter-Petrosyan owe their political survival to the nationalist movement born in the late 1980s that demanded Armenia control the region, and they cannot politically afford major concessions to the Azeris. 
19110 !GCAT !GVIO  The abduction and brutal interrogation of a journalist has fanned fears that the emergence of rebels in southern Mexico may give rise to equally ruthless "white brigades" of paramilitary police.   Released from a kidnap ordeal late on Thursday, newspaper director Razhy Gonzalez gave a chilling account of two days spent bound and blindfolded under interrogation over his possible links to the rebel Popular Revolutionary Army (EPR).   His captors, whom he alleges were undercover police, seized him at gunpoint and crudely tried to force him to admit to being a member of the EPR, he said.   They also made threats against his life and the life of his family.   When they let him go, his face was burned by a blindfold and his wrists were rubbed raw by the bindings on his hands.   His abduction came four days after he and other journalists were invited to a clandestine meeting with the EPR, a newly emerged guerrilla group that carried out bloody attacks in Oaxaca and other parts of southern Mexico in late August.   "It's an aggression against all the journalists who are covering the EPR and have not been systematically attacking it," Gonzalez told reporters in Oaxaca on Thursday.   "It shows the government is resorting to illegal actions to combat illegality."   He backed his claims by saying the interrogation sought answers to the whereabouts of the EPR.   "Who is interested in this?"   Gonzalez said at a later news conference in Mexico City.   "The EPR?   Some private-sector group?   No.   It's the government."   State governor Deodoro Carrasco and his top subordinates all denied they had any hand in Gonzalez's detention and pledged a full investigation.   The federal Attorney General's Office issued a statement on Friday denying official involvement in the abduction, saying: "It's absolutely false."   But human rights workers say a pattern has emerged that suggests shadowy paramilitary forces, perhaps run from Mexico City, are cracking down on government critics among militant peasant and worker organisations, social groups and most recently the press.   In Oaxaca, an impoverished state bankrolled chiefly by foreign tourism, the precedents are grim.   Benjamin Soriano, spokesman for the Mexican League for the Defence of Human Rights in the state capital, said a history of repression by "white brigade" paramilitary forces in the 1970s when the state was roiled by student and guerrilla unrest may be repeating itself.   "In 1977, when there were 600 disappearances in Mexico, 380 of them were in Oaxaca," he said.   He added most of those abducted recently have been returned alive, but when the tone of the conflict rises authorities may again start to "disappear" people.   In a front-page column on Friday, a pro-government Oaxacan newspaper, Noticias, echoed the fear that dark official forces may be at work.   "It's hard to believe that those responsible for official institutions have ordered the illegal detention of the journalist, but if that were the case they would be commiting a giant mistake because the consequences would be terrible", it said.   Coupled with documented cases of illegal detentions in Oaxaca is an apparent bedrock of sympathy for the EPR's goals among some left-wing peasants and other groups that may make the government nervous.   President Ernesto Zedillo's government has insisted the EPR is a terrorist organisation that lacks popular support.   But several left-wing groups supporting Gonzalez's release as well as colleagues at his paper Contrapunto said they blamed the government and the army for rising repression more than the EPR, whose appearance in June forced the government to pour troops into southern Mexico. 
19111 !GCAT !GVIO  Colombia's leftist guerrillas unleashed a wave of bombings and attacks across the country on Friday in a new offensive against the government of embattled President Ernesto Samper.   The heaviest fighting was reported in northwest Antioquia province where the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) was pinned down by air strikes in the mountains.   Armed Forces commander Adm. Holdan Delgado said 22 guerrillas had been killed since Thursday as army units fought to dislodge the FARC from a key highway blockaded by rebels since Monday in the remote Canon de la Llorona region of Antioquia.   He said only four rebel bodies had been recovered, however, and the rest were dragged off by the guerrillas.   The nationwide offensive launched at midnight on Thursday was announced in a communique from the National Liberation Army (ELN), the second-largest rebel group after the FARC.   Founded by radical Roman Catholic priests in 1966, the ELN specialises in kidnappings and economic sabotage.   Police reported hit-and-run attacks across the country, including four bombings of banks and electricity lines in the Caribbean resort city of Cartagena and the torching of 18 trucks loaded with coal in northern Cesar province.   Rebels also hijacked a truck laden with 31 tonnes of ammonimum nitrate, the base material for making explosives.   Guerrillas set five buses ablaze in the coffee-growing province of Tolima in central Colombia and attacked a police station in southwest Valle del Cauca province, killing one policeman and injuring nine.   Four suspected ELN rebels died when the bombs they were making exploded in Cucuta on the border with Venezuela, radio reports said.   Banks and a bus terminal were dynamited in the town overnight and a homeless man was killed.   The new wave of violence came less than a month after the FARC, Latin America's oldest guerrilla force, began its largest offensive in more than three decades of war against the Colombian state.   More than 100 security force members died in the fighting and 60 soldiers were seized by the FARC.   "We call on all those tired of the exploitative, corrupt and militaristic oligarchy to show their discontent and join the campaign of civil disobedience," the ELN said in its communique announcing the new offensive.   It said it would bring industries, schools and transport services to a halt across the country in a bid to topple the Samper government, which the communique said was elected with drug money and was now trying to win favour with the United States by "slaughtering peasants."   Army commander Gen. Harold Bedoya, who has complained in recent interviews about a lack of manpower and resources to wage an effective counterinsurgency campaign, condemned Friday's attacks as "terrorist actions" and urged Colombians to unite against the guerrillas, whom he described as drug-dealing bandits bent on destroying Colombia's economy. 
19112 !E51 !E512 !ECAT !GCAT !GDIP !GPOL  The Mexican Senate on Thursday is expected to approve a so-called "antidote" to the U.S. anti-Cuba law known as Helms-Burton, a Senate spokesman said on Thursday.   "It will be discussed today and it is expected that the law will be approved and sent to the Chamber of Deputies (the lower house)," Senate spokesman Victor Hugo Figueroa told Reuters. 
19113 !E41 !ECAT !GCAT !GJOB  Mexico's open, or base, unemployment rate fell to 5.3 percent during August compared to 5.8 percent in July, the National Statistics Institute said on Thursday.   INEGI said in a statement the jobless rate compared to 7.6 percent unemployment during August of last year.    INEGI said the rate began to fall after climbing during July, when students hit the job market looking for work.   It said that on a seasonally-adjusted basis, unemployment was 5.0 percent in August, 5.3 percent in July and 5.6 percent in June.   The average length of time a person spent looking for work fell to 5.7 weeks in August compared to 6.4 weeks in the same month a year ago.   INEGI defines open unemployment as members of the workforce older than 12 who have searched for work but have not worked more than one hour a week during a month.   The Rate of General Pressure, which measures those in work looking for a new job as well as open unemployment, was 8.0 percent during August compared to 9.2 percent during July.   The Rate of Partial Joblessness and Unemployment, which includes open unemployment and those who have worked less than 35 hours a week due to market conditions, fell to 7.0 percent during August versus 7.4 percent in July.   The Alternative Open Unemployment Rate, which includes open unemployment as well as those who have given up looking for work, was 6.2 percent in August compared to 6.6 percent in July.   -- David Luhnow, Mexico City newsroom +525 7289565 
19114 !GCAT !GENV !GVIO  Guerrilla violence in southern Mexico has led indirectly to the looting of up to 1 million eggs of an endangered sea turtle in Oaxaca state, an environmental group said Friday.   Sailors at a navy base at Huatulco once charged with guarding a beach where the Golfina sea turtles lay their eggs have since been redeployed elsewhere because of the emergence of the Popular Revolutionary Army (EPR), the Group of 100 environmental organisation said.   As a result, Mexicans have looted more than 10,000 turtle nests containing an estimated 800,000 to 1 million eggs, the Group of 100 said.   "This massive depredation will have an enormous impact on the future populations of the Golfina turtle," the group said, adding that the Golfina turtle predated the dinosaurs.   Sea turtle eggs are a part of the diet for poor coastal communities in much of southern Mexico and Central America.   In 1990 the Mexican government ordered the protection of nesting grounds near Huatulco.   The navy will have no immediate comment, a spokeswoman told Reuters.   The Group of 100 said the Escobilla beach in Oaxaca state had gone unprotected by the Navy ever since the EPR attacked the Huatulco base June 28, resulting in nine deaths and about a dozen injuries.   "As a result ... more than 200 pillagers, some armed with machetes, invaded the beach to dedicate themselves to sacking the nests and killing female turtles that were laying eggs," the group said.   Authorities have arrested three people carrying more than 1,000 eggs each and have confiscated more than 16,000 eggs in all, it said. 
19115 !GCAT !GPOL  Argentina's under-secretary for legal affairs at the Economy Ministry Carlos Tombeur has resigned, said the ministry on Friday, according to news agencies.   Tombeur, who resigned to persue private business, will be replaced by Miguel Angel Pareja, said state news agency Telam.   The under-secretary was a part of former Economy Minister Domingo Cavallo's economic team.   -- Axel Bugge, Buenos Aires Newsroom, 541 3180668 
19116 !GCAT !GPOL  The Nicaraguan presidential candidate leading in polls on Friday questioned the sincerity of the surging Sandinista Front's conversion from Marxist radicals to moderate social democrats willing to accept a free market.   "They're great manipulators.   They've put on make-up, but the Sandinista leadership remains trapped in the same statist, socialist way of thinking that led to 10 years of darkness in Nicaragua," Arnoldo Aleman of the conservative Liberal Alliance told reporters.   Backed by the Soviet Union and Cuba, the Sandinistas governed Nicaragua from 1979-1990, implementing a socialist policy and fighting an eight-year civil war against U.S.-backed Contra rebels that left the country bankrupt.   But after losing the 1990 election to President Violeta Chamorro, they have re-emerged revitalised in 1996 for Nicaragua's October 20 presidential elections.   Selling themselves as a "government for everyone," the popularity of the "new-look" Sandinistas has surged from 20 percent in polls at the end of 1995 to 35 percent now, reducing Aleman's once-mighty lead to six percent.   Once written off for the 1996 election, they have emerged as serious contenders and will almost certainly win a large block of seats in the National Assembly, analysts said.   "The international reality has changed and the Sandinista Front has changed with it," former Sandinista President Daniel Ortega said.   In what Ortega called an act of national reconciliation, the Sandinistas on Wednesday formed an election alliance with a faction of the former Contra rebels, embracing many of their former mortal enemies.   The civil war between the Sandinistas and Contras left 30,000 dead before peace was reached in 1990.   The alliance sparked an angry reaction from the other Contra factions which continue opposing the Sandinistas.   "I don't see it as a sign of political reconciliation, but as a show with political ends," said former Contra commander Luis Fley, who fought under the war name Commander Johnston.   Ortega's vice presidential running mate, Juan Manuel Caldera, returned this week from a tour of the United States to convince foreign investors that a Sandinista Nicaragua will be open for business.   But not all Nicaraguans believe the Sandinistas have changed.   "It's a swindle.   They don't have the ability to run a market economy," Aleman said.   Nicaragua's election will mark the first time in the country's history an elected civilian government hands over power to another elected government. 
19117 !E12 !ECAT !GCAT !GDIP  Argentine Economy Minister Roque Fernandez has postponed his trip to Europe next week said the ministry Friday, according to state news agency Telam.   Fernandez will still go to Washington next Thursday as scheduled for the annual meeting of the International Monetary Fund.   The economy minister was due to go to Frankfurt and London for a road show.   Telam said no reason was given by the economy ministry for the postponement of the trip.   -- Axel Bugge, Buenos Aires Newsroom, 541 3180668 
19118 !C42 !CCAT !E12 !E21 !E211 !E212 !E41 !ECAT !GCAT !GJOB  The Venezuelan government will set aside some of its windfall oil revenues to meet debts with public sector employees, Finance Minister Luis Raul Matos Azocar said Friday.   The rest of the higher-than-expected oil revenues will be used to make debt payments, Matos told reporters.   Matos did not specify how much money would be set aside for workers and how much would be used to make debt payments.   Government officials have said that higher-than-budgeted oil prices will bring in windfall revenues of about $2.5 billion this year.    Matos said the proposal to meet the government's debts with its employees, for severance payments and pensions, had been accepted by the International Monetary Fund.   Analysts, however, have voiced concern that using the windfall oil money to pay workers will have an inflationary impact.   They have applauded the government's intention to place most of the revenues in a special fund to meet foreign debt payments.   Debt market traders have speculated that Venezuela intends to use some of the oil money to buy back Brady bond debt.   Matos said the government had consulted private companies to devise new pension funds for public sector employees.   -- Omar Lugo, Caracas newsroom, 582 505 2600 
19119 !E21 !E211 !ECAT !GCAT !GPOL  Legislation exempting small firms in Brazil from tax -- which the government argues would eat into revenues -- will be given priority treatment in the Chamber of Deputies in October, the head of the Senate said.   Sen. Jose Sarney criticized the government for opposing his controversial tax legislation while last week pushing through its own bill exempting exports and capital goods from the ICMS sales and circulation tax.    "The small and micro-companies could be a fundamental springboard for the development of the country.   Sixty percent of jobs are in these sectors and 92 percent of companies are micro, small or medium-sized," Sarney said during a seminar.   The Brazilian government's economic team has made clear its opposition to the bills.   Finance Ministry officials say the legislation would cost $4.0 billion in unpaid taxes.   Sarney rejected those estimates and said his proposals would lead to the creation of five million new jobs.    Sarney scored a victory over the government in July when the Senate's Economic Affairs Committee approved the two bills which, thanks to a loophole in congressional rules, did not have to be approved on the floor of the Senate.   They are now at committee-stage in the Chamber of Deputies but will have to be put to a vote on the floor of the lower house if granted priority treatment.    Small and micro companies would be exempt from several taxes and employer contributions on turnover of up to 204,000 reais a year under the terms of Sarney's legislation.   -- William Schomberg, Brasilia newsroom 5561 2230358 
19120 !GCAT !GVIO  The abduction and brutal interrogation of a journalist has fanned fears that the emergence of rebels in southern Mexico may give rise to equally ruthless "white brigades" of paramilitary police.   Released from a kidnap ordeal late on Thursday, newspaper director Razhy Gonzalez gave a chilling account of two days spent bound and blindfolded under interrogation over his possible links to the rebel Popular Revolutionary Army (EPR).   His captors, who he alleges were undercover police, seized him at gunpoint and crudely tried to force him to admit to being a member of the EPR, he said.   They also made threats against his life and the life of his family.   When they let him go, his face was burned by a blindfold and his wrists were rubbed raw by the bindings on his hands.   His abduction came four days after he and other journalists were invited to a clandestine meeting with the EPR, a newly emerged guerrilla group that carried out bloody attacks in Oaxaca and other parts of southern Mexico in late August.   "It's an aggression against all the journalists who are covering the EPR and have not been systematically attacking it," Gonzalez told reporters in Oaxaca on Thursday.   "It shows the government is resorting to illegal actions to combat illegality."   State governor Deodoro Carrasco and his top subordinates all denied they had any hand in Gonzalez's detention and pledged a full investigation.   But human rights workers say a pattern has emerged that suggests shadowy paramilitary forces -- perhaps run from Mexico City -- are cracking down on government critics among militant peasant and worker organisations, social groups and most recently the press.   In Oaxaca, an impoverished state bankrolled chiefly by foreign tourism, the precedents are grim.   Benjamin Soriano, spokesman for the Mexican League for the Defence of Human Rights in the state capital, said a history of repression by "white brigade" paramilitary forces in the 1970s when the state was roiled by student and guerrilla unrest may be repeating itself.   "In 1977, when there were 600 disappearances in Mexico, 380 of them were in Oaxaca," he told Reuters.   He said most of those abducted recently have been returned alive, but when the tone of the conflict rises authorities may again start to "disappear" people.   In a front-page column on Friday, a pro-government Oaxacan newspaper, Noticias, echoed the fear that dark official forces may be at work.   "It's hard to believe that those responsible for official institutions have ordered the illegal detention of the journalist, but if that were the case they would be commiting a giant mistake because the consequences would be terrible", it said.   Coupled with documented cases of illegal detentions in Oaxaca is an apparent bedrock of sympathy for the EPR's goals among some left-wing peasants and other groups that may make the government nervous.   President Ernesto Zedillo's government has insisted the EPR is a terrorist organisation that lacks popular support.   But several left-wing groups supporting Gonzalez's release as well as colleagues at his paper Contrapunto said they blamed the government and the army for rising repression more than the EPR, whose appearance in June forced the government to pour troops into southern Mexico.   "We are against violence but we are also aware that not only now but previously many Mexicans have opted for this form of struggle.   We're respectful of them and we know that many other opposition social organisations share that point of view," Contrapunto co-founder Arturo Mejia Garcia said. 
19121 !C42 !CCAT !E41 !ECAT !GCAT !GJOB !GPOL  The Argentine government, facing the second general strike in two months, tried Friday to take the heat out of a row with trade unions over President Carlos Menem's campaign for more flexible labor laws.   With the leader of the main CGT union federation Rodolfo Daer quipping that "if we carry on like this we will have to pay to work," officials toned down the threat of the laws being pushed through by decree if Congress drags its feet.   "Ideally we would do this by consensus in parliament," said Menem's Chief of Staff Alberto Kohan.    But he added: "Taking decisions by decree does not violate the constitution.   On labor legislation it is permitted."   Menem himself, who warned in a newspaper article this week "I have governed and will govern by decree," told reporters in neighboring Uruguay Friday: "We are not trying to destabilize the job market, as people have been wrongly informed."   Unions, already on the warpath about austerity measures, are angry about Menem brandishing his power of decree to push through new labor laws if Congress proves reluctant to approve the proposed bill, expected to be submitted in 10 days.    Kohan, who like Menem was speaking to Argentine radio from Uruguay, tried to counter union protests that the labor reform would undermine job security: "We are worrying about people without work.   When we talk of flexibilization we're not talking about a law for people who already have acquired rights, but for those who don't."   "Making it easier for companies to take on new employees means we are concerned with solving the problem.   The quicker the problems is solved, the better.   And if we can do it by law, better still," said Kohan.   Menem has the backing of business, though Stock Exchange chief Julio Macchi, warned it was "absolutely indispensable" for the bill to be agreed by consensus.   Business leaders are also lobbying for redundancy insurance to be financed jointly by contributions from employers and employees.   "It would be a good way to go, to have both employers and employees contributing to a sort of insurance for possible layoffs," said Enrique Crotto, head of the Rural Society farm lobby and a director of the Group of Eight, a powerful lobby of the eight biggest business chambers.   But Labor Minister Caro Figueroa issued a statement making it clear employees will not have to fund their own redundancy:   "Just as we have said all along, the government proposes an indemnization regime via an individual capitalization fund paid into excuslively by the employer."   -- Buenos Aires Newsroom +541 318-0695 
19122 !E51 !E512 !ECAT !GCAT !GDIP  Chancellor Helmut Kohl said on Friday his meetings with leaders of Brazil, Mexico and Argentina had sent "a clear signal" that Germany wanted closer economic ties to Latin America.   Winding up a trip to the region, Kohl said German and European unity had absorbed much of Bonn's energy over the past decade but the time had come to pay more attention to the fast-growing markets of Latin America and Asia.   "We are helping each other to find the way to the future," the German leader said.   "This trip is an important trip for me ... The world has changed.   We need partners".   Kohl told German and Mexican businessmen he had agreed, in friendly talks with leaders of the three nations he visited, to draw up as soon as possible a list of firm projects, including a look at what Latin America could learn from Germany's system of apprenticeship and professional training.   Progress in German-Mexican projects will be reviewed when President Ernesto Zedillo visits Germany, probably in October next year, Kohl said.   The German-Mexican Chamber of Commerce urged Kohl to help speed up possible negotiations between the European Union and Mexico for a free trade agreement.   Otherwise, European firms in Mexico would lose competitiveness against North American counterparts who were already taking full advantage of the North American Free Trade Agreement with Mexico, it said.   Kohl said Germany recognised the importance of the accord but could not commit himself to a date for sealing a pact.   He said he hoped middle-size German companies would follow the lead set by about 500 larger firms already established in the Mexican market, but he added that Mexico needed to "find inner peace" and stability to attract foreign money, an apparent reference to simmering guerrilla conflicts.   Kohl was to travel later in the day to the industrial city of Puebla, east of Mexico City, to lay the foundation stone for a new German school and, jointly with Zedillo, put a plaque on the 21,300,000th Volkswagen Beetle to be produced in the plant outside the city.   Volkswagen has already announced a $1 billion investment in Puebla over the next few years which includes refitting the factory to make its successor car to the Beetle, currently codenamed Concept One.   Kohl leaves for Bonn on Saturday night. 
19123 !GCAT !GVIO  Colombia's leftist guerrillas unleashed a wave of bombings and attacks across the country on Friday in a new offensive against the government of embattled President Ernesto Samper.   The heaviest fighting was reported in northwest Antioquia province where the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) was pinned down by airstrikes in the mountains.   Officials said 20 to 30 guerrillas had been killed since Thursday as army units fought to dislodge the FARC from a key highway blocked by the rebels on Monday to support peasant organisations.   The nationwide offensive launched on Thursday was announced in a communique by the National Liberation Army (ELN), the second-largest rebel group after the FARC.   Police reported hit-and-run attacks across the country, including four bombings of banks and electricity lines in the Caribbean resort city of Cartagena and the torching of 18 trucks loaded with coal in northern Cesar province.   Rebels also hijacked a truck laden with 31 tonnes of ammonimum nitrate, the base material for making explosives.   Guerrillas set five buses ablaze in the coffee-growing province of Tolima in central Colombia and attacked a police station in southwest Valle del Cauca province, killing one policeman and injuring nine.   Four suspected ELN rebels died when the bombs they were making exploded in Cucuta on the border with Venezuela, radio reports said.   Banks and a bus terminal were dynamited in the town overnight and a homeless man was killed.   The new wave of violence came less than a month after the FARC, Latin America's oldest guerrilla force, began its largest offensive in more than three decades of war against the Colombian state.   More than 100 security force members died in the fighting and 60 soldiers were seized by the FARC.   "We call on all those tired of the exploitative, corrupt and militaristic oligarchy to show their discontent and join the campaign of civil disobedience," the ELN said in its communique announcing the new offensive.   It said it would bring industries, schools and transport services to a halt across the country in a bid to topple the Samper government, which the communique said was elected with drug money and was now trying to win favour with the United States by "slaughtering peasants."   Army commander Gen. Harold Bedoya, who has complained in recent interviews about a lack of manpower and resources to wage an effective counterinsurgency campaign, condemned Friday's attacks as "terrorist actions" and urged Colombians to unite against the guerrillas, whom he described as drug-dealing bandits bent on destroying Colombia's economy.   His call was echoed by business leader Armando Montenegro, head of the National Association of Financial Institutions, who said that despite doubts about the army's effectiveness "there is no other option but to support the armed forces."   "Guerrillas are seeking to take advantage of the national situation.   They've unleashed this spiral (of attacks) at a time of great uncertainty," he said, referring to a political crisis stemming from Samper's alleged ties to drug lords. 
19124 !C18 !C183 !C42 !CCAT !E41 !ECAT !GCAT !GJOB  Employees of Ecuador's state electricity company Inecel began a hunger strike Friday to protest a law allowing the privatization of the firm, but did not interrupt service.   The protest was decided late Thursday, after Congress passed a law opening the way for the sale of state firm.   "We have decided to launch a hunger strike," said Miguel Calahorrano of the electrical workers' union.   "From now on some of our members will be watching that service is maintained, while others will carry out the strike."   Employees in the administrative and operations branches will not strike to prevent a breakdown in service he said.   Congress passed early Thursday a law that permits the sale of 49 percent of the shares Inecel.   The government is activley seeking a fresh injection of private capital into the country's electrical system to ensure full supply.   In 1995, Ecuador had an electrical energy crisis and rationing of electricty ran up to eight hours a day.   Unionists said they are willing to accept private capital for the development of new projects but reject private companies taking over the current structure of the firm.   Inecel employs 1,540 workers and manages the country's largest hydroelectric plan of Paute, which supplies 70% of Ecuador's electricity. 
19125 !E51 !E512 !ECAT !GCAT !GDIP  Cuban President Fidel Castro paid warm tribute to a U.S. group that donated more than 400 computers to the island while slamming the U.S. policy of economic isolation of Havana.   Five members of the "U.S.-Cuba Friendship Caravan" staged a 94-day protest fast this year after U.S. authorities impounded the computers at the U.S.-Mexican border in January.   The computers, aimed at modernising Cuba's health system, were eventually released and were brought to Cuba this week.   At a ceremony on Thursday evening, Castro awarded medals to the five and told them and some 100 members of the Caravan, mostly U.S. citizens but including some Canadians, that Cuba was proud to have such support.   The main organiser of the Caravan, Lucius Walker, heaped praise on Castro and the Cuban people, saying that in its social values the country's communist system was similar to the values preached by Jesus Christ.   "Based on his religious convictions, he arrives at conclusions that are similar to ours," Castro replied.   He said the United States sought to destroy a system that tried to care for its people with services such as health care and education.   Walker heads a church group called Pastors for Peace that opposes the longstanding U.S. embargo on Cuba.   Under the embargo, strengthened by the new Helms-Burton law, U.S. citizens may give humanitarian aid to Cuba if they have a license to do so, but critics such as Pastors for Peace oppose the licenses, saying that to apply for them is to accept the embargo.   "To hell with the licenses," Walker told the gathering, pledging to stage another aid caravan next year, this time aimed at helping Cuba's children. 
19126 !C24 !CCAT !GCAT !GWEA  Heavy rains overnight and Friday morning in northeastern Buenos Aires province had little effect on the situation of Argentina's crops and missed the neediest areas, the Meteorological Service said.   Some 24 millimeters had fallen in the city of Buenos Aires by morning, but crop areas suffering from a lingering drought in the northern and eastern reaches of Argentina's grain belt stayed dry.   The Meteorological Service forecast more rain and storms later Friday in northern Buenos Aires, southern Santa Fe and southern Entre Rios, and possible showers in Cordoba.   -- Jason Webb, Buenos Aires Newsroom +541 318-0655 
19127 !GCAT !GVIO  Colombia's leftist guerrillas declared a nationwide offensive on Friday as heavy fighting raged in the country's northwest where radio reports said more than 30 rebels had been killed.   The so-called "armed strike" or all-out offensive was announced in a communique issued by the National Liberation Army (ELN) -- the country's second largest guerrilla group -- which vowed to shut down transportation, schools, business and industrial activity across Colombia.    The strike was called to protest a corrupt government elected with Cali cartel drug money that had sought to curry favor with the United States by giving the military sweeping powers to unleash "indiscriminate repression against the people," the ELN said in its communique.   The RCN radio network reported, meanwhile, that more than 30 Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) rebels had been killed in airstrikes and combat late Thursday in a mountainous area of northwestern Antioquia province.   The death toll could not be immediately confirmed but military sources said airstrikes and fighting resumed shortly after dawn Friday in an area known as Canon de la Llorona.   FARC rebels have blockaded the main highway in the area since Monday, isolating the banana-growing region of Uraba. 
19128 !C42 !CCAT !E41 !ECAT !GCAT !GJOB  Enrique Crotto, a leading member of Argentina's powerful Group of Eight umbrella business association, Friday endorsed a government initiative to have employess finance their own layoff compensation.   "It would be a good way to go," said Crotto, President of Argentina's Rural Society of agricultural industries, "to have both employers and employees contributing to a sort of insurance for possible layoffs."    The initiative is part of the government's ambitious labor market reforms which have become one of President Carlos Menem's top policy priorities.   Crotto said he was all for the government's drive to loosen labor laws and said they were needed to foster employment.   Argentine unemployment is currently at 17.1 percent.   "You have to have more flexible laws.   People are afraid of hiring because of the lawsuits they face if they decide to fire their employees," said Crotto.   "That needs to be changed."    The new labor legislation package will be unveiled shortly and should go to Congress in the next 10 days.   Menem warned that he will resort to presidential decrees if lawmakers drag their feet.   Argentine unions have already come out to express their staunch opposition to any change in labor laws that could diminish workers' benefits.   A World Bank report published Thursday said Argentine unemployment could drop to single figures if the government succeeds in implementing labor reforms.   "Unemployment in Argentina could fall eight percentage points ...i f the government moves ahead with a reduction in labor costs and new compensation schemes that are included in the latest government labor flexibilization plan," it said.   Separately, senior Argentine Economy Ministry labor expert Carola Pessino said the reforms could push down unemployment to below 10 percent.   -- Daniel Helft, Buenos Aires Newsroom + 54 1 318 0663 
19129 !GCAT  These are the highlights of the main Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro newspapers this morning.   - - -   GAZETA MERCANTIL   -- RESERVES NO LONGER NEED TO GROW   Brazil no longer needs to keep accumulating foreign reserves, which currently total $59.6 billion, according to Finance Minister Pedro Malan.   -- PRIVATE RAILWAYS HAVE A GOOD START   After privatization, the center-east and west sections of Brazil's federal railway network returned to the black and now transport more goods.   The center-east section is likely to report an operating profit of 2.0 million reais in September.   -- NOMURA ANNOUNCES LOSSES OF $3.3 BLN   Nomura Securities, the world's largest brokerage house, will show an extraordinary profit of $3.35 billion this fiscal year.   - - -   FOLHA DE SAO PAULO   -- INFLATION AT LOWEST LEVEL SINCE 1958   Inflation in the city of Sao Paulo reached its lowest level in the last 38 years, according to the Fipe institute.   Inflation as measured by the Fipe index was 0.11 percent between August 16 and September 15.   -- KOLYNOS LIKELY TO BE OUT OF THE MARKET IN FOUR YEARS   Colgate-Palmolive is likely to opt for suspending for four years the sale of Kolynos toothpaste brand.   Brazil's Cade, the country's antitrust agency, ruled late Wednesday in favor of Colgate's takeover of Kolynos but set conditions to keep Colgage from snapping up a 78 percent market share of Brazil's toothpast market overnight.   - - -   O GLOBO   -- CONDE RISES, SERGIO FALLS AND DIFFERENCE REACHES 17 POINTS   Luiz Paulo Conde, from the Liberal Front Party (PFL), who is running for Rio de Janeiro's mayor office, rose to 38 percent from 37 percent, according to Ibobe/O Globo/Rede Globo poll among Rio voters.   Sergio Cabral Filho, from the Brazilian Social Democrat Party (PSDB), fell to 21 percent from 25 percent.   - - -   -- Reuters has not verified these stories and cannot vouch for their accuracy.   -- Fatima Cristina, Sao Paulo newsroom, 55-11-2324411 
19130 !GCAT !GCRIM !GVIO  A Mexican journalist emerged alive on Thursday after a two-day abduction which he alleged was carried out by secret police investigating his links to a new rebel group in southern Mexico.   Razhy Gonzalez, director of a small newspaper highly critical of the government in the southern state of Oaxaca, was picked up by a police patrol after being dumped, blindfolded and wrists bound, in a deserted area in the state capital.   In an abduction that aroused concern among international rights groups, Gonzalez, 27, was seized at gunpoint near the centre of Oaxaca by masked men on Tuesday, just four days after he had attended a clandestine news conference with the rebel Popular Revolutionary Army (EPR).   "Their whole interrogation was about how I get information about the EPR," Gonzalez told reporters as he was turned over to his family at the state Attorney General's Office.   He had burn marks on his face and wrists from the blindfold and a pair of tights that bound his hands.   He said he was convinced his abductors were policemen, adding: "I am not sure if they were federal investigators or some special group in the state police."   He said he was not physically tortured but that his captors threatened him and his family with death.   The seizure of Gonzalez, which a witness said was carried out like a police arrest, raised concerns that the Oaxaca authorities were using terror tactics to crack down on government critics in the wake of the rebel uprising.   In late August, the EPR carried out raids on police and military posts here and in neighbouring states in which the official death toll was 20.   Human rights groups have accused the government of military repression after the attacks.   Officials from state Gov. Diodoro Carrasco on down sought to assure journalists that they were not behind the kidnapping and they promise a full investigation. 
19131 !GCAT !GCRIM  Heat and humidity blanket Chapare's mountains in central Boliva with vegetation so thick the rainforest appears to be a lost paradise.   But government troops torching a makeshift laboratory while military helicopters fly overhead on a recent patrol are testimony to this region's most profitable crop, cocaine, and the fact that Chapare is no paradise, lost or found.   One cocaine lab has been destroyed but for officials of the military's anti-drug battalion, UMOPAR, victory is short lived.   "Many people just move on and start again if they are chased away," the unit's commander Luis Caballero said.   Chapare is the world's second largest producer of coca leaf and third largest producer of cocaine paste, which is later purified and sold mostly in America's inner city streets.   Colombia and Peru account for the rest.   Why, after years of concerted international efforts that cost governments billions of dollars, do drug kingpins continue to hold their ground?   And why has Bolivia, which in the past produced just coca leaf, the raw material for cocaine, advanced to producing cocaine almost ready for consumption in the form of "paste" and "base"?   A half-hour ride from UMOPAR near Chimore hamlet followed by a 30-minute walk through the thick tropical forest of Chapare goes a long way to answer those questions.   First, the robust coca plant yields four crops of leaf a year.   The rich soil and the heat and rain are all it needs during its 10-year lifespan.   And the labs, unlike the more elaborate sites common in Colombia, can be erected quickly by a few men for perhaps as little as the price of two grams of cocaine in New York.   These labs require no chemists either -- just a few barefoot campesinos crushing coca leaves in a plastic container with water fetched in buckets from one of the myriad streams crisscrossing Chapare.   There is no electricity or running water.   Machetes, buckets, shovels, some sticks and a piece of cloth used for sifting are their simple tools.   Nor do the labs have roofs or walls.   "Cocaleros," cocaine workers, open up a narrow path in the jungle with machetes and clear a 25-by-10 foot (eight-by-three metre) area.   The thick vegetation makes them invisible from a short distance away.   Then come the "precursor chemicals" -- a sophisticated term for nothing more than gasoline (petrol), lime, baking powder and sulphuric acid.   More and more, Bolivian labs are now going one step further and producing cocaine base -- the last step before cocaine is ready for consumption -- which is smaller in volume and has a much longer lifespan than the paste.   These labs each produce up to four kilos of paste or base a day and net the Cocaleros $450 to $500 per kilo.   The further away from Chapare, the higher the price becomes -- $1,000 per kilo after it is purified and taken to the border, $9,000 in Brazil, between $17,000 and $25,000 in Miami, Caballero said.   Some 40,000 families from the Aymara, Quechua and Guarani aborigine groups grow coca and help produce about 170 tonnes of cocaine paste a year.   But most is confiscated and burned, so the Chapare's net yield is some 60 tonnes a year, he added.   Manpower in the area is any businessman's dream come true -- cheap, plentiful, loyal, highly mobile.   Bolivian campesinos, who rank among the poorest in Latin America, will readily grow coca and then crush it with their feet in a tub for a handful of Bolivianos, mindless of the health hazards posed by the chemicals, army officials say.   Many live in clusters of one-room wooden huts standing on poles above the ground.   This gives the cocaine workers plenty of mobility.   If the army destroys their crop, as is often the case, they just move with their families, their few hogs and other scant belongings a little further into the jungle by another stream and build a new hut.   Lookouts for cocaine workers set off firecrackers when they see military vans approaching, giving them ample time to flee.   Caballero said his 270-strong battalion set up 13 years ago has burned nearly 2,300 labs so far this year.   That comes down to almost 10 labs a day and reveals the odds the troops are up against with just a few trucks and four helicopters.   The government, sometimes with backing from United Nations agencies, is promoting alternative crops such as pineapples, bananas, palm hearts and citrus.   In some cases it compensates peasants who willingly give up growing coca with money and gives them seeds, cows and technical assistance.   But many peasants find four crops a year, paid for in cash and free of sanitary controls, invoices and credit lines, hard to beat.   It is also clear that poor people barely making a living off the land find it hard to discuss alternative crops -- or anything else, for that matter -- with armed rural patrols or their associates.   Asked for comment, a woman holding a baby in her arms, one of about a dozen hut dwellers standing by a dirt road as troops filed by, replied "I know nothing, sir.   They just come here in the trucks.   ... I know nothing." 
19132 !GCAT !GVIO  Helicopter gunships and army planes bombarded leftist guerrillas in northwest Colombia on Thursday, killing an unspecified number and injuring others, military sources said.   The air strike took place in a mountainous area near the town of Dabeiba, about 250 miles (400 km) from Bogota, as the army attempted to end a four-day-old, rebel blockade of the main highway to the banana-growing region of Uraba.   The attack against the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia is the second time the army has bombed the rebels this year.   Both incidents have taken place in northwestern Antioquia province.   An army spokesman said Gen. Rito Alejo del Rio, of the 17th brigade, led the attack, which included helicopters, U.S.-made A-37 bombers and ground troops.   "The rebels suffered a number of deaths and serious damage," the spokesman said without specifying numbers.   The airborne offensive aimed to avoid the risk of ambush by guerrillas on the ground, the spokesman added.   Colombia's guerrillas have made frequent use of highway blockades in the last three weeks as part of what is being termed one of the bloodiest rebel offensives in decades.   The site of Thursday's attack is the gateway to Uraba, home to fertile banana plantations but also to leftist guerrilla groups and right-wing paramilitaries, who have killed with impunity for years in their battle to control lucrative contraband routes. 
19133 !GCAT !GCRIM !GDIP  The U.S. government will give Panama six helicopters to help it combat drug trafficking, a U.S. embassy spokesman said on Thursday.   The helicopters, to come from U.S. military reserves, will be used by Panamanian police to carry out search missions in the remote Darien jungle area bordering Colombia, long a haven for drugs and arms trafficking, spokesman Joe Johnson said.   No date was set for the delivery of the aircraft and Johnson could not say which type they were.   The United States will also donate $340,000 in another anti-narcotics package for justice and customs officials as well as education programmes in local schools, the spokesman said. 
19134 !GCAT !GDIP !GVIO  The Organisation of American States (OAS) is exploring programmes and seeking international funds to support the Guatemalan peace process, OAS Secretary General Cesar Gaviria said on Thursday.   "We are putting together a special aid programme for Guatemala," Gaviria told a news conference after arriving in Guatemala City.   Gaviria is on a two-day visit that coincided with the signing in Mexico City Thursday of a partial peace accord between the government and leftist rebels as Guatemala approaches the end of more than 30 years of civil war.   Gaviria, a former Colombian president, said he would meet President Alvaro Arzu Friday to sign a framework agreement for OAS aid for Guatemala.   The secretary general also will meet government officials to get ideas on designing aid projects.   The OAS has provided Guatemala more than $2 million in the past two years, Gaviria said.   The OAS will collect money from different countries and international institutions so that aid will increase significantly after a definitive peace accord is signed later this year, he said.   Gaviria said the OAS already was sponsoring education and conflict-resolution projects in Guatemala, and was also seeking international funding and expertise to remove land mines from former war zones.   Gaviria said the OAS also wants to help guerrillas return to civilian life after the war. 
19135 !GCAT !GPOL !GVOTE  Colombia's Congress elected diplomat Carlos Lemos Simmonds as the country's new vice president on Thursday amid continuing calls for embattled President Ernesto Samper to step down.   The extraordinary election by both houses of Congress, which is dominated by Samper's Liberal Party, was scheduled after former Vice President Humberto de la Calle resigned last week, citing Samper's alleged ties to drug kingpins and what he described as the government's deepening credibility crisis.   Samper, who shrugged off De la Calle's demand that he resign also, has been widely applauded in the aftermath of the new blow to his prestige for tapping Lemos, ambassador to Britain and widely respected as a tough, honest politician, to fill the post.   But the leader of the opposition Conservative Party said Lemos' election would fail to pull together a country torn by political crisis and growing lawlessness.   "From the outset we said Samper and De la Calle's election was invalid because of the huge funds from drug trafficking that were poured into their campaign," Sen. Jaime Arias said.   "Lemos' election is an agreement by Liberal currents to solve internal disagreements but cannot be seen as a step toward national reconciliation."   Claudia Blum, legislator for the New Democratic Force, whose candidate lost to Samper in 1994, pressed the president to resign "in the shortest time possible" and allow Lemos to lead Colombia out of its prolonged political crisis.   Political analysts say rumours are beginning to circulate that Lemos, who accepted Samper's nomination with a pledge of loyalty, has already struck a deal that will see the president handing over the full reins of power.   Samper, who was cleared of any wrongdoing in connection with his campaign in a congressional trial in June, has insisted repeatedly that he will see out his full term of office.   Even in his largely ceremonial role as vice president, which will be conducted for the time being from London in tandem with his diplomatic posting, Lemos is tipped by political analysts to bridge the divide between warring factions of his own Liberal Party.   That in-fighting has been fuelled by the accusations that Samper knew the Cali drug cartel pumped millions of dollars of cocaine cash into his 1994 campaign and exacerbated by a three-week-old spiral in leftist guerrilla violence.   The post of vice president, created in a package of constitutional reforms in 1991, is ill-defined and confers few specific responsibilities except that of replacing the president should he not fulfil his four-year term. 
19136 !GCAT  REITH CONDEMNS NEW RALLY   The ACTU is planning another rally to coincide with the resumption of its Living Wage Case at the start of next month.   While details have yet to be released the Federal Government has condemned the plan.   Industrial Relations Minister Peter Reith says its disgraceful that the union movement is planning another rally, before its apologised for its part responsibility for the violence at the pre-budget rally in Canberra.   - - - -   JAPANESE PM CALLS AUSTRALIA A VERY GOOD FRIEND   The Japanese Prime Minister has described Australia was an indispensable partner and a very good friend.   Mr Hashimoto and Australian Prime Minister John Howard spoke to the media after a 50 minute meeting today.   The Japanese Prime Minister announced a series of celebrations to be held in both countries to mark important anniversaries in the bilateral relationship.   Mr Howard also received a compliment for his gun control reforms.   In return, Mr Howard thanked Japan for its support for Australia taking part in the next Asia/Europe meeting.   - - - -   DALAI LAMA TO ASK PM FOR SUPPORT   The Dalai Lama says unless Chinese rule of Tibet ends, the Tibetan nation with its unique cultural heritage will die.   The Tibetan spiritual leader will ask John Howard to support his call for meaningful negotiations with China on self-rule for Tibet.   The Prime Minister has agreed to meet the visiting Tibetan spiritual leader next week.   At a media conference in Sydney today, the Dalai Lama said he'd tell Mr Howard that self-rule is the only way to preserve Tibet's distinct cultural identity.   - - - -   BEAZLEY SAYS ACTION IS IN PAST   Federal Opposition Leader, Kim Beazley, says the type of action the Maritime Union is taking, with its boycotts against Indonesian ships, is past.   The unions have taken the action in protest against the arrest of two Indonesian union leaders following the riots in July.   But Mr Beazley has distanced himself from the action, saying it would be more appropriate and useful if the unions instead wrote to embassies and sent a message directly to the Indonesian government.   - - - -   BROWN TO ASK SENATE TO BLOCK WOODCHIP QUOTAS   Tasmanian Greens Senator, Bob Brown, says the Federal Government's move to increase woodchip export quotas sets it up as an environmental vandal.   The Federal Government's announced it'll allow the export of five and a quarter million tonnes of woodchips from public forests.   It will also allow an extra million tonnes from sawmill residue and unlimited woodchips from private forests.   Senator Brown says this could mean ten million tonnes of woodchips exported next year.   Senator Brown will ask the Senate to disallow the new export regulations which would force the Primary Industries Minister to approve each export licence individually.   - - -   WARNE'S FINGER TO GET A WORKOUT   Australian Cricketer Shane Warne says he's hoping a workout for his injured spinning finger in Darwin over the next week, will give him the all clear for the up-coming tour of India.   Warne is visiting the Top End with the Victorian Squad to train in warm conditions on turf wickets.   The new Victorian Captain says squad games, and matches against a Territory Eleven, will give him an opportunity to test his finger.   - - - -   CAR THEFT TASK FORCE   A national car theft task force, which met today for the first time in Melbourne, says the growing problem of car theft from shopping centre car parks must be tackled.   The task force has been set up by State and Territory Leaders.   Chairman Leon Daphne says local and international car-makers will be asked to consider compulsory labelling of car parts, to prevent stolen vehicles being disguised.   Mr Daphne says behaviour, co-operation between the various state jurisdictions, and developing better security systems in vehicles, are all areas task force will address.   -- Reuters Sydney Newsroom 61-2 9373-1800 
19137 !GCAT  SHIPPING GROUP DECRIES BANS   Shippers have called on the Maritime Union to end its boycott of Indonesian vessels, saying Australian unions should keep out of overseas political issues.   The union is continuing the boycott, aimed at delaying the loading of Indonesian ships, in protest at the arrest of two trade union leaders in Indonesia.   Chamber of Shipping executive director John Jenkins says it's the sort of action that can cost Australia its reputation as a reliable trading partner.   And he says the boycott is not good for the union's own ambitions.   - - - -   TAXPAYERS' BILL OF RIGHTS   There's a call today for a Bill of Rights for Australian taxayers.   It comes from the Institute of Chartered Accountants and follows this week's disclosure by the Commonwealth Ombudsman that there's been a 37 percent increase in complaints about the Tax Office.   The Institute's Tax Manager, Helen Warner, says the proposal for a voluntary code of conduct for Tax Office staff is not good enough, and a legally-enforceable taxpayers' charter is needed.   She says industry groups will discuss the proposed charter next month.   - - - -   WOODCHIP QUOTA INCREASE CONFIRMED   The Federal Government will allow the export of an extra one million tonnes of sawmill residues and thinnings from regrowth forests, under higher woodchip export quotas just confirmed.   And Export woodchips from degraded forests cleared for plantations will be allowed on a case-by-case basis, with no ceiling.   A ceiling will limit the export of one category of chips to five-and-a-quarter million tonnes a year.   Three-year export licences will be issued soon under the new regulations.   Tasmanian Senator Bob Brown says they'll mean an increase of 65 per cent in Tasmanian woodchip exports.   But the Federal Primary Industries and Environment Ministers say ceilings on exports won't be needed when regional forest agreements are introduced next June.   - - - -   DISCRIMINATION STILL EXISTS: COMMISSIONER   The President of the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, Sir Ronald Wilson, says there's still a big job ahead to combat racial discrimination in Australia.   Sir Ronald says public reaction to Federal Independent MP Pauline Hanson's maiden speech shows the problems of racial discrimination are still very much in existence.   Ms Hanson called for an end to special benefits for Aborigines and an end to multiculturalism.   Sir Ronald has told a Parliamentary Committee on Human Rights the Commission, parliamentarians and others still have a significant task to emphasise the importance of a united nation for all Australians.   Meanwhile, Queensland's Housing Minister, Ray Connor, has invited Ms Hanson to visit indigenous communities with him, saying she'll understand she's wrong if she sees the conditions.   - - - -   DAVID PARKER JAILED IN WA   Former Deupty Premier David Parker has been sentenced to a total of 18 months in jail after being convicted of giving false evidence to the WA Inc Royal Commission.   Judge Michael Mueller, who heard Parker's case without a jury, said a fine would not adequately reflect the gravity of the offences of which Parker had been found guilty.   He said Parker's good character was now destroyed although he pointed out that the convictions did not amount to an abuse of his former Ministerial office, saying his record of public service remained untainted.   Parker will be eligible for parole.   - - - -   KERNOT WON'T SUPPORT ANTI-EUTHANASIA BILL   Australian Democrats leader, Cheryl Kernot, says she won't support Federal legislation designed to over-ride the Northern Territory's voluntary euthanasia law.   Senator Kernot says she believes euthanasia is a matter of individual choice in the same way as abortion is, and she doesn't want to impose her views on the sanctity of life on others.   The bill introduced by Federal Liberal MP Kevin Andrews aims to override the Northern Territory's laws allowing euthanasia and would affect any similar future legislation in the ACT.   - - - -   PLANNING FOR PRESIDENTIAL VISIT   A United States reconaissance team has already been in Australia planning a visit by President Bill Clinton in November.   Deputy Prime Minister, Tim Fischer, this morning announced President Clinton and his wife, Hilary will arrive on November the 19th for a five day visit, taking in Canberra, Sydney and a private visit to Cairns.   The President will then travel to the Philippines to attend the APEC summit meeting.   Mr Fischer says planning is proceeding, even though Mr Clinton faces re-election in early November.   Talks on trade and defence are expected to dominate the President's agenda in this country.   - - - -   PORSCHE OFFERED FOR RETURN OF CAT   A Melbourne couple, offering their Porsche sports car for the safe return of their Burmese cat, say they feel they've lost a family member.   Five-year-old "Rusty" has been missing from Don and Robin Pyke's Toorak home for a fortnight.   Robin Pyke admits it's desperate attempt to get the cat back, but says they're desperate to have him home again.   She says anyone who has a Burmese cat will know how attached they become to their owners.   -- Reuters Sydney Newsroom 61-2 9373-1800 
19138 !GCAT !GCRIM !GPOL  A three-day no-confidence debate ended in Thailand's parliament late on Friday with Prime Minister Banharn Silpa-archa saying he had answered all the accusations against him.   "I have already answered all the charges," Banharn said in his final speech.   "From now on it depends on the judgement of the members of parliament to make a decision on my fate."   Parliament is due to vote at on Saturday (0330 GMT) on the censure motion, which accuses the prime minister of condoning corruption, mismanaging the economy, plagiarising his master's thesis and amassing land.   The opposition has also questioned whether he is a native- born Thai, as the constitution requires for those who take part in politics.   Banharn, who denies all the charges, spoke frequently on a day filled with long accusations by the opposition followed by drawn-out rebuttals by members of his Chart Thai party.   Opposition leader Chuan Leekpai of the Democrat Party said in his final statement that Banharn had failed to adequately answer the accusations.   "On the question of the change of nationality, you still have not answered the question," he said.   "You have committed an offense by falsifying documents in order to enter politics.   How long do you plan to continue this?"   The opposition claims that Banharn's father arrived in Thailand from China in 1937, five years after Banharn was born, and that Banharn had falsified his nationality papers.   Police Colonel Dej karnchanawat, deputy chief of the Immigration Department, on Friday showed reporters immigration records that stated that Banharn's father, Sengkim Saebey, had come to Thailand in 1907.   Banharn also denied that he or his party accepted financial support from a foreign-born former adviser to an ailing bank.   Thai political parties are forbidden to take money from foreigners.   Most analysts expect Banharn will win the vote, as his six-party coalition holds 209 seats of the 391-seat lower house.   Chart Thai party secretary Sanoh Thienthong said all coalition parties had promised to vote for Banharm.   "What the opposition has accused him of does not carry weight," declared Montree Pongpanich, pledging the support of his Social Action Party's 22 MPs.   "They produced unreliable evidence.   But anyway, after the vote there will be major changes," he said without elaborating.   But analysts have not ruled out the possibility that Banharn still might dissolve parliament before the vote if it appeared at the last moment that he was going to lose.   General Chatichai Choonhavan, leader of the Chart Pattana Party, the second biggest opposition party, took that view.   "During the past days the government did not make anything clear, so the government is deadlocked.   the only way out is to resign or dissolve the house," he said. 
19139 !C21 !CCAT !GCAT !GODD  Cathay Pacific Airways Ltd said Friday that a three-month ban on carrying live or perishable cargo in its new fleet of Boeing 777 aircraft is to be partially lifted.   But live frogs, which were blamed for the emergency evacuation of 306 passengers at the territory's Kai Tak airport in June, are still prohibited, the airline said.   Boeing engineers suspect an over-sensitive fire sensor triggered by vapour given off by the frogs on their way to Chinese food markets caused the false fire alarm in the new twinjet's cargo hold.   Cathay Pacific Cargo's marketing and sales manager Ray Jewell told Reuters that sea food, such as live lobster and tropical fish, will soon be permitted.   "Certain types of live animals, primarily crustaceans and tropical fish, will be allowed if the packing is appropriate.   We're hoping to have the ban lifted within a week," Jewell said.   Cathay cannot yet say when full clearance will be given.   Boeing has been working closely with Cathay and another affected airline, Emirates, after one of the latter's 777s was also forced to make an emergency landing in a similar incident involving a consignment of warm mangoes.   Live animals and perishables are an important revenue-earning cargo, but a Cathay spokesman said it was premature to comment on whether the airline would seek compensation from Boeing. 
19140 !GCAT !GDIP !GVIO  South Korean troops using loudhailers pleaded on Friday with the remnants of a North Korean infiltration group to surrender, while the United States urged "all parties" to stay calm.   Troops blasted the message to a half dozen or so agents they believe may be holed up in a rugged mountain area pitted with disused coal mines.   Helicopters scattered leaflets urging surrender, but by nightfall there was no response and a curfew was imposed until dawn.   There was even speculation the highly-trained operatives may have slipped through a cordon of thousands of troops and police and could be on their way home.   "You are surrounded.   If you abandon your weapons and surrender you can live.   Most of your colleagues have been shot to death.   We urge you to surrender immediately," an army officer shouted through a loudhailer on a military jeep.   Authorities now believe possibly 26 North Koreans came ashore early on Wednesday from a submarine near the east coast city of Kangnung.   So far, 18 have been shot and killed and one has been captured alive.   Political shockwaves from the incident -- one of the deadliest infiltrations of the South since the early Cold War -- spread wider, clouding prospects for a U.S.-South Korean peace initiative for the divided Korean peninsula.   North and South Korea have been technically at war since their 1950-53 conflict ended with an armistice negotiated by U.S.-led United Nations forces.   In Washington, U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher urged "all parties" to avoid further provocative action.   Seoul said it would brief the U.N. Security Council on the drama and Japan denounced the incident as "deplorable".   North Korea accused South Korea of taking "provocative action" near the border earlier this week but made no reference to the submarine incident in a radio broadcast.   Christopher told a news conference: "We wish that all parties would refrain from taking further provocative actions."   The United States has 37,000 troops stationed in the South to deter any North Korean attack.   Japan hit out at its close neighbour across the sea.   "We have an interest in peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula and it is deplorable that North Korea has brought about this incident," government spokesman Seiroku Kajiyama told a news conference.   "The international community will not accept it.   We call on North Korea to immediately end these kinds of actions".   Political analysts said the incident may have damaged the chances of peace on the Korean peninsula by giving ammunition to hardliners in Seoul, who oppose any concessions to the North.   South Korea and the United States are trying to entice Pyongyang to talks, along with China, to work out a peace pact to replace the armistice.   A South Korean foreign ministry statement said Seoul's ambassador to the United Nations would brief members of the Security Council on Friday.   The infiltration was "an obvious violation of the armistice agreement and a grave threat to peace and security on the Korean peninsula", the statement said.   South Korea is one of 15 members of the Security Council, whose permanent members are the United States, China, Russia, Britain and France.   Media reports said the captured man told interrogators 26 North Koreans landed.   Three were saboteurs -- trained to survive behind enemy lines and cover huge distances on foot -- and they were still at large, Lee Kwang-soo reportedly said.   South Korea's spy chief said the saboteurs could have murdered 11 of their collegues, whose bodies were found on top of a mountain on Wednesday.   At the time, authorities said they had committed suicide rather than risk capture.   Kwon Young-hae, the Director of the Agency for National Security Planning, was quoted by newspapers as telling a parliamentary committee some of the 11 were killed by bullets fired from behind, suggesting execution-style death.   Security experts suggested the saboteurs sacrificed their comrades so they could move faster and to distract pursuers.   The infiltrators appeared to have been sent "not for simple espionage or reconnaissance missions but for special duties such as guerilla warfare", Kwon said.   In case they evaded the dragnet around the mines, troops were lying in ambush along roads and mountain passes leading to North Korea, a defence ministry official in Kangnung said. 
19141 !GCAT !GPOL  Thai Prime Minister Banharn Silpa-archa on Friday rejected more charges of wrongdoing levelled against him by the opposition on the third day of a fiery censure debate in parliament.   Debate on the no-confidence motion against Banharn began on Wednesday and was expected to end later on Friday, with the vote on the motion due on Saturday.   The censure motion accuses Banharn of condoning corruption in his administration, mismanaging the economy, plagiarism in his master's thesis, and amassing land.   Doubts have also been raised about the status of Banharn's Thai nationality.   Banharn, who denies all the charges, spoke intermittently on a day filled with long accusations by the opposition followed by drawn-out rebuttals by members of his Chart Thai party.   One topic that occupied a large portion of the debate was if Banharn or Chart Thai had accepted money from a foreign-born, former adviser to an ailing Thai bank.   Thai political parties are forbidden from accepting money from foreigners.   During his periodic comments, Banharn denied receiving support from Rakesh Saxena, a former employee of the Bangkok Bank of Commerce, which was taken over by the government in May after suffering a huge run on its deposits.   Indian-born Saxena alleged last month in a television interview from Canada that several Thai politicians, including Chart Thai members, had sought bribes from him.   "I never knew Rakesh before, until the BBC problem," Banharn said.   "I ordered authorities to take quick action against him ... but even though I ordered this he has fled the country."   "I deny all charges against me and the Chart Thai Party taking money from the man that I most want to be back in the country to face trial," he said.   Banharn was also supported in defending his Thai nationality when a top immigration official showed records that contradicted opposition claims that Banharn was not born in Thailand.   The nationality issue has been a key element of the opposition's campaign to unseat Banharn and is based on the constitutional stipulation that only natural-born Thais can enter politics.   Police Colonel Dej Karnchanawat, deputy chief of the Immigration Department, showed reporters the documents at a news conference on Friday outside the parliamentary chamber.   The immigration records stated that Banharn's father, Sengkim Saebey, emigrated to the kingdom in 1907.   The records countered opposition claims that Banharn's father arrived in Thailand in 1937, five years after Banharn was born, and that Banharn had falsified nationality papers in order to enter politics.   Most analysts expect Banharn to win the vote, as his six-party coalition holds 209 of the 391-seat house and on paper has the votes to defeat the motion.   "I have no doubt the government will win the majority, but what happens after that is the interesting issue," said Khotom Areeya, a political analyst at Chulalongkorn University.   Analysts have not ruled out the possibility that Banharn might dissolve parliament before the vote if it appeared he was going to lose.   General Chatichai Choonhavan, leader of the Chart Pattana party, the second-biggest oppostition party, took that view.   "During the past days the government did not make anything clear, so the government is deadlocked.   The only way out is to resign or dissolve the house," he told reporters. 
19142 !GCAT !GDIP !GVIO  A group of Hong Kong activists said on Friday they would attempt to reclaim the disputed Diaoyu islands from Japan by raising the Chinese flag on the archipelago to reassert Beijing's sovereignty.   "If we can land on the Diaoyu islands and plant a People's Republic of China flag on it, it means we will have sovereignty over these islands," Ngai Lap-chi, a spokesman for the activists, told reporters.   The islands, called the Diaoyus by China and the Senkakus by Japan, have been the focus of intense anti-Japanese protests by Chinese communities across East Asia for the past month since a Japanese right-wing youth group built a lighthouse on one of the islands.   The group will set sail for the islands on Sunday and expect to arrive on Wednesday unless they are forced to turn back by Japanese coast guard vessels patrolling the islands.   The plan is the latest spawned by increasingly anti-Japanese fervour in the British colony surrounding Wednesday's 65th anniversary of Japan's invasion of China.   Hong Kong, which reverts to China next year, was occupied by the Japanese for almost five years during World War Two.   On Friday Hong Kong legislators said they planned to write to Japanese Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto to protest against Tokyo's claim to the islands.   One legislator urged Beijing to declare war on Japan if the dispute could not be settled by diplomatic negotiation.   "If negotiation fails, then the last resort is to send warships to the islands, or even declare war on Japan," Bruce Liu, a member of the Association for Democracy and People's Livelihood, a prominent political party, told Reuters,   Japan needed to be reminded that "the Chinese are not a weak nation", he said.   The uninhabited islands lie 300 km (190 miles) west of Okinawa island and 200 km (125 miles) east of Taiwan.   Japan has claimed sovereignty over the islands and refused to acknowledge that the dispute is open for discussion.   Tokyo's claim dates to 1895, when Japan defeated China and seized Taiwan and other territories.   Taiwan and China both claim sovereignty over the islands. 
19143 !GCAT !GDIP !GVIO  South Korean troops using loudhailers pleaded on Friday with the remnants of a North Korean infiltration group to surrender, while the United States urged "all parties" to stay calm.   Troops blasted the message to an estimated half dozen or so agents holed up in a rugged mountain area pitted with disused coal mines, and helicopters scattered leaflets urging surrender after a night of fierce gunfights.   "You are surrounded.   If you abandon your weapons and surrender you can live.   Most of your colleagues have been shot to death.   We urge you to surrender immediately," an army officer shouted repeatedly through a loudspeaker on a military jeep.   Authorities now believe possibly 26 North Koreans came ashore early on Wednesday from a submarine near the east coast city of Kangnung.   So far, 18 have been shot and killed and one has been captured alive.   Political shockwaves from the incident -- one of the deadliest infiltrations of the South since the early Cold War -- spread wider, clouding prospects for a U.S.-South Korean peace initiative for the divided Korean peninsula.   North and South Korea have been technically at war since their 1950-53 conflict ended with an armistice negotiated by U.S.-led United Nations forces.   In Washington, U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher urged "all parties" to avoid further provocative action.   Seoul said it would brief the U.N. Security Council on the drama and Japan denounced the incident as "deplorable".   North Korea accused South Korea of taking "provocative action" near the border earlier this week but made no reference to the submarine incident in a radio broadcast.   Christopher told a news conference: "We wish that all parties would refrain from taking further provocative actions."   The United States has 37,000 troops stationed in the South to deter any North Korean attack.   Asked if the incident could affect efforts to provide Pyongyang with nuclear technology and humanitarian aid, he added: "Obviously, the episode is a matter of concern but the facts are so murky."   North Korea is appealing for Western food aid following devastating floods.   The United States is part of an international consortium providing the North with nuclear power plants as part of a deal to end the country's suspected nuclear weapons programme.   Japan hit out at North Korea over the incident.   "We have an interest in peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula and it is deplorable that North Korea has brought about this incident," government spokesman Seiroku Kajiyama told a news conference.   "The international community will not accept it.   We call on North Korea to immediately end these kinds of actions".   Political analysts said the incident may have damaged the chances of peace on the Korean peninsula by giving ammunition to hardliners in Seoul, who oppose any concessions to the North.   South Korea and the United States are trying to entice Pyongyang to talks, along with China, to work out a peace pact to replace the armistice.   A South Korean foreign ministry statement said Seoul's ambassador to the United Nations would brief members of the Security Council on Friday on the drama.   The infiltration was "an obvious violation of the armistice agreement and a grave threat to peace and security on the Korean peninsula", the statement said.   South Korea is one of 15 members of the Security Council, whose permanent members are the United States, China, Russia, Britain and France.   Domestic media reports said the captured man, Lee Kwang-soo, 31, told interrogators 26 North Koreans landed on a beach.   Three were trained saboteurs, two guides and the rest crew members.   The saboteurs -- deadly operatives trained to survive behind enemy lines during war -- were still at large, he said.   A South Korean defence ministry spokesman declined to comment on the reports.   The public in South Korea has reacted with anger and anxiety to the infiltration.   Some blame the navy for failing to detect the 34 metre (111 foot) submarine and worry the country is vulnerable to attack from its arch-enemy to the north. 
19144 !E51 !E512 !ECAT !GCAT !GDIP  Australian Prime Minister John Howard and his Japanese counterpart Ryutaro Hashimoto vowed on Friday to strengthen bilateral relations and join forces to tackle pressing global issues.   "It's been an opportunity to reaffirm the great strength and depth of the bilateral relationship between Australia and Japan," Howard told a joint news conference with Hashimoto soon after a summit meeting in Tokyo.   Hashimoto agreed, telling the news conference: "We have been able to establish a very good relationship with Australia so far, and it should remain so."   Howard arrived in Japan on Wednesday for a three-day visit after winding up a three-day tour of Indonesia.   It is his first major Asian tour as prime minister and has been closely watched as a barometer as to whether his coalition government, born in March, will be less committed to Asia than its predecessor.   While reaffirming his government's commitment to the Asia-Pacific region, Howard urged Hashimoto to come up with plans to further liberalise its market for agricultural products, in which Australia has an export interest, at the November meeting of regional economies.   Japan is Australia's biggest trading partner and the third-largest foreign investor in the country.   Bilateral trade was worth A$29.1 billion (US$23.2 billion) in the year to June 1995.   Howard said he raised some major Australian concerns with Hashimoto during their summit talks.   "One of those was a request to the Japanese government that it include in its detailed plans for APEC (the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum) a major initiative towards further trade liberalisation in the area of agriculture," he told a separate news conference on Friday.   "I also raised the specific timing problems in the Japanese auction of foreign quotas of rice imports.   The current timing particularly disadvantages Australian rice producers and exporters," he said.   Howard said Hashimoto had agreed that these issues will be considered.   Australia and Japan are key members of APEC.   Each member is due to present specific plans at its November summit in Subic Bay in the Philippines on how it intends to achieve the goal of free trade in the region by 2020.   Howard said he received an "entirely positive" reaction from the Japanese business community to his government's initiative in tackling a budget deficit and reforming the labour market.   But he denied that the government's reforms would lead to any short-term rise in unemployment or industrial disputes.   The two leaders said their meeting gave them opportunities to reaffirm cooperation on issues such as support for China's bid for membership in the World Trade Organisation.   "Both of us agreed how important it was to engage China, how important it was, on proper conditions, that China would become a member of the World Trade Organisation," Howard said.   "Australia and Japan have very similar views in relation to the need to properly and appropriately engage China not only in the World Trade Organisation but more generally," he added.   Australia is at odds with China after Howard said he would meet Tibet's exiled spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, who is on a two-week visit to Australia.   Beijing, which views the Dalai Lama as a political activist out to split China, issued a warning on Tuesday that foreign leaders who meet the Tibetan leader would see trade and business ties with China suffer.   The Dalai Lama has been in exile since an abortive uprising against Chinese rule in Tibet in 1959.   He won the 1989 Nobel Peace prize for his peaceful campaign for Tibetan autonomy. 
19145 !GCAT  These are some of the leading stories in the Hong Kong press on Wednesday.   Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.   -- ORIENTAL DAILY NEWS -- Shipping tycoon Tung Chee-wah said he was preparing to run for the post of Hong Kong's Chief Executive after the mid-1997 handover.   -- Businessman Peter Wu also has intentions of running for the top post.   Many politicians believe that former Chief Justice Sir Ti Liang Yang's bid for the post was purely decorative.   -- SING TAO DAILY -- A deal on the controvertial Container Terminal 9 project was finally settled between China and Britain.   British-controlled Jardine Matheson Holdings was excluded from any involvement in the project.   -- The chairman of CNT Group, Tsui Tsin-tung, was interested in standing for chief executive of the SAR.   -- TA KUNG PAO -- Zhao Jihua, head of the Chinese team in the Joint Liaison Group, accused the British side of delays in solving some issues on the expert group meetings.   -- HONG KONG ECONOMIC TIMES -- China Strategic Holding's operating profit before exceptionals has slumped 49.7 percent.   It would sell a 5.0 per cent stake of its Hangzhou ring road to Regal International.   -- SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST -- A deal between Britain and China on the Hong Kong's handover ceremony is expected when the two foreign ministers from both countries meet in New York next week.   -- Beijing has asked Tokyo for assurance that protesters from Hong Kong and Taiwan planning to go to the disputed Diaoyu islands in the East China Sea would not be harmed by Japanese naval or coastguard vessels.   -- HONGKONG STANDARD -- A civil servants' union accused Governor Chris Patten of double standards in banning senior officials' participation in the Selection Committee and allowing his cabinet members to join the Chinese body.   -- Taiwan eased rules on visits by mainland business people, signalling that the island would not be moving away from setting up close commercial ties with China.   -- Lai Sun group was considering adding another two to its fleet of four listed companies by selling shares in its China properties unit and its Hong Kong television station.   -- HONG KONG NEWSROOM (852) 28436441 
19146 !GCAT !GCRIM  Hong Kong police arrested 22 American, Irish and British nationals on Friday after a three- day drugs operation in the British colony.   The 13 men and nine women were mostly in their early twenties, a government statement said.   The arrests came after police seized 1,521 tablets of the rave drug Ecstasy, two kg (4.4 pounds) of cannabis, 300 grams (10.5 ounces) of cocaine and 50 tablets of LSD following raids on 41 premises, the statement said.   "As a result of an on-going investigation into the import and sale of Ecstasy in Hong Kong, the Police Narcotics Bureau recently identified two groups of predominately European drug traffickers," it said.   The street value of the Ecstasy was believed to be $380,250 (US$48,750) while the rest of the haul would fetch $405,000 (US$52,000) in the market.   Nine of the 22 arrested had been charged with a total of 34 drug trafficking offences, the statement said.   Police expected to make further arrests both in Hong Kong and overseas.   Hong Kong airport customs seized a record haul of the dance party drug Ecstasy last month, retrieving more than 12,000 tablets worth HK$3.6 million (US$470,000).   ($1 = US$7.8) 
19147 !GCAT !GPOL !GVIO  Moslem regional governor Nur Misuari urged the Philippine government on Friday to negotiate peace with other guerrilla groups in the southern Mindanao region to attract foreign investment into the area.   "Government has to enlarge the dimension of peace.   The larger the dimension of peace, the bigger the attraction of Mindanao will be," Misuari said in a speech to Filipino and foreign businessmen in Manila's Makati financial district.   The government signed a peace deal with former rebel leader Misuari earlier this month ending a 24-year separatist war by the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF), the mainstream Moslem guerrilla group in the southern islands.   Misuari was elected governor last week of a semi-autonomous Moslem region and is to formally assume office on September 30.   The government has also started contacts with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), a breakaway faction demanding an Islamic state, in an attempt to conclude a separate deal with them.   It is also holding talks with communist guerrillas, which also operate in the southern islands.   But the extremist Abu Sayyaf group, another Moslem faction, has shunned talks with Manila.   "I have had contacts with foreign investors and they tell me that government must restore...peace which is comprehensive.   Only with peace can we enter into economic development," Misuari said.   Under the peace deal, Misuari will also head a council that will supervise development in 14 southern provinces which include areas dominated by Christians.   The council will serve as precursor of an expanded autonomy area to be formed after three years.   Businessmen said they were adopting a wait-and-see attitude.   "I would say that investors should wait (for) his economic policies or until there is a specific invitation from the governor," Vicente Paterno, president of the retail chain Philippine Seven Corp, told reporters.   Rufino Bomasang, president of state-owned Philippine National Oil Co-Exploration Corp, urged Misuari in an open forum to support the firm's oil and gas exploration activities in the south.   "You can rest assure that we are always at your beck and call," Misuari replied. 
19148 !GCAT !GDIP  An international conference of parliamentarians ended in Beijing on Friday urging global action to boost human rights, end hunger and curb the scourge of anti-personnel landmines.   The 96th conference of the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU), which gave foreign legislators a rare chance for debate in China on human rights, won the host nation plaudits from both organisers and a watchdog group often critical of Beijing.   Non-binding resolutions on rights, food issues and landmines adopted by the meeting embraced a wide range of international concerns, said IPU Secretary-General Pierre Cornillon.   "The Chinese...had a big role in this success and in the building of this atmosphere," Cornillon told a news conference after the close of the five-day meeting, a talking shop for around 600 members of parliament from more than 100 countries.   Human rights group Amnesty International, which has long been critical of China's treatment of political prisoners and limits on free expression, also praised Beijing's approach.   "It is notable that the resolution...on human rights protection is actually based on the Chinese draft," said Rory Mungoven, Amnesty's Asia Pacific programme director.   "This is exactly the type of positive engagement we would like to see China make with the international human rights debate," Mungoven told a news briefing in Beijing.   China is highly sensitive to foreign criticism of its rights record and on Tuesday blasted a call from a Western conference delegate for less repression in Tibet as ill-informed and inappropriate.   The rights resolution, which includes calls for independent rights monitors and emergency measures to protect vulnerable children, was passed after a Danish objection to one section rejecting "coercive measures" by any country on another was voted down.   While some parliamentarians and IPU officials said the resolutions would be more of a moral spur to member nations than a firm commitment to action, IPU president Dr Ahmed Fathy Sorour said the conference's membership was a guarantee of success.   "The resolutions are adopted by the legislators of the world," Sorour told reporters.   "The parliaments themselves are the guarantee of implementation."   In its resolution on the right to food, the conference noted that 800 million people around the world suffered from chronic malnutrition and called for agricultural development, more aid from developed countries and fair food distribution.   Conference delegates said their call for curbs on anti-personnel landmines had been diluted because of objections from China, which considers mines a legitimate form of defensive weaponry, and other nations.   The resolution was passed unopposed, but delegates from China's largely rubber-stamp National People's Congress, or parliament, expressed reservations about one section calling for moves toward banning mines and destruction of stockpiles.   Objections also came from Libyan delegates, who denounced the resolution as a step toward the disarmament of the developing world, whose armies would suffer most from any ban.   Legislators were uniquely placed to translate high-sounding international words into deeds, said Amnesty's Mungoven.   "We hope that some of the good statements and resolutions of intent that we have heard in this past week will be followed through in action when our parliamentary friends go home," he said. 
19149 !C12 !CCAT !GCAT !GCRIM  The former head of the Carrian group pleaded guilty in a Hong Kong court on Friday to conspiracy to defraud, 13 years after the corporate empire collapsed under a multi-billion dollar debt.   George Tan, 62, pleaded guilty to two counts of conspiracy to defraud in connection with secret loans of HK$1.8 billion (US$238 million) from the Malaysian bank, Bumiputra Malaysia Finance Ltd, ending the British colony's longest-running and most expensive criminal trial.   A further 11 charges against Tan were dropped.   Tan's defence lawyers had consistently expressed concern during the trial about his health, calling three medical specialists to testify to his heart condition and dementia.   Tan will be sentenced on Monday.   The entire Carrian group, which had diverse interests including a property, shipping and restaurant empire, collapsed in 1983 under a mountain of debt.   Tan and his company stormed onto the Hong Kong scene in the early 1980s with a series of spectacular property deals, making the Carrian empire one of the most successful in the financial history of the territory.   By the end of 1981, Carrian was the seventh largest company in Hong Kong.   Its 1983 collapse was the territory's biggest corporate crash.   Tan later went on trial for corruption but the case against him foundered in 1988 amid an outcry over the judge's behaviour and the soaring costs of the unsuccessful prosecution.   Mystery still surrounds the Carrian saga.   An investigator sent from Malaysia to Hong Kong to probe the scandal was found strangled in a banana grove near the Chinese border, and another figure linked to the case was found dead at the bottom of a swimming pool. 
19150 !GCAT !GCRIM  Police in China's capital have arrested two men for robbing cash delivery vans and bank customers since February, the Xinhua news agency said on Friday.   Lu Xianzhou, 33, who had been sentenced to death for burglary and escaped from prison in 1994, was arrested on September 8 while driving a stolen car, Xinhua said.   He resisted arrest and tried to run down the arresting officers.   Lu confessed to robbing cash delivery vans and customers of banks on February 8, June 3 and August 27, it said, adding that he led police to the other suspect, Guo Song, 34, who had been jailed for four years for rape.   Police recovered six guns, 350 bullets and part of the loot -- 170,000 yuan ($20,000), 610,000 yen ($5,000) and $18,000, Xinhua said.   It gave no further details. 
19151 !GCAT !GCRIM  Most Hong Kong people expect corruption to seriously affect the territory's economy after Britain hands the colony back to China next year, a leading pollster and academic said on Friday.   Michael DeGolyer of Hong Kong's Baptist University said fear of graft after the territory reverts to Chinese rule at midnight next June 30, was the biggest concern among the colony's 6.2 million people.   DeGolyer and a team of researchers have been tracking attitudes to the handover for about three years.   Beijing has promised Hong Kong "a high degree of autonomy" as a Special Administrative Region (SAR) of China.   "The privileged position enjoyed by the People's Liberation Army and cadres in China which contributes so much to corruption on the mainland, would, if repeated in Hong Kong, more than likely at some point trigger political instability and or massive flight," DeGolyer told the Foreign Correspondents' Club.   Recent surveys showed at least 51 percent of respondents believed corruption would seriously affect Hong Kong's economy after the 1997 handover, he said.   "Clearly, corruption and its control, and the corrupting influence of mainland China, are major issues challenging the legitimacy and competency of the SAR regime," DeGolyer said.   After corruption, Hong Kong people most feared losing their personal freedom, followed by political instability, he said. 
19152 !GCAT !GCRIM  Authorities in a central Chinese province on Friday executed a government official for his role in the province's biggest corruption scandal since communists swept to power in 1949, the Xinhua news agency said.   Dong Qingrao, 56, former general manager of the Shaoyang City Real Estate Development Corp, was executed in Hunan province on orders from the Supreme People's Court, Xinhua said.   The court also ordered the seizure of Dong's ill-gotten wealth.   Dong was convicted of accepting bribes, cash and an apartment worth a total of $300,000, between 1992 and 1993 -- Hunan's largest corruption scandal since 1949, it said.   In a separate case, authorities in the southern province of Guandong arrested a local Communist Party official who was promoted even though it was suspected he had taken bribes, the Press Digest said in an edition seen in Beijing on Friday.   Su Xiujuan, head of the Communist Party in Xuwen county from 1990 to 1994, was found to have taken bribes and gifts worth more than $166,000, the newspaper said.   Beijing is struggling to combat rampant corruption as sweeping market reforms create unprecedented opportunities for officials to exploit their positions. 
19153 !C13 !CCAT !GCAT !GPOL  President Suharto on Friday urged the domestic media to be responsible in reporting in order to avoid provoking social unrest.   "The mass media needs to have an attitude which is clean, clear and free from fear so it has the freedom to produce the best possible analysis.   It must be responsible in carrying out its duties," Suharto said in a speech to chief editors.   Suharto told the editors at the opening ceremony of a special course on the Indonesian state ideology Pancasila that the media in a developing country needed to have social responsibility.   "Societies which are complex have many problems, which if not handled carefully can trigger unrest.   Riots are indeed attractive news, but there is no issue that can be settled through a riot," he said at the ceremony at the State Palace.   At least five people died and 149 were injured in riots in Jakarta on July 27 which were regarded as the worst in the capital for more than 20 years.   The riots were sparked by a police raid on a minority party headquarters but analysts said the disturbances were inflamed by underlying social unrest in Indonesian society due to a number of factors, including the gap between rich and poor.   Indonesia's human rights record has come under scrutiny since the disturbances, with concerns in the United States congress forcing the Clinton Administration to delay a proposed sale of F-16 jets to Indonesia. 
19154 !C24 !C42 !CCAT !E41 !ECAT !GCAT !GENV !GJOB  With one of Taiwan's two crude ports already closed by pipeline problems, state monopoly Chinese Petroleum scrambled on Friday to defuse tensions with angry fishermen massing near the other.   Almost 300 fishing boats assembled near Chinese Petroleum's offshore oil port at Kaohsiung as representatives demanded prompter compensation for damages from an August oil spill at the southern Taiwan facility.   The oil company, fearing the boats might try to blockade the port, sent a senior negotiator to meet representatives of the fishermen, executives said.   "Nearly 300 fishing boats are moving around our four offshore crude unloading units, posing a potential threat to the Kaohsiung oil port," a company official said by telephone on condition his name not be used.   The boats had not disrupted operation of the crude port, but Chinese Petroleum's negotiator, Vice President Fang Yi-shan, would refuse to enter any new agreements under threat, he said.   Chinese Petroleum said on Thursday it would need up to a week to reopen its northern crude port at Taoyuan, which was forced to shut down at the weekend due to a pipeline problem.   The shutdown forced the company's adjacent refinery to slash production to 34 percent and left Kaohsiung as Chinese Petroleum's only operating crude port.   The firm has agreed a T$230 million (US$8.36 million) plan to compensate fishermen who said their nets and boats were damaged and livelihoods affected, but some claimants say it has not kept to the agreed payment schedule.   "We have agreed to Chinese Petroleum's entire compensation plan, but the company is delaying the payments," one angry fisherman told reporters.   "Chinese Petroleum has no sincerity to solve the problem."   The company official said Chinese Petroleum was questioning the eligibility of some of the 8,000 fishermen who had made claims for compensation, including some who appeared to be too young to qualify.   "Some of the fishermen who registered are under the age of 15," he said.   "Others have questionable identities."   "They want us to pay for the oil spill without further delay, but we still need time to process the claims," he said. 
19155 !GCAT !GPOL  Banharn Silpa-archa's political skills have been put to the test often during his rocky 14 months in office as Thailand's 21st prime minister.   Duirng his tenure seemingly he has spent more time trying to clear himself of opposition charges, control power struggles within his coalition and stop the infighting within his own Chart Thai party than he has governing.   The premier, 64, whose extensive patronage and support network in the provinces propelled him in July 1995 into Thailand's top political job, faced a no-confidence debate in parliament this week.   The censure motion, solely against Banharn, accused him of condoning corruption, economic mismanagement and plagiarism in his master's thesis.   The opposition also raised doubts about his nationality, but top immigration officials backed with official records his claim that he was Thai-born.   The constitution allows only Thai-born citizens to take part in politics.   The House of Representives was expected to vote on the no-confidence motion on Saturday.   A wily politician, Banharn had survived a previous censure debate in May against him and some cabinet members by abruptly ending the debate before opposition could grill him.   Public opinion polls have showed that Banharn's popularity has dropped sharply since his election.   This September, he ranked last on a list of nine people Thais preferred to be their prime minister.   "There is no way that I can do everything to make everyone happy all of the time," Banharn said in a recent interview.   A wealthy and magnanimous, grass-roots man, Banharn was born Tek Siang sea Bae in 1932, one of six children in a humble Sino-Thai family from Suphan Buri town, 150 km (100 miles) northwest of Bangkok.   He began his long climb to the top as an office boy, making coffee and running errands.   Later, he and a group of friends started their own construction company.   He was first elected a member of parliament from Suphan Buri in 1976 and has been returned in every election since then.   He has traditionally been among the top vote-winners in polls over the past two decades.   Banharn led Chart Thai to victory in the July 1995 election, winning 92 seats in the 391-seat parliament to unseat Democrat Prime Minister Chuan Leekpai.   He then forged a seven-party coalition government.   Despite his influence and popularity among rural Thais, the diminutive Banharn ran into problems from the outset with the powerful urban business lobby in Bangkok and the capital city's hostile local media.   Financial markets markets fell several times in the past 14 months on what analysts said was a lack of investor confidence in Banharn's cabinet choices for key economic portfolios and uncertainty over the government's ability to manage the economy.   Banharn's political troubles came to a head in August when one coalition party pulled out, others threatened to do the same and the "young turk" faction of Chart Thai said it could not promise support for the premier in the no-confidence vote.   But Banharn has proved to be an able statesman on various occasions, despite a well-publicised inability to speak any foreign language.   He successfully hosted the summit of leaders from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations last December and the first 25-nation Asia-Europe summit in March.   Banharn and his wife, Jaemsai, have three children.   Their daughter Kanchana is also a Chart Thai member of parliament. 
19156 !GCAT !GPOL !GVOTE  Philippine senator Leticia Ramos Shahani is vying to become the next secretary-general of the United Nations (U.N.), the Presidential Palace said in statement on Friday.   President Fidel Ramos said his younger sister had filed her candidacy for the top U.N. post while Solicitor General Raul Goco had applied for a position in the U.N. International Law Commission, the Malacanang Palace statement said.   Shahani served as a U.N. assistant secretary general for six years before her election as senator in 1987.   She also served as the country's ambassador to Romania, the former East Germany and Australia.   The current U.N. Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali's five-year term ends this year and the United States has said it was prepared to use its veto to replace him with someone who will reform the world body.   If the 73 year-old Egyptian diplomat does leave his post, African nations, backed by China, insist another African replace him.   Among the African candidates mentioned are Kofi Annan of Ghana, the UN undersecretary-general for peacekeeping, and Salim A. Salim, chairman of the Organisation of African Unity.   Hamid Algabid of Niger, the head of the Islamic Conference, has also announced his candidacy. 
19157 !C13 !C24 !CCAT !GCAT !GENV  Debate on the imposition of more environment-friendly rules in the Philippines has stalled the entry of foreign mining investors in the country, officials and industry executives said on Friday.   "Most (foreign) investors are just waiting to see what developments will transpire in the amendments on the implementing rules and regulations (IRR) of the Philippine Mining Act before they commit any investments in the country," said Chris Cairns, vice-president of the Australia-based BHP Minerals   Cairns was attending a forum held by the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) to canvass views on proposed amendments to a new mining law liberalising the entry of foreign investors in the local mining industry.   Foreign mining firms in the Philippines represented by the International Mining and Exploration Committee (IMEC) have called on the government for clearer mining regulations.   "The Philippines is a place where we would like to invest...but we would like to have some idea what conditions we are committing ourselves to for many years in the future," said IMEC chairman Malcolm Norris.   The changes in the IRR, aimed at promoting sustainable development of new mining areas with the least impact on the environment, were an offshoot of the Marcopper Mining Corp mine accident in March in the central Philippines, said Artemio Disini, president of the Chamber of Mines of the Philippines.   Disini said government officials saw the need to review the IRR of the Philippine Mining Act, which was signed into law by President Fidel Ramos in June 1995, after tonnes of mine waste from the Marcopper mine leaked into a nearby river.   The incident sparked protests from environmentalists and indigenous tribes who called on the government to scrap the new mining law, which promises foreign investors 100 percent ownership in local projects.   DENR undersecretary Antonio Lavina said the proposed changes would apply to pending applications by foreign mining firms for financial and technical assistance agreements (FTAA).   "Environmental protection is simply non-negotiable, rights of communities is simply non-negotiable," Lavina told Reuters in an interview.   The department has stalled approvals for FTAA applications until after the DENR puts in place amendments to the IRR, another DENR official said.   "We cannot immediately act on the 80 FTAA applications until the department puts in place the amendments," the official said.   Lavina said the DENR hoped to finalise the new guidelines on mining exploration by the end of the month.   The Chamber of Mines of the Philippines said the amendments, which give preference to ecological protection and conservation and small scale mining, were biased against the commercial mining industry.   "The proposed modifications of the IRR go against the letter and the spirit of the Mining Act which encourage the exploration, development, utilisation, and conservation of our country's natural resources," Disini told participants of the forum. 
19158 !GCAT !GCRIM !GREL  Doomsday cult leader Shoko Asahara blessed the box containing deadly sarin gas before his disciples spread the poisonous substance on the Tokyo subway system last year, one of his followers said on Friday.   Yoshihiro Inoue, the second disciple to testify against Aum Shinri Kyo (Supreme Truth Sect) leader Shoko Asahara in as many days, appeared before the Tokyo District Court to reveal Asahara's involvement in the March 1995 gas attack.   Cult doctor Ikuo Hayashi testified on Thursday.   The 26-year-old Inoue, who joined the cult when he was 16, was considered to be one of the most devout followers of Asahara.   But during his testimony, he called his former mentor by his real name, Chizuo Matsumoto.   Prosecutors made Inoue recount the cult's history and teachings, along with the dramatic details leading to the day of the attack, which killed 11 people and injured 2,000.   Asahara raised the subject of a possible police raid during a ride back in his limousine to his home in Kamikuishiki, near Tokyo, only about 50 hours before the subway attack, Inoue said.   In the car were Asahara's trusted followers including Inoue, cult lawyer Yoshinobu Aoyama and senior member Hideo Murai, who was stabbed to death last year.   Asked by Asahara if there was any way to attack those who opposed the cult, Murai suggested spreading sarin in the subways, Inoue said.   "In response to Murai's suggestion, Matsumoto (Asahara) said, 'That would create a panic, won't it?'  ," Inoue said.   Asahara said it would be a good idea to make the attack look like it was committed by the political party Shinshinto and the lay Buddhist organisation Soka Gakkai, Inoue said.   "Matsumoto also asked everyone 'Would there be a raid if we spread sarin?'   and one of the followers answered, 'They (police) will come regardless (of the attack)'," Inoue said.   Despite the word of warning, Asahara instructed Murai to take control of the operation and the remaining days were spent shuttling back and forth between Tokyo and Kamikuishiki to prepare for the guerrilla attack, Inoue said.   On the morning of the attack, Asahara blessed the sarin before the deadly gas was carried back to the cult's Tokyo hideout, Inoue said.   Inoue, who was quiet during most of the court proceedings, raised his voice when the prosecutors asked him when and why he left the cult.   After a long silence, Inoue replied, "It took a great deal of time."   Inoue said he did not reveal everything during police questioning last year, hiding vital information about Asahara's involvement in numerous crimes.   "I couldn't make myself tell everything," Inoue said.   But after reading the accounts of the victims, Inoue began to doubt Asahara's teachings and studied other Buddhist scriptures to verify his doubts.   "I realised there was a tragedy I couldn't justify in the scope of (the cult's) teachings...I realised it was wrong to destroy the truth of life just because it's useless...I realised my sin," said Inoue.   Lawyers will cross-examine witnesses, including Inoue and Hayashi, in next month's trials.   Asahara is on trial on 17 charges, including murder and attempted murder.   The charges cover both the subway attack and an earlier sarin attack in the mountain resort city of Matsumoto, central Japan, in June 1994, which killed seven people and made over a hundred ill.   Asahara has refused to enter pleas to any of the charges so far.   He can be sentenced to death by hanging if convicted on any of the murder charges. 
19159 !GCAT !GDIP !GVIO  Japan on Friday said it deplored North Korea's infiltration into South Korea and called on the communist state to halt such provocations.   "We have an interest in peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula and it is deplorable that North Korea has brought about this incident," government spokesman Seiroku Kajiyama told a news conference.   "The international community will not accept it.   We call on North Korea to immediately end these kinds of actions," he said.   South Korea has said it has so far shot and killed 18 North Koreans from a larger squad of heavily armed infiltrators that landed from a submarine on Wednesday near the east coast city of Kangnung. 
19160 !GCAT !GDEF !GDIP  China and Tajikistan said on Friday they would work to strengthen military contact and speed up talks on troop reductions along the border between them, the Xinhua news agency said.   "In an effort to increase mutual trust and cooperation in the military sphere, (the two countries) will promote the formation and expansion of ties between their military departments," Xinhua said.   A joint declaration issued by the two neighbours calls for the speeding up of talks to draft an agreement on mutual disarmament along the border between them, Xinhua said.   "The two nations will continue to accelerate the process for formulation and signing an agreement on mutual disarmament at their boundary areas," the agency said.   Chinese President Jiang Zemin and Tajikistan President Imomali Rakhmonov signed the pact this week, it said.   Rakhmonov is to wrap up a five-day visit to China on Friday.   Under the declaration, China and Tajikistan pledged not to enter into any military or political alliances directed at the other nation or to threaten the security of the other, it said.   The two nations will step up cooperation in fighting terrorism, organised crime, smuggling and drug trafficking, it said.   The agreement also called for enhancing economic ties and improving transportation and cargo links, it said without giving further details.   China, Russia, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan earlier this week concluded talks in Beijing on reducing military forces along their common borders, which total 7,640 km (4,750 miles). 
19161 !GCAT !GPOL !GVIO  Cambodia's Second Prime Minister Hun Sen has ruled out senior government and military posts for breakaway Khmer Rouge guerrillas and warned they risked alienation if they persisted with their demands.   "We cannot offer (them these posts).   It is impossible," Hun Sen said on Friday.   Hun Sen said the separatists would become a third force opposed by both the government and the hardline Khmer Rouge forces if they insisted on their demands.   "They will face and fight both Pol Pot and the government sides.   It would give their people many difficulties and then Pol Pot can come back to control their areas," he told the Cambodian Bar Association.   Commanders of Khmer Rouge divisions which last month broke with the mainstream Khmer Rouge demanded at peace talks on Tuesday that the government give them one armed forces deputy chief of staff post and a deputy chief of staff position in the interior ministry.   The also sought a regional military chief post, three regional deputy chief posts and requested that their Pailin stronghold remain under their control as the centre of a new province in the northwest.   Hun Sen said these posts were much more senior than those held by any of the commanders loyal to dissident leader Ieng Sary, foreign minister during the brutal 1975-79 Khmer Rouge "killing fields" regime.   He said senior positions for the guerrillas in the armed forces and interior ministry were not a precondition for peace.   "If today Ieng Sary comes with a group and we offer them a deputy chief of staff post and then Son Sen comes, we offer another one, Khieu Samphan comes, we offer another one -- in the end the Khmer Rouge will hold every post on the general staff."   Khieu Samphan is the nominal leader of the Khmer Rouge and Son Sen is the guerrillas' defence chief.   Ieng Sary, who has accepted a royal amnesty, said after forging a ceasefire earlier this month that the government must clarify his legal status if the peace talks were to advance.   Ieng Sary and Pol Pot were sentenced to death in absentia for their roles in the genocide of more than one million people during the Maoist Khmer Rouge's rule in the late 1970s.   King Norodom Sihanouk signed Ieng Sary's amnesty last Saturday.   This allowed a military working group to meet for the first time on Tuesday in the Pailin stronghold, where guerrilla commanders Sok Peap and Ei Chien put their demands.   First Prime Minister Prince Norodom Ranariddh said on Thursday that creating a new province around Pailin should not be a problem but the districts and number of people to be included must be determined first. 
19162 !GCAT !GDEF !GDIP  Some 800 U.S. Cavalry arrived in Kuwait on Friday for exercises near the Iraqi border in a major show of force to deter possible attacks by Baghdad.   The third batch, 398 soldiers of the some 3,000 combat-ready U.S. Army 1st Cavalry Division, arrived in Kuwait on Friday after a 20-hour flight on a commercial Tower Air Boeing 747 jumbo jet from Texas with stops in New York and Paris.   A total of about 1,000 have already arrived.   All of the added troops are expected to be fully deployed in Kuwait in the next few days, U.S. officers said.   Battalion Executive Officer Major Robert Algermissen told Reuters at the airport his soldiers will head immediately to Camp Doha base in north Kuwait to draw pre-positioned U.S. heavy armour from storage and head into the desert.   The soldiers "are very excited...This is a training mission but also a show of force," he told reporters.   "Now that we are here we are getting keyed up and the adrenaline is pumping and we are ready for a good draw and good training."   As part of Washington's huge military build-up in the oil-rich region, the troops were ordered to deploy in Kuwait to deter Iraq.   They join 1,100 others who came to Kuwait for regular exercises held since the 1991 Gulf War.   Asked about the possibility of war with Iraq, 24-year-old Mathew Mobely of Texas said: "We are aware of the situation.   We are prepared whatever happens but as of right now we were told to exercise and train."   U.S. troops in Kuwait are equipped with chemical and biological warfare detectors, protective suits and masks.   Earlier on Friday U.S. troops staged a live fire exercise, coming under simulated gas attack near the Iraqi border.   "Gas in the trench," shouted one soldier alerting the some two dozen men taking part in the Intrinsic Action exercise to wear their masks in a simulated attack 40 km (25 miles) south of the Iraqi border.   Military sources say Iraq still has a chemical warfare capability.   A total of 4,000 U.S. soldiers, including 150 women in combat support units, 1,600 tanks, 70 armoured fighting vehicles and other heavy arms will take part in the exercise over the next few months.   Across the border, Iraq has some 60,000 troops south of the 32nd parallel, the original no-fly, no-go zone set up by Western allies after they freed Kuwait of a seven-month Iraq occupation.   "We will be ready," U.S. Army Colonel Robert Pollard told reporters when asked if the troops could stop Iraq from crossing the border.   He stressed that the task force was part of a bigger U.S. presence in the region capable of deterring Iraq.   "We are here to deter war...We are trying to send a signal and that signal (to Iraq) is 'We are ready'," he added.   The United States now has close to 30,000 troops in the immediate area and more than 350 warplanes deployed either on warships or in Gulf Arab states.   The crisis with Baghdad erupted when Iraqi forces intervened in northern Iraq on August 31 to help a Kurdish faction fighting a rival Kurdish group.   Washington retaliated by firing 44 cruise missiles at targets in the south.   The U.S. buildup in the Gulf includes the arrival on Thursday of a second aircraft carrier battle group, the USS Enterprise.   Seven of the 28 U.S. warhips in the area are capable of firing Tomahawk cruise missiles. 
19163 !GCAT !GVIO  Jets bombed the rebel-held eastern Afghan city of Jalalabad on Friday as both the rebel Taleban Islamic militia and the beleaguered government reported victories in ground battles.   The government jets bombed the airport and a Taleban command office in Jalalabad, capital of Nangarhar province captured by Taleban last week in a sweep in eastern Afghanistan, the official Kabul Radio reported.   It said there were no immediate reports of casualties.   Taleban said its forces had captured a strategic district and a valley to complete their control of the adjoining eastern province of Laghman.   Kabul Radio, monitored in Islamabad, said government forces had repulsed Taleban assaults on Jagdalak district in Kabul province and on Behsud district of Nangarhar province, which Taleban says entirely under its control.   There was no independent confirmation of either report.   Taleban forces, which control more than half of Afghanistan, have besieged Kabul since last October in their drive to oust Rabbani's government.   The Afghan Islamic Press (AIP) said jets carried out four bombing raids on Jalalabad, dropping two bombs near the provincial governor's house and hitting three other sites.   Friday's was the second jet bombing of Jalalabad after Taleban forces captured it on September 11 from a previously neutral council without a fight.   Government jets bombed the town the next day, killing 12 people and wounding about 50.   A Taleban spokesman in the southern Afghan town of Kandahar, Amir Khan Mutaqi, said the militia captured Daulatsa district, north of the Laghman provincial capital of Mehtar Lam, on Thursday evening after intense fighting, thus completing its control over the province, AIP reported.   Government forces left 20 to 25 bodies on the battlefield and 50 of the defenders were arrested, Mutaqi said.   Earlier on Thursday, the Taleban also seized the nearby Alising valley from pro-government fighters, Mutaqi said.   Taleban regard the area strategically important to outflank President Burhanuddin Rabbani's govenment in Kabul from the northeast and probe the province of Kapisa, a government stronghold. 
19164 !GCAT !GDEF !GDIP  Several hundred heavily-armed U.S. troops were ordered to deploy on Saturday close to Kuwait's border with Iraq as a follow-up to a live fire exercise there to deter possible attacks by Baghdad.   About 1,000 of a 3,000-strong force of the U.S. Army 1st Cavalry Division have arrived in Kuwait as part of Washington's huge military build-up in the oil-rich region.   The remainder were flying in over the next few days.   "They hit the ground running," said one officer.   The soldiers went to Camp Doha base in north Kuwait to draw from storage U.S. main battle tanks, armoured fighting vehicles and other heavy weapons before heading into the desert.   Battalion Executive Officer Major Robert Algermissen told Reuters after arriving in Kuwait on Friday night along with a batch of some 400 soldiers: "We are well-prepared...After the draw (of pre-positioned weapons), which will take about six hours, we will head into the desert early tomorrow (Saturday)."   The troops, who arrived after a 20-hour flight from Texas, join 1,100 others already in Kuwait for exercises code-named Intrinsic Action, which have been held regularly since the 1991 Gulf War.   U.S. troops staged the live fire exercise on Friday as part of these exercises, coming under simulated gas attack near the Iraqi border.   Officers said the troops' mission is to train and send Iraq a clear signal with a show of force but if the current crisis with Iraq escalates, the U.S. has enough firepower in the region to deal with any threats.   The crisis erupted when Iraqi forces intervened in northern Iraq on August 31 to help a Kurdish faction fighting a rival Kurdish group.   Washington retaliated by firing 44 cruise missiles at targets in the south.   "We are here, we are ready and we will get the job done," said 24-year-old Mathew Mobely of Texas upon his arrival in Kuwait.   Asked about the possibility of war with Iraq, he told Reuters: "We are aware of the situation.   We are prepared whatever happens but as of right now we were told to exercise and train."   But he already misses his family.   His five-year-old daughter "kind of understands but it did not hit the kids until I left...My wife is obviously upset...She understands but for the kids it is "Dad has gone all of a sudden'."   The average age of the latest group to arrive in Kuwait is about 25, while many of their commanding officers fought in the 1991 Gulf War to free Kuwait of a seven-month Iraqi occupation, Algermissen said.   The troops arrived in full military gear, equipped with chemical and biological warfare detectors, protective suits and masks for deployment 40 km (25 miles) south of Iraq which military sources say still has a chemical warfare capability.   Some could move even closer to the border, officers said.   A total of 4,000 U.S. soldiers, including 150 women in support units, 1,600 tanks, 70 armoured fighting vehicles and other heavy weaponry will take part in exercises over the next few months.   Across the border, Iraq has some 60,000 troops south of the 32nd parallel, the original no-fly, no-go zone set up by Western allies after the Gulf War.   The United States now has close to 30,000 troops in the immediate area and more than 350 warplanes deployed either on warships or in Gulf Arab states. 
19165 !GCAT !GDIP !GVIO  Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Friday that Israel was conducting "overt and covert contacts" in order to renew peace talks with Syria.   Netanyahu also called on Damascus not to support the Moslem Hizbollah group whose guerrillas killed two Israeli soldiers and wounded eight in south Lebanon on Thursday.   "We renew our call to Syria to resume peace talks...We are conducting overt and covert contacts to renew peace contacts with Syria and I hope that it will answer our call," Netanyahu said after visiting Israeli soldiers wounded on Thursday.   "As far as we are concerned the important thing is...to clarify to Syria, that in a big way is enabling the Hizbollah activity, that we reiterate our call to stop this way, the path of bloodshed, the path of indirect war."   Syria, the main foreign powerbroker in Lebanon, has redeployed up to a third of its 35,000 troops there, moving some to within striking distance of a key Israeli position on the occupied Golan Heights.   Though Israel accuses Damascus of backing the pro-Iranian Hizbollah it played down any link between Thursday's attack and the Syrian troop movements that have worried Israelis.   "I don't link the Syrian activity of the last 10 days to the Hizbollah activity.   The Hizbollah activity has been going on for many years.   It hasn't changed in nature," Uri Lubrani, chief policymaker on Lebanon, told Israel Radio.   Netanyahu did not elaborate on what contacts were being made.   The United States has said it is trying to renew Israeli-Syrian peace talks, suspended by Netanyahu's predecessor Shimon Peres after a spate of Islamic suicide bombings in February and March.   U.S. special Middle East coordinator Dennis Ross visited the region this week but said he would not be going to Syria.   Netanyahu said on Thursday tension between the Jewish state and arch-foe Syria had been brought "under control".   He had said Syria was trying to pressure Israel into unilateral concessions on the strategic plateau Israel seized in the 1967 Middle East war.   The two countries have failed in five years of sporadic talks to settle the dispute over the heights, which Syria insists Israel hand back.   Israel wants talks with Syria to resume without preconditions while Syria says they must be held on the basis of returning occupied Arab land in exchange for peace. 
19166 !GCAT !GPOL  The House ethics committee's top Democrat and its Republican chairman exchanged heated words Friday over a special counsel's report on Speaker Newt Gingrich.   Democrat Jim McDermott of Washington said the report should be released before Congress adjourned at the end of next week.   Chairman Nancy Johnson, a Connecticut Republican, said members of the committee should either stay silent about its work or resign.   The committee last month received a preliminary report from special counsel James Cole on his investigation into whether the financing by tax-deductible contributions of college courses Gingrich taught in Georgia violated federal laws barring tax-exempt charities from furthering partisan politics.   But the subcommittee investigating the affair has said it is premature to make the report public, calling it merely a "draft discussion document."   McDermott told a news conference, "I believe that the subcommittee can reach a decision on the charges by the end of the week."   If it could not, he said, it should release Cole's report to the House and public.   "It's outrageous that it will be buried at the end of the (congressional) session," he said.   McDermott also said, "It's very hard for me to tell, but I think there's pretty good evidence that this thing is being delayed deliberately."   In a statement later, Johnson said: "If any member of the House ethics committee wants to comment publicly about pending cases and publicly urge support of a specific course of action -- which clearly violates both the House and the ethics committee's rules -- then he or she should resign from the committee."   Johnson said the report would be made public in accordance with the rules when the subcommittee had completed its work and sent its report to the full committee.   She asked the House to respect the rules "and let us conclude our work without political interference."   Democrats, charging a coverup, have kept up a drumbeat of demands for release of Cole's report on his eight-month investigation.   A Democratic resolution requiring its release was killed in a House vote Thursday. 
19167 !E21 !E211 !ECAT !GCAT !GPOL !GVOTE  With Republicans casting him as a free-spending Democrat wed to big government, President Bill Clinton on Friday took credit for saving taxpayers $118 billion by overhauling government.   Although Clinton has been cautioning against over-confidence as opinion polls show him with a double-digit lead, White House Political Director Doug Sosnik said Republican Bob Dole may fair worse on election day than President George Bush did in 1992.   "This race has not fundamentally moved since the beginning of March," Sosnik said of public attitudes.   He said, "Bob Dole is never even going to match George Bush's 38 percent in 1992 until he gives people in this country a reason to vote for him."   Clinton, bouyed by enthusiastic crowds throughout his four-day, six-state swing, sought to draw attention to his "reinventing government" efforts over the last three years, which aides believe offset Republican rival Bob Dole's claims that Clinton is an old-fashioned liberal who pays lip service to centrist themes.   "We're bringing common sense to government," Clinton told an outdoor rally in downtown Portland.   He said his efforts to streamline and overhaul the federal government had generated $118 billion in savings and cut 240,000 government jobs.   "We can make this government work for you and we're determined to do it," Clinton said.   The claim was based on efforts led by Vice President Al Gore, who joined Clinton on the campaign trail, to overhaul the way the federal government conducts business -- from eliminating such things as a long-criticised mohair wool subsidy to streamlining federal procurement procedures.   To highlight efforts to modernise and speed up government, Clinton announced that Internet users would be able to go to the White House web page and perform such tasks as applying for a passport.   "There are no lines on-line," he said.   Gore, in a report to Clinton, said 13 of 14 federal departments have reduced the size of their work force -- the Justice Department being the only exception -- since they took office in January 1993.   The federal civilian payroll numbered more than 2.1 million when Clinton was sworn in and now numbers 1.9 million -- a reduction of 240,000.   If re-elected to a second term, Clinton intends to push for an even smaller work force, White House press secretary Mike McCurry said.   Clinton's confidence clearly is growing.   He has been upbeat throughout his trip to Michigan, Illinois, Arizona, Washington and Oregon.   One sign of his confidence can be seen in his adding a stop on his way back to Washington on Friday night to attend a high school homecoming football game in South Dakota, a rural state with few electoral votes that Democrats generally write off in presidential elections.   Democratic strategists see a chance not only to carry the state for Clinton but to capture a Senate seat as well.   Democratic Representative Tim Johnson is in the midst of a surprisingly close fight to upset incumbent Republican Sen. Larry Pressler.   Throughout his trip Clinton has not only been campaigning for himself but for fellow Democrats, who a mere two years ago, in the wake of the Republican congressional landslide, wanted nothing to do with him.   Now candidates go out of their way to be seen with him -- and to sound like him, promoting his ideas. 
19168 !GCAT !GPOL !GVOTE  Ross Perot's campaign lodged a formal complaint on Friday with the Federal Election Commission and plans to file a lawsuit over the decision to bar the Texas billionaire from presidential debates.   Perot, the Reform Party's candidate, said in two television appearances that a lawsuit would be be filed in the matter, but his attorney, Jamie Raskin, dean of American University Law School, said it would be filed on Monday.   The specifics of the lawsuit were not immediately available, but a copy of the complaint to the FEC, which oversees political campaign spending, took aim at the Commission on Presidential Debates, which is organising the match-ups between Democratic President Bill Clinton and Republican candidate Bob Dole.   The panel recommended excluding Perot from the debates, saying he had no chance of winning the presidency.   The complaint alleges that the debate commission has broken federal election law by disregarding an FEC rule stipulating that, in deciding who is eligible to participate in presidential debates, the commission must use objective criteria and are forbidden to use nomination by a particular party as a standard for inclusion.   The commission had not received a copy of the complaint Friday afternoon, but commission spokeswoman Janet Brown disputed the complaint's substance.   Brown noted that the commission had allowed Perot to participate in 1992's presidential debates using the same criteria as this year, requiring, among other things, that any participant have a realistic chance of being elected.   "We feel that the process is thorough, fair and objective and that the results are based on a complete application of the criteria as they now exist," Brown said by telephone.   Perot was an unknown quantity in 1992 and ultimately drew 19 percent of the U.S. popular vote, though not one of the essential electoral votes required for victory.   His poll ratings this year have hovered in the single digits, far behind either Dole or Clinton.   The two major candidates are still negotiating the timing and format of the debate series, with discussions expected to take place behind closed doors on Saturday.   But Perot challenged Dole to "meet him in St. Louis," where the first debate originally was to take place Sept. 25.   "I will be in St. Louis the night of 25th, I'll see that the arena is ready," he said on NBC's "Today" show.   "It'll be interesting to see if he can show up and debate me."   Moments later on ABC's "Good Morning America," he seemed ready to break into song as he quoted the lyrics from the Judy Garland musical: "Meet me in St. Louis, meet me at the fair."   Dole's spokesman Gary Koops responded, "We are in a meeting with the Clinton campaign on Saturday to continue discussion on the one-one-one debates between Bob Dole and Bill Clinton.   And we look forward to having our one-on-one debates on with Bill Clinton." 
19169 !GCAT !GCRIM !GPOL !GVOTE  Republicans criticised White House drug testing policy at a House hearing Friday but Democrats called the charges a political ploy to help Republican Bob Dole's presidential campaign.   Florida Republican John Mica said he called the House Government Reform subcommittee hearing because of previous testimony that some of President Clinton's staff were hired despite their past drug use.   "I believe the American people need reassurance that the Clinton administration has not critically compromised the procedures by which people can gain access to national security information," Mica said.   "It's serious that this administration had a lax policy (on drug use) when they came to office," added Republican Dan Burton, R-Indiana.   Democrats James Moran of Virginia and Paul Kanjorski of Pennsylvania said the hearing was politically motivated.   "This is drug week for the Dole campaign," Moran said.   Dole has been attacking Clinton relentlessly over the sharp increase in drug use among teenagers in the past few years and Clinton's past use of marijuana.   "A president is supposed to show the light, and this president has shown his moral confusion," Dole said.   Dole began running a TV campaign ad Friday featuring footage from a 1992 campaign appearance Clinton made on the pop music network MTV in which one young audience member asked: "If you had it to do over again, would you inhale?"   and Clinton responded: "Sure, if I could.   I tried before."   The exchange referred to Clinton's earlier statements that he had tried marijuana as a young man but was unable to inhale because of his allergies.   Burton said both Clinton and Dole should take drug tests immediately along with members of Congress.   "I think the president and Senator Dole ought to set an example," he said.   Franklin Reeder, director of the White House Office of Administration, testified that all members of the White House staff were subject to random drug tests and anyone testing positive would be fired immediately.   "The chief of staff has clearly articulated the White House policy of zero tolerance for illegal drug use," he said.   "No appointee of this administration has tested positive."   Reeder said 21 staff members of 3,000 hired since Clinton took office in 1993 had undergone special testing with at least two tests a year because they had admitted past drug use.   Eight are still working at the White House, he said.   He said none of those undergoing special testing held a position involving national security, law enforcement, drug policy, budgeting or personnel selection.   He also said the administration had never pressured the Secret Service to issue a White House pass to anyone over the agency's objections.   The hearing was another in a series the panel has been holding about misuse of FBI files at the White House and the firing of seven White House travel office employees in 1993. 
19170 !GCAT !GPOL !GVOTE  With Republicans casting him as a free-spending Democrat wed to big government, President Bill Clinton on Friday took credit for saving taxpayers $118 billion by overhauling government.   Bouyed by enthusiastic crowds throughout his four-day, six-state swing, Clinton sought to draw attention to his "reinventing government" efforts over the last three years, which aides believe offset Republican rival Bob Dole's claims that Clinton is an old-fashioned liberal who pays lip service to centrist themes.   "We're bringing common sense to government," Clinton told an outdoor rally in downtown Portland.   He said his efforts to streamline and overhaul the federal government had generated $118 billion in savings and cut 240,000 government jobs.   "We can make this government work for you and we're determined to do it," Clinton declared.   The claim was based on efforts led by Vice President Al Gore, who joined Clinton on the campaign trail, to overhaul the way the federal government conducts business -- from eliminating such things as a long-criticised mohair wool subsidy to streamlining federal procurement procedures.   To highlight efforts to modernise and speed up government Clinton announced that Internet users would be able to go to the White House web page and perform such tasks as applying for a passport.   "There are no lines on-line," he said.   Gore, in a report to Clinton, said 13 of 14 federal departments have reduced the size of their work force -- the Justice Department being the only exception -- since they took office in January 1993.   The federal civilian payroll numbered more than 2.1 million when Clinton was sworn in and now numbers 1.9 million -- a reduction of 240,000.   If re-elected to a second term, Clinton intends to push for an even smaller work force, White House Press Secretary Mike McCurry said.   Although Clinton and his senior aides insist they are worried that the race for the White House will become close, the president clearly is enjoying life on the campaign trail.   Since he left the White House on Tuesday, he has plunged into crowds to shake hands in Michigan, Illinois, Arizona, Washington and Oregon.   His mood has been relaxed and upbeat, with virtually no sign that he is worried about the outcome of the race.   One sign of his confidence can be seen in the fact that he added a stop on his way back to Washington on Friday night to attend a high school homecoming football game in South Dakota, a rural state with few electoral votes that Democrats generally write off in presidential elections.   Democratic strategists see a chance not only to carry the state for Clinton but to capture a Senate seat as well.   Democratic Representative Tim Johnson is in the midst of a surprisingly close fight to upset incumbent Republican Sen. Larry Pressler.   Throughout his trip Clinton has not only been campaigning for himself but for fellow Democrats, who a mere two years ago, in the wake of the Republican congressional landslide, wanted nothing to do with him.   Now candidates go out of their way to be seen with him -- and to sound like him.   Gary Locke, Democratic nominee for governor of Washington state, spent Wednesday and Thursday appearing with Clinton and telling crowds they needed to build bridges into the 21st century, the president's own campaign slogan. 
19171 !C32 !CCAT !GCAT !GPOL !GVOTE  Nike would have preferred presidential candidate Bob Dole had just left it alone.   The sports and fitness apparel marketer said late Thursday that Dole's "Just don't do it" adaptation of its "Just do it" advertising slogan as an anti-drug mantra was not exactly sporting.   "We are a bit uncomfortable about being brought into the political arena.   While we are supportive of the senator's goal of keeping kids away from drugs, our slogan is based in sports.   And we would have preferred him to use a slogan that is more relevant to this issue," said Nike spokesman Jim Small.   In a speech in Los Angeles on Wednesday, Dole suggested the use of "Just don't do it" as an anti-drug slogan.   The new pitch would update the "Just say no" pitch popularised in former first lady Nancy Reagan's 1980s anti-drug effort.   Small said Dole informed Nike about his adaptation of the company's slogan; however, he did not require Nike's permission as the slogan would be used for non-commercial purposes.   Nike, which has used the "Just do it" slogan since 1988, is confident its theme will not be harmed by the Dole message.   "'Just do it' is etched in the minds of athletes around the world.   We are not concerned about it being diluted by this usage," Small said.   Donald Katz, author of a book about Nike called "Just Do It," said the phrase has entered the culture to powerfully brand the sneaker maker as "cool and aggressive" and has been one of the most successful ad slogans ever.   "I can see how Nike wouldn't like 'Just Don't Do It'," Katz said.   "The implication of the Dole usage is that people should not do something that's risky and dangerous." 
19172 !GCAT !GCRIM  An armed man who said he "wanted to stop" Dr. Jack Kevorkian from helping his friend commit suicide was arrested on Friday outside the office of Kevorkian's lawyer, police said.   Southfield police arrested a 39-year-old man from Leetonia, Ohio, after construction workers reported that the man approached them in the parking lot at attorney Geoffrey Fieger's office and told them he "wanted to stop Dr. Jack," Officer John Harris said.   No one was hurt in the incident.   After Fieger's staff called police, officers searched the man's car and found an unloaded semi-automatic handgun inside a small suitcase, along with ammunition.   Harris said police were questioning the man and added that they believe he was transporting a concealed weapon illegally.   Kevorkian has publicly acknowledged attending 40 suicides since starting his crusade for doctor-assisted suicide in 1990, and Fieger recently disclosed that he had attended suicides of other, unidentified patients whose deaths were previously thought to be due to natural causes.   Southfield Police Chief Joseph Thomas said the man, who has not yet been charged, told the construction workers he had a friend who was going to commit suicide with Kevorkian's help and he wanted to prevent the suicide.   Fieger said Kevorkian was not counselling anyone from Ohio now and added that he considered the incident a threat to Kevorkian's life and possibly his own.   "When somebody shows up at my office unsolicited -- and you can't just walk into my office -- and they're from out of state and they're going to be here to stop Jack, I take that as a threat," Fieger told WXYZ-TV. 
19173 !GCAT !GPOL !GVOTE  President Bill Clinton and Vice-President Al Gore held a 22 percent lead among registered voters over Bob Dole and Jack Kemp seven weeks before the Nov. 5 election, according to a CBS News opinion poll.   The telephone survey, conducted nationwide between Sept. 16 and 18, found that the overall approval rating of Clinton remained near his all-time high with 57 percent approving of the way he was doing his job and 31 percent who disapproved.   Fifty-six percent of registered voters said they would vote or were leaning towards voting for Democrats Clinton and Gore and 34 percent were leaning towards Republican candidates Dole and Kemp.   Only five percent supported the Reform Party of Ross Perot and his running mate Pat Choate.   By 57 percent to 27 percent, respondents believed Clinton has spent more of his campaigning time explaining what he would do if re-elected than attacking Dole, the survey showed.   Dole was seen as running the more negative campaign.   By nearly the same margin, 54 percent to 21 percent, the public saw Dole spending more time attacking Clinton.   The nationwide poll of 1,615 adults included 1,202 registered voters.   The margin of error was three percentage points.   Americans also approved of the way Clinton was handling the Iraqi situation by 57 percent to 26 percent, according to the poll.   It found that 58 percent approved of sending additional troops and planes to Kuwait.   A Los Angeles Times poll on Friday showed Clinton's intense focus on California voters also continues to pay off with a solid 17-point lead over Dole.   It showed Dole, who has vowed to fight for California's 54 electoral votes, has made few inroads with swing voters such as women and independents.   Clinton leads Dole 53 percent to 36 percent among likely voters in California.   Perot is favored by six percent and the Green Party's Ralph Nader by three percent, the poll showed.   When looking at all registered voters, Clinton wins 52 percent of the votes versus Dole's 34 percent in the state.   In a Times poll taken in July, Clinton led Dole 50 percent to 30 percent with Perot at 17 percent.   Among women, Clinton is favored by 60 percent compared with Dole's 27 percent, and independent voters favor the president by 52 percent to 18 percent.   Californians are generally skeptical of Dole's sweeping 15-percent tax cut, as 61 percent of those polled said it was unrealistic, the Times said.   Two recent themes of the Dole campaign, the rise in drug use among teens and a moral decline in the United States, also have not moved voters in the state, the Times said.   Only 10 percent of those questioned considered drugs to be the most pressing problem in this state, while a scant two percent named moral issues as the most important issue.   The Times telephone poll questioned 1,333 people throughout the state, including 1,059 registered voters.   The margin of error is three percentage points.   Clinton has visited California 27 times in this election season, touring defense industry sites and hobnobbing with Hollywood celebrities.   Winning California is a key to his presidential campaign, as it was in 1992.   At the Republican convention in San Diego in August, Dole vowed to battle for California's votes, and he has made several trips to the state since the convention. 
19174 !GCAT !GCRIM !GVIO  The U.S. Justice Department's Inspector General said on Friday that he had opened an investigation into allegations the CIA helped flood U.S. ghettos with crack cocaine to finance rebels fighting Nicaragua's Marxist government in the 1980s.   Inspector General Michael Bromwich said the matter was referred to his office by Attorney General Janet Reno.   He said he would coordinate his investigation with the CIA's inspector general, who is also investigating the reports, first published in the San Jose Mercury News.    The San Jose Mercury News reported in a three-part series last month that a drug pipeline between Colombia and the San Francisco Bay functioned for almost a decade, funneling profits to finance the CIA-backed Contras in Nicaragua.   Bromwich said Reno passed the matter to him after receiving letters from Sen. Dianne Feinstein and Rep. Maxine Waters, both Democrats from California.   "Today I opened an investigation into allegations that federal agencies helped funnel drug profits to rebels in Nicaragua, known as the contras, in the 1980s," Bromwich said.   CIA Director John Deutch ordered an internal investigation Wednesday, but said he believed there was "no substance" to the allegations."   He said he had asked the CIA's in-house watchdog, Inspector General Frederick Hitz, to finish his review within 60 days. 
19175 !C11 !C12 !CCAT !GCAT !GCRIM  British Airways Plc. said it filed a motion in Manhattan federal court Friday asking the judge to dismiss an antitrust suit brought by USAir Group Inc. over the British carrier's proposed alliance with American Airlines.   USAir has "been unable to identify a single substantive provision of the 1993 agreement (between USAir and British Airways) that Brtish Airways has purportedly broken."   British Airways' motion to dismiss claims that USAir has "a case of corporate amnesia" and that it "forgets" its previous chairman calling the deal "perfectly acceptable."   Arlington, Va.-based USAir, British Airways' existing trans-Atlantic partner, filed suit in July saying the proposed alliance between British Airways and American Airlines would monopolise air travel between the United States and Britain.   It also charged the new alliance would undermine its own relationship with British Airways.   British Airways said it believed the suit was a tactic by USAir to rengotiate that agreement.   USAir said British Airways' motion to dismiss, a standard tactic in lawsuit, was "posturing."   The USAir suit alleged that British Airways forced it to relinquish three routes, but British Airways countered in its motion that a consent decree with the U.S. Deparment of Justice compelled the move for anti-trust concerns.   The motion claimed that the suit was based on the "frustration" of USAir management that British Airways has a new partner.   "Disappointment and frustration, however, do not give rise to recognisable legal claims," the filing said. 
19176 !GCAT !GPOL !GVOTE  Russian President Boris Yeltsin suffered a previously unreported heart attack in late June or early July, shortly before the second round of the Russian elections, ABC-TV reported on Friday.   In an interview with ABC's "World News Tonight," Renat Akchurin, the surgeon who will lead Yeltsin's planned heart surgery, said Yeltsin had withheld information on the heart attack before the election for political reasons.   Asked if Yeltsin suffered a heart attack, Akchurin said, "Yes.   End of June or July," adding that the heart attack had not been publicly acknowledged.   "Can you imagine what would happen, for example, if he told everyone he's had a heart attack and he's unable to work?"   Akchurin told ABC.   ABC quoted unnamed surgeons as saying Yeltsin could die on the operating table and they do not know exactly whether he was fit for surgery at all.   The head of the Kremlin medical centre said on Friday Yeltsin faced a "very serious" heart operation and his prolonged stay in hospital was to ensure that problems with other organs do not complicate the surgery.   Yeltsin announced on September 5 that he would have heart surgery at the end of the month. 
19177 !C12 !CCAT !GCAT !GCRIM !GENT !GPRO  Brazil's second largest television network, SBT, filed suit in Manhattan federal court on Friday against actress Sonia Braga, who lives in New York, for breach of contract for not showing up for work on a Brazilian soap opera.   Braga, who starred in "The Milagro Beanfield War," "Kiss of the Spider Woman" and "Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands," and her production company were to have been paid $500,000 for playing the role of Odile in the show "O Taxista" (Taxidriver) for six months starting in Feb., 1996.   Although it was reported as a coup for SBT to hire Braga, considered Brazil's best-known actress, the network fired her for "sometimes erratic behaviour," the suit said.   Braga filed a claim with an arbitrator in September for $399,000 for breach of contract, the suit said.   She originally also sought $100,000 for defamation but decided to drop that claim, the suit said.   The suit claims that Braga breached her agreement to appear on the show by "repeatedly and publicly attacking the production and scripts and failing to show up for work."   "She vocally and unreasonably complained about everything from the scripts and production to her accomodations and hairdresser and repeatedly showed up late for work," the suit said.   Her behaviour "alienated and insulted the production personnel," the suit said.   Braga's attorney declined comment on the suit. 
19178 !GCAT !GENV !GODD  New York City might be well known for its towers of glass and steel, but trees outnumber skyscrapers more than 500 to one, officials announced Friday.   The city's first-ever tree census ended with a flourish and a drumroll as Parks Commissioner Henry Stern counted the last of the 500,000 trees that line New York's 30,400 blocks.   The census data will help save ailing trees and determine where to plant more, he said.   "If we know where they are, we can take better care of them," he said.   The six-month census found the city's most common trees are the hardy London plane and the Norway maple.   Growing in a forest, they would fill 2,860 acres (1,150 hectares).   Planted in a row 20 feet (seven metres) apart, they would stretch 1,893 miles (3,046 km).   The city's 500,000 trees compare with its roughly 900 buildings taller than 100 feet (30 metres), said the Real Estate Board.   The census cost $75,000 in tax dollars, officials said.   Another $15,000 came in private donations, and volunteers contributed 14,000 hours of labour.   Some might argue the city could have saved time and effort.   The 500,000 matches an earlier estimate drawn from aerial photographs, the Parks Department said.   Or they could have guessed.   Asked at random to estimate the number of trees in the city, a man walking his dog in the borough of Queens said, "If I had to guess, I'd say 500,000."   A precise number of trees will be calculated in a few weeks from the census data, the Parks Department said. 
19179 !GCAT !GPOL  The Dole and Clinton campaigns swapped charges on Friday over which candidate has a greater commitment to the war on drugs, as Ross Perot challenged the decision to bar him from presidential debate.   In a pair of apparent tit-for-tat campaign ads, President Bill Clinton and Republican challenger Bob Dole belittled each other's record on the drug problem.   Dole's television spot targeted Clinton's 1992 admission on MTV, the music video network, that he tried to smoke marijuana in his youth but was unable to inhale.   "Bill Clinton doesn't get it," the ad copy reads.   "But we do."   A final graphic reads, "Clinton's liberal drug policy has failed."   Clinton campaign spokesman Joe Lockhart said the Dole ad "should be seen as a desperate act by a desperate campaign," faulting the approach as a negative personal attack.   But at the same time, the Clinton camp unveiled a new advertisement of its own that took pointed aim at Dole, including footage of him repeating his new anti-drug mantra, "Just don't do it."   "To fight drugs, all Bob Dole offers are slogans," the ad says, and goes on to say Dole voted to cut Clinton's school anti-drug efforts and other programmes that would have limited cigarette advertising targeting children.   Congressional Republicans continued the theme on Capitol Hill, where they raised questions about reported past drug use by White House personnel.   "I believe the American people need reassurance that the Clinton administration has not critically compromised the procedures by which people can gain access to national security information," Representative John Mica of Florida told the House of Representatives Government Reform subcommittee.   Clinton was campaigning in Portland, Oregon, on the second day of a bus caravan through the Pacific Northwest, stressing his abilities as a budget-cutter.   "We're bringing common sense to government," Clinton told an outdoor rally, saying his efforts to overhaul the federal government had generated $118 billion in taxpayer savings and cut 240,000 government jobs.   Clinton was riding high in opinion polls, and White House political affairs director Doug Sosnik said Clinton held comfortable leads in key states holding a total of 185 electoral votes, including California, Illinois, Michigan, New Jersey, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.   It takes 270 electoral votes to win the presidency.   In Washington, Reform Party candidate Perot filed a formal complaint with the Federal Election Commission against the Commission on Presidential Debates, which recommended this week that Perot be excluded from any face-offs between Dole and Clinton.   The Perot campaign said it also plans to file a lawsuit on Monday challenging the constitutionality of the commission's decision. 
19180 !GCAT !GDEF !GVIO  A U.S. Senate subcommittee is investigating allegations by family members of a coverup in the 1994 "friendly fire" shootdown of two U.S. helicopters over Iraq by U.S. fighter planes, a family member and Senate sources said on Friday.   But the investigation has hit a legal snag because the Defence Department objected to committee efforts to depose the Air Force officers who dismissed negligent homicide charges against the two F-15 fighter pilots.   A family member said the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations was looking into allegations by relatives of some of the 26 Americans and foreign officers killed in the accident that a coverup allowed the two F-15 fighter pilots to escape prosecution.   A Senate source confirmed the investigation but would not say if evidence of a coverup has been found.   "What I am concerned about is that you have general officers who are covering this thing up," retired Air Force Col. Daniel Piper said in an interview.   "When you cover something like this up then somebody else is going to die for the same stupid reason."   His daughter, Air Force 2nd Lt. Laura Ashley Piper, was among the 26 people killed when the two U.S. F-15 fighter planes mistakenly identified two U.S. Black Hawk helicopters as Iraqi Hinds in the "no-fly" zone in northern Iraq and shot them down with missiles.   The Air Force said it stands by its investigation which led to dismissal of negligent homicide charges against the two F-15 pilots.   Higher commands reviewed and approved the action.   Senate investigators hit the legal snag when they tried to depose and take sworn statements from the Air Force judicial officers who dismissed the charges against the pilots.   Deputy Secretary of Defence John White told the subcommittee in a letter Sept. 3 that Congress "has no judicial function or review authority" in the case.   White said Congress's deposition of such officers "poses a grave risk to the integrity of the military justice system" because judicial officers in the future would have to worry about "possible congressional criticism and public censure."   The Senate subcommittee's chairman, Sen. William Roth, a Delaware Republican, must now decide whether to subpoena the Air Force officers or drop his effort to get their testimony.   They include Maj. Gen. Eugene Santarelli, the 17th Air Force commander who dismissed the charges, and Col. Edward Starr, the Article 32 investigating officer who recommended the charges be dismissed.   An Article 32 investigation is similar to a civilian grand jury hearing.   The Air Force said in a statement in December 1994 that a charge of negligent homicide was dismissed against the lead pilot, Capt. Eric Wickson, because "evidence revealed Wickson made a reasonable mistake, under the circumstances, in misidentifying the Black Hawks as Iraqi helicopters."   It said the second pilot, Lt. Col. Randy May, had been charged with negligent homicide because initial evidence indicated he gave only a vague answer when Wickson asked if he also recognised the helicopters to be Iraqi Hinds.   But it said that charge was dismissed against May because "evidence convinced the investigating officer and Santarelli that May, as wingman, followed proper procedures in yielding control of the action to his lead pilot."   Piper said he believed there was a coverup, including immunity from prosecution for Wickson, so that all blame could be put on him and then neither pilot would be prosecuted.   But the Air Force said Wickson was given immunity only from being prosecuted on the basis of his own testimony.   It said he could have been prosecuted with any other evidence. 
19181 !C12 !C41 !CCAT !E21 !E212 !ECAT !GCAT !GCRIM  Dade County, Fla., Commissioner James Burke resigned Friday as head of the county's Finance and Trust Funds Committee but retained his commission seat, Miami television station WPLG reported.   Burke did not return calls from Reuters.   The Miami Herald reported Friday that former city manager Howard Gary had offered Burke $100,000 to secure a spot for Gary's municipal bond firm, Howard Gary & Co, in the syndicate that underwrote a $183 million county bond refinancing issue.   The newspaper said Gary was cooperating with federal investigators and wore a hidden wire to record conversations implicating Burke in the deal.   The FBI denied allegations that Burke's arrest was imminent and a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney's office in Miami said he had no information about the allegations.   --Jane Sutton, 305-374-5013 
19182 !CCAT !GCAT !GDIS  The TWA jet that exploded in July had carried test packages of explosives within the past year, possibly explaining the explosive chemical traces that investigators have found in the plane's debris, the FBI said on Friday.   Packages containing explosive chemicals had been put on board the aircraft as part of a law enforcement training exercise for bomb-detection dogs, the FBI said in a statement.    The test packages were removed from the Boeing 747 when the training exercise ended, the FBI said.   Investigators seeking the cause of the deadly crash have found microscopic chemical traces of two types of explosives in the wreckage, but have said they lack sufficient evidence to declare that a bomb destroyed the plane.   The Paris-bound TWA Flight 800 exploded in midair on July 17 off the coast of Long Island, New York, killing all 230 people on board.   Investigators have said there are three possible explanations for the crash -- a bomb, a missile or a mechanical failure. 
19183 !E21 !E212 !ECAT !GCAT  New York Gov. George Pataki on Friday reacted noncommitly to a proposal for an approximately $5 billion educational bond that was put forward by the state's educational policy-makers.   Noting that the state over the next five years plans to spend about $9.6 billion on school renovation and construction, Pataki said "With regard to the need for additional funds on top of that, we are certainly willing to sit down with the (Education) Commissioner and Regents and ask for the basis and justification for this."   His comments were released by one of his spokeswoman.   The Regents Chancellor has estimated that public schools throughout the state need about $15 billion of repairs, with about half of these schools located in New York City and rest upstate and on Long Island.   Carl Hayden suggested that the gap between the $15 billion worth of badly needed repairs and other improvements could be made up by sellng about $5 billion of bonds.   Improved oversight, energy conservation and other measures could produce costs-savings, so that the full $5.4 billion shortfall would not have to be met by selling bonds.   Any such sale would have to be approved by the voters, most likely in November 1997, assuming the legislature gives the plan its go-ahead.   --Joan Gralla, 212-859-1654 
19184 !E51 !E512 !ECAT !GCAT !GDIP  The U.S. State Department said on Friday it had set up a special unit to help former property owners in Cuba find out if their premises were now being used by foreign companies.   The move stems from the controversial Helms-Burton act, which imposes sanctions on foreign firms deemed to be "trafficking" in property confiscated by Cuba's communist government from U.S. citizens, many of them Cuban emigres.   Spokesman Nicholas Burns said the Helms-Burton Implementation Unit would collect and analyse information from all available sources on whether property in Cuba claimed by a U.S. national had been confiscated or trafficking in it had occurred.   He said potential claimants and others with information or inquiries should telephone the unit at (202) 647-7050 or fax (202) 647-7095.   Under one section of the act, which was passed in March, a Canadian and a Mexican firm have already had their top executives banned from the United States.   But President Bill Clinton has suspended another section of the act, allowing claimants to sue foreign firms.   The law has infuriated many of Washington's closest allies, some of which are threatening to retaliate. 
19185 !GCAT !GCRIM !GVIO  A handwritten diary kept by Unabomber suspect Theodore Kaczynski contains his "detailed admission" to each of the 16 attacks blamed on the shadowy serial bomber, a U.S. prosecutor said on Friday.   At a pre-trial hearing in U.S. District Court in Sacramento, prosecutors gave a glimpse of the evidence they will present to try to link Kaczynski, a reclusive former mathematics professor, with the Unabomber's 17-year reign of terror.   Prosecutor Robert Cleary said 22,000 pages of documents seized by investigators from Kaczynski's one-room Montana cabin were "the backbone of the government's case."   The Harvard-educated Kaczynski, 54, is accused of being the shadowy Unabomber who killed three people and injured 23 during an anti-technology bombing campaign between 1978 and 1995.   The documents in Kaczynski's handwriting contain a day-to- day record of his hermit-like life in the cabin near Lincoln, Montana, Cleary said.   The key documents contain "Kaczynski's detailed admission to each of the 16 Unabomber devices," he said.   In some cases, Cleary said, Kaczynski wrote "I mailed that bomb", or "I sent that bomb."   Other times he discussed the results of the bombings, the prosecutor said.   Other passages reflect "his desire to kill," he said.   "This is not a circumstantial case," Cleary told U.S. District Judge Garland Burrell.   Kaczynski, bearded and bedraggled, was arrested at his Montana cabin in April and was transferred two months later to Sacramento where he has been charged with four of the bombings, two of them deadly.   He has pleaded not guilty.   Cleary said the other big part of the government's case was forensic evidence linking bomb fragments to items found in Kaczynski's cabin.   He said a typewriter found at the cabin "ties in to a lot of Unabomber correspondence and mailing labels on the bombs."   Kaczynski was not present at Friday's hearing, having voluntarily waived his right to be there.   Cleary also said that prosecutors expect the guilt phase of Kaczynski's trial to last three to four months with possible additional time for a penalty phase if the government decides to seek the death penalty.   The charges against Kaczynski can carry the death penalty but the government has not yet said if it will seek it.   Prosecutor Steven Lapham said prosecutors will submit a memorandum to Attorney General Janet Reno in the next week to 10 days assessing aggravating and mitigating factors in the case to help her reach a decision on whether to seek the death penalty.   He said prosecutors believe the Justice Department can reach a decision on the death penalty by year-end.   Cleary gave the insight into the government case during legal arguments on whether the judge should set dates now for trial and for the filing of pre-trial motions, as the government wants, or whether he should wait, as requested by the defence.   Federal prosecutors have proposed that all pre-trial motions in the complex case be filed by November 20, and asked that the trial itself begin March 31, 1997.   But Kaczynski's attorneys argued passionately during the 50-minute hearing against setting such a timetable now.   The defence attorneys said they had a number of disputes with prosecutors over what evidence the prosecution must share with the defence and they also needed more time to organise and review the vast amount of evidence already turned over.   In sometimes heated argument, defence attorney Quin Denvir said it would be "unheard of" to set a trial date so early in such a complicated case.   "This case is the biggest, most complex case ever filed in this district," Denvir said.   "It shouldn't be put on a fast track because it is more complex."   During its 17-year investigation of the Unabomber, the FBI compiled masses of evidence and investigated 2,000 people.   The defence wants to see some of this material.   Burrell took the lawyers' arguments under submission and said he would try to rule later Friday on whether to set a timetable now for pre-trial motions and trial. 
19186 !GCAT !GPOL  President Clinton, enjoying a double-digit lead over Republican challenger Bob Dole, has asked his top fund-raiser to start raising money to help the Democratic Party retake Congress, Democrats said Friday.   Democrats are increasingly optimistic that with extra money, they might regain control of the House and Senate, which they lost in 1994.   But they acknowledge that the odds are still against them, and for now independent analysts believe Republicans will hold both houses.   Nonetheless, the Democratic National Committee has already turned over $4 million in cash to the House and Senate Democratic campaign committees, DNC communciations director David Eichenbaum said.   A Democratic source, who asked not to be identified, said the goal was to raise $4 million for House candidates and $6 million for Senate candidates.   All 435 seats are at stake in the House, where Republicans hold a 235-198 edge, with one vacancy and one independent.   Democrats would have to win 20 seats to gain a bare majority.   Only 34 seats are up in the 100-member Senate, where Republicans hold a 53-47 edge.   If Democrats win three seats and the presidency, Vice President Al Gore could break tie votes to give them a bare majority.   "The Senate alone has 17 races right now that are in the single digits -- either down or up a couple of points," Senate Democratic Leader Tom Daschle of South Dakota said.   "So it's a wide-open contest."   But PoliticsNow -- a partnership of ABC News, National Journal and The Washington Post -- issued an analysis Friday that said Republicans would most likely retain control of the Senate.   The new money for the Democrats will be raised by Terry McAuliffe, the top fund-raiser for the Clinton-Gore campaign, Eichenbaum said.   "The president and Sen. (Christopher) Dodd and Chairman (Don) Fowler have as a top priority retaking Congress," he said of the co-chairmen of the DNC.   "Having Terry McAuliffe devote his time between now and the election to raising money for our House and Senate candidates we believe sends a strong signal that we intend to be competitive in all our races," he said.   Daschle and Senate Minority Leader Richard Gephardt of Missouri sought the money in a White House meeting last week.   This week top congressional Democrats met with Clinton, who agreed to let his fund-raiser focus on Congress, a Democratic source said.   To give a boost to the Democrats, Clinton has started talking about winning the House and Senate on the campaign trail. 
19187 !GCAT !GWELF  At risk of losing millions of dollars, New York state on Friday said it had met the federal government's deadline for changing Food Stamp rules to comply with the new welfare program with one day to spare.   Patricia Woodworth, the state's budget director and chair of the state's task force on welfare, said the emergency regulations are effective immediately, and noted that the federal government gave the states very little time to comply.   "I want to commend the counties and New York City for working with the state to meet the extremely tight schedule required by the federal welfare legislation," she said, in prepared remarks.   A spokesman for the state Social Services Department, Terrance McGrath, said New York could not yet quantify what the impact of the changes would be on its budget, noting the task force that is examining this issue still is working.   The state, which now has one million households or two million people collecting Food Stamps, said the required changes cover a range of issues.   They include stiffening sanctions for those who do not comply with work requirments and including children under 22 who live with their parents in the same household for Food Stamps budgeting.   Legal aliens are barred from the program unless they meet new qualifying tests.   Refugees and honorably discharged veterans can collect benefits, for example.   Sanctions for fraud were toughened and local districts now must give law enforcement officials information about people on the program "under certain conditions."   --Joan Gralla, 212-859-1654 
19188 !GCAT !GODD  Angry residents of a North Dakota community have threatened to remove school board members over efforts to eliminate a grimacing midget as the local high school's mascot, authorities said Friday.   Dickinson Schools Superintendent C. B. Haas said supporters of the midget character had threatened to call for new school board elections unless the board puts the proposed mascot change to a popular vote by Oct. 1.   "The board members are not in a frame of mind to yield to that kind of ultimatum," Haas told Reuters.   "So it's like the two groups are on a collision course."   In July the board voted 4-1 to change the "Midgets" name of the high school's sports teams and the traditional logo after receiving complaints from a parents' advisory committee.   But the move ran into opposition from what one board member described as "die-hard fans" of the 80-year-old mascot.   Haas said that under state law, the fans only need 40 signatures to validate a petition calling for new board elections.   Dickinson has a population of about 16,000.   "They're obsessed about this name.   I'm calling it mob obsession," Haas said.   Last week more than 250 people attended a lively debate over the proposed change.   At the time, School Board President Earl Abrahamson said the five-person board would consider all the opinions presented at the debate and would probably reach a decision at its October meeting.   But Haas said Friday that because of the threat, the board might have to arrange a special meeting before then to consider its options.   The word "midget" is seen by many as derogatory and politically incorrect.   "Little people" is sometimes used as an alternative. 
19189 !GCAT !GDIP  The United States called on Friday for a timetable starting next month for an orderly U.N. procedure to find a successor to Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali, whose reappointment Washington plans to block.   U.S. officials said that although President (Bill) Clinton and Secretary of State Warren Christopher would not raise the matter formally when they visit the U.N. General Assembly next week, they expected it to figure in backstage discussions.   Boutros-Ghali's first five-year term expires at the end of this year.   The 73-year-old Egyptian is eligible to stand again but Washington says he has not given enough attention to restructuring the world body, and that it will not back him.   "We don't want the matter to go down to the wire on December 31st, nor do we wish a confrontation," Princeton Lyman, U.S. assistant secretary of state for international organisations, told a news conference.   "If we start the process early enough, we believe a consensus can be reached in the Security Council on a new secretary-general.   "What we want to do now is to have countries begin to look seriously at alternative candidates, and ... in October to have the Security Council set up a timetable and a process both for receiving nominations, considering them and eventually voting," Lyman said.   As a veto-holding permanent member of the Security Council, the United States has the power to prevent Boutros-Ghali being re-elected.   But its opposition to him has received little support so far from other countries, some of which believe Clinton has sacrificed him to his own re-election campaign against Republican challenger Bob Dole.   Many Republicans, and some Democrats, look askance at the United Nations in general, and Boutros-Ghali in particular, seeing the world body as a free-spending bureaucracy dominated by Third World countries hostile to the United States.   While some reforms have begun, Lyman said that for them to "really be carried out, we need a secretary-general who puts this at the top of his list.   We came to the conclusion that this was not the present secretary-general's top priority."   Lyman insisted that the United States did not favour any particular candidate.   State Department spokesman Nicholas Burns said Christopher had discussed the issue on Friday with Brazilian Foreign Minister Luiz Felipe Lampreia and would raise it with other foreign ministers in New York next week.   "I think most countries understand that we are serious about our position and will not change it," he said.   Lyman said that over the coming year the United States would continue to push for a reduction of its U.N. dues, including agreement to a 25 per cent cap imposed by Congress on the U.S. contribution to the peacekeeping budget.   At present the United States pays just over 30 per cent of U.N. peacekeeping costs.   It pays 25 per cent of the U.N. regular budget, a figure it wants reduced to 20 per cent.   U.N. officials say a committee studying the peacekeeping budget is likely to propose a 27 per cent allocation for the United States, but Lyman said this was not satisfactory.   Congressional antipathy to the United Nations has resulted in a shortfall in U.S. payments.   Lyman listed it as $414 million for the regular budget, $771 million for peacekeeping and $542 million for specialised agencies, a total of $1.727 billion.   The administration has proposed repaying this over five years.   Among U.N. initiatives Washington will back this year are a ban on landmines, an international declaration on crime and public safety and a global regime against international commercial bribery, Lyman said. 
19190 !GCAT !GDEF !GDIP  The United States said on Friday it does not expect North Korea's attempt to infiltrate the South by submarine to interfere with a landmark nuclear agreement and an offer for peace talks remains on the table.   "We hope very much and do not expect that this incident will affect ... the nuclear freeze that is in place in North Korea," State Department spokesman Nicholas Burns said.   "That agreement is in place (and) is being adhered to by the North Koreans.   And KEDO (Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organisation) is working very hard to make sure that that agreement is fully implemented," he told reporters.   Nevertheless, Burns stressed: "It's clear to the United States that this incursion represents a serious provocation by North Korea and is a violation of the armistice agreement" between North and South that ended the 1950-53 Korean War.   He spoke as a massive search was underway for the remaining North Korean infiltrators who landed by submarine in South Korea.   Fierce gunbattles raged through the night.   South Korean security forces believe several agents are holed up around disused coal mines in rugged mountains near the east coast city of Kangnung.   They are the remnants of a squad of heavily armed infiltrators that landed on Wednesday.   Authorities initially said about 20 North Koreans sneaked in, but now they say there may have been more.   So far, 18 are confirmed to have been shot dead and one captured alive.   This incident wil be "high on the agenda" when Secretary of State Warren Christopher meets his South Korean counterpart next Tuesday on the fringes of the United Nations General Assembly in New York, Burns said.   "The United States is an ally of South Korea.   We're very clear about where our priorities are on that peninsula and we think this is provocative act.   And we think that South Korea has every right to investigate it, every right to talk internationally about it.   And the United States will be quite supportive of the South Koreans throughout this," he added.   Some 37,000 U.S. troops are stationed in the South.   South Korea has described the most serious infiltration since the 1960s as a military provocation.   North and South Korea have been technically at war since the 1950-53 Korean conflict ended in a truce.   North Korea is on the brink of famine following devastating floods and has appealed for international aid.   The United States is leading an international consortium called KEDO providing the North with $4.5 billion in nuclear power plants and alternative energy supplies as part of a deal to end the country's suspected nuclear weapons programme.   Seoul and Washington are also trying to entice Pyongyang to talks, along with China, to work out a peace pact to replace an armistice that sealed the division of the Korean peninsula in 1953.   "The United States and South Korea want to go ahead with the four party (peace) talks because this represents the largest ambition and objective that we have...to achieve a full peace agreement to end the Korean War, and to create a state of peace in the Korean Peninsula," Burns said.   He said North Korea still has not agreed to the proposal. 
19191 !C12 !C41 !CCAT !GCAT !GCRIM  Former Archer Daniels Midland Co executive Mark Whitacre on Friday denied the company's charges that he stole $9 million from it, claiming he received millions in off-the-books bonuses.   "I received $6.5 million, now $7 million with interest (in bonuses)," Whitacre said in a telephone interview.   "It was approved by management."   Whitacre, who acted as a government informant for three years as part of the price-fixing probe, said the $7 million would be returned to ADM shareholders at some point.    Whitacre, who was fired by ADM in August 1995 on charges he stole millions of dollars, said he planned to file an $80 million wrongful discharge lawsuit against the company.   Whitacre had been president of ADM's BioProducts Division.   Whitacre said he would file his suit against his former employer after the Justice Department issues expected charges against the company.   As previously reported, a source close to the probe said the Justice Department was pressing ADM to accept a plea agreement to settle allegations of price fixing in the lysine, citric acid and high fructose corn syrup markets.    "We will wait until after the indictments," Whitacre said, referring to the timing of his lawsuit.   "I assume they (ADM) want to keep the focus off their indictments being announced next week," Whitacre said of the suit ADM filed against him on Thursday in state court in Macon County, Illinois.   Sources familiar with the federal case said the situation was fluid and charges might not be filed next week.   Whitacre claimed that some of the documents ADM has submitted as evidence in the company's suit against him included allegedly forged signatures of his.   "(Some) of the signatures aren't mine," he said.   --Chicago newsdesk, 312-408-8787 
19192 !C12 !CCAT !GCAT !GCRIM  Food giant Archer Daniels Midland Co. sued former executive and whistleblower Mark Whitacre, accusing him of stealing millions of dollars from the company between 1991 and 1995.   The suit, filed Thursday in Illinois Circuit Court in Macon County, Ill., alleged that Whitacre wrote phony invoices and contracts to defraud the company of more than $9 million.   The lawsuit says ADM discovered the fraud in 1995.   Whitacre, who headed the company's BioProducts division, was fired in August, 1995, for allegedly stealing millions of dollars from the company.   He has argued that the money was not stolen, but was part of an off-the-books bonus system, according to press reports.   In the lawsuit, ADM accused Whitacre of having the funds wired to numbered bank accounts in Switzerland and Grand Cayman in the Cayman Islands.   Whitacre acted as a government informant for three years in an ongoing federal anti-trust investigation into possible price-fixing in three food and feed additives.   According to a source familiar with the investigation, the Justice Department is pressing ADM to enter a plea agreement regarding the allegations of price fixing.   That investigation involves allegations that ADM and other producers conspired to fix prices of lysine, a livestock feed additive; citric acid, a food additive; and high-fructose corn syrup, a sweetener used in soft drinks and other foods. 
19193 !C13 !CCAT !GCAT !GWELF  Argentina has identified about half a million people affiliated with its pension fund system who have not been making contributions to the system and expects to remove them within about 90 days, Ignacio Krueger, Argentina's deputy superintendent of pension funds said Friday.   "There are about half a million that are not contributing... We are addressing this," he told a World Research Group conference on Latin American pension funds.   As of June 1996, he said there were about 8,200,000 workers listed as pension fund affiliates.   Argentina created its new pension fund system, which gives workers the option of participating in privately-managed pension funds, three years ago.   Krueger said the funds were worth almost $4 billion, versus $250 million three years ago. 
19194 !GCAT !GCRIM  Greeted by jeering protesters, O.J. Simpson walked into court on Friday for his first encounter with prospective jurors who may end up deciding whether he was responsible for the murders of his ex-wife and her friend.   After being a no-show for the first three days of his civil trial, Simpson arrived at the Santa Monica courthouse where he was confronted outside by about 30 sign-waving demonstrators shouting "You're a murderer!"   and "You can't hide!"   Inside the courtroom, the former football star -- looking relaxed and confident -- took his place beside his attorneys to hear questioning aimed at weeding out members of the jury pool tainted by the massive publicity surrounding the sensational case.   A middle-aged black man was the first to be questioned, and he told attorneys he believed police had engaged in a "coverup" in their investigation of the June 1994 murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman.   But he maintained that despite his opinions, he could still serve as a fair and impartial juror if chosen to sit on the panel.   Simpson was acquitted last October of criminal charges, but he now faces a wrongful-death civil suit brought by the victims' families.   The former football star faces no threat of jail time, but could be forced to pay millions of dollars in damages if he loses the case.   The prospective jurors being questioned on Friday were among the 169 who survived a first round of "hardship" interrogation to determine whether they were unable to serve because of personal or financial problems.   The judge took a hard line, refusing to excuse many of the people who claimed that physical ailments or family duties made it hard for them to serve during a long trial.   The next phase -- known as "publicity voir dire" -- was considered crucial.   Simpson's murder trial was by far the most highly publicised courtroom drama in U.S. history, and his acquittal divided Americans largely along racial lines.   The first trial was broadcast gavel to gavel on national television, making it all but impossible to find jurors who know nothing about the case.   The best hope, legal experts say, is to pick jurors who can set aside their knowledge and opinions and decide the civil suit based solely on the evidence presented in court.   But the difficulty of that task became clear when the first man was questioned about how he was affected by his exposure to the media frenzy that has surrounded the Simpson saga.   The man said he occasionally followed the first trial on television, read about the case in newspapers and magazines and discussed it with friends and family members.   From that, he said he had reached the conclusion that police had conducted a "bad investigation."   "I believe somebody made a mistake and it was a coverup," he said under questioning by Daniel Petrocelli, attorney for the Goldman family.   During the criminal trial, Simpson's defence team argued that police bungled the murder investigation and tried to frame him in a broad conspiracy led by a racist detective.   Simpson missed the first phase of his civil trial because he had to be in an Orange County courtroom 40 miles (65 km) away to fight for custody of the two young children he had with his slain ex-wife.   The closed-door custody battle was put on hold on Wednesday.   When Simpson arrived at the courthouse on Friday, he was met by jeering protesters held behind police barricades chanting, "O.J., O.J., you can't hide.   We charge you with homicide."   Several Simpson supporters tried to shout them down.   Simpson stared at the demonstrators from inside a black sports utility vehicle before dashing through a side entrance to the courthouse.   Clad in a dark blue suit, he sat just behind his attorneys in court and took copious notes.   The judge and attorneys are trying to pick 12 regular jurors -- plus eight alternates.   Jury selection is expected to take up to two weeks. 
19195 !GCAT !GSCI  Space marathon woman Shannon Lucid worked out on Friday to prepare for her long-awaited return to Earth and the crushing pull of gravity.   Lucid jogged on a treadmill in Mir's bus-sized core module as the Russian space station Mir and shuttle Atlantis circled, linked together, 245 miles (394 km) above the Earth.   She was to exercise for two hours a day for the remainder of her flight to counteract the wasting effect of weightlessness, NASA's chief flight director Lee Briscoe said.   The 53-year-old biochemist is nearing the end of a six-month tour on Mir, the longest space flight by a woman and a record for an American.   She told ABC TV's "Good Morning America" on Thursday that she was anxious to see her husband, two daughters and son.   "I'm looking forward to having my family around.   We're going to sit, we're going to talk," she said.   Her stay on Mir was extended by nearly seven weeks because of shuttle booster problems, threatening hurricanes and scheduling difficulties.   Her place on Mir was taken on Thursday by John Blaha, a 54-year-old former Vietnam fighter pilot, who joined the Mir crew of cosmonauts Valery Korzun and Alexander Kaleri for a four-month stay.   Blaha asked mission control to tell his wife that he felt right at home after just one night aboard the station.   "Pass along to Brenda for me that life on the Mir is fantastic," he radioed controllers in Houston.   "I've had a lot of fun in the last day, meeting my crewmates, talking to them and eating with them," he told ABC later.   "I'm looking forward to the stay."   Blaha is the second of six U.S. astronauts who will staff the orbiting outpost into 1998.   NASA began joint manned missions with Russia in 1994 to prepare for an international space station that the two nations plan to start constructing in late 1997.   "This is a fantastic programme that we are doing with the Russians," Blaha said.   "It's a good start to an international space station and for space exploration in the future."   Briscoe said the joint U.S.-Russian crew had accomplished about half of their 6,000-pound (2,700 kg) cargo transfer.   Atlantis carried food, water and equipment for the station and will bring the results of scientific experiments and obsolete equipment back to Earth.   Atlantis is due to leave Mir on Monday and return to Florida's Kennedy Space Centre on Thursday, ending a 188-day mission for Lucid. 
19196 !C12 !C34 !CCAT !GCAT !GCRIM  USAir Group Inc said Friday that it refuted British Airways Plc 's motion to dismiss the antitrust, breach of contract lawsuit brought by USAir against BA and American Airlines.   "No amount of posturing by British Airways will change the reality that USAir's action is firmly based on law and fact," USAir said in a statement.    USAir, BA's existing trans-Atlantic partner, filed suit against the proposed alliance between BA and AMR Corp's American Airlines.   USAir alleged the proposed deal would monopolize air travel between the U.S. and Britain, and undermine USAir's own standing with BA.   BA holds a 24.6 percent stake in USAir. 
19197 !E21 !E212 !ECAT !GCAT  The New York State Board of Regents, the state's educational policy-makers, on Friday proposed an approximately $5 billion bond act to help pay for urgently needed repairs for public schools.   How the Pataki Administration will respond to the proposal is not yet clear, as a spokesman for the governor had no comment immediately available.   The Regents are appointed by the state legislature, who in turn appoint the state Education Commissioner.   The Regents Chancellor, who estimated that public schools throughout the state need about $15 billion of repairs, with about half of these schools located in New York City and the rest upstate and on Long Island.   "Many people believe this is a New York City problem.   But in reality, it is a problem statewide," said Carl Hayden, in prepared remarks.   As school districts, using local and state funding, have budgeted about $9.6 billion of the amount needed to pay for the repairs, the shortfall totals about $5.4 billion.   But any bond act, which is not expected to go before the voters until November 1997 if the legislature approves the proposal, likely would be a bit less.   That is because the state education department said it might be able to cut costs by conserving energy, managing projects more effectively, sharing construction services, and bidding in groups.   "We want to discuss these approaches with the governor and legislature," said Education Commissioner Richard Mills, in prepared remarks.   Other measures the Regents put forward would change state aid to allow schools to teach classes for 180 days during 12 months of the year, instead of the current 10 months.   Also, each school district would have to set up a maintenance reserve fund to keep buildings in good condition and there would be more oversight of their construction and maintenance programs.   Another measure would aid New York City, whose construction costs typically run much higher than upstate, by adjusting state aid to take regional differences in construction costs into account.   --Joan Gralla, 212-859-1654 
19198 !GCAT !GPOL !M12 !MCAT  Assistant U.S. Treasury Secretary Darcy Bradbury's departure from the department next month will be a "significant loss" to the municipal bond sector, a spokeswoman for bond lawyers said Friday.   "Darcy has been a wonderful resource for the state and local government community given her understanding of state and local finance," Amy Dunbar, government affairs director for National Association of Bond Lawyers, said at the group's annual workshop here.   Treasury announced Thursday that Bradbury, a former deputy comptroller for New York City, will resign in early October to join the private sector.   No further details were available.   Dunbar commended Bradbury particularly for her "leadership" in getting Treasury to relax its standards for issuing SLGS, or State and Local Government Series securities.   "We have been working for years to get the federal government to recognize its role in problems related to the SLGS program and (the program's) unavailability to state and local government issuers," Dunbar said,.   "She was a leader in making the government respond," Dunbar said.   Treasury issued major revisions to the SLGS program recently.   --Vicky Stamas, 202-898-8314 
19199 !C12 !CCAT !GCAT !GCRIM  Archer Daniels Midland Co, in a lawsuit obtained by Reuters Friday, accused government informant and former employee Mark Whitacre with a pattern of fraud that took more than $9 million from the company from 1991 through at least 1995.   The lawsuit was filed Thursday in state court in Macon County, Illinois.    The lawsuit alleges ADM discovered in 1995 that Whitacre had engaged in theft, conversion, fraud and breach of fiduciary duties against ADM, including submitting phony invoices and contracts.   Whitacre, who headed ADM's BioProducts division, was fired by ADM in August, 1995, for allegedly stealing millions of dollars from the company.   Whitacre has contended that the money was not stolen, but was part of an off the books bonus system, according to press reports.   Whitacre acted as informant for three years in an ongoing federal anti-trust investigation into possible price fixing in the lysine, citric acid and high-fructose corn syrup market.   According to a source familiar with the investigation, the Justice Department is pressing ADM to enter pleas to charges of price fixing in those markets.   --Reuters Chicago newsdesk, 312-408-8787 
19200 !GCAT !GDIP !GPOL  The United States on Friday welcomed a meeting between two of Bosnia's three new presidents-elect and said it did not fear they were laying the basis for a Croat-Serb alliance that would exclude Moslems.   The two, Croat Kresimir Zubak and Serb Momcilo Krajisnik, met on Thursday in the Serb stronghold of Pale, near the capital Sarajevo.   "We'll defy the conventional wisdom in the press for today and tell you that we're not concerned at all about it.   In fact, we're encouraged that Mr. Zubak and Mr. Krajisnik met," State Department spokesman Nicholas BUrns told reporters.   He said the two men, who won last Saturday's election along with top vote-getter Alija Izetbegovic, a Moslem, "need to work together for the sake of the united Bosnia.   It is a good thing that Croats and Serbs are meeting together."   Izetbegovic, Zubak and Krajisnik make up Bosnia's three-member presidency.   Izetbegovic, having received the most votes, will serve as chairman.   The Washington Post, quoting "Bosnian sources," reported from Sarajevo that Zubak and Krajisnik were cooperating on plans to divide Bosnia as much as possible into three ethnic fiefdoms loosely tied together by a weak central government.   Their goals clash with those espoused by the main Moslem organisation headed by Izetbegovic, which wants to reunite Bosnia, see refugees return to their homes and build a strong central government.   Burns noted at a news briefing that Zubak has been having a series of consultations including with Carl Bildt, the international community's envoy to Bosnia, and U.S. Ambassador John Menzies.   He is due to meet Izetbegovic in the next couple of days, Burns said.   "So, I think this is the normal course of business.   I think, frankly, this (notion of a Serb-Croat alliance) has probably been misunderstood -- and maybe even overwritten -- by some people from the region ... and that our own view is that all of these leaders need to work very quickly and decisively together to create the new institutions of the Bosnian state -- the unified Bosnian state," he said.   Burns said U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher would meet Izetbegovic and other Balkan leaders in New York next Thursday on the fringes of the U.N. General Assembly.   He acknowleged uncertainty about how the newly elected leaders would move to create federal institutions for Bosnia but he said that recently "we have heard some positive statements out of the Bosnia Serbs." 
19201 !E12 !ECAT !GCAT !GPOL  Four New England governors attending a conference at the regional state fair held in this western Massachusetts town Friday split on whether an interest rate hike would hurt or help their individual states.   Connecticut Gov. John Rowland, whose state's economy has been battered by continuing cutbacks in the defense industry and downsizing among insurance firms, said any hike by the Fed would be detrimental to state's recovery.   "I think it (rate hike) would be ill-advised," Rowland said.   "Here we governors are trying to stimulate the New England economy and he's trying to slow it down.   I hardly think the numbers suggest that inflation is rampant or even close by.   I would hold the line.   Rate hike would have a negative impact."   But both Vermont Gov. Howard Dean and Massachusetts Gov. William Weld thought Fed Chairman Greenspan had a broader view of the national economy and agreed that inflation must be kept in check.   "If he (Greenspan) thinks that an uptick is necessary, he probably has a rational basis for that.   You always balance off the danger of putting an excessive damper on the economy with the necessity of to get out in front and make sure that inflation doesn't rear it's ugly head," said Weld, who is in the middle of a campaign against Democratic incumbent John Kerry for Senate.   Vermont Gov. Howard Dean said he was "a big supporter of the Fed.   I'm not one of these politicians who bashes the Fed in an election year...In the long run, inflation is a much bigger enemy than lack of growth.   And we're having growth - even in New England now."   But Rhode Island Gov. Lincoln Almond said, "I don't think it will happen.   This is an election year." 
19202 !GCAT !GPOL !GVOTE  Three polls released this week show a Democrat leading in Saturday's U.S. Senate primary, with a Republican struggling to take second place in the multi-party contest that will choose the final two candidates for the November election.   Former Democratic state Treasurer Mary Landrieu, 40, maintained the top poll ranking she has held throughout most of the campaign.   State Representative Woody Jenkins, 49, the favourite among six Republican candidates, was in a statistical dead heat with state Attorney General Richard Ieyoub, 52, the second-ranked Democrat in the race.   Under the state's unique open primary system, all candidates run at the same time, regardless of party affiliation, with the top two vote-getters facing off in the November general election.   Faced with the specter of having two Democrats in the runoff in one of four Southern states where Republicans hoped to capture Democratic Senate seats, top party leaders have been trying to unite conservative voters behind Jenkins, who has led the tightly bunched pack of Republicans in the polls.   The Louisiana race is for the seat of retiring Sen. J. Bennett Johnston.   The other Southern Senate seats Republicans hope to take are in Arkansas, Alabama and Georgia.   Endorsements of Jenkins by popular Republican officeholders and long-time Louisiana party leaders have come almost daily.   The major exception is Gov. Mike Foster, who has refused to get involved in the primary.   The other Republicans running are former state Representative David Duke, an ex-Ku Klux Klan leader and Nazi sympathiser who ran unsuccessfully for Senate and governor; Representative Jimmy Hayes; millionaire businessman Bill Linder; state Representative Chuck McMains and New Orleans City Councilwoman Peggy Wilson.   A Mason Dixon poll showed Landrieu with 27 percent of the vote, Jenkins 18 percent and Ieyoub 14 percent, with a 4.5 percent margin of error.   A National Republican Senatorial Committee poll show Landrieu with 24.4 percent, Jenkins at 15.8 percent and Ieyoub at 11.4 percent, again with a 4.5 percent margin of error.   The Southern Media & Opinion Research poll put Landrieu at 22.5, trailed by Ieyoub at 16.1 and Jankins at 13.1 percent. 
19203 !GCAT !GDIP !M14 !M143 !MCAT  Recurring rumours that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein is a big oil futures player are not backed up by the facts, according to U.S. intelligence and regulatory officials.   The theory, which has surfaced over the years when Iraq has been at the centre of Middle East turmoil, is that Hussein and his Baghdad cronies play oil futures markets, particularly the New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX), via Swiss accounts controlled by third parties.   "We have looked into the rumour and found that there is no evidence to substantiate it," said a U.S. official familiar with government intelligence on Iraq.   The view from intelligence sources is backed up by futures market regulators and experienced brokers on the exchange.   Though there has long been lighthearted talk among oil traders and diplomats of how the inner circle in Baghdad could benefit financially from its political and military actions, that speculation has taken on a more serious tone in recent months as oil price volatility has run at its highest level since the end of the Gulf War.   In August, in the wake of protacted negotiations between Baghdad and the United Nations over a limited lifting of oil sanctions, The New York Times' ran a "Foreign Affairs" column couched as an idea for a novel, which mused at length about how Saddam Hussein could use foreknowledge of his diplomatic positions to benefit from their effect on oil prices.   Last week, following the oil market turmoil caused by Baghdad's incursion into protected Kurdish zones and the U.S. military response, the respected Journal of Commerce quoted an unnamed United Nations official as saying that Baghdad "is believed to be playing the futures market for some easy money."   "They can play the oil futures market and make money out of nothing," the U.N. official told the newspaper.   But regulatory investigation of futures market activity both before and after major market-moving events in Iraq turned up nothing suspicious, according to officials.   "I can assure you that when surveillance saw (the big Iraq-related price moves) they looked into it," said John Phillips, spokesman for the Commodities Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) in Washington, the regulator for U.S. futures exchanges, including the NYMEX.   He explains that all NYMEX trades must be carried out by members of the exchange and they must report to the CFTC details of any futures position of 300 contracts or more in any one month, covering 300,000 barrels or about $7 million worth of oil at current prices.   The CFTC's Surveillance committee meets weekly and examines closely any unusual activity.   The market and the firms trading it in the weeks before and following the latest crisis were examined closely and no suspicious trading was found, sources confirmed.   Similar procedures were followed when markets were roiled, they added.   To conceal trades large enough to make it worthwhile to Baghdad "would be damn near impossible," said Phillips of the CFTC.   "There has never been an entity which has come up that you are not aware of who they are."   To make, say, $1 million from the threshold reportable position would require a move of more than $3 a barrel in Friday's oil price, a huge move.   And Baghdad would have to get the direction right.   When it signed its deal to partially lift U.N. sanctions on May 20, an event which would be expected to result in lower oil prices, oil futures ended the day nearly $2 a barrel higher.   "You are constantly hearing about conspiracy theories, whether it is Saddam Hussein having a trading account or whatever," said Tom Blakeslee, a trader at Minneapolis-based Cargill Investor Services Inc., one of the largest international commodities firms.   "For it to make any difference to him, he would have to trade in such huge size that we would know.   Frankly, I don't believe it.   I don't think he is moving troops around and betting futures on it," said Blakeslee.   "I think he's got bigger goals." 
19204 !GCAT !GPOL !GVOTE  President Clinton's claim that he tried marijuana in his youth but did not inhale became grist for a new campaign advertisement by Republican challenger Bob Dole Friday.   The centrepiece of the television ad is footage from a 1992 presidential campaign appearance Clinton made on the pop music network MTV in which one young audience member asked: "If you had it to do over again, would you inhale?"   Clinton responded: "Sure, if I could.   I tried before."   The exchange referred to Clinton's earlier statements that he had tried marijuana as a young man but was unable to inhale because of his allergies.   As Dole has done on the campaign trail, the television ad cites statistics that show a doubling of teenage drug use since 1992 and criticises Clinton for cutting funds for the office of the National Drug Control Policy.   The ad concludes: "Bill Clinton doesn't get it.   But we do."   A final graphic reads, "Clinton's liberal drug policy has failed." 
19205 !GCAT !GCRIM !GPOL !GPRO  The top Democrat on the House ethics committee called Friday for swift release of a report on House Speaker Newt Gingrich.   "It's outrageous that it will be buried at the end of the (congressional) session," said Representative Jim McDermott, D-Washington.   The ethics committee last month received a report from special counsel James Cole on his investigation into whether the financing of Gingrich's college courses by tax-deductible contribitions violated federal laws barring tax-exempt charities from furthering partisan politics.   But the subcommittee investigating the affair has said it is premature to make the report public, calling it merely a "draft discussion document."   McDermott told a news conference, "I believe that the subcommittee can reach a decision on the charges by the end of the week."   If it could not, he said, it should release Cole's report to the House and public.   "It's very hard for me to tell, but I think there's pretty good evidence that this thing is being delayed deliberately," McDermott said.   Democrats, charging a coverup, have kept up a drumbeat of demands for release of Cole's report on his eight-month investigation.   But it appears likely to remain under wraps at least before Congress adjourns at the end of next week.   A Democratic resolution requiring its release was killed in a House vote Thursday. 
19206 !GCAT !GHEA !GSCI  Federal health officials on Friday proposed guidelines for transplanting animal tissue and organs into humans, one of the most complex cutting edge issues in modern medicine.   "Xenotranplants" hold out hope for patients who are getting sicker or dying as they wait for suitable human donor organs.   But scientists fear introducing animal viruses into humans with potentially disastrous effects.   That risk may be even higher with transplant patients whose immune systems are suppressed and who therefore are less able to mount a response to foreign microbes.   Yet the benefits could be huge.   Some 48,000 people are on waiting lists at any given time in the United States alone.   The 5,000 people who donate organs each year after death do not meet the demand.   Organ transplant is only one aspect.   Scientists are also studying whether certain animal cells could cure diseases like diabetes or even control a cancer patient's pain.   "We want to protect the public and patients from potential risks while not impeding research into these promising new treatments," Food and Drug Commissioner David Kessler said as the draft guidelines were printed in the Federal Register for 90 days of public comment.   Cross-species transplants, whether cells or whole organs, are reviewed by the Food and Drug Administration.   The new recommendations include animal safety screenings to minimise the risk of transferring diseases, a fear that has been underscored by the AIDS epidemic.   HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, is widely believed to have originated in monkeys and somehow made its way into the human population, although not through a transplant.   The guidelines would require doctors to take blood cell and tissue samples from the animal and the human recipient for future public health study if needed.   A national data base or registry would be established for public health research purposes and there would be requirements about monitoring the patients and careful selection of the doctors and researchers.   There have already been a few cross-species transplants.   A baby received a baboon heart in California several years ago but died.   Last year an AIDS patient received a baboon bone marrow transplant.   The transplanted cells apparently did not take, but the patient is alive and doing well.   Other scientists and biotechnology companies are exploring whether they can genetically modify animal organs such as pig livers for human transplants, either as a replacement for a failing human organ or to keep a patient alive long enough to wait for a human replacement.   Researchers are also testing whether they can treat Parkinson's Disease with foetal pig nerve cells, whether foetal calf adrenal cells implanted into the spine can help control end-stage cancer pain, and whether pancreatic islets from pigs could help treat insulin-dependent diabetes.   The guidelines were drawn up jointly by the FDA, the National Institutes of Health and the Centres for Disease Control in consultation with leading scientists.   The topic of xenotranplantation has also been vigorously analysed and debated at research centres and in the top medical journals.   "This guideline represents the consensus of physicians and scientists regarding the best way to move ahead in the field of xenotransplantation," Health and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala said.   Once the regulations are finalised, they can be updated as scientific knowledge advances. 
19207 !GCAT !GCRIM !GPRO  A jury began deliberating on Friday in the civil suit brought against movie star Clint Eastwood by his ex-lover who claims he sabotaged her Hollywood career.   The six-man, six-woman jury must decide if Eastwood defrauded Sondra Locke with what she has called a "sham" film-directing deal.   Locke, who lived with the Oscar-winning star for 13 years, told reporters on Thursday outside court that, regardless of the outcome of the case, "I feel cleansed of the whole thing."   Locke originally filed a "palimony" suit in 1989, claiming assets the couple accumulated during their relationship.   She later dropped the suit when Eastwood agreed to secure her a director's contract worth $1.5 million at Warner Bros.   Locke says the contract was a sham because Eastwood had a secret deal with the studio to reimburse it for losses incurred by any Locke film, and she is seeking damages of more than $2.5 million.   Locke's directorial efforts, "Ratboy" and "Impulse" were not commercial successes and in three years under the Warner Bros. contract, none of her 30 suggested projects was ever developed into a film. 
19208 !C24 !CCAT !GCAT !GPOL  Two House Democrats Friday called for an investigation into the proposed move of the staff of TV and Radio Marti from Washington to south Florida.   TV and Radio Marti are run by the U.S. Information Agency to broadcast news and other programmes to Cuba.   Reps. David Skaggs of Colorado and Lee Hamilton of Indiana said legislation passed last year authorised relocation of the headquarters of the Office of Cuba Broadcasting to the Miami area.   But they said USIA had begun moving all 225 employees of TV and Radio Marti at a cost to the taxpayers of $7.4 million.   They asked the General Accounting Office, investigating agency of Congress, to review the legality of the move.   "If Congress had intended to have USIA relocate the entire staff and operations of the Office of Cuba Broadcasting, the bill would not have referred only to OCB's headquarters," they said in a joint letter to the GAO.   Skaggs noted that the House this year voted to end funding for TV Marti, which is broadcast only from 3 a.m. to 8 a.m each day and is jammed by Cuba.   The Senate has not agreed to the funds cutoff.   "In light of the House's decision to stop funding TV Marti, it makes no sense for the USIA to take further steps regarding a move of any of the TV Marti operation," he said. 
19209 !GCAT !GPOL !GVOTE  A poll published Friday of Colorado voters showed President Clinton leading his Republican rival Bob Dole by 41 percent to 36 percent, but with a five-percentage point margin of error the Rocky Mountain state looks like a tossup.   The poll in The Denver Post was conducted by the Norwest Public Policy Research Programme at the University of Colorado at Denver.   Reform Party standard-bearer Ross Perot had six percent and 12 percent were undecided, according to the poll of 407 registered voters taken between Sept. 9-12.   Dole, the former senator from neighbouring Kansas, has visited Colorado three times since he received the Republican nomination in August.   Clinton has also campaigned here since the Democratic convention.   The poll also showed a dead heat in the hotly contested election for the Senate seat being vacated by one-term Republican Hank Brown.   Republican Representative Wayne Allard was a favourite of 40 percent of those polled to 39 percent for millionaire lawyer Democrat Tom Strickland, who has never held public office.   Seventeen percent were undecided. 
19210 !GCAT !GPOL  The security detail for President Bill Clinton's visit to Portland found several dozen "small spherical objects" on Friday that caused some concern among Secret Service agents, the White House said.   Spokesman Mike McCurry said the objects, which appeared to be projectiles that might fit on a cartridge but were not live ammunition, were discovered lying loosely on the ground outside the protected security zone at Clinton's campaign event.   "Outside the security zone the Service found several dozen small spherical objects that did cause them some concern.   They didn't see any reason not to go ahead with the event," he said.   He said agents were looking into the matter further.   "It was not live ammunition.   It looked to be projectiles that might be on the tip of a cartridge.   They appeared to be projectiles that you might have on the top of a bullet," he said.   The campaign event went on as schedule with speeches from Clinton, Vice President Al Gore and their wives Hillary and Tipper. 
19211 !GCAT !GCRIM !GVIO  Unabomber suspect Theodore Kaczynski said he had committed 16 bombings in handwritten documents found at his Montana cabin, a prosecutor said on Friday.   In the documents, Kaczynski described mailing bombs, described the results of some bombings and also shows "his desire to kill," Prosecutor Robert Cleary said at a court hearing.    The descriptions appeared in a diary by Kaczynski providing details of life in his remote Montana cabin, Cleary said.   "Those documents are the backbone of the government's case," Cleary said at a pre-trial hearing in U.S. District Court in Sacramento.   He said the diary contained "Kaczynski's detailed admission to each of the 16 Unabomber devices."   Kaczynski, 54, a Harvard-educated former mathematics professor turned mountain hermit, is accused of being the shadowy Unabomber who killed three people and injured 23 during an anti-technology bombing campaign between 1978 and 1995. 
19212 !C42 !CCAT !E41 !ECAT !GCAT !GJOB  International Business Machines Corp. will extend health benefits to the domestic partners of gay and lesbian employees, making it the largest U.S. company to date to adopt such a policy.   A spokeswoman for the world's largest computer maker said Friday the company would extend health coverage to same-sex domestic partners during its annual enrollment period between Oct. 1 and Oct. 31.   The benefits cover health, dental and vision plans offered by the company and would take effect July 1, 1997, IBM spokeswoman Melinda McMullen said.   She said the policy change brings the Armonk, N.Y.-based company into line with its own written policy of non-discrimination that has included sexual orientation since 1974.   The spokeswoman also said the move was designed to keep IBM competitive with other high-tech firms with such policies, including Microsoft Corp., Apple Computer Inc. and Hewlett-Packard Co.   "The competition to attract and retain a high-quality workforce is fierce in the high technology business," the spokeswoman said.   "So it made sense from a competitive business standpoint as well."   A legal group that represents gays and lesbians welcomed the IBM move.   "Big Blue is in good company with nearly 500 employers that offer similar benefits," Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund spokeswoman Peg Byron said.   "Popular culture and many in the private sector recognize that lesbians and gays should have equal treatment and Congress will catch on soon."   The IBM policy does not cover unmarried heterosexual couples who live together because they have the option of marriage.   "What we require of all our employees is proof of commitment.   The acknowledged proof of committment among heterosexuals is marriage," the IBM spokeswoman said.   Last week the U.S. Senate, by a wide margin, passed a bill that would deny recognition of same-sex marriages.   On the same day however, it narrowly defeated a bill prohibiting employment discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.   In the absence of laws allowing gays and lesbians to marry, IBM said it would require employees with same-sex domestic partners to present a notorized affidavit that they are involved in a committed relationship, living in the same household, and that their finances are interdependent.   McMullen noted that such documents were unlikely to be entered into lightly, since they have been used as evidence in some so-called palimony cases recently.   She said very few employees were expected to benefit from the policy change.   IBM also extended its health benefit plans to cover employees who care for a dependent child, even if the employee is not a biological or adopted parent of the child.   For example, an aunt would be covered if she had taken into her house a niece or nephew.   Young people up to 23 years old who are financially dependent on an IBM employee would qualify. 
