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UZUMLU, Turkey - Three weeks after the
Kurdish exodus from Iraq, an international
relief effort has succeeded in feeding most of
the refugees camping in the Turkish moun
tains, say relief officials and refugees.
But water shortages and medical care re
main serious problems for the 800,000 Kurds
along the bolder.
“They have basic food. In that sense, there
was a turning point reached last week,” said
Constantin Sokoloff, a field officer for the
U.N. high commissioner for refugees.
“Psychologically, people are getting better,
they’re settling down,” he said.
Still, scores refugees are dying each day on
the border from preventable diseases, relief
workers and government officials say. Dehy
dration and the resulting severe diarrhea have
killed many infants.
“Sanitation really is the main thing,” said
Dr. Sandra Allaire of Canada, who is working
with the International Committee of the Red
Cross at Uzumlu, a camp of about 50,000
people in a mountain basin on the border.
Meanwhile, the situation for an estimated 1
million Kurdish refugees in Iran remains “criti
cal,” the U.N. refugee office said.
Omar Bakhet, head of the office’s field
operations in Iran, said some supplies are get
ting through, but only slowly — and not enough.
Iran, rather than the international commu
nity, continues to bear the main burden of the
relief effort, estimated to cost $10 million a
day, Bakhet said.
Four Belgian transport planes left Brussels
on Sunday for Ourumieh in western Iran with
tents and blankets for 3,000 refugees, and a
medical team aboard, officials said.
Allaire said disease would continue to spread
rapidly in the Turkish camp at Uzumlu unless
it had clean water and toilets. The stench of
excrement wafts through the air.
The camp is the worst-supplied of the three
main refugee settlements on the Turkish bor
der.
U.S. soldiers and Turkish workers have begun
digging latrines at some camps. But Uzumlu
-«--—
They have basic food. In that
sense, there was a turning
point reached last week.
Sokotoff
field officer for the U.N. high
commissioner for refugees
- 99 -
still lacks any facilities.
Women at the camp roll out pita bread on
wooden boards and cook beans and noodles
over campfires. The rubbery brown wrappers
from U.S. military Meals-Ready-to-Eat carpet
the ground.
“The Americans and the British send us
very good things,” said a 23-year-old medical
student who identified herself only as Kurdis
tan.
But there is little sign of water. And distri
UU11VI1 VI IV/VU IVIMHUIU M*'V » VII, TV IUI UIV OUUMg
est refugees often able to grab the most pack
ages parachuted onto the hillsides by U.S. and
British aircraft.
Special Forces troops and Red Cross work
ers on Sunday were investigating ways to pipe
stream water to the refugees at Uzumlu. The
U.S. troops also will provide desperately needed
medical care to the camp.
Refugees continue to storm trucks carrying
bread and milk to the camp. One refugee was
killed and five were injured Sunday when
Turkish troops fired into a crowd to stop a riot
at a food distribution point near Cukurca, an
other major camp.
“The food is OK, but there’s no milk,”
complained Khayria Ramadan, cradling her
sunburned, 1 1/2-month-old baby next to her
campfire.
Gautier Lambot, a logistics director of the
aid group Doctors Without Borders, said the
dirt road to the Uzumla, which frequently became
a nearly impassable sea of mud, had prevented
supplies from getting through.
Gorbachev has another tough week ahead
MOSCOW - President Mikhail
Gorbachev, just back from a difficult
and disappointing Asian trip, faces an
even tougher week at home.
A strike by coal miners demand
ing his resignation enters its eighth
week and more walkouts are threat
ened by workers blaming their eco
nomic woes on the policies of Gor
bachev’s government.
Hard-line legislators are increas
ing their pressure on Gorbachev,
seeking to convene a special session
of the national parliament to examine
his performance.
And the Communist Party Central
Committee meets to discuss the na
tion’s deepening economic and po
litical crisis. It is expected to have a
spirited discussion of Gorbachev’s
six-year tenure as party chief.
Gorbachev returned Saturday from
an Asian trip on which he managed
only mixed success. South Korea
promised to participate in a multibil
lion-dollar natural gas project in the
Soviet Far East, but Gorbachev failed
to win a commitment from Japan for
substantial financial aid.
Before he landed in Moscow, grim
economic statistics published in So
viet newspapers indicated the gross
national product fell 8 percent in the
first quarter and labor productivity
dropped by 9 percent.
“Can we go on living and working
this way and call ourselves citizens of
a great country if with our own hands
we are pushing the nation into an
abyss?” asked a commentary in the
Communist Party newspaper Pravda.
Members of the hard-line Soyuz
group of Communist lawmakers,
mean wmic, said at a weekend conlcr
ence that Gorbachev should resign.
They considered ways to convene a
special session of the Soviet parlia
ment to try to recall him as president.
On Monday, Gorbachev is due to
give an accounting of his Asian trip
before Supreme Soviet legislators. His
prime minister, Valentin Pavlov, is
expected to outline an “anti-crisis
program” for rescuing the Soviet
economy. In the evening, Gorbachev
will take time out to celebrate the
121 st anniversary' of the birth of Vla
dimir Lenin.
I Baker waits for Israeli word
JIDDAH, Saudi Arabia - Secre
tary of State James Baker said
Sunday he’s not putting pressure
on Israel to compromise its stand
on peace talks with the Arabs, but
made it clear there should be “an
international characteristic” to any
negotiations.
While Baker waited to hear from
Jerusalem, he flew here to discuss
a sharply limited role for the oil
rich kingdom in resolving the Arab
Israeli dispute.
“1 do not anticipate that they
would be there in the context of the
political discussions between Is
rael and her Arab neighbors and
the political discussions between
Israel and Palestinians,” he said at
a news conference in Cairo.
