February 16, 1996
Web posted at: 2:30 p.m. EST
ROME (Reuter) - President Oscar Luigi Scalfaro signed a decree dissolving the Italian parliament Friday, opening the way for a general election three years ahead of schedule.
The cabinet of technocrat Prime Minister Lamberto Dini was due to meet later Friday to set the date of the vote with most commentators expecting an April 21 or 28 election.
The present deeply divided parliament was elected in March 1994 and should have lasted until 1999, but Scalfaro was forced to dissolve it early after the country's feuding parties failed to agree earlier this week on the formation of a new government to oversee constitutional reforms.
BEIRUT, Lebanon (Reuter) - Fourteen people were killed and 10 injured when demolition workers brought down a Beirut building with squatters still inside, a police official said on Friday.
Witnesses said the building collapsed as demolition workers knocked away its foundations to frighten the squatters into leaving.
CHELYABINSK, Russia (CNN) -- Russian President Boris Yeltsin told a group Friday that he wants to withdraw Russian troops to the border of Chechnya.
But he also said if any problems occur in the breakaway region, he would re-deploy the troops to take care of the trouble.
Yeltsin, who announced Thursday that he will run again for president, has promised repeatedly that he would end the war but he has not explained how.
"Send in your suggestions as to how this can be done," Yeltsin said Thursday during a speech.
TOKYO (Reuter) - North Korea staged elaborate ceremonies on Friday for the 54th birthday of leader-in- waiting Kim Jong-il but stopped short of elevating him to key titles held by his late father, Kim Il-sung.
Tens of thousands of youths took part in a rally and gymnastics display in Pyongyang, pledging loyalty to Kim Jong-il, long-designated heir of president and Korean Workers' Party general-secretary Kim Il-sung, said Radio Pyongyang.
Although state media heaped praise on Kim Jong-il, there was no announcement that the shadowy leader was to be formally promoted in what would be communism's first dynastic succession.
TOKYO (Reuter) - North Korea on Friday denied news reports that an intruder killed himself after shooting dead three Korean guards when he forced his way into the Russian embassy compound in Pyongyang to demand political asylum.
"The man in question is a serious lunatic who has suffered from a mental disease after committing murder," said the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), monitored in Tokyo.
"He is now under medical treatment in a hospital," it said. "Alleging that such a person had sought political refuge in another country is foolish and ridiculous," KCNA said.
On Thursday, Russia's Interfax news agency quoted a senior Russian Foreign Ministry official as saying the gunman shot himself.
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Gen. John Shalikashvili, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Thursday he does not believe that China plans to attack Taiwan.
Speaking to a group of print reporters, Shalikashvili said, "We don't see them gathering the kind of forces and the kind of support that you would need to conduct that kind of operation."
The United States has expressed concern over recent reports of China's military bids to threaten Taiwan. China has indicated that it will use force if Taiwan declares formal independence in a presidential election on March 23.
Beijing has regarded Taiwan as a renegade province since 1949, when Nationalists took refuge on the island after being defeated by Chinese communists in a civil war.
LONDON (CNN) -- A judicial commission has concluded that a few ministers in Margaret Thatcher's government conspired to cover up the relaxation of curbs on arms sales to Iraq before the Gulf War.
But the findings of the Scott Commission were milder than expected, prompting the British government to say it has been absolved of wrong-doing.
The 1,800-page report showed a trail of misleading statements but exonerated Conservative government ministers on two highly damaging charges: lying and plotting to let three British exporters go to jail rather than admit official collusion in the sales of weapons-producing equipment.
Relaxation of the curbs meant that right up to Saddam Hussein's 1990 invasion of Kuwait, Britain was selling Iraq machine tools capable of producing artillery shells and ballistic missiles.
Major ordered the judicial inquiry in 1992 after three British executives of an Iraqi-owned, British-based company, Matrix Churchill, were cleared of illegal arms sales on evidence that the government was aware of the sales.