19213 !C13 !C21 !CCAT !GCAT !GPOL  The Republican-written "Freedom to Farm" law -- popular with farmers -- would face only minor tinkering next year even if Democrats take control of the U.S. House, leaders from each party said Friday.   Texas Democrat Charles Stenholm, who probably would chair the House Agriculture Committee if Republicans lose control, said lawmakers would look at modifications like a better crop insurance programs or "risk assurance" against catastrophic plunges in market prices or crop output.    Despite reservations, President Clinton signed "Freedom to Farm" into law in April, erasing a New Deal-era system that limited crop acreage.   In exchange for nearly unlimited power to plant what they want, farmers accepted under "Freedom to Farm" a schedule of guaranteed payments that would decline in size each year through 2002.   Stenholm and Yeutter identified international trade rules as the area for action in the near term, to assure removal of trade barriers to U.S. farm exports.    If he becomes chairman, Stenholm said, the House committee would be "very involved in the international trade area."   It would keep an eye on new trade negotiations and try to make sure past agreements were heeded.   Yeutter said the White House had ignored ag trade issues for the most part.   He said other nations were beginning to use "food safety hinderances" -- disguised barriers -- to block U.S. products.   "We're going to have challenge" those techniques, he said.    Stenholm said the 15 percent tax cut proposed by Republican nominee Bob Dole would drive up the federal deficit and imperil funding for agricultural programs.   Yeutter said Dole's plan was sound and that a Dole administration was a reliable bet to curb unneeded spending.   Democrats will retake House control, Stenholm predicted, but said it would come through election of moderates.   A Democratic-led House, he said, "is going to be much more moderate and under a Speaker (Newt) Gingrich," the Georgia Republican now the speaker of the House. 
19214 !GCAT !GCRIM !GPOL !GVOTE  Republicans criticised White House drug testing policy at a House hearing Friday, but Democrats called the charges a political ploy to help Republican Bob Dole's presidential campaign.   Florida Republican John Mica said he called the House Government Reform subcommittee hearing because of previous testimony that some of President Clinton's staff were hired despite their past drug use.   "I believe the American people need reassurance that the Clinton administration has not critically compromised the procedures by which people can gain access to national security information," Mica said.   "It's serious that this administration had a lax policy (on drug use) when they came to office," added Republican Dan Burton, R-Indiana.   Democrats James Moran of Virginia and Paul Kanjorski of Pennsylvania said the hearing was politically motivated.   "This is drug week for the Dole campaign," Moran said.   Dole has been attacking Clinton relentlessly over the sharp increase in drug use among teenagers in the past few years.   Wednesday in Los Angeles, Dole said Clinton had set a bad example by making light of his own past use of marijuana and by cutting funds to fight drugs.   "A president is supposed to show the light, and this president has shown his moral confusion," Dole said.   Burton said both Clinton and Dole should take drug tests immediately along with members of Congress.   "I think the president and Sen. Dole ought to set an example," he said.   Franklin Reeder, director of the White House Office of Administration, testified that all members of the White House staff were subject to random drug tests and anyone testing positive would be fired immediately.   "The chief of staff has clearly articulated the White House policy of zero tolerance for illegal drug use," Reeder said.   "No appointee of this administration has tested positive."   He said 21 staff members out of 3,000 hired since Clinton took office in 1993 had undergone special testing with at least two tests a year because they had admitted past drug use.   Eight are still working at the White House, he said.   Reeder said none of those undergoing special testing held a position involving national security, law enforcement, drug policy, budgeting or personnel selection.   He said the administration had never pressured the Secret Service to issue a White House pass to anyone over the agency's objections.   The hearing was another in a series the panel has been holding about misuse of FBI files at the White House and the firing of seven White House travel office employees in 1993. 
19215 !C42 !CCAT !E21 !E211 !E41 !ECAT !GCAT !GJOB  The New York City comptroller said on Friday that he doubted that the city would achieve the $71 million of overtime savings that it budgeted for fiscal 1997.   However, Alan Hevesi, in his latest report on New York City, added that the city's total tax revenues for July and August were running nearly $75 million more than planned.    The city official noted that overtime expenditures for July and August rose to $50.1 million in fiscal year 1997, though the city only budgeted for $43.9 million, slightly above what the $41.9 million it spent in the 1996 year.   Saying overtime rose mainly for correction and sanitation, Hevesi added "This does not bode well for the overtime budget this year."   He noted that in July, the Fire, Correction and Sanitation Departments told him they did not achieve their goals, while the police force said they were only partly met.   Most of the gain in tax revenues was due to higher general property taxes, which were $73.8 million more than expected.    While a few other tax revenues also ran slightly higher, there were a few shortfalls, including $8.2 million in general sales tax, $1.4 million in the utility tax, and $1 million in the personal income tax.   Hevesi also said the city could reap an extra $17 million from claiming federal Medicaid money that is paid to states with a disproportionate number of low income and poor people.   This would require the city to appropriate at least an additional $82 million, however.   While the state already has included its $65 million of savings from such a transaction in its 1997 budget, the city has not done so, he said.    Other areas the comptroller touched on included a continuing drop in the number of people getting public assistance benefits, which fell below one million for the first time since June 1992.   When measured on a gross basis, the program's costs fell to $200.6 million in August 1996 from $247.7 million in March 1995, as the caseload dropped 14.3 percent to 994,561.   Hevesi added that New York state's failure to approve a budget on time again will force the city to incur extra costs when it taps the debt market, as it will have to back part of a $1.6 billion note sale on October 1 with a letter of credit.   The letter of credit that was needed last year for a similar issue of revenue anticipation notes totaled $1.9 million, Hevesi said, predicting the cost this year would be "several million dollars."   --Joan Gralla, 212-859-1654 
19216 !C13 !CCAT !GCAT !GENV  Farmers probably will seek one-year extensions on 13 million of the 15 million acres due to leave the Conservation Reserve this fall, the U.S. Agriculture Department's top economist said Friday.   Chief economist Keith Collins also said USDA was mulling whether to allow biomass crops as well as haying and grazing on Conservation Reserve acreage as a matter of course in the future.   USDA will decide CRP guidelines early next year.   Collins declined to speculate on how much land might be enrolled in 1997, when contracts on about 24 million acres would expire in the fall.    "It depends on how farmers bid and what they bid," Collins said, in deflecting repeated questions on how much replacement land would be accepted in 1997.   On Wednesday, USDA outlined its proposals for operating the reserve through 2002.   Collins provided some details, including the proposal for economic use of enrolled land.   At present, such use is prohibited except in emergencies.   Substantial debate appeared likely, he said, over USDA's proposal to accept land for wildlife habitat only if it also was highly erodible.   Great Plains residents say large blocks of land were needed in their region for successful habitat.    The environmental benefits index to be used by USDA in judging land submitted by farmers was not part of the proposed Conservation Reserve rules, Collins said.   "That is something you'll want to watch carefully," he said, because USDA would develop the index separately over the next few months.   An emphasis in the index toward low rental rates could benefit a region like the Great Plains while a focus on special benefits, such as protection of water supplies, could attract acreage in eastern states. 
19217 !E21 !E211 !ECAT !GCAT !GPOL  Senate Democratic Leader Tom Daschle said Friday Democrats are ready to delay adjournment to the day before election if Republicans try to push a vital spending bill through Congress without amendments or extensive debate.   Republican leaders want to attach hundreds of billions of dollars of spending for fiscal 1997 starting Oct. 1 to a military spending bill.   In its present form, that would preclude amendments or debate.    "If they want to be here the day before the election they ought to use the defense bill.   If they want to get out of here a little bit sooner, there are a lot of other vehicles."   Republican leaders are anxious to adjourn Congress so they can leave to campaign for the Nov. 5 election.   They settled on the idea of attaching the huge spending measure to the military spending bill, which is near a final House-Senate compromise.   In its final form, the conference report, as it is called, would not be subject to extensive debate or amendment.   In the bill, Clinton stands to gain about $4 billion for education, job training and other domestic programs.   Another $2 billion would be provided for new efforts for counter-terrorism, to fight forest fires in Western states, and for anti-drug efforts.   But the leadership could also use the bill to force Clinton to accept some Republican proposals that he does not want, including about $10 billion in extra military spending. 
19218 !C12 !C18 !C181 !CCAT !GCAT !GCRIM  A federal judge has denied motions for an injunction blocking the proposed merger of Buffets Inc. and HomeTown Buffet Inc., the two restaurant companies said Friday.   Judge Dee Benson of U.S. District Court for the State of Utah, Central Division, denied motions by HTB Restaurants, a franchisee of HomeTown Buffett, and its parent companies, Summit Family Restaurants Inc. and CKE Restaurants Inc., the merger partners said.   The suit filed in August claimed that Buffets and HomeTown allegedly conspired to restrict competition in the buffet-style restaurant market and prevent plaintiffs from developing additional HomeTown units.   It sought up to $160 million in damages.   Buffets and San Diego, Calif.-based HomeTown said they expect their merger, which was announced in June, to close Friday.   Eden Prairie, Minn.-based Buffets' stock rose 37.5 cents to $10.875, while HomeTown was unchanged at $12.50 on Nasdaq at midday. 
19219 !C12 !C13 !C33 !CCAT !GCAT !GCRIM  Xeikon NV, a maker of digital colour printing systems, has agreed to a deal in which Xerox Corp. could become a business partner, under a settlement of a patent lawsuit filed by Xerox, the companies said Friday.   The suit, filed in a federal court in Rochester, N.Y., in March, alleged that Xeikon had violated certain Xerox patents.   The out-of-court settlement defines a set of procedures to discuss any future patent disputes.   The companies also agreed to define the terms and conditions for a possible arrangement in which Xerox will purchase a small number of Xeikon digital colour printing systems for evaluation and testing.   "If it makes sense to integrate (Xeikon's products) in some way, shape or form into our product line, there is the agreement to do that," a Xerox spokesman said.   The Xerox spokesman said neither company admitted fault under the settlement, and they agreed not to disclose financial details, if any, in the deal.   "We believe this agreement reflects the competitive value of our digital colour printing systems," Xeikon said a joint statement.   "But we cannot say at this time whether or when this agreement will materially affect Xeikon's revenues or earnings."   Xerox's stock rose $1.25 to $54.125 on the New York Stock Exchange in late morning trading.   Xeikon rose 50 cents to $10.625 on Nasdaq. 
19220 !C12 !CCAT !GCAT !GCRIM  Italy's snowballing corruption scandal took a new twist on Friday when newspapers published transcripts of tapped telephone calls detailing how bribes were split up between businessmen and magistrates.   "The Bank of Bribes," headlined Rome's La Repubblica in one of a string of stories in newspapers about police taps of conversations between banker Pierfrancesco Pacini Battaglia, who was arrested on Sunday in a scandal that has rocked Italy.   The corruption probe, which has triggered a flashback to the Tangentopoli (Bribesville) investigations which toppled Italy's ruling political class in the early 1990s, broke on Monday with news of the arrest of the head of the state railway company.   Newspapers described Pacini Battaglia as having operated an extensive "superlobby" of businessmen, judges and lawyers, whom he is alleged to have paid to help win contracts for companies and to fix trials.   Pacini Battaglia is being held on suspicion of the same crimes.   State railways managing director Lorenzo Necci, who had been overseeing Italy's planned multi-billion dollar high-speed rail project, was arrested on Sunday on suspicion of fraud, embezzlement, false accounting, corruption and abuse of office.   Magistrates in the northwestern town of La Spezia have said they are now investigating up to 50 people in the graft probe.   La Spezia's chief prosecutor Antonio Conte ruled out on Wednesday that politicians were involved "at this stage".   Prime Minister Romano Prodi has said the government is not touched in any way and financial markets were so far unruffled.   Many of the conversations, conducted using foreign cellphones in a bid to avoid detection, dated from January, five months before the current centre-left government took office.   They involved Pacini Battaglia's secretary Eliana Pensieroso and Emo Danesi, a former deputy for the discredited Christian Democrat party which collapsed in the Tangentopoli scandals.   All three were arrested on Sunday.   Two magistrates and the head of an arms company were among five arrested on Tuesday.   Pacini Battaglia, known as "Chicchi", hit notoriety during Tangentopoli, in which he was arrested and was briefly jailed.   The transcripts quoted him as saying, in highly ambiguous language, that he had "paid" to get out of that scandal.   Milan's crack "Clean Hands" team of graft investigators are still investigating the ramifications of Tangentopoli.   The transcripts contained references to managers from state energy giant ENI, itself part of a big Tangentopoli probe, being involved in Pacini Battaglia's operations.   ENI said the references were to former managers who left the company in the Tangentopoli storm and said in a statement its managing director Franco Bernabe had never met Pacini Battaglia.   Magistrates investigated Necci over the failed Enimont chemicals joint-venture between ENI and agro-chemicals company Montedison that he chaired, but spared him indictment. 
19221 !GCAT !GDEF !GDIP  Russia and NATO came no closer to compromise on Friday over NATO's plans to accept ex-Soviet bloc states as members, but agreed international troops should remain in Bosnia beyond year's end.   Russian Foreign Minister Yevgeny Primakov held two hours of talks with NATO Secretary-General Javier Solana.   They failed to make headway on any concrete plan on NATO expansion acceptable to Moscow.   "As regards NATO expansion, Russia continues to adhere to the negative position on this issue," Primakov told a joint news conference at the Russian embassy where he met Solana.   The Russian minister made clear in an address to the Vienna-based Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) earlier that the stationing of NATO troops and weapons closer to Russia's borders was unacceptable.   NATO sources said, however, that Primakov's statement disclaiming any right of veto to a country joining NATO was a step in the right direction.   "We are far from claiming to have a right of veto concerning one or another state's joining NATO," Primakov said in his speech to the OSCE permanent council.   "However, Russia finds it absolutely unacceptable that NATO's military infrastructure should come closer to its territory," he added.   Ex-Warsaw Pact states the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland are front-runners to join NATO, probably next year.   Solana acknowledged that obstacles to NATO's drive eastwards remained but said talks with Moscow would continue to try to resolve their differences.   "There is no doubt that there are things on which we disagree," Solana said after his third meeting with Primakov, who took office last January.   "But by talking and dialogue, we may be able to overcome our disagreements," Solana added.   On Bosnia, Primakov said Russia was prepared to maintain its presence in an international peace implementation force after the mandate of the current NATO-led peace force of some 55,000 troops runs out in December.   Some 1,500 Russian troops are deployed in Bosnia.   He urged all sides in Bosnia to comply with their commitments made in the Dayton agreement following Saturday's first postwar election.   Solana said in London on Thursday that the international community, including NATO, would have to remain in Bosnia beyond December, but the military presence would be smaller and for a strictly limited term.   In his speech to the OSCE, Primakov outlined Russia's ideas for a post-Cold War security framework in Europe, cautioning that NATO expansion may reinforce a return to lines of division across the continent.   He said the 53-member OSCE, which includes most of Europe, the United States and Canada, was uniquely positioned to be bolstered into Europe's main security body.   "The model should envisage counteraction against an entire range of threats, both military and terrorist, as well as challenges in the economic, ecological, humanitarian and other fields," Primakov told OSCE ambassadors.   Primakov said proposals for a new security framework should be addressed at the OSCE summit in Lisbon in December and hoped a treaty to set up the new body would be ready at the next OSCE summit in 1998. 
19222 !C21 !C24 !C31 !C312 !CCAT !G15 !G153 !GCAT !GHEA  The European Union on Friday flatly ruled out any lifting of a worldwide ban on British beef exports after London decided to shelve plans for a cull of cattle most at risk from mad cow disease.   Not mincing words, the EU farm commissioner and the farm ministers of France and EU president Ireland all said Britain must abide by an EU summit deal reached in June designed to defuse the so-called "beef war".   Foreign Ministers Klaus Kinkel of Germany and Herve de Charette of France also said lifting the ban was now out of the question.   Resurgence of the six-month-old crisis is likely to inflame an informal meeting of EU farm ministers beginning on Sunday in Killarney, Ireland.   It was otherwise intended to focus on ways to restore battered consumer confidence in beef.   Farm Commissioner Franz Fischler was first out of the blocks in attacking the British government's decision, which came late on Thursday evening.   "As long as they do not meet the pre-conditions and until we have a working document from them which we can carefully check, then an end to the export ban is simply not a possibility," Fischler told the European Parliament.   He said that Britain was still bound by its agreement at the summit in Florence to slaughter up to 147,000 cattle as part of a plan that would eventually lead to the EU lifting its worldwide ban on British beef exports.   European Parliament President Klaus Haensch, a German, said it would be better for Britain to quit the EU altogether if it would not respect joint decisions.   "If the British abandon the Union's internal solidarity, when they don't respect decisions taken together, then they do not belong in the Union," he told Saarland radio.   "It would be better if such a member state left the Union."   The British government decided to suspend the planned cull because of research suggesting that mad cow disease, or bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), would die out in five years.   Irish Agriculture Minister Ivan Yates warned Britain that there were no prospects of lifting the ban and that its farmers would be the biggest losers if it abandoned the cull.   But he told Irish national radio he would strive to resolve the impasse at informal ministerial talks in southwest Ireland.   Britain's partners were adamant.   Kinkel, whose country has been the most concerned about a threat to humans from BSE, said:   "A unilateral change by the British government is...not acceptable.   The main priority is the health of the consumer.   The ban on importing British cattle, beef and other products will remain in force."   French Farm Minister Philippe Vasseur told French radio: "The embargo remains, I'd like to add that I am going to ask for checks to be increased."   British Agriculture Minister Douglas Hogg said London had called off the selective cull because of fierce opposition in Britain's parliament.   The British government has been repeatedly at odds with its EU partners since admitting in March that a fatal, brain-wasting disease could be caught by humans who ate BSE-infected beef.   In Killarney, Fischler is due to present proposals for an EU meat-labelling scheme aimed at reassuring shoppers about where the beef has come from and how it was produced.   Beef promotion schemes, especially on foreign markets, and incentives for farmers to rear their herds in fields on grass rather than in sheds on compound feeds will also be discussed.   The Commission's chief spokesman, Nikolaus van der Pas, said in a statement that the Commission would stick to the Florence framework which was based on the latest scientific evidence.   But he added that EU scientists would assess the latest studies, one by Oxford University and another which shows that BSE can be passed from cows to calves.   But it would take until at least mid-October before any conclusions could be drawn.   Van der Pas held out a ray of hope for farmers with grass-fed herds which were free of BSE.   "The Commission remains open to discuss possibilities that may exist for a relaxation of export restrictions for animals from certified herds possibly on a regional basis," he said.   Northern Ireland is pressing strongly for the ban to be lifted on its grass-fed herds, saying it has an effective computer system to track the origin and feed of all its cattle.   English and Welsh farmers' leader David Naish said that the EU's executive was trying to cool things down.   "I was impressed by the Commission's willingness to ensure that the atmosphere does not set one party against another," Naish told reporters after meeting Fischler.   Naish said his aim was to lift the whole ban but he wouldn't block any regional easing, adding, "that is a matter for the British government to request." 
19223 !GCAT !GENT !GVIO  Moslem fundamentalists kidnapped and killed Algerian rai singer Boudjemaa Bechiri after a wedding in the eastern city of Constantine, Algerian security forces said on Friday.   His dumped body was found at midday (1100 GMT) on Friday in the city, the forces said in a statement.   Bechiri, 28, was kidnapped by "four terrorists" on Wednesday night as he was leaving a wedding in Constantine, said the statement, carried by the official news agency APS.   The agency earlier reported that Bechiri had been seized on Thursday night.   Algerian authorities use the term "terrorists" to describe Moslem fundamentalists who have been battling to topple the authorities since the cancellation of a general election in January 1992.   Bechiri, known as 'Cheb Aziz", is one of about a score of Algerian singers of "rai", a popular blend of Western and Arabic music, to have been slain in the conflict.   Federico Mayor, director-general of the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), denounced the killing as part of a broad attack on the nation's culture.   "These repeated attacks against Algeria's star musicians, along with those against journalists, teachers and others, are calculated to rip (the social) fabric and instill fear in those who resist the proponents of violence and intolerance," Mayor said in a statement.   Around 50,000 people -- including more than 300 women, religious workers, doctors, teachers, former ministers and other civilians -- have been killed in the conflict.   Tight censorship over security matters masks much of the killing.   Diplomats in Algiers say the fundamentalists have turned increasingly either to bombings, which quickly become widely known, or to high-profile targets whose deaths the authorities find difficult to conceal.   "The violence still goes on every day," one senior Western diplomat told Reuters.   "The situation is still bad, though not as bad as a year ago."   Last month, the officially appointed rights body, Human Rights National Observatory, said about 1,400 people had been killed by bombs in the past two years.   Diplomats say these figures are conservative.   Security forces reported one person had been killed and 10 wounded by a car bomb parked outside the Hotel Angleterre in central Algiers earlier this month.   "If you look at the devastation to the building, the figure widely circulating, of nearly 40 deaths, seems more credible," one diplomat told Reuters.   He said that the bomb went off at about 5.45 a.m. when people were sleeping.   The hotel was being used temporarily to house policemen. 
19224 !GCAT !GDIP !GVIO  The military chief of Russia's breakaway Chechnya region has received a French visa to attend a Council of Europe hearing next week.   But a rebel leader said on Friday his delegation had not decided whether to go.   Chechen separatist chief-of-staff Aslan Maskhadov and Russian security boss Alexander Lebed, who signed a peace accord on August 31, have both been asked to the hearing held by the 39-nation Council in Strasbourg on Monday.   "Aslan Maskhadov requested a visa at our Moscow embassy to enable him to come to France," French Foreign Ministry spokesman Jacques Rummelhardt told reporters.   "Mr Maskhadov presented a Russian passport and was granted a visa."   In Chechnya, the rebels' designated foreign minister Ruslan Chimaev told Interfax news agency that seven delegates had received visas from a French embassy in one of the former Soviet Baltic states but had yet to decide whether to attend.   Lebed said this week he would almost certainly spurn the invitation by the parliamentary assembly of the council, which aims to promote democracy and human rights across Europe.   The Council, which Moscow sharply criticised for interfering it what it said was internal politics, said it had received no formal reply from Lebed or Maskhadov.   "For the time being, we still have no confirmation.   We don't know if they are coming or not coming," a spokeswoman for the Council said.   Russia joined the Council of Europe in February only after Moscow pledged to seek a peaceful settlement in Chechnya. 
19225 !E12 !E21 !E211 !ECAT !G15 !G154 !GCAT !M13 !M132 !MCAT  European finance ministers were due to start talks in Dublin on Friday determined to push forward plans for a single currency despite doubts over the ability of the Franco-German alliance to meet conditions for monetary union.   The meeting, coming amid an intense scramble by EU governments to bring their 1997 budget deficits in line with the Maastricht treaty, will focus on three important technical areas of economic and monetary union (EMU), the plan to have a common currency among qualifying European Union countries.   The Dublin agenda focuses on a stability pact to ensure fiscal discipline among EMU participants, a new exchange rate mechanism (ERM) linking the single currency to non-members, and the legal underpinnings of monetary union.   The talks in Dublin Castle, which start in earnest on Saturday, are seen as essential for keeping the considerable political momentum behind EMU on course, powered largely by Germany and France.   But recent criticism by some German economic officials of France's questionable accounting tactics in its 1997 budget plans threatened to overshadow what many hope will be a successful weekend.   At issue is the French government's use of a one-off payment of 37.5 billion francs ($7.30 billion) from France Telecom, the state telecommunications company, to cut the state deficit and bring it in line with the Maastricht treaty's requirement.   Norbert Wieczorek, chairman of the German Parliament's European Affairs Committee, said on Thursday he feared parts of the French budget were against the spirit of the treaty.   Other German officials have also voiced criticism over the use of such funds in France's budget.   However, EU monetary affairs commissioner Yves-Thibault de Silguy said on Friday that France's proposal appeared to be in line with accepted EU accounting rules.   "It seems to me that this operation is in line with the principles of national accounting...which are defined, known and agreed by all member states," de Silguy told a news conference.   Among the three topics on the agenda, the Stability Pact has been cast as the centerpiece of the meeting, with recent progress on the issue by the EU's monetary committee setting the stage for a comprehensive deal later this year.   The committee, a secretive group of national treasury and central bank officials, reached a compromise last week that would punish EMU members which run deficits above three percent of gross domestic product.   Several details remain unresolved -- the size of fines, when they would take effect, and a better definition of the economic circumstances under which a country's poor finances would be overlooked.   But the Dublin meeting is expected to give its blessing to what has been accomplished so far.   German finance minister Theo Waigel's initial proposal for a Stability Pact was considered by many as too severe and out of step with what was politically feasible.   Yet his desire to put more bite into the current sanctions process focused attention on a dominant worry -- for a single currency to ultimately work, national budget policies must be kept under control in a credible way.   Regarding a new ERM, ministers and bankers are likely to nod through the vision emerging from the European Monetary Institute, the forerunner to a European Central Bank (ECB).   Alexandre Lamfalussy, the EMI's head, will outline a system which is voluntary, establishes the single currency as an anchor and gives the ECB an influential voice in realigning the value of currencies under pressure.   But specifics, such as the width of the trading bands for non-EMU currencies, or the limits on how much the ECB would spend to support them should they come under speculative attack, are to likely to be kept vague.   Lastly, there is the tricky issue of implementing a legal framework for EMU in advance of its expected 1999 start date.   While considerable progress has been made in clarifying the legal aspects of a single currency, such as the contractual rights investors will have after it is launched, the Maastricht Treaty only allows such a framework to come into force in 1999.   For many in the financial markets this is much too late.   The task for the ministers and central bankers is to find a way around this hurdle.   ($1=5.139 French Franc) 
19226 !GCAT !GREL  Pope John Paul was greeted by loud cheers and applause when he told French couples on Friday to respect life from the moment of conception in a speech defending Christian marriage and the family.   It was the Pope's first mention of sexual morality during a visit to France, where opinion polls have shown a majority of people in a once fervent Roman Catholic nation either opposes or ignores his strict bans on abortion and birth control.   "You are invited to show the world the beauty of fatherhood and motherhood and to favour the culture of life which consists in accepting the children given to you and making them grow," the Pope told some 3,000 Catholic parents and their children.   "Every human being that is conceived has the right to exist... ," he told the families, gathered to meet him at the hamlet of Saint-Anne d'Auray in Brittany, western France.   The Pope, 76, also praised marital fidelity and said the family, in France as elsewhere, faced not only economic and social difficulties but also moral challenges.   "Like many parents, you are faced with the question of human and moral education of the young, while all around you awareness of the spiritual grows weaker and many essential values are being questioned, such as the indissolubility of marriage or respect for life," the Pope said.   He heard selected couples recount their problems.   One woman, Anne-Marie Monroux, told him how she found strength in faith after her husband left her and their four children.   The Pope's four-day trip has been billed as a test of his ability to rally his flock in the face of controversy over the separation of Church and state in France and the Pontiff's own strict opposition to contraception, abortion and homosexuality.   Most of France's 58 million people are nominal Catholics, but only six million attend mass and many of these believe the Pope's conservative teachings are outdated.   The trip, the Pope's last before he enters hospital next month to have his appendix removed, has coincided with scandal for the Church over a Scottish bishop's reported affair with a divorcee and new revelations that he has a son by another woman.   The Vatican said without comment as the Pope arrived in France on Thursday that he had accepted the resignation of the bishop, 55-year-old Roderick Wright, whose case has raised fresh debate about the Church's insistence on priestly celibacy.   Earlier in Saint-Anne d'Auray, a shrine to the mother of the Virgin Mary, the Pope decried what he called a "climate of indifference" weakening religious following in France and urged Catholics to counter it by spreading the Christian message.   "Too often the Christian faith grows weak, noticeably in the younger generation, which really struggles to acquire their religious heritage," he told worshippers at an outdoor mass which police said had drawn 120,000 people.   The Pope, who has appeared relatively robust since arriving in France despite his fragile health, has steered clear of many of the controversies surrounding his visit.   His address to families did not use the word "abortion" and it contained a reminder that separated and divorced couples "remain members of the Christian community".   A French bishop ousted by the Vatican for his liberal views predicted on Friday that the papacy would rapidly lose its role in setting moral standards for Roman Catholics.   Modern society rejected "this type of authority, and I think that it will end.   This function of the authority of the Church will quickly collapse," said "Red Cleric' Jacques Gaillot in an interview with France Inter radio.   Gaillot was ousted from his Normandy diocese in 1995 and transferred to a non-existent ancient seat in the Sahara for voicing liberal views on issues ranging from condom use to abortion.   Gaillot also faulted the Pope's plan to travel to the eastern city of Reims on Sunday to celebrate the 1,500th anniversary of the baptism of Clovis, the first pagan king in western Europe to convert to Catholicism.   He said the Pope's presence in Reims would seem to sanction the extreme nationalistic view that the baptism marked the creation of a Catholic France.   Clovis's kingdom stretched from what is now Germany and the Netherlands into France.   Sixty-seven groups including leftists, anarchists and freemasons are planning a rally in Paris on the same day to back the secular ideals of the French Revolution and protest against the Pope's teachings on sexual morality. 
19227 !C42 !CCAT !E41 !ECAT !GCAT !GJOB  Irish national carrier Aer Lingus agreed on Friday to attend talks with pilot representatives in a bid to avert threatened strike action at the airline from Sunday.   The Irish Labour Court invited both sides to talks on Saturday to discuss a dispute over pay which threatens to disrupt Aer Lingus flights during one of the busiest months in Ireland's European Union presidency.   The Irish Airline Pilots Association (IALPA) has issued strike notice with effect from midnight on Sunday in protest at Aer Lingus' rejection of a 17 percent pay rise for pilots recommended by an independent tribunal.   The airline welcomed the Labour Court invitation, saying, "Aer Lingus has always maintained that the dispute can be resolved through negotiation."   IALPA also said it would attend the talks but refused to withdraw its strike notice, as requested by Aer Lingus.   A spokesman for the association said the strike would go ahead unless the Labour Court could find a formula to bridge the gap between the two sides.   Aer Lingus, which has just emerged from a major restructuring aimed at ensuring its survival in a fiercely competitive market, says the pay demand flies in the face of commercial reality and would bankrupt the group.   It said on Tuesday it was considering issuing protective notice of dismissal to all 6,000 employees if the strike warning was not withdrawn.   "Aer Lingus finances are still fragile.   Far from conceding a 17 percent pay demand, followed by inevitable knock-on claims, we have to seek to reduce our operating costs if we are to stay in business," chief executive Gary McGann said.   He said the airline was battling for survival in seeking to resolve the pay dispute.   "It is vital, even at this late stage, that IALPA should recognise the irreparable damage to the company that an insistence on a 17 percent pay demand would have," McGann said in a statement.   Aer Lingus has announced contingency plans in the event that the threatened strike goes ahead.   The airline says it will lease aircraft to provide a near-normal service on its priority routes which include Dublin-London Heathrow, Dublin-New York and its main European destinations.   "We are a customer-focused airline and we have got to try and look after our passengers," an Aer Lingus spokesman told Reuters.   The airline has also a published an alternative flight schedule for Monday.   "It's not going to satisfy everybody obviously because it is a limited schedule but we have to go ahead and plan for that while still hoping that we can sit down and resolve the issue with IALPA," the spokesman said.   Aer Lingus made a pre-tax profit of 17.8 million punts ($28.6 million) in 1995, its first profit for years, following implementation of an EU-approved restructuring plan which saw the Irish government give the airline 175 million punts over a three-year period.   In return, the airline cut costs by shedding 1,530 jobs or 12 percent of the workforce and by disposing of non-core assets such as its hotel chain.   ($1=.6211 Punt) 
19228 !GCAT !GPOL !GVOTE  Greece's ruling socialists, fighting an election for the first time without party founder Andreas Papandreou, waited on Saturday to see whether a final passionate plea to leftist voters would secure victory.   Opinion polls show Prime Minister Costas Simitis in a close race with the opposition conservatives and desperately in need of a clear shift by undecided voters, still numbering some 20 percent ahead of Sunday's national election.   In a final Athens rally on Friday, Simitis cast caution to the wind in his best campaign speech to date.   He vowed a tough stand with neighbouring Turkey, pledged to safeguard the welfare state and recalled the socialist struggle since the fall of a military junta in 1974.   Until the last few days of the campaign, Simitis appeared to try to shun the memory of Papandreou, the much-loved founder of the Panhellenic Socialist Movement (PASOK) who died in June.   He had initially campaigned on visions of the "new PASOK" which he wanted to build after taking over as prime minister from the ailing Papandreou in January.   But Simitis, who saw his initial lead fade on his own lacklustre performance, has turned increasingly to Papandreou's memory to try to win traditional leftists back into the fold.   He mentioned Papandreou repeatedly at the start of his speech and then eschewed his usual offering of detailed economic analysis for a rousing attack on the right and a walk down memory lane of great moments in Greek socialist history.   Tens of thousands of socialists packed central Athens to hear his call to arms, unleashing a sea of balloons, blasting air-horns, blazing flares and waving green and white flags.   "We represent the future of hope and progress; a strong, sound, more just Greece with a leading role in the Balkans and the Mediterranean," he told the cheering and chanting crowd.   Turning to neighbouring Turkey, which forced Simitis to back down in his first foreign policy challenge in January, he adopted a firm line.   "Turkey is playing with fire from Thrace, to the Aegean, to Cyprus.   But Greece won't negotiate on our territorial rights and sovereignty," he said.   "Because of the success of our policies, Turkey is now isolated and has suffered a diplomatic defeat."   Although a self-serving view of his handling of a dispute with Turkey over a deserted Aegean island, it showed him on the offensive for the first time.   Simitis, 60, was clearly embracing the more passionate tones of Papandreou, one of the country's most loved politicians this century, and unashamedly mimicking his gestures.   He launched a blistering attack on conservative party leader Miltiades Evert, saying: "We must remember whatever they give with one hand, they take away many times over with the other.   "The old tricks don't work any more.   Greeks can see through his effort to buy votes.   Greeks can see he wants to lead us back to a past where we've already been," Simitis said with his right hand pumping in characteristic Papandreou style.   The socialist throng packing the streets of Athens erupted in chants of "Don't forget what the right means".   Opinion polls show Simitis slightly ahead of Evert, 57, but well within the margin of error and leaving open the possibility of an upset on election day.   Simitis called the election a year early sensing an easy win over a divided conservative camp, and appeared even to expect to draw a large block of conservative voters into his camp.   But Evert, a beefy former mayor of Athens who is popularly known as the "Bulldozer", has fought a vigorous campaign and has clearly sent panic through socialist ranks. 
19229 !GCAT !GDIP  Russia's U.N. envoy set the stage on Friday for a battle with the United States over a second term for Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali.   The United States has repeatedly threatened to use its Security Council veto, if necessary, to prevent the re-election of the 73-year-old Egyptian diplomat, whose curent five-year term expires at the end of this year.   But Russian Ambassador Sergei Lavrov, whose country, like the United States, has a veto, told reporters: "Russia supports Boutros-Ghali.   ... As to why, I would answer with a question: 'Why not ?'"   "He has been doing a good job, and we don't see any reason to say that he is not qualified for the job," Lavrov said.   He said the majority of the 15-nation council "is of the view that November is the good time to start discussion of the substance of the issue."   This conflicts with the U.S. view that the council should begin tackling the question sooner.   Princeton Lyman, U.S. assistant secretary of state for international organisation affairs, told a news conference in Washington on Friday: "We don't want the matter to go down to the wire on Dec. 31, nor do we wish a confrontation.   ...   "What we want to do now is to have countries begin to look seriously at alternative candidates, to begin to surface those and ... in October to have the Security Council set up a timetable and a process both for receiving nominations, considering them and eventually voting."   Of the General Assembly session that opened on Tuesday, Lavrov said, "Terrorism is going to be very high on the agenda because of the events in the real world."   "Middle East issues would have to be considered slightly differently this year because of the problems on the ground," he added, apparently alluding to a slowdown in negotiations between Israel and its Arab neighbours.   Referring also to the election of a secretary-general and the United Nations' cash-flow problems, he said, "It is going to be a very challenging session ... a session which would maybe more than in previous years try to reach quite practical solutions to the problems which we face." 
19230 !GCAT !GREL  Pope John Paul, on the third day of a four-day trip to France, was to celebrate a mass on Saturday honouring the memory of Saint Martin of Tours, who tore his cloak to share it with a poor man who was cold.   The mass, marking the 1,600th anniversary of the holy man's death, was expected to give the Pontiff an opportunity to address the continuing need for charity in modern times.   Saint Martin, at the time a Roman officer, shared his cloak during the fourth century at the gates to the northern city of Amiens.   He later was bishop of Tours and ultimately became the first non-martyred saint, church officials said.   Organisers of the Pope's trip, his last before he enters hospital next month to have his appendix removed, thought Saint Martin an appropriate symbol for the occasion.   "One cannot remember the man who shared his cloak without thinking of those who are today's poor," Jean Honore, Tours' current archbishop, wrote recently.   In the hamlet of Saint-Anne d'Auray in Brittany, western France, on Friday, couples cheered and applauded when the Pope told them to respect life from the moment of conception.   His remarks defending traditional Christian marriage and the family were his first mention of sexual morality during his visit to France, where opinion polls have shown a majority of people in a once fervent Roman Catholic nation either opposes or ignores his strict bans on abortion and birth control.   "Every human being that is conceived has the right to exist," he said.   The Pope, 76, also praised marital fidelity and said the family, in France as elsewhere, faced not only economic and social difficulties but also moral challenges.   But he appeared to steer clear of many of the controversies surrounding his visit.   His address to families did not use the word "abortion" and it contained a reminder that separated and divorced couples "remain members of the Christian community".   The trip has been billed as a test of his ability to rally his flock in the face of controversy over the separation of Church and state in France and the Pontiff's own strict opposition to contraception, abortion and homosexuality.   Most of France's 58 million people are nominal Catholics, but only six million attend mass and many of these believe the Pope's conservative teachings are outdated.   The trip has also generated interest due to persistent rumours about the Pope's fragile health, though he has so far appeared relatively robust.   While some object to the Pope's conservative moral views, others criticise his visit as violating the strict separation of church and state since the government is helping to pay for logistics and security.   Still others fault the Pope's plan to travel to the eastern city of Reims on Sunday to celebrate the 1,500th anniversary of the baptism of Clovis, the first pagan king in western Europe to convert to Catholicism.   They charge that the Pope's presence in Reims would seem to sanction the extreme nationalistic view -- embraced by France's far-right National Front -- that the baptism marked the creation of a Catholic France.   Clovis's kingdom stretched from what is now Germany and the Netherlands into France.   Sixty-seven groups including leftists, anarchists and freemasons are planning a rally in Paris on Sunday to back the secular ideals of the French Revolution and protest against the Pope's teachings on sexual morality. 
19231 !E12 !ECAT !G15 !G154 !GCAT  European Union finance ministers and central bank governors will try to nudge a dream of economic integration and a common currency one step closer to reality at informal talks in Dublin on Saturday.   "Not just talks, but results," the head of the powerful German Bundesbank, Hans Tietmeyer, told reporters who asked what the one-day informal meeting would yield.   Germany and France, the two countries viewed as essential founder members of European Economic and Monetary Union, have come to Dublin determined to inject new life into the project to create a single "Euro" currency.   The two heavyweights, fresh from presenting budget packages aimed at bringing their budget deficits under control to meet the entry conditions for EMU laid down in the Maastricht Treaty, are expected to urge others to do the same.   They have also agreed a joint position on all the main agenda points for the meeting, aimed at giving the planned single currency a secure basis long-term.   But while most countries back their general proposals the discussion of details is likely to be far from easy.   France's budget is seen by some critics as an attempt to manipulate its accounts to stretch the Maastricht entry terms.   Top of the agenda is the creation of a so-called stability pact to ensure budget discipline once monetary union starts, as well as a means to link any currencies which do not make the grade to the new Euro.   Thirdly, there is the tricky issue of implementing a legal framework for EMU in advance of its expected 1999 start date.   Irish officials, keen to stress the informality of the gathering, took ministers and their partners off to Kitty O'Shea's, one of Dublin's most celebrated bars on Friday evening to begin discussions there.   Countries which want to join EMU in the first round must meet targets on interest and exchange rates, inflation, budget deficits and public debt in 1997, ready for an evaluation of their level of economic integration early in 1998.   European Union economic affairs commissioner Yves Thibault de Silguy told a news briefing as EU finance ministers and central bank governors started to arrive on Friday that the stability pact was "essential for the stability of the Euro".   A new European exchange rate mechanism, commonly referred to as the ERM II, was needed "to avoid dividing Europe by having currencies which are simply left outside", he added.   Among the three topics on the agenda, the stability pact has been cast as the centre-piece of the meeting, with recent progress on the issue by the EU's monetary committee setting the stage for a comprehensive deal later this year.   The pact would punish delinquent states with fines if their deficits run out of control. 
19232 !E12 !ECAT !G15 !G151 !G154 !G158 !GCAT !M13 !M132 !MCAT  Finnish Finance Minister Sauli Niinisto on Friday declined all comment on when Finland may join the European Union's Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM).   Asked whether or not Finland could decide to join this weekend, Niinisto told Reuters: "I have decided not to answer these questions, not this weekend and not even later, because if I start to answer, some day I (might) have to lie to somebody."   Niinisto was arriving in Dublin for a two-day meeting of European Union finance ministers and central bank governors who will discuss progress towards Economic and Monetary Union (EMU).   Speculation has been intense in recent weeks that Finland will decide soon to join the ERM and some analysts have suggested this weekend's meeting would be an opportunity to make that decision.   But several EU monetary officials have said such a move is highly unlikely this weekend because of the full agenda facing the ministers as they prepare for EMU. 
19233 !GCAT !GDIP  Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali said on Friday it took a decade after the Second World War to establish institutions to manage the Cold War and he predicted a similar period would be needed to reach a post-Cold-War equilibrium.   "It took around 10 years to agree about the rules of the Cold War, to manage the Cold War and the institutions to apply those rules," he told Reuters, mentioning the creation of NATO in 1949 and the Warsaw and Baghdad Pacts in 1955.   "In our case, we are still at the beginning and the member states don't know what role they want from the United Nations," he said.   "Now we are living in a crisis of the United Nations -- its ups and downs."   Boutros-Ghali balked when asked whether another five years were needed to reach a new plateau in international relations.   He apparently interpreted this as an allusion to his prospects for a second five-year term as secretary-general, which he firmly declined to discuss.   The United States has vowed to use its veto if necessary to block his re-election, saying new leadership is needed to implement U.N. reforms.   The issue must be decided before his current term expires at the end of this year.   "I don't know why you want to mention five years," he said with a smile.   "The millenium will be in the next four years.   2000 is an important number."   He added, "I believe that it will take time until the international community agree on certain basic rules."   A series of U.N. conferences in recent years on such topics as human rights, development, population and the role of women was a "contribution only to finding the new rules, to know how we will manage the world during this globalization."   He referred to the movement across international boundaries of finance, information, drug trafficking, crime and terrorism, all at varying speeds.   "I believe one of the roles of the United Nations also will be to be a think tank, to discuss the problems of tomorrow," he said.   Peacekeeping, which attracted wide attention, represented only 20 or 30 percent of the world body's activities while 70 percent was concerned with long-term problems, he said, citing as an example a landmark convention on the law of the sea that regulates virtually all uses of the world's oceans.   "I believe that the fact that the international community is confronted by such drastic change will compel the international community to find solutions to the problem of those drastic changes.   And the United Nations is one of the instruments," he said.   The problems of the future were still unknown, he added, just as "in 1945 nobody was thinking about decolonization ... and nobody 10 or 20 years ago was thinking about the problem of the environment."   "So the United Nations has played the role of precursor, always able to think (about) the problems of tomorrow.   And I believe that this contribution is an important one." 
19234 !GCAT !GREL  Pope John Paul will on Saturday inaugurate an Internet site being set up by the French Catholic Church to improve communication with its flock, the French Bishops Conference said on Friday.   The Pope will send a live personal message of welcome to electronic visitors to the web site at around 9 a.m. (0700 GMT) from the central city of Tours, they said.   The Pontiff, on a four-day visit to France, was in Tours to mark the 1,600th anniversary of the death of Saint Martin.   The Bishops Conference will use the site to disseminate extracts of the Pope's remarks during his stay in France.   The site's electronic address is http://www.cef.fr.   The Vatican itself is an old hand in cyberspace, having gone on-line last Christmas at the address http://www.vatican.va.   The Vatican site gets frequent requests for prayers, some of which the Pope personally answers, officials say. 
19235 !GCAT !GPRO  Princess Stephanie, in hiding since her husband was snapped in a nude sex romp with "Miss Topless Belgium", tried to put a brave face on things on Friday as she stepped out in public to appear at a vintage car race.   The princess, who began divorce proceedings this week against husband Daniel Ducruet, appeared relaxed and smiled for photographers as she officially welcomed 50 vintage automobiles which had set out for Monaco on Wednesday from the German city of Baden-Baden.   Stephanie, 31, is the glamorous daughter of Prince Rainier and the late Hollywood star Grace Kelly who was killed in a car crash in 1982.   She began divorce proceedings this week after Italian magazines printed page after page of explicit photos of Ducruet and Belgian model and stripper Fily Houteman cavorting at a French Riviera villa in Villefranche, 15 km (nine miles) from Monte Carlo.   Ducruet alleged in an interview released on Thursday that he had been framed by Houteman and photographer Stephane de Lisiecki.   He said the two had been sighted together in a Paris hotel before his visit to the Riviera villa with Houteman.   But Houteman denied in a broadcast interview that she plotted with photographers or even knew they were present during the poolside romp.   The latest upheaval in the Monaco royal family came just before the Grimaldi family celebrates 700 years in power next year, claiming to be the longest-serving European royal dynasty.   Prince Rainier long opposed Stephanie's relationship with Ducruet, her former bodyguard, but he finally accepted him into the family last year for the sake of the couple's two children. 
19236 !GCAT !GCRIM !GODD  French bistro owner Jean-Paul Lacombe, who fed leaders of the Group of Seven industrialised nations in his hometown of Lyon in June, was fined and given a suspended jail term after spoiled pike quenelles and eggs were found in one of his restaurants, he acknowledged on Friday.   Lacombe was ordered on Thursday to pay a fine of 15,000 francs ($3,000) and handed a suspended sentence of a month in prison after spoiled food was found in his Bistrot de Lyon restaurant in November 1995.   "I had some people working for me at this restaurant who did not do good work," Lacombe told Reuters.   "I was its chairman but was not involved in its day-to-day operations.   The restaurant was restructured on January 1, 1996, and I am now directly involved in its management," said Lacombe, who owns six restaurants in all.   Lacombe is a prominent restaurateur in the central city of Lyon, which is known as the gastronomic capital of France.   French President Jacques Chirac, U.S. President Bill Clinton, British Prime Minister John Major and other G7 leaders dined during the June G7 summit in Lyon at Lacombe's more exclusive Leon de Lyon restaurant, located next door to the Bistrot de Lyon.   Restaurant inspectors checking out the Bistrot de Lyon kitchen last November had discovered 10 kg (22 lbs) of spoiled pike quenelles, two dozen rotten eggs and one kg (2.2 lbs) of head cheese that had turned bad, Lacombe acknowledged.   Quenelles, a rich but fluffy fish dish made with pike, are a Lyon specialty. 
19237 !C13 !C24 !CCAT !G15 !G153 !GCAT !GHEA  English and Welsh farmers' leader David Naish said on Friday that the European Commission was trying to cool the mad cow crisis after it flared up again when London shelved a selective cattle cull.   "I was impressed by the Commission's willingness to ensure that the atmosphere does not set one party against another," Naish told reporters after meeting Farm Commissioner Fischler.   He said Britain hadn't abandoned the cull of up to 147,000 animals most at risk to mad cow disease but had said there should be a further study of the scientific evidence.   "I am encouraged because he (Fischler) is as determined as I am that we should stick to the principles of Florence," he said, referring to a deal at the European Councl in June to defuse the crisis between Britain and other member states.   Naish said his aim was to lift the whole ban but he wouldn't block any regional easing, adding, "that is a matter for the British government to request." 
19238 !GCAT !GOBIT !GPRO  Max Manus, a legendary Norwegian resistance fighter who took part in daring acts of sabotage behind German lines in World War Two, died on Friday aged 81.   Manus joined the Company Linge resistance group after Germany invaded Norway in 1940.   In one operation, he swam to German ships riding at anchor, including the troop ship Donau, and fastened explosives to the hull.   On February 16, 1941, German soldiers waited in ambush for Manus in his Oslo home.   He crashed through a second-floor window in an attempt to escape but was injured and taken to hospital.   After friends helped him escape from the hospital, he fled to Britain but returned to Norway in 1943 to resume sabotage operations against the occupying Nazis.   Manus earlier fought as a volunteer alongside Finnish troops fighting invading Soviet forces when the so-called Winter War broke out in 1939.   The national news agency NTB said Manus passed away peacefully at Oslo's Barum hospital. 
19239 !GCAT !GCRIM  Belgian television showed pictures for the first time on Friday of the secret cell in a house owned by convicted child rapist Marc Dutroux where two girls starved to death and from which two others were rescued.   A heavy, soundproofed steel and concrete door set in the wall in the basement and disguised as shelves hid the tiny one metre by three metre (three feet by nine feet) dungeon of death in the Marcinelle suburb of the city of Charleroi.   The door was hung on a complicated system of overhead steel sliding rails and counterbalances.   It took two people to pull it open.   Inside was a rusty steelmesh door to the cage which had a bare concrete floor and ceiling and blank yellow painted walls.   Police found a video game, contraceptives, traces of food, a mattress and shelves.   Eight-year-old Julie Lejeune and Melissa Russo, kidnapped by Dutroux' gang in June 1995, were held there for several months.   They died of starvation earlier this year.   Their bodies were found on August 17 in the garden of another house owned by Dutroux at Sars-La-Buisierre, southwest of Charleroi.   Sabine Dardenne, 12, was held in the Marcinelle dungeon for two and a half months.   Laetitia Delhez, 14, was imprisoned there for six days.   Both girls were rescued on August 15 when Dutroux showed police the hidden cell.   They had both been sexually and mentally abused.   Two other teenage girls, Eefje Lambrecks and An Marchal, kidnapped by Dutroux in August 1995, were found dead on September 3 this year at another Charleroi house that was home to Dutroux accomplice Bernard Weinstein.   Dutroux admits killing Weinstein, whom he accuses of murdering Eefje and An. 
19240 !G15 !G158 !GCAT !GDIP  Irish foreign minister Dick Spring is to represent the European Union at the 51st annual session of the United Nations General Assembly, the EU presidency said on Friday.   Spring, who is president of the EU Council of Ministers during Ireland's six-month tenure of the EU presidency, will arrive in the U.S. on Monday for a four-day visit.   "In what will be one of the highlights of the Irish presidency, he will address the General Assembly on behalf of the EU," Ireland's Department of Foreign Affairs said in a statement.   "This address is expected to reaffirm the EU's commitment to a UN that is well equipped for the tasks of a new century, and to touch on such themes as peacekeeping, disarmament, and human rights, as well as outlining EU perspectives on major issues on the international agenda, including the former Yugoslavia, the Middle East and the Great Lakes region of Africa," it said.   Spring is also due to chair a special meeting of EU foreign ministers and take part in some 20 separate meetings between the EU and its various international dialogue partners.   On Monday he will meet Polish president Alexander Kwasniewski and the foreign ministers of Turkey, China and Japan.   "Spring will also address the prestigious Council on Foreign Relations on the development of the Northern Ireland peace process," Ireland said. 
19241 !GCAT !GPOL !GVIO  France's far-right National Front leader Jean-Marie Le Pen called on Friday for Prime Minister Alain Juppe's resignation after the premier branded him "deeply, almost viscerally racist, antisemitic and xenophobic".   Le Pen said the Gaullist premier had broken the country's political consensus, and he warned parliament against stiffening anti-racism laws.   "I solemnly demand the prime minister's resignation...This escalation is serious, it breaks the republican pact," Le Pen told a news conference.   Juppe on Thursday had waded for the first time into the latest controversy over the outspoken Front leader who said earlier this month he believed in racial inequality.   "One cannot live in a world where people tell us that races are unequal, or where someone says that the Jews have no place under the sun," Juppe told a meeting of young people.   Le Pen's statement marked a new escalation in his war of words with the government.   The National Front has accused Juppe of losing his head and being paranoid.   Justice Minister Jacques Toubon on Friday sent the National Consultative Human Rights Committee a draft bill to plug legal loopholes and stiffen punishment of racism.   The committee is to give its opinion next Thursday and the bill will go before the National Assembly within weeks.   Numerous politicians, rights groups and other civic leaders have demanded that Le Pen be prosecuted over his remarks that racial inequality was "obvious" and "a fact".   But Toubon has said those statements fell through loopholes in laws against inciting racial hatred, making it necessary to review the legislation. 
19242 !C42 !CCAT !E41 !ECAT !GCAT !GJOB  Gan is getting ready to announce layoffs that could cost the jobs of 400 to 600 of the ailing state-controlled insurer's 8,700 employees in France, unions said on Friday.   A Gan spokesman, however, said that: "As of now, there's absolutely nothing planned."   GAN has already instituted one job-cutting programme involving 150 posts for the period 1995-1997, the union said.   The new job reduction effort "could be three times higher than the 150 previous job losses -- around 400 to 600 jobs," said Jacques Dubaele, a spokesman for the CFDT union.   He said the new job-cutting programme which would start in 1997 would mean layoffs as the company had exhausted other means of cutting posts such as early retirement.   In a statement, a union common front made up of the CGT, CFDT and CFTC called on workers to stage work stoppages next Tuesday to take part in demonstrations.   The unions want the state to ensure the future of the company by recapitalising it.   The company posted a 1.79 billion franc loss in 1995 and is seen by analysts as having difficulty making good on its aim to break even this year.   -- Paris Newsroom +33 1 4221 5452 
19243 !C13 !CCAT !GCAT !GPOL  The Italian cabinet on Friday joined a bill setting out tender details for Italy's third mobile phone licence to a draft law covering a watchdog body for the telecoms sector and television ownership.   The government hopes the link-up will speed approval of the mobile phone bill which was unveiled last week.   The draft law on the telecoms watchdog and television ownership was introduced earlier this year and is already making its way through parliamentary commissions.   Despite opposition from the centre-right block in parliament, the government is confident the package will be turned into law by the end of the year   "Today's decision will enable us to meet the date for the tender for the third licence," under-secretary at the Post ministry, Michele Lauria, told Reuters on Friday.   "I think it is now realistic to expect to hold the tender at the start of next year, as forecast," he added.   The two existing cellular phone operators in Italy are state controlled Telecom Italia Mobile and Omnitel-Pronto-Italia, controlled by struggling information and technology group Olivetti.   The third licence will be to operate over the 1800 megahertz personal communications network, which is expected to form the backbone of the next generation of mobile phone technology.   At present the standard is only available to the military in Italy.   TIM and Omnitel will have to wait until the third licence is awarded before developing their own 1800 megahertz networks.   -- Rome newsroom +396 6782501 
19244 !E12 !ECAT !G15 !G154 !GCAT !M13 !M132 !MCAT  European Commission President Jacques Santer said he believed a meeting of European Union finance ministers in Dublin would make strong progress on the question of a Stability Pact for Economic and Monetary Union.   "I am quite confident that we will make very good progress," Santer told reporters as he arrived at his Dublin hotel.   The Stability Pact is a German-inspired proposal to ensure that member states which sign up for EMU keep their budgets in order after they have joined.   Currently it envisages a system of fines for countries seen to be running up excssive deficits.   The stability pact is one of the main points on the agenda of the Dublin meeting which starts on Saturday. 
19245 !GCAT !GDIP !GPOL !GVIO !GVOTE  The head of the OSCE mission in Bosnia urged hardline Serbs on Friday to accept Bosnia's Moslem leader as head of the country's newly-elected collective presidency for his full two-year term.   Alija Izetbegovic has emerged as head of Bosnia's three-member presidency after receiving most votes in the country's first postwar elections on Saturday.   He will share the leadership with Momcilo Krajisnik of the Bosnian Serbs and Bosnian Croat candidate Kresimir Zubak.   Krajisnik earlier this week rejected a ruling by international election observers that Izetbegovic should serve a two-year term as chairman.   Robert Frowick, head of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) mission which supervised the elections, told a news conference that Kraijsnik's position was clearly outside the election's ground rules.   "It's clear in the constitution that whoever wins the highest number of votes will be the president of the presidency," he said after briefing the OSCE's Vienna-based permanent council.   According to the OSCE's count, Izetbegovic received almost 730,000 votes, leading Krajisnik by about 40,000 votes.   Frowick's remarks mirrored those of Western diplomats on the ground who have said the hardline separatist had no choice but to cooperate in a new power-sharing arrangement designed to reintegrate Bosnia after 43 months of war.   Frowick appealed to the international community to push Bosnia's ethnic factions to ensure their new government works.   "The key will be a profound commitment by the international community both militarily and in the civilian area," he said.   The 60,000-strong NATO-led peace force in Bosnia was scheduled to withdraw by the end of the year, but NATO Secretary-General Javier Solana this week said the alliance would have to remain in Bosnia beyond its mandate.   The military alliance's top soldier, U.S. Army General George Joulwan, has said Bosnia's municipal elections later this year could slow the withdrawal of troops, but insisted they would be out within weeks after a December 20 deadline set by the Dayton peace agreement.   Frowick reiterated the municipal polls, which were postponed last month because of irregularities with voter registration, might be held in the second half of November.   "I can't tell you a precise date yet but we're committed to the second half of November," he said. 
19246 !E12 !ECAT !G15 !G154 !GCAT !M13 !M132 !MCAT  Danish economy minister Marianne Jelvid said on Friday European Union member states had different opinions concerning an important aspect of a new Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM) for Europe.   Jelvid, speaking to reporters ahead of two-day meeting of finance ministers and central bank governors in Dublin, said she hoped the meeting would reach a conclusion on fluctuation margins in the new system.   The new system, dubbed "ERM 2" is being set up to create the link between the future single European currency and the currencies of countries which remain outside monetary union.   "I hope of course...but I know there will be different (opinions) between the ministers," Jelvid said.   She said this concerned the question of whether a country outside of monetary union would have the opportunity to have a bilateral special agreement with the new European Central Bank.   This question is important for Denmark as the country has already decided in a public referendum that it will not sign up to Economic and Monetary Union (EMU).   Jelvid said Denmark wanted to have a special relationship with the single currency.   But she said, "I've heard some member states are not interested in an opportunity of a bilateral agreement."   She stressed that Denmark would be in a special situation compared with other countries who will be outside monetary union from the start but still want to join.   "They are real "pre-ins" but Denmark is "out"," she said.   She said she did not believe ministers would finish their discussions about the second stage of EMU at the Dublin meeting. 
19247 !E51 !ECAT !GCAT !GHEA  An international group led by the World Bank said on Friday it had virtually eradicated river blindness from 11 West African countries and now planned to eliminate the disease from the entire continent.   "The programme has succeeded in practically eliminating river blindness from the 11-country West African sub-region it has covered," the World Bank said in a statement.   "The ultimate objective is to eventually eliminate (it) from the continent as a whole, where more than 100 milion are at risk of contracting the disease," it said.   The disease, officially called onchocerciasis, is caused by threadlike worms that live in disfiguring nodules under the skin.   The worms are spread by the bite of the tiny, but aggressive, black fly.   Donors meeting in Paris pledged funding worth $20 million for the final year of the current Onchocerciasis Control Programme, established in 1974, which has protected over 33 million people and hopes to safeguard the region from a repeat of infection and support for resettlement of the fertile land freed.   Donors also pledged $50 million to the first six-year phase of an extension of the new programme, dubbed APOC, to 19 countries in Central and East Africa and an estimated 15 million infected inhabitants.   The African Programme for Onchocerciasis Control, supported by former U.S. president Jimmy Carter and costing $161 million, is a partnership between governments, non-governmental organisations, bilateral donors and international agencies.   Under the programme, Merck & Co Inc will donate its drug Mectizan for distribution in a broad swath of Africa running from Cameroon in the west to Ethiopia in the east, and then south to Angola and Malawi.   When the parasites reproduce, millions of immature worms migrate through the body.   Their presence and death causes rashes and unbearable itching and eventually scarring in the eyes and blindness. 
19248 !E11 !ECAT !G15 !G154 !GCAT  European Commissioner Yves Thibault de Silguy said on Friday he was optimistic on prospects for European growth, with recovery in countries like Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands and Denmark helping pull the others up.   "I am optimistic," he told reporters ahead of a meeting of European Union finance ministers here, adding that he expected "a gradual acceleration in growth".   Growth in some member states "will have the effect of pulling up the whole of Europe," he said, citing Germany, Denmark, the Netherlands and Belgium.   He also said that he saw no reason to think that the European Commission's economic forecasts due in November would be very different overall from those made in May. 
19249 !C31 !C312 !CCAT !G15 !G153 !G158 !GCAT  French farm minister Phillipe Vasseur said on Friday the European Union stood to lose its role as a key supplier of food to world markets unless it stepped up its farm exports.   "Europe must fully participate in the expansion of world food markets," Vasseur told a seminar sponsored by the Coordination of European Farmers, a grouping of 14 farm organisations from 10 EU states.   Vasseur said that the EU was one of the few exporters in a position to provide world markets with adequate food supplies but it could lose that position to rival exporters.   He did not say what countries he had in mind.   He also criticised the EU for driving grain prices to record highs last year, putting the financial burden on food importers.   Faced with strong world demand for grain and tight stocks at home the EU restricted its grain exports in the past season, slapping an export tax on wheat.   But prospects of bumper crops in the EU, Australia and Argentina have put pressure on prices and on Thursday the EU Commissiom reverted to allowing subsidies on wheat exports for the first time in more than a year.   --Paris newsroom +331 4221 5432 
19250 !GCAT !GDEF !GDIP  Russian Foreign Minister Yevgeny Primakov, outlining Moscow's vision of post-Cold War European security, said on Friday stationing NATO's military might closer to Russia's borders was "absolutely unacceptable".   In an address to the Vienna-based Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), Primakov said Moscow had no right of veto if former Soviet bloc members wanted to join the Western military alliance.   "However, Russia finds it absolutely unacceptable that NATO's military infrastructure should come closer to its territory," he said in a closed-door speech to the OSCE's permanent council.   A translation of his address was later made available to reporters.   Primakov, who was due to meet NATO Secretary-General Javier Solana later on Friday, was repeating Moscow's position stated in June when he suggested a limited expansion of NATO to the east may be acceptable if no troops or weapons were stationed on the territory of the new members.   Ex-Warsaw Pact states the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland are front-runners to join NATO, probably next year.   Post-Cold War collective security could collapse if new lines of division emerged in Europe, Primakov said.   "Unfortunately, a trend toward this eventuality does exist.   In our opinion, the intention to expand NATO to the east will reinforce it," he added.   Primakov said political leaders were beginning to understand the emergence of three problems - the transformation of NATO, special relations between Russia and the 16-member Atlantic alliance and its expansion.   "We are for the consistent consideration of these inter-related problems," he said.   He made no reference in his speech to proposals put forward by U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher earlier this month to draw up a new charter defining NATO's ties with Russia or an enhanced Partnership for Peace programme to include countries not accepted into the alliance in the first wave of new entrants.   Outlining his own vision of a future pan-European security structure, Primakov said the 53-member OSCE, whose members include most of Europe, the United States and Canada, was uniquely positioned to be strengthened into the continent's main security body.   "The model should envisage counteraction against an entire range of threats, both military and terrorist, as well as challenges in the economic, ecological, humanitarian and other fields," Primakov told OSCE ambassadors.   He said the new security model should be discussed at the OSCE summit in Lisbon in December and called for a treaty to set up the new body to be ready at the next summit in 1998.   Primakov went on to suggest that all organisations involved in security policy should have an input in a restructured OSCE -- the United Nations, NATO, the Council of Europe, the European Union, the Western European Union (the EU's defence arm) as well as the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS).   "The OSCE is the only really universal organisation of European states.   In addition, it embodies the deep linkage of interests between the European and North American states." 
19251 !GCAT !GCRIM !GPOL  Murtaza Bhutto, the estranged brother of Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, and six of his followers were killed in a gunfight with police in Karachi on Friday night, doctors and police said.   Murtaza, 42, was pronounced dead at Karachi's private Mideast hospital after doctors vainly tried to save his life.   Six members of Murtaza's breakaway Shaheed Bhutto faction of the ruling Pakistan People's Party (PPP) died instantly in the clash that police said occurred when the cars Murtaza's supporters were travelling in failed to halt for checks.   Murtaza received at least two bullets, one in the neck, his followers said.   Friends and supporters wept at the hospital when local officials announced his death from bullet wounds.   Doctors said they had revived Murtaza once after his heart stopped, but when it did so again he could not be revived.   Police said Murtaza's followers, who were in three cars returning from a party, fired first when asked to stop.   Police returned fire, killing six people, all members of Murtaza's faction, Deputy Inspector General of police Shoaib Suddle said.   Five people, including two police officers, were injured in the clash in the port city's seaside Clifton housing district.   A member of the Shaheed Bhutto faction, who described himself only as Israr, told Reuters by telephone from the family home that Murtaza had gone out to attend a party.   "The police have surrounded us and we cannot go out," Israr said.   "We can hear the firing but it is far from our house."   Suddle said the police had insisted on checking the vehicles because of tightened security after three bomb blasts in the violence-hit port city on Wednesday in which one person was killed and at least three others were wounded.   Hours before his death, Murtaza denied any involvement of his group in the bomb blast and told a news conference that police had arrested at least 70 group members in the previous 24 hours.   He had accused police of being responsible for the blasts.   Murtaza and Banazir Bhutto quarrelled during the family's period in the political wilderness after their father, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, was ousted as prime minister by General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq in 1977 and hanged in 1979.   Murtaza, based in Syria, formed an underground resistance group called Al-Zulfikar and was accused of involvement in a 1981 airline hijacking.   His sister took a more moderate approach and, when democracy returned after Zia's death in a plane crash, she was able to lead the PPP to victory in a 1988 election.   She lost power 20 months later but returned to office in 1993.   Murtaza returned to Pakistan in November 1994 and was arrested on a string of criminal charges dating to Zia's military rule.   His sister insisted he should clear his name in court.   He had been cleared in most cases.   Freed on bail, he formed the rival faction in March last year, accusing Benazir of working with those responsible for their father's death.   Benazir met Murtaza on July 7 for the first time since his return, apparently in an attempt at reconciliation, but Murtaza continued to accuse his sister's government of corruption and misrule. 
19252 !GCAT !GCRIM !GVIO  Murtaza Bhutto, the estranged brother of Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, was critically injured and six of his followers were killed in a gunfight with police in Karachi on Friday night, police said.   A senior police official told Reuters Murtaza's followers were the first to fire at police who tried to stop their cars for checks.   The police returned fire, killing six people, all members of Murtaza's Shaheed Bhutto breakaway faction of the ruling Pakistan People's Party, Deputy Inspector General of police, Shoaib Suddle said.   Five people, including two police officers, were injured in the clash in the port city's seaside Clifton housing district.   Earlier, doctors at Karachi's Mideast hospital said Murtaza was criticallty wounded and was in an intensive care unit.   A member of the Shaheed Bhutto faction, who described himself only as Israr, told Reuters by telephone from the family home that Murtaza had gone out to attend a party.   "The police have surrounded us and we cannot go out," Israr said.   "We can hear the firing but it is far from our house."   Suddle said the police had insisted on checking the vehicles because of tightened security after three bomb blasts in the violence-hit port city on Wednesday in which one person was killed and at least three others were wounded.   Murtaza and Banazir Bhutto quarrelled during the family's period in the wilderness after their father Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was ousted as prime minister by General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq in 1977 and hanged in 1979.   Murtaza, based in Syria, formed an underground resistance group, called Al-Zulfikar, and was accused of involvement in a 1981 airline hijacking.   His sister took a more moderate approach and, when democracy returned after Zia's death in a plane crash, she was able to lead the PP to victory in a 1988 election.   She lost power 20 months later but returned to office in 1993.   Murtaza Bhutto returned to Pakistan in 1994 and was arrested on a string of charges.   His sister insisted he should clear his name in court.   Freed on bail, he formed a rival faction of PPP and accusing Benazir of working with those responsible for their father's death. 
19253 !GCAT !GPOL !GVIO !GVOTE  Indian security forces arrested Kashmiri separatist leaders on Friday and fired teargas to stop Moslem groups from holding protests against crucial state assembly polls.   Police said senior leaders of the separatist All Parties Hurriyat (Freedom) Conference were detained when they tried to lead protest marches in Srinagar, the summer capital of Jammu and Kashmir state.   Kashmiris are scheduled to vote on Saturday in Srinagar and two other districts in the third stage of four-phase elections that began on September 7.   Police said suspected Moslem militants launched a rocket at a paramilitary camp in Srinagar late on Thursday, injuring 13 troopers.   Most businesses, shops and offices in Srinagar were closed on Friday at the start of a two-day strike called by the Hurriyat against Saturday's poll.   Thousands of paramilitary troops were deployed around the major mosques in Srinagar after the Hurriyat called Moslems to gather in protest.   But the streets around the main mosque were deserted and residents of Srinagar's Nohatta district said they were prevented from going to Friday prayers because of heavy security.   "There was no prayer at the mosque today," Abdul Rashid, a resident of Nohatta said.   "There won't be any voting tomorrow."   A state government spokesman said: "With the third phase of the elections on Saturday we have entered the most sensitive phase."   Voting in Srinagar is considered especially sensitive because the Kashmir Valley's biggest city has been the focal point of the separatist revolt.   Separatist groups are boycotting the polls, crucial to Prime Minister H.D. Deve Gowda's efforts to restore democracy in the state after six years of direct federal rule.   Former state chief minister Farooq Abdullah's National Conference party is widely expected to win the elections that end on September 30.   Vote counting begins on October 1, and results are expected after October 3.   Abdullah is campaigning on a plank of greater autonomy for the Himalayan region.   Deve Gowda's 13-party coalition has promised the state "maximum autonomy", but opposition Hindu nationalists have vowed to block the move.   Separatist groups say they oppose any polls held by India in Kashmir and that they want either independence or to merge with Pakistan, which also is Islamic, but not autonomy.   At least 20 people, mostly political workers, have been killed in election violence during the month-long campaign.   Several candidates, including Abdullah, have survived assassination attempts.   India imposed direct rule on Kashmir in January 1990 when simmering discontent with New Delhi's control of the state turned into armed rebellion, in which more than 20,000 people have been killed.   India accuses neighbouring Pakistan of fomenting the violence, while Islamabad says it gives only diplomatic and moral support to the militants.   Friday congregations by Moslems in Kashmir have often been rallying points for the separatist groups. 
19254 !GCAT  These are the leading stories in the Pakistani press on Friday.   Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.   THE NEWS   - Pakistan said it had imported a small quantity of rocket fuel for scientific research but denied a report about the seizure of a massive amount of such fuel by Hong Kong cutoms.   - The first batch of eight refurbished second-hand Mirages, out of 40 bought from France early this year, will be delivered to the Pakistani Air Force in February.   DAWN   - Pakistan will present a package of measures to the International Monetary Fund during talks with IMF officials to seek the release of a stalled tranche from the $600 million standby loan, Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto's adviser on Finance and Economic Affairs V.A. Jafarey said on Thursday.   - Nine people were killed and 33 injured when a Swat-bound bus coming from Karachi fell into a deep nullah at Lachi, near Kohat, some 81 km from Peshawar.   - President Farooq Leghari had a meeting with Saudi Arabia's King Fahd in Jeddah on Thursday.   - Tehreek-e-Insaaf (justice movement) leader Imran Khan has asked people to unite for the ouster of what he called a "corrupt" government in Pakistan and change the political system.   - About 50 percent of cotton crop has been damaged by white fly and viral attacks, said a cotton grower Haji Ghulam Mehboob Labar in Multan.   - Pakistan's capital market will make a major leap towards automation and transparency with the planned enactment of a law governing the establishment of the Central Depository Company of Pakistan Ltd.   BUSINESS RECORDER   - The Federation of Pakistan Chambers of Commerce and Industry has decided to observe weekly holiday of business and industry in Pakistan on Sunday instead of Friday.   - One of the top Swiss banks will start business in Pakistan shortly to facilitate and finance import of machinery from Switzerland.   THE NATION   - Twenty-one officials, including seventeen from the State (central) Bank of Pakistan, Quetta, were dismissed on charges of embezzling of million of rupees.   -- Islamabad newsroom 9251-274757 
19255 !C21 !CCAT !GCAT !GWEA !M14 !M141 !MCAT  SUMMARY- Widely scattered showers 0.10-0.95 inch (3-24 mm) in southern India with 40 percent coverage.   Isolated showers 0.10-0.50 inch (3-13 mm) in central India.   Dry to the north.   Highs 86-100F (30-38C).   CROP IMPACT- Mostly favorable conditions through cane areas of India at this time.   FORECAST-   TODAY...Showers 0.10-0.75 inch (3-19 mm) in east central and far southern India, 40-50 percent coverage.   Mostly dry elsewhere.   Highs 85-100F (29-38C).   TONIGHT...Mostly clear to partly cloudy.   Risk of a shower in the south.   Lows 68- 78F (20-25C).   TOMORROW...Little change.   Best chance of showers in the far south again.   Highs 84- 98F (29-37C).   OUTLOOK...Chance of showers well south otherwise mostly dry Sunday-Tuesday with temperatures near to above normal.   Source: Weather Services Corporation 
19256 !C21 !CCAT !GCAT !GWEA !M14 !M141 !MCAT  SUMMARY- Widely scattered showers 0.10-0.95 inch (3-24 mm) in southern India with 40 percent coverage.   Isolated showers 0.10-0.50 inch (3-13 mm) in central India.   Dry to the north.   Highs 86-100F (30-38C).   CROP IMPACT- Rice development continues with conditions favorable.   FORECAST-   TODAY...Showers 0.10-0.75 inch (3-19 mm) in east central and far southern India, 40-50 percent coverage.   Mostly dry elsewhere.   Highs 85-100F (29-38C).   TONIGHT...Mostly clear to partly cloudy.   Risk of a shower in the south.   Lows 68- 78F (20-25C).   TOMORROW...Little change.   Best chance of showers in the far south again.   Highs 84- 98F (29-37C).   OUTLOOK...Chance of showers well south otherwise mostly dry Sunday-Tuesday with temperatures near to above normal.   Source: Weather Services Corporation 
19257 !C21 !CCAT !GCAT !GWEA !M14 !M141 !MCAT  SUMMARY- A few isolated showers up to 0.50 inch (13 mm) far southeast otherwise dry.   Highs 88-100F (31-38C).   CROP IMPACT- Planting for winter wheat begins in October.   FORECAST-   TODAY...Partly to mostly sunny.   Highs 86-100F (30-38C).   TONIGHT...Mostly clear to partly cloudy.   Lows 68-77F (20-25C).   TOMORROW...Fair and warm.   Highs 86-98F (30-37C).   OUTLOOK...Generally fair and warm Sunday-Tuesday.   Source: Weather Services Corporation 
19258 !C21 !CCAT !GCAT !GWEA !M14 !M141 !MCAT  (As on September 20, 1996)   SUMMARY- Widely scattered showers 0.10-0.95 inch (3-24 mm) in southern India with 40 percent coverage.   Isolated showers 0.10-0.50 inch (3-13 mm) in central India.   Dry to the north.   Highs 86-100F (30-38C).   CROP IMPACT- Mostly favorable conditions through sorghum areas.   No major delays for the planting of rapeseed.   FORECAST-   TODAY...Showers 0.10-0.75 inch (3-19 mm) in east central and far southern India, 40-50 percent coverage.   Mostly dry elsewhere.   Highs 85-100F (29-38C).   TONIGHT...Mostly clear to partly cloudy.   Risk of a shower in the south.   Lows 68- 78F (20-25C).   TOMORROW...Little change.   Best chance of showers in the far south again.   Highs 84- 98F (29-37C).   OUTLOOK...Chance of showers well south otherwise mostly dry Sunday-Tuesday with temperatures near to above normal.   Source: Weather Services Corporation 
19259 !C21 !CCAT !GCAT !GWEA !M14 !M141 !MCAT  SUMMARY- Widely scattered showers 0.10-0.95 inch (3-24 mm) in southern India with 40 percent coverage.   Isolated showers 0.10-0.50 inch (3-13 mm) in central India.   Dry to the north.   Highs 86-100F (30-38C).   CROP IMPACT- Mostly favorable conditions through the major cotton areas of India and Pakistan at this time.   FORECAST-   TODAY...Showers 0.10-0.75 inch (3-19 mm) in east central and far southern India, 40-50 percent coverage.   Mostly dry elsewhere.   Highs 85-100F (29-38C).   TONIGHT...Mostly clear to partly cloudy.   Risk of a shower in the south.   Lows 68- 78F (20-25C).   TOMORROW...Little change.   Best chance of showers in the far south again.   Highs 84- 98F (29-37C).   OUTLOOK...Chance of showers well south otherwise mostly dry Sunday-Tuesday with temperatures near to above normal.   Source: Weather Services Corporation 
19260 !GCAT  These are some of the leading stories in the Bangladesh press on Friday.   Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.   ---   DAILY STAR   Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina said her government would take all steps to achieve a 7 percent GDP growth and asked the private sector to act as the real engine of growth.   The Asian Development Bank has decided to withdraw suspension of financial support to Bangladesh's power sector.   ---   THE INDEPENDENT   A special experts' committee on sharing of the Ganges water will hold its first meeting next week in New Delhi.   Additional Foreign Secretary Ahmed Tareq Karim will head the Bangladesh side at the meeting.   Secretary-general of main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), Abdul Mannan Bhuiyan, urged people to prepare for a movement to protect the country's independence and sovereignty.   ---   BANGLADESH OBSERVER   Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina said all problems of Chittagong Hill Tracts would be resolved through establishment of peace and rejuvenating of development activities.   The residence of former deputy minister of health Serajul Huq in the town of Jamalpur came under attack allegedly by the activists of the ruling party's student front.   ---   FINANCIAL EXPRESS   Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina reiterated her firm determination to remove all hindrances to development of the country's trade, investment and industrialisation.   The government has reacst the Industrial Development Committee by bringing in some experts and lawmakers to craft a new industrial policy expected to be announced soon.   -- Dhaka Newsroom 880-2-506363 
19261 !GCAT  These are the leading stories in the Sri Lankan press on Friday.   Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.   ---   DAILY NEWS   Ninety international airlines and companies, which have airline operations as part of their business, have shown interest to buy 40 percent of Sri Lanka's national carrier Airlanka.   The stake includes management control of the company.   Army invites professionals like accountants and lawyers to join as commissioned officers.   ---   THE ISLAND   Government moves to lease the massive unused oil tanks in the northeastern port town of Trincomalee.   The 110 tanks are owned by the Ceylon Petroleum Corporation.   Hashan Tillekeratne hits unbeaten century to lift Sri Lanka to commanding position over Zimbabwe in the second cricket test between the two countries.   ---   DIVAINA   Foreign Minister Lakshman Kadirgamar weds.   Kadirgamar, a prominant lawyer and advisor to several foreign governments, joined the People's Alliance government of President Chandrika Kumaratunga in 1994.   Power cuts, which have been implemented for the past six months due to drought, cancelled as heavy rains experienced in hydro catchment areas.   ---   DINAMINA   The government values ideas and feedback on development and productivity given by trade unions, President Chandrika Kumaratunga tells trade union representatives.   ---   LANKADEEPA   Navy takes two Indian fishing trawlers, illegally ferrying Sri Lankan minority Tamils to South India, into custody.   ---   VEERAKESARI   More than 180 Tamil refugees flee northern Sri Lanka for South India.   Arrive in Rameswaram in Tamil Nadu on Tuesday.   ---   THINAKARAN   Canadian chief justice welcomes Sri Lankan government's devolution proposals aimed at ending the 13-year old ethnic war.   Justice and Constitutional Affairs Minsiter G.L. Peiris is on an official visit to Canada.   --Colombo newsroom tel 941-434319 
19262 !GCAT  Following is a summary of major Indian business and political stories in leading newspapers prepared for REUTERS by Business News and Information Services Pvt Ltd, New Delhi Tel:3326806, 3326813, 3326849 Fax:+91-11-3351006 E-mail: biznis@giasbm01.  vsnl.  net.  in   Reuters has not verified these stories and doen not vouch for thier accuracy    ------------oo0oo-----------   The Hindustan Times   GUJARAT GOVERNMENT DISMISSED   The federal government put an end to the ongoing political drama in Gujarat by dismissing the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) ministry.   The decision came in the wake of reports of violence and bedlam in the state Assembly as the BJP government rushed through the confidence vote on Wednesday.   The prime minister, following a report by the state governor, called a cabinet meeting which decided to impose president's rule in the state and keep the assembly in suspended animation.   A presidential proclamation was later issued after the prime minister met the president to apprise him of the cabinet's decision.   ----   The Economic Times   CABINET NOD FOR $500 MLN STATE BANK GDR ISSUE   The Cabinet Committe on Foreign Investment (CCFI) cleared the proposed $500-million global depository receipt issue of the State Bank.   Together with that, CCFI also cleared the proposals of Hughes Ispat, Reliance Telecom and Jindal Power.   However, CCFI turned down a proposal from a securities firm.   The committee has decided against allowing foreign investment in the service sector.   The Hughes Ispat proposal entailed hiking the foreign equity in the company, currently at 40 percent (eight billion rupees) to 49 percent.   The Reliance Telecom proposal is for an increase in the paid-up capital and foreign equity to 9.13 billion rupees and 4.11 billion rupees.   ----   MARUTI'S 15 BLN RUPEE EXPANSION GETS NOD AS SUZUKI YIELDS   The government scored a point against Japan's Suzuki Motor Corp as the Maruti Udyog Ltd board okayed a 15 billion rupee expansion programme without dilution of equity.   The board has approved the contentious programme for expansion of production capacity by 100,000 units a year.   While Suzuki was keen on tapping the equity route, the government was adamant that the expansion programme should be financed through debt.   ----   MODILUFT CONSIDERS RAISING $100 MLN EXTERNAL BORROWING   Cash strapped ModiLuft is planning a $100 million external commercial borrowing (ECB) as a way out of its financial problems.   The $100 million ECB is about to go through with a European group of banks.   Sources say the Delhi-based airline is in talks with a London-based consortium of banks to finalise the borrowings.   The proceeds from the ECB will be used to finance the airlines plans to acquire aircraft and fulfil some of its working capital needs.   ----   ITOCHU PLANNING TO RAISE STAKE IN PATSPIN TO 18 PCT   The $175 billion Itochu Corp of Japan is planning to raise its stake in Patspin India Ltd from 12 to 19 percent.   Patspin is a 1.5 billion rupee GTN Textile group company.   The Japanese giant has received approval from the Foreign Investment Promotion Board to hike its stake, sources said.   However, the Indian company has no plans to issue shares or other instruments on a preferential basis to enable Itochu increase its stake.   ----   Financial Express   MINISTRY FOR CHANGES IN TAKEOVER CODE   The Finance Ministry has proposed changes in the draft takeover code prepared by the bourse regulator.   The ministry is not in favour of its recommendation seeking to exempt the requirement of a public offer for acquisitions made through rights issues.   The ministry fears that promoters and raiders may use this route to acquire stakes in companies at the cost of small shareholders.   The ministry is also opposed to allowing shareholders holding above 10 percent stake to acquire a differential percentage of shares from the market without attracting the mandatory public offer requirement.   ----    DONORS PLEDGE $7 BLN TO INDIA   Multinational and bilateral agencies pledged $7 billion in external assistance to India at Wednesday's meeting of the India Development Forum in Tokyo.   The pledged amount is 2.8 percent higher than the aid volume of $6.8 billion committed in last fiscal 1995/96 (April-March).   Finance Ministry sources said the donors have expressed support to the country's ongoing reforms process.   -----   INVESTMENT BANKERS RENEW BID FOR TELECOM MAJOR'S EUROISSUE   International investment bankers have renewed the bid for bagging the mandate of the public sector telecommunication major Videsh Sanchar Nigam Ltd's (VSNL) Euro issue.   Leading the pack are Lehman Brothers, Kleinwort Benson, CS First Boston and Jardine Fleming.   The renewed efforts of these global investment banking majors indicate that VSNL is likely to launch its global offering soon.   ----   Business Standard   TWO-PART TARIFF FOR POWER UNITS SCRAPPED   The government has decided to do away with the two-part tariff system for independent power producers.   The new tariff policy being finalised by the power ministry envisages competitive bidding based on the tariff for sale of electricity to state electricity boards.   Other things being same, the bidder offering the lowest tariff would be awarded the contract for putting up thermal power project at a pre-determined site.   ----   HOLDING FIRMS IN CELLULAR TELECOM SERVICES MAY BE ALLOWED   The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) may permit holding companies in cellular telecommunication services.   However, DoT may not allow equity partners in these companies to sell their stake in part or whole without its permission.   The Telecom Commission is likely to take a decision on this soon.   DoT has undertaken a review of holding company structures set up by cellular licencees to finance and set up projects.   The former communication minister had cleared several such proposals in his tenure.   ----   ADR ISSUE NORMS TO BE ANNOUNCED NEXT WEEK   The Finance Ministry is finalising guidelines for domestic corporates wanting to access the American depository receipts (ADRs) market.   The ministry's initiative comes in the wake of applications from domestic telecommunication companies for accessing the ADR market.   The applications received by the ministry include one from the BPL Group.   The ADR guidelines may be on lines of those issued for global depository receipts, which prescribe end use norms for the funds raised abroad, sources said.   ----   The Observer   GOVERNMENT TO PUT BAN ON FOREIGN LIQUOR VENTURES   The government has decided to put a ban on further approval of foreign liquor ventures in the country.   This is the first instance where the government would be suspending foreign investment in an industry which has been opened up after the government initiated the liberalisation policy.   Among the major multinationals to be immediately hit by the ban are the scotch majors William Grant and Burn & Stewert.   Both have firmed up joint venture proposals, which are awaiting clearance from the government.   ----   Business Line   BOMBAY BOURSE INDEX SHEDS 64 POINTS ON SELLING PRESSURE   Share prices fell sharply in the stock market due to heavy selling pressure from domestic and foreign institutional investors.   The Bombay Stock Exchange sensitive index closed at 3349.77 as against the previous close of 3414.01, showing a fall of 64.24 points.   The broad-based National index dipped by 14.39 points to 1509.10 from 1523.49.   The 50-share National Stock Exchange index closed at 977.76 losing 16.67 points from the previous close of 994.43.   ---- 
19263 !GCAT !GCRIM !GVIO  Pakistani police have shot dead Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto's estranged brother Murtaza and six of his followers in Karachi, blaming members of his breakaway political faction for starting the gunbattle.   Murtaza, 42-year-old leader of the Shaheed Bhutto faction of the ruling Pakistan People's Party (PPP), died in hospital about three hours after the gunfight on Friday night in Karachi's affluent seaside Clifton district.   The six members of his faction, who police said opened fire first from three cars that failed to stop when ordered to do so, died instantly.   Official sources said Prime Minister Bhutto, who was in the capital Islamabad, took a special plane to Karachi to be close to her dead brother, who had bitterly criticised her government in a three-year political confrontation.   A police spokesman, quoted by the official APP news agency, said Murtaza's followers opened fire first in the gunfight, injuring two officers and a cab driver.   "Police retaliated in self-defence and, after an encounter, they found six dead and five injured, including Murtaza Bhutto, and six were apprehended alive," the spokesman said, describing the immediate aftermath of the gunfight.   No independent eyewitness account was immediately available.   Karachi police deputy inspector general Shoaib Suddle said police had insisted on checking the vehicles because of tightened security following three bomb blasts in Karachi on Wednesday in which one person was killed and at least three others were wounded.   Hours before his death, Murtaza denied his group was responsible for the bombs and told a news conference police had arrested at least 70 group members in the previous 24 hours.   He accused police of causing the blasts to implicate his group.   Murtaza was pronounced dead at Karachi's private Mideast hospital after doctors vainly tried to save his life, reviving him once after cardiac arrest but failing on a second occasion.   Doctors said Murtaza had eight bullet wounds, while police said there were two.   Murtaza and Benazir quarrelled during the family's period in the political wilderness after their father, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, was ousted as prime minister by army chief General Mohammad Zia-ul-Haq in a 1977 and hanged in 1979.   Murtaza, based in Syria, formed an underground resistance group called Al-Zulfikar and was accused of involvement in a 1981 airline hijacking.   His sister took a more moderate approach and, when democracy returned after Zia's death in a still unexplained plane crash, she was able to lead the PPP to victory in a 1988 election.   She lost power 20 months later but returned to office in 1993.   Murtaza returned to Pakistan in November 1993 and was arrested on a string of criminal charges dating back to Zia's military rule.   His sister insisted he should clear his name in court and was cleared in some cases.   Freed on bail, he formed his rival faction in March last year, accusing Benazir of working with those responsible for their father's death.   Benazir met Murtaza on July 7 for the first time since his return, apparently in an attempt at reconciliation, but Murtaza continued to accuse her government of corruption and misrule.   Their mother Nusrat, who had shown a tilt towards Murtaza in their dispute while maintaining peace with Benazir, was currently in London on holiday, family sources said.   Murtaza was the last surviving son of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto.   His younger brother, Shahnawaz, was found dead in his flat in southern France in 1985 in still unexplained circumstances. 
19264 !GCAT !GOBIT !GPOL !GPRO  Pakistan's Murtaza Bhutto was killed by Karachi police on Friday, ending a troubled career spent in the twin shadows of his hanged father, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, and his sister, Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto.   Murtaza, 42, was the last surviving son of Zulfikar Bhutto.   His younger brother, Shahnawaz, was found dead in his flat in southern France in 1985 in still unexplained circumstances.   Murtaza died along with six members of his breakaway Shaheed Bhutto faction of the ruling Pakistan People's Party after a gunfight with police in Karachi's affluent Clifton district.   Police said Murtaza's men opened fire first after refusing to halt for checks, and wounded two policemen.   Murtaza and Benazir quarrelled during the family's period in the wilderness after their father was ousted as prime minister by General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq in 1977 and hanged in 1979.   Murtaza, who spent 16 years in exile, mainly in Syria, formed an underground resistance group called Al-Zulfikar and was accused of involvement in a 1981 airline hijacking.   His sister shunned his militancy and, when democracy returned after Zia's death in a plane crash, led the PPP to victory in a 1988 election.   She lost power 20 months later but returned to office after winning an election in October 1993.   Murtaza returned to Pakistan in 1993 to be arrested on a string of charges.   His sister said he should clear his name in court.   Freed on bail, he formed a rival PPP faction and accused Benazir of working with those behind their father's death.   When he arrived back in Pakistan, Murtaza received support in his feud with Benazir from their Iranian-born mother Nusrat, who denounced her daughter for taking over the PPP leadership from her.   Nusrat wanted Murtaza to be PPP leader.   Murtaza faced a total of 82 charges when he returned from Syria in November 1993 and spent seven months in jail.   "I am completely disillusioned by her (Benazir)," he said the day after he was freed on bail.   "She was elected democratically, but she rules undemocratically."   The charges against him were condensed into six, including insurgency, activities to destabilise the government by force, spreading hatred and rebellion against the state, and provoking anti-state activities.   Murtaza set up his rival PPP branch in March last year, but attracted no heavyweights from his sister's mainstream party.   "We want to save the party and Pakistan from looters, plunderers and dacoits (bandits)," he told Reuters at the time.   When the party was formed, his followers decked his Karachi home with banners carrying anti-U.S. slogans, such as: "America is the enemy of Pakistan", "America is the enemy of Islam" and "America is the killer of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto".   Red-shirted men armed with assault rifles guarded the splinter party convention, which passed resolutions calling for Benazir to resign in favour of a national unity government.   Murtaza stood for more than 12 National Assembly and provincial seats in the October 1993 elections that returned his sister to power, winning in just one provincial constituency in Larkana, at the heart of the Bhutto estates in Sindh province. 
19265 !GCAT !GCRIM !GVIO  Murtaza Bhutto, the estranged brother of Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, was killed in a gunfight with police in Karachi on Friday, doctors said.    Six other members of Murtaza's breakaway faction of the ruling Pakistan People's Party (PPP) were also killed in the clash, police said earlier.   Friends of Murtaza cried at Karachi's Mideast hospital when local officials present announced his death from bullet wounds.   Doctors said they had revived Murtza once after his heart stopped, but but his heart stopped again and he could not be revived. 
19266 !GCAT !GCRIM !GVIO  Murtaza Bhutto, the estranged brother of Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, was seriously injured in a gunfight with police in Karachi on Friday night, hospital sources said.   Doctors at Karachi's Mideast hospital said four other people were injured in the gunfight.    There was no immediate information about the cause of the clash.   A member of Murtaza's breakaway Shaheed Bhutto faction of the ruling Pakistan People's Party, who described himself only as Israr, told Reuters by telephone from the family home in the seaside Clifton area that Murtaza had gone out to attend party.   "The police have surrounded us and we cannot go out," Israr said.   "We can hear the firing but it is far from our house."   No police comment was immediately available. 
19267 !GCAT !GVIO  Jets bombed the rebel-held eastern Afghan city of Jalalabad on Friday as the rebel Taleban Islamic militia said it had captured a strategic district to gain complete control of the eastern province of Laghman.   The government jets carried out four bombing raids on Jalalabad, capital of Nangarhar province captured by Taleban last week in a swift sweep in eastern Afghanistan, a Pakistan-based Afghan news service reported.   But the Adghan Islamic Press (AIP) said it had no immediate report of casualties.   Two bombs were dropped near the governor's house in Jalalabad and three other sites were also hit.   Friday's was the second jet bombing on Jalalabad after Taleban forces captured it on September 11 from a previously neutral council without a fight.   Government jets bombed the town the next day, killing 12 people and wounding about 50.   A Taleban spokesman in the southern Afghan town of Kandahar, Amir Khan Mutaqi, said the militia captured Daulatsa district, north of the Laghman provincial capital of Mehtar Lam, on Thursday evening after intense fighting, thus completing its control over the province, AIP reported.   Government forces left 20 to 25 bodies on the battlefield and 50 of the defenders were arrested, Mutaqi said.   Earlier on Thursday, the Taleban also seized the nearby Alising valley from pro-government fighters, Mutaqi said.   Taleban regard the area strategically important to outflank President Burhanuddin Rabbani's govenment in Kabul from the northeast and probe the province of Kapisa, a government stronghold.   Taleban forces, which control more than half of Afghanistan, have besieged Kabul since last October in their drive to oust Rabbani's government. 
19268 !GCAT !GPRO !GREL  Mother Teresa, recovering in hospital after a fall, was cheerful on Friday and said she wanted to visit Rome after her discharge, doctors attending her said.   "Mother Teresa is doing well and she is cheerful," a medical bulletin released by Calcutta's Woodlands Nursing Home said.   "She is still under observation".   The 86-year-old nun was admitted to hospital on Monday after she fell from a chair and injured her head.   "She wants to go to Rome," Dr A.K. Bardhan, the Nobel Peace laureate's personal cardiologist quoted one of the sisters of her Missionaries of Charity religious order as saying.   The medical director of Woodlands, Dr S.K. Sen, said Mother Teresa was getting impatient and insisting on returning home.   "I have got hundreds of mouths to feed and many more to look after.   Please don't keep me confined here," Sen quoted her as saying.   She is expected to be released at the weekend, doctors had said on Thursday.   Mother Teresa blessed several hospital employees on Friday and advised them to work for the poor.   "When is your off (rest) day?   Come and work for two hours at Nirmal Sishu Bhavan (a Calcutta home for destitute children) and you will get peace of mind," she told a receptionist at the hospital.   Mother Teresa, known as the Saint of the Gutters for her devotion to the poor and destitute, was admitted to the same hospital on August 20 with heart trouble, malaria and pneumonia.   She was released 18 days later and told to rest. 
19269 !GCAT !GDIS  A monkey mauled and killed a zookeeper who was fixing loose railings on its cage in the eastern Indian city of Calcutta, the Press Trust of India (PTI) said on Friday.   The news agency, which did not state any apparent reason for the monkey's sudden burst of rage, said Parameshwar Ram, 48, succumbed in hospital to injuries inflicted by the 12-year-old monkey.   The monkey was kept under observation after the incident, and the government of the state of West Bengal sought a report on the zookeeper's death, PTI said.   PTI quoted officials as saying such an attack was unheard of in the Calcutta zoo.   On New Year's Day this year a lion killed a drunken visitor who entered its cage in the same zoo. 
19270 !C42 !CCAT !E41 !ECAT !GCAT !GDIP !GJOB  India is ready to help repatriate up to 60,000 Indians who may leave the United Arab Emirates ahead of a tough new immigration law, a Foreign Ministry official said on Friday.   But he said there would be no crisis influx and most Indians would remain in the UAE.   Indian embassies in Dubai and Abu Dhabi have been flooded with applications for exit permits as thousands of illegal workers rush to leave the Emirates by sea and air during a two- month amnesty granted to illegal workers that expires on September 30.   The law, which comes into effect on October 1, imposes stiff penalties on illegal aliens or workers who violate labour laws.   K.C. Singh, a senior Foreign Ministry official coordinating the return of the illegal workers, said there were 50,000 to 60,000 Indian workers without proper documents in the Emirates.   He told a news conference that fewer than 40,000 had so far obtained emergency certificates to leave Dubai and Abu Dhabi.   The certificates permit Indian citizens without valid travel papers to make a one-way trip back to India.   Singh said those required to leave had illegal or expired visas, or had broken UAE law by changing employers.   "It is not that there is a crisis and every Indian is being pushed out.   This amounts to only 10 percent of the population," Singh said, noting there were some 500,000 Indians in the Emirates.   The government was focusing on increasing the number of flights, Singh said.   Air India and Indian Airlines have a total of 32 flights a week from the Emirates.   "In addition, Air India is going to have one flight a day each out of Abu Dhabi and Dubai," Singh said.   Civil Aviation Minister C.M. Ibrahim said on Friday that the Indian air carriers had been asked to exempt routes from the Gulf from a proposed air fare increase.   The government was trying to arrange for two passenger ships from Shipping Corporation of India to bring back illegal Indian workers, as well as a private liner with a capacity of 2,000 passengers scheduled to set sail on September 28.   Singh said one launch with 200 people on board had already set sail for India.   "We feel it is not safe to send out people by launches," Singh said, adding: "If there are stumbling blocks, we will not leave Indians stranded." 
19271 !C13 !C31 !C311 !CCAT !GCAT !GPOL !GVIO  Hundreds of Islamic activists demonstrated in Dhaka on Friday in protest against what they said was Bangladesh's "unpatriotic" plan to buy electricity from India.   "This is an unpatriotic plan ... We will resist until we shed our last drop of blood," said A.Z.M. Hemayetuddin, vice-persident of the Islamic Constitution Movement.   He added that the deal could have other consequences, with India possibly seeking to revive a proposal to buy natural gas from Bangladesh in return and securing land transit rights to transport the gas.   His remarks echoed warnings by the country's main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), which said the prospective deals with India might endanger Dhaka's independence and sovereignty.   Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina said last week Bangladesh was ready to buy electricity from anyone who could provide it at competitive prices and on reasonable terms.   She said the country needed a secure power supply, if it was to encourage foreign investment.   Government officials said India would be the most likely supplier of power but they did not know of any payment proposals.   On Thursday BNP Secretary-General Abdul Mannan Bhuiyan urged Bangladeshis to prepare for a protest if the government entered into any "subservient" deal with India.   Dhaka is currently negotiating with New Delhi an agreement for sharing water from the river Ganges, called Padma in Bangladesh. 
19272 !GCAT !GPOL !GVIO !GVOTE  A militia chief contesting local elections in troubled Kashmir said he would surrender his guns to the government only after the last pro-Pakistan guerrilla was dead, saying it could take 15 years.   Kuka Parray, a bard-turned-militia leader, said his Awami League party would work as a watchdog to keep Kashmir's new government, due to be elected in four-stage local polls ending on September 30, from going soft on separatist insurgents.   "My mission is to see the end of the last Pakistani militant in Kashmir," Parray told Reuters this week in Srinagar, summer capital of India's Jammu and Kashmir state.   "After that I will surrender all my weaponry at Lal Chowk (city square) in Srinagar."   Parray, 39, is the best known "renegade" -- armed militia battling separatist guerrillas in the Himalayan province.   He picked up the gun in 1993, putting on hold a profession as singer, poet and musician.   "When I saw excesses by the militants growing every day -- they were raping women, killing intellectuals, doctors and journalists -- I sold a piece of my ancestral property and bought three guns with the money."   Parray dismissed widespread claims, also denied by government authorities, that he is armed or funded by Indian security personnel, who critics contend allow his men freedom of movement in the strife-torn Himalayan region.   India accuses neighbouring Pakistan of formenting separatist violence in Jammu and Kashmir where more than 20,000 people have been killed since the separatist revolt began in January 1990.   Pakistan says it provides only moral and diplomatic support.   Human rights groups and Kashmiri politicians say Parray's militiamen have killed many suspected militants, part of a spiral of violence in a state with some 200,000 police, paramilitary troopers and soldiers, and thousands of militants.   Parray, 39, shrugs off the accusations.   "God was kind to me," said the portly father of six children.   "No sooner than I got the guns I was told about seven Afghans who had kidnapped some Kashmiri women to rape them.   "I went to the house, killed all the seven Afghans, and got their guns as a bonus."   Parray formed the Awami League party six months ago ahead of Kashmir's first parliamentary elections in nine years.   The Awami League is contesting 44 seats in Kashmir's four- stage polls for the 87-member assembly.   Parray admitted there had been "excesses" but said the perpetrators had either left his group or were thrown out.   "For six months, I am sure you have not heard of Kuka Parray's men being involved in any controversial incident," he said, smoking a Kashmiri hookah pipe.   Outside the room, the Awami League office in a posh part of Srinagar was guarded by uniformed gunmen and state policemen.   Several Kashmiri political parties including the state's largest grouping, the National Conference, have asked New Delhi to disarm some half dozen government-backed militias.   National Conference leader Farooq Abdullah, expected to be the state's next chief minister, has lodged formal complaints with the federal Election Commission, threatening to pull out of the polls if pro-government militia are not disarmed.   Abdullah has vowed to crack down on both separatist guerrillas and renegade militants if his party wins.   But Parray dismisses the threat.   "No one has the guts to disarm me before my mission is over," Parray said.   "It could take 15 years."   Asked how many gunmen his own group had, Parray said: "Enough to finish off the 7,000 militants who are still there." 
19273 !GCAT !GVIO  Three supporters of Sri Lanka's main opposition party were shot dead in an attack on a motorcade carrying President Chandrika Kumaratunga's estranged brother on Friday, police and a party spokesman said.   Anura Bandaranaike, Kumaratunga's brother who is a member of parliament from the main opposition United National Party (UNP), was travelling in one of the vehicles in the motorcade but was unharmed, the spokesman said.   Several bystanders were wounded.   Bandaranaike, an ardent critic of the government and its policies, and his party were returning to Colombo from Negombo, 25 miles (40 km) north of the capital, when unidentified gunmen opened fire on one of the vehicles, he added.   They had attended a court hearing in the coastal town in connection with a previous shooting incident there in which two supporters of Kumaratunga's ruling People's Alliance were killed.   Supporters of the two parties have clashed from time to time since the People's Alliance ended the UNP's 17-year rule in 1994.   The UNP, saying Kumartunga was too hostile towards the opposition, has threatened to withdraw its support in parliament for a crucial peace plan which the government has proposed to end the island's 13-year old ethnic war with separatist guarrillas.   Kumaratunga has publicly criticised the UNP for brutalising opposition supporters and muzzling the media during its rule. 
19274 !GCAT !GPOL  India's centre-left rulers faced a barrage of criticism on Friday for forcing the sudden sacking of a state government headed by rival Hindu nationalists.   The Hindu Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was joined by a string of newspapers in denouncing the decision by Prime Minister H.D. Deve Gowda's cabinet on Thursday to recommend dismissal of the BJP-led government in western Gujarat state.   President Shankar Dayal Sharma, who under his limited constitutional authority had no power to reject the recommendation, sacked the 18-month Gujarat government despite its having won a trust vote in the state assembly on Wednesday.   The federal government said it was forced to act because the voting took place in an environment of disorder and violence.   But the BJP's claim that the move smacked of politics ahead of important assembly polls in populous Uttar Pradesh state was echoed in editorials.   "The imposition of president's rule is a needless invitation to the charge that the (federal) government was looking for ways to finish the BJP through extra-political means," The Times of India said in an editorial titled "Shame and Scandal".   The northern state of Uttar Pradesh, which has more than 130 million of India's 930 million citizens, goes to the polls in late September and early October to elect a new state legislature.   The BJP, which draws its strength from the northern Hindi- speaking belt, has high hopes of capturing Uttar Pradesh, which has produced seven of India's 10 prime ministers and is considered the nation's choicest political prize.   The Indian Express said the cabinet's decision was "not only irregular, but politically motivated", and aimed at helping BJP rebels survive in Gujarat.   The government in Gujarat, one of India's most industrially advanced states, was sacked after pandemonium broke out on Wednesday on the floor of the assembly.   Opposition lawmakers, led by the Congress party, were protesting against a decision by the acting assembly speaker -- a BJP member -- to suspend all opposition legislators before the government won a trust vote.   Scuffles broke out in the assembly, and members hurled microphones at each other.   Several lawmakers and journalists were injured in the fighting.   Legal experts generally questioned the sacking.   "I don't think it was appropriate to invoke president's rule in Gujarat," constitutional expert Nani Palkhivala was quoted by a newspaper as saying.   In an editorial titled "Partisanship to the fore", The Observer said Deve Gowda's 13-party coalition "reckons that it stands to either gain power or deny it to the BJP in Uttar Pradesh where elections are barely a fortnight away".   The Hindu newspaper said the BJP's opponents were hoping that the party's woes in Gujarat, where it has split into two main factions, would tarnish its image as a unified organisation.   "It is no more that disciplined party that it prided itself to be at one time and this can have an adverse impact on the party's fortunes in Uttar Pradesh in the coming elections to the state assembly," The Hindu said.   But some said the BJP could end up benefiting in Uttar Pradesh.   The Indian Express said that despite its public protestations, the BJP should actually be delighted because the sacking had allowed it "to emerge from the assembly fiasco in the robes of a martyr". 
19275 !GCAT !GVIO  An activist belonging to a breakaway faction of Pakistan's ethnic Mohajir National Movement (MQM) was killed in a gun-battle with police on Friday in the port city of Karachi, police said.   They said Mohammad Habib, the MQM's Haqiqi faction head for the Pak Colony area, was killed in the western Orangi Town area, while three of his colleagues managed to flee.   "A police party raided a house in Orangi where Habib was hiding, which resulted in an exchange of fire.   Habib was killed in the gun-battle," a police official said.   A Kalashnikov assault rifle and bullets were found in Habib's possession.   Haqiqi spokesman Younus Khan claimed Habib was killed in a "fake encounter".   "Habib was arrested along with his father from his residence in Landhi and killed in cold blood in a fake encounter," he said.   Habib's father was later released.   The Haqiqi and the main MQM group, blamed by authorities for most of the violence in Karachi, have often accused police of killing their activists in custody.   Police deny the charge.   Both MQM factions claim to represent Urdu-speaking Mohajirs who migrated from India during the partition in 1947. 
19276 !GCAT !GPOL !GVIO !GVOTE  Indian security forces in Kashmir braced for a showdown with separatist groups on Friday, a day before what one official called the region's most sensitive phase of a month-long local election.   Kashmiris are scheduled to vote on Saturday in Srinagar, the state's summer capital, and two other districts in the third stage of four-phase elections that began on September 7.   "With the third phase of the elections on Saturday, we have entered the most sensitive phase," a state government spokesman said.   The voting in Srinagar is considered especially sensitive because the Kashmir Valley's biggest city has been the focal point of the separatist revolt.   Also, demonstrations can be more easily mounted in the city's winding streets, which make it difficult for security forces to maintain order.   Suspected Moslem militants fired a rocket at a paramilitary camp in Srinagar late on Thursday, injuring 13 troopers, police said.   Most businesses, shops and offices in Srinagar were closed on Friday as part of a two-day strike called by separatists.   Thousands of paramilitary troops were deployed around the major mosques in Srinagar after the All Parties Hurriyat (Freedom) Conference called on Moslems to gather there to protest the polls, officials said.   "We urge all Moslems to gather at the main mosque to discuss this explosive situation in Kashmir," said a statement by the Hurriyat, which includes some 30 separatist groups.   "People will also hear our leaders on the issue at other major mosques."   The last day of voting, in the rebellious Doda district, is set for September 30, with the results of the first state assembly polls since the outbreak of the separatist revolt expected in early October.   Separatist groups are boycotting the polls, crucial to Prime Minister H.D. Deve Gowda's efforts to restore democracy in Jammu and Kashmir state after six years of direct federal rule.   Former state chief minister Farooq Abdullah's National Conference party is widely expected to win the the elections.   Abdullah is campaigning on the plank of greater autonomy for the Himalayan region, which Deve Gowda has promised to discuss with the new government.   Separatist groups in mostly Hindu India's only Moslem majority state say they oppose any polls held by New Delhi in Kashmir and that they want either independence or to merge with neighbouring Pakistan, which also is Islamic, but not autonomy.   At least 20 people, mostly political workers, have been killed in election violence during the month-long campaign.   Several candidates, including Abdullah, have survived assassination attempts.   On Thursday, militants attacked paramilitary troops in at least 10 places with grenades and automatic weapons in Srinagar.   Police fired shots in the air to break up a group of women who shouted anti-election slogans in the heart of Srinagar.   India imposed direct rule on Kashmir in January 1990 when simmering discontent with New Delhi's control of the state became armed rebellion.   More than 20,000 people have been killed in the ensuing separatist violence.   India accuses neighbouring Pakistan of fomenting the violence, while Islamabad says it gives only political support to the militants.   Friday congregations by Moslems in Kashmir have often been rallying points for the separatist groups. 
19277 !E41 !ECAT !GCAT !GDIP !GJOB !GPOL  More than 450 Bangladeshi workers have returned to Dhaka from Abu Dhabi to avoid tough new immigration laws, the Independent newspaper said on Friday.   It said they were probably the first group of some 150,000 Bangladeshis expected to return to escape a crackdown on illegal workers in the United Arab Emirates (UAE).   The UAE had asked Bangladesh's diplomatic mission in Abu Dhabi to take back the illegal Bangladeshis by September 30, the newspaper said.   It quoted Dhaka airport officials as saying that most of the Bangladeshis usually go to UAE on short-term visas obtained through recruitment agencies.   "After expiry of the visas, the workers destroy their passports and try to stay on illegally."   The UAE has given a two-month amnesty to illegal workers during which violaters can legalise their stay or leave the country.   The new immigration law, which comes into effect on October 1, imposes stiff penalties on illegal aliens or workers who violate labour laws.   Diplomats expect some 200,000 expatriates will have left by the end of the August-September amnesty period.   Government officials were not available for comment as Friday was a weekend in Moslem Bangladesh. 
19278 !C21 !C42 !CCAT !E41 !ECAT !GCAT !GJOB  A four-hour work stoppage by a big labour union had no major impact on operations in the Colombo port on Thursday, port officials said.   "It did not affect loading and unloading of container ships," Sri Lanka Ports Authority Chairman Sundra Jayawardena said.   "Nor did it have an appreciable effect on general cargo."   Faizer Hashim, chairman of the Ceylon Association of Ships' Agents said no ships were delayed because of the work stoppage by about 6,000 workers of the Ceylon Mercantile Union, the harbour's largest labour union.   The Ceylon Mercantile Union called the stoppage to discuss opposition to government plans to allow the Peninsula & Oriental Shipping Co to set up a container terminal at the port, south Asia's trans-shipment hub.   Jayawardena said the port authority was still holding talks on a deal to give the port's Queen Elizabeth Quay, one of the port's two main quays, to P&O and local partner John Keells Holdings to set up a container terminal. 
19279 !GCAT !GENV !GHEA  The White Fly cotton pest in Pakistan's main cotton growing belt of Multan in the central province of Punjab is causing a health scare for humans, doctors and officials in the area were quoted on Thursday as saying.   The official APP news agency said this was the first time the pest had been found in the region's residential areas and said the authorities had "hardly made any headway in checking the problem which has so far proved to be an open threat to human health ".   It quoted Multan district health officer, Dr Mohammad Riaz, as saying the existance of the pest in residential areas was unusual and that health officials were discussing ways to fight it.   If the fly drops into a human eye, it causes inflammation with severe itching, APP quoted doctors as saying.   Riaz advised motorcyclists, cyclists and pedestrians to use sunglasses to protect their eyes from the small white insect.   Multan Municipal Corporation administrator Rana Naseer Ahmed said anti-fly and anti-mosquito spraying was being carried out in open spaces such as parks, green areas and ponds.   But APP quoted experts as saying such steps were insufficient as the fly was resistant to such sprays. 
19280 !C32 !CCAT !GCAT !GODD  The conservative mayor of the Riviera capital Nice on Friday banned a controversial billboard advertisement by the Italian clothes retailer Benetton featuring a black horse and a white horse mating.   "The shocking and provocative presentation of coupling black and white horses is attempting to incite either racism or human behaviour that is contrary to our republican values," Gaullist mayor Jacques Peyrat said.   The billboard, the latest in a series of controversial advertising campaigns by Benetton, "could also foster an unhealthy perception of mixed couples in our country," Peyrat said in a statement.   The advertising campaign contributed to a general decline in respect for morals and public order, the mayor added.   The eye-catching billboards have shown up all across France in recent weeks, but have attracted little official notice until now though they have sparked considerable private discussion.   They sparked a barrrage of criticism when they first went up in Belgium last month.   The country's two largest billboard operators refused to put them up.   Benetton's controversial advertising campaigns began in 1989.   Previous posters have shown a white baby being breast-fed by a black woman, bodies stamped "HIV positive" and a nun and a priest kissing. 
19281 !C12 !C34 !CCAT !GCAT !GCRIM  British Airways Plc. said it filed a motion in Manhattan federal court Friday asking the judge to dismiss an antitrust suit brought by USAir Group Inc. over the British carrier's proposed alliance with American Airlines.   USAir has "been unable to identify a single substantive provision of the 1993 agreement (between USAir and British Airways) that Brtish Airways has purportedly broken."   British Airways' motion to dismiss claims that USAir has "a case of corporate amnesia" and that it "forgets" its previous chairman calling the deal "perfectly acceptable."   Arlington, Va.-based USAir, British Airways' existing trans-Atlantic partner, filed suit in July saying the proposed alliance between British Airways and American Airlines would monopolise air travel between the United States and Britain.   It also charged the new alliance would undermine its own relationship with British Airways.   British Airways said it believed the suit was a tactic by USAir to rengotiate that agreement.   USAir said British Airways' motion to dismiss, a standard tactic in lawsuit, was "posturing."   The USAir suit alleged that British Airways forced it to relinquish three routes, but British Airways countered in its motion that a consent decree with the U.S. Deparment of Justice compelled the move for anti-trust concerns.   The motion claimed that the suit was based on the "frustration" of USAir management that British Airways has a new partner.   "Disappointment and frustration, however, do not give rise to recognisable legal claims," the filing said. 
19282 !C42 !CCAT !E41 !ECAT !GCAT !GJOB  International Business Machines Corp. said Friday it will extend health benefits to the domestic partners of gay and lesbian employees, making it the largest U.S. company to date to adopt such a policy.   A spokeswoman for the world's largest computer maker said the company would extend health coverage to same-sex domestic partners during its annual enrollment period between Oct. 1 and Oct. 31.   The benefits cover health, dental and vision plans offered by the company and would take effect July 1, 1997, IBM spokeswoman Melinda McMullen said.   She said the policy change brings the Armonk, N.Y.-based company into line with its own written policy of non-discrimination that has included sexual orientation since 1974.   The spokeswoman also said the move was designed to keep IBM competitive with other high-tech firms with such policies, including Microsoft Corp., Apple Computer Inc. and Hewlett-Packard Co.   "The competition to attract and retain a high-quality workforce is fierce in the high technology business," the spokeswoman said.   "So it made sense from a competitive business standpoint as well."   Gay rights groups hailed IBM's move.   "It's a monumental step forward," David Smith, communications director for the Human Rights Campaign, a prominent gay rights group, said in a telephone interview.   "IBM's stature in the business community sends a signal to other companies that it is not only the right thing to do, it makes bottom-line business sense."   At the Lambda Legal Defence Fund, which represents gays and lesbians, spokeswoman Peg Byron said, "Big Blue is in good company with nearly 500 employers that offer similar benefits.   Popular culture and many in the private sector recognise that lesbians and gays should have equal treatment and Congress will catch on soon."   The IBM policy does not cover unmarried heterosexual couples who live together because they have the option of marriage.   "What we require of all our employees is proof of commitment.   The acknowledged proof of committment among heterosexuals is marriage," the IBM spokeswoman said.   Last week the U.S. Senate, by a wide margin, passed a bill that would deny recognition of same-sex marriages.   On the same day however, it narrowly defeated a bill prohibiting employment discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.   In the absence of laws allowing gays and lesbians to marry, IBM said it would require employees with same-sex domestic partners to present a notarized affidavit that they are involved in a committed relationship, living in the same household, and that their finances are interdependent.   McMullen noted that such documents were unlikely to be entered into lightly, since they have been used as evidence in some so-called palimony cases recently.   She said very few employees were expected to benefit from the policy change.   IBM also extended its health benefit plans to cover employees who care for a dependent child, even if the employee is not a biological or adopted parent of the child.   For example, an aunt would be covered if she had taken into her house a niece or nephew.   Young people up to 23 years old who are financially dependent on an IBM employee would qualify.   Smith said IBM's decision came at an opportune time following Congress's action.   The marriage ban "is one example of how homosexuals do not get the same benefits as heterosexuals," he said.   "The domestic partnership programmes (at IBM and elsewhere) are a way of equalising the workplace for gay people, providing equal benefits for equal work." 
19283 !C13 !C22 !CCAT !GCAT !GHEA  Drug company Hoechst Marion Roussel Inc. said Friday that its new treatment for advanced prostate cancer has been cleared by the Food and Drug Administration for marketing in the United States.   The affiliate of German chemical company Hoechst A.G. said the drug, Nilandron, is to be used in combination with surgical castration for the treatment of advanced prostate cancer.   The company said the drug, which is to be taken orally once a day, will be launched in the U.S. in the fall.   Currently, there is no cure for advanced prostate cancer, or cancer that has spread to other parts of the body, and hormonal therapy is used to control disease growth.   Nilandron is an antiandrogen, which is a type of drug that prevents the male hormone testosterone from promoting prostate cancer growth.   Prostate cancer is the most common type of cancer among American men.   According to the American Cancer Society, one out of every five men will develop prostate cancer over the course of his lifetime. 
19284 !C32 !CCAT !GCAT !GPOL !GVOTE  Nike would have preferred presidential candidate Bob Dole had just left it alone.   The sports and fitness apparel marketer said late Thursday that Dole's "Just don't do it" adaptation of its "Just do it" advertising slogan as an anti-drug mantra was not exactly sporting.   "We are a bit uncomfortable about being brought into the political arena.   While we are supportive of the senator's goal of keeping kids away from drugs, our slogan is based in sports.   And we would have preferred him to use a slogan that is more relevant to this issue," said Nike spokesman Jim Small.   In a speech in Los Angeles on Wednesday, Dole suggested the use of "Just don't do it" as an anti-drug slogan.   The new pitch would update the "Just say no" pitch popularized in former first lady Nancy Reagan's 1980s anti-drug effort.   Small said Dole informed Nike about his adaptation of the company's slogan; however, he did not require Nike's permission as the slogan would be used for non-commercial purposes.   Nike, which has used the "Just do it" slogan since 1988, is confident its theme will not be harmed by the Dole message.   "'Just do it' is etched in the minds of athletes around the world.   We are not concerned about it being diluted by this usage," Small said. 
19285 !C42 !CCAT !E41 !ECAT !GCAT !GJOB  International Business Machines Corp. will extend health benefits to the domestic partners of gay and lesbian employees, making it the largest U.S. company to date to adopt such a policy.   A spokeswoman for the world's largest computer maker said Friday the company would extend health coverage to same-sex domestic partners during its annual enrollment period between Oct. 1 and Oct. 31.   The benefits cover health, dental and vision plans offered by the company and would take effect July 1, 1997, IBM spokeswoman Melinda McMullen said.   She said the policy change brings the Armonk, N.Y.-based company into line with its own written policy of non-discrimination that has included sexual orientation since 1974.   The spokeswoman also said the move was designed to keep IBM competitive with other high-tech firms with such policies, including Microsoft Corp., Apple Computer Inc. and Hewlett-Packard Co.   "The competition to attract and retain a high-quality workforce is fierce in the high technology business," the spokeswoman said.   "So it made sense from a competitive business standpoint as well."   A legal group that represents gays and lesbians welcomed the IBM move.   "Big Blue is in good company with nearly 500 employers that offer similar benefits," Lambda Legal Defence and Education Fund spokeswoman Peg Byron said.   "Popular culture and many in the private sector recognise that lesbians and gays should have equal treatment and Congress will catch on soon."   The IBM policy does not cover unmarried heterosexual couples who live together because they have the option of marriage.   "What we require of all our employees is proof of commitment.   The acknowledged proof of committment among heterosexuals is marriage," the IBM spokeswoman said.   Last week the U.S. Senate, by a wide margin, passed a bill that would deny recognition of same-sex marriages.   On the same day however, it narrowly defeated a bill prohibiting employment discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.   In the absence of laws allowing gays and lesbians to marry, IBM said it would require employees with same-sex domestic partners to present a notorized affidavit that they are involved in a committed relationship, living in the same household, and that their finances are interdependent.   McMullen noted that such documents were unlikely to be entered into lightly, since they have been used as evidence in some so-called palimony cases recently.   She said very few employees were expected to benefit from the policy change.   IBM also extended its health benefit plans to cover employees who care for a dependent child, even if the employee is not a biological or adopted parent of the child.   For example, an aunt would be covered if she had taken into her house a niece or nephew.   Young people up to 23 years old who are financially dependent on an IBM employee would qualify. 
19286 !GCAT  The following are top headlines from selected Canadian newspapers.   Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.   THE GLOBE AND MAIL:   - Justice Horace Krever seeks extension for Canada's blood system inquiry: Unexpected request could mean long delay in report on tainted-blood scandal.   - Ontario Premier Mike Harris rejects tobacco tax hike, says it's Ottawa's problem.   - Pope's health prompts talk of successor: Shuffling gait, extreme pallor, trembling hand arouse speculation.   - Desperate soldiers join Moscow protest: Missing pay means tough times.   - Pro sport, U.S. soaps to feel Canadian Broadcasting Corporation cuts: Cuts move corporation closer to mandate, CBC president Perrin Beatty says.   Report on Business Section:   - Baton Broadcasting to buy Electrohome unit: C$117 million deal for TV business consolidates broadcaster's hold on CTV network.   - American Express Co checking out Investors Group: Possible bid for mutual fund giant.   - Quebecor Inc passes on bid for Toronto Sun Publishing Corp: Says management group's offer already high as vote nears.   - Loewen likely to fight for higher Service Corp International offer: Institutional investors say hostile bid low.   THE FINANCIAL POST:   - British Columbia could scupper Canada Pension Plan reform: B.C. says elements of the proposed overhaul of the CPP hit hard at low-income earners.   Its objections threaten a deal to put CPP on a sounder financial footing.   - CIBC Wood Gundy Securities report at odds with its stand on takeover.   -- Reuters Toronto Bureau 416 941-8100 
19287 !GCAT  The following stories were reported in Friday's Daily Variety:   HOLLYWOOD - Acquisition talks between Castle Rock Entertainment, a unit of Turner Broadcasting System Inc and suitor Sony Corp have stalled until management issues at the studio can be worked out.   Castle Rock's other potential buyer -- a partnership headed by MCA, a unit of Seagram Co and General Electric Co NBC television network is in protracted negotiations.   HOLLYWOOD - Burger King and 20th Century Fox, a unit of News Corp Ltd, struck a deal with Burger King for a Thanksgiving '97 promotion of its animated musical "Anastasia," sources said.   HOLLYWOOD - Boosted by a strong premiere for The Drew Carey Show, ABC, a unit of Walt Disney Co won the Wednesday-night ratings.   HOLLYWOOD - Gene Hackman is in final negotiations to join Paul Newman and Susan Sarandon in Paramount Pictures' "The Magic Hour," sources said.   --New York Newsdesk (212) 859-1610 
19288 !C12 !CCAT !GCAT !GCRIM  The Justice Department's examination of Microsoft Corp. entered a new phase on Thursday when the company said investigators were seeking additional information about the software giant's business practices.   The request, which was announced after the market closed, marked the first time in over a year that the Justice Department had sent a written request to Microsoft for information.   The U.S. government has been investigating Microsoft for more than six years for alleged anti-trust practices but critics claim a 1994 settlement was little more than a slap on the wrist.   Microsoft's senior vice president for law and corporate affairs, William Neukom, said the company would cooperate with the federal agency, adding the facts would show Microsoft was competing "vigorously and legally" and that the competition was benefiting consumers.   In Washington, the Justice Department declined to comment on the request other than to say its investigation into Microsoft was continuing and nothing had changed.   The request, coming after many experts had regarded the investigation as dormant, took some observers by surprise.   However, Neukom said the latest Justice Department request appeared to be prompted by "complaints from competitors which are reminiscent of allegations that were thoroughly reviewed in the past."   Microsoft, which supplies the operating system used in 80 percent of the world's computers, has been a frequent target of criticism.   Microsoft officials declined to say Thursday where the latest complaints had come from, but the company has recently become embroiled in a bitter battle with upstart software company Netscape Communications Corp.   Last month, Mountain View, Calif.-based Netscape -- whose dominance of the market for Web browsers is threatened by Microsoft -- accused its arch-rival of anti-competitive behavior and urged the Justice Department to take action.   Gary Reback, outside antitrust counsel for Netscape at Wilson, Sonsini, Goodrich & Rosati, called the inquiry a good first step.   "On one hand, I would say it's about time.   On the other hand there's still time for the government to do some positive thing for consumers," he said.   Unlike the government's earlier investigation into Microsoft's control of computer operating system software, Reback said the stakes were much higher now that the software giant had set its sights on the Internet.   "Before we've been talking about monopolization of particular segments of desktop computing," he said.   "Here we're talking about monopolization of the Internet.   "The Internet is going to be as important to our lives as the telephone has been and the television combined," he said.   "It's the way we're going to get news, deal with our banks and buy baseball tickets and everything else.   And so if one company ends up dominating that through illegal practices, consumers would really suffer and that's what's really motivating the government here."   Among other things, Netscape has accused Microsoft of making written offers to computer makers, Internet service providers, large corporations and others on condition that rival browsers would be less accessible than Microsoft's.   Netscape said the offers consisted of payments or discounts on the Microsoft desktop operating system or payments in the form of "real estate" on the Windows 95 screen.   Microsoft officials have called the Netscape complaints a public relations ploy.   "As a company and as an industry we've been through this before," a Microsoft spokesman said.   "We are not going to be distracted by this latest request."   Netscape is hardly the first company to take on Microsoft.   Most notably, Apple Computer Corp. unsuccessfully sued the software giant, accusing it of copying its Macintosh operating system for Microsoft's Windows system.   Neukom said Thursday that it was disappointing that Microsoft's competitors "continue to seek government intervention in the competitive process rather than concentrating on improving their products."   Microsoft has had numerous squabbles with the government over the years, most notably the company's decision in 1995 to abandon its planned acquisition of personal finance software maker Intuit Inc. after the Justice Department threatened to challenge the deal in court. 
19289 !C13 !CCAT !GCAT !GPOL  The U.S. Senate passed a bill late Wednesday that would outlaw various forms of computer mischief and increase penalties on repeat offenders.   The National Information Infrastructure Protection Act extends existing laws to cover private computers used in foreign or interstate commerce or communications and adds penalties for government employees who misuse confidential information.   "Computer crime is on the rise and these steps are needed to help us fight it," said Sen. Patrick Leahy.    The Vermont Democrat introduced the bill with Republican Senators Jon Kyl of Arizona and Charles Grassley of Iowa.   On Thursday, the Central Intellingence Agency closed its World Wide Web page after an unknown hacker defaced the site, following a similiar break-in at the Justice Department's Web site in August.   And earlier this month, some computers on the Internet were virtually shut down by hackers transmitting vast streams of bogus data.   Public Access Networks Corp, the oldest public Internet system in New York, said attacks on its computers began Sept. 6 and are nearly impossible to trace.    The bill that passed the Senate would fill gaps in current law by amending existing criminal statutes and clarifying definitions that apply to hacking, Senate staffers said.   For example, the bill broadens the definition of damage to specifically include physical injury and threats to public health or safety.   The measure, endorsed by the Justice Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, now goes to the House.   Rep. Robert Goodlatte has introduced a companion measure, but with little time left in the current session the Virginia Republican's bill might not reach the floor for a vote.   --Aaron Pressman, 202-898-8312 
19290 !C12 !C13 !CCAT !GCAT !GCRIM  Stewart Enterprises Inc said Thursday it has settled a Federal Trade Commission complaint against five of its funeral homes in Dallas, agreeing to pay about $30,000 for each home.   The company said the settlement "acknowledges no violations" and that it is a "substantially less" amount than it would have otherwise cost to pursue the matter in court.   Stewart Enterprises operates 211 funeral homes and 114 cemeteries in 21 states, Australia, New Zealand, Mexico and Puerto Rico. 
19291 !C12 !C13 !CCAT !GCAT !GCRIM  International Game Technology has won its lawsuit against WMS Industries Inc over a slot machine component patent, WMS said on Friday.   The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois found certain WMS Gaming Inc reel-type slot machines infringed a 1984 patent owned by IGT.   The court awarded IGT damages and an injunction to take effect in mid-October, WMS said.   WMS said it would appeal.   It estimated maximum damages at $1-$2 million if the appeal is unsuccessful.    WMS said newer WMS slot machines are designed differently and, based on advice from its patent counsel, it believes the newer machines will not be affected by the court ruling.   -- Chicago Newsdesk 312-408-8787 
19292 !C12 !C18 !C181 !CCAT !GCAT !GCRIM  A federal judge has denied motions for an injunction blocking the proposed merger of Buffets Inc and HomeTown Buffet Inc, the two restaurant companies said on Friday.   Judge Dee Benson of U.S. District Court for the State of Utah, Central Division, denied motions by plaintiffs Summit Family Restaurants Inc and CKE Restaurants Inc., the companies said in a joint statement.   Buffets and HomeTown said they expect their merger to close today. 
19293 !C12 !CCAT !GCAT !GCRIM  Microtest Inc said on Friday that a class action lawsuit has been filed against it and certain of its directors and officers, alleging securities violations and common law fraud.   In a statement, the company said that it believed the lawsuit was without merit and it intended to defend itself against the allegations "vigorously". 
19294 !C12 !C34 !CCAT !E51 !E512 !ECAT !GCAT !GCRIM  The U.S. trade representative's office is delaying presentation of evidence in its case against Japan's Fuji Photo Film Co Ltd, which alleges anticompetitive measures are taken against film sales in Japan by Eastman Kodak Co, the Wall Street Journal reported Friday.   The delay is intended to allow the trade office to present evidence not only against major Japanese retailers but also against small and midsized retailers, the article said, quoting the acting U.S. trade representative, Charles Barshefsky.   The trade agency will request a special meeting of the World Trade Organization in the first week of October to approve the change.   The article quotes a Kodak spokesman as saying the developments were positive, while also quoting a Fuji spokesman as saying the change signals a weakness in the original case.   --New York Newsdesk (212) 859-1610 
19295 !GCAT !GWEA  Willie has made landfall as a minimal typhoon over the northeastern portion of Hainan, China.   Willie will reintensify as it tracks westward over open waters of the Gulf of Tonkin this period.   Top winds are near 75 mph and will likely strengthen to 85-100 mph by the time the storm threatens northern Vietnam later this period.   This system will continue to spread heavy rains over Hainan for the next 6-12 hours as the system slowly drifts away from the region.   Additional flooding and mudslides will likely occur.   This sytem continues to threaten shipping operations in the region.    Typhoon Violet is about 300 miles east of Okinawa, Japan at this time, moving very slowly to the north.   This system will begin to accelerate to the northeast over the next 24 hours.   Top winds, now near 105 mph, should be down to near 75 mph by 48 hours.   Violet is mainly a threat to shipping at this time, though high swells are expected to continue along south-facing and east-facing coastal areas of Japan.   Violet threatens Honshu late in the period with gusty winds and rain.    Tom is losing tropical characteristics.   The tropical storm, with top winds of 50 mph, is tranitioning to an extratropical weather system in the northwestern Pacific and should be fully converted to such by 12 hours. 
19296 !GCAT !GDIP !GWELF  California Governor Pete Wilson said late on Thursday he was instructing the state's counties to continue providing food stamp benefits for legal immigrants.   Wilson said the federal government had instructed the state to begin by September 22 the termination of food stamp benefits to all legal immigrants who were not specifically exempted under the new federal welfare law.   But Wilson said the U.S. Department of Agriculture late on Thursday instructed the state not to implement the restrictions for food stamp recipients as it had planned.   As a result, Wilson said he has directed the state's Health and Welfare Agency to notify all 58 counties not to terminate food stamp benefits to legal immigrants pending further direction by the federal government.   Wilson, a Republican, blasted the Clinton Administration for "needlessly" confusing California.   Los Angeles County Supervisor Gloria Molina welcomed the news.   In a statement, she said that more than 200,000 children and adults in the county would have been cut off.    "Thankfully, the U.S. Department of Agriculture has reigned in the state and has told them to continue to provide food stamp benefits to legal immigrants," Molina said.   The welfare law, signed by President Bill Clinton last month, ends a six-decade federal guarantee of aid, limits most benefits to five years and requires recipients to work after two years.   It gives states block grants to design their own welfare systems. 
19297 !GCAT !GPOL  The Los Angeles City Council has confirmed the nomination of Rick Caruso as a member of the city Board of Water and Power Commissioners, city officials said on Thursday.   An attorney and real estate broker, Caruso currently is president of Caruso Affiliated Holdings, a real estate investment and development company.   The Board oversees the city Department of Water and Power. 
19298 !GCAT !GPOL !GPRO !GVOTE  Dimitris Tsovolas seems more like a mischievious imp than the giant killer who may stop socialist Prime Minister Costas Simitis from winning Sunday's election.   He has been a radical populist lawyer, a socialist finance minister, a convicted felon and now he seems to be pulling the electoral carpet out from under Simitis' feet.   Tsovolas, 54, who quit the socialists last year, has Simitis running scared and has siphoned off a substantial block of votes with his reputation as a working class hero.   "Tsovolas is the socialists' biggest problem.   He is the big unknown, the "X" factor in the equation of this election," said MRB polling expert Christina Badouna.   His Democratic Social Movement (DHKKI), set up in December, has a solid five percent in opinion polls -- almost every vote taken from Simitis' Panhellenic Socialist Movement (PASOK).   "Tsovolas focused his campaign on the grassroot socialist populists, the lower income earners, the less educated and all those who are angry with both major parties," said political commentator John Loulis.   Simitis called the early election confident of a strong win and convinced that his personal popularity would even bring over voters from the conservative opposition.   But conservative leader Miltiades Evert mounted a vigorous campaign.   He appears to have rallied his supporters and headed off a large-scale defection to Simitis.   That one-two punch by Evert and Tsovolas has been Simitis' worst nightmare.   He failed to woo conservatives while Tsovolas dug deep into his bedrock socialist support.   Simitis is also handicapped by a lacklustre campaign and his plodding lectures on economics and European Union targets while Tsovolas lays down a passionate stump speech.   A skilled courtroom lawyer, Tsovolas's campaign style and politics come from the early radical days of Andreas Papandreou, one of Greece's most loved politicians and skilled speakers.   That has helped him connect with the PASOK old-guard while Simitis has alienated some leftists with vows to create a "New PASOK" -- a modern party eschewing Papandreou's populism and enforcing stringent economic targets.   Simitis appears to have understood only late in the campaign that Tsovolas had successfully painted him as a neo-conservative who would cut back on Papandreou's vast welfare state.   "Simitis and his cohorts are transforming the socialists from a movement of the disenfranchised to a movement of hustlers pursuing neo-conservative policies and betraying the people," he told a campaign rally.   Tsovolas was Papandreou's finance minister from 1985 to 1989 and became something of a Robin Hood figure for responding with gusto to Papandreou's public order to "Give it all away".   He was charged along with Papandreou in a $200-million bank embezzlement scandal in 1989 but rejected his mentor's order to stay away from the televised trial.   Instead he mounted his own passionate defence, facing down the austere supreme court judges and perhaps saving the skin of the absent Papandreou, who was eventually acquitted.   Tsovolas's courtroom flare confirmed his standing among many leftists, who saw the case as little more than a right-wing show trial.   He was convicted and ordered jailed for two years -- PASOK paid a fine instead -- and he had his political rights suspended for three years -- preventing him from running in 1993.   He was pardoned by parliament after the socialists returned to power in October 1993 but broke formally with the socialists after Simitis and his reform group took control. 
19299 !GCAT !GPOL !GPRO  The Papandreou family feud has come back to haunt Greece's troubled socialists, with the late leader's son branding his blonde widow Dimitra Liani as a power hungry vulture who ruined his father.   Days before a close national election, Andreas Papandreou's second son Nikos told The European newspaper that his father's affair with the former Olympic Airways flight attendant ruined his political career.   Liani, 41, lashed back on Friday, saying Papandreou really loved her and those who doubted his mental condition were only trying to commercially exploit him.   The feud comes as the ruling Socialist party Papandreou founded in 1974 faces a close race against the conservatives and could prove a damaging embarrassment two days before elections.   Nikos Papandreou, who has written a heavily autobiographical novel about his childhood as the son of a Greek political giant, was quoted by the newspaper as saying his father's marriage to Liani was not a happy one.   "This relationship ruined my father's political career and, I think, ultimately brought about his physical demise," he said.   "But I do not think my father was happy in his marriage and I think he regretted it to the day he died."   With a statement sent to Athens newspapers, Liani said it was vile to attack Papandreou's personality by painting him as his wife's "meek instrument" and said this was an effort to take commercial advantage of him -- insinuating book sales.   Liani won Papandreou's heart in 1988 while she was serving him drinks on an airliner and he soon began to flaunt their extramarital affair to a shocked the nation.   He divorced his American wife of 37 years and mother of his four children to marry Liani in 1989.   She stood by him through election defeat, scandals and health problems but she was branded an opportunist for expressing political ambitions.   "She was a woman who wanted power and would do anything to get it," Nikos Papandreou was quoted as saying.   "Many vultures show up around a powerful man and she was one of them."   But he admitted that the woman whose nude photographs were splashed in newspapers around the world had some appeal.   "She has a certain domineering quality.   When you combine that with a certain instinct, a hunger for power and a physical beauty, and impose that on a man in his sixties and seventies then you have the makings of a disaster," he said.   Education Minister George Papandreou, the older brother and one following his father's political footsteps, avoided commenting on the feud, telling reporters the socialist party victory in Sunday's election should take priority.   Papandreou's children had been discreet about their notoriously bad relations with Liani until an Athens court this month made public two of his wills -- where he names her his sole heir and describes her as "the great love of my life."   He left nothing to his four children, saying that his name was a good enough inheritance.   "They continue to violently mire the memory of the man they say they loved," Liani said.   "Andreas Papandrou spoke of me with words of love...which now give me strength and courage."   Papandreou, who ruled Greece from 1981 to 1989 and won a third term in October 1993, died in June.   He was 77, 36 years older than Liani. 
19300 !E12 !ECAT !G15 !G154 !GCAT !M13 !M132 !MCAT  Finland has not fixed any timetable for the decision whether to link the markka to Europe's exchange rate mechanism (ERM), Bank of Finland supervisory board chairman Ilkka Kanerva said on Friday.   "The exact timetable has not been fixed," Kanerva told Reuters by telephone.   "It will be made this autumn," he added.   "But it is not this weekend," he said, referring to the September 20-22 informal meeting of European Union finance ministers and central bank governors in Dublin.   Kanerva said any decisions reached at the ECOFIN meeting would not affect Finland's ERM decision.   "Our game-plan is not built on that," he said, but declined to comment on which elements the Finnish ERM game-plan was built on.   Recent views by high-level foreign decision-makers pointing to a Finnish ERM decision in the next few weeks might be interpretations of Finnish Prime Minister Paavo Lipponen's repeated announcements that the decision was due in the near future, Kanerva said.   "They don't have any sceret information," he said, referring to Belgian central bank governor Alfons Verplaetse and European Parliament President Klaus Hansch.   Verplaetse said on Friday that Finland would "one of these weeks join the ERM system."   Hansch said last week he expected Finland to decide in the next few weeks whether to link the markka to ERM.   --Peter Starck, Helsinki Newsroom +358 - 0 - 680 50 245 
19301 !GCAT !GPOL !GVOTE  The Liberal Forum will hold a meeting at 1900 local at Hilton Hotel in central Athens on election night to chart its post-election policy, its spokesman Tassos Avradinis told Reuters.   The forum which is Greece's neo-liberal think-tank will come out with a formal statement about developments in the liberal-conservative political spectrum on Sunday night, he said.   --Dimitris Kontogiannis, Athens Newsroom +301 3311812-4 
19302 !C13 !C31 !C312 !CCAT !G15 !G153 !GCAT  Prospects of an early lifting of a European ban on British beef sales vanished on Friday after the government bowed to domestic political pressure and shelved a cull of up to 147,000 cattle most at risk of mad cow disease.   Farmers' leaders welcomed the decision but it drew an icy response from the European Union, which had insisted on a full-scale cull as part of a deal with Britain aimed at a gradual easing of the crippling embargo imposed in March.   "As long as they do not meet the pre-conditions and until we have a working document from them which we can carefully check, then an end to the export ban is simply not a possibility," European Union Farm Commissioner Franz Fischler said.   British Agriculture Minister Douglas Hogg said London had called off the selective cull, which is in addition to a rolling programme to destroy 450,000 cattle a year over the age of 30 months, because of fierce opposition in parliament.   "Any minister who wanted to get the cull order through the House of Commons would have to be able to persuade the House of Commons that member states would be able or willing to ... lift the ban.   And many members of parliament are deeply concerned," Hogg told BBC radio.   Prime Minister John Major, who must call an election by May, has a majority of just one in the 651-seat lower chamber.   He would have faced certain defeat had the cull been put to a vote.   Major said new projections by Oxford University scientists that mad cow disease would die out within five years, with or without a cull, also justified the government's decision.   "I don't think anybody wishes to see a cull take place which is unnecessary and economically wasteful," Major told reporters.   "I would ask for a rational debate, rational consideration," Major added.   "No more hysterical overreaction so that gradually we can restore the confidence that I believe should never have been lost in British beef."   The European Union imposed the ban after British scientists discovered a probable link between mad cow disease, or Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE), and the invariably fatal Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease, which rots human brains.   Major said suspension of the cull did not mean he was tearing up a deal struck at an EU summit in Florence in June.   "It was perfectly clear within the Florence agreement that if new evidence arose we had to consider that evidence," he said.   Hogg did admit, however, that Britain could no longer hope for the ban on beef exports, worth 500 million pounds ($780 million) a year before the crisis erupted, to be lifted by November as Major had hoped after the Florence agreement.   Asked whether the ban would still be in place in five years' time, Hogg added: "It depends on member states.   There is a process which enables the ban rapidly and substantially to be lifted, but that depends on member states."   He said the strategy now would be to get the ban lifted first on so-called certified herds -- cattle primarily fed on grass that have no record of BSE.   Such a plan, if agreed by the EU, would be likely to start in Northern Ireland.   Sir David Naish, president of the powerful National Farmers' Union, said he would meet European Farm Commissioner Franz Fischler later on Friday to put Britain's case.   "Our Scottish and our Ulster (Northern Ireland) colleagues do have many more herds that have had no BSE cases, and I hope we can help persuade Commissioner Fischler that this is a way to start the lifting of the beef ban," he told BBC radio.   Members of the ruling Conservative Party from farming constituencies, who had threatened to vote down the cull when parliament debates it next month, were pleased by the news.   But former prime minister Sir Edward Heath, a fervent pro-European, said: "It will be interpreted widely that the British government reached an agreement at Florence and has now overthrown that agreement unilaterally." 
19303 !GCAT  Britain has suspended a listed charity, Iran Aid, from fundraising for Iranian refugees after complaints that it had used emotive tactics.   The charity commission said on Friday it had received complaints that Iran Aid had used intimidating and threatening methods.   They included showing photographs of dead people who the charity said had been executed by the Iranian government.   The collectors were also said at times to have refused to leave until people made donations.   "This charity legitimately raises funds in the U.K. for Iranian refugees both here and abroad.   Many of their collectors are themselves refugees."   the commission said.   It said Iran Aid could be allowed to resume collections only when "it has introduced proper controls and a training plan designed to ensure that fund-raisers will no longer bring the charity into disrepute".   "Previous assurances from the charity that they will improve their methods have done little to reduce the number of complaints received," it said in a statement.   A spokesman for Iran Aid said: "We are very shocked to hear the news which we think is an overreaction.   Over the past six months Iran Aid has received no complaints from the charity commissioners."   Commission investigators and accountants are to visit the charity whose latest accounts show it has an annual income of 1.2 million pounds ($1.87 million). 
19304 !E12 !ECAT !G15 !G151 !G154 !GCAT !GPOL !M13 !M132 !MCAT  British finance minister Kenneth Clarke, defying the powerful "Euro-sceptic" wing of the ruling Conservative party, said in an interview on Friday it would be "complete folly" to rule out joining a single European currency.   Foreign Minister Malcolm Rifkind tried to play down the Chancellor of the Exchequer's comments on the eve of key talks on European economic and monetary union (EMU), insisting Clarke had not actually said a single currency was a good thing.   Clarke, the most committed Europhile in a divided cabinet, told the Daily Telegraph newspaper it would be complete folly for Britain to declare now that it would not join EMU, as Euro-sceptics are demanding.   A decision could be left until closer to the 1999 launch date for the single currency but participation could be "very advantageous to this country."   Clarke added that it could even be "very desirable" for Britain to be among the first wave of participants in monetary union, which is due to start from 1999.   Rifkind, who delighted Conservative right-wingers this week with a speech warning of the dangers of monetary union, said it was an over-simplification to suggest that he and Clarke were at odds over the single currency, to be known as the euro.   "The Chancellor has not said he thinks it is a good idea," he told BBC radio.   "He says, and I agree with him, that this is a crucial and historic decision.   What he was actually pointing out was that there could be circumstances, in his view, in which a single currency might be beneficial to the United Kingdom."   The foreign secretary said he agreed with six Conservative elder statesmen who said on Thursday that membership of the EU was the best guarantee of influence and prosperity in the world.   "It would be folly for Britain to leave the European Union," he said.   "The debate is not about whether we should be in the European Union.   The debate is about what kind of European Union -- whether it should be, as Britain believes, a partnership of nations, or whether it should be some sort of federal super-state."   The foreign secretary delivered a swipe against Germany and France, the self-styled motors of European integration, suggesting they were putting politics before economics.   "One of our concerns has been that much of the motivation for a single currency in France and Germany is political rather than economic.   That is why the economic convergence criteria are so crucially important," Rifkind said.   Clarke's forthright comments were likely to be welcomed by his fellow EU finance ministers when they meet in Dublin on Saturday to consider further steps towards monetary union.   But he nonetheless looks likely to be sidelined at the meeting, where his colleagues will be concentrating on the detailed practicalities of a single currency, unimpressed by Britain's continued agonising over the fundamental concept.   Some leaders in continental Europe hope opposition Labour party leader Tony Blair will take a more positive approach to a single currency if he wins a general election due by next May.   Labour has a strong lead in opinion polls but has so far avoided firm commitments on EMU.   Norbert Walter, chief economist at Germany's largest bank, Deutsche Bank, predicted that Britain would ultimately join a single currency.   "I don't think it will take long before the UK will join the euro," he told Reuters Financial Television.   "I think it won't take more than one or two years after the initial start." 
19305 !GCAT !GREL  Britain's Roman Catholic Church on Friday said it felt betrayed by a runaway bishop who fathered a love child and pleaded with the errant cleric to tell the world his side of the story.   Bishop Roderick Wright vanished nearly two weeks ago from his Scottish diocese with a divorcee.   The church suffered a second body blow when his 15-year-old son tearfully admitted to millions of television viewers he was the priest's secret son.   Sobbing over the father he had met for just two months in his whole life, Kevin Whibley said: "It's too late now.   I don't even want him if he comes."   His mother Joanne spoke angrily of the secret love for a priest she kept buried for so long.   "I have lived a lie and so has he," she said in a BBC television interview on Thursday.   She said she emerged from the shadows because she wanted to "put an end to Kevin's feeling that he should not even exist."   Their revelations shook the Roman Catholic establishment and again raised questions about the enforced celibacy of priests.   Church leaders were appalled by the heartache inflicted on mother and child by one of their clerics.   "We have been mistreated badly and that is regrettable.   I feel as betrayed as anybody in all of this," said Scotland's Cardinal Thomas Winning, who received Wright's resignation at the weekend.   The Vatican accepted it formally on Thursday.   Father Tom Connolly, spokesman for the Scottish Bishops' Conference, appealed to the popular Wright to speak publicly.   "I think it is time that he got in touch with a news agency or other media to tell them the answers to questions that have been posed to church people -- the answers we cannot give."   Wright, 55, vanished at the same time as 40-year-old divorcee and mother of three Kathleen Macphee.   He has apologised to her family but said nothing of his past.   That prompted 48-year-old Joanne Whibley to go public about the guilty secret she harboured for 15 years.   Whibley's revelation prompted another woman to speak out.   Adrianna Alsworth, a 39-year-old widow, said she had given birth to two children by a Catholic priest who then refused to have anything to do with her.   "I found it exhausting.   The secrecy and deceit were very difficult," she said.   On Friday, Joanne Whibley pleaded with journalists to "go away" as they camped outside her house in the southern English village of Polegate.   She even blocked her letter box.   Kevin Whibley, who left the house for an unknown destination on Thursday night, said his tragedy highlighted the need for the church to abandon its opposition to married priests.   Wright was a priest in a remote area of Scotland when he first met Joanne, who sought guidance when she became engaged to a Catholic.   He instructed her in the Catholic faith, started an affair and threatened to flee to Peru if she exposed his secret.   Cardinal Basil Hume, archbishop to 4.4 million English and Welsh Catholics, said the church had been gravely damaged by the scandal which highlighted the need to give priests better training for their vocation.   "I am sure there are other cases and we should be very, very vigilant ... I am amazed and admire the great majority of priests do live out their celibacy often with a struggle but pretty heroically," he told Sky Television. 
19306 !GCAT  Prepared for Reuters by The Broadcast Monitoring Company   EVENING STANDARD   I HAD A PRIEST'S CHILDREN TOO   Following the news that runaway Catholic Bishop Roderick Wright has a son by another woman, the revelation that a second woman has had secret children by a Catholic priest has plunged the Catholic church into turmoil.   Adrianna Alsworth, who had two children by a Catholic priest, implied that other priests were breaking the celibacy rule.   --   FRENCH BOOST FOR TUNNEL DEBT HOPES   There is fresh hope of an early conclusion to Eurotunnel's   debt restructuring talks, after it was made known that Banque National de Paribas was willing to sign up to the proposed agreement.   --   CBI SURVEY BRINGS CHEER FOR ECONOMY   The CBI's September survey has found that Britain's manufacturing industry is poised for a recovery.   --   GUILTY PLEA ENDS 13-YEAR CARRIAN SAGA   The Carrian affair was brought to an end in Hong Kong today, as Malaysian businessman George Tan pleaded guilty to two counts of fraud amounting to 153 million stg.   The charges related to the collapse of the Carrian Group, the biggest company failure in Hong Kong's history.   --   NATWEST "READY TO MOVE OUT OF WALL STREET'   The American arm of NatWest Markets has made it known that it is considering leaving Manhattan, leading to suggestions that it is seeking tax and other incentives to remain in New York City.   --   JFIM TAKES STEPS TO CALM CLIENT WORRIES   Jardine Fleming Investment Management is instituting a much bigger shake-up than previously thought, following regulatory action against the fund management arm of Robert Fleming's joint venture with Jardine Matheson Holdings.   -- BMC +44 171 377 1742 
19307 !GCAT !GREL  Britain's Roman Catholic Church said on Friday it felt betrayed by a runaway bishop who fathered a love child in a deeply embarrassing sex scandal.   Bishop Roderick Wright, who vanished nearly two weeks ago from his Scottish diocese with a divorcee, dealt the church a second body blow when a 15-year-old boy tearfully admitted to millions of television viewers that he was the cleric's secret son.   Sobbing over the father he had met for just two months in his whole life, Kevin Whibley said: "It's too late now.   I don't even want him if he comes."   His mother Joanne spoke angrily of the secret love for a priest she kept buried for so long.   "I have lived a lie and so has he," she said in a BBC television interview on Thursday.   Their revelations shook the Roman Catholic establishment to its foundations and again raised questions about the enforced celibacy of priests.   Church leaders were appalled by the heartache inflicted on mother and child by one of their clerics.   "We have been mistreated badly and that is regrettable.   I feel as betrayed as anybody in all of this," said Scotland's Cardinal Thomas Winning, who received Wright's resignation at the weekend.   The Vatican accepted it formally on Thursday.   Wright, 55, vanished at the same time as 40-year-old divorcee and mother of three Kathleen Macphee.   He has apologised to her family but said nothing of his past.   That prompted 48-year-old Joanne Whibley finally to go public about the guilty secret she harboured for 15 years.   "I would not want this trivialised, this pathetic story.   I would want it to serve some purpose," she said, her face crumpling in anguish.   Kevin Whibley, bombarded all his life with questions about the identity of his father, said his personal tragedy highlighted the need for the church to abandon its opposition to celibate priests.   Wright was a priest in a remote area of Scotland when he first met Joanne.   He instructed her in the Catholic faith and threatened to flee to Peru if she exposed his secret.   "I wept for the mother and child and the way in which they have been treated," Winning, leader of Scotland's 750,000 Catholics, told The Herald newspaper in Glasgow.   Cardinal Basil Hume, archbishop to 4.4 million English and Welsh Catholics, said the church had been gravely damaged by the scandal which highlighted the need to give priests better training for their vocation.   "I am sure there are other cases and we should be very, very vigilant ... I am amazed and admire the great majority of priests who do live out their celibacy, often with a struggle but pretty heroically," he told Sky Television.   Pope John Paul is implacably opposed to any change in church law.   The Vatican insists on celibacy from its priests and nuns, saying the church's consecrated members must be celibate in order to devote themselves completely to God and their work.   Whibley's hurt, anger and confusion mirrored the identity crisis suffered four years ago by the lovechild of runaway Irish priest Eamon Casey, the errant bishop of Galway.   The boy's mother was American divorcee Annie Murphy whose revelations profoundly shocked deeply conservative and predominantly Catholic Ireland.   In her autobiography "Forbidden Fruit," she wrote of their first night of passion: "I witnessed a great hunger.   This was an Irish famine of the flesh.   He was a man releasing energies and feelings pent up for 25 years of his adult life." 
19308 !GCAT !GPOL  Colombia's ambassador to Britain, elected vice president of his country less than 24 hours ago, accepted his new office on Friday with a pledge to strive for reconciliation despite deep political rifts.   "I accept the president's invitation to join the government team to seek and consolidate reconciliation amongst the Colombian people," Carlos Lemos Simmonds said in a statement released in London.   "I am delighted and deeply moved by the high honour bestowed on me by the Colombian congress in electing me vice president of the Republic of Colombia ," he added.   A former interior minister, Lemos is widely respected as a tough and honest politician.   He was elected in absentia late on Thursday after an extraordinary vote in both houses of congress.   His predecessor Humberto de la Calle quit last week citing President Ernesto Samper's alleged ties to drug lords and what he described as the government's deepening credibility crisis.   Accused of accepting drugs money during his 1994 election campaign, Samper was cleared of any wrong-doing by a congressional trial in June.   But calls for his resignation have persisted.   While the duties of the vice president are ill-defined, he would take over from the president should he not complete his full four-year term.   Political analysts hope Lemos will be able to heal the rifts within his own Liberal party and pull together a country riven by political crisis and increasing lawlessness.   --Caroline Brothers, London Newsroom +44 171 542 2734 
19309 !C11 !C42 !CCAT !E41 !ECAT !GCAT !GJOB  British supermarket chain ASDA Plc's collegiate work atmosphere is reminiscent of opposition Labour Party leader Tony Blair's stakeholding idea, chief executive Allan Leighton told Reuters.   "That is exactly what it is.   People should be involved in what they do and there is no reason why they should not be," he said in an interview this week.   "Colleague, customer, shareholder, that's how it should be...bind the three things together, I think it's very powerful," he said.    ASDA's chairman Archie Norman has just been selected by the governing Conservative party as prospective parliamentary candidate for the safe seat of Tunbridge Wells in Kent.   Norman stepped up to the chairman's role last month as Leighton moved from his position as deputy chief executive.   The two introduced an open style of management to ASDA where all employees are called "colleagues" and encouraged to participate in decisions.   ASDA's management team, including Leighton, all work in open-plan offices and everybody at head office wears the "Happy to help" badges which are an intergral part of shop floor dress.    Colleagues are encouraged to "Tell Archie" suggestions and win rewards for improving sales performance of individual items, while weekly and even daily performance is recorded on "white boards" displayed in staff areas of the store.   "Everybody thinks (the company style) is gimmicky.   It isn't, it's incredibly commercial," Leighton said.   He suggested that the collegiate atmosphere and high staff involvement in day-to-day issues boosted staff confidence and improved performance to the benefit of the company.   "It is a third of our success," he said.   -- London Newsroom +44 171 5427717 
19310 !C11 !C42 !CCAT !E41 !ECAT !GCAT !GJOB  Citicorp said on Friday as many as 150 people in five financial centres will come under the scope of a review announced earlier of its strategy in the futures broking business.   As speculation swirled in London markets about the fate of the Citifutures arm of Citicorp, the company said in a statement it was specifically reviewing whether it requires its own execution and clearing capabilities.   "We have 150 people over New York, Chicago, London, Tokyo and Singapore," a spokeswoman for Citicorp in London said.   She told Reuters 39 were posts in London.   "The review process could continue until the end of the year," the spokeswoman said.   She said Citicorp had been involved in the futures business in London for 12 years.   Traders on the LIFFE (the London Financial Futures and Options Exchange) floor said the announcement had sparked concerns the company was likely to pull out of the futures business altogether.   "You have to be concerned when a company comes out and says this sort of thing," said a floor trader at rival firm.   "A lot of the guys will be starting to line something else up."   But traders said the line at the Citifutures booth on LIFFE was "business as usual."   A spokewoman for LIFFE said the exchange has not been informed that Citicorp has made a decision to close the operation.   "As far as we are concerned, they haven't actually made a decision," the spokeswoman said.   "They will continue their operations on LIFFE as usual."   She added that the position of LIFFE's chairman, Jack Wigglesworth, who is also marketing director of Citifutures, was unaffected by the review.   Wigglesworth was elected to the post in May 1995, and was re-elected in May 1996.   LIFFE chairmen typically serve three years, LIFFE said.   Traders said the recent squeeze in commission rates for brokerages has led many companies to question whether the costs involved are worth it.   Clients are pushing down the amount they are prepared to pay brokers, which has resulted in a highly competitive market.   "There are more and more competing brokers falling over themselves for business," said an options broker at LIFFE.   "It's expensive to run a good floor team that can cope with the peaks and the troughs in activity."   Traders said a strong team needs about eight to 10 players, with three or four traders and four staff in the booths at the side of the pits.   Traders can command yearly salaries of about 65,000 stg and brokers salaries of about 45,000 stg.   "Customers view it as a victory when they get the commission charge down," said one futures trader.   "They don't realise that they could be losing one tick each time they do a trade."   Some big-name floor players have refused to join in the commission-slashing, arguing the quality of their staff means they are worth the extra costs.   "It's the old story, you pay peanuts you get monkeys," said a LIFFE trader.   -- International Bonds Unit +44 171 542 6137 
19311 !GCAT !GPOL !GVOTE  Britain's Green Party, whose allies in most of Europe are well entrenched in their national parliaments, on Friday rejected a call to opt out of the next general election by withdrawing its candidates.   At an annual conference in the southern seaside resort of Hastings, delegates voted by a large majority to remain in the electoral battle despite the enormous obstacles put in their way by Britain's first-past-the-post election system.   "Until the government reforms the electoral system, I do not want to take part in what is esentially a sham," the mover of the motion, Hugo Charlton, told the conference.   Britain's Greens are on the margins of politics with only 25 local councillors and no seats in the national parliament.   Charlton urged the party to preserve its resources for 1999 elections to the European Parliament rather than spending its money on the next British poll, expected in April or May 1997.   But local councillor Mike Woodin argued that the 70 candidates already adopted by the Greens should stand, even though they had little chance.   "This party has a duty to speak out loud and clear at the next election, and to put forward our policy message regardless of the number of votes we obtain," he said.   The Greens say their attempts to break into parliament are frustrated by a conviction among voters that their candidates stand no chance and are therefore not worth voting for.   They believe that if an electoral reform referendum pledged by the opposition Labour Party introduced proportional representation, the Greens' prospects would be transformed.   "I don't believe the British people are any less Green than the Germans," said David Taylor, the party's principal speaker, or leader.   "Given a fair electoral system and a well-organised Green Party, we could do at least as well as them."   The party looks wistfully at the success enjoyed by Greens in countries such as Germany where its sister party is the junior partner of the Social Democrats in four regional coalition governments.   In the 1992 general election the handful of British Green candidates averaged just 3.2 percent of the vote in the seats they fought -- a far cry from the 14.9 percent the party won in 1989 elections to the European Parliament. 
19312 !C13 !C21 !C31 !C312 !CCAT !G15 !G153 !GCAT  British Prime Minister John Major said on Friday the British government had suspended a cull of up to 147,000 cattle because it could have been unnecessary or uneconomic.   "I don't think anyone wishes to see a cull take place that is unnecessary and economically wasteful.   I hope we can discuss these matters rationally with the European Union and reach a rational and proper decision.   And that is what we are seeking to do," Major told reporters.    The government's decision to suspend the cull effectively dashed any hopes of the European Union agreeing to an early lifting of its ban on British beef sales.   Farmers' leaders welcomed the decision but it drew an icy response from the EU, which had insisted on a full-scale cull as part of a deal with Britain aimed at a gradual easing of the crippling embargo imposed in March.    "As long as they do not meet the pre-conditions and until we have a working document from them which we can carefully check, then an end to the export ban is simply not a possibility," European Union Farm Commissioner Franz Fischler said. 
19313 !GCAT !GREL  The woman who scandalised British Roman Catholics by revealing she was the mother of a bishop's lovechild hid in her home on Friday, emerging only to plead with journalists to leave her alone.   "Go away," Joanne Whibley implored the army of reporters at her terraced house in the village of Polegate, 55 miles (80 km) south of London.   Whibley blocked up her letterbox with a piece of cardboard in a vain bid to deter reporters.   She later caved in to the pressure, allowing a BBC television team into her small house.   The 48-year-old single mother set off a scandals on Thursday when she to told the BBC that disgraced Scottish bishop Roderick Wright was the father of her 15-year-old son Kevin.   Whibley's tearful interview with the BBC caused huge damage to the Catholic Church in Britain, which was already deep in debate over whether priests could be expected to stick to enforced vows of celibacy.   Wright's resignation was accepted by the Vatican on Thursday.   Wright was so embarrassed by her pregnancy that he forced Whibley to leave his name, as father, off the child's birth certificate.   But she said he had promised he would make up the damage to her when he left the church.   Wright vanished from his Scottish diocese last week.   He was reported to have left with a 40-year-old divorcee he had been counselling during the disintegration of her marriage.   "He told me he would try to make amends for the hurt he had caused us -- and if he resigned he would come to live with us so we could try to salvage something," Whibley sobbed.   "Now Kevin feels his existence has been denied again," Whibley said.   The only way she could keep father and son together was by putting their pictures in a key fob, she said.   Kevin left the house in Polegate in a car on Thursday night.   His destination was unknown.   Whibley met Wright when he was a priest in Scotland and she went to him for advice after she became engaged to another Catholic.   When she became pregnant, he threatened to go to Peru if she forced him to admit he was the father.   Whibley's revelations triggered further embarrassment for the church.   Adrianna Alsworth, a 39-year-old English widow, said she had given birth to two children by a Catholic priest who then refused to have anything to do with her.   "I was left to bring up the children alone.   It was appalling," she told BBC television.   "I found it exhausting.   The secrecy and deceit were very difficult -- I had to live alone."   Michael Hyland, spokesman for a group which supports priests who have abandoned the church to marry, said he deplored the actions of men like Wright.   "They get up on Sundays and preach about chastity...while they have these children.   They say we are traitors for leaving to get married, but what they do is totally unacceptable," he told the Daily Telegraph.   The Whibley case mirrored that of Irish bishop Eamonn Casey, who resigned in disgrace as bishop of Galway in May 1992 after it was revealed he had fathered a child during a passionate affair with American divorcee Annie Murphy.   Casey, a flamboyant man who loved fast cars, admitted he had stolen church funds to pay for the child's upkeep and was further humiliated when Murphy revealed the child had been conceived in the back of a sports car in a Dublin gravel pit.   "I witnessed a great hunger.   This was an Irish famine of the flesh.   Here was a man releasing energies and feelings pent up for more than 25 years," she wrote. 
19314 !GCAT  Britain has suspended a listed charity, Iran Aid, from fundraising for Iranian refugees after complaints that it had used emotive tactics.   The charity commission said on Friday it had received complaints that Iran Aid had used intimidating and threatening methods.   They included showing photographs of dead people who the charity said had been executed by the Iranian government.   The collectors were also said at times to have refused to leave until people made donations.   Iran Aid was not immediately available for comment.   "This charity legitimately raises funds in the U.K. for Iranian refugees both here and abroad.   Many of their collectors are themselves refugees."   the commission said.   It said Iran Aid could be allowed to resume collections only when "it has introduced proper controls and a training plan designed to ensure that fund-raisers will no longer bring the charity into disrepute".   "Previous assurances from the charity that they will improve their methods have done little to reduce the number of complaints received," it said in a statement.   Commission investigators and accountants are to visit the charity whose latest accounts show it has an annual income of 1.2 million pounds ($1.87 million). 
19315 !C23 !CCAT !GCAT !GHEA  Chocolate like red wine contains phenols, chemicals believed to help stop arteries from clogging up, U.S. doctors advised on Thursday.   "The pleasant pairing of red wine and dark chocolate could have synergistic advantages beyond their complementary tastes," Andrew Waterhouse and colleagues at the University of California at Davis wrote in a letter to the Lancet medical journal.   Phenols are antioxidants that prevent the "rusting" of low-density lipoproteins (LDLs), which are the so-called bad fat component of cholesterol.   When LDLs oxidise they turn into a plaque that can block arteries, causing heart disease.   Waterhouse's group, knowing that chocolate has natural preservatives that stop the fat in it from going rancid, tested chocolate to see how it compared to red wine, known to contain high levels of phenols.   They found quite a lot.   "A cup of hot chocolate containing 7.3 grams (two tablespoons) of cocoa could have 146 mg total phenol, whereas a 41 g (1.5 ounce) piece of chocolate would have 205 mg total phenol," they wrote.   "For comparison, a standard 140 ml (five ounce) serving of red wine contains about 210 mg total phenol."   They said the effects would need to be proven in people, but if they did, chocolate could be a significant source of the healthful chemicals. 
19316 !E21 !E211 !ECAT !GCAT !GPOL !GWELF  The Labour Party's plan to replace post-16 child benefit with an educational allowance will not entail extra spending, economics spokesman Gordon Brown said on Friday.   He said the cost of the scheme, which will be announced in due course, would be paid for by re-distributing child benefit (600-700 million pounds a year) and by using money saved from scrapping the present youth training scheme, which costs 950 million pounds.   "You can make the changes we propose within existing resources.   I am not announcing additional spending," Brown said.   -- London Newsroom +44 171 542 7717 
19317 !C13 !C21 !C24 !C31 !C312 !CCAT !G15 !G153 !GCAT  Prospects of an early lifting of a European ban on British beef sales vanished on Friday after the government bowed to domestic political pressure and shelved a cull of up to 147,000 cattle most at risk of mad cow disease.   Farmers' leaders welcomed the decision but it drew an icy response from the European Union, which had insisted on a full-scale cull as part of a deal with Britain aimed at a gradual easing of the crippling embargo imposed in March.   "As long as they do not meet the pre-conditions and until we have a working document from them which we can carefully check, then an end to the export ban is simply not a possibility," European Union Farm Commissioner Franz Fischler said.   British Agriculture Minister Douglas Hogg said London had called off the selective cull, which is in addition to a rolling programme to destroy 450,000 cattle a year over the age of 30 months, because of fierce opposition in parliament.   "Any minister who wanted to get the cull order through the House of Commons would have to be able to persuade the House of Commons that member states would be able or willing to ... lift the ban.   And many members of parliament are deeply concerned," Hogg told BBC radio.   Prime Minister John Major, who must call an election by May, has a majority of just one in the 651-seat lower chamber.   He would have faced certain defeat had the cull been put to a vote.   Hogg said, however, that the decision, taken at a two-hour meeting late on Thursday, was also justified by new projections by Oxford Univeristy scientists that mad cow disease would die out within five years with or without a cull.   The European Union imposed the ban after British scientists disclosed in March a probable link between mad cow disease, or Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE), and the invariably fatal Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease, which rots human brains.   "The position of the Commission has not changed," Jacques Santer, president of the European Commission, told Reuters Television in Brussels when asked about the British decision.   Major's office said suspension of the cull did not mean the government was departing from the framework of a deal struck at the European Council in Florence in June.   This deal allowed the eradication plan to be "adapted if necessary in the light of scientific and epidemiological developments".   Hogg did admit, however, that Britain could no longer hope for the ban on beef exports, worth 500 million pounds ($780 million) a year before the crisis erupted, to be lifted by November as Major had promised after the Florence agreement.   "We will not be seeing the ban lifted by November," Hogg said.   Asked whether the ban would still be in place in five years' time, Hogg added: "It depends on member states.   There is a process which enables the ban rapidly and substantially to be lifted, but that depends on member states."   He said the strategy now would be to get the ban lifted first on so-called certified herds -- cattle primarily fed on grass that have no record of BSE.   Such a plan, if agreed by the EU, is likely to start in Northern Ireland.   Sir David Naish, president of the powerful National Farmers' Union, said he would meet Fischler later on Friday to put Britain's case.   "Our Scottish and our Ulster (Northern Ireland) colleagues do have many more herds that have had no BSE cases, and I hope we can help persuade Commissioner Fischler that this is a way to start the lifting of the beef ban," he told BBC radio.   Members of the ruling Conservative Party from farming constituencies, who had threatened to vote down the cull when parliament debates it next month, were pleased by the news.   But former prime minister Sir Edward Heath, a fervent pro-European, said: "It will be interpreted widely that the British government reached an agreement at Florence and has now overthrown that agreement unilaterally."   ($1=.6412 Pound) 
19318 !C21 !CCAT !GCAT !GWEA !M14 !M141 !MCAT  Canada's Prairies Friday were free of frost and forecast to see mainly sunny skies and warm temperatures, Environment Canada said.   Edson, in Alberta's foothills grainbelt, saw the coolest overnight low at 2.0 Celsius (35.6 F).   Lethbridge, in southeast Alberta, also saw a low of 2.0 Celsius, meteorologist Mark Gerlynd said.   Saskatchewan saw lows of 4.0 to 6.0 Celsius.   Manitoba saw lows of 4.0 to 10 Celsius.   Alberta should see sunny skies with highs of 13 Celsius.   Saskatchewan should see mainly sunny skies.   Southeast Saskatchewan should see five to 20 mm (0.8 inch) of rain and a high of 15 Celsius.   Southwest Manitoba should also see light rain.   Manitoba should see mainly sunny skies otherwise and highs of 18 to 20 Celsius.   --Gilbert Le Gras 204-947-3548 
19319 !GCAT !GDEF !GDIP  A second batch of about 300 U.S soldiers arrived on Friday in Kuwait where U.S. troops staged a live fire exercise, coming under simulated gas attack near the Iraqi border.   "Gas in the trench," shouted one soldier alerting the some two dozen men taking part in the Intrinsic Action exercise to wear their masks in a simulated attack.   U.S. troops in Kuwait, including some 3,000 ordered this week to the tiny Gulf state to deter any possible military action by Iraq, are equipped with chemical and biological warfare detectors, protective suits and masks.   Military sources say Iraq still has chemical warfare capability.   Kuwait Television showed footage of the second group of 1st Cavalry soldiers arriving in the oil-rich state as part of a major U.S. military build-up in the region to contain Iraq.   The first group of about 217 soldiers who arrived in Kuwait from Texas joined an exercise of 1,100 U.S. soldiers stationed in Kuwait since before the Washington-Baghdad crisis erupted at the end of August.   On Friday four fighting vehicles took part in the live firing exercise while two U.S. A-10 tank killers, which were featured prominently in the 1991 Gulf War, flew overhead.   Back at their Camp Doha base, in north Kuwait, arriving soldiers checked pre-positioned U.S. battle tanks and other hardware before plunging into the desert.   More than 1,200 soldiers, part of the 3,000-strong U.S. force ordered to Kuwait, left Texas for Kuwait on commercial jets and C-5 military cargo planes throughout Thursday and hundreds more were expected to leave on Friday.   They are expected to be fully deployed in Kuwait in the next few days, U.S. officers said.   A total of 4,000 U.S. soldiers, including 150 women in combat support units, 1,600 tanks, 70 armoured fighting vehicles and other heavy arms will take part in the exercise over the next few months.   Across the border, Iraq has some 60,000 troops south of the 32nd parallel, the original no-fly, no-go zone set up by Western allies in 1992.   "We will be ready," U.S. Army Colonel Robert Pollard told reporters when asked if the troops could stop Iraq from crossing the border.   He stressed that the task force was part of a bigger U.S. presence in the region capable of deterring Iraq.   "We are here to deter war...We are trying to send a signal and that signal (to Iraq) is 'We are ready'," he added.   The United States has close to 30,000 troops in the immediate area and more than 350 warplanes deployed either on warships or in Gulf Arab states.   The row with Baghdad erupted when Iraqi forces intervened in northern Iraq on August 31 to help a Kurdish faction fighting a rival Kurdish group.   Washington retaliated by firing 44 cruise missiles at targets in the south.   The U.S. buildup in the Gulf includes the arrival on Thursday of a second aircraft carrier battle group, the USS Enterprise.   Seven of the 28 U.S. warhips in the area are capable of firing Tomahawk cruise missiles. 
19320 !GCAT !GDIP !GVIO  A committee monitoring a ceasefire understanding in Lebanon will meet on Sunday to look into Israeli and Lebanese complaints, the Israeli army and Lebanese official sources said on Friday.   The Lebanese sources said representatives of the five nations making up the committee -- Lebanon, Israel, Syria, France and the United States -- are scheduled to meet at 0700 GMT in Naqoura, the coastal headquarters of the U.N. Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL).   "The committee will meet following a complaint by Lebanon over Israeli shelling of civilian areas on September 19 which is in breach of the April understanding," a foreign ministry official told Reuters in Beirut.   An Israeli army spokesman said Israel would register a complaint that pro-Iranian Hizbollah guerrillas fired on its forces from inside three south Lebanon villages on the same day.   Israeli jets and gunners bombarded villages held by the Hizbollah in south Lebanon on Thursday after two Israeli soldiers were killed and eight wounded inside Israel's south Lebanon occupation zone.   At least 50 shells slammed inside the villages of Ain Bouswar and Jba'a, wounding a Lebanese civilian woman in Jba'a who was hurt by flying debris.   The Israeli army said Hizbollah forces fired on its troops from those villages and as well as from a third it named as Jarah.   An April understanding which brought to an end a 17-day Israeli blitz on Lebanon banned firing from or at civilian areas on the two sides of the border but did not rule out guerrilla attacks on Israeli troops inside the zone.   Hizbollah is fighting to oust Israel from the 15-km (nine mile) deep border zone. 
19321 !GCAT !GDEF !GDIP !GVIO  Ashraf Fouad   Hundreds of U.S. ground troops and heavy armour plunged into the Kuwaiti desert on Friday close to the Iraqi border for exercises aimed at deterring any possible military action by Baghdad.   More than 1,200 soldiers, part of a 3,000-strong U.S. force ordered to the tiny Gulf Arab state, left Texas for Kuwait on commercial jets and C-5 military cargo planes throughout Thursday and hundreds more are expected to leave later on Friday.   With no rest after the long flight from Texas, hundreds of the 1st Cavalry Division soldiers already here drew pre-positioned U.S. main battle tanks, armoured fighting vehicles and other hardware from a storage base in north Kuwait and deployed in the desert.   A total of 4,000 U.S. soldiers, including 150 women in combat support units, 1,600 tanks, armoured fighting vehicles (AFV) and other heavy weaponry will take part in the war games.   Across the border, Iraq has some 60,000 troops south of the 32nd parallel, the original no-fly, no-go zone set up by Western allies a year after they freed Kuwait in 1991 from a seven-month Iraqi occupation.   "We will be ready," U.S. Army Colonel Robert Pollard told reporters when asked if the 1st Cavalry could stop Iraq from crossing the border.   He stressed that the task force was part of a bigger U.S. presence in the region capable of deterring Iraq.   "We are here to deter war...We are trying to send a signal and that signal (to Iraq) is 'We are ready'," he added.   The United States has close to 30,000 troops in the immediate area and more than 350 warplanes deployed either on warships or in Gulf Arab states.   Kuwaiti ministers this week toured Gulf War Arab allies to explain the need for the huge U.S. military build-up in the face of renewed Iraqi threats, Gulf officials said.   "There are two separate issues here: The security of Kuwait and its right to defend itself and a possible unprovoked new (U.S.) strike against Iraq," a non-Kuwait Gulf official said.   The latest Iraq-U.S. standoff erupted in late August when Iraqi forces played a decisive role in factional Kurdish fighting in north Iraq.   Washington retaliated by firing 44 cruise missiles at targets in the south.   The strikes failed to gain Arab support, with many allies describing them as a violation of Iraq's sovereignty.   But for Kuwaitis the U.S. deployment is welcome news.   Television footage and pictures published in local newspapers showed the troops arriving.   In Kuwait, uniformed U.S. officers can be seen moving freely in public places while elsewhere in the area some allies find it difficult to justify close ties with Washington and U.S. citizens and soldiers alike are told to keep a low profile.   "There are a lot of Kuwaitis who are going to sleep better tonight (Thursday) because the First Cav is here," said U.S. Ambassador to Kuwait Ryan Crocker.   The U.S. buildup in the Gulf includes the arrival on Thursday of a second aircraft carrier battle group, the USS Enterprise.   Seven of the 28 U.S. warhips in the area are capable of firing Tomahawk cruise missiles.   There are about 17,000 sailors and 150 warplanes, including 50 air-to-ground strike aircraft, based on ships in the area.   Four U.S. B-52 bombers with cruise missiles have rebased to the Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia while eight U.S. F-117As Stealth bombers were sent to Kuwait.   Iraq's air force was dealt a severe blow during the Gulf War and U.N. sanctions against Baghdad since 1990 have impeded its ability to acquire spare parts and upgrade the planes. 
