News Currents

UNITED STATES Voters in Denver elected their first black mayor Tuesday, giving city auditor Wellington Webb a come-from-behind victory in a contest between two black candidates.... US defense officials say they are willing to consider putting women pilots into combat but see little prospect for putting women into other combat jobs.... The Louisiana Legislature on Tuesday overrode Gov. Buddy Roemer's veto and passed into law one of the strictest anti-abortion measures in the US.

EUROPE

The Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, meeting in Berlin, admitted Albania yesterday as part of the group's efforts to defuse political crises and avert ethnic and national conflicts across Europe.... European Community foreign ministers, meeting in Luxembourg, are considering "union with a federal goal," a step strongly opposed in Britain.... In Brussels, plans for a new European Economic Area moved ahead as the economic ministers of the EC and the European Free Trade Association agreed t

o a free-trade zone.

AFRICA

South African neo-Nazi leaders told whites Tuesday at a rally in Pietermaritzburg, in Natal Province, to prepare for war with blacks to fight the scrapping this week of race classification laws. Another white rightist group, the Boerestaat Party, also issued a call to arms.... Ethiopia's new leadership confirmed it intends to demobilize the defeated army of dictator Mengistu Haile Mariam and has ordered all civil servants to report for work by the end of this week.

ASIA AND THE PACIFIC

India's Congress (I) Party is considering forming the country's third successive minority government if it cannot put together a parliamentary majority, party officials said yesterday.... Australian Trade Minister Neal Blewett said yesterday he would protest a US offer to provide 100,000 tons of subsidized wheat to Kuwait, traditionally an Australian market.... The US-based group Asia Watch said yesterday that the Indonesian Army has resorted to summary executions, torture, and arbitrary arrests in its d

rive to crush a separatist movement in the strongly Islamic province of Aceh.

LATIN AMERICA AND THE CARIBBEAN

A declining US demand for cocaine and a growing market in Europe has led to a shift southward in Latin American drug trafficking patterns, away from transshipment through the Caribbean to new routes through Brazil and Argentina, says Raymond Kendall, executive director of the International Criminal Police Organization.... In Washington, the US yesterday signed a trade and investment agreement with Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, and Uruguay. It identifies areas of development and seeks to eliminate some tr a

de barriers.