AP - December 30, 2001

WASHINGTON (AP) -- To hear officials from Iraq's main resistance group describe it, opposition to Saddam Hussein inside the country is such that not much will be needed to dislodge him.

They believe it could be done with 3,000 U.S.-trained Iraqi rebels, an Afghanistan-style bombing campaign, the insertion of several thousand U.S. special forces and a big assist from Iran. A show of American resolve would cause mass defections, they say, crumbling Saddam's regime.

The plan is being circulated by the Iraqi National Congress, a London-based confederation of Iraqi opposition groups that enjoys considerable backing on Capitol Hill but is seen as largely ineffectual by many in the administration.

The Bush administration hasn't said what military options, if any, it has in mind for Iraq.

``What happened in Afghanistan is basically what we want to do in Iraq,'' says Ahmad Chalabi, leader of the INC.

Its officials say the Bush administration has its own plan for removing Saddam. In response, U.S. officials that isn't unusual, since driving Saddam from office has been a longtime goal.

Richard Perle, a former Pentagon aide who maintains close ties with administration officials, says he is unaware of any serious new U.S. military plan to get rid of Saddam.

Says Secretary of State Colin Powell: ``With respect to what is sometimes characterized as taking out Saddam, I never saw a plan that was going to take him out.''

Officials also are concerned about unintended consequences from a U.S.-backed attempt to oust Saddam. One is the possible fragmentation and disintegration of Iraq.

President Bush recently suggested his concerns about Iraq would be eased if Saddam were to allow the return of U.N. weapons inspectors, whom the Iraqi leader expelled three years ago.

Asked what would happen if Saddam refuses, Bush said, ``He'll find out.''

One of the more controversial aspects of the INC plan involves Iran, Iraq's eastern neighbor and longtime enemy of Saddam. The two countries fought a devastating war from 1980-1988.

Chalabi says the Iranians are prepared to help the United States remove Saddam.

``They will do nothing without U.S. support,'' he said.

Specifically, INC officials say Iran will provide transit, staging and logistical support for Iraqi rebel troops if the United States commits fully to the operation's success.

Perle says any role for Iran would be a mistake. ``We should be encouraging the collapse of the Iranian regime,'' he says. ``If the U.S. were to step in and cooperate with Iran in going after Iraq, this would undermine the mounting opposition to the regime.''

David Mack, a former Iraqi officer at the State Department now with the private Middle East Institute, says the United States should seek other Iraqi neighbors -- Turkey, Jordan and Saudi Arabia -- for support roles.

Whether Turkey would allow the United States to use bases in that country in an operation against Iraq is unclear. Of particular concern to Turkey is that upheaval in Iraq could lead to the creation of an independent Kurdish state in northern Iraq. This, in turn, could energize Kurds in neighboring Turkey to seek independence as well.

Alluding to this concern, Turkish Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit said that during a mid-January visit to Washington ``we will make it clear that we are opposed to any developments that threaten Turkey's integrity.''

The INC has been lobbying official Washington for years. Its success in Congress is largely attributed to the efforts of Chalabi, born 56 years ago into a wealthy Iraqi Shiite family.

In 1997, Congress allocated $97 million to the INC for military training and equipment. That rankled Marine Corps Gen. Anthony Zinni, who commanded U.S. forces in the Middle East.

Before retiring from the military last year, Zinni, now the U.S. envoy to the Middle East, criticized Congress' efforts to ``let some silk-suited, Rolex-wearing guys in London gin up an expedition.''

He said equipping a thousand fighters with $97 million worth of AK-47's and sending them into Iraq could end in failure like the 1961 attempt to overthrow Cuba's Fidel Castro at the Bay of Pigs.

``What will we have? A Bay of Goats, most likely,'' Zinni wrote in the U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings.

The INC has received no training or equipment, which upsets members of Congress, some of whom recently implored Bush to start military training for the INC and provide money for other activities.

Perle believes action against Iraq must be taken sooner, not later.

``Do we wait and hope that he doesn't do what we know he is capable of, which is distributing weapons of mass destruction to anonymous terrorists, or do we take pre-emptive action?'' he asked.

``What is essential here is not to look at the opposition to Saddam as it is today, without any external support, without any realistic hope of removing that awful regime, but to look at what could be created.''

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia's TV6, the largest television channel outside the control of the Kremlin, won a reprieve on Saturday when a high court overturned an earlier order for the station to close.

A Moscow lower court ruling in November that TV6 should be shut because of alleged statutory irregularities sparked protests from the television channel that it was the victim of a Kremlin drive to stifle alternatives to official propaganda.

Russian news agencies said the Federal Arbitration Court had rescinded the closure order on Saturday and sent the matter back for further legal examination.

The Moscow court order for TV6 to close followed an action by a minority shareholder, a pension fund linked to Russia's biggest oil producer LUKOIL.

TV6, which dismisses charges of statutory financial irregularities, says the fund is doing the Kremlin's bidding though the Kremlin denies any involvement in the affair.

The station's top news presenter and general director, Yevgeny Kiselyov, described the higher court's ruling on Saturday as ``half-hearted'' but said he was confident about the final outcome.

Kiselyov was quoted by Ekho Moskvy agency as saying the ruling showed that ``not all justice in Russia has yet died, that there are judges who still judge according to law and conscience, irrespective of the pressure to which they are subjected.''

TV6, owned by self-exiled businessman Boris Berezovsky, became a refuge for many veterans who quit the independent NTV network when it was taken over by the state-backed natural gas monopoly Gazprom last April.

The politically-charged battle for control of NTV sparked heated debates over press freedoms and street rallies in Moscow before the controversy died down.

BELGRADE, Yugoslavia (AP) -- Defying U.S. pressure, the Yugoslav president said Thursday he has not accepted the resignation of Slobodan Milosevic's top general who is still in charge of the country's military.

President Vojislav Kostunica praised Gen. Nebojsa Pavkovic for his actions during NATO's 1999 bombing of Yugoslavia.

``Pavkovic has devotedly defended the country,'' Kostunica said.

He also said he wanted Pavkovic to keep his job as the Yugoslav army chief of staff because of his moves to reform the armed forces.

``General (Nebojsa) Pavkovic has offered to resign but I have told him to stay on for now,'' Kostunica said.

To the general's credit, Kostunica stressed, is his refusal to obey alleged orders from Milosevic in October 2000 to move against pro-democracy demonstrators whose massive protests led to the former president's ouster.

While generally supportive of the post-Milosevic leadership in Yugoslavia, the U.S. administration has conditioned further financial aid for the country on further reforms.

Pavkovic was an outspoken supporter of Milosevic before the former president's ouster and extradition to the U.N. war crimes tribunal where he is to stand trial for alleged war crimes in Kosovo, Bosnia and Croatia.

In the event of war, the new conscripts called up by the Russian Defence Ministry could include pets as well as Russian-made jeeps.

Under the new proposals, donkeys, horses, camels, reindeers, sledge-dogs and four-wheel-drive vehicles will have to be registered at local military commandants' offices across the country.

Deputy military commissar of Moscow Mikhail Prostodushev says reindeer and dogs could be of great use in the north of the country.

Full story here.

Editor's commentary: This will certainly help Putin to counteract American withdrawal from ABM Treaty. Just imagine if Red Army goes to North Pole and recruits all reindeers. Millions of children around the world would miss Christmas presents and Santa Claus. This is low even for Putin. Next Christmas is going to be stolen by Putin not Grinch. On the other side we can imagine Putin as Lawrence of Arabia riding camel in Chechnya and waging war against Chechens.

Russian journalist Grigory Pasko has been sentenced to four years in a high security prison after passing footage of the navy dumping nuclear waste into the Pacific Ocean to a Japanese television company.

Pasko has accused Russia of "spy mania", accusing the Federal Security Service (FSB) of persecuting people like himself to justify their existence. There has been a spate of similar cases since former FSB chief Vladimir Putin became President of Russia.

