Associated Press ^VrrYX/Q ^ I ' Net)Taskan
Edited by Todd Cooper 2. 1J_/ f y 1 J 1V J J_JL Tuesday, March 16, 1963
East Coast digs out of weekend weather conditions
Search continues
for teen-agers
in Appalachians
Rescuers searched for 24 teen
age campers missing in the snow
covered southern Appalachians on
Monday after dozens of others made
it to safety. Highway crews strained
to reach thousands snowbound at
home and in shelters by the week
end blizzard, and the death toll rose
to 149.
In addition to the deaths, 32
crewmen were missing after a
freighter sank Monday off Nova
Scotia, and 16 mariners were miss
ing in waters around Florida.
Most major airports moved back
toward normal operations. But>be
cause of delays in the East, “Nor
mal won’t be here until Tuesday or
Wednesday,” said Mary Francis
Fagan of American Airlines at
Chicago’s O’Hare Airport.
Teams from North Carolina and
Tennessee searched the mountains
of Great Smoky Mountains Na-f
tional Park for remaining members
of a group of 117 teen-agers, teach
ers and parents from a Detroit-area
private school who had been hiking
when the storm struck.
Officials at the Cranbrook
Kingswood Upper Middle School
in Bloomfield Hills, Mich., said 93
of the sophomores on an annual
spring break trek were accounted
for by Monday afternoon. 9ne fac
ulty leader was in critical condition
at a North Carolina hospital, while
the seven to nine members of his
group were being examined, school
officials said in Bloomfield Hills,
Mich.
One group of 20 students
emerged from the woods as sched
uled Monday afternoon, schools
spokesman Ray Carson said. “They
had no idea there was a problem,”
he said.
West Virginia authorities
searched for six horseback riders
from Ohio missing since Friday in
the rugged Cranberry Glades wil
derness area, said Andy Ridenour
of the state Office of Emergency
Services. The area got up to 44
inches of snow, and drifts were up
to 16 feet.
In the Shenandoah National Park
in Virginia, six teen-agers and their
two adult leaders from the Rectory
School in Pomfret, Conn., were
found early Monday huddled along
a path and were being led odt to
safety. Drifts were 10 feet high.
“They are all healthy and in
good condition,” park spokesman
Sandy Rives said. “Which is pretty
remarkable considering we have
had zero-degree nights and just a
lot of snow.”
Canadian rescuers searched the
sea off Nova Scotia for 32 British
and Chinese crew members of a
freighter that sank early Monday in
60-foot seas.
Calmer weather allowed heli
copters to search for some of 16
people missing along Florida’s
coast after what Coast Guard offi
cials called the busiest rescue week
end in at least SO years.
Serb forces attack,
seize second enclave
Up to 40 people
dying in Bosnia
from cold, snow
SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina
— Serb forces backed by armor re
portedly seized another Muslim en
clave in eastern Bosnia on Monday,
then rumbled after fighters desper
ately defending the village’s fleeing
civilians.
Many Muslims
from Konjevic
Polje were headed
southward to
Srebrenica, another
Muslim enclave,
but a U.N. official
said up to40people
already were dying
there daily for lack
of shelter from the cold and snow.
Laurens Jolles, a U.N. High Com
missioner for Refugees official who
left Srebrenica on Sunday, said: “I
have seen scenes I would never have
expected in the 20th century.”
He said in Srebrenica, IS miles
southwest of Konjevic Polje, there
were “thousands of women and chil
dren living together in the snow, with
out any shelter, huddled around fires.
Most have not eaten for four to five
days.”
Reports said the U.N. commander
in Bosnia left Srebrenica fora meet
ing with the Bosnian Serb military
commander to press demands that
Serbs fighters allow aid convoys and
the evacuation of wounded.
Murat Efendic, an eastern Bosnian
official in Sarajevo, said he heard by
ham radio that Konjevic Polje fell to
Serbian troops after fierce clashes.
Efendic said 11 tanks and 10 ar
mored vehicles were pursuing retreat
ing Muslim defenders, who were fight
ing a rear-guard action to protect ci
vilians fleeing toward Srebrenica.
