From: Jim Rosenfield <jnr@igc.apc.org>
Newsgroups: soc.culture.african
Date: 28 Dec 92 23:37 PST
Subject: Re: News Stories on Hunger - 12/28/92
Nf-ID: #R:cdp:1471700316:cdp:1471700317:000:162439
Nf-From: cdp.UUCP!jnr    Dec 28 23:37:00 1992


/* Written 11:36 pm  Dec 28, 1992 by jnr in igc:hunger.general */
WP  12/27 xx Mexico City Chases An Unlikely Dream

By Tod Robberson 

Washington Post Foreign Service 

MEXICO CITY - Here in the world's most populous city, notorious for its
pollution and congestion, it may come as no surprise that some see a vision
of the city's future in a rat-infested garbage pit. 

But there is plenty surprising in the vision for Santa Fe, where city
administrators and wealthy foreign investors are beginning work to
transform a 1,600-acre blight of strip-mine pits, garbage dumps and fetid
slums into a planned community that will aim to resolve the mire of
problems for which Mexico City has become infamous. According to the plans,
there will be affordable housing and luxury homes, a golf course, several
parks and a shopping mall. There will be no polluting industries, traffic
jams or crammed parking lots. 

And, according to city officials, this miraculous transformation of Santa
Fe - now a raw eyesore big enough to contain central Washington from
Capital Hill to Foggy Bottom to Hains Point - will be accomplished without
spending a peso of government money. 

In short, Santa Fe, on the western outskirts of the city, is meant to be
what the metropolis around it is not. And, in this country where government
rather than private spending historically has driven development, it is to
be accomplished as no other project of its scope has been. 

The vision for what is this city's biggest development and its first
planned community belongs to Juan Enriquez, a 33-year-old graduate of
Harvard University's business school who heads a city-owned corporation,
Servicios Metropolitanos, or Servimet. Enriquez, who shuns publicity to the
point of refusing to talk about himself, is working to persuade numerous
local and foreign investors to join the project. And he is having some
success. 

Last October, Enriquez escorted a group of 50 American investors, whose
organizations represent a net worth of roughly $300 billion, on a
mud-slogging tour of a garbage dump surrounded by a moonscape of abandoned
strip mines in Santa Fe. One visitor, Bob Toigo, president of the
Sacramento-based Institute for Fiduciary Education, said the group was
impressed with "the vision of the government in Mexico." 

In the 16th century, a Spanish bishop, Vasco de Quiroga, founded Santa Fe
as a sanctuary for Aztec Indians fleeing Spanish conquistadors. As Mexico
City sprawled into surrounding land, Santa Fe evolved into what for decades
has been Mexico City's most putrid eyesore. Many of its residents were
migrant workers living at the edges of the mine pits in caves or cardboard
shacks. Most made their living salvaging garbage at the nearby dump. 

After President Carlos Salinas de Gortari's election in 1988, he named a
city government committed to dissolving thick layers of corrupt bureaucracy
for which it had become infamous. Enriquez was named to head Servimet whose
chief business was to run the city's parking lots. Servimet also had
responsibility for Santa Fe, where, Enriquez said, the plan was to build
industrial warehouses. 

The company also was nearly broke. The federal government was preparing to
seize it for having failed to pay taxes. 

"My first reaction was one of disbelief," Enriquez said. "I wondered, `What
am I doing running parking lots?' " 

He negotiated breathing space on the tax debt and franchised the parking
lots for money with which to begin developing Santa Fe. 

The region consisted of five barren strip mines separated by enormous
earthen walls and sheer 200-foot cliffs. One pit was being used as a public
landfill, another as a depository for rubble from the 1985 earthquake here.
Others had been taken over by squatters. Just to make the land usable, the
cliff-like walls between the pits had to be removed, a task that will be
completed next year. 

Investors did not flock to Enriquez's vision. While commercial real estate
elsewhere in this crowded city cost more than $400 per square foot,
Enriquez offered land at Santa Fe for only $15 per square foot - and even
then had to coax in reluctant investors. 

"Nobody could have cared less about that piece of land. It was one big,
huge mess," said Antonio Gutierrez Cortina, chief executive officer of
Fondo Opcion, a Mexican investment firm. "Our board thought we were crazy
when we proposed an investment out there. You could see millions of rats
running all over the place." 

One of the early believers was real estate developer Jose L. Rion, who said
he argued hard to persuade his reluctant partners to build in Santa Fe.
Then they discovered that "one area we were building on was the worst piece
of land in the city, literally. We drilled for pilings and pulled out tires
and trash and big pieces of concrete," Rion said. 

Today, however, land values have more than quadrupled at Santa Fe, Rion and
Gutierrez said. Commercial developers and international corporations,
including Hewlett-Packard, Mercedes-Benz and the Mexican subsidiary of
Goodyear, have invested well over $1 billion there. General Motors has also
signed an agreement to open offices in Santa Fe. "If you go out there
between now and March," Enriquez said, "you'll see another billion dollars
going into that place." 

Even the first steps at Santa Fe were tough, Enriquez said. Simply
acquiring the land required finding hundreds of owners of small plots. Some
plots were held by multiple owners with deeds "that could be traced back to
the Aztecs," he said. To acquire one 90-acre plot, Servimet had to get
signatures of 125 people who had claims to it, including descendants of the
original owner and dozens of squatters. 

Although Servimet had the legal means to expropriate property, Enriquez
said he has ruled it out because "it's not in the spirit of free
enterprise." To coax 350 legally protected squatter families off the land,
Servimet built and donated each one a 900-square-foot apartment with
running water and electricity. 

Another hurdle was convincing reluctant international investors that the
Mexico City government - with its reputation for bureaucractic inefficiency
and corruption - would honor its pledges to turn the site into a
world-class development. 

While beginning the Santa Fe effort, Enriquez and Servimet have taken on
other projects. They took over Mexico City's money-losing National
Auditorium, closed it for remodeling, fired its 1,200 employees, then
reopened it with a staff of one. In its first year of operation under
Servimet, the auditorium's gross income totaled $20 million, with profits
of $2.6 million. 

Copyright 1992 The Washington Post  <<>>
RTw  12/27 1312  SOMALI WARLORDS AGREE TO DISMANTLE ``GREEN LINE''

By Frances Kerry 

MOGADISHU, Dec 27, Reuter - Mogadishu's rival warlords agreed to dismantle
the "Green Line" dividing their city and troops in the multinational task
force prepared to patrol both halves of the wrecked Somali capital. 

A senior U.S. official said on Sunday Ali Mahdi Mohamed and General Mohamed
Farah Aideed had also agreed in talks to halt clan fighting in and around
Mogadishu and to lead a peace rally through the city on Monday. 

Their deal, reached after five hours of talks on Saturday, was aimed at
putting into practice parts of a peace agreement struck two days after a
U.S.-led multinational intervention force began arriving in Mogadishu on
December 9. 

"All artificial lines in the city will be abolished," a copy of the
agreement made available to reporters said. Hostilities would cease "inside
and outside Mogadishu in areas where up to now fighting has continued." 

Aideed and Ali Mahdi, self-styled president of a country with no
government, turned on each other in a battle for control after fighting as
allies to oust former dictator Mohamed Siad Barre in January 1991. 

Clan feuds in the capital and in other parts of the country caused a famine
which has killed more than 300,000 people. 

The plan to take down the line which divides Ali Mahdi's northern enclave
from territory in the south of the city controlled by Aideed coincided with
news of a clash at a U.N. compound in the north of the city on Saturday. 

U.N. spokesman Farouk Mawlawi said gunmen with machine guns and rocket
launchers attacked a compound housing five U.N. military observers early in
the afternoon. 

Somali guards returned fire, killing at least two gunmen and injuring
several others, Mawlawi said, adding nobody among the guards or in the
compound was hurt. 

But the senior U.S. official, who asked not to be identified, said as the
troop numbers grew, the humanitarian mission could increasingly address
security problems. 

He said U.S. troops would fan out on streets in both south and north
Mogadishu over the next few days to locate and remove heavy weapons. 

"Heavy weapons will be removed voluntarily, or if necessary by force, and
with the agreement of Somalis," the official said. 

"From now on we're going to be doing more enforcement." 

Military spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Steve Ritter said patrols of north
Mogadishu would start in "the very near future." 

The multinational troops have so far held back from an aggressive search
for weapons. But the U.S. official confirmed that a more rigorous approach
had become possible, particularly in Mogadishu, with the increase in troop
numbers. 

The force grew to more than 26,000 either in Somalia or offshore on ships
on Sunday with the arrival of some 1,500 French troops. 

Foreign troops have so far not patrolled north Mogadishu and their presence
in the south has been relatively low-key. Shootings, lootings and muggings
have remained commonplace. 

The task force moved a step closer on Sunday towards completing its goal of
securing eight centres in central and southern Somalia to reach into the
famished countryside. 

A U.S. military  spokesman said some 180 Italian troops and a U.S. military
police escort arrived in the afternoon in the town of Jalalaksi, about 200
km (125 miles) north of Mogadishu. 

A separate group of 260 Canadian and U.S. troops were due to swoop in
helicopters into the town of Belet Huen early on Monday. Theis will
complete the network of towns controlled by the task force ahead of a New
Year visit to Somalia by President George Bush starting on January 31. 

REUTER FK TG  <<>>APn  12/27 1311  Afghanistan-UN

Copyright, 1992. The Associated Press. All rights reserved.  

By KATHY GANNON 

Associated Press Writer 

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (AP) -- The United Nations told Afghanistan's feuding
leaders Sunday to settle their differences or risk losing the international
aid they desperately need to rebuild their war-devastated country. 

After sweeping the former Communist rulers from power in April, Muslim
rebels have turned their guns on each other, killing and wounding tens of
thousands of people, mostly civilians, and leaving another 500,000
homeless. 

Now the rebel leaders seem headed for another violent showdown over the
convening of a shoora, or grand council, to choose Afghanistan's next
leaders, and Kabul's 1 million people are bracing for more fighting. 

"I'm afraid that if the instability continues the donors may start losing
interest in Afghanistan," said Sotirios Mousouris, the secretary-general's
personal representative in Afghanistan. 

"Frequent outbreaks of hostilities, particularly in Kabul, are compounding
the hardships faced by the Afghan people in a country already devasted by a
14-year war and now experiencing a harsh winter" he said. 

The grand council had been scheduled to convene in mid-December, but it has
been delayed by charges of bribery and vote buying. 

About all the rebel factions agree on is that they do not want interim
President Burhanuddin Rabbani to remain in power. 

Mousouris said representatives from the United Nations and the Organization
of the Islamic Conference were in Kabul to try to determine whether the
council would be held and, if it is, whether it would be represent the
majority of Afghans. 

Rabbani has asked the United Nations to monitor the council and help fund
it. But Mousouris said the world body won't do either if there's no
consensus among the warring rebels. 

Mousouris said the United Nations received only half of the $180 million it
requested to provide emergency aid to Afghanistan between June and
December, and only 1 percent of that got to Kabul because of the fighting. 

Mousouris said a 40-truck convoy was stuck in the Pakistani border town of
Peshawar waiting for a guarantee of safe passage. 

The United Nations will make another appeal for aid sometime next month, he
said, but the response won't be good if the rebels are still fighting. 

<<>>RTw  12/27 0733  TWO SOMALI GUNMEN KILLED IN MOGADISHU CLASH

 By Frances Kerry 

Mogadishu, Dec 27, Reuter - Two Somali gunmen were killed and several
others wounded during a shoot-out at a U.N. compound in north Mogadishu, a
U.N. spokesman said on Sunday. 

News of the attack, on Saturday, on a compound housing U.N. military
observers came as the city's two rival warlords agreed to dismantle the
"Green Line" war boundary dividing the Somali capital and to halt clan
fighting in and around Mogadishu. 

It also coincided with U.S. plans for the the U.S.-led multinational
humanitarian task force in Somalia to establish a firmer presence in the
north of the city and to hunt down heavy weapons in both parts of
Mogadishu. 

Farouk Mawlawi, spokesman for the U.N. relief operation in Somalia, UNOSOM,
said men with machine guns and rocket launchers attacked a compound housing
five U.N. military observers early on Saturday afternoon. 

Somali guards returned fire, killing at least two gunmen and wounding
several others, Mawlawi said. 

No-one among the guards or in the compound was hurt, he said. 

The multinational task force sent assistance in the form of U.S. F-18 jets
which screamed over the area. The observers were evacuated from the
compound by Pakistani U.N. peacekeepers. 

The motive for the attack was not known, Mawlawi said. 

The incident illustrated continuing security problems in Mogadishu, a city
wrecked by civil war and divided since rival warlords General Farah Mohamed
Aideed and Ali Mahdi Mohamed turned their guns on each other after uniting
to oust former dictator Mohamed Siad Barre in January 1991. 

Aideed controls territory in the south of the city. Ali Mahdi has an
enclave in the north. 

A senior U.S. official said they agreed at a meeting on Saturday to tear
down the Green line and stop clashes between clans in and around Mogadishu.


Fighting between the two rivals has caused much of the devastation that led
to severe famine in southern and central Somalia. 

They agreed at their meeting to lead a peace rally through Mogadishu on
Monday. 

"On this occasion all artificial lines in the city will be abolished," a
copy of the agreement made available to reporters said. Hostilities would
cease "inside and outside Mogadishu in areas where up to now fighting has
continued." 

Ali Mahdi, self-styled president of Somalia, and Aideed signed the deal at
the end of a five-hour meeting at the U.S. mission in Mogadishu after talks
with the U.S. special envoy to Somalia, Ambassador Robert Oakley, the U.S.
official said. 

REUTER FK JCH  <<>>
WP   12/27  xx War-Ravaged Mozambique: A Case Study of Famine Averted

By Paul Taylor 

Washington Post Foreign Service 

INHAMINGA, Mozambique - "Mealie!" "Mealie!" "Mealie!" 

Thirty ragged anti-government guerrillas scrambled out of the African bush,
attracted by the roar of a twin-engine cargo plane lumbering onto a tiny
dirt-and-grass airstrip outside their village. 

The lucky ones had no shoes or shirts. The unlucky ones were missing more
consequential items: teeth, limbs. But everyone smiled at the sight of the
Antonov 32, and the young teenagers in the group delightedly squealed the
name of their staple food - "Mealie" - as they raced up the Russian plane's
rear ramp to unload 120 sacks of corn meal from the United States. 

"Look better now than three months ago," said Igor Tokarev, one of the
pilots hired by the United Nations World Food Program as part of a massive
international relief effort to keep the next big African famine from
happening. "Now, have some meat on bones." 

In contrast with the situation in Somalia - which like Mozambique has been
buffeted both by crippling drought and savage warfare - the fattening up of
this remote rebel-controlled village in central Mozambique is the story of
calamity averted, and it has echoes throughout southern Africa. Earlier
this year, humanitarian organizations feared that as many as 18 million
people could face starvation as a result of the worst drought in at least
half a century in an area spanning Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Malawi, Zambia,
Swaziland, Lesotho and South Africa. 

Since then, two precious commodities have arrived. One was rain. It came
two months late this year, but it provided the region's first real dousing
in two years. The other was peace, which for Mozambique - one of the most
brutalized nations in the world during the past decade - was even more
crucial to famine relief. 

In early October, rebels of the Mozambique National Resistance - known by
its Portuguese acronym, Renamo - signed a peace accord in Rome with the
Mozambique Liberation Front, known as Frelimo, the formerly Marxist party
that has ruled here since independence in 1975. The agreement ended a
demonic 15-year civil war, whose victims included many children under age 5
- perhaps a half-million of whom died of war-induced starvation and
disease. 

Since then, Renamo-controlled sections of the country, such as this one,
have been opened up for the first time to relief agencies from the outside
world, which have sought to determine the extent of the suffering and the
prospects for aid. "The first thing I tell everyone is that this is not
Somalia," said Roger Ruffy, who runs the International Committee of the Red
Cross program here in the central provinces. "In June, it looked like it
might become that bad. But with the peace agreement holding, we're able to
get food to places we hadn't been before, and now with the rains coming,
that will mean there will be a harvest in a few months. The trick is to get
enough food to people now, so they won't starve before the harvest comes." 

In the past three months, the Red Cross has tripled its truck convoys into
Renamo-controlled areas. The trucks travel over roads that once were
impassable because of mines and bandits. Airlifts remain necessary in some
areas, nevertheless, because of some downed bridges. 

Scores of other relief agencies - drawn to a country so poor and heavily
dependent on aid that it has been dubbed the "Donor's Republic of
Mozambique" - have stepped up their efforts as well. 

As with all relief efforts, this one has carried its own perils. An
estimated 3.8 million people - about a quarter of the country's population
- have been displaced by the war, and massive efforts are being made to
return them to their homes. But as people move, their first need is to eat,
so they cluster around food distribution points, sometimes aggravating
food-dispensing and health problems. 

"It is better now that food comes," said Fernando Antonio, a Renamo
guerrilla who met the relief plane here at Inhaminga and carted off one of
the 110-pound sacks of corn on his head. "But when food comes, more people
come into the village. So we always need more." 

