RFE/RL - November 29th, 2002

Minsk, 29 November 2002 (RFE/RL) -- The head of the Belarusian KGB, Leanid Yerin, accused the United States today of staffing its Minsk Embassy with spies.

Yerin, speaking to journalists in Minsk, alleged that for the last few years, half of the diplomats working at the U.S. Embassy in the Belarusian capital -- some 20 people in total -- have been spies.

Yerin said the United States had the most active intelligence contingent in Belarus. He said foreign intelligence services were especially interested in Belarus's armed forces and defense industry, which cooperates closely with Russia.

The U.S. embassy declined to comment.

The United States this week imposed a travel ban on Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka and seven top ministers over human rights violations. Last week, 14 of the European Union's 15 members imposed the same prohibition.

Minsk, 28 November 2002 (RFE/RL) -- Authorities in Belarus have shut down another independent newspaper. The Belarusian Information Ministry issued the order to shut down "Mestnoe vremya" yesterday, claiming the paper had not legally registered its rental space.

The editor of the paper, however, called it another strike against the free media in Belarus. Anatol Gulyaev told the Associated Press that the Information Ministry was fulfilling a political order from the authorities.

Belarusian officials refused to comment.

Gulyaev told AFP the move was prompted by the paper's decision to set up regional correspondents ahead of next year's local elections.

Gulyaev said the paper's staff ran into problems with authorities shortly after the newspaper went into print on 1 November.

Washington, 27 November 2002 (RFE/RL) -- The United States has imposed a travel ban on Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka and seven other top officials in his government.

State Department spokeswoman Lynn Cassel said yesterday the ban takes effect immediately.

She said the U.S. made the move because of what she called the "erosion of human rights and democratic principles in Belarus."

She also cited the expulsion last month from Minsk of the last remaining representative of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).

Last week, 14 of 15 European Union countries banned Lukashenka and seven top government officials from traveling to their countries.

They also made the move because of Minsk's poor human rights record and its expulsion of the OSCE. The EU ban applies to Lukashenka and Prime Minister Henadz Navitski, as well as the country's foreign, defense, justice, and interior ministers, the head of the secret police, and the head of the presidential administration.

Cassel did not name the officials the U.S. ban applies to other than Lukashenka.

On the other hand, Russian President Vladimir Putin is set today to meet Lukashenka in Moscow. The two leaders will discuss a proposed union between Belarus and Russia.

They are expected to talk about preparations for the union's constitution and trade. Russian gas deliveries to Belarus in 2003 are also on the agenda. Lukashenka has long supported such a union, but the idea has become a source of tension between the countries.

Lukashenka has refused Putin's proposal to either merge Belarus into Russia or opt for a loose European Union-style association.

Russia and Belarus agreed to form a loose union between their countries in 1997, but little progress has been made so far.

The United Nations mission in Kosovo says it has assumed full control of the divided city of Mitrovica, following an agreement with the Serbian Government.

Following a series of talks between the Serbian Government and UN officials, Serbia has let the UN take full administrative control of the north of the city.

The fact that the handover took place unopposed by local gangs is being seen here as evidence that Mitrovica's hardliners have been sidelined by the Serbian Government.

Full story here.

Three of the 670 or so survivors of the Moscow theatre siege last month are suing the city's administration for $2.5m in damages.

The Moscow administration earlier agreed to pay 50,000 roubles (about $1,570) in compensation to each former hostage and R100,000 ($3,140) to relatives of those killed.

Full story here.

Sixty per cent of Russians live in an environment harmful to their health, according to an official report published on Monday.

Environmental conditions, it states, contribute to the deaths of 300,000 Russians a year - far exceeding the number who die in road accidents.

Nearly 65 million Russians live in areas where air pollution exceeds safe levels, leading, in turn, to a rapid growth in the number of chronic respiratory disorders.

Drinking water is unsafe in half the country's regions, while the soil is increasingly infertile and forest fires ever more common.

Full story here.

THE HAGUE (Reuters) - ``Hello Radovan,'' a voice said.

``Yes,'' came the reply over the telephone.

