Voice of America, 99-10-13

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From: The Voice of America <gopher://gopher.voa.gov>

CONTENTS

[01] KOSOVO / SERBS BY LAURIE KASSMAN (PRISTINA)

[02] E-U EXPANSION (L ONLY) BY RON PEMSTEIN (BRUSSELS)

[03] BELGRADE RACE (L-ONLY) BY ANDY EDWARDS (BELGRADE)

[04] N-Y ECON WRAP (S & L) BY BRECK ARDERY (NEW YORK)

[05] WEDNESDAY'S EDITORIALS BY ANDREW GUTHRIE (WASHINGTON)

[01] KOSOVO / SERBS BY LAURIE KASSMAN (PRISTINA)

INTRO: A fragile peace has been restored in Kosovo. But NATO troops, known as K-FOR, and the U-N interim mission in Kosovo, known as UNMIK, are finding that ethnic-Albanian revenge attacks against Serbs and Serb property are hard to stop. /// OPT /// A U-N worker shot dead in the capital, Pristina, late Monday may have been killed because he was speaking Serbian. /// END OPT /// From Pristina, Correspondent Laurie Kassman reports on the intense efforts to reconcile the two communities after so much bloodshed.

TEXT: Ask 42-year-old Sadri Hasani if he can reach out to his Serb neighbors and he does not hesitate to tell you why the answer is -- No, not now.

[02] E-U EXPANSION (L ONLY) BY RON PEMSTEIN (BRUSSELS)

INTRO: The European Commission is recommending that more countries in Central and Eastern Europe be considered for membership in the European Union. V-O- A Correspondent Ron Pemstein in Brussels reports the E-U applicant list would be expanded to include six more countries.

TEXT: Six countries on the waiting list for membership in the European Union will now get a chance to start negotiations. The President of the European Commission, Romano Prodi, is recommending that negotiations begin next year with the six additional nations -- Bulgaria, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Romania, and Slovakia. In a speech to the European Parliament, Mr. Prodi attaches extra conditions for negotiations to begin with Romania and Bulgaria. He recommends that both countries make progress in economic reforms.

[03] BELGRADE RACE (L-ONLY) BY ANDY EDWARDS (BELGRADE)

INTRO: Athletes from Ethiopia, Kenya, Morocco and Burundi captured the top-four places of a race Wednesday in Belgrade. The event, called the Race Through History, was the first major international sporting competition in the Yugoslav capital since the Kosovo crisis. The pre-race favorite, world cross- country champion Paul Tergat of Kenya, placed second. Reporter Andy Edwards has more details from Belgrade.

TEXT: This was Paul Tergat's last race of the season. Just under two weeks ago, the Kenyan won the world half-marathon title in Italy. But here in the Yugoslav capital, he was beaten by another fine runner from Africa, Fita Bayessa of Ethiopia. Bayissa clocked 17 minutes, eight seconds -- one second faster than Tergat. The hilly, rough six-kilometer course wound its way around the grounds of the Kalemegdan fortress. After four attempts to win the title, Paul Tergat might think that fate was against him.

[04] N-Y ECON WRAP (S & L) BY BRECK ARDERY (NEW YORK)

INTRO: Stock prices in the United States were down sharply today (Wednesday) for the second straight session as interest rate concerns intensified. V-O-A Business Correspondent Breck Ardery reports from New York.

TEXT: The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed at 10- thousand-232, down 185 points or almost two percent. The Standard and Poor's 500 index closed at 12- hundred-85, down 27 points. The NASDAQ index lost two and one-half percent. Analysts say continued interest rate worries and less- than-great corporate earnings were the main factors in driving stock prices lower. The bond market dropped with the yield on the benchmark 30-year U-S Treasury bond rising to six-point-two-nine percent, its highest level in two years.

[05] WEDNESDAY'S EDITORIALS BY ANDREW GUTHRIE (WASHINGTON)

INTRO: The military coup in Pakistan and the world's six billionth person are the most popular editorial topics, as one scans today's American press. Also in the commentaries are thoughts about: aiding Serbia and how to do it; domestic air safety; the Nobel prizes; an ancient military technology coming back into vogue against Iraq and a new peacemaker for Northern Ireland. Now, here is __________ with a closer look and some excerpts in today's Editorial Digest.