Because Renamo preferred to keep people in the bush, Inhaminga was all but
deserted during the war. But it is now a population center with 20,000
inhabitants. There is no running water or sewerage, and doctors worry about
the spread of epidemic diseases such as measles and cholera. "We're much
better off if we can keep them on their plots of land and get the food to
them," said Ruffy. 

Food, drought, disease, rain, war and peace have been in a grim dance with
each other in Mozambique for the past decade, their relationship ever
changing, ever fateful. 

During the war years, food was the main trophy for Renamo guerrillas, who
lived off rural peasants - stealing their crops, conscripting their
children, abusing their women, sometimes mutilating resisters by chopping
off noses, ears or sexual organs. An Amnesty International report issued
this year also accused government forces of war atrocities against
civilians but asserted that Renamo clearly was the primary offender. 

Renamo's campaign of terror against the poor was unusual for a guerrilla
movement. Although it described itself as an indigenous anti-communist
resistance movement, its creation in the early 1970s was largely the work
of intelligence officers of what was then Mozambique's white-ruled
neighbor, Rhodesia. After Rhodesia's black majority won control of the
country in 1980 and changed its name to Zimbabwe, support for Renamo came
from South Africa's white-minority government. The South African aim was to
destabilize a communist-controlled neighbor seen as providing a haven for
banned leaders of groups opposing the apartheid system of racial
separation. 

Civil war ravaged Mozambique, and when the drought hit in late 1990,
natural famine trumped man-made famine. "There wasn't much left for the
bandits to steal," said John Yale, head of the Mozambique program for World
Vision, a U.S. church-based aid program that has distributed $35 million in
food, seed and tools here this year. "By the second year of the drought,
people were sort of bottoming out," he said. They sought to survive on
roots, berries, nuts and leaves. 

The drought is widely believed to have hastened the peace process. "I think
both sides are sort of like two tired fighters who have punched themselves
out," said Maj. Howard Hall, part of an advance team of 40 U.N. troops here
to make sure that the Frelimo-Renamo accord holds. 

After a flurry of post-accord skirmishes, peace has prevailed for two
months, and the relationship between famine and peace now is described as
circular: If the peace holds, there is probably enough aid coming from
donor nations and private relief groups to break the famine, and if the
famine is broken, peace is more likely to hold. 

But as Aldo Ajello, who arrived here in mid-October as U.N. Secretary
General Boutros Boutros-Ghali's special representative, noted, some aspects
of the truce pose as much potential peril as did the war. "Even though we
don't have warring clans the way they did in Somalia, we are facing a very
dangerous situation here," Ajello said. 

"Ninety thousand government troops and 25,000 Renamo troops are in the
process of being demobilized and joined into a single army," he said. "The
police force is in the process of being combined. Right now, the country is
wide open. We need some outside force to keep the peace. Otherwise, anyone
with a gun will be king." 

This month, the United Nations granted Ajello's appeals for a 7,500-member
peace-keeping force, which will start to arrive in January. "I don't want
to become the sheriff of Mozambique," Ajello said. "But I want to make sure
peace holds so food relief gets through." 

Elections in Mozambique are supposed to be held within a year. But Ajello
made it clear that he thinks the timetable is optimistic, and he pledged
not to allow the vote to take place until a joint army and police force has
been fully established. 

Meantime, analysts say, it may be too much to expect any rapid economic
improvement in a country that has consistently ranked highest in infant
mortality and lowest in per capita income. Aid specialists here say it will
be years, perhaps decades, before Mozambique can be weaned from its
dependence on development assistance. 

For now, Mozambicans measure their progress in lesser ways. For example,
guerrillas in Inhaminga had two reasons to smile as they carried the sacks
of corn meal from the relief plane. One was the contents of the sacks. The
other was the reason they put them on their heads: to get some cover from
the rains. 

Copyright 1992 The Washington Post  <<>>
WP  12/27 xx Searching for the Lessons of Somalia; Defining Humanitarian 

Searching for the Lessons of Somalia; Defining Humanitarian Intervention in
the Post-Cold War Era 

By Keith B. Richburg 

Washington Post Foreign Service 

MOGADISHU, Somalia, Dec. 26 - Twelve months ago, while the world barely
noticed, two power-hungry warlords sat on opposite sides of Mogadishu
exchanging insults and artillery barrages. The divided capital already was
being overrun by refugees from the countryside. Virtually the only
foreigners left were the unsung heroes working for relief agencies or
Egyptian diplomats hunkered in their compound. 

An American official in Nairobi, asked for his prognosis at the time,
declared that Somalia should be "paved over and turned into a parking lot."


Now, one year later, Somalia has emerged suddenly and unexpectedly at the
center of world attention. The United States is engaged in a military
buildup that will bring up to 30,000 troops here, supported by forces from
a dozen other nations. The operation, under U.N. auspices, is making
possible huge food shipments for starving Somalis. 

But the world awakened late to the tragedy of Somalia. In the past year, up
to 30,000 people are estimated to have died in Mogadishu from gunshot
wounds or shelling. Across the countryside, an estimated 300,000 Somalis,
mostly women, children and old people, are believed to have starved to
death. The U.S.-led humanitarian mission, Operation Restore Hope, was
launched after hope was already lost for hundreds of thousands of desperate
Somalis. 

The military operation is less than three weeks old, and relief for the
most destitute Somalis in the villages is still a long way off. But many of
those grappling with the crisis already are asking what lessons Somalia
holds for the world. 

Sifting through the ruins of Somalia in search of answers becomes
complicated by the desire to affix blame. Many Somalis, and some critics of
past U.S. government policy, hold Washington largely responsible for making
Somalia a Cold War pawn and showering a brutal dictator, Mohamed Siad
Barre, with millions of dollars in aid and arms. Moscow, too, is partly
responsible, since Somalia was first a Soviet client, and most of the
weapons used in the slaughter are of Russian design. Almost everyone
involved blames the United Nations, for failing to foresee the tragedy in
Somalia and failing to move more forcefully to prevent it. When dictator
Siad Barre fled in January 1991, the United Nations pulled out its staff
and did not return for almost a year. 

Ultimately, however, Somalis themselves are responsible. It may have been
the superpowers that supplied the guns, but it was Somalis - driven by clan
hatreds, swayed by misguided leaders - who pulled the triggers. 

Somalis at independence inherited a country hailed as a model for African
stability. It was a country without ethnically differentiated tribes, where
people shared a common language; a common religion, Islam; and a common
culture and history. But instead of being known for unity and stability,
Somalia has become synonymous with chaos, anarchy, famine and despair. 

"I am an old man - I remember when Somalia was flourishing," said
76-year-old Jirdeh Hussein, a respected businessman from the northern
region who throughout the worst of the shelling remained in his home in the
now devastated area known as the Green Line. "Nobody thought Somalis would
destroy their country in this way." 

Asked to explain the violence, Hussein said, "We have tribal feeling -
every tribe wants to kill the other." 

Somalia's first president, Aden Abdullah Osman, has watched the country
disintegrate from his banana and grapefruit farm in the small village of
Genale.

He is 81 years old now and still so widely respected that, throughout the
worst of the violence, his property - unprotected by armed guards - has
remained untouched. Asked his view of his country's tragedy, he hung his
head and said: "Terrible. Terrible. Terrible. It makes me want to cry." 

"I left a peaceful Somalia," said Osman, who served as president from 1960
until 1967, and was later imprisoned for 3 1/2 years by Siad Barre. "I left
Somalia with a good situation. . . . I am not a tribal man. I am a Somali
man." 

With warlords ferociously battling each other for power, and young
militiamen engaged in banditry and looting, the old president said: "They
are all mad here. . . . Now nobody can do anything to control this
situation." 

"At the end of the day, this mess is a Somali mess," said Somali human
rights activist Rakiya Omaar, also a northerner. "When we criticize other
people, that is not to say Somalis are not to blame. This would not have
happened if not for the greed and ruthlessness of Somali politicians and
businessmen." 

Whatever forces and factors were at work to destroy Somalia, and whichever
parties share the blame, one thing appears certain: Somalia's most lasting
legacy may be to alter forever the internationally accepted view of
military intervention for humanitarian purposes. 

When Somalis began their slaughter, the world stood on the sidelines
arguing over legalities. James Jonah, a senior United Nations official,
said the world body was not set up to act in such disputes unless
authorized by the Security Council. 

Western countries, then caught up in trying to mediate the war in the
former Yugoslavia, said Somalia was primarily an African problem, and they
cited the principles of national sovereignty and nonintervention that were
held sacred at the time. 

A decade and a half ago, Tanzania invaded Uganda and toppled Idi Amin Dada,
a brutal baffoon who was slaughtering his people. Rather than being
applauded, Tanzania was condemned by the Organization of African Unity,
which saw the invasion as a threat to sovereignty on this politically
fragile continent. 

When Vietnam invaded Cambodia and toppled the brutal Khmer Rouge regime,
Hanoi was accused of acting out of expansionist self-interests and was
slapped with economic sanctions and political isolation for more than a
decade. 

But the world seems to be moving toward a more accepted view of
"humanitarian intervention" as a principle of diplomacy, and Somalia has
emerged as the first test case. 

Rather than being criticized for the military intervention in Somalia, the
United States and the other partners in the military coalition are being
criticized primarily for not having acted far earlier, before so many
thousands died. 

It is a lesson with implications elsewhere around the globe, in places like
southern Sudan, Mozambique, Liberia and even Bosnia. 

"The great lesson here is that the only way we're going to prevent this is
to intervene early and decisively," said Sam Toussie of the International
Medical Corps, a Los Angeles-based relief group. "The earlier you
intervene, the less residual damage, the less the cost." 

"We had to wait until it got to this point," Toussie said. "Like the Sudan
nightmare - how long will we let that continue? . . . Are we willing to go
in on a humanitarian basis? What are the rights of individuals versus the
rights of nations?" 

Paul Mitchell, spokesman for the World Food Program, said: "It's not like
these emergencies are new. Southern Sudan is as bad as Somalia. Mozambique
is on a par with Somalia. 

"We have other places that have this combination of insecurity and the
inability to deliver relief - in Afghanistan, in northern Iraq. You have to
respond much quicker. . . . It's a whole new area in terms of relief -
we're really writing the first lines of the first new chapter here in
Somalia." 

Somalia might at first glance seem an unlikely test case for humanitarian
intervention in the post-Cold War world. It is a sparsely populated,
inhospitable country with few natural resources. 

In its heyday, it exported bananas to Italy from plantations in the
southern coastal region and camels and sheep to the Middle East. There is
speculation that Somalia sits atop large oil reserves; indeed, before the
country slid into chaos, major oil companies were here signing contracts
for exploration, mostly in the north. 

But Somalia's value always rested in its location on the Indian Ocean
offering a convenient window onto the Middle East. That location put
Somalia at the center of U.S. military planning maps during the early
1980s, when U.S. forces had access to the Somali base at Berbera. In
exchange, successive American administrations were willing to overlook the
brutal excesses of the Siad Barre regime. 

By 1990, however, the United States had grown tired of Barre. And when
guerrillas of the newly formed United Somali Congress, under the leadership
of Gen. Mohamed Farah Aideed, began closing in on Mogadishu for what would
be a final assault, the dictator could no longer turn to his old friends in
Washington for help. 

But the United Somali Congress at that time was already showing the strains
that would eventually lead to the all-out bloody shelling war. 

Aideed, the overall military commander who launched his campaign from base
camps in Ethiopia, found his position as preeminent opposition leader
challenged by a group of businessmen and politicians inside Somalia who
were trying to negotiate a peaceful exit for Barre. 

Barre fled Mogadishu in late January. Ali Mahdi Mohamed, a businessman and
hotelier, became the interim president, and Aideed was named chairman of
the United Somali Congress, formalizing the split responsible for so much
of Somalia's suffering. The two rivals engaged in a series of brief but
bloody battles throughout the summer and fall of 1991, until their feud
escalated into a three-month heavy artillery duel from November until
earlier this year. 

In retrospect, Somali observers and relief officials say the feud between
Ali Mahdi and Aideed could have been avoided if someone with authority -
such as the United States or the United Nations - had stepped in in 1991 to
mediate. "The factions were very much crying out for someone to broker the
peace, and they made various efforts to reach out," said Rakiya Omaar. "Had
someone made a concerted effort to get them together, much could have been
saved." 

Had the civil war been prevented, mass starvation also could have been
averted. Aideed's guerrilla army chased Siad Barre's forces to the Kenyan
border and battled them back and forth, across the country's traditional
agricultural area of the south-central region. The rival armies looted food
and livestock from peasants and committed countless acts of vandalism. The
fighting displaced farmers who flocked into towns such as Baidoba,
Baardheere, Merca and Mogadishu.

All across Somalia today, from Baardheere in the west to Kismaayo and Merca
on the coast, feeding centers and displacement camps are filled with once
able-bodied farmers who, in better days, provided for their families. 

Their stories are all familiar: their farms were looted, their sheep and
goats killed or stolen; they had almost nothing to eat for months. And
finally, they walked. They walked for days, across many miles, to escape
the violence and find food. 

Most of the victims of the violence and famine have been Somalia's women
and children, who largely have been without voice in the current tragedy. 

About two months ago, a group of women on both sides of this divided city
tried to stage a peace march, to meet and link hands at the notorious Green
Line in a show of unity. They were prevented from doing so when young men
with guns opened fire over their heads. 

"We women are the victims," said Sahra Mohamed Noor, a women's activist
with the local charity and relief group Iida. 

"We are a majority, but we are the victims," she said. "Who is going to
look after the handicapped? Women, because they will be our husbands. Who
will be the widows? Women. What is the profit of war to a woman or her
children? Nothing. Who were the victims of the shelling? The woman in the
market, the woman at home with her children." 

Noor suggests that perhaps one of the unspoken lessons of Somalia is that
the voices of women were never taken into account, not in the war councils
or political sessions where strategies were plotted and vendettas pursued.
"The men didn't do their jobs, and the women and children suffered," she
said. 

"Not all of us are looters," she said, referring to the majority of
Somalia's population, the women and children. 

"Not all of us are warlords. Not all of us are involved in these things. .
. . There will be no war to happen like this in the future. There will be
no tribalism like this in the future. Everybody has found out what this
(violence) has done. Right now," she said, "the world can help us, if we
help ourselves." 

Copyright 1992 The Washington Post  <<>>WP   12/27       Memoirs of a World Cop: Balancing Justice and Catharsis 

By Charles Paul Freund 

EVERY WORLD COP knows well the delicate balance between crime and the New
Orders, and how tough it can be to walk a beat when every step can plunge
you into a newly recognized social pitfall. To define a New Order is to
reveal a new class of criminal activity; that's the way it's always been,
and that's the way it is under the New International Video Order. 

Domestic cops, and I used to be one, long ago learned the lessons of New
Orderism. When we established the New Sober Order early in the 20th
century, we revealed that what had passed for conviviality was in fact a
criminal act. When, decades later, we entered the New Smokeless Order, we
revealed self-destructive personal stress management as an act of public
assault. And when we insituted the New Safety Order, the failure to buckle
one's seat belt or to wear a cycling helmet was revealed not merely as
irresponsible, but, in case of injury, as a potential raid on the public
treasury; Big Brother, I sometimes thought to myself, had by then taken a
job as an insurance agent. 

Still, I'd sworn the New Orders, and I did my duty with them all: the New
Cholesterol Order, the New Look-More-Like-America Order, the New Missionary
Position Order and all the rest. I'd as soon haul you in on charges of Not
Getting It as I would spit in your eye, which of course under the New
Expectoration Order was strictly forbidden. 

 

My career as a world cop, of course, was devoted to upholding the New Video
Order, a system of guilt reduction that has undergone a lot of development
since it was instituted - not altogether wittingly as it turned out - in
the 1990s. Like all legal orders, the Video Order revealed previously
unsuspected criminality too. It just took a while to get the whole picture.


With each shift of understanding of the new order and its criminal
implications, my own career shifted too, until I was finally led, step by
step and frame by frame, to where I am now. 

World Cop-ism, as we know, was originally established as an application of
force to alleviate suffering and injustice, or so we thought. It seemed
both a simple and doable job at the time. The motto of this first
generation of world cops was, "To Ride to the Rescue," and we wore it with
pride. 

Our first mission dealt with hunger in East Africa. Nobody was against
that; how could they have been? The video images of the hungry and starving
were in everyone's living room. We did the job, the images improved and
eventually disappeared, and everybody felt good. Before we knew it, rescue
wasn't a mission of mercy, it was an international role. 

 

But even before that original mission was accomplished - indeed as it was
getting under way - the question of the next mission came up. There was
ethnic violence along the Adriatic, disorder in West Africa, hopelessness
in the Caribbean, chaos in Southeast Asia. Innocents were suffering all
over the world. That was not in itself much of a change in the nature of
things. The difference was that it was now happening on tape or via
satellite. Somebody had to do something. If not us, who? If not now, when? 

Well, off we went to make the world safe. But in what direction? I went to
the Chief to map out strategy, and found her sitting in front of a wall of
newly installed video monitors. She said that as it was neither possible
nor morally acceptable to compare the suffering of one group to the
suffering of another, it became a question of identification, didn't it?
Sweeping her remote control toward the monitors, she said that the concept
of the Just War was melding into the doctrine of the Well-Watched War and
that we would help those whom we could see. 

