NEW YORK (JTA) — A Jewish grandmother who succeeded her husband as president of Guyana said she will resign soon as president of the South American nation because she is ill.

Janet Jagan, born Janet Rosenberg, succeeded her husband, Cheddi Jagan, who died in March 1997.

Like her husband, Jagan, 78, was a former revolutionary Marxist who embraced the free market in the 1990s.

First Shoah museum for Latin America

BUENOS AIRES (JTA) — Holocaust survivors in Argentina are organizing Latin America's first museum dedicated to the Shoah.

A cornerstone bearing the inscription "We will give them an eternal name that will never be erased" was placed Thursday of last week for the building, which is scheduled to open in Buenos Aires next April.

Exhibits will include artifacts and documents donated by individuals and families of some of the 8,000 survivors who arrived in Argentina after the war.

AJCongress asks U.N. to postpone session

HAGUE, Netherlands (JTA) — The American Jewish Congress is asking U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan to postpone the opening session of the General Assembly in New York from Sept. 20, so it does not fall on Yom Kippur.

"It is disappointing and distressing that the United Nations has refused to acknowledge the holiest day of the year for members of the Jewish faith," AJCongress Executive Director Phil Baum wrote this week.

"We are asking only for basic fairness, that the same treatment and recognition accorded to Christianity and Islam be extended to Judaism as well." Baum added that it is no surprise that Yom Kippur is being ignored, "given the attitude so often demonstrated by the U.N. toward Israel."

President Clinton is refusing to address the opening session because of Yom Kippur and plans to appear before the world body the following day.

Amnesty International won't aid anti-Semite

SYNDEY, Australia (JTA) — Amnesty International last week rejected an appeal to come to the aid an Australian citizen who is sitting in a German jail awaiting trial for promotion of Holocaust denial and other anti-Semitic slurs.

Declining to help Fred Toben, an Amnesty official wrote in a recent letter that the human rights group excludes from "prisoner of conscience status not only people who have used or advocated violence, but also people who are imprisoned for having advocated national, racial or religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence."