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===== AIM NEWS for Saturday, September 23, 2000 =====
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BELGRADE REFUSED EU
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PARIS, France, September 22, 2000 (BLIC)

Yugoslav authorities have not given approval for arrival of
delegation of European observers. EU delegation consisting of 20
members submitted requests for visas. "Not a single visa has been
issued. Belgrade has refused to allow EU deputies to fulfil their
mandate completely free and without any obstacles", EU statement
reads.


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PRE ELECTIONAL SILENCE VIOLATED
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BELGRADE, September 23, 2000 (Fo-Net)

The supervisory body: The Montenegrin media are violating the
electoral -- silence The supervisory board conducting the elections
has "ascertained that the state media in Montenegro are conducting
intensive political and electoral propaganda during the electoral
silence", it is said in the board's statement today.

The statement assesses that this is a "harsh violation of the
Law on elections for federal delegates and rules of the supervisory
board". "The supervisory board demands that the media in Montenegro
immediately cease such undemocratic and illegal action and warns that
media in Serbia may not transmit programs of the Montenegrin media
containing electoral propaganda", stated the supervisory board. The
statement also demanded of the republic and federal authorities to
"immediately take action against those who are consciously and
deliberately violating the law".

'Politika' violated the electoral silence -- Today's issue of
the Belgrade daily "Politika" published a comment by the Tanjug
agency titled "Everything is clear", under the text about the start
of the electoral silence. The comment judges that the opposition
parties had "organized a campaign against the elections, being aware
of the fact that they could never win in the elections since they are
supported by only four percent of the voters". "It is obviously a
scenario manipulating the domestic and foreign public, which
propagates an alleged electoral theft before the elections have even
held" states the Tanjug comment.


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DJUKANUVIC: MONTENEGRO WILL BE READY
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PODGORICA, September 22, 2000 (I-NET)

Montenegrin president Milo Djukanovic declined yesterday the
possibility that president of FRY Slobodan Milosevic orders military
action in Montenegro after the elections. However, Djukanovic said
Montenegro will be in the state of readiness.


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MACEDONIAN MINISTER'S VISIT POSTPONDED
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PODGORICA, September 23, 2000 (SRNA)

The visit of Macedonian minister of foreign affairs Aleskandar
Dimitrov to Montenegro which was planned for today has been postponed
and the new date will be announced - the SRNA news agency was been
told in the Secretariat for information of the Montenegrin
Government.

Dimitrov was to hold talks with the head of Montenegrin
diplomacy Branko Lukovic on developing cooperation, as well as
opening a Macedonian consulate in the Montenegrin capital.


=========================
APPEAL BY PATRIARCH PAVLE
=========================

BELGRADE, September 23, 2000 (BLIC)

"Today when election campaign is finished, we feel it necessary
to appeal again to all relevant representatives of the actual power
and all other participants in the upcoming elections. They all have
to do everything they can that elections are carried out in order and
peace so that election results reflect the real will of the people.
Voice of the people is voice of God, the ancient saying reads.
Therefore, election results must be accepted by all", the appeal by
Serbian Patriarch Pavle reads.


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PROTEST AGAINST KFOR ABUSE OF DIPLOMATS
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NEW YORK, USA, September 22, 2000 (Tanjug)
Yugoslavia has lodged a protest with the U.N. Security Council over
the impermissible practice of the international missions KFOR and
UNMIK in Kosovo and Metohija to abuse foreign diplomatic
representatives accredited in Belgrade during their visits to the
southern Serbian province.

Foreign representatives recently alerted the Yugoslav Foreign
Ministry in connection with increasingly frequent incidents involving
rough and arrogant actions by KFOR and UNMIK members, who abuse
diplomats, subject them to body searches, search their personal
luggage, using force, which is impermissible.

The letter drew attention to the latest incident which occurred
on Sept 17, when Russian Ambassador to Yugoslavia Valeri Yegoshkin
was stopped at the administrative border with Kosovo and Metohija.
Disregarding the ambassador's diplomatic passport, KFOR insisted on
searching his automobile.

