UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Monday, March 10, 1997
9A
Israel to begin West Bank pullout
Some Israelis and Palestinians still unsatisfied
The Associated Press
JERUSALEM—Israel's next troop pullout from the West Bank will be completed within days, giving Yasar Arafat full control of dozens of villages and tens of thousands more Palestinians, Defense Minister Vitzah Mardekhal said yesterday.
The imminent pullout has been harshly criticized by right-wing members of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's governing coalition, which opposes an surrender of West Bank land, and by Palestinians, who had hoped for a much larger expansion of their autonomy.
Israeli and Palestinian officials met last night in Jerusalem to work out details of the withdrawal.
Under a plan narrowly approved Friday by the Israeli Cabinet, troops will be withdrawn from an additional 9 percent of the West Bank. Seven percent of the West Bank will be transferred from joint Israeli-Pal-
Yassar Arafat
Mordechal said that detailed plans for the redeployment would be submitted to him for approval today and that immediately after that the redeployment would begin. It will be completed in two to three days, he said.
the west Bank—and partial control over more than 500 villages—about 24 percent. They also control most of the Gaza Strip.
The redeployment, which was supposed to take place by last Friday, is the first of three called for under the Israeli-Palestinian peace accords. It will reportedly give Arafat's Palestinian Authority full control of 50 more West Bank villages with a population of about 200,000.
Despite Israeli statements to the contrary, Palestinians said that they expected to be in control of most of the West Bank at the end of the three redeployments and had hoped to gain control of a third of the territory in the first pullback.
A rebellion in Netanyahu's coalition appeared to fizzle yesterday when a key legislator backed down from his threat to support a no-confidence motion against the government. Moshe Peled said that he had met with Netanyahu and had received promises about construction in Jerusalem and settlement actions in the West Bank, which Israel captured in the 1967 Six-Day War.
"We do not want our homeland to be cantons which the Israelis control," said Ahmed Abdel Rahman, a top side to Arafat.
Palestinian anger was compounded by Israel's decision last week to go ahead with construction of a new Jewish neighborhood in disputed East Jerusalem, where the Palestinians hope to establish a capital.
estinian to full Palestinian control, while 2 percent now under Israeli occupation will come under joint control.
Palestinian minister Faisal Husseini said yesterday that the peace
process was on its way to the grave due to the Israelis' insistence on doing what they wanted without taking their Palestinian partner into consideration.
Palestinians now have full control over eight cities—2.8 percent of
Mordechal, however, insisted the pullout was substantive.
Another minister, Hanan Ashrawi, called the planned pullout a big fraud because it largely involved territory already under partial Palestinian control.
"The transfer of dozens of villages, tens of thousands of Palestinian residents who are passing from one status to another, a new and different deployment of Israeli army forces—I have no doubt that these things are new and another layer of progress in the peace process with the Palestinians," he said. "I think that the government decision shows a desire and willingness to move the process forward."
The Maariv and Yediot Ahronot newspaper said that the redeployment would include villages northeast of Jenin, in the northern West Bank, the university town of Bir Zeit, north of Ramallah, a village west of Bethlehem, and villages south of Hebron.
Kabul college reopens lacks women,money
The Associated Press
KABUL, Afghanistan — Lacking desks, books and female teachers and students, Kabul University reopened its doors yesterday for the first time since the Taliban religious army took control of the Afghan capital in September.
Many of the university buildings have been reduced to rubble by bomb and rocket attacks. Much of the campus, littered with land mines, is off-limits.
Because the Taliban bans women from going to school or work, there were no female teachers or students. This was expected to significantly limit the school's standards because 60 percent of the teachers and half the student body had been women.
The Taliban closed the university last year, saying it was against Islam to house female students in dormitories.
"Unfortunately our college is still not really ready to reopen," university director Dr. Syed Amir Shah Asanyar told about 400 Taliban officials and students in the shabby campus auditorium.
Asanyar was made director of Kabul University when former President Burhanuddin Rabbani reopened the school to 10,000 students in 1994. It had been closed
under the previous Soviet-backed regime.
Asanyar said that years of fighting had destroyed most of the school's facilities and that money for new equipment was lacking. "We don't even have chairs and desks for the classrooms," he said. "And there is no money to pay the salaries of the teachers we still have."
Asanyar called for foreign aid and appealed to teachers who have left Afghanistan to return home.
In what was seen as a veiled attack on the Taliban government, he also said that the university belonged to Afghanistan's people and not any party or political group.
Taliban's minister of higher education saw it differently. In his speech at the ceremony, Maulvi Amanullah Noman said that the university had strayded from its rightful path.
"In previous times, we had a university operating in Kabul, but we lost our culture nonetheless," he said. "Now we want all the teachers and students at Kabul University to forget Western culture and adopt traditions that are purely Afghan. Teachers should be here only to lead students through the study of Islam."
Mexican official may be linked to drug lords
Country's top prosecutor may have been bribed
The Associated Press
HOUSTON — At first glance, Texas Commerce Bank account No. 08100355370 seems unremarkable. Its healthy balance of $9,041,598 is nothing special in Houston, where millionaires are plentiful.