The audio tape of a secretly intercepted phone conversation crackled in court. Slobodan Milosevic listened, a faint smile on his lips.

U.N. prosecutors at Milosevic's trial on Friday played excerpts from intercepted telephone conversations they say Milosevic conducted with Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic to prepare Serb forces for war in neighboring Croatia in 1991.

Prosecutors have argued that Milosevic and Karadzic, both charged with genocide in Bosnia, joined forces in the early 1990s to impose Serb control over large swathes of disputed territory in Croatia in a prelude to the 1992-95 Bosnian war.

Prosecutors have spent a week asking an anonymous witness, known only as C-061, to identify the voices of key Serb leaders in more than 50 intercepted telephone conversations presented as evidence against Milosevic at his war crimes trial in The Hague.

``Yes, Slobodan Milosevic and Radovan Karadzic were the people having the conversation,'' C-061 told the U.N. war crimes tribunal when prompted by prosecutors to identify voices on tapes dealing with plans to mobilize Serb forces in 1991.

Karadzic and his wartime military leader Ratko Mladic replaced Milosevic as the tribunal's most wanted men after the former Yugoslav leader was handed over to the U.N. war crimes tribunal in The Hague in June 2001.

The trio have been accused of responsibility for Europe's worst atrocity since World War II in which up to 8,000 Muslim men and boys were killed after Serb forces overran the U.N. ``safe area'' at Srebrenica in Bosnia in 1995.

PHONE TAP

Prosecutors said Bosnian security services got the green light to bug Karadzic's telephone from the Bosnian Interior Ministry in the early 1990s. Milosevic earlier this week challenged the legality of the phone intercepts.

The recordings -- fragments of abrupt conversations about troop movements during the months when the former communist Yugoslavia came apart at the seams -- were not played in full to the press and public.

The court frequently went into closed session when prosecutors wanted to tackle confidential material.

C-061, the latest so-called protected witness to testify for the prosecution at Europe's biggest international war crimes trial since World War II, told the court earlier this week he met Milosevic and Karadzic on numerous occasions.

C-061 said that Karadzic and Milosevic worked together to secure support for rebel Serbs to create a Serb-dominated state known as the Krajina Serb republic (RSK) after Zagreb declared independence in June 1991.

``Where do you want me to deploy the army?'' Milosevic asked Karadzic and the witness in one face-to-face meeting between the three men in the summer of 1991, C-061 told the court this week.

C-061 was screened off from the rest of the court with its closed-circuit TV cameras showing the scrambled image of his face and torso.

Slovenia and Croatia declared independence in 1991 from the Serb-dominated Yugoslav federation. Bosnian Muslims and Croats followed suit in 1992. Milosevic is charged with expelling non-Serbs from disputed territory in Croatia and Bosnia.

The ex-Yugoslav president has been on trial since February charged with ethnic cleansing in Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo in the 1990s. Prosecutors have tackled Kosovo and are now dealing with the 1991-95 conflicts in Croatia and Bosnia.

Prosecutors have indicated C-061's evidence is crucial to their case by saying they were ready to drop ``low-level insider'' witnesses in order to extend the time he had to testify to more than five days, one of the longest testimonies by a witness so far.

PRAGUE, Czech Republic (AP) -- In a historic eastward shift, NATO expanded its membership beyond the borders of the former Soviet Union on Thursday amid a makeover designed to answer new threats of global terrorism.

The Western alliance -- which for decades confronted the U.S.S.R. across the barbed-wire divides of Central Europe -- invited seven former communist countries under its security umbrella as part of reforms that President Bush called the most significant in NATO's 53-year history.

Barely a decade since they regained independence from the Soviet Union, the Baltic nations of Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania joined Bulgaria, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia in receiving a call to become NATO members at the alliance's first summit behind the old Iron Curtain.

``By welcoming seven members,'' Bush said, ``we will not only add to our military capabilities, we will refresh the spirit of this great democratic alliance. We believe today's decision reaffirms our commitment to freedom and our commitment to Europe which is whole and free and at peace.''

