sriEsu. News Digest
Lebanon clash threatens ^alks
TYRE, Lebanon — Israel re
portedly moved more tanks into its
buffer zone in southern Lebanon
on Tuesday, while its warplanes
and artillery hit guerrilla positions
to avenge attacks by the pro-Ira
nian Hezbollah that killed six Is
raelis.
The fighting, which has left at
least 13 people dead and 35
wounded in Israel and Lebanon
this week, threatened to undermine
the seventh round of Arab-Israeli
peace talk underway in Washing
ton.
Hezbollah, the Shiite Muslim
fundamentalist group that wants to
derail the talks, claimed responsi
bility for the bombing Sunday in
the Israeli buffer zone. Th^last
killed five Israeli soldiers and
wounded five.
“We must be ready and deployed
io respond in the necessary manner
if Hezbollah continues in its at
tempts to attack,” Israeli Prime
Minister Yitzhak Rabin said al ter a
guerrilla rocket killed a teen-ager
in northern Israel be fore dawn Tucs
day.
Coupled with a wave of Pales
tinian attacks on Jews, the fighting
in Lebanon is arousing Israeli pub
We must be ready
and deployed to
respond in the nec
essary manner if
Hezbollah continues
in its attempts to
attack.
— Rabin
Israeli Prime Minister
-*♦ "
lie opinion and hampering Rabin’s
efforts to prepare his people to
make concessions required for
peace with the Arabs.
Hezbollah, which said it was
mobilizing its3,500 hardcore fight
ers, clamored Tuesday for Lcba-~
non to withdraw from the talks.
The Beirut government ignored
the demand but said it would lodge
a complaint with the U.N. Security
Cotmcifover the “ferocious Israeli
aggressions.”
Israel radio said an unspecified
number of tanks moved into the
buffer zone Tuesday to reinforce
troops that patrol the area. Israel’s
army radio carried a similar report
and said there were “large numbers
of troops deployed along the bor
der” with Lebanon.
Timur Gokscl, a spokesman for
the U.N. monitoring force in .south
ern Lebanon, said U.N. observers
had not detected any unusual mili
tary moves.
Maj. Gen. Yitzhak Mordcchai,
commander of Israel’s northern
forces, said at a news conference
that Israeli tanks had not moved
north of the security zone. He re
fused todiscuss whether more Links
were sent into the zone.
Israeli planes, helicopters, gun
boats and howitzers struck at nu
merous suspected guerrilla targets
in Lebanon on Monday.
On Tuesday, Israeli warplanes
staged two separate raids in eastern
Lebanon ’ s Bekaa Val ley apparently
in response to the pre-dawn
Katyusha rockclatlack that killed a
Ukrainian teen-ager and wounded
five people in the Israeli border
town of Kiryat Shmonch.
Police said Israeli gunners inter
mittently shelled villages in south
ern Lebanon and the western Bekaa
Valley with 155mm howitzers,
causing hundreds of people to flee
to safer areas.
Advanced U.S. exports aided Iraqis
in 4 supergun ’ effort, lawmakers say
Senator criticizes
slow investigation
WASHINGTON—The chairman
of the Senate Banking Committee
accused the Bush administration Tues
day of “putting out false information”
on U.S. export of advanced technol
ogy to Iraq before the Gulf War.
Sen. Donald Ricglc, D-Mich.,also
criticized the Justice Department for
what he called a delay in investigating
possible criminal wrongdoing by ad
ministration officials^
“It appears on the face of it that
laws were broken; the people that did
it have to be identified,” said Ricglc,
who was the only committee member
present. “The delay cannot go on
indefinitely here ... If this Justice
Department and attorney general don’t
do it, then another one will.”
Before they were submitted to
Congress, documents pertaining*10
export licenses for Iraq were improp
erly altered by Commerce Depart
mcntcmployccslodisguisc their mili
tary potential, the department’s in
spector general has found.
