Thursday, November 18. 1999
The University Daily Kansan
Section A · Page 7
Nation/World
Fort Hays State, Pratt await merger approval
Board of Regents may postpone its decision until after start of 2000
The Associated Press
TOPEKA — A decision on the proposed merger of Fort Hays State University and Pratt Community College may not be approved until next year by the Board of Regents, one of its members said yesterday.
Merger talks between the two institutions have been under way for two years and both agree it's a good idea. However, the Regents, which oversees community colleges, must approve the merger for it to take place.
The Commission for Higher Education Coordination considered the proposal, but it postponed any action until at least its Nov. 30 meeting. The commission is part of the
board and is composed of three regents.
Fred Kerr, the commission's chairman, said he doesn't know when the Regents would take action on the merger proposal, which he supports.
"In the time frame of 1999, it's impossible to handle something of this magnitude — that's what I'm hearing (from other regents)," said Kerr, of Pratt. "I don't want this proposal to just die on the vine."
Part of the reason for the delay is that Regents are considering general guidelines for any merger by schools under their authority. Some board members think the guidelines should be in place before dealing with the Fort Hays-Pratt merger.
Nevertheless, Kerr said he hoped the Regents still can make a decision before the end of the year so lawmakers can consider the proposal in January. Any merger must be approved by the board and Legislature for it to take place.
If the merger occurs, Pratt would retain ownership of its campus and would be known as Pratt Community College of Fort Hays State University. Administration of the campus would be given to to the university.
After the meeting, Pratt President Bill Wojciechowski said he wanted the schools to merge because he's concerned Pratt might not get enough state money under the current funding formula.
wanted to provide four-year programs in areas such as nursing and business, and being part of a university would permit that. In addition, Wojciechowski said, a merger would provide tax relief to local residents, who help finance the community college through taxes.
Wojciechowski estimates the merger could cost the state up to $2.3 million. Much of that would come from shifting some of the burden of paying for the community college from local taxes to the state's general fund.
Fort Hays President Ed Hammond warned that waiting too long could jeopardize the merger because future boards of trustees at the two schools might not support the idea.
"Significantly delaying it — two to three years — will destroy what we've invested in," Hammond said.
Wojciechowski agreed, "You can't allow this to go on forever."
Prosecutor in dragging death calls defendant a liar
The Associated Press
JASPER, Texas — The third white man accused of dragging a black man to his death is a liar whose denial of participation in the murder does not jibe with other evidence, a prosecutor argued yesterday.
Defendant Shawn Allen Berry had testified that he was afraid to interfere in the killing of James Byrd Jr. — so scared by his white supremacist co-defendants that he wet his pants.
"I if sound blaze about some of this, please don't think I'm not deadly serious about this case," Jasper County Assistant District Attorney Pat Hardy said in his closing argument. "It's hard to keep from getting that way when you're lied to and it's easy to see."
Hardy disputed several points of Berry's testimony, notably his claim
that he wasn't driving when Byrd was dragged behind a truck down a rural road. And Hardy said Berry knew exactly what his friends had in store for Byrd when they drove to the remote area where the attack began.
As defense closing arguments began, attorney Joseph "Lum" Hawthorn maintained that the prosecution — which concedes Berry does not have the racist background of his friends — gave the jury no reasonable motive why Berry would have killed Byrd.
"Why in the world does the state think Shawn Berry could do something like this?" Hawthorn said.
Jury deliberations were to follow the closing arguments. Judge Joe Bob Golden had told jurors to bring overnight bags to today's session with the expectation they would be sequestered.
Berry, 24, spent four hours on the witness stand Tuesday, saying he wet his pants in fear for his life when codefendants John William King and Lawrence Russell Brewer attacked the 49-year-old Byrd on June 7. 1998.
Brewer, 32, and King, 25, have been convicted and sentenced to death.
Berry testified he tried to keep Byrd from being pulled from the truck, but stopped when King told him that someone helping Byrd could meet the same fate that awaited Byrd.
Though he said he was unable to move, he said he jumped out of the way when a punch-drunk Byrd was pushed toward him while being beaten. Berry said he thought Byrd's hand might have brushed his leg, where Byrd's blood was later discovered.
He said he then watched King and Brewer kick Byrd, spray-paint his
face and chain his feet to the back of the truck. Berry said King took the driver's seat, while he was in the middle and Brewer on the passenger side, and "they started dragging."
Afterward, Berry said, he helped wash blood off his truck and the logging chain because he thought his presence at the scene meant he was guilty of murder.
"In my mind I was just as guilty as they were for being there," Berry said. "And I didn't want to go to the police."
Berry had been driving when the three buddies first picked up Byrd and he said King suggested they beat him up.
Asked why he ignored King's threat, Berry said "I just thought it was the same old Bill," adding that King had a penchant for making empty threats of violence.
IRA agrees to participate in disarmament negotiations
The Associated Press
BELFAST, Northern Ireland — The Irish Republican Army pledged yesterday to open negotiations soon with a disarmament commission, taking a key first step toward eventually surrendering its weapons in support of Northern Ireland's peace accord.
