Monday, February 7,2000
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Editor: Lindsay Young
(402)472-1763
GEKHI, Russia (AP) - Federal
troops'have seized the last rebel
stronghold in Grozny, acting
President Vladimir Putin said
Sunday, pronouncing an end to
Russia’s months-long drive to take
the Chechen capital.
Russian forces, meanwhile, tried
to stop rebels heading to their moun
tain strongholds, shelling villages
where rebels had taken shelter.
Russian planes and helicopter gun
ships blasted militant positions in the
Vedeno and Argun gorges, key rebel
routes toward the mountains.
* Federal troops took control of the
western Zavodskoi district of the cap
ital and raised the Russian flag over
an administration building there,
Putin said.
“A short while ago, the terrorists’
last bastion of resistance was seized,”
Putin said in an interview with state
controlled ORT television. “So, we
can say the operation to liberate
Grozny is over.”
The claim could not be indepen
dently confirmed, and Russian forces
have previously claimed to control
parts of the Chechen capital, only to
be pushed back by rebel ambushes.
It was unclear how many rebels
remained in Grozny, where they have
taken refuge in the shattered remains
of buildings and moved freely
through underground pipes. About
3,000 broke out of the capital last
week, rebels said, and the military
reported that small groups were still
showing stiff resistance to Russian
troops all week, including Sunday.
The situation was stable enough
to begin deploying regular police in
the city, said Col. Gen. Ivan Golubev,
a deputy interior minister. Several
dozen officers have already arrived
to prepare offices and patrol parts of
the capital, he said.
Russian leaders have put a huge
emphasis on the operation to take
Protests mar start
of new government
VIENNA, Austria (AP) - Right
wing populist Joerg Haider said
Sunday the new Austrian government
in which his party shares power will
take appropriate measures to com
pensate Holocaust victims.
In a televised interview, Haider
also promised to moderate his tough
talk and refrain from meddling in the
coalition Cabinet. He will not hold a
Cabinet post.
Haider’s comments came two
days after the new government -
made up of his far-right Freedom
Party and the center-right Austrian
People’s Party - was sworn in by a
stone-faced President Thomas
Klestil.
The coalition came together
despite a wave of protests and moves
by the European Union and other
nations to isolate Austria diplomati
cally.
Haider’s remarks Sunday were
relatively conciliatory compared to
the verbal salvos he has fired recent
ly against foreign leaders.
He told his interviewers that the
previous government led by Austria’s
Social Democrats had not really dealt
with the Nazi past, including issues
like the compensation of forced
laborers. He said the new govern
ment would seek to redress their
grievances and those of Holocaust
victims.
“Where we have inflicted great
injustice on our Jewish fellow citi
zens or wiped out their families, we
must take pertinent measures,” he
said.
Haider won international notori
ety for statements praising Adolf
Hitler’s “orderly employment” poli
cies and praising veterans of the
WafFen SS as “decent people of good
character” - comments for which he
has since apologized.
The rise to power of his party has
polarized a society with dark memo
ries of defeats in two world wars.
Referring to his past vitriolic
attacks on other Austrian leaders,
Haider s.aid his party would refrain
from “oppositional reflexes and
unnecessary sharpness ... and prove
that, factually, we can reason very
well.”
Sunday, Israeli Interior Minister
Natan Sharansky announced that
Haider is banned from entering
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f{ A short while ago, the terrorists’last
bastion of resistance was seized. So, we
can say the operation to liberate
Grozny is over.”
Vladimir Putin
acting Russian president
Grozny, the key political prize in the
war in the breakaway republic. But
the militants have stressed their
intention to carry on a long-term,
guerrilla war, and the fall of their cap
ital would not spell the end of the
conflict.
Rebels who broke out of Grozny
last week were regrouping in villages
southwest of Grozny on Sunday for
the journey south to the mountains,
where thousands of other militants
are believed to be based.
About 2,000 rebels arrived
overnight in the villages of Valerik,
Zakan-Yurt and Gekhi-Chu - all
about 15 to 18 miles from Grozny,
local residents said. They were met
by other militants who came from the
mountains to lead them back to rebel
strongholds in the southern Argun
and Vedeno gorges.
After the rebels left Valerik for
the mountains, Russian forces moved
Sunday into conduct mopping-up
operations. They also shelled the
nearby village of Katyr-Yurt, which
the rebels had also left, residents said.
Photo By FDB/Newsmakers
WHILE AUSTRIAN President Thomas Klestil is swearing in the new govern
ment in Vienna, Austria, on Friday, Several thousand people demonstrate
against OVP (People’s Party) leader Wolfgang Schussel’s coalition with
rightist Joerg Haider’s FPO (Austrian Freedom Party).
Israel.
The ban is the latest formal Israeli
protest against the Freedom Party’s
inclusion in government. Israel
recalled its ambassador from Vienna
as soon as the Austrian coalition was
approved.
