WASHINGTON: Former US President Richard Nixon and his top aides had plans to appropriate federal land for an ocean-front library housing papers and tapes of his White House stint, a former presidential aide has testified in court, the Washington Post reports. Former White House aide John Dean, who blew the whistle on the Watergate scandal, testified in federal court last week that Nixon had envisioned a 100-acre setting carved out of the marine base at Camp Pendleton, California, with a library, museum and study centre that would give him ``n influence on American politics for as long as he desired.'' The plans floundered with Nixon's deepening involvement in the Watergate cover-up that led to his resignation in August 1974, he told the paper recently. Dean, 60, now a Beverly Hills investment banker, was called as a government witness in a trial in which the Nixon estate is demanding ``just compensation'' for the 1974 seizure of the former president's White House tapes andpapers.

For peace in N Ireland

BELFAST: The British and Irish prime ministers on Tuesday expressed hope that Northern Ireland's peace deal could break out of an impasse over disarmament which they have flown in to try to resolve. But they warned the British-ruled province's Protestant and Roman Catholic political parties that compromise and consensus were needed to meet a deadline for implementing the accord before its first anniversary this Friday. ``I genuinely believe all the parties engaged in this want it to work -- even more than last year,'' British leader Tony Blair told students at an integrated college attended by Protestants and Catholics.

Arabs hold annual rally

SAKHNIN (ISRAEL): Thousands of Arab Israelis and Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza strip held their annual Land Day protest on Tuesday against the confiscation of Arab property by Israel. But the violence which often marks the rallies was largely absent and the Muslim festival of Id-ul-Zuha appeared to have keptmany people away from the demonstrations. Land Day is held every March 30 to mark the killing of six Israeli Arabs by soldiers in a series of protests in 1976 over the confiscation of land from Arab communities in northern Israel. Three of the dead came from Sakhnin in the Galilee, where around 10,000 demonstrators turned out in a carnival atmosphere.