19322 !E21 !E211 !ECAT !GCAT !GPOL  The Lebanese government has approved a tight 1997 public budget of 6,400 billion Lebanese pounds with a 35.9 percent deficit of income against expenditure, a cabinet minister said on Friday.   Acting Finance Minister Fouad Siniora said a draft submitted by the finance ministry was approved Wednesday with slight changes which added 25 billion pounds to the expenditures of 6,375 billion.   Income was unchanged at 4,100 billion pounds.   These figures compared with planned 1996 spending of 6,458 billion against 4,022 billion income -- or a 38 percent deficit.   "Our aim is to tighten spending," Siniora told a news conference.   He said the budget -- which still needs parliament approval -- will relax financial markets and give different economic sectors easier access to sources of finance.   "This will allow easier access for different economic sectors to financing in comparison with the previous period of high competition between the private and public sector in getting needed financing," he said.   "This in turn will positively affect the interest rates on the Lebanese markets allowing these sources of finance to turn towards the private sector," Siniora added.   According to official figures, the shortfall of income against expenditure stood at 47.8 percent at the end of August -- a major overun of the 38 percent deficit authorised by parliament.   "This is due to the April Israeli aggression which forced us to spend more while expected revenues decreased by 10 percent," Siniora said.   In April, Israel launched a 17-day blitz on Lebanon to crush pro-Iranian Hizbollah guerrillas, killing 200 people and causing extensive damage to infrastructure and businesses.   In 1995, the final shortfall of income against expenditure was 47 percent compared with a target deficit of 44 percent.   Siniora said 42.35 percent of 1997 spending will go to debt servicing and interest -- an increase of 100 billion over 1996 -- while some 35.3 percent was allocated to wages and salaries.   He said any possible increases in public sector pay was not noted in the 1997 budget.   "If the government or parliament want to introduce such rises, parliament will have to secure needed revenues."   ($1 =1,559 pounds) 
19323 !E51 !E512 !ECAT !GCAT !GDIP  A delegation from Cyprus Chamber of Commerce and Industry (KEVE) will visit Estonia and Latvia next week to promote the island as an international business centre, it said on Friday.   The delegation will hold seminars in Riga and Tallinn covering trade and shipping issues, investment opportunities in Cyprus, and treaties Cyprus has with other countries to avoid double taxation.   The visit, between September 22 and 29, is organised by KEVE, the Cypriot Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Tourism and the chambers of commerce and industry of Latvia and Estonia.   The Cypriot team will be headed by Paris Lenas, KEVE's vice chairman, the announcement said.   -- Michele Kambas, Nicosia newsroom 357 2 365089 -- 
19324 !E51 !E511 !ECAT !GCAT !GTOUR  Tunisia expects a slight rise this year in earnings from tourism, its biggest source of hard currency, Tourism and Handicrafts Minister Slaheddine Maaoui said in remarks published on Friday.   Earnings from tourism were expected to reach 1.4 billion dinars in 1996, up from 1.322 billion dinars in 1995 and 1.317 billion dinars in 1994.   More than four million tourists visited the north African country last year.   ($=0.97 dinar) 
19325 !E51 !E512 !ECAT !GCAT !GDIP  Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak said in an interview to be aired on Friday he feared a Middle East economic summit in Cairo might become an arena for political strife if peace moves made no progress by November.   "An important economic conference is on the way...Will the countries attend...will it become an arena for us to talk politics and to attack each other politically?   This is the fear," Mubarak told Israel's Channel Two television in an interview to be broadcast later on Friday.   Most of the Egyptian cabinet met on Thursday to prepare for the conference, scheduled to be held in Cairo in November, in a resture publicised to show that Egypt still has hope that the conference will take place.   The fate of the conference, which brings together leaders and businessmen from around the world to discuss joint ventures, appeared in doubt after Egypt threatened to delay the summit over Israel's failure to implement self-rule deals signed with the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO).   Egypt has been pushing Israel's right-wing leader Benjamin Netanyahu to redeploy his troops from the West Bank town of Hebron and to carry out other commitments made by the previous government he ousted in May elections.   Mubarak reiterated in the interview that he was determined to hold the conference on time but demanded U.S. and Israeli help in making the summit a success.   "I want the conference to be held on time because that is very important," Mubarak said.   "I also want the United States and Israel to help push the (peace) process forward so we can move."   Asked to comment on Netanyahu's remarks that cancellation of the summit would be bad for Egypt, Mubarak said: "It will be bad for him, because on the day the summit is postponed, there will be an attack on Israel for being the reason (for its delay)."   The conference, which follows similar gatherings in Casablanca in 1994 and Amman in 1995, is meant to take place from November 12 to 14, with 85 states and more than 25 international organisations taking part.   The World Economic Forum is the main organiser. 
19326 !GCAT !GVIO  Iraqi Kurd refugees said on Friday that two people were wounded when their camp in northwestern Iran came under cross-border fire for the second time in a week, Tehran radio reported.   It quoted them as saying the Siranband camp at the Iran-Iraq border came under fire from the Iraqi side on Thursday night.   The refugees said Iraq-backed Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) forces carried out the attack, the radio added.   The KDP has denied attacking refugee camps.   The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said on Friday in Geneva that 11 Iraqi Kurds were killed and 35 wounded in an earlier attack on Wednesday.   The medical relief group Medecins Sans Frontieres on Thursday put the death toll at 10 and the Iranian news agency IRNA said eight were killed in that attack.   A UNHCR spokeswoman said that officials of the agency were meeting Iranian authorities in Tehran to urge them to move the camp further away from the volatile border.   Tehran radio said on Friday refugees were continuing to cross the border into Iran and it repeated Iranian complaints that international bodies were failing to deliver aid.   Iran said the Siranband camp was home to some 35,000 Iraqi Kurds, who had fled recent fighting in northern Iraq between the KDP and a rival Kurdish group.   UNHCR said it had registered about 18,000. 
19327 !GCAT !GPOL  Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, muzzling criticism of his handling of peace talks, forced on Friday ministers who serve on what is known as the "inner cabinet" to sign a document swearing to secrecy.   "The prime minister asked the ministers to sign a declaration to preserve secrecy and all present did so," said a statement following an inner cabinet meeting.   The reduced forum deals with sensitive security issues.   Based on leaks from such a meeting earlier in the week, Israeli media reported complaints by ministers that Palestinian President Yasser Arafat would learn details of Israel's Hebron redeployment proposals before they did.   "If there will be a fear of leaks it will be impossible to carry out deliberations on secret and sensitive matters," the statement quoted Netanyahu as saying.   Netanyahu, leader of the Likud party which opposes swapping land for peace with the Arabs, defeated prime minister Shimon Peres in May.   Ministers were told members of Peres's cabinet had signed a similar document in January.   Agriculture Minister Rafael Eitan, taking Netanyahu's reprimand to heart, was tight-lipped afterwards, telling Israel Radio: "I signed the document committing to secrecy and more about this I won't say." 
19328 !GCAT !GDIP  Lebanese President Elias Hrawi arrived in Damascus on Friday and immediately opened talks with President Hafez al-Assad on rising tension with Israel, officials said.   Syrian presidential spokesman Joubran Kourieh said the two leaders met at the presidential palace in the Syrian capital but gave no details.   Tension has risen between Syria and Israel in recent weeks after Damascus redeployed about a third of its 35,000 troops in Lebanon, moving some to within striking distance of a key Israeli position on the occupied Golan Heights.   Pro-Iranian Hizbollah guerrillas killed two Israeli soldiers and wounded eight in a south Lebanon ambush on Thursday, triggering the worst fighting in the area for five months and adding to the regional tension.   Shortly before Hrawi arrived in Damascus, an official Syrian newspaper renewed its attack on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, accusing him of pushing Arabs towards the option of war.   "Netanyahu came with flagrant hostility and hatred to Arabs.   He closed all doors for peace and left the region once again with no other option or alternative than war," al-Thawra said.   Lebanese officials said Hrawi will discuss Thursday's events in south Lebanon and Beirut's call for a meeting of a five-nation committee monitoring a ceasefire understanding between Lebanon and Israel.   The committee -- made up of representatives of Lebanon, Israel, Syria, France and the United States -- was called for a meeting on Sunday in south Lebanon to look into a complaint by Beirut over Israeli shelling of civilian areas in the south.   The understanding, which ended a 17-day Israeli blitz against Lebanon in April, banned firing from or at civilian targets on the two sides of the border.   Guerrilla attacks on Israeli troops inside the zone were not ruled out. 
19329 !GCAT !GVIO  Lebanon's pro-Iranian Hizbollah said on Friday that two of its guerrillas were killed in clashes in south Lebanon on Thursday with an Israeli patrol in which two Israeli soldiers were killed.   "With all pride and honour, the Islamic Resistance announces to its people the martyrdom of Rabia Wahbi and Hassan Mreish in the heroic clash with Israeli soldiers in south Lebanon on Thursday," the pro-Iranian group said in a statement.   Hizbollah had said its fighters clashed with an Israeli force trying to advance out of Israel's south Lebanon occupation zone and into the Iqlim al-Toufah ridge controlled by the group.   Pro-Israeli South Lebanon Army (SLA) militia sources said guerrillas fired machineguns and anti-tank rockets on the patrol near Sojoud and Rihane villages.   Two Israeli soldiers were killed and eight wounded in the attack.   Immediately after the ambush, Israeli jets and gunners bombarded south Lebanon hills and villages.   One Lebanese civilian woman was wounded in the bombardment.   Hizbollah is fighting to oust Israel from the 15-km (nine mile) deep border zone. 
19330 !GCAT !GCRIM  Four Israelis involved in a bungled escape bid from police detention in Cyprus last week were charged in court on Friday and will possibly be referred to trial next week.   Police charged telephone salesman Avi Biton, 21, and Shuki Samana, 24, a salesman, with escaping from custody on September 11 while being taken to court for trial on forgery charges.   Biton's brother David, 24, a computer operator, and Amon Shimon, 28, were charged with assisting the first two in their escape, possession of firearms with intent to incite terror, conspiring to commit a crime and causing damage to a police vehicle.   The four were not obliged to answer, and merely nodded when Nicosia district court judge Charis Malaktos asked them if they understood the charges.   The charge of escaping arrest and aiding an escape is punishable by a maximum of life imprisonment.   The other charges carry sentences of three years and upwards.   All four looked cheerful as they were escorted, each one handcuffed to a policeman into the courtroom.   Their Cypriot lawyer George Georgiou did not object to all four remaining in custody until their next appearance, on Tuesday, when it is expected the case will be referred for trial and the accused will answer to the charges.   Police say Avi Biton and Shuki Samana fled through a United Nations checkpoint into the Turkish-held areas of Cyprus last week when David Biton and Shimon, on motorcycles, waylaid a police car taking them to court.   The motorcyclists cut off the prisoner's handcuffs with clippers, cut the police radio and snatched the keys of the police car, leaving two officers stranded in their car at traffic lights in central Nicosia.   Four UN peacekeepers are due to testify at the trial.   Police and the UN say the soldiers were threatened with a knife by the Israelis before they sprinted over a barbed wire gate and entered the Turkish-occupied areas.   But all four were soon back behind bars after Turkish Cypriot police, upon U.N. intervention, returned them the same day across the U.N.-patrolled buffer zone. 
19331 !GCAT !GDIP !GVIO  Iraq's media on Friday assailed United States' policy toward Kurds in north Iraq with one newspaper accusing Washington of sending undercover CIA officers to the area.   The papers said the U.S.-led Operation Provide Comfort in northern Iraq had failed to end the state of anarchy in the area.   "The U.S. scheme in northern Iraq has failed ... The U.S. has failed to maintain Iraq's north as a hotbed of tension and disputes," al-Thawra, organ of the ruling Baath party, said in a commentary.   Thawra said there was no reason for the U.S. to maintain Operation Provide Comfort in northern Iraq to prevent possible attack by Baghdad on the Kurds.   "In contravention of U.S. allegations, the recent events in northern Iraq have proved that the Safe (Haven provided by the U.S. and allied to Iraq's Kurds) area set up by Washington can only be achieved through the (Kurds') unity (with Baghdad)," the paper said.   Baghdad last month helped the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) led by Massoud Barzani to ouset rival rebels of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) led by Jalal Talabani from the city of Arbil.   The move has led to Barzani controlling much of Iraq's Kurdistan.   Barzani's military alliance with Baghdad against its Kurdish rival undermined the U.S.-led air patrols over the no-fly zone in northern Iraq.   Washington reacted to the Iraqi involvement by firing two waves of cruise missiles against air defence targets in southern Iraq and extending the no-fly zone.   The no-fly zones are patrolled by U.S., British and French warplanes.   On Thursday, a source said that Barzani during a meeting with a senior U.S. official in Ankara had asked the West not to abandon him to Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and not to scrap the no-fly zone in the north.   Iraqi press and officials have so far been silent about this meeting between Barzani and U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Robert Pelletreau.   The official al-Iraq newspaper accused the U.S. of sending Central Intelligence Agency personnel to northern Iraq under the cover of extending humanitarian aid to the Kurds.   "The U.S. administration has admitted that it has quickly evacuated CIA officers from northern Iraq," the paper said. 
19332 !GCAT !GDEF !GDIP !GVIO  Israel played down on Friday any link between a Hizbollah guerrilla attack that killed two of its soldiers in Lebanon and Syrian troop movements there that have worried Israelis.   Israel accuses Syria of aiding the Iranian-backed Hizbollah group whose militants killed the two soldiers and wounded eight others in an ambush on Thursday in Israeli-occupied south Lebanon.   Israel said three Hizbollah fighters were also killed.   "I don't link the Syrian activity of the last 10 days to the Hizbollah activity.   The Hizbollah activity has been going on for many years.   It hasn't changed in nature," Uri Lubrani, chief policymaker on Lebanon, told Israel Radio.   "The Syrian exercise is a Syrian exercise and is linked to a Syrian desire to show in my opinion dissatisfaction that the peace process, or the negotiation with them, is going very slowly," Lubrani said.   Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Thursday tension between the Jewish state and arch-foe Syria had been brought "under control".   Syria has redeployed up to a third of its 35,000 troops in Lebanon, moving some to within striking distance of a key Israeli position on the occupied Golan Heights.   Netanyahu has said Syria was trying to pressure Israel into unilateral concessions on the strategic plateau Israel seized in the 1967 Middle East war.   The two countries have failed in five years of sporadic talks to settle the dispute over the heights, the return of which Syria demands. 
19333 !GCAT !GVIO  Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) guerrillas have killed three state-paid village guards and wounded three others in a clash in southeast Turkey, Anatolian news agency said on Friday.   The fighting took place on Thursday night in the southeastern province of Hakkari, it said.   The emergency rule governor's office in the city of Diyarbakir was not immediately available for comment.   The agency also said unknown assailants shot and wounded a member of the security forces on Thursday night in the southeastern town of Varto which had been under curfew earlier this week because of political violence.   Turkish officials say one policeman and five rebels died in a clash in Varto on Tuesday.   Thirty people detained by police during the incident were still being held, Anatolian said.   More than 20,000 people have been killed in the 12-year-old conflict between Turkish troops and the rebels, fighting for autonomy or independence from Ankara.   Turkey pays and arms around 60,000 villagers, mostly Kurds, to fight the guerrillas. 
19334 !GCAT  These are the leading stories in the Moroccan press on Friday.   Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.   LE MATIN DU SAHARA   - Finance Minister Mohamed Kabbaj told a cabinet meeting Moroccan economy indicators evolved positively.   - Interior Minister Driss Basri to visit Madrid next month to discuss issues related to clandestine immigration.   LE QUOTIDIEN DU MAROC   - Recognition of self-styled Saharan Arab Democratic Republic (SADR) was a political mistake, said Congo's Prime Minister.   - Moroccan press union concerned by dispute over Anoual newspaper suspension.   - Government officials and trade union leaders hold first meeting after the 'gentleman's agreement'.   - After the referendum, debate of political parties to concentrate on elections.   AL-BAYANE   - Opposition Istiqlal party leader M'hamed Boucetta calls for a government of transition to prepare 'credible and transparent general elections' in 1997.   L'OPINION   - Morocco's 10,000-metre world record holder, Salah Hissou, celebrates his victory, in home town of Kasba Tadla.   MAROC HEBDO   - Algeria softens its position on Western Sahara dispute.   Paper says Polisario movement is finished.   - With continuing political changes, right-wing Moroccan parties are expected to join the opposition. 
19335 !GCAT !GPOL  Israel said on Friday it would tighten its entry ban against Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza Strip ahead of and during Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement.   "During Yom Kippur and the weekend before it Palestinian entry will not be permitted from Judea and Samaria (West Bank) and Gaza beginning from today at 1600 (1400 GMT) until Tuesday 0400 (0200 GMT)," an army spokeswoman said.   "Urgent humanitarian cases will be permitted entry."   Israel barred the nearly two million Palestinians of the territories from entering Israel after the first in a series of Islamic militant suicide bombings in March and February that killed 59 people in Israel.   The closure bars thousands of Palestinians from livelihoods in Israel and is condemned by them as collective punishment.   Over time, Israel gradually eased the closure allowing nearly 40,000 Palestinians to return to work.   These people will be barred from Israel during the tightened closure.   Yom Kippur runs from Sunday evening through Monday evening. 
19336 !GCAT !GCRIM !GPOL !GVOTE  Reform Party candidate Ross Perot said he would file his lawsuit on the presidential debates on Friday, but his attorney said the suit would be submitted on Monday.   "We'll file the legal papers today," Perot said, but attorney Jamie Raskin, dean of American University Law School, said through an assistant that "The suit will be filed on Monday ... by 5 p.m."   Asked to explain the discrepancy, Raskin's assistant Anna Kelly said by telephone, "It was a mistake.   I guess he (Perot) was not informed."   Perot gave no details in two television interviews, saying he wanted his case against the Commission for Presidential Debates to unfold like the Saturday serials of his childhood.   The panel recommended excluding Perot from the debates, saying he had no chance of winning the presidency.   The two major candidates are still negotiating the timing and format of the debate series.   But Perot challenged Republican Bob Dole to "meet him in St. Louis," where the first debate originally was to take place Sept. 25.   "I will be in St Louis the night of 25th, I'll see that the arena is ready," he said on NBC's "Today" show.   "It'll be interesting to see if he can show up and debate me."   Moments later on ABC's "Good Morning America," he seemed ready to break into song as he quoted the lyrics from the Judy Garland musical: "Meet me In St. Louis, Meet me at the fair."   Dole's spokesman Gary Koops responded, "We are in a meeting with the Clinton campaign on Saturday to continue discussion on the one-one-one debates between Bob Dole and Bill Clinton.   And we look forward to having our one-on-one debates on with Bill Clinton."   Perot said earlier he would seek a court order to delay the debates until a decision is made on his participation.   He maintained he would have won in 1992 if people voted their consciences and ignored news reports that he could not win.   Perot said a poll by the "big media" that was "never reported" showed that he was actually the top candidate in the 1992 race with Clinton and President George Bush.   Perot won 19 percent of the popular vote but no electoral votes that year.   Polls show him with only around five percent currently.   Saying he was being deprived of access to television, and that voters were being manipulated, Perot added, "We probably need to bring in poll watchers from Bosnia and Haiti for this election, it's that bad." 
19337 !GCAT !GPOL !GVOTE  President Bill Clinton and Vice President Al Gore rumbled through the Pacific Northwest on a bus tour on Thursday, urging voters who helped give control of Congress to Republicans two years ago to throw them out on Election Day.   Increasingly confident of their chances of being re-elected Nov. 5, Clinton and Gore unleashed a litany of attacks on House of Representatives Speaker Newt Gingrich in hopes their coattails will be long enough to give Congress back to Democrats.   Their message, from rain-slick Seattle to tiny roadside towns, was that Washington state voters who tossed Democrats out of six congressional seats in 1994, including then-House Speaker Thomas Foley, should look at what two years of Republican control had produced.   "Two years ago the state of Washington in this congressional district and others led the country in embracing Mr. Gingrich's Republican revolution," Clinton said in Yelm, where it seemed nearly all of the town's 2,000 residents were on hand to listen.   He said Gingrich told people his Contract With America "would make America a better place," but "then they shut the government down when we refused" to go along with their budget plans to slow the growth in spending for medical insurance for the poor, elderly and disabled.   Accusing Republicans of being arch-conservatives out of step with mainstream America, Clinton added: "When we said no to that, you knew that there was no revolution, that it was a reaction, and we didn't like it and we weren't going to put up with it."   To a large crowd in Centralia, he said: "Now folks, right here in Centralia, you're going to be looked to all over America.   People are going to ask, 'Did the people in Centralia, Washington, really vote for that Contract With America?'   They're going to be looking to you for answers."   In Longview, Gore told about 9,000 people at an outdoor rally: "Washington has a bigger opportunity than any other state in our country to say we need a change in the Congress of the United States.   We'd like to boot Newt Gingrich out of that speaker's office."   Republican freshmen elected in 1994 showed signs of vulnerability in Washington's primary vote on Tuesday.   Clinton campaign officials saw the results as a possible sign Democrats will do well Nov. 5.   The 14-bus caravan led by Clinton and Gore and their wives, Hillary and Tipper, rolled from Seattle to Tacoma and beyond under low-hanging gray clouds.   It nosed through the mist, past big fir trees swathed in fog, until the sun finally shone brightly in Centralia.   They were headed south through western Washington state to the Oregon city of Portland, 175 miles (280 km) away.   It was the second bus tour of this campaign for Clinton and Gore, who made it a staple of their 1992 race.   Clinton has big leads over Republican Bob Dole in Washington and Oregon, two states he won in 1992, and White House officials say Dole is not challenging them there.   Big crowds turned out for the two leaders, including 20,000 who ignored a steady drizzle outside the Tacoma Dome exhibition hall.   Hundreds lined the highway in rural communities and many people waved signs.   There was a festive mood among people who rarely get to see a president.   On the route into Longview were five shirtless men each with a letter painted green on their bare chests spelling out "BILLY."   There were signs galore all along the road.   "Hey Bill, We Need A Sax Player," said one sign.   "Free Puppy For Chelsea," said another.   Near a development called Whitewater Estates, however, there was a more serious sign at the Calvary Baptist Church: "Even President Clinton Must Repent Or Perish." 
19338 !GCAT !GCRIM  O.J. Simpson, temporarily thwarted in a legal battle with his slain ex-wife's parents for custody of his two children, was a no-show in court on Thursday as jury selection continued in his wrongful-death civil trial.   Meanwhile Judge Hiroshi Fujisaki enacted orders complying with an appeals court ruling that modified his original gag-order against witnesses and attorneys commenting on the case.   He also agreed to let the press have an audio feed of trial proceedings -- although TV cameras are still barred -- and he allowed sketch artists to do their work inside his courtroom, as the appeals court had ruled.   However, Fujisaki, who is intent on reducing the "circus atmosphere" that surrounded Simpson's criminal trial last year, reserved the right to pull the plug on the audio feed if reporters record or broadcast it.   Simpson had been expected to show up on Thursday since the custody hearing in suburban Orange County, which he attended the last two days, some 40 miles (65 km) south of Los Angeles, was abruptly adjourned on Wednesday.   Lawyers in the child custody case were prohibited from commenting on the case in which Simpson is trying to regain custody of Sydney, 10, and Justin, 8, the children he had with his ex-wife Nicole Brown.   However the Orange County Register newspaper reported that the hearing to determine whether the ex-football star gets temporary custody was adjourned on the request of the Brown family, pending a Nov. 4 trial to consider permanent custody.   Simpson, a Hall of Fame running back who went on to become a TV celebrity and bit-part movie actor, was acquitted Oct. 3 of murdering Nicole Brown and her friend Ronald Goldman, found slashed to death on June 12, 1994.   The families of the victims filed a wrongful-death civil lawsuit against him alleging he is responsible for the deaths.   If the plaintiffs prevail, Simpson might have to pay millions of dollars in damages.   On the third day of the civil trial, Fujisaki resumed questioning potential jurors, who for financial or personal reasons said they are unable to serve on the case which is expected to last four months.   The no-nonsense Japanese-American jurist was unsympathetic to all but the most pressing of excuses.   Of the 43 people he questioned on Thursday, only 15 were excused.   In all, 146 prospective jurors reported to the Santa Monica Municipal Court on Thursday -- 75 were kept in the Simpson pool and 71 were either excused or returned to the pool for other trials.   Fujisaki released one pregnant woman and another who was going on honeymoon in January -- as long as she came back to court to show him her tickets to Hawaii.   One woman said she had broken her tooth and her dog might escape through a broken gate, but Fujisaki was unsympathetic.   And to a postal worker he said: "If they give you a hard time, have them call me." 
19339 !C21 !CCAT !GCAT !GWEA !M14 !M141 !MCAT  A cold weather system due in the U.S. Midwest Tuesday through Thursday should produce scattered frost in the U.S. Midwest, meteorologists said.   Lows of 30 to 35 degrees Fahrenheit were forecast Tuesday or Wednesday in northern Iowa, northern Illinois, southern Minnesota and southern Wisconsin.   Lows of 33 to 37 degrees are likely across southern Iowa, northern Missouri, central Illinois, northern Indiana and northwest Ohio.   Joel Burgio, Weather Services Corp meteorologist, said these temperatures should produce scattered frost in low-lying areas, but clouds or wind could limit the breadth of the frost.    In areas of frost there will be crop damage, but Burgio said the large portions of the corn and soybeans should survive the cold and continue to develop.   However, the cold will slow crop development.   Fred Gesser, Weather Express Inc meteorologist, forecasts similar low temperatures Tuesday through Thursday, and said long-term weather maps suggest a more severe cold system September 29 and 30 across the northern half of the Midwest.   "If they (maps) are verified, temperatures will be below freezing across large portions of the corn belt, north of I-70 (Interstate 70 highway)," he said of the Sept 29-30 forecast.    High temperatures next week should range from the mid-60s to low 70s in the Midwest, meteorologists said.   During the past 24 hours, the western Midwest received 0.35 to 1.00 inch rain.   The rain should move into the eastern Midwest Saturday and Sunday and bring 0.25 to 1.00 inch with 60 to 70 percent coverage.   Next week should be mostly dry, but Gesser said more rain was likely from September 27 to 29.   Texas to Nebraska should be dry until early next week, which will allow farmers to resume winter wheat planting, said Burgio.   --Chicago newsdesk 312-408-8720-- 
19340 !E21 !E211 !ECAT !GCAT !GPOL  California voters are about evenly divided on a ballot initiative that would limit the ability of local governments to impose fees, assessments and taxes, according to a survey released on Friday.   After they were read a summary of the initiative's official description, 37 percent of likely voters said they were inclined to support Proposition 218, according to the Field Institute poll.   The non-partisan Field Institute said 38 percent were inclined to vote against the measure, while 25 percent said they were undecided.   Before survey respondents were read a summary of the initiative, just one in nine voters said they had heard or read anything about Proposition 218, the Field Institute said.   Proposition 218 would require that a majority of local voters in an election approve any increase in general taxes.   It would also limit local government's use of fees and assessments.   According to some municipal analysts, the initiative could have a devastating effect on local government finance.   The proposition was sponsored by the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, which downplayed the significance of the Field poll.   "The only thing of value the Field poll discovered is that 89 percent of the voters polled haven't yet heard of Proposition 218 -- which isn't surprising since voters haven't started focusing on any of the ballot measures," said Joel Fox, president of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association.   "All the survey research we've conducted in recent months shows the vast majority of California voters -- over 70 percent of those polled -- want the right to vote on new local taxes, assessments and fees.   And this is precisely what Proposition 218 provides," Fox said.   "When voters begin focusing on the issues and learn more about Proposition 218, we're confident it'll enjoy widespread support from a winning majority of voters who want more control over the local taxes they pay," Fox said.   The Field Institute survey was conducted between August 29 and September 7 among a representative statewide sample of 416.   Of this group, 291 were deemed likely voters in the upcoming November general election.   The margin of error from the overall voter sample was plus or minus five percentage points.   The margin of error for the likely voter sample was six percentage points.   --Adam Entous, 415-677-2511 
19341 !GCAT !GPOL !GVOTE  Four years ago Ross Perot convinced 1,036,426 Ohio voters, about one in five, to back his third-party presidential bid.   This year, if the polls are accurate, he may find only one in 25 voting for him in this heartland state that is a major battlefield between President Clinton and Bob Dole.   A Reuters poll by John Zogby Group International released this week found Perot with only 4.7 percent in Ohio, compared to 45.7 for Clinton and 32.3 for Dole.   In 1992 the Texas billionaire won 21 percent of the Ohio vote, better than the 18.9 percent he averaged nationally.   Across the country Perot's support this year appears to be slightly higher than it is in Ohio at 5.9 percent, according to a Reuters/Zogby poll released earlier this month.   It is not clear if Perot will measureably affect either Clinton's or Dole's fortunes in Ohio this time.   A recent University of Cincinnati poll said about half of Perot's supporters in Ohio would be voting for Clinton if Perot were not in the race.   Pollster John Zogby said any Perot support Clinton gets at this point is "gravy" given his lead.   What is clear, however, is that Perot has not caught the public fancy in Ohio as he did four years ago.   Jim Cox, who owns a Cleveland public relations firm, said Perot "screwed it up" by not creating a bigger and more permanent structure for a third party.   "If he had started individual state parties with candidates at the state and local levels, he'd have started a new movement," he said.   "He could have started a viable third party and created a viable agenda for each state and changed the whole landscape of politics in America."   Dorothy Fritz, who manages a bookstore in Stark County not far from Akron, said Perot "is not going to make a difference one way or the other" this time, although she seriously considered voting for him four years ago.   "Clinton will win -- by default.   No one else is running that's worth voting for."   "I don't think he (Perot) has the finesse for negotiating," added Ruth Shoemaker, who owns the shop where Fritz works and who plans to vote for Dole.   Dave VanDerkar, a transportation worker who lives in Alliance, southeast of Cleveland, voted for Clinton four years ago but said he now has doubts about the president's credibility and has not ruled out voting for Perot.   "A lot of people don't care for Mr. Perot but he is a businessman and the country needs a business mind to help run it," he said.   "I think the independent party will give the other candidates a good wake-up call."   An executive recruiter who was Perot's 1992 Youngstown-area campaign coordinator, however, said she became disillusioned with him.   "He's a fraud," said Debbie Taylor.   Had Perot been sincere, he would have continued efforts to organise a third party formally, Taylor said.   She now believes his motivation was his own ego and she thinks other voters have a similar view.   "He's not a factor (in '96) ... and, God willing, he will not be," she said.   "I think he's irrelevant.   All he's good for is comic relief."   Other voters approached at random in Ohio this week said they had not been paying attention to Perot or had not focused on his message on balancing the budget and political reform.   Ohio's prize of 21 electoral votes are a prime campaign target but the state is also closely watched because it may reflect the country more than any other state with its demographics.   No Republican has won the White House without carrying Ohio and the state has voted on the losing side in presidential elections only twice this century.   Four years ago, Clinton beat Bush in Ohio by only 90,632 votes out of nearly five million cast. 
19342 !GCAT !GCRIM  The FBI has no plans to arrest Dade County Commissioner James Burke on corruption charges, spokeswoman Lucie Von Derhaar said Friday.   Von Derhaar denied local television reports that Burke had already or would soon turn himself in to the FBI.   "That information is not accurate," she said.   Asked if the agency had made any arrangements for Burke's arrest, she said, "None whatsoever."   Miami Herald reported Friday that municipal bond firm owner Howard Gary was cooperating with federal investigators in a corruption probe, and offered to pay Burke up to $100,000 if the commissoner made sure Gary's firm was included in a $183 million revenue bond refunding last month.   Burke, who heads the county commission's finance committee, was not in his office Friday morning.   Asked about the corruption allegations, his aide Willy Johnson said, "I have no knowledge of that."   A spokesman for the U.S. Attorney's Office, Willy Fernandez, said, "I don't know anything about it."   He referred questions to another prosecutor who was not immediately available.   The bond deal in question, a $183 million revenue bond refunding for the Montenay Power Corp recyling plant, was senior managed by Grisgby Brandford & Co Inc.   The syndicate indcluded Gary's firm, Howard Gary & Co, and Smith Barney Inc and AIBC Investment Services Corp.   An industry official involved in the deal said it was the Montenay company, and not the county, that chose the underwriters for the issue.   --Jane Sutton, 305-374-5013 
19343 !GCAT !GCRIM !GPOL !GVOTE  Reform Party candidate Ross Perot said he was filing his lawsuit on the presidential debates on Friday and challenged Republican Bob Dole to "meet him in St. Louis" for a debate next Wednesday.   "We'll file the legal papers today," he said.   But in two national television interviews the Texas billionaire gave no details, saying he wants his case against the Commission for Presidential Debates to unfold like the Saturday movie serials of his childhood.   The panel recommended excluding Perot from the debates, saying he has no chance of winning the presidency.   Originally, the first presidential debate was set for Sept. 25 in St. Louis.   But that date turned out to be bad for Clinton, who is addressing the United Nations the day before.   And the two major candidates are still negotiating the timing and format of the debate series.   But Perot said he would go to St. Louis, and invited Dole to meet him there.   "I will be in St Louis the night of 25th, I'll see that the arena is ready," he said on NBC's "Today" show.   "It'll be interesting to see if he can show up and debate me."   A few moment's later on ABC's "Good Morning America" he seemed about ready to break into song, quoting the old lyrics, "Meet me in St. Louis, Meet me at the fair..."   Dole's spokesman Gary Koop responded, "We are in a meeting with the Clinton campaign on Saturday to continue discussion on the one-one-one debates between Bob Dole and Bill Clinton.   And we look forward to having our one-on-one debates on with Bill Clinton."   Perot had said earlier he would seek a court restraining order to delay the debates until a decision is made.   Perot maintained that he would have won in 1992 if people voted their consciences and ignored news reports that he could not win.   He claimed that a poll by the "big media" that was "never reported" showed that he was actually the top candidate among Clinton and former President Bush.   Perot in 1992 won 19 percent of the popular vote but did not carry a single state.   Polls show him with only around 5 percent of the support at this point.   Saying he was being deprived of access to television, and that voters were being manipulated, he said, "We probably need to bring in poll watchers from Bosnia and Haiti for this election, it's that bad." 
19344 !GCAT  The U.S. Justice Department has launched an antitrust investigation at Microsoft Corp that is expected to focus on programs used to browse the World Wide Web, the Wall Street Journal reported Friday.   Other top stories included:   * Sumitomo Corp raised its estimate of its copper-trading losses to $2.6 billion from earlier forecasts of $1.8 billion.   The company also said it would sue its former chief copper trader, Yasuo Hamanaka, for what it called as a scheme to defraud it.   * The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission said it could charge Merrill Lynch Co and Inc and some of its employees with securities-law violations linked to the 1994 collapse of Orange County's investment fund.   * Loewen Group Inc agreed to buy Rose Hills Cemetery for $240 million.   * Time Warner Inc agreed to carry all-news cable network MSNBC, a joint venture of General Electric Co's NBC television network and Microsoft Corp on half of its systems to meet antitrust regulation requirements.   * Atlantic Richfield Co (ARCO) agreed to increase its investment in a venture with Russia's NK LUKoil to nearly $5 billion from $3 billion.   * The U.S. Trade Representative will delay its presentation of evidence involving a major portion of Eastman Kodak Co's trade case against Japan and Fuji Photo Film Co Ltd.   * Fidelity Investments's 12 largest mutual funds are all trailing the stock market's performance this year.   * Nomura Securities Co Ltd will invest more that $3 billion into a subsidiary to resolve a bad-loan problem.   * Seven U.S. states are opposing efforts by Prudential Insurance Co of America to reach an agreement over alleged deceptive life-insurance sales practices.   * The SEC has settled its lawsuit against Comparator Systems Corp.   * A U.S. federal judge approved a $26.5 million settlement for Burlington Industries Inc employees who claim the company gutted their retirement plan.   * Short interest on the New York Stock Exchange rose 4.7 percent in September, surpassing a record set in August.   * Housing starts jumped 4.5 percent in August to an adjusted annual rate of 1.53 million.   * Seized by a growing conviction that the Federal Reserve is about to raise interest rates for the first time in 1-1/2 years, the bond market stumbled again.   - Credit Markets   * Two eggs.   Two buttermilk pancakes.   Two bacon strips.   And two sausage links.   On the menu of Denny's restaurants, that's called the Original Grand Slam.   But for the leveraged buyout firm of Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co, a $300 million investment in Denny's parent Flagstar Cos has been anything but grand.   - Heard On The Street   -- New York Newsdesk (212) 859-1610 
19345 !C12 !CCAT !GCAT !GCRIM  Seven states are opposing the class-action settlement Prudential Insurance Co of America is offering nationwide to close lawsuits filed over allegedly deceptive practices in sale of life insurance, the Wall Street Journal reported Friday.   The seven states, including California, Texas, Massachussetts and Florida, are opposed to the settlement because of concerns it would hurt their efforts to negotiate better terms for policyholders in their states, the article said, citing anonymous sources for its information.   Prudential was not immediately available to comment on the article.   --New York Newsdesk (212) 859-1610 
19346 !GCAT !GVIO  A document hidden in a presidential library, two Romanians who got lost sightseeing and chilling Congressional testimony from a former Czech general may be lifting the veil off some of the darkest secrets of the Korean War.   Did North Korea keep hundreds of Americans prisoner after the end of the Korean War in 1953?   Did it also subject some of them to brutal Nazi-like medical experiments and amputations?   And are there still American POWs alive in the sealed-off Stalinist state that today mixes hostility towards South Korea with overtures to the West for trade and aid?   These are questions the Pentagon, Congress and the families of 8,000 men listed as missing in the Korean conflict are asking, and the answers they are getting are widely disparate.   To Republican Congressman Robert Dornan, whose House of Representatives Military Personnel sub-committee has been holding hearings on the issue, the answers to all the questions are a simple and stark "Yes."   The conservative congressman told Reuters this week that he planned to fly to North Korea later this year to try to convince Pyongyang to free the remaining Americans he believes are there -- a number he estimates at about 15.   "I will press these people to come clean.   There will be no recriminations.   I'll tell them it's not your fault.   ... It's something your fathers and grandfathers did, a sins-of-the- fathers-type thing," Dornan said.   He added that if he fails he will advocate a naval blockade of North Korea to "isolate them."   Asked if he could win President Bill Clinton's backing, he said, "It would be one way for Clinton to erase that draft dodger specter."   Investigators say that they have traced two Romanians whose bus got lost in North Korea in 1979 and turned up at a collective farm at which several American "farmers" were seen.   The Romanians were told the men were captured in the war.   Recently a North Korean defector claimed in a newspaper interview to have seen elderly white and black men in a secret prison camp and to have been told the same thing.   But Defence Secretary William Perry says there is no evidence that North Korea is still holding American prisoners.   Dornan's committee this week released newly declassified documents from the Dwight Eisenhower Presidential Library that showed that the Pentagon knew in 1953 that possibly up to 1,200 Americans were alive and not released by North Korea.   Eisenhower, the documents said, tried to do everything short of war to get the men.   Dornan said the president did not make the information public for fear of whipping up war hysteria at home that he could not contain.   At a Dornan subcomittee hearing this week, Czech defector General Jan Sejna said his native country built a hospital for the Russians in North Korea in which grotesque experiments were performed on American POWS, including amputations.   "Czechoslovakia also built a crematorium in North Korea to dispose of the bodies and parts after the experiments were concluded," he said.   During the Vietnam War, Sejna, a former first secretary of the Czech Defence Council who defected in 1968, said he was involved in transferring a group of American POWs from Vietnam to Russia for experiments that would test chemical and biological war agents and the effects of atomic radiation.   Not everyone believes Sejna, who now works for the U.S. Defence Intelligence Agency.   But his defenders say he has passed several lie detector tests.   Dornan said he should be given truth serum to clear up any doubts.   James Sanders, who with Mark Sauter wrote "Soldiers of Misfortune," a book about soldiers missing in Korea and Vietnam, says he is positive government archives have documents on the medical experiments.   He said there may even be testimony from soldiers who were subjected to such tortures and were released in one of two major prisoners exchanges.   He said he also believes that Vietnam held back releasing several hundred U.S. soldiers because the United States would not pay ransom for them.   Dornan put the number of prisoners he believes were not released at only a handful in Vietnam but said hundreds were unaccounted for in Laos.   Gary Ledyard, a professor of Korean history at Columbia University, says of the POW controversy, "It is very hard to say such things are not conceivable with North Korea but why would such things have been in their interests?" 
19347 !E21 !E211 !ECAT !GCAT !GPOL  Trying to blunt Republican critics casting him as a free-spending Democrat wanting big government, President Bill Clinton planned to take credit on Friday for saving taxpayers $118 billion and cutting the federal workforce.   Bouyed by enthusiastic crowds on his swing through the Pacific Northwest, Clinton was to wrap up four days of campaigning with events hailing the benefits of his "reinventing government" efforts over the last three years.   After Thursday's day-long bus ride through Washington state generated large crowds and the scent of victory in the Nov. 5 election, Clinton hoped to counter charges by Republican rival Bob Dole that his policies foster more government and higher taxes to pay for it.   "The era of big government is over, and this administration has led the way," Clinton said in remarks prepared for delivery in Portland.   "The proof that government can work better and cost less is $118 billion in savings to taxpayers."   "This is a real result that saves real money that benefits all Americans," said Clinton.   The claim was based on efforts led by Vice President Al Gore, who joined Clinton on the campaign trail on Thursday, to overhaul the way the federal government conducts business -- from eliminating such things as a long-criticised mohair wool subsidies to streamlining federal procurement procedures.   Gore, in a report to Clinton, said that 13 of 14 federal departments have reduced the size of their work force -- the Justice Department being the only exception -- since their administration began in January, 1993.   The federal civilian payroll numbered 2.1 million when Clinton was sworn in and now numbers 1.9 million -- a reduction of 240,000.   If re-elected to a second term, Clinton intends to push for an even smaller work force, White House Press Secretary Mike McCurry said.   Although Clinton and all the senior officials around him insist they are worried that the race for the White House will become close, the president clearly is enjoying life on the campaign trail.   Since leaving Washington on Tuesday, Clinton has plunged into crowds to shake hands -- seemingly oblivious to sometimes heavy rain.   His mood has been relaxed and upbeat, with virtually no sign that he is fretting the outcome.   One sign of Clinton's confidence can be seen in the fact that he added a stop in South Dakota on his way back to Washington on Friday night.   Traditionally Democrats write-off the state as a hopeless cause in presidential elections.   "We believe we have a real chance of winning there," said Joe Lockhart, the press secretary of the Clinton-Gore campaign.   Although the potential electoral college votes to be gained in mostly rural South Dakota are few, the fact the frontrunner is going there is telling.   Not only is Clinton campaigning for himself, he also is campaigning for fellow Democrats -- who a mere two years ago, in the wake of the Republican congressional landslide, wanted nothing to do with him.   Now, candidates not only go out of their way to be seen with him, they go out of their way to sound like him.   Gary Locke, the Democratic nominee for governor of Washington state, spent Wednesday and Thursday appearing with Clinton and telling crowds they needed to build bridges into the 21st Century -- in essence, the president's campaign slogan. 
19348 !E21 !E211 !ECAT !GCAT !GDEF !GDIP  Expanding NATO is likely to add only "modest costs" to the alliance's budget, not the huge sums some analysts have recently predicted, the U.S. ambassador to NATO said on Thursday.   The presumption behind recent studies, including one by the RAND Corp, was that "within a short period of time new members would have to be ready to undertake Article 5 responsibilities -- defence against aggression -- in circumstances not so dissimilar from what we saw during the Cold War," said envoy Robert Hunter.   But "in the absence of a Cold War threat we see those assumptions to be unrealistic," he told defence writers.   Hunter agreed expansion would mean new "costs to the alliance -- modest costs" for new offices at Supreme Allied Command Europe headquarters in Belgium, communiciations and possible start-up costs for headquarters in new countries permitted to join NATO in its first post-Cold War enlargement.   But he stressed that countries joining NATO would have to pay for their own national security, "as we all do."   NATO foreign ministers are expected to set a date in December for an alliance summit next year that would issue formal invitations to countries selected to join NATO.   Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic are expected to be the first new countries to join the 16-member alliance.   RAND, in its recent study, said expansion of NATO -- whose core is a promise to defend member nations if they are threatened -- could cost an extra $42 billion over 15 years.   That sum would rise to $100 billion if NATO troops were stationed in eastern and central Europe.   Some believe those costs will make it harder to persuade legislatures in NATO-member countries to ratify expansion.   Hunter could not predict a more realistic cost of NATO expansion, but said the Defence Department was studying the issue. 
19349 !GCAT  The New York Times reported the following business stories on Friday:   * The U.S. Justice Departement launched a new investigation of Microsoft Corp, focusing this time on the company's sales practices in the market for Internet browsers.   * Hughes Electronics Corp will announce Friday it has reached a deal to acquire PanAmSat Corp for a total value of $3 billion.   * Campbell Soup Co will begin selling, by mail-order, frozen meals designed to reduce high blood pressure, cholesterol and diabetes.   * The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission plans to charge Merrill Lynch and Co Inc with disclosure fraud in connection with the 1994 bankruptcy of Orange County, Calif.   * U.S. housing starts increased 4.5 percent, its fastest rate in nearly two-and-a-half years.   Bond yield rose on the news, as investors were fearful of the implications for inflation.   * Shares in semiconductor companies rallied, though broader stock markets ended mixed.   * French advertising agency BDDP Group, the world's 15th largest ad firm, agreed to be acquired by London ad firm GCT Group Plc, the world's 22nd largest.   * The SEC settled cases against Comparator Systems Corp and two of its officers.   * Ing.   C. Olivetti & C. SpA former chairman Carlo de Benedetti used his leverage as a major shareholder to oust the company's new chief executive and install his own replacement.   * Barney's Inc said it was seeking to end a licensing agreement with its Asian partner, Isetan Co Ltd.   * Ryder System Inc sold its truck rental unit to Questor Partners Fund and a group of investors for $575 million.   * Natural gas prices NGV6 rose sharply on concerns of low inventories in the approaching winter season.   --New York Newsdesk (212) 859-1610 
19350 !GCAT  The New York Times reported the following stories on its front page on Friday:   * The U.S. House of Representatives narrowly voted to override President Bill Clinton's veto of a ban on a form of late-term abortion.   The Senate is expected to uphold the veto next week.   * The U.S. wireless communications industry voted to reject government-backed technology that would make it possible for law enforcement agencies to keep closer tabs on cellular telephone users.   * Guatemala's government and leftist rebels signed a peace agreement, sharply reducing the military's size and power.   * Iran is gripped by a vociferous debate over whether women should ride bicycles.   * Republican presidential nominee Bob Dole appeared to be at ease despite series of mishaps during his election campaign.   --New York Newsdesk (212) 859-1610 
19351 !C12 !C13 !CCAT !GCAT !GCRIM  The Securities and Exchange Commission has informed Merrill Lynch & Co that it intends to recommend enforcement action against the firm for alleged disclosure violations in Orange County, Calif., bond offerings, attorneys involved in the case said on Thursday.   Merrill Lynch received a so-called Wells notice several months ago, said the attorneys, who asked not to be identified.   The attorneys said the Wells notice indicates that the SEC is considering taking action against Merrill Lynch for alleged inadequate disclosure in the offering statements of notes issued by the county and underwritten by Merrill Lynch.   Merrill Lynch spokesman Timothy Gilles said the firm had no comment on reports of the Wells notice.   But he added; "We are confident our disclosure was proper."    A Wells notice informs its recipient that SEC staff intends to recommend enforcement action to commissioners.   Orange County attorney Bruce Bennett said the developments were not a surprise.   "This is not unexpected," Bennett said.   "During the commission's investigation of the county, it made clear it was concerned about the disclosure made in connection with the county's 1994 ($600 million) taxable note issue underwritten by Merrill."   Orange County filed for protection under Chapter 9 of the federal Bankruptcy Code on December 6, 1994, after investment losses of more than $1.6 billion.   The county emerged from bankruptcy in June of this year.   Soon after the county declared bankruptcy, the SEC initiated a sweeping investigation of its massive borrowings.   Based on its investigation of the crisis, the SEC filed complaints against the former county Treasurer Robert Citron and former Assistant Treasurer Matthew Raabe earlier this year, alleging they made misleading statements in the offer and sale of more than $2.1 billion of municipal securities.   The SEC staff has been preparing several other actions.   As previously reported, SEC staff has sent Wells notices to several municipalities, including the the cities of Irvine and Anaheim and several local school districts.   Several firms besides Merrill Lynch have also received Wells notices, including CS First Boston Corp. 
19352 !GCAT  The Washington Post carried the following items on the front page of its business section on Sept 20:   ---   WASHINGTON - Wall Street lobbyists are pushing for the privitization of the Social Security system.   ---   WASHINGTON - The Justice Department is renewing its antitrust probe of Microsoft Corp, focusing on its Internet browser software.   ---   SEOUL - Sumitomo Corp.'s losses from a copper trading scandal totaled $2.6 billion.   ---   WASHINGTON - Washington residents increasingly are using private contractors to perform jobs that the government used to perform. 
19353 !GCAT  The Washington Post carried the following stories on its front page on Sept. 20:   ---   WASHINGTON - House and Senate negotiators agreed to expand insurance coverage for new mothers, infants and the mentally ill in an election-year rush.   ---   WASHINGTON - The House voted to overturn President Clinton's veto of a law that would outlaw a controversial technique known as "partial birth abortions" to end late-term pregnancies.   ---   WASHINGTON - The Clinton administration withdrew a waiver to allow the city of Washington to avoid strict new welfare rules.   ---   WASHINGTON - IBM extended health care coverage and other benefits to partners of gay and lesbian employees.   ---   WASHINGTON - The government has cut its workforce by 250,000 workers, or by 11 percent, since President Clinton took office.   ---   WASHINGTON - Iraqi President Saddam Hussein is politically stronger in the Middle East than he was before he sent troops to northern Iraq to subdue a Kurdish faction, CIA Director John Deutch told Congress. 
19354 !E51 !E512 !ECAT !GCAT !GDIP  President Bill Clinton will make a post-election tour of Asia Nov. 19-26 visiting Australia, the Phillipines and Thailand, the White House said on Thursday.   Spokesman Mike McCurry told reporters accompanying him on a campaign trail that the trip is centred on Clinton's participation in the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation (APEC) forum at Subic Bay in the Phillipines Nov. 24-25.   Clinton and his wife Hillary will visit Australia Nov. 19-23 for his first meeting with Australian Prime Minister John Howard and address parliament in Canberra.   He will also visit Sydney and the northern tropical resort city of Cairns.   Clinton will make a state visit to Thailand on Nov. 26 to celebrate the 50th anniversary of King Bhumibol Adulyade's accession to the throne.   Asked about the possibility of Clinton visiting Vietnam, McCurry said he knew of no plans. 
19355 !GCAT !GDIP !GVIO  The Clinton administration struggled again on Thursday to speak with a single voice on Iraq, with the CIA chief giving a contrasting view to the defence secretary on the success of the U.S. policy.   CIA Director John Deutch said Iraqi President Saddam Hussein had become politically stronger in the Gulf after his military advance in Kurdistan earlier this month and that the European allies were weary with the U.S. containment strategy.   Deutch told the Senate Intelligence Committee that although Saddam had been weakened militarily in a stand-off with U.S. forces, which included two attacks by U.S. cruise missiles, the Iraqi leader was boosted politically.   "On capabilities over the long term, he has gotten significantly weaker," Deutch said.   "In the last six weeks he has gotten stronger politically in the region."   On Tuesday Defence Secretary William Perry gave a different assessment.   On the U.S.-led coalition of European and Gulf states formed against Iraq in 1990, he said: "The bottom line ... is that the coalition is alive and well."   At a press briefing after talks with allied leaders on a trip to the Gulf and Europe, he said: "They offered complete agreement on the (U.S.) containment policy (of Iraq), which I described to them."   Perry and President Bill Clinton have called the U.S. policy, which has involved beefing up air, naval and ground forces in the Gulf and extension of a no-fly zone in southern Iraq, a success.   "We did the appropriate thing in the appropriate way and we've gotten the results that we sought," Clinton told reporters on Wednesday, saying the U.S. military actions had put Saddam in "a tighter box."   Deutch said in his testimony: "I think it is not possible to argue that he is not stronger today than he was six weeks ago -- and I think that is very bad."   White House spokesman Mike McCurry, travelling with Clinton on a campaign tour in Washington state, said Deutch's remarks did not conflict with Clinton's assessment.   "The president feels, and I believe director Deutch feels, that there has been a diminished military capacity on the part of Saddam Hussein," McCurry said.   He said Deutch had "indicated that he (Saddam) has over the last six weeks strengthened his political position in the region by exploiting factional divisions between the Kurdish population."   In his Senate testimony Deutch said Saddam was stronger politically because he had secured better contacts with Turkey, Washington's NATO ally to the north; because feuding among Kurds in northern Iraq had weakened that internal threat to his rule, and because the subsequent confrontation with the United States revealed "weariness among our European allies with the containment strategy."   The U.S. response to Iraq had been marked by apparent stumbles in the last 10 days.   The Pentagon released a statement last Friday saying 5,000 extra troops were being deployed to Kuwait to act as a further deterrence to Saddam, who initiated the Gulf conflict with his invasion of the oil-wealthy emirate in 1990.   It quickly became apparent that that Pentagon statement was premature, and that Kuwait's leaders, sensitive to any suggestion of their being U.S. vassals, had not been fully consulted.   It was not until Monday that the Kuwaitis gave their formal go-ahead for the deployment, which is now underway and in fact involves 3,500 troops. 
19356 !GCAT !GCRIM  Jury selection began on Thursday in the trial of a wrongful termination suit filed against pop star Michael Jackson by five former employees of his Neverland ranch.   Fifty-seven potential jurors were brought into court in Santa Maria for questioning by Santa Barbara County Superior Court Judge Zel Canter and attorneys for both sides.   About 18 people asked to be excused from the civil trial for personal reasons and were dismissed.   The prospective jurors had previously filled out a 28-page questionnaire asking them whether they had heard anything about the case and whether they knew any of the parties involved.   Three of Jackson's former bodyguards, a maid and an administrative assistant filed suit in February last year, alleging they were forced to resign from the Neverland Ranch in July 1994.   The ex-employees alleged Jackson and six of his senior aides installed recording devices at his Neverland Ranch to find out what they knew about molestation allegations against him.   Jackson denies the allegations.   In 1993, a 13-year-old boy said Jackson molested him.   The boy sued Jackson, but the lawsuit was settled out of court for a reported $15 million.   Jackson, who has denied any wrongdoing, was never charged with a crime.   Jury selection is expected to take between two and four days and the trial is expected to last up to two months.   The ex-employees have not specified the amount of financial damages they were seeking.   It is unclear whether Jackson will testify at the trial.   Lawyers for the former employees have subpoenaed him, but because he is not a full-time resident of California, doubts have been raised over whether the subpoena can be enforced.   Jackson's attorney Robert Sanger said at a court hearing this week that the ex-employees "just walked off the job and got together and made these allegations." 
19357 !GCAT !GENV !GODD  In some places ants covered in chocolate are a culinary delicacy.   Donnie Tucker prefers his ants steamed, but he is not out to tempt palates.   The 49-year-old entrepreneur bills his ant steamer as an environmentally friendly way of controlling one of the southeastern United States' most troublesome pests, the red fire ant.   "We're cooking them in the ground," he said.   "I love killing them -- especially when you kill 100,000 at one time."   Tucker sold his plant nursery in 1995 to purchase Cherokee Manufacturing Inc, in Centre, Alabama, where he has produced a dozen fire ant steamers.   The machine, which looks like an industrial-sized cappuccino maker on wheels, is powered by a 12-volt battery charged by a kerosene burner.   Most people living in the southeast and Puerto Rico where the ant is rife would agree with Tucker that the only good fire ant is a dead one.   A cousin of bees and hornets, the fire ant emits a painful formic acid and proteins that can produce a fatal allergic reaction in an unlucky few like Alabama state Sen. Finis St. John, who died in 1984 from bites sustained while working on his Cullman County farm.   In addition, the ants' mounds, some a foot (30 cm) high, can damage hay mowers and other equipment.   And each year the ants do millions of dollars of damage to the agriculture industry, killing calves, chickens, even prize emus and ostriches that can cost their owners $10,000 each.   Both the red (solenopsis invicta) and black (solenopsis richten) fire ants arrived in the port of Mobile in 1918 as stowaways from South America, where disease and predators kept their numbers low.   The red ant hails from Grosso, Brazil, while the less ubiquitous black variety left behind relatives in Uruguay and Argentina in the 1930's.   Demonstrating his device on a mound in a neighbour's backyard, Tucker uses a metal probe to pump boiling hot water into the bowels of the ants' cavernous colony.   Larvae that look like grains of rice bubble to the top and several dozen female worker ants try to climb the probe to sting Tucker, but the hot metal makes them hop off.   Because disturbing the mound tells the ants to move their immobile queen, "you try to go right down to the bottom and fill it up as quickly as possible," Tucker said.   "If the mound is rebuilt within two days, we know we didn't get the queen."   A few days later, workers are still stacking thousands of their dead cohorts in piles on the top of the mound, now a mere sinkhole.   Similar piles of ant corpses reveal other previously hidden entrances to the colony.   The patent for the steam method of killing ants was actually obtained by a Kentucky man in 1994.   Tucker heard about the process from his uncle Zack Taylor who built a prototype machine, and in December 1995 he and business partner John Dorsett made improvements on the device and signed a licensing agreement so they could begin offering Zacks's Fire Ant Control System.   Tucker and Dorsett do not consider the ants their main enemies in this project.   They are more concerned about their business rivals -- manufacturers of fire ant pesticides.   "We're taking on the wealth of the world, the chemical people," said Dorsett, who hopes people will see the device as an environmentally safe alternative to chemicals, which can kill birds, crabs and other wildlife along with the ants.   Industrial models will cost about $2,500, but Tucker plans to offer a $400 version that a homeowner can store right next to the backyard grill.   Steve Hill with United Industries Corp. in St. Louis, which manufactures Spectricide fire-ant pesticide, said his business was not yet running scared from the steamer.   "It sounds a little far-fetched.   It sounds too unwieldy and too expensive for the average Joe," he said. 
19358 !C42 !CCAT !E41 !ECAT !GCAT !GJOB  Chrysler Corp. chief executive Robert Eaton said Thursday he expected the company's next labour contract with the United Auto Workers would have more in common with Ford Motor Co.'s UAW pact than with Chrysler's own recent agreement with the Canadian Auto Workers union.   "I think it's quite clear that if there's an agreement it will be more along the lines of Ford than what we got in Canada," Eaton, who is also Chrysler's chairman, told reporters at a reception.   On Tuesday, Chrysler reached a tentative agreement with the CAW that limits the auto maker's ability to eliminate jobs through shifting work to outside suppliers.   Under the pact, if Chrysler sends work to outside firms it must replace those jobs with other newly created positions.   This week Ford reached a deal with the UAW that requires the company to guarantee jobs for 95 percent of the auto maker's 105,000 U.S. hourly workers.   It provides generous economic gains, including a $2,000 lump sum payment in the first year of the contract followed by 3 percent base wage increases in the second and third years.   Traditionally, the UAW uses the first agreement with a Big Three auto maker as the pattern to be followed by the other two companies.   However, UAW President Stephen Yokich has said there is room to tailor the contract to the individual needs of each auto maker.   Analysts have said Chrysler can afford all of the conditions of the Ford contract with little difficulty.   However, Eaton declined to comment on the terms of the Ford contract.   Eaton said he had not been notified whether the UAW planned to bargain next with Chrysler or General Motors Corp., but added that he expected the union to make its decision Monday. 
19359 !GCAT !GCRIM !GENT  Actress Sondra Locke said she felt "cleansed" on Thursday as her lawsuit accusing ex-lover Clint Eastwood of sabotaging her screen career went to a California jury.   The civil trial of Locke's suit against the famous movie star and director neared an end as Judge David Schachter handed the case to the six-man, six-woman jury.   The jury chose a foreman before leaving for the day.   Deliberations were due to begin on Friday in the case in which Locke accuses Eastwood of defrauding her with what she has called a "sham" film-directing deal.   Speaking to reporters outside court, Locke said that, regardless of the outcome of the case, "I feel cleansed of the whole thing."   "It's a complete miracle that I'm standing here right now," Locke said, apparently drained by the trial.   She said she would pick up her directing career again after the trial.   Locke, who lived with Eastwood for 13 years, originally filed a "palimony" suit in 1989, claiming assets the couple accumulated during their relationship.   She later dropped the suit when Eastwood agreed to secure her a director's contract worth $1.5 million at Warner Bros.   Locke says the contract was a sham because Eastwood had a secret deal with the studio to reimburse it for losses incurred by any Locke film, and she is seeking damages of over $2.5 million.   "I was tricked.   I wasn't told (about the indemnity deal) and I had a right to know," said Locke, who met Eastwood on the set of the 1975 movie "The Outlaw Josey Wales."   Eastwood told reporters that Locke's lawyers were "asking the jury to believe that I have nothing else to do in my life except spend all my waking hours and ... a great amount of money to go around and short-sheet somebody's career, and that just isn't the case."   "It's pulp fiction.   It's a dime store novel," Eastwood said.   Testifying this week, Eastwood denied trying to defraud Locke, saying he only had her best interests at heart.   In final arguments on Thursday, a lawyer for Locke told jurors Eastwood tricked her into dropping the palimony suit while Eastwood's attorney countered that Locke's lawsuit was an attempt to blame everyone else for the failure of her directorial career.   Locke's attorney Peggy Garrity said Eastwood had a duty to disclose he was backing the deal with Warner Bros.   By not telling Locke of the indemnity deal, Garrity said Eastwood made "the ultimate case of betrayal."   But Eastwood's attorney Raymond Fisher argued Eastwood did everything he could to open doors for Locke at the studio.   "This isn't a case where Ms. Locke can blame everybody else for what went wrong in her life," he said.   Locke's directorial efforts, "Ratboy" in 1986 and "Impulse" in 1989, were not commercial successes and in three years under the Warner Bros. contract, none of her 30 suggested projects was ever developed into a film. 
19360 !GCAT !GCRIM  Government agents using wiretaps taped thousands of hours of conversation between members of the Gulf drug cartel in Mexico and the United States, but never recorded alleged drug kingpin Juan Garcia Abrego or heard his name mentioned, an FBI agent testified on Thursday.   Special agent Peter Hanna, taking the stand in Garcia Abrego's drug-trafficking trial, said members of the Gulf cartel were taped surreptiously almost continously starting in 1989, which led to numerous arrests and seizures of cocaine and money.   Under cross-examination by defence attorney Tony Canales, he admitted that Garcia Abrego, who was on the FBI's 10 Most Wanted list, never once surfaced in the wiretaps.   "We have not been able to identify his voice among those we've intercepted," Hanna told the eight-man, four-woman jury in U.S. District Judge Ewing Werlein's court.   "Did anyone ever mention my client's name?"   asked Canales.   "Oh, by name, I would find it highly ... no," Hanna said.   He and other federal agents testified that drug traffickers often use nicknames or no identification at all in telephone conversations.   The 52-year-old Garcia Abrego, born in south Texas, is accused of running a massive drug empire from northern Mexico that once shipped up to a third of the cocaine used in the United States.   He was arrested in Monterrey, Mexico, Jan. 14 and flown to Houston for prosecution on 22 federal counts of drug trafficking, money laundering and bribery and faces several life sentences if convicted.   He has pleaded not guilty.   In opening arguments on Tuesday, Canales said Garcia Abrego was not the head of the Gulf cartel, as shown by his not being taped or spoken of in the wiretaps.   More than 10,000 conversations were recorded during the government's lengthy investigation, he said.   Also under cross-examination by Canales, Hanna said Garcia Abrego's fingerprints had not been found on any documents seized in drug busts.   His prints were seen on a map he drew for FBI agent Claudio de la O showing the bases of other drug-traffickers in the U.S.-Mexico border region, Hanna said.   De la O testified on Wednesday that he taped conversations between him and Garcia Abrego and met with him several times in 1986 when he was attempting to infiltrate his operations by acting as a corrupt agent.   He said Garcia Abrego provided him information about drug dealers, which de la O believed was an attempt to wipe out rivals in the lucrative narcotics trade.   He also said that Garcia Abrego operatives had given him $170,000 in bribes. 
19361 !GCAT !GCRIM !GODD  A state judge on Thursday temporarily released America's most notorious "deadbeat dad" for a three-month trial period in hopes it would motivate him to find a job and pay his ex-wife long overdue child support.   Jeffrey Nichols, 47, a commodities and precious metals investment adviser, owes $642,550 to his ex-wife, Marilyn Nichols Kane, for the support of their three children.   In releasing Nichols on Thursday, Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Phyllis Gangel-Jacob also said she feels Nichols has "thumbed his nose" at a December 1995 agreement in which he pledged to pay his former wife more than half a million dollars and other obligations in back support.   The judge said that Nichols has made "little or no effort to find employment" and ordered that he return to court in December with "serious documentation about his employment."   Nichols was arrested in August 1995 after moving from New York to Florida to Canada and to Charlotte, Vermont for five years in order to avoid paying Kane more than $9,000 a month in child support.   He was released from jail in December 1995 but sent back in June when an angry Gangel-Jacob charged that Nichols had not made a serious effort to get a full-time job in his field.   Nichols claimed at the time that he was broke, a victim of "bad publicity" and living off "the good faith and fortune of friends" who loaned him $25,000 in the previous six months.   In the mid-1980s Nichols earned over $300,000 a year, his lawyer said, but suffered financial setbacks last year after his second wife Suzan got cancer.   She died before his arrest last August.   Nichols adopted two children with his second wife.   Three months ago Nichols pleaded guilty in federal court to violating charges under the 4-year-old Child Support Recovery Act, which makes it a crime to cross state lines to escape paying child support.   Kane said that since Nichols' release in December he has paid her $13,900.   She also said expects to get another $21,000 from proceeds from an auction of Nichols' personal possessions. 
19362 !GCAT !GVIO  Although federal officials are looking at the latest bomb-detection technology as part of a $429 million plan to beef up airport security, they had nothing but raves for the old-fashioned, four-legged version.   "Right now, the best technology for detecting explosives remains a dog's nose," Brian Michael Jenkins, deputy chairman of a presidential panel on aviation security, said on Thursday.   The panel, which is headed by Vice President Al Gore, has recommended spending $9 million to assign 115 more bomb-sniffing dogs to airport security duty, more than doubling its canine army, Jenkins told the House of Representatives Science Committee.   More praise for pooches came from Keith Fultz, assistant comptroller general of the congressional General Accounting Office (GAO).   "Dogs are considered a unique type of trace detector because they can be trained to respond in specific ways to the smell of explosives," Fultz said in testimony prepared for delivery to the House committee.   But praise for man's best friend notwithstanding, the presidential panel also wants to invest in more expensive cutting edge technology and test it out in combination with other systems, Jenkins said.   "It is an experiment with no downside," he said.   "Some combinations will be highly effective, some undoubtedly less so, but all airports involved will reap some security benefits.   No airport's security will be less."   The $429 price tag to fund all of the panel's proposals includes $147 million to put more FBI agents on counter-terrorism duties and is part of a Clinton administration $1.1 billion anti-terrorism plan that needs congressional approval to get funding.   The GAO lauded the panel's recommendations but said they did not go far enough.   It recommended that Congress set airport security goals for the Federal Aviation Administration and that the FAA keep Congress informed of its progress.   "Given the persistence of long-standing vulnerabilities and the increased threat to civil aviation, we believe that corrective actions need to be undertaken immediately," said Fultz.   "These actions need a unified effort from the highest levels of the government to address this national issue."   Among the panel's more controversial recommendations were the use of so-called profiles to select certain passengers for closer scrutiny and FBI fingerprint checks for all airline and airport employees with access to secure areas. 
19363 !C42 !CCAT !E41 !ECAT !GCAT !GJOB !GWELF  Teamsters union President Ron Carey asked four trustees on the union's biggest pension fund to step down Thursday, saying they failed to improve benefit levels even though the fund grew stronger.   Carey said the level of retirement benefits in the Central States Pension and Health Funds have not kept up with recent gains in employer pension contributions in major trucking contracts with the International Brotherhood of Teamsters.   Further, he said, the fund's union and management trustees are not providing him with an accounting of the fund's progress.   The fund covers about 400,000 active Teamsters and retirees.   "I have no way of knowing if those dollars are being spent in the best interests of the members," he said in an interview.   "I do not want to control the pension money.   All I need to know is that whatever we have negotiated is being spent in the best interests of the membership."   Carey said he wants the four union trustees -- Jerry Cook, Joe Orrie, Ray Cash and Jerry Younger -- to be replaced by four representatives elected by rank-and-file Teamsters in the Midwestern locals covered by the Central States Fund.   The call for the resignations of the four Teamster representatives on the multi-billion dollar funds comes as Carey is embroiled in a re-election campaign against James Hoffa Jr., son of the infamous former Teamster leader.   Carey said he has often expressed his displeasure with the fund's performance and denied that his move Thursday had anything to do with his re-election campaign.   "I know they're going to say this is politics, but I've been screaming about this," he said.   The Central States Fund was once among the most corrupt and abused of the union's pension funds, providing mobsters with loans and kickbacks in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s during and after the tenure of the elder Hoffa as Teamster president.   But Carey stopped short of accusing the current trustees of wrongdoing, saying he simply did not have enough information about the fund's finances.   "I get no reports, I get no accountability and the members don't either," he said.   Smaller Teamster funds provide $2,300 a month to members who retire after 25 years and $2,800 for those who retire after 30 years, compared with the Central States Fund's benefits of $1,500 and $2,000, respectively, he said.   Under the union's complex structure, Carey cannot force the trustees to resign.   If they do not, he said: "We're going to keep the pressure on." 
19364 !GCAT !GSCI  U.S. astronaut Shannon Lucid was officially relieved from duty on Thursday after a record-breaking extended stay aboard Russia's Mir space station finally ended with the arrival of the shuttle Atlantis.   Lucid's place on the orbiting outpost was taken by John Blaha, a 54-year-old former Vietnam fighter pilot with four previous shuttle flights to his name.   "It's good to be back," said Lucid as she began to pack her gear aboard Atlantis.   "We're having a good time."   Atlantis arrived at Mir late on Wednesday and the hatches between the two craft swung open at 12:40 a.m.   CDT (0540 GMT) as they soared 248 miles (400 km) above the South Pacfic.   Atlantis skipper Bill Readdy was welcomed to the orbiting outpost with a handshake and hug from his Russian counterpart, Valery Korzun.   But the warmest greeting came when Lucid was reunited with Blaha.   The two U.S. astronauts, who have flown together in space twice before, floated in each other's arms, wearing wide grins.   Lucid was seen chatting and laughing with her U.S. colleagues, but it was some hours before she was heard at mission control over NASA's radio channels.   "There was nothing anybody could have said that would have described it any better than seeing her pensively waiting in the docking module for the hatch to open," said astronaut Frank Culberston who heads NASA's shuttle-Mir programme and watched the docking from mission control.   "Her mission was complete and all she needed was a pick up," he said.   "I thought it said a lot."   Atlantis, with six astronauts and thousands of pounds (kilos) of supplies aboard, arrived at Mir at 10:13 p.m.   CDT on Wednesday (0313 GMT on Thursday).   "Atlantis and Mir are shaking hands," Readdy said as the metallic petals of the two docking ports slipped together.   The shuttle's arrival at Mir, its fourth visit, ended a three-day chase through space that began early on Monday with a pre-dawn blastoff from Florida's Kennedy Space Centre.   Lucid has been waiting for her ride home since early August.   The shuttle was running nearly seven weeks late because of rocket problems, a threatening hurricane and scheduling difficulties.   The 53-year-old mother-of-three has been working aboard the Russian space outpost since March as part of a NASA effort to learn more about long duration space flights before the construction of an international space station begins.   Atlantis will be berthed at Mir for five days while supplies and equipment are transferred to and from the station.   The shuttle is carrying about 4,600 pounds (2,070 kgs) of supplies and equipment for Mir and will return to Earth with 2,200 pounds (990 kgs) of scientific samples and other gear from the station.   The shuttle is due back to earth on Sept. 26, ending Lucid's 188-day mission, a record for a woman and the longest by an American. 
19365 !CCAT !GCAT !GDIS  A Continental Airlines DC-10 with 178 passengers and crew got stuck in the mud as it taxied to a terminal at Houston Intercontinental Airport on Thursday, an airline spokeswoman said.   After landing safely following a trans-Atlantic flight from London, passengers on Continental Airlines Flight 5 were stranded briefly after the right gear assembly of the huge jetliner was steered off the taxiway and sank in mud created by heavy rains from an overnight storm, the spokeswoman said.   The accident occurred after airport ground controllers asked the pilot to reposition the jetliner on a side taxiway at the north end of the airport, she said.   "That's a pretty narrow taxiway for a DC-10," said Continental spokeswoman Sarah Anthony.   There were no injuries and the 164 passengers on board were bused to the terminal to clear U.S. Customs, she said. 
19366 !C13 !C31 !C312 !CCAT !G15 !G153 !GCAT  German leaders, consumer groups and farmers threw their weight behind the European Commission on Friday to oppose lifting a ban on British beef exports after London abandoned a cull of cattle at risk from mad cow disease.   Foreign Minister Klaus Kinkel said the British decision was "not acceptable", while the head of the European Parliament -- a German -- said it would be better for Britain to quit the EU altogether if it would not respect joint decisions.   Britain decided to ignore a vote by EU farm ministers this week and abandon a commitment made in June to slaughter 147,000 cattle at risk from Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE).   That move has aroused anger in Germany, one of the first European countries to slap a unilateral block on British beef last spring after scientists found a link between BSE and a fatal human brain-wasting disease.   "The main priority is the health of the consumer.   The ban on importing British cattle, beef and other products will remain in force," Kinkel said in a statement released in Bonn.   European Parliament President Klaus Haensch went further.   "If the British abandon the Union's internal solidarity, when they don't respect decisions taken together, then they do not belong in the Union," he told Saarland radio.   "It would be better if such a member state left the Union."   Britain based its decision on a new study by scientists from Oxford University which showed the cull was unnecessary because BSE would die out naturally within five years.   But Commission President Jacques Santer and Agriculture Commissioner Franz Fischler both said on Friday Britain was still bound by its promise to cull the cattle as part of a step-by-step plan to lift the ban.   Germany's Farmers Association in Bonn joined the chorus of criticism, saying it was "outraged" by Britain's decision.   "We call on the government and all other member states to exclude Britain from the European beef market until it fulfils its commitments to the European Union," it said in a statement.   Germany's 300,000 beef farmers have been hit by a slide of nearly half in beef consumption in the past five years linked to the BSE scare.   Price falls since 1994 mean they now get 400 marks ($270) less for each bull sold, a spokeswoman said.   Germany has also been swept by consumer health fears that humans could contract the deadly Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (CJD) from dairy produce after it was found that cows could pass BSE on to their calves through their milk.   Consumer groups also said they backed Brussels' position.   "We must stick to this strict export ban until the whole slaughter is complete," Susanne Hampel-Masfeld of the Bonn-based Consumer Initiative group told Reuters.   Hampel-Masfeld said her group was advising consumers not to buy imported milk or cheese until the produce is given a clean bill of health.   "We think that this whole problem is so unclear that we should be careful," she said.   The umbrella organisation of German consumer associations also slammed the British decision as irresponsible.   It said the move could have waited until a meeting in October of Commission science committees to review the findings of the Oxford study.   "Germany's consumer associations see no reason to give the all-clear," a statement said. 
19367 !GCAT !GDEF !GDIP  Russian Foreign Minister Yevgeny Primakov, outlining Moscow's vision of post-Cold War European security, said on Friday stationing NATO's military might closer to Russia's borders was "absolutely unacceptable".   Primakov, who was due to meet NATO Secretary-General Javier Solana in the Austrian capital at 1430 GMT, said Moscow was aware it had no right of veto if former Soviet bloc members wanted to join the Western military alliance.   "However, Russia finds it absolutely unacceptable that NATO's military infrastructure should come closer to its territory," he said in an address to the Vienna-based Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).   Moscow's outright opposition to NATO expansion relaxed a notch following President Boris Yeltsin's victory in presidential elections in June.   Primakov then suggested a limited expansion of NATO to the east may be acceptable if no troops or weapons were stationed inside the new member states.   Ex-Warsaw Pact states the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland are front-runners to join NATO, probably next year.   Slovenia said on Friday it also had a good chance of joining the 16-member alliance in the first wave of new members.   Setting out Russia's ideas for a pan-European security framework, Primakov said Europe, together with its partners in North America, had to grasp the chance to set up new structures otherwise new lines of division based on military alliances would emerge across the continent.   "Unfortunately, a trend toward this eventuality does exist.   In our opinion, the intention to expand NATO to the east will reinforce it," he added.   Primakov said the 53-member OSCE, which includes most of Europe, the United States and Canada, was uniquely positioned to be bolstered into Europe's main security body.   "The model should envisage counteraction against an entire range of threats, both military and terrorist, as well as challenges in the economic, ecological, humanitarian and other fields," Primakov told OSCE ambassadors.   Primakov went on to suggest that all organisations involved in security policy should have an input in a restructured OSCE -- the United Nations, NATO, the Council of Europe, the European Union, the Western European Union (the EU's defence arm) as well as the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS).   Russia is expected to press for the proposals to be seriously addressed at the OSCE's summit in Lisbon in December as a balance, or alternative, to further NATO expansion, diplomatic sources said.   The Russian foreign minister said he hoped a treaty to set up the new body would be ready at the next OSCE summit in 1998.   Primakov made no reference in his speech to proposals put forward by U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher earlier this month to draw up a new charter defining NATO's ties with Russia or an enhanced Partnership for Peace programme to include countries not accepted into the alliance in the first wave of new entrants.   Following talks with Austrian Chancellor Franz Vranitzky earlier, Primakov said he hoped Austria would not give up its neutrality and join NATO but stressed such a move was solely a matter for the Austrian people.   During the Cold War, the Kremlin had insisted that Vienna should remain neutral, a commitment it made to ensure Moscow pulled its World War Two occupying forces out of Austria in 1955. 
19368 !GCAT !GVIO  Moslem fundamentalists kidnapped and killed Algerian rai singer Boudjemaa Bechiri after a wedding in the eastern city of Constantine, Algerian security forces said on Friday.   His dumped body was found at midday (1100 GMT) on Friday in the city, the forces said in a statement.   Bechiri, 28, was kidnapped by "four terrorists" on Wednesday night as he was leaving a wedding in Constantine, said the statement, carried by the official news agency APS.   The agency earlier reported that Bechiri had been seized on Thursday night.   Algerian authorities use the term "terrorists" to describe Moslem fundamentalists who have been battling to topple the authorities since the cancellation of a general election in January 1992.   Bechiri, known as 'Cheb Aziz", is one of about a score of Algerian singers of "rai", a blend of Western and Arabic music, to have been slain in the conflict.   Around 50,000 people -- including more than 300 women, religious workers, doctors, teachers, former ministers and other civilians -- have been killed in the conflict.   Tight censorship over security matters masks much of the killing.   Diplomats in Algiers say the fundamentalists have turned increasingly either to bombings, which quickly become widely known, or to high-profile targets whose deaths the authorities find difficult to conceal.   "The violence still goes on every day," one senior Western diplomat told Reuters.   "The situation is still bad, though not as bad as a year ago."   Last month, the officially appointed rights body, Human Rights National Observatory, said about 1,400 people had been killed by bombs in the past two years.   Diplomats say these figures are conservative.   Security forces reported one person had been killed and 10 wounded by a car bomb parked outside the Hotel Angleterre in central Algiers earlier this month.   "If you look at the devastation to the building, the figure widely circulating, of nearly 40 deaths, seems more credible," one diplomat told Reuters.   He said that the bomb went off at about 5.45 a.m. when people were sleeping.   The hotel was being used temporarily to house policemen. 
19369 !GCAT !GCRIM !GPOL !GVIO  Relatives of Basque separatist detainees briefly occupied the headquarters of France's opposition Socialist Party on Friday to protest against prison conditions and the deportation of Basque suspects to Spain.   A Socialist spokesman said the 30 protesters were evacuated peacefully by police after they spoke by telephone with party leader Lionel Jospin who was not at the Paris headquarters.   Police in the French Basque town of Bayonne said they detonated a small bomb planted outside a customs office at nearby Le Boucau on the border with Spain.   There was no damage caused and no injuries.   There was no indication as to whether the attack was linked with protests marking a week-long hunger strike begun on Monday in seven European cities by 543 French and Spanish Basques in support of an equivalent number of suspected ETA (Basque Homeland and Freedom) guerrillas held in France and Spain.   The protesters said in a statement they wanted to denounce what they said was the Socialists' role in allowing poor prison conditions, deportations and extraditions to Spain, and the death of 28 people in France at the hands of Spanish death squads in 1983-87.   The Socialists ruled in France between 1981-86 and 1988-93.   Conservative President Jacques Chirac has pledged to increase cooperation with Spain to fight ETA which has killed some 800 people in Spain in a campaign for Basque independence. 
19370 !C13 !C21 !C31 !C312 !CCAT !G15 !G153 !GCAT  The European Union on Friday ruled out any lifting of a worldwide ban on British beef exports until London respected the terms of a deal cut with EU leaders.   "As long as they do not meet the pre-conditions and until we have a working document from them which we can carefully check, then an end to the export ban is simply not a possibility," EU Farm Commissioner Fischler told the European Parliament in Strasbourg.   The British government said on Thursday it was putting on hold a cull of beef cattle most at risk from mad cow disease or bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) because of evidence from researchers that the disease would die out in five years.   British Agriculture Minister Douglas Hogg said London had called off the selective cull, which had been due to start on August 1, because of fierce opposition in Britain's parliament.   The British government has been repeatedly at odds with its European partners since acknowledging in March a fatal, brain-wasting disease could be transmitted to humans who ate BSE-inflected beef.   The planned cull would be in addition to a much bigger rolling programme to annually slaughter around one million cattle over the age of 30 months.   Lack of incinerators to destroy the meat has resulted in a huge backlog.   Fischler warned that Britain was still bound by its agreement with the European Union to slaughter up to 147,000 cattle as part of a plan that would eventually lead to the lifting of its worldwide ban on British beef exports.   "That is a question which the British government has to address," he said, adding that London's decision did nothing to improve the poor state of the European beef market.   European Commission President Jacques Santer said that Britain's decision to hold up the planned extra cull of cattle had not influenced the rest of Europe's view of the issue.   "The position of the Commission has not changed," he told a Reuters Television reporter in Brussels.   Germany backed Santer's call on Britain to make the cull.   "As long as the British government does not hold to the agreements of the EU agriculture ministers, we cannot accommodate it," a spokesman for the German agriculture ministry said on Friday.   The European Union says that Britain must honour the agreement reached at an EU summit in Florence in June on a gradual lifting of the ban and that new scientific evidence should not serve as an excuse for delaying the cull.   The Commission's chief spokesman Nikolaus van der Pas said in a statement that the Commission will stick to the Florence framework which was based on the latest scientific evidence.   But he added that EU scientists will assess the latest studies, one by Oxford University and another which shows that BSE can be passed from cows to calves.   In response to a question, Van der Pas estimated it would take until at least mid-October before the scientists would be able to say whether the selective culling programme should be adjusted upwards or downwards.   Van der Pas also said the Commission was ready to examine the case of grass-fed herds which were free of BSE.   "The Commission remains open to discuss possibilities that may exist for a relaxation of export restrictions for animals from certified herds possibly on a regional basis," he said in the statement, adding that the Florence deal must be respected.   Northern Ireland is pressing strongly for the ban to be lifted on its grass-fed herds, saying it has an effective computer system to track the origin and feed of all its cattle. 
19371 !GCAT !GREL  Pope John Paul said on Friday that a "climate of indifference" threatened religious faith in France and urged Roman Catholics to respond by spreading the Christian message.   He chose the western region of Brittany, for long a religious bastion opposed to the secular traditions of the 1789 Revolution, to confront the issue of falling congregations and diminishing adherence to Church teachings in modern France.   "This faith, which is your common heritage, is met with numerous problems," the 76-year-old Pope told worshippers gathered in bright sunshine at this Catholic shrine for his first outdoor mass of a four-day visit to France.   "For sure, the causes to worry are numerous.   Thus we see develop a climate of indifference and individualism," he said in a sermon from a huge grey and blue wooden altar platform erected in front of a crowd estimated by police at 120,000.   "Too often the Christian faith grows weak, noticeably in the younger generation, which really struggles to acquire their religious heritage."   But, referring to what he called "numerous signs of vitality" in the Church, he urged the faithful to spread a message of Christian hope.   "Like your forefathers, be the builders of the Church in the new generations," he said.   The Pope, on the second day of his final foreign visit before surgery to remove his appendix next month, appeared relatively robust at the service, the biggest event so far on a gruelling schedule that will test his fragile health.   "Let us thank God for the sun," he remarked to the crowd after constant rain had fallen on the first day of his trip.   "Thank you for coming in such large numbers...I must say that I have found a lot of hope here," he said.   The Pope's tour has been billed as a test of his ability to rally his flock in France in the face of controversy over the separation of Church and state and the Pontiff's own strict opposition to contraception, abortion and homosexuality.   He was likely to use a meeting with some 3,000 young couples and their children later on Friday in the hamlet of Saint-Anne d'Auray, for centuries a shrine to the mother of the Virgin Mary, to extol Christian marriage and the family.   Most of France's 58 million people are nominal Catholics, but only six million regularly attend mass, and many of these believe the Pope's conservative teachings are out of date.   Opinion polls have shown that most French people are indifferent to his visit, his fifth to mainland France.   A French bishop sacked by the Vatican for his liberal views predicted on Friday that the papacy would rapidly lose its role in setting moral standards for Roman Catholics.   Modern society rejected "this type of authority...This function of the authority of the Church will quickly collapse," "Red Cleric' Jacques Gaillot told France Inter radio.   Gaillot was ousted from his diocese in Normandy in 1995 and transferred to a non-existent ancient seat in the Sahara for his liberal views on issues ranging from condom use to abortion.   He also faulted the Pope's plan to honour a fifth century king in France who converted to Christianity, saying it would help the far right and Roman Catholic traditionalists.   The Pontiff is to travel to the eastern city of Reims on Sunday to celebrate the 1,500th anniversary of the baptism of Clovis, the first pagan king in western Europe to embrace Catholicism.   Traditionalists see him as a father of France.   Seventy groups including leftists, anarchists and freemasons are planning a rally in Paris on the same day to back the secular ideals of the French Revolution and protest against the Pope's teachings on sexual morality.   The Vatican's chief spokesman, Joaquin Navarro-Valls, played down opposition to the visit, which has been blanketed in tight security after a crude bomb was left two weeks ago at a basilica which the Pope visited on Thursday.   "Up until now we haven't seen any protests," Navarro-Valls told reporters.   "The French press has talked about demonstrations but it seems to be fizzling out." 
19372 !GCAT !GDIP  Bosnian Moslem President Alija Izetbegovic and President Slobodan Milosevic of Serbia will meet in Paris on October 3 to discuss how to build peace after Bosnia's elections, the French Foreign Ministry said on Friday.   "(The meeting) will be dedicated to pursuing the normalisation of relations between the two countries," ministry spokesman Jacques Rummelhardt told reporters.   The Bosnian and Serbian leaders would also lunch with French President Jacques Chirac and Carl Bildt, chief international civilian representative in Bosnia.   "France thus bears witness to its wish to contribute very actively to the success of the peace process in close consultation with its partners and the senior representative Carl Bildt," Rummelhardt said.   Bosnia's Serbs, Moslems and Croats voted in their first post-war elections on Saturday.   Izetbegovic won the contest to lead Bosnia's new three-man presidency.   Rummelhardt added that Bildt had suggested Paris host a meeting of the three-man presidency, rather than the United States as previously suggested.   France, frequently at odds with Washington on policies ranging from Bosnia to Iraq, said this week that it planned the Izetbegovic-Milosevic talks with Bildt and played down any role by U.S. mediator Richard Holbrooke in brokering the meeting.   Holbrooke irritated France by announcing the planned Izetbegovic-Milosevic talks in Paris last Sunday in Sarajevo.   Speaking after seeing Izetbegovic on his return from a four-hour visit to Belgrade, the American peace architect had said the Paris meeting then hinged on a resolution of Moslem-Serb disputes over the conduct of the elections.   Holbrooke predicted the two presidents would meet in Paris in about three weeks' time.   The French Foreign Ministry originally said it hoped the meeting might take place as early as the end of this week. 
19373 !GCAT !GDEF !GDIP  Russian Foreign Minister Yevgeny Primakov said on Friday he hoped Austria would not give up its neutrality and join NATO but stressed that membership of a military alliance was solely a matter for the Austrian people.   Primakov, who was due to meet NATO Secretary-General Javier Solana at 16.30 local time (1430 GMT), said NATO membership should not be linked with Austria's entry into the European Union last year, which Moscow supported.   Asked about months of public debate in Austria over NATO membership, Primakov told reporters: "I wish that Austria will not take such a decision.   I do not think Austria or the majority of the Austrian people want to take such a step."   "But this is a decision that can only be taken by the Austrian people," he said after an hour-long meeting with Chancellor Franz Vranitzky.   Primakov's comments were in contrast to the Kremlin's position on Austria during the Cold War, when Soviet leaders insisted that Vienna had to adhere to a commitment to "neutrality forever" written into its 1955 constitution.   The four World War Two victors -- the United States, the Soviet Union, Britain and France -- ended their occupation of Austria in 1955 but Soviet dictator Josef Stalin only agreed to pull his troops out if Vienna embraced neutrality.   Primakov and Vranitzky were speaking in the Austrian chancellory near an oil painting of the signing of the 1955 constitution, with their respective predecessors, Viacheslav Molotov and Leopold Figl, seated next to each other.   Social Democrat leader Vranitzky opposes NATO membership for Austria but some of his conservative coalition partners have backed the idea, saying neutrality was now outdated.   Primakov left the chancellory for the former imperial Hofburg palace to address the Vienna-based permanent council of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).   Moscow has signalled that it wants to strengthen the OSCE by giving it new conflict-prevention powers at a summit of the European security forum in Lisbon in December, an idea already backed by Germany.   Referring to planned changes in the structure of European security, the Russian minister said: "We think that the OSCE should play a central role in these structures."   OSCE officials say Russia is one of the most active members of the body and may use the Lisbon summit to try to push for greater involvement by the OSCE in Europe's security umbrella as a balance, or alternative, to NATO expansion.   Moscow has opposed NATO plans to extend membership eastwards, citing security concerns.   Russian leaders have softened their stance following President Boris Yeltsin's victory in presidential elections in June.   Primakov earlier this month said Moscow's opposition to NATO expansion had not changed but Russia was prepared for dialogue.   Solana said last week that Russia had nothing to fear if NATO accepted former Soviet bloc countries as members.   A first wave of entrants is likely to include the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland next year.   In a key speech in Stuttgart on September 6, U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher called for a new charter defining NATO's ties with Russia to be drawn up next year as the alliance prepared to admit new members.   Christopher also outlined the U.S. vision of a "new Atlantic community", transcending the borders of the old Cold War divide and bolstering the Partnership for Peace programme. 
19374 !GCAT !GREL  Communist powers planted a church 'mole' in the Vatican in the 1970s who fed his Cold War masters reports of talks between the Pope and Western leaders, Germany's Tagesspiegel daily said on Friday.   The newspaper based its report on a still-unpublished report by the "Gauck office", the authority appointed to examine documents left behind after unification by communist East Germany's Ministry for State Security (Stasi).   The infiltrator has not been identified but was "run" by Poland's SB secret service and was therefore probably a top Polish cleric in the Roman Catholic Church's administration, Tagesspiegel said in an advance release from Saturday's edition.   Some 260 pages of Stasi material uncovered so far included confidential memoranda on talks between Pope Paul VI and German "Chancellor of Detente" Willy Brandt, the French and English foreign ministers of the time and U.S. President Richard Nixon's personal envoy, Tagesspiegel said.   The report said it was not clear whether the church agent had also spied on the current Pope, John Paul II, who took office in 1978.   The newspaper said church historian Erwin Gatz had been despatched from Rome to Berlin to look at the documents and report back to the Vatican, but said Gatz himself had declined to comment. 
19375 !E12 !ECAT !G15 !G154 !GCAT  The EU commissioner for Economic and Financial Affairs, Yves-Thibault de Silguy, said on Friday he was sure Ireland would be in the first wave of countries to join EMU in 1999.   Speaking to reporters in Dublin ahead of a weekend meeting of Europe's finance ministers, de Silguy said he had a lengthy talk with Irish Finance Minister Ruairi Quinn and was very optimistic about Ireland's understanding of the requirements for Economic and Monetary Union.   "I am sure Ireland will be in the first wave for EMU in 1999.   Ireland is a star pupil in the class," De Silguy said.   "I am confident because I am convinced that, as ever, Ireland will be up to the challenge."  .   The Maastricht Treaty requires that countries proceeding to the European single currency have a general government deficit not exceeding three per cent of GDP.   De Silguy said five countries besides Ireland had "respect" for the three per cent requirement of the Maastricht criteria which were Germany, France, Belgium, Luxembourg, Netherlands.   Among those countries not far from the three per cent criterion were Finland, Denmark, Austria and Spain, he said.   De Silguy said he wished to quash two myths with regard to monetary union -- firstly that it was bad for employment and secondly that the timetable was not realistic.   "These two claims are false," De Silguy said.   He said far from creating unemployment, economic and monetary union will have a positive impact on jobs.   "There was no alternative to sound public finances.   We cannot pretend that public deficits create jobs.   The fact is that deficits and unemployment go hand in hand," he said.   De Silguy said the two real issues of the moment were completing the framework for future monetary union and preparing administrations and businesses for the practical consequences of a change in currency.   De Silguy said failure to observe the EMU timetable would undermine the EU's credibility and would have serious economic consequences.   "Markets would start to question the soundness and reliability of the Euro," he said.   "This would undermine its credibility even before it was put into circulation."   The Maastricht Treaty provides that EMU is to be achieved by January 1, 1999 at the latest. 
19376 !GCAT !GDEF !GDIP  Taiwan is about to take delivery of its first French air-to-air MICA missiles for use in arming Mirage 2000-5 fighters, even before the French air force gets them, Le Monde reported on Friday.   The daily Le Monde said Paris was taking the unusual step of supplying a foreign client before equipping its own air force in order to get the controversial delivery out of the way before President Jacques Chirac visits China next spring.   No comment was immediately available from the French Defence Ministry, which rarely comments on arms deals.   Deals between Paris and Taipei for French Mirage fighters, missiles and navy frigates have angered Beijing which regards Taiwan as a renegade province since the defeated Nationalists fled into exile in 1949 after a civil war.   France agreed in 1993 to Chinese demands to stop any new arms deals with the prosperous island.   The French air force is expected to receive its first MICA missiles next year.   MICAs are designed to be used in both close and remote air combat, over distances ranging from a few hundred metres (yards) to 60 km (38 miles). 
19377 !CCAT !GCAT !GVIO  The head of Swiss manufacturer Societe Generale de Surveillance S.A. on Friday defended the firm's wartime role under her Jewish grandfather, rejecting allegations SGS holds money left by Jews killed by the Nazis.   Elisabeth Salina-Amorini, chairwoman of the world leader in testing and inspection services, said a "mixture of ignorance and haste" in the United States had led to suspicions earlier this year that SGS still had unclaimed Jewish assets.   In March, the World Jewish Congress (WJC), which has pressed Swiss banks into searching for lost assets of Holocaust victims, said declassified U.S. government documents showed SGS in 1945 held mostly Jewish foreign accounts worth $29 million today.   "Through a mixture of ignorance and haste, information voluntarily handed over by Surveillance to the American authorities in 1945 was cited in 1996, creating suspicion that SGS was in possession of unclaimed Jewish funds," Salina-Amorini told a news conference to announce first-half year results.   "This is naturally false and absurd," she added in an unusual aside from the routine business of presenting the company's financial results for the half year.   Salina-Amorini said SGS archives showed that only four of the 182 commercial accounts mentioned in the U.S. documents had not been claimed.   "These four accounts were worth a total of $6,430 at the time," she said.   "The commercial accounts were liquidated in the years after the war, but our archives do not explain exactly how.   "At our request, the independent auditors Coopers & Lybrand have made a detailed report on these accounts which will be submitted to the competent authorities," she added.   The documents stemmed from a U.S. government investigation after World War Two dubbed "Operation Safe Haven" aimed at uncovering money left in Switzerland by Nazis and their victims.   Salina-Amorini said her Jewish grandfather, Jacques Salmanowitz, was a Latvian emigrant who fled Tsarist repression himself in 1889 and later headed the firm from 1919-66.   "Although living in Switzerland in peace and neutrality, he never stopped using all possible means to help his friends or business relations being persecuted by the Nazis and whose lives and property were in peril," Salina-Amorini said.   SGS consolidated revenues rose 8.6 per cent to 1.40 billion Swiss francs during the first half of 1996, while net profit grew by 10.9 per cent to 110.9 million francs. 
19378 !C31 !CCAT !GCAT !GHEA !GWELF  Portugal's ageing population, concerned over the future of the over-burdened state social security system, is turning increasingly to private life and health insurance, a senior industry official said on Friday.   Ruy de Carvalho, president of the Portuguese Association of Insurers (APS), said the strong growth in life insurance premiums in recent years should continue into the near future and could overtake non-life premiums by the end of the century.   Portugal was catching up with the rest of Europe, although the ratio of total life insurance premiums to Gross Domestic Product still lagged other European countries, he said.   The ratio stood at about 2.2 percent in Portugal, compared with 6.6 percent in Britain, for example, where the market for private life insurance is well-developed.   Life premiums could grow by 40 to 50 percent and sickness premiums by some 20 percent in Portugal this year, compared with 1995, Carvalho told Reuters in an interview.   Total insurance premiums could grow by 25 percent in Portugal to close to one trillion escudos ($6.5 billion) in 1996 from 783 billion escudos ($5.1 billion) in 1995, he added.   Demand for life insurance had risen because of the increasing availability of insurance products at bank branches, the recent drop in inflation and tax incentives, Carvalho said.   "Amid concerns over the future of the social security system, people are motivated to take precautions," he said.   "It is not a problem of a lack of confidence in the government, rather that conditions have changed as people are living longer and the birth rate has fallen," he added.   The Socialist government of Prime Minister Antonio Guterres is studying reforms to the creaking social security system.   Increasing demand for sickness insurance resulted from disillusionment with long waiting periods and inadequate choice and facilities in state hospitals, as well as concerns over the debts of the public health system, Carvalho said.   He said he foresaw increasing concentration in Portuguese financial services as conglomerates offering both insurance and banking evolved.   The supervisory bodies in insurance and banking, the Insurance Institute of Portugal and the Bank of Portugal, should boost cooperation as their industries became increasingly intertwined, he added.   Some Portuguese insurers such as Mundial Confianca and Imperio own banks, while others such as Fidelidade belong to a bank.   Carvalho said he doubted that Portuguese insurers would open many more branches abroad to serve Portuguese emigrants, but would turn instead to alliances with European financial groups.   Now just Fidelidade and Imperio operate branches abroad.   The APS represents some 80 insurance and re-insurance companies in Portugal, accounting for more than 97 percent of total premiums.   $1=154.6 escudos   -- Lisbon newsroom +351-1-3538254 
19379 !C13 !CCAT !GCAT !GDIP  Swiss banks could have moved earlier to settle whether they still hold accounts left by Jewish victims of the Holocaust, the head of the Swiss Bankers Association said on Friday.   But bankers' president George Krayer said a thorough effort was now going on under the supervision of an international Swiss-Jewish commission and urged critics to await the results.   Krayer, speaking to the association's annual meeting, also branded a recent wave of international criticism of Switzerland over Jewish accounts and Nazi gold purchases as "polemics".   "One could have addressed this earlier," Krayer said of the whole issue of Switzerland's wartime financial role, including the question of lost Holocaust accounts.   "One might also have addressed this earlier, because those who now criticise us so loudly and ask such razor-sharp questions provide no balance," he added.   Switzerland has come under mounting pressure since last year's 50th anniversary of the end of World War Two to clear up the fate of Jewish accounts left ownerless by the Holocaust as well as the trail of Nazi gold bought by the Swiss National Bank.   Swiss banks were forced by a 1962 law to sweep their books for ownerless Holocaust accounts, finding about 10 million Swiss francs, but world Jewish groups question if that search was thorough enough.   Krayer acknowledged that Swiss banks had been indifferent over the years to queries from heirs of Holocaust victims who believed Swiss accounts had been left behind but had little or no paperwork to prove it.   "Here the banks answered too many cases with too little understanding, even if the answers stood up to legal scrutiny," he said.   Krayer asked critics to await results from an international commission launched in May by the banks and World Jewish Congress and headed by former U.S. Federal Reserve Board chairman Paul Volcker.   Krayer also blasted media reports and critics for confusing the two issues at hand -- the fate of lost Holocaust accounts and the role of the Swiss National Bank in buying Nazi gold stolen by Germany from occupied countries.   "The polemics of recent weeks have caused complete confusion while actually having only one conclusion: whatever happened or did not happen, the banks have first to justify themselves," he said. 
19380 !GCAT !GDIP  Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is to meet French President Jacques Chirac in Paris next Wednesday, their first talks since Netanyahu's election in May, Chirac's office said on Friday.   The two men are to lunch at the Elysee Palace.   Their talks are likely to focus on faltering Middle East peace efforts.   In recent months, Chirac has sought to strengthen French ties with Arab nations while insisting this would not jeopardise relations with Israel.   Chirac is due to meet Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri in Paris on September 28. 
19381 !GCAT !GPOL !GVIO  Belgium, reeling from its multiple scandals of child sex abuse, political murder and judicial warfare, is taking a serious look at itself but is not on the verge of collapse, political analysts said on Friday.   "Belgium is not in any danger of disintegrating from these events," Helmut Gaus, Professor of Political Science at Ghent University, told Reuters.   "We have in Belgium a Federal state with two seperate entities -- Flemish and Walloon.   This sort of artificial state, is exactly the same thing that Europe is creating," Gaus, a well-respected author on politics and society.   The death of four young girls at the hands of a paedophile kidnap and car theft gang, the linked arrest of a chief detective and the charge of murder against a former government minister in another case have shaken the country to the core.   Add to that evidence of bitter rivalry between Belgium's different police forces and within the judiciary -- deflecting investigations and keeping crucial information from the right hands -- and the brew begins to bubble.   Stir in a series of deadly attacks on security vans, a string of unsolved murders stretching back a decade, widespread corruption, allegations that organised crime is running rampant from drugs to the diamond industry and farming, and it becomes hard not conclude that Belgium is in terminal decline.   "What has happened is undoubtedly very serious.   The problem is that we are incapable of talking about serious problems that are happening at the same time without exagerating on the one side their gravity and on the other the links between them," political analyst Xavier Mabille said.   "It is true that there is organised crime in Belgium, as in other countries...The fact that it all came at the same time gives a rather curious image of Belgium," Gaus said.   "If they had all come at different times there would not have been so much interest.   The timing has not been good for objectivity," he added.   Both analysts accepted the country has not only linguistic divisions between the Dutch-speaking Flemings and the French- speaking Walloons, but also cultural, social, historic, economic and political gulfs that have always and will always exist.   "These events could have happened in Flanders as much as in Wallonia," Gaus said of the so-called Dutroux affair of child abduction, abuse and killing and the arrest of Alain Van der Biest for murdering Socialist Party patriarch Andre Cools.   "Some politicians use these facts to put separatism back on the political agenda, but I think the man in the street in Liege, and in Ghent and in Antwerp doesn't believe that this has anything to do with the Walloon/Flemish question," he added.   Gaus accepted that Belgium's political and judicial systems needed a serious overhaul and had done for some time.   "There you have to take this compromise mentality in the Belgians.   They don't adapt their institutions to new circumstances until something happens," he said.   "If nothing happens and they try to start changing part of the institutions they would make a lot of enemies.   So they don't do anything until forced to.   "They use the fact now to reorganise the whole system.   Many politicians at the end of the 80s were aware of the lack of efficiency in the judicial system but they didn't dare to change that all because there was no obvious reason," Gaus added.   The scandals have already prompted the government to announce a complete review of the legal system and triggered calls for an end to patronage appointments of judges and magistrates.   They have also raised questions about the future of the country, questions that Gaus and Mabille insist are misdirected.   "The changes that will come through the system will not be beneficial for Belgium as a whole, but they will be good for justice.   Belgium as a whole, that is a strange construction you know.   It only exists for foreigners," Gaus concluded. 
19382 !E21 !E211 !ECAT !GCAT !GPOL  Italian deputy Prime Minister Walter Veltroni said on Friday he saw no problems on the horizon for the forthcoming 1997 budget, which the government is expected to unveil by the end of the month.   "There are no clouds over the budget," Veltroni said.   Earlier on Friday, the leader of the hardleft Communist Refoundation party, Fausto Bertinotti, said he saw problems arising over possible changes to state pensions.   Refoundation, whose support is needed if the government is to get the budget approved, has always said it would block the package if it included any cuts to state pensions and Bertinotti's comments caused Italian bonds to lose ground.   -- Rome newsroom +396 6782501 
19383 !C33 !C331 !CCAT !GCAT !GDEF  Italian ship building group Intermarine, controlled by financial holding group Compart, said it had won a 200 billion lire deal to build two minesweepers for the Thai navy.   This follows an Intermarine deal in 1994 to build six mine sweepers for the Australian navy.   The first ship is set to be completed by the start of 1999 and the other in another 12 months.   Both will be built at La Spezia on the Italian north-western coast.   Compart was formerly known as Ferruzzi Finanziaria.   -- Milan newsroom +392 66129502 
19384 !GCAT !GPOL !GPRO !GVOTE  The leaders of Greece's smaller parties may have a more prominent role after elections on Sunday, with opinion polls showing they could all enter parliament.   Following are sketches of main contenders:   - - - -   ANTONIS SAMARAS, first foreign minister in a 1990-1993 conservative government, broke ranks after clashing with then premier Constantine Mitsotakis over the handling of a dispute with the former Yugoslav republic of Macedonia.   He formed the nationalist Political Spring party in 1992 and with other deputies withdrew his support in parliament for Mitsotakis in September 1993, toppling the government and forcing early elections a month later.   Political Spring won 4.9 percent of the vote and 10 seats in the 300-seat parliament.   Opinion polls show the party winning between 3.6 and 5.1 percent of the vote on Sunday.   Samaras, 46, has called for a hard line towards Turkey, less taxes for low income earners and privatisations in the public sector.   The heir to an old conservative family in Athens, Samaras was educated at Amherst College in Massachusetts and graduated from Harvard Business School.   - - - -   DIMITRIS TSOVOLAS, a former socialist finance minister, is the election's wild card.   Polls show his Democratic Social Movement (DIKKI) taking as much as 5.5 percent of the vote from the ruling socialist party of Prime Minister Costas Simitis.   Tsovolas, 54, formed DIKKI in December 1995 after breaking away from the socialists.   A populist lawyer who calls for the redistribution of wealth to low income Greeks, Tsovolas accuses Simitis of abandoning socialist ideals.   He was socialist finance minister from 1985 to 1989 and was the architect of a popular welfare programme.   He was charged in 1989 with late socialist party leader Andreas Papandreou in a $200-million bank scandal and was convicted in 1992, losing his seat in parliament.   The son of a farmer couple in the northern town of Arta, Tsovolas is described by his supporters as the only genuine socialist in Greece.   - - - -   NIKOS KONSTANDOPOULOS, a respected Athens lawyer, hopes this time around his Coalition of the Left party will make it to parliament after failing in 1993 by a mere 2,994 votes.   Konstandopoulos, 54, groups liberal intellectuals, enviromentalists and human rights activists who believe socialism must be a way of life rather than just an ideology expressed by a single party like PASOK.   Kostandopoulos served as interior minister in the 1989 all-party government but he is best known for his fiery and articulate defence in court of various human right groups, suspected guerrillas and others.   He was also one of the prosecutors in the special court which tried Tsovolas and Papandreou.   The Coalition of the Left has its roots in the former Euro-communist movement and in the 1993 election it won 2.94 percent of the vote.   Polls in this election put it around 4.9 percent.   - - - -   ALEKA PAPARIGA, is the first woman to lead the Greek Communist Party (KKE) in its 77-year history and is determined to safeguard its Marxist-Leninist character despite the collapse of communism around the world.   Born into a well-known communist family in the island of Kefalonia, she was elected KKE General Secretary in February 1991 after a bitter fight between hardliners and reformers.   Since the KKE was legalised in 1974, after being outlawed in 1947, it usually won about 10 percent of the vote in national elections.   But the party's decision to reject reform cost it heavily and it won only 4.54 percent of the vote in 1993.   Polls said it would win around five percent on Sunday.   A graduate of history and archaeology from Athens University, Papariga joined KKE in 1968 and was jailed for two months during the 1967-74 right-wing military dictatorship.   She wants a Greece outside NATO and the EU, more money to farmers and low income workers and no major private companies. 
19385 !C24 !CCAT !E12 !ECAT !G15 !G154 !GCAT  The Belgian National Bank's real-time gross settlement system ELLIPS is due to go live on Tuesday, a BNB official told Reuters on Friday.   The system, which brings Belgium into line with another requirement for European economic and monetary union (EMU), allows banks to instantly settle payments in excess of 50 million Belgian francs, rather than at the end of the day as is currently done.   But under plans drawn up by the Frankfurt-based European Monetary Institute (EMI), the system will also be used after EMU starts in 1999 to send monetary policy signals to the market.   ELLIPS, or Electronic Large Value Interbank Payments System, will be Belgium's contribution to the EMI's planned wider system, called TARGET, or Trans-European Automated Real-Time Gross Settlement Express Transfer.   Once EMU starts, TARGET will link all national settlement systems, allowing a future European Central Bank to control interest rates and exercise monetary policy by varying the amount of liquidity in the payments systems.   But the EMI has controversially not stated the terms on which banks in countries not participating in EMU will have access to this liquidity.   -- Nick Antonovics, Brussels Newsroom +32 2 287 6817, Fax +32 2 230 7710 
19386 !GCAT !GDIP !GVIO  France said on Friday it had granted the military chief of Russia's breakaway Chechnya region a visa to participate in a Council of Europe hearing next week, but the council said it was unclear whether he would attend.   Chechen rebel chief-of-staff Aslan Maskhadov and Russian security boss Alexander Lebed have both been asked to attend the hearing at the 39-nation Council in Strasbourg on Monday after their peace accord signed on August 31.   "Aslan Maskhadov requested a visa at our Moscow embassy to enable him to come to France," Foreign Ministry spokesman Jacques Rummelhardt told reporters.   "Mr Maskhadov presented a Russian passport and was granted a visa."   Lebed said this week he would almost certainly spurn the invitation by the parliamentary assembly of the council, which aims to promote democracy and human rights across Europe.   Neither man has formally replied to the invitation, which triggered a storm of charges by Moscow that the Council was trying to interfere in its internal politics.   "For the time being, we still have no confirmation.   We don't know if they are coming or not coming," a spokeswoman for the Council said.   Russia joined the Council of Europe in February only after Moscow pledged to seek a peaceful settlement in Chechnya. 
19387 !GCAT !GPOL !GPRO  The Papandreou family feud has come back to haunt Greece's troubled socialists, with the late leader's son branding his blonde widow Dimitra Liani as a power hungry vulture who ruined his father.   Days before a close national election, Andreas Papandreou's second son Nikos told the European newspaper that his father's affair with the former Olympic Airways flight attendant ruined his political career.   Liani, 41, lashed back on Friday, saying Papandreou really loved her and those who doubted his mental condition were only trying to exploit him commercially.   The feud comes as the ruling socialist party Papandreou founded in 1974 faces a close race against the conservatives and could prove a damaging embarrassment two days before elections.   Nikos Papandreou, who has written a heavily autobiographical novel about his childhood as the son of a Greek political giant, was quoted by the newspaper as saying his father's marriage to Liani was not a happy one.   "This relationship ruined my father's political career and, I think, ultimately brought about his physical demise," he said.   "But I do not think my father was happy in his marriage and I think he regretted it to the day he died."   With a statement sent to Athens newspapers, Liani said it was vile to attack Papandreou's personality by painting him as his wife's "meek instrument" and said this was an effort to take commercial advantage of him -- insinuating book sales.   Liani won Papandreou's heart in 1988 while she was serving him drinks on an airliner and he soon began to flaunt their extramarital affair to a shocked the nation.   He divorced his American wife of 37 years and mother of his four children to marry Liani in 1989.   She stood by him through election defeat, scandals and health problems but she was branded an opportunist for expressing political ambitions.   "She was a woman who wanted power and would do anything to get it," Nikos Papandreou was quoted as saying.   "Many vultures show up around a powerful man and she was one of them."   But he admitted that the woman whose nude photographs were splashed in newspapers around the world had some appeal.   "She has a certain domineering quality.   When you combine that with a certain instinct, a hunger for power and a physical beauty, and impose that on a man in his sixties and seventies then you have the makings of a disaster," he said.   Education Minister George Papandreou, the older brother and one following his father's political footsteps, avoided commenting on the feud, telling reporters the socialist party victory in Sunday's election should take priority.   Papandreou's children had been discreet about their notoriously bad relations with Liani until an Athens court this month made public two of his wills -- where he names her his sole heir and describes her as "the great love of my life."   He left nothing to his four children, saying that his name was a good enough inheritance.   "They continue to violently mire the memory of the man they say they loved," Liani said.   "Andreas Papandrou spoke of me with words of love...which now give me strength and courage."   Papandreou, who ruled Greece from 1981 to 1989 and won a third term in October 1993, died in June.   He was 77, 36 years older than Liani. 
19388 !E12 !ECAT !G15 !G154 !GCAT  A former president of the German Bundesbank, Helmut Schlesinger, said Europe's currency union should begin as planned at the end of the decade, even if less than half of all nations will be ready to join in 1999.   Echoing a recent wave of more optimistic assessments that the planned currency union will be launched on January 1, 1999 as nations still struggle to meet entry criteria, Schlesinger said that at least six nations should be able to pass the test.   "It seems likely that EMU (European Economic and Monetary Union) will begin in 1999 with six to ten member states," Schlesinger wrote in an article published in this week's edition of the The Economist.   Schlesinger, who guided the Bundesbank through turbulent times between 1991 and 1993 when both Britain and Italy left the European Exchange Rate Mechanism, shrugged off calls for a delayed EMU start to give nations more time to qualify.   While Schlesinger concedes a wider circle of membership would be preferable, he argued that it is impossible to forecast when more nations would pass the entry test.   "Bearing this in mind, there are no good reasons for postponement."   To join the union, nations must show stable exchange and moderate inflation rates and meet deficit and debt criteria whose reference values should be three percent and 60 percent of gross domestic product respectively.   At a time when many nations, including Germany, risk exceeding both the deficit and debt reference values, Schlesinger urged that the leeway for evaluating the criteria, enshrined in the Maastricht Treaty, must remain intact.   "The trouble is that considerations of this kind are difficult to translate into simple numerical formulae," Schlesinger said, adding, "it is important that...a certain discretionary leeway should remain, enabling other economic considerations to be taken into account."   Political leaders will determine in 1998 which nations will be eligible to join the union after reviewing their 1997 economic data.   Schlesinger, remembered as a hardline Bundesbank president never permitting the bank to swerve from its main goals of keeping the mark stable and battling inflation, also warned policy makers against undermining EMU with words and actions.   The entry criteria will be effective only if they are wholly endorsed by finance ministers and used in support of their government policies, Schlesinger said.   "Ministers should not be devoting staff time to circumventing measures by setting up shadow budgets or shifting expenditures to quasi-private-sector or state-owned banks and enterprises," Schlesinger warned.   Similarly he urged policy makers to use more discretion when firing off comments about EMU.   "How is confidence in the euro to be gained if those responsible for it find it difficult to say a good word about it," Schlesinger asked.   In the past, markets have been particularly sensitive to a raft of negative comments on EMU.   But now Schlesinger said that financial markets appear more convinced that a number of member states will be ready to go ahead with monetary union.   --Frankfurt Newsroom, +49 69 756525 
19389 !C42 !CCAT !E41 !ECAT !GCAT !GJOB  The CFDT trade union said on Friday it has called a strike at arms-maker Giat Industries for October 3, to protest against a restructuring plan.   Giat chairman Jacques Loppion unveiled in May a plan aimed at turning round the state-owned company to break-even within two years.   The plan includes shedding 2,741 out of a total 12,000 jobs.   The CFDT said in a statement it wanted to open negotiations to find alternatives to the plan, particularly reduction of working hours.   Giat officials were not immediately available for comment.   Giat posted a 1995 net loss of 10 billion francs, almost double its 5.4 billion franc turnover for the year.   It suffers from excess capacity in the face of falling French defence spending and orders.   -- Paris newsroom +33 1 4221 5452 pnt 
19390 !C13 !C21 !C24 !C31 !C312 !CCAT !G15 !G153 !GCAT  Irish agriculture minister Ivan Yates warned Britain on Friday that its farmers would be the biggest losers if a cull of British cattle at risk from mad cow disease is abandoned.   Yates told Irish national radio he would strive to resolve the impasse during an informal meeting of European Union agriculture ministers which begins on Sunday in Killarney, southwest Ireland.   Ireland currently holds the EU presidency and Yates will chair the Killarney meeting.   He said there was no prospect of an early lifting of the European Union's ban on British beef exports if Britain failed to respect a deal struck with EU leaders in June, which included a commitment to selectively destroy up to 147,000 cattle most at risk from mad cow disease.   Britain said on Thursday it was putting the selective cull on hold because of fierce opposition in Britain's parliament and new research evidence that the disease would die out in five years.   "The biggest losers from the British decision are British farmers," Yates said.   "I want to make it clear that the Irish presidency will try to do everything in the dialogue between the European Commission, the EU and Britain to try and reconstruct a basis to proceed."   Yates dismissed British suggestions that the EU might fail to lift the export ban even if the cull went ahead.   "It would be wrong...to conclude that Europe would not be honour-bound to agree the deal... There would be huge moral pressure on the Commission to come forward with proposals.   In fact, Britain is letting the Commission off the hook," he said.   Yates said the new research on mad cow disease did not change the procedure Britain must follow to have the beef ban lifted.   "Like any new scientific data it will be studied by the Commission's experts," he said.   "But we agreed in Florence there was a procedure.   You cannot say on the basis of this new study that this changes that procedure."   He said that even if it was correct that mad cow disease would die out naturally in Britain in five years, abandoning the cull would mean Britain would have to wait at least five years to have the export ban lifted.   "It's all very well going by the (research) if you want the ban lifted in 2001.   If that's what Britain wants that's fine.   It's no skin off Germany or Austria's nose, they don't mind if the ban isn't lifted.   The losers are British farmers," he said.   Beef farmers in Scotland and Northern Ireland would lose most of all, as they relied more than English farmers on exports, Yates said.   "There's no point telling them to come back in the year 2001 when this is eradicated by stealth," he said.   "They need to get back to business...and they are literally devastated.   The only future facing the stock is an incinerator." 
19391 !C13 !CCAT !E12 !E13 !E131 !ECAT !G15 !G154 !GCAT  The Belgian government on Friday proposed making price stability the main objective of the Belgian National Bank (BNB) as part of a law fulfilling changes required by the Maastricht Treaty on European economic and monetary union (EMU).   The proposed law will also slim down the BNB's management structure, give it greater powers in supervising the country's payments and settlement systems and allow it to communicate information to other banking regulators.   The draft law will also change the rules governing how the central bank parcels out its profit with the state, which owns fifty percent of its shares.   The remainder is privately held.   Under the draft, the central bank would, however, be able to set up wholly-owned subsidiaries to carry out functions not linked to the future European System of Central Banks, the government said.   Finance ministry officials were not immediately available to give details.   -- Nick Antonovics, Brussels Newsroom +32 2 287 6817, Fax +32 2 230 7710 
19392 !G15 !G158 !GCAT !GDIP  Germany acknowledged on Friday that it sent an intelligence officer to former Yugoslavia as part of a team of European Union observers but denied that he had been involved in arms smuggling.   A foreign ministry spokesman said the officer from Bonn's BND foreign intelligence agency had been part of the German delegation to the European Community Monitoring Mission (ECMM) to former Yugoslavia between 1993 and 1994.   But he said the officer had been on secondment to the foreign ministry.   "He gave assurances that he did nothing that was inconsistent with his assignment as an observer," the spokesman said.   A German television news programme, Monitor, reported on Thursday that the BND officer helped to smuggle weapons hidden in cartons marked as "milk powder" into the Moslem enclave of Tuzla.   The BND denied that he had been involved in arms smuggling or had in any way broken a U.N. arms embargo on former Yugoslavia in force at the time. 
19393 !GCAT !GREL  Can the Roman Catholic Church expect its bishops and priests to remain celibate in a fast-lane modern world filled with temptations?   That is the thorny question raised yet again by the case of a Scottish bishop who fathered a child with one woman when he was a priest 15 years ago and disappeared with another, divorced, woman this month.   "This is a terrible blow to the Church because an individual in the highest level of responsibility...has totally betrayed his trust," Archbishop John Foley, head of the Vatican's communications department, told Reuters Television.   The saga of Bishop Roderick Wright is only the latest sex scandal to rock a Church whose bishops and priests Pope John Paul insists must remain chaste.   Wright is at least the fifth Catholic bishop to resign in the past six years over acknowledged or alleged affairs.   In 1992 Irish Bishop Eamonn Casey also resigned after admitting that he too had fathered a son.   The media has made it more difficult for the Church to sweep such cases under the carpet, as they had done for centuries.   It is impossible to determine the number of clerics -- many of them often working and living in lonely conditions -- who have violated their chastity vows.   Foley said many priests were under "tremendous stress" in modern society.   In 1990, a study said as many as a third of Roman Catholic priests in the United States were sexually active.   It was compiled by A.W. Richard Sipe, an ordained Catholic priest and professor at Johns Hopkins University for the book "A Secret World: Sexuality and the Search for Celibacy".   The Roman Catholic Church demands celibacy in order to foster single-minded devotion to God and the ministry.   But some Catholics believe that allowing priests to marry -- as is permitted in most other Churches such as the Anglican and Lutheran Churches -- would reduce the risk of sex scandals.   "The spate of cases that have emerged over the last few years about priests and bishops in sex relations is another sign that celibacy just doesn't work," said Frances Kissling, president of the Washington-based Catholics for a Free Choice.   "Celibacy should be optional.   We had married priests for almost the first 1,000 years of the Church.   Most of the apostles were married," she told Reuters on Friday.   Celibacy is a discipline and not a dogma.   Thus, it can be overturned or modified by a future Pope or Church Council.   Britain's Cardinal Basil Hume said the Church could stop losing many excellent candidates for the priesthood if it relaxed its celibacy ruling.   "It is not divine law.   It is Church law, so any Pope or General Council could change it," he told BBC Radio on Tuesday.   But Foley, the Vatican archbishop, said: "It is within their power to do so.   It is very unlikely that they would."   When the Pope visited the United States last year, Catholic scholar Richard Schoenherr, author of "Full Pews and Empty Altars", said that unless celibacy is abandoned, there will be too few priests in the 21st Century to minister to Catholics.   Joaquin Navarro-Valls, the chief Vatican spokesman, tried to control the fallout from the Wright affair on Friday.   "The problem is not whether the Pope thinks celibacy should remain," said Navarro-Valls, who is travelling with the 76-year-old Polish Pontiff in France.   "It is not a personal doctrine.   It is a doctrine of the Church."   In the Bible, Christ refers to "eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven" and St Paul says "he who is unmarried (can) care for the things that belong to the Lord".   The earliest formulation of the discipline of celibacy in the Church did not appear until the Council of Elvria, some three centuries after Christ's death.   The first written universal law making celibacy a must was enacted by the Second Lateran Council in 1139 and the 1563 Council of Trent ruled definitively on the matter. 
19394 !E41 !E411 !ECAT !GCAT !GJOB  Unemployment in Portugal fell to 7.1 percent in the third quarter, compared with 7.2 in the second quarter, the National Statistics Institute (INE) said.     Q3 1996 Q2 1996 Q3 1995    Registered unemployed  324.6 331.0 310.9    Percentage unemployed  7.1  7.2  6.9   -- Lisbon bureau 3511-3538254 
19395 !C12 !CCAT !GCAT !GCRIM !GPOL  Italy's snowballing corruption scandal took a new twist on Friday when newspapers published transcripts of tapped telephone calls they said detailed how bribes were split up between businessmen and magistrates.   "The Bank of Bribes", headlined Rome's La Repubblica in one of a string of stories in newspapers about police taps of conversations between banker Pierfrancesco Pacini Battaglia, who was arrested on Sunday in a scandal that has rocked Italy.   The corruption probe, which has triggered a flashback to the Tangentopoli (Bribesville) investigations which toppled Italy's ruling political class in the early 1990s, broke on Monday with news of the arrest of the head of the state railway company.   Newspapers described Pacini Battaglia as having operated an extensive "superlobby" of businessmen, judges and lawyers, whom he is alleged to have paid to help win contracts for companies and to fix trials.   Pacini Battaglia is being held on suspicion of the crimes.   State railways managing director Lorenzo Necci, who had been overseeing Italy's planned multi-billion dollar high-speed rail project, was arrested on Sunday on suspicion of fraud, embezzlement, false accounting, corruption and abuse of office.   Magistrates in the northwestern town of La Spezia have said they are now investigating up to 50 people in the graft probe.   La Spezia's chief prosecutor Antonio Conte said on Wednesday that politicians were not involved "at this stage".   Prime Minister Romano Prodi has said the government is not touched in any way and financial markets have been so far unruffled.   Prodi's name was mentioned in passing in the transcripts by a magistrate under investigation in relation to a think-tank the former economist ran before becoming prime minister in May.   But the magistrate, Augusta Iannini, on Friday issued a statement categorically denying the reported comments.   Prodi said on Friday: "There is no need to deny this because it has already been denied by the person it was attributed to (the magistrate)."   Names of other politicians also surfaced in the transcripts, printed in all papers.   But far-right National Alliance leader Gianfranco Fini said it was "ridiculous" to imply wrongdoing simply because someone's name was mentioned in a phone call.   Many of the conversations, conducted using foreign cellphones in a bid to avoid detection, dated from January, five months before the current centre-left government took office.   Newspapers said they involved Pacini Battaglia's secretary Eliana Pensieroso and Emo Danesi, a former deputy for the discredited Christian Democrat party which collapsed in the Tangentopoli scandals.   All three were arrested on Sunday.   Two magistrates and the head of an arms company were among five arrested on Tuesday.   Pacini Battaglia, known as "Chicchi", hit notoriety during Tangentopoli, in which he was arrested and was briefly jailed.   The transcripts quoted him as saying, in highly ambiguous language, that he had "paid" to get out of that scandal.   Milan's crack "Clean Hands" team of graft investigators are Bstill investigating the ramifications of Tangentopoli.   The transcripts contained references to managers from state energy giant ENI, itself part of a big Tangentopoli probe, as being involved in Pacini Battaglia's operations.   Magistrates investigated Necci over the failed Enimont chemicals joint-venture between ENI and agro-chemicals company Montedison which he chaired, but spared him indictment. 
19396 !C31 !C311 !C312 !CCAT !G15 !G153 !G158 !GCAT !M14 !M141 !MCAT  Following are details of EU grain export/import commitments between July 1 and September 17 of the 1996/97 (July/June) campaign supplied by member country officials.   Since the figures were drawn up, the EU has granted exports of 250,970 tonnes of soft wheat, 351,061 tonnes of barley and 52,892 tonnes of rye.   Figures ('000 tonnes) are based on officially communicated certificates and are subject to revision.    ---------1996/97------- ------1995/96-------    1Jul96 to 17Sept96 1Jul95 to 17Sept 95    EXPORTS PCT(1) IMPORTS EXPORTS IMPORTS    Soft wheat(grain) 742  31 126 2,362  639    Flour (2)  997  68  3 1,471  4   Food aid    - grain  211 123  0  171  0    - flour (2)  11 19  0  58  0   Donations    - grain 0 0  0  0    - flour (2)  2 0  0  0    TOTAL SOFT WHEAT 1,963 48  129 4,062  643    Durum (grain)  16 104  0  432    Semolina (3)  38 0  22  0    Food aid 1 0  21  0    TOTAL DURUM WHEAT 55 104  43  432    ALL WHEAT  2,018 49  233 4,105  1,075    Barley (grain) 1,089 172  7  632  53    Malt (4) 85 0  7  0    Donations 0 0  0  0    TOTAL BARLEY  1,174 184  7  639  53    Maize (grain)  17 115  1  806    Food aid 0 0  0  0    TOTAL MAIZE  17 115  1  806    Rye (grain)  140 16  3  854  6    Rye flour (5)  0 0  0  0   Donations    - grain 0 0  0  0    - flour (5)  0 0  0  0    TOTAL RYE 140 16  3  854  6    OATS 42 1  0  0    Sorghum (grain)  0 1  0  113    Food aid 0 0  0  0    TOTAL SORGHUM  0 1  0  113   OTHER GRAINS   Buckwheat, Millet,    Triticale 1 56  0  22    TOTAL GRAIN  3,392 61  416 5,599  2,075   Notes: (1) NB: column shows this year's exports expressed as a percentage of last year's exports, not as a percentage change (2) wheat equivalent (3) durum equivalent (4) barley equivalent (5) rye equivalent.   -- Paris newsroom +331 4221 5432 
19397 !C31 !CCAT !GCAT !GHEA  Organon, the pharmaceuticals arm of Dutch group Akzo Nobel, said on Friday it was pleased with early sales of its novel antidepressant Remeron.   Rolled out on the Dutch market two years ago, Remeron won U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA) approval earlier this year and came on to the market there in late July.   It was launched -- as Remergil -- in Germany in April 1996.   "We are very happy with early sales," Ron Huisman from Organon's marketing division told Reuters at a press briefing on the eve of a European College of Neuropsychopharmacology congress in Amsterdam.   Remeron (mirtazapine) is a novel dual-action compound which acts on both the brain's noradrenergic and serotonergic neurotransmitter systems where an imbalance is believed to be the root cause of depression.   Organon claims its new drug has fewer side-effects than other antidepressants.   Huisman said that monthly sales of the drug in Germany were around one million marks ($660,000) while, after a slow start, Dutch sales were running at around 400,000 to 500,000 guilders a month.   He said Remergil had taken a two percent market share in Germany after just two months and sales were on target, but it was too early to analyse U.S. sales.   Huisman said Organon aimed to get Remeron in among the top three antidepressants worldwide, but gave no timeframe for this.   Sales of Eli Lilly's Prozac, the best-selling treatment for depression -- which conservatively affects some 340 million people worldwide -- were over $2 billion in 1995.   Depression -- mood and anxiety disorder -- is estimated to cost the U.S. alone over $53 billion a year, mainly through absenteeism among workers and reduced productivity.   -- Ian Geoghegan, Amsterdam newsroom +31 20 504 5001    Fax +31 20 504 5040   ($ = 1.514 German Marks) 
19398 !GCAT !GCRIM  The Dutch government said on Friday it was reviewing a controversial five-year-old law allowing child sex from 12 years upwards.   "We think that 12 years is very young...we're considering raising the age to 14," a government spokesman said.   Neither the spokesman, nor Prime Minister Wim Kok in a written statement on the move to parliament, specifically linked it with the unfolding Belgian paedophilia scandal.   That unfolding horror story of child kidnapping, sexual abuse and murder in which four girls have been found dead since August has attracted widespread Dutch media coverage.   Under amendments to the Dutch criminal code adopted in 1991, non-coercive sex with children aged 12 to 16 is only punishable if a complaint is brought by the minor concerned, their parent or guardian or the national child protection agency.   The amendments, which at the time sparked an international media outcry, caused few ripples at home.   Advocates of the lower age limit argue that, by lifting the taboo on under-age sex, it has helped reduce the Dutch rate of teenage pregnancies to one of the lowest in the European Union.   Prime Minister Kok told parliament the government was reviewing the 1991 legislation because it could hamper efforts to combat child prostitution.   "Furthermore one could call into question what is after all a very young age (for sex) of 12 years," he said in a written answer to parliamentary questions from opposition Christian Democrats published on Friday. 
19399 !E21 !E211 !E41 !ECAT !GCAT !GJOB  French labour union Force Ouvriere (FO) hopes to mobilise public opinion over record unemployment with a demonstration on Saturday which will provide the first test of resistance to Prime Minister Alain Juppe's 1997 budget cuts.   FO leader Marc Blondel said on the eve of the rally in Paris that close to 100,000 people could lose their jobs in the second half of this year alone and that he was hoping for a big turnout against government inertia in the face of such a "catastrophe".   "We decided on July 3 to hold a demonstration.   On July 3 we already knew through employee committees the numbers private companies were planning to get rid of -- 97,000 in the second half of 1996.   That's a catastrophe," Blondel told RTL radio.   "If you look at unemployment over time, it's not even stabilising and it risks rising even further next year -- by between 120,000 and even 150,000 by our estimates," he said.   French unemployment has hit record levels of 12.5 percent, with more than three million people out of work.   But despite a barrage of union warnings of unrest in the run up to the release of the budget last Wednesday, reactions in the wake of the announcement have so far been relatively subdued and the FO protest is not being joined by the other large unions.   For the moment, there are few signs of turmoil on anything like the scale of late last year, when railworkers worried by government plans to trim pension rights -- plans now abandoned -- spearheaded a crippling wider strike which lasted 24 days.   The country's largest labour union, the Socialist CFDT, said on Thursday: "It (the budget) will delight some and satisfy others, but it will not reassure the vast majority worried by unemployment."   It has not yet talked of demonstrations.   The centre-right government's budget for next year includes spending cuts and savings worth 60 billion francs ($11.6 billion) to help France get its public finances ready for the move to a single European currency and include reducing civil service numbers by 6,000.   Juppe has also promised voters income tax cuts of 25 billion francs next year although he is raising several billion through additional duties on tobacco, alcohol and petrol.   The FO protest kicks off at the Place de la Bastille in the centre of Paris at 0900 GMT, with an address by Blondel at 1230 GMT and then a march to the nearby Place de la Nation.   Louis Viannet, head of the Communist-led CGT union, said in an interview in the newspaper Le Monde on Friday the budget sacrificed jobs in the name of preparing for European monetary union and would drive a bigger wedge between rich and poor.   "I keep hearing 'things are going to explode'.   I've no idea, but we are facing a situation which could rapidly trigger a reaction of rebellion," Viannet said.   "People are no longer solely expressing discontent, but a mixture of anxiety and a will to cross swords," he said.   Blondel at the FO union added he was even sceptical about the forecasts of economic growth underpinning the budget.   He also said a message from President Jacques Chirac was that he was powerless in the face of unemployment.   "We do not accept the rather strange declaration from the President of the Republic on July 14 where he seemed to say he was powerless on this issue," Blondel said.   "We will mount a public demonstration, with a high level of participation if possible, to send a warning to the government on its economic policy."   Another measure of resistance will come at the end of September when teachers are set to stage a strike to protest at the loss of more than 2,500 state education posts. 
19400 !G15 !G155 !GCAT !GDIP !GPOL  From mad cows to a single currency, from the way Europe takes decisions to its plans for security policy, Britain is sounding a discordant note in the European Union and testing its partners' patience to the limit.   Long viewed from the continent as one of the most reluctant of European states, Britain has been accused this year of finding new levels of isolation in the EU under its Conservative Prime Minister John Major.   "The psychological climate (has) deteriorated dramatically, undermining whatever residual goodwill towards John Major and his ministers still existed," Peter Ludlow, director of the Centre for European Policy Studies, writes in a new study.   Britain responds to such criticisms by noting that the EU has adopted many British views on issues such as trade and subsidiarity -- devolved decision-making -- and by arguing that being a partner does not mean having to agree all the time.   "Britain has an alternative vision for Europe.... It is a vision based on choosing carefully the stepping-stones toward closer cooperation; not jumping blindly toward ever greater integration, flailing for footholds that may prove precarious or illusory," Foreign Secretary Malcolm Rifkind said this week.   But clashes between London and its partners have become commonplace.   The latest storm centres on Britain's decision to put off a cull of cattle most at risk from mad cow disease -- a slaughter Major agreed with fellow EU leaders at a June summit in Florence in exchange for a promise from his partners to consider lifting the worldwide ban on British beef exports.   Major backpedalled on Thursday because he saw little chance of winning approval for the cull from a parliament dominated, vocally at least, by so-called Euro-sceptics, a group of British Conservatives leery of closer European integration.   The EU, in turn, dismissed any notion of lifting its beef export ban until Britain met already agreed terms.   To obtain the Florence compromise in the first place, Britain had launched a campaign of non-cooperation that infuriated its partners, leaving some threatening to pay London back at a later date.   Ludlow and others note, however, that Britain's go-it-alone action over beef is only one of a number of areas where it is at odds with its partners.   At the inter-governmental conference (IGC), the EU's treaty review designed to prepare the bloc for the entry of new members from eastern Europe and the Mediterranean, Britain has staked out positions quite contrary to the general trend.   It has, for example, refused any reduction in the power of member states to veto EU decision-making.   Although others plan to defend their veto in specific areas, most accept that some moves towards more majority voting will be needed in a larger Union.   On security policy, London -- as a major player -- has insisted that any move to a common European defence must be completely outside the EU.   Sweden and Finland, two neutrals that might have been expected to support such a stand, deserted in favour of a coordinated EU policy for dealing with humanitarian and peacekeeping activities.   France, the only significant military power in Europe other than Britain, remains a strong advocate of a European defence structure.   Britain's main positions at the IGC -- listened to politely by its partners -- have been calls for power to be returned to nation states and for the EU Court of Justice to be reined in.   Most other EU states are more interested in a further pooling of sovereignty than in stepping back from integration.   Britain also remains on the outside in the drive for a single currency.   Having secured an opt-out, Major's government is now torn over whether and when to use it.   Ludlow suggests that hopes in London that it would become the champion of countries left outside the single currency foundered on the unwillingness of the others to follow.   The split between London and the rest has many in Europe assuming and hoping that Major will lose the next British election to what they believe will be a more cooperative Labour Party.   But even then, says Ludlow, not all will be well in cross-Channel relations.   "Although the atmosphere will almost certainly be more cheerful," he writes, "the basic conclusion is that the British will face a long march back to the heart of Europe."   REUTER 
19401 !GCAT !GPOL !GPRO !GVOTE  Dimitris Tsovolas seems more like a mischievous imp than the giant-killer who may stop socialist Prime Minister Costas Simitis from winning Sunday's election.   He has been a radical populist lawyer, a socialist finance minister, a convicted felon and now he seems to be pulling the electoral carpet out from under the feet of Simitis.   Tsovolas, 54, who quit the socialists last year, has Simitis running scared and has siphoned off a substantial block of votes with his reputation as a working class hero.   "Tsovolas is the socialists' biggest problem.   He is the big unknown, the "X" factor in the equation of this election," said MRB polling expert Christina Badouna.   His Democratic Social Movement (DHKKI), set up in December, has a solid five percent in opinion polls -- almost every vote taken from Simitis's Panhellenic Socialist Movement (PASOK).   "Tsovolas focused his campaign on the grassroots socialist populists, the lower income earners, the less educated and all those who are angry with both major parties," said political commentator John Loulis.   Simitis called the early election confident of a strong win and convinced that his personal popularity would even bring over voters from the conservative opposition.   But conservative leader Miltiades Evert mounted a vigorous campaign.   He appears to have rallied his supporters and headed off a large-scale defection to Simitis.   That one-two punch by Evert and Tsovolas has been Simitis's worst nightmare.   He failed to woo conservatives while Tsovolas dug deep into his bedrock socialist support.   Simitis is also handicapped by a lacklustre campaign and his plodding lectures on economics and European Union targets while Tsovolas lays down a passionate stump speech.   A skilled courtroom lawyer, Tsovolas's campaign style and politics come from the early radical days of Andreas Papandreou, one of Greece's most loved politicians and skilled speakers.   That has helped him connect with the PASOK old-guard while Simitis has alienated some leftists with vows to create a "New PASOK" -- a modern party eschewing Papandreou's populism and enforcing stringent economic targets.   Simitis appears to have understood only late in the campaign that Tsovolas had successfully painted him as a neo-conservative who would cut back on Papandreou's vast welfare state.   "Simitis and his cohorts are transforming the socialists from a movement of the disenfranchised to a movement of hustlers pursuing neo-conservative policies and betraying the people," he told a campaign rally.   Tsovolas was Papandreou's finance minister from 1985 to 1989 and became something of a Robin Hood figure for responding with gusto to Papandreou's public order to "Give it all away".   He was charged along with Papandreou in a $200-million bank embezzlement scandal in 1989 but rejected his mentor's order to stay away from the televised trial.   Instead he mounted his own passionate defence, facing down the austere supreme court judges and perhaps saving the skin of the absent Papandreou, who was eventually acquitted.   Tsovolas's courtroom flare confirmed his standing among many leftist, who saw the case as little more than a right-wing show trial.   He was convicted and ordered jailed for two years -- PASOK paid a fine instead -- and he had his political rights suspended for three years -- preventing him from running in 1993.   He was pardoned by parliament after the socialists returned to power in October 1993 but broke formally with the socialists after Simitis and his reform group took control. 
19402 !E51 !E511 !ECAT !GCAT !GDIP  Yasser Arafat called on German industrialists on Friday to invest in Palestinan self-rule areas, singling out the 2,000th anniversary of the birth of Jesus Christ as an opportunity for their involvement.   "We need your support, and the support of all our friends around the world, to prepare a great celebration to reflect the outstanding status of Jesus Christ," the Palestinan president told the Chamber of Industry and Commerce in Frankfurt.   Arafat, a Moslem whose wife is a Christian, said the anniversary would be a great international occasion but the newly autonomous Palestinan authorities had neither the money nor the know-how to organise it alone.   He said he expected millions to flock to Bethlehem, now under Palestinian self-rule, for the start of the Third Millennium of the Christian Era.   "Three years is not a long time," Arafat told his audience in Germany's financial capital.   "We appeal to you... for valuable help to ensure we can celebrate this great historic and religious occasion appropriately."   Arafat issued a general appeal for foreign investment to build up the infrastructure in the self-rule areas turned over to the Palestinians by Israel after the 1993 peace accord signed between Arafat and then Israeli Prime Minster Yitzhak Rabin.   The Palestinian leader received a warm ovation from the industrialists but Lothar Klemm, the economics minister for the state of Hesse which includes Frankfurt, spoke for many business leaders in mentioning the precarious peace in the Middle East.   "A market which is not yet characterised by peace and political stability remains a difficult one," he said.   Arafat, who has warned Israel's stance could plunge the whole Middle East back into violence, began the second and final day of his latest visit to Germany with talks with Ignatz Bubis, the leader of Germany's Jewish community.   "I urged him to have patience in his dealings with (Israel Prime Minister Benjamin) Netanyahu and to avoid overreacting," Bubis told reporters, adding the Israeli leader had assured him personally that he was committed to the peace process.   "I'm sure this meeting (with Bubis) will have a positive effect on the peace process," Arafat said afterwards.   Arafat was due to meet representatives from some of Germany's biggest banks later in the day and hold talks with managers at Frankfurt airport about the possibility of their help in an airport project in Gaza. 
19403 !C13 !CCAT !GCAT !GENV  Greenpeace is listing German firms opposed to the use of genetically altered soybeans in food products or in favour of special labelling.   The list includes leading retailers and baby food manufacturers, the environmental group said in a statement on Friday.   A spokesman for the Diaetverband, which represents some 80 percent of manufacturers of health and other special foods, told Reuters those members producing baby food had said they would not use soyoil from genetically manipulated beans.   "Our members intend to protect these sensitive consumers below three years of age," he said by telephone from the organisation's base in Bad Homburg near Frankfurt.   The organisation includes leading producers Milupa, owned by Dutch firm Nutricia, plus Nestle Alete.   A spokesman for the Karstadt department store chain told Reuters from the firm's Essen headquarters that the group had asked suppliers to provide clear labelling of genetically altered soy products, with a view to removing them from the Karstadt product list.   Greenpeace has said it opposes the new soy products, which are due to arrive in late 1996, because risks to human health and the environment cannot be ruled out.   It also rejects what it sees as the undue influence of chemical firms such as Monsanto, which developed the new herbicide-resistant soybeans, on farming decisions.   Monsanto's Roundup Ready beans, which are expected to account for up to two percent of the U.S. crop this year, are resistant to the firm's Roundup herbicide, which farmers say will reduce their input costs.   Soy is used in some 30,000 food products such as confectionery and margarine.   U.S. and European (EU) health and safety checks have approved the use of Roundup Ready beans.   German seed crushers have said they depend on U.S. soybeans to ensure sufficient amounts of vegetable oils and oilmeal for European food and animal feed markets.   -Vera Eckert, Hamburg newsroom +49-40-41903275 
19404 !GCAT !GVIO  The body of Algerian singer Boudjemaa Bechiri, who had been kidnapped by four guerrillas in the east Algerian city of Constantine, was found there on Friday, Algerian security forces said.   In a statement carried by the official Algerian news agency APS, the security forces said the singer, 28, was kidnapped on Thursday night leaving a wedding in Constantine. 
19405 !E41 !ECAT !GCAT !GJOB !GPOL  Spain's two biggest unions threatened on Friday to call a general strike to protest against a freeze on public sector wages intended to help whip Spain's finances into shape for Europe's single currency.   The government confirmed on Thursday it would freeze public sector salaries in 1997, just 10 days before it must present to parliament its draft budget for next year.   "The protest actions against the wage freeze will culminate with a demonstration on October 15 and from then we will look at other measures like a strike of one or two days," a spokesman for the Workers' Commissions (CCOO) union told Reuters.   The spokesman said the other unions representing the public sector would join the strike action.   The unions are angry at the new conservative government's move because it breaks a labour accord reached with the last Socialist administration guaranteeing wage rises in 1997 in line with inflation.   But the government is struggling to slash some 1.2 billion pesetas from next year's budget in order to deliver on its pledge to cut the deficit to three percent of gross domestic product in 1997 from a projected 4.4 percent this year.   The workers are filing appeals with the International Labour Organisation and Spain's ombudsman.   "The last protests in the public sector at a general level took place in September 1993 (when the last accord was reached) and culminated with a general strike in January 1994," the CCOO spokesman said, warning that the unions had a history of labour action against the government.   Analysts said the labour action in Spain would not reach the same fever pitch as the strikes at the end of 1995 in France against the welfare cuts of Alain Juppe's government.   "There is no risk of a general strike or a situation like in France last year on the issue of wage freezes, because its social impact is much less," an analyst at Credit Lyonnais said.   A General Workers' Union (UGT) spokesman said their workers would gather the half million signatures needed to propose a legislative bill to regulate public sector labour agreements.   The unions say the real buying power of public sector wages has fallen 11.2 percent since 1993. 
19406 !E21 !E211 !ECAT !GCAT !GPOL !GWELF  The Communist Refoundation party is worried the government may try to cut pension benefits in the coming 1997 budget, Fausto Bertinotti, leader of the hard left grouping, said on Friday.   "Clouds are gathering in the sky," Bertinotti said, adding that he expected there would be a meeting on Monday of all the parties which support Prime Minister Romano Prodi's government.   Bertinotti said international events were putting pressure on the government to cut pension spending, including threats from the European Union that countries which fail to meet the terms of the Maastricht Treaty may face sanctions.   The Communist Refoundation, whose support is needed if Prodi is to get the budget approved, has always said it would block the package if it included any cuts to state pensions.   The government is expected to unveil its 32.4 trillion lire deficit-cutting budget by the end of the month.   -- Rome newsroom +396 6782501 
19407 !C13 !C21 !C24 !C31 !C312 !CCAT !G15 !G153 !GCAT  France said on Friday it would step up frontier checks barring imports of British beef after London shelved a deal with the European Union to cull cattle most at risk from mad cow disease.   "The unilateral decision taken in these circumstances can only be met with perplexity by other European countries," French Agriculture Minister Philippe Vasseur told France Info radio.   "It's obvious this has no effect on our attitude towards imports of bovine products or by-products from Britain.   Perhaps it makes us even more vigilant," he said.   "The embargo remains, I'd like to add that I am going to ask for checks to be increased," he said.   France was the first nation to ban imports of British beef in March, in what quickly widened to a worldwide ban, after London admitted that bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), or mad cow disease, might be passed to humans.   The vast majority of the reported cases of the disease have been confined to Britain.   The EU on Friday ruled out any lifting of the worldwide ban on British beef exports until London respected the terms of a deal cut with EU leaders in June calling for a cull of up to 147,000 extra beef cattle.   The British government said on Thursday it was putting off the cull of beef cattle most at risk from BSE because of new evidence from researchers that the disease would die out on its own in five years.   British Agriculture Minister Douglas Hogg said London had called off the selective cull, which is in addition to a rolling programme to destroy 450,000 cattle a year over the age of 30 months. 
19408 !C31 !C312 !CCAT !G15 !G153 !GCAT !M14 !M141 !MCAT  Latest European Union figures show grain export commitments between July 1 and September 17 were nearly 40 percent below their year-ago level, member-country officials said on Friday.   The figures, based on delivered export certificates, showed grain sales plunged to 3.392 million tonnes from 5.599 million.   Commercial wheat exports fell to 742,000 tonnes from 2.362 million tonnes although heavy export commitments to China had driven up export figures at the start of the 1995/96 campaign.   Flour export commitments reached 997,000 tonnes against 1.471 million tonnes during the same period last year.   But commercial barley exports rose to 1.089 million tonnes from 632,000 tonnes, helped by sales to Saudi Arabia.   Since September 17, the EU has granted 250,970 tonnes of soft wheat, 351,061 tonnes of barley and 52,892 tonnes of rye exports through its weekly grain tender system.   --Paris newsroom +331 4221 5432 
19409 !C21 !C24 !C31 !C312 !CCAT !G15 !G153 !GCAT  The German government, farmers and consumer groups quickly lined up behind the European Commission on Friday to oppose lifting a ban on British beef exports after London abandoned a cull of cattle at risk from mad cow disease.   Foreign Minister Klaus Kinkel criticised Britain for its decision to pull out of a European Union deal struck in June to slaughter 147,000 British cattle most at risk from Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE).   "A unilateral change by the British government is...not acceptable," Kinkel said.   "The main priority is the health of the consumer.   The ban on importing British cattle, beef and other products will remain in force," Kinkel said in a statement released in Bonn.   Britain's decision to ignore a vote this week by EU farm ministers calling to complete the cull aroused widespread anger in Germany -- one of the first European countries to slap a unilateral ban on British beef last spring after scientists found a link between BSE and a fatal human brain disease.   Britain said that a new study by scientists from Oxford University showed the cull was unnecessary because mad cow disease would die out naturally within five years.   Commission President Jacques Santer and Agriculture Commissioner Franz Fischler both said on Friday, however, that Britain remained bound by its promise to cull the cattle as part of a step-by-step plan to have the ban lifted.   Germany's Farmers' Association in Bonn said it was "outraged" by the British decision.   "We call on the government and all other member states to exclude Britain from the European beef market until it fulfils its commitments to the European Union," it said in a statement.   Germany's 300,000 beef farmers have been hard hit by a fall of almost a half in domestic beef consumption in the past five years linked to the BSE scare.   Price falls since 1994 mean they now get 400 marks ($270) less for each bull sold, a spokeswoman said.   Germany has also been swept by consumer health fears that humans could contract the deadly Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (CJD) from dairy products after it was found that cows could pass BSE on to their calves through their milk.   Baerbel Hoehn, Green Party environment minister in the most populous state North Rhine-Westphalia, said the cull deal had to be stuck to -- especially as it had been agreed before fears emerged over BSE-infected dairy produce.   Consumer groups also said they backed Brussels' position.   "We must stick to this strict export ban until the whole slaughter is complete," Susanne Hampel-Masfeld of the Bonn-based Consumer Initiative group told Reuters.   Hampel-Masfeld said her group was advising consumers not to buy imported milk or cheese until the produce is given a clean bill of health.   "We think that this whole problem is so unclear that we should be careful," she said.   The umbrella organisation of German consumer associations also slammed the British decision as irresponsible.   It said the move could have waited until a meeting in October of Commission science committees to review the findings of the Oxford study.   "Germany's consumer associations see no reason to give the all-clear," a statement said. 
19410 !C13 !C24 !C31 !C312 !CCAT !G15 !G153 !GCAT  The Florence agreement on eradicating mad cow disease should be implemented unless a scientific review of new evidence suggests otherwise, Commission chief spokesman Nikolaus van der Pas said on Friday.   Van der Pas read the following statement, which reiterated the Commission's position on dealing with bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), at the midday news briefing.   "The statement which was issued today by the British government on BSE clarifies the British position on a selective cull which is a pre-condition in the florence framework for a step-by-step lifting of the U.K. beef export ban.   The Commission for its part will continue to stick to the framework agreed by the Heads of State and Government in Florence earlier this year which was based on the latest available science.   In this connection, the Scientific Veterinary Committee and the Multidisciplinary Committee will continue their ongoing assessment of the latest available studies, such as that produced by Oxford University and the one on maternal transmission and are expected to indicate as soon as possible whether these suggest an adjustment in the selective culling programme decided in Florence upwards or downwards.   The Commission remains open to discuss possibilities that may exist for a relaxation of export restrictions for animals from certified herds possibly on a regional basis provided again that the principles enshrined in the Florence framework are respected." 
19411 !GCAT !GPOL !GVOTE  Greece's Socialist Prime Minister Costas Simitis is pinning his hopes for victory in Sunday's close election on a mass, flag-waving rally in Athens on Friday, the last day of campaigning.   With polls showing him neck-and-neck with his conservative challenger, New Democracy party leader Miltiadis Evert, Simitis has one last chance to rally his faithful and woo the undecided.   Evert, 57, who has focused his campaign on problems with neighbouring Turkey, takes his nationalist battle cry to a remote border island as his final campaign move.   Polls show smaller parties claiming a bigger piece of the pie in this snap election while the number of undecided remained unusually high only days before the national poll.   When the mild-mannered Simitis, 60, called early elections he was confident of an easy win but New Democracy has been gaining momentum, with only one percentage point separating them in most public opinion polls.   Evert has hinged his campaign on Greece's tense relations with Turkey, accusing Simitis of backing down in a dispute with Greece's eastern neighbour over a deserted Aegean island in January, when war was averted with U.S. intervention.   "National issues are clearly a priority," an Evert adviser said, explaining why the stocky, outspoken leader chose to close his campaign on the easternmost island of Kastellorizo, a few miles from the Turkish coast.   "Any big party can mobilise 100,000 people in Athens, that's easy.   Evert wanted to spend the day with people in this border area to honour them," he added.   Simitis, who succeeded his ailing mentor Andreas Papandreou to the premiership in January, has shown little of the late socialist leader's flair in rousing a crowd.   He run a mild, TV-oriented campaign that has left voters yawning but admitted he miscalculated people's need to touch their leaders and took to the countryside last week.   It remains to be seen whether his mass rally in Athens will finally wake up voters or will prove a pale imitiation of his charismatic predecessor's passionate festivals.   "We all agree that we can't predict this election.   Anything can happen on Sunday," said Christina Badouna of the MRB polling company.   Analysts see little difference between the two major parties in economic policy, which is tightly controlled by European Union demands for recovery.   "This is the case all over Europe now.   Everyone running must abide by EU rules and parties come so close that they almost converge on most issues," a Western diplomat said.   The socialists' turn to more pragmatic economics from the late Papandreou's free-spending days may cost them votes with traditional socialist supporters, analysts said.   In fact, the biggest threat to Simitis comes from Dimitris Tsovolas, a former socialist finance minister who set up a new party this year and has branded the premier a neo-conservative.   Polls indicate Tsovolas could decide the election if he steals enough socialist voters from Simitis.   Most polling experts expected the unusually large block of undecided voters, 15 to 20 percent, to make up its mind only on Saturday or in the polling booth on Sunday. 
19412 !C24 !CCAT !E51 !ECAT !G15 !G158 !GCAT !GENV  All European Union aid for the nuclear sector in Eastern Europe should be strictly limited to funding improvements in nuclear safety, the European Parliament said on Friday.   "All financial assistance by EU institutions involving nuclear matters shall be solely related to matters of nuclear safety," parliament said in a report.   "A higher proportion (of aid should) be devoted to improving the safety of the fuel cycle and radioactive waste installations, which pose a major environmental hazard in north-west Russia," continued the report, drafted by British Socialist Gordon Adam.   Securing the safety of the Chernobyl sarcophagus was an urgent priority, parliament said.   MEPs remarked that the EU's dependence on imported energy was likely to increase substantially over the next 25 years and cooperation with the resource-rich East was therefore vital.   They said more priority should be given to energy within the PHARE and TACIS aid programmes for Eastern and Central European and the former Soviet republics.   The report also called for speedy ratification of the pan-European Energy Charter and the creation of a joint oil and gas centre in Moscow. 
19413 !C42 !CCAT !E41 !ECAT !GCAT !GJOB  The threat of strike action loomed large at Aer Lingus on Friday after the airline's pilots refused to back down from a pay demand which the company sees as a threat to its survival.   The Irish Airline Pilots Association (IALPA) has issued strike notice, effective from midnight on Sunday, in protest at Aer Lingus' rejection of a 17 percent pay rise for pilots recommended by an independent tribunal.   "We are still endeavouring to reach an understanding with IALPA which will avert this threat and allow the company to continue to provide normal scheduled services," Aer Lingus said in a statement.   The two sides remain far apart, however, and have yet to hold direct negotiations on the pay demand.   IALPA chairman Dermot Rafferty has said the association is available for talks with Aer Lingus but only to discuss the implementation of the first phase of the 17 per cent pay rise, five per cent of which is due in October.   But Aer Lingus, which has just emerged from a major restructuring aimed at ensuring its survival in a fiercely competitive market, says the 17 percent pay demand flies in the face of commercial reality.   It said on Tuesday it was considering issuing protective notice of dismissal to all 6,000 employees if the strike warning was not withdrawn.   "Aer Lingus finances are still fragile.   Far from conceding a 17 percent pay demand, followed by inevitable knock-on claims, we have to seek to reduce our operating costs if we are to stay in business," chief executive Gary McGann said.   He said the airline was battling for survival in seeking to resolve the pay dispute.   "It is vital, even at this late stage, that IALPA should recognise the irreparable damage to the company that an insistence on a 17 percent pay demand would have," McGann said in a statement.   The airline has announced contingency plans in the event that the threatened strike goes ahead.   Aer Lingus says it will lease aircraft to provide a near-normal service on its priority routes which include Dublin-London Heathrow, Dublin-New York and its main European destinations.   "We are a customer-focused airline and we have got to try and look after our passengers," an Aer Lingus spokesman told Reuters.   The airline has also a published an alternative flight schedule for Monday.   "It's not going to satisfy everybody obviously because it is a limited schedule but we have to go ahead and plan for that while still hoping that we can sit down and resolve the issue with IALPA," the spokesman said.   Aer Lingus made a pre-tax profit of 17.8 million punts ($28.66 million) in 1995, its first profit for years, following implementation of an EU-approved restructuring plan which saw the Irish government give the airline 175 million punts over a three-year period.   In return, the airline implemented certain cost savings which involved cutting 1,530 jobs or 12 percent of the workforce and the disposal of non-core assets such as its hotel chain.   Newspaper reports said on Friday that the Labour Court or the Labour Relations Commission may intervene in the dispute which is coming to a head during one of the busiest months in Ireland's six-month EU presidency.   An informal council meeting of European Union finance ministers takes place in Dublin this weekend followed by meetings of agriculture, justice and culture ministers and a mini-summit of EU heads of state on October 5.   ($1=.6211 Punt) 
19414 !G15 !GCAT  Following are highlights of the midday briefing by the European Commission on Friday:   Spokesman Nikolaus van der Pas announced that spokesman Jesper Jorgensen is leaving and will be replaced by Mr. Peter Jorgensen from the middle of October.   Reacting to the British government's announcement on Thursday night that it was putting on hold a cull of beef cattle most at risk from BSE because of evidence from researchers that the disease would die out in five years, van der Pas ruled out lifting the ban on British beef exports until London respected the terms of the Florence agreement (for more details see separate story (BC-MADCOW-EUROPE-UPDATE).   - - - -   The Commission released the following documents:   - IP/96/846: Initialling of the interim agreement between the European Communities and Slovenia.   - IP/96/847: Meda-financing for 498 million Ecus for projects in Lebanon, Tunisia, Egypt, Syria and Jordan.   - IP/96/848: Coal and Steel - funding social measures for workers.   - Speech/96/220: Speech by Commissioner Mario Monti on "the European Union on the eve of the 21st Century".   - Eurostat: Statistics in focus, Distributive trades, services and transport, 1996 No 3: Insurance services statistics.   - Eurostat: Memo, Eurostat aims to reduce statistical burden on businesses.   - Centre for the Development of Industry: Press release: ACP-EU Industrial partnership meeting on export opportunities for processed fruit from the Caribbean.   - Centre for the Development of Industry: Press release: International partnership meeting - biological products - opportunities and constraints.   - Memo/96/89: Calendar of the week of Sept 23 to Sept 28, 1996.   - ME96/20.9: Midday express 
19415 !E21 !E211 !ECAT !GCAT !GPOL  German Finance Minister Theo Waigel on Friday met state government leaders from the opposition Social Democrats (SPD) but no agreement was reached on the 1997 tax bill.   Hamburg Mayor Henning Voscherau, after meeting Waigel, said the SPD remained opposed to the government's plan to delay a rise in payments to families with children.   Waigel said federal state and local governments faced 60 billion marks in tax revenue shortfalls in 1997, and must find additional savings.   The rise in child support and deductions would cost three to five billion marks.   The two sides agreed only to create a working group including members of the government and opposition parliamentary factions that would continue the talks within the next two weeks.   The government and the SPD also remain at loggerheads over assets taxes and financing for local governments. 
19416 !C31 !C312 !CCAT !G15 !G153 !GCAT !M14 !M141 !MCAT  The European Union on Friday set a zero refund on daily exports of soft wheat, rye and barley, allowing the prefixing of export licences, grain officials said.   The decision taken on Thursday followed a parallel move to abolish export taxes in the EU weekly export channel.   The abolition of the daily tax was contained in Regulation (EC) No 1813/96 of September 19 and scraps the standing wheat export tax of 10 Ecus per tonne that applied to daily wheat exports from mid-July.   -- Paris newsroom +331 4221 5432 
19417 !C13 !CCAT !E21 !E211 !E51 !E512 !ECAT !G15 !G158 !GCAT  The European Commission should re-examine current excise duties on tobacco, alcohol and fuel oils, the European Parliament said on Friday.   MEPs were reacting to a Commission report on how the current controversial system has worked since its introduction in 1993, the problems which have arisen and the broader question of whether excise duties should be brought more closely into line - COM(95)285.   Having failed to get European Union governments to agree to harmonise national excise duties as part of the internal market programme, the European Commission persuaded them to introduce minimum rates of duty on tobacco, alcohol and mineral oils from 1993.   MEPs failed to agree whether or not to recommend sticking to the current 57 percent minimum level of taxation on cigarettes, or whether excise duties on hand-rolling tobacco should be increased to the same level as the duty on cigarettes.   Instead, they asked the Commission to examine whether the taxation system produced serious distortions of competition and, if necessary, come up with proposals for improving it.   Cigarette prices should be increased to similar levels throughout the EU, for health reasons and to prevent possible distortion of competition, parliament said in a report drafted by German Christian Democrat Karl von Wogau.   The report urged the Commission to take action to tackle the growing problem of cigarette smuggling, which involves some 32 billion cigarettes every year.   On the question of alcoholic drinks, MEPS recognised that huge differences in national excise duty rates on wine, beer and spirits have distorted the internal market and led to greater smuggling, fraud and illicit production.   But they were unable to agree on a proposal to tax wine and beer, like spirits, according to their percentage content of alcohol, or to a zero rating for wine.   As a compromise they recommended, if not convergence then at least an attempt to prevent a widening of the difference in rates on wine, beer and spirits.   MEPs were also unable to decide whether high excise duties on wine, while useful to combat over-production and alcohol abuse, were appropriate at a time when the sector is particularly exposed.   They asked the Commission to come up with a report on the issue within a year.   Parliament threw the ball back into the Commission's court when it came to mineral oils too.   Von Wogau's report highlights three problems with the current wide difference in prices for motor and heating fuel oils.   The absence of taxation on natural gas and coal is distorting the internal market in heating fuel; the low cost of heating gas oil in Luxembourg and Belgium is diverting orders from France and Germany and leading to fraud; and cross-border shopping for low-cost petrol and diesel in Luxembourg is on the increase.   MEPs urged the Commission to examine ways of using excise duties as fiscal intruments to encourage environmental protection, cleaner energy and transport, and a switch away from taxation on labour.   Less polluting products should be subject to more favourable rates of duty than other fuels, parliament said. 
19418 !E21 !E211 !E41 !ECAT !GCAT !GJOB !GPOL  Louis Viannet, head of France's Communist-led CGT union, attacked the government's 1997 budget on Friday but said he could not tell whether public reaction would spark unrest.   "The social climate depends on the way in which each union organisation goes on the offensive," Viannet told the afternoon daily Le Monde in an interview.   "I keep hearing 'things are going to explode'.   I've no idea, but we are facing a situation which could rapidly trigger a reaction of rebellion," Viannet was quoted as saying.    "People are no longer solely expressing discontent, but a mixture of anxiety and a will to cross swords," he said.   He said the budget drive to cut public spending was at the expense of jobs and would widen the gap between rich and poor.   Of the 75 billion francs in income tax cuts planned in the next five years, a quarter would apply to the top 200,000 incomes in France, he said.   Meanwhile, plans to increase tobacco, alcohol and petrol duties would hit the poor harder, as had a two point rise in value added tax introduced two years ago, he said, calling for VAT to be brought back to 18.6 percent.   "(Prime Minister) Alain Juppe says the budget is 'just and ambitious' -- it's precisely the opposite," Viannet said.   -- Paris Newsroom +33 1 4221 5452 
19419 !E12 !ECAT !G15 !G151 !G154 !GCAT !M13 !M132 !MCAT  Bank of Finland supervisory board member Tuulikki Hamalainen said on Friday she expected a decision whether to link the markka to ERM to be made "within the next few weeks".   "I expect that it will happen within the next few weeks," Hamalainen told Reuters by telephone.   "I think we will be called to a meeting at short notice ... but before that, I think we will have time to talk about it thoroughly," she said.   A narrow majority of the board of supervisors was likely to come out in favour of pegging the markka to ERM if such a proposal was given by the Bank's board of management, she said.   Five members of the nine-strong supervisory board were likely to agree that, despite the risks involved, it would make sense to link the markka to ERM, Hamalainen said.   The exact timing of the decision was mainly up to Prime Minister Paavo Lipponen and central bank governor Sirkka Hamalainen, she said.   "I regard it as quite unlikely that it would happen this weekend," Tuulikki Hamalainen said, adding, however, that it could not be entirely ruled out that the board of supervisors would be summoned for a meeting later on Friday afternoon.   Supervisory board chairman Ilkka Kanerva told reporters on Thursday that a possible markka ERM-link "was never intended for this weekend".   Asked whether a link would be possible the weekened of September 28-29, Kanerva said: "Actually it (that weekend) has been out of the question for a long time."   In the past month, Lipponen has said more than once that the decision whether to peg the markka to ERM would be made in the near future.   Last week, European Parliament President Klaus Hansch -- after meeting Lipponen -- told Finnish radio he expected Finland to decide in the next few weeks whether to link the markka.   On Friday, Belgian central bank governor Alfons Verplaetse said in an interview with Reuters Financial Television that Finland would "one of these weeks join the ERM system."   --Peter Starck, Helsinki Newsroom +358 - 0 - 680 50 245 
19420 !E12 !ECAT !G15 !G151 !G154 !GCAT  Greece will press for a provision of "special circumstances" to be included in a report on EMU during an informal meeting of EU finance ministers in Dublin on Saturday, National Economy Minister Yannos Papandoniou told reporters.   Greece will ask for a special exemption from the 3.0 percent of GDP Maastricht budget deficit target because of large military outlays, said Papandoniou.   Greece's general government budget deficit is estimated at 7.6 percent of GDP this year from 9.0 percent in 1995.   It is projected at 4.2 percent of GDP in 1997.   The meeting of finance and economic ministers on Saturday will pave the way for a Dublin summit of EU government leaders in December that will produce a detailed report on EMU.   The informal meeting is expected to take on the issue of the relationship between the currencies that will join EMU first and those that will stay out, discuss a stability pact for fiscal discipline after currency union and the legal framework for the Euro single currency.   Papandoniou added that the socialist government was committed to the hard drachma policy that helped drive inflation and interest rates lower.   He said the revised convergence plan had succeeded in meeting its goals and saw no need for another revision as advocated by the conservatives.   --Dimitris Kontogiannis, Athens Newsroom +301 3311812-4 
19421 !GCAT !GDIP !GVIO  Several German states on Friday ignored heated criticism and vowed to move rapidly to begin forcibly repatriating Bosnian civil war refugees, while other states said they would wait until after the winter.   Opposition political leaders and human rights groups heaped abuse on the states' move, calling it hypocritical for the Bonn government to be sending combat troops to the region while at the same time declaring it safe for returning refugees.   The United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) in Geneva also criticised the states' "unilateral decision", saying that neither security conditions nor the number of destroyed homes in Bosnia permitted mass returns.   Germany's 16 federal states said on Thursday they would begin the twice-delayed process of sending home the 320,000 Bosnians who took refuge here from the Balkan war.   But the ministers also agreed to allow each state to decide for itself whether to evict the Bosnians from October forcibly.   Some states such as Berlin immediately announced they will begin repatriating refugees from October 1 -- forcibly if necessary -- but other states such as North Rhine-Westphalia said no one would be deported before April 1997.   That raised the spectre that refugees who once fled the guns of Bosnia will now move from one German state to another to escape from regions planning prompt deportations to those that will take a more lenient stance.   "There is a very real danger that refugees will now begin wandering from state to state," said Kerstin Mueller, a member of parliament for Alliance 90/Greens.   "This decision will only trigger fear and panic among the refugees in Germany."   Berlin's Interior Minister Joerg Schoenbohm said he hoped the refugees would return voluntarily, but that if necessary unmarried Bosnians and childless couples selected for the first phase would be forcibly returned to Bosnia starting in October.   "I hope that they will go voluntarily, but if this doesn't happen, they will be forcibly returned," Schoenbohm told Berlin's Info-radio station.   Bavaria's Interior Minister Guenter Beckstein said voluntary measures had failed.   He said the number of Bosnian refugees in Bavaria had actually increased by 3,000 to 65,000 in the year after the fighting in Bosnia stopped.   "It should be clear to anyone that something is wrong here," he said.   "We have to underscore the voluntary return process with the threat of forcible repatriation."   There are more Bosnian refugees in Germany than in the rest of the European Union combined.   The 320,000 here amount to nearly 10 percent of Bosnia's population, Beckstein said.   Haunted by their own memories of war and its aftermath, many Germans at first took in the Bosnians with open arms.   While there is still widespread empathy for the Bosnians, the country's more financially strapped states say they simply cannot afford the millions of marks it costs to house and feed the refugees indefinitely.   But many of the states led by the left-leaning Social Democrats said they would not force anyone to go this year.   "We will not deport anyone before next April," said Franz-Josef Kniola, interior minister in North Rhine-Westphalia.   "In my view it is better not to force people back there in the winter but rather wait for improved weather conditions."   He added that there would be chaos if every state were to follow Berlin's lead and force the pace of repatration.   Jost Hess, a leader of the refugee organisation Pro Asyl, told the Saarlaendischer Rundfunk radio station that Bosnia was not yet safe enough or prepared for the refugees' return.   "The decision will worsen the situation for the refugees in Germany," Hess said.   "They will be living in fear of whether they will be picked out for forced repatriation." 
19422 !GCAT !GSCI  Archaeologists in Austria have discovered the skeletal remains of a Stone Age girl, believed to be over 1,200 years older than the 5,300-year-old "iceman" found in 1991, the Austrian news agency APA said on Friday.   The bones were found on a 6,500-year-old Stone Age settlement near the northwestern city of Linz, archaeologist Manfred Pertlwieser at the Francisco Carolinum museum in northern Austria was quoted as saying.   Judging from the good condition of her teeth, the girl was estimated to be between 12 and 13 when she died.   He said the body was curled up in a tight ball when it was buried, "just as children crouch when they are cold".   He said she had probably died of a fever or frozen to death.   Remains of a fireplace near her grave suggest she was buried in her home.   The discovery comes after five years of excavation on the Stone Age settlement in Oelkam.   Previously the "iceman" discovered on a glacier in the Tyrolean Alps five years ago was the oldest human being to have been found intact. 
19423 !C42 !CCAT !E41 !ECAT !GCAT !GJOB  French aluminium company Pechiney has joined a long list of French companies that have announced massive job cuts, spelling possible labour unrest in the autumn, trade unions said on Friday.   But the plan pleased investors, driving the share up 2.2 percent to 218 francs at 0945 GMT.   Angry labour unions denounced a tough cost cutting plan at Pechiney that entails 4,000 to 5,000 jobs cuts worldwide, saying they were considering possible action.   "We are going to fight.   But it is premature to say what form our action will take," one union source told Reuters.   Labour representatives are due to meet management on September 27 to discuss the plan but are already thinking about taking action in October though no date has yet been set.   Pechiney's announcement follows plans by arms-maker Giat Industries to shed 2,741 jobs and appliance maker Moulinex to cut 2,600 jobs, most of them in France.   Engiineering group Alcatel Alsthom may end up shedding some 30,000 jobs worldwide under its restructuring plan, analysts estimate.   On Thursday Pechiney announced that an important part of the savings generated by the Challenge cost-cuting plan would come from a 16 percent reduction in the total wage bill, with half of the savings to be found in France.   The group employs 37,000 worldwide, of which 17,000 are in France.   A Pechiney spokesman told Reuters that the plan may lead to "4,000 to 5,000 job cuts by end-1998,"   In France the job reductions will come from up to 500 redundancies and 1,000 through early retirement.   Use of flexible working would save 1,200 jobs.  The programme will avoid relocating plants abroad where costs are cheaper and will involve the closure of one French foundry which employs 72.   Labour organisations immediately reacted to the announcement with a joint statement from five trade unions denouncing the job losses as "unacceptable", while the CGT union in a separate statement called on employees to organise opposition to the programme.   Pechiney predicted on Thursday that provisions for its "Challenge" cost-cutting plan would push the group into the red in 1996.   Chairman Jean-Pierre Rodier told a news conference the exact amount of provisions, which include up costs of shedding up to 1,500 jobs in France, was not yet known but would include two billion francs ($388.9 million) in restructuring costs and result in a loss for the year.   The Challenge plan has identified four billion francs ($777.4 million) in cost savings to be made by the end of 1998 and is Pechiney's bid to match the profitability of its best competitors.   Alongside the savings, about 3.5 billion francs will be invested in the next three years to modernise plants.   Analysts said they were less concerned over possible unions unrest at Pechiney than over the levels of provisions linked to the restructuring.   They had expected restructuring provisions of up to 1.5 billion instead of the two billion francs announced by Pechiney.   They also said they were sceptical Pechiney could meet its "ambitious" four billion francs cost-savings target.   ($1=5.145 French Franc) 
19424 !GCAT  These are leading stories in afternoon daily Le Monde.   FRONT PAGE   -- Franc boosted by cut in Bank of France intervention rate in sign of support for government's 1997 budget, presented on Wednesday.   BUSINESS PAGES   -- Pechiney to cut up to 5,000 jobs worldwide due to restructuring, may limit layoffs to 500 in France along with part-time work measures affecting some 1,200 workers.   -- Naval shipyards expected to cut about 2,240 jobs before the end of 1997 as part of a defence sector restructuring.   -- Workers at AOM airline strike against a possible merger with ailing rival Air Liberte.   -- Paris Newsroom +33 1 42 21 53 81 
19425 !C13 !CCAT !G15 !G153 !GCAT !GHEA  The European Parliament approved on Friday a European Commission package for stabilising the beef market but rejected the Commission's plan to finance these measures by reducing aid to cereal farmers.   Euro-MPs approved with amendments the Commission's proposal to reduce the surplus on the beef market by increasing the amount of beef that can be bought into intervention and making changes in the premium system - COM(96)422.   These measures imply a modification of a 1968 regulation on the common organisation of the European Union beef and veal market.   But the parliament refused to consider a separate Commission proposal to fund these measures by reducing the set-aside premiums and compensatory payments for cereals and oilseeds.   Rapporteur Honor Funk, a German Christian Democrat, said cereal producers should not be expected to bear the costs of palliating the crisis sparked off by the mad cow (BSE) scare.   "The political mistakes in the fight against BSE cannot be shifted onto farmers who have nothing to do with the disease," Funk said in his report.   The BSE crisis has led to a 20-30 percent drop in beef consumption in some member states and an average 15 percent fall in prices.   Parliament's budget committee said the money to finance the Commission's market-easing measures could be found from unused credits in the 1996 farm budget or from the supplementary 1996 budget approved in July, which includes a 1.5-million-Ecu fund for tackling the mad cow crisis.   Among their amendments to the Commission's proposal, approved by 85 votes to 31, Euro-MPs asked for a more limited increase in the ceiling for intervention purchases on the grounds that intervention was a costly and not particularly effective way of easing the market.   They said the ceiling should be increased from 400,000 to 500,000 tonnes in 1996 and from 350,000 to 400,000 tonnes in 1997.   The Commission had asked for increases to 720,000 and 500,000 tonnes respectively.   Euro-MPs also rejected the Commission's proposal to set a premium of 108.7 Ecus per castrated male animal. 
19426 !GCAT !GDIP !GVIO  The U.N. refugee agency on Friday criticised a "unilateral decision" by Germany to begin forced repatriation of Bosnian civil war refugees next month and urged the government to be flexible in implementing it.   Spokeswoman Christiane Berthiaume of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said that neither security conditions nor the number of destroyed homes in Bosnia permitted mass returns.   The agency estimated that 60 per cent of the 320,000 Bosnians in Germany are Moslems who originate from areas now under the control of the Bosnian Serb Republic.   Interior ministers from Germany's 16 federal states, ignoring protests from human rights groups, said on Thursday they would begin gradually repatriating some of the 320,000 Bosnians who fled to Germany since 1991.   "The UNHCR regrets the unilateral decision taken by Germany to lift the temporary protection for Bosnians on its territory and to begin forced turns on October 1," Berthiaume told a news briefing in Geneva.   "UNHCR hopes that the decision will be applied in a flexible manner," she added.   "No refugee should be sent back without verifying the security situation (in his place of origin) and whether he has found necessary accommodation."   The spokeswoman for UNHCR -- the main U.N. humanitarian agency during the four-year Bosnian civil war -- said: "Conditions do not permit forced returns."   "The degree of destruction is great.   Refugees have a right to return in security and to find a roof over their heads."   Germany took in as many war refugees as the rest of the European Union combined.   Neighbouring countries of asylum in Europe have been anxiously awaiting the decision by the German state ministers, which had the backing of the federal government. 
