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Voice of America, 00-05-08Voice of America: Selected Articles Directory - Previous Article - Next ArticleFrom: The Voice of America <gopher://gopher.voa.gov>CONTENTS
[01] E-U / MONTENEGRO (L ONLY) BY RON PEMSTEIN (BRUSSELS)DATE=5/8/2000TYPE=CORRESPONDENT REPORT NUMBER=2-262099 CONTENT= VOICED AT: INTRO: European Union finance ministers have agreed to help the embattled Yugoslav republic of Montenegro with financial assistance before the republic's local elections in June. V-O-A Correspondent Ron Pemstein reports from Brussels. TEXT: Montenegro cooperates with western institutions. That is why the European Union wants to assist the government of President Milo Djukanovic ahead of local elections scheduled in June. The problem is that Montenegro is the smaller of Yugoslavia's two republics. The larger, Serbia, rejects conditions for cooperation with Western Europe and the United States. This prevents the World Bank and European financial institutions, such as the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, from giving loans directly to Montenegro because it is a Yugoslav republic, not a separate country. To avoid these restrictions, European Union finance ministers have agreed to fund 20-million dollars worth of projects that help President Djukanovic's government. /// OPT ////// SOLANA ACT ////// END ACT ///NEB/RDP/JWH/KBK 08-May-2000 11:36 AM EDT (08-May-2000 1536 UTC) NNNN Source: Voice of America [02] E-U / PHILIPPINES (L-ONLY) BY RON PEMSTEIN (BRUSSELS)DATE=5/8/2000TYPE=CORRESPONDENT REPORT NUMBER=2-262096 CONTENT= VOICED AT: /// Eds: re-running with correct number ///INTRO: The European Union's foreign policy chief Javier Solana is flying to the Philippines to discuss ways to free European hostages being held by Muslim rebels. Ron Pemstein reports from Brussels, Mr. Solana says he does not plan to become a mediator. TEXT: The Philippine Government has been concerned about suggestions that ambassadors from the captives' nations be involved in the negotiations for their freedom. The European Union is sending its foreign policy chief, Javier Solana, to Manila for talks with Philippine leaders. Before leaving Brussels, Mr. Solana told reporters he does not plan to mediate with the rebels. ///Solana Act//////End Act//////Solana Act//////End Act////// opt ///NEB/RP/GE/KBK 08-May-2000 10:43 AM EDT (08-May-2000 1443 UTC) NNNN Source: Voice of America [03] NY ECON WRAP (S&L) BY ELAINE JOHANSON (NEW YORK)DATE=5/8/2000TYPE=CORRESPONDENT REPORT NUMBER=2-262117 CONTENT= VOICED AT: INTRO: U-S stock prices were mixed today (Monday), as new concerns over valuations fueled a big sell-off in technology shares. The trading volume was the lightest this year, as many investors remain cautious. VOA correspondent Elaine Johanson reports from New York. TEXT: The Dow Jones Industrial Average went up 25 points to 10-thousand-603, a fractional gain. The Standard and Poor's 500 index closed eight points lower, while the technology-weighted Nasdaq composite dropped almost four percent. A big part of Nasdaq's problem was Cisco - the leading maker of computer networking equipment. A key financial newspaper (Barron's) raised questions about the stock's high valuation. Cisco trades about 130 times its projected earnings for the year - much of that due to the company's aggressive acquisitions policy. Cisco shares sank seven percent. Analysts say the stock market is also especially sensitive, in advance of the expected increase in interest rates next week. ///REST OPT//////KATZ ACT//////END ACT///NNNN Source: Voice of America [04] MONDAY'S EDITORIALS BY ANDREW GUTHRIE (WASHINGTON)DATE=5/8/2000TYPE=U-S EDITORIAL DIGEST NUMBER=6-11808 EDITOR=ASSIGNMENTS TELEPHONE=619-3335 CONTENT= INTRO: The U-S press is hailing the latest agreement in the Northern Ireland peace process. Other editorials today deal with a wide variety of topics, including the situation in Zimbabwe and in Sierra Leone; some hopeful signs for Indonesia's nascent democracy; the debate over normalizing trade with China and making America's overseas embassies safer. Now, here is ____________ with a closer look and some quotes in our Editorial Digest. TEXT: The weekend announcement by the British and Irish governments that a new agreement has been reached to re-start the Good Friday peace accord in Northern Ireland is good news in the United States. The New York Times leads its editorial column with these thoughts: VOICE: The Irish Republican Army's commitment over the weekend to subject its secret arsenal of weapons to international inspection should reopen the path to peace in Northern Ireland. By ending its long-standing refusal to make a meaningful gesture toward disarmament, the I-R-A has removed a critical barrier to fulfilling the two-year-old Good Friday peace agreement and establishing a new political order in Ulster. ... With the prospect of renewed self-rule, there are grounds for optimism in Northern Ireland among the overwhelming majority who yearn for a fair and lasting peace. TEXT: The national daily USA Today (published in a Washington, D-C, suburb) is a bit more cautious, noting the vagueness of the I-R-A promise and the fact that the confrontational "marching season" in Northern Ireland is almost at hand. VOICE: Saturday's pledge by the Irish Republican Army to place its weapons "beyond use" is being greeted with something that sounds a lot like anxious optimism. If so, no wonder. ... The offer itself is pretty vague. It's not clear what the term "beyond use" means. The pledge contains no timetable or deadlines. The I-R-A did not agree to destroy the weapons or to surrender them. And the I-R-A, which considers itself undefeated, has punted [reversed course] on disarmament promises before. TEXT: To a pair of comments on Africa now. First, Newsday, on