Lucasfilm which produced the movie has denied any racist intent but that has not dampened the furore

Lucasfilm, which produced the movie, has denied any racist intent, but that has not dampened the furore.Throughout the Star Wars saga, George Lucas has drawn on a wide variety of popular culture sources, particularly old Saturday morning adventure serials. His noseless leaders of the Galactic Trade Federation are clearly a throwback to the Yellow Peril characters popular in Flash Gordon and other series, but risk being interpreted as a racial slur just as much as a fond cultural reference.Likewise the revolting fly Watto, a corrupt mechanic on the planet of Tatooine, might remind film buffs of the Greek car repairman in Robert Aldrich's Kiss Me Deadly, but also looks like an eastern Mediterranean stereotype.. TURKEY'S KURDISH rebels yesterday gave full support to the peace calls of their leader, Abdullah Ocalan, but stopped short of embracing his appeal that they lay down their arms. The Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) leader is on trial in Turkey, accused of trying to break up the Turkish state and causing 30,000 deaths. He has threatened thousands more if he is hanged. "All the party fully backs the historical efforts of our leader with all of its force," said a statement from the Executive Council of the PKK The council includes the guerrillas' seven top commanders. But despite Ocalan's call to his followers to cease fighting, the statement said the rebels were ready to continue the war.Mr Ocalan's offer to bring his guerrillas down from their mountain bases is conditional on his life being spared.

In addition, he is asking only for Kurdish cultural rights within Turkey, such as Kurdish-language broadcasting and the right to teach Kurdish in schools. It seems a long way from the PKK's early days, when Mr Ocalan was hell-bent on carving an independent Kurdistan out of south-east Turkey.Even if the PKK's olive branch is real, Turkey seems unlikely to grasp it. Spurred by television images of the grief of those whose relatives have been killed by the PKK, the Turkish public is demanding Mr Ocalan's death.So far the trial has gone Turkey's way, and the Turkish press has revelled in the Kurdish leader's often submissive statements to the court.. ALEKSANDR LUKASHENKA, president of Belarus, is using a weekend tragedy in which 52 people died in an underpass stampede in Minsk to shore up the autocratic methods for which he is notorious.

Mr Lukashenka, blamed it not on poor crowd control, or ill luck, but on democracy. "Why did it happen to us? It is all because of our recklessness," he said, "We treat all this democracy too freely - go where you want, do what you please."Most of the victims were teenage girls, crushed by hundreds of people crowding into a metro underpass after a rock concert was interrupted by a sudden thunderstorm.. Pakistani editor released A PAKISTANI newspaper editor, whose detention aroused international condemnation, was released yesterday from more than three weeks in jail for alleged sedition and vowed to fight for press freedom. Najam Sethi's critical reporting in The Friday Times led to his arrest.. Iraq faces century's worst drought UNITED NATIONS officials said they expected Iraq to suffer its worst drought of the century this year, and said the UN oil-for-food programme would not provide enough money to cope. The drought will hit Iraq hard because it has been struggling under UN trade sanctions, they said..

Zimbabwe denies loss of planes ZIMBABWE YESTERDAY denied that two of its MiG fighters had been shot down by rebels fighting in the Democratic Republic of the Congo where its troops are backing President Laurent Kabila. Rwanda said on Monday that the planes had been brought down.. Pope opens car park in Vatican POPE JOHN Paul II presided over the inauguration of an underground parking garage at Vatican City yesterday, invoking divine protection for the garage, the cars and the people who park there. "A project whose need is surely felt," the pontiff said of the garage..

NO PLAQUE marks the spot where, 10 years ago tonight, the pavements turned red with blood. Instead, newly built traffic flyovers dominate this intersection at Muxidi in the west of Peking. Here, just before midnight, the first shots rang out in what was to be a night of slaughter as the People's Liberation Army blasted its way through the city to Tiananmen Square. Hao Zhijing, 30, a researcher at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, was killed in the first volley at Muxidi, shot in the chest. Xiao Bo, a 27- year-old chemistry teacher at Peking University, was felled nearby while trying to persuade his students to leave the area. Wang Chao, 30, a computer company employee who had been married just one month, died soon after. Others, their names unknown to the outside world, were among the thousands of local residents who had turned out to block the path of the advancing troops, only to be killed or badly injured.These days, the vast Soviet-style residential apartment buildings for civil servants still flank the road at Muxidi "I can never forget So many people died," said a woman in her sixties yesterday. "They even shot at our building."Jiang Jielian, a 17-year-old schoolboy, was among the first to die at Muxidi.