Friday September 1 5:48 p.m. EDT

International Summary

• Bosnian Talks Scheduled - In an apparent breakthrough, the three warring factions in the Bosnian conflict have agreed to meet in Geneva next week for talks aimed at ending the war. The announcement was made simultaneously Friday in Washington and Belgrade following intensive diplomacy by U.S. special envoy Richard Holbrooke and Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic. The diplomatic achievement was the result of a risky twin-track strategy of shuttle talks coupled with an unprecedented NATO bombardment of Bosnian Serb forces to punish them for shelling Sarajevo but also to convince them they could not win on the battlefield and should accept negotiation.

• UN Commander Meets Mladic - The United Nations commander in the former Yugoslavia, General Bernard Janvier, met Bosnian Serb military chief Ratko Mladic Friday to reiterate U.N. and NATO demands for halting the allied military operation against Serb positions. The U.N. has demanded the Bosnian Serbs pull all their heavy weapons out of range of Sarajevo and stop threatening other ``safe areas'' as a condition for permanently ending the massive NATO military campaign against them. Diplomats said Janvier would demand maximum concessions by the Serbs, including reopening of the Sarajevo airport and supply roads -- ``blue routes'' into the besieged city.

• Protesters Breach Nuke Security - Greenpeace breached tight security at a French nuclear test site in the South Pacific on Friday and said two of its divers evaded helicopters and commandos to reach the test platform before being arrested. The environmental group said its divers slipped underneath the platform at the Mururoa atoll test site after a dramatic chase involving Greenpeace activists and the French military in inflatable dinghies. A French official says the two divers have been arrested. The drama came on the first day of the September-to-May French program of seven or eight underground blasts at Mururoa or the neighboring atoll of Fangataufa.

• Cuba Flotilla Planned - President Fidel Castro's daughter is one of a group of Cuban exiles preparing to launch another protest flotilla toward his Communist-ruled island. Saturday's risky undertaking involves piloting boats and small planes nearly 90 miles from Florida to the brink of Cuba's territorial boundaries in the hopes of inspiring dissent among Cuban citizens. The State Department has warned exiles not to cross into Cuban territory, saying officials will have only limited abilities to help anyone detained in Cuba. Cuba has issued repeated threats to sink any boat or shoot down any plane that violates its 12-mile international boundary.

• Arafat, Peres Meet in Italy - Italy is the latest location for talks between Israel and the PLO on expanding Palestinian self rule. PLO head Yasser Arafat and Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres met Friday at a venue on Lake Como. In a speech to delegates before meeting Peres, Arafat chided Israel for the slow pace of the negotiations to date and warned that ``the enemies of peace will exploit the standstill.'' Israeli army redeployment from West Bank Palestinian populated areas is more than a year behind schedule. Peres said he thought the talks on self-rule could be completed by the end of the month.

• Liberian Leaders Installed - Chief warlord Charles Taylor and other key militia leaders were installed in a new ruling council Friday to steer Liberia from civil strife to democratic rule. The council was set up under the terms of a peace accord signed in Nigeria Aug. 20. Taylor, the leader of the National Patriotic Front of Liberia had not been to Monrovia since before the war. His forces twice reached the edge of the city but were driven back by the Nigerian-dominated ECOMOG regional intervention force.

• China Conference Focus on Rights - The international women's conference in Beijing heard speeches Friday from a series of women who described that in areas where human rights abuses are widespread, women are most often the victims. Women from Rwanda and Uganda described the rape, torture and abduction of women who sometimes must give their bodies in order to save their lives. About 20,000 women are in Beijing for the Non-Governmental Organization forum that hopes to influence next week's United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women. First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton travels to Beijing on Sunday.

• Peacekeeper Shot in Haiti - A French member of the U.N. peacekeeping force in Haiti was shot in the head by an unidentified assailant and critically wounded. U.N. sources said Friday Marshall Christian Marginier was preparing to go to bed when he was shot in the head Thursday night from a distance of about 10 yards. Investigators say they don't know if the shooting was the ``work of a crazy person or a premeditated attack.'' But the attacker left behind a tract stating that President Jean-Bertrand Aristide had not kept his promise to pay many of Haiti's newly demobilized soldiers.

• Zedillo: The Worst is Past - Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo promised his country that the threat of economic collapse was past and pledged to build a more just society free from drug traffickers and organized crime. Conscious of Mexico's dire economic plight after a bungled devaluation last December, Zedillo made his first State of the Nation speech to Congress Friday a sober occasion stripped of the pomp, open-air motorcades and hand-kissing of previous years.

• Canada Sex, Murder Trial Ends - A 31-year-old failed accountant was convicted Friday in Canada of first-degree murder, sexual assault and dismemberment in the sex torture slayings of two teen-age girls. Jurors deliberated for more than six hours over two days before finding Paul Bernardo guilty of murdering Leslie Mahaffy, 14, in June 1991 and Kristen French, 15, in April 1992. Bernardo automatically received two concurrent life sentences without eligibility of parole for 25 years for the murder convictions. There is no death penalty in Canada.