Voice of America, 00-05-19

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

CONTENTS

[01] CLINTON / KOSOVO VOTE (L) BY DEBORAH TATE (WHITE HOUSE)

[02] E-U / KOSOVO SERBS (L-ONLY) BY RON PEMSTEIN (BRUSSELS)

[03] E-U / SERB JOURNALISTS (L-ONLY) BY RON PEMSTEIN (BRUSSELS)

[04] CHINA / EU / WTO (L) BY LETA HONG FINCHER (BEIJING)

[05] NORTHERN IRELAND (L ONLY) BY EVANS HAYS (LONDON)

[06] NY ECON WRAP (S&L) BY BARBARA SCHOETZAU (NEW YORK)

[07] FRIDAY'S EDITORIALS BY ANDREW GUTHRIE (WASHINGTON)

[01] CLINTON / KOSOVO VOTE (L) BY DEBORAH TATE (WHITE HOUSE)

INTRO: President Clinton has hailed the U-S Senate's rejection of a proposal to force an early withdrawal of U-S peacekeeping troops from Kosovo. In a speech marking Armed Forces day, the President warned against any effort to place time limits on American participation in the NATO-led operation. VOA's Deborah Tate reports from the White House. Text: The Senate proposal would have required U-S peacekeeping troops to leave Kosovo by July of next year, unless Mr. Clinton's successor won Congressional approval for them to stay. The President called the Senate rejection of the plan on Thursday `profoundly important.'

[02] E-U / KOSOVO SERBS (L-ONLY) BY RON PEMSTEIN (BRUSSELS)

INTRO: The European Union has held its first meeting in Brussels with representatives of Kosovo's Serb population. V-O-A Correspondent Ron Pemstein in Brussels reports both sides are requesting help from each other.

TEXT: The Kosovo Serbs want the European Union's help in assisting the return to Kosovo of tens of thousands of Serbs who fled last June to Serbia. The Serbs also want E-U economic assistance, especially in providing seeds for agriculture. E-U foreign ministers will be asked next week to approve a series of measures to help the Serbs who remained in Kosovo after NATO troops entered and Yugoslav troops and police left. For its part, the European Union wants Kosovo Serb leaders to continue their temporary cooperation with United Nations-run Kosovo Interim Administration. The European Union's foreign policy chief, Javier Solana, also asked the Serbs to take part in municipal elections scheduled for October. Mr. Solana told the Serb delegation leader, Bishop Artemije, the message he wants taken home.

[03] E-U / SERB JOURNALISTS (L-ONLY) BY RON PEMSTEIN (BRUSSELS)

INTRO: The European Union has promised to help Serbian news media taken over earlier this week by the Serb government. But V-O-A's Ron Pemstein, in Brussels, reports the Serbian journalists received little specific help.

TEXT: The European Union has condemned the seizure of Belgrade T-V station Studio B. However, at the end of a meeting of E-U officials with 20 Serbian journalists, the director of Studio B, Dragan Kojadinovic, says (through an interpreter) he needs help right now.

[04] CHINA / EU / WTO (L) BY LETA HONG FINCHER (BEIJING)

INTRO: China and the European Union have reached a trade agreement that removes the last major barrier to China's entry to the World Trade Organization. VOA's Leta Hong Fincher reports from Beijing, where the deal was sealed following some last minute intervention by a top Chinese official.

TEXT: European Union Trade Commissioner Pascal Lamy and Chinese Foreign Trade Minister Shi Guangsheng signed the landmark trade agreement Friday evening after five painstaking days of negotiations. Mr. Lamy says the deal is a giant step towards China's entry to the World Trade Organization.

[05] NORTHERN IRELAND (L ONLY) BY EVANS HAYS (LONDON)

INTRO: Northern Ireland's Protestant leader, David Trimble, is urging his divided Ulster Unionist Party to accept a disarmament offer from the Irish Republican Army. This could revive a disbanded power- sharing agreement (between Protestants and Catholics) in the Northern Ireland provincial government. V-O-A's Evans Hays reports from London.

TEXT: Mr. Trimble faces the difficult task of convincing skeptical Unionist party members to accept a disarmament offer from the Irish Republican Army. Approval of the I-R-A plan is crucial if Britain is to restore a power-sharing Northern Ireland Executive, set up under a 1998 peace accord but disbanded earlier this year. The party's governing council was to have met Saturday to vote on the I-R-A offer, but Mr. Trimble postponed the meeting (for one week), amid fears the I-R-A disarmament plan would be rejected. The I-R-A has agreed to store its weapons in secret bunkers that will be monitored by international observers. Its earlier failure to make a disarmament offer led Britain to disband the power-sharing executive. Mr. Trimble says the I-R-A has made a good-faith offer.

[06] NY ECON WRAP (S&L) BY BARBARA SCHOETZAU (NEW YORK)

INTRO: Stocks in the United States today (Friday) were down after a day of unusually light trading on Wall Street with technology stocks leading the rout. Correspondent Barbara Schoetzau reports from New York.

