Friday, November 12, 1999
The University Daily Kansan
Section A · Page 7
Nation/World
7
First lady's West Bank visit ignites tensions
The Associated Press
RAMALLAH. West Bank — Palestinians pushed the statehood issue into the spotlight yesterday during Hillary Rodham Clinton's visit, triggering an angry response from Israel and potentially complicating the first lady's efforts to court Jewish voters back home.
During a two-day visit that ended last night, Clinton largely managed to steer clear of controversy, visiting hospitals and a youth-counseling center, delivering speeches and making symbolic pilgrimages to Israel's Holocaust memorial and to the Western Wall, Judaism's holiest site.
But tensions flared during her single foray into the West Bank.
At a ceremony in Ramallah intended to commemorate a $3.8 million U.S. grant for health care in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's wife used a speech introducing the first lady to rail
against environmental and health damage she maintained was caused by Israel's 30 year occupation of the Palestinian lands.
for an independent state on their native soil
Soha Arafat also referred to Palestinian statehood aspirations, speaking of the desire
on their native soil.
At one point, Jihad Mashaal, the director of one of the private Palestinian groups receiving the grant, looked directly at the first lady and said,
"Next time, I hope we host you in our state of Palestine and in its capital, Jerusalem."
Jerusalem's status is hotly disputed, with Israel claiming sovereignty over all the city and the Palestinians seek
and the Palestinians seeking to make the tra
Clinton: Was unruffled as Palestinians pushed for statehood
ditionally Arab sector the capital of their future state. The issue is supposed to be settled in negotiations between the two sides that began this week.
The first lady appeared unruffled during the remarks, with no change in her expression or posture, but Israel reacted with irritation. A statement from the prime minister's office condemned the statements.
It would be preferable if the Palestinian side were to bring its positions to the negotiating table," the statement said. "Poisoning the public atmosphere does not contribute to the success of these negotiations."
The strained atmosphere in the brief West Bank stopover was a stark contrast to Clinton's visit to a refugee camp in the Gaza Strip last December. Then, people waved, cheered and clambered atop roofs and crowded onto balconies to catch a glimpse of her.
Of the first lady's appearances in Israel, the centerpiece was a trip to the Western Wall.
Judaism's holiest site.
Accompanied by her daughter, Chelsea, and by Naya Barak, the wife of the Israeli prime minister, Clinton tucked a note into a crack in the Wall — as is customary for observant Jews — and paused for a moment in reflection. Chelsea knelt before the large honey-colored boulders and also slipped in a piece of paper:
Hours earlier, mother and daughter had visited another important Israeli touchstone, the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial. Clinton honored the memory of 6 million Jews killed by the Nazis, rekindling an eternal flame and laying a wreath with a red-and-white ribbon.
The first lady stood in silence, her head bowed and her hands clasped, during the ceremony in the somber, stone-lined Hall of Remembrance. Later she wrote in the Yad Vashem guest book, "May God bless Israel and the Jewish people and may we always remember — and never forget — that all of us must work for peace."
Russia rejects pleas to end attack on Chechen capital
The Associated Press
GROZNY, Russia— Russian forces hammered the capital of breakaway Chechnya with savage barrages of artillery and rocket fire yesterday as Moscow rejected Chechen pleas for talks to end the fighting.
Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov said Russia was prepared to end the military actions by tomorrow but only if Chechen rebels surrendered — a condition the Chechens won't accept.
Chechen President Aslan Maskhadov appealed to Russian President Boris Yeltsin for negotiations in an open letter yesterday. He said the problems couldn't be solved by war and instead urged dialogue. Yeltsin's interior minister, Vladimir Rushailo, who is in charge of internal security, said he opposed any talks.
Russian troops stationed on the Terek Ridge that looms above the northern outskirts of Grozny lashed the city with rockets and shells. The intense barrage was witnessed by an Associated Press reporter, who had to take shelter for several hours behind concrete blocks.
Troops also continued their assault on Gudermes, Chechnya's second-largest city,
and Col. Gen. Valery Manilov said soldiers would start to occupy the city today. Seizing Gudermes, 21 miles east of Grozny, would be a significant victory for the Russians.
Advance Russian units reached the town of Argun, also east of Grozny yesterday. Chechen commanders admitted their forces were being forced back in several areas.
Russia also shelled the rebel stronghold of Bamut in Chechnya's southwest, and Manilov said the campaign to take that key city was likely to continue for many days. In addition, Russian guns and warplanes struck a half-dozen other areas, Russian news agencies reported.
Manilov said some 280 Russian troops had been killed and about 600 wounded since September, the ITAR-Tass news agency reported. Russia said last week that about 150 of its soldiers had been killed.
