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WORLD
I.R.A. Declares Cease-Fire
The Irish Republican Army announced a "complete cessation of military operations" in the civil war that has plagued Northern Ireland and killed more than 3,000 people since 1969. Skeptics, remembering two previous cease- fires that unraveled in violence, noted that the I.R.A. has neither handed over its enormous cache of weapons nor specifically declared the cease-fire to be permanent. London and Dublin declared last December that the I.R.A.'s political wing, Sinn Fein, can join talks on Northern Ireland's future only when a permanent cease-fire has held for three months. Said British Prime Minister John Major last week: "The moment I am clear in my mind that this is a permanent end to violence, then the clock starts ticking."
Russians Strip German Bases ...
Declaring that "today is the last day of the past," Russian President Boris Yeltsin presided over a Berlin ceremony ending 49 years of Soviet military presence in Germany. The last 1,800 troops -- down from 338,000 in 1990 -- will leave this month. Ordered by Major General Matvei Burlakov, commander of the Russian forces in Germany, "to take everything with them," the soldiers stripped their military installations of window frames, toilet fixtures, doorknobs and wiring. After all, Burlakov said, even a cement pole "can be traded in Russia for five pigs."
... And Depart from Baltics
In nearby Latvia and Estonia, 54 years of occupation by the Soviet (and later Russian) army ended as the last soldiers quietly faded away. Joyous Balts celebrated with fireworks, speeches and a free rock concert at a former Soviet military base in the heart of the Estonian capital, Tallinn. "Today," said Estonian President Lennart Meri, "signifies the end of the saddest chapter in our history."
Japan Makes an Offer
The Japanese government said it will spend $1 billion over the next 10 years to pay for research into its wartime activities and to fund cultural exchanges with other Asia-Pacific countries as a symbol of remorse for its wartime atrocities. But groups of women demonstrated at the Japanese embassies in Seoul and Manila, angered that the package contained no compensation for the tens of thousands of Asian women forced into sex slavery by the Japanese army.
Al Gore vs. the Pope
In an unusually personal criticism, Pope John Paul II's spokesman assailed Vice President Al Gore, head of the U.S. delegation to the U.N. Conference on % Population and Development opening this week in Cairo. Papal spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls said the conference's draft document, principally sponsored by the U.S., "in reality contradicts Mr. Gore," who pledged that the U.S. will never try to establish a universal right to abortion.
Mitterrand: Collaborateur?
A new biography of Socialist French President Francois Mitterrand has revealed new information of Mitterrand's youthful extreme right-wing sympathies and later his role in the collaborationist Vichy government in World War II. Une Jeunesse Francaise (A French Youth), by journalist Pierre Pean, was written with Mitterrand's cooperation and depicts Mitterrand as a young nationalist with sympathies for fascist regimes and later, as an ambitious official in Vichy. The book also says Mitterrand joined the Resistance only in 1943, later than he has previously claimed.