From: jnr@igc.apc.org (Jim Rosenfield)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.african
Subject: Re: Newswire Stories on Hunger 12/18
Date: 18 Dec 92 05:59:00 GMT
Nf-ID: #R:cdp:1471700310:cdp:1471700311:000:170088
Nf-From: cdp.UUCP!jnr    Dec 17 21:59:00 1992


/* Written  9:59 pm  Dec 17, 1992 by jnr in igc:hunger.general */
APn  12/14 1244  Segregated Schools

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

By CHRISTINE HANLEY 

Associated Press Writer 

WETHERSFIELD, Conn. (AP) -- Noelle Grattan and Natasha Thorpe have much in
common: They both are high school seniors, they live within a few miles of
each other, and they have little chance to meet kids of other races in
school. 

Thorpe is black, and attends Weaver High School in Hartford, which is
nearly 100 percent black; Grattan is white, and attends suburban
Wethersfield High School, which is 95 percent white. 

This state of affairs does not trouble Grattan. "Maybe we're being cheated
out of learning about different cultures," she said, "but I don't think
that's education." 

But others find the situation intolerable. And the result is a lawsuit that
comes to trial Wednesday -- and threatens to erase the hitherto inviolate
borders that have kept city kids in the city and suburban kids in the
suburbs. 

Hartford Superior Court Judge Harry Hammer must decide whether racial
segregation and the heavy concentration of poor students in Hartford's city
schools violates state constitutional guarantees of an equal education. 

Attorneys for the plaintiffs -- 17 white, black and Puerto Rican children
-- will try to prove that for the past 20 years, the state has done nothing
to correct the socioeconomic patterns that caused the segregation and
should be forced to integrate the city and suburban schools. 

"It's not just a question of Hartford suffering," said Wesley W. Horton, an
attorney for the plaintiffs. "Our view is that the suburbs are suffering,
too. For white students to go to schools that are lily-white is not society
today. We have to prepare students to live in a modern society -- and
modern society is integrated." 

The case focuses on Hartford. But if the plaintiffs win, it could
eventually affect thousands of children and radically alter city and
suburban school boundaries across the state. It also has drawn nationwide
attention because dozens of other urban areas share Hartford's problem of
segregated city and suburban schools. 

"I think most people in the school desegregation community are following
this case closely," said Professor James S. Liebman, an expert on school
desegregation law at Columbia University Law School. "This is the first
trial in which the court is going to have a state definition to use as a
measure of whether students are getting an equal education." 

Sheff vs. O'Neill, as the case is known, was filed in April 1989. It is
named after the chief defendant, then-Gov. William O'Neill, and the lead
plaintiff, Milo Sheff, who was in fourth grade at Hartford's Annie Fisher
School at the time. 

University of Connecticut Law professor John C. Brittain, another of the 10
civil rights attorneys representing the plaintiffs, said about 75
witnesses, including about 30 desegregation experts, will testify in a
months-long trial. Desegregation cases traditionally have been filed in
federal courts, where plaintiffs must prove that the conscious policies of
state or school officials led to a segregated school system. 

But in Sheff vs. O'Neill, the plaintiffs don't argue that the state created
the situation. Rather, they maintain only that the segregation exists and
is illegal under the state constitution. 

"In other words, it doesn't make a difference why the town lines are wrong.
It doesn't make a difference who's responsible for the problem," said
Horton. "The point is the state has an affirmative duty to provide an equal
opportunity for a free public education." 

Though state officials acknowledge and deplore the racial disparity, they
contend that no state law has been violated. They also say they don't
believe the courts can -- or should -- solve the problem. 

"As a matter of public policy, I think it's critical that the state act
promptly and effectively to end as much as possible (unintentional)
segregation," state Attorney General Richard Blumenthal said. "But as a
matter of law, the existing situation is not a violation of the state
constitution. 

"The state has not in any way caused or created or contributed to the lack
of full integration or disparities in educational performance," he said.
"We feel very strongly that court systems are not well-suited to run school
systems. Judges should not determine where our kids go to school." 

State officials, who twice have failed to block the case from going to
trial, say the solution lies in voluntary desegregation programs that
provide financial incentives to school districts that participate. 

Education Commissioner Vincent Ferrandino has formed an Office of Urban
Affairs to develop a plan to encourage more voluntary integration. In
October, he outlined plans for limited school choice involving regional
magnet schools, and financial bonuses for city and suburban districts that
build joint schools. 

"While none of the proposals taken individually are going to solve the
problem, I think if they're taken as a package they're going to go a long
way," Ferrandino said. 

But the plaintiffs' attorneys contend a court order is needed to force
state officials to make progress toward integrating the schools. 

"If they say that the remedies have to be limited to voluntary means --
well, they don't work," Brittain said. "We've had them for more than 20
years." 

<<>>UPn 12/14 0025 Uruguayans reject privatization and free-market economics

By CARLOS DIAZ 

MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay (UPI) -- Uruguayan voters dealt a severe blow to
President Alberto Lacalle's plans to privatize state-owned companies in the
first popular repudiation of market economy in Latin America. 

Early official results released Sunday by the Electoral Commission
indicated 66.5 percent of voters rejected a law passed by Congress on
October 1991 providing for the sale or lease of state-owned companies and
services. 

"Today, the people have derogated the Public Enterprises Law," a
somberLacalle said in a message broadcast by television and radio. The
president called on political leaders to "open a period of reflection to
find proper ways to reform our state. This is part of our task in the
future." 

Lacalle congratulated the people for their participation "in this civic day
(of voting) in order and respect despite our differences." 

Sunday's referendum in the nation of 3.1 million people capped 23 months of
debate on the benefits or harm of selling and leasing state- owned
companies that economic analyses deem profitable and efficient. 

The government's intense pro-privatization campaign failed to persuade
Uruguayans, who for generations have lived with a system where the state
monopolized or heavily controlled major economic and social activities such
as mail, education, air and rail transportation, insurance and pensions. 

It was the first time that economic policies labeled "neo-liberal" -- and
prescribed to underdeveloped countries by the World Bank and the
International Monetary Fund -- were put to the test of popular vote and
were rejected. 

"The vote results unequivocally indicate a wish for deep changes in the
course of the government's social and economic policies," said a statement
released Sunday night by the leaders of a multy-party coalition that
promoted the referendum and campaigned against Lacalle. 

Among those opposing the privatization of state-owned companies were the
Frente Amplio, a coalition of communists, socialists and former Tupamaros
guerrillas, and followers of former president Julio Maria Sanguinetti,
leader of a faction within the Partido Colorado, one of the two political
parties that have alternated in power in Uruguay for more than 150 years. 

"This has been an undisputable victory" for the opposition, said
Sanguinetti. "This has ratified the reformist will of the country, but in
the sense of a reform implemented through a broad consensus." 

"The citizenship demands changes within a legal framework providing
transparency, changes that do not forsake social justice," Sanguinetti
said. 

Sunday's defeat at the polls leave Lacalle's government in a weak position,
without allies and with the grit of his economic policies in disarray. The
nextgeneral elections in Uruguay are scheduled for November 1994. 

In downtown Montevideo, groups opposed to Lacalle's privatization policies
started early celebrations. 

Motorcades and demonstrators poured into the center of the city for noisy
revelry, waving Uruguayan flags and symbols of the many political parties
that confederated against the sale of public companies. 

More than 2.4 million people were eligible -- and obligated by law -- to
vote in Sunday's referendum. As of early afternoon, voting had proceeded
without incident, said Election Commission President Juan Carlos Furest. 

Because of the wording of the referendum, a "yes" vote called for repealing
last year's law giving the government permission to sell state-owned
enterprises. A "no" vote allowed the law -- and therefore Lacalle's
privatization plans -- to stand. 

Lacalle called on voters to give his reforms their vote in order to
"promote the changes the nation needs." A vote against privatization -- a
key element of his market-oriented reforms -- would make it difficult for
Lacalle to move forward with other aspects of his economic policies. 

Among the first state-owned monopolies to be put up for sale were the
national telephone company ANTEL, the electric power supplier UTE, the
national airline PLUNA, and the conglomerate that refines oil and produces
cement ANCAP. 

Lacalle's plan envisaged making ANTEL a joint venture with private capital,
depriving UTE of the electric supply monopoly and selling off ANCAP's unit
that manufactures industrial and pharmaceutical alcohols, and liquors. 

The so-called Public Enterprises Law would have left in the hands of the
Executive Branch all negotiations for the lease or sale of state- owned
companies, without further intervention by Congress. 

All negotiations already started with private investors relating to ANTEL
were conditional on Sunday's referendum. A consensus appears to exist,
however, for going ahead with negotiations for PLUNA and the alcohol
operation in ANCAP. 

ANTEL, with early profits at $120 million and transmission systems
modernized and digitalized over the past five years, received investment
offers from 10 foreign companies. A first selection round left as eventual
investors France's Telecom, Britain's Cable and Wireless, GTE, Bell
Atlantic, and Southwestern Bell from the United States, Detecom from
Germany, and Canada's BCE. 



 Copyright 1992 United Press International  <<>>UPn  12/16 1700  U.N. chief pledges support for Nicaragua

By JOHN OTIS 

MANAGUA, Nicaragua (UPI) -- A day after marking the formal end of the civil
war in El Salvador, U.N. Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali traveled
Wednesday to Nicaragua and pledged support for the nation's shaky, post-war
peace process. 

During his three-hour visit to Managua, Boutros-Ghali met with President
Violeta Chamorro and Cabinet members. He said later the United Nations
would keep a close eye on Nicaragua even though the war between the
Sandinistas and Contra rebels ended two years ago. 

"The international community must not forget Nicaragua now that peace has
been installed," Boutros-Ghali said at a news conference. "We continue to
be concerned." 

Nicaragua still suffers from the aftershocks of the eight-year conflict.
The war left 30,000 dead and caused $17 billion in economic damage,
according to estimates by the former Sandinista government. 

The conflict ended after Chamorro's Feb. 25, 1990, election. But during the
past year, disgruntled former Contras and Sandinistas have waged sporadic
gunfights in the countryside. 

Politically, the country remains polarized between Chamorro's conservative
backers and the Sandinistas, who dominate the police and army. Meanwhile,
the economy is sputtering and poverty is spreading. 

Unlike El Salvador, the United Nations no longer maintains observers in
Nicaragua. Instead, the Organization of American States has posted a small
mission in Managua and outlying regions to oversee the demobilization of
the Contras. 

Boutros-Ghali, who took over as U.N. secretary-general in January, said he
is a novice in Latin American affairs and gave few specifics on how the
organization could assist Nicaragua. But he offered moral support and
suggested the United Nations could help Nicaragua secure foreign loans. 

"We can play the role of the middleman between Nicaragua and the donor
countries," Boutros-Ghali said. "My visit here today is to express the
political will of the United Nations to continue to support Nicaragua." 

Such comments were welcome news to the Chamorro government. International
charity makes up the country's largest source of foreign income. In 1993,
Nicaragua hopes to receive more than $700 million in foreign aid, according
to Erwin Kruger, the minister of foreign cooperation. 



 Copyright 1992 United Press International  <<>>APn  12/17 0020  Somalia-Living Rough

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

By WILLIAM C. MANN 

Associated Press Writer 

MOGADISHU, Somalia (AP) -- Senior Airman Kevin Rhoden stood shaving, his
mirror attached to the door of a Humvee. His wash basin, on the right
fender, was the bottom half of a plastic half-gallon Arrowhead Spring Water
bottle. 

Past his right shoulder was a decrepit gray, white and blue Dornier 228
passenger plane of the defunct Somali Airlines, surrounded by dozens of
cots. 

"They could at least have brought in tents to set up a camp," the
22-year-old airman from Fort Pierce, Fla., said Tuesday. "To take showers
we've been dumping water over our heads from five-gallon bottles." 

Rhoden has lived in a hangar at Mogadishu International Airport since 18
hours after the first wave of more than 3,600 U.S. Marines, soldiers and
airmen arrived for Project Restore Hope. 

Following the Dec. 9 landing, Rhoden's outfit installed the generators and
electrical systems that made the airport operational for nighttime landings
to keep the reinforcements coming. 

Such a rapid buildup, in a city where civil warfare and banditry destroyed
most usable buildings, has meant that U.S. soldiers have had to stay in
airplane hangars, warehouses, office buildings, even in the destroyed
compounds of the former U.S. Embassy and the Mogadishu International
School. 

"We're living in pretty primitive conditions, but we're doing what we can
to solve that," said Marine Col. Fred Peck, spokesman for the U.S.-led
forces. 

He spoke of plans to augment MREs -- the "meals ready to eat" made famous
in the Persian Gulf crisis -- with fresh fruit and vegetables from
neighboring Kenya. Showers were installed Monday for people billeted at
Mogadishu International Airport, he noted. 

That was a big hit. 

"I took my first shower in a week last night. It was wonderful -- all two
minutes of it," said Air Force Capt. Rocco J. Dryfka, 32, of Milwaukee.
"I'll never complain again, about anything. They gave me a shower." 

Drufka's cot, under a mosquito net, is in the same hangar as Rhoden's. 

Living conditions are actually far better than those of most soldiers,
especially at war. 

But many of the American troops in Project Restore Hope are veterans of the
gulf conflict, in which conditions were far less rugged. 

One such veteran, Tech. Sgt. Carmen Spivey, 32, of Cleveland, said this is
the first time he has had to sleep beneath an airplane's wing. 

"Conditions here are not even close to Desert Storm," he said. 

"Jeez, I'd go back in a minute," said Rhoden, 22, who was stationed in
air-conditioned comfort in Doha, United Arab Emirates. His buddy, Airman
1st Class Jay Killen, 21, of West Palm Beach, Fla., said he misses Desert
Storm's "hot meals, hot showers. Here we've had nothing." 

At the international school beside the embassy, the Marine guard company
still has no showers. Its men wash with 1 1/2 canteens of water. 

"They're saying D-plus-30 for showers," said 1st Lt. Bret Curtis, 23, of
Riverside, Iowa. That is 30 days after setting up camp. 

Never mind, said Cpl. Paul Davis, of Las Cruces, N.M., one of Curtis' squad
leaders sitting in a machine gun nest with his .55-caliber trained on the
school gate. 

"We're just doing what we're told to do," said Davis, 21. "It's OK. Nothing
too bad. Not for Marines." 

Over at the Mogadishu port area, Sgt. Frank Ortega's main complaint is that
the living is not rough enough. He arrived in the first amphibious wave and
enjoyed his first four days in vast Warehouse No. 1. He slept on the floor
with a few Marine buddies, sharing the warehouse with wharf rats and
pigeons. 

"It was nice and quiet. Nobody bothered you," said Ortega, of Grand
Junction, Colo. "Then these other guys came in and they modernized the
place. They put in these lights, new equipment and all." 

And the 26-year-old infantryman was issued one of 400 or so aluminum-framed
cots now cluttering the warehouse floor. 

<<>>UPn  12/17 0018  Marines, French Legionnaires welcomed in Baidoa

By CHARLES DOE 

WASHINGTON (UPI) -- Thousands of cheering Somalis welcomed U.S. Marines and
French Foreign Legionnaires who rolled into the inland city of Baidoa,
stricken by famine and, until then, by food thieving armed bands. 

"I have heard nothing but joy, waving and smiles," said Paul Jones, the
deputy director for World Vision, one of the relief agencies working in
Baidoa. 

"There's a lot of enthusiasm. The people were really looking for what we
saw when the Marines came in." 

The Marines and their French allies moved quickly Wednesday in delivering
food to an orphanage supported by Jones' organization. The children
welcomed their armed but humanitarian mission visitors by rhythmically
clapping and chanting "welcome friends" in Somali. Some clasped the
outstreched trooper's hands many times the size of their own tiny ones.
Many were smiling. 

Another military delivery of relief supplies, into the stricken countryside
outside Baidoa, is planned for Thursday. The region is one of those hit
hardest by Somalia's famine. 

The Franco-American move into Baidoa, where at least some Somali gunmen
lingered Tuesday night, went almost exactly according to the plan outlined
by Marine Lt. Gen. Martin Brantner, the director of operations for the
Joint Chiefs of Staff. 

Shortly after midnight Somali time, a 70-vehicle armored convoy of 532
Marines and 140 French Foreign Legionnaires set out by road from their base
at the former Soviet airfield of Bale Dogle, which the Marines occupied
Sunday. 

Driving in darkness over rough, pitted and washed-out roads, the overland
convoy reached Baidoa at first light. Although they avoided the most
congested central parts of the city, their way was lined by crowds of
cheering Somalis. 

The convoy's objective was Baidoa's airport, a major storage center for the
relief supplies which the U.S. Air Force has been flying in from
neighboring Kenya since last August. 

As the Marines and French fanned out to secure the airport, helicoptors
bearing even more Marine reinforcements appeared after a 45 minutes, 150
mile flight from Bale Dogle. The troops moving by truck arrived in four and
a half hours. 

A ragtag, irregular Somalia airport guard force of 100 stood stiffly at
attention to turn the facility over to the Marines and French. They had
earlier stowed their weapons. 

A Marine officer saluted the guards, who had protected the vital airfield
and its supply dump against armed roving gangs for months. The Joint Chief'
current intelligence officer, Navy Rear Adm. Michael Cramer, had earlier
hailed the airfield security effort as "very well organized" and "in good
hands." 

Cramer also proved right in his earlier prediction of "no organized
opposition or resistance to our coalition forces as they enter Baidoa."
There was none. All the armed Somali gangs had either left town or hidden
their weapons. 

In the Somali capital, Mogadishu, the man whose negotiations with local
warlords in Baidoa earlier this week contributed to the ease of the
operation, special U.S. envoy and former Ambassador Robert Oakley,
predicted more help to the stricken city would soon be on the way. 

"There will be a 10-truck convoy escorted from here to Baidoa this
weekend," Oakley promised. "We're not sure whether it will be Saturday or
Sunday." Opening of a safe land route between the capital and Baidoa had
been a major objective of the military relief effort. 

But Oakley cautioned that the relief operation elsewhere in Somalia might
not go as well as it had in Baidoa and in Mogadishu, where the first
Marines landed a week ago. 

"We can't say that the examples of Mogadishu and Baidoa will automatically
be replicated elsewhere," he warned, "because there are parts of the
interior where there's more trouble, where the situation's more tense." 

Also in Mogadishu, American Red Cross President Elizabeth Dole toured
relief facilities supported by her organization and said she would go to
Baidoa as well. 

"My message to the American people," Dole said, "will be that they can give
their money now and that the food supplies will all get through to the
victims. A portion of it will not be ripped off in the process by looting."


The Red Cross president praised the work of her organization's Somali
counterpart, the Red Crescent. "Many of them have lost loved ones, people
who have died from starvation," she said. "They have experienced all kinds
of pain and suffering, and yet they are out there helping their neighbors,
helping other Somalis." 

Relief workers in the inland southern city of Bardera reported that 10
people were killed and 10 woulded by gunmen who raided a relief camp there
earlier this week. 

Like the southern port of Kismayo, Bardera is not scheduled to be secured
until the third phase of the current armed relief effort. Wednesday's
occupation of Baidoa only marks the completion of the operation's first
phase. 



 Copyright 1992 United Press International  <<>>RTw  12/16 2114  ROMANIA'S TRAMP CHILDREN LIVE IN FILTH

 By Peter Humphrey 

BUCHAREST, Dec 17, Reuter - George arrived on our doorstep three months
ago. The 15-year-old brought Viorel, nine, and mentally-handicapped Tudor,
13, with him. They were begging. Not for money, but for clothes to keep
them warm this winter. 

One wore a threadbare coat. No trousers. Bare feet. Shivering. Filthy. Nose
running. Coldsores on his lips. 

"We don't need money," said George. "They'll spend it on glue to inhale. We
need clothes, it's getting cold now." 

He didn't like to admit he also inhaled glue. 

The second time we saw George he was with another 40 or so ragged, homeless
kids, back in the subway passage that is their home. 

His mind was so far gone from inhaling solvent that he couldn't remember
the foreigner who, with two women colleagues, had washed him and his two
young friends, clothed, shod and fed them, one day three months ago. 

George is one of Bucharest's "railway children." Most of them are under 15,
some as young as six. They live in the Gara de Nord, the Romanian capital's
main rail station. 

They sleep in the sewers, the subways, on window ledges. George's growth is
stunted by solvent-inhaling, malnutrition and smoking, but they all look
the same. 

They eke out a sordid existence by begging, stealing, sweeping floors. The
girls perform oral sex for less than a dollar in the back of the Turkish
buses which are parked overnight at the station, the children say. 

They all claim to have run away from broken homes. "I had five mothers,"
said Viorel. "My father is an alcoholic." 

The cash-strapped Romanian government has been at a loss to deal with
social problems as it struggles to meet the challenges of changing from a
communist economy to a capitalist one. 

We urged George and his friends to go to the Pinocchio home, a receiving
centre for runaway and orphaned children. The two little ones promised they
would. Not George. 

"Our centre is one with open doors. But most of them run away when they
hear the police are coming to return them to their families," Pinocchio's
head, Marinela Buttu Alexeanu, told Reuters. "They are free to do what they
want." 

"Criminality among children is growing," said Major Cristinel Eftimie, head
of the local police station. 

"It's absolutely necessary to have a new children's centre where these
children should be taught how to behave, and then we need a real social
system to protect them," Eftimie said. 

We were curious. What had happened to the George trio? The 

police took us on patrol near the railway station one night this month. 

"I've worked here seven years. I know everything that moves. I know the
kids and the guys who live around here," said officer Dumitru Pop. 

"Before the 1989 revolution there were just a few kids here because they
were rounded up and taken to a children's home and they were kept there,"
said Pop, as a colleague stopped three late-night women strollers for
questioning. 

"A lot of bad guys come through the station, so there's always a lot going
on here," he said. 

As he was talking, another officer brought 14-year-old Florentin to meet
us. Florentin pulled out a plastic bag that he had smeared inside with
solvent, blew it up like a balloon, then inhaled. 

The policemen smacked him round the ear and told him to stop. But it was
half-hearted. They knew there was no point. They knew they couldn't save
these children. 

Florentin took us to his hide-out. He lifted a manhole cover near the
station and five grimy faces peered out. 

We climbed down, gagging at the stench of urine and excrement. The room was
about 2.5 metres (eight feet) square, a junction for water pipes and
electricity cables. 

The kids had tapped the power supply and rigged up an electric fire to keep
warm and plumbed in a tap for water. 

We caught the smell of the solvent. They had inhaled so much all were in a
stupor. Glass from broken glue bottles crunched underfoot. One of the
children hallucinated and screamed. One of the policemen choked back tears.


"Fagin" arrived at midnight. An elderly man who usually brings the kids the
glue and takes the money for it -- most shops won't sell it to minors. A
small bottle costs 500 lei (one dollar). The police said they hauled in
Fagin once but could find nothing to charge him with. 

"I've never been to school, I only know how to write my name," slurred
Stela, a stunted 16-year-old girl in a shabby brown coat. 

"She gives oral sex in the cabs for 300 lei," whispers one of the boys.
That's $0.60. 

Stela took us to see where she hid her "fancy clothes." 

She pulled a well-worn plastic bag from its hiding place in a hole under a
shop window sill. Inside were red stockings, a black blouse and studded
high-heel shoes. 

She didn't admit to being a prostitute. And she was so dirty it was hard to
imagine who her customers would be. 

At least 100 children are living homeless at the station. "There's more in
Union Square area and Bucur Obor," says Ionel Miu, a 15-year-old vagrant
who wears a samurai-style headcloth. A club is slung through his waistband.
"I'm Shogun." 

He took us to the metro station entrance inside the Gara de Nord. It was
midnight. Fagin wasn't there yet. But 20 or so kids were settling down for
the night. 

A whole row of them sat against the wall, each inhaling from the grey
plastic bags. One was having a fit and yelling. It was then that we saw
George again. He didn't remember our faces. 

His eyes were milky. His head swayed drunkenly from side to side. He jabbed
a finger at my chest. He spoke a few words of English with a slur: "I am
Georgy, I'm fine, how are you, my name's George, I'm number ONE!" 

REUTER PWH VB PJM  <<>>RTw  12/16 1745  MOGADISHU MOB VICTIM CLEARS FRENCH SOLDIERS

PARIS, Dec 16, Reuter - A young Somali woman attacked by a Mogadishu mob
accusing her of consorting with French soldiers said in a television
interview on Wednesday she was not a prostitute and that the French
troopers had tried to save her. 

The plight of Leyla Hassan Sadik, who was beaten and stripped naked by an
angry mob in front of television cameras on Monday, shocked millions of
viewers in France where the incident has since dominated media coverage of
the Somalia situation. 

"It all started when an American soldier gave me a chocolate bar," she told
France's TF1 television channel. 

"The crowd thought I had received dollars and I tried to flee when the
French took me in to save me. 

"I swore I was innocent but no one wanted to believe me, they all thought I
was a prostitute. The French soldiers did nothing except try to save me.
They gave me water but afterwards the crowd was too crazy for them to do
anything and I was surrounded," she said. 

TF1 said the young woman was still shocked but was not seriously hurt. 

The incident was the first sign of anti-foreign sentiment since the start
of a U.S.-led armed relief operation to feed millions of starving people in
the famine and war stricken East African country. 

French Defence Minister Pierre Joxe told parliament the troops tried to
help the woman even though they had orders not to get involved in civilian
affairs. 

REUTER BE PI  <<>>RTw  12/16 1710  DONORS MEETING FALLS SHORT OF MOZAMBIQUE REQUEST

 By Vera Haller 

ROME, Dec 16, Reuter - International donors failed on Wednesday to meet
Mozambique's request for $400 million in aid to build peace and avert
famine after its worst drought this century. 

Italy, which hosted the donors conference, raised its promise by $20
million to $100 million at the close of the gathering, bringing the final
pledge total to $320 million. 

Mozambique's representative said the aid package did not go as far as he
would have liked but would nevertheless help to implement a peace accord
and feed refugees after 16 years of civil war. 

Mozambique is trying to restructuct its economy after the war, which ended
officially in October when the government of President Joaquim Chissano and
right-wing Renamo rebels signed a peace accord. 

U.N. officials say the southern African country, a former Portuguese
colony, could have the continent's next famine emergency after Somalia
unless aid reaches refugees. 

"We hope with what we received here, we now have a less difficult task,"
said Transport and Communications Minister Armando Guebuza, Mozambique's
representative. 

He said Mozambique might eventually reach its $400 million goal because
some countries said they wanted to study the situation further before
making pledges.

Mozambique asked for help to care for its refugees, to integrate
demobilised rebel troops into society and to establish a new electoral
system. 

Carmelo Azzara, an under-secretary in Italy's foreign ministry, said Italy
would help the government and Renamo rebels to decide how to set up new
political parties and how to hold elections. 

"We have not stopped mediating, nor do we intend to stop mediating," Azzara
told reporters. He said a fresh meeting of donor countries would be held in
Mozambique's capital, Maputo, early next year. 

The conference followed a two-day World Bank meeting in Paris last week at
which the bank announced that international donors had promised $760
million for Mozambique's reconstruction. 

REUTER VH PAE  <<>>RTw  12/16 1453  EAGLEBURGER SAYS TOTAL SOMALI DISARMAMENT IMPOSSIBLE

WASHINGTON, Reuter - Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger said on
Wednesday that U.S.-led forces would collect a substantial cache of weapons
while delivering humanitarian relief to famine-stricken Somalia, but
totally disarmaming rival factions was impossible. 

In a satellite interview from Geneva, where he was attending a conference
on the war in the Balkans, Eagleburger played down differences over  U.N.
Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali's stated wish to get the United
States fully involved in disarming gunmen. 

"I think there's less argument here than people think," Eagleburger said on
the ABC programme "Good Morning America." 

"We'll never be able to disarm everybody but I think you will find, by the
time we have finished our exercise in Somalia, that there will have been,
in accompanying the question of delivering humanitarian assistance,
substantial disarmament," he said. 

Eagleburger added that it was "impossible to imagine" that U.S.-led forces
could ever totally disarm Somalia. 

REUTER JW PI  <<>>RTw  12/16 1416  U.N. ENVOY SAYS SOMALIS HUNGRY FOR RECONCILIATION

 By Alistair Lyon 

MOGADISHU, Dec 16, Reuter - The top U.N. diplomat in starving Somalia said
on Tuesday he believed local factions were keen to bury their differences
now that the world had backed relief efforts with military muscle. 

"They are hungry for political reconciliation," Ismat Kittani, who
coordinates U.N. humanitarian efforts for Somalia, told Reuters in an
interview.

He based his optimism, not shared by everyone in this land of anarchy and
famine, on a peace plan agreed by Mogadishu's two main warlords last Friday
and on the attitudes of factional leaders who attended a conference with
aid donors in Addis Ababa earlier this month. 

Mohamed Farah Aideed and Ali Mahdi Mohamed, whose feud has split Mogadishu,
consented under U.N. and U.S. pressure to call a ceasefire and dismantle
the "Green Line" through the city. Neither man attended the Addis Ababa
conference. 

Mogadishu has been relatively calm, with only scattered shooting, but the
Green Line is still in place and Kittani noted that even the presence of
foreign troops had not yet turned the capital into a "sea of tranquillity."


Kittani replaced Algerian diplomat Mohamed Sahnoun as the U.N. special
envoy after Sahnoun was forced to resign for publicly criticising the
United Nations for failing to act sooner in Somalia. 

Kittani said the United Nations could not simply start governing Somalia,
where all state institutions have collapsed. 

"It's not in the cards," he said. "We have to give the Somalis an
opportunity to put their own society back on track." 

The U.N. mandate for Somalia covers providing humanitarian aid and secure
conditions for its delivery, as well as promoting national reconciliation. 

Kittani would not comment on the debate over whether the U.S.-led task
force which arrived here eight days ago had a mandate to disarm Somalia's
warring clan gangs. 

France believes that Washington will come round to its view, supported by
U.N. Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali, that the multinational force
must confiscate militia guns. 

"France insists on seizing the weapons and one can think that the American
position will evolve towards this," junior minister Georges Kiejman was
quoted as saying on Wednesday. 

Kittani said the target was to ensure that "when the time comes for the
United States to hand over command and control (to U.N. peacekeepers), we
should be able to maintain the same level of security and not have any
retrogression." 

He said much patience was needed to build mutual trust and confidence among
the Somali factions without trying to impose a solution on them. 

"The aim is not to strengthen or weaken any faction or group of
factions...We have to recognise their pride, their dignity," he said. 

Boutros-Ghali plans to chair a meeting of Somali warlords, clan elders and
faction leaders in Addis Ababa on January 4 to try to set a reconciliation
process in motion. 

"We can't impose on them. What we can do is to provide a framework, an
umbrella. We can help them, urge them, and we can respond to reasonable
requests," he said. 

Kittani, a long-serving Iraqi diplomat for the United Nations, said he was
confident the multinational force, criticised by some relief workers for
moving too slowly, would soon fan out across the neediest parts of Somalia.


"By this weekend there will be a quantum increase in the number of troops
and then you will see a speeding up of the deployment," he said. 

About 900 American and French troops pushed into the famine capital of
Baidoa on Wednesday, but gunmen still rove other famished towns in the
interior.

At least 4,000 troops from seven countries have arrived in Somalia and the
force will eventually swell to more than 35,000. 

Kittani said the idea of creating a national Somali police force was now a
"very live topic." It would replace the militiamen and armed hoodlums who
have looted relief convoys meant for the starving. 

Several countries, notably Germany, were willing to finance such a force,
but in the absence of even a semblance of a government in Somalia, the
project was fraught with difficulty. 

"The main question is to whom should such a police force be accountable,"
Kittani said. 

REUTER AL JMC JW  <<>>APn  12/16 1419  Somalia-Great Expectations

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

By MORT ROSENBLUM 

AP Special Correspondent 

BAIDOA, Somalia (AP) -- Gama Dirye Guled, a jobless pasta maker, wants
work. Abshir Abdi, a hungry orphan with a single dirty shirt, wants a life.
Baidoa, like the rest of Somalia, wants peace. 

With the closest thing this battered backwater has seen to joy in years,
Baidoans welcomed Marines and French legionnaires Wednesday with great
expectations, which may fade into despair. 

Baidoa is only a way station for food to 300,000 people still cut off by
bandit gangs. Each day, hundreds of Somalis die, too weak to leave their
hamlets or camps in the bush. 

The troops who began to arrive here will be busy enough just protecting
food shipments. But Guled, 43, in a flamboyant turban, sarong and rubber
thongs, says people expect much more. 

"The soldiers must stay here until they do the job," he said. "First,
security for the people. Then humanitarian aid. And then a lasting solution
among all of the warring clans." 

Asked how long that would take, Guled used his stick to scratch a figure 2
in the sand. Then he made it a 3. He meant years, not months. 

Abshir, who is 14 but looks 11, came to Baidoa when bandits picked clean
his village of Molmod, 25 miles west of here. His sister starved to death
and he has no one else. 

He sleeps outside, despite rain and malarial mosquitos, and lines up for
meager rations at a feeding center. Somehow, he figures, the men in the
fancy camouflage will change all that. 

At the CARE compound, expectations were tempered with hard reality. Troops
would allow the agency's food shipments to arrive and would protect relief
workers in Baidoa. But the hardest part was still to come. 

Operation Restore Hope might hold off looters in the short term, said James
Fennell, a CARE official, but the Americans cannot solve the Somalis'
internal conflicts. And in the long term, the intervention carries risks. 

"This might be like putting a lid over something and leaving it on too
long," he said. "When you lift it up, things are moldy." 

The troops' first act in Baidoa was to disarm the airport security guards,
tough former soldiers hired by CARE to protect supplies while the agency
waited for a promised U.N. force to materialize. 

The former guards and the free-lance looters have driven their "technicals"
-- armed vehicles -- off to remote, risky places that American troops are
likely to avoid, Fennell said. 

In Guled's view, food deliveries are no more than a necessary first step.
Warlords must negotiate peace and forge a stable government so Somalia at
long last can pick up its pieces. 

The country needs schools, services and a sense of purpose, within a
framework of order that outsiders might provide. 

Guled has already paid a price in the chaos. Three of his children were
killed when rival factions fought over Mogadishu last year. Now he wants
his other seven to grow up in a normal civilization. 

"It is not enough to come here and go," he said, watching beefy American
troops who already were suffering from the heat in their desert gear and
fragmentation vests. "All must start again." 

On the first day, the convoy vehicles mostly stayed inside the walled
Baidoa airport, guarded by heavily armed sentries. Occasionally, Humvees
made patrols through the crowded streets. 

In the market, a jumble of whitewashed mud huts and rickety stalls, nothing
seemed to have changed. The great expectations seen elsewhere in town took
a different tone. 

On Tuesday night, as the convoy inched toward Baidoa, two fly-blown corpses
were collected from the market, the latest famine victims. Some days past,
the town's toll reached up to 500. 

"I was expecting them four months ago, five months ago," said Abdulrahman
Abdi, 70, with a gesture of profound disgust at the waste of life. "They
should have come here sooner." 

<<>>UPn  12/16 1038  Hundreds of dowry deaths reported in India

NEW DELHI, India (UPI) -- Hundreds of cases of death, torture and
harassment of women by avaricious in-laws demanding more dowry have been
reported from a provincial district in southern India recently, the Indian
Express reported Wednesday. 

Women's organizations and police in Krishna district of Andhra Pradesh, 900
miles south west of New Delhi, told the Express that more than 200 deaths
and cases of serious harassment for more dowry were recorded in the
district over the last 18 months. 

Many women were killed after their husbands or members of his family dowsed
wives with kerosene, commonly used for cooking, and set them on fire. 

Many others were harassed and tortured until they were driven to suicide,
while some were reportedly killed by hit men hired by their husbands, the
Express, India's largest chain of newspapers, reported. 

The newspaper published a photo of a 24-year old woman lying dead across
the railroad tracks at Vijayawada town in eastern Andhra Pradesh after her
husband allegedly hired a murderer to kill his wife by throwing her from a
train. 

Other women have lodged complaints with the Krishna District Women's Legal
Cell of ongoing mental and physical torture by their husbands and other
members of his family, ironically often the mother-in-law, greedy for more
money, land, cars and other items. 

The Legal Cell told the Express a woman from a middle class family recently
had complained her husband tortured parts of her body, including her
genitals, for more dowry. 

"How inhuman can men get? What else should I be prepared for?" the woman
asked. 

Analysts say dowry, believed to be an ancient custom in India,
traditionally consisted of wedding gifts, usually jewelry, given by the
bride's parents to the groom's family. 

But over the last three decades observers say dowry demands increased as a
consumer boom hit the rapidly expanding Indian middle class. 

Families put a higher price on their sons as they invested more in their
education, and found they could further elevate their economic status by
demanding exorbitant dowries. 

As the practice grew throughout the 1980s, the numbers of dowry deaths,
either by suicide or murder, reportedly increased. Public uproar and media
coverage of the killings finally pushed national lawmakers to toughen the
Dowry Prohibition Act in 1987. 

But a worker at the Krishna women's legal cell, Jyotsna, told the Express
"the government has not bothered to appoint officers in each district to
enforce the Dowry Prohibition Act though the law provides for it." 

The outrage over dowry deaths has subsided in the last few years, but the
media still frequently reports new cases of deaths by burning or suicides. 

The cases are often complicated by conflicting claims by the victim, if she
survives, or her parents on the one hand, and the husband and his family on
the other, about whether the case was suicide or murder. 

Police are reported occasionally to be reluctant to investigate the case
and often accept the in-laws' story that the woman committed suicide. 

A woman died in a Krishna district hospital recently after attempting to
immolate herself when she feared her in-laws also would harm her child
while harassing her for more dowry. The Express reported that only after
sustained public protest did the police finally investigate her case. 

Krishna district's deputy police commissioner M. V. Ramachandra Raju
admitted to the Express "sustained investigation of cases of dowry death
and suicide by women police officers will yield better results." 



 Copyright 1992 United Press International  <<>>RTw  12/16 0931  U.S. RED CROSS CHIEF SENSES NEW HOPE IN SOMALIA

 By Alistair Lyon 

MOGADISHU, Dec 16, Reuter - American Red Cross President Elizabeth Dole
sensed a flicker of hope as she toured the battered city of Mogadishu on
Wednesday. 

Dole pin-pointed diseases arising from lack of sanitation as the number one
problem in the Somali capital, wrecked by years of violence and insecurity.


"I've never seen such devastation," she told Reuters in an interview. "The
people here have no real sanitary conditions. There's no telephones, very
little electricity, no schools, no commerce, no banks and no
transportation. 

"The thing that's positive is that I think people are feeling some hope for
the first time. They've had no jobs, no hope, no future. And now I think
there is almost a sense of security on the streets," she said. 

Dole, transportation secretary in the Reagan administration, said feeding
centres run by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), the
Somali Red Crescent and other aid groups had brought malnutrition under
control in Mogadishu. 

The arrival eight days ago of the U.S.-led multinational force meant
humanitarian organisations would now be able to devote all their time,
energy and emotion to the Somali people rather than to the "enormous
security problem."

Dole, from North Carolina, would not comment on whether the task force
should seize the guns of the clansmen who have terrorised the Somali
capital for the last two years. 

"I think the people of Somalia want peace, stability," she said. "There are
so many Somalis who would like to be a force for change...and I think they
really need to be empowered to play a major role in the rebuilding of their
society." 

Dole, whose husband Robert is Senate Republican minority leader, said she
would assure Americans they could now donate to Somalia in the knowledge
that their money would buy food which will "get through now to the people
without the looting and ripping off of a portion of it in the process." 

She said the American Red Cross would be interested in helping the ICRC
with cattle immunisation, sanitation, water facilities and seed
distribution so that Somalis could begin to get back on their feet and earn
a living again. 

Dole, who plans to visit the inland famine centres of Baidoa and Bardere,
voiced concern for Mozambique, another African country emerging from civil
war. 

"The key is not to let it become another Somalia because already there's
been widespread deaths from starvation," she said. 

She said 1.5 million people had fled Mozambique and 4.5 million had been
internally displaced during 16 years of civil war which ended with a peace
agreement two months ago. 

People in some areas long isolated by civil war faced starvation and others
returning home urgently needed food aid and non-food assistance. 

REUTER AL AET  <<>>RTw  12/16 0921  SOMALI ORPHANS CHEER MARINES IN ``CITY OF DEATH''

 By Paul Holmes 

BAIDOA, Somalia, Dec 16, Reuter - Orphans of Somalia's famine sang and
cheered for U.S. Marines and French legionnaires when they delivered them
food on Wednesday on their first escort mission in the country's
bandit-ridden interior. 

"This is the best way to spend Christmas ever," said Marine Captain Sean
Moore, 31, from San Diego California. 

"We get to do a lot of things, Panama, the Gulf War. None of them are like
this," he said as the children squatted in a muddy compound chanting "We
welcome the Americans with open arms." 

"It's a real positive use of the taxpayers' money," said Moore. 

Marines in two light armoured vehicles and heavily-armed legionnaires in
three trucks delivered the food to 620 orphans at a home on the outskirts
of Baidoa, Somalia's "City of Death." 

They set out on the short mission less than eight hours after more than 700
U.S. and French troops arrived in a 70-vehicle convoy from Mogadishu and by
helicopter to secure Baidoa's disused airbase for the Somalia relief
effort. 

A token 50 bags of wheat donated by the U.S. military and a regular small
delivery of food from the aid agency World Vision were escorted to the home
by a substantial force of troops and arms. 

Scores of journalists reporting the U.S.-led armed Operation Restore Hope
in Somalia clogged Baidoa's rundown streets to follow the troops and turned
the mission into a media event. 

"It's a show of force and that's very deliberate," Marine Colonel Greg
Newbold, who commanded the escort, said of the display of military might. 

"There are people who don't want us to be here, who benefit from unescorted
convoys," he said. "This will deter the people who prevent the food convoys
getting through." 

Baidoa, at the epicentre of a famine that has killed 300,000 people in
Somalia, had been at the mercy of looting gunmen until Wednesday's dawn
arrival of a foreign force which is set to swell the several thousand. 

Relief agency officials in the southern town, fought over and pillaged for
two years by rival clans, have had to barricade themselves inside their
compounds and pay gunmen thousands of dollars for protection on the
streets. 

"Today, for the first time, I didn't need to have armed guards on my cars
to deliver food to the orphanage," said Paul Jones, World Vision's deputy
director in Baidoa. 

One foreign relief agency helping to run the orphanage pulled out of Baidoa
last week because of insecurity. Somalis said the home had been looted
twice in seven months. 

But Jones said the mere presence of foreign troops in Baidoa might mean
food could now be moved in the town without armed guards, though security
would have to be maintained for deliveries to more lawless outlying areas. 

A brief burst of automatic gunfire crackled in Baidoa as the convoy stopped
at World Vision's compound. Troops said it was about 200 metres (yards)
away and from an AK-47, the favoured weapon of Somalia's pillaging gunmen. 

But the welcome for the troops on Baidoa's streets, littered with the
debris of war, was overwhelmingly warm. 

Women and barefoot children in soiled rags chanted and waved as the food
convoy inched along the road. 

"Peace, peace," said one man through a mouthful of qat, the narcotic leaf
many Somalis chew as a mild stimulant. 

"It's fantastic. You can see (the welcome) on the faces of the women and
kids," said Newbold, from Denver, Colorado. 

Several Marines took souvenir snapshots of their mission and some
legionnaires, among the world's toughest troops, said they were moved by
their reception at the orphanage. 

"Soldiers are humans before anything else," said one Foreign Legion captain
with two children of his own. 

"A lot has been done here by the relief agencies. If we can help them to do
more, then even better." 

REUTER PAH MR  <<>>RTw  12/16 0818  SOMALI GUNMEN KILL 10 FAMINE VICTIMS IN BARDERE

BAIDOA, Somalia, Dec 16, Reuter - Somali clan gunmen killed 10 people and
wounded 10 others at a feeding centre for the starving in the southern town
of Bardere, an aid worker said on Wednesday. 

Unidentified armed men attacked the feeding centre on Monday after they
found no food to plunder from relief stores and became angry. 

<<>>RTw  12/16 0639  CHOLERA KILLS 25 PEOPLE IN ZIMBABWE

 HARARE, Dec 16, Reuter - Cholera has killed 25 people, most of them
Mozambican refugees, in the past three weeks near Zimbabwe's eastern border
with Mozambique, the semi-official Herald newspaper reported on Wednesday. 

A further 755 others had gone down with the disease, it said, quoting
officials. Health authorities were unavailable for comment. 

The Herald said the first cholera cases were reported at a Mozambican
refugee camp in Chipinge district in late November but had since spread to
two nearby districts. 

Twenty four of the dead were refugees while 670 of the cholera cases were
in the camp, housing Mozambicans fleeing war and famine in their homeland,
it added. 

Zimbabwe health minister Timothy Stamps told The Herald the refugee camp
had now been quarantined to curb the spread of the disease, which last
month killed more than 500 people in neighbouring Zambia. 

Health officials believe contaminated food sold by Mozambican
border-jumpers may have brought the disease into Zimbabwe which has had no
outbreak in recent years. 

REUTER GNM CTC NJP  <<>>RTw  12/16 0611  ITALIAN TROOPS RETAKE EMBASSY IN MOGADISHU

 By John Pine 

MOGADISHU, Dec 16, Reuter - Italian troops retook the derelict Italian
embassy in north Mogadishu on Wednesday to the cheers and chants of a crowd
of about 200 Somalis. 

Thirty men from the San Marco brigade swept through the shattered and
vandalised compound, evacuated in January 1991 as civil war erupted, and
secured it without incident. 

Ambassador-designate Enrico Augello was presented with a bouquet of wild
flowers by a young Italian-Somali girl from the shattered neighbourhood. 

"We take possession now of the embassy, which is Italian territory," he
told reporters on the steps up to the two-storey villa. 

The white concrete walls were pocked with bullet holes and covered with
anti-Italian slogans and pornographic graffiti. Most of present-day Somalia
was an Italian colony until 1960. 

The green, white and red Italian flag was raised about 10 minutes later on
the roof of the main building. 

Asked if he expected such a warm reception, given some anti- Italian
feeling among clan gunmen in the still-uncontrolled north of the capital,
Augello told Reuters: 

"I'm not surprised at all. There are a certain number of people speculating
about relations between the Italian government and the Somali people. 

"There is a very small minority against us but the majority -- 90 to 95 per
cent -- can see the Italians are near to them and can understand them
better than other countries here now." 

He rode in one of the six machinegun-mounted jeeps and trucks that drove
from the port, up the coast road and across the capital's "Green Line." 

Men, women and children along the route waved and shouted "ciao" and "buon
giorno" as the Italians and about 30 journalists in a bus and three pickup
trucks passed by. 

A few muttered obscenities were heard from Somalis still angry at the
former colonial power, but the general atmosphere was festive once the
convoy rolled by some taller bombed-out buildings to a welcoming committee
organised by former embassy employees. 

"Sure, we welcome them back. The people want peace," local resident Mohamed
Hassan Noor said inside the embassy gates. 

Dozens of Somalis waved small Italian flags. A drummer kept time for the
clapping and chanting crowd. 

The Italians have an 80-man advance contingent in Mogadishu. 

By January 4 Italy will have 2,500 troops in the U.S.-led United Nations
effort to end the anarchy in famine-hit Somalia and feed the hungry. 

"The Americans are more welcome than the French. For them it's unanimous. A
small number of people don't like the Italians," said Noor, a 60-year-old
former trader. 

REUTER JP AL MR  <<>>RTw  12/16 0551  INTO SOMALIA'S YONDER WITH THE U.S. MARINES

 By Paul Holmes 

BAIDOA, Somalia, Dec 16, Reuter - Lance Corporal Bob Barlond flicked the
ignition on his armoured Humvee, depressed the accelerator and rumbled off
into the starlit Somali night. 

"Here we go, into the wild blue yonder," sang the "grunt" as the U.S.
Marines, 217 years of pride, guts and glory, moved out through the bush for
Baidoa, Somalia's city of death. 

For wide-eyed Somalis who ran to watch from fields and thatch huts, the
sight of the slope-backed Humvees rolling into this Wild West town at
daylight must have seemed like a brush with the ultimate "technical" -- the
improvised Somali battlewagons. 

"This is mechanised warfare," said Barlond, a fourth- generation Marine,
aged 19, from Jackson, Michigan. 

"This is what you call a military dawn. You head out at night and arrive
just as it gets light and the other guys are all groggy." 

He then sank another swig from a bottle of "Coon Dog Juice," a concoction
of sugar, water and fruit juice powder the Humvee crew drinks to stay
awake. 

Wire-guided TOW anti-tank missiles and rapid-fire grenade launchers poked
menacingly through the open roofs of the wide- bodied Humvees, the
workhorse vehicles of the U.S. military. 

"We don't promise nobody a rose garden. We're here to do a job," said
Sergeant Mark Movel, vehicle commander in Humvee "Tango Six" while Barlond
played dodgems with a posse of pursuing reporters in battered pick-ups. 

"They (Somali gunmen) appreciate this kind of vehicle," said the
29-year-old sergeant from the New York City borough of Queens. 

"They see this firepower coming and they're happy to stay out of the way." 

Predictably, no-one messed with the Marines except a U.S. television crew
whose Somali driver tried to cut in front of Barlond in the mad melee. 

The deep dent made in a front wing of the pick-up proved you don't hassle a
Humvee. 

The technicals, battlewagons of the looting gunmen who have terrorised this
town at the seat of Somalia's hunger, scuttled for the bush before the
Marines and French legionnaires arrived in a khaki convoy of 70 light
armoured vehicles, Humvees and trucks. 

"Where are the technicals?," asked a U.S. helicopter pilot after landing
his Cobra gunship on the pitted and bumpy runway of Baidoa's disused
airbase. 

"Pity we didn't get here sooner," he said forlornly when told the "Mad Max"
gun trucks had quit town. 

Wednesday's convoy, the first big thrust by Operation Restore Hope into
Somalia's wild interior, had all the trappings of a full combat operation
except secrecy and a firefight. 

U.S. officers who allowed reporters to accompany the sortie from Mogadishu
refused to say where it was going or when it would arrive. 

But the media, whose limpet-like attachment to the U.S. military has caused
more mayhem than Somali militiamen, knew anyway and told the world. 

"You guys. Every port we go, you're there first," said Marine Lance
Corporal Robert McKown, 21, after learning his destination was Baidoa by
listening to the World Service of the British Broadcasting Corporation
(BBC) on a reporter's radio. 

McKown, from Oglesby, Texas, peered though the infra-red sights of the
Humvee TOW when it took up position at the end of the Baidoa airbase
runway. 

"Let me light it up (fire), let me light it up," he pleaded with Movel when
he spied a rusting howitzer in a derelict building about 300 metres (yards)
from his position. 

Superiors decided the vintage artillery piece posed no threat to Uncle
Sam's finest. McKown took it on the jaw. 

"Maybe we can light us up a camel and have us some camelburger," he said. 

REUTER PAH AHH MR  <<>>APn  12/16 0601  Salvador-Peace

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

By JOSEPH B. FRAZIER 

Associated Press Writer 

SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador (AP) -- Amid pealing church bells and
exhortations to keep the peace, El Salvador has at long last put a final
stop to 12 years of civil war. But the passions will die hard. 

The tolling bells concluded a ceremony to lay behind more than 75,000 war
deaths. Tuesday's solemn moment, however, seemed all but incidental to a
Central American nation untouched by fighting since a January truce. 

The ceremony was meant to bind 12 years of wounds that bled and bled hard.
But as Salvadorans were being called to forget their sufferings, it was
clear the remaining challenge of national reconciliation won't come easy. 

The vast gap between the very rich and the very poor, which in part caused
the war, remains largely unchanged. 

And memories of paramilitary death squads blamed for slaying more than
1,000 suspected leftists a month in the early 1980s will be hard to
suppress. 

Raucous street celebrations toasting the peace a year ago were replaced by
just a few organized events and spontaneity seemed missing. Christmas
lights twinkled silently across this capital of 1 million Tuesday night. 

"We were happy in January when the agreement was signed," said Mida
Bustemante, who took her two small children to a government-sponsored
celebration at a park near a military hospital. 

"But nothing has happened since then and we have had better lives. The
future? Well, that's for God to tell us." 

The United States painted the Salvadoran conflict for years as the crucible
of a democratic struggle to prevent a Communist takeover of Latin America. 

Vice President Dan Quayle, representing Washington at the main ceremony on
Tuesday, promised American support for Salvadorans regardless of their
past. 

"The guns are still today because democracy and human rights triumphed," he
said. 

Quayle and President Alfredo Cristiani signed an accord forgiving
three-quarters of the more than $614 million El Salvador owes the United
States, earning the vice president one of the loudest ovations of the
two-hour event. 

Cristiani, who took office in 1989, began efforts early to step up the
peace talks, despite opposition from members of his rightist National
Republican Alliance. 

In his address Tuesday, Cristiani called the conflict the result of "a
series of historic deficiencies and of East-West confrontation lapsed by
the end of the Cold War." 

Accords signed Jan. 16 in Mexico City led to a cease-fire on Feb. 1, but a
lasting peace was delayed in part by squabbling over a timetable for
fulfilling terms of the accord. 

U.N. Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali, who oversaw the final talks,
exhorted former enemies to be tolerant of each other. 

"The unification of Salvadoran society is not yet in sight, and there are
Salvadorans who continue making war in their hearts," he cautioned. 

The antagonisms were apparent at Tuesday's ceremony. 

The Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front, the umbrella group for the
five guerrilla armies, became a legal political party on Tuesday and says
it will jump into the 1994 elections with both feet. 

But when guerrilla leader Shafick Handal thanked Cuba and the Nicaraguan
Sandinistas for support during the war, cheers among the leftists in an
audience of 3,000 were heavily mixed with jeers. 

