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Federal authorities investigating the murder of a Buffalo-area obstetrician who performed abortions have identified a Vermont man as a material witness to the sniper attack last month and issued a warrant for his arrest Wednesday to bring him in for questioning. The man was identified as James Charles Kopp, 44, whose last known address was in St. Albans, Vt. His whereabouts are not known, investigators said. Investigators said Kopp's car was seen near the Amherst, N.Y., home of Dr. Barnett Slepian in the weeks before the doctor, whose work at an abortion clinic had long made him a target of harassment, was killed. Kopp, according to police records and abortion rights groups, has often moved about the country in a series of protests at abortion clinics, and has been linked to an underground manual that describes methods of killing or maiming doctors who perform abortions. Denise O'Donnell, the U.S. attorney for the western district of New York, said Kopp was not considered a suspect at this time but was believed to have information material to the case. She declined to give details on what evidence was being sought from Kopp, describing it only as information that is contained in a sealed affidavit whose disclosure would compromise the ongoing investigation. Ms. O'Donnell said that federal law allowed for an arrest warrant for a material witness when a person has information that is important to a case. ``If Kopp is found, he would be arrested, brought to Buffalo and ordered to provide the required evidence,'' Ms. O'Donnell said. ``Then, most likely, the individual would be released.'' Slepian, 52, was shot by a sniper firing from outside his home on Oct. 23, shortly after returning from an evening service at his synagogue. He was standing in his kitchen with his wife and one of his four sons when the bullet crashed through a back window. He died two hours later. Law enforcement officials said Wednesday's announcement of the material witness warrant was in part an attempt to underscore the potential danger of anti-abortion violence in advance of Remembrance Day, a Canadian holiday that falls on Nov. 11 and that the authorities have associated with some anti-abortion crimes. At the same time, the Justice Department and the FBI were trying to find ways to step up the federal response to violence at abortion clinics in the aftermath of the Slepian killing. The officials said that Attorney General Janet Reno would soon announce that the Justice Department, aiming to heighten the visibility of the federal role in cases that cross state and local jurisdictional boundaries, would revive a national investigative effort focused on abortion clinic violence. Ms. Reno and senior FBI officials, including Robert Bryant, the deputy FBI director, have met with physician and abortion rights groups in recent days to discuss ways to enhance federal investigative efforts and coordination with local agencies. Federal authorities first organized an abortion clinic task force in 1995 after the killing of a Florida doctor. The unit, which was charged with investigating whether a national conspiracy existed, spent nearly two years studying abortion clinic violence. The unit disbanded without uncovering a national conspiracy. Law enforcement officials said that the unit's operation did help reduce violence at abortion clinics and that, in part, the decision to re-establish it was prompted by Ms. Reno's desire to send a renewed message to anti-abortion extremists that the government would aggressively investigate these crimes. Slepian's murder fit the pattern of four earlier sniper attacks on abortion doctors in Canada and western New York, dating from 1994. None of the attacks have been solved. Bernard Tolbert, special agent in charge of the FBI in Buffalo, said at a news conference here Wednesday that investigators had not determined whether there is a link between the five killings. ``There's a possibility they could be linked, but certainly no information,'' he said. Tolbert gave little information about the subject of the material-witness warrant, except to say that Kopp's black 1987 Chevrolet Cavalier, with the Vermont license plate BPE216, was seen near Slepian's home beginning several weeks before the murder. ``We don't have any idea of where he is,'' Tolbert said of Kopp. ``We are looking for him every place we can, every place he might be.'' A photograph of Kopp taken in January 1997 has been distributed to law enforcement agencies around the United States and Canada. The National Abortion Federation has sent out an advisory to clinics around the country about the search for Kopp, said Melinda DuBois, assistant director of Womenservices, the clinic where Slepian worked. She said naming Kopp a material witness in the case had not brought relief to the nurses and other workers at the clinic. ``I don't think it makes me or anyone else at the clinic feel differently,'' she said. ``I don't want anybody to relax and say, `Oh God, they got the guy.' That's easy to happen. I still want people to be very vigilant.'' The clinic is the last in the Buffalo area that is performing abortions. Slepian was one of only a handful of doctors in Buffalo who were still willing to perform the procedure in the face of pickets, protesters and threats. Since his death, doctors from outside Buffalo have come to the clinic to continue providing abortion services. ||||| Rosina Lotempio was standing outside abortion clinics here before Operation Rescue stormed into town in 1992 for the rowdy Spring of Life rallies, in which hundreds were arrested. She was there before Lambs of Christ demonstrators came to town in 1993. She was on the sidewalk outside Buffalo GYN Womenservices the morning of Oct. 23, about 12 hours before Barnett Slepian, the clinic doctor, was fatally shot in his home. And she was there Friday, brown rosary beads in her hands, a small gold cross on a chain around her neck, quietly praying for abortions to stop. ``I'm heartbroken when I have to come here,'' Mrs. Lotempio, 58, said as she stood in the cold, wearing small black earmuffs and a white turtleneck adorned with a tiny silver pin of baby feet. ``It's very difficult out here; I depend on God,'' she said, after praying for several moments to decide whether to talk to a reporter. The bombings, the fiery rhetoric of abortion opponents and the posters of bloody fetuses may capture the attention of the news media, but people like Mrs. Lotempio are the foot soldiers in the abortion battle. They call themselves street counselors and come to the clinic whenever they believe abortions are being performed. They pray and they talk to women, hoping to change their minds. Some scream profanities. Others, like Mrs. Lotempio, denounce not only the violence against doctors and clinics, but also the blocking of doors and the shouting of ugly epithets at clinic workers and patients. For the approximately 80 abortion opponents here, their protest is more like a job than a political activity. There is a schedule. People count on them to show up. Mrs. Lotempio, a mother of three and grandmother of six, connects her involvement to a conversation in the 1970s in which she helped a friend decide to abort an unwanted pregnancy. Two decades later, she was haunted by her own question: whether the fetus was male or female. ``I just felt horrible and I felt guilty,'' she said, tears in her eyes. ``I thought that if I was at the clinic doing something, I could make up for that baby's life.'' During Mrs. Lotempio's 8 a.m.-to-10 a.m. shift Friday, about a dozen people circled the area in front of the Buffalo clinic, saying the ``Hail Mary.'' Others take her spot on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. She returns on Saturdays, when up to 40 people crowd the sidewalk. Similar bands of protesters march in front of abortion clinics throughout the United States, and local protesters are often joined by bands of people who roam the country. At the clinic on Main Street, north of downtown Buffalo, there is an odd sense of community. Local protesters greet Dick, the security guard, by name. They sometimes see the ``enemy'' _ abortion-rights volunteers who escort patients in and out of the clinic _ in the supermarket or on the soccer field. Robert Behn, one of the protest leaders, even spent two hours talking about abortion over breakfast last year with Slepian. And several said they cried when they heard of Slepian's death. Most of the protesters, including Mrs. Lotempio, were among the thousands of people arrested here in 1992, the height of anti-abortion activity in Buffalo. But if Operation Rescue returns, as planned, for a Spring of Life reunion in April, Mrs. Lotempio said, she will not be there. Instead, she plans to stay in church and pray, to avoid the militancy she says she finds uncomfortable. Glenn Murray, a lawyer for Womenservices clinic, said: ``When people from out of town show up, that is when we feel the most danger. The local people are a known quantity. We know most of the local people by name.'' Buffalo has been among a handful of hot spots for abortion protesters for the last decade. It is a heavily Catholic city where thousands of protesters from around the country demonstrated for two weeks in 1992. They failed to close abortion clinics, but 500 people were arrested in rallies that snarled traffic and drew national headlines. Those rallies, as well as earlier protests and continuing sidewalk vigils, have had an impact, people on both sides of the abortion issue say. The number of clinics performing abortions in the Buffalo area has dropped to one from three. And after Slepian's death and the retirement this week of another doctor, there are only two doctors in the area for whom abortions form a significant part of their practices. The daily demonstrators count this as progress. But their perch outside the clinic means they witness far more of what they believe are murders than what they call rescues. About 30 women a day might go into the clinic. After eight years, Mrs. Lotempio can count eight women who changed their minds and did not get abortions while she was at the clinic. Inside the clinic, the protests just make a hard job harder, many clinic workers say. While some demonstrators simply repeat the rosary, other protesters call out to patients as they drive into the parking lot behind the building, or walk up to the fortresslike front. They ask questions like ``Do you know what your baby looks like?'' or ``Is it a boy or a girl?'' Sometimes they accuse people of murder and torture and sin, or threaten them with damnation. Federal law bars protesters from coming within 15 feet of the clinic entrances, and from leaning signs against its walls. Some push the limits, frustrating clinic workers and guards. The rules protect people from physical harassment, but because of the distance, they turn what could be quiet conversations into catcalls and taunts. When a patient goes into the clinic, the protesters ``take on a different persona,'' said Melinda DuBois, director of the Buffalo clinic. ``They scream and yell and call us names. They lie. Some days we're immune to it, but other days it's just too much.'' Linda Palm, 51, marching at the clinic on Friday, said she identified with the clinic patients. When she was 23, she said, she struggled with the difficulties of being unmarried and pregnant herself, but decided to have her child, and married the father. She began protesting in 1990, after attending an abortion protest march in Albany. ||||| Everyone who knew Dr. Barnett Slepian knew that the slight, graying physician endured a measure of stress that would exhaust, even break, most people. There were the strangers who pawed through the garbage cans at his home and growled ``murderer'' as they passed him in the grocery store aisle. Demonstrators assailed his pregnant patients as they arrived at his office for their checkups, calling him a baby killer. Outside the clinic where he performed abortions two days a week, pickets shouted epithets like ``pig'' to his face. Slepian, an obstetrician and gynecologist by training and an abortion doctor by principle, rarely acknowledged the strain. He might crack an occasional joke at the expense of the protesters who shadowed him at work and on weekends. Then he would do something unexpected, like invite an anti-abortion leader to breakfast or stop and chat with a familiar demonstrator outside the clinic. So when he was killed Oct. 23 by a sniper's bullet fired through the kitchen window of his home in the Buffalo, N.Y., suburbs, a furtive execution that fit a pattern of four earlier attacks on abortion providers in western New York state and Canada, friends and relatives wondered not so much that Slepian's work could arouse such murderous violence. He had predicted as much himself. Instead, they wondered, once again, that he persisted in that work, long after other Buffalo doctors had surrendered to the pressure of abortion opponents. ``He was an incredibly fatalistic person who thought that if your number's up, it's up, and there is nothing you can do about it,'' said H. Amanda Robb, the doctor's 32-year-old niece. ``And he was incredibly stubborn. He said that women had a right to comprehensive health care and since he was a women's doctor, he was going to provide it for them.'' Slepian is the third doctor to be killed in the last five years in bombings and shootings that have killed 7 people and wounded 17 at abortion clinics around the nation. To his tormentors, he was simply an abortion doctor. To members of the abortion rights movement, he was a martyr for their cause. But Slepian was far from either. In interviews with friends and family members, he emerges as more than a one-dimensional abstract _ a conservative who advocated old-fashioned values like self-reliance, a shy man who had rare flashes of anger, a doctor who performed abortions but had no more patience for women who had multiple abortions than for women who had multiple children they did not want or could not support. He was killed because he performed a medical procedure that has become emotional and politicized. Yet there is nothing in his life to suggest he was a crusader in either politics or medicine. Rather, he was an obstinate, unassuming man who did a remarkable thing. Out of contrariness and out of conscience, say those who knew him, he refused to allow anyone to dictate what kind of doctor he should be, and for that, he paid with his life. The clues to Slepian's flinty brand of commitment lie, in part, in his upbringing. His was a family that took success for granted even as it teetered on the edge of poverty. To earn money for medical school, he shoveled muck at a ranch and drove a taxi. He made few friends, but those he had were friends for life. When their wives were sick, he called repeatedly. When they were lonely, he flew to their side. Slepian, who was known as Bart, used to tell people that he chose obstetrics because it is a specialty that exposes a doctor to the least suffering, and that he performed abortions because it was legal and the alternatives were so much worse. Slepian often expressed exasperation over women who came to him for abortion after abortion. ``Don't they get it?'' his clinic staff recall him saying more than once. He had the same impatience for women like those he remembered from his residency in inner-city Buffalo, who had child after child and no means of support. ``He had the contempt for that of somebody who had pulled himself up by his bootstraps and made it in the world,'' Ms. Robb said. He believed that to ban abortions or, just as shameful in his view, to stop teaching young doctors how to perform them, would not correct the human imperfections that he found so irritating. ``There are 1.5 million abortions performed in this country,'' his niece said, ``and he just felt we're not equipped to handle 1.5 million unwanted children.'' When he was killed, at the age of 52, Bart Slepian owned an imposing red brick home in the quiet suburb of Amherst, complete with a swimming pool with piped-in music and an assortment of the time-saving gadgets he adored. Slepian's trajectory to that comfortable doctor's life had been unconventional. His grandfather, a Russian Jewish immigrant who started out selling shoelaces from a pushcart in Boston, propelled all five of his sons into Harvard at a time when few Jews met the university's blue-blood standards. His father, in turn, decreed that his own three sons would be doctors or earn Ph.D's. ``We grew up in a home where there was tremendous, tremendous, tremendous respect for education,'' said Serena Robb, Slepian's sister, who is four years older than him. ``If you got an A, it was OK If you got a B, you got yelled at.'' The family's means did not match its expectations. Slepian's father, Philip, had joined his own father's business manufacturing leather soles for shoes. Soon after Bart was born in 1946 in Boston, the company failed, so to save money, the father moved his family of six to his in-laws' apartment in McKeesport, Pa., and then to Rochester, N.Y. Once settled, Slepian's father set himself up as a freelance writer, crisscrossing the country in his old Studebaker, researching the origins of prominent citizens at the Library of Congress and writing their stories for small-town newspapers. He sold articles by the hundreds, and was still writing until his death nine years ago at the age of 93. The success that was expected of Bart Slepian did not come easily. As a child, he was so shy that he cried when anyone looked at him, his sister recalled. An unexceptional student, he went to a local community college before transferring to the University of Denver, where he majored in zoology. Rejected by medical schools in the United States _ the fate of two out of three applicants in the late 1960s _ he studied one year in Belgium and then enrolled at the Autonomous University for Medicine in Guadalajara, Mexico. His friends remember him as funny and obstinate, a thin young man with glasses and a receding hairline who beat all comers at arm-wrestling and pool. ``Bart had certain beliefs, strongly held,'' said Richard Schwarz, an old classmate who is an internist on Long Island. ``He always said you shouldn't sit around whining about things,'' Schwarz said. ``He would say, `Go after what's yours and what's right.''' Bart Slepian's determination surfaced in quirky ways. He once insisted on going to the top of the World Trade Center, despite a crippling fear of heights. To get to the window, he crawled, inch by inch. ``I said, `You don't have to do this,' '' recalled Schwarz, who was with him at the time. ``And he said, `I want to do it.' Bart made it count. He felt alive.'' Forced to drop out of school every few semesters to work, he lived in Reno with his sister Serena, a widow who was struggling to take care of two young daughters. She worked as a waitress and a blackjack dealer, sharing her tips with him while he drove a cab, cleaned barns at a ranch and worked as a laboratory assistant at the local Veterans Administration hospital. After graduation, he moved to Buffalo for his medical residency. There he married Lynne Breitbart, a registered nurse 10 years his junior, and scraped together the money to buy an obstetrics practice from a doctor who was about to retire. He had a soothing, unhurried manner. When a patient of his, Patti Durlak, was diagnosed with diabetes, Slepian referred her to a specialist but called every few days for months to help her overcome a fear of the needles she had to use for her insulin injections. ``The other doctor said, `Just deal with it,''' Mrs. Durlak recalled. ``Not Dr. Slepian.'' In most ways, he was a typical suburban family man, working six days a week and spending his free time at Little League games and county fairs with his four sons. But by the late 1980s, he and other abortion doctors in Buffalo were under siege. In one notorious 1991 incident recorded on videotape, the Rev. Paul Schenck, one of the fieriest of Buffalo's anti-abortion leaders, threw himself in front of the doctor's car as he pulled into the clinic driveway. Slepian parked on the street. As he pushed his way through the crowd of chanting demonstrators, Schenck cupped his hands around his mouth and lunged, shouting, ``Slepian, you pig!'' Slepian's attempts to separate the abortion conflict from his private life were futile. The protests followed him home and the man who had been so bashful as a boy found himself, uncomfortably, at the center of controversy and attention. Once, he showed his anger. In 1988, when demonstrators jeered at him from the sidewalk in front of his home as he opened Hanukkah presents with his children, the doctor came out brandishing a baseball bat. He denied he hurt anyone, but a town judge ordered him to repair one protester's smashed van window and pay a portion of another's medical bills. The outburst surprised his family and friends. It was not Slepian's style to make a public fuss, much less acknowledge the stress of being taunted by protesters. ``Stress?'' his oldest brother Paul responded gruffly when asked about the doctor's mood. ``I never heard the word used in my family, except as an engineering term. He said it was a nuisance.'' Mrs. Slepian did not respond to requests for an interview. She expressed rage to The Buffalo News shortly after the shooting. She said that whoever had killed her husband deserved the death penalty and that she would be happy to administer the lethal injection herself. She also spoke out after Schenck's brother, Robert, another anti-abortion leader who frequently confronted Slepian, sent a bouquet of flowers. Mrs. Slepian denounced him as ``a hypocrite.'' After the confrontation in 1988, Slepian turned to civil harassment lawsuits, letters and levity to deal with the protesters. In 1993, when a man active in the anti-abortion effort was arrested for rifling through the doctor's garbage cans at home, Slepian tried to treat the incident lightly. ``They hopefully got the bags full of dirty diapers,'' he joked. He tried to engage his critics through the local newspaper. He told The Buffalo News that abortion protesters should turn their energies to helping women avoid unwanted pregnancies through birth control and counseling. In a letter to the editor he warned that by repeatedly calling him a murderer, his critics were inciting violence. Slepian accepted that opponents of abortion acted out of moral conviction, his friends said, but resented the personal attacks. ``He thought it tended to demonize and dehumanize him and increased the danger,'' said his lawyer, Glenn Edward Murray. So Slepian took a step that few of the nation's beleaguered abortion clinic doctors dared. He insisted that if he tried hard enough, he might cut through the venom. To the dismay of the staff members who feared for his safety, Slepian began about a year ago to stop and chat with protesters he recognized outside the Womenservices abortion clinic in Buffalo, where he worked two days a week. He surprised a gathering of protesters who were preparing for what they euphemistically called a ``house call,'' or demonstration at the doctor's home, and invited the protest's organizer, the Rev. Robert Behn, to breakfast. Their hourlong conversation the next morning was inconclusive, Behn said, dismissing Slepian's gesture as an ``attempt to get people to like him.'' He asked Slepian how performing abortions affected him spiritually. In response, he recalled, the doctor said, ``I'm fine spiritually.'' Slepian, meanwhile, focused more on time away from home with his family. He planned to take a cruise next spring. He bought a time-share apartment near Disney World in Florida. ``He had so many plans,'' said Ellen Fink, a close friend of the couple for 15 years. ``He wasn't done. He wasn't done living yet.'' Still, sometimes during the most casual conversations, a shadow would appear. When his wife gave him a gray African parrot for a birthday gift, Slepian joked that the bird would probably outlive him so he would teach it his eulogy. ``He would talk about the funeral he wanted,'' Mrs. Fink said. ``He said he didn't have a lot of friends and wanted all of them to come in separate cars, one in each car, so he'd have a long procession.'' In the week before his death, Slepian had reasons to be preoccupied with thoughts of mortality. A medical checkup had revealed a blockage of his heart, Mrs. Fink said, recounting a conversation with Mrs. Slepian the day of the slaying. A blockage is a sign of probable coronary artery disease. He was to have more tests the following week. ``I said, `Lynne, just relax, it's going to be OK,''' Mrs. Fink recalled. That same day, the National Abortion Federation sent a fax to the Womenservices clinic warning of a pattern of sniper attacks on abortion doctors that occurred in early November. Marilynne Buckham, the clinic director, sent it to Slepian. ``He definitely took it seriously,'' she recalled. Typically, the doctor did not share any concerns he might have felt. ``It was a normal day,'' said Tammi Latini, his office assistant. ``We were horsing around.' That evening, the Slepians went to synagogue to mark the ninth anniversary of the death of Slepian's father. Shortly after they returned home, a sniper's bullet smashed through the kitchen window, killing Slepian as he chatted with his wife and sons. The protesters returned to the clinic five days later, the first day it reopened. Mrs. Buckham, the director, said Slepian would not have been surprised. They have their routine. So did he. ``He never wanted a day to end on a bad note,'' she said. ``At the end of the day, I would always say, `Thank you for coming.' And he would always turn with a stupid grin and say, `Thanks for having me.''' ||||| The slaying of Dr. Barnett Slepian in his home last week eliminated the mainstay of the only abortion clinic here, but it has not eliminated women's access to abortion. That is because the availability of abortion in the Buffalo area, as in much of the United States, is a complex reality, one affected by class and education, medical training and the personal convictions of individual doctors. Knowledgeable middle-class and affluent women here who find themselves with an unwanted pregnancy can usually obtain an abortion from their private gynecologists, or if a gynecologist has a personal objection to the procedure, through a referral to a colleague. Women who are poor, young or uneducated and have no such regular relationships with doctors have to rely on specialized clinics like the one Slepian worked in, or on hospitals. It is this group _ for whom unplanned pregnancies are far more common than for prosperous women _ that faces a shrinking universe of possibilities as a result of the fear set off by Slepian's killing and the slayings of five other doctors and clinic workers since 1993, medical experts said. ``If you're well off and well connected, you can get your abortion,'' said Dr. Stephen Wear, co-director of the center for clinical ethics at the University of Buffalo, which trains doctors for the Buffalo area's hospitals. ``For everybody else, it's less and less available.'' The number of abortions in the United States has been declining steadily since the first years after the Supreme Court's Roe vs. Wade decision legalized abortion in 1973, according to the Alan Guttmacher Institute, which studies reproductive issues. They now number roughly 1.5 million a year, according to reports by Guttmacher, or 1.4 million, according to the National Right to Life Committee, the nation's largest anti-abortion group, which calculates its estimate partly from the Guttmacher figures. The number of providers who identify themselves as performing abortions as part of their practice is diminishing as well. A 1994 Guttmacher study, the last one published, found that the number had decreased 18 percent between 1982 and 1992, to 2,380 from 2,908. Moreover, the study said, only 12 percent of the nation's residency programs routinely offer training in abortions during the first trimester, though many do offer elective courses. Laura Echevarria, director of media relations for the National Right to Life Committee, contends, however, that most teaching hospitals do train gynecologists in procedures for treating miscarriages that are similar to those used for performing abortions. Only in cosmopolitan and comparatively liberal cities like New York does the availability of abortions continue at a steady level, experts say, though even in these locales there is concern about the decreasing number of young doctors who emerge from residencies fully trained in performing abortions. The Guttmacher Institute, which keeps the nation's most precise statistics, said that in 1992, the last year for which it has figures, there were 142,410 abortions in New York that were done by just 151 providers, including 61 hospitals and 44 clinics. Still, that provider figure greatly understates the number of private doctors who perform them in their offices, medical experts say. ``Many obstetricians and gynecologists in Manhattan provide abortions as part of their palette of services, and have for many years,'' said Dr. Richard Hausknecht, the medical director of Planned Parenthood. ``Rich and middle-class women have always had access to abortions, and they always will.'' The major threat to availability in the city is less a result of anti-abortion violence than of medical training. ``The bottom line is that we're facing an impending shortage of physicians who are adequately trained and willing to do the procedures,'' said Dr. John Choate, chairman of the New York State division of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. But the lack of training programs is also a result of political pressures on hospitals and universities by antagonists of abortion and the same climate of fear. ``Physicians tend to lie low,'' Choate said. ``They don't publicize the fact that they do them. If they do them, they do it quietly out of fear for their practice and for their lives.'' One development on the horizon that is expected to change the outlook for abortions substantially is final federal approval, expected next year, of the RU-486 pill, the drug that ends an early pregnancy without the need for surgery. When the pill was introduced in France and in Edinburgh, Scotland, Hausknecht said, the number of surgical abortions plummeted. ||||| While veterans and civic leaders devote Wednesday's national holiday to honoring fallen soldiers, Remembrance Day has become a chilling vigil for Canadians in the front lines of the abortion-rights movement. There is immediate fear, because an anti-abortion gunman is believed to be at large. And there is long-term anxiety, because even in this country where abortions are legal and publicly funded, women may find access diminishing. There is speculation the sniper's timing is linked to Remembrance Day because some anti-abortion activists use the day to commemorate aborted fetuses. Three times since 1994, a sniper has used this time of year to fire into the home of a Canadian doctor who performs abortion, each time wounding the target. The attacks were spread across Canada _ Ontario, Manitoba and British Columbia. U.S. and Canadian investigators now believe those attacks were linked to two shootings of abortion-providing doctors in upstate New York, including the Oct. 23 slaying of Dr. Barnett Slepian at his home near Buffalo. An American anti-abortion activist, James Kopp, is wanted for questioning about the shootings. Police say they don't know which side of the border he is on, fueling uneasiness at clinics and hospitals throughout Canada. ``You must realize Canada has the largest undefended border in the world,'' said Keith McCaskill, a police inspector in Winnipeg, Manitoba, and spokesman for the investigation. Many women's clinics have tightened security, and doctors who provide abortions have been urged to take precautions. ``I would suggest they be extremely aware of their day-to-day goings on, whether during their business day or after hours,'' said Toronto Detective Rick Stubbings. Across Canada, there have been reports of obstetrician-gynecologists modifying their practices or deciding to stop performing abortions. Some wear bulletproof vests and hang sheets over windows of their homes. Abortion-rights groups say most doctors are not backing down. ``There's a great deal of sadness,'' said Susan Fox, director of a clinic in Edmonton, Alberta, that provides abortions. ``But there's also a feeling of determination that we won't be deterred or scared by these actions.'' Marilyn Wilson, executive director of the Canadian Abortion Rights Action League, sees a long-term threat because fear of violence may intimidate young doctors from entering the field. ``There are almost no doctors who have stopped performing these procedures, even under the current reign of terror,'' she said. ``But young doctors with families wouldn't necessarily want to do this. They may not be willing to put their lives at risk.'' The abortion debate is only one of several factors contributing to a shortage of obstetrician-gynecologists in Canada. The national society that oversees the speciality says there are about 1,400 doctors in the field, a shortfall of 600, and most are in their 50s or 60s. The society says long hours and limits on fees paid by the public health-care system are causing burnout and deterring medical school graduates as they choose a specialty. Another problem is that few Canadian medical schools offer training in abortion. Women in Canada's big cities generally have adequate access to abortions. Those in rural areas often face long journeys, and the province of Prince Edward Island prohibits abortions at its six hospitals, forcing women there to travel to New Brunswick or Nova Scotia. Abortion-rights groups say the situation would improve if the RU-486 abortion pill were available in Canada. No drug company has applied for permission to market the pill, either fearing boycotts or doubting its profitability. The government has been urged to make a public appeal to drug companies, but the health department says this can't be done. ``It would be a conflict of interest,'' said Bonnie Fox-McIntyre, a department spokeswoman. ``As a regulator we have to stay at arm's length, so we can judge an application impartially.'' Abortion was illegal in Canada until 1988. Now there is no abortion law of any sort, about 100,000 abortions are performed annually, and polls indicate roughly three-quarters of Canadians favor pro-choice policies. Yet public support doesn't spare doctors from fear. Dr. Henry Morgentaler, who led efforts to overturn the old abortion law and whose Toronto clinic was bombed in 1993, says he and his colleagues are sacrificing personal freedom as they reluctantly increase security measures. ``Unfortunately, doctors who are committed to providing these services will have to accept a certain diminishment of their enjoyment of life,'' he said. ||||| By outward appearances, Dorothy Hayes' life seems ordinary. She and her family live in a rambling old home on the shore of Lake Ontario, and every morning, she gives her husband, John, a peck on the cheek before he goes to work. She runs errands, like other suburban moms, and spends much of her day taking care of her children. But one thing sets Mrs. Hayes apart from her neighbors. As a devoted opponent of abortion, the 43-year-old mother of nine regularly plays host to a series of traveling speakers, priests and protesters _ many of whom have come to Rochester intent upon spreading the word against abortion and shutting down clinics that provide it. She is one of thousands of people across the country loosely associated with anti-abortion groups like the Lambs of Christ who have opened their homes to the Lambs' founder, the Rev. Norman Weslin, and other itinerant demonstrators. While many _ including Mrs. Hayes _ disavow violent tactics, supporters of abortion rights say that people like her bear some responsibility when the protesters they help blockade clinics or threaten doctors. ``These people who provide Father Weslin with food and shelter when he comes into town to close the clinics are not innocent,'' said Ann Glazier, the director of clinic defense for the Planned Parenthood Federation. ``It's just not credible to say they aren't part of the extremist activity that is taking place at these clinics. They are still guilty of interfering with women's access.'' But Mary Quinn, a local organizer for the Lambs of Christ who also offers her home to protesters, sees matters in a differing light. ``Taking people in like this is an act of Christian charity,'' Mrs. Quinn said. `People who travel around the country doing this work are taken in by those of us that who don't want to lose their stupid houses. We take in these people because they are willing to make the sacrifice.'' Members of the Lambs of Christ have been persistent figures in protests at the Buffalo women's clinic where Dr. Barnett Slepian worked before he was shot to death last month. Although no suspect has been identified in the shooting or in several similar attacks in New York and Canada over the past several years, officials are looking to question a Vermont man whose car was seen near Dr. Slepian's home. That man, James Charles Kopp, has participated in abortion protests for more than a decade, and often was a house guest of other members of the Lambs of Christ. While Mrs. Hayes says she would never so much as obstruct a clinic's door, some of those to whom she has given refuge have no qualms about doing so. Weslin, the leader of the Lambs of Christ, is one of those who has benefited from Mrs. Hayes' hospitality, a modern version of the generosity that Christ and the Apostles knew well. He prides himself on being arrested more than 60 times during protests in front of medical clinics. And throughout the 1980s and early '90s, he was active in clinic ``rescues,'' in which protesters tried physically to restrain patients trying to enter clinics. Weslin stayed at Mrs. Hayes' home only once, beginning in May 1996 when he first came to speak at local churches about the anti-abortion movement. But during a stay that lasted several months, he was arrested on Federal charges of blocking access to a Rochester health clinic where abortions were performed. He was later convicted and served two and a half months in prison. During the protest outside the clinic, he and several other protesters locked themselves in a homemade contraption called ``the oven,'' made of cement and iron. It took police officers several hours to lug the device to a horse trailer that carted it off. At the same protest, one man glued his head to a lock on a gate surrounding the clinic, a move some protesters later said was an accident. Abortion opponents like Mrs. Hayes and Mrs. Quinn speak of attending peaceful observances at abortion clinics and offering prayers for the unborn. They talk about counseling women about alternatives to abortion at Roman Catholic ``pregnancy centers,'' and their support of anti-abortion candidates. But they also say they saw nothing wrong with Weslin trying to block access to clinics. They describe the activity as peaceful resistance meant to stop what they see as murders. Weslin and the other house guests of Mrs. Hayes and Mrs. Quinn come recommended from friends and members of local Catholic churches, they said, adding that most are speakers at local churches or anti-abortion events. And although they say they would never take into their homes a stranger wanted by the FBI, like Kopp, they concede that they sometimes know little about their guests. But Mrs. Hayes and Mrs. Quinn say they know a lot about Weslin. An Army veteran, he has been a leader of the anti-abortion movement for more than 25 years, they say, and founded a home for unwed mothers. Mrs. Hayes said that when she met him, it was obvious he was a man of peace who ``had a tremendous devotion to the Blessed Mother and basically recognized that we are helpless lambs.'' Barbara Fredericks, another local abortion opponent who developed ties to the Lambs after Weslin came to town, added that the priest epitomized a man of God. ``I just knew when I looked at his holy shoes and his simple coat that had been mended 50 times,'' she said. ``He was humble, a man who was doing this for a higher purpose, trying to save people through sacrifice and prayer.'' opp also has robust defenders among the people who housed him as he rode about the country from protest to protest. E. Kenny, 20, said that his parents housed Kopp in their St. Albans, Vt., home for two years after he spoke at their local church in 1988. During Kopp's stay, he was a pleasure, Kenny said, always helping around the house. ``He was a nice guy, kind of like an uncle to us,'' Kenny said. ``He'd sit around and play video games with us and make us model planes out of wood.'' Like Weslin, Kopp was consumed by a need to fight abortion and often talked about its evils, Kenny said, adding that Kopp was a gentle man who wanted to become a Catholic priest. ``He was always in a good mood,'' Kenny said. ``He never did anything violent at all.'' Both Kopp and Weslin have been arrested repeatedly during abortion protests. The men have moved in the same circles and at times found themselves arrested at the same events. Mrs. Quinn said that Weslin told her in a recent telephone conversation that he knew Kopp. Weslin could not be reached for comment, but it is clear that the two men have encountered each other. Both faced misdemeanor charges after blocking a Burlington, Vt., health clinic in 1990 that Kopp called ``the mill.'' And they spent time in the same jail in Atlanta in 1988 after a clinic protest. Slepian's death has abortion opponents like Mrs. Hayes and Mrs. Quinn worried, both about how the killing is being portrayed in the media and what it will do to membership in groups like the Lambs of Christ. ``For a long time, you felt like the voice in the desert that wasn't being heard,'' Mrs. Hayes said. ``And then there was this horrible tragedy of this doctor's death becoming the face of the movement. ``We're about saving lives,'' she said. The FBI has not talked to Mrs. Hayes, but Kenny said that agents have spoken to him. The Justice Department says that a Federal task force set up this week to investigate the killing of Slepian is looking for evidence connecting anti-abortion violence at various clinics. ``It's fair to say that when investigating these events, we will look at any connection between individuals engaged in criminal conduct,'' Myron Marlin, a spokesman for the department, said. Many local Catholics associated with the Lambs of Christ have tried to distance themselves from the killing of Slepian. They are mailing literature saying that the killer does not represent their movement. In addition, some people associated with the Lambs are offering other possible explanations for the killing. Some say they believe that the killer might have been someone overcome by grief after a personal experience with abortion. Others wondered whether the shooter had tried to wound the doctor to scare him or prevent him from performing more abortions. The Lambs also wonder whether abortionist opponents are being blamed for a shooting committed by a disgruntled patient. One idea gaining currency among the Lambs, and prominently displayed on their Web site, suggests that the killing was the result of a plot by abortion supporters to discredit abortion opponents just before last week's elections. Mrs. Hayes says she doesn't know the truth. ``There are wackos who travel around and they may be in front of the clinic because we are drawn to the same place,'' she said. ``But you don't know everyone who shows up and you don't turn to the person next to you and tell them they don't belong there.'' Mrs. Fredericks said that anyone who would shoot a doctor who provides abortions was someone ``who had snapped, perhaps because of the importance of the situation.'' Members of the Lambs of Christ and other opponents of abortion in Rochester wonder whether the killing of Slepian will hinder their efforts. When Weslin first arrived two years ago, he brought new focus to a group that often had done little more than counsel pregnant women and set up booths on college campuses, they said. ``In many cities, they have a priest for life coordinating and leading rosary marches'' against abortion, Mrs. Quinn said. ``But with Father Weslin coming here, we could finally come together and feel like we were doing something sacrificial as a group.'' Mrs. Hayes said that she felt the first pull of the movement in the early 1980s, when she heard women speak about ``choice'' in regard to abortion. Then she saw ``Silent Scream,'' a well-known anti-abortion film that purports to show the footage of an abortion. ``What I saw was the end of life,'' she said. She began to volunteer at a Catholic pregnancy center where she encouraged women ``not to kill their child.'' She also began to house unwed mothers and went to stand vigil outside local clinics where abortions were performed. Mrs. Hayes looked at her 3-month-old daughter, Bernadette, then pointed to the prenatal image of the infant, a sonogram taken at 13 weeks that she keeps on her refrigerator door. She described what could have been her baby's fate, had she been someone else's child. ``Two pounds and two inches ago, she could have been a partial-birth abortion,'' Mrs. Hayes said, referring to a controversial late-term abortion procedure. ``They have the hardest time getting the shoulders out, so they can get to the head and puncture it. ``It's brutal, but what do you expect when the purpose is a dead baby? There's no question that these doctors are trying to murder a child.'' ||||| On the eve of a holiday that has been linked to antiabortion violence, the authorities on Tuesday were investigating whether a picture of an aborted fetus sent to a Canadian newspaper was connected to last month's fatal shooting of a Buffalo, N.Y. doctor who provided abortions or four similar attacks in western New York and Canada since 1994. The newspaper, the Hamilton (Ontario) Spectator, has received five similar packages in the last year, some containing veiled threats and several delivered by a man who employees said resembled James Charles Kopp, who is wanted for questioning as a witness about the Oct. 23 slaying of Dr. Barnett Slepian. Five days after the shooting, the Spectator received a package containing an antiabortion flier with biographical information about Slepian, including a photograph of him that had been crossed out. ``It certainly causes us to be more interested than ever in speaking to Kopp,'' said Inspector Keith McKaskill of the Winnipeg Police Department, a spokesman for the Canada-United States task force investigating the five shootings. Even as they searched for Kopp, federal officials were also looking into three letters that were received Monday by Catholic and antiabortion organizations in Buffalo, Indianapolis and Chicago. Those letters, saying they contained the deadly anthrax bacteria, came 10 days after eight similar threats to clinics that provide abortions. All the letters appear to be hoaxes, and it remains unclear whether they were connected to any of the five shootings. Kopp is not a suspect in the shootings. An itinerant antiabortion activist whose last known address is in Vermont, he is the subject of warrants on both sides of the border. In Canada, he is suspected of administrative violations of immigration law; in the United States, he is wanted as a material witness in the Slepian case. ||||| James Kopp, the man the FBI is seeking as a material witness in the sniper slaying of Dr. Barnett Slepian, is known to abortion rights leaders as an aggressive anti-abortion protester, and law enforcement officials say he has been arrested several times in demonstrations at abortion clinics. The portrait that emerges of Kopp, 44, from police records, studies by researchers on right-wing movements, newspaper accounts of protests, and abortion rights advocates, is that of an itinerant protester, moving about the country in a series of increasingly abrasive protests at abortion clinics. Federal law enforcement officials say he is not currently a suspect in the Slepian shooting, and there was no indication Wednesday that he had been arrested for any violent acts. At several abortion protests, he was charged with trespassing or resisting arrest, according to news accounts. One of his arrests was in Atlanta during Operation Rescue's huge anti-abortion protests there in 1988. While he was in an Atlanta jail, Kopp was given the nickname Atomic Dog, which investigators contend links him to the violent fringe of the anti-abortion movement, responsible for a series of bombings and arsons and seven murders of abortion providers like Slepian over the last five years. Responsibility for some of the violence _ like the bombing of an abortion clinic in Birmingham, Ala., earlier this year, in which an off-duty policeman was killed _ has been claimed in notes signed by a shadowy ``Army of God.'' An underground manual issued in the name of the Army of God, which describes methods for attacking abortion clinics, including how to make homemade C-4 plastic explosives, begins with a tribute, by nickname, of a clandestine band pledged to stop abortions. The first name under this ``Special Thanks'' section is Atomic Dog. The Atlanta police, after searching the hundreds of arrest records of the protesters from the summer of 1988, confirmed Wednesday night that the date of birth and Social Security number of the James Kopp arrested then matched those given out Wednesday by the FBI task force in Buffalo investigating the murder of Slepian, who was gunned down through the window if his home in suburban Amherst on Oct. 23. At the nondescript frame house in St. Albans, Vt., that the FBI gave as Kopp's last known address, the current resident, who gave his name only as E. Kenny, 20, a shipping clerk, remembered Kopp well. He lived there for part of 1990 as the guest of Kenny's parents, who were active in the anti-abortion movement, among a group of protesters who tried to shut down two abortion clinics in Burlington in stubborn demonstrations that year. Kenny remembered Kopp as a ``really nice guy,'' who did chores around the place but paid no rent to the parents. He sometimes made wooden toys or played video games with Kenny, then a child. ``But the focus of his life was the anti-abortion movement,'' Kenny recalled. ``He was known among these people as Atomic Dog. It wasn't like a name that he had to go to the store or something. But if you knew anything about him, that's what you called him.'' Roughly 95 people were arrested during the protests, according to newspaper accounts at the time. ``There were many, many arrests,'' recalled Allie Stickney, the president of Planned Parenthood of Northern New England. ``It was very big for Vermont. There were Kryptonite locks and leaflets from the Army of God and the Lambs of Christ. It was clearly a highly organized blockade.'' According to newspaper accounts, Kopp was arrested outside a clinic in Levittown, Long Island, in 1991. The protests in Atlanta in 1998 appeared to be a turning point for a hard-core group of protesters. The Atlanta police cracked down hard and carted hundreds of demonstrators off to an isolated prison dormitory the called ``the farm.'' Operation Rescue had mounted a series of blockades to close down abortion clinics in New York and Philadelphia that spring. Atlanta was their high point, but in the face of the tough arrest policy, the movement faltered, split apart and stalled. ``It was a traumatic, life-changing experience,'' said Frederick Clarkson, author of ``Eternal Hostility,'' a book on the anti-abortion movement, adding that by 1993 with the shooting of Dr. David Gunn, an abortion provider in Florida, some of those in the Atlanta jail became the nucleus of a group signing a ``justifiable homicide'' statement that declared that the use of force was warranted to ``defend the life of an unborn child.'' ||||| In the aftermath of last month's deadly sniper attack on an obstetrician in upstate New York, Attorney General Janet Reno announced last week that she was setting up a new investigative unit to examine the possibility that the doctor was the victim of a broader anti-abortion plot. The unit, the National Clinic Violence Task Force, will include a dozen Justice Department lawyers and involve several law-enforcement agencies. But the main work of looking into the shooting of Dr. Barnett Slepian in his suburban Buffalo home and how it fits a larger pattern of organized violence will be done by the FBI, which has jurisdiction over domestic terrorism. For many in the FBI, that's a problem. In contrast to the old image of gung-ho FBI agents turning their surveillance machinery on political groups, a number of senior FBI agents privately expressed misgivings about the attorney general's latest task force, the second she has ordered to begin a broad investigation into a conspiracy involving anti-abortion violence. FBI officials fear that expanding the investigation could drive the agency over the ill-defined boundary that separates inquiries into criminal activity from those into political causes and unpopular ideas. Today's agents are eager to disassociate themselves from the old J. Edgar Hoover days of trampling the civil rights of political dissidents in the guise of serious investigations. They do not want the agency drawn into the middle of the bitter ideological war between anti-abortion groups and abortion rights advocates, who have long asserted the existence of an organized campaign against clinics and doctors. Many of those calling for government help were once themselves subjects of FBI interest as anti-war and civil rights activists. Senior agency officials, including Director Louis Freeh, were starting their careers in the early 1970s and watched in dismay as the FBI was shaken by revelations about Cointelpro, the counterintelligence program that allowed agents to spy on, burgle, wiretap and infiltrate anti-war and civil rights groups like Students for a Democratic Society and the Student Nonviolence Coordinating Committee. Some officials are dubious that a conspiracy exists to kill doctors who perform abortions. They came up empty handed when Reno ordered the first federal inquiry in 1994 after the killing of a Florida doctor and his bodyguard. The Justice Department conducted a two-year grand jury investigation; agents pursued some anti-abortion activists using surveillance teams. But investigators never found a specific plot against abortion clinics and staff members. Violence at abortion clinics is only part of the problem. The FBI has in recent years found itself thrown into a minefield of politically tinged cases involving the volatile worlds of anti-government militias, environmental and Christian extremists, white separatists, animal rights activists and Islamic fundamentalists. ``The FBI is very quick to jump from investigating crime to investigating political association,'' said David Cole, a law professor at Georgetown University. ``When you move from investigating crimes to investigating groups, that all-important nexus to criminal conduct gets lost, the focus gets broader and broader and you start sweeping in all kinds of lawful political activity.'' In response to terrorist attacks like the bombings of the World Trade Center in 1993, the Oklahoma City federal building in 1995 and the Olympic park in Atlanta in 1996, the agency has increased efforts to deter such incidents in a major prevention program. In such cases, the Justice Department, the FBI and other law enforcement agencies said they operate under domestic security guidelines that require investigators to find a ``reasonable indication'' that a group is planning to break the law before they can open an inquiry into an organization. Before the authorities can use such intrusive tactics as wiretapping or property searches, they must have specific evidence. Yet FBI agents throughout the country have quietly evaluated the threat posed by a variety of extremist groups through its links to local authorities and informal interviews with the leaders of some groups. Their conclusion is that most of these groups pose little real danger. Much more difficult to investigate are lone terrorists inflamed by the oratory of extremist ideology but who belong to no group, drifting along society's frayed margins, ``off the grid,'' as some agents describe it, without the usual ties to family, friends or work. The profile fits Eric Robert Rudolph, the fugitive wanted for bombings at the Atlanta Olympics, a gay nightclub and two abortion clinics. He has kept his beliefs mostly to himself, although acquaintances hint that he was familiar with religious extremism and hate groups. In contrast, James Charles Kopp, who is being sought as a material witness in the killing of Slepian, left a trail of clues about his motives. He was an early follower of Randall Terry, a leader of Operation Rescue. Later, Kopp was associated with the Lambs of Christ, an another militant anti-abortion group. One law-enforcement official said that the government should do what it does best. ``We should investigate violations,'' he said. ``We shouldn't investigate groups.'' ||||| In July 1988, when Randall Terry drove through the night from his home in Binghamton, N.Y., to Atlanta to start the series of anti-abortion protests that would finally put his new hard-line group, Operation Rescue, onto America's front pages, James Charles Kopp was in the van riding alongside him, according to former leaders of Operation Rescue who spoke on the condition of anonymity. And, those people say, when Terry was arrested on the first day of Operation Rescue's ``Siege of Atlanta,'' Kopp followed him into jail. Along with more than one hundred other Operation Rescue members, according to some people who were there, Kopp remained in jail for 40 days and adhered to Terry's orders not to give a real name to the police or courts. After his release, Kopp returned to Operation Rescue's Binghamton headquarters, and was there working alongside Terry as the group's power and influence in the anti-abortion movement surged in late 1988 and 1989, according to the former leaders of Operation Rescue. Now, Kopp is being sought by federal and local law enforcement authorities for questioning as a material witness in the murder of an obstetrician who performed abortions in the Buffalo region. The authorities also say he may have information that will help solve four other sniper attacks on doctors who performed abortions in Canada and upstate New York. Some abortion-rights groups are seizing on Kopp's role in Operation Rescue to raise new questions about the connections between the recent anti-abortion violence and the hard-line anti-abortion protest groups that burst onto the national scene in the late 1980s. For years, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Justice Department have looked in vain for evidence to determine whether a national conspiracy might be behind a series of clinic bombings and shootings of doctors and other clinic staff members that began in the early 1990s. A federal grand jury in Alexandria, Va., that looked into conspiracy allegations was ultimately disbanded without finding a national underground. But some federal law enforcement officials say they hope that Kopp may help provide such a link. In fact, the announcement that law enforcement officials are looking for him has been made as Attorney General Janet Reno has prepared to revive an interagency task force to look once again for possible conspiracies behind anti-abortion crimes. Federal law enforcement officials and the authorities say Kopp is not now a suspect in the sniper attack on Oct. 23 that killed Dr. Barnett A. Slepian near Buffalo. But they say Kopp's car was seen near Slepian's home in Amherst, N.Y. in the weeks before the doctor was shot. One day after issuing a warrant for Kopp's arrest as a material witness, law enforcement officials from at least 10 agencies spanning the United States and Canadian border still had not located Kopp Thursday. But law enforcement officials said they were pursuing many tips, including about 400 that have poured into the FBI's information line: (800) 281-1184. The police have gone through photographs of abortion protesters and clinic workers in Buffalo and around the country, and they are also reviewing hundreds of hours of videotapes of demonstrations in search of Kopp's face. At this point, officials consider the shooting of Slepian to be connected to three attacks in Canada and one in Rochester on doctors who provide abortions. The five attacks, all since 1994, occurred in the weeks leading up to Nov. 11, Veterans Day _ called Remembrance Day in Canada _ a holiday that has become important to anti-abortion activists. But the attacks were spread over four years and 3,000 miles, from Vancouver, British Columbia, to Buffalo. As is the case with many early veterans of Operation Rescue, Kopp was transformed into a hard-core anti-abortion militant in jail in Atlanta in 1988, according to many people who were in jail with him who insisted on anonymity.

Dr. Barnett Slepian, the mainstay of Buffalo's only abortion clinic, was slain as he stood at his kitchen window. Slepian has been described as a fatalist who stubbornly adhered to doing what he thought right. The FBI is looking for James Kopp for questioning as a material witness in the slaying. Kopp has long been identified as a major voice in the anti-abortion movement. Attorney General Reno will investigate if the slaying is part of a nation-wide plot. In Canada, authorities are worried that new violence could erupt as Remembrance Day approaches. Anti-abortion pamphlets have been delivered to a Canadian newspaper, possibly by Kopp.

Federal authorities investigating the murder of a Buffalo-area obstetrician who performed abortions have identified a Vermont man as a material witness to the sniper attack last month and issued a warrant for his arrest Wednesday to bring him in for questioning. The man was identified as James Charles Kopp, 44, whose last known address was in St. Albans, Vt. His whereabouts are not known, investigators said. Investigators said Kopp's car was seen near the Amherst, N.Y., home of Dr. Barnett Slepian in the weeks before the doctor, whose work at an abortion clinic had long made him a target of harassment, was killed. Kopp, according to police records and abortion rights groups, has often moved about the country in a series of protests at abortion clinics, and has been linked to an underground manual that describes methods of killing or maiming doctors who perform abortions. Denise O'Donnell, the U.S. attorney for the western district of New York, said Kopp was not considered a suspect at this time but was believed to have information material to the case. She declined to give details on what evidence was being sought from Kopp, describing it only as information that is contained in a sealed affidavit whose disclosure would compromise the ongoing investigation. Ms. O'Donnell said that federal law allowed for an arrest warrant for a material witness when a person has information that is important to a case. ``If Kopp is found, he would be arrested, brought to Buffalo and ordered to provide the required evidence,'' Ms. O'Donnell said. ``Then, most likely, the individual would be released.'' Slepian, 52, was shot by a sniper firing from outside his home on Oct. 23, shortly after returning from an evening service at his synagogue. He was standing in his kitchen with his wife and one of his four sons when the bullet crashed through a back window. He died two hours later. Law enforcement officials said Wednesday's announcement of the material witness warrant was in part an attempt to underscore the potential danger of anti-abortion violence in advance of Remembrance Day, a Canadian holiday that falls on Nov. 11 and that the authorities have associated with some anti-abortion crimes. At the same time, the Justice Department and the FBI were trying to find ways to step up the federal response to violence at abortion clinics in the aftermath of the Slepian killing. The officials said that Attorney General Janet Reno would soon announce that the Justice Department, aiming to heighten the visibility of the federal role in cases that cross state and local jurisdictional boundaries, would revive a national investigative effort focused on abortion clinic violence. Ms. Reno and senior FBI officials, including Robert Bryant, the deputy FBI director, have met with physician and abortion rights groups in recent days to discuss ways to enhance federal investigative efforts and coordination with local agencies. Federal authorities first organized an abortion clinic task force in 1995 after the killing of a Florida doctor. The unit, which was charged with investigating whether a national conspiracy existed, spent nearly two years studying abortion clinic violence. The unit disbanded without uncovering a national conspiracy. Law enforcement officials said that the unit's operation did help reduce violence at abortion clinics and that, in part, the decision to re-establish it was prompted by Ms. Reno's desire to send a renewed message to anti-abortion extremists that the government would aggressively investigate these crimes. Slepian's murder fit the pattern of four earlier sniper attacks on abortion doctors in Canada and western New York, dating from 1994. None of the attacks have been solved. Bernard Tolbert, special agent in charge of the FBI in Buffalo, said at a news conference here Wednesday that investigators had not determined whether there is a link between the five killings. ``There's a possibility they could be linked, but certainly no information,'' he said. Tolbert gave little information about the subject of the material-witness warrant, except to say that Kopp's black 1987 Chevrolet Cavalier, with the Vermont license plate BPE216, was seen near Slepian's home beginning several weeks before the murder. ``We don't have any idea of where he is,'' Tolbert said of Kopp. ``We are looking for him every place we can, every place he might be.'' A photograph of Kopp taken in January 1997 has been distributed to law enforcement agencies around the United States and Canada. The National Abortion Federation has sent out an advisory to clinics around the country about the search for Kopp, said Melinda DuBois, assistant director of Womenservices, the clinic where Slepian worked. She said naming Kopp a material witness in the case had not brought relief to the nurses and other workers at the clinic. ``I don't think it makes me or anyone else at the clinic feel differently,'' she said. ``I don't want anybody to relax and say, `Oh God, they got the guy.' That's easy to happen. I still want people to be very vigilant.'' The clinic is the last in the Buffalo area that is performing abortions. Slepian was one of only a handful of doctors in Buffalo who were still willing to perform the procedure in the face of pickets, protesters and threats. Since his death, doctors from outside Buffalo have come to the clinic to continue providing abortion services. ||||| Rosina Lotempio was standing outside abortion clinics here before Operation Rescue stormed into town in 1992 for the rowdy Spring of Life rallies, in which hundreds were arrested. She was there before Lambs of Christ demonstrators came to town in 1993. She was on the sidewalk outside Buffalo GYN Womenservices the morning of Oct. 23, about 12 hours before Barnett Slepian, the clinic doctor, was fatally shot in his home. And she was there Friday, brown rosary beads in her hands, a small gold cross on a chain around her neck, quietly praying for abortions to stop. ``I'm heartbroken when I have to come here,'' Mrs. Lotempio, 58, said as she stood in the cold, wearing small black earmuffs and a white turtleneck adorned with a tiny silver pin of baby feet. ``It's very difficult out here; I depend on God,'' she said, after praying for several moments to decide whether to talk to a reporter. The bombings, the fiery rhetoric of abortion opponents and the posters of bloody fetuses may capture the attention of the news media, but people like Mrs. Lotempio are the foot soldiers in the abortion battle. They call themselves street counselors and come to the clinic whenever they believe abortions are being performed. They pray and they talk to women, hoping to change their minds. Some scream profanities. Others, like Mrs. Lotempio, denounce not only the violence against doctors and clinics, but also the blocking of doors and the shouting of ugly epithets at clinic workers and patients. For the approximately 80 abortion opponents here, their protest is more like a job than a political activity. There is a schedule. People count on them to show up. Mrs. Lotempio, a mother of three and grandmother of six, connects her involvement to a conversation in the 1970s in which she helped a friend decide to abort an unwanted pregnancy. Two decades later, she was haunted by her own question: whether the fetus was male or female. ``I just felt horrible and I felt guilty,'' she said, tears in her eyes. ``I thought that if I was at the clinic doing something, I could make up for that baby's life.'' During Mrs. Lotempio's 8 a.m.-to-10 a.m. shift Friday, about a dozen people circled the area in front of the Buffalo clinic, saying the ``Hail Mary.'' Others take her spot on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. She returns on Saturdays, when up to 40 people crowd the sidewalk. Similar bands of protesters march in front of abortion clinics throughout the United States, and local protesters are often joined by bands of people who roam the country. At the clinic on Main Street, north of downtown Buffalo, there is an odd sense of community. Local protesters greet Dick, the security guard, by name. They sometimes see the ``enemy'' _ abortion-rights volunteers who escort patients in and out of the clinic _ in the supermarket or on the soccer field. Robert Behn, one of the protest leaders, even spent two hours talking about abortion over breakfast last year with Slepian. And several said they cried when they heard of Slepian's death. Most of the protesters, including Mrs. Lotempio, were among the thousands of people arrested here in 1992, the height of anti-abortion activity in Buffalo. But if Operation Rescue returns, as planned, for a Spring of Life reunion in April, Mrs. Lotempio said, she will not be there. Instead, she plans to stay in church and pray, to avoid the militancy she says she finds uncomfortable. Glenn Murray, a lawyer for Womenservices clinic, said: ``When people from out of town show up, that is when we feel the most danger. The local people are a known quantity. We know most of the local people by name.'' Buffalo has been among a handful of hot spots for abortion protesters for the last decade. It is a heavily Catholic city where thousands of protesters from around the country demonstrated for two weeks in 1992. They failed to close abortion clinics, but 500 people were arrested in rallies that snarled traffic and drew national headlines. Those rallies, as well as earlier protests and continuing sidewalk vigils, have had an impact, people on both sides of the abortion issue say. The number of clinics performing abortions in the Buffalo area has dropped to one from three. And after Slepian's death and the retirement this week of another doctor, there are only two doctors in the area for whom abortions form a significant part of their practices. The daily demonstrators count this as progress. But their perch outside the clinic means they witness far more of what they believe are murders than what they call rescues. About 30 women a day might go into the clinic. After eight years, Mrs. Lotempio can count eight women who changed their minds and did not get abortions while she was at the clinic. Inside the clinic, the protests just make a hard job harder, many clinic workers say. While some demonstrators simply repeat the rosary, other protesters call out to patients as they drive into the parking lot behind the building, or walk up to the fortresslike front. They ask questions like ``Do you know what your baby looks like?'' or ``Is it a boy or a girl?'' Sometimes they accuse people of murder and torture and sin, or threaten them with damnation. Federal law bars protesters from coming within 15 feet of the clinic entrances, and from leaning signs against its walls. Some push the limits, frustrating clinic workers and guards. The rules protect people from physical harassment, but because of the distance, they turn what could be quiet conversations into catcalls and taunts. When a patient goes into the clinic, the protesters ``take on a different persona,'' said Melinda DuBois, director of the Buffalo clinic. ``They scream and yell and call us names. They lie. Some days we're immune to it, but other days it's just too much.'' Linda Palm, 51, marching at the clinic on Friday, said she identified with the clinic patients. When she was 23, she said, she struggled with the difficulties of being unmarried and pregnant herself, but decided to have her child, and married the father. She began protesting in 1990, after attending an abortion protest march in Albany. ||||| Everyone who knew Dr. Barnett Slepian knew that the slight, graying physician endured a measure of stress that would exhaust, even break, most people. There were the strangers who pawed through the garbage cans at his home and growled ``murderer'' as they passed him in the grocery store aisle. Demonstrators assailed his pregnant patients as they arrived at his office for their checkups, calling him a baby killer. Outside the clinic where he performed abortions two days a week, pickets shouted epithets like ``pig'' to his face. Slepian, an obstetrician and gynecologist by training and an abortion doctor by principle, rarely acknowledged the strain. He might crack an occasional joke at the expense of the protesters who shadowed him at work and on weekends. Then he would do something unexpected, like invite an anti-abortion leader to breakfast or stop and chat with a familiar demonstrator outside the clinic. So when he was killed Oct. 23 by a sniper's bullet fired through the kitchen window of his home in the Buffalo, N.Y., suburbs, a furtive execution that fit a pattern of four earlier attacks on abortion providers in western New York state and Canada, friends and relatives wondered not so much that Slepian's work could arouse such murderous violence. He had predicted as much himself. Instead, they wondered, once again, that he persisted in that work, long after other Buffalo doctors had surrendered to the pressure of abortion opponents. ``He was an incredibly fatalistic person who thought that if your number's up, it's up, and there is nothing you can do about it,'' said H. Amanda Robb, the doctor's 32-year-old niece. ``And he was incredibly stubborn. He said that women had a right to comprehensive health care and since he was a women's doctor, he was going to provide it for them.'' Slepian is the third doctor to be killed in the last five years in bombings and shootings that have killed 7 people and wounded 17 at abortion clinics around the nation. To his tormentors, he was simply an abortion doctor. To members of the abortion rights movement, he was a martyr for their cause. But Slepian was far from either. In interviews with friends and family members, he emerges as more than a one-dimensional abstract _ a conservative who advocated old-fashioned values like self-reliance, a shy man who had rare flashes of anger, a doctor who performed abortions but had no more patience for women who had multiple abortions than for women who had multiple children they did not want or could not support. He was killed because he performed a medical procedure that has become emotional and politicized. Yet there is nothing in his life to suggest he was a crusader in either politics or medicine. Rather, he was an obstinate, unassuming man who did a remarkable thing. Out of contrariness and out of conscience, say those who knew him, he refused to allow anyone to dictate what kind of doctor he should be, and for that, he paid with his life. The clues to Slepian's flinty brand of commitment lie, in part, in his upbringing. His was a family that took success for granted even as it teetered on the edge of poverty. To earn money for medical school, he shoveled muck at a ranch and drove a taxi. He made few friends, but those he had were friends for life. When their wives were sick, he called repeatedly. When they were lonely, he flew to their side. Slepian, who was known as Bart, used to tell people that he chose obstetrics because it is a specialty that exposes a doctor to the least suffering, and that he performed abortions because it was legal and the alternatives were so much worse. Slepian often expressed exasperation over women who came to him for abortion after abortion. ``Don't they get it?'' his clinic staff recall him saying more than once. He had the same impatience for women like those he remembered from his residency in inner-city Buffalo, who had child after child and no means of support. ``He had the contempt for that of somebody who had pulled himself up by his bootstraps and made it in the world,'' Ms. Robb said. He believed that to ban abortions or, just as shameful in his view, to stop teaching young doctors how to perform them, would not correct the human imperfections that he found so irritating. ``There are 1.5 million abortions performed in this country,'' his niece said, ``and he just felt we're not equipped to handle 1.5 million unwanted children.'' When he was killed, at the age of 52, Bart Slepian owned an imposing red brick home in the quiet suburb of Amherst, complete with a swimming pool with piped-in music and an assortment of the time-saving gadgets he adored. Slepian's trajectory to that comfortable doctor's life had been unconventional. His grandfather, a Russian Jewish immigrant who started out selling shoelaces from a pushcart in Boston, propelled all five of his sons into Harvard at a time when few Jews met the university's blue-blood standards. His father, in turn, decreed that his own three sons would be doctors or earn Ph.D's. ``We grew up in a home where there was tremendous, tremendous, tremendous respect for education,'' said Serena Robb, Slepian's sister, who is four years older than him. ``If you got an A, it was OK If you got a B, you got yelled at.'' The family's means did not match its expectations. Slepian's father, Philip, had joined his own father's business manufacturing leather soles for shoes. Soon after Bart was born in 1946 in Boston, the company failed, so to save money, the father moved his family of six to his in-laws' apartment in McKeesport, Pa., and then to Rochester, N.Y. Once settled, Slepian's father set himself up as a freelance writer, crisscrossing the country in his old Studebaker, researching the origins of prominent citizens at the Library of Congress and writing their stories for small-town newspapers. He sold articles by the hundreds, and was still writing until his death nine years ago at the age of 93. The success that was expected of Bart Slepian did not come easily. As a child, he was so shy that he cried when anyone looked at him, his sister recalled. An unexceptional student, he went to a local community college before transferring to the University of Denver, where he majored in zoology. Rejected by medical schools in the United States _ the fate of two out of three applicants in the late 1960s _ he studied one year in Belgium and then enrolled at the Autonomous University for Medicine in Guadalajara, Mexico. His friends remember him as funny and obstinate, a thin young man with glasses and a receding hairline who beat all comers at arm-wrestling and pool. ``Bart had certain beliefs, strongly held,'' said Richard Schwarz, an old classmate who is an internist on Long Island. ``He always said you shouldn't sit around whining about things,'' Schwarz said. ``He would say, `Go after what's yours and what's right.''' Bart Slepian's determination surfaced in quirky ways. He once insisted on going to the top of the World Trade Center, despite a crippling fear of heights. To get to the window, he crawled, inch by inch. ``I said, `You don't have to do this,' '' recalled Schwarz, who was with him at the time. ``And he said, `I want to do it.' Bart made it count. He felt alive.'' Forced to drop out of school every few semesters to work, he lived in Reno with his sister Serena, a widow who was struggling to take care of two young daughters. She worked as a waitress and a blackjack dealer, sharing her tips with him while he drove a cab, cleaned barns at a ranch and worked as a laboratory assistant at the local Veterans Administration hospital. After graduation, he moved to Buffalo for his medical residency. There he married Lynne Breitbart, a registered nurse 10 years his junior, and scraped together the money to buy an obstetrics practice from a doctor who was about to retire. He had a soothing, unhurried manner. When a patient of his, Patti Durlak, was diagnosed with diabetes, Slepian referred her to a specialist but called every few days for months to help her overcome a fear of the needles she had to use for her insulin injections. ``The other doctor said, `Just deal with it,''' Mrs. Durlak recalled. ``Not Dr. Slepian.'' In most ways, he was a typical suburban family man, working six days a week and spending his free time at Little League games and county fairs with his four sons. But by the late 1980s, he and other abortion doctors in Buffalo were under siege. In one notorious 1991 incident recorded on videotape, the Rev. Paul Schenck, one of the fieriest of Buffalo's anti-abortion leaders, threw himself in front of the doctor's car as he pulled into the clinic driveway. Slepian parked on the street. As he pushed his way through the crowd of chanting demonstrators, Schenck cupped his hands around his mouth and lunged, shouting, ``Slepian, you pig!'' Slepian's attempts to separate the abortion conflict from his private life were futile. The protests followed him home and the man who had been so bashful as a boy found himself, uncomfortably, at the center of controversy and attention. Once, he showed his anger. In 1988, when demonstrators jeered at him from the sidewalk in front of his home as he opened Hanukkah presents with his children, the doctor came out brandishing a baseball bat. He denied he hurt anyone, but a town judge ordered him to repair one protester's smashed van window and pay a portion of another's medical bills. The outburst surprised his family and friends. It was not Slepian's style to make a public fuss, much less acknowledge the stress of being taunted by protesters. ``Stress?'' his oldest brother Paul responded gruffly when asked about the doctor's mood. ``I never heard the word used in my family, except as an engineering term. He said it was a nuisance.'' Mrs. Slepian did not respond to requests for an interview. She expressed rage to The Buffalo News shortly after the shooting. She said that whoever had killed her husband deserved the death penalty and that she would be happy to administer the lethal injection herself. She also spoke out after Schenck's brother, Robert, another anti-abortion leader who frequently confronted Slepian, sent a bouquet of flowers. Mrs. Slepian denounced him as ``a hypocrite.'' After the confrontation in 1988, Slepian turned to civil harassment lawsuits, letters and levity to deal with the protesters. In 1993, when a man active in the anti-abortion effort was arrested for rifling through the doctor's garbage cans at home, Slepian tried to treat the incident lightly. ``They hopefully got the bags full of dirty diapers,'' he joked. He tried to engage his critics through the local newspaper. He told The Buffalo News that abortion protesters should turn their energies to helping women avoid unwanted pregnancies through birth control and counseling. In a letter to the editor he warned that by repeatedly calling him a murderer, his critics were inciting violence. Slepian accepted that opponents of abortion acted out of moral conviction, his friends said, but resented the personal attacks. ``He thought it tended to demonize and dehumanize him and increased the danger,'' said his lawyer, Glenn Edward Murray. So Slepian took a step that few of the nation's beleaguered abortion clinic doctors dared. He insisted that if he tried hard enough, he might cut through the venom. To the dismay of the staff members who feared for his safety, Slepian began about a year ago to stop and chat with protesters he recognized outside the Womenservices abortion clinic in Buffalo, where he worked two days a week. He surprised a gathering of protesters who were preparing for what they euphemistically called a ``house call,'' or demonstration at the doctor's home, and invited the protest's organizer, the Rev. Robert Behn, to breakfast. Their hourlong conversation the next morning was inconclusive, Behn said, dismissing Slepian's gesture as an ``attempt to get people to like him.'' He asked Slepian how performing abortions affected him spiritually. In response, he recalled, the doctor said, ``I'm fine spiritually.'' Slepian, meanwhile, focused more on time away from home with his family. He planned to take a cruise next spring. He bought a time-share apartment near Disney World in Florida. ``He had so many plans,'' said Ellen Fink, a close friend of the couple for 15 years. ``He wasn't done. He wasn't done living yet.'' Still, sometimes during the most casual conversations, a shadow would appear. When his wife gave him a gray African parrot for a birthday gift, Slepian joked that the bird would probably outlive him so he would teach it his eulogy. ``He would talk about the funeral he wanted,'' Mrs. Fink said. ``He said he didn't have a lot of friends and wanted all of them to come in separate cars, one in each car, so he'd have a long procession.'' In the week before his death, Slepian had reasons to be preoccupied with thoughts of mortality. A medical checkup had revealed a blockage of his heart, Mrs. Fink said, recounting a conversation with Mrs. Slepian the day of the slaying. A blockage is a sign of probable coronary artery disease. He was to have more tests the following week. ``I said, `Lynne, just relax, it's going to be OK,''' Mrs. Fink recalled. That same day, the National Abortion Federation sent a fax to the Womenservices clinic warning of a pattern of sniper attacks on abortion doctors that occurred in early November. Marilynne Buckham, the clinic director, sent it to Slepian. ``He definitely took it seriously,'' she recalled. Typically, the doctor did not share any concerns he might have felt. ``It was a normal day,'' said Tammi Latini, his office assistant. ``We were horsing around.' That evening, the Slepians went to synagogue to mark the ninth anniversary of the death of Slepian's father. Shortly after they returned home, a sniper's bullet smashed through the kitchen window, killing Slepian as he chatted with his wife and sons. The protesters returned to the clinic five days later, the first day it reopened. Mrs. Buckham, the director, said Slepian would not have been surprised. They have their routine. So did he. ``He never wanted a day to end on a bad note,'' she said. ``At the end of the day, I would always say, `Thank you for coming.' And he would always turn with a stupid grin and say, `Thanks for having me.''' ||||| The slaying of Dr. Barnett Slepian in his home last week eliminated the mainstay of the only abortion clinic here, but it has not eliminated women's access to abortion. That is because the availability of abortion in the Buffalo area, as in much of the United States, is a complex reality, one affected by class and education, medical training and the personal convictions of individual doctors. Knowledgeable middle-class and affluent women here who find themselves with an unwanted pregnancy can usually obtain an abortion from their private gynecologists, or if a gynecologist has a personal objection to the procedure, through a referral to a colleague. Women who are poor, young or uneducated and have no such regular relationships with doctors have to rely on specialized clinics like the one Slepian worked in, or on hospitals. It is this group _ for whom unplanned pregnancies are far more common than for prosperous women _ that faces a shrinking universe of possibilities as a result of the fear set off by Slepian's killing and the slayings of five other doctors and clinic workers since 1993, medical experts said. ``If you're well off and well connected, you can get your abortion,'' said Dr. Stephen Wear, co-director of the center for clinical ethics at the University of Buffalo, which trains doctors for the Buffalo area's hospitals. ``For everybody else, it's less and less available.'' The number of abortions in the United States has been declining steadily since the first years after the Supreme Court's Roe vs. Wade decision legalized abortion in 1973, according to the Alan Guttmacher Institute, which studies reproductive issues. They now number roughly 1.5 million a year, according to reports by Guttmacher, or 1.4 million, according to the National Right to Life Committee, the nation's largest anti-abortion group, which calculates its estimate partly from the Guttmacher figures. The number of providers who identify themselves as performing abortions as part of their practice is diminishing as well. A 1994 Guttmacher study, the last one published, found that the number had decreased 18 percent between 1982 and 1992, to 2,380 from 2,908. Moreover, the study said, only 12 percent of the nation's residency programs routinely offer training in abortions during the first trimester, though many do offer elective courses. Laura Echevarria, director of media relations for the National Right to Life Committee, contends, however, that most teaching hospitals do train gynecologists in procedures for treating miscarriages that are similar to those used for performing abortions. Only in cosmopolitan and comparatively liberal cities like New York does the availability of abortions continue at a steady level, experts say, though even in these locales there is concern about the decreasing number of young doctors who emerge from residencies fully trained in performing abortions. The Guttmacher Institute, which keeps the nation's most precise statistics, said that in 1992, the last year for which it has figures, there were 142,410 abortions in New York that were done by just 151 providers, including 61 hospitals and 44 clinics. Still, that provider figure greatly understates the number of private doctors who perform them in their offices, medical experts say. ``Many obstetricians and gynecologists in Manhattan provide abortions as part of their palette of services, and have for many years,'' said Dr. Richard Hausknecht, the medical director of Planned Parenthood. ``Rich and middle-class women have always had access to abortions, and they always will.'' The major threat to availability in the city is less a result of anti-abortion violence than of medical training. ``The bottom line is that we're facing an impending shortage of physicians who are adequately trained and willing to do the procedures,'' said Dr. John Choate, chairman of the New York State division of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. But the lack of training programs is also a result of political pressures on hospitals and universities by antagonists of abortion and the same climate of fear. ``Physicians tend to lie low,'' Choate said. ``They don't publicize the fact that they do them. If they do them, they do it quietly out of fear for their practice and for their lives.'' One development on the horizon that is expected to change the outlook for abortions substantially is final federal approval, expected next year, of the RU-486 pill, the drug that ends an early pregnancy without the need for surgery. When the pill was introduced in France and in Edinburgh, Scotland, Hausknecht said, the number of surgical abortions plummeted. ||||| While veterans and civic leaders devote Wednesday's national holiday to honoring fallen soldiers, Remembrance Day has become a chilling vigil for Canadians in the front lines of the abortion-rights movement. There is immediate fear, because an anti-abortion gunman is believed to be at large. And there is long-term anxiety, because even in this country where abortions are legal and publicly funded, women may find access diminishing. There is speculation the sniper's timing is linked to Remembrance Day because some anti-abortion activists use the day to commemorate aborted fetuses. Three times since 1994, a sniper has used this time of year to fire into the home of a Canadian doctor who performs abortion, each time wounding the target. The attacks were spread across Canada _ Ontario, Manitoba and British Columbia. U.S. and Canadian investigators now believe those attacks were linked to two shootings of abortion-providing doctors in upstate New York, including the Oct. 23 slaying of Dr. Barnett Slepian at his home near Buffalo. An American anti-abortion activist, James Kopp, is wanted for questioning about the shootings. Police say they don't know which side of the border he is on, fueling uneasiness at clinics and hospitals throughout Canada. ``You must realize Canada has the largest undefended border in the world,'' said Keith McCaskill, a police inspector in Winnipeg, Manitoba, and spokesman for the investigation. Many women's clinics have tightened security, and doctors who provide abortions have been urged to take precautions. ``I would suggest they be extremely aware of their day-to-day goings on, whether during their business day or after hours,'' said Toronto Detective Rick Stubbings. Across Canada, there have been reports of obstetrician-gynecologists modifying their practices or deciding to stop performing abortions. Some wear bulletproof vests and hang sheets over windows of their homes. Abortion-rights groups say most doctors are not backing down. ``There's a great deal of sadness,'' said Susan Fox, director of a clinic in Edmonton, Alberta, that provides abortions. ``But there's also a feeling of determination that we won't be deterred or scared by these actions.'' Marilyn Wilson, executive director of the Canadian Abortion Rights Action League, sees a long-term threat because fear of violence may intimidate young doctors from entering the field. ``There are almost no doctors who have stopped performing these procedures, even under the current reign of terror,'' she said. ``But young doctors with families wouldn't necessarily want to do this. They may not be willing to put their lives at risk.'' The abortion debate is only one of several factors contributing to a shortage of obstetrician-gynecologists in Canada. The national society that oversees the speciality says there are about 1,400 doctors in the field, a shortfall of 600, and most are in their 50s or 60s. The society says long hours and limits on fees paid by the public health-care system are causing burnout and deterring medical school graduates as they choose a specialty. Another problem is that few Canadian medical schools offer training in abortion. Women in Canada's big cities generally have adequate access to abortions. Those in rural areas often face long journeys, and the province of Prince Edward Island prohibits abortions at its six hospitals, forcing women there to travel to New Brunswick or Nova Scotia. Abortion-rights groups say the situation would improve if the RU-486 abortion pill were available in Canada. No drug company has applied for permission to market the pill, either fearing boycotts or doubting its profitability. The government has been urged to make a public appeal to drug companies, but the health department says this can't be done. ``It would be a conflict of interest,'' said Bonnie Fox-McIntyre, a department spokeswoman. ``As a regulator we have to stay at arm's length, so we can judge an application impartially.'' Abortion was illegal in Canada until 1988. Now there is no abortion law of any sort, about 100,000 abortions are performed annually, and polls indicate roughly three-quarters of Canadians favor pro-choice policies. Yet public support doesn't spare doctors from fear. Dr. Henry Morgentaler, who led efforts to overturn the old abortion law and whose Toronto clinic was bombed in 1993, says he and his colleagues are sacrificing personal freedom as they reluctantly increase security measures. ``Unfortunately, doctors who are committed to providing these services will have to accept a certain diminishment of their enjoyment of life,'' he said. ||||| By outward appearances, Dorothy Hayes' life seems ordinary. She and her family live in a rambling old home on the shore of Lake Ontario, and every morning, she gives her husband, John, a peck on the cheek before he goes to work. She runs errands, like other suburban moms, and spends much of her day taking care of her children. But one thing sets Mrs. Hayes apart from her neighbors. As a devoted opponent of abortion, the 43-year-old mother of nine regularly plays host to a series of traveling speakers, priests and protesters _ many of whom have come to Rochester intent upon spreading the word against abortion and shutting down clinics that provide it. She is one of thousands of people across the country loosely associated with anti-abortion groups like the Lambs of Christ who have opened their homes to the Lambs' founder, the Rev. Norman Weslin, and other itinerant demonstrators. While many _ including Mrs. Hayes _ disavow violent tactics, supporters of abortion rights say that people like her bear some responsibility when the protesters they help blockade clinics or threaten doctors. ``These people who provide Father Weslin with food and shelter when he comes into town to close the clinics are not innocent,'' said Ann Glazier, the director of clinic defense for the Planned Parenthood Federation. ``It's just not credible to say they aren't part of the extremist activity that is taking place at these clinics. They are still guilty of interfering with women's access.'' But Mary Quinn, a local organizer for the Lambs of Christ who also offers her home to protesters, sees matters in a differing light. ``Taking people in like this is an act of Christian charity,'' Mrs. Quinn said. `People who travel around the country doing this work are taken in by those of us that who don't want to lose their stupid houses. We take in these people because they are willing to make the sacrifice.'' Members of the Lambs of Christ have been persistent figures in protests at the Buffalo women's clinic where Dr. Barnett Slepian worked before he was shot to death last month. Although no suspect has been identified in the shooting or in several similar attacks in New York and Canada over the past several years, officials are looking to question a Vermont man whose car was seen near Dr. Slepian's home. That man, James Charles Kopp, has participated in abortion protests for more than a decade, and often was a house guest of other members of the Lambs of Christ. While Mrs. Hayes says she would never so much as obstruct a clinic's door, some of those to whom she has given refuge have no qualms about doing so. Weslin, the leader of the Lambs of Christ, is one of those who has benefited from Mrs. Hayes' hospitality, a modern version of the generosity that Christ and the Apostles knew well. He prides himself on being arrested more than 60 times during protests in front of medical clinics. And throughout the 1980s and early '90s, he was active in clinic ``rescues,'' in which protesters tried physically to restrain patients trying to enter clinics. Weslin stayed at Mrs. Hayes' home only once, beginning in May 1996 when he first came to speak at local churches about the anti-abortion movement. But during a stay that lasted several months, he was arrested on Federal charges of blocking access to a Rochester health clinic where abortions were performed. He was later convicted and served two and a half months in prison. During the protest outside the clinic, he and several other protesters locked themselves in a homemade contraption called ``the oven,'' made of cement and iron. It took police officers several hours to lug the device to a horse trailer that carted it off. At the same protest, one man glued his head to a lock on a gate surrounding the clinic, a move some protesters later said was an accident. Abortion opponents like Mrs. Hayes and Mrs. Quinn speak of attending peaceful observances at abortion clinics and offering prayers for the unborn. They talk about counseling women about alternatives to abortion at Roman Catholic ``pregnancy centers,'' and their support of anti-abortion candidates. But they also say they saw nothing wrong with Weslin trying to block access to clinics. They describe the activity as peaceful resistance meant to stop what they see as murders. Weslin and the other house guests of Mrs. Hayes and Mrs. Quinn come recommended from friends and members of local Catholic churches, they said, adding that most are speakers at local churches or anti-abortion events. And although they say they would never take into their homes a stranger wanted by the FBI, like Kopp, they concede that they sometimes know little about their guests. But Mrs. Hayes and Mrs. Quinn say they know a lot about Weslin. An Army veteran, he has been a leader of the anti-abortion movement for more than 25 years, they say, and founded a home for unwed mothers. Mrs. Hayes said that when she met him, it was obvious he was a man of peace who ``had a tremendous devotion to the Blessed Mother and basically recognized that we are helpless lambs.'' Barbara Fredericks, another local abortion opponent who developed ties to the Lambs after Weslin came to town, added that the priest epitomized a man of God. ``I just knew when I looked at his holy shoes and his simple coat that had been mended 50 times,'' she said. ``He was humble, a man who was doing this for a higher purpose, trying to save people through sacrifice and prayer.'' opp also has robust defenders among the people who housed him as he rode about the country from protest to protest. E. Kenny, 20, said that his parents housed Kopp in their St. Albans, Vt., home for two years after he spoke at their local church in 1988. During Kopp's stay, he was a pleasure, Kenny said, always helping around the house. ``He was a nice guy, kind of like an uncle to us,'' Kenny said. ``He'd sit around and play video games with us and make us model planes out of wood.'' Like Weslin, Kopp was consumed by a need to fight abortion and often talked about its evils, Kenny said, adding that Kopp was a gentle man who wanted to become a Catholic priest. ``He was always in a good mood,'' Kenny said. ``He never did anything violent at all.'' Both Kopp and Weslin have been arrested repeatedly during abortion protests. The men have moved in the same circles and at times found themselves arrested at the same events. Mrs. Quinn said that Weslin told her in a recent telephone conversation that he knew Kopp. Weslin could not be reached for comment, but it is clear that the two men have encountered each other. Both faced misdemeanor charges after blocking a Burlington, Vt., health clinic in 1990 that Kopp called ``the mill.'' And they spent time in the same jail in Atlanta in 1988 after a clinic protest. Slepian's death has abortion opponents like Mrs. Hayes and Mrs. Quinn worried, both about how the killing is being portrayed in the media and what it will do to membership in groups like the Lambs of Christ. ``For a long time, you felt like the voice in the desert that wasn't being heard,'' Mrs. Hayes said. ``And then there was this horrible tragedy of this doctor's death becoming the face of the movement. ``We're about saving lives,'' she said. The FBI has not talked to Mrs. Hayes, but Kenny said that agents have spoken to him. The Justice Department says that a Federal task force set up this week to investigate the killing of Slepian is looking for evidence connecting anti-abortion violence at various clinics. ``It's fair to say that when investigating these events, we will look at any connection between individuals engaged in criminal conduct,'' Myron Marlin, a spokesman for the department, said. Many local Catholics associated with the Lambs of Christ have tried to distance themselves from the killing of Slepian. They are mailing literature saying that the killer does not represent their movement. In addition, some people associated with the Lambs are offering other possible explanations for the killing. Some say they believe that the killer might have been someone overcome by grief after a personal experience with abortion. Others wondered whether the shooter had tried to wound the doctor to scare him or prevent him from performing more abortions. The Lambs also wonder whether abortionist opponents are being blamed for a shooting committed by a disgruntled patient. One idea gaining currency among the Lambs, and prominently displayed on their Web site, suggests that the killing was the result of a plot by abortion supporters to discredit abortion opponents just before last week's elections. Mrs. Hayes says she doesn't know the truth. ``There are wackos who travel around and they may be in front of the clinic because we are drawn to the same place,'' she said. ``But you don't know everyone who shows up and you don't turn to the person next to you and tell them they don't belong there.'' Mrs. Fredericks said that anyone who would shoot a doctor who provides abortions was someone ``who had snapped, perhaps because of the importance of the situation.'' Members of the Lambs of Christ and other opponents of abortion in Rochester wonder whether the killing of Slepian will hinder their efforts. When Weslin first arrived two years ago, he brought new focus to a group that often had done little more than counsel pregnant women and set up booths on college campuses, they said. ``In many cities, they have a priest for life coordinating and leading rosary marches'' against abortion, Mrs. Quinn said. ``But with Father Weslin coming here, we could finally come together and feel like we were doing something sacrificial as a group.'' Mrs. Hayes said that she felt the first pull of the movement in the early 1980s, when she heard women speak about ``choice'' in regard to abortion. Then she saw ``Silent Scream,'' a well-known anti-abortion film that purports to show the footage of an abortion. ``What I saw was the end of life,'' she said. She began to volunteer at a Catholic pregnancy center where she encouraged women ``not to kill their child.'' She also began to house unwed mothers and went to stand vigil outside local clinics where abortions were performed. Mrs. Hayes looked at her 3-month-old daughter, Bernadette, then pointed to the prenatal image of the infant, a sonogram taken at 13 weeks that she keeps on her refrigerator door. She described what could have been her baby's fate, had she been someone else's child. ``Two pounds and two inches ago, she could have been a partial-birth abortion,'' Mrs. Hayes said, referring to a controversial late-term abortion procedure. ``They have the hardest time getting the shoulders out, so they can get to the head and puncture it. ``It's brutal, but what do you expect when the purpose is a dead baby? There's no question that these doctors are trying to murder a child.'' ||||| On the eve of a holiday that has been linked to antiabortion violence, the authorities on Tuesday were investigating whether a picture of an aborted fetus sent to a Canadian newspaper was connected to last month's fatal shooting of a Buffalo, N.Y. doctor who provided abortions or four similar attacks in western New York and Canada since 1994. The newspaper, the Hamilton (Ontario) Spectator, has received five similar packages in the last year, some containing veiled threats and several delivered by a man who employees said resembled James Charles Kopp, who is wanted for questioning as a witness about the Oct. 23 slaying of Dr. Barnett Slepian. Five days after the shooting, the Spectator received a package containing an antiabortion flier with biographical information about Slepian, including a photograph of him that had been crossed out. ``It certainly causes us to be more interested than ever in speaking to Kopp,'' said Inspector Keith McKaskill of the Winnipeg Police Department, a spokesman for the Canada-United States task force investigating the five shootings. Even as they searched for Kopp, federal officials were also looking into three letters that were received Monday by Catholic and antiabortion organizations in Buffalo, Indianapolis and Chicago. Those letters, saying they contained the deadly anthrax bacteria, came 10 days after eight similar threats to clinics that provide abortions. All the letters appear to be hoaxes, and it remains unclear whether they were connected to any of the five shootings. Kopp is not a suspect in the shootings. An itinerant antiabortion activist whose last known address is in Vermont, he is the subject of warrants on both sides of the border. In Canada, he is suspected of administrative violations of immigration law; in the United States, he is wanted as a material witness in the Slepian case. ||||| James Kopp, the man the FBI is seeking as a material witness in the sniper slaying of Dr. Barnett Slepian, is known to abortion rights leaders as an aggressive anti-abortion protester, and law enforcement officials say he has been arrested several times in demonstrations at abortion clinics. The portrait that emerges of Kopp, 44, from police records, studies by researchers on right-wing movements, newspaper accounts of protests, and abortion rights advocates, is that of an itinerant protester, moving about the country in a series of increasingly abrasive protests at abortion clinics. Federal law enforcement officials say he is not currently a suspect in the Slepian shooting, and there was no indication Wednesday that he had been arrested for any violent acts. At several abortion protests, he was charged with trespassing or resisting arrest, according to news accounts. One of his arrests was in Atlanta during Operation Rescue's huge anti-abortion protests there in 1988. While he was in an Atlanta jail, Kopp was given the nickname Atomic Dog, which investigators contend links him to the violent fringe of the anti-abortion movement, responsible for a series of bombings and arsons and seven murders of abortion providers like Slepian over the last five years. Responsibility for some of the violence _ like the bombing of an abortion clinic in Birmingham, Ala., earlier this year, in which an off-duty policeman was killed _ has been claimed in notes signed by a shadowy ``Army of God.'' An underground manual issued in the name of the Army of God, which describes methods for attacking abortion clinics, including how to make homemade C-4 plastic explosives, begins with a tribute, by nickname, of a clandestine band pledged to stop abortions. The first name under this ``Special Thanks'' section is Atomic Dog. The Atlanta police, after searching the hundreds of arrest records of the protesters from the summer of 1988, confirmed Wednesday night that the date of birth and Social Security number of the James Kopp arrested then matched those given out Wednesday by the FBI task force in Buffalo investigating the murder of Slepian, who was gunned down through the window if his home in suburban Amherst on Oct. 23. At the nondescript frame house in St. Albans, Vt., that the FBI gave as Kopp's last known address, the current resident, who gave his name only as E. Kenny, 20, a shipping clerk, remembered Kopp well. He lived there for part of 1990 as the guest of Kenny's parents, who were active in the anti-abortion movement, among a group of protesters who tried to shut down two abortion clinics in Burlington in stubborn demonstrations that year. Kenny remembered Kopp as a ``really nice guy,'' who did chores around the place but paid no rent to the parents. He sometimes made wooden toys or played video games with Kenny, then a child. ``But the focus of his life was the anti-abortion movement,'' Kenny recalled. ``He was known among these people as Atomic Dog. It wasn't like a name that he had to go to the store or something. But if you knew anything about him, that's what you called him.'' Roughly 95 people were arrested during the protests, according to newspaper accounts at the time. ``There were many, many arrests,'' recalled Allie Stickney, the president of Planned Parenthood of Northern New England. ``It was very big for Vermont. There were Kryptonite locks and leaflets from the Army of God and the Lambs of Christ. It was clearly a highly organized blockade.'' According to newspaper accounts, Kopp was arrested outside a clinic in Levittown, Long Island, in 1991. The protests in Atlanta in 1998 appeared to be a turning point for a hard-core group of protesters. The Atlanta police cracked down hard and carted hundreds of demonstrators off to an isolated prison dormitory the called ``the farm.'' Operation Rescue had mounted a series of blockades to close down abortion clinics in New York and Philadelphia that spring. Atlanta was their high point, but in the face of the tough arrest policy, the movement faltered, split apart and stalled. ``It was a traumatic, life-changing experience,'' said Frederick Clarkson, author of ``Eternal Hostility,'' a book on the anti-abortion movement, adding that by 1993 with the shooting of Dr. David Gunn, an abortion provider in Florida, some of those in the Atlanta jail became the nucleus of a group signing a ``justifiable homicide'' statement that declared that the use of force was warranted to ``defend the life of an unborn child.'' ||||| In the aftermath of last month's deadly sniper attack on an obstetrician in upstate New York, Attorney General Janet Reno announced last week that she was setting up a new investigative unit to examine the possibility that the doctor was the victim of a broader anti-abortion plot. The unit, the National Clinic Violence Task Force, will include a dozen Justice Department lawyers and involve several law-enforcement agencies. But the main work of looking into the shooting of Dr. Barnett Slepian in his suburban Buffalo home and how it fits a larger pattern of organized violence will be done by the FBI, which has jurisdiction over domestic terrorism. For many in the FBI, that's a problem. In contrast to the old image of gung-ho FBI agents turning their surveillance machinery on political groups, a number of senior FBI agents privately expressed misgivings about the attorney general's latest task force, the second she has ordered to begin a broad investigation into a conspiracy involving anti-abortion violence. FBI officials fear that expanding the investigation could drive the agency over the ill-defined boundary that separates inquiries into criminal activity from those into political causes and unpopular ideas. Today's agents are eager to disassociate themselves from the old J. Edgar Hoover days of trampling the civil rights of political dissidents in the guise of serious investigations. They do not want the agency drawn into the middle of the bitter ideological war between anti-abortion groups and abortion rights advocates, who have long asserted the existence of an organized campaign against clinics and doctors. Many of those calling for government help were once themselves subjects of FBI interest as anti-war and civil rights activists. Senior agency officials, including Director Louis Freeh, were starting their careers in the early 1970s and watched in dismay as the FBI was shaken by revelations about Cointelpro, the counterintelligence program that allowed agents to spy on, burgle, wiretap and infiltrate anti-war and civil rights groups like Students for a Democratic Society and the Student Nonviolence Coordinating Committee. Some officials are dubious that a conspiracy exists to kill doctors who perform abortions. They came up empty handed when Reno ordered the first federal inquiry in 1994 after the killing of a Florida doctor and his bodyguard. The Justice Department conducted a two-year grand jury investigation; agents pursued some anti-abortion activists using surveillance teams. But investigators never found a specific plot against abortion clinics and staff members. Violence at abortion clinics is only part of the problem. The FBI has in recent years found itself thrown into a minefield of politically tinged cases involving the volatile worlds of anti-government militias, environmental and Christian extremists, white separatists, animal rights activists and Islamic fundamentalists. ``The FBI is very quick to jump from investigating crime to investigating political association,'' said David Cole, a law professor at Georgetown University. ``When you move from investigating crimes to investigating groups, that all-important nexus to criminal conduct gets lost, the focus gets broader and broader and you start sweeping in all kinds of lawful political activity.'' In response to terrorist attacks like the bombings of the World Trade Center in 1993, the Oklahoma City federal building in 1995 and the Olympic park in Atlanta in 1996, the agency has increased efforts to deter such incidents in a major prevention program. In such cases, the Justice Department, the FBI and other law enforcement agencies said they operate under domestic security guidelines that require investigators to find a ``reasonable indication'' that a group is planning to break the law before they can open an inquiry into an organization. Before the authorities can use such intrusive tactics as wiretapping or property searches, they must have specific evidence. Yet FBI agents throughout the country have quietly evaluated the threat posed by a variety of extremist groups through its links to local authorities and informal interviews with the leaders of some groups. Their conclusion is that most of these groups pose little real danger. Much more difficult to investigate are lone terrorists inflamed by the oratory of extremist ideology but who belong to no group, drifting along society's frayed margins, ``off the grid,'' as some agents describe it, without the usual ties to family, friends or work. The profile fits Eric Robert Rudolph, the fugitive wanted for bombings at the Atlanta Olympics, a gay nightclub and two abortion clinics. He has kept his beliefs mostly to himself, although acquaintances hint that he was familiar with religious extremism and hate groups. In contrast, James Charles Kopp, who is being sought as a material witness in the killing of Slepian, left a trail of clues about his motives. He was an early follower of Randall Terry, a leader of Operation Rescue. Later, Kopp was associated with the Lambs of Christ, an another militant anti-abortion group. One law-enforcement official said that the government should do what it does best. ``We should investigate violations,'' he said. ``We shouldn't investigate groups.'' ||||| In July 1988, when Randall Terry drove through the night from his home in Binghamton, N.Y., to Atlanta to start the series of anti-abortion protests that would finally put his new hard-line group, Operation Rescue, onto America's front pages, James Charles Kopp was in the van riding alongside him, according to former leaders of Operation Rescue who spoke on the condition of anonymity. And, those people say, when Terry was arrested on the first day of Operation Rescue's ``Siege of Atlanta,'' Kopp followed him into jail. Along with more than one hundred other Operation Rescue members, according to some people who were there, Kopp remained in jail for 40 days and adhered to Terry's orders not to give a real name to the police or courts. After his release, Kopp returned to Operation Rescue's Binghamton headquarters, and was there working alongside Terry as the group's power and influence in the anti-abortion movement surged in late 1988 and 1989, according to the former leaders of Operation Rescue. Now, Kopp is being sought by federal and local law enforcement authorities for questioning as a material witness in the murder of an obstetrician who performed abortions in the Buffalo region. The authorities also say he may have information that will help solve four other sniper attacks on doctors who performed abortions in Canada and upstate New York. Some abortion-rights groups are seizing on Kopp's role in Operation Rescue to raise new questions about the connections between the recent anti-abortion violence and the hard-line anti-abortion protest groups that burst onto the national scene in the late 1980s. For years, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Justice Department have looked in vain for evidence to determine whether a national conspiracy might be behind a series of clinic bombings and shootings of doctors and other clinic staff members that began in the early 1990s. A federal grand jury in Alexandria, Va., that looked into conspiracy allegations was ultimately disbanded without finding a national underground. But some federal law enforcement officials say they hope that Kopp may help provide such a link. In fact, the announcement that law enforcement officials are looking for him has been made as Attorney General Janet Reno has prepared to revive an interagency task force to look once again for possible conspiracies behind anti-abortion crimes. Federal law enforcement officials and the authorities say Kopp is not now a suspect in the sniper attack on Oct. 23 that killed Dr. Barnett A. Slepian near Buffalo. But they say Kopp's car was seen near Slepian's home in Amherst, N.Y. in the weeks before the doctor was shot. One day after issuing a warrant for Kopp's arrest as a material witness, law enforcement officials from at least 10 agencies spanning the United States and Canadian border still had not located Kopp Thursday. But law enforcement officials said they were pursuing many tips, including about 400 that have poured into the FBI's information line: (800) 281-1184. The police have gone through photographs of abortion protesters and clinic workers in Buffalo and around the country, and they are also reviewing hundreds of hours of videotapes of demonstrations in search of Kopp's face. At this point, officials consider the shooting of Slepian to be connected to three attacks in Canada and one in Rochester on doctors who provide abortions. The five attacks, all since 1994, occurred in the weeks leading up to Nov. 11, Veterans Day _ called Remembrance Day in Canada _ a holiday that has become important to anti-abortion activists. But the attacks were spread over four years and 3,000 miles, from Vancouver, British Columbia, to Buffalo. As is the case with many early veterans of Operation Rescue, Kopp was transformed into a hard-core anti-abortion militant in jail in Atlanta in 1988, according to many people who were in jail with him who insisted on anonymity.

Abortion clinics continue to be targeted by anti-abortion groups such as Operation Rescue, Lambs of Christ, and Army of God. Opposition ranges from silent vigils to vocal and physical intimidation, and even murder. Dr. Bart Shepian of Buffalo's only abortion clinic was murdered in his home. Police in the US and Canada are looking for James Kopp, a known abortion opponent, as a material witness in that murder. The clinics serve poor, young, and uneducated women since the well-to-do use their established providers. AG Janet Reno has named a task force to find out if the Slepian murder, the third in five years, is part of an organized campaign of violence.

