OAU officials were expected to meet members of the Ethiopian government Monday before heading for Asmara, where authorities on Monday said clashes were still taking place.

Welcoming Eritrea's acceptance Saturday of its peace plan, the OAU said an immediate end to conflict would allow the plan, presented last November, to be put into effect.

BEIJING, March 1 (AFP) - North Korea's food crisis is deepening and the population is increasingly suffering from malnutrition despite the efforts of the international community, a top UN official warned Monday.

"The situation is not getting any better. In fact it is getting worse and malnutrition has spread up from the under-sixes to the under-17s," said Christian Lemaire, UN Development Programme representative in Pyongyang.

"Diseases that had been eradicated like tuberculosis are coming back," he added.

Ansumana Kargbo said those who died were mostly those who fled into the bush between Waterloo and York after rebels of the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) were chased from the capital last month.

Last month a United Nations report said up to 5,000 people had died in and around Freetown since the RUF invaded the city on January 6.

Kargbo said he was personally repeatedly

Rebels of the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA) shelled the city night and day throughout the entire weekend, the daily reported.

UNITA bush fighters also destroyed a bridge on the Lombe river linking Malanje, 400 kilometers (248 miles) east of Luanda, to the rest of the country, the paper said.

Between mid-November and early January, shelling claimed some 200 lives in Malanje.

PRISTINA, Yugoslavia, March 1 (AFP) - Ethnic Albanians are well on track to approve the Rambouillet plan to end the war in Kosovo, US and EU mediators said Monday, amid a lull in fighting in the tense Serbian province.

"Things are moving very positively," said US envoy Christopher Hill during a full day of meetings in Pristina with Kosovo Albanian representatives to peace talks which resume in France on March 15.

"So far the signs are good," he said, as the Kosovars continued what they call a period of "consultations"

Dole agreed to go after speaking by phone to Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, spokesman James Foley said.

"He has agreed to travel to the region to urge agreement on the interim settlement plan," reached after 17 days of negotiations at Rambouillet chateau, near Paris, Foley said.

"He is an eminent figure who has

KABUL, Feb 28 (AFP) - Leaders of Afghanistan's Taliban militia Sunday assured full safety and security for United Nations staff if they returned to Kabul, UN special envoy Lakhdar Brahimi said after talks with the hardline Islamic militia.

"Today, they gave us very strong assurances" that the safety of UN staff will be "fully guaranteed," he told reporters before leaving for Islamabad after the one-day visit.

The UN withdrew its international staff after an Italian officer, Colonel Carmine Calo, was shot dead in Kabul

Until now Iraq had refused to cooperate with the panel, whose initial session winds up Saturday, Ambassador Celso Amorim said.

"The fact that they presented the document is in itself the beginning of a dialogue" with Iraq, Amorim told reporters after updating the UN Security Council on the first four days of panel discussions.

The Iraqi government has described the

Yugoslav customs officials on the Macedonian border were also detaining 10 Kosovo Verification Mission (KVM) vehicles and their passengers, the KVM said.

The incidents came as Kosovar Albanian leader Ibrahim Rugova warned that outbreaks of fighting and mounting tension could endanger peace talks which have just wound up in France and are due to resume on March 15.