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Friday, February 17, 1995 Page 2
Yeltsin addresses nation,
defends Chechnya assault
MOSCOW — In a dark and
defensive address to the nation,
President Boris Yeltsin berated his
military leaders for big losses and
human rights abuses in Chechnya
but insisted Russia must use force
to defend its unity.
Looking somber but steady,
Yeltsin stood throughout his 61
minute speech to a rare joint ses
sion of parliament, winning only
mild applause from the lawmakers
when he finished.
Following his unsteady arrival
at a meeting of fellow leaders in
Kazakhstan last week, all eyes were
on Yeltsin for signs he might be
unwell or had been drinking.
Yeltsin looked confident as he
strode to the microphone to deliver
his address. He closely followed
his prepared text, rarely looking up
at the lawmakers. At one point, he
paused briefly, apparently losing
his place.
There was little of the old vigor
or great sense of drama.
In addition to Chechnya, most
of the issues he raised were gloomy:
the rise of fascism in Russia, re
newed inflation, a weakeningruble,
a huge budget deficit, rampant
crime, corruption and an ineffec
tive judiciary.
At the opening of his speech,
Yeltsin asked lawmakers to ob
serve a moment of silence for the
victims of the fighting in Chechnya.
Members of the State Duma and
the Federation Council then stood
in the Kremlin’s Marble Hall.
Yeltsin admitted “failures, set
backs and mistakes” in Chechnya
by the Russian armed forces, which
demonstrated the need to acceler
ate military reform. However, he
was adamant about the right to use
force.
“Such blisters like the Medellin
cartel in Colombia, the Golden
Triangle in Southeast Asia and the
criminal dictatorship in Chechnya
do not disappear by themselves,”
he said. “To preserve the sover
eignty and integrity the state can
and must use the force of power.”
Sergei Stankevich, a lawmaker
and former Yeltsin adviser, said he
was disappointed because the
speech offered “no ideas, no break
throughs.”
“The Russian president’s ad
dress ... does not contain a single
new word,” Gennady Zyuganov,
the leader of the Communist Party,
said.
The speech was Yeltsin’s first
major address since he sent 40,000
soldiers into Chechnya on Dec. 11
to force the republic to renounce its
3-year-old independence drive.
Yeltsin said Russia had to re
move the “cancerous tumor of the
Grozny regime” in Chechnya, and
said the republic’s leaders had
turned their homeland into a nest
of criminals.
Rabin, Ara
EREZ JUNCTION, Gaza Strip—
Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin
and PLO chief Yasser Arafat broke a
deadlock Thursday and agreed to step
up talks on expanding self-rule in the
West Bank.
Rabin promised to ease a travel
ban and permit 15,000 Palestinians
in the West Bank and Gaza Strip to
return to jobs in Israel next week. The
move came after Arafat arrested mili
tant opponents of the peace talks and
created a military court to try those
suspected of attacking Israel.
Rabin also proposed that Arafat' s
self-rule government take over the
running of the West Bank city of
Jenin. But Palestinians were cool to
the idea because he suggested this be
done without Israeli troops pulling
out.
Rabin told reporters both sides were
committed to implementing the sec
ond stage of the Israel-PLO autonomy
accord—troop withdrawal from Pal
estinian towns in the West Bank and
Palestinian elections.
Arafat did not speak to reporters,
fat break d
but Palestinian Economics Minister
Ahmed Qureia confirmed the two
sides agreed to step up negotiations.
“The result of the meeting was less
than we expected, but I think it broke
the ice and ended a crisis,” Qureia
said.
Rabin and Arafat agreed to meet
again in three weeks, then a week
after that.
Under the autonomy accord, Israel
was to have completed a troop pullout
from West Bank towns by July 1994
so Palestinians could hold general
elections. Rabin delayed withdrawal
after Islamic militants carried out at
tacks, most of them suicide bomb
ings, which have killed 56 Israelis
since October.
Just before the summit, Arafat
named five judges to a special mili
tary court that will try suspected as
sailants. Palestinian police rounded
up eight followers of Islamic Jihad,
the group responsible for a Jan. 22
bombing that killed 21 Israelis.
But Rabin said he still wasn’t sat
isfied with the performance of the
eadlock
Palestinian police and would keep
pushing Arafat to do more to foil
attacks on Israelis.
Meanwhile, he said, Israel is will
ing in every respect but one to give
Arafat immediate administrative con
trol of Jenin, a Palestinian town of
50,000 in the northern West Bank
where there has been relatively little
unrest in recent years.
“Let’s take Jenin, and let the
Palestinian authority run it as far as
municipal and economic matters are
concerned ... but with our full con
trol over security,” Rabin told re
porters.
Palestinians want Israeli troops to
transfer security to Palestinians as
they did in the Gaza Strip and the
West Bank town of Jericho, the two
areas Arafat controls.
However, Palestinians said they
would accept a gradual pullout from
West Bank towns that would begin
with relatively quiet cities and leave
troublespots to the end, as long as
withdrawal was completed within
three months.
Tornado hits Alabama trailer park
ARAB, Ala. — A tornado ripped
across northern Alabama before dawn
Thursday, killing at least three people
and injuring more than 100. Teams
looking for more victims in the rubble
found a baby unharmed beneath two
wrecked trailers.
The dead included a 4-year-old
girl, the coroner said.
