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NTPTATQ O lO-PQf Associated Press X ^ W f V IJ JL-^ Edited by Diana Johnson Democrats investigate Tower’s drinking WASHINGTON — The Democratic chair man of the Senate Armed Services Committee said Tuesday he has directed staff from another committee to investigate new allegations of excessive drinking against John Tower, an unusual move that quickly raised protests from Republicans. The partisan squabble erupted as President George Bush once again defended his em battled defense nominee, saying there would be “25,000 people in the Pentagon” making sure Tower stands by his no-drinking pledge. Senate Democratic Leader George Mitchell, meanwhile, conceded there may be further Democratic defections but insisted the GOP will not have enough votes to win Tower’s confirmation. Sen. Sam Nunn, the Armed Services Com mittee chairman who has led the fight against Tower, said the new allegations concerned Tower’s alcohol consumption, a subject that was exhaustively investigated during commit tee hearings. “The time frame is from the 1970s until recently,” Nunn said. “Why are we still investigating Sen. Tower,” Republican leader Bob Dole of Kan sas asked on the Senate floor. “Isn’t the FBI report adequate? When does the investigation stop?” Dole disclosed details of the separate inves tigation at the start of the fourth day of Senate debate on the troubled nomination. Republicans face what they concede is an uphill battle to win Senate confirmation for Tower, who has been dogged by allegations of excessive drinking, womanizing and questions about his ties to defense contractors. Mitchell said that despite Southern Demo crat Howell Heflin’s decision Monday to back Tower, the nomination will be defeated. An Associated Press survey shows 47 Democrats and Sen. Larry Pressler, R-S.D., leaning against or solidly opposed to confirm ing Tower, and 40 Republicans and Heflin either leaning for or supporting confirmation. Democrats hold a 55-45 edge in the Senate. Dole left open the possibility of asking the Senate to agree to allow Tower to answer the charges against him on the floor itself but in his remarks, the GOP leader made the surprise announcement of the separate investigation. Dole said he had been iuld that investigators from the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations had traveled to Texas this past weekend to look into new charges against Tower. Nunn acknowledged that he directed staff members of the subcommittee, which he chairs, to check the new allegations, and de fended his actions, saying that he had been told by the FBI that it was no longer investigating charges against Tower. 6 ‘ ‘These were not matters the FBI checked,” Nunn said. ‘ ‘These were new matters that came up and there was no other way to check them ’ ’ Nunn did not further characterize the new allegations. But Dole and Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., questioned Nunn’s use of staff from a commit tee other than the Armed Services panel, which conducted the hearings on the Tower nomina tion. Iran severs ties with Great Britain NICOSIA, Cyprus -- Iran broke relations with Great Britain on Tues day because it refused to suppress ‘ ‘The Satanic Verses,’ ’ whose author has been sentenced to death by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini for blaspheming Islam. Khomeini’s fundamentalist Shiite Moslem regime, which has put a price of $5.2 million on novelist Sal man Rushdie’s head, said it was de termined to defended Islam against foreign insults. Britain said the 88-year-old patri arch’s order that his followers kill Rushdie, a British citizen, violated the principles of international rela tions and the diplomatic rupture was “entirely of Iran’s making.4’ Iran decided Feb. 27 to sever dip lomatic ties unless Britain met its demands, expressed as follows in a parliamentary resolution: Moslems object to Rushdie’s por trayal of the prophet Mohammed’s wives as prostitutes and his implica- * tion that Mohammed wrote the holy Koran rather than receiving it from Allah. Rushdie says the novel, pub IioKazI loot tionr ■ r n ^ £ j vu.i , u Liwuitu jiuuj Vyl good and evil that is not meant to offend Moslems. More than a dozen countries have banned the book, including Egypt, India, Pakistan and Iran. Riots it in spired in India and Pakistan have taken at least 19 lives. Rushdie, 41, was bom in Bombay, India, to Moslem parents but has said he no longer practices religion. He has been in hiding since Khomeini pronounced the death sentence and Iranian clerics offered the reward. After Khomeini ordered Rushdie killed, Britain closed its embassy in Tehran and its 11 European Eco nomic Community