News Digest
DATELINES
Iraq
U.S. planes hit targets in
Iraq; two reported killed
BAGHDAD (AP) - Allied planes
struck civil and military targets in
southern Iraq on Sunday, killing two
people and wounding nine others, the
Iraqi military reported.
The U.S. Central Command con
firmed that American planes had
attacked Iraqi missile batteries, but
gave no word of casualties.
The attacks were in retaliation for
anti-aircraft fire and a surface-to-air
missile attack on “coalition aircraft,”
the Central Command said in a state
ment from its headquarters in Florida.
■ India
India tests missile
despite U.S. appeals
NEW DELHI (AP) - India tested
an upgraded version of its intermedi
ate-range missile Sunday, defying
appeals from the United States to put
its nuclear program on hold to encour
age peace moves with Pakistan.
Information Minister Pramod
Mahajan told a hastily summoned
news conference that the Agni II bal
listic missile was successfully
launched from Wheeler Island off
India’s eastern coast in the Bay of
Bengal, at 10 a.m. local time (12:30
a.m. EDT).
■ New Mexico
FBI searches home for evi
dence of leaked secrets
LOS ALAMOS (AP) - FBI agents
searched the home of a fired Los
Alamos National Laboratory scientist
for nearly six hours Saturday, hauling
away boxes of evidence in their inves
tigation into whether nuclear weapons
secrets were leaked to China.
Wen Ho Lee hasn’t spoken pub
licly since he was fired earlier this year
on suspicions he may have given
nuclear secrets to China.
J -
NATO continues assault on Serbs
Officials concerned with missing refugees
tJfciAjKAUfc, Yugoslavia (At) - Saying it
showed restraint in deference to the Orthodox
Easter holiday, NATO nonetheless hammered
Serb targets in Kosovo on Sunday. Western
officials, meanwhile, expressed growing alarm
over reports of atrocities in the province and
said a possible mass gravesite had been spot
ted.
In Belgium, NATO spokesman Jamie Shea
showed aerial photographs of the site in Pusto
Selo, southwest of the Kosovo capital, Pristina.
He said from the air it appeared the ground had
been freshly turned over, and that the site
looked “somewhat similar” to aerial shots of
mass graves seen during the war in Bosnia.
“I suspect... that we are going to find more
and more evidence of mass graves, mass exe
cutions, some pretty horrific stories,” Defense
Secretary William Cohen said on ABC’s “This
Week.”
Underscoring concerns about conditions
inside Kosovo, Western officials say hundreds
of thousands of Kosovo Albanians are believed
to have fled or been driven from their homes,
but unable to make their way out of Kosovo.
About 400,000 people are hiding in forests
and mountains, terrified of Serb forces, British
Foreign Secretary Robin Cook said Sunday
after talking to an ethnic Albanian political
leader in Kosovo.
Cook reported on the plight and estimated
numbers of ethnic Albanians in Kosovo after
talking by telephone with Hashim Thaqi, a
Kosovo Liberation Army commander and
negotiator at peace talks in Rambouillet,
France. He said NATO holds Yugoslav
President Slobodan Milosevic responsible for
these “victims of his ethnic cleansing.”
British officials also said about 100,000
ethnic Albanian men are apparently missing.
That estimate, based on fewei; than expected
men turning up among refugees crossing into
Macedonia and Albania, revived speculation
that the men had either been massacred by
Serbs, joined the rebel Kosovo Liberation
Army or were being held hostage.
NATO has said the bombing campaign, in
66
I suspect... that we are
going to find more and
more evidence of mass
graves, mass executions,
some pretty horrific
stories”
William Cohen
defense secretary
its 19* day, would go on until Milosevic with
draws Yugoslav and Serb units sent to Kosovo
as part of his crackdowh on the separatist
Kosovo Liberation Army.
Shea, the alliance spokesman, said it was “a
night of relative restraint” on the airstrikes.
“We were mindful of the Orthodox Easter cel
ebrations,” he told reporters.
Belgrade itself was unscathed in overnight
air attacks, but attacks in and around Pristina
were heavy. Pristina’s environs were targeted
more than 50 times late Saturday and early
Sunday, the Serb-run Media Center
said.Meanwhile, on the tense Yugoslav -
Albanian border, Yugoslav forces clashed
again Sunday with Kosovo rebels.
Some of the fighting spilled over into
Albania; about 10 mortars exploded near the
border village of Kremica, according to
Albania’s information minister, Musa Ulqini.
He said the Serb gunners had likely been aim
ing at KLA strongholds on the Kosovo side of
the border. Albania is becoming a major stag
ing ground for NATO action against
Yugoslavia. It has handed over control of its
airspace, ports and military infrastructure to
the alliance, and is ready to accept more NATO
ground troops, Foreign Minister Paskal Milo
said Sunday from Tirana.
Kerrey, Hagel weigh
choices for Kosovo
OMAHA (AP) - Nebraska’s two U.S. senators sat
shoulder to shoulder in front of a studio camera Sunday
morning as they appeared on CBS’ “Face The Nation.”
While seated only inches apart crammed into the
camera’s view, Sens. Bob Kerrey and Chuck Hagel rep
resented on national television die widening division in
the growing debate over what to do about Kosovo.
