MIDDLE EAST

ISRAELI NUCLEAR WHISTLE-BLOWER ARRESTED

JERUSALEM – Heavily armed police commandos stormed a Jerusalem church compound and arrested nuclear whistle-blower Mordechai Vanunu yesterday, drawing harsh condemnation from the Anglican Church to which he belongs.

Mr. Vanunu, who was released seven months ago after completing an 18-year prison sentence for treason, was arrested on suspicion of revealing classified information, police said.

He was taken before a magistrate, who ordered him confined to the church hostel under house arrest for seven days.

“This is a disgrace to Israeli democracy!” Mr. Vanunu shouted to journalists as he was led into court. “They want to punish me again. They cannot punish me twice. I suffered 18 years in prison. I have the right to be free.”

Analysts said the arrest of Mr. Vanunu – who has repeatedly defied orders not to give interviews – may be an Israeli attempt to suppress discussion of its nuclear program at a time of increasing international efforts to block Iran from going nuclear.

Mr. Vanunu, 49, was released from prison in April after spending much of his prison sentence in solitary confinement for disclosing secrets he learned as a technician at the Israeli nuclear reactor in the southern town of Dimona in the 1980s.

– Associated Press

EAST ASIA

JAPAN TRACKS MYSTERY SUBMARINE

TOKYO – Japan’s military yesterday shadowed an unidentified submarine that entered its territorial waters the day before, but officials said they had not yet figured out which country the intruder is from.

Tokyo put its navy on alert Wednesday after spotting the submarine off the southern island of Okinawa and sent a reconnaissance plane and destroyer to follow its movements.

The submarine, which spent two hours in Japanese waters before leaving, was heading north yesterday, the chief cabinet secretary, Hiroyuki Hosoda, said.

Prime Minister Koizumi said the government was trying to confirm the vessel’s identify, but he added that sometimes it helped to be vague.

“There are security issues involved. Sometimes it is better to not say things very clearly,” Mr. Koizumi said.

Asked if Japan’s navy was having trouble identifying the vessel, Mr. Koizumi said: “No. It’s good to have advanced abilities, but sometimes it’s better not to know how advanced those abilities are.”

He added that Japan will take “appropriate action” when it confirms the mystery sub’s identity.

– Associated Press

WESTERN EUROPE

U.N.: SECRET S. KOREAN EXPERIMENTS SMALL-SCALE

VIENNA, Austria – Secret South Korean nuclear experiments revealed earlier this year produced minute amounts of weapons-grade uranium and plutonium, but there was no evidence that they were applied to an arms program, the U.N. atomic watchdog said yesterday. The report, drawn up by the International Atomic Energy Agency and made public, followed up on revelations that South Korea dabbled in uranium enrichment and plutonium reprocessing. Officials subsequently acknowledged the experiments but insisted they were small-scale and conducted by scientists who never informed the government. Beyond establishing that those experiments produced minute amounts and had been restricted to the laboratory, the report also revealed a separate attempt at uranium enrichment. But the report said this attempt – to enrich uranium chemically – resulted in extremely low enrichment, far below the 90% minimum normally used to make arms. The experiments were conducted in January and February 2000 at the government-affiliated Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute. The institute’s president, Chang In-soon, said there were three or four tests, but the amount involved was “so small it’s almost invisible.” South Korea also acknowledged conducting a plutonium-based nuclear experiment in 1982.

– Associated Press

WEST AFRICA

LEADERS TO LAUNCH PEACE TALKS AS IVORY COAST EVACUATION BUILDS

Airliners shuttled hundreds of foreigners out of the Ivory Coast yesterday after a surge in violence, and South Africa convened urgent peace talks on a crisis that it said threatened to destabilize West Africa. Residents in the commercial capital, meanwhile, stared hopelessly at the burned-out wreckage of their shops and offices as a measure of calm returned to Abidjan after five days of ant-foreigner mob violence. France and other nations launched the evacuations Wednesday. Convoys sent out by the American embassy and other nations gathered foreigners from their homes, and French soldiers in boats plucked some trapped citizens from the banks of Abidjan’s lagoons. A French official has said that between 4,000 to 8,000 of its 14,000 citizens in the country wanted to leave, a number that alone would make it one of the largest evacuations in Africa’s post-independence era. About 20 Americans arrived Wednesday night in Accra, capital of neighboring Ghana, on a Canadian-organized flight, and Spain said it would evacuate about 90 more at the request of America.

– Associated Press

PERSIAN GULF

SAUDI KING FAHD RELEASES 31 TERRORISTS

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia – Saudi King Fahd has ordered the release of all 31 Islamic terrorists who surrendered to security authorities under a June amnesty, the Interior Ministry said yesterday. The amnesty, which spared the lives of those who turned themselves in, was open to anyone who was wanted but had not been arrested for carrying out terrorist acts. “The concerned authorities were assured that the deviants have already rectified their ideology and attitudes toward their nation and society,” said the ministry’s statement, carried by the official Saudi Press Agency. Relatives of victims or the individuals who suffered at the hands of the terrorists had a right to demand punishment, but the statement said “nobody has claimed anything against them.” During the month of the pardon, four wanted men surrendered in Saudi Arabia, including Khaled bin Ouda bin Mohammed al-Harby, a confidant of Al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden. None of them was considered a hard-core terrorist. Twenty-seven others who had left the country turned themselves in and were repatriated.

– Associated Press

EASTERN EUROPE

PANEL ISSUES ROMANIA HOLOCAUST REPORT

BUCHAREST, Romania – An international panel headed by Nobel Prize winner Elie Wiesel released a report yesterday detailing the responsibility of Romania’s pro-Nazi authorities in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Jews and Gypsies during World War II. President Iliescu, who organized the panel last year after making the first official acknowledgment of Romania’s role in the Holocaust, said yesterday his country assumes responsibility for actions taken by its wartime leaders. He also pledged to help educate the Romanian public about the findings in the report “so that such tragedies will never happen again.” Most Romanian historians had long denied that the country’s wartime leaders were responsible for the mass killings of Romanian Jews, blaming instead their Nazi German allies or Hungary, which annexed a part of country where many Jews lived. Mr. Iliescu’s commitment to release the report represents a sharp departure from the decades of denial and demonstrates the extent to which the country is trying to come to grips with the truth about its role in the Holocaust. “The Holocaust tragedy was possible due to the complicity of leaders of state institutions” who zealously carried out the orders of Romania’s pro-Nazi ruler Marshal Ion Antonescu, Mr. Iliescu said yesterday.

– Associated Press