Federal authorities investigating the murder of a Buffalo-area obstetrician who performed abortions have identified a Vermont man as a material witness to the sniper attack last month and issued a warrant for his arrest Wednesday to bring him in for questioning. The man was identified as James Charles Kopp, 44, whose last known address was in St. Albans, Vt. His whereabouts are not known, investigators said. Investigators said Kopp's car was seen near the Amherst, N.Y., home of Dr. Barnett Slepian in the weeks before the doctor, whose work at an abortion clinic had long made him a target of harassment, was killed. Kopp, according to police records and abortion rights groups, has often moved about the country in a series of protests at abortion clinics, and has been linked to an underground manual that describes methods of killing or maiming doctors who perform abortions. Denise O'Donnell, the U.S. attorney for the western district of New York, said Kopp was not considered a suspect at this time but was believed to have information material to the case. She declined to give details on what evidence was being sought from Kopp, describing it only as information that is contained in a sealed affidavit whose disclosure would compromise the ongoing investigation. Ms. O'Donnell said that federal law allowed for an arrest warrant for a material witness when a person has information that is important to a case. ``If Kopp is found, he would be arrested, brought to Buffalo and ordered to provide the required evidence,'' Ms. O'Donnell said. ``Then, most likely, the individual would be released.'' Slepian, 52, was shot by a sniper firing from outside his home on Oct. 23, shortly after returning from an evening service at his synagogue. He was standing in his kitchen with his wife and one of his four sons when the bullet crashed through a back window. He died two hours later. Law enforcement officials said Wednesday's announcement of the material witness warrant was in part an attempt to underscore the potential danger of anti-abortion violence in advance of Remembrance Day, a Canadian holiday that falls on Nov. 11 and that the authorities have associated with some anti-abortion crimes. At the same time, the Justice Department and the FBI were trying to find ways to step up the federal response to violence at abortion clinics in the aftermath of the Slepian killing. The officials said that Attorney General Janet Reno would soon announce that the Justice Department, aiming to heighten the visibility of the federal role in cases that cross state and local jurisdictional boundaries, would revive a national investigative effort focused on abortion clinic violence. Ms. Reno and senior FBI officials, including Robert Bryant, the deputy FBI director, have met with physician and abortion rights groups in recent days to discuss ways to enhance federal investigative efforts and coordination with local agencies. Federal authorities first organized an abortion clinic task force in 1995 after the killing of a Florida doctor. The unit, which was charged with investigating whether a national conspiracy existed, spent nearly two years studying abortion clinic violence. The unit disbanded without uncovering a national conspiracy. Law enforcement officials said that the unit's operation did help reduce violence at abortion clinics and that, in part, the decision to re-establish it was prompted by Ms. Reno's desire to send a renewed message to anti-abortion extremists that the government would aggressively investigate these crimes. Slepian's murder fit the pattern of four earlier sniper attacks on abortion doctors in Canada and western New York, dating from 1994. None of the attacks have been solved. Bernard Tolbert, special agent in charge of the FBI in Buffalo, said at a news conference here Wednesday that investigators had not determined whether there is a link between the five killings. ``There's a possibility they could be linked, but certainly no information,'' he said. Tolbert gave little information about the subject of the material-witness warrant, except to say that Kopp's black 1987 Chevrolet Cavalier, with the Vermont license plate BPE216, was seen near Slepian's home beginning several weeks before the murder. ``We don't have any idea of where he is,'' Tolbert said of Kopp. ``We are looking for him every place we can, every place he might be.'' A photograph of Kopp taken in January 1997 has been distributed to law enforcement agencies around the United States and Canada. The National Abortion Federation has sent out an advisory to clinics around the country about the search for Kopp, said Melinda DuBois, assistant director of Womenservices, the clinic where Slepian worked. She said naming Kopp a material witness in the case had not brought relief to the nurses and other workers at the clinic. ``I don't think it makes me or anyone else at the clinic feel differently,'' she said. ``I don't want anybody to relax and say, `Oh God, they got the guy.' That's easy to happen. I still want people to be very vigilant.'' The clinic is the last in the Buffalo area that is performing abortions. Slepian was one of only a handful of doctors in Buffalo who were still willing to perform the procedure in the face of pickets, protesters and threats. Since his death, doctors from outside Buffalo have come to the clinic to continue providing abortion services. ||||| Rosina Lotempio was standing outside abortion clinics here before Operation Rescue stormed into town in 1992 for the rowdy Spring of Life rallies, in which hundreds were arrested. She was there before Lambs of Christ demonstrators came to town in 1993. She was on the sidewalk outside Buffalo GYN Womenservices the morning of Oct. 23, about 12 hours before Barnett Slepian, the clinic doctor, was fatally shot in his home. And she was there Friday, brown rosary beads in her hands, a small gold cross on a chain around her neck, quietly praying for abortions to stop. ``I'm heartbroken when I have to come here,'' Mrs. Lotempio, 58, said as she stood in the cold, wearing small black earmuffs and a white turtleneck adorned with a tiny silver pin of baby feet. ``It's very difficult out here; I depend on God,'' she said, after praying for several moments to decide whether to talk to a reporter. The bombings, the fiery rhetoric of abortion opponents and the posters of bloody fetuses may capture the attention of the news media, but people like Mrs. Lotempio are the foot soldiers in the abortion battle. They call themselves street counselors and come to the clinic whenever they believe abortions are being performed. They pray and they talk to women, hoping to change their minds. Some scream profanities. Others, like Mrs. Lotempio, denounce not only the violence against doctors and clinics, but also the blocking of doors and the shouting of ugly epithets at clinic workers and patients. For the approximately 80 abortion opponents here, their protest is more like a job than a political activity. There is a schedule. People count on them to show up. Mrs. Lotempio, a mother of three and grandmother of six, connects her involvement to a conversation in the 1970s in which she helped a friend decide to abort an unwanted pregnancy. Two decades later, she was haunted by her own question: whether the fetus was male or female. ``I just felt horrible and I felt guilty,'' she said, tears in her eyes. ``I thought that if I was at the clinic doing something, I could make up for that baby's life.'' During Mrs. Lotempio's 8 a.m.-to-10 a.m. shift Friday, about a dozen people circled the area in front of the Buffalo clinic, saying the ``Hail Mary.'' Others take her spot on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. She returns on Saturdays, when up to 40 people crowd the sidewalk. Similar bands of protesters march in front of abortion clinics throughout the United States, and local protesters are often joined by bands of people who roam the country. At the clinic on Main Street, north of downtown Buffalo, there is an odd sense of community. Local protesters greet Dick, the security guard, by name. They sometimes see the ``enemy'' _ abortion-rights volunteers who escort patients in and out of the clinic _ in the supermarket or on the soccer field. Robert Behn, one of the protest leaders, even spent two hours talking about abortion over breakfast last year with Slepian. And several said they cried when they heard of Slepian's death. Most of the protesters, including Mrs. Lotempio, were among the thousands of people arrested here in 1992, the height of anti-abortion activity in Buffalo. But if Operation Rescue returns, as planned, for a Spring of Life reunion in April, Mrs. Lotempio said, she will not be there. Instead, she plans to stay in church and pray, to avoid the militancy she says she finds uncomfortable. Glenn Murray, a lawyer for Womenservices clinic, said: ``When people from out of town show up, that is when we feel the most danger. The local people are a known quantity. We know most of the local people by name.'' Buffalo has been among a handful of hot spots for abortion protesters for the last decade. It is a heavily Catholic city where thousands of protesters from around the country demonstrated for two weeks in 1992. They failed to close abortion clinics, but 500 people were arrested in rallies that snarled traffic and drew national headlines. Those rallies, as well as earlier protests and continuing sidewalk vigils, have had an impact, people on both sides of the abortion issue say. The number of clinics performing abortions in the Buffalo area has dropped to one from three. And after Slepian's death and the retirement this week of another doctor, there are only two doctors in the area for whom abortions form a significant part of their practices. The daily demonstrators count this as progress. But their perch outside the clinic means they witness far more of what they believe are murders than what they call rescues. About 30 women a day might go into the clinic. After eight years, Mrs. Lotempio can count eight women who changed their minds and did not get abortions while she was at the clinic. Inside the clinic, the protests just make a hard job harder, many clinic workers say. While some demonstrators simply repeat the rosary, other protesters call out to patients as they drive into the parking lot behind the building, or walk up to the fortresslike front. They ask questions like ``Do you know what your baby looks like?'' or ``Is it a boy or a girl?'' Sometimes they accuse people of murder and torture and sin, or threaten them with damnation. Federal law bars protesters from coming within 15 feet of the clinic entrances, and from leaning signs against its walls. Some push the limits, frustrating clinic workers and guards. The rules protect people from physical harassment, but because of the distance, they turn what could be quiet conversations into catcalls and taunts. When a patient goes into the clinic, the protesters ``take on a different persona,'' said Melinda DuBois, director of the Buffalo clinic. ``They scream and yell and call us names. They lie. Some days we're immune to it, but other days it's just too much.'' Linda Palm, 51, marching at the clinic on Friday, said she identified with the clinic patients. When she was 23, she said, she struggled with the difficulties of being unmarried and pregnant herself, but decided to have her child, and married the father. She began protesting in 1990, after attending an abortion protest march in Albany. ||||| Everyone who knew Dr. Barnett Slepian knew that the slight, graying physician endured a measure of stress that would exhaust, even break, most people. There were the strangers who pawed through the garbage cans at his home and growled ``murderer'' as they passed him in the grocery store aisle. Demonstrators assailed his pregnant patients as they arrived at his office for their checkups, calling him a baby killer. Outside the clinic where he performed abortions two days a week, pickets shouted epithets like ``pig'' to his face. Slepian, an obstetrician and gynecologist by training and an abortion doctor by principle, rarely acknowledged the strain. He might crack an occasional joke at the expense of the protesters who shadowed him at work and on weekends. Then he would do something unexpected, like invite an anti-abortion leader to breakfast or stop and chat with a familiar demonstrator outside the clinic. So when he was killed Oct. 23 by a sniper's bullet fired through the kitchen window of his home in the Buffalo, N.Y., suburbs, a furtive execution that fit a pattern of four earlier attacks on abortion providers in western New York state and Canada, friends and relatives wondered not so much that Slepian's work could arouse such murderous violence. He had predicted as much himself. Instead, they wondered, once again, that he persisted in that work, long after other Buffalo doctors had surrendered to the pressure of abortion opponents. ``He was an incredibly fatalistic person who thought that if your number's up, it's up, and there is nothing you can do about it,'' said H. Amanda Robb, the doctor's 32-year-old niece. ``And he was incredibly stubborn. He said that women had a right to comprehensive health care and since he was a women's doctor, he was going to provide it for them.'' Slepian is the third doctor to be killed in the last five years in bombings and shootings that have killed 7 people and wounded 17 at abortion clinics around the nation. To his tormentors, he was simply an abortion doctor. To members of the abortion rights movement, he was a martyr for their cause. But Slepian was far from either. In interviews with friends and family members, he emerges as more than a one-dimensional abstract _ a conservative who advocated old-fashioned values like self-reliance, a shy man who had rare flashes of anger, a doctor who performed abortions but had no more patience for women who had multiple abortions than for women who had multiple children they did not want or could not support. He was killed because he performed a medical procedure that has become emotional and politicized. Yet there is nothing in his life to suggest he was a crusader in either politics or medicine. Rather, he was an obstinate, unassuming man who did a remarkable thing. Out of contrariness and out of conscience, say those who knew him, he refused to allow anyone to dictate what kind of doctor he should be, and for that, he paid with his life. The clues to Slepian's flinty brand of commitment lie, in part, in his upbringing. His was a family that took success for granted even as it teetered on the edge of poverty. To earn money for medical school, he shoveled muck at a ranch and drove a taxi. He made few friends, but those he had were friends for life. When their wives were sick, he called repeatedly. When they were lonely, he flew to their side. Slepian, who was known as Bart, used to tell people that he chose obstetrics because it is a specialty that exposes a doctor to the least suffering, and that he performed abortions because it was legal and the alternatives were so much worse. Slepian often expressed exasperation over women who came to him for abortion after abortion. ``Don't they get it?'' his clinic staff recall him saying more than once. He had the same impatience for women like those he remembered from his residency in inner-city Buffalo, who had child after child and no means of support. ``He had the contempt for that of somebody who had pulled himself up by his bootstraps and made it in the world,'' Ms. Robb said. He believed that to ban abortions or, just as shameful in his view, to stop teaching young doctors how to perform them, would not correct the human imperfections that he found so irritating. ``There are 1.5 million abortions performed in this country,'' his niece said, ``and he just felt we're not equipped to handle 1.5 million unwanted children.'' When he was killed, at the age of 52, Bart Slepian owned an imposing red brick home in the quiet suburb of Amherst, complete with a swimming pool with piped-in music and an assortment of the time-saving gadgets he adored. Slepian's trajectory to that comfortable doctor's life had been unconventional. His grandfather, a Russian Jewish immigrant who started out selling shoelaces from a pushcart in Boston, propelled all five of his sons into Harvard at a time when few Jews met the university's blue-blood standards. His father, in turn, decreed that his own three sons would be doctors or earn Ph.D's. ``We grew up in a home where there was tremendous, tremendous, tremendous respect for education,'' said Serena Robb, Slepian's sister, who is four years older than him. ``If you got an A, it was OK If you got a B, you got yelled at.'' The family's means did not match its expectations. Slepian's father, Philip, had joined his own father's business manufacturing leather soles for shoes. Soon after Bart was born in 1946 in Boston, the company failed, so to save money, the father moved his family of six to his in-laws' apartment in McKeesport, Pa., and then to Rochester, N.Y. Once settled, Slepian's father set himself up as a freelance writer, crisscrossing the country in his old Studebaker, researching the origins of prominent citizens at the Library of Congress and writing their stories for small-town newspapers. He sold articles by the hundreds, and was still writing until his death nine years ago at the age of 93. The success that was expected of Bart Slepian did not come easily. As a child, he was so shy that he cried when anyone looked at him, his sister recalled. An unexceptional student, he went to a local community college before transferring to the University of Denver, where he majored in zoology. Rejected by medical schools in the United States _ the fate of two out of three applicants in the late 1960s _ he studied one year in Belgium and then enrolled at the Autonomous University for Medicine in Guadalajara, Mexico. His friends remember him as funny and obstinate, a thin young man with glasses and a receding hairline who beat all comers at arm-wrestling and pool. ``Bart had certain beliefs, strongly held,'' said Richard Schwarz, an old classmate who is an internist on Long Island. ``He always said you shouldn't sit around whining about things,'' Schwarz said. ``He would say, `Go after what's yours and what's right.''' Bart Slepian's determination surfaced in quirky ways. He once insisted on going to the top of the World Trade Center, despite a crippling fear of heights. To get to the window, he crawled, inch by inch. ``I said, `You don't have to do this,' '' recalled Schwarz, who was with him at the time. ``And he said, `I want to do it.' Bart made it count. He felt alive.'' Forced to drop out of school every few semesters to work, he lived in Reno with his sister Serena, a widow who was struggling to take care of two young daughters. She worked as a waitress and a blackjack dealer, sharing her tips with him while he drove a cab, cleaned barns at a ranch and worked as a laboratory assistant at the local Veterans Administration hospital. After graduation, he moved to Buffalo for his medical residency. There he married Lynne Breitbart, a registered nurse 10 years his junior, and scraped together the money to buy an obstetrics practice from a doctor who was about to retire. He had a soothing, unhurried manner. When a patient of his, Patti Durlak, was diagnosed with diabetes, Slepian referred her to a specialist but called every few days for months to help her overcome a fear of the needles she had to use for her insulin injections. ``The other doctor said, `Just deal with it,''' Mrs. Durlak recalled. ``Not Dr. Slepian.'' In most ways, he was a typical suburban family man, working six days a week and spending his free time at Little League games and county fairs with his four sons. But by the late 1980s, he and other abortion doctors in Buffalo were under siege. In one notorious 1991 incident recorded on videotape, the Rev. Paul Schenck, one of the fieriest of Buffalo's anti-abortion leaders, threw himself in front of the doctor's car as he pulled into the clinic driveway. Slepian parked on the street. As he pushed his way through the crowd of chanting demonstrators, Schenck cupped his hands around his mouth and lunged, shouting, ``Slepian, you pig!'' Slepian's attempts to separate the abortion conflict from his private life were futile. The protests followed him home and the man who had been so bashful as a boy found himself, uncomfortably, at the center of controversy and attention. Once, he showed his anger. In 1988, when demonstrators jeered at him from the sidewalk in front of his home as he opened Hanukkah presents with his children, the doctor came out brandishing a baseball bat. He denied he hurt anyone, but a town judge ordered him to repair one protester's smashed van window and pay a portion of another's medical bills. The outburst surprised his family and friends. It was not Slepian's style to make a public fuss, much less acknowledge the stress of being taunted by protesters. ``Stress?'' his oldest brother Paul responded gruffly when asked about the doctor's mood. ``I never heard the word used in my family, except as an engineering term. He said it was a nuisance.'' Mrs. Slepian did not respond to requests for an interview. She expressed rage to The Buffalo News shortly after the shooting. She said that whoever had killed her husband deserved the death penalty and that she would be happy to administer the lethal injection herself. She also spoke out after Schenck's brother, Robert, another anti-abortion leader who frequently confronted Slepian, sent a bouquet of flowers. Mrs. Slepian denounced him as ``a hypocrite.'' After the confrontation in 1988, Slepian turned to civil harassment lawsuits, letters and levity to deal with the protesters. In 1993, when a man active in the anti-abortion effort was arrested for rifling through the doctor's garbage cans at home, Slepian tried to treat the incident lightly. ``They hopefully got the bags full of dirty diapers,'' he joked. He tried to engage his critics through the local newspaper. He told The Buffalo News that abortion protesters should turn their energies to helping women avoid unwanted pregnancies through birth control and counseling. In a letter to the editor he warned that by repeatedly calling him a murderer, his critics were inciting violence. Slepian accepted that opponents of abortion acted out of moral conviction, his friends said, but resented the personal attacks. ``He thought it tended to demonize and dehumanize him and increased the danger,'' said his lawyer, Glenn Edward Murray. So Slepian took a step that few of the nation's beleaguered abortion clinic doctors dared. He insisted that if he tried hard enough, he might cut through the venom. To the dismay of the staff members who feared for his safety, Slepian began about a year ago to stop and chat with protesters he recognized outside the Womenservices abortion clinic in Buffalo, where he worked two days a week. He surprised a gathering of protesters who were preparing for what they euphemistically called a ``house call,'' or demonstration at the doctor's home, and invited the protest's organizer, the Rev. Robert Behn, to breakfast. Their hourlong conversation the next morning was inconclusive, Behn said, dismissing Slepian's gesture as an ``attempt to get people to like him.'' He asked Slepian how performing abortions affected him spiritually. In response, he recalled, the doctor said, ``I'm fine spiritually.'' Slepian, meanwhile, focused more on time away from home with his family. He planned to take a cruise next spring. He bought a time-share apartment near Disney World in Florida. ``He had so many plans,'' said Ellen Fink, a close friend of the couple for 15 years. ``He wasn't done. He wasn't done living yet.'' Still, sometimes during the most casual conversations, a shadow would appear. When his wife gave him a gray African parrot for a birthday gift, Slepian joked that the bird would probably outlive him so he would teach it his eulogy. ``He would talk about the funeral he wanted,'' Mrs. Fink said. ``He said he didn't have a lot of friends and wanted all of them to come in separate cars, one in each car, so he'd have a long procession.'' In the week before his death, Slepian had reasons to be preoccupied with thoughts of mortality. A medical checkup had revealed a blockage of his heart, Mrs. Fink said, recounting a conversation with Mrs. Slepian the day of the slaying. A blockage is a sign of probable coronary artery disease. He was to have more tests the following week. ``I said, `Lynne, just relax, it's going to be OK,''' Mrs. Fink recalled. That same day, the National Abortion Federation sent a fax to the Womenservices clinic warning of a pattern of sniper attacks on abortion doctors that occurred in early November. Marilynne Buckham, the clinic director, sent it to Slepian. ``He definitely took it seriously,'' she recalled. Typically, the doctor did not share any concerns he might have felt. ``It was a normal day,'' said Tammi Latini, his office assistant. ``We were horsing around.' That evening, the Slepians went to synagogue to mark the ninth anniversary of the death of Slepian's father. Shortly after they returned home, a sniper's bullet smashed through the kitchen window, killing Slepian as he chatted with his wife and sons. The protesters returned to the clinic five days later, the first day it reopened. Mrs. Buckham, the director, said Slepian would not have been surprised. They have their routine. So did he. ``He never wanted a day to end on a bad note,'' she said. ``At the end of the day, I would always say, `Thank you for coming.' And he would always turn with a stupid grin and say, `Thanks for having me.''' ||||| The slaying of Dr. Barnett Slepian in his home last week eliminated the mainstay of the only abortion clinic here, but it has not eliminated women's access to abortion. That is because the availability of abortion in the Buffalo area, as in much of the United States, is a complex reality, one affected by class and education, medical training and the personal convictions of individual doctors. Knowledgeable middle-class and affluent women here who find themselves with an unwanted pregnancy can usually obtain an abortion from their private gynecologists, or if a gynecologist has a personal objection to the procedure, through a referral to a colleague. Women who are poor, young or uneducated and have no such regular relationships with doctors have to rely on specialized clinics like the one Slepian worked in, or on hospitals. It is this group _ for whom unplanned pregnancies are far more common than for prosperous women _ that faces a shrinking universe of possibilities as a result of the fear set off by Slepian's killing and the slayings of five other doctors and clinic workers since 1993, medical experts said. ``If you're well off and well connected, you can get your abortion,'' said Dr. Stephen Wear, co-director of the center for clinical ethics at the University of Buffalo, which trains doctors for the Buffalo area's hospitals. ``For everybody else, it's less and less available.'' The number of abortions in the United States has been declining steadily since the first years after the Supreme Court's Roe vs. Wade decision legalized abortion in 1973, according to the Alan Guttmacher Institute, which studies reproductive issues. They now number roughly 1.5 million a year, according to reports by Guttmacher, or 1.4 million, according to the National Right to Life Committee, the nation's largest anti-abortion group, which calculates its estimate partly from the Guttmacher figures. The number of providers who identify themselves as performing abortions as part of their practice is diminishing as well. A 1994 Guttmacher study, the last one published, found that the number had decreased 18 percent between 1982 and 1992, to 2,380 from 2,908. Moreover, the study said, only 12 percent of the nation's residency programs routinely offer training in abortions during the first trimester, though many do offer elective courses. Laura Echevarria, director of media relations for the National Right to Life Committee, contends, however, that most teaching hospitals do train gynecologists in procedures for treating miscarriages that are similar to those used for performing abortions. Only in cosmopolitan and comparatively liberal cities like New York does the availability of abortions continue at a steady level, experts say, though even in these locales there is concern about the decreasing number of young doctors who emerge from residencies fully trained in performing abortions. The Guttmacher Institute, which keeps the nation's most precise statistics, said that in 1992, the last year for which it has figures, there were 142,410 abortions in New York that were done by just 151 providers, including 61 hospitals and 44 clinics. Still, that provider figure greatly understates the number of private doctors who perform them in their offices, medical experts say. ``Many obstetricians and gynecologists in Manhattan provide abortions as part of their palette of services, and have for many years,'' said Dr. Richard Hausknecht, the medical director of Planned Parenthood. ``Rich and middle-class women have always had access to abortions, and they always will.'' The major threat to availability in the city is less a result of anti-abortion violence than of medical training. ``The bottom line is that we're facing an impending shortage of physicians who are adequately trained and willing to do the procedures,'' said Dr. John Choate, chairman of the New York State division of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. But the lack of training programs is also a result of political pressures on hospitals and universities by antagonists of abortion and the same climate of fear. ``Physicians tend to lie low,'' Choate said. ``They don't publicize the fact that they do them. If they do them, they do it quietly out of fear for their practice and for their lives.'' One development on the horizon that is expected to change the outlook for abortions substantially is final federal approval, expected next year, of the RU-486 pill, the drug that ends an early pregnancy without the need for surgery. When the pill was introduced in France and in Edinburgh, Scotland, Hausknecht said, the number of surgical abortions plummeted. ||||| While veterans and civic leaders devote Wednesday's national holiday to honoring fallen soldiers, Remembrance Day has become a chilling vigil for Canadians in the front lines of the abortion-rights movement. There is immediate fear, because an anti-abortion gunman is believed to be at large. And there is long-term anxiety, because even in this country where abortions are legal and publicly funded, women may find access diminishing. There is speculation the sniper's timing is linked to Remembrance Day because some anti-abortion activists use the day to commemorate aborted fetuses. Three times since 1994, a sniper has used this time of year to fire into the home of a Canadian doctor who performs abortion, each time wounding the target. The attacks were spread across Canada _ Ontario, Manitoba and British Columbia. U.S. and Canadian investigators now believe those attacks were linked to two shootings of abortion-providing doctors in upstate New York, including the Oct. 23 slaying of Dr. Barnett Slepian at his home near Buffalo. An American anti-abortion activist, James Kopp, is wanted for questioning about the shootings. Police say they don't know which side of the border he is on, fueling uneasiness at clinics and hospitals throughout Canada. ``You must realize Canada has the largest undefended border in the world,'' said Keith McCaskill, a police inspector in Winnipeg, Manitoba, and spokesman for the investigation. Many women's clinics have tightened security, and doctors who provide abortions have been urged to take precautions. ``I would suggest they be extremely aware of their day-to-day goings on, whether during their business day or after hours,'' said Toronto Detective Rick Stubbings. Across Canada, there have been reports of obstetrician-gynecologists modifying their practices or deciding to stop performing abortions. Some wear bulletproof vests and hang sheets over windows of their homes. Abortion-rights groups say most doctors are not backing down. ``There's a great deal of sadness,'' said Susan Fox, director of a clinic in Edmonton, Alberta, that provides abortions. ``But there's also a feeling of determination that we won't be deterred or scared by these actions.'' Marilyn Wilson, executive director of the Canadian Abortion Rights Action League, sees a long-term threat because fear of violence may intimidate young doctors from entering the field. ``There are almost no doctors who have stopped performing these procedures, even under the current reign of terror,'' she said. ``But young doctors with families wouldn't necessarily want to do this. They may not be willing to put their lives at risk.'' The abortion debate is only one of several factors contributing to a shortage of obstetrician-gynecologists in Canada. The national society that oversees the speciality says there are about 1,400 doctors in the field, a shortfall of 600, and most are in their 50s or 60s. The society says long hours and limits on fees paid by the public health-care system are causing burnout and deterring medical school graduates as they choose a specialty. Another problem is that few Canadian medical schools offer training in abortion. Women in Canada's big cities generally have adequate access to abortions. Those in rural areas often face long journeys, and the province of Prince Edward Island prohibits abortions at its six hospitals, forcing women there to travel to New Brunswick or Nova Scotia. Abortion-rights groups say the situation would improve if the RU-486 abortion pill were available in Canada. No drug company has applied for permission to market the pill, either fearing boycotts or doubting its profitability. The government has been urged to make a public appeal to drug companies, but the health department says this can't be done. ``It would be a conflict of interest,'' said Bonnie Fox-McIntyre, a department spokeswoman. ``As a regulator we have to stay at arm's length, so we can judge an application impartially.'' Abortion was illegal in Canada until 1988. Now there is no abortion law of any sort, about 100,000 abortions are performed annually, and polls indicate roughly three-quarters of Canadians favor pro-choice policies. Yet public support doesn't spare doctors from fear. Dr. Henry Morgentaler, who led efforts to overturn the old abortion law and whose Toronto clinic was bombed in 1993, says he and his colleagues are sacrificing personal freedom as they reluctantly increase security measures. ``Unfortunately, doctors who are committed to providing these services will have to accept a certain diminishment of their enjoyment of life,'' he said. ||||| By outward appearances, Dorothy Hayes' life seems ordinary. She and her family live in a rambling old home on the shore of Lake Ontario, and every morning, she gives her husband, John, a peck on the cheek before he goes to work. She runs errands, like other suburban moms, and spends much of her day taking care of her children. But one thing sets Mrs. Hayes apart from her neighbors. As a devoted opponent of abortion, the 43-year-old mother of nine regularly plays host to a series of traveling speakers, priests and protesters _ many of whom have come to Rochester intent upon spreading the word against abortion and shutting down clinics that provide it. She is one of thousands of people across the country loosely associated with anti-abortion groups like the Lambs of Christ who have opened their homes to the Lambs' founder, the Rev. Norman Weslin, and other itinerant demonstrators. While many _ including Mrs. Hayes _ disavow violent tactics, supporters of abortion rights say that people like her bear some responsibility when the protesters they help blockade clinics or threaten doctors. ``These people who provide Father Weslin with food and shelter when he comes into town to close the clinics are not innocent,'' said Ann Glazier, the director of clinic defense for the Planned Parenthood Federation. ``It's just not credible to say they aren't part of the extremist activity that is taking place at these clinics. They are still guilty of interfering with women's access.'' But Mary Quinn, a local organizer for the Lambs of Christ who also offers her home to protesters, sees matters in a differing light. ``Taking people in like this is an act of Christian charity,'' Mrs. Quinn said. `People who travel around the country doing this work are taken in by those of us that who don't want to lose their stupid houses. We take in these people because they are willing to make the sacrifice.'' Members of the Lambs of Christ have been persistent figures in protests at the Buffalo women's clinic where Dr. Barnett Slepian worked before he was shot to death last month. Although no suspect has been identified in the shooting or in several similar attacks in New York and Canada over the past several years, officials are looking to question a Vermont man whose car was seen near Dr. Slepian's home. That man, James Charles Kopp, has participated in abortion protests for more than a decade, and often was a house guest of other members of the Lambs of Christ. While Mrs. Hayes says she would never so much as obstruct a clinic's door, some of those to whom she has given refuge have no qualms about doing so. Weslin, the leader of the Lambs of Christ, is one of those who has benefited from Mrs. Hayes' hospitality, a modern version of the generosity that Christ and the Apostles knew well. He prides himself on being arrested more than 60 times during protests in front of medical clinics. And throughout the 1980s and early '90s, he was active in clinic ``rescues,'' in which protesters tried physically to restrain patients trying to enter clinics. Weslin stayed at Mrs. Hayes' home only once, beginning in May 1996 when he first came to speak at local churches about the anti-abortion movement. But during a stay that lasted several months, he was arrested on Federal charges of blocking access to a Rochester health clinic where abortions were performed. He was later convicted and served two and a half months in prison. During the protest outside the clinic, he and several other protesters locked themselves in a homemade contraption called ``the oven,'' made of cement and iron. It took police officers several hours to lug the device to a horse trailer that carted it off. At the same protest, one man glued his head to a lock on a gate surrounding the clinic, a move some protesters later said was an accident. Abortion opponents like Mrs. Hayes and Mrs. Quinn speak of attending peaceful observances at abortion clinics and offering prayers for the unborn. They talk about counseling women about alternatives to abortion at Roman Catholic ``pregnancy centers,'' and their support of anti-abortion candidates. But they also say they saw nothing wrong with Weslin trying to block access to clinics. They describe the activity as peaceful resistance meant to stop what they see as murders. Weslin and the other house guests of Mrs. Hayes and Mrs. Quinn come recommended from friends and members of local Catholic churches, they said, adding that most are speakers at local churches or anti-abortion events. And although they say they would never take into their homes a stranger wanted by the FBI, like Kopp, they concede that they sometimes know little about their guests. But Mrs. Hayes and Mrs. Quinn say they know a lot about Weslin. An Army veteran, he has been a leader of the anti-abortion movement for more than 25 years, they say, and founded a home for unwed mothers. Mrs. Hayes said that when she met him, it was obvious he was a man of peace who ``had a tremendous devotion to the Blessed Mother and basically recognized that we are helpless lambs.'' Barbara Fredericks, another local abortion opponent who developed ties to the Lambs after Weslin came to town, added that the priest epitomized a man of God. ``I just knew when I looked at his holy shoes and his simple coat that had been mended 50 times,'' she said. ``He was humble, a man who was doing this for a higher purpose, trying to save people through sacrifice and prayer.'' opp also has robust defenders among the people who housed him as he rode about the country from protest to protest. E. Kenny, 20, said that his parents housed Kopp in their St. Albans, Vt., home for two years after he spoke at their local church in 1988. During Kopp's stay, he was a pleasure, Kenny said, always helping around the house. ``He was a nice guy, kind of like an uncle to us,'' Kenny said. ``He'd sit around and play video games with us and make us model planes out of wood.'' Like Weslin, Kopp was consumed by a need to fight abortion and often talked about its evils, Kenny said, adding that Kopp was a gentle man who wanted to become a Catholic priest. ``He was always in a good mood,'' Kenny said. ``He never did anything violent at all.'' Both Kopp and Weslin have been arrested repeatedly during abortion protests. The men have moved in the same circles and at times found themselves arrested at the same events. Mrs. Quinn said that Weslin told her in a recent telephone conversation that he knew Kopp. Weslin could not be reached for comment, but it is clear that the two men have encountered each other. Both faced misdemeanor charges after blocking a Burlington, Vt., health clinic in 1990 that Kopp called ``the mill.'' And they spent time in the same jail in Atlanta in 1988 after a clinic protest. Slepian's death has abortion opponents like Mrs. Hayes and Mrs. Quinn worried, both about how the killing is being portrayed in the media and what it will do to membership in groups like the Lambs of Christ. ``For a long time, you felt like the voice in the desert that wasn't being heard,'' Mrs. Hayes said. ``And then there was this horrible tragedy of this doctor's death becoming the face of the movement. ``We're about saving lives,'' she said. The FBI has not talked to Mrs. Hayes, but Kenny said that agents have spoken to him. The Justice Department says that a Federal task force set up this week to investigate the killing of Slepian is looking for evidence connecting anti-abortion violence at various clinics. ``It's fair to say that when investigating these events, we will look at any connection between individuals engaged in criminal conduct,'' Myron Marlin, a spokesman for the department, said. Many local Catholics associated with the Lambs of Christ have tried to distance themselves from the killing of Slepian. They are mailing literature saying that the killer does not represent their movement. In addition, some people associated with the Lambs are offering other possible explanations for the killing. Some say they believe that the killer might have been someone overcome by grief after a personal experience with abortion. Others wondered whether the shooter had tried to wound the doctor to scare him or prevent him from performing more abortions. The Lambs also wonder whether abortionist opponents are being blamed for a shooting committed by a disgruntled patient. One idea gaining currency among the Lambs, and prominently displayed on their Web site, suggests that the killing was the result of a plot by abortion supporters to discredit abortion opponents just before last week's elections. Mrs. Hayes says she doesn't know the truth. ``There are wackos who travel around and they may be in front of the clinic because we are drawn to the same place,'' she said. ``But you don't know everyone who shows up and you don't turn to the person next to you and tell them they don't belong there.'' Mrs. Fredericks said that anyone who would shoot a doctor who provides abortions was someone ``who had snapped, perhaps because of the importance of the situation.'' Members of the Lambs of Christ and other opponents of abortion in Rochester wonder whether the killing of Slepian will hinder their efforts. When Weslin first arrived two years ago, he brought new focus to a group that often had done little more than counsel pregnant women and set up booths on college campuses, they said. ``In many cities, they have a priest for life coordinating and leading rosary marches'' against abortion, Mrs. Quinn said. ``But with Father Weslin coming here, we could finally come together and feel like we were doing something sacrificial as a group.'' Mrs. Hayes said that she felt the first pull of the movement in the early 1980s, when she heard women speak about ``choice'' in regard to abortion. Then she saw ``Silent Scream,'' a well-known anti-abortion film that purports to show the footage of an abortion. ``What I saw was the end of life,'' she said. She began to volunteer at a Catholic pregnancy center where she encouraged women ``not to kill their child.'' She also began to house unwed mothers and went to stand vigil outside local clinics where abortions were performed. Mrs. Hayes looked at her 3-month-old daughter, Bernadette, then pointed to the prenatal image of the infant, a sonogram taken at 13 weeks that she keeps on her refrigerator door. She described what could have been her baby's fate, had she been someone else's child. ``Two pounds and two inches ago, she could have been a partial-birth abortion,'' Mrs. Hayes said, referring to a controversial late-term abortion procedure. ``They have the hardest time getting the shoulders out, so they can get to the head and puncture it. ``It's brutal, but what do you expect when the purpose is a dead baby? There's no question that these doctors are trying to murder a child.'' ||||| On the eve of a holiday that has been linked to antiabortion violence, the authorities on Tuesday were investigating whether a picture of an aborted fetus sent to a Canadian newspaper was connected to last month's fatal shooting of a Buffalo, N.Y. doctor who provided abortions or four similar attacks in western New York and Canada since 1994. The newspaper, the Hamilton (Ontario) Spectator, has received five similar packages in the last year, some containing veiled threats and several delivered by a man who employees said resembled James Charles Kopp, who is wanted for questioning as a witness about the Oct. 23 slaying of Dr. Barnett Slepian. Five days after the shooting, the Spectator received a package containing an antiabortion flier with biographical information about Slepian, including a photograph of him that had been crossed out. ``It certainly causes us to be more interested than ever in speaking to Kopp,'' said Inspector Keith McKaskill of the Winnipeg Police Department, a spokesman for the Canada-United States task force investigating the five shootings. Even as they searched for Kopp, federal officials were also looking into three letters that were received Monday by Catholic and antiabortion organizations in Buffalo, Indianapolis and Chicago. Those letters, saying they contained the deadly anthrax bacteria, came 10 days after eight similar threats to clinics that provide abortions. All the letters appear to be hoaxes, and it remains unclear whether they were connected to any of the five shootings. Kopp is not a suspect in the shootings. An itinerant antiabortion activist whose last known address is in Vermont, he is the subject of warrants on both sides of the border. In Canada, he is suspected of administrative violations of immigration law; in the United States, he is wanted as a material witness in the Slepian case. ||||| James Kopp, the man the FBI is seeking as a material witness in the sniper slaying of Dr. Barnett Slepian, is known to abortion rights leaders as an aggressive anti-abortion protester, and law enforcement officials say he has been arrested several times in demonstrations at abortion clinics. The portrait that emerges of Kopp, 44, from police records, studies by researchers on right-wing movements, newspaper accounts of protests, and abortion rights advocates, is that of an itinerant protester, moving about the country in a series of increasingly abrasive protests at abortion clinics. Federal law enforcement officials say he is not currently a suspect in the Slepian shooting, and there was no indication Wednesday that he had been arrested for any violent acts. At several abortion protests, he was charged with trespassing or resisting arrest, according to news accounts. One of his arrests was in Atlanta during Operation Rescue's huge anti-abortion protests there in 1988. While he was in an Atlanta jail, Kopp was given the nickname Atomic Dog, which investigators contend links him to the violent fringe of the anti-abortion movement, responsible for a series of bombings and arsons and seven murders of abortion providers like Slepian over the last five years. Responsibility for some of the violence _ like the bombing of an abortion clinic in Birmingham, Ala., earlier this year, in which an off-duty policeman was killed _ has been claimed in notes signed by a shadowy ``Army of God.'' An underground manual issued in the name of the Army of God, which describes methods for attacking abortion clinics, including how to make homemade C-4 plastic explosives, begins with a tribute, by nickname, of a clandestine band pledged to stop abortions. The first name under this ``Special Thanks'' section is Atomic Dog. The Atlanta police, after searching the hundreds of arrest records of the protesters from the summer of 1988, confirmed Wednesday night that the date of birth and Social Security number of the James Kopp arrested then matched those given out Wednesday by the FBI task force in Buffalo investigating the murder of Slepian, who was gunned down through the window if his home in suburban Amherst on Oct. 23. At the nondescript frame house in St. Albans, Vt., that the FBI gave as Kopp's last known address, the current resident, who gave his name only as E. Kenny, 20, a shipping clerk, remembered Kopp well. He lived there for part of 1990 as the guest of Kenny's parents, who were active in the anti-abortion movement, among a group of protesters who tried to shut down two abortion clinics in Burlington in stubborn demonstrations that year. Kenny remembered Kopp as a ``really nice guy,'' who did chores around the place but paid no rent to the parents. He sometimes made wooden toys or played video games with Kenny, then a child. ``But the focus of his life was the anti-abortion movement,'' Kenny recalled. ``He was known among these people as Atomic Dog. It wasn't like a name that he had to go to the store or something. But if you knew anything about him, that's what you called him.'' Roughly 95 people were arrested during the protests, according to newspaper accounts at the time. ``There were many, many arrests,'' recalled Allie Stickney, the president of Planned Parenthood of Northern New England. ``It was very big for Vermont. There were Kryptonite locks and leaflets from the Army of God and the Lambs of Christ. It was clearly a highly organized blockade.'' According to newspaper accounts, Kopp was arrested outside a clinic in Levittown, Long Island, in 1991. The protests in Atlanta in 1998 appeared to be a turning point for a hard-core group of protesters. The Atlanta police cracked down hard and carted hundreds of demonstrators off to an isolated prison dormitory the called ``the farm.'' Operation Rescue had mounted a series of blockades to close down abortion clinics in New York and Philadelphia that spring. Atlanta was their high point, but in the face of the tough arrest policy, the movement faltered, split apart and stalled. ``It was a traumatic, life-changing experience,'' said Frederick Clarkson, author of ``Eternal Hostility,'' a book on the anti-abortion movement, adding that by 1993 with the shooting of Dr. David Gunn, an abortion provider in Florida, some of those in the Atlanta jail became the nucleus of a group signing a ``justifiable homicide'' statement that declared that the use of force was warranted to ``defend the life of an unborn child.'' ||||| In the aftermath of last month's deadly sniper attack on an obstetrician in upstate New York, Attorney General Janet Reno announced last week that she was setting up a new investigative unit to examine the possibility that the doctor was the victim of a broader anti-abortion plot. The unit, the National Clinic Violence Task Force, will include a dozen Justice Department lawyers and involve several law-enforcement agencies. But the main work of looking into the shooting of Dr. Barnett Slepian in his suburban Buffalo home and how it fits a larger pattern of organized violence will be done by the FBI, which has jurisdiction over domestic terrorism. For many in the FBI, that's a problem. In contrast to the old image of gung-ho FBI agents turning their surveillance machinery on political groups, a number of senior FBI agents privately expressed misgivings about the attorney general's latest task force, the second she has ordered to begin a broad investigation into a conspiracy involving anti-abortion violence. FBI officials fear that expanding the investigation could drive the agency over the ill-defined boundary that separates inquiries into criminal activity from those into political causes and unpopular ideas. Today's agents are eager to disassociate themselves from the old J. Edgar Hoover days of trampling the civil rights of political dissidents in the guise of serious investigations. They do not want the agency drawn into the middle of the bitter ideological war between anti-abortion groups and abortion rights advocates, who have long asserted the existence of an organized campaign against clinics and doctors. Many of those calling for government help were once themselves subjects of FBI interest as anti-war and civil rights activists. Senior agency officials, including Director Louis Freeh, were starting their careers in the early 1970s and watched in dismay as the FBI was shaken by revelations about Cointelpro, the counterintelligence program that allowed agents to spy on, burgle, wiretap and infiltrate anti-war and civil rights groups like Students for a Democratic Society and the Student Nonviolence Coordinating Committee. Some officials are dubious that a conspiracy exists to kill doctors who perform abortions. They came up empty handed when Reno ordered the first federal inquiry in 1994 after the killing of a Florida doctor and his bodyguard. The Justice Department conducted a two-year grand jury investigation; agents pursued some anti-abortion activists using surveillance teams. But investigators never found a specific plot against abortion clinics and staff members. Violence at abortion clinics is only part of the problem. The FBI has in recent years found itself thrown into a minefield of politically tinged cases involving the volatile worlds of anti-government militias, environmental and Christian extremists, white separatists, animal rights activists and Islamic fundamentalists. ``The FBI is very quick to jump from investigating crime to investigating political association,'' said David Cole, a law professor at Georgetown University. ``When you move from investigating crimes to investigating groups, that all-important nexus to criminal conduct gets lost, the focus gets broader and broader and you start sweeping in all kinds of lawful political activity.'' In response to terrorist attacks like the bombings of the World Trade Center in 1993, the Oklahoma City federal building in 1995 and the Olympic park in Atlanta in 1996, the agency has increased efforts to deter such incidents in a major prevention program. In such cases, the Justice Department, the FBI and other law enforcement agencies said they operate under domestic security guidelines that require investigators to find a ``reasonable indication'' that a group is planning to break the law before they can open an inquiry into an organization. Before the authorities can use such intrusive tactics as wiretapping or property searches, they must have specific evidence. Yet FBI agents throughout the country have quietly evaluated the threat posed by a variety of extremist groups through its links to local authorities and informal interviews with the leaders of some groups. Their conclusion is that most of these groups pose little real danger. Much more difficult to investigate are lone terrorists inflamed by the oratory of extremist ideology but who belong to no group, drifting along society's frayed margins, ``off the grid,'' as some agents describe it, without the usual ties to family, friends or work. The profile fits Eric Robert Rudolph, the fugitive wanted for bombings at the Atlanta Olympics, a gay nightclub and two abortion clinics. He has kept his beliefs mostly to himself, although acquaintances hint that he was familiar with religious extremism and hate groups. In contrast, James Charles Kopp, who is being sought as a material witness in the killing of Slepian, left a trail of clues about his motives. He was an early follower of Randall Terry, a leader of Operation Rescue. Later, Kopp was associated with the Lambs of Christ, an another militant anti-abortion group. One law-enforcement official said that the government should do what it does best. ``We should investigate violations,'' he said. ``We shouldn't investigate groups.'' ||||| In July 1988, when Randall Terry drove through the night from his home in Binghamton, N.Y., to Atlanta to start the series of anti-abortion protests that would finally put his new hard-line group, Operation Rescue, onto America's front pages, James Charles Kopp was in the van riding alongside him, according to former leaders of Operation Rescue who spoke on the condition of anonymity. And, those people say, when Terry was arrested on the first day of Operation Rescue's ``Siege of Atlanta,'' Kopp followed him into jail. Along with more than one hundred other Operation Rescue members, according to some people who were there, Kopp remained in jail for 40 days and adhered to Terry's orders not to give a real name to the police or courts. After his release, Kopp returned to Operation Rescue's Binghamton headquarters, and was there working alongside Terry as the group's power and influence in the anti-abortion movement surged in late 1988 and 1989, according to the former leaders of Operation Rescue. Now, Kopp is being sought by federal and local law enforcement authorities for questioning as a material witness in the murder of an obstetrician who performed abortions in the Buffalo region. The authorities also say he may have information that will help solve four other sniper attacks on doctors who performed abortions in Canada and upstate New York. Some abortion-rights groups are seizing on Kopp's role in Operation Rescue to raise new questions about the connections between the recent anti-abortion violence and the hard-line anti-abortion protest groups that burst onto the national scene in the late 1980s. For years, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Justice Department have looked in vain for evidence to determine whether a national conspiracy might be behind a series of clinic bombings and shootings of doctors and other clinic staff members that began in the early 1990s. A federal grand jury in Alexandria, Va., that looked into conspiracy allegations was ultimately disbanded without finding a national underground. But some federal law enforcement officials say they hope that Kopp may help provide such a link. In fact, the announcement that law enforcement officials are looking for him has been made as Attorney General Janet Reno has prepared to revive an interagency task force to look once again for possible conspiracies behind anti-abortion crimes. Federal law enforcement officials and the authorities say Kopp is not now a suspect in the sniper attack on Oct. 23 that killed Dr. Barnett A. Slepian near Buffalo. But they say Kopp's car was seen near Slepian's home in Amherst, N.Y. in the weeks before the doctor was shot. One day after issuing a warrant for Kopp's arrest as a material witness, law enforcement officials from at least 10 agencies spanning the United States and Canadian border still had not located Kopp Thursday. But law enforcement officials said they were pursuing many tips, including about 400 that have poured into the FBI's information line: (800) 281-1184. The police have gone through photographs of abortion protesters and clinic workers in Buffalo and around the country, and they are also reviewing hundreds of hours of videotapes of demonstrations in search of Kopp's face. At this point, officials consider the shooting of Slepian to be connected to three attacks in Canada and one in Rochester on doctors who provide abortions. The five attacks, all since 1994, occurred in the weeks leading up to Nov. 11, Veterans Day _ called Remembrance Day in Canada _ a holiday that has become important to anti-abortion activists. But the attacks were spread over four years and 3,000 miles, from Vancouver, British Columbia, to Buffalo. As is the case with many early veterans of Operation Rescue, Kopp was transformed into a hard-core anti-abortion militant in jail in Atlanta in 1988, according to many people who were in jail with him who insisted on anonymity.

The primary doctor at the last abortion clinic in Buffalo, NY, was shot and killed. Dr. Slepian, a stubborn man, dedicated to women's care, and an unlikely martyr. It's the 7th such death, and the 4th similar attack. James Kopp is sought as a material witness. The anti-abortion movement has local and itinerate members. Their activities go from prayers and talking to confrontations, threats and violence. After this killing, the FBI resumed a search for an anti-abortion conspiracy. Since the first few years after Roe v Wade, the number of abortions has declined, as has the number of clinics and doctors providing the procedure, especially for poorer women.

Federal authorities investigating the murder of a Buffalo-area obstetrician who performed abortions have identified a Vermont man as a material witness to the sniper attack last month and issued a warrant for his arrest Wednesday to bring him in for questioning. The man was identified as James Charles Kopp, 44, whose last known address was in St. Albans, Vt. His whereabouts are not known, investigators said. Investigators said Kopp's car was seen near the Amherst, N.Y., home of Dr. Barnett Slepian in the weeks before the doctor, whose work at an abortion clinic had long made him a target of harassment, was killed. Kopp, according to police records and abortion rights groups, has often moved about the country in a series of protests at abortion clinics, and has been linked to an underground manual that describes methods of killing or maiming doctors who perform abortions. Denise O'Donnell, the U.S. attorney for the western district of New York, said Kopp was not considered a suspect at this time but was believed to have information material to the case. She declined to give details on what evidence was being sought from Kopp, describing it only as information that is contained in a sealed affidavit whose disclosure would compromise the ongoing investigation. Ms. O'Donnell said that federal law allowed for an arrest warrant for a material witness when a person has information that is important to a case. ``If Kopp is found, he would be arrested, brought to Buffalo and ordered to provide the required evidence,'' Ms. O'Donnell said. ``Then, most likely, the individual would be released.'' Slepian, 52, was shot by a sniper firing from outside his home on Oct. 23, shortly after returning from an evening service at his synagogue. He was standing in his kitchen with his wife and one of his four sons when the bullet crashed through a back window. He died two hours later. Law enforcement officials said Wednesday's announcement of the material witness warrant was in part an attempt to underscore the potential danger of anti-abortion violence in advance of Remembrance Day, a Canadian holiday that falls on Nov. 11 and that the authorities have associated with some anti-abortion crimes. At the same time, the Justice Department and the FBI were trying to find ways to step up the federal response to violence at abortion clinics in the aftermath of the Slepian killing. The officials said that Attorney General Janet Reno would soon announce that the Justice Department, aiming to heighten the visibility of the federal role in cases that cross state and local jurisdictional boundaries, would revive a national investigative effort focused on abortion clinic violence. Ms. Reno and senior FBI officials, including Robert Bryant, the deputy FBI director, have met with physician and abortion rights groups in recent days to discuss ways to enhance federal investigative efforts and coordination with local agencies. Federal authorities first organized an abortion clinic task force in 1995 after the killing of a Florida doctor. The unit, which was charged with investigating whether a national conspiracy existed, spent nearly two years studying abortion clinic violence. The unit disbanded without uncovering a national conspiracy. Law enforcement officials said that the unit's operation did help reduce violence at abortion clinics and that, in part, the decision to re-establish it was prompted by Ms. Reno's desire to send a renewed message to anti-abortion extremists that the government would aggressively investigate these crimes. Slepian's murder fit the pattern of four earlier sniper attacks on abortion doctors in Canada and western New York, dating from 1994. None of the attacks have been solved. Bernard Tolbert, special agent in charge of the FBI in Buffalo, said at a news conference here Wednesday that investigators had not determined whether there is a link between the five killings. ``There's a possibility they could be linked, but certainly no information,'' he said. Tolbert gave little information about the subject of the material-witness warrant, except to say that Kopp's black 1987 Chevrolet Cavalier, with the Vermont license plate BPE216, was seen near Slepian's home beginning several weeks before the murder. ``We don't have any idea of where he is,'' Tolbert said of Kopp. ``We are looking for him every place we can, every place he might be.'' A photograph of Kopp taken in January 1997 has been distributed to law enforcement agencies around the United States and Canada. The National Abortion Federation has sent out an advisory to clinics around the country about the search for Kopp, said Melinda DuBois, assistant director of Womenservices, the clinic where Slepian worked. She said naming Kopp a material witness in the case had not brought relief to the nurses and other workers at the clinic. ``I don't think it makes me or anyone else at the clinic feel differently,'' she said. ``I don't want anybody to relax and say, `Oh God, they got the guy.' That's easy to happen. I still want people to be very vigilant.'' The clinic is the last in the Buffalo area that is performing abortions. Slepian was one of only a handful of doctors in Buffalo who were still willing to perform the procedure in the face of pickets, protesters and threats. Since his death, doctors from outside Buffalo have come to the clinic to continue providing abortion services. ||||| Rosina Lotempio was standing outside abortion clinics here before Operation Rescue stormed into town in 1992 for the rowdy Spring of Life rallies, in which hundreds were arrested. She was there before Lambs of Christ demonstrators came to town in 1993. She was on the sidewalk outside Buffalo GYN Womenservices the morning of Oct. 23, about 12 hours before Barnett Slepian, the clinic doctor, was fatally shot in his home. And she was there Friday, brown rosary beads in her hands, a small gold cross on a chain around her neck, quietly praying for abortions to stop. ``I'm heartbroken when I have to come here,'' Mrs. Lotempio, 58, said as she stood in the cold, wearing small black earmuffs and a white turtleneck adorned with a tiny silver pin of baby feet. ``It's very difficult out here; I depend on God,'' she said, after praying for several moments to decide whether to talk to a reporter. The bombings, the fiery rhetoric of abortion opponents and the posters of bloody fetuses may capture the attention of the news media, but people like Mrs. Lotempio are the foot soldiers in the abortion battle. They call themselves street counselors and come to the clinic whenever they believe abortions are being performed. They pray and they talk to women, hoping to change their minds. Some scream profanities. Others, like Mrs. Lotempio, denounce not only the violence against doctors and clinics, but also the blocking of doors and the shouting of ugly epithets at clinic workers and patients. For the approximately 80 abortion opponents here, their protest is more like a job than a political activity. There is a schedule. People count on them to show up. Mrs. Lotempio, a mother of three and grandmother of six, connects her involvement to a conversation in the 1970s in which she helped a friend decide to abort an unwanted pregnancy. Two decades later, she was haunted by her own question: whether the fetus was male or female. ``I just felt horrible and I felt guilty,'' she said, tears in her eyes. ``I thought that if I was at the clinic doing something, I could make up for that baby's life.'' During Mrs. Lotempio's 8 a.m.-to-10 a.m. shift Friday, about a dozen people circled the area in front of the Buffalo clinic, saying the ``Hail Mary.'' Others take her spot on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. She returns on Saturdays, when up to 40 people crowd the sidewalk. Similar bands of protesters march in front of abortion clinics throughout the United States, and local protesters are often joined by bands of people who roam the country. At the clinic on Main Street, north of downtown Buffalo, there is an odd sense of community. Local protesters greet Dick, the security guard, by name. They sometimes see the ``enemy'' _ abortion-rights volunteers who escort patients in and out of the clinic _ in the supermarket or on the soccer field. Robert Behn, one of the protest leaders, even spent two hours talking about abortion over breakfast last year with Slepian. And several said they cried when they heard of Slepian's death. Most of the protesters, including Mrs. Lotempio, were among the thousands of people arrested here in 1992, the height of anti-abortion activity in Buffalo. But if Operation Rescue returns, as planned, for a Spring of Life reunion in April, Mrs. Lotempio said, she will not be there. Instead, she plans to stay in church and pray, to avoid the militancy she says she finds uncomfortable. Glenn Murray, a lawyer for Womenservices clinic, said: ``When people from out of town show up, that is when we feel the most danger. The local people are a known quantity. We know most of the local people by name.'' Buffalo has been among a handful of hot spots for abortion protesters for the last decade. It is a heavily Catholic city where thousands of protesters from around the country demonstrated for two weeks in 1992. They failed to close abortion clinics, but 500 people were arrested in rallies that snarled traffic and drew national headlines. Those rallies, as well as earlier protests and continuing sidewalk vigils, have had an impact, people on both sides of the abortion issue say. The number of clinics performing abortions in the Buffalo area has dropped to one from three. And after Slepian's death and the retirement this week of another doctor, there are only two doctors in the area for whom abortions form a significant part of their practices. The daily demonstrators count this as progress. But their perch outside the clinic means they witness far more of what they believe are murders than what they call rescues. About 30 women a day might go into the clinic. After eight years, Mrs. Lotempio can count eight women who changed their minds and did not get abortions while she was at the clinic. Inside the clinic, the protests just make a hard job harder, many clinic workers say. While some demonstrators simply repeat the rosary, other protesters call out to patients as they drive into the parking lot behind the building, or walk up to the fortresslike front. They ask questions like ``Do you know what your baby looks like?'' or ``Is it a boy or a girl?'' Sometimes they accuse people of murder and torture and sin, or threaten them with damnation. Federal law bars protesters from coming within 15 feet of the clinic entrances, and from leaning signs against its walls. Some push the limits, frustrating clinic workers and guards. The rules protect people from physical harassment, but because of the distance, they turn what could be quiet conversations into catcalls and taunts. When a patient goes into the clinic, the protesters ``take on a different persona,'' said Melinda DuBois, director of the Buffalo clinic. ``They scream and yell and call us names. They lie. Some days we're immune to it, but other days it's just too much.'' Linda Palm, 51, marching at the clinic on Friday, said she identified with the clinic patients. When she was 23, she said, she struggled with the difficulties of being unmarried and pregnant herself, but decided to have her child, and married the father. She began protesting in 1990, after attending an abortion protest march in Albany. ||||| Everyone who knew Dr. Barnett Slepian knew that the slight, graying physician endured a measure of stress that would exhaust, even break, most people. There were the strangers who pawed through the garbage cans at his home and growled ``murderer'' as they passed him in the grocery store aisle. Demonstrators assailed his pregnant patients as they arrived at his office for their checkups, calling him a baby killer. Outside the clinic where he performed abortions two days a week, pickets shouted epithets like ``pig'' to his face. Slepian, an obstetrician and gynecologist by training and an abortion doctor by principle, rarely acknowledged the strain. He might crack an occasional joke at the expense of the protesters who shadowed him at work and on weekends. Then he would do something unexpected, like invite an anti-abortion leader to breakfast or stop and chat with a familiar demonstrator outside the clinic. So when he was killed Oct. 23 by a sniper's bullet fired through the kitchen window of his home in the Buffalo, N.Y., suburbs, a furtive execution that fit a pattern of four earlier attacks on abortion providers in western New York state and Canada, friends and relatives wondered not so much that Slepian's work could arouse such murderous violence. He had predicted as much himself. Instead, they wondered, once again, that he persisted in that work, long after other Buffalo doctors had surrendered to the pressure of abortion opponents. ``He was an incredibly fatalistic person who thought that if your number's up, it's up, and there is nothing you can do about it,'' said H. Amanda Robb, the doctor's 32-year-old niece. ``And he was incredibly stubborn. He said that women had a right to comprehensive health care and since he was a women's doctor, he was going to provide it for them.'' Slepian is the third doctor to be killed in the last five years in bombings and shootings that have killed 7 people and wounded 17 at abortion clinics around the nation. To his tormentors, he was simply an abortion doctor. To members of the abortion rights movement, he was a martyr for their cause. But Slepian was far from either. In interviews with friends and family members, he emerges as more than a one-dimensional abstract _ a conservative who advocated old-fashioned values like self-reliance, a shy man who had rare flashes of anger, a doctor who performed abortions but had no more patience for women who had multiple abortions than for women who had multiple children they did not want or could not support. He was killed because he performed a medical procedure that has become emotional and politicized. Yet there is nothing in his life to suggest he was a crusader in either politics or medicine. Rather, he was an obstinate, unassuming man who did a remarkable thing. Out of contrariness and out of conscience, say those who knew him, he refused to allow anyone to dictate what kind of doctor he should be, and for that, he paid with his life. The clues to Slepian's flinty brand of commitment lie, in part, in his upbringing. His was a family that took success for granted even as it teetered on the edge of poverty. To earn money for medical school, he shoveled muck at a ranch and drove a taxi. He made few friends, but those he had were friends for life. When their wives were sick, he called repeatedly. When they were lonely, he flew to their side. Slepian, who was known as Bart, used to tell people that he chose obstetrics because it is a specialty that exposes a doctor to the least suffering, and that he performed abortions because it was legal and the alternatives were so much worse. Slepian often expressed exasperation over women who came to him for abortion after abortion. ``Don't they get it?'' his clinic staff recall him saying more than once. He had the same impatience for women like those he remembered from his residency in inner-city Buffalo, who had child after child and no means of support. ``He had the contempt for that of somebody who had pulled himself up by his bootstraps and made it in the world,'' Ms. Robb said. He believed that to ban abortions or, just as shameful in his view, to stop teaching young doctors how to perform them, would not correct the human imperfections that he found so irritating. ``There are 1.5 million abortions performed in this country,'' his niece said, ``and he just felt we're not equipped to handle 1.5 million unwanted children.'' When he was killed, at the age of 52, Bart Slepian owned an imposing red brick home in the quiet suburb of Amherst, complete with a swimming pool with piped-in music and an assortment of the time-saving gadgets he adored. Slepian's trajectory to that comfortable doctor's life had been unconventional. His grandfather, a Russian Jewish immigrant who started out selling shoelaces from a pushcart in Boston, propelled all five of his sons into Harvard at a time when few Jews met the university's blue-blood standards. His father, in turn, decreed that his own three sons would be doctors or earn Ph.D's. ``We grew up in a home where there was tremendous, tremendous, tremendous respect for education,'' said Serena Robb, Slepian's sister, who is four years older than him. ``If you got an A, it was OK If you got a B, you got yelled at.'' The family's means did not match its expectations. Slepian's father, Philip, had joined his own father's business manufacturing leather soles for shoes. Soon after Bart was born in 1946 in Boston, the company failed, so to save money, the father moved his family of six to his in-laws' apartment in McKeesport, Pa., and then to Rochester, N.Y. Once settled, Slepian's father set himself up as a freelance writer, crisscrossing the country in his old Studebaker, researching the origins of prominent citizens at the Library of Congress and writing their stories for small-town newspapers. He sold articles by the hundreds, and was still writing until his death nine years ago at the age of 93. The success that was expected of Bart Slepian did not come easily. As a child, he was so shy that he cried when anyone looked at him, his sister recalled. An unexceptional student, he went to a local community college before transferring to the University of Denver, where he majored in zoology. Rejected by medical schools in the United States _ the fate of two out of three applicants in the late 1960s _ he studied one year in Belgium and then enrolled at the Autonomous University for Medicine in Guadalajara, Mexico. His friends remember him as funny and obstinate, a thin young man with glasses and a receding hairline who beat all comers at arm-wrestling and pool. ``Bart had certain beliefs, strongly held,'' said Richard Schwarz, an old classmate who is an internist on Long Island. ``He always said you shouldn't sit around whining about things,'' Schwarz said. ``He would say, `Go after what's yours and what's right.''' Bart Slepian's determination surfaced in quirky ways. He once insisted on going to the top of the World Trade Center, despite a crippling fear of heights. To get to the window, he crawled, inch by inch. ``I said, `You don't have to do this,' '' recalled Schwarz, who was with him at the time. ``And he said, `I want to do it.' Bart made it count. He felt alive.'' Forced to drop out of school every few semesters to work, he lived in Reno with his sister Serena, a widow who was struggling to take care of two young daughters. She worked as a waitress and a blackjack dealer, sharing her tips with him while he drove a cab, cleaned barns at a ranch and worked as a laboratory assistant at the local Veterans Administration hospital. After graduation, he moved to Buffalo for his medical residency. There he married Lynne Breitbart, a registered nurse 10 years his junior, and scraped together the money to buy an obstetrics practice from a doctor who was about to retire. He had a soothing, unhurried manner. When a patient of his, Patti Durlak, was diagnosed with diabetes, Slepian referred her to a specialist but called every few days for months to help her overcome a fear of the needles she had to use for her insulin injections. ``The other doctor said, `Just deal with it,''' Mrs. Durlak recalled. ``Not Dr. Slepian.'' In most ways, he was a typical suburban family man, working six days a week and spending his free time at Little League games and county fairs with his four sons. But by the late 1980s, he and other abortion doctors in Buffalo were under siege. In one notorious 1991 incident recorded on videotape, the Rev. Paul Schenck, one of the fieriest of Buffalo's anti-abortion leaders, threw himself in front of the doctor's car as he pulled into the clinic driveway. Slepian parked on the street. As he pushed his way through the crowd of chanting demonstrators, Schenck cupped his hands around his mouth and lunged, shouting, ``Slepian, you pig!'' Slepian's attempts to separate the abortion conflict from his private life were futile. The protests followed him home and the man who had been so bashful as a boy found himself, uncomfortably, at the center of controversy and attention. Once, he showed his anger. In 1988, when demonstrators jeered at him from the sidewalk in front of his home as he opened Hanukkah presents with his children, the doctor came out brandishing a baseball bat. He denied he hurt anyone, but a town judge ordered him to repair one protester's smashed van window and pay a portion of another's medical bills. The outburst surprised his family and friends. It was not Slepian's style to make a public fuss, much less acknowledge the stress of being taunted by protesters. ``Stress?'' his oldest brother Paul responded gruffly when asked about the doctor's mood. ``I never heard the word used in my family, except as an engineering term. He said it was a nuisance.'' Mrs. Slepian did not respond to requests for an interview. She expressed rage to The Buffalo News shortly after the shooting. She said that whoever had killed her husband deserved the death penalty and that she would be happy to administer the lethal injection herself. She also spoke out after Schenck's brother, Robert, another anti-abortion leader who frequently confronted Slepian, sent a bouquet of flowers. Mrs. Slepian denounced him as ``a hypocrite.'' After the confrontation in 1988, Slepian turned to civil harassment lawsuits, letters and levity to deal with the protesters. In 1993, when a man active in the anti-abortion effort was arrested for rifling through the doctor's garbage cans at home, Slepian tried to treat the incident lightly. ``They hopefully got the bags full of dirty diapers,'' he joked. He tried to engage his critics through the local newspaper. He told The Buffalo News that abortion protesters should turn their energies to helping women avoid unwanted pregnancies through birth control and counseling. In a letter to the editor he warned that by repeatedly calling him a murderer, his critics were inciting violence. Slepian accepted that opponents of abortion acted out of moral conviction, his friends said, but resented the personal attacks. ``He thought it tended to demonize and dehumanize him and increased the danger,'' said his lawyer, Glenn Edward Murray. So Slepian took a step that few of the nation's beleaguered abortion clinic doctors dared. He insisted that if he tried hard enough, he might cut through the venom. To the dismay of the staff members who feared for his safety, Slepian began about a year ago to stop and chat with protesters he recognized outside the Womenservices abortion clinic in Buffalo, where he worked two days a week. He surprised a gathering of protesters who were preparing for what they euphemistically called a ``house call,'' or demonstration at the doctor's home, and invited the protest's organizer, the Rev. Robert Behn, to breakfast. Their hourlong conversation the next morning was inconclusive, Behn said, dismissing Slepian's gesture as an ``attempt to get people to like him.'' He asked Slepian how performing abortions affected him spiritually. In response, he recalled, the doctor said, ``I'm fine spiritually.'' Slepian, meanwhile, focused more on time away from home with his family. He planned to take a cruise next spring. He bought a time-share apartment near Disney World in Florida. ``He had so many plans,'' said Ellen Fink, a close friend of the couple for 15 years. ``He wasn't done. He wasn't done living yet.'' Still, sometimes during the most casual conversations, a shadow would appear. When his wife gave him a gray African parrot for a birthday gift, Slepian joked that the bird would probably outlive him so he would teach it his eulogy. ``He would talk about the funeral he wanted,'' Mrs. Fink said. ``He said he didn't have a lot of friends and wanted all of them to come in separate cars, one in each car, so he'd have a long procession.'' In the week before his death, Slepian had reasons to be preoccupied with thoughts of mortality. A medical checkup had revealed a blockage of his heart, Mrs. Fink said, recounting a conversation with Mrs. Slepian the day of the slaying. A blockage is a sign of probable coronary artery disease. He was to have more tests the following week. ``I said, `Lynne, just relax, it's going to be OK,''' Mrs. Fink recalled. That same day, the National Abortion Federation sent a fax to the Womenservices clinic warning of a pattern of sniper attacks on abortion doctors that occurred in early November. Marilynne Buckham, the clinic director, sent it to Slepian. ``He definitely took it seriously,'' she recalled. Typically, the doctor did not share any concerns he might have felt. ``It was a normal day,'' said Tammi Latini, his office assistant. ``We were horsing around.' That evening, the Slepians went to synagogue to mark the ninth anniversary of the death of Slepian's father. Shortly after they returned home, a sniper's bullet smashed through the kitchen window, killing Slepian as he chatted with his wife and sons. The protesters returned to the clinic five days later, the first day it reopened. Mrs. Buckham, the director, said Slepian would not have been surprised. They have their routine. So did he. ``He never wanted a day to end on a bad note,'' she said. ``At the end of the day, I would always say, `Thank you for coming.' And he would always turn with a stupid grin and say, `Thanks for having me.''' ||||| The slaying of Dr. Barnett Slepian in his home last week eliminated the mainstay of the only abortion clinic here, but it has not eliminated women's access to abortion. That is because the availability of abortion in the Buffalo area, as in much of the United States, is a complex reality, one affected by class and education, medical training and the personal convictions of individual doctors. Knowledgeable middle-class and affluent women here who find themselves with an unwanted pregnancy can usually obtain an abortion from their private gynecologists, or if a gynecologist has a personal objection to the procedure, through a referral to a colleague. Women who are poor, young or uneducated and have no such regular relationships with doctors have to rely on specialized clinics like the one Slepian worked in, or on hospitals. It is this group _ for whom unplanned pregnancies are far more common than for prosperous women _ that faces a shrinking universe of possibilities as a result of the fear set off by Slepian's killing and the slayings of five other doctors and clinic workers since 1993, medical experts said. ``If you're well off and well connected, you can get your abortion,'' said Dr. Stephen Wear, co-director of the center for clinical ethics at the University of Buffalo, which trains doctors for the Buffalo area's hospitals. ``For everybody else, it's less and less available.'' The number of abortions in the United States has been declining steadily since the first years after the Supreme Court's Roe vs. Wade decision legalized abortion in 1973, according to the Alan Guttmacher Institute, which studies reproductive issues. They now number roughly 1.5 million a year, according to reports by Guttmacher, or 1.4 million, according to the National Right to Life Committee, the nation's largest anti-abortion group, which calculates its estimate partly from the Guttmacher figures. The number of providers who identify themselves as performing abortions as part of their practice is diminishing as well. A 1994 Guttmacher study, the last one published, found that the number had decreased 18 percent between 1982 and 1992, to 2,380 from 2,908. Moreover, the study said, only 12 percent of the nation's residency programs routinely offer training in abortions during the first trimester, though many do offer elective courses. Laura Echevarria, director of media relations for the National Right to Life Committee, contends, however, that most teaching hospitals do train gynecologists in procedures for treating miscarriages that are similar to those used for performing abortions. Only in cosmopolitan and comparatively liberal cities like New York does the availability of abortions continue at a steady level, experts say, though even in these locales there is concern about the decreasing number of young doctors who emerge from residencies fully trained in performing abortions. The Guttmacher Institute, which keeps the nation's most precise statistics, said that in 1992, the last year for which it has figures, there were 142,410 abortions in New York that were done by just 151 providers, including 61 hospitals and 44 clinics. Still, that provider figure greatly understates the number of private doctors who perform them in their offices, medical experts say. ``Many obstetricians and gynecologists in Manhattan provide abortions as part of their palette of services, and have for many years,'' said Dr. Richard Hausknecht, the medical director of Planned Parenthood. ``Rich and middle-class women have always had access to abortions, and they always will.'' The major threat to availability in the city is less a result of anti-abortion violence than of medical training. ``The bottom line is that we're facing an impending shortage of physicians who are adequately trained and willing to do the procedures,'' said Dr. John Choate, chairman of the New York State division of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. But the lack of training programs is also a result of political pressures on hospitals and universities by antagonists of abortion and the same climate of fear. ``Physicians tend to lie low,'' Choate said. ``They don't publicize the fact that they do them. If they do them, they do it quietly out of fear for their practice and for their lives.'' One development on the horizon that is expected to change the outlook for abortions substantially is final federal approval, expected next year, of the RU-486 pill, the drug that ends an early pregnancy without the need for surgery. When the pill was introduced in France and in Edinburgh, Scotland, Hausknecht said, the number of surgical abortions plummeted. ||||| While veterans and civic leaders devote Wednesday's national holiday to honoring fallen soldiers, Remembrance Day has become a chilling vigil for Canadians in the front lines of the abortion-rights movement. There is immediate fear, because an anti-abortion gunman is believed to be at large. And there is long-term anxiety, because even in this country where abortions are legal and publicly funded, women may find access diminishing. There is speculation the sniper's timing is linked to Remembrance Day because some anti-abortion activists use the day to commemorate aborted fetuses. Three times since 1994, a sniper has used this time of year to fire into the home of a Canadian doctor who performs abortion, each time wounding the target. The attacks were spread across Canada _ Ontario, Manitoba and British Columbia. U.S. and Canadian investigators now believe those attacks were linked to two shootings of abortion-providing doctors in upstate New York, including the Oct. 23 slaying of Dr. Barnett Slepian at his home near Buffalo. An American anti-abortion activist, James Kopp, is wanted for questioning about the shootings. Police say they don't know which side of the border he is on, fueling uneasiness at clinics and hospitals throughout Canada. ``You must realize Canada has the largest undefended border in the world,'' said Keith McCaskill, a police inspector in Winnipeg, Manitoba, and spokesman for the investigation. Many women's clinics have tightened security, and doctors who provide abortions have been urged to take precautions. ``I would suggest they be extremely aware of their day-to-day goings on, whether during their business day or after hours,'' said Toronto Detective Rick Stubbings. Across Canada, there have been reports of obstetrician-gynecologists modifying their practices or deciding to stop performing abortions. Some wear bulletproof vests and hang sheets over windows of their homes. Abortion-rights groups say most doctors are not backing down. ``There's a great deal of sadness,'' said Susan Fox, director of a clinic in Edmonton, Alberta, that provides abortions. ``But there's also a feeling of determination that we won't be deterred or scared by these actions.'' Marilyn Wilson, executive director of the Canadian Abortion Rights Action League, sees a long-term threat because fear of violence may intimidate young doctors from entering the field. ``There are almost no doctors who have stopped performing these procedures, even under the current reign of terror,'' she said. ``But young doctors with families wouldn't necessarily want to do this. They may not be willing to put their lives at risk.'' The abortion debate is only one of several factors contributing to a shortage of obstetrician-gynecologists in Canada. The national society that oversees the speciality says there are about 1,400 doctors in the field, a shortfall of 600, and most are in their 50s or 60s. The society says long hours and limits on fees paid by the public health-care system are causing burnout and deterring medical school graduates as they choose a specialty. Another problem is that few Canadian medical schools offer training in abortion. Women in Canada's big cities generally have adequate access to abortions. Those in rural areas often face long journeys, and the province of Prince Edward Island prohibits abortions at its six hospitals, forcing women there to travel to New Brunswick or Nova Scotia. Abortion-rights groups say the situation would improve if the RU-486 abortion pill were available in Canada. No drug company has applied for permission to market the pill, either fearing boycotts or doubting its profitability. The government has been urged to make a public appeal to drug companies, but the health department says this can't be done. ``It would be a conflict of interest,'' said Bonnie Fox-McIntyre, a department spokeswoman. ``As a regulator we have to stay at arm's length, so we can judge an application impartially.'' Abortion was illegal in Canada until 1988. Now there is no abortion law of any sort, about 100,000 abortions are performed annually, and polls indicate roughly three-quarters of Canadians favor pro-choice policies. Yet public support doesn't spare doctors from fear. Dr. Henry Morgentaler, who led efforts to overturn the old abortion law and whose Toronto clinic was bombed in 1993, says he and his colleagues are sacrificing personal freedom as they reluctantly increase security measures. ``Unfortunately, doctors who are committed to providing these services will have to accept a certain diminishment of their enjoyment of life,'' he said. ||||| By outward appearances, Dorothy Hayes' life seems ordinary. She and her family live in a rambling old home on the shore of Lake Ontario, and every morning, she gives her husband, John, a peck on the cheek before he goes to work. She runs errands, like other suburban moms, and spends much of her day taking care of her children. But one thing sets Mrs. Hayes apart from her neighbors. As a devoted opponent of abortion, the 43-year-old mother of nine regularly plays host to a series of traveling speakers, priests and protesters _ many of whom have come to Rochester intent upon spreading the word against abortion and shutting down clinics that provide it. She is one of thousands of people across the country loosely associated with anti-abortion groups like the Lambs of Christ who have opened their homes to the Lambs' founder, the Rev. Norman Weslin, and other itinerant demonstrators. While many _ including Mrs. Hayes _ disavow violent tactics, supporters of abortion rights say that people like her bear some responsibility when the protesters they help blockade clinics or threaten doctors. ``These people who provide Father Weslin with food and shelter when he comes into town to close the clinics are not innocent,'' said Ann Glazier, the director of clinic defense for the Planned Parenthood Federation. ``It's just not credible to say they aren't part of the extremist activity that is taking place at these clinics. They are still guilty of interfering with women's access.'' But Mary Quinn, a local organizer for the Lambs of Christ who also offers her home to protesters, sees matters in a differing light. ``Taking people in like this is an act of Christian charity,'' Mrs. Quinn said. `People who travel around the country doing this work are taken in by those of us that who don't want to lose their stupid houses. We take in these people because they are willing to make the sacrifice.'' Members of the Lambs of Christ have been persistent figures in protests at the Buffalo women's clinic where Dr. Barnett Slepian worked before he was shot to death last month. Although no suspect has been identified in the shooting or in several similar attacks in New York and Canada over the past several years, officials are looking to question a Vermont man whose car was seen near Dr. Slepian's home. That man, James Charles Kopp, has participated in abortion protests for more than a decade, and often was a house guest of other members of the Lambs of Christ. While Mrs. Hayes says she would never so much as obstruct a clinic's door, some of those to whom she has given refuge have no qualms about doing so. Weslin, the leader of the Lambs of Christ, is one of those who has benefited from Mrs. Hayes' hospitality, a modern version of the generosity that Christ and the Apostles knew well. He prides himself on being arrested more than 60 times during protests in front of medical clinics. And throughout the 1980s and early '90s, he was active in clinic ``rescues,'' in which protesters tried physically to restrain patients trying to enter clinics. Weslin stayed at Mrs. Hayes' home only once, beginning in May 1996 when he first came to speak at local churches about the anti-abortion movement. But during a stay that lasted several months, he was arrested on Federal charges of blocking access to a Rochester health clinic where abortions were performed. He was later convicted and served two and a half months in prison. During the protest outside the clinic, he and several other protesters locked themselves in a homemade contraption called ``the oven,'' made of cement and iron. It took police officers several hours to lug the device to a horse trailer that carted it off. At the same protest, one man glued his head to a lock on a gate surrounding the clinic, a move some protesters later said was an accident. Abortion opponents like Mrs. Hayes and Mrs. Quinn speak of attending peaceful observances at abortion clinics and offering prayers for the unborn. They talk about counseling women about alternatives to abortion at Roman Catholic ``pregnancy centers,'' and their support of anti-abortion candidates. But they also say they saw nothing wrong with Weslin trying to block access to clinics. They describe the activity as peaceful resistance meant to stop what they see as murders. Weslin and the other house guests of Mrs. Hayes and Mrs. Quinn come recommended from friends and members of local Catholic churches, they said, adding that most are speakers at local churches or anti-abortion events. And although they say they would never take into their homes a stranger wanted by the FBI, like Kopp, they concede that they sometimes know little about their guests. But Mrs. Hayes and Mrs. Quinn say they know a lot about Weslin. An Army veteran, he has been a leader of the anti-abortion movement for more than 25 years, they say, and founded a home for unwed mothers. Mrs. Hayes said that when she met him, it was obvious he was a man of peace who ``had a tremendous devotion to the Blessed Mother and basically recognized that we are helpless lambs.'' Barbara Fredericks, another local abortion opponent who developed ties to the Lambs after Weslin came to town, added that the priest epitomized a man of God. ``I just knew when I looked at his holy shoes and his simple coat that had been mended 50 times,'' she said. ``He was humble, a man who was doing this for a higher purpose, trying to save people through sacrifice and prayer.'' opp also has robust defenders among the people who housed him as he rode about the country from protest to protest. E. Kenny, 20, said that his parents housed Kopp in their St. Albans, Vt., home for two years after he spoke at their local church in 1988. During Kopp's stay, he was a pleasure, Kenny said, always helping around the house. ``He was a nice guy, kind of like an uncle to us,'' Kenny said. ``He'd sit around and play video games with us and make us model planes out of wood.'' Like Weslin, Kopp was consumed by a need to fight abortion and often talked about its evils, Kenny said, adding that Kopp was a gentle man who wanted to become a Catholic priest. ``He was always in a good mood,'' Kenny said. ``He never did anything violent at all.'' Both Kopp and Weslin have been arrested repeatedly during abortion protests. The men have moved in the same circles and at times found themselves arrested at the same events. Mrs. Quinn said that Weslin told her in a recent telephone conversation that he knew Kopp. Weslin could not be reached for comment, but it is clear that the two men have encountered each other. Both faced misdemeanor charges after blocking a Burlington, Vt., health clinic in 1990 that Kopp called ``the mill.'' And they spent time in the same jail in Atlanta in 1988 after a clinic protest. Slepian's death has abortion opponents like Mrs. Hayes and Mrs. Quinn worried, both about how the killing is being portrayed in the media and what it will do to membership in groups like the Lambs of Christ. ``For a long time, you felt like the voice in the desert that wasn't being heard,'' Mrs. Hayes said. ``And then there was this horrible tragedy of this doctor's death becoming the face of the movement. ``We're about saving lives,'' she said. The FBI has not talked to Mrs. Hayes, but Kenny said that agents have spoken to him. The Justice Department says that a Federal task force set up this week to investigate the killing of Slepian is looking for evidence connecting anti-abortion violence at various clinics. ``It's fair to say that when investigating these events, we will look at any connection between individuals engaged in criminal conduct,'' Myron Marlin, a spokesman for the department, said. Many local Catholics associated with the Lambs of Christ have tried to distance themselves from the killing of Slepian. They are mailing literature saying that the killer does not represent their movement. In addition, some people associated with the Lambs are offering other possible explanations for the killing. Some say they believe that the killer might have been someone overcome by grief after a personal experience with abortion. Others wondered whether the shooter had tried to wound the doctor to scare him or prevent him from performing more abortions. The Lambs also wonder whether abortionist opponents are being blamed for a shooting committed by a disgruntled patient. One idea gaining currency among the Lambs, and prominently displayed on their Web site, suggests that the killing was the result of a plot by abortion supporters to discredit abortion opponents just before last week's elections. Mrs. Hayes says she doesn't know the truth. ``There are wackos who travel around and they may be in front of the clinic because we are drawn to the same place,'' she said. ``But you don't know everyone who shows up and you don't turn to the person next to you and tell them they don't belong there.'' Mrs. Fredericks said that anyone who would shoot a doctor who provides abortions was someone ``who had snapped, perhaps because of the importance of the situation.'' Members of the Lambs of Christ and other opponents of abortion in Rochester wonder whether the killing of Slepian will hinder their efforts. When Weslin first arrived two years ago, he brought new focus to a group that often had done little more than counsel pregnant women and set up booths on college campuses, they said. ``In many cities, they have a priest for life coordinating and leading rosary marches'' against abortion, Mrs. Quinn said. ``But with Father Weslin coming here, we could finally come together and feel like we were doing something sacrificial as a group.'' Mrs. Hayes said that she felt the first pull of the movement in the early 1980s, when she heard women speak about ``choice'' in regard to abortion. Then she saw ``Silent Scream,'' a well-known anti-abortion film that purports to show the footage of an abortion. ``What I saw was the end of life,'' she said. She began to volunteer at a Catholic pregnancy center where she encouraged women ``not to kill their child.'' She also began to house unwed mothers and went to stand vigil outside local clinics where abortions were performed. Mrs. Hayes looked at her 3-month-old daughter, Bernadette, then pointed to the prenatal image of the infant, a sonogram taken at 13 weeks that she keeps on her refrigerator door. She described what could have been her baby's fate, had she been someone else's child. ``Two pounds and two inches ago, she could have been a partial-birth abortion,'' Mrs. Hayes said, referring to a controversial late-term abortion procedure. ``They have the hardest time getting the shoulders out, so they can get to the head and puncture it. ``It's brutal, but what do you expect when the purpose is a dead baby? There's no question that these doctors are trying to murder a child.'' ||||| On the eve of a holiday that has been linked to antiabortion violence, the authorities on Tuesday were investigating whether a picture of an aborted fetus sent to a Canadian newspaper was connected to last month's fatal shooting of a Buffalo, N.Y. doctor who provided abortions or four similar attacks in western New York and Canada since 1994. The newspaper, the Hamilton (Ontario) Spectator, has received five similar packages in the last year, some containing veiled threats and several delivered by a man who employees said resembled James Charles Kopp, who is wanted for questioning as a witness about the Oct. 23 slaying of Dr. Barnett Slepian. Five days after the shooting, the Spectator received a package containing an antiabortion flier with biographical information about Slepian, including a photograph of him that had been crossed out. ``It certainly causes us to be more interested than ever in speaking to Kopp,'' said Inspector Keith McKaskill of the Winnipeg Police Department, a spokesman for the Canada-United States task force investigating the five shootings. Even as they searched for Kopp, federal officials were also looking into three letters that were received Monday by Catholic and antiabortion organizations in Buffalo, Indianapolis and Chicago. Those letters, saying they contained the deadly anthrax bacteria, came 10 days after eight similar threats to clinics that provide abortions. All the letters appear to be hoaxes, and it remains unclear whether they were connected to any of the five shootings. Kopp is not a suspect in the shootings. An itinerant antiabortion activist whose last known address is in Vermont, he is the subject of warrants on both sides of the border. In Canada, he is suspected of administrative violations of immigration law; in the United States, he is wanted as a material witness in the Slepian case. ||||| James Kopp, the man the FBI is seeking as a material witness in the sniper slaying of Dr. Barnett Slepian, is known to abortion rights leaders as an aggressive anti-abortion protester, and law enforcement officials say he has been arrested several times in demonstrations at abortion clinics. The portrait that emerges of Kopp, 44, from police records, studies by researchers on right-wing movements, newspaper accounts of protests, and abortion rights advocates, is that of an itinerant protester, moving about the country in a series of increasingly abrasive protests at abortion clinics. Federal law enforcement officials say he is not currently a suspect in the Slepian shooting, and there was no indication Wednesday that he had been arrested for any violent acts. At several abortion protests, he was charged with trespassing or resisting arrest, according to news accounts. One of his arrests was in Atlanta during Operation Rescue's huge anti-abortion protests there in 1988. While he was in an Atlanta jail, Kopp was given the nickname Atomic Dog, which investigators contend links him to the violent fringe of the anti-abortion movement, responsible for a series of bombings and arsons and seven murders of abortion providers like Slepian over the last five years. Responsibility for some of the violence _ like the bombing of an abortion clinic in Birmingham, Ala., earlier this year, in which an off-duty policeman was killed _ has been claimed in notes signed by a shadowy ``Army of God.'' An underground manual issued in the name of the Army of God, which describes methods for attacking abortion clinics, including how to make homemade C-4 plastic explosives, begins with a tribute, by nickname, of a clandestine band pledged to stop abortions. The first name under this ``Special Thanks'' section is Atomic Dog. The Atlanta police, after searching the hundreds of arrest records of the protesters from the summer of 1988, confirmed Wednesday night that the date of birth and Social Security number of the James Kopp arrested then matched those given out Wednesday by the FBI task force in Buffalo investigating the murder of Slepian, who was gunned down through the window if his home in suburban Amherst on Oct. 23. At the nondescript frame house in St. Albans, Vt., that the FBI gave as Kopp's last known address, the current resident, who gave his name only as E. Kenny, 20, a shipping clerk, remembered Kopp well. He lived there for part of 1990 as the guest of Kenny's parents, who were active in the anti-abortion movement, among a group of protesters who tried to shut down two abortion clinics in Burlington in stubborn demonstrations that year. Kenny remembered Kopp as a ``really nice guy,'' who did chores around the place but paid no rent to the parents. He sometimes made wooden toys or played video games with Kenny, then a child. ``But the focus of his life was the anti-abortion movement,'' Kenny recalled. ``He was known among these people as Atomic Dog. It wasn't like a name that he had to go to the store or something. But if you knew anything about him, that's what you called him.'' Roughly 95 people were arrested during the protests, according to newspaper accounts at the time. ``There were many, many arrests,'' recalled Allie Stickney, the president of Planned Parenthood of Northern New England. ``It was very big for Vermont. There were Kryptonite locks and leaflets from the Army of God and the Lambs of Christ. It was clearly a highly organized blockade.'' According to newspaper accounts, Kopp was arrested outside a clinic in Levittown, Long Island, in 1991. The protests in Atlanta in 1998 appeared to be a turning point for a hard-core group of protesters. The Atlanta police cracked down hard and carted hundreds of demonstrators off to an isolated prison dormitory the called ``the farm.'' Operation Rescue had mounted a series of blockades to close down abortion clinics in New York and Philadelphia that spring. Atlanta was their high point, but in the face of the tough arrest policy, the movement faltered, split apart and stalled. ``It was a traumatic, life-changing experience,'' said Frederick Clarkson, author of ``Eternal Hostility,'' a book on the anti-abortion movement, adding that by 1993 with the shooting of Dr. David Gunn, an abortion provider in Florida, some of those in the Atlanta jail became the nucleus of a group signing a ``justifiable homicide'' statement that declared that the use of force was warranted to ``defend the life of an unborn child.'' ||||| In the aftermath of last month's deadly sniper attack on an obstetrician in upstate New York, Attorney General Janet Reno announced last week that she was setting up a new investigative unit to examine the possibility that the doctor was the victim of a broader anti-abortion plot. The unit, the National Clinic Violence Task Force, will include a dozen Justice Department lawyers and involve several law-enforcement agencies. But the main work of looking into the shooting of Dr. Barnett Slepian in his suburban Buffalo home and how it fits a larger pattern of organized violence will be done by the FBI, which has jurisdiction over domestic terrorism. For many in the FBI, that's a problem. In contrast to the old image of gung-ho FBI agents turning their surveillance machinery on political groups, a number of senior FBI agents privately expressed misgivings about the attorney general's latest task force, the second she has ordered to begin a broad investigation into a conspiracy involving anti-abortion violence. FBI officials fear that expanding the investigation could drive the agency over the ill-defined boundary that separates inquiries into criminal activity from those into political causes and unpopular ideas. Today's agents are eager to disassociate themselves from the old J. Edgar Hoover days of trampling the civil rights of political dissidents in the guise of serious investigations. They do not want the agency drawn into the middle of the bitter ideological war between anti-abortion groups and abortion rights advocates, who have long asserted the existence of an organized campaign against clinics and doctors. Many of those calling for government help were once themselves subjects of FBI interest as anti-war and civil rights activists. Senior agency officials, including Director Louis Freeh, were starting their careers in the early 1970s and watched in dismay as the FBI was shaken by revelations about Cointelpro, the counterintelligence program that allowed agents to spy on, burgle, wiretap and infiltrate anti-war and civil rights groups like Students for a Democratic Society and the Student Nonviolence Coordinating Committee. Some officials are dubious that a conspiracy exists to kill doctors who perform abortions. They came up empty handed when Reno ordered the first federal inquiry in 1994 after the killing of a Florida doctor and his bodyguard. The Justice Department conducted a two-year grand jury investigation; agents pursued some anti-abortion activists using surveillance teams. But investigators never found a specific plot against abortion clinics and staff members. Violence at abortion clinics is only part of the problem. The FBI has in recent years found itself thrown into a minefield of politically tinged cases involving the volatile worlds of anti-government militias, environmental and Christian extremists, white separatists, animal rights activists and Islamic fundamentalists. ``The FBI is very quick to jump from investigating crime to investigating political association,'' said David Cole, a law professor at Georgetown University. ``When you move from investigating crimes to investigating groups, that all-important nexus to criminal conduct gets lost, the focus gets broader and broader and you start sweeping in all kinds of lawful political activity.'' In response to terrorist attacks like the bombings of the World Trade Center in 1993, the Oklahoma City federal building in 1995 and the Olympic park in Atlanta in 1996, the agency has increased efforts to deter such incidents in a major prevention program. In such cases, the Justice Department, the FBI and other law enforcement agencies said they operate under domestic security guidelines that require investigators to find a ``reasonable indication'' that a group is planning to break the law before they can open an inquiry into an organization. Before the authorities can use such intrusive tactics as wiretapping or property searches, they must have specific evidence. Yet FBI agents throughout the country have quietly evaluated the threat posed by a variety of extremist groups through its links to local authorities and informal interviews with the leaders of some groups. Their conclusion is that most of these groups pose little real danger. Much more difficult to investigate are lone terrorists inflamed by the oratory of extremist ideology but who belong to no group, drifting along society's frayed margins, ``off the grid,'' as some agents describe it, without the usual ties to family, friends or work. The profile fits Eric Robert Rudolph, the fugitive wanted for bombings at the Atlanta Olympics, a gay nightclub and two abortion clinics. He has kept his beliefs mostly to himself, although acquaintances hint that he was familiar with religious extremism and hate groups. In contrast, James Charles Kopp, who is being sought as a material witness in the killing of Slepian, left a trail of clues about his motives. He was an early follower of Randall Terry, a leader of Operation Rescue. Later, Kopp was associated with the Lambs of Christ, an another militant anti-abortion group. One law-enforcement official said that the government should do what it does best. ``We should investigate violations,'' he said. ``We shouldn't investigate groups.'' ||||| In July 1988, when Randall Terry drove through the night from his home in Binghamton, N.Y., to Atlanta to start the series of anti-abortion protests that would finally put his new hard-line group, Operation Rescue, onto America's front pages, James Charles Kopp was in the van riding alongside him, according to former leaders of Operation Rescue who spoke on the condition of anonymity. And, those people say, when Terry was arrested on the first day of Operation Rescue's ``Siege of Atlanta,'' Kopp followed him into jail. Along with more than one hundred other Operation Rescue members, according to some people who were there, Kopp remained in jail for 40 days and adhered to Terry's orders not to give a real name to the police or courts. After his release, Kopp returned to Operation Rescue's Binghamton headquarters, and was there working alongside Terry as the group's power and influence in the anti-abortion movement surged in late 1988 and 1989, according to the former leaders of Operation Rescue. Now, Kopp is being sought by federal and local law enforcement authorities for questioning as a material witness in the murder of an obstetrician who performed abortions in the Buffalo region. The authorities also say he may have information that will help solve four other sniper attacks on doctors who performed abortions in Canada and upstate New York. Some abortion-rights groups are seizing on Kopp's role in Operation Rescue to raise new questions about the connections between the recent anti-abortion violence and the hard-line anti-abortion protest groups that burst onto the national scene in the late 1980s. For years, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Justice Department have looked in vain for evidence to determine whether a national conspiracy might be behind a series of clinic bombings and shootings of doctors and other clinic staff members that began in the early 1990s. A federal grand jury in Alexandria, Va., that looked into conspiracy allegations was ultimately disbanded without finding a national underground. But some federal law enforcement officials say they hope that Kopp may help provide such a link. In fact, the announcement that law enforcement officials are looking for him has been made as Attorney General Janet Reno has prepared to revive an interagency task force to look once again for possible conspiracies behind anti-abortion crimes. Federal law enforcement officials and the authorities say Kopp is not now a suspect in the sniper attack on Oct. 23 that killed Dr. Barnett A. Slepian near Buffalo. But they say Kopp's car was seen near Slepian's home in Amherst, N.Y. in the weeks before the doctor was shot. One day after issuing a warrant for Kopp's arrest as a material witness, law enforcement officials from at least 10 agencies spanning the United States and Canadian border still had not located Kopp Thursday. But law enforcement officials said they were pursuing many tips, including about 400 that have poured into the FBI's information line: (800) 281-1184. The police have gone through photographs of abortion protesters and clinic workers in Buffalo and around the country, and they are also reviewing hundreds of hours of videotapes of demonstrations in search of Kopp's face. At this point, officials consider the shooting of Slepian to be connected to three attacks in Canada and one in Rochester on doctors who provide abortions. The five attacks, all since 1994, occurred in the weeks leading up to Nov. 11, Veterans Day _ called Remembrance Day in Canada _ a holiday that has become important to anti-abortion activists. But the attacks were spread over four years and 3,000 miles, from Vancouver, British Columbia, to Buffalo. As is the case with many early veterans of Operation Rescue, Kopp was transformed into a hard-core anti-abortion militant in jail in Atlanta in 1988, according to many people who were in jail with him who insisted on anonymity.

On Oct. 23, 1998, a sniper killed Dr. Barnet Slepian, a mainstay in the last abortion clinic in the Buffalo area and one of only a few doctors performing the procedure in the face of protesters and threats. Many of the protesters are itinerants like Rev. Norman Weslin, founder of the anti-abortion group Lambs of Christ, who travel about spreading their message and shutting down clinics. Another itinerant demonstrator, James Charles Kopp, is wanted by the FBI as a material witness in the Slepian murder. In addition to anti-abortion violence, a shortage of doctors who are trained and willing to do the procedures imperil their widespread availability.