Efendic spoke of many casualties
but gave no details. Gen. Philippe
Morillon.head of U.N. peacekeepers
in Bosnia, has set up operations in
Srebrenica. Unconfirmed ham radio
reports from the area said he left for a
meeting with Bosnian SerbGen. Ratko
Mladic and later returned.
Morillon told two French TV sta
tions that he is demanding the Serbs
allow aid convoys in and permit evacu
ation of scores of sick and wounded.
He also wants U.N. military observers
stationed in the area.
But an official at U.N. headquar
AP
ters in Zagreb, Croatia, said the
Bosnian Serb military command re
jected those demands as long as
Morillon stayed in Srebrenica.
A U.N. statement released in
Sarajevo stressed Morillon has every
intention of “remaining in the
Srebrenica area for the forseeable fu
ture.”
The fall of Konjevic Polje will
likely worsen conditions in
Srebrenica. Srebrenica’s population
already has been swelled to over
60,000 by refugees fleeing a Serb
offensive that began two weeks ago.
After routing Muslims from a suing
of villages in the region that borders
Serbia, Bosnian Serbs now have artil
lery trained on Srebrenica.
Lawmakers take more power from Yeltsin
MUbCUW — The Communist*
dominated Congress whittled away
more of President Boris Yeltsin’s
powers Thursday and canceled a na
tional referendum he had sought to
cement his authority.
The criticism was so biting that
Yeltsin walked out of the Grand Krem
lin Palace before the Congress of
People’s Deputies adjourned its sec
ond day of an emergency session.
The votes cutting his power were
preliminary but potentially damaging
to Yeltsin, who has haggled for months
with Parliament Speaker Ruslan
Khasbulatov over who should wield
supreme power me president or par
liament.
Without his present power to issue
decrees, Yeltsin loses the ability to
implement market reforms over the
heads pro-Communist lawmakers.
And without the threat of the pro
posed April 11 referendum, lawmak
ers may try to attack Yeltsin further.
Yeltsin’s supporters in the Con
gress claimed the restrictions, if given
final approval, could make Yeltsin a
lame-duck president. The resolution
could be presented for a final vole
Friday.
“After this Congress, the reforms
could be finished, said Leonid
Gurevich, a pro-Yeltsin lawmaker.
In Washington, Secretary of State
Warren Christopher expressed confi
dence Yeltsin could emerge in a stron
ger position.
“It’s a very dynamic situation,”
Christopher said. “The end of the
story has not been written.”
Yeltsin took the podium in Con
gress on Thursday morning.
“I favor strong presidential power
in Russia, not because I am the presi
dent, but because 1 am convinced that
without it, Russia shall not survive
and rise again,” Yeltsin said.
Sixth body found in trade center bombing
NEW YORK — More than two
weeks after a bomb ripped through
the basement of the World Trade
Center, authorities recovered a sixth
body in the rubble Monday.
The victim was identified as
Wilfredo Mercado, 37, a building
worker who was last seen in the base
ment parking area where the bomb
exploded Feb. 26. The first five vic
tims were found within hours of the
explosion at the 110-story twin tow
ers.
Specially trained dogs had gone
into the blast area eight times over the
weekend searching for Mercado, an
employee of the center’s Vista Hotel.
Workers searching the debris in
the underground parking garage first
saw a boot sticking out of the debris,
and then dug up the body, said Mark
Marchese, spokesman for the Port
Authority of New York and New Jer
sey, which owns the complex.
Mercado’s wife, Olga, has been
notified, Marchese said. The couple
have two children, Yveuc, 10, and
Hcidy,3. Thousands of tons of rubble
sit at the bottom of the huge bomb
crater. The debris was being removed
slowly, in shoebox-size containers.
Three people have been arrested in
the bombing, which injured more than
1,000 people. Published reports said
authorities were looking for at least
three more suspects.
A former cab driver reputedly
sought in the bombing was said by a
neighbor Monday to have “carried
himself like a militant sort of guy”
and dressed in military fatigues and
army boots.
