TANJUG - January 31st, 2003

BELGRADE , Jan 31 (Tanjug) - Serbian parliament MPs on Friday backed the presented government strategy for fighting poverty and proposed a re-examination of the methodology for determining the so-called poverty line, since they believe the percentage of poor people in Serbia is much higher than the one officially listed.

According to the poverty line of a monthly salary of 4,489 dinars, 10.6 percent of the Serbian population are poor, with southeastern Serbia being the poorest, village residents poorer than urban residents, and families with three or more children being poorer than others.

Editor's commentary: According to Milosevic and his criminals you are not poor if you can earn €72 per month while Serbia has lover poverty than America and Great Britain!!! Why be poor in America when you can come to Milosevic's FRY and live like elite? It is hardly to imagine how it is possible to even buy a food or any beverage for one month with this ridiculous amount of money and it is almost unthinkable how to pay bills, rent, clothing, medicine? You would probably have to drink tap water from some public water fountain and to buy only cheap bread or rotten vegetable in order to survive. It is far better to be imprisoned because you get free food and water, all bills, medicine and clothing are paid. No wonder why most of Serbian population is criminal then.

A close ally of former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic has been sentenced to seven years in prison for his involvement in an attempt to assassinate an opposition leader.

A Belgrade court found the former head of Serbia's secret police, Radomir Markovic, guilty of trying to cover up a car crash in 1999 which aimed to kill Vuk Draskovic, leader of the Serbian Renewal Movement.

He is the most senior member of Mr Milosevic's inner circle to serve a jail sentence in Serbia since reformers took power in 2000.

Mr Draskovic survived the collision, in which a truck was said to have driven into his convoy, but his brother-in-law and three others travelling with him died.

Former secret police officials Nenad Bujosevic and Nenad Ilic, who drove the truck, were jailed for 15 years.

Relatives of the car crash victims are said to be infuriated, as they expected Mr Markovic to be held directly responsible for the assassination attempt on Mr Draskovic.

Full story here.

UNITED NATIONS - Iraq is in line to take over as chairman of the U.N. Conference on Disarmament in May, prompting one U.S. official Wednesday to say: "The irony is overwhelming."

Richard Grenell, spokesman for U.S. Ambassador John Negroponte, issued the comment as officials realized Iraq was in line for the rotating post. India now holds it and will be followed by Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Ireland and Israel as countries take the job in alphabetical order.

U.N. spokesman Fred Eckhard said on Tuesday that the choice of conference leaders is "a purely automatic rotation by alphabetical order" with five or six conference presidents each year, each serving a term of about four weeks.

Full story here.

Editor's commentary: This looks a lot like socialism and communism where everyone is supposed to be equal regardless of their contribution. That is called "forced equality". If socialist UN is not reformed quickly it may cease to exist very soon similar to demise of socialism and communism throughout the world. We don't need another Comintern. Too many people in UN can't distinguish between democracy and anarchy, between equality and "forced equality". All states should have the same rights and obligations but that doesn't mean that all of them should be treated equally. Iraq and Iran are one of the worst examples of those who arm themselves to the teeth and yet they are now going to become in charge of the U.N. Conference on Disarmament!? Libya has recently become in charge of human rights as well so mockery of UN as international institution is complete. This is like placing Al Capone for Attorney General or State Treasurer.

Moscow, 29 January 2003 (RFE/RL) -- Anna Neistat, the Moscow representative of Human Rights Watch, said today that holding a constitutional referendum in Chechnya while Russian soldiers account for one-sixth of the voting population there is "strange."

Russian troops permanently stationed in Chechnya, estimated at between 21,000 and 23,000 soldiers, will be allowed to vote in the 23 March referendum that is set to approve a new constitution.

Neistat also said it is strange that Russia is "currently closing the door to international observers." Russia closed down the Chechen office of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) on 31 December, effectively putting an end to all international observation in the breakaway republic.

Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov said yesterday that Russia will consider welcoming OSCE members into Chechnya to observe the constitutional referendum, which is due to be followed by presidential and legislative polls.

Human rights groups have widely criticized holding a poll while clashes continue between federal troops and Chechen rebels.

SHANGHAI, China (AP) -- Police in western China have executed a Tibetan for a string of bomb attacks in support of Tibetan independence, despite an international outcry over the fairness of his trial.

Lobsang Dhondup, 28, was executed Sunday afternoon in Ganzi, a city near the Tibetan border in Sichuan province, immediately after a court upheld his original death sentence, an official at Ganzi Intermediate People's Court said Monday. She refused to give her name.

The Sichuan Provincial High People's Court also rejected an appeal by Tenzin Deleg Rinpoche, a 52-year-old senior Buddhist monk, and affirmed his suspended death sentence, the official said. A suspended sentence is usually commuted to life in prison.