In the protest against such actions by the international
mission, Yugoslavia pointed out to the Security Council that the
Vienna Convention on diplomatic relations guarantees freedom of
movement and travel to members of diplomatic representative offices
in the territory of the country where the given mission is located.
KFOR and UNMIK have no right to obstruct foreign diplomats accredited
to Yugoslavia in performing their duty in Kosovo and Metohija, an
autonomous province of the Republic of Serbia, a constituent part of
Yugoslavia.


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GENERAL URGES TO TRUST HIS SOLDIERS
====================================

PRISTINA, September 16, 2000 (RFE/RL)

Major-General Valerii Yevtukovich told journalists in Pristina
on 16 September: "We will not use force, but we will continue our
talks to find a solution that allows Russian troops to deploy in
Rahovec. We believe that we will find a positive result," an RFE/RL
South Slavic Service correspondent reported. Ethnic Albanians have
been blocking the roads to that town since late August to prevent the
deployment of the Russian KFOR contingent there, arguing that Russian
mercenaries committed atrocities in that region during the war.
Yevtukovich stressed that the Russian forces must go to Rahovec as
part of the [18 June] Helsinki agreements and reassured the Kosovo
Albanians that the Russian forces are neutral. He stressed that "the
Russian Federation [is] not responsible for the things that
[mercenaries had done, and those things] must not be linked to the
Russian peacekeeping mission."


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AMBASSADOR ABOUT CONSEQUENCES OF URANIUM BOMBS
===============================================

BRATISLAVA , Slovakia, September 22, 2000 (Tanjug)

Yugoslav Ambassador to Slovakia Veljko Curcic held a press
conference for Slovak reporters in Bratislava on Thursday, pointing
out the consequences of the use of depleted uranium during the NATO
aggression on Yugoslavia.

The effects of radiation from the 30,000-50,000 dropped shells
with depleted uranium filling, most of which were used over Kosovo
and Metohija province, are now increasingly felt by members of the
international force KFOR, including 40 Slovak troops, deployed in the
most polluted area, the ambassador warns.

Many KFOR troops have already fallen ill. The Netherlands, for
instance, has already recalled its troops. Experts have named the
disease the Balkans Syndrome, and this fact is becoming increasingly
accessible to the world public, he said.


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ITALIANS DEMAND INVESTIGATION OF CONTAMINATION
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ROME, Italy, September 22, 2000 (Politika)

Italian MPs of the Northern League party on Thursday asked
parliament immediately to form a commission to determine the actual
state of contamination with depleted uranium in Serbia's Kosovo and
Metohija province, where Italian troops are deployed within the
international force KFOR.

NATO used shells with depleted uranium filling during the
aggression on Yugoslavia in March-June 1999. The present initiative
was launched in reaction to a little-advertised report that two
Italian troops from Kosovo were recently urgently taken to a Rome
hospital because of the sudden appearance of symptoms pointing at
leukemia.

"It is obvious that a competent parliamentary commission is
necessary, which should evaluate the validity of reports on the
sudden incidence of leukemia among KFOR Italian troops, and to
determine whether our troops are exposed to a high risk because of
the contamination in Kosovo and Metohija," a Northern League MP told
parliament.

These grave accusations were answered sharply by KFOR Italian
contingent spokesman in Pec, Col. Gianfranco Scalas. He said the
troops had not been returned to Italy because of leukemia and that
examinations of the field had repeatedly shown that the present
radioactivity was within normal limits.


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GERMAN GENERAL: NATO WANTED WAR IN YU
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BERLIN, Germany, September 22, 2000 (Tanjug)

A German general is on Friday quoted as saying that the true
reason for last year's NATO aggression on Yugoslavia was that, by
attacking Serbs, NATO wished to emplace its new strategy.

The war was not caused by any alleged violation of Kosovo-
Metohija Albanians' human rights, but by NATO's choice of a small,
puny nation on which to demonstrate its credibility and pave the way
for a new global strategy, retired General Heinz Lockwei said.