Nebraskan
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_ 1: „ 1993 DAILY NEBRASKAN
Salvadorans told to look
beyond heinous crimes
SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador
— Salvadoran leaders pleaded with
the nation Monday to look ahead and
not to the past, after a commission
named those responsible for the worst
abuses of a 12-year war that killed
more than 75,000 people.
The Commission on the Truth in El
Salvador released findings of a seven
month probe that blamed both mili
tary and rebel commanders for a long
list of abuses. It said the majority were
committed by the armed forces.
The United Stales backed a series
of rightist governments against leftist
rebels.
“We are going to turn our back on
a sad page of our history,” President
Alfredo Cristiani said on TV Sunday
night. He asked for amnesty to “close
the door to all temptations of revenge
or reprisals.”
The 84-member National Assem
bly probaW/would approve an am
nesty.
The Farabundo Marti National Lib
eration Front, or FMLB, rejected any
immediate amnesty.
The Front was formerly the rebel
army. It became a political party un
der terms of the formal peace imposed
last Dec. 15.
It said that first an investigation
should be completed of rightist death
squads blamed for killing thousands
of suspected leftists, and the report’s
recommendations should be carried
out.
The U.N.-appointed commission
asked for the immediate removal of
all military officers cited for human
rights violations, and said all viola
tors should be banned from political
office for at least a decade.
“The army, security forces and
death squads linked to them commit
ted massacres, sometimes of hundreds
of people at a time,” the report read.
The panel of U.S., Colombian and
Venezuelan jurists was set up under
the auspices of the January 1992peace
accord that ended the war.
An FMLB statement said the
report’s linking of the late Roberto
d'Aubuisson to the 1980 murder of
Archbishop Oscar Romero “proves
that the rightist Republican National
ist Alliance is a party with roots in the
death squads and committed grave
crimes.”
Cristiani said Monday that he had
not decided whether to accept the
resignation Friday of Defense Minis
ter Gen. Rene Emilio Ponce.
-World Wire
Rabin: Israel is ‘ready for compromise’
WASHINGTON — Israeli
Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin
emerged from a meeting Monday
with President Clinton “ready for
compromise” and offered to sur
render part of the Golan Heights to
Syria.
Rabin said Israel would not ne
gotiate a pullback in the strategic
territory without knowing Syria’s
peace terms.
Clinton endorsed Rabin’s de
mand. He said peace must include
open borders and full diplomatic
relations. And he pledged to main
tain Israel’s military edge over the
Arabs as an inducement for a com
promise settlement.
The statements by the two lead
ers after a 3 1 /2-hour Oval Office
meeting set the stage for a resump
tion of Arab-Israel i peace talks here
April 20.
Aspin says closings tailored to ‘share pain’
WASHINGTON — Defense
Secretary Les Aspin claimed Mon
day that his proposed military base
closings were tailored to share the
pain of losing 81,000 jobs rather
than to protect political allies.
“We believe they are fair, and
that no particular state was singled
out,” Aspin told the independent
Base Closure and Realignment
Commission.
The Pentagon chief recom
mended on Friday closing 31 in
stallations and realigning or scal
ing back 134 others. Coastal states
such as Florida, California and
South Carolina were hard hit by the
Navy’s efforts to reduce its force.
The list spells bad economic
news for thousands of local com
munities that will lose a total of
24,000 military jobs and 57,000
civilian jobs. Some 140,000 work
ers will be moved.
China’s premier pushes economic reforms
BEIJING — Premier Li Peng
urged China’s legislature Monday
to push ahead with market reforms
and high-speed economic growth,
as the country prepares to enter a
new era of leadership without revo
lutionary elders.
But he made it clear that the
Communist Party has no plans to
ease its authoritarian rule, and de
nounccd efforts to expand democ
racy in Hong Kong before it reverts
to Chinese rule in 1997.
Li, known as cautious, was un
characteristically bullish on eco
nomic development in his speech
to the National People’s Congress.
He called it the nation’s central
task.
