World digest 10/30/01

Israel scales back demands on withdrawal

JERUSALEM -- After pulling troops and tanks out of Bethlehem, Israeli officials said Monday the army will leave the other Palestinian areas occupied almost two weeks ago if a cease-fire is maintained -- scaling back earlier demands.

Israeli and Palestinian security commanders met in Tel Aviv on Monday night to discuss the next step. Jibril Rajoub, the Palestinian West Bank security chief, said they failed to reach agreement and no date was set for a further meeting.

Israeli troops and tanks started moving into West Bank towns after the Oct. 17 assassination of ultranationalist Cabinet minister Rehavam Zeevi.

Masked gunman kills four and wounds eight

TOURS, France -- A masked gunman opened fire in this central French city on Monday, killing four people, injuring eight and sending bystanders running for cover. Afterward, the suspect told officials he had no recollection of the incident.

A 44-year-old suspect, an unidentified train operator with no criminal record, was quickly apprehended by police after fleeing to an underground parking garage.

Jean-Francois Houssin, a regional government spokesman, said the suspect's personal problems may have triggered the attack.

Milosevic refuses to enter pleas at tribunal

THE HAGUE, Netherlands -- Defiant after four months in custody, former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic denounced new charges at the U.N. war crimes tribunal on Monday and scorned three lawyers assigned to help him.

Milosevic refused to enter pleas to a new indictment accusing him of atrocities and murder in Croatia in 1991, and to expanded charges of more deaths, deportations and sexual assaults on the part of his forces in Kosovo in 1999.

Innocent pleas were entered on his behalf to all charges.

Milosevic was charged with 32 counts of murder, persecution and plunder in Croatia, allegations going back to the 1991 start of the Balkan wars.

Bodies, cruise missiles recovered from sub

MOSCOW -- Investigators pulled three cruise missiles, data recorders and five more bodies from the carcass of the Kursk nuclear submarine Monday, while a top Cabinet official expressed hope the probe would explain what caused one of Russia's worst naval disasters.

"We are getting closer to finding the reason," said Deputy Prime Minister Ilya Klebanov, who is in charge of the Kursk salvage effort.

Klebanov said again that it was the explosion of one of the Kursk's torpedoes that sank the sub Aug. 12, 2000. But he said it was still unclear what triggered the blast -- an internal malfunction or a collision with another vessel or a World War II mine.

Suicide bomber in Sri Lanka kills three

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka -- A suicide bomber blew himself up after being stopped by police on Monday, killing two people and injuring 18. The government blamed Tamil Tiger separatists and said the target may have been Sri Lanka's prime minister.

One of the dead and five of the injured were police officers, a police statement said.

The bomber, in his early 20s, had just passed through a checkpoint in the capital, Colombo, when he was stopped by security forces who were on alert because Prime Minister Ratnasiri Wickramanayake was attending an official function less than a mile away.

Militants among the 3.2 million Tamils of this island-nation off the tip of India are leading an often violent campaign for their own homeland.

Japan loosens postwar restrictions on military

TOKYO -- Loosening the restrictions that have bound Japan's military since World War II, lawmakers voted Monday to allow the country's troops and naval vessels to help in the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan as long as they do not go into combat.

The legislation, which was approved with unusual speed, opens the way for Japanese forces to transport weapons and ammunition in the campaign against terrorism suspect Osama bin Laden and his hosts in Afghanistan, the ruling Taliban militia.

President Bush welcomed the move, said White House spokesman Ari Fleischer.

Japanese military officials are to meet their U.S. counterparts as early as Thursday to draw up a blueprint for pitching in.

-- From wire reports