Page
2
By The
Associated Press
Edited by Kristine Long
news digest
Netrraskan
Tuesday, February 22,1994
Sarajevo guns silent; diplomacy gets its shot
SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina
—With the threat of NATO airstrikes
averted, U.N. peacekeepers Monday
moved to control the remaining Serb
guns around Sarajevo while diplo
mats turned up the heat for a political
settlement.
Immediate airstrikes against re
maining Serb artillery positions were
unnecessary, NATO and U.N. offi
cials said.
Although some Serb guns remained
in place after the Monday 1 a.m. dead
line, the Serbs were credited with
trying to comply with an ultimatum
that could have put NATO into com
bat for the first time ever.
Monday’s catchword was momen
tum: Use this halt in the siege of
Sarajevo as a model for a wider settle
ment in Bosnia.
“The challenge,” said President
Clinton at a White House news con
ference, “... is to build on this week’s
progress and create a lasting and work
able peace for all the people of Bosnia.”
Clinton said the United States would
renew its efforts to help “reinvigorate
the peace process,” and that Russia
would be a partner.
“We must not let this favorable
moment pass,” Russian Foreign Min
ister Andrei Kozyrev said during a
visit in Hungary in which he stressed
the need for cooperation between
Moscow and the West on Bosnia.
The Bosnian Serbs said Russia’s
stronger role was welcomed. Russia
sent 400 troops to join U.N. peace
keepers in Sarajevo.
“It was not natural that Russia was
out of the whole process,” Bosnian
Serb leader Radovan Karadzic said in
Pale, his power center southeast of
Sarajevo.
Karadzic said the Serb side would
only use its withdrawn weapons for
self-defense, not employ them as some
feared against other towns held by
Muslim-led government forces under
siege by well-armed Serbs.
He said a few weapons were “stuck”
in their positions “but will also be
controlled.”
How informally that could happen
was shown in the snowy hills north
east of Sarajevo. French U.N. troops
arrived in two helicopters to control
several cannons and a howitzer.
They demanded that the Serbs turn
around the howitzer aimed at the cen
ter of Sarajevo, and the Serbs com
plied.
After nightfall Monday, U.N. Maj.
Rob Annink said all sites had been
visited and either brought under U.N.
control or had the weapons w i thdrawn.
“The last scraps of metal are being
put in the regroupment sites,” he said.
NATO emphasized that it would
continue to monitor Serb compliance
and made clear air strikes were still an
option.
“I reaffirm strongly that we will
respond to any further shelling of
-M
The challenge... Is to build on this week’s
progress and create a lasting and workable
peace for all the people of Bosnia.
— Clinton,
U.S. president
Sarajevo, whatever its origin, by an
immediate militant response,” said
French Gen. Jean Cot, commander of
U.N. forces in former Yugoslavia.
Russian Deputy Foreign Minister
Vitaly Churkin, talking to reporters in
Sarajevo after meeting Bosnian Pres
ident Alija Izetbegovic, said Russian
President Boris Yeltsin could take
substantial credit for removing Serb
guns from around the badly shelled
capital.
Yeltsin is to go to Bonn, Germany,
on Tuesday for a meeting with U.S.,
European and U.N. officials to work
on the next steps.
The special U.S. envoy on former
Yugoslavia, Charles Redman, was in
Zagreb, Croatia, on Monday working
on the Croatian aspect of the three
sided war in Bosnia.
The Muslim-led government has
rejected the latest peace proposal. The
proposal calls for dividing the country
among its three ethnic groups.
Relief airlifts and convoys, sus
pended for one day as a precaution,
will resume Tuesday.
Americans fail to win medals Monday
LILLEHAMMER, Norway —
No medals Monday for America—
not for Bonnie and not for Picabo.
A shot at one,
though, for the
U.S. hockey
team after their
first victory of the
Olympics.
A fired-up
American team
blistered Italy for
five first period
goals as they swept into the last spot
of the medals round with a 7-1
victory — not a miracle on ice, but
good enough to advance Team Tie
(1-1-3).
