NewsDigest
Netanyahu denies wrongdoing
Police urge attorney general to indict former Israel prime minister
JERUSALEM (AP) - Delivering
an motional television appeal, for
mer Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu angrily denied any
wrongdoing Tuesday after police
urged he attorney general to indict
him and his wife on corruption
charges.
During a 50-minute interview,
Netanyahu occasionally used props
and paused dramatically to empha
size his innocence and to accuse
police of trumping up the charges
against him.
Police said Netanyahu and his
wife, Sara, accepted favors from a
contractor, kept 700 presents meant
to be state property, including a gold
en letter opener from U.S. Vice
President A1 Gore, and tried to influ
ence others to alter their testimony in
the case.
If tried and convicted of the most
serious charge, obstruction of jus
tice, Netanyahu could be sentenced
to up to seven years in prison.
Netanyahu, 50, who was tossed
out by voters 10 months ago,
launched a counter-offensive against
the police in an apparent attempt to
rescue his political future.
During the TV appearance, the
former leader mentioned his son and
recently deceased mother as he
denied the allegations - even, at one
point, brandishing a supposedly
valuable brooch which he said an
appraiser had valued at $ 1.
“The whole thing is ridiculous,”
Netanyahu said during the prime
time interview.
Apparently relishing the under
dog role, the 50-year-old politician
accused police of making up the
charges, saying he was being perse
cuted by the political establishment
because of his hardline views.
Shlomo Ben-Ami, the police
minister, denied police acted in bad
faith.
“The police did not, do not, and
as long as I am responsible for
police, will not have a political agen
da,” he said.
Police said that a seven-month
investigation indicated that
Netanyahu should be charged with
fraud, attempted misuse of state
funds, breach of trust and obstruc
tion of justice.
His lawyer, Yaacov Weinroth,
called the police report “sloppy.”
The attorney general, Elyakim
Rubinstein, will make the final deci
sion on whether to indict.
Asked what the most difficult
moment was since the probe began,
Netanyahu said his 8-year-old son
Yair was tormented at school
because of the probe and his mother,
Cila, died with the charges still hang
ing over him.
OPEC OKs increase
in oil production
Iran voices opp
VIENNA, Austria
(AP) - OPEC ignored
objections of its second
biggest member Tuesday
and agreed to increase oil
production, but perhaps
not enough to bring down
gasoline prices in the
United States.
In a rare departure
from its consensus
approach, ministers of the
11-nation cartel were
expected to announce this
morning that nine mem
bers would raise produc
tion by a total of at least
1.45 million barrels a day.
That appears to be well
short of what analysts have
said would be needed to
stop oil and gasoline
prices from continuing a
rise that has seen crude
triple over the past 12
months.
The Clinton adminis
tration had been lobbying
for a rise of 2 million to 2.5
million barrels a day to
bring down gasoline prices
that in the United States
have risen from below $ 1 a
gallon just over a year ago
to an average of almost
$1.60.
An official statement
was awaited to explain the
action after a six-hour
meeting at OPEC’s head
quarters in Vienna, broke
up Tuesday night without a
unanimous decision.
Iran, the No. 2 OPEC
oil producer, refused to
endorse the action, saying
the Organization of
Petroleum Exporting
Countries should not be a
position in non-consensus vote
” Our difference is on
principle and not on merely a
few barrels."
Bijan Namdar Zangeneh
Iran’s oil minister
ruooer stamp.
The agreement also
excludes Iraq, which never
was part of the original
production cuts last year
that sent prices surging.
Bijan Namdar
Zangeneh, Iran’s oil minis
ter, told reporters he
believed production
should be increased by
less than 1 million barrels
a day and objected to
attempts by others to push
through an agreement to
boost output by some 1.7
million barrels.
While Zangeneh did
not mention other OPEC
countries by name, Saudi
Arabia - OPEC’s leading
producer - had led the
drive to raise output as
much as 7 percent from
official quotas, or by 1.7
million barrels.
“Our difference is on
principle and not on mere
ly a few barrels,”
Zangeneh told reporters
after the meeting broke up.
“In my view, OPEC is not
an organization to rubber
stamp a decision already
made.”
Zangeneh insisted that
only a limited increase in
output was justified and
that there is no shortage of
crude oil.
urfcC pumps more
than 26 million barrels of
crude each day, or about
35 percent of the world's
supply. Key non-OPEC
producers, such as Mexico
and Norway, have said
they were watching to see
what OPEC will do before
adjusting their own output.
This was not the first
time Iran refused to join in
a decision by its OPEC
colleagues. In 1992, Iran
refused to endorse an
agreement that the rest of
OPEC made to cut produc
tion by 668,000 barrels a
day, arguing that the cuts
didn’t go far enough.
Alarmed at the surge in
oil prices, which sent heat
ing oil costs soaring in the
winter and gasoline prices
skyrocketing, the United
States had lobbied hard in
recent weeks for OPEC to
relax its constraints on
production.
U.S. Defense
Secretary William Cohen
travels next week to the
Middle East. A Pentagon
spokesman said Tuesday
that Cohen would call for
increased oil production
when he meets counter
parts from such OPEC
members as Saudi Arabia,
Kuwait and Qatar.
Supreme Court limits
power of police tips
■ Search and seizure
from anonymous tips
curtailed in decision.
