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NATION/WORLD
UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Wednesday, June 28, 1995
9A
Philippine rebels make early exit; peace talks stall
The Associated Press
BRUSSELS, Belgium — It took eight years to get the Philippine government and communist rebels back to the negotiating table but only minutes for the peace talks to break down on Monday.
The rebel National Democratic Front refused to proceed beyond the opening ceremony as long as a jailed communist leader was unable to join their negotiating team in Brussels.
"We shall be able to go into further sessions as soon as he arrives," Luis Jalandoni, chairman of the rebel delegation, said of the jailed leader, Sotero Llamas. He said releasing Sotero Llamas would be a test case of the government's good faith in the talks.
Philippine President Fidel Ramos said that releasing Liamas, a commander of the Communist Party's armed wing who was arrested May 17, was beyond his authority.
"It's not for the executive branch to dictate to the courts in our democratic system," Ramos said.
The standoff overshadowed the resumption of talks to end a 26-year Marxist insurgency in the Philippines. The communists have been fighting to establish their own state and have organized their own government.
On Monday, the government offered a unilateral suspension of offensive military operations for the duration of the formal talks' opening round, said chief government negotiator Howard Q. Dee.
He called on the rebels to agree
to a cease fire. Jalunduni said the
would study the proessus.
Llamas was arrested after a clash in the southern Bicol region, and the rebels claim the arrest broke a safety and immunity guarantee signed by both sides.
Jalandoni said Silvestre Bello III, a government negotiator, was exerting great effort to obtain Llamas' release but could run into opposition from the military.
Negotiators were hoping the issue could be resolved soon, allowing the talks to resume later this week.
Ramos is keen on attracting more foreign investment to the Philippines by stabilizing the country's turbulent political climate.
The first talks to settle the insurgency, held in 1986 and 1987, ended with a rebel walkout after police shot 13 protesters in Manila. The victims had been demanding land reform.
After Monday's opening ceremony, the two sides were to split into four committees on specific topics.
One was to tackle human rights issues, including political prisoners and the practice of charging them with common crimes to keep them behind bars.
A committee on socio-economic matters was to discuss land reform, foreign debt and industrialization.
A third group was to deal with political issues, including the possibility of a constitutional change to give the rebels more say in running the country. And a fourth group was to discuss an end to fighting and the disposition of armed forces.
U.N. blamed for Bosnian woes
The Associated Press
Srebrenica receives heaviest pounding this year by Serbs
SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina — Bosnia's prime minister marked the United Nations' 50th anniversary Monday by branding it an accomplice in genocide for failing to protect his people during 38 months of war.
The criticism came after rebel Serb gunners killed a civilian Monday in Sarajevo and pounded the U.N.-patrolled enclave of Srebrenica in eastern Bosnia with their heaviest attack this year.
"The international community, whether it likes it or not, and the United Nations organization is an accomplice in the genocide against Bosnia and its people," Prime Minister Haris Slaidzic said.
Silajdzic said the United Nations had not been able to protect civilians in six "safe areas" it had established around Bosnia in May 1993. Nor has it continued to enforce a weapons exclusion zone that largely kept Serb guns from pounding Sarajevo from February 1994 until this spring, he said.
The U.N. force, he implied, had done little for Bosnia since war began in April 1992. An estimated 200,000 people are dead or missing.
At least one person was killed and nine were wounded in renewed Serb shelling of Sarajevo on Monday. Eleven civilians, including four children, were killed and 17 were wounded by shelling and snipers on Sunday.
The heaviest shelling this year was recorded Monday morning in Srebrenica. The Serbs also shelled Gorazde, another eastern enclave, U.N. officials said.
There were no confirmed casualty reports from the shelling.
Serb shelling of Sarajevo and five
other U.N.-protected areas in Bosnia has increased since NATO air strikes began last month and the June 15 launch of a governmental offensive to break the Serb siege of the city.