Well, I'm a good cop and I know an order when I hear one. But a question
occurred to me: If a political crime occurs out of camera range does it
happen? The chief's monitors were flickering with pictures of hungry
people, weeping people, fleeing people, bleeding people. Is the gravity of
political disorder, I wondered, measurable in terms of the emotional
response in those who see pictures of its consequences? Is that when us
world cops would be called in, when the audience couldn't stand the
pictures anymore? If so, then I wouldn't be risking my men's and women's
lives for justice, but for catharsis. 

"Anything else?" the Chief asked me. I'm a good cop so I told her no. But
as I left her office I wondered just whose rescue we were riding to. 

 

There was an interesting difference between the video images to which we
were responding, and the situation that, as cops, we were faced with
off-camera. These videos were always about victims; our duties as cops
somehow always seemed to be about victimizers. We couldn't do much for the
former without doing something about the latter, and that meant doing cop
things: disarming people, arresting people, charging people. 

I mean, cops is cops; we chase criminals and turn them over for punishment.
For us to do our job the civilians have to buy into our authority under the
law. If the civilians don't, you're not a cop anymore; you're an Occupying
Force. I learned that during my days as a domestic cop in the big American
cities. Well, we cops didn't realize that what we needed here was a Social
Contract, and for awhile I got transferred to the unit that was assigned to
draft one: the Social Contractors. That was decades ago, of course, and as
everybody knows, they're still trying to come up with something. The
Rousseau faction and the John Locke faction are still arguing about a
definition of a State of Nature among nations, while the Hegelians are
still disrupting meetings by questioning everybody's historical premises.
In the meantime, the guys on the world beat went out and got bigger guns. 

Good thing, too, because disturbing video footage kept coming in from all
over, and we kept getting sent out to do something about it. I got promoted
to leader of a group of squad copters that patrolled known hot spots
protecting video crews who in turn sent back disquieting imagery, which in
turn made viewers increasingly uncomfortable, until finally political
pressure built up to the point where we were ordered in. 

Well, that was a fairly risky way to handle things, and I wondered if I
couldn't think of a better one. I went to the Chief to talk things over. 

What I told her was that this riding-to-the-rescue stuff was fine as far as
it went. But, I said, my cops are people too. If we wait until the TV
images grow dire, then I'm always ordering my people into dangerous setups.
If we're eventually going to go in anyway, how about we quash a bad
situation early, and save everybody a lot of trouble? 

"No go," she said. "Rescue is good, what you're talking about is control,
and control is bad. Anyway, you can't go in before the cameras do. Where
would the public support come from? What do you want?" she asked.
"Preventive cavalry? That's a contradiction in dramatic terms. Stick to
your beat." 

That wasn't what I wanted to hear, and I guess my face showed it, because
she softened her tone right away. "Look," she said, leaning across her
desk, "You're a good cop. A great cop. Don't try to be too good a cop, OK?"


Well, I am a good cop, and I know an order when I hear one. So I shrugged
and got up to go. "One more thing," she added, "Make sure that the
cameramen don"t take pictures of each other taking pictures. People hate
that, don't they? They want the dramatic images without having to deal with
the way their voyeurism is fed. Next time I see a camera pointed at another
camera, the whole platoon gets transferred back to the Social Contracters.
Now get out there and restore order." 

Right, chief, I said, but I was thinking that every picture tells a story,
each in its own turn. And of course I was right. 

 

The thing about the ubiquitous video crews was that to them, footage was
footage, and drama was drama. They didn't care who was in it. Eventually
that dramatic footage was not of us cops riding to the rescue, but of us
cops having to be rescued. We managed to run into trouble in Armenia, the
West Bank, Cambodia, Liberia and St. Petersburg, Fla., all at the same
time. In some of these cases, we had trouble determining who was the victim
and who the victimizer; each side had a case to make, and meanwhile the
disturbing footage continued. When that time came, I didn't have to make an
appointment with the Chief; she called me. 

Her monitors, I noticed as soon as I came in, were all turned off. After
asking about the casualties we'd been taking, she got down to business. 

"The identification pattern on the part of the audience is changing," she
told me. "Viewers are perceiving disorder less as a conflict to be resolved
than as a problem to be avoided. I'm forming a new unit," she told me, "and
you're going to head it." 

I'm a good cop so I asked what my duties would be now. 

"The function of the force," she answered, "has always been to respond to
pressure from the disturbed audience. We are here to alleviate stress,
aren't we? And," she continued, "it has always been a question of
responding to what we saw, hasn't it? Well," she said, "we're going to have
to change what we're seeing, aren't we?" 

She paused waiting for me to reply. I didn't. 

"We're putting you on a video-control crew," she said, "Get to work." 

 

To protect, to serve and to edit. That's my motto now. And, it is after all
one way to create order. Not that it's easy. Every interest group in the
world has equipped itself with its own portable dish and is seeking access
for its footage to the hundreds of channels available here by cable, phone
line and satellite. The abundance of manipulative, guilt-inducing imagery
vying for screen-time is quite impressive. 

Some gets on the air, some doesn't; it depends on policy. I follow policy;
I'm a good cop. As for the world cops in the field, well, they're spending
a lot of time picking up people who are uplinking contraband imagery; the
kind of thing that might lead to inconvenient emotional reactions and
create pressure for actions we don't care to take at this time. 

The Chief's still not completely pleased with the setup, however. Last time
I met with her, she suggested that maybe we could solve the Force's
remaining problems by criminalizing some of these inconvenient emotional
reactions. "The problem could be uncontrolled empathy, could it not?" she
asked. 

Could be, I thought. When you establish a new order, there's no telling
what kind of criminality you might reveal. But I didn't say anything. I'm
too good a cop for that. 


Charles Paul Freund writes regularly for Outlook. 

Copyright 1992 The Washington Post  <<>>WP   12/27       UNICEF: Children, Abroad and at Home

JAMES GRANT,the head of the United States Children's Fund, released an
annual report recently that spoke primarily to the needs of children in the
developing world. The fact that so many are terribly poor, lack decent
medical care and primary education and, in extreme cases like Somalia, even
food, is no surprise to Americans. But the progress reported by Mr. Grant
in dealing with these needs is both heartening and impressive. The
cooperation of the central government - and, in particular, the heads of
government - has made all the difference in those countries where children
have been made the focus of government attention for some specific purpose
such as immunization or infant feeding. 

Meanwhile at home, the Children's Defense Fund released its annual report
on the status of America's children. While this country is by any standard
affluent, and most children here do not face the dire difficulties of their
counterparts in the developing world, the needs of many remain to be
addressed. One in five American children, says Marian Edelman, president of
the CDF, lives in poverty. Fewer than 60 percent of American 2-year-olds
have been immunized. About 2.7 million children in this country were
reported abused or neglected last year. Hundreds of thousands live in
foster homes, group homes or institutions. Others suffer because Head Start
programs are not fully funded, because child support orders are unenforced
or because they are not covered by any form of health insurance. As it does
in less fortunate nations, violence kills children here. CDF reports that
handguns alone are responsible for the death of a child every three hours. 

Some of the proposals offered by the CDF, like universal immunization and
better prenatal care, will save money in the long run, for they will
prevent far costlier complications later in life. Others require a real
commitment of taxpayer funds for new programs, improvements in existing
ones or new tax concessions for families with children. The organization
does not offer a detailed proposal on how federal funds should be raised or
reallocated, but it urgently demands that they be found and allocated to
these reforms. 

If CDF does not achieve all its goals, at least these advocates will get a
sympathetic hearing in the White House because both Clintons have long
supported their work. Yes, the economy will be the new president's primary
worry, and certainly foreign affairs will take his time and attention
perhaps more than he now realizes. But if there is any cause that should be
consistently pressed throughout the next four years, it is the welfare of
poor American children and the young families struggling to raise them. 

Copyright 1992 The Washington Post  <<>>RTw  12/28 1816 *START* HANGS IN BALANCE AT EAGLEBURGER-KOZYREV TALKS 

By Alan Elsner 

GENEVA, Dec 29, Reuter - A treaty to eliminate the most deadly category of
nuclear weapons hung in the balance on Tuesday as the foreign ministers of
Russia and the United States made a final attempt to clinch a deal. 

U.S. Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger and Russian Foreign Minister
Andrei Kozyrev were to meet for a second day in a bid to resolve the last
nagging issues of the START II treaty. 

It was, Eagleburger had said before the talks, in all probability the final
attempt of the Bush administration to finish the treaty before leaving
office on January 20. 

The treaty would reduce the two countries' stocks of nuclear weaponry by
about two thirds. But possibly more significant, it would also eliminate
the most dangerous category of Cold War weapons -- land-based missiles with
multiple warheads. 

On Monday, the ministers said they had moved towards agreement but their
success was still in doubt after several hours of talks. 

"We're making progress," Eagleburger said, at a dinner he hosted for
Kozyrev at the end of a day of talks. But asked if he could complete the
START II treaty on Tuesday, he said: 

"Can't tell you. We're not going to say anything more until we've got this
thing finished. We will be doing our best." 

Earlier, Kozyrev had expressed optimism that he and Eagleburger could
succeed in their effort to complete the treaty before President George Bush
left office. 

"I am ready to bet a bottle of whisky and say that we will do such work
here which will make it possible for our presidents to have a positive
decision after our negotiations today," he said. 

Eagleburger plans to return to Washington, with or without a deal, on
Tuesday afternoon. 

START II would be the crowning achievement of the Bush administration in
arms control. The president himself has spoken of his achievement in
lifting the nuclear nightmare from the face of the earth. But his words
would be empty without START II signed, sealed and delivered. 

If the talks succeed, Bush and Russian President Boris Yeltsin are expected
to meet next week in the Black Sea resort of Sochi to sign the treaty. 

Even if Eagleburger and Kozyrev are successful, experts and translators
would still have to work against the clock to produce formal treaty texts
in Russian and English for the presidents to sign. 

The first Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START), finalized last year, cut
nuclear arsenals of the United States and former Soviet Union by about 30
per cent but left untouched these deadly weapons, which figure in most
nuclear doomsday scenarios. 

As the talks began, there were three issues separating the sides: the fate
of Russian SS18 silos, the role of Russian SS19 missiles and the complex
question of which U.S. bombers should be counted under treaty limits. 

On silos, the United States relaxed its earlier position that all the silos
that house the 154 giant SS18 missiles should be destroyed. Under the
treaty, the missiles themselves would be eliminated but Russia had asked to
preserve the silos to protect its currently-mobile SS25 missiles. 

On SS19s, Eagleburger said Washington was now prepared to allow the
Russians to "download" five warheads from some of their 170 missiles and
thus preserve them under the treaty. 

On both of these issues, the argument appeared to centre around how many
silos and how many missiles the Russians could keep. 

On bombers, the United States wants to retain the option of loading nuclear
weapons on its B1 aircraft as it retires B52 bombers in the future. But
Russia says the B1s should be counted under the treaty limits if Washington
wants to preserve that right. 

REUTER AE JSF  <<>>RTf  12/28 1217  IMF, World Bank face world in economic turmoil

By Alver Carlson 

WASHINGTON, Dec 28, Reuter - The International Monetary Fund and World Bank
are ending what should have been a year of celebration on a down note,
faced with a stalling global economy and new fissures in Russia's economic
reforms. 

Charged with guiding the increasingly complex international monetary
system, IMF officials said they are particularly concerned with an apparent
breakdown in 1992 of a carefully woven system of economic cooperation among
the largest and richest industrial countries. 

A global recession, IMF officials warn, could prompt rich nations to go
their separate ways instead of acting in the best interests of the world
economy. For their part, World Bank officials have grown more worried about
their continued inability to lift the world's poorest countries, especially
those in sub-Saharan Africa, out of grinding poverty that has gripped them
for decades. 

It wasn't supposed to be like this since 1992 was the first full year that
both the IMF and World Bank became truly global. Russia and the other
former Soviet republics joined the two institutions they once reviled as
"capitalist tools." 

"While not every country agrees with everything the two institutions press
for, virtually none feel they can be a part of the international economic
system without being members," said one official. The few remaining
holdouts include North Korea and Cuba. But Russia's entry into the ranks of
the IMF and World Bank has proven a mixed blessing. 

The IMF in particular has been harshly criticized for being too tough on
Russia, demanding painful reforms before the nuclear superpower can obtain
IMF money. Recent developments have not helped. Upheavals in the Russian
government seemed to signal a further softening of Moscow's commitment to
reform. 

"We didn't think it would be easy (to get reforms) and we were right," said
one IMF source. But the Fund's forecast for a 1992 global economic upswing
missed the mark, thanks to economic slowdowns in Europe and Japan. 

In a major downward reassessment of economic activity for next year, the
IMF last week said global growth would only increase 2.3 percent and the
industrial countries would grow a sluggish two percent. 

A few months ago, the international lending agency had been far more
optimistic, calling for 3.1 percent global growth with 2.9 percent growth
for the industrial countries in 1993. 

IMF officials have been increasingly disturbed about what they view as a
virtual collapse of economic coordination between the so-called Group of
Seven countries - the United States, Japan, Germany, Britain, France, Italy
and Canada. 

IMF sources said the lending agency will press for countries to work more
closely together to avoid upheavals in currency markets and other problems.
Recently, IMF Managing Director Michel Camdessus has been
uncharacteristically sharp with the United States, Germany and Japan. He
has urged them to act to help improve the stalled global economy. 

Recessions and budget deficits in the richer nations have made it
"increasingly difficult to get funding" to help poor nations, said one
official. Camdessus is pushing for the IMF to expand its own facilities
that provide low cost help to poor countries. He wants to make one program,
the so-called enhanced structural adjustment facility, permanent in 1993. 

It would complement new funding agreed to last week for the International
Development Association, the World Bank arm that makes essentially
interest-free loans available to the poorest countries. Last week, some 34
nations, including the United States, pledged $18 billion to IDA over the
next three years. 

<<>>RTw 12/28 0031 IRAQI HEALTHCARE,ONCE SOPHISTICATED,SUFFERS FROM SANCTIONS

By Thalia Griffiths 

BAGHDAD, Dec 28, Reuter - For Iraqi doctors used to working in one of the
region's best healthcare systems, the deprivations of more than two years
of U.N. sanctions are especially hard to bear. 

"We're short of everything," said chief doctor Mehdi Mohi at the Qadissiya
hospital in Baghdad's teeming Saddam City district. "We lack even the
simplest things." 

His staff need drugs, syringes, anaesthetics, surgical gowns and parts for
machines such as heart monitors. Film shortages mean x-rays are rationed to
two a day for a large general hospital serving a community of one million
people. 

"What we have is running out or wearing out," said Mohi. 

The doctors say the situation is getting worse. Patients whose treatment
has been postponed are developing complications, poor diet is taking its
toll, and equipment is getting older. 

In the children's wards, mothers sit patiently on iron beds cradling thin
babies. 

A grey-faced three-month old boy with listless eyes lies in an incubator in
a corner. "It's his third admission," says Mohi. "Basically malnutrition.
We treat him and discharge him and he comes back with something else." 

An older boy lies on a thin mattress breathing into a mask. "He's
asthmatic," says Mohi. "He needs hydrocortisone but we have none." 

The hospital is virtually empty. Health Minister Umeed Madhat Mubarak said
only up to 50 per cent of capacity was in use as hospitals were admitting
only emergency cases to conserve supplies. 

United Nations trade sanctions do not bar import of medical supplies or
food but the government says that without selling its oil it has no money
to pay for them. 

It has rejected tough terms laid down by the Security Council to sell some
oil to pay for humanitarian supplies as an infringement of its sovereignty.


Mubarak said giving in to the U.N. terms was worse than putting up with the
shortages. 

"Of course it is, because the sovereignty and dignity of the person is very
important," he told reporters, adding that Iraq would never accept any
conditions. 

Mubarak said that of prepaid orders worth $20 million placed with foreign
companies in February 1990, well before the imposition of the blockade,
only $7 million had been received. 

He said foreign governments were blocking companies from sending supplies.
"We have our old orders with the manufacturers and they are happy with
those orders but the governments are not allowing the manufacturers to send
us these things." 

Plastic canulas for administration of fluid are in short supply. The
doctors say they are using steel needles instead for all but the most acute
cases, risking rupturing veins. 

They have gone back to using the old-fashioned glass syringes sterilised by
boiling as disposable ones are virtually unavailable. 

"If we know a patient has a blood disease such as hepatitis, then we use a
disposable syringe. The problem is with the ones we don't know about," said
doctor Auday Said. 

There is virtually no insulin, and what there is is often out of date. 

The eight-bed cardiac unit has two working monitors. The hospital cannot
get the spare parts it needs to repair them. 

Mubarak says Iraq used to import medical equipment and drugs worth $600
million a year, and the aid agencies now are meeting only five to 10 per
cent of needs. 

U.N. officials agree that the country had one of the best healthcare
systems in the Middle East with treatment available for everyone. 

"There's no way the U.N. agencies and the NGOs can replace what the
government did with billions of dollars of oil revenue," said UNICEF
director Thomas Ekvall. 