Said Handal in response: "Well, I'll repeat it so you can have a chance to
shout again," and he did. 

There were boos as well when he thanked El Salvador's Roman Catholic Church
-- considered by many rightists a rebel tool -- for its substantial role in
the peace process. 

And now, the task of completing national reconciliation. 

As a part of the peace accords the Salvadoran military is to be purged of
the worst human rights violators. A three-man commission has determined who
will stay and who will go, but the names have been kept secret. 

"Salvadorans will put the truth behind them once the truth of the past has
been brought to light," said Boutros-Ghali, in an apparent call for the
list of offenders to be made public. 

More than 10 months of bare-knuckle negotiating since January has since
disbanded the rebel army, trimmed the military, brought judicial and
electoral reforms. It also saw the dismantling of five elite
American-trained battalions blamed for some of the war's worst atrocities. 

As part of reconciliation, a National Police force will be brought under
civilian control and made up of former fighters from both sides. 

------ 

EDITOR'S NOTE: Joe Frazier, the AP's Mexico City news editor, has covered
conflicts in Central America since 1980. 

<<>>APn  12/16 0152  Somalia-Forgotten Adults

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

By TINA SUSMAN 

Associated Press Writer 

BAIDOA, Somalia (AP) -- Children may be the most heart-wrenching victims of
Somalia's famine. But their parents also are struggling quietly to survive
-- and in some places failing at a rate four times that of the young. 

It is a tragic twist of Somalia's famine that with attention focused on the
young, the old should be forgotten. 

But relief workers say this is one result of rampant looting that has
forced them to spread too little aid among too many people. 

"In cases like this, agencies seem to home in on the most vulnerable, and
they are the children," said Micheal O'Reilly, the director of the Irish
relief agency Concern in Baidoa. 

Concern runs the only adults-only feeding center in Baidoa. 

Already, the death rate of children under the age of five has plummeted
from 20 percent of Somalia's population to about 5 percent. 

It wasn't until August that the International Committee of the Red Cross
began counting child and adult death rates separately. The results were
startling -- in the Baidoa region, the ratio was four adults to each child.


That convinced Concern to establish a therapeutic feeding center for
malnourished adults, who often require more than the huge protein doses
given children. 

Each day, Dr. Steve Collins, an English doctor working for Concern, tends
to some 120 Somalis ranging in age from about 18 to 80 in a collection of
stick shelters off Baidoa's main road. 

Many lie on the red-dirt floor writhing in agony. One old woman lies
shivering beneath a blanket in the stifling heat. She has been at the
center since Oct. 12 and weighs 44 pounds. 

A few feet away, 45-year-old Mohamed Isaaq Cumav sits quietly on his straw
mat while Collins tests the swelling in his balloon-like feet and bulging
legs -- symptoms of malnutrition. His legs are as thin as a child's arm,
but his knees are the size of baseballs, signs of septic arthritis. 

Nearly six feet tall, Cumav weighs less than 80 pounds but has improved
since arriving at the center Oct. 2. 

"Children get worse quicker and they die earlier, so a lot of effort was
put into the child problem at first. Now, the adult problem has become
glaringly apparent," Collins said. 

"Adults are much more complicated, so while it takes a lot longer for them
to get sick, it also takes them a lot longer to get better." 

Malnourished children may respond well to the biscuits and high-protein
porridge provided by aid agencies. Collins is trying a new diet for adults
that includes sugar, oil, rice, tea and bananas. 

Malnutrition isn't the only problem. Many patients suffer from, malaria and
tuberculosis, a disease found mostly in adults. 

The French agency Medecins Sans Frontieres has seven clinics in Baidoa but
has not treated TB patients because that requires seven months of constant
medicine. 

"We didn't even know if we'd still be here in seven months," said an agency
spokesman, Wauter van Empelen. 

Stopping treatments early would only leave patients with a more resistant
form of bacteria. 

<<>>APn  12/16 0111  China-Child Abuse

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

By KATHY WILHELM 

Associated Press Writer 

BEIJING (AP) -- When 3-year-old Hu Dandan forgot a word in the poem his
father was teaching him, the father exploded in anger. He boxed the boy's
ears, then kicked him, sending him reeling into a closet. 

Dandan died of head injuries hours later, one of three Chinese children
whose deaths have caused an unusual public debate over a problem barely
acknowledged before in China. 

When Dandan and two other children died at their fathers' hands in
November, authorities decided it was time to launch a public education
campaign. 

"People are furious that such a barbaric and stupid thing can happen now,
at the end of the 20th century," said Song Gaotang, an advisor to the China
Committee Concerned About the Next Generation. 

"But many people still hold that wrong idea, `Spare the rod and spoil the
child,"' he said. 

He was among educators and child experts who took part in a forum on child
abuse sponsored by the nation's leading newspaper, the People's Daily. 

The paper published the experts' remarks, including Song's, over several
days last week. Its editors said they hoped to prevent more deaths. 

The common impression in China's large cities is that children, whose
parents are usually allowed only one child under the state's family
planning program, are more likely to be spoiled than abused. 

But the lingering Confucian notion of absolute obedience to parents,
combined with parents' high ambitions for their single child, have shaded
Chinese childhood in darker tones. 

All three children who died in November came from urban worker families. 

Eight-year-old Wang Xiaochuan got in trouble when he went out to play,
ignoring orders to study. His father boxed him in the ears and kicked him
twice, knocking him unconscious. He died in a hospital. 

The father of Xia Hiu, 11, tied a rope around the boy's stomach and hung
him from a ceiling beam after he played hookey from school. 

The father left and returned half an hour later to find the boy
unconscious. He, too, died in a hospital. 

Confucius held that a father was entitled to kill a disrespectful son and
fathers have traditionally remained king at home. Abusive parents generally
have not faced arrest or punishment. 

But police have arrested the fathers of Hu Dandan and Wang Xiaochuan. There
has been no report about the fate of Xia's father. 

A court in the central Chinese city of Guiyang recently gave a 2-year
sentence to Xie Hongfei, who struck his 7-year-old son with a red-hot metal
hook for forgetting to do his homework. The boy survived with burns. 

The sentence received wide publicity, with many Chinese expressing surprise
that a man could be punished for disciplining his son. 

The experts who took part in the People's Daily forum blamed the low
education level of most parents in a country where even a high-school
education is far from universal. 

Parents need to learn that some mischievousness is normal and reflects
creativity, said Sun Puyuan, a Beijing grammar school teacher. 

He said 47 of the 48 children in his first-grade class told him they'd been
hit by their parents, including 27 who said their parents used some sort of
paddle or rod. 

<<>>UPn  12/16 0025  Beating of street people alleged in homeless abuse case

By HARVEY BURGESS 

CHARLOTTE, N.C. (UPI) -- Tales of street people beaten unconscious,
stripped naked and "left to die" marked the second day of testimony in the
federal trial of one former and two current Gastonia, N.C., police officers
charged with violating the civil rights of homeless men. 

Former Gastonia officer David McKinney, who has pleaded guilty in the case,
told a nine-woman, three-man federal jury Tuesday that he and then-officer
Steven Phillips took a homeless man to Rankin Lake in Gastonia, where
Phillips "kicked him until he was unconscious." 

McKinney, a former Gastonia police officer, and officers Mark Gibby and
Kyle Shepard face charges of routinely assaulting homeless men in the
western North Carolina city of about 50,000. 

Prosecutors say the three, along with four other officers who have pleaded
guilty in the case, routinely poured used cooking oil, motor oil, water,
hot coffee and urine on homeless men. 

Court documents also allege the officers, part of what was known as the
"Eagle Team" in the police department, would beat and slap street people at
various locations between 1987 and 1990. 

The officers would call the assaults "taking them for a ride on Space
Mountain," an allusion to a statement made popular by a professional
wrestler. 

McKinney was one of several officers to testify Tuesday that Phillips,
Gibby and Shepard would join with other officers and then joke about the
assaults. 

"I thought it was funny at the time," McKinney said, admitting he once
struck a homeless man so hard he (McKinney) broke his hand. 

"We should have never done anything like that," he said. "It was totally
wrong." 

McKinney and another officer testified they once found a street person
sleeping at the post office, so they pulled his clothes off and left him. 

Some time later, they got a call to return to the same location, and
learned the man had been apparently assaulted by another officer and "left
to die," McKinney said. 

Another former officer, Karen Hoffman, testified the assaults became so
common "that any time any officer would approach a street person, they
would hold their arms up in front of their faces to defend themselves." 

McKinney told the jury he and the others lied about their participation in
the assaults during a 1990 investigation by the department's internal
affairs bureau. 

After the internal probe, McKinney said former officer Stacy Trull, who
also entered a guilty plea, had T-shirts printed with the words "Space
Mountain" on the back and "The Boys" on the front "to aggravate (the
internal affairs investigator)." 

He said the officers lied "to protect ourselves and our jobs." 

One of the victims, Charles Albert Davis, testified Tuesday and identified
two of the defendants as his assailants. 

Prosecutors expect to rest their case Wednesday. If convicted, the three
face up to 11 years in prison and $500,000 in fines. 



 Copyright 1992 United Press International  <<>>APn  12/16 0004  Pneumonia Vaccine

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

By BRENDA C. COLEMAN 

Associated Press Writer 

CHICAGO (AP) -- A type of bacteria that kills more than a million
youngsters a year will be stopped only through an international effort to
create a new vaccine, studies suggest. 

The bacteria -- streptococcus pneumoniae -- usually invades children's
lungs and causes pneumonia. But it also may attack the brain lining and
cause meningitis, or infect the eyes, the blood, the skin or elsewhere. 

Adults can be immunized with an existing vaccine, but it doesn't work on
the immature immune systems of children under 2, the germ's most frequent
and vulnerable victims. 

Complicating the picture is the existence of 84 subtypes of the bacteria;
only a fraction of them can be covered by a single vaccine, said Dr. Robert
S. Baltimore, associate professor of pediatrics and of epidemiology and
public health at Yale University School of Medicine. 

Different subtypes are more prevalent in different countries, as shown by
two new reports -- one from Finland and one from Israel -- in today's issue
of The Journal of the American Medical Association. 

"A vaccine that might contain (subtypes) for Finland might not be
appropriate for Israel," said Baltimore, author of an editorial in JAMA
calling for international cooperation in developing a new vaccine. 

No one knows exactly how many U.S. youngsters die each each year from
pneumococcal illnesses, as they are called, because they are not required
to be reported, Baltimore said. 

Previous studies have found U.S. illness rates for children under 2 ranging
from 26 per 100,000 to as high as 1,195 per 100,000, the latter among
Alaskan natives. 

"One of things I'm calling for is studies of the quality of those in JAMA
to be done in other countries around the world," Baltimore said. He said
that was the only way for vaccine developers to get the necessary
information about which subtypes to fight in which locations. 

The technology exists for developing an effective childhood vaccine, he
said.

Pneumococcal bacteria can dwell in the throats of healthy humans. They are
usually passed from person to person by coughing or sneezing. 

They become dangerous when they invade the tissues. They kill more than a
million children under 5 each year worldwide through pneumonia cases alone,
previous research has shown. 

<<>>RTw  12/15 2241  MULTINATIONAL FORCES ENTER BAIDOA

(Eds: releads with arrival of convoy in town) 

BAIDOA, Somalia, Dec 16, Reuter -  A heavily-armed convoy of U.S. and
French troops rumbled into Somalia's starving town of Baidoa early on
Wednesday in the first major push to the famine-hit interior since
Operation Restore Hope began a week ago. 

U.S. troops in jeeps and light armoured vehicles, one of them flying a big
American flag, drove down the main street just after 6.00 a.m. (0300 GMT)
as attack helicopters clattered overhead. 

MORE AHH RMG GD  <<>>RTw 12/15 2209 TRIBE SAYS MISCARRIAGES, INFANT DEATHS PLAGUE RESERVATION

TRIBE SAYS MISCARRIAGES, INFANT DEATHS PLAGUE RESERVATION 

By Michael McCarthy 

SHOALWATER BAY RESERVATION, Washington, Dec 16, Reuter - State and U.S.
health officials are investigating a rash of unexplained miscarriages,
stillbirths and infant deaths which tribal leaders here fear threatens
their people with extinction. 

"Our history, our legacy, our future is dying," Tribal Chairman Herbert
Whitish told Reuters. "We're running out of time." 

The Shoalwater Bay Tribe once numbered in the tens of thousands. They lived
along the Pacific coast near the mouth of the Columbia River, fishing the
estuaries, harvesting clams from the area's shallow bays, and hunting seal
and other game. 

Most of the tribe now lives on this 1,100-acre (445-hectare) reservation on
Willapa Bay in the southwest corner of Washington state. 

The remote tribe first noticed the apparent epidemic of miscarriages and
infant deaths about two years ago. 

According to tribal data, there have been 12 miscarriages, two stillbirths
and two infant deaths in the last five years on the reservation where most
of the tribe's 150 remaining members live. 

As a result, only eight children are alive today out of the two dozen
confirmed pregnancies on the reservation in the last five years, tribal
leaders said. 

Members of the dwindling Pacific Coast tribe believe their land may have
been poisoned by pesticides and herbicides used for weed and pest control
in nearby forests and in the bay from which they fish. 

"There's a lot of concern that if it's in our water...if it's something the
government is using out in the ocean. People want to know what's going on
and why," said Sabina Harris who lost her three-day-old child to pneumonia
two years ago. 

While health experts are investigating this, some claim that severe poverty
and attendant medical problems may be key factors. Unemployment on the
reservation runs at 60 per cent and nine in 10 tribal members live below
the official poverty line. 

An initial investigation in 1990 by the U.S. Indian Health Service, the
federal agency which provides health care to native American communities,
concluded there was no evidence of a serious problem on the reservation. 

Then in July of this year, another child died - the six-month old son of
Jim and Kathy Anderson. 

"It broke the back of people around here, because there was so much hope
invested in these babies," said Tribal Administrator Ken Hansen. "We
couldn't look at each other without crying." 

Three days after the infant's death, the tribe declared a medical emergency
and asked state health officials to intervene. That action deliberately
bypassed the Indian Health Service (IHS), which tribal leaders claim had
neglected the problem. 

Both state and IHS officials have now launched an investigation to
determine if there is a true epidemic on the reservation and, if so, to
look for a cause. 

There are a number of conditions on the reservation which could contribute
to foetal and infant death, said Julie Van Eenwyck, an epidemiologist with
the state health department. 

Poverty and the attendant problems with poor nutrition, lack of prenatal
care, and lifestyles that include smoking, alcohol and drug abuse are
clearly associated with foetal and infant death, Van Eenwyck said. 

Researchers are also looking into the possibility there may be
environmental toxins on the reservation. 

In particular, there is concern the herbicides used by timber companies in
the surrounding forests and pesticides used to protect clam beds along the
reservation's shoreline could be poisoning people living on the
reservation. 

"They also eat a lot of wild game that is fairly high on the food chain so
if the game is picking up pesticides they may be getting exposure too," Van
Eenwyck said. 

"There are certainly possibilities for exposure," she said. "Whether there
has been exposure is another question." 

REUTER SGP ZM  <<>>APn  12/15 2157  Clinton-Text

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

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) -- The text of statements by President-elect Clinton
and Vice President-elect Gore at the close of the economic conference
Tuesday: 

Clinton: "Well, I'd like to read a brief statement and then let Senator
Gore make a remark or two and then we'll be glad to answer some questions. 

"First of all, I have to tell you I found these last two days to be
productive, positive and provocative. Full of ideas and experiences and
perspectives that represent the length and breadth of our country. People
from every walk of life, every conceivable background. 

"They represented, in sum, what is very best about America. This kind of
participation, itself, is very important to me and it will continue
throughout my administration. And I don't mean just the people who were
here, but also those who took the time to call from across the country. 

"This is all a part of the effort we have to continue to make to reconnect
the American people to their government. We heard a lot of serious
questions raised and some significant differences among the people who were
here on what the best answers to those questions are. 

"But what I found most striking was the fundamental agreement on several
critical points. 

"First, there was absolute consensus on the need to substantially increase
our level of investment to get this economy going again and to develop the
abilities of our people. We can't hope to rebuild our economy simply by
paving roads and building factories. We also have to have the best-educated
and best-trained work force in the world. 

"Second, there was a remarkable degree of consensus that we have to
increase access to capital if we expect small business -- the real
job-generating engine of this economy -- to flourish and if we expect our
entrepreneurs to have the opportunities they need to innovate and to
compete. 

"Third, while probably no two participants agreed on all the details of our
budget dilemma and what ought to be done about it, there was, after all, a
remarkable level of consensus about the need for a balanced approach
between a new investment agenda and a long-term commitment to deficit
reduction that will be credible, public and specific in the short run. 

"Fourth, despite the enormous range of solutions offered, every speaker who
touched the subject reflected the emerging consensus that reducing health
care costs and providing a basic system of health care to all Americans is
a national imperative. We can't do anything else on the deficit if we fail
to curb the monster of spiraling health care costs. 

"Now we must take the beginnings of the consensuses forged here and move
forward. Our work didn't begin here, it won't end here. And I'll need the
advice and support of other Americans as we move forward to make the tough
choices that lie now in the very near future. 

"We have to build a legislative package, craft its details, get it through
and make it work in the real lives of our country. 

"This conference didn't answer every question or give us the solution to
every problem. No single conference can do that. But the American people
should be certain of this: I'm not going to stop working and our team is
not going to stop working until the economic challenges have been faced and
tackled. Until we have given it our best shot and our best response. 

"As long as people are out of work and children are left behind, as long as
families struggle, as long as the potential of this country is not being
fulfilled, we will not rest. We'll explore every idea and challenge every
prejudice. We won't stop looking or pushing or trying until our job is
done. 

"I think that what happened in the last two days at least demonstrated to
the people who were here -- and I hope to the rest of the American people
-- that while our administration doesn't have all the answers and maybe
never will, we're working hard on the problems. 

"We're going to take what came out of this meeting and what I think will be
a virtually unanimous participation by the principles in writing back their
one- to three-page document of suggestions, put it with the rest of the
work our team is doing and proceed to put together the budget and the
legislative package for January 20th. 

