Visit our website: HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK --------------------------------------------- Deutsche Welle English Service News August 30th, 2001, 16:00 UTC Former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic made a second defiant appearance before the U.N. tribunal on Thursday, refusing to accept legal counsel and complaining about discrimination and not having access to the world's press. Proscutors, meanwhile, said Milosevic will be indicted for genocide in October, for crimes committed in Bosnia Hercegovina during his rule. Croatia was still open. Carla del Ponte, the U.N. chief prosecutor made the announcement as Milosevic continued to denounce the U.N. International Criminal Tribunal for former Yugoslavia as an illegal tool of his Western enemies and challenged its jurisdiction. Milosevic already faces three charges of crimes against humanity, including mass murder and deportation, and one for violations of the laws or customs of war during Serb "ethnic cleansing" against Kosovo Albanians in 1999. NATO says it has collected more than 1,400 weapons from ethnic Albanian guerrillas in the first phase of its mission in Macedonia, well above its target figure for this stage of the operation. NATO officers had said they aimed to collect 1,100 weapons in the first phase of Operation Essential Harvest, a 30-day mission which began on Monday and is part of an international effort to avert a wider war in the former Yugoslav republic. Meanwhile the first contingent of 100 German soldiers has arrived in Skopje after the German Bundestag voted in favour of sending Bundeswehr troops to Macedonia. According to the last data from the Macedonian Red Cross, there are total of more than 70,000 displaced persons in Macedonia. Most of the displaced persons are from the Tetovo region, followed by villages in Kumanovo area, Aracinovo and Skopje regions. Israel withdrew tanks and troops from the West Bank town of Beit Jala under world pressure on Thursday, saying Palestinian President Yasser Arafat agreed to stop gunmen shooting at an Israeli settlement. Israeli Defence Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer said the peace is being kept so far and there is a commitment by Arafat to maintain it. Meanwhile two Palestinians and one Israeli were killed in other parts of the West Bank, while Palestinians raised doubts over whether they had consented to end the attacks on the settlement of Gilo, on the edge of Jerusalem. The European Union said it had brokered a deal for Israeli forces to leave Beit Jala if Palestinians stopped firing at Gilo, which was built on land occupied by Israel after the 1967 Middle East war. German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer said he was cutting short a trip to France on Thursday to prepare for a meeting with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat during a summit on racism in South Africa. Fischer told reporters after talks with French counterpart Hubert Vedrine in Paris he was returning immediately to Berlin to make preparations for the meeting. No details were given on the planned meeting with Arafat at the summit in Durban, South Africa, which is due to be opened by U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan on Friday. Earlier this month, Arafat and Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres agreed at separate meetings with Fischer that they could meet under his auspices to discuss a ceasefire in the 11-month-old Palestinian uprising against Israeli occupation. Fischer and Vedrine said mediation by both the United States and Europe was vital to bringing peace to the Middle East. U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson has said Australia would be flouting a Geneva Convention if it refused to let a Norwegian ship carrying more than 400 asylum seekers to dock. Speaking to reporters from Durban, South Africa, she said the Geneva Convention on Refugees stated clearly that the boat people should be allowed into the nearest port -- Australia's Indian Ocean territory of Christmas Island -- so that they could put their case for asylum. It is not clear whether they would all be entitled to refugee status, said Robinson, but they are all entitled to have their case examined. Meanwhile conditions aboard the Tampa, which is carrying 434 mostly Afghan asylum seekers, are detiorating fast. Many of the refugees are women and children. Despite mounting international pressure, the Australian government has said that it will not accept them because it fears that it could only encourage other would-be immigrants to try and reach its shores. French police said on Thursday they had intercepted 44 illegal immigrants in the Channel Tunnel overnight as they tried to walk to Britain. The group evaded guards and high-security fencing around the Eurotunnel terminal at Coquelles, about two km (1.2 miles) from a Red Cross camp housing some 1,200 refugees, mainly Afghans, Iranians, Iraqi and Turkish Kurds. Thousands of refugees try to cross illegally into Britain from France every year, running a gauntlet of barbed wire and guard dogs to stow away on cross-channel trains or lorries. An Australian diplomat has brought a doctor to the detention centre where the ruling Taliban are holding two Australian and six other foreign