UN official in East Timor quits
UN official in East Timor quits
EAST TIMOR: One of the top United Nations officials running East Timor has resigned, complaining of poor morale, interference in management and a lack of senior Asians in the UN administration.
Malaysian N. Parameswaran said on Tuesday he had quit as chief of staff of the United Nations Transitional Administration in East Timor (UNTAET) and would leave his post on Sunday.
In his resignation letter to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, a copy of which was obtained by AFP, Parameswaran alleges that interference from UNTAET deputy administrator Dennis McNamara hampered his efforts to bring home refugees.
He says UNTAET "has become a very much a 'white' mission, an Eastern mission with a Western face." --AFP
;AFP;KOD; ANPAu..r.. ATW-SAsia-China-India China's Zhu to visit India, Bangladesh amid South Asia tension JP/10/ATW
Zhu to visit India, Bangladesh
CHINA: Premier Zhu Rongji will make a trip to the volatile South Asian region with visits to India and Bangladesh from Jan. 11 to 18, the foreign ministry in Beijing said on Tuesday.
Zhu's visit to India will take place little more than a week after he received Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf in Beijing.
Tension between India and Pakistan has been mounting since a deadly Dec. 13 attack on the New Delhi parliament, which India blames on Islamic militant groups with links to Pakistan.
China is Pakistan's key ally and Musharraf has visited Beijing twice in less than a month. --AFP
;AFP;KOD; ANPAi..r.. ATW-Cuba-US US lawmakers in Cuba meet Castro, dissidents JP/10/ATW
U.S. lawmakers meet Castro, dissidents
CUBA: Six members of the U.S. House of Representatives met for several hours on Monday with Cuban President Fidel Castro, an official source here said.
Republican Jo Ann Emerson of Missouri and her Democratic colleagues Hilda Solis (California), William Clay (Missouri), Victor Snyder (Arkansas) and William Delahunt and Stephen Lynch of Massachusetts spent six hours overnight Sunday with Castro at the Palace of the Revolution.
It was the second marathon meeting with U.S. lawmakers in as many weeks for Castro, who earlier hosted Republican Senators Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania and Lincoln Chafee of Nebraska.
After the meeting, Specter expressed confidence that Cuba would not raise objections to the detention of war prisoners captured in Afghanistan at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay. --AFP
;AP;KOD; ANPAi..r.. ATW-Russia-Obit-Prokhorov Nobel laureate Prokhorov, whose work led to laser, dies at 85 JP/10/ATW
Nobel laureate Prokhorov dies at 85
RUSSIA: Alexander Prokhorov, who won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1964 for work that led to the development of the laser, has died. He was 85.
Prokhorov died early Tuesday in his Moscow apartment, according to a report by the Itar-Tass news agency, which didn't give a cause of death.
Prokhorov won the Nobel Prize with colleague Nikolai Basov and Charles Townes of the United States for work in the field of quantum electronics. The Soviets worked separately from Townes, but their developments were in parallel.
Townes is credited with developing the first maser -- a beam of coherent microwave radiation analogous to a laser -- in 1953, while Prokhorov and Basov produced a similar device the next year. That development preceded the laser. --AP
;AFP;KOD; ANPAi..r.. ATW-US-nuclear-tests US to raise possibility of resuming nuclear tests: report JP/10/ATW
US to raise possibility of resuming nuclear tests: report
USA: The government plans to raise the possibility that it might resume underground nuclear testing to help maintain the safety and reliability of its strategic nuclear arsenal, The Washington Post reported on Tuesday.
The idea is expected to be raised on Tuesday when the administration of President George W. Bush lays out its broad strategic nuclear plans to Congress, the report said.
The highly-classified Nuclear Posture Review will contain the administration's justification for reducing strategic warheads over the next decade from roughly 6,000 to the level of 1,700 to 2,100, as proposed by Bush, the paper reported.
But the review will say the United States needs to be able to resume testing at its Nevada test site quicker than is possible under present government guidelines. --AFP