The Town Talk from Alexandria, Louisiana • Page 3

7RLIG) Alexatttoia Bailg Zmn Calk Friday, October 25, 1991 A-3 Briefs Colombian president: 1 Castro promised elections i i ment for office, however, and while virtually all BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) Cuban President Fidel Castro told a group of Latin leaders that he would allow non-Communists to run in legislative elections and would resign if his party loses, Colombian President Cesar Gaviria said Thursday. Gaviria returned late Wednesday from a meeting in Cozumel, Mexico with Castro and presidents Carlos Salinas Gortari of Mexico and Carlos Andres Perez of Venezuela. Gaviria said Castro told the other presidents "of the changes that will permit people from outside the Communist party to participate" in upcoming legislative elections. "It was very clear that if the party were to lose its majority in these elections, he was ready to retire from the government and from power," Gaviria said at a Bogota news conference. Cuba is constitutionally a one-party communist state and Castro has said it will stay that way.

Party membership is not a legal require national and provincial deputies in Cuba are party members, about a quarter of the municipal deputies are not. Castro emphasized this aspect of Cuba's elec-. toral system in a news conference he gave Wednesday after the meeting in Cozumel. He also noted that the Cuban Communist Par-: ty congress earlier this month had endorsed direct elections to all three assemblies. Only municipal delegates are now directly elected.

Castro said at the news conference that candidates would be nominated by their "neighbors" instead of by the party or its militants. When asked by a reporter what would happen if the party didn't win a majority in the elections, Castro said: "If the majority of the people aren with the Revolution, the Revolution could lose power." U.N. inspectors find evidence imifoH mace nf pomlosive. of A-bomb component test TTMTTFn WATTOWS fAP Agree to truce ZAGREB, Yugoslavia (AP) Serb-dominated Yugoslav forces pounded Croatian defenses around the Adriatic resort of Dubrovnik on Thursday and captured a town just to the south in one of the heavier attacks of the 4-month-old war. European Community observers said federal army and Croatian defense officials agreed to a truce in the Dubrovnik region, to take effect at 5 p.m.

Settlers remain JERUSALEM (AP) The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that Jewish settlers can remain temporarily in a home they seized in east Jerusalem this month. A Justice Ministry spokeswoman, Etti Eshed, said a temporary injunction bars police from evicting the settlers from the house they occupied Oct. 9. The settlers sought the injunction. Soviet elections MOSCOW (AP) The signing of an economic accord by eight Soviet republics has boosted hopes among Mikhail S.

Gorbachev's aides that national presidential elections can be held next spring, his spokesman said Thursday. "The coming six months will be the most decisive, not only for the president, but for the republics and the people as well," said Andrei S. Grachev, who was appointed presidential spokesman after the attempted coup in August. French strike PARIS (AP) A national strike snarled transportation, shut harbors and cut electrical power Thursday, as workers by the tens of thousands heeded calls by leftist labor federations to protest economic policies blamed for a soaring jobless rate. Three daily newspapers in the Lyon region were unable to publish and protest marches of up to 8,000 people, were reported in Marseille, Toulon, Le Havre, Rouen, Bordeaux and i Clermont-Ferrand.

Mariam Smeenk displays damage to her bathroom in Arnhem, Netherlands, after the toilet exploded Wednesday for the second time in two years. Toilet explodes again Willi illlllLVV aixmjw vm. you get in the bunker. It better health!" discovered by U.N. inspection Iraq was testing the lenses, but disclosure of physical evidence of logical end of Iraq's experiments explosive lenses and production used for boosting A-bombs or for reactions would have been the St.

Mleux told reporters. other U.N. experts said Thursday program to stockpile chemical resulted in vastly more accidents accepted by Western military told U.N. weapons inspectors about 100 "incidents" a year weapons, about 10 of which major, said one official with the Commission. have found physical evidence that Iraq conducted test blasts in the desert on a component of an atom bomb, confirming what documents seized earlier had shown, a U.N.

official said Thursday. Iraq could have produced a "working" nuclear bomb in about a year or 15 months, prior to the Gulf War, said Michel St. Mleux, a French nuclear expert with the U.N. Special Commission dismantling Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. The prediction conformed with previous estimates, as did St.

Mleux's statement that inadequate supplies of fissionable uranium and Plutonium were what kept Iraq from having a nuclear bomb. The blasts were tests of high-explosive lenses that enable engineers to boost the power of an atomic blast. "These tests are conducted with bunkers with 3 meters (yards) of high density concrete," St. Mleux said. "You conduct this test either inside TT N.

insnfirtors AP IUC UUlirvCl UUk or outside and for your Documents teams had shown it was the first such tests. The ultimate with A-bombs, of Lithium-6 thermonuclear hydrogen bomb, Meanwhile, that Iraq's crash weapons had than would be industries. Iraqi officials that they had involving chemical they considered U.N. Special ARNHEM, Netherlands (AP) The Dutch environment police are baffled by Mrs. Smeenk's exploding toilet.

It was blasted off the floor again Wednesday, apparently by an explosion in the municipal sewer system. It was the second time the Smeenk family toilet had exploded in two years. "I feel famous," said housewife Miriam Smeenk, noting that television crews were on their way Thursday to film the scene of the domestic disaster that had launched her and her toilet into national notoriety. Three of Thursday's nationwide dailies carried photos of a forlorn Smeenk kneeling in her narrow washroom next to her shattered commode. "It really keeps blowing up into a thousand pieces," G'U ouo FAL 9REAT holidaV 111 PRESENTS Associated Press Smeenk said from her home on Industry Street in this eastern Dutch city.

"My son was almost hit by a piece that flew out the door." The local branch of the Environmental Inspection Authority, which has opened an investigation into the blast, believes it was caused by an explosive solvent released into the sewer. Can't find source But "We can't find the source of the explosion yet," said authority spokeswoman Jeanette Huiskes. She noted that the same sewer system is used by a nearby petrochemical complex. "Luckily, no one was on the toilet at the time," said Arnhem Fire Department spokesman Jan Kuyvenhoven. -5.

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