News Currents

EUROPEUN Secretary-General Javier Perez de Cuellar hopes for results soon on the Middle East hostage crisis, perhaps by early next month, his spokeswoman said yesterday in Geneva.... Foreign ministers of Iceland and the three Baltic republics signed declarations yesterday in Reykjavik establishing diplomatic ties. Iceland, the first Western country to establish diplomatic relations with the Baltic republics, formally recognized Estonia and Latvia last week and Lithuania last February. Poland and Japan are also ready to establish ties with the three Baltic republics (story, page 4).... Berlin, Germany's future seat of government, will cut 10,000 civil service jobs, raise company taxes, and sell off state-owned firms to plug yawning gaps in its 1992 budget. Berlin has had to cut spending because of cuts in federal subsidies. ASIA AND THE PACIFIC Breakaway Soviet republics could become members of the UN if they demonstrate full independence, Thomas Pickering, the US Ambassador to the UN, said in New Delhi yesterday.... AIDS threatens 800,000 child prostitutes in Thailand because they are less able to force adult clients to take such measures as using condoms, a Thai delegate told an international workshop yesterday in Jakarta.... A senior Japanese Finance Ministry official yesterday said the ministry had been aware since 1983 of securities-compan ies reimbursements to favored clients for trading losses. Since June, 21 firms have acknowledged giving $1.26 billion to favored clients for investment losses. Compensation is not illegal in Japan but goes against a Finance Ministry directive. MIDDLE EAST UN Secretary-General de Cuellar hinted yesterday he might visit Iran in the near future but said the trip would not involve negotiations to resolve the Middle East hostage crisis because it might be resolved before then. Reparations from the Iran-Iraq war would be the topic.... A Baghdad newspaper owned by Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's son Uday said yesterday that the Soviet Union was finished as a great power. In a rare signed editorial on the front-page of Babil, Uday said people needed strong leade rship. Western-style democracy would not work in Iraq with its Arab and Islamic traditions, he wrote. ENVIRONMENT AND SCIENCE Three astronomers say they have detected a quasar that may be the oldest, most distant object yet discovered, an enigmatic powerhouse born less than 1 billion years after the birth of the universe. The discovery was announced in the September issue of The Astronomical Journal.... Aircraft could be nearly as bad for the environment as cars because the pollution their exhausts spew out into the sky is accelerating global warming, according to a report released in London by the conservation group World Wide Fund for Nature.