World Scene

AUSTRALIA

Prime minister says no way, mate

CANBERRA — Officials at Australia’s Parliament House yesterday overturned a day-old ban on guards and attendants using the word “mate” to address lawmakers and visitors after the new rule sparked outrage among prime ministers past and present.

Prime Minister John Howard, who has used the term to describe President Bush, said it was “absurd” to require security guards at Parliament House to stop addressing visitors and lawmakers as “mate.”

On Thursday, guards and attendants at the building in Canberra were told to stop using the common Australian expression because of a complaint from a senior civil servant, the press reported.

BRITAIN

Police review their shoot-to-kill policy

LONDON — Police are reviewing a shoot-to-kill policy after its first use took the life of an innocent Brazilian man, the head of the authority that oversees the Metropolitan Police told a newspaper.

Len Duvall, chairman of the Metropolitan Police Authority, told the Independent newspaper in its editions today that the review was being carried out amid “growing pressure” for a public inquiry into the lethal policy.

The comments came as calls mounted for the head of the Metropolitan Police, Ian Blair, to resign over his handling of the mistaken killing of Jean Charles de Menezes, 27, in the tense days after July’s London bombings.

MOROCCO

U.S. urges talks on Western Sahara

TETUAN — Morocco and Algeria must start U.N.-sponsored talks on the Western Sahara dispute after the release of the last Moroccan soldiers to have been held by Algerian-backed separatists, a top U.S. envoy said yesterday.

Sen. Richard G. Lugar, Indiana Republican and chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said the release gave a new momentum to efforts to resolve the dispute.

After U.S. mediation, Morocco welcomed home 404 prisoners of war Thursday, the last to be freed after being held by the separatist Polisario Front.

EGYPT

One more arrested in resort bombings

CAIRO — Egyptian police have arrested one more man suspected of belonging to a group that killed at least 64 persons in three bomb attacks in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el Sheik last month, security sources said yesterday.

The sources said the man, identified as Hassan el-Arayshi, was arrested in the Sinai Peninsula.

SOUTH AFRICA

Apartheid policeman in Biko case dies

JOHANNESBURG — Former South African security policeman Gideon Nieuwoudt, who commanded the torture of anti-apartheid hero Steve Biko, has died at age 54 from cancer, SABC radio reported yesterday.

Nieuwoudt was notorious as one of the apartheid government’s most sinister operatives and was connected with several infamous cases that exposed the white government’s brutality toward its political opponents.

CHINA

U.S. citizen held on spying charge

BEIJING — China has detained an American on suspicion of spying for Beijing’s archrival, Taiwan, the U.S. Embassy said yesterday.

The Chinese Foreign Ministry said Xie Chunren — a Chinese-born American citizen — has been under house arrest since May 31, suspected of “activities harmful to state security.”

A U.S. Embassy spokeswoman said Mr. Xie had been detained “under suspicion of espionage for Taiwan.”