19427 !E12 !E21 !E211 !ECAT !G15 !G151 !G154 !GCAT  As European Union governments struggle to meet the budgetary preconditions of economic and monetary union (EMU), questions are being raised over whether they are being a bit fast and loose with their figures.   With most struggling to bring their deficits near three percent of GDP next year -- the Maastricht treaty's requirement -- every opportunity is being taken to squeeze out extra money through a variety of means, some of which are considered controversial.   The most notable case has been that of France.   The French government plans to use a whopping 37.5 billion francs ($7.4 billion) in its budget accounts next year through the process of privatisating France Telecom.   This one-off item has so far received a cautious response from the European Commission, with Monetary Affairs Commissioner Yves-Thibault de Silguy on Thursday saying the French proposal probably conformed with EU rules.   An eventual opinion by the Commission will be forwarded to EU finance ministers for final consideration.   Economists, however, say the French plan is an ingenous piece of accounting, well within the bounds of EU law but at odds with what one would consider budgetary rigour.   "It's perfectly acceptable within Maastricht, but it is not in the spirit of the treaty," says Bruce Kasman, economist at J.P. Morgan in London.   While such tinkering can be of crucial importance in helping a government raise revenue, in this particular case the decision may also throw light on the political momentum behind EMU, experts say.   Germany, which has argued forcefully for strict adherence to Maastricht, has so far not criticised Paris for its inventive application of EU laws.   Some think such reticence suggests an ironclad political committment between the two countries to push EMU forward.   "The fact that you're not hearing screaming from on the part of the Germans says the political commitment is very strong," adds Kasman.   Evidence of this type of accounting has also been seen in the latest budget plan from the Netherlands.   The Dutch government this week unveiled a 1997 budget which will help reduce its outstanding debt to an expected 76.2 percent of GDP.   Under Maastricht, countries wishing to qualify for EMU must have their debt levels "sufficiently diminishing" and "approaching" the 60 percent reference value.   But a large percentage of next year's budget improvement will be due to the drawing down of an obsolete government cash reserve held at the Dutch central bank.   Analysts say countries which are marginally on the edge of meeting the treaty's deficit and debt criteria are most likely to use such accounting tactics.   Spain, in particular, was cited as one such potential candidate.   European Commission officials say they fully recognise how such maneouverings could be interpreted as slight-of-hand accounting and not in accordance with proper rules.   But they also note that a final judgment on France's proposal must be made in accordance with the law, otherwise they would face sharp criticism from other countries whose deficits are on the verge of meeting Maastricht.   "We are well aware of the criticism we would face if we acted in a way that was less than credible," said one official. 
19428 !E12 !ECAT !G15 !G151 !G154 !GCAT  Like an uninvited guest, the question of who will and who won't make it into European monetary union in 1999 will lurk at the edge of the party when Europe's finance ministers meet in Dublin this weekend.   It is a question few ministers will talk about publicly, but which threatens to create a north-south divide -- between rich northern European states poised to join a single currency first and Mediterranean countries determined not to be left behind.   The practicalities of monetary union and relations between the 'ins and outs' "would really threaten the coherence of the European Union," CS First Boston economist Sean Shepley said.   "That's why Spain and Italy are desperate to get in."   The issue is becoming more pressing as the EU tries to work out the nuts and bolts of exactly how monetary union will be run, with finance ministers in Dublin to consider, among other things, a special council of ministers which will oversee Economic and Monetary Union and exclude non-members.   In theory, Maastricht treaty fiscal and economic standards should weed out countries with weaker economies.   But as the 1997 deadline approaches for judging which countries qualify for EMU in 1999, everyone is making a last dash to the finishing line with one-off measures which comply with the letter if not the spirit of the Maastricht treaty.   France set the tone earlier this week with a budget which relies on a one-off transfer from France Telecom to cover future pension liabilities to get its deficit down to the required three percent of gross domestic product in 1997.   Now Spain is going all out, with a 1997 budget due next week meant to cut its deficit/GDP ratio to three percent.   That in turn is making Italy panic about being left out of the first wave of EMU, and it is hoping its plans to get the deficit to 2.99 percent of GDP -- albeit a year late in 1998 -- might help it to talk its way in.   None of that matches Germany's vision of a core of rich northern countries with stable currencies which would underpin the new "euro" currency when it replaces the mark in 1999.   German Chancellor Helmut Kohl said this week he thought the single currency would probably begin with five to seven members.   Bank of France governor Jean-Claude Trichet hinted last week who he thought should join first, according to minutes of a closed-door parliamentary hearing.   "He insisted on the fact that the credibility of the single currency was largely supported by the stability seen for nine and a half years in exchange rates of seven countries in the European Monetary System Exchange Rate Mechanism (France, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Denmark and Austria)," the minutes said.   But economists say it is hard to see how a country like Spain could be excluded if it does meet Maastricht standards.   France's own creative accounting has left the field wide open for other countries to follow suit, economists say.   One option would be to convince some countries they would be better off waiting a few years, rather than submitting their economies to the rigours of monetary union too soon.   Countries with too high inflation rates would lose competitiveness from early EMU entry, while EMU members would face higher interest rates due to the damage to the euro's credibility, Trichet was quoted as saying last week.   Marie Owens-Thomsen, economist at Banque Internationale de Placement (BIP), said one deterrent might be a rebound in German growth, which would lead to higher German interest rates, forcing up rates in the rest of the euro zone.   "That could put the Mediterranean countries in the same kind of policy dilemna that they were in after German unification," she said.   Germany's decision to jack up rates after unification forced up rates and squeezed economies everywhere in Europe.   But barring that, the political risks of being left out of a currency club that is taking on ever more institutional form as monetary union approaches might be too big to accept.   "At the end of the day they all have a vote each.   I don't see how they can be motivated to vote against themselves," Owens-Thomsen said.   "Politically it is difficult to be convinced you are not going to lose from being outside," Shepley said.   "What you have to start looking for is something that can be provided to these countries," he added. 
19429 !E12 !ECAT !G15 !G151 !G154 !GCAT  Bank of England deputy governor Howard Davies said excluding countries which choose to stay outside monetary union in 1999 from a Europe-wide settlements system would be an "own-goal" for such a system.   Speaking to reporters in Paris on Friday, Davies said banks in countries outside the Euro-bloc would find other ways of settling Euro payments which would be against the interests of central banks in general.   French banks are pushing hard to limit access to the planned settlement system, known as TARGET, to those countries which take part in monetary union from 1999.   They are considering using mechanisms such as limiting intra-day positions held by banks in countries outside EMU, or setting an earlier time for these banks to close out positions.   "For us, this TARGET issue has become a little sad," Davies said.   "We don't understand the position of those who say it's a monetary policy issue."   "If it's not resolved in favour of an open systm there would be significant risks banks would find another way to settle Euro payments," Davies said.   "That would be against the interests of central banks in general, because the TARGET system was established to reduce payment risk."   -- Paris Newsroom +331 4221 5542 cla 
19430 !GCAT !GVIO  The United Nations refugee agency said on Friday that 11 Iraqi Kurds were killed and 35 wounded in cross-border shooting at a camp in northwestern Iran on Wednesday.   A spokeswoman for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said that officials of the agency were meeting Iranian authorities in Tehran to urge them to move the camp, which holds 18,000 people, further away from the volatile border.   "Forty-six people were taken to hospital.   Eleven died and 35 remain in hospital at Baneh," UNHCR spokeswoman Christiane Berthiaume told a news briefing in Geneva.   "There was shelling directed across the border and the Iranians returned fire.   The camp is on the border and was caught between the shooting."   On Thursday, UNHCR was able only to confirm that it had visited 11 people wounded in the incident.   It was the first U.N. confirmation of deaths in the shooting.   The information was relayed by telephone from UNHCR officials in Iran to the Geneva headquarters early on Friday.   The official Iranian news agency IRNA said on Wednesday that three Kurdish children and another refugee were killed when the Iraqi army and Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) forces shelled the camp.   The KDP has denied involvement.   The UNHCR usually prefers refugee camps holding people fleeing persecution or civil war to be located at least 50 km (30 miles) from a frontier, the spokeswoman said. 
19431 !GCAT !GCRIM  Normal education was suspended for two hours in classrooms across France on Friday for teachers, pupils and parents to discuss a spate of violence in schools after a teenage boy shot dead a fellow pupil by accident.   Education Minister Francois Bayrou had decreed the pause, from 10 a.m. to midday, for debate after the Tuesday killing outside a school in Montereau, near Paris, when the teenager took a gun out of his satchel to show his friends.   Two weeks after the start of the school year, Bayrou sent a circular to school heads on Thursday asking each to send him a report on anti-violence measures they planned to take.   "Pupils, staff and parents should together discuss the reasons for violence and the means to combat it," Bayrou wrote.   "You should encourage young people to express themselves, verbally or in writing, and ensure their output is published in the school and outside."   But there was no debate at the school in Montereau where 15-year-old Julien was shot dead this week.   The school chose to go into mourning on the day the boy was buried.   During a meeting with 150 lycee pupils in southern France on Thursday, Juppe had said he did not want his audience "to become tell-tales, but if the law of silence is not broken then we won't get anywhere".   In 1993, the latest year for which figures are available, France recorded 2,000 acts of violence against schoolchildren.   Half of them concerned racketeering and a third involved physical violence. 
19432 !E12 !E21 !E211 !ECAT !G15 !G151 !G154 !GCAT  Belgian central bank governor Alfons Verplaetse said on Friday he is confident that his nation's deficit level would fall further, letting it easily meet one of the entry criteria for Europe's currency union.   "I am convinced that with the measures that will be taken, we will bring (the budget deficit ratio to gross domestic product) below three percent," Verplaetse told Reuters Financial Television in an interview broadcast on Friday.   "It is feasible, and it will be done," Verplaetse assured, forecasting that the nation's deficit level would be brought down to either 3.1 percent or 3.2 percent this year.   The Maastricht Treaty on European Economic and Monetary Union states the reference values for nations' planned or actual government deficit to gross domestic product as three percent and 60 percent.   Verplaetse admitted his nation's government debt ratio, standing at 133 percent at the end of 1995, was very high but promised the government would take further steps to reduce that level.   "We have indeed a huge public deficit and we have to tackle it," Verplaetse said, adding "this will be done by reducing the annual deficit and secondly by selling some public asssets and by better management of public debt."   Verplaetse also said "I do not exclude that in order to make our balance sheet more transparent ... it might be that a part of the capital gains on gold should maybe be used without influencing the annual deficit to reduce the gross debt, I don't exclude that."   "But that I don't consider window dressing, it is a real transaction" Verplaetse added, saying, "We will reduce our public debt in foreign currencies."   --Frankfurt Newsroom, +49 69 756525 
19433 !GCAT !GDIP !GVIO  German editorials on Friday heaped criticism on a decision by state interior ministers to begin sending Bosnian war refugees home in October.   Saying it was "inhumane" to begin repatriating the Bosnians when there was still so much instability in the region, newspapers expressed some understanding for the financially pressed states.   But they raised doubts about the motives of forcing the 320,000 refugees home starting in October, just as the winter begins.   The Koelner Stadt-Anzeiger bluntly said in a headline over an editorial that it "is inhumane to begin the immediate repatriation".   "The conditions in Bosnia are by no means ready for a hopeful new start for returning war refugees," the Cologne paper said.   "If those who stayed behind in Bosnia are now sleeping in ruins and basements, where are the returnees going to stay?"   It said the decision to begin repatriating the refugees on October 1 was misguided.   "For the prickly federal interior minister (Manfred) Kanther the date was a matter of prestige," the paper said.   "Two earlier proposed dates to begin the repatriation had already been nixed.   He now wanted to flex his muscles -- at any cost."   The Stuttgarter Zeitung said that the states were bowing to pressure from the German public and could not have come to any other decision.   With four million unemployed and the states' budgets being cut, it was hard for many ordinary Germans to understand why the refugees were still in the country after the war had ended.   But the paper said the returning Bosnians would be met "by mistrust, hatred, destroyed houses and cities.   And most of those expelled (the Moslems and Croats) will not be able to return to their real homes anyhow because those areas are now controlled by their enemies -- the Serbs". 
19434 !E12 !E41 !E411 !ECAT !G15 !G151 !GCAT !GJOB  The Irish government said on Friday that it plans to spend 56 million punts to revitalise unemployment blackspots as part of a jointly-funded scheme with the EU to create 8,000 jobs over the next four years.   "We are now past the halfway stage in the allocation of the 111 million pounds available under the government/EU funded programme and this.  .  can become our most cost effective method yet of creating real and sustainable employment," Gay Mitchell, Minister for European Affairs and Local Development, said.    Mitchell told a conference on regional development that locally-based initiatives were the most effective way to address regional unemployment problems rather than efforts by a centralised government.   The minister said money from the regional development scheme would be allocated to local partnership bodies to assist small job creation enterprises, as well as environment improvements and education and training schemes.   --Dublin Newsroom +353 1 676 9779 
19435 !C13 !CCAT !G15 !G153 !GCAT !GHEA  Germany on Friday backed European Commission President Jacques Santer in calling on Britain to carry out a cattle cull agreed with its EU partners to wipe out mad cow disease in British beef herds.   Britain said on Thursday it would abandon the slaughter of 147,000 cattle because a new study had showed the degenerative brain disease Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE) would die out naturally within five years.   "As long as the British government does not hold to the agreements of the EU agriculture ministers, we cannot accommodate it," a spokesman for the German agriculture ministry said.   The European Union slapped an export ban on British beef in June, agreeing a step-by-step lifting of the embargo once the cull is completed.   "This position has not changed," the spokesman added.   Santer said earlier on Friday that the rest of Europe had been unmoved by Britain's decision.   "The position of the Commission has not changed," he told Reuters Television.   The Commission said on Thursday it would review the new research into BSE by a team of Oxford University scientists, but the decision demanding a complete cull remained in effect. 
19436 !C21 !C24 !C31 !C312 !CCAT !G15 !G153 !GCAT !GHEA  The European Union on Friday flatly ruled out any lifting of a worldwide ban on British beef exports after London decided to shelve plans for a cull of cattle most at risk from mad cow disease.   Not mincing words, the EU farm commissioner and the farm ministers of France and EU president Ireland all said Britain must abide by an EU summit deal reached in June designed to defuse the so-called "beef war".   Foreign Ministers Klaus Kinkel of Germany and Herve de Charette of France also said lifting the ban was now out of the question.   Resurgence of the six-month-old crisis is likely to inflame an informal meeting of EU farm ministers beginning on Sunday in Killarney, Ireland.   It was otherwise intended to focus on ways to restore battered consumer confidence in beef.   Farm Commissioner Franz Fischler was first out of the blocks in attacking the British government's decision, which came late on Thursday evening.   "As long as they do not meet the pre-conditions and until we have a working document from them which we can carefully check, then an end to the export ban is simply not a possibility," Fischler told the European Parliament.   He said that Britain was still bound by its agreement at the summit in Florence to slaughter up to 147,000 cattle as part of a plan that would eventually lead to the EU lifting its worldwide ban on British beef exports.   The British government decided to suspend the planned cull because of research suggesting that mad cow disease, or bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), would die out in five years.   Irish Agriculture Minister Ivan Yates warned Britain that there were no prospects of lifting the ban and that its farmers would be the biggest losers if it abandoned the cull.   But he told Irish national radio he would strive to resolve the impasse during the informal farm ministers' meeting in southwest Ireland.   Britain's partners were adamant.   Kinkel, whose country has been the most concerned about a threat to humans from BSE, said:   "A unilateral change by the British government is...not acceptable.   The main priority is the health of the consumer.   The ban on importing British cattle, beef and other products will remain in force."   French Farm Minister Philippe Vasseur told French radio: "The embargo remains, I'd like to add that I am going to ask for checks to be increased."   British Agriculture Minister Douglas Hogg said London had called off the selective cull because of fierce opposition in Britain's parliament.   The British government has been repeatedly at odds with its EU partners since admitting in March that a fatal, brain-wasting disease could be caught by humans who ate BSE-infected beef.   In Killarney, Fischler is due to present proposals for an EU meat-labelling scheme aimed at reassuring shoppers about where the beef has come from and how it was produced.   Beef promotion schemes, especially on foreign markets, and incentives for farmers to rear their herds in fields on grass rather than in sheds on compound feeds will also be discussed.   The Commission's chief spokesman, Nikolaus van der Pas, said in a statement that the Commission would stick to the Florence framework which was based on the latest scientific evidence.   But he added that EU scientists would assess the latest studies, one by Oxford University and another which shows that BSE can be passed from cows to calves.   But it would take until at least mid-October before any conclusions could be drawn.   Van der Pas held out a ray of hope for farmers with grass-fed herds which were free of BSE.   "The Commission remains open to discuss possibilities that may exist for a relaxation of export restrictions for animals from certified herds possibly on a regional basis," he said.   Northern Ireland is pressing strongly for the ban to be lifted on its grass-fed herds, saying it has an effective computer system to track the origin and feed of all its cattle. 
19437 !E21 !E211 !E41 !ECAT !GCAT !GJOB !GPOL  French labour union Force Ouvriere (FO) hopes to mobilise public opinion over record unemployment with a demonstration on Saturday which will provide the first test of resistance to Prime Minister Alain Juppe's 1997 budget cuts.   FO leader Marc Blondel said on the eve of the rally in Paris that close to 100,000 people could lose their jobs in the second half of this year alone and that he was hoping for a big turnout against government inertia in the face of such a "catastrophe".   "We decided on July 3 to hold a demonstration.   On July 3 we already knew through employee committees the numbers private companies were planning to get rid of -- 97,000 in the second half of 1996.   That's a catastrophe," Blondel told RTL radio.   "If you look at unemployment over time, it's not even stabilising and it risks rising even further next year -- by between 120,000 and even 150,000 by our estimates," he said.   French unemployment has hit record levels of 12.5 percent, with more than three million people out of work.   But despite a barrage of union warnings of unrest in the run up to the release of the budget last Wednesday, reactions in the wake of the announcement have so far been relatively subdued and the FO protest is not being joined by the other large unions.   For the moment, there are few signs of turmoil on anything like the scale of late last year, when railworkers worried by government plans to trim pension rights -- plans now abandoned -- spearheaded a crippling wider strike which lasted 24 days.   The country's largest labour union, the Socialist CFDT, said on Thursday: "It (the budget) will delight some and satisfy others, but it will not reassure the vast majority worried by unemployment."   It has not yet talked of demonstrations.   The centre-right government's budget for next year includes spending cuts and savings worth 60 billion francs ($11.6 billion) to help France get its public finances ready for the move to a single European currency and include reducing civil service numbers by 6,000.   Juppe has also promised voters income tax cuts of 25 billion francs next year although he is raising several billion through additional duties on tobacco, alcohol and petrol.   The FO protest kicks off at the Place de la Bastille in the centre of Paris at 0900 GMT, with an address by Blondel at 1230 GMT and then a march to the nearby Place de la Nation.   Louis Viannet, head of the Communist-led CGT union, said in an interview in the newspaper Le Monde on Friday the budget sacrificed jobs in the name of preparing for European monetary union and would drive a bigger wedge between rich and poor.   "I keep hearing 'things are going to explode'.   I've no idea, but we are facing a situation which could rapidly trigger a reaction of rebellion," Viannet said.   "People are no longer solely expressing discontent, but a mixture of anxiety and a will to cross swords," he said.   Blondel at the FO union added he was even sceptical about the forecasts of economic growth underpinning the budget.   He also said a message from President Jacques Chirac was that he was powerless in the face of unemployment.   "We do not accept the rather strange declaration from the President of the Republic on July 14 where he seemed to say he was powerless on this issue," Blondel said.   "We will mount a public demonstration, with a high level of participation if possible, to send a warning to the government on its economic policy."   Another measure of resistance will come at the end of September when teachers are set to stage a strike to protest at the loss of more than 2,500 state education posts.   ($1=5.139 French Franc) 
19438 !GCAT !GCRIM  Italy's snowballing corruption scandal took a new twist on Friday when newspapers published transcripts of tapped telephone calls they said detailed how bribes were split up between businessmen and magistrates.   "The Bank of Bribes", headlined Rome's La Repubblica in one of a string of stories in newspapers about police taps of conversations between banker Pierfrancesco Pacini Battaglia, who was arrested on Sunday in a scandal that has rocked Italy.   The corruption probe, which has triggered a flashback to the Tangentopoli (Bribesville) investigations which toppled Italy's ruling political class in the early 1990s, broke on Monday with news of the arrest of the head of the state railway company.   Newspapers described Pacini Battaglia as having operated an extensive "superlobby" of businessmen, judges and lawyers, whom he is alleged to have paid to help win contracts for companies and to fix trials.   Pacini Battaglia is being held on suspicion of the crimes.   State railways managing director Lorenzo Necci, who had been overseeing Italy's planned multi-billion dollar high-speed rail project, was arrested on Sunday on suspicion of fraud, embezzlement, false accounting, corruption and abuse of office.   Magistrates in the northwestern town of La Spezia have said they are now investigating up to 50 people in the graft probe.   La Spezia's chief prosecutor Antonio Conte said on Wednesday that politicians were not involved "at this stage".   Prime Minister Romano Prodi has said the government is not touched in any way and financial markets have been so far unruffled.   Prodi's name was mentioned in passing in the transcripts by a magistrate under investigation in relation to a think-tank the former economist ran before becoming prime minister in May.   But the magistrate, Augusta Iannini, on Friday issued a statement categorically denying the reported comments.   Prodi said on Friday: "There is no need to deny this because it has already been denied by the person it was attributed to (the magistrate)."   Names of other politicians also surfaced in the transcripts, printed in all papers.   But far-right National Alliance leader Gianfranco Fini said it was "ridiculous" to imply wrongdoing simply because someone's name was mentioned in a phone call.   Many of the conversations, conducted using foreign cellphones in a bid to avoid detection, dated from January, five months before the current centre-left government took office.   Newspapers said they involved Pacini Battaglia's secretary Eliana Pensieroso and Emo Danesi, a former deputy for the discredited Christian Democrat party which collapsed in the Tangentopoli scandals.   All three were arrested on Sunday.   Two magistrates and the head of an arms company were among five arrested on Tuesday.   Pacini Battaglia, known as "Chicchi", hit notoriety during Tangentopoli, in which he was arrested and was briefly jailed.   The transcripts quoted him as saying, in highly ambiguous language, that he had "paid" to get out of that scandal.   Milan's crack "Clean Hands" team of graft investigators are still investigating the ramifications of Tangentopoli.   The transcripts contained references to managers from state energy giant ENI, itself part of a big Tangentopoli probe, as being involved in Pacini Battaglia's operations.   Magistrates investigated Necci over the failed Enimont chemicals joint-venture between ENI and agro-chemicals company Montedison which he chaired, but spared him indictment. 
19439 !C13 !C24 !C31 !C312 !CCAT !G15 !G153 !GCAT  The European Union on Friday ruled out any lifting of a worldwide ban on British beef exports until London respected the terms of a deal cut with EU leaders.   "As long as they do not meet the pre-conditions and until we have a working document from them which we can carefully check, then an end to the export ban is simply not a possibility," Fischler said at the European Parliament in Strasbourg.   The British government said on Thursday it was putting on hold a cull of beef cattle most at risk from bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) because of evidence from researchers that the disease would die out in five years.   British Agriculture Minister Douglas Hogg said London had called off the selective cull, which is in addition to a a much bigger rolling programme to destroy cattle over the age of 30 months, because of fierce opposition in Britain's parliament.   But Fischler warned that Britain was still bound by its agreement with the European Union to slaughter up to 147,000 cattle as part of a plan that would eventually lead to the lifting of its worldwide ban on British beef exports.   "That is a question which the British government has to address," he said, adding that London's decision did nothing to improve the poor state of the European beef market.   European Commission President Jacques Santer said that Britain's decision to hold up the planned extra cull of cattle had not influenced the rest of Europe's view of the issue.   "The position of the Commission has not changed," he told a Reuters Television reporter.   The European Union says that Britain must honour the agreement reached at an EU summit in Florence in June on a gradual lifting of the ban and that new scientific evidence should not serve as an excuse for delaying the cull.   Germany backed Santer in calling on Britain to carry out the cattle cull.   "As long as the British government does not hold to the agreements of the EU agriculture ministers, we cannot accommodate it," a spokesman for the German agriculture ministry said on Friday.   On Thursday, the Commission made it clear that although it would study the new research it considered that a full-scale cull was an intergral part of the Florence deal which remained in force.   The summit agreed on a step-by-step plan for lifting the ban on British beef, althout it set no timetable.   "The Commission stated very clearly...that for the time being there was nothing new.   We have the Florence decision which is being put into effect and it remains in effect," Commission chief spokesman Nikolaus van der Pas told reporters.   European farm industry sources said on Friday Britain's unilateral decision put it on collision course with its EU partners and ruled out taking the next step in easing the ban -- exemption of certified BSE-free herds.   "It makes it very difficult," one source said.   Northern Ireland is pressing strongly for the ban to be lifted on its grass-fed herds, saying it has an effective computer system to track the origin, feed and movement of all its cattle.   The English and Welsh farmers leader David Naish is due to explore for any signs of the ban being lifted during talks with EU Farm Commissioner Franz Fischler on Friday. 
19440 !GCAT !GPOL  President Suharto on Friday urged the domestic media to be responsible in reporting in order to avoid provoking social unrest.   "The mass media needs to have an attitude which is clean, clear and free from fear so it has the freedom to produce the best possible analysis.   It must be responsible in carrying out its duties," Suharto said in a speech to chief editors.   Suharto told the editors at the opening ceremony of a special course on the Indonesian state ideology Pancasila that the media in a developing country needed to have social responsibility.   "Societies which are complex have many problems, which if not handled carefully can trigger unrest.   Riots are indeed attractive news, but there is no issue that can be settled through a riot," he said at the ceremony at the State Palace.   At least five people died and 149 were injured in riots in Jakarta on July 27 which were regarded as the worst in the capital for more than 20 years.   The riots were sparked by a police raid on a minority party headquarters but analysts said the disturbances were inflamed by underlying social unrest in Indonesian society due to a number of factors, including the gap between rich and poor.   Indonesia's human rights record has come under scrutiny since the disturbances, with concerns in the United States congress forcing the Clinton Administration to delay a proposed sale of F-16 jets to Indonesia. 
19441 !C13 !CCAT !GCAT !GCRIM  Singapore is blocking local access to "a few dozen" Internet information sources, all of them pornographic, the Singapore Broadcasting Authority (SBA) said on Friday.   Under new rules which took effect on September 15, Singapore's domestic Internet Service providers (ISPs) must install systems capable of screening out "undesirable" web sites, such as those offering pornography or racist literature.   All three of Singapore's domestic ISPs have installed "proxy servers", a large-capacity computer capable of filtering out requests for Internet sites banned by the SBA.   Singapore has vigorously promoted use of the Internet and some 150,000 of its 750,000 households are already on line.   It aims to connect the entire population of three million people by 1999.   But the new rules provoked fears of censorship among some local Internet users and letters in local newspapers charging unwarranted interference with free speech.   But the SBA said on Friday the effect of the new rules had been limited so far, with no political sites affected.   "We are limiting access to a few dozen sites and all of these sites are pornography," a spokeswoman for the SBA told Reuters.   She declined to give further details or say whether the number of blocked sites would increase.   Singapore Internet users say one of the sites being blocked belongs to Playboy magazine.   A spokeswoman for Pacific Internet, part of industrial giant Sembawang Corp, which has around a quarter of Singapore's domestic Internet subscribers, said censorship of the Internet in Singapore was "fairly low level". 
19442 !C42 !CCAT !E41 !ECAT !G15 !G152 !GCAT !GJOB  Anglo-Dutch consumer products group Unilever said on Friday it had set up a European Works council.   The council will meet once a year and provide a framework for exchange of information and consultation at European level and covers the more than 80,000 Unilever employees in Europe.   It will consist of representatives of European Management and 31 worker representatives from all European Union member states plus Switzerland.   -- Amsterdam newsroom +31 20 504 5000 fax +31 20 504 5040 
19443 !E12 !E21 !E211 !ECAT !G15 !G151 !G154 !GCAT  As European Union governments struggle to meet the budgetary preconditions of economic and monetary union (EMU), questions are being raised over whether they are being a bit fast and loose with their figures.   With most struggling to bring their deficits near three percent of GDP next year -- the Maastricht treaty's requirement -- every opportunity is being taken to squeeze out extra money through a variety of means, some of which are considered controversial.   The most notable case has been that of France.   The French government plans to use a whopping 37.5 billion francs ($7.4 billion) in its budget accounts next year through the process of privatisating France Telecom.   This one-off item has so far received a cautious response from the European Commission, with Monetary Affairs Commissioner Yves-Thibault de Silguy on Thursday saying the French proposal probably conformed with EU rules.   An eventual opinion by the Commission will be forwarded to EU finance ministers for final consideration.   Economists, however, say the French plan is an ingenous piece of accounting, well within the bounds of EU law but at odds with what one would consider budgetary rigour.   "It's perfectly acceptable within Maastricht, but it is not in the spirit of the treaty," says Bruce Kasman, economist at J.P. Morgan in London.   While such tinkering can be of crucial importance in helping a government raise revenue, in this particular case the decision may also throw light on the political momentum behind EMU, experts say.   Germany, which has argued forcefully for strict adherence to Maastricht, has so far not criticised Paris for its inventive application of EU laws.   Some think such reticence suggests an ironclad political committment between the two countries to push EMU forward.   "The fact that you're not hearing screaming from on the part of the Germans says the political commitment is very strong," adds Kasman.   Evidence of this type of accounting has also been seen in the latest budget plan from the Netherlands.   The Dutch government this week unveiled a 1997 budget which will help reduce its outstanding debt to an expected 76.2 percent of GDP.   Under Maastricht, countries wishing to qualify for EMU must have their debt levels "sufficiently diminishing" and "approaching" the 60 percent reference value.   But a large percentage of next year's budget improvement will be due to the drawing down of an obsolete government cash reserve held at the Dutch central bank.   Analysts say countries which are marginally on the edge of meeting the treaty's deficit and debt criteria are most likely to use such accounting tactics.   Spain, in particular, was cited as one such potential candidate.   European Commission officials say they fully recognise how such maneouverings could be interpreted as slight-of-hand accounting and not in accordance with proper rules.   But they also note that a final judgment on France's proposal must be made in accordance with the law, otherwise they would face sharp criticism from other countries whose deficits are on the verge of meeting Maastricht.   "We are well aware of the criticism we would face if we acted in a way that was less than credible," said one official. 
19444 !GCAT !GDEF !GDIP  NATO planners are developing a "super" Partnership for Peace to embrace countries likely to be left out of the first wave of expansion of the alliance, its Secretary-General and Western diplomats said on Thursday.   With the Western alliance likely to accept some former communist countries into its fold next year, diplomats say some non-aligned nations and unsuccessful NATO candidates may join a tighter grouping of would-be members and affiliates.   Russia could also join this intensified Partnership for Peace -- dubbed "PfP-Two", "Enhanced PfP" or "PfP Plus" -- which aims to boost non-members' military cooperation and political contact with NATO, a U.S. diplomat told Reuters.   "Let's include the Russians," said Derek Shearer, U.S. ambassador to Finland.   The plan aims to demonstrate to Russia that NATO is not belligerent and ease the concerns of countries that may fall into a security "grey zone" after the alliance expands.   "A 'PfP Plus' should generate the necessary reassurance that the security of an enlarged NATO and its partners remains closely linked," said NATO Secretary-General Javier Solana.   Of the 27 current members of the PfP scheme aimed at uniting former European foes, Shearer said between 15 and 20 could join a super PfP, which could involve specific liaison officers and working groups and would be based on charters.   "It's just a notion of enhancing PfP to show where we're going in Europe," he said.   The scheme builds on a milestone speech by U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher in Stuttgart earlier this month in which he outlined a vision of a New Atlantic Community which would erase former Cold War barriers.   Christopher spoke of forming a New Atlantic Partnership Council based on a charter between NATO and Russia and said the alliance should involve non-members in the PfP programme.   NATO's Solana, in a speech to the international institute for strategic studies (IISS), said the current scheme was already the most successful military cooperation programme in Europe's history.   "But (it) has to be upgraded and deepened to reflect the new situation which will exist after NATO enlargement," he said.   "This could entail, among other things, offering interested partners greater involvement in NATO military planning, activities and structures as well as in consultations with the alliance."   Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Poland are widely regarded as top of the list for inclusion in an expanded NATO.   Other former Soviet Bloc states including the Baltic countries, Romania and Bulgaria are less likely to make it into the first round.   "You don't want them feeling this means 'no' forever," Shearer said.   The scheme could also embrace non-aligned and neutral countries -- Finland, Sweden and Austria -- which do not currently seek NATO membership, offsetting concerns that NATO expansion may be seen as re-creating "zones of influence".   For instance, Finland, Sweden and the three Baltic states, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, have said expansion in central Europe may leave former Soviet satellites in a security void which, under some circumstances, Russia could try to fill.   "We want to see the avoidance of the grey area by the development of a super-PfP," another Western diplomat said.   With Europe still in transition from the Cold War period, the plan aims to let countries address threats like terrorism and drug-trafficking, which are now more likely causes of instability than invasion, diplomats said. 
19445 !E51 !ECAT !G15 !G158 !GCAT !GDIP  The European Parliament, angered by what it sees as Turkey's reneging on promises to improve its human rights record, said on Thursday it would block hundreds of millions of dollars of aid to Ankara.   Euro-MPs said in a resolution they would freeze aid destined for Turkey next month when they begin discussions on the 1997 EU budget.   The bloc's budget must have parliamentary approval.   Thursday's call renewed the assembly's war of words with Turkey, which last year saw it threaten to thwart a planned customs union between Ankara and the 15-country European Union.   "Since the establishment of the (EU-Turkey) customs union, the human rights situation in Turkey has noticeably deteriorated and no appreciable progress has been made towards democratisation," the parliament said in a resolution.   Deputies added that since January 1996, when the customs union came into force, Turkey had fomented tension by actions such as "provocations in the Aegean Sea and Cyprus and aggression in northern Iraq".   Parliament approved the creation of the customs union last December only after the Ankara government had given explicit guarantees that it would take positive action on human rights, democratisation, Cyprus and the plight of the Kurds.   Turkey's failure to honour these obligations was "in conflict with the letter and spirit" of the customs union and other EU-Turkey accords, parliament declared.   Socialist Euro-MPs, who make up the 626-seat parliament's largest faction, denied having been hoodwinked into approval of the customs deal by promises from Ankara.   "As Socialists I think we have special responsibility here because it was our vote that made it possible for the customs union to get through," German Socialist deputy Jannis Sakellariou told a news conference earlier in the week.   "We voted in favour of the customs union as a kind of confidence building measure...But we wanted them to fulfil (their) commitments," he said.   Hans van den Broek, the European Commissioner responsible for relations with Turkey and Cyprus, promised deputies on Wedneday the Commission would produce a report on the customs union by October.   This would look at recent developments on democracy and the preservation of human rights, he said.   Parliament wants all EU aid to Turkey to stop immediately, bar funding for projects to promote democracy and respect for human rights.   The EU plans to set aside 375 million Ecus ($470 million) between 1996 and 2000 to help Turkey implement the customs pact.   Turkey is also eligible for substantial financing from the EU's MEDA programme, through which 410 million Ecus have been earmarked for the bloc's Mediterranean neighbours in 1996.   The EU could allocate as much as 842 million Ecus to this group of countries in 1997.   ($1 = 0.80 Ecu) 
19446 !E12 !ECAT !G15 !G151 !G154 !GCAT  The Finance Ministers of France and Germany said they were more convinced than ever that European Monetary Union (EMU) would be a great success.   In a jointly-authored opinion article in the International Herald Tribune newspaper on Friday Jean Arthuis and Theo Waigel said: "We are more than ever convinced that European monetary union will become a great success, and we have common views on all the important issues that remain to be resolved beforehand."   "The ongoing recovery of growth and the unprecedented efforts by our two governments to rebalance public finances will allow our two countries to fullfill the Maastricht criteria and enter European Monetary Union on Friday, January 1, 1999," they said.   The ministers said that, while growth came to a standstill at the end of 1995, it had now picked up and during the first half of 1996 the underlying economic growth trend in the two countries was about 1.5 percent, compared with a year ago.   "The pace of growth should accelerate further by the beginning of 1997," they said.   The Finance Ministers said a firm commitment to fiscal stability was required for succesful monetary union.   This concern led Germany to propose a so-called "Stability Pact," a proposal "fully supported by the French government."   "It has been endorsed by all member states," Waigel and Arthuis wrote.   They said a European Stability Council could meet on an informal basis to monitor implementation of the stability pact and allow for regular discussions of the macroeconomic situation.   They said the European Council summit in Florence, Italy, late June had recognised that monetary union had to be based on strict budgetary discipline and on an enduring basis, and that each member state should aim for a budgetary position close to balance or in surplus over the medium term.   "The three percent (of GDP) reference value will remain the upper limit for a government deficit after the Euro is introduced, which provision for a safety margin for automatic stablisers to work when necessary," they said.   The Finance Ministers rejected criticism that fiscal restraint to cut budget deficits was hurting growth and employment.   "Some concern may have been expressed about possible negative short-term effects of fiscal entrenchment.   That concern is unwarranted.   People have to stop believing that growing public expenditure is a stimulus to growth," they said.   "Fiscal consolidation has already been rewarded by a sharp decrease in short-term interest rates, to the direct and immediate benefit of households and businesses, thereby facilitating further growth," they added.   "We are making unprecedented efforts on public spending.   This will enable France and Germany to meet all the convergency criteria...and enter European monetary union on the date of its constitution."   They said the European Council would as early as possible in 1998 decide which countries will be selected to join the European Union from the start.   "We hope that as many member states as possible will be with us, and that the others will join as soon as possible," they said.   The ministers said a succesful start of the Euro required maintaining exchange rate stability as one of the major goals of economic policy within the European Union.   "Proper functioning of the single market must not be endangered by exchange-rate misalignments or by excessive fluctuations between the Euro and other EU currencies." 
19447 !GCAT !GPOL  Bulgaria's U.N. ambassador on Thursday launched an attack on his own government, and alleged dirty tricks against anti-communists like himself who were still in key posts.   In an extraordinary account of diplomatic skulduggery, Ambassador Slavi Pashovski read a letter to his government in which he said pro-communist ministers were trying to sideline the constitution and stifle any kind of democratic reform.   He told reporters he did not fear for his life, but related an incident in which he said New York police confirmed that connectors to his steering wheel had been deliberately cut.   He also said the government had sent him a cook who did no visible work, collected his pay and could not cook.   "It would be cheaper to bring over a chef from Paris for a week."   And he told of a colleague with similar anti-communist views who was ambassador to Albania and was driven off a cliff by a Bulgarian driver in the Macedonian mountains on his way back to his post in Tirana.   He survived, although the driver left him on the mountainside to die.   "While the tears of the victims of communism have still not dried, we have been presenting new scenarios with a mafia plot," he said in the letter to Prime Minister Zhan Videnov and Foreign Minister Georgi Pirinski.   "Let us ... put an end to the infamy of the Bulgarian umbrella once and for all," he said in reference to the 1978 incident of a Bulgarian defector being fatally stabbed by a poison-tipped umbrella on the streets of London.   Pashovski has been on the outs with the current government since it was elected in January 1995.   But the government has not been able to revoke his U.N. accreditation because President Zhelyu Zhelev, a founder of the anti-communist opposition, must approve such appointments and he has not agreed to a substitute candidate.   Instead ministers have ignored him and refused to allow him to be a member of Bulgaria's General Assembly delegation.   The situation was particularly embarrassing at last year's 50th U.N. anniversary party when Pashovski, who was vice-chairman of the U.N. celebration committee, discovered he had been kicked off his country's delegation and had to wait outside the assembly's chambers.   He said he still signs checks at Bulgaria's U.N. mission.   "You are not satisfied with the provisions of the current constitution under which the president represents the country in international relations," Pashovski said in his letter.   "If you choose not to correct your policy, you will be outside of the law and the constitution," he added.   "The ghost of communism is looming over Bulgaria, which means also over the Balkans and over Europe," he warned.   He requested a dialogue and said the prime minister should write the United Nations to include its ambassador among the assembly's delegates, since he had to conduct most of the business at hand anyway. 
19448 !GCAT  Leading stories in the Greek press:   ELEFTHEROS TYPOS   --Latest poll shows 43.1 percent of PASOK voters believe a vote for Dimitris Tsovolas's Democratic Social Movement (DHKKI) is a personal choice.   Some 24.9 percent believe it would help a ND victory and 26.6 say voting for DHKKI is a protest at the "new" PASOK, led by Costas Simitis.   ETHNOS --Victory party tonight when PASOK faithful gather to listen to Simitis at the Pedion tou Areos park.   ELEFTHEROTYPIA   --Prognosis at PASOK rally: Victory.   On the basis of four opinion polls showing the ruling party pulling out in front of main challenger New Democracy with a three point lead, PASOK is confident of winning this Sunday's elections.   --One party, two policies.   The differences between the new and the old leaders of the main opposition party New Democracy show the rift in the party.    --Majority government a certainty, statistical analysis shows.   TA NEA    --Simitis interview: Ready for work on Monday.   Yesterday's European Parliament resolution condemning Turkey a "significant success"; no new taxes for 1997 and dialogue with the centre-left after the elections.   KATHIMERINI   --Ruling party PASOK and main opposition New Democracy neck and neck, the first time in 15 years that the pundits have been unable to predict a winner with certainty.   But the two parties together can only account for a low percentage (60-65 percent) of the vote while undecided voters remain at an unprecedented 20-25 percent.   --Chaos, if ND leader Miltiades Evert elected, Prime Minister Costas Simitis says, in strong attack on his main rival.   If ND does what it promises, he says, it means privatisation of hospitals, universities and the end of the welfare state.   --A New Democracy government will not accept any agreement regarding the status of the islet of Imia, Evert tells reporters at press conference last night.   He says it is the first time that a party has committed itself to taking specific social measures within a month.   --Fluidity in opinion polls and a nervy market:   Uncertainty over Sunday's eventual winner shows up on the bourse.   --New labour ministry action plan gets European Commission to release funds for vocational training programmes blocked since March.   --Red tape strangles clever initiative for free industrial zone in Ormenio border region.   IMERISIA   --Money markets on hold for results of Sunday's poll.   --Evert: Great delays in the absorption of funds.   Greek state loses revenues in the order of 400 billion drachmas.    KERDOS   --ECOFIN: Drachma fluctuation to be restricted as of 1999.   --Naturgal gas available to consumers as of spring next year.    --Finance ministry pledges to abolish 'injustices' in objective tax criteria.   --Simitis lays the emphasis on social policy.   EXPRESS   --Public debt reduced as a percentage of GDP from 120.8 percent (December 1995) to 113.8 (April 1996).   --Calm returns to the fuel price market, following defusion of tensions in the Gulf.   NAFTEMBORIKI   --Evert bases his programme on better absorption of funds.   "Community funds will boost growth," he says.   --State utilities (DEKO) to get no more than 5 percent increase in subsidies and 7 percent in wages bill in next year's budget, sources say.    --Mobile telephones in Greece to total half million by year's end, one of the highest growth rates in Europe.  The market is big and has room for OTE (telecommunications organisation), Panafon and Telestet representatives say.   --Athens Newsroom +301 3311812-4 
19449 !C17 !C34 !CCAT !G15 !G152 !G157 !GCAT  The European Union is set to extend its rules allowing shipbuilding aid until the end of 1997, if an international deal to scrap most support to the sector has not come into force before then.   Senior diplomats from the 15 member states cliched a deal late on Wednesday, averting the need to hold a special meeting of EU industry ministers on Friday to settle the issue.   The formal EU decision is expected to be rubber-stamped at another ministerial meeting in September, diplomats said on Friday.   The diplomats failed to reach a unanimous decision on the controversial issue.   Germany, the Netherlands and Finland oppose the deal as they believe the rules -- which allow for construction aid of up to nine percent of contract value -- are being extended for too long, but they are unable to block it.   Finland did not want to see any prolongation at all.   "We think (shipbuilding aid) harms both the economies of the member states and the industry," a Finnish diplomat said.   The issue is a problem for the EU because the United States has so far not ratified an accord brokered in 1994 by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) to slash the amount of aid which may be granted to shipyards.   EU industry ministers decided in 1995 that current aid rules would apply in the absence of the OECD deal, but only until October 1, which is why a new decision now needs to be taken.   In July, the Commission proposed legislation to enable the EU to extend the directive until the end of 1998 or the entry into force of the international agreement.   But several member states believed such an extension would be too long, saying it would send the wrong signal about the EU's commitment to reducing shipbuilding aid, and instead opted to prolong the rules until December 31, 1997.   As soon as the OECD agreement comes into force, the EU's rules lapse automatically, diplomats said.   The OECD agreement would eliminate all direct shipbuilding subsidies except social aid and, within certain ceilings, aid for research and development.   But the deal, which was originally due to enter into force in January, faces ratification problems in the United States.   The Republican-controlled House of Representatives endorsed it on June 13, but adopted amendments that would delay key sections by 30 months, leading the Clinton administration to warn the agreement might not be ratified.   European diplomats fear there will be a price war and that thousands of jobs will be lost if the deal unravels.   But U.S. shipyards argue they have not had enough time to adjust to the commercial era after the loss of military contracts at the end of the Cold War.   The EU, which represents about 20 percent of the world shipbuilding market, ratified the OECD agreement in December, saying it would help improve market access for its shipyards.   It remained unclear what the EU would do if the OECD agreement had not come into force by the end of 1997.   "I think a number of member states would be very reluctant to see any further extension after 1997," one EU diplomat said.   Finland wants the Commission to tighten up the rules before that date, arguing that it could for example lower the amount of aid which is currently being allowed.   "We think nine percent (in aid) is too high," the Finnish diplomat said. 
19450 !C13 !C24 !C31 !C312 !CCAT !G15 !G153 !GCAT  Prospects of an early lifting of a European ban on British beef sales vanished on Friday after the government bowed to domestic political pressure and shelved a cull of up to 147,000 cattle most at risk of mad cow disease.   Farmers' leaders welcomed the decision but it drew an icy response from the European Union, which had insisted on a full-scale cull as part of a deal with Britain aimed at a gradual easing of the crippling embargo imposed in March.   "As long as they do not meet the pre-conditions and until we have a working document from them which we can carefully check, then an end to the export ban is simply not a possibility," European Union Farm Commissioner Franz Fischler said.   British Agriculture Minister Douglas Hogg said London had called off the selective cull, which is in addition to a rolling programme to destroy 450,000 cattle a year over the age of 30 months, because of fierce opposition in parliament.   "Any minister who wanted to get the cull order through the House of Commons would have to be able to persuade the House of Commons that member states would be able or willing to ... lift the ban.   And many members of parliament are deeply concerned," Hogg told BBC radio.   Prime Minister John Major, who must call an election by May, has a majority of just one in the 651-seat lower chamber.   He would have faced certain defeat had the cull been put to a vote.   Hogg said, however, that the decision, taken at a two-hour meeting late on Thursday, was also justified by new projections by Oxford Univeristy scientists that mad cow disease would die out within five years with or without a cull.   The European Union imposed the ban after British scientists disclosed in March a probable link between mad cow disease, or Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE), and the invariably fatal Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease, which rots human brains.   "The position of the Commission has not changed," Jacques Santer, president of the European Commission, told Reuters in Brussels when asked about the British decision.   Major's office said suspension of the cull did not mean the government was departing from the framework of a deal struck at an EU summit in Florence in June.   This deal allowed the eradication plan to be "adapted if necessary in the light of scientific and epidemiological developments".   Hogg did admit, however, that Britain could no longer hope for the ban on beef exports, worth 500 million pounds ($780 million) a year before the crisis erupted, to be lifted by November as Major had promised after the Florence agreement.   "We will not be seeing the ban lifted by November," Hogg said.   Asked whether the ban would still be in place in five years' time, Hogg added: "It depends on member states.   There is a process which enables the ban rapidly and substantially to be lifted, but that depends on member states."   He said the strategy now would be to get the ban lifted first on so-called certified herds -- cattle primarily fed on grass that have no record of BSE.   Such a plan, if agreed by the EU, is likely to start in Northern Ireland.   Sir David Naish, president of the powerful National Farmers' Union, said he would meet European Farm Commissioner Franz Fischler later on Friday to put Britain's case.   "Our Scottish and our Ulster (Northern Ireland) colleagues do have many more herds that have had no BSE cases, and I hope we can help persuade Commissioner Fischler that this is a way to start the lifting of the beef ban," he told BBC radio.   Members of the ruling Conservative Party from farming constituencies, who had threatened to vote down the cull when parliament debates it next month, were pleased by the news.   But former prime minister Sir Edward Heath, a fervent pro-European, said: "It will be interpreted widely that the British government reached an agreement at Florence and has now overthrown that agreement unilaterally."   ($1=.6412 Pound) 
19451 !GCAT !GREL  Britain's leading Roman Catholic conceded on Friday that the church had been gravely damaged by the sex scandal of a runaway bishop who had a love child.   With the celibacy of priests brought under a harsh spotlight, Cardinal Basil Hume said they must be better trained in future for their vocation.   The church was shaken to its foundations on Thursday by the revelation that Bishop Roderick Wright, who fled his diocese with a divorcee, had fathered a love child 15 years ago by another woman.   Kevin Whibley broke down in tears before millions of television viewers on Thursday night when revealing he is the secret son of the Bishop of Argyll, whose resignation has now been accepted by the Vatican.   "I feel angry at the loss of a father but it's too late now.   I don't want him if he comes here," the weeping teenager said of the father he had seen for a total of two months in his life.   His mother Joanne said she had emerged from the shadows to tell her story because she wanted to "put an end to Kevin's feeling that he should not even exist".   The Scottish Catholic Church confirmed her story and said they discovered the bishop's guilty secret when he tendered his resignation last weekend which the Vatican has now accepted.   From Wright's parishioners up to church leaders, there was a profound sense of disillusionment.   "I think it has done a lot of damage.   People are very disappointed and upset," Cardinal Hume, spiritual leader of 4.4.   million Catholics in England and Wales, told BBC Radio.   "We have to look very carefully at how we prepare priests for the celibate life," he added.   Pope John Paul, visiting France, has said that he is implacably opposed to any change.   Wright was a priest in a remote area of Scotland when he first met Joanne Whibley.   He was instructing her in the Catholic faith.   He threatened to flee to Peru if she exposed his secret.   When Wright resigned and disappeared at the same time as mother-of-three Kathleen Macphee, the parishioners of the popular 55-year-old bishop felt sympathy for his plight.   That evaporated after the revelation of his earlier affair and the child he had refused to acknowledge.   "Previously people here were willing to forgive and to say a prayer for him, but tonight they feel let down," said one irate parishioner.   Whibley's tearful revelations in a BBC interview put celibacy under the harshest spotlight since Irish Bishop Eamon Casey resigned four years ago after admitting he had a child with his American mistress.   Joanne Whibley, her voice breaking with a mixture of anger, hurt and relief, said: "I am quite sure there are other women in relationships with priests who would want to end the secret lives."   "I would not want this trivialised, this pathetic story.   I would want it to serve some purpose." 
19452 !GCAT  -- Prepared for Reuters by The Broadcast Monitoring Company   -- KEVIN MAXWELL CLEARED AS FRAUD TRIAL IS CALLED OFF   A High Court judge has upheld an appeal by Kevin Maxwell, son of disgraced media tycoon Robert Maxwell, that a further prosecution against him for his role in the 4 billion stg Maxwell pensions scandal would be unfair and not in the public interest following the publicity surrounding the first case.   The Serious Fraud Office, which had prepared the case against Maxwell, expressed concern about the 'serious implications' of the ruling.   -- BARINGS TAPES REVEAL LACK OF CONTROL   Transcripts of telephone calls among managers of Barings, copies of which have been obtained by the Financial Times newspaper, reveal the level of the lack of control that allowed Singapore-based trader Nick Leeson to bring down the bank with 830 million stg losses.   The tapes appear to show that Leeson was acting alone, with senior managers celebrating his success without, apparently, questioning his methods.   -- POST UNION TO BALLOT AS STRIKES ARE HALTED   The postal workers' union the CWU has called off two strikes planned for this weekend and will ballot its members on whether they want to continue with the industrial action campaign.   The move follows intense pressure on the union leadership, not least from Labour leader Tony Blair.   However, the postal workers will not be balloted on whether to accept the latest pay and productivity deal offered by the Royal Mail.   -- HONG KONG PORT DEAL AGREED BY BRITAIN AND CHINA   Britain and China have ended a four-year dispute and finally announced an agreement on the construction of a new container terminal for Hong Kong.   The new facility, estimated to cost in excess of 830 million sterling, has been one of the most intractable disputes before the transfer of sovereignty over Hong Kong passes from Britain to China next year.   -- PLEDGE OF 'MILLIONS' FROM ICL FOR NET   Computer equipment and services company ICL has pledged to put up 'many millions of pounds' to develop BBC Online, a new commercial service for the Internet.   The promise was made at a press conference to launch the strategic alliance between ICL and the BBC's commercial arm, BBC Worldwide.   The new venture will provide a point of access to the Internet which is 'easy to use and easy to enjoy', and parts of the service will be based on BBC radio and television programmes and magazines.   -- OFT LAUNCHES PERSONAL PENSIONS PROBE   The Office of Fair Trading (OFT) has launched an inquiry into the personal pensions industry after fears that contributors may end up receiving far less than they believed they would.   The probe, which is expected to report in the first half of 1997, will focus strongly on cases where contributors take career breaks during which they can make no contributions.   Another area of interest will be money purchase company pension plans.   -- OLIVETTI TO TAKE MONTH FOR RETHINK   Roberto Colaninno, the new chief executive of troubled Italian electronics and telecoms group Olivetti, has said he will need 'at least a month' to develop a new strategy for the group.   Colaninno took over from Francesco Caio on Wednesday night with the backing of holding company Cir, Olivetti's largest shareholder which is controlled by the group's former chairman Carlo De Benedetti.   -- LOTUS' FUTURE STILL UNCLEAR   Employees at troubled Norfolk sports car and engineering firm Lotus are still uncertain as to their future despite assurance from the group's owner Romano Artioli that a new 'partner' for the business will be signed in the next few weeks.   Artioli refused to deny reports that the group will be sold to South Korean car maker Daewoo.   If Daewoo does acquire Lotus, the new owners may not allow the group's car making operations continue, while Lotus' profitable engineering consultancy activities may lose prime clients such as General Motors.   -- BICC SEEKS 170 MILLION STG IN RIGHTS ISSUE   Cables and construction group BICC has launched a 170 million stg rights issue, aimed at rebuilding its balance sheet and funding an ambitious expansion programme.   The group plans to invest about 140 million stg to expand manufacturing of optical and data-communication cables, and a further 40 million stg on enhancing its presence in Asia and the Pacific Rim.   -- SIGNET REJECTS APAX OFFER FOR JEWELLERY STORES   The 277 million stg sale by Signet Group of its 600-store high street jewellery business to venture capital group Apax has collapsed.   Signet, formerly Ratners, has claimed that the Apax offer failed to provide sufficient value for shareholders.   But Apax responded by suggesting that Signet had been unwilling to offer 'satisfactory' assurances that they could deliver the assets for which Apax were paying.   For a full range of news monitoring services, phone BMC +44-171-377-1742 END 
19453 !GCAT  -Prepared for Reuters by The Broadcast Monitoring Company   DAILY TELEGRAPH   -- BSKYB'S 'BLANK CHEQUE' BONUSES   Details emerged in British Sky Broadcasting's latest annual report of one of Britain's most lucrative bonus packages for directors who can get eight times their salary in phantom shares which have no limit.   The company has also raised the percentage that directors can share of the company's profits from 1 to 1.5 percent of the pre-tax figure.   -- BID RUMOURS SPARK ZENECA SHARE FRENZY   Zeneca shares reached a new high yesterday of 15.90 pounds stg, up 46.5p.   The pharmaceutical group was boosted by market speculation that it is about to become a bid target.   Despite Zeneca's insistence that the group has no need to join the merger and takeover frenzy, they are consistently linked with other medium-sized drugs groups, which has helped to fuel a 150 percent improvement in the shares since the group demerged from ICI in 1993.   -- PETER YOUNG'S LAWYERS MOVE TO GAG 'SANDRA'   Lawyers acting for Peter Young, the sacked Morgan Grenfell fund manager, have been granted an emergency injunction against a woman named only as "Sandra".   The injunction prevents her temporarily from publishing Polaroid photographs of him or disclosing anything he said or did to her or in her presence.   The injunction was granted on the telephone on Wednesday evening, and restrains "Sandra" until midnight on September 23.   Peters & Peters, the law firm acting for Mr Young, declined to comment on the injunction.   THE TIMES   -- LLOYDS TSB EXPECTED TO NAME ELLWOOD AS CHIEF   Peter Ellwood is expected to be named as the new chief executive of Lloyds TSB today.   Mr Ellwood who became deputy group chief executive and chief executive of retail financial services last December, will take over from Sir Brian Pitman who will become chairman.   -- OFT STARTS PERSONAL PENSIONS INQUIRY   An inquiry has been started by the Office of Fair Trading into the 5 billion pounds stg a year personal pensions industry in the hope of restoring confidence after the mis-selling scandals.   The inquiry will study all aspects of how pensions are bought, sold and regulated.   An estimated 500,000 people were mis-sold pensions in the late 1980s and early 1990s, persuaded to leave efficient company schemes for personal pensions that would not provide a viable income in retirement.   -- CBI URGES ACTION TO STRENGTHEN MANUFACTURING   According to new figures from the Confederation of British Industry, the British manufacturing industry is still weak and that although export demand improved slightly over the past month, demand overall is still falling.   The CBI's latest industrial figures come as it urges business to take the opportunity of steady pay rises to boost productivity.   THE GUARDIAN   -- SUMITOMO'S COPPER RIGGING BILL UP BY 50 PER CENT   Sumitomo revealed in a statement yesterday that the cost of the copper market scandal has risen by almost 50 per cent to 1.7 billion pounds stg.   Sumitomo also said it would press criminal charges against Yasuo Hamanaka, the chief copper trader who is accused of propping up the price of copper through a string of unauthorised deals.   -- SOCIETIES WIN 100 MILLION POUNDS TAX VICTORY   Three leading building societies yesterday won a 10-year tax battle with the Government which could lead to a 100 million pound stg windfall for them.   The societies had appealed to the Commission of Human Rights after the Government blocked any legal action in British courts relating to a tax row from 1986.   The case stems from when the Government switched from collecting savings tax under the composite rate system, to taxing savers individually.   -- SIGNET'S ATTEMPT TO OFFLOAD JEWELLERY CHAIN FALLS APART   Signet, the jewellery group, announced yesterday that it had abandoned talks to sell its British chains H Samuel and Ernest Jones.   The announcement confirmed that a satisfactory agreement with he unnamed buyer, thought to be venture capitalist Apax Partners, had not been reached.   In may it looked like the sale of the 600 shops for 280 million pounds stg was near to completion, but later the two sides could not agree over terms for shop leases.   THE INDEPENDENT   -- BA WASTES NO TIME IN AXING 750 AIRPORT JOBS   British Airways yesterday announced the closure of its contract ground handling business at Heathrow airport at the cost of 750 jobs.   BA also hinted that employees at other parts of the airline under threat may have to consider wage reductions to avoid closure.   The closure is part of BA's drive to cut costs by 1 billion pounds stg.   -- MORRISON TO CREATE 3,000 JOBS WITH NEW SUPERSTORES   The Bradford based supermarket chain, Wm Morrison, has plans to open four new superstores, creating more than 3,000 jobs, the company said yesterday.   The company said that despite an 8 per cent increase in first-half profits, it warned that trading was still tough in the second half as pricing initiatives from the market leaders continued to put pressure on the second division chains.   -- ROSS GOOBEY ATTACKS PENSION FUND TRUSTEES WHO FAIL TO VOTE   One of the City's top Pension fund managers, yesterday attacked pension fund trustees who fail to vote at annual meetings.   Alastair Ross Goobey, of Hermes, suggested that they should be forced to lodge proxies declaring their intention to abstain, if they decide not to vote, but did not go as far as insisting on mandatory voting at annual meetings.   For a full range of news monitoring services.    phone BMC +44-171-377-1742  END 
19454 !E12 !ECAT !G15 !G154 !GCAT !GPOL  A Labour government would want to decide sooner rather than later whether or not to join a single European currency, Peter Mandelson, a key aide to British Opposition leader Tony Blair, indicated on Thursday.   Mandelson, Labour's campaigns strategist, told the Foreign Press Association that, if Labour wins power it will decide on economic grounds whether or not to join monetary union.   But he added: "If you pinned me down on timing, I'd be bound to say that Britain with a Labour government would want to maximise its influence in shaping that union if we chose to become members of it."    Mandelson reaffirmed Labour policy that no decision should be taken now on whether or not to join monetary union.   The ruling Conservatives have a similar policy and Mandelson said he could not imagine Prime Minister John Major abandoning it.   To rule out membership of a single currency in the life of the next parliament, as right-wing Eurosceptics demand, would split the party and cause cabinet resignations.   Mandelson, expressing a personal opinion as vice-chairman of the European Movement, said he thought a referendum on Britain's membership of the European Union might be both "inevitable and desirable" to settle the issue.    Mandelson said a Labour government would not be stampeded into a single currency to help fulfil German Chancellor Helmut Kohl's European ambitions.   Nor would it stay outside for bogus reasons of nationalism.   Labour would weigh the economic arguments and would want to be satisfied that economic and monetary union (EMU) was sustainable and not "a leap in the dark," Mandelson said.   He firmly rejected any dilution of the criteria for EMU to maximise the number of countries that join, saying it would be a recipe for an unsustainable union.    Mandelson said Labour was much more united over Europe than the Conservatives, but admitted the question of a single currency would pose the party economic and intellectual problems.   On other issues, he reaffirmed that the Labour leadership had no plan to sever its structural links with Britain's trades unions, but said he could not speculate on how their relations would evolve in the years ahead.   He said he was not complacent about the general election, due by next May, and forecast Labour's 20-point lead in opinion polls would narrow as disgruntled Conservative voters returned to the fold.   "It was ever thus and ever will be," he said.   -- London newsroom 44-171-542 7767 
19455 !CCAT !GCAT !GENV !GPRO  Britain's Prince Charles on Thursday launched a major assault on intensive farming methods and the genetic engineering of foodstuffs, saying man's desire for cheap food had caused immense damage to the environment.   "It is difficult to over-emphasise the significance of what has been unwittingly destroyed in only two generations," he said in a speech to the 50th anniversary meeting of the Soil Association, the governing body of Britain's organic movement.   "We have burdened ourselves and our children with the task of rebuilding what we have destroyed.   I fear it may take them most of their lifetimes to do so.   And the cost, both for us and for them, will be immense," he said in remarks released before delivery.   The heir to the throne, in his first major speech since divorcing Princess Diana last month, called for a more sustainable approach to growing food with more emphasis on usuing natural low-intensive methods.   Charles has been farming organically at his Highgrove estate in the west of England for the last 11 years.   He said there was no such thing as cheap food, since people were paying twice for what they ate -- once to subsidise farming through taxes and again to repair the damage.   He took care not to blame farmers, saying they had been encouraged to produce as much as possible as cheaply as possible by successive governments over the last 50 years.   "But the prevailing mood...has been that man can dominate Nature and win, that human beings are not only at the top of the food chain, but that manipulation and domination of the natural world is somehow our destiny, even our duty," he said.   "That, I think, is where things have gone wrong," he added, saying lessons should be learned from mad cow disease, or BSE, which started when farmers began feeding their cattle feed made from ground-up sheep.   "We see the consequences of treating animals like machines, seeking ever greater 'efficiency' and even experimenting -- catastrophically, as we now know -- with totally inappropriate fuels...with which to "power' them," he said.   "Perhaps BSE will come to be seen as one example, albeit a very expensive and damaging one, of how nature hits back when we violate her laws," he said.   Genetically modifying organisms to boost food production was also dangerous.   "Apart from certain medical applications, what actual right do we have to experiment, Frankenstein-like, with the very stuff of life?   We live in an age of rights -- it seems to me that it is about time our Creator had some rights too." 
19456 !E41 !ECAT !GCAT !GJOB !GPOL  Britain's opposition Labour party on Friday proposed a statutory requirement on employers to train 16-18 year olds as part of a new goal of achieving universal education for that age bracket.   Economics spokesman Gordon Brown, speaking at a news conference, also proposed replacing post-16 child benefit with an educational allowance for those attending school and college.    Brown set the goal for 100 percent of young people to have a certain educational qualification, defined as the equivalent of five GCSE Grade C passes, by the age of 18.   "We will introduce a statutory requirement on employers to enable people aged 16 to 18 who do not meet this basic standard to train, and encourage a national debate about staying on," Brown said.   He said the proposed education allowance would still be paid to mothers but would be subject to the following conditions:   -- the student should register for an approved educational course    -- the student should attend and participate in course studies and undertake careers advice.   Brown said Labour's reforms would root out abuse of child benefit and mistaken claiming of the allowance and would enable resources to be focussed on those who need it most.   "Rather than the millionaire family...receiving child benefit they do not need, while half of all mothers do not receive it at all, our new school and college allowance will be focussed specifically on meeting the financial needs of the middle and lower income families," Brown said.   -- London Newsroom +44 171 542 7947 
19457 !C42 !CCAT !E41 !ECAT !G15 !G152 !GCAT !GJOB  Barclays Plc is to set up a European works council covering its 80,000 employees across the European Union, including Britain, the banking union Unifi said on Friday.   Large companies are obliged to set up the consultative bodies, which include workforce representatives and discuss company performance and strategy, under the Social Chapter of the Maastricht Treaty.   A British opt-out means British-based companies do not have to involve their UK employees, but according to union figures at least 35 have now done so, despite government disapproval.   -- London Newsroom, +44 171 542 7717 
19458 !C13 !C24 !C31 !C312 !CCAT !G15 !G153 !GCAT !GPOL  British Agriculture Minister Douglas Hogg said on Friday that the decision to suspend a beef cull agreed in June with the European Union was made for scientific and domestic political reasons.   "Members of parliament would certainly not approve the (cull) order which in terms of science is not easy to justify," Hogg said.   Hogg said Thursday night's decision by ministers to put a plan to cull up to 147,000 cows on hold was right because of new scientific evidence that mad cow disease could die out by 2001 and that the disease might be transmitted from mother to calf.   He told BBC radio said the Florence agreement in June said any cull decision should be made on "scientific and objective" and it also created the mechanism that new scientific evidence could be brought forward for discussion.    "Any minister who wanted to get the cull order through the House of Commons would have to be able to persuade the House of Commons that member states would be able or willing to ... lift the ban.   And many members of parliament are deeply concerned," he said.   "We need positive evidence that the Europeans are able to deliver what they say that they will deliver because I have to satisfy the House of Commons on that."   Prime Minister John Major's government has a one-seat majority in the 651-seat lower house.   A parliament debate on the culling policy is expected next month. 
19459 !E12 !ECAT !G15 !G154 !GCAT !GPOL  Foreign Secretary Malcolm Rifkind said on Friday it would be "folly" for Britain to rule out participation in a European single currency at this stage.   "It is right and proper we should actually keep our options open until a decision is needed," he told BBC Radio. 
19460 !CCAT !GCAT !GVIO  A London underground train was evacuated at the height of the morning rush hour on Friday when a passenger said he was wired to a bomb, police said.   "A male person allegedly threatened he had an explosive device on him," a police spokesman said after the alert at Stepney Green station.   "He has been arrested and the train is being checked out.   Specialist units are attending the scene.   We cannot take chances and it is being thoroughly checked," he added. 
19461 !C24 !C31 !C312 !CCAT !G15 !G153 !GCAT !GPOL  British Agriculture Minister Douglas Hogg said on Friday that the decision to suspend a beef cull agreed in June with the European Union was made for scientific and domestic political reasons.    "Members of parliament would certainly not approve the (cull) order which in terms of science is not easy to justify," Hogg said.   Hogg said Thursday night's decision by ministers to put a plan to cull up to 147,000 cows on hold was right because of new scientific evidence that mad cow disease could die out by 2001 and that the disease might be transmitted from mother to calf.   He told BBC radio said the Florence agreement in June said any cull decision should be made on "scientific and objective" and it also created the mechanism that new scientific evidence could be brought forward for discussion.    "Any minister who wanted to get the cull order through the House of Commons would have to be able to persuade the House of Commons that member states would be able or willing to ... lift the ban.   And many members of parliament are deeply concerned," he said.   "We need positive evidence that the Europeans are able to deliver what they say that they will deliver because I have to satisfy the House of Commons on that."   Prime Minister John Major's government has a one-seat majority in the 651-seat lower house.   A parliament debate on the culling policy is expected next month. 
19462 !C12 !CCAT !GCAT !GCRIM  Confidential tapes of phone calls between Barings managers reveal how lack of control let trader Nick Leeson bring down Britain's oldest merchant bank, the Financial Times said on Friday.   The newspaper said transcripts of tapes it had obtained showed how managers revelled in the profits made by Leeson and how he defied efforts to make him reduce derivative holdings three weeks before the collapse.   Leeson, now serving a six-and-a-half year jail term in Singapore, ran up almost $1.4 billion of losses in unauthorised derivatives trades.   He used secret accounts to hide his spiralling losses from managers in London.   The conversations were recorded at the end of January 1995 as Leeson escalated his trading.   In one conversation, equity derivatives trading head Mary Walz admitted to Ron Baker, the bank's head of derivatives trading, that she did not fully understand the reasons Leeson was giving for not cutting his trading on Simex, the Singapore Futures Exchange, and on the Osaka Securities Exchange.   She was quoted as saying: "What happened today is that Nick doubled the size of the Simex position... It's very bad.   I really don't know how it happened."   In late July, German and British authorities dismissed a report claiming Leeson stashed 53 million marks ($35.53 million) in German bank accounts before Barings collapsed.   Barings was later rescued by Dutch financial giant Internationale Nederlanden Groep. 
19463 !E12 !ECAT !G15 !G154 !GCAT !GPOL  Finance Minister Kenneth Clarke, fanning the flames of division in the ruling Conservative Party over Europe, said on Friday it would be "complete folly" to close off Britain's option to join a single currency.   Pitching into the argument that has split the Conservatives into warring camps, he said Britain should decide as late as possible -- certainly after the next general election -- whether or not to take part in European monetary union.   Clarke's comments in an interview with the Daily Telegraph newspaper added clout to the fightback by Conservative supporters of the European Union who have been overshadowed by so-called "Eurosceptics" vociferously protesting about interference from Brussels.   His interview followed a letter to the Independent newspaper on Thursday by six elder statesmen of the party who joined forces to appeal to Prime Minister John Major not to rule out membership of a single European currency.   Former prime minister Ted Heath, labelling opponents "Little Englanders", was joined by three former foreign secretaries, British EU Commissioner Sir Leon Brittan and Margaret Thatcher's righthand man, Lord Whitelaw.   Major, trailing opposition Labour leader Tony Blair in opinion polls, has been brought to the brink of defeat by internal Conservative Party mutinies.   He was trying to craft a fragile truce in the run-up to the general election that has to be called by next May.   But the letter by the six party grandees produced a barrage of disdainful comment from Conservative right-wingers.   Former finance minister Norman Lamont, writing in the Sun tabloid on Friday, said caustically of the six: "A period silence from these dinosaurs would be welcome."   Former party chairman Norman Tebbit was equally forthright about the six, saying: "They are old enough (total 399 years between them) to know better." 
19464 !GCAT  PRESIDENT CLINTON TO VISIT AUSTRALIA   Deputy Prime Minister, Tim Fischer, says it's a happy circumstance that United States President, Bill Clinton, is to visit Australia in November, before attending an APEC summit in the Philippines.   Mr Fischer says Mr Clinton will arrive for a five-day visit to Australia on November the 19th, his first official visit to this country.   Mr Clinton and his wife Hilary will hold talks with government officials in Canberra and Sydney before making a recreational visit to Cairns.   The ABC's Washington office says the White House has refused to confirm any planned visit by Mr Clinton because of the coming November presidential election.   White House officials do say that the President is always keen to add extra destinations to scheduled trips when ever it's possible.   - - - -   JOB TRAINERS UNIMPRESSED WITH REFORMS   Job trainers are skeptical about Government claims that more people will find work as a result of changes to job assistance.   The role of the Commonwealth Employment Service is being reduced, with job training contracted out to the private sector.   The Assistant Secretary of the Department of Employment, Education, Training and Youth Affairs, Peter Reeves, has told business people and trainers in Newcastle more people will find real jobs under the new system.   But Newcastle-based job trainer, John Creagh, says international surveys show training is fundamental to jobs growth, and funding for training in being reduced.   - - - -   BUSHFIRE SEASON UP AND RUNNING   The bushfire season has kicked off suddenly in New South Wales, with 30 fires burning in state forests on the north and central coasts after a week of hot weather and strong winds.   Fire crews have been busy all week battling bushfires, but they've been aided by high humidity which has helped minimise damage.   Land-holders and campers have been urged to take extra care with their fires.   Authorities say some bushfires this week appear to have been deliberately lit, while others have escaped into state forests from burning off on private properties.   - - - -   CJC CHIEF SLAMS MISREPRESENTATION   The Chief of Queensland's Criminal Justice Commission has accused the Premier of misrepresenting his statements, involving fresh allegations of police corruption.   Frank Clair claims that police at a relatively high level are involved in drug trafficking.   The Premier, Rob Borbidge, has challenged Mr Clair to immediately set up an inquiry to test his allegations.   Mr Borbidge says the accusations, implicating police in the drug trade are the most disturbing allegations, concerning the police service since the Fitzgerald Inquiry.   But, Mr Clair says the Premier has misrepresented his comments, regarding the extent of the evidence of official corruption.   However, Mr Clair has accepted a Government offer of financial support to set up an inquiry.   He previously said that a Government decision to cut the CJC's funding would handicap the organisation Mr Clair says he now wants to appoint some-one as soon as possible to conduct the inquiry.   -- Reuters Sydney Newsroom 61-2 9373-1800 
19465 !GCAT !GDIP  By Russell Barton (ABC TV Political Editor)   One most unkind observer of John Howard's first major overseas trip this week labelled it "pygmy diplomacy".   Nowhere is the contrast between Howard and his predecessor, Paul Keating, more stark than in the field of foreign relations.   Keating, once overseas, seemed to expand into an even larger-than-life figure, not afraid to lecture world leaders on everything from trade to town planning.   It was high risk but when it scored it hit some big targets.   In the process Keating developed genuinely close friendships with a number of key world players.   Howard, however, as soon as he's away from the safety of his home ground seems to shrink into a stiff and awkward travelling salesman uncertain of his product.   The thrust of his foreign policy is to lower the risk, to provide a smaller target, in essence to back away from innovation and, therefore, from advancement.   This flows from the coalition's pre-election policy which was redolent with questioning of foreign treaties, cutbacks in foreign aid (including the abolition of the DIFF scheme which Foreign Affairs Minister Alexander Downer is now trying to backfill with ad hoc schemes) and a general loathing of the Keating style.   But low risk is not risk free.   Howard's speech this week to the Jakarta welcoming banquet hosted by President Suharto is a case in point.   "We do not claim to be Asian," he said.   "Neither do I see it as a matter of balancing out interests in Asia against or with our interests in the rest of the world."   "Neither do I see Australia as a bridge to Asia and the West as sometimes suggested."   This was directed at his Australian audience, rather than the Indonesians.   It was supposed to further distinguish John Howard from Paul Keating.   But the department of foreign affairs had not seen this key section of the speech.   Had it gone to the department for advice, Howard's office would have been alerted to the contradiction this would present to the recent push to establish Australia as a commercial bridge to Asia, a promotion aimed at attracting European companies to establish their regional head offices here.   The following day the prime ministerial spin team were in operation in Canberra and Jakarta.   They toured the press gallery and the media representatives travelling with Howard with the message that Howard of course meant that Australia was not a political or cultural bridge but it was a business and commercial bridge to Asia.   It was an unnecessary blunder born of making a domestic political point.   Foreign policy number two this week emerged from the Dalai Lama's visit.   The Tibetan spiritual leader's programme has been known for months.   Yet the government was still dithering about who would and who would not see him well into his visit.   Amid almost daily Chinese threats of retaliation, Howard's office would not give a definitive public answer to the question: Will the prime minister meet the Dalai Lama?   This left a vacuum into which rushed Acting Prime Minister Tim Fischer with this pearl: "The government is not in the habit of or ahhh, particularly ahhh, recognising visits by religious leaders as they occur whether it's the patriarch of the Maronite Church or anybody else."   Senate leader Robert Hill was equally confused.   He had agreed to a meeting well before the visit but cancelled it only hours before it was due to take place.   All of which added up to the appearance of a government kowtowing to Beijing.   At the same time, Opposition Leader Kim Beazley was pictured not only meeting but laughing uproariously with the Tibetan leader.   Howard eventually ended the agony at a Jakarta press conference where he said he would meet the Dalai Lama "if their programmes coincided."   By drawing out the issue, the government played into Beijing's hands, providing a number of opportunities for the Chinese to issue their traditional warnings, the last of which came late yesterday afternoon.   While this may be regarded as silly sabre rattling in some quarters, the threats are nonetheless beginning to worry Australian commodity exporters.   The wool industry has expressed its concerns it might have a trade disaster on its hands if the threats to trade and investment are realised.   As if to top off the week, Howard's major speech in Tokyo was marred by the late excision of a frank paragraph conceding there would be "transition costs" from the workplace relations legislation -- that means higher unemplopyment and more industrial disputes.   Foreign policy is clearly not Howard's natural game and unfortunately his Foreign Affairs Minister Alexander Downer has proved accident prone himself.   That indicates the need for a careful review of the policy and the practice of diplomacy.   (Views are those of the author, not those of Reuters)   -- Reuters Canberra Bureau 61-6 273-2730 
19466 !C12 !CCAT !GCAT !GCRIM  Coles Myer Ltd deputy chairman Solomon Lew said on Friday that he was not making any legal claim against Coles Myer but confirmed he had applied to legally force the return of documents given to Coles by the Australian Securities Commission (ASC).   Lew and two officials from his investment company, Premier Investments Ltd, have applied to the Federal Court to compel the return of transcripts of their evidence given in the ASC's enquiry into the Yannon transaction.   "Contrary to some suggestions, I am making no claim against Coles Myer Ltd," Lew said in a statement outlining the actions. 
19467 !C12 !CCAT !GCAT !GCRIM  Coles Myer Ltd said on Friday that deputy chairman Solomon Lew and his investment company, Premier Investments Ltd, had begun legal action against Coles Myer and the Australian Securities Commission.   "Following speculation in the press, the company confirms that two sets of proceedings have commenced," Coles Myer Chairman Nobby Clark said through the company's lawyers.   "One is an application made by Mr Cooper and Ms Vincent (Premier officials) naming the Australian Securities Commission and CML as respondents," Clark said.    "The other is an application by Mr Lew naming the ASC as a respondent," he said.   "Both applications seek a return of transcripts that the ASC has released to CML.   With the commencement of proceedings the company has undertaken not to read the transcripts."   Earlier on Friday The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age newspapers reported Lew wanted to stop Coles from reading Australian Securities Commission evidence about the controversial Yannon transaction.    Coles Myer, Australia's largest retailer, said last month it had settled its dispute with Lew and Premier over the 1990 Yannon transaction and would receive A$12 million in compensation.   The Yannon deal was a financial transaction which cost Coles A$18 million and benefited a company associated with largest shareholder and deputy chairman Solomon Lew by a similar sum.   The deal was at the centre of a dispute between the company and sacked finance director, Philip Bowman.    The furore over Bowman's sacking eventually led to Lew's demotion from the position of executive chairman.   Lew has about 14 percent of Coles Myer shares.   Coles' shares closed up three cents at A$4.58 on Friday.   -- Sydney Newsroom 61-2 373-1800 
19468 !C42 !CCAT !E41 !ECAT !GCAT !GJOB  Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) President Jennie George said on Friday union members would rally next month when the Industrial Relations Commission hears the ACTU's "living wage" claim.   "All we intend to do is to organise for a gathering of union members at the time that our (wage) claim is being heard by the commission (on October 1)," George told Sydney radio 2UE.   "We haven't yet determined the details, but it will be a gathering, a group, a rally of union members indicating their support for the principles behind the ACTU's living wage application," George said.   ACTU Secretary Bill Kelty outlined the union's living wage claim in August for a rise in minimum weekly earnings to A$456 over three years.   Under existing minimum wage rates, some low-paid workers in the metal industry earn about A$350 per week.   George said: "The living wage claim is a very important claim for low paid workers that we will be arguing before the full bench of the Industrial Relations Commission."   The ACTU said early in September it was not responsible for the small minority of violent protestors at the ACTU organised rally in Canberra on August 19 and this rally would be peaceful.   "I'm not contemplating the possibility that anything could go wrong again," George said.   "I don't think it's got anything to do with the events on August 19, it is a totally different issue."   -- Canberra Bureau 61-6 273-2730 
19469 !C42 !CCAT !E41 !ECAT !GCAT !GJOB !GVIO  Australian Industrial Relations Minister Peter Reith said on Friday the Australian Council of Trade Unions should apologise for the violence at its August 19 rally before planning another protest.   "The preparations for this rally (in October) should not proceed until the Australian Council of Trade Unions has apologised for its part in the riot at Parliament House on 19 August," Reith said in a statement.   ACTU President Jennie George said on Friday it would call on its members to rally next month when the Industrial Relations Commission hears its "living wage" claim on October 1.   "All we intend to do is to organise for a gathering of union members at the time that our (wage) claim is being heard by the commission (on October 1)," George told Sydney radio 2UE on Friday.   ACTU Secretary Bill Kelty outlined the union's living wage claim in August for a rise in minimum weekly earnings to A$456 over three years.   Under existing minimum wage rates, some low-paid workers in the metal industry earn about A$350 per week.   The ACTU said in early September it was not responsible for the violent actions of a so-called small minority of the 30,000 participants at the Canberra rally on August 19.   The rally of trade unionists outside the federal parliament in August was called to oppose the government's plan to free up the labour market and weaken the influence of trade unions on the economy.   -- Canberra Bureau 61-6 273-2730 
19470 !GCAT !GDIP !GPOL  Australian Immigration Minister Philip Ruddock will lead the Australian delegation to the United Nations High Commission for Refugees executive committee meeting in Geneva next week.   Ruddock would also visit the United Kingdom and the Middle East, a government statement said on Friday.   In the U.K., Ruddock will address a conference of Australian migration officers from Europe, Africa and the Middle East to outline the government's future direction on immigration policy.   He will also meet representatives of the British government.   -- Canberra Bureau 61-6 273-2730 
19471 !C42 !CCAT !E41 !ECAT !GCAT !GDIP !GJOB !GPOL !GVIO  Australian Opposition Leader Kim Beazley said on Friday there were better ways for unions to protest against the arrest of two Indonesian labour leaders than to impose shipping bans.   "I can understand that members of the union movement would be concerned about what happens to unionists in other countries," Beazley told reporters.   "But I think the most effective means, and the most useful means of protest, is to get together the letters, to get together the direct approach to embassies, this type of activity."    The Maritime Union of Australia (MUA) imposed a ban on Indonesian cargo and shipping on Wednseday after the arrests of Indonesian labour leaders Muchtar Pakpahan and Dita Sari.   The union said the ban was also a response to Australian Prime Minister John Howard's failure to press Indonesia on human rights and democracy during his three-day visit there earlier this week.   "On these types of issues, I think on the whole it would be better that people keep their protest activity within the forums of the normal political presentation," Beazley said.   -- Canberra Bureau 61-6 273 2730 
19472 !GCAT !GCRIM !GPOL  Former West Australian Deputy Premier, David Parker, was sentenced on Friday to 18 months jail on each of five counts of wilfully giving false evidence to the 1991 "WA Inc" Royal Commission.   District Court Judge Michael Muller said the sentences were to be served concurrently and Parker would be eligible for parole in respect of each term.   Legal sources said this meant Parker could be released in six months.   Parker stood quietly in the dock with his hands clasped behind his back while the sentence was read out.   His elder daughter wept quietly in the public gallery and was comforted by her grandmother.   Both women later left the court without commenting on the sentence.   In his sentencing remarks, Judge Muller said he had taken into account the fact that Parker was a first offender and, as a former minister and deputy premier, had performed an important public function "with distinction for a substantial period".   Judge Muller also stressed Parker had not been convicted of offences of corruption or impropriety in the performance of his Ministerial duties.   "I do not know why you gave the evidence you did," Judge Muller told Parker.   "Whatever your motives, however, I believe the offences of which you have been convicted are so serious that only imprisonment can be justified.   I have given consideration to the imposition of a substantial fine but, in my view, a fine would not adequately reflect the gravity of the offences or the twin factors of punishment and deterrence."   -- Sydney Newsroom 61-2 9373-1800 
19473 !E51 !ECAT !GCAT !GPOL !GVOTE  Australian investment in New Zealand worth NZ$20 billion was at serious risk if opposition parties in New Zealand win the October 12 election, Telecom Corp of New Zealand Ltd chairman Peter Shirtcliffe said on Friday.   "If the policies of the populist parties in New Zealand are implemented, your investment values are at serious risk," Shirtcliffe told a Trans-Tasman business circle luncheon. 
19474 !GCAT !GPOL !GVOTE  One week into the serious part of the general election campaign and already the new proportional representation system has thrown up a major surprise.   Politicians are talking as much to each other as they are to the electorate.   And not (just) because public meetings are badly attended.   The adoption of German-style mixed member proportional representation heralded, the pundits said, political niche marketing.    Parties, so the wisdom went, would run positive campaigns emphasising their platform and voters could, at last, focus on a policy mix they wanted and fashion a truly representative legislature.   Now this is not to say voters haven't spent a great deal of toil on the parties' respective policies, but if you judged the campaign so far you would have to say the single outstanding question has been "who will deal with whom?"    The issue has been simmering in the stand-off between natural allies Labour and the five-party left-wing Alliance grouping.   The Alliance will talk coalitions but only before the October 12 election.   Labour, and every other party of significance, will only talk coalitions when the make-up of the House is determined.   But this week it has become the underlying theme of almost every major political event.    So we saw National launch its campaign warning of the "gloom gang" to its left: Labour, the Alliance and economic nationalist New Zealand First.   NZ First leader Winston Peters countered with talk of the "toxic trio" of National, the Christian Coalitio and free-market Act New Zealand.   Alliance leader Jim Anderton again tried to get Labour to the pre-election bargaining table to establish a broad agreement on common policy.   Labour leader Helen Clark once more rebuffed him (much to the chagrin of Alliance strategists who fear increasing isolation and a backlash from the electorate if they refuse to join a government -- or worse -- fail to bring down    the existing conservative government).   Anderton's olive branch was, as Alliance press secretary John Pagani said, "our last box of chocolates" in the wooing of Labour.   Similarly, the public divisions between the left and right of New Zealand First are about who feels comfortable with a Labour- Alliance axis and who would prefer National despite personal animosities between Prime Minister Jim Bolger, Peters and others.    In the cheap seats centrist United Party, currently in coalition with National, fulminated about the "extremism" of a National-ACT-Christian Coalition government and indicated it was unlikely to get into bed with ACT.   In all this position-taking, former Labour leader Mike Moore's decision to return from backbench purdah and accept the long-standing offer of the trade and foreign affairs spokesmanship was a key event.   It came only hours after Peters resurrected his promise of a ministry of all talents (but whose policy?)   in which Moore would be offered trade.    Labour managed to "spin" the Moore acceptance as a positive for the campaign -- as undoubtedly it is.   In a relatively inconclusive week it helped Labour shine.   New Zealand First and the Alliance fared less well and the National government was almost invisible.   But Moore's decision has a number of other ramifications.   Firstly, it enables him to claim some of the credit for any improvement in Labour's fortunes in the last three weeks on the hustings.   Secondly, it will allow him to absolve himself of blame for Labour going into a campaign divided against itself.    But thirdly, and most importantly for the shape of the next government, it builds a bridge to New Zealand First.   Moore is on excellent terms with New Zealand First, and as much as his star rises the likelihood of major concessions by Labour to the Alliance diminishes.   His move took Labour by surprise at a time when many in its left wing were privately concerned at Clark's hardline rejection of Anderton's advances.   Lastly, it positions Moore on the frontbench for the inevitable leadership challenge should Labour make a poor showing.    Moore supporters are disproportionately represented in winnable eletorate seats, Clark's on the list.   Given Labour will be struggling to win any list seats on current polling, then the balance of power in the caucus will swing to the right and Clark's silently anointed successor Steve Maharey will have a hard job mustering the numbers.   Despite the fracturing and realigning that has already taken place, the abiding impression is that all this chat is not just about coalition building.   It is also about party formation.   The parties themselves have yet to complete their transition to the new electoral system. 
19475 !C42 !CCAT !E41 !ECAT !GCAT !GJOB  Australia lost 133,400 working days through industrial disputes in June, down 19 percent on the 164,000 days lost in May, the Australian Bureau of Statistics said on Friday.   The figure compared with the 39,100 working days lost in June a year ago, the bureau said.   There were 52 disputes in June, involving 156,400 workers, compared with 57 disputes in May, involving 185,600 workers.   "The construction industry reported the most working lost (103,700), which represented 78 percent of all working days lost during the month," the bureau said.    "This was the highest number of days lost in this industry since November 1981 (119,200)."   New South Wales was the worst hit state, losing 50,800 working days.   However, the figure was down from the 64,700 working days lost in May.   -- Canberra Bureau 61-6 273-2730 
19476 !C12 !C41 !C411 !CCAT !GCAT !GCRIM  Retailer Coles Myer Ltd said on Friday it had no comment to make on a report that Deputy Chairman Solomon Lew had threatened legal action against Coles Myer and that Coles' independent directors had decided to accelerate their plan to replace chief executive Peter Bartels.   "We have no comments regarding the story in The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald," a Coles spokeswoman told Reuters.   "If there are going to be any comments, they'll come from the chairman," the spokeswoman said.   Chairman Nobby Clark was not immediately available for comment.    The report carried by The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald did not have any attribution.   The newspapers said Coles Myer expected to receive Federal Court writs later on Friday from Lew's Premier Investments Ltd .   "The legal actions are intended to prevent Coles from reading Australian Securities Commission evidence about the now notorious Yannon transaction," The Sydney Morning Herald said.   "The Lew camp is arguing that Coles has settled its civil action over Yannon and no longer has any right to read the transcripts," the newspaper said.    Coles Myer said last month it had settled its dispute with Lew and Premier over the 1990 Yannon transaction and would receive A$12 million in compensation.   The Yannon deal was a financial transaction which cost Coles A$18 million and benefited a company associated with largest shareholder and deputy chairman Solomon Lew by a similar sum.   The deal was at the centre of a dispute between the company and sacked finance director, Philip Bowman.   The furore over Bowman's sacking eventually led to Lew's demotion from the position of executive chairman.   Lew has about 14 percent of Coles Myer shares. 
19477 !GCAT !GCRIM !GPOL  Tonga's parliament on Friday ordered the jailing of one of its members and two journalists for contempt of parliamentary proceeding in the first case of its kind in the Pacific kingdom.   The Tongan legislative assembly, voting shortly after midnight following a day-long decision, decided by an 18 to two majority that MP Akilisi Pohiva and journalists Kalafi Moala and Filokalafi Akau'ola were guilty of contempt.   The maximum 30-day jail term was awarded by 10 votes to eight.    The journalists are the editor and deputy editor of Taimi 'o Tonga, a newspaper based in Auckland, New Zealand.   The charge of contempt arose after Taimi reported a planned impeachment motion against Justice Minister Tevita Tupou before it had been tabled in parliament.   MP Pohiva admitted leaking the intended motion to the newspaper.   Tonga's 30-member parliament consists of nine elected commoners, nine nobles and 12 cabinet ministers appointed by King Taufa'ahau Tupou IV.   Twenty-four were present on Friday, of whom some abstained.    Section 70 of the constitution of Tonga provides for 30 days imprisonment for speaking or acting disrespectfully in the presence of the Legislative Assembly, or for libelling the assembly or threatening any member or his property.   The legislative assembly doubles as the nation's highest court.   Tonga, with a population of about 100,000, is made up of 171 islands scattered just west of the international dateline.    The impeachment of the justice minister was planned by the nine elected people's MPs, who were concerned that Tupou had attended the Atlanta Olympic Games without seeking leave of absence from parliament.   The minister effectively blocked the motion by making a formal complaint over the newspaper publication of the story. 
19478 !GCAT !GDIS !GENV  No damage was reported in southern Philippines after two moderate earthquakes shook the region on Friday, government officials said.   "We have not received any damage reports from our field offices," Olive Luces, duty officer at the Office of Civil Defense, told Reuters.   A seismologist at the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology said the earthquake, which hit shortly after noon, was capable of inflicting slight cracks in poorly built buildings.   The institute measured it at 6.2, on the Richter scale, while the Royal Hong Kong Observatory estimated it at 6.4.   The 2 quake came a few hours after a smaller earthquake, measuring 5.9, shook Surigao city, some 730 km (450 miles) south of Manila, and its surrounding areas.   The epicentre of the second earthquake was 140 km (87 miles) off Surigao, while the first was 149 km (90 miles) off Surigao.   Seismologist Imee Guanio said a team of geologists will conduct a ground deformation survey in the area on Monday to find out the reason for the successive tremors.   The Philippines frequently experiences earthquakes, most of which cause little or no damage. 
19479 !GCAT !GDIP !GPOL  Tan Ee Lyn   A United States envoy urged China on Friday to keep its promises on wide-ranging freedoms and autonomy for Hong Kong after the British hand the colony back to Beijing next year.   Richard Boucher, who took over as U.S. Consul-General in Hong Kong last month, said Washington would support efforts to preserve Hong Kong's way of life through the handover.   "We should never forget that the Joint Declaration and the Basic Law do indeed guarantee that Hong Kong's way of life will not change when sovereignty changes," Boucher told Hong Kong's business community in a luncheon speech.   "I think all of us have every right to expect them to honour their commitments with regard to Hong Kong," he said.   Hong Kong, a British colony for more than 150 years, reverts to Chinese rule in just 284 days.   It has been promised a high degree of autonomy under a "one-country, two systems" formula for the next 50 years under the 1984 Sino-British Joint Declaration and the Basic Law, a mini-constitution that will take effect next July 1.   But the territory of 6.3 million people is weighed down by uncertainty over Beijing's intention to replace the elected legislature with a provisional one next year and threats to water down the territory's human rights bill.   Boucher said China must allow Hong Kong freedom of speech, press, assembly and travel, as well as its separate monetary and financial systems, and the ultimate freedom to select its own leader and legislature by universal suffrage.   "They are high standards the Chinese have set for themselves.   They are standards we should all expect the Chinese to meet," he told his audience.   He urged the business community to constantly remind their highly placed associates in China of the importance of keeping Hong Kong free and open.   Boucher said the United States supported democracy.   Hong Kong's current elected legislature should serve its full four- year term, he said.   He avoided attacking explicitly the provisional legislature that Beijing intends to appoint in Hong Kong, saying he had yet to study the issue. 
19480 !GCAT !GPOL  A top Thai immigration official on Friday displayed records that contradicted opposition claims in parliament that Prime Minister Banharn Silpa-archa was not born in Thailand.   The opposition had made the accusation on Thursday, the second day of debate on a no-confidence motion against Banharn, who denied the charge and said he was a true Thai.   The nationality issue has been a key element of the opposition's campaign to unseat Banharn.   It is based on the constitutional stipulation that only natural-born Thais can enter politics.   Police Colonel Dej Karnchanawat, deputy chief of the Immigration Department, showed reporters the documents at a news conference on Friday outside the parliamentary chamber where the no-confidence motion was being debated.   The immigration records stated that Banharn's father, Sengkim Saebey, emigrated to the kingdom in 1907.   "The records in this book say that Sengkim Saebey arrived in Thailand from China in 1907," Dej said as reporters and politicians present read the immigration records.   The records countered opposition claims that Banharn's father arrived in Thailand in 1937, five years after Banharn was born, and that Banharn had falsified nationality papers in order to enter politics.   The immigration records also supported the documents Banharn showed in the House of Representatives late on Thursday that said his father emigrated in 1907 and that he was born in 1932.   "I am a Thai man who was born here in Thailand, not an immigrant alien," Baharn said then in an emotional address to the House.   "My father could not choose his birthplace, but he chose to die here."   The no-confidence debate was due to end later on Friday and the vote on the motion against Banharn was expected on Saturday.   Banharn's six-party coalition, in power for 14 months, controls 209 of the 391 seats in parliament.   Political analysts say he is likely to survive the no-confidence vote unless he is deserted by some coalition partners.   During the censure debate, which began on Wednesday, the opposition has also attacked the prime minister on the economy and on ethics.   Banharn has denied the charges.   Banharn's administration has been hurt by an economic slowdown, sluggish export growth, a battered stock market that sank last week to near three-year-lows, and a run on the baht by offshore investors after devaluation rumours. 
19481 !GCAT !GPOL !GVOTE  Early elections in Japan appeared certain after two cabinet ministers said on Friday Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto will probably dissolve parliament on September 27.   Hashimoto agreed on Thursday with the leaders of the two junior parties in his ruling coalition to convene an extraordinary session of parliament on September 27, but has remained mum about whether he will call snap polls.   "It is very probable that the parliament will be dissolved (at the beginning of the session)," Minister of International Trade and Industry Shunpei Tsukahara told reporters.   Tsukahara, a member of Hashimoto's Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) appeared to endorse the almost daily media reports that the prime minister would dissolve parliament on the first day of the session and hold general elections on October 20.   Most observers say the prime minister is balancing competing demands from the LDP, which is keen on early polls, and its coalition partners the Social Democratic Party and Sakigake, which want to put off elections until next year.   But Finance Minister Wataru Kubo, who is also a senior Social Democratic Party official, told a news conference, "I suspect this will proceed as reported by various media."   Polls are not mandated until July 1997, but the LDP favours going before voters as early as possible before April, when an unpopular rise in the consumption tax, approved by the Hashimoto government, takes effect.   The junior coalition parties want more time because they are locked in a bitter row over how to regroup for the coming polls, which will be held under a revised electoral system thought to favour large groupings.   Analysts say rump versions of those parties -- or the nascent Democratic Party, formed mainly of defectors from Sakigake and the Social Democrats -- will be the LDP's most likely coalition partner if it falls short of a majority.   The LDP has been projected to get the most votes in the election, but it may not capture a majority in the 500-seat Lower House of parliament.   A public opinion survey this week by the Nihon Keizai Shimbun, a leading financial daily, gave the LDP the highest approval rating with 22.4 percent, while Sakigake scored just 1.2 percent and the Social Democrats 3.7 percent.   Shinshinto (New Frontier Party), the main opposition group, polled only 6.5 percent in the survey, trailing even the 7.8 percent pollsters gave the Democratic Party, which will be formed later this month.   But a senior Shinshinto official told reporters this week that his party would prevail despite gloomy predictions, because it remained the only alternative to the status-quo oriented LDP.   Shinshinto President Ichiro Ozawa, the party's prime minister hopeful, on Friday told visiting Australian Prime Minister John Howard, "We want to win the general election in order to address the problems of the tax system as well as administrative and political reforms."   Most pundits predict issueless, do-or-die races for the 300 seats in the lower chamber to be contested in first-past-the-post constituencies, introduced under 1994 electoral reforms.   The remaining 200 seats will be contested by proportional representation.   "The election is likely to bring bloodshed among politicians," said Jesper Koll, chief economist at JP Morgan .   "We have got 950 candidates running for 300 seats.   As a result of that, two-thirds are not going to make it." 
19482 !GCAT !GVIO  A massive search for North Korean infiltrators who landed by submarine in South Korea moved to an area of mine shafts on Friday after fierce gunbattles raged through the night.   Security forces believe several agents are holed up around disused coal mines in rugged mountains near the east coast city of Kangnung.   The agents are the remnants of a squad of heavily armed infiltrators that landed on Wednesday.   State television withdrew an earlier report that four had been found dead on Friday.   An army officer pleaded with the men to surrender and save their lives in messages shouted through a loud-speaker mounted on the back of a jeep.   "You are surrounded.   If you abandon your weapons and surrender you can live.   Most of your colleagues have been shot to death.   We urge you to surrender immediately," the officer boomed.   Authorities initially said about 20 North Koreans sneaked in, but now say there may have been more.   So far, 18 are confirmed to have been shot dead and one captured alive.   A military officer in Kangnung said security forces had found hollows in the ground where several agents may have spent the night.   "I heard gunfire all night and grenades exploding," said local resident Chang Choon-taik.   Five or six helicopters were flying over the area, which is saturated with armed troops and located about 17 km (10 miles) from a beach where the agents landed.   South Korean authorities have described the most serious infiltration since the 1960s as a military provocation.   North and South Korea have been technically at war since the 1950-53 Korean conflict ended in a truce.   On Thursday, troops shot dead seven agents and displayed their bullet-riddled bodies dressed in South Korean-made blue jeans and sneakers.   In Washington, U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher urged "all parties" to avoid further provocative action.   The United States has 37,000 troops stationed in the South.   "We wish that all parties would refrain from taking further provocative actions," Christopher told a news conference.   Asked if the incident could affect efforts to provide Pyongyang with nuclear technology and humanitarian aid, he added: "Obviously, the episode is a matter of concern but the facts are so murky."   North Korea is on the brink of famine following devastating floods and has appealed for international aid.   The United States is part of an international consortium providing the North with nuclear power plants as part of a deal to end the country's suspected nuclear weapons programme.   In South Korea, the public has reacted with anger and anxiety to the infiltration.   Some blame the navy for failing to detect the 34 metre (111 foot) submarine and worry the country is vulnerable to attack from its arch-enemy to the north.   Political analysts said the incident may have damaged the chances of peace on the Korean peninsula by giving ammunition to hardliners in Seoul, who oppose any concessions to the North.   South Korea and the United States are trying to entice Pyongyang to talks, along with China, to work out a peace pact to replace an armistice that sealed the division of the Korean peninsula in 1953. 
19483 !GCAT !GVIO  A massive search for North Korean infiltrators who landed by submarine in South Korea moved to an area of mine shafts on Friday, and news reports said four bodies had been found.   Fierce gunbattles raged through the night around the disused coal mines in rugged mountains near the east coast city of Kangnung, residents said.   Authorities initially said about 20 North Koreans sneaked in on Wednesday, but now say there may have been more.   So far, 18 infiltrators are confirmed to have been shot dead and one captured alive.   State television said four bodies were found on Friday, but the Korea Broadcasting System gave no further details.   A defence ministry spokesman in Seoul said he could not confirm the reports.   Munhwa Broadcasting System also reported four dead and said troops were searching for a fifth agent still on the loose after a squad of agents came ashore on a beach.   A military officer in Kangnung said security forces had found hollows in the ground where several agents may have spent the night.   "I heard gunfire all night and grenades exploding," said local resident Chang Choon-taik.   Five or six helicopters were flying over the area, which is saturated with armed troops and located about 17 km (10 miles) from the beach where the agents landed.   South Korean authorities have described the most serious infiltration since the 1960s as a military provocation.   North and South Korea have been technically at war since the 1950-53 Korean conflict ended in a truce.   On Thursday troops shot dead seven agents and displayed their bullet-riddled bodies dressed in South Korean-made blue jeans and sneakers.   In Washington, U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher urged "all parties" to avoid further provocative action.   The United States has 37,000 troops stationed in the South.   "We wish that all parties would refrain from taking further provocative actions," Christopher told a news conference.   Asked if the incident could affect efforts to provide Pyongyang with nuclear technology and humanitarian aid, he added: "Obviously the episode is a matter of concern but the facts are so murky."   He said it was impossible to assess the long-term impact of the incident.   North Korea is on the brink of famine following devastating floods and has appealed for international aid.   The United States is part of an international consortium providing the North with nuclear power plants as part of a deal to end the country's suspected nuclear weapons programme.   In South Korea, the public has reacted with anger and anxiety to the infiltration.   Some blame the navy for failing to detect the 34 metre (111 feet) submarine and worry the country is vulnerable to attack from its arch-enemy to the north.   Political analysts said the incident may have damaged the chances of peace on the Korean peninsula by giving ammunition to hardliners in Seoul, who oppose any concessions to the North.   South Korea and the United States are trying to entice Pyongyang to talks, along with China, to work out a peace pact to replace an armistice that sealed the division of the Korean peninsula in 1953. 
19484 !GCAT  Following is a summary of major Chinese political and business stories in leading newspapers, prepared by Reuters in Beijing.   Reuters has not checked the stories and does not guarantee their accuracy.   Telephone: (8610) 6532-1921.   Fax: (8610) 6532-4978.   - - - -   PEOPLE'S DAILY   Li Ruihuan, a member of China's powerful politburo on a visit to Switzerland, defended Beijing's activities in Tibet and slammed Western nations for trying to split region from China.   - - - -   CHINA DAILY   Li Ruihuan said China allows differences of opinion but that dissent must be checked when it turns into criminal activity that threatens national unity.   More than 50 workers were poisoned by ethane gas at a liquid crystal display plant in Shenzhen in southern Guangdong province.   China is to cut production of the metal antimony by 20 percent in the next few months to boost declining prices.   - - - -   CHINA SECURITIES   China collected 402.3 billion yuan in industrial and commercial taxes in the January to August period, a rise of 21.4 percent.   - - - -   FINANCIAL NEWS   Vehicle output in the first eight months of 1996 was 1.025 million units, up 2.06 percent from the same period a year ago.   - - - -   ECONOMIC DAILY   China's export tax rebates totalled 53.5 billion yuan in the January to August period, up 27.8 percent. 
19485 !GCAT  Following is a summary of major Indonesian political and business stories in leading newspapers, prepared by Reuters in Jakarta.   Reuters has not checked the stories and does not guarantee their accuracy.   Telephone: (6221) 384-6364.   Fax: (6221) 344-8404.   - - - -   KOMPAS   Indonesia plans to ratify the Copenhagen Ammendement on the ozone layer by 1997.   The 1992 agreement states that use of all chloro-flurocarbons (CFC) gases should be phased out by 2030.   - - - -   MEDIA INDONESIA   The ruling Golkar has set a target of 70 percent of the vote in next year's parliamentary elections.   At the last elections in 1992, Golkar received 68 percent of vote, compared with 73 percent in 1987.   - - - -   JAKARTA POST   Chairman of the National Supervision and Development Board Sudarjono said findings by his office on corruption were often ignored by other government departments.   In the 1995/96 fiscal year the office discovered 14,572 cases of irregularities with a potential loss of 532.59 billion rupiah.   - - - -   BISNIS INDONESIA   The Lippo Group announced on Thursday it would sweeten the terms of its controversial restructuring plan.   The group announced a six-point plan which benefits shareholders.   The Riadi family -- which owns the Lippo Group -- has been criticised for the restructuring which was seen as a sign they were cashing in their assets. 
19486 !GCAT !GVIO  A massive search for North Korean infiltrators who landed by submarine in South Korea moved to an area of mine shafts on Friday where fierce gunbattles raged through the night.   So far, 18 infiltrators out of about 20 who landed on Wednesday have been shot and killed -- 11 in an apparent mass suicide.   One has been captured alive.   State television reported one infiltrator had signalled surrender on Friday by waving white clothes, but other news reports quoted military authorities denying this.   An army officer in the east coast city of Kangnung said there may be two or three North Koreans holed up around an area of disused coal mines in rugged mountains.   He said security forces had found hollows in the ground where several agents may have spent the night.   "I heard gunfire all night and grenades exploding," said local resident Chang Choon-taik.   Five or six helicopters were flying over the area, which is saturated with armed troops and located about 17 km (10 miles) from the beach where the infiltrators landed.   South Korean authorities have described the most serious infiltration since the 1960s as a military provocation.   North and South Korea have been technically at war since the 1950-53 Korean conflict ended in a truce.   Thousands of troops and police have been combing through undergrowth and tall grass to try to flush out the last of the North Koreans.   On Thursday troops shot dead seven agents and displayed their bullet-riddled bodies dressed in South Korean-made blue jeans and sneakers.   In Washington, U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher urged "all parties" to avoid further provocative action.   The United States has 37,000 troops stationed in the South.   "We wish that all parties would refrain from taking further provocative actions," Christopher told a news conference.   Asked if the incident could affect efforts to provide Pyongyang with nuclear technology and humanitarian aid, he added: "Obviously the episode is a matter of concern but the facts are so murky."   He said it was impossible to assess the long-term impact of the incident.   North Korea is on the brink of famine following devastating floods and has appealed for international aid.   The United States is part of an international consortium providing the North with nuclear power plants as part of a deal to end the country's suspected nuclear weapons programme.   In South Korea, the public has reacted with anger and anxiety to the infiltration.   Some blame the navy for failing to detect the 34 metre (111 feet) submarine and worry the country is vulnerable to attack from its arch-enemy to the north.   Political analysts said the incident may have damaged the chances of peace on the Korean peninsula by giving ammunition to hardliners in Seoul, who oppose any concessions to the North.   South Korea and the United States are trying to entice Pyongyang to talks, along with China, to work out a peace pact to replace an armistice that sealed the division of the Korean peninsula in 1953.   South Korean President Kim Young-sam is under increasing pressure from the rightwing of his ruling New Korea Party to take a tough line with Pyongyang.   The latest security scare will limit his ability to take initiatives, such as offers of aid, to improve the atmosphere and smooth the way for talks, the analysts said. 
19487 !GCAT  Following are the main stories in Friday's Malaysian newspapers.   Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.   NEW STRAITS TIMES   -- Deputy Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said any move towards creating a civil society will fail if it was not founded on the laws of justice.   He said in a speech that a civil society could never exist if there was "pockets of poverty and deprivation".   -- United Malays National Organisation (UMNO) and opposition party Spirit of '46 sat together for the first time on Thursday to prepare for a massive gathering on October 3.   Spirit of '46 is expected to be dissolved soon with its members joining Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad's UMNO.   -- State oil company Petronas records pretax profit of 8.56 billion ringgit.   BUSINESS TIMES   -- Power company Tenaga Nasional Bhd is not keen to further increase its electricity tariffs, new chairman Ahmad Tajuddin Ali said in an interview.   The utility giant will instead focus on raising sales, reducing its supply excess, and improving efficiency and productivity in order to increase revenue.   -- Tenaga Nasional should approach the government if it feels that its power purchase agreements with independent power producers are "one-sided", said Deputy Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim.   -- The Malaysian government will not acquire a stake, apart from a golden share, in the privatisation of national railway operator Keretapi Tanah Melayu Bhd, said Transport Minister Ling Liong Sik.   THE STAR   -- Six companies will invest 50 billion ringgit to lay 57,200 kilometres of fibre optic cables throughout the country over a period of nine years, said Deputy Energy, Telecommunications and Posts Minister Chan Kong Choy.   - Kuala Lumpur newsroom (603-230 8911) 
19488 !GCAT !GDIP  South Korea's ambassador to the United Nations will brief members of the Security Council on Friday on North Korea's infiltration a foreign ministry statement said.   It said Park Soo Gil will also meet U.N. Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali to express concern about the group of armed North Koreans who came ashore from a submarine on Wednesday.    The statement said the infiltration was "an obvious violation of the armistice agreement and a grave threat to peace and security on the Korean peninsula".   The U.S.-led United Nations Command in South Korea helps oversee the armistice that ended the 1950-53 Korean War and sealed the division of the peninsula.   Seoul would press the council to engage in "concrete discussions" and adopt measures as soon as the full facts behind the infiltration emerged, the statement said.   It did not specify the measures.   South Korea is one of 15 members of the Security Council, whose permanent members are the United States, China, Russia, Britain and France. 
19489 !E41 !ECAT !GCAT !GJOB !GPOL  The Hong Kong government on Friday enacted two laws against sex and disability discrimination in a drive to promote equal opportunities.   The Sex Discrimination Ordinance and Disability Discrimination Ordinance would affect jobs as well as political and social life in the British colony, a government statement said.   Under the laws it is illegal to discriminate against a person on grounds of gender, marital status or disability.   The areas affected include education, provision of goods and services, access to real estate, eligibility to vote for, sit on or be appointed to government advisory bodies, as well as the activities of clubs and of the government, the statement said.   Earlier this year the government established an Equal Opportunities Commission, an independent statutory body, to implement the two ordinances. 
19490 !GCAT !GDIP !GPOL  A palpable sense of relief settled on Hong Kong on Friday after Britain and China settled an acrimonious four-year row which had made the bumpy transition to Chinese rule an even rougher ride.   "The collective sigh of relief that echoed around Hong Kong at the resolution of the (Sino-British) row on Thursday was all the greater because of the way in which the argument had become an emblem of the mistrust and lack of cooperation between China and Britain," the influential South China Morning Post said.   "As so often happens, Hong Kong had been the hapless victim."   The accord over a container terminal contract clears the decks for the people of the British colony to concentrate on the battle now hotting up for power once the British leave in just 284 days.   Britain hands over its 150-year-old colony of six million people to China at midnight on June 30 next year.   The dispute over a ninth terminal for Hong Kong's container port, the world's busiest, flared when China objected to the award of the contract in 1992 by private treaty rather than tender and the role of a British-controlled firm as leader of the consortium responsible for developing the facility.   As China and Britain shook hands in Beijing on Thursday, a shipping tycoon considered a front-runner to become the first local leader of Hong Kong announced he was considering heeding the call to stand.   Tung Chee-hwa, 59, has yet to confirm his decision to contest the race for Hong Kong's first post-colonial leader but the battle lines are beginning to firm.   "What we have here is a clash of the business titans," an independent pro-democracy politician said on Friday.   Hong Kong's politicians see a head-to-head battle emerging as the colony's powerful business community aligns itself between two distinct camps created when former Chief Justice Sir Ti Liang Yang, 67, threw his wig into the ring last week.   "Sir Ti Liang is backed by the Henderson camp.   Tung by the Cheung Kong camp," the politician said.   The two companies are Hong Kong's largest and most-powerful property-based conglomerates.   Henderson Land Development Co is owned by Lee Shau-kee whom Forbes magazine calls Hong Kong's richest tycoon.   Cheung Kong Holdings Ltd is the flagship of the British colony's most prominent entrepreneur, Li Ka-shing.   If the people of Hong Kong were to have a say, opinion polls indicate they would plump for neither candidate.   They would choose a neutral member of the civil service.   The name that routinely leads the poll is Anson Chan, Hong Kong's chief secretary and deputy to Governor Chris Patten.   Hong Kong's next leader will be chosen by November by a 400-member Selection Committee now being formulated.   Few believe the committee will serve as more than a rubber stamp and Chan's ties with the colonial administration are believed to make her a non-starter in Beijing's eyes.   "What China wants, China will get," said a senior government official after a visit to Beijing.   But China watchers say they believe the Beijing leadership is divided on which candidate to back and public opinion could help sway the decision.   "They don't want to alienate one business camp at the expense of the other," said Martin Lee, chairman of Hong Kong's Democracy Party who, as a former adviser to China, watched the business camp jostle for influence with Beijing in the 1980s.   Hong Kong media are now speculating that more candidates will emerge in the hope of exploiting a perceived deadlock.   The mass circulation Oriental Daily News tipped the son-in- law of late shipping tycoon Sir Y.K. Pao, Peter Woo, as a contender.   The middle of the road Sing Tao Daily named pro-Beijing businessman Tsui Tsin-tong, head of one of Hong Kong's biggest bus companies, as another possibility. 
19491 !GCAT !GDIS  Two strong earthquakes shook the southern Philippines on Friday, the Royal Hong Kong Observatory reported.   It said one quake measuring 6.4 on the Richter scale shook an area 270 km (169 miles) east-southeast of Cebu island at 12.15 p.m. (0415 GMT).   The observatory earlier reported the first quake in the same area with a strength of 6.2 at 8.07 a.m. (0007 GMT).    The epicentre of the latest quake was initially determined to be off the northeast coast of Mindanao, the observatory said.   After the first quake, the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology said it did not expect any damage to be reported.   The Philippines frequently experiences earthquakes, most of which cause little or no damage. 
19492 !GCAT !GENV  Indonesia expects to be free from the use of ozone-depleting substances (ODS) by the end of next year, the official Antara news agency reported on Friday.   "We have made a country programme which bans the use of ODS by industries and encourages them to use non-ODS materials," it quoted R.T.M. Sutamihardja, an assistant to Environment Minister Sarwono Kusumaatmadja, as saying.   He told a workshop on the subject on Thursday that Indonesia expected to be free of the substances by the end of 1997.   Indonesia has ratified the Vienna Convention and the Montreal Protocol aimed at international cooperation in supervising the use of ozone-depleting substances. 
19493 !C31 !CCAT !GCAT !GFAS  Foreign designers are trying to muscle into the growing fashion market in China, but are being slowed down by policy, pricing, piracy and differences in style concepts, fashion experts said on Friday.   Foreign designers displaying their wares at the annual Shanghai International Fashion Festival, which began on Thursday, have increased their presence by 50 percent over last year, organisers said.   Those with displays included Pierre Balmain, Nina Ricci and Olivier Lapidus.   They are offering to sell to China a wide range of fashions from Europe, North America and other parts of Asia, trying to turn the tables on one of the world's biggest exporters of textiles and clothing.   "They want to break into the Chinese market, but it's not easy," said organiser Zhang Mei.   "There is a policy issue and also the question of whether prices are at the right levels.   Tastes are different too.   Some of the styles are suitable for the China market and some are not," she added.   A handful of Chinese department stores in Shanghai and other major cities have been selling high-class imported fashions for a couple of years, but business is growing slowly, said one importer.   "The market is confused," said Francis Lai of Country Galaxy Development, based in Hong Kong.   "Mainland people with money used to buy name brand stuff without any regard to style, but they are now beginning to pay more attention to how things look.   The result is the market has cooled down a lot," he said.   Lai said that piracy of designs was also a problem for clothing importers, particularly given the price sensitivity of the market.   "For instance, we import ties and sell them at around 80 outlets across China for about 140 yuan each.   But as soon as we introduce a new design, local manufacturers copy it and put out their own version for 50 yuan.   "The quality and the design is not quite as good, but for 50 yuan, who cares?"   he said.   One advantage for international fashion houses trying to sell to growing numbers of wealthier fashion-conscious Chinese is the local design industry so far provides almost no competition.   "The biggest problem is the lack of strong local designers," said exhibition organiser Chen Rongrong.   "We're a long way behind in that area."   Shanghai's Liberation Daily, in a commentary on Friday, said Shanghai fashion styles had been famous in the past and would one day be famous again.   "But we should recognise that there is a gap between the Shanghai fashion industry and international levels in terms of design, brand quality and marketing," the paper said.   "Progress has been fast in recent years, but it is still tough for Shanghai fashion to compete internationally," it added. 
19494 !C41 !CCAT !GCAT !GPOL !GPRO  Shipping tycoon Tung Chee-hwa has stepped into the limelight as the most substantial candidate so far in Hong Kong's 1997 leadership contest, ending months of suspense and public speculation about his intentions.   But although Tung's reputed possession of the cardinal Chinese virtues of modesty, wisdom and caution plus strong ties to China make him look a strong contender, Beijing may ultimately regard him as too independent, analysts say.   The 59-year-old magnate cuts a striking figure with his hallmark grey crewcut hair, bright eyes and hand-on-heart gestures while speaking.   He announced his likely candidacy on Thursday but, true to form, he gave himself an escape clause by saying he would wait a few weeks before finally confirming that he would formally throw his hat into the ring.   At stake is the job of Chief Executive, successor to the colonial British Governor Chris Patten who departs next year after the colony reverts to Chinese sovereignty at midnight on June 30.   China is forming a 400-member Selection Committee in Hong Kong, which will pick the Chief Executive and the members of a new legislature.   The committee, to be set up next month, will name the designated leader before the end of this year.   British officials have long said privately they would be happy to see Tung in the hot seat if Beijing excluded their favourite, Patten's second-in-command, Anson Chan.   The general public favours Tung, they note, since the other two self-declared candidates so far -- lawyer Lo Tak-shing and Chief Justice Sir Ti Liang Yang -- have both caused stirs during the past year with remarks that aroused doubts about their commitment to human rights, basic freedoms and democracy.   Yang sparked a political uproar in November by criticising, in front of Chinese officials, a Hong Kong Bill of Rights brought in by Patten.   Lo raised eyewbrows by saying journalists should be arrested if they preached ideas such as Taiwan independence.   Tung has a reputation for integrity, administrative talent, self-discipline, discretion and good judgement, political analysts say.   But he might be too good, they say.   "They might find him too independent," a senior official said.   "It is hard to see Beijing favouring someone with a local power base, who really means to run the show," said legislator and lawyer Margaret Ng.   "The job is too vital to give somebody they cannot trust, and this does not look like the profile of someone who they can trust implicitly," she said.   Tung has links with the powerful and mighty in the corridors of the key capitals -- Beijing, Taipei, London and Washington -- whose influence will be important for Hong Kong after it becomes an autonomous Special Administrative Region of China.   He has lately started tapping the views of local political parties and grassroots organisations to draft a policy proposal for Hong Kong's future government.   He has served on China-controlled bodies preparing for the handover and resigned in June from Patten's inner cabinet, the Executive Council, to avoid a conflict of interest.   But he was typically modest about his candidacy.   "I just want to offer one more choice for the Selection Committee.   More people should also come forward," Tung said.   He was identified as a possible favourite of China for the Chief Executive's post when President Jiang Zemin singled him out for a personal handshake at a meeting in Beijing this year.   Born in Shanghai in 1937, Tung grew up as the son of a shipping tycoon and philanthropist.   He took over the helm of the Orient Overseas empire when his father died in 1979.   The business was sinking at the time due to the world shipping crisis and Tung was bailed out by the China-backed company of Hong Kong tycoon Henry Fok, a kingmaker in the current leadership stakes.   Tung's family later bought back most of the shares and restored their majority control. 
19495 !GCAT !GPOL  Backers of Thailand's embattled prime minister said on Friday charges raised against him during this week's censure debate lacked a knockout punch, but opponents said there were still some "final blows" to come.   Debate on the opposition-sponsored no-confidence motion against Prime Minister Banharn Silpa-archa began on Wednesday and was expected to end later on Friday, with the vote on the motion taking place on Saturday.   "So far there is no strong evidence to prove the prime minister has committed any serious offences against the law or done wrong," said Bunjong Veerasomsai, secretary to the leader of the New Aspiration Party (NAP), the second largest in Banharn's coalition.   But Arkhom Engchuan, a senior leader of the main opposition Democrat Party, said: "We still have some final blows to hit Banharn with and make the public aware that he has lost his credibility to run the country.   We are confident that some coalition partners will decide to abandon him before the vote."   The censure motion accuses Banharn of condoning corruption in his administration, mismanaging the economy, plagiarism in his master's thesis and amassing land.   Doubts have also been raised about the status of Banharn's Thai nationality.   The premier has denied all of the charges.   Banharn's six-party coalition holds 209 of the 391 seats in the lower house of parliament and -- on paper -- has the votes to defeat the motion.   But political analysts have said some coalition members might defect before the vote.   Analysts also do not discount the possibility that Banharn might dissolve parliament before the vote if it appeared he was going to lose the vote.   The support of the NAP leader and Defence Minister Chavalit Yongchaiyudh, whose party has 57 seats in parliament, was seen as crucial for Banharn.   Chavalit, who has been widely touted as a future prime minister, has so far staunchly supported Banharn.   The coalition partners have said they will support Banharn on the no-confidence vote.   Banharn's administration has overseen a sharply slowing economy, sluggish export growth, a battered stock market that plummeted to near-three-year lows, and devaluation rumours pummelling the Thai baht.   Late on Thursday Banharn countered opposition doubts about his nationality by displaying documents that showed he was born in Thailand in 1932, and that his father had emigrated to the kingdom in 1907.   The opposition had claimed it had papers showing Banharn's father emigrated from China to Thailand in 1937 while the premier's birth certificate said he was born in Suphan Buri in 1932.   Only Thai-born citizens can stand for public office. 
19496 !GCAT  These are the leading stories in the Taiwan press on Friday.   Reuter has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.   Newspaper headlines   CHINA TIMES - Su Chung-feng, arraigned for counterfeiting certificates of deposit, suspected to have printed U.S. banknotes totalling $100 million in face value.   UNITED DAILY NEWS - Five people detained for alleged involvement in baseball scandal.   Parliament passes laws governing government employees.   COMMERICAL TIMES - Taiwanese companies committed to development of Subic Bay Industrial Park are behind schedule in construction.   Taiwan authorities putting priority on shipping arrangements with Hong kong before addressing direct communication links with mainland China.   ECONOMIC DAILY NEWS - Taiwan Power Company working with General Electric on agreement to delay construction of fourth nuclear reactor.   Central bank wants to toughten regulations on bond funds. 
19497 !E51 !E512 !ECAT !GCAT !GDIP  U.S. President Bill Clinton and Japanese Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto, their feet firmly on domestic campaign trails, will likely applaud progress on trade and stay mum about simmering spats when they meet next week.   The two nations are at odds over numerous economic matters from aviation to supercomputers.   But with both leaders facing elections and figuring that success sells best, the disputes are unlikely to rate much attention when the two chat briefly on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday, analysts say.   "It's going to be a big embrace and a handshake for Hashimoto delivering the goods on Okinawa to Clinton," said John Neuffer, a political analyst at a private Japanese think tank.   "They both want it to look like they have carried out successful foreign policies with each other and that there are really very few problems."   Hashimoto diffused his thorniest political problem last week when Okinawa's governor relented and agreed to renew leases for U.S. military bases there in exchange for efforts to reduce the facilities and a pledge of funds for the southern Japanese island's economic development.   Hashimoto, whose rise to the top post was aided by his image as a tough-talking trade minister, hopes his diplomatic success will boost his Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) in a general election which he is expected to call in late October.   "Hashimoto wants to use this (meeting with Clinton) as part of his campaign strategy," said Keio University political scientist Yasunori Sone.   "Economic issues are not the issue."   Clinton, who looks likely to have less than half an hour to spare for Hashimoto in New York, faces much the same pressures ahead of his own November presidential election.   "For political reasons, the Clinton administration has declared victory (on trade) and gone home," said a U.S. businessman in Tokyo.   "They are not going to give (Republican presidential candidate Bob) Dole any issue to criticise."   Signs of that strategy were apparent earlier this week, when U.S. officials declared that Washington's year-old pact on car trade with Tokyo was basically a success.   Then trade minister Hashimoto and U.S. trade chief Mickey Kantor forged the deal on access to Japan's car and car parts market in June 1995, averting U.S. trade sanctions.   Clinton has also praised an agreement on foreign access to Japan's microchip market, although analysts say the deal, reached in early August, mostly mirrored Japanese proposals.   Other disputes over aviation, supercomputers and alleged barriers in Japan's photo film market persist, and resolution of a row over insurance looks more elusive than ever.   Negotiators failed to meet a July 31 deadline set by Clinton and Hashimoto personally for settling the dispute.   The disagreement centres on U.S. charges that Tokyo is poised to renege on a 1994 pact on deregulating its insurance market by opening up a niche sector profitable for foreign firms before deregulating primary sectors where domestic insurers hold sway.   "Clinton might mention insurance," the U.S. businessman said.   "If he doesn't, it would really show that they have totally abandoned the economic agenda."   U.S. and Japanese financial authorities also differ over what Japan's macroeconomic policy priorities should be.   Washington wants Tokyo to make sure its fiscal and monetary measures sustain growth, but Japanese finance mandarins are stressing the need to staunch the red ink in their budget. 
19498 !C21 !C31 !C312 !CCAT !GCAT !GHEA  Fears of madcow disease are encouraging South Korean beef eaters to switch to pork, exacerbating shortages of pork at a time when exports of that meat are booming, an agriculture official said on Friday.   Pork shortfalls are putting pressure on the government to import more to guard against inflation, Ha Wook-won, an official with the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry said.   "The controversial madcow disease has helped increase pork demand, replacing some domestic beef demand, and caused domestic price hikes," Ha said in an interview.   Ha, the ministry official responsible for pork imports, said pork purchases were also up because of the stunning success of Korean fast-food shops specialising in sweet and sour pork, a traditional Chinese dish.   Madcow fears have spread around the worlds since Britain announced in March that scientists had discovered a link between bovine spongifrom encephalopathy, or madcow disease, and its human equivalent Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease.   Already, Seoul has bought 10,000 tonnes more pork than its obligation this year under the Minimum Market Access (MMA) requirement of the World Trade Organisation, according to Ha.   He said Seoul would invite tenders for an additional 5,000 tonnes of pork in October, when supply is traditionally tight following the Korean Thanksgiving holiday.   Earlier, Ha incorrectly told Reuters imports so far this year exactly matched the MMA requirement of 23,392 tonnes.   The finance ministry on Friday said it was determined to keep consumer price inflation growth to within its 4.5 percent target this year.   Exports in the first eight month of this year have surged more than threefold to 26,747 tonnes from 8,467 tonnes a year ago, agriculture minstry figures show.   "Our animal husbandry environment has improved greatly to support pork exports, and exporters seem to be getting confidence," Ha said.   "So far we have exported home-bred pork only to Japan.   Last year we took only a 2.4 percent market share in Japan.   But this year we expect we will take more than 5 percent of total pork imports by Japan."   The ministry expects pork exports to jump by 165 percent to 38,000 tonnes this year from 14,346 tonnes in 1995.   Imports are projected to rise 11 percent to 38,392 tonnes.   Ha said domestic pork consumption for the full year was expected to rise 6.2 percent to 702,000 tonnes against 661,000 tonnes in 1995.   Home-bred pork production was expected to rise 8.6 percent to 694,000 tonnes this year versus 639,000 tonnes in 1995, the official said.   The wholesale price of pork has risen 30 percent to 2,794 won ($3.4) per kilogram (2.2 lb) since the start of the year.   Denmark supplied 50 percent of MMA requirements this year, the United States 17 percent and the rest came from Britain and the Netherlands, Ha said.   South Korea has already announced it will open the pork market from July next year.   In the first six months of next year, before the liberalisation takes effect, South Korea must import 14,620 tonnes of pork to meet the MMA requirements, Ha said.   Last year South Korea imported a total of 34,638 tonnes of pork including 17,544 tonnes under MMA rules. 
19499 !GCAT !GCRIM  Indonesia is preparing a law to ban trade in and use of the drug Ecstasy and enable courts to impose heavier penalties, the official Anatara news agency reported on Friday.   It quoted Health Minister Sujudi as saying a draft bill before parliament would give the authorities "a stronger legal basis to prosecute...Ecstasy traffickers".   The authorities have arrested a number of people involved in trafficking in the so-called designer drug, which has gained popularity in the past couple of years, and has closed some nightclubs where it was available.   But Sujudi said prosecution was currently carried out on the basis of a ministerial decree which did not allow for heavy penalties. 
19500 !C24 !CCAT !GCAT !GDEF  The Indonesian navy will continue to patrol waters around the gas-rich Natuna islands in the South China Sea following military war games in the area, the official Antara news agency reported on Friday.   "Marine security operations around the islands can be mounted at any time by the navy's Western Fleet," the news agency quoted Navy Chief-of-Staff Vice-Admiral Arief Kushariadi as saying.   He said several destroyers and other warships had been ordered to remain in the waters around the Natunas to protect a multi-billion dollar gas extraction project.   The Natuna field, some 680 miles (1,100 km) north of Jakarta off the northwest coast of Kalimantan, is estimated to contain 210 trillion cubic feet (TCF) of natural gas, of which 45 TCF is thought to be recoverable commercially.   Indonesia recently questioned a Chinese maritime map that showed the Natunas as part of Chinese territory.   But Jakarta said it had accepted a Chinese explanation that acknowledged they belonged to Indonesia.   A major 12-day military exercise at the Natunas, involving 19,525 personnel from all branches of the armed forces, 54 aircraft and 27 warships, ended on Thursday.   It included a beach assault landing.   "Always when our government is planning projects, the projects must be secure and investors must feel safe," armed forces chief General Feisal Tanjung told reporters during the exercise.   He denied the exercise was a show of force, however.   Indonesia's state-owned oil company Pertamina owns 24 percent of the Natuna gas project, the U.S. Mobil Corp 26 percent and the U.S. Exxon Corp 50 percent. 
19501 !E51 !E512 !ECAT !GCAT !GDIP  Australian Prime Minister John Howard and his Japanese counterpart Ryutaro Hashimoto vowed on Friday to beef up their bilateral relationship and join forces to tackle pressing global issues.   "It's been an opportunity to reaffirm the great strength and depth of the bilateral relationship between Australia and Japan," Howard told reporters after their summit meeting here.   Howard arrived in Japan on Wednesday for a four-day visit after winding up a three-day tour of Indonesia.   It is his first major Asian tour as prime minister and has been closely watched as a barometer as to whether his coalition government born in March will be less committed to Asia than its predecessor.   "We have been able to establish a very good relationship with Australia so far and it should remain so," Hashimoto told the same news briefing.   "We were able to establish a very good relationship.   I can now safely say that we can discuss any issue at any time over the telephone."   Japan is Australia's biggest trading partner and the third-largest foreign investor in the country.   Bilateral trade between was worth A$29.1 billion (US$23.2 billion) in the fiscal year to June 1995.   The two leaders said their meeting gave them opportunities to reaffirm cooperation on various issues, including support for China's bid for World Trade Organisation membership and Japan's attempt to become a permanent member of the United Nation's Security Council.   "Both of us agreed how important it was to engage China, how important it was, on proper conditions, that China would become a member of the World Trade Organisation," Howard said.   "Australia and Japan have very similar views in relation to the need to properly and appropriately engage China not only in World Trade Organisation but more generally," he added.   On Thursday, Howard told business executives here that Japan and Australia shared an interest in the closest possible engagement of China in regional and global affairs -- as a responsible partner.   Australia is now in a fresh row with China after Howard said he would meet Tibet's exiled spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, who is on a two-week visit to Australia, after returning from his trip to Japan.   Howard hopes to meet the Dalai Lama in Sydney next week if their programmes allow.   Beijing, which views the Dalai Lama as a political activist out to split China, issued a warning on Tuesday that foreign leaders who meet the Tibetan leader would see trade and business ties with China suffer.   The Dalai Lama has been in exile since an abortive uprising against Chinese rule in Tibet in 1959.   He won the 1989 Nobel Peace prize for his peaceful campaign for Tibetan autonomy. 
19502 !GCAT !GDIP !GVIO  A Hong Kong lawmaker said on Friday that China should to go to war with Japan over a group of disputed islands in the east China Sea if the dispute cannot be settled through diplomatic negotiation.   Bruce Liu, a legislator of the Association for Democracy and People's Livelihood, a prominent local political party, told Reuters that China should set a deadline for talks with Japan.   "Otherwise there will be no satisfactory answer," he said.   The islands, the Diaoyu isles in Chinese and the Senkakus in Japanese, have been the focus of intense anti-Japan protests by Chinese communities across East Asia for the past month, since a Japanese right-wing youth group built a lighthouse in the archipelago.   "If negotiation fails, then the last resort is to send warships to the islands, or even declare war on Japan," Liu told Reuters.   He said Japan should take serious note of the fact that "the Chinese are not a weak nation".   Anti-Japanese sentiment reached a new height in Hong Kong on Wednesday when thousands of people braved the rain to join a rally and candlelight vigil to mark the day, 65 years ago, when Japan invaded China.   A group of activists in the British-ruled territory will sail to the disputed isles on Sunday to stage a further protest.   The uninhabited islands lie 300 km (190 miles) west of Okinawa island and 200 km (125 miles) east of Taiwan.   Japan has claimed sovereignty over the islands and refused to acknowledge that the dispute is open for discussion.   Tokyo's claim dates to 1895, when Japan defeated China and seized Taiwan and other territories.   China has claimed sovereignty over the islands for centuries. 
19503 !GCAT !GDIS !GWEA  A tropical storm was expected to hit Vietnam's northern port town of Haiphong and neighbouring Quang Ninh province, on the border with China, on Friday evening, the meteorological centre in Hanoi said.   An official said the storm, known as Typhoon Willie, was moving slowly west-northwest across the Gulf of Tonkin carrying winds of up to 116 km (72 miles) per hour.   Waters in the Gulf of Tonkin were expected to become very rough because the storm was accompanied by a cold front moving south towards northern Vietnam.   Vietnam's Central Committee for Flood and Storm Control said on Thursday that 33 people had been killed and more than 40,000 buildings submerged by flooding after storms in the centre of the country last week.   That took to around 420 the number of people who have died in tropical storms and flooding in northern and central Vietnam since the beginning of July.   The country suffers a string of floods and storms every year, most between July and October, but officials say damage to northern areas this year has been the worst in a decade. 
19504 !GCAT !GDIP !GVIO  North Korea on Friday accused South Korea of taking "provocative action" earlier this week but made no reference to North Koreans who landed in the South from a submarine and fought fatal gun battles.   "The South Korean puppets, on the 17th and 18th (of September), took successive provocative action against North Korea near the demilitarised zone," Korean Central Radio was quoted as saying on Friday by the independent news agency Radio Press, which monitors North Korean radio broadcasts from Japan.   Radiopress said North Korean media have so far not made any direct mention of the submarine incident, which South Korean authorities say began on Wednesday with the landing of infiltrators from the vessel.   But Radiopress said the radio broadcast, which criticised a series of naval exercises it said South Korea carried out in August, was a veiled reaction to the incident.   Referring to the naval exercises, the broadcast said: "The anti-submarine exercises which the (South Korean) puppet navy carried out are a grave threat to our nation."   On Thursday, Korean Central Radio said South Korean soldiers stationed at the demilitarised zone dividing the two countries positioned guns, mobilised more than 1,000 troops and carried out "exercises to attack and invade the north".   "Kim Young-sam and his clique must consider thoroughly the destructive consequences of taking such dangerous, provocative action near a border where the two sides are confronting each other, and must not become frantic," the radio said.   South Korean authorities have described the submarine incident as the most serious infiltration since the 1960s and a military provocation.   North and South Korea have remained technically at war since the 1950-53 Korean conflict ended in a truce.   Seoul originally said 20 North Koreans landed in South Korea from the submarine, but now says the number may be more than that.   Eighteen of have so far been shot dead and one captured alive after landing on a beach near the border in a small submarine and clashing with South Korean forces.   South Korean forces continued searching for other North Koreans on Friday after fierce gun battles raged through the night around disused coal mines in mountains near the east coast city of Kangnung. 
19505 !E41 !E51 !ECAT !GCAT !GJOB  Asia's potential as a market is a bigger draw for foreign investors than its cheap labour, according to a survey of labour competitiveness published on Friday.   "Many countries in Asia may have already lost any competitive advantage they once enjoyed over more developed Western countries due to their labour situation," the Political & Economic Risk Consultancy (PERC) said.   "There is still plenty of inexpensive labour in Asia, to be sure.   But much of this labour lacks the skills required to perform efficiently all but the most basic assembly tasks," it said in its latest "Asian Intelligence" report.   It said that increasingly the key reason foreign direct investment in Asia continued to expand was not because of cost considerations "but because they need to invest if they hope to benefit from Asia's potential as a market".   PERC was commenting on its survey of labour competitiveness in 16 countries that contrasted Asia with some of the main developed economy in the West.   Asia did not come out well in the survey of 223 expatriate managers who were asked about quality, cost, availability and stability of skilled and unskilled labour.   India came out top and Hong Kong last.   But Australia, Britain, the United States and Switzerland all ranked in the top six.   The bottom 10 were all Asian.   On a scale from zero to 10, with zero representing the best situation possible and 10 the worst, India drew the best average grade of 2.80, followed by Australia, the United Kingdom, and the Philippines.   Hong Kong's average grade was 4.92, putting it 16th, just ahead of Malaysia.   Singapore was 14th and South Korea 13th.   Factors in India's favour included the fact that labour was cheap and plentiful, the survey said.   At the other end of the scale, Hong Kong was hurt by high costs and a tight labour market. 
19506 !GCAT !GDIS  The Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology said on Friday it had recorded a moderate earthquake in the south of the country but did not expect any damage to be reported.   "We don't expect any damage report ... We don't expect any tsunamis (tidal wave) either," a government seismologist told Reuters.   She said the quake, which measured 5.9 on the Richter scale, had a shallow tectonic origin and occurred at 8.43 a.m. (0043 GMT).   The Royal Hong Kong Observatory earlier said it measured the quake at 6.2 on the Richter scale.   The quake was centred in the sea 149 km (90 miles) east of Surigao, a city on the main southern island of Mindanao some 730 km (450 miles) south of Manila.   The Philippines frequently experiences earthquakes, most of which cause little or no damage. 
19507 !GCAT  These are some of the leading stories in the official Vietnamese press on Friday.   Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.   VIETNAM NEWS   -- The government plans to allocate as much as $400 million during the next 15 years to develop irrigation projects on the vast basalt plateaux of Tay Nguyen in the Central Highlands.   -- Vietnam has joined the fight against ozone depletion, spending $1.5 million on 11 projects over the past year.   -- Vietnam is seeking more investment to develop the country's petrochemical industry, Petrovietnam Chairman Ho Si Thoang said.   -- Vietnam has officially established a financial association with the Nordic countries.   The Vietnamese government and the Nordic Investment Bank as well as the Nordic Development Fund signed framework agreements in Hanoi last Thursday.   -- The State Bank of Vietnam has proposed a range of actions to improve banking services.   - - - -   LE COURRIER DU VIETNAM   -- Thirty-four people died and more than 400,000 houses were submerged in water when a tropical storm brought flooding to Vietnam's central provinces.   - - - -   NHAN DAN   -- The government has set out policies to develop the Mong Cai border area with measures to encourage foreign and domestic companies to invest in the area.   -- Vietnam and Cambodia signed a Memorandum of Understanding on cultural and information cooperation during Cambodia Information Minister Ieng Mouly's visit to Vietnam.   -- Deputy Prime Minister Tran Duc Luong told the sixth Asian Plastic Forum in Ho Chi Minh City that he appreciated the interest expressed by Asian countries in Vietnam's plastic industry.   Meanwhile, a four-day plastic exhibition VIETPLAS'96 opened on Thurday in Ho Chi Minh City.   - - - -   QUAN DOI NHAN DAN   -- 12,600 people will be evacuated from Muong Lay district in Lai Chau province, which has suffered from serious flash flooding in recent years.   -- A tropical storm accompanied by a cold front is moving northwest towards northern Vietnam.   The sea in the Tonkin Gulf was expected to become very rough, with winds of up to level 8 on the Beaufort scale.   -- A two-day meeting between the Vietnamese and South Korean Foreign Ministries was held in Seoul on September 17-19 in an atmosphere of friendship and frankness.   - - - -   HA NOI MOI   -- Prime Minister Vo Van Kiet told Russian Ambassador to Vietnam V.V. Ivanov that ministries of both countries should develop bilateral cooperation based on their traditional relationship and current global trends.   -- A $20-million Hanoi International Hospital was licensed.   The joint-venture between Australia's Thomson Adsett Group and Vietnam Hoan Kiem hospital is expected to begin operation in 1998.   -- The government approved a $200-million drainage project for Hanoi with 80 percent of the total investment coming from an Overseas Economic Cooperation Fund (OECF) loan.   - - - - 
19508 !C42 !CCAT !E41 !ECAT !GCAT !GDIS !GHEA !GJOB  More than 50 workers at a liquid crystal display plant in China have been poisoned by months of exposure to ethane gas, the China Daily newspaper said on Friday.   Workers suffered serious nerve damage through exposure to the gas at the Huikai Science and Development Corp in Shenzhen city near the border with Hong Kong, the official newspaper said.   Shenzhen is in southern Guangdong province.   After dozens of workers were found with symptoms of chronic poisoning, 56 (corrects from 53) were admitted to hospital, it said but gave no details of their current condition.   Local health officials had found poor ventilation and inadequate safety standards were the main causes of the poisoning and an inspection group was investigating, it said.   China's breakneck economic development has been accompanied by a steep rise in industrial accidents as some employers cut safety corners in the search for profits. 
19509 !GCAT !GCRIM !GPOL  Indonesia's official audit body says its findings on government corruption are routinely ignored by authorities, the Jakarta Post reported on Friday.   "I think they feel ashamed with the findings, but their lack of attention to our findings really hurts us," Sudarjono, chairman of the National Supervision and Development Board (BPKP), was quoted as saying.   In the 1995/96 fiscal year, BPKP had found 14,572 cases of corruption with the potential loss of 532.59 billion rupiah ($229 million), Sudarjono said.   But internal auditors in government offices and state companies were often unwilling to follow up the financial irregularities, he added.   In the 1995/95 fiscal year, only 27 percent of corruption cases reported by his office were actually settled, Sudarjono said.   ($1 = 2,319 rupiah) 
19510 !GCAT !GDIS  An intense earthquake measuring 6.2 on the Richter scale was recorded 280 kilometres east-southeast of Cebu, Philippines on Friday morning, the Royal Hong Kong Observatory said.   The quake struck at 8.07 a.m. (0007 GMT), it said.   The epicentre was initially determined to be off the northeast coast of Mindanao, Philippine Islands about 280 km east-southeast of Cebu at 9.6 N 126.4 E, the observatory said. 
19511 !GCAT !GVIO  South Korea's state broadcaster withdrew a report that bodies of four North Korean infiltrators had been found on Friday.   The Korea Broadcasting System said it had checked the report and found it was not true.   There was no further explanation. 
19512 !E51 !E512 !ECAT !G15 !G158 !GCAT  Japan's Minister of International Trade and Industry Shunpei Tsukahara said on Friday that he believes he will be able to leave for Seattle on September 27 to attend quadrilateral trade talks with the United States, Canada and the European Union.   "I think I will be able to leave on the evening of September 27," Tsukahara said in a news conference.   He also said in the same news conference that Japan's parliament is likely to be dissolved on September 27.   "It is very probable that the parliament will be dissolved (at the beginning of the session)," Tsukahara said. 
19513 !GCAT !GPOL !GTOUR  This time it's "Smile, Singapore".   The government is spending Singapore $2 million (US$1.4 million) to get the people of Singapore to present a smiling face to tourists, the latest campaign in a land with a penchant for campaigns.   "Smile, Singapore" was launched earlier this month by the Singapore Tourist Promotion Board (STPB), which will spend the money on television and newspaper advertisements, posters at bus stops and in underground trains, and on exhibitions and seminars to drive home the importance of the tourism industry.   It is evidence that Singapore's enthusiasm for campaigns -- there has been a continuous stream since the late 1960s -- has not waned.   But there are critics, people who feel the government has been overzealous in using campaigns to engineer the behaviour of a whole population.   "There are so many, it's getting meaningless," said Wai Chan, a pharmacist.   "Why don't they just reduce the cost of cars, that would definitely put some natural smiles on a lot of faces," said freelance photographer Renga Subbiah.   To own a new small car in Singapore can cost up to S$100,000 -- after you have won the right to own one in competitive bidding, paid a variety of taxes and actually bought the vehicle in a system designed to limit traffic in the tiny island-nation.   The STPB says the smile programme -- they do not call it a campaign -- will help "to explain to Singapore the importance of tourism as an important contributor to the economy".   Last year, seven million visitors earned Singapore almost S$12 billion (US$8.5 billion).   But the government says it is worried the growth in the numbers is slowing.   "It is a studied way to make Singapore a truly fun place to visit," said Michael Lim, STPB's assistant director of corporate communications.   Like many recent campaigns, "Smile, Singapore" aims at improving Singapore's social behaviour and reflects the government's desire to make Singapore a more gracious society as it moves towards becoming a developed country.   In contrast, early campaigns in the 1960s and 1970s urged the people to "Build a Rugged Society" and warned them of the country's lack of resources with "Save Water" and "Eat Wheat" drives.   "I remember the Eat Wheat campaign.   That was when we just had television in Singapore in the late 1960s and programmes were in black and white.   My mother actually went and bought more bread during the campaign.   I think it was because there was a rice shortage," said 42-year-old Ronald Wong.   As the government pushed industries to become more capital-intensive and more high-tech, the 1980s saw Teamy The Bee mascot buzzing Singaporeans to be more productive.   In the 1990s, people have been urged to flush toilets, keep fit, show a little kindness and stop smoking, all through sophisticated television advertising, some using local celebrities as role models.   The Keep Fit programme spawned the Great Singapore Workout that features politicians leading aerobics-style routines in mass demonstrations to inspire affluent couch potato Singaporeans to exercise.   Have the campaigns worked?   "I have heard of the campaigns, but I am too tired right now," Singapore's Straits Times newspaper quoted an airport money changer as saying when asked why she was not more friendly to her customers.   On the other hand, longer-running campaigns seemed to have made some impact.   Take, for instance, the courtesy campaign, now in its 18th year and costing some S$700,000 a year to promote consideration for fellow human beings.   "Courtesy is a nebulous kind of thing.   We can just observe or feel that people are slightly more well-behaved or civil," said a spokesman from the Singapore Courtesy Council, which runs the campaign.   "I think the campaign has rubbed off.   Just recently this taxi driver not only offered me his handphone to call my office because I left my wallet there, he offered to lend me S$20 to make sure I had money to return home after an outing with friends.   Usually our perception of cab drivers is that they are rude and don't give a damn," said S. Rani, a public relations consultant.   One campaign was too successful.   The "Stop At Two" campaign, aimed at controlling population growth, was launched in 1972.   It was so successful, the government found that Singapore's younger and productive population was in danger of decline.   Since 1987, the government has been offering tax incentives to "Have Three Or More If You Can Afford It."   US$1.00 = S$1.41 
19514 !GCAT !GPOL !GVOTE  Japan's parliament is likely to be dissolved on September 27, two cabinet ministers said on Friday, paving the way for general elections next month.   Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto agreed on Thursday with the leaders of the two junior parties in his ruling coalition to convene an extraordinary session of parliament on September 27, a move widely expected to lead to an early general election.   "It is very probable that the parliament will be dissolved (at the beginning of the session)," Minister of International Trade and Industry Shunpei Tsukahara told reporters.   Politicians, in frequent leaks to the media over the past two weeks, have said Hashimoto would dissolve parliament on the first day of the session and hold general elections on October 20.   "The right to dissolve parliament is a constitutional right of the prime minister.   However, I suspect this will proceed as reported by various media," Finance Minister Wataru Kubo told a separate news conference.   Most observers say the prime minister, who has the sole right to dissolve parliament, is balancing competing demands from his Liberal Democratic Party, which is keen on early polls, and its coalition partners, who want to put off elections until next year.   Polls are not mandated until July 1997, but the LDP favours going before voters as early as possible before April, when an unpopular rise in the consumption tax, approved by the Hashimoto government, takes effect.   The junior colaition parties, the Social Democrats and Sakigake, want more time because they are locked in a bitter row over how to regroup for the coming polls, which will be held under a revised electoral system thought to favour large groupings.   A public opinion survey this week by the Nihon Keizai Shimbun, a leading financial daily, gave the LDP the highest approval rating with 22.4 percent, while Sakigake scored just 1.2 percent and the Social Democrats 3.7 percent. 
19515 !GCAT !GPOL  Thai Prime Minister Banharn Silpa-archa has denied opposition charges that he falsified nationality papers in order to enter politics.   Banharn presented his explanation in parliament late on Thursday, on the second day of a debate on a no-confidence motion against him, and said he was a true Thai.   The nationality issue has been a key element in the opposition's campaign to unseat Banharn and is pegged on the constitutional stipulation that only natural-born Thais can enter politics.   "I am a Thai man who was born here in Thailand, not an immigrant alien," Banharn told the House of Representatives just before midnight, showing photocopies of documents that said he was born in 1932 in Thailand.   The documents stated that his father immigrated from China in 1907.   "My father could not choose his birthplace but he chose to die here," Banharn said in an emotional address.   The opposition immediately challenged the validity of the documents produced by Banharn.   It has alleged it has documents purporting to show that Banharn's father arrived in the kingdom in 1937, five years after Banharn was born.   The no-confidence debate is due to end on Friday and Banharn is expected to defend himself against other allegations later in the day.   Banharn's six-party coalition has been in power for 14 months and controls 209 of the 391 seats in parliament.   Political analysts say he is likely to survive the no-confidence vote unless he is deserted by some coalition partners.   The opposition has also attacked Banharn on the economy and on ethics.   Banharn has denied the charges, but has not yet provided a clear defence on the economic front.   Banharn's administration has been hurt by an economic slowdown, sluggish export growth, a battered stock market that sank last week to near three-year-lows and a run on the baht by offshore investors after devaluation rumours. 
19516 !C21 !CCAT !GCAT  Take a ride in a Shanghai taxi, and learn about things which are not reported in China's official media.   "Life is becoming as it was before Liberation (1949)," said one taxi driver in his 40s, his voice full of rage.   "The rich are exploiting the poor, just as the capitalists and landlords used to do."   The Communists took power in 1949.   "One million Shanghai people are unemployed or have been laid off, while a small number of people are getting filthy rich, riding in imported cars, eating at fancy restaurants and with their mistresses on their arms," the driver added.   The mistresses are local girls who get rich Hong Kong, Taiwan and local businessmen to buy them an apartment so they have place to live and do not have to work, he said.   His figure for laid-off and unemployed is larger than official estimates, which most recently put the number at "several hundred thousand".   One Shanghai official privately put the figure at half a million.   The mistresses are an important source of business for taxi drivers because they have plenty of money and time to spend and, unlike company or state employees, their spending does not depend on economic policies set in Beijing.   "I can spot them as soon as they get into the cab," said a second driver.   "What other young women have mobile phones, are so well dressed and made up, and can afford to ride a taxi?   You ask them what they do and they say they do not have a job."   Does he resent these young and idle rich?   "No, everyone has to make a living however they can these days.   In any case, they are good customers for us and spend a lot of money.   We should not complain about them," he said.   But the taxi drivers complain about corruption, as well as the privileges enjoyed by officials and police.   For example, cars with police, army or armed police number plates regularly speed down the wrong side of roads, while dozens of cars are trapped in traffic jams in the other lanes.   "Those people do not have to obey the traffic laws," said one driver.   "Have an argument with them and you will always lose, no matter who is in the right."   "In China nowadays, money and power are exchangeable," he said.   "Officials use power to acquire apartments and other goods.   It is we ordinary people who are left behind."   Complaints about being laid off are common from taxi drivers because many have suffered the experience, losing jobs at state factories and being forced to drive a taxi through Shanghai's congested streets for seven days a week.   "I worked in a state-run electronics plant but we could not compete with new joint venture factories and those set up in the countryside.   They have newer equipment and lower labour costs," said one driver in his 40s.   "So our production shrank and the firm laid off about half the workers, including me.   I am lucky, driving a cab.   Some sit at home, getting 230 yuan ($28) a month from the factory.   Others operate street stalls or pull goods with a bicycle," he said.   Ask a taxi driver about his working conditions and you will get a barrage of complaints.   "Look at how we live.   Whether we have passengers or not, we have to pay the company that owns this taxi 350 yuan a day.   We are responsible for all repair and maintenance bills," said one driver.   "We work seven days a week to meet these payments."   "At the end of our contract, the company keeps the taxi.   Isn't that exploitation pure and simple?"   he said.   Other grievances include worsening traffic congestion as Shanghai's city infrastructure undergoes a major overhaul that involves closing major roads for months at a time.   An elevated ring road and an elevated north-south expressway which opened in 1994 and 1995 have been a big help to drivers, but many city roads are still as narrow as they were in 1949.   "The city should limit the number of taxis, since there are already too many for the available business," one driver said.   "But it issues more licences to create jobs.   That just makes the situation worse."   But, is there nothing happy to talk about?   What about the city's professional soccer team, national champions in 1995?   "Don't ask me about them," one driver said.   "They have lost it this year.   They do not have the spirit they had in 1995.   I am disappointed." 
19517 !CCAT !GCAT !GDIS  (Corrects the number of workers poisoned in the headline and the text to 56 from 53.)   More than 50 workers at a liquid crystal display plant in China have been poisoned by months of exposure to ethane gas, the China Daily newspaper said on Friday.   Workers suffered serious nerve damage through exposure to the gas at the Huikai Science and Development Corp in Shenzhen city near the border with Hong Kong, the official newspaper said.   Shenzhen is in southern Guangdong province.   After dozens of workers were found with symptoms of chronic poisoning, 56 were admitted to hospital, it said but gave no details of their current condition.   Local health officials had found poor ventilation and inadequate safety standards were the main causes of the poisoning and an inspection group was investigating, it said.   China's breakneck economic development has been accompanied by a steep rise in industrial accidents as some employers cut safety corners in the search for profits. 
19518 !C31 !C312 !CCAT !GCAT !GDIP  Japanese Finance Minister Wataru Kubo said on Friday that he would like to meet U.S. Trade Representative Charlene Barshefsky on the U.S.-Japan insurance issue if possible when he goes to Washington at the end of this month.    Kubo is scheduled to travel to Washington later this month to attend the annual meeting of the IMF and World Bank, as well as a meeting of Group of Seven (G7) finance ministers.   "I have heard that Ms Barshefsky wants to meet me (on the insurance issue).   I would very much like to meet her in Washington if it is possible schedule-wise," Kubo told a regular news conference.   But he also said, without elaborating, that he was not completely sure yet whether he would be able to attend the Washington meetings.    "It would be favourable if we could meet and talk about basic things such as how to proceed with the bilateral talks," Kubo said. 
19519 !GCAT !GVIO  Four North Korean infiltrators were found dead on Friday and South Korean security forces are seeking a fifth, Munhwa Broadcasting Corporation reported.    The state television network, the Korea Broadcasting System, also reported four infiltrators had been found dead.   The news reports gave no further details.   A defence ministry spokesman said he could not confirm the reports.   Authorities initially said about 20 infiltrators landed by submarine on Wednesday.   Before the latest death reports, authorities had said 18 of the infiltrators had been shot to death and one captured alive. 
19520 !GCAT !GENT !GOBIT !GPRO  Chinese film star Bai Yang, a much-loved actress from the golden age of Chinese cinema in the 1930s and 1940s, has died of illness at the age of 76, the Xinhua news agency reported on Friday.   Bai Yang was born in Beijing on April 22, 1920, and started her film career at the age of 11.   She starred in 24 movies, usually playing the roles of ordinary women caught up in the tragedy of the wars and upheavals which marked the times.   Her most famous role was in the movie "The River Flows East", about a woman who looks after her mother-in-law when her husband leaves them both to become wealthy and powerful.   Her last role was in a television drama in 1989. 
19521 !GCAT  These are some of the leading stories in the Thai press on Friday.   Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.   TOP STORIES   - Prime Minister Banharn Silpa-archa presented an official document showing his father had emigrated to Thailand in 1907 to prove his Thai nationality during a no-confidence debate against him in parliament.   Banharn's true nationality was questioned by the opposition which claimed he was actually born in China and not Thailand.   (THE NATION)   - Muan Chon and Nam Thai parties, partners in the coalition government, have indicated they must listen to Banharn's defence of allegations against him before deciding if they will vote for him in the no-confidence vote.   (BANGKOK POST)   - U.S. President Bill Clinton and his wife will visit Thailand as guests of the king and queen between November 25-26.   (THE NATION)     + + + +   BUSINESS   - A total of 36 bidders are keen to build and operate power plants in Thailand's industrial estates.   Successful bidders will form joint ventures with the state-run Industrial Estate Authority of Thailand to carry out Small Power Producer projects.   (BANGKOK POST)   - The Bank of Thailand has moved to regain its credibility by calling for the replacement of several of its senior officials.   The central bank's reputation has severely tarnished following frequent revisions on economic forecasts.   (THE NATION)   - Federation of Thia Industries favours Banharn resignation over election, as new poll could freeze measures underway, like those to boost exports (BANGKOK POST)   -- Bangkok newsroom (662) 652-0642 
19522 !GCAT  The following are top stories from selected Singapore newspapers.   Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.   THE STRAITS TIMES:   - South Korean troops shoot dead seven North Korean spies in separate gunbattles.   - Taiwan fails to win a UN seat and UN officials decline to accept a $160,000 "political" donation.   - United Engineers, the Goei family and Hong Joo Company top bidders in Urban Redevelopment Authority auction of five conservation shophouses.   - Sumitomo Corp admits losses from massive copper trading scandal at $2.6 billion from the original estimated $1.8 billion.   - Amcol Holdings will not report its interim results when normally due as ongoing investigations into company affairs have not been completed.   THE BUSINESS TIMES:   - Lippo Group's Riady family reassures shareholders of their commitment to the country and amend a controversial 900 billion rupiah restructuring plan.   - WTO ministerial meeting will not launch new round of world trade talks nor set target for achieving global free trade.   - Architect Albert Hong helps out businessman Oei Hong Leong against Sukamto Sia's hold in Hongkong-listed Sum Cheong International.   - City Developments and Centrepoint Properties Ltd may reap more compensation of about Singapore $55 million from the government's acqusition of their Woodlands sites.   - Developer Lim Kah Ngam is looking into possibility of redeveloping its Hotel Equatorial site and decides to revalue investment properties.   -- Singapore newsroom 65-8703080 
19523 !GCAT  These are the leading stories in Manila newspapers on Friday.   Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.   - Twenty-six Filipinos are feared dead after their Sabah-bound boat sank off Malaysia, Philippine officials said.   (MANILA BULLETIN)   - Opponents of a House proposal to amend the Constitution said they would launch a war of attrition to block any move to rewrite the Charter.   (STAR)   - The Department of Interior and Local Government offered an assurance that the proposed barangay (village) identification system is aimed at fighting crime without infringing on the rights of citizens.   (MANILA TIMES)    +++++++++   BUSINESS STORIES   - The House of Representatives says it will stand by its version of the excise taxes on beer and cigarettes.   (BUSINESSWORLD)   - The Monetary Board pledges to help the country attain a manageable trade deficit through prudent monetary management (BUSINESS DAILY)   - The Philippine Stock Exchange plans to operate a separate exchange that will deal with stock futures contracts and options (MANILA TIMES)   - Manila newsroom (632) 841 8938 Fax 8176267 
19524 !GCAT !GWEA  The Royal Observatory said all typhoon signals have been lowered at 9 am (0100 gmt) on Friday.   The centre of tropical storm Willie was estimated at about 410 km west-southwest of Hong Kong at 8 am and was seen moving west-northwest at about 10 km per hour in the general direction of Leizhou Peninsula   The weather today will be cloudy with scattered squally showers with the maximum temperature of 30 C, it said.   Outlook for tomorrow: cloudy with rain.   -- Hong Kong Newsroom (852) 2843-6441 
19525 !C12 !CCAT !GCAT !GCRIM  Olympic Sports Co said on Friday that it had applied for court mediation with creditors. 
19526 !GCAT !GDEF !GDIP !GVIO  Ashraf Fouad   Hundreds of U.S. ground troops and heavy armour plunged into the Kuwaiti desert on Friday close to the Iraqi border for exercises aimed at deterring any possible military action by Baghdad.   More than 1,200 soldiers, part of a 3,000-strong U.S. force ordered to the tiny Gulf Arab state, left Texas for Kuwait on commercial jets and C-5 military cargo planes throughout Thursday and hundreds more are expected to leave later on Friday.   With no rest after the long flight from Texas, hundreds of the 1st Cavalry Division soldiers already here drew pre-positioned U.S. main battle tanks, armoured fighting vehicles and other hardware from a storage base in north Kuwait and deployed in the desert.   A total of 4,000 U.S. soldiers, including 150 women in combat support units, 1,600 tanks, armoured fighting vehicles (AFV) and other heavy weaponry will take part in the war games.   Across the border, Iraq has some 60,000 troops south of the 32nd parallel, the original no-fly, no-go zone set up by Western allies a year after they freed Kuwait in 1991 from a seven-month Iraqi occupation.   "We will be ready," U.S. Army Colonel Robert Pollard told reporters when asked if the 1st Cavalry could stop Iraq from crossing the border.   He stressed that the task force was part of a bigger U.S. presence in the region capable of deterring Iraq.   "We are here to deter war...We are trying to send a signal and that signal (to Iraq) is 'We are ready'," he added.   The United States has close to 30,000 troops in the immediate area and more than 350 warplanes deployed either on warships or in Gulf Arab states.   Kuwaiti ministers this week toured Gulf War Arab allies to explain the need for the huge U.S. military build-up in the face of renewed Iraqi threats, Gulf officials said.   "There are two separate issues here: The security of Kuwait and its right to defend itself and a possible unprovoked new (U.S.) strike against Iraq," a non-Kuwait Gulf official said.   The latest Iraq-U.S. standoff erupted in late August when Iraqi forces played a decisive role in factional Kurdish fighting in north Iraq.   Washington retaliated by firing 44 cruise missiles at targets in the south.   The strikes failed to gain Arab support, with many allies describing them as a violation of Iraq's sovereignty.   But for Kuwaitis the U.S. deployment is welcome news.   Television footage and pictures published in local newspapers showed the troops arriving.   In Kuwait, uniformed U.S. officers can be seen moving freely in public places while elsewhere in the area some allies find it difficult to justify close ties with Washington and U.S. citizens and soldiers alike are told to keep a low profile.   "There are a lot of Kuwaitis who are going to sleep better tonight (Thursday) because the First Cav is here," said U.S. Ambassador to Kuwait Ryan Crocker.   The U.S. buildup in the Gulf includes the arrival on Thursday of a second aircraft carrier battle group, the USS Enterprise.   Seven of the 28 U.S. warhips in the area are capable of firing Tomahawk cruise missiles.   There are about 17,000 sailors and 150 warplanes, including 50 air-to-ground strike aircraft, based on ships in the area.   Four U.S. B-52 bombers with cruise missiles have rebased to the Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia while eight U.S. F-117As Stealth bombers were sent to Kuwait.   Iraq's air force was dealt a severe blow during the Gulf War and U.N. sanctions against Baghdad since 1990 have impeded its ability to acquire spare parts and upgrade the planes. 
19527 !GCAT  These are some of the leading stories in the Jordanian press on Friday.   Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.   AL-RAI   - King Hussein arrives home from a private visit to Britain.   - Jordan switches to winter time at midnight on Friday.   - Prime Minister visits the Royal Medical Services Bureau and discusses means of supporting its budget.   - Jordanian ambassador in Riyadh meets Saudi religious affairs minister to discuss preparations of the Arab religious affairs ministers meeting in Amman this month.   - Temperatures rise again after cold spell.   AD DUSTOUR   - Crown Prince Hassan congratulates Algerian president on the success of national reconciliation.   - Arab Bank Group profits rise 13.8 percent in the first half of 1996.   - Government arrests Hilmi al-Asmar, the chief editor of the political weekly Al-Sabil; and Information Minister Muasher says following up on case and Asmar will be released soon on bail.   - Parliament Speaker Srour meets German parliamentary committee and says Germany's stance on Arab issues is valued. 
19528 !GCAT  These are the leading stories in the Tunisian press on Friday.   Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.   LA PRESSE   - President Ben Ali receives Mohamed Belhadj Amor, leader of the opposition Parti de l'Unite Populaire; renews attachment to democratic principles.   LE TEMPS   - Tunisian businesswomen exhibition starts.   - President Ben Ali names new ambassadors to Turkey, Czech Republic, Sweden and Great Britain. 
19529 !GCAT !GDIP  Turkish Prime Minister Necmettin Erbakan has broken weeks of silence on the Iraq crisis and spoken out against any U.S. military strike on southern neighbour Iraq, the Turkish press said on Friday.   "America could attack Iraq again and enflame the situation.   But we don't want an increase in tension," the Hurriyet newspaper quoted Erbakan as saying at a priavte lunch on Thursday for leading Turkish journalists.   "One of the causes of the situation in Iraq is America's failure to put forward an unambiguous, clear and lucid solution to the Iraq issue," he said.   Other papers carried similar remarks and quoted him as saying that three Turkish soldiers a day were dying in southeast Turkey in attacks by Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) rebels who have bases in Kurdish-held north Iraq.   Erbakan, an Islamist in power since June, had not commented on two U.S. missile strikes on Iraq earlier this month and the subsequent U.S. military build up in the Gulf.   His deputy Tansu Ciller, a pro-Western secularist, has played Turkey's leading role in meeting Iraqi and U.S. officials during the crisis.   She said this week that NATO member Turkey would not allow U.S. planes to bomb Iraq from a base in southern Turkey if Washington asked for permission.   Erbakan urged Baghdad and its new Kurdish ally Massoud Barzani to implement a previous autonomy agreement for Iraq's Kurds to end a power vaccum in northern Iraq that Ankara says helps the PKK maintain bases there.   "If, as a result of that, the region were cleansed of terrorism, peace and security were established and commerce were rejuvinated then we would have accomplished our aims," Hurriyet quoted Erbakan as saying. 
19530 !GCAT  These are some of the leading stories in Israeli newspapers on Friday.   Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.   JERUSALEM POST   - Two soldiers killed in south Lebanon clash.   - Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu complains to U.S. Middle East peace envoy Dennis Ross about Egyptian threats.   - Teva's MS drug gets initial okay from FDA advisory panel.   In the past the FDA has usually followed the panel's advice.   - Peace talks with Syria unlikely to resume soon.   - Finance Minister Dan Meridor to ask government to approve Brodett savings reform despite Netanyahu's reservations.   - Cutbacks at Frutarom, electrochemical industries plant south of Acre, spark walkout.   - Africa-Israel shareholders approve spinoff of Leumi Insurance Holdings, parent company of Migdal.   GLOBES   - Meridor accepts all of the Brodett recommendations for capital market reforms, including taxation of short-term savings.   - Treasury sources: Netanyahu did not oppose committee recommendations in talks with its members.   - Interest rates expected to fall after Yom Kippur by about 0.5 percent.   HAARETZ   - Israeli diplomat expelled from Russia at the start of the year after being caught spying was appointed recently the intelligence coordinator for the the liaison office which deals with immigration from the CIS.   - Prime minister's office will direct Israel Aircraft Industries privatisation negotiations, director-general says.   MAARIV   - Labour party leader Shimon Peres rejects request of former army chief Ehud Barak to be declared successor.   YEDIOTH AHRONOTH   - Israeli video stores on high alert ahead of Yom Kippur. 
19531 !GCAT  These are some of the leading stories in the official Iraqi press on Friday.   Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.   THAWRA   - Iraq's delegation at Beijing world parliamentary conference refutes Kuwaiti allegations that Baghdad is still holding Kuwaiti nationals.   - Iraq's deputy foreign minister meets with French officials who stress the importance of hastening implementation of the oil-for-food deal.   - Iraqi government still sending trucks loaded with oil products to northern Iraq.   - The implementation of the oil-for-food pact is a necessity - commentary.   - Safe (haven in northern Iraq) to whom and for whom - commentary.   IRAQ   - China stresses its support for Iraq's unity and sovereignty. 
19532 !GCAT !GVIO  A committee monitoring a ceasefire understanding between Lebanon and Israel will meet on Sunday to look into a Lebanese complaint over Israeli shelling of civilian areas, Lebanese official sources said on Friday.   They said representatives of the five nations making up the committee -- Lebanon, Israel, Syria, France and the United States -- will meet at 0700 gmt in Naqoura, the coastal headquarters of the U.N. Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL).   "The committee will meet following a complaint by Lebanon over Israeli shelling of civilian areas on September 19 which is in breach of the April understanding," a foreign ministry official told Reuters.   Israeli jets and gunners bombarded villages held by the pro-Iranian Hizbollah in south Lebanon on Thursday after two Israeli soldiers were killed and eight wounded inside Israel's south Lebanon occupation zone.   At least 50 shells slammed inside the villages of Ain Bouswar and Jba'a, wounding a Lebanese civilian woman in Jba'a who was hurt by flying debris.   An April understanding -- which brought to an end 17 days of an Israeli blitz on Lebanon -- banned firing from or at civilian targets on the two sides of the border but did not rule out guerrilla attacks on Israeli troops inside the zone.   Hizbollah is fighting to oust Israel from the 15-km (nine mile)-deep border zone. 
19533 !GCAT  These are the leading stories in the Egyptian press on Friday.   Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.   AL-AHRAM   - Prime Minister Ganzouri tells al-Ahram that the aim of the government is to change the image of Egypt; says government is preparing to increase size of populated land areas and that there will not be any rise in the price of goods and services in the coming period.   - Egypt to present 52 investment projects worth $16 billion to Middle East economic summit.   - Mubarak sends two messages to UAE's Sheikh Zaid and Lebanon's Hrawi and calls Saudi's King Fahd.   - Foreign Minister Moussa to leave for New York on Saturday to attend U.N. General Assembly meeting.   - Seuz Canal offers 20 percent reduction for containers.   AL-AKHBAR   - Expanded cabinet meeting on Thursday discussed preparations for Middle East economic summit.   Ganzouri says Mubarak asked sponsors of peace process to provide atmosphere of trust so that conference can succeed.   - Jordan papers say Mubarak may visit soon.   - Life sentences for Gama'a men for Sanabou massacre.   AL-GOMHURIA   - Egyptian and Kuwaiti businessmen agree on 16 joint projects.   - Kafr el-Dawwar bride chose suicide over divorce. 
19534 !GCAT  These are the leading stories in the Turkish press on Friday.   Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.   SABAH   - Prime Minister Necmettin Erbakan dreams of bringing the Turkish lira on a one-to-one parity with the U.S. dollar.   - European Parliament starts war against Turkey because Ankara has not realised its promises under the custom union accord it signed with the European Union last year.   MILLIYET   - The second economy package of the Islamist-led government aiming to raise another $10 billion consists of taxes and price rises.   - Famous pop star Tina Turner in Istanbul for series of concerts.   HURRIYET   - Islamist media says beauty contests are "separatist" as they draw a clear distinction between people as ugly and beautiful.   CUMHURIYET   - The mystery over nine people killed in mainly-Kurdish southeastern province of Diyarbakir a month ago is not lifted.   DUNYA   - The second economic package of the Islamist-led government is more realistic than the first one.   YENI YUZYIL   - Erbakan to meet a leading religious figure Fethullah Gulen on October 2 for reconciliation of rival Islamists.   ZAMAN   - The West acts against separatist Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) role in drug trafficking. 
19535 !GCAT  These are the leading stories in the Beirut press on Friday.   Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.   AN-NAHAR   -Two Israeli soldiers killed in south Lebanon.   Fears of a widescale Israeli military operation aiming at imposing the "Lebanon First" deal.   -Irish Defense Minister in Beirut: I will seek the implementation of U.N. security council resolution 425 in the interest of peace in the region.   -Ahmad Hallaq will be executed by firing squad tomorrow for a Beirut suburb 1994 blast.   AS-SAFIR   -Some 100 broadcast media workers took part in a sit-in outside the information ministry in Beirut in protest against the government decision to slash the mass of broadcast media outlets dominating airwaves.   -The foreign ministry followed closely the south Lebanon attacks.   Bouez said Lebanon was preparing to file a complaint to the five-nation committee monitoring an April 26 ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon.   AL-ANWAR   -Israeli air raids and heavy artillery shelling of the Iqlim al-Toufah mountain ridges.   AD-DIYAR   -President Hrawi, Prime Minister Hariri and Acting Finance Minister Siniora discussed the 1997 state budget.   NIDA'A AL-WATAN   -Israel's Prime Minister Netanyahu breached the April understanding banning the firing from or at civilian targets on the two sides of the border. 
19536 !G15 !G155 !GCAT !GCRIM  The European Parliament pressed the European Union on Thursday to act to curb child sex and trafficking rings, saying the fight against sexual abuse of children must be an "absolute priority".   "The scourge of paedophilia, trade in children and sexual exploitation is constantly increasing, not only in isolated cases but also through transnational networks and sex tourism, which involve extreme violence," the parliament said in a resolution.   "Combatting the sexual exploitation of children must be an absolute priority for all EU member states, and the European Union must support their efforts," deputies said.   The text urged EU governments to create the legal frameworks for police and justice departments to pool efforts to break up child prostitution networks and to pursue those EU nationals involved in child "sex tourism" outside the 15-country bloc.   Other suggested measures included the establishment of a central register of abducted children, more money for Europol -- the bloc's embryonic police force -- to fight such crimes and special training for those pursuing sex criminals.   But a last-minute amendment backing the creation of an EU register of convicted paedophiles was defeated.   Parliament's call to action follows Belgium's unfolding horror story of child kidnapping, sexual abuse and murder in which four girls have been found dead since August and another two have been rescued alive from captors' hands.   Belgian police have arrested nine people on a series of charges since finding the girls alive, including convicted child rapist Marc Dutroux.   The affair has revolted the country and raised questions of police bungling and political cover-up.   Euro-MPs also called for action to stop criminals using the Internet to disseminate pornography and to deal in women and children.   They urged the European Commission to look into technical and legal measures, at European and global level, to combat the use of the information superhighway for criminal purposes.   They said a strong regulatory framework for controlling the networks was needed to ensure that people's personal and social rights were enhanced by the advent of the new technology.   Parliament's calls came the day after Irish Prime Minister John Bruton pledged to use his country's tenure of the six-month EU presidency to push for coordinated EU action.   "Recent events brought home to us all the obscene and shocking crimes perpetrated against children on our continent," Bruton said in a speech to Euro-MPs.   His remarks followed those of European Justice Commissioner Anita Gradin, who urged last week that EU's 15 countries end their foot-dragging over the issue.   She said an urgent ratification of the Europol Convention to launch the Hague-based police agency was one concrete way they could fight the child-sex trade which has shocked the world.   Among the ideas Gradin will float at a Dublin meeting of EU justice and home affairs ministers on September 26-27 are that countries should try people who travel abroad to buy child sex. 
19537 !GCAT !GREL  Pope John Paul held an outdoor mass in Brittany on Friday, the second day of his trip to France, in a region long a religious bastion opposed to secular traditions of the 1789 Revolution.   The 76-year-old Pontiff, looking relatively robust on the second day of a four-day trip testing his fragile health, waved to the tens of thousands of faithful before the mass in the northwestern hamlet of Sainte-Anne d'Auray in bright sunshine.   He ascended the huge blue and grey wooden altar platform, topped by a wooden crucifix, by a hydraulic lift out of view of the congregation, which fell short of the 150,000 people Church leaders had expected.   Despite chilly temperatures some of the faithful had camped out overnight in sleeping bags to ensure a spot near the altar for a view of the Pope, the first Pontiff to visit Brittany.   Several dozen bishops and hundreds of priests also attended the mass.   The Pope, on his last foreign trip before going into hospital next month to have his appendix removed, was also to address 3,000 young couples with their children later on Friday.   He was expected to urge the faithful to spread the message of Christ and extol family values before returning to Tours, where he is spending each of three nights on the trip.   So far he has avoided stirring controversy in France about his strict moral teachings or about the role of the Church.   According to tradition, Sainte-Anne, the Virgin Mary's mother, appeared to farmer Yves Nicolazic in Auray in 1624, ordering him to rebuild a ruined chapel.   Two men in traditional Brittany dress carried a golden-coloured metre-high (3 ft-high) statue of the saint to the altar.   Wrecked again during the 1789 revolution, the chapel was later rebuilt into a basilica which became a focus of resistance to a 1905 Republican law to separate the state and the Church.   Thousands of Bretons gathered at the basilica in March 1906 to foil the official inventory of church property ordered under the law.   The government had to send troops to Sainte-Anne to carry out the inventory later that year.   On his first day on Thursday, the Pope and President Jacques Chirac sought to defuse a controversy in France over whether Chirac had been violating the 1905 law separating Church and State by partly funding the papal visit.   The Pontiff chose to stress solidarity with the suffering, the poor, the unemployed and the sick.   Chirac welcomed him on his arrival in the western city of Tours in the name of a secular state proud of its historic roots and spirituality.   French newspapers reflected the French people's widely different reactions to his visit.   "Secularism: the Pope and Chirac bury the controversy," the daily France-Soir said in a headline welcoming their efforts to avoid dispute.   "Pope Jean Paul II's lesson in courage," the daily Le Parisien said, focusing on his struggle with illness.   "The Pope is here: let's celebrate the Republic," the leftist daily Liberation said.   Sixty-seven groups including leftists, anarchists and freemasons are planning a rally in Paris on Sunday to back the secular ideals of the Revolution and protest against the Pope's ban on condoms, birth control and abortion.   Most of France's 58 million people are nominal Catholics, but only six million attend mass, and many of these believe Pope John Paul's conservative teachings are out of date.   Opinion polls show most French people are indifferent to his visit.   Security was stringent after a crude bomb was defused two weeks ago at a basilica which the Pope visited on Thursday.   The unknown attackers had scrawled "In nomine-Pope-BOOM!"   on the wall of the crypt. 