“We’re a team that has respond
ed better to pressure, to having our
backs against the wall,” said U.S.
captain Peter Laviolette. “Tonight
we had to do it and we came out
flying.”
With Peter Ferraro scoring twice,
the U.S. grabbed a 5-0 lead before
the first 15 minutes were gone.
They outshot the Italians 47-16 in
dominating the game.
The hockey team will play unde
Three one-hundreths of a second away...
that was a real strong race for me. That’s
what I’m most happy about.
— Blair,
U.S. speedskater
fcated Finland in the next round.
Jayne Torvill and Christopher
Dean skated in hopes of repeating
1984 — and they came up short.
The Sarajevo gold medal ists settled
for bronze in Lillehammcr.
The gold went to Russians
Oksana Gritschuk and Evgeni
Platov, with their teammates Maia
Usova and Alexander Zhul in—the
reigning world champions — tak
ing the silver.
Spcedskater Bonnie Blair missed
lier record-setting sixth medal by
.03 of a second in the women’s
1,500-meter speedskating, while it
wasn’t close at all for skier Picabo
Street, who finished in 10th place
in the women’s combined after a
second in the downhill portion.
Russia’s Lyubov Egorova earned
¥ ¥
her third gold medal in Lillehammer
to tie the all-time Winter Games
record of six. Egorova anchored the
winning Russian squad in the wom
en’s-20-kilometer cross-country
relay her ninth Olympic race
and ninth medal.
Blair could have become thebig
gest U.S. medal winner in Winter
Games history by finishing in the
top three.
“Three one-hundreths of a sec
ond away ... that was a real strong
race for me,” Blair reflected. Her
time of 2 minutes, 3.44 seconds was
a personal best, and “that’s what
I’m most happy about,” she said.
Blair, who skates for the record
again in the 1,000 Wednesday, fin
ished fourth.
Medals table
1954 LILLEHAUMER
Through Monday, February 21
33 total medals'
Country G S B Tbtal
Russia9 7 3 19
Norway8 6 2 16
Italy3 3 8 14
Germany4 2 6 12
United States4 3 0 7
Canada _ 2 2 2 <
Austria12 2 5
Netherlands_0 13 4
Switzerland_12 0 3
France0 12 3
Kazakhstan0 2 0 2
Japan0 11 2
Finland0 0 2 2
Sweden10 0 1
Belarus 0 10 1 ~~
Britain 0 0 11
Slovenia 0 0 1 1
G-Gold. SSJvr. B Bronw
Savings and loan cleanup nearing $150billion
WASHINGTON — Nearly five
years after the government launched
its cleanup of the savings and loan
industry, the end is in sight, but the
cost to the taxpayers is steep—$ 150
billion and counting.
While the industry is no longer in
financial trouble, echoes of the S&L
disaster remain, like the 1989 failure
of an obscure Arkansas thrift, Madi
son Guaranty Savings and Loan.
Madison’s owner invested in some
rural real estate with a small-state
govemor.who later became president.
On Thursday, Republ icans hope to
turn a congressional hearing on the
performance of the Resolution Trust
Corp., the S&L cleanup agency, into a
forum on President Clinton’s long
ago investment.
The thrift industry now looks like
this: Last year, only 10 S&Ls failed,
the fewest since 1979, and none so far
thisyear.
The industiy—about half its former
size — is profitable. It's earned $8.9
billion since the start of 1992.
And the government bureaucracy
charged with cleaning up the mess is
making plans to finish its work by the
end of next year.
The RTC already has whittled its
workforce from a peak of 8,800 to
6,740 currently. It has wrapped up the
affairs of 680 S&Ls and disposed of
$394 billion in assets.
Clinton in December signed legis
lation providing the agency with $ 18.3
billion to finish its job, bringing the
taxpayer tab for the S&L disaster to
more than $150 billion.
By the time the RTC shuts down, it
expects to have handled an additional
63 failed thrifts now operating under
its control and sold the $64 billion in
assets left in its portfolio.
Washington attorney Lawrence B.
