Briefs

U.N. envoy rebuffed in bid

to meet Myanmar generals

YANGON, Myanmar - A U.N. envoy didn't get a chance to meet with Myanmar's top two junta leaders and try to get them to ease a violent crackdown on anti-government protesters. But he was was allowed a highly orchestrated session yesterday with detained opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi.

The military government, meanwhile, flooded the main city of Yangon with troops, swelling their numbers to about 20,000 by yesterday and ensuring that almost all demonstrators would remain off the streets, a diplomat said.

Scores of people also were arrested overnight, further weakening the flagging uprising against 45 years of military dictatorship.

Ibrahim Gambari, the U.N.'s special envoy to Myanmar, was sent to the country to try to persuade the notoriously unyielding military junta to halt its crackdown. Soldiers have shot and killed protesters, ransacked Buddhist monasteries, beaten monks and dissidents and arrested an estimated 1,000 people in the last week alone.

Gambari began yesterday by meeting with lesser officials in Myanmar's new bunker-like capital of Naypyitaw, 240 miles north of Yangon. The meeting, however, did not include junta leader, Senior Gen. Than Shwe, or his deputy, Gen. Maung Aye.

Gambari was then unexpectedly flown back to the main city of Yangon and whisked to the State Guest House. Suu Kyi was briefly freed from house detention and brought over to speak with him for more than an hour.

Suu Kyi, the 1991 Nobel Peace prize winner who has come to symbolize the struggle for democracy in Myanmar, has spent nearly 12 of the last 18 years under house arrest.

Sounds like Kasparov's just

a pawn in Russia elections

MOSCOW - The former world chess champion Garry Kasparov entered Russia's presidential race yesterday, elected overwhelmingly as the candidate for the country's beleagured opposition coalition.

Kasparov has been a driving force behind the coalition, which has united liberals, leftists and nationalists in opposition to President Vladimir Putin. He received 379 of 498 votes at a national congress held in Moscow by the Other Russia coalition, coalition spokeswoman Lyudmila Mamina said.

Kasparov's place on the March ballot was not assured. His candidacy still needs to be registered and is likely to be blocked.

Even if he were allowed to run, Kasparov would not be expected to pose a major challenge to a candidate with Putin's backing.

'Catastrophic' eruption

sighted on tiny Yemen island

TORONTO - A volcano has erupted on a tiny island off the coast of Yemen, spewing lava and ash hundreds of feet into the air, a Canadian naval vessel near the island in the Red Sea reported yesterday. The Yemeni government asked NATO to assist in searching for survivors.

Ken Allan, a Navy spokesman, said a NATO fleet just outside the territorial waters of the island Jazirt Atta-Ir reported seeing a "catastrophic volcanic eruption" at 7 p.m. local time. The 2-mile-long island is about 70 miles off the coast of Yemen.

"At this time, the entire island is aglow with lava and magma as it pours down into the sea. . . . the lava is spewing hundreds of feet into the air, with the volcanic ash also (rising) a thousand feet in the air," Allan said in an e-mail.

Yemen is a poor tribal Sunni Muslim country at the southern tip of the Arabian Peninsula.

Needn't be Martha Stewart

to recognize bad taste

MUMBAI, India - Leaders of India's small Jewish community expressed outrage yesterday over a new line of bedspreads called "The Nazi Collection" from a home-furnishing company that used swastikas in its promotional material.

The furnishing dealer said the name stands for "New Arrival Zone for India" and was not meant to be anti-Semitic.

"This is an enormous insult to Jews and all right-thinking people and must be retracted," said Jonathan Solomon, chairman of the Indian Jewish Federation.

There are about 5,500 Jews living in India, a predominantly Hindu nation of 1.1 billion people. *

-Associated Press