HAVANA, Nov. 14--The European Union is considering a shift in policy toward Cuba that would get it back on speaking terms with President Fidel Castro's government, Reuters quoted diplomats as saying.
EU policy-makers will meet on Tuesday in Brussels to discuss whether to stop inviting dissidents to National Day receptions in Havana, a practice that so incensed the Cuban government it shut its doors to European diplomats.
Spain and Britain believe the diplomatic freeze, in which ambassadors are shunned and telephone calls are not returned, has led to a dead-end that runs counter to EU interests in Cuba.
"I think the policy will change by the end of the year," one European diplomat said. "There is a mood for change, provided we can get it right."
"We are in limbo. The freeze makes it hard for us to do what we should be doing here, which is prepare for a post-Castro transition," he said.
The issue has divided the 25-country EU.
Germany and the Netherlands, as well as several new members from Central Europe that lived under Soviet communism, oppose changes in policy without an improvement in Cuba's rights record.
The attempt to restore political dialogue with Havana was begun by Socialist Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero of Spain, the EU country with most trade, cultural and historical ties to Cuba, its former colony.
German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, meeting last Monday with Zapatero in Spain, doubted restoring dialogue with Havana would help advance democracy in Cuba. Schroeder said "underlying conditions in Cuba still need to be developed."
Spain wants to lift measures adopted by Brussels last year in response to the imprisonment of 75 dissidents and the summary execution of three Cubans who hijacked a ferry to try to escape to the United States. Only seven of the imprisoned dissidents have been freed.
The EU steps included inviting dissidents to National Day parties and ending high-level political visits to Cuba.

Demonstrators march during a protest against the construction of the Israeli West Bank wall in Rome, November 13. (Reuters Photo)

PARIS, Nov. 14--Thousands of people took to the streets of Berlin, Geneva, Paris and Rome to protest against Israel's construction of a separation barrier and the situation of Palestinians on the occasion of Qods Day, AFP reported.
In the French capital between 2,000 and 6,000 joined a rally called by leftist and aid groups.
The demonstration was "part of an international campaign against the construction of the wall" annexing Palestinian territory, said Christian Piquet, a leading figure of the Revolutionary Communist League (LCR).
Piquet estimated the number of demonstrators at 6,000, while police said 2,000 attended, among them members of Amnesty International, the Communist Party and the environmental Greens party.
"We are demonstrating so there will not be a wall between people and no people between the walls," said the spokesman for the group coordinating Palestine committees, Rachid Abel.
A French Jewish group as well as anti-Zionist Orthodox rabbis, who argue that the existence of the state of Israel is illegal, also attended the protest.
In Berlin about 750 people, according to police estimates, most of them members of the Muslim community, demonstrated against Israeli policies on the occasion of Qods Day.
Veiled women carried pictures of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, who died Thursday in Paris and was buried in the West Bank town of Ramallah Friday.
About 50 people took part in a counter-demonstration, calling for action against Islamic extremism, anti-Semitism and racism.
In Rome, several thousand people paid tribute to Arafat and protested against Israel's security wall in the West Bank.
Protesters carried banners condemning the ""Wall of apartheid".
In Geneva, nearly 300 people took to the streets to protest against what they called Israel's "Wall of Shame" in the West Bank.
No incidents were reported.
A week of coordinated international protests against the wall, which the Israeli government says is to protect the country against suicide bomb attacks, was first organized in several countries last year.
The week--November 9-16--was chosen to coincide with celebrations marking the fall of the Berlin Wall on November 9, 1989.

NAIROBI, Kenya, Nov. 14--The veil that cloaks the head of Zafran Mukanwali is a modest symbol of a potentially dramatic shift in religious affiliation in Africa, Reuters reported. The former Roman Catholic put down her rosary and embraced Islam a decade ago out of disgust with ethnic murders committed by Catholics, including priests, in Rwanda's 1994 genocide. "I realized that the Catholics do not practice what they preach," said the 22-year-old Tutsi, whose parents were among the 800,000 people butchered by extremist Hutus.
"When I realized that the people I was praying with killed my parents, I decided to convert to Islam because Muslims saved many lives and did not take part in the killings."
Before 1994, Muslims comprised between 1 percent and 2 percent of the overwhelmingly Catholic population in Rwanda. Today that figure is 5 percent, census returns show. Muslim leaders say the number of mosques has risen to 570 from 220.
The shift is prompting new interest in Islam's long, uneven spread elsewhere in sub-Saharan Africa, where Christianity normally predominates and indigenous faiths are in retreat.
Those who gauge political risk are on alert for any sign of strain in the usually equable relations between Christians and Muslims south of the Sahara, and for any evidence of the arrival of radical Islamic movements from the Middle East.
STATISTICAL WARFARE
While anecdotal evidence suggests a growth in the proportion of sub-Saharan Africans embracing Islam, as well as "born again" forms of Protestant Christianity, data is scarce.
Hassan Mwakimako, who teaches religious studies at Nairobi University, says census surveys either do not track religious affiliation, or if they do, tend not to publish it. Ephraim Isaac, director of the Institute for Semitic Studies at Princeton University, said there are estimates but none are authoritative.
"There is a kind of statistical warfare with Islam said to be growing by leaps and bounds on one side, and growing Christianity, especially Pentecostalists and charismatics, on the other," said Isaac, an Ethiopian."Statistics have influence. People like to be on the winning side."
But Bah Thierno Amadou, 36, a Sierra Leonian Muslim living in Madagascar, has no doubt his religion is on the march. "More Africans are converting to Islam. There was hardly any Islam in Sierra Leone in the 1960s. Now it has a big following, and it's getting bigger in each generation," said Amadou, who also lived in Liberia for 16 years.
He says the wars pursued by President Bush are powerful recruiting tools for Islam in many parts of a continent with long memories of 19th century cooperation between European missionaries and colonizers.
"He (Bush) says he's a Christian and he does things to destroy people's lives and property who are Muslims. Africans identify with the victims of Bush, because they suffered under the European colonizers, also Christians," Amadou said. "In Uganda, Islam is growing so fast. Every single minute we are getting people converting," says Sheik Harun Sengooba of the Union of Muslim Councils for East, Central and Southern Africa.
In South Africa, Islam is growing among blacks in a country where 80 percent of the 45 million people are Christian.
Currently, less than 2 percent of South Africans, or about 650,000 people, are Muslim, mostly members of the country's Indian and Colored (mixed-race) communities. But the semi-autonomous Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) estimates 74,700 Africans are Muslim from fewer than 12,000 in 1991 when apartheid outlawed racial interaction. "The gap is closing and we are finding each other," Sheik Thafir Najjar, who heads the Cape Town-based Islamic Council of South Africa, says of reconciliation since the end of apartheid.
Money helps. Islamic non-governmental groups in Africa, many backed by Gulf oil cash, grew from 138 in 1980 to 891 in 2000, more than twice the rate of increase in the total number of Africa's NGOs in the period, says Mohammed Salim, a Sudanese political scientist at Leiden University in the Netherlands.
COLLISION COURSE
Islam or Christianity, both proselytizing religions that are inherently competitive, have long co-existed in Africa. Tensions between the two have been mitigated by the influential legacy of tolerant African traditional religions, communal movements that have no ambitions to convert humankind.
But the contest can be violent, feeding sectarianism into wider conflicts such as those in Sudan and Ivory Coast. A report by the Roman Catholic church as far back as 1990 said Catholics and Muslims in Africa risked going on a dangerous collision course over efforts to convert new followers. Relations seems to be at their worst in Nigeria, Africa's most populous country, where the two religions share roughly equally its population of 130 million people.
Religious violence there has killed at least 5,000 people since 2000, when 12 northern states predominantly inhabited by Muslims established Islamic Sharia law.
A demonstration by Muslims in Nigeria's northern city of Kano against the US war in Afghanistan in October 2001 flared into communal riots with at least 200 people killed.
Kenyan historian Ali Mazrui says tensions have been stirred in parts of Africa after Sept. 11 as Washington demanded African nations cooperate in a crackdown on Muslim militants. "The aftermath of Sept. 11, 2001, may begin to undermine the multiracial solidarity of post-apartheid South Africa. It has already deepened the cleavage between the Christian-led central government of Tanzania in Dar es Salaam and the overwhelmingly Muslim separatist islands of Zanzibar and Pemba," he said.

