Section A · Page 6
The University Daily Kansan
Nation/World
Wednesday, June 9, 1999
Mir space station may be doomed to flaming end
The Associated Press
MOSCOW — Russia's space agency confirmed Tuesday that the Mir space station will be left unmanned following its crew's departure in August, the first step toward discarding it early next year.
By leaving it empty instead of abandoning it immediately, Russian space officials are putting off the painful moment of parting with Mir — the last symbol of the nation's space glory. Last week, 31 leading Russian space designers suggested that the station continue orbiting Earth unmanned until next February or March.
Sergei Gorbunov, Russian space agency spokesman, said the agency on Tuesday formally endorsed the proposal by the space designers, the ITAR-Tass news agency reported. It will now be sent to the Russian Cabinet and President Boris Yeltsin for final approval.
The delay is a last-ditch effort to raise the $250 million a year needed to keep Mir aloft. The Russian government has said it would only pay for Mir's operational costs through August, and efforts to lure private investors for further missions have failed.
If money is found, a new crew will warm up Mir again. If not, ground controllers will lower it to burn up in the atmosphere with some fragments falling into an uninhabited part of the ocean.
The American space agency NASA has long urged Russia to discard Mir so that Russia could concentrate its meager resources on the new international space station. Because of Russia's failure to build its key segment on time, the first permanent crew isn't expected to move into the new station until next March — almost two years behind schedule.
Refugees' journey deadly
The Associated Press
JAZINCE, Macedonia — With shoes worn through from walking, some wincing from bullet and shrapnel wounds, dozens of ragged Kosovo Albanian men sprawled exhaustively in a grassy field a few miles from the border with Yugoslavia. For them, this was the end of the road out of Kosovo.
Even as NATO strategists plot their troops' entry into the southern Serbian province, the exodus from Kosovo continues, with the latest refugees to make their way out yesterday telling of booby-trapped houses, mass graves and high mountain passes littered with corpses.
"The mountains are full of people, and conditions are terrible, terrible," said Ismet Nika, 47, whose feet were swollen and scabbed from the journey. "There were no small animals left in the forest, because people had already caught and eaten them."
This group—all men—had fled or been driven from their homes in southeast
Kosovo weeks earlier, they said. Serbs forcibly separated some from their families. Others said they feared endangering loved ones by staying together because as fighting-age men they were prime targets for roving Serb paramilitary men.
Nearly all of those interviewed in the group of 135 who straggled over the border before dawn near the village of Jazince told of surviving or witnessing killings of friends and neighbors at home or along the way.
"They didn't say a word; they just started shooting," said Muharem Nebihu, 28, who said masked paramilitary men fired without warning on him and four other men in the village of Vrbovac in central Kosovo last month.
Shot in the buttocks, he lay unmoving among the bodies of the others and was left for dead. Nebihu said. At nightfall, he crawled away.
Others in the group recounted killings of what they said may have been more
than 100 people in and around Vrbovac over a period of about a week. Afrin Becani, a rangy 18-year-old with blazing pale-green eyes and matted hair, said he ran when paramilitary men began shooting at him and a group of neighbors and relatives.
Bombs fall as Serbs stall pullout
The Associated Press
BELGRADE, Yugoslavia — NATO warplanes attacked targets across Syria yesterday in a thunderous warning to President Slobodan Milosevic to implement a Kosovo peace plan, as eight major countries unanimously signed off on a text meant to secure U.N. blessings for the agreement.
Besides drafting a Security Council resolution authorizing a peacekeeping force for Kosovo with substantial NATO participation, the G-8 group of Russia, the United States and six key democracies agreed on a NATO bombing pause — once Serb forces began a verifiable withdrawal.
The G-8 meeting in Germany and U.N. consideration of the plan hours later came about because of Yugoslav insistence that the Security Council endorse any peace plan for Kosovo and that 11 weeks of airstrikes be halted — demands backed by Moscow, the Yugoslavs' main ally.
"We got what we came for," said Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, suggesting that the draft's appendix that nailed down a dominant NATO role for the peace
force nad as much weight as the plan itself. However, Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov warned that his country — which has veto power in the Security Council — will not vote for the resolution as long as the NATO bombings continue, Russian news agencies reported.