New York's Long Island, deplores the growing violence in Zimbabwe, as black squatters occupy white, commercial farms, with President Robert Mugabe's assent. Says the Long Island daily: VOICE: Desperate to maintain his 20-year hold on power in the face of a serious political challenge, President ... Mugabe ... is turning into a caricature of an African despot. // OPT TEXT: In today's Chicago Tribune we read this commentary on the defeat of United Nations peacekeeping forces in Sierra Leone, where at least a hundred of the blue-helmeted troops have been kidnapped. VOICE: // OPT // The U-N has mounted extensive, expensive peacekeeping missions in a number of African trouble spots in recent years, including Angola, Somalia, Rwanda, Sierra Leone and, incipiently, Congo. Sadly, regrettably, the record of success is almost uniformly dismal, and Sierra Leone offers as good an example as any of why. // END OPT // Quite simply, peacekeeping is failing there because there is no peace to keep and, on the part of at least one key actor, no disposition to make genuine peace. ... To send lightly armed, poorly organized and ambiguously commissioned U-N peacekeepers into such a situation is to ask for just the sort of thing that now has happened. To persist in such a mission in the face of what has happened is to commit folly -- or worse. TEXT: There are brighter spots in a troubled world, and today's Washington Post has found one in Indonesia, where, the paper says, democracy appears to be taking root in the far-flung, multi-ethnic archipelago of 216-million people. VOICE: For more than 30 years, the dictator Suharto and his military held this improbable nation together by dishing out economic benefits to loyalists and meting out repression to enemies. ... Now his first elected successor, President Abdurrahman Wahid, is trying to build cohesion through peaceful, democratic means, avoiding the sort of bloodshed that attended East Timor's separation last year. The cease- fire signed last week between his government and separatist guerrillas in the region of Aceh, where 300 people have been killed in the past four months, suggests that democracy might just have a chance. TEXT: Still with Asian issues, the San Francisco Examiner is pleased with a move in Congress to establish a human-rights monitoring commission on China, linked to congressional approval of normalizing trade relations. VOICE: Controversy over the administration's drive for permanent normal trade relations with China is yielding to imaginative solutions to problems raised by legislative opponents and those wavering on the issue. ... // OPT // TEXT: On the subject of U-S Embassy safety around the world, in the wake of several terrorist bombings, the Los Angeles Times wants the State Department to move faster to shore up diplomatic buildings. VOICE: The General Accounting Office recently warned Congress that the State Department is at least a year behind schedule in efforts to improve security at most of its foreign posts. Two boards appointed to investigate the East African embassy bombings [in 1998] pointed to "a collective failure by the executive and legislative branches ... over the past decade to provide adequate resources to reduce the vulnerability of U-S diplomatic missions." ... But this year the Clinton administration and Congress provided only a miserly 300-million dollars for construction. Even next year's request for a little over one billion falls short of projected needs. /// OPT ///TEXT: Speaking of terrorism, the trial of two Libyan men accused of the terrorist bombing of a Pan Am jetliner over Lockerbie, Scotland, 11 years ago, draws this response from The Tulsa [Oklahoma] World: VOICE: The case against the Libyan agents ... is strong. But it took the last 11 years to persuade Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi ... to hand over the suspects. Finally the site in the Netherlands, with the trial presided over by a panel of Scottish judges and based on Scottish rules of court, was agreed upon. So now the trial ... is under way. But the end will surely leave questions and suspicions. /// END OPT ///TEXT: A recent report by the National Intelligence Council suggested the AIDS epidemic racing through Africa and South Asia will soon pose a security risk for the developed world. The Chicago Tribune says: VOICE: There's little doubt that the AIDS epidemic has the potential to become more than a global catastrophe in public health (as if that, alone, were not suffidienct cause for alarm in Washington). Intelligence reports warn that AIDS could undermine social cohesion and the rule of law in many nascent democracies, turning them into hotbeds of resentment and revolution. So it is wise, even overdue, that the National Security Council -- the nation's top policy- making body on defense matters -- is setting up a working group on the AIDS epidemic. And that the Clinton administration, in a companion move, is asking Congress to double foreign aid earmarked to combat the plague. TEXT: The Augusta [Georgia] Chronicle feels more aid is needed, but not necessarily because the AIDS plague is a real national-security threat. VOICE: While taking little issue with the ... findings, congressional critics claim national security ... is not at stake and that the administration is using the report to scare up more AIDS relief for Africa -- to 254-million dollars, double what we're spending now. ... But even putting national security aside, there's still a strong case to be made to boost aid to Africa -- a humanitarian case -- and not just to combat AIDS, either. The continent is being ravaged by famine, drought and other fatal diseases. TEXT: On that somber note, we conclude this sampling
of editorial comment from the pages of Monday's U-S
press.
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