BANGKOK, Thailand, Nov. 14--Thailand will only end an insurgency in its violence-hit south if it patches up relations with neighboring Malaysia which were damaged by the death of 87 Muslim protesters, AFP quoted analysts as saying.
They said harsh complaints about Thai tactics, from influential former Malaysian leaders and others, reflect the strained relations despite a less confrontational approach by current Malaysian premier Abdullah Ahmad Badawi.
The cross-border economies of the two countries depend on stability in southern Thailand, which has been rocked by a separatist-inspired insurgency this year that has left more than 540 people dead.
Tensions rose with the deaths of 78 Muslims who were piled into the backs of trucks after being rounded up and bound following the violent break-up of a riot at Tak Bai by Thai security forces on October 25. Nine others died earlier in the protest.
Following the violence, former Malaysian premier Mahathir Mohamad urged the Thai government to consider giving some autonomy to the south and compared the insurgency to the struggle for a Palestinian state.
Malaysia's former deputy premier Anwar Ibrahim accused Thai Premier Thaksin Shinawatra of "arrogance" in his handling of the issue, prompting a Thai counterblast that his comments were "not consistent with reality".
"The comments by Mahathir and Anwar are a real reflection of the vacuum" in the two countries' relations, said assistant professor Panitan Wattanayagorn of Bangkok's Chulalongkorn university.
"There is no other option, they have to talk, but some of the bridges are damaged.
"This is not a problem that can be managed by one country alone. A solution will be based on workable local solutions, workable local structures and trust among the leaders. Both realize so much is at stake."
Only four percent of the population in mainly Buddhist Thailand are Muslims but most of them live in the south near the border with Malaysia.
Ties are strong between the Muslim communities on either side of the border. Many locals hold dual nationality, have family ties and travel across the border for work.

Vuk Draskovic

ZAGREB, Croatia,
Nov. 14--Serbian Foreign Minister Vuk Draskovic warned Saturday his country was currently facing "closed doors" everywhere abroad in retaliation for its failure to hand over those suspected of crimes committed during 1990 Balkan wars, AFP reported.
"We are aware of our big economic, democratic and other potentials, but everywhere doors are closed to us since we do not meet our obligations towards The Hague tribunal," Draskovic said, quoted by the HINA news agency.
"There are no explanations for delays in fulfilling those obligations and they have to be met."
Draskovic spoke at the end of a two-day conference on the northern Adriatic Brijuni islands, which brought together five Balkan states seeking NATO membership and eight members of the alliance.
The former journalist and novelist rose to political prominence by espousing the Serbian nationalist cause. But he has consistently argued that Serbia and Montenegro must fulfill its obligations to the UN war crimes tribunal in The Hague.
He has bitterly criticized the government's policy over the issue. Former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic is on trial before the UN court but 15 other Serbian indictees are still on the loose.
The chief UN war crimes prosecutor Carla del Ponte said earlier this month it was a scandal that Belgrade was protecting such fugitives.
Ponte said Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica had made it clear he was not prepared to arrest the indictees and transfer them to the tribunal.

TOKYO, Nov. 14--The Japanese government said Sunday it was considering imposing economic sanctions on North Korea as a delegation to Pyongyang prepared to wrap up an investigation into Cold War abductions of its citizens, AFP reported.
Foreign Minister Nobutaka Machimura said the ruling Liberal Democratic Party and the government had already carried out studies on the effects of sanctions, although he cautioned against any "single-track conclusion".
"We will fully analyze the outcome of the latest talks and take a necessary policy measure. One of the options could be imposing economic sanctions," he told a television news program.
Japan warned of economic sanctions before the 19-member delegation flew to the communist country to investigate the fate of eight people kidnapped in the 1970s amd 1980s who North Korea said later died.
Pyongyang has admitted abducting 13 Japanese nationals for spy training and has allowed five to return to Japan, but it says the other eight are dead. Tokyo has rejected the statement and believes at least another two Japanese were also kidnapped.
Last month, North Korea warned that sanctions were tantamount to declaring war when US officials hinted at seeking UN sanctions if it continued to shun talks on its nuclear program.
The delegation, which met with the North Korean husband of one of the kidnap victims and visited a hospital during its visit, will bring back personal effects of the abduction victims including medical records when it returns on Monday.
"I am not sure how much they managed to gather of various materials, such as personal effects and articles. But they are very precious," Vice Foreign Minister Ichiro Aisawa told a news show on the Fuji TV network.
"We want to analyse them well in Tokyo," he added.
The abductions and North Korea's nuclear arms ambitions have been preventing the two countries from moving forward to the normalization of diplomatic ties, which could bring massive economic help to impoverished North Korea.