In a decision that will almost certainly lead to the first work stoppage in National Basketball Association history, the league Monday announced the cancellation of all 114 preseason games. Citing stalled negotiations with the Players Association over a new collective bargaining agreement, league officials said they would decide next week whether to cancel the first week of regular season games. While the decision had been expected for 10 days, it nonetheless sent a strong signal that the owners and players will probably be willing to cancel at least part of the regular season in order to settle their labor dispute. Both sides agree that it would take at least three weeks to hold abbreviated training camps and sign over 200 free agents to new contracts. Privately, officials on both sides do not believe the season will start as scheduled on Nov. 3 or even before December. Unlike Major League Baseball, the National Football League and the National Hockey League, the NBA has never lost a regular-season game to labor strife. ``Since we're not even negotiating, you have to conclude it's very likely that we're going miss some part of the regular season,'' deputy commissioner Russ Granik said Monday night. ``We'll try and defer any decisions until the last minute, but right now it does not look good.'' The two sides will meet on Thursday _ their first official bargaining session since Aug. 6. Commissioner David Stern and a group of owners walked out of a meeting after dismissing the merits of a new proposal from the players. Neither Granik nor players association executive director Billy Hunter sounded as if this week's meeting would go a long way toward the signing of a new agreement _ the precursor to playing again. ``I don't think you have any choice but to miss games at this point,'' Hunter said. ``In fact, I think the they've intended it all along. They've locked us out, they've refused to negotiate and they've given us a proposal that's ludicrous.'' Not only are both sides still awaiting the outcome of an arbitration decision that is due before Oct. 18 - the Fordham Law School dean John Feerick will rule whether or not more than 200 players with $800 million in guaranteed contracts should be paid during the lockout _ but the owners and players also are making time to win public opinion before they test their fans' loyalties by canceling games. Monday in 11 cities throughout the country, the players are holding make-shift press conferences at training-camp venues, NBA arenas and gymnasiums. Patrick Ewing, the union president, and several teammates will speak at SUNY-Purchase in Purchase, N.Y., where the Knicks train during the season. With training camp originally scheduled to open on Oct. 6, the message from the players is clear: if the owners would call an end to the lockout, we would be ready to play today. About 100 players are expected to attend, speak and sign autographs for fans afterward. ``I wish they would put their energies into trying to negotiate a deal rather than the various other things that they've been doing,'' Granik said. The dispute is essentially over how the owners and players will judiciously divvy up $2 billion in income. It began last year with the contention by the owners that their employees were receiving more than their fair share of the pot. The owners were allowed to terminate the current agreement because of a clause that enabled them to do so after player salaries reached 53.8 percent of total basketball-related income. The owners say that figure is currently hovering around 57.1 percent. Though many economic issues need to be resolved, the main point of contention since the labor agreement expired and the owners declared a lockout on July 1 has been a clause which allows teams to pay their own free agents whatever they want, regardless of salary-cap rules governing the NBA's 29 teams. Called the Larry Bird exception, it was created to allow the Hall of Fame Boston Celtics forward to re-sign with the Celtics near the end of his career. Michael Jordan exercised the clause the last two years with the Chicago Bulls, earning more than $30 million per season _ figures more than $5 million more what a team is allowed to spend on all its players. But with exorbitant salaries paid to several unproven stars over the last few years and $100 million deals sprouting up routinely, the owners are determined to swing the income pendulum back toward themselves by enforcing a restricted salary cap _ a hard cap _ and putting a ceiling on how much one player could earn. ``Last year, the players received about $1 billion dollars in salaries and benefits and we have made proposals that are guaranteed to increase that number by 20 percent over the next four years,'' Granik said in a prepared statement. ``Our proposals would result in an average player salary of more than $3.1 million and a minimum salary for 10-year veterans of $750,000. Unfortunately, the union leadership has been unwilling to give any serious consideration to what we have offered.'' Hunter labeled those claims as optimistic projections, and shot down a number of new proposals presented to the players on Sept. 25. ``If they had left the current deal in place, we would have gotten much of that anyway,'' he added. ``All we're saying is, we're not in position to accept a hard cap.'' Monday's decision to cancel the preseason came less than two weeks after the NBA indefinitely postponed training camp and canceled the first week of exhibition games. Through tickets sales alone, Granik estimated that losing the exhibition season would cost the league between $35 million and $40 million. Decisions about the cancellations of regular season games are expected to be made next week, he added. A league official said the games would be canceled in blocks of one or two weeks, depending upon circumstances regarding negotiations. Thursday's bargaining session has suddenly become the last hope at starting the season on time. ``Hurdles could be overcome very quickly, but I have no reason to believe they will on Thursday,'' Granik said. Added Hunter: ``Of course they don't expect much to get done. When Russ and David decide the negotiations are going to be real and substantive, then something will happen. What they're banking on now is that the players are going to miss paychecks and cave in November. It's as if they've ingested something that has to pass. And once it passes, then they'll negotiate.'' ||||| The first substantive talks in more than two months between opposing sides of the National Basketball Association's labor dispute came and went Thursday without a hint of a settlement. Still, a five-hour meeting that was described as cordial by the league and ``almost like two bulls letting off a little steam'' by the players association produced another scheduled round of talks next Tuesday. Barring a major compromise, that will not be enough time to preserve a full season and prevent the league from losing its first regular-season games to labor strife in November. Russ Granik, the NBA's deputy commissioner, said the league would wait until after next week's meeting before deciding to cancel regular-season games. He also discussed the possibility of a significantly shortened season. ``We haven't made a determination that you need this exact number of games in order to have a representative season,'' Granik said. ``But we recognize that beyond a certain point we can't possibly sell to our fans that we're having an NBA season. ``Whether's that 60 games, 50 games or 49 or 53, we're not there yet. We have a few months before we have to face that decision.'' Perhaps the only progress involved Thursday in the conference room of a midtown Manhattan hotel was a question-and-answer session over the league's latest proposal to the players. Patrick Ewing, the union president, and vice presidents Herb Williams and Dikembe Mutombo attended the meeting with the union's executive director, Billy Hunter, and union lawyers. No owners were present, but Granik, Commissioner David Stern and the league's lawyers spent most of the day explaining the intricacies of a two-week-old proposal to the players. At one point before the two parties broke for lunch, Stern and Hunter raised their voices and accused each other of handling their constituencies poorly, a participant in the meeting said. But the two were seen shaking hands and laughing after the meeting concluded shortly after 3 p.m. ``There was some venting from both sides,'' Hunter said. ``We've been placid and very respectful. Today, we took the coats off and we were inclined to take the gloves off a little bit. Having done that, I think it kind of loosened up both sides.'' Hunter added: ``Did anybody blink today? They're sort of look at us for any kind of nuance they can find during the course of negotiations that might, in some way or another, give some indication that while we're mouthing one thing we might be open to something else. We're looking at their body language, too. I don't think that they're ready to make a deal.'' The last formal meeting between both sides on Aug. 6 ended when Stern and the owners abruptly marched out after they had received a proposal from the players. ||||| As labor battles go, the current one between the National Basketball Association and its players is weird even by sports standards. There is a real possibility that most, if not all, of the coming season will be canceled. In this union battle it is the interests of the best paid, not those who make union scale, that are dominating the discussion. And here it is some of the workers, not the management, who are considering trying to make the union disappear. The current arrangement has produced an unbalanced pay scale of immense proportions. Last year more players than ever before received the union minimum, then $242,000 for rookies or $272,000 for veterans. The number of players making $1 million to $2 million a year _ the middle class, in NBA terms _ fell sharply. But Michael Jordan made $33 million. This should not be a surprise. Sports is an entertainment business, not unlike movies. Big stars get millions, while most get union scale. Over the years, NBA efforts to stem the rise of salaries have failed. The most important loophole in its salary cap lets a team sign its own free agent for whatever it is willing to pay. When that was adopted, it was assumed that no team would pay a lot more than a rival could pay. But it has not worked out that way. In the current negotiation, the league has offered to guarantee that its payroll will rise 20 percent over the next four years, from $1 billion to $1.2 billion, and says it is open to proposals to split that money any way the players want, whether by raising the minimum salary or guaranteeing raises for veterans. The union says it is worried about that middle class, but seems determined to preserve the free market. The league got its broadcasters, NBC and Time Warner's cable channels, to agree to pay this year's television fees whether or not there are any games to broadcast. (They will be paid back in later years, either through reduced fees or extra games to show.) Owners hoped the players would think management was willing to wait them out, and come to terms with only a small part of the season canceled. But the union is acting unhurried. It turned aside requests for negotiations this week, saying the players had to meet first. Then there is the issue of union suicide, a tactic that was rejected by the players in 1995. The idea is that if the players had no union, it would be illegal under antitrust laws for the owners to collude. The sky would be the limit. That tactic might fail. The courts could reject a union decertification vote as a sham, and in any case some players may fear that teams would feel free to offer less than the old union minimum. But if the players go that route, it could be a long time before real negotiations get going. Billy Hunter, the union's executive director, warned the owners this week that a prolonged lockout could destroy the league's popularity. That was what all the seers said four years ago, when baseball's World Series was canceled by labor troubles. But fan memories are relatively short, and now baseball seems more popular than ever. With that in mind, both owners and players may choose to battle on for months. ||||| In a critical ruling for the North American National Basketball Association and the players' union, arbitrator John Feerick decides Monday whether more than 200 players with guaranteed contracts should be paid during the lockout. If the players win, the owners will be liable for about dlrs 800 million in guaranteed salaries, although they have vowed to appeal if they lose. The league already has sued the players over Feerick's jurisdiction. ``If we win, I think it just emboldens the spirit and resolve of the players,'' union director Billy Hunter said. ``But I don't think there will be anybody celebrating because there's no guarantee that it will end the lockout. ``It only means they have to pay some 200 players, and they've indicated to us their intent to file an immediate appeal and take it as far as they have to in order to avoid payment. ``So even if he does rule in our favor, at most it's a hollow victory. The players aren't going to get paid Nov. 15 in any circumstance,'' Hunter said. If the owners win, it will remove the last wild card the players had been holding. The sides have not negotiated since last Tuesday, when the union proposed a superstar tax on the highest contracts. The league made a counterproposal Friday, asking that the tax be imposed with a much lower threshold. Hunter dismissed the league's latest proposal on Friday afternoon, then said both sides would be best served by awaiting Feerick's ruling. It's unlikely any negotiations will be held this week, since the union is holding a meeting for all NBA players and the agents advisory committee in Las Vegas from Wednesday through Friday. ``We've got to get a sense of where the players are, what they consider to be reasonable and what they're willing to do in order to get the season to commence,'' Hunter said. The union filed a grievance with Feerick before the lockout was imposed July 1 over the owners' announcement June 29 that they would not honor guaranteed deals. In a six-day hearing over the summer, the union argued that owners should have protected themselves from being liable for guaranteed salaries during a work stoppage by inserting lockout language into the standard player contract. The Sacramento Kings inserted a lockout clause into center Olden Polynice's contract in 1994, and it was approved by the league. The union used the existence of that clause to argue that all the other teams should have protected themselves similarly. Most players are due to receive their first paychecks Nov. 15, although a dozen or so had clauses entitling them to be paid over the summer. None has received a paycheck. The NBA argued that a tenet of labor law allows employers to withhold pay from employees during a lockout. The league also called former union director Simon Gourdine to testify, but Feerick upheld union objections and prohibited Gourdine from saying whether it was his understanding when he negotiated the old labor agreement in 1995 that players would not be paid if the owners chose to reopen the agreement and impose a lockout. ||||| In a critical ruling for the North American National Basketball Association and the players' union, arbitrator John Feerick decides Monday whether more than 200 players with guaranteed contracts should be paid during the lockout. If the players win, the owners will be liable for about dlrs 800 million in guaranteed salaries, although they have vowed to appeal if they lose. The league already has sued the players over Feerick's jurisdiction. ``If we win, I think it just emboldens the spirit and resolve of the players,'' union director Billy Hunter said. ``But I don't think there will be anybody celebrating because there's no guarantee that it will end the lockout. ``It only means they have to pay some 200 players, and they've indicated to us their intent to file an immediate appeal and take it as far as they have to in order to avoid payment. ``So even if he does rule in our favor, at most it's a hollow victory. The players aren't going to get paid Nov. 15 in any circumstance,'' Hunter said. If the owners win, it will remove the last wild card the players had been holding. The sides have not negotiated since last Tuesday, when the union proposed a superstar tax on the highest contracts. The league made a counterproposal Friday, asking that the tax be imposed with a much lower threshold. Hunter dismissed the league's latest proposal on Friday afternoon, then said both sides would be best served by awaiting Feerick's ruling. It's unlikely any negotiations will be held this week, since the union is holding a meeting for all NBA players and the agents advisory committee in Las Vegas from Wednesday through Friday. ``We've got to get a sense of where the players are, what they consider to be reasonable and what they're willing to do in order to get the season to commence,'' Hunter said. The union filed a grievance with Feerick before the lockout was imposed July 1 over the owners' announcement June 29 that they would not honor guaranteed deals. In a six-day hearing over the summer, the union argued that owners should have protected themselves from being liable for guaranteed salaries during a work stoppage by inserting lockout language into the standard player contract. The Sacramento Kings inserted a lockout clause into center Olden Polynice's contract in 1994, and it was approved by the league. The union used the existence of that clause to argue that all the other teams should have protected themselves similarly. Most players are due to receive their first paychecks Nov. 15, although a dozen or so had clauses entitling them to be paid over the summer. None has received a paycheck. The NBA argued that a tenet of labor law allows employers to withhold pay from employees during a lockout. The league also called former union director Simon Gourdine to testify. He said it was his understanding when he negotiated the old labor agreement in 1995 that players would not be paid if the owners chose to reopen the agreement and impose a lockout. ||||| The National Basketball Association, embroiled in a labor dispute with its players, Tuesday canceled the first two weeks of the 1998-99 season. It is the first time in the league's 51-year history that it will lose regular-season games. The NBA's deputy commissioner, Russ Granik, announced the cancellation after nearly three and a half hours of meetings concluded at a Manhattan hotel. The decision to cancel 99 games between Nov. 3 and Nov. 16 came after the players association proposed the implementation of a tax system instead of a hard salary cap, a proposal the owners said they would respond to by Friday. ``We tried our best today to try to do what was possible to salvage the season,'' said Alonzo Mourning, the Miami Heat center. ``Unfortunately, it didn't work out.'' After 35,001 games without a blemish, the NBA now joins the National Hockey League, the National Football League and Major League Baseball in having lost games to a labor dispute. Taking into account that a three- to four-week period would be needed for training camp and free-agent signings before the season starts, the league said it would decide in two weeks whether to make further cancellations. ``I'm very sad and disappointed,'' said the NBA commissioner, David Stern. ``I consider it to be a collective failure, but I honestly don't know what else we could have done. I do things that I like to think are in the best interests of the game. And I believe this is.'' The decision came after what both sides agreed were the most substantive talks since the owners imposed a lockout on the player July 1. Seventeen players, including union president Patrick Ewing and vice presidents Mitch Richmond, Herb Williams, Dikemebe Mutombo and Ty Corbin, attended the meeting along with Stern, Granik and five members of the ownership committee _ Madison Square Garden president Dave Checketts and owners Abe Pollin of Washington, Gordon Gund of Cleveland, Les Alexander of Houston and Jerry Colangelo of Phoenix. The talks featured what the players association implied were a bevy concessions made to the owners that they felt would accommodate the league's desire to swing the revenue pendulum back toward the owners. The dispute involves the distribution of approximately $2 billion in league-wide income. The main sticking point has been the owners' insistence on a salary cap without exceptions, the implementation of which they believe would bring player salaries' in line with revenue growth. While the players did not discuss the elimination of the Larry Bird exception _ a clause that allows a player to secure any amount of money he wants in re-signing with his current team _ they did address the exception in their taxation proposal. The main points were as follows: _ A 50 percent tax would be imposed on salary earned above $18 million, a clause that would affect only a few players who exercised their Bird rights. For example, if a player made $20 million, the team would be forced to put $1 million into a fund that would most likely be distributed to low-revenue teams. ``There could be provisions made for some players,'' said Jeffrey Kessler, the chief outside counsel for the union. ``We don't want to do anything that would encourage Chicago from getting Michael Jordan back. And I think the league feels the same way.'' The proposal is similar to the luxury tax proposed by the union in 1995 during negotiations, but it would not be nearly as liberal. _ A salary cap credit would go into effect if the league pays out more than 63 percent of revenues in salary. Whatever figure over that number reduces the salary cap the next year. If the figure was $29 million over the salary cap, then the 29 teams would work with a salary cap $1 million less than the previous season. But the players would have an assurance that the salary cap would go up at least $2 million before the credit goes into effect. _ Also, if the 63-percent threshold is met, a reduction of annual 20 percent raises would take effect for multi-year contracts. Players would either get raises of 10 percent or the rate of growth in league revenues. The union said this clearly addresses the league's desire to bring salaries in line with revenues. Since the owners re-opened the current agreement because 57.1 percent of revenue was going toward salaries, the 63-percent figure would probably have to come down substantially for the owners to agree to such a proposal. _ Teams would get a right of first refusal on free agents after the fourth year for incoming rookies, meaning a player would be contractually obligated to the same team for the first four years of his deal. Currently, the rookie scale is three years and includes a clause that enables a player to exercise his Bird rights after two seasons _ a clause Kevin Garnett parlayed into an astronomical $126 million deal last year with Minnesota. _ Finally, the players agreed to make marijuana a banned substance. Details of testing have not been negotiated and no specific discussions took place regarding testing for performance-enhancing drugs, a provision the owners included in their last proposal. In return for the concessions, the players want an increase in the minimum salary _ currently $272,500 _ and creation of an average salary exception. This would allow every team above the salary cap being able to sign one free agent per year for the average salary _ currently $2.6 million. ``We're buoyed by the fact for the first time they've decided to submit a counterproposal,'' the union's executive director, Billy Hunter, said. ``I don't know if I'm more optimistic, but I can earnestly say we can look our ballplayers in the eye and say we made a valiant effort.'' Asked if the players would finally be tested financially with the cancellation of games, Hunter added: ``It's not about us blinking. We want to reach an agreement. We're tired of the rhetoric, we're tired of the game-playing. Our position all along has been we don't want to accept a bad deal.'' Granik said refunds to fans would be made at end of the calendar month and that the first refund would include monies for canceled preseason games. He estimated the losses into the ``hundreds of millions of dollars.'' ``I think we have serious concern whether a tax system can address the kind of needs we have economically,'' he added. ``But there's some possibility.'' Added Stern, ``We owe it to the fans to go back and look at the notion whether a tax rate might begin to achieve the result we wanted. It doesn't look promising, but we're going to spend the next two days to see if we can give a favorable response.'' Though the decision to cancel games was not surprising, it did represent a major shift in prior labor stalemates. Both sides reluctantly hammered out a deal in 1995 before the start of training camp with the sole notion of not missing games and preserving the NBA's perfect record. Tuesday, they could not come to such an accord. ``I'd like to think these our the last games we have to cancel,'' Granik said. ``But unless this or something else works, or there's some dramatic breakthrough, I think that is certainly not all of the season that's in jeopardy.'' ||||| Despite modest encouragement over a new proposal delivered by the players to the owners, the National Basketball Association Tuesday canceled the first two weeks of the regular season, the first time in the league's 51-year history that it will lose games to a labor dispute. The NBA's deputy commissioner, Russ Granik, announced the cancellation after nearly three and a half hours of meetings concluded at a Manhattan hotel. The decision to cancel 99 games between Nov. 3 and Nov. 16 came after the players association proposed the implementation of a tax system instead of a hard salary cap, a proposal the owners said they would respond to by Friday. ``We tried our best today to try to do what was possible to salvage the season,'' said Alonzo Mourning, the Miami Heat center. ``Unfortunately, it didn't work out.'' After 35,001 games without a blemish, the NBA now joins the National Hockey League, the National Football League and Major League Baseball in having lost games to a labor dispute. Taking into account that a three- to four-week period would be needed for training camp and free-agent signings before the season starts, the league said it would decide in two weeks whether to make further cancellations. ``I'm very sad and disappointed,'' said the NBA commissioner, David Stern. ``I consider it to be a collective failure, but I honestly don't know what else we could have done. I do things that I like to think are in the best interests of the game. And I believe this is.'' The decision came after what both sides agreed were the most substantive talks since the owners imposed a lockout on the player July 1. Seventeen players, including union president Patrick Ewing and vice presidents Mitch Richmond, Herb Williams, Dikemebe Mutombo and Ty Corbin, attended the meeting along with Stern, Granik and five members of the ownership committee _ Madison Square Garden president Dave Checketts and owners Abe Pollin of Washington, Gordon Gund of Cleveland, Les Alexander of Houston and Jerry Colangelo of Phoenix. The talks featured what the players association implied were a bevy concessions made to the owners that they felt would accommodate the league's desire to swing the revenue pendulum back toward the owners. The dispute involves the distribution of approximately $2 billion in league-wide income. The main sticking point has been the owners' insistence on a salary cap without exceptions, the implementation of which they believe would bring player salaries' in line with revenue growth. While the players did not discuss the elimination of the Larry Bird exception _ a clause that allows a player to secure any amount of money he wants in re-signing with his current team _ they did address the exception in their taxation proposal. The main points were as follows: _ A 50 percent tax would be imposed on salary earned above $18 million, a clause that would affect only a few players who exercised their Bird rights. For example, if a player made $20 million, the team would be forced to put $1 million into a fund that would most likely be distributed to low-revenue teams. ``There could be provisions made for some players,'' said Jeffrey Kessler, the chief outside counsel for the union. ``We don't want to do anything that would encourage Chicago from getting Michael Jordan back. And I think the league feels the same way.'' The proposal is similar to the luxury tax proposed by the union in 1995 during negotiations, but it would not be nearly as liberal. _ A salary cap credit would go into effect if the league pays out more than 63 percent of revenues in salary. Whatever figure over that number reduces the salary cap the next year. If the figure was $29 million over the salary cap, then the 29 teams would work with a salary cap $1 million less than the previous season. But the players would have an assurance that the salary cap would go up at least $2 million before the credit goes into effect. _ Also, if the 63-percent threshold is met, a reduction of annual 20 percent raises would take effect for multi-year contracts. Players would either get raises of 10 percent or the rate of growth in league revenues. The union said this clearly addresses the league's desire to bring salaries in line with revenues. Since the owners re-opened the current agreement because 57.1 percent of revenue was going toward salaries, the 63-percent figure would probably have to come down substantially for the owners to agree to such a proposal. _ Teams would get a right of first refusal on free agents after the fourth year for incoming rookies, meaning a player would be contractually obligated to the same team for the first four years of his deal. Currently, the rookie scale is three years and includes a clause that enables a player to exercise his Bird rights after two seasons _ a clause Kevin Garnett parlayed into an astronomical $126 million deal last year with Minnesota. _ Finally, the players agreed to make marijuana a banned substance. Details of testing have not been negotiated and no specific discussions took place regarding testing for performance-enhancing drugs, a provision the owners included in their last proposal. In return for the concessions, the players want an increase in the minimum salary _ currently $272,500 _ and creation of an average salary exception. This would allow every team above the salary cap being able to sign one free agent per year for the average salary _ currently $2.6 million. ``We're buoyed by the fact for the first time they've decided to submit a counterproposal,'' the union's executive director, Billy Hunter, said. ``I don't know if I'm more optimistic, but I can earnestly say we can look our ballplayers in the eye and say we made a valiant effort.'' Asked if the players would finally be tested financially with the cancellation of games, Hunter added: ``It's not about us blinking. We want to reach an agreement. We're tired of the rhetoric, we're tired of the game-playing. Our position all along has been we don't want to accept a bad deal.'' Granik said refunds to fans would be made at end of the calendar month and that the first refund would include monies for canceled preseason games. He estimated the losses into the ``hundreds of millions of dollars.'' ``I think we have serious concern whether a tax system can address the kind of needs we have economically,'' he added. ``But there's some possibility.'' Added Stern, ``We owe it to the fans to go back and look at the notion whether a tax rate might begin to achieve the result we wanted. It doesn't look promising, but we're going to spend the next two days to see if we can give a favorable response.'' Though the decision to cancel games was not surprising, it did represent a major shift in prior labor stalemates. Both sides reluctantly hammered out a deal in 1995 before the start of training camp with the sole notion of not missing games and preserving the NBA's perfect record. Tuesday, they could not come to such an accord. ``I'd like to think these our the last games we have to cancel,'' Granik said. ``But unless this or something else works, or there's some dramatic breakthrough, I think that is certainly not all of the season that's in jeopardy.'' ||||| He was the classic small-town prodigy, with the creativity of a big-city profiteer. When there was no shot to take, he invented a new one. When there was no one to pass to, he reconfigured the play until a teammate was open. Larry Bird, in the Indiana countryside or inside Boston Garden, was a luminous exception to the governing rule. That is why, six years after his retirement from the National Basketball Association, his name is again basketball's most prominent, beginning with his induction to the Hall of Fame before 7,000 Bird watchers at the Civic Center here on Friday night. Deservedly enshrined as forever exceptional, he again becomes Bird, the exception, the case study for a contentious and potentially disastrous labor war. ``No, not really,'' Bird said, when I asked whether he is troubled by the likelihood of his legendary name soon representing a symbol of greed to unsympathetic millions. ``There's always a player's name attached to these things. I know at the time I was very happy about it.'' That would have been 1988, when the Celtics wanted to compensate Bird with a $4.9 million bonus to push through his back pain, go on as their savior. Three years later, in a contract arbitration involving the Knicks' Patrick Ewing, the agent David Falk would contend that the NBA conspired with the Celtics to circumvent the salary cap, in order to satisfy Bird. Alan Greenspan, I am sure, would agree that this salary cap is convoluted enough to give anyone a headache, so let's just say it is a cap that does not exist when a team is negotiating with one of its own. The process of unsealing the cap to re-sign a particular player eventually became known as making use of the Larry Bird exception. And that is where we stand, as this onetime exception has become the very expensive rule the owners don't want to play by anymore. ``I can understand both sides,'' said Bird, safely in the middle, between Bird, the former exception, and Bird, the present Indiana Pacers' coach. ``Without getting into the exception, I think it's very important for players to stay in the same place.'' Important, he meant, for franchise stability and fan identification. ``You have a son who is 7 years old, he goes from 7 to 17 in the 10 years you've played,'' Bird said. ``A lot of people in Boston told me that they had followed me, from the time they were very young to when they were in college.'' The Bird years numbered only three Celtics championships, but he was the best player pro basketball's most famous team ever had. He and Magic Johnson created a basketball renaissance that began during a college title showdown in Salt Lake City and spread worldwide, like an infectious smile. They stood for the pass, for team play, but now their decade of selflessness has given way to one of selfishness. The NBA of Michael Jordan reached greater heights than anyone imagined it could, but it is a league that now suffers from a sickness of the soul. ``If Larry and Magic hadn't done what they did, we might not survive what we're about to go through,'' said Bill Fitch, Bird's first Celtics coach, who, with Bill Walton, stood with him on the night that, he said, gave closure to his playing career. The owners, as always, are exaggerating their misery, but this time, it is much easier to not root for the players. The president of the union is Ewing, who one day commands players to boycott the world championships because the NBA's corporate fingerprints are on them, then the next day helps himself to some television commentary work for David Stern's women's annex. Ewing leads the fight to protect the $100 million contracts for 21-year-olds who have achieved not a single playoff victory, linked to the big payoffs for agents like his friend Falk. The battle is waged in the name of a salary cap that makes exceptions of the unexceptional, rewards everyone as if they were Bird. ``I believe that in any field there has to be an allowance for the truly special ones,'' Walton said. ``But that group is very small. When I was growing up in this sport, the only players who got the recognition were the champions, the ones who always made you feel good about the game, about sports. That's how Larry and Magic played, always dreaming of the special team. It wasn't about hype, about money.'' That is not quite the case, nor should it have been. Bird was a businessman's ball player from the day he arrived, with his flannel shirts and blue-collar ethic. He hired the late Bob Woolf, one of the original heavy-hitting agents, and got himself a record rookie contract. Then he went out and turned a 29-victory catastrophe into a 61-victory contender. A rare Bird, an honest exception to the rule. ||||| More than 220 National Basketball Association players with guaranteed contracts will find out Monday whether they are to be paid during the management lockout, a long-awaited arbitrator's decision that may affect leverage in the league's dispute with the players and have major ramifications on American sports-labor law. But neither the players nor the owners are counting on the ruling by the arbitrator, John Feerick, to speed up negotiations, especially if Feerick finds in favor of the players, an award that could approach $800 million in salaries. NBA attorneys have indicated to the union that if the decision goes against management, they will seek to have it vacated by appealing to the U.S. District Court in Manhattan and then, if necessary, to the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, a process that could prevent the players from getting paid for several months. The NBA has already canceled the first two weeks of the regular season because of the labor dispute. The league has other litigation pending in U.S. District Court in Manhattan. If the players win the ruling, the NBA intends to renew its motion to disqualify Feerick. The motion was brought last summer on the grounds that no collective bargaining agreement existed and, therefore, he had no jurisdiction to hear the matter. ``If he rules in our favor, I think it emboldens the spirit and the resolve of the players,'' said Billy Hunter, union executive director. ``But we understand that won't end the lockout. It just means they have to pay 200-some players. And there is still other litigation alive that may take a while to resolve. At most, it's a hollow victory.'' Feerick will have taken the full 30 days to render his decision. Whatever he decides, his ruling will be watched carefully. There is no precedent for locked-out athletes being paid. During the NBA summer lockout of 1995, players who missed paychecks did not file a grievance. Neither did National Hockey League players who were locked out for the first three months of the 1994-95 season. The union argued that owners should have protected themselves by inserting clauses about non-payment for lockouts and strikes into individual player contracts. In support of its arguments, the union pointed to clauses in a few individual player contracts that contained language precluding payment during a lockout. The league is relying on the basic tenets of labor law, which hold that employees not be paid during strikes or lockouts. A ruling for the union would be significant for all future negotiations between players and owners. The deterrent factor of a lockout is that employees subject to a collective bargaining agreement do not get paid once the agreement expires and they are unable to reach a new agreement. If Feerick finds in favor of the players, there will be no economic incentive for those with guaranteed contracts to reach an agreement quickly. They would essentially be paid for not playing basketball. If Feerick finds in favor of the owners, the reality of not being paid may spur the players to reach an agreement more quickly. But Hunter disputed this notion, and in a conference call Friday talked openly about the entire season's being canceled before the players would back away from their ultimate goals. ``I'm not at all concerned,'' Hunter said. ``There's been no demonstration that there's going to be a change in our resolve. After the players saw these proposals from the league and the recent posturing by NBA owners, well, I had two players call me up and tell me, if need be, they'd be willing to hock everything they've got.'' Another significant development may be thedeparture of many players to Europe until the dispute is settled, according to at least two player agents. ``I think it would be a case-by-case basis, but yes, there's already some people talking about that,'' said Bill Strickland, a member of the union's agents advisory committee. Steve Kauffman, another member of the committee, said he would explore the possibility that one client, Nets center Rony Seikaly, would sign with a professional team in Greece. ``We wouldn't look to void his deal with the team,'' Kauffman said. ``But we would want him to have the right for him to work temporarily until he could come back and honor his contract.' Russ Granik, NBA deputy commissioner, said the league has approved the idea of players' earning a living elsewhere until the lockout is settled. Proposals exchanged last week that included the concept of a luxury-tax system on player salaries appeared to reflect the first signs of progress in negotiations since the lockout began July 1. But both sides have termed the figures in each other's proposal as unacceptable, and it was unclear whether either side was willing compromise. ``I don't think we should get too carried away about the possibilities just yet,'' Granik said. ``When they explored the idea of a tax system, we were taking the players at their word that they wanted to make some headway. But to call their first proposal meaningless is charitable. They proposed something that has no impact. As it stands, that can't be the solution.'' The owners' goal is to slow the growth of player salaries in relation to leaguewide revenue over the next three years, while the players want to keep earning as much as possible. ||||| Patrick Ewing did not want to sound like a striking longshoreman demanding health benefits. ``I'm not going to try and put it in dollars and cents.'' But Ewing, president of the National Basketball Association Players Association, played the public-relations game Tuesday by expounding on the themes of labor unrest: strong-willed unity and short-sighted proposals. On the day when training camps were scheduled to begin, players from across the country held news conferences in 14 NBA cities to proclaim themselves ready to practice for the regular season. ``We want to show the public that we, as players, want to play,'' said Ewing, who was flanked by five teammates. ``Today is supposed to be the start of training camp. We want to practice and we want the season to start. But unfortunately, the owners have locked us out and the season has been postponed.'' The owners and players are scheduled hold their first bargaining session since Aug. 6 on Thursday in Manhattan. Neither side is predicting progress toward signing a new collective bargaining agreement and beginning the season as scheduled on Nov. 3. The league canceled the entire 114-game preseason on Monday. Next week, it will consider canceling the first-ever regular season games in league history. With wide philosophical differences on how $2 billion annual income should be distributed, both sides have privately said they don't expect to play a regular season game before December. Billy Hunter, the union's executive director, offered a glimmer of hope. He spoke optimistically about the potential for a quick resolution. Standing a few feet away from Ewing, he said, ``I hope the owners and commissioner have gotten the message: that we're serious about a deal. I'm prepared to make a quantum leap. I don't think we're that far off. I think there's a lot jockeying, a lot of rhetoric and a lot of games being played. But if and when the owners decide they want a deal, then they'll get one.'' But soon after, he began lambasting the owners' latest proposal, which includes the eventual phasing out of the Larry Bird exception _ the clause that enables free agents to earn unlimited salaries from their current teams. That clause represents the major rift in negotiations. Owners would like to implement a restrictive salary cap that would eventually put a ceiling on how much one player can earn. ``I don't know if this is going to come to a speedy resolution,'' Ewing said. ``They're entrenched with what they want, which is a hard cap. And we feel with a hard cap, we as players, cannot survive. We would have to be stupid and ignorant to accept that deal.'' Said Hunter, ``If you go for their proposal, it's just a joke. It's a step backwards. I cannot understand it. If the intent was to reach an agreement at this late stage or to negotiate in earnest, this was the wrong way to go about it.'' League officials did not respond to the players' comments. ``All we want is our fair share and we feel like they're trying to take that away from us,'' Ewing said. `There's a perception that we're on strike. It's the other way around. We've been locked out.'' Besides Ewing, the other Knicks included former union president Buck Williams, former vice president Herb Williams, Allan Houston and John Starks. Marcus Camby also showed up briefly. When the media horde closed in, however, the third-year forward went to look for his late-arriving teammates inside the practice facility. He was stopped at the gym door, which was locked. ``They locked us out,'' said Rockets forward Mario Elie. ``Everybody's got to get that corrected. It's not on us. They're the ones that closed us down.'' The stalemate has elicited talks of possibly bringing in a mediator in the coming weeks, as Major League Baseball did in 1994 to help solve its labor dispute. But the players are convinced commissioner David Stern and the owners are set on testing their resolve before any genuine headway can be made in negotiations. That means missing paychecks in November, something Ewing said the players are prepared to do. Both sides are still awaiting the outcome of an arbitration decision that is due before Oct. 18. Fordham Law School dean John Feerick will rule whether or not more than 200 players with $800 million in guaranteed contracts should be paid during the lockout. Feerick's decision could give new leverage to one side. But if the players lose the arbitration, more than 400 athletes _ many with extravagant lifestyles and tremendous financial obligations _ will have their allegiances instantly tested. ``It's like they want to see how strong we are,'' Ewing said. ``Based on the proposals we've received, we're very strong.'' ``So far, it seems as though the NBA is dug in on their position,'' Buck Williams said. ``I don't think they're too concerned at this point about making a deal. He added, ``We're about as far apart as the Grand Canyon right now.''

In a dispute over a new collective bargaining agreement the National Basketball Association owners declared a lockout on July 1, 1998. They wanted to discard a clause in the old agreement allowing teams to pay their own free agents whatever they wanted, substituting a hard salary cap. The players wanted to keep earning as much as possible. On Oct. 5 all 114 preseason games were cancelled. The players then proposed a 50% tax on salaries above $18 million that the owners rejected. On Oct. 13 the NBA cancelled the first two weeks of the regular season. By Oct. 21 the entire season seemed in jeopardy in the interests of the best paid.

In a decision that will almost certainly lead to the first work stoppage in National Basketball Association history, the league Monday announced the cancellation of all 114 preseason games. Citing stalled negotiations with the Players Association over a new collective bargaining agreement, league officials said they would decide next week whether to cancel the first week of regular season games. While the decision had been expected for 10 days, it nonetheless sent a strong signal that the owners and players will probably be willing to cancel at least part of the regular season in order to settle their labor dispute. Both sides agree that it would take at least three weeks to hold abbreviated training camps and sign over 200 free agents to new contracts. Privately, officials on both sides do not believe the season will start as scheduled on Nov. 3 or even before December. Unlike Major League Baseball, the National Football League and the National Hockey League, the NBA has never lost a regular-season game to labor strife. ``Since we're not even negotiating, you have to conclude it's very likely that we're going miss some part of the regular season,'' deputy commissioner Russ Granik said Monday night. ``We'll try and defer any decisions until the last minute, but right now it does not look good.'' The two sides will meet on Thursday _ their first official bargaining session since Aug. 6. Commissioner David Stern and a group of owners walked out of a meeting after dismissing the merits of a new proposal from the players. Neither Granik nor players association executive director Billy Hunter sounded as if this week's meeting would go a long way toward the signing of a new agreement _ the precursor to playing again. ``I don't think you have any choice but to miss games at this point,'' Hunter said. ``In fact, I think the they've intended it all along. They've locked us out, they've refused to negotiate and they've given us a proposal that's ludicrous.'' Not only are both sides still awaiting the outcome of an arbitration decision that is due before Oct. 18 - the Fordham Law School dean John Feerick will rule whether or not more than 200 players with $800 million in guaranteed contracts should be paid during the lockout _ but the owners and players also are making time to win public opinion before they test their fans' loyalties by canceling games. Monday in 11 cities throughout the country, the players are holding make-shift press conferences at training-camp venues, NBA arenas and gymnasiums. Patrick Ewing, the union president, and several teammates will speak at SUNY-Purchase in Purchase, N.Y., where the Knicks train during the season. With training camp originally scheduled to open on Oct. 6, the message from the players is clear: if the owners would call an end to the lockout, we would be ready to play today. About 100 players are expected to attend, speak and sign autographs for fans afterward. ``I wish they would put their energies into trying to negotiate a deal rather than the various other things that they've been doing,'' Granik said. The dispute is essentially over how the owners and players will judiciously divvy up $2 billion in income. It began last year with the contention by the owners that their employees were receiving more than their fair share of the pot. The owners were allowed to terminate the current agreement because of a clause that enabled them to do so after player salaries reached 53.8 percent of total basketball-related income. The owners say that figure is currently hovering around 57.1 percent. Though many economic issues need to be resolved, the main point of contention since the labor agreement expired and the owners declared a lockout on July 1 has been a clause which allows teams to pay their own free agents whatever they want, regardless of salary-cap rules governing the NBA's 29 teams. Called the Larry Bird exception, it was created to allow the Hall of Fame Boston Celtics forward to re-sign with the Celtics near the end of his career. Michael Jordan exercised the clause the last two years with the Chicago Bulls, earning more than $30 million per season _ figures more than $5 million more what a team is allowed to spend on all its players. But with exorbitant salaries paid to several unproven stars over the last few years and $100 million deals sprouting up routinely, the owners are determined to swing the income pendulum back toward themselves by enforcing a restricted salary cap _ a hard cap _ and putting a ceiling on how much one player could earn. ``Last year, the players received about $1 billion dollars in salaries and benefits and we have made proposals that are guaranteed to increase that number by 20 percent over the next four years,'' Granik said in a prepared statement. ``Our proposals would result in an average player salary of more than $3.1 million and a minimum salary for 10-year veterans of $750,000. Unfortunately, the union leadership has been unwilling to give any serious consideration to what we have offered.'' Hunter labeled those claims as optimistic projections, and shot down a number of new proposals presented to the players on Sept. 25. ``If they had left the current deal in place, we would have gotten much of that anyway,'' he added. ``All we're saying is, we're not in position to accept a hard cap.'' Monday's decision to cancel the preseason came less than two weeks after the NBA indefinitely postponed training camp and canceled the first week of exhibition games. Through tickets sales alone, Granik estimated that losing the exhibition season would cost the league between $35 million and $40 million. Decisions about the cancellations of regular season games are expected to be made next week, he added. A league official said the games would be canceled in blocks of one or two weeks, depending upon circumstances regarding negotiations. Thursday's bargaining session has suddenly become the last hope at starting the season on time. ``Hurdles could be overcome very quickly, but I have no reason to believe they will on Thursday,'' Granik said. Added Hunter: ``Of course they don't expect much to get done. When Russ and David decide the negotiations are going to be real and substantive, then something will happen. What they're banking on now is that the players are going to miss paychecks and cave in November. It's as if they've ingested something that has to pass. And once it passes, then they'll negotiate.'' ||||| The first substantive talks in more than two months between opposing sides of the National Basketball Association's labor dispute came and went Thursday without a hint of a settlement. Still, a five-hour meeting that was described as cordial by the league and ``almost like two bulls letting off a little steam'' by the players association produced another scheduled round of talks next Tuesday. Barring a major compromise, that will not be enough time to preserve a full season and prevent the league from losing its first regular-season games to labor strife in November. Russ Granik, the NBA's deputy commissioner, said the league would wait until after next week's meeting before deciding to cancel regular-season games. He also discussed the possibility of a significantly shortened season. ``We haven't made a determination that you need this exact number of games in order to have a representative season,'' Granik said. ``But we recognize that beyond a certain point we can't possibly sell to our fans that we're having an NBA season. ``Whether's that 60 games, 50 games or 49 or 53, we're not there yet. We have a few months before we have to face that decision.'' Perhaps the only progress involved Thursday in the conference room of a midtown Manhattan hotel was a question-and-answer session over the league's latest proposal to the players. Patrick Ewing, the union president, and vice presidents Herb Williams and Dikembe Mutombo attended the meeting with the union's executive director, Billy Hunter, and union lawyers. No owners were present, but Granik, Commissioner David Stern and the league's lawyers spent most of the day explaining the intricacies of a two-week-old proposal to the players. At one point before the two parties broke for lunch, Stern and Hunter raised their voices and accused each other of handling their constituencies poorly, a participant in the meeting said. But the two were seen shaking hands and laughing after the meeting concluded shortly after 3 p.m. ``There was some venting from both sides,'' Hunter said. ``We've been placid and very respectful. Today, we took the coats off and we were inclined to take the gloves off a little bit. Having done that, I think it kind of loosened up both sides.'' Hunter added: ``Did anybody blink today? They're sort of look at us for any kind of nuance they can find during the course of negotiations that might, in some way or another, give some indication that while we're mouthing one thing we might be open to something else. We're looking at their body language, too. I don't think that they're ready to make a deal.'' The last formal meeting between both sides on Aug. 6 ended when Stern and the owners abruptly marched out after they had received a proposal from the players. ||||| As labor battles go, the current one between the National Basketball Association and its players is weird even by sports standards. There is a real possibility that most, if not all, of the coming season will be canceled. In this union battle it is the interests of the best paid, not those who make union scale, that are dominating the discussion. And here it is some of the workers, not the management, who are considering trying to make the union disappear. The current arrangement has produced an unbalanced pay scale of immense proportions. Last year more players than ever before received the union minimum, then $242,000 for rookies or $272,000 for veterans. The number of players making $1 million to $2 million a year _ the middle class, in NBA terms _ fell sharply. But Michael Jordan made $33 million. This should not be a surprise. Sports is an entertainment business, not unlike movies. Big stars get millions, while most get union scale. Over the years, NBA efforts to stem the rise of salaries have failed. The most important loophole in its salary cap lets a team sign its own free agent for whatever it is willing to pay. When that was adopted, it was assumed that no team would pay a lot more than a rival could pay. But it has not worked out that way. In the current negotiation, the league has offered to guarantee that its payroll will rise 20 percent over the next four years, from $1 billion to $1.2 billion, and says it is open to proposals to split that money any way the players want, whether by raising the minimum salary or guaranteeing raises for veterans. The union says it is worried about that middle class, but seems determined to preserve the free market. The league got its broadcasters, NBC and Time Warner's cable channels, to agree to pay this year's television fees whether or not there are any games to broadcast. (They will be paid back in later years, either through reduced fees or extra games to show.) Owners hoped the players would think management was willing to wait them out, and come to terms with only a small part of the season canceled. But the union is acting unhurried. It turned aside requests for negotiations this week, saying the players had to meet first. Then there is the issue of union suicide, a tactic that was rejected by the players in 1995. The idea is that if the players had no union, it would be illegal under antitrust laws for the owners to collude. The sky would be the limit. That tactic might fail. The courts could reject a union decertification vote as a sham, and in any case some players may fear that teams would feel free to offer less than the old union minimum. But if the players go that route, it could be a long time before real negotiations get going. Billy Hunter, the union's executive director, warned the owners this week that a prolonged lockout could destroy the league's popularity. That was what all the seers said four years ago, when baseball's World Series was canceled by labor troubles. But fan memories are relatively short, and now baseball seems more popular than ever. With that in mind, both owners and players may choose to battle on for months. ||||| In a critical ruling for the North American National Basketball Association and the players' union, arbitrator John Feerick decides Monday whether more than 200 players with guaranteed contracts should be paid during the lockout. If the players win, the owners will be liable for about dlrs 800 million in guaranteed salaries, although they have vowed to appeal if they lose. The league already has sued the players over Feerick's jurisdiction. ``If we win, I think it just emboldens the spirit and resolve of the players,'' union director Billy Hunter said. ``But I don't think there will be anybody celebrating because there's no guarantee that it will end the lockout. ``It only means they have to pay some 200 players, and they've indicated to us their intent to file an immediate appeal and take it as far as they have to in order to avoid payment. ``So even if he does rule in our favor, at most it's a hollow victory. The players aren't going to get paid Nov. 15 in any circumstance,'' Hunter said. If the owners win, it will remove the last wild card the players had been holding. The sides have not negotiated since last Tuesday, when the union proposed a superstar tax on the highest contracts. The league made a counterproposal Friday, asking that the tax be imposed with a much lower threshold. Hunter dismissed the league's latest proposal on Friday afternoon, then said both sides would be best served by awaiting Feerick's ruling. It's unlikely any negotiations will be held this week, since the union is holding a meeting for all NBA players and the agents advisory committee in Las Vegas from Wednesday through Friday. ``We've got to get a sense of where the players are, what they consider to be reasonable and what they're willing to do in order to get the season to commence,'' Hunter said. The union filed a grievance with Feerick before the lockout was imposed July 1 over the owners' announcement June 29 that they would not honor guaranteed deals. In a six-day hearing over the summer, the union argued that owners should have protected themselves from being liable for guaranteed salaries during a work stoppage by inserting lockout language into the standard player contract. The Sacramento Kings inserted a lockout clause into center Olden Polynice's contract in 1994, and it was approved by the league. The union used the existence of that clause to argue that all the other teams should have protected themselves similarly. Most players are due to receive their first paychecks Nov. 15, although a dozen or so had clauses entitling them to be paid over the summer. None has received a paycheck. The NBA argued that a tenet of labor law allows employers to withhold pay from employees during a lockout. The league also called former union director Simon Gourdine to testify, but Feerick upheld union objections and prohibited Gourdine from saying whether it was his understanding when he negotiated the old labor agreement in 1995 that players would not be paid if the owners chose to reopen the agreement and impose a lockout. ||||| In a critical ruling for the North American National Basketball Association and the players' union, arbitrator John Feerick decides Monday whether more than 200 players with guaranteed contracts should be paid during the lockout. If the players win, the owners will be liable for about dlrs 800 million in guaranteed salaries, although they have vowed to appeal if they lose. The league already has sued the players over Feerick's jurisdiction. ``If we win, I think it just emboldens the spirit and resolve of the players,'' union director Billy Hunter said. ``But I don't think there will be anybody celebrating because there's no guarantee that it will end the lockout. ``It only means they have to pay some 200 players, and they've indicated to us their intent to file an immediate appeal and take it as far as they have to in order to avoid payment. ``So even if he does rule in our favor, at most it's a hollow victory. The players aren't going to get paid Nov. 15 in any circumstance,'' Hunter said. If the owners win, it will remove the last wild card the players had been holding. The sides have not negotiated since last Tuesday, when the union proposed a superstar tax on the highest contracts. The league made a counterproposal Friday, asking that the tax be imposed with a much lower threshold. Hunter dismissed the league's latest proposal on Friday afternoon, then said both sides would be best served by awaiting Feerick's ruling. It's unlikely any negotiations will be held this week, since the union is holding a meeting for all NBA players and the agents advisory committee in Las Vegas from Wednesday through Friday. ``We've got to get a sense of where the players are, what they consider to be reasonable and what they're willing to do in order to get the season to commence,'' Hunter said. The union filed a grievance with Feerick before the lockout was imposed July 1 over the owners' announcement June 29 that they would not honor guaranteed deals. In a six-day hearing over the summer, the union argued that owners should have protected themselves from being liable for guaranteed salaries during a work stoppage by inserting lockout language into the standard player contract. The Sacramento Kings inserted a lockout clause into center Olden Polynice's contract in 1994, and it was approved by the league. The union used the existence of that clause to argue that all the other teams should have protected themselves similarly. Most players are due to receive their first paychecks Nov. 15, although a dozen or so had clauses entitling them to be paid over the summer. None has received a paycheck. The NBA argued that a tenet of labor law allows employers to withhold pay from employees during a lockout. The league also called former union director Simon Gourdine to testify. He said it was his understanding when he negotiated the old labor agreement in 1995 that players would not be paid if the owners chose to reopen the agreement and impose a lockout. ||||| The National Basketball Association, embroiled in a labor dispute with its players, Tuesday canceled the first two weeks of the 1998-99 season. It is the first time in the league's 51-year history that it will lose regular-season games. The NBA's deputy commissioner, Russ Granik, announced the cancellation after nearly three and a half hours of meetings concluded at a Manhattan hotel. The decision to cancel 99 games between Nov. 3 and Nov. 16 came after the players association proposed the implementation of a tax system instead of a hard salary cap, a proposal the owners said they would respond to by Friday. ``We tried our best today to try to do what was possible to salvage the season,'' said Alonzo Mourning, the Miami Heat center. ``Unfortunately, it didn't work out.'' After 35,001 games without a blemish, the NBA now joins the National Hockey League, the National Football League and Major League Baseball in having lost games to a labor dispute. Taking into account that a three- to four-week period would be needed for training camp and free-agent signings before the season starts, the league said it would decide in two weeks whether to make further cancellations. ``I'm very sad and disappointed,'' said the NBA commissioner, David Stern. ``I consider it to be a collective failure, but I honestly don't know what else we could have done. I do things that I like to think are in the best interests of the game. And I believe this is.'' The decision came after what both sides agreed were the most substantive talks since the owners imposed a lockout on the player July 1. Seventeen players, including union president Patrick Ewing and vice presidents Mitch Richmond, Herb Williams, Dikemebe Mutombo and Ty Corbin, attended the meeting along with Stern, Granik and five members of the ownership committee _ Madison Square Garden president Dave Checketts and owners Abe Pollin of Washington, Gordon Gund of Cleveland, Les Alexander of Houston and Jerry Colangelo of Phoenix. The talks featured what the players association implied were a bevy concessions made to the owners that they felt would accommodate the league's desire to swing the revenue pendulum back toward the owners. The dispute involves the distribution of approximately $2 billion in league-wide income. The main sticking point has been the owners' insistence on a salary cap without exceptions, the implementation of which they believe would bring player salaries' in line with revenue growth. While the players did not discuss the elimination of the Larry Bird exception _ a clause that allows a player to secure any amount of money he wants in re-signing with his current team _ they did address the exception in their taxation proposal. The main points were as follows: _ A 50 percent tax would be imposed on salary earned above $18 million, a clause that would affect only a few players who exercised their Bird rights. For example, if a player made $20 million, the team would be forced to put $1 million into a fund that would most likely be distributed to low-revenue teams. ``There could be provisions made for some players,'' said Jeffrey Kessler, the chief outside counsel for the union. ``We don't want to do anything that would encourage Chicago from getting Michael Jordan back. And I think the league feels the same way.'' The proposal is similar to the luxury tax proposed by the union in 1995 during negotiations, but it would not be nearly as liberal. _ A salary cap credit would go into effect if the league pays out more than 63 percent of revenues in salary. Whatever figure over that number reduces the salary cap the next year. If the figure was $29 million over the salary cap, then the 29 teams would work with a salary cap $1 million less than the previous season. But the players would have an assurance that the salary cap would go up at least $2 million before the credit goes into effect. _ Also, if the 63-percent threshold is met, a reduction of annual 20 percent raises would take effect for multi-year contracts. Players would either get raises of 10 percent or the rate of growth in league revenues. The union said this clearly addresses the league's desire to bring salaries in line with revenues. Since the owners re-opened the current agreement because 57.1 percent of revenue was going toward salaries, the 63-percent figure would probably have to come down substantially for the owners to agree to such a proposal. _ Teams would get a right of first refusal on free agents after the fourth year for incoming rookies, meaning a player would be contractually obligated to the same team for the first four years of his deal. Currently, the rookie scale is three years and includes a clause that enables a player to exercise his Bird rights after two seasons _ a clause Kevin Garnett parlayed into an astronomical $126 million deal last year with Minnesota. _ Finally, the players agreed to make marijuana a banned substance. Details of testing have not been negotiated and no specific discussions took place regarding testing for performance-enhancing drugs, a provision the owners included in their last proposal. In return for the concessions, the players want an increase in the minimum salary _ currently $272,500 _ and creation of an average salary exception. This would allow every team above the salary cap being able to sign one free agent per year for the average salary _ currently $2.6 million. ``We're buoyed by the fact for the first time they've decided to submit a counterproposal,'' the union's executive director, Billy Hunter, said. ``I don't know if I'm more optimistic, but I can earnestly say we can look our ballplayers in the eye and say we made a valiant effort.'' Asked if the players would finally be tested financially with the cancellation of games, Hunter added: ``It's not about us blinking. We want to reach an agreement. We're tired of the rhetoric, we're tired of the game-playing. Our position all along has been we don't want to accept a bad deal.'' Granik said refunds to fans would be made at end of the calendar month and that the first refund would include monies for canceled preseason games. He estimated the losses into the ``hundreds of millions of dollars.'' ``I think we have serious concern whether a tax system can address the kind of needs we have economically,'' he added. ``But there's some possibility.'' Added Stern, ``We owe it to the fans to go back and look at the notion whether a tax rate might begin to achieve the result we wanted. It doesn't look promising, but we're going to spend the next two days to see if we can give a favorable response.'' Though the decision to cancel games was not surprising, it did represent a major shift in prior labor stalemates. Both sides reluctantly hammered out a deal in 1995 before the start of training camp with the sole notion of not missing games and preserving the NBA's perfect record. Tuesday, they could not come to such an accord. ``I'd like to think these our the last games we have to cancel,'' Granik said. ``But unless this or something else works, or there's some dramatic breakthrough, I think that is certainly not all of the season that's in jeopardy.'' ||||| Despite modest encouragement over a new proposal delivered by the players to the owners, the National Basketball Association Tuesday canceled the first two weeks of the regular season, the first time in the league's 51-year history that it will lose games to a labor dispute. The NBA's deputy commissioner, Russ Granik, announced the cancellation after nearly three and a half hours of meetings concluded at a Manhattan hotel. The decision to cancel 99 games between Nov. 3 and Nov. 16 came after the players association proposed the implementation of a tax system instead of a hard salary cap, a proposal the owners said they would respond to by Friday. ``We tried our best today to try to do what was possible to salvage the season,'' said Alonzo Mourning, the Miami Heat center. ``Unfortunately, it didn't work out.'' After 35,001 games without a blemish, the NBA now joins the National Hockey League, the National Football League and Major League Baseball in having lost games to a labor dispute. Taking into account that a three- to four-week period would be needed for training camp and free-agent signings before the season starts, the league said it would decide in two weeks whether to make further cancellations. ``I'm very sad and disappointed,'' said the NBA commissioner, David Stern. ``I consider it to be a collective failure, but I honestly don't know what else we could have done. I do things that I like to think are in the best interests of the game. And I believe this is.'' The decision came after what both sides agreed were the most substantive talks since the owners imposed a lockout on the player July 1. Seventeen players, including union president Patrick Ewing and vice presidents Mitch Richmond, Herb Williams, Dikemebe Mutombo and Ty Corbin, attended the meeting along with Stern, Granik and five members of the ownership committee _ Madison Square Garden president Dave Checketts and owners Abe Pollin of Washington, Gordon Gund of Cleveland, Les Alexander of Houston and Jerry Colangelo of Phoenix. The talks featured what the players association implied were a bevy concessions made to the owners that they felt would accommodate the league's desire to swing the revenue pendulum back toward the owners. The dispute involves the distribution of approximately $2 billion in league-wide income. The main sticking point has been the owners' insistence on a salary cap without exceptions, the implementation of which they believe would bring player salaries' in line with revenue growth. While the players did not discuss the elimination of the Larry Bird exception _ a clause that allows a player to secure any amount of money he wants in re-signing with his current team _ they did address the exception in their taxation proposal. The main points were as follows: _ A 50 percent tax would be imposed on salary earned above $18 million, a clause that would affect only a few players who exercised their Bird rights. For example, if a player made $20 million, the team would be forced to put $1 million into a fund that would most likely be distributed to low-revenue teams. ``There could be provisions made for some players,'' said Jeffrey Kessler, the chief outside counsel for the union. ``We don't want to do anything that would encourage Chicago from getting Michael Jordan back. And I think the league feels the same way.'' The proposal is similar to the luxury tax proposed by the union in 1995 during negotiations, but it would not be nearly as liberal. _ A salary cap credit would go into effect if the league pays out more than 63 percent of revenues in salary. Whatever figure over that number reduces the salary cap the next year. If the figure was $29 million over the salary cap, then the 29 teams would work with a salary cap $1 million less than the previous season. But the players would have an assurance that the salary cap would go up at least $2 million before the credit goes into effect. _ Also, if the 63-percent threshold is met, a reduction of annual 20 percent raises would take effect for multi-year contracts. Players would either get raises of 10 percent or the rate of growth in league revenues. The union said this clearly addresses the league's desire to bring salaries in line with revenues. Since the owners re-opened the current agreement because 57.1 percent of revenue was going toward salaries, the 63-percent figure would probably have to come down substantially for the owners to agree to such a proposal. _ Teams would get a right of first refusal on free agents after the fourth year for incoming rookies, meaning a player would be contractually obligated to the same team for the first four years of his deal. Currently, the rookie scale is three years and includes a clause that enables a player to exercise his Bird rights after two seasons _ a clause Kevin Garnett parlayed into an astronomical $126 million deal last year with Minnesota. _ Finally, the players agreed to make marijuana a banned substance. Details of testing have not been negotiated and no specific discussions took place regarding testing for performance-enhancing drugs, a provision the owners included in their last proposal. In return for the concessions, the players want an increase in the minimum salary _ currently $272,500 _ and creation of an average salary exception. This would allow every team above the salary cap being able to sign one free agent per year for the average salary _ currently $2.6 million. ``We're buoyed by the fact for the first time they've decided to submit a counterproposal,'' the union's executive director, Billy Hunter, said. ``I don't know if I'm more optimistic, but I can earnestly say we can look our ballplayers in the eye and say we made a valiant effort.'' Asked if the players would finally be tested financially with the cancellation of games, Hunter added: ``It's not about us blinking. We want to reach an agreement. We're tired of the rhetoric, we're tired of the game-playing. Our position all along has been we don't want to accept a bad deal.'' Granik said refunds to fans would be made at end of the calendar month and that the first refund would include monies for canceled preseason games. He estimated the losses into the ``hundreds of millions of dollars.'' ``I think we have serious concern whether a tax system can address the kind of needs we have economically,'' he added. ``But there's some possibility.'' Added Stern, ``We owe it to the fans to go back and look at the notion whether a tax rate might begin to achieve the result we wanted. It doesn't look promising, but we're going to spend the next two days to see if we can give a favorable response.'' Though the decision to cancel games was not surprising, it did represent a major shift in prior labor stalemates. Both sides reluctantly hammered out a deal in 1995 before the start of training camp with the sole notion of not missing games and preserving the NBA's perfect record. Tuesday, they could not come to such an accord. ``I'd like to think these our the last games we have to cancel,'' Granik said. ``But unless this or something else works, or there's some dramatic breakthrough, I think that is certainly not all of the season that's in jeopardy.'' ||||| He was the classic small-town prodigy, with the creativity of a big-city profiteer. When there was no shot to take, he invented a new one. When there was no one to pass to, he reconfigured the play until a teammate was open. Larry Bird, in the Indiana countryside or inside Boston Garden, was a luminous exception to the governing rule. That is why, six years after his retirement from the National Basketball Association, his name is again basketball's most prominent, beginning with his induction to the Hall of Fame before 7,000 Bird watchers at the Civic Center here on Friday night. Deservedly enshrined as forever exceptional, he again becomes Bird, the exception, the case study for a contentious and potentially disastrous labor war. ``No, not really,'' Bird said, when I asked whether he is troubled by the likelihood of his legendary name soon representing a symbol of greed to unsympathetic millions. ``There's always a player's name attached to these things. I know at the time I was very happy about it.'' That would have been 1988, when the Celtics wanted to compensate Bird with a $4.9 million bonus to push through his back pain, go on as their savior. Three years later, in a contract arbitration involving the Knicks' Patrick Ewing, the agent David Falk would contend that the NBA conspired with the Celtics to circumvent the salary cap, in order to satisfy Bird. Alan Greenspan, I am sure, would agree that this salary cap is convoluted enough to give anyone a headache, so let's just say it is a cap that does not exist when a team is negotiating with one of its own. The process of unsealing the cap to re-sign a particular player eventually became known as making use of the Larry Bird exception. And that is where we stand, as this onetime exception has become the very expensive rule the owners don't want to play by anymore. ``I can understand both sides,'' said Bird, safely in the middle, between Bird, the former exception, and Bird, the present Indiana Pacers' coach. ``Without getting into the exception, I think it's very important for players to stay in the same place.'' Important, he meant, for franchise stability and fan identification. ``You have a son who is 7 years old, he goes from 7 to 17 in the 10 years you've played,'' Bird said. ``A lot of people in Boston told me that they had followed me, from the time they were very young to when they were in college.'' The Bird years numbered only three Celtics championships, but he was the best player pro basketball's most famous team ever had. He and Magic Johnson created a basketball renaissance that began during a college title showdown in Salt Lake City and spread worldwide, like an infectious smile. They stood for the pass, for team play, but now their decade of selflessness has given way to one of selfishness. The NBA of Michael Jordan reached greater heights than anyone imagined it could, but it is a league that now suffers from a sickness of the soul. ``If Larry and Magic hadn't done what they did, we might not survive what we're about to go through,'' said Bill Fitch, Bird's first Celtics coach, who, with Bill Walton, stood with him on the night that, he said, gave closure to his playing career. The owners, as always, are exaggerating their misery, but this time, it is much easier to not root for the players. The president of the union is Ewing, who one day commands players to boycott the world championships because the NBA's corporate fingerprints are on them, then the next day helps himself to some television commentary work for David Stern's women's annex. Ewing leads the fight to protect the $100 million contracts for 21-year-olds who have achieved not a single playoff victory, linked to the big payoffs for agents like his friend Falk. The battle is waged in the name of a salary cap that makes exceptions of the unexceptional, rewards everyone as if they were Bird. ``I believe that in any field there has to be an allowance for the truly special ones,'' Walton said. ``But that group is very small. When I was growing up in this sport, the only players who got the recognition were the champions, the ones who always made you feel good about the game, about sports. That's how Larry and Magic played, always dreaming of the special team. It wasn't about hype, about money.'' That is not quite the case, nor should it have been. Bird was a businessman's ball player from the day he arrived, with his flannel shirts and blue-collar ethic. He hired the late Bob Woolf, one of the original heavy-hitting agents, and got himself a record rookie contract. Then he went out and turned a 29-victory catastrophe into a 61-victory contender. A rare Bird, an honest exception to the rule. ||||| More than 220 National Basketball Association players with guaranteed contracts will find out Monday whether they are to be paid during the management lockout, a long-awaited arbitrator's decision that may affect leverage in the league's dispute with the players and have major ramifications on American sports-labor law. But neither the players nor the owners are counting on the ruling by the arbitrator, John Feerick, to speed up negotiations, especially if Feerick finds in favor of the players, an award that could approach $800 million in salaries. NBA attorneys have indicated to the union that if the decision goes against management, they will seek to have it vacated by appealing to the U.S. District Court in Manhattan and then, if necessary, to the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, a process that could prevent the players from getting paid for several months. The NBA has already canceled the first two weeks of the regular season because of the labor dispute. The league has other litigation pending in U.S. District Court in Manhattan. If the players win the ruling, the NBA intends to renew its motion to disqualify Feerick. The motion was brought last summer on the grounds that no collective bargaining agreement existed and, therefore, he had no jurisdiction to hear the matter. ``If he rules in our favor, I think it emboldens the spirit and the resolve of the players,'' said Billy Hunter, union executive director. ``But we understand that won't end the lockout. It just means they have to pay 200-some players. And there is still other litigation alive that may take a while to resolve. At most, it's a hollow victory.'' Feerick will have taken the full 30 days to render his decision. Whatever he decides, his ruling will be watched carefully. There is no precedent for locked-out athletes being paid. During the NBA summer lockout of 1995, players who missed paychecks did not file a grievance. Neither did National Hockey League players who were locked out for the first three months of the 1994-95 season. The union argued that owners should have protected themselves by inserting clauses about non-payment for lockouts and strikes into individual player contracts. In support of its arguments, the union pointed to clauses in a few individual player contracts that contained language precluding payment during a lockout. The league is relying on the basic tenets of labor law, which hold that employees not be paid during strikes or lockouts. A ruling for the union would be significant for all future negotiations between players and owners. The deterrent factor of a lockout is that employees subject to a collective bargaining agreement do not get paid once the agreement expires and they are unable to reach a new agreement. If Feerick finds in favor of the players, there will be no economic incentive for those with guaranteed contracts to reach an agreement quickly. They would essentially be paid for not playing basketball. If Feerick finds in favor of the owners, the reality of not being paid may spur the players to reach an agreement more quickly. But Hunter disputed this notion, and in a conference call Friday talked openly about the entire season's being canceled before the players would back away from their ultimate goals. ``I'm not at all concerned,'' Hunter said. ``There's been no demonstration that there's going to be a change in our resolve. After the players saw these proposals from the league and the recent posturing by NBA owners, well, I had two players call me up and tell me, if need be, they'd be willing to hock everything they've got.'' Another significant development may be thedeparture of many players to Europe until the dispute is settled, according to at least two player agents. ``I think it would be a case-by-case basis, but yes, there's already some people talking about that,'' said Bill Strickland, a member of the union's agents advisory committee. Steve Kauffman, another member of the committee, said he would explore the possibility that one client, Nets center Rony Seikaly, would sign with a professional team in Greece. ``We wouldn't look to void his deal with the team,'' Kauffman said. ``But we would want him to have the right for him to work temporarily until he could come back and honor his contract.' Russ Granik, NBA deputy commissioner, said the league has approved the idea of players' earning a living elsewhere until the lockout is settled. Proposals exchanged last week that included the concept of a luxury-tax system on player salaries appeared to reflect the first signs of progress in negotiations since the lockout began July 1. But both sides have termed the figures in each other's proposal as unacceptable, and it was unclear whether either side was willing compromise. ``I don't think we should get too carried away about the possibilities just yet,'' Granik said. ``When they explored the idea of a tax system, we were taking the players at their word that they wanted to make some headway. But to call their first proposal meaningless is charitable. They proposed something that has no impact. As it stands, that can't be the solution.'' The owners' goal is to slow the growth of player salaries in relation to leaguewide revenue over the next three years, while the players want to keep earning as much as possible. ||||| Patrick Ewing did not want to sound like a striking longshoreman demanding health benefits. ``I'm not going to try and put it in dollars and cents.'' But Ewing, president of the National Basketball Association Players Association, played the public-relations game Tuesday by expounding on the themes of labor unrest: strong-willed unity and short-sighted proposals. On the day when training camps were scheduled to begin, players from across the country held news conferences in 14 NBA cities to proclaim themselves ready to practice for the regular season. ``We want to show the public that we, as players, want to play,'' said Ewing, who was flanked by five teammates. ``Today is supposed to be the start of training camp. We want to practice and we want the season to start. But unfortunately, the owners have locked us out and the season has been postponed.'' The owners and players are scheduled hold their first bargaining session since Aug. 6 on Thursday in Manhattan. Neither side is predicting progress toward signing a new collective bargaining agreement and beginning the season as scheduled on Nov. 3. The league canceled the entire 114-game preseason on Monday. Next week, it will consider canceling the first-ever regular season games in league history. With wide philosophical differences on how $2 billion annual income should be distributed, both sides have privately said they don't expect to play a regular season game before December. Billy Hunter, the union's executive director, offered a glimmer of hope. He spoke optimistically about the potential for a quick resolution. Standing a few feet away from Ewing, he said, ``I hope the owners and commissioner have gotten the message: that we're serious about a deal. I'm prepared to make a quantum leap. I don't think we're that far off. I think there's a lot jockeying, a lot of rhetoric and a lot of games being played. But if and when the owners decide they want a deal, then they'll get one.'' But soon after, he began lambasting the owners' latest proposal, which includes the eventual phasing out of the Larry Bird exception _ the clause that enables free agents to earn unlimited salaries from their current teams. That clause represents the major rift in negotiations. Owners would like to implement a restrictive salary cap that would eventually put a ceiling on how much one player can earn. ``I don't know if this is going to come to a speedy resolution,'' Ewing said. ``They're entrenched with what they want, which is a hard cap. And we feel with a hard cap, we as players, cannot survive. We would have to be stupid and ignorant to accept that deal.'' Said Hunter, ``If you go for their proposal, it's just a joke. It's a step backwards. I cannot understand it. If the intent was to reach an agreement at this late stage or to negotiate in earnest, this was the wrong way to go about it.'' League officials did not respond to the players' comments. ``All we want is our fair share and we feel like they're trying to take that away from us,'' Ewing said. `There's a perception that we're on strike. It's the other way around. We've been locked out.'' Besides Ewing, the other Knicks included former union president Buck Williams, former vice president Herb Williams, Allan Houston and John Starks. Marcus Camby also showed up briefly. When the media horde closed in, however, the third-year forward went to look for his late-arriving teammates inside the practice facility. He was stopped at the gym door, which was locked. ``They locked us out,'' said Rockets forward Mario Elie. ``Everybody's got to get that corrected. It's not on us. They're the ones that closed us down.'' The stalemate has elicited talks of possibly bringing in a mediator in the coming weeks, as Major League Baseball did in 1994 to help solve its labor dispute. But the players are convinced commissioner David Stern and the owners are set on testing their resolve before any genuine headway can be made in negotiations. That means missing paychecks in November, something Ewing said the players are prepared to do. Both sides are still awaiting the outcome of an arbitration decision that is due before Oct. 18. Fordham Law School dean John Feerick will rule whether or not more than 200 players with $800 million in guaranteed contracts should be paid during the lockout. Feerick's decision could give new leverage to one side. But if the players lose the arbitration, more than 400 athletes _ many with extravagant lifestyles and tremendous financial obligations _ will have their allegiances instantly tested. ``It's like they want to see how strong we are,'' Ewing said. ``Based on the proposals we've received, we're very strong.'' ``So far, it seems as though the NBA is dug in on their position,'' Buck Williams said. ``I don't think they're too concerned at this point about making a deal. He added, ``We're about as far apart as the Grand Canyon right now.''

The Larry Bird exception has been used to pay some NBA players much more than the salary cap allows. Stalled labor dispute over NBA salaries cancels preseason games and threatens regular season games. NBA owners and players plan meeting, which is unsuccessful. Players submit proposal at next meeting. Owners to respond by Fri. First 2 weeks of the season, 99 games, are cancelled. An arbitrator will decide on Mon. whether or not NBA players with guaranteed salary contracts should be paid during the owners' lockout. As the NBA labor battle goes on, most, if not all, season games may be cancelled. Lesser paid players may suffer if union doesn't survive.

In a decision that will almost certainly lead to the first work stoppage in National Basketball Association history, the league Monday announced the cancellation of all 114 preseason games. Citing stalled negotiations with the Players Association over a new collective bargaining agreement, league officials said they would decide next week whether to cancel the first week of regular season games. While the decision had been expected for 10 days, it nonetheless sent a strong signal that the owners and players will probably be willing to cancel at least part of the regular season in order to settle their labor dispute. Both sides agree that it would take at least three weeks to hold abbreviated training camps and sign over 200 free agents to new contracts. Privately, officials on both sides do not believe the season will start as scheduled on Nov. 3 or even before December. Unlike Major League Baseball, the National Football League and the National Hockey League, the NBA has never lost a regular-season game to labor strife. ``Since we're not even negotiating, you have to conclude it's very likely that we're going miss some part of the regular season,'' deputy commissioner Russ Granik said Monday night. ``We'll try and defer any decisions until the last minute, but right now it does not look good.'' The two sides will meet on Thursday _ their first official bargaining session since Aug. 6. Commissioner David Stern and a group of owners walked out of a meeting after dismissing the merits of a new proposal from the players. Neither Granik nor players association executive director Billy Hunter sounded as if this week's meeting would go a long way toward the signing of a new agreement _ the precursor to playing again. ``I don't think you have any choice but to miss games at this point,'' Hunter said. ``In fact, I think the they've intended it all along. They've locked us out, they've refused to negotiate and they've given us a proposal that's ludicrous.'' Not only are both sides still awaiting the outcome of an arbitration decision that is due before Oct. 18 - the Fordham Law School dean John Feerick will rule whether or not more than 200 players with $800 million in guaranteed contracts should be paid during the lockout _ but the owners and players also are making time to win public opinion before they test their fans' loyalties by canceling games. Monday in 11 cities throughout the country, the players are holding make-shift press conferences at training-camp venues, NBA arenas and gymnasiums. Patrick Ewing, the union president, and several teammates will speak at SUNY-Purchase in Purchase, N.Y., where the Knicks train during the season. With training camp originally scheduled to open on Oct. 6, the message from the players is clear: if the owners would call an end to the lockout, we would be ready to play today. About 100 players are expected to attend, speak and sign autographs for fans afterward. ``I wish they would put their energies into trying to negotiate a deal rather than the various other things that they've been doing,'' Granik said. The dispute is essentially over how the owners and players will judiciously divvy up $2 billion in income. It began last year with the contention by the owners that their employees were receiving more than their fair share of the pot. The owners were allowed to terminate the current agreement because of a clause that enabled them to do so after player salaries reached 53.8 percent of total basketball-related income. The owners say that figure is currently hovering around 57.1 percent. Though many economic issues need to be resolved, the main point of contention since the labor agreement expired and the owners declared a lockout on July 1 has been a clause which allows teams to pay their own free agents whatever they want, regardless of salary-cap rules governing the NBA's 29 teams. Called the Larry Bird exception, it was created to allow the Hall of Fame Boston Celtics forward to re-sign with the Celtics near the end of his career. Michael Jordan exercised the clause the last two years with the Chicago Bulls, earning more than $30 million per season _ figures more than $5 million more what a team is allowed to spend on all its players. But with exorbitant salaries paid to several unproven stars over the last few years and $100 million deals sprouting up routinely, the owners are determined to swing the income pendulum back toward themselves by enforcing a restricted salary cap _ a hard cap _ and putting a ceiling on how much one player could earn. ``Last year, the players received about $1 billion dollars in salaries and benefits and we have made proposals that are guaranteed to increase that number by 20 percent over the next four years,'' Granik said in a prepared statement. ``Our proposals would result in an average player salary of more than $3.1 million and a minimum salary for 10-year veterans of $750,000. Unfortunately, the union leadership has been unwilling to give any serious consideration to what we have offered.'' Hunter labeled those claims as optimistic projections, and shot down a number of new proposals presented to the players on Sept. 25. ``If they had left the current deal in place, we would have gotten much of that anyway,'' he added. ``All we're saying is, we're not in position to accept a hard cap.'' Monday's decision to cancel the preseason came less than two weeks after the NBA indefinitely postponed training camp and canceled the first week of exhibition games. Through tickets sales alone, Granik estimated that losing the exhibition season would cost the league between $35 million and $40 million. Decisions about the cancellations of regular season games are expected to be made next week, he added. A league official said the games would be canceled in blocks of one or two weeks, depending upon circumstances regarding negotiations. Thursday's bargaining session has suddenly become the last hope at starting the season on time. ``Hurdles could be overcome very quickly, but I have no reason to believe they will on Thursday,'' Granik said. Added Hunter: ``Of course they don't expect much to get done. When Russ and David decide the negotiations are going to be real and substantive, then something will happen. What they're banking on now is that the players are going to miss paychecks and cave in November. It's as if they've ingested something that has to pass. And once it passes, then they'll negotiate.'' ||||| The first substantive talks in more than two months between opposing sides of the National Basketball Association's labor dispute came and went Thursday without a hint of a settlement. Still, a five-hour meeting that was described as cordial by the league and ``almost like two bulls letting off a little steam'' by the players association produced another scheduled round of talks next Tuesday. Barring a major compromise, that will not be enough time to preserve a full season and prevent the league from losing its first regular-season games to labor strife in November. Russ Granik, the NBA's deputy commissioner, said the league would wait until after next week's meeting before deciding to cancel regular-season games. He also discussed the possibility of a significantly shortened season. ``We haven't made a determination that you need this exact number of games in order to have a representative season,'' Granik said. ``But we recognize that beyond a certain point we can't possibly sell to our fans that we're having an NBA season. ``Whether's that 60 games, 50 games or 49 or 53, we're not there yet. We have a few months before we have to face that decision.'' Perhaps the only progress involved Thursday in the conference room of a midtown Manhattan hotel was a question-and-answer session over the league's latest proposal to the players. Patrick Ewing, the union president, and vice presidents Herb Williams and Dikembe Mutombo attended the meeting with the union's executive director, Billy Hunter, and union lawyers. No owners were present, but Granik, Commissioner David Stern and the league's lawyers spent most of the day explaining the intricacies of a two-week-old proposal to the players. At one point before the two parties broke for lunch, Stern and Hunter raised their voices and accused each other of handling their constituencies poorly, a participant in the meeting said. But the two were seen shaking hands and laughing after the meeting concluded shortly after 3 p.m. ``There was some venting from both sides,'' Hunter said. ``We've been placid and very respectful. Today, we took the coats off and we were inclined to take the gloves off a little bit. Having done that, I think it kind of loosened up both sides.'' Hunter added: ``Did anybody blink today? They're sort of look at us for any kind of nuance they can find during the course of negotiations that might, in some way or another, give some indication that while we're mouthing one thing we might be open to something else. We're looking at their body language, too. I don't think that they're ready to make a deal.'' The last formal meeting between both sides on Aug. 6 ended when Stern and the owners abruptly marched out after they had received a proposal from the players. ||||| As labor battles go, the current one between the National Basketball Association and its players is weird even by sports standards. There is a real possibility that most, if not all, of the coming season will be canceled. In this union battle it is the interests of the best paid, not those who make union scale, that are dominating the discussion. And here it is some of the workers, not the management, who are considering trying to make the union disappear. The current arrangement has produced an unbalanced pay scale of immense proportions. Last year more players than ever before received the union minimum, then $242,000 for rookies or $272,000 for veterans. The number of players making $1 million to $2 million a year _ the middle class, in NBA terms _ fell sharply. But Michael Jordan made $33 million. This should not be a surprise. Sports is an entertainment business, not unlike movies. Big stars get millions, while most get union scale. Over the years, NBA efforts to stem the rise of salaries have failed. The most important loophole in its salary cap lets a team sign its own free agent for whatever it is willing to pay. When that was adopted, it was assumed that no team would pay a lot more than a rival could pay. But it has not worked out that way. In the current negotiation, the league has offered to guarantee that its payroll will rise 20 percent over the next four years, from $1 billion to $1.2 billion, and says it is open to proposals to split that money any way the players want, whether by raising the minimum salary or guaranteeing raises for veterans. The union says it is worried about that middle class, but seems determined to preserve the free market. The league got its broadcasters, NBC and Time Warner's cable channels, to agree to pay this year's television fees whether or not there are any games to broadcast. (They will be paid back in later years, either through reduced fees or extra games to show.) Owners hoped the players would think management was willing to wait them out, and come to terms with only a small part of the season canceled. But the union is acting unhurried. It turned aside requests for negotiations this week, saying the players had to meet first. Then there is the issue of union suicide, a tactic that was rejected by the players in 1995. The idea is that if the players had no union, it would be illegal under antitrust laws for the owners to collude. The sky would be the limit. That tactic might fail. The courts could reject a union decertification vote as a sham, and in any case some players may fear that teams would feel free to offer less than the old union minimum. But if the players go that route, it could be a long time before real negotiations get going. Billy Hunter, the union's executive director, warned the owners this week that a prolonged lockout could destroy the league's popularity. That was what all the seers said four years ago, when baseball's World Series was canceled by labor troubles. But fan memories are relatively short, and now baseball seems more popular than ever. With that in mind, both owners and players may choose to battle on for months. ||||| In a critical ruling for the North American National Basketball Association and the players' union, arbitrator John Feerick decides Monday whether more than 200 players with guaranteed contracts should be paid during the lockout. If the players win, the owners will be liable for about dlrs 800 million in guaranteed salaries, although they have vowed to appeal if they lose. The league already has sued the players over Feerick's jurisdiction. ``If we win, I think it just emboldens the spirit and resolve of the players,'' union director Billy Hunter said. ``But I don't think there will be anybody celebrating because there's no guarantee that it will end the lockout. ``It only means they have to pay some 200 players, and they've indicated to us their intent to file an immediate appeal and take it as far as they have to in order to avoid payment. ``So even if he does rule in our favor, at most it's a hollow victory. The players aren't going to get paid Nov. 15 in any circumstance,'' Hunter said. If the owners win, it will remove the last wild card the players had been holding. The sides have not negotiated since last Tuesday, when the union proposed a superstar tax on the highest contracts. The league made a counterproposal Friday, asking that the tax be imposed with a much lower threshold. Hunter dismissed the league's latest proposal on Friday afternoon, then said both sides would be best served by awaiting Feerick's ruling. It's unlikely any negotiations will be held this week, since the union is holding a meeting for all NBA players and the agents advisory committee in Las Vegas from Wednesday through Friday. ``We've got to get a sense of where the players are, what they consider to be reasonable and what they're willing to do in order to get the season to commence,'' Hunter said. The union filed a grievance with Feerick before the lockout was imposed July 1 over the owners' announcement June 29 that they would not honor guaranteed deals. In a six-day hearing over the summer, the union argued that owners should have protected themselves from being liable for guaranteed salaries during a work stoppage by inserting lockout language into the standard player contract. The Sacramento Kings inserted a lockout clause into center Olden Polynice's contract in 1994, and it was approved by the league. The union used the existence of that clause to argue that all the other teams should have protected themselves similarly. Most players are due to receive their first paychecks Nov. 15, although a dozen or so had clauses entitling them to be paid over the summer. None has received a paycheck. The NBA argued that a tenet of labor law allows employers to withhold pay from employees during a lockout. The league also called former union director Simon Gourdine to testify, but Feerick upheld union objections and prohibited Gourdine from saying whether it was his understanding when he negotiated the old labor agreement in 1995 that players would not be paid if the owners chose to reopen the agreement and impose a lockout. ||||| In a critical ruling for the North American National Basketball Association and the players' union, arbitrator John Feerick decides Monday whether more than 200 players with guaranteed contracts should be paid during the lockout. If the players win, the owners will be liable for about dlrs 800 million in guaranteed salaries, although they have vowed to appeal if they lose. The league already has sued the players over Feerick's jurisdiction. ``If we win, I think it just emboldens the spirit and resolve of the players,'' union director Billy Hunter said. ``But I don't think there will be anybody celebrating because there's no guarantee that it will end the lockout. ``It only means they have to pay some 200 players, and they've indicated to us their intent to file an immediate appeal and take it as far as they have to in order to avoid payment. ``So even if he does rule in our favor, at most it's a hollow victory. The players aren't going to get paid Nov. 15 in any circumstance,'' Hunter said. If the owners win, it will remove the last wild card the players had been holding. The sides have not negotiated since last Tuesday, when the union proposed a superstar tax on the highest contracts. The league made a counterproposal Friday, asking that the tax be imposed with a much lower threshold. Hunter dismissed the league's latest proposal on Friday afternoon, then said both sides would be best served by awaiting Feerick's ruling. It's unlikely any negotiations will be held this week, since the union is holding a meeting for all NBA players and the agents advisory committee in Las Vegas from Wednesday through Friday. ``We've got to get a sense of where the players are, what they consider to be reasonable and what they're willing to do in order to get the season to commence,'' Hunter said. The union filed a grievance with Feerick before the lockout was imposed July 1 over the owners' announcement June 29 that they would not honor guaranteed deals. In a six-day hearing over the summer, the union argued that owners should have protected themselves from being liable for guaranteed salaries during a work stoppage by inserting lockout language into the standard player contract. The Sacramento Kings inserted a lockout clause into center Olden Polynice's contract in 1994, and it was approved by the league. The union used the existence of that clause to argue that all the other teams should have protected themselves similarly. Most players are due to receive their first paychecks Nov. 15, although a dozen or so had clauses entitling them to be paid over the summer. None has received a paycheck. The NBA argued that a tenet of labor law allows employers to withhold pay from employees during a lockout. The league also called former union director Simon Gourdine to testify. He said it was his understanding when he negotiated the old labor agreement in 1995 that players would not be paid if the owners chose to reopen the agreement and impose a lockout. ||||| The National Basketball Association, embroiled in a labor dispute with its players, Tuesday canceled the first two weeks of the 1998-99 season. It is the first time in the league's 51-year history that it will lose regular-season games. The NBA's deputy commissioner, Russ Granik, announced the cancellation after nearly three and a half hours of meetings concluded at a Manhattan hotel. The decision to cancel 99 games between Nov. 3 and Nov. 16 came after the players association proposed the implementation of a tax system instead of a hard salary cap, a proposal the owners said they would respond to by Friday. ``We tried our best today to try to do what was possible to salvage the season,'' said Alonzo Mourning, the Miami Heat center. ``Unfortunately, it didn't work out.'' After 35,001 games without a blemish, the NBA now joins the National Hockey League, the National Football League and Major League Baseball in having lost games to a labor dispute. Taking into account that a three- to four-week period would be needed for training camp and free-agent signings before the season starts, the league said it would decide in two weeks whether to make further cancellations. ``I'm very sad and disappointed,'' said the NBA commissioner, David Stern. ``I consider it to be a collective failure, but I honestly don't know what else we could have done. I do things that I like to think are in the best interests of the game. And I believe this is.'' The decision came after what both sides agreed were the most substantive talks since the owners imposed a lockout on the player July 1. Seventeen players, including union president Patrick Ewing and vice presidents Mitch Richmond, Herb Williams, Dikemebe Mutombo and Ty Corbin, attended the meeting along with Stern, Granik and five members of the ownership committee _ Madison Square Garden president Dave Checketts and owners Abe Pollin of Washington, Gordon Gund of Cleveland, Les Alexander of Houston and Jerry Colangelo of Phoenix. The talks featured what the players association implied were a bevy concessions made to the owners that they felt would accommodate the league's desire to swing the revenue pendulum back toward the owners. The dispute involves the distribution of approximately $2 billion in league-wide income. The main sticking point has been the owners' insistence on a salary cap without exceptions, the implementation of which they believe would bring player salaries' in line with revenue growth. While the players did not discuss the elimination of the Larry Bird exception _ a clause that allows a player to secure any amount of money he wants in re-signing with his current team _ they did address the exception in their taxation proposal. The main points were as follows: _ A 50 percent tax would be imposed on salary earned above $18 million, a clause that would affect only a few players who exercised their Bird rights. For example, if a player made $20 million, the team would be forced to put $1 million into a fund that would most likely be distributed to low-revenue teams. ``There could be provisions made for some players,'' said Jeffrey Kessler, the chief outside counsel for the union. ``We don't want to do anything that would encourage Chicago from getting Michael Jordan back. And I think the league feels the same way.'' The proposal is similar to the luxury tax proposed by the union in 1995 during negotiations, but it would not be nearly as liberal. _ A salary cap credit would go into effect if the league pays out more than 63 percent of revenues in salary. Whatever figure over that number reduces the salary cap the next year. If the figure was $29 million over the salary cap, then the 29 teams would work with a salary cap $1 million less than the previous season. But the players would have an assurance that the salary cap would go up at least $2 million before the credit goes into effect. _ Also, if the 63-percent threshold is met, a reduction of annual 20 percent raises would take effect for multi-year contracts. Players would either get raises of 10 percent or the rate of growth in league revenues. The union said this clearly addresses the league's desire to bring salaries in line with revenues. Since the owners re-opened the current agreement because 57.1 percent of revenue was going toward salaries, the 63-percent figure would probably have to come down substantially for the owners to agree to such a proposal. _ Teams would get a right of first refusal on free agents after the fourth year for incoming rookies, meaning a player would be contractually obligated to the same team for the first four years of his deal. Currently, the rookie scale is three years and includes a clause that enables a player to exercise his Bird rights after two seasons _ a clause Kevin Garnett parlayed into an astronomical $126 million deal last year with Minnesota. _ Finally, the players agreed to make marijuana a banned substance. Details of testing have not been negotiated and no specific discussions took place regarding testing for performance-enhancing drugs, a provision the owners included in their last proposal. In return for the concessions, the players want an increase in the minimum salary _ currently $272,500 _ and creation of an average salary exception. This would allow every team above the salary cap being able to sign one free agent per year for the average salary _ currently $2.6 million. ``We're buoyed by the fact for the first time they've decided to submit a counterproposal,'' the union's executive director, Billy Hunter, said. ``I don't know if I'm more optimistic, but I can earnestly say we can look our ballplayers in the eye and say we made a valiant effort.'' Asked if the players would finally be tested financially with the cancellation of games, Hunter added: ``It's not about us blinking. We want to reach an agreement. We're tired of the rhetoric, we're tired of the game-playing. Our position all along has been we don't want to accept a bad deal.'' Granik said refunds to fans would be made at end of the calendar month and that the first refund would include monies for canceled preseason games. He estimated the losses into the ``hundreds of millions of dollars.'' ``I think we have serious concern whether a tax system can address the kind of needs we have economically,'' he added. ``But there's some possibility.'' Added Stern, ``We owe it to the fans to go back and look at the notion whether a tax rate might begin to achieve the result we wanted. It doesn't look promising, but we're going to spend the next two days to see if we can give a favorable response.'' Though the decision to cancel games was not surprising, it did represent a major shift in prior labor stalemates. Both sides reluctantly hammered out a deal in 1995 before the start of training camp with the sole notion of not missing games and preserving the NBA's perfect record. Tuesday, they could not come to such an accord. ``I'd like to think these our the last games we have to cancel,'' Granik said. ``But unless this or something else works, or there's some dramatic breakthrough, I think that is certainly not all of the season that's in jeopardy.'' ||||| Despite modest encouragement over a new proposal delivered by the players to the owners, the National Basketball Association Tuesday canceled the first two weeks of the regular season, the first time in the league's 51-year history that it will lose games to a labor dispute. The NBA's deputy commissioner, Russ Granik, announced the cancellation after nearly three and a half hours of meetings concluded at a Manhattan hotel. The decision to cancel 99 games between Nov. 3 and Nov. 16 came after the players association proposed the implementation of a tax system instead of a hard salary cap, a proposal the owners said they would respond to by Friday. ``We tried our best today to try to do what was possible to salvage the season,'' said Alonzo Mourning, the Miami Heat center. ``Unfortunately, it didn't work out.'' After 35,001 games without a blemish, the NBA now joins the National Hockey League, the National Football League and Major League Baseball in having lost games to a labor dispute. Taking into account that a three- to four-week period would be needed for training camp and free-agent signings before the season starts, the league said it would decide in two weeks whether to make further cancellations. ``I'm very sad and disappointed,'' said the NBA commissioner, David Stern. ``I consider it to be a collective failure, but I honestly don't know what else we could have done. I do things that I like to think are in the best interests of the game. And I believe this is.'' The decision came after what both sides agreed were the most substantive talks since the owners imposed a lockout on the player July 1. Seventeen players, including union president Patrick Ewing and vice presidents Mitch Richmond, Herb Williams, Dikemebe Mutombo and Ty Corbin, attended the meeting along with Stern, Granik and five members of the ownership committee _ Madison Square Garden president Dave Checketts and owners Abe Pollin of Washington, Gordon Gund of Cleveland, Les Alexander of Houston and Jerry Colangelo of Phoenix. The talks featured what the players association implied were a bevy concessions made to the owners that they felt would accommodate the league's desire to swing the revenue pendulum back toward the owners. The dispute involves the distribution of approximately $2 billion in league-wide income. The main sticking point has been the owners' insistence on a salary cap without exceptions, the implementation of which they believe would bring player salaries' in line with revenue growth. While the players did not discuss the elimination of the Larry Bird exception _ a clause that allows a player to secure any amount of money he wants in re-signing with his current team _ they did address the exception in their taxation proposal. The main points were as follows: _ A 50 percent tax would be imposed on salary earned above $18 million, a clause that would affect only a few players who exercised their Bird rights. For example, if a player made $20 million, the team would be forced to put $1 million into a fund that would most likely be distributed to low-revenue teams. ``There could be provisions made for some players,'' said Jeffrey Kessler, the chief outside counsel for the union. ``We don't want to do anything that would encourage Chicago from getting Michael Jordan back. And I think the league feels the same way.'' The proposal is similar to the luxury tax proposed by the union in 1995 during negotiations, but it would not be nearly as liberal. _ A salary cap credit would go into effect if the league pays out more than 63 percent of revenues in salary. Whatever figure over that number reduces the salary cap the next year. If the figure was $29 million over the salary cap, then the 29 teams would work with a salary cap $1 million less than the previous season. But the players would have an assurance that the salary cap would go up at least $2 million before the credit goes into effect. _ Also, if the 63-percent threshold is met, a reduction of annual 20 percent raises would take effect for multi-year contracts. Players would either get raises of 10 percent or the rate of growth in league revenues. The union said this clearly addresses the league's desire to bring salaries in line with revenues. Since the owners re-opened the current agreement because 57.1 percent of revenue was going toward salaries, the 63-percent figure would probably have to come down substantially for the owners to agree to such a proposal. _ Teams would get a right of first refusal on free agents after the fourth year for incoming rookies, meaning a player would be contractually obligated to the same team for the first four years of his deal. Currently, the rookie scale is three years and includes a clause that enables a player to exercise his Bird rights after two seasons _ a clause Kevin Garnett parlayed into an astronomical $126 million deal last year with Minnesota. _ Finally, the players agreed to make marijuana a banned substance. Details of testing have not been negotiated and no specific discussions took place regarding testing for performance-enhancing drugs, a provision the owners included in their last proposal. In return for the concessions, the players want an increase in the minimum salary _ currently $272,500 _ and creation of an average salary exception. This would allow every team above the salary cap being able to sign one free agent per year for the average salary _ currently $2.6 million. ``We're buoyed by the fact for the first time they've decided to submit a counterproposal,'' the union's executive director, Billy Hunter, said. ``I don't know if I'm more optimistic, but I can earnestly say we can look our ballplayers in the eye and say we made a valiant effort.'' Asked if the players would finally be tested financially with the cancellation of games, Hunter added: ``It's not about us blinking. We want to reach an agreement. We're tired of the rhetoric, we're tired of the game-playing. Our position all along has been we don't want to accept a bad deal.'' Granik said refunds to fans would be made at end of the calendar month and that the first refund would include monies for canceled preseason games. He estimated the losses into the ``hundreds of millions of dollars.'' ``I think we have serious concern whether a tax system can address the kind of needs we have economically,'' he added. ``But there's some possibility.'' Added Stern, ``We owe it to the fans to go back and look at the notion whether a tax rate might begin to achieve the result we wanted. It doesn't look promising, but we're going to spend the next two days to see if we can give a favorable response.'' Though the decision to cancel games was not surprising, it did represent a major shift in prior labor stalemates. Both sides reluctantly hammered out a deal in 1995 before the start of training camp with the sole notion of not missing games and preserving the NBA's perfect record. Tuesday, they could not come to such an accord. ``I'd like to think these our the last games we have to cancel,'' Granik said. ``But unless this or something else works, or there's some dramatic breakthrough, I think that is certainly not all of the season that's in jeopardy.'' ||||| He was the classic small-town prodigy, with the creativity of a big-city profiteer. When there was no shot to take, he invented a new one. When there was no one to pass to, he reconfigured the play until a teammate was open. Larry Bird, in the Indiana countryside or inside Boston Garden, was a luminous exception to the governing rule. That is why, six years after his retirement from the National Basketball Association, his name is again basketball's most prominent, beginning with his induction to the Hall of Fame before 7,000 Bird watchers at the Civic Center here on Friday night. Deservedly enshrined as forever exceptional, he again becomes Bird, the exception, the case study for a contentious and potentially disastrous labor war. ``No, not really,'' Bird said, when I asked whether he is troubled by the likelihood of his legendary name soon representing a symbol of greed to unsympathetic millions. ``There's always a player's name attached to these things. I know at the time I was very happy about it.'' That would have been 1988, when the Celtics wanted to compensate Bird with a $4.9 million bonus to push through his back pain, go on as their savior. Three years later, in a contract arbitration involving the Knicks' Patrick Ewing, the agent David Falk would contend that the NBA conspired with the Celtics to circumvent the salary cap, in order to satisfy Bird. Alan Greenspan, I am sure, would agree that this salary cap is convoluted enough to give anyone a headache, so let's just say it is a cap that does not exist when a team is negotiating with one of its own. The process of unsealing the cap to re-sign a particular player eventually became known as making use of the Larry Bird exception. And that is where we stand, as this onetime exception has become the very expensive rule the owners don't want to play by anymore. ``I can understand both sides,'' said Bird, safely in the middle, between Bird, the former exception, and Bird, the present Indiana Pacers' coach. ``Without getting into the exception, I think it's very important for players to stay in the same place.'' Important, he meant, for franchise stability and fan identification. ``You have a son who is 7 years old, he goes from 7 to 17 in the 10 years you've played,'' Bird said. ``A lot of people in Boston told me that they had followed me, from the time they were very young to when they were in college.'' The Bird years numbered only three Celtics championships, but he was the best player pro basketball's most famous team ever had. He and Magic Johnson created a basketball renaissance that began during a college title showdown in Salt Lake City and spread worldwide, like an infectious smile. They stood for the pass, for team play, but now their decade of selflessness has given way to one of selfishness. The NBA of Michael Jordan reached greater heights than anyone imagined it could, but it is a league that now suffers from a sickness of the soul. ``If Larry and Magic hadn't done what they did, we might not survive what we're about to go through,'' said Bill Fitch, Bird's first Celtics coach, who, with Bill Walton, stood with him on the night that, he said, gave closure to his playing career. The owners, as always, are exaggerating their misery, but this time, it is much easier to not root for the players. The president of the union is Ewing, who one day commands players to boycott the world championships because the NBA's corporate fingerprints are on them, then the next day helps himself to some television commentary work for David Stern's women's annex. Ewing leads the fight to protect the $100 million contracts for 21-year-olds who have achieved not a single playoff victory, linked to the big payoffs for agents like his friend Falk. The battle is waged in the name of a salary cap that makes exceptions of the unexceptional, rewards everyone as if they were Bird. ``I believe that in any field there has to be an allowance for the truly special ones,'' Walton said. ``But that group is very small. When I was growing up in this sport, the only players who got the recognition were the champions, the ones who always made you feel good about the game, about sports. That's how Larry and Magic played, always dreaming of the special team. It wasn't about hype, about money.'' That is not quite the case, nor should it have been. Bird was a businessman's ball player from the day he arrived, with his flannel shirts and blue-collar ethic. He hired the late Bob Woolf, one of the original heavy-hitting agents, and got himself a record rookie contract. Then he went out and turned a 29-victory catastrophe into a 61-victory contender. A rare Bird, an honest exception to the rule. ||||| More than 220 National Basketball Association players with guaranteed contracts will find out Monday whether they are to be paid during the management lockout, a long-awaited arbitrator's decision that may affect leverage in the league's dispute with the players and have major ramifications on American sports-labor law. But neither the players nor the owners are counting on the ruling by the arbitrator, John Feerick, to speed up negotiations, especially if Feerick finds in favor of the players, an award that could approach $800 million in salaries. NBA attorneys have indicated to the union that if the decision goes against management, they will seek to have it vacated by appealing to the U.S. District Court in Manhattan and then, if necessary, to the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, a process that could prevent the players from getting paid for several months. The NBA has already canceled the first two weeks of the regular season because of the labor dispute. The league has other litigation pending in U.S. District Court in Manhattan. If the players win the ruling, the NBA intends to renew its motion to disqualify Feerick. The motion was brought last summer on the grounds that no collective bargaining agreement existed and, therefore, he had no jurisdiction to hear the matter. ``If he rules in our favor, I think it emboldens the spirit and the resolve of the players,'' said Billy Hunter, union executive director. ``But we understand that won't end the lockout. It just means they have to pay 200-some players. And there is still other litigation alive that may take a while to resolve. At most, it's a hollow victory.'' Feerick will have taken the full 30 days to render his decision. Whatever he decides, his ruling will be watched carefully. There is no precedent for locked-out athletes being paid. During the NBA summer lockout of 1995, players who missed paychecks did not file a grievance. Neither did National Hockey League players who were locked out for the first three months of the 1994-95 season. The union argued that owners should have protected themselves by inserting clauses about non-payment for lockouts and strikes into individual player contracts. In support of its arguments, the union pointed to clauses in a few individual player contracts that contained language precluding payment during a lockout. The league is relying on the basic tenets of labor law, which hold that employees not be paid during strikes or lockouts. A ruling for the union would be significant for all future negotiations between players and owners. The deterrent factor of a lockout is that employees subject to a collective bargaining agreement do not get paid once the agreement expires and they are unable to reach a new agreement. If Feerick finds in favor of the players, there will be no economic incentive for those with guaranteed contracts to reach an agreement quickly. They would essentially be paid for not playing basketball. If Feerick finds in favor of the owners, the reality of not being paid may spur the players to reach an agreement more quickly. But Hunter disputed this notion, and in a conference call Friday talked openly about the entire season's being canceled before the players would back away from their ultimate goals. ``I'm not at all concerned,'' Hunter said. ``There's been no demonstration that there's going to be a change in our resolve. After the players saw these proposals from the league and the recent posturing by NBA owners, well, I had two players call me up and tell me, if need be, they'd be willing to hock everything they've got.'' Another significant development may be thedeparture of many players to Europe until the dispute is settled, according to at least two player agents. ``I think it would be a case-by-case basis, but yes, there's already some people talking about that,'' said Bill Strickland, a member of the union's agents advisory committee. Steve Kauffman, another member of the committee, said he would explore the possibility that one client, Nets center Rony Seikaly, would sign with a professional team in Greece. ``We wouldn't look to void his deal with the team,'' Kauffman said. ``But we would want him to have the right for him to work temporarily until he could come back and honor his contract.' Russ Granik, NBA deputy commissioner, said the league has approved the idea of players' earning a living elsewhere until the lockout is settled. Proposals exchanged last week that included the concept of a luxury-tax system on player salaries appeared to reflect the first signs of progress in negotiations since the lockout began July 1. But both sides have termed the figures in each other's proposal as unacceptable, and it was unclear whether either side was willing compromise. ``I don't think we should get too carried away about the possibilities just yet,'' Granik said. ``When they explored the idea of a tax system, we were taking the players at their word that they wanted to make some headway. But to call their first proposal meaningless is charitable. They proposed something that has no impact. As it stands, that can't be the solution.'' The owners' goal is to slow the growth of player salaries in relation to leaguewide revenue over the next three years, while the players want to keep earning as much as possible. ||||| Patrick Ewing did not want to sound like a striking longshoreman demanding health benefits. ``I'm not going to try and put it in dollars and cents.'' But Ewing, president of the National Basketball Association Players Association, played the public-relations game Tuesday by expounding on the themes of labor unrest: strong-willed unity and short-sighted proposals. On the day when training camps were scheduled to begin, players from across the country held news conferences in 14 NBA cities to proclaim themselves ready to practice for the regular season. ``We want to show the public that we, as players, want to play,'' said Ewing, who was flanked by five teammates. ``Today is supposed to be the start of training camp. We want to practice and we want the season to start. But unfortunately, the owners have locked us out and the season has been postponed.'' The owners and players are scheduled hold their first bargaining session since Aug. 6 on Thursday in Manhattan. Neither side is predicting progress toward signing a new collective bargaining agreement and beginning the season as scheduled on Nov. 3. The league canceled the entire 114-game preseason on Monday. Next week, it will consider canceling the first-ever regular season games in league history. With wide philosophical differences on how $2 billion annual income should be distributed, both sides have privately said they don't expect to play a regular season game before December. Billy Hunter, the union's executive director, offered a glimmer of hope. He spoke optimistically about the potential for a quick resolution. Standing a few feet away from Ewing, he said, ``I hope the owners and commissioner have gotten the message: that we're serious about a deal. I'm prepared to make a quantum leap. I don't think we're that far off. I think there's a lot jockeying, a lot of rhetoric and a lot of games being played. But if and when the owners decide they want a deal, then they'll get one.'' But soon after, he began lambasting the owners' latest proposal, which includes the eventual phasing out of the Larry Bird exception _ the clause that enables free agents to earn unlimited salaries from their current teams. That clause represents the major rift in negotiations. Owners would like to implement a restrictive salary cap that would eventually put a ceiling on how much one player can earn. ``I don't know if this is going to come to a speedy resolution,'' Ewing said. ``They're entrenched with what they want, which is a hard cap. And we feel with a hard cap, we as players, cannot survive. We would have to be stupid and ignorant to accept that deal.'' Said Hunter, ``If you go for their proposal, it's just a joke. It's a step backwards. I cannot understand it. If the intent was to reach an agreement at this late stage or to negotiate in earnest, this was the wrong way to go about it.'' League officials did not respond to the players' comments. ``All we want is our fair share and we feel like they're trying to take that away from us,'' Ewing said. `There's a perception that we're on strike. It's the other way around. We've been locked out.'' Besides Ewing, the other Knicks included former union president Buck Williams, former vice president Herb Williams, Allan Houston and John Starks. Marcus Camby also showed up briefly. When the media horde closed in, however, the third-year forward went to look for his late-arriving teammates inside the practice facility. He was stopped at the gym door, which was locked. ``They locked us out,'' said Rockets forward Mario Elie. ``Everybody's got to get that corrected. It's not on us. They're the ones that closed us down.'' The stalemate has elicited talks of possibly bringing in a mediator in the coming weeks, as Major League Baseball did in 1994 to help solve its labor dispute. But the players are convinced commissioner David Stern and the owners are set on testing their resolve before any genuine headway can be made in negotiations. That means missing paychecks in November, something Ewing said the players are prepared to do. Both sides are still awaiting the outcome of an arbitration decision that is due before Oct. 18. Fordham Law School dean John Feerick will rule whether or not more than 200 players with $800 million in guaranteed contracts should be paid during the lockout. Feerick's decision could give new leverage to one side. But if the players lose the arbitration, more than 400 athletes _ many with extravagant lifestyles and tremendous financial obligations _ will have their allegiances instantly tested. ``It's like they want to see how strong we are,'' Ewing said. ``Based on the proposals we've received, we're very strong.'' ``So far, it seems as though the NBA is dug in on their position,'' Buck Williams said. ``I don't think they're too concerned at this point about making a deal. He added, ``We're about as far apart as the Grand Canyon right now.''

