News Digest Edited by Jennifer O'Cilka
Rumblings of war, peace heard in gulf
DHAHRAN, Saudi Arabia - Sounds
of war thundered up and down the
tense Persian Gulf battle line Thurs
day, but words of possible peace came
from a midnight meeting in Moscow.
The Iraqi foreign minister met with
Mikhail Gorbachev to deliver a reply
to the Soviet president’s peace plan,
and it was announced afterward that
Baghdad and Moscow had agreed on
steps to end the war.
There was no immediate official
U.S. reaction to the Soviet-Iraqi plan,
but one official U.S. source said the
proposals have “serious problems.”
Seventy-two British artillery pieces
and battery after battery of U.S. rocket
launchers opened fire on targets deep
in Iraqi-held territory, in one of the
heaviest barrages of the war.
Helicopter gunships streaked north
of the frontier and blasted Iraqi guns
and armored vehicles, and American
ground troops were venturing into
Kuwait and Iraq on reconnaissance
forays, the U.S. command said.
Meanwhile, seven Americans were
killed in a helicopter accident.
The command said the allies’
stepped-up cross-border activity was
“shaping the battlefield.”
The exiled emir of Kuwait, Sheik
Jaber al-Ahmed al-Sabah, issued a
message to his armed forces declar
ing: “The hour of salvation is near.”
But there were signals Thursday that
a major attack would not begin in a
day or two, as some expected.
A senior Pentagon official said it
“might be worthwhile” to continue a
mostly air war to destroy more Iraqi
armor and artillery. The CIA said
only 10 percent to 15 percent of equip
ment has been destroyed, far below
the U.S. military’s estimate.
As Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz
headed to Moscow with the message
from the Iraqi leadership, President
Saddam Hussein went on Iraqi radio
to rally his people for a final defense
if the United States and its allies re
ject the latest peace terms.
“There is no path except the path
that we have chosen. . . . this path
which Tariq Aziz has carried to
Moscow,” Saddam said. He acknowl
edged Iraq is ready to withdraw from
Kuwait, but gave no clue to any other
Iraqi or Soviet terms for peace.
The Moscow plan was presented
to Aziz on Monday by Gorbachev.
The Soviets briefed the Desert Storm
allies on the plan, but did not publicly
disclose its details, except to say it
abides by U.N. Security Council reso
lutions demanding unconditional
withdrawal from Kuwait.
Various reports suggested it also
provided some guarantee that Sad
dam could remain m power and some
reference to eventual settlement of
the Israeli-Palestinian impasse. Sad
dam previously had sought to link
simultaneous withdrawals of Iraq from
Kuwait and of Israel from occupied
Arab lands.
• •
Peace plan dismissed
Ground war readied as U.S.
warns Saddam to withdraw
WASHINGTON - With allied
troops awaiting the presidential go
ahead for the ground war with Iraq,
the Bush administration warned
Saddam Hussein to withdraw from
Kuwait unconditionally or be forced
out soon.
Debate and speculation over
when allied forces would launch a
full-scale land war against weak
ened Iraqi forces intensified as
Moscow awaited a response from
the Iraqi president on its 11 th-hour
peace initiative.
Secretary of State James Baker
asserted anew Wednesday that
nothing less than immediate, total
and unconditional withdrawal of
Iraqi forces from Kuwait would
avert a land attack.
“Anything short of that is unac
ceptable,” Baker said. “One way
or another, the army of occupation
of Iraq will leave Kuwait soon.”
President Bush, at a state dinner
Wednesday night for Denmark’s
Queen Margrethc, denounced
Saddam as a “brutal dictator.” As
for the start of the ground war.
Bush said only, “Watch and wait.
Watch and learn.”
-44 —
Anything short of
that (unconditional
withdrawal) is unac
ceptable. One way or
another, the army
occupation of Iraq
will leave Kuwait
soon.
James Baker
Secretary of State
-ft ~
Brent Scowcroft, the president’s
national security adviser, told re
porters at the dinner that the White
House had been in touch with the
Soviets on Wednesday. But he said
the Soviet peace plan had not af
fected the U.S. timetable.
Defense Secretary Dick Cheney
and Gen. Colin Powell, chairman
of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, were
appearing today before the Senate
Armed Services Committee to dis
cuss the Pentagon’s request for funds
to pay for the Persian Gulf War.