Russia says its Chechnya campaign, which began with airstrikes in early September, is aimed at liquidating Islamic rebels. But Russia increasingly appears determined to regain full control of the republic, which has been effectively independent since a 1994-96 war.
EgyptAir crash still a mystery
Experts hope to find cockpit's voice recorder for answers
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON — With the flight data recorder from EgyptAir Flight 990 showing things were normal until the autopilot mysteriously disconnected, investigators looking into the Oct. 31 crash said it was all the more important that they recovered the plane's cockpit voice recorder.
The search for that second recorder deep in the Atlantic Ocean near Rhode Island was suspended about 5:30 a.m. yesterday because of rough seas. The voice recorder may not only reveal what the pilots said to each other but also what other noises or alarms were audible in the cockpit.
In Boeing airplanes, for example, an alarm sounds if the autoplot disconnect button isn't pressed twice — a way to prevent the pilots from missing an accidental disengagement.
"We await information off the cockpit voice recorder, when it is recovered, that can help us put this information in context," said Jim Hall, chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board. on Wednesday as he revealed the first bits of information from the plane's flight data recorder.
rhail said the New York-to-Cairo flight had been cruising normally at 33,000 feet when the autopilot disconnected. That is unusual because the plane was just beginning its cruise across the Atlantic Ocean. Hall refused to say if the autopilot disconnected manually or automatically.
About eight seconds later, the flight began what appeared to be a controlled descent from 33,000 feet to about 19,000 feet, Hall said.
five to 10 seconds of information on its tape are still being extracted by safety board technicians. Without that information, details from the cockpit tape or more analysis of radar data showing that the plane later climbed briefly before plunging to the ocean, investigators are having difficulty explaining the crash.
Hall dashed speculation that the plane's initial plunge was caused by a problem with a thrust reverser — the cause of a 1991 crash of another Boeing 767 in Thailand.
The recorder stopped shortly afterward, and the final
Thrust reversers are used to slow an airplane upon touchdown with the runway. One of EgyptAir's reversers was out of service at the time of the crash.
"There is no evidence of thrust reverser deployment in the data we have," Hall said.
Flight 990 took off early Halloween morning from New York's Kennedy International Airport, rising to 33,000 feet before plunging into the sea south of Nantucket Island, Mass., about 40 minutes after takeoff. All 217 people aboard were killed.
Investigators have not ruled out any possible cause, including mechanical failure, human error, sabotage and terrorism.
The flight data recorder was designed to capture more than 150 types of information from 55 aircraft systems during a rolling 25-hour period.
Among them were such things as the plane's altitude, speed, spin and roll, when electrical power was cut off and how the autopilot functioned.
The search for the cockpit voice recorder has been conducted by two remote-controlled underwater robots. Deen Drone and Magnum.
Seas exceeded 10 feet yesterday morning, but the forecast called for the possibility of good weather today and tomorrow. Although the search was suspended this morning, Navy, Coast Guard and the civilian salvage ship Carolyn Chouest remained in anticipation of calmer waters.
Student gunman sentenced to jail for 112 years without parole
The Associated Press
EUGENE, Ore. — Victims of Kip Kinkel's shooting rampage at Thurston High School were relieved to see the gunman who has tormented their dreams the past year and a half sent to prison for the rest of his life.
"I am so glad Kip Kinkel will be put behind the bars," said Teresa Miltonberger, one of 25 students injured in the May 1998 attack at Springfield's Thurston High School. She nearly died after being shot in the head. "If he wasn't, I wouldn't feel safe."
Kinkel, 17, on Wednesday was sentenced to nearly 112 years in prison — effectively a death sentence because he will not be entitled to parole.
Before the sentence was issued, Kinkel read an apology from a small sheet of white paper.
"I absolutely loved my parents and had no reason to kill them," he said. "I had no reason to dislike or kill or try to kill anyone at Thurston. I am truly sorry for all of this."
Judge Jack Mattison said it was more important to make the victims feel safe than to try to rehabilitate Kinkel, who was 15 when he went on the shooting spree.
Kinkel's attorneys said that the sentence was too harsh and that they planned to appeal.
"There was some possibility of a better result at trial," attorney Ruth Mullen said. "We're very disappointed."
After being expelled from school for having a stolen gun in his locker, Kinkel killed his parents at their home on May 20, 1998. The next day he opened fire on the packed cafeteria at Thurston High School. Mikael Nickolauson and Ben Walker were killed.
Kinkel later told doctors he had been hearing voices telling him to kill since he was 12. Experts testified he was psychotic, probably paranoid schizophrenic, and deeply depressed.
Prosecutors discounted the effects of mental illness, saying that Kinkel had spoken often to his friends about taking a gun to school and that he had been nasty and violent since he was a little boy.
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