News Currents
MIDDLE EAST AND GULF
Twelve Palestinian activists ordered to be expelled from the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip have appealed to the Israeli Army against the orders. An Israeli source said the request will be considered.... Arab League Secretary-General Esmat Abdel Meguid left Dubai for Khartoum yesterday in an apparent mediation effort between impoverished Sudan and the oil-rich United Arab Emirates. He faces the deep rift between Sudan's Muslim fundamentalist leaders and the moderate Arab states. UNITED STATES
UN Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali plans to recommend a small contingent of peacekeepers be sent to Yugoslavia shortly, but he does not intend to commit the UN to a planned 10,000-member peacekeeping force until he is convinced the current cease-fire will hold.... The US will continue intelligence surveillance of North Korea until Pyongyang allows inspections of its suspected atomic arms installations, national security adviser Brent Scowcroft said Sunday on ABC television.... More than two dozen
vessels worked Sunday to contain and skim a 10-to-15 mile slick of North Slope Crude oil that leaked through a rupture in the Kenia oil pipeline.... Louisiana Gov.-elect Edwin Edwards welcomed the New Year in Las Vegas gambling, the New Orleans Times-Picayune reported Sunday.... Mother Teresa celebrated her 63rd anniversary as a nun Sunday in a San Diego hospital, and her doctors said she could be released in a week. EUROPE
The foreign minister of Italy, the first European Community country to drop a US-led trade embargo against Vietnam, said Sunday that Rome would give Hanoi $70 million in new grants and loans for 1993 and 1994.... The Ukraine will be ready to ditch the ruble next month and start introducing coupons to replace the former Soviet currency, the head of the Ukrainian National Bank said.... A 600-pound Irish Republican Army car bomb exploded in Belfast Sunday night, devastating scores of offices and slightly in juring about a dozen. ASIA AND THE PACIFIC
Japan will send an official delegation to Vietnam this month as a first step toward resuming official aid. The 10-man delegation will visit Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City Jan. 11-19. Japan suspended aid when Vietnam invaded Cambodia in 1978.... President Bush yesterday declined to back Japan's bid to become a permanent member of the UN Security Council.... Nearly 1,000 Burmese Muslims have fled to Bangladesh over the past four days as Rangoon's military rulers build up their forces on the frontier after a bo rder clash, Bangladesh government officials said yesterday. And Burma's military junta arrested at least 100 schoolchildren in Rangoon late last month in a continuing clampdown on pro-democracy dissent, Reuters reported residents of the capital saying yesterday.