WASHINGTON (AP) -
The Supreme Court sharply
curtailed police power to rely
on anonymous tips to stop and
search people. The unanimous
ruling Tuesday was a victory
for civil rights organizations
but a police group said the
nation’s streets may become
more dangerous.
The court said Miami
police acted unlawfully when
in 1995 they searched and
arrested a juvenile for carrying
a gun after an anonymous tele
phone caller said someone
matching his description had a
concealed weapon.
“The question is whether an
anonymous tip ... is, without
more, sufficient to justify a
police officer’s stop and frisk of
that person,” Justice Ruth
Bader Ginsburg wrote for the
court. “We hold that it is not.”
She said such “bare-bone
tips” generally do not give
police the reasonable suspicion
of criminal conduct needed to
justify the type of stop-and
ffisk search the nation’s highest
court has allowed for the last 32
years.
The court’s unanimity
caught some legal experts by
surprise. Over the past two
decades, a series of conserva
tive-led rulings dramatically
narrowed protections offered
by the Constitution’s Fourth
Amendment ban on unreason
able police searches and
seizures.
“This was a slam-dunk vic
tory for individual rights,” said
James Tomkovicz, a University
of Iowa law professor who rep
resented the American Civil
Liberties Union and other
groups in a friend-of-the-court
brief attacking searches based
on anonymous tips.
“The court made clear it is
not going to sacrifice personal
privacy whenever the magic
word ‘firearm’ is mentioned,”
he said. “That message was
made even more emphatic by
the fact the court was unani
mous.”
The liberal groups had
attracted an unlikely ally - the
National Rifle Association,
whose friend-of-the-court brief
had urged the justices to protect
“the peaceful carrying of a
firearm.”
But the National
Association of Police
Organizations reacted angrily.
“We are disappointed and,
frankly, baffled by the court’s
decision,” said Robert Scully,
the group’s executive director.
“As a consequence of this
ruling, the danger to law
enforcement officers and the
general public will significant
ly increase, and we fear that
more officers and more mem
bers of the public will be
assaulted and murdered,” he
said.
In the Miami case, a youth
identified in court records only
as J.L. was arrested as a result
of an anonymous tip that three
black youths were standing
outside a pawn shop and that
the one in a plaid shirt was car
rying a gun.
The court ruled that the
search of J.L. violated his
Fourth Amendment rights and,
as a result, the seized gun can
not be used as evidence against
him.
The decision upheld a
Florida Supreme Court ruling
that had suppressed use of the
gun as evidence.
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■ Georgia
Train hits school bus,
two children killed
TENNGA, Ga. (AP) - A train
slammed into a school bus Tuesday
morning at an unmarked crossing
near the Georgia-Tennessee line,
splitting it in two and killing two
children. The five other elementary
school pupils on board were critical
ly injured.
No one on the CSX freight train
was injured.
The Murray County school bus
was picking up children to go to
Northwest Elementary School north
of Chatsworth. The full-size bus had
crossed into Polk County, Tenn., to
turn around when it was struck by
the train at about 7 a.m.
■ Florida
Cuban boy’s relatives still
at odds with government
MIAMI (AP) - With a govern
ment deadline fast approaching,
Elian Gonzalez’s Miami relatives
Tuesday continued to resist
demands that they promise in writ
ing to surrender the boy if they lose
their court fight to keep him in the
country.
Lawyers for the family and the
U.S. government met in the morning
without resolving the impasse,
despite threats from immigration
authorities to remove the 6-year-old
Cuban boy.
“They said, ‘If you don’t sign the
paper, we remove Elian.’They don’t
tell us how,” family spokesman
Armando Gutierrez said. Late
Monday, the Immigration and
Naturalization Service warned that
Elian’s temporary permission to stay
in the United States would be
revoked at 9 a.m. Thursday unless
the relatives provide the written
guarantee.
■ Washington, D.C.
Reno says she didn’t approve
demolition of compound
WASHINGTON (AP) -
Attorney General Janet Reno testi
fied Tuesday that she never gave
approval for tanks to demolish the
Branch Davidians’ compound near
Waco, Texas - and does not believe
the FBI intentionally did so - say
lawyers for the sect who deposed
her for their wrongful-death lawsuit
against the government.
But the Davidians’ lead counsel,
emerging from the rare deposition
of an attorney general, said Reno
was less than forthcoming in dis
cussing whether the FBI intended to
dismantle the complex during its
tear-gassing operation - an interpre
tation rejected by Reno’s aides.
“The only issue where we felt
that she was less than candid was on
the demolition,” Houston lawyer
Michael Caddell said outside the
Justice Department. “The problem
that she’s got is she testified to
Congress in 1995 that the damage
done to the building was the result
of tear-gas insertion. And I think it’s
very difficult for her to back off of
that testimony.”
■ Austria
Avalanche buries skiers,
at least 11 dead
NIEDERSILL, Austria (AP) -
An Alpine avalanche as wide as five
football fields buried more than a
dozen skiers underneath tons of
snow Tuesday, killing at least 11
people, rescue officials said.
Ten people were found dead in
the area of the huge snow slide south
of Salzburg. Another died later in a
hospital. Two others were able to
free themselves while rescuers dug
out a third survivor, state television
said in its evening newscast.