In Jiddah, Baker was to hold
talks with Saudi King Fahd and
Prince Saud, the foreign minister.
Baker met Saturday with Jordan’s
King Hussein and Sunday with
Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.
In the meantime, Baker’s strat
egy seemed geared to placing the
onus on Israel to keep his peace
mission from disintegrating.
“We have not heard responses
to the suggestions that we made in
my Iasi visit,” Baker said.
He has refused to spell out the
proposals he left Friday with Is
raeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Sha
mir and Foreign Minister David
Levy.
But Baker has said the Soviets
should co-sponsor the peace talks
with the United States and he’s
leaning publicly in the “direction
of Arab and European demands for
an international conference.”
“There is an international char
acteristic to any meetings that would
involve five, or six, or even seven
countries from different parts of
the world,” Baker said in Cairo.
Baker said he called Shamir on
Saturday, not to get answers but to
“give him my own personal de
briefing of my visit to Jordan.”
“We do not intend to press or
obviously to pressure for an an
swer,” Baker told reporters.
Israel agreed nearly two weeks
ago to negotiate with the Arab states
and representatives of the 1.7 mil
lion Palestinians who live on the
West Bank in Gaza. But Israel wants
to restrict the Soviets to a limited
role, bar members of the Palestine
Liberation Organization and keep
all outside powers except the United
States on the sidelines.
The Israeli cabinet took up those
issues Sunday, but delayed any
decisions until later in the week.
Baker’s aides told reporters
Saturday that he would not return
to Jerusalem after he ends his lour
of Arab countries in Syria on Tucs
day. But Levy was quoted in Jerusa
lem as saying Baker would return
Tuesday night and hold meetings
there Wednesday.
Meanwhile, Israeli newspapers
reported Baker had asked Shamir
and Levy if they would allow the
United Nations and the European
Community to participate in peace
talks. Baker, the newspapers said,
also asked the Israeli leaders if
they would try to exclude Pales
tinians with links to East Jerusa
lem.
Shamir and Levy want to deal
directly with the Arabs. They don’t
want even a symbolic suggestion
that East Jerusalem, which became
part of Israel’s capital after the
1967 Midcast War, should be handed
over to the Arabs.
Palm Beachers upset
over public attention
PALM BEACH, Fla. - There’s a
For Sale sign just a few doors down
from the Kennedy estate. But, no, an
international scandal in the neighbor
hood isn’t driving away the always
preened, sometimes prim and usually
private residents of this island of wealth.
Indeed, while many longtime Palm
Beachers express disapproval — even
suggesting it’s the Kennedys who
should move out — feelings among
the Rolls-Royce set are mixed about
the Kennedy case and all the attention
it’s brought their town of 12,000 resi
dents.
“Except for the ones who are titil
lated, the rest are embarrassed,” said
Kathryn Robinette, editor of Palm
Beach Today, a newspaper that chron
icles charity parties and gallery open
ings and appears twice weekly during
the Thanksgiving-to-Easter social
season, weekly the rest of the year.
Easter social season, weekly the rest
of the year.
“It’s a terrible thing for Palm
Beach,” said Esther Elson, who like
other longtime residents, worries that
publicity surrounding a woman’s al
legation that she was raped at the
Kennedy estate will further change
the town.
“It’s going to ruin our beautiful
town,” she said. “We’ll be getting a
lot of trash here.”
On the surface, Palm Beach —
with its marble mansions surrounded
by tall walls and hedges pruned to
perfect straightness — seems safely
shielded from any change that it doesn’t
want, and some locals say the latest of
many society scandals shouldn't
concern their neighbors.
“That’s just apprehension on their
part,” said George Lewis Jr., a past
president of the town’s Board of
Realtors.
“Henry Flagler used to do a lot
worse things than that,” he said, re
ferring to the developer who helped
found Palm Beach 80 years ago by
extending a railroad to fill his hotels
about 70 miles north of Miami.
Many older Palm Beachcrs remem
ber a world even more cloistered and
set apart and say they’re adjusting
reluctantly to many changes — some
subtle, some less so — that have
come to their town.
Medicare proposal urges cost analysis
WASHINGTON - A proposed rule
calling for cost-benefit analysis of
new types of medical care for the
elderly could pul additional burdens
on Medicare recipients, critics said
Sunday.
“I find it a little paradoxical that a
program designed to protect senior
citizens against cost now may be step
ping back from its public obligations
to protect them just because some
thing may be too expensive," Gordon
Schatz, a lawyer who specializes in
health care issues, said Sunday.
The rule, which is awaiting adop
tion, would require the federal gov
ernment for the first lime to compare
costs and benefits of specific types of
care in deciding whether to pay foi
them.
Schatz, who is familiar with the
proposal, said the regulation is evi
dently a response to budgetary re
straints brought on by the federal
deficit.
Horace Dcets, a top official of the
American Association of Retired
Persons, said he wasn’t familiar with
the rule but worried that it, like othci
proposals to deal with health costs,
would merely “shift the cost perhaps
from the government to individuals.’
The New York Times said in its
Sunday editions that Gail Wilensky,
head of the Health Care Financing
Administration, sent the proposal tc
Health and Human Services Secre
tary Louis Sullivan.
Wilensky was at a conference
Sunday and could not immediately be
reached for comment.
Previous rules have called for
considering safety and effectiveness
in determining whether Medicare
would pay for new services and pro
cedures such as liver transplants and
magnetic resonance imaging. The new
rule also provides for considering
whether those procedures would be
more or less cost effective than alter
natives already approved.
About 34 million elderly and dis
abled people are enrolled in Medi
care. The overall cost of the program
tripled in the last decade, and is ex
pected to reach $104 billion this year.
Netfraskan
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