Monday, September 22, 1997 |
Monday, September 22, 1997 |
Family and friends mourn as Di, Dodi driver is buried LORIENT, France -- Three weeks after the death of Princess Diana and Mr Dodi al-Fayed, friends and family buried Mr Henri Paul, the driver who was drunk and on prescription drugs the night of the crash. Police held back hundreds of onlookers outside Saint Theresa's Church in Mr Paul's hometown as 300 friends and family members mourned inside. Church bells tolled under bright, clear skies. The 50-minute ceremony included heartfelt testimony from Mr Paul's friends, who have frequently defended him as a kind person and responsible driver. A dozen large wreaths were laid in front of the altar and the simple wooden coffin, including one with a ribbon that read: "Your friends are not fooled." Mr Paul's funeral was scheduled for September 6, the same day Diana was buried in England, but was postponed for more tests. He was the No 2 security man at the Ritz Hotel. Three separate tests showed his blood-alcohol level was more than three times the legal limit at the time of the August 31 crash in the Pont de l'Alma traffic tunnel. The final test also showed he'd taken prescription drugs, including the anti-depressant Prozac. The burial was attended by about 50 people. Among those attending the funeral were friends from a nearby flying club, the owner of a bowling alley at a local beach that Paul used to frequent, and school classmates. "He was a serious fellow, not at all like the things were are reading in the newspaper," said a school friend. Paul's friends in Lorient -- where the 41-year-old bachelor often returned from Paris on weekends -- say he wasn't a drinker and wasn't depressed. lYesterday was the last day for signing condolence books at Kensington Palace, Diana's home. In the week after her death, mourners queued for 12 hours to sign. Buckingham Palace said the 30 books will be offered to Diana's family, the Spencers. Earlier, British philatelist Peter Jennings appealed to Diana's brother, Earl Spencer, to allow the release of five commemorative stamps. The 26 pence (41,5 cents) stamps were to have been issued last week, but were held up after the earl asked for more time to consider commemorations. -- Sapa-AFP Witness
saw car LONDON -- A British lawyer says he saw a small black car escaping at high speed from the scene of the crash which killed Princess Diana, Mr Dodi al-Fayed and their driver, Mr Henri Paul, reports London's Sunday Times in the first account by an identified witness of another car being involved. The newspaper says Mr Gary Hunter, who was in Paris on August 31 for his wife's birthday, saw the fleeing car from the window of his third-floor hotel room. French investigators said last week that pieces of a tail-light not from Princess Diana's Mercedes were found at the crash scene, and two unidentified witnesses had said they saw a small, black hatchback, possibly a Fiat Uno, near the smashed Mercedes. Mr Hunter, a partner in a London law firm, said he was watching television when he heard an "almighty crash'' at exactly 12 25 am. He went to the window, saw people running towards the tunnel and, seconds later, saw a car turning from the area at the tunnel exit and roaring down the street below. "I would say it was racing at 96-112 km/h," Mr Hunter said. "My own feeling is that these were people in a hurry not to be there. "I am confident that the car was getting off the scene ... it looked quite sinister." Mr Hunter said the car could have been a Fiat Uno or a Renault. The Sunday Times said experts are cautious about the second car theory, saying a small car hit by the heavy Mercedes at high speed would also have crashed. Nine photographers and a motorcycle courier have been placed under formal investigation for manslaughter and failure to assist people in danger. They have not been formally charged. -- Sapa-AP Fire haze kills 150, stops mercy flights JAKARTA -- A choking haze prevented emergency flights yesterday into a fire-stricken region of Indonesia where more than 150 people have died as the blinding fumes pushed on over Malaysia and Singapore. Forest fires sweeping across Indonesia spread the haze leading to desperate measures ranging from cloud-seeding to mass prayers across the stricken region. In Indonesia's remote eastern province of Irian Jaya, small aircraft have been mobilised to take supplies to Jayawijaya district, a valley surrounded by mountains, where food shortages have been followed by an outbreak of cholera. At least 154 people have died in Jayawijaya since August due to lack of food and clean water. Jayawijaya district head JB Wenas said planes and helicopters had not been able to get into the valley with food and to take out casualties. About 500 hectares of forest in Jayawijaya are burning. Many of Indonesia's 27 provinces are facing the worst drought in 50 years as the global El Nino weather pattern threatens to postpone rain for several months. West Kalimantan has declared an "alert status" because of the thick smoke that has blanketed the sky for weeks. Forest fires are burning across Irian Jaya, Sumatra and Kalimantan on the Indonesian half of