University Daily Kansan / Monday. December 9, 1991
5
Three Slavic republics defy Gorbachev, forge alliance
New union creates commonwealth of independent states
The Associated Press
MINSK, U.S.S.R. — The Soviet Union's three Slavic republics — Russia, Byelorussia and Ukraine — forged a new alliance yesterday and said Mikhail Gorbachev's government was dead, Soviet media reported.
The agreement creates a commonwealth of independent states with its capital in Minsk instead of Moscow, the news agency Tass said. The pact defies Gorbachev's sry to preserve the Soviet Union under a new union treaty.
The 74-year-old Soviet Union "as a subject of international and geopolitical reality no longer exists," Tass quoted the agreement as saying.
"Talks on the preparation of a new union treaty have reached a dead end and the process of the secession of
republics from the U.S.S.R. and forming the independent states has come to reality."
Russian President Boris Yeltsin, Byelorussia's Stanislav Shushkevich and newly elected Ukrainian President Leonid Kravchuk signed the agreement. Ukraine and Byelorussia's prime ministers and Russia's secretary of state signed another pact concerning economic ties.
Ukraine, after its vote for independence last week, had rejected Gorbachev's proposed union treaty to hold the country together. The new commonwealth plan keeps the Slavic republics united in a limited manner.
Gorbachev, who was not at the meeting, told Ukrainian television yesterday that there would be economic and social collapse if the republics
destroved the Soviet Union.
THERE ARE ACCEPTABLE CONTRADICTIONS
"I started all this, and I have responsibility for the consequences," an emotional Gorbachev said, referring to his $6\frac{1}{2}$-year-old perestroika reform campaign. "We have reached a kind of limit, and after this limit comes instability."
Yeltsin, Kravchuk and Shushkevich are to meet today in Moscow with Gorbachev, who appeared to be removed from the political mainstream. Yeltsin already had stripped the central government of nearly all its functions and resources after the failure of a hard-line coup against Gorbachev in August.
Russia, Beyelorussia and Ukraine comprise nearly three-fourths of the Soviet Union's 290 million people.
Woman who contracted AIDS in dental procedure dies at 23
The Associated Press
FORT PIERCE, Fla. — Kimberly Bergalis, who contracted AIDS from her dentist and became the focus of a national crusade for mandatory testing of health professionals, died yesterday surrounded by her family. She was 23.
Her plight stirred a bitter battle over whether mandatory testing and AIDS disclosure among doctors, nurses and dentists would improve; patient safety.
"The world has lost a great deal, but the world will never, ever forget how brave and how caring and how determined that lady was," said Barbara Webb, a retired teacher who also was infected by dentist David Acer.
Bergalia shocked the nation in September 1990 when she came forward to say she was "patient A," the first known U.S. case of a patient who contracted AIDS in a medical procedure.
Bergals was born Jan. 19, 1968, in Tamaqua, Pa., and moved to Florida with her family in 1978.
Bergalis' lawyer, Robert Montgomery, said her father phoned shortly after 3 a.m. and said, "Kimberly is not going to suffer any more."
"Her courageous spirit and her determination to help others avoid her own fate touched Florida and the Gov. Lawton Lawts said yesterday.
She was studious in high school, a
member of the Math League and National Honor Society, with little time for a social life.
She graduated with a business degree from the University of Florida and was pursuing post-graduate study in science when she got sick in late 1989.
Doctors initially rejected the idea of infection by the dentist, but in January the U.S. Centers for Disease Control determined that her particular strain of HIV almost identically matched Acer's.
Acer, who learned he had full-blown AIDS in September 1987, pulled two of Bergalis' teeth that December and treated about 2,000 others before he died.
Evidence expert testifies in Smith trial
Lack of grass stains on accuser's dress doesn't mean she wasn't raped, he says
The Associated Press
Kennedy estate lawn described by the woman.
WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — A criminal evidence expert hired by the defense in the William Kennedy Smith rape trial said under cross-examination yesterday that the absence of grass stains on a woman's dress did not mean she wasn't trapped.
In a rare Sunday court session that was ordered in hopes that the trial would be over by Christmas, Lee said that he was not allowed to do experiments on clothing still held by police as evidence.
Henry Lee, chief criminalist of the state of Connecticut, said during defense questioning that the accuser's clothing showed no signs of grass stains or other damage that could have resulted from the struggle on the
Lee said that he went to the estate with defense lawyer Mark Seiden last
Smith, the 31-year-old nephew of Sen. Edward Kennedy, is charged with sexual battery. Florida's legal equipment to rape, and misdemeanor mea
June and dida "transfer test," wiping a white handkerchief on the grass and concrete to show how stains transferred to fabric.
"If the dress behavior was like the handkerchief," he said, it would have been stained from contact with the ground.
Lee was one of several witnesses hired by the defense to analyze the conditions at the Kennedy estate in an effort to show that physical evidence in the case was inconsistent with a rape.
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