0206307
University Daily Kansan / Tuesday, October 31, 1989
Nation/World
7
Soviets crush rally outside KGB office Police confine 40 in jarring crackdown
The Associated Press
MOSCOW — Helmeted riot police wielding truncheons repeatedly charged and clubbed demonstrators outside KGB headquarters last night after a candlelight vigilin memory of Joseph Stalin's victims. Scores of protesters were knocked to the ground, beaten and dragged into police buses.
About 40 people were detained, the official news agency Tass said, in what was the harshest crackdown on protesters in Moscow in more than $1\frac{1}{2}$ years.
The clashes took place on some of Moscow's busiest streets. They were especially jarring because of the permissive political climate instituted under President Mikhail S. Gorbachev's wide-ranging reforms.
About 1,000 Soviets converged on the secret police's headquarters at Dzerzhinsky Square after dusk to mark the unofficial "Day of the Political Prisoner" and mourn the millions who were wrongly imprisoned or killed under Stalin.
The hour-long protest, in which two rows of people holding flickering candles lined up on three sides of the building, proceeded peacefully. It had been organized by the Memorial Society, which seeks to commemorate those who suffered unjustly under Stalin, and the Democratic Union, a self-styled opposition to the Communist Party.
When the demonstration ended, a splinter group of about 500 people, mostly young men, marched off in the direction of Pushkin Square, a favorite rallying site for human rights activists.
Chanting, "Shame on the KGB" and "The KGB is the enemy of the people," the group was confronted without warning by riot police two blocks from Pushkin Square as they passed out leaflets to homebound commuters.
The white-helmeted police, armed with long black rubber truncheons, formed a line, then waded into the protesters, clubbing at least four of their leaders to the ground and dragging them into nearby buses for detention.
The demonstrators retreated, then formed again and headed to Gorky Street, the main thoroughfare leading to Pushkin Square. The riot police and other uniformed officers sealed off the square and split the protesters into two groups.
On Gorky Street, riot police again-charged the demonstrators, taking about six into custody. As the protesters were dragged to the buses, spectators shouted: "Shame! Shame!" Several passersby spat at a police car.
Another group of demonstrators gathered on the southeast side of Pushkin Square also was repeatedly charged by riot police.
COURT EXAMINES PENSIONS:
Federal protection for $30 million
U.S. workers' pensions could be at
stake in a dispute the Supreme
Court agreed to resolve yesterday.
The justices said they would decide what authority the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, a federal agency, had to order employers to revive scraped pension plans.
A federal appeals court limited such authority by setting aside the agency's order that LTV Corp. and its subsidiary, LTV Steel Co., restore three pension plans with liabilities of $2.3 billion.
Government lawyers said the ruling, if not overturned, could make the agency "an open-ended source of industry bailouts" and spark a financial crisis similar to the one facing the government's insurance program for the savings and loan industry.
World Briefs
The justices' decision is
AUTHORIZES APPLAUD RALLY:
Government-run broadcasting in South Africa said yesterday that peaceful demonstrations similar to the huge anti-apartheid rally during the weekend have helped ease political tensions and assisted reforms.
expected hv. Julv
"We thank the people for behaving within the norms of democratic society," Maj. Gen. Herman Stadler, the police public relations chief at the 70,000-member rally Sunday in a Johannesburg soccer stadium.
It was the largest ever anti-government event, and virtually every aspect violated security laws.
But authorities approved the event in advance, and police maintained a low profile as African National Congress leaders, released from prison Oct. 15, endorsed the organization's guerrilla campaign and called for increased economic sanctions against the white-run government.
The ANC has been outlawed since 1980, but Sunday's rally was the clearest signal yet that the government is willing to allow peaceful public activities by the organization.
**GRAVADA'S GLASTHOST:** The Gorbachev confidant who is now Pravda's editor met the foreign press yesterday and made himself the target, a definite change at a paper that has bashed imperialists mercilessly for generations.
Asked how he will stop a sharp decline in readers in President Mikhail S. Gorbachev's era of glasnost, or openness, Ivan Froli said, "We shall not seek to increase circulation at all costs."
Frolov opened Pravda's eight floor conference room to foreign correspondents and sought their questions.
It was a unique opportunity to hear the views of a member of the policy-making party Central Committee now in charge of the most authoritative, but no longer most widely read, Soviet newspaper.
STRANGE PREDICTIONS: Chicago — hog butcher for the world, tool maker, stacker of wheat . . . and global fashion capital? Edo Koch the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations? The newest fast food chain, McSushi?
Do not adjust your set. You have entered the strange zone, a collection of forecasts ostensibly culled from a survey of U.S. witches by very serious folks at the New York Center for the Strange.
Each year at Halloween, the center, which claims to be a non-profit organization involved in research, publishes a list of predictions based on a poll of 300 witches.
White House kills Dole's gas-tax increase plan
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON — The White House yesterday shot down a suggestion by Senate Minority Leader Bob Dole that the federal gasoline tax be increased to build new roads and bridges, leaving the idea politically lifeless.
"We do not feel that an increase in federal gas taxes is necessary at this time." White House press secretary Fitzin Manlar told reporters.
changes his mind, there will be no increase of the 9.1-cent-per-gallon federal gasoline tax. The Democratic leaders of Congress, sensitive to the unpopularity of tax increases, have been saying for months that they will not seek to raise taxes without Bush's approval in advance.
"He has veto power, and there's no way to override a veto on a tax increase, that's for sure," Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell, D-Maine, said Monday. "So there's no point going through the exercise."
Fitzwater's remarks all but guarantee that unless President Bush
Washington told reporters that he favored raising the fuel levy to rebuild crumbling roads but added that "before it goes through Congress, we would have to be ensured of the president's support."
House Speaker Thomas S. Foley of
A keystone of Bush's election campaign last year was the oft-repeated pledge, "No new taxes."
On the NBC-TV news program "Meet the Press." Dole said Sunday that he "would support a gas tax increase for rebuilding the infrastructure, not for debt reduction."
In offering the proposal, Dole
became the highest-ranking Republican to support the idea.
Dole has supported tax increases for specified purposes before.
He originally supported the income surcharge on the elderly to pay for Medicare coverag of extended illnesses, a program Congress is rolling back. He has also favored an oil import fee.
Dole did not suggest how much he would like to see the gasoline tax increased. Officials estimate that for each penny increase, the levy would raise $1 billion.