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Christus Rex Information Service
The Associated Press
CAIRO (Nov 29, 1996 07:54 a.m. EST) - Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak has sent an "urgent" message to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warning that expansion of Jewish settlements in the Palestinian territories could threaten Arab-Israeli peace accords, Al-Ahram newspaper said Friday.
"The danger represented by the expansion of settlements in the occupied Arab territories is that such activities hinder the peace process and are against all efforts in that direction," Mubarak said in the message, the government newspaper reported.
"These activities are of a nature to destroy the trust between Israel and its Arab neighbors and to encourage the non-respect and violation of the peace accords reached between Israel and Arab parties," the president said.
It was the first time that Mubarak has raised the prospect, even implicitly, of the peace accords being violated. Egypt in 1979 became the first Arab country to sign a peace treaty with Israel.
Netanyahu aroused international concern over his comments during a visit this week to a settlement in the West Bank, where he pledged that Jewish settlements in the Palestinian territories would expand and prosper "forever."
Peace talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority of Yasser Arafat are deadlocked over the long-delayed Israeli army withdrawal from the West Bank town of Hebron.
Mubarak spoke of the "necessity and importance" of an accord between Israel and the Palestinians on the unresolved issues and the need to prepare for a resumption "without delay" of Israeli-Syrian peace talks, Al-Ahram said.
The talks have been frozen since February.
"Egypt will take rapid steps to face up to the threats weighing on the peace process, which could return the region to the state of tension and instability which reigned before the conclusion of the peace accords," Mubarak said.
On Sunday, Egyptian Foreign Minister Amr Mussa made a veiled threat to work to freeze Arab-Israeli relations because of Israel's settlement policy in the occupied territories.
"Egypt is currently looking at measures to oppose the settlement policy based on resolutions from the Arab summit,"' Mussa said.
The Cairo summit in June warned that the process to normalise Arab ties with Israel would be frozen if Netanyahu's right-wing government did not abide by its commitments to the Middle East peace process.
BUCHAREST, Romania (Nov 28, 1996 9:42 p.m. EST) -- With a last-minute pardon of six former Communist comrades, outgoing President Ion Iliescu has now pardoned all but one of the ex-Communist leaders jailed during his leadership of Romania.
As Iliescu hands over power on Friday, the only former Communist still in jail is Constantin Dascalescu, the last premier under dictator Nicolae Ceausescu. He has refused to apply for a pardon.
Late Wednesday, state television said Iliescu had pardoned six members of the last Communist Politburo under Ceausescu, who was ousted and executed in a bloody revolt in December 1989. Among them were Dumitru Popescu, Ceausescu's propaganda chief, and Lina Ciobanu, a former deputy prime minister.
Iliescu, 66, hands over power Friday to Emil Constantinescu, a former geology professor who won a presidential runoff on Nov. 17.
Iliescu, a Communist minister who fell foul of Ceausescu in the early 1970s, has ruled Romania since the dictator was ousted. His exact path to power has never been clarified.
Iliescu has always said he took the helm during the popular uprising. Some of his critics have charged that he staged a coup on the back of the anti-Communist revolt, in which more than 1,000 people were killed.
Iliescu won elections in 1990 and 1992. During his tenure, dozens of former Communists sentenced to jail have been freed, officially on health grounds. They included Ceausescu's son Nicu, who died two months ago in a Vienna hospital.
The six former Politburo members pardoned Wednesday were sentenced in 1991 to between 11 and 14 years in jail for their part in Communist repression.
All were already out of prison, freed on health grounds.
As president, Iliescu sometimes used pardons to win favor. In a move to bolster relations with the West, and with Britain in particular, he pardoned a British couple last year who had paid for, and tried to smuggle, a baby girl out of Romania.
In 1994, he also pardoned several Communists, including some ethnic Hungarians, in what was widely seen as a bid to improve relations with the ethnic Hungarian minority.
On Wednesday, Iliescu pardoned two journalists sentenced to jail for libeling authorities in the Black Sea port of Constanta.
He pointedly did not pardon two other journalists who were sentenced earlier this year to jail after writing that Iliescu once worked for the KGB secret police in the former Soviet Union. They are not yet serving their sentences pending appeal.
The other 13 people pardoned Wednesday were said in official statements to be non-political criminals. They were not named. Iliescu's spokesman was not available for comment and did not return telephone calls.
