NOTEBOOK/WORLD WATCH	FEBRUARY 9, 1998 VOL. 151 NO. 6
	World Watch LONDON Prime Minister Tony Blair ordered a new judicial inquiry into the "Bloody Sunday" deaths of 14 Catholics shot by British paratroopers during a 1972 civil rights march in Londonderry, Northern Ireland. The original inquiry concluded that the soldiers had fired in self-defense, while acknowledging that the victims had been unarmed. The Irish government and victims' families have submitted new evidence. Peace talks continued, despite the absence of Ulster Democratic Party delegates, who walked out before being expelled over links to paramilitaries responsible for several recent murders. SEVILLE The Basque organization E.T.A.'s campaign of violence against Popular Party officials in Spain took a new turn when gunmen killed the deputy mayor of Seville and his wife. The murders of Alberto Jimenez Becerril and his wife, Asuncion Garcia, in the southern city marked the first time in their current campaign that E.T.A. separatists have targeted a non-Basque P.P. official--and raised fears that all governing party politicians were potential targets. The couple, both 37-year-old lawyers, were shot at point-blank range as they walked home from a dinner with friends, and their deaths brought protesters onto the streets of Seville. Jimenez was the fourth P.P. councillor to be murdered since last July. WURZBURG Germany's 27 Catholic bishops yielded to a papal order demanding that Catholic counseling centers stop issuing certificates of attendance to women planning to undergo legal abortions. Under German law, pre-abortion counseling is required. The 260 Catholic agencies in Germany's network of 1,600 counseling centers will remain active, but only for anti-abortion advice. Church officials had argued that counseling under the law provided opportunities to dissuade women from terminating their pregnancies. Chancellor Helmut Kohl's government fears that the controversy could antagonize some women voters in next autumn's election, especially in heavily Catholic Bavaria. MOSCOW After years of Dna testing and forensic investigations, the bones of Russia's last Czar, Nicholas II, and his family have been positively identified. "This evidence is complete. There can be no doubt," declared First Deputy Prime Minister. Boris Nemtsov, announcing the conclusions of a commission established by President Boris Yeltsin to determine whether the nine skeletons exhumed in 1991 in a forest near Yekaterinburg are the remains of Nicholas, his wife Alexandra, their three children and four servants. Yeltsin is to decide this month on the Romanovs' final burial place. BARI Italian police rounded up nearly 60 Albanians and Iraqi Kurds in the southern region of Puglia as European Union justice ministers--meeting in Birmingham, England--discussed problems with the Schengen agreement. That 1995 accord, which opened up borders among most E.U. members, has come under attack since nearly 2,000 Turkish and Iraqi Kurds began arriving in Italy two months ago. E.U. foreign ministers, meeting earlier, approved a 43-point plan that aims to halt trafficking in refugees by organized crime groups. It also calls for the immediate expulsion of those illegally present in the E.U. BANJA LUKA The efforts of Milorad Dodik, the moderate new Prime Minister, to change the outcast status of Republika Srpska paid off when the European Union pledged an immediate aid package of $7 million, followed by a World Bank offer of $17 million. Dodik--who is supported by Muslim deputies--agreed to issue common passports and establish a common currency and license plates. He also endorsed a plan to allow refugees to return. In his attempt to isolate alleged war criminal Radovan Karadzic, the former Bosnian Serb leader, Dodik is moving the capital to Banja Luka from the hardliners' stronghold of Pale. He has pledged to hand over indicted war criminals for trial. ALGIERS A day after E.U. ministers met in Brussels to pledge their continuing commitment to ending the slaughter in Algeria, gunmen killed at least 34 more people in attacks south of Algiers. Following the violence in the Blida, Djelfa and Laghouat areas, attributed to Islamic radicals, security forces said they had killed 18 Muslim guerrillas. The bloodshed--which has taken an estimated 75,000 lives since it began in 1992--peaked during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which ended last week. NAKURU Politically motivated tribal attacks in central Kenya have left at least 87 people dead since early January and appear to be spreading. Thousands of Kikuyu in Rift Valley province have fled their homes to escape the burning, looting and killing, which is said to have been carried out by members of the Kalenjin tribal group, to which President Daniel arap Moi and many of his close allies belong. Church leaders and opposition groups blame Moi's government for the violence, contending that those who voted against him last December were being punished. POONAMALLEE Nearly seven years after Rajiv Gandhi was killed by a suicide bomber at a political rally near Madras, 26 Tamils were sentenced to hang for their roles in a Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam plot to assassinate the former Indian Prime Minister. Only two of the 26--13 Sri Lankans and 13 Indians--were found guilty of murder. The others, who provided various forms of assistance, were sentenced under anti-terrorism laws permitting the death penalty--a rarity in India. KANDY Fifteen people were killed in a suicide truck-bomb attack at the most sacred Buddhist temple in Sri Lanka. Tamil separatists were believed to be responsible for the deaths at the Dalada Maligawa, where the faithful believe a tooth of the Buddha is kept. Following the attack, the government outlawed the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, thereby refusing to enter into more discussions toward ending 15 years of civil war on the island. JAKARTA As the Indonesian government continued to grapple with its economic and political troubles, celebrations marking the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan and the lunar new year were marred by rioting in two towns on the island of Java. Attacks on shops and market stalls in Sarang and Kragan were directed at the Chinese minority who comprise merely 3% of the Indonesian population, yet control more than 70% of the nation's commerce. The Chinese believe they are being made scapegoats. TOKYO Finance Minister Hiroshi Mitsuzuka resigned after public prosecutors raided the Finance Ministry and arrested two civil servants suspected of corruption. Inspectors Koichi Miyagawa and Toshimi Taniuchi are said to have accepted entertainment and acquired property at below-market rates in exchange for giving confidential information to executives at the Asahi and Sanwa banks. Two other ministry officials committed suicide shortly before being questioned by prosecutors. Former prosecutor Hikaru Matsunaga was appointed as Finance Minister. PRINCE RUPERT Alaska agreed to drop its lawsuit against British Columbian fishermen for their illegal blockade of a U.S. ferry in the Canadian port of Prince Rupert last summer, in exchange for an injunction against future blockades and a three-year, $1.9 million tourism initiative. The Canadian-funded program would promote travel to the U.S. state as well as to northwestern Canada. The deal promises to thaw relations between U.S. and Canadian fishermen, but does not address the larger dispute between the two countries over who has the right to dwindling stocks of Pacific salmon. BRASILIA Satellite data just released by the Brazilian government shows that while burning and logging continue to destroy huge sections of the Amazon rain forest, the rate of devastation has slowed in the past two years. A range of steps to reduce deforestation in the Amazon was implemented in 1996, following record levels of destruction in 1995, when just over 29,000 sq km were cut down and burned. Although the rate of devastation fell by 1997, continuing deforestation means that 12.9% of the Brazilian Amazon has been cleared--and that just over 11% of that percentage has occurred since mid-1994. Recent legislation imposes, for the first time, fines and imprisonment for illegal deforestation. BIRMINGHAM The sporadic violence at U.S. abortion clinics has claimed its first bomb victim. A primitive device exploded outside a clinic in Birmingham, Alabama, killing a security guard. Throughout the country, five other people have been killed in incidents at abortion clinics since 1993--all of them shooting deaths.
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