Official Visits

Making his first trip to reunited Germany, President Ezer Weizman of Israel visited a former Nazi concentration camp and urged young people to make the next century better than this one. After being greeted with military honors at a Berlin airport by German President Roman Herzog, Weizman made a first stop at the Sachsenhausen camp, just north of the city. About 100,000 people--thousands of them Jews--were killed at the camp under Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler.

Jordan's King Hussein made his first public visit to Tel Aviv on Wednesday to promote a relationship that has fast become the deepest among the region's former rivals, as Secretary of State Warren Christopher began his 16th Mideast shuttle by calling for an "acceleration" of the peace process. The king's visit underscored the surprisingly swift bonding between Israel and Jordan, which was hailed by Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres on Wednesday as the "model peace."

Israeli President Ezer Weizman broke a political taboo Monday to meet with surviving members of the wartime German resistance against Adolf Hitler. On the second day of his state visit to Germany, Weizman laid a wreath at the Ploetzensee prison in Berlin where the Nazis executed about 2,500 resistance fighters from Germany and abroad between 1933 and 1945.

Mayor Tracy Wills Worley this month returned to the same kindergarten classroom she attended as a child to kick off a yearlong school district plan to boost reading and language skills. The Comprehensive Reading Improvement Plan for kindergarten through 12th-grade students will focus on reading for this school year, officials said. Included in the plan is additional training for teachers and administrators, motivational programs for students and a series of workshops for parents.

Secretary of State Warren Christopher led eight other Cabinet members to Mexico on Monday in a show of confidence in U.S.-Mexican relations. But the team ran immediately into Mexican resentment over recent bloody incidents involving the treatment of illegal immigrants in California.

Many things are changing these days in what can now officially be called postwar Bosnia. And among them is the role of the U.S. ambassador. In an effort to avert a threatened exodus by Bosnian Serbs from the Sarajevo area, U.S. Ambassador to Bosnia John Menzies traveled to Serb-held territory this week and met with the mayors of two Serbian suburbs of Sarajevo.

It may sound like merely a matter of history and ceremony, but it is providing President Clinton with one of the touchiest foreign-policy decisions of the year--whether to travel to Moscow in May and stand beside Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin to commemorate World War II's end in Europe. Yeltsin's invitation to Clinton for May 9 ceremonies marking the Allied victory over Nazi Germany has forced the President and his top advisers to make agonizing choices. If Clinton does not go, some U.S.

In an effort to rebuild U.S.-Chinese military ties and reduce tensions over a confrontation in international waters in October, a U.S. Navy cruiser sailed into this important northern naval base Wednesday on a friendly port call, the first by Americans since 1989. Rear Adm. Bernard J.

In a milestone visit symbolizing a new era of pragmatic diplomacy toward the Koreas, Chinese President Jiang Zemin met today with South Korean President Kim Young Sam and urged deeper economic ties. The first visit by a Chinese head of state to South Korea--three years after the two sides established diplomatic relations--cemented Beijing's new approach of balancing old socialist allegiances to the North with rapidly growing economic overtures to the South.

President Clinton plans to go to Japan in January to make up for the visit he canceled during the federal budget deadlock last week. Clinton told reporters and editors during a visit to The Times' Washington Bureau this week that his trip will begin Jan. 2 and last several days. Clinton had been scheduled to make a state visit to Tokyo as a guest of Emperor Akihito after the Osaka summit meeting of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum.