Victor Messiga works for a development company that has built 54 houses, costing between £89,000 and £164,000, primarily for Orthodox Jews Fourteen had been sold, he said, so sales were “going well” He denied living on the front line was a problem. After all, wasn’t security an issue for Israelis everywhere? And wasn’t Har Homa just another part of Israel?The truth, though, is that Palestinian guerrillas see the settlements and settlers as legitimate targets for mortar attacks and drive-by shootings The death toll is rising steadily. Added to it this week was 30-year-old Assaf Hershkowitz, a settler from Ofra, shot dead in a roadside ambush near the spot where his father was killed three months earlier.Until there is a complete end to such violence, Mr Sharon says he will not negotiate with Yasser Arafat. Yet while the bulldozers go on digging, so do the grave diggers..

Missile-testing by North Korea will be frozen for at least two years, President Kim Jong Il has promised after five hours of talks with an EU delegation in Pyongyang. Missile-testing by North Korea will be frozen for at least two years, President Kim Jong Il has promised after five hours of talks with an EU delegation in Pyongyang.
G? Persson, the Swedish Prime Minister, who led the delegation, said the North Korean leadership had agreed that its moratorium on testing will last “until 2003″, after which date the North Koreans “would wait and see”.North Korea has also agreed to send officials to Europe this summer to discuss opening talks about Pyongyang’s much-criticised human rights record. Chris Patten, the EU’s commissioner for external relations, cautioned against expecting quick results on human rights, “but we think it’s important to start talking, and they’ve agreed to do that”.Mr Patten described Kim Jong Il as “very articulate”, characterising the talks as “surprisingly open and free-flowing”. The positive response implies that the EU will establish diplomatic relations with Pyongyang, provided France withdraws its opposition.. China’s state press today accused President George W. Bush of threatening global peace with his missile-defense plans

China’s state press today accused President George W. Bush of threatening global peace with his missile-defense plans, saying he would ignite an arms race and destroy disarmament efforts.”The United States is taking a dangerous course,” said the China Daily newspaper “The United States …

is apparently attempting to seek absolute military supremacy and even greater global hegemony.”The attack came a day after China, in its first official response, called on Bush to scrap plans unveiled Tuesday in a speech in Washington.Beijing urged Bush to preserve the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, which severely restricts such defenses. The treaty was signed only by Washington and Moscow, but China calls it an important arms-control standard.Bush is considering a system that could be rushed into operation as early as 2004, possibly using weapons on ships or planes as well as on land to shoot down missiles in flight.The plan “will trigger a new arms race and destroy what has been achieved so far with international disarmament efforts,” the China Daily said.The main Communist Party newspaper People’s Daily and other state newspapers published reports on foreign opposition to the Bush plan. “Bush’s speech receives criticism from every country,” said a headline in the Guangming Daily.U.S. allies Britain and Canada have stopped short of endorsing the plan. Sweden, Germany and others expressed deep concern, fearing the plan could jeopardize global security. Australia has said it would let Washington use its communications facilities for such a defense if requested.China worries that missile defenses could blunt the deterrent effect of its small nuclear arsenal.Chinese leaders also worry that Washington might extend protection to Taiwan. Beijing claims the island, ruled separately since 1949, as its territory and has repeatedly threatened to capture it by force.The China Daily on Friday ridiculed Bush’s stated goal of defending against such “rogue states” as North Korea or Iran.”Such an excuse is too fragile to convince others.

It hasn’t even convinced the American people,” said the newspaper.The comments added to unusual personal criticism Thursday of Bush by the People’s Daily. It called him a “weak president” and said he was taking aggressive foreign policy steps to combat the stigma of his controversial election victory.”The Bush administration’s behavior in the past 100 days has illustrated that an ultra-self-centered ‘America first’ attitude is gaining more ground in U.S. foreign policy,” the China Daily said.It noted Bush’s decision to back out of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol on reducing greenhouse-gas emissions and decision to rethink support for South Korean overtures toward North Korea.. Japanese authorities have arrested the son and grandson of Kim Jong II, the hereditary ruler of North Korea, as they attempted to visit Disneyland in Tokyo. Japanese Authorities are detaining the son and grandson of Kim Jong Il, the hereditary ruler of North Korea, after the family attempted to visit Disneyland in Tokyo.
Kim Jong Nam was held on Tuesday at Narita airport in Tokyo with his wife and infant son when he tried to enter the country using a fake passport.

After insisting that he was from the Dominican Republic, he then admitted his identity and is being held with his family in an immigration detention centre, pending their deportation.Kim Jong Nam, 29, is the eldest known son of Mr Kim and is regarded as the designated heir to the world’s last remaining Stalinist dictatorship. Japan’s Kyodo news agency reported that he told police: “I wanted to go to Disneyland.” Yesterday, sources close to his family confirmed the incident and told The Independent that Mr Kim and his family were going to Japan for an incognito holiday, something that they have done many times in the past. His detention in Japan, a country regarded by North Korea as a historic enemy, is humiliating for a regime that has only recently begun to take tentative steps towards opening up.For Tokyo, it is mortifying a senior member of a hostile government should have managed to penetrate immigration controls so easily in the past.Mr Kim landed in Japan on Tuesday afternoon on a Japan Airlines flight from Singapore, accompanied by his four-year-old son, his wife and a maid. The group was detained by immigration officers, apparently acting on a tip-off, and found to be carrying forged passports from the Dominican Republic. The passport bore a false name, but the date of birth, 10 May 1971, was the same as that of Kim Jong Nam.Very little is known about the family of Kim Jong Il, who had almost no contact with the outside world until his historic summit meeting last summer with the South Korean President, Kim Dae Jung.