Sharansky said Haider has
expressed an interest in visiting
Israel, and that his party tried unsuc
cessfully to hire a local public rela
tions firm to spruce up his image
there.
On Sunday, about 300 demon
strators gathered outside the Austrian
embassy in Paris, shouting “Haider,
fascist, collaborator.”
And on Saturday night, anti
Haider demonstrators scuffled with
police in downtown Vienna for a sec
ond night, despite appeals for calm
from Klestil.
First lady launches
campaign for Senate
PURCHASE, N.Y. (AP) - With
the president beside her and 2,000
supporters chanting her name,
Hillary Rodham Clinton formally
launched her campaign Sunday to be
U.S. senator from New York, a state
she has lived in only a month.
The race for the seat being vacat
ed by fellow Democrat Daniel
Patrick Moynihan is likely to pit
Clinton against New York Mayor
Rudolph Giuliani in what could be
one of the most flamboyant political
campaigns in memory.
No other first lady has ever run
for public office.
“I am honored today to announce
my candidacy for the U.S. Senate
from New York,” Clinton said as
shouts of “Hillary! Hillary!” rang
through a university gymnasium
close to her new home in the suburbs
north of New York City.
“1 may be new to the neighbor
hood, but I’m not new to your con
cerns,” she said, while President
Clinton, her mother and daughter
Chelsea sat beaming behind her.
The president is said to be one of
his wife’s top advisers.
“I often return to one thing I said
back then, that politics is the art of
making possible what appears to be
impossible. I still believe that today.
We can do what seems impossible if
we have the vision, the passion and
the will to do it together,” Clinton
said, recalling a speech she made at
her college commencement at
Wellesley in 1969.
Clinton described her commit
ment to better schools, better health
care and better gun control. But she
also took pains to describe herself as
a “new Democrat.”
“I don’t believe that government
is the source of all our problems - or
the solutions to them,” she said.
Recent polls have shown Giuliani
with a slight lead over Clinton and
tied with her among women voters.
Giuliani has not made a formal
campaign announcement, but he
came close on ABC’s “This Week,”
one of the five TV talk shows he
appeared on Sunday.
When asked if he planned to run,
he said: “Looks that way.”
■ Nevada
Alaska Airlines jet returns
to airport after motor problem
RENO, Nev. (AP) - An Alaska
Airlines MD-80 jet returned to Reno’s
airport shortly after takeoff on
Saturday night alter its pilot reported
problems similar to those under inves
tigation in last Monday’s crash off the
California coast, officials said.
The Seattle-bound flight left
Reno/Tahoe International Airport at
about 7 p.m. and returned about eight
minutes later when the pilot reported
motors controlling the plane’s hori
, zontal stabilizer were operating
improperly, said Jack Evans, an
Alaska Airlines spokesman.
The Saturday night flight made a
rough landing, but none of the 140
people aboard were injured, airport
officials said.
On Tuesday, an American Airlines
MD-83 reported trouble with its hori
zontal stabilizer after takeoff"and safe
ly returned to Phoenix.
■ Germany
Express train derails
near Cologne, nine killed
BRUEHL, Germany (AP^-An
overnight express train derailed at a
switch south of Cologne early Sunday,
killing at least nine passengers and
injuring more than 100, authorities
said.
Police said the train may have
been speeding.
The sleeper train carrying about
300 passengers had been traveling j
from Amsterdam, the Netherlands, to
Basel, Switzerland, when it hurtled
off the tracks in the small town of ’
Bruehl, German railways spokesman
Manfred Ziegerath said.
One car flipped onto its side, and
another was crushed against a steel
post.
■ Russia
Passenger airliner hijacked
MOSCOW (AP) - A passenger
airliner hijacked from Afghanistan
and sent on a tense, meandering trip
across Central Asia and Europe land-: i
ed Sunday night at Moscow’s
Sheremetyevo airport complex, offi
cials said.
The plane, carrying at least 140
people, including an estimated 20
hijackers, landed about 9:20 p.m. as
trucks and buses loaded with Russian
commandos, police and rescue work
ers converged on the airports.
Sniper teams moved into the
Sheremetyevo-1 terminal, and securi
ty was heavy in the area.
Russian news reports said the
plane intended to land in Moscow
only to refuel, but that could not be
immediately confirmed.
The hijackers’ identities remain
unknown, and their demands and
final destination was unclear.
■ Washington
Clinton prepares final budget
of his eight-year term
WASHINGTON (AP) - As
President Bill Clinton prepared to
reveal a $1.84 trillion farewell budget
full of politically popular programs
from health care to education, the
administration warned Sunday that
Republican efforts to pass big tax cuts
would face another presidential veto.
Clinton’s final budget coming out
today covers the 2001 fiscal year that
begins Oct. 1. It promises a replay of
last year’s battle with the GOP-con- |
trolled Congress over what to do with
the $3 trillion or more in surpluses the
booming economy is projected to pro
vide over the next decade.
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