NATION/WORLD UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Tuesday, November 28, 1995
5A
Clinton commits troops to Bosnian fray
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON — Seeking support from a reluctant Congress, President Clinton tried to build a compelling case yesterday for sending 20,000 American troops on a risky peacekeeping mission to Bosnia.
"We must not and we will not turn our backs on peace. " he declared.
The accord signed in Dayton, Ohio, last week offers the people of Bosnia the first real hope of peace in nearly four years, Clinton said. "Now we have a responsibility to see this achievement through. That is who we are as a people. That is what we stand for as a nation."
With a prime-time televised address from the Oval Office, Clinton was kicking off an administration campaign to break down opposition to what Pentagon planners regard as the most dangerous U.S. military operation since the Persian Gulf War.
The American troops would be part of a 60,000 troop NATO force enforcing a 600-mile long separation zone between the warring factions. Headquartered in Tuzla in northeastern Bosnia, the Americans would be deployed in a mountainous, mine-strewn countryside in harsh winter conditions.
The dangers would becompounded by the bitter ethnic rivalries.To some in Bosnia,the NATO troops are more likely tobe seen as an unwelcome occupying force than as peacekeeping saviors.
Clinton has promised to seek Congress' support for the mission, but he has made clear he would invoke his powers as commander in chief to deploy the forces, even if lawmakers resist.
While Congress appears skeptical of the mission, it appears likely that lawmakers will defer to the president — and let him shoulder all of the responsibility.
"I want to be in a position to support the president," said Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole. "It seems to me, when it comes to foreign policy, if we speak with one voice we're better off."
House Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga., said, "I think people are skeptical, but I think they are willing to listen." Clinton and Gingrich talked by telephone about Bosnia.
"This is an extraordinary opportunity," the president said. "And we have a very compelling responsibility."
Clinton previewed his speech in an afternoon announcement of a $2 million U.S. commitment for a child immunization program in Bosnia. He said the people of Bosnia had suffered unspeakable atrocities.
The Pentagon says America's military role in Bosnia should be completed within a year. Even so, Defense Secretary William Perry has cautioned that there will be U.S. casualties.
War Powers Resolution
As President Clinton prepares to send U.S. troops to Bosnia, here's a look at the law designed to balance the military power of the president and Congress:
SENDING TROOPS
Clinton can, but must inform Congress with 48 hours of sending U.S. forces to a hostile area without a declaration of war
DECLARING WAR
- Congress can't, but forces may remain no longer than 90 days unless Congress approves the president's action or declares war
Cannot, but can ask Congress to
SOURCE: World Book; research by PAT CARR
Can.
Virus wipes out Australian rabbits
Congress is the only legislative body having this ability.
People cheer as pesky bunnies succumb to lab experiment gone awry
Knight-Ridder Tribune/RON CODDINGTO
The Associated Press
BROKEN HILL, Australia — It sounds like a script for a Hollywood horror film: A deadly virus escapes from a biohazard lab. Corpuses litter the landscape as a plague spreads across a continent.
But rather than flee in terror, Australians are cheering a virus that is wiping out rabbits across the outback. The real plague, people say, is the rabbit population.
"It's history, and we'll look back on
Australians do not view rabbits as cute, carrot-nibbling harbigins of Easter. Most see them as pests that gobble down native plants and farm crops.
"It's history, and this month and say, 'What a wonderful thing it was,' said sheep rancher David Lord.
out of the hat.
In a few weeks, the virus has spread throughout the states of South Australia and New South Wales, and scientists say attempts to isolate it have failed.
"And most rabbit deaths, according to the scientists, are supposed to occur under the ground," he said. "So the figure for dead rabbits taken off the park is horrendous."
Yesterday, wildlife officials said they had counted 850,000 dead rabbits just in the Flinders Ranges National Park, 125 miles west of Broken Hill. National Parks and Wildlife ranger David Peacock said his staff had counted 22 dead rabbits an acre.
Not that Peacock was mourning
began in 1859, when Victorian land- owner Thomas Austin imported a dozen wild rabbits, intending to shoot them for sport. He let them loose to breed.
David Peacock wildliferanger
the bunnies.
And breed they did — by the 1940s, Australia had an estimated 600 million rabbits.
in the 1950s, scientists released myxomatosis, a virus from Brazil that is deadly to rabbits. Within two years, fewer than 100 million rabbits remained. But the survivors began building up immunity — and their numbers.
So-with hundreds of millions of wild bunnies on the loose, scientists burrowed into their own warren, a high-tech biobazar bunker on Wardang Island, off the southern coast of Australia, to experiment on a new biological bunny killer: calicivirus.
The researchers infected a captive population of rabbits with the virus, and insects who bit the bunnies picked it up. Then last month, freak winds blew the insects onto the mainland, and the rabbit-killer was
"As far as I'm concerned, the calicivirus is the best news possible," he said. With the virus on the loose, he said, "It's a bloody paradise."
Cruelty to Animals had been critical of the calicivirus work even in the research stage, fearing the virus could mutate and infect native Australian animals or even humans.
Members also said the virus could cause rabbits to die cruelly, suffering internal hemorrhaging for 24 to 40 hours before dying.
Scientists said there was no danger the virus would attack humans or other animal species, noting that it had been released among rabbit populations in China and Europe without apparent mutations.