Full story here.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has answered a barrage of questions from his country's citizens in a marathon live appearance, broadcast simultaneously on TV, radio and internet.

Russians from across the country and abroad sent in around 500,000 questions by internet and telephone, most of them about low salaries and poor electricity and heating services.

But a teacher from the city of Yekaterinburg in the Urals complained that her salary was "comical". And a World War II veteran demanded to know why she had to survive on a pension of 1,000 roubles ($33) per month.

A 10-year-old boy told Mr Putin his school in the Siberian city of Irkutsk had been closed for three weeks because there had been no heating. He was worried he might miss out a whole year's schooling if the situation did not change.

What happened to his 70% approval rating? Full story here.

BEIJING (Reuters) - China has jailed six academics for downloading material on the banned spiritual movement Falun Gong and distributing it over the Internet, a Hong-Kong based human rights group said.

Beijing's Number One Intermediate Court sentenced the six Falun Gong practitioners, including four graduate students at the prestigious Tsinghua University, the Information Center for Human Rights and Democracy said in a statement seen on Sunday.

The six received separate jail terms of three to 12 years for ``making use of a cult to undermine the implementation of the law,'' the group said citing relatives and a fellow practitioner at the university.

The court was not reachable for comment.

China has carried out a legal crackdown against the practice and dissemination of Falun Gong since branding it an ''evil cult'' and banning it in 1999.

Falun Gong practices a mixture of Taoism and Buddhism and traditional Chinese physical exercises.

The human rights group did not say if the six jailed were accused of acting together but said they included husband-and-wife Tsinghua scientists Liu Wenyu and Yao Yue. The six were detained between January and April.

Yao, who studied microelectronics, received a 12-year sentence while husband Liu, who studied thermal energy, was jailed for three years, the group said.

Nine other Tsinghua students or teachers who have been arrested for activities related to Falun Gong remain untried, it said.

Thirty-two Tsinghua University academics overseas have sent an open letter calling on Chinese Premier Zhu Rongji and Vice President Hu Jintao, both alumni of the university, to stop Beijing's ``suppression and persecution of Falun Gong,'' it said.

Chinese state media have intensified a campaign against the spiritual group in recent weeks through repeated coverage highlighting a murder in Beijing that officials said was carried out by a practitioner.

The banned group's U.S.-based information center has denied the reports, saying its teachings prohibit killing and suicide.

The group says more than 1,600 followers have died as a result of abuse in police custody or detention centers.

Chinese authorities have acknowledged several deaths of Falun Gong members in custody, but say most resulted from suicide or illness. They blame the group for the deaths of at least 1,800 people through suicide or the refusal to take medical treatment.

The Salvation Army is to be expelled from Moscow after a court ruled that its name and uniforms defined it as a "paramilitary organisation".

Since it set up in Moscow in 1992, it has provided humanitarian aid for nearly 900 city organisations such as churches, prisons, hospitals and orphanages.

Lieutenant Colonel Barry Pobjie, the Salvation Army's Eastern European commander, said the organisation "would not go down the road of paying bribes".

Full story here.

PRAGUE, Czech Republic (AP) -- Two former top communist leaders have been charged with treason for their alleged roles in the 1968 Soviet-led invasion that crushed Czechoslovakia's democratic reforms.

Milos Jakes, former secretary-general of the Czechoslovak Communist Party, and Jozef Lenart, Czechoslovak prime minister in the 1960s and head of the Slovak Communist Party until 1988. He said they face prison terms of 12 to 15 years if convicted, said Martin Omelkia, spokesman for the Prague prosecutor. There is a further possibility of unspecified ``exceptional'' punishment, he said Wednesday.

The two are accused of trying to legalize the invasion by trying to form a new government slavishly loyal to the Soviet Union.

Jakes, 79, and Lenart, 78, allegedly participated in talks on the formation of the government held at the Soviet embassy in Prague on Aug. 22, 1968, one day after the Warsaw Pact troops invaded the country.

They both allegedly agreed to join the new government and unsuccessfully demanded its appointment by Czechoslovak President Ludvik Svoboda. A more moderate government was later formed

Czechoslovakia split into the Czech Republic and Slovakia in 1993.

No date for the trial has been set.

BERLIN (AP) -- Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's Social Democrats and the former East German communists reached a tentative deal early Thursday to form a new Berlin city government, which will see the ex-communists take their first share of power in the capital since it was reunited.

The Social Democrats, who emerged the strongest party from city elections in October but fell short of an outright majority in the state legislature, turned to the ex-communist Party of Democratic Socialism two weeks ago after monthlong efforts to form a broad alliance with Greens and liberals collapsed.

Mayor Klaus Wowereit, a Social Democrat, hopes the new city government -- which will have to tackle a $36 billion debt -- will be sworn in Jan. 17. Wowereit said Thursday the new coalition will limit the social impact of dealing with Berlin's ``catastrophic budget situation.''

The two parties said they agreed to deep cuts in spending on public-sector employees but spared the education budget. The parties still had to decide how they will divide the government posts.

With national elections looming next September, Schroeder had opposed lining up in Berlin with a party whose predecessors built the Berlin Wall and which refuses to support his ``unrestricted solidarity'' with the United States in the war on terrorism.

His party governs one eastern state with the PDS, but he has ruled out a national coalition on the grounds that its foreign policy and economic positions remain too leftwing. However, the national Social Democrats pledged not to interfere in Berlin.

Reformers such as Gregor Gysi, who spearheaded the PDS election campaign, have long worked to remold the party into a modern left-wing force. It took nearly half the vote in the former East Berlin and made gains in the west.

For most of the time since German reunification in 1990, Berlin was governed by the conservative Christian Democrats with the Social Democrats as junior partner in a ``grand coalition'' of the two biggest parties. That ended in June with the ousting of conservative mayor over a scandal at a city-controlled bank.

Editor's commentary: Schroeder's explanation for red coalition is that former Stasi members are excellent in retrieving money from citizens of Berlin. He needs money desperately and who can perform extortion better than former Stasi? Some suggested Italian mafia and Slobodan Milosevic but at the end, former Stasi won the contest. Check out what socialists think about Schroeder:

A biographical sketch of German SPD leader Gerhard Schröder

Interesting part:

Many details of his life astonishingly parallels the biography of Bill Clinton. The childhood of a semi-orphan, the climb upward from impoverished conditions "through one's own hard work," anti-government protests as a student, then the career of an unbridled provincial opportunist. In the eyes of big business, this boundless adaptability qualified him for the highest national office.

As with Clinton in America, the ruling circles and the media chose Schröder in Germany. What the bourgeoisie requires today is precisely this type of social climber--people who are ready to do anything to insure that they do not fall back down the social ladder, go-getters who knuckle down to defend the state against any opposition movement from workers and youth "without wavering."

BANGKOK, Thailand (AP) -- Myanmar is once again the world's top opium producer because of a sharp drop in production of the drug in Afghanistan, according to the latest U.S. government survey.

Myanmar overtook Afghanistan, which had been the No. 1 opium producer for the past three years, despite having its smallest opium harvest since the mid-1980s this year, the survey showed. Opium is used to make heroin.

Myanmar produced an estimated 865 metric tons of opium in 2001, down from 1,085 tons in 2000, a U.N. official said Thursday, citing the State Department's Annual Survey of Opium Cultivation and Production.

The U.S. survey attributed Myanmar's drop in production to poor weather and drug eradication efforts.

But Myanmar's drop in production was dwarfed by Afghanistan's. The war-ravaged nation produced just 185 tons of opium in 2001, compared with 3,276 tons in 2000, according to the U.N. International Drug Control Program, or UNDCP.

Afghanistan's opium yield dropped this year because of a successful ban on poppy growing by its former Taliban rulers, who have been ousted by U.S.-led forces in the war against terror.

