Deutsche Welle English Service News 28-08-2002, 16:00 UTC ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Today's highlight on DW-WORLD:
Trial in High-Speed Rail Disaster Opens More than four years after a high-speed train accident killed 101 just outside the the small town of Eschede in Germany, the trial of the engineers involved opens on Wednesday. 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_617933_1_A,00.html ---------------------------------------------------------------------- More nations reject pre-emptive assault Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's government and German opposition parties remain jointly opposed to a pre-emptive invasion of Iraq as suggested on Monday by U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney. Chancellorship challenger Edmund Stoiber said instead it was solely up to United Nations to decide. He warned the USA not to go it alone. U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan called on Washington to back-track and seek talks with the regime of Saddam Hussein. Similar calls for restrain came from India, China, and Turkey, a neighbour of Iraq's and a key NATO ally. Turkish Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit said his government was using "every opportunity" to dissuade the USA. On Tuesday Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld maintained that other countries would follow once the USA had made the "right" decision. Frontlines draw at Johannesburg summit Delegates at the sustainibility summit in Johannesburg have agreed on ways to save the world's fisheries but confrontations have emerged on the issues of subsidies, import taxes and energy alternatives. Developing nations continue to demand that the rich lower their trade barriers so that poor farmers can export produce and break the poverty cycle. They rejected an EU offer to lower only so-called environment-hostile subsidies. The International Energy Agency said 1.6 billion earth residents had no electricity and called for massive investments. The EU wants renewable energy sources such as biomass raised to 15 percent of usage by 2010. Resisting that are the USA and oil-producing nations. On fisheries, the summit agreed to non-binding goal of restoring sustainable levels by 2015 "when possible". Israel suspends talks after alleged arms find Israel has called off talks due today with the Palestinians citing what Israeli sources said was the interception of smuggled weapons and munitions in 20 barrels washed ashore on the Gaza Strip coast. Israeli Defence Minister Binyamin Ben-Elizier said he expected the Palestinians to deter terrorism. He had been due to meet Palestinian Interior Minister Abdel-Razzek al-Yahya. Some Palestinian officials accused Israel of reneging on the Bethlehem-Gaza-first pullback deal. So far, Palestinian police have only resumed patrols in Bethlehem. A U.S. envoy, David Satterfield, has arrived in Jericho. Palestinian chief negotiator Saeb Erekat demanded that the Bush administration publish its timetable for an end to Israel's West Bank occupation. Tasmil Tigers name vetern negotiator for peace talks Sri Lanka's Tamil Tiger rebels have named a four-person team headed by veteran negotiator Anton Balasingham to hold direct peace talks with the government in neutral Thailand next month. There will also be an exchange of prisoners of war on Saturday as a sign of goodwill ahead of the three-day talks starting on September the 16th. Norway is acting as a go-between and brokered a ceasefire both sides signed in February. The Tigers, who say Tamils are discriminated against by the island's Sinhala majority, have been fighting for a separate Tamil state in the north and east. More than 64,000 people have been killed in the fighting that has destroyed the country's economy. 1.6 million Afghans back home Since last year's ouster of the Taliban by a U.S.-led alliance, 1.6 million Afghans have returned home, according to Ruud Lubbers, the head of the U.N. refugee agency. Visiting Kabul, he said most were Pashtun Afghans, who had sheltered in Pakistan. Another 170,000 had returned from Iran. The rest, some 10,000, arrived home from other nations. Lubbers forecast that an additional 400,000 refugees would return by the end of this year, including many more from Iran. Once home, Lubbers added, refugees still lacked security, homes and jobs. The protection force ISAF estimates that half-a-million of the returnees have settled in the Kabul area. Today, eastern Afganistan six missiles struck Jalalabad's airport. The region's governor said no one was hurt. Three men on trial after worst German rail crash Three engineers charged with manslaughter in Germany 's worst rail accident went on trial on Wednesday, more than four years after the crash that killed 101 people. In June 1998 an Inter-City Express train jumped the rails at high speed near Eschede in northwestern Germany,sending carriages ploughing into a road bridge which collapsed and crushed several coaches. The three engineers were involved in the manufacture and licensing of a wheel believed to have caused the high-speed train to jump the rails. Two Koreas focus on rail, military in economic talks North and South Korea have begun talks focused on how to reconnect a railway across their divided peninsula that would extend into China or Russia. The talks are the first detailed discussions on economic cooperation in two years, a follow-up meeting agreed when the two held ministerial-level talks earlier this month. Russian President Vladimir Putin pressed North Korea last week to forge a new Asia-Europe freight route by extending Russia's trans-Siberian railway across the peninsula, bypassing China, as the deal would help revitalise its depressed Far East. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 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. You can even listen to all programmes as audio-on-demand. Serbian News Network - SNN [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.antic.org/