U.N. figures show infant mortality has shot up to 90 per 1,000 live births
in 1991 from less than 30 in 1989 and 1990. Among the under fives, there
were 125 deaths per 1,000 in 1991, compared to 80 in 1990 and less than 60
in 1985. 

The doctors said malnutrition and its impact on the body's resistance to
disease was a major cause of the higher death rate. "The children are the
worst affected," said Mohi. "The adults have more resistance." 

Government subsidised rations provide only about a third of monthly needs
and market prices have risen by many hundred times since before the war. 

Aid workers are seeing cases of malnutrition as well as vaccine-preventable
diseases and water-borne illnesses caused by poor sanitation. 

UNICEF has begun a campaign to catch up on the lack of vaccination in the
past two years by immunising some two million children and women against
tubercolosis, whooping cough, diphtheria, tetanus, polio and measles. 

The deprivation at Qadissiya hospital is all the harder to bear because
three years ago the doctors had all the equipment they needed. Asked how it
feels to work under such conditions, Said shrugs sadly. "You can imagine,"
he says. 

"Listen, this isn't Somalia. We don't want help, we want to be allowed to
go back to helping ourselves as we did before," said a government official.


REUTER TG  <<>>APn  12/28 1624  Somalia-Belet Huen

Copyright, 1992. The Associated Press. All rights reserved.  

By JEFFREY ULBRICH 

Associated Press Writer 

BELET HUEN, Somalia (AP) -- Helicopter-borne American and Canadian troops
swept into this famine-stricken town just after dawn Monday, securing the
last point designated by the U.N. forces in Somalia as a hub for food
distribution. 

The soldiers met no resistance as the helicopters landed at a dusty gravel
airstrip lined with hundreds of townspeople. 

Col. Serge Labbe, commander of all Canadian forces in Somalia, said his
soldiers would begin escorting food convoys immediately and would guard the
distribution points to ensure no food is stolen. 

The commander of the force, Canadian Lt. Col. Carol Mathieu, said his
troops will react quickly to any threat and will disarm Somali gunmen. 

"We passed the word yesterday that anybody who has a weapon parallel to the
ground is a threat and will be dealt with," Mathieu said. 

In the past three weeks, troops in the U.S.-led coalition have secured
Mogadishu, Beli Dogle, Baidoa, Kismayu, Bardera, Hoddur and Gailalassi, all
virtually without struggle. 

Although Belet Huen, 250 miles north of Mogadishu, is not free from the
gunmen who have been looting relief supplies in this famine-wracked
country, it is one of the few areas with a functioning government. 

Mathieu was welcomed at the airstrip by Mayor Hussain Mao Issa, who said
that unlike other towns, Belet Huen's clans have come together to try to
sort out their differences. 

Somalia descended into chaos and anarchy after the ouster two years ago of
President Mohammed Siad Barre. Fighting between clans has devastated the
country and given rise to banditry and violence in most areas. 

Makeshift camps haved sprouted around Belet Huen as hungry people drift in
from the countryside. Estimates of the town's population range from 110,000
to 150,000. 

Red Cross officials here said the problem of malnutrition has been dealt
with. But the aid kitchens remain indispensable until crops can be planted
and harvested. 

Scouts led by a Canadian captain flying the red maple leaf flag on his
radio antenna were the first troops to arrive in Belet Huen. Accompanying
the unit were a British officer and an American Special Forces exchange
captain wearing a Canadian uniform. 

Two scout helicopters landed at 7:05 a.m., followed 30 minutes later by
seven U.S. Army Blackhawk choppers that dropped off an American platoon at
the south end of the airstrip and a Canadian platoon that took up position
on the north end. 

"There is a problem of security, and that's what we're here for, to ensure
that the (food) that gets here doesn't get looted and disappear," said
Mathieu. 

Mathieu said that by the end of the day Monday, he would have 300 Canadian
troops on the ground. The 220 Americans who came in Monday were expected to
begin pulling out as early as Tuesday. 

<<>>APn  12/26 1226  Madagascar-Cheating Famine

Copyright, 1992. The Associated Press. All rights reserved.  

By MICHELLE FAUL 

Associated Press Writer 

ANKAZOFOTSY, Madagascar (AP) -- The heavens torment the scraggly bush of
southern Madagascar with such frequency that its inhabitants give names to
the worst droughts. 

"My husband died in the iron-belt-getting-tighter famine and I lost a
grandchild in the trousers-too-big famine," said Ivolamiza, a peasant woman
whose wrinkled face creased with a toothless grin as she spoke of her
troubles. 

Although rain hasn't fallen in three years, the 1 million people in this
isolated region are staving off famine thanks to a World Food Program
operation that has bypassed the government and gone directly to the people.


"We've all survived the `kere PAM,"' said Ivolamiza, using the Malagasy
words for "WFP famine." Like many Malagasy people, whose ancestors came
here from Indonesia about 2,000 years ago, Ivolamiza uses only one name. 

Rather than working with government bureaucrats, the World Food Program, or
WFP, is relying on drought victims themselves to distribute food. That has
halved transport costs and kept losses low. 

In Africa, war, inefficiency, corruption and political squabbling often
turn a single dry spell into a famine of insurmountable proportions. 

That happened in Ethiopia in 1984-85, when the government refused to allow
food deliveries to regions where guerrillas were fighting for independence.


It is happening now in Somalia. A U.S.-led intervention was needed to
guarantee food deliveries. 

But in Madagascar, an island nation in the Indian Ocean off southeastern
Africa, the WFP turned instability to its advantage. It launched a relief
program in August 1991 while the government was distracted by an
8-month-long general strike for democracy. 

Attempts by President Didier Ratsiraka and the opposition to reach a
political consensus for the nation of 12 million people have kept the
government paralyzed and out of aid workers' way. 

World Food Program officials say government inaction has been a plus. 

"We lose less than half a percent of the food we bring in," said Dominique
Frankefort, a Dutch woman who is deputy director of the U.N. aid program in
Madagascar. 

"Normally, you have losses from a bag that falls overboard, broken bags, to
theft at warehouses, in the harbor and during tranpsort and delivery. In
Mozambique, you have 40 percent losses, and no one knows how little of the
food reaches beneficiaries in Somalia." 

When a ship arrived recently in Taolagnaro, 460 miles from the capital,
Antananarivo, local supervisors fanned out to alert villagers when the food
would arrive and advised them to send workers to guard, transport and
deliver it. 

In the countryside, people transport bags of food on wheelbarrows. Those
who have had to sell their oxen and cows yoke themselves to carts and haul
the food home. 

Some villagers have spontaneously filled in holes in roads to speed
distribution. 

"Perhaps we do need to think more about how to use communities that we
help, and the success we achieved by dropping normal bureaucratic
procedures," said David Fletcher, a Briton who directs the World Food
Program here. 

At Ankazofotsy, 40 miles southeast of Taolagnaro, two skinny oxen dragged a
cart loaded with American corn over ruts leading to the wooden huts during
a visit this month. The village chief, Mara Mahasoa, organized the
distribution of 25 cups of rice a person, to last one month. 

That is less than the United Nations considers the minimum needed to keep
people alive, but villagers forage for wild fruit like cactus prickly
pears. The area often is hit by drought, and people have learned to get by.


"These people are proud and it has helped their spirit of independence to
supplement the diet themselves, even though it's a struggle," said Thomas
Frey, a supply expert on loan from the Swiss Diaster Relief agency. 

The program has not all been smooth. When the U.N. agency ran out of food
and the rains failed again last May, people started dying. Just how many
isn't known. 

Ivolamiza said she sold the family's two oxen, then their rice field, then
all but one of her cooking pots. 

<<>>RTw  12/26 1128  PROTEST IN KIEV AS BREAD PRICE QUADRUPLES

By Alexander Tkachenko 

KIEV, Dec 26, Reuter - Thousands of Kiev workers protested against steep
price rises on Saturday but Ukrainian Prime Minister Leonid Kuchma defended
harsh austerity measures as essential to the country's survival. 

Kuchma said the slashing of subsidies on basic goods and services, which
quadrupled the price of bread and sent the cost of a Kiev metro ride
soaring by 10 times, was a painful and necessary step which could no longer
be postponed. 

"For a long time we spoke about reforms -- but that was just talk, when in
fact we were following a catastrophic course of events in the economy," he
said in a statement prepared for delivery on Ukrainian television. 

"Now the government is forced to take highly unpopular measures and bring
prices for a number of goods into line with their cost...If we do not take
this burden on ourselves, then tomorrow it will weigh 100 times more
heavily on our children." 

A loaf of bread which cost six to eight coupons (less than one U.S. cent)
on Friday was selling for about 30 (three cents) in the capital on
Saturday. A journey on the metro leapt from 50 kopecks to five coupons. 

More than 5,000 workers from Kiev's "Arsenal" factory, a defence plant
close to parliament and government headquarters, demonstrated for several
hours along with leaders of the Socialist (former Communist) Party. 

"The government has no right to allow the impoverishment of the people,"
said Valery Kravchenko, one of the leaders of the protest. A worker at the
factory earns about 5,000 to 6,000 coupons (up to $6.70 a month). 

Government ministers shrugged off the protest. 

"We entered government not to win glory, but to carry out decisive reform,"
Deputy Prime Minister Viktor Pynzenyk told reporters. "Our government
cannot be frightened. We are responsible for our words and our actions." 

Economic reform in Ukraine, the second most powerful of the former Soviet
republics, has lagged far behind that in neighbouring Russia amid damaging
tug-of-wars over policy in the year since independence. 

Month-on-month inflation is running at 30 per cent and government figures
show that the 1992 budget deficit was 44 per cent of gross national product
in November. 

Government economic advisers finished work on Thursday on a new reform
blueprint drawn up in cooperation with the International Monetary Fund and
World Bank. 

Kuchma defended the price rises, which also apply to milk, butter, other
staple foods and housing rents. He said they had been forced by massive
increases in the price of oil and gas. 

"There was no alternative to such a decision...Otherwise, a complete
collapse of the economy and a halt in production awaited us. It is a
question of the survival of the people and the state," said Kuchma's
statement, read to Reuters by a government spokesman in advance of his
broadcast. 

"We must travel this road -- no one else will do it for us, and the longer
we put it off, the harder it will be to control events," the prime minister
added. 

The increases came into effect in 11 of the country's 25 regions on
Saturday and were due to take effect in the remaining 14 by the end of the
year. 

While removing price controls on a number of products, the government has
maintained them on some foods such as salt, sugar and vegetable oil, as
well as on industrial goods in the chemical, machine-building and
metallurgical sectors.

REUTER MJT RDW  <<>>APn  12/26 1154  Food Labels

Copyright, 1992. The Associated Press. All rights reserved.  

By DIANE DUSTON 

Associated Press Writer 

WASHINGTON (AP) -- You may wonder where all the vitamins went when you see
the new nutrition labels on food packages. 

They'll still be in the foods, but they're no longer considered essential
health information. 

And that's because diseases like beriberi and pellagra haven't been a
threat to American health since anyone can remember. 

It's cancer, diabetes, heart disease and a myriad of ailments caused by
overeating and poor nutrition that health experts worry about now. 

So the label is being retooled to discourage diets of excess rather than
guard against diet deficiencies -- emphasizing fat, sodium and cholesterol
instead of B-vitamins like niacin, thiamine and riboflavin. 

The new labels aren't out yet, but they should begin appearing next year.
The government is giving food manufacturers until May 1994 to phase them
in. 

The National Academy of Sciences recommended removing some vitamin
information after surveys showed that even Americans suffering from hunger
are not at risk of diseases caused by lack of vitamins such as those seen
in the Third World. 

Vitamins A and C will still be listed along with iron and calcium, because
there's an interest in them for other reasons, says the Food and Drug
Administration, not because people are suffering from scurvy, a Vitamin C
deficiency, for example. 

It's mostly the B-vitamins that have been eliminated from the label. 

This family of nutrients is essential to overall good health, but found in
a wide variety of foods regularly consumed by most Americans, including
whole grains, dried beans, eggs, meat and leafy green vegetables. 

Additionally, during food processing, vitamins and minerals are routinely
added, said Regina Hildwine of the National Food Processors Association. 

Americans eat abundant proportions of processed foods from white bread and
cereal to microwaveable dinners. 

Hildwine said enough vitamins and minerals are spread through the American
food supply that people can quit worrying about them. 

Dietary deficiency "hasn't been a problem in this country for the last 20
years," she said. 

Nancy Schwartz of the American Dietetic Association says it's been a lot
longer than that. 

Beriberi and pellagra are nervous disorders associated with a B-vitamin
deficiency originally observed in Asia when the staple diet became white
rice instead of brown. They never were overriding health concerns in the
United States, said Schwartz. 

Vitamins A and C, however, are believed to minimize cancer risk; calcium is
important in the fight against osteoperosis and iron helps prevent anemia,
health officials say. So they'll stay on the label. 

Here's what else you'll find: 

--Serving size. 

--Servings per container. 

--Total calories and calories from fat per serving. 

--Total fat, saturated fat, cholesterol, sodium, protein and total
carbohydrates in sugars and dietary fiber. 

--Amount of Vitamin A, Vitamin C, calcium and iron. 

--How the nutrients fit into a daily diet of 2,000 calories and 65 grams of
fat. 

--Exactly how many grams and milligrams of total fat, saturated fat,
cholesterol, sodium, carbohydrates and fiber comprise a 2,000 calorie diet
and a 2,500 calorie diet. 

--How to convert one gram of fat, carbohydrates and protein into calories. 

As a whole, the new labels will tell consumers twice as much about
nutrition as currently on foods and likely will seem more complicated at
first. 

Schwartz said her organization already is preparing educational materials
and programs to help people use the label to plan healthier diets. 

The government also will be providing information to consumers, promised
Health and Human Services Secretary Louis Sullivan. 

So will industry groups. 

"This new label is a graduate degree in nutrition," said Jeff Nedelman of
the Grocery Manufacturers of America. "Your children may be the first
consumers who will be able to understand it, and that may make it worth
doing." 

<<>>RTw  12/26 1812  SOMALIA ANTI-FAMINE FORCE HEADS FOR FINAL FRONTIERS

By Frances Kerry 

MOGADISHU, Dec 27, Reuter - The U.S.-led task force is pushing ahead to
secure the last two towns it needs to spread out into Somalia's hunger
zone. 

By going into the towns of Belet Huen and Jalalaksi, the foreign task force
will have reached its target of seven towns by the time President George
Bush arrives for a New Year visit on December 31. 

There were also signs that the mission was toughening its stance on arms
and lawlessness, a key cause of a famine which has killed more than 300,000
people. 

The Canadian contingent of a force now numbering more than 23,000 troops
either in Somalia or in ships offshore said on Saturday it would guard food
distribution points from looters. 

And U.S. Marine Colonel Fred Peck, a task force spokesman, said foreign
forces were making an "aggressive attempt" to impose order in the places in
their control. 

U.S. military spokesmen said Marines shot at least three Somalis in a
pick-up truck on Friday, when one of the occupants fired at them with a
Kalashnikov assault rifle. It was not clear if the Somalis had been killed.


The push over the next two days takes Italian troops into the hinterland
for the first time. 

Some 180 Italians, escorted by U.S. military police, were due to enter
Jalalaksi, 196 km (120 miles) north of Mogadishu, by dark on Sunday. 

An advance group was 80 km (50 miles) outside the town on Saturday
afternoon, U.S. military spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Steve Ritter said. 

A separate group of 260 U.S. and Canadian troops was set to land soon after
dawn on Monday in the town of Belet Huen, north of Jalalaxi and near the
border with Ethiopia. 

They will pour from UH-60 helicopters in an "air assault" mounted from a
former Soviet airfield at Bali Dogle. 

The force in Belet Huen will swell to more than 845 troops, mostly
Canadian, by the New Year. The Canadians will be the first troops to guard
food distribution points since the multinational force began arriving on
December 9. 

"If you don't put guards in distribution centres people are going to come
in and get food," Colonel Serge Labbe, commander of the Canadian forces in
Somalia, told a news conference. 

There have been isolated reports over the past two weeks of food aid being
looted soon after being escorted to distribution centres by foreign troops.
U.S. troops, by far the biggest contingent, say they cannot guard "every
grain of wheat." 

The force has fanned out over an area of southern and central Somalia and
aims to spread out from its eight bases to reach into the famished
hinterland. 

David Stables of the aid agency CARE said U.S. Marines who arrived in the
southern town of Bardere on Thursday would escort a convoy of 40 tonnes of
food to the village of Darjani, 15 km (eight miles) outside town on Sunday.


"This village has been unreachable since mid-October because of bad roads
and mines. The American sappers are sweeping these roads," Stables said. 

CARE says more than 100,000 in the countryside around Bardere need food
aid. They have got little in the last two months, largely because of mines
laid in a battle for Bardere in October between two clan factions. 

Stables said the town was relieved to see the Marines. 

"People are happy in Bardere. They don't mind getting out at checkpoints
because they know what the Americans are looking for," he told Reuters. 

Although task force commanders have said it is not their job to disarm
Somalis, spokesman Peck said foreign troops were taking a more active
stance as the force grew. 