About an hour before the tornado
hit, lightning struck the office of the
National Weather Service in Hunts
ville. The service’s Birmingham of
fice was able to issue a warning at 5
a.m., minutes before the twister raced
through Arab, but police didn’t have
time to warn everyone.
“Normally they give us a siren
warning, but they didn’t this morn
ing,” Arab resident Karen Berry said.
“There was nothing.”
There was just the howl of the
wind in the dark — sending debris
smashing through windows, tearing
off roofs, pulling trees from the soil
and demolishing trailers, homes and
lives.
In the aftermath, rescue crews
searched for people possibly trapped
in the wreckage, rain pounded flat
tened bams, pink insulation dripped
from trees and yet more wind shook
cars creeping over littered roads.
No more victims were found —
just one small miracle.
“We found a 1-year-old baby un
der two trailers,” fireman Robert
Reynolds said. “He was sitting there,
not making a sound.”
The last deadly funnel cloud that
struck Alabama hit on Palm Sunday a
year ago, killing 22 people, most in a
church about 60 miles from Arab.
When the Huntsville weather
service office went down, Birming
ham took over watching the radar
and the weather service said there
was no delay in picking up the tor
nado and issuing a warning.
Police got the warning through
deputies in a nearby county and were
in the process of sending out siren
vehicles to alert residents when the
tornado hit, Lt. Danny Harvell said.
In Washington, Sen. Howell
Heflin, D-Ala., called for a complete
accounting from the weather service.
Four Army Rangers die
during exhaustive training
EGLIN AIR FORCE BASE, Fla.
— Four soldiers died of exposure
after struggling through chilly, chest
deep swamp waters in the last days of
a two-month effort to become Army
Rangers.
The soldiers, training to be among
the Army’s elite warriors, had al
ready undergone stressful testing in
the forest, desert and mountains to
prepare them for extreme conditions
faced in warfare.
They had been out in the swampy
grounds of Eglin Air Force Base in
the Florida Panhandle since Satur
day, and eight began suffering from
hypothermia Wednesday. Hypother
mia is caused by severe loss of body
heat, leading to extreme fatigue,
drowsiness, disorientation, and some
times death.
Seven were taken to a clinic, where
three of them died late Wednesday.
The rescue effort was hampered by
foggy weather. The body of the eighth
was found at about daybreak Thurs
day.
“Ranger training is ... one of the
most difficult courses the Army of
fers,” said A1 Blanchard, a former
Ranger and a spokesman at Fort
Benning, Ga., Ranger headquarters.
“The whole course is designed to
push the individual. There is very
little sleep involved, a lot of stress.
It’s not unusual for the individual to
keep going on sheer guts.”
Blanchard said he didn’t know
what the water temperature was, but
“it doesn’t have to be particularly
. cpld to suffer from hypothermia.”
The Florida Panhandle had just
warmed up this week after acold snap
with highs in the 40s and lows at or
below freezing. The National Weather
Service estimated that water tempera
tures for this time of year range in the
mid to upper 50s.
The soldiers began boat training
Wednesday morning and were pa
“Ranger training is...
one of the most difficult
courses the Army offers. ”
■
AL BLANCHARD
Ranger spokesman
trolling in the swamps by mid-after
noon. They began building rope
bridges as they moved into deeper
waters.
At about 5:30 p.m., instructors
noticed one student was showing signs
of hypothermia, and by the time a
helicopter arrived, several others
started showing symptoms and were
taken to a clinic, said officials at die
724-square-mile base.
Three of the survivors were in
good condition and the fourth was
listed as stable and in intensive care.
Names and home units of the sol
diers were not released pending noti
fication of relatives.
The deaths were being investigated
by the Army Safety Office out of Fort
Rucker, Ala.
Ranger school, which is based at
Fort Benning and has camps in
Dahlonega, Ga.; Fort Bliss, Texas;
and Eglin, trains about 3,000 soldiers
in leadership and small-unit skills
each year. The last casualty at the
Florida camp was a drowning that
occurred in 1985. The soldiers come
to Fort Benning near-Columbus, Ga.,
from bases all over the world.
Monica Manganaro, a spokes
woman at Fort Benning, said candi
dates are physically tested during a
week of screening before Ranger
school begins.
“They have to be in good physical
condition and even better mental con
dition,” she said.
jSjWj News...
mP* in a Minute
Women smokers want to quit
ATLANTA—About three-quarters of women who smoke say they
want to quit but can’t, federal health officials said Thursday.
In a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study involving
more than 7,000 female smokers, about 73 percent said they wanted to
quit and 75 percent reported at least one sign of addiction.
Of those who said they had tried to stop smoking in the past year, 80
percent said they failed. Only 2.5 percent of all smokers successfully
quit each year, and the rates are about the same for women and men.
About 22 million of the nation’s 48 million adult smokers are
women.
“Quitting smoking may be the most important thing women can do
to improve their health,” said Dr. Wanda Jones, acting director of the
CDC’s Office of Women’s Health. '
To determine addiction, the CDC asked women whether they needed
or were dependent on cigarettes; needed to smoke more to get the same
effect; felt unable to cut back even though they’ve tried, and got sick
when they did so.
A third of the women smokers said they felt sick and suffered
withdrawal symptoms when they tried to cut back or quit.
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