News Currents

AFRICA AND THE MIDDLE EAST

Russian Foreign Minister Andrei Kozyrev said in Cairo yesterday that Libya should hand over to the UN two Libyan suspects whom the United States and Britain hold responsible for bombing the Pan Am flight over Lockerbie in 1988. Sweden has rejected a Libyan request for it to host the trial of the two Libyans. Le Journal du Dimanche reported in Paris that a Libyan intelligence agent who defected to the West is willing to give evidence on the case. And reports circulated in Cairo that the UN Security Counci l might soon seek trade sanctions against Libya.... Iraq has rejected the UN Security Council condemnation of its refusal to comply with a UN deadline to begin destroying equipment used to manufacture weapons of mass destruction. UNITED STATES

A move to endorse President Bush three months before the June 2 California primary fizzled at the state Republican Party convention in San Francisco Saturday. The move would have taken a two-thirds vote because it involves suspending the rules. A non-binding "straw vote" was much more likely, since it takes only a majority. ASIA AND THE PACIFIC

Leaders of an anti-Indonesia demonstration in East Timor in November that ended in an army massacre of civilians will go on trial this week, a local court official in Dili, East Timor, said. They will be charged with subversion, which carries a maximum penalty of death. Indonesia last week banned foreign journalists from the former Portuguese colony before the arrival of a "peace boat," which is to sail there from the Australian port of Darwin this week. Would-be protesters flew from Portugal to Australi a yesterday to board the boat.