6A
Nation/World
Thursday November 12, 1998
Clinton promotes preparation in Persian Gulf
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON — President Clinton laid out his case Wednesday for a possible attack on Iraq as the Pentagon began a major buildup of American warplanes and troops in the Persian Gulf.
Allowing Saddam Hussein to flout the will of the United Nations by rejecting weapons inspections would only embolden him to act recklessly, Clinton said in a Veterans Day speech at Arlington National Cemetery.
"We continue to hope — indeed, pray — that Saddam will comply," the president said. "But we must be prepared to act if he does not."
prepared to act in the U.S. warships headed
Meanwhile, U.S. warships headed
toward the Gulf, and Defense Secretary William Cohen ordered dozens of Air Force fighters and bombers, additional Patriot airdefense missiles and 3,000 soldiers to the area, roughly doubling U.S. firepower.
"Nowhere is our vigilance more urgent than in the Persian Gulf, where Saddam Hussein's regime threatens the stability of one of the most vital regions of the world," Clinton said in a speech that suggested he was still weighing his options.
Adding to the crisis atmosphere, the State Department withdrew as many as 200 nonessential personnel and their families from embassies in Israel and Kuwait.
citing the mounting tensions since Iraq on Oct. 31 stopped cooperating with weapons inspectors of the a U.N. Special Commission. The department also suggested private U.S. citizens in Kuwait should leave.
Hussein: Refuses to allow U.N. weapons inspections of Iraq.
The United Nations withdrew several hundred weapons inspectors and other U.N. staff from Baghdad in light of the possibility of
American airstrikes. The U.N. Security Council called an emergency meeting as Secretary-General Kofi Annan appealed to Saddam to immediately resume cooperation with inspectors. Annan said he was saddened and burdened by Iraq's defiance.
The Security Council passed a resolution this week condemning Iraq's noncooperation, but it did not include an explicit go-ahead for military action. The Clinton administration contends that earlier resolutions on Iraq gave it the right to use force, although some U.N. members dispute that.
The timing of any possible U.S. action was unclear. Clinton spent the afternoon on the golf course,
and his ales said he still planned to travel to Malaysia on Saturday for a meeting of Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation nations, although that trip probably would be scrapped if airstrikes were ordered. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright put off her departure for Malaysia from today to Friday, representative James Rubin said, to give her another day in Washington to deal with the Iraq issue.
Clinton issued no explicit threat to attack Iraq but made clear he thought that failure to enforce the U.N.'s demands for arms inspections would be a costly mistake.
"If the inspectors are not permitted to visit suspect sites or monitor
Kristi Ellott / KANSAN
compliance at known production facilities, they may as well be in Baltimore, not Baghdad," Clinton said.
Israelis, Palestinians closer to agreement
The Associated Press
JERUSALEM — The Israeli Cabinet narrowly ratified the peace agreement with the Palestinians yesterday after a two-week delay and some U.S. prodding, setting the stage for a troop withdrawal from 13 percent of the West Bank by the end of January.
of the west bank by the east bank. The accord was approved by eight of the 17 ministers after a seven-hour debate. Five ministers abstained and four voted against
in what appeared to be a political blow for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who had expected broader support.
In the past two weeks, with Netanyahu postponing Cabinet debate four times, the United States urged Israel to try and stick to the original time table of the land-for-security agreement.
President Clinton spoke with Netanyahu
Netanyahu: Has attached stipulations to agreement.
on Tuesday night about the deal and about the U.S. showdown with Iraq about weapons inspections.
An Israeli official said the United States had let it be known that its policy of being tough on Iraq was encountering problems in the Arab world because Israel had not moved forward on its implementation of the agreement.
Saying that it was difficult to "part with even one square centimeter" of the land, Netanyahu attached four stipulations to the agreement that could cause new disruptions.
Under one of the conditions, Netanyahu said he would bring each stage of the phased pullback during the next three months to the
Cabinet for separate approval. Ministers will be asked to determine whether the Palestinians have met their security obligations under the accord, he said.
Netanyahu also demanded that the Palestine National Council hold a formal vote by mid-December to revoke clauses in the PLO founding charter that call for Israel's destruction.
The third stipulation said Israel reserved the right to annex areas of the West Bank if Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat went ahead with plans to unilaterally declare a Palestinian state in May, at the end of the five-year autonomy period.
In a fourth clause, Netanyahu said that in an additional pullback to which Israel committed itself last year, the Palestinians would receive no more than 1 percent of the West Bank.
Despite the new conditions, Netanyahu pledged to go ahead with implementing the agreement. Israel has already fallen behind in the 12-week time table negotiated at last month's Mideast summit.
Netanyahu said he would permit the opening of the Palestinian airport next week and would also begin release Palestinian security prisoners at that time. In all, 750 Palestinians held by Israel for security offenses are to be freed by January.
bereted by January. Another key Israeli commitment, to withdraw from 2 percent of the West Bank by Monday, likely will not be carried out on time, said Netanyahu adviser David Barllan. The troop redeployment cannot take place until parliament approves the deal Tuesday and will likely be carried out a week later.
Palestinian negotiator Hassan Asfour said he believed Netanyahu attached new conditions to please Israeli hard-liners.
Impeachment inquiry will continue
Postponement of trial unlikely for president
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON Reflecting Republican divisions, Sen. Arlen Specter suggested yesterday that Congress halt the impeachment inquiry and leave President Clinton to the criminal justice system after his term ends. The leader of the inquire rejected the idea.
Specter, of Pennsylvania, told reporters he has shared his idea with Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott of Mississippi and the likely House speaker in the next Congress, Bob Livingston of Louisiana. Both were noncommittal, Specter said, adding that he would discuss his idea with
House Judiciary Committee Chair man Henry Hyde.
man henry hyde.
Hyde said in Wheaton, Ill., that
Hyde said in Wh hearings scheduled for Nov. 19 would go on, as would subsequent committee deliberations on articles of impeachment.
Articles of impeachment, similar to an indictment, would become a matter for the Senate and Specter if approved by the
approved by the full House by
Clinton: Could face criminal charges after his term ends.
majority vote. If the Senate conducts a trial, a two-thirds vote would be needed for conviction — unlikely with a 55-45 GOP majority.
"I think we have a constitutional duty to perform under the law and the Constitution, and we're going to perform it." Hyde said in response to Specter's idea.
Specter — a former prosecutor — said some Republicans were searching for a way out of an unpopular impeachment effort but acknowledged his idea "is going to take some digestion." The dialogue must begin now, Specter said, because the Senate won't convict Clinton.
Senate work
"I am suggesting holding the president accountable through the criminal process after his term of office expires, where he could be subject to prosecution for perjury, obstruction of justice and face the distinct possibility of a jail sentence, as contrasted with the impeachment proceedings, which I believe will come to naught," Specter told a news conference.
Scientists may have found lightless supernova
The Associated Press
Astronomers have discovered evidence that hundreds of years ago a star exploded closer to Earth than any other known supernova. They just can't figure out why no one back in the 13th century seems to have recorded the blast, which should have been a spectacular sight.
The mystery suggests, among other things, that the astronomic records are
incomplete or that scientists have come across a new celestial phenomenon: invisible supernovas.
The supernova should have appeared for a year or more as the brightest object in the night sky, except for the moon, around the year 1250.
presumably, the astronomers of the Orient should have been able to see it just above the horizon, even during the day, said Bernd Aschenbach, one of the researchers, but records
from that time are incomplete and could account for the hole in the data.
The explanation may be that the explosion of superheated gas and radiation may not have given off visible light. The new work "offers the possibility that we're looking at a new and different phenomenon," said astrophysicist Robert Petre at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.
The discovery was made by scientists at the Max Planck
Institute in Germany and was reported today in the journal Nature.
The supernova revealed itself when researchers scanned the constellation Vela for invisible X-rays and gamma rays, which can be byproducts of a supernova explosion.
The astronomers found that the explosion's gas cloud is still out there and is twice as hot as the sun's core and stretches up to 25 light-years across.
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