University Daily Kansan / Wednesday, November 8, 1989
Nation/World
7
Namibians weather lines to vote
The Associated Press
WINDHOEK, Namibia — People waited in 96-degree heat for hours yesterday to vote in an election that will open the way to independence after 74 years of South African rule. Some lines were more than a mile long.
Namibian radio said a baby was crushed to death and several people were injured in the northern Ovambo region when people surged toward shade. Officials said three children were killed in the explosion of a grenade they found.
No serious political violence was reported on the first of five days of
U. N. supervised voting, despite lingering animosities from a 23-year civil war.
"The behavior of the voting public has been an example to the rest of the world," said Gerhard Roux, spokesman for the territorial government installed by South Africa.
Voters are choosing a 72-member assembly to write a constitution for South Africa, known as South-West Africa, which will become independent next year.
The main election issue was whether the left-leaning South-West Africa People's Organization, which fought the long guerrilla war, would get the two-thirds of the seats neces-
arry to write a charter without con-
sulting any of the other nine parties.
Its main rival is the Democratic Turnhalle Alliance, a multiracial coalition that favors a capitalist economy and is part of a transitional government installed by South Africa.
"Today we are finally burying apartheid, colonialism," SWAPO leader Sam Nujuma said in Katuura, the main black neighborhood on the edge of Windhoek, the territorial capital.
One line of voters in Katsutura stretched for about 1.2 miles when polled, and longer lines were reported elsewhere. Some voters
waited more than four hours in temperatures that reached 95 degrees Fahrenheit.
"After all the years of waiting, the people of Namibia themselves, and no one else, will have their say in free and fair elections," U.N. special representative Marti Ahtisaari said in a radio broadcast.
An estimated 60 percent of Nambia's 701,488 registered voters are illiterate. The 318,252-square-mile territory, rich in minerals, had a population of 1.3 million in 1981, when the last census was taken.
Namibians may vote through Saturday and election officials hope results will be available Nov. 15.
United States thaws Iran's bank assets
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON — The United States is returning $67 million in frozen assets to Iran, a move President Bush said yesterday he hoped would prompt Tehran to push for freedom for U.S. hostages in Lebanon.
But administration officials maintained that the transfer of money, which has been held for nearly a decade, was unrelated to the plight of the hostages held in Lebanon by pro-Iranian Muslims.
The $657 million was being held in a fund to back up claims by U.S. banks against Iran. Most of those claims were settled in the past few weeks.
As a result, U.S. officials said Monday night, the leftover assets would be returned to the Bank of Iran. An additional $243 million will be transferred to a special fund to back up other U.S. claims against the country.
Bush, speaking at a morning news conference, said he didn't know what effect the money transfer would have on officials in Iran.
But he said, "I hope that they will do what they can to influence those who hold these hostages."
Referring to financial claims and counter-claims between the United States and Iran, the president said, "I'd like to get this underbrush cleaned out now."
Although Iran had made some "positive statements" recently, Bush said the administration had so far run into "dead ends" in working behind the scenes to free the hostages in Lebanon.
The move on the Iranian assets
followed talks in The Hague last week between Abraham Sofaer, the State Department's legal adviser and Iranian officials.
U. S. officials said the decision to return the assets through the Bank of Iran was unrelated to the eight Americans being held in Lebanon by two Iranian faction.
Bush administration officials immediately responded they would not engage in negotiations over the hostages and called on humanitarian grounds for the release of all the hostages.
Boeing reportedly set to plead guilty to felonies
WASHINGTON — The Boeing Co. plans to plead guilty next week to two felony charges of unauthorized conveyance of Pentagon budget documents, Justice Department sources said yesterday.
The Associated Press
The Seattle-based aerospace company has agreed to enter the pleas in
connection with obtaining two budget documents, said the sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity. Boeing's planned plea has been widely reported during the past week.
A court document states that Boeing, which was the Pentagon's 10th-largest contractor with $3 billion worth of business last year, is scheduled to enter a pre-indictment plea Monday in U.S. District Court in Alexandria, Va.
World Briefs
According to another court filing, Boeing is an unindicted co-conspirator of Richard Lee Fowler, a former company marketing analyst awaiting trial on charges of obtaining more than 100 Pentagon documents between 1979 and 1985.
Many of the documents Fowler obtained were classified, according to the indictment.
Robert S. Bennett, Boeing's Washington attorney, declined to comment on the case.
The documents that Fowler is accused of giving Boeing contain material on former President Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative.
PANAMA GUNFIRE: U.S. Marines and Army soldiers guarding a military site at Galeta Island near the Panama Canal exchanged gunfire twice Friday with a small group of unidentified intruders, the Pentagon reported yesterday.
"There were no known casualties and sweeps conducted in the area at daybreak, revealing no evidence of intruders or hostile fire," Pentagon spokesman Fred Hoffman told reporters.
However, one Army MP was taken to the U.S. Army hospital with arm, leg and head injuries sustained in a fall into barbed wire
The Marines first noticed unidentified intruders outside the gate Friday evening at the Galeta site, at the northern end of the mainland area and connected to the mainland by a road, Hoffman said.
