Cable briefs

Press, 28 July 1976, Page 8

Cable briefs

' Bloic to Banabans i The South Pacific Forum | meeting in Nauru will not 'allow representatives of the ! Banaban people to put their lease for independence from the Gilbert Islands. An informal meeting of delegates has decided not to place the topic on the formal agenda—the second year in a row the forum has declined to hear ithe Banaban’s case. The Ban.abans are the dispossessed {natives of Nauru’s phosphate- ■ rich nearest neighbour. Ocean | Island They now live on Rabi Island in the Fiji group, but have to pav a high percentage of their phosphate royalties to the Gilbert Islands’ {Administration. —Nauru. (Jiteen learned i An organisation set up to | itry and persuade the Austrailian Governor-General (Sir 'John Kerr) to resign. . has {announced that it has written to the Queen telling her that she would face demonstrations in Australia if her representative there was. still in office when she arrived. The Queen is due in Australia next March, and Government officials in Canberra have stated that security measures were already being planned because of the possibility of demonstrations against the Governor-General. Sir John has faced a barrage of criticism and a number of demonstrations since he dismissed the Labour Government under the leadership of Mr Gough Whitlam, last November—Canberra. Alert spreads I The Australian authorities {have extended security preicautions from airports to a wide range of public buildi ings in response to a warning that six international terrorists might be heading there. A Commonwealth police spokesman said the precautions, involving al! internal security forces, were being taken in response to a warning from Interpol that the terrorists might be travelling to Australia. The gang — five men and one woman — vanished from somewhere in Germany five days ago, and the warning was extended to Australia because the former Israeli Defence Minister, General Moshe Dayan, is visiting there.—Sydney. Attack in S.A. A white farmer and his wife, both in their 60s, have been killed, and their farm burned down, at Tzaneen, 150 km west of the Mozambique border. Johannes Hendrikus Brandt Wessels was burned to death. His wife died in hospital from a bullet wound in the head. The police do uot yet know whether their attackers were {white or black.—Tzaneen. ;

Arabs arrested 1 The Israeli security forces have arrested 12 Arab resi- ' dents of the occupied West Bank in connection with a 1 bomb blast in Nablus on ; Monday which killed one J Israeli border policeman and ■ wounded three others. Military sources said the arrests 1 were made during a search of the Balata refugee camp, I on the outskirts of Mablus' The explosion occurred near Jacob's Well, a Christian i holy site, at the edge of the camp.—Jerusalem. ;! 'Callan' buried The executed mercenary deader. Costas Georgiou. :alias "Colonel Callan," has I been buried in a secret cereqmony in North London. His body had been flown back from Angola last Wednesday. 1 The funeral arrangements were kept secret to avoid publicity. Georgiou, aged 33, and three other mercenaries ' who had been fighting for pro-Western forces in the Angolan civil war. were sen- ; tenced to death oy a revolu- ; tionary tribunal in Luanda this month, and executed on July 10.—London. Killing claim The West German newspaper, ‘ Die Welt."’ says that 17 persons were killed when security forces used handgrenades to quell riots over food prices in Poland last month. The daily said some 30 planeloads of arms and I men were flown to the icentral industrial town of Radom on June 25. when crowds stormed through streets, threw’ up barricades, and attacked policemen — Bonn. Transkei arrests South Africa’s security police have arrested five leaders of the Opposition Transkei Democratic Party only three months before the Transkei homeland is due to , become an independent State. The five were arrested under the Transkei Emergency Regulations, first introduced during unrest in 1960. These provide for indefinite detention and interrogation of people suspected of saying or doing anything that might interfere wi.h the authority of the State — llmtata. S.A. Office robbed Four masked gunmen forced their way into premises of the Italian Ministry of Labour tn Rome on Monday and stole 464 M lire (about $565,000) from the accounts office. Thev threw tear-gas grenades at workers who were counting wages, before making their escape in 'a high-powered car.—Rom”