TEXT: The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell more than 166 points - one point four percent - to 10-thousand - 626. The Standard and Poor's 500 index - reflecting the broader market - slipped 30 points or two-point- one percent. And the Nasdaq composite sank 148 points, about four percent. This is the third consecutive week the Nasdaq has declined. Market analysts say much of the decline is due to worries that the U-S central bank will continue to raise interest rates, slowing the economy to curb inflation. The central bank hiked interest rates for the sixth time Tuesday and has hinted at a further raise. Any efforts to slow growth hit technology particularly hard. Richard Cripps of the investment advisory service Legg Mason says some investors who own too much technology are panicking but the stock news in general is more positive than negative.

[07] FRIDAY'S EDITORIALS BY ANDREW GUTHRIE (WASHINGTON)

INTRO: The U-S Congress is debating whether to approve full trading relations with China, and the topic continues to find a key place in the nation's editorial columns. Close behind it are comments on the arrest of two white men recently charged with bombing a mainly black church in the southern United States more than decades ago. The capture of a rebel leader in Sierra Leone also comes in for attention, as does the Clinton administration policy on Africa. The early moves of Russia's new president are being closely watched, among them his assistance to Yugoslavia. And lastly, after 30 years, two American girls get an answer to their letter cast adrift in a bottle. Now, here is ________ with a closer look in today's U-S Editorial Digest.

TEXT: The U-S House of Representatives is scheduled to vote soon on one of the year's most important pieces of legislation - a bill that would normalize trade relations with China. At present, normal trade authorization is extended one year at a time. The Fort Worth [Texas] Star-Telegram sees the trade issue being needlessly complicated by China's blustering toward Taiwan.

VOICE: China must choose between threatening Taiwan and getting normalized trade relations with the United States. Beijing's latest efforts to bully Taiwan into acquiescing to the status of a province of mainland China could not have been more poorly timed. With the House ... scheduled to ... vote next week ... it would appear to be in Beijing's best interests to tone down its rhetoric on Taiwan until the issue is decided.

TEXT: The Detroit Free Press is considering organized labor's opposition to permanent trade relations compared to its claimed benefits to U-S business. Its conclusion:

VOICE: Organized labor protests notwithstanding, the pending China trade bill is a win-win for the U-S economy and its workers. ... The bill would end 20 years of annual congressional votes on China's trade status ...[and] ... would grant Chinese products permanent access to U-S markets with the same low tariffs most other countries enjoy.

TEXT: Another aspect of the China trade issue is the pending airline expansion between the two countries, which draws the attention of the Chicago Tribune.

VOICE: ... a separate lobbying battle involving China ... [concerns] ... which among four applicants will win the coveted right to join United, Northwest and Federal Express in offering direct air service to China. That the government and not the marketplace has sole authority to make this decision is infuriating - - the result of a bilateral trade agreement between China and the U-S ... last year.

TEXT: The Tribune says it is a tough decision, pitting passengers against packages, and tourism against merchandise trade, with both passenger and air cargo firms bidding for the new position.

VOICE: The cowardly murder ... is hard to forget even nearly 37 years later. Denise McNair, 11, and Cynthia Wesley, Carole Robertson and Addie Mae Collins, all 14, were putting on their choir robes when dynamite exploded at the 16th Street Baptist Church, horrifying the nation. /// OPT /// ... Southern prosecutors and federal law enforcement officials certainly haven't forgotten. /// END OPT /// ... By keeping the case alive, [U-S Attorney Doug] Jones honors the memory of those little girls, slaughtered pitilessly on a Sunday morning. Their cry for justice cannot be allowed to die.

TEXT: The San Francisco Chronicle says the bombing was so shocking, it gave the African-American civil rights struggle new momentum.

VOICE: ... the bombing ... prompted millions of Americans to join the fight against segregation and the reign of racist terror that prevailed in the Deep South. ... But these will be difficult convictions to win. Memories have faded, witnesses have died and physical evidence has been lost or tarnished by time. /// OPT /// Still, Americans will be watching and demanding a dose of justice, far later and far less satisfying than the memories of these four little girls deserved. /// END OPT ///

TEXT: Turning to African news, the capture of Sierra Leone's rebel leader Foday Sankoh, continues to draw comment. The New York Times says despite the horrors committed by his forces, (including the amputation of children's limbs) Mr. Sankoh must have a fair, respectable trial.

VOICE: A trial for Mr. Sankoh must be conducted according to international standards before impartial judges, affording the accused access to counsel and the means to wage an effective defense. /// OPT /// ... the best approach is to create an international tribunal like those the U-N has established for Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia. /// END OPT /// [However] ... it should now be clear that any attempt to enlist Mr. Sankoh as a partner in peace is doomed to fail. Bringing him to justice is the best way to curb the anarchy that lies at the root of Sierra Leone's agony.

