armed rebellion.

FREETOWN - Fierce fighting was reported in the east of Sierra Leone on Saturday after the Nigerian-led West African ECOMOG force trying to flush rebels out of the town of Kailahun was reinforced by troops from neighbouring Guinea.

PARIS - France`s leftist government will again ease rules on residence permits for illegal immigrants, an interior ministry official said on Saturday.

BEIJING - Three dikes have burst along the raging Nen river in northeast China, threatening the country`s largest oilfield of Daqing nearby. About 200,000 soldiers and civilians have

been reinforcing flood defences near Daqing in Heilongjiang province, where waterlogging has closed 355 oil wells and reduced daily output by 807 tonnes.

KIGALI - Rebel leaders in the Democratic Republic of the Congo told a rally in the eastern town of Bukavu that their forces were heading towards Kinshasa. They repeated their demand that President L. Kabila stand down.

WASHINGTON - His historic grand jury questioning just hours away, President Bill Clinton had one final day on Sunday to refine testimony in which he may admit to a sexual relationship with Monica Lewinsky.

YANGON - Aung San Suu Kyi and Myanmar`s military rulers were locked in a war of wills as the government faced more international pressure for political reform.

JAKARTA - Indonesian opposition leader Megawati Sukarnoputri plans to boycott the country`s official independence day celebrations on Monday and will hold a rival ceremony.

COLOMBO - Tamil Tiger rebels have agreed to release 17 Indians whose merchant ship was bombed by the Sri Lankan air force last week, but the release of four Sri Lankan crew members was still being discussed.

MELBOURNE - A major search was under way in the southern Australian state of Victoria on Sunday after two police officers were shot dead overnight shortly after pulling over a car in suburban Melbourne, police said.

NEW DELHI - Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee defended his country`s nuclear tests and said he was ready for talks to mend strained relations with Pakistan and China.

JERICHO, West Bank - A top member of the militant Islamic Hamas movement jailed by the Palestinians since April escaped on Saturday, a senior Palestinian security official said. Imad Awadallah was captured on April 11 on suspicion that he shot dead Hamas master bombmaker Muhyideen al--Sharif on March 29 in an internal power struggle. "Imad Awadallah escaped from prison today and we are searching for him," the official, who declined to be identified, told Reuters.

BAGHDAD - Iraq lashed out at the United States on Saturday for saying it was ready to use force against Iraq. "These hollow U.S. threats will be ridiculed, opposed and rejected by the American people and the people of the world at large", said a spokesman for the Iraqi Information Ministry.