GENERAL
WARS AND RUMORS OF WARS
COMMERCE DRIVEN
MISCELLANEOUS AFRICA AND MIDDLE EAST
MISCELLANEOUS EUROPE AND NORTH/SOUTH AMERICA

Center for Security Policy 8/10/98 "History appears increasingly likely to remember the Clinton presidency as the era in which the world's only superpower lost its grip. As a result in no small measure of Mr. Clinton's fecklessness in the conduct of foreign policy and his misfeasance (if not malfeasance) in providing for the national security, the international environment of Pax Americana he inherited has given way to one that might be characterized as "Pack Up, Americans." .The more telling evidence of the free- fall that has occurred on Mr. Clinton's watch in American prestige and ability to influence -- if not actually to dictate -- international events can be found in the following: Iraq.. In short, so weak has the U.S. position become, so inexorable is the pressure to terminate the Iraqi sanctions regime and, therefore, to pretend that Saddam has complied with his disarmament obligations, that it is now a matter of time, perhaps just weeks, before what is left of the international sanctions start coming undone.Kosovo .The common theme is that, here again, America's adversary is acting with impunity, confident that his friends like Primakov in the Kremlin and Chirac in the Elys‚e Palace will protect him from any appreciable retribution.Iran.the Clinton Administration refuses to deploy defenses to protect its people against such a threat. Just as it has chosen to ignore evidence of Iranian involvement in the penultimate terrorist attack on U.S. personnel abroad -- the murderous destruction of Saudi Arabia's Khobar Towers, Mr. Clinton prefers to rely upon Primakov's lies that Russia is not assisting Iran's missileers and futile diplomatic efforts to dissuade North Korea from doing so. Thanks to the Clinton team, the precipitous decline in America's credibility and perceived willingness to use its power effectively assures that U.S. citizens and interests around the world are going to be increasingly in peril.

Washington Times 9/1/98 William Bennet, Jack Kemp, Jeane Kirkpatrick ".On the final day, they were close to finalizing the historic agreement. But Mr. Gorbachev insisted that the United States immediately halt development of our ballistic missile defense system. To Mr. Reagan, who had promised the American people he would not give away America's right to defend itself, that was unacceptable. He was excoriated by his critics. But history proved him right. The Clinton administration's refusal to deploy an anti-ballistic missile system has compromised our defenses in precisely the way Mr. Reagan would not allow Mr. Gorbachev to do. Is this acceptable in an era when terrorists such as Osama bin Laden organize against our nation and our citizens? . We already know that at least 20 countries may be developing chemical, biological and nuclear weapons. If any one of these countries were to launch a missile on the United States today, we would be unprotected. The Rumsfeld Commission found that the threat is "broader, more mature and evolving more rapidly than had been reported in the estimates and reports by the Intelligence Community," and that the ability of the CIA to provide timely estimates of the threat "is eroding." Several countries will be capable of producing a nuclear missile within five years. A little more that a a month ago, reflecting a clear intelligence breakdown, Iran tested a missile capable of traveling 800 miles - far enough to reach Israel. And during the last two weeks, we've learned of possible nuclear weapons advances in North Korea. "

Washington Post 8/20/98 Jim Hoagland "Count among Bill Clinton's victims this week his secretary of state, his national security adviser and his foreign policy at large. President Clinton has undermined his people and his policies with a recklessness and a disregard for America's standing in the world that is monumental and unpardonable.. But Clinton's tardy and grudging admission of wrongdoing in the Oval Office and of his mendacity converts weakness in foreign policy into potential disaster. Clinton has erased the large margin of error he has assigned himself in dealing with threats and challenges abroad. His plight will encourage rogue regimes in Baghdad, Belgrade, Pyongyang and elsewhere to test his attention to their depredations and his resolve in deterring or punishing those acts. It will encourage allies to resist even more strongly U.S. pressure to do things they do not see as in their interest. On the day Clinton spent four hours dueling with prosecutors over the salacious details of his relationship with Monica Lewinsky, it was disclosed that the Looney Tunes government of North Korea has been cheating on its 1994 accord with Washington to stop working on nuclear bombs. It was a telling coincidence, pointing up the misallocation of presidential and national attention and energies the Lewinsky affair has spawned. In determining their attitude toward Clinton's fate, the Republican majority in Congress must factor into their actions an increasingly uncertain international "

Vanity Fair 3/99 Christopher Hitchens "....Not once but three times last year, Bill Clinton ordered the use of cruise missiles against remote and unpopular countries. On each occasion, the dispatch of the missiles coincided with bad moments in the calendar of his long and unsuccessful struggle to avoid impeachment..... Did, then, a dirtied blue dress from the Gap cause widows and orphans to set up grieving howls in the passes of Afghanistan, the outer precincts of Khartoum, and the wastes of Mesopotamia? Is there only a Hollywood link between Clinton's carnality and Clinton's carnage? Was our culture hit by weapons of mass distraction?...In the even, only one person was killed in the rocketing of Sudan. But many more have died, and will die, because an improvished country has lost its chief source of medicines and pesticides. The rout continues. In fact, it becomes a shambles. Let us suppose that everything the administration alleged about El Shifa was - instead of embarrassingly untrue - absolutely verifiable. The Sudanese regime has diplomatic relations with Washington. Why not give it a warning or notice of, say, one day to open the plant to inspection? A factory making deadly gas cannot be folded like a tent and stealthily moved away..... Mr. Bearden is one of the Central Intelligence Agency's most decorated ex-officers, having retired in 1994 without any stain from assassination plots, blackbag jobs, or the like. During his long service, he was chief of station in Sudan, where he arranged the famous airlift of Ethiopian Jews to Israel. He also directed the C.I.A. effort in Afghanistan. (His excellent new thriller, The Black Tulip, carries a 1991 photograph of him standing at the Russian end of the Friendship Bridge, across which the Red Army had marched in defeat.) Nobody knows clandestine Sudan and clandestine Afghanistan in the way he does. We speak on background, but after some fine-tuning he agrees to be quoted in exactly these words: "Having spent 30 years in the C.I.A. being familiar soil and environmental samplings across a number of countries, I cannot imagine a single sample, collected by third-country nationals whose country has a common border, serving as a pretext for an act of war against a sovereign state with which we have both diplomatic relations and functioning back channels." ..."

Los Angeles Times 2/25/99 Jim Mann "...It's high time to draw up a Devil's Dictionary of the Clinton administration's foreign policy--a compendium of the favorite buzzwords, translated into plain English. What makes the subject ripe is the mess the State Department got into over the idea of a "rogue state," a vague but catchy phrase the administration has often applied to the likes of Libya, Iraq and North Korea.... Would China, for example, fit under that umbrella? Since the administration has trouble explaining such ideas, let's try to come up with some of our own definitions: Rogue State A country that meets two conditions: It does things the Clinton administration doesn't like AND it is one that the administration doesn't want to do business with. If the country is a big commercial market or strategically important, the term might not apply, regardless of the country's behavior. Thus Libya is a rogue state, China is not, and Iran seems to be in transition. Engagement The administration's policy toward countries that do bad things and that might otherwise be declared rogue states but that the Clinton administration DOES want to do business with. Cookie Cutter Secretary of State Madeleine Albright's derogatory term for logical consistency. Albright is regularly asked why America tries to isolate Communist Cuba even as it applies its policy of engagement toward China. She has a stock, dismissive answer. "We do not have a cookie-cutter approach to policy," she says with great force, as if that explained everything. Agreed Framework A deal the Clinton administration negotiates with a rogue state and doesn't want to have to submit to Congress..."

American Spectator 3/99 Benjamin J. Stein "…I cannot possibly believe what is happening. Here it is, the day before the House of Representatives is to vote on the impeachment of Bill Clinton, and what is Bill Clinton doing? Suddenly, after years of near total inaction, without any particular provocation, without a United Nations command to do it at any specific time, with several big powers opposing the move, Clinton is bombing Iraq with cruise missiles and throwing thousands of tons of high explosives at various targets. The transparency of this murderous fraud would be funny if it were not for innocent people getting killed…. Something Freudian is going on, as well. Clinton is symbolically murdering his critics here at home by his projected acts of killing in Iraq. I never thought I'd feel afraid of a U.S. president, but Clinton is out of control…."

Fox News Wire 3/28/99 Reuters "…A suspected Kurdish rebel suicide bomber killed herself and injured 10 other people Saturday in a dramatic attack at the heart of Turkey's commercial capital Istanbul. Turkey has been hit by a wave of violent protests since the capture of Kurdish rebel leader Abdullah Ocalan last month. Anatolian news agency said a woman carrying hand grenades on her body and in a bag launched the attack near a riot police bus in the bustling Taksim Square, the main shopping and entertainment quarter on city's European section…."

BBC NEWS 3/28/99 "… Sri Lanka has the second highest number of disappeared people in the world, according to a new United Nations study. The UN study says that since 1980, 12,000 Sri Lankans have gone missing after being detained by security forces. Most of them are said to be young Tamil men accused of supporting the Tamil Tiger rebels fighting for a homeland in the north east of Sri Lanka. More than 55,000 people have been killed over the issue in the past 27 years. Only Iraq had more cases of disappearances, with 16,384 missing, according to the study by the United Nations Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances. …."

Radio Prague -- 11/14/97 "…Today's papers are rife with speculation over the latest Czech Iraq-gate scandal - whether or not the Czech armaments firm Omnipol has been having secret talks with Iraq on the sale of the Czech- made Tamara radar system. All the papers seem to have their own theory. PRAVO reckons the whole idea is so far fetched that it looks as though someone is deliberately trying to discredit the Czech Republic and the Tamara system itself - which is capable of detecting aircraft even if they have sophisticated anti-radar devices…."

Prague Business Journal – 3/22/99 "… The Tamara radar system made the Czech Republic famous because of its ability to detect stealth aircraft. Now, Czech companies are trying to make a name for themselves as specialists in detecting and preventing unauthorized cyber-attacks as well…."

STRATFOR's Global Intelligence Update 3/28/99 "…In examining the options, it seemed clear to us that two things would happen. First, the Russians would do everything to encourage the Iraqis to pin U.S. forces in Iraq. Second, the Russians would encourage Serbian intransigence over Kosovo. By covertly supplying critical military supplies and providing public political support, Russia created a space in which both the Serbs and Iraqis could resist U.S. military pressure. Ideally, from the Russian point of view, the United States would find itself in a position where, for the first time since World War II, it was conducting air campaigns simultaneously in two widely dispersed theaters. The ideal for the Russians was an ineffective, prolonged campaign in Iraq and an intensive one in Serbia. Neither can succeed, neither can end, both will together sap U.S. military strength while straining the American alliance system.This should not be thought of as some conspiracy theory. The Russians did not create the current situation. All they did was provide limited resources and encouragement to two isolated nations that the United States, of its own volition and inertia, was committed to redefining. ….The Russians want to bring down the Americans several notches in order to increase their leverage. Coordinating two rogue states is a Russian specialty. They are doing it well. This puts the Russians in an excellent position. The head of the IMF is in Moscow today. A Russian delegation is in Belgrade, having first met with Richard Holbrooke, architect of the current U.S. Serbian policy. Having demonstrated their willingness to resist the United States and their ability to do so, the U.S. must either dramatically escalate the air war and introduce ground forces, or it must negotiate from a much weaker position than before….. But the big story now is Russia’s relationship with China. In 1972, China and America ganged up on Russia in order to stop its tremendous momentum. Today, the players shift their partners but the game remains the same. Russia and China have a joint, strategic interest in hemming in the United States. With U.S.-Russian relations in terrible shape and U.S.-Chinese relations in nearly as bad disarray, the danger to the American global position is substantial. China and the U.S. are having a summit in a few weeks. With Russia on the knife’s edge of hostility or cooperation with the U.S., China is an extraordinary position to demand concessions, and failing to secure them from the U.S. to then realign itself with the Russians. These are the fundamental issues facing the U.S. The Kosovo issue is and was a side issue. The key to the lives of the Kosovars is not in Washington but in Belgrade and Moscow. Serbia wants guarantees of a unified, sovereign nation. Russia wants a sphere of influence. So does China. The real issue is does the United States know what it wants, and knowing it, is it achievable and at what cost? There are far greater stakes on the table than Kosovo. That was obvious in January and that is obvious today…"

Richmond Times-Dispatch 4/12/99 "...In 1992, George Bush sent U.S. troops to Somalia. Their mission? To feed a people threatened by famine. In 1993, Bill Clinton expanded Operation Restore Hope to include nation-building. The exercise ended in death and humiliation in Mogadishu. In 1994, the U.S. "invaded" Haiti to restore to power Jean-Bertrand Aristide - and to promote Haitian democracy. Although boats crowded with Haitian refugees no longer wash ashore in Florida, the democratic dream remains unrealized. The U.S. occupation accomplished next to nothing....Somalia and Haiti offered entirely different scenarios. Democracy cannot be imposed. Efforts to use the U.S. military to do just that were doomed. The Clinton approach was flawed not only in execution but in concept. ..."

The Hindu 4/13/99 Sriprakash Loya "...Sir, The refugees fleeing Kosovo are being accepted by the European countries. The U.S. and Canada have also agreed to accept them. Even far-flung Australia, which traditionally has been averse to any such influx, has welcomed 4,000 refugees on its soil. All these first world countries have been magnanimous towards these refugees. But, recollect the fate of the recent refugees from Kurdistan, Afghanistan and Northern Algeria. Go back a few years and think of the boat people accepted by none. Also, everyone knows the fate of the refugees from Cambodia, Vietnam and then the ten million refugees on our own land in 1972 from Bangladesh. No first world country has ever discussed their fate, leave alone accept them. Should we conclude, therefore, that the colour of the refugees matters? - Sriprakash Loya, Secunderabad ..."

Wall Street Journal 4/9/99 Paul Gigot Freeper Stand Watch Listen "...EXCERPTS "The only good news about Kosovo is that it is reminding Americans that the presidency is about more than shorter suburban commutes. It may even cause challengers to Al Gore in 2000 to ask, Is the world safer than it was eight years ago? That question should be a staple of every presidential election. But U.S. victories over communism and in the Gulf War meant that Bill Clinton inherited a world with fewer threats to America than anytime since before World War I. ......Which means that the media and maybe the voters will listen to the argument that his presidency has been squandering the strategic depth it took decades to build. Let's scan the globe for a six-year scorecard:.."..."

Center for Security Policy's Roundtable discussion ANA Hotel DC 7/15/97 "...International instability was viewed as the most pressing reason for the maintenance of a viable nuclear deterrent force. Not only do the four other "declared" nuclear states and the "threshold" states still retain their arsenals, but there is an increasing threat that other, rogue nations will soon have nuclear capabilities with which to threaten American security. Secretary Weinberger expressed the view that as long as any nation has even one nuclear weapon, the United States will require a deterrent of its own..... The increasing threat posed by China was also the subject of discussion. The People's Republic of China already possesses 17 nuclear-tipped missiles capable of striking the United States. It has, moreover, embarked upon a massive nuclear, as well as conventional, forces build-up. China has two major missile programs in development with Russian, Ukrainian and/or Belarusian assistance: a ground-based, mobile ICBM, and a sea-launched ballistic missile. ...The discussion also addressed the deterrent requirements arising from the emerging threats posed by rogue states like North Korea, Iran, Iraq, Libya and others. All of these nations have displayed a determination to acquire weaponry of mass destruction; to varying degrees, they have specifically sought nuclear weapons capabilities. This menace is only likely to increase as the means to deliver chemical, biological and/or nuclear weapons over long distances -- via ballistic missile or cruise missile -- become available to such states as a result of technology transfers and/or indigenous developments. On this point, there appeared to be widespread agreement among the Roundtable participants that it could be a matter of only a few years before one or more of these states acquires delivery systems of sufficient range to pose a direct threat to the U.S. -- not the minimum of fifteen years projected by the Clinton Administration's 1995 National Intelligence Estimate...Most recently, President Clinton and Secretary of State Albright have virtually promised the Baltic States admission in the next round of NATO enlargement. It was noted that such a step would appear to renew a requirement for extended deterrence -- i.e., the threat of nuclear response in the event of a non-nuclear attack -- in a place where the United States and its allies would clearly not enjoy conventional superiority over potential adversaries. There is little indication that such considerations are being factored into Clinton Administration thinking concerning the extension of new security guarantees to Eastern Europe..... "

WorldNetDaily 4/19/99 Rep. Richard Pombo "... But what did surprise me in my dealings with the president -- beyond the tawdry details of a rootless personal life -- was his relentless effort to weaken America's fighting ability while both transferring highly classified technology to America's major military competitor and involving our country in numerous, questionable military ventures around the world. In 1992, the United States seemed invulnerable. We had, after nearly half a century in the shadow of nuclear Armageddon, backed down the Soviet Union and unleashed the forces of freedom and democracy among its former captives. We had demonstrated the technological superiority of American weaponry and sent Saddam Hussein packing back to his Baghdad bunker. When President Bush passed the torch to Mr. Clinton, he passed the Reagan/Bush legacy of a strong, respected and victorious America. In six-and-a-half short years that hard-earned legacy has been squandered...."

The Washington News Letter 5/3/99 Marvin Lee "...The London Sunday Times, in its May 2 edition, confirms allegations made by former Clinton employee L. D. Brown in his new book "Crossfire." The allegations, first reported in last week's Washington Weekly, reveal a covert operation to channel money to one side of the Northern Ireland conflict, the IRA. The Times spoke to a left-wing member of the British Parliament named by L. D. Brown as a consultant to the scheme. Ken Livingstone, Labour MP, "did corroborate key parts of Brown's story about the project," write Phelim AcAleer and Kevin Dowling. The Times also cites a written job offer from T. John McBrearty, who sought to involve L. D. Brown in the project and offered him $300,000 for his cooperation with the Clinton administration at a time where L. D. Brown was a witness in multiple investigations of the President. "What we are looking at here is jobs for the boys in exchange for a ceasefire, the peace process and a diplomatic triumph for the US," quotes the Times. "The Clinton White House had agreed to put up between $100m and $150m. The link with them was [Nancy] Soderberg. It was made clear there would be no problem getting money from the White House," Livingstone told the Times. Nancy Soderberg was identified to L. D. Brown as the White House contact person for the covert Northern Ireland operation. She was at the time Deputy Staff Director at the White House National Security Council and Clinton's main advisor on Ireland...."

Reuters 5/3/99 "...Sandinista party leader and former revolutionary president Daniel Ortega urged the Nicaraguan people on Saturday to overthrow the government in response to the death of two people during a transport strike. "If the people, united and mobilised, decide to remove this government I don't see that that would be a problem," Ortega said in a speech after leading 5,000 supporters in a march to commemorate International Labour Day...."

The Orlando Sentinel Online 5/6/99 Charley Reese "....While the United States is committing a crime against Yugoslavia, where we have no legitimate strategic or national interests, President Clinton's Chinese friends have been busy little bees, 90 miles from our shores. Chi Haotian, minister of national defense, got together with Raul Castro, big brother Fidel's minister of defense, and decided that working together was a very good idea....You can expect to see Chinese investments in Cuba, and you will see Castro join forces with the Communist Chinese to drive Taiwanese interests and businesses out of Latin America and the Caribbean.....As they say, much is afoot to the south of us. It makes you wonder why the United States is bogging itself down in the no-win mire of the Balkans. My guess is that flawed decision can be attributed to the fact that underneath his mask of sanity, President Clinton has a screw loose. I suspect that before his term ends the cowardly Democrats in the House of Representatives and Senate who chose partisanship over duty will regret they missed their opportunity to get this captain off the ship. Probably what will shock most Americans in the months ahead is the discovery that the United States has few to no friends in Latin America, and among the few, the fervor is faint to absent..... "

Omaha World-Herald 5/6/99 Freeper Stand Watch Listen "...It's strange to contemplate: A president asking Congress to not give him flexibility in a crisis. Usually a president seeks the maximum maneuvering room. The resolution was not telling Clinton to invade Yugoslavia. It was simply expressing Senate support for that option. .....The fact that Clinton worked to defeat McCain's resolution confirms the opinion of the doubters. He does not want a green light on ground forces because he does not want to be responsible for deciding whether to use them. He is afraid to lead...."

World Tribune 5/6/99 "...The United States and Libya are engaged in secret talks in an effort to improve relations after nearly 20 years of enmity, an Arab newspaper reported on Wednesday. The Saudi-owned A-Sharq al-Awsat said on Wednesday that Libyan and U.S. representatives are holding secret talks in Italy to normalize relations. They said the talks were arranged by Egypt. The effort began last month after Libya handed over two suspects in the 1989 TWA bombing for trial in the Hague. Most of the 270 passengers killed in the bombing were Americans...."

The Hindu 5/7/99 UNI Freeper Jai "...Shri Lanka has complained to the United Nations about the LTTE's move to use the Electronic Mail and Internet to spread propaganda and disinformation to discredit the island nation. "Terrorist groups is general, and the LTTE in particular, continue to abuse electronic mail and global information superhighway -- the Internet -- to undermine the sovereignty and territorial integrity of countries, including Shri Lanka," Dharshana Perera, Shri Lanka's representative at the United Nations Committee on Information, said. The Shri Lankan representative singled out the LTTE as one of the biggest culprits which continue to "wage a ruthless terrorist campaign against the democratically elected Government of Shri Lanka." Blasting the LTTE for blatant abuses, he said the LTTE and its front organisations continue to disseminate false propaganda and complete distortion of facts in their effort to discredit the Shri Lankan State and mislead the international community. ..."

New York Times 5/16/99 "...It is hard to imagine a more damaging American security failure than the serial hemorrhage of nuclear-weapons secrets and other military information to China over the last two decades. Each new disclosure adds to a picture of breathtaking incompetence by Federal agencies and lack of vigilance by Republican and Democratic administrations alike. The United States might as well have dumped its most sensitive defense secrets on Pennsylvania Avenue for Chinese spies to pick up. Then there is the Clinton Administration's inert response to possible Chinese campaign contributions in 1996, and the Justice Department's lack of interest in tens of millions of dollars that flowed from China into a small Los Angeles bank the same year. Little wonder both Republicans and Democrats in Congress want to know whether the Administration willfully ignored all these Chinese provocations so it could improve relations with Beijing. In recent weeks, Jeff Gerth and James Risen of The Times have described three serious security breakdowns, two at nuclear weapons laboratories and one involving work by a private defense contractor. In all cases, there seems to have been a loss of critically important information to China that could be used to modernize Beijing's small arsenal of nuclear weapons or help it develop other military technologies. In each instance, security measures were lax and Federal criminal investigations proved ineffectual..... This is no way to run a government....."

The London Telegraph 5/15/99 Ben Fenton "An American scientist convicted of spying for China worked closely with British military and visited Scotland as part of a secret team working on a method of tracking nuclear missile submarines. The information available to Peter Lee as a prominent member of the UK/US Radar Ocean Imaging Programme (ROIP) is almost certain to have compromised the security of Britain's Trident nuclear deterrent. Lee is at the centre of a spy scandal in America that has been compared to the case of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, who provided Russia with America's nuclear secrets in the early 1950s. He and his namesake Wen Ho Lee are believed to have handed China enough information to update their relatively primitive nuclear arsenal in years rather than decades. The information obtained by The Telegraph is the first clear indication that Britain's nuclear deterrent has been put at risk. According to court documents made available to this newspaper, Peter Lee was a member of the ROIP for at least six years before the FBI discovered he was divulging details of the technology to Chinese military scientists...."

New York Times 5/17/99 Mireya Navaro "....Guatemalans on Sunday appeared to have voted down constitutional changes to recognize officially for the first time the rights of the country's Mayan majority, a rejection that supporters of the measures said would set back efforts to consolidate peace after a 36-year civil war. Electoral officials said on Sunday night that turnout for the referendum was extremely poor, about 21 percent of Guatemala's 4 million registered voters, because of Guatemala's high illiteracy rate and the scarce effort to inform residents about the proposals. But preliminary results for Guatemala City, where nearly half of all eligible voters reside, indicated a vote of 77 percent to 23 percent against 50 amendments to the Guatemala constitution. In a country where the indigenous majority has faced genocide and poverty and long been excluded from power, the reforms would have declared Guatemala "multiethnic" and for the first time granted equal status to the languages, religions and customary laws of the Mayan peoples, who account for about 60 percent of the population...."

Washing ton Post 5/17/99 Anthony Faiola "...Such feelings [anti-NATO/US] are common in Argentina -- and in many other parts of the world far from the conflict over Kosovo. As the air war against Yugoslavia concludes its eighth week, and blunders like the bombing that reportedly killed nearly 90 ethnic Albanians at Korisa and the strike on the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade grab headlines worldwide, NATO's warplanes are inflicting collateral damage of another kind -- on the alliance's international reputation. And Uncle Sam, NATO's dominant power, is bearing the brunt of people's anger. Here in Argentina, one of Washington's closest Latin American allies, a poll last week showed that 64 percent of the public opposed the NATO air campaign against Yugoslavia. More respondents had a negative opinion of NATO than of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic. In Latin America, Asia, Africa, the Middle East and other regions with little direct interest in the conflict, opposition is surfacing in statements by elected officials, newspaper editorials, opinion polls, public protests, Internet banter and street graffiti. Increasingly, there is little subtlety in NATO-bashing. "NATO is blindly bombing Yugoslavia," Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee said in a fiery political speech in India last week. "There is a dance of destruction going on there. Thousands of people rendered homeless. And the United Nations is a mute witness to all this. Is NATO's work to prevent war or to fuel one?" In the view of analysts here and elsewhere, the anti-NATO backlash shows how Washington's portrayal of the conflict as a humanitarian mission is being superseded by lingering anti-Western feelings in countries with bad memories of U.S. intervention and European colonialism...."