MOSCOW (Nov 28, 1996 6:48 p.m. EST) - Parliament meets on Friday in an extraordinary session to scrutinize a decision by President Boris Yeltsin to withdraw Russia's last troops from breakaway Chechnya.
But chances are slim that the session will lead to a head-on collision between the lower chamber, dominated by the communist-led opposition, and Yeltsin, who is recovering after a multiple bypass heart operation on November 5.
On Thursday, Yeltsin sent a firm message to the Duma over who is in charge in Russia.
He defied opposition demands that he send Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin to parliament to explain the withdrawal decision and an agreement which the premier signed with the rebel Chechen government.
Presidential spokesman Sergei Yastrzhembsky told a news briefing that Yeltsin had told Chernomyrdin and Secretary of the Security Council Ivan Rybkin to provide a written account to deputies rather than be present in person.
Yastrzhembsky, clearly referring to Yeltsin's vast constitutional powers, also said: "The president is the supreme military commander and is fully entitled to take decisions on the stationing and restationing of troops."
Yeltsin, in a letter to the Duma's communist speaker, Gennady Seleznyov, wrote that, as president, he was ultimately responsible for safeguarding Russia's territorial integrity.
The opposition, which includes Communists and ultra-nationalists led by Vladimir Zhirinovsky, raised a furore after Yeltsin on Saturday ordered the troops to withdraw.
Some deputies, saying the pullout amounted to acceptance of Chechen independence demands, said they might try to start impeachment moves against Yeltsin. Others suggested a no-confidence vote in the government.
But Communist leader Gennady Zyuganov was non-committal during a news conference on Thursday and said his faction would meet before Friday's session to weigh up their options.
He declined to say whether they would back calls to impeach the president or seek a no-confidence vote, and appeared not to support such moves personally.
Asked if the communists would support impeachment proceedings, he said: "The president is ill, let him get well."
Zyuganov's tone appeared to reflect the fact that Yeltsin, reelected in July, is in a much stronger position than the Duma.
By Thursday only Zhirinovsky remained apparently determined to press for a showdown with the government, and he is known for dramatic last-minute U-turns.
Under the constitution, any impeachment bid would be a long drawn-out procedure with virtually no chance of success.
Any move to bring the cabinet down gives Yeltsin a possibility of dismissing the Duma and calling early elections.
Kremlin chief of staff Anatoly Chubais, talking to reporters during a visit to St Petersburg, said the Communists' attacks were "completely absurd."
"Just over a year ago some Duma deputies initiated impeachment proceedings over the sending of troops to Chechnya. Today they are talking about impeachment for withdrawing the troops from Chechnya," he said.
Tens of thousands of people, mainly civilians, have been killed in the Chechnya conflict. Fighting largely halted under a ceasefire last August but no solution has been found to the central dispute over Chechnya's status -- in or out of Russia.
Yeltsin, who sent troops into Chechnya in December 1994, seems determined to end the conflict while he recovers.
Interfax news agency quoted Sergei Mironov, the chief Kremlin doctor, as saying Yeltsin could start visiting the Kremlin from December 5 and resume normal work two weeks later.
RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil (Nov 28, 1996 5:48 p.m. EST) -- A court sentenced a state trooper to 261 years in prison Thursday for killing eight street children and trying to kill another, but the move was largely symbolic.
Under Brazilian law, no one may serve more than 30 years in prison for any crime, and defendant Nelson Cunha is automatically granted a retrial because he was sentenced to more than 20 years.
Cunha is the second policeman to face trial for the slayings in downtown Rio. Earlier this year, officer Marcus Vinicius Emmanuel was sentenced to 309 years in prison, later reduced to 89 years at his retrial. With time off for good behavior, Emmanuel could be free in as little as five years.
While human rights groups said Cunha's sentence represents a step forward, they say many aspects of the trial were questionable and not all of those responsible will be punished.
"The sentence was to satisfy people abroad, so they can say justice was done. But that's only partially true. Some of those involved were convicted, but a lot of the others will walk," said Cristina Leonardo, head of the Brazilian Center for Defense of Children's and Adolescent's Rights.
In convicting Cunha, the court rejected his claim that he didn't kill anyone but only accidentally shot one youth, Wagner dos Santos, in the face. Dos Santos, who survived the shooting and now lives in Switzerland for his protection, testified at the trial.
Three others, two policemen and a metal-worker, are scheduled to stand trial on Dec. 9, but Leonardo fears that they will be acquitted.
"Cunha has testified that the others weren't involved and the court seems to be buying that part of his testimony," Leonardo said.
