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Deutsche Welle English Service News April 30th, 2001, 16:00 UTC ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Today's highlight on DW-WORLD: Politicizing a Tragedy A day after a tragic shooting rampage at a German high school, politicians started with the partisan bickering that has dominated this election year. But they quickly changed their tune. To read this article on the DW-WORLD website, just click on the internet address below: http://dw-world.de/english/0,3367,1430_A_509675_1_A,00.html ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Large group leaves besieged Bethlehem church Twenty-six people filed out of the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem on Tuesday,the largest group to leave in a four-week-long Israeli siege of Palestinian fighters taking refuge in the shrine. Half of the group were members of the Palestinian security forces and the rest civilians, including youths, an army spokesman said. Israeli troops have besieged the church, revered by Christians as the site where Jesus was born, since April 2nd after 30 gunmen burst inside to escape from Israeli soldiers who had reoccupied Bethlehem. Scores of Palestinian police, Christian clerics and other civilians are trapped in the shrine. EU commission warns on Iraq and raps Israel European Commission President Romano Prodi attacked Israel on Tuesday for again blocking a U.N. mission from probing its assault on Jenin refugee camp. He said that if Israel had nothing to hide then there was no reason at all to block the mission. Israel, which denies Palestinian allegations of war crimes or a massacre in the Jenin refugee camp during its military incursion into the West Bank, again blocked the U.N. mission on Tuesday, after setting terms it says the world body must fulfil. Mr.Prodi also urged the United States to join Europe in demanding unfettered access for relief workers. Speaking ahead of Thursday's annual U.S.-E.U. summit in Washington, Mr. Prodi also warned President Bush against the risk of harming the global coalition against terrorism by taking military action against Iraq. Germany takes over command of Africa sea anti-terror watch Germany said on Tuesday it would take over command from the United States of the multinational patrol off the east African coast. U.S. and European forces started patrolling the seas and skies off Somalia, the Horn of Africa country in recent months to try to deny refuge to any member of Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda group trying to flee Afghanistan. Washington fears the lack of central authority in Somalia, Kenya's eastern neighbour, could make it an ideal haven for followers of Saudi-born militant Osama bin Laden. Meanwhile, Turkey announced it would assume command of a peacekeeping force in Afghanistan for six months.Germany had earlier said it could not take over the leadership role there from Britain. OAU calls for referendum on Madagascar Organisation of African Unity Secretary-General Amara Essy said on Tuesday that Madagascar should hold a referendum to choose between its two rival leaders, warning the country risked being partitioned. He said that the OAU still recognised President Ratsiraka as the leader of the island of 15 million, despite Madagascar's High Constitutional Court ruling on Monday that Mr. Ravalomanana had won the December 16th elections, after a recount agreed by the two rivals at a meeting in Senegal earlier in April. But Mr. Ratsiraka, in power for 23-years and five of the country's six governors, said before the verdict was announced that they would not accept the results of the recount and threatened to set up their own state. Mugabe says food crisis in Zimbabwe now a disaster Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe said a food crisis caused by drought had reached disaster levels, the official Herald newspaper reported on Tuesday. The Herald said the declaration would enable donors and international relief agencies to step up emergency aid to an estimated 8 million people, who need food assistance in the southern African country. Aid agencies say crop production was slashed last season by drought and the government's seizure of white-owned farms for redistribution to landless blacks, which disrupted agriculture.Analysts say agricultural production in the crop season ending this month has fallen by 50 percent. Counting begins in Pakistan referendum Counting has began after polls closed in Pakistan on Tuesday in a controversial referendum to extend military President Pervez Musharraf's rule, with the government saying it would be happy with a turnout of 25 percent. Mr. Musharraf, who seized power in a bloodless coup in October 1999, has since been accepted internationally to become a key U.S. ally in the war on terror. He has asked for a mandate to remain in power to continue economic and political reforms and to check religious extremism. Nepalese forces kill 23 Maoist rebels Nepalese forces killed at least 23 Maoist rebels in separate clashes across the Himalayan kingdom in the past 24 hours, the Defence Ministry said in a statement on Tuesday. The guerrillas are fighting to topple Nepal's constitutional monarchy and set up a communist republic in a six-year rebellion that has killed more than 3,500 people. Serb police pledge to open Milosevic-era files Serbia's interior minister pledged on Tuesday to allow U.N. prosecutors to search police archives from the rule of Slobodan Milosevic for evidence of war crimes. Hague Tribunal prosecutors hope to implicate the ousted Yugoslav president and several top officials in alleged police and military atrocities during the Balkan wars of the 1990s. Belgrade has come under heavy Western pressure, including a freeze in much-needed U.S. aid, to cooperate with their efforts,in particular by handing over more war crimes fugitives and granting access to secret police and army files. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For more information please turn to our internet website at http://dw-world.de/english Here you'll find out what's happening in Germany, Europe and the rest of the world. News and background reports from the fields of current affairs, culture, business and science. And of course the DW website also has information about DW-RADIO and DW-TV programmes: topics, broadcast times and frequencies. 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