News In Brief

OPEC rules out price cut to avoid a global 'war'

A group of OPEC oil ministers, meeting to head off a global price war, ruled out any price cut as a way to boost world demand. ''No price change,'' the Saudi Arabian oil minister, Sheikh Ahmad Zaki Yamani , told reporters as an advance group of OPEC ministers began drawing up a crisis plan to put to a full emergency meeting of the 13-member organization Oct. 29.

Former Libyan Oil Minister Kamal Hassan Maghur also rejected the idea of OPEC's cutting prices after reductions by nonmembers Britain and Norway as well as Nigeria - a maverick member of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries.