RUSSIA: The journalist from the Russian-language service of US-funded Radio Free Europe accused of collaboration with Chechen rebels, Andrei Babitsky, has been arrested in the Russian republic of Dagestan, a Dagestan interior ministry spokesman told AFP. Babitsky's fate has been a mystery since Moscow exchanged him on February 3 for Russian soldiers captured by Chechen fighters after he was arrested in the breakaway republic and accused of spying for the separatist rebels. Babitsky had earlier called an AFP reporter to arrange a meeting. He was arrested in the centre of Dagestan's capital Makhachkala during what the interior ministry described as a routine check.DUBAI: Jews of Yemeni origin are allowed to visit Yemen but not on an Israeli passport, the country's foreign minister said in an interview published on Saturday. ``Yemeni Jews who wish to return to their country or make a visit.can do so, on condition they do not use Israeli passports,'' Abdelkader Bajammal told the London-based Arabic newspaper Asharq Al-Awsat. This was Yemen's long-standing policy, he said, in reaction to press reports that Sanaa was planning to lift a ban on visits by Israeli passport-holders. A senior Yemeni official, quoted in the same newspaper, denied reports that an Israeli foreign ministry official had visited Sanaa to work out an agreement on lifting the ban.WASHINGTON: US president Bill Clinton demanded that Russia grant international human rights investigators ``unfettered access'' to war-torn Chechnya in the wake of reports of Russian atrocities in the breakaway republic. ``I think it is imperative for the Russians to allow the appropriate international agencies unfettered access to do the right inquiries, to find out what really went on and to deal with it in an appropriate way,'' Clinton said. International concern about treatment of Chechen civilians and captured separatist fighters by Russian troops was heightened on Thursday, when Britain's BBC television aired German-recorded footage, which appeared to show mutilated corpses being thrown into a mass grave by Russian troops.
