KINSHASA - Up to 5,000 "Mai Mai" warriors and 800 Hutu fighters, responsible for the latest insurgency in the eastern Kivu provinces, have given themselves up to the authorities in the east of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Interior Minister Mwenze Kongolo said.
NAIROBI - Rwandan President Pasteur Bizimungu said the bulk of his army had withdrawn from the neighbouring Democratic Republic of the Congo where it helped to topple late dictator Mobutu Sese Seko.
MORONI - Leaders of the self-declared state of Anjouan, which has announced its secession from the Federal Islamic Republic of the Comoros, are preparing for a referendum among the islanders late in October.
ANTANANARIVO - A body guard of former Madagascar president Albert Zafy has been arrested for alleged complicity in a grenade attack on the president of the island`s High Constitutional court.
JAKARTA - At least 11 people were killed by collapsing buildings when an earthquake measuring 6.0 on the Richter scale struck the Indonesian island of Sulawesi.
HONG KONG - Hong Kong`s unelected parliament passed an election law that critics say curtails democracy in the former British colony.
ROME - Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi`s centre-left government announced that it had approved a draft 1998 budget early on Sunday after a marathon nine-hour cabinet session.
BANGKOK - Thai Premier Chavalit Yongchaiyudh, having survived a weekend no-confidence motion in parliament, is now under pressure to take quick and meaningful steps to get Thailand`s stricken economy back on its feet, starting with a major cabinet reshuffle, analysts said.
PARIS - Algerian government forces killed 25 Moslem rebels in a southwestern province and were besieging another group of radical guerrillas in an abandoned village near Algiers.
ALEXANDRIA, Egypt - Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and his Israeli counterpart President Ezer Weizman held talks on the Middle East peace crisis. They met in the Mediterranean city of Alexandria.
PARIS - Polisario Front leader Mohamed Abdelaziz was quoted as urging Morocco to respect an accord on a referendum to seal the fate of the disputed Western Sahara.
TEHRAN - Police seized about five tonnes (11,000 pounds) of narcotics in Iran`s central Yazd province from March to August. The "drug haul during the period was 3,078 kg (6,780 pounds) more than what was seized during the corresponding period of last year".
AMMAN - Jordan confirmed that a leader of the militant Palestinian group Hamas was attacked in Amman after what it said was a clash with Canadian tourists. Hamas blamed Israel for Thursday`s attack on politburo chief Khaled Meshal, three days after the shooting of two Israeli embassy guards in Amman, and its military wing vowed revenge.
WASHINGTON - The CIA has developed convincing evidence that Egyptian agents staged the 1993 abduction in Cairo of prominent Libyan dissident Mansour Kikhia, a U.S. resident, who was then turned over to Col. Muammar Gaddafi`s government. The CIA told the Clinton administration this summer that it had confirmed that Kikhia was taken to Libya and executed.
Autor: EDITED BY ZUZANA VILIKOVSKÁ