19538 !GCAT  The following are the main stories   from Friday morning's German newspapers:   FRANKFURTER ALLGEMEINE ZEITUNG   - The return of Bosnian refugees to begin on October 1.   State interior ministers say that singles and childless couples should go first and from next summer families   - The German population is getting older.   Also smaller as birthrate declines, life expectancy rises   - Arafat in Germany seeks international support for Mideast peace process.   Says he has "great hopes" from Germany   HANDELSBLATT   - Bosnian war refugees to be send back from October   - Brussel and Bonn want compromise on dispute over subsidies for Volkswagen   - Arafat, in speech to state parliament in Hesse, sees danger for new conflict in the Mideast, but wants to keep peace process moving forward   SUEDDEUTSCHE ZEITUNG   - Bosnian war refugees to be sent back starting October 1, forced repatration also possible from this date.   States can decide on their own when to implement measures   - Entrance exam for medical students to be discontinued in 1998   - Reconstruction of eastern Germany will last at least another 15 years, officials from Economics Ministry say   DIE WELT   - Bosnian to be returned from October 1   - Bonn coalition wants further budget cuts   -- Bonn Newsroom +49 228 2609760 
19539 !C13 !C24 !C31 !C312 !CCAT !G15 !G153 !GCAT  European Commission President Jacques Santer said on Friday that Britain's decision to hold up a planned cull of cattle at risk from mad cow disease had not influenced the rest of Europe's view of the issue.   "The position of the Commission has not changed," he told a Reuters Television reporter at the Commission's Brussels headquarters.   The British government on Thursday said it was putting a full-scale cull of beef cattle most at risk from bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) on hold because of evidence from researchers that the disease would die out in five years.   The European Union has rejected such a move saying Britain should carry out an agreed plan to slaughter up to 147,000 as part of an agreement that would eventually lead to the lifting of its worldwide ban on British beef exports.   Santer declined to comment further on the British move.   On Thursday, however, the Commission made it clear that although it would study the new research it considered that a full-scale cull was an intergral part of the deal reached by EU leaders at a summit in Florence, Italy, in June.   The summit agreed on a step-by-step plan for lifting the ban on British beef, althout it set no timetable.   "The Commission stated very clearly...that for the time being there was nothing new.   We have the Florence decision which is being put into effect and it remains in effect," Commission chief spokesman Nikolaus van der Pas told reporters. 
19540 !GCAT  NEUE ZUERCHER ZEITUNG   - Farmers in the Canton of Freiburg blocked highways with their tractors on Thursday in protest of a government proposal to cull 230,000 cows because of suspected mad cow disease.   - EU Commissioner Mario Monti is not making any progress in his bilateral negotiations with Swiss president Jean-Pascal Delamuraz on the free flow of people.   - Switzerland is giving 500,000 Swiss francs to two Jewish organisations for surviving Holocaust victims and the maintain work at the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp.   - A Swissair jumbo jet enroute to Tokyo was forced to make an emergency landing in Helsinki after its pilot had a stroke while flying over Russian airspace.   - Nestle subsidiary Perrier-Vittel SA acquired a 49 percent stake in Societe des Eaux Minerales Libanaises, its first acquisition in the Middle East.   TAGES ANZEIGER   - Swiss transportation minister Moritz Leuenberger said he views Geneva's plan to raise landing fees for domestic flights as an act of revenge against Swissair for cutting its flights to Geneva.   - Consumer goods group Valora is expecting a 70 percent profit rise to 70 million Swiss francs for the fiscal year 1995.   JOURNAL DE GENEVE   - The Swiss Commission for Economic Questions said that Switzerland is officially in recession. 
19541 !GCAT  Headlines from major national newspapers.   Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.   EL PAIS   - Aznar faces internal rebellion over finance pact with CiU   - Doctors are the only state workers whose salaries will rise   - Mayor Oreja wants "negotiated end" to ETA   - Dole hits floor for trying to dance the Macarena   EL MUNDO   - Public employees near revolt at confirmation of salary freeze   - PP swallows in silence its stupor at Eduardo Serra's words   - Aznar and Pujol will meet next week to agree budget   DIARIO 16   - Gonzalez wanted to tell King about his worries about the content of his speeches   - Oreja - "I'm not afraid of the word dialogue"   ABC   - France receives Pope, an "untiring pilgrim for peace"   CINCO DIAS   - Credit Lyonnais retreats - negoitating sale of up to 30 branches of 186 network and is ready to rid itself of all   - Pension reform, watered down   EXPANSION   - The Catalan business association says budget cuts insufficient   - Analysts don't see Spain in EMU in 1999 - international poll   - Public deficit of 4.2 percent in 1997, according to Merrill Lynch   - Airtel allies itself with BCH to reopen commercial battle with Telefonica and capture 50,000 clients   - Risk premium on debt falls to historic lows   GACETA DE LOS NEGOCIOS   - Public workers challenge government on salary freeze   - Ebro and General Azucarera "condemned to understand each other" to defend production 
19542 !GCAT !GDIP  Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in an interview published on Thursday he accepted France's efforts to play a more active role in Middle East peacemaking.   The hardline Israeli leader, due to visit Paris next week, told the French magazine Valeurs Actuelles he was not sure the European Union had a coherent foreign policy or understood the dangers which the creation of a Palestinian state would imply.   Netanyahu, whose opposition to trading occupied Arab land for peace has been criticised by France, said he did not believe President Jacques Chirac's policy was "aimed exclusively towards the Arab countries to the detriment of other countries".   "It seems to me that France simply wants to play an active role in the region, commensurate with its real importance.   That is a healthy and normal ambition," he said.   Chirac, who will meet Netanyahu next Wednesday and tour the Middle East next month, has sought a bigger role for Paris alongside the United States in the peace process.   He sent his foreign minister to the region in April to help negotiate a ceasefire between Israel and Lebanese Hizbollah guerrillas, using France's good contacts with Syria and Iran.   The French Foreign Ministry said on Thursday it had reassured Israel about suspicious Syrian troop movements in southern Lebanon, boasting that its intelligence network had concluded the movements were a routine redeployment.   Asked about EU support for Palestinian self-determination, Netanyahu said: "I am not sure the European Union has really got a fully thought-out or coherent common foreign policy so far.   "I do not know either whether the EU has understood all the implications of the creation of a sovereign Palestinian state.   Such a state would control Israel's water resources and airspace, could invite the armed forces of Arab states or Islamic extremists on to its territory, could continue to formulate extremist demands towards the State of Israel."   Netanyahu, who will tour Britain, France and Germany next week, said it would not be logical for the Europeans to be more categorical about the final shape of peace than the parties involved in negotiations. 
19543 !E12 !ECAT !G15 !G151 !G154 !GCAT  A majority of Danes remain opposed to their country joining Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) a new opinion poll published on Friday shows.   The Sonar survey for the Danish daily Jyllands Posten said that 51 percent of Danes are still against monetary union and only 31 percent want the Danish opt out revoked.   Danes voted in a 1993 referendum to endorse the Maastricht treaty on condition that Denmark did not join EMU.   Although Denmark is one of a handful of countries fulfilling the membership criteria it cannot, therefore, join unless a fresh plebiscite overturns the previous decision. 
19544 !E12 !ECAT !G15 !G151 !G154 !GCAT  Belgian National Bank governor Alfons Verplaetse said on Friday he was optimistic that Europe's planned currency union (EMU) would begin, as planned, at the end of the decade.   In an interview with Reuters Financial Television broadcast on Friday, Verplaetse said, "I do not see why there should not be a decision of the heads of state of governments at the beginning of 1998 appointing the countries which will be part of the first wave to start EMU on January 1, 1999"   The only factor which could still derail the timeplan, Verplaetse said, would be an economic recession.   But he was confident the economic recovery was underway in Europe, even though it was difficult to tell how strong this recovery will be.   Speaking about the nations which will not join the currency union from the beginning, Verplaetse said he favoured an "ERM II", a system like the current European Rate Mechanism.   He also said that Finland would "one of these weeks join the ERM system."   Verplaetse said European finance ministers and central bankers were likely to make a substantial amount of progress at the weekend's informal ECOFIN meeting in Dublin, Ireland, a meeting where traditionally no policies are adopted.   "Substantial progress will be done in this informal ECOFIN meeting," Verplaetse said, adding however that nothing specific will likely result from the meeting.   --Frankfurt Newsroom, +49 69 756525 
19545 !E12 !ECAT !GCAT !GPOL !GVOTE  Hiatus or stall?   With national elections due on Sunday, Greeks are looking forward to a break from what has been a crash course in economics during the month- long campaign.   Adrift in issues such as the first phase of EMU (European Monetary Union) and fatigued by years of austerity in the name of European Union convergence, they must decide who is better fit to captain their ship towards an integrated European economy.   Whether they stick with socialist Prime Minister Costas Simitis, who inherited the job just eight months ago, or take a chance on conservative opposition leader Miltiades Evert, the going will be tough.   Well into the third quarter, Greece's economy is struggling to meet demanding revised macroeconomic targets under the EU's Maastricht convergence treaty.   Inflation's falling trend has slowed and is now 8.5 percent year-on-year.   It is officially projected to drop to 7.5 percent in December, only marginally below the eight percent rate reached in December 1995.   Despite EU applause for its long, steady decline since peaking at 22 percent in 1991, it has now reached hard core territory and will prove resistant to further declines, many economists said.   "The fiscal target of Greece's convergence plan with the EU is likely to be exceeded this year due to a shortfall in revenues and higher than expected interest rates," says Salomon Brothers.   "The 1996 general government deficit will probably reach 9.0 percent of GDP compared to a 7.6 percent target.   Next year's 4.2 percent deficit target appears unattainable irrespective of the election outcome, putting at risk the objective to stabilise the public debt ratio," the latest Salomon's report on Greece said.   After getting full marks for economic stabilisation in 1995, concentration is now centred on a harder steer towards EU convergence targets.   The socialists seem more determined to see that recovery does not stall after a first half where attention drifted on political and foreign policy issues and macroeconomic fundamentals took a turn to the worse.   As regards monetary policy, the "hard drachma" disinflation strategy which keeps the depreciation of the drachma below the inflation differential between Greece and its trading partners is losing fans in hard hit export industries.   The drachma has appreciated by almost four percent against the mark this year and this is blamed partly for the sharp fall this summer in tourism -- which effects the pocketbooks of many Greek families.   Relative to the ECU, the drachma's rate of slide has been lowered gradually to virtual stability from 10 percent in 1991.   "The matter is closed.   The government's counterinflationary foreign exchange policy will stay intact," insists National Economy Minister Yannos Papandoniou, fending off criticism.   "Resultant lower interest rates will boost business investment and result in GDP growth of 3.0 percent in 1997," he said in an interview with the Express financial newspaper.   But conservatives are making it clear they want faster growth rates, four to five percent along a downsized public sector and privatisations of state controlled firms nursed by an overburdened budget.   Will the balance tilt in favour of "steady as she goes" Simitis and his visions of stability?   Or is it finally time for work, less talk and more privatisation as Evert sees it?   So far, polls suggest it is a neck-and-neck race between the two along with a large percentage of undecided voters and four smaller parties vying to enter parliament.   To further complicate the choice, many find a reversal of role stereotypes this time around as conservatives appear more toned down on privatisation but more populist in their campaign promises to farmers, pensioners and small business.   And with warnings of more austerity ahead, socialists are having a hard time defending their ideological heritage, denounced by the centre-left as conservatives in disguise.   Political commentators now refer to "conservative populism" and "neo-conservative" socialism, leaving many voters confused. 
19546 !GCAT  Following are some of the leading stories in the Swedish papers this morning.   Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.   DAGENS NYHETER   - Sweden's defence forces are to be cut with several units throughout Sweden closed down, according to plans unveiled on Thursday by Defence Minister Thage G Peterson.   - Swedish hackers managed to break into the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency's (CIA) home page on the Internet and change its page.   - The Swedish committee in charge of bidding for Stockholm to host the 2004 Olympic Games has been severely criticised for being incompetent by a senior Swedish sports authority as an IOC team arrives in Stockholm for a four day visit.   SVENSKA DAGBLADET   - Fewer Swedes are breaking the law with crimes reported to the police down by 10 percent so far this decade.   - Cutting the use of electricity in Sweden by the year 2010 equivalent to a quarter of nuclear energy production will cost over 100 billion crowns, a study by the Energy Ministry found.   - Japan has become a new market for Swedish wood houses with exports set to increase in 1997.   DAGENS INDUSTRI   - Volvo's new light truck models will put the truck maker in direct competition with Mercedes in the 7.5 ton truck class.   The lighter trucks are the most sold of all trucks, with between 40,000 and 60,000 sold anually.   - Swedish economists from the National Institute of Economic Research and the Federation of Swedish Industries differ over estimated export figures for this year by over 23 billion crowns.   - Conference bookings are up in Stockholm with three major doctors' conferences arranged in the past few weeks, the Stockholm Convention Bureau said.   -- Paul de Bendern, Stockholm newsroom +46-8-700 1006 
19547 !C13 !CCAT !G15 !G153 !GCAT !GHEA  European Union Farm Commissioner Franz Fischler said on Friday that Britain's decision to hold up a cull of cattle most at risk from mad cow disease ruled out for now a lifting of the worldwide beef ban.   "As long as they do not meet the pre-conditions and until we have a working document from them which we can carefully check, then an end to the export ban is simply not a possibility," Fischler said at the European Parliament.    The British government said on Thursday it was putting on hold a cull of beef cattle most at risk from bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) because of evidence from researchers that the disease would die out in five years.   But Fischler warned that Britain was still bound by its agreement with the European Union to slaughter up to 147,000 cattle as part of a plan that would eventually lead to the lifting of its worldwide ban on British beef exports.   "That is a question which the British government has to address," he said, adding that London's decision did nothing to improve the poor state of the European beef market. 
19548 !C13 !CCAT !G15 !G152 !GCAT  European commissioner in charge of financial services Mario Monti has an ambitious work programme for the months to come.   But EU officials are cautious about whether the programme will be carried out as the Commission moves on highly controversial issues such as disclosure of derivatives and whether and how to regulate new means of payments such as smart cards.   The officials were also particularly wary about the chances to revive two key proposals to create a truly EU-wide market for pension funds and to update legislation on investment funds to bring in new instruments.   The following are the planned actions in the different financial sectors.   BANKING   - The Commission is discussing whether to revise the existing bank accounts directive to provide for a more accurate picture of banks exposure to market risk from derivative financial contracts.   The alternative would be to adopt a recommendation which is not legally binding.   Derivatives disclosure became a very hot topic in the wake of headline-grabbing financial scandals such as the failure of British merchant bank Barings in 1995 after Singapore-based trader Nick Leeson ran up losses of almost $1.4 billion through unauthorised derivatives deals.   Daiwa Bank was also hit by a scandal last year after it disclosed that a former bond trader at its New York branch incurred losses of $1.1 billion over an 11-year period.   However, the Commission currently thinks it is premature to adopt legally-binding legislation since other international authorities, such as the London-based International Accounting Standards Committee, are also discussing standards for derivatives accounting.   Monti will ultimately have to decide, possibly before the end of the year, on whether to propose to adopt a recommendation or revise the existing directive.   In the meantime discussion will intensify in the Commission's directorate general for internal market and financial services (DGXV) and between the Commission and national governments.   - The Commission is also working on amending the capital adequacy directive, 93/6/EEC, (CAD) to incorporate the modifications proposed by the Basle Committee concerning the application of banks's internal management models for measuring market risks.   A proposal is expected in December.   The CAD came into force in January together with the Investment Services Directive (ISD), which created a single passport for share dealers wishing to operate throughout the Union.   It completes the framework for prudential supervision of both banks and investment firms by providing a standard measure to capture the market risk of the institutions concerned.   But most EU states would like the CAD to be updated to take aboard the proposals agreed in the Basle Committee on the use of more sophisticated in-house models to assess risk.   - The Commission is also expected to adopt a communication on the secong banking directive, EEC/89/646, clarifying a bank's right to provide services throughout the EU after it has been authorised in its home country.   The communication is also to clarify when the concept of "general good" can justify restrictions to that freedom.   A draft communication was adopted in November which said a bank could start operations in a foreign EU country after having informed the relevant local authority without waiting for its green light.   It also said national restrictions to the right to provide banking services should be non-discriminatory, objective and proportinate.   - Finally, the Commission is preparing a second report on the implementation of the money laundering directive, 91/308/EEC, an increasingly hot topic since the EU's internal borders were scrapped in 1993.   Publication expected early next year.   A Commission first report, in March 1995, said that significant progress had been made in fighting money laundering, but advocated continued vigilance.   The directive obliges banks to require identification of customers when transactions exceed 15,000 European currency units.   But concerns have been raised, especially in France and Belgium, that organised crime is finding it easier to invest dirty money now that border controls no longer exist.   An international conference on economic crime in Cambridge, England, last wekend also questioned the very existence of off-shore financial centres and bank secrecy laws saying they provided the support for money laundering.   INSURANCE   - Green paper on pension funds.   This is one of the most eagerly waited Commission initiatives in the field of financial services following years of wrangling at the EU ministerial level.   Timing is end of October.   Commission sources said the paper would be dealing with such things as current national investment and fund management restrictions; taxation aspects; and whether there is need for EU legislation on pension funds altogether.   The Commission was forced to withdraw in 1994 a draft directive, COM(93)237, on the issue due to opposition from a majority of EU states to allow for funds to invest their assets how and wherever it is most suitable and to choose a foreign depositary.   Monti said in June he thought regulation would be justified if there was a demand for cross-border activity by pension funds, which represented 1.1 trillion Ecus in 1993.   - The EU executive is also expected to propose a directive to ensure victims of car accidents in a foreign EU country are compensated.   Currently, under the Green Card system, if for example an insured Belgian driver is held responsible for an accident in Germany where he is visiting, the German victim of the accident will get compensated.   But if the victim in the same accident is the Belgian resident it is likely that it will be both long and difficult to obtain redress.   Just how long and difficult it is depends on whether the insurance company of the German resident is represented in Belgium.   The European insurance committee (CEA), which represents the industry, told Reuters the Commission was proposing that each insurance company should appoint an agent in all EU countries.   SECURITIES   In this field, the Commission will be trying to change its ill-fated 1993 proposal, COM(93)37, to change the so-called UCITS directive, EEC/85/661, to include a larger number of instruments such as cash and money-market funds as well as funds of funds.   A deadlock at ministerial level since 1994 has forced the Commission to revise its strategy and to consult member states in July on the issue.   But the Commission sources were pessimistic about the changes of making a breakthrough as the consultation process had brought limited input and only highligthed the huge gap between the defensors -- a minority led by Britain -- and the opponents of more freedom for funds.   PAYMENT SYSTEMS   The Commission is planning to adopt at the end of the year a communication on new means of payments which would update two old recommendations on traditional credit and debit cards and, more importantly, cover electronic money such as smart cards and payments over computer online networks.   On traditional cards, the main issue has been whether they should be issued by financial institutions only or whether other companies -- such as department stores -- should also be allowed to have theirs.   But the focus in the payment systems area is increasingly shifting to payments over computer networks such as the Internet due to concerns that consumers are not duly protected and that the networks can act as a means to launder money of criminal origin.   A Comission source said the communication would be addressing the issues of prudential supervision and issuing or cards as well as criminal law and consumer protection. 
19549 !GCAT  Following are some of the leading stories in Norwegian papers this morning:   AFTENPOSTEN   - A survey on equality of the sexes in Norwegian companies commissioned by several government ministries shows that efforts to recruit more women in top positions haven't had any effects.   The problem is not primarily that women are hampered by maternity leave or small children in their career, but that company boards are old-fashioned in selecting top leaders, who usually are men.   - State-owned oil company Statoil wants to recruit more women, especially in leading positions.   By the year 2000 the company will have 20 percent women on all levels of staff.   - The Postal Authority will shut down 1,400 post offices before 1999, saving 800 million crowns a year on the cutbacks.   DAGENS NAERINGSLIV   - Pharmaceutical group Nycomed ASA is looking for ways to save money after booking poor results in the first six months of 1996.   Svein Aaser, head of Nycomed, says staff layoffs are planned, but gave no figures.   - Shipowner John Fredriksen is in negotiations with Hyundai in South Korea on building up to four new Suexmax tankers. 
19550 !E41 !E411 !ECAT !GCAT !GJOB !GVIO  French FO labour union leader Marc Blondel said on Friday he hoped for a big turnout at a weekend demonstration called by his union against government inertia in the face of an an unemployment "catastrophe".   "We decided on July 3 to hold a demonstration.   On July 3 we already knew through employee committees the numbers private companies were planning to get rid of -- 97,000 in the second half of 1996, that's a catastrophe," Blondel told RTL radio.   "If you look at unemployment over time, it's not even stabilising and it risks rising even further next year, by between 120,000 and even 150,000 by our estimates.    The non-partisan Force Ouvriere union has called for a demonstration on Saturday in what will be the first test of reaction in the wake of the centre-right government's 1997 spending-cut budget presented on Wednesday.   Blondel said the budget was a restrictive one which had been drawn up to produce the public deficit requirement of European monetary union and that he was sceptical about the assumptions for 1997 economic growth underpinning the budget mathematics.   "It's above all a budget arrived at by saying 'we have to meet a certain result to meet the Maastricht criteria'... and from there we put the various elements together," he said.   "Notably 2.3 percent growth -- I'd like to know where that will come from with a budget which has no spark in it," he said.   The government is forecasting growth of 2.3 percent in gross domestic product (GDP) for 1997.   Blondel said the message from President Jacques Chirac was that he was powerless on unemployment and said that Saturday's demonstration would warn the government over economic policy.   "We do not accept the rather strange declaration from the President of the Republic on July 14 where he seemed to say he was powerless on this issue."   "We will mount a public demonstration, with a high level of participation if possible, to send a warning to the government on its economic policy."   On the 1996 freeze in civil servive pay rises, which Prime Minister Alain Juppe has said he is open to unblocking, Blondel said: "I'm willing to talk, on the amount and when it applies from...and where it will be found in the budget that is being proposed."   French unemployment stands at a record 12.5 percent.   -- Paris Newsroom +33 1 4221 5452 
19551 !GCAT  These are the leading stories in the Maltese press on Friday.   Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.   THE TIMES   The state-owned Mid-Med bank and the Malta Union of Bank Employees are in dispute again over working conditions.   L-ORIZZONT   - Bank of Valletta is seeking to extend opening hours.   IN-NAZZJON   Prime Minister says ruling Nationalist Party deserves to win election with increased majority.   The elections must be held by June next year. 
19552 !E12 !ECAT !G15 !G151 !G154 !GCAT  A majority of Danes remain opposed to their country joining European Economic and Monetary Union (EMU), a new opinion poll published on Friday showed.   The Sonar survey for the Danish daily Jyllands Posten said 51 percent of Danes are still against monetary union and only 31 percent want the Danish opt-out revoked.   Danes voted in a 1993 referendum to endorse the Maastricht treaty on condition that Denmark did not join EMU.   Although Denmark is one of a handful of countries fulfilling the membership criteria it cannot, therefore, join unless a fresh plebiscite overturns the previous decision.   --Steve Weizman, Copenhagen newsroom +45 33969650 
19553 !GCAT !GDIP  Russian Foreign Minister Yevgeny Primakov arrived in Vienna on Friday for talks with NATO Secretary-General Javier Solana on the future of the Atlantic alliance and international forces in Bosnia, officials said.   Primakov was first scheduled to meet Austrian Chancellor Franz Vranitzky to discuss bilateral relations before addressing the Vienna-based permanent council of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).   Moscow has signalled that it wants to strengthen the OSCE by giving it new conflict-prevention powers at a summit of the European security forum in Lisbon in December, an idea backed by Germany.   Solana, who was due to arrive in the Austrian capital later on Friday, was to meet Vranitzky before entering talks with Primakov at 16.30 local time (1430 GMT).   "They will be discussing the obvious themes -- IFOR (the NATO-led peace implementation force in Bosnia) and NATO enlargement," one diplomat close to the talks said.   Solana said last week that Russia had nothing to fear if NATO expanded to include former Soviet bloc countries.   The front-runners for membership of the military alliance are the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland.   Moscow has opposed NATO plans to extend membership eastwards, citing security concerns.   But Russian leaders have softened their stance following President Boris Yeltsin's victory in presidential elections in June.   In a keynote speech in Stuttgart on September 6, U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher called for a new charter defining NATO's ties with Russia to be drawn up next year as the alliance prepared to admit new members.   Christopher also outlined the U.S. vision of a "new Atlantic community", transcending the borders of the old Cold War divide and bolstering the Partnership for Peace programme.   Primakov, who took office in January, said earlier this month that Moscow's position on NATO expansion had not changed but committed Moscow to a dialogue with the West on Europe's new security structures. 
19554 !GCAT  The following are leading domestic stories in Portuguese newspapers.   DIARIO ECONOMICO   - Bank of Portugal appeals for salary rises to be contained next year as it worries about inflation trends.   - Portugal Telecom profit up 56.3 percent to 23 billion escudos in the first half of 1996 compared to the same period in 1995.   PUBLICO   - The government could earn 123 billion escudos from the part-privatisation of cement group Cimpor next month if the share price remains at current levels.   DIARIO DE NOTICIAS   - Portugal's second biggest trade union group, the UGT, paid 1.2 billion escudos to banks in loan payments for professional training between 1988 and 1995.   A further loan for one billion escudos has been negotiated between the UGT and the banks.   The large indebtedness is creating concern within the UGT.   -- Lisbon bureau 3511-3538254 
19555 !E12 !ECAT !G15 !G151 !G154 !GCAT  European Union plans for a common currency are expected to receive a solid push forward this weekend when EU finance ministers and central bank governors gather informally in Dublin.   The meeting, coming in the midst of an intense scramble by EU governments to bring their 1997 budget deficits in line with the Maastricht treaty, will focus on three important and rather technical areas of economic and monetary union (EMU), the plan to have a common currency among qualifying European Union countries.   The three areas, including a budget stability pact to ensure fiscal discipline among EMU participants, a new exchange rate mechanism (ERM) linking the single currency to non-members, and the legal underpinnings of monetary union are all scheduled for discussion.   While the talks in Dublin Castle on Saturday are seen essential in keeping the considerable political momentum behind EMU on course, EU ministers and monetary officials have sought to play down what might emerge from the session.   "This will be a work in progress meeting.   I am not expecting any dramatic or earth-shattering announcements to come out of it," Irish finance minister Ruairi Quinn told a news conference on Tuesday.   Quinn's measured view was also echoed by other officials.   "I would expect that they present a positive picture of recent developments," said one EU monetary official.   "Anything else is really not justified."   Among the three topics, a budget stability pact is being cast as the centerpiece of the meeting, with recent progress on the issue by the EU's monetary committee setting the stage for a comprehensive deal later this year.   The committee, a secretive group of national treasury and central bank officials, reached a compromise last week that would punish EMU members which run deficits above three percent of gross domestic product in a semi-automatic fashion.   While several details remain unresolved -- the size of fines, when they would take effect, and a better definition of the economic circumstances under which a country's poor finances would be overlooked -- there is the expectation that Dublin will give its blessing to what has been accomplished so far.   Germany, the main catalyst behind a revamped EU excessive deficits procedure, is expected to leave Dublin relatively pleased at having won at least part of what it wanted.   German finance minister Theo Waigel's initial proposal for a stability pact was considered by many as too severe and out of step with what was politically feasible.   Yet his desire to put more bite into the current sanctions process focused attention on a dominant worry -- for a single currency to utltimately work, national budget policies would have to be kept under control in a credible way.   As one EU official put it: "Eleven months ago most people didn't give the stability pact a chance.   Now it's on the verge of becoming legislation."   Regarding an ERM, here again, the ministers and bankers are likely to nod through the vision emerging from the European Monetary Institute, forerunner to a European Central Bank (ECB).   Alexandre Lamfalussy, the EMI's head, will outline a system which is voluntary, establishes the single currency as an anchor and gives the ECB an influential voice in realigning the value of currencies under pressure.   But specifics, such as the width of the trading bands for non-EMU currencies, or the limits on how much the ECB would spend to support them should they come under speculative attack, are to likely to be kept vague.   Lastly, there is the tricky issue of implementing a legal framework for EMU in advance of its expected 1999 start date.   While considerable progress has been made in clarifying the legal aspects of a single currency, such as the contractual rights investors have after it has begun, the Maastricht treaty only allows such a framework to come into force in 1999.   For many in the financial markets this is much too late.   The task for the ministers and central bankers then is to find a way around this rather technical and legalistic hurdle.   EU officials caution that the informal nature of the Dublin meeting means specific decisons cannot be reached.   Instead, the gathering is expected to rubber-stamp what has been accomplished so far with a view towards more concrete and comprehensive decisions in December when EU leaders meet in Dublin for their twice-yearly summit. 
19556 !E12 !ECAT !G15 !G154 !GCAT !M13 !M132 !MCAT  The Swedish government reiterated on Friday in its 1997 budget proposal that linking the Swedish crown to Europe's Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM) was not on the agenda.    "The government's position is that participation in the European Exchange Rate Mechanism ERM is not on the agenda," the budget said.   The comment was a repeat of Sweden's Finance Minister Erik Asbrink's statement on Thursday that a link was not on the cards and a decision by Sweden would not be affected by a decision by other European Union nations.   Analysts say Finland may be on the verge of announcing it will link the markka to the ERM.   However, the government said that the Swedish budget would meet economic criteria to participate in Europe's economic and monetary union (EMU) because the budget deficit as a proportion of GDP was falling and because of other factors.   The state deficit as a percentage of GDP would be 4.0 percent in 1996 and 2.6 percent in 1997.   "Consequently, the convergence criterion for participation in the third stage of the European monetary union will be satisfied by a reasonable margin," the budget said.   -- Stockholm newsroom, +46-8-700 1017 
19557 !GCAT  Here are the highlights of stories in the Danish press on Friday.   Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.   BERLINGSKE TIDENDE   --- The number of Danes infected with AIDS and HIV is decreasing.   Until June 30 this year 68 new AIDS cases were reported compared to 100 cases in the same period last year.   --- The Confederation of Industry wants politicians to lower Denmark's high tax level to stop more companies moving production to Eastern Europe and other low-wage areas.   --- Toy group Lego is to cut expenses by 10 to 15 percent due to decreasing sales.   The cutbacks could cost close to 200 jobs.   Lego's explanation for the falling sales is increasing competition from PC and CD-ROM products.   POLITIKEN   --- Minister of justice Bjoern Westh wants more immigrants in the Danish police force to increase confidence between immigrants and the police.   The minister has already started an information campaign and a course financed by the ministry of justice for immmigrants who are interested in police work.   JYLLANDS POSTEN   ---New EU rules on intra-community study taking effect on July 27 make it likely that fewer Danes will be able to study in other member states.   BORSEN   --- For the first time in 22 years exports of Danish furniture have decreased -- by eight percent to 2.8 billion crowns in the first six months of 1996 compared to the same period last year.   --- Denmark is to invest 750 million crowns in new projects in developing countries within the next five years leading to strong growth in Danish companies' investments in these parts of the world. 
19558 !GCAT !GREL  A French bishop ousted by the Vatican for his liberal views on Friday faulted Pope John Paul's plan to honour a fifth century king in France, saying it would help the far right and Roman Catholic tradionalists.   "Red Cleric" Jacques Gaillot, ousted from his diocese in Normandy last year and transferred to a non-existent ancient diocese in the Sahara desert, also predicted that the Vatican would lose a role in dictating moral standards for Catholics.   The Pope was to visit Brittany on Friday, the second day of a four-day visit that has aroused conflict in France between secular traditions since the 1789 Revolution and an earlier history influenced by Catholicism.   Most controversially, on Sunday the Pontiff will travel to the eastern city of Reims to celebrate the 1,500th anniversary of the baptism of Clovis, the first pagan king in western Europe to convert to Roman Catholicism.   "Sometimes I ask myself "who will be helped by this Clovis event?'  .   More than anyone else, I think it will help the extreme right and a traditionalist current in the Church," Gaillot said in an interview with France Inter radio.   He said the Pope's presence in Reims would seem to sanction extreme nationalistic views that Clovis's baptism marked the creation of a Catholic France.   Clovis's kingdom stretched from what is now Germany and the Netherlands into France.   Gaillot said he would go to Reims on Sunday to meet the Pontiff with other bishops to reaffirm ties with the Catholic Church, despite his sacking last year for liberal views on issues ranging from the use of condoms to abortion.   "I expect nothing from Rome nor from the bishops of France.   I am on a path which is both passionate and harsh, the path of fighting for those excluded from society," he said.   Gaillot said the Pope was "a man who prescribes norms, who reaffirms his authority."   He said that modern society rejected "this type of authority, and I think that it will end, this function of the authority of the Church will quickly collapse," he said. 
19559 !E12 !ECAT !G15 !G151 !G154 !GCAT  European Economic Affairs Commissioner Yves-Thibault de Silguy said in a newspaper interview on Friday that European Monetary Union would go into effect on January 1, 1999 as planned and France would be among the first wave of members.   Speaking on the eve of the Dublin finance ministers' meeting to discuss the workings of monetary union, de Silguy told Le Figaro daily that the "decision to move to the euro will be taken in the spring of 1998.   That's definite."   "Monetary union will see the light of day January 1, 1999 and a significant number of countries will take part, including France.   I have every reason to believe," he said.   De Silguy reiterated he believed France's plans to use a 37.5 billion franc one-off payment from France Telecom to reduce its deficit posed no problems at first sight.   "A priori, it seems to me it conforms to European accounting rules but I emphasise a priori," he said.   France intends to count the money -- payment for future pension obligations -- against its deficit as it seeks to reduce it to three percent of gross domestic product to qualify for monetary union.   Silguy added that he believed monetary union would, by imposing deficit restraint, pave the way for job creation.   -- Paris Newsroom +33 1 4221 5452 pmc 
19560 !C21 !C42 !CCAT !E41 !ECAT !GCAT !GJOB  Irish national airline Aer Lingus on Friday released a contingency flight schedule for Monday, September 23 in the event that a threatened strike by the airline's pilots goes ahead.   "We are still endeavouring to reach an understanding with IALPA which will avert this threat and allow the company to continue to provide normal scheduled services," Aer Lingus said in a statement.   The Irish Airline Pilots Association has issued strike notice, effective from midnight on Sunday, in protest at Aer Lingus' rejection of a 17 percent pay rise for pilots.    Newspaper reports said on Friday that either the Labour Court or the Labour Relations Commission is likely to intervene in the dispute which is coming to a head during one of the busiest months in Ireland's six-month EU presidency.   The airline had put on additional flights on its Brussels route to meet demand.   If the strike does go ahead, Aer Lingus plans to lease aircraft to provide a near-normal service on its priority routes such as Dublin-New York, Dublin-London Heathrow and its main European destinations.   The company said the alternative schedule would operate using aircraft which are in strict accordance with its high standards of comfort and safety.   -- Dublin Newsroom +353 1 676 9779 
19561 !GCAT  Following are some of the top headlines in leading Italian newspapers.   ----------   TOP POLITICAL STORIES   * After the arrest of state railway managing director Lorenzo Necci, a complicate web of politics and bribes involving also magistrates is coming to the surface (all).   * Interior Minister Giorgio Napolitano says police search at the Northern League party's headquarters in Milan was legitimate.   The search ended up in clashes between the police and members of the secessionist party (all).   *Northern League party leader Umberto Bossi seems to calm down and says he is going back to Rome.   "There is a time for everything".   (La Repubblica)   ----------   TOP BUSINESS STORIES   * Car-maker Fiat posted a 1,547 trillion lire pre-tax profit for the first half 1996 but says full year profits will be below forecasts (all).   *After the ousting of CEO Francesco Caio, Olivetti gained 11,7 pct on the stock exchange.   The troubled company is suing former managing director Renzo Francesconi who casted doubts over the validity of Olivetti's financial statements (all).   * The Italian Treasury is looking for 1 million small investors for the second tranche sale of energy giant Eni.   Small investors will be offered a discount on the public offer price (Corriere).   * In the 1997 budget, the government intends to cut funds to railway by 3 trillion lire and to raise the price of soccer pools coupon (Sole 24 Ore).   Reuters has not verified these stories and cannot vouch for their accuracy.   --Milan bureau +39266129450 
19562 !E41 !E411 !ECAT !GCAT !GJOB  The Swedish government said it expected unemployment to rise to 7.7 percent in 1996 from a forecast five months ago of 7.2 percent.   The government, presenting its 1997 budget, forecast unemployment in 1997 at 6.9 percent compared to a forecast of 6.5 percent at its last budget in April this year.   The government has pledged to halve unemployment to around 4.0 percent by the year 2000.   -- Stockholm newsroom +46-8-700 1017 
19563 !GCAT  The following are the main stories from Friday morning's Austrian newspapers.   DER STANDARD   - Foreign investment in Austria rises to 16.7 billion schillings in the first half, three times as much as in all of 1995.   Including sales of retailer Billa and paper maker Steyrermhl, more than 30 billion schillings were invested.   - Total volume of Austrian investment funds for the first time exceeds 400 billion schillings.   - Austrian sugar maker Agrana controls more than 50 percent share of Hungary's sugar market, following acquisition of five sugar plants.   - Austria's economy is recovering, but the country may miss Europe's common currency if efforts to slash its ballooning budget deficit fail, investment bank Morgan Grenfell says in a study.   - Austrian Chamber of Industry calls for corporate tax cuts totalling 1.6 billion schillings.   DIE PRESSE   - German tyre maker Continental to close down an Irish plant by the end of the year, raising hopes the group's ailing Austrian plant could be saved from closure.   - After month-long debate over apprentice training, the government has agreed to exempt companies from social security payments for trainees in their first year, Austria's chamber of commerce said.   - Machine-maker Binder says half-year net loss rose to 29.6 million schillings from 20.5 million a year ago.   KURIER   - Police bust international crime ring believed to have smuggled more than 5,000 immigrants into Austria over the past four years.   - Creditanstalt cuts stakes in several regional banks.   - Austria's planned stock market watchdog would cost as much as 35 million schillings annually.   SALZBURGER NACHRICHTEN   - Austrian Finance Minister Viktor Klima is expected to announce his final decision about the sale of Creditanstalt when he returns from a European Union finance ministers meeting in Dublin next week. 
19564 !GCAT  The following are some of the leading stories in Finnish papers this morning:   HELSINGIN SANOMAT   - Finnish financial support to improve safety of Kola nuclear reactor in Russia did not bear fruitful results.   - A third of immigrants school children who complete their basic education do not know enough Finnish to enable them to further their education, a study shows.   - Central Union of the forestry industry says division of labour within the sector has not improved job-creation.   Shortage of skilled labour begins to show in the sector.   @   - There has been an increase in the number of women candidates running in European as well as local elections.   Thirty eight percent of the candidates in the EU are women.   AAMULEHTI   - Alzheimer patients will not receive subsidies on new generation of drugs introduced into the market.   National Pension Scheme says insufficient evidence of their efficacy.   KAUPPALEHTI   - There are now bright prospects for an upturn in the metal industry.   Expected growth in the sector to reach 10 percent this year, overcoming previous low performance.   @   - Finnish banks and investment companies are considering investing millions in risk control measures.   It is particularly pertinent for trading companies because new legal regulations would require more detailed risk reporting.   - President of academic union, Mikko Viitasalo says income tax of academic profession should be lowered as an incentive to retain well-educated and competent people in Finland.   @   TURUN SANOMAT   - Negotiations between Finland and Sweden on joint border control in the Gulf of Bothnia to start next week at EU meeting in Ireland.   -- Linus Atarah, Helsinki newsroom +35 80 6805 0247 
19565 !GCAT  These are leading stories in this morning's Paris newspapers.   LES ECHOS   -- Pechiney plans to shed 5,000 jobs worldwide, including some 2,700 in France, in an effort to cut costs.   -- National accounts commission to publish report on social security today in whcih it is pessimistic about the capacity to reduce the welfare deficit, which the government has said will come in at 30 billion francs for 1997.   -- Bank of France cuts intervention rate by 10 basis points to 3.25 percent.   LA TRIBUNE DESFOSSES   -- Consumer tax on meat to help pay for safe disposal of dead cattle linked with fear of contamination by BSE "mad cow" disease.   -- State companies to receive 27 billion francs in 1997 in funds raised by privatisations.   -- Air Liberte airline shareholders reject savings plan as insufficient, company could file for bankruptcy on Monday.   L'AGEFI   -- Bankers and insurers near agreement on whether pension funds' subscribers could take their moneey out of the schemes in annuities or in a lump sum.   LE FIGARO-ECONOMIE   -- European Commissioner Yves-Thibault de Silguy says France will meet Maastricht criteria for a single currency and join the move to the euro by a significant number of countries on January 1, 1999.   LIBERATION (Economic section)   -- Government to use surpluses from peripheral social security funds and tighten health spending, to bring down the social security deficit for 1997 to 30 billion francs from an estimated 47 billion francs.   THE INTERNATIONAL HERALD TRIBUNE   -- Senior German government officials criticise France over budget manoeuvres, talk of "window dressing" in the 1997 budget presented Wednesday and call for real structural reform.   -- Paris Newsroom +33 1 4221 5381 
19566 !E21 !E211 !ECAT !GCAT !GWELF  France's national audit commission says in a report due to be released that 1996 augurs poorly for the rebalancing of the social security accounts, financial daily Les Echos said on Friday.   The separate Social Security accounts body is expected to put a figure on the 1996 social security deficit imminently, with press reports saying the figure is likely to be in excess of 50 billion francs.   The government said this week it was forecasting a deficit for social security accounts, which cover healthcare, pensions and family benefit, of 30 billion francs in 1997. 
19567 !GCAT  Following are the highlights of stories reported in the Irish press on Friday.   IRISH INDEPENDENT   - Irish Ferries is to scrap its continental sailings this winter in a move that will result in the lay-off of up to 400 workers.   - The man who kidnapped Guinness heir Jennifer Guinness ten years ago and who absconded from police custody was seen in a pub the night before he escaped.   - The Irish couple who adopted a Chinese toddler, Peng Xiju, returned home to Dublin on Thursday night.    - Large repatriation of profits by multinationals in Ireland has given Ireland a 20 million pounds payments deficit with the rest of the world in the first three months of 1996.   - Bookie shop off-course betting turnover in Ireland is likely to reach 400 million this year as the industry rebounds from the effects of industrial disputes and bad weather last year.   - Irish exploration company Ivernia, which has a 50 percent stake in the Lisheen mine in Co Tipperary, said on Thursday it had invested 2.96 million pounds in the mining project.    IRISH TIMES   - The Irish Labour Commission or Labour Relations Commission may intervene in the pilots' dispute at Irish airline Aer Lingus before the weekend.   - Irish Enterprise and Employment minister Richard Bruton has moved to defuse the row between German company Continental AG and Irish industrial development body IDA over the shutdown of the Semperit rubber plant in Dublin.   - Brian Duncan, chief executive of Irish health insurer VHI, said he would respond in full to the criticisms of him in an independent company report presented to him on Thursday.    - Vatican sources have confirmed that the resignation of the Archbishop of Armagh, Cardinal Cahal Daly, is imminent.   - A representative of Irish-based media group Independent Newsapapers hinted on Thursday that it may not increase its offer price of NZ$10.50 per share in its takeover bid for New Zealand publishing firm Wilson and Horton. 
19568 !GCAT !GODD !GTOUR  Munich's famed Oktoberfest opens its traditional 16-day celebration to beer and bratwurst on Saturday with something new on tap this year to mark the 163rd anniversary -- the virtual Oktoberfest.   A CD-ROM called "Virtual Oktoberfest" will enable computer users to enjoy the fest's opening on Saturday from the dry comfort of their homes.   But some seven million thirsty visitors from around the world are expected to descend upon Germany's beer capital to sample the real experience.   Regular Oktoberfest-goers will be pleased to learn this year that one of the country's most-closely watched inflation index -- the price of the Oktoberfest litre of beer -- has remained stable this year.   The litre of beer -- or "Mass" as locals call it -- will fetch between 9.50 marks ($6.3) and 10.50 marks, up fractionally from 9.40 marks to 10.40 marks last year.   Munich's Mayor Christian Ude will tap the first barrel at precisely noon on Saturday, opening the the fest with a Bavarian cheer "O'zapft is" ("The keg is tapped").   The world's biggest beer party runs through October 6.   Some six million litres carried through six crowded beer tents by brawny, buxom beer maids will be consumed during the festival.   But if the past is any indication, the tent's toilets will be overcrowded.   Especially after darkness falls, visitors will have a hard time avoiding the sight, sound and smell of inebriated men urinating in the open meadows outside the beer tents.   "We will have additional toilets set up this year," said Gabriele Weihaeupl, the festival's chief organiser.   There will be 556 for women and 185 for men.   The total length of the urinal "troughs" for the men adds up to 785 metres (2,575 ft), she said.   That should be enough, she hopes.   Organisers are confident of a successful event, with turnover likely to surpass the one billion mark level once again.   They long ago gave up on hoping for "record" crowds.   In the past, the unchecked growth had threatened to spoil the Oktoberfest, making it too successful and organisers have been content to hold the attendance figures at around seven million, the level achieved in 1975.   That is still a huge number for the city of Munich to digest.   The Bavarian capital may be Germany's second largest city, but its population is just 1.7 million.   While Oktoberfest is known everywhere as a symbol of Munich merriment and the event has spawned some 2,000 similarly-named parties around the world, locals often grumble about being portrayed as lederhosen-clad country bumpkins and, to a surprisingly large degree, turn their backs on the event.   "The kitsch on the meadow", read the headline over one Oktoberfest story in one Munich daily newspaper earlier this week.   "Enjoy the beer on the meadow now, it is going to get more expensive soon" grumbled another daily.   Those laughing and drinking the most are usually either from northern Germany or foreigners, say dour Munich fest-goers.   The annual festival grew out of horse races in 1810 celebrating the marriage of Bavarian Crown Prince Ludwig.   But the prince would hardly recognise it today.   Besides the giant, smoky beer tents where loud partying strangers leap onto tables to dance together to the beat of the oom-pah-pah bands, away from the huge beer mugs, mountains of chicken and sausage there is the inescapable commercialism of the festival.   Local officials admit there is a lot of kitsch, but proudly point out they do have standards.   They rejected as too tacky, for instance, a request by one vendor to sell beer mugs equipped with breasts and large buttocks.   ($1=1.5103 Mark) 
19569 !GCAT  Following are some of the main stories in Dutch newspapers today.   Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.   FINANCIEELE DAGBLAD   - ABN AMRO Bank acquires a 74 percent stake in Polish stockbroker Dom Maklerski for undisclosed sum.   (page 3)   - Bunnik-based building firm BAM is to withdraw operations from Germany after first half German losses.   (page 1).   - Investment fund NPM is having difficulty finding enough participations in which it can invest its capital.   (page 9)   - Food retailer Ahold opens its first Tops supermarkets in Asia via its 60/40 joint venture with Perlis Plantations.   (page 4)   - Engineering consulstancy DHV returns to profit in the first half, following restructuring changes, expects recovery to continue into second half.   (page 3).   VOLKSKRANT   - Wolters Kluwer expects soon to complete the acquisition of the professional publishing activities of Little, Brown and Company, a U.S. medical and legal publisher.   (page 2)   DE TELEGRAAF   - Banks want to offer "chipknip" electronic cash cards to rivals' clients.   (page 27).   - The transport ministry has wrongly protected Dutch PTT's monopoly on data transmission via cable, says independent business arbitrator.   (page 27).   - Beers, importer of Scania trucks, increases first half profit to 20.1 million guilders from 19.6 million.   ALGEMEEN DAGBLAD   - Turnover in plants and flowers set to grow around the world in the coming years.   The world market for cut flowers is set to grow by 18.7 percent to 52.3 billion guilders by the year 2000.   Pot plant turnover seen growing 11.6 percent to 19.1 billion guilders (page 11)   - Unions threaten strike action at NS Cargo if the company does not clarify restructuring measures.   (page 11).   -- Amsterdam Newsdesk +31-20-504-5000 (FAX 31-20-504-5040) 
19570 !GCAT !GPOL !GVOTE  Hiatus or stall?   With national elections due on Sunday, Greeks are looking forward to a break from what has been a crash course in economics during a month- long campaign.   Adrift in issues such as the first phase of EMU (European Monetary Union) and fatigued by years of austerity in the name of European Union convergence, they must decide who is better able to captain their ship towards an integrated European economy.   Whether they stick with socialist Prime Minister Costas Simitis, who inherited the job just eight months ago, or take a chance on conservative opposition leader Miltiades Evert, the going will be tough.   Well into the third quarter, Greece's economy is struggling to meet demanding revised macroeconomic targets under the EU's Maastricht convergence treaty.   Inflation's falling trend has slowed and is now 8.5 percent year-on-year.   It is officially projected to drop to 7.5 percent in December, only marginally below the eight percent rate reached in December 1995.   Despite EU applause for its long, steady decline since peaking at 22 percent in 1991, it has now reached hard core territory and will prove resistant to further declines, many economists said.   "The fiscal target of Greece's convergence plan with the EU is likely to be exceeded this year due to a shortfall in revenues and higher than expected interest rates," says Salomon Brothers.   "The 1996 general government deficit will probably reach 9.0 percent of GDP compared to a 7.6 percent target.   Next year's 4.2 percent deficit target appears unattainable irrespective of the election outcome, putting at risk the objective to stabilise the public debt ratio," the latest Salomon's report on Greece said.   After getting full marks for economic stabilisation in 1995, concentration is now centred on a harder steer towards EU convergence targets.   The socialists seem more determined to see that recovery does not stall after a first half where attention drifted on political and foreign policy issues and macroeconomic fundamentals took a turn to the worse.   As regards monetary policy, the "hard drachma" disinflation strategy which keeps the depreciation of the drachma below the inflation differential between Greece and its trading partners is losing fans in hard hit export industries.   The drachma has appreciated by almost four percent against the mark this year and this is blamed partly for the sharp fall this summer in tourism -- which effects the pocketbooks of many Greek families.   Relative to the ECU, the drachma's rate of slide has been lowered gradually to virtual stability from 10 percent in 1991.   "The matter is closed.   The government's counterinflationary foreign exchange policy will stay intact," insists National Economy Minister Yannos Papandoniou, fending off criticism.   "Resultant lower interest rates will boost business investment and result in GDP growth of 3.0 percent in 1997," he said in an interview with the Express financial newspaper.   But conservatives are making it clear they want faster growth rates, four to five percent along a downsized public sector and privatisations of state controlled firms nursed by an overburdened budget.   Will the balance tilt in favour of "steady as she goes" Simitis and his visions of stability?   Or is it finally time for work, less talk and more privatisation as Evert sees it?   So far, polls suggest it is a neck-to-neck race between the two along with a large percentage of undecided voters and four smaller parties vying to enter parliament.   To further complicate the choice, many find a reversal of role stereotypes this time round as conservatives appear more toned down on privatisation but more populist in their campaign promises to farmers, pensioners and small business.   And with warnings of more austerity ahead, socialists are having a hard time defending their ideological heritage, denounced by the centre-left as conservatives in disguise.   Political commentators now refer to "conservative populism" and "neo-conservative" socialism, leaving many voters confused. 
19571 !GCAT !GCRIM !GVIO  France's top anti-terrorism judge Jean-Louis Bruguiere, who has accused six Libyan secret service officials of bombing a French airliner in 1989, has little time for red tape or diplomatic niceties.   Tireless and obstinate, the pipe- and cigar-smoking judge has grappled with French and Japanese gangsters, Middle Eastern and leftist guerrillas in a 20-year career.   Next on his slate is jailed guerrilla mastermind "Carlos the Jackal".   His meticulous investigations, and the big role he gives victims' families, have won him plaudits from colleagues, as well as some accusations from officialdom that his tenacity can turn to authoritarianism.   "I stay off the beaten paths," Bruguiere, 53, said gruffly over lunch a few days before he called for the trial in absentia of six Libyans including a brother-in-law of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi.   "I'm subversive because I use the law, the law pushed to the limit.   That necessarily leads to conflicts, institutional conflicts.   I assert myself while making the government understand what is in its best interest."   Bruguiere's chosen path led him to make a first unsuccessful attempt to enter Libya aboard a French warship in 1992.   He eventually got to Tripoli last July by road with an armed escort to question some 40 people on the downing of the UTA airlines DC-10 over Niger and the Sahara desert.   A painstaking search of the desert sands, a reconstruction of the plane from shards of wreckage and, crucially, an explosives-packed suitcase handed over in July by Libyan secret services helped him complete his investigation.   The suitcase, which Bruguiere believes is identical to that used to bring down the DC-10, was full of pentrite -- the same explosive used in the bombing.   Libyan officials told him it had been found in 1990 at the home of opponents of Gaddafi.   That account did not convince Bruguiere, who also searched Libyan secret service offices where he found timers and detonators believed similar to those used on the airliner.   On the trail of shadowy Middle Eastern networks, the judge sifted through the archives of former East Germany's Stasi secret police, where he amassed several thousand pages of files on Ilyich Ramirez Sanchez, alias Carlos, blamed for many of the bloodiest attacks of the 1970s and 1980s.   His single-minded pursuit of wanted guerrillas has sometimes irked the government.   Others have tried more drastic methods of blocking his way.   "Around 1980, an underworld contract was out on me linked to a dismantled prostitution ring.   In 1987 someone booby-trapped the door to my flat with a nylon thread and a grenade.   I got there quarter of an hour after police had defused it," he said.   A scion of generations of lawyers, the judge was reported to be on Action Directe's assassination list after taking charge of probes into the extreme-left group in early 1981.   Most of its members are now behind bars.   But Bruguiere said he has never received a death threat.   Asked whether he carried a gun, he opened his blazer to show he had none.   "I carried one for 10 years or so, I'm quite a sharpshooter.   But I can't bear it any longer," he said.   Bodyguards?   "They're out there somewhere.   Protection here is a bit heavy," he said, gesturing towards a quiet square where locals played bowls among the chestnut trees.   Bruguiere, who works behind armoured doors on the top floor of the central Paris Palais de Justice, was dubbed "a star" by the Venezuelan-born Carlos when the two met two years ago after the French secret service seized him in Sudan.   The judge dismisses that compliment with a wave of the hand.   The guerrilla's first court appearance next year will probably be at a murder retrial for shooting two French secret agents in Paris in 1974, for which he was sentenced to life imprisonment in his absence in 1992.   "He's not cooperating.   He had many contacts, with revolutionary organisations and especially with the ex-communist bloc, Arab and South American states," Bruguiere said.   "We're working on it, we've got quite a few things."   Probes into the likes of Carlos have given Bruguiere a high profile in France but he envies his U.S. colleagues their more eminent role.   "In the United States, the judge has a higher status in society, he's not a postman.   Here, judges have been devalued.   We must give the judge a new position without entering the political arena.   "I've used lobbying, which is an American tactic, and the law to the maximum," he said.   The lobbying involves keeping up political pressure from victims' lawyers and families, represented by an association called SOS Attentats.   Bruguiere said pressure from himself and other judges investigating the DC-10 bombing and that of the Pan Am jumbo jet over the Scottish town of Lockerbie in 1988 had helped push the U.N. Security Council into imposing economic sanctions on Libya for refusing to hand over suspects.   "That was a stunning innovation.   The international community recognised that a terrorist act could threaten world peace.   That can harm only states which use terrorism in foreign relations.   "The Lockerbie and DC-10 investigations are still continuing.   One day, those responsible will pay.   One of the biggest lessons of Carlos's arrest is that a democracy does not forget," Bruguiere said.   As he emerged from the restaurant, one of his bodyguards stepped quickly up to him and the two walked briskly across the picturesque square towards his waiting armoured car. 
19572 !E41 !ECAT !G15 !G158 !GCAT !GDIP !GJOB  The European Union on Thursday moved to allay Asian fears that a row over labour standards will sidetrack efforts to liberalise world trade.   EU trade ministers -- meeting to review the 15-nation bloc's approach to the World Trade Organisation's ministerial meeting in Singapore in December -- agreed the issue would best be handled by the International Labour Organisation.   Many Asian countries fear that calls for trade liberalisation to be linked to Western-style labour standards are a thinly-disguised attempt to dilute their competetive edge.   "If it becomes an issue at Singapore, it won't be because of us," an EU source said.   "There is a general agreement to steer away from the matter."   WTO Director-General Renato Ruggiero, who on Wednesday urged the EU trade ministers not to press the issue, said on Thursday:   "The strong suspicion remains among many WTO members that this is a concern not so much to limit labour abuses as to limit competition from low-cost imports.   "While we cannot ignore this issue -- we can even discuss it in principle -- it should not be for the Singapore meeting."   An EU official said Trade Commissioner Sir Leon Brittan had made a case to the ministers for labour standards to be examined, but said it was not planned as part of the EU's position for Singapore.   The 15 trade ministers endorsed this, the official said. 
19573 !G15 !G158 !GCAT !GDIP !GVIO  The European Parliament urged the United Nations on Thursday to look into the Indonesian authorities' crackdown on pro-democracy activists on July 27, during which at least five people died.   "The European Parliament requests that the UN Specal Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions be asked to undertake an investigation into the events of July 27 and the whereabouts of people still missing," deputies said in a resolution.   The directly elected EU assembly urged European Union member states to withold all military assistance and arms sales to Indonesia, which it accused of "violating the rights of peaceful critics and activists".   The non-binding resolution condemned the "violent seizure" of the Indonesian Democratic Party headquarters on July 27 by military and para-military forces and the subsequent wave of arrests.   Five people died, 149 were wounded and 74 went missing on July 27, according to the Indonesian National Commission of Human Rights.   The parliament reiterated its support for the Indonesian pro-democracy movement "in the struggle for a just, democratic and pluralist society". 
19574 !GCAT !GPOL !GVOTE  Early elections in Japan appeared certain after two cabinet ministers said on Friday Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto will probably dissolve parliament on September 27.   Hashimoto agreed on Thursday with the leaders of the two junior parties in his ruling coalition to convene an extraordinary session of parliament on September 27, but has remained mum about whether he will call snap polls.   "It is very probable that the parliament will be dissolved (at the beginning of the session)," Minister of International Trade and Industry Shunpei Tsukahara told reporters.   Tsukahara, a member of Hashimoto's Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) appeared to endorse the almost daily media reports that the prime minister would dissolve parliament on the first day of the session and hold general elections on October 20.   Most observers say the prime minister is balancing competing demands from the LDP, which is keen on early polls, and its coalition partners the Social Democratic Party and Sakigake, which want to put off elections until next year.   But Finance Minister Wataru Kubo, who is also a senior Social Democratic Party official, told a news conference, "I suspect this will proceed as reported by various media."   Polls are not mandated until July 1997, but the LDP favours going before voters as early as possible before April, when an unpopular rise in the consumption tax, approved by the Hashimoto government, takes effect.   The junior coalition parties want more time because they are locked in a bitter row over how to regroup for the coming polls, which will be held under a revised electoral system thought to favour large groupings.   Analysts say rump versions of those parties -- or the nascent Democratic Party, formed mainly of defectors from Sakigake and the Social Democrats -- will be the LDP's most likely coalition partner if it falls short of a majority.   The LDP has been projected to get the most votes in the election, but it may not capture a majority in the 500-seat Lower House of parliament.   A public opinion survey this week by the Nihon Keizai Shimbun, a leading financial daily, gave the LDP the highest approval rating with 22.4 percent, while Sakigake scored just 1.2 percent and the Social Democrats 3.7 percent.   Shinshinto (New Frontier Party), the main opposition group, polled only 6.5 percent in the survey, trailing even the 7.8 percent pollsters gave the Democratic Party, which will be formed later this month.   But a senior Shinshinto official told reporters this week that his party would prevail despite gloomy predictions, because it remained the only alternative to the status-quo oriented LDP.   Shinshinto President Ichiro Ozawa, the party's prime minister hopeful, on Friday told visiting Australian Prime Minister John Howard, "We want to win the general election in order to address the problems of the tax system as well as administrative and political reforms."   Most pundits predict issueless, do-or-die races for the 300 seats in the lower chamber to be contested in first-past-the-post constituencies, introduced under 1994 electoral reforms.   The remaining 200 seats will be contested by proportional representation.   "The election is likely to bring bloodshed among politicians," said Jesper Koll, chief economist at JP Morgan .   "We have got 950 candidates running for 300 seats.   As a result of that, two-thirds are not going to make it." 
19575 !E12 !ECAT !G15 !G151 !G154 !GCAT  European Union plans for a common currency are expected to receive a solid push forward this weekend when EU finance ministers and central bank governors gather informally in Dublin.   The meeting, coming in the midst of an intense scramble by EU governments to bring their 1997 budget deficits in line with the Maastricht treaty, will focus on three important and rather technical areas of economic and monetary union (EMU).   A budget stability pact to ensure fiscal discipline among EMU participants, a new Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM) linking the single currency to non-members, and the legal underpinnings of monetary union are all scheduled for discussion.   While the talks in Dublin Castle on Saturday are seen essential in keeping the considerable political momentum behind EMU on course, EU ministers and monetary officials have sought to play down what might emerge from the session.   "This will be a work in progress meeting.   I am not expecting any dramatic or earth-shattering announcements to come out of it," Irish finance minister Ruairi Quinn told a news conference on Tuesday.   Quinn's measured view was also echoed by other officials.   "I would expect that they present a positive picture of recent developments," said one EU monetary official.   "Anything else is really not justified."   Among the three topics, a budget stability pact is being cast as the centerpiece of the meeting, with recent progress on the issue by the EU's monetary committee setting the stage for a comprehensive deal later this year.   The committee, a secretive group of national treasury and central bank officials, reached a compromise last week that would punish EMU members which run deficits above three percent of Gross Domestic Product in a semi-automatic fashion.   While several details remain unresolved -- the size of fines, when they would take effect, and a better definition of the economic circumstances under which a country's poor finances would be overlooked -- there is the expectation that Dublin will give its blessing to what has been accomplished so far.   Germany, the main catalyst behind a revamped EU excessive deficits procedure, is expected to leave Dublin relatively pleased at having gotten at least part of what it wanted.   German finance minister Theo Waigel's initial proposal for a stability pact was considered by many as too severe and out of step with what was politically feasible.   Yet his desire to put more bite into the current sanctions process focused attention on a dominant worry -- for a single currency to utltimately work, national budget policies would have to be kept under control in a credible way.   As one EU official put it: "Eleven months ago most people didn't give the stability pact a chance.   Now it's on the verge of becoming legislation."   Regarding an ERM, here again, the ministers and bankers are likely to nod through the vision emerging from the European Monetary Institute, forerunner to a European Central Bank (ECB).   Alexandre Lamfalussy, the EMI's head, will outline a system which is voluntary, establishes the single currency as an anchor and gives the ECB an influential voice in realigning the value of currencies under pressure.   But specifics, such as the width of the trading bands for non-EMU currencies, or the limits on how much the ECB would spend to support them should they come under speculative attack, are to likely to be kept vague.   Lastly, there is the tricky issue of implementing a legal framework for EMU in advance of its expected 1999 start date.   While considerable progress has been made in clarifying the legal aspects of a single currency, such as the contractual rights investors have after it has begun, the Maastricht treaty only allows such a framework to come into force in 1999.   For many in the financial markets this is much too late.   The task for the ministers and central bankers then is to find a way around this rather technical and legalistic hurdle.   EU officials caution that the informal nature of the Dublin meeting means specific decisons cannot be reached.   Instead, the gathering is expected to rubber-stamp what has been accomplished so far with a view towards more concrete and comprehensive decisions in December when EU leaders meet in Dublin for their twice-yearly summit. 
19576 !GCAT !GPOL  Japan's parliament is likely to be dissolved on September 27, Minister of International Trade and Industry Shunpei Tsukahara told reporters on Friday.   Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto agreed on Thursday with the leaders of the two junior parties in his ruling coalition to convene an extraordinary session of parliament on September 27, which was widely expected to lead to an early general election.    "It is very probable that the parliament will be dissolved (at the beginning of the session)," Tsukahara said.   Politicians, in frequent leaks to the media over the past two weeks, have said Hashimoto would dissolve parliament on the first day of the session and hold general elections on October 20.   Most observers say the prime minister, who has the sole right to dissolve parliament, is balancing competing demands from his Liberal Democratic Party, which is keen on early polls, and its coalition partners, who want to put off elections until next year.   Polls are not mandated until July 1997, but the LDP favours going before voters as early as possible before April, when an unpopular rise in the consumption tax, approved by the Hashimoto government, takes effect. 
19577 !GCAT !GSPO  Fred Funk fired a sparkling eight-under-par 63 on Saturday to catch overnight leader Pete Jordan and claim a share of the lead after three rounds of the B.C. Open golf tournament.   Conditions for scoring were so good at the En-Joie Golf Club that Jordan's fine five-under 66 was only good enough to share top spot on the leaderboard despite starting the day with a three-stroke advantage over Funk, Tiger Woods and first-round leader Brian Claar.   Funk and Jordan stood at 16-under 197 to take a three-stroke lead over Woods, who carded his second successive 66, and Patrick Burke (65) into the final round.   The little-known Jordan, who had never led after a round on the PGA Tour before Friday, birdied five of his first eight holes.   But Funk also got off to a quick start, reaching five under par through six holes with the help of a chip-in eagle on the par-five fifth.   Jordan picked up two more birdies, tapping in on the 12th hole and chipping in on 17, but he closed with a bogey on 18.   He had also missed the green and bogeyed the ninth.   Funk put together another hot streak after the turn with three consecutive birdies beginning with the 10th hole.   He gave back a stroke on 15 before nailing a three-foot birdie putt on the 17th hole.   "It all seemed to go so fast, especially in the beginning when it seemed like either Fred or I made a birdie on every hole," said Jordan, who was paired with Funk.   Jordan, who was forced to return to qualifying school in both 1993 and 1994, currently stands 163rd on the money list and needs to finish third or better to assure his playing privileges for 1997.   "I'm not nervous," he said.   "I'm just antsy to get it over with.   I'm not thinking about the money, I just want to win."   Woods, who could sew up his tour spot for 1997 in just his fourth tournament since turning professional last month, is similarly focused on winning.   "I wasn't as sharp or precise as I wanted to be, but I got into the clubhouse with a good round and didn't shoot myself out of the tournament," said the three-time amateur champion.   "I happy that even with out my 'A' game I can still be in contention."   Woods, who led during the final round last week but fell to a fifth-place finish, suffered two bogeys on the front nine to go along with three birdies.   He then picked up birdies on the 10th, 13th, 14th and 15th holes coming in, holing a bunker shot on 15 from 35 feet.   "This week I'm playing and putting better, but I'm behind," said a confident Woods.   "I'd rather have a nine shot lead, but I'm comfortable with the position I'm in right now, and I know I can win from where I am." 
19578 !GCAT !GSPO  Leaders after the   third round of the $1 million B.C. Open golf tournament on   Saturday (U.S. unless noted):   197 Pete Jordan 67 64 66, Fred Funk 68 66 63   200 Tiger Woods 68 66 66, Patrick Burke 68 67 65   202 Brian Claar 66 68 68   203 Joe Daley 68 73 62, Joey Sindelar 69 68 66, Hugh Royer 70   66 67   204 Bradley Hughes (Australia) 71 68 65, Jeff Sluman 69 67   68, David Ogrin 70 67 67   205 Kelly Gibson 69 69 67, Jay Delsing 68 70 67, Craig Parry   (Australia) 69 67 69   206 David Duval 71 71 64, Woody Austin 70 71 65, Mike Hulbert   69 69 68, Jim McGovern 67 70 69, Carl Paulson 69 68 69   207 Tommy Tolles 67 74 66, Gary Rusnak 69 71 67, Scott Gump   70 68 69, Mike Standly 69 68 70, Grant Waite (New Zealand) 68   69 70, Greg Kraft 70 67 70 
19579 !GCAT !GSPO  Argentina held off a second-half rally by Canada on Saturday to successfully defend its title in the Pan American rugby championship series.   In a rematch of last year's championship game played in Argentina, the Pumas beat the home side 41-21, leaving Canada second best again.   Third place went to the United States, which beat Uruguay 27-13 in a very physical and at times unruly match.   Argentina outscored Canada in every aspect with two goals (converted tries), three tries and four penalties against Canada's one goal, one try and three penalties.   The Argentines led from the start and took a 18-9 advantage into the second half.   Twenty minutes into the second half, Canada gave the home crowd some hope by rallying with a pair of tries to tie the score 21-21.   But experience and poise were in Argentina's favour with the Pumas running in three tries in the final 20 minutes to score 20 unanswered points and clinch the championship.   Canada's Bob Ross, one of the stars in this year's tournament with his conversions and penalty kicks, had a disappointing game, missing four penalty kicks.   "The better team won," admitted Canadian coach Pat Parfrey.   "But the margin of points didn't reflect the game.   "We made a lot of tactical errors and threw away a lot of balls."   In the consolation match, the United States topped Uruguay in a game which at times made ice hockey look like a gentle sport.   Once again, the star of the American squad was fly-half kicker Matt Alexander who kicked five penalties and a conversion for 17 of his side's 27 points.   Despite the victory, U.S. coach Jack Clark was not happy with his team's performance.   "This week Uruguay has made two good teams look bad even in victory," said Clark, referring also to Canada's win over Uruguay Wednesday.   "We did what we had to do to win, but it wasn't a pretty game." 
19580 !GCAT !GSPO  Led by world No. 1 Laura Davies, Europe turned a 5-3 overnight deficit into a 9-7 lead over defending champions United States Saturday on the second day of the Solheim Cup at St Pierre.   Davies won both her matches by wide margins with different partners as Europe took the morning foursomes 3-1/2 to 1/2 and the afternoon fourballs 2-1/2 to 1-1/2.   Europe needs 5-1/2 points from Sunday's 12 singles matches to regain the trophy they lost to the Americans in 1994 in the women's golf equivalent of the Ryder Cup.   Davies and fellow Briton Trish Johnson raced to a 4 and 3 triumph over Patty Sheehan and Rosie Jones in Saturday's opening foursomes.   Then the world's best female golfer then linked with debutante Lisa Hackney to crush Beth Daniel and Val Skinner 6 and 5 in the first fourballs.   "Laura is playing awesome golf.   We got to watch awesome golf for 13 holes," Daniel conceded.   "I wished we could have watched it longer."   The match ended on the 13th green.   The only American victory on the day came from Kelly Robbins and Betsy King, who beat Marie-Laure de Lorenzi of France and Joanne Morley of Britain 2 and 1 in the fourballs.   Meg Mallon and Michelle McGann collected half a point in a fourballs draw with U.S. Open champion Annika Sorenstam of Sweden and Britain's Johnson.   Mallon and Jane Geddes halved their foursomes against Liselotte Neumann and Kathryn Marshall, the only addition to the U.S. score in the morning.   Davies, who lost in her opening foursomes Friday, never trailed in either of her matches Saturday.   She won the long opening hole both times.   In the foursomes, she and Johnson won the fifth, ninth and 10th holes without losing and secured victory at the 15th.   Hackney won the second and third holes as she and Davies rolled to an even easier win over Daniel and Skinner.   Sorenstam and Johnson were three down with four to play against McGann and Mallon but won the 15th, 16th and 17th with birdies to draw even before halving the final hole and the match.   Neumann and fellow Swede Catrin Nilsmark won the 13th and 16th holes to set up their 2 and 1 win over Sheehan and Geddes. 
19581 !GCAT !GSPO  Argentina beat Canada   41-21 (halftime 18-9) on Saturday to win the Pan American   rugby championship.   United States beat Uruguay 27-13 (halftime 16-3) to take   the third place in the tournament.   U.S. v Uruguay Scorers:   U.S. - tries: Jason Walker, Vaea Anitoni.   Penalties: Matt   Alexander (5).   Conversion: Alexander   Uruguay - tries: Marcello Calandra, Martin Mendaro.   Penalty: Fredrico Sciarra   Argentina v Canada Scorers:   Argentina - Tries: Tomas Solari (2), Octavio Bartolucci   (2), Roland Martin.   Penalties: Gonazalo Quesada (4).   Conversions: Queseda ( 2)   Canada - Tries: Kevin Wirachowski, Scott Hendry.   Penalties: Bob Ross (3).   Conversion: Ross 
19582 !GCAT !GSPO  U.S. captain Judy Rankin must rally her troops for Sunday's decisive singles after watching Europe eclipse her 12 players in the Solheim Cup on Saturday.   From a lead of 3-1/2 points to half a point after Friday's opening foursomes, Rankin has seen her team fall behind 9-7 to the Europeans after three losing session of matches.   "I wouldn't characterise this as a great day.   It actually started about one p.m. yesterday," Rankin said.   "There are places I'd rather be than behind.   "If our putters warm up tomorrow, it will be very exciting," she added.   Rankin defended her decision to rest her major weapon, world number five Dottie Pepper, from Saturday afternoon's fourballs.   "Her three matches went twice to 18 holes and once to 17 holes and she is critical for us on Sunday," she said.   "Dottie did not ask to sit out.   She would have played, but she was tired and she was comfortable with the decision," Rankin said.   Pepper, who was part of two wins on Friday before losing her foursomes on Saturday, faces Trish Johnson in the sixth singles on Sunday.   Rankin also had a minor matter to deal with stemming from the presence of English player Lisa Hackney's coach on the course near Hackney and near Johnson at the 14th hole.   "I sought no penalty and I'm not questioning anyone's integrity," she said.   "I don't mind anyone, friends, family, coaches, being inside the ropes to see the action, but not to be part of the action," she said. 
19583 !GCAT !GSPO  Draw for Sunday's   singles in the Solheim Cup women's team golf match between   Europe and the United States (European names first, times GMT):    0748 - Annika Sorenstam (Sweden)  v Pat Bradley    0800 - Kathryn Marshall (Britain)  v Val Skinner    0812 - Laura Davies (Britain)  v Michelle McGann    0824 - Liselotte Neumann (Sweden)  v Beth Daniel    0836 - Lisa Hackney (Britain)  v Brandie Burton    0848 - Trish Johnson (Britain)  v Dottie Pepper    0900 - Alison Nicholas (Britain)  v Kelly Robbins    0912 - Marie-Laure de Lorenzi (France) v Betsy King    0924 - Joanne Morley (Britain)  v Rosie Jones    0936 - Dale Reid (Britain) v Jane Geddes    0948 - Catrin Nilsmark (Sweden)  v Patty Sheehan    1000 - Helen Alfredsson (Sweden)  v Meg Mallon 
19584 !GCAT !GSPO  An untried Spanish doubles team made the home fans suffer on Saturday before beating Denmark and guaranteeing the point that gave Spain a 3-0 lead that takes them back to the Davis Cup World group.   After singles victories in which Alberto Costa and Carlos Moya had lost only six games between them, Spain looked to be on the way to a straightforward victory.   But after going two sets up, Tomas Carbonell and Alex Corretja lost their way against Kenneth Carlsen and Frederik Fetterlein.   Fetterlein, having dropped his serve at the end of the first two sets, recovered his form and began to force errors out of the Spanish pair, playing together for the first time.   The Danes had three break points to go 4-1 up in the fifth, but the Spaniards survived a disputed line-call, and lifted by the crowd, came back to win 6-4 7-5 4-6 5-7 6-3.   Earlier Carlos Moya had raced to victory in his match with Carlsen, postponed because of rain from Friday.   Moya played superb baseline tennis to win 6-1 6-2 6-1.   In Friday's match Alberto Costa had dispatched Fetterlein 6-0 6-0 6-2.   Spain lost their World group status last year after falling to Mexico. 
19585 !GCAT !GSPO  Collated second day   results in the Solheim Cup women's team golf match between the   United States and Europe on Saturday (European names first):   Foursomes   Laura Davies/Trish Johnson (Britain) beat Patty Sheehan/Rosie   Jones 4 and 3   Annika Sorenstam/Catrin Nilsmark (Sweden) beat Dottie Pepper/   Brandie Burton by one hole   Marie-Laure de Lorenzi (France)/Helen Alfredsson (Sweden) beat   Kelly Robbins/Michelle McGann 4 and 3   Liselotte Neumann (Sweden)/Kathryn Marshall (Britain) halved   with Meg Mallon/ Jane Geddes   Foursomes result: Europe 3-1/2 U.S. 1/2   Fourballs   Laura Davies/Lisa Hackney (Britain) beat Beth Daniel/Val   Skinner 6 and 5   Annika Sorenstam (Sweden)/Trish Johnson (Britain) halved with   Michelle McGann/Meg Mallon   Marie-Laure de Lorenzi (France)/Joanne Morley (Britain) lost to   Kelly Robbins/Betsy King 2 and 1   Catrin Nilsmark/Liselotte Neumann (Sweden) beat Patty Sheehan/   Jane Geddes 2 and 1   Fourballs result: Europe 2-1/2 U.S. 1-1/2   Overall score: Europe 9 U.S. 7   Twelve singles on Sunday will complete the competition. 
19586 !GCAT !GSPO  Europe, again led by world number one Laura Davies, turned a 5-3 overnight deficit into a 9-7 lead over the U.S. holders on the second day of the Solheim Cup at St Pierre on Saturday.   Davies won both her matches by wide margins with different partners as Europe took the morning foursomes 3-1/2 to 1/2 and the fourballs 2-1/2 to 1-1/2.   Europe need 5-1/2 points from Sunday's 12 singles matches to regain the trophy they lost in 1990 and 1994 but won in 1992 at Dalmahoy, Scotland.   A European victory would leave the United States without any of the four team titles played for by golfers from opposite sides of the Atlantic.   The Americans have already lost the Ryder Cup and the amateur Walker and Curtis Cups over the past 14 months.   Davies and Trish Johnson raced to a 4 and 3 triumph over Patty Sheehan and Rosie Jones in the opening foursomes on Saturday.   Then the world's best player linked with debutante Lisa Hackney to crush Beth Daniel and Val Skinner 6 and 5 in the first fourballs.   "Laura is playing awesome golf.   We got to watch awesome golf for 13 holes," Daniel said.   "I wished we could have watched it longer."   The match ended on the 13th green.    The only American victory on the day came from Kelly Robbins and Betsy King, who beat Marie-Laure de Lorenzi of France and Joanne Morley of Britain 2 and 1 in the fourballs.   Meg Mallon and Michelle McGann collected half a point in a fourballs draw with U.S. Open champion Annika Sorenstam of Sweden and Britain's Johnson.   Mallon and Jane Geddes halved their foursomes against Liselotte Neumann and Kathryn Marshall, the only addition to the U.S. score in the morning.   Two minor disputes arose during the day.   One involved Hackney's boyfriend and coach, Martin Hall, who was inside the ropes and talking to Hackney walking up the sixth and 11th fairways, and later to Johnson at the 14th.   U.S. captain Judy Rankin later commented that "he should not have been in there", and though match referee David Rollo agreed, no penalty was imposed.   The second issue developed at the 14th green in a fourballs involving McGann, Mallon and Sorenstam, whose putts were all in the same line with the hole.   The Americans decided that McGann should putt first, as was their right, but Rankin and European captain Mickey Walker were seen to be discussing matters at some length afterwards.   Davies, who lost in her opening foursomes on Friday, never trailed in either of her matches on Saturday.   She won the long opening hole both times.   In the foursomes, she and Johnson won the fifth, ninth and 10th holes without losing and secured victory at the 15th.   Hackney won the second and third holes as she and Davies rolled to an even easier win over Daniel and Skinner.   Sorenstam and Johnson were three down with four to play against McGann and Mallon but won the 15th, 16th and 17th with birdies to draw level before halving the final hole and the match.   Neumann and fellow Swede Catrin Nilsmark won the 13th and 16th holes to set up their 2 and 1 win over Sheehan and Geddes. 
19587 !GCAT !GSPO  Colin Montgomerie still believes he can win his first European Tour event in Scotland when the last round of the Loch Lomond World Invitational championship gets under way on Sunday -- despite trailing by five shots.   The Scot shot a 70 on Saturday for a three-round aggregate of 212, one under par overall, but both Thomas Bjorn of Denmark and Frenchman Jean Van de Velde are on 207 and playing with supreme confidence.   Bjorn, who carded a 68, was heading for a useful lead when he stumbled with a double bogey six at the 16th while Van de Velde followed up his course record 65 on Friday with a 67.   Montgomerie, however, still gives himself a chance.   He said: "This is a very difficult golf course and anything can happen.   I'm going to give it everything I have tomorrow."   Montgomerie made a great start with three successive birdies from the second but then had three bogeys in his next seven holes.   Nick Faldo, who had begun the day one shot ahead of the big Scot, shot a disappointing 73 and grumbled: "I'm not creating enough chances and when I get them I don't take them."   Australian Robert Allenby, in third on 211, also complained: "I couldn't putt today.   I had no confidence in the stroke."   But Allenby, having won three European Tour events this year, is in line for a fourth if Bjorn and Van de Velde slip up.   Bjorn led going into the last day at the Scandinavian Masters six weeks ago and then had a poor last round but he said: "I think I have learned a little from that experience.   "I'm playing well and apart from the 16th hole where I went into the water with my second shot I hardly made a mistake.   I shall not lack confidence."   Van de Velde said: "When you've shot 65 and 67 on successive days round a great course like this you really feel you can do anything." 
19588 !GCAT !GSPO  Liverpool manager Roy Evans warned his English premier league rivals on Saturday his side can play ever better after demolishing Chelsea 5-1 in their top-of-the-table clash.   "We can play better than this," Evans said.   "I was pleased with our movement but our passing was sloppy.   "I was delighted with the result in the end but only reasonably pleased with the performance."   Liverpool, who have won five and drawn two of their opening seven matches to lead the standings by two points over Newcastle, totally outclassed Rudd Gullit's team who started the day in third place and were unbeaten themselves.   Despite their emphatic win which establishes Liverpool as serious contenders for the title they last won in 1990, Evans kept his feet firmly on the ground.   "We can't complain about the first seven matches, but we've not been brilliant or played out of our skin.   We've ground out results and worked hard for them, and we probably deserve to be top.   It's nice, no one is getting carried away, and I just hope we can improve from here."   Robbie Fowler opened the scoring with a cleverly taken header after 15 minutes before man-of-the-match, Czech striker Patrick Berger, playing in place of Stan Collymore, rounded Chelsea keeper Kevin Hitchock for the second three minutes before half time.   A headed own goal by Andy Myers put Liverpool 3-0 up just before the break and further goals by Berger after 49 minutes and John Barnes, whose 57th minute shot took a wicked deflection off Dennis Wise, put Liverpool 5-0 up.   Frenchman Frank LeBouef scored a consolation for Chelsea with an 85th minute penalty after Mark Hughes was tripped in the Liverpool box.   Chelsea manager Ruud Gullit said: "We played more against ourselves than Liverpool today.   The goals came from individuals and mistakes.   We must avoid similar performances if we are to improve.   None of my players did what I know they can do today."    Liverpool and Manchester United are now the only teams in the division yet to lose, but the champions slipped from second to fourth after an entertaining 0-0 draw at Aston Villa.   But United's plans for their Champions League match against Rapid Vienna on Wednesday were thrown into some confusion as defender Gary Pallister twisted his knee at Villa Park.   The champions already have David May struggling after injuring his ankle in a reserve game last Wednesday and manager Alex Ferguson said: "I think Gary will make it all right because it's a very big game for us.   But he'll probably need treatment right up to Wednesday night."   United are also banking on goalkeeper Peter Schmeichel recovering from a virus to face Vienna, but Ferguson praised stand-in Raimond Van Der Gouw, making his debut.   "He didn't have any saves to make but he's very agile, got a good temperament and handled it all very well.   He's a very good goalkeeper and a good professional but Peter should be ready for Wednesday."   Newcastle leapfrogged over Manchester United into second place after their 1-0 win at Leeds United, who had former England defender Carlton Palmer sent off for two bookable offences inside four minutes in the first half.   Alan Shearer, who has now scored 10 times against Leeds in 11 matches in his career, scored the only goal of the game after 59 minutes as Newcastle chalked up their fifth successive win in cup and league matches.   Arsenal, whose new manager Arsene Wenger does not arrive until the end of the month, also put their recent troubles further behind them with a 2-0 win at high-flying Middlesbrough.   John Hartson (third) and Ian Wright (27th) scored the goals that gave Arsenal victory and moved them up to third place, a point behind Newcastle and three behind Liverpool.   Blackburn, champions in 1995, stayed bottom still searching for their first win after drawing 1-1 at home with Everton who had Scottish striker Duncan Ferguson sent off near the end.   Everton manager Joe Royle was fuirous about that saying: "Duncan was sent off for swearing but he was running away from the referee at the time."   Blackburn boss Ray Harford said: "I thought we deserved better than 1-1 at half-time but they had better chances than us on the counter attack in the second half."   Greek striker George Donis scored for Blackburn after 32 minutes and David Unsworth equalised for Everton five minutes later. 
19589 !GCAT !GSPO  Leading placings in the   150-km 14th stage of the Tour of Spain from Cangas de Onis to    Cabarceno on Saturday:    1.   Biagio Conte (Italy) Scrigno 4 hours 48 minutes 14 seconds    2.   Orlando Rodrigues (Portugal) Banesto same time    3.   Laurent Dufaux (Switzerland) Lotus  1 minute 57 seconds   behind   4.   Laurent Jalabert (France) ONCE   5.   Alex Zuelle (Switzerland) ONCE   6.   Tony Rominger (Switzerland) Mapei   7.   Marcos Serrano (Spain) Kelme   8.   Davide Rebellin (Italy) Polti   9.   Roberto Pistore (Italy) MG    10.   Fernando Escartin (Spain) Kelme  all same time    11.   Mauro Gianetti (Switzerland) Polti  2:02    12.   Georg Tostching (Austria) Polti  2:04   13.   Neil Stephen (Australia) ONCE    14.   Stefano Faustini (Italy) AKI both same time    15.   Andrea Peron (Italy) Motorola  2:12   16.   Pascal Chanteur (France) Petit Casino   17.   Kai Hundertmark (Germany) Telekom    18.   Massimo Apollonio (Italy) Scrigno  all same time    19.   Bobby Julich (U.S.) Motorola 2:18    20.   Vladislav Bobrik (Russia) Gewiss  same time   Overall classification:    1.   Zuelle 61 hours 9 minutes 23 seconds    2.   Jalabert  1:13 seconds behind    3.   Dufaux  5:20    4.   Faustini  6:33    5.   Pistore  same time    6.   Melchor Mauri (Spain) ONCE 7:23    7.   Rebellin  7:28    8.   Tostching  8:09    9.   Rominger  8:41    10.   Stephen  8:53    11.   Julich  9:51    12.   Peron  11:28    13.   Mikel Zarrabeitia (Spain) ONCE  11:42    14.   Apollonio  12:55    15.   Daniel Clavero (Spain) MX Onda  13:32    16.   Bobrik  13:43    17.   Maarten Den Bakker (Netherlands) TVM 14:27    18.   Escartin  14:53    19.   Axel Merckx (Belgium) Motorla  15:01    20.   Marcos Serrano (Spain) Kelme  same time 
19590 !GCAT !GSPO  France's Jeannie Longo said on Saturday she would attempt to beat the one hour cycling world record held by Britain's Yvonne McGregor in Stuttgart next week.   The Olympic road champion, who won the women's Grand Prix des Nations on Saturday, said she would arrive in Germany on Tuesday and would probably stage a first attempt at the record of 47.411 kms on Sunday.   McGregor set her mark in Manchester on June 17 last year.   Longo, who failed to beat McGregor's record last November, said she had hoped to go to Mexico or Colombia but found it too costly. 
19591 !GCAT !GSPO  Australia took an   unbeatable 3-0 lead over Croatia in their Davis Cup World group   qualifying tie after winning the doubles on Saturday.   Result:   Marc Woodforde/Patrick Rafter beat Goran Ivanisevic/Sasa   Hirszon 6-3 6-2 6-4 
19592 !GCAT !GSPO  Leading third   round scores in the Loch Lomond World Invitational golf   tournament on Saturday (Britain unless stated):   207 Jean Van de Velde (France) 75 65 67, Thomas Bjorn (Denmark)   70 69 68   211 Robert Allenby (Australia) 69 71 71   212 Colin Montgomerie 72 70 70   213 Eamonn Darcy (Ireland) 71 76 66, Jamie Spence 67 74 72   214 Darren Clarke 68 73 73, Nick Faldo 68 73 73, Barry Lane   69 74 71, Thomas Gogele (Germany) 70 75 69, Jonathan Lomas   71 73 70   215 Miguel Angel Martin (Spain) 73 73 69, Stephen Ames   (Trinidad and Tobago) 76 71 68, Paul McGinley (Ireland)   72 74 69, Roger Chapman 71 75 69, Andrew Coltart 74 71 70,   Mark McNulty (Zimbabwe) 73 72 70   216 Rodger Davis (Australia) 76 72 68, Peter O'Malley   (Australia) 70 78 68, Lee Westwood 74 73 69, Richard Green   (Australia) 72 73 71, Pierre Fulke (Sweden) 71 72 73   217 Ross Drummond 69 79 69, Des Smyth (Ireland) 75 72 70, Glen   Day (U.S.) 72 74 71, Martin Gates 76 70 71, David Gilford   71 74 72, Andrew Sherborne 73 72 72, Pedro Linhart (Spain)   69 76 72, Ian Woosnam 73 69 75   218 Greg Turner (New Zealand) 78 70 70, Costantino Rocca   (Italy) 72 74 72, David Howell 70 73 75   219 Raymond Russell 76 74 69, Miguel Angel Jimenez (Spain)   77 70 72, Ignacio Garrido (Spain) 72 74 73, Retief Goosen   (South Africa) 72 72 75, Peter Baker 69 73 77   220 Ricky Willison 72 77 71, Per Haugsrud (Norway) 77 72 71,   Eduardo Romero (Argentina) 77 70 73, Jose Coceres   (Argentina) 68 77 75 
19593 !GCAT !GSPO  Britain's Chris Boardman headed a quality field to win the Grand Prix des Nations on Saturday.   The world one-hour record holder left Tour de France winner Bjarne Riis trailing by four minutes 51 seconds in the 70 km time trial held around the lake of Madine in eastern France.   Spanish road world champion Abraham Olano, who beat Boardman into third place in the time trial at the Atlanta Olympics, was third, 5:11 behind.   The race was the main time trial to elude Boardman, who this season has won the Grand Prix Eddy Merckx and the Grand Prix Telekom.   On his first attempt in 1994 he lost to Switzerland's Tony Rominger.   This year, he was in a class of his own, even though some of the world's leading specialists, including Rominger and Miguel Indurain, were involved in the Tour of Spain.   Boardman had an impressive lead of nearly two minutes halfway through.   For good measure he overtook Riis and Olano, who had started four and two minutes respectively before him, and clocked 1:25:39.    "I felt no pressure at all.   I was relaxed, I rode at my own pace," said Boardman, whose performance was deemed "exceptional" by Riis.   The Briton starts firm favourite for next month's time trial world championships in Lugano, Switzerland, but he said the 1997 Tour de France remained his main objective.   "The Tour remains the great challenge for me.   If this season I had managed to have a good Tour and nothing else it would have been fine by me," he said.   Boardman finished 31st in the Tour this year.   He said he would have a "different approach" next year and look for a top three placing. 
19594 !GCAT !GSPO  Leading results in   the Grand Prix des Nations cycling race on Saturday:   Men's race (70 kms time trial):   1.   Chris Boardman (Britain) One hour 25 minutes and 39 seconds    2.   Bjarne Riis (Denmark) 4:51 behind    3.   Abraham Olano (Spain) 5:11    4.   Christophe Moreau (France)  5:27    5.   Vlacheslav Ekimov (Russia)  5:54    6.   Johan Museeuw (Belgium) 6:26    7.   Christophe Bassons (France)  6:55    8.   Bert Roesems (Belgium) 7:37    9.   Pascal Lance (France) 7:37    10.   Erik Dekker (Netherlands)  8:24   Women's race (35 kms time trial):   1.   Jeannie Longo (France) Fifty minutes and two seconds    2.   Hanka Kupfenagel (Germany)  14 seconds behind    3.   Natalia Boubenshchikova (Russia) 1:57    4.   Catherine Marsal (France)  2:04    5.   Sophie Swaertvaeger (France)  3:01    6.   Diana Rast (Switzerland)  3:02    7.   Svetlana Samokhvalova (Russia) 3:03    8.   Jolanta Polikeviciute (Lithunaia) 4:10    9.   Karin Mobes (Switzerland)  4:14    10.   Rasa Polikeviciute (Lithuania) 4:26 
19595 !GCAT !GSPO  Jockey Stephen Craine enjoyed his first classic success at the age of 39 when he guided Oscar Schindler (4-1) to an impressive victory in the group one Irish St Leger on Saturday.   Irish champion Johnny Murtagh had pushed the 11-4 favourite Key Change past the tiring pace-setter Blushing Flame as the nine-runner field turned for home.   But Oscar Schindler, a Royal Ascot winner, was going ominously well and a devastating turn of speed inside the final furlong (200 metres) saw the Kevin Prendergast-trained colt home by an easy three-and-a-half lengths.   Michael Stoute's 9-2 chance, Sacrament, finished best of the three British challengers in third spot a further two lengths adrift.    Oscar Schindler was third in the 1995 Irish Leger and fourth in this year's King George VI and Queen Elizabeth Diamond Stakes at Ascot where he was squeezed for room.   Craine rated Saturday's win the proudest moment of his career.   His previous major success dates back to 1992 when he rode Irish Derby winner St Jovite to victory in Ascot's King George.   It was a third Irish Leger success for Curragh-based trainer Prendergast.   Oscar Schindler will now drop back two furlongs (400 metres) in distance from Saturday's 14-furlongs (2.8 km) to contest the Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe in Paris on October 6.   "Oscar Schindler is getting better...he is growing into his huge frame," said Prendergast.   "I was confident all week that he would win," he added.   Murtagh said that his mount had been beaten by the better horse on the day.   "We gave it everything...but we couldn't match the winner's pace in the end," he said.   Just over 40 minutes later top Irish trainer Aidan O'Brien landed his first group one race when 11-1 chance Desert King, the mount of British jockey Walter Swinburn, won the Aga Khan Stud National Stakes run over seven furlongs (1.4 km). 
19596 !GCAT !GSPO  Biagio Conte of Italy won his second stage of the Tour of Spain on Saturday after sprinting away from Orlando Rodrigues at the end of a 100 km breakaway.   They were followed home by Alex Zuelle, who remained overall leader, and his ONCE team mate Laurent Jalabert.   Again the pair left their rivals struggling in a mountain finish.   Zuelle heads Jalabert by just over a minute, with the next challenger a further four minutes back, according to unofficial timings.   "It's great to have won two stages," said Conte a first-year professional with the Scrigno team.   His victory came two weeks after his opening stage triumph.   With neither Conte nor Rodrigues in contention overall, they were allowed to slip away from the pack just before the mid-point of the 150 km section.   What had been a lead of eight minutes was whittled down to under two at the line as Zuelle and Jalabert sought to gain extra time over their rivals.   The ONCE pair had destroyed the field at the end of Friday's stage and again left the pack strung out as they powered up an 18-degree slope towards the end of the stage in the Cabarceno National Park.   Swiss Laurent Dufaux maintained his outside hopes by managing to stay with Zuelle and Jalabert.   He trails by five minutes 20 seconds.   The stage was run in the shadow of Miguel Indurain's decision to abandon the Tour on Friday.   "I agreed to race and I tried to do it as well as possible, but then if your health doesn't respond there's nothing you can do," said Indurain on Saturday.   The Spaniard, suffering from a heavy cold, said he might undergo medical tests after "recharging the batteries" with his wife and son in the resort town of Benidorm.   The five times Tour de France winner said that he had not yet made a decision about his future in cycling.   Indurain's withdrawal occupied the front pages of many Spanish newspapers.    "All of Spain became sad with the abandonment of Indurain," read a headline in Marca.   The race continues on Sunday with a 210 km stage between Cabarceno and Demanda. 
19597 !GCAT !GSPO  Results of group   one races at The Curragh on Saturday:   Irish St Leger over one mile and six furlongs (2.8 kms)   1.   Oscar Schindler 4-1 (ridden by Stephen Craine)   2.   Key Change 11-4 favourite (John Murtagh)   3.   Sacrament 9-2 (Walter Swinburn)   Nine ran   Distances: Three and a half lengths, two lengths.   Winner owned by Oliver Lehane and trained in Ireland by   Kevin Prendergast.   Value to winning owner: 85,800 sterling ($133,200)   Aga Khan Studs National Stakes over seven furlongs (1.4 km),   for two-year-olds.   1.   Desert King 11-1 (Walter Swinburn)   2.   Referendum 10-1 (John Reid)   3.   Azra 10-1 (Stephen Craine)   Ten ran.   Sahm 6-4 favourite   Distances: neck, one length.   Winner owned by Michael Tabor and trained by Aidan O'Brien   in Ireland.   Value to winning owner: 112,600 sterling ($174,900) 
19598 !GCAT !GSPO  Switzerland took an   unbeatable 3-0 lead against Morocco in their Davis Cup World   group qualifying tie after winning the doubles on Saturday.   Result:   Jakob Hlasek/Marc Rosset beat Mehdi Tahiri/Mounir El Aarej 6-2   6-2 6-0 
19599 !GCAT !GSPO  Oscar Schindler, ridden by Stephen Craine, won the Irish St Leger horse racing classic on Saturday. 
19600 !GCAT !GSPO  Biagio Conte of Italy won the 14th stage of the Tour of Spain over 150 kms from Cangas de Onis to Cabarceno on Saturday.   Alex Zuele of Switzerland retained the overall leader's yellow jersey. 
19601 !GCAT !GSPO  Spain took a 2-0 lead over Denmark in their Davis Cup World Group qualifying round tie on Saturday after winning the second singles match.   Result:   Carlos Moya (Spain) beat Kenneth Carlsen (Denmark) 6-1 6-2 6-1 
19602 !GCAT !GSPO  Damon Hill enhanced his prospects of clinching the world championship in Sunday's Portuguese Grand Prix when he seized his eighth pole position of the season in a riveting qualifying session on Saturday.   Hill lapped just 0.009 of a second clear of his sole title rival, Williams team mate Jacques Villeneuve, who was second fastest and will share the front row of the grid.   Villeneuve's hopes of producing one more telling lap in the final minutes were wrecked when heavy rain began to fall.   Hill's pole was the 20th of his career, six better than his nearest challenger, defending champion Michael Schumacher.   The British driver was quick throughout the session and headed the times on each of his runs.   His mid-session lap of 1:20.330 left him well clear of all his rivals and he could afford to sit back and see how well Villeneuve managed in the closing period.   The Canadian, who needs to finish at least four points ahead of Hill to keep the title race alive, tried his very best in the closing stages, but it was not quite enough.   Hill begins the race from the left side of the front row of the grid.   His side of the track on the long straight into the first curve has less dirt and dust so he will be favourite to take the lead -- provided he makes a good start for once.    Hill said his advantage was slender, but invaluable.   "I feel more relaxed than I have in a long time and I know I drive much better when I am relaxed.   I feel good and I am enjoying myself."   Villeneuve was disappointed that the rain prevented him having an opportunity in the final moments to improve his time further.   Hill said: "It's scary to be that close.   It's only about a car's length and nothing more."   Jean Alesi, in a Benetton, shared the second row with double world champion Michael Schumacher in a Ferrari.   Schumacher said he did not think he could win and complete a hat-trick of victories because his car was less competitive in Portugal than it was in Italy.   He said high tyre-wear would be a problem also.   Alesi said he would need to keep a close eye on the two Williams men as they could create an incident that would endanger him.   "I am not sure if I can do a start like I did in Monza as the straight here is much shorter," said Alesi who had slalomed sixth to lead, briefly, on the opening lap at the Italian Grand Prix.   "But, of course, I will try." 
19603 !GCAT !GSPO  Leading provisional   grid positions for Sunday's Portuguese Grand Prix after   Saturday's qualifying session:   1.   Damon Hill (Britain) Williams one minute and 20.330 seconds   2.   Jacques Villeneuve (Canada) Williams 1:20.339   3.   Jean Alesi (France) Benetton 1:21.088   4.   Michael Schumacher (Germany) Ferrari 1:21.236   5.   Gerhard Berger (Austria) Benetton 1:21.293   6.   Eddie Irvine (Britain) Ferrari 1:21.362   7.   Mika Hakkinen (Finland) McLaren 1:21.640   8.   David Coulthard (Britain) McLaren 1:22.066   9.   Rubens Barrichello (Brazil) Jordan 1:22.205   10.   Martin Brundle (Britain) Jordan 1:22.374   11.   Heinz-Harald Frentzen (Germany) Sauber 1:22.325   12.   Johnny Herbert (Britain) Sauber 1:22.655   13.   Mika Salo (Finland) Tyrrell 1:22.765   14.   Ukyo Katayama (Japan) Tyrrell 1:23.013   15.   Olivier Panis (France) Ligier 1:23.055   16.   Jos Verstappen (Netherlands) Footwork 1:23.531   17.   Ricardo Rosset (Brazil) Footwork 1:24.230   18.   Pedro Diniz (Brazil) Ligier 1:24.293   19.   Pedro Lamy (Portugal) Minardi 1:24.510   20.   Giovanni Lavaggi (Italy) Minardi 1:25.612   (Hill's average speed 195.394 kph) 
19604 !GCAT !GSPO  Europe overhauled the U.S. holders when a last-green birdie putt from world number three Liselotte Neumann gave them a lead of 6-1/2 points to 5-1/ 2 on the second day of the Solheim Cup on Saturday.   The Swedish player's five-foot putt followed a fine greenside bunker shot from her foursomes partner, Kathryn Marshall of Britain, and completed a superb morning for the Europeans after they had won the other three matches.   The result of the third session of matches reversed the outcome of the opening foursomes on Friday, when the U.S. team won 3-1/2 to 1/2.   World number one Laura Davies and Trish Johnson led off for Europe, took the opening hole and were never caught as they opened a four-hole lead by the 10th and won four and three.   Swedes Catrin Nilsmark and Annika Sorenstam led by three holes with four to play but were almost caught by the irrepressible Dottie Pepper and Brandie Burton.   But after Pepper hit the hole and stayed out at the last with a 45-foot putt from off the green, Nilsmark sank a two- footer for a birdie to preserve a one-hole victory.   Marie-Laure de Lorenzi of France and Helen Alfredsson of Sweden won three successive holes from the 10th on the way to a four and three victory over Kelly Robbins and Michelle McGann.   Four fourball matches on Saturday and 12 singles on Sunday remained in the competition.    Neumann's putt gave her and Marshall a half against Meg Mallon and Jane Geddes after she lost twice to pairs including Pepper on the first day.   "We had to fight all the way and never got momentum going.   We didn't play so well but we never gave up," she said.   "The half point might just be the half we need at the end," she added.   U.S. captain Judy Rankin said she was not surprised at the morning result.   "When we came here I said we were slight underdogs but everybody disagreed with me including the bookmakers.   "There is so much talent on both sides.   We will obviously have to play very well this afternoon."   Davies, who putted badly on Friday morning but recovered to play superbly as Europe took the first-day fourballs, picked up where she left off with a five-foot birdie putt at the first.   Sheehan hit into a greenside bunker as the Americans bogeyed the fifth to drop two behind and after the British pair won the ninth and 10th it was just a matter of time before they beat the pair who had beaten Davies and Alison Nicholas on Friday.   "We got our blow in first.   We did not make a bogey and in foursomes that's usually good enough to win," Davies said.   Sorenstam and Nilsmark had a three-hole lead after 14, but the Americans fought back to be pipped at the last.   "We just couldn't get the putters going all day.   We didn't make anything," Burton said. 
19605 !GCAT !GSPO  Pairings for afternoon   fourballs in the Solheim Cup women's team golf match between the   United States and Europe at St Pierre on Saturday (European   names first):   Laura Davies/Lisa Hackney (Britain) v Beth Daniel/Val Skinner   Annika Sorenstam (Sweden)/Trish Johnson (Britain) v Michelle   McGann/Meg Mallon   Marie-Laure de Lorenzi (France)/Joanne Morley (Britain) v Kelly   Robbins/Betsy King   Catrin Nilsmark/Liselotte Neumann (Sweden) v Patty Sheehan/Jane   Geddes 
19606 !GCAT !GSPO  Results on the second day of the Solheim Cup women's team golf match between the United States and Europe on Saturday (European names first):   Foursomes:   Laura Davies/Trish Johnson (Britain) beat Patty Sheehan/Rosie   Jones 4 and 3   Annika Sorenstam/Catrin Nilsmark (Sweden) beat Dottie Pepper/   Brandie Burton by one hole   Marie-Laure de Lorenzi (France)/Helen Alfredsson (Sweden) beat   Kelly Robbins/Michelle McGann 4 and 3   Liselotte Neumann (Sweden)/Kathryn Marshall (Britain) halved   with Meg Mallon/ Jane Geddes.   Foursomes score: Europe 3-1/2 U.S. 1/2   Overall score: Europe 6-1/2 U.S. 5-1/2   Fourballs:   Laura Davies/Lisa Hackney (Britain) beat Beth Daniel/Val   Skinner 6 and 5   Fourballs:   Annika Sorenstam (Sweden)/Trish Johnson (Britain) halved with   Michelle McGann/Meg Mallon   Overall score: Europe 8 U.S. 6   Fourballs:   Marie-Laure de Lorenzi (France)/Joanne Morley (Britain) lost to   Kelly Robbins/Betsy King 2 and 1   Catrin Nilsmark/Liselotte Neumann (Sweden) beat Patty   Sheehan/Jane Geddes 2 and 1   Fourballs result: Europe 2-1/2 U.S. 1-1/2   Overall score: Europe 9 U.S. 7 
19607 !GCAT !GSPO  Briton Damon Hill remained silent on Saturday as virtually everyone else in the paddock at practice for Sunday's Portuguese Grand Prix began predicting where his future lay.   "I am not saying anything," said Hill, who has been given notice by the Williams team that his services will not be required in 1997 even if he clinches the world drivers' title this weekend.   His replacement, German Heinz-Harald Frentzen, was announced two weeks ago.   "I am talking to people, but I am not telling you who, how many people, what about or anything else at all.   There is no point in talking about it any further.   "I am here to win this Grand Prix and this weekend I am not involving myself in the discussions about next year.   I am just concentrating on the work of the race weekend."   Hill has been linked, in some fanciful speculation, with both Benetton and Ferrari, but more realistic talk has connected him with the Jordan and Stewart teams.   Stewart, owned by three times champion Jackie Stewart, is a new team entering the championship next year.    Formula One supremo Bernie Ecclestone said on Thursday evening, during a dinner with British reporters, that he thought Hill might have to consider retirement -- and said his days of winning races would be over next year.   Ecclestone, vice-president of the sport's ruling body FIA, said Hill, 36, should recognise that he had no chance of defending his title next year.   "It looks as if he has reached the stage where he has got to quit or he's got to go to somewhere like Jordan and put something back into the sport," said Ecclestone.   "As far as I can see, he could win the title -- and quit.   If he doesn't, he has to accept that he won't have a car in which he can win anything at all next year."   Ecclestone said he had warned Hill in Hungary in August that he was in danger of being booted out of Williams if he did not drop his pay demands.   Now, he said, he needed to recognise the time has come to think of packing up.   "You've got to know when to go, when you've peaked -- and then you just say Adios and go," said Ecclestone.   "For him to win the world championship and move on and defend it, he'd need to move to a team which up to now has not shown any real interest in him," said Ecclestone.    "It's unfortunate, he can't defend his championship in the team with which he won the championship.   If he goes to Jordan, the only thing he can do there is to help the team develop and help Ralf Schumacher develop.    "At least, he would be putting something back into the sport if he did that -- but he would have to sacrifice his hopes of defending the championship."   Hill was amused and amusing when asked about the arrival in Formula One of his old rival Michael Schumacher's younger brother Ralf at Jordan.   "At one point, I thought the world of F1 could only bear one Schumacher.    "But now we've got two and it's going to be fascinating.   Until this year, I didn't even know he had a brother, so it all caught me by suprise   "He seems very condident and he has a great opportunity to be coming into F1 with a team like Jordan."   Hill refused to confirm he would consider driving alongside Schumacher junior next year.   "I've already said I have nothing to say about my discussions -- and that's all I've got to say now." 
19608 !GCAT !GSPO  A spirited struggle from Eastern Transvaal was not enough to prevent a 28-11 defeat (halftime 8-8) by Griqualand West in their Currie Cup rugby fixture on Friday.   In their best performance this season the home side held Griquas in the first half but eventually succombed to the visitors' superior scrummaging and forward power.   Scorers:   Eastern Transvaal - Try: Jaco Viljoen.   Penalties Viljoen (2).   Griqualand West - Tries: Ian Horn, Tobie de Jager, Abrie Pretorius.   Conversions: Franco Smith (2).   Penalties: Smith (3). 
19609 !GCAT !GSPO  Europe continue their pursuit of the United States in the Solheim Cup on Saturday determined not to squander the winning positions they wasted on Friday.   They trail 5-3 after four foursomes and four fourballs, all of which they led for a time.   In two of the foursomes they were ahead only briefly but in the six other matches they were in front at the turn only to fritter away their advantage in the face of resolute American fightbacks.   "We will have to go out and get ahead and keep pegging them back," Trish Johnson of the European team said.   On Friday the Europeans could glean only half a point from the foursomes and, despite leading all the fourballs at halfway, still managed to drop 1-1/2 points.   "The afternoon was positively horrid for a time," U.S. captain Judy Rankin said.   "I give credit to our players for hanging in there and not quitting."   Unsurprisingly, the high-spirited Dottie Pepper emerged as the star of the first day.   She and Brandie Burton, whose twisted right ankle stood up well, trailed by two holes after 10 in the foursomes before they beat Swedes Liselotte Neumann and Helen Alfredsson by one hole.   Then later she holed a crucial 15-foot putt for birdie at the 15th as she and Betsy King held off Neumann and another Swede, Catrin Nilsmark, in the fourballs after Nilsmark had rolled in an 18-footer just ahead of her.   "I played my heart out and I had two great partners who lifted me when I strayed," Pepper said.   "Now my legs are tired and I am looking forward to a good meal and a hot bath."   She played in the last foursomes and the third fourballs and Rankin moved her up to play the second of Saturday morning's foursomes, perhaps in hope that she might clash with world number one Laura Davies.   "I wouldn't have minded if it had come out that way," Rankin admitted.   But Davies will instead play the opening match with Johnson against Patty Sheehan and Rosie Jones, who beat Davies and Alison Nicholas on Thursday.   Pepper and Davies were involved in an incident in the last match two years ago when the American was alleged to have applauded a missed putt by Davies.   But a meeting here will have to wait, though it could take place in the Saturday afternoon fourballs or as one of the 12 singles on Sunday which will decide if the Americans retain the trophy. 
19610 !GCAT !GSPO  Little-known Pete Jordan fired a seven-under-par 64 on Friday to vault into the lead after two rounds of the B.C. Open golf tournament.   Jordan, who turned pro in 1986 and has never led a round on the PGA Tour, stood at 11-under-par 131 for a three-shot lead over Tiger Woods, Fred Funk and overnight leader Brian Claar.   Woods, the amateur phenom who turned professional last month, birdied his last three holes for a 66 that put him at eight-under.   Funk also shot a 66, while Claar shot a 68 to earn a share of second place.   Jordan, who in 24 tournaments this year has earned only about $1,000 more than Woods has in just three professional starts, carded seven birdies between the third and 12th holes.   His lead could have been even more comfortable, but Jordan missed birdie putts inside of five feet on the 15th and 16th holes.   "I don't know how it happened today.   I've been struggling with my game, but it just all seemed to come together," said Jordan, who was forced to return to qualifying school in 1993 and 1994.   "Out here it's all a matter of confidence and believing you belong out here, which is something I'm not always sure about," Jordan admitted.   Woods, who held the lead in the final round of the Quad Cities Classic last week, had seven birdies and two bogeys for his 66.   Four of Woods' birdies came from two-putts on En-Joie's par fives, all of which are reachable for the longest driver in the tournament.   The amateur champion, who has earned $82,194 in his three professional starts, has no trouble believing he belongs on the PGA Tour and is already talking like a seasoned pro.   "It was a good day," said Woods, whose two bogeys came on three-putt greens.   "Going off in the afternoon, when the greens aren't in good condition, I did what I had to.   I shot five under and put myself in good position for the weekend," Woods said.   Woods has improved each week, last week cracking the top 10 with a fifth place finish after squandering a lead on Sunday.   He can sew up his playing privileges for next year by finishing third or better this week. 
19611 !GCAT !GSPO  Liverpool are naturally delighted to be unbeaten and top of the English premier league after seven games but no-one involved with the club is even thinking about the title yet.    They remember the 1990-91 season all too clearly.   Six years ago this weekend Liverpool beat arch-rivals Everton 3-2.   It was their sixth successive league win and they went on to win their opening eight matches and eventually 12 of their opening 14.   A second successive title seemed inevitable but in what eventually proved to be a watershed season at Anfield, they slipped up in the second half of the season, finished runners-up to Arsenal in the championship, lost to Everton in the fifth round of the F.A. Cup and even more astonishingly lost manager Kenny Dalglish.   The Scot, a legend at Anfield, stunned the club and the entire soccer world when he walked out of Liverpool two days after his side had drawn 4-4 with Everton in the cup.   It is no exaggeration to say that it has only been in the last year or so that the club have really come to terms with his departure.   In his biography, published this week, Dalglish recalls the night of the famous cup draw with Everton -- February 20, 1991.   "I was the only person at Goodison that night who knew it was my last match," he writes.   "Before the game I lay on my hotel bed and decided I had to get out.   The alternative was going mad.   "Irrespective of the outcome against Liverpool's oldest rivals I resigned the next day.   I could either keep my job or my sanity.   I had to go."   Despite winning the F.A. Cup in 1992, Liverpool lost direction under his replacement Graeme Souness who only stayed in charge until the beginning of 1994.    They also lost their dominant position in England which they had held since Bill Shankly laid the foundations of the modern club in the early 1960s.   To regain that place, they have to win the league again for the first time since 1990 and begin to claw back some of Manchester United's new found power and prestige.   Since Roy Evans, a long-time member of Liverpool's famous "boot-room" coaching staff, took over as manager two-and-half years ago, Liverpool have gradually re-built their confidence and regained some of their old authority.   But only the title will represent true, regained, success.   They have made steady improvement under Evans who has largely taken Liverpool back to what the team always did best: playing a passing and moving game, swamping the opposition and doing the simple things well.   And Evans has not been slow to strengthen and adapt his side.   Veteran striker Ian Rush was off-loaded to Leeds at the end of last season after a dazzling goal-laden career at Anfield.   The attack is now led by 21-year-old Robbie Fowler who has already scored 67 league goals in 116 appearances with new 3.25 million pounds ($5.05 million) signing, the Czech striker Patrik Berger, looking poised to keep 8.0 million pounds ($12.4 million) man Stan Collymore out of the side and even possibly become the fans's new idol.   Berger has made a stunning impact on his new club, scoring twice when he came on as a substitute against Leicester last week and adding two more on his full debut in Liverpool's 5-1 victory over Chelsea on Saturday which ensured they stayed top.   Berger, who wears a girl's headband to keep his long hair under control, otherwise seems cut from the same cloth as all great marksmen.   He took his two goals with stunning skill, rounding Chelsea keeper Kevin Hitchcock for the first and firing past him left-footed with stunning accuracy for the second.   Evans was philosophical about the win afterwards, saying that Liverpool have room for improvement.   There seemed little wrong with a 5-1 victory that had the home fans singing in joy and left Chelsea wondering what hit them.   Liverpool may be top now, but Evans is one man who remembers the 1990-91 season.   And he's taking nothing for granted. 
19612 !GCAT !GSPO  Leicestershire secured the English county cricket championship title on the penultimate day of the season on Saturday -- thanks to a pragmatic move from Surrey captain Alec Stewart at The Oval.   Stewart's decision to forfeit Surrey's first innings against Worcestershire meant that with no batting bonus points even a Surrey victory could not overturn Leicestershire's lead at the top of the table.   After rain ruined much of the first two days, Stewart was left with little option as he needs a positive result to ensure his side do not slip lower than second in the final reckoning, which despite his bold move still looks probable.   That will matter little to Leicestershire, who left the field at Grace Road at tea of the third day of their match against Middlesex, to find they had been confirmed as champions.   It was an an announcement that sparked wild celebrations of their first title since their only previous success in 1975 and followed a sparkling batting display earlier on that virtually ensured the draw they required for the championship.   Jack Birkenshaw, Leicestershire's delighted coach and a member of their previous title-winning side, said: "This is the highlight of my career.   This is even better than playing test cricket for England.   "People kept telling us that Surrey had forfeited and we were champions but we didn't believe them at first.   We rang The Oval in the end and they confirmed it.   It's a great feeling.   There were a few moist eyes in the dressing room."   On the field, Middlesex were 194 for five at the close with England seamer Alan Mullally again in fine form with three for 40, with only Mark Ramprakash (78) offering much resistance before he was bowled by Adrian Pierson.   Earlier, Leicestershire were finally dismissed for an imposing 512 in their first innings, a lead of 322, with Phil Simmons left unbeaten on 142.   Mullally offered him valuable support before he was eventually bowled by Angus Fraser for 75.   In what is now the battle for second spot, Surrey are in danger of defeat against Worcestershire after the visitors were all out for 362 in 106 overs with Vikram Solanki hitting 90.   With Surrey forfeiting, Worcestershire chose to bat again, adding 61 runs in a frustrating 31 overs for the home side before declaring.   Surrey struggled to 15 for one at the close, leaving them still needing more than 400 runs to win after Tom Moody snapped up the wicket of Mark Butcher.   Derbyshire recorded the victory expected of them over Durham by eight wickets with captain Dean Jones leading the way with a top-scoring 71 not out.   The home side cruised to 220 for two in just 46.3 overs after Durham were dismissed for 332 with youngster David Cox making a stylish 91.   Stewart Hutton could only add a single to his overnight 85.    Leicestershire captain James Whitaker said: "I always believed right from the pre-season tour we made to South Africa that we would have a good chance providing we were okay with injuries and everybody played to their maximum."   Coach Birkenshaw advised West Indies selectors, who have omitted Simmons out of recent test squads, to reconsider.   Simmons has scored over 1,000 first class runs and is nearing 60 championship wickets.   Birkenshaw said: "He is batting better than he has ever done and bowling better than he has ever done.   I think the West Indies selectors are mad to leave him out." 
19613 !GCAT !GSPO  Close of play scores on the third   day of four-day English county championship cricket matches on   Saturday:   At Bristol: Gloucestershire beat Kent by 10 wickets.   Kent   154 and 117 (C.Walsh 4-21).   Gloucestershire 241 and 33-0.   Gloucestershire 21 points, Kent 4.   At Hove: Somerset beat Sussex by 8 wickets.   Sussex 141 and   270 (N.Lenham 64, W.Athey 57; A.Caddick 5-122).   Somerset 354 and   60-2.   Somerset 24 points, Sussex 4.   At Derby: Derbyshire beat Durham by 8 wickets.   Durham 142   and 332 (D.Cox 91, S.Hutton 86; P.DeFreitas 4-54).   Derbyshire   256 and 220-2 (D.Jones 71 not out, A.Rollins 69 not out, C.Adams   64).   Derbyshire 22 points, Durham 4.   At Northampton: Yorkshire 478 (M.Vaughan 183, C.White 66,   M.Moxon 47; A.Penberthy 5-92).   Northamptonshire 222 and 157-0   (M.Loye 106 not out).   At The Oval: Worcestershire 362 (V.Solanki 90, K.Spiring 63,   T.Moody 60) and 61-1 declared.   Surrey forfeited first innings   and 15-1.   At Chelmsford: Essex 367 and 143-3 (N.Hussain 64).    Glamorgan 353-6 declared (M.Maynard 122, D.Hemp 95, A.Cottey 69   not out).   At Southampton: Hampshire 513-4 declared and 39-1.   Nottinghamshire 391-4 declared (G.Archer 120, P.Johnson 109,   U.Afzaal 67 not out).   At Leicester: Middlesex 190 and 194-5 (M.Ramprakash 78).   Leicestershire 512 (P.Simmons 142 not out, J.Whitaker 89,   A.Mullally 75; R.Fay 4-140).   At Edgbaston: Warwickshire 386 and 58-0.   Lancashire 597   (N.Fairbrother 204, G.Lloyd 113, J.Crawley 73, P.McKeown 64;   A.Giles 4-165). 
19614 !GCAT !GSPO  The Czech Republic and France clawed their way back into the Davis Cup semifinals on Saturday with doubles wins over Sweden and Italy respectively.   A late decision by captain Vladislav Savdra to opt for the experience of Petr Korda and Daniel Vacek paid off handsomely for the Czech Republic in Prague.   The pair, replacing Jiri Novak and Bohdan Ulihrach, defeated Jonas Bjorkman and Nicklas Kulti 4-6 6-3 6-4 6-4 to give the home team their first win of the tie.   In Nantes, pre-match favourites France also won their first rubber with Guillaume Raoux and Guy Forget defeating Andrea Gaudenzi and Diego Nargiso 6-3 6-4 6-2.   Korda and Vacek combined in the quarter-final victory over defending champions the United States and after dropping the first set on Saturday they lost only four service points in the second and six in the third during a match featuring some spectacular rallies.   "Today in the doubles we knew we had to pick it up, just as we did last time against the Americans," Korda said.   "I guess Vladislav once again made the right choice."   French captain Yannick Noah decided to keep faith with the inexperienced Raoux, who rewarded his country handsomely by conceding only six points on his serve.   "Italy lead 2-1, they're still ahead," Noah said.   "The Italian players are still smiling but they'll smile less at 2-2." 
19615 !GCAT !GSPO  Paul Gascoigne and substitute Peter Van Vossen each scored twice to give Rangers a 4-1 win at Kilmarnock on Saturday after they looked like going down to their first Scottish premier division defeat of the season.   Rangers, chasing a ninth successive title, trailed to a 19th minute Mark Reilly goal before Gascoigne equalised with a 68th minute penalty.   He scored again eight minutes later to make it 2-1 while van Vossen scored in the 84th and 86th minutes to give Rangers their sixth successive league victory of the season and keep Walter Smith's men two points clear of Celtic.   Rangers, who face Auxerre in the European champions league on Wednesday, were watched by Guy Roux, the manager of the French side, who saw them outplayed for long periods.   Celtic went one better than Rangers, winning 5-1 at home to Dunfermline with goals from Jorge Cadete (32nd), Paolo di Canio (35th and 41st) and Pierre van Hooydonk (72nd and 89th).   Former Celtic striker Gerry Britton scored for the visitors.   Hearts, who had four men sent off in their 3-0 defeat against Rangers last Saturday, had a better afternoon drawing 1-1 at home with Motherwell.   David Weir, one of the quartet banished last week, scored Hearts' 58th minute equaliser after Doug Arnott had put Motherwell ahead a minute after the break.   In other action, Hibernian won 2-0 at Aberdeen and Raith picked up their first points of the season with a 3-2 win over Dundee United who replace Raith at the bottom of the table. 
19616 !GCAT !GSPO  Leading goalscorers in the   Scottish premier division after Saturday's matches:   6 - Pierre Van Hooydonk (Celtic), Billy Dodds (Aberdeen)   4 - Jorge Cadete (Celtic), Ally McCoist (Rangers),   Peter Van Vossen (Rangers), Dean Windass (Aberdeen),   Paul Gascoigne (Rangers), Andreas Thom (Celtic) 
19617 !GCAT !GSPO  Leading goalscorers in the   English premier league after Saturday's matches:   6 - Fabrizio Ravanelli (Middlesbrough), Ian Wright (Arsenal)   4 - Les Ferdinand (Newcastle), Patrik Berger (Liverpool),   Kevin Campbell (Nottingham Forest), Eric Cantona    (Manchester United), Juninho (Middlesbrough), Frank   Leboeuf (Chelsea), Alan Shearer (Newcastle)   3 - Chris Armstrong (Tottenham), Andy Booth   (Sheffield Wednesday), Michael Hughes (West Ham),   Richie Humphreys (Sheffield Wednesday), Steve    McManaman (Liverpool) 
19618 !GCAT !GSPO  Results of Northern Ireland Gold   Cup soccer matches on Saturday:   Group A    Coleraine 0 Portadown  0    Newry 0 Bangor 4   Group B    Crusaders 2 Ballymena  1    Larne 2 Ards 2   Group C    Carrick 3 Cliftonville  2    Omagh Town 1 Glentoran  0   Group D    Ballyclare 1 Linfield 3    Glenavon 7 Distillery  0 
19619 !GCAT !GSPO  Scottish league soccer standings   after matches played on Saturday (tabulated under played, won,   drawn, lost, goals for, against, points):   Premier division    Rangers 6 6 0 0 15 3 18    Celtic 6 5 1 0 21 6 16    Aberdeen 6 3 2 1 15 7 11    Hibernian 6 3 1 2 5 7 10    Motherwell 6 1 4 1 8 6 7    Hearts 6 2 1 3 6 12 7    Dunfermline 6 1 3 2 8 14 6    Kilmarnock 6 1 1 4 8 16 4    Raith 6 1 0 5 5 15 3    Dundee United  6 0 1 5 4 9 1   Division one    Greenock Morton  6 4 1 1 10 4 13    Dundee 6 3 2 1 6 3 11    St Johnstone 5 3 1 1 10 3 10    Falkirk 6 3 1 2 4 2 10    Clydebank 6 3 1 2 6 8 10    Airdrieonians  5 2 2 1 7 6 8    Stirling 6 1 2 3 4 7 5    St Mirren 6 1 1 4 6 8 4    Partick 6 0 4 2 6 9 4    East Fife 6 0 3 3 2 11 3   Division two    Livingston 6 5 1 0 12 5 16    Hamilton 6 4 1 1 12 4 13    Ayr 6 3 2 1 14 8 11    Queen of the South  6 3 1 2 9 8 10    Stranraer 6 2 2 2 5 6 8    Clyde 6 2 1 3 6 8 7    Stenhousemuir  6 1 2 3 7 4 5    Dumbarton 6 1 2 3 7 11 5    Berwick 6 1 1 4 8 21 4    Brechin 6 0 3 3 3 8 3   Division three    Albion 6 4 2 0 9 2 14    Montrose 6 3 1 2 8 5 10    Alloa 6 2 3 1 7 6 9    Cowdenbeath 6 2 2 2 6 6 8    Inverness 6 2 2 2 7 8 8    Forfar 6 2 1 3 9 9 7    Arbroath 6 1 4 1 6 6 7    Ross County 6 2 0 4 7 9 6    Queen's Park 6 1 3 2 9 13 6    East Stirling  6 1 2 3 6 10 5 
19620 !GCAT !GSPO  Summaries of English premier   league soccer matches on Saturday:   Aston Villa 0 Manchester United 0.   Attendance: 39,339   Blackburn 1 (Donis 32nd) Everton 1 (Unsworth 37th).   Halftime   1-1.   Attendance: 27,091   Leeds 0 Newcastle 1 (Shearer 59th) 0-0.   36,070   Liverpool 5 (Fowler 15th, Berger 42nd, 49th, Myers 45th own   goal, Barnes 57th) Chelsea 1 (Leboeuf 85th penalty).   3-0.   40,739   Middlesbrough 0 Arsenal 2 (Hartson 3rd, Wright 27th) 0-2.   29,629.   Nottingham Forest 0 West Ham 2 (Bowen 45th, Hughes 54) 0-1.   23,352   Sheffield Wednesday 0 Derby 0.   23,934   Sunderland 1 (Agnew 51st) Coventry 0.   0-0.   19,459. 
19621 !GCAT !GSPO  English league soccer standings   after matches played on Saturday (tabulated under played, won,   drawn, lost, goals for, against, points):   Premier league    Liverpool 7 5 2 0 16 5 17    Newcastle 7 5 0 2 10 7 15    Arsenal 7 4 2 1 15 8 14    Manchester United 7 3 4 0 16 6 13    Sheffield Wednesday 7 4 1 2 9 9 13    Aston Villa  7 3 3 1 8 5 12    Chelsea 7 3 3 1 10 9 12    Middlesbrough  7 3 2 2 14 9 11    Derby 7 2 4 1 8 8 10    Sunderland 7 2 3 2 6 4 9    Wimbledon 6 3 0 3 7 6 9    Tottenham 6 2 2 2 5 4 8    West Ham 7 2 2 3 6 10 8    Leeds 7 2 1 4 6 12 7    Everton 7 1 3 3 6 10 6    Nottingham Forest 7 1 3 3 8 13 6    Leicester 6 1 2 3 3 8 5    Coventry 7 1 1 5 3 13 4    Southampton  6 0 2 4 5 9 2    Blackburn 7 0 2 5 5 11 2   Division one    Bolton 8 6 1 1 21 11 19    Barnsley 7 6 0 1 15 6 18    Norwich 8 5 2 1 9 4 17    Wolverhampton  8 4 2 2 12 8 14    Crystal Palace  8 3 4 1 15 7 13    Tranmere 8 4 1 3 11 9 13    Ipswich 8 3 3 2 15 12 12    Queens Park Rangers 8 3 3 2 11 10 12    Manchester City  8 4 0 4 9 9 12    West Bromwich  7 3 2 2 12 11 11    Stoke 7 3 2 2 10 12 11    Swindon 8 3 2 3 9 9 11    Sheffield United  6 3 1 2 12 9 10    Oxford 8 3 1 4 11 8 10    Huddersfield  6 3 1 2 10 8 10    Portsmouth 8 3 1 4 6 9 10    Birmingham 6 2 2 2 8 7 8    Port Vale 8 1 5 2 6 8 8    Reading 8 2 1 5 10 20 7    Charlton 7 2 1 4 6 8 7    Southend 8 1 3 4 7 14 6    Bradford 8 2 0 6 6 14 6    Grimsby 8 1 2 5 8 18 5    Oldham 8 0 2 6 7 15 2   Division two    Brentford 8 6 2 0 16 6 20    Millwall 8 5 2 1 16 9 17    Watford 8 5 1 2 9 7 16    Chesterfield  8 5 1 2 6 4 16    Bury 8 4 3 1 12 6 15    Burnley 8 4 1 3 10 9 13    Crewe 8 4 1 3 10 9 13    Shrewsbury 8 3 4 1 9 8 13    Wrexham 7 3 3 1 11 9 12    Blackpool 8 3 3 2 7 7 12    Plymouth 8 3 2 3 13 13 11    Bristol Rovers  8 3 2 3 6 7 11    Bristol City  8 3 1 4 15 13 10    Gillingham 8 3 1 4 9 10 10    Luton 8 3 1 4 7 12 10    Bournemouth  8 3 0 5 8 10 9    Peterborough  7 1 5 1 10 10 8    York 8 2 2 4 9 11 8    Notts County  7 2 2 3 6 7 8    Stockport 8 2 2 4 6 8 8    Preston 8 2 1 5 6 9 7    Walsall 7 1 2 4 7 12 5    Wycombe 8 0 4 4 5 9 4    Rotherham 8 0 2 6 7 15 2   Division three    Fulham 8 6 0 2 12 7 18    Wigan 8 5 2 1 15 8 17    Carlisle 8 5 2 1 10 4 17    Hull 8 4 4 0 8 4 16    Chester 8 4 2 2 12 8 14    Cambridge 4 2 2 11 10 14    Cardiff 8 4 2 2 8 7 14    Torquay 8 3 3 2 10 7 12    Leyton Orient  8 3 3 2 7 4 12    Darlington 8 3 2 3 13 10 11    Hartlepool 8 3 2 3 9 9 11    Scarborough  8 2 4 2 11 10 10    Barnet 8 2 4 2 8 4 10    Scunthorpe 8 3 1 4 6 10 10    Swansea 8 3 0 5 11 15 9    Brighton 8 2 2 4 9 14 8    Colchester 8 1 5 2 7 9 8    Lincoln 8 2 2 4 7 11 8    Exeter 8 2 2 4 7 12 8    Northampton  8 1 4 3 10 10 7    Hereford 8 2 1 5 5 9 7    Mansfield 8 1 4 3 4 9 7    Rochdale 8 1 3 4 5 10 6    Doncaster 8 1 2 5 6 10 5 
19622 !GCAT !GSPO  English league leaders Liverpool thrashed previously unbeaten Chelsea 5-1 in a top-of-the-table match at Anfield on Saturday with a display which confirmed them as true championship contenders.   Two outstanding goals from new Czech striker Patrik Berger, who took his tally to six in a week, highlighted a rampant Liverpool performance.   Berger scored twice after coming on as a substitute against Leicester last week and two more for the Czech Republic in midweek.   He struck twice in seven minutes on either side of halftime as Liverpool ran riot against Ruud Gullit's team, who started the day in third place.   Robbie Fowler (15), Andy Myers (44 own goal) and John Barnes (57) added the others as Liverpool, who have not won the title since their record 18th success in 1990, stayed top.   Frenchman Frank LeBouef scored a consolation for Chelsea with an 85th minute penalty.   Newcastle moved into second place, two points behind, after winning 1-0 at Leeds United thanks to a 59th minute goal from Alan Shearer.    The result left news Leeds manager George Graham beaten for the second time in his two matches in charge.   Leeds had a miserable afternoon with former England defender Carlton Palmer sent off after 30 minutes.   Arsenal went third with a 2-0 win at Middlesbrough.   The goals came from John Hartson in the third minute and Ian Wright, who netted his 101st league goal for the Gunners after 27 minutes.   Defending champions Manchester United, who started the day in second place, slipped down the table after drawing 0-0 at Aston Villa.   West Ham won 2-0 at Nottingham Forest despite having Swiss defender Marc Reiper sent off.   Sunderland beat Coventry 1-0 and Sheffield Wednesday drew 0-0 with Derby.   Bottom-of-the-table Blackburn drew 1-1 with Everton, who had Scottish striker Duncan Ferguson sent off after 88 minutes. 
19623 !GCAT !GSPO  Results of Scottish league   soccer matches on Saturday:   Premier division    Aberdeen 0 Hibernian  2    Celtic 5 Dunfermline  1    Hearts 1 Motherwell  1    Kilmarnock 1 Rangers 4    Raith 3 Dundee United  2   Division one    Airdrieonians  4 Partick 4    Clydebank 2 St Johnstone  1    Dundee 2 East Fife  0    St Mirren 0 Falkirk 1    Stirling 1 Greenock Morton 3   Division two    Berwick 3 Dumbarton  1    Brechin 0 Hamilton 2    Queen of the South 1 Ayr 2    Stenhousemuir  0 Livingston  0    Stranraer 0 Clyde 0   Division three    Albion 1 Alloa 1    Cowdenbeath  0 Ross County  1    East Stirling  1 Montrose 3    Forfar 1 Arbroath 1    Inverness C. Thistle 2 Queen's Park  2 
19624 !GCAT !GSPO  Results of English league soccer   matches on Saturday:   Premier division    Aston Villa  0 Manchester United 0    Blackburn 1 Everton 1    Leeds 0 Newcastle  1    Liverpool 5 Chelsea 1    Middlesbrough  0 Arsenal 2    Nottingham Forest 0 West Ham 2    Sheffield Wednesday 0 Derby 0    Sunderland  1 Coventry 0   Playing Sunday: Tottenham v Leicester   Playing Monday: Wimbeldon v Southampton   Division one    Bradford 2 Bolton 4    Grimsby 0 Oxford 2    Manchester City  1 Birmingham  0    Oldham 0 Barnsley 1    Portsmouth  0 Norwich 1    Queen's Park Rangers 1 Swindon 1    Reading 1 Crystal Palace  6    Southend 0 Port Vale  0    Tranmere 2 West Bromwich  3    Wolverhampton  1 Sheffield United 2   Playing Sunday: Stoke v Huddersfield   Division two    Blackpool 1 Shrewsbury  1    Bournemouth  0 Notts County  1    Bristol City  4 Walsall 1    Bury 0 Luton 0    Chesterfield  0 Burnley 0    Gillingham  3 Rotherham  1    Millwall 2 Crewe 0    Plymouth 0 Bristol Rovers  1    Watford 0 Peterborough  0    Wrexham 1 Preston 0    Wycombe 0 Brentford  1    York 1 Stockport  2   Division three    Barnet 3 Exeter 0    Brighton 2 Torquay 2    Cambridge 2 Scarborough  1    Cardiff 2 Northampton  2    Carlisle 1 Darlington  0    Chester 1 Scunthorpe  0    Doncaster 0 Swansea 1    Fulham 1 Mansfield  2    Hereford 3 Rochdale 0    Hull 1 Hartlepool  0    Leyton Orient  1 Colchester  1    Wigan 1 Lincoln 0 
19625 !GCAT !GSPO  Results of rugby union matches on   Saturday:   English division one    Bristol 24 Harlequins  35    Gloucester  29 Bath 45    London Irish  19 Sale 25    Northampton  41 Orrell 7    West Hartlepool 25 Saracens  16   Welsh division one    Bridgend 59 Neath 13    Dunvant 10 Pontypridd  18    Llanelli 30 Swansea 17    Newbridge  11 Cardiff 64    Treorchy 31 Caerphilly  16   Scottish division one    Boroughmuir  25 Melrose 47    Hawick 15 Watsonians  25    Heriots F.P.  22 Stirling County 9    Jed-Forest  21 Currie 28   Irish Inter Provincial Championship    Munster  38 Connacht 28    Ulster  25 Leinser 35 
19626 !GCAT !GSPO  Britain took a winning 3-0 lead   over Egypt in their Davis Cup Euro/African zone group two, third   round tie after victory in the doubles on Saturday.   Result:   Neil Broad/Mark Petchey beat Tamer El Sawy/Amr Ghoneim 3-6 6-4   6-3 6-4 
19627 !GCAT !GSPO  Leicestershire won the English county championship on Saturday when Surrey forfeited their first innings against Worcestershire at The Oval.   Even if Leicestershire are defeated by Middlesex in their match at Leicester, Surrey can not now get enough points to take first place.    Surrey, 19 points adrift of Leicestershire at the start of the third day of the final round of four-day matches, needed a victory with maximum bonus points to have a chance of winning their first title since 1971.   But with their match badly hit by rain and Worcestershire still batting in their first innings when play began that result was clearly out of their reach.   Instead, in an effort to manufacture a result, Surrey forfeited their first innings and effectively conceded the title to Leicestershire.   Leicestershire won their only previous title in 1975. 
19628 !GCAT !GSPO  Four times derby winning jockey Willie Carson should be able to resume competitive riding within three months,if he wants to, his doctor said on Saturday.   Carson, 53, suffered a damaged liver when he was kicked by the horse he was about to mount in the parade ring before a race at Newbury racecourse yesterday.   The Scot, champion jockey five times, was sent flying by the blow, but doctors have indicated his life may have been saved by the body armour jockeys now wear.   Carson had a "reasonably comfortable" night in hospital and doctors will decide by the end of the weekend whether he will need surgery.   Consultant surgeon Myrddin Rees said: "Mr Carson is a very brave man and I don't think this injury will stop him riding next year but ... it'll be two to three months before he is fully fit for competitive riding."   The jockey had previously indicated he might be about to retire and Rees said his prognosis was medical and not based on anything Carson had said. 
19629 !GCAT !GSPO  The Sahara Cup series cricket tug of war will be decided by a fifth and final match after Pakistan scored an emphatic 97-run victory over India on Saturday.   The Pakistanis levelled the series at 2-2 with a disciplined performance which featured a fine return to form by Ijaz Ahmed (90) and some exceptional bowling from skipper Wasim Akram (two for 11) and spinner Saqlain Mushtaq (three for nine).   Ahmed, the player of the match, helped Pakistan recover from a precarious 91-4 in the 20th over to compile 258-8 on a wicket which offered the bowlers some encouragement.   India was never in the running after a fine opening spell from Akram.   They lost openers Nayan Mongia (0) and Sachin Tendulkar (3) with only nine runs on the board and had the staggers at 64-6.   A rear-guard 47 runs from Ajay Jadeja was nowhere near enough as Saqlain and Aamir Sohail (none for 36 off ten) bowled tightly to prevent any Indian revival.   Salim Malik mopped up the tail (two for six) to dismiss India for 161 and present Pakistan with a confidence builder going into Sunday's decider.   "We are getting better day by day," Akram said after the match.   "Our bodies were stiff before but they are loose now."   The capacity crowd of 5,000 at the Toronto Cricket, Skating and Curling Club were treated to some vintage Ijaz Ahmed.   The 28-year-old combined with punishing right hander Inzamam-ul-Haq for an 86-run partnership just when Pakistan was looking vulnerable.   He brought up his 50 off 74 balls and looked set for a fifth career one-day century.   However an attempted cut off an Anil Kumble top spinner was the wrong shot and Ahmed was bowled for a series-saving 90.   India had to score at a rate of 5.2 runs an over and after losing their openers cheaply they were always going to struggle. 
19630 !GCAT !GSPO  Scoreboard for the fourth   limited overs international between Pakistan and India in the   Sahara Cup series played at the Toronto Cricket, Skating and   Curling Club on Saturday.   (India won the toss).   Pakistan    Aamir Sohail c Srinath b Joshi 23    Saeed Anwar bowled Prasad 35    Saleem EIahi lbw Srinath 1    Ijaz Ahmed b Kumble 90    Salim Malik run out 1    Inzamam-ul-Haq run out 40    Moin Khan st Mongia b Tendulkar 33    Wasim Akram c Prasad b Kumble 10    Saqlain Mushtaq not out 10    Waqar Younis not out 0    Extras (3b, 8lb, 4w) 15    Total (for eight wickets) 258   50 overs   Fall of wickets: 42-1, 43-2, 84-3, 91-4, 177-5, 214-6,   235- 7, 248-8.   Bowling: Srinath 9-0-52-1, Prasad 10-0-50-1 (2w), Jadeja   1- 0-8-0, Kapoor 8-0-34-0 (1w), Joshi 9-1-45-1, Kumble   10-0-36-2, Tendulkar 3-0-22-1 (1w).   India    Nayan Mongia c Ijaz b Akram 0    Sachin Tendulkar c Malik b Akram 3    Rahul Dravid c Moin b Saqlain 25    Mohammad Azharuddin c Elahi b Saqlain  16    Vinod Kambli run out 6    Ajay Jadeja st Moin b Malik 47    Sunil Joshi c Moin b Saqlain 1    Ashish Kapoor c Moin b Younis 19    Anil Kumble c Sohail b Malik 16    Javagal Srinath c Saqlain b Younis 10    Venkatesh Prasad not out 0    Extras (8b, 7lb, 3w) 18    Total 161   39.2 overs.   Fall of wickets: 4-1, 9-2, 41-3, 58-4, 63-5, 64-6, 118-7,   148-8, 160-9, 161.   Bowling: Akram 6-2-11-2 (1w), Younis 8-0-51-2 (1w),   Saqlain 7-1-9-3, Sohail 10-0-36-0 (1w), Mushtaq 7-0-33-0,   Malik 1.2-0-6-2.   Umpires: David Shepherd, Lloyd Barker.   Player of the match: Ijaz Ahmed.   Series level 2-2.   Fifth and final match to be played Sunday. 
19631 !GCAT !GSPO  Pakistan defeated India by 97   runs in the fourth one day international of the five-match   Sahara Cup series in Toronto on Saturday.   Pakistan compiled 258-8 off their maximum of 50 overs   while India replied with 161 all out off 39.2 overs.   The series stands at 2-2 with the fifth and final match to   be played at the Toronto Cricket, Skating and Curling Club on   Sunday.   Scores:   Pakistan 258-8 (Ijaz Ahmed 90, Inzamam-ul-Haq 40; Anil   Kumble two for 36)   India 161 (Ajay Jadeja 47; Wasim Akram two for 11, Saqlain   Mushtaq three for nine, Salim Malik two for six). 
19632 !GCAT !GSPO  South Africa won the Four Nations friendly tournament in Pretoria on Saturday by drawing 0-0 in an ill-tempered match.   Kenyan referee Suleiman Gharib sent off three players and handed out six cautions as the home team struggled to secure the point they needed to edge Australia into second place.   Australia earlier beat Kenya 4-0 in a one-sided game with two goals in each half.   South Africa, after two easy wins in the tournament earlier in the week, found themselves in a pitched battle from the start against a determined Ghanaian team.   Tough midfield tackling and some spectaclar saves from goalkeeper Richard Kingston kept South Africa at bay in front of a packed and frustrated crowd of 50,000.   Referee Gharsib sent off Ghanaian striker Shamo Quaye early in the second half for a seemingly innocuous challenge but the hosts failed to take advantage of the 10-man oppostion.   Then South African defender Sizwe Motaung and Ghana's sweeper Foster Bastios were also dismissed for savage tackles late in the match.   Australia thoroughly outplayed a limp Kenyan team in the first match at the Loftus Versfeld stadium, scoring twice within six minutes in the first half to effectively kill off the opposition.   First Jason Polak with a 32nd minute header and then a shot from Warren Spink gave them a 2-0 half-time lead which substitute Damian Mori added to in the 63rd minute.   Kenya's misery was completed when Alex Tobin converted a 78th minute penalty shortly after Tom Juma and coach Vojo Gardesevic had been sent off.   Kenya ended the tournament with three defeats while Australia finished second just one point behind South Africa.   Ghana were third with four ponts from their three matches.   Teams:   South Africa: 1-Andre Arendse; 2-Sizwe Motaung, 3 - David Nyathi, 9 - Neil Tovey, 20-Jacob Tshisevhe; 8-Linda Buthelezi, 7-Thomas Madigage (22-Isaac Kungwane 75th min), 19-Quinton Fortune (12-Joel Masilela 52nd), 10-John Moshoeu; 11-Mark Williams, 25-Jerr Sikhosana (17-Shaun Bartlett 66th).   Ghana: 1-Richard Kingston; 2-Frank Amankwah (5-Sammy Adjei 27th), 10-Patrick Allotey, 4 - Jacob Nettey, 6-Stephen Baidoo, 7-Foster Bastios; 12-Nana Dartey (9-Yaw Sakyi 56th), 18-Ablade Kumah (3-Osei Kuffour 66th), 8-Bernard Aryee; 11-Shamo Quaye, 17-KimGrant.   Australia: 18-Jason Petkovic; 4-Milan Ivanovic, 5-Alex Tobin, 8 - Andrew Marth; 6-Robbie Hooker, 10-Craig Foster, 12-Alistair Edwards, 13-Goran Lozanovksi, 14-Jason Polak (7-Ernie Tapai 46th); 16-Warren Spink (11-Paul Trimboli 74th), 17-Kris Trajanovksi(9-Damian Mori 56th).   Kenya: 1-Matthew Ottomax; 6-Thomas Juma, 3-Francis Oduor, 2 - Musa Otieno, 5-Paul Ochieng; 17-Gerald Origi, 11 - Frederick Ambani, 9-Allan Odhiambo, 7-Tom Odhiambo (12-Joe Birgen 71st); 10-Anthony Lwanga, 14-Nickanor Aketch. 
19633 !GCAT !GSPO  Results in the Four Nations Cup   on Saturday:   Australia 4 Kenya 0 (halftime 2-0)   Scorers:   Jason Polak (32nd min), Warren Spink (36th), Damian Mori   (63rd), Alex Tobin (78th, penalty)   South Africa 0 Ghana 0   Attendance: 50,000   Final standings (tabulate under games played, won, drawn, lost, goals for, goals against, points):    South Africa 3 2 1 0 3 0 7    Australia 3 2 0 1 6 2 6    Ghana  3 1 1 1 1 2 4    Kenya  3 0 0 3 0 6 0 
19634 !GCAT !GSPO  Free State re-wrote the Currie Cup rugby union record books on Saturday with a 113-11 win over South Western Districts (SWD) in Bloemfontein.   SWD, the weakest side in the Currie Cup which was expanded from six to 14 teams this season, were demolished in a 17-try display by the home side.   Free State's Springbok wing Chris Badenhorst was one of 13 players to get on the scoresheet, becoming the first man in South African provincial rugby to reach the 100-try mark.   The previous biggest Currie Cup score was set in 1988 when Western Transvaal beat Eastern Free State 103-9.   The South African Rugby Football Union has been widely criticised over the experiment to include the nation's minnows in the Currie Cup although it is committed to retaining the format for 1997. 
19635 !GCAT !GSPO  Results in African club   soccer competitions on Saturday:   Champions' Cup quarter-finals, second leg   In Ibadan: Shooting Stars (Nigeria) 1 Orlando Pirates (South   Africa) 0 (halftime 0-0)   Scorer: Dotun Alatishe (55th minute)   Attendance: 10,000   Aggregate 1-1.   Shooting Stars won 4-3 on penalties.   In Meknes: Omnisports Meknes (Morocco) 2 Zamalek (Egypt) 2   (1-1)   Scorers:   Meknes - Youssef el Mintih (27th), Aballah Belbkri (48th)   Zamalek - Mustapha Tarek (27th), Ayman Mansour (85th)   Attendance: 12,000   Zamalek win 4-2 on aggregate. 
19636 !GCAT !GSPO  Zimbabwe took a winning 3-0 lead   over Finland in their Davis Cup Euro/African zone group one   play-off tie after victory in the doubles on Saturday.   Result:   Wayne Black/Byron Black beat Kim Tiilikainen/ Vilie Liukko 6-1   6-1 6-3 
19637 !GCAT !GSPO  Currie Cup rugby union   standings after Saturday's matches (tabulated under played, won,   drawn, lost, points for, against, total points):   Section A    Natal 10 10 0 0 566 181 20    Transvaal 11 8 1 2 426 228 17    Boland 10 6 0 4 213 225 12    South Eastern Transvaal 11 5 2 4 269 342 12    Border 10 2 2 6 213 352 6    Eastern Province  10 1 1 8 195 303 3    Western Transvaal  10 1 0 9 222 473 2   Section B    Northern Transvaal  11 10 0 1 560 199 20    Free State 10 8 0 2 476 235 16    Griqualand West 10 7 0 3 393 364 14    Western Province  10 6 0 4 400 210 12    Eastern Transvaal  11 3 0 8 267 519 6    Northern Free State  10 2 0 8 193 461 4    South Western Districts 10 0 0 10 185 586 0 
19638 !GCAT !GSPO  Results of Currie Cup rugby   union matches on Saturday:   In Johannesburg: Transvaal 36 Natal 37 (halftime 16-27)   Scorers:   Transvaal - Tries: Kobus Wiese, Japie Mulder, Jannie van der   Walt.   Conversions: Gavin Lawless (3).   Penalties: Lawless (5).   Natal - Tries: Mark Andrews, Jeremy Thompson, Andre Joubert   (3).   Conversions: Henry Honiball (3).   Penalties: Honiball,   Joubert.   In Bloemfontein: Free State 113 South Western Districts 11   (54-6)   Scorers:   Free State - Tries: Braam Els, Johan Erasmus (2), Helgard   Muller, MJ Smith, Jan-Harm van Wyk (3), Dirkie Groenewald (2),   Ryno Oppermann, Brendan Venter, Charl Marais, Chris Badenhorst,   Naka Drotske, Jorrie Kruger, Alex Skinner.   Conversions: MJ Smith   (14).   South West Districts - Try: Jacques Wolfardt.   Penalties:   Jurie Coetzee (2).   In Wellington: Boland 18 Eastern Province 17 (15-7).   Scorers:   Boland - Tries: Stefan Terblanche, Elmo Wolfaardt.   Conversion: Francois Horn.   Penalties: Francois Horn (2)   Eastern Province - Try: Chad Alcock, penalty try.   Conversion: Andries Fourie (2).   Penalty: Fourie.   In Cape Town: Western Province 16 Northern Transvaal 27   (6-14)   Scorers:   Western Province - Tries: Jaco Taute, Joggie Viljoen.   Penalties: Louis Koen (2).   Northern Transvaal - Tries: Theo van Rensburg, Lourens   Campher, FA Meiring.   Conversions: Lance Sherrell (3).   Penalties:   Sherrell (2).    In East London: Border 20 South Eastern Transvaal 20 (20-10)   Scorers:   Border - Tries: Andre Claasen, Craig Snelling.   Conversions:   Greg Miller (2).   Penalties: Miller (2).   South Eastern Transvaal - Tries: Hakkies Swart, Johan   Visagie.   Conversions: Clive Terre'Blanche (2).   Penalties:   Terre'Blanche (2)   Played Friday:   In Brakpan: Eastern Transvaal 11 Griqualand West 28 (8-8)   Scorers:   Eastern Transvaal - Try: Jaco Viljoen.   Penalties: Viljoen   (2).   Griqualand West - Tries: Ian Horn, Tobie de Jager, Abrie   Pretorius.   Conversions: Franco Smith (2).   Penalties: Smith (3). 
19639 !GCAT !GSPO  Results of Yugoslav league   soccer matches on Saturday:   Division A    Red Star  1 Partizan  3    Buducnost (P) 2 Zemun  1    Mladost (L) 2 Vojvodina  2    Becej  0 Hajduk  0    Rad 3 Cukaricki  0   Played Friday:    Proleter  4 Borac  0   Standings (tabulated under played, won, drawn, lost, goals   for, against, points):    Partizan  7 6 1 0 19 5 19    Red Star  7 5 1 1 13 7 16    Vojvodina 7 4 2 1 11 5 14    Becej  7 3 2 2 8 10 11    Rad  7 3 1 3 9 5 10    Zemun  7 2 3 2 6 6 9    Cukaricki 7 3 0 4 8 13 9    Mladost (L) 7 2 2 3 11 10 8    Hajduk  7 2 2 3 5 4 8    Proleter  7 2 1 4 10 12 7    Buducnost (P) 7 2 1 4 7 12 7    Borac  7 0 0 7 2 20 0   Division B    OFK Beograd 1 Obilic  2    Mladost (BJ) 1 Rudar 1    OFK Kikinda 1 Loznica  2    Buducnost (V) 1 Radnicki  1    Spartak  3 Sutjeska  0   Standings:    Obilic  7 7 0 0 17 2 21    Loznica  7 5 0 2 14 5 15    Sutjeska  7 4 0 3 10 11 12    Radnicki  7 3 2 2 10 8 11    Buducnost (V) 7 3 2 2 6 6 11    Rudar  7 3 1 3 8 9 10    OFK Kikinda 7 3 0 4 7 6 9    OFK Beograd 7 1 4 2 7 9 7    Spartak  7 2 1 4 7 12 7    Zeleznik  6 2 0 4 6 10 6    Sloboda  6 1 2 3 8 11 5    Mladost (BJ) 7 0 2 5 3 14 2 
19640 !GCAT !GSPO  Uzbekistan took an unbeatable   3-0 lead over Thailand in their Davis Cup Asia/Oceania group two   final tie after winning the doubles on Saturday.   Results:   Oleg Ogorudov/Dmitri Tomashevich beat Wittaya Samrei/Worapol   Thongkhamchu 6-3 6-4 6-2 
19641 !GCAT !GSPO  Results of Polish first division   soccer matches played on Saturday:    Gornik Zabrze 3 Stomil Olsztyn 1    GKS Belchatow 0 LKS Lodz  0    Ruch Chorzow 1 Legia Warszawa 1    Odra Wodzislaw 3 Amica Wronki 0    Lech Poznan  0 GKS Katowice 0    Wisla Krakow 1 Widzew Lodz  2    Sokol Tychy  1 Slask Wroclaw 0   Played Friday:    Hutnik Krakow 0 Zaglebie Lubin 0   Standings (tabulated under played, won, drawn, lost, goals   for, against, points):    Legia Warszawa 10 6 2 2 18 10 20    Lech Poznan  10 6 2 2 17 12 20    Amica Wronki  10 6 2 2 15 12 20    Widzew Lodz  10 5 4 1 18 7 19    GKS Katowice  10 5 4 1 17 11 19    Sokol Tychy  10 5 1 4 17 19 16    Wisla Krakow  10 4 3 3 9 7 15    Odra Wodzislaw 10 4 2 4 18 15 14    Hutnik Krakow 10 4 1 5 10 12 13    Stomil Olsztyn 10 3 3 4 15 16 12    GKS Belchatow 10 3 2 5 12 13 11    Rakow Czestochowa 9 3 2 4 8 11 11    Polonia Warszawa 9 3 2 4 8 13 11    Zaglebie Lubin 10 2 4 4 13 17 10    Slask Wroclaw 10 3 1 6 10 14 10    LKS Lodz  10 2 3 5 12 16 9    Gornik Zabrze 10 2 2 6 12 17 8    Ruch Chorzow  10 1 4 5 9 16 7 
19642 !GCAT !GSPO  The Czech Republic narrowed the gap to 2-1 against Sweden in their Davis Cup World Group semifinal tie on Saturday, as a last minute switch by captain Vladislav Savrda paid off handsomely.   Petr Korda and Daniel Vacek, nominated just before the match, won a hard fought 4-6 6-3 6-4 6-4 victory over the Swedish pair of Jonas Bjorkman and Nicklas Kulti.   Just as he had done before the doubles match against holders the U.S. in the quarter-final, Savrda replaced Jiri Novak and Bohdan Ulihrach with Korda and Vacek, plumping for experience and it worked, but only after a shaky start.   The Czechs were broken in the opening game of the match, which is all the Swedes needed to take the first set 6-4.   But it was all the Czechs would surrender, with Korda overcoming a disastrous serving performance in the opening singles on Friday to lead the pair in a dominant show that saw them lose only four service points in the second set and six in the third.   Korda also showed his experience midway through both sets, twice ripping cross-court service returns to give the Czechs vital breaks.   Neither pair would yield in the fourth set, producing some spectacular rallies, bringing the partisan crowd to its feet several times.   But then Korda picked his game up a notch in the ninth game, giving the Czechs the break they needed to take the match with some incredible shotmaking.   Vacek then served out the match, emphatically ending it with an ace.   "I didn't think I played that poorly last night besides some bad serving, but today in the doubles we knew we had to pick it up, just as we did last time against the Americans," said Korda.   "I guess Vladislav (Savrda) once again made the right choice."    But the Czechs have little time to rest on their laurels, with two tough matches in the reverse singles on Sunday as Vacek faces Thomas Enqvist for the first time in his career while Korda plays his Australian Open doubles championship partner Stefan Edberg.   Both Edberg and Enqvist looked in top form on Friday, easily defeating their Czech opponents as Sweden look to stay in the hunt for their sixth Davis Cup title.   "Both teams played a strong game today, and I think only a few points separated them.   But we know that tomorrow is another day and I am confident that our team will be up to the challenge," said Swedish captain Calle Hageskog. 
19643 !GCAT !GSPO  The Czech Republic kept its hopes alive for advancing past Sweden in their Davis Cup World Group semifinal, winning the doubles match on Saturday.   Result:   Petr Korda/Daniel Vacek beat Jonas Bjorkman/Nicklas Kulti 4-6   6-3 6-4 6-4   Sweden lead the Czech Republic 2-1 
19644 !GCAT !GSPO  Slovakia took an unbeatable   3-0 lead over Poland in their Davis Cup Euro/African zone group   two, third round tie after winning the doubles on Saturday.   Result:   Jan Kroslak/Karol Kucera beat Michal Gawlowski/Michal Chmela   6-1 6-4 6-7 (5-7) 6-0 
19645 !GCAT !GSPO  Belgium led Romania 2-1 in their Davis Cup World group qualifying tie on Saturday.   Results: (Romanian names first)   Andrei Pavel beat Filip Dewulf 6-1 6-3 6-2   Doubles:   George Cozac/Dinu Pescariu lost to Dewulf/Libor Pimek 6-4 0-6 2-6 4-6 
19646 !GCAT !GSPO  Russia took an unbeatable 3-0   lead over Hungary in their Davis Cup World group qualifying tie   after winning the doubles on Saturday.   Result:   Yevgeny Kafelnikov/Andrei Olkhovsky beat Gabor Koves/Sandor   Nosai 7-6 (7-2) 6-3 6-1 
19647 !GCAT !GSPO  Captain Vladislav Savrda, as expected, has turned to Petr Korda and Daniel Vacek to play the doubles portion of their Davis Cup World Group semifinal tie against Sweden on Saturday.   Savrda had originally named Bohdan Ulihrach and Jiri Novak to face the Swedish pair of Nicklas Kulti and Jonas Bjorkman, but made it known that Korda and Vacek, his top two singles players, may be called to action at the last minute if needed.   Korda and Vacek paired up to beat favourites the U.S. in their quarterfinal tie, which proved to be the turning point in their 3-2 win over the reigning champions.   The two Czechs both lost their opening singles matches on Friday, leaving their team down 2-0 against the Swedes.   A win in the doubles by the Swedes would place them into the final against the winner of the second semifinal between France and Italy, which the Italians also lead 2-0. 
19648 !GCAT !GSPO  Ukraine took a winning 3-0 lead over Norway in their Davis Cup Euro/African zone group one play-off tie after victory in the doubles on Saturday.   Result:   Andrei Medvedev/Dmitri Polyakov (Ukraine) beat Christian Ruud/ Helge Koll (Norway) 6-0 0-6 6-0 6-1 
19649 !GCAT !GSPO  Brazil took a 2-1 lead over   Austria in their Davis Cup World group qualifying tie on   Saturday when Brazil won the doubles after Austrian Thomas   Muster quit the match in the fifth set.   Result:   Jaime Oncins and Gustavo Kuerten (Brazil) beat Thomas   Muster and Udo Plamberger (Austria) 7-6 4-6 6-3 3-6 2-0   retired 
19650 !GCAT !GSPO  Mexico won the doubles to   take a 2-1 lead over Argentina in their Davis Cup World Group   qualifying tie on Saturday.   Result:   Oscar Ortiz/Alejandro Hernandez beat Luis Lobo/Pablo Albano 6-7   (5-7) 6-4 3-6 7-6 (7-2) 6-4 
19651 !GCAT !GSPO  Chile won a doubles match on Saturday to take a 3-0 lead over Peru in their Davis Cup American zone group one play-off tie.   Chile had defeated Peru on Friday in two singles matches.   Chilean players Marcelo Rios and Oscar Bustos beat Peruvians Americo Venero and Luis Horna 6-4 6-3 4-7 3-6 8-6. 
19652 !GCAT !GSPO  Chile won a doubles match on Saturday to take a 3-0 lead over Peru in their Davis Cup American zone group one play-off tie.   Chile had defeated Peru on Friday in two singles matches.   Chilean players Marcelo Rios and Oscar Bustos beat Peruvians Americo Venero and Luis Horna 6-4 6-3 4-7 3-6 8-6. 
19653 !GCAT !GSPO  Ecuador won the doubles on   Saturday to take a 2-1 lead over Uruguay in their Davis Cup   American Zone group two final tie.   Results (Ecuador names first):   Andres Gomez/Nicolas Lapenti beat Marcelo Filippini/Gonzalo   Rodriguez 6-4 6-3 7-6 (7-2) 
19654 !GCAT !GSPO  St George booked a place in the   Australian Rugby League grand final with a convincing 29-12 win   over North Sydney on Saturday to complete a remarkable   resurgence this season.   The Saints, who scored five tries to two in front of 37,779   fans at the Sydney Football Stadium, will meet either Manly or   Cronulla in next Sunday's grand final.   St George were left in disarray at the start of the season   when coach Rod Reddy and a number of key players left and the   club considered a merger because of financial troubles.   But fullback Dean Raper, centre Mark Bell, standoff Anthony   Mundine, lock Wayne Bartrim and replacement forward Nathan Brown   put those troubled times far behind them by each scoring a try   against Norths.   Bartrim added four goals and scrumhalf Noel Goldthorpe   kicked a drop goal for the Saints, who led 7-6 at halftime.   After their early internal divisions, St George's revival   was orchestrated by coach David Waite, whose side only scraped   into the playoffs with a late charge to claim one of the top   eight positions in the league at the end of the regular season.   North Sydney, who were favourites to secure their first   grand final appearance since 1943, scored tries through fullback   Matt Seers and hooker Mark Soden.   Scrumhalf Jason Taylor kicked two goals in a nervous,   disappointing team performance.   Cronulla and Manly will play each other in the other   semifinal at the Sydney Football Stadium on Sunday. 
19655 !GCAT !GSPO  Result in an Australian rugby   league premiership semifinal at the Sydney Football Stadium on   Saturday.     St George 29 North Sydney  12 
19656 !GCAT !GSPO  Taiwan lead Indonesia 2-1 in   their Davis Cup Asia/Oceania zone group one play-off tie after   losing the doubles match on Saturday.   Result (Indonesian names first):   Suistyo Wibowo/Bonis Wiryawan beat Chen Chih-jun/Lien Yu-hui   6-2 6-4 6-2 
19657 !GCAT !GSPO  Monica Seles frustrated the title ambitions of home favourite Kimoko Date in a tight semifinal at the Nichirei women's tournament on Saturday.   But Spain's Arantxa Sanchez Vicario had few problems dismissing American Kimberly Po 6-4 6-3 to reach Sunday's final.   Date, who earlier this year scored an upset win over Steffi Graf in the same Tokyo arena, earned three match points in the final set before going down to the top seed 6-3 1-6 7-6 (8-6).   "I think there was a lot of luck involved," Seles said after the match.   "You'd wish tennis had two winners when you have a match like this."   Date, the number three seed, broke Seles's serve in the third set to lead 5-3 but let the American back into the match through a number of costly errors.   Spain's Sanchez Vicario, the number two seed and 1994 champion, lost her first service game to Po, but she broke right back and took control of the match for a 6-4 6-3 win.   "I played (Po) earlier this year and I knew what I had to do -- not to get her in a position where she could hit good shots," Sanchez Vicario said.   Po, who was unseeded, had earlier beaten number four seed Mary Pierce of France and sixth seeded Ai Sugiyama of Japan to reach the semifinals. 
19658 !GCAT !GSPO  Results of semifinal matches at Nichirei women's tournament on Saturday (prefix denotes seeding):   1-Monica Seles (U.S.) beat 3-Kimiko Date (Japan) 6-3 1-6 7-6 (8-6)   2-Arantxa Sanchez Vicario (Spain) beat Kimberly Po (U.S.) 6-4 6-3 
19659 !GCAT !GSPO  India beat the Philippines 2-0   (halftime 0-0) in a World Cup Asian zone, group 10 qualifying   match on Saturday.   Scorers: R.Vijayan (81st minute), Bruno Coutinho (86th)   Standings (tabulated under played, won, drawn, lost, goals   for, against, points):    Qatar 1 1 0 0 3 0 3    India 1 1 0 0 2 0 3    Philippines  1 0 0 1 0 2 0    Sri Lanka  1 0 0 1 0 3 0   Next match: Qater v Philippines in Doha, Sept 23. 
19660 !GCAT !GSPO  Frank "Big Hurt" Thomas continued his one-man campaign to carry Chicago to the American League wild card playoff berth on Friday.   Thomas belted a grand slam in the second inning to lead Chicago to a 7-3 victory over the Minnesota Twins.   He launched a 1-1 pitch from Twins starter Rich Robertson (7-16) 423 feet into the bleachers to give the White Sox a 5-0 lead.   It was Thomas's 39th homer this year.   He has 10 home runs and 20 RBI this month to help the White Sox keep pressure on Baltimore and Seattle in the wild card chase.   "Robertson walks a guy and then hangs a ball to Frank, that hurts," said Twins manager Tom Kelly.   Kevin Tapani (13-9) allowed three runs and 10 hits over 7-1/3 innings with no walks for the win.   Robertson gave up six runs and seven hits in six innings.   Rich Becker hit a two-run shot off Tapani in the eighth to draw the Twins within 6-3, but Chicago's Dave Martinez homered in the bottom half to close the scoring.   "We're not only trying to catch Baltimore right now, but we have to worry about Seattle as well," Martinez said.   "Our pitching and our bats are real hot right now and we're looking forward to the final stretch."   In Seattle, Jay Buhner hit a three-run homer and Mark Whiten and Paul Sorrento each added two RBI as the surging Mariners cruised to a 12-2 rout of the Oakland Athletics for their club-record ninth consecutive victory.   The win left Seattle just one game back of floundering Texas in the West title battle and only half a game behind Baltimore in the wild card race.   Joey Cora homered off A's starter Don Wengert (7-11) in the second, Ken Griffey Jr belted his 46th round tripper off reliever Doug Johns in the fourth and Buhner unleashed a three-run shot, his 42nd homer, off Carlos Reyes in the fifth.   At California, Garret Anderson's two-out, two-run double in the bottom of the 10th inning lifted the Angels to a 6-5 victory and continued the Texas Rangers' freefall.   Texas had scratched out the go-ahead run in the top of the 10th when Mark McLemore singled to left and Dean Palmer just beat the throw to the play for a 5-4 lead.   But with Texas one out from victory, Mike Stanton (4-4) surrendered singles to George Arias and Rex Hudler and Anderson lined a 2-2 pitch to the gap in left-centre, bringing home the winning runs as the the Rangers fell for the ninth time in their last 10 games.   In Baltimore, Pat Hentgen scattered eight hits over 8 1/3 innings and Otis Nixon had a key two-run single as the Toronto Blue Jays shut down the Baltimore Orioles 5-1.   Baltimore remained four games behind first-place New York in the East.   But the set-back allowed hard-charging Seattle and the White Sox to close the gap in the wild card race.   Hentgen (18-10) gave up a run while walking four and striking out five in 8 1/3 innings.   Rick Krivda (2-5) took the loss for Baltimore.   The Jays scored in each of the first four innings, with Joe Carter's 30th homer in the fourth making it 4-0.   In New York, Tim Wakefield gave up two runs over eight innings and shortstop Derek Jeter made a costly throwing error as the Boston Red Sox beat the Yankees 4-2.   Yankee relievers Dale Polley (1-2) and David Weathers loaded the bases in the seventh.   Troy O'Leary hit a grounder to second baseman Mariano Duncan, who flipped the ball to Jeter.   But John Valentin slid into the shortstop, whose throw to first was off, allowing Boston's final two runs to score.   O'Leary also robbed Jeter of a homer, climbing the right-field fence to snare a line drive in the fifth.   The Red Sox won their fifth straight game to stay in the wild card hunt.   In Cleveland, Brian Bevil allowed three runs over five innings and Mike Sweeney and Kevin Young each drove in two runs as the Kansas City Royals scored a 6-4 win over the Indians, who have already captured the Central Division crown.   Bevil (1-0) allowed four hits, walked two and struck out three in his second big-league appearance.   The Royals struck for three runs in the first against Charles Nagy (16-5), keyed by Sweeney's two-run double.   Nagy allowed four runs and 10 hits over five innings for the loss.   Cleveland must win seven of its last nine games to post consecutive 100-win seasons.   In Milwaukee, Melvin Nieves belted a three-run homer in the fourth inning and Travis Fryman drove in three runs as the Detroit Tigers ended a 12-game losing streak with a 10-1 rout of the Brewers.   A.J. Sager (4-4) picked up the win in relief of starter Omar Olivares, who left in the fifth after spraining his right ankle trying to field a groundball.   Sager limited the Brewers to one run and three hits over three innings.   The Tigers opened the scoring with five runs in the fourth against starter Scott Karl (13-8). 
19661 !GCAT !GSPO  The San Diego Padres pulled within half a game of Los Angeles in the National League West title race and regained sole possession of the wild card lead with a crucial 4-2 victory over the Dodgers on Friday.   Joey Hamilton allowed just three Dodger hits over 7 2/3 innings and Steve Finley hit a pair of solo home runs to keep San Diego in the thick of the title hunt.   The West race could come right down to the wire as San Diego has seven games remaining, five of them with first-place Los Angeles.   The Dodgers have eight games left.   Hamilton (15-8) yielded two runs with five walks and nine strikeouts.   Trevor Hoffman pitched 1 1/3 perfect innings for his 38th save.   Finley tagged knuckleballer Tom Candiotti (9-10) for his 26th homer in the first and 27th in the fourth for a 2-0 lead.   Ken Caminiti added his 38th homer for San Diego against reliever Mark Guthrie to lead off the eighth.   In Atlanta, Javier Lopez's second RBI single scored Fred McGriff in the bottom of the eighth inning as the Braves edged the Montreal Expos 3-2.   The win increased Atlanta's lead to six games over second-place Montreal with six games remaining between the teams.   The Expos also fell a game back of San Diego in the chase for the wild card berth.   Tom Glavine (15-9) pitched eight innings, holding the Expos to five hits.   Mark Wohlers struck out two in the ninth for his 37th save.   Dave Leiper (2-1) started the eighth for Montreal and surrendered a leadoff double to McGriff.   Jeff Juden relieved Leiper and gave up Lopez's single up the middle that scored McGriff with the winning run.   In Cincinnati, Lenny Harris' sacrifice fly snapped a seventh-inning tie and Curtis Goodwin added a RBI single as the Reds ended a five-game losing streak with a 4-2 victory over the St Louis Cardinals.   Harris' sac fly with the bases loaded off starter Alan Benes (13-10) gave the Reds a 3-2 lead.   Goodwin followed by driving home the insurance run.   Dave Burba (10-13) allowed two runs and six hits over seven innings for the win that kept the first-place Cards from adding to their five-game Central Division lead over Houston.   At Florida, Kevin Brown scattered four hits over seven innings and Jeff Conine and Devon White drove in runs in the fourth inning as the Marlins beat the Houston Astros 3-1.   Brown (16-11) allowed one run, walked three, struck out five and lowered his league-leading ERA to 1.95 as Houston fell to 0-10 on the road in September.   Shane Reynolds (16-10) took the loss, giving up four hits and two runs in six innings.   In San Francisco, Mark Gardner allowed two runs over eight innings and Rick Wilkins hit a two-run homer to lead the Giants to a 6-2 victory over the Colorado Rockies.   Gardner (11-7) gave up nine hits with a walk and four strikeouts for his first win in eight starts.   Barry Bonds hit his 42nd homer off starter Mark Thompson (8-11) to give the Giants a 2-0 lead.   Glenallen Hill's 17th homer, also a solo shot, made it 3-1 in the fourth.   Wilkins launched a 1-0 pitch from Thompson over the right-field fence in the fifth to make it 6-1.   In Pittsburgh, Jay Bell hit a two-run homer in the second inning and Jon Lieber allowed two runs over seven innings as the last place Pirates posted their ninth straight victory, a 6-4 win over the Chicago Cubs.   Bell hit an 0-1 offering from Kevin Foster (7-5) over the left-field wall for his 11th homer and a 2-0 lead to extend his hitting streak to 12 games.   Lieber (9-5) gave up five hits with a walk and four strikeouts.   In Philadelphia, Paul Wilson hit a tie-breaking homer and picked up his first victory in two months, leading the New York Mets to a 5-2 victory over the Phillies.   Wilson (5-12) snapped a personal seven-game losing streak, giving up a two-run homer to Gene Schall in the fourth, but little else.   He allowed five hits over eight innings.   With the score tied 2-2 in the top of the fifth, Wilson smacked an 0-1 pitch from Phillies starter Mike Mimbs (3-9) over the left-field fence for his first major-league homer. 
19662 !GCAT !GSPO  Major League Baseball   standings after games played on Friday (tabulate under won,   lost, winning percentage and games behind):    AMERICAN LEAGUE    EASTERN DIVISION    W L PCT GB    NEW YORK  87 66 .569 -    BALTIMORE  83 70 .542 4    BOSTON  80 73 .523 7    TORONTO  69 84 .451 18    DETROIT  52 102 .338 35 1/2    CENTRAL DIVISION    Y-CLEVELAND  93 60 .608 -    CHICAGO  82 73 .529 12    MINNESOTA  75 79 .487 18 1/2    MILWAUKEE  75 79 .487 18 1/2    KANSAS CITY  72 82 .468 21 1/2     WESTERN DIVISION    TEXAS 84 70 .545 -    SEATTLE  82 70 .539 1    OAKLAND  73 81 .474 11    CALIFORNIA  67 85 .441 16   Y - CLINCHED DIVISION TITLE   SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 21 SCHEDULE   MINNESOTA AT CHICAGO    KANSAS CITY AT CLEVELAND    BOSTON AT NEW YORK      TORONTO AT BALTIMORE     DETROIT AT MILWAUKEE     TEXAS AT CALIFORNIA     OAKLAND AT SEATTLE     NATIONAL LEAGUE    EASTERN DIVISION    W L PCT GB    ATLANTA  91 62 .595 -    MONTREAL  85 68 .556 6    FLORIDA  74 80 .481 17 1/2    NEW YORK  69 85 .448 22 1/2    PHILADELPHIA 62 92 .403 29 1/2    CENTRAL DIVISION    ST LOUIS  83 71 .539 -    HOUSTON  78 76 .506 5    CINCINNATI  75 78 .490 7 1/2    CHICAGO  74 78 .487 8    PITTSBURGH  68 85 .444 14 1/2    WESTERN DIVISION    LOS ANGELES  87 67 .565 -    SAN DIEGO  87 68 .561 1/2    COLORADO  80 75 .516 7 1/2    SAN FRANCISCO 63 91 .409 24   SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 21 SCHEDULE    ST LOUIS AT CINCINNATI    LOS ANGELES AT SAN DIEGO    COLORADO AT SAN FRANCISCO    HOUSTON AT FLORIDA     NEW YORK AT PHILADELPHIA     CHICAGO AT PITTSBURGH     MONTREAL AT ATLANTA 
19663 !GCAT !GSPO  Results of Major League   Baseball games on Friday (home team in CAPS):    National League    ATLANTA 3 Montreal  2    CINCINNATI  4 St Louis  2    FLORIDA 3 Houston  1    PITTSBURGH  6 Chicago  4    New York  5 PHILADELPHIA 2    SAN DIEGO  4 Los Angeles 2    SAN FRANCISCO  6 Colorado  2    American League    SEATTLE  12 Oakland  2    CALIFORNIA  6 Texas  5 (10 innings)    Toronto 5 BALTIMORE  1    Boston 4 NEW YORK  2    Kansas City  6 CLEVELAND  4    CHICAGO 7 Minnesota  3    Detroit  10 MILWAUKEE  1 
19664 !GCAT !GSPO  Pernell Whitaker got it right the second time around.   Five months after edging Wilfredo Rivera in a questionable split decision verdict to hold onto his World Boxing Council welterweight title, Whitaker scored a clear unanimous 12-round victory in the rematch on Friday .   Whitaker, a world champion six times in four different weight classes, silenced a crowd waving Puerto Rican flags in support of Rivera by landing a barrage of lefts that bloodied the challenger under both eyes.   The American champion also scored a knockdown in the key sixth round in which Rivera had a point deducted for a low blow.   Judge Mazakazu Uchida of Japan scored it 115-113, Briton John Keane saw it it 115-111 and Jay Kassees of the United States had it 113-112 for the champion.   "I feel I dominated this fight.   I think it will go down as one of my best performances," said the 32-year-old Whitaker, who raised his record to 39-1-1.   "I was at my best.   I gave them the Pernell of old."   Rivera, who thought he should have won the previous fight, saw his record drop to 23-2-1 with both of his losses at the hands of Whitaker.   "I thought he won this fight fairly," Rivera said through an interpretor.   But he felt the bout was much closer than at least one of the judges did.   "I'm very sad about the decision," said the 27-year-old from Puerto Rico.   "I felt I was the aggressor most of the time."   Rivera did throw more punches than the champion, but Whitaker landed more of his blows -- connecting on 43 percent to just 22 percent for the challenger.   Whitaker's controversial victory in their first fight on April 12 in St. Maarten was considered so close that the WBC ordered the second fight.   But there should be no need for a third after the champion's performance Friday.   Whitaker came out firing.   In the opening round, he landed a left flush to the chin that buckled Rivera's legs.   In the third round, a left hook opened a cut under the challenger's left eye and a couple of rounds later another welt appeared under the right eye.   Whitaker did go down in the fifth round.   But it was unclear whether a short left to the body put the champion down or if he tripped over Rivera's foot.   There was no doubt about Whitaker's knockdown blow in the sixth.   Another crunching left flush on the chin toppled Rivera, who nevertheless was quickly back on his feet to continue his game challenge.   "I was looking for that shot all night," Whitaker said.   "I wanted that shot."   Cuban defectors Ramon Garby and Joel Casamayor, who both bolted from their Olympic team just before the Atlanta Games, made successful pro debuts on the undercard.   Garby, a two-time world amateur light heavyweight champion, beat Kerry Parks when the American was forced to stop at 1:03 of the second round of their scheduled four-round bout with an injured right arm.   Casamayor, the 1992 Olympic junior lightweight champion, knocked out American Javier Garcia at 1:34 of the first round in their scheduled four-rounder. 