NATO Secretary-General Lord Robertson said the summit was ``a truly defining moment for the Atlantic Alliance. We will reinforce that essential trans-Atlantic bond on which our security and defense still depends. We have the organization, the military capabilities and the will to deal with threats to our people wherever and whenever they may come.''

The seven new countries will formally join the alliance in May 2004 after the U.S. Senate and the parliaments of the NATO member countries ratify the expansion.

Speaking to students in the Czech capital on the eve of Thursday's summit, Bush said the new members would reinvigorate an alliance seeking to transform itself into a force to fight the dangers of terrorism and renegade governments armed with weapons of mass destruction rather than the threat of Cold War-era tank assaults.

``Those with fresh memories of tyranny know the value of freedom,'' Bush said Wednesday. ``In Central and Eastern Europe, the courage and moral vision of prisoners and exiles and priests and playwrights caused tyrants to fall ... this spirit is needed in the councils of a new Europe.''

French President Jacques Chirac took up the theme, telling Czech television the NATO expansion -- to be followed next month by a European Union decision to invite in eight former communist nations -- was ``an affirmation that there can be no more splits in Europe.''

As well as extending NATO's territory into the Balkans, Baltic states and Central Europe, leaders will approve an overhaul of the way the alliance does business and try to silence critics who say it has drifted into irrelevance in the post-Warsaw Pact, post-Sept. 11 world.

Among the decisions before the summit was one to pool crack troops in a 20,000-strong rapid-response force to tackle threats anywhere around the world, burying NATO's old reluctance to act outside its established European and North Atlantic spheres of influence.

European allies also will pledge to beef up their outdated militaries with smart bombs, anti-germ warfare gear and heavy-lift planes to get troops and equipment to trouble spots quickly. NATO will also streamline its command structure under a U.S. general in a new post as strategic operational commander.

The aim is to give the alliance the flexibility to respond immediately to today's unpredictable dangers and close the gap between America's military might and European armies weakened by years of defense cuts.

``NATO has the strength and flexibility to defy its critics and to change, to undertake the tasks we all need in a complex and dangerous security environment,'' Robertson said Wednesday in a pre-summit address.

Bush stressed that the new NATO members will have to pull their own weight in the alliance like the Poles, Hungarians and Czechs who joined in 1999 as the first ex-communist members. But once in, they will enjoy the protection of the all-for-one, one-for-all security guarantees that come with membership.

``Anyone who would choose you for an enemy also chooses us for an enemy,'' Bush said. ``Never again in the face of aggression will you stand alone.''

Bush's speech was a strong affirmation of U.S. support for NATO, whose future was questioned by critics in the United States after Washington declined to seek its support during the war against al-Qaida and the Taliban in Afghanistan last year.

Those same critics are now looking intently at the role -- if any -- that the alliance might play if the United States goes to battle against Iraq. Although NATO is expected to issue a message of support for the U.N. weapons inspectors' mission to Iraq, Bush indicated the United States would be looking for a ``coalition of the willing'' for military support rather than turning to the alliance as a whole.

Editor's commentary: Congratulations to Slovenians for their quest to become part of NATO. Very soon they will become EU member too. Slovenian drive to independence from Serb Stalinism and Russian boot is finally proven as tremendous success. Those who wanted to dissuade them in in 1991 were wrong. One of those who opposed Slovenian independence and their entrepreneurship is Vojislav Kostunica which undoubtedly is telling us that his vision is not the one that will help Serbia enter NATO and EU any time soon. If you want the same thing Slovenians wanted all these years then there is no need to vote in December because every vote for Kostunica is one step back from Europe. His "Mother Russia" feelings will lead him and Serbia into opposite direction which is beyond Ural, in cold and frozen Siberia.

A song that lampoons German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder has shot to the top of the German pop charts. The song, called Tax Song (Der Steuersong), reached number one a week after it was released. It sold more than 350,000 copies. Created by comedian Elmar Brandt, the lyrics ridicule the chancellor for jettisoning campaign vows just weeks after winning re-election.

"Promises that were made yesterday can be broken today," Brandt sings, in a voice that mimics Schroeder's.

