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About The daily Nebraskan. ([Lincoln, Neb.) 1901-current | View Entire Issue (Feb. 23, 1996)
i . I 5 Ss=- News Digest Friday, February 23, 1996 Page 2 Candidate’s tactics may divide Republican party, officials say WASHINGTON—It was two days before the New Hampshire primary and Pat Buchanan was pacing his hotel room, shaking his head in bewilder ment at a Bob Dole television ad label ing Buchanan “too extreme” to be president. “Why is my old friend doing this to me?” Buchanan asked a visitor. “Go back over this entire campaign. 1 have never said anything harsh about Bob Dole. But he left me no choice.” The wisdom of the decision to cast Buchanan as an extremist is beinghotly debated within the Dole campaign and in broader GOP circles, where many believe that it is Dole who went to extremes with his criticism. Several longtime Dole advisers, for example, have appealed to the Senate majority leader and urged him to aban don the strategy of labeling Buchanan an extremist and instead challenge his views on specific issues such as trade and America’s role in the world. In Denver on Thursday, Dole clearly had Buchanan in mind when he said, “Bob Dole is not some sort of fringe candidate. If you want a polarizer, I’m not your candidate.” And the Dole campaign is running a radio version of the New Hampshire ad in South Caro lina. But late Thursday, Dole agreed to abandon the strategy and be more spe cific in taking issue with Buchanan, according to a senior aide traveling “I’ve always supported the Republican nominee. But I tell you, the name calling is making it very difficult for my people and my movement to support someone who’s called me a lot of names. ” PAT BUCHANAN Republican presidential candidate with the senator who spoke on condi tion of anonymity. The shift, if carried out by Dole, would come in the face of stiff criti cism, even from longtime supporters. “1 do not think it is wise to attack what is a fourth to a third of the Repub lican primary electorate as ipso facto extremist and intolerant,” Ralph Reed, executive director of the Christian Coalition, said. “Democrats have tried that line for years and Christian con servatives not only reject it, but resent it.” As Buchanan campaigned Thurs day in Arizona, he suggested Dole and others who say Buchanan risks divid ing the party ought to look in the mir ror. “I’ve always supported the Repub lican nominee,” he said. “But I tell you, the name calling is making it very difficult for my people and my move ment to support someone who’s called me a lot of names.” Buchanan also isdrawing 1992 Ross Perot supporters and blue-collar vot ers to the GOP ranks. While most GOP operatives predicted Buchanan would suffer if turnout was high, a record number of voters participated in the GOP primary and Buchanan won none theless^'• ' “That’s why these attacks are both stupid and silly,” Buchanan said in an interview. “You bring the Perot and Buchanan people into the Republican Party and it becomes a majority move ment.” Without taking sides in the Dole Buchanan spat, Republican National Committee Chairman Haley Barbour said it was critical not to alienate “the large number of Perot voters and inde pendents and working men and women who are looking to get Clinton out of the White House and knew voting in the Republican primary was the right place to start.” Farrakhan scrutinized after trip to Libya, Iraq WASHINGTON — Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan’s passport will be examined for entry and exit stamps from Iraq and Libya when he returns to the United States, a State Department official said Thursday. Farrakhan and his delegation are due to return to Chicago on Satur day. He*plans to deliver a major address Sunday at the University of Illinois. State Department spokesman Nicholas Bums said: “If they do Find those stamps, they will turn those passports over to the proper authorities; In this case, the Justice Department for a review of whether or not U.S. laws were violated.” Farrakhan’s 18-nation tour in cluded stops in Iraq, Iran, Libya, Nigeria, Sudan and South Africa and Sudan. The Supreme Court ruled in 1970 that the constitution protects the right of Americans to travel any where — but they are prohibited from using their U.S. passports to travel to countries such as Iraq and Libya. Under U.S. law, citizens may not travel to Libya or Iraq without a special validation in their passports. which is granted by the State De Krtment. Bums said he did not lieve Farrakhan made a request, but would not know for certain until his passport was examined. After Farrakhan met with Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi, U.S. of ficials said they were investigating whether he should be forced to reg ister as a representative of Gadhafi ’ s government. “We know that he stood with Gadhafi and condemned the United States and did not raise the fact that Gadhafi is responsible for the deaths of American citizens on Pan Am 103,” Bums said. “We know he stood in Iraq with Saddam Hussein and said very negative things about the United States. So there are a lot of very disturbing aspects of this case.” “I believe Minister Farrakhan wil 1 be welcomed back to the United States enthusiastically by the ma jority of African-Americans,” said Rev. Benjamin Chavis, who with Farrakhan organized the Million Man March. “Some will be critical, but the majority of African-Ameri cas support his right to travel and his right to free speech.” News ■ in a jK | Minute1 Navy halts F-14 jet flights WASHINGTON — The Navy ordered its F-14 fighter jets world wide to stop flying for three days after a crash Thursday in the Persian Gulf, the third catastrophic loss for the Navy’s front-line fighter in less than a month. The pilot and radar intercept officer ejected safely before the early morning crash. They were rescued in the northern gulf by a helicopter from the carrier USS Nimitz from which the F-14 was flying, officials said. An F-14 crashed last Sunday in the Pacific Ocean; another crashed Jan. 29 in Nashville, Tenn. Ten have gone down in the past two years and 32 since 1991, a record at least a little worse than for other planes. Just two days earlier Bacon had said in response to questions about Sunday ’ s crash, in which the two crewmen were