National news briefly

U.N. leader unhappy with Sudan efforts

United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan said Tuesday he is not satisfied with Sudan’s efforts to provide security in the conflict-ridden western Darfur region and called on Khartoum to redouble its efforts to protect the population.

Annan said he expects the U.N. Security Council to take action within the next week on his report which urged the government to accept a greatly expanded international monitoring force to help prevent escalating militia attacks in Darfur.

U.S. Deputy Ambassador Stuart Holliday said the United States is working on a draft resolution and expects to introduce it in the council today “and then obviously have a discussion after that.” He refused to provide any details.

British Foreign Minister Jack Straw on Tuesday called on the United Nations to detail clear steps the Sudanese government must take to end the crisis.

The African Union currently has about 80 military observers in Darfur, protected by just over 300 soldiers, monitoring a rarely observed cease-fire signed in April. The top U.N. envoy to Sudan, Jan Pronk, said last week that more than 3,000 troops were needed.

Annan urged the international community to support an expanded African Union force financially and logistically.

He was asked to comment on reports of new violence in the Darfur region, where Arab militias have been accused of attacking local villagers, killing up to 30,000 people and forcing over 1.2 million to flee their homes in what the United Nations says is the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.

Pinochet ordered to appear for questioning

Santiago, Chile A judge ordered Gen. Augusto Pinochet on Tuesday to appear for questioning this week about the disappearance of opponents during his 17-year dictatorship, after the Supreme Court last month stripped him of the immunity enjoyed as a former president.

Judge Juan Guzman set Thursday as the date for the testimony.

The case being investigated by Guzman refers to the so-called “Operation Condor” – a plan by South American military dictatorships to eliminate leftists and quash dissent in the 1970s. Pinochet ruled Chile from 1973 to 1990 after seizing power in a bloody coup.

According to court papers, 20 Chileans “disappeared” as a result of the operations, which involved the secret services of Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay.

Human rights accusations are not the only legal problem Pinochet faces. He is also under investigation by another judge trying to determine the source of $4 million to $8 million he secretly deposited at Riggs Bank in Washington in the mid-1990s. The disclosure of the accounts was made by a U.S. Senate banking committee investigating Riggs.

Dozens of hippos die in Uganda

Kampala, Uganda Some 60 hippos have died from an unknown cause in the past two months in one of Uganda’s national parks, an official said Tuesday.

Preliminary analysis by scientists from the state-run Makerere University suggests the dead hippos did not have a viral infection, said John Bosco Nuwe, the chief warden of Queen Elizabeth National Park where the deaths occurred.

“The animals just fall down and die,” Nuwe told The Associated Press. “Veterinary doctors are working out the cause of the deaths of these hippos. Saliva oozes out from the sick and dead ones.”

Queen Elizabeth National Park, about 205 miles west of the capital Kampala, is home to about half of the estimated 10,000 hippos in Uganda. The park is Uganda’s second largest.

Farmers seize dam in Guatemala

Guatemala City Hundreds of angry farmers seized Guatemala’s largest hydroelectric dam Tuesday, threatening to shut off power to large parts of the country unless the government agrees to return nearby lands to them.

The farmers forced their way into the Chixoy dam complex in the northern province of Alta Verapaz, seized the control room and were trying to force employees to close the gates that supply water to the facility’s turbines.

“Hundreds of farmworkers have cornered the manager in the control room, and are pressuring him to close the gates,” said Fredy Lopez, spokesman for the National Electricity Institute, which runs the facility.

President Oscar Berger urged the farmers to hand over the facility. “This is no way to negotiate or solve conflicts,” Berger said.

The farmers are demanding the institute give them land around the dam. The agency expropriated that land — and gave residents other plots — in order to secure the dam’s watershed and catchment basin.

However, the estimated 500 farmers say they were given land of inferior quality in compensation.

The takeover of the plant, which supplies about 60 percent of the country’s electricity, comes on the eve of a deadline set six months ago by various peasant groups for the solution of the problem.

The events at Chixoy, about 75 miles north of Guatemala City, appear unrelated to the deaths last week of 3 policemen and 7 farmers when police ousted squatters from a private farm they had seized about 110 miles south of the capital.

South Korean denies reports of nuclear activity

Taejon, South Korea South Korea’s top nuclear energy official on Tuesday denied claims that scientists in his country had produced near-bomb-grade uranium, seeking to ease concern that the previously undisclosed experiments were in apparent violation of international law.

“Yes, we did enrich uranium, but an amount so small it was almost invisible and to levels that were not close” to weapons grade, said Chang In-soon, president of the government Korean Atomic Energy Research Institute. “This was an academic exercise, nothing more,” Chang said in an interview. “We have no ambition beyond science. Any suggestion to the contrary is wrong.”

His description of the experiments appeared to be at odds with testimony that South Korean officials are said to have provided last week to the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency. Diplomats familiar with the testimony said the South Korean officials had reported that they enriched uranium to almost 80 percent – close to levels used in nuclear weapons and far above the single-digit levels typically used in nuclear energy production.

Chang, however, insisted there had been a “misunderstanding.” He said the three tests had yielded an average enrichment level of only 10 percent – with the highest levels not exceeding the average by a large amount. Diplomats familiar with the case, however, said they preferred to await the results of IAEA testing.

Typhoon kills 17 in northern Japan

Tokyo A powerful tropical storm hammered northern Japan today, leaving at least 17 people dead and 19 missing, cutting power to nearly 400,000 homes and forcing hundreds of people to evacuate.

Public broadcaster NHK said at least 718 people were injured, while police estimated the number at 498.

Typhoon Songda was downgraded to a tropical storm today. It was heading northwest and had sustained winds of up to 67 miles per hour and was centered west of Otaru city in Hokkaido state, 525 miles northwest of Tokyo.

As much as 8 inches of rain was forecast for Hokkaido and other areas of northern Japan through Wednesday evening, the Meteorological Agency said.Songda was the record seventh typhoon to hit Japan this year — exceeding the six storms that lashed the country in 1990, the agency said.