Cable Briefs

Press, 23 September 1980, Page 8

Cable Briefs

Japan warns Korea The Japanese Prime Minister (Mr Zenko Suzuki) has said that Japan would be forced to cut its technological and economic aid to South Korea if the Opposition leader, Kim Dae Jung, is executed on sedition charges. In a television interview with the Japan Broadcasting Corporation, Mr Suzuki also said that his Government would do its utmost to save the life of Mr Kim, sentenced to death by a military.' court last week. The Prime Minister'safd this had been conveyed to Sgouh — Tokyo.Bushfire naming Fire conditions are naw almost the same ps in 1968 when bushfires stretched from Bega in southern New South Wales to Newcastle in an almost unbroken line, the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation has said. . “That hasn’t developed yet, but unless the south coast forests burning at the . moment are. brought under control, it could be the scenario for late : October, early November,” said Phil Cheney, the head of the organisation’s fire-research section. Eastern Australia could be in for an early, severe ' fire season unless the' area got 150 mm over normal spring rainfall. — Canberra. ‘S.zLL.T. essential’ The United States Defence Secretary (Mr Harold Brown) has said that the Carter Administration wants the Senate to ratify the second Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (S.A.L.T. Il) with the Soviet Union by next spring at the latest. Otherwise, he said in a television interview, the whole armscontrol process might well break down. Ratification of the treaty signed by , President , Carter and the Soviet leader, Leonid Brezhnev, in Vienna last year has been held up since the Soviet military intervention' in Afghanistan last December. — Washington. Zia defied Two leading opposition groups in Pakistan have defied the military Government ban on criticising members of the armed forces, calling the military ruler, General Zia-Ul-Haq, unfit to speak at the United Nations on behalf of the world’s Muslims. Benazir Bhutto, the daughter of the executed former Prime Minister, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, whom General Zia overthrew in 1977, said in Karachi that the general was unqualified for the privilege because he represented noone in Pakistan. The executive of the Centrist Tehriq Istiqlal Party said, in a resolution passed in Lahore last Thursday and made public at the week-end, that General Zia had denied Pakistanis their basic human rights and did not represent his countrymen. — Islamabad. Zimbabwe protest Demonstrators stoned the main police station at Bulawayo at the. week-end but caused little damage and dispersed after a riot squad arrived. The demonstrators were part of a crowd of 3000 Patriotic Front supporters which had gathered earlier outside a newspaper office to protest against alleged misuse of State broadcasting facilities by the ruling party led by the Prime Minister (Mr Robert Mugabe). The protest came as the two parties began cam* paigning for. local-govern-ment elections scheduled tot ‘next month. — Bulawayo.