Bush has dismissed the secret
Soviet peace initiative as inade
quate and said there would be no
concessions for Saddam. But there
were signs the administration was
restrained, at least temporarily, by
the potential of the Soviet plan.
The administration faced the
possibility its coalition of allied
war partners, assembled around the
U.N. resolutions demanding Iraqi
withdrawal from Kuwait, could be
fractured should it ignore a serious
bid for peace.
House Speaker Thomas Foley,
D-Wash., said if Saddam agrees to
an unconditional withdrawal, Bush
would have “a very difficult choice.
... I don’t know how he could fail
to accept iL”
The Washington Post reported
in today’s editions that Bush told
Gorbachev the Soviet proposal
should be toughened to require an
Iraqi withdrawal from Kuwait within
four days, plus the immediate re
lease of ail war prisoners and dis
closure of mine locations.
It cited unnamed diplomatic and
administration sources, and said
the United States and Soviet Union
were continuing to talk about the
plan.
>
Details
of Peace
Plan
Q Iraq agrees to a complete,
unconditional withdrawal from
Kuwait.
Q The withdrawal begins the
second day after the cessation
of hostilities.
|<] The withdrawal takes place
in a fixed time frame.
Q After the withdrawal of
two-thirds of the Iraqi forces,
the United Nations' economic
sanctions against Iraq cease
to apply.
13 After the full withdrawal,
the causes for the remaining
U.N. resolutions against Iraq
cease to exist.
Q After the cease-fire, all
prisoners of war will be
immediately released.
Q The withdrawal will be
monitored by countries not
directly involved in hostilities,
to be entrusted by the U.N.
Security Council.
|jj The work of determining
details of the agreement
continues.
AP
- 1
raratroopers anticipate war,
spend day readying for fight
Editor’s Note: The following dis
patch was subject to U.S. military
censorship.
IN NORTHERN SAUDI ARABIA
- When paratroopers have to wait,
they call it racetracking.
It refers to the oval pattern their
planes fly over a jump zone when
they have their gear on, their chutes
ready, their adrenalin flowing. All
they need to jump is a green light.
Waiting for G-Day, the day for the
ground war to start, is like racetrack
ing for Bravo Company, 2nd Battal
ion, 325th Infantry Regiment of the
82nd Airborne Division.
The line doggies of Bravo Com
pany call themselves “The Nasty
Boys.” Here is a day in their life in the
Saudi desert.
6 p.m. - Sunset. A crescent moon
hangs in the sky like a bright slice of
melon.
“Out here, night is when we got to
work,” said 1st Sgt. Michael O’Neal,
35, of Ripley, W. Va. “We have height
ened security at night. All our mis
! sions have been at night. It’s a reverse
i cycle.”
8 p.m. - Staff Sgt. Steven Ahlfield,
24, of Tucson, Ariz., is using his night
vision goggles to adjust an infrared
scope on his M-16 rifle. The invisible
beam allows him to shoot targets more
than a football field away.
11 p.m. - Grunts sleeping on the
ground, many of them snoring, are
awakened by an artillery barrage aimed
at Iraqi positions. They can see trac
ers from a distant skirmish and light
ning flashing over the desert while
rain pelts them.
Most of the paratroopers wrap
; themselves in ponchos and sleep in
the rain.
2 a.m. - A red glare knifes through
the damp sky from a multiple launch
rocket system firing that lasts an hour.
3 a.m. - Spec. 4 Darrin Janish, 21,
of Apple Valley, Wise., rises for guard
duty.
“Everybody’s got a purpose in life.
Mine is to sit in a hole,” Janish jokes.
6 a.m. - The sun isn’t up yet but
Bravo Company is.
“There’s Iraqis coming over the
hill,” yells 1st Sgt. O’Neal.
There aren’t, of course, but it’s an
effective wakeup call.
The company’s warming tent has
already been dismantled in anticipa
tion of an attack. O’Neal lights a heat
tab in his foxhole to heat water for
coffee and warm up an MR E, or Meal,
Ready to Eat.
The first order of business is to
clean the sand and morning mist off
the weapons.
7:30 a.m. - Spec. 4 Dary Small
wood, 21, of Gainesville, Ga., gets
off guard duty and heads for his hooch
— a poncho-covered hole with bur
lap strung over his sleeping bag. It’s a
modest but dry home.