Simons, head of the Federal Housing
Administration in the Carter admin
istration, now is the leading candidate
His main challenge will be selling
assets such as hopelessly delinquent
loans and vacant land. For the most
part, the traditional thrift that offered
customers savings accounts, home
mortgages and little else, has disap
peared. It’s been supplanted by com
mercial banks and mortgage compa
nies who sell their loans to big govern
ment-chartered mortgage buyers.
The survi vine thrifts look like con
sumer-oriented banks, and soon even
the legal distinction between S&Ls
and banks may disappear. The Clinton
administration has proposed merging
the Treasury Department’s Office of
Thrift Supervision into a new Federal
Banking Commission.
Army leaders
storm building,
free hostages
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Army
commandos stormed the Afghan
Embassy late Monday, freeing five
schoolboys and a teacher and killing
three masked Afghan gunmen who
had held them hostage for nearly 40
hours.
I ne kidnappers had every inten
tion of shooting us, but they ... were
killed before they could move,” one of
the boys told state-run TV.
The kidnappers, carrying pistols
and grenades, had demanded $5 mil
lion for themselves and 2,000 truck
loads of food for Kabul, the Afghan
capital, where heavy fighting between
rival Islamic factions has led to severe
food shortages.
The kidnappers said they belonged
to no faction, but wanted to draw
world attention to the suffering of
Kabul’s people.
The raid on the embassy, a white,
two-story house in a posh residential
section of Islamabad, began with a
loud explosion aimed at stunning or
distracting the kidnappers. About 10
commandos then rushed in and fired
furiously for about 15 seconds, killing
the three young kidnappers.
No one else was hurt, said Interior
Secretary Jamshed Burkhi.
The incident began Sunday when
the gunmen hijacked a busload ofboys
and teachers from Peshawar, 120 miles
away, and drove them to Islamabad.
They freed six teachers and 55
schoolboys Sunday and eight more
students earlier Monday.
The Pakistanis refused to pay any
money, but indicated they would ne
gotiate on other issues. The interior
minister offered the gunmen safe pas
sage home if they freed the hostages.
Government officials, police and mil
itary officers traipsed in and out of the
embassy Monday, but negotiations
deadlocked.
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Hundreds killed in Saddam’s death camps
TEHRAN, Iran—Iraqi exiles claim
Saddam Hussein’s regime recently
slaughtered hundreds of prisoners at
the infamous Radwaniych death camp
southwest of Baghdad
Most were Shiite Muslims who
have been rounded up by the Baghdad
government since an ill-fated uprsing
in southern Iraqi right after Saddam’s
Gulf War defeat in early 1991.
Ayatollah Mohammed Bakr al
Hakim, a senior Shiite cleric and lead
ing dissident, and Hussein Sharastani,
who monitors human rights abuses in
Iraq, told The Associated Press in
separate interviews that refugees from
Iraq reported that the Radwaniyeh
executions took place three months
ago.
Many of the victims were buried in
mass graves, they said. But they noted
that hundreds of bodies have been
delivered to their families forburial in
recent weeks — a move apparently
aimed at intimidating the Shiites.
“We know from refugees and eye
witnesses that 150 bodies were deliv
ered to al-Amarah,” a southern Shiite
city, said Sharastani, head of Gulf
War Victims, a human rights group in
Tehran.
Sharastani said he also received
similar reports from other places and
believed as many as 2,000 prisoners
were executed.
“From past experience, we know
that not all the bodies of people exe
cuted arc returned, so we calculate
from the number returned that around
2,000 inmates were executed in
Radwaniyeh.and possibly elsewhere,”
he said.
There was no independent confir
mation of the claims.
Baghdad does not permit outside
observers into Iraq to monitor human
rights, and the few journalists allowed
in are heavily restricted.
Saddam’s regime, dominated by
minority Sunni Muslims, has in re
cent months intensified a campaign oi
repression against the majority Shiites.
Amnesty International, the Lon
don-based human rights organization,
reported in November that hundreds
of people were being rounded up by
military and intelligence units.
“Many died under torture or were
executed cn masse,” Amnesty said.
“Former detainees at Radwaniyeh tes
tified that executions were carried out
regularly throughout 1993.”
