World Watch

ISRAEL
Caught in a Vicious Spiral of Violence
As israeli foreign minister shimon peres met with Palestinian negotiators in Greece, the violent point-counterpoint at home continued. Notable fatalities included militant Islamic Jihad leader Iyad Hardan, who died in a phone booth rigged to explode in the West Bank. On Thursday, Palestinian security officials came under attack from soldiers as they returned from talks with Israeli authorities. The Israeli army says that someone on the Palestinian side fired first. Also on Thursday, Palestinians launched mortar attacks on several Israeli communities. Israel responded by striking Palestinian security posts as well as a power station, leaving thousands of Palestinian homes without electricity. Israel’s government also announced that it would build hundreds of new homes in Jewish settlements in the West Bank. The U.S. decried the move as inflammatory.

ITALY
Bin Laden Bombers
Police in Milan arrested five Tunisians on charges of smuggling arms and explosives and belonging to a criminal organization. The men are believed to be members of an Islamic guerrilla group linked to the Saudi terror suspect, Osama bin Laden. Milan prosecutor Stefano Dambruoso said the men, and five others who are still sought, had been part of a botched plan to bomb a central square in Strasbourg, France, in December.

YUGOSLAVIA
A Tug-of-War over Slobodan Milosevic
The U.N. war crimes tribunal delivered an arrest warrant for ousted strongman Slobodan Milosevic to Yugoslav officials and repeated its demand that the war-crimes suspect stand trial in the Hague. Earlier, a Belgrade court turned down Milosevic’s request for release. In his appeal, he admitted for the first time that he used state funds to equip Serb rebels in Bosnia and Croatia.

BULGARIA
The Popular Vote
Bulgaria’s exiled King Simeon II announced Friday that he is founding a political movement to contest parliamentary elections on June 17. Simeon, who has lived in Spain for most of the past 50 years, is the first of Eastern Europe’s exiled monarchs to enter the political fray. His election platform: to unite the country, fight corruption and improve living standards within 800 days of taking office.

MACEDONIA
Time to Talk
Nearly a month after the sudden ethnic Albanian insurgency in the north of the country the Macedonian government claimed to have crushed the uprising, allowing the border with Kosovo to reopen. nato Secretary-General George Robertson and other international leaders took advantage of the interlude to encourage Macedonians and ethnic Albanians to establish a lasting accommodation.

RUSSIA
Putin’s Remedy
President Vladimir Putin last week addressed the daunting challenges of the country’s economy. He told political leaders gathered in the Kremlin’s Marble Hall that structural reform was essential if Russia is to modernize. He blamed bribery and bureaucracy for crippling industry, saying that every year more than $20 billion of capital fled the country, and called for radical changes to improve the climate for investors. “The essence of many of our problems is a lack of confidence in the state,” he added, “which has betrayed its citizens so many times.”

CONGO
All Change
With a view to “remedying the country’s troubles,” Congo President Joseph Kabila sacked his entire government, which had been largely unchanged from the administration he had inherited from his assassinated father, Laurent-Desiré. A government spokesman said that all those dismissed would be required to prove their innocence of any administrative wrongdoing. Following the arrival of U.N. peacekeepers two weeks ago, Zimbabwe withdrew the first 200 of its soldiers from the war-torn state and Uganda restated its decision to pull out forces.

NEPAL
Grim Anniversary
Maoist guerrillas in Nepal marked the fifth anniversary of their war against the govern-ment with attacks on three police stations in the country’s remote western region, killing more than 70 policemen. The rebel group models itself on Peru’s Shining Path guerrillas, and runs a parallel administration in the isolated parts of the country it controls. More than 1,500 people have died in the insurgency, which began in 1996, when the Maoists pulled out of Nepal’s parliament and launched a “people’s war.”

BURMA
Calling Card
For the first time in five years a U.N. human rights rapporteur has visited Burma. Paulo Sergio Pinheiro, the replacement for Rajsoomer Lallah, who was never allowed into the country in the four years he held the post, spent three days meeting officials, including Lieut. General Khin Nyunt, Secretary One of the ruling State Peace and Development Council. On the final day of his visit Pinheiro met pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi at her home, where she has been virtually under house arrest since September.

JAPAN
Historical Revision
A new history schoolbook, approved by Japan’s Education, Science and Technology Ministry, has prompted protests from her neighbors. China and South Korea attacked the text, which they say plays down Japan’s wartime aggression. A Ministry panel revised 137 sections, including one that referred to the 1937 Nanjing Massacre, when around 300,000 Chinese civilians died after Japanese troops overran the city, as “nothing on the scale of the Holocaust.” The revised book will be issued to schools in 2002.

PHILIPPINES
Another Curtain Call for Estrada?
The Philippine Supreme Court unanimously rejected a claim by disgraced leader Joseph Estrada that he was still President and immune from prosecution. The decision paved the way for prosecutors to indict the actor-turned-politician on eight counts of corruption-related crime, including economic plunder, which carries a possible death sentence. The former President’s lawyers have petitioned the court to suspend its normal rules and permit another appeal but admitted it was a “long-shot” motion.

CANADA
Logging Off
A landmark agreement has saved 600,000 hectares of coastal Canadian rainforest. Timber companies, the pro-vincial government and native groups have agreed to ban logging to protect a vast swath of British Columbia, home to the rare white kermode bear, which includes some of the last old-growth temperate rainforest in the world. A coalition of environmentalists called off a five-year Greenpeace-organized boycott of companies logging in the area.

UNITED STATES
At Long Last
Negotiators from America, Russia and France met in Florida to guide talks aimed at resolving a 13-year conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh. The two countries’ Presidents, Robert Kocharian and Heydar Aliyev, aim to settle a conflict that has blighted the economies and political stability of both countries. Years after a 1994 cease-fire hundreds of thousands of displaced persons are still in camps in Azerbaijan.