The National Basketball Association joined the NHL, the NFL and baseball when it canceled first the preseason games then two weeks of regular season. In litigation that is complicated by a dispute over the distribution of nearly $2 billion in league income, the main sticking point is the owner's insistence on a salary cap without exceptions. Top players are avoiding discussion of the Larry Bird exception, which allows a player to secure any amount he wants in resigning with his current team except as it applies to their taxation proposal. Also pending is an arbiter's decision as to whether players will be paid during the lockout.

In a decision that will almost certainly lead to the first work stoppage in National Basketball Association history, the league Monday announced the cancellation of all 114 preseason games. Citing stalled negotiations with the Players Association over a new collective bargaining agreement, league officials said they would decide next week whether to cancel the first week of regular season games. While the decision had been expected for 10 days, it nonetheless sent a strong signal that the owners and players will probably be willing to cancel at least part of the regular season in order to settle their labor dispute. Both sides agree that it would take at least three weeks to hold abbreviated training camps and sign over 200 free agents to new contracts. Privately, officials on both sides do not believe the season will start as scheduled on Nov. 3 or even before December. Unlike Major League Baseball, the National Football League and the National Hockey League, the NBA has never lost a regular-season game to labor strife. ``Since we're not even negotiating, you have to conclude it's very likely that we're going miss some part of the regular season,'' deputy commissioner Russ Granik said Monday night. ``We'll try and defer any decisions until the last minute, but right now it does not look good.'' The two sides will meet on Thursday _ their first official bargaining session since Aug. 6. Commissioner David Stern and a group of owners walked out of a meeting after dismissing the merits of a new proposal from the players. Neither Granik nor players association executive director Billy Hunter sounded as if this week's meeting would go a long way toward the signing of a new agreement _ the precursor to playing again. ``I don't think you have any choice but to miss games at this point,'' Hunter said. ``In fact, I think the they've intended it all along. They've locked us out, they've refused to negotiate and they've given us a proposal that's ludicrous.'' Not only are both sides still awaiting the outcome of an arbitration decision that is due before Oct. 18 - the Fordham Law School dean John Feerick will rule whether or not more than 200 players with $800 million in guaranteed contracts should be paid during the lockout _ but the owners and players also are making time to win public opinion before they test their fans' loyalties by canceling games. Monday in 11 cities throughout the country, the players are holding make-shift press conferences at training-camp venues, NBA arenas and gymnasiums. Patrick Ewing, the union president, and several teammates will speak at SUNY-Purchase in Purchase, N.Y., where the Knicks train during the season. With training camp originally scheduled to open on Oct. 6, the message from the players is clear: if the owners would call an end to the lockout, we would be ready to play today. About 100 players are expected to attend, speak and sign autographs for fans afterward. ``I wish they would put their energies into trying to negotiate a deal rather than the various other things that they've been doing,'' Granik said. The dispute is essentially over how the owners and players will judiciously divvy up $2 billion in income. It began last year with the contention by the owners that their employees were receiving more than their fair share of the pot. The owners were allowed to terminate the current agreement because of a clause that enabled them to do so after player salaries reached 53.8 percent of total basketball-related income. The owners say that figure is currently hovering around 57.1 percent. Though many economic issues need to be resolved, the main point of contention since the labor agreement expired and the owners declared a lockout on July 1 has been a clause which allows teams to pay their own free agents whatever they want, regardless of salary-cap rules governing the NBA's 29 teams. Called the Larry Bird exception, it was created to allow the Hall of Fame Boston Celtics forward to re-sign with the Celtics near the end of his career. Michael Jordan exercised the clause the last two years with the Chicago Bulls, earning more than $30 million per season _ figures more than $5 million more what a team is allowed to spend on all its players. But with exorbitant salaries paid to several unproven stars over the last few years and $100 million deals sprouting up routinely, the owners are determined to swing the income pendulum back toward themselves by enforcing a restricted salary cap _ a hard cap _ and putting a ceiling on how much one player could earn. ``Last year, the players received about $1 billion dollars in salaries and benefits and we have made proposals that are guaranteed to increase that number by 20 percent over the next four years,'' Granik said in a prepared statement. ``Our proposals would result in an average player salary of more than $3.1 million and a minimum salary for 10-year veterans of $750,000. Unfortunately, the union leadership has been unwilling to give any serious consideration to what we have offered.'' Hunter labeled those claims as optimistic projections, and shot down a number of new proposals presented to the players on Sept. 25. ``If they had left the current deal in place, we would have gotten much of that anyway,'' he added. ``All we're saying is, we're not in position to accept a hard cap.'' Monday's decision to cancel the preseason came less than two weeks after the NBA indefinitely postponed training camp and canceled the first week of exhibition games. Through tickets sales alone, Granik estimated that losing the exhibition season would cost the league between $35 million and $40 million. Decisions about the cancellations of regular season games are expected to be made next week, he added. A league official said the games would be canceled in blocks of one or two weeks, depending upon circumstances regarding negotiations. Thursday's bargaining session has suddenly become the last hope at starting the season on time. ``Hurdles could be overcome very quickly, but I have no reason to believe they will on Thursday,'' Granik said. Added Hunter: ``Of course they don't expect much to get done. When Russ and David decide the negotiations are going to be real and substantive, then something will happen. What they're banking on now is that the players are going to miss paychecks and cave in November. It's as if they've ingested something that has to pass. And once it passes, then they'll negotiate.'' ||||| The first substantive talks in more than two months between opposing sides of the National Basketball Association's labor dispute came and went Thursday without a hint of a settlement. Still, a five-hour meeting that was described as cordial by the league and ``almost like two bulls letting off a little steam'' by the players association produced another scheduled round of talks next Tuesday. Barring a major compromise, that will not be enough time to preserve a full season and prevent the league from losing its first regular-season games to labor strife in November. Russ Granik, the NBA's deputy commissioner, said the league would wait until after next week's meeting before deciding to cancel regular-season games. He also discussed the possibility of a significantly shortened season. ``We haven't made a determination that you need this exact number of games in order to have a representative season,'' Granik said. ``But we recognize that beyond a certain point we can't possibly sell to our fans that we're having an NBA season. ``Whether's that 60 games, 50 games or 49 or 53, we're not there yet. We have a few months before we have to face that decision.'' Perhaps the only progress involved Thursday in the conference room of a midtown Manhattan hotel was a question-and-answer session over the league's latest proposal to the players. Patrick Ewing, the union president, and vice presidents Herb Williams and Dikembe Mutombo attended the meeting with the union's executive director, Billy Hunter, and union lawyers. No owners were present, but Granik, Commissioner David Stern and the league's lawyers spent most of the day explaining the intricacies of a two-week-old proposal to the players. At one point before the two parties broke for lunch, Stern and Hunter raised their voices and accused each other of handling their constituencies poorly, a participant in the meeting said. But the two were seen shaking hands and laughing after the meeting concluded shortly after 3 p.m. ``There was some venting from both sides,'' Hunter said. ``We've been placid and very respectful. Today, we took the coats off and we were inclined to take the gloves off a little bit. Having done that, I think it kind of loosened up both sides.'' Hunter added: ``Did anybody blink today? They're sort of look at us for any kind of nuance they can find during the course of negotiations that might, in some way or another, give some indication that while we're mouthing one thing we might be open to something else. We're looking at their body language, too. I don't think that they're ready to make a deal.'' The last formal meeting between both sides on Aug. 6 ended when Stern and the owners abruptly marched out after they had received a proposal from the players. ||||| As labor battles go, the current one between the National Basketball Association and its players is weird even by sports standards. There is a real possibility that most, if not all, of the coming season will be canceled. In this union battle it is the interests of the best paid, not those who make union scale, that are dominating the discussion. And here it is some of the workers, not the management, who are considering trying to make the union disappear. The current arrangement has produced an unbalanced pay scale of immense proportions. Last year more players than ever before received the union minimum, then $242,000 for rookies or $272,000 for veterans. The number of players making $1 million to $2 million a year _ the middle class, in NBA terms _ fell sharply. But Michael Jordan made $33 million. This should not be a surprise. Sports is an entertainment business, not unlike movies. Big stars get millions, while most get union scale. Over the years, NBA efforts to stem the rise of salaries have failed. The most important loophole in its salary cap lets a team sign its own free agent for whatever it is willing to pay. When that was adopted, it was assumed that no team would pay a lot more than a rival could pay. But it has not worked out that way. In the current negotiation, the league has offered to guarantee that its payroll will rise 20 percent over the next four years, from $1 billion to $1.2 billion, and says it is open to proposals to split that money any way the players want, whether by raising the minimum salary or guaranteeing raises for veterans. The union says it is worried about that middle class, but seems determined to preserve the free market. The league got its broadcasters, NBC and Time Warner's cable channels, to agree to pay this year's television fees whether or not there are any games to broadcast. (They will be paid back in later years, either through reduced fees or extra games to show.) Owners hoped the players would think management was willing to wait them out, and come to terms with only a small part of the season canceled. But the union is acting unhurried. It turned aside requests for negotiations this week, saying the players had to meet first. Then there is the issue of union suicide, a tactic that was rejected by the players in 1995. The idea is that if the players had no union, it would be illegal under antitrust laws for the owners to collude. The sky would be the limit. That tactic might fail. The courts could reject a union decertification vote as a sham, and in any case some players may fear that teams would feel free to offer less than the old union minimum. But if the players go that route, it could be a long time before real negotiations get going. Billy Hunter, the union's executive director, warned the owners this week that a prolonged lockout could destroy the league's popularity. That was what all the seers said four years ago, when baseball's World Series was canceled by labor troubles. But fan memories are relatively short, and now baseball seems more popular than ever. With that in mind, both owners and players may choose to battle on for months. ||||| In a critical ruling for the North American National Basketball Association and the players' union, arbitrator John Feerick decides Monday whether more than 200 players with guaranteed contracts should be paid during the lockout. If the players win, the owners will be liable for about dlrs 800 million in guaranteed salaries, although they have vowed to appeal if they lose. The league already has sued the players over Feerick's jurisdiction. ``If we win, I think it just emboldens the spirit and resolve of the players,'' union director Billy Hunter said. ``But I don't think there will be anybody celebrating because there's no guarantee that it will end the lockout. ``It only means they have to pay some 200 players, and they've indicated to us their intent to file an immediate appeal and take it as far as they have to in order to avoid payment. ``So even if he does rule in our favor, at most it's a hollow victory. The players aren't going to get paid Nov. 15 in any circumstance,'' Hunter said. If the owners win, it will remove the last wild card the players had been holding. The sides have not negotiated since last Tuesday, when the union proposed a superstar tax on the highest contracts. The league made a counterproposal Friday, asking that the tax be imposed with a much lower threshold. Hunter dismissed the league's latest proposal on Friday afternoon, then said both sides would be best served by awaiting Feerick's ruling. It's unlikely any negotiations will be held this week, since the union is holding a meeting for all NBA players and the agents advisory committee in Las Vegas from Wednesday through Friday. ``We've got to get a sense of where the players are, what they consider to be reasonable and what they're willing to do in order to get the season to commence,'' Hunter said. The union filed a grievance with Feerick before the lockout was imposed July 1 over the owners' announcement June 29 that they would not honor guaranteed deals. In a six-day hearing over the summer, the union argued that owners should have protected themselves from being liable for guaranteed salaries during a work stoppage by inserting lockout language into the standard player contract. The Sacramento Kings inserted a lockout clause into center Olden Polynice's contract in 1994, and it was approved by the league. The union used the existence of that clause to argue that all the other teams should have protected themselves similarly. Most players are due to receive their first paychecks Nov. 15, although a dozen or so had clauses entitling them to be paid over the summer. None has received a paycheck. The NBA argued that a tenet of labor law allows employers to withhold pay from employees during a lockout. The league also called former union director Simon Gourdine to testify, but Feerick upheld union objections and prohibited Gourdine from saying whether it was his understanding when he negotiated the old labor agreement in 1995 that players would not be paid if the owners chose to reopen the agreement and impose a lockout. ||||| In a critical ruling for the North American National Basketball Association and the players' union, arbitrator John Feerick decides Monday whether more than 200 players with guaranteed contracts should be paid during the lockout. If the players win, the owners will be liable for about dlrs 800 million in guaranteed salaries, although they have vowed to appeal if they lose. The league already has sued the players over Feerick's jurisdiction. ``If we win, I think it just emboldens the spirit and resolve of the players,'' union director Billy Hunter said. ``But I don't think there will be anybody celebrating because there's no guarantee that it will end the lockout. ``It only means they have to pay some 200 players, and they've indicated to us their intent to file an immediate appeal and take it as far as they have to in order to avoid payment. ``So even if he does rule in our favor, at most it's a hollow victory. The players aren't going to get paid Nov. 15 in any circumstance,'' Hunter said. If the owners win, it will remove the last wild card the players had been holding. The sides have not negotiated since last Tuesday, when the union proposed a superstar tax on the highest contracts. The league made a counterproposal Friday, asking that the tax be imposed with a much lower threshold. Hunter dismissed the league's latest proposal on Friday afternoon, then said both sides would be best served by awaiting Feerick's ruling. It's unlikely any negotiations will be held this week, since the union is holding a meeting for all NBA players and the agents advisory committee in Las Vegas from Wednesday through Friday. ``We've got to get a sense of where the players are, what they consider to be reasonable and what they're willing to do in order to get the season to commence,'' Hunter said. The union filed a grievance with Feerick before the lockout was imposed July 1 over the owners' announcement June 29 that they would not honor guaranteed deals. In a six-day hearing over the summer, the union argued that owners should have protected themselves from being liable for guaranteed salaries during a work stoppage by inserting lockout language into the standard player contract. The Sacramento Kings inserted a lockout clause into center Olden Polynice's contract in 1994, and it was approved by the league. The union used the existence of that clause to argue that all the other teams should have protected themselves similarly. Most players are due to receive their first paychecks Nov. 15, although a dozen or so had clauses entitling them to be paid over the summer. None has received a paycheck. The NBA argued that a tenet of labor law allows employers to withhold pay from employees during a lockout. The league also called former union director Simon Gourdine to testify. He said it was his understanding when he negotiated the old labor agreement in 1995 that players would not be paid if the owners chose to reopen the agreement and impose a lockout. ||||| The National Basketball Association, embroiled in a labor dispute with its players, Tuesday canceled the first two weeks of the 1998-99 season. It is the first time in the league's 51-year history that it will lose regular-season games. The NBA's deputy commissioner, Russ Granik, announced the cancellation after nearly three and a half hours of meetings concluded at a Manhattan hotel. The decision to cancel 99 games between Nov. 3 and Nov. 16 came after the players association proposed the implementation of a tax system instead of a hard salary cap, a proposal the owners said they would respond to by Friday. ``We tried our best today to try to do what was possible to salvage the season,'' said Alonzo Mourning, the Miami Heat center. ``Unfortunately, it didn't work out.'' After 35,001 games without a blemish, the NBA now joins the National Hockey League, the National Football League and Major League Baseball in having lost games to a labor dispute. Taking into account that a three- to four-week period would be needed for training camp and free-agent signings before the season starts, the league said it would decide in two weeks whether to make further cancellations. ``I'm very sad and disappointed,'' said the NBA commissioner, David Stern. ``I consider it to be a collective failure, but I honestly don't know what else we could have done. I do things that I like to think are in the best interests of the game. And I believe this is.'' The decision came after what both sides agreed were the most substantive talks since the owners imposed a lockout on the player July 1. Seventeen players, including union president Patrick Ewing and vice presidents Mitch Richmond, Herb Williams, Dikemebe Mutombo and Ty Corbin, attended the meeting along with Stern, Granik and five members of the ownership committee _ Madison Square Garden president Dave Checketts and owners Abe Pollin of Washington, Gordon Gund of Cleveland, Les Alexander of Houston and Jerry Colangelo of Phoenix. The talks featured what the players association implied were a bevy concessions made to the owners that they felt would accommodate the league's desire to swing the revenue pendulum back toward the owners. The dispute involves the distribution of approximately $2 billion in league-wide income. The main sticking point has been the owners' insistence on a salary cap without exceptions, the implementation of which they believe would bring player salaries' in line with revenue growth. While the players did not discuss the elimination of the Larry Bird exception _ a clause that allows a player to secure any amount of money he wants in re-signing with his current team _ they did address the exception in their taxation proposal. The main points were as follows: _ A 50 percent tax would be imposed on salary earned above $18 million, a clause that would affect only a few players who exercised their Bird rights. For example, if a player made $20 million, the team would be forced to put $1 million into a fund that would most likely be distributed to low-revenue teams. ``There could be provisions made for some players,'' said Jeffrey Kessler, the chief outside counsel for the union. ``We don't want to do anything that would encourage Chicago from getting Michael Jordan back. And I think the league feels the same way.'' The proposal is similar to the luxury tax proposed by the union in 1995 during negotiations, but it would not be nearly as liberal. _ A salary cap credit would go into effect if the league pays out more than 63 percent of revenues in salary. Whatever figure over that number reduces the salary cap the next year. If the figure was $29 million over the salary cap, then the 29 teams would work with a salary cap $1 million less than the previous season. But the players would have an assurance that the salary cap would go up at least $2 million before the credit goes into effect. _ Also, if the 63-percent threshold is met, a reduction of annual 20 percent raises would take effect for multi-year contracts. Players would either get raises of 10 percent or the rate of growth in league revenues. The union said this clearly addresses the league's desire to bring salaries in line with revenues. Since the owners re-opened the current agreement because 57.1 percent of revenue was going toward salaries, the 63-percent figure would probably have to come down substantially for the owners to agree to such a proposal. _ Teams would get a right of first refusal on free agents after the fourth year for incoming rookies, meaning a player would be contractually obligated to the same team for the first four years of his deal. Currently, the rookie scale is three years and includes a clause that enables a player to exercise his Bird rights after two seasons _ a clause Kevin Garnett parlayed into an astronomical $126 million deal last year with Minnesota. _ Finally, the players agreed to make marijuana a banned substance. Details of testing have not been negotiated and no specific discussions took place regarding testing for performance-enhancing drugs, a provision the owners included in their last proposal. In return for the concessions, the players want an increase in the minimum salary _ currently $272,500 _ and creation of an average salary exception. This would allow every team above the salary cap being able to sign one free agent per year for the average salary _ currently $2.6 million. ``We're buoyed by the fact for the first time they've decided to submit a counterproposal,'' the union's executive director, Billy Hunter, said. ``I don't know if I'm more optimistic, but I can earnestly say we can look our ballplayers in the eye and say we made a valiant effort.'' Asked if the players would finally be tested financially with the cancellation of games, Hunter added: ``It's not about us blinking. We want to reach an agreement. We're tired of the rhetoric, we're tired of the game-playing. Our position all along has been we don't want to accept a bad deal.'' Granik said refunds to fans would be made at end of the calendar month and that the first refund would include monies for canceled preseason games. He estimated the losses into the ``hundreds of millions of dollars.'' ``I think we have serious concern whether a tax system can address the kind of needs we have economically,'' he added. ``But there's some possibility.'' Added Stern, ``We owe it to the fans to go back and look at the notion whether a tax rate might begin to achieve the result we wanted. It doesn't look promising, but we're going to spend the next two days to see if we can give a favorable response.'' Though the decision to cancel games was not surprising, it did represent a major shift in prior labor stalemates. Both sides reluctantly hammered out a deal in 1995 before the start of training camp with the sole notion of not missing games and preserving the NBA's perfect record. Tuesday, they could not come to such an accord. ``I'd like to think these our the last games we have to cancel,'' Granik said. ``But unless this or something else works, or there's some dramatic breakthrough, I think that is certainly not all of the season that's in jeopardy.'' ||||| Despite modest encouragement over a new proposal delivered by the players to the owners, the National Basketball Association Tuesday canceled the first two weeks of the regular season, the first time in the league's 51-year history that it will lose games to a labor dispute. The NBA's deputy commissioner, Russ Granik, announced the cancellation after nearly three and a half hours of meetings concluded at a Manhattan hotel. The decision to cancel 99 games between Nov. 3 and Nov. 16 came after the players association proposed the implementation of a tax system instead of a hard salary cap, a proposal the owners said they would respond to by Friday. ``We tried our best today to try to do what was possible to salvage the season,'' said Alonzo Mourning, the Miami Heat center. ``Unfortunately, it didn't work out.'' After 35,001 games without a blemish, the NBA now joins the National Hockey League, the National Football League and Major League Baseball in having lost games to a labor dispute. Taking into account that a three- to four-week period would be needed for training camp and free-agent signings before the season starts, the league said it would decide in two weeks whether to make further cancellations. ``I'm very sad and disappointed,'' said the NBA commissioner, David Stern. ``I consider it to be a collective failure, but I honestly don't know what else we could have done. I do things that I like to think are in the best interests of the game. And I believe this is.'' The decision came after what both sides agreed were the most substantive talks since the owners imposed a lockout on the player July 1. Seventeen players, including union president Patrick Ewing and vice presidents Mitch Richmond, Herb Williams, Dikemebe Mutombo and Ty Corbin, attended the meeting along with Stern, Granik and five members of the ownership committee _ Madison Square Garden president Dave Checketts and owners Abe Pollin of Washington, Gordon Gund of Cleveland, Les Alexander of Houston and Jerry Colangelo of Phoenix. The talks featured what the players association implied were a bevy concessions made to the owners that they felt would accommodate the league's desire to swing the revenue pendulum back toward the owners. The dispute involves the distribution of approximately $2 billion in league-wide income. The main sticking point has been the owners' insistence on a salary cap without exceptions, the implementation of which they believe would bring player salaries' in line with revenue growth. While the players did not discuss the elimination of the Larry Bird exception _ a clause that allows a player to secure any amount of money he wants in re-signing with his current team _ they did address the exception in their taxation proposal. The main points were as follows: _ A 50 percent tax would be imposed on salary earned above $18 million, a clause that would affect only a few players who exercised their Bird rights. For example, if a player made $20 million, the team would be forced to put $1 million into a fund that would most likely be distributed to low-revenue teams. ``There could be provisions made for some players,'' said Jeffrey Kessler, the chief outside counsel for the union. ``We don't want to do anything that would encourage Chicago from getting Michael Jordan back. And I think the league feels the same way.'' The proposal is similar to the luxury tax proposed by the union in 1995 during negotiations, but it would not be nearly as liberal. _ A salary cap credit would go into effect if the league pays out more than 63 percent of revenues in salary. Whatever figure over that number reduces the salary cap the next year. If the figure was $29 million over the salary cap, then the 29 teams would work with a salary cap $1 million less than the previous season. But the players would have an assurance that the salary cap would go up at least $2 million before the credit goes into effect. _ Also, if the 63-percent threshold is met, a reduction of annual 20 percent raises would take effect for multi-year contracts. Players would either get raises of 10 percent or the rate of growth in league revenues. The union said this clearly addresses the league's desire to bring salaries in line with revenues. Since the owners re-opened the current agreement because 57.1 percent of revenue was going toward salaries, the 63-percent figure would probably have to come down substantially for the owners to agree to such a proposal. _ Teams would get a right of first refusal on free agents after the fourth year for incoming rookies, meaning a player would be contractually obligated to the same team for the first four years of his deal. Currently, the rookie scale is three years and includes a clause that enables a player to exercise his Bird rights after two seasons _ a clause Kevin Garnett parlayed into an astronomical $126 million deal last year with Minnesota. _ Finally, the players agreed to make marijuana a banned substance. Details of testing have not been negotiated and no specific discussions took place regarding testing for performance-enhancing drugs, a provision the owners included in their last proposal. In return for the concessions, the players want an increase in the minimum salary _ currently $272,500 _ and creation of an average salary exception. This would allow every team above the salary cap being able to sign one free agent per year for the average salary _ currently $2.6 million. ``We're buoyed by the fact for the first time they've decided to submit a counterproposal,'' the union's executive director, Billy Hunter, said. ``I don't know if I'm more optimistic, but I can earnestly say we can look our ballplayers in the eye and say we made a valiant effort.'' Asked if the players would finally be tested financially with the cancellation of games, Hunter added: ``It's not about us blinking. We want to reach an agreement. We're tired of the rhetoric, we're tired of the game-playing. Our position all along has been we don't want to accept a bad deal.'' Granik said refunds to fans would be made at end of the calendar month and that the first refund would include monies for canceled preseason games. He estimated the losses into the ``hundreds of millions of dollars.'' ``I think we have serious concern whether a tax system can address the kind of needs we have economically,'' he added. ``But there's some possibility.'' Added Stern, ``We owe it to the fans to go back and look at the notion whether a tax rate might begin to achieve the result we wanted. It doesn't look promising, but we're going to spend the next two days to see if we can give a favorable response.'' Though the decision to cancel games was not surprising, it did represent a major shift in prior labor stalemates. Both sides reluctantly hammered out a deal in 1995 before the start of training camp with the sole notion of not missing games and preserving the NBA's perfect record. Tuesday, they could not come to such an accord. ``I'd like to think these our the last games we have to cancel,'' Granik said. ``But unless this or something else works, or there's some dramatic breakthrough, I think that is certainly not all of the season that's in jeopardy.'' ||||| He was the classic small-town prodigy, with the creativity of a big-city profiteer. When there was no shot to take, he invented a new one. When there was no one to pass to, he reconfigured the play until a teammate was open. Larry Bird, in the Indiana countryside or inside Boston Garden, was a luminous exception to the governing rule. That is why, six years after his retirement from the National Basketball Association, his name is again basketball's most prominent, beginning with his induction to the Hall of Fame before 7,000 Bird watchers at the Civic Center here on Friday night. Deservedly enshrined as forever exceptional, he again becomes Bird, the exception, the case study for a contentious and potentially disastrous labor war. ``No, not really,'' Bird said, when I asked whether he is troubled by the likelihood of his legendary name soon representing a symbol of greed to unsympathetic millions. ``There's always a player's name attached to these things. I know at the time I was very happy about it.'' That would have been 1988, when the Celtics wanted to compensate Bird with a $4.9 million bonus to push through his back pain, go on as their savior. Three years later, in a contract arbitration involving the Knicks' Patrick Ewing, the agent David Falk would contend that the NBA conspired with the Celtics to circumvent the salary cap, in order to satisfy Bird. Alan Greenspan, I am sure, would agree that this salary cap is convoluted enough to give anyone a headache, so let's just say it is a cap that does not exist when a team is negotiating with one of its own. The process of unsealing the cap to re-sign a particular player eventually became known as making use of the Larry Bird exception. And that is where we stand, as this onetime exception has become the very expensive rule the owners don't want to play by anymore. ``I can understand both sides,'' said Bird, safely in the middle, between Bird, the former exception, and Bird, the present Indiana Pacers' coach. ``Without getting into the exception, I think it's very important for players to stay in the same place.'' Important, he meant, for franchise stability and fan identification. ``You have a son who is 7 years old, he goes from 7 to 17 in the 10 years you've played,'' Bird said. ``A lot of people in Boston told me that they had followed me, from the time they were very young to when they were in college.'' The Bird years numbered only three Celtics championships, but he was the best player pro basketball's most famous team ever had. He and Magic Johnson created a basketball renaissance that began during a college title showdown in Salt Lake City and spread worldwide, like an infectious smile. They stood for the pass, for team play, but now their decade of selflessness has given way to one of selfishness. The NBA of Michael Jordan reached greater heights than anyone imagined it could, but it is a league that now suffers from a sickness of the soul. ``If Larry and Magic hadn't done what they did, we might not survive what we're about to go through,'' said Bill Fitch, Bird's first Celtics coach, who, with Bill Walton, stood with him on the night that, he said, gave closure to his playing career. The owners, as always, are exaggerating their misery, but this time, it is much easier to not root for the players. The president of the union is Ewing, who one day commands players to boycott the world championships because the NBA's corporate fingerprints are on them, then the next day helps himself to some television commentary work for David Stern's women's annex. Ewing leads the fight to protect the $100 million contracts for 21-year-olds who have achieved not a single playoff victory, linked to the big payoffs for agents like his friend Falk. The battle is waged in the name of a salary cap that makes exceptions of the unexceptional, rewards everyone as if they were Bird. ``I believe that in any field there has to be an allowance for the truly special ones,'' Walton said. ``But that group is very small. When I was growing up in this sport, the only players who got the recognition were the champions, the ones who always made you feel good about the game, about sports. That's how Larry and Magic played, always dreaming of the special team. It wasn't about hype, about money.'' That is not quite the case, nor should it have been. Bird was a businessman's ball player from the day he arrived, with his flannel shirts and blue-collar ethic. He hired the late Bob Woolf, one of the original heavy-hitting agents, and got himself a record rookie contract. Then he went out and turned a 29-victory catastrophe into a 61-victory contender. A rare Bird, an honest exception to the rule. ||||| More than 220 National Basketball Association players with guaranteed contracts will find out Monday whether they are to be paid during the management lockout, a long-awaited arbitrator's decision that may affect leverage in the league's dispute with the players and have major ramifications on American sports-labor law. But neither the players nor the owners are counting on the ruling by the arbitrator, John Feerick, to speed up negotiations, especially if Feerick finds in favor of the players, an award that could approach $800 million in salaries. NBA attorneys have indicated to the union that if the decision goes against management, they will seek to have it vacated by appealing to the U.S. District Court in Manhattan and then, if necessary, to the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, a process that could prevent the players from getting paid for several months. The NBA has already canceled the first two weeks of the regular season because of the labor dispute. The league has other litigation pending in U.S. District Court in Manhattan. If the players win the ruling, the NBA intends to renew its motion to disqualify Feerick. The motion was brought last summer on the grounds that no collective bargaining agreement existed and, therefore, he had no jurisdiction to hear the matter. ``If he rules in our favor, I think it emboldens the spirit and the resolve of the players,'' said Billy Hunter, union executive director. ``But we understand that won't end the lockout. It just means they have to pay 200-some players. And there is still other litigation alive that may take a while to resolve. At most, it's a hollow victory.'' Feerick will have taken the full 30 days to render his decision. Whatever he decides, his ruling will be watched carefully. There is no precedent for locked-out athletes being paid. During the NBA summer lockout of 1995, players who missed paychecks did not file a grievance. Neither did National Hockey League players who were locked out for the first three months of the 1994-95 season. The union argued that owners should have protected themselves by inserting clauses about non-payment for lockouts and strikes into individual player contracts. In support of its arguments, the union pointed to clauses in a few individual player contracts that contained language precluding payment during a lockout. The league is relying on the basic tenets of labor law, which hold that employees not be paid during strikes or lockouts. A ruling for the union would be significant for all future negotiations between players and owners. The deterrent factor of a lockout is that employees subject to a collective bargaining agreement do not get paid once the agreement expires and they are unable to reach a new agreement. If Feerick finds in favor of the players, there will be no economic incentive for those with guaranteed contracts to reach an agreement quickly. They would essentially be paid for not playing basketball. If Feerick finds in favor of the owners, the reality of not being paid may spur the players to reach an agreement more quickly. But Hunter disputed this notion, and in a conference call Friday talked openly about the entire season's being canceled before the players would back away from their ultimate goals. ``I'm not at all concerned,'' Hunter said. ``There's been no demonstration that there's going to be a change in our resolve. After the players saw these proposals from the league and the recent posturing by NBA owners, well, I had two players call me up and tell me, if need be, they'd be willing to hock everything they've got.'' Another significant development may be thedeparture of many players to Europe until the dispute is settled, according to at least two player agents. ``I think it would be a case-by-case basis, but yes, there's already some people talking about that,'' said Bill Strickland, a member of the union's agents advisory committee. Steve Kauffman, another member of the committee, said he would explore the possibility that one client, Nets center Rony Seikaly, would sign with a professional team in Greece. ``We wouldn't look to void his deal with the team,'' Kauffman said. ``But we would want him to have the right for him to work temporarily until he could come back and honor his contract.' Russ Granik, NBA deputy commissioner, said the league has approved the idea of players' earning a living elsewhere until the lockout is settled. Proposals exchanged last week that included the concept of a luxury-tax system on player salaries appeared to reflect the first signs of progress in negotiations since the lockout began July 1. But both sides have termed the figures in each other's proposal as unacceptable, and it was unclear whether either side was willing compromise. ``I don't think we should get too carried away about the possibilities just yet,'' Granik said. ``When they explored the idea of a tax system, we were taking the players at their word that they wanted to make some headway. But to call their first proposal meaningless is charitable. They proposed something that has no impact. As it stands, that can't be the solution.'' The owners' goal is to slow the growth of player salaries in relation to leaguewide revenue over the next three years, while the players want to keep earning as much as possible. ||||| Patrick Ewing did not want to sound like a striking longshoreman demanding health benefits. ``I'm not going to try and put it in dollars and cents.'' But Ewing, president of the National Basketball Association Players Association, played the public-relations game Tuesday by expounding on the themes of labor unrest: strong-willed unity and short-sighted proposals. On the day when training camps were scheduled to begin, players from across the country held news conferences in 14 NBA cities to proclaim themselves ready to practice for the regular season. ``We want to show the public that we, as players, want to play,'' said Ewing, who was flanked by five teammates. ``Today is supposed to be the start of training camp. We want to practice and we want the season to start. But unfortunately, the owners have locked us out and the season has been postponed.'' The owners and players are scheduled hold their first bargaining session since Aug. 6 on Thursday in Manhattan. Neither side is predicting progress toward signing a new collective bargaining agreement and beginning the season as scheduled on Nov. 3. The league canceled the entire 114-game preseason on Monday. Next week, it will consider canceling the first-ever regular season games in league history. With wide philosophical differences on how $2 billion annual income should be distributed, both sides have privately said they don't expect to play a regular season game before December. Billy Hunter, the union's executive director, offered a glimmer of hope. He spoke optimistically about the potential for a quick resolution. Standing a few feet away from Ewing, he said, ``I hope the owners and commissioner have gotten the message: that we're serious about a deal. I'm prepared to make a quantum leap. I don't think we're that far off. I think there's a lot jockeying, a lot of rhetoric and a lot of games being played. But if and when the owners decide they want a deal, then they'll get one.'' But soon after, he began lambasting the owners' latest proposal, which includes the eventual phasing out of the Larry Bird exception _ the clause that enables free agents to earn unlimited salaries from their current teams. That clause represents the major rift in negotiations. Owners would like to implement a restrictive salary cap that would eventually put a ceiling on how much one player can earn. ``I don't know if this is going to come to a speedy resolution,'' Ewing said. ``They're entrenched with what they want, which is a hard cap. And we feel with a hard cap, we as players, cannot survive. We would have to be stupid and ignorant to accept that deal.'' Said Hunter, ``If you go for their proposal, it's just a joke. It's a step backwards. I cannot understand it. If the intent was to reach an agreement at this late stage or to negotiate in earnest, this was the wrong way to go about it.'' League officials did not respond to the players' comments. ``All we want is our fair share and we feel like they're trying to take that away from us,'' Ewing said. `There's a perception that we're on strike. It's the other way around. We've been locked out.'' Besides Ewing, the other Knicks included former union president Buck Williams, former vice president Herb Williams, Allan Houston and John Starks. Marcus Camby also showed up briefly. When the media horde closed in, however, the third-year forward went to look for his late-arriving teammates inside the practice facility. He was stopped at the gym door, which was locked. ``They locked us out,'' said Rockets forward Mario Elie. ``Everybody's got to get that corrected. It's not on us. They're the ones that closed us down.'' The stalemate has elicited talks of possibly bringing in a mediator in the coming weeks, as Major League Baseball did in 1994 to help solve its labor dispute. But the players are convinced commissioner David Stern and the owners are set on testing their resolve before any genuine headway can be made in negotiations. That means missing paychecks in November, something Ewing said the players are prepared to do. Both sides are still awaiting the outcome of an arbitration decision that is due before Oct. 18. Fordham Law School dean John Feerick will rule whether or not more than 200 players with $800 million in guaranteed contracts should be paid during the lockout. Feerick's decision could give new leverage to one side. But if the players lose the arbitration, more than 400 athletes _ many with extravagant lifestyles and tremendous financial obligations _ will have their allegiances instantly tested. ``It's like they want to see how strong we are,'' Ewing said. ``Based on the proposals we've received, we're very strong.'' ``So far, it seems as though the NBA is dug in on their position,'' Buck Williams said. ``I don't think they're too concerned at this point about making a deal. He added, ``We're about as far apart as the Grand Canyon right now.''

In a dispute between the owners and NBA players over how to divide the $2 billion in league-wide income, all preseason and the first 99 1998-1999 regular season games were cancelled. The Larry Bird exception, a clause in the old agreement that allowed teams to pay their own free agents any amount, regardless of salary-cap rules, is the major issue. The owners want a restricted salary cap. The players have proposed a superstar tax, and the owners have presented a counter proposal, but negotiations have stalled. Meanwhile, both sides are awaiting a ruling by arbitrator Feerick on whether $800 million in guaranteed salaries will be paid during the lockout.

A top IOC official on Saturday made explosive allegations of widespread Olympic corruption, saying agents demand up to dlrs 1 million to deliver votes in the selection of host cities. Marc Hodler, a senior member of the International Olympic Committee executive board, alleged malpractices in the voting for the 1996 Atlanta Games, 2000 Sydney Olympics and 2002 Salt Lake Games. Hodler said a group of four agents, including one IOC member, have been involved in promising votes for payment. He declined to identify them. ``The four agents try to make a living out of this,'' he said. ``I missed a chance to be a rich man. Some of the agents do the following: they say, `I can offer this or that number of votes.' ``The price wold be between dlrs 500,000 and dlrs 1 million for a number of votes, a bloc.'' Hodler added that the agents then charge the city winning the bid ``something like dlrs 3 million to dlrs 5 millon.'' Hodler, an 80-year-old Swiss lawyer, said there is one agent who boasts ``that no city has ever won the Olympic Games without his help.'' ``No one can prove that,'' Hodler said. IOC president Juan Antonio Samaranch immediately disassociated himself from Hodler's allegations. ``The only official spokeman for the IOC executive board is (director general) Francois Carrard,'' Samaranch said. ``All the other comments are personal comments. They are not official comments.'' Hodler's allegations, made to a group of reporters, came as the IOC continued investigations into alleged financial misconduct by the Salt Lake City group which won the bid for the 2002 games. Hodler has described as a ``bribe'' the dlrs 500,000 scholarship fund set up by Salt Lake which benefited the relatives of six IOC members. It also came as the former minister in charge of Sydney's 2000 Olympic bid revealed he was asked to offer bribes in exchange for votes. Bruce Baird, the former New South Wales minister, said he refused. Asked whether Atlanta's victory in the vote for the 1996 games was clean, Hodler said, ``Certainly not.' Asked whether Sydney's election was clean, he said, ``I would be surprised. I know what happened but I don't want to disclose it.'' ``I can't imagine that Sydney is different from the others,'' he said. ``Sydney pretends it is completely clean, clean, clean.'' Hodler contested the argument by the current Salt Lake organizing committee that it was not directly involved in the controversial scholarship program and that the onus was on former bid chief Thomas Welch. ``Yesterday the lawyer of Salt Lake City said, `Everything had been done by Tom Welch, who is not there any more. We know nothing.' My experience is that this is not true.'' The controversy centers on scholarships _ including tuition assistance and athlete training programs _ paid to relatives of IOC members by the Salt Lake bid committee. From 1991 to 1995, the committee _ under the direction of Welch _ spent nearly dlrs 400,000 on scholarships to 13 individuals _ six of them relatives of IOC members, mostly from Africa. The current SLOC president, Frank Joklik, was chairman of the bid committee at the time. SLOC vice president Dave Johnson was also a high official on the bid committee. ||||| The mayor of the Japanese city of Nagano, site of the 1998 Winter Olympics, denied allegations that city officials bribed members of the International Olympic Committee to win the right to host the games. Nagano Mayor Tasuku Tsukada was responding to allegations by Marc Hodler, the Swiss member of the IOC executive board, of systematic buying and selling of the Olympic Games. ``I have never heard of such a thing,'' Tsukada told the Associated Press Sunday. ``As far as Nagano is concerned, we haven't done anything wrong. We were selected as host of the Olympics through our efforts. We can't believe that Mr. Hodler has made such a statement,'' he said. Tsukada was vice chairman of the Japanese committee to invite the Olympics to Nagano. Nagano has been criticized for spending a large amount of money to win the games. Sports Nippon, a leading Japanese sports newspaper, said more than 2 billion yen (dlrs 17 million) of the money Nagano spent to bring the games there has not been accounted for. Japan Olympic Committee has warned cities seeking to host the games in the future that they should not entertain IOC members excessively, the newspaper said. Holder's accusation might effect the invitation activities for the 2008 summer Olympics by Osaka, Japan's second largest city, the paper said. Osaka is competing with Beijing, China and other cities for the right to host the games. Nagano became the first Asian city to host the Winter Games since Sapporo, Japan played host to the 1972 games. Eighty-eight IOC members took part in a secret vote in 1991 to decide who would host the 1998 games. Nagano led in each of the five rounds, beating out Salt Lake city 46 votes to 42 in the final ballot. ||||| Saying ``if we have to clean, we will clean,'' Juan Antonio Samaranch responded on Sunday to allegations of corruption in the Olympic bidding process by declaring that IOC members who were found to have accepted bribes from candidate cities could be expelled. ``It is a serious problem we have before us,'' Samaranch, president of the International Olympic Committee, said in a hastily arranged news conference at a tumultuous meeting of the IOC executive board. Samaranch compared the current climate to the Soviet boycott of the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles and the sprinter Ben Johnson's expulsion from the 1988 Olympics in Seoul, South Korea. ``Those were difficult moments,'' Samaranch said. ``Now we are facing another difficult moment, but I'm sure we will solve this problem.'' Samaranch expressed surprise at allegations made by the IOC executive board member Marc Hodler of Switzerland that agents were offering to sell I.O.C. members' votes for payments from bidding cities. Hodler, the second most senior member of the IOC, said Saturday that he knew of four agents, including one IOC member, who engaged in such activities. Hodler said he believed that 5 to 7 percent of the IOC membership, which currently numbers 115, asked for some sort of compensation for their vote. He has called for a new electoral process, in which the executive board or some other select IOC group would decide which cities become Olympic hosts instead of the full IOC membership. Samaranch agreed Sunday that the time had come to explore change. ``The system we have now is very complicated, very slow and very expensive,'' he said. Hodler, the former head of the International Ski Federation, also claimed that the Fiat tycoon Gianni Agnelli had given free vans to influence votes for the Italian resort of Sestriere to hold the 1997 world skiing championships. Fiat denied the claims on Saturday, but Sunday Howard Peterson, a former senior American delegate to the ski federation, said he had been offered cars by two Fiat executives. The issue of vote-buying came to the fore in Lausanne because of the recent disclosure of scholarship payments made to six relatives of IOC members by Salt Lake City officials during their successful bid to play host to the 2002 Winter Games. The Salt Lake Organizing Committee has said the payments, which amounted to slightly less than $400,000, came from a privately financed fund that was started in 1991. And Intermountain Health Care, Utah's largest health care provider, confirmed Sunday that it gave free surgical services to at least two people associated with the IOC in 1994. A special commission headed by the IOC vice president Dick Pound was appointed on Friday to investigate the issue and has met with Salt Lake officials. Sunday, Frank Joklik, president of the Salt Lake Organizing Committee, issued a public apology to the ``Olympic family and the citizens of Utah'' for the embarrassment caused by the scholarships program. Samaranch Sunday ruled out taking the Games from Salt Lake City. He said, ``If necessary we will expel members if this ad hoc commission thinks these members are guilty.'' Pound said his commission was already ``satisfied Salt Lake City won the 2002 Games on the merit of the bid.'' He also said that his commission would expand its inquiry beyond the Salt Lake City bid only if it was presented with evidence and not simply rumors of corruption in other bids. On Saturday, Hodler had suggested the bidding teams from Atlanta and Nagano, Japan, that won the 1996 Summer Olympics and 1998 Winter Olympics had not run ``clean'' campaigns. Billy Payne, who presided over Atlanta's bid, and Makoto Kobayashi, the general secretary of the Nagano organizing committee, denied those claims. Asked whether he regretted his statements Sunday, Hodler said, ``Not at all'' and later said that ``the cities have been the victims and not the villains.'' Pound said there had been concern in the IOC for some time about agents. ``There always have been lobbyists,'' he said. ``In recent years, especially with the Olympics coming up every two years, there seems to be a professional class being created.'' Hodler, when pressed for further comment this afternoon at Olympic headquarters, initially covered his mouth with both hands and then said, ``Muzzle imposed by the president.'' Hodler, 80, is one of only four IOC members with life membership because he was appointed before age limits were imposed in 1966. Asked if he might resign he said, ``I'm not going to resign, but I might be expelled.'' But the 78-year-old Samaranch said he had ``great respect'' for Hodler and no intention of asking for his resignation or pushing for his expulsion. ||||| Moving quickly to tackle an escalating corruption scandal, IOC leaders questioned Salt Lake City officials Friday in the first ever investigation into alleged vote-buying by an Olympic city. Acting with unusual speed, the International Olympic Committee set up a special investigative panel that immediately summoned the organizers of the 2002 Salt Lake Games to address the bribery allegations. The chief investigator refused to rule out the possibility of taking the games away from Salt Lake City _ though that scenario is considered highly unlikely. Frank Joklik, president of the Salt Lake Organizing Committee, and SLOC senior vice president Dave Johnson appeared before the IOC panel for 90 minutes Friday night. Both sides declined to comment after the talks, saying the inquiry was still in process. Earlier, Joklik met with IOC president Juan Antonio Samaranch and other top officials to provide information and documents on the case. The controversy centers on the payment of nearly dlrs 400,000 in scholarships to relatives of IOC members by the Salt Lake bid committee which won the right to stage the 2002 games. Senior IOC executive board member Marc Hodler said the scholarship fund _ described as ``humanitarian aid'' by Salt Lake officials _ amounted to a bribe to sway votes in the 1995 election. It's the most serious case of alleged ethical misconduct investigated by the IOC since former U.S. member Robert Helmick was accused of conflict of interest in 1991. Helmick eventually resigned both as an IOC member and as president of the U.S. Olympic Committee. This is the first time the IOC has ever investigated possible bribery by bidding cities, despite previous rumors and allegations of corruption in other Olympic votes. ``The executive board takes this matter very seriously,'' said Dick Pound, the IOC vice president heading the Salt Lake inquiry. ``Despite many requests made in the past or evidence to support rumors that have been floating around, we have never had anything come forward. ``Specific allegations have now been made. The executive board acted very quickly to investigate.'' Also on the investigative panel are IOC vice president Keba Mbaye, executive board members Jacques Rogge and Thomas Bach, and IOC director general Francois Carrard. Pound said the panel would investigate allegations that ``there may or may not have been payments for the benefit of members of the IOC or their families connected with the Salt Lake City bid.'' Pound, a Canadian lawyer, said there was no deadline for completion of the investigation but said it was possible the inquiry could be wrapped up this weekend. Pound declined to speculate on what _ if any _ sanctions could be taken against Salt Lake but did not rule out moving the games elsewhere. ``We're not going to make any conclusions or any speculations as to what we may decide until we know what the facts are,'' he said. Moving the games would be unprecedented and, with just over three years to go, would be a logistical nightmare. Most of the facilities needed for the games in Salt Lake already are built. John Krimsky, deputy secretary general of the U.S. Olympic Committee, discounted any possibility of the games being moved. ``There is no chance at all, absolutely none in my mind,'' he said. ``I can't be stronger in saying I don't consider it a possibility whatsoever of the games being withdrawn from Salt Lake City. '' Salt Lake organizers have denied that the bid committee's dlrs 500,000 project was an effort to buy key IOC members' support in the four years between votes on the 1998 and 2002 Winter Games. Salt Lake lost the '98 race to Nagano, Japan, in 1991, when the program was begun. It won a landslide vote over Sion, Switzerland, for the 2002 Games in the 1995 balloting. From 1991 to 1995, the bid committee _ under the direction of former president Thomas Welch _ spent nearly dlrs 400,000 on scholarships to 13 individuals _ six of them relatives of IOC members, mostly from Africa. Olympic rules prohibit bidding cities from giving IOC members or their relatives any presents or benefits exceeding a value of dlrs 150. ``I've already stated I do not regard what was done as a bribe,'' Joklik said Friday. ``I recognize there have been perceptions contrary to that. I regret those perceptions, but I don't feel they are justified.'' Joklik was chairman of the bid committee at the time, the No. 2 official behind Welch. Welch resigned last year as president of the organizing committee after being accused of domestic violence against his wife. He currently serves as a SLOC consultant. ``The organizing committee certainly has people of integrity and ethical standards that would stand any investigation,'' Joklik said. ``The facts were in the early 1990s when the bid committee was operating.'' Among those identified as receiving scholarship funds was Sonia Essomba, the daughter of the late Rene Essomba of Cameroon. The elder Essomba, a prominent surgeon, was the secretary general of the National Olympic Committees of Africa. ||||| What started as a local controversy in Salt Lake City has evolved into a full-blown international scandal. The International Olympic Committee has ordered a top-level investigation into the payment of nearly dlrs 400,000 in scholarships to relatives of IOC members by the Salt Lake group which won the bid for the 2002 Winter Games. IOC executive board member Marc Hodler said the scholarship fund _ described as ``humanitarian aid'' by Salt Lake officials _ amounted to a ``bribe.'' ``I'm terribly sorry that even Salt Lake City _ by far the best place to hold the winter games _ had to use certain methods in order to get the vote,'' Hodler said. IOC president Juan Antonio Samaranch assigned the international body's juridical commission _ which deals with legal and ethical issues _ to investigate. The inquiry will be headed by IOC vice president Keba Mbaye of Senegal, a highly respected former World Court judge. The scholarship fund was first disclosed two weeks ago by a Salt Lake radio station. The controversy is now bound to overshadow the routine progress report which the Salt Lake Olympic Committee (SLOC) is scheduled to make to the IOC executive board this weekend. SLOC president Frank Joklik, who arrived in Lausanne Friday, welcomed the IOC investigation. ``I think that's who the matter should be taken up by,'' he told The Associated Press. `` Of course, we intend to collaborate fully with the IOC and its investigation.'' Joklik expressed concern that the case had harmed Salt Lake's image. ``I appreciate the perception of this matter is bad now,'' he said. Asked about Hodler's accusation of bribery, Joklik said he hadn't seen the remarks yet and couldn't reply directly. But he sought to distance himself from the allegations by making a distinction between the actions of the bidding committee and the current organizing committee. ``Presumably (Hodler's) remarks are related to actions of the bid commitee before 1995,'' Joklik said. ``The organizing committee certainly has people of integrity and ethical standards that would stand any investigation. The facts were in the early 1990s when the bid committee was operating.'' U.S. Olympic Committee deputy secretary general John Krimsky described the controversy as ``disruptive'' for Salt Lake's image and preparations for the games. ``It doesn't do us any good at all,'' he said. ``I hope we see a speedy resolution to Judge Mbaye's review. I hope it will be a footnote. I hope it never becomes a chapter.'' Salt Lake organizers, 10th graf pvs ||||| The senior Olympic official who leveled stunning allegations of corruption within the IOC said Sunday he had been ``muzzled'' by president Juan Antonio Samaranch and might be throw out of the organization. Marc Hodler, the Swiss member of the IOC executive board, said Samaranch had ordered him to keep quiet. He said he was told not to appear at a scheduled routine news conference. Asked whether he might resign, Hodler said, ``No, I don't resign. But maybe I will be expelled. You never know.'' Hodler was, 3rd graf pvs ||||| Swiss IOC executive board member Marc Hodler said Sunday he might be thrown out of the International Olympic Committee for making allegations of corruption within the Olympic movement. Asked whether he might resign, Hodler said, ``No, I don't resign. But maybe I will be expelled. You never know.'' Hodler, who made the allegations Saturday, said he has since been ``muzzled'' by IOC president Juan Antonio Samaranch. His comments came as the leader of the Salt Lake organizing committee apologized Sunday for the alleged rules violations during the city's successful bid for the 2002 Winter Games. The IOC, meanwhile, said it was prepared to investigate allegations made by Hodler of bribery in the selection of Olympic host cities. Frank Joklik, 4th graf pvs ||||| Following is the text of the rules on gifts and benefits that were in force during the bidding for the 2002 Winter Olympics: _ ``The finalist cities as well as third parties acting for them or on their behalf or in their favor, are forbidden to give IOC members _ as well as their blood relations, relatives by marriage, guests or companions _ any presents, liberalities or direct or indirect benefits other than souvenirs ot small presents of a total value which shall in no case exceed U.S. dlrs 150 per person.'' _ ``Finalist cities and any third parties acting for them or on their behalf or in their favor are forbidden to conclude with IOC members, their relations, relatives by marriage, their guests or companions, agreements, transactions or any other contracts.'' _ ``In the event of a serious breach of the present regulations, the IOC executive board may further propose to the IOC session that it exclude the city having breached the regulation from the contest for the games.'' ||||| LAUSANNE, Switzerland (AP) _ IOC president Juan Antonio Samaranch on Sunday promised to expel any members if they are found guilty of accepting bribes. Samaranch said he was surprised at the allegations of corruption in the International Olympic Committee made by senior Swiss member Marc Hodler. But he said the allegations would be considered by a special IOC panel looking into alleged rules violations by the Salt Lake group which won the 2002 Winter Games. ``If it is necessary, we will expel members if this commission feels these members are guilty,'' Samaranch said at a news conference. ``After we get the recommendations of the panel, we will take the measures necessary to arrange the problem.'' Samaranch said the IOC was intent on protecting the integrity of the organization and the Olympics as a whole. ``If we have to clean, we will clean,'' he said. ``After, the IOC will be even stronger than before.'' Samaranch said he was taken aback by Hodler's allegations, which were made to reporters Saturday. Samaranch said Hodler should have brought his allegations first to the IOC executive board. ``For me, I was really surprised. If he has names and evidence, he must go to the executive board.'' Hodler said he believed four agents _ including one IOC member _ had been involved in vote-buying over the past 10 years. He said he thought 5 to 7 percent of the IOC members _ currently numbering 115 _ were open to bribery. Samaranch denied that he ``muzzled'' Hodler, as the Swiss official claimed earlier Sunday. He said he had told all members of the executive board that only himself and director general Francois Carrad could speak to the media. ``This is not the first time I do this,'' he said. Samaranch expressed his respect and admiration for Hodler and ruled out the possbility of expelling him from the IOC, an option the Swiss member had raised. ``Never, never, is anyone thinking to expel Mr. Hodler,'' Samaranch said. The IOC also ruled out any possibility of stripping Salt Lake City of the games over alleged rules violations during the bid. ``No, there is not any kind of possibiity,'' he said. ``We trust the organizing committee of Salt Lake City.'' The Salt Lake controvery centers on a scholarship program that provided nearly dlrs 400,000 in tuition and other assistance to 13 individuals _ including six relatives of IOC members, mostly from Africa. Samaranch said the IOC would possibly consider a new procedure to eliminate the tempations for corruption in the selection of host cities. Under current rules, all IOC members have a vote. Samaranch noted the IOC could adopt the formula used by sports federations such as FIFA, world soccer's governing body, which assign their executive boards to select sites. ||||| A top IOC official on Saturday made explosive allegations of widespread Olympic corruption, saying agents demand up to dlrs 1 million to deliver votes in the selection of host cities. Marc Hodler, a senior member of the International Olympic Committee executive board, alleged malpractices in the bid campaigns for the games of 1996, 1998, 2000 and 2002. Hodler said a group of four agents, including one IOC member, have been involved in promising votes for payment. He declined to identify them. ``The four agents try to make a living out of this,'' he said. ``I missed a chance to be a rich man. Some of the agents do the following: they say, `I can offer this or that number of votes.' ``The price would be between dlrs 500,000 and dlrs 1 million for a number of votes, a bloc.'' Hodler added that the agents then charge the city winning the bid ``something like dlrs 3 million to dlrs 5 millon.'' Hodler, an 80-year-old Swiss lawyer, said there is one agent who boasts ``that no city has ever won the Olympic Games without his help.'' ``No one can prove that,'' Hodler said. ``It could be possible.'' He said he believed agents had been buying and selling votes for the past 10 years. ``There are four agents we know,'' he said. ``One is an IOC member. He promises he will give enough votes so (the biddding city) can win.'' Asked whether all Olympic votes are tainted, Hodler said, ``I know of so many times. There is a good chance it is always the case.'' IOC president Juan Antonio Samaranch immediately disassociated himself from Hodler's allegations. ``The only official spokeman for the IOC executive board is (director general) Francois Carrard,'' Samaranch said. ``All the other comments are personal comments. They are not official comments.'' Hodler's allegations, made to a group of reporters, came as the IOC continued investigations into alleged financial misconduct by the Salt Lake City group which won the bid for the 2002 games. Hodler has described as a ``bribe'' the dlrs 500,000 scholarship fund set up by Salt Lake which benefited the relatives of six IOC members. It also came as the former minister in charge of Sydney's 2000 Olympic bid revealed he was asked to offer bribes in exchange for votes. Bruce Baird, the former New South Wales minister, said he refused. Asked whether Atlanta's victory in the vote for the 1996 games was clean, Hodler said, ``Certainly not.'' John Krimsky, deputy secretary general of the U.S. Olympic Committee, disputed Hodler's assertion. ``There is no basis for the charges against Atlanta at this point,'' Krimsky said. ``All these issues should be put to the IOC review commission.'' Hodler also leveled allegations against the head of the Athens bid which lost to Atlanta in the 1996 vote. Hodler said he overheard Spyros Metaxa, a wealthy Greek businessman who led the bid, describing Samaranch and IOC members as ``stupid'' for imposing restrictions on the bidding process. ``For me there is only one purpose: winning the games,'' Hodler quoted Metaxa as saying. ``I will do whatever is necessary to win the games _ if it costs me dlrs 100,000, dlrs 10 million or dlrs 100 million.'' Hodler said he didn't know of any misconduct in Athens' successful bid for the 2004 games. Asked whether Sydney's election for the 2000 games was clean, Hodler said, ``I would be surprised. I know what happened but I don't want to disclose it.'' ``I can't imagine that Sydney is different from the others,'' he said. ``Sydney pretends it is completely clean, clean, clean.'' The committee which won the 1998 games for Nagano ``certainly had to do things which are not legitimate,'' Hodler said. Hodler contested the argument by the current Salt Lake organizing committee that it was not directly involved in the controversial scholarship program and that the onus was on former bid chief Thomas Welch. ``Yesterday the lawyer of Salt Lake City said, `Everything had been done by Tom Welch, who is not there any more. We know nothing.' My experience is that this is not true.'' The controversy centers on scholarships _ including tuition assistance and athlete training programs _ paid to relatives of IOC members by the Salt Lake bid committee. From 1991 to 1995, the committee _ under the direction of Welch _ spent nearly dlrs 400,000 on scholarships to 13 individuals _ six of them relatives of IOC members, mostly from Africa. The current SLOC president, Frank Joklik, was chairman of the bid committee at the time. SLOC vice president Dave Johnson was also a high official on the bid committee. Hodler said the blame shud be on those ``who put pressure'' on Salt Lake to offer the scholarship funds. ``Nobody blames Salt Lake City,'' he said. ``We blame those voters who can be bought _ not Salt Lake City. They were a victim. We should thank them for not paying money _ only scholarships.'' Joklik on Saturday denied any payment for votes. ``I don't even know what agents are,'' he said.

In December 1998 a story broke that relatives of International Olympic Committee (IOC) members had received $400,000 in scholarships from promoters of Salt Lake City for the 2002 Winter Olympic Games. The IOC immediately ordered a top-level investigation. Senior IOC official Marc Hodler called the scholarships a "bribe". The IOC rules stated that cities could not give any IOC member anything exceeding $150 in value. Hodler went on to allege similar malpractice in choosing other Olympic sites and estimated that 5-7% of the 115 IOC members received compensation for their votes. IOC President Samaranch vowed to expel any guilty member.

A top IOC official on Saturday made explosive allegations of widespread Olympic corruption, saying agents demand up to dlrs 1 million to deliver votes in the selection of host cities. Marc Hodler, a senior member of the International Olympic Committee executive board, alleged malpractices in the voting for the 1996 Atlanta Games, 2000 Sydney Olympics and 2002 Salt Lake Games. Hodler said a group of four agents, including one IOC member, have been involved in promising votes for payment. He declined to identify them. ``The four agents try to make a living out of this,'' he said. ``I missed a chance to be a rich man. Some of the agents do the following: they say, `I can offer this or that number of votes.' ``The price wold be between dlrs 500,000 and dlrs 1 million for a number of votes, a bloc.'' Hodler added that the agents then charge the city winning the bid ``something like dlrs 3 million to dlrs 5 millon.'' Hodler, an 80-year-old Swiss lawyer, said there is one agent who boasts ``that no city has ever won the Olympic Games without his help.'' ``No one can prove that,'' Hodler said. IOC president Juan Antonio Samaranch immediately disassociated himself from Hodler's allegations. ``The only official spokeman for the IOC executive board is (director general) Francois Carrard,'' Samaranch said. ``All the other comments are personal comments. They are not official comments.'' Hodler's allegations, made to a group of reporters, came as the IOC continued investigations into alleged financial misconduct by the Salt Lake City group which won the bid for the 2002 games. Hodler has described as a ``bribe'' the dlrs 500,000 scholarship fund set up by Salt Lake which benefited the relatives of six IOC members. It also came as the former minister in charge of Sydney's 2000 Olympic bid revealed he was asked to offer bribes in exchange for votes. Bruce Baird, the former New South Wales minister, said he refused. Asked whether Atlanta's victory in the vote for the 1996 games was clean, Hodler said, ``Certainly not.' Asked whether Sydney's election was clean, he said, ``I would be surprised. I know what happened but I don't want to disclose it.'' ``I can't imagine that Sydney is different from the others,'' he said. ``Sydney pretends it is completely clean, clean, clean.'' Hodler contested the argument by the current Salt Lake organizing committee that it was not directly involved in the controversial scholarship program and that the onus was on former bid chief Thomas Welch. ``Yesterday the lawyer of Salt Lake City said, `Everything had been done by Tom Welch, who is not there any more. We know nothing.' My experience is that this is not true.'' The controversy centers on scholarships _ including tuition assistance and athlete training programs _ paid to relatives of IOC members by the Salt Lake bid committee. From 1991 to 1995, the committee _ under the direction of Welch _ spent nearly dlrs 400,000 on scholarships to 13 individuals _ six of them relatives of IOC members, mostly from Africa. The current SLOC president, Frank Joklik, was chairman of the bid committee at the time. SLOC vice president Dave Johnson was also a high official on the bid committee. ||||| The mayor of the Japanese city of Nagano, site of the 1998 Winter Olympics, denied allegations that city officials bribed members of the International Olympic Committee to win the right to host the games. Nagano Mayor Tasuku Tsukada was responding to allegations by Marc Hodler, the Swiss member of the IOC executive board, of systematic buying and selling of the Olympic Games. ``I have never heard of such a thing,'' Tsukada told the Associated Press Sunday. ``As far as Nagano is concerned, we haven't done anything wrong. We were selected as host of the Olympics through our efforts. We can't believe that Mr. Hodler has made such a statement,'' he said. Tsukada was vice chairman of the Japanese committee to invite the Olympics to Nagano. Nagano has been criticized for spending a large amount of money to win the games. Sports Nippon, a leading Japanese sports newspaper, said more than 2 billion yen (dlrs 17 million) of the money Nagano spent to bring the games there has not been accounted for. Japan Olympic Committee has warned cities seeking to host the games in the future that they should not entertain IOC members excessively, the newspaper said. Holder's accusation might effect the invitation activities for the 2008 summer Olympics by Osaka, Japan's second largest city, the paper said. Osaka is competing with Beijing, China and other cities for the right to host the games. Nagano became the first Asian city to host the Winter Games since Sapporo, Japan played host to the 1972 games. Eighty-eight IOC members took part in a secret vote in 1991 to decide who would host the 1998 games. Nagano led in each of the five rounds, beating out Salt Lake city 46 votes to 42 in the final ballot. ||||| Saying ``if we have to clean, we will clean,'' Juan Antonio Samaranch responded on Sunday to allegations of corruption in the Olympic bidding process by declaring that IOC members who were found to have accepted bribes from candidate cities could be expelled. ``It is a serious problem we have before us,'' Samaranch, president of the International Olympic Committee, said in a hastily arranged news conference at a tumultuous meeting of the IOC executive board. Samaranch compared the current climate to the Soviet boycott of the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles and the sprinter Ben Johnson's expulsion from the 1988 Olympics in Seoul, South Korea. ``Those were difficult moments,'' Samaranch said. ``Now we are facing another difficult moment, but I'm sure we will solve this problem.'' Samaranch expressed surprise at allegations made by the IOC executive board member Marc Hodler of Switzerland that agents were offering to sell I.O.C. members' votes for payments from bidding cities. Hodler, the second most senior member of the IOC, said Saturday that he knew of four agents, including one IOC member, who engaged in such activities. Hodler said he believed that 5 to 7 percent of the IOC membership, which currently numbers 115, asked for some sort of compensation for their vote. He has called for a new electoral process, in which the executive board or some other select IOC group would decide which cities become Olympic hosts instead of the full IOC membership. Samaranch agreed Sunday that the time had come to explore change. ``The system we have now is very complicated, very slow and very expensive,'' he said. Hodler, the former head of the International Ski Federation, also claimed that the Fiat tycoon Gianni Agnelli had given free vans to influence votes for the Italian resort of Sestriere to hold the 1997 world skiing championships. Fiat denied the claims on Saturday, but Sunday Howard Peterson, a former senior American delegate to the ski federation, said he had been offered cars by two Fiat executives. The issue of vote-buying came to the fore in Lausanne because of the recent disclosure of scholarship payments made to six relatives of IOC members by Salt Lake City officials during their successful bid to play host to the 2002 Winter Games. The Salt Lake Organizing Committee has said the payments, which amounted to slightly less than $400,000, came from a privately financed fund that was started in 1991. And Intermountain Health Care, Utah's largest health care provider, confirmed Sunday that it gave free surgical services to at least two people associated with the IOC in 1994. A special commission headed by the IOC vice president Dick Pound was appointed on Friday to investigate the issue and has met with Salt Lake officials. Sunday, Frank Joklik, president of the Salt Lake Organizing Committee, issued a public apology to the ``Olympic family and the citizens of Utah'' for the embarrassment caused by the scholarships program. Samaranch Sunday ruled out taking the Games from Salt Lake City. He said, ``If necessary we will expel members if this ad hoc commission thinks these members are guilty.'' Pound said his commission was already ``satisfied Salt Lake City won the 2002 Games on the merit of the bid.'' He also said that his commission would expand its inquiry beyond the Salt Lake City bid only if it was presented with evidence and not simply rumors of corruption in other bids. On Saturday, Hodler had suggested the bidding teams from Atlanta and Nagano, Japan, that won the 1996 Summer Olympics and 1998 Winter Olympics had not run ``clean'' campaigns. Billy Payne, who presided over Atlanta's bid, and Makoto Kobayashi, the general secretary of the Nagano organizing committee, denied those claims. Asked whether he regretted his statements Sunday, Hodler said, ``Not at all'' and later said that ``the cities have been the victims and not the villains.'' Pound said there had been concern in the IOC for some time about agents. ``There always have been lobbyists,'' he said. ``In recent years, especially with the Olympics coming up every two years, there seems to be a professional class being created.'' Hodler, when pressed for further comment this afternoon at Olympic headquarters, initially covered his mouth with both hands and then said, ``Muzzle imposed by the president.'' Hodler, 80, is one of only four IOC members with life membership because he was appointed before age limits were imposed in 1966. Asked if he might resign he said, ``I'm not going to resign, but I might be expelled.'' But the 78-year-old Samaranch said he had ``great respect'' for Hodler and no intention of asking for his resignation or pushing for his expulsion. ||||| Moving quickly to tackle an escalating corruption scandal, IOC leaders questioned Salt Lake City officials Friday in the first ever investigation into alleged vote-buying by an Olympic city. Acting with unusual speed, the International Olympic Committee set up a special investigative panel that immediately summoned the organizers of the 2002 Salt Lake Games to address the bribery allegations. The chief investigator refused to rule out the possibility of taking the games away from Salt Lake City _ though that scenario is considered highly unlikely. Frank Joklik, president of the Salt Lake Organizing Committee, and SLOC senior vice president Dave Johnson appeared before the IOC panel for 90 minutes Friday night. Both sides declined to comment after the talks, saying the inquiry was still in process. Earlier, Joklik met with IOC president Juan Antonio Samaranch and other top officials to provide information and documents on the case. The controversy centers on the payment of nearly dlrs 400,000 in scholarships to relatives of IOC members by the Salt Lake bid committee which won the right to stage the 2002 games. Senior IOC executive board member Marc Hodler said the scholarship fund _ described as ``humanitarian aid'' by Salt Lake officials _ amounted to a bribe to sway votes in the 1995 election. It's the most serious case of alleged ethical misconduct investigated by the IOC since former U.S. member Robert Helmick was accused of conflict of interest in 1991. Helmick eventually resigned both as an IOC member and as president of the U.S. Olympic Committee. This is the first time the IOC has ever investigated possible bribery by bidding cities, despite previous rumors and allegations of corruption in other Olympic votes. ``The executive board takes this matter very seriously,'' said Dick Pound, the IOC vice president heading the Salt Lake inquiry. ``Despite many requests made in the past or evidence to support rumors that have been floating around, we have never had anything come forward. ``Specific allegations have now been made. The executive board acted very quickly to investigate.'' Also on the investigative panel are IOC vice president Keba Mbaye, executive board members Jacques Rogge and Thomas Bach, and IOC director general Francois Carrard. Pound said the panel would investigate allegations that ``there may or may not have been payments for the benefit of members of the IOC or their families connected with the Salt Lake City bid.'' Pound, a Canadian lawyer, said there was no deadline for completion of the investigation but said it was possible the inquiry could be wrapped up this weekend. Pound declined to speculate on what _ if any _ sanctions could be taken against Salt Lake but did not rule out moving the games elsewhere. ``We're not going to make any conclusions or any speculations as to what we may decide until we know what the facts are,'' he said. Moving the games would be unprecedented and, with just over three years to go, would be a logistical nightmare. Most of the facilities needed for the games in Salt Lake already are built. John Krimsky, deputy secretary general of the U.S. Olympic Committee, discounted any possibility of the games being moved. ``There is no chance at all, absolutely none in my mind,'' he said. ``I can't be stronger in saying I don't consider it a possibility whatsoever of the games being withdrawn from Salt Lake City. '' Salt Lake organizers have denied that the bid committee's dlrs 500,000 project was an effort to buy key IOC members' support in the four years between votes on the 1998 and 2002 Winter Games. Salt Lake lost the '98 race to Nagano, Japan, in 1991, when the program was begun. It won a landslide vote over Sion, Switzerland, for the 2002 Games in the 1995 balloting. From 1991 to 1995, the bid committee _ under the direction of former president Thomas Welch _ spent nearly dlrs 400,000 on scholarships to 13 individuals _ six of them relatives of IOC members, mostly from Africa. Olympic rules prohibit bidding cities from giving IOC members or their relatives any presents or benefits exceeding a value of dlrs 150. ``I've already stated I do not regard what was done as a bribe,'' Joklik said Friday. ``I recognize there have been perceptions contrary to that. I regret those perceptions, but I don't feel they are justified.'' Joklik was chairman of the bid committee at the time, the No. 2 official behind Welch. Welch resigned last year as president of the organizing committee after being accused of domestic violence against his wife. He currently serves as a SLOC consultant. ``The organizing committee certainly has people of integrity and ethical standards that would stand any investigation,'' Joklik said. ``The facts were in the early 1990s when the bid committee was operating.'' Among those identified as receiving scholarship funds was Sonia Essomba, the daughter of the late Rene Essomba of Cameroon. The elder Essomba, a prominent surgeon, was the secretary general of the National Olympic Committees of Africa. ||||| What started as a local controversy in Salt Lake City has evolved into a full-blown international scandal. The International Olympic Committee has ordered a top-level investigation into the payment of nearly dlrs 400,000 in scholarships to relatives of IOC members by the Salt Lake group which won the bid for the 2002 Winter Games. IOC executive board member Marc Hodler said the scholarship fund _ described as ``humanitarian aid'' by Salt Lake officials _ amounted to a ``bribe.'' ``I'm terribly sorry that even Salt Lake City _ by far the best place to hold the winter games _ had to use certain methods in order to get the vote,'' Hodler said. IOC president Juan Antonio Samaranch assigned the international body's juridical commission _ which deals with legal and ethical issues _ to investigate. The inquiry will be headed by IOC vice president Keba Mbaye of Senegal, a highly respected former World Court judge. The scholarship fund was first disclosed two weeks ago by a Salt Lake radio station. The controversy is now bound to overshadow the routine progress report which the Salt Lake Olympic Committee (SLOC) is scheduled to make to the IOC executive board this weekend. SLOC president Frank Joklik, who arrived in Lausanne Friday, welcomed the IOC investigation. ``I think that's who the matter should be taken up by,'' he told The Associated Press. `` Of course, we intend to collaborate fully with the IOC and its investigation.'' Joklik expressed concern that the case had harmed Salt Lake's image. ``I appreciate the perception of this matter is bad now,'' he said. Asked about Hodler's accusation of bribery, Joklik said he hadn't seen the remarks yet and couldn't reply directly. But he sought to distance himself from the allegations by making a distinction between the actions of the bidding committee and the current organizing committee. ``Presumably (Hodler's) remarks are related to actions of the bid commitee before 1995,'' Joklik said. ``The organizing committee certainly has people of integrity and ethical standards that would stand any investigation. The facts were in the early 1990s when the bid committee was operating.'' U.S. Olympic Committee deputy secretary general John Krimsky described the controversy as ``disruptive'' for Salt Lake's image and preparations for the games. ``It doesn't do us any good at all,'' he said. ``I hope we see a speedy resolution to Judge Mbaye's review. I hope it will be a footnote. I hope it never becomes a chapter.'' Salt Lake organizers, 10th graf pvs ||||| The senior Olympic official who leveled stunning allegations of corruption within the IOC said Sunday he had been ``muzzled'' by president Juan Antonio Samaranch and might be throw out of the organization. Marc Hodler, the Swiss member of the IOC executive board, said Samaranch had ordered him to keep quiet. He said he was told not to appear at a scheduled routine news conference. Asked whether he might resign, Hodler said, ``No, I don't resign. But maybe I will be expelled. You never know.'' Hodler was, 3rd graf pvs ||||| Swiss IOC executive board member Marc Hodler said Sunday he might be thrown out of the International Olympic Committee for making allegations of corruption within the Olympic movement. Asked whether he might resign, Hodler said, ``No, I don't resign. But maybe I will be expelled. You never know.'' Hodler, who made the allegations Saturday, said he has since been ``muzzled'' by IOC president Juan Antonio Samaranch. His comments came as the leader of the Salt Lake organizing committee apologized Sunday for the alleged rules violations during the city's successful bid for the 2002 Winter Games. The IOC, meanwhile, said it was prepared to investigate allegations made by Hodler of bribery in the selection of Olympic host cities. Frank Joklik, 4th graf pvs ||||| Following is the text of the rules on gifts and benefits that were in force during the bidding for the 2002 Winter Olympics: _ ``The finalist cities as well as third parties acting for them or on their behalf or in their favor, are forbidden to give IOC members _ as well as their blood relations, relatives by marriage, guests or companions _ any presents, liberalities or direct or indirect benefits other than souvenirs ot small presents of a total value which shall in no case exceed U.S. dlrs 150 per person.'' _ ``Finalist cities and any third parties acting for them or on their behalf or in their favor are forbidden to conclude with IOC members, their relations, relatives by marriage, their guests or companions, agreements, transactions or any other contracts.'' _ ``In the event of a serious breach of the present regulations, the IOC executive board may further propose to the IOC session that it exclude the city having breached the regulation from the contest for the games.'' ||||| LAUSANNE, Switzerland (AP) _ IOC president Juan Antonio Samaranch on Sunday promised to expel any members if they are found guilty of accepting bribes. Samaranch said he was surprised at the allegations of corruption in the International Olympic Committee made by senior Swiss member Marc Hodler. But he said the allegations would be considered by a special IOC panel looking into alleged rules violations by the Salt Lake group which won the 2002 Winter Games. ``If it is necessary, we will expel members if this commission feels these members are guilty,'' Samaranch said at a news conference. ``After we get the recommendations of the panel, we will take the measures necessary to arrange the problem.'' Samaranch said the IOC was intent on protecting the integrity of the organization and the Olympics as a whole. ``If we have to clean, we will clean,'' he said. ``After, the IOC will be even stronger than before.'' Samaranch said he was taken aback by Hodler's allegations, which were made to reporters Saturday. Samaranch said Hodler should have brought his allegations first to the IOC executive board. ``For me, I was really surprised. If he has names and evidence, he must go to the executive board.'' Hodler said he believed four agents _ including one IOC member _ had been involved in vote-buying over the past 10 years. He said he thought 5 to 7 percent of the IOC members _ currently numbering 115 _ were open to bribery. Samaranch denied that he ``muzzled'' Hodler, as the Swiss official claimed earlier Sunday. He said he had told all members of the executive board that only himself and director general Francois Carrad could speak to the media. ``This is not the first time I do this,'' he said. Samaranch expressed his respect and admiration for Hodler and ruled out the possbility of expelling him from the IOC, an option the Swiss member had raised. ``Never, never, is anyone thinking to expel Mr. Hodler,'' Samaranch said. The IOC also ruled out any possibility of stripping Salt Lake City of the games over alleged rules violations during the bid. ``No, there is not any kind of possibiity,'' he said. ``We trust the organizing committee of Salt Lake City.'' The Salt Lake controvery centers on a scholarship program that provided nearly dlrs 400,000 in tuition and other assistance to 13 individuals _ including six relatives of IOC members, mostly from Africa. Samaranch said the IOC would possibly consider a new procedure to eliminate the tempations for corruption in the selection of host cities. Under current rules, all IOC members have a vote. Samaranch noted the IOC could adopt the formula used by sports federations such as FIFA, world soccer's governing body, which assign their executive boards to select sites. ||||| A top IOC official on Saturday made explosive allegations of widespread Olympic corruption, saying agents demand up to dlrs 1 million to deliver votes in the selection of host cities. Marc Hodler, a senior member of the International Olympic Committee executive board, alleged malpractices in the bid campaigns for the games of 1996, 1998, 2000 and 2002. Hodler said a group of four agents, including one IOC member, have been involved in promising votes for payment. He declined to identify them. ``The four agents try to make a living out of this,'' he said. ``I missed a chance to be a rich man. Some of the agents do the following: they say, `I can offer this or that number of votes.' ``The price would be between dlrs 500,000 and dlrs 1 million for a number of votes, a bloc.'' Hodler added that the agents then charge the city winning the bid ``something like dlrs 3 million to dlrs 5 millon.'' Hodler, an 80-year-old Swiss lawyer, said there is one agent who boasts ``that no city has ever won the Olympic Games without his help.'' ``No one can prove that,'' Hodler said. ``It could be possible.'' He said he believed agents had been buying and selling votes for the past 10 years. ``There are four agents we know,'' he said. ``One is an IOC member. He promises he will give enough votes so (the biddding city) can win.'' Asked whether all Olympic votes are tainted, Hodler said, ``I know of so many times. There is a good chance it is always the case.'' IOC president Juan Antonio Samaranch immediately disassociated himself from Hodler's allegations. ``The only official spokeman for the IOC executive board is (director general) Francois Carrard,'' Samaranch said. ``All the other comments are personal comments. They are not official comments.'' Hodler's allegations, made to a group of reporters, came as the IOC continued investigations into alleged financial misconduct by the Salt Lake City group which won the bid for the 2002 games. Hodler has described as a ``bribe'' the dlrs 500,000 scholarship fund set up by Salt Lake which benefited the relatives of six IOC members. It also came as the former minister in charge of Sydney's 2000 Olympic bid revealed he was asked to offer bribes in exchange for votes. Bruce Baird, the former New South Wales minister, said he refused. Asked whether Atlanta's victory in the vote for the 1996 games was clean, Hodler said, ``Certainly not.'' John Krimsky, deputy secretary general of the U.S. Olympic Committee, disputed Hodler's assertion. ``There is no basis for the charges against Atlanta at this point,'' Krimsky said. ``All these issues should be put to the IOC review commission.'' Hodler also leveled allegations against the head of the Athens bid which lost to Atlanta in the 1996 vote. Hodler said he overheard Spyros Metaxa, a wealthy Greek businessman who led the bid, describing Samaranch and IOC members as ``stupid'' for imposing restrictions on the bidding process. ``For me there is only one purpose: winning the games,'' Hodler quoted Metaxa as saying. ``I will do whatever is necessary to win the games _ if it costs me dlrs 100,000, dlrs 10 million or dlrs 100 million.'' Hodler said he didn't know of any misconduct in Athens' successful bid for the 2004 games. Asked whether Sydney's election for the 2000 games was clean, Hodler said, ``I would be surprised. I know what happened but I don't want to disclose it.'' ``I can't imagine that Sydney is different from the others,'' he said. ``Sydney pretends it is completely clean, clean, clean.'' The committee which won the 1998 games for Nagano ``certainly had to do things which are not legitimate,'' Hodler said. Hodler contested the argument by the current Salt Lake organizing committee that it was not directly involved in the controversial scholarship program and that the onus was on former bid chief Thomas Welch. ``Yesterday the lawyer of Salt Lake City said, `Everything had been done by Tom Welch, who is not there any more. We know nothing.' My experience is that this is not true.'' The controversy centers on scholarships _ including tuition assistance and athlete training programs _ paid to relatives of IOC members by the Salt Lake bid committee. From 1991 to 1995, the committee _ under the direction of Welch _ spent nearly dlrs 400,000 on scholarships to 13 individuals _ six of them relatives of IOC members, mostly from Africa. The current SLOC president, Frank Joklik, was chairman of the bid committee at the time. SLOC vice president Dave Johnson was also a high official on the bid committee. Hodler said the blame shud be on those ``who put pressure'' on Salt Lake to offer the scholarship funds. ``Nobody blames Salt Lake City,'' he said. ``We blame those voters who can be bought _ not Salt Lake City. They were a victim. We should thank them for not paying money _ only scholarships.'' Joklik on Saturday denied any payment for votes. ``I don't even know what agents are,'' he said.

IOC executive board member, Marc Hodler, alleged that agents from cities bidding to host Olympic Games offer IOC members bribes to favor their city. The allegation was made public when Holder revealed the Salt Lake City 2002 Games organizers offered scholarship payments to IOC members' relatives. The IOC is investigating the charges and further allegations of Olympic corruption in voting for the games of 1996, 1998 and 2000. IOC President Samaranch called for an investigation of the allegations, promising to expel anyone found guilty, and ordered Hodler to keep quiet. Japan denied allegations of bribery to host the 1998 Winter Games.

