MOSCOW, March 15
(AFP)
Turkish President Suleyman Demirel was due to begin a two-day official visit to Uzbekistan on Monday, ITAR-TASS said, quoting the Turkish embassy in Tashkent.
Demiral will have talks with his counterpart Islam Karimov and the two men are set to travel on Tuesday to Samarcand where they will inaugurate a Turkish-built bus and lorry factory.
More than 200 Uzbek-Turkish joint ventures have been set up in this ex-Soviet Turkish-speaking republic.
Trade between the two countries reached 400 million dollars in 1998.
SEOUL, March 15 (AFP)
Dozens of passengers were injured on Monday, three seriously, when a Korean Air jet skidded off the runway as it landed in the southeastern city of Pohang, officials said.
The MD-83 jet carrying 150 passengers and six crew, careered off the runway on its second attempted landing in Pohang, 370 kilometers (230 miles) from Seoul.
It was the latest in a series of incidents involving the Korean carrier, which has one of the worst safety records in Asia. Korean Air said in a statement that 76 passengers received treatment at hospitals following the accident and that all but 19 were released. It said eight foreigners were on the plane, but none were injured.
News reports said more than 60 passengers, including those with light injuries, were taken to seven different hospitals.
The jet was on a flight from Seoul and had already aborted one landing. �The plane landed safely but it did not stop. It just went off the runway,� an official at Pohang airport told AFP.
He said three people were seriously injured and �more than 10 hurt� in the accident.
News reports quoted passengers as saying the plane failed in its first attempt to land and the pilot had told them the aircraft would be returning to Seoul because of poor visibility.
�Then about 15 minutes later, I heard a loud noise as the plane was making another landing attempt,� Yonhap news agency quoted one passenger as saying.
ISLAMABAD, March 15 (AFP)
Afghanistan�s neighbours hailed a surprise breakthrough in talks between the Islamic Taliban militia and the opposition alliance which could pave the way to an end of two decades of conflict.
Key regional players Pakistan and Iran, who both border Afghanistan and support different sides in the drawn-out civil war, both welcomed the agreement reached Sunday in the Turkmen capital of Ashgabad.
After three days of peace talks, Taliban and opposition representatives told journalists they had reached a ground-breaking deal on sharing power in a coalition government.
It is the first hopeful sign in many years of a definitive accord to bring peace to the warring factions in Afghanistan and took many observers by surprise, as past talks have nearly always ended in a stalemate.
The two sides also agreed to release 20 prisoners each as soon as possible through the International Committee of the Red Cross and will reconvene peace talks in Afghanistan in two weeks.
Almaty, March 15
(THE GLOBE)
The gas stations of Almaty and other cities and towns of Kazakhstan are supplied with good petrol products. The majority of them offers the full list of quality trademarks such as AI-91, AI-93, AI-95, AI-98. But some Kazakhstani refineries offer a short assortment list of the commodities, Pavlodar and Atyrau refineries among them. Lead is added to the low quality products.
According to the official sources, the added lead in the form of tetraethyl and tetramethyl is imported not by refineries but by the private Ltds. So the swindlers raise the price by ten-fifteen tenge per liter, thus getting surplus revenue of $200-300 million, which are out of reach of tax officials.
All Over the Globe is published by IPA House.
© 1998 IPA House. All Rights Reserved.