Friday, Jun 13, 2003
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HAVANA: The Cuban President, Fidel Castro, led a march of hundreds of thousands of people outside the Spanish embassy on Thursday as Cuba protested the European Union's decision to review its policy toward the island because of concerns over human rights. Surrounded by his security men and his closest aides, the 76-year-old leader led a huge river of people called out by the Government a day earlier to join the early morning demonstration. ``Down with fascism!'' a Government announcer chanted over a public broadcast system near the easternmost end of the Malecon coastal highway in Old Havana. The marches, which paralysed traffic and business activity in the nation's capital early on Thursday, were Cuba's reaction to the E.U.'s announcement last month it was reviewing its policies toward the island. Both marches were broadcast live on state-run television. — AP Liberian truce talks to resume MONROVIA (Liberia): Families emboldened by a lull in fighting headed back to bullet-strewn districts of Liberia's capital on Thursday, as envoys of the President, Charles Taylor, and rebels gathered in the nearby west African nation of Ghana to resume peace talks. Ghana's Foreign Minister, Nana Akuffo Addo, said after meeting Mr. Taylor in Monrovia that talks — postponed last week as fighting raged on the outskirts of Monrovia — would resume ``in earnest.'' Rebel negotiators and other international mediators were already in Ghana, Mr. Addo said. The fighting left bodies lying in the streets of north-western neighbourhoods outside Monrovia, although the total toll for the campaign is unknown . — AP U.N. envoys arrive in Congo BUNIA (Congo): United Nations Security Council diplomats arrived in this ravaged north-eastern Congolese town on Thursday on a mission to revive a political process and end violence in the resource-rich region of Ituri. As the representatives of the 15 Council members began a series of meetings, none spoke to reporters. In April, the U.N. prodded rival Hema and Lendu factions and other political players in the area to elect a broad-based administration called the Ituri Pacification Commission. But renewed fighting in the area paralysed the reconciliation process. Last month, 500 people were killed in fighting among rival tribal factions. Bunia, the capital of Ituri province, has been the scene of some of the worst atrocities committed in the nearly 5-year civil war in Congo. — AP Vigilance urged OSLO: The head of the World Health Organisation on Thursday urged continued global vigilance against SARS despite signs that the outbreak of the flu-like virus may be tapering off. ``We have to be very effective in our surveillance and our control measures so that we don't get setbacks,'' the WHO Director-General, Gro Harlem Brundtland, said during a European Health Ministers' conference in Oslo. She said that cases of SARS were dwindling in many nations, including China, which has suffered most, but that there was no vaccine and about 15 per cent of those infected were dying. The global situation ``looks better than it did two months ago but we cannot be sure that that is the end of the story. We have to be vigilant.'' She said the WHO's main fear now was that the world would lower its guard too early. ``We don't know,'' she said when asked if SARS might spread much further or if it might, for instance, flare up again in a few months when the northern hemisphere heads towards winter. — Reuters
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