"Senator Gore." 

Gore: "I'd like to make three additional points, briefly. 

"Number one: there was an impressive agreement among the participants at
this conference that the pursuit of environmental efficiency represents an
enormous business opportunity for our nation. And an important challenge
which we can and must address successfully. 

"Number two: a better national approach to developing and implementing new
technologies -- especially to those which, by common agreement, are likely
to have a tremendous leverage over the future -- can bring great
improvements to our economic performance. 

"Third and finally: there was a certain magic to the diversity of this
conference. And I just want to make this point. That didn't happen by
accident. It was intentional and we worked at it. 

"Everyone who participated in this conference -- and I dare say, most who
watched the conference -- came to feel an extra quality that was a part of
the dialogue because of the richness of the diversity at that conference. 

"Every institution in our society has the opportunity to tap into that same
richness and diversity if they don't leave it to accident. If they work at
it. If we as a nation work at it we can become much greater than the sum of
our parts." END 



<<>>RTw 12/15 1759 PHYSICIANS SAYS MINES THREATEN SOMALI RELIEF EFFORT

WASHINGTON, Dec 15, Reuter - A physicians' human rights group on Tuesday
called for an international effort to defuse hundreds of thousands of land
mines in northern Somalia to supplement the relief effort now under way in
the country's south. 

The land mines, laid between 1988 and 1991 during the civil war in northern
Somalia, "must be considered a humanitarian emergency," said Dr Jonathan
Fine, senior medical consultant for the Physicians for Human Rights. 

"International initiatives are needed to implement an effective de-mining
effort, similar to the effort that was undertaken in Kuwait" after the Gulf
War, the group said in a report on Tuesday. 

The report said the mines threatened to injure civilians in the
famine-devastated East African nation as they try to return to their homes
from Ethiopia, where many sought refuge. 

The mines also will be an obstacle to residents seeking to resume farming
and raising livestock in the area, it said. 

Fine and Dr Chris Giannou of Canada, another member of the rights group,
toured Northern Somalia earlier this year and said they discovered
extensive mining around the area's major cities, water sources and farming
and grazing lands. 

In a statement issued along with the report, they said many Somali
civilians were thought to have died from mine-related injuries, most of
them children under 16, hurt as they walked along roadways or accompanied
their herds. 

Still others have been crippled by infection caused by injuries, due to
shortages of medications and trained medical personnel, they reported. 

"Physical injuries are difficult to accept psychologically in any society,
but in a pastoral one, where muscle power means survival, the loss of a
limb can be particularly cruel. Among nomads, amputees become a special
burden to their families," the report said. 

REUTER IA CM WS  <<>>APn  12/15 1448  Quayle-El Salvador

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

By HARRY F. ROSENTHAL 

Associated Press Writer 

SANTA ELENA, El Salvador (AP) -- Dan Quayle, making what probably will be
his last foreign trip as vice president, today delivered a surprise gift --
a $464 million debt reduction at a ceremony ending a dozen years of civil
war. 

Under the plan, the United States will forgive all but $150 million of a
$614.8 million debt accumulated by El Salvador over a 15-year period. 

It is the largest debt reduction ever agreed to under President Bush's
Enterprise for America initiative, officials said. 

At the peace-making ceremony between the government and guerrilla forces,
Quayle said that the United States continues its support of efforts to
rebuild El Salvador. 

"As a measure of our commitment, today I am pleased to sign with your
president an agreement that forgives 75 percent of El Salvador's official
debt to the United States," he said. 

Even after the writeoff, the Salvadoran government won't have to pay
interest to the United States on the remainder. That money will go instead
for local needs, either for environmental or child-survival programs. 

"It is a reward to El Salvador for its economic reforms," said Bernard
Aronson, assistant secretary of state for Latin American affairs. "They are
the best economic reformers in the hemisphere. 

Meanwhile, President Bush said in an address at Texas A&M University that
"the day of the dictator has given way to the dawn of democracy" in Latin
America. 

"This very day, our vice president is taking part in a ceremony in El
Salvador that caps the long effort to end the killing and give the people
there the opportunity to live in peace," Bush said. 

In Washington, the Treasury Department said it had signed smaller debt
reduction agreements with three other Latin American nations: Colombia,
Chile and Uruguay. 

Colombia's debt for food and foreign assistance loans will be reduced by
$31 million to $279.2 million; Chile's by $15 million to $132 million, and
Uruguay's by $3.7 million to $30.7 million. 

In exchange, the governments of El Salvador and the other three nations
agreed to undertake economic reforms. 

"These agreements ... demonstrate the U.S. commitment to strengthening ties
through economic growth in the region as well as here at home," Treasury
Secretary Nicholas F. Brady said at a signing ceremony with representatives
of Colombia and Uruguay. 

Quayle flew to this Central American country to take part in signing a
declaration of congratulations for the peace accord reached by the
government and the guerrillas who engaged in the long civil war. 

"Many observers said this day would never come," Quayle said. "Some said
that peace and justice could only come from the barrel of a gun. Others
said peace could only be attained by trampling on human rights and
liberties." 

He said the doubters were wrong and "the guns were stilled today because
democracy and human rights have triumphed." 

On the five-hour flight, Aronson said El Salvador faces enormous costs and
demands for services brought on by peace. Thousands of soldiers have been
and are continuing to be demobilized and there is tremendous physical
damage remaining from the war, he said. 

President Alfredo Cristiani has a five-year, $1 billion program, which
includes such items as a $75 million for a new police academy. 

"We saved them essentially $25 million a year by reducing the debt,"
Aronson said. 

The government and the rebels signed a United Nations-mediated peace
agreement on Jan. 16, and on Feb. 1 began a cease-fire. 

Quayle's office said the visit symbolizes the long U.S. commitment to
ending the conflict and bringing democracy to El Salvador. Over the decade,
the United States spent more than $4 billion in the effort. Twenty
Americans lost their lives. 

When the United States first became involved, the rebel Farabundo Marti
National Liberation Front was a strong force, led by Cuban-backed leftists.
The Salvadoran military, which controlled much of the government, trampled
human rights and death squads spread terror. 

Because of the civil war, more than one-fifth of the country's five million
people were displaced or in exile. Material damage was estimated beyond $2
billion. 

The government and rebel leaders last January signed a pact that ended the
conflict, in which at least 75,000 people have died. 

<<>>RTw  12/15 1348  U.N. TO SEND 100 TRUCKS TO SOMALIA

 ROME, Dec 15, Reuter - The U.N. World Food Programme said on Tuesday it
would send 100 trucks to Somalia to help speed up the delivery of food to
the famine- and war-stricken Horn of Africa nation. 

The lorries will be loaned to Somalia for three months from the WFP's
operation in neighbouring Ethiopia, the agency said in a statement. 

The first 20 trucks will be flown from Addis Ababa to the Somali capital
Mogadishu between Wednesday and Saturday. The rest will arrive at Mogadishu
harbour on December 22. 

The U.S.-led military mission in Somalia has come under pressure by relief
agencies to speed up the operation so food aid can reach Somalia's
starving. 

"Now that we are able to deliver food to Mogadishu, it is critical that we
have enough reliable trucks to move into the interior where people are in
the greatest need," said WFP Executive Director Catherine Bertini. 

REUTER VH JLF  <<>>APn  12/15 1304  Somalia-Africa Reax

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

By ANDREW TORCHIA 

Associated Press Writer 

NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) -- Not so long ago, the intervention of white foreign
troops in an African nation would have stirred outrage on the continent. 

Now, Africans applaud the mission of U.S. Marines to save Somalia from
anarchy and famine. Somalis have warmly welcomed the Americans, and some
African governments are promising military help. 

Africa "has been hyper-sensitive ... to the slightest suggestion of
neo-colonial dependence," columnist Graham Linscott wrote in The Star, an
independent daily in Johannesburg, South Africa. 

So it is astonishing, he said, that "something that looks very much like a
version of neo-colonialism or neo-imperialism is being tolerated by the
African continent." 

What's changed African minds? 

Only one thing, say some analysts: Somalia is a disaster unprecedented even
in disaster-prone Africa, a human tragedy so vast that African pride must
be laid aside. 

"All of us are fed up with the killing. There's no state, no society in
Somalia," said Gideon Mutiso, a Kenyan development consultant. "It's unique
and that's why people are willing to stretch international law." 

"I don't think what's happening in Somalia can be extended to anywhere
else," said former Kenyan Vice President Mwai Kibaki. "Nowhere else has a
country disintegrated into villages." 

Yet Africa's inability to solve its own problems, from the Liberian civil
war in the west to famine in the south and east, stings many Africans. 

Salim Salim, secretary-general of the 52-nation Organization of African
Unity, said it was a "depressing experience" that his organization had
failed to bring tranquility to Somalia. 

"It must trouble the African conscience that it requires troops from half
the world away to undertake a humanitarian operation of this kind,"
commented the state-owned Times of Zambia in Lusaka. 

"If more African countries were prepared to live up to even a small
fraction of the pious resolutions passed at so many summits, then Somalia
would probably have been sorted out already, and largely by African
troops," said the government-controlled Herald newspaper in Harare,
Zimbabwe. 

Some observers said the disappearance of the Soviet Union, once a rival for
influence in Africa, allowed the United States to intervene in Somalia
without its action being cast in a geopolitical light. 

"In a unipolar world, without the Russians, America is seen as supporting
the interests of humanity," said Olewe Nyunya, a professor at the
University of Nairobi. "The only danger is if America stays too long, or if
the United States shows preference for one Somali faction." 

The New Vision, a government-owned newspaper in Uganda, said U.S. troops
should not leave too soon. 

But Sudan's military ruler, Lt. Gen. Omar Hassan el-Bashir, criticized the
U.S. intervention as a "surprise escalation that would aggravate
instability and hamper peace efforts in the region." 

Hundreds of thousands have died since 1983 in civil war and famine in
southern Sudan, and Western powers have accused el-Bashir of serious human
rights abuses. 

Nigeria's military government sees the U.S. action as bolstering Nigeria's
involvement in a U.N.-backed West African military intervention in the
Liberian war. The West African force has become embroiled in fighting with
Charles Taylor, the leading guerrilla fighter in Liberia. 

"It justifies our position that we couldn't watch idly while senseless
killings were going on," said a Nigerian military spokesman, Col. Fred
Chijuka. 

Nigeria has shipped food, clothing and medicine to Somalia and is
considering sending 200 soldiers. 

Other African pledges include 320 soldiers from Botswana, 750 from Egypt,
1,000 from Zimbabwe and an unspecified army unit and medical team from
Tunisia. 

The United States has promised up to 28,000 soldiers and Marines and France
is sending more than 3,000. Smaller forces have been promised by Canada,
Belgium, Italy, Australia and Saudi Arabia. 

<<>>RTw  12/15 1219  SOMALIS CHEER CONVOY HEADING FOR FAMINE CENTRE

(Eds: changes dateline from Mogadishu, changes byline) 

By Paul Holmes 

BALI DOGLE, Somalia, Dec 15, Reuter - Crowds of Somalis turned out to cheer
a convoy of U.S. and French troops pushing towards the famine capital of
Baidoa from Mogadishu on Tuesday. 

Young children gave the thumbs-up sign and flashed V-for- victory salutes
as the 70 vehicles wound through impoverished villages in the first ground
thrust into Somalia's worst hunger zone by Operation Restore Hope. 

The convoy of 530 U.S. marines and 142 French legionnaires met no
resistance from Somali gunmen who, by disrupting relief work, indirectly
led the U.N. to dispatch a multinational force. 

The troops, accompanied by scores of reporters and cameramen, sighted a
lone "technical" -- Somali battlewagon -- just before they arrived at Bali
Dogle, once a Soviet airbase. 

U.S. troops say they will not tolerate any interference but Washington will
not allow them to disarm gunmen systematically. 

French "paras," veterans of African crises from Zaire to Burundi, say they
are under orders to secure Baidoa airfield by dawn on Wednesday. 

In Mogadishu French spokesman Colonel Jean-Paul Perruque said as many as
2,000 of the 2,200-strong French contingent would deploy in Baidoa. Others
would move further west to the town of Hoddur. 

"French forces are happy to be going to Baidoa...We expect to be there
tomorrow morning," Perruque told reporters. 

A U.S. military spokesman declined to say where the convoy was heading but
the U.S.-led task force set Baidoa, 250 km (170 miles) northwest of
Mogadishu, as its next objective after landing in the Somali capital a week
ago. 

Aid workers in Baidoa, where up to 70 people are dying each day, have been
barricaded in heavily fortified compounds waiting for the troops to arrive.


Helicopters hovered low over the convoy as it moved through the busted
streets of the capital. 

As it neared the U.S. embassy on the main southern exit from Mogadishu,
guns held by Somalis at one checkpoint quickly vanished, only to reappear
after the last vehicle went by. 

Perruque said the U.S. and French advance force expected little, if any,
resistance in Baidoa or along the route. 

"You've seen the size of this convoy. There'll be helicopter escorts as
well, so anyone who even tries to have a go would have to be mad," he said.


When the famine in Somalia first made international headlines in August,
some 400 people a day were dying in Baidoa, capital of the famine-stricken
Bay region. 

The wretched town has been looted several times as ragtag rival militias
swapped control at least seven times. 

Aid workers in Baidoa have criticised the U.S.-led force for not coming
sooner. 

Somali "technicals" have been skulking around the town, looking for a
chance for one more looting spree before troops restore a semblance of law
and order. 

Several people have been killed in clan battles over the last week, but aid
workers said the town was calm on Tuesday. 

The U.S.-led force has come under U.N. pressure to take more radical action
to disarm Somalia, but Washington has said troops will only take weapons
from gunmen who cross their path. 

White House spokesman Marlin Fitzwater told reporters on Monday the U.S.
administration would not risk its troops by systematically seizing weapons
which are part of the landscape in the shattered Horn of Africa nation. 

"Our mission has always been...(that) we would collect arms as they became
available and as we encountered them. But disarmament was not a stated part
of our mission and that has not changed," he said. 

Relief workers pressed a senior U.S. officer to explain Washington's stand
on the issue in Mogadishu on Tuesday. 

"Is the Unified Task Force to be the gendarme of all of Somalia? The answer
is 'No'," replied Colonel Kevin Kennedy, U.S. embassy liaison officer to
the humanitarian agencies. 

REUTER JMC AL JW  <<>>RTw  12/15 0938  FRANCE, U.S. TRY SOLVE DIFFERENCES ON SOMALIA MISSION

PARIS, Dec 15, Reuter - France said on Tuesday it was trying to solve
differences with the United States which media said threatened to wreck the
U.N.-mandated operation to feed the starving in Somalia. 

The White House has said that disarming warring Somali factions was not
part of the mission of the 28,000 American troops which began arriving last
week. 

But France, supported by U.N. Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali, said
it was part of the U.N. mandate which called for the creation of a secure
environment for the relief operation. 

Foreign ministry spokesman Daniel Bernard acknowledged there were
differences and said efforts were being made to solve them. 

"Obviously, contacts are underway," he told reporters. 

But he played down the dispute, saying the deployment was still at an early
stage and the U.S. and French troops on the ground were left to use their
own judgment and analysis. 

"If the French troops stop a vehicle carrying weapons, they take
them....They seize weapons when they find them," he said. 

Despite calls from relief workers and Somalis for troops to disarm gunmen
forcibly, Washington has said it wanted to avoid a backlash of guerrilla
warfare against the U.N.-mandated force. 

President Bush's special envoy Robert Oakley said the Somalis had promised
to take the lead to bring the threat of arms under control. 

Boutros-Ghali said disarmament was a prerequisite to a later peace-keeping
operation and he hoped a common denominator could be found. 

French media said the differences between the two main U.N. forces in
Somalia could wreck the operation. 

They also said the attempted lynching of a Somali woman accused of
consorting with French soldiers showed the culture gap between Western
forces and the Moslem Africans they were sent to help. 

The daily Le Monde said the addition to the task force of soldiers from
such different cultural background as Saudi Arabia, Botswana and Canada
could increase tension between Somalis and the task force. 

A Somali woman was stripped naked and beaten by an angry mob which accused
her of prostitution on Monday after she emerged from a French Foreign
Legion jeep. 

The incident was the first real sign of anti-foreign sentiment since the
start of a U.S.-led armed relief operation to feed millions of starving
people in the famine- and war-stricken Horn of Africa nation. 

"French soldiers are tolerated with ever growing difficulty in Mogadishu,"
the popular France-Soir said in a headline. 

"This new incident could further blacken the Foreign Legion parachute
regiment in the eyes of some Somalis who are not very appreciative of the
French presence," it said. 

The Communist Party daily L'Humanite, which opposed the operation from the
outset, said: 

"This drama says much about the feelings of an impoverished people which
suddenly sees the arrival of thousands of well-fed soldiers, armed to the
teeth, and supposed to be 'humanitarian' liberators. 

"In a few days, their presence has already confirmed an image reviled by
the peoples of the Third World -- that of the conquering, domineering white
man," it said. 

REUTER PHT FR JLF  <<>>APn  12/15 0258  Somali Refugees-Kenya

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

By ANDREW TORCHIA 

Associated Press Writer 

DADAAB, Kenya (AP) -- Hussein Aden Ahmed and his 90-year-old mother spent a
year trekking through the desert from their home in northern Somalia. Along
the way, a gang stole their camel and all their possessions. 

When they and other family members arrived in a refugee camp in Kenya last
week, Ahmed was told the U.S. Marines had landed in Somalia. Good news, he
said, that meant it might be safe to return. 

"At any expense, Somalia needs order," said the 50-year-old herdsman. "The
Marines must stay." 

News of the U.S. landing in Somalia spread slowly in the camps from the few
refugees who had shortwave radios. Marking the cheerful moment, men clapped
their hands and women ululated. Some danced and sang. 

"It got people talking about going back," said Haroon Ayub of Pakistan,
manager of the Hagadera refugee camp. 

But not everyone interviewed by a reporter this week even had heard about
the Marine intervention. 

Among those who knew, a few worried that Christians among the soldiers
would interfere with Islam in Somalia. But none complained about the
foreign intervention, despite Africa's history of colonialism enforced by
expatriate troops. 

