The Guardian from London, Greater London, England • 20

20 The GManfiaw Thursday December 2 1999 International Roundup fight against the Congo government. The United Nations security council took a tentative step toward sending a peace monitoring force to Congo on Tuesday when it approved the equipping of 500 observers. But their deployment appears some way off. AP, Kigali Aum cult to pay up for gas attack Aum Shinrikyo, the cult that attempted to kick-start Armageddon with a deadly gas attack on the Tokyo underground in 1995, apologised yesterday and offered to pay compensation to the victims. Cult watchers, however, questioned the sincerity of the long-awaited statement of remorse, which comes as the cult faces an increasingly hostile public and an intensifying police crackdown.

"We cannot deny that some of the sect followers at the time were involved in the incidents," Aum's spokeswoman, Tatsuko Muraoka. told journalists. "We apologise sincerely to the victims and the families of the victims." It is the second public relations offensive launched by Aum this year, and goes further than the cult's earlier promise to stop recruiting and using its name. The cult's leader, Shoko Asahara, who is one of several Aum members on trial, has said in court that his followers proposed the sarin gas attack on commuters. It killed 12 and left thousands of others feeling ill.

Two Aum members have already been sentenced to death for the attack. The cult also faces other charges of murder, gun-running and drug dealing. Jonathan Watts, Tokyo Six killed in train crash near Sydney Two passenger trains collided near Sydney this morning, killing at least six people and injuring 40 more, emergency services said. A peak-hour commuter train rounded a blind corner and rammed an Indian Pacific transcontinental tourist train, which had either slowed or stopped on the line. The force of the crash shook nearby houses.

It occurred near Glenbrook, a small town at the base of the Blue Mountains, 35 miles west of Sydney. Wayne Geddes, a spokesman for New South Wales State Rail, said six people had been killed, and the death toll was expected to rise. "This is an absolutely horrific accident between the Indian Pacific train travelling from Perth into Sydney this morning and an early morning commuter service into Sydney," Mr Geddes said. An ambulance spokesman said emergency workers were racing to free three people still trapped in the wreckage. AP, Sydney Rebels in Congo warn of carnage Rebels in the Congo were last night threatening to attack about 700 surrounded Zimbabwean troops unless the Congolese president, Laurent Kabila, calls off efforts to rescue them.

The rebel spokesman, Kin-Kiey Mulumba who was once the spokesman for the late despot Mobutu Sese Seko said that government forces were breaching a recent ceasefire accord by using bombers, helicopter gunships and heavy artillery in an attempt to break through rebel lines and free the Zimbabweans, who are surrounded at Ikela airport, 500 miles from Kinshasa. "The fighting is extremely violent," Mr Mulumba said. "We're continuing to resist. But if they continue, the Zimbabweans at Ikela will find themselves in a bloodbath." Attempts to negotiate a safe passage for the Zimbabweans, who arc fighting in support of Mr Kabila, have failed because they refuse to agree to rebel demands to surrender their weapons and vehicles. The principal countries involved in the war, including Zimbabwe, Uganda and Rwanda, signed a peace accord in August that was supposed to end the fighting while a peace monitoring force was put in place and political negotiations began.

But since then each side has regularly accused the other of continuing to launch attacks. The rebels have denied accusations by Zimbabwe's president, Robert Mugabe, that United States mercenaries have been recruited to 4Pf ation with the Indonesian militia forces. "With the same courage we fought for independence and freedom we must forgive," he said. Mr Ramos-Horta said he had no interest in becoming part of the new country's government. Jose Ramos-Horta (above), the East Timorese winner of the Nobel peace prize, received a hero's welcome yesterday from thousands of people in Dili after a 24-year exile, writes Christopher Zinn in Dili.

Three months after Aus Cult leader Shoko Asahara The pelvic bone of the young Tyrannosaurus rex at the excavation site in South Dakota tralian-led. troops liberated the devastated former Indonesian province, Mr Ramos-Horta flew in from Darwin. His tireless diplomacy over two decades has helped keep East Timor in the minds of the world. Yesterday he told 8,000 Dili's Roman Catholic bishop, Carlos Belo, with whom Mr Ramos-Horta shared the Nobel peace prize, said the return should encourage the East Timorese to return from abroad to help rebuild. Photograph: Darren Whiteside Neo-fascist leader held in Spain The leader of Spain's biggest neo-fascist group was arrested yesterday after a sharp rise in xenophobia and racist attacks.

Ricanlo Saenz de Ynestril-las was remanded in custody and charged with theft and assault after three masked figures burst into two bars in Madrid, demanded the contents of the tills and assaulted staff and clients. He-denies the charges. Mr Saenz de Ynestrillas leads the extreme rightwing National Unity movement, which opposes immigration and regional devolution in Spain. 1 lis arrest follows warnings by Spain's interior ministry of a worsening problem of racism. Several people were injured this summer in riots in areas of Catalonia with a relatively high immigrant population.