A top IOC official on Saturday made explosive allegations of widespread Olympic corruption, saying agents demand up to dlrs 1 million to deliver votes in the selection of host cities. Marc Hodler, a senior member of the International Olympic Committee executive board, alleged malpractices in the voting for the 1996 Atlanta Games, 2000 Sydney Olympics and 2002 Salt Lake Games. Hodler said a group of four agents, including one IOC member, have been involved in promising votes for payment. He declined to identify them. ``The four agents try to make a living out of this,'' he said. ``I missed a chance to be a rich man. Some of the agents do the following: they say, `I can offer this or that number of votes.' ``The price wold be between dlrs 500,000 and dlrs 1 million for a number of votes, a bloc.'' Hodler added that the agents then charge the city winning the bid ``something like dlrs 3 million to dlrs 5 millon.'' Hodler, an 80-year-old Swiss lawyer, said there is one agent who boasts ``that no city has ever won the Olympic Games without his help.'' ``No one can prove that,'' Hodler said. IOC president Juan Antonio Samaranch immediately disassociated himself from Hodler's allegations. ``The only official spokeman for the IOC executive board is (director general) Francois Carrard,'' Samaranch said. ``All the other comments are personal comments. They are not official comments.'' Hodler's allegations, made to a group of reporters, came as the IOC continued investigations into alleged financial misconduct by the Salt Lake City group which won the bid for the 2002 games. Hodler has described as a ``bribe'' the dlrs 500,000 scholarship fund set up by Salt Lake which benefited the relatives of six IOC members. It also came as the former minister in charge of Sydney's 2000 Olympic bid revealed he was asked to offer bribes in exchange for votes. Bruce Baird, the former New South Wales minister, said he refused. Asked whether Atlanta's victory in the vote for the 1996 games was clean, Hodler said, ``Certainly not.' Asked whether Sydney's election was clean, he said, ``I would be surprised. I know what happened but I don't want to disclose it.'' ``I can't imagine that Sydney is different from the others,'' he said. ``Sydney pretends it is completely clean, clean, clean.'' Hodler contested the argument by the current Salt Lake organizing committee that it was not directly involved in the controversial scholarship program and that the onus was on former bid chief Thomas Welch. ``Yesterday the lawyer of Salt Lake City said, `Everything had been done by Tom Welch, who is not there any more. We know nothing.' My experience is that this is not true.'' The controversy centers on scholarships _ including tuition assistance and athlete training programs _ paid to relatives of IOC members by the Salt Lake bid committee. From 1991 to 1995, the committee _ under the direction of Welch _ spent nearly dlrs 400,000 on scholarships to 13 individuals _ six of them relatives of IOC members, mostly from Africa. The current SLOC president, Frank Joklik, was chairman of the bid committee at the time. SLOC vice president Dave Johnson was also a high official on the bid committee. ||||| The mayor of the Japanese city of Nagano, site of the 1998 Winter Olympics, denied allegations that city officials bribed members of the International Olympic Committee to win the right to host the games. Nagano Mayor Tasuku Tsukada was responding to allegations by Marc Hodler, the Swiss member of the IOC executive board, of systematic buying and selling of the Olympic Games. ``I have never heard of such a thing,'' Tsukada told the Associated Press Sunday. ``As far as Nagano is concerned, we haven't done anything wrong. We were selected as host of the Olympics through our efforts. We can't believe that Mr. Hodler has made such a statement,'' he said. Tsukada was vice chairman of the Japanese committee to invite the Olympics to Nagano. Nagano has been criticized for spending a large amount of money to win the games. Sports Nippon, a leading Japanese sports newspaper, said more than 2 billion yen (dlrs 17 million) of the money Nagano spent to bring the games there has not been accounted for. Japan Olympic Committee has warned cities seeking to host the games in the future that they should not entertain IOC members excessively, the newspaper said. Holder's accusation might effect the invitation activities for the 2008 summer Olympics by Osaka, Japan's second largest city, the paper said. Osaka is competing with Beijing, China and other cities for the right to host the games. Nagano became the first Asian city to host the Winter Games since Sapporo, Japan played host to the 1972 games. Eighty-eight IOC members took part in a secret vote in 1991 to decide who would host the 1998 games. Nagano led in each of the five rounds, beating out Salt Lake city 46 votes to 42 in the final ballot. ||||| Saying ``if we have to clean, we will clean,'' Juan Antonio Samaranch responded on Sunday to allegations of corruption in the Olympic bidding process by declaring that IOC members who were found to have accepted bribes from candidate cities could be expelled. ``It is a serious problem we have before us,'' Samaranch, president of the International Olympic Committee, said in a hastily arranged news conference at a tumultuous meeting of the IOC executive board. Samaranch compared the current climate to the Soviet boycott of the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles and the sprinter Ben Johnson's expulsion from the 1988 Olympics in Seoul, South Korea. ``Those were difficult moments,'' Samaranch said. ``Now we are facing another difficult moment, but I'm sure we will solve this problem.'' Samaranch expressed surprise at allegations made by the IOC executive board member Marc Hodler of Switzerland that agents were offering to sell I.O.C. members' votes for payments from bidding cities. Hodler, the second most senior member of the IOC, said Saturday that he knew of four agents, including one IOC member, who engaged in such activities. Hodler said he believed that 5 to 7 percent of the IOC membership, which currently numbers 115, asked for some sort of compensation for their vote. He has called for a new electoral process, in which the executive board or some other select IOC group would decide which cities become Olympic hosts instead of the full IOC membership. Samaranch agreed Sunday that the time had come to explore change. ``The system we have now is very complicated, very slow and very expensive,'' he said. Hodler, the former head of the International Ski Federation, also claimed that the Fiat tycoon Gianni Agnelli had given free vans to influence votes for the Italian resort of Sestriere to hold the 1997 world skiing championships. Fiat denied the claims on Saturday, but Sunday Howard Peterson, a former senior American delegate to the ski federation, said he had been offered cars by two Fiat executives. The issue of vote-buying came to the fore in Lausanne because of the recent disclosure of scholarship payments made to six relatives of IOC members by Salt Lake City officials during their successful bid to play host to the 2002 Winter Games. The Salt Lake Organizing Committee has said the payments, which amounted to slightly less than $400,000, came from a privately financed fund that was started in 1991. And Intermountain Health Care, Utah's largest health care provider, confirmed Sunday that it gave free surgical services to at least two people associated with the IOC in 1994. A special commission headed by the IOC vice president Dick Pound was appointed on Friday to investigate the issue and has met with Salt Lake officials. Sunday, Frank Joklik, president of the Salt Lake Organizing Committee, issued a public apology to the ``Olympic family and the citizens of Utah'' for the embarrassment caused by the scholarships program. Samaranch Sunday ruled out taking the Games from Salt Lake City. He said, ``If necessary we will expel members if this ad hoc commission thinks these members are guilty.'' Pound said his commission was already ``satisfied Salt Lake City won the 2002 Games on the merit of the bid.'' He also said that his commission would expand its inquiry beyond the Salt Lake City bid only if it was presented with evidence and not simply rumors of corruption in other bids. On Saturday, Hodler had suggested the bidding teams from Atlanta and Nagano, Japan, that won the 1996 Summer Olympics and 1998 Winter Olympics had not run ``clean'' campaigns. Billy Payne, who presided over Atlanta's bid, and Makoto Kobayashi, the general secretary of the Nagano organizing committee, denied those claims. Asked whether he regretted his statements Sunday, Hodler said, ``Not at all'' and later said that ``the cities have been the victims and not the villains.'' Pound said there had been concern in the IOC for some time about agents. ``There always have been lobbyists,'' he said. ``In recent years, especially with the Olympics coming up every two years, there seems to be a professional class being created.'' Hodler, when pressed for further comment this afternoon at Olympic headquarters, initially covered his mouth with both hands and then said, ``Muzzle imposed by the president.'' Hodler, 80, is one of only four IOC members with life membership because he was appointed before age limits were imposed in 1966. Asked if he might resign he said, ``I'm not going to resign, but I might be expelled.'' But the 78-year-old Samaranch said he had ``great respect'' for Hodler and no intention of asking for his resignation or pushing for his expulsion. ||||| Moving quickly to tackle an escalating corruption scandal, IOC leaders questioned Salt Lake City officials Friday in the first ever investigation into alleged vote-buying by an Olympic city. Acting with unusual speed, the International Olympic Committee set up a special investigative panel that immediately summoned the organizers of the 2002 Salt Lake Games to address the bribery allegations. The chief investigator refused to rule out the possibility of taking the games away from Salt Lake City _ though that scenario is considered highly unlikely. Frank Joklik, president of the Salt Lake Organizing Committee, and SLOC senior vice president Dave Johnson appeared before the IOC panel for 90 minutes Friday night. Both sides declined to comment after the talks, saying the inquiry was still in process. Earlier, Joklik met with IOC president Juan Antonio Samaranch and other top officials to provide information and documents on the case. The controversy centers on the payment of nearly dlrs 400,000 in scholarships to relatives of IOC members by the Salt Lake bid committee which won the right to stage the 2002 games. Senior IOC executive board member Marc Hodler said the scholarship fund _ described as ``humanitarian aid'' by Salt Lake officials _ amounted to a bribe to sway votes in the 1995 election. It's the most serious case of alleged ethical misconduct investigated by the IOC since former U.S. member Robert Helmick was accused of conflict of interest in 1991. Helmick eventually resigned both as an IOC member and as president of the U.S. Olympic Committee. This is the first time the IOC has ever investigated possible bribery by bidding cities, despite previous rumors and allegations of corruption in other Olympic votes. ``The executive board takes this matter very seriously,'' said Dick Pound, the IOC vice president heading the Salt Lake inquiry. ``Despite many requests made in the past or evidence to support rumors that have been floating around, we have never had anything come forward. ``Specific allegations have now been made. The executive board acted very quickly to investigate.'' Also on the investigative panel are IOC vice president Keba Mbaye, executive board members Jacques Rogge and Thomas Bach, and IOC director general Francois Carrard. Pound said the panel would investigate allegations that ``there may or may not have been payments for the benefit of members of the IOC or their families connected with the Salt Lake City bid.'' Pound, a Canadian lawyer, said there was no deadline for completion of the investigation but said it was possible the inquiry could be wrapped up this weekend. Pound declined to speculate on what _ if any _ sanctions could be taken against Salt Lake but did not rule out moving the games elsewhere. ``We're not going to make any conclusions or any speculations as to what we may decide until we know what the facts are,'' he said. Moving the games would be unprecedented and, with just over three years to go, would be a logistical nightmare. Most of the facilities needed for the games in Salt Lake already are built. John Krimsky, deputy secretary general of the U.S. Olympic Committee, discounted any possibility of the games being moved. ``There is no chance at all, absolutely none in my mind,'' he said. ``I can't be stronger in saying I don't consider it a possibility whatsoever of the games being withdrawn from Salt Lake City. '' Salt Lake organizers have denied that the bid committee's dlrs 500,000 project was an effort to buy key IOC members' support in the four years between votes on the 1998 and 2002 Winter Games. Salt Lake lost the '98 race to Nagano, Japan, in 1991, when the program was begun. It won a landslide vote over Sion, Switzerland, for the 2002 Games in the 1995 balloting. From 1991 to 1995, the bid committee _ under the direction of former president Thomas Welch _ spent nearly dlrs 400,000 on scholarships to 13 individuals _ six of them relatives of IOC members, mostly from Africa. Olympic rules prohibit bidding cities from giving IOC members or their relatives any presents or benefits exceeding a value of dlrs 150. ``I've already stated I do not regard what was done as a bribe,'' Joklik said Friday. ``I recognize there have been perceptions contrary to that. I regret those perceptions, but I don't feel they are justified.'' Joklik was chairman of the bid committee at the time, the No. 2 official behind Welch. Welch resigned last year as president of the organizing committee after being accused of domestic violence against his wife. He currently serves as a SLOC consultant. ``The organizing committee certainly has people of integrity and ethical standards that would stand any investigation,'' Joklik said. ``The facts were in the early 1990s when the bid committee was operating.'' Among those identified as receiving scholarship funds was Sonia Essomba, the daughter of the late Rene Essomba of Cameroon. The elder Essomba, a prominent surgeon, was the secretary general of the National Olympic Committees of Africa. ||||| What started as a local controversy in Salt Lake City has evolved into a full-blown international scandal. The International Olympic Committee has ordered a top-level investigation into the payment of nearly dlrs 400,000 in scholarships to relatives of IOC members by the Salt Lake group which won the bid for the 2002 Winter Games. IOC executive board member Marc Hodler said the scholarship fund _ described as ``humanitarian aid'' by Salt Lake officials _ amounted to a ``bribe.'' ``I'm terribly sorry that even Salt Lake City _ by far the best place to hold the winter games _ had to use certain methods in order to get the vote,'' Hodler said. IOC president Juan Antonio Samaranch assigned the international body's juridical commission _ which deals with legal and ethical issues _ to investigate. The inquiry will be headed by IOC vice president Keba Mbaye of Senegal, a highly respected former World Court judge. The scholarship fund was first disclosed two weeks ago by a Salt Lake radio station. The controversy is now bound to overshadow the routine progress report which the Salt Lake Olympic Committee (SLOC) is scheduled to make to the IOC executive board this weekend. SLOC president Frank Joklik, who arrived in Lausanne Friday, welcomed the IOC investigation. ``I think that's who the matter should be taken up by,'' he told The Associated Press. `` Of course, we intend to collaborate fully with the IOC and its investigation.'' Joklik expressed concern that the case had harmed Salt Lake's image. ``I appreciate the perception of this matter is bad now,'' he said. Asked about Hodler's accusation of bribery, Joklik said he hadn't seen the remarks yet and couldn't reply directly. But he sought to distance himself from the allegations by making a distinction between the actions of the bidding committee and the current organizing committee. ``Presumably (Hodler's) remarks are related to actions of the bid commitee before 1995,'' Joklik said. ``The organizing committee certainly has people of integrity and ethical standards that would stand any investigation. The facts were in the early 1990s when the bid committee was operating.'' U.S. Olympic Committee deputy secretary general John Krimsky described the controversy as ``disruptive'' for Salt Lake's image and preparations for the games. ``It doesn't do us any good at all,'' he said. ``I hope we see a speedy resolution to Judge Mbaye's review. I hope it will be a footnote. I hope it never becomes a chapter.'' Salt Lake organizers, 10th graf pvs ||||| The senior Olympic official who leveled stunning allegations of corruption within the IOC said Sunday he had been ``muzzled'' by president Juan Antonio Samaranch and might be throw out of the organization. Marc Hodler, the Swiss member of the IOC executive board, said Samaranch had ordered him to keep quiet. He said he was told not to appear at a scheduled routine news conference. Asked whether he might resign, Hodler said, ``No, I don't resign. But maybe I will be expelled. You never know.'' Hodler was, 3rd graf pvs ||||| Swiss IOC executive board member Marc Hodler said Sunday he might be thrown out of the International Olympic Committee for making allegations of corruption within the Olympic movement. Asked whether he might resign, Hodler said, ``No, I don't resign. But maybe I will be expelled. You never know.'' Hodler, who made the allegations Saturday, said he has since been ``muzzled'' by IOC president Juan Antonio Samaranch. His comments came as the leader of the Salt Lake organizing committee apologized Sunday for the alleged rules violations during the city's successful bid for the 2002 Winter Games. The IOC, meanwhile, said it was prepared to investigate allegations made by Hodler of bribery in the selection of Olympic host cities. Frank Joklik, 4th graf pvs ||||| Following is the text of the rules on gifts and benefits that were in force during the bidding for the 2002 Winter Olympics: _ ``The finalist cities as well as third parties acting for them or on their behalf or in their favor, are forbidden to give IOC members _ as well as their blood relations, relatives by marriage, guests or companions _ any presents, liberalities or direct or indirect benefits other than souvenirs ot small presents of a total value which shall in no case exceed U.S. dlrs 150 per person.'' _ ``Finalist cities and any third parties acting for them or on their behalf or in their favor are forbidden to conclude with IOC members, their relations, relatives by marriage, their guests or companions, agreements, transactions or any other contracts.'' _ ``In the event of a serious breach of the present regulations, the IOC executive board may further propose to the IOC session that it exclude the city having breached the regulation from the contest for the games.'' ||||| LAUSANNE, Switzerland (AP) _ IOC president Juan Antonio Samaranch on Sunday promised to expel any members if they are found guilty of accepting bribes. Samaranch said he was surprised at the allegations of corruption in the International Olympic Committee made by senior Swiss member Marc Hodler. But he said the allegations would be considered by a special IOC panel looking into alleged rules violations by the Salt Lake group which won the 2002 Winter Games. ``If it is necessary, we will expel members if this commission feels these members are guilty,'' Samaranch said at a news conference. ``After we get the recommendations of the panel, we will take the measures necessary to arrange the problem.'' Samaranch said the IOC was intent on protecting the integrity of the organization and the Olympics as a whole. ``If we have to clean, we will clean,'' he said. ``After, the IOC will be even stronger than before.'' Samaranch said he was taken aback by Hodler's allegations, which were made to reporters Saturday. Samaranch said Hodler should have brought his allegations first to the IOC executive board. ``For me, I was really surprised. If he has names and evidence, he must go to the executive board.'' Hodler said he believed four agents _ including one IOC member _ had been involved in vote-buying over the past 10 years. He said he thought 5 to 7 percent of the IOC members _ currently numbering 115 _ were open to bribery. Samaranch denied that he ``muzzled'' Hodler, as the Swiss official claimed earlier Sunday. He said he had told all members of the executive board that only himself and director general Francois Carrad could speak to the media. ``This is not the first time I do this,'' he said. Samaranch expressed his respect and admiration for Hodler and ruled out the possbility of expelling him from the IOC, an option the Swiss member had raised. ``Never, never, is anyone thinking to expel Mr. Hodler,'' Samaranch said. The IOC also ruled out any possibility of stripping Salt Lake City of the games over alleged rules violations during the bid. ``No, there is not any kind of possibiity,'' he said. ``We trust the organizing committee of Salt Lake City.'' The Salt Lake controvery centers on a scholarship program that provided nearly dlrs 400,000 in tuition and other assistance to 13 individuals _ including six relatives of IOC members, mostly from Africa. Samaranch said the IOC would possibly consider a new procedure to eliminate the tempations for corruption in the selection of host cities. Under current rules, all IOC members have a vote. Samaranch noted the IOC could adopt the formula used by sports federations such as FIFA, world soccer's governing body, which assign their executive boards to select sites. ||||| A top IOC official on Saturday made explosive allegations of widespread Olympic corruption, saying agents demand up to dlrs 1 million to deliver votes in the selection of host cities. Marc Hodler, a senior member of the International Olympic Committee executive board, alleged malpractices in the bid campaigns for the games of 1996, 1998, 2000 and 2002. Hodler said a group of four agents, including one IOC member, have been involved in promising votes for payment. He declined to identify them. ``The four agents try to make a living out of this,'' he said. ``I missed a chance to be a rich man. Some of the agents do the following: they say, `I can offer this or that number of votes.' ``The price would be between dlrs 500,000 and dlrs 1 million for a number of votes, a bloc.'' Hodler added that the agents then charge the city winning the bid ``something like dlrs 3 million to dlrs 5 millon.'' Hodler, an 80-year-old Swiss lawyer, said there is one agent who boasts ``that no city has ever won the Olympic Games without his help.'' ``No one can prove that,'' Hodler said. ``It could be possible.'' He said he believed agents had been buying and selling votes for the past 10 years. ``There are four agents we know,'' he said. ``One is an IOC member. He promises he will give enough votes so (the biddding city) can win.'' Asked whether all Olympic votes are tainted, Hodler said, ``I know of so many times. There is a good chance it is always the case.'' IOC president Juan Antonio Samaranch immediately disassociated himself from Hodler's allegations. ``The only official spokeman for the IOC executive board is (director general) Francois Carrard,'' Samaranch said. ``All the other comments are personal comments. They are not official comments.'' Hodler's allegations, made to a group of reporters, came as the IOC continued investigations into alleged financial misconduct by the Salt Lake City group which won the bid for the 2002 games. Hodler has described as a ``bribe'' the dlrs 500,000 scholarship fund set up by Salt Lake which benefited the relatives of six IOC members. It also came as the former minister in charge of Sydney's 2000 Olympic bid revealed he was asked to offer bribes in exchange for votes. Bruce Baird, the former New South Wales minister, said he refused. Asked whether Atlanta's victory in the vote for the 1996 games was clean, Hodler said, ``Certainly not.'' John Krimsky, deputy secretary general of the U.S. Olympic Committee, disputed Hodler's assertion. ``There is no basis for the charges against Atlanta at this point,'' Krimsky said. ``All these issues should be put to the IOC review commission.'' Hodler also leveled allegations against the head of the Athens bid which lost to Atlanta in the 1996 vote. Hodler said he overheard Spyros Metaxa, a wealthy Greek businessman who led the bid, describing Samaranch and IOC members as ``stupid'' for imposing restrictions on the bidding process. ``For me there is only one purpose: winning the games,'' Hodler quoted Metaxa as saying. ``I will do whatever is necessary to win the games _ if it costs me dlrs 100,000, dlrs 10 million or dlrs 100 million.'' Hodler said he didn't know of any misconduct in Athens' successful bid for the 2004 games. Asked whether Sydney's election for the 2000 games was clean, Hodler said, ``I would be surprised. I know what happened but I don't want to disclose it.'' ``I can't imagine that Sydney is different from the others,'' he said. ``Sydney pretends it is completely clean, clean, clean.'' The committee which won the 1998 games for Nagano ``certainly had to do things which are not legitimate,'' Hodler said. Hodler contested the argument by the current Salt Lake organizing committee that it was not directly involved in the controversial scholarship program and that the onus was on former bid chief Thomas Welch. ``Yesterday the lawyer of Salt Lake City said, `Everything had been done by Tom Welch, who is not there any more. We know nothing.' My experience is that this is not true.'' The controversy centers on scholarships _ including tuition assistance and athlete training programs _ paid to relatives of IOC members by the Salt Lake bid committee. From 1991 to 1995, the committee _ under the direction of Welch _ spent nearly dlrs 400,000 on scholarships to 13 individuals _ six of them relatives of IOC members, mostly from Africa. The current SLOC president, Frank Joklik, was chairman of the bid committee at the time. SLOC vice president Dave Johnson was also a high official on the bid committee. Hodler said the blame shud be on those ``who put pressure'' on Salt Lake to offer the scholarship funds. ``Nobody blames Salt Lake City,'' he said. ``We blame those voters who can be bought _ not Salt Lake City. They were a victim. We should thank them for not paying money _ only scholarships.'' Joklik on Saturday denied any payment for votes. ``I don't even know what agents are,'' he said.

Salt Lake Olympic bidders gave $400,000 in scholarships to 13 IOC relatives in the first case of host-city bribery. Gifts of over $150 to IOC members or relatives is banned. The IOC's Marc Hodler says agents and a member demanded payment to 5-7% of the IOC for votes. Bribery was also part of 1996, 2000, and 2002 bidding. Nagano's mayor denies bribery to host the 1998 games. $17 million went unaccounted for. Hodler says he won't resign but may be expelled. The IOC head says bribe takers will be expelled, Hodler will stay. The games will stay in Salt Lake. IOC VP Keba Mbaye, former World Court judge, headed an inquiry. The Salt Lake committee apologized.

A top IOC official on Saturday made explosive allegations of widespread Olympic corruption, saying agents demand up to dlrs 1 million to deliver votes in the selection of host cities. Marc Hodler, a senior member of the International Olympic Committee executive board, alleged malpractices in the voting for the 1996 Atlanta Games, 2000 Sydney Olympics and 2002 Salt Lake Games. Hodler said a group of four agents, including one IOC member, have been involved in promising votes for payment. He declined to identify them. ``The four agents try to make a living out of this,'' he said. ``I missed a chance to be a rich man. Some of the agents do the following: they say, `I can offer this or that number of votes.' ``The price wold be between dlrs 500,000 and dlrs 1 million for a number of votes, a bloc.'' Hodler added that the agents then charge the city winning the bid ``something like dlrs 3 million to dlrs 5 millon.'' Hodler, an 80-year-old Swiss lawyer, said there is one agent who boasts ``that no city has ever won the Olympic Games without his help.'' ``No one can prove that,'' Hodler said. IOC president Juan Antonio Samaranch immediately disassociated himself from Hodler's allegations. ``The only official spokeman for the IOC executive board is (director general) Francois Carrard,'' Samaranch said. ``All the other comments are personal comments. They are not official comments.'' Hodler's allegations, made to a group of reporters, came as the IOC continued investigations into alleged financial misconduct by the Salt Lake City group which won the bid for the 2002 games. Hodler has described as a ``bribe'' the dlrs 500,000 scholarship fund set up by Salt Lake which benefited the relatives of six IOC members. It also came as the former minister in charge of Sydney's 2000 Olympic bid revealed he was asked to offer bribes in exchange for votes. Bruce Baird, the former New South Wales minister, said he refused. Asked whether Atlanta's victory in the vote for the 1996 games was clean, Hodler said, ``Certainly not.' Asked whether Sydney's election was clean, he said, ``I would be surprised. I know what happened but I don't want to disclose it.'' ``I can't imagine that Sydney is different from the others,'' he said. ``Sydney pretends it is completely clean, clean, clean.'' Hodler contested the argument by the current Salt Lake organizing committee that it was not directly involved in the controversial scholarship program and that the onus was on former bid chief Thomas Welch. ``Yesterday the lawyer of Salt Lake City said, `Everything had been done by Tom Welch, who is not there any more. We know nothing.' My experience is that this is not true.'' The controversy centers on scholarships _ including tuition assistance and athlete training programs _ paid to relatives of IOC members by the Salt Lake bid committee. From 1991 to 1995, the committee _ under the direction of Welch _ spent nearly dlrs 400,000 on scholarships to 13 individuals _ six of them relatives of IOC members, mostly from Africa. The current SLOC president, Frank Joklik, was chairman of the bid committee at the time. SLOC vice president Dave Johnson was also a high official on the bid committee. ||||| The mayor of the Japanese city of Nagano, site of the 1998 Winter Olympics, denied allegations that city officials bribed members of the International Olympic Committee to win the right to host the games. Nagano Mayor Tasuku Tsukada was responding to allegations by Marc Hodler, the Swiss member of the IOC executive board, of systematic buying and selling of the Olympic Games. ``I have never heard of such a thing,'' Tsukada told the Associated Press Sunday. ``As far as Nagano is concerned, we haven't done anything wrong. We were selected as host of the Olympics through our efforts. We can't believe that Mr. Hodler has made such a statement,'' he said. Tsukada was vice chairman of the Japanese committee to invite the Olympics to Nagano. Nagano has been criticized for spending a large amount of money to win the games. Sports Nippon, a leading Japanese sports newspaper, said more than 2 billion yen (dlrs 17 million) of the money Nagano spent to bring the games there has not been accounted for. Japan Olympic Committee has warned cities seeking to host the games in the future that they should not entertain IOC members excessively, the newspaper said. Holder's accusation might effect the invitation activities for the 2008 summer Olympics by Osaka, Japan's second largest city, the paper said. Osaka is competing with Beijing, China and other cities for the right to host the games. Nagano became the first Asian city to host the Winter Games since Sapporo, Japan played host to the 1972 games. Eighty-eight IOC members took part in a secret vote in 1991 to decide who would host the 1998 games. Nagano led in each of the five rounds, beating out Salt Lake city 46 votes to 42 in the final ballot. ||||| Saying ``if we have to clean, we will clean,'' Juan Antonio Samaranch responded on Sunday to allegations of corruption in the Olympic bidding process by declaring that IOC members who were found to have accepted bribes from candidate cities could be expelled. ``It is a serious problem we have before us,'' Samaranch, president of the International Olympic Committee, said in a hastily arranged news conference at a tumultuous meeting of the IOC executive board. Samaranch compared the current climate to the Soviet boycott of the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles and the sprinter Ben Johnson's expulsion from the 1988 Olympics in Seoul, South Korea. ``Those were difficult moments,'' Samaranch said. ``Now we are facing another difficult moment, but I'm sure we will solve this problem.'' Samaranch expressed surprise at allegations made by the IOC executive board member Marc Hodler of Switzerland that agents were offering to sell I.O.C. members' votes for payments from bidding cities. Hodler, the second most senior member of the IOC, said Saturday that he knew of four agents, including one IOC member, who engaged in such activities. Hodler said he believed that 5 to 7 percent of the IOC membership, which currently numbers 115, asked for some sort of compensation for their vote. He has called for a new electoral process, in which the executive board or some other select IOC group would decide which cities become Olympic hosts instead of the full IOC membership. Samaranch agreed Sunday that the time had come to explore change. ``The system we have now is very complicated, very slow and very expensive,'' he said. Hodler, the former head of the International Ski Federation, also claimed that the Fiat tycoon Gianni Agnelli had given free vans to influence votes for the Italian resort of Sestriere to hold the 1997 world skiing championships. Fiat denied the claims on Saturday, but Sunday Howard Peterson, a former senior American delegate to the ski federation, said he had been offered cars by two Fiat executives. The issue of vote-buying came to the fore in Lausanne because of the recent disclosure of scholarship payments made to six relatives of IOC members by Salt Lake City officials during their successful bid to play host to the 2002 Winter Games. The Salt Lake Organizing Committee has said the payments, which amounted to slightly less than $400,000, came from a privately financed fund that was started in 1991. And Intermountain Health Care, Utah's largest health care provider, confirmed Sunday that it gave free surgical services to at least two people associated with the IOC in 1994. A special commission headed by the IOC vice president Dick Pound was appointed on Friday to investigate the issue and has met with Salt Lake officials. Sunday, Frank Joklik, president of the Salt Lake Organizing Committee, issued a public apology to the ``Olympic family and the citizens of Utah'' for the embarrassment caused by the scholarships program. Samaranch Sunday ruled out taking the Games from Salt Lake City. He said, ``If necessary we will expel members if this ad hoc commission thinks these members are guilty.'' Pound said his commission was already ``satisfied Salt Lake City won the 2002 Games on the merit of the bid.'' He also said that his commission would expand its inquiry beyond the Salt Lake City bid only if it was presented with evidence and not simply rumors of corruption in other bids. On Saturday, Hodler had suggested the bidding teams from Atlanta and Nagano, Japan, that won the 1996 Summer Olympics and 1998 Winter Olympics had not run ``clean'' campaigns. Billy Payne, who presided over Atlanta's bid, and Makoto Kobayashi, the general secretary of the Nagano organizing committee, denied those claims. Asked whether he regretted his statements Sunday, Hodler said, ``Not at all'' and later said that ``the cities have been the victims and not the villains.'' Pound said there had been concern in the IOC for some time about agents. ``There always have been lobbyists,'' he said. ``In recent years, especially with the Olympics coming up every two years, there seems to be a professional class being created.'' Hodler, when pressed for further comment this afternoon at Olympic headquarters, initially covered his mouth with both hands and then said, ``Muzzle imposed by the president.'' Hodler, 80, is one of only four IOC members with life membership because he was appointed before age limits were imposed in 1966. Asked if he might resign he said, ``I'm not going to resign, but I might be expelled.'' But the 78-year-old Samaranch said he had ``great respect'' for Hodler and no intention of asking for his resignation or pushing for his expulsion. ||||| Moving quickly to tackle an escalating corruption scandal, IOC leaders questioned Salt Lake City officials Friday in the first ever investigation into alleged vote-buying by an Olympic city. Acting with unusual speed, the International Olympic Committee set up a special investigative panel that immediately summoned the organizers of the 2002 Salt Lake Games to address the bribery allegations. The chief investigator refused to rule out the possibility of taking the games away from Salt Lake City _ though that scenario is considered highly unlikely. Frank Joklik, president of the Salt Lake Organizing Committee, and SLOC senior vice president Dave Johnson appeared before the IOC panel for 90 minutes Friday night. Both sides declined to comment after the talks, saying the inquiry was still in process. Earlier, Joklik met with IOC president Juan Antonio Samaranch and other top officials to provide information and documents on the case. The controversy centers on the payment of nearly dlrs 400,000 in scholarships to relatives of IOC members by the Salt Lake bid committee which won the right to stage the 2002 games. Senior IOC executive board member Marc Hodler said the scholarship fund _ described as ``humanitarian aid'' by Salt Lake officials _ amounted to a bribe to sway votes in the 1995 election. It's the most serious case of alleged ethical misconduct investigated by the IOC since former U.S. member Robert Helmick was accused of conflict of interest in 1991. Helmick eventually resigned both as an IOC member and as president of the U.S. Olympic Committee. This is the first time the IOC has ever investigated possible bribery by bidding cities, despite previous rumors and allegations of corruption in other Olympic votes. ``The executive board takes this matter very seriously,'' said Dick Pound, the IOC vice president heading the Salt Lake inquiry. ``Despite many requests made in the past or evidence to support rumors that have been floating around, we have never had anything come forward. ``Specific allegations have now been made. The executive board acted very quickly to investigate.'' Also on the investigative panel are IOC vice president Keba Mbaye, executive board members Jacques Rogge and Thomas Bach, and IOC director general Francois Carrard. Pound said the panel would investigate allegations that ``there may or may not have been payments for the benefit of members of the IOC or their families connected with the Salt Lake City bid.'' Pound, a Canadian lawyer, said there was no deadline for completion of the investigation but said it was possible the inquiry could be wrapped up this weekend. Pound declined to speculate on what _ if any _ sanctions could be taken against Salt Lake but did not rule out moving the games elsewhere. ``We're not going to make any conclusions or any speculations as to what we may decide until we know what the facts are,'' he said. Moving the games would be unprecedented and, with just over three years to go, would be a logistical nightmare. Most of the facilities needed for the games in Salt Lake already are built. John Krimsky, deputy secretary general of the U.S. Olympic Committee, discounted any possibility of the games being moved. ``There is no chance at all, absolutely none in my mind,'' he said. ``I can't be stronger in saying I don't consider it a possibility whatsoever of the games being withdrawn from Salt Lake City. '' Salt Lake organizers have denied that the bid committee's dlrs 500,000 project was an effort to buy key IOC members' support in the four years between votes on the 1998 and 2002 Winter Games. Salt Lake lost the '98 race to Nagano, Japan, in 1991, when the program was begun. It won a landslide vote over Sion, Switzerland, for the 2002 Games in the 1995 balloting. From 1991 to 1995, the bid committee _ under the direction of former president Thomas Welch _ spent nearly dlrs 400,000 on scholarships to 13 individuals _ six of them relatives of IOC members, mostly from Africa. Olympic rules prohibit bidding cities from giving IOC members or their relatives any presents or benefits exceeding a value of dlrs 150. ``I've already stated I do not regard what was done as a bribe,'' Joklik said Friday. ``I recognize there have been perceptions contrary to that. I regret those perceptions, but I don't feel they are justified.'' Joklik was chairman of the bid committee at the time, the No. 2 official behind Welch. Welch resigned last year as president of the organizing committee after being accused of domestic violence against his wife. He currently serves as a SLOC consultant. ``The organizing committee certainly has people of integrity and ethical standards that would stand any investigation,'' Joklik said. ``The facts were in the early 1990s when the bid committee was operating.'' Among those identified as receiving scholarship funds was Sonia Essomba, the daughter of the late Rene Essomba of Cameroon. The elder Essomba, a prominent surgeon, was the secretary general of the National Olympic Committees of Africa. ||||| What started as a local controversy in Salt Lake City has evolved into a full-blown international scandal. The International Olympic Committee has ordered a top-level investigation into the payment of nearly dlrs 400,000 in scholarships to relatives of IOC members by the Salt Lake group which won the bid for the 2002 Winter Games. IOC executive board member Marc Hodler said the scholarship fund _ described as ``humanitarian aid'' by Salt Lake officials _ amounted to a ``bribe.'' ``I'm terribly sorry that even Salt Lake City _ by far the best place to hold the winter games _ had to use certain methods in order to get the vote,'' Hodler said. IOC president Juan Antonio Samaranch assigned the international body's juridical commission _ which deals with legal and ethical issues _ to investigate. The inquiry will be headed by IOC vice president Keba Mbaye of Senegal, a highly respected former World Court judge. The scholarship fund was first disclosed two weeks ago by a Salt Lake radio station. The controversy is now bound to overshadow the routine progress report which the Salt Lake Olympic Committee (SLOC) is scheduled to make to the IOC executive board this weekend. SLOC president Frank Joklik, who arrived in Lausanne Friday, welcomed the IOC investigation. ``I think that's who the matter should be taken up by,'' he told The Associated Press. `` Of course, we intend to collaborate fully with the IOC and its investigation.'' Joklik expressed concern that the case had harmed Salt Lake's image. ``I appreciate the perception of this matter is bad now,'' he said. Asked about Hodler's accusation of bribery, Joklik said he hadn't seen the remarks yet and couldn't reply directly. But he sought to distance himself from the allegations by making a distinction between the actions of the bidding committee and the current organizing committee. ``Presumably (Hodler's) remarks are related to actions of the bid commitee before 1995,'' Joklik said. ``The organizing committee certainly has people of integrity and ethical standards that would stand any investigation. The facts were in the early 1990s when the bid committee was operating.'' U.S. Olympic Committee deputy secretary general John Krimsky described the controversy as ``disruptive'' for Salt Lake's image and preparations for the games. ``It doesn't do us any good at all,'' he said. ``I hope we see a speedy resolution to Judge Mbaye's review. I hope it will be a footnote. I hope it never becomes a chapter.'' Salt Lake organizers, 10th graf pvs ||||| The senior Olympic official who leveled stunning allegations of corruption within the IOC said Sunday he had been ``muzzled'' by president Juan Antonio Samaranch and might be throw out of the organization. Marc Hodler, the Swiss member of the IOC executive board, said Samaranch had ordered him to keep quiet. He said he was told not to appear at a scheduled routine news conference. Asked whether he might resign, Hodler said, ``No, I don't resign. But maybe I will be expelled. You never know.'' Hodler was, 3rd graf pvs ||||| Swiss IOC executive board member Marc Hodler said Sunday he might be thrown out of the International Olympic Committee for making allegations of corruption within the Olympic movement. Asked whether he might resign, Hodler said, ``No, I don't resign. But maybe I will be expelled. You never know.'' Hodler, who made the allegations Saturday, said he has since been ``muzzled'' by IOC president Juan Antonio Samaranch. His comments came as the leader of the Salt Lake organizing committee apologized Sunday for the alleged rules violations during the city's successful bid for the 2002 Winter Games. The IOC, meanwhile, said it was prepared to investigate allegations made by Hodler of bribery in the selection of Olympic host cities. Frank Joklik, 4th graf pvs ||||| Following is the text of the rules on gifts and benefits that were in force during the bidding for the 2002 Winter Olympics: _ ``The finalist cities as well as third parties acting for them or on their behalf or in their favor, are forbidden to give IOC members _ as well as their blood relations, relatives by marriage, guests or companions _ any presents, liberalities or direct or indirect benefits other than souvenirs ot small presents of a total value which shall in no case exceed U.S. dlrs 150 per person.'' _ ``Finalist cities and any third parties acting for them or on their behalf or in their favor are forbidden to conclude with IOC members, their relations, relatives by marriage, their guests or companions, agreements, transactions or any other contracts.'' _ ``In the event of a serious breach of the present regulations, the IOC executive board may further propose to the IOC session that it exclude the city having breached the regulation from the contest for the games.'' ||||| LAUSANNE, Switzerland (AP) _ IOC president Juan Antonio Samaranch on Sunday promised to expel any members if they are found guilty of accepting bribes. Samaranch said he was surprised at the allegations of corruption in the International Olympic Committee made by senior Swiss member Marc Hodler. But he said the allegations would be considered by a special IOC panel looking into alleged rules violations by the Salt Lake group which won the 2002 Winter Games. ``If it is necessary, we will expel members if this commission feels these members are guilty,'' Samaranch said at a news conference. ``After we get the recommendations of the panel, we will take the measures necessary to arrange the problem.'' Samaranch said the IOC was intent on protecting the integrity of the organization and the Olympics as a whole. ``If we have to clean, we will clean,'' he said. ``After, the IOC will be even stronger than before.'' Samaranch said he was taken aback by Hodler's allegations, which were made to reporters Saturday. Samaranch said Hodler should have brought his allegations first to the IOC executive board. ``For me, I was really surprised. If he has names and evidence, he must go to the executive board.'' Hodler said he believed four agents _ including one IOC member _ had been involved in vote-buying over the past 10 years. He said he thought 5 to 7 percent of the IOC members _ currently numbering 115 _ were open to bribery. Samaranch denied that he ``muzzled'' Hodler, as the Swiss official claimed earlier Sunday. He said he had told all members of the executive board that only himself and director general Francois Carrad could speak to the media. ``This is not the first time I do this,'' he said. Samaranch expressed his respect and admiration for Hodler and ruled out the possbility of expelling him from the IOC, an option the Swiss member had raised. ``Never, never, is anyone thinking to expel Mr. Hodler,'' Samaranch said. The IOC also ruled out any possibility of stripping Salt Lake City of the games over alleged rules violations during the bid. ``No, there is not any kind of possibiity,'' he said. ``We trust the organizing committee of Salt Lake City.'' The Salt Lake controvery centers on a scholarship program that provided nearly dlrs 400,000 in tuition and other assistance to 13 individuals _ including six relatives of IOC members, mostly from Africa. Samaranch said the IOC would possibly consider a new procedure to eliminate the tempations for corruption in the selection of host cities. Under current rules, all IOC members have a vote. Samaranch noted the IOC could adopt the formula used by sports federations such as FIFA, world soccer's governing body, which assign their executive boards to select sites. ||||| A top IOC official on Saturday made explosive allegations of widespread Olympic corruption, saying agents demand up to dlrs 1 million to deliver votes in the selection of host cities. Marc Hodler, a senior member of the International Olympic Committee executive board, alleged malpractices in the bid campaigns for the games of 1996, 1998, 2000 and 2002. Hodler said a group of four agents, including one IOC member, have been involved in promising votes for payment. He declined to identify them. ``The four agents try to make a living out of this,'' he said. ``I missed a chance to be a rich man. Some of the agents do the following: they say, `I can offer this or that number of votes.' ``The price would be between dlrs 500,000 and dlrs 1 million for a number of votes, a bloc.'' Hodler added that the agents then charge the city winning the bid ``something like dlrs 3 million to dlrs 5 millon.'' Hodler, an 80-year-old Swiss lawyer, said there is one agent who boasts ``that no city has ever won the Olympic Games without his help.'' ``No one can prove that,'' Hodler said. ``It could be possible.'' He said he believed agents had been buying and selling votes for the past 10 years. ``There are four agents we know,'' he said. ``One is an IOC member. He promises he will give enough votes so (the biddding city) can win.'' Asked whether all Olympic votes are tainted, Hodler said, ``I know of so many times. There is a good chance it is always the case.'' IOC president Juan Antonio Samaranch immediately disassociated himself from Hodler's allegations. ``The only official spokeman for the IOC executive board is (director general) Francois Carrard,'' Samaranch said. ``All the other comments are personal comments. They are not official comments.'' Hodler's allegations, made to a group of reporters, came as the IOC continued investigations into alleged financial misconduct by the Salt Lake City group which won the bid for the 2002 games. Hodler has described as a ``bribe'' the dlrs 500,000 scholarship fund set up by Salt Lake which benefited the relatives of six IOC members. It also came as the former minister in charge of Sydney's 2000 Olympic bid revealed he was asked to offer bribes in exchange for votes. Bruce Baird, the former New South Wales minister, said he refused. Asked whether Atlanta's victory in the vote for the 1996 games was clean, Hodler said, ``Certainly not.'' John Krimsky, deputy secretary general of the U.S. Olympic Committee, disputed Hodler's assertion. ``There is no basis for the charges against Atlanta at this point,'' Krimsky said. ``All these issues should be put to the IOC review commission.'' Hodler also leveled allegations against the head of the Athens bid which lost to Atlanta in the 1996 vote. Hodler said he overheard Spyros Metaxa, a wealthy Greek businessman who led the bid, describing Samaranch and IOC members as ``stupid'' for imposing restrictions on the bidding process. ``For me there is only one purpose: winning the games,'' Hodler quoted Metaxa as saying. ``I will do whatever is necessary to win the games _ if it costs me dlrs 100,000, dlrs 10 million or dlrs 100 million.'' Hodler said he didn't know of any misconduct in Athens' successful bid for the 2004 games. Asked whether Sydney's election for the 2000 games was clean, Hodler said, ``I would be surprised. I know what happened but I don't want to disclose it.'' ``I can't imagine that Sydney is different from the others,'' he said. ``Sydney pretends it is completely clean, clean, clean.'' The committee which won the 1998 games for Nagano ``certainly had to do things which are not legitimate,'' Hodler said. Hodler contested the argument by the current Salt Lake organizing committee that it was not directly involved in the controversial scholarship program and that the onus was on former bid chief Thomas Welch. ``Yesterday the lawyer of Salt Lake City said, `Everything had been done by Tom Welch, who is not there any more. We know nothing.' My experience is that this is not true.'' The controversy centers on scholarships _ including tuition assistance and athlete training programs _ paid to relatives of IOC members by the Salt Lake bid committee. From 1991 to 1995, the committee _ under the direction of Welch _ spent nearly dlrs 400,000 on scholarships to 13 individuals _ six of them relatives of IOC members, mostly from Africa. The current SLOC president, Frank Joklik, was chairman of the bid committee at the time. SLOC vice president Dave Johnson was also a high official on the bid committee. Hodler said the blame shud be on those ``who put pressure'' on Salt Lake to offer the scholarship funds. ``Nobody blames Salt Lake City,'' he said. ``We blame those voters who can be bought _ not Salt Lake City. They were a victim. We should thank them for not paying money _ only scholarships.'' Joklik on Saturday denied any payment for votes. ``I don't even know what agents are,'' he said.

In 1995 Salt Lake City was chosen to host the 2002 Winter Olympics. The revelation that from 1991 to 1995, the city's bid committee spent nearly $400,000 on scholarships to 13 people, six of them relatives of IOC members, ignited an international scandal. IOC rules forbid bidding cities from giving members or their relatives anything valued greater than $150; however, IOC member Marc Hodler alleges widespread corruption. According to Hodler, agents offer to sell votes, and the bid campaigns for the 1996, 1998, and 2000 games were tainted. A special IOC panel investigating the Salt Lake City matter will also consider the allegations of broader wrongdoing.

Deprived of a voice in state-controlled newspapers and television, supporters of Malaysia's jailed opposition leader have turned to the Internet to air their views. Although the government said police would ``check every bit of information and leaflet'' posted on the Internet, Malaysia's sole Internet provider acknowledged Friday the medium is ``impossible to control.'' Jailed, beaten and facing trial on 10 sexual misconduct and corruption charges, ousted Deputy Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim is a political underdog in Malaysia. In the realm of cyberspace, though, he's top dog. Within hours of Anwar's recent speech accusing Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad of cruelty and insanity, dozens of boot-legged recordings had been posted onto new websites hatched by supporters. Among the hottest images now making the Internet rounds are several news-photo versions of Anwar's badly bruised eye, which he claims was inflicted by police during his first night of detention. Most pro-Anwar sites also contain his speeches, private letters to Mahathir, clippings of foreign news reports and prose scorching the 72-year old prime minister. Most of the Internet content about Anwar is false or unverifiable, but the medium is tough to rein in, said Azzman Shariffadeen, head of Mimos, the company that set up Malaysia's Internet infrastructure. ``No website has been blocked or censored by the government,'' he said. Shortly after Anwar's arrest, one of the former leader's aides bragged that they had set up dozens of sites offshore, beyond the reach of the Malaysian government. Malaysian journalist M.G.G. Pillai, who runs a popular website on local politics, isn't surprised by the aggressive march toward cyberspace. ``When you're in the opposition and you have no access to resources and media, then you end up making use of what's available to air your grouses,'' he said, noting that membership on his site has soared by 40 percent since Anwar's ouster. The cyber explosion is a boon to most middle-class Malaysians, who are leery of local media. ``I've finally given up reading local newspapers. They're so skewed,'' said Michael Chan, a lawyer who upgraded his computer with a high-speed modem the day after Anwar was arrested on Sept. 20. Chan uses the modem to download pictures of balaclava-clad police in bulletproof jackets busting down Anwar's front door before bundling him off to jail. Occasionally, he receives e-mail calling for organized rallies at the National Mosque and nearby Independence Square, where hundreds of protesters have been arrested by police. The advertised demonstrations don't always materialize. Other e-mails call for ``silent protests.'' Malaysians are being urged on the Internet now to switch off all lights for 10 minutes on Oct. 6 to declare their ``state of sorrow, sadness and darkness'' over national injustice. ||||| A key witness in the government's sexual misconduct case against Malaysia's former deputy prime minister remains determined to appeal his conviction, his attorney said Monday. Munawar Ahmad Aness, a friend and speech writer of Anwar Ibrahim, pleaded guilty to the charges last month, allegedly confessing to having sex with the political dissident. Anwar has said the guilty plea was coerced. Aness, a Pakistani with permanent residence in the United States, was sentenced to six months in jail. In a move that could deal a major setback to the case against Anwar, Aness then filed a letter of appeal through his lawyers. Another letter then appeared, saying Aness would not go through with the appeal. His lawyers say the second letter was a fraud. ``His instructions are he wants us to proceed with the appeal. There is no change,'' said Balwant Singh, one of two lawyers defending Aness, after a meeting with Aness. One of the major charges against Anwar hinges on Aness' confession. Singh spoke to reporters after attending court proceedings Monday where Anwar's trial was fixed for Nov. 2 on corruption charges. He said he went to a hospital to meet Aness when the court broke for lunch. Aness was jailed on Sept. 15 but moved soon after to a hospital where he has been under treatment for heart problems. ``He has given us the written retainer. He signed a notice of appeal. We have instructions to proceed and we are proceeding,'' said Singh, adding he filed the letter of appeal in court Sept. 29. Between the visits with his client, however, Aness signed another letter saying he would not proceed with the appeal, Singh said. That led to confusion whether Aness really wanted an appeal. ``Somebody approached him and asked him to sign a typewritten letter,'' said Singh. ``He was asked to sign it and he did.'' ||||| Among Asia's leaders, Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad was notable as a man with a bold vision: a physical and social transformation that would push this nation into the forefront of world affairs. It almost came true. In 17 years as prime minister, Mahathir, 72, who is a medical doctor, fostered an economic liberalization that led to some of the world's fastest rates of growth. He drove Malaysians to be more productive, to embrace high technology and to begin major investments around the world. He created a national affirmative-action program that allowed the country's ethnic Chinese, Malays and Indians to share in improved living standards and a new sense of Malaysian identity and pride. This year was to have been Mahathir's year of triumph, perhaps paving the way for his retirement, with the inauguration of huge public works projects and impressive gatherings of foreign leaders and sportsmen. But today, in a dizzying turnaround, Malaysia is on Asia's critical list, its economy teetering on the edge of disaster and its stability shaken by what seems to have been an entirely avoidable political cat fight. Last month, Mahathir dismissed and arrested his deputy and heir apparent, Anwar Ibrahim, 51, accusing him of corruption and illegal sex acts. The move set off street demonstrations and aroused international condemnation, particularly from Anwar's many friends in foreign governments. One of the region's most stable and prosperous nations is suddenly in an uproar. It appears that as in Indonesia, Thailand, Japan and South Korea, the pressures of economic collapse have spawned a political crisis. In all those nations, the result was a change in leadership. The question now is: Is Mahathir next? The answer is far from clear. Unlike in Indonesia, there has been little evidence of a simmering discontent in Malaysia. The ouster of former President Suharto in Indonesia had been predicted by many people. Almost no one seems to have foreseen the eruption here. Malaysia is not familiar with political demonstrations. Unlike Indonesians, Malaysians rarely riot. Many people here were puzzled and disturbed when they encountered water cannon and the riot police on the streets in recent weeks. ``What we're seeing is unprecedented,'' said Ambassador John Malott of the United States. ``This has never happened in Malaysia, and nobody knows where it's going to go. You can write a lot of scenarios but we are in totally uncharted waters.'' Mahathir, the confident nation-builder, seems to be flailing as he watches his legacy crumble. An economy that had been growing at more than 8 percent a year for the last decade is now headed for a contraction of perhaps 6 percent. Angry and frustrated, he closed Malaysia off from international financial markets one month ago, turning his back on the foreign investors whom he once embraced and who had fueled the country's rapid growth. The move had the intended effect of bringing home the Malaysian currency, insulating it from the speculators Mahathir blames for the crisis, and giving an adrenaline jolt to the now self-contained economy. It is a move that seems in tune with a recent round of questioning of the economic orthodoxy of the International Monetary Fund. But few foreign economists expect it to work for long. ``Mahathir is attacking the fundamental beliefs of the free market, of capitalism, of Wall Street,'' a foreign diplomat said. ``We are either watching economic theory being rewritten or reconfirmed _ and I don't think it's being rewritten.'' The day after making his economic gamble, Mahathir set off the most severe political crisis of his tenure, dismissing Anwar, the man he had been grooming to be his successor. Two weeks later, Anwar was arrested at his home and held incommunicado for 10 days, during which he says he was beaten by his jailers. Last week he was charged with 10 counts of corruption and sexual misconduct that could result in a prison term of up to 34 years. The harshness of those moves unleashed a surge of largely unsuspected discontent that mobilized Anwar's motley fellow constituencies: liberal democrats, young professionals and politically assertive Muslims. For the first time in decades, Malaysians by the thousands demonstrated in the streets and in mosques and were met with tear gas and water cannon. Many people were beaten and hundreds were detained, although most were later released. With the emergence of this still-tentative opposition movement, the fear expressed by one Western diplomat is of a ``downward spiral'' in which ``suppression breeds more discontent breeds more suppression breeds more discontent.'' People here whisper that Mahathir's days may now be numbered. But few venture a guess at what the number might be. Given his control of the levers of power and the lack of focus or leadership in the opposition, Mahathir could ride out the storm as Anwar's trial proceeds. But he has struck a harsh blow to the morale of his own nation, to the sense of confidence he had worked so hard to build under the slogan ``Malaysia Can!'' In this generally decorous nation, the depth of anger expressed by two men who once called each other father and son is disturbing to hear. Anwar, says the prime minister, is ``despicable'' and ``a sodomist.'' Mahathir, says his former deputy, is ``senile'' and ``insane.'' Malaysians, who have stolidly accepted Mahathir's authoritarian rule with a mixture of gratitude and emerging pride, seem stunned. ||||| Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad said Friday he is not too choosy about who will be his successor. The man need not necessarily be very religious and only preoccupied with doing virtuous deeds at all times, the national news agency, Bernama, quoted Mahathir as saying after Friday prayers at the Al-Falah Mosque in the northern town of Jitra in Kedah state. ``It is sufficient that the person does things acceptable by the people,'' Mahathir said. So far Mahathir, 72, has designated three heirs-apparent during his 17-year rule. One resigned. Another challenged Mahathir for leadership of the ruling party, and lost. On Sept. 2, he fired the last one, Anwar Ibrahim, calling him morally unfit for office. Anwar mounted a nationwide campaign against the prime minister before being detained as a national security risk and charged with illegal homosexual acts and corruption in connection with those allegations. Mahathir told reporters later that Anwar had been working toward toppling him as prime minister and president of the governing coalition's dominant party, the United Malays National Organization. ``He appeared very good to me but he was actually planning ways of bringing me down. At first, I did not believe when people told me about this, but I now know this to be true,'' said Mahathir. Mahathir said Anwar had arranged for his supporters to contest for and gain control of the UMNO divisions so that he could win the party's top post in next year's party elections. ||||| Bruises on the face of jailed dissident Anwar Ibrahim, splashed on newspaper front pages for two days and downloaded from the Internet, are blemishing the image of Malaysian police. After first suggesting that the former deputy prime minister had beaten himself on the face, neck and arms during 10 days in police custody, Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad called for an investigation of the wounds Anwar displayed in court Tuesday and Wednesday. ``We can't accept this and we will undertake full investigations,'' Mahathir was quoted as saying in Thursday's New Straits Times. ``The police cannot harm their detainees in the course of their interrogation.'' Mahathir fired Anwar on Sept. 2 from his posts as deputy prime minister and finance minister, saying he was morally unfit for office. The two had differed over economic policy as the country veered into recession and Anwar has said the 72-year-old Mahathir feared him as an alternative leader. Local newspapers that are normally pro-Mahathir have splashed close-up photos of Anwar's badly bruised face for two days. People are peering at the pictures, downloading copies from the Internet, discussing whether Mahathir, who also oversees the police as home affairs minister, knew what was happening to the man he had once groomed as his successor. It was not the first time that a Malaysian has said he was tortured or mistreated in police custody. But there has been no one as high-profile as Anwar. ``What I experienced was chicken feed compared to Anwar,'' Syed Husin Ali, head of the opposition Malaysian People's Party, said Thursday. In a book about his six-month detention under the same law that kept Anwar away from family and lawyers for 10 days, Syed described being hit and deprived of sleep. ``At least I didn't have bruises on my face, although I was slapped and hit on the stomach,'' Syed told The Associated Press. Anwar's bruises raise ``alarming questions about the state of governance in the country,'' said Lim Kit Siang, leader of the opposition Democratic Action Party. If Mahathir did not know of the alleged beatings, it suggests the police acted on their own. At a series of rallies before his arrest, Anwar led throngs in chanting for Mahathir's resignation and a more open, less corrupt government. His arrest Sept. 20 was followed by street protests and hundreds of additional arrests. Before his arrest, Anwar designated his wife, Azizah Ismail, as the leader of his new ``reform'' movement. But police have banned her from speaking publicly. On Thursday she was summoned for the third time to police headquarters for questioning about an interview with regional television network CNBC Asia. She had expressed fears that her husband would be injected with the HIV virus to prove allegations of homosexuality, and police are investigating possible charges of sedition against her. She called the repeated interviews ``pressure and harassment.'' Three Malaysian police officers traveled to Singapore Thursday to ask CNBC news anchors how they had arranged to get the Sept. 21 interview with Azizah and one with Anwar on Sept. 3. CNBC refused to answer questions about its news gathering, said vice president of news programming Chris Blackman. Anwar, who pleaded innocent this week to five charges of sodomy and five of corruption, told the court that police beat him the night he was arrested, ``until blood seeped down my nose,'' leaving him half-conscious. His allegations, accompanied by pictorial evidence, brought prompt expressions of disapproval, from the U.S. State Department, the Australian government, Amnesty International, and the finance ministers of other countries who used to meet with Anwar at international conferences. On Thursday, the Indonesian government, where security forces have been accused for years of mistreating prisoners, said it regretted the reports about Anwar's injuries and that the allegations have placed in doubt a visit to Malaysia by President B.J. Habibie. ||||| Lawyers for the prime minister's former deputy, now his most prominent opponent, went to court Thursday to demand their client's release from indefinite detention. Azizah Ismail, the wife of jailed politician Anwar Ibrahim, told reporters that the lawyers had filed a habeas corpus appeal that says the dissident politician is being unjustly held. She said authorities have denied lawyers access to her husband, and asked: ``How are they going to prepare for his defense?'' Anwar, 51, was arrested Sept. 20 under the Internal Security Act, which allows indefinite detention without trial, after two weeks of rallies around Malaysia at which he called for government reform and Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad's resignation. Anwar was sacked on Sept. 2 from his posts as deputy prime minister and finance minister, after he had differed with Mahathir on policy for escaping economic recession. But the prime minister said the deputy was fired because he was morally unfit. Anwar said Mahathir viewed him as a threat. Anwar since has been charged with corruption and illegal homosexual acts, and is to go on trial Nov. 2. He has pleaded innocent to all the charges, which he says were trumped up by his political enemies. ``We claim that his detention is illegal and we'll prove that in court,'' said one of Anwar's lawyers, Pawancheek Marican. He said the lawyers had asked the High Court for an early hearing on the request for Anwar's release. When Anwar appeared in court Monday, the judge had assured defense attorneys that they would have access to their client so that they could prepare their arguments for the trial. Azizah said authorities have spurned all her requests for family members to visit her husband on grounds that Anwar's case was still under police investigation. ``I pleaded with the police to allow the children to see their father,'' she told reporters at the courthouse. ``I told them that I don't have to see my husband. But please let my son go and see him. But the police said no.'' Although Anwar remains in custody at the Bukit Aman federal police headquarters in Kuala Lumpur, all but five of those arrested under the ISA for participating in activities and rallies organized by Anwar have been released. Sidek Baba, deputy rector of the International Islamic University, was released Wednesday after 16 days in jail. ``I may have been detained because I knew Anwar during my involvement with the Malaysian Islamic Youth Movement,'' Sidek was quoted as saying by The Star daily. Despite the recent protests against him, Prime Minister Mahathir said Wednesday that support for his ruling party remains strong and there have been no defections from the party, which claims a membership of 2.4 million in a nation of 22 million. He ruled out an early election to prove his popularity. A general election is not scheduled until 2000. Support ``is solid,'' said Mahathir. ``There is no exodus from the party.'' This week, Mahathir declined to name a replacement for Anwar, who had been Malaysia's deputy prime minister since 1993. The absence of a successor could lead to a power struggle in the event Mahathir is forced to resign or dies, because there is no clear line of succession. Mahathir, 72, underwent heart bypass surgery in 1989. ||||| The leaders of Malaysia's ruling party met Tuesday to discuss a replacement for ousted deputy prime minister Anwar Ibrahim, who faces trial next month in a case that will test the country's legal system. Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, 72, said last week he could ``drop dead'' at any time. But because of the large number of candidates for the deputy's job within the ruling United Malays National Organization, a decision was not expected quickly. The party leaders, who have been conducting a national campaign to explain to Malaysians why the popular Anwar was fired Sept. 2, will also confer on what to do now that the High Court judge has banned all comments on Anwar's guilt or innocence. The ruling coalition had scheduled a giant rally in the capital Saturday, aimed at drawing in the youth to whom Anwar's campaign of reform has the most appeal. Mahathir, who had heart bypass surgery in 1989, had groomed Anwar, 51, as his successor. But he fired his protege from his posts as deputy prime minister and finance minister on grounds he was morally unfit to lead. The two had differed over economic policy and Anwar has said Mahathir feared he was a threat to his 17-year rule. Anwar was also dumped from the ruling party, and after two weeks of nationwide rallies at which he called for government reform and Mahathir's resignation, he was arrested under a law that allows police to hold him indefinitely, and prevent him from seeing his family and lawyers. On Tuesday, Mahathir denounced demonstrators who had flocked by the thousands to the streets of downtown Kuala Lumpur in recent weeks, calling them part of a plot to topple the government. Baton-wielding riot police had dispersed the crowds with tear gas and water cannons, arresting more than 100 people. ``They decided that the government should be brought down through demonstrations, riots,'' the Bernama news agency quoted Mahathir as saying in Sarawak state on Borneo Island. He was expected to return to Kuala Lumpur later Tuesday to chair the UMNO meeting. After Anwar appeared in court with a black eye, bruised face, neck and arms, his case drew international attention, particularly from the presidents of the Philippines and Indonesia, who have raised the possibility they might not attend an 18-nation summit in Malaysia next month. The United States would downgrade President Bill Clinton's visit to Kuala Lumpur next month if Anwar continued to be mistreated, the Wall Street Journal quoted an official in Washington as saying. Clinton is scheduled to go to Malaysia for the meeting of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum. Wearing a neck brace Monday after a court-ordered hospital checkup, Anwar was ordered to stand trial Nov. 2 on four charges of abusing his powers to interfere with a police investigation. His trial is to halt on Nov. 14 and resume after the APEC meetings. He has pleaded innocent to all charges, including another corruption count and five charges of sodomy. He faces 14 years in prison and a fine on each corruption count and 20 years, plus whipping, on each sexual charge, if convicted. Anwar was arrested Sept. 20 under the Internal Security Act, which allows jail without trial. Under the same law, police also arrested 17 people considered Anwar associates and a risk to national security. As of Tuesday, 12 had been released. The UMNO supreme council was expected to prepare a list of top candidates for Anwar's job for Mahathir's final decision. The Star newspaper, which is close to the government, listed the favorites as Foreign Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi and Education Minister Najib Tun Razak. Other top contenders included Mahathir's confidant Daim Zainuddin, a former finance minister brought back into the Cabinet in June as ``special functions minister'' in charge of economic recovery. Rafidah Aziz, the international trade and industry minister, and Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah, a former finance minister, were also in the running. ||||| BRUSSELS, Belgium (AP) - The European Union on Friday expressed its ``deep concern'' over reports of physical abuse of Malaysia's former deputy-prime minister, Anwar Ibrahim, who was arrested last month. ``The EU urges the Malaysian authorities to ensure that similar incidents will not occur again in the future and that Anwar Ibrahim be assured correct treatment while in custody,'' a statement by the 15 EU countries said. The EU ``hopes that appropriate action will be taken against any individuals, including officials, found responsible for such mistreatment,'' the statement added. On Sept. 2, Malaysia's Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad fired Anwar, calling him morally unfit for office. Mahathir and Anwar had differed over economic policy and Anwar says Mahathir feared him as an alternative leader. Anwar mounted a nationwide campaign against the prime minister before being detained as a national security risk and charged with illegal homosexual acts and corruption in connection with those allegations. Earlier this week, Anwar appeared in court with a black eye and bruises on his neck and arms. He told the magistrate's courts he was beaten by police on Sept. 20, the night of his arrest. Faced with mounting public criticism, Mahathir called Thursday for a probe by the attorney general of the alleged mistreatment of Anwar. The EU statement welcomed the opening of this investigation. It also welcomed the release of seven youth leaders, including Ahmad Zahid Hamidi, the head of the youth wing of the ruling United Malays National Organization and a former ally of Anwar, who were arrested last week in connection with demonstrations in favor of the ousted deputy-premier. ``The EU expresses hope that the other political demonstrators still detained under the Internal Security Act will also be released soon,'' the statement said. The former deputy-premier, who was also finance minister, pleaded innocent this week to charges of sodomy and corruption. A number of Anwar's associates are still detained. ||||| The arrest of former Malaysian Deputy Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim won't lead to massive social unrest or frighten away investors, Malaysia's trade minister said Thursday. Anwar was fired by Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad on Sept. 2 after the two differed on economic policy. He then began speaking out against Mahathir and was arrested Sept. 20. ``Frankly speaking there is no reason to say that just because one man was arrested for something ... that it should bring any unrest,'' trade minister Rafidah Aziz said. ``Leaders come and go. ... They even get sacked in all countries of the world. They even die,'' she told a news conference in Manila, where she attended a meeting of Association of Southeast Asian Nations economic ministers. Rafidah said there have only been a few demonstrations in Malaysia over Anwar's arrest, all of them ``orchestrated.'' In recent visits to Chicago, New York, Houston and Boston, she said potential investors asked her about Anwar's arrest but were still interested in investing in Malaysia. Anwar said police beat him in custody. In recent appearances in court, where he is facing charges of corruption and illegal homosexual acts, he was seen with a black eye and a neck brace. At least two ASEAN leaders, Philippine President Joseph Estrada and Indonesian President B.J. Habibie, have spoken out against Anwar's treatment. The Philippine leader said he was considering skipping a summit of Asia-Pacific leaders in Malaysia in November to protest the arrest of Anwar, whom he described as a personal friend. He later said he would attend the summit and had only made the earlier remarks out of sympathy toward Anwar. The Philippines, Malaysia and Indonesia are founding member countries of ASEAN, which also includes Brunei, Laos, Myanmar, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. ||||| Indonesian President B.J. Habibie finds attending a summit of Asia-Pacific leaders ``difficult'' because of his concerns about the arrest of Malaysia's former deputy prime minister, a Thai newspaper reported Sunday. Asia-Pacific leaders are scheduled to meet next month in Malaysia for an annual economics meeting. Last week, Philippine President Joseph Estrada said he was considering not going to the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum because of Anwar Ibrahim's arrest. ``I'm very concerned over how my friend Anwar Ibrahim has been treated,'' Habibie was quoted as saying by the English-language newspaper The Nation. ``I'm concerned because people should not forget that Anwar Ibrahim had contributed a lot for the benefit of his country.'' Anwar is a charismatic politician who was once picked to be the successor to Malaysia's long-serving Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad. But he was suddenly fired by Mahathir on Sept. 2 after the two differed on economic policy. He then began speaking out against Mahathir and was arrested Sept. 20. Anwar has been accused of engaging in homosexual acts illegal under Malaysia law, but the charges are generally seen as a pretext for his political persecution. In a court appearance last week, Anwar's face was bruised and he said he had been beaten by police, heightening international attention to his case. ``Because of human rights involved _ and I think it is universal _ people should be given the chance to defend themselves,'' Habibie was quoted as saying in the interview conducted Saturday. ``People should not be tortured.'' Habibie said Anwar's dismissal should not have been based ``on things which had not been proven.'' On attending the APEC meeting, he said, ``It's difficult for me.'' But he said he would consult parliament, adding, ``I'm not coming personally but as the president of 211 million people of Indonesia.'' Like Estrada, Habibie served as his country's vice president when Anwar was deputy prime minister, making them counterparts on the international affairs circuit.

Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad ruled adroitly for 17 years until September 1998 when he suddenly reversed his economic policy and fired his popular deputy and heir apparent, Anwar Ibrahim. Anwar organized a political opposition leading Mahathir to arrest him. Mahathir met street demonsrations with tear gas and water cannon, but his censorship did not reach Anwar's internet support. News that police had beaten Anwar brutally brought protests from around the world, but the Malaysian trade minister discounted any unrest. Anwar remained in custody as lawyers appealed. Malaysia hardly provided a salubrious setting for the forthcoming economic summit.

Deprived of a voice in state-controlled newspapers and television, supporters of Malaysia's jailed opposition leader have turned to the Internet to air their views. Although the government said police would ``check every bit of information and leaflet'' posted on the Internet, Malaysia's sole Internet provider acknowledged Friday the medium is ``impossible to control.'' Jailed, beaten and facing trial on 10 sexual misconduct and corruption charges, ousted Deputy Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim is a political underdog in Malaysia. In the realm of cyberspace, though, he's top dog. Within hours of Anwar's recent speech accusing Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad of cruelty and insanity, dozens of boot-legged recordings had been posted onto new websites hatched by supporters. Among the hottest images now making the Internet rounds are several news-photo versions of Anwar's badly bruised eye, which he claims was inflicted by police during his first night of detention. Most pro-Anwar sites also contain his speeches, private letters to Mahathir, clippings of foreign news reports and prose scorching the 72-year old prime minister. Most of the Internet content about Anwar is false or unverifiable, but the medium is tough to rein in, said Azzman Shariffadeen, head of Mimos, the company that set up Malaysia's Internet infrastructure. ``No website has been blocked or censored by the government,'' he said. Shortly after Anwar's arrest, one of the former leader's aides bragged that they had set up dozens of sites offshore, beyond the reach of the Malaysian government. Malaysian journalist M.G.G. Pillai, who runs a popular website on local politics, isn't surprised by the aggressive march toward cyberspace. ``When you're in the opposition and you have no access to resources and media, then you end up making use of what's available to air your grouses,'' he said, noting that membership on his site has soared by 40 percent since Anwar's ouster. The cyber explosion is a boon to most middle-class Malaysians, who are leery of local media. ``I've finally given up reading local newspapers. They're so skewed,'' said Michael Chan, a lawyer who upgraded his computer with a high-speed modem the day after Anwar was arrested on Sept. 20. Chan uses the modem to download pictures of balaclava-clad police in bulletproof jackets busting down Anwar's front door before bundling him off to jail. Occasionally, he receives e-mail calling for organized rallies at the National Mosque and nearby Independence Square, where hundreds of protesters have been arrested by police. The advertised demonstrations don't always materialize. Other e-mails call for ``silent protests.'' Malaysians are being urged on the Internet now to switch off all lights for 10 minutes on Oct. 6 to declare their ``state of sorrow, sadness and darkness'' over national injustice. ||||| A key witness in the government's sexual misconduct case against Malaysia's former deputy prime minister remains determined to appeal his conviction, his attorney said Monday. Munawar Ahmad Aness, a friend and speech writer of Anwar Ibrahim, pleaded guilty to the charges last month, allegedly confessing to having sex with the political dissident. Anwar has said the guilty plea was coerced. Aness, a Pakistani with permanent residence in the United States, was sentenced to six months in jail. In a move that could deal a major setback to the case against Anwar, Aness then filed a letter of appeal through his lawyers. Another letter then appeared, saying Aness would not go through with the appeal. His lawyers say the second letter was a fraud. ``His instructions are he wants us to proceed with the appeal. There is no change,'' said Balwant Singh, one of two lawyers defending Aness, after a meeting with Aness. One of the major charges against Anwar hinges on Aness' confession. Singh spoke to reporters after attending court proceedings Monday where Anwar's trial was fixed for Nov. 2 on corruption charges. He said he went to a hospital to meet Aness when the court broke for lunch. Aness was jailed on Sept. 15 but moved soon after to a hospital where he has been under treatment for heart problems. ``He has given us the written retainer. He signed a notice of appeal. We have instructions to proceed and we are proceeding,'' said Singh, adding he filed the letter of appeal in court Sept. 29. Between the visits with his client, however, Aness signed another letter saying he would not proceed with the appeal, Singh said. That led to confusion whether Aness really wanted an appeal. ``Somebody approached him and asked him to sign a typewritten letter,'' said Singh. ``He was asked to sign it and he did.'' ||||| Among Asia's leaders, Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad was notable as a man with a bold vision: a physical and social transformation that would push this nation into the forefront of world affairs. It almost came true. In 17 years as prime minister, Mahathir, 72, who is a medical doctor, fostered an economic liberalization that led to some of the world's fastest rates of growth. He drove Malaysians to be more productive, to embrace high technology and to begin major investments around the world. He created a national affirmative-action program that allowed the country's ethnic Chinese, Malays and Indians to share in improved living standards and a new sense of Malaysian identity and pride. This year was to have been Mahathir's year of triumph, perhaps paving the way for his retirement, with the inauguration of huge public works projects and impressive gatherings of foreign leaders and sportsmen. But today, in a dizzying turnaround, Malaysia is on Asia's critical list, its economy teetering on the edge of disaster and its stability shaken by what seems to have been an entirely avoidable political cat fight. Last month, Mahathir dismissed and arrested his deputy and heir apparent, Anwar Ibrahim, 51, accusing him of corruption and illegal sex acts. The move set off street demonstrations and aroused international condemnation, particularly from Anwar's many friends in foreign governments. One of the region's most stable and prosperous nations is suddenly in an uproar. It appears that as in Indonesia, Thailand, Japan and South Korea, the pressures of economic collapse have spawned a political crisis. In all those nations, the result was a change in leadership. The question now is: Is Mahathir next? The answer is far from clear. Unlike in Indonesia, there has been little evidence of a simmering discontent in Malaysia. The ouster of former President Suharto in Indonesia had been predicted by many people. Almost no one seems to have foreseen the eruption here. Malaysia is not familiar with political demonstrations. Unlike Indonesians, Malaysians rarely riot. Many people here were puzzled and disturbed when they encountered water cannon and the riot police on the streets in recent weeks. ``What we're seeing is unprecedented,'' said Ambassador John Malott of the United States. ``This has never happened in Malaysia, and nobody knows where it's going to go. You can write a lot of scenarios but we are in totally uncharted waters.'' Mahathir, the confident nation-builder, seems to be flailing as he watches his legacy crumble. An economy that had been growing at more than 8 percent a year for the last decade is now headed for a contraction of perhaps 6 percent. Angry and frustrated, he closed Malaysia off from international financial markets one month ago, turning his back on the foreign investors whom he once embraced and who had fueled the country's rapid growth. The move had the intended effect of bringing home the Malaysian currency, insulating it from the speculators Mahathir blames for the crisis, and giving an adrenaline jolt to the now self-contained economy. It is a move that seems in tune with a recent round of questioning of the economic orthodoxy of the International Monetary Fund. But few foreign economists expect it to work for long. ``Mahathir is attacking the fundamental beliefs of the free market, of capitalism, of Wall Street,'' a foreign diplomat said. ``We are either watching economic theory being rewritten or reconfirmed _ and I don't think it's being rewritten.'' The day after making his economic gamble, Mahathir set off the most severe political crisis of his tenure, dismissing Anwar, the man he had been grooming to be his successor. Two weeks later, Anwar was arrested at his home and held incommunicado for 10 days, during which he says he was beaten by his jailers. Last week he was charged with 10 counts of corruption and sexual misconduct that could result in a prison term of up to 34 years. The harshness of those moves unleashed a surge of largely unsuspected discontent that mobilized Anwar's motley fellow constituencies: liberal democrats, young professionals and politically assertive Muslims. For the first time in decades, Malaysians by the thousands demonstrated in the streets and in mosques and were met with tear gas and water cannon. Many people were beaten and hundreds were detained, although most were later released. With the emergence of this still-tentative opposition movement, the fear expressed by one Western diplomat is of a ``downward spiral'' in which ``suppression breeds more discontent breeds more suppression breeds more discontent.'' People here whisper that Mahathir's days may now be numbered. But few venture a guess at what the number might be. Given his control of the levers of power and the lack of focus or leadership in the opposition, Mahathir could ride out the storm as Anwar's trial proceeds. But he has struck a harsh blow to the morale of his own nation, to the sense of confidence he had worked so hard to build under the slogan ``Malaysia Can!'' In this generally decorous nation, the depth of anger expressed by two men who once called each other father and son is disturbing to hear. Anwar, says the prime minister, is ``despicable'' and ``a sodomist.'' Mahathir, says his former deputy, is ``senile'' and ``insane.'' Malaysians, who have stolidly accepted Mahathir's authoritarian rule with a mixture of gratitude and emerging pride, seem stunned. ||||| Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad said Friday he is not too choosy about who will be his successor. The man need not necessarily be very religious and only preoccupied with doing virtuous deeds at all times, the national news agency, Bernama, quoted Mahathir as saying after Friday prayers at the Al-Falah Mosque in the northern town of Jitra in Kedah state. ``It is sufficient that the person does things acceptable by the people,'' Mahathir said. So far Mahathir, 72, has designated three heirs-apparent during his 17-year rule. One resigned. Another challenged Mahathir for leadership of the ruling party, and lost. On Sept. 2, he fired the last one, Anwar Ibrahim, calling him morally unfit for office. Anwar mounted a nationwide campaign against the prime minister before being detained as a national security risk and charged with illegal homosexual acts and corruption in connection with those allegations. Mahathir told reporters later that Anwar had been working toward toppling him as prime minister and president of the governing coalition's dominant party, the United Malays National Organization. ``He appeared very good to me but he was actually planning ways of bringing me down. At first, I did not believe when people told me about this, but I now know this to be true,'' said Mahathir. Mahathir said Anwar had arranged for his supporters to contest for and gain control of the UMNO divisions so that he could win the party's top post in next year's party elections. ||||| Bruises on the face of jailed dissident Anwar Ibrahim, splashed on newspaper front pages for two days and downloaded from the Internet, are blemishing the image of Malaysian police. After first suggesting that the former deputy prime minister had beaten himself on the face, neck and arms during 10 days in police custody, Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad called for an investigation of the wounds Anwar displayed in court Tuesday and Wednesday. ``We can't accept this and we will undertake full investigations,'' Mahathir was quoted as saying in Thursday's New Straits Times. ``The police cannot harm their detainees in the course of their interrogation.'' Mahathir fired Anwar on Sept. 2 from his posts as deputy prime minister and finance minister, saying he was morally unfit for office. The two had differed over economic policy as the country veered into recession and Anwar has said the 72-year-old Mahathir feared him as an alternative leader. Local newspapers that are normally pro-Mahathir have splashed close-up photos of Anwar's badly bruised face for two days. People are peering at the pictures, downloading copies from the Internet, discussing whether Mahathir, who also oversees the police as home affairs minister, knew what was happening to the man he had once groomed as his successor. It was not the first time that a Malaysian has said he was tortured or mistreated in police custody. But there has been no one as high-profile as Anwar. ``What I experienced was chicken feed compared to Anwar,'' Syed Husin Ali, head of the opposition Malaysian People's Party, said Thursday. In a book about his six-month detention under the same law that kept Anwar away from family and lawyers for 10 days, Syed described being hit and deprived of sleep. ``At least I didn't have bruises on my face, although I was slapped and hit on the stomach,'' Syed told The Associated Press. Anwar's bruises raise ``alarming questions about the state of governance in the country,'' said Lim Kit Siang, leader of the opposition Democratic Action Party. If Mahathir did not know of the alleged beatings, it suggests the police acted on their own. At a series of rallies before his arrest, Anwar led throngs in chanting for Mahathir's resignation and a more open, less corrupt government. His arrest Sept. 20 was followed by street protests and hundreds of additional arrests. Before his arrest, Anwar designated his wife, Azizah Ismail, as the leader of his new ``reform'' movement. But police have banned her from speaking publicly. On Thursday she was summoned for the third time to police headquarters for questioning about an interview with regional television network CNBC Asia. She had expressed fears that her husband would be injected with the HIV virus to prove allegations of homosexuality, and police are investigating possible charges of sedition against her. She called the repeated interviews ``pressure and harassment.'' Three Malaysian police officers traveled to Singapore Thursday to ask CNBC news anchors how they had arranged to get the Sept. 21 interview with Azizah and one with Anwar on Sept. 3. CNBC refused to answer questions about its news gathering, said vice president of news programming Chris Blackman. Anwar, who pleaded innocent this week to five charges of sodomy and five of corruption, told the court that police beat him the night he was arrested, ``until blood seeped down my nose,'' leaving him half-conscious. His allegations, accompanied by pictorial evidence, brought prompt expressions of disapproval, from the U.S. State Department, the Australian government, Amnesty International, and the finance ministers of other countries who used to meet with Anwar at international conferences. On Thursday, the Indonesian government, where security forces have been accused for years of mistreating prisoners, said it regretted the reports about Anwar's injuries and that the allegations have placed in doubt a visit to Malaysia by President B.J. Habibie. ||||| Lawyers for the prime minister's former deputy, now his most prominent opponent, went to court Thursday to demand their client's release from indefinite detention. Azizah Ismail, the wife of jailed politician Anwar Ibrahim, told reporters that the lawyers had filed a habeas corpus appeal that says the dissident politician is being unjustly held. She said authorities have denied lawyers access to her husband, and asked: ``How are they going to prepare for his defense?'' Anwar, 51, was arrested Sept. 20 under the Internal Security Act, which allows indefinite detention without trial, after two weeks of rallies around Malaysia at which he called for government reform and Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad's resignation. Anwar was sacked on Sept. 2 from his posts as deputy prime minister and finance minister, after he had differed with Mahathir on policy for escaping economic recession. But the prime minister said the deputy was fired because he was morally unfit. Anwar said Mahathir viewed him as a threat. Anwar since has been charged with corruption and illegal homosexual acts, and is to go on trial Nov. 2. He has pleaded innocent to all the charges, which he says were trumped up by his political enemies. ``We claim that his detention is illegal and we'll prove that in court,'' said one of Anwar's lawyers, Pawancheek Marican. He said the lawyers had asked the High Court for an early hearing on the request for Anwar's release. When Anwar appeared in court Monday, the judge had assured defense attorneys that they would have access to their client so that they could prepare their arguments for the trial. Azizah said authorities have spurned all her requests for family members to visit her husband on grounds that Anwar's case was still under police investigation. ``I pleaded with the police to allow the children to see their father,'' she told reporters at the courthouse. ``I told them that I don't have to see my husband. But please let my son go and see him. But the police said no.'' Although Anwar remains in custody at the Bukit Aman federal police headquarters in Kuala Lumpur, all but five of those arrested under the ISA for participating in activities and rallies organized by Anwar have been released. Sidek Baba, deputy rector of the International Islamic University, was released Wednesday after 16 days in jail. ``I may have been detained because I knew Anwar during my involvement with the Malaysian Islamic Youth Movement,'' Sidek was quoted as saying by The Star daily. Despite the recent protests against him, Prime Minister Mahathir said Wednesday that support for his ruling party remains strong and there have been no defections from the party, which claims a membership of 2.4 million in a nation of 22 million. He ruled out an early election to prove his popularity. A general election is not scheduled until 2000. Support ``is solid,'' said Mahathir. ``There is no exodus from the party.'' This week, Mahathir declined to name a replacement for Anwar, who had been Malaysia's deputy prime minister since 1993. The absence of a successor could lead to a power struggle in the event Mahathir is forced to resign or dies, because there is no clear line of succession. Mahathir, 72, underwent heart bypass surgery in 1989. ||||| The leaders of Malaysia's ruling party met Tuesday to discuss a replacement for ousted deputy prime minister Anwar Ibrahim, who faces trial next month in a case that will test the country's legal system. Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, 72, said last week he could ``drop dead'' at any time. But because of the large number of candidates for the deputy's job within the ruling United Malays National Organization, a decision was not expected quickly. The party leaders, who have been conducting a national campaign to explain to Malaysians why the popular Anwar was fired Sept. 2, will also confer on what to do now that the High Court judge has banned all comments on Anwar's guilt or innocence. The ruling coalition had scheduled a giant rally in the capital Saturday, aimed at drawing in the youth to whom Anwar's campaign of reform has the most appeal. Mahathir, who had heart bypass surgery in 1989, had groomed Anwar, 51, as his successor. But he fired his protege from his posts as deputy prime minister and finance minister on grounds he was morally unfit to lead. The two had differed over economic policy and Anwar has said Mahathir feared he was a threat to his 17-year rule. Anwar was also dumped from the ruling party, and after two weeks of nationwide rallies at which he called for government reform and Mahathir's resignation, he was arrested under a law that allows police to hold him indefinitely, and prevent him from seeing his family and lawyers. On Tuesday, Mahathir denounced demonstrators who had flocked by the thousands to the streets of downtown Kuala Lumpur in recent weeks, calling them part of a plot to topple the government. Baton-wielding riot police had dispersed the crowds with tear gas and water cannons, arresting more than 100 people. ``They decided that the government should be brought down through demonstrations, riots,'' the Bernama news agency quoted Mahathir as saying in Sarawak state on Borneo Island. He was expected to return to Kuala Lumpur later Tuesday to chair the UMNO meeting. After Anwar appeared in court with a black eye, bruised face, neck and arms, his case drew international attention, particularly from the presidents of the Philippines and Indonesia, who have raised the possibility they might not attend an 18-nation summit in Malaysia next month. The United States would downgrade President Bill Clinton's visit to Kuala Lumpur next month if Anwar continued to be mistreated, the Wall Street Journal quoted an official in Washington as saying. Clinton is scheduled to go to Malaysia for the meeting of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum. Wearing a neck brace Monday after a court-ordered hospital checkup, Anwar was ordered to stand trial Nov. 2 on four charges of abusing his powers to interfere with a police investigation. His trial is to halt on Nov. 14 and resume after the APEC meetings. He has pleaded innocent to all charges, including another corruption count and five charges of sodomy. He faces 14 years in prison and a fine on each corruption count and 20 years, plus whipping, on each sexual charge, if convicted. Anwar was arrested Sept. 20 under the Internal Security Act, which allows jail without trial. Under the same law, police also arrested 17 people considered Anwar associates and a risk to national security. As of Tuesday, 12 had been released. The UMNO supreme council was expected to prepare a list of top candidates for Anwar's job for Mahathir's final decision. The Star newspaper, which is close to the government, listed the favorites as Foreign Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi and Education Minister Najib Tun Razak. Other top contenders included Mahathir's confidant Daim Zainuddin, a former finance minister brought back into the Cabinet in June as ``special functions minister'' in charge of economic recovery. Rafidah Aziz, the international trade and industry minister, and Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah, a former finance minister, were also in the running. ||||| BRUSSELS, Belgium (AP) - The European Union on Friday expressed its ``deep concern'' over reports of physical abuse of Malaysia's former deputy-prime minister, Anwar Ibrahim, who was arrested last month. ``The EU urges the Malaysian authorities to ensure that similar incidents will not occur again in the future and that Anwar Ibrahim be assured correct treatment while in custody,'' a statement by the 15 EU countries said. The EU ``hopes that appropriate action will be taken against any individuals, including officials, found responsible for such mistreatment,'' the statement added. On Sept. 2, Malaysia's Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad fired Anwar, calling him morally unfit for office. Mahathir and Anwar had differed over economic policy and Anwar says Mahathir feared him as an alternative leader. Anwar mounted a nationwide campaign against the prime minister before being detained as a national security risk and charged with illegal homosexual acts and corruption in connection with those allegations. Earlier this week, Anwar appeared in court with a black eye and bruises on his neck and arms. He told the magistrate's courts he was beaten by police on Sept. 20, the night of his arrest. Faced with mounting public criticism, Mahathir called Thursday for a probe by the attorney general of the alleged mistreatment of Anwar. The EU statement welcomed the opening of this investigation. It also welcomed the release of seven youth leaders, including Ahmad Zahid Hamidi, the head of the youth wing of the ruling United Malays National Organization and a former ally of Anwar, who were arrested last week in connection with demonstrations in favor of the ousted deputy-premier. ``The EU expresses hope that the other political demonstrators still detained under the Internal Security Act will also be released soon,'' the statement said. The former deputy-premier, who was also finance minister, pleaded innocent this week to charges of sodomy and corruption. A number of Anwar's associates are still detained. ||||| The arrest of former Malaysian Deputy Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim won't lead to massive social unrest or frighten away investors, Malaysia's trade minister said Thursday. Anwar was fired by Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad on Sept. 2 after the two differed on economic policy. He then began speaking out against Mahathir and was arrested Sept. 20. ``Frankly speaking there is no reason to say that just because one man was arrested for something ... that it should bring any unrest,'' trade minister Rafidah Aziz said. ``Leaders come and go. ... They even get sacked in all countries of the world. They even die,'' she told a news conference in Manila, where she attended a meeting of Association of Southeast Asian Nations economic ministers. Rafidah said there have only been a few demonstrations in Malaysia over Anwar's arrest, all of them ``orchestrated.'' In recent visits to Chicago, New York, Houston and Boston, she said potential investors asked her about Anwar's arrest but were still interested in investing in Malaysia. Anwar said police beat him in custody. In recent appearances in court, where he is facing charges of corruption and illegal homosexual acts, he was seen with a black eye and a neck brace. At least two ASEAN leaders, Philippine President Joseph Estrada and Indonesian President B.J. Habibie, have spoken out against Anwar's treatment. The Philippine leader said he was considering skipping a summit of Asia-Pacific leaders in Malaysia in November to protest the arrest of Anwar, whom he described as a personal friend. He later said he would attend the summit and had only made the earlier remarks out of sympathy toward Anwar. The Philippines, Malaysia and Indonesia are founding member countries of ASEAN, which also includes Brunei, Laos, Myanmar, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. ||||| Indonesian President B.J. Habibie finds attending a summit of Asia-Pacific leaders ``difficult'' because of his concerns about the arrest of Malaysia's former deputy prime minister, a Thai newspaper reported Sunday. Asia-Pacific leaders are scheduled to meet next month in Malaysia for an annual economics meeting. Last week, Philippine President Joseph Estrada said he was considering not going to the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum because of Anwar Ibrahim's arrest. ``I'm very concerned over how my friend Anwar Ibrahim has been treated,'' Habibie was quoted as saying by the English-language newspaper The Nation. ``I'm concerned because people should not forget that Anwar Ibrahim had contributed a lot for the benefit of his country.'' Anwar is a charismatic politician who was once picked to be the successor to Malaysia's long-serving Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad. But he was suddenly fired by Mahathir on Sept. 2 after the two differed on economic policy. He then began speaking out against Mahathir and was arrested Sept. 20. Anwar has been accused of engaging in homosexual acts illegal under Malaysia law, but the charges are generally seen as a pretext for his political persecution. In a court appearance last week, Anwar's face was bruised and he said he had been beaten by police, heightening international attention to his case. ``Because of human rights involved _ and I think it is universal _ people should be given the chance to defend themselves,'' Habibie was quoted as saying in the interview conducted Saturday. ``People should not be tortured.'' Habibie said Anwar's dismissal should not have been based ``on things which had not been proven.'' On attending the APEC meeting, he said, ``It's difficult for me.'' But he said he would consult parliament, adding, ``I'm not coming personally but as the president of 211 million people of Indonesia.'' Like Estrada, Habibie served as his country's vice president when Anwar was deputy prime minister, making them counterparts on the international affairs circuit.

Mahathir's 17-year rule saw great advances. Now, Malaysia has economic crisis and instability. Photos show bruised Anwar, who says police beat him. Mahathir requests investigation. Anwar supporters use internet to air views, photos, speeches. EU is concerned about reports of his abuse and hopes for appropriate actions. Habibie and Estrada may stay away from APEC talks over Anwar's arrest. A witness against Anwar asks for appeal of his conviction. Anwar says false confession was coerced. Lawyers demand Anwar's release. Ruling party leaders discuss Anwar's replacement; Mahathir not choosy. Rafidah says arrest won't cause unrest or scare away investors.

Deprived of a voice in state-controlled newspapers and television, supporters of Malaysia's jailed opposition leader have turned to the Internet to air their views. Although the government said police would ``check every bit of information and leaflet'' posted on the Internet, Malaysia's sole Internet provider acknowledged Friday the medium is ``impossible to control.'' Jailed, beaten and facing trial on 10 sexual misconduct and corruption charges, ousted Deputy Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim is a political underdog in Malaysia. In the realm of cyberspace, though, he's top dog. Within hours of Anwar's recent speech accusing Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad of cruelty and insanity, dozens of boot-legged recordings had been posted onto new websites hatched by supporters. Among the hottest images now making the Internet rounds are several news-photo versions of Anwar's badly bruised eye, which he claims was inflicted by police during his first night of detention. Most pro-Anwar sites also contain his speeches, private letters to Mahathir, clippings of foreign news reports and prose scorching the 72-year old prime minister. Most of the Internet content about Anwar is false or unverifiable, but the medium is tough to rein in, said Azzman Shariffadeen, head of Mimos, the company that set up Malaysia's Internet infrastructure. ``No website has been blocked or censored by the government,'' he said. Shortly after Anwar's arrest, one of the former leader's aides bragged that they had set up dozens of sites offshore, beyond the reach of the Malaysian government. Malaysian journalist M.G.G. Pillai, who runs a popular website on local politics, isn't surprised by the aggressive march toward cyberspace. ``When you're in the opposition and you have no access to resources and media, then you end up making use of what's available to air your grouses,'' he said, noting that membership on his site has soared by 40 percent since Anwar's ouster. The cyber explosion is a boon to most middle-class Malaysians, who are leery of local media. ``I've finally given up reading local newspapers. They're so skewed,'' said Michael Chan, a lawyer who upgraded his computer with a high-speed modem the day after Anwar was arrested on Sept. 20. Chan uses the modem to download pictures of balaclava-clad police in bulletproof jackets busting down Anwar's front door before bundling him off to jail. Occasionally, he receives e-mail calling for organized rallies at the National Mosque and nearby Independence Square, where hundreds of protesters have been arrested by police. The advertised demonstrations don't always materialize. Other e-mails call for ``silent protests.'' Malaysians are being urged on the Internet now to switch off all lights for 10 minutes on Oct. 6 to declare their ``state of sorrow, sadness and darkness'' over national injustice. ||||| A key witness in the government's sexual misconduct case against Malaysia's former deputy prime minister remains determined to appeal his conviction, his attorney said Monday. Munawar Ahmad Aness, a friend and speech writer of Anwar Ibrahim, pleaded guilty to the charges last month, allegedly confessing to having sex with the political dissident. Anwar has said the guilty plea was coerced. Aness, a Pakistani with permanent residence in the United States, was sentenced to six months in jail. In a move that could deal a major setback to the case against Anwar, Aness then filed a letter of appeal through his lawyers. Another letter then appeared, saying Aness would not go through with the appeal. His lawyers say the second letter was a fraud. ``His instructions are he wants us to proceed with the appeal. There is no change,'' said Balwant Singh, one of two lawyers defending Aness, after a meeting with Aness. One of the major charges against Anwar hinges on Aness' confession. Singh spoke to reporters after attending court proceedings Monday where Anwar's trial was fixed for Nov. 2 on corruption charges. He said he went to a hospital to meet Aness when the court broke for lunch. Aness was jailed on Sept. 15 but moved soon after to a hospital where he has been under treatment for heart problems. ``He has given us the written retainer. He signed a notice of appeal. We have instructions to proceed and we are proceeding,'' said Singh, adding he filed the letter of appeal in court Sept. 29. Between the visits with his client, however, Aness signed another letter saying he would not proceed with the appeal, Singh said. That led to confusion whether Aness really wanted an appeal. ``Somebody approached him and asked him to sign a typewritten letter,'' said Singh. ``He was asked to sign it and he did.'' ||||| Among Asia's leaders, Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad was notable as a man with a bold vision: a physical and social transformation that would push this nation into the forefront of world affairs. It almost came true. In 17 years as prime minister, Mahathir, 72, who is a medical doctor, fostered an economic liberalization that led to some of the world's fastest rates of growth. He drove Malaysians to be more productive, to embrace high technology and to begin major investments around the world. He created a national affirmative-action program that allowed the country's ethnic Chinese, Malays and Indians to share in improved living standards and a new sense of Malaysian identity and pride. This year was to have been Mahathir's year of triumph, perhaps paving the way for his retirement, with the inauguration of huge public works projects and impressive gatherings of foreign leaders and sportsmen. But today, in a dizzying turnaround, Malaysia is on Asia's critical list, its economy teetering on the edge of disaster and its stability shaken by what seems to have been an entirely avoidable political cat fight. Last month, Mahathir dismissed and arrested his deputy and heir apparent, Anwar Ibrahim, 51, accusing him of corruption and illegal sex acts. The move set off street demonstrations and aroused international condemnation, particularly from Anwar's many friends in foreign governments. One of the region's most stable and prosperous nations is suddenly in an uproar. It appears that as in Indonesia, Thailand, Japan and South Korea, the pressures of economic collapse have spawned a political crisis. In all those nations, the result was a change in leadership. The question now is: Is Mahathir next? The answer is far from clear. Unlike in Indonesia, there has been little evidence of a simmering discontent in Malaysia. The ouster of former President Suharto in Indonesia had been predicted by many people. Almost no one seems to have foreseen the eruption here. Malaysia is not familiar with political demonstrations. Unlike Indonesians, Malaysians rarely riot. Many people here were puzzled and disturbed when they encountered water cannon and the riot police on the streets in recent weeks. ``What we're seeing is unprecedented,'' said Ambassador John Malott of the United States. ``This has never happened in Malaysia, and nobody knows where it's going to go. You can write a lot of scenarios but we are in totally uncharted waters.'' Mahathir, the confident nation-builder, seems to be flailing as he watches his legacy crumble. An economy that had been growing at more than 8 percent a year for the last decade is now headed for a contraction of perhaps 6 percent. Angry and frustrated, he closed Malaysia off from international financial markets one month ago, turning his back on the foreign investors whom he once embraced and who had fueled the country's rapid growth. The move had the intended effect of bringing home the Malaysian currency, insulating it from the speculators Mahathir blames for the crisis, and giving an adrenaline jolt to the now self-contained economy. It is a move that seems in tune with a recent round of questioning of the economic orthodoxy of the International Monetary Fund. But few foreign economists expect it to work for long. ``Mahathir is attacking the fundamental beliefs of the free market, of capitalism, of Wall Street,'' a foreign diplomat said. ``We are either watching economic theory being rewritten or reconfirmed _ and I don't think it's being rewritten.'' The day after making his economic gamble, Mahathir set off the most severe political crisis of his tenure, dismissing Anwar, the man he had been grooming to be his successor. Two weeks later, Anwar was arrested at his home and held incommunicado for 10 days, during which he says he was beaten by his jailers. Last week he was charged with 10 counts of corruption and sexual misconduct that could result in a prison term of up to 34 years. The harshness of those moves unleashed a surge of largely unsuspected discontent that mobilized Anwar's motley fellow constituencies: liberal democrats, young professionals and politically assertive Muslims. For the first time in decades, Malaysians by the thousands demonstrated in the streets and in mosques and were met with tear gas and water cannon. Many people were beaten and hundreds were detained, although most were later released. With the emergence of this still-tentative opposition movement, the fear expressed by one Western diplomat is of a ``downward spiral'' in which ``suppression breeds more discontent breeds more suppression breeds more discontent.'' People here whisper that Mahathir's days may now be numbered. But few venture a guess at what the number might be. Given his control of the levers of power and the lack of focus or leadership in the opposition, Mahathir could ride out the storm as Anwar's trial proceeds. But he has struck a harsh blow to the morale of his own nation, to the sense of confidence he had worked so hard to build under the slogan ``Malaysia Can!'' In this generally decorous nation, the depth of anger expressed by two men who once called each other father and son is disturbing to hear. Anwar, says the prime minister, is ``despicable'' and ``a sodomist.'' Mahathir, says his former deputy, is ``senile'' and ``insane.'' Malaysians, who have stolidly accepted Mahathir's authoritarian rule with a mixture of gratitude and emerging pride, seem stunned. ||||| Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad said Friday he is not too choosy about who will be his successor. The man need not necessarily be very religious and only preoccupied with doing virtuous deeds at all times, the national news agency, Bernama, quoted Mahathir as saying after Friday prayers at the Al-Falah Mosque in the northern town of Jitra in Kedah state. ``It is sufficient that the person does things acceptable by the people,'' Mahathir said. So far Mahathir, 72, has designated three heirs-apparent during his 17-year rule. One resigned. Another challenged Mahathir for leadership of the ruling party, and lost. On Sept. 2, he fired the last one, Anwar Ibrahim, calling him morally unfit for office. Anwar mounted a nationwide campaign against the prime minister before being detained as a national security risk and charged with illegal homosexual acts and corruption in connection with those allegations. Mahathir told reporters later that Anwar had been working toward toppling him as prime minister and president of the governing coalition's dominant party, the United Malays National Organization. ``He appeared very good to me but he was actually planning ways of bringing me down. At first, I did not believe when people told me about this, but I now know this to be true,'' said Mahathir. Mahathir said Anwar had arranged for his supporters to contest for and gain control of the UMNO divisions so that he could win the party's top post in next year's party elections. ||||| Bruises on the face of jailed dissident Anwar Ibrahim, splashed on newspaper front pages for two days and downloaded from the Internet, are blemishing the image of Malaysian police. After first suggesting that the former deputy prime minister had beaten himself on the face, neck and arms during 10 days in police custody, Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad called for an investigation of the wounds Anwar displayed in court Tuesday and Wednesday. ``We can't accept this and we will undertake full investigations,'' Mahathir was quoted as saying in Thursday's New Straits Times. ``The police cannot harm their detainees in the course of their interrogation.'' Mahathir fired Anwar on Sept. 2 from his posts as deputy prime minister and finance minister, saying he was morally unfit for office. The two had differed over economic policy as the country veered into recession and Anwar has said the 72-year-old Mahathir feared him as an alternative leader. Local newspapers that are normally pro-Mahathir have splashed close-up photos of Anwar's badly bruised face for two days. People are peering at the pictures, downloading copies from the Internet, discussing whether Mahathir, who also oversees the police as home affairs minister, knew what was happening to the man he had once groomed as his successor. It was not the first time that a Malaysian has said he was tortured or mistreated in police custody. But there has been no one as high-profile as Anwar. ``What I experienced was chicken feed compared to Anwar,'' Syed Husin Ali, head of the opposition Malaysian People's Party, said Thursday. In a book about his six-month detention under the same law that kept Anwar away from family and lawyers for 10 days, Syed described being hit and deprived of sleep. ``At least I didn't have bruises on my face, although I was slapped and hit on the stomach,'' Syed told The Associated Press. Anwar's bruises raise ``alarming questions about the state of governance in the country,'' said Lim Kit Siang, leader of the opposition Democratic Action Party. If Mahathir did not know of the alleged beatings, it suggests the police acted on their own. At a series of rallies before his arrest, Anwar led throngs in chanting for Mahathir's resignation and a more open, less corrupt government. His arrest Sept. 20 was followed by street protests and hundreds of additional arrests. Before his arrest, Anwar designated his wife, Azizah Ismail, as the leader of his new ``reform'' movement. But police have banned her from speaking publicly. On Thursday she was summoned for the third time to police headquarters for questioning about an interview with regional television network CNBC Asia. She had expressed fears that her husband would be injected with the HIV virus to prove allegations of homosexuality, and police are investigating possible charges of sedition against her. She called the repeated interviews ``pressure and harassment.'' Three Malaysian police officers traveled to Singapore Thursday to ask CNBC news anchors how they had arranged to get the Sept. 21 interview with Azizah and one with Anwar on Sept. 3. CNBC refused to answer questions about its news gathering, said vice president of news programming Chris Blackman. Anwar, who pleaded innocent this week to five charges of sodomy and five of corruption, told the court that police beat him the night he was arrested, ``until blood seeped down my nose,'' leaving him half-conscious. His allegations, accompanied by pictorial evidence, brought prompt expressions of disapproval, from the U.S. State Department, the Australian government, Amnesty International, and the finance ministers of other countries who used to meet with Anwar at international conferences. On Thursday, the Indonesian government, where security forces have been accused for years of mistreating prisoners, said it regretted the reports about Anwar's injuries and that the allegations have placed in doubt a visit to Malaysia by President B.J. Habibie. ||||| Lawyers for the prime minister's former deputy, now his most prominent opponent, went to court Thursday to demand their client's release from indefinite detention. Azizah Ismail, the wife of jailed politician Anwar Ibrahim, told reporters that the lawyers had filed a habeas corpus appeal that says the dissident politician is being unjustly held. She said authorities have denied lawyers access to her husband, and asked: ``How are they going to prepare for his defense?'' Anwar, 51, was arrested Sept. 20 under the Internal Security Act, which allows indefinite detention without trial, after two weeks of rallies around Malaysia at which he called for government reform and Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad's resignation. Anwar was sacked on Sept. 2 from his posts as deputy prime minister and finance minister, after he had differed with Mahathir on policy for escaping economic recession. But the prime minister said the deputy was fired because he was morally unfit. Anwar said Mahathir viewed him as a threat. Anwar since has been charged with corruption and illegal homosexual acts, and is to go on trial Nov. 2. He has pleaded innocent to all the charges, which he says were trumped up by his political enemies. ``We claim that his detention is illegal and we'll prove that in court,'' said one of Anwar's lawyers, Pawancheek Marican. He said the lawyers had asked the High Court for an early hearing on the request for Anwar's release. When Anwar appeared in court Monday, the judge had assured defense attorneys that they would have access to their client so that they could prepare their arguments for the trial. Azizah said authorities have spurned all her requests for family members to visit her husband on grounds that Anwar's case was still under police investigation. ``I pleaded with the police to allow the children to see their father,'' she told reporters at the courthouse. ``I told them that I don't have to see my husband. But please let my son go and see him. But the police said no.'' Although Anwar remains in custody at the Bukit Aman federal police headquarters in Kuala Lumpur, all but five of those arrested under the ISA for participating in activities and rallies organized by Anwar have been released. Sidek Baba, deputy rector of the International Islamic University, was released Wednesday after 16 days in jail. ``I may have been detained because I knew Anwar during my involvement with the Malaysian Islamic Youth Movement,'' Sidek was quoted as saying by The Star daily. Despite the recent protests against him, Prime Minister Mahathir said Wednesday that support for his ruling party remains strong and there have been no defections from the party, which claims a membership of 2.4 million in a nation of 22 million. He ruled out an early election to prove his popularity. A general election is not scheduled until 2000. Support ``is solid,'' said Mahathir. ``There is no exodus from the party.'' This week, Mahathir declined to name a replacement for Anwar, who had been Malaysia's deputy prime minister since 1993. The absence of a successor could lead to a power struggle in the event Mahathir is forced to resign or dies, because there is no clear line of succession. Mahathir, 72, underwent heart bypass surgery in 1989. ||||| The leaders of Malaysia's ruling party met Tuesday to discuss a replacement for ousted deputy prime minister Anwar Ibrahim, who faces trial next month in a case that will test the country's legal system. Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, 72, said last week he could ``drop dead'' at any time. But because of the large number of candidates for the deputy's job within the ruling United Malays National Organization, a decision was not expected quickly. The party leaders, who have been conducting a national campaign to explain to Malaysians why the popular Anwar was fired Sept. 2, will also confer on what to do now that the High Court judge has banned all comments on Anwar's guilt or innocence. The ruling coalition had scheduled a giant rally in the capital Saturday, aimed at drawing in the youth to whom Anwar's campaign of reform has the most appeal. Mahathir, who had heart bypass surgery in 1989, had groomed Anwar, 51, as his successor. But he fired his protege from his posts as deputy prime minister and finance minister on grounds he was morally unfit to lead. The two had differed over economic policy and Anwar has said Mahathir feared he was a threat to his 17-year rule. Anwar was also dumped from the ruling party, and after two weeks of nationwide rallies at which he called for government reform and Mahathir's resignation, he was arrested under a law that allows police to hold him indefinitely, and prevent him from seeing his family and lawyers. On Tuesday, Mahathir denounced demonstrators who had flocked by the thousands to the streets of downtown Kuala Lumpur in recent weeks, calling them part of a plot to topple the government. Baton-wielding riot police had dispersed the crowds with tear gas and water cannons, arresting more than 100 people. ``They decided that the government should be brought down through demonstrations, riots,'' the Bernama news agency quoted Mahathir as saying in Sarawak state on Borneo Island. He was expected to return to Kuala Lumpur later Tuesday to chair the UMNO meeting. After Anwar appeared in court with a black eye, bruised face, neck and arms, his case drew international attention, particularly from the presidents of the Philippines and Indonesia, who have raised the possibility they might not attend an 18-nation summit in Malaysia next month. The United States would downgrade President Bill Clinton's visit to Kuala Lumpur next month if Anwar continued to be mistreated, the Wall Street Journal quoted an official in Washington as saying. Clinton is scheduled to go to Malaysia for the meeting of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum. Wearing a neck brace Monday after a court-ordered hospital checkup, Anwar was ordered to stand trial Nov. 2 on four charges of abusing his powers to interfere with a police investigation. His trial is to halt on Nov. 14 and resume after the APEC meetings. He has pleaded innocent to all charges, including another corruption count and five charges of sodomy. He faces 14 years in prison and a fine on each corruption count and 20 years, plus whipping, on each sexual charge, if convicted. Anwar was arrested Sept. 20 under the Internal Security Act, which allows jail without trial. Under the same law, police also arrested 17 people considered Anwar associates and a risk to national security. As of Tuesday, 12 had been released. The UMNO supreme council was expected to prepare a list of top candidates for Anwar's job for Mahathir's final decision. The Star newspaper, which is close to the government, listed the favorites as Foreign Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi and Education Minister Najib Tun Razak. Other top contenders included Mahathir's confidant Daim Zainuddin, a former finance minister brought back into the Cabinet in June as ``special functions minister'' in charge of economic recovery. Rafidah Aziz, the international trade and industry minister, and Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah, a former finance minister, were also in the running. ||||| BRUSSELS, Belgium (AP) - The European Union on Friday expressed its ``deep concern'' over reports of physical abuse of Malaysia's former deputy-prime minister, Anwar Ibrahim, who was arrested last month. ``The EU urges the Malaysian authorities to ensure that similar incidents will not occur again in the future and that Anwar Ibrahim be assured correct treatment while in custody,'' a statement by the 15 EU countries said. The EU ``hopes that appropriate action will be taken against any individuals, including officials, found responsible for such mistreatment,'' the statement added. On Sept. 2, Malaysia's Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad fired Anwar, calling him morally unfit for office. Mahathir and Anwar had differed over economic policy and Anwar says Mahathir feared him as an alternative leader. Anwar mounted a nationwide campaign against the prime minister before being detained as a national security risk and charged with illegal homosexual acts and corruption in connection with those allegations. Earlier this week, Anwar appeared in court with a black eye and bruises on his neck and arms. He told the magistrate's courts he was beaten by police on Sept. 20, the night of his arrest. Faced with mounting public criticism, Mahathir called Thursday for a probe by the attorney general of the alleged mistreatment of Anwar. The EU statement welcomed the opening of this investigation. It also welcomed the release of seven youth leaders, including Ahmad Zahid Hamidi, the head of the youth wing of the ruling United Malays National Organization and a former ally of Anwar, who were arrested last week in connection with demonstrations in favor of the ousted deputy-premier. ``The EU expresses hope that the other political demonstrators still detained under the Internal Security Act will also be released soon,'' the statement said. The former deputy-premier, who was also finance minister, pleaded innocent this week to charges of sodomy and corruption. A number of Anwar's associates are still detained. ||||| The arrest of former Malaysian Deputy Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim won't lead to massive social unrest or frighten away investors, Malaysia's trade minister said Thursday. Anwar was fired by Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad on Sept. 2 after the two differed on economic policy. He then began speaking out against Mahathir and was arrested Sept. 20. ``Frankly speaking there is no reason to say that just because one man was arrested for something ... that it should bring any unrest,'' trade minister Rafidah Aziz said. ``Leaders come and go. ... They even get sacked in all countries of the world. They even die,'' she told a news conference in Manila, where she attended a meeting of Association of Southeast Asian Nations economic ministers. Rafidah said there have only been a few demonstrations in Malaysia over Anwar's arrest, all of them ``orchestrated.'' In recent visits to Chicago, New York, Houston and Boston, she said potential investors asked her about Anwar's arrest but were still interested in investing in Malaysia. Anwar said police beat him in custody. In recent appearances in court, where he is facing charges of corruption and illegal homosexual acts, he was seen with a black eye and a neck brace. At least two ASEAN leaders, Philippine President Joseph Estrada and Indonesian President B.J. Habibie, have spoken out against Anwar's treatment. The Philippine leader said he was considering skipping a summit of Asia-Pacific leaders in Malaysia in November to protest the arrest of Anwar, whom he described as a personal friend. He later said he would attend the summit and had only made the earlier remarks out of sympathy toward Anwar. The Philippines, Malaysia and Indonesia are founding member countries of ASEAN, which also includes Brunei, Laos, Myanmar, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. ||||| Indonesian President B.J. Habibie finds attending a summit of Asia-Pacific leaders ``difficult'' because of his concerns about the arrest of Malaysia's former deputy prime minister, a Thai newspaper reported Sunday. Asia-Pacific leaders are scheduled to meet next month in Malaysia for an annual economics meeting. Last week, Philippine President Joseph Estrada said he was considering not going to the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum because of Anwar Ibrahim's arrest. ``I'm very concerned over how my friend Anwar Ibrahim has been treated,'' Habibie was quoted as saying by the English-language newspaper The Nation. ``I'm concerned because people should not forget that Anwar Ibrahim had contributed a lot for the benefit of his country.'' Anwar is a charismatic politician who was once picked to be the successor to Malaysia's long-serving Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad. But he was suddenly fired by Mahathir on Sept. 2 after the two differed on economic policy. He then began speaking out against Mahathir and was arrested Sept. 20. Anwar has been accused of engaging in homosexual acts illegal under Malaysia law, but the charges are generally seen as a pretext for his political persecution. In a court appearance last week, Anwar's face was bruised and he said he had been beaten by police, heightening international attention to his case. ``Because of human rights involved _ and I think it is universal _ people should be given the chance to defend themselves,'' Habibie was quoted as saying in the interview conducted Saturday. ``People should not be tortured.'' Habibie said Anwar's dismissal should not have been based ``on things which had not been proven.'' On attending the APEC meeting, he said, ``It's difficult for me.'' But he said he would consult parliament, adding, ``I'm not coming personally but as the president of 211 million people of Indonesia.'' Like Estrada, Habibie served as his country's vice president when Anwar was deputy prime minister, making them counterparts on the international affairs circuit.