TEXT: In Ohio, The Akron Beacon Journal is just pleased that the rebel boss is now a captive.

VOICE: [Mr.] Sankoh's 10-year rebellion has fostered anarchy from which Sierra Leone will take years to recover. [He] ... must be tried as a war criminal for the atrocities of his Revolutionary United Front.

TEXT: In the national daily. U-S-A Today, published in a Washington suburb, the newspaper accuses the Clinton administration of having an unfocused policy toward Africa. The paper cites the litany of ills, from wars and famine to the AIDS epidemic and other diseases, then comments:

VOICE: The United States surely can't expect to solve every woe. But under Washington's watchful eye, it has been doing less of what is needed, not more. Official U-S aid to Africa has been falling since 1992. As a percentage of national wealth, the United States donates less non-military aid to sub-Saharan Africa than does Canada or Japan. ... the Clinton administration has ... consistently ... failed to articulate goals that inspire effective engagement.

TEXT: In an adjoining response published in U-S-A Today, Samuel Berger, the president's national security adviser, disputes the newspaper's claim. He says the Clinton record on Africa "speaks for itself." On the other side of the world, some of the first moves by Russia's new president, Vladimir Putin, are drawing fire from a Florida daily, The St. Petersburg Times.

VOICE: Not for nothing was Vladimir Putin trained by the K-G-B (the former Soviet intelligence agency). The new president of Russia seems a little too nostalgic for the old days when government controlled information and intimidated the press ... The vodka toasts at [Mr.] Putin's inauguration were barely over when masked police commandos burst into the office of ... Media-Most Company ... proprietor of ... a television channel which has been critical of the war against Chechnya and skeptical about [Mr.] Putin's commitment to democratic ways. /// OPT /// ... Newspaper and magazine editors who have had the temerity to question [President] Putin's policies have also been "visited" by men with guns. /// END OPT ///... We must hope that journalists will not be cowed [Editors: "frightened into submission"] by these tactics

TEXT: Today's Washington Post is worried that Mr. Putin may even be "exporting" his contempt for a free press to another Slavic leader.

VOICE: The already gloomy outlook for democracy in Yugoslavia darkened considerably this week when President Slobodan Milosevic shut Belgrade's two main opposition-run broadcasting operations along with the popular newspaper, Blic. ... Some 20-thousand people protested the media crackdown in the streets of Belgrade ... perhaps Mr. Milosevic has actually felt fortified by recent international events. First Congress sent a strong signal of Kosovo fatigue, nearly adopting a (measure calling for a)... U-S pullout ... by July of next year. ... Then newly inaugurated President Vladimir Putin of Russia extended Belgrade moral and material support, welcoming Belgrade's defense minister, General Dragolub Ojdanic, indicted by the war crimes tribunal in the Hague for actions during the Kosovo war ... Now the isolated Mr. Milosevic has what he needs most: a foreign patron. /// OPT /// Thus did Mr. Putin demonstrate that his conception of restoring Russia's great power status includes violating his country's legal responsibility to enforce a valid international arrest warrant against a wanted war criminal. This was a slap in the face of the Clinton administration and a challenge to NATO. /// END OPT ///

TEXT: The recent progress in the Northern Ireland peace process draws this praise from The Dallas Morning News.

VOICE: The Northern Irish peace process got an indispensable boost with the Irish Republican Army's welcome announcement that it would reveal the locations of secret arms depositories to international inspectors. ...It means ...the way is cleared to reinstate the provincial home rule that the British government revoked in February. ... The onus is now on Protestant paramilitary groups to put their arms beyond reach too.

TEXT: As to the latest violence in the Middle East, against a backdrop of significant diplomatic progress between Israel and the Palestinians, The [Cleveland, Ohio] Plain Dealer says in Friday's editions:

VOICE: Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak made a bold move to advance the peace process when he won the Knesset's approval ... to transfer three villages bordering Jerusalem to Palestinian control. Parliament consented even as heavy Israeli-Palestinian fighting raged in the West Bank. At other times, such a situation probably would have dissuaded an Israeli leader from proposing any territorial concessions to Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority. ... Further challenges lie ahead, including the tricky extrication of Israeli forces from Lebanon. But so far, [Mr.] Barak shows admirable tenacity in his pursuit of peace.

TEXT: And lastly, the incredible, 20-year tale of a letter mailed at sea in a bottle by two young, Connecticut, girls. It was found earlier this year by fisherman Michael Wall, on an Irish beach. He plans to visit the young women later this year when he travels to the United States. Says Charleston's [South Carolina] Post and Courier:

VOICE: It reminds us of the value of carefully putting pen to paper and waiting patiently for a similarly crafted response.

TEXT: On that note, we conclude this sampling of editorial comment from Friday's U-S press.
NEB/ANG/JP 19-May-2000 12:43 PM EDT (19-May-2000 1643 UTC)
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Source: Voice of America

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