EVENTS

CARTER TO MEET KOREAN DIPLOMATS Former US President Carter said yesterday he will meet representatives from both North and South Korea this week to help start peace talks between the two countries. Mr. Carter, interviewed on CNN after brokering a peace agreement with Haiti, said the UN ambassadors from both countries have requested a meeting this week. ``I hope this will be the first stirring on their part to begin to talk together,'' Carter said. In Seoul, the domestic Yonhap news agency said Sunday that South Korea is expected to ask Carter for help in rescheduling talks between the leaders of the rival Koreas. In June, Carter visited North Korea for three days in a bid to defuse the long-running dispute over Pyongyang's suspected nuclear-arms program. During his trip, Carter met the late North Korean leader Kim Il Sung, who proposed a meeting with the southern leader. If the meeting with his successor goes ahead, it would be the first time the leaders of North and South Korea have met since the country was divided after World War II. Yeltsin in Georgia

President Boris Yeltsin interrupted his vacation in the Black Sea resort of Sochi yesterday to meet with the leaders of Georgia and its breakaway province of Abkhazia. Mr. Yeltsin held separate, closed-door talks with Georgian President Eduard Shevardnadze and Abkhazian leader Vladislav Ardzinba on the return of Georgian refugees to Abkhazia. Abkhazia broke from Georgia, a former Soviet republic, in a bitter civil war that ended last fall.

30,000 flee eruptions

Papua New Guinea yesterday declared a state of emergency in the area surrounding the northeastern port town of Rabaul after 30,000 people fled erupting volcanoes and earth tremors on the island of New Britain.

The volcanoes Vulcan and Tavurvur spewed smoke miles into the air and blanketed the town in hot ash and mud up to 30-inches thick.

N. Irelanders to visit US

Showing the importance of US opinion in the search for peace, leaders from both sides of Northern Ireland's political divide go to Washington this week to argue their cases. Those on the Catholic nationalist side want Washington's support for early talks involving Sinn Fein, the Irish Republican Army's political wing. Pro-British Protestants hope to dampen what they believe is premature US enthusiasm for the 19-day-old IRA cease-fire.

Lee won't attend games

Bowing to Chinese pressure, Taiwan announced yesterday that President Lee Teng-hui will not attend next month's Asian Games in Japan, but said Vice Premier Hsu Li-teh will be there. A presidential statement denounced ``the Chinese Communists' blatant interference with sports,'' and said the trip was ``blocked,'' rather than canceled by Mr. Lee himself.