February 1, 1996
Web posted at: 12:30 a.m. EST (0530 GMT)
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- American interests in Saudi Arabia may be under threat of new attacks, according to reports received by the U.S. Embassy in Saudi Arabia.
In a written statement Wednesday, the State Department said the U.S. Embassy believed that potential targets in Riyadh are especially at risk.
It urged all Americans in the kingdom to exercise caution, keep a low profile, reduce travel within Saudi Arabia and "treat mail received from unfamiliar sources with suspicion."
Secretary of State Warren Christopher, who was scheduled to visit Riyadh as part of a trip to the Middle East, has now canceled the stop. State Department spokesperson Nicholas Burns said the cancellation was because of scheduling problems rather than for security reasons.
Last November, a car bomb killed seven people, including five Americans, at a Riyadh building being used by U.S. personnel to train the Saudi National Guard.
Several little-known dissident groups claimed responsibility for the attack, which shook the normally non-violent Saudi community. The United States sent 19 FBI agents and several State Department experts to Riyadh to help probe the blast, but no arrests have been made.
Oil-rich Saudi Arabia is one of the most important U.S. strategic and economic allies.
KHARTOUM, Sudan (CNN) -- The increasing sectarian violence in Sudan has caused the United States to pull all its diplomats out of the African nation, the State Department announced Wednesday.
Spokesman Glynn Davies said the withdrawal would begin on Thursday. Ambassador Timothy Carney will be relocated to a neighboring country, probably Kenya, to keep diplomatic contacts open.
Davies said 25 U.S. diplomats serve at the embassy in Khartoum . The 2,100 U.S. citizens in the country, most of them dual-nationals, are being informed of the move and being offered assistance if they wish to leave.
The United States is also calling on Sudan to comply with a newly adopted U.N. Security Council resolution that demands that Sudan turn over three men believed responsible for a failed assassination attempt on Egyptian President Hosni Mubarek on a visit to Ethiopia last year.
WARSAW, Poland (CNN) -- An ex-Communist who once wanted to be Poland's president may now become its next prime minister.
The country's ruling leftist coalition is recommending that Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski appoint Wlodzimierz Cimoszewicz to the post. Kwasniewski, also a former Communist, was expected to make a decision Thursday.
Cimoszewicz, a deputy Parliament speaker who is considered independent of the Democratic Left Alliance of former communists, is a leading member of the ex-Communist caucus, the strongest in Parliament.
If Cimoszewicz is appointed, he will replace Jozef Oleksy, who resigned as prime minister last week after a Warsaw military prosecutor opened an investigation into charges that he passed classified information for 13 years to a KGB agent.
VIENNA, Austria (CNN) -- Workers at a power plant construction site have unearthed at least nine skeletons thought to be Holocaust victims.
The remains were discovered near a concentration camp site which was part of the Mauthausen death camp.
Veteran Nazi-hunter Simon Wiesenthal believes the remains were those of Hungarian Jews. He said the victims probably died on a death march.
Wiesenthal says there are more than 100 such graves scattered across the Austrian countryside.
DUSHANBE, Tajikistan (CNN) -- Pro-Islamic militants and Tajik government troops clashed near the Afghanistan border Wednesday, two days after the two sides resumed peace talks.
While foreign minister Talbak Nazarov said two government soldiers were killed, a rebel leader, Akbar Turadzhonzoda, told the ITAR-Tass news agency that 10 soldiers had been killed and 80 taken prisoner.
There was no word on rebel casualties.
In a separate offensive, another group of rebels attacked Tajik government troops Wednesday in the Tavildara region at the foot of the Pamir Mountains about 100 miles east of Dushanbe, ITAR-Tass said.
The rebels, supporters of Muslim and pro-democratic groups, were defeated in a 1992 civil war and many fled south to Afghanistan. They now wage cross-border skirmishes aimed at destabilizing the government of Moscow-backed President Emomali Rakhmonov.
Tajikistan was part of the former Soviet Union.
NIAMEY, Niger (CNN) -- Niger's military leaders yielded to international pressure to return Niger to civilian rule and freed the deposed president and prime minister Wednesday, state radio said.
Armed forces chief of staff Lt. Col. Ibrahim Bare Mainassara seized power in a military-sponsored coup Saturday, forcibly unseating Niger's first democratically-elected president, Mahamane Ousmane. Mahamane has been under house arrest since then.
The United States, Canada, and France have mounted pressure on the dirt-poor sub-Saharan nation by suspending aid while Germany has frozen all new development aid.
Mainassara named a former finance minister, Boukary Adji, 56, to head a transitional civilian government.
WELLINGTON, New Zealand (CNN) -- A rare giant squid was caught by a New Zealand research ship Wednesday.
The 8-meter, 1-ton creature was captured off the country's south island coast two weeks ago. The female is one of only 20 caught in the world in the past decade.
It's only 10 centimeters short of the New Zealand record for a giant squid.
The squid will be preserved for research.
MANAGUA, Nicaragua (CNN) -- Police raided the Foreign Ministry Wednesday, removing dozens of students who barricaded themselves inside with a cabinet minister and two diplomats to press for more university funding.
Police said at least three students and one policeman were injured when police retook the building before dawn. Several students were arrested on charges that included kidnapping, Interior Minister Sergio Narvaez said.
About 300 students, some with homemade grenade launchers and slingshots, rushed the building Tuesday afternoon, witnesses said. Most of the protesters were unarmed. Dozens of people were caught inside the building, but the students allowed most visitors to leave, including two foreign diplomats. (330K QuickTime movie)
National Police Chief Fernando Caldera charged that Radio Ya, operated by the leftist Sandinista party, had incited the takeover. The radio station reported that "the students were savagely removed, and several of them were injured."
The seizure is the latest in a series of protests by students who want President Violeta's administration to comply with a constitutional provision guaranteeing that 6 percent of the national budget go to universities.
NEW DELHI, India (CNN) -- Indian Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao does not plan to step down over a bribery scandal in his administration, the ruling Congress Party said Wednesday.
The scandal stems from the seizure of the diary of New Delhi businessman Surendra Jain, which contains the names of 115 politicians and bureaucrats who allegedly accepted bribes from him between 1988 and 1991. Ten politicians have been charged so far. Opposition parties allege Jain also paid Rao, although he isn't named in the diary.
Opposition parties say Rao should be investigated. And, Tuesday, India's Supreme Court ordered a wider probe into the $18 million scandal by saying everyone named in the case should be investigated. The scandal has led to the resignation of three government ministers and several opposition leaders.
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- In a move that could irritate communist China, Taiwan's vice president will visit three U.S. cities starting Saturday.
Li Yuan-hi has not yet received a U.S. visa, but is expected to get one, said a senior Clinton administration official.
Li plans to stop in San Francisco and Miami on his way to Haiti; he'll break up his journey from El Salvador back to Taiwan with a stop in Los Angeles February 11. He plans to stay one night in each city, but Li has been told not to make public appearances, the official said.
Allowing Li to travel in the United States has not caused "an uptick in the mercury," the official said, referring to the sour U.S.-China relations caused last year when Taiwan President Lee Teng-hui was granted a visa. Lee attended a class reunion at Cornell University.
China, which regards Taiwan as a renegade province not entitled to foreign relations, objects strongly to senior Taiwanese officials visiting the United States. Taiwan does not have diplomatic relations with the United States.
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