Most saw the news as the first hope they might some day go home. 

Seasonal rain and mud have slowed the influx of refugees into the camps
around Dadaab, 250 miles northeast of Nairobi and about 50 miles west of
the Somali border. Field workers estimate daily arrivals at 100, down from
500 a day in October. 

Some 300,000 Somalis are living in refugee camps in Kenya. For most, camp
life is boring. Housed in mud huts and plastic sheets, the children
sometimes attend school while adults spend the day fanning away flies. 

The distribution of food every 15 days is a big event. 

Ahmed and his family left their home near Hargeisa, about 700 miles north
of Dadaab, last year. He and his mother, son and 58-year-old sister arrived
together at Hagadera. 

They had just learned Monday that Ahmed's wife and four other children --
separated from the group along the way -- got here a few months ago. 

Kaha Ibrahim, 36, her four children and her aged, blind husband spent six
months walking from Kismayo in southern Somalia. Along the way, she traded
her last 10 goats for food and the family reached Hagadera with nothing. 

"I was very hungry in Somalia. I don't want to go back," Ibrahim said. "The
U.S. Marines? I haven't heard about them." 

Mohamed Noor, 28, said he was in no hurry to return to his farm near
Kismayo. "Here, I get rations, I hang around, there's no work. I'm pretty
sure fights will start again in Somalia after the Americans leave." 

Noor's six children survived a six-day walk to Kenya but his 23-year-old
wife starved to death along the way. Noor said all his relatives back home
were killed by bandits. 

But life in the camps is not rosy. 

Stanley Miseleni of Malawi, manager of the Ifo refugee camp, said bandits
have killed 10 people since June. 

Halima Abdi Ali, 38, the only midwife at Ifo, said there are many rapes in
the camps. 

When a single, circumcised girl is raped, Ali sews up her vagina, she said.


Female circumcision, which involves slicing the clitoris and sewing part of
the vagina together, is common in Somalia. Some traditional Somali man will
only marry a circumcised woman. 

"In two months, I've sewn six girls," Ali said. "Otherwise, they could not
be married." 

At the Mandera camp, north of Hagadera, officials from the U.N. High
Commissioner for Refugees say 7,000 Somalis have signed up to return to
Somalia.

The United Nations offers them seeds, food and water pumps to get started
again. 

<<>>WP   12/15  XXX Somali Gunmen Spread Their Violent Net
Somalia's `Safest Place' Now Threatened by Civil Disorder 

By Jennifer Parmelee 

ODDUR, Somalia - Ibrahim Hassan Yalaho likes to call this western patch of
scrubland "the safest place in Somalia." In relative terms, the doctor is
right.

The cyclone of death and destruction that has devastated so much of Somalia
has barreled through here many times. Somehow, however, residents of the
remote Bakool region along the Ethiopian border have managed to hang on to
a measure of civil order unknown in most of the country. 

Now, however, the threat of chaos is looming. 

As with other towns in the famine belt that fans out in a 250-mile radius
of misery from Mogadishu, the Somali capital, the arrival of U.S. troops in
the country has - in the near term - spelled not relief but increased
insecurity. Aid workers say hundreds of the armed thugs who have been
terrorizing Mogadishu, and major relief points such as Baidoa, are now
moving into smaller communities near the Ethiopian border. 

"We are still the safest place in Somalia," said Yalaho, who has been
coordinating relief and health programs for UNICEF in the Bakool region for
the past five months. "(But) we are worrying we may lose this tradition." 

On Sunday, some 60 armed men who arrived here from Baidoa in military
trucks demanded grain at gunpoint from a warehouse run by the Irish charity
Concern and the U.N. World Food Program. It was the first attempt at
looting here in many months, local aid officials said, and ultimately the
men were persuaded to talk their actions over with the region's chief
elder. Officials also say there have been skirmishes between armed groups
recently in the area. In addition, "protection fees" given to local
distributors of aid food have soared, from 30 bags of grain a day to 100,
according to Mark Mullen of Concern. 

"What you're seeing in this town is a breakdown in the distribution
network. Everyone's panicking and wants to get their `piece' before the
Americans arrive," Mullen said. 

On Saturday night, about 40 of the heavily armed vehicles known as
"technicals" - rarely seen in this part of the country - put in a menacing
appearance here in Oddur, which is about 50 miles from the Ethiopian
border. They continued on toward the border town of Borgas without causing
any damage, but they left a trail of anxiety in their wake. 

"People feel they'll wait until all the (foreign) troops are gone and then
they'll come back from the bush to raise hell," Mullen said. 

Similar incidents have been reported in other outlying points. Dozens of
the gun-mounted vehicles reportedly have entered Beledweyne, which is about
25 miles from the border and on a main track to Gode, the capital of
Ethiopia's Ogaden region, and reports of armed theft have shot up, aid
officials in Mogadishu said Monday. 

"It's the same thing we've seen in other parts of the country - the
displacement of conflict out of Mogadishu," said Don Redding, spokesman for
Save the Children-U.K., in the capital. "Armed groups are moving out of
Mogadishu, and now away from Baidoa, into the countryside and causing
trouble. . . . The lack of clarity about when the troops are going to
arrive is contributing to this new wave of instability." 

Redding, echoing others in the aid community, concedes that the foreign
troops are in a Catch-22 situation. If they announce they are arriving
within a certain time frame, thieves will feel free to operate in the
meantime. If the troops do not establish a clear timetable, however, the
uncertainty is likely to fuel unrest, as it has in Oddur. 

"The thing to do is to move more quickly," Redding said. 

The government of Ethiopia has been bracing for an onslaught of armed
vehicles and gangs across its 1,000-mile-long border ever since U.N.
officials announced the military intervention Dec. 3. Ethiopia has sent
some troops to the border and has closed it to anyone carrying arms. 

Ethiopian officials admit, however, that it is extremely difficult to
police the long border that Somali nomads regularly cross with impunity.
They fear that Somali militias will simply conceal their weapons and
vehicles in the bush, then infiltrate Ethiopia - especially the refugee
camps teeming with hundreds of thousands of Somalis who fled the civil war.


"These Somalis know the terrain and we don't," said one official for the
Ethiopian government, which is now run largely by a group of former
insurgent fighters from the north of the country. "We need help to contain
them, to keep this chaos from spilling over into Ethiopia." 

Meanwhile those Oddur citizens striving to maintain their region's
semblance of security are hoping for the speedy arrival of the U.S.
military forces. 

"God willing, they will arrive any minute," said Mohammed Noor Shodok, 80,
head of the Hadama sub-clan who has run the territory for 55 years and is
now the nominal "governor" of Bakool region. "We are very fed up with
security problems and these militias arriving here" from Baidoa and
Mogadishu. "We are trying to get peaceful. And so we are expecting the
Americans to help us." 

Asked what he expected from the Americans, he responded, "It will take a
long time, but they must stay until all the weapons are taken." 

Shodok, distinguished-looking with a brightly hennaed beard,  frequently is
asked to mediate disputes between rival clans and with gunmen such as those
who targeted the grain warehouse on Sunday. Relief workers give him a lot
of credit for creating a relative oasis of calm in the turbulent Somali
landscape. 

Oddur's own citizens destroyed all government institutions in the town two
years ago, and marauding rebel forces periodically have swept through the
city. Yet there has been no reign of terror by local thugs, and relief
workers often walk, unarmed, to work. 

Such a climate enabled UNICEF, Doctors Without Borders and Concern to work
quickly to contain measles epidemics that hit the drought-stricken and
hungry region recently. In mid-October, 100 people a day were dying in
Oddur alone from the combined effects of measles and malnutrition.
Large-scale vaccination and health programs helped cut the rate to a third
of that figure by the end of November. 

Yet observers fear that Shodok's traditional authority is even now being
eroded, as has the power of elders throughout Somalia during the two-year
period of anarchy. 

"With all these young armed people coming in, our tensions are getting
always higher," Yalaho said. "In other regions, they have lost this
tradition (of elders' authority). We fear that the same thing will happen
in Oddur." 

  Copyright 1992 The Washington Post  <<>>WP 12/15 x Transforming the Debate By Focusing on Economic Details

By David Von Drehle 

LITTLE ROCK, Ark., Dec. 14 - By any conventional measure of politics or
television, Day One of President-elect Clinton's economic conference was
stupendously boring, hour after hour of academics lecturing on a podium and
business leaders declaiming from leather chairs. 

Transition communications director George Stephanopoulos could not have
been happier. 

"Picture someone at home channel-surfing," he said, as highly detailed talk
of deficits and investment droned through the early afternoon. "They go by
this on C-SPAN, or CNN, or they're in their car and catch a little on NPR,
and they say, `Oh, good, he's working on the economy.' " 

Perhaps the glitzy photo opportunity is dead. Independent candidate Ross
Perot drew raves this year for half-hour campaign commercials starring a
man with a pointer and a stack of charts, and now Clinton trumps him with
13 hours of it over two days. 

Deep, dry talk on capital-I Issues settled electronically over "the whole
country, not just in a 30-second sound bite," marveled Comcast's Brian
Roberts, a participant from Philadelphia. 

Seriousness is in, it appears, especially seriousness about the economy. So
with the first televised images of Clinton chewing intently on the earpiece
of his eyeglasses as a Nobel Prize-winning economist tracked "output per
hour of U.S. workers" along the X-axis of a line graph, the worries and
misgivings of the transition team about the conference melted away. 

"If you tune in for half an hour you're going to see him listening and
asking informed questions," said Stephanopoulos. "Look at George Bush.
People just loved the fact that he knew all the foreign leaders by their
first names. Well, here's a guy who knows all these economists and business
leaders and labor leaders and so forth. He knows them and knows their
work." 

Clinton offered no solutions. Instead, he probed and questioned and
cajoled. "Anybody else wanna respond to the strong dollar-weak dollar
argument? Jeff?" he said, pointing to economist Jeffrey Garten of Columbia.
"It's a terribly difficult issue," Clinton said, after hearing from
Lockheed's Dan Tellep about the problem of foreign subsidies to aircraft
makers, and he gave a brief history of failed negotiations on just that
point. 

Later in the day, P.M. Grieve, head of a chemical company in St. Paul,
Minn., pronounced the event an "enormous watershed" in breaking down "the
adversarial relationship between the federal government and business." 

Not long ago, Clinton aides were privately wringing their hands over the
conference, fearful that Americans would expect solutions from such a
high-profile event. Today, having spun down expectations, all was well in
their world. 

"Now is the winter of our content," Stephanopoulos said. 

Suddenly, Clinton advisers were talking about the conference as a tool to
change the terms of America's economic debate. For more than a decade, they
said, the country has been talking and thinking of dilemmas defined by
conservative Republicans. Taxes versus Free Enterprise. Government spending
versus private-sector growth. The deficit versus the future. 

Those are not necessarily the terms Democrats want to operate with. Clinton
spent the day speaking instead in terms of spending-for-investment versus
spending-for-consumption. Long-term job training as the root of economic
growth. Tax incentives as a route to global competitiveness. 

There was a moment when Marion Sandler of World Savings in Oakland 
delivered an attack on entitlement spending. 

"I don't disagree," Clinton parried. But then he turned the tables. Runaway
spending for entitlements, he said, is linked to health care costs. The way
to cut welfare, he added, is to spend on creating jobs. Everything turned
to his agenda. 

Stephanopoulos glowed. "See, you never get to this level on the evening
news. It's either you're for entitlements or you're against them. . . . We
need to just change everyone's frame of reference." 

Clinton's message meister pictured positives of this long day of talk
expanding across the country in vast concentric circles. "When the
president puts emphasis on an issue, it has a ripple effect,"
Stephanopoulos said. "It sets what the universities do, what the think
tanks do, what industry does, what people talk about. Look around this
room, these people all have ripple effects of their own." 

When Betsy Henley-Cohn of Joseph Cohn & Sons in New Haven began talking,
Stephanopoulos envisioned Connecticut newspapers and television stations
clamoring for interviews with her. When Andrew Shapiro, a Yale Law School
student, thanked Clinton for including "age diversity" in the conference,
the Clinton aide said: "He'll be on MTV." 

In one string, there were remarks by four women and one student
uninterrupted by older men in suits. "People don't think of government this
way," Stephanopoulos said. "They think of guys walking up the steps of the
Capitol to raise their taxes." 

There is, of course, a difference between talk and action, and the
difference was apparent in the conference hall at the end of the opening
session. "The American people are at the table with us also," said Clinton,
and the voice of Bob Edwards, NPR anchor, boomed into the room. He had a
caller on the line, Ken Hunt, an unemployed toolmaker, laid off because of
defense cuts at McDonnell-Douglas in Long Beach, Calif. 

"Frankly, I'm pessimistic," said Hunt, a single father of six. "In the
short term I don't see things to help my family." 

The president-elect fired off statistics about potential job growth in
civilian aviation. "We need people with your skills, we just need you
somewhere else," he said. 

But explanations don't feed hungry mouths. So Hunt cut to the bottom line:
"If you have a job opening for me, I'll take it." 

Copyright 1992 The Washington Post  <<>>APn  12/14 1424  Somalia-Law and Disorder

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

By NICOLAS B. TATRO 

Associated Press Writer 

MOGADISHU, Somalia (AP) -- A surging, angry mob of several hundred men beat
and stripped a woman Monday in front of a French checkpoint and within
clear view of U.S. Marines perched on an armored vehicle. 

The peacekeepers made no move to rescue the woman. 

The incident illustrates the violent nature of the streets of Mogadishu,
which are rife with robberies, car hijackings and shootings. Much of the
theft is directed at foreign relief workers and journalists. 

The violence poses a dilemma for foreign troops who are intent on
delivering food to famine victims but who risk their credibility if they
fail to act to stop the violence. 

The French commander, Col. Michel Touron, told reporters the woman had run
into a French position to escape a stone-throwing mob. French Foreign
Legionnaires then drove her down the street to a nearby French checkpoint
to get her out of harm's way. 

But when she got out of the vehicle, a group of Somali men accused her of
being a prostitute, repeatedly knocking her to the ground during a
15-minute attack with sticks and fists. Her green, flowered dress was
ripped off. 

The crowd also hurled stones at foreign journalists who were filming the
incident from a nearby rooftop. 

The woman was rescued by a man who raised a large kitchen knife and led her
across the street to the former police headquarters as other men locked
arms to hold back the crowd. She was kept in the police station by
followers of Gen. Mohamed Farrah Aidid, the warlord who controls southern
Mogadishu. 

Touron denied that the woman was involved with French soldiers, adding that
there "are probably some people in Somalia who would like to incite
incidents against the French." 

Asked why the French soldiers didn't rescue her a second time, he shrugged
and said, "That's a good question." 

Col. Fred Peck, spokesman for U.S.-led forces, said he did not know of any
American forces at the scene. But reporters saw U.S. troops in desert
fatigues sitting on an armored vehicle nearby. 

"The position of the U.S. forces, and it is clear in our instructions, is
that if you see someone in danger, physical harm, we have a right to act in
a humanitarian fashion to protect their personal well-being," Peck said. 

However, he added, the Marines are not looking for ways to stop crime. 

"We are not meant to be the police force of Mogadishu or any other town in
Somalia at this time," he said. 

Some relief workers suggested U.S. forces should take a stronger hand in
stopping the violence. 

"The Marines need to be more aggressive or they will be ignored and laughed
at which is what happened to the United Nations troops," said UNICEF
spokesman Mark Thomas. 

He referred to a 500-man Pakistani force that was the first international
contigent in Mogadishu but failed to make a dent in the violence. That
failure is why many Somalis say they prefer U.S. troops to those of the
United Nations even though American forces have a U.N. mandate. 

In recent days, five relief workers and an Associated Press photographer
have been robbed; a U.N. worker and a Kenyan television sound recorder were
shot; cameramen were stoned. 

In the chaotic Dodge City environment of pre-Marine Mogadishu, journalists
and relief workers traveled in cars with guards carrying automatic rifles
-- and in some cases rocket-propelled grenades and machine guns. 

It was hardly safe, but few were robbed. 

Today, foreigners, and Somalis, face a Catch-22. 

If they travel with guns in the U.S.-protected zone, the guards run the
risk of having their arms seized at checkpoints. But if they travel without
weapons, they are vulnerable to attack by bandits. 

Relief workers have decided to keep their arms, especially when traveling
to the interior. 

"When I go out of town, I take my gun, of course," said Horst Hamborg of
the International Committee of the Red Cross. 

Mike MacDonagh of the Irish charity Concern travels with two
rocket-propelled grenade launchers, a Browning automatic rifle and two
AK-47s. 

"I have met some nasty checkpoints in the countryside and without having
some heavy stuff I don't think I'd be here today," said MacDonagh. 

In the capital, he said, the Marines assured relief workers they could
carry light weapons -- anything short of belt-fed machine guns. But in
practice, peacekeepers are searching cars for weapons and seizing whatever
they find. 

<<>>RTw  12/14 0809  SOMALI REFUGEES THINK OF GOING HOME

 By Frances Kerry 

NAIROBI, Dec 14, Reuter - Packed into camps and dependent on aid hand-outs,
hundreds of thousands of Somalis who fled to Kenya to escape fighting and
hunger are considering going home. 

The change of heart, a spokesman for the United Nations High Commission for
Refugees (UNHCR) said on Monday, follows the arrival of U.S.-led troops in
their battered, starving country. 

The 4,000 U.S. and French troops deployed in Mogadishu and an airstrip west
of the capital are the first of a multinational force to end anarchy and
ensure food gets to the needy. 

The UNHCR and private charities have been looking after some 320,000 Somali
refugees in camps near Liboi, Wajir, Mandera and El Wak in Kenya's arid
northern border areas. 

"We think there will be a massive movement once there are troops in the
border areas, perhaps in about two to three weeks' time," spokesman Panos
Moumtzis said. 

"We've been doing questionnaires among the refugees and have found the
majority want to go home quickly," he said. 

"We want to help encourage their return and we want to try to help them
stand on their own feet," Moumtzis said, adding that UNHCR. 