TEXT: Tuesday's news of a military coup in Pakistan has drawn a rapid and generally unfavorable response in U-S daily papers. The lead editorial in today's New York Times, for instance, calls it "dangerous" in the headline, adding:

VOICE: The coup . is cause for alarm in South Asia and the rest of the world. A nation newly armed with nuclear weapons, and with a volatile history of wars and internal upheavals, has been seized by generals who may be inclined to favor a more confrontational approach with India. Suddenly . the subcontinent is once again one of the most dangerous places on earth. .. Because of Pakistan's history as a "front-line state" against the former Soviet Union, the United States has maintained relationships with Pakistani generals. Washington must now work with two other important Pakistani allies; China and Saudi Arabia, to see that the generals do not even consider trying to solve their problems with India by military force.

TEXT: On New York's Long Island, Newsday connects the events in Pakistan, the newest of nuclear nations, to the current debate in the U-S Senate over the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty.

VOICE: /// OPT /// Yesterday's military coup in Pakistan is not only a serious blow to that nation's fragile democracy, but a destabilizing event in one of the world's most unstable regions, one in which nuclear war could be on a hair trigger. ///END OPT /// The developments in Pakistan took place as the U-S Senate debated the fate of a treaty that would ban all nuclear testing. The question last night was whether the Senate would reject the treaty outright, as radical right-wing Republicans advocate, or put the treaty off until after the presidential election next year. The votes are not there to pass it.

TEXT: Today's Los Angeles Times is worried about the effect of the coup on regional stability, /// OPT /// reminding readers of this past summer's conflict with India, over Kashmir.

VOICE: It was because last summer's fighting in Kashmir raised fears of a much larger war, conceivably involving nuclear weapons, that the United States intervened diplomatically to tamp down the crisis. How much leverage Washington has now to put behind the State Department's call for a rapid restoration of civilian democratic rule is uncertain. /// END OPT /// The last thing Southwest Asia needs is the threat of further instability. But that's exactly what Tuesday's coup has created.

TEXT: The Sun of Baltimore also is concerned about the coup in Pakistan, writing:

VOICE: President Clinton is scheduled to visit both countries early next year. If this coup succeeds, he should not. The coup was mounted on behalf of bellicosity against India, though Pakistan would lose any war between the two. The coup repudiates President Clinton's peacemaking. And despite growing unhappiness with [deposed Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz] Mr. Sharif, no popular support exists for a return to military rule.

TEXT: The world's population officially grew to six billion people Tuesday and newspapers continue to reflect on that statistic today. The Fort Worth Star- Telegram in Texas muses about that old saying:

VOICE: ."It's a small world," took on new meaning this week with the announcement that the Earth's population has reached six billion, doubling since 1960. While the world community grows larger at a steady rate - 75-million a year - and places additional demands on already overstressed natural resources, there is also good news in the numbers. Contrary to what many think, the planet's birth rate actually has slowed substantially in recent years. . The good news, however, should not cause humankind to become complacent in educating the world about responsible population control.

TEXT: The Los Angeles Times harks back to one of the most famous population theorists of the past, as it remarks:

VOICE: Thomas Malthus' population bomb exploded, but it didn't cause all the damage he and more modern doomsayers predicted. . Although there still are millions going unfed around the world, it is also true that in more than two dozen developed countries, the concern is "birth dearth." . Today, economists are among the most Pollyannaish [optimistic] of forecasters. The late professor Julian Simon of the University of Maryland declared that the world has an endless supply of everything. He argued that, with their creative intelligence, humans will always develop alternatives to resources they are depleting and find means to clean up the environmental mess they leave behind.

TEXT: Turning to the Balkans, more newspapers are concerned with a debate over whether, or how, to aid Serbia, without helping President Slobodan Milosevic. The Honolulu Star-Bulletin in Hawaii is emphatic that "any such aid should not be diverted for use by the government."

