EAST ASIA

MINE EXPLOSION DEATH TOLL AT 203

FUXIN, China – Three years after a promised overhaul of China’s workplace safety system, an explosion deep in a coal shaft killed 203 miners and left 12 more missing, the government said yesterday, in its worst reported mining disaster since communist rule began in 1949. Dozens of rescuers worked through the night in freezing temperatures to try to reach the miners who may have been trapped by Monday’s blast in the Sunjiawan coal mine in northeastern Liaoning province. The cause of the gas explosion, which went off about 794 feet below the surface, was under investigation, state media said. Twenty-eight injured miners lay in hospital beds yesterday, suffering from carbon monoxide poisoning, burns, and fractures. All were in stable condition, except for one who was in a coma because of a head injury caused by flying debris, the Xinhua News Agency said. Some 30 family members of the victims were also hospitalized “due to deep grief,” it said.

– Associated Press

MIDDLE EAST

SHARON BEGINS COORDINATING GAZA WITHDRAWAL

JERUSALEM – Prime Minister Sharon said yesterday he has already begun coordinating a Gaza withdrawal with the Palestinian Arabs and won’t be deterred by increasingly belligerent opposition at home, including threats against him and his Cabinet ministers. In the West Bank, Israeli troops killed two armed Palestinian Arabs who the army said approached a West Bank settlement. The two belonged to the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, a violent group with ties to Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah movement. Insurgents said gunmen were from a local Al Aqsa cell financed by Lebanese Hezbollah guerrillas who oppose a fledgling Israeli-Palestinian Arab truce. Mr. Sharon, speaking at a carefully scripted news conference, said if Palestinian Arabs attack Israeli soldiers or settlers during the Gaza withdrawal, set to begin in July, Israel would respond harshly and may even call off the pullout. Israel’s parliament was scheduled to hold a final vote on the Gaza withdrawal today, with the plan expected to win overwhelming approval. Palestinian Cabinet minister Saeb Erekat responded, “Israel must choose between settlements or peace. It cannot have both.”

– Associated Press

WESTERN EUROPE

LIVINGSTONE REFUSES TO APOLOGIZE FOR NAZI REMARK

LONDON – Ken Livingstone, the mayor of London, refused yesterday to apologize for comparing a Jewish newspaper reporter to a Nazi concentration camp guard. Jewish and Holocaust groups have urged Mr. Livingstone to say he is sorry, as have Culture Secretary Tessa Jowell and the London Assembly, the body that scrutinizes the mayor’s work. But Mr. Livingstone told a news conference that he didn’t believe he had done anything wrong. “You may think my remarks to that reporter – and many over the years – are offensive,” he said. “That is purely a matter of judgment. If you think they are racist I think you are wrong.” Mr. Livingstone made the comments last week when he was approached by a reporter for the Evening Standard newspaper at a reception for the gay and lesbian community. The mayor, an outspoken left-winger nicknamed Red Ken, has no love of the paper and its conservative sister paper, the Daily Mail. The Daily Mail had a pro-Nazi editorial line in the 1930s, and Mr. Livingstone asked journalist Oliver Finegold if he had been a “German war criminal.” Mr. Finegold replied that he was Jewish. Mr. Livingstone told the reporter he was “just like a concentration camp guard. You’re just doing it because you’re paid to, aren’t you?” The conversation was recorded on tape and played before the London Assembly on Monday. The body passed a unanimous motion calling on the mayor to withdraw his remarks.

– Associated Press