Borneo island. The government has mostly blamed plantation companies for the fires and has banned them for land clearing. In Riau, Central Sumatra, the province hardest hit by the smoke, rain fell on Saturday but failed to disperse the thick smoke. The smog improved yesterday in Kuala Lumpur and elsewhere but environment experts said the respite would be short as the wind was expected to change again. Life has slowed to a crawl in the Malaysian province of Sarawak, neighbouring Kalimantan, prompting the government to declare a state of emergency. The emergency declaration remained in force in the state capital, Kuching, yesterday despite an announcement that the pollution index had eased to 366, a level still considered "hazardous". In Kuching the index reached 658 late on Friday, forcing government offices and businesses except those providing essential services to close down. Schools were already shut. Malaysia's Taoist and Buddhist associations have called upon devotees to stop burning joss-sticks and paper sacrifices. Muslim fundamentalist leaders have claimed that the health-threatening haze shrouding most parts of Malaysia is God's punishment to his people for ignoring him. In Singapore, the pollutants standard index measuring the haze level was at 100, just below the unhealthy level. The Environment Ministry has said schools and sports complexes will be shut when haze levels monitored over 24 hours are higher than the 300 level. Malaysian activists yesterday voiced dissatisfaction at what they said was a lack of "firm, serious and concrete actions" by the government to overcome the critical haze problem. -- Sapa-AFP
MASKED: A supporter of an environmental group, Chan Kar Ming, protests against the foul air in Malaysia. (AP) Unita threatens to abandon accords LISBON -- Angola's former Unita rebel movement will abandon the country's 1994 peace accords if the United Nations slaps sanctions on the organisation, the movement's leader said in a interview published at the weekend. The 15-member UN Security Council decided late in August to impose sanctions on the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (Unita) should it continue to fail to apply the 1994 Lusaka peace accords ending the two-decade Angolan war. "If sanctions are imposed on Unita, we will abandon the peace protocol," Jonas Savimbi said. The measures, which include travel restrictions on Unita members and an international embargo on flights to or from Unita-controlled territories, are scheduled to go into effect on September 30 unless the organisation takes "concrete and irrevocable" steps to implement the accords. Mr Savimbi also said he would move from his stronghold in Andulo to the capital Luanda once a joint government has been established. "Unita is a party with a national vocation," he said. However, the problem of Mr Savimbi's personal security and Unita's continued access to the diamond-rich north-eastern Lunda region are issues that need to be resolved before peace can be fully implemented. Mr Savimbi recently stressed that Unita would not leave the Lunda region without guarantees of sustained financial resources "to continue its political action". Unita is currently exploiting diamond mines outside Lunda province, in the basin of the Kwanza River, 150 kilometres north of Andulo. -- Sapa-AFP SA investigates Swiss agent GENEVA -- A former Swiss army secret service agent is suspected of helping the apartheid rulers in South Africa acquire biological and chemical substances designed to produce weapons of mass destruction, the Swiss Sonntagszeitung newspaper said yesterday. A South African judge in charge of the probe is to travel to Switzerland in the next few days to investigate the charges. The former army intelligence agent, an arms dealer based in Zurich, fled the country a few weeks ago, the report said. The man, whose whereabouts are unknown, was once a close confidant of the head of the Swiss UNA armed forces intelligence service, Mr Peter Regli. He is said to have organised frequent visits to Switzerland for Wouter Basson, the official in charge of South Africa's secret chemicals and biological weapons programme, now in investigative detention in South Africa, the paper added. The ex-agent had been given legal power over Swiss bank accounts of the South African arms' project, it said. The head of the Swiss intelligence service said that as a matter of principle his agency never commented on any of its outside contacts. -- Sapa-DPA Villeneuve closes gap to one point ZELTWEG, Austria -- Jacques Villeneuve of Canada won a pulsating Austrian Grand Prix in his Williams-Renault here yesterday as he edged out Scotland's David Coulthard in a McLaren. It was Villeneuve's sixth win of the season. Ferrari's Michael Schumacher still leads the drivers' championship after coming in sixth to grab the single point which keeps him just ahead of the Canadian in the championship standings with three races remaining. Villeneuve, who started on pole for the eighth time this season, led from around the halfway mark after choosing his moment to move past early pacesetter Jarno Trulli of Italy in a Prost. The Canadian finally came