partners — along with Canada, Norway and Sweden — recalled their ambassadors to Iran. The dispute arose as relations be tween Britain and Iran were returning to normal. In December, Britain re opened its embassy in Tehran, which had been closed for eight years. c ! i I I c < Gumbel and Scott warm 'Today’ show cold spell NEW YORK - “Today” show regulars Bryant Gumbcl and Wil lard Scott patched things up pub licly Tuesday -- sort of -- with the folksy weatherman trying to lead his severest critic in an oath on computer memo writing. Scott had threatened to leave if Gumbel did not apologize for say ing in an in-house memo to the producer that the weatherman was killing the show with “his assort ment of whims, wishes, birthdays and bad taste.” Their first effort to make up occurred Monday, but a technical problem with the telephone and a video link prevented the two from completing an on-air conversa tion. jk. Tuesday morning, they tried again, and this time the hookup worked. After some banter about the previous day’s snags - “I hung up on you,” Scott joked -- they got down to business. Scott told Gumbel to raise his right hand and repeat after him: Gumbcl raised his left hand. Scott: “I, Bryant Gumbel...” Gumbel: ‘‘I, Bryant Gumbel.. Scott: ”... will promise ...” Gumbel: ”... will promise ... Scott: ”... to never write an other memo and leave it in the computer again.” Gumbel: ”... but I can't write in longhand.” bush reruses to act in airline strike W A QVlINriTHN — _u r>-i j L . ... . . . . .. _ ^ ^ ^ George Bush on Tuesday virtually ruled out intervening in the Eastern Airlines strike, saying ‘‘man-to*man negotiation” is preferable to a gov ernment-imposed settlement. While he didn’t flatly rule out stepping in to end the walkout, Bush said his policy ‘‘will hold firm” de spite pressure in some congressional quarters to force him to act. Fielding questions for more than 40 minutes in the White House brief ing room, he insisted that ‘‘there isn’t malaise” in his administration be cause of the drawn-out fight over confirmation of Defense Secretary designate John Tower. ‘‘A lot is happening," the presi dent said. ‘‘Not all of it good, but a lot is happening_We’re on track.” Bush also defended his chief of staff, saying John Sununu, the former New Hampshire governor, knows his way around Washington and is doing MMMJ JW YVUI. UU^II 5UIU IIC IIU5 lUiai confidence” in Sununu. Bush noted that Tower has pledged not to drink a drop of liquor if he gets the job and told his nation ally televised news conference, ‘‘You’ll have 25,000 people in the Pentagon making sure that’s true.” The president said his backing of Tower against Democratic opposi tion in the Senate “isn’t iron-willed stubbornness; it’s a question of fun damental principle here.” The president had spare lime in his schedule Tuesday because inclement weather forced him to cancel a planned trip to Lancaster, Pa., and Wilmington, Del., for speeches on his plans to attack drug abuse. House Speaker Jim Wright re sponded that Bush’s refusal to hall the strike by appointing an investiga tive panel “would be unprece dented,” noting that over the last half-century 33 such boards have uccii naincu hi transportation uis putes. Bush, however, used his opening news conference statement to “re state my belief that free collective bargaining is the best means of re solving” the strike. He exhorted Eastern manage ment, the machinists union and other unions to conduct “head-on-head, man-to-man negotiation” and said he thought that would be “better and more lasting . . . than an imposed government settlement, which could cause the airline to totally shut down.” On other subjects during the more than 40-minute question-and-answer session, Bush said: • He would like to see Palestine Liberation Organization Chairman Yasser Arafat “speak out” against raids that have been carried out by Palestinian guerrillas against Israelis in southern Lebanon. tsusn said ne nopcd these incidents would not jeopardize U.S. talks with PLO representatives but said he thought that Arafat should “forth rightly condemn any terror that might be perpetrated by the Palestinians.” • He welcomes a Soviet proposal for a reduction in conventional weap ons and military personnel in Europe. The proposal was outlined in Vienna Monday by Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze. “It looks to me (as if) he is moving toward the oft-stated public position of NATO in this regard, and that is good,” Bush said. But he cautioned he had not yet seen Secretary of State James Baker Ill’s report on the NATO and Warsaw Pact conference. • The Contra rebels in Nicaragua will need additional humanitarian aid after the current program expires