EWTN 5/19/99 Freeper marshmallow "..."We do not want the state to substitute the role of the parents," Fr. Welch added. "Mrs. William Clinton not withstanding, it dosen't take a village to raise a child, it takes a caring and responsive family to do so. Instead of state intervention, the families in Puerto Rico need state support. Any legislation affecting minor children must be based on the moral convictions of Puerto Rico - not the government, and certainly not the United Nations." ..."

NewsMax 5/18/99 Linda Bowles "...Chinese ambassador Li Zhaoxing looked like a prison camp commander extracting a written confession from a prisoner as he stood over Bill Clinton in the Oval Office. His scowl was menacing as he watched the president sign a book of condolences for victims of the bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade..... Given China's domestic tyranny and repression of its own people, the brutalization of Tibet, the persecution of Christians, the theft of U.S. nuclear and military secrets, armed threats against Taiwan, the transfer of nuclear and missile technology to rogue nations who hate America, the trashing of the American embassy in China, the terrorization of our ambassador and his family, and the illegal funneling of millions of dollars to the Clinton-Gore re-election campaign, you have to wonder why we are not the ones demanding an apology and breaking off negotiations. By our actions, we have effectively ceded the moral high ground to one of the most tyrannical dictatorships on the planet Earth. What happened to us? How did we wind up in this weak and humiliating posture? The answer is simple. What happened to us was "collateral damage."... It is the damage done to international relationships and to the image of America as the moral leader in the post Cold-War world. On April 25, following a 50th anniversary summit, NATO issued a Washington Declaration. In effect, NATO formally announced its intention to preemptively deal with human rights violations and perceived threats beyond the borders of its member nations. Surely, it was no surprise that the non-NATO world reacted with apprehension and resentment. Why would they not? NATO had just thrown down the gauntlet.....Throughout the non-NATO world, America is increasingly seen as an aggressor nation, the new "Evil Empire," demonstrably unfit to preach to other nations about human rights and democratic freedoms. The perception grows that America has fallen from grace and lost its image as the light and hope of the world. The view is taking hold that the American people have scrapped their Constitution, abandoned their founding principles, and put themselves in the heavy hands of an elite band of liberal globalists....."

WORLD Magazine 5/14/99 Mindy Belz "...Even before the war in Kosovo soured U.S. relations with Beijing, war-game strategists were planning for an eventual confrontation with China. While the Clinton administration worries over copyright infringements and smoothing China's way into the World Trade Organization, military analysts see armed conflict with China as the second most likely threat facing the United States (confrontation on the Korean Peninsula being the first)....The January report also predicted, "Russia will begin the process of recreating the old Soviet empire in 1999 ... the Westernizers who dominated Russia for the past decade are being replaced by Slavophiles, who will seek to root out Western influence while they liquidate the Westernizers." Proof of those predictions lies in Russia's opposition to recent NATO campaigns. Yet Washington continues to court Russian officials who call NATO forces "aggressor states" and orate about hands "stained with the blood of bombs," in the words of defense minister Valentin Sergeyev.... North Korea looks desperate under its third year of famine and a crumbling economy. It could be poised to lash out at its prospering southern nemesis. A surprise attack of missiles and artillery from the north could quickly devastate Seoul and its 11 million inhabitants, who live just 35 miles south of the border. In a ground assault, the 36,000 U.S. troops stationed at the border to supplement the South Korean army would be met by 1.2 million soldiers from North Korea quicker than even Bill Clinton can say, "Call up the reserves." ....Little needs to be said about Iraq, given its high-profile conflicts with the United States and UN weapons inspectors in just the last year. Iraq stands fourth-behind Russia, China, and North Korea-in overall military capabilities, according to Defense Department statistics. But it ranks first in demonstrated willingness to use what it has.....In times past, two events currently underway would have been seen as sure fire-starters: a Palestinian declaration of statehood and Washington support for it. So far, trends in both directions have caused no flames, as tensions have been on hold leading up to national elections in Israel this month....For 15 years, Sudan has fought a civil war between the Muslim-dominated north and the Christian- and animist-controlled south. ...Second, the United States inserted itself into this flashpoint when it bombed a pharmaceutical factory in Sudan following last year's attacks on U.S. embassies in Africa. Evidence linking the factory to Saudi terrorist Osama bin Laden, believed to be the mastermind behind the embassy attacks, proved much less than conclusive. ....The tête-à-tête with Iran's Islamic fundamentalist regime may have softened from 20 years ago, but the United States faces essentially the same threat in Tehran's rooted opposition to all things American.....Policy analysts say the conflict in Congo is the most serious threat to peace in Africa since the end of the Cold War, perhaps since the end of the slave trade..... U.S. foes like Libyan dictator Muamar Ghadhafi have stepped into the fray to broker a peace agreement and, if they see a toehold, threaten more U.S. interests in Africa than just safari and game preserves...... The fall of the Soviet Union prompted oil scouts to dream of a rise in production from largely untapped petroleum reserves beneath the Caspian Sea. Geologists say the Caspian basin could yet possess 200 billion barrels, nearly equal to the combined proven reserves of Iran and Iraq..... The littoral nations cannot agree on who owns what portions of the sea...... Of 273 terrorist attacks worldwide last year, 77 were bombings of multinational oil pipelines in Colombia. In those attacks, 71 people, including 28 children, were killed, according to the U.S. State Department. ...."

The Daily Republican Newspaper 5/20/99 Tony Artero "...Illegal Chinese aliens are invading Guam. But, the Clinton administration is according these aliens greater economic opportunity than Americans on Guam who have fought in wars defending America's interest. .....The slogan that "Guam is where America's day begins" has been turned on its head by the spectacle created by the White House and Congress by the subtle recognition of a new idiom, "Guam, the back doormat to the United States." The practice of according illegal imigrants swarming the beaches on Guam with diplomatic status is as appalling as any miscarriage of justice in American History. The political mythology that Guam is obligated to render political asylum to Communist Chinese smugglers and spies simply because they are on American soil is an affrontory to Guams heroic contributions to the American victroy at sea in World War II. The Clinton administration has reduced Guam to "doormat status" and must take ultimate responsibility for the human disaster overwhelming Guam's civilian capacity to maintain civil order and protect U.S. citizens from risks to health and safety. Every day more of these Chinese derelicts arrive vessels founder on our reefs or run aground in our harbors...."

5/25/99 AP Freeper Thanatos "...President Hugo Chavez said Monday that he will deny a request by the United States to use Venezuela's airspace for anti-narcotics flights in the region. The United States wants to use Venezuela's airspace for flights from three new staging centers being set up in Ecuador and the islands of Curacao and Aruba, which are located off Venezuela's western coast...."

AP 5/24/99 Manila "...About 200 protesters scuffled with riot police outside the U.S. Embassy i n Manilla today, demonstrating against a pact that would allow large-scale U.S. military exercises in the country. The activists, belonging to the National Democratic Movement, ran past riot police and destroyed a plastic cover protecting th e U.S. government seal at the embassy's entrance. Police pushed them back with shields and truncheons, injuring at least one protester....."

Washington Times 5/25/99 Jennifer Bauduy "...The preoccupation with American forces' safety that is shadowing debate about a ground war in Kosovo has meant a life behind barbed wire and sandbag walls for hundreds of U.S. troops in Haiti. There are about 500 U.S. soldiers remaining in Haiti, the impoverished Caribbean nation that the United States occupied in 1994 in one of the last major deployments of U.S. forces before NATO attacks on Yugoslavia began two months ago...."

5/27/99 BBC News Freeper Thanatos "...Senators in the Philippines are to vote on whether to accept a controversial agreement reviving military ties with the US. Supporters of the agreement say it will help the Philippines in its armed confrontation with China; opponents say the agreement will restore a quasi-colonial relationship between the United States and the Philippines. What the Senate is voting on is deceptively mundane: a Visiting Forces Agreement, or VFA, setting out the conditions under which United States forces can come to the Philippines to conduct military exercises...."

San Diego Union-Tribune 5/26/99 Marjorie Cohn Freeper Stand Watch Listen "...NATO tells us the bombs fall to stop reprehensible ethnic cleansing. If that is true, why does NATO's leader, the United States, support a government in Colombia whose "cleansing" policies rival those of Slobodan Milosevic's regime in Kosovo? During the past decade, Colombian military and paramilitary violence has killed tens of thousands of civilians. It created nearly as many refugees as the bombing of Kosovo and resulted in the worst human-rights abuses of the early 1990s, according to Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International. NATO is exercising military power in Kosovo, not to stop human-rights atrocities, but to establish control of an area that will be important to the economic growth of Western nations in coming decades...."

Scmp.com 5/29/99 RAISSA ROBLES "...The Supreme Court was asked yesterday to stop a military exercises accord with the US approved by the Senate on Thursday. The move came as Washington debated a resolution that could send swift military aid to the Philippines..... Congressman Dana Rohrabacher told Philippine congressman Roilo Golez yesterday that he had managed to insert an amendment favourable to Manila in a resolution being deliberated by the US House of Representatives. An amendment to House Resolution 1908 would allow UH-1 helicopters to be donated to the Philippines, along with A-4 aircraft and the Coast Guard cutter Point Evans, said Mr Rohrabacher, who had accompanied Mr Golez on an aerial tour of the Spratlys in December....In urging the amendment, Congressman Rohrabacher said: "The ongoing Chinese construction of naval bases in the Spratlys and repeated incursions of warships and fishing fleets into Philippine territorial waters, have increased the urgency of our long-time ally's need to modernise its naval and air patrol capabilities." Mr Rohrabacher called the Philippines a "frontline nation against the growing designs of China to militarily control the Pacific in the 21st century"...."

Fox News 6/8/99 "...A U.S. proposal to defend democracy throughout the Western Hemisphere was shelved Tuesday after Mexico and other nations in the Organization of American States (OAS) said it smacked of interventionism. The measure, which had been set to be adopted at the OAS's annual general assembly meeting in Guatemala, would have allowed OAS members to turn to a "Group of Friends'' to help prevent political crises such as a coup..... "Every action by the OAS has to be based on the principle that each country needs to find its own solution for its problems,'' Peru's Foreign Minister Fernando de Trazegnies told delegates Tuesday. "When somebody suddenly storms my house and comes in, I don't consider him a friend,'' de Trazegnies said...."

newsmax.com 6/9/99 Carl Limbacher and Caron Grich "...The Clinton administration has also offered the promise of greater U.S. defense cooperation with Azerbaijan. For example, NATO, through its Partnership for Peace program, has established the Central Asian Peacekeeping Battalion, or CENBAT," reports Jofi Joseph in a January 1999 case study on "Pipeline Politics" for Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. "As part of one of the first joint exercises involving American soldiers and the CENBAT force, 500 members of the U.S. Army's 82nd Airborne Division parachuted into Kazakhstan (Azerbaijan's oil rich neighbor across the Caspian Sea) after a 23- hour flight from Ft. Bragg. The impressive display powerfully represented the strategic reach of the U.S.; the Kazakhstan deputy foreign minister stated, 'Five years ago, no one here could even dream of such things as American soldiers dropping out of the sky into a remote area of Kazakhstan.' " Prof. Joseph adds, "Evolving closer defense ties with Azerbaijan's neighbors sends a clear signal that the U.S. and NATO are interested in the security of the region, of which Azerbaijan is one of the most valuable pieces." ...."

Stratfor.com 6/10/99 Global Intelligence Update "...During a meeting of the Organization of American States (OAS) the U.S. proposed the creation of a multinational force to guarantee the security of the Western Hemisphere. At the same time, the U.S. is reportedly pushing a plan to support Colombia's neighbors with aircraft and intelligence in their efforts to contain Colombian guerrillas. With its OAS proposal in the long term and its Colombia plan in the short term, the U.S. appears eager to become more actively involved in resolving Latin America's long running conflicts. This promises at best a mixed blessing for U.S. businesses currently operating in Colombia and throughout the region, as greater U.S. involvement will draw greater reaction from the region's rebels...."

6/12/99 AP Freeper Thanatos Angola "...With UNITA guerrillas in control of most of this vast country in southwest Africa, army officials are planning a new offensive on the rebels' command center in hopes of bringing the two-decade civil war to a close. The assault -- perhaps as soon as this month -- will be aimed at crushing the rebels' strongholds and choking off the diamond revenues that keep them fighting. A 1994 peace accord unraveled in December, when lingering hostility and mistrust between the two sides erupted into renewed fighting. Since then, UNITA -- a Portuguese acronym for the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola -- has taken control of 80 percent of Angola...."

Reuters 6/12/99 "....Heavy fighting raged on the western end of Eritrea's border with Ethiopia Saturday after Eritrea said 2,400 Ethiopian soldiers had been killed in two days of clashes. Ethiopia branded the casualty report a fabrication. Eritrean television and radio said late Friday that 2,400 Ethiopian troops were killed and 4,000 were wounded, while Eritrea had taken 80 prisoners, shot down one Ethiopian MI 35 helicopter gunship and destroyed three tanks. "The fighting is continuing,'' Eritrean presidential spokesman Yermane Gebremeskel told Reuters Saturday. "The casualty toll was high because the Ethiopians concentrated their attack - they used two divisions in the attack which is about 20,000 soldiers,'' he said.... "This is the usual Eritrean fabrication aimed at getting media attention,'' government spokeswoman Selome Taddesse told Reuters...."

Mercury News 6/4/99 AP "...Anti-nuclear activists said Friday that corruption was behind personnel changes on a panel overseeing safety at a planned nuclear research reactor in Thailand. The Bangkok Post reported on Friday that Darakant Mongkolphantha, a nuclear safety expert who was in charge of the panel, had been replaced with a non-nuclear engineer by Thailand's Office for Atomic Energy for Peace, a government agency...... The paper said three other safety experts on the panel had also been replaced with engineers.....According to her group, General Atomics recently asked the OAEP to change its contract to allow it buy uranium from Russia instead of the United States. ``If the OAEP buys fuel from the U.S., we have an agreement that allows us to send nuclear waste back to the U.S. for disposal. But we have no deal with Russia,'' she said....."

Hong Kong Standard 6/1/99 Cary Huang "...THE Nato strikes against Yugoslavia, and the resulting tension with Russia and China, have dramatically changed the prospects for global politics in the post-Cold War era. The development would prompt, at its worst, the birth of a new military bloc aimed at keeping US-led Western supremacy in check, and would be a major setback for arms controls and disarmament....Russia and China begin from the standpoint that bilateral military unions operating in the Asian-Pacific region should have strictly defensive objectives. They must not target third countries or upset the regional balance of power. They have to adapt themselves to multilateral efforts aimed at ensuring security. Beijing and Moscow reject the inclusion of any of their territory in the projected arc of US-Japanese operations. Beijing, Moscow and New Delhi believe that upgraded US-Japan military ties are widening the American presence here and significantly increasing Japan's military might. And the recently escalating tension between the world's developing giants and the West reinforces the belief among the trio that the US is forging ahead with a global military alliance to encircle and contain the world's non-Western powers in next millennium....."

Reuters [OL] 6/2/99 Freeper Mark Egan "...The recent Asian financial crisis plunged millions into poverty and could derail long-held goals of poverty reduction and social improvements in the world's poorest countries, the World Bank said Wednesday. The Bank said the Asian crisis, which began in 1997 in Thailand and spread through the region and beyond, showed that economic reforms can increase inequalities if they fail to include a social safety net for the poorest...."

Knight-Ridder Washington Bureau 6/5/99 Joyce M. Davis "...``When this ends, it's the end of NATO in its current form,'' said Stephen Fischer-Galati, a University of Colorado history professor and an expert on Eastern Europe. ``I am quite convinced that the Europeans are going to establish their own security organization, keeping the United States at a safe distance.'' .....William Stuebner, a specialist in international law at the congressionally funded United States Institute of Peace in Washington, D.C., says the bombing is bound to have an effect on conflicts around the globe and on U.S. relations with other countries. ``We can spin this all we want and say that we've won, but there will be serious repercussions from NATO's actions in Yugoslavia,'' he said. U.S. ties to China and Russia became strained, as both countries opposed the bombing, and China even suffered casualties when its embassy in Belgrade was bombed. Both Chinese and Russian officials fear that NATO has become so bold that it could decide to interfere in their internal affairs, Stuebner and other analysts say Early on, the NATO offensive stirred China's worst fears about U.S. willingness to use military power to get its way. Beijing argued that NATO was a pawn of the United States and that the Kosovo crisis was an internal matter for Yugoslavia to resolve. What really bothered Beijing, China specialists say, was the precedent set by NATO's action..... Many in Russia believe they face a more immediate threat, with NATO already at their borders....``The most important result (of the Kosovo crisis), which was foreseeable from the first day of the conflict, was that many countries who don't have nuclear weapons will take a new look at this option,'' said Martin van Creveld, professor of military history and strategy at Hebrew University of Jerusalem. ``They will say to themselves, `We want to make certain that nothing like this ever happens to us.' Suppose I were an Indonesian, Algerian or Nigerian: All these countries have severe ethnic problems.'' ..."

EWTN.COM 6/12/99 "...In spite of the aggressive posture of its promoters, a play was forced to cancel its public appearances in the Mexican city of Queretaro after pressure exercised by the citizens, who disapproved the hostile posture toward the Church and the shameless moral relativism proposed by the play. The play "For women only" was initially presented to a public of 5000 people. From that moment the Church, in the voice of the bishop and of diverse committed laymen, denounced the play and organized a gathering of signatures that was supported by more than 50 thousand Queretans opposed to a second presentation. Approximately twenty social and religious organizations prepared a document where they requested the respective authorities the immediate cancellation of the play. It was not necessary to wait for a formal prohibition from authorities, since the Municipal Committee of the Party of the Democratic Revolution -organizer of the play-, in view of the obvious rejection of the population, announced presentations would be cancelled...."

Associated Press Tom Raum 6/15/99 "...Imagine Russian soldiers in a military standoff with NATO troops on a European airfield. Consider the United States hitting a Chinese diplomatic mission with a missile. Add in the naval gunfire between North and South Korea, and sometimes it's hard to remember the Cold War is over. U.S. policy-makers are suddenly confronted with far larger security issues than those initially at stake in Kosovo.....While NATO's air campaign achieved the stated goal of forcing a Serb withdrawal from Kosovo, it also rekindled Cold War tensions......Cordesman sees a fundamental difference between today and the years of nuclear confrontation between a massive Soviet military and the West. Still, he said, it's ``very dangerous for Americans to believe the diplomatic rhetoric'' that minimizes present dangers.....U.S. officials reiterated on today that they expected the stalemate with Russia to be eased. Moscow has given ``assurances at a variety of levels'' that it won't add to the 200 soldiers at the airport in Pristina, said State Department spokesman James Rubin. As he spoke, an 11-vehicle Russian convoy rolled through Kosovo on its way to Pristina to resupply the Russian troops. And concerns were raised that Russia might try to send in reinforcements by air......``I'm not sure Yeltsin is in total control of the military,'' said Rep. Curt Weldon, R-Pa., chairman of a congressional group that meets with members of the Russian Duma.....``This is extremely serious. All it takes is for one Russian or one American to misfire,'' Weldon said.... At the same time, the United States dispatched additional aircraft to patrol the area, and there was talk of sending additional U.S. ships or other resources...."

The Associated Press 7/17/99 Dan Perry "...In an explosion of fury on the Fourth of July, thousands of Puerto Ricans converged on a U.S. Navy base, waving a U.S. flag with skulls for stars and condemning the ``Evil Empire.'' Two days later, Gov. Pedro Rossello, who may well be the most pro-American leader Puerto Rico ever had, asked the United Nations to declare the island a colony whose status must be resolved next year. This is not how it was meant to be a year ago, when Rossello stood near the beach where U.S. troops invaded in July 1898, exuberantly waved a 51-star flag and promised the island taken from Spain would soon be a U.S. state...."

Detriot News 7/16/99 Chris Stewart and David Forsmark "….The Clinton Doctrine, in essence, states that, in an effort to stop racial or ethnic slaughter within another nation's borders, the United States and NATO should be willing to engage in something called "humanitarian warfare" - a chillingly Orwellian phrase, even by this administration's standards of torturing language. It is based on the purported success of the United States in the Kosovo war. The premise of this policy is extremely dangerous to the future of our military preparedness because it is based on political spin, not competent analysis…If this doctrine is accepted as our national policy, plan on U.S. troops being stationed in Bosnia and Kosovo for generations to come. And you can add Turkey, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Pakistan, the Sudan, Russia and China to the list of potential future bombing targets…."

EWTN 7/19/99 "…The Catholic bishop of El Obeid in Sudan, writing for the US newspaper The Boston Globe, chided Western nations for ignoring ethnic cleansing in Sudan even as they intervened in Kosovo. Bishop Macram Max Gassis said the militant Islamic government of Sudan has waged a decade-long campaign of ethnic cleansing in southern Sudan that has left nearly 2 million people dead -- more than the entire population of Kosovo -- and has left more than 4 million displaced, the largest refugee population in the world….The bishop also asked the reason for being ignored. "I pray that the reason for the indifference ... is not that we are black while the Kosovars are white, not that we are Africans rather than Europeans," he said…."

Itar-Tass 7/19/99 "…Georgian President Eduard Shevardnadze eyes a Kosovo scenario for separatist Abkhazia and does not rule out a NATO presence in the region where calm is currently maintained by Russian peacekeepers. However, the president said a UN Security Council decision will be necessary for that…."

Chicago Tribune 7/29/99 Eric Reeves "...The ongoing catastrophe in Sudan stands as the greatest humanitarian crisis in the world today... A carefully assembled set of data for the U.S. Committee for Refugees makes evident that almost 2 million people have perished in the most recent phase of Sudan's ongoing civil war. As many as 5 million refugees have been created, making the refugee problem the greatest of its kind in the world. And at the height of last summer's famine, more than 2 million more people, mainly children, were at risk of starvation. And the catastrophe continues: famine, epidemic disease, human enslavement and scorched earth warfare remain defining features of the landscape in the south, where the civil war has been so devastatingly concentrated And yet Americans remain painfully unaware of the catastrophe. How can this be?.... it bears the curse of being in Africa, where any policy success is almost surely destined to be overshadowed by Clinton's abysmal moral failure in the Rwandan genocide. Africa can contribute nothing to the "Clinton legacy" that is being cobbled together, and so--despite its vast geographic, political and cultural variability--a continent has been relegated to the extreme periphery of White House attention....And the news media--television most egregiously, but newspapers as well--have made the marginalizing of Sudan almost effortless. Not one major American newspaper, for example, reported on a resolution passed by the U.S. House of Representatives on June 15 declaring the Khartoum regime's conduct of civil war in the south of Sudan to be "genocidal." Could this have been declared at any time during the past 50 years of any European or Western government without explosive news coverage? Why is Sudan's death struggle so entirely unworthy of national attention? ..."

Long Island Newsday 7/29/99 Mark Simon "...MORALITY? As I have read over the last few weeks of NATO's "moral victory" over Serbian dictator, Slobodan Milosevic, I've reflected on the almost simultaneous, allegedly CIA-aided capture, subsequent conviction and death sentence in Turkey of Kurdish leader Abdullah Ocalan and the moral imperative in U.S. foreign policy. The United States and NATO took nine long years to confront Milosevic over Kosovo, nine years in which the Kosovo Albanians mounted a truly remarkable, nonviolent campaign against Serbian apartheid, aggression and the beginnings of ethnic cleansing-that is, routine harassment, beatings, torture and murder. The Kurds in Turkey, by contrast, don't even have the dubious benefit of a NATO military intervention. Striving for a measure of autonomy, they are up against the Turkish military, with the second largest army in NATO-and the worst human rights record. Why does the West turn a proverbial blind eye? The answer has little to do with morality..... "

Associated Press 7/29/99 "...The U.S. Navy owes the Puerto Rican government $8.8 million for water it has been drawing from a river since 1985 without a permit, the island's Department of Natural and Environmental Resources says. Department secretary Daniel Pagan said the Navy failed to present a permit to draw water from the Rio Blanco in the eastern town of Naguabo, near Naval Station Roosevelt Roads in Ceiba, The San Juan Star newspaper reported Thursday...."

Reuters 7/31/99 "...The Roman Catholic archbishop of Cali, Colombia's second largest city, on Saturday excommunicated the members of a Marxist guerrilla group responsible for the abduction of 143 of his churchgoers. The Cuban-inspired National Liberation Army (ELN), Colombia's second largest guerrilla group, ignored a June 30 deadline set by the church to free the remaining 36 hostages seized at gunpoint while attending mass on May 30 in an affluent Cali suburb..."

Baltimore Sun 7/30/99 Lawrence Pezzullo Nancy Jackson "...REMEMBER Haiti? That's the Caribbean island-nation where the United States intervened militarily five years ago with 20,000 troops to restore democracy and billions of dollars in assistance. Currently, it is being threatened by the very leaders who were the beneficiaries of our military intervention and financial largess. If left unchecked, Haiti's trouble could boil over and hurt Vice President Al Gore's presidential campaign. Of course, there have been some improvements. Haiti now has an elected government, though, in January, President Rene Preval closed down the parliament that had the temerity to question the executive branch. Haiti's corrupt and oppressive military has been eliminated, but violence continues. The latest example was the summary execution by Haitian police of 11 handcuffed youths in broad daylight. ..."

LISBON, Portugal (AP) 8/3/99 "...Eyewitnesses said Angola's UNITA rebels drove 50 villagers from their homes in a northern town, fatally shot them and dumped their bodies in a nearby river, the Portuguese news agency Lusa reported Tuesday. The massacre is alleged to have taken place early Sunday in Quipacassa, Lusa said. ..."

Xinhua via NewsEdge Corporation 8/5/99 "...Devil worship is widespread in Kenya with rituals of human sacrifice and nudity in prayers, the Daily Nation newspaper Wednesday quoted a report of survey as saying. The report titled the Presidential Commission of Inquiry into the Cult of Devil Worship in Kenya was recently released to religious organizations but never made public, the paper said. The report, compiled by prominent religious leaders and presented to President Daniel arap Moi in 1995, claims that the tentacles of evil sects reached into schools, churches and even government offices ..."

AP George Gedda 8/16/99 "…The Senate's Democratic leader and a fellow farm-state senator spoke strongly for lifting an embargo on food and drug sales to Cuba after returning Monday from a visit that included a seven-hour meeting with Fidel Castro. They said they told the Cuban president, however, that no further easing of the decades-long sanctions can be considered until Cuba improves its human rights record...."

XINHUA 8/17/99 "… Ebrahim Samba, regional director for Africa of the World Health Organization (WHO), Sunday told the daily Herald that the Center For Disease Control in Atlanta, the United States, had proof that the first patient died between 1961 and 1962 of a "rare disease"…. "All the bad things are said to emerge from Africa, while all the good come from the West. The West should, therefore, send a letter of apology to Africa for being wrongfully blamed," said Samba…"

Reuters 8/17/99 "…The governor of a Venezuelan state said Monday he had instructed his police force not to step in to save criminals from being killed by angry local communities. ``The police will not intervene to protect any crook, rapist, assailant or murderer,'' said Lara state governor Orlando Fernandez. ``I have to look after honest and decent people,'' he told the local Union Radio station. Fernandez's decision came amid growing concern in the South American country of 23 million people over a sudden rise in crime…..``I have to set priorities. ... I'm too busy to be protecting criminals,'' said Fernandez, whose small, mostly agricultural state is located in central Venezuela…."

San Francisco Chronicle 8/19/99 Winifred Tate "…THE LONG-NEGLECTED conflict in Colombia is emerging as Latin America's major crisis and pulling the United States ever more deeply into an unwinnable war. Escalating political violence, an entrenched insurgency, increasing illicit drug production and growing concern from Colombia's neighbors about the conflict spilling over have policymakers in Washington searching for a solution to the problems besetting Colombia….. Though the Colombian army has declared itself ``reformed,'' the nation's military is far from a new institution. Military collusion with paramilitary activity on a local and regional level continues, and paramilitary violence has escalated in the past six months. These groups target alleged guerrilla sympathizers, but their net of terror has been cast wide over a growing number of Colombian peace leaders and members of civil society. More than 400 people have been killed or ``disappeared'' in the first three months of this year alone, and tens of thousands more have been forced to flee their homes…."

AP 8/20/99 George Gedda "…Less than three months after President Kennedy's death, Cuban leader Fidel Castro told President Lyndon Johnson he was eager for Johnson to prevail in the 1964 election - and even invited him to take ``hostile action'' against Cuba if it would be to his political benefit, newly published documents show. Castro also invited Johnson to continue a U.S.-Cuban dialogue that Kennedy had initiated in the months before his assassination. Castro's comments are contained in a series of once-secret 1960s documents on U.S.-Cuban relations that were obtained by Peter Kornbluh, a senior analyst at the National Security Archive, a research group at George Washington University….. It was a time when the conservative wing of the party was poised to seize power after long years of dominance by moderates. That summer, the GOP nominated one of those conservative rebels, Sen. Barry Goldwater of Arizona, to run against Johnson in the 1964 presidential election…. "

BBC 8/20/99 "…The African World Reparations and Repatriation Truth Commission, meeting in Accra for its first international conference, also called for all international debt owed by Africa to be "unconditionally cancelled''. The Accra Declaration issued at the conference says that money will be demanded from ''all those nations of Western Europe and the Americas and institutions, who participated and benefited from the slave trade and colonialism''…. Mrs Kofie told the BBC the reparation figure was based on the number of human lives lost to Africa during the slave-trade, as well as an assessment of the worth of the gold, diamonds and other minerals taken from the continent during colonial rule. She says Africa's turn has come. "We are the only group that have not received reparations. The Jewish people have received reparations. The native Americans have received reparations. The Korean comfort women and so-on and so forth," she said…."

AFP 8/24/99 "…Kosovar refugees received 21 times as much humanitarian aid from the international community than those in Africa, the European Union's top aid official, Alberto Navarro, said here Tuesday. During the Kosovo crisis, roughly 800,000 Kosovar refugees were given an average of 13 dollars a day each in food and medical aid, while African refugees received 0.6 dollars a day, Navarro told a press conference. …"

MSNBC 8/23/99 Tammy Kupperman "…FOR SOME YEARS now, the U.S. military has rotated Army and Marine forces through Port-Au-Prince as part of a military presence that also includes medical personnel and engineers. The last deployment of these troops is scheduled to end in December. Instead of a constant U.S. military presence in Haiti, the United States will periodically send troops to outlying areas in Haiti to provide medical, engineering and humanitarian assistance as part of a series of reserve and National Guard exercises that take place throughout Central America and the Caribbean. Active-duty forces may also occasionally deploy to Haiti under this new regime. The move comes amid Pentagon efforts to scale back American military commitments around the world. In addition to Haiti, military officials are also trying to reduce U.S. troop presence in the Sinai Peninsula, where it is part of the multinational force of observers….."

Houston Chronicle John Otis 8/27/99 "…Street fighting broke out in front of this nation's Capitol building Friday as opposition demonstrators clashed with supporters of President Hugo Chavez, who has vowed to carry out a "peaceful revolution" of social reforms. Riot police fired tear gas and water cannons to break up the crowds of people, some of whom tried to prevent opposition lawmakers from entering the building, in the first political protest since Chavez took office on Feb. 2. At one point, several lawmakers climbed over the spiked metal fence surrounding the Capitol in defiance of a constitutional assembly decree that stripped Congress of most of its functions and barred lawmakers from holding sessions. "We are exercising our constitutional rights," screamed Julio Castillo, vice president of the Congress, as police prevented him from entering the Capitol grounds. …"

Houston Chronicle 8/27/99 "… Chavez replacing democracy with authoritarian rule Democracy is on the ropes in oil-rich Venezuela, a country long considered one of Latin America's more stable democracies and this nation's second largest supplier of foreign oil. President Hugo Chavez, a former paratrooper who failed to take over the government in a 1992 coup, has now won office by way of the ballot box. …"

NewsMax 9/8/99 Chris Ruddy "...A Castro-style takeover is taking place right in America's backyard, but practically no one is paying attention. It wouldn't be quite accurate to say that the leftist take-over of Venezuela by former Lt. Col. Hugo Chavez has been totally ignored by the major media. Here and there we do find isolated reports that speak of events in Venezuela after the election to the presidency last July of the 45-year-old Marxist. But most of these reports have a clear slant in accepting Pres. Chavez, who has proclaimed that his power-grab, his "peaceful revolution," is intended to bring true democracy to Venezuela. The Chavez coverage here in the U.S. bears an eerie resemblance to the positive press treatment afforded a young Fidel Castro who promised democracy for the Cuban people. Chavez demonstrated his "democratic" intentions in the past two months by disbanding of the Venezuelan congress and supreme court and vesting authority in a "Constitutional Assembly" he controls. On a clear path to dictatorship, Chaivez's Constitutional Assembly has summarily eliminated the democratic separation of powers in Venezuela and declared itself the nation's "supreme body." It has even amassed the power to remove as it sees fit duly elected judges, mayors and governors outside the federal government...."

Associated Press 9/7/99 Laura Wides "….America gave Bill Clinton grief for trying marijuana. That was nothing. A leading presidential candidate in Guatemala shocked the country this week by admitting he killed two men in Mexico, then fled to avoid trial. Alfonso Portillo, the candidate for the right-wing Guatemalan Republican Front, said he had acted in self-defense in 1982 when he shot and killed two men and wounded another in a fight in the Guerrero state capital of Chilpancingo. ``I'm ready to have my life investigated and I have nothing to hide,'' Portillo said at a news conference Monday. …."

Associated Press 9/6/99 "… A gunman opened fire on a Haitian political party leader in what the politician said Monday was an attempt to assassinate him. Sauveur Pierre Etienne, secretary of the Struggling People's Organization, said a man stepped onto the road as Etienne was driving away from the Port-au-Prince airport with his family Sunday afternoon. The gunman aimed a pistol at Etienne from about 12 feet and fired, hitting the hood of the car, Etienne said. Etienne was armed and fired back, wounding the man ``in the lower part of his body,'' he said. The gunman then fled with another man who was standing by the side of the road. ``This is the last in a long series of attempts to intimidate our party,'' Etienne said, calling the gunman ``a professional hitman.''…"

AP 9/7/99 "…- They put smiles on the faces of the desperate and hopeless. They built toilets and showers for orphans used to squatting outside and bathing in drains. They helped farmers get produce to market. Now American troops are packing up to leave Haiti after a humanitarian mission that probably saved hundreds of lives and made those of countless others more livable. ….. After receiving hundreds of millions of dollars from the U.S., it remains gripped by the political power struggles that have helped keep it one of the most impoverished nations on Earth for the nearly 200 years since it became the world's first black republic…."

New York Times 8/30/99 Bob Shacochis "… In 1995, I spoke with a Haitian-American woman in Miami who had recently enjoyed a lucrative tenure as translator for the American high command in Port-au-Prince during the early months of its military intervention, which had restored Haiti's first democratically elected President to the national palace. "What will happen when the American troops finally go home?" I wondered out loud to the well-educated linguist, the daughter of one of Haiti's elite families. Her horrific vision of the future, which she seemed to energetically embrace, shocked me. "Everything will be fire, ashes and blood," she said, because the Haitian people would at long last be free to unleash the revolution that she believed the Americans had denied them throughout the 20th century….."

AFP 8/29/99 "….US anti-drug czar Barry McCaffrey has informally urged Latin leaders to organize a military intervention force to pacify Colombia, a Peruvian TV newscast reported Sunday. McCaffrey reportedly made the statements in off-the-record personal talks with the presidents of Brazil, Bolivia, Peru and Argentina, according to Frecuencia Latina - Channel 2. Frecuencia Latina -- a station that has close ties with the Peruvian military intelligence service, SIN -- reports that the multinational force would intervene in early 2000 acting on a request by Colombian President Andres Pastrana. ..."

International Herald Tribune 8/31/99 "…In 1994, 20,000 American troops landed on this dirt-poor patch of the Caribbean [Haiti], promising to restore democracy. During the ensuing five years, troops remained there at an annual cost of $20 million to American taxpayers, and Haiti became the top Latin American recipient of U.S. development aid. Yet it now seems that the world's only superpower has had remarkably little impact on this micropower of 7 million people. With an air of resignation, the U.S. administration recently let it be known that the American garrison in Haiti would be closed by the end of the year. There is no easy explanation for this debacle….. Some will argue that America should give up on pro-democracy intervention. The Pentagon and its congressional sympathizers declare that the military should not be called upon to do what they regard as ''social work,'' which saps preparedness for proper wars. Given the scant returns on the investment in Haiti, this view cannot be dismissed. And yet America should not turn its back on this and other trouble spots…"

AFP 9/6/99 Fritz Kuhn "…Colombia's left-wing rebels have upped the stakes in their 35-year-old war against the government, buying Russian-made SAM missiles capable of knocking helicopters out of the air, according to a media report. Quoting the national leader of former guerrilla fighters in El Salvador, the respected Semana weekly said Sunday the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) rebels had bought 16 surface-to-air missiles. "(Our members) have firsthand information of the acquisition of 16 surface to air missiles, used to knock down fighter planes and helicopters," Raul Elias Monge was quoted as saying….."

AFP 9/14/99 "....- Rebels from the Marxist FARC group were the likely culprits in a mass kidnapping last weekend of 13 foreigners, Colombia's military leader said Tuesday. "Everything points to ... this group," General Fernando Tapias told reporters. Rebels from the FARC -- the Armed Revolutionary Forces of Colombia -- typically "engage in kidnappings and terrorist activities at the border," Tapias said, although at present officials have no concrete proof that FARC is responsible for the abductions of the foreigners..."

The Associated Press, via News Plus 9/14/99 Nicole Winfield "....The United Nations opened its 1999-2000 session Tuesday by admitting three new members: the South Pacific island nations of Nauru, Kiribati and the Kingdom of Tonga. The General Assembly also inaugurated its new president, Namibian Foreign Minister Theo-Ben Gurirab, who used his first speech to highlight the colonial struggle of Africa and call for an apology from its ``invaders and slave-traders.'' ``The horrors of slavery and destruction wrought upon Africa and its people cannot be forgotten,'' Gurirab told the assembly, which now comprises 188 members. ``Now is the time for reconciliation and healing.'' ..."

AP 9/9/99 "....Cuban President Fidel Castro said the United States would fail if it tried to intervene in Colombia's guerrilla war and predicted capitalism's collapse in remarks at a youth conference that lasted more than four hours. Those who advocate U.S. intervention ``have no idea of what a war is or what an intervention of that type would signify when all patriotism and national spirit is aroused,'' he said Wednesday, responding to a question from a Colombian student. Some analysts in the United States have speculated that growing guerrilla activity in Colombia could eventually draw a U.S. intervention, but American policymakers have strongly denied such intentions. ``It is asking to put the United States into a very big conflict and a very great risk,'' Castro said....."

The Toronto Star 9/9/99 Reuters "...A leading Rwandan journalist working for a state-owned weekly newspaper has been arrested on charges of genocide for her alleged role in the slaughter of an estimated 800,000 people in 1994. A member of Rwanda's ethnic Hutu majority, Nyirabikali has worked for Rwanda's state-owned weekly newspaper Imvaho (Truth) for 15 years. Last year, she won an award for her reporting on reconciliation following the genocide, in which Hutu extremists attempted to eradicate Rwanda's minority Tutsis. But she is now accused of drumming up anti-Tutsi sentiment. "Nyirabikali is charged with inciting ethnic hatred using the government paper before and during the genocide,"Kigali's deputy prosecutor, Edouard Kayihura, told Reuters. "She characterized herself by inflammatory articles calling the population to stand up, fight, and kill the then Tutsi rebels and their accomplices inside the country," he said. ...."

The Associated Press, via News Plus 9/10/99 Angus Shaw "....Three American missionaries were found guilty today of possessing weapons of war and trying to smuggle guns on board a civilian airliner. Judge Ismael Adam of the Harare High Court said the men violated Zimbabwe security laws that forbid unlicensed offensive weapons and tried to transport guns in their baggage on a Zurich-bound Swissair flight from Harare on March 7. Gary Blanchard, 36, John Lamonte Dixon, 36, and Joseph Wendell Pettijohn, 35, self-described missionaries from the Indiana-based Harvestfield Ministries Pentecostal church, bowed their heads as Adam read the verdict, but otherwise showed little emotion. The three refused to respond to reporters' questions as they were led from the courthouse under armed escort. The Americans face up to life imprisonment for possessing war weapons and up to seven years for breaching international aviation rules that ban the transportation of ``dangerous goods'' by air. Adam said he will sentence them on Monday. Defense attorney Chris Andersen urged Adam to be lenient, saying the men had served seven months in harsh prison conditions since their arrest. He said Zimbabwe law allowed jail terms to be suspended if weapons were not intended for offensive use. ...."

Reuters; FOX 9/10/99 "....An ebola-like virus festering in a Congolese gold mine has killed 73 people, health officials said Friday. "There are dead rats, bats and even human bodies decomposing in these mines,'' Floribond Tshoko, an epidemiologist of the World Health Organization (WHO), told Reuters. The 73 have died from hemorrhagic fever - which causes massive internal bleeding - believed to have been caused by the Marburg Virus. Marburg is one of four virulent viruses that cause hemorrhagic fever. Ebola, another of the four, is highly infectious and causes bleeding through the mouth and skin. The fever has killed 73 of 88 people affected in Durba in the northwestern part of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Officials said it was probably caused by conditions in the mine. ...."

http://www.afrikan.net/NALF/jerich~1.html 9/10/99 ".... In October of 1996, the Provisional Government-Republic of New Afrika and the New Afrikan Liberation Front, at the request of political prisoner Jalil Muntaquim, embarked on an 18 month project that culminated with the March on the White House on March 27, 1998. The Jericho '98 Organizing Committee, made up of over 50 organizations, defense committees and groups, and Jericho Organizing committees from 68 different cities around the country, with a large portion of the work being done by Students for Jericho, succeeded in making the issue of Recognition and Amnesty for PP/POW'S a national one with its successful demonstration and rally at the White House. Approximately 8,000 people descended on the city of Washington, D.C. to challenge the hypocrisy of the u.s.a. in proclaiming there are no political prisoners in this country. The March 27th demonstration was just the beginning of a whole new commitment to supporting these political prisoners and demanding recognition and amnesty fir them. There are hundreds of people who went to prison or into exile as a result of their work on the streets against oppressive conditions like indecent housing, inadequate and lack of medical care, lack of quality education, drugs, police brutality and for independence and liberation. These people belonged to organizations like the RNA, the Black Panther Party, La Raza Unida, FALN, Los Macheteros, North American Anti-Imperialist Movement, May 19th, AIM, etc, and were incarcerated because of their political beliefs and acts in support of and/or in defense of freedom...."

Universal Press Syndicate 7/13/99 Joseph Sobran ".... The African country of Mauritania has a problem: slavery. This is compounded by a second problem: Most Mauritanians don't think of slavery as a problem. Boubacar Ould Messaoud, a Mauritanian abolitionist and former slave, held a press conference in Washington the other day to inform the West about the question. As quoted by Laura Vanderkam of The Washington Times, Mr. Messaoud said: "Today in Mauritania they've arrived at the 'perfect slave,' one who's completely assimilated to the master's family. They don't need physical chains because people are mentally enslaved. Slavery is so embedded, people don't know anything else. ... "Mauritania is not like the Sudan, where slaves are captured and sold. Slavery in Mauritania has existed since long before American slavery. It can't just be abolished overnight. The social climate has to change so we no longer have the mentality of slavery." Slavery was officially abolished in Mauritania by the French colonial government in 1905. That didn't work, because, in Miss Vanderkam's words, slavery in Mauritania enjoyed "widespread cultural acceptance, causing many slaves to see it as a normal part of life." Our image of the slave has been formed by movies like "Spartacus" and "Roots," in which slaves are always shown as constantly suffering, while chafing for freedom. And certainly slaves have been subject to inhuman treatment. In Africa they have been used for human sacrifice, or, as the British observer G.T. Basden put it, "to furnish a supply of meat." They might be branded, mutilated, crippled, castrated or blinded to make them manageable and to prevent escape.....Born in slavery himself, Mr. Messaoud wisely acknowledges "the mentality of slavery" as the real obstacle to abolition. As long as there are people of servile temperament, there will probably be slavery in one form or another -- sometimes in the guise of freedom and equality....."

Associated Press 9/17/99 Michael Norton "....Five years ago, President Clinton sent 20,000 troops to Haiti, hoping to end its long, bloody nightmare. The intervention cost $1.5 billion, and the United States has since poured another half-billion dollars into the economy. To what avail? No longer do thousands of Haitian boat people wash up on U.S. shores; Haiti's brutal military regime is history; dead bodies no longer turn up on Port-au-Prince's streets each dawn. But the negatives are daunting. Crushing poverty still makes Haiti the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere; 80 percent of Haitians are jobless or underemployed; and across the board, with amazing speed, people have lost faith in democracy as a cure. U.S. Ambassador Timothy Carney summed up the situation with bleak frankness. "We've gotten only modest results for all that money and effort,'' he said in an interview....."

AFP 9/17/99 "....Suspected Tamil Tiger guerrillas massacred at least 47 Sinhalese villagers in eastern Sri Lanka Saturday, police said. The victims included seven children and 17 women...."

AFP 9/19/99Amal Jayasinghe "....Sri Lanka's ethnic bloodshed has worsened with the slaughter of 76 civilians in attacks amid mounting international concern for the innocents caught between government troops and Tamil Tigers. Women fighters of the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) movement butchered 54 ethnic-Sinhalese villagers Saturday in one of the bloodiest massacres in the embattled country in more than four years. The slaughter was seen by many here as a tit-for-tat revenge attack by the LTTE to avenge the deaths of 22 minority Tamil civilians killed in an airforce bombing raid three days earlier. ...."

The Village Voice 9/22/99 James Ridgeway "....Beneath the struggles that define today's global hot spots lies the age old struggle for riches. In Russia as well as in East Timor, that means oil. In poverty-ridden Kosovo, the Serbs have attempted to maintain control of metal mining. In most cases, the ruling forces are not nationalists or ethnic factions but robber barons, themselves often surrogates for U.S. interests. In East Timor, scenes of fighting and burning buildings gave way on Monday to images of smiling Indonesian officers greeting grinning Australian commanders in Dili after the first UN "peacekeepers" landed. Here, the family of former Indonesian president Suharto, whose U.S.-trained and -armed elite forces wreaked havoc among the population, have long-term interests in oil. The Suhartos also control timber, sugar cane, marble deposits, and coffee, as well as oil tankers. Indonesian generals beholden to the Suharto family run companies that export sandalwood and oil. The governor of East Timor, who also is tightly tied to the Suhartos, controls alchohol, textiles, and even drinking water. General Wiranto, the military leader, has a hand in telecommunications and timber through philanthropic organizations that own stock, along with the Suhartos, in both industries. Of course, the major players are the U.S.-domiciled oil giants Chevron and Mobil and Dutch-based Shell. Energy-starved Australia is anxious to jump into the fray......"

Wall Street Journal 9/21/99 Alam Kuperman "...Australian peacekeeping troops are already on the ground in East Timor but the debate over responsibility for the recent atrocities there continues to simmer. Human-rights groups blame 25 years of Western coddling of Indonesia. If only the U.S. had applied more pressure on Jakarta, they say, the violence could have been avoided. The reality, however, is almost exactly the opposite. Today's suffering in East Timor is a direct result of too much Western human-rights pressure without any precautions against the tragic, and predictable, backlash. This lesson should have been learned in Rwanda. In the early 1990s, the international community applied intense diplomatic pressure on Rwanda's Hutu government to share power with Tutsi rebels. Threatening to cut off aid, the West compelled the Hutu president to sign an agreement to hand over power. But the West could not compel the Rwandan president and his cronies to honor the pact, which would have cost them the benefits of rule and left them vulnerable to retribution from new leaders. Instead, Hutu extremists decided to retain power by killing the opposition and its civilian supporters. In three months, at least a half-million Tutsis and moderate Hutus were killed--more than 100 times the number of civilian victims in the two decades prior to Western meddling. Militias and extremist soldiers led the killing. Many in the Hutu army initially stayed neutral, but as fighting continued they too inevitably sided against the Tutsis. The United Nations withdrew its peacekeepers and returned only after the killing was over. The parallels in East Timor are chilling....... After the Cold War, however, the U.S. began applying human-rights conditionality over East Timor, including suspending military cooperation with Jakarta. Pressure grew in 1996, after Timorese independence leaders won the Nobel Peace Prize and became media darlings. In 1997 the Asian financial crisis increased Indonesia's need for aid and thereby boosted Western leverage. Finally, this year, Indonesian President B.J. Habibie relented, agreeing to hold a referendum in East Timor and to accept last month's vote for independence. As in Rwanda, however, the ruling elite in East Timor (transplanted Indonesians and their local allies) had much to lose and much to fear if they handed over power, so they chose to resist with deadly force. Militias spearheaded the violence, and the army predictably sided with its long-time allies. The U.N. withdrew, and peacekeepers are being sent only now that the blitzkrieg of killing, ethnic cleansing and looting is mostly complete. As in most recent cases--including Bosnia, Croatia, Kosovo and Rwanda--the bulk of the latest violence in East Timor was perpetrated in a matter of days, long before an adequate force of peacekeepers could arrive. ...."

Charleston (SC) Post & Courier 9/20/99 "....Five years ago, on Sept. 19, 1994, President Clinton dispatched 20,000 American troops and hundreds of millions of dollars to Haiti to remove a noxious military dictator, and to restore an equally noxious but elected President Aristide to power. An unintended (but quite predictable, given even rudimentary knowledge of Haitian history) consequence of this latest U.S. intervention, once significant American forces and money began to be withdrawn, was even greater political and economic chaos than had existed before. Recently Washington announced that its "permanent" military presence in Haiti, a presence now numbering in the hundreds rather than the thousands, will be replaced by "temporary" missions. Most servicemen, we wager, will view such assignment as punitive rather than career enhancing. Haiti, once trumpeted as a Clinton administration foreign policy success, is seldom referred to in that light today. Floridians and the Coast Guard would be well advised to brace for a renewed wave of starving boat people trying desperately to escape their island hell once the current hurricane season ends. ...."

AFP 9/13/99 "....Hundreds of people were killed in clashes between rival tribes last week in a remote part of northeastern Uganda, aid agencies working in the region confirmed on Monday. An aid agency official, who asked not to be named, confirmed earlier reports that elements of the Bokora tribe attacked a village of the Matheniko ethnic group in northeast Moroto District in fighting which began Wednesday and lasted several days. The official said that at least two hundred men, women and children were killed in the raid in the Karamoja region...."

Strait Times (Singapore) 10/5/99 "....The Sri Lankan authorities are investigating the possibility of Tamil Tiger guerillas having acquired guided missiles to attack government forces in the island's north. Fragments of an exploded device, believed to be an anti-tank guided surface-to-surface missile, had been sent to experts in Europe to determine the weapon type, officials said yesterday. The suspected missile had destroyed an army track armoured personnel carrier in the northern town of Paranthan 10 days ago, they said. Navy patrols have been stepped up in the north-eastern waters amid reports that the guerillas might have arranged for new supplies of weapons and ammunition. ...."

AFP 10/5/99 "...The strong showing by Austria's right-wing Freedom Party in last weekend's polls is "unfortunate" and puts the country "out of step" with its European neighbors, US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said Tuesday. In the most critical comments yet made from the United States on the second-place finish by Joerg Haider's anti-immigration group, Albright told AFP the party's message was inconsistent with the ideals of a multi-ethnic democracy. "I think its unfortunate when a party that is basically delivering the kind of message that that party is delivering has gotten that much support," Albright said in an interview on her arrival here. "The kind of stridency that comes with the Freedom Party puts Austria out of step with the language that comes out of other Western European countries," she said. ...."

Wall Street Journal 10/5/99 Hugh Pope "....The Turkish armed forces are marching on with an ambitious modernization program to bulk up their military machine, and U.S. and European companies are flocking to profit as once-hidebound Turkey turns itself into an assertive military power to be reckoned with in the Balkans and Middle East. Western observers of Turkey's secretive military establishment, noting its increasingly confident use of threats and armed action in regional disputes, predict that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization ally will buy at least half of the equipment ...."

Associated Press 10/11/99 "....Puerto Rico's delegate to Congress has warned Attorney General Janet Reno that any effort to forcibly remove protesters from a military training ground in the U.S. territory would be a ``dangerous'' mistake that could lead to violence. Delegate Carlos Romero Barcelo made the statement in a letter made public Sunday. The letter was sent to Reno last week. ``You must be aware that the situation would rapidly become very confrontational and dangerous if such attempts were to be made,'' Romero Barcelo said in the letter...."

Long Island Newsday 10/10/99 Tina Susman Geoffrey Mahan ".....Soldiers who were themselves children drove fourth-grader Abu Jusu to go to war. Hunched in the bushes, he watched as rebels dragged his mother and father from their home and forced them to lie on their backs in the dirt road, their eyes staring up into the starry night. As other villagers were ordered to crowd around like spectators at a cock fight, the rebels hoisted axes high and slammed them down onto the necks of the chosen couple, sending their heads tumbling toward the terrified onlookers. ....."

The Virginian-Pilot 10/19/99 Dale Eisman "....The Pentagon offered Monday to negotiate an orderly surrender to Puerto Rico of the Navy's training grounds on Vieques Island, suggesting it would provide new economic aid in exchange for an agreement to permit the service to continue using the island's bombing range for up to five more years. But First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, bidding for the support of New York's sizable bloc of Latino voters in her budding quest for the U.S. Senate, urged ``an immediate and permanent end to the bombing.''....."

Christian Science Monitor 10/22/99 Steven Dudley ".... In Washington, debate over the narco-guerrilla menace in Colombia and the threat to its neighbors is swirling through Congress. In its $1.3 billion three-year proposed aid package for this Andean nation unveiled on Wednesday, the Republicans called the countries bordering Colombia "front-line states." "Rebels have infiltrated South American border countries and even southern Panama - a mere 250 miles from the United States border," said Sen. Mike DeWine (R) of Ohio....."

The Cato Institute 10/21/99 Doug Bandow ".... On the day that President Bill Clinton vetoed the $12.6 billion foreign aid bill for being too stingy, the body of former Tanzanian dictator Julius Nyerere was returned to his nation's capital of Dar es Salaam for burial. Nyerere's death should signal the death of foreign assistance as well. Nyerere was representative of the "big men" who emerged in Africa through decolonization.. ......Along the way, the West showered billions of dollars on Tanzania $6.4 billion through 1985 alone. The United States alone contributed $352.5 million through 1985. The World Bank, demonstrating that it lacked both a conscience and common sense, directly underwrote his brutal ujamaa scheme. The result of such hubris that a powerful elite should forcibly organize the lives of millions of people was, not surprisingly, a disaster..... By the mid-1990s, the World Bank ranked Tanzania as the third poorest country on the globe. Between 1980 and 1992, its economy grew not at all. It will be years before Tanzania's people recover from his mistakes and from the Western "aid" that allowed Nyerere to turn his philosophical fantasies into Tanzania's economic practices. Alas, Tanzania is not alone. As of 1996, 70 poor countries were worse off than in 1980; 43 were poorer than they had been in 1970. All had received generous doses of so-called assistance. The pervasive corruption now evident in Russia and Bosnia is problem enough. Much aid simply disappears, as has much of the $5.1 billion so far given to Bosnia, and more than $20 billion provided by the International Monetary Fund to Russia. In fact, the flood of Western cash has actually stoked the fires of corruption......"

The Heritage Foundation: Exceutive Memorandum 10/22/99 Brett Schaefer Denise Froning ".....During a meeting of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank in late September, President Bill Clinton announced that he would ask Congress to pass legislation forgiving the debt that 36 extremely poor countries owe to the United States. This $5.7 billion debt is primarily the product of decades of failed foreign assistance. The Administration also requested $1 billion in fiscal year 2000 to fund his proposal........Unfortunately, although the President's proposal represents a positive step in addressing a serious problem, it will not solve poor countries' debt problems for three reasons: First, the IMF and the World Bank refuse to forgive debt. Instead, they have offered to restructure the debt that the poor countries owe them, which at nearly 30 percent of the total debt owed in 1995, is substantial........Second, nothing in the G-7, HIPC, or the President's initiatives will prevent the recurrence of unsustainable poor country debt.......Third, Clinton's notion of fostering poor country development by conditioning debt forgiveness on increased social spending is flawed. Proponents argue that, in exchange for forgiveness, poor countries must spend the funds they would otherwise use for repaying their debt on such programs as education, health, and other social initiatives. This requirement stems from the premise that government programs, if sufficiently funded, foster development. This notion is false. Many studies, including The Heritage Foundation's Index of Economic Freedom, show that the single greatest determinant of future economic growth is a freer market--not the amount that governments spend on programs. Developing countries must adopt free-market reforms in order to grow....."

Reuters,via News Plus 10/24/99 David Storey ".....A series of foreign policy failures for President Bill Clinton have crystallised concern around the world about America's credibility and authority in the waning days of the 20th century. The perception of a superpower in confusion has been enhanced by an acrimonious debate on America's role, with Clinton branding conservative Republicans who control Congress as ``isolationists'' and Senators accusing him of pursuing ``failed policies.'' ...... Analysts in Washington lay much of the blame on Clinton, a consummate politician who signalled his top priority when he campaigned for his 1992 election under the informal slogan: ``It's the economy, stupid.'' ...... He has presided over an economic boom, but has been widely criticised by analysts and diplomats for showing only a sporadic, crisis-driven attention to foreign affairs at a time when a more conceptual, consistent approach was badly needed...."

Associated Press 10/30/99 "….Puerto Rican pop star Ricky Martin has a message for President Clinton: stop bombing runs on the territory's island of Vieques. "Puerto Rico is united in this cause and I'm part of it," Martin said in Friday's El Mundo newspaper. The Livin' La Vida Loca singer has a tentative meeting scheduled next week with Clinton when he is in Washington for a benefit concert….."

AP 10/28/99 "….Over 100,000 Muslims in Nigeria's northern Zamfara state attended a mass celebration marking the state's historic adoption of Islamic law. The outdoor ceremony, held Wednesday in the state capital of Gusau, ushers in sharia - fundamentalist Islamic law - for the first time in a Nigerian state. The new measures, put in place by Zamfara's Governor Ahmed Sani, included segregating men and women on public transport throughout the state...."

Village Voice 11/3-9/99 Mark Schoofs "…As the death toll from AIDS recedes in America, Africa is reeling from an epidemic of Biblical proportions. South of the Sahara, AIDS is worse than anywhere else in the world, and this catastrophe is transforming the continent forever……In this pandemic, no nation is an island. AIDS has already fueled a global resurgence of tuberculosis, and by weakening the body's ability to fend off pathogens, HIV gives new and emerging microbes a golden opportunity to adapt to the human species. AIDS has not yet run its course. …."

AGENCE FRANCE PRESSE 11/4/99 "….The rights group Amnesty International said Thursday that Colombian right-wing paramilitary groups responsible for massacres of civilians have acted with the complicity of certain sectors of the military. Amnesty's regional director for Latin America, Javier Zuniga, told a press conference that in certain regions of Colombia there is so little attempt to hide the complicity that football matches have reportedly been organised between paramilitaries and the military. An Amnesty researcher for Colombia, Susan Lee, told AFP that the paramilitary groups are "without doubt responsible for the worst human rights violations in Colombia." Paramilitary groups were responsible for around 70 percent of massacres reported this year in Colombia, which total 290 separate incidents, she said….."

BBC 11/7/99 "…..Sri Lankan army changes top brass Morale is flagging among the Sri Lankan troops By Susannah Price in Colombo Major changes have been made in the highest levels of the Sri Lankan military following a series of demoralising defeats by Tamil Tiger separatists in the north-east. Among those being replaced are the commander of the Vanni area, where fighting is continuing, and his colleague in the northern Jaffna peninsula.. ..."

Rueters via FoxNews.com ".....The United States has told Greece that planned demonstrations outside the U.S. embassy during a two-day visit by President Clinton at the weekend could damage bilateral ties, the Greek government said on Tuesday. "(U.S. ambassador in Athens Nicholas) Burns is voicing his concern that the protests may cast a cloud over the visit or even damage U.S.-Greek relations,'' government spokesman Dimitris Reppas told reporters. The Greek Communist Party and various leftist unions and organizations have called for daily mass protests against Clinton's visit and the government has snubbed U.S. requests to stop the protesters from reaching the U.S. embassy building......"

World Tribune 11/9/99 ".....Egypt's government-owned press has now raised the possibility that EgyptAir Flight 990 was downed in an attack meant to stop the training of Egyptian airmen in the United States. The government Al Akhbar daily said the presence of 33 Egyptian officers on board the doomed flight on Oct. 31 has raised suspicion of foul play. "Sabotage is thus highly possible," the newspaper said on Sunday. Egyptian military sources said the officers were training to fly the Apache AH-64D helicopter. The officers in the crash included a brigadier general....."

BBC Front Page (Online) 11/7/99 "….. Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe has accused the British government of setting "gay gangsters" on him over his controversial land reforms. In an interview with Zimbabwe's official newspaper, the Sunday Mail, Mr Mugabe said the Labour government was behind gay activists who ambushed his car outside a London hotel on 30 October. The incident took place just outside the UK's intelligence headquarters and was witnessed by television crews. 'Gangster tactics' The 75-year-old leader said Prime Minister Tony Blair's administration was using "gangster tactics", saying each time he passed through London there were people trailing him...."

BBC 11/8/99 "…. Two American targets have been attacked in Athens in the run-up to a visit to Greece by US President Bill Clinton. A bomb exploded outside the office of the American jeans company, Levi Strauss, in the northern Halandri area of the capital. The time bomb blew out windows and damaged cars parked near the building, but caused no injuries. Reports said a group calling itself Anti-Capitalist Action issued a deliberately misleading warning message just moment before the blast...."

The Washington Post 11/6/99 Colum Lynch "…..-When the United States intervened in Haiti in September 1994, ending a military dictatorship, American GIs seized 60,000 documents from the headquarters of the Haitian army and the regime's notorious paramilitary organization, FRAPH. Five years later, most of those papers remain warehoused in the basement of the U.S. Embassy in Port-au-Prince, prompting charges from human rights activists and U.N. officials that Washington is delaying justice for former Haitian leaders...."

AP 11/14/99 "….A U.S. team is probing health records of the pilot and co-pilot of crashed EgyptAir Flight 990, despite the airline's assertion that both men were in good physical and mental condition, officials said Sunday. The probe came amid angry remarks from EgyptAir officials that U.S. investigators should concentrate on the possibility that the plane might have been downed by something other than pilot error. ``They were among our best pilots,'' said Hassan Misharfa, EgyptAir head of operations. ``They had long experience and, in addition to that, they had passed all professional, safety and psychological tests successfully.'' EgyptAir officials said the U.S. team, which includes security experts and investigators from Boeing and the National Transportation Safety Board, is checking the health and flying records of pilot Ahmed el-Habashy and co-pilot Adel Anwar as well as their backgrounds….."

THE WASHINGTON TIMES 12/2/99 Tom Carter "….Growing pressure for an indictment seeking the arrest of Fidel Castro when he next sets foot on U.S. soil helped persuade the Cuban president not to attend this week's World Trade Organization meeting in Seattle. The State Department pointed out the risk last week to a senior Cuban diplomat, Mr. Castro said in a letter Monday explaining his reasons for not attending the trade summit. ….."

Fox News 11/19/99 AP "….The Greek capital erupted in violence on Friday after police fired dozens of rounds of tear gas to break up a mass protest against the arrival of President Clinton. Banks and shops throughout the main commercial area were smashed and fires set across central Athens as Air Force One touched down, bringing the president, his wife and daughter for a stopover of under 24 hours. Clinton, who scrapped plans for a more elaborate visit last weekend in the face of protests, said he had come to Greece as a friend. ….."

AP 11/20/99 "….President Clinton said today the United States was wrong to back the military junta which took control in Greece in 1967 - an action at the core of festering anti-U.S. sentiments that erupted anew in violent protests during his visit. In an address to business leaders here, Clinton said it is time for the United States to admit it erred 30 years ago by allowing Cold War strategy to outweigh concern for Greece's democratic government...."

