COLOMBO, Sri Lanka -- The decomposed bodies of 19 of the 39 servicemen who were aboard a military transport helicopter that disappeared January 22 were found washed ashore last Thursday and Sunday, the National News Agency said.
The agency said coastal fishermen found and buried 16 highly decomposed bodies on Thursday. Three more bodies, along with a military type boot and pieces of military uniform, washed ashore in the same area Sunday.
The Mi-17 transport helicopter disappeared while flying off the Jaffna peninsula, stronghold of the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, who claimed to have shot it down.
The National News Agency said the International Committee of the Red Cross had told the military about the bodies, which were found about nine kilometers from where the helicopter disappeared.
UNITED NATIONS (CNN) -- The United Nations Security Council warned Burundi on Monday it may impose an arms embargo if ethnic violence in that country does not stop.
The Council unanimously adopted a resolution threatening the arms embargo, as well as travel restrictions against Burundi leaders who "encourage violence." The resolution also gave Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali the green light to consider "contingency plans" in the light of increasing violence in Burundi.
Boutros-Ghali sent a technical mission to Burundi over the weekend to look into deploying U.N. monitors there. He also has suggested that a U.N. mission be posted on the Burundian border with Zaire. Burundi has been trying to put a lid on smoldering tension between the minority Tutsi and majority Hutu factions. The coalition government is adamantly opposed to any U.N. action.
JERUSALEM (CNN) -- A lawyer for Yitzhak Rabin's assassin quit in mid-trial Tuesday, citing his opposition to Yigal Amir's use of the court to express his extremist political views.
Avraham Pachter resigned less than 24 hours after he had been appointed to replace another attorney who quit.
"He wants a stage by means of the defense to present his ideological view and opinions, and is not at all that interested in conducting the trial in terms that I understand the law," Pachter said.
Amir has said he shot the prime minister in Tel Aviv on November 4 to stop Israel's peace process with Arabs.
A lawyer hired by the family, Jonathan Ray Goldberg, will continue to represent Amir when the trial resumes Thursday. But the court has reprimanded him for being unprepared, and Amir, a third-year law student, has taken over much of his own defense.
TOKYO (CNN) -- The Japanese island of Okinawa formally asked the central government on Tuesday to close all U.S. military bases on the island within 20 years.
Central government officials neither accepted nor rejected the demand, but the initial response was cool. Okinawa has increasingly pressed the long-standing issue since three U.S. servicemen were arrested in the rape last year of an Okinawan schoolgirl.
The request was formally presented at a meeting of the Okinawa-Central Government Liaison Council, a body set up to discuss the bases' future. Okinawa's governor, Masahide Ota, already has refused to renew leases for some land on which the bases are located.
Okinawa houses half of the 47,000 U.S. service personnel stationed in Japan. Official there want to scrap all U.S. bases by the year 2015, including all camps, training grounds and housing used by the 3rd Marine Division and the Kadena Air Force Base.
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