"When they come across weapons they're not sitting back, they're going in
and taking them away," he said. 

REUTER FK JKF  <<>>UPn  12/26 1621  U.S. troops fire on truck, move deeper into Somalia

By United Press International 

In the aftermath of a Christmas Day exchange of gunfire with a Somali
rifleman, U.S.-led troops moved deeper into the war-torn African nation
Saturday, poised to secure two more famine-plagued towns. 

Newly arrived Italian troops established positions outside of Gialalassi,
90 miles north of the Somali capital of Mogadishu, while U. S. soldiers
teamed up with Canadian paratroops to enter Belet Huen. 

The towns, scheduled to be secured Sunday and Monday, respectively,
represent the remaining two targets on Operation Restore Hopes' list of
eight communities that it plans to turn into relief hubs. 

Officials reported Saturday that a U.S. military convoy returned fire at a
pickup truck loaded with Somalis outside the city of Baidoa. They said at
least three Somalis were hit, but that no American personnel were wounded. 

Marine Col. Fred Peck told reporters in Mogadishu that the incident
occurred Friday, Christmas Day, when the pickup approached the U.S. convoy
and one of the truck's occupants opened fire at the Marines. 

"The Marines returned fire, hitting at least three of the occupants, " Peck
said. "The pickup trucks went off the road and the convoy continued to move
in accordance with standard procedure." 

The incident took place as the international task force led by U.S. troops
helped deliver holiday food and medicine to thousands of people. 

A combined force of French Foreign Legionnaires and U.S. Marines rolled
into the city of Oddur at dawn Christmas Day. 

"Oddur was not the scene of any...fighting," said Peck. "But it has been
fortified by the side that was occupying it at one time and positions were
protected by land mines." 

Peck said the U.N. forces would have plenty of work to do clearing the
mines, which were estimated to number in the thousands. 

"There are a lot of mines in the area around the approaches to the Oddur
airfield, partcularly the small plastic mines -- foot poppers," he said. 

Meanwhile, U.S. Ambassador Robert Oakley said that Somali bandits continue
to roam the countryside, but that the number of guns is dwindling. 

<<>>WP   12/26 xx In Troubled Somalia, U.S. Troops Learn The Limits of Charity

MOGADISHU; Outside GIs' Control, Crime Rises 

By Keith B. Richburg 

Washington Post Foreign Service 

MOGADISHU, Somalia, Dec. 25 - Little more than two weeks after the U.S.-led
military force arrived to quiet factional fighting and mass looting in
large sections of Mogadishu, banditry and small-scale armed robbery seems
to be increasing in areas outside U.S. control. 

The gangs of gunmen that controlled this city, extorting protection money
and stealing food from international aid organizations, have turned to
carjacking and robbery instead. "It's switched to a kind of everyday,
common-thievery street crime," said an Irish aid worker here. 

And it can happen to anyone. A Marine this week left his M-16 rifle, his
seabag and pack unattended when, according to U.S. military spokesman Col.
Fred Peck, "a Somali grabbed and ran. . . . They took all of his
possessions," which were recovered only when U.S. troops searched the trunk
of a car at a checkpoint. 

U.S. military officials insist that their troops are not here to act as a
police force for Somalia. But in a country without government or laws, many
expect the Americans - as the most powerful armed faction - to perform just
that role. "We're still in that vacuum," said a United Nations spokesman. 

Mogadishu's new contradiction - more security in town but more common crime
on its fringes - has led to confusion for foreign relief workers and
journalists who must navigate between the two zones. At checkpoints, U.S.
troops will seize heavy weapons, such as rocket-propelled grenade launchers
or machine guns - but in the mean streets outside the American perimeter, a
heavy gun or a rocket launcher is still the best deterrent against thieves.


Many of the relief workers who began traveling without guns in the first
days after the American troops arrived have now started to re-arm in the
face of the perceived rise in lawlessness. 

According to an agreement between the aid agencies and the U.S. forces, the
relief groups are allowed to have only light weapons in their cars, and
then only if they are not visible from the windows. 

One problem, some relief workers say, is that for trips out of the capital,
light arms simply are not good enough. 

Mike McDonagh, team leader of the Irish aid group Concern, said a security
vehicle full of Somali gunmen hired by his agency passed an American
checkpoint and had a grenade-launcher confiscated by U.S. troops. 

"My bazooka was taken yesterday by the Americans - I'm not going to get it
back," he said. "I'm going to have to get another one." For traveling to
areas in the countryside where bandits are still rife, he said, "three
Kalashnikovs (automatic assault rifles) would be no good." 

Crime is rising in part because of greater opportunity. With more
foreigners, including journalists, in the city, there are simply more
people around to rob. 

"There's still a lot of lawlessness, as you all know, because some of you
have been the victims of it," Peck told reporters on Thursday. "We hope to
expand to the other areas of the city as rapidly as we can." 

Many of the robberies have taken place in the no man's land now commonly
referred to as the "green line" - a zone between the forces of Mogadishu's
two main warlords that has been  reduced by months of intensive shelling
into a deserted maze of rubble, partially destroyed buildings and twisted
metal. 

Marines have been conducting periodic foot patrols in the area, but for the
most part the zone remains largely unpoliced and in the hands of marauding
bands of freelance gunmen. 

The green line has been the site of recent carjackings, particularly as
relief vehicles must traverse the dangerous streets in crossing from the
southern sector of the city, controlled by Mohamed Farah Aideed, to the
northern sector, in the hands of a rival, Ali Mahdi Mohamed. 

Relief groups with operations on both sides of the divided city, including
the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and the United Nations
Children's Fund (UNICEF), have reported an upsurge of lawlessness in
northern Mogadishu. 

The aid agencies are urging the U.S. military to expand their perimeter and
establish some kind of a presence in Ali Mahdi's zone, which now seems to
have become a haven for looters. 

The situation is said to be similar, even worse, in rural areas outside of
the major towns where American and other foreign forces have established a
presence. 

The towns of Baidoa and Baardheere have now been declared secure and
gun-free. For example, in Baidoa, the local commander there has instituted
a "gun check" at the entry to the town where new arrivals leave their
weapons and pick them up when leaving. But the roads outside are said to be
still teeming with highway bandits and car thieves. 

Copyright 1992 The Washington Post  <<>>APn  12/26 1056  Food Stamps for Aliens?

Copyright, 1992. The Associated Press. All rights reserved.  

By JENNIFER DIXON 

AP Farm Writer 

WASHINGTON (AP) -- A government program to keep illegal aliens off the food
stamp rolls may be a waste of money because few undocumented immigrants
appear willing to risk detection by applying for welfare, Agriculture
Department investigators say. 

But advocates say the system has caught thousands of illegal aliens who
tried to get benefits and is a deterrent that keeps other immigrants out of
welfare offices. 

The Agriculture Department, which runs the $25.6 billion food stamp
program, is expected to spend $5 million this year verifying the
immigration status of food stamp applicants. Yet USDA's Office of Inspector
General says the system rarely catches an illegal immigrant. 

"State agency officials stated that illegal aliens applying for program
benefits are not a problem because undocumented aliens do not risk
detection by applying for (food stamp) benefits," the investigators said in
a September audit, obtained by The Associated Press under the Freedom of
Information Act. 

But the Immigration and Naturalization Service says its verification system
detected 10,837 illegal aliens who applied for food stamps in 1991 and
1992, resulting in potential savings to taxpayers of $14.5 million. 

An INS official said the agency's figures are based on the number of
inquiries to the system as well as logs kept by local offices, while the
Agriculture auditors' findings do not include statistics and are the result
of anecdotal information. 

The INS is barred from deporting any illegal aliens caught by the system,
except in cases involving criminal activity. 

Under the law, only certain immigrants are entitled to receive food stamps
and other welfare benefits. Ineligible immigrants include foreign tourists,
students, those whose application for permanent status has not been
approved and aliens whose status is questionable or unverified. 

Food stamp caseworkers must verify the immigration status of all non-U.S.
citizens, and can do so by tapping into a nationwide computer data base
with information on 25 million aliens. If that doesn't work, the INS will
conduct other checks of its records in what is called a "secondary
verification." 

INS is responsible for the verification program, known as Systematic Alien
Verification for Entitlements, or SAVE, while the Agriculture Department
reimburses states for the administrative costs of checking food stamp
applicants' immigration status. 

Agriculture spent $2.46 million in 1991 on SAVE "with little or no
results," the USDA audit said. 

Officials in two states with large immigrant populations, California and
Texas, said "they did not know of any instances whereby the SAVE system
prevented an illegal alien from receiving (food stamp) benefits," the
report said. 

Auditors said USDA's Food and Nutrition Service has found little data to
counter the states' claims. 

Agency spokesman Dick Thaxton said last week that the verification system
is an added burden for caseworkers already stretched thin by expanding food
stamp rolls. Caseworker mistakes and errors and fraud by food stamp
recipients cost the program $1 billion a year. 

A record 26.4 million Americans received food stamps in September, up from
23.7 million a year ago. 

Bob Martinez, assistant INS commissioner, said the verification system is
catching an increasing number of aliens not entitled to receive food
stamps. 

And Dan Stein, executive director of the Federation for American
Immigration Reform and an advocate of tougher immigration laws, said the
system saves money because it keeps immigrants from seeking welfare. 

"This country is facing a world of hundreds of millions of people who have
everything to gain and nothing to lose by trying to come to a country with
food stamps, free public education, emergency medical care and Social
Security," Stein said. "The whole point of SAVE is to deter people." 

------ 

Not all states participate in SAVE. The law allows USDA to grant waivers to
those with an alternative system or if the costs of administering the
program exceed the savings. 

Requests for waivers from New York and Massachusetts are pending. Other
states with waivers are Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota and Ohio. 

<<>>RTw  12/25 1201  HOMELESS HOLD CHRISTMAS PARTY IN LUXURY PARIS HOTEL

PARIS, Dec 25, Reuter - About 100 homeless people took over the lobby of
the luxury George V hotel off the Champs Elysees avenue on Friday to hold a
Christmas party, the hotel said. 

The surprise operation, during which gifts were distributed to children of
the homeless, was organised by a group campaigning for more housing to be
made available to the poor. 

The hotel's management offered chocolates to the homeless, who left after
about 90 minutes. 

France's main campaigner for the poor, 80-year-old priest Abbe Pierre, said
last week that homelessness was a national catastrophe. Two million French
people were either without shelter or were poorly housed. 

REUTER BE PAE  <<>>APn  12/25 1226  Somalia-Aid Worker

Copyright, 1992. The Associated Press. All rights reserved.  

By JEFFREY ULBRICH 

Associated Press Writer 

MOGADISHU, Somalia (AP) -- For 23 years, Rhodri Wynn-Pope was a
professional warrior. Since July, he's been a professional aid worker,
helping to feed the starving people of Somalia. He sees no irony in that. 

"Servicemen are ideally suited for emergency relief," said Wynn-Pope, 43, a
former Grenadier Guards major in the British Army who is the team leader
for CARE International in southern Somalia. 

"When it's absolute bedlam, earthquake, hurricane disaster, thrashing
around in absolute chaos, or in a warlike situation like here, soldiers
have a better appreciation of what the risks are." 

Few soldiers rise to any rank of consequence without getting skills in
crisis management, administration and logistics. 

"Our basic training makes us perfectly suitable to pick up a lot of hot
potatoes and run with them." 

On the face of it, delivering food to starving people would seem a simple
matter -- just get the stuff in and hand it out to hungry, grateful people.
Actually, it's a very hot potato. 

First of all, some of the people you want to give the food are just as
likely to rob and kill you. 

Then there are your assistants. 

On one occasion, a group of "technicals" -- gunmen hired by the relief
agencies as "technical staff" (read bodyguards) -- fought like the devil to
protect a CARE food convoy against fellow Somali raiders, Wynn-Pope said.
Four of the gunmen died. 

After Wynn-Pope paid for their funerals, the dead gunmen's coleagues turned
around and robbed him of $20,000. 

Somalia disintegrated into chaos with the ouster of President Mohammed Siad
Barre two years ago. No clan has been able to assert itself over another.
Anarchy reigns. It is impossible to operate without payoffs. 

"The only thing I haven't paid for here is I haven't paid people to eat,"
Wynn-Pope said. 

Wynn-Pope, who served in the military in such places as Hong Kong,
Singapore, Malaysia, London, India, Sudan, Kenya, Cyprus, Germany and
Northern Ireland, finds it difficult to articulate why he changed
professions. 

Part of the reason, he said, is that he is good at emergency relief,
something not all aid officials can handle. 

"There are a lot of people with an immense amount of experience in
rehabilitation and development, a lot more than people with experience in
emergency relief," he said. 

Non-governmental organizations tend to be "talking shops," Wynn-Pope said,
where things are run by committee. When decisions need to be made
immediately based on fragmentary information, military skills are of
immense value. 

Wynn-Pope said many of his fellow officers had gone into business. They
make money, he said, but their work days are a grind. 

Athough as a soldier, he sometimes "craved a flat or house in London and
wanted to lead a `normal life,"' within a few months of his military leave,
he found himself in Somalia. 

"I love people. Any job that doesn't involve people I find difficult. I
love to travel. I'm a bloody flaming nomad." 

Nothing Wynn-Pope saw on television prepared him for Somalia, however. 

"In September, I went to Baidoa to a feeding camp. I virtually could not
speak for the rest of the day. But I went back three weeks later and saw
hope in the eyes of the children. They were chirping like birds. 

"If we can get the crops going, I will feel I have accomplished that much.
If it means it gives them the strength to kill themselves, well, it's not
my job to install a Somali government." 

He speaks darkly about signs the Somali clans will fail to make good use of
the U.N. military intervention. 

"All they are doing is making hay while the sun shines and making money out
of the system as it is. I've already been threatened by people I've stopped
paying. We say, `Aren't you going to build something?' No, they are going
to let somebody else do it, then suck it dry." 

<<>>WP   12/26 xx Improving Trade With Russia Bolsters Cuba's Outlook

Improving Trade With Russia Bolsters Cuba's Economic Outlook 

By Douglas Farah 

Washington Post Foreign Service 

HAVANA - Slowly and with little fanfare, Cuba and its erstwhile ally in
Moscow are rebuilding trade relations that could help President Fidel
Castro slow his country's economic tailspin, according to officials and
diplomats. 

Cuba received near $3.5 billion a year in annual subsidies from the former
Soviet Bloc and the new relationship would not come close to making up for
that loss. But diplomats and analysts said the reviving ties were important
both economically and psychologically. 

"Potentially it is quite significant," said Wayne Smith, a Cuban expert at
the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies in
Washington and former head of the U.S. Interest Section here. "The fact
that Russia indicates it would like to continue dealing with Cuba . . .
must be rather reassuring to the Cubans, who are so accustomed to having
this trading link." 

"Clearly, things will be much reduced," Smith said in a telephone
interview, "but it can be quite significant, especially psychologically at
a very difficult time." 

With the resolution of the Cold War, ties between Cuba and Russia are now
viewed largely in terms of what is economically beneficial to both - not
what furthers the cause of Marxist revolution. Cuba owes Russia some $25
billion, and, given Cuba's lack of hard currency, trade and barter may be
the only hope of Moscow recovering any of it. 

The relations hit bottom in 1989, when the former Soviet Union ended its
multibillion-dollar subsidies. A trade agreement signed Nov. 3 in Moscow
could lead to greatly increased trade of Cuban sugar and nickel for
desperately needed Russian petroleum products. 

The agreement was the first high-level economic agreement reached since the
collapse of the Soviet Union. A joint statement said the nations "confirmed
their intention to develop relations on a new basis." 

"The new relationship is based on mutual interest," said Raul Taladrid,
vice minister of economic development, in a recent interview. "Russia
realized it was absurd not to trade with us because our economies were so
integrated, and now we are reaching a new kind of economic rationality." 

Taladrid said commerce with Russia was virtually paralyzed since 1989, but
there is now a recognition that "we are a market and have things they need,
not just sugar but things like nickel and citrus. They have also invested
money here, and there are incomplete works, as well as factories in Russia
designed especially to make things for us. So we have mutual needs." 

While all transactions are now at world market prices, the move could give
Cuba, which faces a tightening U.S. trade embargo, a desperately needed
market for its goods. 

"The ability to simply sell in Russia is a boon," said Andrew Zimbalist, a
Cuban economics expert at Smith College. "One of Cuba's main problems is
getting into the world market, and just to have a large market for
biotechnoligy, citrus and nickle should be quite beneficial." 

Zimbalist said that if the international environment toward Cuba does not
grow more hostile, and there is no major political upheaval, the economy
could begin a slow recovery in 1993. 

"The Cuban economy is basically at the bottom," said Zimbalist, whose
studies indicate the Cuban economy shrunk by 45 percent from 1989 to 1992.
"It could gradually begin to turn around next year, and I emphasize
gradually." 

Diplomats here said the agreement also calls for the Russian military to
begin to pay rent for use of their electronic listening station on the
island. The diplomats said at least part of the rent was to be paid with
spare parts for the Cuban military, armed by the former Soviet Bloc. 

Diplomats and analysts said the move by Russia seemed to be partly a
response to pressure on Russian President Boris Yeltsin for his country to
maintain a role in world affairs rather than abandon the field to the
United States. 