19665 !GCAT !GSPO  American Pernell Whitaker won a unanimous 12-round decision over Wilfredo Rivera of Puerto Rico to retain his World Boxing Council welterweight title on Friday. 
19666 !GCAT !GCRIM !GSPO  Former Olympic boxing gold medalist Henry Tillman has been charged with murder stemming from a shooting outside a nightclub, the Los Angeles District Attorney's office said on Friday.   A spokeswoman said Tillman, who won a heavyweight boxing gold medal at the 1984 Olympic Games in Los Angeles, was returned to a state prison in central California, where he was serving 32 months for credit card fraud.   He faces arraignment in Santa Monica next week.   Tillman, 36, faces one count of murder and one of attempted murder, she said, relating to what police believe was an attempted robbery outside a club in the Westchester section of Los Angeles last Jan. 10.   The former boxer was out on bail on the credit card fraud charges when police allege he shot and killed one man and wounded a second. 
19667 !GCAT !GSPO  Troubled striker Romario scored on his recall to the Valencia line-up on Saturday and celebrated by rushing to shake hands with Luis Aragones, the coach who had dropped him.   Romario helped Valencia to a 2-1 win over Tenerife, while champions Atletico Madrid also returned to winning ways after consecutive defeats by brushing aside unfancied Logrones 3-0.   After Enrique Romero had put Valencia ahead, Romario headed home the second midway through the second half.   Tenerife pulled one back shortly afterwards when international goalkeeper Andoni Zubizarreta was slow to react to a free kick from Bosnian forward Meho Kodro.   But Valencia hung on for their first league win of the season and a valuable morale-booster ahead of the midweek UEFA Cup clash with Bayern Munich.   Atletico's game at Logrones was much less complicated.   Radomir Antic's team went ahead on the half-hour when Czech international Radek Bejbl latched on to the ball in midfield and saw his long-range shot deflected over goalkeeper Andoni Cedrun.   With Atletico piling on the pressure, Juan Eduardo Esnaider made it two-nil just before the break after pouncing on a neat through ball by Kiko Narvaez.   Kiko claimed the third goal, a deflection from a shot by Juan Carlos Aguilera, before being substituted twenty minutes from the end.   UEFA Cup side Espanyol reversed their trend of throwing away winning leads by coming from 2-0 down to earn a 2-2 draw at Athletic Bilbao.   Francisco Lopez hit the bar with a header just before time as Espanyol pushed for the three points.   Racing Santander's dream of going top ahead of Sunday's games was shattered at Valladolid, where they lost 3-0. 
19668 !GCAT !GSPO  Results of Spanish first division   soccer matches on Saturday:    Valladolid  3 Racing Santander 0    Logrones  0 Atletico Madrid 3    Athletic Bilbao 2 Espanyol 2    Valencia  2 Tenerife 1 
19669 !GCAT !GSPO  Porto maintained their lead in the Portuguese first division soccer championship on Saturday when they beat Salgueiros 1-0 away.   Porto and Sporting both have 10 points, with Porto ahead on goal difference.   Benfica, Braga and Farense have seven points with a match in hand after three matches.   Guimaraes have seven points after four matches.   Salgueiros put up a spirited defence against Porto, who had only one chance to score in the first half when a long shot by midfielder Sergio Conceicao hit the bar in the 16th minute.   Brazilian striker Mario Jardel, twice-scoring hero in Porto's recent 3-2 first round win against AC Milan in the European Champions' league, shot the ball into the net in the 63rd minute after a header by compatriot Luis Marcos (Lula) hit the bar.   He dedicated his winning goal to his newly born son.   He heard the news of the birth last Wednesday when Porto crushed Benfica to win the Portuguese Supercup 5-0.   Guimaraes, who will face Parma of Italy in a first leg second round UEFA Cup match at home on Tuesday, drew 0-0 away against Chaves.   Lisbon Sporting beat Maritimo 3-0 at home on Friday with an own goal by Filipe Ramos as well as goals by Sa Pinto and Afonso Martins.   Benfica meet bottom-of-the-table Uniao Leiria on Sunday. 
19670 !GCAT !GSPO  Portuguese first division   standings after Saturday's matches: (tabulate under played, won,   drawn, lost, goals for, goals against, points):    Porto  4 3 1 0 8 2 10    Sporting  4 3 1 0 10 4 10    Benfica  3 2 1 0 9 2 7    Braga  3 2 1 0 8 3 7    Farense  3 2 1 0 3 0 7    Guimaraes  4 2 1 1 7 6 7    Leca 3 2 0 1 6 2 6    Boavista  4 2 0 2 6 6 6    Maritimo  4 1 2 1 5 6 5    Chaves  4 1 2 1 4 5 5    Setubal  3 1 1 1 7 7 4    Espinho  3 1 1 1 3 3 4    Rio Ave  4 0 2 2 4 7 2    Salgueiros  4 0 2 2 2 5 2    Estrela Amadora 3 0 1 2 0 3 1    Belenenses  3 0 1 2 3 7 1    Gil Vicente 3 0 0 3 3 11 0    Uniao Leiria 3 0 0 3 0 9 0 
19671 !GCAT !GSPO  Results in the Portuguese first   division soccer matches on Saturday:    Salgueiros 0 Porto 1    Chaves 0 Guimaraes 0    Boavista 2 Rio Ave 0   Played on Friday:    Sporting 3 Maritimo 0 
19672 !GCAT !GSPO  Results of Belgian first   division matches on Saturday:    Lommel  1  Lierse  1    Mouscron  1  Harelbeke  0    Anderlecht  2  Ghent  1    Cercle Brugge 0  Antwerp  1    Ekeren  0  Molenbeek  0    Mechelen  0  Genk 0    Lokeren  1  Club Brugge 1   Played Friday:    Charleroi  1  Standard Liege 2   Standings (tabulate under games played, won, drawn, lost,   goals for, goals against, points):    Standard Liege  7 5 0 2 11 8 15    Anderlecht 7 4 3 0 17 4 15    Club Brugge  7 4 3 0 17 6 15    Mouscron 7 4 3 0 14 8 15    Ghent 7 3 2 2 14 13 11    Antwerp 7 3 1 3 9 14 10    Lokeren 7 2 3 2 11 8 9    Genk 7 2 3 2 8 9 9    Lommel 7 2 3 2 10 13 9    Aalst 6 2 2 2 7 7 8    Lierse 7 1 5 1 10 7 8    Mechelen 7 1 5 1 11 11 8    Charleroi 7 2 1 4 10 12 7    Molenbeek 7 1 4 2 5 8 7    Ekeren 7 1 2 4 7 11 5    Harelbeke 7 1 2 4 7 11 5    Sint Truiden  6 1 1 4 7 15 4    Cercle Brugge  7 0 3 4 6 16 3 
19673 !GCAT !GSPO  Substitute Vincenzo Montella struck a second half hat-trick on Saturday as Sampdoria ruined Roma's perfect start to the season with a 4-1 away victory.   Montella, who came on after the interval, scored twice in 10 minutes after Argentine Abel Balbo had given Roma a 53rd minute lead with his third goal in three matches.   The 22-year-old striker, signed from Genoa in the close season, completed his hat-trick in extra time.   Roma's first defeat of the season put Parma on top after a hard-fought 3-2 home win over arch-rivals Reggiana.   Parma head Inter, held 1-1 at the San Siro by Lazio, on goal difference.   Sampdoria join Roma and Bologna in a three-way tie for third place on six points although Bologna have a game in hand and can go top if they beat champions Milan on Sunday.   Gianfranco Zola scored Parma's winner in the 60th minute, turning home Enrico Chiesa's cross after the visitors had twice levelled the scores.   In a fiercely-contested match, Reggiana's Gianluca Sordo was shown a red card after coming on as second-half substitute.   Parma's Roberto Mussi joined Sordo on the sidelines as a result of a vicious tackle.   Roy Hodgson's Internazionale, victorious in both their opening matches, fell behind to Giuseppe Signori's 33rd minute opener for Lazio before Frenchman Jocelyn Angloma levelled the scores in the 39th minute.   In a tense finale, Lazio repelled a wave of Inter attacks to claim their first point of the season and move off the bottom of the table.    Roma, revitalised under Argentine Carlos Bianchi's management, will blame their surprise defeat on the poor markmanship of Uruguay's Daniel Fonseca.   By the time Balbo dashed between two defenders to volley home just after the interval, Fonseca should have wrapped up the match but the South American squandered a series of chances.   Instead Montella gave Roma a lesson in finishing, aided by ex-international Mancini who dribbled past two defenders and the goalkeeper to score Sampdoria's third from the tightest of angles.   Parma's new manager Carlo Ancelotti led Reggiana back into serie A last season, but his old side were in no mood to reward their former boss.   Twice, they fought back from a goal down.   Firstly, Romanian Ioan Sabau's volley cancelled out Parma's opener, an 11th minute own-goal from Belgium's Georges Grun.   Then, new signing Sandro Tovalieri cancelled Chiesa's 40th minute penalty, before Zola settled the contest.   Signori's first goal of the season silenced critics who blamed the club's early season crisis on the departures of Roberto Di Matteo and Dutchman Aron Winter.   The goal was signed and sealed by their replacements.   Australian Paul Okon found Pavel Nedved in space, and the Czech bided his time before releasing a perfect through ball behind the defence for Signori to finish with customary aplomb.   It was Lazio's first goal of the season and the first Inter's Gianluca Pagliuca had conceded.   The goal stung Inter into life and, six minutes later, Angloma headed home Youri Djorkaeff's free-kick. 
19674 !GCAT !GSPO  Summaries of Italian first division   soccer matches played on Saturday:   Inter 1 (Angloma 40th minute) Lazio 1 (Signori 33).   Halftime   1-1.   Attendance: 52,000   Parma 3 (Grun 11 - own-goal, Chiesa 40 - penalty, Zola 60)   Reggiana 2 (Sabau 26, Tovalieri 58).   2-1.   24,000   Roma 1 (Balbo 53) Sampdoria 4 (Montella 64, 74 and 90,   Mancini 88).   0-0.   59,000 
19675 !GCAT !GSPO  Italian first division standings   after Saturday's games: (Tabulate under played, won, drawn,   lost, goals for, goals against, points):    Parma  3 2 1 0 6 2 7    Inter  3 2 1 0 3 1 7    Sampdoria 3 2 0 1 6 3 6    Roma  3 2 0 1 6 5 6    Bologna 2 2 0 0 3 0 6    Juventus 2 1 1 0 3 2 4    Milan  2 1 0 1 5 3 3    Cagliari 2 1 0 1 3 2 3    Vicenza 2 1 0 1 4 4 3    Udinese 2 1 0 1 1 1 3    Perugia 2 1 0 1 1 1 3    Napoli 2 1 0 1 1 3 3    Fiorentina 2 0 1 1 4 6 1    Reggiana 3 0 1 2 3 5 1    Atalanta 2 0 1 1 2 4 1    Lazio  3 0 1 2 1 3 1    Piacenza 2 0 1 1 1 3 1    Verona 2 0 0 2 1 6 0 
19676 !GCAT !GSPO  Results of Irish premier division   soccer matches on Saturday:    Derry City  1 Shamrock Rovers 0    Home Farm Everton 0 Dundalk  0   Standings (tabulated under played, won, drawn, lost, goals   for, against, points):    Derry City 4 4 0 0 9 3 12    Bohemians 3 3 0 0 4 1 9    Sligo Rovers 4 2 2 0 7 5 8    Shelbourne 4 2 1 1 4 2 7    University College Dublin 4 2 0 2 7 4 6    Bray Wanderers 3 1 1 1 2 3 4    Shamrock Rovers 4 1 1 2 2 3 4    Dundalk 4 1 1 2 3 5 4    Finn Harps 3 1 0 2 3 7 3    St Patricks Athletic  4 0 2 2 3 5 2    Home Farm Everton  4 0 2 2 4 7 2    Cork City 3 0 0 3 2 5 0 
19677 !GCAT !GSPO  Summaries of Saturday's Spanish first division soccer matches:   Valladolid 3 (Fernando Sanchez 10th minute, Victor Fernandez 54th, Jose Luis Soto 90th) Racing Santander 0.   Halftime 1-0.   Attendance 16,000.   Athletic Bilbao 2 (Aitor Larrazabal penalty, 19th, Bolo Perez 46th) Espanyol 2 (Luis Cembranos penalty, 54th, Sergio Corino 81st, own goal).   1-0.   36,000.   Logrones 0 Atletico Madrid 3 (Radek Bejbl 30th, Juan Eduardo   Esnaider 45th, Kiko Narvaez 70th).   0-2.   17,000.   Valencia 2 (Enrique Romero 59th, Romario 69th) Tenerife 1   (Meho Kodro 71st).   0-0.   46,000. 
19678 !GCAT !GSPO  Spanish champions Atletico Madrid returned to their winning ways after two consecutive defeats on Saturday by brushing aside Logrones 3-0.   Atletico went ahead on the half hour when Czech international Radek Bejbl intercepted the ball in midfield and saw his long-range shot deflected over goalkeeper Andoni Cedrun.   With Atletico running riot, Argentine striker Juan Eduardo Esnaider made it 2-0 just before the break after pouncing on a neat through ball by Kiko Narvaez.   Kiko claimed the third goal, a deflection from a shot by Juan Carlos Aguilera, before being substituted 20 minutes from the end.   The result leaves Atletico with six points from two games, a point behind leaders Real Betis and second-placed Barcelona, who play on Sunday.   Espanyol recovered from 2-0 down to earn a 2-2 draw at Athletic Bilbao.   Francisco Lopez hit the bar with a header just before time as Espanyol pushed for the three points.   Racing Santander's dream of going top ahead of Sunday's games was shattered at Valladolid, where they lost 3-0. 
19679 !GCAT !GSPO  Dutch league leaders Feyenoord Rotterdam widened the gap with PSV Eindhoven to three points after winning 1-0 at neighbours Sparta Rotterdam on Saturday while PSV were held to a 0-0 draw at home to Vitesse.   Sparta goalkeeper Edward Metgod was sent off in the 26th minute for handling the ball oustide the area, and although Feyenoord dominated for the most of the game, they only had a Henke Larsson 46th minute goal to show for it.   But Feyenoord will be happy with a victory ahead of Tuesday's UEFA cup match against CSKA Moscow.   PSV, who play Dynamo Batumi of Georgia in the Cup Winners' Cup on Thursday, missed injured Belgian pair Luc Nilis and Marc Degryse.   They pressed hard for most of the game but failed to break the strong Vitesse defence with only Wim Jong and Brazilian striker Marcello getting anywhere near.   PSV have now dropped five points in the last two matches.   Leaders Feyenoord are now on 19 points with PSV on 16.   Ajax, who have made a modest start, are at home on Sunday to De Graafschap Doetinchem who beat PSV last week. 
19680 !GCAT !GSPO  Results of Italian first division   soccer matches played on Saturday:    Inter 1 Lazio  1    Parma 3 Reggiana 2    Roma 1 Sampdoria 4 
19681 !GCAT !GSPO  Result of a Swiss premier   division soccer match played on Saturday:   Grasshopper 2 Sion 2   Standings (tabulated under played, won, drawn, lost, goals   for, against, points):    Neuchatel 12 7 4 1 17 10 25    Lausanne 13 7 3 3 27 17 24    Grasshopper 13 5 7 1 21 14 22    Sion  12 5 5 2 20 14 20    Aarau  13 5 3 5 13 11 18    St. Gallen 13 4 6 3 9 12 18    Lucerne  13 3 7 3 19 18 16    Basle  13 3 6 4 22 21 15    Zurich  13 3 6 4 13 16 15    Servette 13 3 5 5 14 15 14    Lugano  13 2 6 5 9 19 12    Young Boys 13 1 0 12 9 26 3 
19682 !GCAT !GSPO  Summaries of Saturday's Dutch   first division soccer matches:   Fortuna Sittard 1 (Roest 65th minute) Volendam 1 (De Bruyn   81th).   Halftime 0-0.   Attendance not available.   NAC Breda 0 Roda JC Kerkrade 1 (Vurens 23rd).   0-1.   Attendance   12,121.   Willem II Tilburg 1 (Van Hintum 90th) Twente Enschede 2 (Petrov   55th, Bruggink 86th).   0-0.   8,732.   Sparta Rotterdam 0 Feyenoord Rotterdam 1 (Larsson 46th).   0-0.    13,500.   PSV Eindhoven 0 Vitesse Arnhem 0.   27,700. 
19683 !GCAT !GSPO  Result of Dutch first division   soccer matches on Saturday:    Fortuna Sittard 1 Volendam 1    NAC Breda  0 Roda JC Kerkrade  1    Willem II Tilburg 1 Twente Enschede  2    Sparta Rotterdam 0 Feyenoord Rotterdam 1    PSV Eindhoven  0 Vitesse Arnhem  0   Played Friday:    Heerenveen  1 NEC Nijmegen  1   Standings (tabulated under played, won, drawn, lost, goals   for, against, points):    Feyenoord Rotterdam  7 6 1 0 14 3 19    PSV Eindhoven 7 5 1 1 21 5 16    Twente Enschede  7 4 2 1 9 5 14    Roda JC Kerkrade  7 3 4 0 9 3 13    Heerenveen 7 3 2 2 14 9 11    Graafschap Doetinchem 6 3 1 2 11 7 10    Ajax Amsterdam 6 3 1 2 4 4 10    NAC Breda 7 3 1 3 4 8 10    Vitesse Arnhem 6 2 3 1 6 4 9    NEC Nijmegen 7 2 3 2 9 12 9    Fortuna Sittard  7 2 2 3 6 10 8    Utrecht 6 1 3 2 7 7 6    Sparta Rotterdam  7 1 2 4 5 9 5    Volendam 7 1 2 4 6 14 5    RKC Waalwijk 5 1 1 3 7 12 4    AZ Alkmaar 6 1 1 4 2 6 4    Willem II Tilburg  7 1 1 5 6 13 4    Groningen 6 0 3 3 5 14 3 
19684 !GCAT !GSPO  The International Baseball Association (IBA) cleared the path for professionals to compete in the 2000 Sydney Olympics after voting to change its amateur only rule on Saturday.   The association's decision to embrace professionalism was overwhelming with 56 of 65 countries, far more than the two-thirds majority necessary, voting in favour.   While the United States would automatically become gold medal favourites, an American Dream Team is not expected to dominate the same way their basketball counterparts have done.   Cuba, gold medallists at the Atlanta Olympics, have dominated the amateur game and would remain a threat while the sport ranks high in popularity in Japan.   The Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico and Mexico would also benefit from the inclusion of professionals having produced much of the talent playing in the North American major leagues.    Saturday's decision was seen as necessary if baseball was to maintain its status as an Olympic sport.   IBA president Aldo Notari said it had been made clear that the IOC, who meet next month to finalise the 2000 Games programme, wanted to see the best players on the field.   "With the limitations to the number of athletes and sports, only sports that attract media attention will be kept on the programme, " said Notari.    He added: "In Atlanta, baseball received little coverage, even in the United States and in the rest of the world (there was) nothing."    By admitting professionals baseball is poised to travel the same Olympic route as basketball, ice hockey, tennis and cycling.   However, before professionals step up to the plate, several hurdles remain to be cleared.   The Sydney Games are set for the last two weeks in September which clashes with vital stages of major league baseball in the United States.   Any decisions would also have to involve the powerful major league baseball players association and its president Donald Fehr who attended the vote.   Notari said: "We will start to work towards an agreement as soon as possible and have the best players available for the IBA tournaments."   Saturday's vote also paves the way for professionals to play in world championships and other major international competitions, from January 1 1997. 
19685 !GCAT !GSPO  Leading goalscorers in the German   first division after Saturday's matches:   6 - Ulf Kirsten (Bayer Leverkusen), Jonathan Akpoborie   (Hansa Rostock)   5 - Harry Decheiver (Freiburg), Sean Dundee (Karlsruhe),   Martin Max (Schalke)   4 - Andreas Herzog (Werder Bremen), Bruno Labbadia   (Werder Bremen), Bernhard Winkler (1860 Munich),   Krassimir Balakov (VfB Stuttgart), Fredi Bobic   (VfB Stuttgart) 
19686 !GCAT !GSPO  Summaries of Bundesliga matches   played on Saturday:   Bochum 3 (Baluszynski 17th minute, Mamic 67th, Michalke 90th)   Hamburg 1 (Breitenreiter 75th).   Halftime 1-0.   Attendance 24,135.   St Pauli 0 Cologne 0.   19,572.   Borussia Moenchengladbach 5 (Neun 14th, Heinrich own goal 22nd,   Pettersson 32nd, Effenberg 49th, Juskowiak 63rd) Borussia   Dortmund 1 (Zorc 41st).   3-1.   34,500.   VfB Stuttgart 0 Fortuna Duesseldorf 2 (Juran 83rd and 86th).   0-0.   40,000.   Arminia Bielefeld 0 Schalke 1 (Max 16th).   0-1.   22,212.   Bayern Munich 1 (Zickler 19th) Karlsruhe 0.   1-0.   63,000. 
19687 !GCAT !GSPO  Results of Bundesliga matches   played on Saturday:    Bochum 3 Hamburg 1    St Pauli 0 Cologne 0   (Corrects St Pauli-Cologne result from 0-1)    Borussia Moenchengladbach 5 Borussia Dortmund 1    VfB Stuttgart 0 Fortuna Duesseldorf 2    Arminia Bielefeld  0 Schalke 1    Bayern Munich 1 Karlsruhe  0   Bundesliga standings after Saturday's games (tabulate under   played, won, drawn, lost, goals for, goals against, points):    Bayern Munich 7 5 2 0 14 5 17    VfB Stuttgart 7 5 1 1 17 4 16    Cologne 7 4 1 2 11 7 13    Borussia Dortmund  7 4 1 2 15 12 13    Bayer Leverkusen  6 4 0 2 13 8 12    Bochum 7 3 3 1 11 10 12    Werder Bremen 7 3 1 3 15 10 10    Karlsruhe 7 3 1 3 11 9 10    1860 Munich 7 3 1 3 11 10 10    Schalke 7 2 4 1 8 10 10    Fortuna Duesseldorf  7 3 1 3 5 10 10    Hamburg 7 3 0 4 11 13 9    Borussia Moenchengladbach 7 2 2 3 9 9 8    Hansa Rostock 7 2 2 3 9 9 8    St Pauli 7 1 2 4 7 17 5    Duisburg 7 1 1 5 5 13 4    Arminia Bielefeld  7 0 3 4 3 7 3    Freiburg 6 1 0 5 7 19 3 
19688 !GCAT !GSPO  Alexander Zickler struck a first half goal on Saturday to give Bayern Munich a 1-0 win over Karslruhe and first place in the Bundesliga.   Previous leaders VfB Stuttgart crashed to their first defeat of the season, losing 2-0 to Duesseldorf.   Duesseldorf's away win over the side who have lit up German soccer this season was not the only surprise on a day in which champions Borussia Dortmund were crushed 5-1 by Borussia Moenchengladbach.   Bayern were fortunate to walk away with maximum points against Karlsruhe, who missed a string of gilt-edged scoring chances after Zickler's goal.   The 22-year-old striker put Bayern ahead in the 19th minute after a stunning long pass from Christian Ziege, one of the outstanding players in Euro 96.   Bayern are now the only unbeaten side in the division with 17 points from seven games, a point ahead of Stuttgart.    Bayern coach Giovanni Trapattoni said his side's victory should boost their confidence for Tuesday's UEFA Cup second leg match with Valencia, where the Bavarians must overturn a 3-0 away defeat or end the defence of their title at the first hurdle.   But the Italian prefectionist was not completely happy.   "Karlsruhe put on a lot of pressure.   We should have more out of the position we had at the start of the second half," he said.   Stuttgart's first defeat came just hours after caretaker coach Joachim Loew had been appointed to the job on a permanent basis.   Loew took over before the start of the season after Rolf Fringer left to coach the Swiss national side.   "We didn't take our chances in the first half.   Then we lost our rhythm and made it easy for Fortuna," said Loew, who was without injured Bulgarian playmaker Krassimir Balakov.   Moenchengladbach captain Stefan Effenberg celebrated his decision to extend his contract to the year 2000 with the fourth goal in their comprehensive demolition of Dortmund.   "Moenchengladbach made all the running," Dortmund coach Ottmar Hitzfeld complained.   "We played without any sort of aggression."    Dortmund finished the day in fourth place, four points adrift from Bayern, and the champions could slip even further down the table if Leverkusen beat Freiburg on Sunday.   Other surprises included a 3-1 win for promoted Bochum over Hamburg, who must recover quickly for Tuesday's second leg at home to Glasgow Celtic.   Hamburg go into the match with 2-0 lead over the Scottish side.   "Bochum were the more aggressive side for the first hour of the game," Hamburg coach Felix Magath said.   "We certainly seemed to have the match against Celtic on our mind." 
19689 !GCAT !GSPO  Result of Austria first division   soccer match played on Saturday:    Admira Wacker 0 Rapid Vienna  2    GAK 1 SV Ried 0    Linzer ASK  0 FC Linz 0    FC Tirol  2 Sturm Graz 0   SV Salzburg to play Austria Vienna on Sunday.   Standings (tabulated under played, won, drawn, lost, goals   for, against, points):    FC Tirol Innsbruck  10 6 3 1 17 7 21    SV Salzburg 9 6 2 1 13 3 20    Rapid Vienna 10 4 6 0 17 8 18    Austria Vienna 9 4 3 2 11 12 15    GAK 10 3 4 3 11 12 13    Sturm Graz 10 2 4 4 9 11 10    Linzer ASK 9 2 4 3 10 13 10    SV Ried 10 2 2 6 12 16 8    Admira Wacker 10 1 4 5 9 18 7    FC Linz 9 0 4 5 2 11 4 
19690 !GCAT !GSPO  Guillaume Raoux and Guy Forget won the doubles on Saturday to revive France's hopes of beating Italy in their Davis Cup World Group semifinal.   The French pair won 6-3 6-4 6-2 in one hour and 59 minutes to leave the French 2-1 behind with their chances of reaching their first final since 1991 resting on Sunday's reverse singles.   French captain Yannick Noah's faith in the relatively inexperienced Raoux was amply rewarded with the best performance of the four players on court in the Palais des Sports de Beaulieu.   Raoux, who lost only six points on his serve, was the steadying influence beside erratic veteran Forget, who helped France win the Cup five years ago in Lyon.   A double fault by Gaudenzi -- the Italian hero on Friday with victory in the opening singles against French number one Cedric Pioline -- in the eighth game of the first set gave France their first break point.   They went on to take the set 6-3 on Forget's service.   Nargiso, who with Gaudenzi had won epic five-set doubles matches in Rome against 1995 finalists Russia and South Africa in the previous rounds, struggled to find his rhythm.   Italy's most experienced Davis Cup player in the tie was broken at the start of the second set, also on a double fault, and again in the third.   Two fine successive crosscourt winning volleys from Raoux, playing with Forget for only the second time, gave France the second set also with Forget serving and Raoux at the net.   A similar volley from Raoux, whose accurate hitting at the net was crucial in France's victory, in the opening game of the third set gave France another break of Gaudenzi's serve.   Further breaks of Nargiso's and Gaudenzi's serves clinched the match for France, the winning shot appropriately a volley from Raoux.    "Tomorrow will be a fierce battle," Italy's captain Adriano Panatta predicted.   "And I hope those imbeciles in the crowd who threw their (cardboard) fans onto the court at the end don't do it again tomorrow.   It's dangerous."   The partizan crowd of barely 5,000 in the small Palais des Sports de Beaulieu, quiet when Pioline lost the opening singles on Friday, gave Forget and Raoux raucous support throughout their match.   Noah said: "Italy lead 2-1, they're still ahead.   The Italian players are still smiling, but they'll smile less at 2-2."   World number 17 Pioline plays Italian number one Renzo Furlan, ranked 38, in the crucial first reverse singles on Sunday looking to level the tie.   Arnaud Boetsch is due to meet Gaudenzi afterwards. 
19691 !GCAT !GSPO  The Netherlands led New Zealand 2-1 in their Davis Cup tennis World Group qualifying round tie after winning the doubles match on Saturday.   Result: (Dutch names first):   Jan Siemerink/Sjeng Schalken beat Brett Steven/Alistair Hunt   3-6 7-6 (8-6) 6-4 6-2 
19692 !GCAT !GSPO  France kept alive their   Davis Cup World Group semifinal chances against Italy with   victory in the doubles on Saturday.   Result:   Guy Forget/Guillaume Raoux beat Diego Nargiso/Andrea Gaudenzi   6-3 6-4 6-2   Italy lead France 2-1 
19693 !GCAT !GSPO  Ireland's Vintage Crop, the 1993 Melbourne Cup winner, was retired from racing on Saturday.   "Sadly, Vintage Crop has lost a lot of his speed and as such cannot hope to compete at the top level any more.   I want him to be remembered for what he was, a true champion," said emotional trainer Dermot Weld.    "Vintage Crop will retire to the Irish National Stud where he will stand as a tourist attraction -- not as an attraction to mares," he added.   The nine-year-old gelding was due to run in the group one Irish St.Leger at The Curragh on Saturday.   But he was pulled   out of the race on Friday following discussions between Weld and owner Michael Smurfit, who sponsors the Irish Leger.   "I feel very sad.   I didn't realise how much I would miss him but I will.   Vintage Crop has been part of my life for the last six years," said Smurfit.     Vintage Crop ran in the Irish Leger four times, winning in 1993 and 1994.   The gelding finished fifth in the race in 1992 and fourth in 1995.   He was the first Irish-trained horse to top the one million Irish pounds mark in earnings and then became the first European-trained horse to win the Melbourne Cup, an event he ran in on three occasions.   Vintage Crop finished seventh in the Melbourne Cup in 1994 and was third in the race last year.   That proved to be the gelding's last race.   Vintage Crop made a final bow in front of his many supporters when he led the parade at the start of Saturday's big race. 
19694 !GCAT !GSPO  Captain Yannick Noah entrusted Guy Forget and Guillaume Raoux with the task of winning the doubles to keep France's hopes alive in their Davis Cup World Group semifinal with Italy on Saturday.   With his side 2-0 down after the first two singles, Noah would not confirm his doubles team on Friday night, leading to speculation he might send out Arnaud Boetsch in a more experienced pairing with Forget, a veteran of France's 1991 triumph.   But Noah opted for the fresher men despite their only having played together once.   Boetsch, France's second string singles player, lost to Italy's number one Renzo Furlan on Friday after the home side's top player Cedric Pioline had fallen to Andrea Gaudenzi.   Gaudenzi and Diego Nargiso were confirmed as Italy's doubles team.   The pair are unbeaten in two Davis Cup matches. 
19695 !GCAT !GSPO  Sri Lanka have made the perfect start to their campaign to be the world's best test-playing team by 2000.   Captain Arjuna Ranatunga said his team were right on schedule after the world one-day champions completed a crushing 2-0 series win over Zimbabwe on Saturday.   "Things are going on the right track following our success in the World Cup, the Singer World Series and the test series win over Zimbabwe," he said.   "We performed more than I expected, especially the spinners Muralitharan and Silva, who played major roles.   Fast bowler Chaminda Vaas also played his part."   Zimbabwe captain Alistair Campbell was full of praise for his conquerors.   "As World Cup champions, Sri Lanka are playing fantastic cricket at this stage," he said.   "I feel Sri Lanka will beat a lot of test nations playing at home, especially on the sort of slow turning wickets they have and the quality spinners and the batsmen."   He attributed his side's defeats to lack of practice against quality spin bowling.   "When you look at it at the end of the day, we had only one spinner (Paul Strang) while Sri Lanka had two world class spinners (Muthiah Muralitharan and Jayantha Silva)."   The two Sri Lankan spinners captured 27 of the 39 wickets that fell to the bowlers in the two games.   Off-spinner Muralitharan finished the series with 14 wickets at 13.92 to take his career tally to 95 test wickets.   His performance won him the Man of the Series award.   Left-arm leg-spinner Silva was more economical, conceding only 100 runs for his 13 wickets at a cost of 7.69 apiece.   "When Sri Lanka batted, they always had two guys who went on and got reasonably big scores.   We didn't have anyone who went anywhere near to getting a decent enough total," said Campbell.   Sri Lanka visit Kenya later this month for a four-nation limited overs tournament that includes South Africa and Pakistan. 
19696 !GCAT !GSPO  Sri Lanka completed a clean   sweep of the two-test series against Zimbabwe when they won the   second by 10 wickets with a day to spare on Saturday.   Zimbabwe were dismissed in their second innings for 235   shortly after lunch, leaving Sri Lanka the formal task of   scoring 27 for victory   Openers Sanath Jayasuriya and Roshan Mahanama hit the   required total in 6.4 overs, the winning runs coming off a leg   glance by Jayasuriya to the long leg boundary.   Sri Lanka won the first test -- also inside four days -- by   an inning and 77 runs.   Hashan Tillekeratne, who hit a career best unbeaten 126 runs   in the Sri Lankan first innings, was adjudged Man of the Match.   Zimbabwe's tail wagged to deny Sri Lanka a chance of a   second successive innings victory and they went to lunch at 227   for nine wickets.   A passing shower drove the players for an early lunch 15   minutes before the scheduled time.   But the resistance was ended   13 minutes after the break by Chaminda Vaas.   The left-arm paceman held back a hard return catch to end   Paul Strang's defiant half-century -- his first in test cricket.   Strang batted for 107 minutes and faced 94 balls, hitting   five fours.   Last man Henry Olonga (three in 49 minutes) gave   Strang good support in a last wicket stand that produced 34   runs.   Zimbabwe began the day badly losing their top scorer Ali   Shah without adding a run to his 62 out of an overnight total   162 for six.   Shah survived only eight balls before getting an outside   edge to an outswinger from Pushpakumara and was caught by Vaas   at gully.   Andrew Whittall (10) and Bryan Strang (two) both perished in   quick succession, bowled by off-spinner Muthiah Muralitharan,   while attempting big drives. 
19697 !GCAT !GENT  Polish newspapers hailed the success of Micheal Jackson's first ever concert in Poland on Friday night, which drew a record 100,000 to 120,000 fans to a deserted military airfield just ouside of Warsaw.   Best-selling daily Gazeta Wyborcza said "Micheal is Beautiful," while top tabloid Super Express said "Music in a crowd, Jackson in great form."   The King of Pop was cheered by screaming fans of all ages as he popped out of a space capsule at the Bemowo airfield to start a two-hour performance on his "HIStory World Tour".   Jackson, who changed his outfits between nearly every song, was made larger-than-life by three giant television screens, but some fans said they saw too little of the 38-year-old star.   "The dream of my life has come true now that Micheal sang here, I just wish I could have seen him better," said Anna Welska, 17, who has been a fan of the pop star for four years.   During his three day stay in Warsaw, Micheal Jackson met Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski and Finance Minister Krzegorz Kolodko, who gave him a set of compact discs featuring Poland's most famous composer Frederic Chopin.   Jackson, who wore a surgeon-style anti-septic mask whenever he ventured into the city, also visited a Warsaw orphanage, where he greeted children with gifts. 
19698 !C13 !C16 !CCAT !E12 !ECAT !GCAT !GPOL  Czech Prime Minister Vaclav Klaus, and his Civic Democratic Party (ODS), the leading governing coalition member on Saturday said it still supported Finance Minister Ivan Kocarnik, the Czech news agency CTK reported on Saturday.   CTK quoted Klaus, the ODS leader, as saying at a party meeting that Kocarnik, who has recently faced numerous opposition calls for his resignation over problems in the banking sector, that Kocarnik still had his full support.   "The executive board of ODS supports his (Kocarnik's) steps up to now required by the finance minister that would prepare proposals for legislative changes which will clarifiy supervision of the finance and capital markets," Klaus said.   Opposition Social Democrat leader Milos Zeman sharply criticised Kocarnik this week and called for his resignation after the central bank placed Agrobanka under temporary forced supervision due to liquidity problems stemming from the failure of another bank, Kreditni Banka.   In August, the Czech National bank (CNB) rescinded the licence of Kreditni with losses estimated at nearly 12 billion crowns after a complicated series of non-performing loans and debt swaps.   On Tuesday, the CNB took steps against Agrobanka saying it had become illiquid partly because of its ties to Kreditni and the secretive investment group Motoinvest.   The Czech government, under heavy political pressure from the opposition, has set up a special commission of ministers to lead the investigation of Kreditni's failure,   After the Agrobanka intervention this week, Prime Minister Vaclav Klaus reluctantly agreed with the creation of a special parliamentary commission to investigate the failure as well.   Kocarnik has rejected any blame for himself or his ministry in the failure of Kreditni, saying that the responsibility lied with the bank's management and it was up to the CNB to watch over the country's banking sector.   But the CSSD, the strongest opposition party, has repeatedly called for Kocarnik's resignation in the aftermath of the Agrobank intervention.   "The measures of the Finance Ministry are limited on the co-signing of banking licences, and the same thing is true for (the licence's) cancellation," Kocarnik said on Friday.   But when asked on how his ministry's oversight of the capital markets entered the equation, he said: "The sitauation on the capital market regarding transparency is improving."   Czech analysts have repeatedly complained about the opaque nature of securities deals, and have criticised Kocarnik's ministry for being understaffed and slow to react to incidents in the markets.   Kocarnik pointed out that the capital market in the Czech Republic will, for some time, bear marks of the mass voucher-based privatisation, which gave millions of citizens shares in Czech companies between 1991 and 1994.   He said the unwieldy nature of the privatisation created a specific case in the Czech Republic, "but this will dissappear."   -- Alan Crosby, Prague Newsropom, 42-2-2423-0003 
19699 !GCAT  Here are highlights of stories in Romania's press at the week-end.   Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy:   Business:   ROMANIA LIBERA   - State pensions to raise 13.4 percent starting October 1.   ADEVARUL   - Newspaper publishes two-page interview with local businessman Sever Muresan.   General:   ROMANIA LIBERA   - Hospitalisation costs in Vienna central hospital for Nicu Ceausescu, son of late dictator Nicoale Ceausescu, amount to some $2,000 a day.   - Schools to start on September 23.   ADEVARUL   - Mayor of Bucharest Victor Ciorbea disagrees over early kick-off for schools.   - Letter by U.S. President Bill Clinton to Romanian and Hungarian presidents congratulating both countries for signing friendship treaty.   EVENIMENTUL ZILEI   - Some 3,800 Romanians won U.S. visas through lottery.   - Nicu Ceausescu to undergo surgery in Vienna next Monday.   - Ciorbea to sue education ministry over its decision to start schools on Monday, despite meningitis epidemic.   CRONICA ROMANA   - Nicolae Manolescu, candidate of National Liberal Alliance for presidential polls, submmited his candidacy to Central Electoral Bureau.   -- Bucharest Newsroom 40-1 3120264 
19700 !GCAT !GDEF !GDIP  Russia and NATO came no closer to compromise on Friday over NATO's plans to accept ex-Soviet bloc states as members, but agreed international troops should remain in Bosnia beyond year's end.   Russian Foreign Minister Yevgeny Primakov held two hours of talks with NATO Secretary-General Javier Solana.   They failed to make headway on any concrete plan on NATO expansion acceptable to Moscow.   "As regards NATO expansion, Russia continues to adhere to the negative position on this issue," Primakov told a joint news conference at the Russian embassy where he met Solana.   The Russian minister made clear in an address to the Vienna-based Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) earlier that the stationing of NATO troops and weapons closer to Russia's borders was unacceptable.   NATO sources said, however, that Primakov's statement disclaiming any right of veto to a country joining NATO was a step in the right direction.   "We are far from claiming to have a right of veto concerning one or another state's joining NATO," Primakov said in his speech to the OSCE permanent council.   "However, Russia finds it absolutely unacceptable that NATO's military infrastructure should come closer to its territory," he added.   Ex-Warsaw Pact states the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland are front-runners to join NATO, probably next year.   Solana acknowledged that obstacles to NATO's drive eastwards remained but said talks with Moscow would continue to try to resolve their differences.   "There is no doubt that there are things on which we disagree," Solana said after his third meeting with Primakov, who took office last January.   "But by talking and dialogue, we may be able to overcome our disagreements," Solana added.   On Bosnia, Primakov said Russia was prepared to maintain its presence in an international peace implementation force after the mandate of the current NATO-led peace force of some 55,000 troops runs out in December.   Some 1,500 Russian troops are deployed in Bosnia.   He urged all sides in Bosnia to comply with their commitments made in the Dayton agreement following Saturday's first postwar election.   Solana said in London on Thursday that the international community, including NATO, would have to remain in Bosnia beyond December, but the military presence would be smaller and for a strictly limited term.   In his speech to the OSCE, Primakov outlined Russia's ideas for a post-Cold War security framework in Europe, cautioning that NATO expansion may reinforce a return to lines of division across the continent.   He said the 53-member OSCE, which includes most of Europe, the United States and Canada, was uniquely positioned to be bolstered into Europe's main security body.   "The model should envisage counteraction against an entire range of threats, both military and terrorist, as well as challenges in the economic, ecological, humanitarian and other fields," Primakov told OSCE ambassadors.   Primakov said proposals for a new security framework should be addressed at the OSCE summit in Lisbon in December and hoped a treaty to set up the new body would be ready at the next OSCE summit in 1998.   201818 GMT sep 96 
19701 !C12 !C42 !CCAT !E41 !ECAT !GCAT !GCRIM !GJOB  Forty-eight current and former employees of Bell Atlantic Corp on Friday filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court alleging that the company has had a long practice of discriminating against African Americans, the Washington Post reported Saturday.   The lawsuit alleges that the company has "engaged in a pattern and practice of discriminating" against black employees in promotions, training and work assignments since 1983.   It also charges that the company steers black employees into lower-paying jobs or positions with little potential.   Attorney John Hermina, representing the employees, has asked the judge to certify the case as a class action suit, filed on behalf of all black workers at Bell Atlantic.   The Post said Bell Atlantic declined to comment specifically on the suit, but spokesman Michel Daley said the company had "a long history of providing equal employment opportunity" to all minorities. 
19702 !GCAT !GREL  A British newspaper said it had agreed a deal with the runaway bishop who fathered an illegitimate son and would tell his story on Sunday, angering Roman Catholic church leaders who had been appealing to him to come forward.   The mass-selling News of the World said it had found the bishop and the divorced woman with whom he went missing 10 days ago and they had agreed to talk to the paper.   "They have come out of hiding.   They want their account to be known," said the paper's managing editor, Stuart Kuttner.   But Cardinal Thomas Winning, head of the Church in Scotland, bitterly criticised the decision by bishop Roderick Wright to give his story to a newspaper.   In a statement, the cardinal said: "We regard the sale of his story by Roderick Wright as deplorable."   Wright, 55, resigned his post three days after going missing with the divorcee from his Scottish docese.   But another woman later revealed that he was the father of her 15-year-old son and Saturday newspapers said Wright had been involved with two other women in the 1960s and 1970s.   Church leaders had been appealing to the errant bishop to come forward and answer the allegations.   "We just don't have the full truth at all and we won't know it until Roderick Wright appears and reveals himself either to his superiors, or to the media or to some counselling service," said Edinburgh Archbishop Keith O'Brien.   "He must come forward and humbly and simply tell us what went wrong."   O'Brien told BBC radio.   O'Brien said he feared more scandals over the Wright affair, which has rocked the Catholic Church in Britain and raised new questions about priestly celibacy.   "When one opens a can of worms, one just doesn't realise what's at the bottom of that can," O'Brien said.   Early editions of the News of the World merely carried reports that the newspaper had tracked down the couple to a cottage in the picturesque Lake District in north-west England.   But a newspaper spokesman said they were holding the exclusive back for later editions to prevent rivals copying it.   The newspaper showed no regrets over its exclusive, which the Press Association news agency said was reported to have involved payment of anything from a five figure sum upwards to Wright.   "It is in our view a very moving and powerful story of a very human man," Kuttner said.   Catholic Church leaders have been dismayed at the revelations, strenuously denied by Wright three years ago.   Winning said Wright had given his superiors "cast-iron guarantees" when confronted with allegations he was having an affair.   "We received a categorical denial and a guarantee not only was it untrue but it was scurrilous," said Winning.   The Daily Mirror quoted a highly-placed church source as saying the bishop had been involved with at least another two women, while The Sun said two women made claims about improper conduct by Wright during the 1960s and 1970s.   Joanna Whibley, the mother of Wright's 15-year-old son Kevin, told reporters of her astonishment that the bishop had disappeared with a Scottish woman.   She said Wright had telephoned only a few days before to say that he was finally coming to live with her.   "He is an honest, decent, genuine man and I still love him," Whibley said.   "But he compartmentalises things in his head.   One day he would be loving, caring and the next day deny his son."   Whibley appealed to Wright on BBC television to come out of hiding.   "Roddy, this must stop.   You must come out from wherever you are.   I know your turmoil and you deserve a real life and forgiveness without limit," she said.   "You are entitled to a number of things and one of those is help from the church.   Please make contact with them."   The bishop's brother, Donald Wright, said he was devastated by the revelations and also appealed to Wright to contact him. 
19703 !GCAT !GDIP !GPOL !GVIO  An influential Irish-American politician dampened hopes on Saturday of an early IRA ceasefire after nearly three hours of talks with the guerrillas' Sinn Fein political arm.   "No, there is no news of that sort that we have," former U.S. Congressman Bruce Morrison told reporters asking him about the potential for a new truce by Irish Republican Army (IRA) fighters opposed to British rule in Northern Ireland.   British and Irish media, quoting security sources in both countries, reported last week that the IRA was considering convening a secret peace conference of its underground commanders.   Sinn Fein said the reports were groundless.   Morrison helped broker a 17-month IRA ceasefire that began in September 1994, but Sinn Fein and sources in his delegation denied the visit was linked to the reports.   Sinn Fein's chief strategist Martin McGuinness said earlier that struggling Anglo-Irish-sponsored talks which exclude his party had failed and should be scrapped.   "These talks are pointless, they are going nowhere," he told BBC radio.   "I believe they should be wound up," he added.   "There is a need now to reconstruct a new peace process, this time with completely different terms of reference."   McGuinness said Sinn Fein had to be included in future peace talks and demands for prior IRA disarmament must be dropped.   "It is time that people stopped fooling the public (and) recognised that the peace process is dead and that the urgent task now facing us is to establish whether or not we can reconstruct, rebuild a new peace process," McGuinness added.   Without Sinn Fein's inclusion in talks and other "confidence-building" measures, there was no prospect of a ceasefire, McGuinness said.   "This is the minimum I believe that Sinn Fein (would need) to go to the IRA to request a second ceasefire.   I think that anything less than that is doomed to failure," he said.   The Northern Irish peace process, which flourished when the IRA and pro-British Loyalist foes called twin truces, flagged in February when the IRA resumed violence, accusing Britain of violating a deal giving Sinn Fein a seat at talks.   Britain, backed by Ireland, convened talks involving all the province's major pro-British Protestant and pro-Irish Catholic politicians in June but said there would be no seat for Sinn Fein until the IRA called off its renewed bombing campaign.   The talks, chaired by former U.S. senator George Mitchell, have been blighted by procedural wrangling and have failed to tackle substantive issues or make headway towards a settlement.   Morrison is due to meet British Northern Ireland Secretary Sir Patrick Mayhew, Irish Prime Minister John Bruton and a range of Protestant and Catholic politicians on his five-day visit.   The former Congressman said he and his colleagues would brief White House officials and others in the United States about their meetings.   He said he had heard nothing in his talks with Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams that would contribute to feelings of despair.   "I think there is a commitment on the part of the Sinn Fein leadership, that has been expressed to us over a long period of time, that wants to build a successful political peace process."   he said. 
19704 !GCAT !GPOL  Britain's ruling Conservative Party on Saturday sought to play down an apparent gaffe by the wife of Prime Minister John Major suggesting she was expecting her husband to lose the next election.   Norma Major appeared to suggest in a newspaper interview that she expected Labour Party leader Tony Blair to be the next resident of the prime minister's 10 Downing Street residence after elections that must be held by May next year.   Asked what advice she would give to Blair's wife Cherie Booth should she find herself there, Norma Major told the Independent;   "Oh, I wouldn't presume.   I think we all have to make of this job what we can.   But I have no brief.   She will do it her way."   The comment was seized on by political commentators as a sign that the Conservatives, some 20 points behind Labour in opinion polls, had accepted they would lose the elections.   But Conservative Central Office said Norma Major was "perfectly confident" that her husband would win the election.   "When Mrs Major said "I am sure Cherie Booth will do things her way' what she obviously meant was that she would do things her way as the wife of the leader of the opposition party," a spokeswoman said on Saturday.   Later in the interview Norma Major was asked if she had her life planned out when she left Downing Street.   "We will cross that bridge when we come to it.   We are not planning for it yet."   She added: "Let's put it this way -- I'm not in a hurry to leave.   But it won't be a problem when the time comes." 
19705 !GCAT !GPRO !GREL  Scottish Roman Catholic church leaders on Saturday appealed to a runaway bishop who fathered an illegitimate son to come forward and answer allegations that he had affairs with at least two other women.   Bishop Roderick Wright, 55, went missing 10 days ago with a divorced woman from his Scottish diocese and resigned his post three days later.   But another woman later revealed that he was the father of her 15-year-old son and Saturday newspapers said Wright had been involved with two other women in the 1960s and 1970s.   "We just don't have the full truth at all and we won't know it until Roderick Wright appears and reveals himself either to his superiors, or to the media or to some counselling service," said Edinburgh Archbishop Keith O'Brien.   "He must come forward and humbly and simply tell us what went wrong."   O'Brien told BBC radio.   O'Brien said he feared more scandals over the Wright affair, which has rocked the Catholic Church in Britain and raised new questions about priestly celibacy.   "When one opens a can of worms, one just doesn't realise what's at the bottom of that can," O'Brien said.   Catholic Church leaders have been dismayed at the revelations, which had been strenuously denied by Wright three years ago.   Scotland's Cardinal Thomas Winning said Wright gave his superiors "cast-iron guarantees" when confronted with allegations that he was having an affair.   "We received a categorical denial and a guarantee not only was it untrue but it was scurrilous," said Winning.   The Daily Mirror quoted a highly-placed church source as saying the bishop had been involved with at least another two women, while The Sun said two women made claims about improper conduct by Wright during the 1960s and 1970s.   Joanna Whibley, the mother of Wright's 15-year-old son Kevin, told reporters of her astonishment that the bishop had disappeared with a Scottish woman.   She said Wright had telephoned only a few days before to say that he was finally coming to live with her.   "He is an honest, decent, genuine man and I still love him," Whibley said.   "But he compartmentalises things in his head.   One day he would be loving, caring and the next day deny his son."   The bishop's brother, Donald Wright, said he was devastated by the revelations and appealed to Wright to contact him.   Wiping tears from his eyes, he told ITN television news that he could offer "to all my relations and friends, my nearest and dearest, my heartfelt sorrow and shame, and the same applies really to all the Catholics in Britain". 
19706 !GCAT !GENV  Britain's cyclists used to be peaceful creatures, quietly going about their business with wicker baskets attached to the handlebars and bells that were rarely rung in anger.   But no more.   The nation's mild-mannered cyclists have evolved into urban warriors, fighting what they see as the evil of the automobile.   Today's militant cyclists wear gaudy Lycra clothing and weave between traffic on aggressive-looking mountain bikes, shouting angrily at motorists who dare to cross their path.   Last month, hundreds of two-wheelers joined forces in their fight against the car and crowded onto the streets of London, aggravating the traffic chaos caused by an underground train-drivers' strike.   The cyclists rode slowly around major road junctions in the heart of the capital, blowing whistles and yelling anti-car slogans at motorists.   The action was organised by Reclaim the Streets, an environmental pressure group fighting to rid cities of the car.   It is a secretive organisation which describes itself as a loose amalgamation of people devoted to green, liberal causes, and often mobilises members via coded telephone messages.   Even a rendezvous with the group's spokesman was held at a clandestine location on a boat moored in one of London's canals.   "We have to be secretive because the police are constantly on our backs," said the spokesman, who uses the pseudonym Chris Roberts.   "If the police are branding you as terrorists, they're likely to arrest you for conspiracy to do this or that."   The group has staged a series of spectacular protests since its creation in early 1995, some of which have caused considerable damage.   In July, it blocked off the traffic and held a street party on a section of one of the main motorways passing through west London.   Protesters used a pneumatic drill to bore holes in the fast lane of the motorway in which they planted trees.   Techno music blared, graffiti were sprayed on the tarmac and thousands of pounds (dollars) worth of damage was caused.   And all in the name of the bicycle.   Not long afterwards, police raided the group's offices in north London, confiscating their computer and arresting a member for conspiracy to cause criminal damage.   A heavy price to pay for a bicycle friendly city.   But Roberts insists the group still commands considerable support for its campaigning among the public.   "The public has supported us on the narrow issues of urban transport mainly because it's so obvious something needs to be done about it," he said.   Britain's Automobile Assocation (AA), which champions the motorist, agrees that more investment is needed in the country's transport system but says it cannot support the activities of groups such as Reclaim the Streets which break the law in their protests.   "Such protests cause chaos for all road users including emergency services, putting lives at risk," said Rebecca Rees, spokeswoman for the AA.   No doubt the ideal of streets devoid of traffic and pollution is appealing to many.   But do the heavy-handed tactics of the militant cyclists do much to further this cause?   "More conventional campaigning groups have been lobbying for a long time and haven't been noticed as much as the issues merit," says Roberts.   "Reclaim the Streets seeks to increase the political and public pressure for change."   Lynn Sloman, assistant director of one of the more conventional groups, Transport 2000, agrees that Reclaim the Streets had played an important role in raising awareness of transport issues.   "We think Reclaim the Streets has a very important role to play," she said.   "Their direct action follows in a long line of groups that have felt they can't get their voices heard any other way."   They may already have made their impact.   The government announced a National Cycling Strategy earlier this year which aims to quadruple the number of journeys made by cyclists by 2012.   But for Reclaim the Streets the war with motorists is far from over -- they plan to continue fighting for their vision of car-free streets with more protests planned at secret locations across Britain. 
19707 !GCAT !GENT  Russia's Ilya Itin won the Leeds International Piano Competition on Saturday, defeating five others who won through to the final round of what is considered one of the world's top musical tests.   Itin was voted winner by the 15-strong panel and also won the most votes from viewers and listeners who followed the competition on radio and television and called a special telephone hotline, a BBC spokesman said.   The Russian topped the field ahead of Italy's Roberto Cominati after an evening in which the leading contenders performed a concerto with the Birmingham Symphony Orchestra.   A total of 260 pianists entered the gruelling contest, inspired by piano teacher Fanny Waterman who decided more than 30 years ago to try to hold an international piano competition in Leeds, northern England. 
19708 !GCAT  Following are some of the major events to have occurred on September 28 in history.   48 B.C. - Pompey the Great, one of the great statesmen and generals of the Roman Republic, was murdered in Egypt.   1066 - Duke William of Normandy landed at Pevensey, Sussex, and began the Norman Conquest of England.   1891 - Herman Melville, U.S. novelist and author of "Moby Dick", died.   1894 - The first "Penny Bazaar", owned by Polish immigrant Simon Marks and Yorkshireman Tom Spencer, was opened in Manchester, England.   1895 - Louis Pasteur, French chemist and microbiologist who invented the process of pasteurisation, died.   1950 - Indonesia was admitted to the United Nations.   1960 - Mali was admitted to the United Nations.   1964 - Arthur "Harpo" Marx died.   He started his show business career as a singer, but played a mute in the Marx Brothers films.   Although he never spoke a line, he used a taxi horn to communicate -- two blasts for yes, one for no.   1966 - Andre Breton, French poet and essayist, died.   One of the founders of the surrealist movement, he published "The Surrealist Manifesto" in 1924.   1970 - Gamal Abdel Nasser, Egyptian statesman, died.   He staged a coup against the monarchy in 1952, named himself prime minister two years later and was elected president in 1956.   In 1956, and again in 1967, he fought brief wars with Israel.   1971 - Cardinal Josef Mindszenty of Hungary, who took refuge in the U.S. embassy in Budapest in 1956 to escape treason charges, agreed to end his exile and flew to Rome as guest of the Pope.   1978 - Pope John Paul I died after only 33 days in office, being succeeded by John Paul II.   1978 - Former defence minister P.W. Botha was elected prime minister of South Africa.   He became the first government head to visit Johannesburg's sprawling black township of Soweto, synonymous with the black struggle for racial equality.   1989 - Former Philippines president Ferdinand Marcos, a war hero who became an unpopular autocrat, died in exile in Hawaii more than three years after he was driven from his homeland never to return.   1990 - A Philippines court found an air force general and 15 other soldiers guilty of the 1983 murder of politician Benigno Aquino, husband of former president Corazon Aquino, and sentenced them to life imprisonment.   1991 - Jazz great Miles Davis, considered the father of "cool jazz" for his muted trumpet playing, died after a long battle with illness.   He was 65.   1994 - In Europe's worst peacetime maritime disaster, 852 people died when the ferry Estonia sank in the Baltic Sea off the coast of Finland during a heavy storm.   1995 Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and PLO leader Yasser Arafat signed an accord at White House ceremonies establishing Palestinian self-rule in most of the West Bank.   1995 - China's Communist Party rulers approved an ambitious five-year plan promising an end to poverty, a better deal for farmers and poor inland areas and an overhaul of lumbering state companies. 
19709 !GCAT !GPOL  Britain's opposition Labour Party is holding onto its opinion poll lead despite rows over whether modernising leader Tony Blair intends to sever its traditional links with the trade unions and distance it from socialism.   The Sunday Times said its new poll showed Labour, fighting to end 17 years of Conservative rule at an election now less than eight months away, was 19 points ahead of the ruling party.   The NOP poll gave Labour 50 points, one down on last month, and the Conservatives 31, an increase of one point.   The minority Liberal Democrats had 14 points, one down on last month.   "The Labour lead... is down by two points from last month, but is bang in line with the average of the past four months," the newspaper said, adding that what it called the "rough couple of weeks" had yet to significantly eat into the lead.   Blair, who has wrenched his party from the left to the political centreground since taking over the helm two years ago, has been battered by media stories accusing him of wanting to ditch "socialism" as a description of the party's beliefs.   The stories also said Blair planned to sever Labour's links with the trade unions, which founded and traditionally funded the party.   Blair, who Conservatives have portrayed with demonic red eyes in a poster campaign designed to paint a Labour government as dangerous, dismissed both stories as groundless.   And the poll showed voters the media stories had failed to turn voters away from Labour.   Most voters, while sceptical about whether Labour could cut its ties with the unions, said such a move would not affect their vote.   Most of those polled were also sceptical about the latest claim of the Conservatives' "demon eyes" poster campaign -- that they were 700 pounds better off under the current government and Labour would snatch that money back in taxes.   Only 13 percent believed they were better off at all, while 43 percent said they were worse off and only 27 percent believed the Conservatives would improve their economic lot.   The NOP poll was carried out by interviewing 1,546 adults at 75 sampling points across the country last Thursday. 
19710 !GCAT !GDIP !GPOL !GVIO  The political wing of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) guerrilla force said on Saturday that Northern Ireland's peace process is dead and a new one should be put in its place.   Martin McGuinness, the chief strategist of the Sinn Fein party, said the current peace talks, from which it is excluded, are going nowhere.   A new process must involve Sinn Fein, he said, and a condition that the IRA must disarm before its political allies can join talks must be dropped.   "These talks are pointless, they are going nowhere," McGuinness told BBC radio.   "I believe they should be wound up," he added.   "There is a need now to reconstruct a new peace process, this time with completely different terms of reference."   The IRA has waged a 25-year guerrilla struggle against British rule of Northern Ireland, which has a pro-British Protestant majority and an Irish Catholic minority.   Britain and Ireland called all-party talks to give the region a chance to heal wounds, but they have not allowed Sinn Fein to take part until an IRA ceasefire is restored.   In the absence of Sin Fein, the talks have bogged down in wrangling between pro-British Protestant and pro-Irish Catholic nationalists over scrapping guerrilla arms and other issues.   "It is time that people stopped fooling the public (and) recognised that the peace process is dead and that the urgent task now facing us is to establish whether or not we can reconstruct, rebuild a new peace process," McGuinness added.   He called for unconditional "inclusive negotiations" held within a defined time-frame and said Britain must put in place "confidence-building" measures.   "This is the minimum I believe that Sinn Fein (would need) to go to the IRA to request a second ceasefire.   I think that anything less than that is doomed to failure.   That is a reality that must be faced," he said in the radio interview.   He said Britain's early insistence on an IRA arms handover strangled the peace process and kept his party out.   An Irish-American delegation that helped broker the IRA's last ceasefire in September 1994 arrived in Belfast for talks with Sinn Fein leaders.   Sinn Fein has dismissed media speculation that this might point to a possible new truce and said there were no links between the delegation and the reports. 
19711 !GCAT !GDIP !GPOL !GVIO  A group of Irish-Americans who helped broker a 1994 IRA truce held talks on Saturday with the guerrillas' political arm Sinn Fein, but both sides brushed aside suggestions that a new ceasefire was in the offing.   Sinn Fein denied the talks were linked to media speculation about a new Irish Republican Army (IRA) ceasefire but said the group, led by former U.S. Congressman Bruce Morrison, could play a role in fostering a new peace climate in the divided British province of Northern Ireland.   "They are an extremely influential group...and we certainly believe that they can -- as they have in the past -- help create conditions in which the peace process can be restored," a Sinn Fein spokesman told Reuters.   The IRA, fighting to end British rule in Northern Ireland, ended a 17-month ceasefire in February and has planted several bombs on the British mainland and in Germany.   Sinn Fein were subsequently excluded from multi-party peace talks in Belfast because of IRA refusal to reinstate the truce.   Morrison met Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams, who on Thursday dismissed reports of an early IRA truce as "without foundation".   His delegation will also have talks with a wide range of politicians in Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic over several days.   Irish media quoted sources close to the delegation as denying the trip was connected to suggestions by British and Irish security officials that the IRA was leaning towards a new ceasefire.   The multi-party talks, chaired by former U.S. senator George Mitchell, have been blighted by political wrangling by rival pro-British Protestant and pro-Irish Catholic parties.   Martin McGuinness, Sinn Fein's chief strategist, said on Saturday that the talks should be scrapped because they were going nowhere and a new peace process should be reconstructed.   "I believe that they should be wound up...," he told BBC radio.   Sinn Fein says the peace process can be rebuilt if Britain changes tack and calls unconditional talks with Sinn Fein given a place.   Britain, backed by Ireland, says Sinn Fein will get a seat only when the IRA abandons violence. 
19712 !GCAT !GPOL !GVIO  Human rights watchdog Amnesty International on Saturday accused Zairean troops, officials and politicians of committing atrocities against Tutsi civilians in eastern Zaire and of inciting violence against them.   Amnesty acknowledged that the Zairean government had a right to take action against armed Tutsis in the region bordering Burundi but said that an entire ethnic group could not be held responsible for alleged violence by some of its members.   "Amnesty International strongly condemns the atrocities committed over the past month by the Zairean security forces and government officials against members of the Banyamulenge Tutsi ethnic group in South Kivu region," its statement said.   "We understand the Zairean authorities' right to take action against armed opponents but there is no justification for this calculated abuse of human rights -- including unlawful killings, disappearances, severe beatings and deportation or refoulement to another country."   Zaire has been host to over a million Hutus who fled Rwanda in 1994 fearing reprisals after the massacre by Hutu hardliners of hundreds of thousands of minority Tutsis and the civil war victory of Tutsi-led rebels.   It says its troops have clashed with armed Tutsi infiltrators sent by Rwanda and Burundi to destabilise the region but Amnesty and other sources speak of attacks and expulsions of Banyamulenge Tutsis, many of whom have reportedly lived in the border region for generations.   "The organisation urgently appeals to Zairean Prime Minister Leon Kengo wa Dondo and Armed Forces Chief of Staff General Eluki Monga to take immediate measures to prevent these human rights violations and ensure that perpetrators of any abuses are brought to justice," Amnesty said.   REUTER NJP 
19713 !GCAT !GODD  Residents of a Welsh town are being offered a special rail fare to visit London but there is a small catch -- they can spend only 10 minutes in the British capital.   To qualify for the 34 pound ($52.80) fare for the 474 mile (763 km) round trip, passengers must take the 9.22 a.m. train from Aberystwyth which arrives in London at 2.25 p.m., the Daily Telegraph reported on Saturday.   But they have to leave for home on the 2.35 p.m. train, the newspaper added.   "Who in their right minds would sit on a train for 10 hours all for the sake of 10 minutes in London," said Aberystwyth town clerk Roger Roberts.   The train company's marketing manager, Bernard Pratt, said the offer was being reconsidered and passengers might be allowed to return on a service leaving London at 6.15 p.m. ($1=.6439 Pound) 
19714 !GCAT !GPOL !GVOTE  British Prime Minister John Major's wife Norma sparked controversy on Saturday when she hinted she expected Cherie Blair, the opposition Labour party leader's wife, to be in Downing Street after the next election.   In an interview in the Independent newspaper, Mrs Major was asked what advice she would give to Tony Blair's wife should she find herself in the prime minister's official residence after the election.   Mrs Major replied: "Oh, I wouldn't presume.   I think we all have to make of this job what we can.   But I have no brief.   She will do it her way."   Friends will see her suggestion that Cherie Blair "will" rather than might be in Downing Street as a slip of the tongue.   But the episode shows the danger of thrusting party leaders' wives into the limelight, as has happened this month.   Norma Major has been touted as the prime minister's "secret weapon" in getting himself re-elected, while Mrs Blair has been invited to edit an issue of a mass-market women's magazine.   In the interview, Mrs Major went some way towards correcting the impression that she expects her husband to lose the election he must call by next May.   The ruling Conservatives are up to 20 points behind Labour in opinion polls.   Asked if she had her life planned out when she left Downing Street, she replied: "We will cross that bridge when we come to it.   We are not planning for it yet."   She added: "Let's put it this way -- I'm not in a hurry to leave.   But it won't be a problem when the time comes." 
19715 !GCAT !GVIO  Looted art treasures stolen from Jews and now worth up to 15 billion pounds ($23 billion) were sent by Nazi Germany for safekeeping in Switzerland during World War Two, the Daily Telegraph reported on Saturday.   Declassified official British and United States records in archives in London and Washington showed that many paintings, plundered from France, the Benelux countries and Eastern Europe, entered Switzerland in German diplomatic bags.   The newspaper said other art works were lodged in Swiss freeports and those uncollected after the war would have become the property of the Swiss government.   Only a small number of paintings had been located and it was suspected that a substantial proportion fell into the hands of Swiss dealers, the Telegraph said.   British and U.S. officials had repeatedly asked Swiss authorities for information about the hoarded valuables when the war ended in 1945.   But the official papers revealed bitter complaints about Swiss reluctance to investigate looted art or seize stolen goods.   From Swiss import records, it appeared that thousands of paintings arrived in Switzerland.   But by the end of 1945, only 75 had been rounded up in a combined operation by Britain, the United States and France.   The Telegraph's report came only days after the Swiss government, under pressure from Jewish groups and from Britain and the United States, agreed to investigate reports that stolen Nazi gold worth up to four billion pounds at today's values had been sent from Germany to Switzerland during the war.   The Telegraph said the value of German holdings in Switzerland of property, currency, stocks, bonds, jewellery and private accounts was put at between 1.77 billion and 3.5 billion Swiss francs in 1945.   This would work out at between 15.5 billion and 65.3 billion pounds at today's prices, depending on how the interest was calculated.   The paper said a U.S. State Department official had in 1945 estimated the value of looted paintings at between 100 million and 350 million Swiss francs.   At today's prices, that would represent between three billion and 15 billion pounds.   The Telegraph quoted British opposition Labour Party member of parliament Greville Janner, a prominent member of the Jewish community, as saying:   "I am convinced an Aladdin's cave of art stolen by the Nazis was stashed away in Switzerland.   A lot was probably smuggled out to other countries by escaping Nazi war criminals."   He called for an intensive search by Swiss authorities and banks, and the other countries where the loot may have gone, to establish the whereabouts of all the stolen assets.   ($1=.6439 Pound) 
19716 !GCAT !GSPO  Results of South Korean pro-baseball games played on Friday.    Lotte 3  Haitai  2   Note: Ssangbangwool, Hyundai, Hanwha, Samsung, LG and OB did not play on Friday.   Standings after games played on Friday (tabulate under won, drawn, lost, winning percentage, games behind first place)    W D L PCT  GB    Haitai  71 2 50 .585  -    Ssangbangwool 70 2 53 .568  2    Hanwha  70 1 54 .564  2 1/2    Hyundai  67 5 54 .552  4    Lotte  56 6 62 .476 13 1/2    Samsung  54 5 67 .448  17    LG 49 5 71 .412 21 1/2    OB 47 6 73 .397 23 1/2 
19717 !GCAT !GPOL  THAILAND GOVERNMENT LIST (960921) ************************************************************    *21 Sep 96 - Prime Minster Banharn won a no-confidence vote*    * after he said he would resign as premier  *    * within seven days.   *    *14 Aug 96 - The Palang Dharma party (PDP) announced it *    * was pulling out of the government in a row *    * over controversial bank licenses.   *    ************************************************************    - - - - - - -    Head of State.........................King BHUMIBOL Adulyadej    Crown Prince.......................Prince MAHA Vajiralongkorn    - - - - - - -   COALITION GOVERNMENT (Formed 18 Jul 95, reshuffled 28 May 96)   Prime Minister (Apptd 13 Jul 95)...BANHARN Silpa-archa** (CT)    (Also Interior Minister) (**See note above)    Deputy Prime Ministers....................SOMBOON Rahong (CT)     CHAVALIT Yongchaiyudh (NAP)    THAKSIN Shinawatra** (PDP)    (**See note above)    MONTRI Pongpanich (SAP)    SAMAK Sunderavej (PTP)    AMNUAY Viravan (NT)    (Also Minister of Foreign Affairs)   Ministers in Prime Minister's    Office..........................  BOONPHAN Khaewattana (SAP)    CHATCHAI Earsakul (NAP)    PONGPOL Adireksan (CT)    RUENGVIT Lik (CT)    PIYANAT Watcharaporn (CT)     POKIN Polakun (NAP, non MP)    - - - - - - -   MINISTERS:    Agriculture & Cooperatives..............SUVIT Khunkitti (SAP)    Commerce...............................  CHUCHEEP Hansawat (CT)    Defence..........................  .  CHAVALIT Yongchaiyudh (NAP)    Education..........................  .  SUKAVIT Rangsitphol (NAP)    Finance.........................BODI Chunnananda (CT, non-MP)    Foreign Affairs....................See Deputy Prime Ministers    Industry............................CHAIWAT Sinsuwong** (PDP)    (**See note above)    Interior...................................See Prime Minister    Justice...............................  CHALERM Yoobamrung (MC)    Labour & Social Welfare................  PRASONG Boonpong (NAP)    Public Health............................SNOH Thienthong (CT)    Science, Technology & Environment...YINGPHAN Manasikarn (PTP)    Transport & Communications......  WAN MUHAMAMAD Nor Matha (NAP)    University Affairs.....................  .  BOONCHU Trithong (CT)    - - - - - - -   PARTY AFFILIATIONS:     CT - Chart Thai (Thai Nation)     NAP - New Aspiration     PDP - Palang Dharma (Moral Force)     SAP - Social Action     NT - Nam Thai (Thai Leaders)     MC - Muon Chon (Mass)     PTP - Prachakorn Thai (Thai Citizens)    - - - - - - -   Speaker of the House &    President of Parliament...............BOON-UA Prasertsuwan    - - - - - - -    Central Bank Governor....................RERNGCHAI Marakanond    - - - - - - -     NOTE: Any comments/queries on the content of this    government list, please contact the Reuter    Editorial Reference Unit, London, on (171) 542    7968.    (End Government List) 
19718 !GCAT !GVIO  Kenya has arrested an exiled Rwandan Hutu businessman suspected of involvement in Rwanda's 1994 genocide of up to a million Tutsis and moderate Hutus, state radio and a Rwandan refugee leader said on Saturday.   The arrest on Friday of Obeid Ruzindana was the first by Kenya, a country considered by Rwanda's new Tutsi-led government as a haven for Hutus who fled their motherland after the genocide.   A senior Rwandan government official welcomed the arrest of Ruzindana as a "postive and long overdue step", saying he hoped the development signified new cooperation between Kenya and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda.   Innocent Butare, executive secretary of the exiled Rally for the Return of Refugees and Democracy in Rwanda, a Hutu lobby group, said Ruzindana was arrested on Friday on a warrant signed by the Rwanda tribunal, based in Arusha, Tanzania.   "He is on the list of people wanted by the International Tribunal.   He was arrested yesterday by police accompanied by tribunal officials," Butare said.   Tribunal deputy spokesman Bocar Sy told Reuters by telephone from Tanzania that he had heard radio reports of Ruzindana's arrest but could not confirm them officially.   Butare said Ruzindana, a former trader in Rwanda's southwestern Kibuye region, was charged with genocide and crimes against humanity.   Kenyan state radio reported the arrest, bringing to 11 the number of suspects indicted by the tribunal and in custody in various capitals.   Kenyan President Daniel arap Moi last year publicly refused to cooperate with the tribunal on the grounds that it was only targeting Hutus.   He said Kenya would arrest tribunal members who came to this country.   After international protests, Moi later backed down, saying all he wanted was a wider mandate for the tribunal based in Tanzania so it could also investigate the murder of his friend and former Rwandan president Juvenal Habyarimana, whose death sparked off the killings.   Ties between Kenya and Rwanda remain strained after Nairobi shut down the Rwandan embassy and deported its diplomats earlier this year in a row over the wounding of an exiled Hutu politician.   Kenya said the attack on Seth Sendashonga, a former interior minister in the post-genocide Rwandan government, was carried out by a Rwandan diplomat on instructions from Kigali.   Kigali has denied the charge and instead accuses Kenya of harbouring Rwandan criminals.   Claude Dusaidi, a senior adviser to Rwandan Vice-President and military strongman Major-General Paul Kagame, told Reuters by telephone from the Rwandan capital Kigali that Ruzindana's arrest was good news.   "This is a good development, it is a positive and long overdue step," Dusaidi said.   He added: "We hope that the arrest is the beginning of cooperation between Kenya and the tribunal.   It is in Kenya's interest to arrest these people and comply with international obligations."   Excluding Ruzindana, the tribunal has so far indicted 21 people of whom 10 are in custody -- three in Arusha, two in Belgium, one in Switzerland and four in Cameroon. 
19719 !E51 !ECAT !GCAT !GDIP  Zaire stepped up accusations that aid agencies had helped armed Tutsi infiltrators, warning them that they would be banned if they did not limit their activities to relief work.   Government spokesman Oscar Lugendo said on state television on Saturday that Zaire would examine the activities of all aid groups and any going beyond their mandate would suffer the same fate as the International Organisation for Migration (OIM).   "Zaire draws the attention of all humanitarian organisations operating in North and South Kivu to the fact that their involvement in acts contrary to their mission will cause the government to end their activities," he added.   "The OIM, which has gone beyond the framework envisaged in the cooperation accords it signed with Zaire, has been banned until further notice from operating on Zairean territory."   A U.N. official, speaking in Rwanda on Friday, first broke the news of the suspension.   Lugendo said Zairean troops killed three Rwandan soldiers and captured five at Kiringye in Uvira region on August 31.   He said Tutsi soldiers from the Rwandan army who had infiltrated South Kivu to destabilise the region were members of the Banyamulenge ethnic group, some of whose members have lived in eastern Zaire for generations.   "These elements are commanded in their infiltration operations by other Banyamulenge, former officers in the Zairean army, who went to Rwanda after the victory of the (Tutsi-led) Patriotic Front in 1994," he added.   Eastern Zaire is host to over a million Hutus who fled Rwanda in 1994 fearing reprisals after the massacre by Hutu hardliners of hundreds of thousands of minority Tutsis and the civil war victory of Tutsi-led rebels.   Human rights watchdog Amnesty International on Saturday accused Zairean troops and officials of atrocities against Tutsi civilians in eastern Zaire over the past month and said officials and politicians had incited violence against them.   Lugendo put the number of infiltrators at 600.   "Vehicles apparently belonging notably to humanitarian organisations provided their transport at Cyangugu in Rwanda and in Burundi's Cibitoke province," he said.   "Given all the violations noted on the part of certain humanitarian agencies, Zaire will systematically identify all humanitarian NGOs and evaluate all their activities," he said. 
19720 !GCAT !GDIP !GVIO  A United Nations team looking into the rival claims of Nigeria and Cameroon over Bakassi on Saturday visited the oil-rich peninsula, state radio reported.   It said the team which arrived in Nigeria on Wednesday was touring Abana and Ibaka on the peninsula in the Gulf of Guinea.   Nigerian troops in the disputed territory are stationed on the two islands, which together with several others make up Bakassi peninsula in the southeast.   Cameroon on Friday denied that its troops had attacked Nigerian positions in Bakassi during the visit by the U.N. mission as alleged by Nigerian Foreign Minister Tom Ikimi on Thursday when he received the four-member team.   "One can say with near certainty that this (charge) is designed to compromise the work of the mission as well as the planned visit to the peninsula," Cameroonian Foreign Minister Ferdinand Oyono said in a statement in Yaounde.   The two African nations have clashed sporadically on the Bakassi peninsula with heavy loss of lives on both sides.   Both sides have troops entrenched in the impoverished islands whose inhabitants are mainly fishermen and speak Efik, the language of southeastern Nigeria.   Cameroon took its case to the World Court in 1994 but the court's ruling in March forbidding further fighting did not prevent clashes a month later.   The U.N. team is due to meet Nigerian military ruler General Sani Abacha in the capital Abuja on Sunday before leaving the following day for Cameroon. 
19721 !GCAT !GVIO  The head of the Roman Catholic Church in the Burundi capital said on Saturday only unconditional talks between all groups would provide the way forward for the ethnically-divided and war-torn nation.   Bujumbura Bishop Simon Ntamwana told Reuters in an interview that any solutions to the problems of Burundi where thousands have been killed in three years of civil war would have to begin with negotiations.   "(The church) demands dialogue between the opposing sides and an end to violence in Burundi.   Any other (proposals) are secondary," said Ntamwana, an ethnic Hutu.   He said testimony from survivors showed that rebels were responsible for killing Archbishop Joachim Ruhuna, the country's top Catholic prelate, who died in an ambush on September 9.   Four people survived the attack, and the head of Burundi's Catholic Bishops' Conference, Bernard Bududira, earlier said evidence from them pointed to the rebels.   Burundi's Tutsi-dominated army has also blamed Hutu rebels for the ambush, but they have in turn accused the military of killing the archbishop and two nuns travelling with him in the centre of the staunchly Catholic country.   The cleric's body vanished for more than a week after the vehicle he was travelling in was attacked north of Gitega, Burundi's second biggest city.   It was found in a shallow grave a few kilometres (miles) from the site of the ambush and was buried on Thursday.   The army in the tiny landlocked central African state has accused Hutu rebels of targeting civilians in a stepped up campaign of violence.   More than 150,000 people -- mostly civilians -- have died in three years of violence between the army and rebels from the Hutu majority, which makes up 85 percent of the country's six million people.   Regional analysts fear Burundi could go down the same path as neighbouring Rwanda, which has the same ethnic composition and where up to a million Tutsis and politically-moderate Hutus were slaughtered in genocidal killings in 1994.   Burundi has been hit by sanctions imposed in late July by its neighbours trying to force Tutsi military ruler Pierre Buyoya to talk to the rebels and allow normal political activity. 
19722 !GCAT !GPOL !GVOTE  Chad's interim parliament has changed the electoral law, banning independents from a November 24 parliamentary poll wrapping up its transition to multi-party democracy, state radio reported on Saturday.   The radio said that only those candidates put forward by political parties, of which Chad has 64, could stand.   But a group of independent politicians planning to run for the 125-seat parliament denounced the decision and said they would ask the N'Djamena appeal court to overturn it.   "Independent candidates no longer have the right to stand in the November 24 legislative elections," the radio said.   "The modified electoral law only allows candidates presented by political parties or alliances of political parties."   The would-be independents accused the government and politicians in the interim parliament of "trampling on the political rights of the Chadian citizen".   Of Chad's 64 political parties, 30 form the Republican Front which backs President Idriss Deby, a former warlord and military ruler elected in July in the second round of a presidential poll against southern rival Wadal Abdelkader Kamougue.   The Coordination of the Democratic Opposition alliance groups 17 parties.   Parties must register candidates by the end of September.   Deby seized power in a 1990 French-backed coup.   Chad's democratic transition has lagged behind that of many other states in the region. 
19723 !GCAT  These are significant stories in the Nigerian press on Saturday.   Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.   WEEKEND TIMES   - Nigerian police arrest two leaders of Lagos market women's association in investigations into murder of leading woman industrialist Madam Abisoye Tejuosho.   - Military ruler General Sani Abacha says economic reforms are not being carried out at instance of any foreign organisation but out of conviction.   THE GUARDIAN ON SATURDAY   - Shock, anger at brutal murder of 80-year-old Nigerian industrialist Madam Abisoye Tejuosho.   - Thirty-five Shi'ite Moslems arraigned over religious riots in northern Nigeria.   - Demand for foreign exchange drops to $39.7 million at this week's auction from $41.25 million last week.   - Nigeria and China to strengthen ties and promote mutual economic cooperation, says visiting Chinese deputy premier.   THISDAY   - Annual Lagos motorfair tagged "Automania '96" opens next Friday.   - Abacha says his economic campaign "Vision 2010" launched this week will bring prosperity to the average Nigerian.   -- Lagos newsroom +234 1 2631943 
19724 !GCAT !GCRIM !GVIO  A Sudanese military spokesman was quoted on Saturday as saying that some 40 people are on trial for alleged involvement in a failed coup against the Islamic government of President Omar Hassan al-Bashir last March.   "The trial... began more than three weeks ago," spokesman of the armed forces, Lieutenant General Mohamed Senousi Ahmad, told the government-owned Al-Ingaz Al-Watani newspaper.   The paper said that the group included more than 40 people, including 33 military men.   The rest are civilians and retired soldiers, it added.   The coup attempt is reported to have been led by a military officer called Colonel Abdel Kerim al-Nagr.   "The defendants will be given full opportunity to present their case in a fair manner," the spokesman said,   "The military court... is holding its sessions at the buildings of the general command of the armed forces," he said.   A defence team of 17 lawyers is representing the defendants, Ahmed added. 
19725 !GCAT !GCRIM !GODD !GPRO  Three foreign tourists robbed in Soweto were taken in for tea and sympathy by a local homeowner, but none of them recognised her as South Africa's fallen first lady, Winnie Mandela.   The Saturday Star newspaper said a Briton and two Swiss tourists were being guided round the crime-ridden township on Tuesday when they were robbed at gunpoint.   In shock, they knocked at the nearest house in Soweto's "Beverley Hills" suburb and said what had happened to them.   Winnie, recently divorced from President Nelson Mandela in March, comforted them with tea and took them to the police station where she finally revealed who she was.   "This is amazing.   It's like being mugged outside 10 Downing Street and Norma Major invites you in for a cup of tea," said Florida resident Sue Broomfield, refering to British Prime Minister John Major's wife.   "We shouldn't have got out of the car.   No one warned us of this type of danger," said Verena Arnold, 66, on holiday from Switzerland with her friend Anny Jenk, 76.   "I am so embarrassed.   This is a real shame," Winnie said, vowing to help stamp out South Africa's rampant violent crime. 
19726 !GCAT !GPOL !GPRO  Russia faced fresh uncertainty on Saturday after a disclosure that President Boris Yeltsin may have suffered a third, unreported, heart attack earlier this year and planned bypass surgery might be at least postponed.   Cardiac surgeon Renat Akchurin, tipped to lead the planned operation on Yeltsin, told Reuters on Saturday that damage to the president's heart could make surgery too risky.   Akchurin and other doctors, including top U.S. cardiologist Michael DeBakey, will make a final decision next Wednesday or Thursday on the surgery, which they want to do so that Yeltsin can lead a normal life.   In a separate interview on Friday, Akchurin told a U.S. television interviewer that Yeltsin suffered a new heart attack -- his third in about 12 months -- in late June or July during his successful re-election battle.   On Saturday he said he had not treated the 65-year-old Yeltsin himself at the time but had concluded from examining Yeltsin's heart later and considering media reports that a new heart attack had occurred.   His remarks implied that he had not known what he was undertaking when he had agreed to conduct the operation and had talked about the presumed new heart attack to ABC-TV to stress the dangers.   Yeltsin announced the operation on September 5.   "It was the goal of my interview to say that we can postpone the operation but that we are trying to go ahead with it," Akchurin said.   "The most likely is that the operation will be postponed," he said in another interview with French TF1 television.   "In effect, if the risks are high, no one will want to take the chance.   Here, like in France and in the United States, a surgeon does not jump off a plane without a parachute," he said.   Yeltsin dropped out of public view in late June before a July 3 runoff vote in which he beat communist challenger Gennady Zyuganov to secure a second four-year term in office.   Both Yeltsin's office -- which has previously played down the seriousness of the operation -- and the government refused to comment on Akchurin's comments.   Presidential chief-of-staff Anatoly Chubais also declined to comment.   But he ticked off Yeltsin's rivals for looking to step into his shoes.   "Those politicians who believe that it is time to take up starting positions in a presidential campaign will very soon realise that they have jumped the gun," Chubais told a congress of the Russia's Democratic Choice party in Moscow.   "Those who have got off to a false start will be forced to hang their heads and go back to the starting lines under the intent gaze of the judge, who is and will remain Russian President Boris Yeltsin," Chubais said.   The head of the presidential medical centre Sergei Mironov broke new ground on Friday by saying that the operation, hitherto described as a simple bypass, was "very serious" and that much was at stake.   Akchurin's disclosures heightened fears for Yeltsin's future.   Yeltsin's own fate is inextricably linked with the political situation in his vast, unpredictable country.   Asked if the operation could be too dangerous, Akchurin told Reuters: "It might be".   Russian media, highlighting the sensitivity of the issue, showed extreme caution on Saturday in covering the latest news on Yeltsin's health.   Akchurin suggested the latest heart attack had been hushed up because it could have had an impact on the election.   "Can you imagine what would happen, for example, if he told everyone he's had a heart attack and he's unable to work?"   he told ABC.   The latest reports about Yeltsin, whose aides were insisting less than three weeks ago that he was just "tired", troubled Russian financial markets and may worry Western leaders who see Yeltsin as the guarantor of stability in Moscow.   Yeltsin stayed in hospital as nationalist and leftist opponents rallied to mark Saturday's third anniversary of the president's dissolution of the Soviet-era parliament, which led to bloody armed clashes.   His 1993 victory over parliament handed Yeltsin the sweeping powers he now wields, raising the stakes for Russia if he should be kept out of action.   It ranked among the epic exploits of a man who has proved to be a remarkable political survivor.   His doctors are making increasingly clear that he is facing another daunting test -- this time on the operating table.   "You all understand what is at stake," Mironov said.   A decree on Thursday confirmed Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin, Yeltsin's constitutional deputy who has already been given some other powers, would have the controls.   But other ambitious and powerful figures, including Kremlin security chief Alexander Lebed, are expected to continue asserting the importance of their own roles in the hierarchy.   Under Lebed's latest accord with Chechen separatist rebels, Russian troops resumed withdrawing from the region on Saturday, ending a suspension called by disgruntled generals. 
19727 !GCAT !GPOL !GVOTE  Organisers of Bosnia's postwar elections have delayed announcement of the final results of the vote and they said on Saturday the outcome was still unclear because of numerous errors.   They could not say whether the discrepancies might undo the provisionally announced victory of Bosnian Moslem President Alija Izetbegovic in the key race for a new collective presidency.   He narrowly beat a Serb separatist.   Despite the confusion, the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) said the municipal part of Bosnia's electoral process -- postponed earlier because of voter registration irregularities -- would be held on November 22 and extended to November 23-24 if needed.   Voters would effectively re-register under stricter guidelines in a five- to seven-day period ending November 16.   The OSCE had been expected on Saturday to announce final results from the September 14 elections for a presidency and parliament mandated by a U.S.-brokered peace treaty to reunite Moslem, Serb and Croat enclaves of Bosnia carved out in war.   Instead, supervisors described a virtual breakdown in the counting process and discrepancies in figures caused by sloppiness, incompetence and poor coordination -- and possibly outright fraud, critics say.   "We'll have no idea who won the elections until the certification of results is completed and that will take longer than we expected," said John Reid, special elections adviser in the OSCE's Bosnia mission.   "We found numerous errors of transcription, numerous errors of addition and... a series of problems with cases of double entry of results coming at different times from the same counting centre," he said at a news briefing.   He said the mistakes could involve from a few hundred votes in one municipality to tens of thousands in others, possibly the entire count from some areas.   "Our mistake was in trying to rush out the results before they were actually ready and our communications system to get them here (tabulation centre in Sarajevo) just collapsed."   The OSCE was now busy trying to reconcile its original counts by cross-checking ballot totals with voter lists.   Reid said so many of the 150-odd counting stations scattered about war-shattered Bosnia lacked telephone and fax machines that results in many cases had to be hand-carried by OSCE supervisors to Sarajevo.   The OSCE dismissed an inquiry by independent monitors which found that an improbable 103 percent of the maximum possible electorate may have cast ballots, arguing there was no firm pre- war figure of eligible voters to base that conclusion on.   But the OSCE conceded this meant it could probably never pinpoint the extent of possible ballot-box stuffing or other forms of fraud in an election where the OSCE had only one supervisor for every three polling station.   Jeff Fischer, OSCE's director general for elections, also admitted it had no fullproof way of checking whether "dead people" voted -- war casualty figures were imprecise or covered up in many areas -- and had no list of missing people.   Many municipal registers were also destroyed in the war.   Around half the estimated electorate today are war refugees, compounding problems of documentation.   Nevertheless, an OSCE-affiliated team of 900 observers has declared the elections generally free of irregularities.   Analysts say the American-run OSCE mission would rather excuse imperfections in the vote and certify the result to avoid a major U.S. foreign policy setback for President Bill Clinton in the stretch run of his own re-election campaign.   Reid said the OSCE had been not been able to obtain reliable figures on voting-age citizenry and therefore had to estimate a "voter universe" based on the 1991 census.   Preliminary counts have pointed to voter turnouts in the 80- 95 percent range -- unprecedented in all but the rigged elections of former Communist Bloc countries.   As a result, the OSCE on Saturday revised its estimate of potential voters to around 3.2 million from 2.9 million -- even though tens of thousands of people were killed in the war and rates of death from natural causes also rose during this time. 
19728 !GCAT !GPOL !GPRO  Russia faced fresh uncertainty on Saturday after a disclosure that President Boris Yeltsin may have suffered a third, unreported, heart attack earlier this year and planned bypass surgery might now be in question.   Cardiac surgeon Renat Akchurin, tipped to lead the planned operation on Yeltsin, told Reuters on Saturday that damage to the president's heart could make surgery too risky.   A final decision would be taken next Wednesday or Thursday, he said.   In a separate interview on Friday, Akchurin told a U.S. television interviewer that Yeltsin suffered his new heart attack -- his third in about 12 months -- in late June or July during his successful re-election battle.   On Saturday he said he had not treated the 65-year-old Yeltsin himself at the time.   But he had concluded from examining Yeltsin's heart later and considering media reports that a new heart attack had occurred.   His remarks implied that he had not known what he was undertaking when he had agreed to conduct the operation and had talked about the presumed new heart attack to ABC-TV to stress the dangers.   Yeltsin himself announced the operation on September 5.   "It was the goal of my interview to say that we can postpone the operation but that we are trying to go ahead with it," he said.   He and other doctors, including top U.S. cardiologist Michael DeBakey, will make a final decision next Wednesday or Thursday on the surgery, which they want to do so that Yeltsin can lead a normal life.   Yeltsin dropped out of public view in late June before a July 3 runoff vote in which he beat communist challenger Gennady Zyuganov to secure a second four-year term in office.   Both Yeltsin's office -- which has previously played down the seriousness of the operation -- and the government refused to comment on Akchurin's comments.   Presidential chief-of-staff Anatoly Chubais also declined to comment.   But he ticked off Yeltsin's rivals for looking to step into his shoes.   "Those politicians who believe that it is time to take up starting positions in a presidential campaign will very soon realise that they have jumped the gun," Chubais told a congress of the Russia's Democratic Choice party in Moscow.   "Those who have got off to a false start will be forced to hang their heads and go back to the starting lines under the intent gaze of the judge, who is and will remain Russian President Boris Yeltsin," Chubais said.   The head of the presidential medical centre Sergei Mironov broke new ground on Friday by saying that the operation, hitherto described as a simple bypass, was "very serious" and that much was at stake.   Yeltsin is in a Moscow clinic and Mironov said he would be kept in for several more days to make sure complications with other organs would not worsen.   Akchurin's disclosures heightened fears for Yeltsin's future.   Yeltsin's own fate is inextricably linked with the political situation in his vast unpredictable country.   Asked if the operation could be too dangerous, Akchurin told Reuters: "It might be".   Neither of the two main Russian news agencies, Itar-Tass or Interfax reported Akchurin's remarks to ABC-TV and state television also turned a blind eye.   Akchurin suggested the latest heart attack had been hushed up because it could have had an impact on the outcome of the election.   "Can you imagine what would happen, for example, if he told everyone he's had a heart attack and he's unable to work?"   he told ABC.   The latest reports about Yeltsin, whose aides were insisting less than three weeks ago that he was just "tired", troubled Russian financial markets and may worry Western leaders who see Yeltsin as the guarantor of stability in Moscow.   Yeltsin stayed in hospital as nationalist and leftist opponents rallied to mark Saturday's third anniversary of the president's dissolution of the Soviet-era parliament, which led to bloody armed clashes.   His 1993 victory over parliament handed Yeltsin the sweeping powers he now wields, raising the stakes for Russia if he should be kept out of action.   It ranked among the epic exploits of a man who has proved to be a remarkable political survivor.   His doctors are making increasingly clear that he is facing another daunting test -- this time on the operating table.   "You all understand what is at stake," Mironov said.   A decree on Thursday confirmed Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin, Yeltsin's constitutional deputy who has already been given some other powers, would have the controls.   But other ambitious and powerful figures, including Kremlin security chief Alexander Lebed, are expected to continue asserting the importance of their own roles in the hierarchy.   Under Lebed's latest accord with Chechen separatist rebels, Russian troops resumed withdrawing from the region on Saturday, ending a suspension called by disgruntled generals. 
19729 !GCAT !GPOL !GPRO  The Russian surgeon expected to lead a heart operation on President Boris Yeltsin said on Saturday it might be too dangerous to go ahead with the planned bypass surgery, but he hoped it would still be possible.   Renat Akchurin clarified that his revelation on Friday that Yeltsin had a heart attack just before his reelection was not based on first-hand knowledge but on current medical evidence and on media reports.   He was certain it was correct, however.   Asked if the latest damage to the heart meant the operation might be too risky, he told Reuters: "It might be."   Akchurin and other doctors are due to decide on the surgery on Wednesday or Thursday next week and will seek advice from pioneering U.S. cardiologist Michael DeBakey, who is due to arrive in Moscow on Monday.   The Russian surgeon said that he had not been told by the Kremlin that he could talk about Yeltsin's health.   On the contrary, he had been asked not to reveal details.   But he indicated he had decided to talk about the previously unannounced heart attack in an interview on Friday with the U.S. television channel ABC, to stress the dangers of the operation which the doctors advised for Yeltsin to return to active life.   "It was the goal of my interview to say that we can postpone the operation but that we are trying to go ahead with it."   Akchurin said evidence of new scarring on Yeltsin's heart and newspaper coverage of the president's illness led him to the conclusion he had given to ABC that the president had had a heart attack in late June or early July.   "I said that because of the publication in newspapers.   Not because I was there during that treatment," he said in a telephone interview, adding that he had not been informed of any heart attack by those doctors who had been treating Yeltsin.   "We saw the scars on the electrocardiogram," he said.   "If the patient has some stenotic (damaged) areas on the coronary angiography and damage to the vessel which is seen exactly, is it possible that it happened with no heart attack?"   The scars were fresh and could not have come from the two heart attacks Yeltsin suffered in 1995, he added. 
19730 !GCAT !GPOL  Russia faced fresh uncertainty on Saturday as doctors prepared President Boris Yeltsin for major heart surgery after a disclosure that he suffered a third, unreported heart attack earlier this year.   Renat Akchurin, the Russian surgeon tipped to lead the operation, disclosed in a U.S. television interview on Friday that Yeltsin suffered the unreported heart attack in late June or early July, shortly before the second round of the Russian presidential elections.   Speaking on ABC's "World News Tonight," he said Yeltsin, 65, had withheld information on the heart attack before the election because he was afraid of the impact it would have on the outcome of the poll.   Asked if Yeltsin suffered a heart attack, Akchurin said: "Yes.   End of June or July."   He added that the heart attack had not been publicly acknowledged.   "Can you imagine what would happen, for example, if he told everyone he's had a heart attack and he's unable to work?"   Yeltsin went on to beat strong communist challenger Gennady Zyuganov in the election and secure a second four-year term in the Kremlin.   ABC quoted unnamed surgeons as saying Yeltsin could die on the operating table and that they did not know exactly whether he was fit for surgery at all.   In another sign of new Kremlin openness, the head of Russia's presidential medical centre conceded on Friday the president had a variety of other problems that are making his planned heart bypass operation a complex proposition.   Sergei Mironov said Yeltsin would stay in Moscow's Central Clinical Hospital for another three or four days -- the third extension to a stay originally scheduled to end last weekend.   The latest admissions about Yeltsin's health by aides, who less than three weeks ago were insisting the president was just "tired", troubled Russian financial markets and may worry Western leaders who see Yeltsin as the guarantor of stability in Moscow.   The longer stay in hospital also means Yeltsin, scarcely seen since shortly before his re-election in July, will be well out of sight as nationalist and leftist opponents rally to mark Saturday's third anniversary of the president's dissolution of the Soviet-era parliament, which led to bloody armed clashes.   His 1993 victory over parliament handed Yeltsin the sweeping powers he now wields, raising the stakes for Russia if he should be kept out of action.   It ranked among the epic exploits of a man who has become the embodiment of a political survivor.   His doctors are making increasingly clear that he is facing another daunting test, this time on the operating table.   "(The president) is preparing for a very responsible and a very serious operation," Mironov said.   "A big and serious operation is ahead and it needs adequately large, balanced and serious preparations.   "You all understand what is at stake," he added.   Mironov singled out blood circulation, kidneys, liver and lungs as areas the medical team would be watching for possible complications.   Yeltsin needs bypass surgery, in which veins are grafted on to coronary arteries to improve blood supply to the heart.   Akchurin told Reuters success rates for bypass surgery were good, but much depended on how fit the patient was.   "Success rates are about 98 percent if you are dealing with an uncomplicated, generally healthy patient, if you have some problems with other systems and organs the percentage of success might decrease to 90 percent," he said.   A team of cardiologists, including U.S. pioneer Michael DeBakey, will meet on September 25 to set the date for the operation.   Yeltsin's 1993 confrontation with parliament built towards a climax on September 21, 1993, when, frustrated by its opposition to his free market reforms, he dissolved the assembly.   Deputies and parliamentary supporters barricaded themselves in the White House parliament building in an ironic reversal of Yeltsin's own stand against the hardline communist coup of 1991.   A fortnight later over 100 were dead after Yeltsin's order to shell the building and other armed clashes in Moscow.   A subsequent referendum approved a new constitution that gave sweeping powers to the president.   Speculation has focused on how that power -- including the "nuclear trigger" -- will be distributed during Yeltsin's operation.   A decree on Thursday confirmed Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin, Yeltsin's constitutional deputy who has already been given some other powers, would have the controls.   But other ambitious and powerful figures, including Kremlin security chief Alexander Lebed, are expected to continue asserting the importance of their own roles in the hierarchy.   Under Lebed's latest accord with Chechen separatist rebels, Russian troops resumed withdrawing from the region on Saturday, ending a suspension called by disgruntled generals. 
19731 !GCAT !GPOL !GPRO  Boris Yeltsin is spending a second weekend in hospital as doctors, who now admit a host of complications, prepare the Russian president for major heart surgery.   Renat Akchurin, the Russian surgeon tipped to lead the operation, disclosed in a U.S. television interview on Friday that Yeltsin suffered a previously unreported heart attack in late June or early July, shortly before the second round of the Russian presidential elections.   Speaking on ABC's "World News Tonight," he said Yeltsin had withheld information on the heart attack before the election for political reasons.   Asked if Yeltsin suffered a heart attack, Akchurin said: "Yes.   End of June or July."   He added that the heart attack had not been publicly acknowledged.   "Can you imagine what would happen, for example, if he told everyone he's had a heart attack and he's unable to work?"   ABC quoted unnamed surgeons as saying Yeltsin could die on the operating table and that they did not know exactly whether he was fit for surgery at all.   In another sign of new Kremlin openness, the head of Russia's presidential medical centre conceded on Friday the 65-year-old leader had a variety of other problems that are making his planned heart bypass operation a complex proposition.   Sergei Mironov said Yeltsin would stay in Moscow's Central Clinical Hospital for another three or four days -- the third extension to a stay originally scheduled to end last weekend.   The latest dose of drip-feed frankness by aides, who less than three weeks ago were insisting the president was just "tired", troubled Russian financial markets and may worry Western leaders who see Yeltsin as the guarantor of stability in Moscow.   The longer stay in hospital also means Yeltsin, scarcely seen since shortly before his re-election in July, will be well out of sight as nationalist and leftist opponents rally to mark Saturday's third anniversary of the president's dissolution of the Soviet-era parliament, which led to bloody armed clashes.   His 1993 victory over parliament handed Yeltsin the sweeping powers he now wields, raising the stakes for Russia if he should be kept out of action.   It ranked among the epic exploits of a man who has become the embodiment of a political survivor.   His doctors are making increasingly clear that he is facing another daunting test, this time on the operating table.   "(The president) is preparing for a very responsible and a very serious operation," Mironov said.   "A big and serious operation is ahead and it needs adequately large, balanced and serious preparations.   "You all understand what is at stake," he added.   Mironov singled out blood circulation, kidneys, liver and lungs as areas the medical team would be watching for possible complications.   Yeltsin needs bypass surgery, in which veins are grafted on to coronary arteries to improve blood supply to the heart.   Akchurin told Reuters success rates for bypass surgery were good, but much depended on how fit the patient was.   "Success rates are about 98 percent if you are dealing with an uncomplicated, generally healthy patient, if you have some problems with other systems and organs the percentage of success might decrease to 90 percent," he said.   A team of cardiologists, including U.S. pioneer Michael DeBakey, will meet on September 25 to set the date for the operation.   Yeltsin's 1993 confrontation with parliament built towards a climax on September 21, 1993, when, frustrated by its opposition to his free market reforms, he dissolved the assembly.   Deputies and parliamentary supporters barricaded themselves in the White House parliament building in an ironic reversal of Yeltsin's own stand against the hardline communist coup of 1991.   A fortnight later over 100 were dead after Yeltsin's order to shell the building and other armed clashes in Moscow.   A subsequent referendum approved a new constitution that gave sweeping powers to the president.   Speculation has focused on how that power -- including the "nuclear trigger" -- will be distributed during Yeltsin's operation.   A decree on Thursday confirmed Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin, Yeltsin's constitutional deputy who has already been given some other powers, would have the controls.   But other ambitious and powerful figures, including Kremlin security chief Alexander Lebed, are expected to continue asserting the importance of their own roles in the hierarchy.   Under Lebed's latest accord with Chechen separatist rebels, Russian troops are due to resume withdrawing from the region on Saturday, ending a suspension called by disgruntled generals. 
19732 !GCAT !GREL  "Bring me back a miniature of the Infant of Prague," Hebe Cunha, a 95-year-old Brazilian, told her granddaughter as she set off from Rio de Janeiro for the Czech capital.   The tiny wax statue of the Infant Jesus is a household name across the Roman Catholic world, and its home, a baroque Prague church, is now easily accessible to pilgrims after half a century of restrictions caused by war and communism.   But while foreign Catholics are flooding to see the 45 cm (17.72 inches) statue they believe can perform miracles, many Czechs are sceptical about its powers or oblivious to its very existence.   "The rest of the world already believes in his powers but the local people do not," said Father Adalbert, a priest at the 17th century Church of Our Lady Victorious, which houses the statue.   Catholics around the world believe that the smiling infant, dressed in a sumptuous robe, has performed countless miracles -- and still does.   Known affectionately in Italian as "bambino di Praga", the statue is credited with protecting Prague from Swedish invaders in 1639 and helping to eradicate a plague in the same century.   Church records are packed with accounts of how across the centuries it cured people, noble and common, of illnesses when all other remedies had failed.   Solange Grondin, a law student from the Pacific ocean island of Reunion, believes the statue, which is kept in a small glass cabinet, still has those powers.   "As a child I was given a small reproduction of the Holy Infant of Prague with the accompanying prayer without ever knowing where Prague was," said 27-year-old Grondin.   "Throughout the years it has performed several miracles for me, from helping me to pass difficult exams to curing sick family members."   Legend has it that the statue was modelled in the 12th century by a dying Spanish monk after he had had a vision of the child Jesus.   It is now believed to date from the 16th century.   It is known that Duchess Manriquez de Lara brought the statue to Bohemia in 1556 when she married a Czech noblemen.   Her daughter gave it to Carmelite monks at the church in 1628.   Roman Catholicism recognises many pilgrimage sites around the world where miracles are performed.   But the Infant of Prague is unusual because it has become open to large numbers of pilgrims only since the 1989 fall of communism.   Hardly had the brutal six-year occupation of Prague by Nazi Germany ended when the communists seized power in 1948 and clamped down on religion, notably the Catholic church.   They never closed the Church of Our Lady Victorious, and masses were held throughout the communist period although records show the number fell dramatically in the Stalinist 1950s.   But foreign pilgrims were deterred from visiting the statue by visa requirements and accompanying red tape.   Father Adalbert recalls how all but regular masses had to be reported in advance to the communist authorities, and secret policemen would keep tabs on who attended.   Many believers and their families suffered discrimination, such as barring their children from universities or good jobs.   But suspicion of the statue and the Czech Catholic church long pre-dates communism.   The word "victorious" refers to the 1620 Battle of the White Mountain, just outside Prague, when the forces of the Catholic Habsburgs defeated the protestant Czech nobility.   This heralded a counter-reformation when Catholicism was reimposed on a predominantly protestant Bohemia.   At the same time, Czech sovereignty was snuffed out and the country was ruled by German-speaking Habsburgs until 1918.   These divisions have not been forgotten in what is now a largely secular society.   They surfaced last year in a dispute when Pope John Paul canonised Jan Sarkander, a Catholic priest tortured to death by protestant noblemen during the religious wars of the 17th century.   Father Adalbert said even Czech Catholics had a different outlook from other believers.   "They do not believe in adoring a God that is covered in robes, pearls and a jewelled crown," he said.   "In the beginning I didn't believe in the Infant of Prague either but when you work close to him and see him every day, you begin to believe in him."   "I don't believe that God would give such a small child such incredible powers," said Jiri Ledvinka, a Czech student who does odd jobs at the church.   "In our age we need more belief in philosophy and theology and less faith in miracles."   Among foreign Catholics, faith in the Infant Jesus seems unshakable.   One Brazilian couple, Eduardo Faveret and Juliana Pimenta, had had no plans to visit the statue.   But the couple who live apart -- he studies in Germany while she lives in Rio de Janeiro -- had second thoughts when they heard of the infant's miraculous powers.   As they looked at each other, Pimenta smiled and said: "Maybe we should pay this little holy child a visit." 
19733 !GCAT !GPOL !GPRO  One of the doctors preparing Boris Yeltsin for heart surgery indicated that the 65-year-old Russian president might be too ill to withstand the operation.   This followed the disclosure by cardiac surgeon Renat Akchurin that Yeltsin must have suffered a third, and unreported, heart attack just before he was elected in July to a second four-year term in the Kremlin.   Akchurin told Reuters that the damage to the president's heart could make the planned bypass surgery too risky and the operation might have to be either postponed or cancelled.   He and other doctors, including top U.S. cardiologist Michael DeBakey, will make a final decision next Wednesday or Thursday.   Akchurin told a U.S. television interviewer on Friday that Yeltsin suffered his third heart attack in about 12 months in late June or early July.   He said later he had not personally treated the Kremlin leader at the time but he concluded from examining Yeltsin's heart later and from considering media reports that a new heart attack had occurred.   His remarks implied that he had not known what he was undertaking when he agreed to conduct the operation, which Yeltsin announced on September 5.   "The most likely decision is that the operation will be postponed," Akchurin told French TF1 television.   "In effect, if the risks are high, no one will want to take the chance...A surgeon does not jump off a plane without a parachute."   Akchurin's disclosures could worry Western leaders who regard Yeltsin as the guarantor of stability in a vast unpredictable country.   Both the president's office, which has previously played down the seriousness of his condition, and the government refused to comment on Akchurin's comments.   Yeltsin stayed in hospital on Saturday as nationalist and leftist opponents held a rally to mark the third anniversary of his dissolution of the Soviet-era parliament, a move which led to bloody armed clashes.   Presidential chief-of-staff Anatoly Chubais criticised some of Yeltsin's rivals for looking to step into his shoes.   "Those politicians who believe that it is time to take up starting positions in a presidential campaign will very soon realise that they have jumped the gun," Chubais told a congress of the Russia's Democratic Choice party in Moscow.   A decree on Thursday confirmed that Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin, Yeltsin's constitutional deputy, would govern while the president was incapacitated.   But other ambitious and powerful figures, including Kremlin security chief Alexander Lebed, were expected to continue to assert the importance of their own roles in the hierarchy.   Communist leader Gennady Zyuganov, whom Yeltsin defeated in the presidential election, has said that he is now best placed to become the next Kremlin leader. 
19734 !GCAT !GVIO  Russian troops in the NATO-led peace force in Bosnia confiscated illegal weapons on Saturday from a group of Moslems who entered a village in Serb-controlled territory, a military spokesman said.   The Russians encountered about 100 Moslem men in the village of Jusici in eastern Bosnia, some of whom had unauthorised weapons including submachine guns and grenades, Major Brett Boudreau of the peace implementation force (IFOR) told Reuters.   The Moslems, who said they had crossed into Serb territory to visit their pre-war homes, handed over the weapons to Russian troops without incident and Serb police had not attempted to force them to leave, he said.   A similar attempt last month by Moslems armed with rifles to enter a formerly Moslem village in Serb territory turned violent when Serb police armed with guns and clubs tried to force them from the village of Mahala.   NATO ended up detaining 65 Serb policemen and Serbs retaliated by blockading U.N. officials in their office in the nearby town of Zvornik.   IFOR ultimately blamed both Moslems and Serbs for the clash.   Boudreau said the discovery of armed Moslem men in Jusici derailed talks on Saturday between interior ministers from Bosnia's Moslem-Croat federation and Serb republic aimed at working out an agreement for Moslems to go to Mahala.   The Serb minister, Dragan Kijac, refused to meet his federation counterpart until the incident in Jusici was resolved.   IFOR told federation authorities they should produce a list of those had property in the village to establish who had a right to repair damaged homes.   "This squarely puts the ball into the court of the federation to resolve who should or should not be there," Boudreau said. 
19735 !GCAT !GPOL !GPRO  Russian media, highlighting the sensitivity of the issue, showed extreme caution on Saturday in covering the latest news on the state of health of President Boris Yeltsin.   Neither the official Itar-Tass news agency nor independent agencies reported comments by cardiac surgeon Renat Akchurin, tipped to lead the planned bypass operation on Yeltsin.   Akchurin told U.S. ABC television on Friday that Yeltsin suffered an unreported heart attack -- his third in about 12 months -- in late June or July during his successful re-election battle.   The doctor told Reuters on Saturday that damage to the president's heart could make surgery too risky but added he hoped it would still be possible.   Akchurin's disclosures heightened fears for Yeltsin's future.   The president's personal fate is inextricably linked with the political situation in his vast, unpredictable country.   The commercial NTV television reported Akchurin's remarks to Reuters, calling them "sensational", but did not mention the report on the third heart attack.   ORT television, Russia's biggest network which is partially owned by the state, said Akchurin's comment to the U.S. channel had triggered "a new wave of journalists' fuss around President Yeltsin's health".   It pointed out that the doctor was speaking in English and suggested this could have resulted in some inexactness of terminology.   Both Yeltsin's office -- which has previously played down the seriousness of the operation -- and the government refused to comment on Akchurin's comments. 
19736 !GCAT !GPOL !GVOTE  International organisers said on Saturday Bosnia's hotly-contested local elections are scheduled to be held at the end of November after the vote was postponed due to abuses in the registration process.   The municipal polls were originally supposed to coincide with general elections held on September 14 under the supervision of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).   OSCE officials delayed the local poll citing evidence of manipulation of voter registration.   "Voting will take place over the weekend between the 22nd (corrects from 27th) and the 24th of November on either one or two or three days depending on the number of polling stations we can identify during that period," Sir Kenneth Scott, deputy head of the OSCE mission in Bosnia, told news briefing.   He said voters would be able to register over a five to seven day period ending on November 16.   The OSCE has yet to announce how it will correct the problems with registration that led to postponing the municipal ballot.   But Scott's announcement implied that at least some part of the original registration would be cancelled.   "We will have to revise the rules which we used for the September 14 elections," Scott said.   "One of the reasons why the elections were postponed because one or another of those rules were abused in a way that could have seriously affected the outcome of those municipal elections."   The September 14 general elections passed without any serious violence but OSCE officials and analysts say the municipal vote poses more security problems as well as political difficulties.   Rival Serb, Croat and Serb factions view the local elections as a battleground for control of disputed territory.   Authorities have tried to register voters in key municipalities to stack the odds in their own favour.   Human rights workers have singled out Serb authorities in particular for manipulating refugees into registering in Brcko, Srebrenica and other areas to seal the results of wartime expulsions and military conquest.   Bosnian refugees and displaced have the choice of voting in their pre-war homes, in towns where they have resettled or where they "intend" to live. 
19737 !GCAT !GPOL !GVOTE  Organisers of Bosnia's postwar elections have delayed announcement of the final results of the vote and said on Saturday the outcome was still unclear.   "We'll have no idea who won the elections until the certification of results is completed and that will take longer than we expected," said John Reid, special elections adviser in the Bosnia mission of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), which supervised the vote.    "We have found numerous errors of transcription and addition as well as double entries (by counting centres)," Reid said at a briefing where OSCE had been expected to announce final results from the September 14 election but did not.   "Our mistake was in trying to rush out the results and our entire communications system collapsed," Reid told Reuters afterwards.   So many counting stations around war-devastated Bosnia lacked telephone and fax machines that many results had to be hand-carried to central tabulation centres.   OSCE election supervisors could not say whether the discrepancies might undo the provisionally announced victory of Bosnian President Alija Izetbegovic in the key race for a new collective presidency.   He narrowly beat a Serb separatist.   Despite the confusion, the OSCE said the municipal part of Bosnia's electoral process -- postponed earlier because of voter registration irregularities -- would be held on November 22 and extended to November 23-24 if needed. 
19738 !GCAT !GCRIM !GDEF  A military court has started proceedings against four Croatian youths suspected of beating a British soldier serving as a peacekeeper in Bosnia, who later died of injuries, a newspaper said on Saturday.   Simon Lee Jeans, a member of Britain's Royal Logistics Corps, suffered serious head injuries after he and five other soldiers were set upon on September 7 near the Adriatic port of Split by some 30 youths armed with sticks.   The next day he was flown back to Britain where he died on Wednesday, the British defence ministry said.   Zagreb daily Vecernji List said the Split military court had remanded in custody the four prime suspects, including a Croatian army soldier, and started an investigation.   Lt.-Colonel Paul Brooks, spokesman for British troops serving with NATO's peacekeeping force (IFOR) in Bosnia, said Jeans, normally based in Sarajevo, went to Croatia to take part in a fund-raising marathon for Croatian refugee children.   "He and his five friends raised 250,000 Deutschmarks ($160,000) for children that day and in the evening they went to Kastela (near Split) to have a drink and celebrate," Brooks told Reuters.   "But when they left the bar they were set upon by 30 locals armed with iron bars, baseball bats and other blunt weapons," he said.   Jeans suffered a fractured skull whereas the other five suffered were only slightly hurt, he said. 
19739 !GCAT !GPOL !GPRO  Russian surgeon Renat Akchurin said on Saturday that his statement that Boris Yeltsin had had a heart attack in early summer was based on his condition now and on media reports.   He had not treated the president himself at the time.   Akchurin told Reuters evidence of new scarring on Yeltsin's heart and newspaper coverage of the president's illness led him to the conclusion he had given on Friday to a U.S. television channel that he had a heart attack in late June or early July.    The Russian heart specialist, who is tipped to lead a bypass operation on Yeltsin, told ABC television on Friday that the president had his third heart attack in a year shortly before his re-election on July 3.   "I said that because of the publication in newspapers.   Not because I was there during that treatment," he said in a telephone interview, adding that he had not been informed of any heart attack by those doctors who had been treating Yeltsin.   "We saw the scars on the electrocardiogram," he said, adding that the scars were fresh and could not have come from two heart attacks in 1995.   "If the patient has some stenotic (damaged) areas on the coronary angiography and damage to the vessel which is seen exactly, is it possible that it happened with no heart attack?" 
19740 !GCAT !GPOL  Diehard communists, marking the third anniversary on Saturday of the start of Boris Yeltsin's bloody showdown with Russia's Soviet-era parliament, had no sympathy for the sick president.   Some said they wanted him dead.   Few were surprised by a leading doctor's disclosure that the Kremlin apparently hushed up a third heart attack on the eve of Yeltsin's July 3 presidential election victory over communist challenger Gennady Zyuganov.   "It's just what we expect from the current authorities.   They have no respect for the law or the constitution," said Nikolai Argunov, one of the organisers of a rally on Moscow's Smolensk Square to commemorate Yeltsin's constitutionally dubious decree, on September 21, 1993, which dissolved the hostile legislature.   Yeltsin, who disappeared from public view days before his reelection, is in a clinic preparing for major heart surgery.   Renat Akchurin, tipped to perform a bypass operation, disclosed on Friday that the president had had an unreported heart attack in late June or early July just before the final runoff vote -- the third the 65-year-old leader had suffered.   "I just want him dead," said middle-aged Raisa Gorshkova, as she listened to speakers denouncing Yeltsin's order to shell the White House parliament building into submission three years ago.   "He sent so many fine young lads to their deaths, at the White House, in Chechnya," she added, with a motherly smile.   "Whether he's sick or not sick, we don't care," said aeronautical engineer Vasily Ryabtsev.   "What's important is that he's a criminal.   First because he executed our legally elected parliament...And second because he faked the election result."   Among the red flags waved by many of the thousand or so mainly middle-aged or elderly folk who gathered at Saturday's rally, some banners targeted the president personally.   Under a map of Russia portrayed as a breaking red heart, one urged: "Boris Nikolayevich, for the good of the country and your own health, resign your post of president!"   Like many of the protesters, who represent a hard core of support for Zyuganov, Gorshkova said she had been among thousands of Muscovites who rushed to barricades to defend the communist-dominated Supreme Soviet after Yeltsin dissolved it in frustration at its resistance to reform.   For two weeks they refused to obey the president and, on October 3, crowds of parliament supporters stormed the city council and television centre.   Next day Yeltsin ended the standoff by ordering tanks to shell the building.   More than one hundred people died in the clashes.   "We demand justice for those who gave the order to storm the Russian Supreme Soviet building," read one banner at the rally.   Zyuganov, 52, whose Russian Communist Party rose from the ashes of the assault on parliament to become the main opposition, failed to make a promised appearance at the rally.   But on Friday he made clear he was ready for a comeback if Yeltsin's health problems led to a new election, calling himself the most "legitimate" candidate in an interview with Reuters.   He accused Yeltsin's Kremlin entourage of "lies and hypocrisy" in working to return an already sick president to power in order to pursue their own presidential ambitions.   "We are on the brink of very serious changes," he said.   The speakers who took his place on the podium on Saturday were also in no doubt.   Viktor Morozov, a self-styled cossack leader present at the White House siege, said: "Nothing can stop the new social revolution.   We must show the courage we showed three years ago.   We will fight to the last drop of blood.   Socialism or death!" 
19741 !GCAT !GPOL  The Russian surgeon expected to lead a heart operation on President Boris Yeltsin said on Saturday it might be too dangerous to go ahead with the planned bypass surgery, but that he hoped it would still be possible.   Renat Akchurin said earlier that Yeltsin had had a heart attack just before the second round of Russia's presidential election in July.   Asked if damage to the heart meant the operation might be too risky, he told Reuters: "It might be."    Akchurin and other doctors are due to decide on the surgery next week and will seek advice from top U.S. cardiologist Michael DeBakey.   The Russian surgeon said that he had not been told by the Kremlin that he could talk about Yeltsin's health.   On the contrary, he had been asked not to reveal details.   But he implied he had decided to disclose the previously unannounced heart attack in an interview on Friday with the U.S. television channel ABC-TV, in order to stress the dangers of the operation which the doctors wanted to undertake so that Yeltsin could lead a normal life.   "It was the goal of my interview to say that we can postpone the operation but that we are trying to go ahead with it." 
19742 !GCAT !GPOL !GVOTE  Armenia celebrated five years of independence from the old Soviet union on Saturday, the eve of elections which will decide the fate of President Levon Ter-Petrosyan.   Ter-Petrosyan, who has led Armenia through five years of economic turmoil and confrontation with neighbouring Azerbaijan, told Armenians on Friday evening they would face "anarchy, confusion and tyranny" if they chose his main rival, former prime minister Vazgen Manukyan.   Several thousand troops backed by dozens of tanks, artillery pieces and modern surface-to-air rockets paraded through Yerevan's Republic Square on Saturday as the 50-year-old president watched from a reviewing stand.   MiG-24 warplanes flying low overhead shook buildings and decorative red smoke streamed from attack helicopters.   Tens of thousands of Armenians gathered for the show strolled about the city centre and listened to a free concert on the square after it was over.   Ter-Petrosyan was clearly worried by a stronger than expected challenge by Manukyan.   In a 10 minute television campaign address, he painted a doomsday scenario of life under a Manukyan presidency and suggested his rival's election would lead to civil war in the impoverished Caucasus state.   "I know Vazgen Manukyan and I know what his election would mean.   I must raise this alarm in order to exclude the slightest possibility that a mistake could be made," he said.   Ter-Petrosyan argued that virtually every aspect of life in the small country sandwiched between Iran, Georgia, Azerbaijan and Turkey would disintegrate if he were to lose power.   He said Manukyan's "populist" ideas would lead to institutions like the International Monetary Fund cutting off vital loans, and that his proposed coalition government would lead to a power vacuum.   He said that Armenia's eight year-war with Azerbaijan over territory, frozen under a ceasefire for over two years, could re-ignite.   Ter-Petrosyan's recent tough rhetoric is a major change from his usually aloof approach.   But his former ally Manukyan has gained ground from promises to raise wages by up to 10 times, reviving domestic industry and attracting investment.   His chances have been boosted by a wide coalition of opposition groups backing him.   Several presidential candidates have withdrawn from the race and backed him.   Also on the ballot are Communist Sergei Badalyan and Ashot Manucharyan of the Scientific-Industrial Citizens Union.   Manucharyan has practically given up his candidacy and his campaign backers have been telling voters to vote for Manukyan.   Manukyan served at various times as prime minister and defence minister under Ter-Petrosyan, who has dominated Armenia's political scene since the country began moving towards independence in the late 1980s.   If no candidate gets 50 percent of the vote, a second round will be held in two weeks between the two frontrunners.   Armenians have at least some reason to celebrate.   The economy has shown strong progress over the last year as it has started to rise from the ashes of collapse of the Soviet union.   A chronic shortage of electricity, once the hallmark of the the republic's misery, has been greatly relieved and the city's hundreds of new businesses and restaurants are now illuminated by flashy neon and electronic signs.   But the return of the electric light bulb has not proven enough for many people still mired in poverty, and they are the ones most likely to vote for Manukyan.   Polls open at 0800 (0400 GMT) and close at 2200 (0800).   Independent analysts say a high turnout among the 2.4 million eligible voters might be bad news for Ter-Petrosyan.   Opinion polls, while regarded as not reliable in Armenia, have shown him leading but Manukyan's popularity rising.   Several dozen international observers will monitor voting. 
19743 !GCAT !GPOL  The disclosure that Boris Yeltsin had another, unreported, heart attack during this year's presidential election carries wide-ranging implications for Russia and the Kremlin leader's future as head of state.   It increases fears that he may not survive a forthcoming heart operation which his doctors had originally said would be a straightforward bypass.   It also gives critics grounds to argue his re-election to the Kremlin was not fair.   The surgeon, who dropped the bombshell in an interview with U.S. television channel ABC on Friday, zeroed in on the dilemma Yeltsin faced after his third heart attack which occurred before the July 3 runoff in the two-round election.   "Can you imagine what would happen, for example, if he told everyone he's had a heart attack and he's unable to work?"   Renat Akchurin told ABC when asked why no-one had said anything at the time.   During the campaign, communist challenger Gennady Zyuganov had tried to convince voters that the two heart attacks the 65-year-old Yeltsin suffered last year made him unfit to rule.   He was foiled by Yeltsin's surprisingly energetic election campaign, in which he danced the twist, swung on a swing and was generally transformed from the puffy-faced, slurring figure who had sparked rumours of failing health and heavy drinking.   Then Yeltsin suddenly dropped out of sight after beating Zyuganov in the June 16 first round.   "They are suggesting we vote for a living corpse," Zyuganov backer Stanislav Govorukhin said after Yeltsin appeared briefly on television just ahead of the poll looking stiff and awkward.   The president did not even appear in public to vote in the second round on July 3, but despite Zyuganov's demand for an official report on his health, Kremlin aides got away with dismissing his ailment variously as a sore throat or a cold.   Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin was one of many officials who successfully managed to play the issue down, ensuring the president's victory in the second round.   On July 1, Chernomyrdin was asked whether Yeltsin had suffered a new heart attack.   "I noticed no sign of any attack," he answered, saying he had met Yeltsin earlier in the day.   "Boris Nikolayevich (Yeltsin) has a cold, but his voice improved today," Chernomyrdin told a news conference, adding that the Kremlin leader's handshake was so firm he had nearly torn his hand off when greeting him.   "The situation in the country is normal, nothing unexpected, unforeseen or extravagant is taking place," Chernomyrdin said.   "Everything will be all right."   A presidential official refused to comment on Saturday on the heart attack report, which came amid a sudden shift in Kremlin policy towards more openness about Yeltsin's health.   The president himself said on television on September 5 that he would have heart surgery at the end of the month.   His doctors said it would be straightforward bypass, but on Friday the head of the Kremlin medical centre said the operation was "very serious" and that Yeltsin was staying in hospital to ensure problems with other organs did not complicate surgery.   Akchurin, who had earlier refused requests for interviews, spent Friday giving a series of interviews.   While he told other news organisations he could not comment on the president's health, when ABC asked him whether the president had had a heart attack he said: "Yes.   End of June or July."   Asked if it was before the second round he said: "In fact you can see it on the ECG (electrocardiogram)."   Leading U.S. cardiologist Michael DeBakey, who will arrive in Moscow on Monday and consult on Yeltsin's case, told ABC that a third heart attack could make surgery more complicated.   "There is a possibility that each attack damages the heart a little more," he said.   Although the cover-up of the heart attack may be criticised by the communists, it would not have actually infringed the law.   Nor is it clear its disclosure would have handed victory to Zyuganov, who finished more than 13 percentage points behind.   Many voters were aware not all was well with the president's health and millions voted for him not because they felt he was a good or even entirely competent leader but through fear of a return to the communist past, played up in Yeltsin's campaign.   However, talk of a Kremlin cover-up will do Zyuganov no harm.   He made clear on Friday that he would be back to challenge for power at the earliest opportunity. 
19744 !E51 !ECAT !GCAT !GDIP  The World Bank will deliver 6,000 pregnant cows to Bosnian farmers in another sign of a stepped-up international peace effort in the Balkan country.   A NATO peace force spokesman said on Saturday the first group of cows would be handed over to farmers on September 23-27 after a month-long quarantine in holding farms following their arrival from Germany.   Some 6,000 Bosnian farmers in all are buying the cows through a loan programme with the World Bank, said Major Brett Boudreau of NATO, whose Civil-Military Cooperation team is assisting the project.   The imported cows will help replace around 60,000 cows killed during Bosnia's 1992-95 war. 
19745 !GCAT !GPOL  A Kremlin spokesman said on Saturday that top Russian officials had been informed of a U.S. report that Boris Yeltsin suffered a heart attack shortly before the July 3 presidential election runoff.   But he declined to comment on remarks about the previously- unreported attack made in a U.S. ABC news bulletin by the surgeon expected to conduct a heart operation on the 65-year-old Kremlin leader.   "The information about this interview has been distributed to all the people concerned," said the official, asked if Yeltsin's chief-of-staff Anatoly Chubais knew about the report.   "We do not comment on it...We are not not expecting anything so far."   Renat Akchurin, the Russian surgeon tipped to lead the operation, disclosed in a television interview on Friday that Yeltsin suffered a heart attack, his third, in late June or early July, shortly before the second round of the Russian presidential elections.   Speaking on ABC's "World News Tonight," he said Yeltsin had withheld information on the heart attack before the election because he was afraid of the impact it would have on the outcome of the poll. 
19746 !GCAT !GVIO  Russian troops began resuming their withdrawal from Chechnya on Saturday under a peace deal signed on August 31, after a break caused by arguments over prisoners of war, Russian news agencies said.   "The commander of Russian troops Vyacheslav Tikhomirov opened a meeting dedicated to this event," Interfax news agency said.   The withdrawal had begun on September 8 but was stopped a day later amid a row over lists of prisoners provided by the Russian military and the rebels they have been fighting since December 1994.   Interfax said the first train with soldiers from the 276th motorised rifle regiment would set off towards the regiment's base in the Urals after the ceremony.   Two more would follow on Monday and Tuesday.   Other soldiers not regularly stationed in the military district which includes Chechnya will also withdraw in the first of a two-stage pullout of the defence ministry troops in the region, who number about 11,000, it said.   It is due to be complete by December.   The fate of interior ministry troops still in Chechnya is unclear.   The deal involves the withdrawal of all troops temporarily stationed in the region, but there is a disagreement over what this means.   The withdrawal is a key part of the deal signed by President Boris Yeltsin's Chechnya envoy Alexander Lebed and rebel leader Aslan Maskhadov designed to end 21 months of fighting in the rebel region, where tens of thousands of people have died.   The two men agreed to shelve the issue at the centre of the conflict, the political status of the region, which Moscow insists must remain in the Russian Federation despite rebel calls for independence.   A ceasefire has held, although there are still isolated exchanges of fire.   But politicans in Moscow have cast doubt over the future of the deal, arguing that it gives too much away to the rebels. 
19747 !GCAT !GDIP  Colombian President Ernesto Samper left for New York on Saturday to address the U.N. General Assembly while caught in a new drug scandal over heroin found stashed on his presidential jet.   The embarassing discovery on board the presidential Boeing 707 was made at the Catam military air base near Bogota during an inspection prompted by an anonymous telephone caller.   Police and military officials said 7.4 pounds (3.4 kg) of heroin were found hidden in 14 small packets stashed in the nose and tail section of the aircraft at the air base where the jet was being readied for the flight to New York.   Conspiracy theories abounded in Bogota as to how the drugs had been planted or smuggled aboard the closely-guarded jet, which is owned and operated by the Colombian Air Force.   Police said no arrests had been made.   Samper, who has defied repeated calls for his resignation because of charges his 1994 election campaign was partly financed by the Cali drug cartel, told reporters before his departure it was the work of someone seeking to hurt him.   He called it an "outrageous and dastardly" act.   "It does harm to everyone ... but a greater harm was averted," he said, alluding to the scandal that would have erupted if the heroin had been detected by drug or customs agents at New York's JFK international airport.   Samper's U.S. visa was revoked in July because of his alleged ties to drug traffickers and as a sign of Washington's displeasure over a move by Colombia's Congress to clear him of drug corruption charges a month earlier.   The travel restriction does not apply to heads of state visiting the U.N. headquarters, where Samper was due to address the General Assembly on Monday.   Instead of the presidential plane, Samper and an official party that included Foreign Minister Maria Emma Mejia, Finance Minister Jose Antonio Ocampo and about 30 journalists left for New York aboard a jet belonging to Colombia's Avianca airline.   Ironically, a senior government official told Reuters on Friday that Samper's U.N. address would focus on the need for closer cooperation between consumer and producer nations in the war on drugs, which a growing number of critics say is a lost cause.   Washington decertified Colombia as a partner in U.S. counternarcotics efforts in March, arguing that it had not done enough to stem the flow of cocaine and heroin onto U.S. streets.   Some Western diplomats have suggested that Samper might use his U.N. address, and a separate speech as head of the 114-nation Non-Aligned Movement, to "decertify" the United States, since its lack of effective drug treatment and prevention programmes has gone a long way toward creating the world's single largest market for illicit drugs.   The government official, who asked not be identified by name, said Samper would be "quite civilised, given the circumstances," limiting himself to a message of "either we fix this together or it won't be fixed at all."   Colombia is the world's leading exporter of cocaine and was identified by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration earlier this month as the top supplier of heroin to the United States. 
19748 !GCAT !GCRIM !GDIP  More than seven pounds of heroin was found stashed aboard Colombian President Ernesto Samper's jet just hours before he was due to leave on an official visit to U.N. headquarters in New York, authorities said on Saturday.   They said 7.4 pounds (3.3 kg) of heroin were discovered hidden in 14 cigarette pack-sized bags stashed in the nose and tail section of the Boeing 707 aircraft during an inspection at the Catam military air base on the outskirts of Bogota.   Police sources had earlier mistakenly identified the plane as a Fokker.   Air Force commander Hector Hernando Gil said the inspection, at 10 p.m.   Friday (0300 GMT Saturday), was prompted by an anonymous telephone caller who tipped off authorities to the existence of the heroin.   Justice Minister Carlos Medellin, who joined Gil and National Police chief Gen. Rosso Jose Serrano at a pre-dawn news conference called to discuss the embarrassing discovery, said the heroin had apparently been planted by criminals seeking to add to Samper's drug-tainted image abroad.   "They're trying to muddy the name of the president and his government," Medellin said, adding that Samper may have faced arrest at New York's JFK international airport if the drug stash had been discovered there.   No arrests were made in connection with the discovery aboard the aircraft, which was due to depart at 10 a.m. local time (1500 GMT) Saturday for New York.   Gen. Serrano said the prime suspects of having planted the drug were Air Force technicians responsible for routine inspections of the ageing 707.   "There may be some involvement by one or two Air Force people but not by the Air Force itself," he said.   According to Gil, the plane's most recent itinerary included stopovers in the southwest city of Cali and northwestern Medellin on rouutine test flights ahead of Samper's four-day trip to New York, where he is to address the United Nations General Assembly on Monday afternoon.   Samper's private secretary told reporters there were no plans to delay the president's departure despite the drug find.   Samper, whose 1994 election campaign allegedly received millions of dollars from the Cali drug cartel, was stripped of his U.S. travel visa on July 11 because of what Washington described as his known ties to the narcotics trade.   The travel restriction generally does not affect heads of state visiting U.N. headquarters, however, and U.S. State Department spokeswoman Susan Snyder told Reuters by telephone from Washington on Friday that no limitations had been placed on Samper's movements during his stay in New York.   Colombia, the source of 80 percent of the world's cocaine, was identified by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration earlier this month as the top supplier of heroin to the United States. 
19749 !GCAT !GCRIM !GDIP !GPOL  Colombian President Ernesto Samper, unable to shake off his drug-tainted image, was to fly to New York on Saturday, hours after heroin was found stashed away on his presidential jet.   The embarassing discovery on board Samper's Boeing 707 jet, which is owned and operated by the Colombian Air Force, was made during an inspection at a military air base prompted by an anonymous telephone caller.   At a news conference called at the base before dawn on Saturday, shame-faced authorities said 7.4 pounds (3.7 kg) of heroin were discovered hidden in 14 small packets stashed in the nose and tail section of the aircraft.   Despite rumours Samper would cancel his trip to address the U.N. General Assembly, government sources said he was due to depart for New York later on Saturday afternoon.   Conspiracy theories abounded in Bogota as to how the drugs had been planted or smuggled aboard the closely-guarded jet.   Justice Minister Carlos Medellin said someone was clearly trying "to muddy the name of the president."   Police sources said no arrests had been made.   But Samper, who has defied repeated calls for his resignation because of charges that his 1994 election campaign was funded in part by the Cali drug cartel, has no shortage of enemies in Colombia and abroad.   Samper's U.S. visa was revoked in July because of his alleged ties to drug traffickers and as a sign of Washington's displeasure over a move by Colombia's Congress to clear Samper of drug corruption charges a month earlier.   The travel restriction does not apply to heads of state visiting the U.N. headquarters, where Samper was due to address the General Assembly on Monday.   Government sources said Samper would travel to New York with an official party that includes Foreign Minister Maria Emma Mejia, Finance Minister Jose Antonio Ocampo and about 30 Colombian journalists.   Ironically, a senior government official told Reuters on Friday that Samper's U.N. address would focus on the need for closer cooperation between consumer and producer countries in the war against drugs, which a growing number of critics describe as a lost cause.   Washington decertified Colombia as a partner in U.S. counternarcotics efforts in March, arguing it had not done enough to stem the flow of cocaine and heroin onto U.S. streets.   Some Western diplomats have suggested Samper might use his U.N. address, and a separate speech as head of the 114-nation Non-Aligned Movement, to "decertify" the United States, since its lack of effective drug treatment and prevention programmes has gone a long way toward creating the world's single largest market for illicit drugs.   The government official, who asked not be identified by name, said Samper would be "quite civilised, given the circumstances," limiting himself to a message of "either we fix this together or it won't be fixed at all."   Colombia is the world's leading exporter of cocaine and was identified by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration earlier this month as the top supplier of heroin to the United States. 
19750 !GCAT !GCRIM !GPOL  Mexican state prosecutors on Friday appealed the acquittal last month of a man accused of shooting top Mexican politician Luis Donaldo Colosio in 1994.   Officials from the Colosio case special prosecutor's office asked a Second Circuit appeals judge to overturn the not guilty verdict handed down by Second Circuit Judge Mario Pardo Rebolledo on Aug. 7 against Othon Cortes Vazquez.   The officials, using 360 pages of written evidence as well as videotapes and photographs, argued that Pardo had not given sufficient weight to certain evidence suggesting Cortes shot Colosio in the abdomen at the end of a March 23, 1994 campaign rally.   Colosio was the presidential candidate of the long-ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) and as such almost certain to have become the next president of Mexico.   After the killing, the most serious political assassination in Mexico in half a century, Colosio's campaign manager Ernesto Zedillo took over the PRI candidacy and won August 1994 presidential elections.   One man, 25-year-old factory worker Mario Aburto Martinez, is serving a 45-year sentence for shooting Colosio in the head but prosecutors believe the killing was a plot and have been trying to jail others on charges of conspiracy to murder Colosio.   The acquittal of Cortes, who walked free the day of the acquittal after 18 months in a high security prison near Mexico City, was the latest in a series of not guilty verdicts against accused co-conspirators and led to the firing of Special Prosecutor Pablo Chapa Bezanilla.   Chapa's replacement, lawyer Luis Raul Gonzalez Perez, is the fourth prosecutor to take up the case in two and a half years.   He said earlier this week he would start from the beginning in his probe of the killing, and that he would leave the appeal against the acquittal of Cortes to hold-overs from Chapa's team.   Gonzalez, formerly an investigator at the government Human Rights Commission, listed 26 questions about the case which had to be answered, including that of whether the Aburto in prison is really the same man who shot Colosio in the head or a double planted to confuse investigators. 
19751 !GCAT !GPOL  Mexico's ruling party opened a critical three-day national assembly to discuss reforms by ratifying as its leader a moderniser chosen by President Ernesto Zedillo.   More than 4,500 delegates from the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), crammed into a sweaty hall in the south of the city, approved the leadership of Santiago Onate and his deputy Juan Millan by acclamation.   The decision came as a relief to the government, which had feared possible opposition to Onate by rank-and-file hardliners.   The hardliners dislike the party's shift away from its all-dominating role in Mexican life towards competition in free elections against an ever bolder opposition.   Founded in the turbulent aftermath of the 1910-17 Mexican Revolution, the PRI has ruled Mexico without a break ever since and despite recent scattered election losses to the opposition retains enormous political clout.   Some of that clout was on view on Friday night, as rank-and-file militants from throughout Mexico cheered, shouted and sang the party anthem under banners with the assembly's theme: "PRI -- The Answer".   But hanging over the party's 17th National Assembly was the shadow of one of its former leaders, a man who would almost certainly be President of Mexico today had he not been cut down by assassins' bullets in 1994.   More than two years after, the motives behind Luis Donaldo Colosio's murder remain a mystery and investigators have been unwilling or unable to discover them.   Many Mexicans, including PRI militants, suspect a political plot.   Roars from the delegates of "Colosio, Colosio" and "Justice!"   punctuated Onate's opening speech.   The party faithful listened passively as Onate reiterated his vision of the reforms the party needed to take it into the next century but rose to their feet and roared cheers of approval when Onate demanded the "definitive clearing-up" of Colosio's murder.   The assembly continues on Saturday with four workshops in different parts of the city to discuss reforms -- deemed vital by the party leadership if the PRI is to stay in power beyond the end of the century -- and concludes Sunday lunchtime with an address from President Zedillo. 
19752 !GCAT !GODD  A Peruvian pensioner died trying to show off his skills as a bullfighter during his 74th birthday party, local media reported Friday.   Marco Padilla, from the northern town of Acushpampa, dragged friends away from a barbecue held in his honour and invited them to watch him take on a bull in a nearby stable.   But the manly display did not last long as Padilla failed to avoid one of the bull's advances and was skewered by the animal's horns.   Friends killed the bull and sold the meat to raise money for his funeral. 
19753 !GCAT !GENT !GSCI  Australian archaeologists have found aboriginal stone tools and rock art they claim date back more than 116,000 years and could support suggestions that modern humans orginated in Asia, not Africa.   Research team leader Richard Fullagar said on Saturday the stone chips found at a dig in Australia's remote northwest showed humans lived there between 116,000 and 176,000 years ago, around the time of the emergence of modern human form in Africa.   "The initial samples were taken four to five years ago now, and we were so shocked with the results that we have been trying to go over them and trying to disprove these things, and we can't do that," Fullagar said in a radio interview.   The artefacts dramatically push back the earliest human occupation of Australia and roughly coincide with the emergence of homo sapiens in Africa, he said.   "This almost doubles the previous estimates of the age of aboriginal occupation on the continent," the four-member research team said in a statement issued on Saturday.   Australian Museum prehistorian Paul Tacon said on Saturday that the antiquity of the stone artefacts implied that either modern humans originated outside Africa or homo sapiens spread across the world more rapidly than currently presumed.   "Some people have argued that perhaps modern humans originated somewhere in Southeast Asia and this could strengthen that argument," Tacon told Reuters.   "What our findings do is raise the level of debate and general discussion of human origins.   Perhaps humans developed in other parts of the world, or perhaps humans were spreading across the world much faster...," he added.   Tacon estimated the first Australian Aborigines must have reached the continent from the direction of Asia by sea.   "One of the reasons we think they were fully modern humans is that at the time...they would have had to have crossed at least 60 km (37 miles) of open water and that means they would have had to have built some sort of complex raft," he said.   The discoveries, at a site dubbed "Australia's Stonehenge", also include rock engravings dating back 58,000 to 75,000 years -- twice as old as French rock paintings traditionally felt to mark the beginnings of art, the team said.   "The whole package is mind-blowing," Tacon said, describing the series of circular impressions as a form of rock sculpture.   Fullagar said some ochre, commonly used in aboriginal art, was found at a slightly higher level than the stone artefacts.   "Up at the level which is around about 58,000 to 75,000 years ago, there is an (engraved) sandstone slab," Fullagar told Australian Broadcasting Corp. "They are perhaps the oldest rock art anywhere in the world," he added.   The age of the engravings was determined by dating the sediments in which they were found, the research team said.   "There are engravings thought to be a couple of hundred thousand years old in Asia, but all the finds (there) are small and the dates are questionable.   We have a very reliable date," Tacon said.   The team from the Australian Museum and University of Wollongong plan to publish their findings in British science journal "Antiquity" in December. 
19754 !GCAT !GREL  Tibet's exiled spiritual leader the Dalai Lama began a nine-day Buddhist ceremony, the Kalachakra, to promote world peace on Saturday, but the setting was incongruous -- a cavernous, old rock n roll venue in Sydney.   The tin-roofed Hordern Pavilion is normally overlooked by visiting rock stars these days due to its poor acoustics, limited capacity and ageing image.   But the Dalai Lama roadshow, in Australia for a two-week spiritual tour, has transformed the pavilion into a Buddhist temple, resplendent with a maroon and gold covered throne, a statue of Buddha and stocks of burning joss sticks.   The Dalai Lama, the Tibetan god-king, said the Kalachakra was a "vehicle for world peace" because of its potential for spiritual healing of the environment and the individual.   "From the very beginning, the teachings of the Buddha have been concerned with fulfilling the wish shared by every living being to find peace and happiness and avoid suffering," he said.   This is the first time the 2,500-year-old Kalachakra, or Wheel of Time ceremony, has been performed in the southern hemisphere and has attracted an Australian and Asian audience.   "Anyone can attend the Kalachakra solely for the purpose of enjoying the spiritual inspiration that the event provides," the Dalai Lama said.   Buddhism is the fastest growing faith in Australia, albeit from a low base, with some 140,000 to 200,000 followers.   About 3,000 followers have paid A$300 (US$237) each to attend the full ceremony.   The Kalachakra ceremony features ceremonial dancing by Tibet's Namgyal monastery monks, chanting, music and the creation of butter sculptures.   But the centrepiece of the ceremony is the creation of a sand mandala -- a picture made of sand crushed from white Himalayan stone and dyed in 14 different colours.   The mandala depicts a palace of 722 dieties respresenting aspects of the mind and has an inner wheel symbolising the human body and an outer wheel for the environment and the universe.   "The Kalachakra mandala is a visual guide to the teachings," said a "Dalai Lama In Australia" tour spokesman.   "It represents the interdependence of all living beings, the continuity of all events past, represent and future, the outer environment and our inner state of being."   Buddhist monks will take nine days to complete this intricate sand picture.   It will then be swept up into an urn and the Dalai Lama will pour it into Sydney Harbour to spread its benefits. 
19755 !GCAT !GENT !GSCI  Australian archaeologists have found aboriginal stone tools and rock art they claim date back more than 116,000 years and could rewrite conventional theories of prehistory.   Research team leader Richard Fullagar said on Saturday the stone chips found at a dig in Australia's remote northwest showed humans lived there between 116,000 and 176,000 years ago, around the time of the emergence of modern human form in Africa.   "The initial samples were taken four to five years ago now, and we were so shocked with the results that we have been trying to go over them and trying to disprove these things, and we can't do that," Fullagar said in a radio interview.   The artefacts dramatically push back the earliest human occupation of Australia and roughly coincide with the emergence of homo sapiens in Africa, Fullagar and the Sydney Morning Herald newspaper said.   "This almost doubles the previous estimates of the age of aboriginal occupation on the continent," the research team said in a short statement issued on Saturday morning.   The discoveries, at a site dubbed "Australia's Stonehenge", also include rock engravings dating back 58,000 to 75,000 years, he said.   "There is also some ochre (commonly used in aboriginal art) at the slightly higher level than the stone artefacts.   Up at the level which is around about 58,000 to 75,000 years ago, there is an (engraved) sandstone slab," Fullagar said.   The age of the engravings was determined by dating the sediments in which they were found, he said.   "They are perhaps the oldest rock art anywhere in the world," Fullagar said.   The team of four archaeologists from the Australian Museum and University of Wollongong plan to publish their findings in British science journal "Antiquity" in December, the Herald said. 
19756 !GCAT !GVIO  A South Korean paratrooper was shot in the head and killed during a helicopter chase for North Korean agents across rugged mountains on Saturday, the defence ministry said.   But in a sign that Seoul wants to limit damage from one of the deadliest infiltrations from the North since the early Cold War, foreign minister Gong Ro-myung said he still wanted peace talks with Pyongyang.   Media reports said the 26-year-old sergeant was hit while being winched to the ground to pursue two communist fugitives.   Another paratrooper on the helicopter was also wounded as the infiltrators opened fire with automatic weapons.   It was the first reported Southern fatality in a four-day hunt along east coast mountains for an estimated 26 infiltrators who landed on Wednesday morning by submarine on a beach from the enemy North.   South Korean forces have killed seven of the agents and captured one alive, while the bodies of 11 others were found, possibly shot by saboteurs among the squad who wanted to increase their survival chances.   Foreign Minister Gong told reporters that despite the incident, "there will be no change in the government's original position pressing for four-way talks to obtain peace on the Korean peninsula".   In April, U.S. President Bill Clinton and South Korean President Kim Young-sam proposed four-way talks, also including China, to replace an armistice that ended the 1950-53 Korean War with a peace treaty.   But Gong said he believe the drama would affect the flow of international food aid to North Korea, which is on the brink of famine following disastrous floods.   Several skirmishes broke out on Saturday as a deadly game of cat-and-mouse was played out in wooded ravines.   Loudspeakers on army jeeps boomed out a recorded message from the captured agent, Lee Kwang-soo, pleading with his colleagues to give themselves up.   "I am alive and safe," according to the message, which echoed around canyons.   "Our mission has already been finished.   I want you to surrender and find a new life along with me in the Republic of Korea."   Piecing together the account of the captured agent, defence ministry officials say two of three highly trained saboteurs were still alive and at large.   Also missing were the captain of the vessel, two guides and three crew members.   "Our forces are still chasing the two men believed to be saboteurs and squeezing the dragnet," a defence ministry official in Kangnung said.   "We are also hunting another group of three suspected North Korean agents on a nearby hillside after a report from witnesses."   Defence Minister Lee Yang-ho called the submarine infiltration a military provocation.   "The inflitrators seem to have been entrusted with an important mission.   We continue to investigate what it was," he told reporters.   The submarine ended up stranded on rocks, indicating that whatever the mission it had been badly botched.   Salvage vessels on Saturday prepared to tow away the vessel.   Television pictures have been playing North Korean propaganda film of spy agents displaying awesome combat skills as frogmen, paratroopers and martial art fighters.   The old movie reels show muscular men being beaten with boards studded with nails and female operatives slicing bottles in half with flashing open-hand chops.   Terrified residents around Kangnung bolted their doors at night, and tourist hotels in the region have emptied ahead of the Korean Thanksgiving, an important national holiday.   Nearby Sorak Mountain is one of the country's best-known resort areas, frequented by millions of South Korean climbers, skiers and other tourists throughout the year.   "We spend every day helpless," said Chon Song-hee, a female resident at a town on the outskirts of Kangnung.   "I feel like I live in the dark.   I don't go out even during the daytime." 
19757 !GCAT !GVIO  A South Korean paratrooper was shot in the head and killed during a helicopter chase for two North Korean agents across rugged mountains on Saturday, hospital officials said.   "He died of head injuries," an official at a hospital in the east coast city of Kangnung said by telephone.   Television news reports said the 26-year-old sergeant was hit while being winched to the ground to pursue the two communist fugitives on foot.   A defence ministry official in Kangnung said another paratrooper on board the helicopter was also shot, but there were no details of his condition.   The agents are the remnants of a squad of about 26 infiltrators who landed by submarine in the early hours of Wednesday morning on a beach near Kangnung.   So far 18 have been shot and killed and one captured alive.   There were several skirmishes on Saturday as a deadly game of cat-and-mouse was played out on mountains and ravines for a fourth day.   According to the testimony of the captured man, Lee Kwang-soo, the remaining fugitives include three saboteurs, two guides and two members of the submarine crew.   Loudspeakers on army jeeps boomed out a recorded message from Lee pleading with his colleagues to give themselves up.   "I am alive and safe," according to the message, which echoed around mountain canyons.   "Our mission has already been finished.   I want you to surrender and find a new life along with me in the Republic of Korea."   Media reports quoted Lee as telling interrogators the submarine, which ran aground on rocks, was the same vessel used to drop two other agents on South Korea's Cheju Island in September last year.   One of those agents was shot and killed in a clash with security forces on the South Korean mainland the following month and the other was captured.   Lee was also reported to have said a submarine pierced coastal defences in the Kangnung area last year.   There was speculation the saboteurs, elite operatives fanatically committed to Pyongyang leader Kim Jong-il, may have evaded the massive dragnet and could be on their way home.   "We are expanding the area of our search operations to prevent them from returning to the North," the defence ministry official said.   Television pictures have been playing North Korean propaganda film of spy agents displaying awesome combat skills as frogmen, paratroopers and martial art fighters.   The old movie reels show muscular men being beaten with boards studded with nails and female operatives slicing bottles in half with flashing open-hand chops.   Terrified residents around Kangnung bolted their doors at night, and tourist hotels in the region have emptied ahead of the Korean Thanksgiving, the most important holiday in the calendar.   South Koreans have been jolted by the realisation that coastal defences they once thought were almost impregnable can so easily be evaded.   North Korean saboteurs would be in the first wave of any Northern invasion of the South, blowing up key facilities, such as radar installations, and spreading terror among civilians.   Complicating the search were reports that the suspected saboteurs were dressed in South Korean army uniforms and carrying M-16 rifles, standard issue among Southern defence forces.   South Korea's ambassador to the United Nations, Park Soo-kil, briefed Security Council members on the infiltration on Friday.   Seoul has said it wants the council to take unspecified action against the North.   North and South Korea have been technically at war since their 1950-53 conflict ended with an armistice negotiated by U.S.-led United Nations forces. 
19758 !GCAT !GVIO  Two more North Korean infiltrators were killed on Sunday during a gun battle with South Korean security forces, the Defence Ministry said.   A ministry spokesman said a South Korean soldier also died in the gun battle.   Further details were not given.    Another South Korean soldier was injured in the shootout, the spokesman said.   The latest North Korean infiltrators to be killed were among the remnants of around 26 agents who landed by submarine on Wednesday on a beach near the east coast city of Kangnung.   The killings brought to 20 the number of North Korean agents shot and killed in the infiltration incident.   One other has been captured alive.   The death of the South Korean soldier was a second in two days.   A paratrooper was shot and killed on Saturday during a helicopter chase for the North Korean agents across rugged mountains near Kangnung. 
19759 !E51 !ECAT !GCAT !GDIP !GVIO  A senior military leader has said Indonesia must monitor foreign aid to non-governmental organisations (NGOs) to ensure it does not benefit anti-state forces, the official Antara news agency said on Saturday.   "Our country needs foreign aid (to fund NGOs)," the agency quoted Lieutenant-General Syarwan Hamid, head of the army's socio-political affairs unit, as saying.   "However, there must be regulations so that the aid is used in the interest of the state and not against it."   Hamid said the government needed to monitor where the funds were going.   Members of some NGOs, he said, had been involved in riots in Jakarta in July.   Riots erupted in the city on July 27 when police ousted supporters of Megawati Sukarnoputri from the headquarters of the opposition Indonesian Democratic Party (PDI).   Megawati, daughter of late founding President Sukarno, had been ousted as leader of the PDI at a government-backed congress in Medan, North Sumatra, in June but her supporters had refused to give up the party's headquarters.   The government crackdown after the riots has been criticised by Indonesian activists who accuse authorities of a campaign of intimidation and violence against NGOs. 
19760 !GCAT !GDIS  The skipper of a cargo boat was reported missing, while 17 of his crew were rescued after their boat sank near the San Bernardo Strait in southern Philippines, Coast guard officials said on Saturday.   The Philippine Coast Guard said it rescued 17 crew members from the LCD Socor III off the coast of Cabacungan island in Allen, Samar, 410 kms (256 miles) south of Manila, in the early morning last on Thursday.   "All the crew were accounted for except for the skipper," Coast guard officer Andrew Pilon told Reuters.   The boat was carrying a cargo of cement, worth around 1.5 million pesos ($58,000), from Cebu in central Philippines to neighbouring Albay when it sank, the Coast guard said. 
19761 !GCAT !GVIO  Moslem regional governor Nur Misuari, a former rebel chief who has signed a peace deal with the Philipppine government, said on Saturday he would use "moral pressure" to persuade Moslem radicals to lay down their arms.   "I will try my best to bring the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) and the Abu Sayyaf to the folds of the law," Misuari told reporters after speaking before military officers at the National Defense College in Manila.   The chairman of the Moro National Liberation Front earlier this month signed a peace agreement with Manila formally ending a 24-year MNLF-led revolt for Moslem self-rule in the southern Mindanao region.   The deal does not cover the breakaway rebel faction Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) and the extremist Abu Sayyaf group which are demanding an Islamic state.   "I met with the MILF leadership and they seemed to be receptive to my suggestion," Misuari said.   Misuari was elected governor last week of a semi-autonomous Moslem region comprising four provinces and is to assume office on September 30.   The government said it has also started contacts with the MILF on a possible ceasefire prior to formal talks on a separate peace agreement with the group.   The Abu Sayyaf, blamed by the military for a spate of bombings, raids and kidnappings in the southern islands, has shunned talks with Manila.   "We need peace to transform our homeland and cast away bitter memories of the...war," Misuari said, referring to Mindanao where the bulk of the country's five million Moslem minority live.   Misuari said he hoped the government's peace talks with another guerrilla group, the communist-led National Democratic Front (NDF), would bear fruit.   Misuari's deal with Manila calls for him to also head a special Mindanao council to supervise development in 14 provinces, which include Christian-dominated areas.   The council will serve as forerunner of an expanded autonomy area to be established after three years. 
19762 !GCAT !GDIP  Taipei said on Saturday it was prepared to defend a chain of uninhabited East China Sea islands claimed by Taiwan, China and Japan -- but only as a worst-case last resort.   "The government has the determination to protect its territory," Interior Minister Lin Feng-cheng told a parliament subcommittee in comments broadcast by state-funded television.   "It will show that determination when necessary," he said in reply to lawmakers' calls for a military response to Japan.   A festering dispute over the potentially resource-rich Diaoyus in the East China Sea, called the Senkakus in Japanese, erupted in July after Japanese ultra-rightists erected a lighthouse there, angering rival claimants Taiwan and China.   Taiwanese anger has swelled in recent days since Tokyo, in effect supporting the rightists, sent patrol ships to repel private Taiwan vessels that tried to approach the islands.   Local Japanese and Taiwan officials whose jurisdictions both include the islands met on Saturday in Taiwan's Suao prefecture to discuss the dispute, but made no agreements in the unofficial meeting.   Taiwan and Japan have no diplomatic ties.   Saturday saw more of what have become daily anti-Japanese protests and organisers pledged to marshal more than 10,000 people on Sunday for a major street demonstration in Taipei.   Taiwan and Hong Kong activists planned to sail on Sunday to the islands northeast of Taiwan and southeast of Japan's Okinawa to challenge Japan's claim by hoisting flags of the People's Republic of China and Taiwan's exiled Republic of China.   Interior Minister Lin said Taipei preferred to handle the dispute through peaceful and "rational" means, but said Taiwan did not rule out the possibility of a military response.   "In the worst-case scenario...the government is willing to fight at all costs.   It will not let the people down," Lin said.   Lin called for public support and reiterated that Taipei had no desire to collaborate with arch rival China in the dispute.   The foreign ministry was expected in early October to hold a second round of talks with Japan on rival claims to fishing waters around the islands, Lin said.   Foreign ministry spokesman Peter Cheng, quoted by the official Central News Agency, denied rumours that Taipei and Tokyo had reached a "secret agreement" under which the disputed waters would be split by a mid-line between Taiwan and the Japanese archipelago.   "The reports are groundless," Cheng was quoted as saying.   Many Taiwan people have criticised their government for taking too conciliatory a stance towards Tokyo and some even suggested that Taipei enlist mainland China's help.   Hong Kong activists have been even more vocal, urging China to respond with force to Japan's territorial assertion.   Taiwan and China have been bitter rivals since a civil war split them in 1949 when the Republic of China government, defeated by the communists, took refuge on the island.   A group of paroled criminals have announced a "dare-to-die" mission to bomb the Japanese lighthouse.   Japan took the islands as war booty after defeating imperial China in 1895.   Beijing and Taipei say Chinese claims go back centuries but both have resisted mounting calls to expel Japan by force. 
19763 !GCAT !GVIO  A prolonged emergency triggered by North Korean infiltrators who landed on a beach near South Korea's east coast city of Kangnung has drastically cut regional business income, city officials and residents said on Saturday.   "We have received a lot of complaints from the residents in this region, mostly fishermen and farmers, in connection with the guerrilla incident," Kim Kil-hyon, a spokesman for the Kangnung city government told Reuters in a telephone interview.   "They are biting their nails ahead of Chusok holidays," he said, referring to the Korean Thanksgiving, the most important holiday, which lasts for four days starting from next Thursday.   Kim said city authorities have yet to calculate exact losses stemming from the incident, which began on Wednesday when around 26 North Korean infiltrators came ashore from a submarine.   On Saturday a small group of the infiltrators was still at large.   Squid-fishing housholds in the Kangnung area appeared to be suffering a combined daily income loss of about 800 million won ($975,000) since authorities have prohibited fishing boats from leaving ports, Kim said.   He said September was a big season for catching squid in the country.   Since the infiltration, authorities have imposed a dusk-to-dawn curfew on the region, an action that has also upset owners of night-time entertainment places.   The curfew has left guest rooms at most accommodation facilities for tourists in the mountainous area almost empty.   Nearby Sorak Mountain is one of the country's best-known resort areas, frequented by millions of South Korean climbers, skiers and other tourists throughout the year.   "Our room occupancy rate has fallen by about 30 percent -- compared with that in the same period of last year -- apparently affected by the infiltration incident," said Kim Gwang-yon, manager of a hotel located on the foot of Sorak.   "There have been many telephone calls from customers to cancel their reservations made for Chusok," he said.   The Kangnung city official said the incident has also seriously damaged mushroom harvesting in the area.   He did not elaborate.   The Korea Times daily said a one-kg (2.2 lb) carton of champignon mushrooms is now selling for as much as 120,000 won ($146).   The mushrooms are in high demand as gifts on the occasion of Chusok.   It said farmers, who used to pick four kg (8.8 lb) of champignon per day before the incident, make much less since they have been banned from entering mountains in the region.   Another Kangnung official said there has been an outcry from residents demanding that city authorities take steps so they can resume their work.   Since the infiltration, terrified local residents have been bolting their doors at night and some have even been doing so during the day.   "We spend everyday in a helpless situation," said Chon Song-hee, a female resident at a town on the outskirts of Kangnung.   "I feel like I live in the dark.   I don't go out even during the daytime."   So far 18 of the North Korean infiltrators have been shot and killed.   Another was captured alive.   During a helicopter chase on Saturday, one South Korean paratrooper was shot in the head and died in hospital. 
19764 !GCAT !GDIP !GPOL  An international parliamentarians' group has called for support for fellow legislators around the world whose rights to freedom of speech and action are under threat, group officials said on Saturday.   An Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) committee set up to support legislators targeted for imprisonment, intimidation or assassination had highlighted the cases of 109 parliamentarians in 13 nations ranging from Burundi to Turkey, they said.   The Committee on the Human Rights of Parliamentarians met during a five-day international IPU conference that ended in Beijing on Friday.   "Extend your active support to those of your fellow parliamentarians whose human rights are under threat, or may have been violated," an IPU statement quoted committee Chairman Nicos Anastasiades as telling legislators.   "It is not only our duty to do so but it is also in our interests.   It is them today.   It could be us tomorrow," he said.   The committee, which normally works in private and only publicises cases in which action by governments is judged inadequate, highlighted the plight of 27 parliamentarians from Burundi forced into hiding or exile after a July coup.   It also noted the imprisonment of Kurdish members of parliament in Turkey, Burma's jailing of pro-democracy parliamentarians and attacks on a Guatemalan legislator's family, IPU officials said. 
19765 !GCAT !GPOL  The decision by unpopular Thai premier Banharn Silpa-archa to quit in seven days will only bring temporary calm to troubled political and economic waters, analysts said on Saturday.   Banharn's departure, on the promise he would find a suitable replacement within a week, was seen as a quick-fix measure designed to keep remaining leaders in his six-party coalition in power and avoid fresh elections.   Analysts said any replacement would face the same high expectations and opposition attacks and would be required to launch a massive cabinet reshuffle to restore credibility.   The front-runner for the post was seen to be Defence Minister Chavalit Yongchaiyudh, head of the second largest coalition partner, the New Aspiration Party (NAP).   A rank outsider and compromise contender was Foreign Minister Amnuay Viravan from the small Nam Thai party, analysts said.   Banharn has been in power for 14 months.   "In the short term, Banharn's resignation will bring relief to many.   But the coalition which stays on is seen as a stop-gap measure," said Suchit Bumbongkarn, political scientist at Chulalongkorn University.   "We may see a fresh election if they fail to polish up their image."   Analysts also said Thai financial markets would react positively to the news of Banharn's departure.   "But there will be cautious optimism as they wait to see what happens in coming days," said Deutsche Morgan Grenfell's Thailand country manager, Graham Catterwell.   The stock market sank to near three-year lows, the baht was hit by devaluation rumours and the nation's economy and export growth slowed sharply during Banharn's tenure.   Catterwell said Banharn's departure was positive for parliamentary democracy in Thailand.   The next few days would be interesting as coalition partners jostled for the best deals for themselves.   "The game is not fully over yet.   They have got a week to trade horses," he added.   Thailand's military, which has launched 17 coups or coup attempts since 1932 when the country switched to a parliamentary system from absolute monarchy, had no immediate comment on the developments.   Banharn said on Saturday he would resign in return for support at a no-confidence vote against him from coalition partners who had threatened to abandon him.   Banharn won the poll by 207-180 in the 391-seat House of Representatives.   Some members did not vote.   The vote was held after the opposition had accused Banharn of condoning corruption in his government, mismanaging the economy and plagiarising in his master's thesis.   They had also raised doubts about Banharn's nationality.   The premier had denied all charges against him.   "Banharn's departure was coming anyway.   I think Chavalit is the front runner to be the new prime minister with Amnuay as a rank outsider," said an Asian diplomat.   It was Chavalit's NAP which sparked Banharn's fall by threatening to withhold support for the premier in parliament.   "The future of any new PM depends on how he measures up to the high expectations of the public, especially the economic situation, and fulfills their pledges," the diplomat added. 
19766 !GCAT !GDIS !GWEA  Typhoon Violet, packing maximum winds of 144 kph (90 mph), was expected to hit central Japan on Sunday, the Meteorological Agency said on Saturday.   As of 4.30 p.m. (0730 GMT), Violet was located 1,150 km (719 miles) southwest of Tokyo, the agency said.   Violet, the 17th typhoon to hit Japan this year, was moving northeast at a speed of 20 kph (12.5 mph), it said.   The typhoon was likely to start striking the southern part of Izu Peninsula, a popular hot-spring resort, on Sunday morning before pounding areas along the Pacific coast near Tokyo, the agency said.   The agency predicted the typhoon would dump up to 30 cm (12 inches) of rain. 
19767 !GCAT !GCRIM  Suspected members of an expatriate drugs ring appeared in courts throughout Hong Kong on Saturday after an undercover narcotics operation smashed a syndicate supplying the designer drug Ecstasy and cocaine.   Eight foreigners made separate appearances on charges that they were part of a syndicate providing drugs such as cocaine, cannabis and Ecstasy to the expatriate community through bars and nightclubs.   A ninth suspect is due to appear in court on Monday, and police said on Saturday they expected to make further arrests in Hong Kong and overseas.   The suspects are mainly British, Irish and U.S. nationals, police said.   A total of 22 expatriates, 13 men and nine women, were arrested in the British colony over the past two days.   Most are in their early 20s.   Police said three had been released and 10 were yet to be charged.   The arrests came after police seized 1,521 tablets of Ecstasy, two kg (4.4 pounds) of cannabis, 300 grams (10.5 ounces) of cocaine and 50 tablets of LSD following raids on 41 premises, police said.   The street value of the Ecstasy was believed to be $380,250 (US$48,750) while the rest of the haul would fetch $405,000 (US$52,000) in the market, they said.   Hong Kong airport customs seized a record haul of Ecstasy last month, retrieving more than 12,000 tablets worth HK$3.6 million (US$470,000).   Hong Kong, a British colony for more than 150 years, returns to Chinese rule next year. 
19768 !GCAT !GPOL  Representatives from the six parties in Thailand's coalition government met on Saturday to try to choose a new leader after Prime Minister Banharn Silpa-archa vowed to resign his post within seven days.   "The representatives from the six parties are holding discussions on the issue but it will take some time," Pramarn Adireksan, member of parliament and adviser for Banharn's Chart Thai Party, told reporters.   Banharn won a no-confidence vote in parliament on Saturday just minutes after telling a news conference he would resign within seven days in a dela he struck in exchange for support from his coaltion partners in the vote.   Banharn survived the censure by 207 to 180 votes.   The remaining members of 391-seat parliament did not vote.   "I agreed to resign within seven days but the coalition of six parties will still remain.   I will find an appropriate person to replace me as soon as possible," a visibly upset Banharn told a horde of reporters gathered close to hear him.   Banharn appeared physically debilitated after the vote, and had to be helped as walked out of the chamber.   His daughter Kanchana, who is also a Chart Thai member of parliament, burst into tears at Banharn's resignation announcement.   Banharn ran into trouble about an hour before the no-confidence vote was due to be held on Saturday morning.   Members of his 14-month-old, six-party coalition, led by the second biggest New Aspiration Party (NAP), surprised the prime minister by demanding he resign before the vote or they would abstain.   Some last minute haggling with his coalition partners saved him the embarrassment of either having to quit before the vote or dissolve parliament.   Banharn had been the target of fierce opposition attacks during the three-day censure debate where he was accused of condoning corruption, mismanaging the economy, plagiarism in his master's thesis and lying about his Thai nationality.   Banharn denied all the accusations in parliament.   Opposition politicians said Banharn's resignation showed the democratic system in Thailand was working.   "This is a democratic process.   Instead of dissolving the house the prime minister decided to resign from parliament so it can continue on with its duties," said Prasob Busarakahm, a member of the second-largest opposition Chart Pattana Party.   Deputy prime minister Amnuay Viravan, who is also foreign minister and in charge of economic matters, said the government has put a priority on economic issues.   "Solving the economic problems is a priority for the coalition," Amnuay told reporters after the vote.   The opposition has held Banharn responsible for this year's sharp downturn in the Thai economy, a battered stock market that has tumbled to near three-year lows and a baht currency clouded by devaluation rumours.   Analysts said the frontrunner to succeed Banharn appeared to be Defence Minister Chavalit Yongchaiyudh, the NAP leader.   A former army chief, Chavalit helped found NAP in 1990 after retiring from the military.   Since being named Defence Minister after a July 1995 general election, the ambitious Chavalit, 64, has often been touted as one of the candidates to be the next prime minister. 
19769 !CCAT !GCAT !GDIS  Three Vietnamese crewmen are dead and another three missing after 14 men were winched off a sinking cargo ship 460 nautical miles southwest of Hong Kong, the coast guard said on Saturday.   The 518-gross tonne general cargo ship, registered in Vietnam, went down in heavy seas after sending out distress signals on September 18, a spokesman for Hong Kong's Marine Rescue Coordination Centre told Reuters.   The officer said the Vietnamese government had conducted rescue operations, and reported that three of the 20 crew had died, and another three were still missing.   No other details were available, he said. 
19770 !GCAT !GPOL  Here are brief profiles of the two Thai politicians seen as most likely to replace Banharn Silpa-archa who said on Saturday he would resign from his post within seven days.   Chavalit Yongchaiyudh is seen as the front-runner but Amnuay Viravan could be chosen as a compromise due to his strong economic background, political analysts said.   ----   CHAVALIT YONGCHAIYUDH - An orchestrator of Thai politics for decades both in and out of uniform, General Chavalit, 64, has a strong eye on the nation's top job.   A former army chief and current defence minister in Banharn's coalition government, Chavalit heads the New Aspiration Party -- the second largest in the coalition -- which he helped found in 1990 after retiring from the military.   Chavalit's party led coalition partners in making a surprise demand that Banharn resign before a no-confidence vote against him on Saturday.   Since being named defence minister after a July, 1995, general election, the ambitious Chavalit has often been touted as a candidates to be the next prime minister.   He has been seen using the defence portfolio to strengthen his own power base, managing military reshuffles to place officers loyal to him in key positions and supporting big-budget military procurement to keep favour with the armed forces.   However, he has said he would like to become premier "gracefully" through a fresh election.   ----   AMNUAY VIRAVAN - Respected economist and former banker Amnuay Viravan, 64, is relatively new to Thai politics having entered the fray only in 1992.   To launch his political career, Amnuay quit his job as head of Thailand's biggest bank, Bangkok Bank Plc, and aligned with Chavalit's New Aspiration Party.   The intelligent but soft-spoken Amnuay has had a distinguished 38-year career as a government economist, corporate executive, banker and cabinet minister.   Amnuay now heads the small Nam Thai party, which he formed in 1994 after leaving the NAP.   Recognising his skills, Banharn made him deputy prime minister, foreign minister and economic affairs supremo.   Amnuay is a champion of free trade and privatisation. 
19771 !C24 !CCAT !GCAT !GDIP  The Vietnam News Agency (VNA), an official mouthpiece of the Hanoi government, said on Saturday that it had opened a bureau in the U.S. capital, Washington.   The agency, which generally sets the news agenda for the state-controlled domestic press, has around 900 journalists and now 18 offices outside the country.   Communist Vietnam and its old adversary, the United States, normalised diplomatic ties in July last year.   But despite the thaw in relations, Hanoi and Washington have not yet reached agreement on full economic and trade normalisation. 
19772 !GCAT !GDIP  Vietnam said on Saturday that it had held high-level talks in Hanoi with China on differences over the two countries' 1,400-km (870-mile) land frontier and overlapping maritime borders.   "The talks took place in an atmosphere of friendship and frankness," the official Vietnam News Agency (VNA) said.   It said Vietnam's Deputy Foreign Minister, Vu Khoan, and his Chinese counterpart, Tang Jiaxuan, reviewed recent border talks and agreed that progress had been made.   However, it gave no details of their talks.   China and Vietnam, which share a long history of mutual suspicion, have discussed border demarcation and boundary disputes on land and in the Gulf of Tonkin since they normalised relations in 1991.   They agreed in 1994 to set up a group of experts to discuss problems in the South China Sea, where they are among several regional claimants to the potentially oil-rich Spratly and Paracel Island chains.   VNA said the two deputy foreign ministers exchanged notes on bilateral relations and international issues of mutual concern.   "They noted that friendship and cooperation between the two countries over the past year have seen positive steps in various fields," it said.   Diplomats believe relations between Vietnam and China have warmed considerably in recent months, but say they are still dogged by festering disputes over territorial claims. 
19773 !GCAT !GVIO  A South Korean paratrooper was shot in the head and killed during a helicopter chase for two North Korean agents across rugged mountains on Saturday, hospital officials said.    "He died of head injuries," an official at a hospital in the east coast city of Kangnung said by telephone.   Television news reports said the 26-year-old sergeant was hit while being winched to the ground to pursue the two communist fugitives on foot.   A defence ministry official in Kangnung said another paratrooper on board the helicopter was also shot, but there were no details of his condition.   The agents are the remnants of a squad of about 26 North Korean infiltrators who landed by submarine in the early hours of Wednesday morning on a beach near Kangnung.   So far 18 have been shot and killed and one captured alive. 
