Cable Briefs

Press, 9 June 1980, Page 8

Cable Briefs

; Continental link? ; Morocco and Spain will ’ form a joint company to • stud; the possibility of ; building a road and rail link [ between Europe and Africa . across the Straits of Gibraltar. Linking . the continents ; has been under'consideration . since a Spanish engineer, , Laurent Valdeuil, first proposed the excavation of a tunnel beneath the straits in ; 1869. Proposals since have included the laying of large steel tubes on the seabed, and the construction of a suspension bridge, suggested 1 in 1956 by a former Spanish Minister of Public Works, Mr Alfonso Pena Boeuf. The latest proposal is to build a huge dam across the straits, \vith roads and railways running along the top and channels at each end to allow the passage of shipping. — Rabat. Hashish haul The police and customs officers have found five tonnes of hashish on board a Cypriot-registered coaster n Rotterdam Harbour. A police spokesman said the drug was worth about $6 million.. The coaster, identified by y the police as the 500-tonne Total, is owned by a Dutch- / man and was believed to i have picked up the hashish i in Lebanon. Twelve people 1 have been arrested, including - the boat’s all-Dutch crew of < , five—Rotterdam. : Portuguese dismayed . ; The Portuguese Govern- i ment has expressed dismay 1 . at the call uf the French . President (Mr Valery Gis- 1 card d’Estaing) for a delay ‘ .in enlarging the European 1 t Comm n Market, and said it r - could never agree to Portug- ■ ■ al’s membership negotiations ' being delayed. A Foreign , Ministry statement said the ’ Prime Minister (Mr Francisco sa Carneiro) and the Foreign Minister (Mr Diogo Freitas do Amaral) would visit Paris soon to discuss the issue with French authorities. Mr Giscard’s remarks have deeply .embarrassed the Portuguese Government. One of the main b planks of the ruling Rightwing alliance Government’s L programme was that by d coming to power it had b ensured that Europe would s: welcome Portugal into the g Common Market. — Lisbon. z More arrests si A former general and a P press official of the deposed 11 Shah, both of them alleged e ‘ to have been in touch with ” the former Prime Minister n (Mr Shapur Bakhtiar) have n been arrested in Teheran. General Samsam Bakhtiar, described as a cousin of the W former prime minister who ol now lives in Paris, was ar- h< rested on May 27 and handed over to Islamic judge f° Ayatollah Sadeq Khalkhali. b< Mr Syiamak Zand-Irani, an K official of the public relations office, was seized a or few days ago. General Bak- si htiar, aged about 50, is al- It leged to have sent $l6 mil- al lion to Mr Shapur Bakhtiar ar in France, and a suitcase ja full of microfilms was discovered at his Teheran th home. — Teheran. P.