Rep. Henry B. Gonzalez, D-Texas,
House Banking Committee chairman
who has investigated U.S.-lraq lies
for two years, testified that the Bush
administration helped the Iraqis build
a nuclear “supergun,” by approving
export licenses in 1989 for related
technology.
Gonzalez said the Commerce De
partment granted an export license in
1989 to Space Research Corp. of
Maryland for a computer used to de
sign a projectile for the long-range
cannon designed to deliver nuclear
weapons. At the time, Gonzalez said,
the State Department knew Space
Research was engaged in numerous
military projects in Iraq.
“Not surprisingly, the State De
partment misled the public about ex
port licenses approved for Space Re
search Corp.,” Gonzalez said.
Ricglc was bolstered in his asser
tions by testimony from several
nuclear technology experts who dis
puted recent statements by President
Bush and lop administration officials
that U.S. technology was not used in
Iraq’s nuclear weapons program.
Bush had said in the final presiden
tial debate that “there hasn’t been one
single scintilla ofevidencc that there’s
any U.S. technology involved in it.”
Economic growth
boosts Bush bid
to catch Clinton
President Bush seized on news of
strongcr-than-expcctcd Economic
growth Tuesday as a welcome tonic
for his ailing campaign. Bill Clinton
sped through the South, telling sup
porters who seemed ready to begin
celebrating, “One more week.”
The third man in the race, indepen
dent candidate Ross
Perot, sla ycd out c)f
the Republicans of
plotting -Cdirly
tricks” against him
and his family.
“It’s crazy,” Bush said of Perot’s
allegation that Republicans were plan
ning to disrupt his daughter’s wed
ding. “A little bizarre,” the president
said of Perot’s spending tens of mil
lions of dollars on campaign ads.
Clinton was glad to lake the high
road, denouncing “all this name call
ing and stuff.”
In Augusta, Ga., and then again in
Tampa, Fla., he gave his dramatic
version of political appointees at the
State Department going through his
records late at night, then declared, to
cheers and laughter:
“I bet it’s the only lime those three
political hacks have worked till 10
o’clock at night the whole lime Bush
has been president.”
Perot’s running male, former Viet
nam prisoner of war James Stockdalc,
said in an interview with The Idaho
Statesman in Boise that anti-war dem
onstrations by young Americans such
as Clinton hurt the war effort, costing
thousandsof American lives and pro
longing the captivity of POWs.
Vice President Dan Quay 1c joined
a Bloomington, III., crowd in laugh
ingly tossing around waffles symbol
izing GOP charges about Clinton’s
changeability. He had a tougher mo
ment earlier, in an interview with
CBS’ “This Morning,” when he as
serted, “We have been pushing the
idea that George Bush is going to
make matters much, much worse.”
The government reported that cco
nomic growth jumped to an annual
rale of 2.7 percent in the quarter end
ing Scpl. 30. The growth surprised
most private forecasters and was
nearly double the weak 1.5 percent
rate in the April-Junc quarter.
“It’s going to be very hard for the
nay-sayers and the pessimists, who
can only win by convincing people
how bad things arc, to refute the fact
that this is very encouraging for
America,” the president said.
“If you think I’m happy, you're
right,” said Bush.
Just seven days from the election,
Bush tried to play catch-up in Iowa,
Kentucky and Ohio. He was running
behind in all three slates.
“ it -
If you think I’m
happy, you’re right.
— Bush
-ft “
Clinton campaigned from Georgia
to Florida to Louisiana.
“If we carry Florida, it is over,”
Clinton shouted to the cheering crowd
in Tampa.
Running mate A1 Gore campaigned
in W isconsin and M ich igan, serenaded
in Racine, Wis., by a crowd chanting,
“One more week.”
Bush gave television interviews
aboard Air Force One to local chan
nels, and liner! up a scries of morning
and evening appearances on network
television programs throughout the
week.
“There’s a sea change in the coun
try, and I feel it,"Bush said. “Every
body traveling with us feels it.. . .
There’s something happening out
there.”
Even while predicting victory,
Bush looked ahead to his life after he
leaves the While House.