The two men were convicted in December of seeking independence for Tibet and involvement in a series of bombings that killed one person.

While only Tenzin Deleg Rinpoche filed an appeal, the court affirmed the sentences of both men on Sunday, the official Xinhua News Agency said Sunday.

The case has raised protests among Tibetan activists and the U.S. government.

The top U.S. human rights official raised the men's cases during talks last month in Beijing. Assistant Secretary of State Lorne Craner expressed ``deep concern'' about the severity of the sentences and the possible lack of a fair trial.

China has angrily rejected such appeals as interference in its internal affairs.

Militants opposed to Chinese control of Tibet have carried out at least eight bomb attacks in the Himalayan region since the mid-1990s. Communist troops marched into the region in 1950, and Beijing says it has been part of China for centuries.

The Dalai Lama, who fled into exile in 1959 during a failed uprising against communist rule, has urged Tibetans to avoid violence, but some want more direct action.

Activists describe Tenzin Deleg Rinpoche as a community leader in Sichuan, which abuts Tibet and has a large ethnic Tibetan population.

The court official in Ganzi refused to tell how Lobsang Dhondup's execution was carried out, but China's usual method is by gunshot to the back of the head.

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) -- The head of the giant Hyundai group and 14 others have been barred from leaving South Korea amid allegations the conglomerate illegally transferred money to North Korea, prosecutors said Friday.

State prosecutors ordered Chung Mong-hun, head of the Hyundai group, to stay put until advised otherwise. Fourteen more people, mostly from Hyundai and state-run Korea Development Bank, received the same order on Friday.

``The decision does not mean that they were specifically implicated in the case. We need them for the investigation,'' assistant prosecutor Park Young-soo, who is handling the case, was quoted as saying by local media.

The main opposition Grand National Party raised suspicions last year that President Kim Dae-jung might have given North Korea 400 billion won $330 million to facilitate a historic summit with the North's leader, Kim Jong Il, in June 2000. The opposition claimed Hyundai, which has been involved in projects in North Korea, passed along the money.

Although the presidential Blue House denied the allegations, the matter has become a major political issue, especially amid recent concerns that South Korea has given too much to the North and gotten little in return.

North Korea and the United States -- the South's key ally -- are now locked in a dispute over the North's nuclear weapons development.

Days before the 2000 inter-Korean summit, the state-run Korea Development Bank gave Hyundai Merchant Marine Co., a key subsidiary of Hyundai group, the money in emergency loans.

The company, which was in deep financial trouble at the time, said later that the money was used to improve its financial position.

The firm's finances were hurt after it got involved in a losing joint venture tourism project with North Korea. It was behind payment to North Korea when it received the emergency loans.

Hyundai said Friday that it will summit documents next week that prove the entire loan was used by the company and no money was illegally passed to North Korea.

Hyundai denied the allegations last year and paid back the loan after its financial situation improved.

BEIJING (Reuters) - China has jailed a Tibetan for five years in connection with the cases of two religious figures sentenced to death for a series of bomb attacks, rights groups said.

Village leader Tserang Dondrup was jailed for organizing a petition with 20,000 signatures on behalf of prominent Buddhist monk Tenzin Deleg Rinpoche, New York-based Students For a Free Tibet said in a statement seen Thursday.

A court in Sichuan province convicted Tenzin Deleg Rinpoche and religious teacher Lobsang Dhondup in December on charges of detonating bombs and inciting separatism for Tibet, a region where sporadic violence is linked to pro-independence forces.

Court, religious and government officials in Sichuan's Tibetan-populated area of Garze declined comment on Tserang Dondrup's case.

Chinese police were holding four more people connected to the case, the London-based Free Tibet Campaign said in a statement.

Tenzin Deleg Rinpoche was given a suspended death sentence, which in China is usually commuted to life imprisonment. Lobsang Dhondup was given a straightforward death sentence.

The two are attempting to appeal, but a hearing scheduled for January 10 was canceled abruptly, Radio Free Asia said on Wednesday.

Tenzin Deleg Rinpoche has protested his innocence from jail, saying in a taped statement he had only heard about the bombings for which he was arrested, the U.S. government-backed station said.

A judge who ruled in the original case said Tenzin Deleg Rinpoche had confessed to five of the six explosions between 1998 and 2002 in Garze, it said.

There has been sporadic violence in the Himalayan region where many people resent what they see as Chinese occupation since the People's Liberation Army marched in and imposed Communist rule in 1950.

Tehran, 22 January 2003 (RFE/RL) -- Iran's most widely circulated daily, "Hamshahri" (Fellow Citizen), received an order today for a temporary ban from the country's judiciary.

