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News Digest feE*— Amid combat, Salvadorans vote at SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador - Salvadorans voted for a new presi dent Sunday as leftist revolutionaries opposed to the election attacked mili tary posts and army troops countered with rockets and rifle fire. At least five guerrillas and two soldiers were killed in fighting in nine provincial towns, according to military officials and witnesses. Two journalists and a Dutch television cameraman also were reported killed. Early voter turnout appeared di minished by the combat and a rebel imposed transport ban. But Roman Catholic churches were crowded with Palm Sunday worshipers, at least some of whom planned to vote later. By midday, there were long lines at the downtown polling sta tions. Turnout was light in smaller towns. “With these problems, it’s belter to stay home,’ ’ said Jose Carlos Ortiz, 23. He spoke in front of his home in the capital as guerrillas retreated from an assault on a military post three blocks away. Sporadic rifle fire echoed from the slope of the Guazapa volcano north of the capital, a guerrilla stronghold, as troops from the army’s elite Bra camonte battalion pursued the insur gents. Two air force helicopters raced toward the volcano and fired rockets into the mountainside. Guerrillas of the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front are waging a 9-year-old war againsl the U.S backcd government. Salvadorans voted to elect a presi dent from among seven candidates. Fidel Chavez Mena of the incumbent Christian Democratic Party and Al fredo Cristiani of the rightist Nation alist Republican Alliance, or Arena led the field in polls. But neither was likely to receive the more than 50 percent required to avoid a runoff next month. Cristiani, favored to become the country’s next president, pledged free-market policies and reduced state intervention in the economy. His party promised to step up the war if the guerrillas do not agree to lay down their arms. Surrounded by a mob of support ers, Cristiani voted Sunday morning on the capital’s central Roosevelt Avenue. “I hope the United States realizes inat tsaivauoiain; --j* with this effort they’re making to vote. We don’t want any more bombs,” he said. President Jose Napoleon Duarte s five-year term ends June 1. Duarte, barred by law from running for re election, is Washington’s staunchest ally in the Western Hemisphere. He is dying of liver cancer. Chavez Mena is a lawyer and leader of the Christian Democratic Parly’s conservative wing. The centrist Christian Democrats contend Arena has not changed much since it was founded in 1981 by indi viduals allegedly linked to death squads. Arena denies links to death squads. Cristiani says the party s ideology is similar to that of the U.S. Republican Party. The leftist Democratic Conver gence, whose leaders maintain for mal links with the guerrillas, is run ning third in the election, according to polls. It was the first election since • ; v —““ol '““"uiuaies ■ have competed. About 1.83 million people out of a I population of 5 million were eligible 1 to vote. Polls opened at 7 a.m. in 243 of the country’s 262 municipalities I and were to close at 5 p.m. Nineteen towns in the north did I not set up voting stations because election officials deemed those rebel- I held ?x)nes too dangerous. Ricardo Perdomo, chairman of the Central Elections Council, said pre liminary results would be available early Monday. Rebel sabotage to telephone lines and electricity, which has cut or restricted power to 80 per- ' cent of the country, were likely to I slow the vote count. The rebels called a boycott of the election and last week declared a transport ban that has paralyzed bus and truck traffic in most of the coun- fe In San Sebastian, 30 miles cast of I the capital, turnout was light. Semiautomatic gets kick I Polls find majority support ban on weapons An overwhelming majority of Americans favor a ban on semi automatic assault weapons, al though there is no consensus on how such a ban should work, ac cording to two polls released Sat urday. A nationwide survey conducted by the Los Angeles Times found that 80 percent of Americans fa vored banning such weapons. A Newsweek poll showed that 72 percent favor a permanent ban on selling them, while 21 percent opposed such a ban. The Times poll found opposi tion to the sale and possession of the rapid-firing weapons across political, ethnic, gender, geo graphical and educational lines, said survey director I.A. Lewis. However, given several sugges tions for how to remove the guns from society, respondents split three ways. Twenty-four percent said the guns should be confiscated from present owners, 30 percent supported buying the guns back and 30 percent would allow pres ent owners to keep their guns but ban new sales. More than half of the 1,158 people polled in the Times’ tele phone survey said only law-abid ing citizens would obey the ban, leaving the weapons mainly in the hands of criminals. The poll has a margin of error of plus or minus 3 or 4 percentage points, Lewis said. According to the Newsweek poll, 58 percent oi Americans be lieve a ban would reduce the num ber of killings by unstable people, the magazine said. However, half of those polled said they did not believe such a ban would reduce drug- or crime-related killings, while45 percent said they believe it would help. Seventy-eight percent of those surveyed said they believe people should be required to provide more information to police before they are allowed to buy any kind of firearm, while 15 percent said they believe current laws are adequate. The telephone poll of 756 adults was conducted March 16-17 and has a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percent. The issue gained national prominence ir. January after a sui cidal gunman killed five children and wounded 30 other people in a Stockton schoolyard. The California Assembly has approved a bill banning 40 types of assault weapons and the Bush Administration has imposed a temporary ban on the import of foreign-made assault weapons. Heir stirs hope in some, but creates doubt in others JOHANNESBURG, South