Section A · Page 6
The University Daily Kansan
Thursday, January 21, 1999
Nation/World
Albright travels to discuss Balkans
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON — Secretary of State Madeleine Albright will go to London and Paris late next week for talks on Kosovo and Iraq with the British and
French foreign ministers, her representative, James P. Rubin, said yesterday.
Albright: Willdiscuss diplomacy options
ing tensions with Yugoslavia over Kosovo and a standoff with Iraq over weapon sites inspections.
Asked if Albright's scheduled meetings with British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook and French Foreign Minister Hubert Vedrine meant a threat to bomb Serb installations was being put on hold at least until then, Rubin said that he wouldn't draw any conclusions from her plans.
Still, tensions were rising about what U.S. officials consider to be stiff resistance by Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic to a series of demands.
Albright's discussions with Cook and Vedrine could be followed by a joint meeting of the foreign ministers of the United States, Russia, Italy, Germany, France and Britain, which make up the so-called "Contact Group" that oversees the restive Balkans.
Albright is scheduled to leave Sunday for Moscow and to talk with Russian leaders.
Senators draft bills to improve airline service
WASHINGTON — Sen. John McCain pledged quick action this year on legislation to increase flights out of major airports, expand air access for people in smaller communities and ensure competition in the aviation industry.
The Associated Press
"We must pass legislation that will bring competition to communities that are paying astronomical air fares that hurt their economy," McCain, R-Ariz., the chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, said Tuesday at a hearing on his bill.
McCain and House Transportation Committee Chairman Bud Shuster, R-Pa., are both pushing sweeping bills that would reauthorize the Federal Aviation Administration, enhance competition and generate more money for airport improvements.
The two chambers failed to reach agreement on differing bills last year, and Congress had to pass a stopgap six-month extension to keep the FAA operating through March 31.
McCain's bill, nearly identical to legislation that passed the Senate 92-1 last year, would reauthorize the FAA for two years and provide about $2.4 billion each year for the Airport Improvement Program.
It would increase flights out of Chicago's O'Hare and New York's LaGuardia and JFK and Reagan National in Washington. Thirty new slots — each equivalent to a takeoff and landing —
would be allocated to O'Hare, with 18 to go to lesser-served communities.
It would create 12 new round-trip flights at National, six which would go beyond 1,250 miles, a distance limit set under the 1986 "perimeter rule" set up to protect the economic viability of Dulles and Baltimore-Washington, the region's two long-haul airports. Only aircraft with the lowest noise levels could be added.
Patrick Murphy, deputy assistant secretary for aviation at the Transportation Department, agreed with McCain that perimeters and slots hurt consumers. But he said noise and local development remain issues in expanding flights out of busy airports.
The bill died last year in part because Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Henry Hyde, R-Ill., resisted the addition of flights at O'Hare.
McCain's bill also would establish a four-year program to develop air service in small communities and require the Transportation Department to review marketing and other airline practices that could inhibit competition.
He noted that it was cheaper to fly from Chicago to Tokyo than from Chicago to Des Moines, Iowa.
Shuster's legislation would reauthorize the FAA for five years and would ensure that all airline ticket tax revenues be devoted to aviation improvements.
The ranking Democrat on the Senate committee, Sen. Ernest
Hollins of South Carolina, said it was outrageous that only part of airline tax revenues were used for airport improvement.
FAA Assistant Administrator David Traynham said the administration would submit legislation on raising the airport ticket tax, called the passenger facility charge. The administration last year failed in an effort to raise the charge from $3 to $4 and reportedly is looking at a $2 boost.
Rights violations continue
Chinese human rights abuse condemned by United States
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON — The Clinton administration told Congress that human rights conditions were worse in China than before President Clinton's visit there last summer.
At the same time, the State Department's chief human rights official said yesterday, China had shown modest improvements in other areas, such as acting against weapons proliferation.
"For someone who cares deeply about human rights, recent developments in China have been, frankly, deeply discouraging," Assistant Secretary of State Harold Hongju Koh told the House International Relations Committee.
Committee lawmakers from both parties have denounced administration policy towards China as too lenient, criticism repeated Wednesday.
"We're not yet at a real China policy. When it comes to China, there seems to be no standard, whether it comes from a Democratic or Republican administration," said Rep. Sam Gadjenson of Connecticut, the panel's senior Democrat.
condemning China for human rights abuses in China and Tibet. The administration did not support last year's version of the resolution.
"Even when it comes to words, our government continues to send mixed messages about whether we really care what Beijing does to its people." Gilman said.
Committee Chairman Rep. Benjamin Gilman, R-N.Y., urged the administration to work to pass a resolution at the U.N. Human Rights Commission in Geneva this spring
Koh said the administration was still weighing whether to support such a resolution in the United Nations.
Last week in Washington, he told a panel focusing on human rights talks with China that the United States took strong exception to recent Chinese arrests of 25 disidents for trying to organize an opposition party in the aftermath of Clinton's visit last June.
"I made clear that these recent developments are steps in the wrong direction. I told the Chinese delegation that these actions obstruct the development of our bilateral relationship and urged them to take immediate steps to repair the damage." Koh said.
The testimony coincided with release of a report by Ammesty USA that said the Chinese government has not only failed to improve its human rights record but has "severely regressed" in the categories of arbitrary arrests and long prison terms for dissidents.
It said 250 people still are imprisoned for "peaceful participation" in the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests. The report also alleged that cases of around 2,000 prisoners detained on political grounds have not been reviewed.
Yeltsin avoids surgery
The Associated Press
MOSCOW — Russian president Boris Yeltsin's ulcer will not require surgery because drug treatment appears to be working, his doctors decided Wednesday.
Yeltsin, who has been hospitalized five
times since his re-election in 1996, underwent a gastroscopy Wednesday. The procedure required a fiber-optic thread with a tiny camera to be passed through his mouth into his stomach, allowing doctors to inspect the ulcer.
"Treatment is under way and no situations that would give cause for worry have appeared," Yeltsin's
chief of staff Nikolai Bordyuza was quoted as saying by the Interfax news agency.
Presidential spokesman Dmitry Yakushkin said the exam showed that Yeltsin's ulcer had stopped bleeding, the inflammation and swelling of tissue stopped and initial signs of healing appeared.
Yeltsin, 67, has not been to his Kremmlin office so far this year. Prime Minister
Veygenim Primakov now runs most of the country's day-to-day operations and is leading efforts to pull the country out its economic crisis.
The Kremlin says that there would be no formal transfer of any powers to Primakov, and Yeltsin insisted he would serve out his term, which ends in the middle of next year.
Nearly every day for months, Kremlin aides have been saying Yeltsin was working with documents to support their claims that Yeltsin was active and in charge — and the tired phrase has been drawing ridicule lately from Russian media and the opposition.
Meanwhile, doctors decided to continue a course of medicinal treatment. Starting Wednesday, doctors allowed Yeltsin to get out of bed to walk around his room and work at a table, Yakushkin said.
Still, chief presidential doctor Sergei Mironov said Yeltsin would need two to three weeks in the hospital and would not be allowed to travel by air for up to three months.
Other medical experts were even less optimistic about Yeltsin's recovery, saying his treatment could take up to six weeks, and may include a recovery period in a sanitarium. Interfax reported.
Yeltsin postponed a Jan. 28 trip to France after he talked to French President Jacques Chirac by telephone on Tuesday.
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