According to U.S. figures, Afghanistan overtook Myanmar, also known as Burma, as the No. 1 producer in 1998 and last year was responsible for 72 percent of the global supply.

The U.S. figures are set for publication in an annual report early next year. The survey uses satellite imagery and opium yield sampling on the ground. The figures were given to The Associated Press on Thursday by Yngve Danling, law enforcement adviser at UNDCP's Asia office in Bangkok.

Danling said world prices of opium and heroin should rise as a result of the fall in supply. Prices have already increased sharply in Afghanistan and central Asia, but the impact would take longer to be felt farther afield, Danling said.

``It's too early to see any reaction globally (to the drop in opium production). We'll probably only see that by the end of next year when the heroin reaches the market,'' he said.

The Myanmar government, which has been accused of turning a blind eye to drug trafficking in its border regions, says it is doing all it can with minimal foreign aid to end opium growing by poor hilltribe farmers.

Opium production nearly doubled soon after the current military regime took power in 1988 and reached cease-fires with ethnic armies heavily involved in the trade. But it has declined steadily since 1996.

As opium production has fallen, Myanmar's drug producers have diversified into cheap and popular stimulant pills, which have become a social menace in several Asian countries. These synthetic drugs, known as methamphetamines, are easier to produce than heroin and offer greater profits.

Soviet history may have to be rewritten now that the Russian secret police headquarters has released the archives of Stalin's secret agents into the public domain.

Russia's NTV said the three-volume collection of unabridged documents stored at the Lubyanka spy HQ contains "sensational material on abuses of power at the highest levels".

"Paragraph after paragraph describe abuses in the army and in the Communist Party, as well as the immoral conduct of Communists and Komsomol (Young Communist League) members."

The TV described the new evidence as "a new USSR history textbook, one that is much more reliable and terrible than even the boldest of its like produced today".

Material from the 1937-39 "Great Terror" period when millions of people, including artists and intellectuals, were arrested as "enemies of the people", remain classified for now.

No one knows exactly how many people were sent to the camps during Stalin's purges, but Russian historian Dmitriy Volkogonov estimates that between four and five million people were detained at any one time in both before and after World War II.

Full story here.

The European Court of Human Rights has thrown out a case brought against Nato over the bombing of Belgrade's main TV station during the Kosovo conflict.

Full story here.

HAVANA (AP) -- Gunmen killed a Florida couple, their 8-year-old grandson and two others during a robbery on a central Cuban highway, official sources and family members said Tuesday.

Four were identified as members of the same family and the fifth as a family friend who was driving the car. Family members and a morgue employee said the victims were shot to death.

Multiple killings are almost unheard of, and slayings of visitors to the communist country -- whose economy depends heavily on foreign tourism -- are extremely rare.

Osmani Placencia of Hialeah, Fla., identified the dead as his parents, Ada Lorenzo, 52, and Celedonio Placencia, 62, both Cuba natives with legal U.S. residency; his son, Daniel Osmani Placencia, 8, of Cuba; his sister, Yailen Placencia, 28, of Cuba; and Domingo Delgado, a family friend who was driving.

The couple flew to Cuba on Sunday to deliver medicine and supplies to sick relatives in Santa Clara.

Cuba's official media did not report the killings and there was no comment Tuesday from official government spokesmen.

But several government sources privately confirmed the five were slain in an apparent robbery attempt in Matanzas province while driving east from Havana to visit relatives in Santa Clara, in Las Villas province. It wasn't immediately clear if the killings occurred Sunday or Monday.

A woman reached later at the forensic services office -- the morgue -- in Matanzas said the victims had been shot. The woman also refused to give her name.

Most Cubans are not allowed to carry firearms, which are restricted to police and the military. However, criminals have been known to obtain firearms on the black market.

``They robbed them and then they killed them,'' Placencia told Spanish language television in Miami.

Family and friends of the victims, gathered in Florida Tuesday to mourn and remember.

Yisel Placencia, the couple's daughter, broke down as she looked at photographs of the victims. One showed her sister Yailen smiling as she hugged their parents. Another showed Daniel happily playing in front of his Santa Clara home.

Jorge Lorenzo, Ada Lorenzo's brother, said family members had no plans to go to Cuba and that Cuban authorities assured them they were working ``night and day'' on the case.

Cuban exile groups in Miami who oppose leader Fidel Castro said the killings show the Caribbean island is dangerous.

The bodies were retrieved by a relative early Tuesday from the Matanzas morgue and taken to a funeral home in Santa Clara, where several hundred people paid their respects amid heavy police security.

``What is certain is that they were murdered,'' Armando Lopez, a neighbor of the victims' relatives in Santa Clara, told Associated Press Television News. ``Nobody knows why.''

Officials at the U.S. Interests Section, the American mission here, said they had no information about the case but would not be contacted if no American citizens were involved.

The last known killing of a visitor to Cuba was in May, when a former Roman Catholic priest from the United States was strangled at a Havana home where he was staying. Cuban officials never commented publicly on the case and the cause of death was never given.

Editor's commentary: Despite Castro's statements that there are no death squads on Cuba, it seems that they sure do exist and their activity is increasing.

BRUSSELS, Dec 17, 2001 -- (dpa) At least four German activists arrested amid violent protests at the European Union leaders' summit in Brussels are to face charges in a Belgian court, the office of the state prosecutor said on Saturday.

Three of the demonstrators were arrested for throwing stones at police while the fourth is accused of having destroyed a police radio, a charge he denies.

The three alleged stone-throwers will appear in court on January 14 charged with opposing public authority, but no date was set for the fourth detainee.

Violence flared on Friday when protestors principally drawn from the anti-globalization movement gathered in Brussels to press their claims for a more socially and economically conscious Europe. Police put the number of protestors at some 12,000.

Brussels' Mayor Freddy Thielemans said that there had been a hard core of 250 mainly German protestors among the demonstrators who had caused most of the violence.

Although the majority of demonstrators were peaceful, both on Friday and at an 80,000-strong union rally on Thursday, Thielemans said two cars, windows of banks and a police station had been damaged and two policemen slightly injured.

Police turned out in large numbers on Saturday to patrol the streets of the capital in preparation for a right-wing, anti- globalization demonstration which organizers expected would draw between 250 and 300 protestors.

Editor's commentary: All they have to say to the judge is that their role model is German foreign minister Joschka Fischer. He is a true inspiration for all those who practice violence around the world.

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) -- North Korea on Sunday rejected U.S. demands for an inspection of its alleged nuclear weapons program and refused to participate in talks on its missile development.

``There is neither condition nor need for the Democratic People's Republic of (North) Korea to accept the 'nuclear inspection,''' said Rodong Sinmun, the official newspaper of the North's ruling Workers' Party.

``The same is the case with the 'missile issue,''' it added.

North Korea has increased anti-U.S. rhetoric since President Bush warned this month that it and Iraq would be ``held accountable'' if they developed weapons of mass destruction to carry out terrorism.

Bush has demanded that the North allow U.N. experts to inspect its nuclear program. The North is believed to have stockpiled enough plutonium to make one or two atomic bombs.

The U.S. president has also expressed frustration over the North's silence to his proposal in June to resume dialogue and discuss the communist country's missile program and conventional arms.

``The U.S. is going to use the dialogue with the DPRK as a lever to pressure and an opportunity to find a pretext for military provocation,'' said Rodong. The report was carried by the North's official news agency, KCNA, which was monitored in Seoul.

The North has accused the United States of preparing to make it the next target after Afghanistan in the U.S.-led anti-terrorism campaign.

North Korea is on a U.S. list of countries sponsoring terrorism. It maintains a 1.1 million-member military, the world's fifth largest.

The United States keeps 37,000 troops in South Korea to deter North Korea, a legacy of the 1950-53 Korean War. That war ended in a cease-fire, not a peace treaty.