The official IRNA news agency reported a 10-day ban has been imposed on the paper due to an apparent failure to circulate letters written by politicians responding to articles the newspaper previously carried.

The reformist daily has a circulation of more than 350,000 copies, a substantially higher figure than any other newspaper in Iran.

In Brussels today, Iran's foreign minister faced criticism from European parliamentarians over human rights protections in his country.

European deputies questioned Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi repeatedly on a reported rise in the number of public executions -- including stoning -- as well as the forced closure of several newspapers in Iran. Over 90 newspapers in Iran have been banned in the last three years.

Kharrazi told the committee of the European Parliament that reforms in the Islamic Republic must move at a realistic pace, saying rapid change in the deeply traditional culture could undermine the entire reform process. He also said the government has already advised against public executions.

Kharrazi was attending a talk on potential cooperation with the European Union, which last month launched trade talks with Iran. The EU says it will seek Iran's progress on human rights and issues related to terrorism before it signs a trade deal with Tehran.

NOVI SAD , jan 21 (Tanjug) - Vojvodina assembly head Nenad Canak has strongly protested against chauvinist leaflets, which appeared in the Novi Sad settlement of Telep, inhabited by a large number of ethnic Hungarians.

The leaflets, placed into mailboxes, said that ethnic Hungarians would be returned to "their beautiful Hungary" which "we respect as good neighbours."

LJUBLJANA , Jan 20 (Tanjug) - Serbian parliament President and Acting Serbian President Natasa Micic has said she is pleased her predecessors Slobodan Milosevic and Milan Milutinovic will answer for what they have done.

"It is our task at this time to fight against people who took us into wars and tragedies and brought us to where we are now," Micic said in an interview to the Slovenian weekly Mladina.

THE HAGUE (Reuters) - Former Serbian President Milan Milutinovic arrived in The Hague (news - web sites) Monday to face trial on charges of war crimes during the 1999 Kosovo conflict.

"He's arrived at the tribunal. He's at the detention center," a spokeswoman for the U.N. International Criminal Tribunal for former Yugoslavia told Reuters.

Milutinovic, 60, was indicted in 1999 along with former Yugoslav federal president Milosevic and three other former senior officials for atrocities against ethnic Albanians in Kosovo, the southern province of Serbia now under U.N. rule.

U.N. Chief Prosecutor Carla del Ponte planned to meet Milutinovic after his arrival, her spokeswoman said. She declined further comment amid speculation he could be called to testify against Milosevic.

Full story here.

CARACAS, Venezuela (Reuters) - Venezuelan national guard troops armed with machine-guns and shotguns, on Friday seized control of a local bottling affiliate of Coca-Cola Co. and started taking away bottled and canned drinks to ease food shortages caused by an opposition strike, officials said.

The action was the first major takeover of a food plant after threats by leftist President Hugo Chavez that he would send troops to seize manufacturing facilities that withheld food products during the nearly seven-week-old stoppage.

``We are distributing this product to the population because collective rights come above individual rights,'' National Guard Gen. Luis Felipe Acosta Carles told reporters at the Panamco plant in Valencia in western Carabobo state. ``What I see here is hoarding and we are going to move these products,'' he said.

Last week Chavez accused Venezuelan tycoon Gustavo Cisneros, who is based in the United States and listed as a member of Panamco's board of directors, of plotting to overthrow his government. Miami-based Panamco or Panamerican Beverages Inc is the Latin America's largest soft drink bottler and one of the world's three largest bottlers of Coca Cola in the world.

Gen. Acosta said his troops would move bottled water and soft drinks. Television images showed troops standing inside warehouses filled with crates of bottled products. There were no immediate reports of damage to the plant.

``The national guard are here at the plant and they look as if they are ready to take over a guerrilla base because they are walking around armed with FAL rifles...Uzisand shotguns,'' plant sales manager Romulo Salazar said.

No official was immediately available at Panamco to comment on the seizure.

The opposition strike, started on Dec. 2, has crippled oil production in the world's fifth largest petroleum exporter, causing widespread domestic fuel shortages and disruptions in the supplies of some basic foods.

Former paratrooper Chavez, who survived a coup in April, has ordered the military to take over oil installations as he fights to defeat the strikers. He has also threatened to take over schools, banks and factories that join the shutdown.

But opposition leaders have vowed to maintain the stoppage, now in its 47th day, until Chavez steps down and calls elections. The strike has also slashed Venezuela's oil exports, which account for about half of the government's revenues.

Opposition leaders say Chavez has pushed Venezuela into economic and political turmoil with his populist reforms aimed at easing poverty in the oil-rich nation. Riled by his fiery speeches laced with class warfare rhetoric, the opposition accuses Chavez of ruling like a dictator and fear he will install Cuba-style communism.

