Cable briefs

Press, 16 December 1988, Page 8

Cable briefs

Plane hits village

A Nigerian transport plane crashed into a village in Upper Egypt killing all eight crew members and some Egyptian residents on the ground, Egyptian newspapers reported. The plane, turned back from Cairo airport because of bad weather, crashed into three houses in Korn Omran village near Luxor after midnight—Cairo. Peres agrees The Israeli Foreign Minister, Shimon Peres, has agreed to serve as Finance Minister in a new national unity coalition headed by his political rival, the Right-wing Prime Minister, Yitzhak Shamir. Mr Peres had wanted to stay on as foreign minister but came under pressure from members of his Labour Party to take over the Finance Ministry to aid ailing Labour-affiliated industries and collective settlements, or kibbutzim.—Jerusalem. Crash cause

Pilot error probably caused a military transport plane crash which killed almost 80 people

bringing relief aid to quake-ravaged northern Armenia, the Soviet Air Force Commander-in-chief said. Marshal Alexander Yefimov said in an interview with the Communist Party daily, “Pravda,” that flying conditions were usually difficult in Armenia because of mountainous terrain and meteorological conditions. In 50 years of flying experience he had never witnessed such congested air traffic, with the arrival of more than 300 transport planes at Yerevan and Leninakan airports in a week after the December 7 earthquake—Moscow. Forces job cuts The Defence Secretary, Frank Carlucci, has ordered 3000 jobs cut in the U.S. Armed Forces over the next three years, the Defence Department said. Major Kathy Wood, a Pentagon spokeswoman, said the order would affect 1168 positions in the Air Force, 1123 in the Army, 654 in the Navy, 41 in the Marine Corps and 14 in senior staff at the Pentagon. She said the cuts, to begin in 1989, would be made through attrition. Many of the reductions are expected to

involve staff positions around the world. —Washington.

Albanian quake

A region of southern Albania near the Greek border was shaken by an earthquake measuring 5.0 on the open-ended Richter scale. There was no immediate news of damage.—Athens. London shootout Two policemen and three suspected robbers were wounded, none seriously, in a shootout after a gang was ambushed during a post office raid in West London. The masked attackers tried to escape when they were confronted by police who had been posing as customers. The police had received a tip-off about the raid.—London. LR.A. attack The LR.A. said today it was responsible for a grenade attack which wounded two British policemen and an elderly civilian in the border town of Newry. The Irish Republican Army said it used a shoulder-fired rocket-propelled grenade in the attack.—Belfast.