The Age from Melbourne, Victoria, Australia • Page 10

A 10 THE AGE TUESDAY 2 APRIL 1996 World News Picture: AP In Brief Mandela tribute sparks $16m row r2 -t i Viv rM) i-b 3 il propriate because of their controversial activities in the past. The sculptor, Danie de lager, describes himself as the country's "most experienced sculptor of the heroic or larger than He omits to mention that he was one of the principal state artists in the apartheid era. He designed the statue of Hendrik Verwoerd, the architect of apartheid, that overlooks his grave, and a monument in Pretoria to I.G. Strijdom, another hardline Nationalist leader. The project's proposers are almost as controversial.

They are the multi-millionaire Krok twins, who made their fortune by selling skin-lightening creams and quack medicines to blacks. South African newspapers said yesterday that about $255,000 already had been spent on the project. The Krok twins told the Sunday Independent that they and Mr De Jager had borne the costs so far, and that they intended to launch a national and international fund-raising campaign. But leaked minutes of a meeting of the organising committee suggest that Mr Mandela has offered financial support. His office tried to play down the row yesterday, insisting that the minutes were wrong, that backing was limited to an official authorisation and that the' idea was still open to review.

Telegraph Computer fails in Bangkok road test Bangkok, Monday A newly installed computer system to control Bangkok's traffic lights has caused chaos on the roads, a Government official said today. Everyone had hoped the system would help solve Bangkok's traffic jams, considered among the worst in the world. The Deputy Prime Minister, Mr Thaksin Shinawatra, blamed faulty installation and had telephone lines for the poor results. He said he would inspect the system this week and decide whether it should be shut down temporarily to try to fix it. Traffic iights at Bangkok's intersections have been manually controlled by policemen.

A recent poll indicated that many commuters felt the policemen contributed to the chaos. Bangkok has as many cars as New York or Paris, but only one-third as many roads. The daily gridlock is the problem most city residents say they want the Government to solve. When the computer system was used in a test at 69 intersections on 17 March, a badly timed light at one junction in central Bangkok created a traffic jam that stretched to the suburbs, newspapers said. The day after the system was tesled, the foreign supervisor for the British company that installed it quit to take another job.

More than 3000 farmers and factory workers staged a noisy but peaceful rally yesterday near the Bangkok office of the Thai Prime Minister. Mr Banharn Silpa-archa. It was the fourth day of a protest to demand tha authorities heed their grievances. The protesters, mostly from north-east Thailand and some from a suburban athletic shoe factory, faced anti-riot police mobilised to stop them from reaching the gate leading to the Prime Minister's office. Police said a farmer had failed on Saturday to carry out his earlier threat to torch himself in protest at what he called Government negligence in caring for the welfare of the rural poor.

One of seven protesting groups said they had not been fairly compensated for being uprooted from forested land used by the Government for building dams in north-east Thailand about 25 years ago. A few hundred shoe factory workers said they had been laid off by employers in violation of the thai labor law. The protesters, with moral support from a national university student organisation, said they would continue their vigil until the Government took steps to help them. Reuter, AP Jt .1 j) it it v. people called hoping to adopt Scarlet and her family after word got out in New York how she entered to save her litter.

Her eyes were blistered shut but veterinarians expect that she will regain her sight. li2 "3 it; In 111! altar boy terrorises villages of Uganda 1 woman and wounded two others. Last week, the cult attacked an army outpost for the first time, wounding three soldiers. In an apparent escalation on Friday, the rebels attacked a key northern military barracks and destroyed at least 90 civilian homes. General AM, the bicycle-riding army commander, is frustrated.

The rebels run rather than fight, he complains. They attack at night, when helicopters are useless. And they strike where least expected. "We have been working a long time without achieving very much." Los Angeles Times The MIS report gives away few secrets about how agents can earn their extra money. It is summed up in a section on staffing, stating succinctly: "The Service has adopted performance-related pay." Dame Stella Rimlngton, the director-general of MI5, steps down this week.

She was not eligible for the performance bonus. New contracts being prepared for the most senior civil servants mean that her successor, Stephen Lander, might benefit In due course. A security source said: "It Is a method of ensuring that Individual desk officers have a clear understanding of what they are expected to achieve." Professor Paul Wilkinson, an expert on counter-terrorism, said he was dismayed by the application of the concept in such a fundamental area of defence. "The security services should be attracting graduates with really good brains. The kind of people who are In this lob are not motivated by bonuses but by a sense of public service." Telegraph Ivd By ALEC RUSSELL, Johannesburg, Monday The South African Government was embroiled in an embarrassing row yesterday after the disclosure of a project to build a gigantic sculpture of one of President Nelson Mandela's hands at a cost of some SA16 million.

