World Digest
Russia boasts new array of nuclear arms

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MOSCOW — Russia has deployed a fresh batch of its top-of-the-line strategic nuclear missiles after a three-year break caused by a funding shortage. The first 10 such missiles entered service in December 1998, and two more sets followed in the next two years. The military had planned to continue the deployment in regular annual installments, but got the fourth batch of Topol-Ms out only Sunday.

Speaking at the Tatishchevo missile base in central Russia, Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov described the Topol-M, which has a range of 6,000 miles, as a "21st-century weapon."

U.S. military analysts equate the missile, known as the SS-27 in the West, with the American Minuteman III, the older of the two land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles in the U.S. inventory. A State Department official said the missiles violate no strategic-weapons treaties.

Colombian rebels release 5 hostages after 101 days

VALLEDUPAR, Colombia — Rebels released four Israelis and a Briton to a humanitarian commission yesterday after holding them 101 days in the jungle-covered mountains of northern Colombia.

Gunmen from the National Liberation Army, known as the ELN, kidnapped the five along with three other foreign backpackers from archaeological ruins in the northern Sierra Nevada mountains Sept. 12. One of the hostages, a British teenager, escaped days later. Two other hostages — a German and a Spaniard — were released in November.

The ELN claimed it carried out the abductions to draw attention to hardships inflicted on Indians of the Sierra Nevada, allegedly by the Colombian military and right-wing paramilitary fighters. The rebels said they agreed to the release after a humanitarian commission visited peasant communities. They said no ransom was requested.

Libya prepared to welcome five U.S. oil firms back

ALGIERS, Algeria — Libya will welcome back five U.S. oil companies forced out of the North African nation in 1986, Libyan Foreign Minister Mohamed Abderrhmane Chalgam said yesterday.

Libya hopes its pledge Friday to abandon weapons of mass destruction may lead to the return of the major U.S. oil firms once responsible for producing around a million barrels per day of Libyan crude oil.

"We've made no secret that we would be very interested in returning to Libya if permitted," said Larry Meriage, spokesman for Occidental Petroleum, one of the five companies.

German neo-Nazi singer sent to prison for inciting hatred

BERLIN — A German court yesterday found members of a neo-Nazi rock group guilty of inciting racial hatred through the lyrics to its songs.

The 38-year-old lead singer of the band "Landser" — an older German name that means soldier — was sentenced to three years and four months in prison, while two other members received suspended sentences of 21 and 22 months after a trial lasting six months.

The band had "massively disrupted society's cohesiveness" with its song lyrics inciting racial hatred, the court ruled.

U.S. congressmen plead case of murder convict in Mexico

MEXICO CITY — Five members of the U.S. Congress yesterday asked Mexico to free an Illinois man they say was tortured and wrongly imprisoned for murder 10 years ago, saying his case contradicts Mexico's crusade against what it sees as U.S. injustices.

Alfonso Martin del Campo, an Illinois native with both U.S. and Mexican citizenship, was convicted of murdering his sister and her husband in Mexico in 1992 and sentenced to 50 years in prison.

Mexican President Vicente Fox has campaigned against the death penalty in the United States, taking the U.S. government before the International Court of Justice to win retrials for 52 Mexicans on death row in the United States.

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