Editor's commentary: It is more important to maintain 1.1 million men military while millions of North Koreans are starving and forced to practice cannibalism. Learn more about starvation in "democratic people's" state here and cannibalism here.

BEIJING, Dec 14, 2001 -- (dpa) A member of China's banned Democracy Party has been sentenced to four years in jail on charges of trying to overthrow the government, the Hong Kong-based Information Center for Human Rights and Democracy said Friday.

The center said in a statement that Wang Jinbo, 29, was found by the Intermediate People's Court in the Shandong province city of Linyi of being guilty of publishing numerous articles from foreign websites as well as of other crimes, including the urging of a reevaluation of the democracy movement that led to the bloody June 4, 1989 Tiananmen Square confrontation.

Wang has appealed against the conviction, but is unlikely to have it overturned.

Since 1998, Chinese rights activists have tried to register the Democracy Party in a number of provinces. Many of the party's members and founders have been jailed for their attempts, including Xu Wenli, China's leading dissident, who was sentenced to a 13-year jail term.

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - A heavily armed group opened fire in India's parliament complex Thursday, killing several people in an unprecedented attack on the seat of power in the world's biggest democracy.

Several ministers were in the building, next to the prime minister's office, but were not hurt.

There was no immediate indication of who was behind the attack in a country plagued by separatist revolts, intermittent political unrest and communal violence.

``I heard a cracker-like sound near the entrance, then I saw people running helter-skelter,'' lawmaker Kharbala Sain told Reuters.

``I saw many people firing at the same time. I couldn't make out who was who. I couldn't understand who the terrorists were and who the police were. My mind went blank.''

Witnesses said five terrorists stormed through the complex firing automatic weapons and hurling grenades about 11:45 a.m. (0615 GMT), soon after both houses of parliament adjourned.

Gunshots were heard for about an hour. All five were killed in a shootout with police. Doctors at a nearby hospital said at least five guards and a worker were killed and 16 people seriously injured.

Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee's office at first said he was in the parliamentary complex, but officials later said he had not yet arrived when the shooting started and was now at his home.

TROOPS DEPLOYED AROUND CAPITAL

Star News said the heavily-armed attackers, dressed in civilian clothes, drove into the parliamentary grounds in a vehicle with a fake pass.

Hundreds of troops in full battle gear took up position around the parliament, sealing off the area as security forces throughout Delhi and around the nation were put on red alert.

Soldiers were deployed outside Vajpayee's office and residence as well as key government buildings in the capital and the Press Trust of India news agency said commandos were also deployed outside some state assemblies.

The cabinet security committee was due to meet at 4:00 p.m.

Financial markets fell immediately after the attack before recovering. The Bombay stock market dropped three percent after the news broke.

The attack came two months after 38 people died in a suicide bomb attack on the assembly in the troubled state of Jammu and Kashmir in India's far north.

A Pakistan-based militant group first claimed responsibility for that attack, but later denied carrying it out.

If Thursday's raid was by Kashmir separatists, India could launch a counter-attack across the Line of Control into Pakistani-held territory, raising the risk of a dangerous confrontation between the nuclear-capable neighbors.

India is racked by separatist and communal violence, but this is the first time such an attack has been launched on the heavily guarded parliamentary complex.

Sikh separatists assassinated prime minister Indira Gandhi in 1984. A suicide bomber killed her son, Rajiv Gandhi, who also served as a prime minister, in 1991.

MIAMI (Reuters) - A Cuban convicted of conspiracy to murder in the deaths of four exiles whose planes were shot down by Cuban jets off the island's coast in 1996, and of trying to spy on U.S. military bases, was sentenced on Wednesday to life in prison.

Gerardo Hernandez, the 36-year-old alleged ring-leader of a network of Cuban spies operating in south Florida, was convicted of murder conspiracy and conspiracy to commit espionage in June after a six-month trial.

U.S. District Court Judge Joan Lenard sentenced him to two concurrent life sentences in a Miami federal court on Wednesday. It was the maximum sentence for the charges.

Communist Cuba reacted predictably, with state-run television decrying the ``despicable sentence against our heroic compatriot.''

Havana's chief diplomat in the United States, Dagoberto Rodriguez, said from Washington the sentence was ``a way of getting even for 40 years of failures against our country.''

``The atmosphere in the courtroom was totally corrupt, it was incredible seeing innocent men in the dock and terrorists among the public,'' Rodriguez added.

Hernandez was the first to be sentenced out of a group of five Cubans convicted in June of charges related to a spying ring known as the ``Wasp Network.'' The group was charged with infiltrating local U.S. military bases and Cuban exile groups.

Hernandez was the only one of the five to be convicted of murder conspiracy. Prosecutors said he knew in advance about plans in Havana to shoot down planes belonging to the exile group Brothers to The Rescue near the island in February 1996. The four crew of the two planes were killed in the incident that sparked an international storm.

The other Cubans face sentencing in the coming days.

CASTRO PROTESTS

Before his sentencing Wednesday, Hernandez gave a 20-minute speech, saying he did no harm to the United States and had nothing to do with the shoot-down.

Hernandez, whose mother traveled from Havana for the sentencing, described himself as a patriot who was in the United States to protect his country, echoing the official view of President Fidel Castro's government.

Havana says the group was defending Cuba against what it views as ``terrorist'' groups operating among Miami's large and generally fiercely anti-Castro exile community.

Hernandez's lawyer, Paul McKenna, told reporters afterward that the life sentence ``was absolutely not a surprise'' to the Cuban. ``He is very hopeful about his appeals,'' he said of his client. ``We are not finished yet, we've got a long way to go on this case.''

Although exile groups have long known that they are liable to infiltration by agents from Havana, the trial of the five Cubans was a rare case of agents being caught and convicted.

Most of the Miami-based exile groups are peaceful but there have been periodic attacks or plots to attack Cuba over the years since Castro took power in 1959 and steered the island down a communist path.

Most recently, a series of bomb attacks on Cuban hotels in 1997 killed an Italian. Havana says the attacks were masterminded by exiles.

The U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida, Guy Lewis, welcomed the sentencing, as did relatives of the slain fliers who attended the hearing.

``Today's sentencing is a clear victory for the United States, and more importantly, for the South Florida community and the family members who have been so personally victimized by these defendants and the Cuban government,'' Lewis said in a statement. ``It is a great day for justice.''

Hernandez and two others were convicted of espionage conspiracy for efforts to penetrate U.S. military bases, a case that hinged on their efforts to infiltrate bases. They were not found to have obtained secret information.

Those two, Ramon Labanino and Antonio Guerrero, also face sentences of possible life in prison. Fernando Gonzalez and Rene Gonzalez, who are not related, face up to 15 years in prison for the lesser charge of failing to register as foreign agents. The spy ring they were accused of belonging to was dismantled in 1998.

Their trial involved dozens of witnesses and several thousand pages of evidence, much of it in the form of reports written by the Cuban agents to their handlers in Havana and decrypted by the FBI.

Authorities have continued to hunt down possible Cuban spies and in September, a Florida couple pleaded guilty to charges they acted as agents for Cuba against the United States. They were allegedly also part of the ``Wasp Network.''

In an unrelated and rare case of a U.S. citizen charged with spying for Cuba, a senior intelligence analyst with the Defense Department in Washington was arrested in September, charged with giving classified defense information to Cuba.

Ana Belen Montes, who has worked at the Defense Intelligence Agency since 1985 and specialized in Cuban affairs, faces a possible death penalty or life imprisonment if convicted.

A Russian prosecutor has demanded a prison term of nine years for a military journalist being re-tried in the far eastern city of Vladivostok on charges of treason.

Grigory Pasko is accused of passing classified documents on the combat-readiness of the Russian Pacific fleet to Japanese media. He was acquitted of treason and espionage charges in 1999, but found guilty on lesser charges of abuse of office.

