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Voice of America, 99-09-20Voice of America: Selected Articles Directory - Previous Article - Next ArticleFrom: The Voice of America <gopher://gopher.voa.gov>CONTENTS
[01] KOSOVO / DELAY (L) BY TIM BELAY (PRISTINA)DATE=9/20/1999TYPE=CORRESPONDENT REPORT NUMBER=2-254094 CONTENT= VOICED AT: INTRO: NATO Supreme Commander Wesley Clark has flown to Kosovo and is trying to persuade the Kosovo Liberation Army (K-L-A) to disband. Tim Belay reports from Kosovo's capital, Pristina, that General Clark's arrival follows an all-night negotiating meeting between the K-L-A and leaders of the Kosovo peacekeeping mission. TEXT: General Clark flew to the Kosovo capital after K-L-A leaders would NOT sign an agreement accepting NATO's proposed five-thousand member civilian guard, called the Kosovo Corps. The rebel army opposes NATO plans to allow only 200 members of the Kosovo Corps to carry weapons. The K- L-A says it wants twice that number carrying arms. A spokesman for NATO-led peacekeepers in Kosovo, Roland Lavoie, says there also is disagreement about when and where it would be appropriate for members of the Kosovo Corps to carry the weapons. /// LAVOIE ACT ONE ////// END ACT ////// LAVOIE ACT TWO ////// END ACT ///NEB/TB/JWH/JP 20-Sep-1999 14:33 PM EDT (20-Sep-1999 1833 UTC) NNNN Source: Voice of America [02] YUGOSLAV OPPOSITION (L ONLY) (CQ) BY PAMELA TAYLOR (WASHINGTON)DATE=9/20/1999TYPE=CORRESPONDENT REPORT NUMBER=2-254101 INTERNET=YES CONTENT= VOICED AT: INTRO: A top Serbian opposition leader -- Zoran Djindjic (GIN-jitch) -- says daily street protests are the only way to bring about the resignation of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic. Mr. Djindjic told V-O-A mass protests are planned for 30 to 40 cities and towns throughout Serbia for the next several weeks (beginning Tuesday). V-O-A's Pamela Taylor reports: TEXT: Despite the failure of massive street protests to bring down the government of President Slobodan Milosevic in 1997, Zoran Djindjic believes they must resume. Mr. Djindjic disagrees with rival opposition leader, Vuk Draskovic, of the Serbian Renewal Party, that elections are a better way. /// ACT ONE - DJINDJIC ////// END ACT ////// ACT TWO - DJINDJIC ///// END ACT //// OPT //// ACT THREE - DJINDJIC //// END ACT //// END OPT //NNNN Source: Voice of America [03] BALKAN RECONSTRUCTION (L-ONLY) BY BARRY WOOD (WASHINGTON)DATE=9/20/1999TYPE=CORRESPONDENT REPORT NUMBER=2-254096 INTERNET=YES CONTENT= VOICED AT: INTRO: A conference on reconstruction in the Balkans (sponsored by Equity International) took place in Washington Monday. V-O-A's Barry Wood reports that some Kosovo Albanians say aid money could be used more effectively to reactivate factories and put people to work. TEXT: The European Union has committed one billion dollars to rebuilding Kosovo. But so, most of that money has been used for humanitarian assistance. Aslam Aziz is the development assistance specialist at the European Union embassy in Washington. Mr. Aziz says it is hard to commit money when it is unclear who owns what. He says since Kosovo is still technically part of Yugoslavia, aid agencies have to move with caution. // AZIZ ACT //// END ACT //// SHALA ACT //// END ACT //// TUPURKOVSKI ACT //// END ACT //NEB/BDW/TVM/JP 20-Sep-1999 16:12 PM EDT (20-Sep-1999 2012 UTC) NNNN Source: Voice of America [04] N-Y ECON WRAP (S & L) BY BRECK ARDERY (NEW YORK)DATE=9/20/1999TYPE=CORRESPONDENT REPORT NUMBER=2-254102 CONTENT= VOICED AT: INTRO: Stock prices in the United States were up today (Monday) in lackluster trading. VOA Business Correspondent Breck Ardery reports from New York. TEXT: The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed at 10- thousand-823, up 20 points. The Standard and Poor's 500 index closed at 13-hundred-35, up a fraction of one point. The NASDAQ index gained more than one-half percent, reflecting strength in technology stocks. Ed Lavarnway of the First Albany investment firm says concerns about Year 2000 computer problems, or Y-2K, are actually helping many technology stocks. ///Lavarnway act//////end act//////Rest opt///NNNN Source: Voice of America [05] MONDAY'S EDITORIALS BY ANDREW GUTHRIE (WASHINGTON)DATE=9/20/1999TYPE=U-S EDITORIAL DIGEST NUMBER=6-11477 EDITOR=ASSIGNMENTS TELEPHONE=619-3335 CONTENT= INTRO: Comments about the latest mass killing in the United States and the corruption and terrorist bombings in Russia are among the day's most popular editorial topics. There are also comments on the Mideast peace efforts; the debate on paying the U-S debt to the United Nations; the United Nations moves peacekeepers into East Timor; and the huge clean-up and continuing problems caused, along the Southeastern seaboard by Hurricane Floyd. Now, here with a closer look including some excerpts is ___________ and today's editorial digest. TEXT: The nation continues to grieve over the murder last week of seven people at a Forth Worth, Texas, church service. In Northern New Jersey, The Record says: VOICE: America's latest mass shooting ... was eclipsed last week by Hurricane Floyd. That's too bad, because right now Congress is wrestling with gun control and could have used the pressure of public outrage to do something substantive. ... This month, a House-Senate conference is trying to resolve differences in two versions of a juvenile crime bill. The Senate version includes significant gun-control provisions that would require background checks at gun shows. The House version has no gun-control provision, and opponents are hoping to keep it that way in the final measure. TEXT: Boston's Christian Science Monitor points out that a wave of mass killings is a relatively new phenomenon, while guns have been around for a much longer time. VOICE: America once again finds itself soul-searching after the murder[s] . in . Texas. In Washington, the cry quickly went up for more gun control, specifically provisions passed by the senate. While we'd like to see those provisions become law, we also know anything short of a full ban on guns would not have prevented this tragedy. . Such crimes began occurring regularly in the mid-1960s and since the mid-`70s have averaged two per month. Guns have been around a lot longer than that. TEXT: Trouble in Russia continues to occupy many editorial columns. In Florida, The St. Petersburg Times focuses on the reports of corruption, noting: VOICE: Boris Yeltsin called President Clinton the other day to tell him he didn't need to pay any attention to those nasty rumors of rampant corruption within [Mr.] Yeltsin's inner circle. Thanks for the call, Boris. But the evidence of widespread corruption - official thievery on a scale that threatens the political and economic reforms that are crucial to Russia's future - cannot. TEXT: Today's New York Times, focusing on the wave of terrorist bombings, criticizes the response of the Russian police, who are arresting people merely on their looks. VOICE: The fear and anger in Russia are understandable. Terrorism has struck people in their homes, with bombs exploding in Moscow and . the south.... Government officials, including President Boris Yeltsin, have spoken admirably about the need to find these terrorists without turning a crucial search into a racist crusade. . Yet among the alarming reports coming out of Moscow in the past few days are stories of police officers conducting the wholesale roundup of those who look as if they come from the Caucasus region of the country. .. The bombing deaths of so many innocent Russians are a terrible tragedy that can only be made worse by any overreaction that tampers with Russia's democratic progress. TEXT: A comment by The New York Times. Today's Washington Post is pleased with recent developments in the Middle East, where peacemaking is underway. VOICE: The quiet you hear . is the sound of Israeli and Palestinian negotiators embarking on their third attempt - the first two fizzled - to initiate talks on a final settlement. The six years of sound and fury they just have completed were devoted to negotiating limited self-rule for Palestinians and matching security measures for Israel in the West Bank and Gaza. .. [However] it is hard to imagine that issues encrusted by a century of conflict between Israelis and Palestinians can be taken down by the negotiators in only a year's time - a pace dictated in some measure by the American political calendar./// OPT /// TEXT: The Washington Post on the progress of the peace talks in the Mideast. Now to the failure of this country to pay its U-N dues, something approaching a billion dollars, and these thoughts from The Philadelphia Inquirer. VOICE: Washington tries, on one hand, to [direct the debate] in U-N councils, while, on the other, refusing to pay its obligations. The United States already has been voted off a key financial committee. Unless at least 350-million dollars is paid by December 31st, the world's sole superpower could face the embarrassing loss of its General Assembly vote. The failure to pay is absurd. TEXT: While that debate goes on, the U-N is busy spending more money sending a peacekeeping force, led by Australia, to East Timor, to restore order there in the wake of violence and widespread killing after the pro-Independence vote last month. Today's Wall Street Journal says of the effort: VOICE: [There is] . a fatal flaw in most such U-N missions: they get their priorities backward. Holding a vote is easy. Making it stick is the hard part. Thus 75-hundred peacekeepers are to be sent into a province where as many as 300-thousand Timorese have already been made homeless, where there is a well- armed pro-Indonesian faction and where, truth to tell, some Timorese leaders are not exactly the sainted democrats they would have the world believe. We wish the men in the blue helmets luck. But we can't help thinking it might never have come to this had some brutal interests been taken into account earlier. . such efforts require there be a clear definition of victory and [that]they be fought by someone who has a stake in relaxing it. TEXT: The Wall Street Journal on U-N peacekeeping ventures. ///OPT ///TEXT: There is a comment in today's St. Paul [Minnesota] Pioneer Press on the fight against AIDS in Africa from Abbe Maine, director of a Zambian news agency in Lusaka. Africa will enter the new millennium heavily burdened by the scourge of HIV/AIDS but with hope and optimism that the disease will be reduced to manageable levels. At Thursday's close of the 11th International Conference on AIDS and STDs [shorthand for sexually transmitted diseases] in Africa, the conference chair, Zambian Health Minister Nkandu Luo struck an optimistic tone: "Let us adopt a positive culture and re-focus our attention," she urged . one of the worst tragedies of Africa is that we get ashamed of our traditional heritage and culture, she told reporters. "We have very good cultures that we can bank on as we fight the scourge." TEXT: In Nebraska, The Omaha World-Herald takes on the difficult question of what to do with a just revealed Soviet spy in Britain, who is an 87-year-old retired government worker. The World-Herald asks of the British: VOICE: How, in a hypothetical case, would Britain treat an 87-year-old woman who had slipped Hitler information to help him fight the Battle of Britain? If a difference exists, what is it? This is not to say that Melita Norwood ought to be prosecuted. Perhaps she should. Perhaps not. .the fact that there's even a debate illustrates the difficulty that some people find in looking Stalinism in the eye. And that fact, to anyone who hopes that history will accurately record the reasons for the Cold War, can hardly be encouraging. /// END OPT ///TEXT: Lastly, some comments on Hurricane Floyd and the debate over whether a massive evacuation of the Southeast was really needed. VOICE: . affluence breeds a contemptuous forgetfulness. Whenever an anticipated catastrophe fails to materialize, complaints about cost and inconvenience begin. So it went . with Hurricane Floyd. And when Floyd was milder than expected, the carping began. "This is a joke," said a resident of Long Island, New York. "I didn't even take in my furniture." .. Depends on where you were. In North Carolina, at least 20 people died. Crop and livestock losses are in the hundreds of millions, and Floyd- related flood waters were still rising Sunday. If a few false alarms cause us to underestimate even one such future storm, we will have squandered more than money. TEXT: On that note, we conclude this sampling of
editorial opinion from Monday's U-S press.
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