"I'll raise your taxes, I'll empty your pockets, every one of you nerds stashes some cash away, but I'll find it no matter where it is."

A video to accompany the hit features a Spitting Image-style puppet of Schroeder smoking a cigar and laughing.

Full story here. The Tax Song translated here.

BRUSSELS, Belgium (Reuters) - All European Union nations except Portugal agreed Tuesday to bar Belarus's President Alexander Lukashenko and seven ministers from their territory to protest the country's alleged human rights abuses.

Officials in Belarus blamed Washington for the ban, although Belarus's Foreign Ministry said it had yet to decide on its response as the EU had not informed it formally of its decision.

``This is Uncle Sam who has decided to pull the strings of its puppets in Europe. ... We must respond with appropriate measures,'' Nikolai Cherginets, head of the parliamentary committee on international affairs, told Reuters.

The EU's lack of unanimity in responding to Lukashenko, a man often described as Europe's last dictator, was an embarrassing reminder of the continued problems of the Union's vaunted common foreign and security policy.

``Fourteen member states agreed that they would not grant visas to eight people including Lukashenko to enter their territory. ... Portugal can do as it wishes,'' a diplomat told reporters after a meeting of EU foreign ministers.

Lukashenko, long criticized by the West for what it sees as his repression of political opposition and freedom of speech, has already been denied a visa by the Czech Republic to attend a NATO summit in the Czech capital Prague this week.

Portugal -- geographically the furthest EU country from the ex-Soviet republic of Belarus -- had been pressing for a review of the EU's policy on visa bans after recent disagreements with other member states involving southern Africa.

Portugal is part of the EU's open-border Schengen zone. But diplomats said it would only be allowed to grant a national visa to those on the Belarus blacklist, not a visa for the whole Schengen area, which embraces all EU countries except Britain and Ireland plus some non-EU members such as Norway.

BELGRADE , Nov 19 (Tanjug) - Christian Democratic Party of Serbia (DHSS) leader Vladan Batic said on Tuesday that this party would freeze its membership in DOS and immediately separate its party club from the joint DOS club, until the DHSS initiative on a referendum on the independence of Serbia is put on the agenda of the Serbian parliament.

Batic made the statement after the DOS-Reform of Serbia party club on Tuesday voted that the parliament should not debate the DHSS initiative for a referendum on the independence of Serbia.

OSECINA , Nov 19 (Tanjug) - Christian Democratic Party of Serbia (DHSS) President and Serbian Justice Minister Vladan Batic said in the western Serbian town of Osecina late Monday that growing numbers of Serbian citizens support the initiative for an independent Serbia, and that he himself is ready to give up his post in the Serbian government if he has to choose between the post of minister and defense of this idea.

Two-thirds Serbian citizens have supported the idea on an independent Serbia so far, and there are now "already three-quarters of them, and there will be over 90 percent of them," Batic said.

Editor's commentary: Thanks to Kostunica's pressure, Serbian Varela Project has been sacked permanently. Although over 100,000 Serbs signed for Serbia's independence, parliament refused to listen to them. Moscow masters and socialist EU leaders are much more important for them. It is now clear that new artificial state of Serbia and Montenegro will be forcefully created against wishes of Serbs and Montenegrins. That is certainly not a democracy but appeasement to Russian imperialist interests.

BELGRADE - Citizens of Serbia will choose president of Serbia on December 8th between three candidates: Vojislav Kostunica, Vojislav Seselj and Borislav Pelevic.

Editor's commentary: It's that time of the year, which means BOYCOTT! Between two fascists and a mobster there is only one choice and that is to stay home and ignore election. And NO, it is not OK to choose any president because we all know what happened with Milosevic and Milutinovic as well with Kostunica and his tough stance against West and America and refusal for extradition of those accused of war crimes by Hague tribunal. Choosing any of these three will result in halting of all democratic reforms in Serbia and further isolation from the world with less investments and loans for Serbia. Kostunica and his party DSS continuously obstruct work of Serbian parliament so his victory would probably force Serbian parliament to complete stop. Same applies for Seselj who promised to disband parliament as soon as he takes position of a president. Mobster Pelevic is usually siding with those two and their parties but his chances of winning presidency are equal to zero. Do you vote for fascist or another fascist is the only question for voters in Serbia. Fascist forces in Serbia have succeeded to completely paralyze democratic forces in Serbia who will not be represented by any democratic candidate.