He said UNHCR was working on a programme to provide farm tools and seeds
and rehabilitate schools and health clinics for about half a million
people, focusing on returnees. 

But the UNHCR does not want to be the banker for trade between border camps
and Somalia. Prospective returnees will not get any cash hand-outs. 

As a famine which has killed more than 300,000 Somalis reached cataclysmic
proportions six months ago, some 2,000 people a day were streaming over the
border, desperate to escape hunger and conflict. 

The rate fell to around 500 a day by October and is now down to a trickle.
Moumtzis said just 100 arrived last week. 

The numbers early this year caught aid agencies off guard. 

The refugees arrived in poor physical condition in sparsely populated
frontier towns of northern Kenya where water supplies and roads could not
cope with a soaring population. 

At one stage the camps were squalid centres of death and disease. The daily
death toll in some camps was higher than in parts of Somalia suffering the
famine. 

Moumtzis said more supplies, food distribution targetted at mothers and
children and better health care had brought the daily death rate down to
under one per 10,000 inhabitants from a high of 14. 

Moumtzis said that while most of the refugees in Kenya were farmers or
nomads, up to 10 per cent were professionals or intellectuals. Most of
these had told interviewers in the past few days they did not want to
return to their wrecked country. 

This group could wait months or even years while awaiting permission to go
abroad to places such as the United States. 

But for the rest, the UNHCR is anxious for refugees not to dig in and
become dependent on aid handouts. 

He said about 1.5 million Kurdish refugees who fled to Turkey and Iran had
returned to northern Iraq after the Gulf War when allied troops established
a buffer zone there. 

"We believe we can get a similar effect here," he said. 

REUTER FK MR  <<>>RTw  12/14 0315  SAUDI ARABIA SENDS ELITE TROOPS TO SOMALIA

 NICOSIA, Dec 14, Reuter - Saudi Arabia is sending hundreds of soldiers
from its elite special forces to Somalia to join the U.S.-led operation
protecting famine relief there, a Saudi general said on Monday. 

General Abdullah al-Shodokhy told Reuters by telephone from Saudi Arabia
that the main part of the force, veterans of the 1991 Gulf War against
Iraq, would start leaving Tabuk in the north west of the kingdom on
Tuesday. 

"The Saudi contribution to Operation Restore Hope in Somalia will be
battalion strong," Shodokhy, information chief at the defence ministry,
said. "These men will be from the elite Saudi special forces." 

A battalion in the Saudi armed forces usually numbers 800 to 1,200 men,
including support teams. 

The official Saudi Press Agency (SPA) said on Sunday that a first
contingent had already left to join the U.N.-mandated operation to protect
relief aid from gunmen from feuding clans who have divided up the
war-ravaged country. 

The Saudi troops, the general said, should all be deployed in Somalia by
Thursday. 

Riyadh, like several Arab and Moslem states, pledged troops to the
multinational force which is expected to number up to 35,000 -- most of
them Americans. 

"The Saudi forces will operate under the U.N. flag and therefore they will
be governed by the U.N. mandate for Operation Restore Hope," the general
said. 

REUTER IAM NJP  <<>>WP   12/14       Rights Group Faults U.N. in 5 Regions

By Trevor Rowe 

Special to The Washington Post 

UNITED NATIONS - The New York-based group Human Rights Watch has sharply
criticized the United Nations for "downplaying" individual rights concerns
around the globe at a time when it says the end of the Cold War has made it
possible for greater action. 

In its annual review, the group examines human rights issues in Somalia, El
Salvador, Iraq, Cambodia and the former Yugoslav republics and concludes
that "the pattern . . . suggests (the United Nations) undervalues human
rights concerns." 

In Croatia, for example, the report says that while U.N. troops have helped
keep the peace after a six-month Serb-Croat war there last year, it allowed
"ethnic cleansing" and other abuses to continue. In neighboring Bosnia, it
says, U.N. threats to use force to protect humanitarian aid convoys were
rarely carried out and no effective steps have been taken to stop the
slaughter of civilians as the three-side factional conflict there grinds
on. 

On Somalia, the report says the United Nations abandoned the country at a
point when armed conflict and famine there might have been checked. It says
that while U.N. involvement there resumed "in fits and starts" in 1992, its
emphasis on negotiating with warring factions kept it from undertaking
stronger action. "While U.N.-sponsored military intervention to protect the
delivery of relief is most welcome, earlier U.N. attention to persistent
violence might have avoided the need for such a drastic step," the report
says. 

On El Salvador, the group charges that U.N. officials there have tempered
criticism of human rights violators to avert potential points of conflict.
It says the stress on prompt reconciliation is often shortsighted in that
it neglects creating salutary human rights conditions. 

On Cambodia, the United Nations is faulted for being fixated on holding
elections in May 1993 and for ignoring the need to build institutions that
could secure the rule of law. On Iraq, it notes that the U.N.-imposed
"no-fly zone" in the south has been ineffective in protecting Shiite
Muslims from government repression. 

Copyright 1992 The Washington Post  <<>>RTw  12/13 2214  IN CHINA, 27 MILLION LIVE BELOW HUNGER LINE

BEIJING, Dec 14, Reuter - Some 27 million people in China live below the
hunger line, some of them minority Moslems in the remote north-west, Xinhua
news agency reported. 

The figure has decreased from 125 million seven years ago, the official
news agency reported late on Sunday. 

Another 60 million people are just over the line, meaning their annual
income is more than 200 yuan ($37), Xinhua said in a report on a recent
visit to Qinghai and Gansu provinces by Vice Premier Tian Jiyun. 

Nobody in China actually starves but in Gansu the poorest of the poor still
live in caves and lead a hand-to-mouth existence. 

REUTER AMB MVB GD  <<>>RTw 12/13 2144 WILL SOMALIA MISSION ENSHRINE U.N. ``RIGHT TO INTERFERE?"

By Andrew Gumbel 

PARIS, Dec 14, Reuter - Today Somalia. Tomorrow Bosnia? Or Liberia, or
Sudan or Burma? 

The spectacle of tens of thousands of U.N. troops piling into the Horn of
Africa -- not to wage war, but to save hundreds of thousands of lives from
famine and political anarchy -- is astonishing enough in modern times. 

But the U.S.-led mission to Somalia could also prove a milestone in
establishing the international community's "right to interfere" in
conflicts around the globe where the toll of human misery becomes too great
to contemplate from a distance. 

Bernard Kouchner, France's go-getting Minister for Humanitarian Action has
advocated just such a "right to interfere" for years. 

"Taking action in Somalia is only the beginning," he told a recent news
conference. "People are also dying elsewhere: in southern Sudan, in
Liberia, in Mozambique, in Angola, in Burma and in Bosnia." 

Kouchner hopes U.N. Security Council Resolution 794, which authorised
Operation Restore Hope to Somalia, will prove a turning point in history by
enshrining the principle of humanitarian intervention in the affairs of
sovereign states. 

"Humanitarian action and the right to interfere are the great modern
political ideas...that states do not belong to governments, they belong to
people," Kouchner said in an interview with Reuters earlier this year.
"That is a huge change, and if I have contributed to it I am very proud." 

During the Cold War, international task forces of any kind were all but
impossible because two of the U.N. Security Council's permanent members --
the United States and the Soviet Union -- were irreconcilably at
loggerheads. 

All that changed last year with the crumbling of Soviet communism and the
Gulf War, which set a precedent for international action, albeit
belligerent, and prompted U.S. President George Bush to hail a "New World
Order." 

The first triumph for the "right of interference" immediately came
immediately after the Gulf War when Kouchner, among others, persuaded the
United Nations to authorise the establishment of safe havens for Iraq's
threatened Kurdish population. 

But Kouchner's ideas are far from universally welcome and raise searching
questions about humanitarian versus political interests, the distinction
between altruism and neo-colonialism. 

Kouchner has often clashed with the International Red Cross, which fears
the "right of interference" could jeopardise its role as a neutral broker
in conflicts and shatter a fragile international respect for the Geneva
Conventions which delineate the limits of acceptable behaviour in wartime. 

Some critics argue that humanitarian interference, while laudable for
non-governmental organisations, is potentially harmful when undertaken by
governments with interests to defend. 

"This action (in Somalia) introduces real confusion between what is
humanitarian and what is military," said one of Kouchner's most vocal
critics, Rony Brauman, who is head of the medical charity Medecins sans
Frontieres (MSF).

"I don't like the idea that an MSF team landing in a crisis zone could be
mistaken for the bridgehead of a marine division." 

Brauman is also suspicious of Kouchner's high media profile and accuses of
him of milking the misery of others for his own glorification and political
advancement. 

Television pictures of Kouchner personally delivering rice to the starving
in Mogadishu this month "went beyond the bounds of decency," Brauman said
-- echoing concern that the Somalia crisis should not turn into a photo
opportunity for world leaders anxious to prove they care about the Third
World. 

Governments have always been picky about international crises -- while they
are willing to help in Somalia, they are far more reticent in Bosnia and
have for years stalled on such flashpoints as East Timor and the
Israeli-occupied West Bank. 

In many cases industrialised countries have channelled aid and arms into
states notorious for their human rights records and belligerence towards
neighbours -- scandals over U.S. and British supplies to Iraq before the
Gulf War being one example. 

Kouchner is idealistic enough to believe no problem is so thorny that it
cannot be sorted out through goodwill and international solidarity --
starting with the slaughter in former Yugoslavia. 

"It would be wonderful to think we could wage war against war in that
area," he said. 

The French government, in common with the rest of the European Community,
is against full-scale intervention in Bosnia for the moment and Kouchner
has ruffled government feathers by appearing to disagree. 

He has also apparently angered officials over Somalia. Leaks to the press
suggest they feel he is muscling his way into terrain under the
jurisdiction of the Foreign and Defence Ministries. 

Conservative commentator Alain Peyrefitte believes the "right to interfere"
is, in the end, an ill thought out ideology symptomatic of a left-wing
government that has run out of ideas. He says the U.N.'s founding Charter
already sets out the rules of international intervention. 

But the charter is contradictory. 

Chapter Seven leaves military action at the discretion of the Security
Council, while Chapter One states: "Nothing contained in the present
charter shall authorise the United Nations to intervene in matters which
are essentially within the domestic jurisdiction of any state." 

REUTER APG VB RDW  <<>>RTw  12/13 2123  HUNGER STALKS DEMOCRACY IN EASTERN EUROPE

 By Vera Haller 

ROME, Dec 14, Reuter - Heart disease, obesity and other diseases that come
from overeating plagued those East Europeans who managed to find food under
communism. 

There were plenty of exceptions such as the vast majority of Romanians,
kept on hunger rations in the last years of Nicolae Ceaucescu's rule. But
now the meat and potatoes that kept some communist citizens looking chubby
have all but disappeared. 

Food experts say East Europeans are now eating more wheat products and less
protein as food shortages and soaring prices tip the nutrition scale to the
opposite extreme. 

"You see all sorts of figures about coronary heart disease that don't
relate at all to the current food situation," said Valeria Menza, a
nutrition officer for the Rome-based U.N. Food and Agriculture Organisation
(FAO). 

Experts said communist governments had an ideological interest to feed
their citizens to show high standards of living to the free world. 

The diet of meat, potatoes and cheeses provided a daily intake of about
3,500 calories, comparable to figures in western Europe, but it also
contributed to nutrition problems such as heart disease and obesity. 

Everything changed with the budding of democracy and the end of price
supports and state-run agriculture systems. 

Agencies like the FAO are just starting to examine how this shift in eating
habits is affecting East Europeans' health. 

They have little data to work with because the region's new governments,
struggling to emerge after 40 years of communism, have yet to document the
phenomenon. 

There are, however, tangible examples of suffering. 

In war-torn former Yugoslavia, a massive relief effort is underway to stem
severe food shortages, expected to worsen as the winter progresses and
fighting continues. 

The war's effect on nutrition is being felt already. The United Nations
reported in mid-November that 10 per cent of Sarajevo's 400,000 residents
were undernourished. 

Albania, Europe's poorest country, has "an alarmingly low level of food,"
the FAO said in a report earlier this year. Italy and the European
Community are pouring food into Albania to keep its three million people
from starving. 

"You find the shelves are just empty (in Albania)," said Menza. "You might
find a few odd things, a tin of this and a tin of that, but really
nothing." 

Three-quarters of the residents of Sofia, Bulgaria's capital, have cut back
on food purchases because prices are too high, the FAO said in the same
report. 

Shortages and exhorbitant food prices also are found in the former Soviet
Union. In Armenia, for example, an FAO nutrition officer saw the price of
bread rise five times in one day during a recent visit. 

The food problems, which are less prevalent in more industrialised
countries such as Hungary and Poland, can be traced to efforts to establish
free markets after communism. 

A report issued after a meeting of Eastern European nutrition experts last
April gave this summary: "As an immediate result of the economic reforms,
there has been lower food production and hyper-inflation -- with consumer
prices rising well in excess of wages." 

It went on to say that consumers have decreased expenditure on food and
also are eating a less diverse selection of food. 

The end of the Soviet trade bloc also contributed to the food shortages. 

"Eastern Europe is suffering because the market to the Soviet Union is gone
and Western Europe is a wall of subsidies and tariffs that keep trade from
moving," said John Lupien, director of the FAO's Food Policy and Nutrition
Division. 

"The problem they have now is they don't have trade," said Anthony
Whitehead, a consultant to the FAO. "Production is dropping, surpluses are
rotting in the fields and these kinds of things are affecting their ability
to feed their people." 

REUTER VH VB RDW  <<>>RTw  12/13 1908  U.S. TROOPS UNDER PRESSURE TO TAKE ON SOMALI GUNMEN

 By Jonathan Clayton 

MOGADISHU, Dec 14, Reuter - Five days after U.S. Marines stormed up
Mogadishu's beaches to police famine relief supplies, much of Somalia is
still in the grip of wild gunmen. 

U.S. forces swept into the interior for the first time on Sunday and came
under increased pressure to disarm marauding gangs of looters. 

"The notion that you can disarm Somalia is an enormous challenge...and
would very likely be a function of the U.N. forces that will follow us,"
Lieutenant General Robert Johnston, commander of the U.S.-led task force,
told reporters. 

He was speaking shortly after U.S. troops, the vanguard of an eventual
force of some 35,000 foreign troops, had secured the Soviet-built military
airfield of Bali Dogle about 160 km (100 miles) west of Mogadishu. 

Aid workers in the wrecked town of Baidoa, under virtual siege from untamed
gunmen, meanwhile took refuge for another night in heavily-armed compounds.


Darkness in the town, where up to 90 people are still dying each day,
brings the visits of looters on a final fling before the troops of
Operation Restore Hope cut off their milk cow. 

"There is a preoccupation with Baidoa, and I can understand that... We are
going to get there as fast as we can," said Johnston. 

But he added he had no mission to disarm Somali gunmen and French military
sources said the first soldiers would not probably arrive in Baidoa, 200 km
(125 miles) northwest of Mogadishu, before Wednesday. 

The main southern port city of Kismayu, now evacuated by all foreign aid
staff, was reported to be equally chaotic with clan feuding, which has
killed between 60 to 90 people since the first marines landed on Wednesday,
still raging. 

A semblance of normality has returned to the battered capital. 

A U.N, ship packed with grain docked in the port and gunmen who had kept
militia gangs from looting the capital's main water plant allowed it to
reopen. 

"Today is the first visible sign there is no more insecurity and we can
start bringing in relief vessels regularly," said Paul Mitchell of the
U.N.'s World Food Programme. 

The port, once one of the most chaotic and lethal corners of a dangerous
city, is crucial to the success of a famine relief operation designed to
save a million lives. 

For months, supplies have been blocked in the port where gangs extorted
"protection" money to unload aid ships and then often looted as much as
half of the cargo. 

Helicopters and C-141 transport planes flew 230 Marines and 140 soldiers
from the U.S. army's 10th Mountain Division into Bali Dogle. 

"Bali Dogle will be a staging area for the army forces," Marine Colonel
Fred Peck told reporters. 

The task force now numbers 4,000 but is expected to swell to at least
35,000, including 28,000 Americans. 

U.S. commanders have made it clear that any hostile gunmen who try to
disrupt their work will be dealt with firmly. On Saturday, two Cobra attack
helicopters blasted three Somali battlewagons, killing two people and
injuring three others. 

But relief workers have expressed concern the troops have not undertaken
more far-reaching "search and destroy" missions. They say that unless the
gunmen are routed, they will simply return when the troops are not around. 

"There is a dichotomy here, but the military are aware of it and realise
they may have to do more," said James Kunder of the U.S. Office for Foreign
Development and Assistance. 

U.S. military sources say they do not yet have enough men in place to do
the work being demanded of them. 

On Sunday, the radio supporting one of Mogadishu's main warlords --
self-styled president Ali Mahdi Mohamed -- banned guns in his northern
Karaan enclave. 

Ali Mahdi signed a peace accord with his blood enemy Mohamed Farah Aideed
on Friday in the most dramatic sign yet of the effects of the U.N. military
intervention. 

REUTER JMC PAH RDW  <<>>RTw  12/13 1051  U.S. MILITARY MIGHT SUCCEEDS WHERE TALKS FAILED

 By Jonathan Clayton 

MOGADISHU, Dec 13, Reuter - U.S. military might has achieved more in
Somalia in a few days than the United Nations did in almost a year of
near-fruitless negotiations, analysts say. 

Warlords have been brought together to sign a peace accord, gunmen who
tried to test U.S. resolve were shot dead, and Mogadishu port -- the most
important channel for efforts to save a million lives -- is once again open
for business. 

But analysts say the U.S.-led Operation Restore Hope faces daunting
challenges as it moves into a second phase designed to end one of the 20th
century's worst famines, establish peace and nurture reconciliation. 

Aid workers have strongly criticised the military for not moving quicker
into the wild interior of the anarchic country. 

"They are encouraging people (gunmen) to have one last go, they should have
gone in immediately," said Rick O'Sullivan of Save the Children Fund. 

Concern has also been voiced over what is seen as the U.S. military's
narrow interpretation of its role in protecting famine supplies, reviving
doubts about Washington's long-term commitment to resolving Somalia's
political crisis. 