The children were killed before dawn on July 23, 1993. Gunmen drove up to a sidewalk in front of the Candelaria Cathedral in downtown Rio and opened fire on the children sleeping there.
Human rights groups say shopkeepers in high-crime districts routinely pay policemen to kill children suspected of stealing. An estimated 2,000 to 3,000 children, most of them runaways, live on Rio's streets.
According to police figures, 596 minors were slain last year in Rio de Janeiro state, up from 513 in 1994. But activists say many more are killed and buried in secret cemeteries.
NEW DELHI, India (Nov 28, 1996 4:30 p.m. EST) -- Chinese President Jiang Zemin sidestepped protests by Tibetan exiles Thursday and promised a closer partnership with neighboring India.
Jiang's three-day visit, the first by a Chinese president to India, is aimed at easing tensions that linger from the two country's 1962 border war in the Himalayas.
"Though we still have some outstanding problems left over from history, I can say that our common interests far outweigh our differences," Jiang said in a speech during a dinner hosted by Indian President Shanker Dayal Sharma.
Indian officials say the two countries are likely to agree on a delineation of the cease-fire line and a further reduction of troops that began three years ago. They also expect new trade and shipping agreements.
"Both of us need a peaceful neighborhood," Sharma said during his dinner speech.
Because the Tibet issue is nearly always at the top of any agenda when China and India talk, police in riot gear kept a close watch as about 700 refugee women, children and monks in scarlet robes protested the visit.
The demonstrators were blocked near their shantytown district close to Delhi's old city, about 11 miles from the Chinese embassy. The embassy was cordoned off by police barricades. Other protests were held in Bombay and Tibetan communities throughout India.
Beijing says Tibet has been its territory for centuries, but many Tibetans say they enjoyed de facto independence.
The Dalai Lama, Tibet's spiritual leader, welcomed Jiang's visit to India and expressed hopes of meeting him. But the Dalai Lama said in a statement that the prospects were unrealistic because "of the new wave of repression and the ongoing campaign to denounce me inside Tibet."
The Tibetan leader said a closer relationship between India and China would help the Tibetan cause. "I therefore welcome the visit of President Jiang Zemin to India," he said.
India is the home of the Dalai Lama, who was both the spiritual and temporal leader of Tibet until he fled in 1959 to escape imminent arrest in a Chinese crackdown. India restricts his political activities as a condition for allowing him and more than 100,000 of his followers to stay as refugees.
China, however, is unhappy that the Dalai Lama, who won the 1989 Nobel Peace Prize, runs a self-proclaimed government-in-exile in the Indian city of Dharmsala, from where he conducts a worldwide campaign for Tibetan autonomy.
As part of Thursday's protest, a young monk representing the Panchen Lama -- second in rank only to the Dalai Lama -- was paraded in a cage by two other demonstrators dressed as Chinese soldiers holding toy guns.
Tibetan exiles say the real Panchen Lama was abducted shortly after the Dalai Lama named him in 1995 as the reincarnation of the last Panchen Lama, who died six years earlier.
Chinese authorities then orchestrated the selection of another 6-year-old boy as the revered monk.
MINSK (Nov 28, 1996 3:42 p.m. EST) - President Alexander Lukashenko sent in police to shut down parliament in Belarus Thursday and Western diplomats stayed away from an official ceremony at which he signed the former Soviet republic's new constitution.
"There is talk Lukashenko won the referendum. No, it was a victory for the people of Belarus," Lukashenko said, using the kind of language that helped him win more than 70 percent support at a constitutional referendum Sunday.
He then signed the gleaming, leather-bound text of a constitution which will extend his term beyond 2000, give him big powers over all rival institutions. A Council of Europe analysis said the constitution failed to meet minimum human rights standards.
But deputy Viktor Gonchar, fired as head of the electoral commission by Lukashenko who monopolized the media throughout his campaign, slammed his old boss.
"Belarus has received a lesson in democracy Russian-style. Moscow has betrayed the idea of parliamentarism and has received as a partner a totalitarian republic," he said.
Russia made clear Thursday it recognized Lukashenko's new constitution, unlike Western countries, and sent its ambassador and a government delegation to the signing ceremony.
He also asked the West to pay no attention to the opinions of his opponents in Belarus, who accuse him of tyrannical behavior and compare him to Europe's worst dictators.
"I call on Western politicians to look at what is happening in Belarus without bias. I urge you, don't let the opposition burden you with emotions," he said.
