DAKAR - Heavy firing rang out around Guinea-Bissau‘s airport, signalling the start of a fresh push by Senegalese-backed government forces to dislodge army rebels from their final bastion.
JOHANNESBURG - South African white right winger Eugene Terre Blanche has for the first time accepted moral and political responsibility for bombings before the 1994 elections which killed 21 people.
FREETOWN - A raiding party of several hundred rebels attacked Nigerian-led West African forces in Sierra Leone near a major highway junction just 76 km from the capital Freetown. The battle near Masiaka town on Wednesday was the closest the rebels had come to the capital since the force ejected a military junta from power in February.
THE HAGUE - Rebels fighting for self-determination for southern Sudan said they were committed to serious negotiationsto end more than 30 years of strife in the African state.
WASHINGTON - President Bill Clinton reinforced the U.S. charm offensive toward Iran, saying the Islamic country was changing for the better and the United States wanted genuine reconciliation.
COPENHAGEN - An Air Europe Boeing 737 charter plane hit by hydraulic problems on its way to Malaga in Spain from Oslo landed safely at Copenhagen‘s Kastrup airport.
CANBERRA - Richard Butler, the United Nations‘ chief weapons inspector for Iraq, sought to dampen hopes that sanctions on Baghdad could be lifted as early as this October, saying that „There is not unalloyed optimism.“
SYDNEY - Politicians joined ethnic and religious leaders in urging Australian Prime Minister John Howard to repudiate racism and anti-immigration figure Pauline Hanson.
PHNOM PENH - Cambodia‘s three main opposition parties said conditions were not in place for a July 26 election to be free and fair, warning they might not take part without improvements.
WASHINGTON - President Bill Clinton, days away from travelling to China, urged the Chinese government to free religious prisoners and resume talks with Tibet‘s spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama.
BUENOS AIRES - The first round of negotiations to create the world‘s largest free-trade area cleared an early hurdle after swift agreement on the brief for sensitive talks on agriculture.
LONDON - Britain‘s opposition Conservatives threw overboard a longstanding cross-party consensus on Northern Ireland, voting against a bill to release guerrilla prisoners ahead of schedule under the April peace agreement.
BEIRUT - A car bomb killed two people in Beirut overnight.
ZURICH - Switzerland‘s three big banks confirmed on they were offering $600 million to settle U.S. claims that they hoarded Holocaust victims‘ funds after World War Two.
DIYARBAKIR, Turkey - Turkish armed forces have killed 18 Kurdish rebels in three days of clashes in the southeast.