Treatment of U.N. peacekeepers by both sides has worsened. On Monday, U.N. officials reported that French peacekeepers patrolling the only open road into Sarajevo were harassed by government troops who robbed one unit. Bosnian Serbs have shot at other U.N. units using the road.
U. N. representative Lt. Col. Gerdard Dubois said a unit of French peacekeepers on the road near Mount Igman, southwest of Sarajevo, was ambushed and robbed of assault rifles, flak jackets, helmets, radios and ammunition belts by Bosnian soldiers late Sunday.
Diplomats and politicians are trying to determine whether the 23,000-man peacekeeping force should continue its mission — even as they bolster it with additional
troods.
A new rapid-reaction force of as many as 12,000 soldiers is arriving in Bosnia. Germany decided Monday to reinforce it with planes and 1,500 troops.
When Serb violations of the weapons-exclusion zone led to retaliatory NATO air strikes last month, the Serbs seized hundreds of peacekeepers. They released them only after apparently winning promises that there would be no more air strikes.
Virtually the only U.N. measure in effect in Bosnia is an international arms embargo on all of former Yugoslavia, Slaidicz said angrily.
Although Bosnia's Muslim-led government army clearly has obtained some weapons despite the embargo, it has always been outgunned by Serbs who inherited heavy weapons from the old Yugoslav army before it left Bosnia in April 1992.
Neo-Nazi messages blitz cyberspace
"Our hands are tied," Silajdzic said.
Germany's extreme right avoid arrest with e-mail
The Associated Press
BERLIN — Germany's neo-Nazis are retreating; their political parties are banned; their homes are searched almost weekly; their physical moves are constantly monitored.
Yet scores — perhaps hundreds — have found shelter in electronic fortresses that authorities say they can barely penetrate.
The fortresses are modem-equipped computers, including a dozen linked to a bulletin-board network with inner chambers open only to select comrades after elaborate identity checks.
A protective wall of U.S.-authored encryption software is used to keep prying eyes from sensitive e-mail.
"I don't wish to betray how things work here," says a bulletin board operator code named Undertaker.
Undertaker, who would not give his real name during an on-line interview last week, shares a
belief common in his circles: Germany's extreme right is unjustly persecuted by an autocratic state bent on curbing civil liberties.
Germany's estimated 50,000 extreme rightists are going on line by the hundreds, although authorities offer no hard numbers.
Via the global Internet, they have direct access to material illegal in their country — from anti-Semitic material to treatises claiming the Holocaust was a hoax.
Some of the material has reached Germany via postings in forums of Ohio-based CompuServe, raising questions about how one nation's laws can be enforced in borderless cyberspace.
German authorities are only just beginning to study the issues.
Meanwhile, the country's neo-Nazis have turned to producing their propaganda abroad and transferring it electronically. Mailed leaflets are going out of style.
One of Germany's top investigators of the extreme right, who spoke on condition he not be further identified, said: "When someone disappears into one of these bulletin boards where the information is encoded, the authorities might as
well call it quits. There's nothing we can do. And that is surely the danger. They are out of reach.
Despite a decrease in neo-Nazi street violence, 1994 saw the first firebombing of a German synagogue since Nazi times, and many experts fear a terrorist backlash from the technologically elite neo-Nazis forced underground.
"Those who can use this kind of sophisticated technology are the real war-makers, the real violence-producers," said Berlin professor Hajo Funke.
Two bulletin boards — based in Frankfurt and Kassel — were shut down in October and all the equipment was seized. But no charges have been filed against their operators.
The Nuremberg prosecutor dropped his case against the network's main board last year after deciding that bomb recipes discovered inside were likely planted by leftist saboteurs.
Lefists accuse authorities of lenient treatment of neo-Nazis. They note that it is technically possible through eavesdropping to read encrypted email once it has been decoded at its destination.
If authorities are doing that, they aren't admitting it.
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