EVENTS
SOMALIS ESTABLISH RULING COUNCIL
Somali warlords have agreed to set up the first form of national government Somalia has known for more than two years after a breakthrough at United Nations-sponsored peace talks, delegates said yesterday. They said 15 faction leaders representing the country's warring clans agreed to establish a Transitional National Council to act as a focus for disarmament and relief. The TNC will give the country a federal-style administration with which the UN, relief agencies, and an international military task for ce can negotiate. Delegates said the council would group 74 regional representatives including women's groups and community leaders to give the council as broad a base as possible. Li Peng re-elected
Chinese Premier Li Peng, reelected to a second term yesterday, has transformed his public image from shrill defender of hard-line Marxism to quiet but effective supporter of economic reform. But Li's screaming denunciations of student demonstrators in 1989 marked him as a political hatchet man. He is still widely reviled among Chinese citizens, and Beijing residents in particular have never forgiven him for his role in the army massacre of pro-democracy protesters in their city on June 4, 1989. NATO looks to Bosnia
Some NATO nations are wondering, off the record, whether the alliance can actually field the tens of thousands of soldiers that might be needed to implement a comprehensive UN peace plan in Yugoslavia. Alliance military strategists are working on plans to put together a peacekeeping force ranging from 65,000 to 75,000 troops that would help the UN. Meanwhile, France has become the first country to join the United States in airdropping supplies to besieged Muslim towns in eastern Bosnia, the US European C ommand said yesterday. Final French vote held
French voters were set to complete the Socialist Party's humiliation yesterday by electing a conservative government with an overwhelming parliamentary majority. The Union for France alliance could finish with as many as 500 of the 577 seats in the National Assembly, a majority unprecedented in modern France, after the second round of the two-stage election. Nigeria's election
Millionaire Bashir Tofa won an overwhelming victory in a first round of primary voting and appeared set yesterday to clinch his party's nomination in Nigeria's first civilian presidential election in a decade. Tofa, a Muslim businessman from northern Kano city, won more than half the 8,749 delegate votes cast March 27 for 27 hopefuls in the right-of-center National Republican Convention. The NRC is vying with the Social Democratic Party for full political power in a June 12 election before military Presi dent Ibrahim Babangida's planned handover of power on Aug. 27. India-Pakistan fight
Senior Pakistani officials yesterday accused India of making "unsubstantiated and wild allegations" linking Pakistan to a recent bombing spree in Bombay. Earlier, senior Indian officials charged that Pakistan's secret service had masterminded the March 12 bombing spree. Meanwhile, divisions in Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's fragile coalition government broadened yesterday as three Cabinet ministers announced their resignations. Planning Minister Hamid Nasir Chattha spearheaded the resignations t o protest attempts by Sharif to take over the presidency of the Pakistan Muslim League, which is the political powerhouse in the coalition. UN peacekeeper killed
A Bangladeshi soldier serving with United Nations peacekeeping forces in Cambodia died yesterday following an attack by suspected Khmer Rouge guerrillas, a UN spokesman said. He was the first member of the UN's 15,000-strong military force to die from hostile fire in Cambodia.
