WASHINGTON: The United States said Israeli and Palestinian negotiators were holding ``serious and constructive'' talks near Washington, as extra Palestinians arrived to bolster their side of the table.

US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright will be meeting with the delegation heads, Israeli Foreign Minister David Levy and senior PLO official Mahmoud Abbas, today and sources close to the talks said this round of negotiations would likely be wrapped up soon. A state department spokesman said the US-brokered talks ``were serious and constructive'', but Palestinian and Israeli officials gave conflicting accounts of the talks, which seek to break a deadlock.

Relief for nurse

LONDON: British nurse Lucille McLauchlan will have the sentence of eight years' jail and 500 lashes imposed by a Saudi Arabian court for her part in the murder of a colleague reduced. McLauchlan, who was sentenced in September, will instead get a four-year term and be spared the lashes. Deborah Parry, of Hampshire, who has yet to be sentenced by the Islamic court for the alleged murder of Australian nurse Yvonne Gilford, will also serve four years in prison.

Freetown raid

FREETOWN: Allies of Sierra Leone's ousted President Ahmad Tejan Kabbah killed 25 people when they ambushed a bus in the country's eastern region at the weekend.

The attackers were wearing blue uniforms, like those worn by South African mercenaries from the company Executive Outcomes, the major said. The Kamajors, like the South African company, were used by the civilian government, which was overthrown in a May 25 military coup, to fight the rebellion of the Revolutionary United Front which allied itself with the junta after the coup.

Mir repairs

KOROLYOV: Two Russian cosmonauts installed a new solar panel to improve energy supplies to the ageing Mir station during a space walk of more than six hours today. Anatoly Solovyov, 49, and Pavel Vinogradov, 43, spent 47 minutes more than planned in space. Two sections of the solar panel failed at first to unfold properly and the operation had to be completed manually. NASA astronaut David Wolf, 41, was backing up his colleagues inside Mir.

Korean `justice'

TOKYO: North Korea's ruling party secretary in charge of agriculture and 17 others were shot to death in a public execution in Pyongyang in mid-September, tourists returning from the North Korean capital said today quoting witnesses. Seventy-one-year old So Kwan Hi, ranked 26th in North Korea's ruling hierarchy and one of the party's 10 secretaries was the first secretary to be executed in public. So Kwan Hi, three senior officials of the Kim Il Sung Socialist Youth League and 14 others were executed before 20,000 to 30,000 citizens.

Copyright © 1997 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.