Under the broad terms of the agreement that have been published, in 1993
Russia could exchange about 2 million tons of crude oil and about 1.2
million tons of refined petroleum products for sugar and nickel, if all of
the option clauses were fulfilled. In 1992, Russia provided 1.8 million
tons of crude, and no refined products, Taladrid said. In 1989, Cuba traded
sugar for 13 million tons of Soviet Bloc oil (some of which it resold). But
in 1992, with the growing economic crisis and shortage of hard currency, it
was able to purchase only an additional 4.7 million tons in the open
market. 

Sergio Roca, a Cuban specialist at Adelphi University in New York, said
that one of the most significant things in the agreement was that it gave
Cuba a market for its sugar without having to scramble on the world market.


"It is going to make a difference," Roca said. "At one point there were
some of us who suspected they would not have a market. Now at least they
have some sort of marketing agreement." 

But Smith cautioned that even with the new agreement, it was not clear that
Russia, facing its own economic upheaval, would be able to fulfill all
parts of the agreement. And if it did, Cuba would still face a tremendous
energy shortfall. 

In part to overcome that, Vice President Soto said when the agreement was
signed that Cuba and Russia were seeking a third partner to help complete
Juragua nuclear power plant. Castro had suspended the project two months
earlier. It already had cost the former Soviet Union an estimated $1
billion. The project was a favorite of Castro's, and many predictions of
Cuban economic recovery were predicated at least in part on it being
functional by 1995. 

Diplomats here said the French and Italians had been approached about
helping to put up the estimated $300 million necessary to finish the
reactor, but so far had found no takers. 

"It is hard to convince someone to put up $300 million when the nation is
obviously not creditworthy or able to pay it back," said a diplomat
monitoring the process. 

Taladrid said "conversations are ongoing," but did not elaborate. He said
the power plant, if finished, would save 1 million tons annually of
petroleum used to produce electricity, which could then be routed to other
economic sectors. Russia wants to salvage some of its investment, as well
as to sell parts manufactured especially for the Juragua plant. 

"Where else are they going to go with their nuclear industry?" Taladrid
said. "They need us, and we need them." 

Copyright 1992 The Washington Post  <<>>APn  12/26 1106  World Symposium '93

Copyright, 1992. The Associated Press. All rights reserved.  

By The Associated Press 

In some parts of the world, the old order has given way to a new disorder
and the infant 1993 arrives with a gun in his diaper. 

The death of European communism not only brought freedom, but revived
centuries-old ethnic and religious hatreds. 

A barbarous war rages in what used to be Yugoslavia, in the name of "ethnic
cleansing." Several ethnic or religious conflicts are under way within or
between former Soviet republics. 

In western Europe, progress toward political and economic union continues,
but slowly. Some of the delay is blamed on a recession among rich nations
that would seem like a boom to poor ones. 

Attacks by neo-Nazi skinheads on foreign workers, refugees and Gypsies
recall the 1930s like a shrouded skull. But this time, the decent people
are protesting, not silent. 

At year's end, American soldiers landed in Somalia, with the uncustomary
mission of seeing that the starving are fed. They volunteered to help the
United Nations, which still has not found the role of global guardian
envisioned for it when the U.N. Charter was adopted in 1945. 

Democracy wrestles stubbornly with authoritarian governments elsewhere in
Africa, and prevails in various forms in Latin America despite corruption
and restive generals. 

Most promising of all for 1993 is the persistence of hope, that dogged
constant of the human condition. 

The Associated Press asked some of its correspondents around the world to
assess the coming year's prospects. Here are their reports: 

------ 

United Nations 

By VICTORIA GRAHAM 

UNITED NATIONS -- The United Nations began 1992 with high hopes and great
plans, but ended it in disappointment and frustration. Many of the same
problems, seemingly intractable, remain unresolved at the dawn of 1993. 

Disturbing encounters with reality starkly revealed the limitations of an
organizaton born of optimism that has yet to become the maker, keeper and
rational voice of peace envisioned by its founders 50 years ago. 

In Cambodia, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Somalia, U.N. operations faltered,
demonstrating that high expectations on a low budget were unrealistic, and
that the United Nations could not solve problems if the parties did not
want them solved. 

The limitations of traditional peacekeeping with lightly armed soldiers in
blue helmets became apparent in situations that demanded the aggressive,
innovative enforcement of peace. More than 50,000 U.N. peacekeepers were
deployed worldwide at the end of the year. 

An underlying problem appeared to be the underestimation of old animosities
such as those between Serbs and Bosnian Muslims, and of nationalist
compulsions like the Serbs' brutal determination to expand their territory.


Serbs defied belated U.N. efforts to protect relief convoys. They expelled
or killed Muslims in a process called "ethnic cleansing." 

In Somalia, U.N. peacekeepers could not be deployed to guard food convoys
because of opposition by Somali warlords and threats by marauding gangs.
U.N. food deliveries were looted and the humanitarian mission was
curtailed. 

Near the end of the year, the United Nations turned to the United States,
which sent troops to make sure food reached the starving. 

In Cambodia, the communist Khmer Rouge flouted a U.N. peace plan, barred
U.N. peacekeepers from areas it controlled and refused to disarm and
demobilize its fighters. Khmer Rouge intransigence has jeopardized peace
and prospects for elections. 

Finally, as 1992 drew to a close, the Security Council imposed painful
economic sanctions on the Khmer Rouge, forbidding imports of petroleum and
exports of timber in areas it controls. 

In the Balkans, as 1993 begins, the United Nations is considering the use
of force and looking to NATO for possible military help. 

------ 

Africa 

By BARRY RENFREW 

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa -- Starvation and civil war stalk East Africa,
where millions of people struggle to stay alive from day to day with little
hope of better times. 

Somalia grips the world's attention, but war and famine also threaten
neighboring Sudan and Ethiopia. 

American soldiers are in Somalia to help make sure donated food reaches the
starving people it is intended to help. Many Somalis say the anarchy will
not end unless the country is rebuilt with international help. 

Africa's fragile hopes of democracy and reform are once again endangered by
the continent's old trio of curses: dictatorship, war and poverty. 

The pro-democratic euphoria with which the 1990s began has fizzled.
Authoritarian and corrupt regimes are digging in, poverty and starvation
threaten millions, and civil wars rage on. 

AIDS, a new scourge, is claiming tens of thousands of lives. Africa is
estimated to have half the world's AIDS victims and millions of deaths are
predicted in the next decade or two. 

On a brighter note, apartheid is in its final days in South Africa, there
is opposition to authoritarian rule in most parts of the continent and a
few democratic governments struggle to turn things around. 

South Africa's white-minority government and the African National Congress
are negotiating a power-sharing arrangement. In war-shattered Angola and
Mozambique, hopes for peace grow despite renewed fighting. 

Democratic movements stubbornly survive in West Africa, but Liberia is
caught in a nightmarish war, reform is bogged down in Zaire and Nigeria's
military rulers are procrastinating on elections promised for 1993. 

------ 

Former Soviet Union 

By THOMAS GINSBERG 

MOSCOW -- If President Boris Yeltsin asked Russians whether they were
better off than a year ago, when the Soviet Union collapsed, the response
would probably be a cacophony of cheers and complaints, not a straight yes
or no. 

Although industrial production has fallen 25 percent, more goods seem to be
available than ever before. Prices are up to 20 times higher, but many
people seem to have plenty of rubles. 

The Commonwealth of Independent States has been ineffective as a successor
to the Soviet Union, so Russia and many of the 14 other former republics
have made pacts among themselves to cope with the chaos of an empire in
collapse. 

Despite six years of liberalization under Mikhail Gorbachev, the last
Soviet president, only in 1992 did the republics embark on the long road
away from central planning and Communist control. Their success or failure
will have global ramifications. 

Half a dozen ethnic and political conflicts have cost several thousand
lives and displaced hundreds of thousands of people. 

Russia's troubles as the largest of the new nations pose the greatest
dangers for the world. Yeltsin has managed only mixed success with the
first difficult stage of reform. His plans often are frustrated by the
government bureaucracy and a legislature filled with hard-line former
Communists. 

Victory by Yeltsin's opponents could slow reform and sow new uncertainty
about the former superpower's future. Russian media already have compared
the situation to Gorbachev's futile attempt to hold the Soviet Union
together in 1991. 

------ 

Eastern Europe 

By TEDDIE WEYR 

VIENNA, Austria -- Three years after the fall of communism, economic
hardship and rising nationalism threaten stability in eastern Europe. 

Other problems affecting relations among the countries of the old Soviet
bloc are the continuing war in the former Yugoslavia and the split of
Czechoslovakia into two countries Jan. 1. 

Fears grow that the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina will spread and involve
neighboring countries, in particular Bulgaria and Albania. 

As long as nationalist President Slobodan Milosevic continues to rule
Serbia, Yugoslavia is likely to remain an international pariah, subject to
U.N. sanctions. Outside military intervention to halt the fighting remains
a possibility. 

Czechs and Slovaks will have the burden of establishing separate national
governments and convincing potential investors of their stability. 

The larger, more prosperous Czech Republic is likely to make a relatively
smooth transition, but Slovakia, which is more rural and has a weaker
economy, may have trouble. Concern about increasing nationalism could
hamper investment in Slovakia. 

Nationalism is also on the rise in Romania, and to a lesser degree in
Hungary, contributing to right-wing extremism in those countries. Attacks
on foreigners, minorities and Gypsies have been reported. 

Poland's prospects seem the brightest in the region. If the coalition
government can survive differences over the role of the Roman Catholic
Church, it should continue making progress on economic reform. 

Political stalemate between former Communists and anti-Communist forces
threatens economic reforms in Bulgaria and Romania. 

Increasing poverty could cause unrest throughout the area. Albania, already
the poorest country in Europe, probably will suffer most. 

------ 

Western Europe 

By PAUL AMES 

BRUSSELS, Belgium -- Western Europe's plans for unity appear to face a
rough ride in 1993. 

The 12 members of the European Community will try to save the treaty on
political and monetary union their governments approved with such fanfare a
year ago in the Dutch city of Maastricht. 

They must persuade Danish voters to accept it in a second referendum
expected in the summer. The Danes derailed the unity process by rejecting
the treaty last June. 

Other EC countries have threatened to form a union without Denmark and
Britain, another laggard, if a solution is not found early in the year. 

The EC summit in December opened the way for new members. Sweden, Finland
and Austria will start negotiations in February and Norway is expected to
follow soon after. They are not expected to join before 1995. 

The borderless single market will be largely achieved in 1993. Most
internal trade barriers will disappear by Jan. 1, but not all frontiers.
Some countries reserve the right to continue passport checks. 

A plan to extend the single market to include Scandinavian and Alpine
nations has been slowed by the proposal's rejection by Swiss voters Dec. 6.


Rich and poor nations within the EC are expected to continue quarreling
over where and how to spend the community's budget. 

Western Europe's divisions have been highlighted by its failure to take
firm action against the carnage in the former Yugoslavia. 

Germany and other nations face violence at home, with increasing attacks on
foreigners and Gypsies by neo-Nazis. Political extremism has grown in
tandem with economic troubles. 

------ 

Middle East 

By ED BLANCHE 

NICOSIA, Cyprus -- The Middle East can expect new turbulence in 1993. 

An arms race has begun in the Persian Gulf region, the tide of Islamic
fundamentalism is rising, Iraq's future remains unresolved and there seems
to be little progress in the Arab-Israeli peace talks that began in October
1991. 

Washington's intervention may be needed to break the logjam in the
U.S.-sponsored negotiations between Israel and Syria, Jordan, Lebanon and
the Palestinians. 

Once again, Iran is viewed as an international menace by the West and many
Arab states. That perception probably will heighten in 1993, with radicals
apparently ascendant in Tehran once again and President Hashemi
Rafsanjani's so-called pragmatists on the defensive. 

The Islamic republic is threatened with new U.S.-led sanctions to curb its
rearmament program, particularly efforts to develop nuclear weapons. 

With Saudi Arabia and its gulf partners spending billions of dollars on
Western arms, Iran is not likely give in. 

Iran also has resumed spreading Muslim fundamentalism through the Middle
East to the growing alarm of Egypt and other Arab countries. Sudan is its
springboard in North Africa. 

Internal unrest in Iran appears likely to worsen. Arab countries around the
gulf fear that it will either disentegrate or become a threat again, but
have difficulty making a coherent security strategy because of their own
dynastic and territorial rivalries. 

Gulf Arabs are expected to continue relying on U.S. protection, further
antagonizing Iran, which wants to be the region's leading power. 

In Iraq, an unrepentant Saddam Hussein is unlikely to find President-elect
Clinton any more pliant than President Bush, and may well become more
defiant. 

------ 

Far East 

By ELAINE KURTENBACH 

The Far East enters 1993 burdened by regional rivalries and tensions left
over from the Cold War. 

Pressure will build for North Korea to allay fears about its plans for
developing nuclear arms. Financial aid and diplomatic recognition by
capitalist countries will depend on whether it allows more complete nuclear
inspection. 

South Korea will inaugurate a civilian president and continue the dialogue
on reunification with its communist rival. 

Deng Xiaoping, 88, continues engineering a transfer to younger leadersship
in China. The new leaders can expect demands for political freedoms as they
guide the huge nation's rapid economic development. 

In February, the Hong Kong legislature will vote on democracy proposals by
Gov. Christopher Patten that could hasten a showdown between London and
Beijing over the colony, which Britain is to return to China in 1997. 

Negotiations between Vietnam and China over control of the Spratly Islands,
thought to be rich in oil, will be watched by Asian countries that worry
about their giant neighbor's ambitions for greater regional influence. 

Japan, Beijing's rival for Asian leadership, may encounter stronger
pressure from a new U.S. administration to cut its resurgent trade surplus
and contribute more to international aid and peacekeeping. Much of Japan's
attention, however, is focused on a recession and political scandals at
home. 

Economic and political relations among Asian nations are expected to grow
closer as they debate the merits of forming a trade bloc similar to those
emerging in North America and Europe. 

------ 

Asian Subcontinent 

By ARTHUR MAX 

NEW DELHI, India -- Nations of the Asian subcontinent, long buffeted by
political upheaval and ethnic revolt, will try to make headway against
civil strife and poverty in an area peopled by the poorest one-fifth of
humanity. 

Afghanistan's Islamic rebels, victorious over the totalitarian rule of
President Najibullah, seek balance in their own fractious ranks so they can
start rebuilding a nation devastated by 14 years of civil war. 

India must follow up its crackdown on Sikh militants in Punjab and Muslim
guerrillas in Kashmir with political initiatives to satisfy ethnic
grievances and end the rebellions. But Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao
may be distracted by recurring religious strife. 

As 1992 ended, more than 1,200 people were killed in Hindu-Muslim rioting
that began after Hindu zealots razed a mosque on disputed holy ground. 

In Pakistan, hostilities between Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and opposition
leader Benazir Bhutto are expected to continue, further weakening the
4-year-old democracy. That may reinforce the belief of many Pakistanis that
only the army can provide stability. 

Both India and Pakistan have begun economic reforms that need nurturing. 

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, its old ally, India looks to the
United States for help and investment. It probably will come under close
scrutiny from the new Clinton administration on its human rights record,
especially in Punjab and Kashmir. 

Sri Lanka is likely to redouble efforts for a peaceful settlement of the
long civil war with secessionist Tamil rebels, who control the northern
part of the island off the tip of India. 

Bangladesh and Nepal, both adjusting to newly won democracy, could face
civil unrest unless they make real economic gains to benefit their people. 

------ 

South Pacific 

By GEOFF SPENCER 

SYDNEY, Australia -- Australia is in a deep recession and must hold
elections by May. Paul Keating, the Labor Party prime minister, has not set
a date and needs some good economic news soon. 

Particularly troublesome is the unemployment rate, now above 11 percent. 

John Hewson, leader of the opposition Liberal Party, advocates a 15 percent
value-added tax, a form of sales tax, and a relaxation of labor laws. 

Keating is slightly ahead in the polls. 

In neighboring New Zealand, elections are required by the end of 1993. 

Five years ago, the New Zealand government introduced policies similar to
Hewson's, but the jobless rate remains at about 10 percent. 

Promises by a new third party, the Alliance, to reverse free-market
economics has made it more popular than two traditional rivals, Labor and
the National Party. 

In Papua New Guinea, Prime Minister Paias Wingti wants to end a 4-year-old
armed conflict with secessionists on Bougainville. 

Wingti, who took office this year, also must reach a compromise with
foreign resource companie, mainly Australian. He wants to increase local
ownership of such assets as gold mines and oil fields in order to finance
badly needed social and economic programs.. 

In Fiji, Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka hopes to stitch together a
national- unity government of indigenous Fijians, whom he represents, and
ethnic Indians, who complain of being treated as second-class citizens. 

------ 

South America 

By ED McCULLOUGH 

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina -- A shock dose of capitalism helped South America
recover from the "lost decade" of the 1980s. Now, political leaders want to
give the harsh economic reforms a human face. 

Deregulation, privatization and opening up to world trade led to economic
growth and lower inflation, but also brought high unemployment and low
wages that caused social unrest. 