19774 !GCAT !GPOL  The following is a chronology of key events leading to Thai Prime Minister Banharn Silpa-archa's decision to resign.   July 2, 1995 - Banharn's Chart Thai party wins 92 seats in a general election, unseating the incumbent Democrat Party of former Prime Minister Chuan Leekpai which garners 86 seats in the 391-member lower House of Representatives.   July 13, 1995 - Banharn appointed 21st prime minister by King Bhumibol Adulyadej.   July 18, 1995 - Banharn forms seven-party coalition comprising Chart Thai, New Aspiration, Palang Dharma, Social Action, Prachakorn Thai, Nam Thai and Muon Chon parties.   Banharn criticised for choice of some ministers, especially economic ministers.   Stock market plunges after cabinet news.   July 20, 1995 - New cabinet sworn in before King Bhumibol.   Aug 17, 1995 - King Bhumibol makes unprecedented criticism of government's inability to solve Bangkok's traffic problems.   Aug 1995 - Powerful army criticises Banharn for insincerity on political reform.   Army radio broadcast says it looks forward to the day when the country has a brave leader.   Sept 19, 1995 - King again criticises government, this time for failure to implement adequate Bangkok flood-prevention steps.   Nov 26, 1995 - Banharn's party accused of accepting bribes from Swedish naval contractor Kockums which was bidding for submarine contract.   Dec 25, 1995 - Head of Securities and Exchange Commission Ekamol Khiriwat forced to resign suddenly and fired from concurrent post as deputy central bank governor on allegations he had leaked confidential inside information.   Feb 28, 1996 - Banharn makes first cabinet reshuffle, but retains key ministers.   May 3, 1996 - Chart Thai looses seat to opposition Chart Pattana party in by-election.   Coalition now has 232 seats.   May 11, 1996 - Banharn and nine of his ministers survive no-confidence vote.   Government abruptly ends the debate early before the opposition can grill Banharn and two colleagues.   May 17, 1996 - Finance ministry sets up panel to take control of troubled Bangkok Bank of Commerce Plc (BBC).   During no-confidence debate, opposition charges BBC was threatened by its previous granting of huge loans to politicians for leveraged corporate takeovers.   Government says BBC had 77 billion baht (US$3.1 billion) of problem and high risk loans.   May 23, 1996 - Four deputy ministers and one minister from Therd Thai faction within Banharn's Chart Thai Party resign to pave way for a reshuffle.   May 27, 1996 - Finance minister Surakiart Sathirathai, a Banharn confidant and unelected cabinet member, is asked to resign by the prime minster.   May 28, 1996 - Banharn reshuffles cabinet, appoints Bodi Chunnananda as new finance minister.   Deputy prime minister Amnuay Viravan of the Nam Thai, a coalition partner, is named foreign minister to replace outgoing minister Kasem Kasemsri.   June 1, 1996 - Prachakorn Thai Party pulls out of coalition, saying Banharn favours rival coalition party.   June 2, 1996 - Coalition suffers setback when Bangkok residents elected an independent as the capital's new governor instead of a candidate backed by coalition partners.   June 30, 1996 - Prachakorn Thai rejoins coalition.   July 2, 1996 - Central bank governor Vijit Supinit submits resignation following political pressure and months of media criticism of his preformance and debate over his integrity.   July 25, 1996 - Central bank revised down expected economic targets for year.   July/August 1996 - Heavy baht selloff on rumours the central bank may devalue the currency, spurring Bank of Thailand to inject billions of baht through the bond repurchase market and to intervene in offshore swap markets.   Aug 2, 1996 - Support fund launched to shore up battered Thai stock market which plunged 15 percent in July.   Aug 14, 1996 - Palang Dharma Party, third largest in the coalition with 23 seats, pulls out after a row over controversial licensing of banks.   Coalition has 209 seats.   Aug 20, 1996 - Opposition parties submit no-confidence motion against Banharn accusing him of damaging the country through mismanagement and inefficiency.   Sept 11, 1996 - Finance ministry sets up 10 billion baht market fund support to bourse, now near three-year-lows.   Sept 18, 1996 - No-confidence debate against Banharn begins in parliament.   Sept 21, 1996 - Banharn wins no-confidence vote after he says he will resign as premier within seven days in return for support from his coalition partners.   The seven days to his resignation will be used to find a successor. 
19775 !GCAT !GDIP !GPOL  Hong Kong people remain deeply divided and uncertain less than 300 days before they return to Chinese rule, according to the latest research on attitudes to the mid-1997 handover by a leading pollster and academic.   "Hong Kong people remain fragmented and divided in their hopes and fears about the future," said Michael DeGolyer in his latest report issued on Saturday.   "They are torn between mainland relations who cannot understand why they aren't rejoicing at the prospect of sending the British colonialists packing and overseas relations who cannot understand why they remain in Hong Kong with the Communist takeover imminent.   "Families and married couples have become, in some cases, bitterly and publicly divided," the report said.   Hong Kong, a British colony for more than 150 years, becomes a Special Administrative Region (SAR) of China at midnight on June 30 next year.   DeGolyer's team of researchers at Hong Kong's Baptist University said their research, a series of surveys conducted over the past few years, showed the majority of the colony's six million people had become dispirited with Beijing's handling of Hong Kong affairs in the transition period.   They said 71 percent feared the central government would exercise more control over their lives than the SAR government.   Fifty-one percent believed that corruption would seriously threaten Hong Kong's economy after the handover and that cherished rights and freedoms might not survive the takeover.   But DeGolyer said China's hardline policy of confrontation, isolation and intimidation had failed either to win over or cow Hong Kong people.   The political participation rate of Hong Kong people, more often than not seen as politically apathetic and withdrawn, remained impressively high and comparable with that of many Western democracies, the report said.   "There's a lot of statements going around, particularly in the business community, that people in Hong Kong are only concerned about the economy," DeGolyer told the Foreign Correspondents Club on Friday.   "That's not true -- not before, not now, and not after 1997, and there are hundreds of thousands of people who, at great sacrifice to themselves, have made preparations to leave Hong Kong if they feel they have to after the handover."   There was room for some optimism on the handover, DeGolyer said in his report, but it had to be cautious optimism.   "It depends entirely on China," he said.   "The more the mainland seeks to control Hong Kong, the more that Hong Kong people will begin to exercise the other options they have over the past decade spent so much time and effort to secure."   Hundreds of thousands of Hong Kong people have emigrated overseas in the past decade, many returning to the British colony with a foreign passport as an insurance policy should they decide to leave after the handover. 
19776 !GCAT !GDIS !GWEA  A tropical storm which has been swirling off Vietnam for past three days is expected to hit northern and north central provinces by Sunday morning, the meteorological centre in Hanoi said.   An official said on Saturday that Typhoon Willie was moving west-southwest across the Tonkin Gulf at 10 km (6.5 miles) per hour carrying winds of up to 74 km (46 miles) per hour.   She said it would land in an area stretching south from Nam Ha province to the central province of Ha Tinh.   The storm had originally been expected to hit the northern port town of Haiphong and neighbouring Quang Ninh province, on the border with China, with winds of up to 116 km (72 miles) per hour on Friday evening.   Vietnam's official media said on Saturday that the death toll from last week's storms, torrential rain and heavy flooding in seven central provinces had risen to 44.   That took to more than 430 the number of people who have died in tropical storms and flooding in northern and central Vietnam since the beginning of July.   Vietnam suffers a string of floods and storms every year, most between July and October, but officials say damage to northern areas this year has been the worst in a decade.   The offical army daily Quan Doi Nhan Dan said the government was planning to evacuate 12,600 people from the Muong Lai district of Lai Chau province, near the borders with China and Laos, which has been devastated by flash flooding this year.   The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) last week proposed launching a $2.154 million project to reduce poverty in typhoon-prone areas of the country.   The three-year project would focus on mitigating the effects of typhoons in coastal regions through improved construction technology.   The UNDP said recent typhoons had destroyed 38,000 houses and important infrastructure such as roads, irrigation and sea dykes.   Estimated damage has been put at $300 million. 
19777 !GCAT !GVIO  Cambodian First Prime Minister Prince Norodom Ranariddh has said that his government would investigate reports that Sri Lanka's Tamil Tiger guerrillas were shopping for arms in Cambodia.   "I am having someone investigate this case," he told reporters late on Friday in response to a question about a local media report that the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) were looking to buy arms in Cambodia.   "We have no evidence, but the Sri Lankan minister of national defence wrote to us saying there had probably been sales of surface-to-air missiles (SAMs) from Cambodia through Thailand to Sri Lanka," Ranariddh said   Ranariddh said if SAMs were up for sale in Cambodia, they must have either come from the former Soviet countries or could be those which were given to Khmer Rouge guerrillas by China in the 1980s.   The fortnightly Phnom Penh Post on Friday cited sources in Colombo as saying the Tamil Tigers were arranging the purchase and shipment of missiles from Cambodia, which they planned to use to defend their positions in Sri Lanka.   The LTTE is fighting a 13-year-old ethnic war against Sri Lankan government troops in the island's north and east.   The Post quoted a Sri Lankan diplomat as saying his government had received reliable reports LTTE arms procurer Selvarajah "KP" Pathmanathan and other LTTE members had been seen working out of Phnom Penh and Bangkok in the past two months.   The report also said Sri Lankan expatriates feared increased Tiger activity in Cambodia.   "There are strong indications that the LTTE have set up a safe house in Phnom Penh, from where they engage in arms buying, drawing on lucrative sources of revenue such as passport and visa forging and heroin trading," the paper said. 
19778 !GCAT !GPOL !GVIO  The Khmer Rouge's nominal leader, Khieu Samphan, denied on Saturday government claims he wanted to split from hardliners it said were holding him captive.   Co-premiers Prince Norodom Ranariddh and Hun Sen had said on Thursday they believed Khieu Samphan wanted to leave Khmer Rouge forces loyal to Pol Pot and join peace talks between the government and dissident Khmer Rouge leader Ieng Sary.   They added that he and two other senior Khmer Rouge officials were under arrest in northern Cambodia and prevented from leaving the guerrillas.   "This is a terrible lie and swindle by the Yuon (Vietnamese) communists and their puppets," Khieu Samphan said in a broadcast aired over Khmer Rouge radio, which remains under the control of the hardliners.   "We must continue to struggle bravely and by all means in the cities and the countryside and outside the country...in order to prevent the Yuon from swallowing up Cambodia," he said, echoing a familiar Khmer Rouge theme of Hanoi's hegemonistic ambitions.   He said the Khmer Rouge must continue their struggle until the Vietnamese were out of Cambodia and a government could be set up that included Khmer Rouge representatives.   Khieu Samphan was one of two Khmer Rouge members who sat on the Supreme National Council, a sovereign body and debate forum gathering the four warring parties that signed a United Nations brokered peace pact in 1991.   Its mandate ended when a coalition government was set up and a constitutional monarchy adopted after general elections in 1993.   The Khmer Rouge boycotted the polls and began fighting the new government, claiming it was a puppet of the Vietnamese.   But last month commanders loyal to Ieng Sary, foreign minister and deputy premier during the brutal 1975-79 Khmer Rouge regime of Pol Pot, split with the mainstream Khmer Rouge and began peace talks with the government in northwest Cambodia.   The two sides forged a ceasefire and King Norodom Sihanouk earlier this month granted an amnesty to Ieng Sary, who was sentenced to death in absentia with Pol Pot for his role in the genocide of more than one million people during the late 1970s.   Khieu Samphan was in July 1994 named as the head of a Provisional Government for National Solidarity and the National Salvation of Kampuchea formed days after the national assembly adopted legislation banning the Khmer Rouge.   But most observers said Pol Pot remained leader of the Maoist faction. 
19779 !GCAT !GPOL  Thai Prime Minister Banharn Silpa-archa won a no-confidence vote in parliament on Saturday after he said he would resign as premier within seven days.   He earlier told a news conference that he had agreed to resign after finding a suitable replacement from within his six-party coalition, in exchange for support from his coalition partners at the vote. 
19780 !GCAT !GPOL  A senior member of Burma's ruling military body said the current government may stay on longer than planned if "stooges" continue to disrupt the work of the national convention, official media reported on Saturday.   General Maung Aye, vice-chairman of the ruling State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC), made the comments on behalf of SLORC chairman Than Shwe in a speech to newly graduated army officers on Friday, state-run media reported.   "Some stooges, who are relying on external elements, are disturbing and hindering the activities of building a new modern nation," he said.   "By doing so they are obstructing and hindering the National Convention.   If these hindrances and disruptions continue, the present form of administration could be prolonged and stay on," he said without elaborating.   He also urged the newly commissioned officers to crush all internal and external destructive elements as the common enemy.   This is the second time in a week that a senior SLORC official has warned the administration might last for a while.   A National Convention of mostly hand-picked delegates has been meeting intermittently at the whim of the government since 1993 to draft guidelines for a new constitution.   Nobel Peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi angered the SLORC last November when she pulled her National League for Democracy (NLD) party out of the discussions, saying they were undemocratic and did not represent the will of the people.   Since assuming power in 1988 after quashing several months of pro-democracy uprisings, the SLORC has vowed to turn over the government to a democratically elected administration.   But the military refused to recognise the results of a 1990 general election -- which it organised -- after the NLD won a landslide victory with more than 80 percent of the seats.   SLORC has said the convention will resume soon but has not set a date. 
19781 !GCAT !GPOL  Here are some key facts about Thailand, whose prime minister Banharn Silpa-archa has said he will resign following a heated no-confidence debate.   Thailand is a constitutional monarchy with an elected government and parliament.   POPULATION: About 59.1 million.   AREA: 513,115 square km (191,113 sq miles).   ECONOMY: The total gross domestic product in 1995 was 2,918.8 billion baht (US$116.75 billion), and growth of 8.6 percent was recorded.   HISTORY: It is the only country in Southeast Asia never to have been colonised by Europeans.   It has had 17 coups or attempted coups since 1932 when it abandoned absolute monarchy and switched to parliamentary democracy.   The last coup was in February 1991 when the army overthrew the government led by Chatichai Choonhavan.   The last general election was held on July 2, 1995.   Chart Thai party leader Banharn Silpa-archa won the largest number of seats, beating the incumbent Democrat Party of former prime minister Chuan Leekpai.   Banharn quickly formed a seven-party coalition government.   One coalition partner pulled out from Banharn's government in August 1996 leaving his coalition with a total of 209 seats in the 391-seat House of Representatives.   On September 22, the second largest party in the coalition demanded that Banharn must resign or it would abstain a no-confidence vote set for Saturday against the prime minister.   Banharn then decided he would resign in seven days in return for the support of all his coalition members in the vote. 
19782 !GCAT !GPOL  Thai premier Banharn Silpa-archa promised on Saturday that he would resign from his post within seven days after finding a suitable person from within his six-party coalition to replace him.   He said a vote of no-confidence against him will be taken later today in parliament and his coalition partners had pledged to support him in the voting in exchange for his resignation.    Immediately after his news conference to announce his planned resignation, a parliamentary vote was taken on the motion and Banharn survived by polling 207-180.   Banharn ran into trouble before the voting, when members of his six-party coalition, led by the second biggest New Aspiration Party (NAP), demanded he resign before the vote or they would abstain.   The vote against Banharn was due to have been taken at 0330 GMT but was delayed after the surprise move by his coalition partners who have been with him for 14 months.   Banharn had been the target of fierce opposition attacks during a three-day debate where he was accused of condoning corruption, mismanaging the economy, plagiarism in his master's thesis and lying about his Thai nationality.   But Banharn denied them all in parliament. 
19783 !GCAT !GPOL  Thai prime minister Banharn Silpa-archa's future hung in the balance on Saturday after the second largest partner in his six-party coalition demanded he resign ahead of a no-confidence motion set for later in the day.   A parliament official and an opposition politician said Banharn was expected to seek an audience with King Bhumibol Adulyadej later on Saturday, presumably to seek approval to dissolve parliament before the vote.   "The Prime Minister must resign before the vote.   Otherwise, the New Aspiration Party (NAP) will abstain from voting," NAP spokesman Suraporn Danaitangtrakul told Reuters an hour before the voting was due to begin.   The sudden withdrawal of Defence Minister Chavalit Yongchaiyudh's NAP and smaller coalition partner the Nam Thai party ahead of the scheduled motion appeared to dash hopes Banharn would muster enough votes to survive as premier.   Support from the NAP would be crucial for Banharn, who has led his 14 month-old six-party coalition with 209 seats, to win the opposition-launched censure vote against him.   Suraporn said the NAP, with 57 seats, had been swayed by opposition arguments in parliament and wanted a change in the coalition.   The smaller 18-seat Nam Thai party, also declared it also wanted the premier to quit or it would abstain from voting, a party leader Somchai Pesprasert told reporters.   Few MPs were seen in parliament at the time originally set for the scheduled vote (10.30 a.m. local, 0330 GMT).   One said Banharn was instead likely to seek an audience with the king.   "I learned that the prime minister and the president of Parliament are on their way to have an audience with the king.   It is almost 100 percent sure that he will seek approval for a dissolution of the house," Democrat member of parliament Arkhom Engchuan told Reuters.   There was no immediate comment or reaction from Banharn or his Chart Thai party officials on the developments.   Banharn has faced three days of opposition accusations ranging from economic mismanagement and condoning corruption to plagiarising his masters thesis and lying about his nationality.   He has denied all such charges and until Saturday's moves political analysts had expected Banharn to win the vote.   Until Saturday Banharn had showed no sign of conceding defeat and the secretary general of his main Chart Thai party Sanoh Thienthong said earlier all coalition parties had promised to vote for the premier.   The opposition held him responsible for this year's sharp slowdown in the Thai economy, a battered stock market near three year-lows and a baht clouded by devaluation rumours.   Banharn also denied he or his party accepted financial support from a foreign-born former adviser to an ailing bank.   Thai political parties are forbidden to take money from foreigners.   Late on Friday he wound up his defence by saying he had answered all the accusations against him.   "I have already answered all the charges," Banharn said in his final speech.   "From now on it depends on the judgement of the members of parliament to make a decision on my fate."   Opposition leader Chuan Leekpai of the Democrat Party said in his final statement on Friday that Banharn had failed to answer adequately the accusations. 
19784 !GCAT !GDEF !GDIP  Malaysia will continue to station its troops in Bosnia Herzegovina after the expiry of NATO peace implementation force's (IFOR) mandate in December, a local newspaper reported on Saturday.   "This decision was made at the weekly (cabinet) meeting on Wednesday," Defence Minister Syed Hamid Albar was quoted as saying by the New Straits Times.   "We believe our presence is vital to the reconstruction of the war-torn state," he said.   Syed Hamid said details of the deployment would be known after the meeting between NATO and the new Bosnian government in November.   "We don't know what they require of us.   Maybe, they might even request we reduce the size of our contingent or provide some other form of assistance," he said.   Malaysia has more than 1,500 peacekeepers in Bosnia, the third largest contingent after Britain and France.   NATO has said that a follow-up mission, to be called IFOR-2, might be necessary to maintain peace and security in the former Balkan republic.   However, it said the present 60,000 multinational troops would be reduced to about 20,000 under IFOR-2. 
19785 !E51 !E512 !ECAT !GCAT !GDIP  Chinese President Jiang Zemin is expected to visit India in late November to strengthen bilateral ties, a Japanese newspaper reported on Sauturday.   Quoting unnamed "reliable" sources in Beijing, the Tokyo Shimbun newspaper said Jiang was expected to make a visit to India, the first by a Chinese president, after attending an unofficial summit meeting of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum in the Philippines.   China and India were arranging for Jiang's meetings with Indian President Shankar Dayal Sharma and Prime Minister H.D. Deve Gowda, the daily said.   Jiang was likely to discuss with the Indian leaders bilateral economic cooperation and security issues in Asia, it said.   China was likely to seek support from India for its policy towards Taiwan while India was expected to ask for support for its bid to win a permanent seat in the U.N. Security Council, the daily said.   India and China, the world's two most populous nations, fought a border war in 1962. 
19786 !GCAT !GPOL  The second largest partner in Thai premier Banharn Silpa-archa's six-party coalition demanded on Saturday that he resign or it would abstain from voting on a no-confidence motion against him later today.   "The Prime Minister must resign before the vote.   Otherwise, the New Aspiration Party (NAP) will abstain from voting," the NAP spokesman Suraporn Danaitangtrakul told Reuters an hour before the voting was due to begin.    The NAP controls 57 seats in the 391-seat parliament and is led by Defence Minister Chavalit Yongchaiyudh.   Support from the NAP is crucial for Banharn, who leads the coalition with 209 seats, to win the opposition-launched censure vote against him.   The NAP's statement also cast doubt whether a vote against Banharn due to take place later on Saturday would be delayed.   There was no immediate comment from Banharn.   Banharn has been accused by the opposition of economic mismanagement and condoning corruption. 
19787 !GCAT !GVIO  South Korean troops skirmished with suspected North Korean saboteurs on Saturday as a deadly game of cat-and-mouse played out in mountains and ravines entered its fourth day.   A spokesman for the Joint Chiefs of Staff said two fugitives had been trapped by Southern forces.   "There is a standoff," Kang Jun-kwon told reporters.   A defence ministry official in the east coast city of Kangnung said the men had been spotted by helicopters.   Earlier, exhausted military pursuers showed their frustration at being unable to capture the last of a squad of North Koreans who landed by submarine in the early hours of Wednesday on a beach near Kangnung.   "Day and night searches and ambush operations have come up with nothing, not even traces of the guerrillas," the ministry official said.   Authorities now believe around 26 agents came ashore.   So far 18 have been shot dead and one captured alive.   According to the testimony of the captured man, the remaining fugitives include three saboteurs, two guides and two members of the submarine crew.   There is speculation the saboteurs, elite operatives fanatically committed to Pyongyang leader Kim Jong-il, may have evaded a massive dragnet and could be on their way home.   "We are expanding the area of our search operations to prevent them from returning to the North," the defence ministry official said.   Television pictures have been playing North Korean propaganda film of spy agents displaying awesome hand-to-hand combat skills.   The old movie reels show bare-chested men smashing rocks with their fists, and female operatives slicing bottles in half with flashing open-hand chops.   Terrified local residents bolt their doors at night, and tourist hotels in the region have emptied ahead of the Korean Thanksgiving, the most important holiday in the calendar.   Their fears have been fanned by the testimony of the captured agent who indicated that North Koreans had in the past moved in and out of the area unchallenged.   South Koreans have been jolted by the realisation that coastal defences they once thought were almost impregnable can so easily be pierced.   North Korean saboteurs would be in the first wave of any Northern invasion of the South, blowing up key facilities, such as radar installations, and spreading terror among civilians.   Some would be infiltrated from submarines, such as the one that sneaked in this week but which grounded itself on a shallow reef, South Korean defence experts believe.   Complicating the search are reports that the suspected saboteurs are dressed in South Korean army uniforms and carrying M-16 rifles, standard issue among Southern defence forces.   South Korea's ambassador to the United Nations, Park Soo-kil, briefed Security Council members on the infiltration on Friday.   Seoul has said it wants the council to take unspecified action against the North.   North and South Korea have been technically at war since their 1950-53 conflict ended with an armistice negotiated by U.S.-led United Nations forces.   The United States said on Friday it did not expect the incident would damage its landmark nuclear agreement with North Korea under which Pyongyang agreed to freeze its suspected nuclear weapons programme.   "We hope very much and do not expect that this incident will affect ... the nuclear freeze that is in place in North Korea," State Department spokesman Nicholas Burns said.   Nevertheless, Burns stressed: "It's clear to the United States that this incursion represents a serious provocation by North Korea and is a violation of the armistice agreement." 
19788 !GCAT !GVIO  South Korean security forces exchanged gunfire on Saturday with one or two North Korean infiltrators, a defence ministry spokesman said.   The clash with survivors of a group of posssibly 26 infiltrators landed by submarine in the South on Wednesday took place on a hillside near the east coast city of Kangnung at around 10.00 a.m. (0100 GMT).   No further details were given.    Seoul authorities believe up to seven North Korean agents may be holed up in the Kangnung area close to a beach where the submarine was spotted early on Wednesday grounded on a reef.   So far 18 infiltrators have been shot and killed and one has been captured alive.   Thousands of troops and police have been clambering along mountain trails to search for the remaining fugitives.   The captured agent was reported to have told interrogators that three saboteurs, two guides and two crew members of the submarine were still at large. 
19789 !GCAT !GDEF !GVIO  Another 300 U.S. soldiers arrived in Kuwait and warplanes from a second U.S. aircraft carrier began patrols over Iraq on Saturday in a show of force against Washington's Gulf War foe.   The 1st Cavalry Division troops from Fort Hood, Texas, were bused to an arsenal near Kuwait City to draw weapons and deploy quickly near the Iraqi border, U.S. officials said.   A second U.S. aircraft carrier, the USS Enterprise, began sending warplanes from the Gulf at about 1030 GMT to patrol a Western-imposed no-fly zone in southern Iraq.   "Our mission is to hopefully deter aggression and help contribute to the peace in the Middle East," said the Commander of the Enterprise, Captain Michael D. Malone, of Brooklyn.   The Enterprise, with 74 aircraft -- including F-14 fighters recently modified to deliver laser-guided bombs -- entered the Gulf on Thursday.   It joined another carrier battle group plus U.S. ground and air forces deployed mainly in Kuwait against Iraq.   The Enterprise left the Adriatic Sea last weekend to join the carrier Carl Vinson, which is taking part in flights as part of Operation Southern Watch over southern Iraq.   Fresh tension arose between Washington and Baghdad in August when Baghdad's forces intervened to help a Kurdish faction in northern Iraq.   Washington retaliated by firing 44 cruise missiles at air defence targets in southern Iraq on September 3 and 4.   It also expanded the southern no-fly zone by pushing its northern limit up to the 33rd parallel from the 32nd parallel.   The 300 newly-arrived troops are part of a 3,500-strong force ordered to Kuwait last week in response to the flare-up.   Another 398 soldiers who arrived on Friday deployed in the desert overnight at the Kuwaiti military's Adera Range exercise zone 40 km (25 miles) south of Iraq.   The troops will join 1,100 others already here for exercises that have been held almost continuously in the scorching Kuwaiti desert since the 1991 Gulf War ended a seven-month Iraqi occupation of Kuwait.   This week's exercises involved live-fire by Bradley armoured fighting vehicles and a simulated gas attack near the Iraqi border.   The troops are equipped with main battle tanks, self-propelled artillery, anti-tank weapons and support and communications vehicles.   Although tension in the region has subsided over the past week, officers said the troops' mission is to train and show Iraq that the United States has enough firepower in the region to deal with any threats.   The troops arrive with full military gear that includes chemical and biological weapons detectors, protective suits and masks because Washington says Baghdad may still have chemical and biological weapons.   Across the border, Iraq has some 60,000 troops south of the 32nd parallel, the original no-fly zone set up by Western allies after the Gulf War.   In November 1994 Britain and the United States created a "no-drive" zone in the south by warning Iraq not to reinforce any element of its military south of the 32nd parallel. 
19790 !GCAT !GVIO  A second U.S. aircraft carrier began sending warplanes from the Gulf to patrol a no-fly zone over southern Iraq on Saturday.   "Our mission is to hopefully deter aggression and help contribute to the peace in the Middle East," said the Commander of the USS Enterprise, Captain Michael D. Malone, of Brooklyn, New York.   "We hope to assist in whatever measures the U.N. decides."   The Enterprise, carrying 74 aircraft including F-14 fighters recently modified to deliver laser-guided bombs, entered the Gulf on Thursday.   It joined another carrier battle group plus U.S. ground and air forces deployed mainly in Kuwait against Iraq.   Fresh tension arose between Washington and Baghdad in August when Baghdad's forces intervened to help a Kurdish faction in northern Iraq.   Washington retaliated by firing 44 cruise missiles at air defence targets in southern Iraq on September 3 and 4.   It also expanded the southern no-fly zone by pushing its northern limit to the 33rd parallel from the 32nd parallel.   "We are here to support U.N. resolutions and to do as directed," said Rear-Admiral Martin J. Mayer, Commander of the Enterprise battle group which includes a submarine and two other support ships.   The no-fly zones in southern and northern Iraq were not mandated by the United Nations.   The United States, Britain and France imposed them in 1992 to protect southern Iraqi Shi'ites and northern Iraqi Kurds who rebelled against Iraqi president Saddam Hussein after the 1991 Gulf War ended Iraq's ocupation of Kuwait.   Mayer, who declined to say how long the vessel would stay in the Gulf, was asked if the Enterprise's arrival was a message also for Iran and other Gulf Arab states.   "You can draw the conlusions you want," he said.   "I think an aircraft carrier, wherever it is, is a message.   There is always a military message and always a political message."   F-14 and F-18s began taking off from the Enterprise on their first no-fly zone mission at around 1030 GMT.   The planes included an F-18 that was the first to shoot down an Iraqi MiG fighter in the 1991 Gulf War, officers said.   Airman Tareq Ali, an American of Jordanian origin who maintains warplanes aboard the carrier, said: "It is something that I have to do.   If somebody makes a mistake he should be punished for it."   Emphasising he was speaking for himself, Ali added: "I don't like Saddam Hussein.   But I don't like the bombing of innocent people either."   The Enterprise left the Adriatic Sea last weekend where it was part of the U.S. Sixth Fleet.   It has joined the carrier Carl Vinson which is taking part in flights as part of Operation Southern Watch over southern Iraq.   Across the border, Iraq has some 60,000 troops south of the 32nd parallel, the original no-fly zone set up by Western allies in 1992.   In November 1994 Britain and the United States in effect created a "no-drive" zone in the south by warning Iraq not to reinforce any element of its military south of the 32nd parallel. 
19791 !GCAT !GVIO  Israeli warplanes blasted suspected Hizbollah targets in south Lebanon with rockets on Saturday after its guerrillas attacked Israeli forces there, security sources said.   They said the jets fired several rockets in four attacks on hills in the Iqlim al-Toufah ridge which is controlled by pro-Iranian Hizbollah guerrillas north of Israel's south Lebanon occupation zone.   In Israel, the army said in a statement that an officer was wounded in an attack by Hizbollah (Party of God) fighters.   It was not immediately known if there were any casualties in the air assaults, which followed the attacks by Hizbollah guerrillas against two Israeli outposts at Sojoud and Beir Kallab and forces stationed nearby on the edge of the zone.   Pro-Israeli South Lebanon Army (SLA) militia sources said the guerrillas fired mortar bombs and anti-tank rockets.   "An Israel Defence Forces officer was lightly wounded this morning after an anti-tank missile was fired at an IDF force which was operating in the north of the eastern sector of the south Lebanon security zone," the Israeli army said.   "The officer was taken to hospital for treatment.   The IDF returned fire," it said.   In Beirut, Hizbollah claimed responsibility for the attacks, saying its fighters fired rockets at two tanks and attacked the Sojoud and Beir Kallab posts.   On Thursday, Israeli jets raided Iqlim al-Toufah in the hills and artillery bombarded the area, including Hizbollah-held villages there, in retaliation for a Hizbollah attack that killed two Israeli soldiers and wounded eight.   Hizbollah (Party of God) fighters are battling to oust Israeli forces from a 15-km (nine-miles)-deep zone they have occupied in south Lebanon since 1985. 
19792 !GCAT !GDEF !GDIP !GVIO  Hundreds of U.S. Cavalry backed by heavy armour deployed in the Kuwaiti desert near Iraq on Saturday to boost a military buildup aimed at deterring threats by Iraq, U.S. officials said.   The deployment overnight and on Saturday morning of a batch of 398 soldiers was part of wargames arranged for 3,500 U.S. Army 1st Cavalry Division troops ordered to Kuwait last week at short notice to help contain Kuwait's former occupier.   "Most of them have now gone out to the exercise positions," U.S. Army Lieutenant-Colonel Thomas Nickerson Nickerson told Reuters, referring to the 398 who arrived on Friday afternoon.   Five hundred more U.S. troops will arrive on two flights on Saturday, bringing to about 1,500 the number deployed in the Gulf Arab state in the past 48 hours, Nickerson said.   The remaining 2,000 troops will arrive over the next three days.   The soldiers are joining 1,100 others already in Kuwait for exercises that have been held almost continuously in the scorchingly hot Kuwaiti desert since the 1991 Gulf War ended a seven-month Iraqi occupation of Kuwait.   This week's exercises have so far involved live-firing by Bradley armoured fighting vehicles and a simulated gas attack near the Iraqi border.   The troops are also equipped with main battle tanks, self-propelled howitzer artillery, anti-tank weapons and support and communications vehicles.   Officers said the troops' mission is to train and send Iraq a clear signal with a show of force but if the current crisis with Iraq escalates, the U.S. has enough firepower in the region to deal with any threats.   The flare-up happened when Iraqi forces intervened in northern Iraq on August 31 to help a Kurdish faction fighting a rival Kurdish group.   Washington retaliated by firing 44 cruise missiles at targets in the south.   The average age of the latest group to arrive in Kuwait is about 25, while many of their commanding officers fought in the Gulf War.   The soldiers arrived in full military gear, equipped with chemical and biological warfare detectors, protective suits and masks for deployment at the Kuwaiti military's Adera Range exercise zone 40 km (25 miles) south of Iraq.   Across the border, Iraq has some 60,000 troops south of the 32nd parallel, the no-fly, no-go zone set up by Western allies after the Gulf War. 
19793 !GCAT !GVIO  A Lebanese man convicted of bombing the Beirut bastion of the anti-Israeli Hizbollah on orders from Israel's intelligence agency Mossad was executed on Saturday by firing squad, judicial sources said.   They said 44-year-old Ahmad Hallaq, sentenced to death by a military tribunal in June for the 1994 blast that killed three people, was executed by a 12-man squad at Roumyeh jail northeast of Beirut at 5:45 a.m. (2:45 GMT).   Hallaq's execution came nearly seven months after he was snatched in a spectacular operation by Lebanese army intelligence agents from his hiding place in a south Lebanon border zone occupied by Israel.   The agents had drugged his whisky bottle then smuggled him out in the boot of a car.   President Elias Hrawi had rejected an appeal for amnesty by Hallaq.   The execution, the first since January 1995, was Lebanon's sixth since the 1975-90 civil war.   The court ruled that Hallaq carried out the December 1994 bombing in Beirut's Shi'ite Moslem southern suburbs, a stronghold of the pro-Iranian Hizbollah (Party of God), on instructions from Mossad.   The blast killed Fouad Moughniyyeh, a Hizbollah security official and brother of Lebanon's most wanted 1980s kidnapper of western hostages.   Two other people were also killed.   In his will Hallaq said that he had renounced Israel and asked to be buried in his south Lebanon home town of Barja.   "I renounce Israel and I put my (four) innocent children in the hands of Moslems.   If I had made a mistake, I ask God for forgiveness," he said in the will.   His final request to be blindfolded and given tranquilizers before he was shot was granted.   But his request to see his wife Hanan Yassin before his execution was denied as she is serving a 15-year jail term for her part in the bombing.   A Palestinian friend Wafiq Nasser was also sentenced by the court to 15 years imprisonment.   The court had also sentenced a Lebanese accomplice Tawfiq Nasser to 10 years jail.   Nasser, sentenced to death in absentia in an earlier trial, was given the lighter sentence at a retrial after he surrendered to Lebanese authorities.   Two other Lebanese defendants tried in their absence were give life sentences. 
19794 !GCAT !GVIO  Israel defended its air and ground attacks in south Lebanon, saying they were necessary retaliation against the Jewish state's guerrilla foes.   "We are trying in every possible way to lower the tension in the region," Israeli Defence Minister Yitzhak Mordechai said.   "We have no intention of taking extraordinary measures, but we have the obligation to take every necessary operation for the good of our forces working in Lebanon."   Israeli jets and artillery blasted Hizbollah targets in south Lebanon on Saturday after an Israeli officer was wounded in clashes with Moslem guerrillas there.   Hizbollah fighters, who have killed 20 Israelis this year in south Lebanon, are battling to oust Israel and allied forces from a 15-km (nine miles) zone Israel has occupied since 1982.   A five-nation committee monitoring a ceasefire understanding -- which ended a 17-day Israeli blitz on Lebanon in April -- is to meet on Sunday to look into Israeli and Lebanese complaints.   Lebanon has filed a complaint that Israel shelled civilian areas on Thursday.   Israel said it would complain the guerrillas fired on its forces from inside three villages.   According to witnesses, some 50 shells slammed into the Lebanese villages of Ain Bouswar and Jba'a on Thursday, wounding a civilian woman in Jba'a.   Representatives of the United States, France, Syria, Lebanon and Israel will gather in the town of Naqoura, south Lebanon.   Some 200 Lebanese, mostly civilians, were killed in the April onslaught, dubbed by Israel "Operation Grapes of Wrath", after tit-for-tat bombardments of civilian areas by both sides.   In Saturday's attacks, Lebanese security sources said Israeli jets fired several rockets in four attacks into Mlita hill and Jabal Safi in Iqlim al-Toufah ridge which is used by Shi'ite Moslem Hizbollah (Party of God) fighters to attack Israeli troops occupying a south Lebanon border zone.   The Israeli strikes followed attacks against two Israeli outposts at Sojoud and Beir Kallab and forces stationed nearby.   Israel's army said an officer was wounded in an attack by Hizbollah guerrillas and confirmed the air raids, saying pilots reported accurate hits.   In Beirut, Hizbollah claimed responsibility for the assault, saying its fighters hit a tank and attacked the Sojoud and Beir Kallab posts. 
19795 !GCAT !GPOL  Israeli police on Saturday arrested two Palestinians suspected of destroying a plaque at Jerusalem's al-Aqsa mosque inscribed with the name of Jordan's King Hussein, a police spokesman said.   "Two residents of East Jerusalem suspected of breaking the plaque were arrested," spokesman Shmulik Ben-Ruby told Reuters.   Ben-Ruby said the plaque, hailing Jordan's King Hussein as guardian of Islam's third holiest shrine, was broken during a scuffle on Friday between Moslem worshippers and guards of the Waqf (Islamic Trust) near the mosque at the heart of Jerusalem's walled Old City.   "There was a scuffle between worshippers and waqf guards in which six or seven people were lightly injured.   During the incident, some worshippers smashed a marble plaque on which King Hussein's name was engraved," he said.   Waqf officials could not be reached for immediate comment.   Israel radio said the incident was a sign of a continued tension between the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) and Jordan over who should control Jerusalem's sacred sites.   King Hussein, whose grandfather was killed in Jerusalem and who lost East Jerusalem to Israel with the rest of the West Bank in the 1967 Middle East war, has emotional links with the city.   Israel, which annexed East Jerusalem shortly after occupying it in a move that has not been recognised by the international community, gave the Jordanian monarch guardianship over Islamic religious sites in the city under a 1994 peace treaty.   The PLO, which views Arab East Jerusalem as the capital of a future Palestinian state, criticised the move.   Israel claims both halves of Jerusalem as its eternal capital.   Interim Israeli-PLO peace deals place the fate of the city up for negotiation in final status peace talks. 
19796 !GCAT !GVIO  Israeli jets and artillery blasted Hizbollah targets in south Lebanon on Saturday after an Israeli officer was wounded in clashes with Moslem guerrillas there, security sources said.   Israeli Defence Minister Yitzhak Mordechai said Saturday's strikes were "necessary operations" in retaliation for attacks on Israeli forces by Iranian-backed Hizbollah guerrillas.   "We are trying in every possible way to lower the tension in the region.   we have no intention of taking extraordinary measures, but we have the obligation to take every necessary operation for the good of our forces working in Lebanon," Moedechai told Israel's Channel One television.   Israel occupies a belt of territory across southern Lebanon with Lebanese militia proxies and several hundred members of its own security forces ostensibly to protect the Jewish state's northern border from guerrilla assault.   Lebanese security sources said Israeli jets fired several rockets in four attacks into Lebanon's Mlita hill and Jabal Safi in Iqlim al-Toufah ridge which is used by Shi'ite Moslem Hizbollah (Party of God) fighters in operations against Israeli troops occupying the so-called security zone.   It was not immediately known if there were any casualties in the air raids and concurrent artillery bombardment of Iqlim al-Toufah which followed strikes against two Israeli outposts at Sojoud and Beir Kallab and forces stationed nearby.   Israel's army said an officer was wounded in an attack by Hizbollah guerrillas and confirmed the air raids, saying pilots reported accurate hits.   "An Israel Defence Forces officer was lightly wounded this morning after an anti-tank missile was fired at an IDF force which was operating in the north of the eastern sector of the south Lebanon security zone," the Israeli army said.   "The officer was taken to hospital for treatment.   The IDF and SLA returned fire," it added in a statement.   Pro-Israeli South Lebanon Army (SLA) militia sources said the guerrillas fired mortar bombs and anti-tank rockets.   In Beirut, Hizbollah claimed responsibility for the assault, saying its fighters hit a tank and attacked the Sojoud and Beir Kallab posts.   On Thursday, Israeli jets raided Iqlim al-Toufah hills and artillery bombarded the area, including Hizbollah-held villages, in retaliation for a Hizbollah attack that killed two Israeli soldiers and wounded eight.   Hizbollah fighters, who have killed 20 Israelis this year in south Lebanon, are battling to oust Israel and allied forces from the 15-km (nine-miles) zone they have occupied since 1982.   Saturday's clashes came a day before a scheduled meeting of a five-nation committee monitoring a ceasefire understanding -- which ended a 17-day Israeli blitz on Lebanon in April -- to look into Israeli and Lebanese complaints.   Lebanon has filed a complaint that Israel shelled civilian areas on Thursday.   Israel said it would complain the guerrillas fired on its forces from inside three villages.   According to witnesses, some 50 shells slammed inside the villages of Ain Bouswar and Jba'a on Thursday, wounding a civilian woman in Jba'a who was hurt by debris.   Representatives of the United States, France, Syria, Lebanon and Israel will meet on Sunday in the south Lebanon town of Naqoura.   Some 200 Lebanese, mostly civilians, were killed in the April onslaught, dubbed by Israel "Operation Grapes of Wrath", after tit-for-tat bombardments of civilian areas by both sides. 
19797 !GCAT !GDIP !GPOL  Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein said on Saturday that last month's expulsion of a Kurdish rebel faction from a northern Iraqi city showed the country was a force to be reckoned with.   Speaking during a cabinet meeting shown on state television, Saddam also praised his armed forces for what he called the "liberation of the city of Arbil" in northern Iraq.   "What has been achieved (by Iraq forces) is an Arab and international declaration of Iraq's strength and capability," Saddam said according to the television presenter.   Iraq forces last month helped the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) led by Massoud Barzani to oust rival rebels of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) led by Jalal Talabani from the city of Arbil.   The move has led to Barzani controlling much of Iraq's Kurdish region.   Washington reacted to the Iraqi involvement by firing two waves of cruise missiles against air defence targets in southern Iraq and extending the no-fly zone patrolled by allied planes.   "Confidence and stability were in our armed forces' souls who liberated the city of Arbil or our air defence forces who confronted the American warplanes and missiles," Saddam said.   Saddam anounced after the first U.S. missile strike that the no-fly zones were null and void and urged his forces to shoot at U.S. and allied warplanes policing them.   Saddam later decided to suspend firing at these planes.   "Iraqi people and its armed forces have foiled the foreigner's conspiracies and his attempts to impose partition (in Iraq) through what is so called parallels in Iraq's north and south," he said.   The cabinet meeting also praised the "supportive stand toward Iraq" by Arab states. 
19798 !GCAT !GDIS  At least 12 people died when a bus carrying a group of passengers collided with a truck near the town of Tiflet, 90 km (55 miles) east of Rabat, the official news agency MAP said on Saturday.   Morocco has one of the world's highest death rates from traffic accidents. 
19799 !GCAT !GPOL  Senior Palestinian officials warned Israel on Saturday that its expansion of Jewish settlements was leading Jews and Arabs towards "confrontation and disaster".   "The continuation (of settlements) buries any hope for the peace process," chief Palestinian peace negotiator Saeb Erekat said after a weekly Palestinian cabinet meeting.   "They (Israel) should keep in mind that the continuation of such policies is taking both people, Israelis and Palestinians, back to the circle of confrontation and disaster," Erekat told reporters in self-ruled Gaza.   Palestinian President Yasser Arafat convened his cabinet to discuss Jewish settlement expansion at the end of a week in which news emerged that Israeli Defence Minister Yitzhak Mordechai had approved 1,800 new homes for Jews in the West Bank and that plans for 2,000 more homes were in the pipeline for Mordechai's approval.   "We made a clear decision for the complete refusal of expansion and thickening of settlements which the Israeli government is taking," said Palestinian Minister of Public Works Azzam al-Ahmed.   Erekat said he had sent a letter to his Israeli counterpart, Dan Shomron, asking Israel to revoke recent orders to build new Jewish homes in West Bank lands the Israel occupied in the 1967 Middle East war.   Palestinian warnings on settlements were given moral support on Saturday by key Arab peace mediator Egypt.   In Cairo, Egyptian Foreign Minister Amr Moussa condemned right-wing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's settlement policies as "rejection and obstinacy".   Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak told the German news magazine Der Spiegel in an interview released ahead of publication on Monday that Jewish settlement expansion would lead to a renewed Palestinian uprising.   "Planting time bombs such as the unfettered construction of Jewish settlements on the West Bank and ignoring treaties will lead to a new intifada sooner or later," Mubarak said.   "And this time it won't be limited to throwing stones."   Erekat said the blame for any such breakdown would fall squarely on Israel's shoulders.   "If the peace process collapses...the Israeli government alone carries the responsibility for the consequences," he said.   Netanyahu, who ousted Nobel peace laureate Shimon Peres in May elections, in August won cabinet approval to overturn the previous government's building freeze in the West Bank.   Palestinians want to establish an independent state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.   They view the 130,000 Jews scattered in settlements among nearly two million Palestinians as an obstacle to peace. 
19800 !GCAT !GCRIM  Moroccan coastal guards have arrested two Britons charged with stealing a Spanish boat, a police spokesman said on Saturday.   The two men were identified as Douglas Richard King, 41, and Garry Quale, 39.   "The 22-metre-long boat, which had power failure, forced the two British thieves to draw it alongside the port of Tangier," the spokesman said.   The boat was stolen from the southern Spanish port of Ibiza Nueva last week, he added. 
19801 !GCAT !GVIO  Israeli jets and artillery blasted Hizbollah targets in south Lebanon on Saturday after one Israeli officer was wounded in clashes with the Moslem guerrillas there, security sources said.   They said the jets fired several rockets in four attacks into Mlita hill and Jabal Safi in Iqlim al-Toufah ridge which is used by the pro-Iranian Shi'ite Moslem Hizbollah fighters to attack Israeli troops occupying a south Lebanon border zone.   In Israel, the army said an officer was wounded in an attack by Hizbollah (Party of God) guerrillas and confirmed the air raids, saying the pilots reported accurate hits.   It was not immediately known if there were any casualties in the air raids and concurrent artillery bombardment of Iqlim al-Toufah which followed the attacks against two Israeli outposts at Sojoud and Beir Kallab and forces stationed nearby.   Pro-Israeli South Lebanon Army (SLA) militia sources said the guerrillas fired mortar bombs and anti-tank rockets.   "An Israel Defence Forces officer was lightly wounded this morning after an anti-tank missile was fired at an IDF force which was operating in the north of the eastern sector of the south Lebanon security zone," the Israeli army said.   "The officer was taken to hospital for treatment.   The IDF returned fire," it added in a statement.   In Beirut, Hizbollah claimed responsibility for the assault, saying its fighters rocketed a tank and attacked the Sojoud and Beir Kallab posts.   "AT 1215 p.m. (0915 GMT) the enemy, backed by tanks and heavy machinery, tried to advance into the liberated areas.   Our strugglers confronted it and clash with it using all sorts of weapons.   A tank was directly hit," the group said.   On Thursday, Israeli jets raided Iqlim al-Toufah hills and artillery bombarded the area, including Hizbollah-held villages there, in retaliation for a Hizbollah attack that killed two Israeli soldiers and wounded eight.   Hizbollah (Party of God) fighters, who have killed 20 Israeli soldiers this year in south Lebanon, are battling to oust the Israeli forces from a 15-km (nine-miles)-deep zone they have occupied in south Lebanon since 1985   Saturday's clashes came a day before a scheduled meeting of a five-nation committee monitoring a ceasefire understanding -- which ended a 17-day Israeli blitz on Lebanon in April -- to look into Israeli and Lebanese complaints.   Lebanon has filed a complaint that Israel shelled civilian areas on Thursday.   Israel said it would complain the guerrillas fired on its forces from inside three villages.   According to witnesses, some 50 shells slammed inside the villages of Ain Bouswar and Jba'a on Thursday, wounding a civilian woman in Jba'a who was hurt by flying debris.   The representatives of the United States, France, Syria, Lebanon and Israel will meet on Sunday in the town of Naqoura, south Lebanon.   Some 200 Lebanese, mostly civilians, were killed in the April onslaught, dubbed by Israel "Operation Grapes of Wrath", after tit-for-tat bombardments of civilian areas by both sides. 
19802 !GCAT !GVIO  The militant Palestinian group Islamic Jihad expects to soon resume attacks on Israel like the suicide bombings that killed 59 people earlier this year, senior officials from the group were quoted on Saturday as saying.   Suicide bombers from the Palestinian organisations Islamic Jihad and Hamas carried out four separate attacks in Israel in February and March.   "The secretary general of the Islamic Jihad, Dr. Ramadan Abdallah Shallah...and other Islamic leaders expect these attacks to be resumed soon," the London-based Arabic daily al-Hayat reported.   But the paper said: "Shallah complained that the Palestinian Authority's intelligence bodies were chasing the group's activists, which makes the execution of suicide attacks against Israeli targets difficult."   Al-Hayat said Shallah was interviewed by chief editor Jihad al-Khazen during a Middle East tour.   It did not say where it took place, but Islamic Jihad is based in Damascus.   Palestinian police rounded up some 900 Islamists in a crackdown on Hamas and Islamic Jihad after the four bombings.   The organisations oppose the peace accord signed by PLO chairman Yasser Arafat and former Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1993.   "The leaders said there were pressures at all levels to resume operations similar to those carried out in February, particularly as the first anniversary of Fathi Shikaki's assassination is approaching," the paper said.   It was referring to the former secretary general, founder and spiritual leader of the group, who was assassinated in Malta on October 26, 1995.   Palestinian groups said Israel was responsible.   The paper added that other leaders said Islamic Jihad was trying hard to resume attacks but Palestinian intelligence bodies, in cooperation with Israel, had rounded up many activists and forced others into hiding. 
19803 !GCAT !GVIO  Turkish security forces have killed 35 Kurdish separatist militants in several clashes in the past two days in southeast Turkey, officials said on Saturday.   They said troops killed 20 members of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) in Beytussebap, eight in Cukurca, five in Catak and two in Karakocan towns.   Three civilian village guards were also killed in the clashes, they said.   They did not give other details.   More than 20,000 people have been killed in the PKK's 12-year-old fight for independence or autonomy in Turkey. 
19804 !GCAT !GHEA  United Arab Emirates member Abu Dhabi on Saturday banned the smoking of traditional water pipes, or "shisha" as they are known locally, in cafes, restaurants and other public places, the official WAM news agency reported.   It did not give a reason, but the daily Al-Khaleej newspaper on Saturday said that families who lived in the buildings near coffee houses offering shisha had requested the curb.   The newspaper added that the decision was also in line with moves to ban smoking in public, but the WAM report did not say whether cigarette smoking was included. 
19805 !GCAT !GVIO  Israeli warplanes rocketed suspected guerrilla targets in south Lebanon's highlands on Saturday, security sources said.   They said the jets fired rockets in three attacks on hills in Iqlim al-Toufah mountain ridge which is controlled by pro-Iranian Hizbollah guerrillas north of Israel's south Lebanon occupation zone.    It was not immediately known if there were any casualties in the air attack.   On Thursday, Israeli jets raided Iqlim al-Toufah in the hills and artillery bombarded the area, including Hizbollah-held villages there, in retaliation for a Hizbollah attack that killed two Israeli soldiers and wounded eight.   Hizbollah (Party of God) fighters are battling to oust Israeli forces from a 15-km (nine-miles)-deep zone they have occupied in south Lebanon since 1985. 
19806 !GCAT  Arabian horses from Israeli stables took centre stage at a Jordanian horse show this week, but their triumphs were invisible in local media on Saturday.   Participants said the Israeli Arabian horses outshone their Arab competitors at Jordan's Seventh Arabian Horse Festival, which ended on Friday night, in categories including "Most Classic Female Head" and a race for colts.   The Israeli horses, competing against entrants from Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, also won prizes for yearling colts, and fillies born in 1994.   Participants said this was the second year Israeli horses competed, following Jordan's 1994 peace treaty with Israel which ended a 46-year state of war between the two neighbours.   But local newspapers and television, which gave the four-day event high profile coverage, made no mention of the Israeli entrants.   The two year peace accord between Jordan and the Jewish state remains controversial among many Jordanians, still waiting for a promised peace dividend from the treaty. 
19807 !GCAT !GCRIM !GENT !GPOL !GREL  Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri, responding to protests from intellectuals, has ordered the dismissal of a lawsuit against a leftist singer charged with insulting Islam by using a Koranic verse in a song.   Lebanon's official National News Agency said Hariri instructed Justice Minister Bahij Tabbara on Friday "to stop the lawsuit against artist Marcel Khalife and all that he has been charged with of insulting religious rituals in his song".   Prosecutor Abdullah Bitar on Wednesday charged Khalife, a Maronite Christian, with insulting religious rituals by using a verse from the chapter of Yusif from the Moslem holy book, the Koran, in a song titled "Oh my father, I am Yusif".   The indictment said the lyrics: "Did I commit adultery when I said that I saw 11 planets and the sun and the moon kneeling in front of me", resemble a Koranic verse in which Yusif, the Biblical figure Joseph, addresses his father Jacob.   Judicial sources have said Khalife would face between six months and three years jail if convicted.   Lebanese law prohibits the slandering of religions or religious figures.   Joseph and Jacob are revered in Islam as prophets.   A prosecutor appointed to question Khalife said on Saturday that the file was still effectively open as he had not yet received written notification to drop the charges.   Khalife, who is touring the United States with his band, said on Friday by telephone he had obtained permission to release the song in his 1995 album "Arabic Coffeepot" from Lebanon's general security censorship bureau.   The 46-year-old bearded crooner has earned a cult following in the Arab world and the Arab diaspora through nationalistic songs during the 1975-90 Lebanese civil war.   Hariri's orders to drop the case came after Lebanese Moslem and Christian poets, writers and journalists expressed disgust at them, saying they were bizarre and reminiscent of campaigns waged against intellectuals in some Arab or Islamic countries.   One poet said on Friday the charges against Khalife were similar to 15th century Spanish Inquisition accusations.   "Sir (prosecutor) you were preceeded in your edict by those who issued edicts in Egypt, Sudan, India and Pakistan and before them the Inquistion courts of the dark Middle Ages," poet Paul Shaool wrote in an indignant newspaper article.   Another poet, Shawki Bzeih, said the charges and Lebanese police's confiscation last year of books by late Islamist writer al-Sadeq al-Nayhoum, considered offensive to Islam, and others "falsify Beirut's spirit and role" as a cultural centre.   "It is as if we face a new version of the saga of Youssef Chahine and his film 'The Emigrant'," wrote poet Zahi Wehbeh, referring to the Egyptian director's controversial film that narrowly escaped being banned for allegedly depicting Joseph.   The lyrics used in the song were taken from a collection of poems by famous Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish. 
19808 !GCAT  These are the leading stories in the Moroccan press on Saturday.   Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.   LE MATIN DU SAHARA   - King Hassan meets Sheikh Zaid of United Arab Emirates in Rabat.   L'OPINION   - Opposition Istiqlal party leader Boucetta says recently adopted constitution is turning point in political life.   AL-MAGHRIB   - Economy needs new approach to solve structural problems and continue growth.   AL-ALAM   - Morocco and European Union to negotiate free trade zone agreement details.   AL-BAYANE   - Russian minister of foreign affairs to visit Morocco on September 29.   - Dispute between members of OADP opposition party worsens.   BAYANE AL-YOUM   - Morocco dismantles clandestine immigration network in northern town of Larache. 
19809 !GCAT  These are some of the leading stories in the Jordanian press on Saturday.   Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.   JORDAN TIMES   - Prime Minister Kabariti gets message from Kuwaiti Crown Prince Sheikh Saad about latest developments in Iraq.   - UNWRA's Amman office says urgent donations needed to plug budget deficit.   - International organisations appeal to King Hussein on behalf of detained journalists.   - Jordan's Investment Promotion Corporation plans new incentives, import customs to be streamlined.   AL-RAI   - Field Marshall Abdul-Hafiz al-Kabina returns from three-day visit to Slovenia where he inspected peacekeeping forces.   AL-DUSTOUR   - Amman municipality employees on daily pay to receive 100 to 135 fils wage rise.   AL-ASWAQ   - Milk producers ask for establishment of Higher Council for Milk and reject imports of powdered milk.   - Parliamentary deputy says 21 members of Jordan's Arab Socialist Baath Party remain in detention over last month's bread price riots.   - Crown Prince Hassan to open conference of Ministers of Awqaf on Wednesday. 
19810 !GCAT  These are the leading stories in the Egyptian press on Saturday.   Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.   AL-AHRAM   - Defence Minister Mohamed Hussein Tantawi says that supporting the military power and continued training are not contradictory to peace.   "The Egyptian military exercises are not aimed at anyone," he told reporters during manoeuvres "Badr 96".   - IMF Board Member, Abdul Shakour Shaalan, told Al-Ahram: The Board will discuss on October 11 the third stage of Egypt's reform programme.   IMF has not asked Egypt to cut its foreign reserves, he added.   - Managing Director of the International Moneatary Fund, Michel Camdessus, supports the Egyptian reform programme.   - Egypt welcomes results of the Bosnian election.   AKHBAR AL-YOUM   - Chairman of the federation of Egyptian bankers, Mahmoud Abdul Aziz, said that new bonds would be issued to help build investment projects worth 500 million pounds in south Egypt.   - Tantawi to submit a report on the military exercises "Badr 96" to President Hosni Mubarak.   AL-GOMHURIA   - President Mubarak told Israel's Channel Two televisoin that he wanted the United States and Israel to help push the peace process forward.   He said that achieving progress in the peace process is necessary for the success of the economic summit, which is expected to be held in Cairo in November.   - Prime Minister Kamal Ganzouri bans the construction of any building on state lands within city and village cordons.   -- Cairo newsroom +202 578 3290/1 
19811 !GCAT  These are the leading stories in the Tunisian press on Saturday.   Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.   LA PRESSE   - President Ben Ali chairs cabinet meeting on 1997 budget.   - French member of Senate hails Ben Ali's role in Tunisia's progress.   LE TEMPS   - Ben Ali receives message from Egyptian President Mubarak.   - Tunisia's Samurai bond issue concluded in Japan. 
19812 !GCAT  These are some of the leading stories in the official Iraqi press on Saturday.   Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.   QADISSIYA   - Turkish prime minister opposes any U.S. military action against Iraq.   - Iraq is invited to attend an oil conference to be held in London.   - CIA admits the strong position of President Saddam Hussein.   - Iraq's ambassador in Ankara reiterates Iraq's rejection of the security zone Turkey wants to set up in northern Iraq.   - France encourages dialogue between Baghdad government and the Kurds.   IRAQ   - More than four million students go to Iraqi schools on Saturday after the end of the summer holiday.   - Activities of Babylon cultural festival start on Sunday. 
19813 !GCAT !GDIP  Egypt said on Saturday the settlement policy of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government could wreck the Middle East peace process.   "The settlement policy, which the Israeli government is adopting, is very serious," Egyptian Foreign Minister Amr Moussa told reporters.   "It could wreck the peace process on the rock of Israeli rejection and obstinacy," Moussa said before leaving Cairo on his way to New York to head Egypt's delegation at the United Nation's general assembly.   "This policy cannot be described but as rash," he added.   Israel's military administration approved this week plans to build 1,800 new homes to expand a Jewish settlement in the West Bank.   Netanyahu, who ousted Shimon Peres in May elections, won cabinet approval in August to overturn the previous government's building freeze in the West Bank. 
19814 !GCAT !GPOL  Gay groups expressed regret on Saturday that President Bill Clinton, acting in the dead of night, signed legislation into law that gives states the right not to recognise same-sex marriages.   Clinton put his signature to the law at 12:50 a.m.   EDT (0450 GMT) at the White House, then went to bed upon his return from a four-day, cross-country campaign swing.   Separately, Clinton praised the Republican Congress for moving toward approving a guarantee of longer hospital stays for new mothers and requiring more equitable treatment of mental-health benefits under private health insurance plans.   In a written statement issued on Friday night during a campaign stop in South Dakota, the president said he was signing the same-sex legislation because he has "long opposed governmental recognition of same-gender marriages, and this legislation is consistent with that position."   But the White House made clear Clinton felt the legislation was produced by Republicans trying to make gay rights an election-year issue.   "We think this bill is completely politically motivated and completely unnecessary," said deputy press secretary Mary Ellen Glynn.   The Human Rights Campaign, the country's largest national lesbian and gay political organisation, was relatively restrained in its criticism.   "We regret that Clinton opted to sign this needless and mean-spirited bill," said the group's executive director, Elizabeth Birch.   "We had hoped that the president would have changed his mind after hearing the anti-gay rhetoric spouted by some extreme members of Congress."   Steve Michael, president of the local Washington chapter of the national AIDS activist group ACT UP, blasted Clinton's decision and said it would cost him the votes of gay and lesbian voters in the Nov. 5 election.   "It is clear by his middle of the night stealth vote that Clinton knows what he is doing is wrong," Michael said.   "We will remember his betrayal on Nov. 5."   The bill, approved by the Senate earlier this month and by the House in July, was passed out of fear that a pending court case in Hawaii would set a precedent for legalising gay and lesbian marriages.   No state legally recognises marriage between two people of the same sex.   The law recognises each state's right to determine its own policy with respect to same-sex marriages and clarifies for purposes of federal law that a marriage is between a man and a woman.   "With the stroke of his pen, he has condoned the exclusion of all lesbian and gay Americans from the federal benefits and responsibilities that come with marriage, even though it will be years before such an institution becomes available to them," Birch said.   Gays overwhelmingly supported Clinton's election in 1992.   The Clinton campaign believes they will still back him this year since the new law does not take away any current gay rights and since same-sex marriages has not been a top priority for the gay community.   In his weekly radio address, Clinton sought election-year credit for legislation moving in Congress to extend hospital stays for new mothers and expand insurance coverage for mental health patients.   House and Senate negotiators approved the plans on Thursday and final enactment could come next week.   "I will sign it with enthusiasm," Clinton said in his weekly radio address.   The longer hospital stays for new mothers -- 48 hours for normal deliveries, 96 hours for Caesarean sections -- were driven by complaints from many families that insurance companies will only pay for a woman to remain in the hospital for 24 hours after giving birth.   The mental health provision would require insurance companies to provide much more generous spending benefits for people suffering from serious mental illnesses.   Businesses had opposed the provisions. 
19815 !GCAT !GPOL !GVOTE  Russian President Boris Yeltsin had a previously-unreported heart attack in late June or early July, shortly before presidential elections went into a decisive second round, his heart surgeon said on U.S. television on Friday.   The bombshell disclosure, after many Kremlin denials, came in an interview on ABC's "World News Tonight," with Renat Akchurin, who will lead Yeltsin's planned heart surgery soon.   Other doctors were quoted as saying Yeltsin risked death in the forthcoming operation, revealed as more complex than previously announced.   Akchurin said Yeltsin had withheld information on the heart attack before the July 3 presidential election runoff for political reasons.   Yeltsin sparked a mystery by disappearing from public view although facing a strong electoral challenge from a communist rival.   At the time the Kremlin leader, 65, who had had two previous heart attacks, was described as tired or resting his voice, but communist contender Gennady Zyuganov said he was "a living corpse."   Asked if Yeltsin suffered a heart attack, Akchurin said, "Yes.   End of June or July," adding that the heart attack had not been publicly acknowledged.   "Can you imagine what would happen, for example, if he told everyone he's had a heart attack and he's unable to work?"   Akchurin told ABC.   Yeltsin went on to beat Zyuganov in the election and secure a second four-year term in the Kremlin.   In Moscow, a Kremlin spokesman said on Saturday that top Russian officials had been informed of the U.S. network's interview.   But he declined comment on the disclosure of a third heart attack.   The interview was screened on the same day as the head of Russia's presidential medical centre conceded Yeltsin had a variety of other problems making his planned heart bypass operation a complex proposition.   Sergei Mironov said Yeltsin would stay in Moscow's Central Clinical Hospital for another three or four days -- the third extension to a stay originally scheduled to end last weekend.   ABC quoted Russian doctors as saying Yeltsin could die on the operating table and they did not know exactly whether he was fit for surgery at all.   "The risk (of death) is considerable," one Russian doctor, anaesthetist Michael Lepilin, told the network, adding that it was "much more" than in an ordinary heart bypass operation.   U.S. cardiac specialist Dr Michael DeBakey, who is flying to Moscow this weekend to consult with Yeltsin's Russian doctors, said the revelation of an earlier heart attack could make the coming operation more difficult.   "There is a possibility that each attack damages the heart a little bit more, and so that would suggest that there may be more damage to the heart than the first heart attack produced," DeBakey said.   Mironov said on Friday Yeltsin faced a "very serious" heart operation and his prolonged stay in hospital was to ensure that problems with other organs do not complicate the surgery.   DeBakey said the prolonged hospital stay "suggests that his condtion is reasonably serious, and that means they are taking their time to try to prepare him for the operation."   Yeltsin announced on September 5 that he would have heart surgery at the end of the month. 
19816 !GCAT !GDEF !GDIP !GVIO  The Defence Department said Friday that an improper U.S. training manual encouraged South American military officers in the 1980s to offer informants presents to aid the arrest, capture or death of guerrillas.   It said that manual and five others containing about two dozen objectionable phrases on treatment of informants and guerrillas violated U.S. policy at that time and were recovered and destroyed.   A defence official said U.S. Army specialists who developed information for the manuals, written in Spanish, included practices that had been U.S. policy as late as the 1960s but were outlawed in the 1980s.   The Defence Department said other phrases in the manuals suggested informants could be controlled with fear, beatings, truth serum and death threats.   The Pentagon said the manuals were used by students at the U.S. Army's School of the Americas, which trains military officers, police and civilians from Latin America, and were distributed to intelligence schools in several Latin American countries.   "The counterintelligence agent must offer presents and compensation for information leading to the arrest, capture or death of guerrillas," a manual title "Handling of Sources" said.   It also said "threats should not be made (against informants) unless they can be carried out and the employee (informant) realises that such threats could be carried out."   A manual titled "Terrorism and the Urban Guerrilla" referred to extortion as a method of interrogation.   It also said one function of counterintelligence agents was to recommend "targets for neutralising" without spelling out what that meant.   A defence memorandum said the manuals also contained classified information that could have compromised U.S. Army counterintelligence methods at the time.   A defence official said the course material that was later included in the manuals was developed by specialists at the Army Intelligence Centre at Fort Huachuca in Arizona beginning in 1982.   He said the manuals were written by a unit at the U.S. Southern Command in Panama.   He said neither group apparently realised that some of the practices included had by that time been outlawed by U.S. policy.   The Pentagon said the manuals were used by trainers in Latin America from 1987 to 1989 and by the School of the Americas from 1989 to 1991 when they were recovered and destroyed.   Representative Joe Kennedy, D-Mass., called for the release of the full document and said the matter underscored the need to close the U.S. Army School of the Americas.   "The partial release of this training manual shows what we have long suspected: taxpayer dollars have been used to train military officers in executions, extortion, beatings and other acts of intimidation -- all clear human rights abuses which have no place in civilised society," Kennedy said in a statement. 
19817 !GCAT !GCRIM !GPRO  In their first face-to-face encounter with O.J. Simpson, some prospective jurors in his civil trial said Friday he was probably a murderer, while others saw him as the victim of a conspiracy.   Simpson, a no-show for the first three days of the proceedings, was confronted outside the Santa Monica courthouse by about 30 jeering protesters who chanted: "O. J., O. J., you can't hide.   We charge you with homicide."   Inside the courtroom, Simpson showed little expression as potential jurors were questioned to determine whether they had been prejudiced by the massive publicity surrounding the sensational case.   Judge Hiroshi Fujisaki dismissed a number of panellists who expressed strong bias while keeping more than a half-dozen others, including a black man who said he believed there was a police coverup and several white women who said Simpson probably murdered his former wife and her friend.   The former football star was acquitted Oct. 3 of criminal charges in the killings of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman, but he now faces a wrongful-death civil case brought by the victims' families.   The 19 potential jurors questioned Friday were largely divided along racial lines, with whites tending to believe Simpson committed the murders and blacks more convinced of his innocence.   Simpson's lead defence attorney Robert Baker accused the families' lawyers of singling out blacks for removal from the jury pool, but Fujisaki dismissed the complaint without comment.   Not even the victims' families were spared.   A black woman in her 60s looked straight at Fred Goldman, the father of murder victim Ronald, and accused him of being "greedy" in his quest for monetary damages.   Goldman glared back from across the courtoom.   But most panellists also insisted they could set aside their opinions and serve as impartial jurors.   "In my mind the score is zero-to-zero," said a black man who was kept in the jury pool.   Fujisaki, a no-nonsense jurist who has made clear he has no plans to play ringmaster to another courtroom circus like Simpson's criminal trial, scolded attorneys for proceeding at a "snail's pace."   And he ordered them to speed up the process of picking 12 regular jurors and eight alternates.   Jury selection is expected to take up to three weeks, followed by testimony lasting at least four months.   A middle-aged black man was the first to be questioned, telling attorneys he thought police had engaged in a "coverup" in their investigation of the June 1994 murders.   He was allowed to stay on the panel.   A white woman in her 60s dismissed the conspiracy theories that have been floated by Simpson's defence, saying she was "90 percent certain" of his guilt.   She was dismissed.   The prospective jurors being grilled Friday were among the 169 who survived a first round of "hardship" questioning to determine whether personal or financial problems would prevent them from serving.   But the latest phase -- known as "publicity voir dire" -- is considered even more crucial.   The first trial -- the most highly publicised courtroom drama in U.S. history -- was broadcast gavel to gavel on national television, making it all but impossible to find jurors who know nothing about the case.   The best hope, legal experts say, is to pick jurors who can set aside their opinions.   Legal analysts believe both sides will be anything but colourblind in choosing a jury.   Polls have shown that an overwhelming majority of whites believe Simpson got away with murder, while blacks mostly support the not-guilty verdict.   A factor that weighs against the black celebrity is that the case is being tried in upscale Santa Monica, increasing the likelihood that the jury will be whiter and wealthier than the mostly black panel that acquitted Simpson in Los Angeles.   A black man in his 40s told attorneys Simpson was probably framed for the murders and accused police of mishandling blood evidence.   Fujisaki ruled that the panellist "has already formed opinion" and dismissed him.   A white woman in her 20s said she thought Simpson was probably guilty and accused him of "bad taste" for selling a home-made video about the case.   She stayed on the panel.   Simpson missed the first phase of his civil trial because he had to be in an Orange County courtroom to fight for custody of the two young children he had with his slain former wife.   The custody battle was put on hold Wednesday. 
19818 !GCAT !GPOL  The chairman of a congressional panel investigating the White House database said on Friday that it was bigger than had been acknowledged, but the White House disputed his figures.   Rep David McIntosh, R-Indiana, said a review of 2,000 documents turned over by the White House on Thursday showed that the White House "has not honestly characterised" the size of the database.   He said White House Counsel Jack Quinn had written that the database had cost the taxpayers $545,000 -- but the documents showed cost estimates at more than $1.7 million.   McIntosh also said the documents showed that in April there were 300,000 individuals and 50,000 organisations stored in the database, although the White House had said it contained the names of 200,000 individuals.   McIntosh also said the subcommittee had been "misled" by a list showing fewer than 150 past and present White House staffers had access to the database because the documents showed more than 200 people had access.   A White House spokesman, Barry Toiv, said the White House's best estimate of the number of names remained 200,000, noting that there were "an extraordinary number" of duplications.   He said the documents showing more people with access to the database were inaccurate and the White House had given as precise an estimate as possible of costs, based on the cost of outside contractors, hardware and software.   He said the subcommittee had included salaries and benefits of White House staff who had done any work on the database.   "These people would have been working there anyway," Toiv said.   "All they (the subcommittee) had to do was get on the phone and ask what these documents meant," he said.   "Instead they put out a press release." 
19819 !GCAT !GCRIM !GVIO  The U.S. Justice Department launched an internal investigation on Friday into allegations that the CIA helped flood U.S. ghettos with cocaine to finance rebels fighting Nicaragua's leftist government in the 1980s.   "Today I opened an investigation into allegations that federal agencies helped funnel drug profits to rebels in Nicaragua, known as the contras, in the 1980s," Justice Department Inspector General Michael Bromwich said.   He said he would coordinate his investigation with the CIA's inspector general, who is also investigating the reports, first published in the San Jose Mercury News.   The California newspaper reported in a three-part series last month that a drug pipeline between Colombia and the San Francisco Bay area functioned for almost a decade with at least tacit CIA approval, funnelling profits to the CIA-backed Contras in Nicaragua.   Bromwich said Attorney General Janet Reno referred the matter to him after receiving letters from Sen. Dianne Feinstein and Representative Maxine Waters, both Democrats from California.   CIA Director John Deutch ordered the internal CIA probe on Sept. 4 but said he believed there was "no substance" to the allegations."   He said he had asked the CIA's in-house watchdog, Inspector General Frederick Hitz, to finish his review within 60 days.   Waters released a letter Friday from House Speaker Newt Gingrich, in which he said he had asked the House Intelligence Committee to investigate the matter as well.   "While I am pleased that we are beginning to receive some cooperation in calling for an in-depth investigation into the origins of crack cocaine in our neighbourhoods, and the possible involvement or knowledge on the part of the CIA, this is only the beginning," Waters said in a statement.   "We have a lot of work to do and the investigations will give us a place to start," she said.   In its series titled "Dark Alliance," the Mercury News detailed a scheme that allegedly funnelled tonnes of cocaine to black Los Angeles neighbourhoods and returned millions in drug profits to a CIA-funded guerrilla army in Nicaragua.   The series traced the crack epidemic to two Nicaraguan drug dealers, Danilo Blandon and Norwin Meneses, who were civilian leaders of the CIA-backed FDN, the largest Nicaraguan Contra group fighting to overthrow the leftist Sandinistas.   Citing newly declassified material, court testimony and interviews, the paper alleged the pair had been recruited by the CIA to raise money for the Contras and turned to drug-running with at least tacit spy agency approval.   In his letter to members of Congress, Deutch said the CIA had "never had any relationship with either Blandon or Meneses."   Nor, contrary to the newspaper report, had it sought to have information regarding either of them withheld at the recent trial of a convicted Los Angeles drug dealer, he said. 
19820 !E21 !E211 !ECAT !GCAT !GPOL !GVOTE  With Republicans casting him as a free-spending Democrat wed to big government, President Bill Clinton on Friday took credit for saving taxpayers $118 billion by overhauling government.   Although Clinton has been cautioning against overconfidence as opinion polls show him with a double-digit lead, White House Political Director Doug Sosnik said Republican Bob Dole may fare worse on election day than President George Bush did in 1992.   "This race has not fundamentally moved since the beginning of March," Sosnik said of public attitudes.   He said, "Bob Dole is never even going to match George Bush's 38 percent in 1992 until he gives people in this country a reason to vote for him."   Clinton, bouyed by enthusiastic crowds throughout his four-day, six-state swing, sought to draw attention to his "reinventing government" efforts over the last three years, which aides believe offset Republican rival Bob Dole's claims that Clinton is an old-fashioned liberal who pays lip service to centrist themes.   "We're bringing common sense to government," Clinton told an outdoor rally in downtown Portland.   He said his efforts to streamline and overhaul the federal government had generated $118 billion in savings and cut 240,000 government jobs.   "We can make this government work for you, and we're determined to do it," Clinton said.   The claim was based on efforts led by Vice President Al Gore, who joined Clinton on the campaign trail, to overhaul the way the federal government conducts business -- from eliminating such things as a long-criticised mohair wool subsidy to streamlining federal procurement procedures.   To highlight efforts to modernise and speed up government, Clinton announced that Internet users would be able to go to the White House web page and perform such tasks as applying for a passport.   "There are no lines on-line," he said.   Gore, in a report to Clinton, said 13 of 14 federal departments had reduced the size of their work force -- the Justice Department being the only exception -- since the two took office in January 1993.   The federal civilian payroll numbered more than 2.1 million when Clinton was sworn in and now numbers 1.9 million -- a reduction of 240,000.   If re-elected to a second term, Clinton intends to push for an even smaller work force, White House press secretary Mike McCurry said.   But the Dole campaign scoffed at Clinton's claims and cited September Bureau of Labour Statistics as showing that federal employment, excluding defence cuts, had actually increased by 5,100 under Clinton.   "You'd have to believe in the tooth fairy to believe Bill Clinton has cut big government," Dole's deputy press secretary, Christina Martin, said.   Clinton's confidence clearly is growing.   He has been upbeat throughout his trip to Michigan, Illinois, Arizona, Washington and Oregon.   One sign of his confidence was the addition of a stop on his way back to Washington on Friday night, so he could attend a high school homecoming football game in South Dakota.   The rural state has few electoral votes, and Democrats generally write it off in presidential elections.   Democratic strategists see a chance not only to carry the state for Clinton but to capture a Senate seat as well.   Democratic Representative Tim Johnson is in the midst of a surprisingly close fight to upset incumbent Republican Sen. Larry Pressler.   Throughout his trip, Clinton has been campaigning not only for himself but for fellow Democrats, who a mere two years ago, in the wake of the Republican congressional landslide, wanted nothing to do with him.   Now candidates go out of their way to be seen with him -- and to sound like him, promoting his ideas. 
19821 !CCAT !GCAT !GDIS  A canine training exercise six weeks before the TWA Flight 800 disaster used the same explosive chemicals that investigators later found small traces of in the wreckage, investigators said on Saturday.   "We can now confirm that those same explosive elements were used in canine training," said Ed Kittel, a special agent with the Federal Aviation Administration.   "We can say one thing for sure: that (this is) one possible source of how some trace amounts -- we're talking sub-gram quantities of explosives -- could have wound up on this aircraft."   Kittel identified these explosives as PETN, RDX and dynamite and smokeless powder, which have nitroglycerine.   Both PETN and RDX are key ingredients in Semtex, a plastic explosive that was used in bombing Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in December 1988.   Some missiles also have these chemicals in their warheads.   At a press briefing, Kittel said that the FAA had learned that St. Louis police had on June 10th conducted an exercise aboard the same TWA Boeing 747 that later crashed off Long Island en route to Paris, killing all 230 people on board.   In that June excercise, police hid the chemicals, kept in small packages, in places such as the overhead bins and in the seats to test the dogs' ability to detect explosives, he said.   Investigators do not know why the TWA flight exploded before crashing into the sea, but have privately said they believe a bomb likely caused the crash.   The only evidence cited to back up this theory has been the microscopic traces of chemicals found on a few pieces of wreckage.   Jim Kallstrom, who is leading the FBI's investigation into the crash, said the traces of chemicals found in the wreckage did not necessarily come from the canine exercise.   "It could still be a bomb, it could still be a missile, it could still be mechanical failure," he said, citing the three leading theories in the case.   It took investigators a while to learn of the canine exercise because there is no central record of such events, and they had to make inquiries in 10 possibile cities.   St. Louis police initially had no record of their test at Lambert St. Louis International Airport until asked by the FAA to reconfirm their records, Kittel said.   St. Louis was a likely city for such an exercise because it is the main hub of TWA, officials said.   An FAA official later said the difficulty in getting the information on the test has prompted the agency to consider setting up a central database of such information.   Also Saturday, the lead FAA investigator in the case, Robert Francis, said that as much as 85 percent of the crash wreckage had been recovered from the sea floor of the Atlantic Ocean.   The U.S. Navy and Coast Guard have been recovering the plane's debris, and investigators have been reassembling the wreckage in an old aircraft hangar in Calverton, New York. 
19822 !GCAT !GPOL  The first of two 90-minute presidential debates between President Bill Clinton and Republican Bob Dole will be held October 6 in Hartford, Ct., negotiators for both campaigns said on Saturday.   The Dole and Clinton teams overseeing the talks aimed at ironing out the debate format also agreed to exclude Reform Party candidate Ross Perot from the presidential debates.    Negotiators wrapped up their discussions after nine hours in the office of a Washington attorney.   They agreed to a second 90-minute matchup between the candidates in a town hall meeting in San Diego on Oct. 16, as well as a debate between Vice President Al Gore and Dole's running mate, former housing secretary Jack Kemp, in St. Petersburg, Fla., on Oct. 9.   The first presidential debate and the vice presidential debate would feature a single moderator, negotiators said.   Clinton's top negotiator, Commerce Secretary Mickey Kantor, said the Dole camp maintained its adamant opposition to Perot's participation in the debate.   Excluding Perot, as recommended by the Commission on Presidential Debates last week, "was the only circumstance where they could go forward," Kantor told reporters after the meeting ended.   Dole's top negotiator, former South Carolina Gov. Carroll Campbell, dismissed speculation that the negotiations had broken down, but admitted there were "a few hesitations."   "We had a very substantive discussion off and on all day," Campbell, who also heads the American Council of Life Insurance, told reporters.   "We did not agree on everything.   We worked it out as we went along." 
19823 !GCAT !GSCI  NASA officials concerned about a failed power unit imposed tighter landing restrictions on Saturday for shuttle Atlantis when it returns from its mission to the Russian space station Mir.   One of the shuttle's three auxiliary power units (APUs) failed unexpectedly after last Monday's launch.   The critical devices, part of the shuttle's hydraulic system, are used during launch and landing to steer the shuttle.   Flight controllers would look for light winds and high cloud ceilings for Thursday's landing, said Lee Briscoe, NASA's mission operations director.   The shuttle is due to touchdown at Florida's Kennedy Space Center with U.S. space endurance champion Shannon Lucid aboard.   The new restrictions, however, may cause a diversion to the back-up landing strip at Edwards Air Force Base, California, where weather conditions are usually better.   Briscoe did not rule out an early end to the mission if the weather outlook for the landing day was unfavorable.   Although the shuttle can land safely on two power units, a second failure, would make it difficult to control during the final approach to the runway.   "Running with two there is absolutely no problem.   Running with one we are in an uncertified flight mode," said Jay Greene, manager space shuttle vehicle engineering at Johnson Space Center.   "So we will pick the most benign conditions you can to put as little demand on the system as possible if you get to the one APU case," he said.   The loss of a second power unit was highly unlikely, however, Greene cautioned.   This was only the second time an APU had failed in the 79 space shuttle flights since 1981.   Atlantis remained berthed at Mir after picking up Lucid and dropping off her replacement, John Blaha.   The joint U.S.-Russian space crew has nearly completed its 6,000-lb (2,722 kg) cargo transfer.   The shuttle was due to leave the station on Monday. 
19824 !E21 !E211 !ECAT !GCAT !GPOL  Republican vice presidential candidate Jack Kemp said on Saturday he and Republican presidential nominee Bob Dole would if elected seek to abolish the capital-gains tax and the estate tax.   "Bob Dole and Jack Kemp believe that when we fundamentally overhaul the tax code of America by 1998 or '99 at the latest ... there will be no capital-gains tax at all and no estate tax at all," Kemp told a meeting of the National Association of Manufacturers in answer to an audience question.   "They're dumb taxes.   Dumb.   Dumb," Kemp said to applause from the business group.   The Dole campaign until now has talked of cutting the capital-gains tax by 50 percent as part of a six-year, $548 billion package worth of tax cuts.   Dole also has proposed as a part of that package to give Americans a 15 percent across-the-board income-tax cut and a $500 a child tax tax credit, while balancing the budget.   In addition, Dole has vowed to repeal the current tax code and replace it with a "lower, flatter, fairer" system.   And the Kansas Republican wants to end the Internal Revenue Service "as we know it."   President Bill Clinton and other critics have questioned how Dole can cut taxes sharply and still eliminate the budget gap.   "Jack Kemp and I have a vision of growth, opportunity, and strong families through lower taxes ... a vision of smaller government and greater responsibility entrusted to the people, families, and communities across America," Dole said in his weekly radio address on Saturday. 
19825 !GCAT !GPOL  New York Rep. Susan Molinari joined House Speaker Newt Gingrich on Saturday in a campaign bid to portray the Republican-controlled Congress as an institution devoted to the advocacy of women's interests.   Addressing a luncheon attended by about 200 Republican women, Gingrich said his party has failed to draw support from women voters because the news media has ignored its steps to raise female lawmakers to leadership positions in the House.   "It is absolutely true, unequivocally, and yet it has never been covered by any news media I know of, that more women are in more roles of influence in more rooms where decisions are made in the Republican House than ever in the history of the United States," the Georgia Republican said.   "We are somehow not politically correct.   We are not appropriate."   Unlike its Democratic predecessors, Gingrich said, the Republican House has for the first time appointed women to its rules committee and officer posts.   He also touted the Republican Party's decision to make three female legislators -- Sue Myrick of North Carolina, Barbara Vucanovich of Nevada and Molinari -- part of the House leadership.   Gingrich told reporters it was also time for Republicans to consider running a woman for president, naming Molinari, Elizabeth Dole, New Jersey Gov. Christine Todd Whitman and Rep. Jennifer Dunn of Washington state as possibilities.   "I would feel very comfortable as an American with any of those four in the White House as president of the United States," he said.   "It's natural and automatic to talk about males who might run for president.   I also think we ought to start saying, let's look around at some really talented people who could, in fact, be president."   With Republican presidential candidate Bob Dole trailing President Clinton by 30 points in opinion polls of working women, the party has been struggling to close a yawning gender gap before the November 5 election.   Interviews with prospective female voters show that women fear that Dole would allow valued social programs to be dismantled if elected.   Republicans also have suffered from their opposition to a federal law allowing workers to take time off to care for children and sick parents.   For some women, the abortion issue has become emblematic of a party that advocates freedom from government control except where the reproductive rights of women are concerned.   Molinari, the young Staten Island mother who delivered the keynote speech at last month's Republican National Convention in San Diego, extolled Republican legislation on crime, taxes and health-care as proof of the party's sensitivity to women's issues.   She said House Republicans have voted to increase spending for breast cancer screening, child support, domestic violence programs and child welfare, while supporting a bill this week that requires longer hospital stays for new mothers.   "This Congress, under the leadership of Newt Gingrich, has decided that one of our priorities is going to be, again, the safety, the health, the fairness of women in America," she said.   Gingrich and Molinari later took part in a round table on domestic violence. 
19826 !GCAT !GENT  A huge crane hoisted 18 rotund bronze sculptures by Colombian artist Fernando Botera into position on Saturday just steps from the White House.   The swollen human and animal figures weighing up to two tonnes each will line the Mall's Constitution Avenue opposite the Washington Monument until Nov. 1.   It is the first outdoor exhibit of Botero's work in the U.S. capital.   The sculptures have already been to Florence, Monte Carlo, Paris, Madrid, Chicago and New York.   One of the sculptures, Cat, will be seen without its whiskers, though.   An organiser said they were being left off because people at previous exhibitions would unscrew the bronze pieces and take them home.   The show was organised by the Art Museum of the Americas, with the backing of the Organisation of American States.   "Placing sculptures in a non-traditional setting not known for art will reveal an unexpected surprise to passersby, encouraging them to rediscover Washington's famous cityscape," said OAS general secretary and ex-Colombian president, Cesar Gaviria. 
19827 !C13 !CCAT !GCAT !GPOL  The Clinton administration defended its auto-safety record Saturday after consumer advocate Ralph Nader called on top officials to quit, charging the government had weakened its tough safety stance.   Nader, who issued a report on auto safety and is running for president as the Green Party candidate, said Friday the steep drop in deaths and injuries from highway crashes since 1966 had "lulled the current administration into dangerous inactivity."   But the Transportation Department, in response, said the administration's top safety officials had demanded the two biggest auto recalls in history, enacted a "zero-tolerance law," beefed up the nation's anti-drunk driving campaigns, and set new truck anti-lock brake and auto passenger head-protection standards.   "As a result, the vehicle-mile highway fatality rate is the lowest in our nation's history, our automobiles are safer than ever, and we are proud that our roads are among the safest in the world," the department said in a statement.   "But we will not stop there as we continue to seek additional ways to improve safety and decrease the number of highway deaths and injuries in our country."   Nader called on Transportation Secretary Federico Pena and other top transportation officials in the administration to resign, saying they had "betrayed their oaths of office, turned their backs on millions of trusting Americans and prostrated themselves in ignominious kowtows to greedy industry lobbies."   In his report, entitled "Driving in Reverse," Nader alleged that regulators have failed to carry out expectations laid out by Congress, issuing watered-down standards in some cases or dragging its feet on reforms.   The report tracks progress made since creation of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration 30 years ago. 
19828 !GCAT !GDEF !GDIP !GVIO  The last of 3,000 ground troops being deployed to join U.S. military forces massing in the Gulf flew out of the Fort Hood army base in central Texas on Saturday.   Defence officials said the last of 12 flights carrying the 3,000 1st Cavalry Division soldiers left at 8:50 a.m.   CDT (1350 GMT) and would take about 20 hours to arrive in Kuwait.   The deployment, which began on Wednesday, was ordered by President Bill Clinton as part of efforts to deter Iraqi aggression against its neighbours.   As the troops arrive in Kuwait, they are being moved quickly to join training exercises with M1A1 Abrams tanks and M2A2 Bradley Fighting Vehicles in the desert about 25 miles (40 km) from the Iraqi border.   Most of the tanks and heavy equipment were already in place in Kuwait, but the departing troops took key satellite and radar equipment with them.   They joined about 1,200 soldiers already in Kuwait before the latest Gulf crisis began.   The ground troops' formal mission is to train Kuwaiti forces, but officials said they could be used in any military action against Iraq.   It was Iraq's invasion of Kuwait that sparked the 1991 Gulf War.   The U.S. military launched cruise missile strikes against air defence facilities in southern Iraq two weeks ago after Iraq moved against Kurds in the north.   Clinton has also ordered expansion of a no-fly zone excluding Iraqi warplanes in southern Iraq.   Fort Hood is the U.S. Army's largest base.   It holds about 45,000 troops and lies just outside Killeen in central Texas, about 120 miles (190 km) south of Dallas. 
19829 !GCAT !GSCI  Away from home in outer space, Shannon Lucid was still a "world-class" mom, her family says.   During her six-month stay on Russia's space station Mir, Lucid has kept close tabs on husband Mike, daughters Kawai and Shandara and son Michael through electronic mail and video conferences.   "She likes to know everything that's going on," Kawai said in an interview.   "With three kids, if you don't tell something about yourself, the others are going to tell, so she has a lot of reliable sources.   She gives her advice from space and gets her opinion in on everybody's life."   "She's certainly a world-class mother," added husband Mike.   Shannon's hair, which she started wearing in a bun, was a talking point during family video conferences.   "We tease her about her hair everytime, because it gets longer and gets put in some different kind of bun," said Kawai.   "We give her hair advice a lot."   Shannon declined an offer to cut her hair from Yuri Onufrienko and Yuri Usachev, her Russian crewmates for the first five months of the mission.   She will probably wait for an appointment at her favourite hairdresser in Houston.   "She has gone to the same one for a long time," her husband explained.   The unexpected extension of the mission in July was a disappointment for Shannon and her family.   She was due to return in early August but shuttle booster problems and hurricanes pushed back her homecoming by nearly seven weeks.   "It was a little bit of a downer because she had decided to start thinking about coming home and she likes to anticipate what's coming next," said Mike.   For daughter Shandara it also meant an unexpected shopping trip to buy birthday presents for brother Michael, who celebrated his 21st on August 22, and sister Kawai, who turned 28 on Thursday.   "She ended up missing both those birthdays and had planned on being home in time to buy them presents," Shandara said.   The family had books, candies and animal puppets sent to Mir to keep up Shannon's spirits.   Sometimes at night they would go out to watch the space station cross the sky above the family home in Houston like a bright moving star.   "Everybody waved and we kind of imagined that Mom was waving back," said Kawai.   The family gathered again late on Wednesday to watch on television as shuttle Atlantis, Shannon's ride home, successfully docked with the Russian space outpost.   "We were excited that they actually hooked up and she could be back on American ground as it were," said Mike.   Atlantis is due to leave the station Monday and bring Shannon back to Earth on Thursday morning.   Her family plans to bring flowers, but according to Mike: "A fresh change of clothes is probably the main thing that she's interested in." 
19830 !GCAT !GDEF  The Virginia Military Institute, the country's last state-supported military academy to bar women, decided on Saturday to bow to a Supreme Court ruling and admit women after 157 years as an all-male school.   The decision was made in a 9-8 vote by the school's governing body following a June 26 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that the academy must open its doors to women or become a private school.   VMI, founded in 1839, was the only state-supported college in the country that had yet to admit women.   The institute had said women would be unable to withstand its tough mental and physical training known as "the Rat Line".   The Citadel, the only other state-supported U.S. military academy, admitted females in September after the high court's ruling in the VMI case.   "The board made this decision with the full understanding that VMI will not change the military and academic features of its culture, which has distinguished the institute since its founding," William Berry, president of the Board of Visitors, told a news conference.   "VMI will welcome women who come ready to meet the rigourous challenges they will find at VMI.   I am resolute about VMI's future and its ability to meet this new test of its inherent greatness."   In Washington, the Justice Department said it was pleased by the decision.   "We trust the school will now begin encouraging and accepting applications from women looking to enroll in next year's entering class," said Deval Patrick, a civil rights attorney in the Justice Department.   Gen. Josiah Bunting, the institute's superintendant and a graduate of the class of 1963, said changes to accomodate women would be minimal.   "Female cadets will be treated exactly as male cadets are treated," he said.   He said women will have to get the "buzz" hair cut required of cadets.   They will live in barracks, and while they will have their own showers there will be no locks on the doors.   "We teach what are called the vigorous virtues -- determination, self-reliance, self-control and courage.   This is achieved through the application of mental stress, physical rigour, minute regulation of behaviour, pressures, hazards and physcological bonding," Bunting said.   Women will be admitted beginning in August 1997 to the academy, which currently has about 1,200 cadets.   Spokesman Mike Strickler said that since the Supreme Court ruling about 80 women had enquired about admission.   The eight dissenters on the board wanted to privatise the school but faced funding difficulties.   The Supreme Court had ruled that VMI was unconstitutionally discriminating against women.   Following the ruling, The Citadel, founded in 1842, admitted four women. 
19831 !GCAT !GVIO  Turkey has urged President Saddam Hussein to reassert his authority in northern Iraq and crush separatist Turkish Kurds based there, to the dismay of the United States, which wants to keep Saddam boxed in, The New York Times reported on Saturday.   The newspaper, in an interview with Turkish Foreign Minister Tansu Ciller, quoted her as saying Ankara would drop its plan to create a "security zone" inside Iraq if Saddam took steps to crush Turkish Kurds waging a guerrilla war against Ankara from camps in northern Iraq.   Ciller said Turkey was having talks with Saddam on the issue.   "We are still talking to him, and we are interested to see what he can do or is prepared to do.   If he can establish a degree of rule there that puts an end to terrorist infiltration, that would be fine with us.   "If not, we will take measures to see that terrorists do not continue to operate on our borders.   We defend the territorial integrity of Iraq, but the lack of authority there has been tragic for us," Ciller said.   The New York Times said senior U.S. administration officials were "dismayed" by Ciller's remarks.   It quoted a senior State Department official as saying: "This does not accord with the discussions the United States has had with Turkey.   Perhaps it is Turkey's way of signalling to the Unite States that it has alternatives."   Turkey announced plans early in September to create a security zone in northern Iraq up to six miles (9.6 km) deep, and Washington said it would not object if Ankara went ahead with the scheme.   Turkey said the cordon would deter infiltration from Iraq by guerrillas of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), fighting for self-rule in Turkey's Kurdish southeast.   The Turkish plan followed U.S. missile strikes on military installations in southern Iraq in response to the Iraqi army's intervention in northern Iraq to help a Kurdish faction seize a city from a rival group a week ago.   Ciller did not say if Turkey wanted Saddam to send his own troops back into northern Iraq or influence his Kurdish allies to do the job of pushing out PKK forces.   For the past five years, Iraqi forces have been barred from the northern part of Iraq, where the United States and its allies established a safe haven for Kurds after the Gulf War.   But Kurdish authorities in the enclave have been unwilling or unable to close Turkish separatist Kurdistan Workers Party camps there.   The Times said the emerging policy differences suggested that relations between Turkey and the United States may be entering a new and possibly difficult phase in the wake of recent power shifts in northern Iraq.   The United States is seeking to limit Saddam's power and prevent him from disrupting the flow of oil from the Middle East to Western industrial nations. 
19832 !GCAT !GDEF  A U.S. Foreign Service officer who vanished in Shenandoah National Park in Virginia last month may have compromised Navy missile secrets while serving as a lieutenant in the Gulf, the Washington Post reported on Saturday.   James Schneider, 27, was last seen on Aug. 30 at a restaurant in the park, just days after his expected assignment to Greece was cancelled because he failed two polygraph tests, law enforcement officials said.   Local television stations reported that Schneider disappeared shortly after Federal Bureau of Investigation agents gave him a lie detector test.   WJLA-TV, the local ABC affiliate, quoted Jason Knutson, Schneider's roommate, denying speculation that Schneider was a CIA agent, although he said Schneider had interviewed for a job with the spy agency.   The Post quoted unnamed federal investigators as saying that Schneider failed sections of the polygraph test which focused on whether he had mishandled classified information or been contacted by foreign agents while he was aboard the USS Chancellorsville.   "The anxiety at the Navy is very high," the newspaper quoted one law enforcement official as saying.   "At one extreme, it could be just that he got sloppy and lost a few documents.   At the other, he could be sitting in Moscow.   We have to assume the worst, but hope for the best."   Rangers in Shenandoah Park found Schneider's rented Hyundai sedan in a parking lot 10 miles (16 km) from Big Meadows Lodge, where he was last seen, the Post reported.   In it, they found newly purchased camping equipment, two boxes of ammunition, and a sales slip for a recently purchased handgun, but no gun.   Schneider graduated from Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service in 1991, then joined the Navy and was honourably discharged in June 1995.   The Post said Schneider applied for a job with the CIA but was turned down because he failed a general polygraph test that is customarily administered to agency applicants.   He enrolled in the Foreign Service Institute in November 1995 and was due to depart this month for Greece, where he was to be a consular and administrative officer, the Post said, quoting State Department spokesman John Dinger. 
19833 !GCAT !GPOL !GVOTE  The Reform Party's vice presidential candidate Pat Choate on Friday challenged President Bill Clinton to appear in a debate with Ross Perot, even if Republican Bob Dole did not want to participate.   The Commission on Presidential Debates recommended on Tuesday that Perot be excluded from the presidential debates, saying he had no realistic chance of winning the election.   But Perot is fighting back.   On Friday, he lodged a formal complaint with the Federal Election Commission and said he planned to file a lawsuit over the decision to bar him from the debates.   Then, speaking on ABC-TV's "Good Morning America," the Texas billionaire challenged Dole to "meet him in St. Louis," where the first debate originally was to take place Sept. 25.   Later Friday, Choate invited President Clinton to debate Perot on his own.   The Clinton campaign has supported Perot's participation, while the Dole camp opposes it.   In a conversation on CNN's "Talk Back Live" programme, Choate told Clinton's deputy campaign manager Ann Lewis, "what would you think about Bill Clinton and Ross Perot doing a debate, and then we invite Bob Dole.   If he wants to come, fine.   If he doesn't want to come, fine."   Lewis replied: "Pat Choate is full of good and interesting ideas.   I think what I've got to do is take this idea ... back to (Commerce Secretary) Mickey Kantor, he's our lead negotiator."   A spokeswoman for the campaign said Lewis had passed the invitation on to Kantor and negotiators would discuss it Saturday morning.   Kantor is due to meet Dole's lead negotiator on the debates, former South Carolina Gov. Carroll Campbell, at 9 a.m.   EDT (1300 GMT) on Saturday.   The two sides are still at odds on the format, dates and number of debates.   The Clinton camp has proposed that Perot be included in one debate; Dole's team are resisting. 
19834 !GCAT !GENT !GPRO  Singer Mel Torme, who suffered a stroke last month, is being treated in a hospital intensive care unit for a gastro-intestinal complaint, his publicist said Friday.   The 71-year-old singer, nicknamed "The Velvet Fog" for his throaty voice, should be out of intensive care early next week to resume his neurological rehabilitation, said Rob Wilcox.   He said the complaint, which forced Torme back into the intensive care unit this week, was now under control.   Torme suffered a minor stroke on Aug. 8 and Wilcox said he expected him to soon resume his singing career. 
19835 !GCAT !GPOL !GPRO  First lady Hillary Rodham Clinton announced Friday that her book on educating children, "It Takes A Village," had earned $742,000 in royalties.   Clinton has promised to donate after-tax royalties from the book, which Republicans bashed roundly at their August convention, to benefit children's hospitals.   In a statement released Friday, Clinton said she would seek the advice of the National Association of Children's Hospitals and Related Institutions in distributing the funds.   Clinton's book deal with publisher Simon and Schuster stipulates that she is to receive 15 percent of the suggested retail price of the book.   The royalties collected thus far have been deposited in an interest-bearing checking account and will be distributed after the November election, the statement said. 
19836 !GCAT !GDEF !GVIO  The U.S. Defence Department said on Friday the U.S. issued improper training manuals in the 1980s which encouraged South American military officers to pay informants to help capture or kill guerrillas.   It said that six manuals containing two dozen objectionable phrases on treatment of informants and guerrillas violated U.S. policy at that time and were recovered and destroyed.   A defence official said U.S. Army specialists who helped develop the manuals, written in Spanish, included practices that had been U.S. policy as late as the 1960s but were outlawed by the 1980s.   The Defence Department said other phrases in the manuals suggested informants could be controlled with fear, beatings, truth serum and death threats.   It said the manuals were used by students at the U.S. Army's School of the Americas, which trains military officers, police and civilians from Latin America, and were distributed to intelligence schools in several Latin American countries.   "The counterintelligence agent must offer presents and compensation for information leading to the arrest, capture or death of guerrillas," a manual titled "Handling of Sources" said.   It also said "threats should not be made (against informants) unless they can be carried out and the employee (informant) realises that such threats could be carried out."   A manual titled "Terrorism and the Urban Guerrilla" referred to extortion as a method of interrogation.   It also said one function of counterintelligence agents was to recommend "targets for neutralising".   A defence memorandum said the manuals also contained classified information that could have compromised U.S. Army counterintelligence methods at the time.   A defence official said the course material that was later included in the manuals was developed by specialists at the Army Intelligence Centre at Fort Huachuca in Arizona beginning in 1982.   He said the manuals were written by a unit at the U.S. Southern Command in Panama.   He said neither group apparently realised that some of the practices included had by that time been outlawed by U.S. policy.   The Pentagon said the manuals were used by trainers in Latin America from 1987 to 1989 and by the School of the Americas from 1989 to 1991 when they were recovered and destroyed. 
19837 !C12 !CCAT !GCAT !GCRIM  The jury in the trial of agricultural cooperative Sun-Diamond Growers of California met all day Friday without reaching a verdict, and deliberations will continue next week.   Sun-Diamond -- the nation's biggest fruit cooperative, with affiliates that include Sun Maid raisins, Sunsweet prunes and Diamond Walnut -- has been charged with nine criminal violations.   It is accused, among other things, of illegally giving gifts to then-Secretary of Agriculture Mike Espy in 1993 and 1994 because of his senior position in the Clinton administration.   The charges arose out of two-year special government investigation of Espy.   The Sun-Diamond case is the first to come to court as a result of the probe.   Espy resigned from the Cabinet in 1994 amid accusations he had accepted illegal gifts and favors from companies the Agriculture Department was charged with regulating. 
19838 !GCAT !GPOL  President Clinton will sign a bill that bans the federal government from recognizing same-sex marriage shortly after he returns to Washington early Saturday, the White House said Friday.   Asked why Clinton would sign the bill in the early morning hours, White House Press Secretary Mike McCurry said, "Because the president believes the motives behind this bill are dubious and the president believes that the sooner he gets this over with the better."    Clinton has opposed same-sex marriages, but believes the Republican Congress passed the measure in a bid to make gay rights an election-year issue.   No state legally recognizes marriage between two people of the same sex.   The bill recognizes each state's right to make its own determination of what constitutes a marriage but says no federal recognition will be given to gay or lesbian unions.   Clinton, wrapping up a four-day campaign swing, was slated to return to Washington shortly after midnight. 
19839 !GCAT !GCRIM  Two former attorneys for multimillionaire John du Pont, listing what they said were his delusions, testified Friday that du Pont said the Republican Party, not he, had killed an Olympic wrestler.   Fired defence attorney Richard Sprague, testifying at a competency hearing, said that during the nine months since du Pont was arrested in the Jan. 26 shooting death of wrestler David Schultz, he had never expressed rational knowledge of why he was in jail.   Sprague quoted the defendant as saying Schultz had been killed by the Republicans because du Pont, the 57-year-old heir to a chemical company fortune, did not contribute to the party.   Sprague said du Pont had continually pressed his defence team to "see Bill Clinton" to get him out of jail, "and if Mr. Clinton didn't do what he wanted, he would see that a plane went over the White House and dropped eggs."   Sprague said when he joked about scrambled eggs, du Pont became angry and shot back, "You don't trifle with the Dali Lama and make jokes."   The hearing on du Pont's competency to stand trial will continue Saturday before Delaware County Common Pleas Judge Patricia Jenkins.   She has set a Jan. 30 trial date.   Psychiatrists are expected to testify for both sides about whether du Pont knows the nature and quality of the charges against him and can participate in his own defence.   On cross-examination by Special Assistant District Attorney Dennis McAndrews, Sprague acknowledged that du Pont had signed a contract stipulating $300-an-hour fees for him and other attorneys in his firm.   He said that so far he had billed du Pont $1.5 million.   Du Pont fired Sprague and fellow attorney William Lamb Jan. 10, claiming they were conspiring with the CIA, the two lawyers testified. 
19840 !GCAT !GPOL  The White House database listing thousands of individuals was much bigger than previously acknowledged, the chairman of a House investigating panel said Friday.   Rep David McIntosh, R-Indiana, said a review of 2,000 documents turned over Thursday by the White House showed it "has not honestly characterised" the size of the database.   He said White House Counsel Jack Quinn had written that the database had cost the taxpayers $545,000 -- but the documents showed cost estimates at more than $1.7 million.   McIntosh also said the documents showed that in April there were 300,000 individuals and 50,000 organisations stored in the database, although the White House had said it contained the names of 200,000 individuals.   "The fact that organisations are even tracked is particularly disturbing because White House staff members told me directly when I visited the White House that the (database) organisation tracking feature was never implemented," he said.   McIntosh said the subcommittee had also been "misled" by a list showing fewer than 150 past and present White House staffers had access to the database because the documents showed more than 200 people had access. 
19841 !CCAT !GCAT !GDIS  The TWA jet that erupted in flames in July over the Atlantic was used for a bomb training operation that could have left traces of explosives found by investigators, officials said on Friday.   Packages containing explosive chemicals were put on board the Boeing 747 in the past year as part of a training exercise for bomb-sniffing dogs, the Federal Bureau of Investigation said in a statement.   The test packages were removed from the Boeing 747 when the training exercise ended, sometime in the past year, the FBI said.   Those explosives would not have caused an explosion to destroy the plane, said Shelly Hazle, a spokeswoman for the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), which is leading the investigation.   "They only used bomb-making materials," she said.   "They weren't planting bombs and didn't leave one on board."   The Paris-bound TWA Flight 800 exploded without warning in midair on July 17 off the coast of Long Island, New York, killing all 230 people on board.   Investigators seeking the cause of the deadly crash have found microscopic chemical traces of two types of explosives in the wreckage but have said they lack sufficient evidence to declare that a bomb destroyed the plane.   They have been puzzled by the lack of physical evidence of a bomb, such as distinctive scarring or so-called pinging, on the wreckage.   "This could discount the traces that were found," the NTSB spokeswoman said.   The FBI did not say what types of explosives were used in the dog-sniffing tests or precisely when they were carried out.   Investigators have said privately that the chemical traces they found in the wreckage were of PETN and RDX, both prime ingredients in the plastic explosive Semtex.   Investigators maintain there are three possible explanations for the crash -- a bomb, a missile or a mechanical failure -- but this latest revelation could diminish the possiblity that it was a bomb.   TWA spokesman John McDonald said from the airline's headquarters in St. Louis that the airline could not confirm that the plane was used to test bomb-detection dogs.   "We haven't received information that in fact that's what happened," he said.   The U.S. Navy and Coast Gaurd have been recovering the plane's debris from the floor of the Atlantic Ocean, and investigators have been reassembling the wreckage in an old aircraft hangar in Calverton, New York.   Investigators also have travelled to London to look at a mock-up of Pan Am Flight 103, which blew up over Lockerbie, Scotland in 1988 killing 259 people aboard and 11 on the ground.   The bodies of 213 of the 230 victims on Flight 800 have been recovered. 
19842 !E12 !ECAT !G15 !G154 !GCAT  EU finance ministers agreed on Saturday on the architecture of a new currency grid to be set up after European monetary union, which will be modelled on the existing system with wide fluctuation bands, officials said.   The new exchange rate mechanism, the ERM II, will limit fluctuations between the newly launched Euro and currencies whose countries are waiting to join European monetary union when their economies are ready.   "It is in the interests of all for as many as possible to participate," Bundesbank president Hans Tietmeyer said.   Ministers said the ERM II, of which membership will be voluntary, would be based on the existing system introduced in 1993 after a currency crisis forced the European Union to abandon a much tighter currency grid.   Now currencies are allowed to fluctuate 15 percent either side of a central rate.   "There is a consensus to maintain the relatively wide bands of today," French Finance Minister Jean Arthuis told reporters.   In the ERM II, the exchange rates of countries wanting to join monetary union will be fixed against the Euro.   One delegation source said ministers had been asked whether they had any objection to maintaining the current system after the launch of the euro, and none had objected.   "My reading of that is that it will be plus or minus 15 percent," the source said.   A European Commission spokesman said though that narrower bands were possible for countries with economies which were closely aligned to those of the euro zone.   Ministers however, did not in their talks specify an exact figure, which Arthuis said would be left to heads of state to approve at a summit here in December.   One technical problem to be ironed out was over how to deal with the unlikely possibility that currencies actually swung 60 percent against each other -- which could only happen if one started at the maximum 15 percent above the euro and the other 15 percent below, and then reversed positions.   "We have not finalised the bands for ERM II.   We have asked for additional work to be done.   We want some more clarity on how it is going to function and ensure that the new ERM will work efficiently," Irish Finance Minister Ruairi Quinn said.   Commission officials also hinted countries still outside European monetary union which failed to follow sensible monetary and fiscal policies could lose the support of the future European Central Bank (ECB) if their currencies came under pressure on exchange markets.   That would mean the ECB might either stop intervening to support those currencies or it would suggest a devaluation.   "There may be an implicit deal between respect of economic programmes in the (convergence) plan and membership of the ERM II," a Commission spokesman said.   European Monetary Institute head Alexandre Lamfalussy, in a confidential letter written earlier this month, a copy of which was circulating at the talks, recommended that the ECB would have the right to initiate procedures aimed at realigning currencies in ERM II if necessary.   "The ECB should have at its discretion the right to suspend intervention if it appers that the amount of intervention would put at risk price stability in the euro area," Lamfalussy told reporters.   But Lamfalussy said given the width of the new fluctuation bands, the question about the limits on European Central Bank intervention would arise only in very exceptional circumstances.   "This would be an exceptional situation because the margins will be wide and of the same order as ERM I," he said. 
19843 !E12 !ECAT !G15 !G154 !GCAT !GPOL  British Chancellor of the Exchequer Kenneth Clarke said on Saturday he would not rule out membership of a single European currency despite attempts by right-wingers in his party to fuel "civil war" on the issue.   As Clarke met other European Union finance ministers in Dublin for negotiations on Economic and Monetary Union (EMU), bitter infighting over membership of a single currency continued within the ruling Conservative party in Britain.   Former Conservative minister Norman Tebbitt told BBC radio that the government should rule out membership of monetary union, even if this provoked Clarke's resignation.   It was the latest in a series of attacks on a single currency from within the ranks of the Conservative party, which remains openly divided on EMU membership.   But Clarke insisted that a single currency could be beneficial for Britain.   "The policy of the government is that we would choose whether to join the single currency when the most sensible time arrived," Clarke told reporters at the talks in Dublin.   "We would be more popular in the country if some of my colleagues or former colleagues...would stop this extraordinary attempt to get a civil war open to change that policy."   Clarke said the prospects of EMU taking place within the next few years were improving.   "I get the feeling ever more clearly that it is going to go ahead," he said.   He said Britain would await the full details of a single currency framework before deciding whether to join, adding that such a move might prove to be in Britain's interests.   "A single currency could offer the prospects of stability, low interest rates, and a zone of economic conditions which attract investment and stimulate the growth of trade."   One of the main points on the Dublin agenda was a Stabilty Pact, a scheme to ensure that EMU members stick to disciplined economic policies not only before they sign up to monetary union but afterwards as well.   Clarke said Britain was committed to sound anti-inflationary policies although it would fight to retain flexibilty and control over policy-making.   But he said there was no conflict between the economic policies Britain would choose to pursue and the measures required for EMU membership.   "The Maastricht criteria are good economics and any country that follows them has a better chance of sustaining growth and falling unemployment than a country that fails to," he said.   The Dublin meeting also discussed a successor to the Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM), which would define the relationship between the single currency and the currencies outside it.   Britain left the current Exchange Rate Mechanism in 1992 after a heavy run on sterling and Clarke said the country would not join ERM II, although he would not attempt to gain competitive advantage through strategic devaluations.   He insisted that whether or not Britain joined a single currency, the country would not face discrimination from other member states after monetary union.   "I'm...determined to ensure that it does not have any divisive or discriminatory effect as far as the member states are concerned," Clarke said.   "There was nothing proposed today that was remotely discriminatory to the UK." 
19844 !E12 !ECAT !G15 !G154 !GCAT  European Union finance ministers and central bank governors laid the foundations on Saturday for three critical areas of monetary union, taking a giant leap towards the realisation of a common currency.   "We are well on the way to a single currency," French Finance Minister Jean Arthuis told reporters.   The ministers, meeting in a Dublin castle, reached broad agreement on setting up a budget stability pact to punish countries joining Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) in 1999 if they pursued lax budget policies.   There was also consensus on the outline for a new Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM) which would link a new "Euro" currency to those not participating in EMU.   In addition they agreed to clarify the legal basis for the Euro as quickly as possible to instill confidence among businesses and financial markets.   "We have made substantial progress on the three areas set before us," Irish Finance Minister Ruairi Quinn told a news conference, predicting that any outstanding issues would be resolved by the end of the year.   Other ministers echoed his remarks after the talks intended to iron out the technical details of the EMU blueprint.   Britain's Chancellor of the Exchequer, Kenneth Clarke, told Reuters that details of the stability pact had been sent back to the EU Commission for further study.   "We have made a lot of progress but have referred it back to do more work," he said.   Issues still to be resolved include how much countries would be fined for running annual deficits above three percent of Gross Domestic Product and how long a government would have to put its finances back in order before incurring a penalty.   Germany, the catalyst behind the pact, has argued for six to seven months, a period considered by many to be too short for a government to adopt a credible new budget plan.   EU officials said a consensus of around nine months appeared to be emerging.   One final challenge is a better definition of the "exceptional" economic circumstances which would lead to a deterioration in a government's finances.   In such cases a delinquent government would essentially be let off the hook.   The stability pact is central to the EMU design because it would force the member states to stick to tough anti-inflationary policies aimed at monetary stability.   Ministers agreed that a new ERM should be voluntary and include relatively wide and flexible trading bands for currencies outside the EMU zone.   Alexandre Lamfalussy, president of the European Monetary Institute, forerunner to a European central bank (ECB), said there was also recognition that the bank should have a prominent role in realigning currencies under pressure.   While the bank would support ailing currencies outside of EMU, he cautioned that such intervention would not be limitless.   "The ECB should have at its discretion the right to suspend intervention if it appears that the amount...would put at risk price stability in the EMU zone," Lamfalussy told reporters.   Lamfalussy also proposed to the ministers that exchange rates for currencies versus the Euro should be set in early 1998, the same time as a decision will be made on which countries will be the first to sign up to EMU.   The ministers agreed to secure a regulation establishing a legal framework for the Euro.   This would remove a key worry of some businessmen by ensuring that contracts drawn up in national currencies would be respected after the start of EMU. 
19845 !E12 !ECAT !G15 !G154 !GCAT  European Union finance ministers and central bank governors reached consensus on Saturday on how to define the legal status of a proposed Euro single currency due to be introduced in 1999.   Establishing a regulation which ensures legal certainty for investors and businesses who expect to use the Euro has been a major concern and one of the items for discussion in Dublin on preparations for Economic and Monetary Union (EMU).   While the European Commission has made considerable headway in assuaging concerns of financial markets, particularly on the dominant worry that contracts drawn up in national currencies will be respected after the start of EMU, how to nail it down in legislative form had remained elusive.   The problem, say EU officials, relates to the constraints the Maastricht treaty imposes on finance ministers in implementing such a regulation quickly.   The relevant part of the treaty, Article 109L4, stipulates that legal decisions on the single currency can only be taken when it is launched in 1999.   But for many that is too late and would slow the necessary and costly preparations businesses must make.   One way around this legal obstacle is to opt for Article 235, a sort of catch-all for decisions which go outside the bounds of the treaty.   The reluctance to use this route, however, stems from the fact that unanimity is required among all of the EU's 15 members.   In classic EU fashion, what the ministers and bankers have decided is to split the difference -- essentially, use Article 235 for the most urgent legal decisions -- the new currency's name, the continuity of contracts and a one-to-one conversion rate between the Euro and Ecu-denominated contracts.   Less pressing matters would be left until 1999 and brought into force under Article 109L4.   The Commission will put forward a paper on this issue in mid-October, say officials, with a view towards formal adoption in December when EU leaders gather for a summit.   "We will propose the legal regulation under (Article) 109L4 but note that the most urgent matters be proposed under (Article) 235," said one Commission official.   French Finance Minister Jean Arthuis told a news conference on Saturday that there would be a political declaration recognising the decision on the legal status.   "The important thing will be to have an unambiguous political declaration during the Dublin summit," Arthuis said.   Echoing the progress made on this somewhat vexing issue, Bank of France governor Jean-Claude Trichet said that ministers had come up with exactly what was needed for markets and banks.   Squaring away the Euro's legal uncertainties was one of three items under discussion on Saturday.   The ministers and bankers also discussed a new Exchange Rate Mechanism after the start of EMU and a budget Stability Pact to enforce budgetary discipline among members. 
19846 !GCAT !GREL  Pope John Paul struck out at the exclusion of society's weakest members on Saturday, kissing an AIDS sufferer and telling a church filled with the sick and marginalised that they were a living image of God.   The Pope, who has drawn criticism from AIDS campaigners for his opposition to the use of condoms to guard against the disease, launched a strong appeal for solidarity at the emotional meeting, held in the basilica of Tours on the third day of a visit to France.   The Roman Catholic Pontiff attacked selfishness in society and called for a fairer distribution of resources.   "Every person wounded in body or in spirit, every person deprived of their most elementary rights, is a living image of Christ," the 76-year-old Pontiff told an audience that included immigrants, homeless people, and the mentally and physically handicapped, one of them on a stretcher.   "Whatever their origin, whatever the weight of their problems, refusing to see them is to condemn oneself to understand nothing about life," he said.   He waded through the small crowd, kissing an emaciated AIDS sufferer, blessing a boy in a wheelchair, stroking heads.   French Church officials said prostitutes had also been invited to the meeting as well as a young non-Christian rape victim who wanted to meet the Pope to restore her dignity.   The Pope's speech was his strongest so far on a visit that has stirred controversy over the separation of Church and state and the Pontiff's conservative injunctions on sexual issues, including his opposition to condom use to guard against AIDS.   Some 1,800 leftists and anarchists protested peacefully a few hundred meters (yards) from the basilica where the Pope was speaking.   "He could not see them," a spokeman for the prefect (government representative) said.   The turn-of-the-century basilica holds the relics of Saint Martin, a fourth-century bishop of Tours whose charity the Pope hailed at a mass to mark the 1,600th anniversary of his death.   As a Roman officer, according to legend, Martin ripped his cloak at the gates to the French city of Amiens and shared it with a poor man dying of cold whom other passers-by had ignored.   "A society is judged on how it treats those afflicted by life and the attitude towards them," the Pope said.   He launched an "appeal for real solidarity among all people" and suggested that rich countries like France must share resources more equitably among their people and with others elsewhere, and find new ways of ensuring employment for all.   "When will all the rights of people be truly respected -- to work, to a home, to one's culture, to health, to an existence worthy of this name?"   he asked.   A stagnating economy has brought France record unemployment and a growing number of homeless.   "The Church would gravely lack its mission if She did not remind everyone of this urgent obligation to do everything possible in the rich societies of the West as in every society, to root out the scourges which are rampant on the surface of our planet," the Pope said.   His four-day visit is his fifth to mainland France and his last trip abroad before expected surgery to remove his appendix.   Despite frailty, he has appeared relatively robust and at ease during the trip, billed as a test of his ability to rally his flock in a once fervent Roman Catholic nation that is now largely indifferent to his moral teachings.   The main event of the visit will be an open-air mass in the eastern city of Reims on Sunday to celebrate the 1,500th anniversary of the baptism of Clovis, the first pagan king in western Europe to convert to Catholicism.   Critics charge that the Pope's presence in Reims would seem to sanction the extreme nationalistic view -- embraced by the far-right National Front -- that the baptism marked the creation of a Catholic France.   Clovis's kingdom stretched from what is now Germany and the Netherlands into France.   Sixty-seven groups, including leftists, anarchists and freemasons, are to rally in Paris on Sunday against his visit.   Secularists have also called for a protest in Reims. 
19847 !E12 !ECAT !G15 !G154 !GCAT !M13 !M132 !MCAT  European Union Finance ministers made "substantial progress" on key areas of plans to create Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) at Dublin talks on Saturday but said more work was needed on a pact to underpin it.   Irish Finance Minister Ruairi Quinn, the meeting's host, said further study was needed on a so-called stability pact to impose discipline on member states adopting a single "Euro" currency envisaged in January 1999.   But he said the meeting made headway on agreeing a legal framework for the new currency as well as on relationships between those states which adopt it and those which do not.   "We have made substantial progress on the three areas set before us" Quinn told a news conference.   His statement was echoed by other ministers after talks at a Dublin city castle supposed to iron out the technical details of the EMU blueprint.   Britain's Chancellor of the Exchequer, Kenneth Clarke, told Reuters that details of the stability pact had been referred back to the EU Commission for further study.   "We have made a lot of progress but have referred it back to do more work," he said.   The plan is supposed to be finalised for study by an EU summit meeting in Dublin in December.   Irish officials said they reached broad agreement on the legal status of the Euro and relationships between the so-called "ins" and "outs" in morning talks.   But it had always been clear that the discussion of the stability pact, the main topic for the final session of the talks, was going to be more problematic.   The stability pact is central to the EMU design because it will force the member states to stick to tough anti-inflationary policies aimed at monetary stability.   A system of fines aimed at punishing deliquent states is envisaged for countries which let their budget deficits run out of control. 
19848 !E12 !E41 !E411 !ECAT !GCAT !GJOB  More than 12,000 demonstrators marched through Paris on Saturday to protest against what they said was government inertia in the face of record unemployment.   The rally, organised by the centrist Force Ouvriere (FO) union, marked the first sign of resistance to Prime Minister Alain Juppe's 1997 budget, which fulfils criteria required for European Monetary Union through government spending cuts.   The FO says the 1997 budget, which was presented this week, contains no measures to reduce the record 12.5 percent jobless rate.   It says 100,000 people risk losing their jobs this year and between 120,000 and 150,000 next year.   "It's not because some technocrats arbitrarily defined certain economic criteria several years ago that these criteria should constitute a Bible," FO leader Marc Blondel told the crowd gathered at Bastille square.   He said the outlook for jobs was even gloomier among young people.   "Two out of three say, 'We won't have work.'   Whether or not they're right, this reflects such a poor outlook that our society will have great difficulty to go on.   We say no to layoffs because if not, our society will explode," Blondel said.   "Tomorrow perhaps others will join us," he told the crowd, which marched a short way to the Place de la Nation.   Estimates from police and organisers ranged from 12,000 to 30,000 demonstrators.   Despite a barrage of union warnings of unrest, reactions to the budget have so far been relatively subdued and the FO protest was not joined by the other large unions.   For the moment, there are few signs of turmoil on anything like the scale of late last year, when railworkers worried by government plans to trim pension rights -- plans now abandoned -- spearheaded a crippling 24-day-long public transport strike.   The country's largest labour union, the Socialist CFDT, has not yet talked of demonstrations, but said the budget would not "reassure the vast majority worried by unemployment."   The centre-right government's budget for next year provides for spending cuts and savings worth 60 billion francs ($11.7 billion), including some 6,000 civil service job cuts, to help France get its public finances ready for the move to a single European currency.   The drive to monetary union requires countries to trim their deficit to three percent of gross national product in 1997.   Louis Viannet, head of the Communist-led CGT union, said in an interview in the newspaper Le Monde on Friday that the budget sacrificed jobs in the name of preparing for monetary union and would drive a bigger wedge between rich and poor.   "I keep hearing 'things are going to explode'.   I've no idea, but we are facing a situation which could rapidly trigger a reaction of rebellion," Viannet said.   Another measure of resistance will come at the end of this month when teachers are set to stage a strike to protest at the loss of more than 2,500 state education posts.   ($1=5.139 French Franc) 
19849 !GCAT !GREL  Pope John Paul struck out at the exclusion of society's weakest members on Saturday, telling a church filled with the sick and marginalised that they were a living image of God.   Launching a strong appeal for solidarity at the emotional meeting, held in the basilica of Tours on the third day of a visit to France, the Pope attacked selfishness in society and called for a fairer distribution of resources.   "Every person wounded in body or in spirit, every person deprived of their most elementary rights, is a living image of Christ," the 76-year-old Roman Catholic Pontiff told an audience that included AIDS sufferers, immigrants, homeless people, gypsies and the mentally and physically handicapped, one of them on a stretcher.   "Whatever their origin, whatever the weight of their problems, refusing to see them is to condemn oneself to understand nothing about life," he said.   The Pope waded through the small crowd, blessing a boy in a wheelchair, stroking heads and accepting gifts of a compact disc from an AIDS sufferer and a small statue of the Virgin Mary.   French Church officials said prostitutes had also been invited to the meeting as well as a young non-Christian rape victim who wanted to meet the Pope to restore her dignity.   The Pope's speech was his strongest so far on a visit that has stirred controversy over the separation of Church and state and the Pontiff's conservative injunctions on sexual issues, including opposition to use of condoms to guard against AIDS.   He delivered it in a turn-of-the-century basilica that holds the relics of Saint Martin, a fourth-century bishop of Tours whose charity the Pope hailed at an outdoor mass earlier on Saturday to mark the 1,600th anniversary of his death.   As a Roman officer, according to legend, Martin ripped his cloak at the gates to the French city of Amiens and shared it with a poor man dying of cold whom other passers-by had ignored.   "A society is judged on how it treats those afflicted by life and the attitude towards them," the Pope said.   He launched an "appeal for real solidarity among all people" and suggested that rich countries like France must share resources more equitably among their people and with others elsewhere, and find new ways of ensuring employment for all.   "When will all the rights of people be truly respected -- to work, to a home, to one's culture, to health, to an existence worthy of this name?"   he asked.   A stagnating economy has brought France record unemployment and a growing number of homeless.   "The Church would gravely lack its mission if She did not remind everyone of this urgent obligation to do everything possible in the rich societies of the West as in every society, to root out the scourges which are rampant on the surface of our planet," the Pope said.   His four-day visit is his fifth to mainland France and his last trip abroad before expected surgery to remove his appendix.   Despite frailty, he has appeared relatively robust and at ease during the trip, billed as a test of his ability to rally his flock in a once fervent Roman Catholic nation that is now largely indifferent to his moral teachings.   The main event of the visit will be an open-air mass in the eastern city of Reims on Sunday to celebrate the 1,500th anniversary of the baptism of Clovis, the first pagan king in western Europe to convert to Catholicism.   Critics charge that the Pope's presence in Reims would seem to sanction the extreme nationalistic view -- embraced by the far-right National Front -- that the baptism marked the creation of a Catholic France.   Clovis's kingdom stretched from what is now Germany and the Netherlands into France.   Protesters, including leftists, anarchists and freemasons are to rally in Paris on Sunday against his visit.   Alain Peyrefitte, a former minister of the late president Charles de Gaulle, praised the Pontiff's courage for sticking to his visit despite poor health and sometimes mocking criticism.   "People sharing the same society...should refrain from wounding each other.   Some practices of mockery are no longer acceptable," he wrote in the conservative newspaper Le Figaro. 
19850 !GCAT !GDEF !GDIP  U.S. Defence Secretary William Perry said on Saturday that NATO had no plans to move nuclear weapons into new member states along Russia's borders but was making no promises to Moscow on the subject.   Replying to reporters' questions during a flight from Washington, Perry also noted that Moscow had resisted pressure to slash its arsenal of short-range tactical nuclear arms.   Asked if he could conceive of giving Russia a promise that nuclear arms would not be based in Eastern European countries that might gain future membership in NATO, Perry said:   "I don't think we're to the point where anybody's ready to make guarantees or commitments.   "I think NATO would want to see what's happening in the world, what's happening in Russia" before making any promise, he said.   "But there is no interest and no plan in NATO today for either increasing the number, the quantity, of (nuclear) weapons or increasing places where they are based."   The secretary, beginning a 10-day trip to Finland, Sweden, Denmark and Norway, had lunch on Saturday with Finland's President Martti Ahtisaari and also held talks on Bosnia and other security issues with Defence Minister Anneli Taina.   He said Finland, which is in the process of taking delivery of 64 U.S.-build F-18 fighter jets, could be a good influence on neighbouring Russia on behalf of the West.   Finland, which is militarily non-aligned, is not a member of NATO and is not pressing to join the alliance as are its smaller Baltic neighbours Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.   "It is veru important that Russia's concerns are taken into consideration," Taina told reporters at a joint press conference with Perry.   She said Finland, which shares a long common border with Russia, would work to alleviate Moscow's worries over NATO expansion to make sure that those concerns did not effect Baltic security.   Perry said aboard his aircraft earlier that Washington had urged Moscow to cut its Cold War battlefield nuclear arsenal commensurate with deep cuts in strategic and intermediate-range nuclear arms made by Russia and the United States, even though those tactical arms are stored far from Western Europe.   He told reporters he understood Russia's concerns about NATO expansion and that he strongly supported proposals for a new NATO charter giving Moscow a non-voting voice in alliance affairs.   The matter, Perry said, will be discussed in depth at an informal meeting of NATO defence ministers which he will attend in Bergen, Norway, on Wednesday and Thursday.   Perry told reporters that he would push for Russian participation in NATO committees "so they will have an opportunity to learn about what NATO is doing formally and to influence what NATO is doing formally."   Russians, he said, should participate in deliberations of the committee which deals with nuclear weapons although he stopped short of supporting Russian membership on the committee.   "We must get a meaningful, in-depth, concrete discussion of the future of nuclear weapons in Europe.   And to do that -- I'm talking about theatre tactical nuclear weapons -- we need to get the players together on that," Perry added.   Russian Defence Minister Igor Rodionov will attend a special session at the NATO meeting, which is also expected to take up the matter of whether and how any new international force of military peacekeepers might be sent back to Bosnia next year.   On Thursday, Rodionov, Perry and Norway's Defence Minister Joergen Kosmo will sign an agreement under which the three nations will cooperate to halt and perhaps even clean up nuclear and other waste dumped by Russia's military in the vast Arctic. 
19851 !GCAT !GPOL !GVOTE  Greek socialists crossed their fingers on Saturday that a last-minute swing to traditional leftwing rhetoric by Prime Minister Costas Simitis would win over undecided voters in Sunday's desperately tight elections.   In a final Athens rally on Friday PASOK party officials saw the Simitis they had always hoped for: making a passionate vow to safeguard the welfare policies of late party founder Andreas Papandreou and warning that a victory for the opposition conservatives would endanger the country's future.   "He finally showed his socialist face, which the voters want to see," a senior PASOK official told Reuters.   "He should have done this from the start...but better late than never."   Simitis, 60, called the snap vote a month ago, apparently certain of an easy victory, but the professorial prime minister has proved far less appealing than the fiery Papandreou, who was adored by millions of Greeks and secured three landslide PASOK wins in 1981, 1985 and 1993.   "Papandreou gave Greeks a reason to dream.   Simitis wants to give them a reason to think, but they did not respond and the vote could go either way," a poll analyst said.   Opinion polls show Simitis slightly ahead of New Democracy opposition leader Miltiades Evert, 57, but well within the accepted margin of error and leaving open the possibility of an upset on election day.   Evert, nicknamed the "Bulldozer" for his no non-nonsense style and stocky build, went into the campaign with a Papandreou-style populism, making bold promises of more money for farmers and less taxes for small businesses.   Latest polls showed an unprecedented 20 percent of the electorate still undecided, setting off alarm bells at Socialist party headquarters and forcing Simitis to pull the old Papandreou slogans out of his bottom drawer.   "On Sunday we will say "yes' to progress, "yes' to development, "yes' to a strong and socialist Greece.   Today we can tell Andreas Papandreou that PASOK is here, that the power of hope is here," Simitis said in his most enthusiatically received campaign speech.   Tens of thousands of socialists packed central Athens to hear his call to arms, unleashing a sea of balloons, blowing horns, burning flares and waving green and white flags.   He launched a blistering attack on Evert, saying: "We must remember whatever they give with one hand they take away many times over with the other."   The socialist throng erupted in chants of "The people don't forget what the right means."   Previously Simitis had clearly bored his audiences with uninspiring lectures on the need for the Greek economy to converge with those of its European partners and for a tight fiscal policy to slash state debts and inflation.   Smaller leftist parties branded him a "neo-conservative" for his failure to openly back a welfare state and polls showed them siphoning off as much as eight percent of voters who traditionally backed PASOK.   "Sometimes I feel that he is more conservative than I am," Evert said last week. 
19852 !E12 !ECAT !G15 !G154 !GCAT !GPOL  British Chancellor of the Exchequer Kenneth Clarke said on Saturday he would not rule out membership of a single European currency despite attempts by right-wingers in his party to fuel "civil war" on the issue.   Clarke, in Dublin for key European Union negotiations on a Economic and Monetary Union (EMU), said a single currency could be beneficial for Britain and he would not yield to the demands of some in the Conservative party who want Britain to stay away.   "The policy of the government is that we would choose whether to join the single currency when the most sensible time arrived," Clarke told reporters after the morning session of talks in Dublin.   "We would be more popular in the country if some of my colleagues or former colleagues...would stop this extraordinary attempt to get a civil war open to change that policy."   Clarke was responding to comments by former Conservative minster Norman Tebbit who told BBC radio earlier on Saturday that the government should rule out membership of a single currency even if this caused Clarke to resign.   It was the latest in a series of attacks on a single currency from within the ranks of the Conservative party, which remains openly divided on EMU membership.   Clarke said Conservative party in-fighting could destroy its chances of winning the next general election.   "What we need to win the next election is for the Conservative party to remain a cohesive party," he said.   "A single currency could offer the prospects of stabilty, low interest rates, and a zone of economic conditions which attract investment and stimulate the growth of trade," Clarke said.   He said he would wait to see the eventual design of the single currency framework before deciding whether to join.   One of the main points on the Dublin agenda was a Stabilty Pact, a scheme to ensure that EMU members stick to tough anti- inflationary policies not only before they sign up to union but afterwards as well.   Clarke said Britain was committed to sound anti-inflationary policies but would fight to retain flexibilty and control over policy-making.   "You have to respect the parliaments of a whole lot of independent nation states, which is what we're all going to remain," he said.   He said Britain would not join "ERM II", a framework for linking currencies outside EMU which was also being discussed at the Dublin talks.   Britain was ejected from the current Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM) in 1992 after a huge run on the pound sterling and Clarke said ERM II would have little relevance to Britain.   But he said Britain would not seek to win competitive advantage through strategic currency devaluations.   "Obviously we have to give some...confidence to the markets that there isn't going to be a structure of competitive devaluations," he said. 
19853 !E12 !ECAT !G15 !G154 !GCAT !M13 !M132 !MCAT  European Union Finance ministers made a brisk start on Saturday to agreeing key technical details of plans to forge Economic and Monetary Union, officials said.   They said ministers from the 15-nation bloc reached consensus on how to define the legal status of a proposed "Euro" single currency which is due to be introduced in 1999.   Ministers will now ask the EU's executive commission to draw up legislation to make sure that contracts drawn up in national currencies will be respected after members abandon them and switch to the Euro.   This has been a major concern for financial markets which are eager to have such issues clarified well in advance of 1999 so that they are well prepared for the change.   Additional progress was made on a new Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM), linking the Euro to currencies outside of a monetary union in an arrangement dubbed ERM Two.   "There is a deep consensus on the mechanism to be put in place," French Finance Minister Jean Arthuis told reporters after the first sessions of Saturday's talks in Dublin Castle.   "It is nobody's interest even if they are outside the single currency that the single currency is unstable," Irish Finance Minister Ruairi Quinn, the meeting's host, added.   Since not all countries are expected to qualify for the single currency in 1999, a system that imposes some degree of currency stability is considered necessary to eventually allow non-EMU members to join and guard against financial turmoil.   Hans Tietmeyer, head of the Germany's Bundesbank Central Bank, said it was vital that as many countries as possible which did not embrace the Euro took part in ERM Two to give monetary Union cohesion and strength.   Under plans being discussed in Dublin, the Euro would be the anchor of the ERM with currencies outside the arrangement trading in relatively wide bands.   The precise ranges were still to be decided but EU monetary officials said the standard bands would be 15 percent, with a possibility of narrower bands for countries which enjoy strong economic stability.   "The new system will be a system of hubs and spokes with the Euro at the center and relatively wide bands around it," a European Commisson spokesman told a news conference.   A new European Central Bank (ECB) would have a say in initiating parity changes for non-EMU currencies should they come under speculative attack, he said.   There also appeared to be agreement that the ECB's intervention to support such currencies would have limits.   Officials said intervention to support a currency would have to cease if it threatened price stability, one of EMU's key goals.   The ministers are due to focus on the more controversial issue of a budget Stability Pact for countries inside EMU on Saturday afternoon, a plan which would punish governments which ran deficits above three percent of Gross Domestic Product.   Such a pact is considered essential to ensure that EMU is launched in a credible fashion.   The results of today's meeting are expected to form the basis for talks among EU leaders when they meet in Dublin in December for summit talks. 
19854 !E12 !ECAT !G15 !G154 !GCAT  European Union finance ministers began talks on Saturday on technical details to underpin a common "Euro" currency despite doubts about how many member states would be eligible to take part.   Host Ireland, the current EU president, played down media speculation of sharply divergent positions about a plan championed by EU heavyweights France and Germany to forge Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) by January 1, 1999.   "I do not anticipate any surprises because there are no big divisions but it will be the nuances of the issues that we will want to agree," Irish Finance Minister Ruairi Quinn told reporters as the talks started in Dublin Castle.   Top of the agenda is a so-called stability pact which would penalise member states if they ran up excessive budget deficits.   Ministers will also try to iron out the workings of a new Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM) linking countries which join EMU and those which, for political or economic reasons, do not.   Britain's finance minister, Chancellor of the Exchequer Kenneth Clarke, in an apparent bid to clarify confusion over London's position, said it was important for Britain to take part fully in the talks even if it was unlikely to be among the first wave of EMU members.   "We want to try and make sure that we make a constructive contribution to getting the rules right," Clarke said.   He said Britain had a vested interest in financial stability in the 15-nation bloc so that "we don't have any countries getting into trouble and destabilising the markets."   Ministers' worst fears are that financial markets will try to reap windfalls from financial turmoil with a repeat of the kind of speculation which forced Britain and Italy to leave the EU's current ERM in 1992.   Quinn said the stability pact was essential because any divergence from agreed economic performance criteria would cause market turbulence and small countries like Ireland would suffer.   "For large countries, if they were to go offside we would see a reaction in the markets and that is why it is important to have a stability pact" he said.   Quinn named no country but was speaking days after France unveiled a 1997 budget designed to bring its budget deficit within the three percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) laid down in the EU's Maastricht criteria for EMU membership.   But it relies on a one-off transfer from the state telecommunications body to balance its books, a move which some critics have said is a manipulation of the Maastricht terms.   Countries, such as Ireland, fear their economies will be vulnerable if they join EMU while rivals outside the system can devalue their currency to make their exports more competitive.   Quinn, whose country is an enthusiastic supporter of EU and EMU membership, said he had ordered studies to ensure that the economy was not too exposed if Ireland joined EMU while its biggest trading partner, Britain, did not.   He ruled out any postponement of the start of EMU, a position echoed by France and Germany.   "All the indications are that everybody is committed to meeting the deadline of the first of January, 1999.   I believe there are enough countries on target for that," he said. 
19855 !GCAT !GREL  Pope John Paul, on the third day of a visit to France, put the focus on the need to help the weak, honouring a fourth century saint who shared his cloak with a poor man dying of cold.   His praise of Saint Martin at an outdoor mass on Saturday to mark the 1,600th anniversary of his death set the tone for a day on which the Pontiff was expected to launch a strong appeal for solidarity with the weakest members of society.   "Here in France the Church has been singing the hymn to charity for 16 centuries," the 76-year-old Pope, on his last visit abroad before surgery to remove his appendix, told worshippers gathered in sunshine at Tours military airport.   "Saint Martin was an admirable apostle, but it is not sufficient just to remember.   In the various situations of today, be in your turn living members of the living Church," he said.   Saint Martin, born in 336 in what is now Hungary, helped spread Christianity through much of western Europe.   He was a young Roman officer when, according to legend, he tore his cloak to share it with a poor man freezing to death at the gates to the northern city of Amiens.   Martin was later bishop of Tours, were he died in 397 aged 61.   His relics are held in the central city's basilica, where the Pope was due later on Saturday to meet 190 "casualties of life" -- people living in poverty or distress, including a prostitute, an AIDS victim, homosexuals, tramps and immigrants.   The Pope said at the Vatican this week that he would launch a "new appeal for solidarity with all those who suffer in their bodies and in their heart, those for whom life is precarious and threatened".   Saturday's mass, which police said drew 80,000 people, was also attended by French Protestant and Orthodox leaders whom the Pope met before the service for a brief exchange of remarks on the search for Christian unity.   The Pope also recorded a personal message on the Internet to inaugurate a new computer web site which the Catholic Church in France has set up to help spread its message.   The Pope's four-day visit to France, in which he has looked in reasonable health, has been billed as a test of his ability to rally his flock in the face of opposition and indifference to the Church's role and teachings in modern society.   Most of France's 58 million people are nominal Catholics, but only six million attend mass and many of these believe the Pope's conservative teachings opposed to abortion, birth control and homosexuality are outdated.   The main event of the Pope's visit will be an open-air mass in the eastern city of Reims on Sunday to celebrate the 1,500th anniversary of the baptism of Clovis, the first pagan king in western Europe to convert to Catholicism.   Critics charge that the Pope's presence in Reims would seem to sanction the extreme nationalistic view -- embraced by France's far-right National Front -- that the baptism marked the creation of a Catholic France.   Clovis's kingdom stretched from what is now Germany and the Netherlands into France.   Sixty-seven groups including leftists, anarchists and freemasons are planning a rally in Paris on Sunday to back the separation of Church and state and protest against the Pope's teachings on sexual morality.   Alain Peyrefitte, a former minister of the late president Charles de Gaulle, praised the Pontiff's courage for sticking to his visit despite poor health and sometimes mocking criticism.   "People sharing the same society...should refrain from wounding each other.   Catholics, a new minority, are entitled to respect.   Some practices of mockery are no longer acceptable," he wrote in the conservative newspaper Le Figaro. 
19856 !GCAT !GPOL  Swedish women may be equal to men when it comes to politics.   But they still clean, cook and mind children much more than men and have little or no influence in the country's business life.   Hailed by the United Nations as one of the most equal countries in the world, and champion of rights such as day care and abortion, Sweden in fact has a long way to go to achieve true equality, fresh data and surveys show.   "The equality thing is a bit of a myth in Sweden," said Christina Hultbom, an economics professor at Uppsala University.   "Women work, yes, but their jobs are often caretaking or clerical and they still make less money than men," said Hultbom, who is conducting a study on women's representation in business.   Most Swedish women work today, but they are still far from the powerful, executive jobs held by men and there is only one female managing director among Sweden's 240 listed companies.   The political picture, the one seen by the outside world, looks good as Prime Minister Goran Persson's government has a 50/50 split between men and women in top ministerial posts.   "Swedish women have made great progress in trying to achieve full equality.   The political arena demonstrates that," Eva Nikell, a spokeswoman for Sweden's Equality Ombudsman told Reuters.   A closer look at what the female ministers do, however, reveals most women hold softer posts than men, including social affairs, equality issues, the environment, education and culture.   Hultbom says the division between men and women is partly the fault of men who guard their power.   "There are such few posts which give power, status and money.   Obviously these positions are jealously guarded.   And Swedish business is also bound to tradition," she said.   The women are also to blame, she says, as they are bound by their traditional roles as mothers and wives while at the same time trying to hold down full-time jobs.   "The Swedish woman is so busy trying to do everything.   She has to work full time, have children, take care of her aging parents and do all the cleaning and cooking herself.   It is simply a zero sum game," she said.   Official statistics support her theory.   According to the Central Bureau of Statistics, Swedish women still spend more than 30 hours a week on unpaid work, i.e. work in the household, while men spend around 20 hours per week on similar chores.   Women spend more time on cooking, cleaning, washing and ironing, looking after children and shopping than men who traditionally work longer hours on paid work and also put in an hour a week or so on repair work or gardening.   Women in business, who like to think of themselves as equal to men, are also faced with the social stigma attached to having hired help.   Mona Sahlin, the former deputy prime minister who had been groomed to take over the Social Democratic government earlier this year, found herself out of a job after a tabloid published allegations that she had misused a government credit card for holidays, nappies and chocolate for her children.   Sahlin, 38, a mother of three, was later cleared of any wrongdoing but her political career was left in ruins and she is no longer the prominent figure she was on the political arena.   Sahlin did not have any hired help and worked more than 12 hours a day.   Women's careers may also be hampered in part by a generous social welfare system which entitles them to stay at home with their children for at least a year with the guaranteed right of a similar job upon return.   While a great benefit, this has also served to effectively hamper women's careers as most tend to take off up to a year and a half or even more to care for their children.   "Yes you could say that.   The fact that women are allowed to stay at home for so long and that most do, does stop them from getting ahead," Hultbom said.   The women who do choose a career and make it to the top are often not rewarded in cash in the same fashion as men.   A case in point is Anki Forsberg, the only woman managing director of a stock exchange listed firm, the biotech group Skandigen.   According to daily Svenska Dagbladet her salary this year is 524,000 Swedish crowns ($80,000), less than half the average salary for men in similar positions.   Women also have to pay a price for their careers.   "It is tough at the top.   Many of the women who make it find out later in life the price may have been too high when they end up disillusioned after perhaps having given up children and perhaps even a partner," Hultbom said.   Swedish women, who like to think of themselves as equal to men, are also still up against sexism, although perhaps not of the blatant kind that may be seen in some other countries. 
19857 !GCAT !GPOL !GVOTE  Greece votes on Sunday in a general election which commentators regard as an even contest between the ruling socialists and the opposition conservatives.   "It is too close to call.   Everything about this election is new -- the leaders, the number of undecided voters, the general apathy," poll analyst Ilias Nikolakopoulos said on television.   Opinion polls say socialist Prime Minister Costas Simitis and his PASOK party are about two points ahead of the New Democracy party of Miltiades Evert, but this is well within their accepted margin of polling error.   With both parties endorsing similar economic and foreign policies, the campaign developed into a personality clash between Simitis, known as "the Chinese", and Evert, "the Bulldozer".   Simitis, a short economics professor with almond-shaped eyes and a fixed smile, treated voters like students, testing their brains on issues such as Greece's future in the European Union and ways to slash inflation.   He made no promises during the campaign but instead called for harder work and sacrifices so that Greece could improve its economy and secure a place within a united Europe at the turn of the century.   Evert, a hefty former Athens mayor given to emotional outbursts, accused Simitis of being too vague and he promised voters that they would get more money and lower taxes within 30 days of his election.   But both leaders apparently failed to inspire the electorate as opinion polls reported that an unprecedented 20 percent of the nine million voters remained undecided and apathetic.   Simitis made a last-minute switch to traditional left-wing rhetoric in his closing Athens rally, vowing to safeguard the welfare policies of PASOK founder Andreas Papandreou and warning that an Evert victory would endanger Greece's future.   He called the snap vote a month ago, apparently certain of an easy victory, but has proved far less appealing to voters than the late Papandreou, who secured landslide PASOK wins in 1981, 1985 and 1993.   "Papandreou gave Greeks a reason to dream.   Simitis wants to give them a reason to think, but they did not respond and the vote could go either way," one poll analyst told Reuters.   "Evert embarked on a Papandreou-style populism but he is simply not good at it.   The bottom line is that Greeks will have to learn to live without the political giants of the past." 
19858 !GCAT !GREL  Demonstrators will march in the French capital on Sunday to protest against Pope John Paul's strict views on birth control, abortion and homsexuality and to contest the symbolism of a long-dead French king.   The Pope, meanwhile, will say mass near Reims to celebrate the 1,500th anniversary of the baptism of Clovis, the first west European king to convert to Catholicism and source of a bitter modern row about the separation of Church and State.   About 150,000 people were expected to attend the mass at an air base near the capital of France's eastern champagne region, on the last and most controversial day of the Pontiff's visit.   He seemed likely to seek to appease opponents by avoiding a traditional Catholic view that the conversion of Clovis marked the birth of France, instead using a sermon to stress the importance of baptism to Catholics.   In Paris, 70 anti-papal groups will stage a rally to accuse the Church, President Jacques Chirac and the far right of trying to use Clovis -- whom they say was a brutal warlord -- to revive belief that France is rightfully Catholic.   The groups, including anarchists, Greens, Freemasons and police trade unions, will instead celebrate the traditions of the 1789 Revolution and criticise the 76-year-old Pope for his opposition to birth control, abortion or homosexuality.   "For the separation of Church and State, against the return of moral order," their posters say.   Clovis, born in what is now Belgium and who ruled an area stretching from eastern France to Germany, was baptised in Reims around 496.   He extended his kingdom in battles against tribes like the Visigoths to cover most of France.   The Pontiff, on a visit that has taken him to Tours, Brittany and Vendee, has so far played down his controversial moral views -- which few French people follow -- and has stressed solidarity with the poor and the suffering.   In Tours on Saturday, the Pope embraced AIDS victims, prostitutes and an unmarried woman about to give birth.   "The Pope is not coming for a historical commemoration," said Bernard Lagoutte, secretary-general of the French Bishops' Conference.   "He's coming to remind Catholics of the importance of their individual baptism."   The Pope upset France's other religious groups -- mainly Moslems, Jews and Protestants -- on his first visit in 1980 when he spoke of France's 1,500-year history as a nation.   "France, eldest daughter of the Church, what have you done with the promises of your baptism?"   he asked.   Chirac has been accused of violating a 1905 law separating Church and State by helping fund the visit.   Early this year, a Reims court overturned a 1.5 million franc ($300,000) subsidy by the local council to build the podium for the Reims mass.   In Reims, the Pope will also hold a meeting with France's bishops on Sunday -- including "Red Cleric" Jacques Gaillot, sacked last year by the Vatican for his liberal views, such as favouring condoms to prevent the spread of AIDS.   The Pope will also visit Reims cathedral, almost wrecked by during World War One and where Catholics say Clovis was baptised -- and where French monarchs were crowned.   After brief talks with Prime Minister Alain Juppe, he will fly home to Rome, ending his last trip abroad before an operation next month to remove his appendix.   Among those missing the Pope's mass will be the pretender to the French throne -- 86-year-old Henri d'Orleans told a French newspaper he was suffering from 'flu. 
19859 !E12 !ECAT !G15 !G154 !GCAT  German finance minister Theo Waigel, the architect of a Stability Pact to ensure fiscal discipline with Europe's monetary union, said on Saturday he was satisfied with progress made towards its establishment.   Waigel told a briefing at the end of one-day informal talks with other European Union finance ministers, "I am satisfied.   We are following exactly on the road we started on one year ago."   Waigel and German central bank governor Hans Tietmeyer told the briefing that there had been unanimous or near-unanimous agreement on all major aspects of the pact although no details had been agreed on the sanctions offenders would face.   Under the stability pact, countries which run a budget deficit in excess of a three percent ratio to gross domestic product will face sanctions, and later fines, if they take no action to correct the problem.   Waigel said all EU countries had agreed there should be pre-defined exceptional conditions which would allow a country to exceed the three percent limit.   There was also unanimous approval of the need for sanctions and of a proposal that a deposit should be surrendered to a zero interest account which should then later be converted to a fine if there was no evidence of improvement, he added.   "But the type and size of these have yet to be agreed," he said.   Germany also said it was optimistic that one of its key proposals -- that the time between assessment of a seemingly excessive budget deficit and sanctions kicking in should be as short as possible -- had also found the approval of many.   The German govenment had originally proposed a timeframe of six or seven months before sanctions would be imposed.   However EU officials said a consensus appeared to be emerging on a gap of about nine months for a country to take corrective action, once it had established its previous year's budget deficit in March.   Some countries are known to oppose even this longer time constraint, arguing that their parliaments would need more time to ratify new budgetary proposals.   But Waigel said there had nonetheless been "very broad agreement" that the sanctions should be effected by the end of the calendar year.   The Bundesbank's Tietmeyer, who has argued continually for the adoption of a stability pact, saying this would help the credibility of the single currency, said he was also satisfied with the progress made.   "You cannot expect to decide everything in one meeting," he said.   "We have made good progress." 
19860 !E12 !ECAT !G15 !G154 !GCAT !M13 !M132 !MCAT  Swedish Central Bank governor Urban Backstrom said on Saturday he personally believed it would be positive for Sweden to join Europe's exchange rate mechanism (ERM) but stressed that such a move was not topical now.   "I believe that the time is ready to start discussing this issue because Sweden has become an increasingly stable country," he told Reuters during a European Union meeting in Dublin on a future single currency for Europe.   Backstrom was referring to a domestic economic situation with low inflation and a reduced budget deficit.   "I think we should form an opinion in Sweden that we should join at a later stage," he said.   He declined to discuss any timetable for possible ERM entry.   However, Backstrom added, "The matter is not topical now" and stressed that he did not want to create the impression that Sweden was preparing a decision to join the ERM, which currently groups 10 of the EU's 15 currencies.   Finance Minister Erik Asbrink took a more cautious line on the issue, saying the current Swedish monetary policy, which is aimed at keeping inflation down, was working well.   "We are pursuing a monetary and foreign exchange policy which has been very successful," Asbrink told reporters, like Backstrom stressing that ERM entry was not on the agenda.   But, Asbrink added, "We have not ruled out that possibility in the future."   The Swedish crown is floating on currency markets since the autumn of 1992, a victim of European currency turmoil.   Backstrom said it was important to have support in the Swedish society for any decision to join ERM.   "We will see how that discussion is developing," he said.   Backstrom noted that there were critical voices in the current Swedish debate about ERM and he suggested that Sweden could not join the mechanism if there was strong opposition.   Asked whether he believed ERM membership would be desirable or a positive step, he said, "Yes.   Otherwise I would not have raised the issue."   He was referring to a speech he made on Thursday in Stockholm where he said ERM membership could confirm increased economic stability in Sweden and also show that it would continue to pursue policies aimed at economic stability.   Backstrom said ERM membership could increase the freedom of action for the Swedish parliament when it decides in the autumn of 1997 whether to join economic and monetary union (EMU), both if it opted for or against membership.   Separately, Finnish Finance Minister Sauli Niinisto refused to comment on when and whether his country may join the ERM.   Niinisto said on Saturday the issue had not been discussed at the meeting.   The Finnish government, determined to be among the first group of countries to join monetary union in 1999, has repeatedly said it will decide this autumn whether to join ERM. 
19861 !GCAT !GREL  AIDS sufferers, prostitutes and an unmarried woman about to give birth embraced the Pope on Saturday at an emotional meeting between the 76-year-old Pontiff and those he called "life's wounded".   Many of them had clearly not practiced what the Pope preaches -- injunctions on abstinence from sex outside marriage, homosexual relations and birth control which many of his opponents condemn as out of date and unfeeling.   They were among 190 people -- infirm, handicapped or marginalised -- who were invited to meet the Pope at a basilica in the central city of Tours during a visit to France that has been met with criticism of his teachings.   Three of them lay on hospital beds brought in to the church, many were sick and mentally disabled children and each was blessed, embraced or touched by the Pope as he proceeded slowly along the aisle before and after the hour-long service.   One or two whispered in his ear, including a 36-year-old woman from Cameroon, her long fingernails painted a deep burgundy and her hair hidden under a red scarf.   The Pope listened, regarded her with a look of shock and then made the sign of the cross on her forehead.   "I am like everyone here.   I am another one of life's wounded," she said, declining to give her name or profession.   A lay Catholic worker accompanying her shooed reporters away when they tried to question her further.   The woman's reluctance to be identified was shared by many in the basilica, where the Pope used his meeting to launch an appeal for solidarity in France and beyond with society's outcasts and those living in physical or mental distress.   "Every person wounded in body or in spirit...is a living image of Christ," the Pope told the group.   "I kissed him and he kissed me," said a 21-year-old South Korean woman living in Tours who also would not give her name.   Heavily pregnant under a bright red dress, she said she was unmarried and had initially wanted to abort.   She now lives at a Catholic charity home for unmarried mothers but said she was not a member of any religion.   "It's a ray of hope to continue with the child I'm expecting," she said of her meeting with the Pope.   "He has a lot of courage, coming here to give us words of hope."   But there were also words of bitterness from inside the basilica, dedicated to Saint Martin.   He was a fourth-century young Roman officer when, according to legend, he ripped his coat to share it with a poor man dying in the freezing cold.   Jean-Marc Oyer, 33 and with AIDS, said many of his friends had tried to talk him out of attending the service, where he had wanted to ask the Pope three questions.   "Why the 'wounded of life', why is he against condoms and why is he against homosexuals," Oyer said.   "I don't feel like one of life's wounded, I feel like everyone else.   Of course I'm waiting for something but I won't get it.   That would be too much of a miracle," he said of his condition.   About one km (800 yards) from the heavily-guarded basilica, police said some 1,800 protesters opposed to the Pope's visit had demonstrated against his views on sexual morality.   One banner read: "Down with the Vatican's Mad Cow" and one demonstrator dressed up as the Pope with a condom on his head. 
19862 !E12 !ECAT !G15 !G154 !GCAT  Irish finance minister Ruairi Quinn said on Saturday all signs from Britain, Ireland's closest trading partner, were that it would maintain a steady relationship towards a future European currency.   He was responding to fears that Ireland was vulnerable to sterling weakness if Dublin joins the single Euro currency and Britain did not.   He said British Chancellor of the Exchequer Kenneth Clarke had made it clear that sterling would maintain close ties with the Euro.   "The declared policy that Kenneth Clarke has enunciated on many occassions is that he believes it is in Britain's best interest to maintain an economic policy which would result in sterling maintaining a very steady relationship with the present arrangement of currencies and any future European currency," he said.   Quinn was speaking to reporters after a meeting of European finance ministers in Dublin.   Quinn added that the British Labour Party's "shadow" Finance Minister Gordon Brown, in private discussions with Quinn, had led him to conclude that a British labour government would maintain a similar steady economic strategy.   "So there is nothing at this time that would lead me to believe that, through the actions of government policy in the UK, there would be a volatile sterling/Euro relationship which will cause us serious problems," Quinn said.   He said he believed that if there was a slow, gradual appreciation of the punt against sterling then, by and large, there were benefits to the Irish economy from Dublin joining EMU.   -- Dublin Newsroom +353-1-6603377 
19863 !C18 !C183 !CCAT !E12 !ECAT !GCAT !GPOL  The Algerian government appointed on Saturday an academic as the head of the Privatisation Council to speed up the sell-off of state-owned enterprises, the official Algerian news agency APS said.   Abderhmane Mebtoul, 48, a staunch advocate of the market economy, would run the seven-member Privatisation Council, said APS quoting the Prime Minister's office.   Mebtoul, an academic specialising on economics, was leader of the private Association for the Defence of the Free Market in Algeria.   The government set up the Privatisation Council and the Privatisation Operations Control Committee (POCC) in May to implement the delayed privatisation process.   The government is expected to appoint soon the head of the POCC, APS added. 
19864 !GCAT !GPOL  France's opposition Socialists said on Saturday they would field women in nearly a third of constituencies in the 1998 general election, a watershed for a party which has only about two percent of women among its MPs.   Party leader Lionel Jospin said the decision to mark out such a large number of constituencies for women was a first in the country's male-dominated politics.   The Socialist Party executive is to decide in November which constituencies the party's ladies will get.   Ten prominent women across the spectrum, including Socialist Edith Cresson who was France's only female prime minister, triggered a heated debate last June by calling for quotas for women in politics.   Prime Minister Alain Juppe said he was open to the idea of a referendum on revising the constitution to add the principle of male-female equality in politics, a step seen by an opinion poll as backed by an overwhelming majority of voters.   Opponents said such a move would open a Pandora's box of claims from racial, religious, sexual or age groups demanding equal political representation.   They said quotas would be contrary to the legacy of the 1789 Revolution, which did away with castes, and to the constitution, which bans discrimination either against or in favour of anyone.   France trails European nations in its proportion of women in politics, with just 5.5 percent in the National Assembly and just over eight percent among elected local officials. 
19865 !E12 !ECAT !G15 !G154 !GCAT  Swedish Central Bank Governor Urban Backstrom, saying he shared the views of his British counterpart, expressed concern on Saturday over the French and German positions on access to the future Target EU interbank payment and settlements system.   He said France and Germany did not want countries outside monetary union to have access on equal terms to Target because of monetary policy reasons.   He described this as "worrisome."   "Here it is a question of opinion against opinion," he told reporters at a meeting of European Union finance ministers and central bank governors in Dublin.   Backstrom was commenting on an interview published earlier this month in which Bank of England governor Eddie George warned that the differences among Britain, Germany and France over access to Target threatened to undermine cooperation among Europe's central banks.   Sweden is due to decide in the autumn of 1997 whether to join economic and monetary union.   Backstrom said Danish and British banks had reacted strongly to the French/German position on Target but not Swedish banks and this surprised him. 
19866 !E12 !ECAT !G15 !G154 !GCAT !M13 !M132 !MCAT  German Finance Minister Theo Waigel said on Saturday there had been no discussion or challenge to the entry criteria for monetary union at this weekend's meeting of European Union finance ministers.   "There was nobody who wanted to discuss the entry criteria even in the slightest," he told a briefing at the end of the one-day talks.   The Maastricht Treaty on monetary union sets targets for countries which want to join the single currency, on interest and exchange rates, inflation, budget deficits and public borrowing.   -- Dublin Newsroom +353 1 4759258 
19867 !E12 !ECAT !G15 !G154 !GCAT !M13 !M132 !MCAT  EU finance ministers meeting to push forward plans for a single european currency did not discuss the question of Finland joining Europe's Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM), Finnish Finance Minister Sauli Niinisto said.   Asked whether the ministers had discussed Finnish ERM membership, Niinisto said, "No, we were not discussing that."   There had been intense speculation in recent weeks that Finland might announce plans to join the ERM at the Dublin talks, although a Bank of Finland supervisory board member said Friday she thought it unlikely.   EU officials also had said ahead of the meeting that an announcement was not likely.   -- Dublin Newsroom +353 1 4759258 
19868 !GCAT !GPOL  Northern secessionist leader Umberto Bossi presided over the opening session of his new "government of Padania" on Saturday, vowing no one could stop his drive to split Italy in two.   "Today we are here to celebrate the installation of the first government of the Federal Republic of Padania," Bossi told supporters at a theatre in the nothern city of Mantua.   "The die has been cast.   History has brought us here to Mantua," added Bossi, who last week declared "independence" for his would-be republic of Padania in northern Italy at a solemn ceremony in Venice.   "The Padania which was born in Venice will live on," he vowed is his deep, gravely voice.   "No force in the world will be able to stop it."   After an opening ceremony at which the "Hymn of Padania" was played, Bossi told the crowd the new government would have one year to hold talks with the Italian government on how to proceed with the north's peaceful secession.   Bossi said that, once the north had succeeded in splitting from Italy, his party would no longer have a reason to exist and a normal two-party democracy would take up the task of governing Padania.   "The League cannot be the future," said Bossi.   "Padania's system will have a liberal and a conservative party."   The Northern League won an unexpected 10.7 percent in Italy's general election in April but opinion polls show that, despite deep frustration with high taxes and a perceived incompetent central bureaucracy, most northerners firmly oppose secession. 
19869 !E12 !ECAT !G15 !G154 !GCAT  EU finance ministers made progress on a planned Stability Pact to ensure countries do not run up excessive budget deficits after Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) is introduced, the finance ministers of Belgium and Finland said.   Asked whether there had been agreement on a stability pact, Finnish Finance Minister Sauli Niinisto told Reuters, "Not in details...It went forward with quite a lot of steps."   Belgian Finance Minister Philippe Maystadt added progress had been made on this subject at a meeting of EU finance ministers and central bank governors in Dublin on Saturday. 
19870 !E12 !ECAT !G15 !G154 !GCAT  EU finance ministers made progress on three key areas of forging Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) at one-day Dublin talks, Irish Finance Minister Ruairi Quinn said on Saturday.   He told a news conference at the end of the discussions that the 15 member states had agreed a broad outline on a stability pact to underpin Economic and Monetary Union (EMU), the legal basis for a new Euro currency and links between members who joined or opted out of EMU.    Quinn said: "We have made substantial progress on the three areas set before us" and would do further work to put more proposals to an EU summit in Dublin in December.   Britain's Chancellor of the Exchequer, Kenneth Clarke, told Reuters that details of the stability pact had been referred back to the EU Commission for further study.   "We have made a lot of progress but have referred it back to do more work," he said at the conclusion of the talks.   The pact is supposed to impose discipline on EMU members by providing for fines on member states which contravene budget deficit criteria. 
19871 !GCAT !GPOL  The popularity of French President Jacques Chirac and Prime Minister Alain Juppe dropped sharply this month, according to an opinion poll released on Saturday.   An IFOP poll of 1,849 voters to be published on Sunday in the weekly Journal du Dimanche said 31 percent of voters were satisfied with Chirac, down from 38 percent a month ago.   Juppe's standing fell to 27 percent from 31 percent.   The survey was carried out between September 12-20.   On September 18 the conservative government unveiled a 1997 budget cutting state deficit to ensure France's place in the European Monetary Union and cutting taxes to revive growth. 
19872 !E12 !ECAT !G15 !G154 !GCAT !M13 !M132 !MCAT  European Monetary Institute (EMI) President Alexandre Lamfalussy has proposed setting rates for the Euro currency in early 1998, Belgian Finance Minister Philippe Maystadt said.   He was speaking at the end of a one-day informal meeting of European Union finance ministers which discussed details of European Economic and Monetary Union.    The minister said Lamfalussy had proposed exchange rates against the Euro be fixed at the same time as a decision is taken on which countries join EMU.   The European Union is due to decide in early 1998 on which countries should join EMU when it is launched in 1999.   Lamfalussy had suggested at a meeting of EU finance ministers that the "the exchange rates be fixed at the same time as we decide the list of (EMU) member states", Maystadt said.   The EU ministers had not made a decision on the proposal, which Maystadt said was meant to head off intense currency speculation in the run up to EMU. 
19873 !GCAT !GPRO !GREL  Flu will prevent the ageing pretender to the throne of France meeting Pope John Paul on Sunday at Reims cathedral, where France's kings were traditionally crowned, according to a French newspaper.   A report to be published on Sunday in the weekly Journal du Dimanche alongside an interview with pretender Henri d'Orleans said he was confined to bed by a bout of influenza.   The 86-year-old Count of Paris said his royal ancestors had been crowned at Reims by French prelates, abandoning an early medieval tradition of being crowned by the Pope.   "This is why I would have wanted to go to Reims," he said.   Pope John Paul is to visit the Reims cathedral on the last day of his four-day visit to France. 
19874 !C42 !CCAT !E12 !E41 !E411 !ECAT !GCAT !GJOB  French Industry Minister Franck Borotra said he wanted to start negotiations among unions, professional branches and the government to seek ways to preserve jobs while increasing industrial competitiveness.   "I'd like us to establish before the end of the year three-part negotiations among professional branches, unions and the state to try to find the right compromise between the necessary adaptation for competitiveness and the preservation of the industrial base," he said in an interview with the newspaper Le Monde.   "My intention isn't to substitute myself for the corporate bosses.   But the authorities aren't there to just pay the bill for the adaptation programmes without seeking answers.   When there's a layoff plan, the government always pays a part," he said.   He likened the government's interest to that of shareholders seeking to maximise their investment.   "We need to verify that public money is well spent in the interest of preserving the industrial base and jobs," Borotra said.   A number of French companies, including Moulinex and most recently Pechiney, are planning layoffs.   Borotra refrained from criticising them, saying that Moulinex had promised to maintain production in France in excess of the demand in the domestic market and to study early retirement and flexible hours to minimise the number of layoffs.   He said Pechiney faced stiff international competition but had promised to keep its industrial operations in France, retain at least 50 percent of its French investments, and hire more young people.   "It's the kind of industrial adaptation effort worth supporting," Borotra said.   He said the car industry needs state help, even if a rebate programme is not extended beyond September 30.   Borotra has previously said he favoured extending the year-long support programme but Prime Minister Alain Juppe recently suggested that he was not inclined to extend it.   "Whatever his (Juppe's) decision, we'll have to help the two French carmakers (PSA Peugeot Citroen and Renault ) to prepare for huge competition with the total opening of the (European) market in the year 2000," he said.   "This sector, which provides a living for more than 700,000 people and generates more than 400 billion francs in sales, is a pivotal part of the national industry," he said.   -- Paris Newsroom, +33 1 4221 5452 
19875 !E12 !ECAT !G15 !G154 !GCAT !M13 !M132 !MCAT  Finance Minister Erik Asbrink said on Saturday he did not rule out future Swedish membership of the European Union's exchange rate mechanism (ERM).   "We have not ruled out that possibility in the future," Asbrink told reporters.   However, Asbrink reiterated that ERM entry was not on the agenda now and that the present monetary policy, which aims at keeping inflation low, was working well.   "We pursue a monetary and foreign exchange policy in Sweden which has been very successful," Asbrink told reporters.   Earlier, Swedish Central Bank governor Urban Bckstrom said he personally believed Swedish ERM entry would be desirable.   But he stressed that ERM membership was "not topical" now.   ERM could confirm the increased stability in the Swedish economic situation, Backstrom said.   He declined to discuss any possible timetable for membership.   "I think we should form...an opinion in Sweden that we should join at a later stage.   When that could be a topic, I don't know," Backstrom told reporters.   He said he did not want to create the impression that Sweden was preparing to join ERM, but that it was time to start debating the issue.   He noted that there had been critical opinions of ERM in public debate in Sweden, and said: "It is clear that we cannot enter the ERM if we have strong criticism (against it)." 
19876 !GCAT !GDIP !GPOL !GPRO  U.S. Defence Secretary William Perry wished ailing Russian President Boris Yeltsin well on Saturday and said he was comforted by Russia's constitutional system of replacing its president democratically if Yeltsin became incapacitated.   Perry was speaking in response to questions at a news conference after Yeltin's heart surgeon in Moscow expressed worry about the Russian leader's condition.   "I couldn't comment at all on the medical status or medical risks that are involved in President Yeltsin's forthcoming surgery," said Perry.   "I am gratified, though, that Russia has a constitution that provides for a systematic and democratic process of succession if that becomes necessary."   Perry was asked by a reporter if he thought Yeltsin's problem might cause destabilisation in Russia and threaten regional security, including neighbouring Finland which shares a long border with Russia.   "Every country, every democratic country has to face that possibility -- that it will lose a leader (or) have a leader incapacitated.   "And the important issue from a point of view of long-term stability of that country and its neighbours is whether there is a constitutional and systematic process for dealing with that contingency if it should arise," he said.   "Russia has such a process and I find that fact comforting," Perry added.   "And I also take the opportunity to wish President Yeltsin very well in his upcoming surgery and wish him the best of health." 
19877 !GCAT !GCRIM !GDIP !GVIO  German Defence Minister Volker Ruehe has called for the NATO-led peace force in Bosnia to be allowed to hunt down indicted war criminals such as Bosnian Serb wartime leader Radovan Karadzic and army chief Ratko Mladic.   Ruehe said when a new mandate for the international peace force (IFOR) is formulated, it should go beyond the current provision allowing troops to detain suspects if they come across them but not to hunt them down.   "In the long run, NATO soldiers who are there to secure the peace cannot coexist with war criminals," Ruehe told the news magazine Der Spiegel in an interview released ahead of publication on Monday.   Defence chiefs must agree a new mandate for IFOR to replace the current one which runs out in December.   "When a new mandate is drawn up, apprehending war criminals should be one of the soldiers' tasks," Ruehe said.   "For the sake of its own credibilty, I can't imagine that the international peace force will stay out of pursuing war criminals." 
19878 !GCAT !GDEF !GDIP  U.S. Defence Secretary William Perry said on Saturday NATO sought to create a European security "circle" rather than a dividing line, and Nordic countries had a strong role to play in including Russia in it.   Speaking to reporters after talks with Finnish Defence Minister Anneli Taina at the start of a 10-day trip to Finland, Sweden, Denmark and Norway, Perry said the Western alliance sought to alleviate tensions with Russia over its expansion.   "I would describe the work we are doing in Russia ... is to not create a dividing line in Europe but to create a circle of a new European security structure," Perry said.   "We want Russia inside the circle, not outside it."   Perry, who on Saturday lunched with Finnish President Martti Ahtisaari, said the Nordic countries had been pivotal in building new European security through NATO's Partnership for Peace programme, the main building block for this circle.   With NATO likely to decide next year to accept some former communist countries into its fold, he said other countries -- including the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania which are widely expected not to make the first round of expansion -- should "also be inside the circle.   "If they're not members of NATO the primary tool would be Partnership for Peace -- therefore we believe it's important to strengthen and expand the Partnership for Peace," he said, adding that this did not mean they would not join NATO later.   Nordic politicians and analysts have voiced concerns that leaving their southern neighbours in the Baltic out of an expanded alliance could create a security void that Russia, which is opposed to NATO expansion, may be tempted to fill.   Earlier, speaking to reporters on a flight from Washington, Perry underlined the role in this to be played by the three non-NATO member Nordic states.   Norway is a member of NATO.   "You can see that ... whether the answer (to Baltic NATO membership) is yes or no, is going to create either a profound problem for Russia -- if the answer were yes -- or a profound problem for the Baltic nations if the answer is no," he said.   "Finland, Sweden, Denmark, but especially Finland, have a very vital interest in how that works out and some influence in how it works out," he said.   Finland shares an 800-mile (1,300 km) border with Russia and was for decades squashed between the superpowers, and Perry said parts of his trip would be crucial in fostering cooperation across old Cold War barriers.   The idea of "neutral" military status no longer had any meaning, he added.   Finnish and Swedish troops' participation with their American and Norwegian counterparts in international actions in the Balkans had, he said, "demonstrated that the old concept of neutrality just no longer had any meaning".   Of the Nordic countries, Sweden still claims a "neutral" status, but Finland, which like Sweden joined the European Union in 1995 but is not seeking membership of NATO, has opted instead for the term "non-aligned".   "I understand what it meant during the Cold War, when NATO and the Warsaw Pact were facing off against each other and you were in between them, and you did not want to be seen as taking sides with either," he said.   "But it doesn't mean anything today." 
19879 !GCAT !GODD  Corn circles, the large round indentations in fields of crops which in the early 1990s sparked controversy and talk of alien visitors in Britain, have appeared in Finland, a newspaper reported on Saturday.   Two of the circles -- initially claimed in Britain to be the tracks of flying saucers but since widely dismissed as hoaxes -- were found in the Helsinki suburb of Espoo and have set UFO watchers buzzing, daily Helsingin Sanomat said.   "At first we thought of reporting vandalism.   But when we went for a closer look at the patterns, we realised that they could not have been made by humans," said Birger Nymalm, agronomist at Soderskog Manor where the rings were found.   "The patterns were made from the air.   The field around them was completely untouched," Nymalm was quoted as saying.   The rings, the largest measuring about 30 metres (90 feet) across, appeared on the night of August 24 in two fields about three km (two miles) apart.   They consist of swathes of grain pressed to the ground, the stems snapped at the roots and lying pointed in the same direction, the paper said.   Police have said they will not mount an investigation unless someone reports a crime. 
19880 !E12 !ECAT !G15 !G154 !GCAT  Danish Economy Minister Marianne Jelved said on Saturday she believed Denmark, which has opted out from monetary union, would be able to have a bilateral currency agreement with the future European Central Bank.   Jelved, who had previously expressed concern about the issue, said she was happy about the outcome of discussions on a new exchange rate mechanism at a meeting of European Union finance ministers and central bank governors in Dublin.   "It seems like we can get a bilateral agreement between the ECB (the European Central Bank) and the Danish National Bank and government," she told Reuters.   There was agreement at the meeting that the new "ERM2", which would link currencies outside monetary union with the planned single currency, would be a voluntary and flexible system with relatively wide fluctuation margins.   However, there was also acknowledgement that trading bands could be narrower.   This is important for Denmark as it has decided not to join economic and monetary union (EMU) but still wants a close relationship with the euro, including narrow fluctuation margins.   Jelved said the discussions had gone better than she had feared before the meeting.   She made clear Denmark wanted a narrow fluctuation band but said no figures had yet been discussed.   Denmark is one of only a few EU countries which currently meet criteria for joining the monetary union. 
19881 !E41 !E411 !ECAT !GCAT !GJOB  More than 10,000 demonstrators marched through Paris on Saturday to protest against what they said was government inertia in the face of record unemployment.   The rally, organised by the centrist Force Ouvriere (FO) union, marked the first sign of resistance to Prime Minister Alain Juppe's 1997 budget, which fulfilled the criteria required for European Monetary Union through government spending cuts.   "It's not because some technocrats arbitrarily defined certain economic criteria several years ago that these criteria should constitute a Bible," FO leader Marc Blondel told the crowd gathered at Bastille square.   The FO says the 1997 budget, which was presented this week, contains no measures to reduce the record 12.5 percent jobless rate.   It says 100,000 people risk losing their jobs this year and between 120,000 and 150,000 next year.   "We say no to layoffs because if not, our society will explode," Blondel said.   "Tomorrow perhaps others will join us," he told the crowd, which then proceeded on a short march to the Place de la Nation.   Despite a barrage of union warnings of unrest, reactions to the budget have so far been relatively subdued and the FO protest was not joined by the other large unions.   For the moment, there are few signs of turmoil on anything like the scale of late last year, when railworkers worried by government plans to trim pension rights -- plans now abandoned -- spearheaded a crippling 24-day-long public transport strike.   The country's largest labour union, the Socialist CFDT, has not yet talked of demonstrations, but said the budget would not "reassure the vast majority worried by unemployment."   The centre-right government's budget for next year provides for spending cuts and savings worth 60 billion francs, including 6,000 civil service job cuts, to help France get its public finances ready for the move to a single European currency.   The drive to monetary union requires countries to trim their deficit to three percent of gross national product in 1997.   Louis Viannet, head of the Communist-led CGT union, said in an interview in the newspaper Le Monde on Friday that the budget sacrificed jobs in the name of preparing for monetary union and would drive a bigger wedge between rich and poor.   "I keep hearing 'things are going to explode'.   I've no idea, but we are facing a situation which could rapidly trigger a reaction of rebellion," Viannet said.   Another measure of resistance will come at the end of this month when teachers are set to stage a strike to protest at the loss of more than 2,500 state education posts. 
