Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat moved Monday to defuse three days of tension and violence over his appointment of his cousin, Moussa Arafat, as head of security in Gaza. Arafat reinstated the officer his relative replaced, Abdel Razek al-Majaide. Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia said Monday he is intent on resigning but made no move to leave office. Meanwhile, Israeli missiles twice hit a house in a Gaza refugee camp, wounding a militant Palestinian leader and four others, a spokesman for a Palestinian group said.
An explosion in a Hezbollah stronghold in southern Beirut killed a longtime guerrilla, Ghaleb Awali, who led many operations against Israel. Although a Sunni Muslim fundamentalist group claimed responsibility for the bombing, Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah accused Israel or its agents of planting the car bomb and threatened to “cut off their hands.”
President Jacques Chirac said Monday that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon would not be welcome here until he gave a satisfactory explanation for saying over the weekend that Jews should go to Israel to escape anti-Semitism in France. Israeli officials claimed the remarks were taken out of context.
Human Rights Watch, the New York-based advocacy group, on Monday published excerpts of documents that it says implicate the Sudanese government in recruiting, equipping and guaranteeing impunity for the Arab militias accused of killing tens of thousands of Africans and driving more than 1 million from their homes in the Darfur region of Sudan.
Russia: Putin fires top general
Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday fired Gen. Anatoly Kvashnin, the armed forces’ chief of general staff who was blamed by the defense minister for resisting reform, in a security shake-up that included the dismissals of top officials of the Interior Ministry and the KGB successor agency. Dismissals were expected after last month’s brazen attack by militants on police and government facilities in the Ingushetia region.
From Herald news services
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