Chavez, whose anti-capitalist stance and friendly relations with countries such as Cuba and Libya have strained ties with the U.S., accuses the strikers of trying to overthrow him by halting the state oil firm PDVSA.

A Mexican company, Coca Cola Femsa on Dec. 23 struck a $2.7 billion deal to take over Panamco, whose holdings include the plant seized Friday.

Under the terms of the deal announced then, Atlanta-based Coca Cola will receive about 304 million unlisted KOF shares, valued at the time at about $674 million, in exchange for its Panamco shares.

TEHRAN (Reuters) - An Iranian court has sentenced a teen-ager to death by hanging after he was convicted for a third time of drinking alcohol, the state newspaper Iran said on Saturday.

Under Iran's strict Islamic law, consuming alcohol is forbidden for Muslims and usually punishable by lashes or fines. An offender caught for a third time, however, can be sentenced to death.

The 19-year-old man was arrested when he appeared at a police station in southern Tehran to inquire about two of his friends who had recently been arrested.

Police noticed that the man, whose first name was given as Davoud, had been drinking alcohol and immediately charged him.

``I had been punished twice for drinking three glasses of alcohol and I knew what I was drinking was forbidden under Islamic law,'' the newspaper quoted Davoud as saying.

Although illegal, alcohol is readily available on Iran's black market.

Despite the sentence, Davoud may escape the gallows. His case was passed on for review after he expressed regret for his drinking exploits and gave a written pledge to avoid alcohol in the future.

LONDON (AP) -- A new high school said Wednesday its students will be charged for their lunches with a retina scanning device to prevent poor children who eat for free from being ridiculed in the cafeteria.

Dr. Ed Yates, headmaster of the Venerable Bede school, said the advanced eye-recognition software will be in place when the institution opens its doors to 900 students in September in Sunderland, western England.

He said the school is concerned that if students are forced to pay for their lunches in cash the poor ones who receive food for free could be stigmatized. So officials have decided to make the entire school ``cashless.''

The retina scanning device also will be used in the library when students take out and return books, Yates said.

He assured parents the low-intensity light of the retina scanning devices will be safe for all students.

``We think we are the first (school) in the country to use this,'' he said of the device. ``But this is not a James Bond school for spies. ... This is not science fiction. This is technology that exists.''

Editor's commentary: This is even beyond Orwell's 1984. Not even he dared to predict that children's eyes would need to be scanned when they want to eat their lunch or borrow a book from school library. It is obvious that Tony Blair's government is going into openly totalitarian way in order to achieve total control of entire population. What is next? DNA check when you buy subway ticket? Fingerprinting when you want to buy Big Mac? And just read this story several times carefully to find out what is the stupidest reason we ever heard for taking our liberties. In some civilized and democratic countries people pay for their lunches with personal checks, credit cards or ATMs. They do not use cash and if you need to check someone's identity then standard practice is to check their photo ID like driver's license or in this case this can be school photo ID issued to every student. Our advice to students in this fascist school is either to leave it ASAP or to stage massive boycott against these crazy fascists who portray themselves as defenders of poor. It is always easy to use and exploit poor. Just imagine American supermarkets forcing customers for retina scan because many people pay their groceries with food stamps so they don't want them to feel embarrassed!? Latest news is that all those who are eligible for food stamps are given a plastic card that works similar to any other card. You just swipe it and the amount is charged to your account, in this case your food stamp balance. This is Big Brother is watching you, welcome to the post 1984 totalitarian world.

Moscow, 1 January 2003 (RFE/RL) -- The mandate for the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe's (OSCE) monitoring group in Chechnya has expired. The Russian government says it has no plans to renew the mandate, which expired at midnight.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Aleksandr Yakovenko said yesterday that "not all our partners proved willing to assess the situation correctly and acknowledge the new reality in Chechnya."

Yakovenko said that meant the Russian government could not agree to a new mandate for the OSCE mission and that as a result beginning today the OSCE mission in Chechnya will cease to exist.

The OSCE said, however, that new negotiations were possible this year and could result in a new mandate for the mission.

The move follows a suicide truck bombing of the Chechen government headquarters on 27 December, which killed 83 people.

Chechen separatist President Aslan Maskhadov urged the republic's separatists yesterday to refrain from further suicide attacks.

Meanwhile, the OSCE is set today to reopen its office in Minsk. The move came after Belarus and the democracy watchdog reached an agreement on Monday to allow the OSCE observers back into the country. The old OSCE mandate ended yesterday.

The office was effectively shut down in October, after frequent clashes over what the government claimed was OSCE support for the country's opposition.