Section B · Page 10
The University Daily Kansan
Thursday, October 21, 1999
Nation/World
Russian attacks in Chechnya near Grozny
Troops may or may not enter capital city
The Associated Press
GROZNY, Russia—Russia artillery pounded the outskirts of Chechnya's capital yesterday, making the earth tremble in parts of Grozny, while President Boris Yeltsin met with top officials near Moscow to discuss the next phase of the offensive.
Russia's strategy since sending ground troops into Chechnya to crush Islamic militants three weeks ago has been to slowly advance from three directions but to stop short of Grozny. Russian forces were devastated by street fighting with guerrillas in the capital during the 1994-96 war, which left the republic with de facto independence.
Russia has indicated that it does not plan to enter Grozny, but Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said yesterday that the
troops would not stop and that they would fulfill] their task to the end.
Yeltsin's representative Dmitry Yakushkin said the president's meeting with Chief of Staff Alexander Voloshin. Defense Minister Igor Sergeyev and Interior Minister Valdimir Rushato focused on the second phase of the operation, but he did not give specifics. The officials met at Yeltsin's country retreat, where he still is recovering from the flu.
Russia sent troops into the separatist republic Sept. 30, following weeks of airstrikes, to eliminate Islamic militants who invaded neighboring Dagestan twice this summer and who are blamed for a series of September apartment explosions in Russia that killed some 300 people.
Heavy shelling hit Pervomaiskaya and Tolstoy-Yurt. 10 miles from central Grozny. The roar of shelling echoed in the capital's streets and the ground shook in the northern suburbs.
Chechen fighters in northern positions in the capital could easily see Russian troops through their binoculars, conducting drills and doing morning exercises.
"The troops will not stop. They will fulfill their task to the end."
Vladimir Putin
Russian Prime Minister
The Chechen chief of staff for the southwestern front, Isa Astamirov, said Russian long-range artillery also pounded the large town of Bamut, a key base for rebels. In Urus-Martan, another sizable southern town, nine people died in shelling that began Tuesday and continued overnight, local administrator Khavazh扎 bashtayev said.
Chechen fighters reportedly launched sporadic raids in the north. But Russia appeared to have firm control of the northern third of the republic, where the terrain is open and less densely populated than the hills and mountains of the south.
Putin, whose popularity has soared since the offensive began, visited a Russian air force base, where he met pilots carrying out airstrikes and flew in an Su-25 warplane during a training flight.
The prime minister said the air campaign allowed the Russia to avoid exposing large numbers of ground troops to attack. He later stopped in the southern towns of Kraskarod and Mozdok, both to the west of Chechnya.
Putin also discussed the refugee crisis in southern Russia. More than 160,000 people have streamed out of Chechnya since the fighting started. Most of the refugees are camping in Ingushetia, which borders Chechnya to the west, and local authorities have pleaded for more assistance before winter.
"The position of the refugees is disastrous," Yuri Yezhov, of the Russian Red Cross, told ITAR-Tass. Yezhov accompanied a shipment of 3,500 winter jackets for the refugees but said the most critical shortage was tents.
Mandela endorses violence as a last resort in talks
Afterthought to speech on peace in Middle East excites Palestinian crowd
The Associated Press
SHATI REFUGEE CAMP, Gaza Strip — Violence becomes an option when peace talks break down, Nelson Mandela told the Palestinians yesterday, eliciting thunderous applause from a people drinking up the moral support of an icon for freedom.
That earned two minutes of applause.
The warning from the former South African president was an afterthought to a speech otherwise strongly supportive of the peace the Palestinians are pursuing with Israel.
"Then, if the only alternative is violence, we will use violence."
"Our men and women with vision choose peace rather than confrontation, except in cases where we cannot get, where we cannot proceed, where we cannot move forward," he told the Palestinian Legislative Assembly, addressing its members as brothers.
The Palestinians, eager to press Israel to accelerate the peace process, seized on the speech to reinforce demands for a full Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
"No doubt, Mandela's speech has great
meaning," said Kadoura Fares, a member of Yasser Arafat's Fatah faction. "This man has worked all his life for peace [but] this cannot be achieved if Israel does not implement agreements fully and honestly."
Mandela called for an Israeli withdrawal from all Arab lands and the establishment of an international commission to supervise the
peace process. Israel captured the West Bank and Gaza during the 1967 Middle East War.
Mandela: advocated violence if talks did not work
His affection for the Palestinians was clear, but Mandela also expressed sympathy for the Israeli view.
"I understand why they occupied territory during the [1967] war and after the war," he said, and urged all Arabs to grant Israel firm and unequivocal recognition of a right to exist within secure borders.
Arafat has recognized Israel, but some Palestinians want a final status agreement to include the right of Palestinians to return to all parts of the land, including Israel's pre-1967 borders.
Mandela led the African National Congress from a prison cell for 27 years before leading South Africa's transition from apartheid to democracy and becoming president. He retired in June.
Concluding his Mideast tour with a hero's welcome in Gaza, he repeatedly invoked the similarity between the struggle of Palestinians and nonwhites in South Africa.
"The histories of our two peoples, Palestinian and South African, correspond in such painful and poignant ways, that I intensely feel myself being at home amongst compatriots," he said.
Mandela recalled a time when both movements were treated as pariahs by the
international community - a period that saw the forging of close bonds between the Palestinians and the ANC.
"The long-standing fraternal bonds between our two liberation movements are now translating into the relations between two governments," Mandela said.
It was an admiration readily recipi-
cated when Mandela toured a refugee
camp that he said reminded him of con-
ditions at home.
Posters bearing Mandela's image dotted walls, and banners read "Our dreams will come true through your support."
The pupils at the Shati refugee girls' school waited in the sandlot that functions as their yard, hoisting Palestinian and South African flags.
When Mandela arrived, the girls burst into cheers and lined up to shake his hand, bewildering him with blessings in Arabic. Crammed two to a desk in a classroom, they sang in English, "Good morning, we are happy to see you."
Mandela, charmed, responded by asking,
"Can I sing you a song?" The class shouted
"Yes!" and listened attentively as he sang
"Twinkle. Twinkle, Little Star."
Appeals court reversal could prove deadly for big tobacco
The Associated Press
MIAMI—A state appeals court yesterday reversed course and revived the threat of a crippling multibillion-dollar punitive damage award against big tobacco.
The third District Court of Appeal ruled that the jury in a landmark class-action case involving 500,000 Florida smokers can award punitive damages in a single lump sum instead of deciding cases one smoker at a time.
Tobacco attorneys argued before a three-judge appeals court panel for damage decisions on a smoker-bysmoker basis. The companies could more easily defend against individual lawsuits than one large suit carrying a potentially huge verdict.
In July, jurors found the nation's five largest cigarette makers and industry groups had produced a defective and deadly product. The same jury is to determine damages in the second phase of the trial, to begin Nov. 1.
"The stakes have suddenly become humongous," said Northeastern University law professor Richard Daynard, head of an anti-tobacco clearinghouse. "The fate of the industry rests on this jury that has already found that the industry has behaved outrageously."
The appeals court had ruled Sept. 3 that damage claims in the landmark smoking case must be considered case by case, raising the prospect of more manageable multimillion-dollar individual awards.
The appeals court vacated its decision later that month and called for oral arguments.
Dan Webb, lead attorney for the tobacco companies, insisted today that a single award would cause an enormous amount of irreparable harm to the industry.
Presiding Judge David L. Levy asked Webb why tobacco lawyers didn't raise the punitive damage issue earlier, since the structure was set by another judge almost two years ago.
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