Speaking for Berlin's Neues Deutschland newspaper, Lockwei said
it was no wonder that U.S. President Bill Clinton on March 24, 1999,
the day the air strikes began, stressed NATO's credibility rather
than a "humanitarian catastrophe" as the reason for the campaign.

Lockwei is the author of the book Der Kosovo Konflikt (The
Kosovo Conflict), in which he puts forward a series of accusations
against NATO.

Until this summer, he was Germany's representative to the
Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) in Vienna,
when he was replaced after exposing the lies of German Defence
Minister Rudolf Scharping.

In his book and numerous television interviews, Lockwei has
offered proof that Scharping himself had thought up the so-called
Horshoe Plan, which purported to be a Serb plan for driving the
ethnic Albanians out of Kosovo-Metohija.

According to Lockwei, five of the six members of the Contact
Group on Yugoslavia had maintained before the February 1999
Rambouillet, France, conference that a military intervention in
Kosovo-Metohija would require a mandate from the United Nations.

However, he explained, the United States were against this, and
then Germany changed sides, to be followed eventually by all the
others.


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ANTI-IMF PROTESTS
=================

PRAGUE, Czechs Republic, September 22, 2000 (Politika)

Parallely with the International Monetary Fund and World Bank
annual meeting in Prague, started the meeting of those who are
against globalization and who wants to express their dissatisfaction
with politics of those institutions. They want to send the message
that " there is no possibility to reform these institutions because
they are in deep control of supranational corporations that determine
their politics, and their only interest is profit."

The organisators of the contrameeting expect to concretize world
alternatives without IFM and WB during the three-days discussion.


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NORTH AND SOUTH KOREA NEGOTIATE
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KOREAS, September 23, 2000 (Deutche Welle)

North and South Korea were involved in talks on Saturday with
Red Cross negotiators trying to work out plans for further reunions
of families separated by the heavily fortified border. Red Cross
officials from the two Koreas have been meeting since Wednesday to
plan reunions like the gatherings held in August, when 100 people
from each country were allowed to visit relatives in Seoul and
Pyongyang. The reunions are one of the most important developments
between the two Koreas, since they held their first-ever summit in
June. Some 10 million people in the two Koreas have been cut off from
family members or hometowns for the last half century.


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BOMB EXPLOSIONS IN INDIAN KASHMIR
=================================

JAMMU, India, September 23, 2000 (Reuters)

Five people were killed and two others injured in two powerful
bomb blasts in India's strife-ridden state of Jammu and Kashmir,
police said. The bombs rocked the Sangaldan area in Udhampur
district, 200 km (125 miles) north of Jammu, the state's winter
capital, a police official said. "The first bomb exploded in a shop
belonging to a Hindu at seven in the morning killing five civilians,
including the shopkeeper, on the spot, followed by another blast, 200
metres away from the first one, at 10 a.m. (0430 GMT) injuring two,"
he said.

Eight separatists were killed in three different incidents of
insurgency-related violence in the state's border district of Poonch
on Friday.

Separatist violence has surged in the region after a frontline
Kashmiri separatist group, Hizbul Mujahideen, called off a brief
unilateral ceasefire last month.

India, which controls 45 percent of the Kashmir region, accuses
Pakistan of arming and training Kashmiri separatists, a charge
Islamabad denies. Pakistan rules a third of Kashmir and China the
rest.


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RUSSIAN PLANE FLIES TO BAGHDAD
==============================

MOSCOW, Russia, September 22, 2000 (Deutche Welle)

A Russian plane took off on Saturday on the third direct flight
in two months from Moscow to Baghdad in moves seen as tests by Russia
of the U.N. sanctions regime against Iraq. The plane, with five tones
of medicines and humanitarian groups left Moscow a day after a French
plane landed in Baghdad, which sparked criticism from the United
States and Britain. Russia insists it is not breaking the 10-year-old
U.N. sanctions imposed on Iraq for its 1990 invasion of Kuwait,
saying a ban on non-commercial flights is not included in the
sanctions.


