World briefs

By Compiled from Times wires

© St. Petersburg Times, published August 14, 2000

Venezuelan president visits Libya's Gadhafi

TRIPOLI, Libya -- Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez followed up a controversial trip to Iraq with a visit Sunday to Libya -- another nation often at odds with the United States and familiar with the sort of U.N. sanctions he has condemned.

Meeting with Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi, Chavez praised the country's economic and political reforms and called the 1986 U.S. bombing of Tripoli a "criminal act." The two leaders discussed bilateral relations and the prospect of further cooperation, according to the Libyan News Agency.

"Our struggles are the same, as well as our ideals, namely the preservation of dignity, liberty and the rule of the people," Chavez said, quoted by Egypt's Middle East News Agency.

Nuclear forces will be cut

MOSCOW -- President Vladimir Putin will reduce spending on nuclear forces and shift some of their responsibilities to the conventional forces, said air force commander Anatoly Kornukov.

The decision came at a meeting Friday to debate the future of Russia's beleaguered military and defuse tensions over control of the country's nuclear arsenal. Putin, elected in March, has championed nuclear disarmament as a goal of his presidency.

Kornukov, who participated in the meeting, said on Russian television Saturday that the space missile defense troops, currently a branch of the Strategic Rocket Forces, would be put under air force command by 2002.

Elsewhere

CASTRO BIRTHDAY: President Fidel Castro marked his 74th birthday Sunday in Havana, with a speech to a graduating class of health care workers -- communist Cuba's new ambassadors to the developing world.

PIG RESEARCH: The creators of Dolly the Sheep are halting their research into genetically modifying pigs for human organ transplants, one of the scientists said Sunday, citing fears that transplanting animal organs into people could unleash deadly new viruses among humans.

TALEBAN OFFENSIVE: Heavy fighting raged in Afghanistan's northern Takhar province Sunday as the country's ruling Taleban militia advanced toward the opposition stronghold of Taloqan, an opposition spokesman said.

SOMALIA: Somalia's first legislators in nine years were inaugurated Sunday. The nation has had no central government since opposition leaders joined forces to oust Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991. The country then descended into chaos as faction leaders turned against one another.

YUGOSLAVIA: Ten men were detained after French peacekeepers discovered a cache of grenades, ammunition and radios in northern Kosovo, NATO-led peacekeepers said Sunday.

HOSTAGES FREED: Two Red Cross workers were reunited with their families in Geneva after they and their driver were freed Sunday from nine days' captivity in the mountains of northern Georgia.

© St. Petersburg Times. All rights reserved.