News Digest Edited by Jennifer O'Cilka
U.S.:No cease-fire while Soviets negotiate
WASHINGTON - The Bush administra
tion said Sunday that there was “nothing to be
lost by talking” but vowed to continue the
allied bombing campaign while the Soviets
seek a diplomatic solution to the Persian Gulf
war.
“We say no cease-fire,
no pause, get out of
Kuwait,” said Secretary
of State James A, Baker
III.
President Bush, vaca
tioning in Kennebunkport,
Maine, told reporters:
“We are determined to finish this job and do it
right.”
The administration reiterated its resolve as
Iraqi Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz headed to
Moscow for talks aimed at finding a peaceful
solution to the crisis. He is scheduled to meet
Monday with Soviet President Mikhail Gor
bachev.
Bush said he did not know what would
come of the talks, but he said Gorbachev was
“trying very hard to seek an end to this con
flict.”
“He knows very well that the objectives
spelled out by the United Nations ... must be
met in their entirety,” Bush said.
Defense Secretary Dick Cheney said the
only thing that could slow the allied military
campaign was the start of an Iraqi pullout from
Kuwait.
“The only thing we can really believe is
action,” Cheney said on ABC’s “This Week
With David Brinkley.” “We have to see him
withdraw from Kuwait.”
“We have a certain tempo to our military
operations now and ... we’re not going to
break that tempo unless it is clear that he is
complying with the (U.N.) Security Council
directive,” said Bush’s national security ad
viser, Brent Scowcroft.
Baker, interviewed on CNN’s“Newsmaker
Sunday,” said the Soviets were welcome to
seek a diplomatic solution, but he expressed
no optimism they would succeed.
“There is nothing to be lost by talking . . .
and if that will result in the withdrawal of Iraq
from Kuwait, more power to whoever is doing
the talking,” Baker said. .. It remains to be
seen, of course, whether anything can come ot
this session.”
Scowcroft, appearing on CBS “Face the
Nation,” said past Soviet attempts to help
Saddam Hussein engineer an “elusive with
drawal with dignity” had ended in failure.
“He cannot be rewarded for the terrible
things that he has perpetrated in the gulf,”
Scowcroft said.
Bush’s day began in church, where the
service was disrupted by a man who demanded
an end to the bombing of Iraq and the deaths of
civilians there.
Bush made no response at the time but told
reporters later in the day: “I am concerned
about the suffering of innocents and I’m talk
ing about the innocents in Kuwait, too.”
“I hope we can get an end to that suffering
very, very soon. I think we will,” he said.
Neither Bush nor others in the administra
tion would confirm a statement by French
Foreign Minister Roland Dumas that a date
had been set for the start of ground war and that
it was close at hand.
“The decision on ground forces will be
made by me,” Bush said.
U.S.: Ground war not set
DHAHRAN, Saudi Arabia - The
U.S .'military said Sunday that no date
has been set for an allied ground of
fensive in the Persian Gulf war, and
Washington said it would reject any
Soviet peace plan calling for a cease
fire.
In Saudi Arabia, American and
Iraqi patrols clashed along the border
in seven separate engagements be
tween 5 a.m. and 10 a.m. Sunday.
During one pre-dawn skirmish, an
American Apache attack helicopter
firing Hellfire missiles destroyed two
American military vehicles, killing
two soldiers and wounding six, the
U.S. Command said.
It was the worst friendly fire acci
dent since Jan. 29, when a U.S. war
plane hit a Marine reconnaissance
vehicle during a furious lank battle
along the Saudi-Kuwaiti border and
seven American soldiers were killed.
Travelers reaching Nicosia on
Sunday gave vivid accounts of an
anti-Saddam Hussein pfotest by up to
5,000 people in Iraq earlier this month.
The travelers told The Associated Press
the demonstrators shot and killed 10
officials of Iraq’s ruling Bcath Arab
Socialist Party, which tried to stop the
protest.
T_• _A. _
The demonstration in the southern
city of Diwaniyeh was the first against
Saddam and his Kuwait policy since
the war began Jan. 17, the travelers
said.
