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Wednesday, June 8, 1994
NATION/WORLD UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Rwandan army counterattacks
The Associated Press
KIGALI, Rwanda — The army has launched a major counterattack in southern Rwanda, the first big offensive by besieged government forces since the civil war with rebels resumed two months ago.
"Obviously they want to push back the whole of the RPF (Rwandan Patriotic Front) forces from the south," Canadian Maj. Jean-Guy Plante, a military representative for the 450-man U.N. force in Rwanda, said Monday.
In two months rebels have swept government and civilian militia forces from much of the north and east and part of the south, and by late last month had captured about half of the country.
Fighting has been intense around the city of Gitarama, the provisional seat of the Hutu-dominated government. The Tutsi-led rebels captured the nearby town of Kabgayi last week, but rebel forces there are still coming under shell fire.
Plante said there also was heavy fighting about 12 miles north of Kigali but had no further details.
U. N. officers assumed that the government plan is to push the rebel forces as far as possible east of the main north-south road between Gitarama and the Burundi border.
The war erupted April 6 after the death of President Juvenal Habyarimana, a Hutu, in a mysterious plane crash. The presidential guard, army-soldiers and civilians armed by Hutu extremist political parties went on a rampage, killing Tutsis and Hutu opposition figures.
that prompted rebels to resume a three-year-old civil war, marching down from positions they held in the north behind a demilitarized zone set up by a peace accord signed in August.
The president died while returning from a conference to solidify the peace.
An estimated 200,000 people have been slain, mostly Tusis butchered by the roving militias armed with hand grenades, machetes and spears. There have been far fewer deaths in army-rebel fighting.
Plante said the army's mortar attack on a U.N. flight carrying an Italian delegation Sunday at Kigali airport may have been part of the overall plan to boost the morale of government troops.
Two shells exploded around the plane just after it arrived, and the United Nations issued a strong protest. The plane was forced to leave without unloading passengers or cargo. There were no injuries.
Sunday's attack on the Kigali airport led to suspension of all relief flights. The United Nations announced that beginning today it was instituting fuel rationing on U.N. personnel.
Plante said the United Nations would begin using Entebbe airfield in neighboring Uganda and truck supplies to troops in Kizilah.
"That will create a hell of a logistical problem for us because we have to truck everything down here," he said.
"We don't think we will be able to use the airport at Kigali before Friday because we don't think we'll have the guarantees we are looking for," he said.
North Korea warns against sanctions
The Associated Press
SEOUL, South Korea — Threatened with the prospect of U.N. sanctions for barring inspectors from nuclear facilities, North Korea warned again Monday that sanctions would mean war.
in Vienna, Austria, meanwhile, governors of the International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N. nuclear watchdog, met to discuss stalled efforts to get North Korea to open its secretive nuclear program.
North Korea insists its nuclear program is peaceful, but its refusal to allow full inspections for more than 15 months has deepened suspicion it is developing weapons.
Finances appeared slim that the North would relent and allow full inspections as required by international treaty.
"Sanctions mean outright war," said a statement issued by the Committee for Peaceful Unification of the Fatherland, North Korea's chief organization overseeing inter-Korea affairs.
"If the South Korean puppet hopes that it
would be safe while opening the forum of sanctions, it is a big miscalculation."
The statement was carried by North Korea's state radio,monitored by South Korea's Naewoe news agency.
North Korea said several months ago that any sanctions would amount to a declaration of war. In heated talks with South Korea, the North once said that Seoul would become "a sea of fire," though the threat later was retracted.
Despite the renewed warning of war on Monday, there was no sign that Pyongyang's Communist government was massing troops along the heavily armed border with South Korea, Seoul officials said. North Korea invaded South Korea in 1950, starting a three-year war that resulted in millions of casualties.
"If the North chooses reckless adventurism, it will be destined to self-destruction," President Kim Young-sam was quoted as saying Monday.
"The North will not have a single nuclear bomb, not even half a bomb. I am determined to stop them," the South Korean news agency Yon-
hap quoted Kim as telling reporters.
The crisis over North Korea's nuclear program came to a head last week when U.N. inspectors said the removal of fuel rods from an experimental reactor had made it impossible to verify whether nuclear materials had been diverted to build bombs.
The United States is leading the drive at the United Nations to punish the North with economic sanctions. A range of options have been explored, ranging from a full cutoff of trade and a weapons embargo to milder measures.
Diplomats said final action is not expected before next week.
Before introducing a sanctions resolution in the Security Council, the United States is working to assure the support of China and Russia, countries that have veto power.
Russia favors holding an international conference on the issue before proceeding to international sanctions. China is not eager either to punish its longtime Communist ally and prefers more dialogue to resolve the dispute.
U.S. exports to Mexico rise nearly 16 percent
The Associated Press
NEW YORK — In the three months after the North American Free Trade Agreement took effect, U.S.-Mexico trade reached record levels, and the trade surplus with Mexico was cut almost in half, the New York Times reported Monday.
The United States imported much more from Mexico than it exported to its southern neighbor in the first quarter after NAFTA took effect on Jan. 1, according to the Times article.
That disparity cut America's quarterly trade surplus with Mexico by 45.1 percent, to $560 million.
American exports to Mexico rose 15.7 percent in the January-March quarter of this year, compared with the first three months of 1993, the Commerce Department reported. That amounted to record $11.85 billion after seasonal adjustments.
Imports from Mexico over the same period rose by 22.5 percent to a record $11.29 billion.
which opposed the pact, fearing it would eat away at American jobs — and business and government leaders, who said it would create jobs by making Mexico a market for American goods.
Passage of NAFTA heightened ill will between organized labor —
While both sides said trying to draw long-term conclusions from the early trade figures would be premature, NAFTA was creating jobs, said Mickey Kantor, the American trade representative.
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"The balance of trade is not as important as the content of trade and
the increase in exports," Kantor said in an interview with the Times on Friday. "That's what raises our standard of living."
But labor leaders said Americans jobs could be lost if NAFTA continues to increase Mexican exports more than imports.
"The story is that it hasn't done more" to boost American exports, said Arthur Gundersheim, international affairs director at the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union.
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