Kostunica is running as candidate of his own party, this year kicked out of DOS. He is not a democrat by any standard. He refused to participate in second round of elections in 2000 and used army to force Milosevic to accept defeat at gunpoint and then he appointed himself as president of FRY. Kostunica kept all Milosevic's men including war criminals and until this day refused to extradite a single one to the Hague tribunal. In the meantime he planned to stage military coup against Serbian government, to disband parliament and take absolute control of the country as Saddam Hussein. His party DSS contnously obstructed work of Serbian parliament and continuously voted against any changes and reforms. He is called democrat and "moderate" nationalist in the West thanks to Madeliene Albright, Gorge Soros and CNN who helped him become president (dictator) of FRY. All of them are out of international politics today so there is no reason to blindly follow their huge mistake that is maybe even bigger than the support for Milosevic in 1990. If Kostunica is democrat because he claims to support laws and constitution then similar can be said for Milosevic, Saddam, and Castro as well. People should think twice about what Kostunica has done for Serbia in the past two years, not listen to CNN and Soros' NGOs.

Gunmen have shot dead a Russian army general in the capital of the war-torn region of Chechnya.

Lieutenant-General Igor Shifrin, who headed the army's Chief Special Construction Directorate, was fatally wounded when his and another vehicle were fired upon on Friday.

Federal Security Service (FSB) agents accompanying him were not hurt in the attack in Grozny's Oktyabrski district.

The attack came on the same day Moscow installed a new regional prime minister for Chechnya.

Full story here.

Prague, 15 November 2002 (RFE/RL) -- The Czech Republic has rejected a visa request by Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka to attend the NATO summit in Prague next week.

Czech Foreign Minister Cyril Svoboda said today that the visa will not be granted because of the Belarusian government's record on human rights. He said Czech officials do not want Lukashenka to use the visit to "legitimize his position" in Belarus. Svoboda said a Belarusian delegation will be given visas to attend the two-day summit beginning on 21 November.

NATO officials have said Lukashenka is unwelcome at the summit because of his autocratic rule and opposition to NATO enlargement.

Belarus is not a NATO member, but belongs to the NATO-related Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council, which is to meet in Prague on 22 November.

In related news, a European Commission spokesman today said EU foreign ministers meeting in Brussels on 18-19 November are "almost certain" to impose a visa ban on the Belarus leadership. Gunnar Wiegand, spokesman for external affairs, said the EU's candidate countries are expected to support the decision.

He also criticized the threat by Lukashenka to drop controls on Belarus's borders -- and allow drug traffickers and illegal immigrants free passage -- if he's not allowed to travel to the NATO summit in Prague next week. Wiegand said the threat is not "the most reasonable way to react to justified criticism of the record of democracy and human rights in Belarus."

Wiegand said the EU retains "full confidence" in the capacities of the border-monitoring services in Poland and other EU candidate countries.

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) -- Three thousand students demonstrated for a second straight day Tuesday against the death sentence handed down to a prominent professor convicted of insulting Islam.

The demonstration was called to protest the case of Hashem Aghajari, a popular teacher of history at the university.

Aghajari has been convicted of insulting the Prophet Muhammad and questioning the hard-line clergy's interpretation of Islam. Last week, he was told he had been sentenced to death.

``All Iranians brought the 1979 revolution to victory. Now, clerics hold the pillars of power. Prisons host distinguished scholars, respected teachers and popular students. What are you doing to this country?'' student leader Meisam Yousefzadeh said to applause at Tehran's Tarbiat-e-Modarres University.

Nearly two-thirds of the reformist-dominated parliament called Sunday for the sentence to be overturned. But the head of the conservative judiciary, Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi, has dismissed criticism of the verdict as ``ignorant.''