Mr Pasko and his lawyers said the treason charges were retribution for his reporting on alleged environmental abuses by the Russian navy, including dumping of radioactive waste in the Sea of Japan.

Full story here.

A French ban on British beef imports is illegal, the European Court of Justice has ruled. France was sued for defying a decision made by the European Commission more than two years ago that imports could resume.

France maintained a unilateral embargo, arguing its own scientific advice suggested there were still risks of BSE in British beef exports. The ban has remained in place despite Prime Minister Tony Blair protesting to the French Prime Minister Lionel Jospin.

Commission officials said it was one of the most flagrant legal breaches in EU history.

Full story here.

The UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Ruud Lubbers, has strongly criticized governments' attitudes to asylum-seekers, accusing them of failing to meet their international obligations and contributing to the problem of illegal immigration.

Mr Lubbers said he accepted that the problem of displaced people in the world had grown but he attacked the view of refugees as a burden rather than potentially productive citizens.

There are currently about 22m refugees in the world. Governments, however, now tended to treat asylum-seekers as a burden, lumping them together with "economic migrants".

"Unless governments do more to find lasting solutions for refugees, more of them will fall into the hands of human smugglers, traffickers and criminal networks," he said. "Who is then fuelling crime? Fleeing refugees or failing governments?"

Full story here.

A French army major has been found guilty of handing military secrets to the Serbs shortly before the Kosovo conflict. Pierre-Henri Bunel, 49, was jailed for two years, with a further three years suspended. He was immediately taken to the Sante prison in Paris.

A special military court in Paris heard that he revealed details of Nato's bombing plans just before its military campaign got under way in Kosovo. Prosecutors had asked for a five-year term for Bunel.

"You wanted to be a hero but you were a traitor. You must assume the consequences," state prosecutor Janine Stern told the tribunal.

"You betrayed your comrades, you betrayed your allies, you betrayed France."

Full story here.

MANAGUA, Nicaragua (AP) -- Former Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega renounced his congressional immunity on Wednesday, saying he wants to confront his stepdaughter's allegations that he repeatedly raped her.

``I want to say that I am innocent, that I reject the charges,'' Ortega told Managua criminal court Judge Juana Mendez. He formally renounced protection from prosecution granted members of congress.

However, it was not clear if the action would have any practical effect. Ortega's attorneys have argued that the statute of limitations on the accusations had expired.

The congressional protection allowed Ortega to avoid charges for nearly four years over the allegations of Zoilamerica Narvaez, the daughter of his wife Rosario Murillo.

Ortega led the leftist Sandinista National Liberation Front government between 1979 and 1990, when he lost a re-election bid. He also lost presidential elections in 1996 and last month.

In March 1998, Narvaez accused Ortega of raping her repeatedly over several years, beginning when she was 11 years old. That was about the time the Sandinistas took power in 1979. She is now 33.

Ortega said the allegation ``has been a political trial that was manipulated by the government and the government party in the recent elections.''

``It is time to seek a solution to this case,'' he said.

Ortega has repeatedly denied the allegations. He said earlier that he maintained immunity to avoid exposing his family to a painful trial.

Murillo, who has also said Ortega is innocent, repeated her support on Wednesday. ``I totally approve of his decision,'' she said, adding that it was ``just and correct.''

Editor's commentary: It seems that Ortega figured out that revolution and "power to the people" means what Fidel Castro told him. free ticket to rape minors and steal everything.

YANGON, Dec 12, 2001 -- (dpa) Chinese President Jiang Zemin, who arrives in Yangon (Rangoon) on Wednesday morning, is expected to reaffirm his country's decade-old position as the Myanmar (Burmese) junta's best friend and principal weapons supplier.

The four-day state visit, which comes at the invitation of Senior General Than Shwe, chairman of the ruling State Peace and Development Council (SPDC), is the first ever to Myanmar by a Chinese president.

It marks an acknowledgement by China of the importance it places on its strategic partnership with Myanmar's military regime, according to local analysts.

For the Myanmar junta, it is a measure of its success in largely ignoring the diplomatic and economic sanctions slapped on by the United States and other Western powers who do not approve of human rights abuses in the country.

The failure of the sanctions to isolate Myanmar and force the junta to make concessions to the democratic opposition can be attributed in large part to the infusions of military and economic aid provided by Beijing.

The military aid has made it possible for the junta to not only keep a lid on the activities of the opposition, led by Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, but also to mount offensives against Myanmar's myriad of ethnic minority insurgencies.

As a result, conclude some analysts, the junta is in a stronger position than ever, and has felt no compelling need to offer concessions during a year-long "dialogue", backed by the United Nations, with Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy.

Despite pressure from Western governments, and a public appeal to the junta by fellow Nobel laureates last Saturday on the 10th anniversary of the awarding of the prize to her, Suu Kyi remains under defacto house arrest at her Yangon residence.

But the Chinese largesse, including fighter jets, tanks and other weapons systems estimated to be worth some 2 billion U.S. dollars, has not come without a price.

Many of Myanmar's northern cities, particularly the former capital Mandalay, have during the past decade taken on the look of Chinese provincial towns, with ethnic Chinese, many of them recent immigrants, in firm control of nearly all economic activity.

This has caused some disgruntlement among ethnic-majority Burmans, including many in the military who are the ideological heirs of former dictator Ne Win's "Burmese way to socialism", which included a strongly xenophobic, anti-Indian and anti-Chinese bias.

Jiang and his wife, Madame Wang Yeping, along with a high-level delegation, will be greeted at Yangon's airport Wednesday morning by a 21-gun salute, with Than Shwe and his wife, Daw Kyaing Kyaing, offering a personal welcome.

The Chinese president will then proceed to official talks with his Myanmar hosts, followed by a signing ceremony of several commercial treaties and a banquet on Wednesday evening.

On Thursday morning Jiang is scheduled to go to Yangon's People's Park to preside over a tree planting ceremony, followed by a visit to the famed Shwedagon Pagoda.

He is due to meet with selected members of the local Chinese business community later in the day at the Sein Le-Kanitha State House.

He will then proceed by special aircraft to Mandalay, where he is to be welcomed by the Mandalay SPDC chairman, Major General Ye Myint.

On Friday the Chinese presidential entourage will visit Kuthodaw Pagoda and Mandalay Hill and the Myanansankyaw Royal Palace, followed in the afternoon by meeting with members of the Mandalay Chinese community at Nanmyo Guest House.

On Saturday morning Jiang will fly from Mandalay to Beijing after he is seen off by the SPDC's first secretary and secret police chief, Lieutenant General Khin Nyunt.

WASHINGTON (AP) - President Bush, eager to deploy a missile shield long sought by Republicans, soon will give Russia notice that the United States is withdrawing from a landmark 1972 arms-control treaty, U.S. government officials said Tuesday. The pact bans missile defense systems.

Bush will invoke a clause in the Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty that requires the United States and Russia to give six months' notice before abandoning the pact, the sources said.

Full story here.

The two rounds of France's presidential election have been set for 21 April and 5 May next year.

The decision, taken by the National Assembly, also fixes parliamentary elections for 9 and 16 June.

The presidential election is expected to pit the incumbent Jacques Chirac against the Socialist Prime Minister, Lionel Jospin - though neither has officially declared his candidacy.

More than 10 candidates are standing, but only the two winners of the first round qualify for the second vote.

Full story here. Check out what socialists think about Lionel Jospin:

KIEV, Dec 11, 2001 -- (dpa) Ukrainian journalists will soon be allowed to carry firearms for their personal protection, the Interfax news agency reported police as saying Monday.

Ukraine's parliament changed the law this summer to allow Ukrainians working as journalists to carry pistols capable of firing rubber bullets. The amendment came after the Ukrainian government was accused of not doing enough to protect press freedom.

