Clinton aims to improve D.C.
WASHINGTON (AP)—President Clinton told
District of Columbia residents Sunday he’s dedicated
to making toe nation’s beleaguered capital “a shining
city on the hill for all America.”
“I don’t believe our national government has
. always been the best neighbor to the city of
Washington,” Clinton admitted, but he added: “We
are committed to becoming a better neighbor.”
Mayor Marion Barry said he appreciated
Clinton’s comments.
“I think it was good he came to point out that
the present government has not been good
neighbors,” Barry said during a later, unrelated
White House reception. “I hope that (Senate
Majority Leader) Trent Lott and (House
Speaker) Newt Gingrich hear that.”
Crumbling conditions in the district were
the focus of Clinton’s visit to Metropolitan
Baptist Church, in the heart of the district’s
black community. But the subtext clearly was to
show Clinton himself crossing the invisible bar
riers that make religious worship one of
, America’s most segregated practices.
The visit came as Clinton’s yearlong campaign
for racial reconciliation shifted into a higher gear
after last week’s town hall meeting in Akron, Ohio.
That gathering was followed by several others
convened by Clinton aides - one of which has
drawn fire for having a black-only audience.
That closed, invitation-only event last week
at a Dallas museum, presided over by black
Transportation Secretary Rodney Slater, was
organized by Dallas Municipal Court Judge
Vonceil Hill, a friend of Slater’s.
Sylvia Mathews, deputy chief of staff over
seeing the race effort, said the Dallas meeting
was an “isolated incident” that would not be
repeated. Slater’s spokesman Bill Schulz said
the reaction was an encouraging sign that peo
ple of all races are eager to talk.
“Clearly this was a missed opportunity,”
Schulz said.
Hill told the Dallas Morning News that having
an all-black audience did not hurt the discussion. “I
don’t believe the president has indicated that every
dialogue must start in the same way,” she said.
But Abigail Thernstrom, a conservative
author who took part in the Akron dialogue, told
“Fox News Sunday” that the exclusion of whites
was unfair. She urged Clinton to add divergent
views to his advisory board on race.
“I want to hear the White House say it is
racist,” Thernstrom said. “You can make more
of an effort so we don’t have a monologue here.”
Although Sunday’s event also played to a
largely black audience, aides hoped images of
Clinton reading letters from black children,
singing along with soulful hymns and entering
the debate over the district’s ftiture would nudge
the national conversation beyond the feel-good
platitudes that came out of Akron.
Metropolitan’s pastor, the Rev. Dr. H. Beecher
Hicks Jr., took it there, saying blacks must not use
the legacy of slavery as an excuse for perpetuat
ing wretched conditions in Washington.
“There comes a moment in my life when I must
declare liberation from my past,” Hicks said. “We
will not lay all of our problems at the feet of racism.
Nor will we wink at mismanagement and incom
petence that we have heaped upon ourselves.”
Clinton did not promise new policies or tax
relief for the district. He reiterated his support
for local home rule and pledged to pay closer
attention to the problems of those who live in
the White House’s shadow.
“One of the gifts I hope I and our adminis
tration can leave for the 21 st century is a nation
al capital that is a shining city on the hill for all
America,” he said.
Currently, district government is overseen
by a congressionally appointed control board,
and Congress has final say over the district’s
budget. Many citizens believe the controls exist
because Washington’s population is mostly
black, and the city’s voters have placed mostly
blacks among their leaders.
“Washington has gotten a lot of lectures from
people in national politics about being more
responsible,” Clinton said. “But in the essence of
our Constitution is the idea that responsibility
requires freedom. I want Washington, D.C., to be
able to run its own affairs.”
Clinton said he chose to attend
Metropolitan, with a black membership, rather
than his usual church, the racially diverse
Foundry United Methodist, to encourage more
Americans to worship at least once with people
of different races or faiths. The two churches are
only about 10 blocks apart.
Global warming concerns scientist
| : :1 KYOTO,- Japan (AP) - The American lead
< ing the international scientific effort to track
* global warming says he fears the world may
repeat the mistake it made on ozone - wait for a
near-catastrophe before acting decisively.
“Suddenly, the Antarctic ozone hole
appeared, a huge geophysical change,” climate
scientist Robert T. Watson recalled.
With global warming, he said, “I don’t want
to find a ‘smoking gun’ in quite that way.”
In an interview with The Associated Press,
Watson also warned that the global climate
observation system is deteriorating, just when it
may be needed most, because of budget cuts by
governments in many nations.
“It will degrade our ability to say to what
degree our climate is changing,” said die former
NASA scientist, recently named chairman of
the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change, a U.N.-sponsored network of more
than 2,000 scientists monitoring the global cli
mate.
Watson is participating in the week-old
Kyoto climate change conference, where dele
gates worked behind closed doors Sunday to
reach agreement by Wednesday on a complex
plan to rein in industrial nations’ emissions of
carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.
The gases, mostly from combustion of fossil
fuels, trap heat in the atmosphere.
The IPCC, established in 1988 to coordinate
research on global warming, warned in a major
1995 report that emissions appeared already to
have boosted temperatures slightly - and would
raise them as much as 6 degrees more by 2100 if
not controlled.
That would shift climate zones, make
weather more turbulent and expand oceans,
flooding islands and coasts.
The Kyoto talks are expected to lead to only
limited rollbacks in emissions by 2010 or so.
But “it’s still a critical step,” Watson said. “It
will start to send a message to governments and
industries that they have to get their energy poli
cies right.”