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TURKISH SCARF BAN PENALISES STUDENTS
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ANKARA, Turkey, September 23, 2000 (BBC)

As the new academic year begins in Turkey, thousands of female
students are being prevented from entering their universities and
colleges because they want to wear the Islamic style headscarf.

The students say their human rights are being infringed but
influential figures in the state education system insist that wearing
the scarf is a statement of political intent and current laws allow
them to ban it.

On the first day of term at the beginning of the week men
wearing beards were also banned because facial hair is seen by some
defenders of Turkish secularism as an expression of Islamic identity.

Now the beards have been let in but the women wearing
headscarves are still locked out.


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COURT RULES SIAMESE TWINS CAN BE SEPARATED
===========================================

LONDON, UK, September 23, 2000 (CBC)

A British Court of Appeal has ruled that doctors can surgically
separate a pair of Siamese twins, even though it's against the
parents' wishes.

Health experts have predicted the baby girls, Jodie and Mary,
will die within months if they remain together. But they believe
Jodie could survive on her own. Born Aug. 8 at St. Mary's Hospital in
Manchester, the twins are joined at the lower abdomen. Mary has
primitive brain functions and shares Jodie's heart and lungs.

Their parents - identified only as Roman Catholics from Malta -
bitterly oppose the move. "We believe that nature should take its
course," they said in a statement. "If it's God's will that both our
children should not survive then so be it." The Roman Catholic
archbishop of Westminster, Cormac Murphy O'Connor, supported the
parents in the case.

One of the three judges who ruled the operation should go ahead
said it was "excruciatingly difficult" to decide that one twin should
be killed to save the other. "There are the most dramatic questions
of life and death involved," said Lord Justice Alan Ward. "One's
heart bleeds for the family. There are frightfully, seriously
difficult questions of law, criminal law, which have not been fully
explored for centuries."


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HOSPITALS IN MISSING EMBRYOS BLUNDER
====================================

NORTH HAMPSHIRE, UK, September 23, 2000 (BBC)

A hospital has admitted making a major blunder concerning human
embryos being stored for fertility treatment.

Administration checks made at the North Hampshire Hospital in
Basingstoke and the private Hampshire Clinic, which share facilities,
revealed some embryos to be missing from storage.

The hospital said at least 10 couples hoping to be made pregnant
through in vitro fertilisation (IVF) treatment could be affected -
but The Sun newspaper reports the scandal may affect up to 80 women.

A spokesman for the hospital, which is run by a NHS Trust,
confirmed that a senior member of staff had been suspended pending
the outcome of an official probe.

A spokesman from the Department of Health stressed there was no
risk of any women being mistakenly impregnated with the wrong egg.


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WEB RESEARCH CENTRE SET TO OPEN
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LONDON, UK, September 23, 2000(BBC)

A research center to examine the impact of new technology is to
be opened before the end of this year. But the Department for
Education says it is still unsure whether it will be a "virtual"
center or physically located within a university or commercial
research unit. This will depend upon the tenders submitted to the
education department. A spokesman said they were looking forward to
some "creative" proposals.

The funding of the new institution will also depend on the
outcome of the tendering process, with a contract to be awarded in
November and the launch of the center expected in December.

The research center will be responsible for in-depth analysis of
the application of new technologies such as the Internet and will
help to provide expert advice to the government.

The Minister for Learning and Technology, Michael Wills, said on
Friday the center will initially focus on two areas - the so-called
"digital divide" where there is unequal access to new technologies
and the link between employability and new technology.


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STEVE REDGRAVE'S FIFTH GOLD
===========================

SYDNEY, Australia, September23, 2000 (Deutche Welle)

Britain's Steve Redgrave made Olympic rowing history on Saturday
when he claimed his fifth gold in 5 consecutive Games in the men's
coxless fours. The 38-year-old's record is bettered only by Hungarian
fencer Aladar Gerevich who won gold in the team sabre fencing at six
successive Games from 1932 to 1960. The British rowing great won his
first gold in the coxless fours in Los Angeles in 1984.


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THE NEWS
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The news edited by Milka Zrnic

AIM, Belgrade, September 23, 2000 17:00


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