NATION/WORLD
UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Wednesday, February 5, 1997
8A
U.S. ambassador to France suffers stroke
Democratic fund-raiser known for negotiating
The Associated Press
PARIS — Family members rushed to the hospital yesterday as word came that U.S. Ambassador Pamela Harriman, the grand dame of the Democratic Party, was in serious condition a day after suffering a stroke.
At least a dozen relatives spanning several generations entered the American Hospital in the western suburb of Neuilly where Harriman, 76, was admitted after having the stroke Monday evening at the Ritz Hotel.
"It's as if something happened to your mother. All you can do is wait to see what's going to happen," said one embassy employee at the hospital.
Embassy workers were told not to
talk to reporters, so reactions were offered only on condition of anonymity.
Pamela Harriman
Harriman had the stroke after getting out of the Ritz swimming pool, part of her regular
exercise regimen that also included brisk walks. She has been the ambassador to France since spring 1993, but was preparing to leave her post by midyear.
"The initial diagnosis is that the ambassador suffered a cerebral hemorrhage and she remains in serious condition," said embassy representative Chris Snow.
Sources said Harriman was in intensive care.
A confidant of President Clinton,
Harriman won respect in Paris with her high-level contacts that helped to short-circuit Washington red tape in a crisis. She has helped mediate difficult relations with Paris about trade, Bosnia, NATO, the Middle East, Africa and CIA spying.
"The president and first lady were very concerned to hear about the stroke," said White House press secretary Mike McCurry. "She is in their thoughts and prayers."
President Jacques Chirac gave instructions that everything be done to put the best specialists at the disposal of the embassy for Harriman, said his representative Catherine Colonna.
Foreign Minister Herve de Charette had excellent personal relations with Mrs. Harriman, said ministry representative Yves Doutlaux.
There was some dissent when
"It's as if something happened to your mother. All you can do is wait to see what's going to happen."
U. S. Embassy employee
Clinton named Harriman ambassador, a position some derided as payback for her longtime fund-raising efforts for the Democratic Party.
Her "Democrats for the '80s" political action committee raised $12 million during the Reagan and Bush administrations.
But there was no disputing that the French-speaking daughter of an English baron succeeded with the Paris political court of today. French officials were fully aware that she had Clinton's ear.
Harriman spent a lifetime as a socialite who developed political savvy. She was married to Winston Churchill's son Randolph; "Sound of Music" producer Leland Hayward; and finally to New York governor and ex-ambassador Averell Harriman.
As Harriman's wife and later his widow, she threw soirees in Washington and Paris that became legendary — focal points for politicians, businessmen, the literati and the glitterati.
"I am a political animal. I do love
politics. I'm interested in my country's politics and other countries' politics," she said in an interview with The Associated Press in November.
During the years Harriman has been the subject of unauthorized biographies that have portrayed her as a social climber who married her way to the top. She has refused to comment about these books.
"It's a waste of their time and mine," she said.
She was snared in a legal battle with Averell Harriman's children, who accused her of squandering the family fortune after he died in 1986.
Russians can make toxin quickly, a secret Pentagon report reveals
The family settled out of court in 1995 by redistributing the assets. The exact terms were not disclosed, but that same year, Harriman put up for auction millions of dollars in paintings by Picasso, Leonardo da Vinci, Renoir, Matisse and others.
Method could evade inspectors
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON — Russia could produce large amounts of chemical warfare agents within weeks by methods that pose a challenge to international arms-control inspectors, according to a classified Pentagon report.
The Russian project, code-named Foliant and first reported by The Washington Times yesterday, may complicate the Clinton administration's already difficult task of winning Senate ratification of an international treaty banning not only the production and use of chemical weapons but also their development
Sen. Jesse Helms, R-N.C., indicated
Monday that he intended to prevent the Chemical Weapons Convention from reaching a Senate vote until other issues, including State Department and U.N. reforms, were sorted out. The treaty already has been ratified by enough countries to put it into force on April 29. Helms and many others in Congress believe the treaty is fatally flawed.
Advocates of the chemical treaty said the Russian chemical warfare project was an example of the usefulness of the treaty's inspection and other provisions.
Amy Smithson, a chemical weapons expert at the Henry L. Stimson Center, a research group, said the Russian project would not be permitted under the treaty and could be exposed. She said that the only way to get to the bottom of this problem was through the inspection procedures of the treaty.
Like the United States, Russia has signed but not ratified the treaty.
The existence of the newest generation of Russian chemical agents, known as A-232, has been public knowledge for several years. The focus of the new Pentagon report is on the Russians' progress in developing the technology to produce A-232 in meaningful quantities with an eve to evade outside detection.
"The Russians can produce sizable quantities of their new chemical agents within weeks to meet military requirements," said the Military Intelligence Digest report dated Jan. 24 and labeled secret. A copy was obtained by The Associated Press.
It said that the Russians could begin full production of the chemical agent within four to six months if they saw no need to hide the activity. In that case, Russia might use
the idle Knipmpro production complex at Novocheboksarsk, which is estimated to be capable of producing 2,000 to 2,500 tons of A-232 annually.
In the case that the Russians would try to hide such production, they could use an undecleared facility to produce a stockpile of the weapons, the report stated. With slight modifications, a pesticide processing plant would offer easy potential for covert production.
"Covert production of these agents poses an onerous challenge to arms control inspection regimes," the report said.