About an hour later, he said, "a group of Marine Guards and Army MPs were fired on by a small group of intruders. The U.S. Marines and soldiers returned the fire."
There was a second exchange later, Hoffman said.
later, Hoffman said.
SOVIET PROTESTS: Anti-Communist marchers, striking workers and clashes between police and protesters vied in a scaled-down military parade as the Soviet Union celebrated the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution.
Even President Mikhail S. Gorbachev tempered the Revolution Day festivities by saying the nation's economic problems hang like a "sword of Damocles over us."
A column of about 5,000 marchers paraded peacefully through Moscow to challenge Communist Party authority, while a few miles away, Gorbachev and other leaders organized a militaryary of the revolution reviewing the traditional show of military force.
Activists in the southwest republic of Moldavia said police broke
up a crowd of thousands of protesters and beat some of them. The military part of the parade in its capital, Kishinev, was canceled.
In the Arctic city of Vorkuta, striking coal miners joined the official celebration but carried slogans demanding more independence and that the government fulfill promises of better living and working conditions.
PEACE PLAN REJECTED. Leanon's Gen. Micheal Aoum said yesterday he rejected the entire peace plan adopted by Parliament, and the general's followers roamed Christian areas, beating street vendors who ignored a strike supporting him.
The Christian army commander originally accepted political reforms in the accord worked out at Tafil, Saudi Arabia, but rejected security arrangements that did not include a timetable for withdrawal of Syria's 40,000 soldiers from Lebanon.
Aoun called the Syrians, who are in Lebanon under a 1976 peacekeeping mandate from the Arab League, an occupation army. Hundreds of people were killed and wounded in a six-month artillery war between Syria and the Syrians that was suspended by a truce in September.
Yesterday, the general said: "We reject all of the Tafi accord. Lebanon was killed in Taif and buried in Kleiat, where they elected a president for a Syrian state in Lebanon."
SHUTTLE LAUNCH Space shuttle discovery will lift off after dark on a secret Thanksgiving week military mission, the first of three nighttime launches scheduled for Cape Caneral, Fla., in four weeks.
NASA announced the Nov. 20 Discovery launch date yesterday after shuttle managers concluded a two-day review that assessed the readiness of the orbiter, the payload, the global tracking network and all other aspects of the mission.
Congress agrees to raise U.S. borrowing power
The Associated Press
"Default is unthinkable," said Rep. Bill Archer, R-R Texas. "It would strike a devastating blow to our credit rating."
The legislation was approved by voice vote in the Senate and by a 269-99 margin in the House, then sent to President Bush. His signature would prevent the government from running out of cash tomorrow.
WASHINGTON — The Senate and House agreed last night to raise the treasury's borrowing authority to more than $3.1 trillion, preventing the government from reneging for the first time ever on its pledge to repay creditors.
The way for action on the debt-ceiling increase was cleared earlier in the evening when leaders of the
The agreement was blocked for more than an hour by Sen. John Heinz, R-Pa. He sought to add to the debt-ceiling bill an amendment that would bar use of the cash-laden Social Security trust fund income to make the budget deficit look smaller than it is.
House and Senate worked out an arrangement that modified catastrophic health insurance for retirees. That debate previously had blocked approval of the increase.
Heinz dropped his objection after Majority Leader George Mitchell, D-Maine, assured him that the Social Security amendment would be given priority consideration next year. Under the agreement.
—The debt-ceiling bill has only one amendment. It would repeal a 1986 law, bitterly opposed by business,
that prohibits employer-financed health insurance plans from discriminating against lower-paid workers. House acceptance of that amendment would send the package to Bush.
—The House would pass a new bill repealing catastrophic medical coverage for retires. That would send the bill to the Senate, which would be expected to amend the bill with a plan repealing the unpopular surtax that finances catastrophic insurance and retains coverage for hospital bills. Negotiators from the Senate and House would work out a compromise somewhere between total repeal and keeping hospital benefits.
Without an increased debt ceiling, the Federal Reserve Board would order banks, starting tomorrow, not
to honor any checks issued by the U.S. Treasury. Owners of maturing federal securities would have to continue holding their bonds, creating a cloud over the government's credit rating and raising interests rates, economists say.
"It is important to our economy and our country that we not risk the adverse consequences of default by the government," Mitchell said.
With no more authority to borrow, the Treasury Department suspended sales of savings bonds and special state and local securities and postponed auctions of $40 billion of securities.
Only a token Senate minority opposed approving the House-passed bill raising the debt limit by $250 billion.
SOURCE: Congressional Budget Office
Knight-Ridder Tribune News
GET THE EDGE WITH CLIFFS NOTES.
Cliffs Notes give you a greater understanding of the classics. More than 200 titles.Learn more and earn better grades as you study.
LOCATIONS:
LAWRENCE, KS - 15th & KASOLD, 749-4944, OPEN 9-M-F, 9-SAT., NOON-4 SUN.
OVERLAND PARK, KS - 8777 METCALF, 341-0191, OPEN 9-M-F, 9-BAT., NOON-5 SUN
INDEPENDENCE MO, - 3292 S NOLAND RD, 481-0900, OPEN 9-M-F, 9-SAT.