Cable Briefs

Press, 19 October 1977, Page 8

Cable Briefs

‘Convoy ambushed’

Eritrean insurgents have claimed to have destroyed or captured a 600-truck convoy I and killed 650 Ethiopian troops in an ambush last Thursday on the road from the Red Sea port of Massawa to the besieged Eritrean capital of Asmara. The claim was made in Paris by a spokesman for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Eritrea, one of the two major insurgent groups who claim to have won near-total control of Eritrea from the Ethiopian forces. — Paris. Guardsman killed Leftist Sandinista guerrillas have fought the Nicaraguan National Guard in the street of Managua for the first time as part of a series -of co-ordinated attacks in which at least five •guardsmen and two guerrillas have been killed, informed sources have said. — Managua. Doctors conscripted Black doctors are now liable for military service in Rhodesia, according to a notice published in the official Government gazette. Only Europeans in Rhodesia, where 6.5 million blacks are : in a 20-to-one majority, have hitherto been liable for conscription. However, the white-led Rhodesian security forces are about two-thirds black volunteers. — Salisbury. ‘Relations mending” The White House has agreed that United States relations with the Soviet Union are on the mend but says President Carter would not sign a new strategic arms limitation agreement ) simply to further detente. The President’s first concern in the reviving strategic : arms limitation talks was ; the security of the United, States, the President’s press secretary (Mr Jody Powell) ' said in remarks apparently ) aimed at easing Congres- ' sional concern over the lat- 1 est proposals for a new J arms accord. — Washington. 8 Laws scrapped '<

Laws forbidding sex or' marriage across racial lines ■ have been scrapped in Namibia, by the territory’s new South African-appointed administrator. A 43-year-old law forbidding sex between blacks and whites and a, 1953 ordinance outlawing iti' were based on South African legislation and carried penalties of up to five years jail. — Windhoek. Amnesty proclaimed An amnesty for Spanish political prisoners has gone into force, freeing about 90 of the estimated 120 political prisoners in Spain and removing a major source of friction between the Government and the Opposition. But the Government suffered a rebuff when the Socialist General Workers’ Union rejected a basic economic plan agreed upon by the Prime Minister (Mr Adolfo Suarez) and Opposition parties, making the plan’s implementation 'difficult. — Madrid.