NOTEBOOK/WORLD WATCH	FEBRUARY 23, 1998 VOL. 151 NO. 8
	World Watch BELFAST The loyalist Ulster Democratic Party, currently expelled from the Northern Ireland peace talks over links to paramilitaries responsible for the murders of several Catholics, will be readmitted by the end of the month. In turn, Sinn Fein faced expulsion over two killings in Belfast that police linked to the Irish Republican Army, of which Sinn Fein is the political wing. Sinn Fein insisted, however, that it should remain in the negotiations, and while the I.R.A. did not specifically deny involvement in the murders, it did maintain that its ceasefire was intact. AJACCIO French police rounded up nearly a dozen Corsican nationalists following the assassination of the government's highest-ranking official on the island by suspected separatist gunmen. The Feb. 6 murder of the island's Prefect, Claude Erignac, marked the first time that a senior representative of France had been targeted in Corsican violence. Although the administrator's murder occurred just two weeks after the main independence group, the National Front for the Liberation of Corsica, ended a truce begun last June, police believe a radical splinter faction, Sampieru, is responsible for Erignac's death. ANKARA Two Turkish politicians were indicted on charges of forming criminal gangs and abuse of power. Mehmet Agar of the True Path Party (D.Y.P.), who was in charge of the national police as Interior Minister in former Prime Minister Tansu Ciller's administration, is accused of involvement in the creation of death squads--allegedly financed by drug money--to eliminate suspected Kurdish separatists and their sympathisers. Sedat Bucak, a Kurdish militia chief, faces abuse of power allegations, and is also accused of weapons violations. Prompted in part by evidence that Turkey's casinos have played a key role in the web of corruption and murder now under investigation, the government closed them down. JERUSALEM A seven-month truce in the battle between Israel's Orthodox rabbis and their Reform and Conservative challengers has ended at best in ambiguity, at worst in a resumption of hostilities. The two ultra-Orthodox parties in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's coalition--United Torah Judaism and Shas--are again pressing for a vote on a conversion bill that would anchor in law the Orthodox monopoly on religious affairs. The Chief Rabbinate has scuttled a compromise proposal under which Orthodox conversion courts would retain their monopoly, but Reform and Conservative rabbis could prepare candidates who chose a more liberal stream of Judaism. FREETOWN As a Nigerian-led intervention force tightened its grip on Freetown, Sierra Leone's military leaders were on the run. By the weekend, fighting in the capital had died down, and the intervention force--authorized by the Economic Community of West African States--was seeking to restore order and pave the way for the return of the elected President, Ahmed Tejan Kabbah. After months of skirmishes, bombardments and a blockade of Freetown's port, the West African force launched a final offensive on Feb. 5 to unseat the military junta, led by Lieut. Colonel Johnny Paul Koroma. Koroma's men deposed Kabbah in a May 1997 coup. GISENYE Remnants of the Rwandan Interahamwe militia who killed more than 500,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus in 1994 started a new terror campaign in northwest Rwanda. Fifty-eight villagers, Hutus and Tutsis alike, were killed near Gisenye by fighters based in the Democratic Republic of Congo, formerly Zaire. Gisenye's Governor Jean-Baptiste Muhirwa said the raiders had attacked 18 families, indiscriminately killing members of both ethnic groups. More than 120,000 prisoners await trial in Rwanda for mass murder. NASIR Sudan's First Vice President, Lieut. General Al-Zabeir Mohamed Saleh, and 25 other military and political leaders drowned after their plane overshot the runway while landing at the southern town of Nasir and plunged into the River Sobat. Thirty-one people on board survived. The team had been touring Sudan in efforts to resolve the 20-year war between the Islamic north and Christian and animist south. Former rebel leader Arok Thon Arok, who joined the government side two months ago, was among the dead. TBILISI Georgia's President Eduard Shevardnadze escaped unharmed from an assassination attempt that killed two of his bodyguards and destroyed his armored limousine. In the second attempt on his life in three years, 10 to 15 men ambushed the presidential motorcade with grenades and submachine guns. In a 10-minute firefight, one attacker was killed. A passport found at the scene identified him as an ethnic Chechen from southern Russia, but Georgian officials believe it was planted to divide the peoples of the Caucasus. Shevardnadze was careful not to blame Russia for the attack, saying that "a third party from abroad" had carried out the "military assault." Georgian parliamentarians, however, plan to investigate the possible complicity of Russian armed forces stationed in Georgia. KHAGRACHARI A 22-year war in southeastern Bangladesh ended when 739 Chakma tribal fighters from the Chittagong Hill Tracts surrendered their weapons before Prime Minister Sheik Hasina. She had negotiated peace with them last December, promising more autonomy. The Buddhist Chakma people--ethnically, linguistically and religiously distinct from the Bengali Muslim majority--have long sought self-rule and rebelled against settlers who usurped their land and culture. More than 20,000 people were killed in the war. TENGGARONG The bush fires that spread smog over Southeast Asia last year have flared up again in Indonesia, destroying at least 24,000 hectares of Kutai National Park, Mt. Suharto and the Pasir Regency of East Kalimantan province. Orangutans and other animals fled the forests as soldiers and park rangers battled flames from the fires, set by plantation companies. The government estimates that 265,000 hectares of Indonesian forests burned during the extended dry season caused by the El Nino weather effect last year. Environmentalists put the damage at 1.7 million hectares. CANBERRA Australians will vote next year on whether their country should become a republic with a head of state selected by Parliament from candidates nominated by the public. That was the proposal formulated by a two-week Constitutional Convention that earlier had been split between rival republican groups over whether a head of state should be chosen by Parliament or popularly elected. LIMA President Alberto Fujimori moved a step closer to a third presidential term following a Supreme Court decision that found no barrier to his running for re-election in 2000. Peru's constitution limits a president to two terms, but Fujimori's backers say he is serving only his first term under the new 1993 constitution. He came to power in 1990 and was re-elected in 1995. His opponents say Fujimori, who has not officially declared his candidacy, has stacked the court with sympathetic judges. MOKOTORO A huge mud-slide--and a raging Bolivian river swollen by heavy rains made worse by El Nino--destroyed the gold mining village of Mokotoro, leaving at least 59 people dead. The jungle village is situated in the Tipuani-Guanay region east of La Paz, the site of a similar disaster at Llipi in 1992. El Nino storms also pounded Mexico's Baja California region, leaving 14 people dead in Tijuana and Rosarito. El Nino-inspired storms struck California, too, destroying many homes. HAVANA A month after Pope John Paul II asked Cuba to free jailed dissidents, several dozen prisoners have been released. A Vatican statement said they had been on a list of several hundred people presented to the Cuban authorities during the Pope's visit in January. A Foreign Ministry spokesman said others would be pardoned in line with the Vatican's appeal, but the Prensa Latina news service said 70 of those on the Pope's list would remain jailed as threats to national security or public safety. SAN DIEGO Ten Southern California gang members whom U.S. authorities believe were hired assassins for the Tijuana-based Arellano Felix drug cartel were indicted in San Diego. The 10--five of whom are in custody--are charged with various crimes, including murder, conspiracy to murder and drug trafficking. Authorities say the gang was hired to kill a rival Mexican drug lord, Joaquin Guzman Loera, at Guadalajara's airport in 1993. Seven people were killed in the gunfire, including a Roman Catholic cardinal, Juan Jesus Posadas Ocampo.
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