Miscalculation can be costly to a political leader in South America. 

Elements of the Venezuelan military tried twice in 1992 to overthrow
President Carlos Andres Perez. 

In Peru, President Alberto Fujimori suspended the constitution, citing the
need to fight corruption and Shining Path guerrillas, and later thwarted a
coup. His popularity has been boosted by the capture of Abimael Guzman,
founder of the guerrilla group. 

Poverty-stricken Peruvans -- most of the populaton -- wait to see whether
Fujimori can stop the guerrilla bombing in Lima and pull the economy out of
a long recession. 

Unions and leftists in Uruguay called general strikes to protest such
austerity measures as stopping the indexation of wages and selling the
state airline and telephone company. 

Until early February, Colombians will be under a state of emergency imposed
by President Cesar Gaviria to give him wider powers to combat guerrillas
and narcotics traffickers. 

Public outrage spurred Brazil's congress to impeach Fernando Collor de
Mello on corruption charges. In April, voters will declare in a referendum
whether they prefer the presidential system or a European-style
parliamentary government. 

Presidential elections are scheduled for May in Paraguay, June in Bolivia
and December in Chile. 

Paraguayans will have a chance to oust the Colorado Party for the first
time since 1947 and elect a civilian president for the first time since
1954. 

In Argentina, the partial sale in 1993 of YPF, the oil monopoly that is the
nation's largest business, will complete the privatization of nearly all
state companies. 

------ 

Mexico-Central America 

By JOHN RICE 

MEXICO CITY -- Mexico and Central America enter 1993 in an unusual state of
peace, but with little peace of mind. 

Mexico is on the verge of a free-trade treaty with the United States and
Canada, but the election of Bill Clinton as U.S. president has created an
atmosphere of uncertainty despite his support of the agreement. 

An economic slowdown, and failure of the recent boom to aid Mexico's
poorest citizens, also has created worries. 

President Carlos Salinas de Gortari's sweeping reforms of banking, farming,
industrial and religious laws will reverberate through 1993, his last year
of almost unfettered power before the 1994 presidential campaign. Mexican
presidents are allowed only one six-year term. 

Still largely unfulfilled are Salinas' promises to reform the political
system, which the opposition says is riddled with fraud perpetrated by the
governing Institutional Revolutionary Party. 

Central America is at peace for the first time in decades, save for a dying
rebellion in Guatemala whose end is being negotiated. 

Peace has not brought tranquility, however. Political murders still haunt
Guatemala and El Salvador. 

Panama, El Salvador and Nicaragua are torn by internal political disputes
after civil wars or foreign invasions. 

President Guillermo Endara of Panama, installed by the 1989 U.S. invasion,
suffers a popularity rating below 10 percent. Leaders of the conservative
coalition that made Violeta Chamorro president of Nicaragua now rage
against her friendship with the ousted Sandinistas. 

In a Central America ravaged by years of civil war, however, the peace
alone is progress. 

------ 

Caribbean 

By DAVID BEARD 

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico -- Fidel Castro of Cuba will begin 1993 trying to
figure out whether a Democrat in the White House will bring better
relations with the colossus to the north. 

So will Haiti's military. In their case, the question is whether Bill
Clinton is a human rights crusader, like Jimmy Carter, who will increase
pressure on them to restore the ousted president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide. 

Many Haitians hope Clinton will follow a more liberal immigration policy
than President Bush, but the thought of another wave of Haitian refugees
causes worry in the Bahamas and throughout the Antilles, as well as in
Florida. 

Caribbean nations that have followed Washington's free-market approach and
cuts in social spending have a big stake in what Clinton does. 

"The intent is to create priorities with a view toward the future," Heinz
Sonntag, a university sociologist, said of the president-elect. "This is
going to have a profound influence in Latin America and the Caribbean." 

He and other scholars in the area expect the desire for change to grow in
Cuba, the Dominican Republic and smaller islands of the Caribbean. 

In the Dominican Republic, public protest has centered on President Joaquin
Balaguer's cuts in social programs and the hugely expensive cross-shaped
monument he built to commemorate the voyages of Columbus. 

Smaller islands like Grenada, St. Lucia, Dominica and St. Vincent and the
Grenadines must change their economies to suit new trade patterns. Decades
of a protected banana market in Britain, for example, are ending as
European Community gets together. 

Threats to similar protected markets in France prompted protests that shut
down the French territories of Martinique and Guadeloupe for five days in
November. 

In Puerto Rico, a new government takes office in January with a pledge to
repeal the Spanish-only law and promote more English -- the first step in a
new campaign to make the U.S. commonwealth a state. 

------ 

Canada 

By JEFFREY ULBRICH 

TORONTO -- Prime Minister Brian Mulroney must call a national election in
1993, and will be out on his ear if the polls are accurate. 

Just who will be in, however, is far from clear. Some pundits predict the
first minority government in Canadian history. 

The Liberals lead a Gallup Poll published in November at 47 percent,
followed by Mulroney's Conservatives with 22 percent, the leftist New
Democrats with 14 and the western Reform Party with 11. 

Liberal Party leader Jean Chretien does not stir the Canadian blood,
howefver, nor does Audrey McLaughlin of the New Democrats. Also, as
prognosticators and the prime minister himself like to point out, Mulroney
has a reputation of coming from far behind to win. 

As the year drew to a close, Mulroney was talking like a candidate and
pledging to lead the Conservatives to their third straight victory. But a
good many political thinkers believe he will step down as party leader in
the spring.

For whoever wins the election, the overriding issue will be the economy. 

While the Conservatives managed to bring annual inflation down to 1.4
percent and reduced interest rates to high single digits, Ottawa is still
struggling with a $450 billion debt and unemployment of 11.3 percent, among
the highest in the develolped world. 

<<>>WP   12/26 xx In Far Northeast India, Mountain Tribes Meet the World

By Molly Moore 

Washington Post Foreign Service 

ITANAGAR, India 

Nyoju Techi hunts with a bow and arrow, wears his tribe's trademark bamboo
cap topped with the beak of a hornbill bird and the talons of an eagle, and
drapes a homespun loin cloth over his torso and thighs. 

"My son insists that I wear trousers and says I should get rid of my
headdress and cut my hair," grumbled the Nishi tribesman whose long locks
were twisted in a knot above his forehead and pierced with a long brass
skewer. 

Techi lives in Arunachal Pradesh, India's far northeastern state, whose
rugged mountains rise toward the glaciers of southern Tibet. Most villages
are so remote they can be reached only by a seven-to-eight day trek on foot
through jungles. During particularly harsh winters, to keep villagers from
starving, the government must air-drop food supplies. 

Few outsiders have been allowed within this state, and the 26 native tribes
that inhabit its rugged Himalayan mountains have had so little contact with
one another that each speaks a different language. Tribal families exist
today much as their great-grandparents did, living in simple bamboo huts,
hunting the jungles and performing Tapu war dances to ward off evil
spirits. 

But the outside world has arrived. Satellite-dish antennas bring movies
from the distant, urbanized culture of Hindi-speaking New Delhi and Bombay
and soap operas from more distant America. More young people are venturing
out of their tribal communities for college educations. 

Techi's dispute with his son over his loin cloth and headdress is symbolic
of the larger struggle of a people trying to preserve its culture in the
face of modernization and the encroachment of alien influences. 

"We don't want to be wild any more," said Najing Jamoh, a 23-year-old of
the Adi (hill man) tribe who graduated from college and has returned to his
native village hoping to find a government job as a road or bridge
engineer. "Other people are very advanced. We want to learn more. We need a
better standard of living, better medical facilities." 

The older generation is more skeptical of opening the state to outsiders.
"Civilization, when it comes, corrupts," said one local government
official. "You build roads and the forests start disappearing because they
use the firewood to heat the materials to build the roads." 

The Indian government, and British colonial authorities before them, have
kept Arunachal Pradesh tightly closed in part because of its of its
mountainous inaccessibility, and its unique tribal cultures. Also, because
of its strategic military importance - India and China fought a war over
this state in 1962, and China still claims part of it. Even Indians are
required to obtain permits to enter the state. India recently allowed a
small group of western reporters to visit Arunachal Pradesh for the first
time in 30 years. 

The tight restrictions on access to Arunachal Pradesh - which means land of
the dawn-lit mountains - have helped preserve this easternmost slice of the
Himalayas as a land of spectacular mountain ranges so lush in tropical rain
forests that the jagged peaks look as though they are covered in green
velvet. More than 550 varieties of orchids grow wild in its forests and
orchidologists say they have discovered as many as 60 types of orchids
growing on a single tree. Emerald rivers lined with snowy sand beaches wind
through its deep valleys. 

India considers Arunachal Pradesh one of its most backward states. It
depends on the central government in New Delhi for all of its income. No
taxes are imposed on its 858,000 tribal inhabitants. It has one of the
highest illiteracy rates in India - about 60 percent of its population
cannot read or write - and has few hospitals or highways. 

Recently, the easing of tensions on the Chinese-Indian border and the
recognition that military spies are now satellites in the sky rather than
infiltrators in mountain passes, has prompted the Indian government to
consider the financial advantages of opening the state to outsiders -
particularly western tourists with foreign currency. 

"It has to be controlled tourism," cautioned Madhav Rao Scindia, India's
tourism minister. "We want to learn from other people's mistakes." 

Trekkers and other "adventure tourists" have destroyed many sections of the
Himalayan mountain range in Nepal and nothern India, stripping forests for
firewood, littering mountainsides with garbage and exploiting the native
people.

"It's the sad thing about my business," said John R. Edwards, a Nepal-based
tour operator who recently was invited by the Indian government to visit
Arunachal Pradesh. "It screws things up. They shouldn't let people like us
come in and build here. It will be messed up in five years." 

While some officials may have reservations about an invasion of foreigners,
inhabitants in a half-dozen villages expressed a desire to see more of the
outside world. 

"We can't see the places where you are from," said Nyoju Techi's wife,
Reenye, her bosom covered with hundreds of strands of colorful tribal
necklaces and beads. "So the only way we can meet people from the outside
world is to have them come here." 

Scindia noted that the Indian government can no longer shield the tribes of
Arunachal Pradesh from the outside world. "Some of the local people are
worried about culture shock, but the TV media has made everyone more aware
of what's going on around them." 

The 550 residents of the village of Balek live in bamboo huts perched on
stilts along the steep mountain terrain, smoke their meat in baskets hung
over open fires and brew apang, an alcoholic beverage that tastes like a
mix of beer and cider, from the burned hulls of rice and millet. A favorite
tribal delicacy is a crunchy, hard-shelled bug the size of a thumbnail that
is eaten alive. In a palm-thatched hut, next to kitchen utensils such as a
copper cookpot and a mortar and pestle, stood a television set. 

There are other signs of change, said Nanom Jamoh (no relation to Najing
Jamoh), one of a small but growing number of young women who have left
their villages for a college education. The 32-year-old mother of four now
has a career directing construction projects in a small town several miles
from Balek. Jamoh and other young career women no longer have time to weave
the traditional long skirts they wear and have begun hiring the older
village women to make their clothes, a transaction that would have been
unheard of just a few years ago. 

Much remains unchanged, however. The village hunters still hang their
animal-head trophies in the central community meeting and worship hall, and
village women are banned from the hall during their menstrual periods.
Although the state's head-hunting tribes have given up that pastime in
recent decades, some meeting centers still display rows of human skulls.
The primary religions revolve around animism, the sacrifice of animals,
worship of the sun and moon. 

When a family member dies, a wooden rack is constructed next to his grave.
His family hangs his old clothes on the rack along with a set of new
clothes for his journey into the next world. The skulls of each of the
animals killed during a man's hunting career are arrayed along the poles.
For the first 10 mornings after death, family members cook the deceased
person's favorite foods and place them atop the grave, offering nourishment
for the coming journey. On the tenth morning, the family announces they
will no longer visit the grave and bid the deceased a safe journey. 

Najing Jamoh hunts the jungle for deer, wild boar and birds, but like
Techi's son, shuns the native animal skins and loin cloths in favor of
western blue jeans and shirts. He spends more time listening to Dolly
Parton and other American country-western singers on satellite television
than he spends singing his native tribal songs. 

"There is a generation gap," he said in English he learned in school and
has honed by listening to BBC and Voice of America broadcasts. "My father
hunts with a bow and arrow. I hunt with a gun." He paused, pulling the
collar of his blue jean jacket around his ears, then added, "We'll keep our
traditions alive, but we can't remain this way forever." 

Copyright 1992 The Washington Post  <<>>RTw  12/25 0733  KISSINGER SAYS U.S., FRANCE SHOULD NOT DOMINATE RELIEF

KISSINGER SAYS U.S., FRANCE SHOULD NOT DOMINATE SOMALI RELIEF 

BONN, Dec 25, Reuter - Former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger said
on Friday that the United States and France should not dominate
humanitarian efforts in Somalia. 

"Europeans and Americans should not appear in such a dominating fashion in
Africa," Kissinger said. 

U.S. and French troops -- vanguard of an eventual 35,000 multinational
force -- landed in Mogadishu on December 9 with a U.N. mandate to stop
marauding bands of armed looters looting relief supplies intended for a
million starving people.

In an interview with Berlin-based N-TV television news, Kissinger
emphasizied other nations should take part in the relief effort to
distribute food to the starving millions. 

"I would have demanded that 5,000 Africans take part in Somalia," said
Kissinger, who was in Germany for a short visit. 

"I don't see why Western powers, without any Africans, should go into an
African country," Kissinger said, adding that the political situation in
the East African nation should be a task for the OAU (Organisation of
African Unity). 

REUTER KR JSF  <<>>RTw  12/25 0924  MARINES SPEND CHRISTMAS IN SOMALIA FERRYING FOOD

By Frances Kerry 

BARDERE, Somalia, Dec 25, Reuter - U.S. Marines celebrated Christmas in the
desolate southern Somali town of Bardere on Friday by offering to escort
food supplies to the starving. 

"This is our Christmas present to Somalis," said Colonel Buck Beddard,
commander of a task force of 750 Marines which swept into this dusty town
near the Kenyan border on Thursday. 

Gun wagons and most guns vanished from the streets of a town which is one
of Somalia's worst centres for famine, clan fighting and looting. 

Addressing a meeting of local leaders, Beddard told residents to keep
weapons out of sight or they would be confiscated. 

In a gesture for Christmas which is not celebrated in Moslem Somalia, the
Marines offered to escort more than 10 tonnes of food for the hungry, and
the local relief committee was discussing who needed the food most. 

Some 60 to 70 people are dying every day of hunger in Bardere, a rate which
has fallen from 300 a day in October after a battle for control of the
town. 

Beddard asked local leaders to cooperate in clearing mines planted on roads
outside Bardere. The mines have played havoc with relief efforts to
outlying villages. 

James Fennell of Care Aid Agency said more than 100,000 people in villages
around Bardere needed feeding. 

Bardere was the fifth of the five places to be secured by a multinational
task force since U.S. marines started pouring into the capital of Mogadishu
on Dec 9. 

By Friday, the marines were fully installed at the airstrip and planning a
Christmas service in the evening on a bleak stretch of scrub just outside
town. 

"We are happy they are here. Now there will be no more looting at night,"
said one local resident watching the bush meeting between Beddard and the
town leaders in a clearing by the river Juba ringed by marines in their
vehicles. 

But not all the foreigners in town were welcome. Some residents were
resentful of journalists who arrived with cars and drivers hired from
outside town and belonging to the clan which controlled Bardere until
October. 

A car hired by the British Broadcasting Corporation from outside Bardere
was stopped and property stolen at knifepoint. No one was hurt in the
incident. 

Some 30 Marines moved in to protect a compound of journalists, while they
moved out because of the threatening atmosphere. 

"We find ourselves caught in inter-clan rivalry and we suddenly have become
a target, also because we carry a lot of expensive equipment," said Jim
Maceda, a correspondent with the American television network NBC. 

The compound was also used by correspondents from the BBC, Visnews, the
international TV film news agency, and Reuters, the international news
organisation. 

REUTER FK SCM JKF JCH  <<>>RTw  12/25 0658  MARINES RESCUE JOURNALISTS FROM SOMALI GUNMEN

MOGADISHU, Dec 25, Reuter - U.S. marines rescued a group of journalists
when armed Somalis surrounded their house to loot their belongings in the
famine town of Bardere on Friday. 

The Christmas Day attack took place in a Save the Children Fund compound,
where journalists from Reuters, Visnews television agency and two other
organisations had been staying to cover the marines' arrival in the
southern town. 

A company of marines rushed to the compound to rescue the journalists after
the Mogadishu office of the American NBC network appealed for help from the
military spokesman for U.S.- led Operation Restore Hope, Marine Colonel
Fred Peck. 

Reuter correspondent Frances Kerry, a Briton, had money and a car she was
using stolen by the gunmen. Staff from Visnews, NBC and the British
Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) were also in the compound. 

"They were threatening to come in and take everything they had, all their
equipment, food, everything," said an NBC producer in Mogadishu who
received a May Day message from the group by satellite telephone. 

No one was hurt and it was not clear if the looters stole anything else. 

