The move follows last week's failed attempt by the military to end a secessionist movement on Anjouan island.
CAPE TOWN - South Africa's National Party, which imposed apartheid and later dismantled it, elected political scientist Marthinus van Schalkwyk to succeed former president F.W. de Klerk as leader.
NAIROBI - The name of Mobutu Sese Seko, the ousted leader of Zaire who died in exile, will live on in "singular infamy", Kenya's Daily Nation said in a hard-hitting editorial. East Africa's biggest-selling newspaper said he symbolised the African "Big Man", a concept which would be buried with him.
KINSHASA - U.N. sources in Kinshasa said the investigation into alleged massacres in the former Zaire is still faced with major obstacles despite a written go-ahead from President Laurent Kabila.
MOSCOW - The crew of Russia's Mir space station restarted the main on-board computer early, one day after it failed and reduced energy supplies, a Mission control spokeswoman said.
BANJA LUKA, Bosnia - Bosnian Serb hardline leaders claimed they
were being held hostage in a Banja Luka hotel after it was surrounded by police loyal to President Biljana Plavsic.
LITTLE ROCK, Ark. - Lawyers representing Paula Jones in her sexual harassment lawsuit against President Bill Clinton sought to withdraw from the case because of "fundamental differences" with their client.
WASHINGTON - The United States called the arrest by Palestinian authorities of 35 suspected militants a positive step on the eve of Secretary of State Madeleine Albright's first Middle East peace mission.
LIMA - Hundreds of rescuers saved the Inca citadel of Machu Picchu from a huge brush fire that blazed up a steep mountainside and threatened to engulf Peru's most popular tourist site, authorities said.
MADRID - Bombs were found under the cars of a mayor and a town councillor in southern Spain, two days after Basque ETA guerrillas killed a policeman with a car bomb.
PARIS - Algerian security forces have smashed the main hideout of an elite force of the Armed Islamic Group (GIA) in one of two operations in which scores of rebels died.
MOSCOW - Russia's rebel region of Chechnya will publicly execute two criminals found guilty of murder just a week after a similar execution sparked an angry reaction from Moscow, Interfax news agency said.
SEOUL - South Korean troops shot dead an armed North Korean soldier who crossed into the South, the Defence Ministry in Seoul said.
BELFAST - Sinn Fein, the IRA's political wing, formally signed a declaration renouncing violence and assured itself of a place in historic peace talks on Northern Ireland next week.
HEBRON, West Bank - Jewish settlers threw stones at Palestinian labourers and lay down in the street to disrupt work on a U.S.-funded road project in the heart of the divided West Bank town of Hebron, witnesses said.
BAGHDAD - Iraq will hand to the United Nations a full declaration on its germ warfare programme in the next 48 hours, head of the U.N. Special Commission (UNSCOM) on Iraq Richard Butler said.
WASHINGTON - The United States called the arrest by Palestinian authorities of 35 suspected militants a positive step on the eve of Secretary of State Madeleine Albright's first Middle East peace mission.
NUREMBERG, Germany - German unemployment continued its inexorable rise to new postwar highs in August, hitting a seasonally adjusted 4.456 million, up 49,000 from July, the Federal Labour Office said.