The U.S. State Department, meanwhile, said Tuesday that Iran broke international judicial standards by sentencing Aghajari to death.

The trial and the harsh sentence ``represent a breach of accepted international standards of due process,'' State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said.

He said the case shows the human rights situation in Iran is deteriorating.

On Monday, about three thousand students protested the sentence in Tehran. Yousefzadeh said police detained six protesters, but this could not be confirmed with the authorities Tuesday.

Aghajari was prosecuted because in June he gave a speech in the western city of Hamedan saying that each new generation should be able to interpret the Islamic faith on its own. He criticized the clerical establishment for considering previous cleric's interpretations as sacred.

His comments enraged hard-liners, who organized street demonstrations in several Iranian cities and urged the courts to prosecute Aghajari.

BELGRADE , Nov 11 (Tanjug) - Serbian parliament legislative committee concluded Monday by a majority of votes that the proposal for calling a referendum on Serbia's independence, presented by over 100,000 voters, is in line with the Constitution and the law.

This practically means that the committee has given the green light to the parliament to vote on the proposal, which will be on the agenda of the Tuesday session.

MOSCOW (AP) -- Russian prosecutors said that 128 hostages died during last month's seizure of a theater in Moscow by Chechen militants, eight more than previously revealed, Russian news agencies reported Thursday. In addition, 41 attackers were killed.

The Moscow city prosecutor's office published a list containing the names of 120 Russians and eight foreigners -- from Belarus, Kazakhstan, Ukraine, Austria, the United States and the Netherlands. It said that five of the victims had died of gunshot wounds, three more than reported before, the Interfax news agency said. Four of the bodies could not be identified for many days, the prosecutors said.

Prosecutors could not be reached for comment on Thursday, a national holiday marking the 85th anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution.

Dozens of gunmen seized more than 800 hostages in a theater on Oct. 23 and threatened to blow up the building unless Russia ended the war in Chechnya. Special forces stormed the building on Oct. 26, and at least 118 people were killed by the opiate-based gas used to knock out the attackers.

Prosecutors say that 41 militants, 22 men and 19 women, were killed in the storming, and that none of the attackers managed to escape. Officials have argued that it was necessary to kill the hostage-takers in order to prevent them from detonating the hundreds of kilograms (pounds) of explosives they had rigged in the theater.

As of Thursday, 42 of the freed hostages remained in hospitals, five of them in grave condition, Ekho Moskvy radio reported.

In addition, nine officers of the Federal Security Service's elite Alpha commando that stormed the building also were in hospitals, it quoted the unit's former chief Sergei Goncharov as saying. He said that the hospitalization was probably related to the effects of gas.

At a meeting with surviving hostages on Wednesday, President Vladimir Putin said that Russia had suffered ``a terrible tragedy, heavy, irreparable losses.'' During a separate meeting with foreign ambassadors in the Kremlin, Putin said that the global community must make ``joint efforts to ensure that the masterminds and perpetrators of terrorist attacks don't find refuge in any country of the world.''

Editor's commentary: It is hardly a coincidence that so many people have unnecessary died under Putin administration. Hundreds of people supposedly drowned for the past two years in Moscow, over hundred people died in Kursk incident, unresolved Moscow apartment bombings, downing of military helicopter in Chechnya and now in Moscow during hostage rescue operation. Unfortunately, Putin and his administration are not looking for their own responsibility in these terrible events, They continue to blame others for it, just like Stalin used to do. If death toll continues to rise then Putin and his men should step down and let someone else lead Russia.

YANGON, Myanmar (AP) -- A law student who staged a solo protest to demand the release of political prisoners in Myanmar was sentenced to 14 years in jail under emergency laws imposed by the military government, lawyers said.

The verdict was passed Tuesday, a week after United Nations human rights envoy Paulo Pinheiro ended a 12-day tour of the country by severely criticizing the junta for holding political prisoners. He demanded their immediate and unconditional release.

Thet Naung Soe, a final-year law student from Yangon, was tried in a special court at the Insein prison where he is being held, the officials said. He was sentenced to two seven-year terms on two separate charges, said a lawyer who did not wish to be named.

