World
Iraq's leadership should reject the new UN resolution on weapons inspection and disarmament, the parliamentary committee on international affairs recommended. Speaker Saadoun Hammadi called the resolution "provocative, deceitful, and a preamble for war." The committee also recommended that Saddam Hussein "do what he thinks is appropriate" to defend Iraq's people against a possible US-led attack. Iraq's formal response to the resolution is due by Friday.
A tough Israeli response was expected to the latest incident of Palestinian violence, the shooting deaths of five people at a kibbutz late Sunday. Three of the victims were a mother and her two young sons as she was reading them a bedtime story. Responsibility was claimed by the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, which vowed further missions. It said the attack was in retaliation for the shooting death in the West Bank city of Jenin early Saturday of an Islamic Jihad leader found hiding in a cave after a 16-day manhunt by Israeli forces.
More shooting was reported as Jordanian police and army units pushed their crackdown on Muslim fundamentalists into a second day, apparently to head off internal violence in case of a US attack on neighboring Iraq. At least four people died in a raid on the city of Maan, the scene of numerous pro-Iraq demonstrations. Another 24 people were wounded in the clashes, and a similar number of arrests were reported for drug- and weapons-smuggling.
Thousands of furious university students and some of their professors were boycotting classes in Iran's capital to protest the death sentence handed down last week to a prominent teacher for insulting Islam and questioning the nation's hard-line regime. The protests were in their third day Monday, and more are planned for Tuesday, although the speaker of parliament said the case of Hashem Aghajari had been "settled" and he likely would not be executed.
The seizure of white-owned farms in Zimbabwe is over, the nation's agriculture minister announced at a regional conference in neighboring South Africa. Agence France-Press quoted Joseph Made as saying: "We do not want any new occupations by people wanting land." He told the meeting that 74,000 landless black families had been resettled on farms confiscated by the government. In the 2-1/2 years of the program, all but about 15 percent of Zimbabwe's 4,500 white-owned farms have been seized without compensation.
Rescuers pulled 14 people from the water of Manila Bay after the passenger plane in which they were riding crashed three minutes after takeoff. Reports said 18 others were killed or remained missing. The plane, which was on a domestic flight, was a Fokker, the second from that German builder to crash in less than a week. The first went down on a landing approach in Luxembourg Nov. 6.