Cases of journalists being assaulted or intimidated with violence are common in Ukraine. One or two are killed every year.

The death of an Internet journalist, Georgy Gongadze - who disappeared in September 2000 - and a botched police investigation as well as a possible government cover-up in the case led to the largest public demonstrations since Ukraine's independence in 1991.

A headless body thought to be that of Gongadze was later recovered near Kiev.

Ukraine police spokesman Viktor Ratushnkik said Monday that news organization members will receive gun permits only after attending a police weapons safety course, receiving a medical check-up and paying a registration fee.

The total cost would be some 41 dollars, roughly half an average Ukrainian journalist's monthly salary.

Ukraine has strict controls over gun ownership.

NEW YORK (AP) -- From his perch near Tora Bora, Afghanistan, Fox News Channel correspondent Geraldo Rivera seemed more agitated by a question about carrying a gun than by the mortar rounds that just exploded nearby.

``I refuse to address that issue,'' said Rivera, speaking into a satellite phone. ``It's been blown way out of proportion. It makes me sound like a tabloid talk show host goes to war. It's so unfair.''

Yet Rivera's decision to bring a gun into a war zone where eight journalists have been killed has raised questions about whether it's a proper -- or wise -- thing for a reporter to do.

Many reporters say that carrying a gun is risky because soldiers would be less likely to believe a claim that someone is a journalist, making them potential targets.

``If the word gets out that a journalist is carrying a gun, it makes it difficult for everyone,'' said Peter Arnett, a former war correspondent for The Associated Press and CNN.

Rivera, speaking on Fox News Channel last week, said that ``if they're going to get us, it's going to be in a gunfight.'' But when asked specifically by an anchor whether he had a gun, he was reluctant to talk about it, finally nodding yes.

He's traveling with two guards who have five guns between them, Fox spokesman Robert Zimmerman said. Rivera isn't necessarily carrying a gun in most situations, but has one readily available, he said.

While filming a report last week, Rivera ducked after a sniper fired a few shots in his direction.

``There are eight journalists already dead,'' he said. ``I almost got killed last Thursday and, believe me, it wasn't because of a story in the New York Post that I was carrying a gun. This is a very dangerous place.

``That makes me feel ill, that suddenly it's become an issue that I'm putting journalists at risk,'' he said. ``That's complete bull.''

NBC forbids its correspondents from carrying firearms. ABC won't discuss its security arrangements. CBS and CNN said none of their personnel carries weapons, but it isn't a formal policy.

Steve Bell, a telecommunications professor at Ball State University who covered Vietnam for ABC News, doubts he'd be alive today if he were carrying a gun when captured by Viet Cong soldiers in Cambodia in 1970.

He sat in a car while his Vietnamese co-workers convinced the soldiers that Bell was a journalist, not a CIA agent.

``If I had been carrying a weapon, I doubt if that argument would have gone over well,'' Bell said.

Former CBS anchorman Walter Cronkite, who covered World War II for United Press International, said all journalists he knew then adhered to Geneva Convention rules that they should not carry weapons.

Novelist Ernest Hemingway, who covered World War II as a reporter, angered fellow journalists in August 1944 when he joined a band of French resistance fighters. They were concerned about him blurring lines between journalists and soldiers.

Hemingway kept firearms, bazookas and grenades in his hotel in Paris, leading to an appearance before a military panel on allegations he was violating Geneva Convention rules concerning news correspondents. He claimed the weapons were in his room only because the military lacked storage space.

Carrying a gun could make soldiers ``look at reporters, particularly American reporters, as some kind of opponent,'' said Arnett, who is heading to Afghanistan soon as a correspondent for an independent production company. ``The whole point of being a journalist is to be detached.''

Arnett said he hoped Rivera is trained in using a weapon. ``I wouldn't want to be near him if he opened up,'' he said.

As a young reporter in Vietnam, Arnett admitted to occasionally carrying a weapon before he was convinced it was unwise. He hasn't since, he said.

Even if the journalists themselves are not armed, many news organizations -- including The Associated Press -- have hired armed guards for their personnel in particularly dangerous areas of Afghanistan. Expensive news equipment is considered tempting to thieves.

``I can understand wanting to have a bodyguard,'' said Alex Jones, director of the Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard University. ``I think I would prefer to have someone with experience both locally and experience in their kind of battlegrounds and keep my focus on doing my job.''

But Jones said he wouldn't criticize a reporter who feels safer armed.

``I can understand both sides of the argument,'' Jones said. ``What I can't understand is if you're carrying a gun and talking about it.''

Rivera and Fox News Channel have both been outspoken in support of the U.S. war effort. Rivera, who left his CNBC talk show because he wanted to cover the war, has talked about killing Osama bin Laden if he had the opportunity.

He's less willing to talk about his own personal security.

``I haven't had a shower in two weeks and I have to defend whether I'm carrying a six-shooter?'' he said. ``It's just ridiculous.''

Editor's commentary: Just imagine Hemingway using bazooka to interview SS officers. Those were the days! And what about Geneva Convention, like we don't remember Red Cross visits to concentration camps in Third Reich and their findings that prisoners are "well treated"!? Those Swiss hypocrites can really make you upset sometimes. If Steve Bell and his companions had guns they wouldn't be captured by VC at all. Why let VC search you or capture you, shoot first, interview later. In places like Afghanistan it is always better to focus your sniper sight than camera. Here is bin Laden, just wait a second until I focus on him... BANG! What can you tell us about your view of American foreign policy Mr. Laden? Cat got your tongue or your forgot how to breathe?

MOSCOW (Reuters) - A Russian general said on Monday the military was ``radar blind'' across two-thirds of the country, and unable for long periods to track flights carrying the top leadership.

Lieutenant-General Alexander Shramchenko told Interfax news agency the situation was so critical that aircraft carrying Russian leaders to Japan could be outside radar coverage for 90 minutes.

``In fact, we do not control the air space from the Ural Mountains to the Kuril Islands (in Russia's far east),'' said Shramchenko, whose troops run the military's radar systems.

``There is only a thin line of radar field along the border with Kazakhstan, Mongolia and China,'' he said.

It is highly unusual for Russia's senior officers to speak publicly about serious deficiencies in the military, and could be a calculated bid for more funds for the hard-pressed service.

Since the start of fitful military reforms in the 1990s, the radio-technical forces have lost 60 percent of their personnel, Shramchenko said. That increased the distance between units and impaired their ability to detect low-level targets, he said.

The poor state of radar could have implications for the civilian aviation industry too, said independent defense analyst Alexander Golts.

``All our satellites, civilian as well as military, are controlled by Russia's space troops. Every satellite, or most of them, are multi-purpose. They are used for civilian needs as well as military,'' he said.

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the military have fallen on hard times, their budgets and numbers slashed as Russia launched a helter-skelter drive toward a market economy.

In the Soviet era, Moscow had more than 100 satellites in orbit for early-warning, intelligence and communications. Now, only four communications satellites are thought to operate and more than 80 percent of the country's ``spies in the sky'' are past their original operational design date.

KATHMANDU (Reuters) - Government troops killed at least 50 Maoist rebels in an overnight battle at an army post in western Nepal, the Defense Ministry said on Sunday.

A ministry statement said four soldiers were killed and eight wounded in the fighting after the guerrillas attacked an army post at Ratmate in Rolpa district in west Nepal late on Saturday.

``About 50 to 60 (rebel) bodies killed by the army were lying scattered around a telecom repeater station,'' the ministry said.

There has been no immediate comment from the rebel group, who are fighting to overthrow the Himalayan kingdom's monarchy and replace with a one-party communist regime.

Troops repulsed another rebel attack in nearby Sallyan and rounded up at least 44 insurgents. They also killed two rebels and arrested 25 others in the central Nepal district of Nuwakot. But insurgents bombed two private houses in the district, killing two civilians.

