News Currents
UNITED STATES
Patrick Buchanan's strong showing in the New Hampshire primary, some analysts say, could mean that President Bush will have a campaign fight on his hands all year. (Election story, Page 1).... Consumer prices rose a scant 0.1 percent in January, the Labor Department reported yesterday, while construction of new homes and apartments rose sharply in January, at a 5.5 percent rate.... The Navy announced in Washington that US and Russian submarines collided Feb. 11 off the Russian coast. Russian officials ha ve been quoted as saying the collision happened within 12 miles of the coast near Murmansk, in Russia's territorial waters. MIDDLE EAST
Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Velayati said yesterday that Israel's killing of Hizbullah chief Sheikh Abbas Musawi would not affect Tehran's efforts to win the release of German hostages in Lebanon.... An Algerian minister said that a total of 5,000 government opponents have been arrested since Feb. 1.... Iraq will build an oil refinery in Sudan, its impoverished Gulf war ally, an Iraqi government newspaper said yesterday.... PLO adviser Bassam Abu Sharif told Reuters that a Middle Eastern country o ther than Libya was responsible for bombing Pan Am Flight 103 over Scotland. And Libya brought two of its countrymen before the media Tuesday, perhaps to put to rest reports it had hidden or executed them to forestall Western attempts to have them tried abroad for the bombing. EUROPE
New Irish Prime Minister Albert Reynolds, responding to growing protests over a court decision stopping a 14-year-old alleged rape victim from obtaining an abortion outside the republic, called on the opposition parties to join urgent talks on the issue, but not the girl's specific case. He also said the country did not want the law applied by "nods and winks." ... Pope John Paul II left for Senegal yesterday on a trip that will also include visits to Gambia and Guinea. All three nations are overwhelming ly Muslim and the Pope is expected to expound the theme of collaboration between the Christian and Muslim religions.... Bulgarian authorities are searching for $3 billion alleged to have been transferred abroad by Communist-run joint ventures between 1977 and 1990. Experts assess that only about one-tenth of the joint ventures abroad were actually registered in Bulgaria.... Germany announced yesterday it would forgive half of Poland's official debt of $5.54 billion in support of Warsaw's economic reforms. LATIN AMERICA AND THE CARIBBEAN
Haitian legislators agreed Tuesday to propose Saturday as a date for talks with ousted and exiled President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.... Former East German leader Erich Honecker can come to Chile if Moscow grants him documents to leave Russia, Chile's acting foreign minister, Edmundo Vargas, said.