But diplomats in Minsk said no European embassies had accepted the president's invitation to attend the ceremony.
Earlier Lukashenko swept aside the main obstacle to enforcing his new constitutional order in the former Soviet republic by barring several dozen deputies from the chamber.
They had held out while colleagues joined Lukashenko and split parliament, but Sunday police allowed them in to the building only to empty their desks.
"This marks the setting up of a junta through the falsification of the referendum results," liberal faction leader Stanislav Bogdankevich told Reuters.
Anatoly Malofeyev, 63, who once ran the Soviet-era communist party in Belarus, was elected speaker of the new lower house which is occupied entirely by Lukashenko supporters.
The deputy speaker will be 42-year-old Vladimir Konoplyov, who led the pro-Lukashenko faction in the old parliament. Their election was a formality as they were the only candidates.
For three days Belarus had two parliaments but the odds were clearly stacked on the side of the majority who abandoned the old chamber to sit in the new "House of Representatives."
Wednesday deputies voted unanimously to abolish the old parliament under Lukashenko's approving gaze.
"The opposition will not leave. We will wait for the Belarussian people to wake up," Bogdankevich said.
Members of the rump parliament saw the writing on the wall Wednesday when their official phone lines were cut off and there were calls for immediate "redecoration" of the old chamber, meaning they would have to vacate it.
When they arrived around nine a.m. Thursday they found the building sealed off by a cordon of police. Deputies including speaker Semyon Sharetsky found more police blocking access to the "Oval Hall" debating chamber.
JERUSALEM -- A government-appointed commission has confirmed reports that Israeli soldiers killed Egyptian POWs in the 1956 Mideast war, an Israeli newspaper reported Thursday.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu confirmed the existence of the report, but said it was "on the whole very favorable in its findings vis-a-vis Israeli behavior."
"I don't know who leaked it, but it was leaked incorrectly," he told newspaper editors in Tel Aviv.
According to the Yediot Ahronot newspaper, the inquiry found one incident in which Israeli troops killed 49 Egyptian prisoners and several cases in which Israeli prisoners were killed by Egyptian troops.
The paper said it based its report on a draft of the panel's findings submitted to Netanyahu several weeks ago.
Israeli-Egyptian relations deteriorated after reports of the killings surfaced more than a year ago, when a retired Israeli general said he shot and killed 49 Egyptian soldiers in 1956.
Several other veterans then came forward with additional accounts of POW killings by Israeli soldiers.
At Egypt's urging, former Prime Minister Shimon Peres ordered an investigation into reports that Israeli soldiers had killed as many as 1,000 Egyptian POWs in the 1956 and 1967 Mideast wars.
The commission of inquiry, headed by reserve Gen. Aharon Doron, found that Israeli soldiers took Egyptian prisoners during the fighting in the Sinai Peninsula in 1956 and then shot and killed them, Yediot said. The panel was unable to verify reports of other incidents of killings by Israelis, Yediot said. The paper gave no details.
The report submitted to Netanyahu also found several incidents in which Egyptians killed Israeli POWs, the paper said.
Netanyahu spokesman David Bar-Illan confirmed that the prime minister has received the draft but said he decided against publishing it. Bar-Illan would not elaborate.
Yediot Ahronot quoted another Netanyahu spokesman, Shai Bazak, as saying the report would eventually be made public.
MOSCOW -- Russia has executed 103 people since joining the Council of Europe and promising to abolish the death penalty, the head of the presidential pardon commission said Thursday.
"We execute 'domestic criminals' and alcoholics, but not a single contract killer or mafia chieftain has been placed in the dock," Anatoly Pristavkin said, according to the Interfax news agency.
He spoke at a Council of Europe conference on the death penalty in Kiev, the Ukrainian capital. The council is Europe's leading human rights organization.
Pristavkin said 103 people have been executed in Russia this year. Last year, 86 were put to death, he said.
Russia also has set up two prison camps for people whose death sentences were commuted to life in prison.
Pristavkin said inmates there are not allowed access to newspapers, radio or television. Conditions are so awful that 41 percent of these inmates said in a recent survey that they wish now they'd been executed.
Russia joined the Council of Europe earlier this year despite the council's lingering doubts about its human rights record. In joining, Russia promised to abolish the death penalty, but has since balked.
In May, Russia's justice minister claimed the death penalty was not being used, although it was still on the books, and said President Boris Yeltsin was commuting all death sentences.
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