The envisaged 23-metre-high bronze statue of a hand breaking through prison bars is meant to mark the anti-apartheid struggle as a "beacon of The 30-tonne work is to be the centrepiece in an elaborate complex to include 40 plaques depicting the freedom struggle, an eternal flame in an amphitheatre, a wall with the word "freedom" on it in 100 languages and a museum with a gallery for viewing the hand. But the plan has stirred a storm of protest. An early intention to put the complex opposite the Voor-trekker Monument, the granite memorial to 19th-century Boer trekkers. which is the Afrikaners' holy of holies, already has had to be shelved. Mr Mandela's office denies any financial involvement, but newspapers suggested yesterday that the cost was intended to be split between the private sector and the state.

Criticism also focused on the choice of the organisers and the sculptor, who are seen as inap Former By BOB DROGIN, Amuru, Uganda, Monday Brigadier General Chefe Ali, army commander of the north, held his gleaming sword high as he mounted his steed in this case, the back of a bicycle and charged off into the bush here last week to inspect Africa's latest nightmare. For two hours, terrified villagers told him of atrocities and attacks by the Lord's Resistance Army, a Christian fundamentalist cult. Okeya Santo, right arm now amputated at the elbow, said the cult shouted, "Teachers come out," when they came to rush, in which there were 200,000 passport applications in March, has been replaced by concerns over whether the value of the passport will depreciate after the handover of sovereignty to China in July next year. More than 700 immigration officers were processing 3000 applications an hour as the deadline loomed. The small but angry group outside the Wan Chai sports stadium said they got caught in traffic for 45 minutes and so missed the midnight cut-off.

They join up to two million other Hong Kong residents who will have to get by after 1 July 1997 with passports issued by the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of China. Indonesian-born Ms Yau was happy enough. "I am very happy because I got here on time. I rn hi Iff i A FELI NE FORTITUDE: 700 a burning building five times The' President has led his country into the modern world since seizing power in 1986. The economy is the fastest-growing in Africa, the press is free, elections are scheduled for May, and foreign donors and investors have poured in more than $1 billion.

But Uganda's progress, at least in the north, is now held hostage by a former Roman Catholic altar boy named loseph Kony. "They kidnap, they kill, they rape and they maim," said a senior Western diplomat. "They're like the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse when they come in." out British passport application offices. The passport will die a natural death after the handover. 1 "The last-minute rush was just the herd instinct since people in Hong Kong are very practical," said a Chinese source close to the Xinhua UK herd for slaughter Brussels, Monday Britain was poised today to announce a program to slaughter a quarter of its cattle to wipe out BSE, or "mad cow and restore confidence in European consumers, an EU source said in Brussels.

Nearly three million cattle aged more than 30 months, or a quarter of Britain's herd, would be slaughtered at the rate of 700,000 a year, the source said. Britain's European partners have promised to show solidarity to enable the British to compensate farmers and pay for the operation. AFP. i Montana siege Families and friends might hold the key to ending a week-long standoff between FBI agents and an anti-Government militant group holed up on a remote Montana ranch, Democratic Senator Max Baucus, of Montana, said yesterday. He said the best way to resolve the crisis was for local people to do it, by family members talking to their relatives inside the compound.

Townsfolk have signed a petition urging the group to leave the ranch, Reuter Shuttle returns The space shuttle Atlantis landed at Edwards Air Force Base in California yesterday after leaving American astronaut Shannon Lucid on the Russian space station Mir to establish a permanent US presence in space. Ms Lucid is expected to break the record for an American in space before Atlantis returns to ferry her home in August. Reuter Mexican actor dies Delia Magana, who made 14 films in the US and about 240 in her native Mexico, died yesterday aged 90, Notimex newsagency reported. Her first films in both countries were silents. She later appeared with such stars as Pedro Infante and Mario Moreno, known as Cantinflas.

AP Tigers admit losses Tamil Tiger guerrillas today admitted losing 22 men in a weekend suicide attack against the navy in northern Sri Lanka which may have set back military plans for a fresh offensive against them. The clandestine Tiger radio said: "Two Tigers were killed in the suicide mission and another 20 died when MI-24 helicopter gunshlps retaliated." The rebels claimed to have killed 16 sailors in the attack. AFP Bangladeshis clash Clashes between rival political groups erupted within hours of Muhammad Habibur Rahman taking charge of an interim neutral administration to guide Bangladesh through new elections, reports said today. At least two activists were killed and 120 others injured yesterday in clashes between supporters of the former ruling Bangladesh Nationalist Party arid the opposition Awami League and Jatiya Party. AP, AFP And finally An eminent church scholar today dismissed the finding of tomb relics bearing the names of Jesus, Mary and Joseph as no more than "an interesting Dr Tom Wright, the Dean of -Lichfield, spoke out after experts said they might have uncovered the tomb in which Christ and his family were laid to rest.