Immigrants account for just 2 of the country's population. But many manual jobs are being filled by immigrants, mainly from north Africa and Latin America. As memories of the Franco era fade. Spanish fascist groups are forming links with European skinhead and neo-Nazi groups, police say. An independent human rights organisation, Young People Against Intolerance, warns that the number of neo-fascist groups active in Spain has increased five-fold in the last four years and that they are becoming better organised.

Spaniards are shocked by the change in their society. Rosa Montero, a columnist in El Pais, said: "We've now produced our very own racist gangs. Who knows, at the rate we're going, we may even develop an Iberian version of the Ku Klux Klan." Adela Gooch, Madrid followers to thank the foreign governments, nongovernmental organisations and church leaders who had helped them realise their dream of independence and were helping to rebuild their nation. He appealed for reconcili- Scientists uncover son of rex The first nearly complete skeleton of a juvenile Tyran-nosaurus rex has been found in South Dakota and is being prepared for study in a Texas laboratory, researchers said. "It really did knock my socks off," said paleontologist Robert Hakker after seeing the specimen.

"You're getting a window into the childhood of the world's favourite dinosaur." The skeleton, which Mr Bakker estimated as 75-90 complete, was found north of Belle Fourche. in the summer of 1998. said Ron Frithiof, an amateur fossil hunter. The dinosaur, most of it still encased in rock and other material, is now at a laboratory Mr Frithiof owns west of San Antonio. He and others have been painstakingly exposing the bones so that it can be studied.

Mr Bakker, who works with the Wyoming Dinamation Society, said the specimen was around 66m years old. AP, New York Giscard's gifts 'horrible' State gifts to France's late president, Francois Mitterrand, fill two personal museums, and Jacques Chirac is now building one of his own. But public gallery curators have described the handful of offerings from Valery Giscard d'Estaing, president between 1974 and 1981, as horrible -and they have confined them to the cellars as worthless. A leaked report on the value of 20 gifts donated to museums by the former president will add to his reputation forheing tightfisted. It will also reawaken questions on what he has done with jewels and gold ornaments offered by heads of state.

Mr discard, now 73, lost the 1981 election to Mitterrand after a row over a gift of diamonds from the deposed Centra African dictator, Jean-Bedel Bokassa. Public reaction to this inspired Mr Mitterrand to put all his state gifts worth millions of pounds on permanent public display. His predecessor, Georges Pompidou, quietly dispersed his presidential presents, including priceless Chinese ornaments, to Paris galleries. But a report on the value of Mr Giscard's donations described them as "horrors" and The gallery curators were responding to a survey which was carried out to see whether the presidential presents would fit in a new museum of early ethnic art sponsored by Mr Chirac. According to the satirical weekly, Le Canard Iinchaine, which revealed the Bokassa diamonds affair, the document listed only 20 donations to state museums.

A Polynesian walking stick was csv saar ossjmi i-r fo rt eri jctc described by an Oceanic arts gallery curator as "horrible" and not worth displaying "except in a tourist art Paul Webster, Paris New peace mission for Mandela Nelson Mandela has been appointed as the new mediator in Burundi's six-year civil war which has claimed hundreds of thousands of lives. Mr Mandela, who retired as South African president after the election in June, replaces the former Tanzanian leader, Julius Nyerere, who died in London last month. A summit of regional presidents in Tanzania urged Mr Mandela to move quickly to break the deadlock in the conflict between the Tutsi army and Hutu rebels. The war has intensified after the conflict in neighbouring Congo forced Hutu rebels back into Burundi. The army has forced 800,000 Hutus into squalid "relocation camps" in an effort to deny the rebels support.

Mr Mandela will have to reassure the Tutsi minority that its security is not threatened by any peace settlement. Tutsis control the army, most of the civil service and much of the economy. The civil war began after troops murdered Burundi's first elected president, a Hutu, in 1993. Tens of thousands villagers were killed in retaliation before the army began its pogrom against Hutus. Tutsi fears have been reinforced by the genocide in neighbouring Rwanda.

Mr Nyerere angered the Burundian government by pressing for a regional intervention force, and even advocated invasion at one point. But he believed that the key to peace in Burundi was collective security. Chris MeGrcal, Johannesburg PRIVATE MEDICAL INSURANCE CAN BE EXPENSIVE WE'VE GOT THE ALTERNATIVE LOG ON TODAY AND PAY LESS XS health www.xshealth.co.uk OR CALL FREE ON 0800 389 9797.