NOUAKCHOTT - Police arrested four human rights activists in Mauritania after a French television programme on slavery, a sensitive subject in the West African nation.

KINSHASA - President Laurent Kabila said that a ban on politics would remain in force in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, adding that the alternative was to risk bloodletting among rival political militias.

BAGHDAD - Iraqi President Saddam Hussein has threatened to halt U.N. arms inspections within months and warned Washington against taking military action over Baghdad's deepening row with the United Nations. Iraq said a senior diplomat at its embassy in Jordan had been killed along with his wife and other Iraqi nationals.

JAKARTA - President Suharto's political credibility has been severely eroded by Indonesia's slide toward economic disaster, but the wily former army general cannot be counted out yet.

JERUSALEM - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu convenes his cabinet to set guidelines for a U.S.-demanded West Bank troop redeployment ahead of key talks with President Bill Clinton on Tuesday.

ANKARA - Turkish President Suleyman Demirel has defended the closure of the Islam-based Welfare Party as a regrettable legal necessity.

MOSCOW - Two miners were killed and 25 were still missing after an explosion and fire ripped through a colliery in Russia's Arctic town of Vorkuta.

TAIPEI - Taiwan Premier Vincent Siew declined either to confirm or deny media reports that he will soon visit Indonesia in a trip that would likely anger rival China.

BIJELJINA, Bosnia - Bosnia's Serb parliament elected a new government led by a pro-Western moderate in a major defeat for hardline nationalists who boycotted the vote.

TEHRAN - Iraq has told former foe Iran it wants to resolve their disputes through peaceful negotiations.

BAGHDAD - Iraqi President Saddam Hussein has called on Iraqis to volunteer for training to confront what he termed continuing threats from the United States.

SANTIAGO - Leftist Chileans took to the streets of Santiago shouting insults to protest against former dictator Gen. Augusto Pinochet's plans to take a seat in the Senate.

LONDON - British Prime Minister Blair is assembling a broad alliance on Europe which will include top figures in the opposition Conservatives and the minority Liberal Democrats.

PARIS - France's swelling jobless movement staged some of its largest protests to date in a five-week-old campaign for higher unemployment payments.

MEXICO CITY - Hours after paramilitary thugs slaughtered 45 Indian refugees in southern Mexico last month, they were captured by local police but later freed and given their weapons back.

TEHRAN - A majority of deputies in Iran's 270-seat parliament have supported supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's rejection of any ties or talks with the United States.

JERUSALEM - An Israeli Holocaust museum said the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum had scuttled a chance for an "historic reconciliation" between Palestinians and Jews by denying Yasser Arafat an official visit next week.

BONN - German Foreign Minister Klaus Kinkel has urged the European Union to agree quickly on aid measures for Algeria or risk further instability that could spark a mass exodus of refugees.