Both Vietnam veterans are playing key roles by
calling for different kinds of action in the war-torn
region.
Hagel criticized NATO’s decision to rule out the use
of ground forces from the start. Kerrey called for
patience in allowing airstrikes to cripple Serb forces.
Kerrey expressed concerns that perhaps die United
States was ignoring other national security risks in Iraq,
North Korea and China by focusing too much on
Kosovo.
Hagel said he was worried that the United States
was not focused enough on winning the war in the
Balkans.
If ground troops are to be used, Hagel admitted that
most of his fellow Republican senators may oppose the
idea while Kerrey hesitated before he said that his col
leagues in the Democratic party would back it.
Despite their many differences, Kerrey and Hagel
did agree on some points.
Both agreed that NATO needs to do all it can to win
the war in Kosovo. If ground soldiers are to be used,
both said die president needs to properly convince the
U.S. public that they are necessary. Both said partisan
politics should not influence the final decision.
“It’s whether or not (the president) can persuade the
American people that he has the resolve to finish the
job ... that he knows what it is that is necessary to
achieve a victory,” Kerrey said.
If Congress is asked to vote on a resolution support
ing ground troops, the decision must transcend party
lines, Hagel said.
“The blame game that is played all too often in
Washington must be minimized here,” Hagel said. “We
have to be very careful with this. We’ve got to stay
focused on the mission and that is to win.”
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THE DAILY NEBRASKAN
Group promises
to go after clinics
Abortion opponents vow protests soon
BUFFALO, N.Y. (AP) - One
week after October’s sniper killing of
Dr. Barnett Slepian, a prominent
obstetrician who performed abor
tions, abortion opponents said they
would target his clinic and others with
major protests in six months’ time.
Their Operation Save America is
now just days away, and hundreds of
demonstrators are expected to show
up outside clinics, bookstores and
high schools in upstate New York
from Buffalo to Rochester.
“I think God has chosen Buffalo
as a battleground where he’s going to
fight abortion with great strength,”
the Rev. Robert Behn, director of Last
Call Ministries, said in his announce
ment last fall.
Local and national organizers
have sent out 60,000 invitations and
Operation Rescue has encouraged
people to “storm the gates of hell” in
Buffalo from April 18-25.
Leaders say the event also will
denounce what they consider other
ills of society, such as teen sex,
pornography and school violence.
Local participants are being
encouraged to take a more prayerful
approach than they did during the rau
cous clashes of the 1992 Spring of
Life, which resulted in about 625
arrests.
But there’s no way to know if out
of-towners will follow suit, and law
enforcement officials are taking no
chances. Erie County has built a tem
porary jail in an armory to hold any
demonstrators who refuse to give
their names so they can’t be taken
before a judge to have bail set.
Since the 1992 protests, violence
against abortion providers has esca
lated markedly from trespassing and
minor altercations to clinic bombings
and shootings.
Besides Slepian, whose Oct. 23
killing remains unsolved - although a
rifle was found buried on his property
last week ^ eight other doctors have
been shot at since 1993.
Two of them died: Dr. David
Gunn in 1993 and Dr. John Bayard
Britton in 1994, both in Pensacola,
Fla- Several nurses, receptionists and
security officers also have been killed
or injured.
Contractor’s history of
sex offense unearthed
■ The employee had
helped set up Nebraska’s
sex-offender registry.
OMAHA (AP) - A contractor
who helped set up cbmputer pro
gramming for the state’s new sex
offender registry has been found to
be an unregistered sex offender him
self.
The Nebraska State Patrol
became suspicious of Steve C.
Ashley after quit his job in February
after working as a contract employee
for the patrol for about four months,
Maj. GaleT. Griess said.
“Due to the fact that the guy quit
all of a sudden when there wasn’t any
reason for it, it kind of piqued some
people’s notice, and they decided to
check it a little further,” Griess said.
Officials found that Ashley had
been convicted of a felony sex
offense after touching a child in
Council Bluffs, Iowa, in 1994,
Douglas County Sheriff Tim
Dunning said.
Ashley, 35, of Omaha was arrest
ed Friday afternoon by Douglas
County Sheriff’s deputies for being
an unregistered sex offender.
Ashley was involved in the initial
setup of a software program for the
sex-offender registry, Griess said. He
declined to disclose the name of the
company that Ashley worked for.
Griess said the State Patrol ran an
in-state criminal background check
on Ashley but it did not show the
Iowa conviction.
“We don’t like this as well as any
body else does,” Griess said.
Dunning said he fears Ashley
might have sabotaged the sex
offender registry by manipulating
files to block his name or the names
of his friends out of the system.
Griess said that he does not
believe Ashley could have sabotaged
the system because he was always
working with the patrol’s own com
puter programmers. He also said the
computer program that Ashley was
working on was “squashed” before it
became known that he was a sex
offender^
“There was some problems with
some computers working right,” he
said. “It had nothing to do with him
and sabotage.”
Delays in getting the sex-offend
er registry notification system opera
tional had nothing to do with Ashley,
Griess said. The registry is due to go
online June 1.