Africa -- The selection of a shrewd, affable pragmatist as President P.W. Botha’s successor is contributing to a surge of hope for a peaceful breakthrough in South Africa’s political stalemate. So far, however, the optimistic musings are coming almost exclu sively from whites. Black leaders make clear they will be relieved when Botha steps down. But they suspect his heir apparent, F.W. de Klerk, will preside over changes more cosmetic than substan tive. Mangosuthu Buthelczi, the Zulu political leader denounced by many black activists as too conservative, says he will oppose de Klerk until the government gives blacks full voting rights. There is no sign de Klerk contemplates such action. At the other end of the black politi cal spectrum, the African National Congress guerrilla movement says changes under de Klerk will be in personal style, not National Party policy. De Klerk and Botha ‘ ‘arc pieces of the same carcass,” spokesman Tom Sebina said from the outlawed move ment’s exile headquarters in Lusaka, Zambia. “If the meat is bad, the meal is bad.” Botha, 73, resumed his presiden tial duties last week after an eight week convalescence from a stroke. In the interim, he resigned as National Party leader and was replaced by de Klerk, the minister of national educa non. In a dramatic chain of events, Nationalist newspapers and politi cians began suggesting that Botha should retire, Botha responded by declaring he would stay in office until next year, and the party’s parliamen tary caucus resolved that it wanted dc Klerk to be president. However, the parly has neither the constitutional power nor the appetite to force Botha from office. De Klerk said Friday he will seek cordial coex istence with the president while urg ing his party to “break new ground” in pursuing political reform. De Klerk, who turned 53 Satur day, has never been viewed as liberal But supporters and skeptics alike depict him as more open-minded anl less imperious than Botha, who ha: headed the government since 1978. After becoming party leader, d< Klerk called for a South Africa “free of domination and oppression.’ Helen Suzman, long-serving leg islator for the anti-apartheid Progres sive Federal Party, said of de Klerk “People are being too optimistic il they think he is going to throw funda mental policy overboard.” Dc Klerk docs not have the sam< close ties to the military and polici that Botha nurtured. But he is com milted firmly to segregating neigh borhoods and schools for whites wh< want them, and his proposal fo “genuine power sharing” will blacks as yet ha& no substance. I housands march on Moscow MOSCOW -- Thousands of Sovi ets took to the streets Sunday to ac cuse the Communist Party of sabo taging Boris N. Yeltsin’s election campaign and to threaten a general strike if the maverick reformer fails to win office. The march through downtown Moscow by 3,000 Soviets chanting 4 Hands off Yeltsin! ” was an extraor dinary outburst of passions aroused by Sunday’s election for a new na tional parliament, the Congress of People’s Deputies. Yeltsin, 58, is running to represent the Soviet capital, where he headed the local party apparatus for almost two years before President Mikhail S. Gorbachev fired him. At pre-election meetings and in a televised debate with his opponent, automobile factory manager Yevgeny Brakov, the stocky, white ; haired Yeltsin has charged the party machine he once led of conspiring against his candidacy and restricting ‘ voters’ access to his campaign ap ; pearances. Thousands of Yeltsin supporters planned to rally after noon Sunday at southwestern Moscow’s Gorky Park, where a Russian folklore festival was under way. When they were told permission for the meeting had been refused, they set off for the city’s 5 downtown. i Their anger was also kindled by a ■ recent decision of the party’s policy ■ making Central Committee, an > nounced Thursday, to form a special r commission to investigate charges i that Yeltsin, who is still a Central .. Committee member, opposes some parly policies. The campaign against Yeltsin appeared to enter another phase Sun day when the parly’s Moskovskaya Pravda printed an account about Yeltsin’s character and poll ics. The newspaper claimed it was a ‘myth” that he was more faithful to pi inc iplcs than others. Yeltsin won the hearts of many Muscovites with a campaign against corruption and spirited attacks on the privileges, from special Uxxl stores to chauilcured limousines, available to the government and party elite. ‘ He’s against the party mafia, and that s why the party mafia is against him,” declared one marcher on Sun day, l aras Osipov, 65, a retired engi neer. Yeltsin is with the people, and for the people.” The demonstrators, who carried a hand-painted banner reading “Yes to Yeltsin, no to the bureaucratic sys tem!” glued pro-Yeltsin posters to the walls of buildings along their route, including the Foreign Ministry Press Center, and called on passers by to join them. On Kalinin Prospekt, scores of gray-uniformed police olliccrs, backed up by KGB agents in plain clothes, barred the way to the Krem lin, the scat of Soviet power. The marchers, including teen-agers and people in their 60s, turned north on a tree-lined boulevard, passed the headquarters of the Soviet ne^s agency Tass, and arrived at Gorky Street, Moscow’s major shopping thoroughfare. In unison, the protesters bran dished their fists and chanted their demand to meet with Lev N. Zaikov, a member of the ruling party Po.it buro who succeeded Yeltsin as Moscow parly boss in November 1987, and who leads the party ma chine Yeltsin claims is working to his defeat.__—. Nebraskan Editor Curt Wagner Night News Editors Victoria AyoNe 472-1766 Chrle Carroll Managing Editor Jane Hlrt Librarian Anne Mohr! Assoc News Editors Lee Rood Art Directors John Bruce _ Bob Nelson Andy Manharl Ed.torial Page Editor Amy Edwards General Manager Dan Shattll Wire Editor Diana Johnson Production Manager Katherine Policny Copy Desk Editor Chuck Green Advertising Manager Robert Bates TheDaily Nebraskan(USPS 144-080) is published by theUNL Publications Board, Ne braska Union 34.1400 R St, Lincoln, NE. 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