AP Breaking News 11/28/99 "….Two journalists covering a local election in a war-torn northeastern region of Colombia were shot in the head and killed Sunday a police spokesman said. The bodies of cameraman Luis Alberto Rincon and reporter Alberto Sanchez, were left lying in a road near the town of El Playon, 200 miles northeast of Bogota. The two journalists, who worked for local television stations, were covering elections to replace the mayor of El Playon, who was killed by gunmen in September along with his secretary and a bodyguard. No group has claimed responsibility for the attack, but police say that various leftist rebel factions and right-wing paramilitary militias operate in the region……"

AP 11/23/99 "….The United Nations is preparing to shut down its civilian police mission in Haiti and replace it with a broader new program to help the country rebuild its fragile democracy and encourage longer-term international support. The transition comes at a delicate time for Haiti, which has scheduled legislative elections for March that many hope will end more than two years of political crisis. It also comes as the United States is preparing to withdraw its own 450 full-time troops in Haiti..."

Strafor 12/6/99 "…..A couple of weeks ago, Stratfor forecast that Philippine President Joseph Estrada might not finish out his term. This week, the forecast was reported in the Philippines and stirred a huge controversy: Estrada accused Stratfor of being allied with his enemies, the Filipino stock market dipped and politicians debated whether or not Estrada should go. Ultimately, our analysis was quite correct and we stand by it. But the Filipino debate gives us cause to examine our role in disseminating intelligence on the Internet. Normally, Stratfor doesn't talk about Stratfor; this week, we will….."

National Post (Canada) 12/6/99 Steven Edwards "…..Madeleine Albright, the U.S. secretary of state, has refused to appear before a United Nations-mandated independent inquiry probing why the world body failed to prevent the genocide in Rwanda in 1994, the National Post has learned. Ms. Albright was the U.S. ambassador to the UN at the time of the genocide and can provide key information about high-level decisions that led the U.S. to call on the UN Security Council to dramatically reduce the number of UN peacekeepers in Rwanda shortly after the killing began in earnest in April. ….. However, she and members of her senior staff, including Susan Rice, U.S. assistant secretary of state for Africa both at the time of the genocide and now, have declined invitations from Ingvar Carlsson, a former Swedish prime minister who is chairing the inquiry, to meet with him and his two fellow panelists when they visit Washington this week….."

The Wall Street Journal 12/13/99 Review & Outlook "…. Look who's discovered family values. Ever since six-year-old Elian Gonzalez washed up on the Florida coast on Thanksgiving Day, Fidel Castro has been leading mass demonstrations in Havana thumping for the boy's return on the grounds that a child should be with his father. Of course, Fidel knows firsthand the pain of family separation. His own daughter, Alina Fernandez, escaped from Cuba in 1983 and has been a thorn in her father's revolution ever since…..But effective. When little Elian was first fished out of the waters off Fort Lauderdale clinging to a rubber tube he'd held onto even after watching his mother and stepfather drown, the Immigration and Naturalization Service released him to uncles of his father in Miami. The family and their lawyer say the INS told them Elian would be paroled, which under U.S. law would make him eligible for permanent U.S. residence in a year. And an INS press release earlier this month agreed the case would be decided by a family court in Florida. But on Thursday, Deputy Attorney General Eric Holder held a press conference saying that the INS had made a "mistake." The Justice Department would decide Elian's fate. In our book these days, that's automatically a red flag. The boy's lawyers have responded by filing for political asylum. ….."

Atlanta Journal-Constitution 12/9/99 Rebecca Carr "….. Peacekeepers fled, some families say, and Rep. Cynthia McKinney wants to know why and what can be done to avert future genocide. On the morning of April 7, 1994, Hutu soldiers burst into the home of Rwanda's minister of labor and killed him. They herded his wife and children onto his bed and shot them, too. The killings of Landoald Ndasingwa and his family happened while they were under the protection of U.N. peacekeeping guards, and Rep. Cynthia McKinney (D-Ga.) believes they could have been prevented had the United Nations heeded warnings of the impending assassination. ….."

Washington Post 12/10/99 Al Kamen "…..The details are a bit sketchy. None of the principals want to talk about it. But feathers were ruffled at the White House last week over U.N. Ambassador Richard C. Holbrooke's 12-day swing through Africa. No one thinks the Nov. 30 trip--to decidedly unhappy, impoverished, war-torn or AIDS-ridden places such as Mali, Uganda, Rwanda and Angola--was a junket. Far from it. What miffed senior White House types was that Holbrooke announced the trip on Nov. 23 and then, since his U.N. budget isn't adequate, wanted someone to pick up the tab for an Air Force plane. White House folks say Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright wouldn't cough up the authorization. But if the White House were to pay, the trip would have to be declared an official presidential mission. National security adviser Samuel R. "Sandy" Berger had just approved Holbrooke's trip to East Timor. With Holbrooke's prior public announcement, Berger was left with no option but to approve this one….."

The Union-Leader 12/14/99 Robert Novak "…. BILL CLINTON, NEARING THE END of a press conference, was not feeling the pain of Elian Gonzalez when asked about the fate of the 6-year-old Cuban. The normally voluble President was brusque and cryptic in saying, "there is a legal process for determining . . . what would be best for the child." But what legal process? The answer came coldly at Deputy Atty. Gen. Eric Holder's press conference. He made clear the case would go neither to federal court nor Florida State court. "I would expect that the final decision will be made within the INS (Immigration and Naturalization Service)." The translation: Elian, say goodbye to the freedom of Florida and hello to the oppression of Cuba. ….Government lawyers claimed to have found a legal technicality to keep the Cuban boy's fate away from unpredictable judges. Because Elian, in dire physical condition, was taken straight to a hospital when he arrived in Miami, he was not formally paroled. That consigns him to the INS, which asks but two questions. Is Juan Miguel Gonzalez in Cuba really his father? Does he have a good relationship with Elian? The answer, of course, will be yes, and the boy is gone, lacking effective legal intervention…..Holder was fulfilling the President's wishes. Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart of Florida, the leading Cuban-American Republican politician, interpreted it this way: "Clinton has agreed to (Cuban President Fidel) Castro's demands that Janet Reno (in other words, Clinton himself in appeasement of Castro) make this decision."……"

New York Times 1/6/00 Neil Lewis "….The Clinton administration, hoping to end a deeply emotional diplomatic and political battle over the fate of Elián González, ruled today that the 6-year-old boy should be sent back to Cuba to live with his father. "This little boy, who has been through so much, belongs with his father," said Doris Meissner, the commissioner of the Immigration and Naturalization Service. But officials said the decision was made with full awareness that a ruling that would keep the boy in the United States could worsen Washington's relations with Havana at a time when the administration is attempting to increase contacts with Cuba….."

arabicnews.com 1/4/00 "….Egyptian Minister of Oil and Mineral Resources Sameh Fahmi on Monday announced an unprecedented oil discovery in the Mediterranean that will help raise Egypt's oil reserves from 3.7 to 8.2 billion barrels. The Egyptian minister added that the three international oil companies in the Mediterranean also discovered at the same site fields natural gas. The natural gas reserves also rose to 120 trillion cubic feet from 36.5 trillion cubic feet. These reserves will guarantee Egypt's reserves to 100 years from natural gas, and 25 years from crude oil, an official statement said...."

South African Daily Mail & Guardian 1/4/00 "….AN ESTIMATED 128 000, or 20% of some 640 000 teenagers in Kenya's secondary schools, are infected with the HIV virus, Education Minister Kalonzo Musyoka said on Thursday. Most secondary school pupils in Kenya are aged between 14 and 17. President Daniel arap Moi last November declared Aids, which kills an estimated 500 Kenyans every day, a national disaster, but declined to advocate condom use to fight the epidemic. Between 13 and 14 percent of all adults in Kenya, about 1,9-million people, are infected with HIV, according the health ministry…."

Reuters 12/28/99 "…..Cuba, the target of U.S.-funded radio and TV programs hostile to its one-party political system, is retransmitting Chinese radio programs to the American continent, Communications Minister Silvano Colas said Tuesday. Colas told Cuban journalists that two transmitters on the island nation were broadcasting eight hours of Radio China International programming each day. The programs -- in Chinese, Spanish, Portuguese and English -- are captured by satellite and rebroadcast via short wave, the Cuban news agency Prensa Latina quoted Colas as saying. Colas said no other communication facility on the island was linked to Chinese government interests….."

South African Daily Mail & Guardian 1/9/00 "…..LISTENERS of the pan-African radio station Africa No 1 have voted Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi the most notable African of 1999, the station announced on Saturday. He beat out former South African president Nelson Mandela. The station said 35 million listeners voted for either Gaddafi or Mandela, but did not specify how big the gap was between the two…."

Washington Post 1/8/00 Yemane Asmerom "….It is time for the international community, and especially the United States, to compel Ethiopia to accept the only rational and humane option on the table: the peaceful resolution of the problem through international law. Up to this point Ethiopia has acted with impunity, for example, in deporting more than 60,000 people of Eritrean origin and confiscating their properties and refusing pleas for peace from the international community…." V Shumet Sisagne "…But in 1991, Eritrean insurgents were allowed to secede from Ethiopia through a deal brokered by the United States. The two communities that were tied together by so many threads were made to separate in order to punish Ethiopia for flirting with the Soviet Union in the post-Haile Selassie period. The separation of Eritrea made Ethiopia landlocked, consigning it to poverty and dependence…. U.S. interests cannot be served by undermining Ethiopia's viability and alienating 60 million Ethiopians…."

New York Times 12/28/99 Barbara Crossette "….In the waning days of this fall's General Assembly session, a majority of nations, united by concerns about terrorism, voted to establish an international agreement to stop the flow of money to terrorist organizations. The agreement, the International Convention for the Suppression of the Financing of Terrorism, is intended to encourage nations to monitor closely the collection or deposit of funds in banks by foreign organizations that may be using the money to buy arms or to support in other ways terrorists in another country…… While many nations, large and small, welcomed the growing international determination to cut off sources of income for terrorist groups, the convention may be of most immediate help to Sri Lanka, where a violent Tamil separatist movement against an ethnic Sinhalese government has been sustained almost entirely by money raised in ethnic Tamil communities in Canada, the United States, India and Southeast Asia, diplomats and Sri Lankan officials say……

Associated Press 1/8/00 "…..Components of Scud missiles capable of carrying chemical or biological warheads were illegally smuggled into Britain and seized before their shipment to Libya, a British customs official said Saturday. A Customs and Excise official said crates carrying the missile components were found at Gatwick Airport, south of London, and were bound for Tripoli…….. According to The Sunday Times newspaper, 32 crates of missile parts were discovered Nov. 24 in an airport transit shed during a joint investigation by customs and intelligence officers. The parts included components of the jet propulsion system for Scuds with a range of up to 600 miles, the report said. Paperwork seized along with the crates indicated the shipment originated in Taiwan and that other crates had already reached Libya, the newspaper said. ….."

The Sunday Times (UK) 1/9/00 Nicholas Rufford "…..Thirty-two crates of missile parts, disguised as automotive spares, were discovered when they arrived on a British Airways flight at Gatwick bound for Tripoli via Malta. Paperwork seized with the equipment indicated other consignments had already reached Libya through Britain….. Cook endorsed the lifting of trade sanctions and the renewal of commercial flights after assurances from Colonel Muammar Gadaffi, the Libyan leader, that he had renounced terrorism and military aggression. He also handed over two Libyans suspected of bombing Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie in Scotland……. A bigger punch: the missile parts smuggled through Britain give Gadaffi's existing Scuds a greater tactical reach…… It was sent to Britain from Taiwan in the name of a knitwear company called Hontex. When The Sunday Times telephoned the offices of Hontex in Yung Kang City, Taiwan, a recorded message in Mandarin said its number was no longer in service. A senior Whitehall official said the shipment was part of Libya's programme to develop a long-range Scud called "Al-Fatah", meaning "victory by holy war". "Gadaffi is trying to substantially increase his firepower," he said. ……"

New York Times 12/17/99 Barbara Crossette "….A strongly worded report issued today by an international panel of experts holds both the United Nations and leading member countries, primarily the United States, responsible for failing to prevent or end the genocide in Rwanda in 1994, which cost hundreds of thousands of lives. The report, commissioned by Secretary General Kofi Annan, who was then head of the peacekeeping department, spares no one, naming those in the highest reaches of the United Nations who were running the operation in Rwanda, including Mr. Annan and his predecessor, Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali. Mr. Annan and others in his department made weak and equivocal decisions in the face of mounting disaster, the panel found. At the same time the Clinton administration -- represented at the United Nations by Madeleine K. Albright -- persistently played down the problem, setting the tone for a Security Council generally lacking the political will for a tougher response. …."

The Sydney Morning Herald 1/10/00 Pamela Bona "….Two Australian lawyers are driving the world's first lawsuit against the United Nations, accusing it of genocide. The prominent human rights lawyer Mr Geoffrey Robertson and Mr Michael Hourigan, a former South Australian crown prosecutor, are acting for two Rwandan women whose families were murdered by Hutu militants during the 1994 genocide. The women claim the UN soldiers whose task it was to defend their families either handed them over to their killers or ran away…… Mr Hourigan also has previously secret documents which allegedly show the UN had warning the genocide, in which as many as a million people were slaughtered within 100 days, was taking place….."

Associated Press 1/23/2000 "….Vandals sacked election offices