Deutsche Welle
English Service News
3rd November , 2001, 16:00 UTC
American B-52s have carpet-bombed hills north of Kabul in an attempt
to soften Taliban front lines ahead of an offensive that the Afghan
opposition says is only days away. Earlier, Washington ruled out a
military pause for the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which starts in
mid-November.Meanwhile, the U.S. remained on high aleart amid
warnings of new terrorist attacks. Security in California and 7 other
western states has been increased around numerous bridges, including
San Francisco's famous Golden Gate Bridge, for fear of rush-hour
attacks.
Ten New York firefighters were charged with misdemeanors early on
Saturday over clashes with the police during a protest near the World
Trade Center against plans to cut the number of workers assigned to
comb the rubble of the ruins from the present about 400 to 100,
working 24-hours a day. Firefighters and policemen, praised as heroes
after the Sept.11th attack, clashed on Friday near ground zero, when
firemen overturned barricades and punched police officers during the
protest by some 1,000 firefighters. The firefighters say that the
reason for the personnel cuts was to save the city money and not for
reasons of safety as they shifted work at the ground zero to scoop,
dump, and sift for body parts.
Palestinian President Yasser Arafat and Israeli Foreign Minister
Shimon Peres will hold talks with top European Union officials in
Brussels on Monday. Mr. Peres will be in Brussels for a meeting of
foreign ministers from 27 EU and Mediterranean countries, which
starts on Monday. Mr.Arafat will also address the EuroMed meeting.
EuroMed , whose members include the 15 EU nations,the Palestinian
Authority, Israel and other Middle Eastern and North African
countries, is a rare forum for Israeli and Arab officials to meet.
Mr.Arafat and Mr.Peres sparred verbally on Saturday at a conference
on the Spanish island of Mallorca, but did not hold formal talks, as
many had expected.
U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld left Moscow for former
Soviet Central Asia on Saturday after talks in the Kremlin on support
by Russia's intelligence services for the U.S. military campaign in
Afghanistan. Russia, while backing Washington's anti-terrorism
campaign,has ruled out any involvement of its armed forces in the
U.S.-led operation. Mr. Rumsfeld's eight-hour visit to Moscow was the
first leg of a whirlwind four-day tour of five countries, including
Pakistan and India for talks on the war on terrorism. Russia has
sided with the United States in efforts to form a global
anti-terrorism coalition.Supplying intelligence information to the
United States about terrorist organisations and Afghanistan was part
of Russia's contribution to the war.
Britain has given financial institutions a list of 25 organisations
it says are linked to terrorism, requiring their assets to be frozen.
The list includes Irish Republican group the Real IRA, Basque
separatist movement ETA and several Palestinian organisations such as
the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. The Treasury was
acting in coordination with authorities in the United States and a
treasury spokesman said the list was broadly the same as one issued
on Friday by the U.S. State Department. Britain has already frozen
about 92 million dollars of suspect terror funds held in 33 bank
accounts in Britain.
In China, a court in southwestern Yunnan Province has executed 11
people for drug smuggling, according to the Yunnan Daily newspaper
seen by Reuters. A municipal-level court in Yunnan's capital city of
Kunming executed the 11 for trafficking drugs and in some cases
smuggling them in from abroad, the newspaper said. Yunnan borders
Burma and Laos, which along with northern Thailand make up the Golden
Triangle, one of the world's leading source of opium and heroin.
The German Olympic Committee voted unanimously in favour of a German
bid to stage the Summer Olympic Games in 2012 on Saturday. Five
German cities have expressed interest in bidding for the games --
Hamburg, Duesseldorf, Frankfurt, Leipzig and Stuttgart. The capital
Berlin was also expected to bid for the Games. Berlin hosted the 1936
Olympics and Munich held the 1972 Games. Germany has already been
chosen to host the 2006 soccer World Cup finals. The International
Olympic Committee decides who will stage the 2012 Games in 2005. The
next Summer Games will be held in Athens in 2004 with Beijing the
host in 2008.
In Belgrade, Yugoslavia's leadership came out in favour on Saturday
of Serbs taking part in this month's general election in neighbouring
Kosovo, but representatives of the Serb minority in the U.N.-run
province expressed doubts about the decision. Some leaders of the
Kosovo Serbs, who boycotted municipal elections last year, said many
believed their security situation and general living conditions were
still too poor to justify taking part in the November 17 poll.
Western powers had put pressure on Belgrade to back the vote in the
ethnic Albanian-dominated province to elect a 120-member assembly
under plans to give Kosovo substantial self-government while it
remains under overall U.N. rule.
Serbian News Network - SNN
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http://www.antic.org/