VOICE: Devastated by NATO's air war over Kosovo last spring, Yugoslavia is struggling to avoid economic collapse. The European Union appears to support providing humanitarian aid without bolstering the despotic leadership of Slobodan Milosevic. The Clinton administration is justifiably opposing any aid that supports the Milosevic regime. . Directing aid to cities controlled by [Mr.] Milosevic's opponents theoretically could show Serbs that the international community is willing to help those committed to democracy. The problem is that energy can be easily diverted to the central government. . Any such effort should be distributed in such a way that it cannot be diverted.

TEXT: Domestically the national daily, U-S-A Today, is concerned about the practice of swapping flights between U-S air carriers with good safety records and foreign carriers, especially in Central America, with very poor records.

VOICE: Fliers who purchase an American Airlines ticket to Honduras or Costa Rica don't always fly on American's planes. Instead, some are carried part way on foreign airlines with safety records so shaky that the Department of Defense almost never lets employees fly with them. Likewise, passengers with United [Airlines] tickets to Southeast Asia often end up flying on Thai Airways, unaware that the airline has about ten times the accident rate of United. . The uncertainty over safety takes on added significance this year because some partner countries lack adequate Y2K preparedness. .. To bridge the domestic-foreign safety gap, the [Federal Aviation Administration] inspector general says the F-A-A should monitor the safety of U-S airlines' partners.

TEXT: Nobel prizes awarded this week are celebrated by The Los Angeles Times, not for their practical applications, but for their value as pure science.

VOICE: The 1999 Nobel prizes for medicine and chemistry recognize two researchers who have greatly enhanced scientists' ability to see and manipulate down to the level of the atom. On Monday, the Swedish Academy awarded the medicine prize to Guenter Blobel of New York City's Rockefeller University for discovering how yeast, plant and animal cells send molecules to "the right address" by reading a kind of ZIP [postal code] code in a stretch of protein. On Tuesday the academy honored Caltech's[California Institute of Technology] Ahmed Zewail for inventing a camera-like device that [records] the movement of individual atoms .. [Both] [Mr. Blobel and [Mr.] Zewail downplayed the huge practical benefits of their research. . [Mr.] Zewail, when asked about the practical applications of his work quipped "there aren't any."

VOICE: The Los Angeles Times points out that both men often had trouble finding funding for their science, because their work did not have the practical applications for which, many funders are always looking.

TEXT: There is an ironical theme to one editorial today, in the [Minneapolis, Minnesota] Star-Tribune, suggesting the U-S Air Force has gone back more than a couple of centuries, to "find" its newest weapon in the undeclared air war against Iraq.

VOICE: Flying from Incerlik, Turkey, against targets in northern Iraq, American F-15s and F-16s have begun dropping bombs filled with concrete. The C-bombs are used against sensitive military targets placed cynically by Saddam Hussein in the middle of populated neighborhoods. The . goal is to damage these targets without the explosive force that causes so much misery to nearby civilians. .Whether this is an advance or retreat in modern warfare depends on your point of view. But surely it's a hybrid approach: a mix of modern jet fighters, high-tech projectiles and the blunt barbarism of the ancient world ... [harking] back to the Romans' use of catapults beginning about 200 B-C. . the "new" C-bombs seem a good fit for a sensitive air campaign that more diplomatic than strategic in nature.

TEXT: And finally, from the Boston Globe, some thoughts on British Prime Minister Tony Blair's new man to head the Northern Ireland peace effort.

VOICE: . [the] appointment . says as much about . Tony Blair's . ability to forgive ethical lapses as it does about his commitment to a peace settlement. Peter Mandelson, who engineered the Labor party landslide in 1997 and is known as the "sultan of spin," will find his public relations skills of little use if fundamental differences are not resolved. ... [Mr.] Mandelson is making a comeback from a scandal that cost him the ministry of industry and trade in December. He resigned when it was disclosed that a millionaire member of Parliament loaned him 625- thousand dollars at below-market rates to buy a house in a fashionable part of London.

TEXT: On that note, we conclude this sampling of comment from Wednesday's U-S. newspapers.
NEB/ANG/JP 13-Oct-1999 11:54 AM EDT (13-Oct-1999 1554 UTC)
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Source: Voice of America

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