Newspaper photos of the bruised face of Thailand's jailed former deputy minister, Anwar Ibrahim, has aroused international condemnation as well as local demonstrations. Ibrahim, considered heir-apparent to Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamed, was fired by Mahathir for being morally unfit for office. Anwar mounted a nationwide campaign against Mahathir before his arrest. Mahathir served as Prime Minister for 17 years with a bold socio-economic program that had veered into recession. Anwar differed with Mahathir over economic policy and began speaking out against him. Mahathir has not selected a successor and if he resigns or dies, a power struggle could ensue.

Deprived of a voice in state-controlled newspapers and television, supporters of Malaysia's jailed opposition leader have turned to the Internet to air their views. Although the government said police would ``check every bit of information and leaflet'' posted on the Internet, Malaysia's sole Internet provider acknowledged Friday the medium is ``impossible to control.'' Jailed, beaten and facing trial on 10 sexual misconduct and corruption charges, ousted Deputy Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim is a political underdog in Malaysia. In the realm of cyberspace, though, he's top dog. Within hours of Anwar's recent speech accusing Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad of cruelty and insanity, dozens of boot-legged recordings had been posted onto new websites hatched by supporters. Among the hottest images now making the Internet rounds are several news-photo versions of Anwar's badly bruised eye, which he claims was inflicted by police during his first night of detention. Most pro-Anwar sites also contain his speeches, private letters to Mahathir, clippings of foreign news reports and prose scorching the 72-year old prime minister. Most of the Internet content about Anwar is false or unverifiable, but the medium is tough to rein in, said Azzman Shariffadeen, head of Mimos, the company that set up Malaysia's Internet infrastructure. ``No website has been blocked or censored by the government,'' he said. Shortly after Anwar's arrest, one of the former leader's aides bragged that they had set up dozens of sites offshore, beyond the reach of the Malaysian government. Malaysian journalist M.G.G. Pillai, who runs a popular website on local politics, isn't surprised by the aggressive march toward cyberspace. ``When you're in the opposition and you have no access to resources and media, then you end up making use of what's available to air your grouses,'' he said, noting that membership on his site has soared by 40 percent since Anwar's ouster. The cyber explosion is a boon to most middle-class Malaysians, who are leery of local media. ``I've finally given up reading local newspapers. They're so skewed,'' said Michael Chan, a lawyer who upgraded his computer with a high-speed modem the day after Anwar was arrested on Sept. 20. Chan uses the modem to download pictures of balaclava-clad police in bulletproof jackets busting down Anwar's front door before bundling him off to jail. Occasionally, he receives e-mail calling for organized rallies at the National Mosque and nearby Independence Square, where hundreds of protesters have been arrested by police. The advertised demonstrations don't always materialize. Other e-mails call for ``silent protests.'' Malaysians are being urged on the Internet now to switch off all lights for 10 minutes on Oct. 6 to declare their ``state of sorrow, sadness and darkness'' over national injustice. ||||| A key witness in the government's sexual misconduct case against Malaysia's former deputy prime minister remains determined to appeal his conviction, his attorney said Monday. Munawar Ahmad Aness, a friend and speech writer of Anwar Ibrahim, pleaded guilty to the charges last month, allegedly confessing to having sex with the political dissident. Anwar has said the guilty plea was coerced. Aness, a Pakistani with permanent residence in the United States, was sentenced to six months in jail. In a move that could deal a major setback to the case against Anwar, Aness then filed a letter of appeal through his lawyers. Another letter then appeared, saying Aness would not go through with the appeal. His lawyers say the second letter was a fraud. ``His instructions are he wants us to proceed with the appeal. There is no change,'' said Balwant Singh, one of two lawyers defending Aness, after a meeting with Aness. One of the major charges against Anwar hinges on Aness' confession. Singh spoke to reporters after attending court proceedings Monday where Anwar's trial was fixed for Nov. 2 on corruption charges. He said he went to a hospital to meet Aness when the court broke for lunch. Aness was jailed on Sept. 15 but moved soon after to a hospital where he has been under treatment for heart problems. ``He has given us the written retainer. He signed a notice of appeal. We have instructions to proceed and we are proceeding,'' said Singh, adding he filed the letter of appeal in court Sept. 29. Between the visits with his client, however, Aness signed another letter saying he would not proceed with the appeal, Singh said. That led to confusion whether Aness really wanted an appeal. ``Somebody approached him and asked him to sign a typewritten letter,'' said Singh. ``He was asked to sign it and he did.'' ||||| Among Asia's leaders, Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad was notable as a man with a bold vision: a physical and social transformation that would push this nation into the forefront of world affairs. It almost came true. In 17 years as prime minister, Mahathir, 72, who is a medical doctor, fostered an economic liberalization that led to some of the world's fastest rates of growth. He drove Malaysians to be more productive, to embrace high technology and to begin major investments around the world. He created a national affirmative-action program that allowed the country's ethnic Chinese, Malays and Indians to share in improved living standards and a new sense of Malaysian identity and pride. This year was to have been Mahathir's year of triumph, perhaps paving the way for his retirement, with the inauguration of huge public works projects and impressive gatherings of foreign leaders and sportsmen. But today, in a dizzying turnaround, Malaysia is on Asia's critical list, its economy teetering on the edge of disaster and its stability shaken by what seems to have been an entirely avoidable political cat fight. Last month, Mahathir dismissed and arrested his deputy and heir apparent, Anwar Ibrahim, 51, accusing him of corruption and illegal sex acts. The move set off street demonstrations and aroused international condemnation, particularly from Anwar's many friends in foreign governments. One of the region's most stable and prosperous nations is suddenly in an uproar. It appears that as in Indonesia, Thailand, Japan and South Korea, the pressures of economic collapse have spawned a political crisis. In all those nations, the result was a change in leadership. The question now is: Is Mahathir next? The answer is far from clear. Unlike in Indonesia, there has been little evidence of a simmering discontent in Malaysia. The ouster of former President Suharto in Indonesia had been predicted by many people. Almost no one seems to have foreseen the eruption here. Malaysia is not familiar with political demonstrations. Unlike Indonesians, Malaysians rarely riot. Many people here were puzzled and disturbed when they encountered water cannon and the riot police on the streets in recent weeks. ``What we're seeing is unprecedented,'' said Ambassador John Malott of the United States. ``This has never happened in Malaysia, and nobody knows where it's going to go. You can write a lot of scenarios but we are in totally uncharted waters.'' Mahathir, the confident nation-builder, seems to be flailing as he watches his legacy crumble. An economy that had been growing at more than 8 percent a year for the last decade is now headed for a contraction of perhaps 6 percent. Angry and frustrated, he closed Malaysia off from international financial markets one month ago, turning his back on the foreign investors whom he once embraced and who had fueled the country's rapid growth. The move had the intended effect of bringing home the Malaysian currency, insulating it from the speculators Mahathir blames for the crisis, and giving an adrenaline jolt to the now self-contained economy. It is a move that seems in tune with a recent round of questioning of the economic orthodoxy of the International Monetary Fund. But few foreign economists expect it to work for long. ``Mahathir is attacking the fundamental beliefs of the free market, of capitalism, of Wall Street,'' a foreign diplomat said. ``We are either watching economic theory being rewritten or reconfirmed _ and I don't think it's being rewritten.'' The day after making his economic gamble, Mahathir set off the most severe political crisis of his tenure, dismissing Anwar, the man he had been grooming to be his successor. Two weeks later, Anwar was arrested at his home and held incommunicado for 10 days, during which he says he was beaten by his jailers. Last week he was charged with 10 counts of corruption and sexual misconduct that could result in a prison term of up to 34 years. The harshness of those moves unleashed a surge of largely unsuspected discontent that mobilized Anwar's motley fellow constituencies: liberal democrats, young professionals and politically assertive Muslims. For the first time in decades, Malaysians by the thousands demonstrated in the streets and in mosques and were met with tear gas and water cannon. Many people were beaten and hundreds were detained, although most were later released. With the emergence of this still-tentative opposition movement, the fear expressed by one Western diplomat is of a ``downward spiral'' in which ``suppression breeds more discontent breeds more suppression breeds more discontent.'' People here whisper that Mahathir's days may now be numbered. But few venture a guess at what the number might be. Given his control of the levers of power and the lack of focus or leadership in the opposition, Mahathir could ride out the storm as Anwar's trial proceeds. But he has struck a harsh blow to the morale of his own nation, to the sense of confidence he had worked so hard to build under the slogan ``Malaysia Can!'' In this generally decorous nation, the depth of anger expressed by two men who once called each other father and son is disturbing to hear. Anwar, says the prime minister, is ``despicable'' and ``a sodomist.'' Mahathir, says his former deputy, is ``senile'' and ``insane.'' Malaysians, who have stolidly accepted Mahathir's authoritarian rule with a mixture of gratitude and emerging pride, seem stunned. ||||| Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad said Friday he is not too choosy about who will be his successor. The man need not necessarily be very religious and only preoccupied with doing virtuous deeds at all times, the national news agency, Bernama, quoted Mahathir as saying after Friday prayers at the Al-Falah Mosque in the northern town of Jitra in Kedah state. ``It is sufficient that the person does things acceptable by the people,'' Mahathir said. So far Mahathir, 72, has designated three heirs-apparent during his 17-year rule. One resigned. Another challenged Mahathir for leadership of the ruling party, and lost. On Sept. 2, he fired the last one, Anwar Ibrahim, calling him morally unfit for office. Anwar mounted a nationwide campaign against the prime minister before being detained as a national security risk and charged with illegal homosexual acts and corruption in connection with those allegations. Mahathir told reporters later that Anwar had been working toward toppling him as prime minister and president of the governing coalition's dominant party, the United Malays National Organization. ``He appeared very good to me but he was actually planning ways of bringing me down. At first, I did not believe when people told me about this, but I now know this to be true,'' said Mahathir. Mahathir said Anwar had arranged for his supporters to contest for and gain control of the UMNO divisions so that he could win the party's top post in next year's party elections. ||||| Bruises on the face of jailed dissident Anwar Ibrahim, splashed on newspaper front pages for two days and downloaded from the Internet, are blemishing the image of Malaysian police. After first suggesting that the former deputy prime minister had beaten himself on the face, neck and arms during 10 days in police custody, Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad called for an investigation of the wounds Anwar displayed in court Tuesday and Wednesday. ``We can't accept this and we will undertake full investigations,'' Mahathir was quoted as saying in Thursday's New Straits Times. ``The police cannot harm their detainees in the course of their interrogation.'' Mahathir fired Anwar on Sept. 2 from his posts as deputy prime minister and finance minister, saying he was morally unfit for office. The two had differed over economic policy as the country veered into recession and Anwar has said the 72-year-old Mahathir feared him as an alternative leader. Local newspapers that are normally pro-Mahathir have splashed close-up photos of Anwar's badly bruised face for two days. People are peering at the pictures, downloading copies from the Internet, discussing whether Mahathir, who also oversees the police as home affairs minister, knew what was happening to the man he had once groomed as his successor. It was not the first time that a Malaysian has said he was tortured or mistreated in police custody. But there has been no one as high-profile as Anwar. ``What I experienced was chicken feed compared to Anwar,'' Syed Husin Ali, head of the opposition Malaysian People's Party, said Thursday. In a book about his six-month detention under the same law that kept Anwar away from family and lawyers for 10 days, Syed described being hit and deprived of sleep. ``At least I didn't have bruises on my face, although I was slapped and hit on the stomach,'' Syed told The Associated Press. Anwar's bruises raise ``alarming questions about the state of governance in the country,'' said Lim Kit Siang, leader of the opposition Democratic Action Party. If Mahathir did not know of the alleged beatings, it suggests the police acted on their own. At a series of rallies before his arrest, Anwar led throngs in chanting for Mahathir's resignation and a more open, less corrupt government. His arrest Sept. 20 was followed by street protests and hundreds of additional arrests. Before his arrest, Anwar designated his wife, Azizah Ismail, as the leader of his new ``reform'' movement. But police have banned her from speaking publicly. On Thursday she was summoned for the third time to police headquarters for questioning about an interview with regional television network CNBC Asia. She had expressed fears that her husband would be injected with the HIV virus to prove allegations of homosexuality, and police are investigating possible charges of sedition against her. She called the repeated interviews ``pressure and harassment.'' Three Malaysian police officers traveled to Singapore Thursday to ask CNBC news anchors how they had arranged to get the Sept. 21 interview with Azizah and one with Anwar on Sept. 3. CNBC refused to answer questions about its news gathering, said vice president of news programming Chris Blackman. Anwar, who pleaded innocent this week to five charges of sodomy and five of corruption, told the court that police beat him the night he was arrested, ``until blood seeped down my nose,'' leaving him half-conscious. His allegations, accompanied by pictorial evidence, brought prompt expressions of disapproval, from the U.S. State Department, the Australian government, Amnesty International, and the finance ministers of other countries who used to meet with Anwar at international conferences. On Thursday, the Indonesian government, where security forces have been accused for years of mistreating prisoners, said it regretted the reports about Anwar's injuries and that the allegations have placed in doubt a visit to Malaysia by President B.J. Habibie. ||||| Lawyers for the prime minister's former deputy, now his most prominent opponent, went to court Thursday to demand their client's release from indefinite detention. Azizah Ismail, the wife of jailed politician Anwar Ibrahim, told reporters that the lawyers had filed a habeas corpus appeal that says the dissident politician is being unjustly held. She said authorities have denied lawyers access to her husband, and asked: ``How are they going to prepare for his defense?'' Anwar, 51, was arrested Sept. 20 under the Internal Security Act, which allows indefinite detention without trial, after two weeks of rallies around Malaysia at which he called for government reform and Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad's resignation. Anwar was sacked on Sept. 2 from his posts as deputy prime minister and finance minister, after he had differed with Mahathir on policy for escaping economic recession. But the prime minister said the deputy was fired because he was morally unfit. Anwar said Mahathir viewed him as a threat. Anwar since has been charged with corruption and illegal homosexual acts, and is to go on trial Nov. 2. He has pleaded innocent to all the charges, which he says were trumped up by his political enemies. ``We claim that his detention is illegal and we'll prove that in court,'' said one of Anwar's lawyers, Pawancheek Marican. He said the lawyers had asked the High Court for an early hearing on the request for Anwar's release. When Anwar appeared in court Monday, the judge had assured defense attorneys that they would have access to their client so that they could prepare their arguments for the trial. Azizah said authorities have spurned all her requests for family members to visit her husband on grounds that Anwar's case was still under police investigation. ``I pleaded with the police to allow the children to see their father,'' she told reporters at the courthouse. ``I told them that I don't have to see my husband. But please let my son go and see him. But the police said no.'' Although Anwar remains in custody at the Bukit Aman federal police headquarters in Kuala Lumpur, all but five of those arrested under the ISA for participating in activities and rallies organized by Anwar have been released. Sidek Baba, deputy rector of the International Islamic University, was released Wednesday after 16 days in jail. ``I may have been detained because I knew Anwar during my involvement with the Malaysian Islamic Youth Movement,'' Sidek was quoted as saying by The Star daily. Despite the recent protests against him, Prime Minister Mahathir said Wednesday that support for his ruling party remains strong and there have been no defections from the party, which claims a membership of 2.4 million in a nation of 22 million. He ruled out an early election to prove his popularity. A general election is not scheduled until 2000. Support ``is solid,'' said Mahathir. ``There is no exodus from the party.'' This week, Mahathir declined to name a replacement for Anwar, who had been Malaysia's deputy prime minister since 1993. The absence of a successor could lead to a power struggle in the event Mahathir is forced to resign or dies, because there is no clear line of succession. Mahathir, 72, underwent heart bypass surgery in 1989. ||||| The leaders of Malaysia's ruling party met Tuesday to discuss a replacement for ousted deputy prime minister Anwar Ibrahim, who faces trial next month in a case that will test the country's legal system. Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, 72, said last week he could ``drop dead'' at any time. But because of the large number of candidates for the deputy's job within the ruling United Malays National Organization, a decision was not expected quickly. The party leaders, who have been conducting a national campaign to explain to Malaysians why the popular Anwar was fired Sept. 2, will also confer on what to do now that the High Court judge has banned all comments on Anwar's guilt or innocence. The ruling coalition had scheduled a giant rally in the capital Saturday, aimed at drawing in the youth to whom Anwar's campaign of reform has the most appeal. Mahathir, who had heart bypass surgery in 1989, had groomed Anwar, 51, as his successor. But he fired his protege from his posts as deputy prime minister and finance minister on grounds he was morally unfit to lead. The two had differed over economic policy and Anwar has said Mahathir feared he was a threat to his 17-year rule. Anwar was also dumped from the ruling party, and after two weeks of nationwide rallies at which he called for government reform and Mahathir's resignation, he was arrested under a law that allows police to hold him indefinitely, and prevent him from seeing his family and lawyers. On Tuesday, Mahathir denounced demonstrators who had flocked by the thousands to the streets of downtown Kuala Lumpur in recent weeks, calling them part of a plot to topple the government. Baton-wielding riot police had dispersed the crowds with tear gas and water cannons, arresting more than 100 people. ``They decided that the government should be brought down through demonstrations, riots,'' the Bernama news agency quoted Mahathir as saying in Sarawak state on Borneo Island. He was expected to return to Kuala Lumpur later Tuesday to chair the UMNO meeting. After Anwar appeared in court with a black eye, bruised face, neck and arms, his case drew international attention, particularly from the presidents of the Philippines and Indonesia, who have raised the possibility they might not attend an 18-nation summit in Malaysia next month. The United States would downgrade President Bill Clinton's visit to Kuala Lumpur next month if Anwar continued to be mistreated, the Wall Street Journal quoted an official in Washington as saying. Clinton is scheduled to go to Malaysia for the meeting of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum. Wearing a neck brace Monday after a court-ordered hospital checkup, Anwar was ordered to stand trial Nov. 2 on four charges of abusing his powers to interfere with a police investigation. His trial is to halt on Nov. 14 and resume after the APEC meetings. He has pleaded innocent to all charges, including another corruption count and five charges of sodomy. He faces 14 years in prison and a fine on each corruption count and 20 years, plus whipping, on each sexual charge, if convicted. Anwar was arrested Sept. 20 under the Internal Security Act, which allows jail without trial. Under the same law, police also arrested 17 people considered Anwar associates and a risk to national security. As of Tuesday, 12 had been released. The UMNO supreme council was expected to prepare a list of top candidates for Anwar's job for Mahathir's final decision. The Star newspaper, which is close to the government, listed the favorites as Foreign Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi and Education Minister Najib Tun Razak. Other top contenders included Mahathir's confidant Daim Zainuddin, a former finance minister brought back into the Cabinet in June as ``special functions minister'' in charge of economic recovery. Rafidah Aziz, the international trade and industry minister, and Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah, a former finance minister, were also in the running. ||||| BRUSSELS, Belgium (AP) - The European Union on Friday expressed its ``deep concern'' over reports of physical abuse of Malaysia's former deputy-prime minister, Anwar Ibrahim, who was arrested last month. ``The EU urges the Malaysian authorities to ensure that similar incidents will not occur again in the future and that Anwar Ibrahim be assured correct treatment while in custody,'' a statement by the 15 EU countries said. The EU ``hopes that appropriate action will be taken against any individuals, including officials, found responsible for such mistreatment,'' the statement added. On Sept. 2, Malaysia's Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad fired Anwar, calling him morally unfit for office. Mahathir and Anwar had differed over economic policy and Anwar says Mahathir feared him as an alternative leader. Anwar mounted a nationwide campaign against the prime minister before being detained as a national security risk and charged with illegal homosexual acts and corruption in connection with those allegations. Earlier this week, Anwar appeared in court with a black eye and bruises on his neck and arms. He told the magistrate's courts he was beaten by police on Sept. 20, the night of his arrest. Faced with mounting public criticism, Mahathir called Thursday for a probe by the attorney general of the alleged mistreatment of Anwar. The EU statement welcomed the opening of this investigation. It also welcomed the release of seven youth leaders, including Ahmad Zahid Hamidi, the head of the youth wing of the ruling United Malays National Organization and a former ally of Anwar, who were arrested last week in connection with demonstrations in favor of the ousted deputy-premier. ``The EU expresses hope that the other political demonstrators still detained under the Internal Security Act will also be released soon,'' the statement said. The former deputy-premier, who was also finance minister, pleaded innocent this week to charges of sodomy and corruption. A number of Anwar's associates are still detained. ||||| The arrest of former Malaysian Deputy Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim won't lead to massive social unrest or frighten away investors, Malaysia's trade minister said Thursday. Anwar was fired by Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad on Sept. 2 after the two differed on economic policy. He then began speaking out against Mahathir and was arrested Sept. 20. ``Frankly speaking there is no reason to say that just because one man was arrested for something ... that it should bring any unrest,'' trade minister Rafidah Aziz said. ``Leaders come and go. ... They even get sacked in all countries of the world. They even die,'' she told a news conference in Manila, where she attended a meeting of Association of Southeast Asian Nations economic ministers. Rafidah said there have only been a few demonstrations in Malaysia over Anwar's arrest, all of them ``orchestrated.'' In recent visits to Chicago, New York, Houston and Boston, she said potential investors asked her about Anwar's arrest but were still interested in investing in Malaysia. Anwar said police beat him in custody. In recent appearances in court, where he is facing charges of corruption and illegal homosexual acts, he was seen with a black eye and a neck brace. At least two ASEAN leaders, Philippine President Joseph Estrada and Indonesian President B.J. Habibie, have spoken out against Anwar's treatment. The Philippine leader said he was considering skipping a summit of Asia-Pacific leaders in Malaysia in November to protest the arrest of Anwar, whom he described as a personal friend. He later said he would attend the summit and had only made the earlier remarks out of sympathy toward Anwar. The Philippines, Malaysia and Indonesia are founding member countries of ASEAN, which also includes Brunei, Laos, Myanmar, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. ||||| Indonesian President B.J. Habibie finds attending a summit of Asia-Pacific leaders ``difficult'' because of his concerns about the arrest of Malaysia's former deputy prime minister, a Thai newspaper reported Sunday. Asia-Pacific leaders are scheduled to meet next month in Malaysia for an annual economics meeting. Last week, Philippine President Joseph Estrada said he was considering not going to the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum because of Anwar Ibrahim's arrest. ``I'm very concerned over how my friend Anwar Ibrahim has been treated,'' Habibie was quoted as saying by the English-language newspaper The Nation. ``I'm concerned because people should not forget that Anwar Ibrahim had contributed a lot for the benefit of his country.'' Anwar is a charismatic politician who was once picked to be the successor to Malaysia's long-serving Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad. But he was suddenly fired by Mahathir on Sept. 2 after the two differed on economic policy. He then began speaking out against Mahathir and was arrested Sept. 20. Anwar has been accused of engaging in homosexual acts illegal under Malaysia law, but the charges are generally seen as a pretext for his political persecution. In a court appearance last week, Anwar's face was bruised and he said he had been beaten by police, heightening international attention to his case. ``Because of human rights involved _ and I think it is universal _ people should be given the chance to defend themselves,'' Habibie was quoted as saying in the interview conducted Saturday. ``People should not be tortured.'' Habibie said Anwar's dismissal should not have been based ``on things which had not been proven.'' On attending the APEC meeting, he said, ``It's difficult for me.'' But he said he would consult parliament, adding, ``I'm not coming personally but as the president of 211 million people of Indonesia.'' Like Estrada, Habibie served as his country's vice president when Anwar was deputy prime minister, making them counterparts on the international affairs circuit.

Malaysian PM Mahathir Mohamad fired Deputy PM Anwar Ibrahim, once groomed as a successor but now called unfit to lead and trying to topple him, after an economic disagreement. Anwar and a friend were charged with illegal homosexual activity. Anwar showed marks of a beating during 10 days in custody. The EU condemned his abuse and regional leaders considered boycotting a Malaysian meeting. Anwar's treatment sparked street riots and protests on the Internet. Lawyers demanded his release. The incident damaged Mahathir's 17-years of good leadership and isolated Malaysia from international markets, although the Malaysian trade minister played down its effect.

Parliament on Thursday formally elected Gen. Emile Lahoud, the popular army commander who has the backing of powerful neighbor Syria, as Lebanon's next president. All the 118 legislators present at the session cast votes in his favor. Lahoud is to be sworn for a six-year term on Nov. 24, the day President Elias Hrawi leaves office. ||||| Prime Minister Rafik Hariri's efforts to win a fourth term in office have hit a snag after he failed to receive the expected speedy appointment from new President Emile Lahoud. Hariri is still the front-runner to form the next government but Saturday's Daily Star newspaper quoted sources as saying that Hariri was ``outraged'' that only 62 of the 128 members in Parliament declared their support for him during a meeting with Lahoud Friday. According to the constitution, a president must begin his term by appointing the prime minister and a Cabinet through a decree issued after consulting with Parliament members. A presidential decree was expected Friday but nothing came through after a meeting between Lahoud and Hariri. Hariri had even scheduled Friday a traditional meeting between the prime minister-designate and former prime ministers, but that was canceled. The state-run National News Agency said that while only 62 deputies told Lahoud they supported Hariri, the rest refused to divulge their choice or left it to the president to decide. A TV station owned by Hariri said he won the backing of at least 100 deputies. The delay reflects the tug-of-war among the power brokers in the country. Under a formula aimed at preventing the recurrence of the 1975-90 civil war, power in Lebanon is shared equally by a Maronite Christian president, a Sunni Muslim prime minister and a Shiite Parliament speaker. While the Christian Lahoud may have no objection to appointing the Sunni Hariri, it is possible that Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri's 19 Shiite supporters in the legislature are holding out to emphasize their value. The leading An-Nahar and other newspapers said the delay could last for days. But in the end, it is Hariri that is most likely to be renamed on the strength of his record in office. Hariri, Lebanon's top businessman, has almost single-handedly created a multibillion dollar program to rebuild a country destroyed by the civil war. He is also credited with stabilizing the currency and restoring confidence in the postwar economy. But his government under former president Elias Hrawi were dogged by accusations of corruption. Hariri, who has been prime minister since 1992, was appointed three times during the extended term of former President Elias Hrawi. He has remained in office as caretaker prime minister since Lahoud succeeded Hrawi on Tuesday. Lahoud, a general who as army commander rebuilt the military from 1989 until his election by Parliament in October, has pledged in his inauguration speech Tuesday to clean up the corruption-plagued administration. ||||| Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, the business tycoon who launched Lebanon's multibillion dollar reconstruction from the devastation of civil war, said Monday he was bowing out as premier following a dispute with the new president. He accused President Emile Lahoud of violating the constitution and demanded that he acknowledge it before he could reconsider his position. Hariri's move could be a ploy to gain more power as a new government is formed, but the crisis atmosphere generated by the possible departure of the billionaire businessman could affect Lebanon's economic recovery. ``I'm not a candidate,'' Hariri said in a live interview with CNN. He demanded that Lahoud admit that he acted unconstitutionally by allowing 31 Parliament deputies to authorize him to name a prime minister instead of naming one themselves. Such an action ``might put the country in danger,'' Hariri warned. Asked if there was a risk of renewed conflict in Lebanon over the alleged tampering with the constitution, Hariri said: ``If the president continues with this, I don't know what will happen.'' But the dispute between the two leaders appears to be over who will have the upper hand in governing the nation of 3.2 million. Lahoud, 62, is an army commander who wants to assert his authority at the start of his six-year presidential term. Hariri, 53, virtually has had a free hand in running the country since he became premier six years ago under former President Elias Hrawi. A brief meeting on Monday between the two did not help resolve the disagreements. Hariri's Cabinet has been serving in a caretaker capacity since Lahoud's inauguration last Tuesday. Lahoud on Monday set the stage for choosing a new prime minister when he scheduled a fresh round of consultations with Parliament for Tuesday and Wednesday. In a statement, Lahoud said Hariri was asked but declined to form the next government after a previous round of consultations. The offer came after the 128 legislators polled by the president gave Hariri a majority but fell short of the near unanimous backing he had received in his previous three mandates since 1992. Hariri is credited with restoring economic confidence and stabilizing the national currency. His globe-trotting travels to drum up political and economic support were sometimes instrumental in drawing international financial aid and investment. But he was faulted for declining living standards at home and a rise in corruption in government. Lahoud pledged in a tough inauguration speech to clean up the graft-riddled administration. The general enjoys widespread popular backing after succeeding in rebuilding an army fractured by civil war. Central bank officials on Monday tried to calm fears about a run on the Lebanese pound by announcing that the bank was ready to intervene with its foreign currency reserves if necessary, the state-run National News Agency reported. It added that the money markets remained stable. ||||| A Cabinet minister and a close Syria ally on Wednesday criticized the Syrian-backed choice of the army commander as president, and said he will boycott a vote to elect the military man for the executive post. Walid Jumblatt, the minister for displaced persons, said he and his party's three legislators will not vote when the 128-member Parliament elects the president, likely sometime before Oct. 23. Although a boycott by Jumblatt's Progressive Socialist Party will hardly spoil the chances of Gen. Emile Lahoud, it could embolden others to express discontent at the choice and the process of his election. Lahoud is virtually assured of the job: the prime minister and the parliament speaker first approved Lahoud, who then won the all-important backing of Syria, the main power broker in Lebanon. ``Historically, we do not approve that a military man takes control of the country,'' Jumblatt told reporters after a meeting with outgoing President Elias Hrawi. Although opposition to Syria's hold on Lebanon's politics is common among anti-Syrian politicians, it is rare for somebody like Jumblatt to openly speak against a decision personally cleared by Syrian President Hafez Assad who keeps 30,000 troops in Lebanon. Like Jumblatt, some in Lebanon fear that a military man as president could mean intelligence agents will track civilian life just as they did between 1958 and 1964 during the presidency of Fouad Chehab, the only other army commander to become head of state. In nominating Lahoud, ``rules were not respected,'' Jumblatt said. ``Things were supposed to run in a more democratic way,'' said Jumblatt, whose Druse militia fought Christian forces during the 1975-90 civil war. The new president must be sworn in on Nov. 24, the day Hrawi leaves office after a six-year term. Jumblatt said ``there is adequate political diversity and competition in the country,'' implying that choosing a military man for president was unnecessary. Deputy Prime Minister Michel Murr sought to calm fears about military intrusion. He told reporters that Lahoud will ``keep the army out of politics just as he kept politics out of the army.'' Lahoud, a 62-year-old naval officer, enjoys wide public and political support at home and has good relations with Syria. He gained public admiration for reuniting an army fractured by civil war and in ending the reign of militias. Many hope he will cleanse the government of nepotism and wastage of public funds. Lahoud's nomination complies with a tradition that the president be a Maronite Christian, the prime minister a Sunni Muslim and Parliament speaker a Shiite Muslim. The government is run by the joint efforts of the three officials. Jumblatt said his party will also boycott a Parliamentary session to amend the Constitution so that senior public servants can run for president. Criticism of the nomination process also came from a meeting of Catholic bishops on Wednesday. Nevertheless, the bishops welcomed the choice of Lahoud, a fellow Catholic, a statement said. ||||| The commander of Lebanon's army will become the country's next president after winning the crucial backing of Syria, the powerbroker in Lebanon. ``Congratulations, your excellency the general,'' Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri told army commander Emile Lahoud in a telephone conversation Monday that was headlined on the front-page of the leftist newspaper As-Safir. Lebanese media said the matter was settled Monday at a meeting in Damascus between outgoing President Elias Hrawi and Syrian President Hafez Assad, whose country dominates its weaker, smaller neighbor. Agriculture Minister Shawki Fakhoury, a Hrawi confidant, said Tuesday that Lahoud is expected to be elected by the 128-member Parliament at an extraordinary session on Oct. 15. The election is a formality since other candidates have little chance now that Syria has thrown its weight behind Gen. Lahoud. In another formality before the election, the Parliament will amend the constitution, which forbids senior public servants from running for president. The new president must be sworn in on Nov. 24, the day Hrawi leaves office at the end of his six-year term. The choice of Lahoud, a Maronite Catholic, will continue a 55-year-old tradition under which the president is a Maronite, the prime minister a Sunni Muslim and the Parliament speaker a Shiite Muslim. Agreement among the three officials is essential for the smooth running of the government. Since Lahoud has a good relationship with Hariri and Speaker Nabih Berri, little change was expected in government policy. Lahoud's nomination ends weeks of suspense over the identity of the next head of state. Lahoud, a 62-year-old naval officer trained in Britain and the United States, enjoys wide public and political support at home and has good relations with Syria. But the choice could not have been sealed before a final say from Assad, who keeps 30,000 troops in this country. His word is referred to in the Beirut media as ``the password.'' Lahoud, elevated from rear admiral to general and appointed army commander in 1988 amid a rebellion in the fractured military during the 1975-90 civil war, is credited with rebuilding the 55,000-strong Lebanese army and in ending the reign of militias. In Lebanon, the army commander heads the air force, navy and the ground forces. Many hope he will copy his success with the military in government, which is plagued by nepotism and waste of public funds. But some fear that a military man in the nation's highest office could mean a return to the use of intelligence services to track civilian life _ the case under Fouad Chehab, the only other army commander to become president, who ruled from 1958 to 1964. ``The election of a military man is a threat to democracy in Lebanon,'' Raymond Edde, a Christian politician living in self-imposed exile in France, told the An-Nahar newspaper. ||||| Prime Minister Rafik Hariri has declined an informal invitation from Lebanon's new president to form the next government, sparking a political crisis in this country as it rebuilds from its devastating civil war. Sources close to the prime minister, whose Cabinet has been in care-taker capacity since last Tuesday's swearing in of Emile Lahoud as president, said Hariri turned down the invitation from Lahoud to select a new Cabinet. There has been no formal announcement from Lahoud reappointing Hariri as prime minister. Although Hariri's move could be a bargaining tactic, since he remains the front-runner for the premiership, the apparent tension between the two powerful men could affect Lebanon's economic stability as it recovers from the 1975-90 civil war. Hariri, 53, the architect of Lebanon's multibillion dollar postwar reconstruction program, has been in power since 1992. A billionaire businessman who made his fortune in Saudi Arabia, Hariri is credited with restoring economic confidence and stabilizing the national currency. The dispute appears to be the opening salvo of a struggle on how Lebanon will be governed during Lahoud's six-year term. Toward the end of former President Elias Hrawi's nine years in office, Hariri virtually had a free hand in running the country. Lahoud, 62, a former commander of Lebanon's army, was propelled to power with widespread popular backing. He pledged in a tough inauguration speech to clean up the graft-riddled administration. The British-trained general made his name rebuilding the army after it disintegrated in the civil war. Similar political disputes in Lebanon in the past have been solved only with the intervention of Syria, the main power broker in this country. Damascus supports both Lahoud and Hariri. Lahoud had been expected to issue a presidential decree last week asking Hariri to form the next government after the president polled members of the 128-seat Parliament on their choice for prime minister. But many legislators, who in the past gave their overwhelming support to Hariri, did not name him and, instead, left it to the president to select a prime minister. The two leaders met Friday, but no presidential decree followed. The sources close to Hariri, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the prime minister's decision to bow out came because he did not feel Lahoud was following constitutional procedures in selecting the premier. ||||| Prime Minister Rafik Hariri has declined an informal invitation from Lebanon's new president to form the next government, sparking a political crisis in this country as it rebuilds from its devastating civil war. Sources close to the prime minister, whose Cabinet has been in care-taker capacity since last Tuesday's swearing in of Emile Lahoud as president, said Hariri turned down the invitation from Lahoud to select a new Cabinet. There has been no formal announcement from Lahoud reappointing Hariri as prime minister. Although Hariri's move could be a bargaining tactic, since he remains the front-runner for the premiership, the apparent tension between the two powerful men could affect Lebanon's economic stability as it recovers from the 1975-90 civil war. Hariri, 53, the architect of Lebanon's multibillion dollar postwar reconstruction program, has been in power since 1992. A billionaire businessman who made his fortune in Saudi Arabia, Hariri is credited with restoring economic confidence and stabilizing the national currency. Lahoud, 62, commander of Lebanon's army who was propelled to power with widespread popular backing, pledged in a tough inauguration speech to clean up the graft-riddled administration. The British-trained general made his name rebuilding the army after it disintegrated in the civil war. Previous disputes among government leaders have cost the Central Bank hundreds of millions of dollars in its efforts to stabilize the Lebanese pound. Such political disputes in Lebanon in the past were solved only with the intervention of Syria, the main power broker in this country. Damascus supports both Lahoud and Hariri. Lahoud had been expected to issue a presidential decree last week asking Hariri to form the next government. The decree was to be issued after the president polled members of the 128-seat Parliament on their choice for prime minister. But many legislators, who in the past gave their overwhelming support to Hariri, did not name him and, instead, left it to the president to select a prime minister. The two leaders met Friday, but no presidential decree followed. The sources close to Hariri, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the prime minister's decision to bow out came because he did not feel Lahoud was following constitutional procedures in selecting the premier. The Hariri camp argues that the president can poll Parliament members on their choice for prime minister but cannot accept a mandate to name a person of his choice. The dispute, in fact, appears to be the opening salvo of a struggle on how Lebanon will be governed during Lahoud's six-year term. Toward the end of former President Elias Hrawi's nine years in office, Hariri virtually had a free hand in running the country. ||||| Lebanon's Parliament on Tuesday ratified a constitutional amendment to clear the way for the election of the army's commander, Gen. Emile Lahoud, as president. Lahoud has received the backing of Syria, the main power broker in the country, making the election by Lebanon's pro-Syrian Parliament later this week just a formality. A total of 113 deputies voted for the amendment and four deputies against, including the general's cousin, Nassib Lahoud, a presidential aspirant. Eleven deputies were absent. Among those who were absent was Walid Jumblatt, a Cabinet minister who had said he would boycott the session to protest the choice of a military man even though Lahoud has wide public and political support. The 128-member legislature is expected to meet Thursday to elect Lahoud after outgoing President Elias Hrawi signs the constitutional amendment. The amendment to Article 49 of the constitution revokes a ban on senior civil servants from running for the presidency. The new president will be sworn in Nov. 24, the day Hrawi leaves office. Hrawi has served for nine years, including a three-year extension in 1995 to his six-year term. Lahoud, a Maronite Catholic, will keep alive a 55-year-old tradition under which the president is a Maronite, the prime minister a Sunni Muslim and the Parliament speaker a Shiite Muslim. Lahoud, appointed army commander in 1989 amid a rebellion in the fractured military during the 1975-90 civil war, is credited with rebuilding the 55,000-strong Lebanese army and in ending the reign of militias. Many hope he will copy his success with the military in the government, which is plagued by nepotism and waste of public funds. But some fear of military dominance of public life. ||||| Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, the business tycoon who launched Lebanon's multibillion dollar reconstruction from the devastation of civil war, said Monday he was bowing out as premier following a dispute with the new president. He accused President Emile Lahoud of violating the constitution and demanded that he acknowledge it before he could reconsider his position. Hariri's move could be a ploy to gain more power as a new government is formed, but the crisis atmosphere generated by the possible departure of the billionaire businessman could affect Lebanon's economic recovery. ``I'm not a candidate,'' Hariri said in a live interview with CNN. He demanded that Lahoud admit that he acted unconstitutionally by allowing 31 Parliament deputies to authorize him to name a prime minister instead of naming one themselves. Such an action ``might put the country in danger,'' Hariri warned. Asked if there was a risk of renewed conflict in Lebanon over the alleged tampering with the constitution, Hariri said: ``If the president continues with this, I don't know what will happen.'' But the dispute between the two leaders appears to be over who will have the upper hand in governing the nation of 3.2 million. Lahoud, 62, is an army commander who wants to assert his authority at the start of his six-year presidential term. Hariri, 53, virtually has had a free hand in running the country since he became premier six years ago under former President Elias Hrawi. A brief meeting on Monday between the two did not help resolve the disagreements. Hariri's Cabinet has been serving in a caretaker capacity since Lahoud's inauguration last Tuesday. Lahoud on Monday set the stage for choosing a new prime minister when he scheduled a fresh round of consultations with Parliament for Tuesday and Wednesday. In a statement, Lahoud said Hariri was asked but declined to form the next government after a previous round of consultations. The offer came after the 128 legislators polled by the president gave Hariri a majority but fell short of the near unanimous backing he had received in his previous three mandates since 1992. Hariri is credited with restoring economic confidence and stabilizing the national currency. His globe-trotting travels to drum up political and economic support were sometimes instrumental in drawing international financial aid and investment. But he was faulted for declining living standards at home and a rise in corruption in government. Lahoud pledged in a tough inauguration speech to clean up the graft-riddled administration. The general enjoys widespread popular backing after succeeding in rebuilding an army fractured by civil war. Central bank officials on Monday tried to calm fears about a run on the Lebanese pound by announcing that the bank was ready to intervene with its foreign currency reserves if necessary, the state-run National News Agency reported. It added that the money markets remained stable. ||||| Parliament on Thursday formally elected Gen. Emile Lahoud, the popular army commander who has the backing of powerful neighbor Syria, as Lebanon's next president. All the 118 legislators present at the session cast votes in his favor. Lahoud is to be sworn in for a six-year term on Nov. 24, the day President Elias Hrawi leaves office.

Power in Lebanon is shared equally by a Maronite Christian president, a Sunni Muslim prime minister, and a Shiite Parliament speaker, an arrangement made to prevent a recurrence of the 1975-90 civil war. Syria, with 30,000 troops in Lebanon is the main power broker there. The Lebanese parliament amended the constitution to permit popular army general Emile Lahoud to become president. Prime minister Rafik Hariri, the architect of Lebanon's postwar reconstruction, expected to get a fourth term but a conflict with the new president led him to bow out as premier. Lebanon's economic stability has been threatened by the conflict.

Parliament on Thursday formally elected Gen. Emile Lahoud, the popular army commander who has the backing of powerful neighbor Syria, as Lebanon's next president. All the 118 legislators present at the session cast votes in his favor. Lahoud is to be sworn for a six-year term on Nov. 24, the day President Elias Hrawi leaves office. ||||| Prime Minister Rafik Hariri's efforts to win a fourth term in office have hit a snag after he failed to receive the expected speedy appointment from new President Emile Lahoud. Hariri is still the front-runner to form the next government but Saturday's Daily Star newspaper quoted sources as saying that Hariri was ``outraged'' that only 62 of the 128 members in Parliament declared their support for him during a meeting with Lahoud Friday. According to the constitution, a president must begin his term by appointing the prime minister and a Cabinet through a decree issued after consulting with Parliament members. A presidential decree was expected Friday but nothing came through after a meeting between Lahoud and Hariri. Hariri had even scheduled Friday a traditional meeting between the prime minister-designate and former prime ministers, but that was canceled. The state-run National News Agency said that while only 62 deputies told Lahoud they supported Hariri, the rest refused to divulge their choice or left it to the president to decide. A TV station owned by Hariri said he won the backing of at least 100 deputies. The delay reflects the tug-of-war among the power brokers in the country. Under a formula aimed at preventing the recurrence of the 1975-90 civil war, power in Lebanon is shared equally by a Maronite Christian president, a Sunni Muslim prime minister and a Shiite Parliament speaker. While the Christian Lahoud may have no objection to appointing the Sunni Hariri, it is possible that Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri's 19 Shiite supporters in the legislature are holding out to emphasize their value. The leading An-Nahar and other newspapers said the delay could last for days. But in the end, it is Hariri that is most likely to be renamed on the strength of his record in office. Hariri, Lebanon's top businessman, has almost single-handedly created a multibillion dollar program to rebuild a country destroyed by the civil war. He is also credited with stabilizing the currency and restoring confidence in the postwar economy. But his government under former president Elias Hrawi were dogged by accusations of corruption. Hariri, who has been prime minister since 1992, was appointed three times during the extended term of former President Elias Hrawi. He has remained in office as caretaker prime minister since Lahoud succeeded Hrawi on Tuesday. Lahoud, a general who as army commander rebuilt the military from 1989 until his election by Parliament in October, has pledged in his inauguration speech Tuesday to clean up the corruption-plagued administration. ||||| Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, the business tycoon who launched Lebanon's multibillion dollar reconstruction from the devastation of civil war, said Monday he was bowing out as premier following a dispute with the new president. He accused President Emile Lahoud of violating the constitution and demanded that he acknowledge it before he could reconsider his position. Hariri's move could be a ploy to gain more power as a new government is formed, but the crisis atmosphere generated by the possible departure of the billionaire businessman could affect Lebanon's economic recovery. ``I'm not a candidate,'' Hariri said in a live interview with CNN. He demanded that Lahoud admit that he acted unconstitutionally by allowing 31 Parliament deputies to authorize him to name a prime minister instead of naming one themselves. Such an action ``might put the country in danger,'' Hariri warned. Asked if there was a risk of renewed conflict in Lebanon over the alleged tampering with the constitution, Hariri said: ``If the president continues with this, I don't know what will happen.'' But the dispute between the two leaders appears to be over who will have the upper hand in governing the nation of 3.2 million. Lahoud, 62, is an army commander who wants to assert his authority at the start of his six-year presidential term. Hariri, 53, virtually has had a free hand in running the country since he became premier six years ago under former President Elias Hrawi. A brief meeting on Monday between the two did not help resolve the disagreements. Hariri's Cabinet has been serving in a caretaker capacity since Lahoud's inauguration last Tuesday. Lahoud on Monday set the stage for choosing a new prime minister when he scheduled a fresh round of consultations with Parliament for Tuesday and Wednesday. In a statement, Lahoud said Hariri was asked but declined to form the next government after a previous round of consultations. The offer came after the 128 legislators polled by the president gave Hariri a majority but fell short of the near unanimous backing he had received in his previous three mandates since 1992. Hariri is credited with restoring economic confidence and stabilizing the national currency. His globe-trotting travels to drum up political and economic support were sometimes instrumental in drawing international financial aid and investment. But he was faulted for declining living standards at home and a rise in corruption in government. Lahoud pledged in a tough inauguration speech to clean up the graft-riddled administration. The general enjoys widespread popular backing after succeeding in rebuilding an army fractured by civil war. Central bank officials on Monday tried to calm fears about a run on the Lebanese pound by announcing that the bank was ready to intervene with its foreign currency reserves if necessary, the state-run National News Agency reported. It added that the money markets remained stable. ||||| A Cabinet minister and a close Syria ally on Wednesday criticized the Syrian-backed choice of the army commander as president, and said he will boycott a vote to elect the military man for the executive post. Walid Jumblatt, the minister for displaced persons, said he and his party's three legislators will not vote when the 128-member Parliament elects the president, likely sometime before Oct. 23. Although a boycott by Jumblatt's Progressive Socialist Party will hardly spoil the chances of Gen. Emile Lahoud, it could embolden others to express discontent at the choice and the process of his election. Lahoud is virtually assured of the job: the prime minister and the parliament speaker first approved Lahoud, who then won the all-important backing of Syria, the main power broker in Lebanon. ``Historically, we do not approve that a military man takes control of the country,'' Jumblatt told reporters after a meeting with outgoing President Elias Hrawi. Although opposition to Syria's hold on Lebanon's politics is common among anti-Syrian politicians, it is rare for somebody like Jumblatt to openly speak against a decision personally cleared by Syrian President Hafez Assad who keeps 30,000 troops in Lebanon. Like Jumblatt, some in Lebanon fear that a military man as president could mean intelligence agents will track civilian life just as they did between 1958 and 1964 during the presidency of Fouad Chehab, the only other army commander to become head of state. In nominating Lahoud, ``rules were not respected,'' Jumblatt said. ``Things were supposed to run in a more democratic way,'' said Jumblatt, whose Druse militia fought Christian forces during the 1975-90 civil war. The new president must be sworn in on Nov. 24, the day Hrawi leaves office after a six-year term. Jumblatt said ``there is adequate political diversity and competition in the country,'' implying that choosing a military man for president was unnecessary. Deputy Prime Minister Michel Murr sought to calm fears about military intrusion. He told reporters that Lahoud will ``keep the army out of politics just as he kept politics out of the army.'' Lahoud, a 62-year-old naval officer, enjoys wide public and political support at home and has good relations with Syria. He gained public admiration for reuniting an army fractured by civil war and in ending the reign of militias. Many hope he will cleanse the government of nepotism and wastage of public funds. Lahoud's nomination complies with a tradition that the president be a Maronite Christian, the prime minister a Sunni Muslim and Parliament speaker a Shiite Muslim. The government is run by the joint efforts of the three officials. Jumblatt said his party will also boycott a Parliamentary session to amend the Constitution so that senior public servants can run for president. Criticism of the nomination process also came from a meeting of Catholic bishops on Wednesday. Nevertheless, the bishops welcomed the choice of Lahoud, a fellow Catholic, a statement said. ||||| The commander of Lebanon's army will become the country's next president after winning the crucial backing of Syria, the powerbroker in Lebanon. ``Congratulations, your excellency the general,'' Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri told army commander Emile Lahoud in a telephone conversation Monday that was headlined on the front-page of the leftist newspaper As-Safir. Lebanese media said the matter was settled Monday at a meeting in Damascus between outgoing President Elias Hrawi and Syrian President Hafez Assad, whose country dominates its weaker, smaller neighbor. Agriculture Minister Shawki Fakhoury, a Hrawi confidant, said Tuesday that Lahoud is expected to be elected by the 128-member Parliament at an extraordinary session on Oct. 15. The election is a formality since other candidates have little chance now that Syria has thrown its weight behind Gen. Lahoud. In another formality before the election, the Parliament will amend the constitution, which forbids senior public servants from running for president. The new president must be sworn in on Nov. 24, the day Hrawi leaves office at the end of his six-year term. The choice of Lahoud, a Maronite Catholic, will continue a 55-year-old tradition under which the president is a Maronite, the prime minister a Sunni Muslim and the Parliament speaker a Shiite Muslim. Agreement among the three officials is essential for the smooth running of the government. Since Lahoud has a good relationship with Hariri and Speaker Nabih Berri, little change was expected in government policy. Lahoud's nomination ends weeks of suspense over the identity of the next head of state. Lahoud, a 62-year-old naval officer trained in Britain and the United States, enjoys wide public and political support at home and has good relations with Syria. But the choice could not have been sealed before a final say from Assad, who keeps 30,000 troops in this country. His word is referred to in the Beirut media as ``the password.'' Lahoud, elevated from rear admiral to general and appointed army commander in 1988 amid a rebellion in the fractured military during the 1975-90 civil war, is credited with rebuilding the 55,000-strong Lebanese army and in ending the reign of militias. In Lebanon, the army commander heads the air force, navy and the ground forces. Many hope he will copy his success with the military in government, which is plagued by nepotism and waste of public funds. But some fear that a military man in the nation's highest office could mean a return to the use of intelligence services to track civilian life _ the case under Fouad Chehab, the only other army commander to become president, who ruled from 1958 to 1964. ``The election of a military man is a threat to democracy in Lebanon,'' Raymond Edde, a Christian politician living in self-imposed exile in France, told the An-Nahar newspaper. ||||| Prime Minister Rafik Hariri has declined an informal invitation from Lebanon's new president to form the next government, sparking a political crisis in this country as it rebuilds from its devastating civil war. Sources close to the prime minister, whose Cabinet has been in care-taker capacity since last Tuesday's swearing in of Emile Lahoud as president, said Hariri turned down the invitation from Lahoud to select a new Cabinet. There has been no formal announcement from Lahoud reappointing Hariri as prime minister. Although Hariri's move could be a bargaining tactic, since he remains the front-runner for the premiership, the apparent tension between the two powerful men could affect Lebanon's economic stability as it recovers from the 1975-90 civil war. Hariri, 53, the architect of Lebanon's multibillion dollar postwar reconstruction program, has been in power since 1992. A billionaire businessman who made his fortune in Saudi Arabia, Hariri is credited with restoring economic confidence and stabilizing the national currency. The dispute appears to be the opening salvo of a struggle on how Lebanon will be governed during Lahoud's six-year term. Toward the end of former President Elias Hrawi's nine years in office, Hariri virtually had a free hand in running the country. Lahoud, 62, a former commander of Lebanon's army, was propelled to power with widespread popular backing. He pledged in a tough inauguration speech to clean up the graft-riddled administration. The British-trained general made his name rebuilding the army after it disintegrated in the civil war. Similar political disputes in Lebanon in the past have been solved only with the intervention of Syria, the main power broker in this country. Damascus supports both Lahoud and Hariri. Lahoud had been expected to issue a presidential decree last week asking Hariri to form the next government after the president polled members of the 128-seat Parliament on their choice for prime minister. But many legislators, who in the past gave their overwhelming support to Hariri, did not name him and, instead, left it to the president to select a prime minister. The two leaders met Friday, but no presidential decree followed. The sources close to Hariri, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the prime minister's decision to bow out came because he did not feel Lahoud was following constitutional procedures in selecting the premier. ||||| Prime Minister Rafik Hariri has declined an informal invitation from Lebanon's new president to form the next government, sparking a political crisis in this country as it rebuilds from its devastating civil war. Sources close to the prime minister, whose Cabinet has been in care-taker capacity since last Tuesday's swearing in of Emile Lahoud as president, said Hariri turned down the invitation from Lahoud to select a new Cabinet. There has been no formal announcement from Lahoud reappointing Hariri as prime minister. Although Hariri's move could be a bargaining tactic, since he remains the front-runner for the premiership, the apparent tension between the two powerful men could affect Lebanon's economic stability as it recovers from the 1975-90 civil war. Hariri, 53, the architect of Lebanon's multibillion dollar postwar reconstruction program, has been in power since 1992. A billionaire businessman who made his fortune in Saudi Arabia, Hariri is credited with restoring economic confidence and stabilizing the national currency. Lahoud, 62, commander of Lebanon's army who was propelled to power with widespread popular backing, pledged in a tough inauguration speech to clean up the graft-riddled administration. The British-trained general made his name rebuilding the army after it disintegrated in the civil war. Previous disputes among government leaders have cost the Central Bank hundreds of millions of dollars in its efforts to stabilize the Lebanese pound. Such political disputes in Lebanon in the past were solved only with the intervention of Syria, the main power broker in this country. Damascus supports both Lahoud and Hariri. Lahoud had been expected to issue a presidential decree last week asking Hariri to form the next government. The decree was to be issued after the president polled members of the 128-seat Parliament on their choice for prime minister. But many legislators, who in the past gave their overwhelming support to Hariri, did not name him and, instead, left it to the president to select a prime minister. The two leaders met Friday, but no presidential decree followed. The sources close to Hariri, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the prime minister's decision to bow out came because he did not feel Lahoud was following constitutional procedures in selecting the premier. The Hariri camp argues that the president can poll Parliament members on their choice for prime minister but cannot accept a mandate to name a person of his choice. The dispute, in fact, appears to be the opening salvo of a struggle on how Lebanon will be governed during Lahoud's six-year term. Toward the end of former President Elias Hrawi's nine years in office, Hariri virtually had a free hand in running the country. ||||| Lebanon's Parliament on Tuesday ratified a constitutional amendment to clear the way for the election of the army's commander, Gen. Emile Lahoud, as president. Lahoud has received the backing of Syria, the main power broker in the country, making the election by Lebanon's pro-Syrian Parliament later this week just a formality. A total of 113 deputies voted for the amendment and four deputies against, including the general's cousin, Nassib Lahoud, a presidential aspirant. Eleven deputies were absent. Among those who were absent was Walid Jumblatt, a Cabinet minister who had said he would boycott the session to protest the choice of a military man even though Lahoud has wide public and political support. The 128-member legislature is expected to meet Thursday to elect Lahoud after outgoing President Elias Hrawi signs the constitutional amendment. The amendment to Article 49 of the constitution revokes a ban on senior civil servants from running for the presidency. The new president will be sworn in Nov. 24, the day Hrawi leaves office. Hrawi has served for nine years, including a three-year extension in 1995 to his six-year term. Lahoud, a Maronite Catholic, will keep alive a 55-year-old tradition under which the president is a Maronite, the prime minister a Sunni Muslim and the Parliament speaker a Shiite Muslim. Lahoud, appointed army commander in 1989 amid a rebellion in the fractured military during the 1975-90 civil war, is credited with rebuilding the 55,000-strong Lebanese army and in ending the reign of militias. Many hope he will copy his success with the military in the government, which is plagued by nepotism and waste of public funds. But some fear of military dominance of public life. ||||| Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, the business tycoon who launched Lebanon's multibillion dollar reconstruction from the devastation of civil war, said Monday he was bowing out as premier following a dispute with the new president. He accused President Emile Lahoud of violating the constitution and demanded that he acknowledge it before he could reconsider his position. Hariri's move could be a ploy to gain more power as a new government is formed, but the crisis atmosphere generated by the possible departure of the billionaire businessman could affect Lebanon's economic recovery. ``I'm not a candidate,'' Hariri said in a live interview with CNN. He demanded that Lahoud admit that he acted unconstitutionally by allowing 31 Parliament deputies to authorize him to name a prime minister instead of naming one themselves. Such an action ``might put the country in danger,'' Hariri warned. Asked if there was a risk of renewed conflict in Lebanon over the alleged tampering with the constitution, Hariri said: ``If the president continues with this, I don't know what will happen.'' But the dispute between the two leaders appears to be over who will have the upper hand in governing the nation of 3.2 million. Lahoud, 62, is an army commander who wants to assert his authority at the start of his six-year presidential term. Hariri, 53, virtually has had a free hand in running the country since he became premier six years ago under former President Elias Hrawi. A brief meeting on Monday between the two did not help resolve the disagreements. Hariri's Cabinet has been serving in a caretaker capacity since Lahoud's inauguration last Tuesday. Lahoud on Monday set the stage for choosing a new prime minister when he scheduled a fresh round of consultations with Parliament for Tuesday and Wednesday. In a statement, Lahoud said Hariri was asked but declined to form the next government after a previous round of consultations. The offer came after the 128 legislators polled by the president gave Hariri a majority but fell short of the near unanimous backing he had received in his previous three mandates since 1992. Hariri is credited with restoring economic confidence and stabilizing the national currency. His globe-trotting travels to drum up political and economic support were sometimes instrumental in drawing international financial aid and investment. But he was faulted for declining living standards at home and a rise in corruption in government. Lahoud pledged in a tough inauguration speech to clean up the graft-riddled administration. The general enjoys widespread popular backing after succeeding in rebuilding an army fractured by civil war. Central bank officials on Monday tried to calm fears about a run on the Lebanese pound by announcing that the bank was ready to intervene with its foreign currency reserves if necessary, the state-run National News Agency reported. It added that the money markets remained stable. ||||| Parliament on Thursday formally elected Gen. Emile Lahoud, the popular army commander who has the backing of powerful neighbor Syria, as Lebanon's next president. All the 118 legislators present at the session cast votes in his favor. Lahoud is to be sworn in for a six-year term on Nov. 24, the day President Elias Hrawi leaves office.

Army Commander and Maronite Catholic Emile Lahoud was named Lebanon's president for the next 6 years, chosen by outgoing President Hrawi and Syria's Hafez Assad. Traditionally the president is a Maronite, the PM a Sunni, and Speaker of Parliament a Shiite. Election by Parliament is a formality. The constitution was amended to permit senior public servants to be president. Lahoud rebuilt the army and ended militia reign. Walid Jumblatt opposed a military president, fearing a return of surveillance on civilians. PM Rafik Hariri, a businessman who rebuilt the country and economy, refused his delayed re-appointment by Lahoud, who vowed to fight corruption.

Parliament on Thursday formally elected Gen. Emile Lahoud, the popular army commander who has the backing of powerful neighbor Syria, as Lebanon's next president. All the 118 legislators present at the session cast votes in his favor. Lahoud is to be sworn for a six-year term on Nov. 24, the day President Elias Hrawi leaves office. ||||| Prime Minister Rafik Hariri's efforts to win a fourth term in office have hit a snag after he failed to receive the expected speedy appointment from new President Emile Lahoud. Hariri is still the front-runner to form the next government but Saturday's Daily Star newspaper quoted sources as saying that Hariri was ``outraged'' that only 62 of the 128 members in Parliament declared their support for him during a meeting with Lahoud Friday. According to the constitution, a president must begin his term by appointing the prime minister and a Cabinet through a decree issued after consulting with Parliament members. A presidential decree was expected Friday but nothing came through after a meeting between Lahoud and Hariri. Hariri had even scheduled Friday a traditional meeting between the prime minister-designate and former prime ministers, but that was canceled. The state-run National News Agency said that while only 62 deputies told Lahoud they supported Hariri, the rest refused to divulge their choice or left it to the president to decide. A TV station owned by Hariri said he won the backing of at least 100 deputies. The delay reflects the tug-of-war among the power brokers in the country. Under a formula aimed at preventing the recurrence of the 1975-90 civil war, power in Lebanon is shared equally by a Maronite Christian president, a Sunni Muslim prime minister and a Shiite Parliament speaker. While the Christian Lahoud may have no objection to appointing the Sunni Hariri, it is possible that Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri's 19 Shiite supporters in the legislature are holding out to emphasize their value. The leading An-Nahar and other newspapers said the delay could last for days. But in the end, it is Hariri that is most likely to be renamed on the strength of his record in office. Hariri, Lebanon's top businessman, has almost single-handedly created a multibillion dollar program to rebuild a country destroyed by the civil war. He is also credited with stabilizing the currency and restoring confidence in the postwar economy. But his government under former president Elias Hrawi were dogged by accusations of corruption. Hariri, who has been prime minister since 1992, was appointed three times during the extended term of former President Elias Hrawi. He has remained in office as caretaker prime minister since Lahoud succeeded Hrawi on Tuesday. Lahoud, a general who as army commander rebuilt the military from 1989 until his election by Parliament in October, has pledged in his inauguration speech Tuesday to clean up the corruption-plagued administration. ||||| Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, the business tycoon who launched Lebanon's multibillion dollar reconstruction from the devastation of civil war, said Monday he was bowing out as premier following a dispute with the new president. He accused President Emile Lahoud of violating the constitution and demanded that he acknowledge it before he could reconsider his position. Hariri's move could be a ploy to gain more power as a new government is formed, but the crisis atmosphere generated by the possible departure of the billionaire businessman could affect Lebanon's economic recovery. ``I'm not a candidate,'' Hariri said in a live interview with CNN. He demanded that Lahoud admit that he acted unconstitutionally by allowing 31 Parliament deputies to authorize him to name a prime minister instead of naming one themselves. Such an action ``might put the country in danger,'' Hariri warned. Asked if there was a risk of renewed conflict in Lebanon over the alleged tampering with the constitution, Hariri said: ``If the president continues with this, I don't know what will happen.'' But the dispute between the two leaders appears to be over who will have the upper hand in governing the nation of 3.2 million. Lahoud, 62, is an army commander who wants to assert his authority at the start of his six-year presidential term. Hariri, 53, virtually has had a free hand in running the country since he became premier six years ago under former President Elias Hrawi. A brief meeting on Monday between the two did not help resolve the disagreements. Hariri's Cabinet has been serving in a caretaker capacity since Lahoud's inauguration last Tuesday. Lahoud on Monday set the stage for choosing a new prime minister when he scheduled a fresh round of consultations with Parliament for Tuesday and Wednesday. In a statement, Lahoud said Hariri was asked but declined to form the next government after a previous round of consultations. The offer came after the 128 legislators polled by the president gave Hariri a majority but fell short of the near unanimous backing he had received in his previous three mandates since 1992. Hariri is credited with restoring economic confidence and stabilizing the national currency. His globe-trotting travels to drum up political and economic support were sometimes instrumental in drawing international financial aid and investment. But he was faulted for declining living standards at home and a rise in corruption in government. Lahoud pledged in a tough inauguration speech to clean up the graft-riddled administration. The general enjoys widespread popular backing after succeeding in rebuilding an army fractured by civil war. Central bank officials on Monday tried to calm fears about a run on the Lebanese pound by announcing that the bank was ready to intervene with its foreign currency reserves if necessary, the state-run National News Agency reported. It added that the money markets remained stable. ||||| A Cabinet minister and a close Syria ally on Wednesday criticized the Syrian-backed choice of the army commander as president, and said he will boycott a vote to elect the military man for the executive post. Walid Jumblatt, the minister for displaced persons, said he and his party's three legislators will not vote when the 128-member Parliament elects the president, likely sometime before Oct. 23. Although a boycott by Jumblatt's Progressive Socialist Party will hardly spoil the chances of Gen. Emile Lahoud, it could embolden others to express discontent at the choice and the process of his election. Lahoud is virtually assured of the job: the prime minister and the parliament speaker first approved Lahoud, who then won the all-important backing of Syria, the main power broker in Lebanon. ``Historically, we do not approve that a military man takes control of the country,'' Jumblatt told reporters after a meeting with outgoing President Elias Hrawi. Although opposition to Syria's hold on Lebanon's politics is common among anti-Syrian politicians, it is rare for somebody like Jumblatt to openly speak against a decision personally cleared by Syrian President Hafez Assad who keeps 30,000 troops in Lebanon. Like Jumblatt, some in Lebanon fear that a military man as president could mean intelligence agents will track civilian life just as they did between 1958 and 1964 during the presidency of Fouad Chehab, the only other army commander to become head of state. In nominating Lahoud, ``rules were not respected,'' Jumblatt said. ``Things were supposed to run in a more democratic way,'' said Jumblatt, whose Druse militia fought Christian forces during the 1975-90 civil war. The new president must be sworn in on Nov. 24, the day Hrawi leaves office after a six-year term. Jumblatt said ``there is adequate political diversity and competition in the country,'' implying that choosing a military man for president was unnecessary. Deputy Prime Minister Michel Murr sought to calm fears about military intrusion. He told reporters that Lahoud will ``keep the army out of politics just as he kept politics out of the army.'' Lahoud, a 62-year-old naval officer, enjoys wide public and political support at home and has good relations with Syria. He gained public admiration for reuniting an army fractured by civil war and in ending the reign of militias. Many hope he will cleanse the government of nepotism and wastage of public funds. Lahoud's nomination complies with a tradition that the president be a Maronite Christian, the prime minister a Sunni Muslim and Parliament speaker a Shiite Muslim. The government is run by the joint efforts of the three officials. Jumblatt said his party will also boycott a Parliamentary session to amend the Constitution so that senior public servants can run for president. Criticism of the nomination process also came from a meeting of Catholic bishops on Wednesday. Nevertheless, the bishops welcomed the choice of Lahoud, a fellow Catholic, a statement said. ||||| The commander of Lebanon's army will become the country's next president after winning the crucial backing of Syria, the powerbroker in Lebanon. ``Congratulations, your excellency the general,'' Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri told army commander Emile Lahoud in a telephone conversation Monday that was headlined on the front-page of the leftist newspaper As-Safir. Lebanese media said the matter was settled Monday at a meeting in Damascus between outgoing President Elias Hrawi and Syrian President Hafez Assad, whose country dominates its weaker, smaller neighbor. Agriculture Minister Shawki Fakhoury, a Hrawi confidant, said Tuesday that Lahoud is expected to be elected by the 128-member Parliament at an extraordinary session on Oct. 15. The election is a formality since other candidates have little chance now that Syria has thrown its weight behind Gen. Lahoud. In another formality before the election, the Parliament will amend the constitution, which forbids senior public servants from running for president. The new president must be sworn in on Nov. 24, the day Hrawi leaves office at the end of his six-year term. The choice of Lahoud, a Maronite Catholic, will continue a 55-year-old tradition under which the president is a Maronite, the prime minister a Sunni Muslim and the Parliament speaker a Shiite Muslim. Agreement among the three officials is essential for the smooth running of the government. Since Lahoud has a good relationship with Hariri and Speaker Nabih Berri, little change was expected in government policy. Lahoud's nomination ends weeks of suspense over the identity of the next head of state. Lahoud, a 62-year-old naval officer trained in Britain and the United States, enjoys wide public and political support at home and has good relations with Syria. But the choice could not have been sealed before a final say from Assad, who keeps 30,000 troops in this country. His word is referred to in the Beirut media as ``the password.'' Lahoud, elevated from rear admiral to general and appointed army commander in 1988 amid a rebellion in the fractured military during the 1975-90 civil war, is credited with rebuilding the 55,000-strong Lebanese army and in ending the reign of militias. In Lebanon, the army commander heads the air force, navy and the ground forces. Many hope he will copy his success with the military in government, which is plagued by nepotism and waste of public funds. But some fear that a military man in the nation's highest office could mean a return to the use of intelligence services to track civilian life _ the case under Fouad Chehab, the only other army commander to become president, who ruled from 1958 to 1964. ``The election of a military man is a threat to democracy in Lebanon,'' Raymond Edde, a Christian politician living in self-imposed exile in France, told the An-Nahar newspaper. ||||| Prime Minister Rafik Hariri has declined an informal invitation from Lebanon's new president to form the next government, sparking a political crisis in this country as it rebuilds from its devastating civil war. Sources close to the prime minister, whose Cabinet has been in care-taker capacity since last Tuesday's swearing in of Emile Lahoud as president, said Hariri turned down the invitation from Lahoud to select a new Cabinet. There has been no formal announcement from Lahoud reappointing Hariri as prime minister. Although Hariri's move could be a bargaining tactic, since he remains the front-runner for the premiership, the apparent tension between the two powerful men could affect Lebanon's economic stability as it recovers from the 1975-90 civil war. Hariri, 53, the architect of Lebanon's multibillion dollar postwar reconstruction program, has been in power since 1992. A billionaire businessman who made his fortune in Saudi Arabia, Hariri is credited with restoring economic confidence and stabilizing the national currency. The dispute appears to be the opening salvo of a struggle on how Lebanon will be governed during Lahoud's six-year term. Toward the end of former President Elias Hrawi's nine years in office, Hariri virtually had a free hand in running the country. Lahoud, 62, a former commander of Lebanon's army, was propelled to power with widespread popular backing. He pledged in a tough inauguration speech to clean up the graft-riddled administration. The British-trained general made his name rebuilding the army after it disintegrated in the civil war. Similar political disputes in Lebanon in the past have been solved only with the intervention of Syria, the main power broker in this country. Damascus supports both Lahoud and Hariri. Lahoud had been expected to issue a presidential decree last week asking Hariri to form the next government after the president polled members of the 128-seat Parliament on their choice for prime minister. But many legislators, who in the past gave their overwhelming support to Hariri, did not name him and, instead, left it to the president to select a prime minister. The two leaders met Friday, but no presidential decree followed. The sources close to Hariri, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the prime minister's decision to bow out came because he did not feel Lahoud was following constitutional procedures in selecting the premier. ||||| Prime Minister Rafik Hariri has declined an informal invitation from Lebanon's new president to form the next government, sparking a political crisis in this country as it rebuilds from its devastating civil war. Sources close to the prime minister, whose Cabinet has been in care-taker capacity since last Tuesday's swearing in of Emile Lahoud as president, said Hariri turned down the invitation from Lahoud to select a new Cabinet. There has been no formal announcement from Lahoud reappointing Hariri as prime minister. Although Hariri's move could be a bargaining tactic, since he remains the front-runner for the premiership, the apparent tension between the two powerful men could affect Lebanon's economic stability as it recovers from the 1975-90 civil war. Hariri, 53, the architect of Lebanon's multibillion dollar postwar reconstruction program, has been in power since 1992. A billionaire businessman who made his fortune in Saudi Arabia, Hariri is credited with restoring economic confidence and stabilizing the national currency. Lahoud, 62, commander of Lebanon's army who was propelled to power with widespread popular backing, pledged in a tough inauguration speech to clean up the graft-riddled administration. The British-trained general made his name rebuilding the army after it disintegrated in the civil war. Previous disputes among government leaders have cost the Central Bank hundreds of millions of dollars in its efforts to stabilize the Lebanese pound. Such political disputes in Lebanon in the past were solved only with the intervention of Syria, the main power broker in this country. Damascus supports both Lahoud and Hariri. Lahoud had been expected to issue a presidential decree last week asking Hariri to form the next government. The decree was to be issued after the president polled members of the 128-seat Parliament on their choice for prime minister. But many legislators, who in the past gave their overwhelming support to Hariri, did not name him and, instead, left it to the president to select a prime minister. The two leaders met Friday, but no presidential decree followed. The sources close to Hariri, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the prime minister's decision to bow out came because he did not feel Lahoud was following constitutional procedures in selecting the premier. The Hariri camp argues that the president can poll Parliament members on their choice for prime minister but cannot accept a mandate to name a person of his choice. The dispute, in fact, appears to be the opening salvo of a struggle on how Lebanon will be governed during Lahoud's six-year term. Toward the end of former President Elias Hrawi's nine years in office, Hariri virtually had a free hand in running the country. ||||| Lebanon's Parliament on Tuesday ratified a constitutional amendment to clear the way for the election of the army's commander, Gen. Emile Lahoud, as president. Lahoud has received the backing of Syria, the main power broker in the country, making the election by Lebanon's pro-Syrian Parliament later this week just a formality. A total of 113 deputies voted for the amendment and four deputies against, including the general's cousin, Nassib Lahoud, a presidential aspirant. Eleven deputies were absent. Among those who were absent was Walid Jumblatt, a Cabinet minister who had said he would boycott the session to protest the choice of a military man even though Lahoud has wide public and political support. The 128-member legislature is expected to meet Thursday to elect Lahoud after outgoing President Elias Hrawi signs the constitutional amendment. The amendment to Article 49 of the constitution revokes a ban on senior civil servants from running for the presidency. The new president will be sworn in Nov. 24, the day Hrawi leaves office. Hrawi has served for nine years, including a three-year extension in 1995 to his six-year term. Lahoud, a Maronite Catholic, will keep alive a 55-year-old tradition under which the president is a Maronite, the prime minister a Sunni Muslim and the Parliament speaker a Shiite Muslim. Lahoud, appointed army commander in 1989 amid a rebellion in the fractured military during the 1975-90 civil war, is credited with rebuilding the 55,000-strong Lebanese army and in ending the reign of militias. Many hope he will copy his success with the military in the government, which is plagued by nepotism and waste of public funds. But some fear of military dominance of public life. ||||| Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, the business tycoon who launched Lebanon's multibillion dollar reconstruction from the devastation of civil war, said Monday he was bowing out as premier following a dispute with the new president. He accused President Emile Lahoud of violating the constitution and demanded that he acknowledge it before he could reconsider his position. Hariri's move could be a ploy to gain more power as a new government is formed, but the crisis atmosphere generated by the possible departure of the billionaire businessman could affect Lebanon's economic recovery. ``I'm not a candidate,'' Hariri said in a live interview with CNN. He demanded that Lahoud admit that he acted unconstitutionally by allowing 31 Parliament deputies to authorize him to name a prime minister instead of naming one themselves. Such an action ``might put the country in danger,'' Hariri warned. Asked if there was a risk of renewed conflict in Lebanon over the alleged tampering with the constitution, Hariri said: ``If the president continues with this, I don't know what will happen.'' But the dispute between the two leaders appears to be over who will have the upper hand in governing the nation of 3.2 million. Lahoud, 62, is an army commander who wants to assert his authority at the start of his six-year presidential term. Hariri, 53, virtually has had a free hand in running the country since he became premier six years ago under former President Elias Hrawi. A brief meeting on Monday between the two did not help resolve the disagreements. Hariri's Cabinet has been serving in a caretaker capacity since Lahoud's inauguration last Tuesday. Lahoud on Monday set the stage for choosing a new prime minister when he scheduled a fresh round of consultations with Parliament for Tuesday and Wednesday. In a statement, Lahoud said Hariri was asked but declined to form the next government after a previous round of consultations. The offer came after the 128 legislators polled by the president gave Hariri a majority but fell short of the near unanimous backing he had received in his previous three mandates since 1992. Hariri is credited with restoring economic confidence and stabilizing the national currency. His globe-trotting travels to drum up political and economic support were sometimes instrumental in drawing international financial aid and investment. But he was faulted for declining living standards at home and a rise in corruption in government. Lahoud pledged in a tough inauguration speech to clean up the graft-riddled administration. The general enjoys widespread popular backing after succeeding in rebuilding an army fractured by civil war. Central bank officials on Monday tried to calm fears about a run on the Lebanese pound by announcing that the bank was ready to intervene with its foreign currency reserves if necessary, the state-run National News Agency reported. It added that the money markets remained stable. ||||| Parliament on Thursday formally elected Gen. Emile Lahoud, the popular army commander who has the backing of powerful neighbor Syria, as Lebanon's next president. All the 118 legislators present at the session cast votes in his favor. Lahoud is to be sworn in for a six-year term on Nov. 24, the day President Elias Hrawi leaves office.

Lebanon's leadership changed in Nov 1998. Army commander Emile Lahoud was elected to a 6-year term as President by the Parliament and took office on Nov 24. He had the backing of Syrian President Assad, the powerbroker in Lebanon, and a special constitutional amendment in Oct cleared his way. He did not immediately ask Prime Minister Rafik Hariri to form a new government. Hariri, the nation's top businessman, had served three terms and rebuilt the nation, but some accused him of corruption. His support in the Parliament had also slipped, but many believed Lahoud was trying to assert his authority. When finally asked to form a government, Hariri refused.

Parliament on Thursday formally elected Gen. Emile Lahoud, the popular army commander who has the backing of powerful neighbor Syria, as Lebanon's next president. All the 118 legislators present at the session cast votes in his favor. Lahoud is to be sworn for a six-year term on Nov. 24, the day President Elias Hrawi leaves office. ||||| Prime Minister Rafik Hariri's efforts to win a fourth term in office have hit a snag after he failed to receive the expected speedy appointment from new President Emile Lahoud. Hariri is still the front-runner to form the next government but Saturday's Daily Star newspaper quoted sources as saying that Hariri was ``outraged'' that only 62 of the 128 members in Parliament declared their support for him during a meeting with Lahoud Friday. According to the constitution, a president must begin his term by appointing the prime minister and a Cabinet through a decree issued after consulting with Parliament members. A presidential decree was expected Friday but nothing came through after a meeting between Lahoud and Hariri. Hariri had even scheduled Friday a traditional meeting between the prime minister-designate and former prime ministers, but that was canceled. The state-run National News Agency said that while only 62 deputies told Lahoud they supported Hariri, the rest refused to divulge their choice or left it to the president to decide. A TV station owned by Hariri said he won the backing of at least 100 deputies. The delay reflects the tug-of-war among the power brokers in the country. Under a formula aimed at preventing the recurrence of the 1975-90 civil war, power in Lebanon is shared equally by a Maronite Christian president, a Sunni Muslim prime minister and a Shiite Parliament speaker. While the Christian Lahoud may have no objection to appointing the Sunni Hariri, it is possible that Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri's 19 Shiite supporters in the legislature are holding out to emphasize their value. The leading An-Nahar and other newspapers said the delay could last for days. But in the end, it is Hariri that is most likely to be renamed on the strength of his record in office. Hariri, Lebanon's top businessman, has almost single-handedly created a multibillion dollar program to rebuild a country destroyed by the civil war. He is also credited with stabilizing the currency and restoring confidence in the postwar economy. But his government under former president Elias Hrawi were dogged by accusations of corruption. Hariri, who has been prime minister since 1992, was appointed three times during the extended term of former President Elias Hrawi. He has remained in office as caretaker prime minister since Lahoud succeeded Hrawi on Tuesday. Lahoud, a general who as army commander rebuilt the military from 1989 until his election by Parliament in October, has pledged in his inauguration speech Tuesday to clean up the corruption-plagued administration. ||||| Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, the business tycoon who launched Lebanon's multibillion dollar reconstruction from the devastation of civil war, said Monday he was bowing out as premier following a dispute with the new president. He accused President Emile Lahoud of violating the constitution and demanded that he acknowledge it before he could reconsider his position. Hariri's move could be a ploy to gain more power as a new government is formed, but the crisis atmosphere generated by the possible departure of the billionaire businessman could affect Lebanon's economic recovery. ``I'm not a candidate,'' Hariri said in a live interview with CNN. He demanded that Lahoud admit that he acted unconstitutionally by allowing 31 Parliament deputies to authorize him to name a prime minister instead of naming one themselves. Such an action ``might put the country in danger,'' Hariri warned. Asked if there was a risk of renewed conflict in Lebanon over the alleged tampering with the constitution, Hariri said: ``If the president continues with this, I don't know what will happen.'' But the dispute between the two leaders appears to be over who will have the upper hand in governing the nation of 3.2 million. Lahoud, 62, is an army commander who wants to assert his authority at the start of his six-year presidential term. Hariri, 53, virtually has had a free hand in running the country since he became premier six years ago under former President Elias Hrawi. A brief meeting on Monday between the two did not help resolve the disagreements. Hariri's Cabinet has been serving in a caretaker capacity since Lahoud's inauguration last Tuesday. Lahoud on Monday set the stage for choosing a new prime minister when he scheduled a fresh round of consultations with Parliament for Tuesday and Wednesday. In a statement, Lahoud said Hariri was asked but declined to form the next government after a previous round of consultations. The offer came after the 128 legislators polled by the president gave Hariri a majority but fell short of the near unanimous backing he had received in his previous three mandates since 1992. Hariri is credited with restoring economic confidence and stabilizing the national currency. His globe-trotting travels to drum up political and economic support were sometimes instrumental in drawing international financial aid and investment. But he was faulted for declining living standards at home and a rise in corruption in government. Lahoud pledged in a tough inauguration speech to clean up the graft-riddled administration. The general enjoys widespread popular backing after succeeding in rebuilding an army fractured by civil war. Central bank officials on Monday tried to calm fears about a run on the Lebanese pound by announcing that the bank was ready to intervene with its foreign currency reserves if necessary, the state-run National News Agency reported. It added that the money markets remained stable. ||||| A Cabinet minister and a close Syria ally on Wednesday criticized the Syrian-backed choice of the army commander as president, and said he will boycott a vote to elect the military man for the executive post. Walid Jumblatt, the minister for displaced persons, said he and his party's three legislators will not vote when the 128-member Parliament elects the president, likely sometime before Oct. 23. Although a boycott by Jumblatt's Progressive Socialist Party will hardly spoil the chances of Gen. Emile Lahoud, it could embolden others to express discontent at the choice and the process of his election. Lahoud is virtually assured of the job: the prime minister and the parliament speaker first approved Lahoud, who then won the all-important backing of Syria, the main power broker in Lebanon. ``Historically, we do not approve that a military man takes control of the country,'' Jumblatt told reporters after a meeting with outgoing President Elias Hrawi. Although opposition to Syria's hold on Lebanon's politics is common among anti-Syrian politicians, it is rare for somebody like Jumblatt to openly speak against a decision personally cleared by Syrian President Hafez Assad who keeps 30,000 troops in Lebanon. Like Jumblatt, some in Lebanon fear that a military man as president could mean intelligence agents will track civilian life just as they did between 1958 and 1964 during the presidency of Fouad Chehab, the only other army commander to become head of state. In nominating Lahoud, ``rules were not respected,'' Jumblatt said. ``Things were supposed to run in a more democratic way,'' said Jumblatt, whose Druse militia fought Christian forces during the 1975-90 civil war. The new president must be sworn in on Nov. 24, the day Hrawi leaves office after a six-year term. Jumblatt said ``there is adequate political diversity and competition in the country,'' implying that choosing a military man for president was unnecessary. Deputy Prime Minister Michel Murr sought to calm fears about military intrusion. He told reporters that Lahoud will ``keep the army out of politics just as he kept politics out of the army.'' Lahoud, a 62-year-old naval officer, enjoys wide public and political support at home and has good relations with Syria. He gained public admiration for reuniting an army fractured by civil war and in ending the reign of militias. Many hope he will cleanse the government of nepotism and wastage of public funds. Lahoud's nomination complies with a tradition that the president be a Maronite Christian, the prime minister a Sunni Muslim and Parliament speaker a Shiite Muslim. The government is run by the joint efforts of the three officials. Jumblatt said his party will also boycott a Parliamentary session to amend the Constitution so that senior public servants can run for president. Criticism of the nomination process also came from a meeting of Catholic bishops on Wednesday. Nevertheless, the bishops welcomed the choice of Lahoud, a fellow Catholic, a statement said. ||||| The commander of Lebanon's army will become the country's next president after winning the crucial backing of Syria, the powerbroker in Lebanon. ``Congratulations, your excellency the general,'' Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri told army commander Emile Lahoud in a telephone conversation Monday that was headlined on the front-page of the leftist newspaper As-Safir. Lebanese media said the matter was settled Monday at a meeting in Damascus between outgoing President Elias Hrawi and Syrian President Hafez Assad, whose country dominates its weaker, smaller neighbor. Agriculture Minister Shawki Fakhoury, a Hrawi confidant, said Tuesday that Lahoud is expected to be elected by the 128-member Parliament at an extraordinary session on Oct. 15. The election is a formality since other candidates have little chance now that Syria has thrown its weight behind Gen. Lahoud. In another formality before the election, the Parliament will amend the constitution, which forbids senior public servants from running for president. The new president must be sworn in on Nov. 24, the day Hrawi leaves office at the end of his six-year term. The choice of Lahoud, a Maronite Catholic, will continue a 55-year-old tradition under which the president is a Maronite, the prime minister a Sunni Muslim and the Parliament speaker a Shiite Muslim. Agreement among the three officials is essential for the smooth running of the government. Since Lahoud has a good relationship with Hariri and Speaker Nabih Berri, little change was expected in government policy. Lahoud's nomination ends weeks of suspense over the identity of the next head of state. Lahoud, a 62-year-old naval officer trained in Britain and the United States, enjoys wide public and political support at home and has good relations with Syria. But the choice could not have been sealed before a final say from Assad, who keeps 30,000 troops in this country. His word is referred to in the Beirut media as ``the password.'' Lahoud, elevated from rear admiral to general and appointed army commander in 1988 amid a rebellion in the fractured military during the 1975-90 civil war, is credited with rebuilding the 55,000-strong Lebanese army and in ending the reign of militias. In Lebanon, the army commander heads the air force, navy and the ground forces. Many hope he will copy his success with the military in government, which is plagued by nepotism and waste of public funds. But some fear that a military man in the nation's highest office could mean a return to the use of intelligence services to track civilian life _ the case under Fouad Chehab, the only other army commander to become president, who ruled from 1958 to 1964. ``The election of a military man is a threat to democracy in Lebanon,'' Raymond Edde, a Christian politician living in self-imposed exile in France, told the An-Nahar newspaper. ||||| Prime Minister Rafik Hariri has declined an informal invitation from Lebanon's new president to form the next government, sparking a political crisis in this country as it rebuilds from its devastating civil war. Sources close to the prime minister, whose Cabinet has been in care-taker capacity since last Tuesday's swearing in of Emile Lahoud as president, said Hariri turned down the invitation from Lahoud to select a new Cabinet. There has been no formal announcement from Lahoud reappointing Hariri as prime minister. Although Hariri's move could be a bargaining tactic, since he remains the front-runner for the premiership, the apparent tension between the two powerful men could affect Lebanon's economic stability as it recovers from the 1975-90 civil war. Hariri, 53, the architect of Lebanon's multibillion dollar postwar reconstruction program, has been in power since 1992. A billionaire businessman who made his fortune in Saudi Arabia, Hariri is credited with restoring economic confidence and stabilizing the national currency. The dispute appears to be the opening salvo of a struggle on how Lebanon will be governed during Lahoud's six-year term. Toward the end of former President Elias Hrawi's nine years in office, Hariri virtually had a free hand in running the country. Lahoud, 62, a former commander of Lebanon's army, was propelled to power with widespread popular backing. He pledged in a tough inauguration speech to clean up the graft-riddled administration. The British-trained general made his name rebuilding the army after it disintegrated in the civil war. Similar political disputes in Lebanon in the past have been solved only with the intervention of Syria, the main power broker in this country. Damascus supports both Lahoud and Hariri. Lahoud had been expected to issue a presidential decree last week asking Hariri to form the next government after the president polled members of the 128-seat Parliament on their choice for prime minister. But many legislators, who in the past gave their overwhelming support to Hariri, did not name him and, instead, left it to the president to select a prime minister. The two leaders met Friday, but no presidential decree followed. The sources close to Hariri, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the prime minister's decision to bow out came because he did not feel Lahoud was following constitutional procedures in selecting the premier. ||||| Prime Minister Rafik Hariri has declined an informal invitation from Lebanon's new president to form the next government, sparking a political crisis in this country as it rebuilds from its devastating civil war. Sources close to the prime minister, whose Cabinet has been in care-taker capacity since last Tuesday's swearing in of Emile Lahoud as president, said Hariri turned down the invitation from Lahoud to select a new Cabinet. There has been no formal announcement from Lahoud reappointing Hariri as prime minister. Although Hariri's move could be a bargaining tactic, since he remains the front-runner for the premiership, the apparent tension between the two powerful men could affect Lebanon's economic stability as it recovers from the 1975-90 civil war. Hariri, 53, the architect of Lebanon's multibillion dollar postwar reconstruction program, has been in power since 1992. A billionaire businessman who made his fortune in Saudi Arabia, Hariri is credited with restoring economic confidence and stabilizing the national currency. Lahoud, 62, commander of Lebanon's army who was propelled to power with widespread popular backing, pledged in a tough inauguration speech to clean up the graft-riddled administration. The British-trained general made his name rebuilding the army after it disintegrated in the civil war. Previous disputes among government leaders have cost the Central Bank hundreds of millions of dollars in its efforts to stabilize the Lebanese pound. Such political disputes in Lebanon in the past were solved only with the intervention of Syria, the main power broker in this country. Damascus supports both Lahoud and Hariri. Lahoud had been expected to issue a presidential decree last week asking Hariri to form the next government. The decree was to be issued after the president polled members of the 128-seat Parliament on their choice for prime minister. But many legislators, who in the past gave their overwhelming support to Hariri, did not name him and, instead, left it to the president to select a prime minister. The two leaders met Friday, but no presidential decree followed. The sources close to Hariri, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the prime minister's decision to bow out came because he did not feel Lahoud was following constitutional procedures in selecting the premier. The Hariri camp argues that the president can poll Parliament members on their choice for prime minister but cannot accept a mandate to name a person of his choice. The dispute, in fact, appears to be the opening salvo of a struggle on how Lebanon will be governed during Lahoud's six-year term. Toward the end of former President Elias Hrawi's nine years in office, Hariri virtually had a free hand in running the country. ||||| Lebanon's Parliament on Tuesday ratified a constitutional amendment to clear the way for the election of the army's commander, Gen. Emile Lahoud, as president. Lahoud has received the backing of Syria, the main power broker in the country, making the election by Lebanon's pro-Syrian Parliament later this week just a formality. A total of 113 deputies voted for the amendment and four deputies against, including the general's cousin, Nassib Lahoud, a presidential aspirant. Eleven deputies were absent. Among those who were absent was Walid Jumblatt, a Cabinet minister who had said he would boycott the session to protest the choice of a military man even though Lahoud has wide public and political support. The 128-member legislature is expected to meet Thursday to elect Lahoud after outgoing President Elias Hrawi signs the constitutional amendment. The amendment to Article 49 of the constitution revokes a ban on senior civil servants from running for the presidency. The new president will be sworn in Nov. 24, the day Hrawi leaves office. Hrawi has served for nine years, including a three-year extension in 1995 to his six-year term. Lahoud, a Maronite Catholic, will keep alive a 55-year-old tradition under which the president is a Maronite, the prime minister a Sunni Muslim and the Parliament speaker a Shiite Muslim. Lahoud, appointed army commander in 1989 amid a rebellion in the fractured military during the 1975-90 civil war, is credited with rebuilding the 55,000-strong Lebanese army and in ending the reign of militias. Many hope he will copy his success with the military in the government, which is plagued by nepotism and waste of public funds. But some fear of military dominance of public life. ||||| Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, the business tycoon who launched Lebanon's multibillion dollar reconstruction from the devastation of civil war, said Monday he was bowing out as premier following a dispute with the new president. He accused President Emile Lahoud of violating the constitution and demanded that he acknowledge it before he could reconsider his position. Hariri's move could be a ploy to gain more power as a new government is formed, but the crisis atmosphere generated by the possible departure of the billionaire businessman could affect Lebanon's economic recovery. ``I'm not a candidate,'' Hariri said in a live interview with CNN. He demanded that Lahoud admit that he acted unconstitutionally by allowing 31 Parliament deputies to authorize him to name a prime minister instead of naming one themselves. Such an action ``might put the country in danger,'' Hariri warned. Asked if there was a risk of renewed conflict in Lebanon over the alleged tampering with the constitution, Hariri said: ``If the president continues with this, I don't know what will happen.'' But the dispute between the two leaders appears to be over who will have the upper hand in governing the nation of 3.2 million. Lahoud, 62, is an army commander who wants to assert his authority at the start of his six-year presidential term. Hariri, 53, virtually has had a free hand in running the country since he became premier six years ago under former President Elias Hrawi. A brief meeting on Monday between the two did not help resolve the disagreements. Hariri's Cabinet has been serving in a caretaker capacity since Lahoud's inauguration last Tuesday. Lahoud on Monday set the stage for choosing a new prime minister when he scheduled a fresh round of consultations with Parliament for Tuesday and Wednesday. In a statement, Lahoud said Hariri was asked but declined to form the next government after a previous round of consultations. The offer came after the 128 legislators polled by the president gave Hariri a majority but fell short of the near unanimous backing he had received in his previous three mandates since 1992. Hariri is credited with restoring economic confidence and stabilizing the national currency. His globe-trotting travels to drum up political and economic support were sometimes instrumental in drawing international financial aid and investment. But he was faulted for declining living standards at home and a rise in corruption in government. Lahoud pledged in a tough inauguration speech to clean up the graft-riddled administration. The general enjoys widespread popular backing after succeeding in rebuilding an army fractured by civil war. Central bank officials on Monday tried to calm fears about a run on the Lebanese pound by announcing that the bank was ready to intervene with its foreign currency reserves if necessary, the state-run National News Agency reported. It added that the money markets remained stable. ||||| Parliament on Thursday formally elected Gen. Emile Lahoud, the popular army commander who has the backing of powerful neighbor Syria, as Lebanon's next president. All the 118 legislators present at the session cast votes in his favor. Lahoud is to be sworn in for a six-year term on Nov. 24, the day President Elias Hrawi leaves office.

Lebanon's Parliament voted the country's top military man, Gen. Emile Lahoud, president. Lahoud, who promises to clean up a graft-riddled government, is popular and is backed by powerful Syria. It is unclear, though, whether Prime Minister Hariri, in office since 1992 and credited with the country's economic recovery, will continue to head the cabinet. 31 of 128 legislators chose not to support him, leaving it to the president to name the next prime minister. Consequently, Hariri withdrew his candidacy, claiming the president acted unconstitutionally when he accepted the mandate to name a prime minister. Hariri's administration was plagued by nepotism.

Greek media and officials leveled strong opposition Sunday to the possible extradition of Abdullah Ocalan, the arrested Kurdish guerrilla leader, to Greece's traditional rival Turkey. Ocalan, whose Kurdistan Workers Party has waged a 14-year war with Turkey for autonomy in southeastern Turkey, is in prison custody in Rome where his arrest was announced Friday. ``We do not give advise to other countries,'' said parliament speaker Apostolos Kaklamanis. ``Europe has a tradition of civilization and human rights and I think as a rule it abides by that tradition.'' Greece has not officially responded to Ocalan's arrest, which was welcomed by the United States. But Greek government officials have stressed support for Kurdish self-determination. ``We have repeatedly brought attention to the problems created by the blatant violation of human rights in southeast Turkey,'' government spokesman Dimitris Reppas said late Saturday. In the past, Greece has accused Ankara of waging a campaign of ``genocide'' against its Kurdish population. Ankara counters that Greece is harboring PKK ``terrorists.'' Both sides angrily deny the charges. Thousands of Kurdish refugees from northern Iraq and Turkey have sought refuge in Greece. A group of more than 100 Kurds began a three-day fast in a downtown Athens square Saturday in support of Ocalan. Within hours of the PKK leader's arrest, Turkey requested his extradition to face a number of terrorism-related charges, which could carry the death penalty. ``Italy knows what the fate of the Kurdish rebel will be if he falls into the hands of the Turkish military regime,'' said an editorial Saturday in the Greek daily Eleftherotypia. ``Ocalan has requested political asylum in Italy as head of the Kurdish liberation movement and should be allowed to remain in a democratic country. He must not be extradited to Turkey.'' Greece's Communist party and a small leftist opposition party called on the government to exercise its influence on Italy to keep Ocalan there. The move was also supported by a number of parliamentary deputies from the governing Socialist party. Earlier this month, a bloc of 109 lawmakers in the 300-member parliament issued an invitation for Ocalan to visit Greece. ||||| Turkish authorities negotiated with an imprisoned mob leader for a second day Monday to secure the release of an Italian inmate held hostage to pressure Italy into extraditing a Kurdish rebel leader, a prosecutor said. The Italian, Mario Calascibetta, was taken hostage Sunday by a group of inmates affiliated with mob leader Yasar Oz, to push for the return to Turkey of rebel leader Abdullah Ocalan, Turkey's most-wanted man. Ocalan is currently being held in Rome. Calascibetta, imprisoned in Istanbul's Metris jail since his detention in August, was due to be handed over to Swiss police Monday. He is wanted for questioning in Switzerland in connection with a killing. Turkey's Anatolia news agency said Oz was determined not to free his hostage until Italy agreed to Turkey's demand to send back Ocalan who is Turkey's most wanted man. ``He is not in any life threatening danger. We are not alarmed for his safety,'' said prosecutor Celil Demircioglu. ``The negotiations are continuing, we believe he will be freed very soon.'' Demircioglu said Calascibetta's extradition would now be delayed by a few days. He denied Turkish press reports that the Italian was being held at gun point. Oz is currently on trial on drugs-related charges. The mob has often supported right-wing parties and ultranationalist causes. At a time when the state is under pressure to crack down on the mob, it seemed convenient for Oz to show he was backing the government's cause. ||||| Facing his first real foreign policy test, Prime Minister Massimo D'Alema must decide what to do with a prominent Kurdish rebel leader who was arrested at the Rome airport on Thursday. Turkey wants Italy to extradite the rebel, Abdullah Ocalan, leader of the Kurdistan Workers' Party, which is seeking Kurdish autonomy in southeastern Turkey. He is viewed in Turkey as a terrorist. Germany also has a warrant out for his arrest on homicide charges. But D'Alema, a former Communist who was appointed prime minister last month, is under pressure from leftists in his coalition to offer Ocalan political asylum. In a news conference Monday, D'Alema recognized the extent of the problem. ``The last thing we wanted was an awkward and complicated situation like this one,'' he said. He noted that Italian law prohibits extradition of suspects to countries that have the death penalty. Turkey has capital punishment, though it says it will soon abolish it. Ocalan is being tried in absentia there on charges that could bring the death penalty. D'Alema said a committee in the Interior Ministry would determine whether Ocalan would qualify for political asylum, which would be possible if Ocalan's promise to renounce terrorism, issued Monday, holds up. ``We do not want someone who organizes terrorism in Italy,'' D'Alema said. ``This is an opportunity to find an exit from a bloody conflict.'' Earlier Monday, while members of D'Alema's government met with Turkish officials who were in Rome for a European ministerial meeting, thousands of Kurds flooded into Rome to hold a demonstration and hunger strike in support of Ocalan. D'Alema's decision was further complicated on Sunday when Turkish inmates in a prison in Istanbul took an Italian prisoner hostage, saying they would release him only after Italy extradited Ocalan. Monday, D'Alema said he would not bow to pressure. ||||| Turkey stepped up the pressure on Italy for the extradition of captured Kurdish rebel leader Abdullah Ocalan, warning Sunday that granting him asylum would amount to ``opening doors to terrorism.'' In Rome, 1,500 Kurds massed for a second day of demonstrations outside the military hospital where Ocalan is believed to be held. Kurds arrived from Germany and France to show solidarity with the rebel leader and a Kurdish group stopped at Rome's airport launched a hunger strike. If Italy sends the Kurd leader back to Turkey, ``he'll be tortured for certain,'' said Dino Frisullo, an Italian supporter among the singing, chanting Kurds outside the military hospital. ``And very possibly he'll be killed.'' Ocalan was arrested at the Rome airport on Thursday as soon as he stepped off a plane from Moscow, where he had sought asylum after recently fleeing his hideout in Syria. He leads the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party, PKK, which has been fighting for Kurdish autonomy in southeastern Turkey since 1984. The conflict has killed nearly 37,000 people. Turkey considers Ocalan a terrorist and its most-wanted criminal. ``If Western European nations open their arms (to the rebels) they will be taking on this great terrorism problem,'' Deputy Premier Bulent Ecevit told reporters in Ankara. ``If Italy continues to show the tolerance it showed yesterday it will be opening its doors to terrorism,'' Ecevit added, referring to Italy's handling of brawls that broke out among the Kurdish demonstrators in Rome on Saturday. The protests were peaceful Sunday. Ocalan faces the death penalty in Turkey, a fact that has heightened opposition in Italy to his extradition. Although there have been no executions in Turkey since 1984, Italy has consistently refused to extradite anyone if there were even a risk of capital punishment. Foreign Minister Ismail Cem left for Rome on Sunday to attend a meeting of European defense and foreign ministers. Before leaving, he criticized an Italian Justice Ministry official, who reportedly said Turkey's extradition request would be refused. ``To announce the results of an extradition trial that has not yet even begun does not go hand in hand with justice,'' Cem told reporters. He said he would tell Italian Foreign Minister Lamberto Dini ``that we expect a serious and fair approach.'' Ocalan, a political science dropout from Ankara University, founded the Marxist-inspired PKK in 1978. He turned the group toward armed struggle in 1984, finding wide support among poor Kurds in the underdeveloped southeast. The Turkish army claims to have all but wiped out the PKK within Turkey but the rebels have havens in Iran, Syria, and Iraq and the fighting continues. ||||| A Kurdish rebel group fighting for autonomy in Turkey's southeast faces an uncertain future following the detention in Rome of its founder and leader. Italian authorities captured Abdullah Ocalan at Rome's international airport Thursday. Turkey has asked for his extradition and Ocalan has asked for political asylum. Some believe that without Ocalan, who ruled some 10,000 loyal rebels with an iron fist, his Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, will be left in disarray. ``If the head is dethroned, the rebellion gets a mortal blow,'' said Cengiz Candar who has been following the Kurdish insurgency for daily Sabah. But Ocalan has been absent from the battlefield for at least a month, and others contend that the PKK is capable of operating without him. ``Let us not fall into false expectations that this will be the end of the PKK. The PKK has already been acting like a headless monster for too long,'' said Ilnur Cevik of the English-language Turkish Daily News. Turkish newspapers have carried frequent reports of power struggles within the PKK and said that Ocalan's grip on the PKK was beginning to waver. Better known as Apo, Ocalan founded the Kurdistan Workers Party, PKK, in 1978. The movement turned to armed struggle in 1984, mainly focusing on guerrilla-style warfare in the southeast, but also carrying out bomb attacks on civilians in western Turkey. Close to 37,000 people died in the conflict. His presence in Europe could also be a blessing in disguise for the group, forcing the PKK to transform itself from a rebel army into a political movement. Ocalan seemed to be moving in this direction before his detention. While living in Damacus, he increased his meetings with European deputies. This may be the PKK's best option. The Turkish military claims it has made important battlefield gains and captured the PKK's second-in-command this year. The rebels also seem to have lost the support of Syria, which appears to have forced Ocalan to leave after Turkey threatened to attack it. Two Iraqi Kurdish groups controlling Turkey's border with Iraq have also grown lukewarm. The PKK has used their bases in Syria and Iraq to wage cross-border operations. ``The PKK had two options. Either they choose to fight until they get control of the area, regardless of what image they project abroad, or they try to take on a political image. I believe (Ocalan) wanted to leave the Middle East so he could become a political figure,'' said Hikmet Tavak, managing director of the London-based Kurdish television, MED-TV. In Rome, spokesmen for the PKK said Ocalan had carefully selected Italy because he felt there was sympathy there for his cause. They also said Italian authorities were warned that Ocalan would be arriving. There is a fair amount of sympathy for the Kurds in Europe, and if the movement gains political momentum, Turkey could come under more pressure from its western allies to grant the Kurds minority rights. There are an estimated 8 to 15 million Kurds in Turkey. They are not recognized as an official minority and barred from using Kurdish in education or broadcasting. Kurdish politicians have been jailed and groups banned on charges of supporting the PKK. ||||| Thousands of Kurds living in Romania closed down restaurants, shops and companies to protest the arrest of leader Abdullah Ocalan by Italian authorities, a newspaper reported Tuesday. Kurdish business leaders said the one-day shutdown Monday cost their 1,000 businesses some dlrs 700,000, daily Evenimentul Zilei reported. There are some 4,000 Kurds living in Romania. Kurdish students cut classes and workers didn't go to work. Some 41 Kurds declared a hunger strike Monday to protest Ocalan's detention. The protesters have refused any medical assistance from Romanian authorities, relying on the services of two Kurdish doctors, the paper reported. ``We are not terrorists, as we are considered by the Turkish state and its friends,'' said Aihan Dogan, a Kurdish leader. The detention in Italy of Kurdish rebel leader Ocalan prompted widespread protests by Kurds throughout Europe. Turkey has asked for Ocalan to be returned to Turkey. ||||| INNSBRUCK, Austria (AP) -- Italian authorities have turned back at least 136 people along the Austro-Italian border during an immigration crackdown prompted by the arrest of Kurdish leader Abdullah Ocalan, Austrian officials said Monday. Most of those sent back since the crackdown began Saturday were refused entry into Italy because they had no visas or residence permits, the Austrians said. On Monday alone, about 70 people were refused entry at the Brenner Pass crossing point. They included Pakistanis, Indians, Yugoslavs and Chinese as well as Kurds, the Austrians said. The border crackdown appeared designed to prevent large numbers of Kurds living in Western Europe from flocking to Rome for protests in connection with Ocalan's arrest. Turkey has asked for Ocalan's extradition. Austrian authorities said many of those turned back had come from Germany. A Red Cross station was set up at the border to assist those turned away to return to Germany if their residence permits were in order. Those without proper papers were detained by Austrian immigration. ||||| Turkey stepped up pressure on Italy for the extradition of captured Kurdish rebel leader Abdullah Ocalan, saying Sunday that granting him asylum would amount to ``opening doors to terrorism.'' Kurds in Italy, Germany, Austria and Romania launched protests and hunger strikes in fervent shows of solidarity with the rebel leader. Kurds came to Rome by bus and car from across Western Europe for a 1,500-strong protest outside the military hospital where Ocalan is believed held under tight security. If Italy sends Ocalan back to Turkey, ``he'll be tortured for certain,'' said Dino Frisullo, an Italian supporter among the singing, chanting Kurds outside the military hospital. ``And very possibly he'll be killed.'' Ocalan was arrested Thursday at the Rome airport as soon as he stepped off a plane from Moscow, where he had sought asylum after fleeing his hideout in Syria. He leads the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party, PKK, which has been fighting for Kurdish autonomy in southeastern Turkey since 1984. The conflict has killed nearly 37,000 people. To Turkey, Ocalan is the nation's most-wanted criminal. ``If Western European nations open their arms (to the rebels) they will be taking on this great terrorism problem,'' Deputy Premier Bulent Ecevit told reporters in Ankara. ``If Italy continues to show the tolerance it showed yesterday, it will be opening its doors to terrorism,'' Ecevit added, referring to Italy's handling of brawls that broke out during the first day of protests Saturday outside the Rome military hospital. The protest in Rome was peaceful Sunday. Elsewhere in Europe, dozens of Kurds protested in Bucharest until chased away by police; 1,000 Kurds rallied in Bonn, some waving pictures of the Kurd leader; and 100 Kurds in Vienna set up tents outside Parliament and declared a hunger strike. In Turkey, four Kurdish prison inmates were in critical condition after setting themselves on fire to protest Ocalan's arrest, the independent Human Rights Association said. Ocalan faces the death penalty in Turkey, a fact that has heightened opposition in Italy to his extradition. Although there have been no executions in Turkey since 1984, Italy has consistently refused to extradite anyone if there were even a risk of capital punishment. Foreign Minister Ismail Cem left for Rome on Sunday to attend a meeting of European defense and foreign ministers, saying he would tell Italian Foreign Minister Lamberto Dini that ``we expect a serious and fair approach.'' He criticized an Italian Justice Ministry official, who reportedly said Italy would deny Turkey's extradition request. ``To announce the results of an extradition trial that has not yet even begun does not go hand in hand with justice,'' Cem told reporters before departing. Turkish Defense Minister Ismet Sezgin indicated to reporters in Rome that Italian companies could be shut out of Turkey's billions of dollars of defense contracts if it fails to turn over the Kurd. In Italy, Dini told reporters in the city of Trento that the government would decide Ocalan's request for asylum in a ``clear and responsible manner.'' It was up for the courts to decide Turkey's extradition request, as well as an expected one from Germany, he said. In Istanbul, Turkish inmates at a prison took an Italian prisoner hostage to increase pressure for Ocalan's extradition. Metris prison officials said the jail director was talking to the inmate captors. Ocalan founded the Marxist-inspired PKK in 1978. He turned the group toward armed struggle in 1984, finding wide support among poor Kurds in the underdeveloped southeast. The Turkish army claims to have all but wiped out the PKK within Turkey but the rebels have havens in Iran, Syria, and Iraq and the fighting continues. ||||| About 1,000 policemen were assigned to protect Turkish President Suleyman Demirel, who arrived Tuesday on a three-day official visit. President Thomas Klestil's invitation for the visit was issued to take place during Austria's European Union presidency. Austrian government officials reportedly will try to open up a ``longer-term perspective'' for Turkey's EU membership. A related topic certain to come up is Cyprus, among six countries with whom the European Union started formal membership talks on Nov. 10. In a rare joint statement, the Netherlands, Germany and France said the inability of Greek and Turkish Cypriots to reconcile their differences weighed heavily on their island's membership chances. They spoke of ``fundamental problems'' in the Cyprus negotiating process, adding ``a political solution is urgently required.'' Austrian police took special measures to ensure the safety of the Turkish visitor. ``The political situation requires comprehensive security measures,'' the Austria Press Agency quoted Walter Zehetmayr, a senior police officer, as saying. The extra effort was prompted by the arrest last week in Rome of Abdullah Ocalan, the chief of the Turkish Workers Party PKK, Zehetmayr said. He hinted that he expects large protests of Turkish groups in Vienna. Demirel, who was accompanied by five Cabinet members and a large trade delegation, is the first head of state of the Turkish Republic to visit Austria, APA said. Following his talks with Klestil and a luncheon in the president's residence, Demirel was scheduled to meet Parliament president Heinz Fischer and other senior officials. He was also to deliver a speech to the Foreign Policy Society later Tuesday. ||||| About 1,500 Kurds who spent the night outside a military hospital where Kurdish rebel leader Abdullah Ocalan is believed held continued their hunger strike Monday to protest his detention. Kurds from across Western Europe have been streaming into Rome to show their support for Ocalan (pronounced Oh-jah-lan), who was arrested Thursday when he stepped off a plane from Moscow. He had been seeking political asylum in Russia after fleeing his hideout in Syria. He has, 3rd graf

PKK leader Ocalan was arrested on arrival at the Rome airport. He asked for asylum. Turkey pressured Italy to extradite Ocalan, whom they consider a terrorist. Kurds in Europe flocked to Rome to show their support. About 1,500 staged a hunger strike outside the hospital where he was held. Italy began a border crackdown to stop Kurds flocking to Rome. Greek media and officials oppose extradition. Romanian Kurds staged a 1-day business shutdown to protest his arrest. In a Turkish prison, an Italian prisoner was taken hostage. The Turkish president needed extra security for a trip to Austria. This is Italy's Prime Minister D'Alema's first foreign policy test.

Greek media and officials leveled strong opposition Sunday to the possible extradition of Abdullah Ocalan, the arrested Kurdish guerrilla leader, to Greece's traditional rival Turkey. Ocalan, whose Kurdistan Workers Party has waged a 14-year war with Turkey for autonomy in southeastern Turkey, is in prison custody in Rome where his arrest was announced Friday. ``We do not give advise to other countries,'' said parliament speaker Apostolos Kaklamanis. ``Europe has a tradition of civilization and human rights and I think as a rule it abides by that tradition.'' Greece has not officially responded to Ocalan's arrest, which was welcomed by the United States. But Greek government officials have stressed support for Kurdish self-determination. ``We have repeatedly brought attention to the problems created by the blatant violation of human rights in southeast Turkey,'' government spokesman Dimitris Reppas said late Saturday. In the past, Greece has accused Ankara of waging a campaign of ``genocide'' against its Kurdish population. Ankara counters that Greece is harboring PKK ``terrorists.'' Both sides angrily deny the charges. Thousands of Kurdish refugees from northern Iraq and Turkey have sought refuge in Greece. A group of more than 100 Kurds began a three-day fast in a downtown Athens square Saturday in support of Ocalan. Within hours of the PKK leader's arrest, Turkey requested his extradition to face a number of terrorism-related charges, which could carry the death penalty. ``Italy knows what the fate of the Kurdish rebel will be if he falls into the hands of the Turkish military regime,'' said an editorial Saturday in the Greek daily Eleftherotypia. ``Ocalan has requested political asylum in Italy as head of the Kurdish liberation movement and should be allowed to remain in a democratic country. He must not be extradited to Turkey.'' Greece's Communist party and a small leftist opposition party called on the government to exercise its influence on Italy to keep Ocalan there. The move was also supported by a number of parliamentary deputies from the governing Socialist party. Earlier this month, a bloc of 109 lawmakers in the 300-member parliament issued an invitation for Ocalan to visit Greece. ||||| Turkish authorities negotiated with an imprisoned mob leader for a second day Monday to secure the release of an Italian inmate held hostage to pressure Italy into extraditing a Kurdish rebel leader, a prosecutor said. The Italian, Mario Calascibetta, was taken hostage Sunday by a group of inmates affiliated with mob leader Yasar Oz, to push for the return to Turkey of rebel leader Abdullah Ocalan, Turkey's most-wanted man. Ocalan is currently being held in Rome. Calascibetta, imprisoned in Istanbul's Metris jail since his detention in August, was due to be handed over to Swiss police Monday. He is wanted for questioning in Switzerland in connection with a killing. Turkey's Anatolia news agency said Oz was determined not to free his hostage until Italy agreed to Turkey's demand to send back Ocalan who is Turkey's most wanted man. ``He is not in any life threatening danger. We are not alarmed for his safety,'' said prosecutor Celil Demircioglu. ``The negotiations are continuing, we believe he will be freed very soon.'' Demircioglu said Calascibetta's extradition would now be delayed by a few days. He denied Turkish press reports that the Italian was being held at gun point. Oz is currently on trial on drugs-related charges. The mob has often supported right-wing parties and ultranationalist causes. At a time when the state is under pressure to crack down on the mob, it seemed convenient for Oz to show he was backing the government's cause. ||||| Facing his first real foreign policy test, Prime Minister Massimo D'Alema must decide what to do with a prominent Kurdish rebel leader who was arrested at the Rome airport on Thursday. Turkey wants Italy to extradite the rebel, Abdullah Ocalan, leader of the Kurdistan Workers' Party, which is seeking Kurdish autonomy in southeastern Turkey. He is viewed in Turkey as a terrorist. Germany also has a warrant out for his arrest on homicide charges. But D'Alema, a former Communist who was appointed prime minister last month, is under pressure from leftists in his coalition to offer Ocalan political asylum. In a news conference Monday, D'Alema recognized the extent of the problem. ``The last thing we wanted was an awkward and complicated situation like this one,'' he said. He noted that Italian law prohibits extradition of suspects to countries that have the death penalty. Turkey has capital punishment, though it says it will soon abolish it. Ocalan is being tried in absentia there on charges that could bring the death penalty. D'Alema said a committee in the Interior Ministry would determine whether Ocalan would qualify for political asylum, which would be possible if Ocalan's promise to renounce terrorism, issued Monday, holds up. ``We do not want someone who organizes terrorism in Italy,'' D'Alema said. ``This is an opportunity to find an exit from a bloody conflict.'' Earlier Monday, while members of D'Alema's government met with Turkish officials who were in Rome for a European ministerial meeting, thousands of Kurds flooded into Rome to hold a demonstration and hunger strike in support of Ocalan. D'Alema's decision was further complicated on Sunday when Turkish inmates in a prison in Istanbul took an Italian prisoner hostage, saying they would release him only after Italy extradited Ocalan. Monday, D'Alema said he would not bow to pressure. ||||| Turkey stepped up the pressure on Italy for the extradition of captured Kurdish rebel leader Abdullah Ocalan, warning Sunday that granting him asylum would amount to ``opening doors to terrorism.'' In Rome, 1,500 Kurds massed for a second day of demonstrations outside the military hospital where Ocalan is believed to be held. Kurds arrived from Germany and France to show solidarity with the rebel leader and a Kurdish group stopped at Rome's airport launched a hunger strike. If Italy sends the Kurd leader back to Turkey, ``he'll be tortured for certain,'' said Dino Frisullo, an Italian supporter among the singing, chanting Kurds outside the military hospital. ``And very possibly he'll be killed.'' Ocalan was arrested at the Rome airport on Thursday as soon as he stepped off a plane from Moscow, where he had sought asylum after recently fleeing his hideout in Syria. He leads the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party, PKK, which has been fighting for Kurdish autonomy in southeastern Turkey since 1984. The conflict has killed nearly 37,000 people. Turkey considers Ocalan a terrorist and its most-wanted criminal. ``If Western European nations open their arms (to the rebels) they will be taking on this great terrorism problem,'' Deputy Premier Bulent Ecevit told reporters in Ankara. ``If Italy continues to show the tolerance it showed yesterday it will be opening its doors to terrorism,'' Ecevit added, referring to Italy's handling of brawls that broke out among the Kurdish demonstrators in Rome on Saturday. The protests were peaceful Sunday. Ocalan faces the death penalty in Turkey, a fact that has heightened opposition in Italy to his extradition. Although there have been no executions in Turkey since 1984, Italy has consistently refused to extradite anyone if there were even a risk of capital punishment. Foreign Minister Ismail Cem left for Rome on Sunday to attend a meeting of European defense and foreign ministers. Before leaving, he criticized an Italian Justice Ministry official, who reportedly said Turkey's extradition request would be refused. ``To announce the results of an extradition trial that has not yet even begun does not go hand in hand with justice,'' Cem told reporters. He said he would tell Italian Foreign Minister Lamberto Dini ``that we expect a serious and fair approach.'' Ocalan, a political science dropout from Ankara University, founded the Marxist-inspired PKK in 1978. He turned the group toward armed struggle in 1984, finding wide support among poor Kurds in the underdeveloped southeast. The Turkish army claims to have all but wiped out the PKK within Turkey but the rebels have havens in Iran, Syria, and Iraq and the fighting continues. ||||| A Kurdish rebel group fighting for autonomy in Turkey's southeast faces an uncertain future following the detention in Rome of its founder and leader. Italian authorities captured Abdullah Ocalan at Rome's international airport Thursday. Turkey has asked for his extradition and Ocalan has asked for political asylum. Some believe that without Ocalan, who ruled some 10,000 loyal rebels with an iron fist, his Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, will be left in disarray. ``If the head is dethroned, the rebellion gets a mortal blow,'' said Cengiz Candar who has been following the Kurdish insurgency for daily Sabah. But Ocalan has been absent from the battlefield for at least a month, and others contend that the PKK is capable of operating without him. ``Let us not fall into false expectations that this will be the end of the PKK. The PKK has already been acting like a headless monster for too long,'' said Ilnur Cevik of the English-language Turkish Daily News. Turkish newspapers have carried frequent reports of power struggles within the PKK and said that Ocalan's grip on the PKK was beginning to waver. Better known as Apo, Ocalan founded the Kurdistan Workers Party, PKK, in 1978. The movement turned to armed struggle in 1984, mainly focusing on guerrilla-style warfare in the southeast, but also carrying out bomb attacks on civilians in western Turkey. Close to 37,000 people died in the conflict. His presence in Europe could also be a blessing in disguise for the group, forcing the PKK to transform itself from a rebel army into a political movement. Ocalan seemed to be moving in this direction before his detention. While living in Damacus, he increased his meetings with European deputies. This may be the PKK's best option. The Turkish military claims it has made important battlefield gains and captured the PKK's second-in-command this year. The rebels also seem to have lost the support of Syria, which appears to have forced Ocalan to leave after Turkey threatened to attack it. Two Iraqi Kurdish groups controlling Turkey's border with Iraq have also grown lukewarm. The PKK has used their bases in Syria and Iraq to wage cross-border operations. ``The PKK had two options. Either they choose to fight until they get control of the area, regardless of what image they project abroad, or they try to take on a political image. I believe (Ocalan) wanted to leave the Middle East so he could become a political figure,'' said Hikmet Tavak, managing director of the London-based Kurdish television, MED-TV. In Rome, spokesmen for the PKK said Ocalan had carefully selected Italy because he felt there was sympathy there for his cause. They also said Italian authorities were warned that Ocalan would be arriving. There is a fair amount of sympathy for the Kurds in Europe, and if the movement gains political momentum, Turkey could come under more pressure from its western allies to grant the Kurds minority rights. There are an estimated 8 to 15 million Kurds in Turkey. They are not recognized as an official minority and barred from using Kurdish in education or broadcasting. Kurdish politicians have been jailed and groups banned on charges of supporting the PKK. ||||| Thousands of Kurds living in Romania closed down restaurants, shops and companies to protest the arrest of leader Abdullah Ocalan by Italian authorities, a newspaper reported Tuesday. Kurdish business leaders said the one-day shutdown Monday cost their 1,000 businesses some dlrs 700,000, daily Evenimentul Zilei reported. There are some 4,000 Kurds living in Romania. Kurdish students cut classes and workers didn't go to work. Some 41 Kurds declared a hunger strike Monday to protest Ocalan's detention. The protesters have refused any medical assistance from Romanian authorities, relying on the services of two Kurdish doctors, the paper reported. ``We are not terrorists, as we are considered by the Turkish state and its friends,'' said Aihan Dogan, a Kurdish leader. The detention in Italy of Kurdish rebel leader Ocalan prompted widespread protests by Kurds throughout Europe. Turkey has asked for Ocalan to be returned to Turkey. ||||| INNSBRUCK, Austria (AP) -- Italian authorities have turned back at least 136 people along the Austro-Italian border during an immigration crackdown prompted by the arrest of Kurdish leader Abdullah Ocalan, Austrian officials said Monday. Most of those sent back since the crackdown began Saturday were refused entry into Italy because they had no visas or residence permits, the Austrians said. On Monday alone, about 70 people were refused entry at the Brenner Pass crossing point. They included Pakistanis, Indians, Yugoslavs and Chinese as well as Kurds, the Austrians said. The border crackdown appeared designed to prevent large numbers of Kurds living in Western Europe from flocking to Rome for protests in connection with Ocalan's arrest. Turkey has asked for Ocalan's extradition. Austrian authorities said many of those turned back had come from Germany. A Red Cross station was set up at the border to assist those turned away to return to Germany if their residence permits were in order. Those without proper papers were detained by Austrian immigration. ||||| Turkey stepped up pressure on Italy for the extradition of captured Kurdish rebel leader Abdullah Ocalan, saying Sunday that granting him asylum would amount to ``opening doors to terrorism.'' Kurds in Italy, Germany, Austria and Romania launched protests and hunger strikes in fervent shows of solidarity with the rebel leader. Kurds came to Rome by bus and car from across Western Europe for a 1,500-strong protest outside the military hospital where Ocalan is believed held under tight security. If Italy sends Ocalan back to Turkey, ``he'll be tortured for certain,'' said Dino Frisullo, an Italian supporter among the singing, chanting Kurds outside the military hospital. ``And very possibly he'll be killed.'' Ocalan was arrested Thursday at the Rome airport as soon as he stepped off a plane from Moscow, where he had sought asylum after fleeing his hideout in Syria. He leads the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party, PKK, which has been fighting for Kurdish autonomy in southeastern Turkey since 1984. The conflict has killed nearly 37,000 people. To Turkey, Ocalan is the nation's most-wanted criminal. ``If Western European nations open their arms (to the rebels) they will be taking on this great terrorism problem,'' Deputy Premier Bulent Ecevit told reporters in Ankara. ``If Italy continues to show the tolerance it showed yesterday, it will be opening its doors to terrorism,'' Ecevit added, referring to Italy's handling of brawls that broke out during the first day of protests Saturday outside the Rome military hospital. The protest in Rome was peaceful Sunday. Elsewhere in Europe, dozens of Kurds protested in Bucharest until chased away by police; 1,000 Kurds rallied in Bonn, some waving pictures of the Kurd leader; and 100 Kurds in Vienna set up tents outside Parliament and declared a hunger strike. In Turkey, four Kurdish prison inmates were in critical condition after setting themselves on fire to protest Ocalan's arrest, the independent Human Rights Association said. Ocalan faces the death penalty in Turkey, a fact that has heightened opposition in Italy to his extradition. Although there have been no executions in Turkey since 1984, Italy has consistently refused to extradite anyone if there were even a risk of capital punishment. Foreign Minister Ismail Cem left for Rome on Sunday to attend a meeting of European defense and foreign ministers, saying he would tell Italian Foreign Minister Lamberto Dini that ``we expect a serious and fair approach.'' He criticized an Italian Justice Ministry official, who reportedly said Italy would deny Turkey's extradition request. ``To announce the results of an extradition trial that has not yet even begun does not go hand in hand with justice,'' Cem told reporters before departing. Turkish Defense Minister Ismet Sezgin indicated to reporters in Rome that Italian companies could be shut out of Turkey's billions of dollars of defense contracts if it fails to turn over the Kurd. In Italy, Dini told reporters in the city of Trento that the government would decide Ocalan's request for asylum in a ``clear and responsible manner.'' It was up for the courts to decide Turkey's extradition request, as well as an expected one from Germany, he said. In Istanbul, Turkish inmates at a prison took an Italian prisoner hostage to increase pressure for Ocalan's extradition. Metris prison officials said the jail director was talking to the inmate captors. Ocalan founded the Marxist-inspired PKK in 1978. He turned the group toward armed struggle in 1984, finding wide support among poor Kurds in the underdeveloped southeast. The Turkish army claims to have all but wiped out the PKK within Turkey but the rebels have havens in Iran, Syria, and Iraq and the fighting continues. ||||| About 1,000 policemen were assigned to protect Turkish President Suleyman Demirel, who arrived Tuesday on a three-day official visit. President Thomas Klestil's invitation for the visit was issued to take place during Austria's European Union presidency. Austrian government officials reportedly will try to open up a ``longer-term perspective'' for Turkey's EU membership. A related topic certain to come up is Cyprus, among six countries with whom the European Union started formal membership talks on Nov. 10. In a rare joint statement, the Netherlands, Germany and France said the inability of Greek and Turkish Cypriots to reconcile their differences weighed heavily on their island's membership chances. They spoke of ``fundamental problems'' in the Cyprus negotiating process, adding ``a political solution is urgently required.'' Austrian police took special measures to ensure the safety of the Turkish visitor. ``The political situation requires comprehensive security measures,'' the Austria Press Agency quoted Walter Zehetmayr, a senior police officer, as saying. The extra effort was prompted by the arrest last week in Rome of Abdullah Ocalan, the chief of the Turkish Workers Party PKK, Zehetmayr said. He hinted that he expects large protests of Turkish groups in Vienna. Demirel, who was accompanied by five Cabinet members and a large trade delegation, is the first head of state of the Turkish Republic to visit Austria, APA said. Following his talks with Klestil and a luncheon in the president's residence, Demirel was scheduled to meet Parliament president Heinz Fischer and other senior officials. He was also to deliver a speech to the Foreign Policy Society later Tuesday. ||||| About 1,500 Kurds who spent the night outside a military hospital where Kurdish rebel leader Abdullah Ocalan is believed held continued their hunger strike Monday to protest his detention. Kurds from across Western Europe have been streaming into Rome to show their support for Ocalan (pronounced Oh-jah-lan), who was arrested Thursday when he stepped off a plane from Moscow. He had been seeking political asylum in Russia after fleeing his hideout in Syria. He has, 3rd graf

The leader of the Kurdish rebel group fighting for autonomy in southeast Turkey, Abdullah Ocalan, was arrested at Rome's international airport on Thursday. The arrest set off a wave of protests throughout Europe as Kurdish groups in Italy, Romania, Germany, Austria rallied in support of Ocalan. The support ranged from a one-day shutdown of business in Romania to a hunger strike in Rome. In Turkey, Kurdish inmates took an Italian prisoner hostage in an effort to get Italy to extradite Ocalan. Italy's leftist Prime Minister was being pressured to grant Ocalan asylum.

Greek media and officials leveled strong opposition Sunday to the possible extradition of Abdullah Ocalan, the arrested Kurdish guerrilla leader, to Greece's traditional rival Turkey. Ocalan, whose Kurdistan Workers Party has waged a 14-year war with Turkey for autonomy in southeastern Turkey, is in prison custody in Rome where his arrest was announced Friday. ``We do not give advise to other countries,'' said parliament speaker Apostolos Kaklamanis. ``Europe has a tradition of civilization and human rights and I think as a rule it abides by that tradition.'' Greece has not officially responded to Ocalan's arrest, which was welcomed by the United States. But Greek government officials have stressed support for Kurdish self-determination. ``We have repeatedly brought attention to the problems created by the blatant violation of human rights in southeast Turkey,'' government spokesman Dimitris Reppas said late Saturday. In the past, Greece has accused Ankara of waging a campaign of ``genocide'' against its Kurdish population. Ankara counters that Greece is harboring PKK ``terrorists.'' Both sides angrily deny the charges. Thousands of Kurdish refugees from northern Iraq and Turkey have sought refuge in Greece. A group of more than 100 Kurds began a three-day fast in a downtown Athens square Saturday in support of Ocalan. Within hours of the PKK leader's arrest, Turkey requested his extradition to face a number of terrorism-related charges, which could carry the death penalty. ``Italy knows what the fate of the Kurdish rebel will be if he falls into the hands of the Turkish military regime,'' said an editorial Saturday in the Greek daily Eleftherotypia. ``Ocalan has requested political asylum in Italy as head of the Kurdish liberation movement and should be allowed to remain in a democratic country. He must not be extradited to Turkey.'' Greece's Communist party and a small leftist opposition party called on the government to exercise its influence on Italy to keep Ocalan there. The move was also supported by a number of parliamentary deputies from the governing Socialist party. Earlier this month, a bloc of 109 lawmakers in the 300-member parliament issued an invitation for Ocalan to visit Greece. ||||| Turkish authorities negotiated with an imprisoned mob leader for a second day Monday to secure the release of an Italian inmate held hostage to pressure Italy into extraditing a Kurdish rebel leader, a prosecutor said. The Italian, Mario Calascibetta, was taken hostage Sunday by a group of inmates affiliated with mob leader Yasar Oz, to push for the return to Turkey of rebel leader Abdullah Ocalan, Turkey's most-wanted man. Ocalan is currently being held in Rome. Calascibetta, imprisoned in Istanbul's Metris jail since his detention in August, was due to be handed over to Swiss police Monday. He is wanted for questioning in Switzerland in connection with a killing. Turkey's Anatolia news agency said Oz was determined not to free his hostage until Italy agreed to Turkey's demand to send back Ocalan who is Turkey's most wanted man. ``He is not in any life threatening danger. We are not alarmed for his safety,'' said prosecutor Celil Demircioglu. ``The negotiations are continuing, we believe he will be freed very soon.'' Demircioglu said Calascibetta's extradition would now be delayed by a few days. He denied Turkish press reports that the Italian was being held at gun point. Oz is currently on trial on drugs-related charges. The mob has often supported right-wing parties and ultranationalist causes. At a time when the state is under pressure to crack down on the mob, it seemed convenient for Oz to show he was backing the government's cause. ||||| Facing his first real foreign policy test, Prime Minister Massimo D'Alema must decide what to do with a prominent Kurdish rebel leader who was arrested at the Rome airport on Thursday. Turkey wants Italy to extradite the rebel, Abdullah Ocalan, leader of the Kurdistan Workers' Party, which is seeking Kurdish autonomy in southeastern Turkey. He is viewed in Turkey as a terrorist. Germany also has a warrant out for his arrest on homicide charges. But D'Alema, a former Communist who was appointed prime minister last month, is under pressure from leftists in his coalition to offer Ocalan political asylum. In a news conference Monday, D'Alema recognized the extent of the problem. ``The last thing we wanted was an awkward and complicated situation like this one,'' he said. He noted that Italian law prohibits extradition of suspects to countries that have the death penalty. Turkey has capital punishment, though it says it will soon abolish it. Ocalan is being tried in absentia there on charges that could bring the death penalty. D'Alema said a committee in the Interior Ministry would determine whether Ocalan would qualify for political asylum, which would be possible if Ocalan's promise to renounce terrorism, issued Monday, holds up. ``We do not want someone who organizes terrorism in Italy,'' D'Alema said. ``This is an opportunity to find an exit from a bloody conflict.'' Earlier Monday, while members of D'Alema's government met with Turkish officials who were in Rome for a European ministerial meeting, thousands of Kurds flooded into Rome to hold a demonstration and hunger strike in support of Ocalan. D'Alema's decision was further complicated on Sunday when Turkish inmates in a prison in Istanbul took an Italian prisoner hostage, saying they would release him only after Italy extradited Ocalan. Monday, D'Alema said he would not bow to pressure. ||||| Turkey stepped up the pressure on Italy for the extradition of captured Kurdish rebel leader Abdullah Ocalan, warning Sunday that granting him asylum would amount to ``opening doors to terrorism.'' In Rome, 1,500 Kurds massed for a second day of demonstrations outside the military hospital where Ocalan is believed to be held. Kurds arrived from Germany and France to show solidarity with the rebel leader and a Kurdish group stopped at Rome's airport launched a hunger strike. If Italy sends the Kurd leader back to Turkey, ``he'll be tortured for certain,'' said Dino Frisullo, an Italian supporter among the singing, chanting Kurds outside the military hospital. ``And very possibly he'll be killed.'' Ocalan was arrested at the Rome airport on Thursday as soon as he stepped off a plane from Moscow, where he had sought asylum after recently fleeing his hideout in Syria. He leads the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party, PKK, which has been fighting for Kurdish autonomy in southeastern Turkey since 1984. The conflict has killed nearly 37,000 people. Turkey considers Ocalan a terrorist and its most-wanted criminal. ``If Western European nations open their arms (to the rebels) they will be taking on this great terrorism problem,'' Deputy Premier Bulent Ecevit told reporters in Ankara. ``If Italy continues to show the tolerance it showed yesterday it will be opening its doors to terrorism,'' Ecevit added, referring to Italy's handling of brawls that broke out among the Kurdish demonstrators in Rome on Saturday. The protests were peaceful Sunday. Ocalan faces the death penalty in Turkey, a fact that has heightened opposition in Italy to his extradition. Although there have been no executions in Turkey since 1984, Italy has consistently refused to extradite anyone if there were even a risk of capital punishment. Foreign Minister Ismail Cem left for Rome on Sunday to attend a meeting of European defense and foreign ministers. Before leaving, he criticized an Italian Justice Ministry official, who reportedly said Turkey's extradition request would be refused. ``To announce the results of an extradition trial that has not yet even begun does not go hand in hand with justice,'' Cem told reporters. He said he would tell Italian Foreign Minister Lamberto Dini ``that we expect a serious and fair approach.'' Ocalan, a political science dropout from Ankara University, founded the Marxist-inspired PKK in 1978. He turned the group toward armed struggle in 1984, finding wide support among poor Kurds in the underdeveloped southeast. The Turkish army claims to have all but wiped out the PKK within Turkey but the rebels have havens in Iran, Syria, and Iraq and the fighting continues. ||||| A Kurdish rebel group fighting for autonomy in Turkey's southeast faces an uncertain future following the detention in Rome of its founder and leader. Italian authorities captured Abdullah Ocalan at Rome's international airport Thursday. Turkey has asked for his extradition and Ocalan has asked for political asylum. Some believe that without Ocalan, who ruled some 10,000 loyal rebels with an iron fist, his Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, will be left in disarray. ``If the head is dethroned, the rebellion gets a mortal blow,'' said Cengiz Candar who has been following the Kurdish insurgency for daily Sabah. But Ocalan has been absent from the battlefield for at least a month, and others contend that the PKK is capable of operating without him. ``Let us not fall into false expectations that this will be the end of the PKK. The PKK has already been acting like a headless monster for too long,'' said Ilnur Cevik of the English-language Turkish Daily News. Turkish newspapers have carried frequent reports of power struggles within the PKK and said that Ocalan's grip on the PKK was beginning to waver. Better known as Apo, Ocalan founded the Kurdistan Workers Party, PKK, in 1978. The movement turned to armed struggle in 1984, mainly focusing on guerrilla-style warfare in the southeast, but also carrying out bomb attacks on civilians in western Turkey. Close to 37,000 people died in the conflict. His presence in Europe could also be a blessing in disguise for the group, forcing the PKK to transform itself from a rebel army into a political movement. Ocalan seemed to be moving in this direction before his detention. While living in Damacus, he increased his meetings with European deputies. This may be the PKK's best option. The Turkish military claims it has made important battlefield gains and captured the PKK's second-in-command this year. The rebels also seem to have lost the support of Syria, which appears to have forced Ocalan to leave after Turkey threatened to attack it. Two Iraqi Kurdish groups controlling Turkey's border with Iraq have also grown lukewarm. The PKK has used their bases in Syria and Iraq to wage cross-border operations. ``The PKK had two options. Either they choose to fight until they get control of the area, regardless of what image they project abroad, or they try to take on a political image. I believe (Ocalan) wanted to leave the Middle East so he could become a political figure,'' said Hikmet Tavak, managing director of the London-based Kurdish television, MED-TV. In Rome, spokesmen for the PKK said Ocalan had carefully selected Italy because he felt there was sympathy there for his cause. They also said Italian authorities were warned that Ocalan would be arriving. There is a fair amount of sympathy for the Kurds in Europe, and if the movement gains political momentum, Turkey could come under more pressure from its western allies to grant the Kurds minority rights. There are an estimated 8 to 15 million Kurds in Turkey. They are not recognized as an official minority and barred from using Kurdish in education or broadcasting. Kurdish politicians have been jailed and groups banned on charges of supporting the PKK. ||||| Thousands of Kurds living in Romania closed down restaurants, shops and companies to protest the arrest of leader Abdullah Ocalan by Italian authorities, a newspaper reported Tuesday. Kurdish business leaders said the one-day shutdown Monday cost their 1,000 businesses some dlrs 700,000, daily Evenimentul Zilei reported. There are some 4,000 Kurds living in Romania. Kurdish students cut classes and workers didn't go to work. Some 41 Kurds declared a hunger strike Monday to protest Ocalan's detention. The protesters have refused any medical assistance from Romanian authorities, relying on the services of two Kurdish doctors, the paper reported. ``We are not terrorists, as we are considered by the Turkish state and its friends,'' said Aihan Dogan, a Kurdish leader. The detention in Italy of Kurdish rebel leader Ocalan prompted widespread protests by Kurds throughout Europe. Turkey has asked for Ocalan to be returned to Turkey. ||||| INNSBRUCK, Austria (AP) -- Italian authorities have turned back at least 136 people along the Austro-Italian border during an immigration crackdown prompted by the arrest of Kurdish leader Abdullah Ocalan, Austrian officials said Monday. Most of those sent back since the crackdown began Saturday were refused entry into Italy because they had no visas or residence permits, the Austrians said. On Monday alone, about 70 people were refused entry at the Brenner Pass crossing point. They included Pakistanis, Indians, Yugoslavs and Chinese as well as Kurds, the Austrians said. The border crackdown appeared designed to prevent large numbers of Kurds living in Western Europe from flocking to Rome for protests in connection with Ocalan's arrest. Turkey has asked for Ocalan's extradition. Austrian authorities said many of those turned back had come from Germany. A Red Cross station was set up at the border to assist those turned away to return to Germany if their residence permits were in order. Those without proper papers were detained by Austrian immigration. ||||| Turkey stepped up pressure on Italy for the extradition of captured Kurdish rebel leader Abdullah Ocalan, saying Sunday that granting him asylum would amount to ``opening doors to terrorism.'' Kurds in Italy, Germany, Austria and Romania launched protests and hunger strikes in fervent shows of solidarity with the rebel leader. Kurds came to Rome by bus and car from across Western Europe for a 1,500-strong protest outside the military hospital where Ocalan is believed held under tight security. If Italy sends Ocalan back to Turkey, ``he'll be tortured for certain,'' said Dino Frisullo, an Italian supporter among the singing, chanting Kurds outside the military hospital. ``And very possibly he'll be killed.'' Ocalan was arrested Thursday at the Rome airport as soon as he stepped off a plane from Moscow, where he had sought asylum after fleeing his hideout in Syria. He leads the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party, PKK, which has been fighting for Kurdish autonomy in southeastern Turkey since 1984. The conflict has killed nearly 37,000 people. To Turkey, Ocalan is the nation's most-wanted criminal. ``If Western European nations open their arms (to the rebels) they will be taking on this great terrorism problem,'' Deputy Premier Bulent Ecevit told reporters in Ankara. ``If Italy continues to show the tolerance it showed yesterday, it will be opening its doors to terrorism,'' Ecevit added, referring to Italy's handling of brawls that broke out during the first day of protests Saturday outside the Rome military hospital. The protest in Rome was peaceful Sunday. Elsewhere in Europe, dozens of Kurds protested in Bucharest until chased away by police; 1,000 Kurds rallied in Bonn, some waving pictures of the Kurd leader; and 100 Kurds in Vienna set up tents outside Parliament and declared a hunger strike. In Turkey, four Kurdish prison inmates were in critical condition after setting themselves on fire to protest Ocalan's arrest, the independent Human Rights Association said. Ocalan faces the death penalty in Turkey, a fact that has heightened opposition in Italy to his extradition. Although there have been no executions in Turkey since 1984, Italy has consistently refused to extradite anyone if there were even a risk of capital punishment. Foreign Minister Ismail Cem left for Rome on Sunday to attend a meeting of European defense and foreign ministers, saying he would tell Italian Foreign Minister Lamberto Dini that ``we expect a serious and fair approach.'' He criticized an Italian Justice Ministry official, who reportedly said Italy would deny Turkey's extradition request. ``To announce the results of an extradition trial that has not yet even begun does not go hand in hand with justice,'' Cem told reporters before departing. Turkish Defense Minister Ismet Sezgin indicated to reporters in Rome that Italian companies could be shut out of Turkey's billions of dollars of defense contracts if it fails to turn over the Kurd. In Italy, Dini told reporters in the city of Trento that the government would decide Ocalan's request for asylum in a ``clear and responsible manner.'' It was up for the courts to decide Turkey's extradition request, as well as an expected one from Germany, he said. In Istanbul, Turkish inmates at a prison took an Italian prisoner hostage to increase pressure for Ocalan's extradition. Metris prison officials said the jail director was talking to the inmate captors. Ocalan founded the Marxist-inspired PKK in 1978. He turned the group toward armed struggle in 1984, finding wide support among poor Kurds in the underdeveloped southeast. The Turkish army claims to have all but wiped out the PKK within Turkey but the rebels have havens in Iran, Syria, and Iraq and the fighting continues. ||||| About 1,000 policemen were assigned to protect Turkish President Suleyman Demirel, who arrived Tuesday on a three-day official visit. President Thomas Klestil's invitation for the visit was issued to take place during Austria's European Union presidency. Austrian government officials reportedly will try to open up a ``longer-term perspective'' for Turkey's EU membership. A related topic certain to come up is Cyprus, among six countries with whom the European Union started formal membership talks on Nov. 10. In a rare joint statement, the Netherlands, Germany and France said the inability of Greek and Turkish Cypriots to reconcile their differences weighed heavily on their island's membership chances. They spoke of ``fundamental problems'' in the Cyprus negotiating process, adding ``a political solution is urgently required.'' Austrian police took special measures to ensure the safety of the Turkish visitor. ``The political situation requires comprehensive security measures,'' the Austria Press Agency quoted Walter Zehetmayr, a senior police officer, as saying. The extra effort was prompted by the arrest last week in Rome of Abdullah Ocalan, the chief of the Turkish Workers Party PKK, Zehetmayr said. He hinted that he expects large protests of Turkish groups in Vienna. Demirel, who was accompanied by five Cabinet members and a large trade delegation, is the first head of state of the Turkish Republic to visit Austria, APA said. Following his talks with Klestil and a luncheon in the president's residence, Demirel was scheduled to meet Parliament president Heinz Fischer and other senior officials. He was also to deliver a speech to the Foreign Policy Society later Tuesday. ||||| About 1,500 Kurds who spent the night outside a military hospital where Kurdish rebel leader Abdullah Ocalan is believed held continued their hunger strike Monday to protest his detention. Kurds from across Western Europe have been streaming into Rome to show their support for Ocalan (pronounced Oh-jah-lan), who was arrested Thursday when he stepped off a plane from Moscow. He had been seeking political asylum in Russia after fleeing his hideout in Syria. He has, 3rd graf

An international incident resulted after the arrest in Rome of Abdullah Ocalan, the leader of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK). An armed struggle has ensued since the PKK was formed in 1978, and nearly 37,000 died. Turkey wants Ocalan extradited but Italy is reluctant since Turkey still has the death penalty. Kurds from all over Europe have come to Rome, or at least tried to, to protest Ocalan's detention and to urge asylum for him. Turkey has said countries bordering eastern Turkey have harbored Kurdish rebels and Greece has voiced support for the Kurds. Prisoners in Turkey held an Italian inmate hostage in hope of forcing Italy to extradite Ocalan.

Greek media and officials leveled strong opposition Sunday to the possible extradition of Abdullah Ocalan, the arrested Kurdish guerrilla leader, to Greece's traditional rival Turkey. Ocalan, whose Kurdistan Workers Party has waged a 14-year war with Turkey for autonomy in southeastern Turkey, is in prison custody in Rome where his arrest was announced Friday. ``We do not give advise to other countries,'' said parliament speaker Apostolos Kaklamanis. ``Europe has a tradition of civilization and human rights and I think as a rule it abides by that tradition.'' Greece has not officially responded to Ocalan's arrest, which was welcomed by the United States. But Greek government officials have stressed support for Kurdish self-determination. ``We have repeatedly brought attention to the problems created by the blatant violation of human rights in southeast Turkey,'' government spokesman Dimitris Reppas said late Saturday. In the past, Greece has accused Ankara of waging a campaign of ``genocide'' against its Kurdish population. Ankara counters that Greece is harboring PKK ``terrorists.'' Both sides angrily deny the charges. Thousands of Kurdish refugees from northern Iraq and Turkey have sought refuge in Greece. A group of more than 100 Kurds began a three-day fast in a downtown Athens square Saturday in support of Ocalan. Within hours of the PKK leader's arrest, Turkey requested his extradition to face a number of terrorism-related charges, which could carry the death penalty. ``Italy knows what the fate of the Kurdish rebel will be if he falls into the hands of the Turkish military regime,'' said an editorial Saturday in the Greek daily Eleftherotypia. ``Ocalan has requested political asylum in Italy as head of the Kurdish liberation movement and should be allowed to remain in a democratic country. He must not be extradited to Turkey.'' Greece's Communist party and a small leftist opposition party called on the government to exercise its influence on Italy to keep Ocalan there. The move was also supported by a number of parliamentary deputies from the governing Socialist party. Earlier this month, a bloc of 109 lawmakers in the 300-member parliament issued an invitation for Ocalan to visit Greece. ||||| Turkish authorities negotiated with an imprisoned mob leader for a second day Monday to secure the release of an Italian inmate held hostage to pressure Italy into extraditing a Kurdish rebel leader, a prosecutor said. The Italian, Mario Calascibetta, was taken hostage Sunday by a group of inmates affiliated with mob leader Yasar Oz, to push for the return to Turkey of rebel leader Abdullah Ocalan, Turkey's most-wanted man. Ocalan is currently being held in Rome. Calascibetta, imprisoned in Istanbul's Metris jail since his detention in August, was due to be handed over to Swiss police Monday. He is wanted for questioning in Switzerland in connection with a killing. Turkey's Anatolia news agency said Oz was determined not to free his hostage until Italy agreed to Turkey's demand to send back Ocalan who is Turkey's most wanted man. ``He is not in any life threatening danger. We are not alarmed for his safety,'' said prosecutor Celil Demircioglu. ``The negotiations are continuing, we believe he will be freed very soon.'' Demircioglu said Calascibetta's extradition would now be delayed by a few days. He denied Turkish press reports that the Italian was being held at gun point. Oz is currently on trial on drugs-related charges. The mob has often supported right-wing parties and ultranationalist causes. At a time when the state is under pressure to crack down on the mob, it seemed convenient for Oz to show he was backing the government's cause. ||||| Facing his first real foreign policy test, Prime Minister Massimo D'Alema must decide what to do with a prominent Kurdish rebel leader who was arrested at the Rome airport on Thursday. Turkey wants Italy to extradite the rebel, Abdullah Ocalan, leader of the Kurdistan Workers' Party, which is seeking Kurdish autonomy in southeastern Turkey. He is viewed in Turkey as a terrorist. Germany also has a warrant out for his arrest on homicide charges. But D'Alema, a former Communist who was appointed prime minister last month, is under pressure from leftists in his coalition to offer Ocalan political asylum. In a news conference Monday, D'Alema recognized the extent of the problem. ``The last thing we wanted was an awkward and complicated situation like this one,'' he said. He noted that Italian law prohibits extradition of suspects to countries that have the death penalty. Turkey has capital punishment, though it says it will soon abolish it. Ocalan is being tried in absentia there on charges that could bring the death penalty. D'Alema said a committee in the Interior Ministry would determine whether Ocalan would qualify for political asylum, which would be possible if Ocalan's promise to renounce terrorism, issued Monday, holds up. ``We do not want someone who organizes terrorism in Italy,'' D'Alema said. ``This is an opportunity to find an exit from a bloody conflict.'' Earlier Monday, while members of D'Alema's government met with Turkish officials who were in Rome for a European ministerial meeting, thousands of Kurds flooded into Rome to hold a demonstration and hunger strike in support of Ocalan. D'Alema's decision was further complicated on Sunday when Turkish inmates in a prison in Istanbul took an Italian prisoner hostage, saying they would release him only after Italy extradited Ocalan. Monday, D'Alema said he would not bow to pressure. ||||| Turkey stepped up the pressure on Italy for the extradition of captured Kurdish rebel leader Abdullah Ocalan, warning Sunday that granting him asylum would amount to ``opening doors to terrorism.'' In Rome, 1,500 Kurds massed for a second day of demonstrations outside the military hospital where Ocalan is believed to be held. Kurds arrived from Germany and France to show solidarity with the rebel leader and a Kurdish group stopped at Rome's airport launched a hunger strike. If Italy sends the Kurd leader back to Turkey, ``he'll be tortured for certain,'' said Dino Frisullo, an Italian supporter among the singing, chanting Kurds outside the military hospital. ``And very possibly he'll be killed.'' Ocalan was arrested at the Rome airport on Thursday as soon as he stepped off a plane from Moscow, where he had sought asylum after recently fleeing his hideout in Syria. He leads the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party, PKK, which has been fighting for Kurdish autonomy in southeastern Turkey since 1984. The conflict has killed nearly 37,000 people. Turkey considers Ocalan a terrorist and its most-wanted criminal. ``If Western European nations open their arms (to the rebels) they will be taking on this great terrorism problem,'' Deputy Premier Bulent Ecevit told reporters in Ankara. ``If Italy continues to show the tolerance it showed yesterday it will be opening its doors to terrorism,'' Ecevit added, referring to Italy's handling of brawls that broke out among the Kurdish demonstrators in Rome on Saturday. The protests were peaceful Sunday. Ocalan faces the death penalty in Turkey, a fact that has heightened opposition in Italy to his extradition. Although there have been no executions in Turkey since 1984, Italy has consistently refused to extradite anyone if there were even a risk of capital punishment. Foreign Minister Ismail Cem left for Rome on Sunday to attend a meeting of European defense and foreign ministers. Before leaving, he criticized an Italian Justice Ministry official, who reportedly said Turkey's extradition request would be refused. ``To announce the results of an extradition trial that has not yet even begun does not go hand in hand with justice,'' Cem told reporters. He said he would tell Italian Foreign Minister Lamberto Dini ``that we expect a serious and fair approach.'' Ocalan, a political science dropout from Ankara University, founded the Marxist-inspired PKK in 1978. He turned the group toward armed struggle in 1984, finding wide support among poor Kurds in the underdeveloped southeast. The Turkish army claims to have all but wiped out the PKK within Turkey but the rebels have havens in Iran, Syria, and Iraq and the fighting continues. ||||| A Kurdish rebel group fighting for autonomy in Turkey's southeast faces an uncertain future following the detention in Rome of its founder and leader. Italian authorities captured Abdullah Ocalan at Rome's international airport Thursday. Turkey has asked for his extradition and Ocalan has asked for political asylum. Some believe that without Ocalan, who ruled some 10,000 loyal rebels with an iron fist, his Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, will be left in disarray. ``If the head is dethroned, the rebellion gets a mortal blow,'' said Cengiz Candar who has been following the Kurdish insurgency for daily Sabah. But Ocalan has been absent from the battlefield for at least a month, and others contend that the PKK is capable of operating without him. ``Let us not fall into false expectations that this will be the end of the PKK. The PKK has already been acting like a headless monster for too long,'' said Ilnur Cevik of the English-language Turkish Daily News. Turkish newspapers have carried frequent reports of power struggles within the PKK and said that Ocalan's grip on the PKK was beginning to waver. Better known as Apo, Ocalan founded the Kurdistan Workers Party, PKK, in 1978. The movement turned to armed struggle in 1984, mainly focusing on guerrilla-style warfare in the southeast, but also carrying out bomb attacks on civilians in western Turkey. Close to 37,000 people died in the conflict. His presence in Europe could also be a blessing in disguise for the group, forcing the PKK to transform itself from a rebel army into a political movement. Ocalan seemed to be moving in this direction before his detention. While living in Damacus, he increased his meetings with European deputies. This may be the PKK's best option. The Turkish military claims it has made important battlefield gains and captured the PKK's second-in-command this year. The rebels also seem to have lost the support of Syria, which appears to have forced Ocalan to leave after Turkey threatened to attack it. Two Iraqi Kurdish groups controlling Turkey's border with Iraq have also grown lukewarm. The PKK has used their bases in Syria and Iraq to wage cross-border operations. ``The PKK had two options. Either they choose to fight until they get control of the area, regardless of what image they project abroad, or they try to take on a political image. I believe (Ocalan) wanted to leave the Middle East so he could become a political figure,'' said Hikmet Tavak, managing director of the London-based Kurdish television, MED-TV. In Rome, spokesmen for the PKK said Ocalan had carefully selected Italy because he felt there was sympathy there for his cause. They also said Italian authorities were warned that Ocalan would be arriving. There is a fair amount of sympathy for the Kurds in Europe, and if the movement gains political momentum, Turkey could come under more pressure from its western allies to grant the Kurds minority rights. There are an estimated 8 to 15 million Kurds in Turkey. They are not recognized as an official minority and barred from using Kurdish in education or broadcasting. Kurdish politicians have been jailed and groups banned on charges of supporting the PKK. ||||| Thousands of Kurds living in Romania closed down restaurants, shops and companies to protest the arrest of leader Abdullah Ocalan by Italian authorities, a newspaper reported Tuesday. Kurdish business leaders said the one-day shutdown Monday cost their 1,000 businesses some dlrs 700,000, daily Evenimentul Zilei reported. There are some 4,000 Kurds living in Romania. Kurdish students cut classes and workers didn't go to work. Some 41 Kurds declared a hunger strike Monday to protest Ocalan's detention. The protesters have refused any medical assistance from Romanian authorities, relying on the services of two Kurdish doctors, the paper reported. ``We are not terrorists, as we are considered by the Turkish state and its friends,'' said Aihan Dogan, a Kurdish leader. The detention in Italy of Kurdish rebel leader Ocalan prompted widespread protests by Kurds throughout Europe. Turkey has asked for Ocalan to be returned to Turkey. ||||| INNSBRUCK, Austria (AP) -- Italian authorities have turned back at least 136 people along the Austro-Italian border during an immigration crackdown prompted by the arrest of Kurdish leader Abdullah Ocalan, Austrian officials said Monday. Most of those sent back since the crackdown began Saturday were refused entry into Italy because they had no visas or residence permits, the Austrians said. On Monday alone, about 70 people were refused entry at the Brenner Pass crossing point. They included Pakistanis, Indians, Yugoslavs and Chinese as well as Kurds, the Austrians said. The border crackdown appeared designed to prevent large numbers of Kurds living in Western Europe from flocking to Rome for protests in connection with Ocalan's arrest. Turkey has asked for Ocalan's extradition. Austrian authorities said many of those turned back had come from Germany. A Red Cross station was set up at the border to assist those turned away to return to Germany if their residence permits were in order. Those without proper papers were detained by Austrian immigration. ||||| Turkey stepped up pressure on Italy for the extradition of captured Kurdish rebel leader Abdullah Ocalan, saying Sunday that granting him asylum would amount to ``opening doors to terrorism.'' Kurds in Italy, Germany, Austria and Romania launched protests and hunger strikes in fervent shows of solidarity with the rebel leader. Kurds came to Rome by bus and car from across Western Europe for a 1,500-strong protest outside the military hospital where Ocalan is believed held under tight security. If Italy sends Ocalan back to Turkey, ``he'll be tortured for certain,'' said Dino Frisullo, an Italian supporter among the singing, chanting Kurds outside the military hospital. ``And very possibly he'll be killed.'' Ocalan was arrested Thursday at the Rome airport as soon as he stepped off a plane from Moscow, where he had sought asylum after fleeing his hideout in Syria. He leads the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party, PKK, which has been fighting for Kurdish autonomy in southeastern Turkey since 1984. The conflict has killed nearly 37,000 people. To Turkey, Ocalan is the nation's most-wanted criminal. ``If Western European nations open their arms (to the rebels) they will be taking on this great terrorism problem,'' Deputy Premier Bulent Ecevit told reporters in Ankara. ``If Italy continues to show the tolerance it showed yesterday, it will be opening its doors to terrorism,'' Ecevit added, referring to Italy's handling of brawls that broke out during the first day of protests Saturday outside the Rome military hospital. The protest in Rome was peaceful Sunday. Elsewhere in Europe, dozens of Kurds protested in Bucharest until chased away by police; 1,000 Kurds rallied in Bonn, some waving pictures of the Kurd leader; and 100 Kurds in Vienna set up tents outside Parliament and declared a hunger strike. In Turkey, four Kurdish prison inmates were in critical condition after setting themselves on fire to protest Ocalan's arrest, the independent Human Rights Association said. Ocalan faces the death penalty in Turkey, a fact that has heightened opposition in Italy to his extradition. Although there have been no executions in Turkey since 1984, Italy has consistently refused to extradite anyone if there were even a risk of capital punishment. Foreign Minister Ismail Cem left for Rome on Sunday to attend a meeting of European defense and foreign ministers, saying he would tell Italian Foreign Minister Lamberto Dini that ``we expect a serious and fair approach.'' He criticized an Italian Justice Ministry official, who reportedly said Italy would deny Turkey's extradition request. ``To announce the results of an extradition trial that has not yet even begun does not go hand in hand with justice,'' Cem told reporters before departing. Turkish Defense Minister Ismet Sezgin indicated to reporters in Rome that Italian companies could be shut out of Turkey's billions of dollars of defense contracts if it fails to turn over the Kurd. In Italy, Dini told reporters in the city of Trento that the government would decide Ocalan's request for asylum in a ``clear and responsible manner.'' It was up for the courts to decide Turkey's extradition request, as well as an expected one from Germany, he said. In Istanbul, Turkish inmates at a prison took an Italian prisoner hostage to increase pressure for Ocalan's extradition. Metris prison officials said the jail director was talking to the inmate captors. Ocalan founded the Marxist-inspired PKK in 1978. He turned the group toward armed struggle in 1984, finding wide support among poor Kurds in the underdeveloped southeast. The Turkish army claims to have all but wiped out the PKK within Turkey but the rebels have havens in Iran, Syria, and Iraq and the fighting continues. ||||| About 1,000 policemen were assigned to protect Turkish President Suleyman Demirel, who arrived Tuesday on a three-day official visit. President Thomas Klestil's invitation for the visit was issued to take place during Austria's European Union presidency. Austrian government officials reportedly will try to open up a ``longer-term perspective'' for Turkey's EU membership. A related topic certain to come up is Cyprus, among six countries with whom the European Union started formal membership talks on Nov. 10. In a rare joint statement, the Netherlands, Germany and France said the inability of Greek and Turkish Cypriots to reconcile their differences weighed heavily on their island's membership chances. They spoke of ``fundamental problems'' in the Cyprus negotiating process, adding ``a political solution is urgently required.'' Austrian police took special measures to ensure the safety of the Turkish visitor. ``The political situation requires comprehensive security measures,'' the Austria Press Agency quoted Walter Zehetmayr, a senior police officer, as saying. The extra effort was prompted by the arrest last week in Rome of Abdullah Ocalan, the chief of the Turkish Workers Party PKK, Zehetmayr said. He hinted that he expects large protests of Turkish groups in Vienna. Demirel, who was accompanied by five Cabinet members and a large trade delegation, is the first head of state of the Turkish Republic to visit Austria, APA said. Following his talks with Klestil and a luncheon in the president's residence, Demirel was scheduled to meet Parliament president Heinz Fischer and other senior officials. He was also to deliver a speech to the Foreign Policy Society later Tuesday. ||||| About 1,500 Kurds who spent the night outside a military hospital where Kurdish rebel leader Abdullah Ocalan is believed held continued their hunger strike Monday to protest his detention. Kurds from across Western Europe have been streaming into Rome to show their support for Ocalan (pronounced Oh-jah-lan), who was arrested Thursday when he stepped off a plane from Moscow. He had been seeking political asylum in Russia after fleeing his hideout in Syria. He has, 3rd graf

Abdullah Ocalan, the leader of the Kurdish Workers Party, was detained in the Rome airport and is asking for political asylum. Ocalan has led the Kurdish insurgents in southeastern Turkey since 1978. Turkey, where he faces the death penalty, immediately requested his extradition and has heavily pressured Italy. Germany also wants him. Greeks and leftist Italians oppose his extradition. Others in Europe have joined with Kurds in staging demonstrations and hunger strikes. Prisoners in Turkey are holding an Italian in hopes of a swap. The Kurds join Cyprus as contentious issues as the Turkish President goes to Vienna to discuss European Union membership.

North Korea is entering its fourth winter of chronic food shortages with its people malnourished and at risk of dying from normally curable illnesses, senior Red Cross officials said Tuesday. The officials warned against international complacency and hostility toward North Korea as the food crisis stretches on and the isolated communist country shows little willingness to adopt far-reaching changes to revive its ruined economy. ``Humanitarian suffering cannot be routine in any part of the world,'' said Margareta Wahlstrom, the Red Cross' undersecretary of disaster relief, who returned to Beijing Tuesday after a week inspecting the aid agency's operations in North Korea. She and other Red Cross officials saw further ravages of North Korea's slow-motion famine: electricity supplied to only half the capital, Pyongyang, at a time; the elderly looking swollen, a sign of long-term hunger; a generation of children stunted, with 10-year-olds looking like 6-year-olds and 5-year-olds like 2-year-olds. Everywhere, from bakeries to government ministries, people were being served noodles and cakes made from soybeans mixed with acorns, grass and herbs, Red Cross president Astrid Heiberg said. Heiberg likened the additives to ``cattle food'' and noted that doctors reported a rise in stomach illnesses from the mixtures. ``This is really part of the daily life,'' she said. ``You would not give them to your children or your elderly mother knowing she would get cramps in her stomach and diarrhea unless her stomach was moaning.'' Three years of floods and drought that started in 1995 devastated North Korea's collective farming and planned economy, already teetering from the loss of its Soviet bloc trading partners. With few goods or money to barter or buy foreign supplies, the country lacks sufficient fertilizer for crops, and fuel and parts for machinery. The Red Cross inspectors saw soldiers and people harvesting cabbage, the winter's main vegetable. The grain harvest is finished and by U.N. estimates little improved over last year's: about 3 million tons, only enough to meet two-thirds of the needs of North Korea's 22 million people. As the long, harsh winter begins, doctors confirm and official statistics show widespread malnutrition, tuberculosis on the rise and hunger-weakened patients unable to recover from operations and sickness, Heiberg said. Doctors worry that the respiratory illnesses so common in the winter may ``take a toll'' on the weakened population, she said. One 10-bed hospital in the countryside was keeping only three patients at a time because it did not have food to care for more, said Heiberg. The Red Cross wants to focus its latest dlrs 9 million appeal on getting essential medicines and blankets and warm clothes to North Korea. Food aid is largely being turned over to U.N. agencies. ||||| Despite catastrophic hunger at home, North Korea plans to send 317 athletes and officials to next month's Asian Games in Thailand, South Korean officials said Thursday. It will be the largest sports delegation the communist country has sent abroad in recent years. North Korean Sports Minister Chang Ung said 209 athletes from his country will compete in 21 events in Bangkok, hoping to win medals in women's judo, women's soccer, wrestling, table tennis, weightlifting and boxing. Chang made the remarks in an interview published recently by the Chosun Shinbo, a newspaper run by pro-North Korean residents in Japan, said Seoul's Naewoe Press, which obtained the report. Chang said North Korea was sending a large delegation to Bangkok to prepare for the 2000 Sydney Olympics. North Korea did not enter the last Asian Games, in Hiroshima, Japan, in 1994. It sent only 18 athletes and officials to the Winter Olympics in Nagano, Japan, in February. Naewoe is run by South Korea's main government intelligence agency and specializes in monitoring communist news media. Three years of floods and drought that started in 1995 devastated North Korea's collective farming and planned economy, forcing the country to rely on outside aid to feed its 23 million people. ||||| More than five years of severe food shortages and a near-total breakdown in the public health system have led to devastating malnutrition in North Korea and probably left an entire generation of children physically and mentally impaired, a new study by international aid groups has found. The study, the first scientific nutritional survey in North Korea, confirms the disturbing reports by international aid workers, who over the past year have gained increasing access to the population of this highly isolated and secretive country. Among other shocking findings, researchers from the World Food Program, Unicef and the European Union found that, because of long-term food shortages, a staggering 62 percent of children under 7 years old suffer from stunted growth. They have discovered that, despite a huge international food aid program over the past three years, severe malnutrition is widespread among toddlers at crucial stages of brain development, suggesting that this generation's physical and mental abilities will not develop normally and that the losses can never be recovered. Separately, international medical workers from groups like the Red Cross, have begun to document how the effects of food shortages are being severely compounded by a breakdown in public health services. Even basic water purification systems stand idle for lack of essential ingredients like chlorine, Red Cross workers say, leaving vast numbers of people with such severe diarrhea that they are unable to absorb completely what little food they have. As the North Korean dictatorship has slowly, often grudgingly, granted increased access to international aid groups in the last six months, an increasingly clear and saddening picture of the hunger haas emerged as a result of the large formal study and informal surveys and observations by foreign aid agencies. Past assessments of the magnitude of the disaster in the country of 23 million are considered flawed because they were based on interviews with a small number of North Korean refugees who had fled into China. And while the researchers and aid workers on the ground in North Korea have not seen evidence of cannibalism or starving children dying by the roadside _ descriptions that have surfaced in the more lurid refugee reports _ what they did find was in many ways equally disturbing: A population withering after nearly a decade of chronic hunger, people so weakened by malnutrition that colds and stomach flus quickly turn lethal, the future of a generation irretrievably lost. ``Now at last we have hard facts _ the situation is very grave,'' said Judith Cheng-Hopkins, regional director for Asia of the World Food Program, which has taken part in the research. ``To me this is a famine in slow motion. People cope year after year, and probably a lot drop off. But the totality is very hard to gauge.'' For three weeks this fall, crews led by foreign scientists were finally permitted to fan out across North Korea to conduct the first random sample nutritional survey of children, providing by far the most solid data on the crisis. They found that 62 percent of children under 7 had stunted growth, a symptom of long-term malnutrition. Thirty percent of 1-year-olds suffered from moderate to severe malnutrition. This means a high likelihood of impaired mental and physical development, because the nervous system matures dramatically during this essential first year. The researchers said that available scientific data suggest that 10 years ago, malnutrition was rare in North Korea. ``Even if the situation improves, it is unlikely to improve to the degree that the country will fully recover from what we saw,'' said Judit Katona-Apte, a senior program adviser for the World Food Program. ``People will be small and not as well developed as otherwise and somewhat limited in their mental capacities.'' Likewise, when Red Cross representatives this year tested the water supply at the 840 hospitals and clinics where they operate, they found that not one had water that was suitable for human consumption, said Sten Swedlund, head of the Red Cross delegation in North Korea. ``But of course they drink it _ they have no choice,'' he said during a recent trip to Beijing. ``There is a very close relationship between the problems caused by the lack of food and a health sector that's in very bad shape.'' Virtually all the children under 7 who are malnourished also have diarrhea, he said. None of the aid groups has been able to study the issue of hunger-related deaths, and the North Koreans have not released relevant figures, although most experts agree that probably more than one million and perhaps as many as three million have died prematurely since the food shortages began. But public health experts say the number who have perished might be difficult to tally in any case, because most deaths were probably not from quick starvation, but from immune systems weakened by years of hunger, so that common colds more easily give way to lethal pneumonia and an ordinary bout of infectious diarrhea proves fatal. Still, there are some disturbing clues: In one limited study conducted by the World Food Program and other groups last year on 4,000 children hand-picked by the government, 10 percent had a parent who was dead. In this fall's independent nutritional survey, 18 teams of experts sent to eight of North Korea's nine provinces looked at 1,800 rural and urban children under seven. In addition to finding that 62 percent of children had stunted growth, the teams found that about 16 percent of children were suffering from acute malnutrition and were underweight for their height, a sign that they were severely underfed at the time of the study. That figure is higher than in any country in East Asia and puts North Korea among the world's worst 10 countries in terms of malnutrition. While that 16 percent figure is not quite as bad as that of India and Bangladesh, the worst in the world with an 18 percent malnutrition rate, experts say that North Korea's number in some ways understates the problem. In India and Bangladesh, pockets of severe poverty alternate with pockets of relative plenty, while in North Korea the whole country is to some degree underfed. ``Even in war-torn countries, famine is more in pockets,'' Dr. Katona-Apte said. ``It's hard to think of another country that's been affected in this way.'' The survey results are especially sobering since the researchers studied only children under 7, the group that received nearly all the food donated from abroad. After three years of food donations, many foreign aid workers in the country have remarked that children in nurseries and kindergartens are looking better _ but that their older siblings are failing. So a month ago, the World Food Program began providing elementary schools with high nutrition biscuits for children aged 7 to 12. ``We have reason to believe that many people are suffering and that the elderly are a neglected age group that is just getting weaker and weaker,'' Swedlund said. There are now more than 100 Westerners living in Pyongyang, the capital city, and many say the long-term hunger is readily apparent there. ``If you walk down the street in Pyongyang and ask a child how old she is, you are usually off by three years,'' Swedlund said. ``She may be 7 but she looks just 3 or 4.'' Dr. Katona-Apte, a nutrition expert who has worked in Bangladesh and the Sudan, said she was shocked when she first visited a North Korean kindergarten last year. ``There were these two children sitting at a desk who were obviously severely malnourished _ they were so thin and they had patchy hair,'' she said. ``And they were just sitting there working. This is accepted as normal! They are in school, and they should really be hospitalized or placed in nutritional rehabilitation. If you saw them in a refugee camp, you would recommend immediate intervention.'' But with a severely depleted public health and hospital system, that option does not exist, she and others said. Many Korean doctors do not know how to diagnose or treat malnutrition; few had seen it before this decade. And, in any case, the hospitals lack the food and proper nutritional supplements. Swedlund said most hospitals lacked medicines, had no glass to replace broken windows and were ``colder inside than out,'' having received no coal since 1994. He said that even in hospitals, sanitation and water purification systems were virtually nonexistent, because the country lacks chlorine for purification and fuel to run water pumps. He said that next year, the Red Cross would start to address those problems, spending $3.5 on food for hospital patients and $1 million on water treatment. With few other options, vast numbers of North Koreans have resorted to eating ``substitute food,'' hard cakes and noodles made from a mix of nutritional plants, like soybeans and sweet potatoes, combined with indigestible filler, like cornstalks and straw. ``This now constitutes 40 percent of food intake,'' Swedlund said. ``It's becoming a regular part of the food basket.'' Doctors in North Korea say many people suffer from stomachaches after eating this partly indigestible material, he said, but added, ``If you're very hungry, it fills your stomach.'' Although the North Koreans date their food problems to a series of floods and droughts in the mid-1990's, the foreign researchers who have worked in North Korea say medical records and childhood growth patterns indicate that the hunger began several years before that and is linked to the collapse of the Soviet Union, which had long been North Korea's main supplier of food, fuel and fertilizer. North Korea is a mountainous country, with less than 20 percent arable land. It has been a food importer for decades, mostly from the former Soviet Union, but also from China. ``The country has to come to grips with the fact that this is part of a structural problem and can't just be blamed on the weather anymore,'' Ms. Cheng-Hopkins said. Still, she and others praised the normally rigid and secretive government for slowly loosening its restrictions. Swedlund said that after three years in the country, the international Red Cross, which collaborates with the North Korean Red Cross, had found officials increasingly responsive and doctors more willing to share medical records and bring up problems. Travel is still restricted. There are more than 100 counties, home to 30 percent of the population, to which aid groups have no access and where they have therefore refused to provide food or medical supplies. Still, the number of counties open to the workers has increased steadily, and freedom to move about has improved. Ms. Cheng-Hopkins said about half of follow-up inspections were now unannounced, and she noted that the researchers in the nutritional survey were allowed to select villages to visit and enter homes at random. Workers from the Red Cross and the World Food Program said they had not observed extreme scenes of people dying of acute starvation and believe that they would have if they were occurring frequently. ``I have not seen acute starvation like I have seen in Bangladesh,'' Dr. Katona-Apte said. ``But that doesn't mean it can't exist. We're still really limited in what we can see.'' Swedlund said it was unlikely that the counties still closed to foreigners were markedly different from the open ones. And while some have surmised that the closed counties might harbor pockets of death and devastation, he said he accepted North Korea's explanation that they had been excluded from some areas for national security reasons. ``One thing I've learned is how important national security issues are to the North Koreans,'' said Swedlund, a retired admiral in the Swedish Navy. ``And I really think these areas are important from that standpoint,'' he added, going through a map of closed areas and describing what Western intelligence experts know about military installations there. He also rejected the notion that the North Korean military is stealing donated food, a charge leveled by the organization Doctors Without Borders, when it angrily pulled out of North Korea last summer to protest the many restrictions on groups working there. Now that aid groups say they are starting to get somewhat better cooperation from the North Koreans, they hope to repeat their nutrition survey every 6 to 12 months. And they are still analyzing some tantalizing findings: Boys were twice as likely to suffer from stunted growth as girls, and every child whose mother was dead was malnourished. ``A generation of North Korean children is already scarred for life,'' said Astrid Heiberg, president of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, in an interview in Beijing after a trip to North Korea. ``We need to continue to mobilize resources to prevent an even greater catastrophe.'' ||||| The founder of South Korea's largest conglomerate plans to visit his native North Korea again next week with a gift of 501 cattle, company officials said Thursday. The visit has been delayed a month because of a dispute over 500 cattle donated by Chung Ju-yung, founder of the Hyundai group, during a trip to the North in June. North Korea claimed 71 of those cattle died because Seoul government agents force-fed them indigestible vinyl strips and lumps of rope before shipping them to the North. Calling the North's claim nonsense, Seoul's Ministry of National Unification ordered Hyundai to check thousands of other cattle being raised at its ranch on the west coast. The ministry later acknowledged that lumps of rope were found in the stomachs of some cattle on the ranch, but said the material didn't kill the animals donated to North Korea. It blamed the deaths on stress caused by the long shipment by truck to the North. The South Korean government said it would not authorize a second shipment of cattle unless the North retracted its accusations. On Thursday, South Korean Unification Minister Kang In-duk said North Korea sent a letter to Hyundai last week, saying that ``the misunderstanding with the southern authorities on the issue of the dead cattle is cleared.'' Kang said the North's letter ``cleared a stumbling block for Hyundai's additional cattle donation.'' During his visit, Chung is expected to reach agreement on details of Hyundai's plan to start sightseeing tours of a scenic mountain in the North. The tours, originally scheduled to begin in September, have been delayed because of cost, security and other matters. Hyundai hopes to send by ship up to 2,000 tourists a week for four-day tours of Diamond Mountain on the North's east coast beginning in November. Animosity and distrust between the two Koreas run deep. The Korean states were separated into the communist North and the capitalist South in 1945. They fought a three-year war in the early 1950s. ||||| Famine-threatened North Korea's harvest will be no better this year than last and could be worse, a senior U.N. aid official said Saturday. North Korea needs a minimum 4.5 million to 5 million tons of grain to feed its 23 million people, but managed last year to harvest just 2.8 million tons, Namanga Ngongi, deputy head of the World Food Program said. Although hard figures are not yet available, the prospects for this year are that ``the harvest will not be any better,'' Ngongi told reporters in Beijing after visiting North Korea. ``It may be worse than last year.'' Poor harvests, economic collapse and three years of floods and drought, have produced chronic food shortages in North Korea and left it heavily reliant on foreign aid. Fertilizer is lacking, as is fuel to power tractors and farm machinery, meaning most planting and harvesting must be done by hand. ``Every year it gets worse,'' Ngongi said. But despite the need for food aid, Ngongi said the government about a month ago cut the number of counties to which the WFP has access from 171 to 145, reducing the number of people who can get aid from 6.7 million to 5.8 million. Most of those receiving WFP aid are children aged between 6 months and 6 years. Ngongi said the government cited security concerns _ notably the lack of a peace treaty with its rival South Korea _ for its decision. The government said the ban would be temporary, Ngongi added. Ngongi, who spent four days inspecting WFP relief efforts in North Korea, said people generally looked better than during a visit last year. But he also said he could see that ``a large part of the population is very weak.'' ``Everybody has been consuming at a very low level. So they may not be severely malnourished, but they are not well nourished at all,'' he said. U.S. officials who toured some of the hardest-hit regions of North Korea this summer said 2 million people may have died because of famine. Ngongi said he saw malnourished children who were said to be 10 or 11 years old, but appeared to be only 4 or 5 years old. About 30 percent of children in one primary school he visited were not in class. ``A lot of the children were too weak to come to school,'' he said. But Ngongi said foreign food aid has saved lives. ``A lot of people are alive today thanks to the international community's support,'' he said. ||||| Police in northeastern China's Jilin province said Monday they had rounded up at least 100 North Koreans and sent them back to endure a famine in their reclusive country. A police official in the Jilin city of Tonghua, near the North Korean border, said the North Koreans were forced to repatriate because some had resettled illegally in China, had formed criminal gangs or engaged in prostitution. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, denied reports in the South Korean press that the Chinese had disregarded requests for political asylum in forcing the refugees back across the border. He said they had crossed into China seeking food, not because of political repression in North Korea. Citing a North Korean human rights group and Japanese tourists visiting the region, South Korea's Yonhap News Agency reported Monday that 150 North Koreans had been sent home from China, despite having presented petitions for political asylum. North Korea is entering its fourth winter of chronic food shortages, having harvested only 3 million tons of grain this year, about two-thirds of the minimum needed by its 23 million people. ||||| Hunger and malnutrition in Cambodia are reaching crisis levels comparable to the effects of famine in North Korea, a U.N. World Food Program representative said Tuesday. Though North Korea is suffering from a simple lack of food, a faltering economy in Cambodia combined with weak health care and education is causing similar levels of malnutrition in children, said Ken Davies, the WFP's country director. ``There is enough rice. The problem is that people are too poor to access it. The problem is poverty,'' Davies said. The WFP is currently supporting 1.7 million hungry Cambodians _ about 15 percent of the population _ with food-for-work and direct assistance programs, but Davies said he fears there are still plenty more that are not getting enough to eat every day. ``The problem is so bad that it is only a little worse in North Korea,'' Davies said. ``The situation is much worse than most people recognize.'' According to a recent WFP survey, 49 percent of Cambodian children under age 5 are stunted by lack of food and 20 percent suffer from acute malnutrition. By comparison, a similar survey of North Korean children under 7 found that 65 percent are stunted and 16 percent suffer from acute malnutrition. Cambodia has produced a rice surplus for export in the last two years and expects another this year, but WFP statistics show that 25 percent of rice-growing areas account for 75 percent of the surplus. The majority of Cambodian farmers are not producing enough to keep their families fed and are being increasingly saddled with debts incurred when they run out of reserves before harvest, Davies said. Money-lenders in rural Cambodia typically charge 100 percent interest, which must be paid in rice at harvest time, giving many farmers a handicapped start on the next crop season. Poor sanitation, lack of health care and ignorance of modern child rearing _ problems left mostly unaddressed by under-funded health and education sectors in Cambodia _ have exacerbated the food security problem, Davies said. Davies urged the new government to substantially increase annual expenditures on health, education and rural development as a first step in a long-term solution to Cambodia's food crisis. ``The poverty is getting worse right now and the situation with the malnutrition of children is a crisis,'' Davies said. Cambodia typically earmarks about half of its annual budget to defense and security. In the 1998 budget, education was allocated 6.5 percent, health 4.4 percent and rural development 0.2 percent. Actual disbursements to the three ministries are often only 60 to 70 percent of the budgeted amount as annual revenues fall short of expectations, according to aid workers. A 1999 budget draft proposed a reduction of the health ministry's allotment, which caused an outcry in September from health officials and the U.N. World Health Program. The draft was later readjusted to provide an unprecedented 33 percent increase in health spending. ||||| A North Korean man arrived in Seoul Wednesday and sought asylum after escaping his hunger-stricken homeland, government officials said. Kim Myong Sup, 23, had been living in hiding in a ``third country'' since fleeing North Korea last year, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade said. The ministry generally uses the term ``third country'' to avoid naming China, which is required by treaty with North Korea to return defectors to their homeland. The ministry described Kim as a former athlete, but said details of his background and his method of escape from North Korea were not available. About 200 North Koreans have defected to South Korea in the past three years, including 60 so far this year. All complained about severe food and fuel shortages in their country. The Koreas were divided into the communist North and the capitalist South in 1945. They fought the Korean War in 1950-53 and never signed a formal peace treaty. ||||| A congressman who visited remote parts of North Korea last week said Saturday that the food and health situation there was desperate and deteriorating, and that millions of North Koreans might have starved to death in the last few years. The congressman, Tony Hall, D-Ohio, who has had a longtime interest in world hunger, passed through Tokyo on his return to the United States and showed photographs he had taken of North Korean children with patchy hair, protruding bones, open sores and other signs of severe malnutrition. Hall also brought back a bag of what officials called ``substitute food'' being distributed by a government food station: dried leaves and straw, so coarse that even cattle would normally turn away. ``They grind it into powder and make it into noodles,'' Hall said. The noodles have no nutrition and are indigestible, leaving people holding their aching stomachs, he said. North Korea has admitted that it is facing serious economic difficulties, but there have been sharply diverging assessments of how serious these are. Some visitors with the United Nations and other organizations have said that the food situation seems to be a bit better now than a year or two ago. Hall said that the divergence might have arisen because in the North Korean capital, Pyongyang, life did seem to be slightly better than during his three previous trips to North Korea. But in rural areas where foreigners are not often allowed to visit, he added, the overall situation is worse than ever. Based on visits to four hospitals, Hall also emphasized that public health care had declined sharply. In one hospital, assistants were holding down a patient while surgeons conducted a stomach operation without electric lights or anesthesia. Ordinary North Koreans are suffering, in part, because their government's hard-line policies have alienated would-be donors and aid agencies. The United Nations has repeatedly appealed for relief aid for North Korea, but the latest appeal has raised less than one-third of the target. In September, Doctors Without Borders announced that it was pulling its staff of 13 from North Korea because it feared that its aid was going to the politically connected rather than to the most needy. North Korea does not release mortality figures or health statistics, but Hall said that the United Nations had gathered and would soon release data indicating that 30 percent of North Korean children under age 2 are acutely malnourished and that 67 percent of all children are physically stunted. Hall said he thought that overall at least 1 million people had died and that the total was probably closer to 3 million. In an indication of the seriousness with which professional demographers view the situation, the U.S. Bureau of the Census recently published estimates suggesting that North Korea's population peaked in 1995 at 21.55 million and has since fallen to 21.23 million this year. That would be a decline of 320,000 over three years, a period when North Korea's population would have been expected to grow by about 925,000 people, based on the population growth rate of the early 1990s. Nicholas Eberstadt, an American specialist on North Korean population figures, says that there simply is not enough hard information for him to estimate the death toll from the famine. But he notes one political tidbit: North Korea's constitution stipulates that there should be one delegate to the country's ``people's assembly'' for every 30,000 citizens. This year's assembly did not expand as previous ones did, but rather had just 687 delegates, the same as the previous assembly held in 1990. While Eberstadt counsels caution, that could mean that North Korea's population, after eight years in which it had been expected to add several million people, is now back to 20.6 million people or fewer. The United States has been supplying grain to North Korea, but strains are growing over a secret underground complex in the North that some experts worry may be the heart of a new nuclear weapons program. The United States warned last week that the ``agreed framework'' that is the basis for its relations with North Korea will be in jeopardy unless the North lets American experts visit the underground complex and resolve their doubts. North Korea has said that it will show off the complex only if Washington promises that if the complex is not a nuclear one, it will pay for ``vilifying us and impairing our prestige.'' Washington refuses to pay, and North Korea is warning that the standoff could lead the agreement to fall apart. ``Their shameless and wicked demand is an open infringement upon our sovereignty and wanton interference in our internal affairs,'' declared North Korea's leading newspaper, Rodong Sinmun. ||||| Years of food shortages have stunted the growth of millions of North Korean children, with two-thirds of children under age seven suffering malnourishment, U.N. experts said Wednesday. Several years of flooding and droughts coupled with an economic downturn have heavily damaged North Korea's crop production and capacity to import food in the closed, communist nation. A survey carried out in September and October also showed that 16 percent of children in North Korea are acutely malnourished, with a body weight too low for their height. That figure, which reflects ongoing shortages, is exceeded in Asia only by Bangladesh, India and Sri Lanka. Eighteen teams, each headed by a foreign official from the World Food Program, the U.N. Children's Fund or the European Union, carried out the study. They measured the weight and height of 1,800 North Korean children from infants up to age seven in homes randomly selected in areas where aid agencies have access. Those areas cover around 70 percent of the population. It was the first ``technically sound survey'' of the problem, UNICEF official Kirsi Madi told reporters. The most alarming findings were for toddlers aged one to two, 30 percent of whom were acutely malnourished. At that age, ``malnutrition can permanently impair physical and intellectual growth,'' said Judy Cheng-Hopkins, WFP director for the region. Children in North Korea's three largest cities _ Pyongyang, Wonsan and Nampo _ were better off than their counterparts elsewhere, with 11 percent acutely malnourished. Boys were almost twice as badly affected as girls.

Famine had become the rule as North Korea entered its fourth winter of chronic food shortage in 1998. In 1997 the nation produced only 2.8 million tons of grain of the 4.5 million required to feed its 23 million people. Poor harvests, floods and droughts contributed to the problem exasperated by government restrictions on international aid. Two million may have died from famine and the U.N. reported that 65% of the children under 7 showed stunted growth. One report concluded that famine and a failed public health system had produced a generation of physically and mentally impaired children. Similar conditions were said to be developing in Cambodia.