“I’m going to get big in the grand
child business, I’m going to get big in
the golf business,” he said on NBC’s
“Today” program. “I f I want to be out
on a boat whether there’s a war on or
something else, 1 know what I’m do
ing and forget about it all.”
“But that’s going to be five years
from now, not one,” he said.
President faces high hurdles in final campaign week
Brian Shellito/DN
WASHINGTON — Americans’
economic worries and desire for
change arc proving stiff obstacles to a
comeback for President Bush, who is
making late progress in a handful of
traditional Republican states, but in
others has stalled or even slipped.
In two states, Washington and New
York, the incumbent president has
even slipped below
20 percent in some
recent overnight
tracking polls, ac
S5s | cording to pollsters
in both parties who
arc not involved in
the presidential
campaign.
They predicted Bush ultimately
would larc belter in those stales, but
said the numbers underscore the
president’s troubles in the final days
before the election. Several pollsters
interviewed Tuesday said Bush’s
standing is remarkably stagnant in
national surveys because so many
voters arc convinced he is not the best
choice to run the economy.
“The feeling was that he wasn’t
paying as much attention as they
wanted him to pay to the central thing
— which is jobs and the economy,’’
said Andrew Kohul, director of sur
veys for Times Mirror Center for The
People & The Press, which recoiled
1,200 voters 10 days apart this month
and found no movement toward Bush.
“The economy is the key issue and
President Bush,has not focused to the
voters’ satisfaction sufficient atten
tion to answering the question, ‘How
is the second term going to be differ
ent and better?’” said pollster Lee
Miringoff of New York’s Marisl In- ’
stilutc.
One alarming sign for Bush: poll
sters in New England say Clinton has
stretched a tiny lead over Bush in New
Hampshire to double digits in recent
days. New Hampshire last supported
a Democrat for president in 1964.
Also, pollsters trying to gauge the
impactof Ross Perot’s unsubstantiated
allegations of a Republican smear
campaign say there was movement
away from Perot in Monday night
polling in Wisconsin and Michigan,
with Clinton the beneficiary.
Interviews Tuesday with a dozen
pollsters across the country and re
cent national survey data offered
ample evidence of the obstacles Bush
laces in generating a last-week come
back. Even with good economic news
Tuesday, pollsters said, it likely is too
late for Bush to repair his image on the
issue of most concern to voters.
Bush on Monday delivered a speech
in which he detailed second-term pri
orities, but it was overshadowed by
Perot’s vitriolic defense of his con
duct.
“It didn’t get quite as much cover
age as it might have without this
bizarre scries of events,” said Bush
strategist Charles Black.
Canadian 6no’ vote snubs leaders
MONTREAL — Canadians dis
covered a new unity Tuesday. East
and west, French and English came
together — not over constitutional
reforms but in rejecting the path cho
se t for them by the country1 s pol itical
elite.
The results of Monday’s referen
dum was a sharp rebuff to Prime
Minister Brian Mulroney, provincial
premiers and aboriginal leaders. Vot
ers in French-speaking Quebec re
jected the reform accord, but it also
lost in five other provinces and one
territory.
The constitutional changes would
have recognized Quebec asa “distinct
society,” reformed the Senate and the
House of Commons to give western
states more representation, and rec
ognized the rights of Indians and Inuit
to govern themselves.
Canadians combined to vole the
measure down 54.4 percent to 42.4
percent. Canada was left no closer to
a consensus on dealing with the cul
tural and regional differences that have
been straining the federation for years.
Separatists in Quebec were,
cheered, hoping the results would re
ju venalc their independence campaign
and give them a boost in provincial
elections that must be held by 1994.
The province’s rejection did not trans
late into support for independence,
because many opponents of secession
also voted “no.”
The reform package originally was
designed to meet Quebec’scomplaints
about threats to its cultural identity in
a predominantly English-speaking
nation. It gradually was expanded to
meet demands for giving more power
to less populous provinces and ab
original peoples.
L
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