Cable Briefs

Press, 25 March 1980, Page 8

Cable Briefs

Bus crash kills 16 Sixteen teenagers have been killed and five injured when their coach plunged 60m down a ravine near Barcelonnette. The accident, occurred when a coach I carrying children of families stationed at the large French! Air Force base of Istres in; southern France missed a | bend on the mountain road.! —Madrid. I

Trying again The outgoing Italian Prime Minister Mr F. Cossiga has agreed to try to form a government which political observers believe will be a Christian Democratic-Social-ist coalition. Mr Cossiga, caretaker Prime Minister since Wednesday, was called as expected to the Quirinale Palace by President Sandro Pertini.—Rome.

Aid for teams? Monique Berlioux, director of the International Olympic Committee has been quoted as saying the 1.0. C. might give financial aid to. teams attending the Moscow Olympics against their Governments’ wishes. Mrs Berlioux told the “Sovietsky Sport” newspaper that national Olympic committees in the United States, Britain, and other countries wanted their athletes to compete at Moscow. “This means they have to be helped by us possibly in a material way” she said. National Olympic (Committees from the United States and 15 West European countries, meeting in Brussels, have implicity rejected calls for a boycott of the Moscow Olympics over the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan. — Moscow. Chad cease-fire President Goukouni Oueddei of Chad and the country’s Prime Minister (Mr Hissene Habre) have agreed to a cease-fire in the fighting between their private armies that has rocked the Chad capital for 36 hours. The agreement came at a 90-minute meeting of the two men and the French Ambassador (Mr Marcel Beaux) at the military base where about 1100 French troops are stationed under the command of Colonel Paul Lardry. The fighting constituted the most serious breach yet of the peace agreement signed last August in Lagos among Chad’s 11 main politico-military factions. — Ndjamena (Chad).

Poles vote Poles voted in Communiststyle single-list national and local elections yesterday after an unprecedented campaign by political dissidents who said they had distributed 300,000 anti-election leaflets. The official news agency, P.A.P., reported a high turn-out throughout the country. There have been huge turn-outs in all elections since the communists came to power in 1945 and the results of the dissident campaign seemed likely to be small.—Warsaw.

‘Agents shot South Korean troops yesterday said they had shot dead three armed North Korean agents south of the demilitarised zone dividing the two Koreas. The Defence Ministry in Seoul said three Czechoslovak-made pistols, 12 hand grenades, and 300 rounds of ammunition had been found on rhe North Korean bodies.—Seoul.