News Digest
Strong-armed Fujimori quits
■The president had been in power for
10 years; his rule was more autocratic
than democratic,critics say.
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
LIMA, Peru - President Alberto
Fujimori resigned in a letter to Congress
on Monday, ending a 10-year reign in
which he crushed leftist insurgents and
tamed runaway inflation - but also bul
lied the country’s democracy to fit his
iron-fisted rule.
Fujimori’s resignation caught the
country’s leadership by surprise and left a
trail of confusion over who would suc
ceed him. The president was on a visit to
his ancestral homeland Japan and
stepped down in a letter to Congress
President Valentin Paniagua.
MI submit to you, Mr. President of
Congress, my formal resignation as presi
dent of the republic,” Fujimori wrote in
the two-page letter, a copy of which was
faxed to The Associated Press by the
Government Palace.
“I am the first to recognize that there
is a new political scenario in the country,”
said Fujimori in the letter.
It was not clear when - or if - Fujimori
would return to Peru. Japanese officials
said Fujimori had not requested political
asylum. But Mary Ellen Countryman, a
spokeswoman for the U.S. National
Security Council, said Monday that
Peruvian officials have informed the U.S.
government that Fujimori would stay in
Japan indefinitely.
Paniagua said Congress would be
called into session Tuesday to take up the
resignation.
Fujimori’s letter spoke of a "new cor
relation of forces.” It was an apparent ref
erence to the fact that opposition law
makers won control of Congress last
week.
The letter did not elaborate, but a
motion had been placed before the 120
seat legislature to remove Fujimori as
president on constitutional grounds of
"moral incapacity.”
Fujimori acknowledged "errors” dur
ing his 10 years of rule but insisted he had
always acted in Peru’s best interests. He
said he was stepping aside for the good of
die country.
Fujimori had announced in a written
statement earlier Monday that he would
resign within 48 hours.
Fujimori was initially popular for
defeating the powerful Marxist Shining
Path and Tupac Amaru Revolutionary
Movement guerrillas - which controlled
much of Peru’s countryside and shanty
towns, and for ending annual inflation
that had topped 7,000 percent when he
took office in 1990.
But his popular support was eroded
by lingering poverty, weariness with his
autocratic ways and his close ties to his ,
shadowy spymaster Vladimiro
Montesinos, who critics charge with cor
ruption and human rights abuses.
The signature moment of his auto
cratic, hands-on leadership style came in
1996 when he personally directed the res
cue of 74 hostages held by Tupac Amaru
rebels in the Japanese ambassador’s resi
dence in Lima. The siege ended with
commandoes storming the building,
killing all 14 rebels.
Fujimori and Montesinos had con
trolled almost all aspects of Peruvian
society - from congress to the courts to
television stations - and his resignation
has set off a power struggle to fill the vac
uum he leaves.
It was the release in September of a
videotape apparently showing
Montesinos bribing an opposition con
gressman that launched die scandal that
prompted Fujimori’s downfall.
Fujimori’s trip abroad had fueled
speculation at home that he would go
into exile in Asia.
Second Vice President Ricardo
Marquez said Sunday that he was ready
to assume the presidency and lead Peru
to special elections on April 8.
But the issue of succession was cloud
ed by controversy.
Under the constitution, the first vice
president takes over when the president
resigns. But First Vice President Francisco
Tudela resigned after Montesinos
returned to Peru on Oct. 23 following a
failed asylum bid in Panama.
Congress, however, had yet to accept
his resignation. Opposition
Congressman Fernando Olivera said law
makers would move to ratify TUdela’s res
ignation unless he withdrew it before the
end of the day Monday.
Monica San Martm/Newsmakers
A1990 photo shows Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori starting his campaign against novelist Mario
Vargas Uosa in Huaycan, Pern. Fujimori announced his resignation Monday.
Time Warner may cany EarthLink
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
WASHINGTON - Time
Warner, striking a deal vital to its
proposed merger with America
Online, agreed Monday to carry
AOLs chief Internet service rival,
EarthLink, on its high-speed
cable systems.
Time Warner’s arrangement
with EarthLink could satisfy
antitrust regulators reviewing
die merger, who had demanded
that Time Warner offer an
Internet provider besides AOL
before the merger can dose.
The Federal Trade
Commission now will consider
the Earthlink deal in its ongoing
merger review, extending the
deadline for its decision to mid
December.