A Defense Ministry spokesman said it suspected more insurgents may have been killed in the battle but could not verify the numbers since the Maoists carried off some of their dead and wounded.

``Details of the incident could not be ascertained because of adverse weather conditions,'' he said.

The wounded soldiers were taken to the capital Kathmandu for treatment and more troops were sent to Rolpa.

The Nepalese army was deployed against the rebels on November 26 when the guerrillas broke a four-month-old truce to launched a string of deadly attacks on security forces across the kingdom.

About 2,100 people have been killed since the rebellion first erupted in 1996, hurting the tourist trade, a major source of hard currency earnings. The latest outbreak of violence has claimed more than 300 lives.

KIEV, Dec 7, 2001 -- (dpa) A newspaper accused Ukrainian National Security Council Chairman Evhen Marchuk of running an illegal weapons export ring for years, the Interfax news agency reported Friday.

Marchuk is Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma's advisor for national defense and security. Marchuk allegedly sold everything from small arms to tanks and jet aircraft to international buyers while s heading Ukraine's secret police (SBU) from 1992 to 1995, the Kievskii Telegraf newspaper reported in a series of articles ending Wednesday.

The articles alleged Marchuk cooperated with suspected Ukrainian smuggler Leonid Minin, on trial in the Italian city Turin on arms trafficking charges, to sell weapons stolen from Ukrainian army warehouses to underworld customers in Sierra Leone, Angola, Serbia, and Afghanistan.

Marchuk not only had information of the weapons transfers, but gave his direct agreement and the assistance of his office for them to take place, the articles allege.

Marchuk flatly denied any connection with illegal weapons trading during a Thursday interview on the ICTV television channel. He alleged the Kievskie Telegraf reports were concocted by "political enemies" to undermine his authority and that of the National Security Council.

Kievskii Telegraf's editors stood by their story. They filed a complaint with Ukrainian Chief Prosecutor Mykola Potabenko on Friday requesting an investigation into the articles' allegations, and requesting protection from retaliation which Marchuk or his subordinates might exact against the newspaper.

A still-unapprehended assailant in 1997 shot Ukrainian journalist Serhy Odarych in the leg for writing a series of news stories on Ukrainian illegal weapons exports during the first half of the 1990s. They claimed "high officials in government security organs" were behind the deals.

President Kuchma said an Autumn speech members of the Russian and Ukrainian Mafias working with army and government officials stole 32 billion dollars worth of Ukrainian military property during the last decade.

A UN report released this year on small arms trafficking suggested members of the Ukrainian government were working with organized crime in exporting weapons, but like Kuchma named no serving Ukrainian officials as involved.

The Kievskie Telegraf reports are a potential bombshell for Kuchma, dogged for more than a year by allegations he ordered the kidnapping of opposition Georgy Gongadze (whose headless body later was found dead in a shallow grave) for anti-government writing.

Two other Kuchma direct subordinates, a Minister of Interior and an SBU boss, resigned because of sloppy police investigation into Gongadze's killing, and anti-government public disturbances - one ending in an unsuccessful assault on the Presidential palace - ensuing from the scandal.

PRISTINA, Yugoslavia (Reuters) - Serbia released a prominent Kosovo Albanian student activist on Friday who had been in jail since NATO's 1999 war on Yugoslavia.

Taken to the Serbian heartlands as Slobodan Milosevic's Yugoslav forces retreated from the mainly Albanian province, Albin Kurti was sentenced to 15 years in prison for terrorism.

While most Kosovo Albanian prisoners had already been freed from Serbian jails after the ousting of Milosevic as Yugoslav president 14 months ago, Western nations and human rights bodies have been pressing for Kurti and others to be released too.

The reformist authorities in Belgrade are still determined not to give in to the demands of some ethnic Albanians for complete independence for Kosovo.

Kurti, in his mid-20s, was greeted by around 100 friends and family members when he arrived late in the evening in Pristina, capital of Kosovo, which is now under U.N.-led administration.

Sporting a short prison haircut, Kurti said he did not know why he had been freed nor why it had taken so long: ``I don't know why I stayed in prison for such a long time,'' he said.

The crowd, including many others who had seen the inside of Serbian jails, cheered and applauded him.

``This is a miracle,'' said his uncle, Skender Kurti.

A spokeswoman for the International Red Cross (ICRC), Vjosa Osmani, said in Pristina that Kurti had been released from prison in the central Serbian town of Pozarevac.

Serbian officials were not available for comment.

Kurti was arrested in Kosovo during the air strikes NATO launched in an effort to force Milosevic to stop what it said was Serbian oppression of Kosovo's ethnic Albanian majority.

Like hundreds of other Albanian detainees, he was taken to Serbia proper when Yugoslav forces withdrew from the province.

A district court in southern Serbia sentenced him in March last year to 15 years in jail for terrorism.

Kurti was leader of the Independent Union of Albanian Students, which was set up in Pristina after Belgrade stripped Kosovo of the autonomy it had enjoyed during the Communist era in federal Yugoslavia and imposed direct rule in 1989.

He also organized student demonstrations in Kosovo.

Some Kosovo Albanians are still held in Serbian jails. Kurti said the international community was not doing enough for them.

Dragan Marsicanin, an official in the party of the Yugoslav federal president, Vojislav Kostunica, quit after a stormy parliamentary session in which deputies traded insults and accusations over everything from corruption to reform.

He had accused the party of the Prime Minister, Zoran Djindjic, of vote-rigging in its efforts to push through a bill on labour reform.

No-one ever expected the coalition to last forever, particularly given the very public feud between Mr Djindjic and Mr Kostunica. But the process of disintegration began slowly some months ago and now appears to be gathering speed.

Full story here.

Editor's commentary: Kostunica, Marsicanin and the rest from DSS are against 105 article of Labor Law where employer can offer changed contract to workers and if they do not accept it employer can fire them. In general, they are against any kind of employers right to fire workers which is against international standards. That would block any foreign investments in Serbia and prolong communist practices indefinitely.

MOSCOW, Dec 6, 2001 -- (dpa) Russian police have arrested three suspected uranium dealers near Moscow, Interior Ministry officials said Thursday.

The men allegedly demanded 30,000 dollars for one kilogram of radioactive material. It is unclear where the material came from.

Unconfirmed reports said a member of the Russian security was also a member of the gang, the Interfax news agency said.

BEIJING, Dec 6, 2001 -- (dpa) The U.S. special envoy for counter-terrorism, General Francis Taylor, on Thursday praised China's support but denied its claims that it faces a terrorist threat in its far western region of Xinjiang.

"It was clear in my discussions that the Chinese leadership, along with counterparts at my level, share our resolve in shutting down the global terrorist networks that are linked to Osama bin Laden and his Al-Qaeda organization," Taylor said after two days of talks with senior foreign ministry, defense, finance and central bank officials.

The two sides discussed fighters from Xinjiang arrested in Afghanistan with the Taliban or Al-Qaeda, he said.

But he said the United States "does not designate or consider the East Turkestan (Xinjiang) organization as a terrorist organization".

"Legitimate economic and social issues" in Xinjiang "are not necessarily counter-terrorist issues and should be resolved politically", Taylor said.

"We accept the fact that there are people from western China that are involved in terrorist activities in Afghanistan, and that terrorists' actions have hurt."

"We don't believe, though, that all of the people of western China are indeed terrorists," he said.

Despite their differences on Xinjiang, China agreed to give "positive consideration" to allowing the United States to set up a legal attache office in Beijing, to which the U.S. would post FBI officers.

"We anticipate posting FBI personnel to that office if approved, which will greatly improve the efficiency of our law enforcement cooperation," Taylor said.

"It's a very important part of our (counter-terrorism) campaign".

China and the U.S. also agreed to set up a working group on financial issues related to counter-terrorism, he said.