British military officials admitted
Sunday that a bomb from an RAF
Tornado veered off course into the
western Iraqi town of Fallouja during
an attack on a bridge last week.
Iraq has claimed that 130 people
were killed and 78 wounded when the
bomb hit an apartment building and
an outdoor market on Thursday.
The French foreign minister, Ro
land Dumas, said Sunday that the
allies have already set a date for the
ground assault.
“We are on the eve or the pre-eve
of the ground offensive for the libera
tion of Kuwait,” Dumas said in a
radio interview in Paris, without say
ing exactly when the attack would
occur.
In another report, The Los Ange
les Times said Sunday that the United
States plans to launch a ground and
sea attack this week if Iraq does not
surrender or agree to a “diplomatic
deal” in the next three days. The
newspaper quoted unidentified U.S.
military officers in Washington.
i Source: AP_ :
Brian Shellito/Daily Nebraakan
Married witn cnnaren
New military gets first test
The average American soldier in
Saudi Arabia is a husband or wife, has
children and a habit of eating dinner
at home.
These aren’t the same teen-age
draftees who fought in Vietnam. Many
are reservisis or National G uardsman,
older and perhaps long out of duty.
But exactly how the U.S. mili
tary’s new demographics will shape
the Gulf war is an open question.
“We have been living for 20 years
in a situation where you could be a
soldier and have a family and both
could be orchestrated fairly well,”
said Peter A. Morrison, an Army
demographics researcher at the Rand
Corp. in Santa Monica, Calif.
“But suddenly being a soldier is
being a soldier and going out to fight
a war,” he said. “And all the change
that unfolded gradually has suddenly
come into sharp focus.”
The military has been jolted from
its peacetime orientation. The child
care, household and other domestic
safety nets designed for wartime are
being tested.
Sixty percent of military person
nel today arc married compared with
40 percent in 1970, and the average
number of dependents has risen to
nearly two from one, according to the
Defense Department.
The Pentagon says that 16,300
single parents and 1,200 military
couples with children are among the
513,000 U.S.troops deployed in the
6-month-old gulf crisis.
“This is unprecedented in that we’ve
never had a situation where so many
family members have been pulled
apart for so long,” Morrison said.
Members of the volunteer force
are likely to have better attitudes than
the Victnam-cra draftees who often
spent five or six months of a two-year I
hitch in training. These are profes
sionals, many with years of experi- /
encc.
But they also are parents, people
with community commitments and
mortgages to pay. Whether both par
ents in dual-military marriages should
be deployed at the same time has
generated some controversy.
The issue could become even hot
ter in the event of a bloody ground
campaign, which would leave more
widowed spouses and orphaned chil
dren than in previous wars.
Iraqis create smokescreen,
contribute to the war effort
Editor’s Note: The following dis
patch was not subject to Iraqi cen
sorship.
BAGHDAD, Iraq - As dawn breaks
over Baghdad, men wearing gloves
and heavy boots fan out to collect
discarded tires, then set them afire.
Other residents search for old clothes,
bits of plastic — anything that bums.
It’s a strange spectacle, but the
aim is simple: to create a thick, black
smokescreen that might help shield
the capital from allied air strikes.
The bonfires are among many low
technology methods used by the war
hardened Iraqis in their effort to off
set the far superior military might of
the U.S.-led forces.
Housewives separate papers and
other flammable materials before
throwing the daily garbage away. Teen
agers, unmindful of the air raid si
rens, collect old shoes, scraps of plas
tic and other refuse that will smolder
smokily.
The campaign is spearheaded by
members of President Saddam
Hussein’s militia, the Popular Army.
In every corner of this sprawling
city of 4 million, residents search for
discarded tires. They even remove
tires from stranded or broken-down
vehicles, which abound in wartime
Iraq because of the lack of spare parts.
The collected tires are set on fire
under the bridges over the Tigris River
tnat connect tne western and eastern
districts of Baghdad.
Tires also are burnt elsewhere in
the city, sometimes spewing smoke
so thick that the sun is blotted out.
Besides reducing the visibility of
allied pilots, the smoke may give a
false impression toallicd surveillance
satellites that parts of Baghdad are
burning.