The merger also awaits eval
uation at the Federal
Communications Commission.
The deal means that sub
scribers to Time Warner's high
speed Web service delivered
over cable lines will have two
choices - Earthlink or AOL -for
their online provider. Earthlink
is the nation's No. 2 Internet
provider.
The Earthlink arrangement
won’t take effect until the AOL
Time Warner merger closes,
which the companies now
expect to happen late this year
or early next year.
Time Warner must also com
plete its negotiations to restruc
ture an exclusive contract it cur
rently has with Internet provider
Road Runner before it can offer
any other service.
But the agreement with
Earthlink addresses a key gov
ernment concern about the
merger’s shutting out competi
tion.
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Abortion pill
not quick fix
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
WASHINGTON - It was hailed by pro-choice
groups as a turning point in the abortion wars - a pill
to increase access to abortions and let women get
them privately from their own doctor instead of fee
ing shouting protesters at clinics.
But with the first RU-486 abortions to begin this
week, don't expect such sweeping change yet So for,
private doctors aren't rushing to embrace the abor
tion pill, now called mifepristone - and many of the
thousands of women flooding hot lines seeking it are
learning surgical abortion remains the option most
appropriate for them.
“A woman might feel that all she has to do is take a
pill and die pregnancy kind of magically disappears,
and of course that’s not true,” said Dr. Maureen Paul
of Boston's Planned Parenthood League of
Massachusetts.
Many clinics will offer mifepristone abortions
using a method that means less hassle for patients
than the Food and Drug Administration-approved
method - swallowing fewer pills and making one less
doctor visit
Still, it takes several days and miscarriage-like
cramping and bleeding before the pill-caused abor
tion is complete, while surgical abortions are finished
within an hour. And the pill only works in early preg
nancy-49 days after the start of the last menstrual
period - stipulations abortion providers must ensure
that women understand.
The FDA approved mifepristone in September, 12
years after European women began using it and after
years ofbitter opposition by anti-abortion groups.
On Monday, U.S. marketer Danco Laboratories
shipped the first mifepristone supplies, mostly to
abortion clinics affiliated with Planned Parenthood
and the National Abortion Federation. More than 300
such clinics are expected to offer the pills within a few
weeks.
Milosevic convinced
he won at the polls
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
BELGRADE, Yugoslavia -
Six weeks after handing over
power, Slobodan Milosevic is
still living comfortably in his
posh villa, recuperating from
the shock of his ouster from the
presidency and plotting a
political comeback.
Socialist Party officials say
Milosevic has been encour
aged by the new government’s
inability to curb Yugoslavia’s
economic slide as well as sim
mering public discontent with
the new pro-democratic lead
ership and bickering among
the forces that ousted him.
“Milosevic is not giving up
politics,” said Zoran lilic, who
resigned last month from the
Socialist Party. “Milosevic is
considering his best possible
survival options, and counting
on things going downhill” for
the democratic movement that
ousted him.
Milosevic’s allies say the
former president is devoting
much of his time to planning
for Saturday’s congress of his
Socialist Party. Moderates plan
to use the session to try to
unseat Milosevic as party
leader.
However, Milosevic hopes
to retain control.
“Milosevic is seeing many
people,” said the party’s gener
al-secretary, Zoran
Andjelkovic. “Many people
communicate with Milosevic
personally or over the phone.
Milosevic is communicating
with the outside world directly.
I can assure you that." He
would not elaborate.
Several other Socialist Party
officials, speaking on condi
tion of anonymity, said
Milosevic has recovered from
the shock suffered when
crowds rioted in Belgrade after
the disputed September elec
tion, forcing him to concede
defeat to Vojislav Kostunica,
With Kostunica refusing to
extradite Milosevic to the
international war crimes tribu
nal in The Hague, the former
first couple has shelved plans
to flee the country. Instead,
Milosevic and his wife, Mir j ana
‘Milosevic is not
giving up politics.
Milosevic is
considering his best
possible survival
options...”
Zoran Lille
Former Socialist Party member
Markovic, have been seen
strolling hand-in-hand in the
garden of the white brick
house on Uzicka Street in the
capital’s Dedinje district,
where they moved weeks
before he was ousted.
In some ways, their life is
not so different from the final
months of his rule, when the
president rarely ventured out
in public. He and his wife are
guarded by a paramilitary force
of some 100 loyal, well-armed
troops, commanded by his
longtime personal bodyguard,
police Gen. Senta Milenkovic.
