Briefs

RUSSIA

Peace still eludes Moscow and Tokyo

MOSCOW — President Vladimir Putin’s visit to Japan later this year is unlikely to produce a breakthrough in a stalemated territorial dispute, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov indicated yesterday.

Preparation for the November visit does not include work on a peace treaty between Moscow and Tokyo to formally end World War II hostilities that remains unsigned because of a dispute over a chain of islands in the Pacific Ocean, Mr. Lavrov said.

Tokyo has refused to sign a treaty unless Moscow agrees to return four rocky islands northeast of Hokkaido that the Soviet Union seized in the closing days of the war. Moscow has said it is ready to negotiate the return of two of the islands.

AUSTRALIA

Howard to visit U.S., Britain

SYDNEY — Warning that Australia could be hit by London-style suicide attacks and defending his military deployments abroad, Prime Minister John Howard heads for the United States and Britain today with terrorism and Asian security high on the agenda.

Already assured of a warm welcome from President Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair for his steadfast support in the “war on terrorism,” Mr. Howard takes with him a pledge to send 150 elite troops to Afghanistan ahead of September elections there. Mr. Howard, who also has about 900 soldiers in Iraq, dismissed the idea the new deployment, announced Wednesday, could put Australia at greater risk of a terrorist attack.

INDONESIA

U.S. mining firm faces pollution trial

JAKARTA — A pollution trial against an Indonesian unit of U.S. mining giant Newmont Mining Corp. and its top executive will start Aug. 5, a court official said yesterday.

State prosecutors this week filed charges against Newmont’s Indonesian subsidiary, Newmont Minahasa Raya, and its American president-director, Richard Ness, accusing them of dumping toxic waste into a North Sulawesi bay.

Weekly notes …

East Timor will become a member this month of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations Regional Forum (ARF), a regional security grouping, its Foreign Ministry said yesterday. Ministry chief Nelson Santos said East Timor would become the 25th member of the ARF when Foreign Minister Jose Ramos-Horta attends the forum’s annual meeting in Vientiane, Laos, on July 26. … After years of fearing a flood of Chinese immigration, Russians in eastern Siberia are coming to terms with a migration that has become vital to economic development. “We’ve had a Chinese cobbler working near our house for five years now, and he does everything quickly and for cheap — not like Russian workers,” said Anna Makarova, a Russian pensioner living in Vladivostok, some 30 miles from the Russo-Chinese border. “If they want honest work, they can come,” she added.

From wire dispatches and staff reports