The trial of two Libyans accused of the Lockerbie bombing is to resume today after a month-long break. The trial of two Libyans accused of the Lockerbie bombing is to resume today after a month-long break.
Lawyers defending one of the accused men, Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi, will continue attempts to blame others including two Palestinian terror groups for the outrage.Meanwhile Megrahi, 48, is expected to move from the dock to the witness box during this week to give evidence.The long-running Lockerbie trial ground to a halt just one day into the defence case last month when an adjournment was requested by William Taylor QC, defending Megrahi.The panel of judges hearing the trial, at Camp Zeist in Holland, reluctantly granted his request to allow more time for a document, relating to new evidence, to be sent to the court by the Syrian government.The defence has described the evidence as establishing new links between Lockerbie inquiries conducted by the German intelligence services and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – General Command.The Syrian-based organisation was originally high on the list of suspects for the bombing and is one of two Palestinian groups defence counsel have indicated they will blame for causing the tragedy.Megrahi and his co-accused Al Amin Khalifa Fhimah, 44, deny bombing Pan Am Flight 103, which exploded over Lockerbie on December 21 1988, killing a total of 270 people.They plead not guilty to conspiracy to murder, murder and a breach of the 1982 Aviation Security Act.. Beef industry unions today blocked traffic for hours at toll booths in Rennes, Lyon, Bordeaux and Paris to protest stringent new government-ordered testing for mad cow disease. Beef industry unions today blocked traffic for hours at toll booths in Rennes, Lyon, Bordeaux and Paris to protest stringent new government-ordered testing for mad cow disease.
The A13 and A1 highways near Paris were among the routes blocked by slaughterhouse owners, meat transporters and other professionals who say the ambitious plan to screen 20,000 animals every week is hurting an industry already battered by mad cow fears.In a statement, three protesting unions said they felt “let down by the government.The protesters called for a lifting of the blockade in the early afternoon.As fears about mad cow disease, or bovine spongiform encephalopathy, peaked in November, the 15-nation European Union decided that all cows more than 30 months old would be tested at slaughterhouses before they could enter the food chain.Older cows are considered to be at higher risk from the fatal, brain-wasting disease.Experts believe infected meat can cause people to contract Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease, a similar illness. Two people have died of the disease in France, compared to about 80 in Britain, where the disease was identified in 1995.In France, consumer confidence in beef slumped after it was discovered that potentially infected meat had wound up on grocery store shelves in October.

Since then, many school cafeterias have taken beef off the menu, and several cuts – such as the T-bone – have been banned.. Nine men suspected of membership of a radical ethnic Albanian guerrilla group were detained by British peacekeepers when they tried to enter Kosovo from a tense region beyond its borders, the alliance said yesterday. Nine men suspected of membership of a radical ethnic Albanian guerrilla group were detained by British peacekeepers when they tried to enter Kosovo from a tense region beyond its borders, the alliance said yesterday.
Major Tim Pierce, a Nato spokesman, said the soldiers gave chase on Saturday after observing the men entering Kosovo from a region in southern Serbia that is home to a predominantly ethnic Albanian population A tenth man remained at large. The 10, armed and in uniform, dropped their weapons and fled after being challenged by a British patrol. A Nato statement said 22 rifles were confiscated.Lieutenant-Colonel Stephen Kilpatrick, the commander of the British unit, said another four men – also suspects but unarmed and in civilian clothing – were detained separately. He did not offer details.The nine uniformed suspects were being questioned at Camp Bondsteel, the main American base in eastern Kosovo.

The arrests were made in the US sector.The group was spotted after entering eastern Kosovo from the Presevo Valley area, the site of months-long tensions between ethnic Albanian radicals and lightly armed Serb police. The radicals call themselves the “Liberation Army of Presevo, Medvedja and Bujanovac,” or UCPMB, named after three predominantly ethnic Albanian towns that the insurgents want united with Kosovo as part of ethnic Albanian hopes of independence for the province.Although controlled by the UN and Nato under terms of the 1999 peace agreement that ended the alliance’s bombing of Yugoslavia, Kosovo formally remains part of Serbia, the main Yugoslav republic.UCPMB fighters operate in the five kilometre (three-mile) wide buffer, the Ground Safety Zone, between Kosovo and the rest of Serbia. The zone was established in June 1999 to protect Nato-led peace-keepers who entered the province after Yugoslav troops and police were forced to leave.Yugoslav forces are not allowed to enter the zone, except for lightly armed police. Kosovo peace-keepers cannot enter the zone either because it is on the Yugoslav-controlled part of the boundary.

That has enabled the UCPMB to operate in the zone with virtual impunity.Commander Lleshi, the leader of the rebels, has demanded a multi-national peace-keeping force to keep apart Serb troops and Albanians.The government in Belgrade considers the area strategic because it controls the land routes south to Macedonia and Greece.The ethnic Albanian insurgents killed four Serb police officers in November and overran an extensive trench network constructed by the Serb police in the zone.Four Serbs were abducted last month but were released after intercession by Nato-led peace-keepers. Six more Serbs were taken hostage more recently but released after Nato intervention.There have been concerns in the West that the clashes in southern Serbia could explode into violence similar to the 1999 conflict in Kosovo, which began when the former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic cracked down on ethnic Albanians seeking independence.That drive triggered the 78-day Nato bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999 and the deployment of the alliance’s peace-keepers in Kosovo (AP). Ethnic Albanian villagers in southern Serbia are letting their cattle graze on soil contaminated by depleted uranium during the NATO bombing campaign, a Serb health official warned today. Ethnic Albanian villagers in southern Serbia are letting their cattle graze on soil contaminated by depleted uranium during the NATO bombing campaign, a Serb health official warned today.
UN and Russian officials, meanwhile, called for new investigations of reports that cancer among veterans of Balkan peacekeeping operations could be due to the NATO munitions using the radioactive, heavy metal during the 1999 bombing campaign.Bernard Kouchner, the UN administrator of Kosovo province, made an “urgent appeal” to the World Health Organsation to send public health experts to monitor the possible health risks to civilians, said UN spokeswoman Susan Manuel.Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov also called for an independent investigation to determine whether NATO’s use of depleted uranium ammunition in Kosovo presented a health threat.A health official in Vranje, a town 290 kilometers (180 miles) southeast of Belgrade in Serbia, said the Albanians of nearby village of Bratoselce had removed a fence sealing off the contaminated patch of land close to their village.The official, Miroslav Simic, said using the contaminated land for grazing endangered the villagers and anyone who consumes the milk or meat from the cattle.Yugoslav experts and officials have long been claiming that the ammunition could pose a health threat to the country’s population. They claim the depleted uranium will remain in the soil for billions of years, filtering into ground water and moving into the food chain.After the bombing, the Yugoslav army marked and sealed off several sites in Serbia just outside of the southern Kosovo province and is preparing to clean them up.In Vranje, depleted uranium ammunition targeted Yugoslav army and television relays on the nearby Mt Plackovica. Several other villages were also struck, including Boravac, Reljan and Svinjiste, mostly populated by ethnic Albanians, Simic said.”We have not registered an increase in the level of radioactivity in repeated checking in all these areas where the contaminated sites were visibly marked and sealed off,” Simic said. “But the terrain must be decontaminated as fast as possible.”Simic, the Serbian health official, said that the local government in Vranje lacked means for such a costly operation and that they have appealed to Belgrade and the international community.