In a statement, the IRA promised to send a negotiator to the commission if the British province's major Protestant party, the Ulster Unionists, first formed the Protestant-Catholic administration envisaged in last year's Good Friday agreement.
The policy turnaround came after Ulster Unionist leader David Trimble, in a crucial
concession Tuesday, said such an IRA statement would be sufficient for him to accept the IRA-linked Sinn Fein party within a new Cabinet, long the stumbling block to progress.
These back-to-back compromises were carefully prescripted as part of American mediator George Mitchell's 11-week-old mission to save the accord.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair's government minister for Northern Ireland, Peter Mandelson, called the IRA pledge welcome and stronger in certain respects than some expected.
In Dublin, Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern said the IRA's words carry real value at a critical time.
The IRA statement offered no
explicit guarantee that gradual disarmament will follow. But until now the outlawed movement had rejected any direct contact with the disarmament commission, formed in 1997 during peace negotiations.
IRA commanders had argued that to hand over even a single bullet would symbolize surrender, and humiliate and split their ranks.
Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams praised the IRA for demonstrating courage, discipline and patience. He said that no one should underestimate the effort that this initiative involved.
Adams' diehair predecessor as Sinn Fein leader, Ruaiir O Bradaigh, predicted a new generation would take up
arms in pursuit of the traditional IRA goal — the abolition of Northern Ireland as a Protestant-majority state linked with Britain.
"An army which surrenders its weapons is not an army," said O Bradaigh, who today leads Republican Sinn Fein, a small party linked with dissidents scheming to wreck the IRA's 1997 truce. "The indomitable spirit of Irish republicanism will reassert itself as sure as day follows night."
Trimble faces a far more serious challenge in the immediate future. His decision to soften his "no IRA guns, no government" policy needs approval by a majority of the Ulster Unionists' 800-strong ruling council. The vote is
expected Nov.27.
Ulster Unionist negotiator Michael McGimpsey, a moderate likely to take a lead in selling the deal, noted that the IRA statement was particularly significant for what it didn't say — the usual rejection of disarmament.
But many Protestants were unhappy.
Peter Robinson, deputy leader of the uncompromising Democratic Unionist Party that also is supposed to be in the new Cabinet, urged Ulster Unionists to reject their leadership rather than embrace Gerry Adams.
If Trimble wins his vote, his lawmakers could then elect Sinn Fein politicians to two of the intended Cabinet's 12 posts in early December.
Pakistani military fulfills its promise of arresting debtors
The Associated Press
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — The military government rounded up hundreds of Pakistan's most powerful and wealthy people yesterday, making good on its promise to try and rid the country's political ranks of rampant corruption.
The raids — which brought in landowners, industrialists, athletes and politicians from all parties — began hours after a deadline expired for debtors to repay loans or face criminal charges.
According to Pakistan television, $138 million had been recovered when the deadline expired — just 3 percent of the estimated $4 billion outstanding.
Soldiers in green army jeeps roared up to the palatial home of Nawaz Kokhar, a member of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto's party, on the outskirts of Islamabad to arrest him.
"We hope we will get justice. We are not going to run," said Kokhar, who reportedly owes about $2 million.
He was just one of hundreds taken in during army chief Gen. Pervez Musharraf's crackdown on corruption, which he promised to carry out last month after seizing power in a bloodless coup.
There were conflicting reports on the exact number of arrests, but police and intelligence officials said the nationwide raids brought in as many as 450 people. An official statement named 21 people who were arrested.
The former prime minister, who has been in army custody since his Oct. 12 ouster, had earlier been accused of treason and hijacking. He was handed to police late yesterday, and within 24 hours was due in court to be formally charged. If convicted of either charge, he would face the death penalty or life in prison.
The charges stem from an incident in which an aircraft returning Musharraf to Pakistan was refused permission to land in Karachi on Oct. 12. The army seized control of the country, allowed the plane to land, and took Sharif into custody.
The army interrupted television programming yesterday to name some of those arrested, including Manzoor Wattoo, a former chief minister of Punjab; Akhtar Rasool, former captain of Pakistan's national field hockey team; retired Air Marshal Waqar Azim; and Anwar Saifullah, a leading politician and industrialist.
"They have committed crimes against this nation," Interior Minister Moinuddin Haider said on state television. "We have to be tough."
The TV report also called Bhutto a proclaimed offender, and said she still was wanted for arrest on corruption charges.
Bhutto, who lives in Britain, earlier was found guilty of corruption and sentenced to five years in jail. But she refused to return to Pakistan, saying the trial had been unfair and she was innocent.
The television report also said Bhutto's jailed husband, Asif Ali Zardari, faces new charges.
Yesterday's arrests followed the enactment of a law, promulgated by President Rafiq Tarar, barring politicians from holding office for 21 years if they were found guilty of corruption or of defraught on loans.
The law makes corruption a crime punishable by up to 14 years in prison, whereas a corruption conviction previously carried a maximum five-year prison term and kept politicians from office for seven years.
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