NOTEBOOK/WORLD WATCH	MARCH 16, 1998 VOL. 151 NO. 11
	World Watch London Chris Patten, the former Governor of Hong Kong, and HarperCollins, the publishing house that cancelled publication of Patten's memoir East and West, reached an out-of-court deal in the dispute that has rocked the book world. Details of the breach-of-contract settlement were kept secret, but HarperCollins apologized to Patten for unjustifiably denigrating his manuscript, which harshly criticizes the Chinese regime with which Murdoch's News International empire wants to do business. Sarajevo While the Kosovo region of neighboring Serbia threatens to explode in violence, peace is taking root in Bosnia. A fourth Bosnian Serb war-crimes suspect surrendered to the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in less than a month, and a fifth said he would soon do the same. Former paramilitary commander Dragoljub Kunarac, who gave himself up, has been indicted for rape, while Zoran Zigic is charged with torturing and killing Muslim and Croat prisoners. With warm weather in the region, authorities have begun unearthing more mass graves from the Bosnian and Croatian wars in 1991-95. Thirteen bodies were found in Croatia and 68 in Bosnia. Bratislava As President Michal Kovac ended his five-year term as President of Slovakia with no successor agreed upon by parliament, Prime Minister Vladimir Meciar stepped into the political vacuum--to the consternation of many who see him as increasingly authoritarian. He fired 28 of Slovakia's 59 foreign ambassadors, declared a sweeping amnesty for criminal offenses and cancelled an April referendum on joining NATO and direct presidential elections. Meciar has been widely blamed for the growing isolation of Slovakia. Ankara The Turkish government has stopped enforcing a ban on Islamic headscarves in universities and religious schools. The climbdown came after weeks of demonstrations by thousands of university students in Istanbul and Ankara, representing both the right and the left. Despite pressure by Turkey's secularist military to enforce the prohibition, government officials saw that the issue was being politically exploited by Islamists. The government also decided against bringing ex-Prime Minister Necmettin Erbakan, leader of the banned Refah Party, to trial for crimes against the secular state. Jerusalem Hoping to rehabilitate the humiliated Mossad intelligence agency, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu named a veteran spy as its new director and a respected general as deputy. Ephraim Halevy, who spent 28 years at Mossad and became the organization's No. 2 before being named ambassador to the E.U. in 1996, will succeed Danny Yatom, who resigned in the wake of two botched operations. Halevy's deputy, Major-General Amiram Levine, head of the army's Northern Command, is expected to take over the Mossad in due course. Harare Nearly 80% of Zimbabwean workers stayed away from their jobs in a two-day strike to protest soaring taxes and food prices. In the capital, Harare, and in provincial cities, schools and government offices closed at the urging of the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions. New Delhi The likelihood of the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party forming a government came closer to reality as results were announced for nearly all of the parliamentary seats contested in the general election. In its best showing so far, a coalition of parties led by the BJP won 250 seats, which left it just 22 short of a majority. The rival Congress Party and United Front won 166 and 98 seats respectively, and although some leaders declared their intent to block the BJP by joining forces, there was strong opposition within the Front to backing a Congress-led government. Colombo Two bombs exploded in Colombo, Sri Lanka's capital, killing at least 32 people. The devices, which were detonated on a bus in front of the city's railway station, are thought to have been placed by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, the country's main separatist guerrilla group. Hundreds of people were reported injured, at least 40 other vehicles were destroyed and 50 shops were damaged. The Tamil Tigers are fighting for an independent homeland in northeastern Sri Lanka. Pyongyang North Korea's state news agency says the country could run out of food in mid-March, despite dramatic reductions in food allocations for its people. Daily grain rations were cut in February, and are well below the consumption level that international experts say adults need to remain relatively healthy. Expecting such a crisis, the U.N. World Food Program appealed in January for 658,000 tons of food. The only significant response has been a U.S. pledge of 200,000 tons of food aid--worth $75 million. Auckland After two weeks of power outages in the center of their city, Aucklanders got more bad news: normal electricity service is at least another month away. The estimate came from power officials after repair work failed on two of the four cables supplying electricity to New Zealand's largest city. Many central hotels, restaurants and small businesses struggled on, using portable generators, while residents and businesses faced rolling power cuts. Treasury estimates indicate the problem may cost as much as $350 million. Santiago A flurry of protests and lawsuits marked the week before General Augusto Pinochet's retirement as head of the Chilean army and his swearing-in as a senator-for-life. Opponents of the 82-year-old former dictator hoped the legal actions, in which Pinochet is accused of ordering a range of abuses--including kidnapping, torture and homicide--while he was head of the military junta in 1973-90 will prevent him from holding the Senate seat. His new position is stipulated in the 1980 constitution passed by his regime, however, and fellow members of the right-wing opposition control the Senate. The outlook for the lawsuits is also bleak. Most of the abuses cited are covered under a 1978 amnesty law. Cartegena Del Chaira Ahead of Colombia's congressional elections on Sunday, the country's principal guerrilla group dealt government forces their worst military defeat in more than 30 years of conflict. According to estimates by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), guerrillas in the southern coca-producing region of Caqueta killed at least 80 soldiers in three days of intense fighting in the remote Quebrada El Billar area. President Ernesto Samper acknowledged that the rebels had struck "a heavy blow." Rio Canas El Nino kept raging in Ecuador and Peru, where an estimated 350 people have been killed and 250,000 driven from their homes since December. In the Pacific weather pattern's latest wind-and-rain assault on Ecuador, 20 villagers in Rio Canas in the coastal province of Manabi perished when a landslide buried their houses under meters of mud and rocks. Storm-related damage is edging toward $600 million in the country. Fishing, agriculture and other enterprises have been severely affected by the vagaries of El Nino--which include drought in some areas--from Guyana to Chile. Miami Citing a "pattern of fraudulent, intentional and criminal conduct" in last November's election for mayor of Miami, a Florida judge threw out the results. Mayor Xavier Suarez and the man the results showed he defeated--his predecessor Joe Carollo--both claimed the job after the ruling, in which Judge Thomas Wilson found no evidence that Suarez had any role in rampant absentee-vote fraud in the Cuban-American "Little Havana" district. City commissioners have until March 14 to choose an interim mayor to serve until a May 4 election. Mountain View Ice crystals that could help space travelers have been found beneath the moon's poles, confirming previous evidence. Scientists at the Ames Research Center in California said a robot Lunar Prospector spacecraft made the important discovery. If water could be "mined" on the moon, it would make a permanent settlement feasible. That, in turn, could be used in the development and testing of technologies for further space exploration. Montreal In a step that may well decide the future of Canada, the unpopular Daniel Johnson stepped down as leader of the Quebec Liberal Party. As a result, federalists are hoping that Jean Charest--leader of the federal Progressive Conservative Party and enormously popular in Quebec--will take over leadership of the Quebec Liberals. That move is considered a real possibility, albeit a highly unusual one. Polls show that Charest could defeat Quebec Premier Lucien Bouchard, ending the threat of another Quebec referendum--and of separation.
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