He said it was laughable that anyone could have tended the body of Jesus without it becoming public knowledge. He said early Christians were -adamant that Christ's body was resuriected and this was the reason the religion survived the centuries. PA III hi I ft '''ill lit! i bf? half the army, have been sent to stop them. New helicopters and night-vision equipment are expected, and shquld help. But the battle is not going well.

On 8 March, the cult machine-gunned and burned a 17-vehicle convoy of civilian cars and buses. The military says 22 people were killed; survivors insist that more than 100 died. In a similar attack last week, the cult ambushed a truck in northern Uganda, killing 15 people. On 13 March, the rebels fired a mortar at the nation's second largest hospital, and set mines by the entrance that killed one UK puts contract out on its secret agents Hong Kong rush for passports ends in a frenzy By VALERIE ELLIOTT, London, Monday Britain's spies must work harder. From now on, there will be no slacking allowed on Her Majesty Secret Service.

But neutralise the bad guys, and there could be a fat bonus. The Government has decided that countering International crime and terrorism needs a dose of Whitehall's new management culture of 'performance-related pay. The development was exposed last week in the second annual report from MI5, the Internal security service. Disgruntled moles In MI6, the secret intelligence arm, have revealed the same payment-by-results ethos has also embraced their more flamboyant overseas activities. As a retired, formerly very senior spy said last week: "Imagine that an agent gets the crown Jewels of Russian nuclear plans, and is rewarded.

Then we discover It was deliberate disinformation. What Is he supposed to do pay his bonus back?" Government officials compare Kony's brutality to that of Pol Pot in Cambodia. "We call him Africa's David Koresh," said Major Kale Kayihura, the army's political commissar, referring to the leader of the ill-fated American Branch David-ian cult. At first, Kony's troops routinely sliced the lips, ears or arms off their victims. Later, anyone seen riding a bicycle or owning white chickens was slain.

These days, the owners of white pigs are killed. For now, the 400 to 800 guerrillas in the cult are unlikely to rout the government in Kampala. About 20,000 soldiers, or Picture: AP forms to Hong Kong residents, news agency. The passport does not bestow the right to residence in Britain as many people in Hong Kong have demanded, but, at the moment, it can be used for travelling. AFP If his hamlet.

When he emerged, he was shot in the chest and arms. "I said, 'You are killing me for no reason', they said, 'You are a teacher. We don't want teachers'." On 22 March, the guerrillas burned 17 huts and the school, and four villagers stepped on mines left by them. Since stepping up their attacks in early February, members of the cult have killed about 250 civilians and abducted hundreds more. They say their goal is to topple the government of President Yoweri Museveni and to install a regime dedicated to enforcing the Ten Commandments.

An immigration officer hands have a lack of confidence in the future Chinese passport, that's why my family was keen for me to come today." But according to one Chinese official there was no need for all the fuss and the queuing outside the immigration sessio'n Well for training, there is Following this week, Fartlek can do, Anderson. distance Basically dropping recover For the surges By PAUL HARRINGTON, and PETER LIM, Hong Kong, Monday Ms Yau Sui-chun ran through the gate, as police closed it behind her at the midnight deadline, to become the last person in Hong Kong to apply for a British passport. Outside, Mr Cheung Sing was not so lucky as the same gate closed in his face. Nearby, a disconsolate group of women, who arrived three seconds later, were remonstrating unsuccessfully with police. The question being asked the day after Indonesian-born Ms Yau joined 54,177 others in yesterday's queue to apply for a British National Overseas passport, was "was it really worth It?" The figure for the whole of 1995 was less than 35,000.

The frenzied last-minute RUN WALK TC TUB 0 Sample wek: Monday easy 30 min. jog, swim or cycle Tuesday rest Wednesday 5 min jog, stretch, 10 min. fartlek, 5 min jog, stretch Thursday rest Friday 25 mins slow jog Saturday rest Sunday eventrace or threshold or steady state training. For more information contact Start to Finish (03) 9819-9225. Check The Agm for entry coupons.

those of you who have taken up the challenge of the 'G and started congratulations! For those who are starting this week, nevermind, still plenty of time to prepare. on from last week, our training program is very similar. However, a new element known as fartlck has been added on Wednesday. is an interesting term for a unique training technique that everyone from the beginner runner, to the likes of Steve Moneghetti and Kate Fartlek is used to develop the speed you need to complete the 1 in your target time. Fartlek is running at or above race pace for a set distance then back to a slow runjog without stopping, allowing enough time to for the next surge.

INCLUDING JUNIOR 'G SUNDAY 28 APRIL, 199 6 The following is Week 2 of a training program by Debbie Flintoff-King aimed to get you to the beginner runner, it is recommended to include about 5 100 metre spread evenly throughout the run, building the number of surges up to l' THEft29LAGE star Ho for The SPORTSCO HurtWalk to the G. is harder than it sounds! 4- 'r I.