Cable briefs

Press, 14 March 1984, Page 6

Cable briefs

Burmese in clash Thai forces backed by armoured troop carrierr repulsed intruding Burmese soldiers yesterday after a night of heavy fighting in which at least 10 Burmese were killed. Military sources said that up to 200 Burmese soldiers had crossed into north-western Thailand on Monday to attack Karen secessionist rebels but had clashed instead with Thai border police, killing two of the police and wounding 17. A Thai Army battalion had been sent to help beat back the Burmese, who had moved about 100 metres into Thai territory in an area 600 km from Bangkok. — Bangkok. S.W.A.P.O. replies The South-West Africa People’s Organisation will accept a South African call for a regional conference on Namibia but only if it focuses on the territory and excludes discussion of Angola, S.W.A.P.O.’s president, Sam Nujoma, said. South .Africa yesterday called for a conference of all parties concerned with Namibia and Angola, including S.W.A.P.O. guerrillas and U.N.I.T.A. rebels fighting the Angolan Government. The issues of Namibia and Angola were separate and should not be linked, he said. — Lusaka. Chernenko call The new Soviet leader, Konstantin Chernenko, has expressed a Soviet willingness to return to detente and to negotiations on reducing nuclear arms in Europe, but with conditions. “The talks can be resumed at any moment — let the United States remove the obstacles which it created by fielding its new missiles in Europe,” Tass quoted him as telling the West German Opposition Leader, Mr Hans-Jochen Vogel. — Moscow. Witness challenged Lawyers defending three Catholic priests and six lay workers facing murder charges in Bacolod, the Philippines, have challenged the credibility of a key prosecution witness. The de-

fence alleged that the witness, Juanito Bolhano, aged 27, a farmer, was facing two criminal charges, one for murder, filed on March 4, 1983, and another for kidnapping with serious illegal detention. They submitted that he could be an unreliable witness and open to pressure. — Bacolod. Woman missing A woman with whom the alleged assassin of the Filipino opposition leader, Benigno Aquino, spent the last few days before the killing, has been missing since September, a newspaper reports. The woman’s mother told the paper, “Malaya” that her daughter Ana, aged 28, believed to have been Rolando Galman’s mistress, and her other daughter, Catherine, aged 23, had been abducted by men who, “looked like secret agents and carried walkie-talkies.” — Manila. Bears endangered Bears are vanishing from the Pyrenees and face extinction unless urgent action is taken to protect their last refuge, say French conservation officials. A committee recently formed to protect the species said that the bear population of the rugged mountains between France and Spain had dropped from 200 in 1937 to 15. The committee called on the Government to stop building new roads and forest paths in the area, to crack down on poaching, and to ban winter hunting near the bears' lairs. — Paris. Guard defects An East German border guard scaled a barbed wire fence and escaped unharmed to West Germany — -the third East German to flee in one day. The soldier, aged 20, who was on duty and who crossed the border at a point where there are neither mines nor automatic scatterguns, crossed just south of the Baltic port of Luebeck. During the night two men aged 29 and 34. both building workers, crossed the frontier near Osterode. in Lower Saxony. — Bad Bramstedt