News In Brief

Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi will meet Sikh political leader Harchand Singh Longowal today for talks on the situation in strife-torn northern Punjab State. State-run All-India Radio said the meeting was arranged at the prime minister's initiative. The development is seen as a breakthrough in Prime Minister Gandhi's bid to end a three-year crisis in Punjab, where extremists are fighting for a separate Sikh nation.

Korean legislators to talk of a North-South conference

North and South Korean parliamentarians will meet at the border village of Panmunjom today in the first meeting of its kind since the Korean Peninsula was divided at the end of World War II. The meeting, attended by five members of parliament from each side, will discuss plans for a full-scale parliamentary conference between the two Koreas.

House Democrats offer to resume budget talks

House Democrats said Monday they are ready to resume congressional budget talks if Republicans can stop feuding among themselves long enough to draft a compromise deficit-reduction package to bring to the bargaining table. The talks aimed at writing a compromise version of fiscal 1986 budgets passed by the House and Senate broke down last week after Senate negotiators rejected a House compromise offer as not providing enough major domestic spending cuts and providing too little for the military. m

Islamic Jihad says it set off bombs at Copenhagen sites

Bombs blasted Scandinavia's oldest synagogue and the office of Northwest Orient Airlines in Copenhagen Monday, wounding 27 people in an attack claimed by Islamic Jihad (Islamic Holy War) to avenge an Israeli raid in southern Lebanon Sunday. Islamic Jihad is believed to be a name used by groups of Shiite Muslim fundamentalists. They have carried out a string of suicide bombings and kidnappings in Lebanon in a bid to clear it of Western influence.

3 West Bank settlers get life terms for murders

A Jerusalem court sentenced three members of a Jewish underground group to life imprisonment Monday for murdering Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. It sentenced 12 others convicted of anti-Arab attacks -- including a plot to blow up one of Islam's holiest mosques -- to prison terms of 3 to 10 years. The arrest and year-long trial of the men, settlers from the West Bank, fueled deep political tensions. Right-wing nationalists led by Foreign Minister Yitzhak Shamir pressed for a pardon, while left-wingers said such a move would undermine Israel's judicial system.

4 charged with murder plot in killing of Palau President

Four men, including the son of a state governor, were charged with conspiracy and murder Monday in the June 30 assassination of Haruo I. Remeliik, the first President of the Republic of Palau, officials said. An election for a new president of the US-administered trust territory in the Caroline Islands, 500 miles east of the Philippines, has been tentatively set for Aug. 28.

OPEC defers output debate to discuss call for price cut

OPEC oil ministers put off a debate Monday on whether to cut production and focused on Saudi Arabia's call for lower prices. The decision to delay debate on production came after Iraq, Ecuador, Gabon and Qatar all demanded bigger shares of OPEC sales. Those requests ran head-on into an Iranian proposal for cutting each member's output by 7 percent. By delaying debate, the ministers were acknowledging that the most pressing question was whether to reduce prices.

Spanish ambassador to Zimbabwe slain

The Spanish ambassador to Zimbabwe, Jos'e Luis Blanco Briones, was found slain Monday on a small farm just outside Harare. A Western diplomat said Mr. Briones had been beaten and was found near his car by a passing workman. The reason for the attack is still not known.

Sudanese finance minister resigns over policy rift

Sudan's finance minister, Aouad Abdul-Maguid, resigned over policy differences with Prime Minister al-Gazouli Dafaa-Allah and the powerful trade union alliance, state-owned newspapers reported Monday. The finance minister's move followed a bank workers' strike last week over government economic policies they said were imposed by the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.

Dollar plunges against lira after devaluation by Italy

The dollar fell sharply against the Italian lira on the nation's foreign-exchange markets Monday, two days after the Italian currency was devalued by 8 percent. On Saturday, the Monetary Committee of the Common Market accepted Italy's request to devalue the lira by 6 percent within the European Monetary System, the joint alignment of West European currencies. At the same time, Monetary Committee officials, meeting in Basel, Switzerland, increased the value of other European currencies by 2 percent, in effect making the lira's devaluation 8 percent.

Weinberger, Joint Chiefs ask US to reject POW revisions

Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger and the Joint Chiefs of Staff have recommended that the United States reject changes to the 1949 Geneva Convention governing war prisoners, on grounds the revisions could be read as applying to terrorists, officials said Monday. The revisions, signed by administration officials under former President Carter but never submitted to the Senate for ratification, are undergoing a final review by the State Department, the officials said.

More than 100 nations have signed the protocols, but only 40 or so have formally ratified them.

No prosecution planned yet in Greenpeace ship sinking

Prime Minister David Lange said Monday that he knows who bombed the Greenpeace flagship Rainbow Warrior but that there was not enough evidence to prosecute. He did not identify the suspect. The Rainbow Warrior sank in Auckland Harbor July 10 after two bomb blasts breached the hull and killed a Greenpeace photographer.

Westinghouse averts strike with concessions on wages

Westinghouse Electric Corporation avoided a walkout Monday by 28,500 hourly and white-collar workers at dozens of plants nationwide when it dropped demands for wage concessions and agreed to three-year contracts calling for annual 3 percent wage increases.

Former Navy auditor accuses carrier sailors of supply theft

Sailors threw surplus military supplies off the aircraft carrier Kitty Hawk, stole Navy equipment, and manipulated records to cover the thefts and sloppy bookkeeping, a former Navy auditor alleged. Petty Officer 1st Class Robert Jackson, in a 25-page statement, said he called questionable transactions to his superiors' attention but was told to falsify records to make them appear legitimate. Jackson's statement, along with information from 1,100 pages of Navy records and internal audits and memos, were reported Sunday in the Los Angeles Times.

US lifts its warning on airport in Athens

The US lifted the travel advisory it had imposed on the Athens International Airport after the hijacking there of TWA flight 847. The June 18 advisory warned Americans that they risked a higher-than-normal chance of hijacking by using the airport. The warning was lifted Monday after an inspection of the airport last week by a Federal Aviation Administration team.