in 2,9 seconds clear to gain the 10 points which would have seen him go level with two-time world champion Schumacher had the German not just edged reigning champion Damon Hill of Arrows to take sixth spot and a vital point. Villeneuve's triumph allowed his Williams team to overtake Schumacher's Ferrari team in the constructors' standings. Villeneuve's teammate Heinz-Harald Frentzen was third for the third race in succession, four seconds off the pace. Schumacher now leads Villeneuve by 68 points to 67, with Frentzen third on 31 and Coulthard fourth with 30. "It wasn't easy because of an average start. Somehow we didn't get out of the corners very well," said Villeneuve afterwards. Trulli, who started on the second row of the grid, was fastest out of the blocks along with McLaren's Mika Hakkinen. But Hakkinen, who started second on the grid behind Villeneuve and who took the lead right from the start, quickly saw his hopes extinguished as he came to a halt with mechanical problems in front of the stands at the end of the opening lap. Following the Finn's mishap. Trulli opened up a six-second lead after 15 laps stretching to almost nine after 21. Villeneuve, fifth in the last two races, initially established himself in third place behind Stewart's Rubens Barrichello before moving through on the inside into second on lap 22. Schumacher, after starting back on the fifth row of the grid, found himself unable to join the leading pack on the redesigned circuit as Austria welcomed the return of Grand Prix racing for the first time in a decade. There was drama in the scenic setting beneath pine-clad hills as Trulli, who had superbly negotiated the short, tight circuit eventually was forced to concede the lead. The Formula One roadshow now moves on to Nurburgring for the Luxembourg Grand Prix in a week's time. -- Sapa-AFP 53 die in Algerian massacre ALGIERS -- Fifty-three residents of a village south of Algiers were massacred by an armed group, the Le Soir d'Algerie evening newspaper said yesterday. The victims, mainly women and children, lived in the Guelb el-Kebir village in the Medea region. There was no immediate attribution of responsibility for the killings which took place early on Saturday. The report did not say how many attackers there were. Algeria has been hit by a wave of bloody massacres since an Islamic insurrection erupted against the military-backed government in 1992 after it cancelled the second round of elections. -- Sapa-AFP 20 killed in Burundi violence BUJUMBURA -- Assailants with guns, axes and machetes went on a random killing spree overnight in a town in Burundi, leaving some 20 people dead and dozens wounded, survivors of the attack said yesterday. The rampage occurred in Gitaza, about 20 kilometres south of the capital Bujumbura. Burundi has been torn by civil war since October 1993 with Hutu rebels fighting the Tutsi-dominated army and government. The fighting has claimed some 200 000 lives, mainly civilians. -- Sapa-AFP Kenyans pray, burn condoms NAIROBI -- After lighting a fire, and saying a round of prayers, a group of young Kenyan Roman Catholics ceremonially burned a pile of condoms in a protest against what they termed "immoral practices". Auxiliary Catholic bishop of Nairobi Alfred Rotich led the burning in a protest against the expanded use here of condoms -- something linked to the regional Aids epidemic. The bishop said the burning was a protest against "immoral practices and dangerous cultures" imported from the West. -- Sapa-AFP 10 yachts set sail for Cape COWES, Isle of Wight -- Ten yachts flying the flags of six countries began the marathon Whitbread Round the World Race yesterday, a journey that will cover 31600 nautical miles over the next eight months. The boats are bound for Cape Town on the first leg -- a 7350 nautical mile journey and the longest of the nine legs. Arrival is expected about October 22. The race is expected to end on May 24 when the crews arrive back in Southampton, England. -- Sapa-AP Fans disrupt soccer matches BRUSSELS -- Disgruntled fans invaded the field during three games in Belgium's top soccer division over the weekend, forcing players into dressing rooms to seek refuge. In the worst incident, police had to drive back fans of FC Antwerp, who had demolished a fence and spilled onto the field after their team conceded the fifth goal in a 5-2 drubbing by newcomer, Westerlo. The field invasions were the worst security incidents during the Belgian season so far. Belgium hosts the 2000 European Championships, together with the Netherlands. -- Sapa-AP Liberian president visits SA JOHANNESBURG -- Liberian President Charles Taylor arrived at Johannesburg International Airport on Saturday night on what foreign affairs officials described as a private visit. Although diplomats in Liberia said his visit was for unspecified medical treatment, South African Foreign Affairs spokesman Marco Boni would only sat Mr Taylor was on a private visit. According to a report from Monrovia, Mr Taylor's Information Minister Joe Mulbah said Mr Taylor would see President Nelson Mandela during the visit. -- Sapa |
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