Watson, 49, has the rapid-fire delivery and
untamed beard of a scientist in a hurry. A veter
an research manager, he was a White House sci
ence aide in the first Clinton administration,
and previously worked for NASA for 13 years.
Beginning in 1980, the British-born scien
tist was in charge of the global effort to assess
the “eating aw.ay” by manmade chlorofluoro
. carbons (CpCs) of atmospheric ozone, which
helps protect life on Earth from harmful ultravi
olet rays that can cause skin cancer and other
biological damage.
He notes that some of the same handful of
scientific “skeptics” questioning global warm
ing today had challenged theories about ozone
depletion in the 1980s. Then NASA discovered
the fast-developing ozone “hole” in the late
1980s, and world governments rushed to ban
CFCs.
“Still, we are going to be living with ozone
depletion for another 50 or 60 years,” Watson
said.
Scientists now theorize that the physical
chain reactions of global warming, phenomena
only partly understood, might also produce such
sudden events - a slowdown in Atlantic Ocean
currents, for example, that could drive down
temperatures in Europe.
The lesson, according to Watson: “Yes,
there is some uncertainty over global warming.
... But I see no reason to be complacent behind
scientific uncertainty.”
:-:--—
-—-” I
Provocative
playwright
wins Nobel
STOCKHOLM, Sweden (AP) — Dario
Fo wore a conservative black suit Sunday
when he gave his Nobel Literature Prize lec
ture - but that was about the only way the
noted provocateur conformed to tradition.
As guests entered the ornate auditorium
of the strait-laced Swedish Academy, ushers
as usual handed them texts of the lecture. But
their eyes widened when they turned the
cover page. , , |
Instead of seeing neatly printed para- 1
graphs full of carefully worded thoughts,
they found 25 pages of brightly colored
drawings, some of them unsettling - includ
ing several of pigs and men undergoing
genetic manipulation.
A few words were scrawled amid the
drawings: “provocazione ... ignoranza del
nostro tempo (provocation ... ignorance of
our times).”
“Friends of mine, noted men of letters,
have in various radio and television inter
views declared: ‘The highest prize should no
doubt be awarded to the members of the
Swedish Academv. for havine had the
courage this year to award the Nobel Prize to
a jester,’” Fo said in his introduction.
Then he launched into the speech, extem
porizing as he referred to the same pages the
audience was regarding. From them he spun a
tale of deep affection for his small home
town, outrage at political repression and the
devaluation of life through genetic manipula
tion; he ended with a statement of devotion to
his wife, actress Franca Rame.
The gilded ceiling of the room echoed <
with laughter and applause as Fo demonstrat
ed the qualities shown in some 70 ptyyisf a
torrent of words, burlesque gestures and
noises and the sense that madness is overtak
ing the stage, followed by the realization that
Fo is a craftsman with icy control.
The Nobel Prize lectures are expected by
tradition to last 40 to 45 minutes - and Fo
concluded the chaotic capering exactly on
time.
Fo, author of plays including “Can’t Pay,
Won’t Pay” and “Accidental Death of an
Anarchist,” is admired by many for combin
ing biting social commentary with side-split
ting comedy - and reviled by many others.
The Vatican was distressed by his win
ning the prestigious award; Fo has sharply
satirized the church, notably in “Comic
Mystery,” one of his most famous plays.
For many years, the Italian government
banned his work from state broadcasting
channels and unsuccessfully prosecuted him
on several occasions for allegedly defaming
police and other offenses.
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ALL MATERIAL COPYRkShT 1997
THE DAILY NEBRASKAN
Albright completes first year
PARIS (AP) - It was a year ago
Friday that the telephone rang in her
home in Georgetown. President
Clinton was on the line, asking
Madeleine Albright to be secretary of
state in his second term.
She said yes, of course, and in the
ensuing 12 months has grappled with
postwar Bosnia’s problems, Russia’s
relationship with an expanding NATO,
Iraq’s resistance to U.N. weapons
inspectors and China’s blotted record
on human rights and proliferation of
dangerous weapons technology.
Like her recent predecessors, how
ever, the Czech-born former university
professor is finding that managing
Middle East peacemaking is by far her
toughest challenge.
Over the last quarter-century, the
conflict between die Arabs and Israel
has absorbed all American secretaries
of state, from Henry Kissinger to
Warren Christopher. With mixed
results, almost all of them have flown
exhausting shuttles in the region, pre
scribing formulas for peace that most
of the time were rejected.
All wanted concessions from
Israel. All skirted the explosive ques
tions of eventual Palestinian statehood
and Jerusalem’s future. All assumed
the United States had a vital security
interest in the two sides’ reaching
accords.
As she gets drawn deeper into so
far intractable disputes over land, sov
ereignty and terrorism, heaping one set
of meetings with Palestinian and
Israeli leaders on another, Albright
could be staking her reputation as sec
retary of state more on die Middle East
than on any other foreign policy front
Her counterparts in protracted and
painful diplomacy, Benjamin
Netanyahu, prime minister of Israel,
and Yasser Arafat, leader of the
autonomous Palestinian Authority and
chairman of the Palestine Liberation
Organization, also have much at stake.
Albright put off her first trip to the
Middle East until September, her ninth
month on the job. When she finally
went, she found little basis for concord.
Declaring she would not return just to
“tread water,” Albright nevertheless
has immersed herself deeper and deep
er into the details of peacemaking.
Over the last three weeks, she has 1
traveled twice to western Europe for 1
back-to-back meetings with
Netanyahu and Arafat. She decided I
Saturday to return again in midmonth.
“We will be able, at that stag?, j
think, to move forward,” Albright said
in Geneva.
v . I