But this single account and its owner could blow wide open a corruption scandal simmering in Mexico and further damage the U.S.' drugfighting partnership with its southern neighbor.
The account belongs to Mario Ruiz Massieu, once Mexico's top drug prosecutor, who is now named in allegations that top Mexican officials were paid to protect drug cartels.
U. S. prosecutors go to court this week to prove that Ruiz Massieu's nest egg, fed in six-figure deposits over 13 months, was not the result of shrewd stock picks or a lucky real estate deal.
The money, they say, came from Mexico's leading drug traffickers, who wanted unfettered routes to get drugs into the United States and their profits back into Mexico. If they can convince six federal jurors, U.S. taxpayers will be $2 million richer, thanks to federal asset forfeiture laws.
In Mexico, this is more than some mere cash forfeiture trial; it has
exploded into a kind of Mexican Watergate.
This is what has happened in public view:
In 1993, then-President Carlos Salinas de Gotari appointed Mario Ruiz Massieu deputy attorney general, with a primary goal of cracking down on drug traffickers.
In 1994, assassins killed Jose Francisco Ruiz Massieu—the prosecutor's older brother and the No.2 man in the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party—and Luis Donaldo Colosio, then the party's presidential candidate, within six months of each other.
Despite convictions in both deaths, questions remain as to whether the murders were motivated by political struggles within the ruling party or linked to drug trafficking—or both.
Using false names, Raul Salinas in 1989 opened a network of bank accounts. Four years later, he began shifting money to banks in Switzerland and elsewhere via Cayman Island shell corporations. So far, Mexican investigators have found at least $120 million in Salinas bank accounts.
Mexican prosecutors believe Salinas conspired with federal congressman Manuel Munoz Rocha to hire a hit man for the killing.
On Feb. 28, 1995, police in Mexico arrested Raul Salinas and charged him in the murder.
Ruiz Massieu is currently under house arrest in New Jersey, awaiting a deportation hearing in May.
Belgrade crowds rally for free press
The Associated Press
BELGRADE, Yugoslavia — Fifty thousand jeering, flag-waving opponents of Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic rallied in central Belgrade yesterday in support of more democracy and freedom for the media.
The crowd gathered at Belgrade's Republic Square in the first big protest since Milosevic reinstated opposition victories in local elections last month.
The demonstration also marked the sixth anniversary of the first street protest against Milosevic on March 9, 1991. Then, Milosevic used police and army tanks to disperse protesters.
Anti-Milosevic rallies began last November, when Milosevic annulled results of municipal elections in 14 districts, including Belgrade, where his Socialist Party lost.
Zoran Djindjic, who last month became the first non-communist mayor of Belgrade in 52 years, said that no one could stop the march toward democracy.
The opposition protests were put on hold last month when Milo-
This time, there was no visible police presence. Three leaders of the opposition Zajedno, or Together, coalition, spoke.
"Democracy in Serbia has started, and soon it will triumph," said one of the leaders, Vuk Draskovic.
Noah Musser/KANSAN
sevic reinstalled original election results. But the opposition said that it will continue with occasional protests until Milosevic frees the state-run media, especially Serbian TV from his grip.
Following Milosevic's official line, the TV has been blasting the opposition leaders as tools of foreign powers and traitors to Serbia. The Serbian president needs a monopoly on TV, which covers the whole of Serbia, to influence public opinion before general elections later this year. Serbia's independent media covers only bigger cities and towns and does not reach rural districts, the pillar of Milosevic's support.
"If they had television in the stone age, it would look like Serbian TV," opposition leader Vesna Pesic told the crowd. "Our main aim is to take this dangerous toy away."
Eclipse, comet coincide
The Associated Press
BEIJING — Sky gazers in China and Russia got a double delight yesterday when the sun disappeared behind the moon in a total solar eclipse that coincided with a rare view of the bright Hale-Bopp comet.
Tens of thousands of people in northern China and eastern Siberia watched the sky go dark and felt already freezing temperatures drop as the moon blocked the sun's rays for more than two minutes.
The moon looked like a giant black hole ringed by a necklace of fire.
In Chita, near Russia's border with Mongolia and China, people crowded in the streets to watch the eclipse through pieces of smoked glass to protect the eyes, the ITAR-Tass news agency said.
Nearly 90,000 people saw the eclipse from Mohe, a county on China's northern tip that banned people from lighting stoves at home yesterday morning to keep the air smoke-free for sky gazing, the state-
run Xinhua News Agency said.
They bundled up in thick coats there against temperatures of minus 13 degrees.
The eclipse coincided with the arrival of the Hale-Bopp comet, extending its fiery tail toward the northwest, Xinhua said.
Just twice before in Egypt in 1882 and in Brazil in 1947—have a full eclipse and the close passing of a comet been recorded at the same time, said Li Qibin, president of the China Astronomical Society.
China does not expect to see another full eclipse until 2008, Xinhua said.
Astronomers from Moscow and other Russian cities, as well as from abroad, conducted observations from a specially equipped platform on top of Chita's Teacher Training Institute, ITAR-Tass said.
Chinese and Russian scientists planned to study the sun's corona, its hottest, outermost region, during the eclipse.
Solar eclipses occur when the sun, moon and Earth line up, with the moon in the middle.