Cable briefs

Press, 12 August 1985, Page 6

Cable briefs

Fire cost Canada’s west coast province of British Columbia has spent the record sum of sCanloo million (about SNZIBO million) fighting forest fires this (northern) summer. The Forestry Minister, Mr Ken Lines, said that nearly 3000 firemen were struggling against 800 fires that had been brought under control and 20 still out of control. Most were caused by lightning. — Victoria, B.C.

Detainees freed Uganda’s new military rulers have freed 1203 political detainees and announced that they will hold talks in Taanzania tomorrow with the biggest rebel group. The National Resistance Army has so far shunned the new regime’s peace overtures, but rebel sources in neighbouring Kenya said that a the northern Tanzanian town of Arusha was the proposed venue for the. discussions. Some 50,000 jubilant Kampala residents attended a rally in the capital’s main square yesterday to greet detainees released from maximum security jails, many of them prominent political figures held under security laws for yea’rs. — Kampala. Passports seized The Zimbabwean police have seized the passport of the; chief opposition leader, Joshua Nkomo, and detained two top officials of his P.F.Z.A.P.U. party, his wife says. Johanna Nkomo said from Bulawayo that two policemen had called at their house and confiscated his passport and her own. She said no reason was given and that the police had behaved politely. Mr Nkomo was present when the police arrived. — Harare. Nemery sought Sudan has officially asked Egypt to extradite the de-

posed President, Jaafar Nemery, says the Sudanese Prime Minister, Mr al-Ga-zouli Dafaa-Allah. “We believe Nemery should not be identified as a political refugee,” Mr Dafaa-Allah said. Sudan had not yet received a reply- from Egypt, he said. The Egyptian President, Mr Hosni Mubarak, has said that his country’s Constitution forbids political refugees to be extradited. Alps deaths

At least six people died in the Swiss Alps last week, partly because of freak weather. The Air Zermatt rescue service said that two S’ had plunged to their while climbing about 3500 metres on the Matterhorn. Rescuers had found the bodies of four people who had died after a sudden bout of cold weather hit the mountain areas. The bodies of two Italians were found on the Pointe-Dufour peak and the bodies of two Frenchmen were discovered in the Jungfrau mountain area. — Zurich.

Drafted crowd The Egyptian police and soldiers have been drafted in to fill the stands at this week’s African athletics championships to avoid a repetition of embarrassingly low attendances at the last such event in Cairo. “I did not want to do it but we could not face empty stands again,” said the Egyptian Athletics Federation’s chairman, Mr Suliman Hagar. Cairo’s 100,000-seat, West German-designed international stadium hosted the African athletics championships in 1982, but only a few hundred spectators turned up. This time the public will be admitted free, and thousands of police and soldiers from barracks around the capital will swell the crowd to cheer the competitors on. — Cairo.