News Currents

EUROPE AND AFRICA

Prime Minister John Major reiterated his support yesterday for greater European unity. News reports said he had threatened to resign and call an election if Parliament refused to ratify the Maastricht Treaty. Debate begins in the House of Commons Nov. 4.... French officials waited Saturday to see if Dr. Michel Garretta, one of three people convicted in the contamination of 1,200 hemophiliacs, will return from the US to face a prison sentence. More than 250 died since the 1985 scandal.... The US yesterd ay suspended its airlift of food to the Somali town of Baidoa after a cargo plane was struck by a bullet.... Following reports of renewed rebel activity in the province of Bie, the Angolan government and former rebels agreed Saturday to halt troop movements, sending troops back to containment areas monitored by the United Nations. Talks were scheduled to resume yesterday. NORTH AND SOUTH AMERICA

President Bush played a role in a Reagan administration plan to escalate the Iran-Iraq war, The New Yorker magazine reports in its Nov. 2 issue. Bush asked Jordan's King Hussein and Egypt's President Mubarak in 1986 to urge Saddam Hussein to bomb deep inside Iran, forcing Iran to turn to the US for weapons and conclude the arms-for-hostage deals.... In perhaps the nation's largest settlement of its kind, more than 150 southern California cities and sanitation districts will pay $43.2 million for coas tal waters polluted by toxic sewage more than two decades ago, reported Saturday's Los Angeles Times.... El Salvador's defense minister, his deputy, and more than 110 other military officers will be purged next month for human rights abuses or other violations, reported yesterday's New York Times.