March 31. “We simply cannot and I will not leave the Contras out there with no humanitarian aid at all,” he said. Vworld leaders commit to saving ozone LONDON -- Industrialized na tions committed themselves Tuesday to banning chemicals that are de stroying the ozone layer, but they reacted coolly to Third World de mands for money to find substitutes. China, India and other populous developing nations embarking on mass production of consumer goods containing chlorofluorocarbons rea son that since the West invented and produces most of the ozone-destroy )g chemicals, the West should pay to replace them. Despite the split, the 123 countries at an international conference on the ozone layer agreed that pressure is on scientists and industry to find safe alternatives before more damage is done to the fragile atmospheric shield. William Reilly, head of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, said the three-day conference that ended Tuesday sparked as much public discussion as any international environmental issue since the 1985 Chernobyl nuclear accident in the Soviet Union. “We are all in this together,” he said. “We’re all going to have to find ways to collaborate in cleaning this mess up. It affects us all.” Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher of Britain, the conference host, said all countries, including financially strapped Third World nations, must do their part to save the ozone layer. “It is not a case of some countries asking other countries to act,” she said. “It is a case of every country taking action... No one can opt out. ” Chlorofluorocarbons are widely used in aerosol propellants, refriger ants, air conditioners, fast-fo^d car tons and computer solvents. They are stable and non-toxic when released into the atmosphere, but 10 to 100 years later, when they rise 15-20 miles to the stratosphere, their chemical bonds arc broken apart. Scientists say their chlorine atoms destroy ozone, allowing more of the sun’s ultraviolet rays to reach Earth, causing more skin cancer and eye cataracts, and suppressing human immune systems. Related chemicals known as ha lons, used primarily in firefighting equipment, cause the same damage, but are 10 times as efficient at it. “Even if all the chemicals which damage the ozone layer were banned tomorrow, ozone depletion would continue for more than a decade and it would take our planet something like 100 years to replenish the ozone already lost,” said Thatcher, an Ox ford University-educated chemist. Chlorofluorocarbon s also trap heal and warm global temperatures, a process known as the “Greenhouse Effect,’’ which already is thought to be responsible for climate changes. More than 1 million tons of the damaging substances arc produced annually, mostly by the United States. Several companies arc working on substitutes, including the American chemical firm Du Pont, which is the world s largest manufacturer of chlo rofluorocarbons, and Britain’s Impe rial Chemical Industries. Du Pont says it has “candidate alternatives’’ for all major markets and hopes to market them by the mid 1990s. Reilly said American car makers told him they plan to use substitutes in air-conditioning sys tems of their 1994 models. The United States and the 12-na tion European Community have promised to try to ban those chcmi ia S ^L^9w" surPassing the goals of the 1987 Montreal Protocol which requires they be halved by the turn of the century. The protocol has been ratified by • i C()untrics. Another 20 countries told the coniercncc they will sign up, and 14 arc thinking seriously about it, said Britain’s Environment Secretary Nicholas Ridley. Nebraskan Editor Curl Wagner 472-1766 Managing Editor Jana Hlrt Assoc. News Editors Lea Rood Bob Nelson Editorial Page Editor Amy Edwards Wire Editor Diana Johnson Copy Desk Editor Chuck Groan Sports Editor Jeff Apal Arts & Entertain ment Editor Mlckl Haller Diversions Editor Joeth Zucco Graphics Editor Tim Hartmann Photo Chief Connie Sheehan Night News Editors Victoria Ayotte Chris Carroll The Daily Nebraskan(USPS 144-080) is published by theUNL Publications Board, Ne braska Union 34, 1400 R St , Lincoln. NE, Monday through Friday during the academic year; weekly during summer sessions Readers are encouraged to submit story ideas and comments to the Daily Nebraskan by phoning 472-1763 between 9 a m. and 5 p m Monday through Friday. The public also has access to the Publications Board For information, contact Tom Macy, 475 9868 Subscription price is $45 for one year Postmaster Send address changes to the Daily Nobraskan, Nebraska Union 34,140C R St .Lincoln, NF 68588 0448 Second class postage paid at Lincoln, NF ALL MATERIAL COPYRIGHT 1989 DAILY NEBRASKA _