kilied, that the Navy saw no pattern in recent F-14 crashes that would call for special safety precautions. Tainted water found in Nebraska WASHINGTON — Agricultural runoff from fertilizer use is occa sionally contaminating drinking water in thousands of communities, including Nebraska, and is posing a special risk to infants, an environ mental group contended Thursday. Nebraska was identified as one of 10 states where more than 10 percent of all private drinking water wells were contaminated with high levels of nitrates. In fact, the state came in sixth with 14 percent of its private water systems contaminated. The study by the Environmental Working Group said 44,313 people drank water from 116 water systems in Nebraska with nitrate levels that violate federal standards. Nitrates can be particularly harmful to infants. Contaminated water if used to mix baby formula can deprive infants of oxygen and result in a condition known as “blue-baby syndrome” that can be fatal, according to health experts. Astronauts to try electricity test CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. —Seven shuttle astronauts blasted into orbit Thursday to attempt a Space Age version of Benjamin Franklin’s kite experiment — unreeling a satellite on the end of a 12.8-mile cord. Columbia, carrying an international crew, rose from its seaside pad at 3:18 p.m. As the shuttle sliced through a hazy sky, Mission Control got a scare when a cockpit light came on, indicating engine trouble that could force the crew to abort the flight. It proved to be a false alarm. On Saturday, in a risky maneuver, the crew will reel out the satellite and try to generate electricity from the half-ton metal ball and its slender cord as they sweep through Earth’s magnetic field at 5 miles per second. The same U.S.-Italian experiment flopped four years ago; the tether jammed on the.reel and the satellite got no farther than 840 feet from the shuttle, producing hardly any electricity. Thousands of Serbs flee Sarajevo as Muslim government takes control VOGOSCA, Bosnia-Herzegovina — “I don’t know where I’m going,” Nebojsa Acimovic said from the win dow of his old truck packed with fur niture, trunks and relatives, joining the stream of embittered Serb refu gees fleeing Sarajevo’s suburbs Thurs day. “Where this sad column stops is my next home.” Thursday was the last day before the Muslim-led government begins to take control of five Sarajevo suburbs — and, in the minds of many Serbs, the last day before the enemy would come to inflict revenge for four years of war. The grim flight was another mourn ful chapter in Bosnia’s tragedy — a war whose sole aim was to take a country where Serbs, Muslims and Croats coexisted for centuries and carve out ethnically homogeneous re gions. This time, it was the Serbs on the move, forced out because of the poli cies of their leaders, who oversaw the brutal purge of Muslims and Croats from much of eastern and northern Bosnia, only to lose five Serb-held districts around Sarajevo at the nego tiating table. Thousands of Serbs headed out of those suburbs Thursday, abandoning their homes in chaos and panic. Some slogged on foot along mud and-snow covered roads in freezing temperatures, their belongings on their backs. Others jammed onto anything that would move — trucks, buses, tractors, horse-drawn carts—splash ing and sliding in long columns that fanned out from Vogosca, the first district the Serbs will lose Friday, and from four other areas. A German shepherd, led by a young boy, began to stumble on a snow covered road. “Make it for just a bit longer,” the boy pleaded, running his hand over the dog’s head. A Bosnian Serb official oversee ing the exodus estimated that 20,000 people were leaving, with more to follow as all Serb neighborhoods are handed over to the Muslim-led gov ernment and its Bosnian Croat part ners by March 19. “This is a human disaster,” Acimovic said. His truck stalled on a frozen track linking Vogosca to another Serb sub urb, Uidza. “What did I do to deserve this exo dus?” he asked, banging his fists against the steering wheel and swear ing at his fortune. In Serb-held Sokolac,25 miles east of Sarajevo, Serbs who had driven 10 hours overnight chopped at the frozen mud at dawn with pickaxes and shov els, frantic to rebury their relatives— some 40 Serb soldiers whose bodies had been exhumed from graves in Vogosca. “This is what matters to me the most; my husband deserves this,” said Milomirka Savic, 28, whose husband Dragan was killed in 1993. The harsh snowstorm only added to her sorrow. “Even the Lord has turned his back on us,” Savic said, sitting and sobbing by a wooden cross. Before the Serbs left Vogosca, many of them stripped their houses of everything — down to the window frames and electric wires — so that their Muslim foes wouldn’t get it. Some even set their houses on fire. The Serbs left behind a virtual ghost town. “What can we expect but revenge?” asked Dragan Maslovaric, caught in a traffic jam along a narrow, muddy road leaving Sarajevo. “The Muslims would shoot us like rabbits.” Panic began to spread through Serb held Sarajevo last Friday, when the 300-man international peace force gave Serb leaders a timetable for a phased handover of the five Serb dis tricts. Residents who had thought they had until March 19 to figure out their future were forced to make quick de cisions based mostly on rumor. The international police and NATO troops began handing out leaflets about the timetable on Monday. “Don’t be lieve the rumors! You can stay in your homes,” said one of the fliers. “Lie: You must leave your homes before the (Muslim-Croat) federation police ar rive. Lie: The federation police will be composed of Islamic fundamental ists.” “What we’re countering is four years of war propaganda, and it ’ s very hard to counter that in four days,” said Alexander Ivanko, spokesman for the international police force. Netnraskan Editor J. Christopher Hain Night News Editors Rebecca Oltmans 472-1766 Melanie Brandert http://www.unl.edu/DailyNeb/ , FAX NUMBER 472-1761 The Daly Nebraskan(USPS 144-080) is published by the UNL Publications Board. Nebraska Union 34,1400 R St., Lincoln, NE 68588-0448 Monday through Friday during the academic year; weekly during summer sessions. 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