By Balazs Koranyi OSLO (Reuters) - Israel, Egypt and North Korea should renounce chemical weapons, especially after Syria joined the convention banning them and three other nations plan to do so, the chief of an international watchdog said on Tuesday. Ahmet Uzumcu, head of the Nobel Peace Prize-winning Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), said Angola, Myanmar and South Sudan were preparing to join the pact. "Now since Syria has become a member country, I think (Israel) can reconsider," Uzumcu told Reuters in Oslo, where he accepted the 2013 Nobel award for the OPCW. Israel, which has observer status at the OPCW, signed the convention in 1993, but has never ratified it.

Arcady Gaydamak, the wealthy Franco-Israeli businessman wanted in France over alleged involvement in an Angolan arms sales scandal, has been freed after two weeks in a Swiss prison, a report said Wednesday. The 61-year-old tycoon had been arrested for not paying 400,000 euros ($542,000) to Luis Fernandez, a former French footballing international and the ex-coach of Betar Jerusalem, a club he once owned. Swiss prosecutors got involved because the money reportedly was meant to be paid via Geneva, but Fernandez allegedly never received it. "Angolagate" implicated members of the French political elite including former interior minister Charles Pasqua and ex-president Francois Mitterrand's son, Jean-Christophe Mitterrand.

JOHANNESBURG (AP) — A Namibian report says the remains of 33 people who died in a Mozambique Airlines plane crash are being transported to the Namibian capital, Windhoek.

A Mozambican Airlines airplane carrying 28 passengers and six crew members went missing en route from Mozambique to Angola on Friday, the airline said. Flight TM470 took off from Maputo at 09H26 GMT and had been due to land in the Angolan capital Luanda at 13H10 GMT, but never arrived, the airline said in a statement. "Initial information suggests it might have landed in Rundu, in northern Namibia near the border with Botswana and Angola." "LAM airlines, aeronautical and airport authorities are trying to establish contact to confirm the information," it added.

Angola on Friday denied a report by Portuguese state TV that President Jose Eduardo dos Santos was undergoing cancer treatment, saying the long-serving 71-year-old was in good health. The RTP report on Thursday said Dos Santos had checked in to the oncology unit of a clinic in Barcelona. "He is in good health and will return within days." In power since 1979, Dos Santos is Africa's second longest-serving leader. He flew to Barcelona from Luanda on November 9 on a private visit.

Angola on Friday denied a report by Portuguese state TV that the oil-producing African state's long-serving President Jose Eduardo dos Santos was undergoing cancer treatment in Spain. "I don't have anything to say, because it is not true," Angolan Foreign Minister Georges Chikoti told reporters in Luanda. The RTP report, broadcast late on Thursday, said dos Santos had checked in to the oncology unit of a clinic in Barcelona. The 71-year-old dos Santos has been in power in Africa's second-biggest oil producer since 1979, making him the continent's second longest-serving leader.