UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Monday, August 19, 1996
17A
Liberians reach peace after seven years of war
The Associated Press
ABUJA, Nigeria — West African leaders have signed off on a peace plan to end nearly seven years of civil war in Liberia and hold elections next spring.
The Economic Community of West African States meeting in Nigeria also announced late Saturday that a former Liberian senator would lead a new interim government to be sworn in by the end of the month.
Yet another cease-fire in the war that has claimed more than 150,000 lives and left half of the country's 2.6 million people homeless will go into effect Tuesday.
More than a dozen peace accords have been broken during the war launched in 1989 by Liberian warlord Charles Taylor.
"I wish to seize this occasion to publicly accept this awesome responsibility," said former senator Ruth Perry in her acceptance speech. "We owe this pledge to God and to the Liberian people. We have
no illusions and shall endeavor to have no other loyalties to any group or faction."
Some Monrovian residents
"The whole world is now convinced that the men have failed us."
Nancy Smith Monrovian used clothes vendor
expressed optimism for peace with a woman at the helm.
"We have tried the men for more than five years," said Nancy Smith, a used clothes vendor. "The whole world is now convinced that the men have failed us."
Liberia's leading warlords, Taylor, Alhaji Kromah, George Boley and Roosevelt Johnson, all attended the summit and agreed to the new peace plan.
The plan is an amended version of an accord created last year that called for an immediate cease-fire and placed Taylor, Kromah and
Boley on an interim Council of State with three civilians. Summit members said a change in leadership on the council was needed and replaced chairman Wilton Sankawilo with Perry.
The cease-fire that went into effect with the seating of the interim government last September broke down in April when a stand-off between Taylor and his rival Johnson led to wide-scale fighting in the Liberian capital.
More than 1,500 people died during the bloodshed between April 6 and May 27. The fighting and looting prompted the U.S. military to evacuate about 2,000 foreigners from Monrovia.
Relief workers Sunday reported that 35,000 displaced people in an abandoned mining town about 50 miles outside of Monrovia are in grave danger.
The relief officials said at least five people were dying each day in Bong Mine of starvation, measles, severe diarrhea and malaria.
The interim government will oversee preparations for elections scheduled for May 30. It is supposed to hand over power to an elected administration by June 15.
Irish nationalist loses fight against extradition
Friends of Jimmy Smyth believe that he has been sent to Northern Ireland
The Associated Press
SAN FRANCISCO — An Irish nationalist's struggle to fight extradition from California to Northern Ireland may have come to an end Saturday.
Authorities at a federal prison in Pleasanton, Calif., confirmed reports that Jimmy Smyth had been removed at noon Saturday. But Ken White, an officer at Federal Correctional Institution at Camp Parks, said he could not say who took custody of Smyth or where he was taken.
Smyth's family members fear he was being extradited to Ireland but also were unable to get details.
"Extradition is a pretty safe assumption," said John Fogarty of the San Francisco chapter of the Irish American Unity Conference.
In a statement provided by the conference on Saturday night, Smyth said: "I leave this country full of thanks for the spirit and independence of the American people ... I am returning to a country I left unwillingly 12 years ago ... There are many who will seek revenge against me because I spoke the truth about Ireland."
His wife, Margaret Lynch, from whom he is separated, said she received a phone call from her husband's friend on Saturday afternoon, telling her that Smyth was taken from the prison.
Smith apparently had asked his cellmate to contact his friend if he was taken from the institution, said Lynch, who lives in San Francisco.
Smyth, an Irish prison escapee, was convicted of the 1976 attempted murder of an off-duty prison guard in Belfast, a crime he denies committing.
He took part in a mass escape in 1983 from Maze prison near Belfast and was arrested in 1992 in San Francisco.
A federal judge barred his extradition in 1994, fearing Smyth would be persecuted because of his political views.
But the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals disagreed, saying any harsh official treatment either in prison or after his release would be because of his crime, not his opinions.
Smyth tried to appeal to the Supreme Court, but the court denied review of the case in June.
"I remember Jimmy saying that he had a feeling they were going to take him away in about a week," Lynch's sister, Anne Cecchetti, said.
Fogarty said there was a 60-day statutory limit on Smyth's extradition warrant, which would have expired at the end of August.
Administration may send Yeltsin abroad for surgery
Time reports that Russian president has heart trouble
The Associated Press
NEW YORK — Boris Yeltsin's health is far more precarious than previously disclosed, Time magazine reported yesterday, so serious
that the Kremlin is considering sending the Russian president abroad for double-bypass surgery.
Yeltsin's health has been a serious concern for months, especially in the run-up to his July re-election when Yeltsin inexplicably disappeared for days — prompting rumors the 65-year-old leader had suffered a heart attack or had gone on a drinking binge.
Time said it had obtained a Kremmlin medical advisory detailing the
seriousness of Yeltsin's condition.
It said V.S. Dubrovin, head of the doctors monitoring the president's health, reported that Yeltsin's cardiac ischemia — constriction of the heart caused by blocked arteries — had worsened during the election campaign following a crisis situation in mid-June.
Time reported that a source close to the president's security service said that a relapse occurred partly because Yeltsin gave up his prescribed medication and went on a drinking binge that may have affected his heart as well as the left side of his brain.
There was no official comment yesterday in Moscow to the magazine report.
Yeltsin dropped out of sight at the end of the election campaign, and on July 15 checked into a government health resort outside Moscow. Aides said he worked steadily during his stay at the resort and needed
a more thorough rest.
At his inauguration on Aug. 9, Yeltsin looked frail and slurred his words, fueling speculation that his health is deteriorating. Yeltsin has already had two bouts of serious heart trouble.
The president has been on what aides call a semi-vacation last week, working two or three hours a day but issuing a series of decrees and naming Russia's new Cabinet.
Spokesman Sergei Yastrzhembsky
said Yeltsin was likely to spend his full vacation near Moscow and undergo an unspecified course of medical treatment.
Time's reported that Yeltsin's condition was so bad that the Kremlin was considering secretly transferring him to a Swiss clinic for double-bypass surgery. The magazine also cited U.S. intelligence sources who said that if Yeltsin were under American care, an angioplasty or bypass would be ordered.
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