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JAPAN

Fischer plans to wed, appeals to Powell

TOKYO -- Former chess champion Bobby Fischer announced plans yesterday to marry a leading Japanese chess official and appealed to Secretary of State Colin L. Powell to help him renounce U.S. citizenship, the latest in a series of moves in his attempts to block deportation to the United States.

Mr. Fischer, wanted in the United States for violating international sanctions by playing a match in the former Yugoslavia in 1992, was detained in Japan last month when trying to travel on a revoked American passport.

BURUNDI

Massacre victims buried in mass grave

GATUMBA -- Burundian army helicopters patrolled the sky as hundreds of mourners gathered yesterday on a dusty cotton field to bury 162 Congolese Tutsi refugees massacred at a U.N. camp Friday night by extremists who crossed from the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Wearing face masks to stave off the stench of decomposing bodies, survivors, relatives and aid workers lowered rudimentary coffins into a mass grave. Burundian President Domitien Ndayizeye and Congolese Vice President Azarias Ruberwa looked on.

NORTH KOREA

Pyongyang to skip working meetings

SEOUL -- Critizing the United States for what it perceives as hostile intentions, North Korea said yesterday that it will not participate in working meetings ahead of six-party talks on its nuclear program.

North Korea said the "hastily" proposed working talks ahead of the full negotiations indicated "that the U.S. is, in actuality, not interested in making the dialogue fruitful but only seeks to give an impression that it makes efforts to solve the issue."