NATO officials in Macedonia, meanwhile, announced that talks would resume tonight between British Lt. Gen. Michael Jackson and Yugoslav generals at Kumanovia, the border town where talks broke off early Monday after details of the peace draft upset the Yugoslavs.
But President Clinton made clear that palpable evidence of troop pullbacks was a must, saying only a verifiable withdrawal of Serb forces will allow us to suspend the bombing and go forward with the plan.
NATO intensified its air campaign, flying 658 sorties over the past 24 hours, alliance spokesman Jamie Shea said — a 50 percent increase since Milosevic accepted a peace proposal last Thursday that he subsequently refused to carry out.
ond-largest city, and NATO also hit targets near Belgrade, the capital, for the first time in days.
Serb media said one person was killed by a missile in Novi Sh, the country's sec-
The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe said Serb shelling of Albanian villages continued overnight, with shells exploding in the village of Llugaj, about seven miles over the border — one of the conflict's deepest cross-border shellings.
Llugaj is near Bajram Curri, a town that has been a major recruiting point for the Kosovo Liberation Army, the rebel group fighting for Kosovo's independence from Yugoslavia.
U. S.B-52 bombers pounded Serb positions for the third day near the key Albanian border point at Morini. There were unconfirmed reports of a large number of Yugoslav army casualties from the bombing.
China and Russia, in the meantime, demanded Tuesday that NATO stop bombing Yugoslavia before the Security Council formally adopts a resolution ending the Kosovo conflict and paving the way for 860,000 refugees to return home.
Policeman found guilty in beating
The Associated Press
NEW YORK — A white policeman was convicted Tuesday of holding down a Haitian immigrant in a stationhouse bathroom while another officer brutalized him with a broken broomstick. Three other officers were acquitted in the racially explosive case.
Officer Charles Schwarz, 33, sat impassively as the jury convicted him of violating the victim's civil rights. Schwarz was immediately taken into custody as his supporters wept in the courtroom.
The split verdict came two weeks after Officer Justin Volpe — the central figure in the trial — pled guilty to torturing Abner Louima with the stick.
The case against the five white officers heightened racial tensions between the police department and minorities and touched off several protests. But it also brought about the collapse of the blue wall of silence that keeps police from testifying against each other.
Schwartz and Volpe could be sentenced to life in prison.
Volpe rammed a broomstick up Louima's rectum as he lay handcuffed in a bathroom on Aug. 9, 1997. Louima suffered severe internal injuries, including a ruptured bladder and colon, and spent two months in the hospital.
"I'll say something that I've never said before: The jury reached the wrong verdict," said Stephen Worth, Schwarz's attorney. "I'm sure they were under pressure to convict somebody, but they got it wrong."
Louima, 32, was not in the courtroom for the verdict but said later that the decision fell short of what he had hoped for. Louima is suing the city for $155 million
"I am confident in the end that complete justice will be done in my case," he said. "I hope what comes out of my case is change."
Louima had provided some of the trial's most riveting testimony. He testified he was arrested, beaten and tortured in a filthy bathroom stall — an account bolstered by the testimony of four police officers credited with shattering the blue wall of silence.
The trial was interrupted on May 25 by Volpe's dramatic guilty plea. The stocky, square-jawed patrolman admitted brutalizing Louima in the mistaken belief that Louima had sucker-punched him outside the nightclub.
Too Hot to Make the Hike?
Stay cool and ride the bus.
You get 2 months worth of:
- Unlimited rides
- Service throughout the KU campus and Lawrence.
- Cool air conditioning
All for Only $30!
Buy your bus pass at the Banking window on the 4th floor of the Kansas Union
STUDENT
THE UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS
SENATE
Orchard Corners Apartments Featuring...
- 2 BR w/ 2 BTH, 3 BR w/ 2 BTH
- 4 BR w/ 2 BTH
- Central A/C
- Gas Heat & Water
- Fully Applianced Kitchen including microwaves
- Private Patios & Balconies
- Swimming Pool
- Laundry Facilities on site
- Friendly on site manager
Production In association with the students of KU
Now Showing
Monday-Friday 9-5 p.m.
Saturday 10-4 p.m.
Sunday 1-4 p.m.
15th & Kasold · 749-4226