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Wednesday, August 31, 1994
UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
China reopens talks with U.S. on human rights
The Associated Press
BELING — China yesterday told Commerce Secretary Ronald Brown
it was ready to resume talks with the United States on the sensitive topic of human rights, discussions that the Chinese suspended a half-year ago.
The surprise decision seemed intended to reward Brown for pushing President Clinton to sever the link between trade and China's human
rights practices. It also was seen as China's way of thanking the United
States for Brown's visit, which both sides say marks a new era in Chinese-U.S. business ties.
Brown, leading an entourage of two dozen American business executives, is the first Cabinet member to visit China since Clinton decided in May not to make the annual renewal of China's most-favored nation trade status contingent on improvements in its human rights practices.
Clinton's policy change was an important boost to American corporations seeking to expand or establish
themselves in China, the world's fastest-growing economy and biggest single consumer market. In subsequent months, businesses ranging from Boeing to Wal-Mart have announced agreements with the Chinese.
Brown told a news conference he was "exhalated by the results" of his trip so far. He said nearly $5 billion in business deals have been concluded in the first three days of his eight-day trip, but did not give details.
"We came with high expectations
about our ability to have a profoundly positive impact on the relationship between China and the United States. We have already met and surpassed those expectations," he said.
Brown said Foreign Minister Qian Qichen would be visiting the United States at the end of September for talks, but said he had no other details.
China and the United States have been holding informal discussions on human rights since 1990. But that dialogue was suspended after Beijing reacted with fury to a meeting
between U.S. Assistant Secretary of State John Shattuck with leading dissident Wei Jiengsheng during a visit in February.
The flap over the Shattuck-Wei meeting helped taint the subsequent visit of Secretary of State Warren Christopher in March, when dozens of dissidents were detained or put under surveillance. Many of those detained remain in custody.
Only one dissident has been detained during Brown's visit, but that may be because the most vocal
political activists are already in detention.
Human rights activists charge China has become even more heavy-handed in suppressing dissent since Clinton's decision lifted pressure on the issue.
Clinton and many U.S. business leaders argued that using the annual threat to withdraw MFN from China was not an effective way to bring about improvements in China's human rights practices.
Serbs vote on peace plan
The Associated Press
BELGRADE, Yugoslavia — Hundreds of Bosnian Serbs voted Sunday in the Yugoslav capital on an international peace plan their leaders have already condemned, defying opposition by Belgrade authorities.
Bosnian Serbs were determined to give an overwhelming 'No' vote to the plan crafted by the United States, Russia, Britain, France and Germany.
Serb-led Yugoslavia, desperate to have crippling economic sanctions lifted, supported the plan and cut off supplies to Bosnia's Serbs when their leaders rejected it earlier this month.
The plan would reduce Serb holdings to 49 percent of Bosnia's territory from the 70 percent they seized
during the war. A federation of Bosnian Muslims and Croats, who have accepted the plan, would have 51 percent.
Serb President Slobodan Milovec branded the weekend referendum a crude attempt by Bosnian Serb leaders to shift responsibility for a bad decision to ill-informed voters.
Milosevic was meeting Sunday night in Belgrade with Russian Foreign Minister Andrei Kozyrev. They were expected to discuss a proposal to ease the sanctions if the Serb leader allows international monitors on the border with Bosnia to ensure his break with the Bosnian Serbs is real.
Bosnian Serbs said Friday that Serb officials would not allow voting in Serbia proper. But balloting was held anyway, with no apparent interference by Serb police. By mid-afternoon Sunday, some 1,500 Bosnian Serbs had voted in downtown Belgrade.
"This is a disgrace," Vladimir Karadatz, a 67-year-old Bosnian Serb refugee said as he cast his "No" vote. "We have to sneak and hide if we want to say what we think about the plan.
Results of the two-day referendum were expected early this week, but few doubted the peace plan would be overwhelmingly rejected, despite pressure from Yugoslavia to accept it.
"There has been no dilemma for me," said Skavko Nenadic, a 34-year-old refugee. "I voted against it. That's not a peace plan."
Bosnian Serb leaders say the plan would leave them with an unviable state and prevent them from uniting with Serbia. The quest for such a union was the reason the minority Serb rebelled in April 1992 as Bosnia broke from the old Yugoslav federation. Since then, an estimated 200,000 Bosnians are dead or missing.
West unlikely to punish Serbs
The Associated Press
SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina — Bosnia's prime minister said yesterday he has little hope the West will punish Serb rebels for rejecting an international plan to end their 28-month-old war.
Tens of thousands of people will be in danger of dying from hunger and cold this winter, Prime Minister Haris Slajdzic said in an interview with The Associated Press.
The plan rejected by Bosnian Serbs this weekend would have split the former Yugoslav republic with a Muslim-Croat federation, reducing Serb holdings from the 70 percent of territory they control to 49 percent.
Slijadzic said he expected the United States to keep its promise to lift the arms embargo unilaterally against the Bosnia government if the Serbs continue to reject peace proposals.
Britain and France say that could force them to withdraw their peacekeeping troops.
"It would be the final announcement by the United Nations that despite tons of paper on human rights, despite the U.N. Charter, that they have no answer to a
handful of people who break all rules, that we as humanity know," Slaizidic said.
Washington has said it will try to exempt Bosnia's government from the arms embargo imposed on former Yugoslavia if the Bosnian Serbs don't accept a peace plan by Oct. 15.
"We believe it is important for the Bosnian Serbs to understand that they cannot go on like this forever, and for the Bosnians to be able to defend themselves," Madeline Albright, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said yesterday.
The U.N. Security Council is divided over how to handle the Serbs, Russian Foreign Minister Andrei Kozyrev has warned that if the United States lifts the arms embargo, Russian hard-liners will want to break sanctions imposed on Serbia for its support of the Serbs.
"I expect the international community to give the Serbs a new deadline, that's all. More of the same," Silajdiz said. "They are not doing anything. They cannot find a consensus on the measures to be taken."
Population conference faces boycott
CAIRO, Egypt — Saudi Arabia and Sudan are boycotting next week's United Nations population conference in Cairo following criticism by Muslim clerics that the meeting violates the principles of Islam.
The Saudi representative at the United Nations in New York sent a message earlier this week "regretting they are not going to participate," an official at conference headquarters in Cairo said yesterday.
Sudan's government announced Monday night it would boycott the meeting and urged other Muslim nations to also withdraw because the meeting would result in "the spread of immoral and irreligious values."
The Associated Press
Saudi Arabia and Sudan are the first countries known to withdraw from the U.N.-sponsored International Conference on Population and Development, which is expected to draw some 15,000 people to Cairo beginning Sept. 5.
The leaders of two other predominantly Muslim nations canceled plans to attend the conference. Prime Minister Tansu Ciller of Turkey announced yesterday that a lower-level official would head her country's delegation. Bangladesh's prime minister, Khaleda Zia, made a similar announcement Saturday.
Yesterday, an Egyptian court rejected a suit by Muslim fundamentalists aimed at blocking the conference.
The suit argued that Egypt, which says its legal code is based largely on Islamic law, could not hold a conference which runs counter to Islamic principles. But the court said the matter was outside its jurisdiction because President Hosni Mubarak had the right to invite the conference to be held in Egypt.
The meeting is intended to set guidelines for the next 20 years for halting the growth in world population and encouraging economic development, particularly in the Third World.
Pope John Paul II has criticized the conference for several months.
'Gorillas in the mist missing in Rwanda
In the forest that straddles Rwanda's border with Zaire and Uganda, the research camp featured in the movie "Gorillas in the Mist" stands ransacked and nearly deserted.
Associated Press
KARISOKE RESEARCH CENTER, Rwanda — Shards of glass and torn files litter the forest floor, evidence that Rwanda's deadly civil war has reached high into the Virunga Forest, home to half the world's rare mountain gorillas.
But what has happened to the shy primates themselves?
Only about 600 mountain gorillas remain on Earth. Some 320 lived in Virunga Forest before the civil war erupted anew in April.
A group of Rwandan trackers returned in early August and have traced the base's three gorilla groups used for research. But about 60 gorillas usually shown to tourists are still missing.
"There's no reason for major worry right now," said Jose Kalpers of the International Gorilla Conservation Program, which helps run Karisio.
"As long as there's no disturbance in the forest, the gorillas have no reason to move — it's not as if they're listening to the radio.
"But there's no surveillance at all and the potential risks are quite high," he added.
In mid-July, Karisoke's 30 employees and another 80 Virunga Forest rangers fled advancing Rwandan Patriotic Front rebels and are now refugees in Zaire.
The victorious rebels now form Rwanda's government and are encamped just south of the forest. Over the border, Rwanda's defeated Hutu army feverishly plots revenge.
The forest is a tense no man's land, parts of which are said to be mined. Without rangers, it is open to antelope
and buffalo poachers, who can kill or ensnare gorillas on purpose or by mistake.
Up to 3,000 Rwandan villagers and their livestock fled through the forest in July, but Kalpers said gorillas probably took refuge up the slopes only to return later to their home ranges.
Leonidas Munyatarama was equally confident as he stepped through the debris at the camp founded by Dian Fossey, the American naturalist.
"Even if they fled over the border, they'll be back. Gorillas don't need passports," he said.
Fossey, whose campaign to protect the gorillas was the basis for "Gorillas in the Mist," was murdered in 1985 and buried at the camp among the remains of some of the animals she loved.
"We don't know if it was soldiers or poachers," said Munyatara, who returned to Karisoke last week, the first research student back since the staff's panicked flight.
"The first thing is to get all the trackers back, so we can start searching for all the gorillas, start research, start patrolling."
Easier said than done.
An attempt by the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees to ferry the trackers home ended in disaster Aug. 24 when supers loyal to Rwanda's old government attacked them as they waited for U.N. trucks.
Tracker leader Jean-Bosco Bizumenryl, who said at the time he wanted to return "because gorillas are more peace-loving than men," was nearly beaten to death with rocks.
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