He said Thet Naung Soe was charged under the all-encompassing emergency laws that can be used to suppress any allegedly political or economic crime.

Myanmar's military government strictly controls the judiciary and the media, and trials of political dissidents are held behind closed doors. Verdicts are almost never made public.

Thet Naung Soe was arrested on Aug. 18 for protesting in front of Yangon City Hall by holding a red flag on which was printed a fighting peacock, a symbol of the National League for Democracy party of pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi.

He was among the 17 political prisoners met by Pinheiro inside Insein prison during his visit last month.

The NLD has been leading a pro-democracy campaign since 1988 when the current group of generals came to power after a bloody crackdown. The junta called elections in 1990 but refused to hand over power to the victorious NLD.

Another law student, Khin Maung Win, who was arrested the same day as Thet Naung Soe for distributing anti-government leaflets in the university campus is currently facing trial at Insein prison and will be charged soon, the lawyer said.

According to Pinheiro, there are 1,200 to 1,300 political prisoners in the country.

PARIS (Reuters) - Billionaire U.S. financier George Soros and three others go on trial in France on Thursday accused of insider trading linked to a failed 1988 takeover bid for the French bank Societe Generale.

The four are accused of earning some $11 million speculating on Societe Generale stocks before the takeover bid became public knowledge. The case has taken 14 years to come to trial because of delays in getting information from other countries involved.

Apart from Soros, the legendary Hungarian-born fund manager turned philanthropist, the others on trial are a French former finance minister's adviser, Jean-Charles Naouri, banker Jean-Pierre Peyraud and Lebanese businessman Samir Traboulsi.

The corporate raider in the case, Georges Pebereau, was amnestied in 1995, while seven others were cleared in a separate hearing two years ago. Insider trading carries a potential jail term in France.

Soros took the international stage 10 years ago as ``The Man Who Broke the Pound'' after he calculated correctly that sterling would not hold its allotted value in the European currency grid that prefigured the euro single currency.

Funds he managed made nearly $1 billion when sterling was finally forced from the grid by waves of speculation against it.

Since then Soros has set about using his fortune and network of foundations to help tackle what he sees as the failures of a global financial market system that penalizes poor countries.

Investigations were opened into the French affair in 1990 after stock exchange regulators issued a report into corporate raider Pebereau's failure to seize control of Societe Generale, which had been privatized in 1987.

French investigators sought information from authorities in the Netherlands, Britain, Switzerland and Luxembourg to track allegedly suspect financial movements in the case but acknowledge many questions remain unanswered.

The trial is due to last until November 20. No date has been given for a verdict.

BEIJING (Reuters) - China executed 46 people in just two days last week following calls to intensify the fight against crime ahead of a pivotal Communist Party Congress, Amnesty International said Wednesday.

Twenty-nine people were executed in the southwest city of Chongqing and on southern island of Hainan last Wednesday while 17 were executed in the town of Pingdingshan in the central province of Henan two days later, Amnesty said in statement.

No immediate comment was available from Chinese officials. The executions followed recent calls by the authorities to intensify a national ``Strike Hard'' anti-crime campaign that began in April 2001, Amnesty said.

Reports of death sentences and executions have peppered state media in recent months ahead of the congress, due to introduce a younger line-up of Chinese leaders after it begins Friday.

This week, a court in the northeastern city of Changchun sentenced to death or prison 36 members of a gang for murder and other crimes, Xinhua reported on its Web site www.xinhuanet.com. The sentences were handed down after the gang terrorized the city of Jiutai in the northeastern province of Jilin, where they killed one person, injured others and stole more than $93,000, it said.

Battling crime has been a major theme for the Communist Party which has shamed or sentenced several senior officials for corruption against a backdrop of growing resentment of political privileges.

Amnesty appealed to the Chinese government to end the death penalty in the world's most populous country, where it said 2,468 people were executed last year.

China has executed more people than the rest of the world combined in recent years, mostly with a bullet to the back of the head, human rights groups say.

State media have reported plans to spread the use of lethal injection to execute people as a ``civilized way of law enforcement.''