Deutsche Welle English Service News June 22th , 2001, 16:00 UTC German leaders have said deep historical wounds remain as Europe today marks the 60th anniversary of Nazi Germany's attack on the former Soviet Union. Hitler's Operation Barbarosa, begun on June the 22nd 1941, opened an eastern front in World War Two, resulting in up to 40 million deaths. Russian historians say 27 million were Soviet citizens, including troops killed and those who died in German internment up until 1945 when the Red Army entered Berlin. Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder said Hitler's attack of 1941 was the act of a crazed and criminal regime but he hoped for closer peaceful links between Berlin and Moscow. Former Soviet veterans plan ceremonies today in the ex-Soviet states. The Jewish Claims Conference in Germany has made the first compensation payments to former Nazi-era slave and forced labourers. About 300 victims received the first installment during a symbolic ceremony in Frankfurt. Ten thousand people will intitially be paid about 10,000 Marks, the equivalent of $4,370. The representative of the Jewish Claims Conference in Germany, Karl Brozik, said this modest sum could, however, in no way put right the suffering endured by the victims. By the end of July the first compensation payments will have been paid in other countries. Payments from the ten billion Mark government foundation were delayed until U.S. lawsuits were dismissed. Hans-Otto Braeutigam, deputy head of the foundation administering the compensation funds, said about 1.8 million applications were now expected. Earlier estimates put the number of applicants at 1.2 million, which could mean than the amount of compensation will be have to be reduced, he said. The Macedonian army has launched attacks on the rebel-held village of Aracinovo, just 10 kilometres from the capital Skopje, after a two-week stand-off. Its dawn assault with helicopters and tanks coincided with a fragile 11-day ceasefire and stalled peace deal talks between Macedonia's ethnic Albanian and majority slav politicians, despite another visit to Skopje on Thursday by EU security chief Javier Solana. The rebels said three people had been killed and ten others wounded. A rebel commander repeated his threat to shell Skopje and its airport, if the army pressed its offensive. After Thursday's talks, Solana sounded optimistic, but Prime Minister Ljubco Georgievski said his government insisted that rebel areas "be liberated". Early this week NATO offered to oversee a rebel disarmament, if agreed. The European Union has been trying to revive the deadlocked Middle East. EU foreign policy Javier Solana chief travelled to Tel Aviv where he met with Israel's prime minister Ariel Scharon to discuss ways of cementing the fragile ceasefire agreement with the Palestinians. A meeting with Palestinian president Yasser Arafat is also planned later today. Meanwhile an Israeli soldier was killed in a bomb attack in the Gaza Strip on Friday. The Israeli army responded by shelling the Palestinian village of Beit Lahia. The chairman of Bosnia's reformist central government Bozidar Matic resigned on Friday after the state parliament failed to adopt a new election law. Matic submitted his resignation to the country's three-man inter-ethnic presidency. The Bosnian parliament's house of representatives, which groups deputies from the country's Muslim-Croat federation and Serb republic, ended a session late on Thursday without agreement on the law. An acceptable electoral law is one of the main conditions put forward by the Council of Europe for the Balkan country to become a member of the organisation. Matic's government, the first non-nationalist administration in Bosnia in more than a decade, took over from nationalists four months ago. Northern Ireland police and British troops restored calm to a Belfast flashpoint area on Friday after a second night of rioting by rival Protestant and Roman Catholic crowds. Police said several shots were fired at them as they tried to keep petrol bomb and stone-throwing Protestants and Catholics apart in the Ardoyne area of north Belfast. No one was hit by the gunfire but up to 20 police officers were hurt in the violence, orchestrated mainly by loyalists. The sectarian violence erupted as London and Dublin prepared for talks at Hillsborough Castle on the outskirts of Belfast on Friday to revive Norhtern Ireland's Good Friday peace process. Turkey's Constitutional Court banned the main opposition party on Friday but stopped short of large-scale expulsions from parliament that would have triggered by-elections and thrown IMF-backed financial reforms into doubt. The court ruled that there were grounds to ban the Virtue Party, which controlled 102 out of 550 seats, as a focus of what it called "Islamist and anti-secular activities". It expelled two members from parliament and imposed political bans on five more. The judges reached their verdict by an 8-3 majority. European Commission President Romano Prodi said on Friday that Ireland's failure to ratify the Nice Treaty could hold up EU enlargement. Prodi said it was essential the country vote in favour of the treaty. The treaty is intended to pave the way for the entry of 12 applicant countries, including Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary. During talks with Prodi, Irish opposition leader Michael Noonan said it would be undemocratic to simply wait for an opportunity to put the same question again to the Irish electorate. In a national referendum 56 percent voted against ratification of the Nice Treaty, but only a third of the electorate turned out to vote. In Germany, a U.S. army truck has collided with a passenger train, leaving at least three people dead and five seriously injured. Previous reports had put the toll higher. The accident, at a level crossing in forest, happened near the Gressenwoehr military training zone in Bavaria. The train dragged the truck for 200 metres and caught fire. Police said the dead include the truck's driver and two passengers. At the time, 26 people were on board the train. A 100 medics and rescue workers, using helicopters, converged on the scene. Three coaches of a passenger train plunged from a bridge into a river in the southern Indian state of Kerala on Friday raising fears of heavy casualties. About 19 bodies have so far been recovered but rescue services expect the death toll to rise. About 300 people were travelling in the train. The train was headed to the southern Indian city of Madras from the southwestern port city of Mangalore. Two British boys who battered a toddler to death when they were 10 years old are to be freed after serving less than nine years of their sentence, the government said on Friday. Robert Thompson and Jon Venables, both now 18, were sent to secure units in 1993 for an indefinite period after being found guilty of abducting two-year-old James Bulger and torturing him, beating him to death and dumping his body on a railway line. Bulger's mother, Denise Fergus, said on Friday she was "devastated" that her son's killers were now free. Few crimes in British history have aroused as much revulsion as the murder of Bulger. The two teenagers will be given new lives and identities on their release to reduce the risk of revenge attacks. The legendary blues guitarist and singer John Lee Hooker has died at his home near San Francisco at the age of 83. Hooker influenced many of the world's most prominent contemporary musicians and was admitted to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1991. Over sixty years he recorded more than 100 albuns. Among his hits were: "I'm in the Mood", and "Walking the Boogie". Finally, a set of environmental features by DW Radio's English Service has won gold at the United Nation's "New York Festivals" competition. Produced by John Hay and Irene Quaile-Kersken, the winning "Man and Environment" reports examined six endangered ecological regions around the world listed by the World Wildlife Fund. The Australian network ABC Radio National, its journalist Maria Zijlstra, and Deutsche Welle freelancers contributed to the joint series. It illustrates links between wildlife and economic development. 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