The A-232 agent is as toxic as VX, a highly lethal and persistent chemical warfare agent, according to the report. It also is harder to detect and easier to make than VX. Key components of A-232 are not covered by the Chemical Weapons Convention.
Teen photographer captured victims on film
Youth photographed Cambodian captives before torture, death
The Associated Press
Nhem Ein held the chunky Canon He focused on the people's faces. He heard their screams. He said nothing.
PHNOM PENH — For 10,000 people, stepping in front of the camera was a step toward the grave. Some days, hundreds gazed forlornly into the lens, many en route to horrible torture before execution.
"One day, I saw the face of a close relative through my camera," he now recalls. "I kept silent even after he was taken to be interrogated and then killed."
Nhem Ein was chief photographer at Phnom Penh's infamous Tuol Sleng torture center during the rule of the Khmer Rowe, whose effort to
create a collective agrarian society led to the deaths of 2 million Cambodians in less than four years.
About 20,000 people passed through Tuol Sleng's bloody chambers before being trucked to the Choeung Ek killing field 10 miles outside of the capital and bludgeoned to death.
A fraction of the photographer's grim black-and-white mug shots have stared for years from the walls of Tuoil Sleng, turned into a genocide museum when Vietnam drove out the Khmer Rouge in 1979.
"It was incredible to meet the person who took all these pictures," said Douglas Niven, an American photographer who spent three years
But until a few months ago, the man who took the photos was a mystery. It turned out the photographer was just a 16-year-old boy when he started his grisly task.
Nhem Eim, now 37, told his story to The Associated Press last week, which adds an eerie footnote to the anonymous portraits on the walls.
"...I knew that if I said anything, I would be killed."
NhemEin
formerKhmerRougephotographer
helping clean and catalog 6,000 negatives found in forgotten drawers at the prison, covered in fungus and dirt. "Anyone who has been to the Tuol Sleng museum just cannot forget them."
"They used many ways, such as taking a clamp to pull out a nail, or using an electric shock on the tongue to force confessions," Nhem Ein said.
Nhem Ein said torture measures varied greatly.
The cries and screams were constant. Him Ein recalls seeing face after face filled with fear and deep
sadness.
"I took pictures of the prisoners just after they had a number pinned on them," Nhem Ein said. "The photos were taken before they were interrogated or tortured. I and three others were able to develop and print the pictures. We did this every day. I took hundreds of photographs at a time, sometimes thousands."
When Nhem Ein was a teenager, he was sent to Shanghai, China, for training as a photographer, filmmaker and cartographer. He returned in May 1976 to be named chief photographer at Tuol Sleng, in charge of five apprentices.
"I knew that I was taking the pictures of innocent people, but I knew that if I said anything, I would be killed," Nhem Ein said.
Besides Nhem Ein's photographs, the Tuol Sleng museum also displays skulls and clothing of Khmer Rouge victims, primitive torture chambers where people were shackled to iron beds and some of the absurd confessions extracted under torture.
Pakistan's Bhutto accepts bitter loss; says results rigged
The Associated Press
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — A weary Benazir Bhutto, routed at the polls, her Pakistan People's Party in tatters, said yesterday that she would accept her crushing defeat in parliamentary elections that she insisted were rigged.
"The results were engineered.
"The whole thing was a fraud for the people of Pakistan."
Bhutto told reporters at her first news conference since Monday's elections.
But she said she would not challenge her defeat because that only would create political and economic instability.
Bhutto earlier had threatened to contest the results if her party did not win, a move that could have meant delaying the formation of a new government.
Independent election observers had reported no evidence of fraud and said that the election, scheduled after Bhutto was ousted from power on corruption charges, was free and fair.
More than 24 hours after polls closed, results still were coming in from remote locations. But Nawaz Sharif, Bhutto's nemesis, was guaranteed a healthy majority in Pakistan's 217-seat National Assembly and a second term as prime minister.
By late yesterday, Bhutto's party had won just 17 seats — compared to 86 in the last parliament.
Bhutto said her supporters wanted to stage street protests against the results.
"But I feel, 'What's the point?' she said. "I will not launch an agitation against the engineered results."
President Farooq Leghari dismissed Bhutto in November, accusing her of rampant corruption and economic mismanagement that drove the country to ruin. He appointed an interim government to oversee the vote.
Bhutto has denied the allegations. She said she hoped Sharif's parliament majority would be able to counter the indirectly elected president, who has the authority to dismiss elected governments.
Bhutto urged repeal of the constitutional amendment, written by a previous military government, that gives the president his firing powers. She said Sharif could win the two-thirds majority he needed to change the constitution.
Sharif, who also defeated Bhutto in a 1990 parliamentary race, was himself dismissed in 1993 after a five-month feud with the president.
The transfer of power from the interim administration to an elected parliament is scheduled for Feb. 20.
Sharif said that the economy would be his top priority as prime minister and that he planned to adopt some of the radical reforms recommended by the interim government.
Sharif said he had been thoroughly briefed by Javed Burki, who took a sabbatical from the World Bank to act as Pakistan's chief financial adviser for the last three months.
Burki helped shape a package of spending cuts and new taxes meant to bring down Pakistan's deficit.
"We will go ahead with all the policies that are in the interest of the country," Sharif said yesterday. "I also feel we will go for more reforms."