NEWS BRIEFS

U.S., Russia Move Toward Joint Defense

MOSCOW--The United States and Russia, in a first step toward a joint defense system, agreed yesterday to set up an early warning center to alert them to ballistic missile attacks, U.S. officials said.

Secretary of State James A. Baker III and Russian Foreign Minister Andrei Kozyrev also agreed on accelerated high-level talks toward an accord to sharply reduce their long-range nuclear arsenals, Kozyrev said.

Baker and Kozyrev decided to jettison the cumbersome arms control negotiating procedures of the Cold War, which involved large teams of experts working for years to reach agreement--if at all. They agreed instead to conduct the negotiations themselves with a completion goal of July, when President Bush and Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin meet in Washington.

The two will hold another round of talks on March 10 on the sidelines of a NATO foreign ministers' meeting in Brussels, a U.S. official said.

Russia Protests Submarine Collision

MOSCOW--The commonwealth navy charged yesterday that a nuclear-powered U.S. submarine was secretly in Russian waters when it collided with a Soviet sub last week. U.S. officials said the crash occurred in international waters.

The subdued but unambiguous Russian anger over the underwater bump on February 11 in the Barents Sea, near the Arctic Ocean, was a throwback to Cold War rivalries and a reminder of the powerful weapons the countries still have deployed against each other.

No injuries were reported to the crew members of either submarine.

Both subs were nuclear powered and capable of carrying nuclear weapons, but neither side would say whether the ships were loaded at the time.

U.S. and Russian officials said that though there was no radiation leakage, both vessels suffered some damage.

"The fact that a foreign submarine should be secretly operating within our territorial waters is bound to cause concern in the Russian leadership," Adm. Ivan Kapitants said in a report obtained by the Interfax news agency. REGION

Boston Blacks Again Seek Secession

BOSTON--An organization of Black Boston residents is attempting to carve a new, independent city from the city's minority neighborhoods.

The effort by FATE, or Focusing Attitudes Toward Empowerment, is the third such campaign in less than a decade.

"The community must realize it has two choices: it can live as a municipality or die as a ghetto," said FATE member Andrew Jones, who was a leader in an earlier secessionist drive.

Jones said promises of economic benefits and political power have not materialized, and the city's elected school committee has been replaced by a committee appointed by the mayor. While the new committee, like the old, includes minority representatives, residents have complained that the appointed board is accountable only to the mayor, while the elected committee had to answer to neighborhood voters. Bids to secede and to create a separate city named Mandela, after South Africa's Nelson Mandela, were defeated by ratios of 3-1 in 1986 and 2-1 in 1988.