Captain Steve Spangler, one of Peck's staff, said it was the first assault
on journalists "by an entire group of armed men" since foreign media
flooded into Somalia to cover the U.S.-led task force's military
intervention to safeguard famine relief. 

No shots were fired by the marines, said Spangler. 

The marines told the journalists they could not guarantee their safety in
Bardere itself and escorted them to the town's airstrip, which the 800
troops secured on Christmas Eve. 

Dozens of journalists have been robbed, often at gunpoint or knifepoint, in
Mogadishu since Restore Hope began on December 9. 

Television and still cameras are a favourite booty and are frequently sold
back to victims through Somali middlemen. 

In another incident on Christmas Day, a lone gunman in Mogadishu shot at a
pick-up truck carrying a Visnews crew. U.S. troops who saw the incident
said the sniper was trying to blow out the vehicle's tyres. The gunman
missed and the crew sped away. 

"I did not expect an incident like this in the centre of town with the
marines so close," said Visnews cameraman Jimi Matthews. 

Spangler said such attacks were to be expected in a poverty- stricken city
with a legacy of gun rule when journalists "walked round with $45,000 tv
cameras." He compared conditions to what could happen "at 2.30 in the
morning in Detroit." 

REUTER PAH DJG  <<>>RTw  12/25 0541  TROOPS SECURE TOWN OF HODDUR, CLEAR MINES

By Paul Holmes 

MOGADISHU, Dec 25, Reuter - French and American troops rolled into the town
of Hoddur as Christmas day dawned in Somalia and started clearing land
mines that have cut off food aid from the starving interior. 

"No mines were found on the main road but they expect to find about 5,000
mines on outlying roads," a U.S. military spokesman said in Mogadishu. 

"The main task right now is to clear them so that we can begin working with
the humanitarian relief organisations," said Navy Commander Jim Kudla. 

French helicopters clattered over the area to try to spot minefields. Kudla
said mine clearance would begin at Hoddur's airstrip on Friday afternoon. 

Hoddur, 300 km (180 miles) northwest of the capital, is known in Somalia as
"the town that looted itself" -- residents stripped their homes and
government buildings then carried away anything of value before the troops
arrived. Hardely a building is left intact. 

It was the sixth town secured for a U.S.-led military mission to protect
food for famine victims from looting gunmen since marines landed in
Mogadishu on December 9. 

The French-commanded force of 550 men set out from the inland town of
Baidoa at dawn on Thursday as 800 U.S. marines rumbled south to the
famished town of Bardere. 

The marines reached Bardere on Thursday afternoon. 

A senior official with the United Nations Operation for Somalia (UNOSOM)
said Bardere, scene of some of the worst excesses in Somalia's two years of
clan killings and gun law, was facing a fresh crisis. 

Weak and hungry Somalis had flocked from the bush in the past two weeks to
a camp of ramshackle twig huts on the edge of the town, swelling the number
of refugees there to 20,000, said Phil Johnston, UNOSOM coordinator of
humanitarian assistance. 

Previous estimates were that up to 10,000 people were in the camp outside
Bardere, whose fixed population is only 8,000. 

"About 500 to 700 people a day are coming in because of food scarcity in
areas up to 75 miles (120 km) away. They are walking in," Johnston said. 

Marine Colonel Fred Peck, a military spokesman for Operation Restore Hope,
said on Thursday that the multinational task force had to escort relief
convoys into the remote countryside as fast as possible. 

"We want to start branching out as fast as we can in each one of these
sites that we go to to avoid those cities becoming magnets...for more
people to come in from the countryside," he said. 

Marauding bands of armed looters have preyed on food convoys heading into
the bush. 

Mines littering roads around towns like Bardere and Hoddur and the decrepit
condition of Somali trucks have made the problem of food distribution even
worse. 

An American civilian working for the U.S. Department of Army was killed and
three State Department security officers were badly hurt on Wednesday when
their vehicle hit an old anti-tank mine just outside Bardere. 

Airlifts of food from neighbouring Kenya to dirt and gravel airstrips have
been a vital lifeline in the absence of ground links but the World Food
Programme of the United Nations said a fuel shortage in Mombasa had reduced
the number of flights. 

Arthur Holdbrook Arthur, WFP director of operations in Somalia, said three
flights a day to Somalia had been cut for the past three days because of
the shortage. Until then, flights had averaged 14 a day. 

He said the WFP was looking at possible alternative fuel supplies from
neighbouring Djibouti or from private dealers. 

REUTER PAH DJG  <<>>APn  12/24 2356  Charity Decline

Copyright, 1992. The Associated Press. All rights reserved.  

By FRED BAYLES 

AP National Writer 

ARLINGTON, Va. (AP) -- The nation's hard-pressed charities face a decline
in annual contributions for the first time in two decades. Donors are
holding back -- because they fear lingering recession, and because they
don't trust some of the do-gooders. 

Federal and state budget deficits have cut into the flow of government
grants to charities. Corporate giving has sunk with the economy. A survey
by Independent Sector, a Washington-based coalition of philanthropic
groups, found household donations down 20 percent this year. 

"Charities are having one of their hardest years raising money," said
Virginia Hodgkinson, head of research for Independent Sector. "I think
we're going to see a decline in giving this year over last year." 

The effects are being felt at San Francisco's Haight Ashbury Food Program,
where donations are down 10 to 15 percent; at Mile High United Way in
Denver, which warned its 106 member agencies to brace for cuts of up 30
percent; at "Toys for Tots" programs such as the one in San Diego, where
Marines have collected 43,000 toys, down from 115,000 last year. 

The dip in fund raising, which increased steadily through the 1980s to $124
billion last year, comes as demand for help is greater than ever. Charities
have not faced the prospect of shrinking resources since the oil bust of
the 1970s. 

Beyond economic factors, charity watchers note a newer, more troubling
aspect to the decline: a wavering of public confidence in charitable
organizations. 

Over the past year, once-trusting contributors got hard lessons in the dark
side of the charity world. Among them: 

-- The $442,000 in salary and perks for the head of United Way of America. 

-- Warnings from state regulators about fund-raising campaigns that send
only a few pennies on each dollar to those in need. 

-- Lawsuits alleging some charities use accounting alchemy to transmute
donations of old vegetable seeds and torn books into millions of dollars in
falsely reported aid to cancer patients and refugees. 

As a result, nearly half those questioned in the Independent Sector survey
said they had a low degree of trust in charities. 

"The public is more cautious about giving," said Kenneth Albrecht,
president of the National Charities Information Bureau. "One factor has
obviously been the economy. But a second factor is the stream of
disquieting news about the operation of some organizations." 

This jitteriness is recorded at watchdog agencies where questions about
charities come in at an ever-increasing rate. 

"Americans have been generous in the past, but because of the economy and
new concerns about accountability, they are asking tougher questions," said
Bennett Weiner, vice president of the Better Business Bureau's
Philanthropic Advisory Service. 

The business bureau's office in an Arlington shopping mall is lined with
manila folders documenting everything from the IRS filings to fund-raising
brochures of some 6,000 charities. In about a fourth of those files,
researchers have found something to withhold their seal of approval. 

Usually it is an easily fixed procedural glitch. But increasingly it is
some sleight-of-hand accounting, done to make the numbers charities are
judged by -- money raised vs. money spent on programs -- more impressive
than their growing list of competitors. 

"Competition can bring out the best in a charity, but it can also bring out
the worst in an organization that cuts corners in fund raising and tells
white lies in its publications," Weiner said. 

Competition for funds is fierce. With the rise of new causes, from child
abuse to AIDS, the number of groups that receive donations grew from
561,000 in 1989 to 632,000 in 1990; for every charity that closed its doors
in that time, three sprang up. 

Sometimes the competition gets nasty. Save the Children, a
Connecticut-based charity, takes Feed the Children of Oklahoma to court
over name infringement; Easter Seals and Christmas Seals knock heads over
similar fund-raising techniques. 

"I see it happen all the time where two groups competing in the same area
will badmouth each other," said Seth Perlman, a New York lawyer who
specializes in charities. "It's an issue of money and power." 

The greater competition for fewer dollars has turned many charities into
savvy marketers of their cause. Some buy heart-wrenching ads with toll-free
numbers. Phone appeals, once limited to local charities, have been taken up
by national organizations. More turn to direct mail campaigns and
micro-marketing, buying or trading lists of those demographically suited to
their pitch. 

The rush to raise money can push charities to the edge. Smaller
organizations hire professional fund raisers who often keep 90 cents or
more of every dollar raised. Recently, California officials charged one
fund-raising group with creating its own charities to make money. 

To avoid such dodges, donors are urged to look at a charity's numbers. How
much money did they raise? How much money did they spend in raising it? How
much of the funds actually went to aid programs? 

Watchdog agencies recommend at least 60 percent of a charity's donations go
to aid programs. But some charities have countered with creative accounting
that puts their numbers in a better -- and often false -- light. 

To look good in this number game, some charities stuff throwaway
information about cancer prevention or the evils of drugs into their
solicitations, then write off the cost of printing and postage to education
programs rather than fund raising. 

"All the legitimate charities feel under pressure to enhance their
accounting lines. People are being forced to count things in ways that are
questionable," said Stacy Palmer, managing editor of the Chronicle of
Philanthropy. 

Others cook their books with donated materials that have little to do with
their charity. Connecticut and Pennsylvania recently brought charges
against a half dozen charities accused of writing off donations of expired
seed packets and discarded textbooks as aid to cancer patients and drug
therapy. 

One charity valued damaged paperbacks at their original retail price of
$1.2 million; expired baby food donated in this country was given the
retail value of food sold in British Columbia where prices are 25 percent
higher. 

The donated goods were then either handed along to another charity or
distributed to people who were said to be in need. In either case, using
these inflated values, the charity claimed 75 percent of its revenues went
to aid programs. State regulators claim the actual number was closer to 3
percent. 

"Beyond the question of inflated values, we're asking what in the heck does
a lot of this stuff have to do with what these organizations say they're
all about," said Mark Pacella, a deputy state attorney general in
Pennsylvania. 

Such cases still represent a very small percentage of all charities. But
there is fear these extremes will taint the majority. Struggling charities
with good programs but marginal numbers are vulnerable in this new climate
of cynicism. 

"People will ask, `What's your percentage?' They don't know that our
programs take time to get results," said Caroline Williams, the head of
fund raising for TechnoServe, a small, well-respected group that provides
technical advice to Third World farmers from spartan offices in Norwalk,
Conn. 

But larger charities also struggle with the same issues of proving their
worthiness to the public. In his spacious Red Cross office overlooking the
White House Christmas tree, head fund raiser John Thomas considers how to
meet changing public perceptions of charities. 

"It's terribly important for us in philanthropy to educate people about
what we do," he said. "We have a tremendous responsibility to earn their
trust, not because we're good at asking for money, but because the services
we're providing are exceptionally good." 

<<>>APn  12/25 2352  Somalia-Camp of Hope

Copyright, 1992. The Associated Press. All rights reserved.  

By DENIS D. GRAY 

Associated Press Writer 

LAFOOLE, Somalia (AP) -- Several generations ago, two rival clans battled
with such viciousness at this site that both were utterly decimated. They
named the place Lafoole -- "The Place of Bones." 

It is an apt description for Somalia today. Three years of clan warfare and
famine have left 350,000 dead, displaced several million people and
shattered almost every social institution. 

But at the Lafoole refugee camp, perky, smiling children are going to
school, and dedicated Somalis are helping their own countrymen. Perhaps
because of their common suffering, families from warring clans live side by
side in this camp of nearly 4,000 without apparent friction. 

"Three, four months ago these children were walking skeletons. Now look at
their faces. They are happy. Do they look like refugees?" says Dr. Adan Ali
Abdi, administrator of the hospital around which the camp sprouted. 

One of the kids jostling and milling about, 5-year-old Abdul Kadar, flashes
a jaunty thumbs-up sign and echoes a common sentiment in the camp: "I see
the Americans and I am happy." 

Others dash to the roadside to wave to U.S. Marines, armed and riding
vehicles escorting truckloads of food to the stricken interior. 

It is Friday, a Muslim holiday, as well as Christmas Day. But Dr. Hawa
Abdi-Diblue, the hospital's sole doctor, is on duty. Workers are finishing
a water tank and others are drilling a well so refugee women won't have to
haul water on their backs from two miles away. 

Rice and beans are being cooked in crude outdoor stoves for the daily
distribution to the nearly 4,000 refugees. Mothers of some of the camp's
dwindling number of severely malnourished children pass out high-protein
biscuits. 

Part of Lafoole's good fortune comes from its location, 15 miles northwest
of Mogadishu, the base of both the military and aid operations for Somalia.
It has been able to receive aid from the International Red Cross and U.N.
Children's Fund with relative ease. 

But a big dose of self-reliance also appears to have borne fruit. 

A Red Cross staffer visits once a week and UNICEF comes from time to time
when needed. But the camp and hospital have been run from the start by
Somalis, including doctors Adan and Hawa and five nurses. 

The camp workers are themselves refugees, and most have lost family
members. While virtually all of Mogadishu's doctors fled the country after
the outbreak of civil war in 1990, Mrs. Hawa returned to Lafoole where
seven generations of her family had lived. 

The 45-year-old doctor, educated in the former Soviet Union and Italy, took
in the wounded and starving as fighting raged around the hospital and
refugees streamed in from all parts of the country. 

Lafoole was indeed "The Place of Bones" for most of the past three years.
Three to four months ago, nearly everyone was badly malnourished and the
dead piled up daily, the doctors said. Things began turning around when
fighting started to die down and more aid began reaching Somalia. 

The camp's current death toll is one to two each week. Only about 100
people -- children and new arrivals -- are severely malnourished. 

Even 10-year-old Hassan Riyole shows some signs of improvement. Although
still vacant-eyed and struggling along on spindly legs after nearly a year
of deprivation, he has moved up from a death's door weight of 22 pounds to
31 pounds over the past few months. 

But the ordeal of famine has left him dumb and hard of hearing. He is
unable to join the 400 other children at the camp's elementary school, run
by volunteer refugee teachers. 

Still, suffering has by no means vanished from the camp. There is no milk
for the 50 orphans or other children; the diet provides little protein.
Tuberculosis, malaria, dysentry are rampant. The hospital lacks an X-ray
machine and a proper laboratory. 

"We were self-sufficient before the war. We had cattle, camels, goods but
now everything is gone," said 59-year-old farmer Adan Mohammed, who lost
two of his six children to famine. 

Mohamed, his wife and four children live in a stifling, 7-by-6 hovel of
thatch and plastic sheeting set among the thorn trees. Adan said he hoped
for more food, help from Americans, some schooling for his children and an
end to clan hatreds. 

Asked what she needed most to better the conditions of the refugees, Mrs.
Hawa replied without a second's hesitation: "Peace, peace, peace, peace." 

<<>>RTw  12/24 1811  AID FORCE SET TO ENTER SOMALI TOWN ``THAT LOOTED ITSELF"

By Frances Kerry 

BARDERE, Somalia, Dec 25, Reuter - U.S.-led troops were set to move on
Christmas Day into a town with a difference in Somalia's mayhem. Hoddur is
"the town that looted itself." 

A joint force of U.S. marines and French soldiers halted 30 km (20 miles)
west of Hoddur on Christmas Eve, waiting to enter at first light on Friday.


Hardly a building stands intact in the town, 300 km (180 miles) northwest
of the capital Mogadishu. Houses are shells devoid of fixtures and
fittings. Most of the tin roofs have been stripped along with their beams. 

"It was a kind of scorched earth policy," Mark Mullan of the relief group
Concern Ireland told Reuters. "They (residents) took away anything of value
and ransacked government buildings before the troops came." 

Troops of Somali dictator Mohamed Siad Barre caused some of the devastation
during the civil war which ousted him in January 1991. But locals had
already done most of the damage. 

Hoddur will be the sixth town secured by U.S.-led forces since they arrived
in Somalia on December 9 to stop predatory gunmen looting famine aid in a
country where an estimated 300,000 people have already starved to death. 

Marines arrived on Thursday at Bardere, a town wrecked by gunmen and
starvation, and secured the dirt and gravel airstrip after a 160-km
(100-mile) drive in armoured vehicles, trucks and jeeps through the heat
and dust of southern Somalia. 

"This is kind of the Marine Corps' Christmas present to Somalia," said
Colonel Buck Bedard (Bedard), commander of the Regimental Combat unit which
provided the bulk of the 800 men. 

Bardere saw some of the worst excesses by rival gunmen fighting for control
in the famished region. 

In Hoddur, marauders in their "Mad Max" gunwagons were never a common sight
on the streets. But food aid for the starving was still creamed off. 

Aid workers said the six clans controlling the Hoddur area joined together
to extort 700 bags of wheat and rice a week from relief agencies in
exchange for protecting food trucks, drivers and guards. 

In Bardere, the marines were expected to spend Christmas Day digging
foxholes at the bumpy airstrip and sweeping for mines. 

An American civilian working for the U.S. Army Department was killed on
Wednesday when his vehicle hit an old Soviet anti- tank mine just outside
Bardere. 

Three U.S. State Department security officers who were seriously injured in
the explosion were flown to the United States on Thursday, a U.S. military
spokesman said.