8A NEWS
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 1, 2007
》 OLYMPICS
U.N. urges for truce during games in China
BY EDITH M. LEDERER ASSOCIATED PRESS
UNITED NATIONS — The U.N. General Assembly on Wednesday urged all nations to observe a truce during the Beijing Olympics next summer to enable all athletes to compete and help build "a peaceful and better world through sport."
A resolution adopted by the 192-nation world body recalled the ancient Greek tradition of ekcheiria, or "Olympic Truce," citing it as a model for encouraging a peaceful environment, ensuring safe passage for athletes and mobilizing the "youth of the world to the cause of peace."
The truce covers Beijing's Olympic Games set for Aug. 8-24 and the following Paralympic Games on Sept. 6-17.
The General Assembly revived the call for an Olympic Truce in 1993 after an appeal from the International Olympic Committee allowed athletes
of warton Yugoslavia to participate in the 1992 Barcelona Games.
According to the IOC's Web site, the General Assembly has unanimously called for a truce during each Olympics since then. But while the modern Olympics have been suspended only for the two world wars, the peaceful competitions have not halted smaller-scale conflicts.
IOC President Jacques Rogge and sports officials from a number of nations were in the General Assembly chamber for the adoption of the resolution, which was co-sponsored by 182 countries. It was approved by consensus.
Liu Qi, president of the Beijing Organizing Committee, introduced the resolution, saying that "at its very heart lies the pledge to safeguard world peace and promote common development of mankind, while at the same time upholding the Olympic spirit of 'swifter, higher, stronger'"
Thousands of refugees flee into Uganda amid intense fighting in Congo
》 UGANDA
BY KATY POWNALL ASSOCIATED PRESS
KISORO, Uganda — Mani Fosten's wife and three children are missing after the 35-year-old was separated from them amid the surging violence behind Congo's latest refugee crisis.
Now the farmer has only the clothes he wears and a small, battered Bible where he has scribbed his family's phone numbers — but there is no phone in his refugee camp.
ing set to stay permanently after years of deadly strife in eastern Congo linked to the 1994 genocide in Rwanda.
Some 13,000 refugees like Fosten have fled into Uganda in the past 10 days amid one of the worst spates of fighting in Congo since elections last year. They're arriving with tales of rape and murder and look-
"The worries can never stop now," said Fosten, looking at the sea of makeshift tents and bonfires at the U.N.-administered refugee camp. "Things are just that way now."
Nkunda says his fighters are protecting the Tutsi people, who were the main victims in the 1994
Glenna Gordon/ASSOCIATED PRESS
The latest fighting in Congo is pitting government forces and allied militants against forces loyal to a renegade army commander, Gen. Laurent Nkunda, who split from the Congo military after the official 2002 end of a four-year civil war that displaced millions of Congolese.
Congolese refugees arrive on the back of a truck Monday at the Nak雅anda transit camp near Kisoro, a reception center in Uganda. The United Nations Refugee Agency set up the center 10 miles from the Congo border. Violence in eastern Congo has reached new levels. The remote, vast and lawless land has become a playground for roaming militias and armed groups who terrorize civilians.
Rwandan genocide that saw Hutu extremists slaughtering more that 500,000 Tutus and moderate Hutus. Nkunda says he'll drive out the Hutu militants who fled to Congo after the genocide, but his predominantly Tuti forces now stand accused of atrocities they claim to want to stop.
Elections last year overseen by some 17.000 U.N. peacekeepers were meant to knit the country
back together. But President Joseph Kabila's re-elected government has yet to stabilize the east.
WORLD
In recent weeks, the government has moved forcefully to neutralize Nkunda and fighting has spread, the refugees in Uganda said.
More than 300,000 people have been driven from their homes since late 2006, New York-based Human Rights Watch said in a recent report.
Spanish court convicts suspects in Madrid train bombings Prosecutors have mixed reactions about verdict; victims' family members say men deserve more punishment
BY PAUL HAVEN ASSOCIATED PRESS
MADRID, Spain — Spain's National Court convicted the three main suspects in the Madrid commuter train bombings of mass murder Wednesday and sentenced them to tens of thousands of years in prison for Europe's worst Islamic terror attack.
But the verdict was a mixed bag for prosecutors, who saw four other key defendants convicted of lesser offenses and an accused ringleader acquitted altogether.
With much of the case resting on circumstantial evidence, the three judges may have been wary after a number of high-profile Spanish terror cases were overturned on appeal.
Spain's prime minister said the verdict still upheld justice. But victims of the attack, which killed 191 people and wounded more than 1,800 when bombs exploded on four trains on March 11, 2004, expressed shock and sadness over the court's decision.
"The verdict seems soft to us"
Pidlar Manjon, who lost her 20-
year-old son in the attack and has become a leader of a victims association. "I don't like it that murderers are going free."
Three lead suspects — Jamal Zougam and Othman Gnaoul of Morocco and Emilio Suarez Trashorras of Spain — were convicted of murder and attempted murder and received prison sentences ranging from 34,000 to 43,000 years. Under Spanish law, the most they will spend in jail is 40 years. Spain has no death penalty or life imprisonment.
Zougam was convicted of placing at least one bomb on a train and Gnaoui of being a right-hand man of the plot's operational chief. Trashorras, who once worked as a miner, was found guilty of supplying the explosives used in the bombs.
One of the biggest surprises was the acquittal of Rabei Osman, an Egyptian already convicted and jailed in Italy for the Madrid bombings.
Italian authorities said Osman bragged in tapped Arabic-language phone conversations that he was the brains behind the Madrid plot. But
translations of the taped conversations by two sets of Spanish translators indicated his comments were more nuanced and did not amount to a confession.
The Spanish verdict came just two days after an Italian appeals court upheld Osman's conviction there, but shaved two years off his prison term, sentencing him to eight years.
Osman watched the Spanish proceedings on a videoconference link from the Justice Palace in Milan. The Europa Press news agency reported that he broke down in tears and
shouted: "I've been absolved! I've been absolved!"
Four other top suspects — Youssef Belhadj, Hassan el Haski, Abdulmajid Bouchar and Rafa Zouhier — were acquitted of murder but convicted of other charges that included belonging to a terrorist organization. They received sentences of 10 to 18 years in prison.
Fourteen other defendants were found guilty of lesser crimes and six others were acquitted.
Much of the evidence in the 57 session, five-month trial was circumstantial.
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