NATION/WORLD
UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Monday, September 27, 1993
7
Supporters cheer Yeltsin
Protesters defy orders to leave the Parliament
The Associated Press
MOSCOW — Thousands of Russians cheered Boris Yeltsin at a concert on Red Square yesterday, and at least 10,000 people marched through downtown in the biggest demonstration of support for the president since he disbanded Parliament five days ago.
Across town, the hard-liners who have defied the president by refusing to leave the parliament building dug in their heels.
"If need be, we will stay here for a year," said Parliament speaker Russian Khanbulasulov, leader of approximately 100 lawmakers who remain holed up in the building, known as the White House.
Foreign Minister Andrei Koziyev, speaking yesterday on NBC's "Meet the Press," said that if there is a "growing mood" in the country, Yeltsin might compromise on his plan.
Late yesterday, in a potentially significant development, the Interfax news agency reported that a top Yeltsin alde had agreed to simultaneous parliamentary and presidential elections. No date was mentioned, and the president has not approved the proposal.
Yeltis has set new parliamentary elections for December and said presidential elections could be held in June. Khasbulatov's parliament, elected in Soviet times, wants simultaneous elections in March.
But Kozyrev said he believes simultaneous elections are "very, very dangerous" and could destabilize the country.
Yeltsin, accompanied by Defense Minister Pavel Grachev and Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov, waded into surging crowds on Red Square for a free concert by the Washington-based National Symphony Orchestra and its conductor, former dissident Mistislav Rostropovich.
The president waved and smiled taking his place at the front of the crowd. He cracked a smile again when earblasting cannons went off during Tchaikovsky's "1812 Overture."
"Someone has to be in office," he said.
An announcer urged "faith in the president and in Russia's future," and the crowd responded "Hurrah! Hurrah!"
cert to give Russians hope and confidence during the transition to a post-Soviet democracy.
Outside the White House, Yeltsin's rebellious vice president, Alexander Rutskoi, urged 3,000 to 4,000 anti-Yeltsin demonstrators "to stand till the end." Rutskoi has condemned Yeltsin's actions as unconstitutional and declared himself president.
At a news conference, Khasbulatov said that he would not deal with Yeltsin, saying elections could be held only if the "former president leaves his Kremlin office."
The deputies have little popular support in Moscow, and Khasbulatov said Saturday that they might move to another city. Yesterday, he said five or six cities had been selected should the Parliament be evicted "or the speaker eliminated or arrested."
A longtime backer of Yeltsin, Rostropovich has said he wanted the con-
Electricity and phones have been cut off to the White House.
'Virginity' comments denounced by faculty
The Associated Press
AMHERST, Mass. — The faculty senate at the University of Massachusetts voted to "emphatically dissociate itself" from the views of an English teacher who said professors can help some female students lose their virginity.
"In the public's eye he was identified with the faculty, and a lot of people out there thought he represented our views." English professor Jeremiah Allen, who sought the vote, said Friday. "I wanted to make it clear that he did not represent our views."
More than 100 faculty representatives approved Allen's motion, which did not refer to English professor William W. Kerrigan by name. One person was opposed and one abstained.
Kerrigan did not attend the meeting Thursday, but he said Friday that he had no quarrel with the section of the motion that said professors should maintain a "strictly professional" relationship with the students they teach or supervise.
In an interview published in the September issue of Harper's magazine, Kerrigan said sex between students and professors was not necessarily a bad thing.
The professor said he was "not defending Don Juianism, you know, sex for grades and so forth. But there is a kind of student I've come across in my career who was working through something that only a professor could help her with. I'm talking about a female student, who for one reason or another had unnaturally prolonged her virginity...
"There have been times when this virginity has been presented to me as something that I, not quite another man, half an authority figure can handle—a thing whose preciousness I realize."
U.S. confronts Russia about lost Korean War prisoners
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON — The U.S. government has confronted Moscow for the first time with evidence that hundreds of U.S. Korean War prisoners were secretly moved to the Soviet Union, imprisoned and never returned.
The allegation, supported by new information from a variety of U.S. and Russian sources, was made in a detailed presentation by a State Department official at a meeting with Russian officials in Moscow earlier this month.
The evidence is spelled out in a government report titled "The Transfer of U.S. Korean War POWs to the Soviet Union." It was given to the Russians at the Moscow meeting, but the Clinton administration has refused to release it.
A copy of the report was obtained by The Associated Press.
"The Soviets transferred several hundred U.S. Korean War POWs to the U.S.S.R. and did not repatriate them," the report says. "This transfer was mainly politically motivated with the intent of holding them as political hostages, subjects for intelligence exploitation and skilled labor within the camp system."