Their daughter Marija is
staying with them, while son
Marko, who has been linked to
several murky business deals,
is believed laying low in Russia
after he was turned back from
entering China shortly after his
father’s downfall.
The Milosevic home is in a
complex of renovated villas
near what had been his official
residence until it was
destroyed by NATO bombs last
year. The villa has a spacious
living room with white sofas,
green marble walls, small bed
rooms upstairs and a large
grassy garden planted with
roses and pine trees.
When the former first cou
ple do venture out, it is in
secret, using small cars with
tinted windows, officials say.
Those who claim to have
seen Milosevic recently say the
former strongman insists he
never lost to Kostunica at the
polls, but was forced out in an
“illegal and violent street
coup." He has convinced him
self that he stepped aside to
spare the nation from blood
shed.
The Associated Press
■Netherlands
Bosnian Serbs on trial
for sexual assault, torture
THE HAGUE - War crimes
prosecutors on Monday urged a
U.N. court to show no mercy
toward three Bosnian Serbs
accused of sexually enslaving and
torturing Muslim women.
The U.N. war crimes tribunal
for the former Yugoslavia was
asked in the strongest terms to
put Dragoljub Kunarac, Radomir
Kovac and Zoran Vukovic behind
bars for up to 35 years. The men
have not been convicted or sen
tenced, but the prosecutors can
call for a jail term.
Prosecutors detailed the
abuses inflicted on dozens of
Bosnian Muslim women - includ
ing the 16 who bravely took the
witness stand since the trial
began in April
Victims as young as 12 and 13
years old were assaulted “in all
possible ways,” said German
prosecutor Hildegard Uertz
Retzlaff.
The defendants claimed the
sex was consensual Kunarac, the
key defendant, went so far as to
assert that one of the victims actu
ally forced herself on him.
■Netherlands
Carbon-dioxide emission cuts
under scrutiny by U.N.
THE HAGUE - The United
States presented a new proposal
Monday on how countries could
use existing forests and farmlands
to meet their targets to reduce
greenhouse gas emissions.
But environmentalists at a
U.N. Climate Conference imme
diately denounced the offer as
“cheating.” There was no immedi
ate reaction from European or
other delegates gathered in The
Hague for negotiations over how
far countries may rely on such
methods to meet their targets
instead of cutting emissions.
The conference, now in its
second and final week, is sup
posed to lay down the rules and
procedures for implementing
emissions cuts agreed upon in the
Kyoto Protocol three years ago in
Japan.
The protocol calls for the
worldwide reduction in emis
sions of carbon dioxide - primari
ly from fossil fuels - and other
heat-trapping gases by an average
52 percent from their 1990 levels.
The main burden is to fall on the
industrialized countries - Europe
must cut by 8 percent, the United
States by 7 and Japan by 6. The tar
get date is 2012.
■ Netherlands
Prosecution finishes case
in Pan Am 103 bombing trial
THE HAGUE-Scottish prose
cutors concluded their case
Monday in the trial of two Libyans
accused of blowing up Pan Am
Flight 103 twelve years ago over
Lockerbie, Scotland.
After calling 230 witnesses in
72 days of hearings at a special
court in the Netherlands, the
Scottish Lord Advocate, Colin
Boyd, told the judges: “That con
cludes the case for the crown
(prosecution)”
Defense attorneys are expect
ed to outline their plans Tuesday.
Defense attorney Richard Keen
said he intends to ask the judges
to dismiss the case against his
client, Lamen Khalifa Fhimah.
■France
Yahoo! told to block surfers
from Nazi auction sites
PARIS - In a landmark ruling
affecting legally uncharted
Internet territory, a French judge
on Monday ordered the U.S.
based portal Yahoo! to block Web
surfers in France from an auction
where Nazi memorabilia is sold.
Judge Jean-Jacques Gomez
gave Yahoo three months to find a
way to prevent users based in
France from accessing pages on
auctions.yahoo.com that feature
nearly 2,000 Nazi-related objects,
such as swastika-emblazoned
flags and daggers.
After the deadline, Yahoo
would be fined $13,000 for each
day it does not comply.
The decision capped a seven
month court battle initiated by
anti-racism groups that accused
the Santa Clara, Calif.-based com
pany of violating French hate law
and in which the trial judge called
on leading technical experts to
examine die feasibility of “zon
ing” the Internet