He listens to his favorite country
song on tape: ‘ Jesus Hold My Hand.”
4 It gives me hope. When I get
down, I listen to that tape,” Small
wood says. “I’ve got too much I want
to do in life to die in a place like this.”
Noon - The sun has defeated the
overnight chill. Sgt. David Kent, 27,
of San Francisco, pauses from his
reading and weapons study to cat a
ham slice MRE for lunch.
He also takes a moment to think
about his unseen Iraqi counterparts.
“I honestly feel sorry for those
men. The majority of them are vic
tims of circumstance,” Kent says.
“They may be my enemy, but I have
more in common with them than
anything else. We’re all stuck out
here in the desert facing each other,
wailing for the fighting and the dying.”
2 p.m. - Sgt. Tony Bell of Oxnard,
Calif., schools his squad on the tech
nique of taking Iraqi prisoners. “We re
anticipating a lot of them. We expect
a lot of them to surrender,” Bell says
after an hour of drilling.
4:30 p.m. - Training ends. Time to
clean weapons one more time. Maybe
grab an MRE dinner.
Peer
Continued from Page 1
for UNL.
UNL’s reference group in the legislative
study consists of Auburn University, Colorado
State University, Iowa State University, Kan
sas Slate University, the University of Massa
chusetts at Amherst, Oklahoma State Univer
sity, Oregon Stale University, the University of
Tcnnessce-Knoxville and Washington State
University. The study was issued to the Appro
priations Committee on Tuesday by the Na
tional Center for Higher Education Manage
ment Systems.
In a second comparison group, the study
includes the University of Georgia and the
University of Missouri at Columbia, in order to
represent institutions that are both land-grant
and acknowledged flagship universities in their
states, according to a letter from Dennis Jones,
president of NCHEMS.
Calling UNL’s current peer group an “aspi
ration group,” Moore said the report substanti
ates his beliefs about UNL’s place in it.
“The group that UNL has used has been a far
stretch of the imagination to call a peer,” he
said.
Moore cited report findings that place UNL
below its current peer institutions in student
enrollment, research expenditures, tuition, sala
ries and in degrees awarded in some fields.
UNL’s current peer group includes Illinois,
Iowa Slate, Maryland, Michigan Slate, Minne
sota, Missouri, Ohio State, Penn State, Purdue
and Wisconsin.
Using 1987-88 data, the NCHEMS report
said UNL enrolled 19,818 full-time students
compared to the average 33,769 students at its
current peer group.
The report also indicates that UNL’s aver
age faculty salaries lagged 22.6 percent behind
those of its peer group in 1987-88, with an
average salary of $42,694 per year compared to
the group’s average of $52,336.
When compared to the peer groups pro
posed by the report, UNL salaries lagged 6.9
percent behind the first group, which had an
average annual salary ot $45,638, using the
1987-88 figures.
The report indicated that, when compared to
the second group, UNL faculty salaries were
7.9 percent less than the average $46,054 an
nual salary.
Appropriation
Continued from Page 1
the transition of Kearney State College into the
University of Nebraska system, scheduled to
lake place July 1. The committee is proposing
5275,000 for 1991-92 and S278:950 for 1992
93 to finance the transition.
The committee recommendation provides
no increase in funding for the Neoraska Re
search Initiative from 1991-93.
The initiative was a five-year plan to in
crease university research funding by 54 mil
lion a year.
Instead of accepting Nelson’s proposal fora
2 percent across-the-board cut for state agen
cies in 1991-92, the committee recommended
a 4 percent cut.
McShane said he was concerned about
the larger cut.
If the Legislature does not allocate funding
for the faculty raises while creating a 4 percent
across-the-board cut, McShane said, the money
to pay for the salaries probably would come
from operating budgets.
The NU budget hearing before the Appro
priations Committee will be March 4.
Nebraskan
Editor Eric Planner, 472-1766
Managing Editor victoria Ayotta
Assoc News Editors Jana Pedersen
_ Emily Rosenbaum
General Manager Dan Shaft II
Production Manager Katherine Pollcky
Advertising Manager Loren Melrose
Sales Manager Todd Sears
Publications Board
Chairman qhi Vobelda, 436-9993
Professional Adviser Don Walton, 473-7301
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1991 DAILY NEBRASKAN