Taylor's remarks on Xinjiang appear to have weakened China's case in its two-month campaign to persuade the international community to accept its fight against small groups of separatists and terrorists in the Moslem-majority region as part of the global anti-terrorism battle.

BERLIN, Dec 5, 2001 -- (dpa) The German government Wednesday formally called for the country's next general election to be held on September 22, 2002.

Under Germany's constitution the federal president, Johannes Rau, sets elections which must take place between 46 and 48 months after the previous vote.

Schroeder's center-left Social-Democratic alliance with the Greens was sworn in after defeating conservative Chancellor Helmut Kohl on October 26, 1998.

The September 22 date had been widely expected to be recommended.

BERLIN, Dec 5, 2001 -- (dpa) German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's Social Democrats (SPD) voted late Tuesday to seek a leftist coalition government in the city-state of Berlin with the former East German communist party.

Berlin's interim Mayor Klaus Wowereit of the SPD said that the party's Berlin leadership voted 24-0 with one abstention to seek a coalition with the Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS), the successor party to the communist regime that ruled East Germany until 1990.

The move followed the collapse overnight Monday of negotiations with both the Greens and the Free Democrats (FDP) to set up a three- party alliance to rule Berlin. Talks for the so-called stoplight coalition - among parties whose colors are red, yellow and green, stretching from the far left to the liberal center of modern Germany's political spectrum - were torpedoed by disagreements over tax policies.

Germany's biggest city with 3.4 million people, Berlin, is effectively bankrupt, almost 80 billion marks (36.4 billion dollars) in debt.

Schroeder's Social Democratic Party (SPD), which won the largest fraction in Berlin's October 21 elections with a weak 29.7 percent, and the Greens wanted to raise taxes. The FDP demanded deep spending cuts and no new taxes.

Schroeder has warned against an SPD coalition with the PDS to rule the city of Berlin, though his party rules in coalition with the post-communists in three former East German states. The PDS has a significant following among discontented voters in eastern regions but almost no following elsewhere in reunified Germany.

"The PDS is an option," Wowereit told Germany's ARD television.

PDS national manager Dietmar Bartsch said that setting up a Berlin government would be difficult, but that his party would not reject the challenge.

Schroeder apparently fears that the prominence of a "red-red" alliance in the capital city's government would give the center- right opposition powerful ammunition for next year's German general election.

The PDS's forerunner built the Berlin Wall in 1961.

The SPD has official governing coalitions with the PDS in Mecklenburg-West Pommerania and a minority government backed by the PDS in Saxony-Anhalt.

The big winner of Berlin's election was the PDS, which took 22.6 percent city-wide and grabbed almost half the vote in east Berlin. It was a strong showing for a party widely assumed to be dead in the water after reunification.

Germany's main opposition Christian Democrats (CDU) were crushed in the election and saw their share of the vote almost halved to 23.7 percent.

The liberal FDP won almost 10 percent, and the Greens just over 9 percent. Sibyll Klotz, leader of the Greens in Berlin, said that her party would go into opposition in the German capital after the failure of coalition talks.

WARSAW, Dec 4, 2001 -- (dpa) Polish border guards foiled an attempt to smuggle over 70 kilograms of radioactive dried mushrooms into Poland from neighboring Belarus, reports said Monday.

Officials at Poland's Czeremsze border point with Belarus were alarmed when the radioactivity level of the mushrooms was recorded as being several times higher than accepted norms.

It was unclear where the mushrooms had been picked in Belarus. Polish officials sent the radioactive contraband back across the border.

A Bosnian Serb general goes on trial in The Hague on Monday on charges of crimes against humanity and war crimes during the siege of Sarajevo from 1992 to 1994.

The indictment says General Galic's forces used a strategy of shelling and sniping designed to keep the inhabitants of Sarajevo in a constant state of terror.

Prosecutors hold him directly responsible for an attack on a Sarajevo market in 1994, which left 66 people dead and 140 wounded.

The indictment speaks of his forces directing "shelling and sniping at civilians who were tending vegetable plots, queuing for bread, collecting water, attending funerals, shopping in markets, riding on trams, gathering wood or simply walking with their children and friends".

Full story here.

TAIPEI, Dec 2, 2001 -- (dpa) Taiwan's opposition Nationalist Party (KMT), in a state of shock after a thrashing at the polls on Saturday, ruled out Sunday any idea of joining a coalition administration.

The KMT, which seeks eventual reunification with China, lost its grip on the parliament for the first time in 50 years when it won only 31 percent of the vote compared with over 46 percent in 1998.

Its seats in the 225-seat parliament were cut to 68 from 110.

The pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) increased its share of the vote from less than 30 percent to 36.57 percent and its seats from 70 to 87 to become the biggest party in the legislature, though it failed to gain an overall majority.

The People First Party (PFP), formed only in 2000, won 46 seats. The Taiwan Solidarity Union (TSU) won 13 seats while the small, right-wing New Party won just one seat. The remaining 10 seats went to smaller parties.

In the run up to the election, Taiwan's president, Chen Shui-bian, a member of the DPP, had proposed a "National (Stabilization) Alliance".

His aim was to enable a range of national problems to be solved including appointing a prime minister and cabinet in a parliament hamstrung by the DPP's inability to achieve a parliamentary majority.

Chen's government has been hampered by a belligerent opposition that controlled well over half the parliamentary seats.

But on Sunday, KMT spokesman Wang Chih-kang said: "We have already decided not to join (the alliance)... However, we haven't closed off any channels of communication and in future we can still exchange ideas with each other on a party-to-party basis."

The election result is expected to lead to behind-the-scenes deal- making as the DPP attempts to patch together a parliamentary majority and bring an end to one and a half years of legislative gridlock.

The KMT's policy of seeking eventual reunification with China is not popular with the electorate. That was reflected last May when the Chen Shui-bian won the presidential election and the KMT's Lien Chan ran only third.

Since then, Chen has angered China by refusing to accept its one- China policy.

BELGRADE (Reuters) - Bosnian Serb wartime commander Ratko Mladic, one of the world's most wanted men, is in Serbia and under Yugoslav army protection, a Serbian political source said on Saturday.

The source said Mladic -- indicted by the U.N. war crimes court for genocide during the 1992-95 Bosnian conflict -- was staying in a military facility secured by 80 army soldiers.

``He's in Serbia and is staying in a military facility,'' the source told Reuters, declining to give the exact location.

The source suggested Serbian authorities had made no attempt to arrest him, fearing a bloodbath and the absence of approval for such an operation at the federal level. Serbia is the dominant republic in the two-member Yugoslav federation.

The source's remarks appeared to support allegations by U.N. chief war crimes prosecutor Carla del Ponte who earlier this week accused Yugoslavia of shielding Mladic from justice.

Del Ponte said she had Mladic's address in Belgrade and told the 15-nation U.N. Security Council to insist on his arrest, as well as that of his fellow fugitive, former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic.

She said Mladic was living ``under the official protection of the Yugoslav army,'' which she said depends directly on Yugoslav President Vojislav Kostunica.

But Yugoslav Interior Minister Zoran Zivkovic has dismissed as ``completely unfounded'' her charges that Mladic was being shielded by his government.

Kostunica has also been quoted by local media as denying during an official visit to London that Mladic was under army protection.

The U.N. war crimes court indicted both Mladic and Karadzic in 1995 for genocide during the Bosnian war but the tribunal's two most wanted men -- after ousted Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic was handed over in late June -- remain at large.

The political source said Mladic had left Serbia to the Serb part of neighboring Bosnia after the overthrow of Milosevic in October last year but that he had since returned after receiving promises of protection.

The source said Mladic left his Belgrade house and moved to the military installation after the Serbian authorities, under heavy Western pressure and desperate for financial aid, handed over Milosevic to The Hague five months ago.