December 9, 1995
Web posted at: 1:30 a.m. EST (0630 GMT)
GAZA STRIP (CNN) -- Palestinian self-rule got a boost after a meeting between Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres and Palestinian Liberation Organization Chairman Yasser Arafat on Friday.
Peres announced that 1,000 additional Palestinian prisoners will be released due to the PLO leader's success in curbing attacks against Israelis.
More Palestinian workers also will be allowed entrance to Israel each day. The two met for the first time since the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.
Israel is scheduled to turn control of Nablus over to Palestinian authorities next week.
UNITED NATIONS (CNN) -- The U.N. Security Council and Rwanda were unable to agree Friday on the future of U.N. peacekeeping troops stationed in the central African country. A mandate that authorizes the presence of the 2,100 strong U.N. Assistance Mission troops, known as UNAMIR, expired Friday.
Rwandan U.N. ambassador Manzi Bakuramutsa, himself a security council member, has been negotiating with council diplomats on the issue of the size and future of troop deployment.
The Tutsi-led government in Rwanda, which ousted the previous Hutu-dominated regime, resents the presence of U.N. forces and blames them for failing to stop ethnic massacres last year.
Council members are insisting on at least 1,400 troops, saying that it is the minimum needed to help in the return of the more than 1.5 million Rwandan refugees who fled during and after ethnic massacres last year. Nearly 2 million minority Tutsis and moderate Hutus were killed.
The council adopted a resolution at the formal meeting with the Kigali government to extend the life of UNAMIR until Tuesday while negotiations continued. Rwanda's permission was required in order for troops to remain.
ABIDJAN, Ivory Coast (CNN) -- Just months after it killed 250 people in Zaire, the deadly Ebola virus has re-emerged in the Ivory Coast.
Health officials were in Abidjan trying to ensure the virus was contained after striking a 25-year-old male refugee from a village in neighboring Liberia. They fear it could easily spread through the unsanitary coastal border region, where five years of civil war have caused 400,000 Liberian refugees to settle.
The virus attacks internal organs and triggers massive bleeding. It is spread by direct contact with infected blood or other bodily secretions and kills 80 percent of those infected. There is no known cause or cure.
Ebola, named after a river in northern Zaire, first appeared in 1976 and killed 300 people in and around the village of Yambuku. Between January and August of this year, 244 people in and around the western Zaire city of Kikwit died from Ebola.
BUJUMBURA, Burundi (CNN) -- The U.S. State Department on Friday condemned the reported massacre of civilians by the Burundian military in Gasarara, Burundi, on November 14. According to reports, 430 civilians -- mostly women and children -- were killed in the town located 10 kilometers from the capital of Bujumbura..
At the center of Burundi's ethnic violence is the Tutsi government army fighting against members of the majority Hutu community, who have sought for years to end Tutsi domination of state power.
State Department spokesman Nicholas Burns said that the U.S. also condemns December 6 attacks on the Bujumbura suburbs of Mutanga Nord, Kiriri, and Kanyosha.
"We remind the Burundi government and security forces that respect for human rights and peaceful dialogue should be key elements in their efforts to re-establish security in the country," Burns said in a written statement.
At least 53 people have been killed since Tuesday as Burundi's Tutsi-dominated army battled with Hutu rebels in the hills behind Bujumbura.
Burundi has been unstable since rebel soldiers murdered the country's first elected president Melchior Ndadaye, a Hutu, in 1993. Since his assassination, more than 100,000 people are estimated to have died in ethnic violence.
BELFAST, Northern Ireland (CNN) -- IRA guerrillas on Friday dismissed British demands they hand over their weapons.
The IRA's announcement provoked an angry reaction from British Prime Minister John Major who said it was a slap in the face for thousands of peace-loving Irish people.
The dispute dampened optimism that a visit to Northern Ireland last week by U.S. President Bill Clinton had provided a new momentum to the peace process in the British-ruled province.
It demonstrated the issue of "decommissioning" arms caches held by the IRA remains a huge stumbling block to peace, more than a year after rival guerrilla groups declared cease-fires.
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