aid workers accused of promoting Christianity in Afghanistan. It is not known if one of the the detainees is ill. Earlier a representative of the International Red Cross had been allowed to visit the eight jailed foreign aid workers. The jailed foreigners,- four Germans, two Australians, two Americans and 16 Afghans, all from the German-based Christian relief agency Shelter Now International, were arrested more than three weeks ago. They face charges of trying to convert Afghan Muslims to Christianity, which could carry a death penalty under the Taliban's purist interpretation of Islam. The fate of the 16 Afghan aid workers, however, is not known. East Timorese have kept what the United Nations has called a date with democracy, voting in the first democratic election. After centuries of foreign occupation, the death of a quarter of the population and the near destruction of the territory, the election of a constituent assembly will bring closer the independence for which they have paid such a high price. Today, Thursday is also the second anniversary of a U.N.-run ballot that rejected Indonesian rule and unleashed a fury of killing and destruction by pro-Jakarta militias backed by Indonesian troops. Informal results are expected by about September 5 and a formal tally on September 10. A train carrying spent German nuclear fuel has arrived at a processing plant in France on schedule, despite pledges by environmental protesters to block the shipment. Some 20 anti-nuclear campaigners gathered on France's northeastern border with Germany as the shipment crossed into France, but they did not try to physically stop the train as protesters have done in the past. Germany's transport of nuclear waste for reprocessing abroad resumed in April after a three-year interruption. This followed an agreement between the country's federal government and the power industry on the abandonment of nuclear energy by 2020. Western Europe's 143rd Ariane rocket has placed into orbit the second in a new series of INTELSAT satellites after earlier launching from French Guiana. The Ariane-4 rocket blasted-off from the European Space Agency launch centre in Kourou, French Guiana on the northeast coast of South America. The INTELSAT 902 satellite separated from the rocket 20 minutes after the launch. The satellite will provide telecommunications and television broadcasting to Europe, sub-Saharan Africa, Central Asia, the Far East and Australia. Cambodian authorities on Thursday warned thousands of villagers fleeing floods not to swamp the capital after police used water cannon and electric prods to disperse crowds of homeless people. The tension is a sign of the growing desperation in the lower Mekong region where floods have killed dozens, left hundreds of thousands homeless and caused widespread damage. Distributing emergency aid in southern Kandal province, 45 km from Phnom Penh, Prime Minister Hun Sen said on Thursday that flood victims would only receive assistance in their home areas in a bid to keep them out of the capital. Officials in Cambodia said 35 people have been killed in flooding this month, while around 400,000 had lost their homes. British police said they stopped 12 men at airports and ports on Thursday in a bid to prevent football hooligans from disrupting the World Cup soccer match between England and Germany. The game will be played in Munich on Saturday afternoon. Essex police were applying for banning orders under the Football (Disorder) Act to stop nine of the 11 men they detained from travelling to Germany. The act, which gave police increased powers to stop known soccer hooligans from travelling, was introduced last year after England fans were involved in violent clashes at the Euro 2000 soccer championship in Belgium and the Netherlands. The European Central Bank unveiled the new Euro notes in Frankfurt on Thursday which will begin circulating in 12 nations of the euro zone from January 1 2001 to 300 million people. President Wim Duisenberg described the unveiling of euro notes and coins as a historic moment and the euro a symbol of European integration. He said the euro was not just a currency integrating markets and bringing to an end currency volatility within Europe, but also a powerful symbol of European unity. About 14.5 billion euro notes and 50 billion coins are being minted for the launch. The European Central Bank in Frankfurt has cut the key rate by 25 basis points to 4.25% in response to signs that the U.S. economic slowdown is greater than expected. It's the second time interest rates have been cut this year. Meanwhile ECB President Wim Duisenberg has said the increase in gross domestic product from 2.2 to 2.5% forecast for Europe this year will not be achieved. ------------------------------------------------- This Discussion List is the follow-up for the old stopnato @listbot.com that has been shut down ==^================================================================ EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a84x2u.a9spWA Or send an email To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] This email was sent to: archive@jab.org T O P I C A -- Register now to manage your mail! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/register ==^================================================================
