Tuesday, January 19, 1999
The University Daily Kansan
Section A · Page 11
Nation/World
Clinton's speech to focus on agenda
State of Union address won't include scandal
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON — Even with his political fate in jeopardy, President Clinton is preparing a State of the Union address that aides say offers an ambitious agenda geared to the challenges of the 21st century and the needs of aging baby boomers.
"Tuesday night, I'm going to ask the country to go back to work because we've still got a lot to do," the president told a Democratic party gala late Friday before settling in for a weekend of rehearsing the speech with aides in the White House family theater.
In a series of previews of Tuesday night's speech, Clinton already has announced initiatives to improve military readiness, improve food safety, reduce violence against children and help Americans with long-term health care needs. He also is expected to call for increasing the minimum wage even though Congress ignored a similar call last year.
A big question is how Clinton will follow up on last year's call to "save Social Security first." He used that slogan to beat down Republican tax-cut proposals, but has not shown his hand on what he wants done to ensure the solvency of the Social Security fund when the baby boom generation retires.
Lewis said Clinton will tell Congress that "this is the year we should get it done" and shed some light on his thinking, stressing that any solution has to have bipartisan support.
The nation's strong economy gives him strong footing for his speech. Clinton will boast of a record budget surplus, the lowest unemployment in nearly 80 years, the highest home ownership rate in history and the creation of nearly 18 million new jobs during his presidency.
Clinton: Will make State of the Union speech tonight.
Clinton will make his nationally televised address at 9 p.m. EDT tonight from the House chamber, where a month earlier lawmakers voted mostly on party lines to impeach him.
His speech comes on the same day as the opening of the White House defense in his Senate impeachment trial, a coincidence that even some Democrats say creates an awkwardness warranting postponement of the address.
"The president can help himself by delivering a strong State of the Union speech and acting presidential." Breaux said.
But Sen. John Breaux, D-La., said Saturday that the State of the Union is an opportunity for Clinton.
The president has indicated that he will not mention his political troubles; last year he did not mention the Monica Lewinsky affair even though it dominated the headlines.
White House aides, however, see the speech as an opportunity to stand before an audience of tens of millions of Americans and demonstrate that he is focusing on their needs, regardless of his own political peril. The appearance is likely to provide a boost in the polls even for a president who enjoys extraordinarily high approval ratings.
Clinton has successfully used the State of the Union speech to frame the policy agenda for Congress. His Social Security theme put the brakes on GOP tax cuts even as the president achieved some of his own prized goals, such as winning a down payment on money to hire 100,000 new teachers.
NATO seeks peace while Serb forces spread
The Associated Press
MALOPOLJE, Yugoslavia — Defying global outrage over the massacre of civilians, Serb forces pounded villages Monday with tanks and artillery. The government also barred the U.N. war crimes prosecutor from entering Kosovo and ordered the chief U.S. peace verifier to leave.
Fighting spread Monday to northern Kosovo, where ethnic Albanian rebels attacked a Serb vehicle, wounding five policemen in an ambush 25 miles northwest of the provincial capital, Pristina.
bia.
The defiant moves after last week's massacre of 45 ethnic Albanian civilians indicated President Slobodan Milosevic was willing to risk further international pressure in his campaign against rebels seeking independence from the main Yugoslav republic, Ser-
NATO's supreme commander, Gen. Wesley Clark, and German Gen. Klaus Naumann, planned to fly to the Yugoslav capital of Belgrade on Tuesday to warn Milosevic he is facing military action unless he abides by the U.S.-negotiated, Oct. 12 deal that ended seven months of fighting.
The generals were to have gone to Belgrade on Monday but delayed the visit after Yugoslav authorities said Milosevic was too busy to see them.
"I think a strong message will be brought to President Milosevic about bringing those to justice who should be punished for this and coming into compliance with the agreements that he made," White House press secretary Joe Lockhart said in Washington.
Kosovo's Serb minority and Milosevic's ultra-national allies have
been demanding the government crush the ethnic Albanian Kosovo Liberation Army.
Tensions rose dramatically Saturday after international verifiers found the bodies of 45 ethnic Albanians, including three women and a 12-year-old boy, in a gully near the village of Racak, 20 miles south of Pristina.
William Walker, the American head of the international peace verification mission, accused Serb police of the massacre, despite government claims the dead were guerrillas killed in combat.
The U.N. Security Council held an emergency meeting Monday to discuss the massacre.
"It's an emergency situation, and I think the council could not stand idle while these things are happening," Brazil's U.N. ambassador and current council president Celso Amorim told reporters as he
In Vienna, Austria, David Johnson, the U.S. ambassador to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, expressed outrage Monday over Yugoslav authorities' scandalous attempt to present the cold-blooded slaughter and mutilation of civilians as a military operation against terrorists.
entered the council chamber
Kansas National Guard aircrews off to Bosnia
The Associated Press
TOPEKA — One is a Kansas Highway Patrol trooper, another is an air traffic controller, and still others are military veterans. All of them are spending time in special hellcopters these days, preparing for service in a troubled part of Europe.
About 20 members of the 24th Medical Company, Kansas National Guard, head to Bosnia in February to relieve a unit from California.
Other Guard troops served there in late 1995 and early 1996, but this will be the first deployment of Kansas Army Guard aircrews to the region.
Chief Warrant Officer 3 Darrell W. Linenberger is one of the volunteers. In civilian life, he is a state trooper and the pilot of the Highway Patrol's helicopter.
"The Guard's been good to me,
Linenberger said. "I figure this
is my chance to pay them back a
little."
Other members of the medevac unit include Chief Warrant Officer 4 Robert Good, a full-time Guard technician, instructor pilot and Vietnam veteran. Capt. Antonia Kaplan, detachment commander. Kaplan is an air traffic controller at the Kansas City air route control center in Olathe.
Residents of northeastern Kansas may have heard them during the past four months as they train in special, ambulance-equipped Sikorsky UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters.
To remain mission-qualified, they must clip night vision goggles to their flight helmets and fly 90 minutes every 45 days, but they've been doing more than that as their departure approaches.
They also must be completely at ease with all of the rest of the equipment in the helicopters.
There's an elaborate global positioning system that allows them to fly precisely along a route, and a backup radar and navigation system. There's a rotating, pivoting multiple litter table in the middle of the chopper. And a jungle penetrator swings out of the open right door to lower a collapsible seat a hundred feet or more to the ground on a steel cable.
For a recent night flight, Good and Linenen planned a route from Forbes Field to the northern shore of Clinton Lake, then to the Lawrence generating plant and a landing at Lawrence Municipal Airport. On the return route, they planned to practice a downed-plot extraction south of the Forbes runway intersection.
The flight lasted more than an hour, with the helicopter flying 200 feet above the ground at 100 mph, kicking up clouds of snow particles and frozen dust.
Ghostly trees and an overturned jeep at the south end of Forbes provided a marker for the rescue practice, with Stegner seated comfortably on the helicopter floor, legs dangling in the void.
A few maneuvers put the helicopter in position for the rescue exercise. Stegner swung the penetrator arm down the ground, waited the amount of time a person would need to get into the seat, and brought the arm back up.
Then, they did the whole rescue exercise again before returning to the hangar, finally satisfied with their performance. Once they're in Bosnia, after all, the rescues will be real.
Pinochet trial appealed again
The Associated Press
LONDON — Britain is taking precautions to ensure that the next decision in the thorny legal battle over the fate of former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet will withstand any ethical or judicial challenge.
The case against Pinochet reopened yesterday, when a second panel of judges from the House of Lords considers whether to clear the way for the aging general's extradition to Spain to face criminal charges.
Pinochet, who remains under police guard in a rented mansion west of London, was arrested on a Spanish warrant Oct. 16 alleging crimes against humanity during his 1973-1990 regime.
In one step taken to ensure the decision stands, lawyers for both Pinochet and the prosecution have accepted the makeup of the new tribunal. Seven law lords have been chosen to sit on the new panel — two more judges than Britain's highest court usually assigns to an appeals case.
A panel of law lords voted 3-2 against Pinochet last month. But a second appeal is being heard because Lord Justice Hoffmann, one of the law lords who made the original ruling, failed to disclose his ties
with Amnesty International, a key player in the long campaign to have the 83-year-old general charged.
The legal arguments in this second round are expected to be much the same as the first time. Only now, the Chilean government and Amnesty International have been given permission by the House of Lords to present arguments in the case.
Lawyers for the Spanish and British governments plan to argue again that international agreements supersede England's 1978 State Immunity Law, and that Pinochet's crimes are so horrific they are beyond immunity anyway.
Pinchet's lawyers argue that he should be immune from prosecution as a former head of state.
If the law lords rule in Pinochet's favor, the general will be free to go home. If the judges rule against Pinochet, he will proceed to an extradition hearing before a magistrate's court, which will decide whether he will be sent to Spain to face the charges there.
An official Chilean report says 3,197 people were murdered or disappeared at the hands of Pinochet's secret police after the general overthrew elected Marxist President Salvador Allende.
The Associated Press
Work complaints up in federal jobs
WASHINGTON — Even as the federal work force shrank, employee complaints alleging discrimination or other mistreatment swelled in the 1990s and have already cost taxpayers more than $866 million, federal records show.
Federal workers are seven times more likely to file a civil-rights complaint than private-sector employees, one analysis by federal managers found.
Downsizing seems to have contributed to the complaints. Between 1990 and 1997, the government's payroll fell by 340,000, to 2.7 million, increasing competition for jobs and complaints from those laid off. Other causes include greater sensitivity to discrimination, changes in the law and a multilayered grievance process that doesn't exist at private companies.
"People are more aware and maybe even testing the boundaries," said David Larson, a Creighton University law professor who studies employment law.
Private firms also get worker complaints. But in studying 10 years of complaints, the Senior Executive Association, a federal managers group, said government employees use the grievance system far more than workers at private companies.
An Associated Press review of federal records found that from 1990 through 1997, the government spent $378 million on counselors, judges and investigators who handled complaints.
Another $488 million went to employees who won compensation awards ranging from a few thousand dollars to millions for class-action lawsuits.
"There's a phenomene cost," said Jerry Shaw, an attorney for
idence of the upward trend:
the executives association. "The system in the private sector is not anywhere near as elaborate."
Evidence of the upward trend: Civil rights complaints rose 70 percent from 17,000 cases in 1990 to nearly 29,000 cases in 1997,a preliminary Equal Employment Opportunity Commission report indicates.
EEOC figures show twice as many employees appealed decisions in 1997 compared with 1991.
In 1997, one-fifth of the allegations in EEOC complaints concerned racial discrimination, mostly toward blacks. But whites filed about one-fourth of the race cases, alleging reverse discrimination.
More often, employees complain the government isn't doing enough to provide equal opportunities for minorities, who make up 29 percent of the work force.
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