LOME - A Togolese opposition leader has become the first person to line up for this year's presidential race in which veteran President Gnassingbe Eyadema is widely expected to seek re-election.

DAKAR - Senegal's President Abdou Diouf denounced dissidents within his ruling Socialist Party, saying that they should either agree to work with him or come out and say clearly that they oppose him.

KINSHASA - The main human rights group in the Democratic Republic of the Congo reported summary executions in a town in the east where it earlier alleged more than 300 civilians were massacred.

JAKARTA - Japan's Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto met President Suharto and was expected to relay a message that Tokyo would do all it could within a framework to help Indonesia through its worst economic crisis in decades.

WASHINGTON - The White House reeled under an avalanche of sensational court papers alleging President Bill Clinton showed a pattern of sexual peccadilloes and tried to cover them up.

JERUSALEM - Palestinian leaders said anti-Israeli street protests were likely to continue until Israeli soldiers who shot dead three Palestinian labourers at an army checkpoint last week were brought to justice.

LONDON - British Prime Minister Tony Blair was reported to be ready to become more personally involved with Northern Irish peace talks in an attempt to clinch an agreement.

BRUSSELS - The European Union signalled its intent to pave the way for a smooth passage to economic and monetary union next year by revaluing the Irish punt and allowing the Greek drachma into its ERM currency grid.

VATICAN CITY - The Vatican announced it would release on Monday a long-awaited document on the role of the Roman Catholic church during the Holocaust -- a period in which the then Pope Pius XII was accused of turning a blind eye to the Nazi murder of six million Jews.

HAVELOCK, North Carolina - Four U.S. Marine airmen whose fighter jet severed a gondola cable, killing 20 people at an Italian Alpine ski resort, returned to the United States on Saturday to prepare for a military hearing.

EDINBURGH, Scotland - European Union foreign ministers clinched agreement on terms for opening accession negotiations with the divided island of Cyprus after France dropped its objections. The accord means entry talks with Cyprus can start on schedule on March 31 even though Turkish Cypriots reject an offer to join the Cypriot government's negotiating team.

BRUSSELS - Belgian prosecutors said they were investigating the possibility that Algerian Islamic militants may have planned a bomb attack during this year's World Cup soccer tournament in France.

BRASILIA - A leader of Brazil's primitive Yanomami Indians appealed for help as huge fires which have devastated the Amazonian state of Roraima advanced into his tribe's rainforest reservation.

JAKARTA - Indonesian President Suharto consolidated his grip on government with the announcement of a new cabinet to battle an economic crisis ravaging his country of 200 million people.

PESHAWAR - Pakistani troops exchanged gunfire with Taleban Islamic militia fighters at a border point after Pakistani customs found weapon parts in the luggage of an Afghan.

LONDON - Three agents of Israel's Mossad security service tried to bug the home of a prominent Moslem activist in London, but had to abort the mission after arousing suspicion and fled to Israel the same day.