19882 !GCAT !GDIP !GPOL !GVIO  Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak has accused Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netnayahu of not keeping a promise to honour Middle East peace deals and warned of a new Palestinian uprising far worse than the last intifada.   Mubarak told the German news magazine Der Spiegel Netanyahu had promised him personally he would stick to agreements between Israel and the Palestinians signed by the governments of his predecessors Yizhak Rabin and Shimon Peres.   "But he is not keeping his promise," Mubarak told Spiegel in an interview released ahead of publication on Monday.   "He was hardly back from (visiting me in) Cairo before he was telling the whole world he could not accept the results of negotiations reached with the Palestinians and approved by his predecessors," Mubarak said.   He said if Netanyahu did not honour the peace agreements, a a repeat of the Intifada -- the Palestinian uprising which began in late 1987 against the Israeli occupation of East Jeruslaem, the West Bank and the Gaza strip -- was bound to take place.   "Planting time bombs such as the unfettered construction of Jewish settlements on the West Bank and ignoring treaties will lead to a new intifada sooner or later," he said.   "And this time it won't be limited to throwing stones."   Mubarak pointed to the fact Israel has not redeployed the troops station in the West Bank town of Hebron and has now approved plans to build more Jewish housing on the West Bank as flagrant violations of the peace accords.   Netanyahu, also interviewed by Spiegel, insisted his right-wing government would honour the agreements made by its Labor-led predecessors.   "We'll stick to the treaties," he said.   But he added: "The most difficult work is before us -- such as the future of Jerusalem, Jewish settlements and the question as to whether there should be a Palestinian state.   Our answers will certainly be different from those of my predecessors."   Netanyahu, who will visit Bonn as part of a European tour next week, said negotiators would need to come up with a totally new type of political structure for the Palestinians.   "The Palestinian area will not be able to be a state in the classic sense of the word.   There will be a series of restrictions on its sovereignty," he said.   "It's inconceivable that a Palestinian leader would preside over an army of tanks, missiles and aircraft.   He would not be allowed to form any military alliances with the likes of Iran or Iraq," the Likud party leader said. 
19883 !C13 !C42 !CCAT !E41 !ECAT !GCAT !GJOB  German Labour Minister Norbert Bluem warned employers who hope to reduce sick pay to abide by current contracts.   The move to cut sick pay to 80 percent of ordinary wages was part of the government's Programme for More Jobs and Growth, passed by parliament earlier this month.   But the government was careful not to undermine existing contracts.   Employers should not attempt to simply declare such contracts invalid, Bluem told the Welt am Sonntag newspaper.   "These contracts of course remain valid until they expire or are renegotiated in an orderly way," he said.   Hans Peter Stihl, president of the German Federation of Chambers of Commerce, took a harsher view, saying employers now had a firm legal basis to cut sick pay.   "The current contract regulations are sufficient to implement the cuts in sick pay," Stihl told the Magdeburg Volksstimme am Sonntag.   Unions will probably seek court rulings, which could drag the matter out, he said.   -- Bonn newsroom, 49 228 26097150 
19884 !C42 !CCAT !E41 !ECAT !GCAT !GJOB  Gesamtmetall, employers' federation of the German engineering industry, aims to hold wages flat in 1997, the newspaper Die Welt reported on Saturday, citing federation sources.   In an effort to cut costs, employers in this key sector will be seeking to avoid all discussion of wages in coming negotiations, and will also seek reductions in Christmas and holiday bonuses, it said.   The employers' federation is expected to cancel the current contract on Friday, effective December 31, the newspaper reported.   Negotiations on a new contract are expected to start around the end of the year.   -- Bonn newsroom, 49 228 26097150 
19885 !E21 !E211 !ECAT !GCAT !GPOL !GWELF  The head of the hardleft Communist Refoundation party warned on Saturday that Italy's government could fall if it tried to cut pension benefits in the forthcoming 1997 budget.   "We are absolutely against (pension cuts) and we ask the government to quickly eliminate this threat, which is a threat not only to pensioners but to the government itself," Refoundation leader Fausto Bertinotti told reporters.   Bertinotti said on Friday that international events were pressuring the government to cut pension spending, including European Union plans to impose sanctions on future members of the monetary union who exceed deficit limits.   The Communist Refoundation, whose support is vital if Prodi is to get the budget approved, has always said it would block the package if it included any cuts to state pensions.   Treasury Minister Carlo Azeglio Ciampi told reporters at a meeting of European finance ministers in Dublin on Saturday that the budget bill, due to trim 32.4 trillion lire off the 1997 deficit, would be presented to parliament next week.   -- Rome newsroom +00396 678 2505 
19886 !E12 !ECAT !G15 !G154 !GCAT !M13 !M132 !MCAT  Swiss National Bank (SNB) board member Bruno Gehrig said on Saturday enforcing fixed exchange rate parities gave the market an unreasonable advantage and was an empty exercise for central banks.   Gehrig's comments were mostly general, but he noted past experience with systems such as the European Monetary System (EMS) had proved currency parities were ineffective wherever markets saw misalignments.   "To hold fast to such parities means to offer market participants a large potential for profit, with a small potential for loss," Gehrig said in a speech.   He added that in this sense, enforcing currency parities was like writing a free option for banks.   "Inadvertently issuing free options in increasing amounts is, also for currency authorities, not a sensible exercise," Gehrig said.   Gehrig believed that politicians and central bankers had learned this lesson from previous crises in the European Monetary System earlier this decade.   "Central banks are not likely to serve up so generous a free lunch as in 1992/1993 anytime in the near future," Gehrig said.   A copy of the speech was made available to the press before delivery to the Swiss foreign exchange dealers' association, Forex Suisse.   -- Zurich Editorial, +41 1 631 7340 
19887 !GCAT !GPRO  Princess Margareta, the oldest daughter of exiled former Romanian king Michael, was married on Saturday to Romanian actor Rado Duda, Swiss media reported.   The couple's engagement was announced in June.   Margareta lives in the Swiss town of Versoix, Switzerland, near Geneva.   Princess Margareta, 47, is eldest of five daughters of ex-king Michael.   Michael has generally been barred from entering Romania since he was forced to abdicate in a 1947.   He was allowed back for a visit in 1992 for Orthodox Easter, but has been barred again since October 1994 by Ion Iliescu's leftist government.   The government says it will not let him into the country until he recognises the post-Communist Republican constitution.   Margareta and her mother Ana are allowed into Romania for charitable work.   The ceremony was planned for St Gherassimos church, the same in which Margareta was baptised.   The couple met at a charity performance for a Bucharest orphanage and reportedly fell in love at the funeral of opposition leader and political prisoner Corneliu Coposu last November. 
19888 !GCAT !GPOL  Leaders of the French Left will meet next Thursday to work on a strategy for tackling an increasingly vocal far-right National Front, Socialist Party leader Lionel Jospin said on Saturday.   Jospin told reporters the left-wing opposition summit would bring together, among others, the leaders of the Communist Party and the Greens "to review responses" to the challenge of Front leader Jean-Marie Le Pen.   In an escalating dispute, Le Pen has asked conservative Prime Minister Alain Juppe to resign for branding him "deeply, almost viscerally racist, antisemitic and xenophobic" for espousing racial inequality.   Jospin said the fight against the extreme right must be above all political, but the left-wing leaders would also discuss possible legal action and a review of laws against racism.   "Le Pen must be unmasked as who he is: racist, antisemitic, an enemy of the Republic, a danger for the country," Jospin said.   Le Pen, who advocates sending immigrants home, won 15 percent of the vote in last year's presidential election.   Several politicians, rights groups and other civic leaders have demanded that he be prosecuted over his remarks that racial inequality was "obvious" and "a fact".   But Justice Minister Jacques Toubon has said Le Pen could not be prosecuted because laws punishing incitement of racial hatred required that a specific ethnic group be named.   Toubon on Friday sent the National Consultative Human Rights Committee a draft bill to plug legal loopholes and stiffen penalties for racism.   The daily Le Monde said the bill would make anyone making a racist statement liable to a year in prison with a 300,000-franc ($60,000) fine.   Sanctions would increase to two years in jail and a 500,000-franc ($100,000) fine if the statement was likely to incite discrimination, hatred or violence.   The bill will go before the National Assembly within weeks.   Jospin said he favoured plans floated by Juppe earlier this month to introduce an element of proportional representation into the current first-past-the-post voting system.   Such a reform would open the doors of the National Assembly to the National Front which does not have any seat now.   The next general election is scheduled in 1998. 
19889 !GCAT !GENT  Munich's mayor opened the annual Oktoberfest celebration of beer and bratwurst on Saturday, sampling the first of an estimated six million litres of beer which will be consumed during the festival.   To traditional Bavarian cries of "O'zapft is" ("the keg is tapped"), mayor Christian Ude opened the first keg of the 16-day festival, which takes place in a huge tented village erected on parkland in the centre of the city.   The lederhosen-clad landlords who run the bars in tents began the day with a colourful procession through the city to the festival site, watched by tens of thousands of onlookers.   Opening day visitors were keen not just to sample the multitude of beers on offer at "the meadows" -- as locals call the festival site -- but also to take advantage of the dodgems and other fairground rides beside the tents.   Officials expect around seven million visitors to the city during the festival.   Some come to dance on the tables of the tents late at night with oom-pah music ringing in their ears while others will head for the beer halls of the big breweries.   Beer fans who cannot make it to Munich have some consolation this year as even the ultra-traditional Oktoberfest has blasted off into the worlds of cyberspace and virtual reality.   A CD-ROM called "Virtual Oktoberfest" allows computer users to sample some of the pleasures of the festival and several Internet pages give surfers on the worldwide computer network a taste of the festival and advice on how to get there.   While liquid refreshment is likely to be the main thing on the minds of most visitors, food catering is also big business at the Oktoberfest.   Around 600,000 chickens and 190,000 pairs of pork sausages are expected to be devoured during the festival.   Locals and visitors alike were pleased to discover that the litre of beer -- or "Mass" -- will cost between 9.50 marks ($6.3) and 10.50 marks, up just fractionally from 9.40 marks to 10.40 marks last year.   The festival grew out of celebrations when Bavarian Crown Prince Ludwig married Princess Therese of Saxony-Hildburghausen on October 12, 1810.   The festivities became an annual event and evolved into the present-day Oktoberfest.   Attendance figures reached their peak of around seven million visitors in 1975 and organisers have been content to keep them at that level, fearing that a larger number would make the event too crowded to enjoy.   With so much liquid being consumed, one of the main headaches for organisers has been providing sufficient toilets.   Officials say be 556 toilets for women and 185 for men at this year's festival.   The total length of the urinal "troughs" for the men adds up to 785 metres (2,575 ft). 
19890 !GCAT !GVIO  Algerian President Liamine Zeroual, whose government has been battling Moslem fundamentalist rebels for nearly five years, said on Saturday the security situation in the country was improving.   An estimated 50,000 people have been killed in Algeria's violence since early 1992 when the authorities cancelled a general election which radical Islamists were poised to win.   "The security situation (in Algeria) is improving markedly compared with the years 1993, 1994 and even in early 1995," Zeroual was quoted by the official Algerian news agency APS as telling a news conference in Algiers.   At the news conference, Zeroual invited opposition parties into his government.   He told reporters: "The idea (to broaden government) is not a new initiative...The main point is to associate all political partners in the country's management."   Diplomats said the invitation did not extend to the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS), barred from government in 1992 despite its electoral successes.   Nor did the diplomats expect Algeria's main secular parties to join the government.   Zeroual described Moslem guerrillas fighting his rule as "mercenaries, traitors and criminals" and acknowledged that they still represented a threat.   "Of course, there still remain some problems but the Algerian state has at its disposal all means to wipe out this phenomenon unknown to our society," he said.   Independent analysts say political killings are still a regular occurrence in Algeria.   "The violence still goes on every day," one senior Western diplomat told Reuters this week.   "The situation is still bad, though not as bad as a year ago."   On Friday a leading singer, 28-year-old Bechir Boudjemaa, was found murdered in the eastern city of Constantine.   He had been kidnapped by Moslem guerrillas after leaving a wedding.   Last month the officially appointed rights body, Human Rights National Observatory, said about 1,400 people had been killed by bombs in the past two years.   Diplomats say these figures are conservative.   Security forces reported one person had been killed and 10 wounded by a car bomb parked outside the Hotel Angleterre in central Algiers earlier this month.   "If you look at the devastation to the building, the figure widely circulating, of nearly 40 deaths, seems more credible," one diplomat told Reuters.   He said that the bomb went off at about 5.45 a.m. when people were sleeping. 
19891 !C13 !C24 !C31 !C312 !CCAT !G15 !G153 !GCAT  European Commission President Jacques Santer was quoted on Saturday as saying he would not tolerate any friction in the European Union executive which might undermine its position towards Britain over mad cow disease.   He made his comments in an interview with the Belgian daily Le Soir after the Commission on Wednesday rejected British media reports that Trade Commissioner Sir Leon Brittan had prompted a U-turn in its position on Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE).   "Each Commissioner has to keep his own house in order.   It's important that the Commission implements decisions that have been taken.   I would not tolerate friction on this point," Santer said in the interview.   He did not specifically name Brittan.   According to the press reports the Commission had asked scientists to review a British study suggesting a cull of cattle most at risk from the disease was unnecessary because the epidemic would die out in five years regardless.   The Oxford University study received a cool reception from Farm Commissioner Franz Fischler and farm ministers at a meeting on Tuesday and a British newspaper said on Saturday Fischler had protested to Brittan over the issue in a letter.   The Commission on Friday ruled out an early lifting of a global export ban on British beef exports after Britain shelved the plan for a cull of the cattle most at risk.   The cull was part of a hard won deal at June's Florence summit which brought a brief respite from the "beef war" which erupted after the British government admitted in March that a fatal brain-wasting disease could be caught by humans who ate BSE-infected beef.   Resurgence of the crisis is likely to inflame an informal meeting of EU farm ministers beginning on Sunday in Killarney in Ireland, at a meeting originally intended to restore consumer confidence in beef.   In the newspaper interview Santer said Britain should play a more constructive role in the 15-nation bloc.   "A large country like Britain has every interest in participating in a direct, conscious and consructive way in this big European adventure," he said. 
19892 !E12 !ECAT !G15 !G154 !GCAT !M13 !M132 !MCAT  Bundesbank president Hans Tietmeyer said Saturday it would be in the interests of the European Union for the maximum number of nations unable to take part in a single currency to join a new exchange rate mechanism.   (Corrects to read dateline as Dublin, Ireland not Germany).   Tietmeyer told a briefing during an informal meeting of EU finance ministers and central bank governors that although there was no compulsion for any country to join the planned ERM2, "It is in the interests of all for as many as possible to participate."   Britain had made clear in advance of the meeting that it wanted membership to be voluntary and would probably not join.   Britain, which withdrew sterling from the current exchange rate mechanism (ERM) in 1992, has also argued strongly that this does not deny it the option to join a single currency in the first round if it meets other economic conditions.   Both Tietmeyer and German Finance Minister Theo Waigel repeated in their remarks to the briefing that Germany believes countries whose currencies have not been in the ERM for at least two years when Europe's Economic and Monetary Union starts will not be allowed to merge their currencies with the Euro.   "It is clear in the Treaty that any country which wants to enter into the third stage must have been in the ERM for two years," Waigel said.   211257 GMT sep 96 
19893 !E12 !ECAT !G15 !G154 !GCAT !M13 !M132 !MCAT  Denmark could join the new exchange rate mechanism (ERM) to be set up after the launch of the Euro with narrower fluctuation bands than the standard ones, a European Commission spokesman said on Saturday.   He said European Union finance ministers and central bankers meeting here agreed that the new mechanism, the ERM II, would have standard fluctuation bands not narrower than 15 percent, with a possibility of narrower bands for countries whose economies coverged more closely to those in the euro zone.   Asked whether Denmark might join the ERM II with narrower bands, he said: "They might come in with a closer position to the Euro which would reflect the better economic position they find themselves in."   He declined to say whether the new ERM bands would be set at precisely 15 percent.   The bands will fix the amount by which currencies that do not join a single currency when it is first launched in 1999 can fluctuate either side of the euro. 
19894 !GCAT !GCRIM  Italian police said on Saturday they had smashed a drug smuggling ring and confiscated a record four tonnes of hashish in an operation carried out with Spanish police.   Italian finance police said their nine-month investigation dubbed "Querida" (Spanish for "loved one") ended on Friday with the arrest of three Italians and four Spaniards in the Spanish port city of Barcelona.   "It was a textbook operation which involved significant team work," police chief Maria Rosaria Pollice told a news conference in Rome at which Spanish and Italian officials explained the operation.   They said they confiscated a record four tonnes of hashish with a street value of some 16 billion lire ($10.5 million) as the drugs were being unloaded from a yacht to a fishing boat in the port of Barcelona.   The ring had been tracked by police from the beginning of their boat journey at Fiumicino near Rome all the way to the coast of Morocco, where they picked up the hashish, and finally to Barcelona, police said.   They said the ring members, now in a Barcelona jail, had invested heavily in sophisticated equipment including helicopters and the 18-metre, double-masted sailing vessel. 
19895 !E12 !E21 !E211 !ECAT !G15 !G154 !GCAT !M13 !M132 !MCAT  Italy is continuing its efforts to be among the first nations which sign up to European Economic and Monetary Union (EMU), Treasury and Budget Minister Carlo Azeglio Ciampi said.   For this reason the Italian government would approve the 1997 financial bill, laying out the budget for next year, he said.   "Italy is continuing its efforts to be part of the first group of countries entering EMU," Ciampi told reporters in Dublin where he was attending a meeting of European finance ministers laying out the ground for a future single currency. 
19896 !E12 !ECAT !G15 !G154 !GCAT !M13 !M132 !MCAT  European Union finance ministers agreed on Saturday that the fluctuation bands in a future Exchange Rate Mechanism would not be narrower than 15 percent, a European Commission spokesman said.   "No one asked for margins narrower than 15 percent," Commission spokesman Patrick Childs told a news conference during a meeting of European Union finance ministers.   He said, however, there was a possibility of narrower limits if greater convergence occurred.   They also reached agreement on the legal status of the future single European currency, the Euro, Patrick Childs said.   The agreement was reached in the morning session of Saturday's meeting of ministers to discuss details of European Economic and Monetary Union (EMU).   Establishing a legal status for the future single European currency is needed to ensure the continuity of financial contracts under EMU.   They agreed that central banks could cease intervention in support of currencies in a future Exchange Rate Mechanism if price stability was threatened.   "The European central banks and the central banks of the pre-ins can stop intervention if it would endanger the central goal which is the stability of prices," Childs said. 
19897 !GCAT !GCRIM  Killer and rapist Patrick Tissier has led police to a bricked-up well concealing a skeleton he says is the body of his third victim, justice sources disclosed on Saturday.   The case has stirred debate over the early release of sex criminals, which was already under discussion in France because of horrific child killings in neighbouring Belgium.   Tissier, 44, has a record for rape and murder that stretches back to 1971.   He is now awaiting trial after confessing to raping and killing the 10-year-old daughter of his companion three years ago.   The skeleton in the well near the southern town of Perpignan he identified as 46-year-old Concetta Lema who also disappeared three years ago.   Police scientists were trying to confirm the identity.   The body of the 10-year-old, known as Karine, was found in another well in the same region.   Tissier was jailed for 20 years in 1971 for raping and killing a 18-year-old girl.   He was released after 12 years, and jailed again within months for rape and armed robbery.   He was released in 1992 before serving out his 10-year term and arrested a year later for the murder of Karine. 
19898 !E12 !ECAT !G15 !G154 !GCAT !M13 !M132 !MCAT  European Union finance ministers have reached an agreement on the legal status of the future single European currency, the Euro, European Commission spokesman Patrick Childs said.   The agreement was reached in the morning session of Saturday's meeting of European finance ministers to discuss details of European Economic and Monetary Union (EMU).   Establishing a legal status for the future single European currency is needed to ensure the continuity of financial contracts under EMU. 
19899 !E12 !ECAT !G15 !G154 !GCAT !M13 !M132 !MCAT  European Union finance ministers agreed on Saturday that central banks could cease intervention in support of currencies in a future Exchange Rate Mechanism if price stability was threatened.   "The European central banks and the central banks of the pre-ins can stop intervention if it would endanger the central goal which is the stability of prices," EU Commission spokesman Patrick Childs said.    The spokesman was speaking after a morning session of EU Finance Ministers and central Bank governors which discussed the relationship between countries which join a new single currency and those which remain outside, the so-called "ins" and "outs"   They also discussed the legal status of the new Euro currency and were to examine the economic outlook for the 15-nation bloc in talks later in the day, officials said.   -- Dublin Newsroom +353-1-4759256 
19900 !GCAT !GCRIM  Police said on Saturday they had arrested more than 50 alleged mobsters in dawn swoops across southern Italy.   Police in the southeastern port city of Taranto said they had arrested some 40 suspected members of a powerful clan on charges of murder, trafficking of drugs and counterfeit money, and extortion.   Some 400 police agents took place in the raid.   In the eastern Sicilian town of Paterno, near Catania, 15 alleged mobsters of the "Santa Barbara" clan were rounded up in a dawn swoop.   They face charges of murder, criminal association and sexual assault, police said.   In Palermo, eight jailed Mafiosi were informed that they were being investigated in connection with several murders in the Sicilian capital during the 1980s, including that of former Palermo soccer club owner Roberto Parisi and Republican Party senator Ignazio Mineo.   The investigation was based in part on the testimony of turncoat Emanuele Di Filippo, who took part in some of the murders himself, police said. 
19901 !E12 !ECAT !G15 !G154 !GCAT  Prime Minister Romano Prodi was quoted on Saturday as saying Italy must be among the countries to launch Europe's single currency in 1999 or risk being left behind.   "I used to think a second group of countries could take part (in monetary union) in a successive phase," Prodi told La Stampa in an interview.   "But I no longer believe that...The countries that will be left out (of the first phase) will remain only farther and farther behind," Prodi added.   European Union finance ministers were meeting in Dublin on Saturday to drive forward proposals to introduce a single currency, and forge the planned Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) by January 1, 1999.   Top of the agenda is a so-called stability pact which would penalise member states if they ran up excssive budget deficits.   Ministers will also try to iron out the workings of a new Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM) linking countries which join EMU and those which, for political or economic reasons, do not.   Countries wanting to join the launch face stringent targets on interest and exchange rates, inflation, budget deficits and public debt in 1997, and evaluation of their level of economic integration early in 1998.   Prodi said his centre-left government's 1997 budget, which is designed to achieve 32.4 trillion lire ($21 billion) in deficit cuts and must be presented to parliament by September 30, would be vital to helping Italy meet those targets.   "The budget must be passed all in one piece and straight away," he said.   ($1=1523) 
19902 !C15 !C151 !CCAT !E12 !ECAT !G15 !G154 !GCAT  The switch to a single European currency will cost Banque Nationale de Paris 1.6 billion francs, but the expense will be staggered over a number of years, Michel Pebereau, chairman of the bank, said in a radio interview.   "We have calculated the cost of the changeover to the Euro for BNP.   It will be 1.6 billion francs in the six years to 2003," Pebereau told Radio Classique.   He said the money would be needed to cover such costs as training and adaptation of computer systems and that a large part of the expenditure would be needed after 1999.   He said the bank did not plan to take provisions to cover the cost as the expenditure would be staggered "and we will assume these expenses year after year."   -- Paris Newsroom +33 1 4221 5452 
19903 !E12 !ECAT !G15 !G154 !GCAT  European Union Finance ministers reached broad agreement on a new Exchange Rate Mechanism and the legal status of the Euro at their informal meeting in Dublin on Saturday, Irish sources said.   "Ministers reached broad consensus on the objectives, principles and overall structure of a new ERM," an Irish official said.   He said broad agreement had also been reached on the legal status of the euro, which will put into effect legislation to ensure the continuity of financial contracts under Economic and Monetary Union (EMU).    We are pleasantly suprised by how quickly consensus is being achieved, particularly in relation to the euro," he said.   The official told reporters that ministers discussed the nature of the new exchange rate mechanism, the work to be done on it and the timetable for doing it.   Ministers confirmed the euro would be the central rate and anchor of the new system and discussed whether there should be wider bands for some members with closer links for others.   They also discussed how intervention would work under the new system.   "The details were kept vague so as not to give hostages to fortune," the official said. 
19904 !GCAT !GVIO  A bomb wrecked a customs office in the Corsican port of Bastia early on Saturday, French police said.   The blast caused major damage to the office but no injuries.   No one immediately claimed responsibility, but the attack appeared to be the work of separatist guerrillas who have been waging a campaign for greater autonomy from France for the past two decades.   Despite a threatened crackdown on lawlessness on the Mediterranean resort island, bombs have exploded regularly since mid-August, when one of the main nationalist groups called off a shaky truce intended to foster secret talks with the government. 
19905 !E12 !ECAT !G15 !G154 !GCAT !M13 !M132 !MCAT  Finnish central bank governor Sirkka Hamalainen refused to comment on Saturday on whether and when the markka may join the European Union's Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM).   "No comments on ERM," she told Reuters ahead of a meeting in Dublin of EU finance ministers and central bank heads who are discussing preparations for Economic and Monetary Union (EMU).   Speculation has been intense recently about an imminent Finnish decision to join ERM.   But EU monetary officials have said such a move is highly unlikely this weekend in view of the full agenda of the meeting in Dublin.   -- Dublin Newsroom +353 1 4759258 
19906 !GCAT  The month-long ordeal of two teenage Moroccan stowaways ended on Saturday when they disembarked in the French port of Brest to be repatriated, their lawyer said.   The two unnamed youths, aged 16 and 18, sneaked aboard the Cypriot freighter Iason in Casablanca more than a month ago.   One of them was detained by French police and taken back to the ship earlier this month after trying to swim ashore.   A third stowaway, aged 19, was missing and believed to have drowned after he also tried to swim to the French coast.   According to the ship's captain, the two survivors tried to commit suicide several times on board.   Authorities in Croatia, Britain and France had refused to let the stowaways disembark.   Lawyer Ronan Appere finally obtained the Interior Ministry's green light to have them taken off the ship.   They would be flown home later in the day, he said. 
19907 !GCAT !GDEF !GDIP  U.S. Defence Secretary William Perry said on Saturday that NATO was not ready to promise it would keep nuclear weapons out of Eastern European states on Russia's borders.   Replying to questions from reporters on a flight from Washington, Perry said NATO had no interest in basing nuclear weapons in Eastern Europe but "I don't think we're to the point where anybody's ready to make guarantees or commitments."    Asked if he could conceive of giving Russia a promise that nuclear arms would not be based in Eastern European countries that might gain future membership in NATO, Perry said:   "I think NATO would want to see what's happening in the world, what's happening in Russia" before making any promise.   "But there is no interest and no plan in NATO today for either increasing the number, the quantity, of (nuclear) weapons or increasing places where they are based."   Perry was beginning a 10-day trip to Finland, Sweden, Denmark and Norway. 
19908 !GCAT !GREL  Pope John Paul recorded his voice onto the Internet on Saturday when he inaugurated a web site set up by the French Roman Catholic Church to improve communication with its flock.   The 76-year-old Pontiff sent a live personal message welcoming electronic visitors to the new site from a terminal at the convent of the Sisters of Charity where he is staying in the central city of Tours during a four-day visit to France.   "I am happy to address a message of welcome to those who are consulting the Internet service of the Catholic Church in France," the Pope said.   "Among them I especially welcome the young people with whom I will meet during the World Youth Days in Paris in August 1997," said the Pope, who will return to France next year for the event.   His electronic message can be heard by visitors to the web site whose computers have a voice facility.   A longer, written message from the Pope was entered into the site for him by a French nun who helped set up the service.   "It's a great joy to be doing this.   It's the culmination of more than a year of negotiations," Sister Catherine Cesboue, 42, told reporters.   The site's electronic address is http://www.cef.fr.   and has been on-line since September 8.   It contains biographies of French bishops, details of the Pope's visit and his speeches and a photograph of the Polish-born Pontiff as a young man.   The Roman Catholic Church has been critical of what it perceives as abuse of the media to peddle sexual and other vices while at the same time welcoming the opportunities of new technologies to spread its own message.   The Vatican itself is an old hand in cyberspace.   It went on-line last Christmas at the address http://www.vatican.va.   and 10 national bishops' conferences also have their own web sites.   The Vatican site gets frequent requests for prayers, some of which the Pope personally answers, officials say. 
19909 !E12 !ECAT !G15 !G154 !GCAT  British Chancellor of the Exchequer Kenneth Clarke said on Saturday it was important for Britain to play its part in shaping European Economic and Monetary Union even though its immediate membership is in doubt.   Clarke, attending a meeting of European Union finance ministers in Dublin, was speaking after the British government last week appeared to give conflicting signals about the merits of EMU membership.   The strongly pro-European Clarke has insisted that Britain must not rule out joining up to EMU.   But last Wednesday Foreign Secretary Malcolm Rifkind made a keynote speech warning that EMU could tear Europe apart.   His comments bolstered the confidence of "Eurosceptics" on the right of Prime Minister John Major's ruling conservative party, who want Britain to flatly reject the idea of joining EMU.   Asked about apparent confusion over the British position, Clarke told reporters the British position was clear.   "The cabinet settled its position five months ago and said that we would make a decision about whether Britain would join in due course, when we knew how it would work and whether it was in the British interests."   Clarke, who arrived slightly late for the opening photo session of the ministers and their central bank governors, said Saturday's meeting in Dublin was aimed at discussing the rules that would apply once EMU began.   Some rules were for those that join the single currency and some were for all the members of the European Union, he said.   "We (in Britain) want to try and make sure that we make a constructive contribution to getting the rules right so that (European countries) have stability, we have low inflation, we have sustainable debt, we don't have any countries getting into trouble and destabilising the markets."   It was "extremely important" for Britain to take part in the talks, he said. 
19910 !E12 !ECAT !G15 !G154 !GCAT  Irish Finance Minister Ruairi Quinn said he did not expect any surprises or major divisions at Saturday's informal meeting of European Union Finance Ministers and Central Bank governors.   "I do not anticipate any surprises because there are no big divisions but it will be the nuances of the issues that we will want to agree," he told reporters as the talks started.   Quinn said the talks would focus on a stability pact to underpin Economic and Monetary Union by punishing members which run up excessive budget deficits.   He said the issue was crucial because divergence from agreed criteria by major countries would cause market turbulence which would make smaller countries, such as Ireland, suffer.   "For large countries, if they were to go offisde we would see a reaction in the markets and that is why it is important to have a stability pact" he said.   Quinn said Ireland's Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) had carried out a detailed study of the implications of EMU to assess Ireland's vulnerability.   "We have looked at where the vulnerability is and I have alrady taken some steps to try to protect those sectors of the Irish economy that would be most vulnerable," he said.   Irish exporters fear that they would be exposed if the nation's biggest trading partner, Britain, did not join a proposed single Euro currency and Ireland did.   They have lobbied the government to voice fears that competitive devaluations by Britain would undermine their market position by fixing the value of the Irish pound immutably.   Quinn said he thought the possibility that Britain would introduce a huge devaluation was "extremly remote."   Senior British monetary officials have stressed that Britain will stick to tough anti-inflationary policies even if Britain stays out of EMU.   Quinn said there was a lobby in Britain to join EMU and he thought a London government would become a member at some stage after it goes into effect on January 1, 1999.   "If Britain is consistent in the way she has conducted her affairs in the past and if that consistency comes through in the future then I think it is reasonable to assume that Britain will join the single currency a couple of years after the start, if not the beginning," he said.   Quinn ruled out any postponement of the start of EMU, a position echoed by France and Germany, prime movers of the scheme.   "All the indications are that everybody is committed to meeting the deadline of the first of January, 1999.   I believe there are enough countries on target for that," he said.   -- Dublin Newsroom - 353-1-4759259 
19911 !E12 !ECAT !G15 !G154 !GCAT  European Union finance ministers began talks on Saturday in Dublin to try to drive forward proposals to introduce a single currency in 1999.   Top of the agenda in the informal meeting of ministers and their central bank governors will be a plan to ensure countries which sign up to Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) stick to tough anti-inflationary economic policies.   The proposal, inspired by Germany, envisages a series of fines on EMU members which allow their budget deficits to rise out of control.   The ministers, meeting in a castle in Dublin's city centre, will also debate measures to link the future single currency, the Euro, to currencies which stay outside EMU.   Bank of France governor Jean-Claude Trichet told reporters as he arrived for the talks that he expected "good progress".   Although the meeting is informal and can take no decisions, the President of the powerful German Bundesbank, Hans Tietmeyer, has said he expects "not only talks, but results". 
19912 !GCAT  These are the leading stories in the Algerian press on Saturday as reported by the official Algerian news agency APS.   Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.   EL WATAN   - Rai singer Boudjemaa Bechiri found dead on Friday; kidnapped by four gunmen on Wednesday night as he was leaving wedding party in eastern town of Constantine.   - Government holds national conference on economic and social strategy to seek support for its policy.   L'AUTHENTIQUE   - President Zeroual to hold news conference, second since his election last year.   LE MATIN   - Algeria's foreign debt estimated at less than $32 billion in 1996.   EL MOUDJAHID   - Government of national union expected in coming days to oversee general and local elections next year. 
19913 !GCAT !GDIP !GPOL !GVIO  The U.N. Security Council Friday said Croatia had made insufficient progress in stopping abuses against minority Serbs, despite progress on an amnesty law and returning refugees.   In a statement read at a formal meeting, the council also deplored Zagreb's refusal to turn over to the Hague-based U.N. war crimes tribunal indicted Croatian or Bosnian Croats.   Some 18 of the 75 men indicted by the tribunal are Croats.   "Despite some positive developments, the Security Council is deeply concerned that residents of the Krajina and Western Slavonia continue to suffer from inadquate security, including the danger of theft or assault at any time," the council said.   "In particular it deplores the reported involvement of Croatian uniformed military and police officials in acts of looting and harrassment," it added.   Up to 200,000 Serbs fled to Serbia and Bosnia when Zagreb troops's recaptured the Krajina region in two swift offensives a year ago.   Only a few, most of them elderly, remained in Krajina, although others now have asked to return.   But the council praised Zagreb for passing a new amnesty law for Croatian Serbs not wanted for war crimes and said it should be implemented quickly "in a fair and equitable" way.   It also recognised steps Croatia had taken to reintegrate refugees and urged Zagreb to implement the measures without preconditions or delay.   The council based its statement on a report from Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali which said the government had authorised the return of more than 9,000 Croatian Serbs but few had come back to their homes.   Another 10,000 have applied to return home but their applications were being processed slowly.   Many of their old homes are now occupied by Croatian refugees.   The report cited crimes, some by soldiers and police, ranging from looting the kitchen sink to explosives being used to kill or maim Croatian human rights or relief aid workers.   Zagreb has objected to the continued monitoring of its human rights by the Security Council, saying this fell under the jurisdiction of other U.N. bodies.   Some members agreed but the United States as well as the Europeans on the council rejected that position, diplomats said.   A statement by Croatia's U.N. mission said the number of "authorized returns of Serbs to Croatia, which has steadily increased since the beginning of the year, should be seen in a positive light," particularly since national groups in other areas of the former Yugoslavia were far less tolerant.   The Security Council's statement may have an impact on the Council of Europe where Croatia has applied for membership.   Final approval depends on protecting minorities and cooperating with U.N. war crimes tribunal. 
19914 !GCAT !GOBIT !GPOL !GPRO  Thousands of mourners attended the burial of Murtaza Bhutto, estranged brother of Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, on Saturday as Pakistan named a judge to investigate his killing with six aides by police.   Murtaza was buried at the ancestral graveyard at Garhi Khuda Bakhsh, about 25 km (15 miles) from Larkana, beside the grave of his younger brother Shahnawaz and near that of his father, executed former prime minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto.   More than 10,000 people turned up at the graveyard amid rice fields and several fainted in sweltering heat as the temperature soared to 37 degrees Celsius (98 degrees Fahrenheit).   Murtaza's sobbing widow, Ghinwa, appeared briefly in the crowd before her husband's bullet-ridden body was lowered into the grave.   His body was flown to the family home of Larkana to the north of the city of Karachi, where he and six supporters were killed in a shootout with police on Friday night.   Benazir Bhutto and her mother Nusrat also arrived in Larkana but did not attend the burial because of the crowds.   Earlier, Benazir wailed and prayed over Murtaza's body at a Karachi hospital.   In a mark of deep mourning, she went barefoot to the hospital where Murtaza, 42, died after being hit by up to eight bullet wounds in the gunfight near his home in an affluent area of the city.   She flew overnight from Islamabad to Karachi after hearing of the death of the brother who had bitterly opposed her government in a three-year political confrontation.   Police blamed the shooting on Murtaza's political followers, saying they had fired on police who wanted to search their cars.   A Sindh province government notice said provincial high court judge Ali Mohammad Baluch would head an inquiry tribunal which would submit its report within a month.   Sindh's police chief also ordered a senior officer to investigate "whether or not right procedure was adopted by the police and whether there was an excessive use of force or not," the official APP news agency said.   Provincial Chief Minister Abdullah Shah told Reuters that the police officers involved in the shooting had been suspended from duty.   He also appealed for calm.   Bhutto's ruling Pakistan People's Party (PPP) declared three days of mourning for Murtaza, who led a breakaway faction of the party in opposition to the government.   Party secretary general Rafiq Ahmad Sheikh, quoted by state television, asked party branches throughout the country to fly black flags at their offices and hold religious services.   In Larkana, all bazaars and transport were shut in response to a three-day mourning period already called by Murtaza's breakaway Shaheed Bhutto faction of the PPP.   Crowds of mourners marched through the town chanting slogans, some blaming the prime minister for the death, witnesses said.   "Benazir, murderer of brother", some shouted.   Interior Minister Naseerullah Babar, in a speech to parliament, described Murtaza as "a brave and bold man" who stood by his principles and fought against the late military dictator, General Mohammad Zia-ul-Haq.   Opposition leader Nawaz Sharif accused the government of "state terrorism" and said: "We should be told of the circumstances which led the killing of Murtaza Bhutto.   Such a thing never happens in a civilised country."   Murtaza's wife issued a statement which avoided apportioning blame for what she called his "tragic death" and asked his followers to abstain from violence.   "I appeal to all those who believe as he did and who shared that dream to find answers through peaceful means, to struggle for the cause he espoused, with calm and dignity," she said.   Murtaza was the last surviving son of Zulfikar Bhutto, who was toppled as prime minister in a 1977 army coup and hanged two years later.   His younger brother, Shahnawaz, was found dead in his flat in southern France in 1985 in mysterious circumstances. 
19915 !GCAT !GOBIT !GPOL !GPRO  Thousands of mourners attended the burial of Murtaza Bhutto, estranged brother of Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, on Saturday as Pakistan named a judge to investigate his killing with six aides by police.   Murtaza was buried at the ancestral graveyard at Garhi Khuda Bakhsh, about 25 km (15 miles) from Larkana town, beside the grave of his younger brother Shahnawaz and near that of his father, executed former prime minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto.   More than 10,000 people turned up at the graveyard amidst rice fields and several fainted in sweltering heat as temperature soared to 37 degrees Celsius (98 degrees Fahrenheit), witnesses said.   Murtaza's sobbing widow, Ghinwa, briefly appeared among crowd before her husband's bullet-ridden body was lowered into a large grave.   Murtaza's body was flown to the family home of Larkana in the north of the port city of Karachi, where he and six others were killed in a shootout with police on Friday night.   Benazir and her mother Nusrat also arrived in Larkana but did not immediately come to the burial because of the crowds.   Parliamentarians from government and opposition voiced shock at a National Assembly (lower house) session in Islamabad.   Earlier on Saturday morning, Benazir wailed and prayed over Murtaza's corpse at a Karachi hospital hours after his death.   She flew overnight from Islamabad to Karachi after hearing of the death of the brother who had bitterly opposed her government in a three-year political confrontation.   In a mark of deep mourning, Bhutto came barefoot to Karachi's Mideast hospital where Murtaza, 42, died of up to eight bullet wounds he received in the gunfight near his home in an affluent area of the city.   Police blamed the shooting on Murtaza's political followers, saying they had fired on police who wanted to search their cars.   A Sindh province government notice said provincial high court judge Ali Mohammad Baluch would head the inquiry tribunal which would submit its report within a month.   The provincial police chief also ordered a senior officer to investigate "whether or not right procedure was adopted by the police and whether there was an excessive use of force or not", the official APP news agency said.   Interior Minister Naseerullah Babar, in a speech to parliament, called Murtaza "a brave and bold man" who stood by his principles and fought against late military dictator General Mohammad Zia-ul-Haq.   Opposition leader Nawaz Sharif accused the government of "state terrorism" and said: "We should be told of the circumstances which led the killing of Murtaza Bhutto.   Such a thing never happens in a civilised country."   All bazaars and transport were shut in Larkana in response to a three-day mourning period called by Murtaza's breakaway Shaheed Bhutto faction of the ruling Pakistan People's Party.   Crowds of mourners marched through Larkana chanting slogans, some blaming the prime minister for the death, witnesses said.   "Benazir, murderer of brother", some shouted.   About 10,000 mourners were present at the family home when Murtaza's body was taken out for funeral prayers.   Karachi, the provincial capital, was tense and security was beefed up in the southern district of Lyari, a stronghold of Murtaza's supporters, who threw stones at vehicles and erected roadblocks in some areas.   Ghinwa issued a statement which avoided apportioning blame for what she called her husband's "tragic death" and asked his followers to abstain from violence.   "I appeal to all those who believe as he did and who shared that dream to find answers through peaceful means, to struggle for the cause he espoused, with calm and dignity," she said.   Murtaza was the last surviving son of Zulfikar Bhutto, who was toppled as prime minister in a 1977 army coup and hanged two years later.   His younger brother, Shahnawaz, was found dead in his flat in southern France in 1985 in mysterious circumstances. 
19916 !GCAT !GPOL !GVIO !GVOTE  One person was killed and more than 24 were seriously wounded in a string of blasts on Saturday during the third phase of local assembly elections in India's troubled Jammu and Kashmir, police said.   Six paramilitary troopers were among the 24 wounded, police said.   Separatist politicians said more than 50 people were wounded in explosions and shooting continued late into Saturday.   Kashmir police chief Mohinder Nath Sabharwal said the worst incident occured when militants hurled a grenade at a security picket near a polling station in the Gandarbal of Srinagar, injuring 20 people and killing a civilian.   Former state chief minister Farooq Abdullah is a candidate from Gandarbal in Saturday's leg of assembly elections.   Sabharwal said militants attacked five polling stations, forcing a brief suspension of voting in four of them.   The fifth attack wrecked a polling station.   "We are likely to hold a re-poll there," Kashmir's election chief Jalil Ahmed Khan told the news conference.   Saturday's elections in three administrative regions involved 21 seats in the 87-member assembly.   Polling in Srinagar, Kashmir's capital city, was the lowest at 28.8 percent, Kashmir's top civil servant Ashok Kumar said.   "There is a pattern that the farther you go away from Srinagar, the higher the polling gets," he said.   Police also said a landmine in the town of Charar-e-Sharief, 30 km (18 miles) east of the state's summer capital Srinagar, wrecked a building and a bus.   There were no casualties.   Residents in downtown Srinagar reported dozens of explosions through the night ahead of the third phase of the local elections in Kashmir that began on September 7 and would conclude on September 30.   At least 20 people have been killed in the month-long campaign.   Separatist militants and their political supporters oppose the polls, part of India's effort to restore democracy in Jammu and Kashmir after more than six years of direct rule by New Delhi.   Tens of thousands of Indian security personnel have poured into some of the most sensitive areas of Srinagar where officials identified four districts as particularly prone to violence.   The first two phases of the four-stage elections, held on September 7 and 16, were generally peaceful and there was only sporadic violence.   But authorities feared greater violence during voting on Saturday in Srinagar, which has been the focal point of the separatist movement since 1990.   Reporters visiting the militant-dominated areas of Srinagar said most polling booths were deserted and the region was filled with paramilitary forces and security vehicles.   The government detained senior leaders of the All Party Hurriyat (Freedom) Conference ahead of the third phase of the polls on Saturday.   Sixty of the assembly's 87 seats were contested earlier this month.   Police and hospital officials say more than 20,000 people have died in insurgency-related violence during the six-year rebellion. 
19917 !GCAT !GCRIM !GPOL  Former Indian prime minister P.V. Narasimha Rao quit as head of the Congress party on Saturday, stepping down in disgrace after a court upheld a summons ordering him to appear in a criminal case.   Although his Congress party suffered a humiliating defeat in general elections earlier this year, Rao has retained a say in the nation's politics by offering his party's crucial support to the centre-left United Front coalition government.   Rao said in a statement read to a news conference in the Indian capital by Congress general secretary Devendra Dwivedi that he was not guilty of any misdemeanour.   "Although the case is yet to be heard on its merits, I have decided to relinquish the post of party president."   Earlier on Saturday a Delhi judge upheld the summons ordering Rao to appear in court on September 30 as a co-accused in a case of criminal conspiracy to cheat.   Formal charges would be framed on the same day.   An Indian expatriate businessman, Lakhubhai Pathak, alleges Rao and a Hindu guru conspired to cheat him of $100,000 in 1983.   Rao rejected the accusation.   "The allegations levelled against me are false, frivolous and baseless, and are intended to cause harm to my reputation," Rao said in the statement.   The 75-year-old former prime minister said he had decided to step down "in the interests of the Congress party and to avoid tension and confusion in the ranks".   The Congress Working Committee, the party's highest decision-making body, was to meet on Monday to elect a new leader, senior Congress member and former foreign minister Pranab Mukherjee said.   Political analyst Kewal Varma said Rao's resignation could immediately stir confusion in Congress, which is India's oldest party and has ruled for all but four years since independence in 1947.   But he said the party would eventually pull together.   "The chances of Congress uniting now are quite bright.   There will be a power struggle.   But things could improve," he said.   Although Rao retained the option to challenge the court's move, he had already lost an appeal in the Supreme Court over the case.   Few expected the veteran politician to stage a comeback within Congress.   "There is no future.   At 75, he can't have one," Varma said.   Another senior Congress party member, C.K. Jaffer Sharief, said Rao's resignation was a "step in the right direction and will help in rebuilding the party".   Rao, architect of India's economic liberalisation programme, served as prime minister from 1991 until last May when his party finished a humiliating second in general elections.   "During the period I was in positions of power, including that of prime minister, I have not done anything violative of law nor have I done anything which might bring discredit to my party or to my government," Rao said.   Asked if Rao's resignation would have an impact on Congress' support for Prime Minister H.D. Deve Gowda's minority government, Mukherjee told Reuters: "I do not think so."   In another case involving alleged vote buying in which Rao has been named, a Delhi court on Saturday postponed the recording of a statement by one of the co-accused.   The main accused, Shailendra Mahato, and two other politicians belonging to a regional party have said they were paid $100,000 to vote against a 1993 no-confidence motion that Rao's Congress-led government narrowly survived.   The court gave Mahato until Monday to decide whether to offer a closed-door confession. 
19918 !GCAT !GCRIM !GOBIT !GPOL !GPRO  Pakistani authorities on Saturday named a high court judge to investigate the death of Murtaza Bhutto, estranged brother of Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, and six aides in an overnight shootout with police.   The chief of Sindh province police also ordered a separate inquiry into the conduct of the police in the incident, which sent shockwaves across the country.   While Murtaza's body was flown to the family home of Larkana in the north of the province of Sindh for burial, parliamentarians from government and opposition voiced shock at a National Assembly (lower house) session in Islamabad.   Earlier on Saturday morning, Benazir wailed and prayed over Murtaza's corpse just hours after his death.   She flew overnight from Islamabad to Karachi after hearing of the death of the brother who had bitterly opposed her government in a three-year political confrontation.   In a mark of deep mourning, Bhutto came barefoot to Karachi's Mideast hospital where Murtaza, 42, died of up to eight bullet wounds he received in the Friday night gunfight near his home in an affluent area of the city.   Police blamed the shooting on Murtaza's political followers, saying they had fired on police who wanted to search their cars.   A Sindh province government notice said provincial high court judge Ali Mohammad Baluch would head the inquiry tribunal which would submit its report within a month.   The provincial police chief ordered a senior officer to investigate "whether or not right procedure was adopted by the police and whether there was an excessive use of force or not", the official APP news agency said.   Interior Minister Naseerullah Babar, in a speech to parliament, called Murtaza "a brave and bold man" who stood by his principles and fought against late military dictator General Mohammad Zia-ul-Haq.   Opposition leader Nawaz Sharif accused the government of "state terrorism" and said: "We should be told of the circumstances which led the killing of Murtaza Bhutto.   Such a thing never happens in a civilised country."   All bazaars and transport were shut in Larkana in response to a three-day mourning period called by Murtaza's breakaway Shaheed Bhutto faction of the ruling Pakistan People's Party.   Crowds of mourners marched through Larkana chanting slogans, some blaming the prime minister for the death, witnesses said.   "Benazir, murderer of brother", some shouted.   About 10,000 mourners were present at the family home when Murtaza's body was taken out for funeral prayers.   Karachi, the provincial capital, was tense and security was beefed up in the southern district of Lyari, a stronghold of Murtaza's supporters, who threw stones at vehicles and erected roadblocks in some areas.   Murtaza's widow Ghinwa issued a statement which avoided apportioning blame for what she called her husband's "tragic death" and asked his followers to abstain from violence.   "I appeal to all those who believe as he did and who shared that dream to find answers through peaceful means, to struggle for the cause he espoused, with calm and dignity," she said.   Murtaza was the last surviving son of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, the former prime minister toppled in a 1977 coup and hanged two years later.   His younger brother, Shahnawaz, was found dead in his flat in southern France in 1985 in mysterious circumstances. 
19919 !GCAT !GPOL !GVIO !GVOTE  At least 20 people, including six paramilitary troopers, were seriously wounded in a grenade attack by separatist militants in India's Jammu and Kashmir state after key local polls began on Saturday, police said.   They also said a landmine explosion in the town of Charar-e-Sharif, 29 km (18 miles) east of the summer capital of Srinagar, wrecked a building and a passenger bus.   Police did not say if there were any casualties.   A police spokesman said militants hurled the grenade at a paramilitary picket guarding a polling station in the Gandarbal district of Srinagar, where former state chief minister Farooq Abdullah is a candidate in Saturday's leg of assembly elections.   Residents in downtown Srinagar reported dozens of explosions throughout the night ahead of the third phase of a four-stage local assembly polls in Kashmir that began on September 7 and would conclude on September 30.   At least 20 people have been killed in the month-long, violence-marred campaign.   Appa Sahib Allur, chief of Kashmir's Border Security Force (BSF), told Reuters in Srinagar there were three explosions, including two grenade attacks on a security patrol on Friday night.   Militants also fired on security pickets.   "A powerful explosion on Saturday morning rocked Kalamdan Pora in downtown Srinagar near a polling station," Allur said.   The blast was aimed at a polling station, but no damage was caused, he said.   Residents, used to six years of separatist violence in the region, said there were dozens of blasts which could be either grenades or mines in areas where Kashmiri militants are strong.   Journalists staying in central Srinagar heard a deafening explosion nearby which shook their hotel in the early morning.   Intermittent gunfire was heard during the night.   Separatist militants and their political supporters are opposing the polls, part of India's effort to restore democracy in the state of Jammu and Kashmir after more than six years of New Delhi's direct rule.   Tens of thousands of Indian security personnel have been poured into some of the most sensitive areas of Srinagar where officials have identified four districts as particularly prone to violence.   The first two phases of the four-stage elections, held on September 7 and 16, were generally peaceful and there was only sporadic violence.   But authorities feared greater violence during voting on Saturday in Srinagar, which has been the focal point of the separatist movement since 1990.   A state government spokesman said polling was brisk in some parts of Srinagar and neighbouring Budgam and Udhampur regions.   "But the votivg in some of the affected areas was slow with between one two six votes cast in the first hour," he said.   Reporters visiting the militant-dominated areas of Srinagar, said most polling booths were deserted and the region was filled with paramilitary forces and security vehicles.   The government detained senior leaders of the All Party Hurriyat (Freedom) Conference ahead of the third phase of the polls involving 21 seats on Saturday.   Sixty of the assembly's 87 seats were contested earlier this month.   Police and hospital officials say more than 20,000 people have died in insurgency-related violence during the six-year rebellion. 
19920 !GCAT !GPOL !GPRO  Pakistan Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto wailed and prayed on Saturday over the corpse of her estranged brother, Murtaza Bhutto, just hours after he and six of his aides were killed in a shootout with Karachi police.   As a mark of deep mourning, Bhutto came barefoot to Karachi's Mideast hospital where Murtaza, 42, died of up to eight bullet wounds he received in the Friday night gunfight near his home in an affluent area of this violence-torn city.   She sat beside Murtaza's body for 45 minutes, wailing and later reciting Koranic verses, witnesses said.   Bhutto cried loudly inside the hospital room where the body lay and when she met Murtaza's widow Ghinwa, the witnesses said.   "What has happened?"   Bhutto cried, as she pressed her head between her hands in sorrow and sat with Ghinwa.   Benazir had flown overnight from the capital Islamabad to Karachi after the death of her brother, who had bitterly opposed her government in a three-year political confrontation.   Ghinwa later issued a statement which pointed no finger of blame for what she called her husband's "tragic death" and asked his followers to abstain from violence.   "I appeal to all those who believe as he did and who shared that dream to find answers through peaceful means, to struggle for the cause he espoused, with calm and dignity," she said.   Murtaza was the last surviving son of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, the former prime minister toppled in a 1977 coup and hanged two years later.   His younger brother, Shahnawaz, was found dead in his flat in southern France in 1985 in mysterious circumstances.   Their mother, Nusrat, who had shown a tilt towards Murtaza while maintaining peace with Benazir, was flying to Karachi from London to accompany the body to the family home in Larkana.   The burial was set to take place there later on Saturday.   Witnesses said at least 3,000 people had gathered at Murtaza's home in Larkana district and thousands more emotional mourners were expected to assemble there for the funeral.   The government ordered an inquiry into the gunbattle, but made no immediate move to apportion blame.   Police blamed the shooting in Karachi on members of Murtaza's breakaway Shaheed Bhutto faction of the ruling Pakistan People's Party, saying they had fired on police who wanted to search their vehicles.   Karachi police deputy inspector general Shoaib Suddle said police had insisted on checking Murtaza's vehicles as part of security measures ordered after bomb blasts in Karachi on Wednesday that killed one person and wounded three.   Hours before his death, Murtaza denied his group was responsible for the bombs and told a news conference police had arrested at least 70 of his supporters in the previous 24 hours.   He accused police of causing the blasts to implicate his group.   Murtaza and Benazir quarrelled during the family's period in the political wilderness after their father's execution.   Murtaza, who spent 16 years in exile, mainly in Syria, formed an underground resistance group called Al-Zulfikar and was accused of involvement in a 1981 airline hijacking.   His sister took a more moderate approach and, when democracy returned after Zia's death in a still unexplained plane crash, she won a 1988 election.   She lost power 20 months later but returned to office after an election victory in October 1993.   Murtaza returned to Pakistan in November 1993 and was arrested on criminal charges dating back to Zia's rule.   Benazir insisted he should clear his name in court.   Freed on bail, he formed his rival faction in March 1995, accusing Benazir of working with those behind their father's death.   Benazir met Murtaza on July 7 for the first time since his return, in an apparent reconciliation attempt, but Murtaza continued to accuse her government of corruption and misrule. 
19921 !GCAT  These are the leading stories in the Pakistani press on Wednesday.   Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.   DAWN   - Mir Murtaza Bhutto, 42, was killed with six supporters during a shootout with the police outside his 70 Clifton residence in the port city of Karachi.   - One of the two burn victims, Zaibunnisa of Tando Bhawal, who had set herself ablaze in Hyderabad eight days ago, died in a Karachi hospital.   - The Governor of North West Frontier Province Khurshid Ali Khan said a commission would be constituted to probe the causes of bloody clashes in Kurram Agency.   - An activist of ethnic Mohajir National Movement was killed in an alleged shootout with the police in Karachi's Orangi Town.   - The September 1 increase in the prices of medicines has made 1996 a record year in terms of winning price rises by Pakistan's pharmaceutical industry.   - Pakistan is set to achieve a record export target of $10 billion for 1996/97 after the latest rupee devaluation of 3.65 percent.   BUSINESS RECORDER   - Pakistan and Britain are to set up a joint venture in the pharmaceutical sector to manufacture life-saving drugs in Pakistan.   - Uzbekistan has invited members of the Karachi Stock exchange to invest and participate in privatisation investment funds in Uzbekistan.   - A fishing rights dispute between Sindh and Balochistan provinces may cost the country millions of rupees, beside hurting the credibility of Pakistani exports internationally.   THE MUSLIM   - The secretary general of the opposition Pakistan Muslim League, Senator Sartaj Aziz, said Pakistan was facing "creeping economic crises" caused by declining investment and production and warned that the country would plunge into financial emergency if immediate remedial measures were not taken.   THE NEWS   - The United States has requested Pakistan to allow the deployment of its Military Information Support Team in Pakistan to work in collaboration with the Anti-Narcotics Force to target drug traffickers and enforce a demand reduction programme.   -The World Bank president James Wolfensohn has rescheduled his visit to South Asia for health reasons, the bank said.   -- Islamabad newsroom 9251-274757 
19922 !GCAT  These are some of the leading stories in the Bangladesh press on Saturday.   Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.   ---   DAILY STAR   Imported wooden electrical poles treated with chromated copper arsenate have threatened soil and sub-soil water with arsenic pollution in some parts of rural Bangladesh, scientists said.   Bangladesh Rural Electrification Board imported over 2.5 million poles during the last two decades.   Pregnancy related deaths in Bangladesh are among the highest in South Asia, a seminar was told.   Some 600 mothers per 100,000 died of pregnancy in Bangladeh against 460 in India and 500 in Pakistan.   ---   THE INDEPENDENT   Bangladesh Biman has instructed its international flight operators to re-route the incoming flights through Abu Dhabi for airlifting illegal Bangladehi immigrants from UAE.   Officials said about 20,000 Bangladeshis were facing deportation from UAE following a tougher immigration law.   ---   BANGLADESH OBSERVER   Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina said her government was pledge-bound to ensure equal rights, privileges and facilities of all citizens irrespective of caste, creed and religion.   ---   FINANCIAL EXPRESS   Dhaka Stock Exchange will delist eight companies for what its officials said was "poor performance and breaching of listing rules."   Bangladesh's garment workers demanded weekly holiday in their factories.   -- Dhaka Newsroom 880-2-506363 
19923 !GCAT !GPOL  Pakistan Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto wailed and prayed on Saturday over the corpse of her estranged brother, Murtaza Bhutto, just hours after he and six of his aides were killed in a shootout with Karachi police.   As a mark of deep mourning, Bhutto came barefoot to Karachi's Mideast hospital where Murtaza, 42, died of up to eight bullet wounds he received in the Friday night gunfight near his home in an affluent area of this violence-torn city.   She sat beside Murtaza's body for 45 minutes, wailing and later reciting Koranic verses, witnesses said.   Bhutto cried loudly inside the hospital room where the body lay and when she met Murtaza's widow Ghanva, the witnesses said.   "What has happened?"   Bhutto cried, as she pressed her head between her hands in sorrow and sat with Ghanva.   Murtaza was the last surviving son of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, the former Pakistani prime minister toppled in a 1977 coup and hanged two years later.   His younger brother, Shahnawaz, was found dead in his flat in southern France in 1985 in still unexplained circumstances.   Their mother, Nusrat, who had shown a tilt towards Murtaza while maintaining peace with Benazir, was currently in London on holiday, family sources said.   As preparations were made for Murtaza's funeral later on Saturday in the Bhutto family's native Larkana district, in the north of the southern province of Sindh, the government ordered an inquiry into the gunbattle.   Police blamed the shooting in Karachi -- capital of Sindh province -- on members of Murtaza's breakaway Shaheed Bhutto faction of the ruling Pakistan People's Party (PPP), saying they opened fire on police.   Murtaza died about three hours after the gunfight in the fashionable seaside Clifton area.   Only close relatives were allowed into the hospital and a police cordon in the area appeared to have kept Murtaza's followers away.   The six Murtaza aides, who police said opened fire first from three cars which failed to stop when ordered to do so, died instantly.   Official sources said Benazir Bhutto, who was in the capital Islamabad, took a special plane to Karachi to be close to her dead brother, who had bitterly criticised her government in a three-year political confrontation.   A police spokesman, quoted by the official APP news agency, said Murtaza's followers opened fire first in the gunfight, wounding two officers and a cab driver.   "Police retaliated in self-defence and, after an encounter, they found six dead and five injured, including Murtaza Bhutto, and six were apprehended alive," the spokesman said, describing the immediate aftermath of the gunfight.   No independent eyewitness account was immediately available.   Karachi police deputy inspector general Shoaib Suddle said police had insisted on checking the vehicles because of tightened security following three bomb blasts in Karachi on Wednesday in which one person was killed and at least three others were wounded.   Hours before his death, Murtaza denied his group was responsible for the bombs and told a news conference police had arrested at least 70 group members in the previous 24 hours.   He accused police of causing the blasts to implicate his group.   Murtaza was pronounced dead after doctors vainly tried to save his life, reviving him once after cardiac arrest but failing on a second occasion.   Doctors said Murtaza had eight bullet wounds, while police said there were two.   Murtaza and Benazir quarrelled during the family's period in the political wilderness after their father, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, was ousted as prime minister by army chief General Mohammad Zia-ul-Haq in 1977 and hanged in 1979.   Murtaza, based in Syria, formed an underground resistance group called Al-Zulfikar and was accused of involvement in a 1981 airline hijacking.   His sister took a more moderate approach and, when democracy returned after Zia's death in a still unexplained plane crash, she was able to lead the PPP to victory in a 1988 election.   She lost power 20 months later but returned to office in 1993.   Murtaza returned to Pakistan in November 1993 and was arrested on a string of criminal charges dating back to Zia's military rule.   His sister insisted he should clear his name in court and he was cleared in some cases.   Freed on bail, he formed his rival faction in March last year, accusing Benazir of working with those responsible for their father's death.   Benazir met Murtaza on July 7 for the first time since his return, apparently in an attempt at reconciliation, but Murtaza continued to accuse her government of corruption and misrule. 
19924 !GCAT !GCRIM !GPOL  Critics of Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto have begun pointing fingers at her government after police killed her estranged brother and political opponent Murtaza Bhutto in a shootout on Friday night.   Police say Murtaza's supporters started the clash in Karachi in which six of his aides were also killed.   But some opposition politicians and lawyers have branded the killings conspiracy and murder.   "Benazir, murderer of brother," chanted demonstrators at the Bhutto family's home town of Larkana before Murtaza's body was brought from Karachi on Saturday for burial in the nearby village of Garhi Khuda Bakhsh.   Opposition leader Nawaz Sharif, in a speech in parliament, accused the government of "state terrorism" against its political opponents.   The official APP news agency quoted leaders of the Lahore High Court Bar Association in Punjab province as describing Murtaza's killing as a murder.   Akbar Bugti, a former governor of the southwestern province of Baluchistan and leader of the Baluchistan-based Jamhoori Watan Party, accused Bhutto in a statement of having "devoured the fresh blood of her younger brother".   Earlier on Saturday Bhutto walked barefoot into the Karachi hospital where her 42-year-old brother's body lay as a mark of respect and wailed and prayed over him.   She has declined to talk to reporters.   But Sindh province Chief Minister Abdullah Shah, a member of her Pakistan People's Party (PPP), declined to rule out a conspiracy.   The provincial government named a high court judge on Saturday to head a tribunal to investigate the shootout and submit a report within a month.   The province's police chief also directed a senior official of his department to inquire into the conduct of the police.   Shah said the police inquiry report must come in three days and appealed for calm after reports of violent demonstrations in parts of the province, including the provincial capital Karachi.   He told Reuters that he had ordered the suspension from duty of all police officers and constables involved in the shootout, though initial police reports put the blame on Murtaza's men.   APP quoted Shah as saying "nothing can be ruled out" when asked whether it was a conspiracy, because Murtaza's father, former prime minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, and younger brother Shahnawaz had also been victims of alleged conspiracies.   More than 10,000 mourners attended Murtaza's funeral at the ancestral graveyard at Garhi Khuda Bakhsh, about 25 km (15 miles) from Larkana, between the graves of Zulfikar and Shahnawaz, eyewitnesses said.   Benazir and her mother Nusrat also went to Larkana but did not attend the burial because of the crowds.   Police said Murtaza's men had fired on officers who wanted to search their cars near his home in Clifton, an affluent seaside suburb of Karachi and the police returned fire in self-defence.   But local newspaper reports quoted a senior member of Murtaza's breakaway Shaheed Bhutto faction of the PPP as accusing police of opening fire without provocation.   "The policemen suddenly opened fire on Murtaza, seriously injuring him," said the faction's vice-president for Hyderabad administrative division, Dr Mazhar Memon.   "I also came out of the vehicle to help my injured leader who was on the ground and I received a bullet in my leg."   Memon said Murtaza's guards fired at police after they saw their master lying in a pool of blood.   "Mir Murtaza raised his hand in the air, urging police to hold fire.   The policemen ignored Murtaza and continued firing."   The PPP declared three days of mourning for Murtaza.   Murtaza's wife issued a statement that avoided apportioning blame for what she called his "tragic death" and urged his followers to abstain from violence.   "I appeal to all those who believe as he did and who shared that dream to find answers through peaceful means, to struggle for the cause he espoused, with calm and dignity," she said.   Murtaza was the last surviving son of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, who was toppled in an army coup in 1977 and hanged two years later.   The other brother, Shahnawaz, was found dead in his flat in southern France in 1985 in mysterious circumstances. 
19925 !GCAT !GVIO  Afghanistan's powerful Taleban Islamic militia has urged pro-government fighters to defect to its side and promised them amnesty, a Pakistan-based Afghan news service said on Saturday.   A statement issued by Taleban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar, quoted by the Afghan Islamic Press (AIP), said he had instructed his militia to give full protection to the defectors.   "It is possible some people in the ranks of the so-called government are fighting against Taleban out of compulsion or some other reasons," AIP quoted the statement as saying.  "But we have declared general amnesty for such people," Omar said.   Taleban forces, which now control more than half of Afghanistan, captured two eastern provinces in a quick sweep last week.   But fighting has continued in some parts of the two provinces, Nangarhar and Laghman.   Government jets bombed Jalalabad airport in Nangarhar for the second day running on Saturday as well as Taleban positions in Shewa district, north of the city, AIP reported.   There was no immediate information about any damage or casualties.   Taleban has been besieging the afghan capital of Kabul since last October to force President Burhanuddin Rabbani's government to step down. 
19926 !GCAT !GCRIM !GPOL  The killing of Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto's brother adds a famous name to a long list of victims of gun law in one of Asia's most violent cities.   Murtaza Bhutto, 42, died in a hail of police bullets on Friday night.   Police say his bodyguards fired first.   Six of them were killed along with their impulsive leader.   The Sindh provincial government has set up a judicial inquiry, but speculation is already rife about whether the police account is credible or whether Murtaza's death may have been engineered by his enemies in a wider conspiracy.   Either way, the showdown outside 70 Clifton, once home of Murtaza's father, executed former prime minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, has damaged Karachi's hopes of shaking off its reputation for danger and political mayhem.   More than 2,000 people were killed in the southern port last year in ethnic, sectarian and political unrest, many of them in a bitter struggle between the security forces and militants of the Karachi-based ethnic Mohajir National Movement (MQM).   The bloodletting traumatised Karachi residents, depressed business confidence and made foreign investors uncomfortable.   The death toll has declined, but this year's total so far still stands at more than 360.   Security in the sprawling city of 12 million people, Pakistan's economic capital, is in the hands of just 25,000 police backed by up to 15,000 paramilitary Rangers and several security agencies.   Guns have been readily available in Karachi since the 1979-89 Soviet intervention in neighbouring Afghanistan, when the Western-backed mujahideen rebels were based in Pakistan and weapons flooded into the country.   The security forces have reduced MQM activities, partly by adopting harsh tactics sanctioned by the government.   "This means the police may now be predisposed to shoot first and ask questions later," a European diplomat said.   The MQM accuses police and Rangers of killing scores of its activists in cold blood, by shooting them on sight or killing them later in custody.   The security forces deny this and accuse the MQM of killing more than 300 of its own men last year in an attempt to provoke anti-government protests and strikes.   Murtaza himself, embittered by his sister's success in inheriting the leadership of their father's Pakistan People's Party (PPP), was a minor thorn in the government's side.   He set up a splinter PPP group last year, saying that the government was tainted by corruption and should resign.   Murtaza won over few mainstream PPP figures, but attracted some radical elements.   He often moved around the city in a noisy high-speed cavalcade with gunmen poking assault rifles from the windows of their pickups and four-wheel drive vehicles.   Hours before his death he denied that his group was behind bomb blasts that killed one person and wounded three in Karachi on Wednesday, telling a news conference that the security forces had deliberately planted the devices to discredit him.   "We were not checking Murtaza, but the armed guards with him," said a senior police officer after the fatal shootout.   "According to our information, they were all trained by RAW (India's Research and Intelligence Wing intelligence outfit)."   Pakistan and India, bitter foes since partition in 1946, routinely accuse each other of fomenting unrest and training and arming terrorists.   The officer, who asked not to be named, said Murtaza had come to two police stations on Tuesday seeking the release of a detained party member and had "misbehaved" with police officers.   "There is a limit to this kind of behaviour.   It cannot be allowed," the officer said. 
19927 !GCAT !GPOL  Political rivals and Congress dissidents welcomed former Indian prime minister P.V. Narasimha Rao's resignation on Saturday as head of the nation's oldest party, saying corruption had caught up with him.   Rao's Congress loyalists also praised the 75-year-old leader's decision.   But they said he was setting high standards in public life, not resigning in disgrace.   Rao quit as president of the 111-year-old party after a Delhi judge upheld a summons ordering him to appear as a co-accused in a case of criminal conspiracy to cheat.   Rao said he was innocent in the case, involving a businessman who says he offered $100,000 to a Rao acquaintance in 1983 to secure a government contract which did not come his way.   Rao said he resigned to spare the party trouble.   The Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) minced no words in lambasting the man it loves to hate.   "P.V. Narasimha Rao's sins are finally catching up with him," BJP spokesman Yashwant Sinha said in a statement.   "He used every loophole in legal procedure to delay doomsday, but has not succeeded."   The opposition BJP had led an attack on Rao linked to a series of scandals that have plagued his party, which suffered its worst electoral debacle in this year's general elections held in April and May.   Rao had ruled for five years since 1991.   "It (the court ruling) is poetic justice for the man who believed in the principle of law taking its own course for others but not for himself," Sinha said.   Rao has been accused by critics of not defending senior party colleagues named in a string of corruption cases that have hit the party this year.   "He has delayed it for too long.   He should have done it much earlier," said Harkishan Singh Surjeet, general secretary of the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPM), a member of the 13-party United Front coalition which assumed power in June.   Party dissidents who have been seeking Rao's exit and hold him responsible for the poll debacle heaved a sigh of relief.   "It is in the fitness of things that he has done it.   But he should have done it long before," C.K. Jaffer Sharief, who served in Rao's cabinet, was quoted by the Press Trust of India (PTI) as saying.   Loyalists said Rao made a principled decision to quit in the larger interests of his party.   "Mr Rao is a Congress leader with a large following.   Interest of the party is uppermost in his mind," said Devendra Dwivedi, a Rao confidant who announced the resignation.   Party dissidents signalled they were ready to offer Rao an honourable exit.   "The Congress will stand by him in this crucial juncture," said Ghulam Nabi Azad, a minister in Rao's defeated cabinet who earned the wrath of some loyalists for pressing Rao to step down. 
19928 !GCAT !GPOL  Former prime minister P.V. Narasimha Rao earned international praise for five years of reform that opened the Indian economy to the world.   But the voters responded by giving his Congress party a humiliating electoral defeat and on Saturday he quit in disgrace as party leader after a judge upheld a summons ordering him to appear as co-accused in a criminal conspiracy case.   Although Congress suffered its worst-ever defeat in May's general election, Rao, 75, had remained an influential voice by offering his party's crucial support to the centre-left United Front coalition government.   His hold over Congress came to an abrupt end after the court turned down his appeal and ordered him to appear on September 30.   The case stems from allegations by a business magnate who claims he was cheated of $100,000 which he had paid to a Hindu guru known to Rao to secure a state contract in 1983.   Rao has denied the allegation.   Congress -- which is India's oldest party and has ruled for all but four years since independence in 1947 -- has been reeling from a string of other scandals and Rao's legal tangles are sure to tarnish his legacy.   He also faces allegations of buying votes in a narrowly won confidence motion in 1991.   He has denied any wrongdoing.   Plucked from semi-retirement in 1991 to fill the shoes of the assassinated of Rajiv Gandhi, Pamulaparthi Venkata Narasimha Rao's tact and patience made him the only person outside the Nehru-Gandhi family to complete a full term as prime minister since independence in 1947.   His reticent, indecisive style irritated rivals and baffled supporters.   Some saw it as the shyness of a backroom man.   Others saw the signs of a Machiavellian.   "When I don't take a decision, it's not that I don't think about it," Rao said recently.   "I think about it and take a decision not to take a decision."   Until 1991, Rao was happy to be a quiet strategist, drafting party documents and reading books.   Bureaucrats loved his scholarly style, which rarely inspired the masses of a nation with an estimated population of 930 million.   When Gandhi was murdered Rao, at the age of 69, was seen as the man who could rise above power struggles to unite the party.   His lacklustre style did help cool the social tensions of the times, which included caste conflicts and Hindu-Moslem riots.   A widower since 1970 who has undergone major heart surgery, he came to power facing a balance of payments crisis and a high fiscal deficit.   Things looked up after he slashed socialist controls and managed his way through a foreign exchange shortage.   India achieved economic growth of more than six percent over the past two years, trade more than doubled and inflation fell to a 10-year low.   During his term of office, Rao quelled Maoist insurgency in the border state of Assam, and successfully oversaw state elections in Punjab, where Sikh militants had battled for independence for years.   But corruption allegations against Congress leaders, including Rao, mounted during his tenure.   Seven ministers resigned this year after being linked to a bribes-for-favours scandal.   Former communications minister Sukh Ram, who served in Rao's cabinet, was arrested this week in a corruption case after more than $1 million in cash was discovered in two of his homes. 
19929 !GCAT !GCRIM !GPOL  A criminal case which forced former prime minister P.V. Narasimha Rao to resign as Congress party leader on Saturday is the latest in a series of scandals that have rocked Indian politics in the past decade.   Following are summaries of major political scandals:   BOFORS SCANDAL - In 1987, then prime minister Rajiv Gandhi's government was hit by allegations Swedish arms manufacturer AB Bofors had paid kickbacks to officials to secure a $1.3 billion artillery contract.   The opposition accused Gandhi of covering up a probe into the scandal, which was seen as contributing to the defeat of Gandhi's Congress party in 1989 general elections.   The allegations are still under investigation.   SECURITIES SCANDAL - India's biggest ever financial scandal erupted in April 1992.   Banks and brokers were accused of colluding illegally to siphon $1.3 billion from the inter-bank securities market to fuel a boom on the Bombay Stock Exchange.   The scandal weakened Rao's government.   SUGAR SCANDAL - In April 1994, Rao's government allowed duty-free import of sugar, banned since August 1993, sparking opposition allegations that imports had been delayed to allow domestic mills to reap enormous profits.   Food minister Kalpanath Rai lost his job in the row.   TELECOMMUNICATIONS SCANDAL - Opposition political parties paralysed parliament in late 1995, alleging then communications minister Sukh Ram had favoured a little-known Indian firm in opening up the state monopoly over telecommunications.   The Supreme Court dismissed the allegations and paved the way for privatisation.   In August, federal agents discovered more than $1 million in cash in two of Sukh Ram's homes.   Sukh Ram, accused of pocketing kickbacks, was arrested this week after returning from a trip to Britain.   He said the money belonged to the Congress party and has denied any wrongdoing.   "HAWALA" SCANDAL - An $18 million political bribery scandal in January 1996 forced seven of Rao's ministers and two governors to resign after a "hawala," or illegal foreign exchange dealer, claimed to have paid more than 100 bureaucrats and ruling party and opposition politicians bribes in exchange for favours.   The scandal was widely seen as contributing to the defeat of Congress in general elections this year.   VOTE-BUYING SCANDAL - Lawmakers of the regional Jharkand Mukti Morcha party said they were paid $100,000 to vote against a 1993 no-confidence motion, which Rao's Congress-led government survived by a wafer-thin margin.   Earlier this year the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) filed a case accusing Rao and other Congress leaders of buying the votes.   They have denied any wrongdoing.   UREA SCANDAL - The CBI in June named one of Rao's sons, P.V. Prabhakara Rao, in a $40 million kickback scandal related to the import of urea fertiliser from Turkey which never arrived.   Prabhakara Rao, questioned by the CBI, denied the charges.   CHEATING SCANDAL - A Delhi criminal court judge summoned Rao to testify in a cheating case involving an expatriate Indian, Lakhubhai Pathak, who testified that he paid $100,000 to a Rao acquaintance in 1983 in a failed attempt to win a government contract.   A special Delhi court upheld the summons on Saturday and ordered Rao to appear as a co-accused on September 30.   Rao, who denied any involvement, resigned as Congress party head. 
19930 !GCAT !GPRO !GREL  Mother Teresa, recovering from an injury to her head suffered in a fall, is expected to leave hospital soon, doctors treating the Roman Catholic missionary said on Saturday.   "We must have another CAT (brain) scan on Monday before we release her on Tuesday," Dr S.K. Sen, medical director of Woodlands Nursing Home, said.   The 86-year-old nun was admitted to hospital on Monday after falling from a chair and injuring her head.   A brain scan later showed an apparent spot on her brain.   Doctors have said they do not believe the unexplained spot is cause for worry, but want to conduct another scan to determine if it stemmed from an old injury.   Sen said the revered missionary showed no signs of suffering from the head injury.   "She is significantly better now and there is no neurological deficit," he said.   "Mother Teresa remains bright and cheerful.   But she will be under observation for a few more days," a medical bulletin issued by the hospital said.   Mother Teresa expressed her desire on Friday to visit Rome and meet Pope John Paul II to wish him good health.   "She needs lots of rest and she is not in a position to fly to Rome," Dr A.K. Bardhan, the personal cardiologist of the 1979 Nobel Peace Prize winner, said.   The missionary, known as the "Saint of the Gutters" for her devotion to the poor and destitute, was admitted to the same nursing home on August 20 with heart trouble, malaria and pneumonia.   She was released 18 days later and told to rest. 
19931 !E51 !E512 !ECAT !GCAT !GDIP  Bangladesh's Commerce and Industry Minister Tofael Ahmed left on Saturday for Vietnam on a five-day official visit to explore business relations and sign a trade agreement, officials said.   They said the three-year renewable agreement Ahmed and his Vietnamese counterpart Le Van Triet were expected to sign would be the first trade accord between Dhaka and Hanoi.   The officials said Ahmed would propose to Vietnamese leaders to set up a joint economic committee to "institutionalise bilateral relations."   They gave no details.   Trade between Dhaka and Hanoi has been at a low level, government officials said.   Bangladesh's exports to Vietnam in fiscal 1994/95 (July-June) totalled $26.7 million against exports from Vietnam worth $3.67 million, according to official figures.   Officials accompanying Ahmed included the head of Bangladesh's export promotion office and leading entrepreneurs.   He will meet Vietnamese President Le Duc Anh and Prime Minister Vo Van Kiet. 
19932 !GCAT !GPOL !GVIO !GVOTE  Tense Indian officials in flak jackets on Saturday supervised voting in Kashmir elections, marred by widespread voter resistance and a string of explosions which killed one person and injured 24.   Police confirmed about a dozen blasts since Friday night, including grenade attacks and mine explosions targeting security forces near polling stations in and around the summer capital of Srinagar, focal point of separatist violence since 1990.   The third leg of the first state assembly polls in nine years revealed deep-seated anger among local Kashmiris, who showed solid support for a separatist-led boycott of the elections.   "My life is cheaper, so they didn't give me a flak jacket," said Atar Singh, a Hindu Kashmiri official at Srinagar's Makhdoom Kucha polling station in a makeshift tent resembling a bunker.   Singh was one of hundreds of Kashmiri officials ordered to supervise the polls crucial to India's effort to restore democracy in the Himalayan state of Jammu and Kashmir after nine years of direct rule by New Delhi.   The first two phases of the four-stage elections, held on September 7 and 16, were generally peaceful and there was only sporadic violence.   M.K. Sudarshan and Mohammed Ayub, two other polling officials recruited as election monitors from ministries in Delhi, looked embarrassed as their local colleague complained about what he said was India's bias against Kashmiris.   "We don't know why, but only officials from outside the state have been given this security," Sudarshan told Reuters.   Outside the polling booth a Kashmirir woman walked away angrily, complaining she was dragged there by Indian security to cast her vote.   "I have heart trouble, so please spare me," she screamed in Kashmiri.   "You have dragged out our men to vote, isn't that enough?"   The Makhdoom polling station had recorded 63 votes in the first five hours out of 880 voters registered there, officials said.   "The turnout is low," a polling official at Bazaar Batmaloo confessed, looking embarrassed at the deserted school building that housed his polling booth.   Outside, paramilitary troops kept a tense vigil.   Forty one votes had been cast there out of an electorate of 763 in the first five hours, an official said.   A 40 km (25 miles) drive through usually congested lanes in Srinagar revealed nearly deserted streets.   The monotony was broken by one set of young boys playing cricket on the streets, a group of youths flashing victory signs at journalists and heavily armed security men mounted on armoured vehicles.   The tension was clearly etched on the face of 80-year old Mohammed Ameen Qureishi.   "I did not want to come out," he told, taking a visiting correspondent by the arm.   Turning his back to expectant poll officials ready to hand him a ballot paper, Qureishi whispered: "I have come because it would be dangerous to argue with the men in uniform.   "Do they send the military to fetch voters in India too?  ," he asked. 
19933 !GCAT !GPOL  Former Indian prime minister P.V. Narasimha Rao resigned as head of the Congress party on Saturday after a court upheld a summons ordering him to appear as a co-accused in a cheating case.   Although his Congress party suffered a humiliating defeat in general elections earlier this year, Rao has retained a say in the nation's politics by offering his party's crucial support to the centre-left United Front coalition government.   Rao said in a statement read to a news conference in the Indian capital by Congress general secretary Devendra Dwivedi he was not guilty of any misdemeanour.   "Although the case is yet to be heard on its merits, I have decided to reliquish the post of party president."   Earlier on Saturday a Delhi judge upheld a summons ordering Rao to appear in court on September 30 as a co-accused in the cheating case.   An Indian expatriate businessman, Lakhubhai Pathak, alleges Rao and a Hindu guru conspired to cheat him of $100,000 in 1983.   Rao rejected the charge.   "The allegations levelled against me are false, frivolous and baseless, and are intended to cause harm to my reputation," Rao said in the statement.   Rao served as prime minister from 1991 until last May when his party finished a humiliating second in general elections.   "During the period I was in positions of power, including that of prime minister, I have not done anything violative of law nor have I done anything which might bring discredit to my party or to my government," Rao said.   "I have full faith in the rule of law and I am confident that all the allegations made against me will be proven to be false and without any substance," he said.   The 75-year-old former prime minister said he had decided to step down "in the interests of the Congress party and to avoid tension and confusion in the ranks".   The Congress Working Committee, the party's highest decision-making body, was to meet on Monday to elect a new leader, senior Congress member and former foreign minister Pranab Mukherjee said.   Asked if Rao's resignation would have an impact on Congress' support for Prime Minister H.D. Deve Gowda's minority government, Mukherjee told Reuters: "I do not think so."   Earlier on Saturday, Judge Ajit Bharihoke summoned Rao to appear in court on September 30.   "He has been asked to appear before this court," Bharihoke said in a local Delhi court after he rejected an appeal by Rao to overturn the summons issued by another court.   The Indian expatriate businessman, Pathak, says he paid money to guru Chandraswami in a failed attempt to secure a state newsprint contract after Rao, then foreign minister, assured him at a meeting in a New York hotel that his "work would be done".   On July 9, a Delhi court charged Rao with criminal conspiracy to cheat and issued a summons.   On Saturday judge Bharihoke rejected Rao's appeal to have the summons quashed.   The maximum punishment which Rao could face if convicted of the charge would be seven years in jail, court officials said.   Since 1991 when former prime minister and Congress leader Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated, Rao had been president of the party which has ruled India for all but four years since independence from Britain in 1947.   As prime minister he launched a free-market programme which discarded decades of socialist controls and opened India, the second most populous country after China, to foreign trade and investment.   But corruption allegations against Congress leaders, including Rao, multiplied during his tenure, contributing to his party's humiliating defeat in general elections ended in May. 
19934 !GCAT !GPOL  Former Indian prime minister P.V. Narasimha Rao resigned as head of the Congress party on Saturday after a court upheld a summons ordering him to appear as a co-accused in a cheating case.    "Although the case is yet to be heard on its merits, I have decided to relinquish the post of party president," Rao said in a statement read to a news conference in the Indian capital by Congess general secretary Devendra Dwivedi.   Earlier on Saturday a Delhi judge upheld a summons ordering Rao to appear in court on September 30 as a co-accused in the cheating case.   An Indian expatriate businessman, Lakhubhai Pathak, alleges Rao and a Hindu guru conspired to cheat him of $100,000 in 1983.   Rao has said he is innocent of the charge of criminal conspiracy to cheat, and has denied he was in New York on the dates mentioned by Pathak.   Rao served as prime minister from 1991 until last May when his party finished a humiliating second in general elections.   The maximum punishment which Rao could face if convicted of the charge would be seven years in jail, court officials said. 
19935 !GCAT !GPOL !GVIO !GVOTE  One person was killed and at least 24 seriously wounded in a string of blasts in India's troubled Jammu and Kashmir state during the third phase of key local assembly elections on Saturday, police said.   Six paramilitary troopers were among the 24 wounded, police said.   The Press Trust of India (PTI) reported at least 37 persons had been wounded.   A police spokesman said militants hurled a grenade at a paramilitary picket guarding a polling station in the Gandarbal district of Srinagar, where former state chief minister Farooq Abdullah is a candidate in Saturday's leg of assembly elections.   One person was killed in this explosion, which also wounded a number of others.   The other injuries reported during the day occured in attacks in various areas.   PTI said separatist militants lobbed grenades at some polling stations in Srinagar but did not say if there were any casualties.   Police also said a landmine in the town of Charar-e-Sharief, 30 km (18 miles) east of the state's summer capital Srinagar, wrecked a building and a bus.   There were no casualties.   Appa Sahib Allur, chief of Kashmir's Border Security Force (BSF), told Reuters in Srinagar there were three explosions, including two grenade attacks on a security patrol on Friday night.   Militants also fired on security pickets.   "A powerful explosion on Saturday morning rocked Kalamdan Pora in downtown Srinagar near a polling station," Allur said.   The blast was aimed at a polling station, but he said there was no damage.   Residents in downtown Srinagar reported dozens of explosions through the night ahead of the third phase of the local elections in Kashmir that began on September 7 and conclude on September 30.   At least 20 people have been killed in the month-long campaign.   Separatist militants and their political supporters oppose the polls, part of India's effort to restore democracy in Jammu and Kashmir after more than six years of direct rule by New Delhi.   Tens of thousands of Indian security personnel have been poured into some of the most sensitive areas of Srinagar where officials have identified four districts as particularly prone to violence.   The first two phases of the four-stage elections, held on September 7 and 16, were generally peaceful and there was only sporadic violence.   But authorities feared greater violence during voting on Saturday in Srinagar, which has been the focal point of the separatist movement since 1990.   A state government spokesman in Srinagar said polling was brisk in some parts of Srinagar and neighbouring Budgam and Udhampur regions.   Reporters visiting the militant-dominated areas of Srinagar said most polling booths were deserted and the region was filled with paramilitary forces and security vehicles.   The government detained senior leaders of the All Party Hurriyat (Freedom) Conference ahead of the third phase of the polls involving 21 seats on Saturday.   Sixty of the assembly's 87 seats were contested earlier this month.   Police and hospital officials say more than 20,000 people have died in insurgency-related violence during the six-year rebellion. 
19936 !GCAT !GPOL  Pakistan's President Farooq Leghari differs with Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto over who has the right to appoint senior judges, his lawyer said on Saturday.   Leghari's legal counsel, Shahid Ahmed, told reporters that the president had sent a formal request to the Supreme Court on Saturday for an opinion on whether the prime minister's advice to him on judicial appointments was binding or not.   "As the president sees it, the core issue is whether he is bound by his oath of office to do what is his constitutional duty, or by the advice of the prime minister to perform what she says is his (the president's) executive function," Ahmed said.   Leghari, a long-standing political ally of Bhutto, was publicly airing his differences with her for the first time.   There was no immediate comment from Bhutto, who flew to Karachi from Islamabad overnight after her estranged brother Murtaza Bhutto was killed in a shootout with police.   Ahmed said Leghari had turned to the Supreme Court to settle what he said was an "evident difference of opinion" with Bhutto on how to implement a Supreme Court judgement curtailing the prime minister's powers to appoint judges.   Ahmed said Leghari had not consulted Bhutto before his latest approach to the Supreme Court.   "The president is of the view that under the constitution, as interpreted by the Supreme Court, the appointment of judges is a constitutional duty and not an executive function to be performed on the advice of the prime minister," he said.   In March, the Supreme Court challenged Bhutto's powers to appoint judges and ordered the removal of temporary judges she had appointed.   She reluctantly moved to implement the order.   The ruling angered Bhutto, under fire from opposition parties who accused her of packing the judiciary with supporters of her Pakistan People's Party.   She denied the charge. 
19937 !GCAT !GCRIM !GPOL  An Indian court on Saturday upheld a summons ordering former Indian prime minister P.V. Narasimha Rao to appear as a co-accused in a cheating case.   The judge, Ajit Bharihoke, has summoned Rao to personally appear in court on September 30.    "He has been asked to appear before this court," Justice Ajit Bharihoke said in a local Delhi court after he rejected an appeal by Rao to overturn the summons issued by another court.   An Indian expatriate businessman, Lakhubhai Pathak, alleges he paid a Rao aquaintance $100,000 in a failed attempt to secure a government contract.   Rao, who denied the allegations against him, is president of the Congress party which has ruled India for all but four years since independence from Britain in 1947.   The party suffered its worst electoral humiliation earlier this year in India's general elections. 
19938 !GCAT !GPOL !GVIO !GVOTE  One person was killed and at least 24 seriously injured in a string of explosions in India's troubled Jammu and Kashmir state after the third phase of key local assembly elections began on Saturday, police said.   They said six paramilitary troopers were among the 24 injured.   The Press Trust of India (PTI) reported that at least 37 persons had been injured.    PTI said separatist militants lobbed grenades at some polling stations in Srinagar.   But it did not say if there were any casualties.   Police also said a landmine in the town of Charar-e-sharief, 30 km (18 miles) east of the summer capital of Srinagar, wrecked a building and a bus.   There were no casualties.   Residents in downtown Srinagar reported dozens of explosions throught the night ahead of the third phase of the local elections in Kashmir that began on September 7 and conclude on September 30.   At least 20 people have been killed in the month-long campaign.   Separatist militants and their political supporters are opposing the polls, part of India's effort to restore democracy in the state of Jammu and Kashmir after more than six years of direct rule by New Delhi. 
19939 !GCAT !GVIO  Sri Lankan police were investigating eight Indian fishermen on Saturday on suspicion of trying to smuggle Tamil Tiger rebels to India among Tamil refugees on trawlers, a military spokesman said.   "Two LTTE members and the Indians are being investigated," the spokesman said.   "They were aboard two Indian trawlers apprehended earlier this week."   Indian fishermen have said separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) guerrillas, who have been fighting Sri Lankan troops for more than 13 years, have forced them to carry refugees to the southern Indian state Tamil Nadu, home to 50 million Tamil-speakers.   "Police are trying to investigate LTTE's various operations in southern India," the spokesman said, declining to elaborate.   He said the two Indian trawlers, carrying 21 Sri Lankans and the eight Indians, were held on Tuesday by navy vessels in Sri Lankan waters north of Mannar island.   "The Indians and the trawlers would be released once the investigation is over.   The investigation has been notified to the Indian High Commission here," the spokesman said.   He gave no other details but Sri Lanka's independent Island newspaper said the two arrested LTTE members were proof that the rebel group was sending its cadres to south India mingled with civilians being smuggled across the Palk Strait.   Last month, when predominantly Sinhalese troops shelled the rebels' territory on the northern mainland, at least 1,000 Tamil refugees went to India from Sri Lanka, according to Tamil Nadu officials.   Indian diplomats in Colombo have expressed concern over the Tamil refugees but say there have been no signs of a repeat of the 1980s when some 200,000 refugess landed in Tamil Nadu.   New Delhi in 1987 sent peacekeeping troops to the island after brokering a failed peace accord between Colombo and the Tigers, but met with opposition from Sri Lanka's Sinhalese majority groups, Tamil guerrillas and critics at home.   The Tigers, who once had a large number of sympathisers in Tamil Nadu, have been unwanted in India since they fought Indian peace-keeping troops sent to Sri Lanka to disarm them.   The Sri Lankan government has said more than 50,000 people have died in the country's ethnic war which began in 1983. 
19940 !E41 !ECAT !GCAT !GDIP !GJOB !GPOL  The United Arab Emirates (UAE) clampdown on illegal foreign workers will hit the south Indian state of Kerala harder than anywhere else in Asia, state government officials said on Saturday.   State officials say about half the 50,000 to 60,000 Indians who will be forced out of the UAE are Malayalees, natives of Kerala, and 90 percent will be manual or semi-skilled labourers.   The UAE has given illegal workers, estimated at around 200,000 by diplomats there, a two-month amnesty to get their documents in order or quit the country by September 30.   So far only a trickle of workers have come back to their home state, as most have waited in vain for a change of heart from the UAE authorities, V. Venu, the head of the local government department for non-resident Indians, told Reuters.   He expected the numbers returning to swell markedly and said that most of them would be unskilled labourers.   The Indian government said on Friday it would ask national airlines to arrange extra flights from Abu Dhabi and Dubai, and arrange for ferries and ships to bring stranded nationals home.   Remittances home from Malayalees working in the Gulf now provide the economic mainstay of this lush-green state, best known for its exotic spices and tea and coffee plantations.   "There should be around one million Malayalees working in the Gulf countries," Venu told Reuters.   The old spice route between Cochin port and the Arabian Peninsula had thrived for centuries, but when oil money arrived in the Gulf in the 1970s people became Kerala's main export.   Sociologists estimate that three in five families in this state of 30 million people at the southwest tip of the subcontinent have a relative working in the Gulf.   The money earned has mostly been spent on building new homes and consumer goods for their families.   The dependence on this flow of money back from the Gulf was clearly evident when Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's army occupied Kuwait in 1990.   That caused a drastic slowdown in remittances and led to a crash in land prices in Kerala.   Kerala's chief minister E.K. Nayanar told Reuters in the state capital Trivandrum his government was putting together a seven billion rupee ($196 million) rehabilitation scheme for the welfare of people forced to come home by the UAE's new measures.   He said central government help was needed.   The Times of India, in an editorial, also urged the New Delhi government to share the burden.   "The problems the displaced face can already be seen in Kerala.   The suicide rate has gone up as has alcohol and drug abuse, all of which have put a tremendous strain on the family, in particular, and society, in general," it said.   Some of those coming back will be virtually destitute and disillusioned of any dreams of becoming wealthy with Gulf money.   Many will have paid agents large amounts of money, selling their land, to arrange travel, visas and jobs in the Gulf.   And, unscrupulous agents will have given them forged papers and promises of non-existent jobs.   At first sea passage to the Gulf was the only option for many poor Keralites.   They were often dropped off illegally, and left to wade or swim ashore to evade the authorities.   Now the air routes from Kerala to the Gulf are highly lucrative, providing Air India with some of its biggest revenue earners and the state's three main airports' livelihood depend on the Gulf bound traffic. 
19941 !GCAT !GDIP  Bangladesh Foreign Minister Abdus Samad Azad said on Saturday an agreement with India for sharing water from the Ganges was in the works and urged political foes not to try to disrupt it.   "Efforts for Ganges water sharing are on the right track and progressing well for a possible finalisation before the next lean season (starting in December)," he told a news conference.   "This is a very important national issue and I would urge everyone including our political opponents not to try to push it off."   Azad said Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina would address the U.N. General Assembly on October 24, where she would look for an opportunity to meet her Indian counterpart, H.D. Deve Gowda, to discuss the water issue further.   The foreign minister said Bangladesh had convinced India not to link water sharing with any other issues.   "They have understood us and promised full cooperation," said Azad who visited Calcutta last week for talks with West Bengal Chief Minister Jyoti Basu.   The Ganges flows down into Bangladesh through West Bengal.   Doubts over the proposed agreement cropped up after Basu told Indian reporters that the two governments differed on the amount of water to be shared from the Ganges, called Padma in Bangladesh.   "He has many considerations, too.   I think things will be resolved as expected," Azad said on Saturday.   He said that India's proposal for transporting goods to its landlocked northeastern states through Bangladesh had been "totally delinked" from the Ganges issue.   Dhaka says India withdraws the bulk of the Ganges water at its Farakka barrage, 18 km (12 miles) from Bangladesh's northern border in Rajshahi district, leaving some 40 million people in northwestern Bangladesh short.   The last sharing agreement expired in 1988 and efforts to revive it have failed.   The main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party and several fringe groups have threatened to frustrate the water deal, saying India would demand too much in return. 
19942 !GCAT !GPOL  The police shooting of the estranged brother of Benazir Bhutto has cut down another scion of Pakistan's best-known political family and plunged the prime minister into a new crisis, analysts said on Saturday.   Murtaza Bhutto, 42, died after a clash on Friday night between his armed followers and police near his home in Karachi's posh Clifton district, former residence of his hanged father Zulfikar Ali Bhutto.   For Benazir Bhutto, whose family has now been stricken by three untimely deaths, the killing is a major embarrassment.   "A lot depends on how she handles things," said a Pakistani analyst, who asked not to be identified.   "If Bhutto relatives start making accusations, the opposition will pounce."   Benazir is already beset by economic difficulties that forced her to impose a tough budget for 1996/97 (July-June) in the hope of persuading the International Monetary Fund to resume disbursements of a stalled $600 million standby loan.   There was no love lost between Benazir and Murtaza, who set up a rival faction of the ruling Pakistan People's Party (PPP) last year, accusing the government of corruption and misrule.   But his splinter party attracted no PPP heavyweights and posed no political threat to his older sibling, who firmly grasped her father's mantle after he was executed by former military ruler General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq in 1979.   Their younger brother, Shahnawaz, was found dead, possibly poisoned, at his apartment in the south of France in 1985.   The circumstances of Murtaza's death seem certain to stir a hornet's nest for Benazir, already fighting pressures to quit before her five-year term expires in 1998.   "This certainly means trouble for Benazir and could eventually lead to her downfall," said one European diplomat.   The Pakistani analyst said Murtaza supporters could stir trouble in the PPP's Karachi stronghold of Lyari and in the Bhutto heartland near Larkana in the interior of Sindh province.   "Benazir must try to keep the family in control, otherwise it could be a free-for-all," he said.   "There could be a wave of sympathy for Murtaza, as the last Bhutto male, or Benazir herself could gain sympathy from the bereavement."   The attitude of Nusrat Bhutto, Iranian-born mother of the feuding siblings, could prove crucial, he added.   Nusrat, who has in the past sided with Murtaza without burning her bridges to Benazir, was flying to Karachi from London to attend the funeral in Larkana later on Saturday.   Murtaza's wife Ghinwa made no accusations in a statement on what she called her husband's "tragic death" and appealed to his followers to struggle for his cause through peaceful means.   Murtaza was killed hours after holding a news conference at which he denied his party had been behind bomb attacks that killed one person and wounded three in Karachi on Wednesday.   Police had accused Murtaza and his supporters of attacking two centres of the police central intelligence agency on Tuesday to try to release a detained party activist.   Murtaza was killed in a shootout that started when police waiting outside his house tried to search vehicles carrying him and his supportersu when they returned from a function. 
19943 !GCAT !GPOL !GVIO !GVOTE  A grenade attack by separatist militants seriously wounded at least 20 people, including six paramilitary troopers, in India's Jammu and Kashmir state after key local polls began on Saturday, police said.   They also said a landmine explosion in the town of Charar-e-Sharif, 29 km (18 miles) east of the summer capital of Srinagar wrecked a building and a passenger bus.   The police did not say if there were any casualties.    A police spokesman said militants hurled the grenade at a paramilitary picket guarding a polling station in the Gandarbal district of Srinagar, where former state chief minister Farooq Abdullah is a candidate in Saturday's leg of assembly elections.   Residents in downtown Srinagar reported dozens of explosions throughout the night ahead of the third phase of a four-stage election in Kashmir that began on September 7.   At least 20 people have been killed in the month-long, violence-marked campaign.   Separatist militants and their political supporters are opposing the polls, part of India's effort to restore democracy in the state of Jammu and Kashmir after more than six years of New Delhi's direct rule. 
19944 !GCAT !GPOL !GVOTE  A string of explosions rocked Kashmir's capital city of Srinagar throughout the night ahead of a third crucial phase of local assembly polls on Saturday, residents and police said.   The official count of the blasts varied from three to six explosions in densely populated areas of Srinagar, but no casualties were reported.   A senior police official in the state's winter capital of Jammu said there were six blasts in Srinagar, including two near polling stations.   Appa Sahib Allur, chief of Kashmir's Border Security Force (BSF), told Reuters in Srinagar there were three explosions, including two grenade attacks on a security patrol on Friday night.   Militants also fired on security pickets.   "A powerful explosion on Saturday morning rocked Kalamdan Pora in downtown Srinagar near a polling station," Allur said.   The blast was aimed at a polling station, but no damage was caused, he said.   Residents, used to six years of separatist violence in the region, said there were dozens of blasts which could be either grenades or mines in areas where Kashmiri militants are strong.   Journalists staying in central Srinagar heard a deafening explosion nearby which shook their hotel in the early morning.   Intermittent gunfire was heard during the night.   At least 20 people, mostly political workers, have been killed in the month-long election campaign aimed at restoring democracy in India's troubled Jammu and Kashmir state after more than six years of direct federal rule.   Tens of thousands Indian security personnel have been poured into some of the most sensitive areas of Srinagar where officials have identified four districts as particularly prone to violence.   The first two phases of the four-stage elections, held on September 7 and 16, were generally peaceful and there was only sporadic violence.   But authorities feared greater violence during voting on Saturday in Srinagar, which has been the focal point of the separatist movement since 1990.   A state government spokesman said polling was brisk in some parts of Srinagar and neighbouring Budgam and Udhampur regions.   "But the votivg in some of the affected areas was slow with between one two six votes cast in the first hour," he said.   Reporters visiting the militant-dominated areas of Srinagar, said most polling booths were deserted and the region was filled with paramilitary forces and security vehicles.   The fourth and last day of voting is set for September 30 in six constituencies in Doda district, a militant stronghold.   The government detained senior leaders of the All Party Hurriyat (Freedom) Conference ahead of the third phase of the polls involving 21 seats on Saturday.   Sixty of the assembly's 87 seats were contested earlier this month.   All India Radio said police detained more than 200 people in an effort to prevent protest demonstrations.   Police and hospital officials say more than 20,000 people have died in insurgency-related violence during the six-year rebellion.   India accuses Pakistan, which rules one third of Kashmir, of fomenting militancy by arming and training guerrillas.   Islamabad says it provides only moral and diplomatic support. 
19945 !GCAT !GPOL !GVIO !GVOTE  Following are key facts of India's Jammu and Kashmir state, where the third phase of four-stage elections were being held on Saturday.   These are the first local assembly elections since a violent separatist revolt erupted in 1990.   POPULATION: 8 milliom (1990 census)   AREA: 101,387 square km.   Bordered by Pakistan to the west and north, China to the east.   LANGUAGES: Urdu, Kashmiri, Dogri, Pahari, Balti, Ladakhi, Punjabi, Gujri and Dadri.   ECONOMY: About 80 percent of the population is engaged in agriculture, including the cultivation of rice, maize and apples.   Other activities include handicrafts such as carpets and wood carving.   Wool items, such as shawls and blankets, dominate industry.   Tourism, including skiing, has been hard hit by civil unrest.   REGIONS: State is divided into three main regions -- mostly Moslem Kashmir in the north, Buddhist Ladakh to the east and Hindu majority Jammu in the south.   VOTERS: Some 4.5 million eligible state voters spread over 87 constituencies.   The first two phases of voting were held on September 7 and 16, and the last two are on September 21 and 30.   Vote counting begins on October 1, and final results are expected after October 3.   GOVERNMENT: Under the Indian constitution, Jammu and Kashmir state is responsible for all areas except defence, foreign affairs and communications.   But, since 1952, many of the state's powers gradually have been shifted to the federal government in New Delhi.   The main pro-India party, the National Conference, is demanding the restoration of autonomy.   When the state assembly is constituted, the majority party or coalition will select a chief minister, who will appoint a cabinet of ministers.   The winter capital is in Jammu city, and the summer capital is in Srinagar, some 890 km (535 miles) north of New Delhi.   HISTORY: The former Himalayan principality of Kashmir has been passionately disputed by India and Pakistan since they became independent in 1947.   It is the biggest obstacle to better bilateral relations.   Two of their three wars have been fought over the region of spectacular mountain scenery, noted for its lakes with houseboats moored on tranquil waters.   Predominantly Hindu India controls two-thirds, called Jammu and Kashmir, its only Moslem-majority state.   The remainder, ruled by Moslem Pakistan, is known as Azad (Free) Kashmir.   The region had been ruled by Moguls, Afghans, Sikhs and Hindu Dogras before Britain set up a vaguely-defined princely state in 1846 to act as a buffer between the Raj to the south and Russia and China to the north.   On partition in 1947, Kashmir, with its largely Moslem population, was expected to go to Pakistan.   The Hindu ruler, Hari Singh, wanted to stay independent but faced a revolt in the west and the threat of an invasion by Pathan tribesmen from Pakistan.   In October 1947, Singh hastily signed an instrument of accession to India in return for military aid and the territory became a battlefront in fighting between India and Pakistan.   When they signed a ceasefire in 1949, one-third of Kashmir was in Pakistan's hands.   Two more wars, in 1965 and 1971, left positions virtually unchanged but convinced neither side to drop its claim to the whole of the territory.   Pakistan has always insisted that Kashmir's fate should be determined in a plebescite of Kashmiris.   India argues that under the 1972 Simla Agreement the two countries agreed to negotiate a solution to the dispute.   An uprising against Indian rule in the Kashmir Valley broke out in January 1990, inflaming tensions with Pakistan.   New Delhi dissolved the assembly and imposed direct rule over the state.   India accuses Islamabad of arming and training the militants.   Pakistan says it provides only diplomatic support. 
19946 !GCAT !GPOL !GVOTE  India's Jammu and Kashmir state staged the third phase of four-stage elections on Saturday as part of the Himalayan region's first local polls since a separatist rebellion broke out in 1990.   Polling was set for 21 of the state's 87 constituencies on Saturday.   Polling stations opened at 0700 (0130 GMT) and were due to close at 1700 (1130 GMT).   Voting in a total of 60 constituencies was conducted on September 7 and 16.   The remaining six constituencies, all in the troubled Doda district, will vote on September 30.   Counting begins on October 1, and final results are expected after October 3.   The balloting has been spread over four days to allow polling officials and an estimated 200,000 security forces time to move between regions.   At least 20 people, mostly political activists, have been killed during the electoral campaign, and several candidates have escaped attempts on their lives.   The elections are the first to the state assembly since 1987.   The last assembly was dissolved in February 1990, shortly after the separatist insurgency erupted.   The state has been under New Delhi's direct rule since then.   The Himalayan state which borders Pakistan to the west and China to the north and east held parliamentary polls in May as part of general elections which brought Prime Minister H.D. Deve Gowda to power.   In those elections, Jammu and Kashmir voters chose six representatives to sit in the lower house of parliament, the Lok Sabha, in New Delhi.   Voting in the state's summer capital Srinagar, the biggest city in the mostly Moslem Kashmir Valley, will be held on Saturday.   Voters in the winter capital Jammu, which is predominantly Hindu, cast ballots on September 16, while Buddhist Ladakh to the east voted on September 7.   The state's largest pro-India party, the National Conference, is tipped to win the most seats although some polls showed it short of an outright majority.   The All Parties Hurriyat (Freedom) Conference, which includes some 30 separatist groups, has urged voters to boycott the polls.   Hurriyat member groups favour either merger with neighbouring Pakistan or independence.   On paper, the Jammu and Kashmir assembly has a total of 111 seats.   However, 24 constituencies fall within the one third of Kashmir which Pakistan governs.   Earlier this year, elections were held in Pakistan-controlled Kashmir.   Pakistan, which has staked a claim over all of Kashmir, wants an internationally supervised plebiscite of Kashmiris to determine the status of the region.   India wants to resume high-level bilateral talks, which were last held in early 1994, to settle the issue. 
19947 !GCAT !GPOL !GVIO !GVOTE  Kashmir was holding on Saturday the third phase of local assembly polls, which India hopes will help end a six-year-old separatist revolt that has fanned regional tensions.   The fourth and final phase of the elections will be on September 30.   The armed rebellion has roots in the 1947 accession of Moslem-majority Jammu and Kashmir state to mainly Hindu India, and not neighbouring Pakistan, at the end of British rule.   Pakistan seized one third of the Himalayan state in 1948, one of three wars it has fought with India since independence.   Following is a chronology of key Kashmir events from 1990:   January 1990 - Indian army opens fire in Srinagar during protest against crackdown on simmering separatism, killing 38 and giving impetus to a rebel campaign.   February 1990 - India dissolves state assembly, imposes direct rule by the federal government in New Delhi.   May 1990 - Moulvi Mohammed Farooq, chief Moslem priest of Kashmir valley, killed by unidentified gunmen.   At least 50 people killed when troops fire on mourners.   May 1991 - About 68 rebels killed in shootout with army.   June 1991 - Government evacuates foreign tourists from Kashmir following killing of kidnapped Israeli tourist.   December 1991 - Foreign ministers of Islamic nations condemn India's stand on Kashmir.   February 1992 - India lays mines on border with Pakistan to stop guerrillas from crossing over.   Pakistan seeks U.N. probe into alleged human rights violations by Indian forces.   April 1992 - U.N. Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali says no role for the United Nations in Kashmir.   August 1992 - India launches six-week "Operation Tiger" crackdown, killing 40 rebels and arresting scores.   January 1993 - Militants kill 33 troops in Sopore district.   Security forces torch buildings, kill 53 people in retaliation.   October 1993 - Troops lay siege to Hazratbal shrine where about 150 armed guerrillas are holed up.   Protesters against siege march in Bijebehara town, where firing by security men kills 32.   November 1993 - Hazratbal militants surrender peacefully.   March 1994 - Government allows delegation from Swiss-based International Committee of the Red Cross to visit Kashmir.   June 1994 - Two Britons and an American kidnapped by guerrillas.   They are freed unharmed days later.   March 1995 - Security forces surround Charar-e-Sharief town, site of holy shrine where insurgents are holed up.   May 1995 - Fire guts Charar-e-Sharief shrine.   Facing widespread outrage, government abandons plan to hold first state assembly elections since 1987.   July 1995 - Al-Faran guerrillas kidnap American Donald Hutchings, German Dirk Hasert, Norwegian Hans Christian Ostroe and Britons Paul Wells and Keith Mangan.   August 1995 - Ostroe's beheaded body found.   November 1995 - Federal Election Commission rejects government plan to hold assembly polls, saying security situation is not conducive to free and fair elections.   March 1996 - Security forces seal off Hazratbal shrine after at least seven people killed in battle with rebels.   Days later, 21 rebels killed in battle after refusing to surrender arms.   May 1996 - First polls in seven years, as part of India's general elections, in Jammu and Kashmir.   July 6 - H.D. Deve Gowda becomes first Indian prime minister to visit Kashmir valley in 10 years.   July 8 - India announces plans for state polls.   July 16 - Six Indian tourists abducted and shot dead.   August 2 - Deve Gowda unveils a package of economic benefits for the state.   August 7 - Government announces dates for assembly polls -- September 7, 16, 21 and 30.   August 11 - Farooq Abdullah, leader of the National Conference political party in Kashmir, announces plans to participate in elections.   September 6 - Some 200,000 Indian security officers fan out across state ahead of first phase of polls.   September 7 - Between 50 and 53 percent of eligible voters cast ballots in first phase of voting, marked by scattered violence and allegations of coercion by security forces.   September 12 - Abdullah escapes grenade attack during campaign rally.   September 16 - Some 57 percent of eligible voters cast ballots in generally peaceful second phase of elections. 
19948 !E51 !ECAT !GCAT !GDIP  Nepal has ratified a controversial water-sharing treaty with India, paving the way for increased foreign investment into the Himalayan kingdom, Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba said on Saturday.   Authorities said a joint session of the two houses of parliament late on Friday voted 220 to 8 to approve the treaty, which will provide for a $3 billion hydroelectric dam on the Mahakali river on Nepal's western borders with India.   The vote put an end to two weeks of political upheaval as communists dropped their longstanding opposition to the treaty.   Supporters of the agreement said it would allow Nepal to draw more water and electricity from the river project, making its economy more attractive to foreign firms which had shied away from the power-starved nation.   Water-sharing agreements with India have been prickly political issues in Nepal since it agreed to two river projects in the 1950s which critics said favoured India.   "It (the treaty) has opened new avenues for economic development," Deuba said after the vote, considered crucial for the survival of his fragile three-party coalition.   The main opposition United Marxist-Leninist (UML) communist party lent decisive backing to the treaty as the three-party coalition government lacked the required majority.   On Friday, police lobbed teargas shells and detained about 70 people to disperse demonstrations by extreme leftist groups against the treaty.   Four vehicles were damaged by stones thrown by protesters, an official spokesman said.   Officials said passage of the treaty showed the kingdom's six-year-old multi-party democracy was working.   "We have proved our credibility, assuring the world that Nepal is a good for investment," Water Resources Minister Pashupati Shumshere Rana said.   The treaty defines terms for a $3-billion dam on the Mahakali river which will generate up to 6,000 megawatts of electricity to be shared equally by the two nations.   Currently Nepal can generate 293 megawatts of power but it needs 302.   It will thus be able to sell most of the 3,000 megawatts from the Mahakali project to India.   Nepali officials said they hoped the pact would help cut the kingdom's $310 million trade deficit with India by enabling Nepal to export surplus power from the project to its southern neighbour.   The communists had complained the treaty would not balance the distribution of water from two existing facilities on the same river, the Tanakpur dam and the 70-year-old Sarada barrage.   The communists want New Delhi to accept Kathmandu's plans to dam its rivers for irrigation, and have demanded clearer demarcation of the kingdom's borders with its giant neighbour.   But mainstream communists eventually relented, saying both Nepal and India had promised to review the status of the existing dams.   "We have received some commitments to correct the treaty," UML general secretary Madhav Kumar Nepal said.   Extreme left-wing groups opposed to the treaty called for a general strike on Sunday. 
19949 !GCAT !GPOL !GVIO !GVOTE  Dozens of explosions rocked Kashmir's capital city of Srinagar throughout the night ahead of Saturday's crucial phase of local assembly polls, residents said.   There was no immediate official comment on the nature of the blasts or whether there had been any casualties.   But residents, used to six years of separatist violence in the region, said they were either grenades or mines in areas where Kashmiri militants are strong.   Journalists staying in central Srinagar heard a deafening explosion nearby which shook their hotel in the early morning.   Intermittent gunfire was heard during the night.   At least 20 people, mostly political workers, have been killed in the month-long election campaign aimed at restoring democracy in India's troubled Jammu and Kashmir state after more than six years of direct federal rule.   Thousands of Indian security personnel have been poured into some of the most sensitive areas of Srinagar where officials have identified four districts as particularly prone to violence.   The first two phases of the four-stage elections, held on September 7 and 16, were generally peaceful and witnessed only by sporadic violence.   But authorities feared greater violence during voting in Srinagar, which has been the focal point of the separatist movement since 1990.   "With the third phase of the elections on Saturday we have entered the most sensitive phase," a state government spokesman said on Friday.   The fourth and last day of voting is set for September 30 in six constituencies in Doda district, a militant stronghold.   The government detained senior leaders of the All Party Hurriyat (Freedom) Conference ahead of the third phase of the polls involving 21 seats on Saturday.   Sixty of the assembly's 87 seats were contested earlier this month.   All India Radio said police detained more than 200 people in an effort to prevent demonstrations.   Police and hospital officials say more than 20,000 people have died in insurgency-related violence during the six-year rebellion.   India accuses Pakistan, which rules over one third of Kashmir, of fomenting militancy by arming and training guerrillas.   Islamabad says it provides only moral and diplomatic support. 
19950 !GCAT !GPOL !GVIO !GVOTE  Dozens of explosions rocked Kashmir's capital city of Srinagar throughout the night on Friday ahead of Saturday's crucial phase of local assembly polls, residents said.   There was no immediate official comment on the nature of the blasts or casualties if any but residents, used to six years of separatist violence in the region, said they were either grenades or mines in areas where Kashmiri militants are strong.    At least 20 people, mostly political workers, have been killed in the month-long election campaign aimed at restoring democracy in India's troubled Jammu and Kashmir state after more than six years of New Delhi's direct rule.   Thousands of Indian security personnel have been poured into some of the most sensitive areas of Srinagar where officials have identified four districts as particularly prone to violence.   The government has detained senior leaders of the All Party Hurriyat Conference ahead of the third phase of the polls involving 21 seats on Saturday.   Sixty of the assembly's 87 seats were contested earlier this month. 
19951 !C13 !C24 !C31 !C312 !CCAT !GCAT !GENV  Argentina is setting its sights on the growing world market for organic food products untainted by pesticides, hormones and chemicals.   With its broad expanses of fertile virgin soil and little tradition of using fertilisers and farm chemicals, Argentina is well placed to forge its place in the green food market, the Foreign Ministry's Marcelo Avogadro said.   "The world market for ecological products is a fast-growing niche, which is under-supplied but for which demand is growing," said Avogrado earlier this week at the signing of a deal to promote Argentine organic products abroad.   The amount of Argentine land under the plough devoted to organic products has risen 15-fold in under four years to 370,000 acres (150,000 hectares) today, according to the Argentine Movement for Organic Production, a year-old green farmers' group.   Exports of their products should run to about $25 million this year, but the Movement reckons that they could swell by 25 percent a year to at least $100 million by 2000.   "The potential demand is practically infinite.   Who wouldn't like to eat an apple without having to peel it so as not to eat the pesticides too?"   said one green farmer.   "Not to mention the pleasure of eating chicken that has not been raised on hormones and pumped with antibiotics so it doesn't get sick," piped in another producer.   Export markets aside, Argentines themselves are ever eager to latch onto health fads, bogus or genuine, and farmers hope that their home market will provide them with a solid base.   But so far few supermarkets in the capital Buenos Aires stock organic goods, which are still very expensive compared to more massively-produced products.   "In Argentina there is still no market, as there is no ecological conscience," said Miguel Hermida, of the government's export agency Exportar.   Hermida pointed out that, ironically, farmer's use of fertilisers and chemicals was beginning to grow for the first time.   Argentina's green export drive will receive a boost in 1997, when it will host the biannual meeting of the International Federation of Movements for Organic Agriculture.   Farmers plan to use the event to show off their fruit, beef, vegetable oil and other natural produce.   Argentina adopted European Union quality standards for organic produce between 1992 and 1993. 
19952 !GCAT !GSPO  Australia took an   unbeatable 3-0 lead over Croatia in their Davis Cup World group   qualifying tie after winning the doubles on Saturday.   Result:   Marc Woodforde/Patrick Rafter beat Goran Ivanisevic/Sasa   Hirszon 6-3 6-2 6-4 
19953 !GCAT !GSPO  Only one hole counted on Sunday and Fred Funk made the most of it, winning the rain-shortened B.C. Open with a birdie on the first hole of a sudden death playoff with Pete Jordan.   Funk nearly holed his 7-iron approach shot before winning with a tap-in birdie during a brief pause in the rain that washed out the final round.   The tournament had been reduced to 54 holes by afternoon rain storms with officials ruling that scores from the fourth round, already in progress, would be wiped out.   That left overnight leaders Funk and Jordan tied in the top spot, necessitating a playoff.   "I was upset and distraught about having the round washed out because I was playing so well," said Funk.   "But my caddie reminded me that I was lucky to even be in the playoff because Pete had bogeyed the 18th hole on Saturday to tie me.   "I was really nervous in the playoff, and to hit it that close is obviously a dream," Funk said.   When the fourth round was cancelled, Funk had already put four strokes between himself and Jordan through six holes.   The two began the day at 16-under-par, and Funk had picked up birdies on the second, third, fifth and sixth holes to move to 20 under while Jordan parred each hole.   Although the rain had made the En-Joie course unplayable, the par-four 18th hole was readied for the playoff during a window between storms.   Jordan hit his second shot over the green, and needed to chip-in to extend the playoff.   When he failed, Funk tapped in his eight-inch birdie for the win.   But second place money of $108,000 was enough to assure little-known Jordan of his playing privileges for next year, relieving him of the chore returning to qualifying school.   Before the rain, Tiger Woods had taken sole possession of third place at 14-under.   Cancellation of the round forced him to settle for a share of third place with Patrick Burke and cost him a serious shot at overtaking Jordan for second.   In the four events since the amateur phenom turned professional, Woods has improved his finish position each week.   He was only 60th at the Greater Milwaukee Open, but finished 11th at the Canadian Open, tied for fifth last week at the Quad Cities Classic and has now cracked the top three.   For Funk, this was his fourth top 10 finish in his last six starts and the fourth title of his eight-year PGA career.   Funk won twice last year and will defend next week at the Buick Challenge.   Funk earned $180,000 for Sunday's win, assuring him a place in the top 30 for the year, which makes him eligible for the $3 million season-ending Tour Championship.   He has also locked up a spot in the 1987 Masters and U.S. Open.   "The main thing was the U.S. Open, which is being played in my home town next year," he said of the major, which will be contested at Congressional Country Club in Bethesda, Maryland.   "I'd have hated to go through qualifying and maybe not made it." 
19954 !GCAT !GSPO  Leaders after the   final round of the rain-shortened $1 million B.C. Open golf   tournament, won by Fred Funk on the first hole of a sudden   death playoff with Pete Jordan on Sunday (U.S. unless noted):   197 Fred Funk 68 66 63, Pete Jordan 67 64 66   200 Tiger Woods 68 66 66, Patrick Burke 68 67 65   202 Brian Claar 66 68 68   203 Joe Daley 68 73 62, Joey Sindelar 69 68 66, Hugh Royer 70   66 67   204 Bradley Hughes (Australia) 71 68 65, Jeff Sluman 69 67   68, David Ogrin 70 67 67   205 Kelly Gibson 69 69 67, Jay Delsing 68 70 67, Craig Parry   (Australia) 69 67 69   206 David Duval 71 71 64, Woody Austin 70 71 65, Mike Hulbert   69 69 68, Jim McGovern 67 70 69, Carl Paulson 69 68 69   207 Tommy Tolles 67 74 66, Gary Rusnak 69 71 67, Scott Gump   70 68 69, Mike Standly 69 68 70, Grant Waite (New Zealand) 68   69 70, Greg Kraft 70 67 70 
19955 !GCAT !GSPO  David Coulthard's return to the scene of his only grand prix triumph turned into a catalogue of errors in Portugal on Sunday.   Coulthard celebrated his maiden victory with former team Williams 12 months ago, but finished this year's race on the receiving end of a blast from McLaren boss Ron Dennis.   The Scot limped home 13th after an embarrassing 44th lap collison with team mate Mika Hakkinen and five visits to the pits, including one for a speeding penalty.   Coulthard said: "But following my second pit-stop Mika made contact with my car, which spun me and damaged the left rear tyre.   I had a slow puncture which was missed when I made a precautionary stop.   "It was made even worse by speeding in the pit-lane, for which I got a 10 seconds penalty.   (It was) not a good day for either of us."   Hakkinen, who failed to finish, felt his fellow driver was at fault.   At one stage the duo formed a queue in the pits for repairs.   "The incident between our drivers is unacceptable," said Dennis.   He added: "We were not competitive this weekend, which required both of the drivers to focus on the race strategy and of achieving some points out of a difficult situation." 
19956 !GCAT !GSPO  Thomas Bjorn became the first Dane to win a European Tour event when he showed no sign of nerves to collect the 125,000-pound ($195,000) first prize at the Loch Lomond World Invitational golf championship on Sunday.   Bjorn, playing in his first season on the tour, shot a fourth round 70 for a 72-hole aggregate of 277, seven under par, to beat Frenchman Jean Van de Velde, who finished in 71, by one shot.   Australian Robert Allenby hit a 70 to finish alone in third place four strokes off the lead while Colin Montgomerie, with an unwelcome double bogey six at the 14th, finished joint fourth with fellow Briton Jonathan Lomas on 282.   Briton Nick Faldo, making one of his rare appearances in a European Tour event, stumbled to a six over par 77 and could only tie for 37th place on 291.   Bjorn and Van de Velde began the final round joint leaders, four ahead of the star-studded field, and the general feeling was that they would crack under the strain of keeping ahead of more celebrated golfers.   "There were lots of good golfers behind me when I started the last round and if one of them had made an early charge it could have changed things totally.   But no-one did," Bjorn said.   "Before I went out I got a letter from Brian Laudrup (the Danish soccer international who plays for Glasgow Rangers) wishing me luck and that was very nice.   Van de Velde led by one shot when Bjorn bogeyed the second hole but the Dane got back on level terms at the third and went ahead himself when the Frenchman dropped a shot at the fourth.   Van de Velde drew level again with a birdie at the ninth but when he bogeyed the 12th and Bjorn birdied the 13th and 14th the Dane was three shots ahead.   Then the gap narrowed again to one as Bjorn bogeyed the 15th and Van de Velde birdied the last.   Allenby hardly had time to celebrate his third place before he was being taken to hospital after tripping in a rut as he was leaving the course.   At first it was feared his right ankle was broken but X-rays showed it was only badly bruised and he hopes to play in the European Open in Dublin next week.   He is currently third behind Colin Montgomerie and Ian Woosnam in the Order of Merit. 
19957 !GCAT !GSPO  There was no ceremony.   No trophy.   Not even some roses and a kiss on the cheek from a ballgirl.   But make no mistake, Thomas Enqvist has replaced crowd favourite Stefan Edberg as Sweden's top tennis player.   Enqvist's hard fought, five set victory over Czech Daniel Vacek not only clinched Sweden's second Davis Cup final berth in three years, it marked a changing of the guard in his country's storied tennis history.   With Edberg, owner of six Grand Slam titles and three Davis Cup championships, in the last year of his distinguished career, the 22 year-old righthander from Stockholm, like it or not, has been passed the torch, following in the footsteps of legends such as Bjorn Borg, Mats Wilander and Edberg.   "I think we are seeing a big part of the future of Swedish tennis unfolding in front of us," assistant coach Anders Jarryd, who temaed with Edberg 12 years ago to beat the U.S. in the Davis Cup final, told Reuters.   "Edberg is the last of the old Swedish guard, Enqvist will be the cornerstone of the new guard.   This tournament should give him the confidence boost he will need when facing big opponents on big occasions in the future," he added.   Added Edberg: "I think even without me, they have a great team, and can win in the future.   And for Enqvist, the win against Vacek was important because it should help his confidence in the future."   Enqvist was a pillar in Sweden's victory over the Czechs, dominating Petr Korda in the tie's opening singles match, and then, down 2-1 in sets with a raucous partisan crowd cheering hometown favourite Vacek on, he showed the poise of a veteran to regroup and claw his way back into the match.   Instead of wilting under the pressure of an entire nation, he used it for strength, regaining the rythym that he had lost earlier in the match, scorching the Prague Sports Hall's Supreme surface with some of the most powerful groundstrokes it will ever see.   "I have never faced a ball coming back at me like that.   His shots were unbelievably strong.   If he can play like that on the tour, he can definitely be in the top five," said a shell- shocked Korda after falling to the world number 14 in straight sets.   But he can he reach number one -- his highest ranking was number six in February -- the way his boyhood idols Borg, Wilander and Edberg did?   Swedish non-playing captain Calle Hageskog believes so, but only with hard work and time.   "I think he has the skills to make it.   If he continues to work and progress, I really believe he has the tools to best one of, if not the best in the world," he said.   If Enqvist himself believes the words being served to him, it doesn't show.   With only eight tournament victories under his belt, he readily acknowledges Edberg's accomplishments -- 41 singles titles and 17 doubles titles -- praising one of the tour's greatest without hesitating.   Unassuming and shy, he seems to prefer letting the venerable Edberg handle the crowds of reporters in pre and post match interviews, staying at the back of the room like an awkward teenager at their first high school dance.   "Stefan is no doubt the leader of this team, he's shown over a long period of time that he can play with the best, and off the court he handles himself like a champion as well," Enqvist told Reuters.   And does he consider himself an Edberg-in-waiting?   "I hope I can be as successful, or even more so.   But there is only one Stefan and I hope to be the only Thomas, that is all I can hope for." 
19958 !GCAT !GSPO  Leading final   scores after the fourth round of the Loch Lomond World   Invitational golf championship on Sunday (British unless   stated):   277 Thomas Bjorn (Denmark) 70 69 68 70   278 Jean Van de Velde (France) 75 65 67 71   281 Robert Allenby (Australia) 69 71 71 70   282 Colin Montgomerie 72 70 70 70, Jonathan Lomas 71 73 70 68   283 Richard Green (Australia) 72 73 71 67, Darren Clarke 68 73   73 69   284 Peter O'Malley (Australia) 70 78 68 68, Mark McNulty    (Zimbabwe) 73 72 70 69, Miguel Angel Martin (Spain) 73 73   69 69   285 Greg Turner (New Zealand) 78 70 70 67, Eamonn Darcy    (Ireland) 71 76 66 72, Barry Lane 69 74 71 71   286 David Gilford 71 74 72 69, Stephen Ames (Trinidad) 76 71    68 71   287 Jose Coceres (Argentina) 68 77 75 67, Miguel Angel Jimenez   (Spain) 77 70 72 68, Gary Day (U.S.) 72 74 71 70, Lee   Westwood 74 73 69 71   288 Per Haugsrud (Norway) 77 72 71 68, David Howell 70 73 75   70, Ian Woosnam 73 69 75 71, Martin Gates 76 70 71 71, Des   Smyth 75 72 70 71, Roger Chapman 71 75 69 73   289 Andrew Sherborne 73 72 72 72, Andrew Coltart 74 71 70 74,    Jamie Spence 67 74 72 76   290 Eduardo Romero (Argentina) 77 70 73 70, Ricky Willison 72   77 71 70, Retief Goosen (South Africa) 72 72 75 71, Peter   Baker 69 73 77 71, Ross Drummond 69 79 69 73, Costantino   Rocca (Italy) 72 74 72 72, Pierre Fulke (Sweden) 71 72 73   74, Paul McGinley 72 74 69 75. 
19959 !GCAT !GSPO  The United States routed Europe 10-2 in the singles to comfortably retain the Solheim Cup women's team title Sunday.   Trailing 9-7 overnight and needing to win seven points from the 12 singles matches, the Americans took heart from an early 3 and 2 victory by Michelle McGann over world No. 1 Laura Davies to race to a 17-11 victory.   McGann, world-ranked sixth, had beaten Davies in a playoff for the State Farm Rail Classic three weeks ago to win the third of her three titles on the U.S. Tour this year.   A crucial 30-yard pitch from deep rough into the 16th hole by Brandie Burton helped her to a one-hole victory over Briton Lisa Hackney for another key success.   The destination of the cup was sealed when Kelly Robbins won the final hole to halve her match with Alison Nicholas of Britain, who three-putted the last green.   The Americans then added salt to European wounds by winning the last three singles matches.   American captain Judy Rankin said: "I am as pleased as I can be over the way all my players performed today.   No one wanted to say it but I think they were a little shocked to be trailing after yesterday.   "They mustered everything they had today," said Rankin, who was captaining the team for the first time.   The only European victory of the day came from from U.S. Open champion Annika Sorenstam of Sweden, who beat veteran Pat Bradley 2 and 1 in the opening match.   Europe lost nine and halved two of the remaining 11 games.   The Americans won the first and third editions of this biennial event at home in 1990 and 1994 but lost to Europe at Dalmahoy, Scotland, in 1992.   "Despite how it looked, this was very hard fought," said Rankin...It does not reflect on the European Tour.   From midday Friday to Saturday night, we took a whipping."   She was referring to her side's 3-1/2-1/2 win in Friday's foursomes, after which they lost the next three sets of fourballs and foursomes.   European captain Mickey Walker said: "I really felt we could win back the cup today.   But it just wasn't to be.   We were outgolfed today."   After Sorenstam took the opening match, Val Skinner quickly levelled with a 2 and 1 win over Scottish rookie Kathryn Marshall.   Davies, such an inspirational figure for the European team, was at odds with her putter for most of the day.   "None of my putts went in, it's that simple," said Davies, who also putted poorly in her first match.   "For three sessions I couldn't miss but today I had putts of six feet at the first, 15 at the second, five feet at the fourth.   Missing them obviously told Michelle it was going to be one of those days for me."   McGann won the second and ninth holes as Davies parred the first 13 before making bogeys to lose the 14th and 16th.   McGann's only mistake came at the 15th.   "I tried to be conservative and finished in the water," she said.   She won her match at the 210-yard, par-three 16th.   "My three wood is perfect for that hole," she said.   McGann put it five feet from the pin, and Davies, after struggling through the rough for a bogey, conceded the short putt and the match.   "I still never thought we would lose, not until Alison three-putted the last," said Davies.   World No. 3 Liselotte Neumann of Sweden salvaged a half with a winning par at the last against Beth Daniel in the fourth match.   But after that it was one-way traffic as the Americans won seven of the last eight games and halved the other.   Dottie Pepper, as much the inspirational leader of the U.S. team as Davies is for Europe, trailed Trish Johnson until the 11th, than raced away to win 3 and 2.   Burton's remarkable bunker shot at the short 16th for a birdie put her two up on Hackney when it looked likely to be even.   Hackney won the next with a birdie but could not better par at the last.   Marie-Laure de Lorenzi of France and Briton Joanne Morley were trounced 5 and 4 by Betsy King, who won all three of her matches, and Rosie Jones respectively.   By then the outcome was clear and the final three matches just served to underline the Americans' superiority. 
19960 !GCAT !GSPO  Result of the   Spa four-hour endurance event on Sunday:   Distance: 100 laps (of 7.001 kms a circuit)   1.   Hans Stuck (Germany)/Thierry Boutsen (Belgium) Porsche four   hours 01 minute 59 seconds (average speed: 182.079 kph)    2.   Ray Bellm/James Weaver (Britain) Gulf McLaren  99 laps    3.   Thomas Bscher (Germany)/John Nielsen (Denmark) McLaren 98    4.   Anders Olofsson (Sweden)/Luciano della Nocce (Italy) Ferrari 98    5.   Jan Lammers (Netherlands)/Andy Wallace (Britain) Lotus 98    6.   Jean-Marc Gounon/Eric Bernard/Paul Belmondo (France) Ferrari 96    7.   Bruno Lachmann/Gerd Ruch/Ralf Kelleners (Germany) Porsche 96    8.   Cor Euser (Netherlands)/Thomas Erdos (Brazil)/Ferdinand    Lesseps (France) GT2 Marcos  95    9.   Philippe Gache/Eric Helary (France) Chrysler Viper  93   10.   Stefano Buttiero (Italy)/Guy Martinolle/Jean-Claude Lagniez   (France)  93   Fastest lap: Boutsen two minutes 16.798 seconds (182.079   kph)   Standings (after nine rounds of 11 rounds):    1 equal.   Bellm, Weaver 194 points    2.   Bscher 156    3.   Eichmann, Ruch  153    4.   Olofsson, della Nocce 132    5.   Owen-Jones, Raphanel, Nielsen 126 
19961 !GCAT !GSPO  Porsche made it three wins in three races when Belgium's Thierry Boutsen and Germany's Hans Stuck drove their factory 911 GT1 to a one-lap victory on Sunday.   Boutsen and Stuck also won the GT category at the Le Mans 24 Hours in June, when they were second overall behind another Porsche, and at Brands Hatch, England, earlier this month.   For Boutsen it was an emotional return to his home circuit 10 years after winning the Spa 1,000 kms for Porsche in the closest-ever finish to a world sportscar race -- by just 0.8 seconds from the Jaguar of Britain's Derek Warwick.   A year earlier, in 1985, his German partner Stefan Bellof had been killed at Spa when their Porsche crashed at 290 kph.   Boutsen and Stuck dominated qualifying and led the entire race, although the factory car is not eligible for GT championship points.   These went to second-placed Ray Bellm and James Weaver of Britain in a Gulf McLaren.   Thomas Bscher of Germany and John Nielsen of Denmark were third in a West McLaren.   There are two races to come in the series -- Nogaro, France, on October 6 and Zhuhai, China, in November. 
19962 !GCAT !GSPO  Spain beat Denmark 4-1 in a Davis Cup world group qualifying round match which ended on Sunday.   Sunday's results (Spanish names first):   Carlos Moya beat Thomas Larsen 6-3 6-4   Alberto Costa lost to Kenneth Carlsen 6-3 5-7 3-6 
19963 !GCAT !GSPO  Alex Zuelle tightened his grip on the Tour of Spain when he emerged from the mist to take the mountain finish of the 15th stage on Sunday.   In another masterful display, Zuelle launched a late attack to catch Spain's Jose Maria Jimenez near the line.   He was followed home by fellow Swiss riders Laurent Dufaux and Tony Rominger and French team mate Laurent Jalabert.   In the provisional overall standings, Zuelle leads Jalabert by one minute 21 seconds with Dufaux just over four minutes further back.   Three-times winner Rominger has been out of contention since losing nearly eight minutes in the third stage but on Sunday reinforced his bid to take the king of the mountains prize.   The 210-km stage was ridden in cold, wet conditions, the riders finishing almost an hour later than organisers had expected.   After hauling in a breakaway group of five riders, the leaders arrived together at the final 15-km climb to Alto Cruz de la Demanda.   Jimenez broke for the line four kilometres from home and looked to have the stage sewn up before Zuelle appeared out of the mist in the last 100 metres.   With Jimenez's Banesto team and Spanish cycling in general still smarting from Miguel Indurain's decision to quit the Tour, it was a cruel blow.   A Spaniard has yet to win a stage.   Italian riders, by comparison, have already taken nine stages.   In an interview published by sports daily Marca on Sunday, Indurain criticised those who were trying to "bury" him.   "Some people think I'm dead, but here I am...(they) want to say I've retired without even asking me," said Indurain, reiterating that he had yet to decide on his future plans. 
19964 !GCAT !GSPO  Results in the Motocross   des Nations event on Sunday:   First race (for 125cc and 500cc):   1.   Steve Lamson (U.S.) 125 Honda   2.   Sebastien Tortelli (France) 125 Kawasaki    3.   Jeff Emig (U.S.) 500 Kawasaki   4.   Stefan Everts (Belgium) 125 Suzuki   5.   Frederic Bolley (France) 500 Kawasaki   6.   Dietmar Lacher (Germany) 500 Honda   Second race (for 125cc and 250cc)   1.   Jeremy McGrath (U.S.) 250 Honda   2.   Marnicq Bervoets (Belgium) 250 Suzuki   3.   Lamson   4.   Tortelli   5.   Pit Beirer (Germany) 250 Honda   Third race (for 250cc and 500cc)   1.   McGrath   2.   Bervoets   3.   yves Demaria (France) 250 Yamaha   4.   Beirer   5.   Emig   6.   Bolley   Team standings:    1.   United States 9 points    2.   France  21    3.   Belgium  30    4.   Germany  51    5.   Netherlands 51    6.   New Zealand 53 
19965 !GCAT !GSPO  Result of Sunday's   Portuguese Grand Prix motor race:   Race distance: 70 laps (305.200 kms)    1.   Jacques Villeneuve (Canada) Williams one hour 40 minutes    and 22.915 seconds (average speed 182.423 kph)    2.   Damon Hill (Britain) Williams  19.966 seconds behind    3.   Michael Schumacher (Germany) Ferrari 53.765 seconds    4.   Jean Alesi (France) Benetton  55.109    5.   Eddie Irvine (Britain) Ferrari  1:27.389    6.   Gerhard Berger (Austria) Benetton 1:33.141    7.   Heinz-Harald Frentzen (Germany) Sauber one lap    8.   Johnny Herbert (Britain) Sauber  one    9.   Martin Brundle (Britain) Jordan  one    10.   Olivier Panis (France) Ligier  one    11.   Mika Salo (Finland) Tyrrell one    12.   Ukyo Katayama (Japan) Tyrrell  two    13.   David Coulthard (Britain) McLaren  two    14.   Ricardo Rosset (Brazil) Footwork  three    15.   Giovanni Lavagi (Italy) Mianrdi  five    16.   Pedro Lamy (Portugal) Minardi  five   Did not finish (not classified):    17.   Mika Hakkinen (Finland) McLaren  52 laps covered    18.   Jos Verstappen (Netherlands) Footwork 47    19.   Pedro Diniz (Brazil) Ligier 46    20.   Rubens Barrichello (Brazil) Jordan  41   Fastest lap: Villeneuve 1:22.873 (189.398 kph). 
19966 !GCAT !GSPO  Jacques Villeneuve kept alive his hopes of the world drivers' championship when he finished just under 20 seconds ahead of Williams team mate Damon Hill to win Sunday's Portuguese Grand Prix.   Hill, who started the race on pole position for the 20th time in his career, was unable to resist Villeneuve's powerful challenge in the second half of a riveting duel and fell away after conceding the lead following their third pit stops.   After the race it emerged that the Briton had been troubled by his clutch which he had to adjust in order to finish.   The result was an unexpected triumph for the 25-year-old French-Canadian and brought him his fourth victory of the season.   It lifted him to 78 points in the championship, just nine behind Hill with one race remaining.   Hill now requires a single point from the Japanese Grand Prix at Suzuka on October 13 to clinch the title while Villeneuve must win and hope Hill fails to finish if he is to become the first "rookie" driver to succeed.   Hill's performance looked very impressive in the early stages but Villeneuve gradually clawed his way back into the race after making a poor start and running in fourth position for the first 16 laps.   Once he got into a rhythm, however, Villeneuve carved through the traffic to chop Hill's lead from 9.2 seconds after 25 laps to less than a second by lap 39.   He moved ahead on the road and stayed there when Hill went in for his third pit stop and came out behind him after he had followed him in one lap later.   That was on lap 50 and Hill, hampered by the clutch trouble, simply fell away over the closing laps.   Double world champion Michael Schumacher of Germany finished third for Ferrari ahead of Frenchman Jean Alesi in a Benetton.   Briton Eddie Irvine completed a race for the first time in 10 attempts to finish fifth in the second Ferrari ahead of Austrian Gerhard Berger in the other Benetton.   The resurgence by Irvine moved Ferrari up to second equal with Benetton in the constructors' championship.   Hill has now gone four races since winning the German Grand Prix in July without claiming a victory and during that period Villeneuve has forced his way convincingly back into the title race.   Hill confirmed he had been told by his pit crew that he had a clutch problem which he had to adjust.   Hill said: "After that I really just concentrated on finishing.   Jacques did a great job catching up early on and then he surprised me when he popped out ahead of me at that pit stop.   After that he was flying and I couldn't stay with him."   Villeneuve praised his pit team for providing him with a perfect car on the day and said he had use his Indycar racing experience to pass Schumacher on the outside early on.   He said: "I had a bad start but it was great to fight back and the championship is still alive.    "Damon is in a very strong position but we are not giving up.   You never know what will happen until the last lap is over."    Hill added: "I can't be too disappointed.   I am only one point away from the world championship should Jacques win in Japan."   Williams team manager Patrick Head felt Hill had lost the race long before the clutch problem came to light.   He said: "Damon was not fast enough in the middle part of the race.   He got stuck in traffic."   Head added: "He had a slight technical problem in the last eight laps and we told him to alter the setting on the clutch.    "We were going to party tonight, but we'll have to wait for Japan to have the big one."   British bookmakers William Hill make Hill a hot 9-1 on favourite to win the title with Villeneuve quoted at 5-1 against. 
19967 !GCAT !GSPO  Individual points scored   by U.S. and European players in the Solheim Cup women's team   event, which the Americans won 17-11 on Sunday (tabulate under   played, won, lost, halved, points won:   United States    Betsy King  3 3 0 0 3    Dottie Pepper 4 3 1 0 3    Meg Mallon  4 1 0 3 2-1/2    Brandie Burton 3 2 1 0 2    Rosie Jones  3 2 1 0 2    Beth Daniel  4 1 1 2 2    Michelle McGann 4 1 1 2 2    Patty Sheehan 4 2 2 0 2    Val Skinner  4 2 2 0 2    Kelly Robbins 5 1 2 2 2    Jane Geddes  4 1 2 1 1-1/2    Pat Bradley  2 0 2 0 0   Europe    Annika Sorenstam  5 3 0 2 4    Laura Davies  5 3 2 0 3    Trish Johnson  4 2 1 1 2-1/2    Catrin Nilsmark  5 2 2 1 2-1/2    Liselotte Neumann  5 1 2 2 2    Kathryn Marshall  3 1 1 1 1-1/2    Helen Alfredsson  4 1 2 1 1-1/2    Lisa Hackney  2 1 1 0 1    Alison Nicholas  3 0 1 2 1    Marie-Laure de Lorenzi 4 1 3 0 1    Joanne Morley  2 0 2 0 0    Dale Reid 2 0 2 0 0 
19968 !GCAT !GSPO  Alex Zuelle of Switzerland won the 15th stage of the Tour of Spain over 210 kms from Cabarceno to Alto Cruz de la Demanda on Sunday.   He retained the overall leader's yellow jersey. 
19969 !GCAT !GSPO  Leading provisional   results in the Bol d'Or motrocycling race on Sunday:   1.   Alex Vieira/Christian Lavieille/William Costes (France)   Honda 457 laps   2.   Terry Rymer (Britain)/Doug Polen (U.S.)/Peter Goddard   (Australia) Suzuki three laps behind   3.   Eric Gomez/Frederic Protat (France)/Diamon Buckmaster   (Australia) Suzuki  3 laps   4.   Adrien Morillas/Jean-Marc Deletang (France)/James Whitham   (Britain) Yamaha 3 laps   5.   Jean-Michel Mattioli (France)/Michel Simeon (Belgium)/Pascal   Guigou (France) Honda  8 laps   6.   Yves Briquet (Switzerland)/Bernard Cazade/Marc Garcia   (France) Honda 9 laps   7.   Eric Mahe/Rachel Nicotte/Jean-Luc Battistini (France) Yamaha    14 laps 
19970 !GCAT !GSPO  Jacques Villeneuve of Canada, driving a Williams, won the Portuguese Grand Prix on Sunday.   Team mate Damon Hill of Britain finished second.    Hill now leads Villeneuve in the drivers' title race by nine points, 87-78, meaning Hill needs just a sixth place finish or better in the final race of the season, the Japanese Grand Prix on October 13, to win the drivers' title.    Sunday's result set up an exciting finale with Villeneuve knowing he must win in Japan and hope Hill is out of the top six.   Third place in Sunday's race went to Michael Schumacher of Germany in a Ferrari followed by Frenchman Jean Alesi in a Benetton.   Eddie Irvine of Britain finished fifth in his Ferrari with Austria's Gerhard Berger, driving a Benetton, in sixth.    World drivers' championship standings (after 15 rounds):    1.   Damon Hill (Britain) 87 points    2.   Jacques Villeneuve (Canada) 78    3.   Michael Schumacher (Germany) 53    4.   Jean Alesi (France) 47    5.   Mike Hakkinen (Finland) 27    6 equal.   David Coulthard (Britain)  18    6 equal.   Gerhard Berger (Austria)  18    8.   Rubens Barrichello (Brazil) 14    9.   Olivier Panis (France) 13    10.   Eddie Irvine (Britain) 11    11 equal.   Heinz-Harald Frentzen (Germany) 6    11 equal.   Martin Brundle (Britain)  6    13.   Mika Salo (Finland) 5    14.   Johnny Herbert (Britain) 4    15.   Pedro Diniz (Brazil) 2    16.   Jos Verstappen (Netherlands) 1   Constructors' championship:    1.   Williams  165 point    2.   Benetton  65    3.   Ferrari  64    4.   McLaren  45    5.   Jordan 20    6.   Ligier 15    7.   Sauber 10    8.   Tyrrell 5    9.   Footwork  1 
19971 !GCAT !GSPO  Honduras beat Mexico 2-1 (halftime 0-0) in a CONCACAF semifinal group three match.   Scorers:   Honduras - Carlos Pavon (50th), Eduardo Bennett (82nd, penalty)   Mexico - Ramon Ramirez (64th)   Attendance: 22,000   Standings (tabulate under played, won, drawn, lost, goals for, goals against, points)    Jamaica  1 1 0 0 3 0 3    Mexico  2 1 0 1 4 2 3    Honduras  2 1 0 1 2 4 3    St. Vincent 1 0 0 1 0 3 0   Top two qualify for the CONCACAF final qualifying round. 
19972 !GCAT !GSPO  Collated singles results   on the final day of the Solheim Cup women's team golf match   between the United States and Europe at St Pierre on Sunday   (U.S. names first):   Pat Bradley lost to Annika Sorenstam (Sweden) 2 and 1   Val Skinner beat Kathryn Marshall (Britain) 2 and 1   Michelle McGann beat Laura Davies (Britain) 3 and 2   Beth Daniel halved with Liselotte Neumann (Sweden)   Dottie Pepper beat Trish Johnson (Britain) 3 and 2   Betsy King beat Marie-Laure de Lorenzi (France) 5 and 4   Brandie Burton beat Lisa Hackney (Britain) by one hole   Rosie Jones beat Joanne Morley (Britain) 5 and 4   Kelly Robbins halved with Alison Nicholas (Britain)   Jane Geddes beat Dale Reid (Britain) by two holes   Patty Sheehan beat Catrin Nilsmark (Sweden) 2 and 1   Meg Mallon beat Helen Alfredsson (Sweden) 4 and 3   Singles score: U.S. 10 Europe 2   Result: U.S. 17 Europe 11 
19973 !GCAT !GSPO  Frenchmen Alex Vieira, Christian Lavieille and William Costes won the 60th Bol d'Or 24-hour motorcycling race, stopped four times by heavy rain and marred by a serious crash on Sunday.    It was the sixth time Vieira, 39, has won the race.    The rain started shortly after midnight and had not stopped at 1200 GMT when the organisers decided to halt the event, one hour before planned.   The Honda team finished three laps ahead of two Suzukis.   Britons Terry Rymer, Doug Polen and Peter Goddard were second and France's Eric Gomez, Frederic Protat and Gilles Frerstler were third.   Another Frenchman, Serge Vieira, was taken to hospital after a crash during the night.   He was said by doctors to be in a "serious condition."   Costes said after his victory: "The conditions were near impossible regarding safety and visibility.   It was probably a good idea to stop it."    It was Honda's 14th success in this race which marked the final event of the endurance season.   Despite the Honda victory, Kawasaki took the constructors' title.   Briton Brian Morrison, favourite on a Kawasaki, was forced out of the race with a mechanical problem on Saturday night but he was already certain of winning the drivers' crown. 
19974 !GCAT !GSPO  The United States retained the Solheim Cup Sunday, overwhelming Europe's women golfers in the final day singles matches.   The Americans, trailing 9-7 overnight, lost the first match but then won six of the next eight.   The winning score came when Kelly Robbins won the last hole from Alison Nicholas to halve that match.   That took the tally to 14-11 and the best Europe could hope for was to tie the contest 14-14.   In that event the U.S. as the holders would retain the trophy.   Problems set in for Europe after world No. 1 Laura Davies lost to Michelle McGann 3 and 2.   Those following fell like a house of cards to miss the chance to put the trophy alongside the Ryder, Walker and Curtis Cups on the European side of the Atlantic. 
19975 !GCAT !GSPO  Australia beat Croatia 4-1 in their Davis Cup tennis World group qualifying tie after sharing the final singles on Sunday.   Results (Australian names first):   Mark Philippoussis beat Goran Oresic 6-1 6-4   Jason Stoltenberg lost to Sasa Hirszon 2-6 2-6. 
19976 !GCAT !GSPO  The United States retained the Solheim Cup on Sunday, totally overwhelming Europe's women golfers in the final-day singles.   The Americans, trailing 9-7 overnight, lost the first match but then won six of the next eight.   The winning score came when Kelly Robbins won the last hole from Alison Nicholas to halve that match.   That took the tally to 14-11 and the best Europe could hope for was to tie the contest 14-14.   In that event the U.S. as the holders would retain the trophy.   Problems set in for Europe after world number one Laura Davies lost to Michelle McGann three and two.   Those following fell like a pack of cards to miss the chance to put the trophy alongside the Ryder, Walker and Curtis Cups on the European side of the Atlantic. 
19977 !GCAT !GSPO  The United States made sure of retaining the Solheim Cup when they took an unassailable 14-11 lead over Europe during the final day singles on Sunday. 
19978 !GCAT !GSPO  Singles results on the   final day of the Solheim Cup women's team golf match between the   United States and Europe at St Pierre on Sunday (U.S. names   first):   Pat Bradley lost to Annika Sorenstam (Sweden) 2 and 1   Val Skinner beat Kathryn Marshall (Britain) 2 and 1   Michelle McGann beat Laura Davies (Britain) 3 and 2   Overall score: Europe 10 U.S. 9   Beth Daniel halved with Liselotte Neumann (Sweden) Dottie Pepper beat Trish Johnson (Britain) 3 and 2 Betsy King beat Marie-Laure de Lorenzi 5 and 4   Overall score: U.S. 11-1/2 Europe 10-1/2    Brandie Burton beat Lisa Hackney (Britain) by one hole Rosie Jones beat Joanne Morley (Britain) 5 and 4 Kelly Robbins halved with Alison Nicholas (Britain)   Overall score: U.S. 14 Europe 11.    Jane Geddes beat Dale Reid (Britain) by two holes   Patty Sheehan beat Catrin Nilsmark (Sweden) 2 and 1   Meg Mallon beat Helen Alfredsson (Sweden) 4 and 3   Singles score: U.S. 10 Europe 2   Overall score: U.S. 17 Europe 11 
19979 !GCAT !GSPO  U.S. captain Judy Rankin must rally her troops for Sunday's decisive singles after watching Europe eclipse her 12 players in the Solheim Cup Saturday.   After a strong start for the Americans on Friday morning, Rankin has seen her team fall behind 9-7 to the Europeans after three losing sessions of matches.   "I wouldn't characterise this as a great day.   It actually started about one p.m. yesterday," Rankin said after Saturday's play turned a 5-3 U.S. lead into a 9-7 deficit.   "There are places I'd rather be than behind," she said.   "If our putters warm up tomorrow, it will be very exciting."   Rankin defended her decision to rest her major weapon, world No. 5 Dottie Pepper, from Saturday afternoon fourballs.   "Her three matches went twice to 18 holes and once to 17 holes and she is critical for us on Sunday," she said.   Twelve singles matches Sunday will decide the title, won by the United States in 1994.   Pepper, who was part of two wins Friday before losing her foursomes Saturday, faces Briton Trish Johnson in the sixth singles on Sunday.   "Dottie did not ask to sit out.   She would have played, but she was tired and she was comfortable with the decision," Rankin said. 
19980 !GCAT !GSPO  Leading money winners on the   European Tour after the Loch Lomond World Invitational   tournament won by Thomas Bjorn on Sunday (British unless   stated):    1.   Colin Montgomerie 676,996.36 pounds sterling    2.   Ian Woosnam 535,448.94    3.   Robert Allenby (Australia) 456,803.66    4.   Costantino Rocca (Italy)  331,031.86    5.   Lee Westwood 325,656.37    6.   Mark McNulty (Zimbabwe)  271,077.03    7.   Andrew Coltart 263,497.75    8.   Wayne Riley (Australia)  239,733.17    9.   Raymond Russell 237,930.21    10.   Jean Van de Velde (France) 237,609.88   11.   Padraig Harrington (Ireland) 233,651.41    12.   Stephen Ames (Trinidad)  232,534.12    13.   Peter Mitchell 227,847.37   14.   Miguel Angel Jimenez (Spain) 225,219.20    15.   Thomas Bjorn (Denmark)  224,104.78    16.   Jonathan Lomas 222,952.90    17.   Paul Lawrie 215,942.86    18.   Paul McGinley 215,259.29   19.   Retief Goosen (South Africa) 210,377.58    20.   Frank Nobilo (New Zealand) 209,412.03. 
19981 !GCAT !GSPO  Results of African club competitions quarter-final second legs on Sunday:   Confederation of African Football (CAF) Cup   In Kinshasa:    Vita Club (Zaire) 2 Mouloudia Oran (Algeria) 0 (halftime 0-0)   Scorers: Lukikama Icham (47th minute) Luende (85th)   Attendance: 80,000   Aggregate score 2-2.   Vita won after penalty shoot-out.   In Freetown (played Saturday):   Port Authority (Sierra Leone) 1 Kenya Breweries 0 (0-0)   Attendance: 40,000   Aggregate score 1-1.   Kenya Breweries won penalty shoot-out 4-2.   African Cup Winners' Cup   In Maiduguri, Nigeria:   Katsina United (Nigeria) 0 Sodigraf (Zaire) 0 (0-0)   Attendance: Not available   Sodigraf won 2-0 on aggregate. 
19982 !GCAT !GSPO  France turned a 2-0 deficit into a 3-2 triumph over Italy on Sunday and will face Sweden in the Davis Cup final.   Arnaud Boetsch clinched France's place in the final with a 6-4 6-2 7-6 (10-8) victory over Andrea Gaudenzi in the second reverse singles of their world group semifinal in Nantes.   Earlier, in Prague, Sweden had booked their final place when Thomas Enqvist gave them an unbeatable 3-1 lead over the Czech Republic.   Enqvist overcame Czech number one Daniel Vacek 6-3 6-7 4-6 7-5 6-3 to ensure Sweden would contest the final on home territory from November 29 to December 1.   The Czech hosts, 2-0 down after Friday's opening singles, had kept their hopes alive by winning Saturday's doubles and Vacek appeared on the way to levelling the tie when he took a 2-1 lead after losing the first set.   But Enqvist fought back to win an epic 3-1/2-hour battle.   Veteran Stefan Edberg rounded off a 4-1 Swedish victory when he beat Petr Korda 4-6 6-2 7-5 in the final dead rubber.   France, like the Czechs, trailed 2-0 on the opening day but levelled their tie against Italy at 2-2 after they won Saturday's doubles and Cedric Pioline took the first reverse singles on Sunday.   French number one Pioline improved on Friday's disappointing defeat by Gaudenzi to beat Renzo Furlan 6-3 2-6 6-2 6-4 in just over three hours.   Boetsch then went on to complete the job.   Since 1972, when the old challenge round was replaced by the world group competition, Sweden have won the Davis Cup five times -- 1975, 1984, 1985, 1987 and 1994 -- and were beaten finalists in 1983, 1986, 1988 and 1989.   France won the trophy in 1991 and were runners-up in 1982.   In Sao Paulo, Austria's team walked out of their world group qualifying tie against Brazil in protest at the crowd's behaviour, handing their opponents a 4-1 victory.   The furious Austrians refused to play Sunday's two reverse singles after their top player Thomas Muster stormed out of Saturday's doubles, complaining the crowd had been provocative and he had been spat at. 
19983 !GCAT !GSPO  Newly-crowned county champions Leicestershire wrapped up the season with a comprehensive win over Middlesex by an innings and 74 runs on Sunday and also earned themselves an extra cash bonus.   Guaranteed 65,000 pounds ($101,000) for winning the title, Leicestershire added a further 10,000 pounds ($15,600) to their prize fund by completing their 10th victory of the season.   Middlesex, resuming on 194 for five and still 128 runs adrift, collapsed to 248 all out, with seamer David Millns claiming four for 21 from the 5.3 overs he bowled on Sunday.   Millns finished with four for 48 while England pace bowler Alan Mullally claimed three for 40 to round off the easy victory.   But there was one cloud on Leicestershire's horizon with the possibility they could be without the services of West Indian Phil Simmons next season.   The Trinidadian all-rounder has played a major part in the county's success, having hit more than 1,000 first-class runs and taken 55 championship wickets, but he may not be available for much of next season under a plan by West Indies to put their leading players under contract.   If Simmons is one of the West Indies under contract he would be unavailable for matches at the start and end of the English county season.   "We could handle the odd week if he is going to be arriving late for next season but if he's not coming until the end of June I don't know what will happen," said coach Jack Birkenshaw.   Surrey, who had begun the final round of matches with an outside chance of taking the title, had to settle for third place after losing to Worcestershire by 124.   Captain Alec Stewart had already abandoned the title hopes on Saturday when he forfeited Surrey's first innings in the hope of gaining a win which would ensure second place.   But chasing an improbable 424 for victory, Surrey were all out for 299 despite a masterful 129 not out by opener Darren Bicknell who batted through the innings.   Surrey's defeat meant second spot in the table went to Derbyshire who completed an eight-wicket win over Durham on Saturday. 
19984 !GCAT !GSPO  John Lomu, younger brother of top All Blacks player Jonah Lomu, was sent off without even playing after getting involved in a brawl on the pitch.   Lomu was on the bench for Cardiff club Old Illtydians in a local cup match against Cwmllynfell on Saturday when players started exchanging blows.   "There was a bit of a fracas going on between the forwards and John ran into the middle of it," said Cwmllynfell fixture secretary Wyn Griffiths.   "I honestly think his intention was to separate the players involved but as he arrived in the thick of it he got a bit of a clout.   So he gave one back and as a result he got sent off without even playing."   Cwmllynfell won the match 22-19.   Lomu faces a ban of up to six weeks. 
19985 !GCAT !GSPO  An 86th minute header from substitute Ian Marshall gave newly-promoted Leicester City their first away win in the English premier league this season when they won 2-1 at injury-hit Tottenham on Sunday.   Leicester were inspired by 18-year-old Emile Heskey who terrorised the Tottenham defence all afternoon, made the first goal for striker Steve Claridge after 22 minutes, earnt Leicester's missed second half penalty and also hit a post.   Claridge, who scored with a left foot shot at the far post injured himself in the process and was replaced by Marshall, a recent 800,000 pounds ($1.24 million) signing from Ipswich, whose winner, from a Garry Parker corner, was his first goal for the club.   Tottenham, who have yet to win at home this season having drawn two and now lost two of their four opening games, had equalised when Clive Wilson scored from a 64th minute penalty, awarded after Spencer Prior had upended their emergency striker Sol Campbell.   Campbell, playing up front with young reserve Rory Allen in the absence of the injured Teddy Sheringham and Chris Armstrong, had several chances.   But Tottenham, also missing three other injured first team regulars, were never able to dominate.   Eight minutes before Tottenham's goal Leicester seemed to have blown a great opportunity to make the game safe when skipper Steve Walsh's low hard penalty was saved by Ian Walker.   Leicester manager Martin O'Neill said: "I've got to admit I thought we deserved to win but if we'd have lost it I think I would have committed suicide.    "I thought when we missed the penalty and hit the post it was going to be one of those afternoons, but I am delighted we won.   Emile was outstanding.   To tell you the truth I'm not convinced he's only 18."   Leicester have moved away from the foot of the table to join Tottenham on eight points from seven matches.    Tottenham manager Gerry Francis said: "No one listens to hard luck stories.   People are only interested in results, but we are operating off basically a skeleton staff at the moment." 
19986 !GCAT !GSPO  Final standings in the English   county championship after Sunday's results (tabulated - played,   won, lost, drawn, batting points, bowling points, points):    Leicestershire 17 10 1 6 57 61 296    Derbyshire 17 9 3 5 52 58 269    Surrey 17 8 2 7 49 64 262    Kent 17 9 2 6 47 52 261    Essex 17 8 5 4 58 57 255    Yorkshire 17 8 5 4 50 58 248    Worcestershire 17 6 4 7 45 60 222    Warwickshire 17 7 6 4 39 55 218    Middlesex 17 7 6 4 30 59 213    Glamorgan 17 6 5 6 50 43 207    Somerset 17 5 6 6 38 61 197    Sussex 17 6 9 2 36 58 196    Gloucestershire  17 5 7 5 23 59 177    Hampshire 17 3 7 7 41 56 166    Lancashire 17 2 6 9 49 52 160    Northamptonshire  17 3 8 6 36 57 159    Nottinghamshire  17 1 9 7 42 52 131    Durham 17 0 12 5 22 60 97 
19987 !GCAT !GSPO  Summary of Sunday's English premier league match:   Tottenham 1 (Wilson penalty 64th minute) Leicester 2 (Claridge 22nd, Marshall 86th).   Halftime 0-1.   Attendance: 24,159. 
19988 !GCAT !GSPO  Britain beat Egypt 5-0 in their Davis Cup tennis Euro/African zone group two, third round tie on Sunday after taking both reverse singles.   Results (British names first):   Tim Henman beat Tamer El Sawy 6-7 (4-7) 6-2 6-2   Greg Rusedski beat Amr Ghoneim 6-4 6-2. 
19989 !GCAT !GSPO  Scores in four-day English county championship cricket matches on Sunday:   At Leicester: Leicestershire beat Middlesex by an innings and 74 runs.   Middlesex 190 and 248 (M.Ramprakash 78; D.Millns 4-48), Leicestershire 512.   Leicestershire 24 points, Middlesex 4   At The Oval (London): Worcestershire beat Surrey by 124 runs.   Worcestershire 362 and 61-1 declared, Surrey first innings forfeited and 299 (D.Bicknell 129 not out, B.Julian 80).   Worcestershire 20 points, Surrey 4.    At Southampton: Hampshire v Nottinghamshire - match drawn.   Hampshire 513-4 declared and 181-5 declared (G.White 53), Nottinghamshire 391-4 declared and 152-5 (G.Archer 63).   Hampshire 8 points, Nottinghamshire 8.   At Edgbaston (Birmingham): Warwichsire v Lancashire - match drawn.   Warwickshire 386 and 359-6 (N.Knight 103, T.Penney 70 not out, A.Moles 59), Lancashire 597.   Warwickshire 9 points, Lancashire 11.   At Northampton: Northamptonshire v Yorkshire - match drawn.   Yorkshire 478, Northamptonshire 222 and 531-4 (M.Loye 205, R.Montgomerie 127, R.Bailey 61 not out, T.Walton 58).   Northamptonshire 6 points, Yorkshire 11.    At Chelmsford: Glamorgan beat Essex by 7 wickets.   Essex 367 and 269-9 declared, Glamorgan 353-6 declared and 284-3 (H.Morris 149, S.James 78).   Glamorgan 24 points, Essex 6. 
19990 !GCAT !GSPO  Results of English soccer matches   on Sunday:   Division one    Stoke  3  Huddersfield  2   Standings (tabulated - played, won, drawn, lost, goals for,   goals against, points):    Bolton 8 6 1 1 21 11 19    Barnsley 7 6 0 1 15 6 18    Norwich 8 5 2 1 9 4 17    Stoke 8 4 2 2 13 14 14    Wolverhampton  8 4 2 2 12 8 14    Crystal Palace  8 3 4 1 15 7 13    Tranmere 8 4 1 3 11 9 13    Ipswich 8 3 3 2 15 12 12    Queens Park Rangers 8 3 3 2 11 10 12    Manchester City  8 4 0 4 9 9 12    West Bromwich  7 3 2 2 12 11 11    Swindon 8 3 2 3 9 9 11    Sheffield United  6 3 1 2 12 9 10    Huddersfield  7 3 1 3 12 11 10    Oxford 8 3 1 4 11 8 10    Portsmouth 8 3 1 4 6 9 10    Birmingham 6 2 2 2 8 7 8    Port Vale 8 1 5 2 6 8 8    Reading 8 2 1 5 10 20 7    Charlton 7 2 1 4 6 8 7    Southend 8 1 3 4 7 14 6    Bradford 8 2 0 6 6 14 6    Grimsby 8 1 2 5 8 18 5    Oldham 8 0 2 6 7 15 2   Premier division    Tottenham 1  Leicester  2   Playing Monday: Wimbledon v Southampton   Standings:    Liverpool 7 5 2 0 16 5 17    Newcastle 7 5 0 2 10 7 15    Arsenal 7 4 2 1 15 8 14    Manchester United 7 3 4 0 16 6 13    Sheffield Wednesday 7 4 1 2 9 9 13    Aston Villa  7 3 3 1 8 5 12    Chelsea 7 3 3 1 10 9 12    Middlesbrough  7 3 2 2 14 9 11    Derby 7 2 4 1 8 8 10    Sunderland 7 2 3 2 6 4 9    Wimbledon 6 3 0 3 7 6 9    Tottenham 7 2 2 3 6 6 8    West Ham 7 2 2 3 6 10 8    Leicester 7 2 2 3 5 9 8    Leeds 7 2 1 4 6 12 7    Everton 7 1 3 3 6 10 6    Nottingham Forest 7 1 3 3 8 13 6    Coventry 7 1 1 5 3 13 4    Southampton  6 0 2 4 5 9 2    Blackburn 7 0 2 5 5 11 2 
19991 !GCAT !GSPO  Arsenal's new French manager Arsene Wenger paid a flying visit to Highbury on Sunday and immediately denied he was taking over a club in crisis.   Wenger, 47, who officially takes control on September 30, said he had read all the stories concerning the problems at the club but thought they had been greatly exaggerated, although he agreed there had been plenty of turmoil.   "The board are strong and united and know exactly what they want to do, and the team are playing very well.   I think the crisis might have been around the club -- not inside the club.   I do not think there is a problem with any crisis."   But Wenger knows Arsenal have been making as many headlines off the pitch as they have been making on it.   Despite currently lying third in the premier league after a 2-0 win at Middlesbrough on Saturday and being unbeaten for five matches, they were rocked last week when club captain Tony Adams said he was an alcoholic.   The club has also been widely condemned for the way it sacked previous manager Bruce Rioch just five days before the start of the season.   But Wenger, who will meet the players for the first time on Monday and accompany the team when they visit Germany this week for the return leg of the UEFA Cup match against Borussia Moenchengladbach, praised Adams for admitting his problem.   "My message for Tony Adams is one of respect.   I know that to say what he said took a lot of courage and when people are brave and honest you have to respect them."   Wenger, who is fluent in French, German, English, Italian, Spanish and speaks some Japanese, also said he intended to impose discipline on the club.   Over the past 10 years Arsenal have won all the major honours in England, but they have also been involved in some major off-field scandals, including the illegal payments affair which led to ex-manager George Graham leaving the club nearly two years ago.   Wenger said: "I believe in strong discipline but the strongest discipline is when players understand what the coach is trying to do.   But today success on the field depends on discipline -- on the field and off it."   Wenger, showing a refreshing openness not normally associated with many more guarded English managers, said he was offered the job at the beginning of August but could not join Arsenal immediately until his current Japanese club, Grampus Eight, had found a suitable replacement.    His revelation was intriguing as Rioch was not sacked by Arsenal until August 12.   Wenger is only the fourth overseas coach ever appointed to manage a senior English club but felt that being foreign was no disadvantage.   He was excited by the thought of marrying his continental background to the demands of the English game.   "That is my challenge," he said.   "I have studied English football for many years and although I might not know every player and every ground, I will have good people around me to assist me.   "I also think English football has changed so much in the past four or five years.   It is much more international than it was.   Who could have imagined (Fabrizio) Ravanelli or the Brazilians at Middlesbrough five years ago?"   His assistant manager will be Pat Rice, an Arsenal stalwart and member of their double-winning team in 1971, who will remain in charge until Wenger returns permanently from Japan.   Arsenal may not be ready to win another double yet, but Wenger believes they are a "great club" who can look forward to "It will take me a couple of months to adapt to the team and for them to adapt to me, but my message to the fans is come here and watch us and be happy.   "No team can always be attractive and fantastic in every match.   But we have a very strong squad with some excellent technically gifted players.   We might need some new players, but not yet.   The challenge for me is to succeed." 
19992 !GCAT !GSPO  Queen Elizabeth has sent Willie Carson a get well message as the five-time champion jockey recovers in hospital from a damaged liver.   Her "best wishes" were delivered in a telephone message from her private secretary Sir Robert Fellowes, a spokesman at Basingstoke's North Hampshire Hospital said on Sunday.   Carson, 53, suffered a damaged liver when he was kicked by the horse he was about to mount in the parade ring before a race at Newbury racecourse on Friday.   A hospital spokesman said Carson was "out of immediate danger" but is remaining in intensive care.   Flowers, cards and messages of support have flooded in from well-wishers including one from the Queen, for whom Carson has ridden many winners notably her last Classic victor, the 1977 Oaks and St Leger heroine Dunfermline.   "The flowers and best wishes and well-wishes have been coming in, including a message from the Queen via one of her staff, which obviously Mr Carson is very pleased about," said hospital chief executive Mark Davies.   Carson spent a comfortable night but his consultant Myrddin Rees has still not ruled out the possibility of surgery which would result in the removal of part of the jockey's liver.   "Mr Carson had a much better night and remains in remarkably good spirits.   Our indicators from yesterday and this morning are that the bleeding has stopped and that the damage to the liver has not extended," he said.   "We cannot exclude the possibility of surgery at a later date but he seems to be out of immediate danger.   I am a lot happier with his condition today."   Carson will remain in hospital for two weeks but he is expected to make a full recovery and be fit to return to riding within three months. 
19993 !GCAT !GSPO  Heavy rain forced officials to postpone Sunday's series-deciding fifth cricket match between Pakistan and India at the Toronto Cricket, Skating and Curling Club.   Pakistan levelled the Sahara Cup series at 2-2 with a 97 run win over India on Saturday.   Pakistan compiled 258-8 off their maximum of 50 overs while India replied with 161 all out off 39.2 overs.   A capacity crowd at the small ground and an international television audience of tens of millions had been expected to watch Sunday's decider but relentless rain made play impossible.   Organisers said the fifth match would be played on Monday, weather permitting. 
19994 !GCAT !GSPO  Zimbabwe beat Finland 4-1 in   their Davis Cup Euro/African zone group one play-off after   sharing the reverse singles on Sunday.   Results (Zimbabwe names first):   Byron Black beat Tapio Nurminen 6-7 (7-9) 6-4 6-3    Genius Chidzikwe lost to Vilio Liukko 1-6 6-7 (1-7) 
19995 !GCAT !GSPO  Section B log leaders Northern Transvaal weathered a first half storm from an experimental Western Province side to record a comfortable 27-16 (halftime 14-6) Currie Cup victory at Newlands on Saturday.   The Province selectors had dropped Springbok flyhalf Joel Stransky among seven changes after a woeful 25-16 defeat by Free State the previous week.   It threatened to pay off as Province dominated the first half territorially and went close to scoring the first try only for newcomer at fullback Breyton Paulse to drop the ball in the tackle as he crossed the line.   The Blue Bulls came under further pressure but two brilliant long-range tries as Province attacks broke down turned the game.   First Springbok centre Andre Snyman broke from his own 10-metre line to set up a try for fullback Theo van Rensburg in the 30th minute.   Five minutes later wing Jacques Olivier sprinted clear from his own 22 to set up a score for hooker Lourens Campher and give his side a 14-6 lead.   A third try from wing FA Meiring gave Northerns a handy cushion although Province claimed late consolations tries from centre Jaco Taute and scrumhalf Joggie Viljoen.   Scorers:   Western Province - Tries: Jaco Taute, Joggie Viljoen.   Penalties: Louis Koen (2).   Northern Transvaal - Tries: Theo van Rensburg, Lourens Campher, FA Meiring.   Conversions: Lance Sherrell (3).   Penalties: Sherrell (2). 
19996 !GCAT !GSPO  Free State romped to a record 113-11 (halftime 54-6) victory over out-classed Southern Western Districts in Bloemfontein on Saturday.   The Cheetahs scored 17 tries in a one-sided encounter with flyhalf MJ Smith on target with the boot, converting 14 of the tries.   Pacey leftwing Jan-Harm van Wyk scored a hat-trick and 13 players got themselves on the scoresheet in the massacre.   Lock Braam Els crashed over in the fifth minute to get the scoreboard moving and Free State crossed a further seven times in the opening period.   They reached the century mark in the final quarter and actually failed to score in the final nine minutes.   Instead it fell to South Western Districts to have the final say with replacement wing Jacques Wolfardt scoring his side's solitary try in the 80th minute.   Scorers:   Free State - Tries: Braam Els, Johan Erasmus (2), Helgard Muller, MJ Smith, Jan-Harm van Wyk (3), Dirkie Groenewald (2), Ryno Oppermann, Brendan Venter, Charl Marais, Chris Badenhorst, Naka Drotske, Jorrie Kruger, Alex Skinner.   Conversions MJ Smith (1).   South West Districts - Try: Jacques Wolfardt.   Penalties: Jurie Coetzee (2). 
19997 !GCAT !GSPO  Section A log leaders Natal narrowly beat their second placed opponents Transvaal 37-36 (halftime 27-16) at Ellis Park on Saturday.   A decisive third try from Andre Joubert after Transvaal had begun to assert themselves was the key to Natal retaining their unbeaten record in the Currie Cup this season.   Joubert gathered the ball on his own 22 and ran the length of the field to reverse what had been a try scoring opportunity for the home side and give Natal a 34-16 cushion.   Accurate penalty kicking from Gavin Lawless kept Transvaal in the game and late tries from Japie Mulder and Jannie van der Walt took them to within one point.   Scorers:   Transvaal - Tries: Kobus Wiese, Japie Mulder, Jannie van der Walt.   Conversions: Gavin Lawless (3).   Penalties: Lawless (5).   Natal - Tries: Mark Andrews, Jeremy Thompson, Andre Joubert (3).   Conversions: Henry Honiball (3) Penalties: Honiball, Joubert. 
19998 !GCAT !GSPO  Border's chances of sneaking into the quarter finals of the Currie Cup were ended when they were held to a 20-20 (halftime 20-10) draw by South Eastern Transvaal in East London on Saturday.   Scorers:   Border - Tries: Andre Claasen, Craig Snelling.   Conversions: Greg Miller (2).   Penalties: Miller (2).   South Eastern Transvaal - Tries: Hakkies Swart, Johan Visagie.   Conversions: Clive Terre'Blanche (2).   Penalties: Terre'Blanche (2). 
19999 !GCAT !GSPO  Results of Croatian League first   division soccer matches played on Sunday:    Croatia Zagreb  2 Hajduk  1    Istra 1 Inker  0    Orijent 0 Zadarkomerc 0    Sibenik 0 Segesta 0    Osijek 1 Cibalia 2    Marsonia 1 Rijeka  0   Played on Saturday:    Varteks 1 Mladost 127 0    Hrvatski dragovoljac 4 Zagreb  2