And most Australians are grateful. Many are calling for an intentional release elsewhere in the country to speed its spread.
Peacock said that with the rabbits dying, native plants finally will have a chance to flourish: They will be able to drop seed, wait for rain and sprout, unmolested by rabbits feeding on baby shoots.
Activists must pay $100,000 penalty
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court piled on more bad news for anti-abortion activists yesterday, refusing to free five demonstrators from paying nearly $100,000 in lawyer fees to an abortion clinic they targeted.
The action, taken without comment in a case from Sacramento, Calif., extended abortion opponents' recent losing streak in the nation's highest court. It marked the first time the issue of lawyerfee awards in abortion-linked litigation had been considered by the justices.
geous and sends a very chilling message to pro-life demonstrators," said Jay Sekulow, a lawyer with the anti-abortion American Center for Law and Justice.
"That the court would let this $100,000 penalty stand is outra-
The justices let stand rulings that said the lawyer-fees award against the abortion protesters did not violate their free-speech rights.
The Feminist Women's Health Center operates four medical clinics in Northern California, including one in Sacramento that since 1988 has been the scene of anti-abortion demonstrations.
On occasion, some protesters have blocked the clinic's entrance or harassed its patients and staff members.
The center's operators sued in state court in 1989, naming anti-abortion activists Theresa Reall, Murray Lewis, John Stoos, Jay Baggett and Don Blythe, as well as Operation Rescue and others as defendants.
The lawsuit sought to bar the demonstrators from taking certain actions and also sought to have them pay all lawyer fees in connection with the litigation.
Operation Rescue and the other defendants did not show up to defend themselves and lost by default. After trial, a state judge ruled against Reali, Lewis, Stoos, Baggett and Blythe.
The judge prohibited picketing within 20 feet of the clinic's
entrance and ordered the five defendants who went to trial to pay $99,106.98 for the lawyer fees incurred by the clinic's operators. State courts upheld the award.
in the appeal acted yesterday, lawyers for the five protesters argued that they were being punished unfairly.
Lawyers for the abortion clinic urged the justices to reject the appeal, contending that the five protesters' conduct exceeded the protection afforded by the First Amendment.
They said the five protesters tried to prevent patients from getting out of their cars, yelled at patients, thrust literature at them and even chased them.
Future of Haitian presidency still is uncertain
The Associated Press
"I am leaving on Feb. 7," the Rev. Jean-Yves Urfe quoted Aristide as saying in an interview with Libete, an independent Creole-language weekly newspaper that the priest founded and directs.
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — After a week of uncertainty that unnerved local politicians as well as top U.S. officials, President Jean-Bertrand Aristide promised yesterday to abide by elections to choose his successor.
Urfie said Aristide also cleared doubts about the election, saying they would be held as scheduled Dec. 17. The interview is to be published tomorrow.
Still, in a contradiction that has left many perplexed, Haiti's Cabinet is to consider a resolution tomorrow calling for Aristide to cancel the election and stay in office to make up for the three years he lost in exile.
Aristide himself has stirred the confusion. Last week, he said he agreed with the resolution, which came from a national conference monopolized by his supporters. At the same time, the president has said he would not violate the constitution, which bars consecutive terms as president.
Victor Benoit, one of 14 presidential hopefuls, has called upon Aristide to spell it
Jean-Bertrand Aristide
uped upon Aristide to speak out his intentions. The Clinton administration has reacted coldly to suggestions that the election plans be changed.
"President Aristide has said that there will be an inauguration of a new president next February," National Security Adviser Anthony Lake said
Sunday on ABC's "This Week With David Brinkley." "We expect the elections to place."
Aristide was deposed in a September 1991 coup. The United States led the military intervention that restored Aristide in October last year and has pressured Aristide to step down to complete Haiti's first peaceful, democratic change of leaders in two decades.
The United States also has intervened to stem a resurgent flood of Haitians trying to flee the country's poverty. More than 50 percent of Haiti's 7 million people are jobless or underemployed.
Forty-seven Haitians desperate to reach U.S. shores drowned Friday off the north coast of Haiti. Radio Metropole reported yesterday.
Seven bodies were found washed up on a La Tortue beach, and 40 others were presumed drowned, the station reported.
U. S. Coast Guard cutters intercepted more than 1,100 Haitians last week.
Casinos won't attract out-of-state dollars,experts say
The Associated Press
TOPEKA — Casinos in Kansas are more likely to make their money from local residents than to attract out-of-state customers, two gambling industry observers told a legislative committee yesterday.
The two men, an economics professor and an investment banking analyst, expressed different opinions about the value of expanded gambling. However, they agreed
that Kansas was not likely to lure dollars from other states by allowing casinos.
Bruce Turner, a vice president for research with Salomon Brothers, the Wall Street investment banking firm, said it would be naive for any state to expect to attract people from other states. Still, he did tell legislators that allowing casinos could prevent Kansans from spending as much as $183 million a year in Missouri.
Earl Grinols, a professor of economics at the University of Illinois, described gambling as a likely drain on the state's economy. Grinols said his research showed that the reasons the social costs of gambling were so high was that casinos typically depended on gambling addicts for about half of their revenues. Most costs are associated with the cost of helping compulsive gamblers get over their addictions, he said.
Legislative leaders told the Special Committee on Gaming to study the social and economic effects of gambling. The committee plans to draft a report for the 1996 Legislature, which convenes in January.
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