WASHINGTON, March 9 (UPI) -- Insider notes from United Press International for March 9
Zimbabwean government officials believe that a group of 64 suspected "mercenaries" aboard a Boeing 727-100 seized at Harare International Airport on Sunday night are South Africans. The men have been taken into custody and the aircraft transferred to Manyame airport outside Harare. Zimbabwe intelligence believes that the aircraft might have been on its way to West Africa to participate in an imminent coup d'etat in Malabo, Equatorial Guinea, when it touched down in Harare for unknown reasons, possibly because of mechanical problems. The aircraft's departure point in South Africa has not been determined, but South African Deputy Foreign Minister Aziz Pahad said, "The South African government is concerned at unconfirmed reports that some of the people on board may be South African nationals. Should the allegations that those South Africans on board are involved in mercenary activities prove true, this would amount to a serious breach of the Foreign Military Assistance Act, which expressly prohibits the involvement of South Africans in military activities outside South Africa without the due authorization of the national conventional arms control committee." The men could be held under the Zimbabwe's Public order and Security Act for seven days. Washington has denied that aircraft is American.
Nowhere in the world are sensitivities about the Holocaust more heightened than in Berlin, former capital of the Third Reich. Peter Eisenman, the American-Jewish architect of Berlin's $32 million Holocaust memorial project has outraged Germany's Jewish community after making an anti-Semitic "joke." Eisenman reportedly caused Jewish members of the project's supervisory board to exit a meeting in disgust after relating a story about how his New York dentist had asked him whether Degussa provided the gold for fillings in his teeth. Degussa was once a part of Degesch, the German company that supplied Zyklon B gas pellets to the Nazi concentration camps. The memorial committee was appalled to learn of Degussa's camp connections last October, when the company was awarded a contract to apply a graffiti-resistant coating to the memorial's 2,700 concrete pillars. Berlin's Chief Rabbi Andreas Nachama said, "If a top German architect had made these remarks, he would have been dismissed instantly." Eisenman claimed that his audience misunderstood his jest because of differences in American and German humor, and has reportedly apologized.
A cargo ship from Japan will shortly sail into Tacoma in the U.S. Northwest equipped with prototype technology designed to secure shipping containers on vessels bound for American ports from being used by terrorists. The potential for a terrorist shipping incident is immense; nearly 7 million containers enter the 361 U.S. ports annually, of which less than 2 percent are searched. Sensors and communications equipment will monitor the cargo throughout its voyage. The prototype containers are electronically sealed and are designed to transmit warnings if their security is breached in transit. Washington Democratic Senator Patty Murray sponsored the $58 million "Operation Safe Commerce" project. According to Mike Zachary, the program manager for Operation Safe Commerce for the Tacoma and Seattle, "The e-seal is a unique identification number for the container. In some cases, it is tied to a GPS system, through satellite or cell. It has the ability to communicate to the world that, 'I'm this box in this location.'" Customs inspectors are focusing on on cargo from smaller shippers and high-risk countries.
If war breaks out on the Korean peninsula, military analysts could soon see a unique sight; Russian tanks battling older Russian tanks. South Korea will deploy thirty T-80U tanks and another thirty BMP-3 infantry combat vehicles with front-line units along the DMZ in Kangwon province. They armor is part of Russian weapons shipments that South Korea purchased to offset some of the $1.47-billion loan, which the USSR received in 1991. The South Korean army is largely equipped with U.S. weaponry. The new armaments are two to three generations ahead of North Korea's main T-62 tanks and BMP-1 combat vehicles. After the fall of the Soviet Union, Russia absorbed the debts of the USSR, but tardiness in repaying South Korea has ballooned the remaining principal and interest to more than $2.24 billion. By June 2003 Russia had repaid only $460 million of its debt, primarily in military equipment and raw materials.