“We may not be Rambos and we
may not have Star Wars capabilities,
but we know how to defend our
selves,” said a member of the Popular
Army militia who did not give his
name.
The militia is Saddam’s second
line of defense, trained in civil de
fense and also in hand-to-hand com
bat in case ihe war over Kuwait reaches
Baghdad one day.
Bags made of jute, collected by
Popular Army soldiers and civilians,
are wrapped around the iron railings
of the bridges over the Tigris.
Nel?ra&kan
Editor Eric Planner Professional Adviser Don Walton
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If Saddam doesn’t know, military
doesn’t want media to tell him
RIYADH, Saudi Arabia - A re
porter demanding to know the loca
tion of an Army helicopter raid on
Iraqi troops offered what appeared to
be a compelling argument: Surely
Saddam Hussein knew, so why not
tell the American people?
“Does he?” asked the senior mili
tary officer briefing reporters. “I’m
not so sure.” He refused to say where
the attack took place.
Alone, the episode is unremark
able. But it illustrates a trend. Allied
commanders, convinced they have
crippled Saddam’s military commu
nications network, have adopted a
more cautious approach in their pub
lic statements to keep Saddam from
gaining vital intelligence from the
news media.
The effort is active on several fronts,
from limiting televised news brief
ings to increasing censorship of re
ports from the field, particularly from
units deployed along Saudi Arabia’s
borders with Iraq and Kuwait.
Allied officers say Iraq’s units just
north of those borders have the hard
est time communicating with Baghdad.
Because their top-line communica
tion systems have been destroyed, the
Iraqis are forced to relay secure mes
sages through several command lev
els.
“We’re not sure the Iraqis do know
consistently where their troops are
being taken on,” the senior military
source told reporters at the background
briefing Saturday.
The military commanders also
believe Iraq has limited intelligence
on U.S. troop locations, and is send
ing patrols into Saudi Arabia to gel
information about its enemy.
One senior Army officer specu
laied that Iraqi commanders are hop
ing their patrols end up in skirmishes
so they can find out what U.S. units
are in the area — either from return
ing troops or through media accounts
of the fighting.
Because of this concern, Army Gen.
H. Norman Schwarzkopf, commander
of Operation Desert Storm, last week
ordered unit-level public affairs offi
cers to pay closer attention to media
dispatches, which are submitted to
the military for security review.
Ten days ago, journalists in the
field with front-line units were told to
no longer identify units by name if
they also planned to give a location,
even a general location like “near the
Kuwait border.”
Some field commanders also re
sisted accepting journalists, arguing
their reports could undermine secu
rity.
Death of former Contra to be investigated
MANAGUA, Nicaragua - An offi
cial from the Sandinista controlled
security police Sunday promised a
full-scale probe into the slaying of
former Contra chief Enrique Ber
mudez, whose death cast doubt on
government assurances for the safety
of other rebels who laid down their
arms.
But a right-wing radio station
blamed the slaying of Bermudez late
Saturday on Sandinista sympathiz
ers, some of whom cheered the news
of the killing.
Officials said they had no suspects
and no one immediately claimed re
sponsibility for the killing.
Someone shot Bermudez, 58, out
side his car near the downtown Inter
continental Hotel Saturday night, then
fled on foot.
Vice Interior Minister Jose Pallais
said it appeared Bermudez was fol
lowed and was shot twice from a
distance of five to six feci.
Taxi driver Rene Sanchez said a
man looked at the body and said,
“This man died by the bullet. He is
380, Enrique Bermudez,” then hur
ried away. Bermudez ’ s nom dc guerre
was “Comaridante 380.” >
Garcia added that the slaying clouds
the government’s ability to guarantee
the safety of ex-Contras.
Bermudez only months earlier said
he feared death at the hands of the
Snndinistas.
Right-wing RadioCorporacion, in
a Sunday broadcast, blamed the Sandin
istas.
Pallais promised an “exhaustive”
investigation and called the killing
“an attack against the policy of recon
ciliation by the government of Presi
dent Violcta Barrios de Chamorro.”