It asserts that the evidence gave a "consistent and mutually reinforcing description" of Soviet intelligence services forcibly moving U.S.POWs to the Soviet Union at a time when the Soviet military, including anti-aircraft units, was active in North Korea.
It does not assess how long the U.S. servicemen — mostly Air Force aviators — may have lived or whether any might still be alive in the chaotic former Soviet Union.
Just last year, the U.S. government said it had
no evidence of such transfers. Washington has known, though, since the end of the war that some evidence existed that U.S. POWs from Korea had been taken to the Soviet Union. It asked Moscow for information on this in May 1954 and July 1956. Both times the Soviet government denied any knowledge of U.S. POWs on its soil.
Russian President Boris Yeltsin said last year that Soviet records showed that 59 captured U.S. servicemen in Korea were interrogated by Soviet officials and that 12 crew members of U.S. aircraft shot down in reconnaissance missions unrelated to the Korean War were transferred to Soviet territory. But the Yeltsin government has yet to concede that Americans were taken from Korea.
In the three years of fighting in Korea, in which the United States led a U.N. force on the side of South Korea against communist North Korea, 54,246 Americans were killed. The government lists 8,140 as unaccounted for, although the number of missing for which there is no direct evidence of death is estimated at 2,195. Many of the unaccounted for were not recovered because they were buried in battlefield graves in North Korea or died in POW camps.
The 77 page U.S. report on U.S. Korean War prisoners delivered to Russia gives no specific figure, but the analysis seems to indicate it is fewer than 600.
It identifies by name 31 missing Air Force F-66 fighter pilots who are among the most likely identifiable servicemen to have been taken by the Soviets for their knowledge of the plane's capabilities.
Was former hostage a hero or a stooge?
Publication of Waite's memoirs revives questions
The Associated Press
LONDON — Freed from the chains, the fear and the boredom
Terry Waite
The publication of Waite's
memoir, "Taken on Trust," has revived charges that the Church of England envoy was naive, or an ogoniacian, or a stooge of Oliver North; that Waite took credit for hostage releases actually bought with U.S. arms shipments to Iran; and that Waite is still holding back some of the truth.
Waite insists his conscience is clear.
Whatever his motives, Waite paid a severe price: 1,763 days of captivity, most of them in solitary confinement.
The aide to Archbishop of Canterbury Robert Runcie had been involved in securing the release of British prisoners from Iran and Libya. In 1984, an American Presbyterian official, Fred Wilson, sought Waite's help on behalf of the Rev. Benjamin Weir, who had disappeared in Lebanon.
Weir's captors, Islamic Jihad,
took more hostages in 1985; Terry
Anderson, the Rev. Martin Jenco,
David Jacobsen and Thomas
Sutherland.
Weir was released in September 1985. Two months later, The Associated Press bureau in Beirut received a letter signed by Anderson, Jacobsen, Jenco and Sutherland, addressed to the Archbishop of Canterbury.
It carried a crucial message: "Our captors have indicated they are willing for you to be involved ..."
Waite went to Beirut, met a representative of the kidnappers and
returned with four Polaroid photographs of the captives, each holding a copy of the Wall Street Journal that Waite had signed.
Jenco was released in July 1986 and Jacobsen the following November.
To Walle's critics, this was taking credit where none was due.
Amid the Iran-Contra uproar, Waite returned to Beirut in January 1987 — in part, he said, to demonstrate he had nothing to hide. He said he also had been told one of the hostages — either Sutherland or Anderson — was gravely ill.
Waite went alone to the office of a Dr. Mroueh, again meeting the representative of the kidnappers to set up a meeting with the hostages.
At a news conference last week, Waite said he expressed fear that he would be taken hostage, but the representative assured him that would not happen.
"And I said, 'Give me your word as a Muslim that you will not keep me.' He stretched out his hand, he gave me his hand ..." Waite said.
But he was soon taken captive and kept alone for nearly four years. Waite did not meet Anderson, Sutherland and British hostage John McCarthy until he was put in their cell in late 1990.
Richard Secord, retired U.S. Air Force general convicted for his Iran-Contra activities, has said Waite served as "a convenient lightning rod for us to keep the prying eyes of the press diverted from our covert operations."
Waite now believes that he may have been caught between two agendas: the kidnappers seeking the release or at least better conditions for relatives imprisoned in Kuwait and the Iranians using the situation to get U.S. arms.
He concedes hostages may have been released because of arms trades and not because of his efforts.
"But how does one know that at the time, you see?" Wait asked.
As his book was released last week, a British Broadcasting Corp. documentary showed Waite putting the question to North: Had he been used?
"Oh, very much so," North said. "Our government did use you. It uses people every day."
THE WAR RAGES ON!
OCTOBER 9,1993
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