Novelist Salman Rushdie and fellow literary figures in the International Parliament of Writers (PIE) yesterday launched a fund-raising campaign to enable them set up havens for persecuted writers. PIE, based in Strasbourg, had only gathered $20,000 from writers, publishers and ordinary donors, far short of its proposed $100,000 budget. Rushdie, PIE honorary president, is under a "death sentence" from Iranian authorities for allegedly blaspheming the Koran in his novel, The Satanic Verses. The PIE president is Nigeria's Nobel prize-winning exile, Wole Soyinka, a leading opponent of his country's military-led government.
The Australian government has done everything possible to counter the views of the right-wing MP, Pauline Hanson, short of shooting or jailing her, Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said yesterday.
He said the Liberal Party had expelled Hanson before the 1996 federal election after she made racist remarks and the coalition government had later passed resolutions condemning her in parliament.
Downer said the issue had been exaggerated enormously in Australia and picked up by foreign news services.
Jan Syse, a former Norwegian prime minister who once described himself as a "fanatical moderate", has died. Syse, a mild-mannered conservative, aged 66, was prime minister from 1989-1990.
The Turkish Cypriot leader, Rauf Denktash, is ill and has cancelled all appointments for the next four days. He has a vein infection in his left leg.
Denktash had been due to hold talks with the UN envoy in Cyprus, Gustave Feissel, today to pave the way for a planned meeting with Cypriot President Glafcos Clerides.