KABUL, Afghanistan (CNN) -- Afghani defense officials are ruling out a rebel attack as the cause of a deadly explosion in the capital.
An ammunition dump in the presidential palace in Kabul caught fire Thursday, igniting a blast that killed up to 60 people.
The government said a faulty appliance was to blame.
Kabul has been besieged for the last few months by the Taleban Islamic militia, which has frequently fired rockets and artillery shells at government-held areas in its bid to topple President Burhanuddin Rabbani's government.
HULL, Quebec (CNN) -- Prime Minister Jean Chretien reacted strongly to hecklers at a ceremony honoring the Canadian flag, grabbing one of the demonstrators by the neck and pushing him into the hands of a police officer at a ceremony honoring the Canadian flag.
Police briefly pinned the man, Bill Clennett, to the ground. When Clennett got up, he had lost two teeth.
Clennett was part of a group of protesters who had disrupted the prime minister's Flag Day speech with air horns and chants to express their opposition to reductions in unemployment insurance.
After the scuffle, the prime minister said he was not exactly sure what happened as a man pushed through a crowd of school children and a line of Royal Canadian Mounted Police officers to reach him.
The ceremony marked the 31st anniversary of Canada's adoption of the Maple Leaf flag, which replaced the British Union Jack.
WARSAW, Poland (CNN) -- The leftist-dominated Parliament Thursday backed Poland's seventh government since communism fell in 1989. New Prime Minister Wlodzimierz Cimoszewicz pledged to continue the nation's six-year-old market reforms.
Cimoszewicz was sworn in with his cabinet on February 7, but the new government required parliamentary approval.
The Sejm, the powerful lower chamber of Parliament, voted 273-87, with 28 abstentions to approve the prime minister's 23-member cabinet.
Even though the prime minister and five other officials are new, the government is the product of the same leftist coalition that has ruled Poland since 1993: the Polish Peasants' Party and the Democratic Left Alliance.
Cimoszewicz, 45, replaced Jozef Oleksy, who resigned last month amid allegations that he had spied for Moscow. Oleksy has denied the charges.
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The Pentagon is casting doubt on the accuracy of press reports that Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, who has been indicted for war crimes, was allowed to pass through several NATO checkpoints in Bosnia.
The Washington Post Saturday reported that Karadzic's motorcade passed unchallenged through four checkposts.
Senate Majority Leader Robert Dole said he was outraged by the reports. In a letter to President Clinton, Dole and three other senators wrote, "While we do not advocate ... hunting down war criminals, such a 'see no evil' policy is unconscionable."
The Pentagon said NATO efforts to track down the story have produced no evidence that Karadzic's motorcade went through NATO checkpoints.
There are several possible routes Karadzic could have taken from Pale to Banja Luka that would have allowed him to remain in Serb-controlled territory and thus avoid checkpoints, Pentagon officials said.
The Pentagon said if Karadzic is spotted by NATO troops, they are authorized to use force to apprehend him, even if he is protected by armed bodyguards.
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Using a sophisticated detection device, the U.S. Navy Thursday located the "black box" recorders from a charter Boeing 757 that crashed in Caribbean waters last week, killing all 189 people on board.
A locating device picked up a tracking signal from the flight data and voice recorders and showed them to be resting on the sea floor some 7,600 feet below the surface. Next step: Sending a robot to recover the devices.
Information from the recorders could be crucial to discovering the cause of the February 6 crash, which occurred minutes after takeoff.
LONDON (CNN) -- One of the last survivors of the Titanic is dead. Eva Hart died Wednesday in a hospice near her East London home. She was 91.
Hart was seven when the "unsinkable" Titanic struck an iceberg and sank in April of 1912. She was among 705 people who survived. Her father, who was among the 1,523 who perished, had lifted her into a lifeboat and told her: "Hold mummy's hand and be a good girl."
For years, Hart had recurring nightmares and refused to talk about the tragedy, but she finally told her story in an autobiography titled "Shadow of the Titanic."
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Reuters contributed to this report.
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