U.S. commanders see their job primarily as protecting food convoys and
delivering supplies to distribution centres. 

If armed gangs get in the way and "show hostile," they will act firmly as
they did on Saturday when Cobra helicopters blasted three Somali
battle-wagons, killing three people. 

But relief organisations want the troops to clean up dangerous areas and
disarm people to prevent the guns reappearing when the troops move on. 

They point to incidents on the "green line" dividing Mogadishu in which
U.N. staff were robbed and convoys harassed. 

"Pushing the guns to one side for a while simply is not good enough, action
must be more far reaching," said a representative of a foreign relief
organisation. 

"There is a dichotomy here, but the military are aware of it, and realise
they may have to do more," said James Kunder of the U.S. Office for Foreign
Development and Assistance. 

Sources in the U.S. military, commanding the 12-nation force, say they do
not yet have enough men to ensure the operation is a complete success. 

"They like to go in with an overwhelming show of force," added Kunder.
"Whatever other people might think, military calculations are different." 

Aid workers in Baidoa, the "city of death" at the heart of the famine, are
barricaded in compounds, impatiently awaiting the first marines. 

"If they (the Americans) leave it much longer, the gunmen will go on one
last shark feeding frenzy," said Merv Zigenbine. 

Dozens of people were killed last week in Baidoa and the southern port of
Kismayu in score-settling and banditry. 

An advance guard of 1,800 Marines landed in Mogadishu last Wednesday and
secured control of the airport and port, key lifelines for a relief effort
crippled by months of banditry. 

On Sunday, 230 U.S. Marines struck out into the interior, flying in 12
helicopters to Bali Dogle airfield, 160 km (100 miles) west of the capital
and half-way to Baidoa. 

But French military sources said they were unlikely to arrive in Baidoa
before Wednesday. 

"That's not good enough. Why don't they go straight there?" said a
spokesperson with the American charity CARE. 

Death rates in Baidoa are back to between 70 to 90 a day, almost as high as
last summer before a major international relief effort started. 

U.S. officials defend the military's cautious approach, arguing that safety
of personnel is paramount. They also say Washington is putting its full
weight behind a U.N. attempt to find a long-term solution for the shattered
nation. 

Only 48 hours after arriving in the ruined capital, American special envoy
Robert Oakley brokered a meeting between rival warlords Ali Mahdi Mohamed
and Mohamed Farah Aideed. 

They signed a peace plan formally ending over a year of vicious feuding and
pledged to dismantle the "green line." 

On Saturday, a huge display of U.S. military force escorted Operation
Restore Hope's first convoy of relief food into Ali Mahdi's northern
enclave. 

Experts on Somalia say one of the trickiest problems for Washington will be
to fulfill its stated aim of handing over the operation to the U.N. as
quickly as possible. 

The world-body is deeply distrusted by many Somalis, who accuse it of
failing to act sooner and in the right way to head off a tragedy which has
claimed at least 300,000 victims. 

"This is a U.N. operation. By working closely with the U.N., we hope to
restore faith in that body in the next few months," said a senior U.S.
official.

But he admitted U.S. troops would not leave quickly. "There is no time
limit," he said. 

REUTER JMC AET  <<>>RTw  12/13 0911  U.S. DOCTOR TOILS TO SAVE BAIDOA GUNMEN

 By Aidan Hartley 

BAIDOA, Somalia, Dec 13, Reuter - Most days American doctor Raymond Pollock
removes bullets from the shattered bodies of the very Somali gunmen who
threaten his life in the "City of Death." 

He and other relief workers in the hellish town of Baidoa impatiently await
U.S. troops, who swept ashore in Mogadishu on Wednesday, to arrive in the
next few days and end the chaos. 

"No more death and destruction. I'd like to jog to work. The Somalis want
to walk down to the market and not get their heads blown off," Pollock said
as he performed surgery at the weekend. 

Pollock, 28, is from a 10-person team of the Los Angeles-based
International Medical Corps (IMC), which works at Baidoa's ramshackle
hospital. 

Last month he operated on 162 gunshot victims. In total, the team worked on
about three times that number in November. 

He is not a qualified surgeon -- he has the slightly junior position in the
U.S. system of physician's assistant -- but nobody checks his
qualifications on the battlefront of famine and war that is Baidoa. 

On Saturday night, like all relief workers, IMC staff put up machinegun
emplacements on the roof of their house, using bags of baby milk instead of
sand to build a defence bunker. 

Scarcely a night has gone by in the past month when gunmen have not gone on
a looting spree. 

"It's deteriorated to the point where negotiation can no longer work. Force
is the only way," said Russ Kerr, vice-president of the Christian charity
World Vision. 

Baidoa has for months been a "Wild West" town where armed youths from rival
clan militias speed through the streets in trucks mounted with heavy
machine guns or mortars and bloody feuds erupt regularly. 

Some of the militias are taking time off from battling their ethnic enemies
in the bush 80 km (50 miles) south of Baidoa. 

The clan war has laid waste the fertile farming Bay region around Baidoa in
the past two years, making it the epicentre of a famine that has killed an
estimated 300,000 people so far. 

Many of the militias are simply gangsters who rob civilians or try to
extort money from relief agencies in the town, relief workers say. 

But news of the imminent arrival of U.S.-led forces has raised tensions to
snapping point. The militias have fled Mogadishu to escape U.S. forces
there and poured into towns such as Baidoa. 

"There's hoodlums in town. Who knows what will happen if they (the marines)
don't come soon," said Pollock, an ex-marine from Baltimore, Maryland. 

Then he slipped on surgical gloves to operate on gunman Salaad Ax'ole
Abdulle, 22, whose friend shot him after a squabble. The bullet smashed
Salaad's pelvic bone, ripped through his groin and came out of his
buttocks. 

On Sunday blood spatters the floor and walls of the operating theatre, but
IMC has the bare minimum eqiupment necessary to save lives. When Pollock
first came here five months ago he had to conduct operations by torchlight.


A sign at the hospital door bars guns but youths saunter around with AK-47s
and a nurse recalls how a stray bullet rammed into the wall two feet above
her head as she worked. 

Youths have threatened medical workers at gunpoint to stop them amputating
their friends' limbs -- in Somalia such a disability banishes one to a life
of begging. 

Between 50 and 80 people have been killed in two clan quarrels this month,
one after some camels were rustled and another over which families were
going to control the town when U.S.-led troops arrive. 

REUTER AHH AET  <<>>RTw  12/13 0858  GUN DRAMA IN SOMALI TOWN; AID WORKERS AWAIT ENVOY

By Andrew Hill 

BAIDOA, Somalia, Dec 13, Reuter - A disgruntled Somali fired shots at aid
workers on Sunday while relief workers waited in vain for the U.S.
ambassador to arrive and reassure them that he would soon send troops to
protect them. 

The Somali, a driver for the international agency CARE, took his gun to the
agency's roof and fired at staff to dramatise a legitimate claim for back
pay, CARE workers said. 

"Eventually we got a man over the back wall who was from his clan. He came
down and we had a bottle of Coke and a chat," said CARE's Lockton
Morrissey. 

Relief agencies said they had been told U.S. Ambassador Robert Oakley would
arrive on Sunday. They hoped Oakley would reassure them that troops would
soon be dispatched from Mogadishu, where some 3,000 French and American
soldiers are on duty. 

They waited for him in sizzling heat at Baidoa air strip while transport
aircraft flew in food for the starving. But he failed to show up. 

"They might have told us," lamented Josi Clevenger, head of the Los
Angeles-based International Medical Corps. "I mean, after all, we do speak
the same language." 

Some 230 Marines in 12 helicopters flew from Mogadishu earlier on Sunday to
Bali Dogle airfield, about 160 km (100 miles) west of the capital and
halfway to Baidoa, in a first foray into the interior. 

Marine Lieutenant Colonel Fred Peck told reporters in the capital the
Marines would stay in Bali Dogle pending arrival of reinforcements and that
the date of their deployment to Baidoa would not be announced in advance. 

The CARE incident in Baidoa was minor compared to the looting and threats
of last week which led to complaints by aid agencies over the delay in
sending troops from Operation Restore Hope, the multinational relief police
force. 

Many, including those at CARE, have barricaded themselves in their
compounds at night with extra armed guards and sand bags as protection
against gunmen going on one last looting spree before the troops arrive. 

"Our guards are under a lot of pressure, working day and night to protect
us. In the gun culture that goes on here, he snapped," Morrissey said of
the disgruntled driver. 

Baidoa, epicentre of a famine which still kills 70 daily of hunger and
disease, was also host to a bitter clan feud last weekend in which up to 80
people, many of them innocent bystanders, were killed. 

Shooting has since subsided. But on Saturday there was a shootout in the
market over a handful of the local stimulant qat, and another involving a
Somali drunk on looted whisky. 

Some relief staff thought the shootings at CARE and Oakley's non-arrival
might be connected. 

"There were American security staff up here this morning, they probably saw
the shooting at CARE and called it off," said one. 

Aid agencies have evacuated all but essential staff and cannot understand
why the American-led operation does not send at least a token force to the
ramsackle town. 

"A company of Marines would scare the pants off these people," said Paul
Jones of World Vision. 

He said that gunmen trying to loot his warehouse two nights ago shot dead a
Somali guard who caught them chiselling a hole through the back wall. 

"For one bag of powdered milk, which is all they managed to steal, there
are seven children without a father today and a wife with no husband. 

"If we had better security, these turkeys (gunmen) would not be wandering
around," said Jones. 

Most gunmen fled in their "technicals" (battlewagons) by Friday to avoid
clashes with U.S. Marines, but aid workers fear they might come back for a
last looting spree if they hear the marines are not due very shortly. 

They say frequent overflights by F-14 Tomcat warplanes, which are supposed
to intimidate the gunmen, had an initial deterrent effect, but will
evaporate unless backed up by troops on the ground. 

"This place was like a tomb when the aircraft first came over but security
really degenerated when no one came," said Jones. 

The F-14s continued to swoop over Baidoa on Sunday, but most residents
ignored them. 

"Ah, lookee here. It's the blue angels," said Clevenger, pointing at the
speeding black specks in the blue horizon. 

"I just want them to come on down." 

REUTER AJH DRB MR  <<>>WP   12/13 XX Henry Kissinger - Somalia: Reservations

In light of the wave of approval for the dispatch of 30,000 American combat
forces to Somalia, it may seem churlish to voice reservations. 

The objective is noble, and some kind of international action is
appropriate. What is questionable is the timing and the unilateral nature
of the American role in a continent heretofore free of American military
presence. Normally, one would not expect an enterprise with such
potentially long-term consequences to be launched in the last five weeks of
a presidency. The president-elect is as yet without a national security
team to help him make his own assessments. His entourage has been careful
to note that though he is "supportive," he did not participate in the
actual decision. He will therefore inherit commitments he has had no part
in shaping - not the ideal circumstance for a sustained effort should
anything go wrong. 

It is unlikely that the mission assigned to the expeditionary force can be
accomplished as quickly or as smoothly as administration briefings foresee.
According to Gen. Colin L. Powell, the Pentagon envisages a two-phase
operation: First the American forces are to create a secure environment,
then a multinational U.N. force will protect it. That first stage could be
prolonged. One must hope that the forces described in the media as bandits
do not keep abreast of American public discussion. For they may decide to
lie low - neither harassing nor disarming - hide their weapons or take
sanctuary in Ethiopia and face us with the dilemma of withdrawing
prematurely or continuing what may then become an open-ended commitment. 

To escape this dilemma, the U.S. force will almost certainly try to force
the various armed groups to disarm - as some administration spokesmen have
already indicated. This could turn into a messy affair with significant
casualties, especially on the Somali side. When blood has been shed,
support for the American military action may evaporate, especially in
Africa. 

As difficult as establishing the dividing line between the security
function and its follow-up will be making the crucial distinction between
humanitarian efforts and the civil conflict over who controls Somalia. In
the end, civil wars are about the distribution of power, physical and
political. As political legitimacy disintegrates, the physical distribution
of power grows more decisive. The process of disarming will by definition
affect the relative position of key competitors for political power - as we
have learned again in Cambodia. Should disarmament go as planned, some sort
of governing structure possessing preponderant power must be left in place.


All this obliges the United States to understand Somali conditions well
enough to manage the situation in a way capable of achieving an
international, especially African, consensus. But can we possibly know
enough? And if the key challenge is political, why should the United States
choose to play that role alone or be the only country to run significant
military risks? 

Intervention in the civil conflict seems inherent in the U.S. role. Food
will have to be distributed, a process in which some groups of Somali
officials must be involved. These will automatically receive an edge in
establishing political domination afterward. Once media and other observers
descend on the scene, they are certain to find conditions deeply offensive
to the Western sensibility. They will urge a whole variety of initiatives,
from ending corruption to the administration of justice, that make eminent
sense in the Western context. None can be accomplished without greater
intervention, drawing America deeper into the political process. And sooner
or later, no matter how well-intentioned, such conduct will begin to grate
on African sentiments that in turn will tend to undermine domestic support
for the operation. 

America should not play a solitary role with respect either to security or
to reform. If the Somali bandits are so poorly armed, why was America's
technological and military superiority so crucial? The United States may be
the only country with sufficient modern equipment for rapid intervention,
but this, involving mostly transport, could have been put at the disposal
of other countries. Since reform depends on moral issues that are
presumably of universal validity, why were no other countries involved in
the first and most complicated phase, in particular the Organization of
African Unity? 

The United States did gain unanimous support in the U.N. Security Council.
But the approval was for an American proposal presented on a
take-it-or-leave-it basis. Since the United States clearly preferred the
first stage to be unilateral, other countries were risking the entire
prospect of an international effort by refusing. Though the administration
would have been well advised to sacrifice some military efficiency to wider
political backing, two factors inhibited it: the new Pentagon approach
toward military intervention, which says that never again must American
military power be vitiated by political restraint; and another new
philosophy that differentiates between humanitarian and strategic
intervention. 

The military view that, once employed, American force must be overwhelming
reflects the supposed lesson of Vietnam. It has much merit, though it must
also be said that in Vietnam the military contributed to its own
frustration by a misconceived military strategy. In any event, the lessons
of Vietnam or Korea cannot be transposed literally to humanitarian
intervention. In a strategic war, there is a concrete enemy, and victory
has some fairly precise definition. In Somalia, the enemy is more elusive:
hunger and chaos, the solution to which has a much longer time frame. In
Vietnam, American military effectiveness was reduced by domestic and
international inhibitions; in Somalia, the risk is the opposite - turning a
humanitarian enterprise into an essentially American military effort
disconnected from political realities. In a war against a strategic enemy,
rapid victory is of the essence. In a war for humanitarian purposes, the
political context must be paramount. 

The new doctrine of "humanitarian intervention" is based on the proposition
that, the end of the Cold War having removed the strategic threat,
traditional military operations become much less important. Moreover, so
the argument goes, excessive concern with security led to strategic
overextension and an illusion of American omnipotence. Therefore, in the
post-Cold War world the United States would be well advised to fight
primarily for humanitarian and moral values, and not simply for its own
interests. 

In fact, moral purpose has been an integral part of the motivation of every
American war in this century - from the "war to end all wars" in 1917, to
resisting totalitarian evil in World War II, to the fight against Communist
aggression in Korea and Vietnam. The new approach claims an extension in
the reach of morality, not in the significance attached to it. 

We must not pretend that America fights where it has no strategic
interests. Whenever American lives are at stake, so is a conception of
vital interests - or else the sacrifice mocks the anguish of bereaved
families. The world of the '90s demands of America a new definition of
vital interest, strategic as well as moral. In the traditional world of
geopolitics, there is no longer a danger of an immediate, almost measurable
peril. But there remains the historic danger of a gradual transformation of
the security framework through a cumulative series of steps, none of which
will appear individually as overwhelming as the threats of the Cold War had
been. In Kuwait the United States resisted because President Bush concluded
that the consequences of submission would ultimately lead to far greater
American sacrifices. As the '90s progress, comparable judgments will be
increasingly required on as yet unforeseeable issues. 

"Humanitarian intervention" asserts that moral and humane concerns are so
much a part of American life that not only treasure but lives must be
risked to vindicate them; in their absence, American life would have lost
some meaning. No other nation has ever put forward such a set of
propositions. The more abstract nature of humanitarian intervention
therefore involves an even greater danger of overextension, and of assuming
the role of world policeman. 

The American foreign policy trauma of the '60s and '70s was caused by
applying valid principles to unsuitable conditions. Care must be taken not
to repeat the same tragedy in the '90s with a wider set of equally
important principles. We must not seem to be claiming for ourselves a
doctrine of universal unilateral intervention, all the less so as we cannot
want to encourage some future rogue nation to decide to use the slogan of
"humanitarian intervention" for expansionist designs. 

 Moral claims can be asserted as a national prerogative only at the cost
of long-term domestic and international support. Given their values, the
American people will always expend more treasure to ease the starvation in
Somalia than others. But it will be difficult to convince them indefinitely
that they have a greater responsibility to risk lives on behalf of Somalia
than the European nations and those of Africa itself. American unilateral
intervention should occur only when all alternatives for genuine
international action have been exhausted, and if the cause permits no other
remedy. Even then, American military actions cannot be successful or
sustainable if they are divorced from political realities. 

With respect to Somalia, this leads to three conclusions: 

Unilateral American security operations should be terminated rapidly; 

The first- and second-stage military contingents in Somalia should be
merged from the beginning, with the American component reduced to
reasonable proportions within a short, fixed time frame; 

The political aspect - anything bearing on civil administration - should be
internationalized immediately and fortified with a significant African
component. 

Over two decades ago, while I was discussing extrication from Vietnam with
an acquaintance, he told me the story of a Russian peasant who came running
into his village to get help for a man stuck up to his ankles in mud. When
told that this did not sound too serious, he replied: "But he dived in head
first." 

We must make sure that the same story cannot be repeated in our time. 

1992, Los Angeles Times Syndicate 

The writer, former secretary of state, is president of Kissinger
Associates, an international consulting firm with business interests in
many countries abroad. 

Copyright 1992 The Washington Post  <<>>