University Daily Kansan / Tuesday, February 20, 1990
Nation/World
7
The Associated Press
Japanese party confident
TOKYO — Prime Minister Toshiki Kaifu said yesterday that voters showed confidence in his party in its time of greatest crisis by keeping the Liberal Democrats in control of Parliament.
Some Japanese who voted Sunday said they were angry with the Liberal Democrats because of political scandal and an unpopular sales tax. However, they still were not ready to entrust the government to the opposition Socialists.
Business leaders called the result a vote for the economic policies that have brought unprecedented prosperity to Japan.
Liberal Democrats implicated in the Recruit Co. influence-buying scandal were re-elected, including former prime ministers Yasuhiro Nakasone, 72, and Noboru Takeshita, 65. Nakasone ran as an independent.
The Liberal Democratic Party has
ruled Japan since its founding in 1855.
Socialist Party leader Takako Do claimed a victory from making inroads on Liberal Democratic power.
Her party campaigned on opposition to the 3 percent sales tax introduced last year. The Liberal Democrats have promised to ease the sales tax on groceries and some other items.
The Socialists also reminded voters of the scandal, in which the Recruit Co. information and publishing conglomerate made large contributions to politicians and sold them stock at insider prices.
Doi said Nakasone, Takahashi and others touched by the scandal wore-election to Parliament because of their powerful political machines.
The Liberal Democrats got 275 seats in Parilament's powerful lower house, a 512-seat body that chooses
the prime minister and sets the budget. Fourteen more candidates who ran as independents are expected to join them. Before the election, the party had 295 seats.
Socialists won 136 seats, up from 83.
When the Liberal Democrats reached 271 seats yesterday morning, giving the party control of all committees in the lower house, Kaifu filled in the blank eye of a papier-mache "daruma" doll in a traditional ceremony signifying fulfillment of a wish.
Liberal Democrats won 30.3 million votes, or 46.1 percent of the total, down from 49.4 percent in the last lower house election in 1986. Socialists took 16 million votes, or 24.4 percent, and increased from 17.2 percent in 1986.
Twenty-three people were arrested on suspicion of election law violations.
ECONOMIC OPTIMISM: Many economists have gone from predicting an impending economic downturn to believing that the longest peaceetime expansion in history will continue.
The new general consensus of moderate economic growth this year is likely to be an important element in Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan's testimony before Congress today when he reveals the Fed's policy targets for 1990. These targets will have a major influence on interest rates and economic growth.
MISSELS IN CARAGENTA! Asr police said they seized 10 shoulder-d fired missiles from drug traffickers in Colombia yesterday, four days after President Bush came to Cartagena amid fears the traffickers would use such weapons against him.
istrative Security Department, the country's secret police, said the missiles were found in a raid on a Bogota drug hideout.
They said Aoun informed Samir Geagea when a cease-fire began Saturday that Geagea the Lebanese Forces militia had until late today to withdraw from Beltrut port and the nearby Karavanta quarter.
Lebanese Forces officials declined to comment on the report but said Geagaea was prepared to negotiate differences with Aoum.
AOUH DEMANDS PULLOUT:
Michel Acun has told the Christian militia challenging his supremacy to give up its east Beirut strongholds in 72 hours or face an all-out assault, sources close to the rebel general said yesterday.
The sources close to Aoun, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the general would not interfere with the contact to mount another challenge.
A news release from the Admin-
MINERS MAY SETTLE: Appalachian coal miners voted yesterday on a contract with Pitttson Coal Group that could end an acrimonious, 10-month strike that drew international support from labor organizations.
United Mine Workers Vice President Cecil Roberts planned to announce the result of the vote this morning at the union's southwest Virginia district office, UMW spokesman Gene Carroll said, adding that ballots would be coming in until midnight:
UMW President Richard Trumka, AFL-CIO President Lane Kirkland and U.S. Secretary of Labor Elizabeth Dole planned to make a simultaneous announcement at the AFL-CIO convention in Miami. Dole appointed the super mediator, former Labor Secretary William Utley, who helped forge the tentative settlement announced Jan. 1.
Czech leader to meet with Bush
Nation/World briefs
Havel is first of new E. European leaders to visit U.S.
The Associated Press
Now the country, under Havel's caretaker government, is preparing for June 8 parliamentary elections that will be its first free balloting in more than 40 years.
WASHINGTON — Vaclav Havel, the dissident playwright who went from prison to the presidency of Czechoslovakia within eight months, will meet with President Bush today, the first of Eastern Europe's new democratic leaders to visit the White House.
Havel arrived here last night after stops in Iceland and Canada on a Western trip that comes conspicuously a week before his first trip to Moscow.
Havel has said he was coming West not to look for charity but for investment in a country that already maintains a standard of living well above that of Poland, its northern neighbor.
The Czech Parliament elected Havel president Dec. 28, a few weeks after a peaceful revolution led to the ouster of Communist Party chief Milos Jakes and his hard-line government.
"Zechoslovakia is not looking for U.S. aid. They are not in the same economic dire straits that . . . Poland has been in," a senior Bush administration official said.
White House government is prodding the Soviets to remove their 73,500 troops as quickly as possible. Sharing borders with both East and West Germany, Czechoslovakia also has no small stake in the thrust toward German reunification.
The Czechs "favor a Europe that is democratic and in which Germany plays a role, but not necessarily a dominant role." said the U.S. official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
The administration also expects to expand exchanges and possibly dispatch Peace Corps volunteers to Czechoslovakia, said the official who briefed White House reporters on the Havel visit.
to Prague on Feb. 6, already signaled support for giving Czechoslovakia most-favored-nation trade status and allowing it to rejoin the International Monetary Fund. It was a founding member of the IMF but was evicted after the 1948 communist takeover.
The United States already has announced plans to reopen its consulate shuttered for more than four decades in Bratislava in the Slovak region of Czechoslovakia.
And if Congress approves, Czechoslovakia would share in a pool of $300 million in new aid that the Bush administration has requested for the emerging democracies in Eastern Europe.
Secretarv of State James A. Baker III, in a brief visit
Ralliers for united Germany oppose NATO membership
The Associated Press
BONN, West Germany — Chancellor Helmut Kohl made peace between his defense and foreign ministers yesterday on the NATO role in a united Germany, while Germans exiled from areas now in Poland demanded their homelands back.
Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher and the defense minister, Gerhard Stoltenberg, issued a statement at Kohl's request saying neither soldiers from the alliance nor German troops were to be integrated in what now is East Germany.
Stolttenberg suggested Friday that NATO defenses be applied to a whole Germany. Genscher said the defense minister was causing unnecessary irritation where a subtle touch was needed.
In East Berlin yesterday, most participants in weekly talks between the government and opposition spoke against NATO membership for a
As a precondition for reumification, they said, East and West Germany should issue a joint statement guaranteeing Poland's borders and giving security assurances to other European countries.
united Germany and said it should be demilitarized.
About 50,000 East Germans who favor a rapid union participated in the weekly rally yesterday at Leipzig, the center of the pro-democracy movement.
Hans Modrow, East Germany's Communist premier, told opposition leaders that he would not go on his trip to interim aid from West Germany.
At meetings with Kohl and other West German officials last week in East Berlin, Modrow asked for 15 billion marks or $9 billion in solidarity aid to tide his government over until the nation's free elections March 18.
Bonn refused on grounds that East Germany would not disclose its financial condition or accept an offer to make the West German mark the currency of both countries. West Germany did provide the equivalent of about $3.5 billion in aid for projects over which East Germany will have little control.
Negotiations on economic and currency union begin today in East Berlin, although Modrow's government has made it clear that such a step cannot be approved before the elections.
Dieter Vogel, government spokesman in Bonn, told reporters that Kohl summoned Stoltenberg and Genscher to the chancellery yesterday. Their statement repeated assurances Kohl made during talks in Moscow with Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev, who favors a neutral, united Germany.
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