News Currents
MIDDLE EAST Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir confirmed Sunday that Israel would accept Palestinians as part of a Jordanian delegation to Middle East peace talks, but said Israel would insist on veto power over specific Palestinian representatives.... A team of UN experts headed to Baghdad from Cairo for an extensive firsthand appraisal of Iraq's stockpile of chemical and other weapons. The UN's Security Council ordered the weapons destroyed after the Gulf war.... King Hussein of Jordan announced a new national charter ,
launching the first formal multiparty system in the nation's 70-year history. He also rejected Islam as Jordan's sole legal basis.
UNITED STATES
Executives from longtime archrivals IBM Corporation and Apple Computer Inc. were to meet yesterday, the New York Times reported, possibly to discuss Apple's licensing a microprocessor from IBM for a new line of computers that would succeed the Macintosh.... Senate Republican leader Robert Dole, speaking Sunday on the CBS program "Face the Nation," said he sees the possibility of compromise on civil rights legislation that has created an explosive political confrontation between President Bush and Democr a
ts in Congress.... The feud between Virginia Sen. Charles Robb (D) and Gov. L. Douglas Wilder has flared anew over a tape of Wilder's private telephone conversations that ended up in the senator's possession. The tape, recorded when Wilder was lieutenant governor, was kept for more than two years before it was destroyed several weeks ago, it was reported Sunday.... Gen. Colin Powell was given a "promotion" to five-star general Sunday by New York Mayor David Dinkins at a dinner on the eve of the city's vict o
ry parade; but he graciously turned it down.
EUROPE
Boris Yeltsin said he plans to visit the US if he wins Wednesday's elections for the Russian Republic's presidency and that he has received an official invitation to go to South Korea.... Albania's ruling Communist Party yesterday started what was expected to be its most tumultuous congress in almost half a century, with a possible split on the horizon. It will consider changing its name to the Socialist Party. The congress will force a postponement of the National Assembly, delaying the naming and conf i
rmation of Albania's first coalition government.
OTHER WORLD NEWS
The Organization of African Unity last week privately agreed to a timetable to lift sanctions against South Africa as the nation prepares to end apartheid formally in three weeks, the South African Sunday Times reported.... Chinese Premier Li Peng will visit Kuwait and as many as five other Middle East nations next month on a tour apparently designed to reassert China's role in the region. China is reported to be ready soon to sell advanced missiles to Syria and perhaps to other nations.