North Korea is entering its fourth winter of chronic food shortages with its people malnourished and at risk of dying from normally curable illnesses, senior Red Cross officials said Tuesday. The officials warned against international complacency and hostility toward North Korea as the food crisis stretches on and the isolated communist country shows little willingness to adopt far-reaching changes to revive its ruined economy. ``Humanitarian suffering cannot be routine in any part of the world,'' said Margareta Wahlstrom, the Red Cross' undersecretary of disaster relief, who returned to Beijing Tuesday after a week inspecting the aid agency's operations in North Korea. She and other Red Cross officials saw further ravages of North Korea's slow-motion famine: electricity supplied to only half the capital, Pyongyang, at a time; the elderly looking swollen, a sign of long-term hunger; a generation of children stunted, with 10-year-olds looking like 6-year-olds and 5-year-olds like 2-year-olds. Everywhere, from bakeries to government ministries, people were being served noodles and cakes made from soybeans mixed with acorns, grass and herbs, Red Cross president Astrid Heiberg said. Heiberg likened the additives to ``cattle food'' and noted that doctors reported a rise in stomach illnesses from the mixtures. ``This is really part of the daily life,'' she said. ``You would not give them to your children or your elderly mother knowing she would get cramps in her stomach and diarrhea unless her stomach was moaning.'' Three years of floods and drought that started in 1995 devastated North Korea's collective farming and planned economy, already teetering from the loss of its Soviet bloc trading partners. With few goods or money to barter or buy foreign supplies, the country lacks sufficient fertilizer for crops, and fuel and parts for machinery. The Red Cross inspectors saw soldiers and people harvesting cabbage, the winter's main vegetable. The grain harvest is finished and by U.N. estimates little improved over last year's: about 3 million tons, only enough to meet two-thirds of the needs of North Korea's 22 million people. As the long, harsh winter begins, doctors confirm and official statistics show widespread malnutrition, tuberculosis on the rise and hunger-weakened patients unable to recover from operations and sickness, Heiberg said. Doctors worry that the respiratory illnesses so common in the winter may ``take a toll'' on the weakened population, she said. One 10-bed hospital in the countryside was keeping only three patients at a time because it did not have food to care for more, said Heiberg. The Red Cross wants to focus its latest dlrs 9 million appeal on getting essential medicines and blankets and warm clothes to North Korea. Food aid is largely being turned over to U.N. agencies. ||||| Despite catastrophic hunger at home, North Korea plans to send 317 athletes and officials to next month's Asian Games in Thailand, South Korean officials said Thursday. It will be the largest sports delegation the communist country has sent abroad in recent years. North Korean Sports Minister Chang Ung said 209 athletes from his country will compete in 21 events in Bangkok, hoping to win medals in women's judo, women's soccer, wrestling, table tennis, weightlifting and boxing. Chang made the remarks in an interview published recently by the Chosun Shinbo, a newspaper run by pro-North Korean residents in Japan, said Seoul's Naewoe Press, which obtained the report. Chang said North Korea was sending a large delegation to Bangkok to prepare for the 2000 Sydney Olympics. North Korea did not enter the last Asian Games, in Hiroshima, Japan, in 1994. It sent only 18 athletes and officials to the Winter Olympics in Nagano, Japan, in February. Naewoe is run by South Korea's main government intelligence agency and specializes in monitoring communist news media. Three years of floods and drought that started in 1995 devastated North Korea's collective farming and planned economy, forcing the country to rely on outside aid to feed its 23 million people. ||||| More than five years of severe food shortages and a near-total breakdown in the public health system have led to devastating malnutrition in North Korea and probably left an entire generation of children physically and mentally impaired, a new study by international aid groups has found. The study, the first scientific nutritional survey in North Korea, confirms the disturbing reports by international aid workers, who over the past year have gained increasing access to the population of this highly isolated and secretive country. Among other shocking findings, researchers from the World Food Program, Unicef and the European Union found that, because of long-term food shortages, a staggering 62 percent of children under 7 years old suffer from stunted growth. They have discovered that, despite a huge international food aid program over the past three years, severe malnutrition is widespread among toddlers at crucial stages of brain development, suggesting that this generation's physical and mental abilities will not develop normally and that the losses can never be recovered. Separately, international medical workers from groups like the Red Cross, have begun to document how the effects of food shortages are being severely compounded by a breakdown in public health services. Even basic water purification systems stand idle for lack of essential ingredients like chlorine, Red Cross workers say, leaving vast numbers of people with such severe diarrhea that they are unable to absorb completely what little food they have. As the North Korean dictatorship has slowly, often grudgingly, granted increased access to international aid groups in the last six months, an increasingly clear and saddening picture of the hunger haas emerged as a result of the large formal study and informal surveys and observations by foreign aid agencies. Past assessments of the magnitude of the disaster in the country of 23 million are considered flawed because they were based on interviews with a small number of North Korean refugees who had fled into China. And while the researchers and aid workers on the ground in North Korea have not seen evidence of cannibalism or starving children dying by the roadside _ descriptions that have surfaced in the more lurid refugee reports _ what they did find was in many ways equally disturbing: A population withering after nearly a decade of chronic hunger, people so weakened by malnutrition that colds and stomach flus quickly turn lethal, the future of a generation irretrievably lost. ``Now at last we have hard facts _ the situation is very grave,'' said Judith Cheng-Hopkins, regional director for Asia of the World Food Program, which has taken part in the research. ``To me this is a famine in slow motion. People cope year after year, and probably a lot drop off. But the totality is very hard to gauge.'' For three weeks this fall, crews led by foreign scientists were finally permitted to fan out across North Korea to conduct the first random sample nutritional survey of children, providing by far the most solid data on the crisis. They found that 62 percent of children under 7 had stunted growth, a symptom of long-term malnutrition. Thirty percent of 1-year-olds suffered from moderate to severe malnutrition. This means a high likelihood of impaired mental and physical development, because the nervous system matures dramatically during this essential first year. The researchers said that available scientific data suggest that 10 years ago, malnutrition was rare in North Korea. ``Even if the situation improves, it is unlikely to improve to the degree that the country will fully recover from what we saw,'' said Judit Katona-Apte, a senior program adviser for the World Food Program. ``People will be small and not as well developed as otherwise and somewhat limited in their mental capacities.'' Likewise, when Red Cross representatives this year tested the water supply at the 840 hospitals and clinics where they operate, they found that not one had water that was suitable for human consumption, said Sten Swedlund, head of the Red Cross delegation in North Korea. ``But of course they drink it _ they have no choice,'' he said during a recent trip to Beijing. ``There is a very close relationship between the problems caused by the lack of food and a health sector that's in very bad shape.'' Virtually all the children under 7 who are malnourished also have diarrhea, he said. None of the aid groups has been able to study the issue of hunger-related deaths, and the North Koreans have not released relevant figures, although most experts agree that probably more than one million and perhaps as many as three million have died prematurely since the food shortages began. But public health experts say the number who have perished might be difficult to tally in any case, because most deaths were probably not from quick starvation, but from immune systems weakened by years of hunger, so that common colds more easily give way to lethal pneumonia and an ordinary bout of infectious diarrhea proves fatal. Still, there are some disturbing clues: In one limited study conducted by the World Food Program and other groups last year on 4,000 children hand-picked by the government, 10 percent had a parent who was dead. In this fall's independent nutritional survey, 18 teams of experts sent to eight of North Korea's nine provinces looked at 1,800 rural and urban children under seven. In addition to finding that 62 percent of children had stunted growth, the teams found that about 16 percent of children were suffering from acute malnutrition and were underweight for their height, a sign that they were severely underfed at the time of the study. That figure is higher than in any country in East Asia and puts North Korea among the world's worst 10 countries in terms of malnutrition. While that 16 percent figure is not quite as bad as that of India and Bangladesh, the worst in the world with an 18 percent malnutrition rate, experts say that North Korea's number in some ways understates the problem. In India and Bangladesh, pockets of severe poverty alternate with pockets of relative plenty, while in North Korea the whole country is to some degree underfed. ``Even in war-torn countries, famine is more in pockets,'' Dr. Katona-Apte said. ``It's hard to think of another country that's been affected in this way.'' The survey results are especially sobering since the researchers studied only children under 7, the group that received nearly all the food donated from abroad. After three years of food donations, many foreign aid workers in the country have remarked that children in nurseries and kindergartens are looking better _ but that their older siblings are failing. So a month ago, the World Food Program began providing elementary schools with high nutrition biscuits for children aged 7 to 12. ``We have reason to believe that many people are suffering and that the elderly are a neglected age group that is just getting weaker and weaker,'' Swedlund said. There are now more than 100 Westerners living in Pyongyang, the capital city, and many say the long-term hunger is readily apparent there. ``If you walk down the street in Pyongyang and ask a child how old she is, you are usually off by three years,'' Swedlund said. ``She may be 7 but she looks just 3 or 4.'' Dr. Katona-Apte, a nutrition expert who has worked in Bangladesh and the Sudan, said she was shocked when she first visited a North Korean kindergarten last year. ``There were these two children sitting at a desk who were obviously severely malnourished _ they were so thin and they had patchy hair,'' she said. ``And they were just sitting there working. This is accepted as normal! They are in school, and they should really be hospitalized or placed in nutritional rehabilitation. If you saw them in a refugee camp, you would recommend immediate intervention.'' But with a severely depleted public health and hospital system, that option does not exist, she and others said. Many Korean doctors do not know how to diagnose or treat malnutrition; few had seen it before this decade. And, in any case, the hospitals lack the food and proper nutritional supplements. Swedlund said most hospitals lacked medicines, had no glass to replace broken windows and were ``colder inside than out,'' having received no coal since 1994. He said that even in hospitals, sanitation and water purification systems were virtually nonexistent, because the country lacks chlorine for purification and fuel to run water pumps. He said that next year, the Red Cross would start to address those problems, spending $3.5 on food for hospital patients and $1 million on water treatment. With few other options, vast numbers of North Koreans have resorted to eating ``substitute food,'' hard cakes and noodles made from a mix of nutritional plants, like soybeans and sweet potatoes, combined with indigestible filler, like cornstalks and straw. ``This now constitutes 40 percent of food intake,'' Swedlund said. ``It's becoming a regular part of the food basket.'' Doctors in North Korea say many people suffer from stomachaches after eating this partly indigestible material, he said, but added, ``If you're very hungry, it fills your stomach.'' Although the North Koreans date their food problems to a series of floods and droughts in the mid-1990's, the foreign researchers who have worked in North Korea say medical records and childhood growth patterns indicate that the hunger began several years before that and is linked to the collapse of the Soviet Union, which had long been North Korea's main supplier of food, fuel and fertilizer. North Korea is a mountainous country, with less than 20 percent arable land. It has been a food importer for decades, mostly from the former Soviet Union, but also from China. ``The country has to come to grips with the fact that this is part of a structural problem and can't just be blamed on the weather anymore,'' Ms. Cheng-Hopkins said. Still, she and others praised the normally rigid and secretive government for slowly loosening its restrictions. Swedlund said that after three years in the country, the international Red Cross, which collaborates with the North Korean Red Cross, had found officials increasingly responsive and doctors more willing to share medical records and bring up problems. Travel is still restricted. There are more than 100 counties, home to 30 percent of the population, to which aid groups have no access and where they have therefore refused to provide food or medical supplies. Still, the number of counties open to the workers has increased steadily, and freedom to move about has improved. Ms. Cheng-Hopkins said about half of follow-up inspections were now unannounced, and she noted that the researchers in the nutritional survey were allowed to select villages to visit and enter homes at random. Workers from the Red Cross and the World Food Program said they had not observed extreme scenes of people dying of acute starvation and believe that they would have if they were occurring frequently. ``I have not seen acute starvation like I have seen in Bangladesh,'' Dr. Katona-Apte said. ``But that doesn't mean it can't exist. We're still really limited in what we can see.'' Swedlund said it was unlikely that the counties still closed to foreigners were markedly different from the open ones. And while some have surmised that the closed counties might harbor pockets of death and devastation, he said he accepted North Korea's explanation that they had been excluded from some areas for national security reasons. ``One thing I've learned is how important national security issues are to the North Koreans,'' said Swedlund, a retired admiral in the Swedish Navy. ``And I really think these areas are important from that standpoint,'' he added, going through a map of closed areas and describing what Western intelligence experts know about military installations there. He also rejected the notion that the North Korean military is stealing donated food, a charge leveled by the organization Doctors Without Borders, when it angrily pulled out of North Korea last summer to protest the many restrictions on groups working there. Now that aid groups say they are starting to get somewhat better cooperation from the North Koreans, they hope to repeat their nutrition survey every 6 to 12 months. And they are still analyzing some tantalizing findings: Boys were twice as likely to suffer from stunted growth as girls, and every child whose mother was dead was malnourished. ``A generation of North Korean children is already scarred for life,'' said Astrid Heiberg, president of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, in an interview in Beijing after a trip to North Korea. ``We need to continue to mobilize resources to prevent an even greater catastrophe.'' ||||| The founder of South Korea's largest conglomerate plans to visit his native North Korea again next week with a gift of 501 cattle, company officials said Thursday. The visit has been delayed a month because of a dispute over 500 cattle donated by Chung Ju-yung, founder of the Hyundai group, during a trip to the North in June. North Korea claimed 71 of those cattle died because Seoul government agents force-fed them indigestible vinyl strips and lumps of rope before shipping them to the North. Calling the North's claim nonsense, Seoul's Ministry of National Unification ordered Hyundai to check thousands of other cattle being raised at its ranch on the west coast. The ministry later acknowledged that lumps of rope were found in the stomachs of some cattle on the ranch, but said the material didn't kill the animals donated to North Korea. It blamed the deaths on stress caused by the long shipment by truck to the North. The South Korean government said it would not authorize a second shipment of cattle unless the North retracted its accusations. On Thursday, South Korean Unification Minister Kang In-duk said North Korea sent a letter to Hyundai last week, saying that ``the misunderstanding with the southern authorities on the issue of the dead cattle is cleared.'' Kang said the North's letter ``cleared a stumbling block for Hyundai's additional cattle donation.'' During his visit, Chung is expected to reach agreement on details of Hyundai's plan to start sightseeing tours of a scenic mountain in the North. The tours, originally scheduled to begin in September, have been delayed because of cost, security and other matters. Hyundai hopes to send by ship up to 2,000 tourists a week for four-day tours of Diamond Mountain on the North's east coast beginning in November. Animosity and distrust between the two Koreas run deep. The Korean states were separated into the communist North and the capitalist South in 1945. They fought a three-year war in the early 1950s. ||||| Famine-threatened North Korea's harvest will be no better this year than last and could be worse, a senior U.N. aid official said Saturday. North Korea needs a minimum 4.5 million to 5 million tons of grain to feed its 23 million people, but managed last year to harvest just 2.8 million tons, Namanga Ngongi, deputy head of the World Food Program said. Although hard figures are not yet available, the prospects for this year are that ``the harvest will not be any better,'' Ngongi told reporters in Beijing after visiting North Korea. ``It may be worse than last year.'' Poor harvests, economic collapse and three years of floods and drought, have produced chronic food shortages in North Korea and left it heavily reliant on foreign aid. Fertilizer is lacking, as is fuel to power tractors and farm machinery, meaning most planting and harvesting must be done by hand. ``Every year it gets worse,'' Ngongi said. But despite the need for food aid, Ngongi said the government about a month ago cut the number of counties to which the WFP has access from 171 to 145, reducing the number of people who can get aid from 6.7 million to 5.8 million. Most of those receiving WFP aid are children aged between 6 months and 6 years. Ngongi said the government cited security concerns _ notably the lack of a peace treaty with its rival South Korea _ for its decision. The government said the ban would be temporary, Ngongi added. Ngongi, who spent four days inspecting WFP relief efforts in North Korea, said people generally looked better than during a visit last year. But he also said he could see that ``a large part of the population is very weak.'' ``Everybody has been consuming at a very low level. So they may not be severely malnourished, but they are not well nourished at all,'' he said. U.S. officials who toured some of the hardest-hit regions of North Korea this summer said 2 million people may have died because of famine. Ngongi said he saw malnourished children who were said to be 10 or 11 years old, but appeared to be only 4 or 5 years old. About 30 percent of children in one primary school he visited were not in class. ``A lot of the children were too weak to come to school,'' he said. But Ngongi said foreign food aid has saved lives. ``A lot of people are alive today thanks to the international community's support,'' he said. ||||| Police in northeastern China's Jilin province said Monday they had rounded up at least 100 North Koreans and sent them back to endure a famine in their reclusive country. A police official in the Jilin city of Tonghua, near the North Korean border, said the North Koreans were forced to repatriate because some had resettled illegally in China, had formed criminal gangs or engaged in prostitution. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, denied reports in the South Korean press that the Chinese had disregarded requests for political asylum in forcing the refugees back across the border. He said they had crossed into China seeking food, not because of political repression in North Korea. Citing a North Korean human rights group and Japanese tourists visiting the region, South Korea's Yonhap News Agency reported Monday that 150 North Koreans had been sent home from China, despite having presented petitions for political asylum. North Korea is entering its fourth winter of chronic food shortages, having harvested only 3 million tons of grain this year, about two-thirds of the minimum needed by its 23 million people. ||||| Hunger and malnutrition in Cambodia are reaching crisis levels comparable to the effects of famine in North Korea, a U.N. World Food Program representative said Tuesday. Though North Korea is suffering from a simple lack of food, a faltering economy in Cambodia combined with weak health care and education is causing similar levels of malnutrition in children, said Ken Davies, the WFP's country director. ``There is enough rice. The problem is that people are too poor to access it. The problem is poverty,'' Davies said. The WFP is currently supporting 1.7 million hungry Cambodians _ about 15 percent of the population _ with food-for-work and direct assistance programs, but Davies said he fears there are still plenty more that are not getting enough to eat every day. ``The problem is so bad that it is only a little worse in North Korea,'' Davies said. ``The situation is much worse than most people recognize.'' According to a recent WFP survey, 49 percent of Cambodian children under age 5 are stunted by lack of food and 20 percent suffer from acute malnutrition. By comparison, a similar survey of North Korean children under 7 found that 65 percent are stunted and 16 percent suffer from acute malnutrition. Cambodia has produced a rice surplus for export in the last two years and expects another this year, but WFP statistics show that 25 percent of rice-growing areas account for 75 percent of the surplus. The majority of Cambodian farmers are not producing enough to keep their families fed and are being increasingly saddled with debts incurred when they run out of reserves before harvest, Davies said. Money-lenders in rural Cambodia typically charge 100 percent interest, which must be paid in rice at harvest time, giving many farmers a handicapped start on the next crop season. Poor sanitation, lack of health care and ignorance of modern child rearing _ problems left mostly unaddressed by under-funded health and education sectors in Cambodia _ have exacerbated the food security problem, Davies said. Davies urged the new government to substantially increase annual expenditures on health, education and rural development as a first step in a long-term solution to Cambodia's food crisis. ``The poverty is getting worse right now and the situation with the malnutrition of children is a crisis,'' Davies said. Cambodia typically earmarks about half of its annual budget to defense and security. In the 1998 budget, education was allocated 6.5 percent, health 4.4 percent and rural development 0.2 percent. Actual disbursements to the three ministries are often only 60 to 70 percent of the budgeted amount as annual revenues fall short of expectations, according to aid workers. A 1999 budget draft proposed a reduction of the health ministry's allotment, which caused an outcry in September from health officials and the U.N. World Health Program. The draft was later readjusted to provide an unprecedented 33 percent increase in health spending. ||||| A North Korean man arrived in Seoul Wednesday and sought asylum after escaping his hunger-stricken homeland, government officials said. Kim Myong Sup, 23, had been living in hiding in a ``third country'' since fleeing North Korea last year, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade said. The ministry generally uses the term ``third country'' to avoid naming China, which is required by treaty with North Korea to return defectors to their homeland. The ministry described Kim as a former athlete, but said details of his background and his method of escape from North Korea were not available. About 200 North Koreans have defected to South Korea in the past three years, including 60 so far this year. All complained about severe food and fuel shortages in their country. The Koreas were divided into the communist North and the capitalist South in 1945. They fought the Korean War in 1950-53 and never signed a formal peace treaty. ||||| A congressman who visited remote parts of North Korea last week said Saturday that the food and health situation there was desperate and deteriorating, and that millions of North Koreans might have starved to death in the last few years. The congressman, Tony Hall, D-Ohio, who has had a longtime interest in world hunger, passed through Tokyo on his return to the United States and showed photographs he had taken of North Korean children with patchy hair, protruding bones, open sores and other signs of severe malnutrition. Hall also brought back a bag of what officials called ``substitute food'' being distributed by a government food station: dried leaves and straw, so coarse that even cattle would normally turn away. ``They grind it into powder and make it into noodles,'' Hall said. The noodles have no nutrition and are indigestible, leaving people holding their aching stomachs, he said. North Korea has admitted that it is facing serious economic difficulties, but there have been sharply diverging assessments of how serious these are. Some visitors with the United Nations and other organizations have said that the food situation seems to be a bit better now than a year or two ago. Hall said that the divergence might have arisen because in the North Korean capital, Pyongyang, life did seem to be slightly better than during his three previous trips to North Korea. But in rural areas where foreigners are not often allowed to visit, he added, the overall situation is worse than ever. Based on visits to four hospitals, Hall also emphasized that public health care had declined sharply. In one hospital, assistants were holding down a patient while surgeons conducted a stomach operation without electric lights or anesthesia. Ordinary North Koreans are suffering, in part, because their government's hard-line policies have alienated would-be donors and aid agencies. The United Nations has repeatedly appealed for relief aid for North Korea, but the latest appeal has raised less than one-third of the target. In September, Doctors Without Borders announced that it was pulling its staff of 13 from North Korea because it feared that its aid was going to the politically connected rather than to the most needy. North Korea does not release mortality figures or health statistics, but Hall said that the United Nations had gathered and would soon release data indicating that 30 percent of North Korean children under age 2 are acutely malnourished and that 67 percent of all children are physically stunted. Hall said he thought that overall at least 1 million people had died and that the total was probably closer to 3 million. In an indication of the seriousness with which professional demographers view the situation, the U.S. Bureau of the Census recently published estimates suggesting that North Korea's population peaked in 1995 at 21.55 million and has since fallen to 21.23 million this year. That would be a decline of 320,000 over three years, a period when North Korea's population would have been expected to grow by about 925,000 people, based on the population growth rate of the early 1990s. Nicholas Eberstadt, an American specialist on North Korean population figures, says that there simply is not enough hard information for him to estimate the death toll from the famine. But he notes one political tidbit: North Korea's constitution stipulates that there should be one delegate to the country's ``people's assembly'' for every 30,000 citizens. This year's assembly did not expand as previous ones did, but rather had just 687 delegates, the same as the previous assembly held in 1990. While Eberstadt counsels caution, that could mean that North Korea's population, after eight years in which it had been expected to add several million people, is now back to 20.6 million people or fewer. The United States has been supplying grain to North Korea, but strains are growing over a secret underground complex in the North that some experts worry may be the heart of a new nuclear weapons program. The United States warned last week that the ``agreed framework'' that is the basis for its relations with North Korea will be in jeopardy unless the North lets American experts visit the underground complex and resolve their doubts. North Korea has said that it will show off the complex only if Washington promises that if the complex is not a nuclear one, it will pay for ``vilifying us and impairing our prestige.'' Washington refuses to pay, and North Korea is warning that the standoff could lead the agreement to fall apart. ``Their shameless and wicked demand is an open infringement upon our sovereignty and wanton interference in our internal affairs,'' declared North Korea's leading newspaper, Rodong Sinmun. ||||| Years of food shortages have stunted the growth of millions of North Korean children, with two-thirds of children under age seven suffering malnourishment, U.N. experts said Wednesday. Several years of flooding and droughts coupled with an economic downturn have heavily damaged North Korea's crop production and capacity to import food in the closed, communist nation. A survey carried out in September and October also showed that 16 percent of children in North Korea are acutely malnourished, with a body weight too low for their height. That figure, which reflects ongoing shortages, is exceeded in Asia only by Bangladesh, India and Sri Lanka. Eighteen teams, each headed by a foreign official from the World Food Program, the U.N. Children's Fund or the European Union, carried out the study. They measured the weight and height of 1,800 North Korean children from infants up to age seven in homes randomly selected in areas where aid agencies have access. Those areas cover around 70 percent of the population. It was the first ``technically sound survey'' of the problem, UNICEF official Kirsi Madi told reporters. The most alarming findings were for toddlers aged one to two, 30 percent of whom were acutely malnourished. At that age, ``malnutrition can permanently impair physical and intellectual growth,'' said Judy Cheng-Hopkins, WFP director for the region. Children in North Korea's three largest cities _ Pyongyang, Wonsan and Nampo _ were better off than their counterparts elsewhere, with 11 percent acutely malnourished. Boys were almost twice as badly affected as girls.

N. Korea will have another poor harvest this year, making this its 4th winter of famine. Government has cut the number of people to get aid for security reasons. The possibility of nuclear weapons in N. Korea threatens U.S. aid. Millions have died of starvation. Two thirds of children under age 7 are malnourished and their growth is stunted. A generation will be physically and mentally impaired. Hyundai's founder will give 501 cattle to his native N. Korea. About 200 defected to S. Korea in the last 3 years. China returned 100 to 150, denying them asylum. Hunger in Cambodia is due to a bad economy. N. Korea will send 317 to the Asian Games in Thailand.

North Korea is entering its fourth winter of chronic food shortages with its people malnourished and at risk of dying from normally curable illnesses, senior Red Cross officials said Tuesday. The officials warned against international complacency and hostility toward North Korea as the food crisis stretches on and the isolated communist country shows little willingness to adopt far-reaching changes to revive its ruined economy. ``Humanitarian suffering cannot be routine in any part of the world,'' said Margareta Wahlstrom, the Red Cross' undersecretary of disaster relief, who returned to Beijing Tuesday after a week inspecting the aid agency's operations in North Korea. She and other Red Cross officials saw further ravages of North Korea's slow-motion famine: electricity supplied to only half the capital, Pyongyang, at a time; the elderly looking swollen, a sign of long-term hunger; a generation of children stunted, with 10-year-olds looking like 6-year-olds and 5-year-olds like 2-year-olds. Everywhere, from bakeries to government ministries, people were being served noodles and cakes made from soybeans mixed with acorns, grass and herbs, Red Cross president Astrid Heiberg said. Heiberg likened the additives to ``cattle food'' and noted that doctors reported a rise in stomach illnesses from the mixtures. ``This is really part of the daily life,'' she said. ``You would not give them to your children or your elderly mother knowing she would get cramps in her stomach and diarrhea unless her stomach was moaning.'' Three years of floods and drought that started in 1995 devastated North Korea's collective farming and planned economy, already teetering from the loss of its Soviet bloc trading partners. With few goods or money to barter or buy foreign supplies, the country lacks sufficient fertilizer for crops, and fuel and parts for machinery. The Red Cross inspectors saw soldiers and people harvesting cabbage, the winter's main vegetable. The grain harvest is finished and by U.N. estimates little improved over last year's: about 3 million tons, only enough to meet two-thirds of the needs of North Korea's 22 million people. As the long, harsh winter begins, doctors confirm and official statistics show widespread malnutrition, tuberculosis on the rise and hunger-weakened patients unable to recover from operations and sickness, Heiberg said. Doctors worry that the respiratory illnesses so common in the winter may ``take a toll'' on the weakened population, she said. One 10-bed hospital in the countryside was keeping only three patients at a time because it did not have food to care for more, said Heiberg. The Red Cross wants to focus its latest dlrs 9 million appeal on getting essential medicines and blankets and warm clothes to North Korea. Food aid is largely being turned over to U.N. agencies. ||||| Despite catastrophic hunger at home, North Korea plans to send 317 athletes and officials to next month's Asian Games in Thailand, South Korean officials said Thursday. It will be the largest sports delegation the communist country has sent abroad in recent years. North Korean Sports Minister Chang Ung said 209 athletes from his country will compete in 21 events in Bangkok, hoping to win medals in women's judo, women's soccer, wrestling, table tennis, weightlifting and boxing. Chang made the remarks in an interview published recently by the Chosun Shinbo, a newspaper run by pro-North Korean residents in Japan, said Seoul's Naewoe Press, which obtained the report. Chang said North Korea was sending a large delegation to Bangkok to prepare for the 2000 Sydney Olympics. North Korea did not enter the last Asian Games, in Hiroshima, Japan, in 1994. It sent only 18 athletes and officials to the Winter Olympics in Nagano, Japan, in February. Naewoe is run by South Korea's main government intelligence agency and specializes in monitoring communist news media. Three years of floods and drought that started in 1995 devastated North Korea's collective farming and planned economy, forcing the country to rely on outside aid to feed its 23 million people. ||||| More than five years of severe food shortages and a near-total breakdown in the public health system have led to devastating malnutrition in North Korea and probably left an entire generation of children physically and mentally impaired, a new study by international aid groups has found. The study, the first scientific nutritional survey in North Korea, confirms the disturbing reports by international aid workers, who over the past year have gained increasing access to the population of this highly isolated and secretive country. Among other shocking findings, researchers from the World Food Program, Unicef and the European Union found that, because of long-term food shortages, a staggering 62 percent of children under 7 years old suffer from stunted growth. They have discovered that, despite a huge international food aid program over the past three years, severe malnutrition is widespread among toddlers at crucial stages of brain development, suggesting that this generation's physical and mental abilities will not develop normally and that the losses can never be recovered. Separately, international medical workers from groups like the Red Cross, have begun to document how the effects of food shortages are being severely compounded by a breakdown in public health services. Even basic water purification systems stand idle for lack of essential ingredients like chlorine, Red Cross workers say, leaving vast numbers of people with such severe diarrhea that they are unable to absorb completely what little food they have. As the North Korean dictatorship has slowly, often grudgingly, granted increased access to international aid groups in the last six months, an increasingly clear and saddening picture of the hunger haas emerged as a result of the large formal study and informal surveys and observations by foreign aid agencies. Past assessments of the magnitude of the disaster in the country of 23 million are considered flawed because they were based on interviews with a small number of North Korean refugees who had fled into China. And while the researchers and aid workers on the ground in North Korea have not seen evidence of cannibalism or starving children dying by the roadside _ descriptions that have surfaced in the more lurid refugee reports _ what they did find was in many ways equally disturbing: A population withering after nearly a decade of chronic hunger, people so weakened by malnutrition that colds and stomach flus quickly turn lethal, the future of a generation irretrievably lost. ``Now at last we have hard facts _ the situation is very grave,'' said Judith Cheng-Hopkins, regional director for Asia of the World Food Program, which has taken part in the research. ``To me this is a famine in slow motion. People cope year after year, and probably a lot drop off. But the totality is very hard to gauge.'' For three weeks this fall, crews led by foreign scientists were finally permitted to fan out across North Korea to conduct the first random sample nutritional survey of children, providing by far the most solid data on the crisis. They found that 62 percent of children under 7 had stunted growth, a symptom of long-term malnutrition. Thirty percent of 1-year-olds suffered from moderate to severe malnutrition. This means a high likelihood of impaired mental and physical development, because the nervous system matures dramatically during this essential first year. The researchers said that available scientific data suggest that 10 years ago, malnutrition was rare in North Korea. ``Even if the situation improves, it is unlikely to improve to the degree that the country will fully recover from what we saw,'' said Judit Katona-Apte, a senior program adviser for the World Food Program. ``People will be small and not as well developed as otherwise and somewhat limited in their mental capacities.'' Likewise, when Red Cross representatives this year tested the water supply at the 840 hospitals and clinics where they operate, they found that not one had water that was suitable for human consumption, said Sten Swedlund, head of the Red Cross delegation in North Korea. ``But of course they drink it _ they have no choice,'' he said during a recent trip to Beijing. ``There is a very close relationship between the problems caused by the lack of food and a health sector that's in very bad shape.'' Virtually all the children under 7 who are malnourished also have diarrhea, he said. None of the aid groups has been able to study the issue of hunger-related deaths, and the North Koreans have not released relevant figures, although most experts agree that probably more than one million and perhaps as many as three million have died prematurely since the food shortages began. But public health experts say the number who have perished might be difficult to tally in any case, because most deaths were probably not from quick starvation, but from immune systems weakened by years of hunger, so that common colds more easily give way to lethal pneumonia and an ordinary bout of infectious diarrhea proves fatal. Still, there are some disturbing clues: In one limited study conducted by the World Food Program and other groups last year on 4,000 children hand-picked by the government, 10 percent had a parent who was dead. In this fall's independent nutritional survey, 18 teams of experts sent to eight of North Korea's nine provinces looked at 1,800 rural and urban children under seven. In addition to finding that 62 percent of children had stunted growth, the teams found that about 16 percent of children were suffering from acute malnutrition and were underweight for their height, a sign that they were severely underfed at the time of the study. That figure is higher than in any country in East Asia and puts North Korea among the world's worst 10 countries in terms of malnutrition. While that 16 percent figure is not quite as bad as that of India and Bangladesh, the worst in the world with an 18 percent malnutrition rate, experts say that North Korea's number in some ways understates the problem. In India and Bangladesh, pockets of severe poverty alternate with pockets of relative plenty, while in North Korea the whole country is to some degree underfed. ``Even in war-torn countries, famine is more in pockets,'' Dr. Katona-Apte said. ``It's hard to think of another country that's been affected in this way.'' The survey results are especially sobering since the researchers studied only children under 7, the group that received nearly all the food donated from abroad. After three years of food donations, many foreign aid workers in the country have remarked that children in nurseries and kindergartens are looking better _ but that their older siblings are failing. So a month ago, the World Food Program began providing elementary schools with high nutrition biscuits for children aged 7 to 12. ``We have reason to believe that many people are suffering and that the elderly are a neglected age group that is just getting weaker and weaker,'' Swedlund said. There are now more than 100 Westerners living in Pyongyang, the capital city, and many say the long-term hunger is readily apparent there. ``If you walk down the street in Pyongyang and ask a child how old she is, you are usually off by three years,'' Swedlund said. ``She may be 7 but she looks just 3 or 4.'' Dr. Katona-Apte, a nutrition expert who has worked in Bangladesh and the Sudan, said she was shocked when she first visited a North Korean kindergarten last year. ``There were these two children sitting at a desk who were obviously severely malnourished _ they were so thin and they had patchy hair,'' she said. ``And they were just sitting there working. This is accepted as normal! They are in school, and they should really be hospitalized or placed in nutritional rehabilitation. If you saw them in a refugee camp, you would recommend immediate intervention.'' But with a severely depleted public health and hospital system, that option does not exist, she and others said. Many Korean doctors do not know how to diagnose or treat malnutrition; few had seen it before this decade. And, in any case, the hospitals lack the food and proper nutritional supplements. Swedlund said most hospitals lacked medicines, had no glass to replace broken windows and were ``colder inside than out,'' having received no coal since 1994. He said that even in hospitals, sanitation and water purification systems were virtually nonexistent, because the country lacks chlorine for purification and fuel to run water pumps. He said that next year, the Red Cross would start to address those problems, spending $3.5 on food for hospital patients and $1 million on water treatment. With few other options, vast numbers of North Koreans have resorted to eating ``substitute food,'' hard cakes and noodles made from a mix of nutritional plants, like soybeans and sweet potatoes, combined with indigestible filler, like cornstalks and straw. ``This now constitutes 40 percent of food intake,'' Swedlund said. ``It's becoming a regular part of the food basket.'' Doctors in North Korea say many people suffer from stomachaches after eating this partly indigestible material, he said, but added, ``If you're very hungry, it fills your stomach.'' Although the North Koreans date their food problems to a series of floods and droughts in the mid-1990's, the foreign researchers who have worked in North Korea say medical records and childhood growth patterns indicate that the hunger began several years before that and is linked to the collapse of the Soviet Union, which had long been North Korea's main supplier of food, fuel and fertilizer. North Korea is a mountainous country, with less than 20 percent arable land. It has been a food importer for decades, mostly from the former Soviet Union, but also from China. ``The country has to come to grips with the fact that this is part of a structural problem and can't just be blamed on the weather anymore,'' Ms. Cheng-Hopkins said. Still, she and others praised the normally rigid and secretive government for slowly loosening its restrictions. Swedlund said that after three years in the country, the international Red Cross, which collaborates with the North Korean Red Cross, had found officials increasingly responsive and doctors more willing to share medical records and bring up problems. Travel is still restricted. There are more than 100 counties, home to 30 percent of the population, to which aid groups have no access and where they have therefore refused to provide food or medical supplies. Still, the number of counties open to the workers has increased steadily, and freedom to move about has improved. Ms. Cheng-Hopkins said about half of follow-up inspections were now unannounced, and she noted that the researchers in the nutritional survey were allowed to select villages to visit and enter homes at random. Workers from the Red Cross and the World Food Program said they had not observed extreme scenes of people dying of acute starvation and believe that they would have if they were occurring frequently. ``I have not seen acute starvation like I have seen in Bangladesh,'' Dr. Katona-Apte said. ``But that doesn't mean it can't exist. We're still really limited in what we can see.'' Swedlund said it was unlikely that the counties still closed to foreigners were markedly different from the open ones. And while some have surmised that the closed counties might harbor pockets of death and devastation, he said he accepted North Korea's explanation that they had been excluded from some areas for national security reasons. ``One thing I've learned is how important national security issues are to the North Koreans,'' said Swedlund, a retired admiral in the Swedish Navy. ``And I really think these areas are important from that standpoint,'' he added, going through a map of closed areas and describing what Western intelligence experts know about military installations there. He also rejected the notion that the North Korean military is stealing donated food, a charge leveled by the organization Doctors Without Borders, when it angrily pulled out of North Korea last summer to protest the many restrictions on groups working there. Now that aid groups say they are starting to get somewhat better cooperation from the North Koreans, they hope to repeat their nutrition survey every 6 to 12 months. And they are still analyzing some tantalizing findings: Boys were twice as likely to suffer from stunted growth as girls, and every child whose mother was dead was malnourished. ``A generation of North Korean children is already scarred for life,'' said Astrid Heiberg, president of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, in an interview in Beijing after a trip to North Korea. ``We need to continue to mobilize resources to prevent an even greater catastrophe.'' ||||| The founder of South Korea's largest conglomerate plans to visit his native North Korea again next week with a gift of 501 cattle, company officials said Thursday. The visit has been delayed a month because of a dispute over 500 cattle donated by Chung Ju-yung, founder of the Hyundai group, during a trip to the North in June. North Korea claimed 71 of those cattle died because Seoul government agents force-fed them indigestible vinyl strips and lumps of rope before shipping them to the North. Calling the North's claim nonsense, Seoul's Ministry of National Unification ordered Hyundai to check thousands of other cattle being raised at its ranch on the west coast. The ministry later acknowledged that lumps of rope were found in the stomachs of some cattle on the ranch, but said the material didn't kill the animals donated to North Korea. It blamed the deaths on stress caused by the long shipment by truck to the North. The South Korean government said it would not authorize a second shipment of cattle unless the North retracted its accusations. On Thursday, South Korean Unification Minister Kang In-duk said North Korea sent a letter to Hyundai last week, saying that ``the misunderstanding with the southern authorities on the issue of the dead cattle is cleared.'' Kang said the North's letter ``cleared a stumbling block for Hyundai's additional cattle donation.'' During his visit, Chung is expected to reach agreement on details of Hyundai's plan to start sightseeing tours of a scenic mountain in the North. The tours, originally scheduled to begin in September, have been delayed because of cost, security and other matters. Hyundai hopes to send by ship up to 2,000 tourists a week for four-day tours of Diamond Mountain on the North's east coast beginning in November. Animosity and distrust between the two Koreas run deep. The Korean states were separated into the communist North and the capitalist South in 1945. They fought a three-year war in the early 1950s. ||||| Famine-threatened North Korea's harvest will be no better this year than last and could be worse, a senior U.N. aid official said Saturday. North Korea needs a minimum 4.5 million to 5 million tons of grain to feed its 23 million people, but managed last year to harvest just 2.8 million tons, Namanga Ngongi, deputy head of the World Food Program said. Although hard figures are not yet available, the prospects for this year are that ``the harvest will not be any better,'' Ngongi told reporters in Beijing after visiting North Korea. ``It may be worse than last year.'' Poor harvests, economic collapse and three years of floods and drought, have produced chronic food shortages in North Korea and left it heavily reliant on foreign aid. Fertilizer is lacking, as is fuel to power tractors and farm machinery, meaning most planting and harvesting must be done by hand. ``Every year it gets worse,'' Ngongi said. But despite the need for food aid, Ngongi said the government about a month ago cut the number of counties to which the WFP has access from 171 to 145, reducing the number of people who can get aid from 6.7 million to 5.8 million. Most of those receiving WFP aid are children aged between 6 months and 6 years. Ngongi said the government cited security concerns _ notably the lack of a peace treaty with its rival South Korea _ for its decision. The government said the ban would be temporary, Ngongi added. Ngongi, who spent four days inspecting WFP relief efforts in North Korea, said people generally looked better than during a visit last year. But he also said he could see that ``a large part of the population is very weak.'' ``Everybody has been consuming at a very low level. So they may not be severely malnourished, but they are not well nourished at all,'' he said. U.S. officials who toured some of the hardest-hit regions of North Korea this summer said 2 million people may have died because of famine. Ngongi said he saw malnourished children who were said to be 10 or 11 years old, but appeared to be only 4 or 5 years old. About 30 percent of children in one primary school he visited were not in class. ``A lot of the children were too weak to come to school,'' he said. But Ngongi said foreign food aid has saved lives. ``A lot of people are alive today thanks to the international community's support,'' he said. ||||| Police in northeastern China's Jilin province said Monday they had rounded up at least 100 North Koreans and sent them back to endure a famine in their reclusive country. A police official in the Jilin city of Tonghua, near the North Korean border, said the North Koreans were forced to repatriate because some had resettled illegally in China, had formed criminal gangs or engaged in prostitution. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, denied reports in the South Korean press that the Chinese had disregarded requests for political asylum in forcing the refugees back across the border. He said they had crossed into China seeking food, not because of political repression in North Korea. Citing a North Korean human rights group and Japanese tourists visiting the region, South Korea's Yonhap News Agency reported Monday that 150 North Koreans had been sent home from China, despite having presented petitions for political asylum. North Korea is entering its fourth winter of chronic food shortages, having harvested only 3 million tons of grain this year, about two-thirds of the minimum needed by its 23 million people. ||||| Hunger and malnutrition in Cambodia are reaching crisis levels comparable to the effects of famine in North Korea, a U.N. World Food Program representative said Tuesday. Though North Korea is suffering from a simple lack of food, a faltering economy in Cambodia combined with weak health care and education is causing similar levels of malnutrition in children, said Ken Davies, the WFP's country director. ``There is enough rice. The problem is that people are too poor to access it. The problem is poverty,'' Davies said. The WFP is currently supporting 1.7 million hungry Cambodians _ about 15 percent of the population _ with food-for-work and direct assistance programs, but Davies said he fears there are still plenty more that are not getting enough to eat every day. ``The problem is so bad that it is only a little worse in North Korea,'' Davies said. ``The situation is much worse than most people recognize.'' According to a recent WFP survey, 49 percent of Cambodian children under age 5 are stunted by lack of food and 20 percent suffer from acute malnutrition. By comparison, a similar survey of North Korean children under 7 found that 65 percent are stunted and 16 percent suffer from acute malnutrition. Cambodia has produced a rice surplus for export in the last two years and expects another this year, but WFP statistics show that 25 percent of rice-growing areas account for 75 percent of the surplus. The majority of Cambodian farmers are not producing enough to keep their families fed and are being increasingly saddled with debts incurred when they run out of reserves before harvest, Davies said. Money-lenders in rural Cambodia typically charge 100 percent interest, which must be paid in rice at harvest time, giving many farmers a handicapped start on the next crop season. Poor sanitation, lack of health care and ignorance of modern child rearing _ problems left mostly unaddressed by under-funded health and education sectors in Cambodia _ have exacerbated the food security problem, Davies said. Davies urged the new government to substantially increase annual expenditures on health, education and rural development as a first step in a long-term solution to Cambodia's food crisis. ``The poverty is getting worse right now and the situation with the malnutrition of children is a crisis,'' Davies said. Cambodia typically earmarks about half of its annual budget to defense and security. In the 1998 budget, education was allocated 6.5 percent, health 4.4 percent and rural development 0.2 percent. Actual disbursements to the three ministries are often only 60 to 70 percent of the budgeted amount as annual revenues fall short of expectations, according to aid workers. A 1999 budget draft proposed a reduction of the health ministry's allotment, which caused an outcry in September from health officials and the U.N. World Health Program. The draft was later readjusted to provide an unprecedented 33 percent increase in health spending. ||||| A North Korean man arrived in Seoul Wednesday and sought asylum after escaping his hunger-stricken homeland, government officials said. Kim Myong Sup, 23, had been living in hiding in a ``third country'' since fleeing North Korea last year, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade said. The ministry generally uses the term ``third country'' to avoid naming China, which is required by treaty with North Korea to return defectors to their homeland. The ministry described Kim as a former athlete, but said details of his background and his method of escape from North Korea were not available. About 200 North Koreans have defected to South Korea in the past three years, including 60 so far this year. All complained about severe food and fuel shortages in their country. The Koreas were divided into the communist North and the capitalist South in 1945. They fought the Korean War in 1950-53 and never signed a formal peace treaty. ||||| A congressman who visited remote parts of North Korea last week said Saturday that the food and health situation there was desperate and deteriorating, and that millions of North Koreans might have starved to death in the last few years. The congressman, Tony Hall, D-Ohio, who has had a longtime interest in world hunger, passed through Tokyo on his return to the United States and showed photographs he had taken of North Korean children with patchy hair, protruding bones, open sores and other signs of severe malnutrition. Hall also brought back a bag of what officials called ``substitute food'' being distributed by a government food station: dried leaves and straw, so coarse that even cattle would normally turn away. ``They grind it into powder and make it into noodles,'' Hall said. The noodles have no nutrition and are indigestible, leaving people holding their aching stomachs, he said. North Korea has admitted that it is facing serious economic difficulties, but there have been sharply diverging assessments of how serious these are. Some visitors with the United Nations and other organizations have said that the food situation seems to be a bit better now than a year or two ago. Hall said that the divergence might have arisen because in the North Korean capital, Pyongyang, life did seem to be slightly better than during his three previous trips to North Korea. But in rural areas where foreigners are not often allowed to visit, he added, the overall situation is worse than ever. Based on visits to four hospitals, Hall also emphasized that public health care had declined sharply. In one hospital, assistants were holding down a patient while surgeons conducted a stomach operation without electric lights or anesthesia. Ordinary North Koreans are suffering, in part, because their government's hard-line policies have alienated would-be donors and aid agencies. The United Nations has repeatedly appealed for relief aid for North Korea, but the latest appeal has raised less than one-third of the target. In September, Doctors Without Borders announced that it was pulling its staff of 13 from North Korea because it feared that its aid was going to the politically connected rather than to the most needy. North Korea does not release mortality figures or health statistics, but Hall said that the United Nations had gathered and would soon release data indicating that 30 percent of North Korean children under age 2 are acutely malnourished and that 67 percent of all children are physically stunted. Hall said he thought that overall at least 1 million people had died and that the total was probably closer to 3 million. In an indication of the seriousness with which professional demographers view the situation, the U.S. Bureau of the Census recently published estimates suggesting that North Korea's population peaked in 1995 at 21.55 million and has since fallen to 21.23 million this year. That would be a decline of 320,000 over three years, a period when North Korea's population would have been expected to grow by about 925,000 people, based on the population growth rate of the early 1990s. Nicholas Eberstadt, an American specialist on North Korean population figures, says that there simply is not enough hard information for him to estimate the death toll from the famine. But he notes one political tidbit: North Korea's constitution stipulates that there should be one delegate to the country's ``people's assembly'' for every 30,000 citizens. This year's assembly did not expand as previous ones did, but rather had just 687 delegates, the same as the previous assembly held in 1990. While Eberstadt counsels caution, that could mean that North Korea's population, after eight years in which it had been expected to add several million people, is now back to 20.6 million people or fewer. The United States has been supplying grain to North Korea, but strains are growing over a secret underground complex in the North that some experts worry may be the heart of a new nuclear weapons program. The United States warned last week that the ``agreed framework'' that is the basis for its relations with North Korea will be in jeopardy unless the North lets American experts visit the underground complex and resolve their doubts. North Korea has said that it will show off the complex only if Washington promises that if the complex is not a nuclear one, it will pay for ``vilifying us and impairing our prestige.'' Washington refuses to pay, and North Korea is warning that the standoff could lead the agreement to fall apart. ``Their shameless and wicked demand is an open infringement upon our sovereignty and wanton interference in our internal affairs,'' declared North Korea's leading newspaper, Rodong Sinmun. ||||| Years of food shortages have stunted the growth of millions of North Korean children, with two-thirds of children under age seven suffering malnourishment, U.N. experts said Wednesday. Several years of flooding and droughts coupled with an economic downturn have heavily damaged North Korea's crop production and capacity to import food in the closed, communist nation. A survey carried out in September and October also showed that 16 percent of children in North Korea are acutely malnourished, with a body weight too low for their height. That figure, which reflects ongoing shortages, is exceeded in Asia only by Bangladesh, India and Sri Lanka. Eighteen teams, each headed by a foreign official from the World Food Program, the U.N. Children's Fund or the European Union, carried out the study. They measured the weight and height of 1,800 North Korean children from infants up to age seven in homes randomly selected in areas where aid agencies have access. Those areas cover around 70 percent of the population. It was the first ``technically sound survey'' of the problem, UNICEF official Kirsi Madi told reporters. The most alarming findings were for toddlers aged one to two, 30 percent of whom were acutely malnourished. At that age, ``malnutrition can permanently impair physical and intellectual growth,'' said Judy Cheng-Hopkins, WFP director for the region. Children in North Korea's three largest cities _ Pyongyang, Wonsan and Nampo _ were better off than their counterparts elsewhere, with 11 percent acutely malnourished. Boys were almost twice as badly affected as girls.

North Korea has suffered 5 years of famine, caused by floods and the loss of Soviet trade. The government distributed nutritionless substitutes and made food aid available to fewer people. Two million may have starved. Children are stunted. Curable diseases become fatal. A generation is impaired mentally and physically. Some seek asylum in the South. China sends refugees home. N. Korea's hard line discourages donors. Hyundai's founder donated cattle to the North but leaders claim he sabotaged them. He hopes to promote tourism of the North. N. Korea is sending many athletes to the Asian Games despite famine. Cambodia's famine approaching N. Korea's level.

North Korea is entering its fourth winter of chronic food shortages with its people malnourished and at risk of dying from normally curable illnesses, senior Red Cross officials said Tuesday. The officials warned against international complacency and hostility toward North Korea as the food crisis stretches on and the isolated communist country shows little willingness to adopt far-reaching changes to revive its ruined economy. ``Humanitarian suffering cannot be routine in any part of the world,'' said Margareta Wahlstrom, the Red Cross' undersecretary of disaster relief, who returned to Beijing Tuesday after a week inspecting the aid agency's operations in North Korea. She and other Red Cross officials saw further ravages of North Korea's slow-motion famine: electricity supplied to only half the capital, Pyongyang, at a time; the elderly looking swollen, a sign of long-term hunger; a generation of children stunted, with 10-year-olds looking like 6-year-olds and 5-year-olds like 2-year-olds. Everywhere, from bakeries to government ministries, people were being served noodles and cakes made from soybeans mixed with acorns, grass and herbs, Red Cross president Astrid Heiberg said. Heiberg likened the additives to ``cattle food'' and noted that doctors reported a rise in stomach illnesses from the mixtures. ``This is really part of the daily life,'' she said. ``You would not give them to your children or your elderly mother knowing she would get cramps in her stomach and diarrhea unless her stomach was moaning.'' Three years of floods and drought that started in 1995 devastated North Korea's collective farming and planned economy, already teetering from the loss of its Soviet bloc trading partners. With few goods or money to barter or buy foreign supplies, the country lacks sufficient fertilizer for crops, and fuel and parts for machinery. The Red Cross inspectors saw soldiers and people harvesting cabbage, the winter's main vegetable. The grain harvest is finished and by U.N. estimates little improved over last year's: about 3 million tons, only enough to meet two-thirds of the needs of North Korea's 22 million people. As the long, harsh winter begins, doctors confirm and official statistics show widespread malnutrition, tuberculosis on the rise and hunger-weakened patients unable to recover from operations and sickness, Heiberg said. Doctors worry that the respiratory illnesses so common in the winter may ``take a toll'' on the weakened population, she said. One 10-bed hospital in the countryside was keeping only three patients at a time because it did not have food to care for more, said Heiberg. The Red Cross wants to focus its latest dlrs 9 million appeal on getting essential medicines and blankets and warm clothes to North Korea. Food aid is largely being turned over to U.N. agencies. ||||| Despite catastrophic hunger at home, North Korea plans to send 317 athletes and officials to next month's Asian Games in Thailand, South Korean officials said Thursday. It will be the largest sports delegation the communist country has sent abroad in recent years. North Korean Sports Minister Chang Ung said 209 athletes from his country will compete in 21 events in Bangkok, hoping to win medals in women's judo, women's soccer, wrestling, table tennis, weightlifting and boxing. Chang made the remarks in an interview published recently by the Chosun Shinbo, a newspaper run by pro-North Korean residents in Japan, said Seoul's Naewoe Press, which obtained the report. Chang said North Korea was sending a large delegation to Bangkok to prepare for the 2000 Sydney Olympics. North Korea did not enter the last Asian Games, in Hiroshima, Japan, in 1994. It sent only 18 athletes and officials to the Winter Olympics in Nagano, Japan, in February. Naewoe is run by South Korea's main government intelligence agency and specializes in monitoring communist news media. Three years of floods and drought that started in 1995 devastated North Korea's collective farming and planned economy, forcing the country to rely on outside aid to feed its 23 million people. ||||| More than five years of severe food shortages and a near-total breakdown in the public health system have led to devastating malnutrition in North Korea and probably left an entire generation of children physically and mentally impaired, a new study by international aid groups has found. The study, the first scientific nutritional survey in North Korea, confirms the disturbing reports by international aid workers, who over the past year have gained increasing access to the population of this highly isolated and secretive country. Among other shocking findings, researchers from the World Food Program, Unicef and the European Union found that, because of long-term food shortages, a staggering 62 percent of children under 7 years old suffer from stunted growth. They have discovered that, despite a huge international food aid program over the past three years, severe malnutrition is widespread among toddlers at crucial stages of brain development, suggesting that this generation's physical and mental abilities will not develop normally and that the losses can never be recovered. Separately, international medical workers from groups like the Red Cross, have begun to document how the effects of food shortages are being severely compounded by a breakdown in public health services. Even basic water purification systems stand idle for lack of essential ingredients like chlorine, Red Cross workers say, leaving vast numbers of people with such severe diarrhea that they are unable to absorb completely what little food they have. As the North Korean dictatorship has slowly, often grudgingly, granted increased access to international aid groups in the last six months, an increasingly clear and saddening picture of the hunger haas emerged as a result of the large formal study and informal surveys and observations by foreign aid agencies. Past assessments of the magnitude of the disaster in the country of 23 million are considered flawed because they were based on interviews with a small number of North Korean refugees who had fled into China. And while the researchers and aid workers on the ground in North Korea have not seen evidence of cannibalism or starving children dying by the roadside _ descriptions that have surfaced in the more lurid refugee reports _ what they did find was in many ways equally disturbing: A population withering after nearly a decade of chronic hunger, people so weakened by malnutrition that colds and stomach flus quickly turn lethal, the future of a generation irretrievably lost. ``Now at last we have hard facts _ the situation is very grave,'' said Judith Cheng-Hopkins, regional director for Asia of the World Food Program, which has taken part in the research. ``To me this is a famine in slow motion. People cope year after year, and probably a lot drop off. But the totality is very hard to gauge.'' For three weeks this fall, crews led by foreign scientists were finally permitted to fan out across North Korea to conduct the first random sample nutritional survey of children, providing by far the most solid data on the crisis. They found that 62 percent of children under 7 had stunted growth, a symptom of long-term malnutrition. Thirty percent of 1-year-olds suffered from moderate to severe malnutrition. This means a high likelihood of impaired mental and physical development, because the nervous system matures dramatically during this essential first year. The researchers said that available scientific data suggest that 10 years ago, malnutrition was rare in North Korea. ``Even if the situation improves, it is unlikely to improve to the degree that the country will fully recover from what we saw,'' said Judit Katona-Apte, a senior program adviser for the World Food Program. ``People will be small and not as well developed as otherwise and somewhat limited in their mental capacities.'' Likewise, when Red Cross representatives this year tested the water supply at the 840 hospitals and clinics where they operate, they found that not one had water that was suitable for human consumption, said Sten Swedlund, head of the Red Cross delegation in North Korea. ``But of course they drink it _ they have no choice,'' he said during a recent trip to Beijing. ``There is a very close relationship between the problems caused by the lack of food and a health sector that's in very bad shape.'' Virtually all the children under 7 who are malnourished also have diarrhea, he said. None of the aid groups has been able to study the issue of hunger-related deaths, and the North Koreans have not released relevant figures, although most experts agree that probably more than one million and perhaps as many as three million have died prematurely since the food shortages began. But public health experts say the number who have perished might be difficult to tally in any case, because most deaths were probably not from quick starvation, but from immune systems weakened by years of hunger, so that common colds more easily give way to lethal pneumonia and an ordinary bout of infectious diarrhea proves fatal. Still, there are some disturbing clues: In one limited study conducted by the World Food Program and other groups last year on 4,000 children hand-picked by the government, 10 percent had a parent who was dead. In this fall's independent nutritional survey, 18 teams of experts sent to eight of North Korea's nine provinces looked at 1,800 rural and urban children under seven. In addition to finding that 62 percent of children had stunted growth, the teams found that about 16 percent of children were suffering from acute malnutrition and were underweight for their height, a sign that they were severely underfed at the time of the study. That figure is higher than in any country in East Asia and puts North Korea among the world's worst 10 countries in terms of malnutrition. While that 16 percent figure is not quite as bad as that of India and Bangladesh, the worst in the world with an 18 percent malnutrition rate, experts say that North Korea's number in some ways understates the problem. In India and Bangladesh, pockets of severe poverty alternate with pockets of relative plenty, while in North Korea the whole country is to some degree underfed. ``Even in war-torn countries, famine is more in pockets,'' Dr. Katona-Apte said. ``It's hard to think of another country that's been affected in this way.'' The survey results are especially sobering since the researchers studied only children under 7, the group that received nearly all the food donated from abroad. After three years of food donations, many foreign aid workers in the country have remarked that children in nurseries and kindergartens are looking better _ but that their older siblings are failing. So a month ago, the World Food Program began providing elementary schools with high nutrition biscuits for children aged 7 to 12. ``We have reason to believe that many people are suffering and that the elderly are a neglected age group that is just getting weaker and weaker,'' Swedlund said. There are now more than 100 Westerners living in Pyongyang, the capital city, and many say the long-term hunger is readily apparent there. ``If you walk down the street in Pyongyang and ask a child how old she is, you are usually off by three years,'' Swedlund said. ``She may be 7 but she looks just 3 or 4.'' Dr. Katona-Apte, a nutrition expert who has worked in Bangladesh and the Sudan, said she was shocked when she first visited a North Korean kindergarten last year. ``There were these two children sitting at a desk who were obviously severely malnourished _ they were so thin and they had patchy hair,'' she said. ``And they were just sitting there working. This is accepted as normal! They are in school, and they should really be hospitalized or placed in nutritional rehabilitation. If you saw them in a refugee camp, you would recommend immediate intervention.'' But with a severely depleted public health and hospital system, that option does not exist, she and others said. Many Korean doctors do not know how to diagnose or treat malnutrition; few had seen it before this decade. And, in any case, the hospitals lack the food and proper nutritional supplements. Swedlund said most hospitals lacked medicines, had no glass to replace broken windows and were ``colder inside than out,'' having received no coal since 1994. He said that even in hospitals, sanitation and water purification systems were virtually nonexistent, because the country lacks chlorine for purification and fuel to run water pumps. He said that next year, the Red Cross would start to address those problems, spending $3.5 on food for hospital patients and $1 million on water treatment. With few other options, vast numbers of North Koreans have resorted to eating ``substitute food,'' hard cakes and noodles made from a mix of nutritional plants, like soybeans and sweet potatoes, combined with indigestible filler, like cornstalks and straw. ``This now constitutes 40 percent of food intake,'' Swedlund said. ``It's becoming a regular part of the food basket.'' Doctors in North Korea say many people suffer from stomachaches after eating this partly indigestible material, he said, but added, ``If you're very hungry, it fills your stomach.'' Although the North Koreans date their food problems to a series of floods and droughts in the mid-1990's, the foreign researchers who have worked in North Korea say medical records and childhood growth patterns indicate that the hunger began several years before that and is linked to the collapse of the Soviet Union, which had long been North Korea's main supplier of food, fuel and fertilizer. North Korea is a mountainous country, with less than 20 percent arable land. It has been a food importer for decades, mostly from the former Soviet Union, but also from China. ``The country has to come to grips with the fact that this is part of a structural problem and can't just be blamed on the weather anymore,'' Ms. Cheng-Hopkins said. Still, she and others praised the normally rigid and secretive government for slowly loosening its restrictions. Swedlund said that after three years in the country, the international Red Cross, which collaborates with the North Korean Red Cross, had found officials increasingly responsive and doctors more willing to share medical records and bring up problems. Travel is still restricted. There are more than 100 counties, home to 30 percent of the population, to which aid groups have no access and where they have therefore refused to provide food or medical supplies. Still, the number of counties open to the workers has increased steadily, and freedom to move about has improved. Ms. Cheng-Hopkins said about half of follow-up inspections were now unannounced, and she noted that the researchers in the nutritional survey were allowed to select villages to visit and enter homes at random. Workers from the Red Cross and the World Food Program said they had not observed extreme scenes of people dying of acute starvation and believe that they would have if they were occurring frequently. ``I have not seen acute starvation like I have seen in Bangladesh,'' Dr. Katona-Apte said. ``But that doesn't mean it can't exist. We're still really limited in what we can see.'' Swedlund said it was unlikely that the counties still closed to foreigners were markedly different from the open ones. And while some have surmised that the closed counties might harbor pockets of death and devastation, he said he accepted North Korea's explanation that they had been excluded from some areas for national security reasons. ``One thing I've learned is how important national security issues are to the North Koreans,'' said Swedlund, a retired admiral in the Swedish Navy. ``And I really think these areas are important from that standpoint,'' he added, going through a map of closed areas and describing what Western intelligence experts know about military installations there. He also rejected the notion that the North Korean military is stealing donated food, a charge leveled by the organization Doctors Without Borders, when it angrily pulled out of North Korea last summer to protest the many restrictions on groups working there. Now that aid groups say they are starting to get somewhat better cooperation from the North Koreans, they hope to repeat their nutrition survey every 6 to 12 months. And they are still analyzing some tantalizing findings: Boys were twice as likely to suffer from stunted growth as girls, and every child whose mother was dead was malnourished. ``A generation of North Korean children is already scarred for life,'' said Astrid Heiberg, president of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, in an interview in Beijing after a trip to North Korea. ``We need to continue to mobilize resources to prevent an even greater catastrophe.'' ||||| The founder of South Korea's largest conglomerate plans to visit his native North Korea again next week with a gift of 501 cattle, company officials said Thursday. The visit has been delayed a month because of a dispute over 500 cattle donated by Chung Ju-yung, founder of the Hyundai group, during a trip to the North in June. North Korea claimed 71 of those cattle died because Seoul government agents force-fed them indigestible vinyl strips and lumps of rope before shipping them to the North. Calling the North's claim nonsense, Seoul's Ministry of National Unification ordered Hyundai to check thousands of other cattle being raised at its ranch on the west coast. The ministry later acknowledged that lumps of rope were found in the stomachs of some cattle on the ranch, but said the material didn't kill the animals donated to North Korea. It blamed the deaths on stress caused by the long shipment by truck to the North. The South Korean government said it would not authorize a second shipment of cattle unless the North retracted its accusations. On Thursday, South Korean Unification Minister Kang In-duk said North Korea sent a letter to Hyundai last week, saying that ``the misunderstanding with the southern authorities on the issue of the dead cattle is cleared.'' Kang said the North's letter ``cleared a stumbling block for Hyundai's additional cattle donation.'' During his visit, Chung is expected to reach agreement on details of Hyundai's plan to start sightseeing tours of a scenic mountain in the North. The tours, originally scheduled to begin in September, have been delayed because of cost, security and other matters. Hyundai hopes to send by ship up to 2,000 tourists a week for four-day tours of Diamond Mountain on the North's east coast beginning in November. Animosity and distrust between the two Koreas run deep. The Korean states were separated into the communist North and the capitalist South in 1945. They fought a three-year war in the early 1950s. ||||| Famine-threatened North Korea's harvest will be no better this year than last and could be worse, a senior U.N. aid official said Saturday. North Korea needs a minimum 4.5 million to 5 million tons of grain to feed its 23 million people, but managed last year to harvest just 2.8 million tons, Namanga Ngongi, deputy head of the World Food Program said. Although hard figures are not yet available, the prospects for this year are that ``the harvest will not be any better,'' Ngongi told reporters in Beijing after visiting North Korea. ``It may be worse than last year.'' Poor harvests, economic collapse and three years of floods and drought, have produced chronic food shortages in North Korea and left it heavily reliant on foreign aid. Fertilizer is lacking, as is fuel to power tractors and farm machinery, meaning most planting and harvesting must be done by hand. ``Every year it gets worse,'' Ngongi said. But despite the need for food aid, Ngongi said the government about a month ago cut the number of counties to which the WFP has access from 171 to 145, reducing the number of people who can get aid from 6.7 million to 5.8 million. Most of those receiving WFP aid are children aged between 6 months and 6 years. Ngongi said the government cited security concerns _ notably the lack of a peace treaty with its rival South Korea _ for its decision. The government said the ban would be temporary, Ngongi added. Ngongi, who spent four days inspecting WFP relief efforts in North Korea, said people generally looked better than during a visit last year. But he also said he could see that ``a large part of the population is very weak.'' ``Everybody has been consuming at a very low level. So they may not be severely malnourished, but they are not well nourished at all,'' he said. U.S. officials who toured some of the hardest-hit regions of North Korea this summer said 2 million people may have died because of famine. Ngongi said he saw malnourished children who were said to be 10 or 11 years old, but appeared to be only 4 or 5 years old. About 30 percent of children in one primary school he visited were not in class. ``A lot of the children were too weak to come to school,'' he said. But Ngongi said foreign food aid has saved lives. ``A lot of people are alive today thanks to the international community's support,'' he said. ||||| Police in northeastern China's Jilin province said Monday they had rounded up at least 100 North Koreans and sent them back to endure a famine in their reclusive country. A police official in the Jilin city of Tonghua, near the North Korean border, said the North Koreans were forced to repatriate because some had resettled illegally in China, had formed criminal gangs or engaged in prostitution. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, denied reports in the South Korean press that the Chinese had disregarded requests for political asylum in forcing the refugees back across the border. He said they had crossed into China seeking food, not because of political repression in North Korea. Citing a North Korean human rights group and Japanese tourists visiting the region, South Korea's Yonhap News Agency reported Monday that 150 North Koreans had been sent home from China, despite having presented petitions for political asylum. North Korea is entering its fourth winter of chronic food shortages, having harvested only 3 million tons of grain this year, about two-thirds of the minimum needed by its 23 million people. ||||| Hunger and malnutrition in Cambodia are reaching crisis levels comparable to the effects of famine in North Korea, a U.N. World Food Program representative said Tuesday. Though North Korea is suffering from a simple lack of food, a faltering economy in Cambodia combined with weak health care and education is causing similar levels of malnutrition in children, said Ken Davies, the WFP's country director. ``There is enough rice. The problem is that people are too poor to access it. The problem is poverty,'' Davies said. The WFP is currently supporting 1.7 million hungry Cambodians _ about 15 percent of the population _ with food-for-work and direct assistance programs, but Davies said he fears there are still plenty more that are not getting enough to eat every day. ``The problem is so bad that it is only a little worse in North Korea,'' Davies said. ``The situation is much worse than most people recognize.'' According to a recent WFP survey, 49 percent of Cambodian children under age 5 are stunted by lack of food and 20 percent suffer from acute malnutrition. By comparison, a similar survey of North Korean children under 7 found that 65 percent are stunted and 16 percent suffer from acute malnutrition. Cambodia has produced a rice surplus for export in the last two years and expects another this year, but WFP statistics show that 25 percent of rice-growing areas account for 75 percent of the surplus. The majority of Cambodian farmers are not producing enough to keep their families fed and are being increasingly saddled with debts incurred when they run out of reserves before harvest, Davies said. Money-lenders in rural Cambodia typically charge 100 percent interest, which must be paid in rice at harvest time, giving many farmers a handicapped start on the next crop season. Poor sanitation, lack of health care and ignorance of modern child rearing _ problems left mostly unaddressed by under-funded health and education sectors in Cambodia _ have exacerbated the food security problem, Davies said. Davies urged the new government to substantially increase annual expenditures on health, education and rural development as a first step in a long-term solution to Cambodia's food crisis. ``The poverty is getting worse right now and the situation with the malnutrition of children is a crisis,'' Davies said. Cambodia typically earmarks about half of its annual budget to defense and security. In the 1998 budget, education was allocated 6.5 percent, health 4.4 percent and rural development 0.2 percent. Actual disbursements to the three ministries are often only 60 to 70 percent of the budgeted amount as annual revenues fall short of expectations, according to aid workers. A 1999 budget draft proposed a reduction of the health ministry's allotment, which caused an outcry in September from health officials and the U.N. World Health Program. The draft was later readjusted to provide an unprecedented 33 percent increase in health spending. ||||| A North Korean man arrived in Seoul Wednesday and sought asylum after escaping his hunger-stricken homeland, government officials said. Kim Myong Sup, 23, had been living in hiding in a ``third country'' since fleeing North Korea last year, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade said. The ministry generally uses the term ``third country'' to avoid naming China, which is required by treaty with North Korea to return defectors to their homeland. The ministry described Kim as a former athlete, but said details of his background and his method of escape from North Korea were not available. About 200 North Koreans have defected to South Korea in the past three years, including 60 so far this year. All complained about severe food and fuel shortages in their country. The Koreas were divided into the communist North and the capitalist South in 1945. They fought the Korean War in 1950-53 and never signed a formal peace treaty. ||||| A congressman who visited remote parts of North Korea last week said Saturday that the food and health situation there was desperate and deteriorating, and that millions of North Koreans might have starved to death in the last few years. The congressman, Tony Hall, D-Ohio, who has had a longtime interest in world hunger, passed through Tokyo on his return to the United States and showed photographs he had taken of North Korean children with patchy hair, protruding bones, open sores and other signs of severe malnutrition. Hall also brought back a bag of what officials called ``substitute food'' being distributed by a government food station: dried leaves and straw, so coarse that even cattle would normally turn away. ``They grind it into powder and make it into noodles,'' Hall said. The noodles have no nutrition and are indigestible, leaving people holding their aching stomachs, he said. North Korea has admitted that it is facing serious economic difficulties, but there have been sharply diverging assessments of how serious these are. Some visitors with the United Nations and other organizations have said that the food situation seems to be a bit better now than a year or two ago. Hall said that the divergence might have arisen because in the North Korean capital, Pyongyang, life did seem to be slightly better than during his three previous trips to North Korea. But in rural areas where foreigners are not often allowed to visit, he added, the overall situation is worse than ever. Based on visits to four hospitals, Hall also emphasized that public health care had declined sharply. In one hospital, assistants were holding down a patient while surgeons conducted a stomach operation without electric lights or anesthesia. Ordinary North Koreans are suffering, in part, because their government's hard-line policies have alienated would-be donors and aid agencies. The United Nations has repeatedly appealed for relief aid for North Korea, but the latest appeal has raised less than one-third of the target. In September, Doctors Without Borders announced that it was pulling its staff of 13 from North Korea because it feared that its aid was going to the politically connected rather than to the most needy. North Korea does not release mortality figures or health statistics, but Hall said that the United Nations had gathered and would soon release data indicating that 30 percent of North Korean children under age 2 are acutely malnourished and that 67 percent of all children are physically stunted. Hall said he thought that overall at least 1 million people had died and that the total was probably closer to 3 million. In an indication of the seriousness with which professional demographers view the situation, the U.S. Bureau of the Census recently published estimates suggesting that North Korea's population peaked in 1995 at 21.55 million and has since fallen to 21.23 million this year. That would be a decline of 320,000 over three years, a period when North Korea's population would have been expected to grow by about 925,000 people, based on the population growth rate of the early 1990s. Nicholas Eberstadt, an American specialist on North Korean population figures, says that there simply is not enough hard information for him to estimate the death toll from the famine. But he notes one political tidbit: North Korea's constitution stipulates that there should be one delegate to the country's ``people's assembly'' for every 30,000 citizens. This year's assembly did not expand as previous ones did, but rather had just 687 delegates, the same as the previous assembly held in 1990. While Eberstadt counsels caution, that could mean that North Korea's population, after eight years in which it had been expected to add several million people, is now back to 20.6 million people or fewer. The United States has been supplying grain to North Korea, but strains are growing over a secret underground complex in the North that some experts worry may be the heart of a new nuclear weapons program. The United States warned last week that the ``agreed framework'' that is the basis for its relations with North Korea will be in jeopardy unless the North lets American experts visit the underground complex and resolve their doubts. North Korea has said that it will show off the complex only if Washington promises that if the complex is not a nuclear one, it will pay for ``vilifying us and impairing our prestige.'' Washington refuses to pay, and North Korea is warning that the standoff could lead the agreement to fall apart. ``Their shameless and wicked demand is an open infringement upon our sovereignty and wanton interference in our internal affairs,'' declared North Korea's leading newspaper, Rodong Sinmun. ||||| Years of food shortages have stunted the growth of millions of North Korean children, with two-thirds of children under age seven suffering malnourishment, U.N. experts said Wednesday. Several years of flooding and droughts coupled with an economic downturn have heavily damaged North Korea's crop production and capacity to import food in the closed, communist nation. A survey carried out in September and October also showed that 16 percent of children in North Korea are acutely malnourished, with a body weight too low for their height. That figure, which reflects ongoing shortages, is exceeded in Asia only by Bangladesh, India and Sri Lanka. Eighteen teams, each headed by a foreign official from the World Food Program, the U.N. Children's Fund or the European Union, carried out the study. They measured the weight and height of 1,800 North Korean children from infants up to age seven in homes randomly selected in areas where aid agencies have access. Those areas cover around 70 percent of the population. It was the first ``technically sound survey'' of the problem, UNICEF official Kirsi Madi told reporters. The most alarming findings were for toddlers aged one to two, 30 percent of whom were acutely malnourished. At that age, ``malnutrition can permanently impair physical and intellectual growth,'' said Judy Cheng-Hopkins, WFP director for the region. Children in North Korea's three largest cities _ Pyongyang, Wonsan and Nampo _ were better off than their counterparts elsewhere, with 11 percent acutely malnourished. Boys were almost twice as badly affected as girls.

The fourth year of devastating famine is striking North Korea, making it the worst in East Asia, and behind only India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, with Cambodia catching up. North Korea is getting massive international aid, but investigators fear the young generation will be lost to severe malnutrition. The public health system is disseminated. The old, rural, and nonpolitical are hardest hit. The rigid political system continues to limit access and aid to 30% of the country, repel attempts to help, such as from South Korean businessmen and Doctors without Borders, and waste money on propaganda. More are fleeing to China, seeking food not political freedom.

A sticking point for White House and congressional budget negotiators has been the issue of how the 2000 census will be conducted, and the White House is finding itself negotiating on the issue as much with House Democrats as it is with the House Republican leaders. On Monday, White House negotiators, led by chief of staff Erskine Bowles, tried to determine whether Democrats would accept a deal to finance for six months the departments of State, Justice and Commerce, which oversees the Census Bureau. The deal would put off until next March the contentious issue of whether the next census would use statistical sampling to supplement traditional methods of counting people. Bowles told the group of Democrats that the House Republicans were willing to give on a number of outstanding issues that were stalling final agreement on the budget, but that they were digging in their heels when it came to financing the census for six months. The Democrats met in the office of Minority Leader Dick Gephardt. The rationale for the half-year financing is that by next March the Supreme Court is expected to rule on whether using sampling is legal or constitutional. The Supreme Court has already agreed to review two lower court rulings that said sampling would violate federal law. Oral arguments on the cases are set for November. But House Democrats balked at the idea of six months' financing for the census, arguing that even if the Supreme Court allowed sampling, the Republicans would be under no obligation to approve money for a census that included sampling. ``The general feeling among many Democrats was that even if we won the case, there would be a lot less leverage in March, especially if it was the only issue left to be debated,'' said a House Democratic official who insisted on anonymity. Democrats contend that now is the time to press the Republicans, while they want to complete work on the budget and go home to campaign. Rep. Lucille Roybal-Allard, D-Calif., who attended the meeting Monday, said, ``It was, sort of, this is where we are. We've been able to accomplish great things, what do you think? We made it very clear that unless the census was included, along with some other issues, like school construction, the deal wouldn't be acceptable.'' Statistical sampling would allow the Census Bureau to estimate populations that are difficult to count, and would have the largest effect on the counting of African-Americans in cities and blacks and Hispanics in rural areas, groups that are traditionally undercounted by the standard means. Republicans fear, and Democrats hope, that the method would raise the count of people living in traditionally Democratic areas, giving the party an advantage when new boundaries for election districts are drawn following the 2000 census. At Monday's meeting, the Democrats reminded administration officials that Clinton had promised that he would veto any legislation that restricted the Census Bureau's ability to conduct an accurate census. ``I can't think of any way that restricts the census more than not to fully fund it,'' said Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y. The willingness of House Democrats, including Gephardt, to press the president on the issue represents a realization of their leverage with Clinton, who will need all of their support in the coming impeachment inquiry. ``Gephardt is a major player now, and the irony is we helped make him that,'' said Rep. Christopher Shays, R-Conn., who supports the use of sampling in the census. The Democrats' position also indicates how little trust many have in the White House on this issue. The proposal to finance the departments of Commerce, Justice and State for six months is similar to one reached last November between Bowles and House Speaker Newt Gingrich. The idea then was that holding all three departments hostage in the census fight would place maximum pressure on all sides to work out their differences over sampling. But House Democrats were not consulted before that agreement was struck and later grumbled about it. At a meeting of the Democratic caucus Tuesday, Ms. Maloney briefed lawmakers on dealings with the White House and declared that Clinton had promised that he would hold firm on the census and that she believed him, a participant said. The statement was greeted with laughter. ``There is a certain level of suspicion because there have been times when we have been cut out,''said the House Democratic official. ``But I have to say, there hasn't been much evidence of that, this time.'' ||||| Struggling to meet their fourth deadline over the federal budget, congressional Republicans and White House officials wrestled Tuesday with their differences over education, the most politically high-stakes element of the budget battle. Negotiators ended a late-night session without resolving disagreements over not just education, but the census and contraceptives. These were among the biggest issues that still separated the two sides as each tried to formulate a message to take home to voters for the Nov. 3 elections. On education, the issue that President Clinton has propelled to the forefront and on which Republicans do not want to appear recalcitrant, both sides have agreed to spend more than $1 billion but not on how to spend it. The president insists that the money be spent to hire 100,000 teachers across the country so that the average class can be reduced to 18 students. Republicans, railing against ``Beltway bureaucrats,'' say that local school districts should decide how the money is spent, whether it be for teachers or computers. As the two sides broke Tuesday night, White House chief of staff Erskine Bowles, the president's top negotiator, emerged from the session saying: ``We don't have a deal. We made some good progress. The biggest issue, still, is the 100,000 teachers.'' He added: ``There are still some open issues'' upon which no agreement has been reached, but he sounded optimistic about a session scheduled for Wednesday morning. ``I think we've got a chance of wrapping up tomorrow,'' he said. The two sides remained apart on several ideological matters, including whether to allow federal health plans to cover contraceptives and whether to allow those few plans with religious affiliations to refuse to cover contraceptives not only on religious grounds but on moral grounds as well. They were also split on how to conduct the census in 2000, which is one of the thorniest issues. It is not one that moves voters, but it is vital to both parties because it helps determine their relative strength in Congress. House Speaker Newt Gingrich and Bowles met for much of the day in the speaker's office, shuttling in and out of ante-rooms with their lieutenants but giving few clues about the nitty-gritty details of their talks. They have given themselves another deadline of midnight Wednesday to wrap up about $500 billion worth of spending items, but they could easily extend that deadline another day or two. They missed having spending bills in place for the Oct. 1 start of the fiscal year, providing temporary financing for the federal government through Oct. 9, then Oct. 12, then Wednesday. Some of the other central issues, like financing for the International Monetary Fund, were all but nailed down, but neither side was ready to declare a final deal until all the other elements of the budget package were in place. ``We're down to splitting infinitives,'' House Majority Leader Dick Armey said of approving money for the IMF. As they worked through several issues, Republican leaders appeared to be calculating the differences in their own party that might sour a final deal when it arrives on the House floor _ more of a concern than the Senate floor because the Senate has fewer differences among its Republicans and with the White House. Some conservative Republicans said they were concerned over the emerging shape of the final package, particularly elements dealing with family planning and emergency spending. They say the president's proposals for emergency spending, on such items as the peacekeeping mission in Bosnia, fixing the year 2000 computer bug and providing relief to American farmers, will break the limits in last year's balanced-budget agreement. The administration said such money would come from corresponding cuts elsewhere in the budget, but conservatives say it comes from raiding the surplus. If Republican leaders cannot count on their conservatives, they will need support from Democrats to pass the final package. And Democrats on Tuesday expressed concern over some White House positions, on issues like the census and an apparent compromise with Republicans on aid for farmers. Rep. David McIntosh, R-Ind., a leader of House conservatives, said he believed Republican leaders were ceding too quickly to the White House. He said that the president appeared to be getting his way on some issues but that what he really seemed to be winning was the war of public relations. ``The president is getting what he wants; he's controlling the situation,'' McIntosh lamented. When Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott appears on television, McIntosh said, ``it's in reaction to the president.'' Nonetheless, McIntosh suggested that he could vote for a final accord. ``Most conservatives are holding out for a better deal than we're hearing,'' he said, ``but we'll probably give them the vote because we don't see a much better alternative happening if it goes down.'' Others were distressed, particularly about two contraceptive issues. One would require federal health plans to cover contraceptives. The other would bar overseas family-planning organizations from lobbying to change abortion laws in other countries. Rep. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., said he wanted to see the final language on the health plan measure. As it passed both the House and the Senate, it allowed for health plans with religious affiliation to decline to offer contraceptive coverage; Coburn wants plans to be able to refuse such coverage on moral grounds as well. The plan covers five specific types of contraception. Coburn said he wanted two of those _ Depo-Provera and intrauterine devices _ to be eliminated from coverage because he said they interfered with fertilization and were therefore considered to cause abortions. Democrats like Rep. Nita Lowey, D-N.Y., who introduced the contraceptive plan in the House, said she strongly objected to Coburn's position. She said that health plans based their decisions on what to offer on profits, not morals. The question is whether the White House will insist on keeping the contraceptive coverage in the final package and will oppose the moral exception. If the administration allows the moral exception, it could alienate some House Democrats. House Democrats are also worried about the direction the talks are taking on the census. This has always loomed as one of the biggest issues separating Democrats and Republicans. The results of a census help determine the future power of the two political parties. But the fact that the two sides are finally talking about it now indicates that they are covering the full range of budget matters that need to be resolved. The White House has proposed buying time on the matter by financing the Commerce, State and Justice departments only for five months. The Commerce Department contains the Census Bureau. White House officials said this would put off the nettlesome issue while allowing a resolution of the entire spending package, but House Democrats worry it would be a prelude to giving in to Republicans down the road. Republican leaders like the idea of postponing a decision but say that financing should be restricted only for the Census Bureau. On several touchy environmental issues that have prompted repeated veto threats from the White House, the two sides appeared to be opting for compromise over confrontation, with several disputes resolved. But a few particularly difficult issues remained under negotiation. A compromise was struck between the White House and Alaskan lawmakers on logging in the Tongass National Forest. But compromise still eluded them on the question of building a road through a wilderness refuge to connect two communities in Alaska. ||||| Some conservatives sounded notes of discord Friday over the federal spending agreement, but they also said they would probably vote for the $500 billion package because it boosted defense spending and provided aid to farmers. However, no one can vote on the package just yet, because it is not finished. The deal that President Clinton and Republican leaders hailed Thursday was a broad outline of areas of agreement on the final portion of the $1.7 trillion budget, not a written document. That is now being crafted by the chairmen of the spending committees and their aides, who said Friday that there were still disputes that needed to be resolved and that the final document could run to more than 3,000 pages. For example, still unresolved is a dispute over whether airlines can create a ``peanut-free'' zone to protect passengers who are allergic to peanuts. House Speaker Newt Gingrich and other members from Georgia, a major peanut-producing state, are fighting the proposal, which would force airlines to ban peanuts within three rows of someone with an allergy. Congress gave itself until midnight Tuesday to vote on the final bill, agreeing with President Clinton to a fifth extension of temporary financing to keep the government open. The budget was due Oct. 1, the start of the new fiscal year. The vote was initially expected Friday, but the bill is nowhere near to being written. Only a handful of top-level bargainers _ including Gingrich, Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott and White House chief of staff Erskine Bowles _ were in the room for the final deal. Excluded were the committee chairmen and the heads of the appropriation committees, who now must write the language that will put the deal into law. Almost everyone on Capitol Hill expects the budget to pass eventually, with the biggest defections coming from conservatives who object to the $20 billion taken from the surplus to address so-called emergencies and for the package's failure to offer voters a serious tax cut. The lag time before the bill is officially closed is making some conservatives nervous that more members will try to add provisions that will further expand a bill they already consider overly bloated. And some worry that once the hometown pork that is stuffed into the bill is publicly revealed, voters could put pressure on members not to support it. The elections are Nov. 3. But several conservatives said that despite these problems, they expected to support the bill anyway. Rep. Mark Souder, R-Ind., said: `Most of my friends, who are predominantly activist conservatives, are split about 50-50. If tax cuts were your primary thing, then you're unhappy, but many conservatives have a mixed agenda. My position is, hold the nose and vote yes. We have no tax cuts and far too much spending that I oppose, but that's the nature of compromise. Every member has a little different focus.'' Souder said he liked the extra money for defense spending, and he liked the price supports for farmers. Hog farmers in his district, whose biggest customers were Japan and China, had been hit hard by the collapse of Asian markets. Several Republicans said that the bill seemed skewed in favor of the Democrats. They cited two reasons: Clinton needed to curry favor with Democrats to shore up support if the House votes to impeach him, and Republican leaders feared that if they had stood up to Clinton, they might have forced a government shutdown and Republicans would be blamed. ``Clinton was buying votes,'' said Rep. David Hobson, R-Ohio. ``He was sucking up to the liberal Democrats so they would support him in impeachment.'' Rep. W.J. (Billy) Tauzin, R-La., said the leaders seemed motivated by a desire to avoid the political damage they incurred from the partial government shutdowns of 1995 and 1996. He also cited the president's need to placate the left by adding costly domestic programs. ``The combination of the lessons learned three years ago and the scandal on the president's side yielded the inevitable result, a budget that leans way to the left,'' Tauzin said. Still, he said he would probably support the bill. ``It won't be enthusiastically,'' he said. ``It won't be holding my nose either. I would have preferred to spend more of this money on a tax cut. I think we would have gotten a tax cut, but for the scandal. If the president had not been caught up with the scandal, he probably would have followed the Dick Morris strategy and moved towards the center.'' Gingrich said he recognized that some conservatives were wary of the agreement. But he sought to reassure them that the package served their interests. He cited a $9 billion increase in defense spending. And he noted that the Republicans had blocked several items, including needle-exchange programs in the District of Columbia, national education testing and U.S. contributions to a United Nations program that pays for family planning in China, which many in Congress object to because China has a policy of coercing abortions and forcing sterilization. Gingrich said the agreement was the best that could be achieved ``when you have a conservative Republican Congress and a liberal Democratic president.'' Some conservatives who had been especially critical were more understanding Thursday. Rep. David McIntosh, R-Ind., a leader of conservatives in the House, had denounced the bill earlier as a Great Society type of big-spending program. Friday, after a meeting of Republicans, he said, ``Our leadership found themselves in a bad situation and did a good job.'' A few remained outright hostile to the bill, as much for the hasty way in which it was cobbled together as for what it contained. Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, said: `I'm voting `no' unless something revolutionary happens between now and Tuesday. I think it's the process that gives the president the ability to stonewall until the very end and then hold us for ransom. The Republican leadership in the House and Senate did a good job of limiting the highway robbery, but it's still gone too far beyond the spending caps.'' Also angry at the rushed endgame was Rep. Gene Taylor, D-Miss., who took to the House floor and said he could not support the final bill. ``I'm going to urge my colleagues to vote `no,' '' Taylor said. ``We have stayed here this long. We can stay a little bit longer. And I am going to encourage my colleagues to continue to vote no until we are given adequate time to study the measure that is brought before us.'' ||||| Voting mainly on party lines on a question that has become a touchstone in the debate over development and preservation of wilderness, the Senate on Thursday approved a gravel road through remote wildlife habitat in Alaska. The road, barely 30 miles long, would slice across the edge of a wildlife refuge and wilderness area on the Aleutian Peninsula, where it would connect an isolated village called King Cove to a long-range air strip in the town of Cold Bay. Without the road, its backers say, about 700 residents of King Cove must continue to use unreliable air and boat service in emergencies, often risking dangerous winds and seas as they seek medical evacuation to Anchorage. Opponents of the road call the project an unjustifiable precedent that threatens the seasonal breeding grounds of protected migratory birds, and they say that improved air or sea service would be a better alternative. The vote Thursday, 59-38, was a victory for the state's congressional delegation. But with President Clinton likely to veto the measure, the final outcome may depend on whether its sponsors can insert the road proposal into a huge spending bill that is likely to emerge just before Congress heads home for the Nov. 3 elections. Three Republicans voted against the bill, and six Democrats voted for it. The Clinton administration has repeatedly warned that it will veto a big spending bill if it contains an array of anti-environmental provisions that are under consideration. Indeed, the White House seems to be itching for a partisan fight over environmental priorities. But while many Republicans in Congress still appear reluctant to engage in that broad fight, they were willing Thursday to cast their lot with the Senate's two powerful Alaskans, Ted Stevens and Frank Murkowski, both Republicans. A companion bill in the House, sponsored by Rep. Don Young of Alaska, also a Republican, has not come to the floor. Even Sen. John Chafee of Rhode Island, a leader of Republican environmentalists, voted for the road. Last February Chafee's staff had assembled a score of environmental lobbyists in his office to plan strategy for opposing the road, environmental advocates said Thursday. They speculated that the senator had changed his position out of deference to the power of Stevens, who as chairman of the Appropriations Committee exerts tremendous influence at a time when a dozen spending bills are in their final stages. A Chafee aide said Chafee voted reluctantly for the road after Alaska's senators convinced him of its merits. Stevens said in angry tones Thursday that two-thirds of Alaska's land was off limits to development and that vital health services were being denied to his state's residents. ``We can't use it without permission from some bureaucrat who is compelled by extreme environmentalists,'' he said. ``They are so extreme that they say this 330,000-acre Izembek refuge, the smallest wilderness in Alaska, is so sacrosanct that it can't move its border 60 feet.'' But Sen. Dale Bumpers, D-Ark., called the road project a dangerous precedent. ``Building a road through a wilderness in Alaska, no matter how short or how long, would be the first time in the nation we have voted deliberately to authorize a road through a wilderness area,'' Bumpers said. ``And once you go down that road, nobody knows where it is going to end.'' ||||| House and Senate negotiators agreed Thursday to require most federal health plans to cover prescription contraceptives for women, giving an unusual victory on Capitol Hill to advocates of abortion rights. But the future of the measure was in doubt because it was attached to a spending bill that includes a controversial provision regarding the Federal Election Commission. That provision could scuttle the spending bill, which would finance the Treasury Department and the Postal Service and which still must be approved by the House and Senate. The contraceptive measure would require the federal health plans, which affect 1.2 million female federal employees who are of child-bearing age, to cover the five methods of contraception that have been approved by the Food and Drug Administration for use in this country _ birth control pills, diaphragms, inter-uterine devices, Norplant and Depo-Provera. Currently, only 19 percent of federal health plans cover those methods. The House and Senate approved the contraceptive measure earlier this year. But the opponents of abortion were furious about the approval and persuaded Republican leaders to have negotiators reopen discussion on the matter. The cost of contraceptives has driven up the out-of-pocket cost of health care for women. And many male members of Congress seemed persuaded to support coverage of contraceptives for women, since almost all of the 285 federal health plans cover Viagra, the male impotency drug. Thursday, with pressure building to resolve the spending bills before Oct. 9, when temporary financing of the government expires, the negotiators agreed to include the contraceptive measure in their conference report on the $13.4 billion bill for the Treasury Department and Postal service. Rep. Nita Lowey, D-N.Y., who pushed the contraceptive measure through the House, hailed Thursday's agreement as the first major accomplishment by abortion rights advocates since the Republicans took control of Congress in 1994. She said the negotiators had agreed to include the measure because in an election year they did not want to be perceived as opposing contraception or be seen as rejecting a measure that had passed both the House and Senate. But many Democrats said the were upset that the bill contains a provision that is seen as interfering with the independence of the Federal Election Commission. That provision would require a four-vote majority among the seven federal election commissioners every four years to retain the general counsel and staff director. The provision is aimed at getting rid of Lawrence Noble, the current general counsel, who has investigated the campaign finance practices of groups like the Christian Coalition. The contraceptive measure is one of four related matters that have helped stall four spending bills. The three other bills that are stalled in part because of abortion-related matters include the agriculture bill, in which there is a dispute over whether the federal Food and Drug Administration should use taxpayer money to approve drugs like RU-486, which induce abortions. The foreign operations bill is also stalled over whether to finance international family planning programs that may also promote abortion, while the labor and health bill is delayed because of a provision that would block access of minors to contraception. Addressing the measure on insurance coverage for contraceptives, Helen Alvarez, a spokeswoman for the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, said that the bill was bad policy. She said contraception had failed to stem the number of abortions, teen-age pregnancies or out-of-wedlock births. ``Public-relations-wise, it's a good tactic for them,'' she conceded, ``but in terms of social policy, this is a failure.'' ||||| Some conservatives sounded notes of discord Friday over the federal spending agreement, but they also said they would probably vote for the $500 billion package because it boosted defense spending and provided aid to farmers. However, no one can vote on the package just yet, because it is not finished. The deal that President Clinton and Republican leaders hailed Thursday was a broad outline of areas of agreement on the final portion of the $1.7 trillion budget, not a written document. That is now being crafted by the chairmen of the spending committees and their aides, who said Friday that there were still disputes that needed to be resolved and that the final document could run to more than 3,000 pages. For example, still unresolved is a dispute over whether airlines can create a ``peanut-free'' zone to protect passengers who are allergic to peanuts. House Speaker Newt Gingrich and other members from Georgia, a major peanut-producing state, are fighting the proposal, which would force airlines to ban peanuts within three rows of someone with an allergy. Congress gave itself until midnight Tuesday to vote on the final bill, agreeing with President Clinton to a fifth extension of temporary financing to keep the government open. The budget was due Oct. 1, the start of the new fiscal year. The vote was initially expected Friday, but the bill is nowhere near to being written. Only a handful of top-level bargainers _ including Gingrich, Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott and White House chief of staff Erskine Bowles _ were in the room for the final deal. Excluded were the committee chairmen and the heads of the appropriation committees, who now must write the language that will put the deal into law. Almost everyone on Capitol Hill expects the budget to pass eventually, with the biggest defections coming from conservatives who object to the $20 billion taken from the surplus to address so-called emergencies and for the package's failure to offer voters a serious tax cut. The lag time before the bill is officially closed is making some conservatives nervous that more members will try to add provisions that will further expand a bill they already consider overly bloated. And some worry that once the hometown pork that is stuffed into the bill is publicly revealed, voters could put pressure on members not to support it. The elections are Nov. 3. But several conservatives said that despite these problems, they expected to support the bill anyway. Rep. Mark Souder, R-Ind., said: `Most of my friends, who are predominantly activist conservatives, are split about 50-50. If tax cuts were your primary thing, then you're unhappy, but many conservatives have a mixed agenda. My position is, hold the nose and vote yes. We have no tax cuts and far too much spending that I oppose, but that's the nature of compromise. Every member has a little different focus.'' Souder said he liked the extra money for defense spending, and he liked the price supports for farmers. Hog farmers in his district, whose biggest customers were Japan and China, had been hit hard by the collapse of Asian markets. ||||| Struggling to meet their fourth deadline over the federal budget, congressional Republicans and White House officials wrestled Tuesday with their differences over education, the most politically high-stakes element of the budget battle. Negotiators ended a late-night session without resolving disagreements over not just education, but the census and contraceptives. These were among the biggest issues that still separated the two sides as each tried to formulate a message to take home to voters for the Nov. 3 elections. On education, the issue that President Clinton has propelled to the forefront and on which Republicans do not want to appear recalcitrant, both sides have agreed to spend more than $1 billion but not on how to spend it. The president insists that the money be spent to hire 100,000 teachers across the country so that the average class can be reduced to 18 students. Republicans, railing against ``Beltway bureaucrats,'' say that local school districts should decide how the money is spent, whether it be for teachers or computers. As the two sides broke Tuesday night, White House chief of staff Erskine Bowles, the president's top negotiator, emerged from the session saying: ``We don't have a deal. We made some good progress. The biggest issue, still, is the 100,000 teachers.'' He added: ``There are still some open issues'' upon which no agreement has been reached, but he sounded optimistic about a session scheduled for Wednesday morning. ``I think we've got a chance of wrapping up tomorrow,'' he said. The two sides remained apart on several ideological matters, including whether to allow federal health plans to cover contraceptives and whether to allow those few plans with religious affiliations to refuse to cover contraceptives not only on religious grounds but on moral grounds as well. They were also split on how to conduct the census in 2000, which is one of the thorniest issues. It is not one that moves voters, but it is vital to both parties because it helps determine their relative strength in Congress. House Speaker Newt Gingrich and Bowles met for much of the day in the speaker's office, shuttling in and out of ante-rooms with their lieutenants but giving few clues about the nitty-gritty details of their talks. They have given themselves another deadline of midnight Wednesday to wrap up about $500 billion worth of spending items, but they could easily extend that deadline another day or two. They missed having spending bills in place for the Oct. 1 start of the fiscal year, providing temporary financing for the federal government through Oct. 9, then Oct. 12, then Wednesday. Some of the other central issues, like financing for the International Monetary Fund, were all but nailed down, but neither side was ready to declare a final deal until all the other elements of the budget package were in place. ``We're down to splitting infinitives,'' House Majority Leader Dick Armey said of approving money for the IMF. As they worked through several issues, Republican leaders appeared to be calculating the differences in their own party that might sour a final deal when it arrives on the House floor _ more of a concern than the Senate floor because the Senate has fewer differences among its Republicans and with the White House. Some conservative Republicans said they were concerned over the emerging shape of the final package, particularly elements dealing with family planning and emergency spending. They say the president's proposals for emergency spending, on such items as the peacekeeping mission in Bosnia, fixing the year 2000 computer bug and providing relief to American farmers, will break the limits in last year's balanced-budget agreement. The administration said such money would come from corresponding cuts elsewhere in the budget, but conservatives say it comes from raiding the surplus. If Republican leaders cannot count on their conservatives, they will need support from Democrats to pass the final package. And Democrats on Tuesday expressed concern over some White House positions, on issues like the census and an apparent compromise with Republicans on aid for farmers. Rep. David McIntosh, R-Ind., a leader of House conservatives, said he believed Republican leaders were ceding too quickly to the White House. He said that the president appeared to be getting his way on some issues but that what he really seemed to be winning was the war of public relations. ``The president is getting what he wants; he's controlling the situation,'' McIntosh lamented. When Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott appears on television, McIntosh said, ``it's in reaction to the president.'' Nonetheless, McIntosh suggested that he could vote for a final accord. ``Most conservatives are holding out for a better deal than we're hearing,'' he said, ``but we'll probably give them the vote because we don't see a much better alternative happening if it goes down.'' Others were distressed, particularly about two contraceptive issues. One would require federal health plans to cover contraceptives. The other would bar overseas family-planning organizations from lobbying to change abortion laws in other countries. Rep. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., said he wanted to see the final language on the health plan measure. As it passed both the House and the Senate, it allowed for health plans with religious affiliation to decline to offer contraceptive coverage; Coburn wants plans to be able to refuse such coverage on moral grounds as well. The plan covers five specific types of contraception. Coburn said he wanted two of those _ Depo-Provera and intrauterine devices _ to be eliminated from coverage because he said they interfered with fertilization and were therefore considered to cause abortions. Democrats like Rep. Nita Lowey, D-N.Y., who introduced the contraceptive plan in the House, said she strongly objected to Coburn's position. She said that health plans based their decisions on what to offer on profits, not morals. The question is whether the White House will insist on keeping the contraceptive coverage in the final package and will oppose the moral exception. If the administration allows the moral exception, it could alienate some House Democrats. House Democrats are also worried about the direction the talks are taking on the census. This has always loomed as one of the biggest issues separating Democrats and Republicans. The results of a census help determine the future power of the two political parties. But the fact that the two sides are finally talking about it now indicates that they are covering the full range of budget matters that need to be resolved. The White House has proposed buying time on the matter by financing the Commerce, State and Justice departments only for five months. The Commerce Department contains the Census Bureau. White House officials said this would put off the nettlesome issue while allowing a resolution of the entire spending package, but House Democrats worry it would be a prelude to giving in to Republicans down the road. Republican leaders like the idea of postponing a decision but say that financing should be restricted only for the Census Bureau. On several touchy environmental issues that have prompted repeated veto threats from the White House, the two sides appeared to be opting for compromise over confrontation, with several disputes resolved. But a few particularly difficult issues remained under negotiation. A compromise was struck between the White House and Alaskan lawmakers on logging in the Tongass National Forest. But compromise still eluded them on the question of building a road through a wilderness refuge to connect two communities in Alaska. ||||| Top-level budget negotiators for congressional Republicans and the White House concluded yet another bargaining session late Sunday afternoon with plans to resume talks on Monday morning and probably extend their midnight Monday deadline for another day or two. Both sides were amiable as they emerged from a two-hour session, but they had little to report and indicated that their relatively early departure, compared with the last three nights, should not be interpreted as a sign of crisis or of imminent peace in the budget talks. Sunday's discussions focused on education and President Clinton's request for $1.1 billion to hire 100,000 teachers, but aides said the bargainers did not delve into much detail and nothing was resolved. ``I think we made some real progress today, but we still have a significant difference in the area of education,'' said Erskine Bowles, Clinton's chief of staff and top negotiator, after Sunday's meeting. ``We're going to try to plow through that over the next two days.'' Asked how far apart the two sides were on education, Rep. Dick Armey of Texas, the Republican majority leader, replied: ``I don't know. We're not together.'' He said the two sides had made ``some progress, but not enough.'' The talks came during another day of escalated political confrontation as congressional Democrats and Republicans, painfully aware that they have three weeks until Election Day, tried to take advantage of the static budget situation. Congress has passed only six of the 13 required spending bills and are negotiating now with the White House on a final omnibus package that will contain the remaining seven bills and major issues including how to conduct the census in the year 2000, how much money to provide the International Monetary Fund and under what conditions it should be provided, and how much emergency money to provide for items like increased security at U.S. embassies around the world and for American farmers. Also to be resolved are a host of issues that have little to do with financing and more to do with ideology, including environmental matters, contraception and national student testing. Republicans said the president had been disengaged from the process, and they were irked at what they said was his swooping in at the 11th hour and pushing his education agenda in an apparently successful portrayal of himself as the guardian of that popular topic. Democrats countered that the Republican-led Congress had done nothing all year, and cast the Republicans as extremists for blocking the president's plea for more money to hire teachers and modernize schools. In fact, Republican bargainers said Saturday night that they would provide the money if local governments, not Washington, could decide how the money would be used. Armey was one of many who castigated the president for apparent disengagement, an indirect reminder that Clinton has been steeped in a sex scandal and is facing an impeachment inquiry in the House. The scant number of congressional Republicans who did not leave town for the weekend used the House floor to press this same message. ``What about the president?'' asked Rep. Tom DeLay of Texas, the majority whip. ``Maybe in Martha's Vineyard? Aspen? Camp David? Where is the president? I bet the American people don't know that he spent 152 days out of the 283 days this year fund raising, traveling and on vacation.'' Republicans said that Clinton had participated in 98 fund-raising events so far this year and that two events on Monday in New York, supporting the Senate campaign of Rep. Charles Schumer, would bring him to 100. Clinton said at the White House that he was ``prepared to do whatever it takes'' to reach a resolution over the spending bills, and dispatched his aides to Capitol Hill. He also said he would postpone from Monday morning until Monday afternoon his departure for his fund-raising tour in New York, and he canceled a fund-raising appearance in Florida. But as the high-level budget bargaining concluded Sunday afternoon, both sides agreed they would need to extend their deadline beyond midnight Monday, when temporary financing for the government expires for the third time since the Oct. 1 start of the fiscal year. Congressional Democrats struck back at the Republicans, saying they have held a slack schedule themselves. Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., said Congress had been in session only 108 days so far this year, an unusually abbreviated period and one consumed for more than a month by the drive to hold impeachment hearings on the president. Most Americans, Miller said, had worked more than 225 days. ``They say, `Where is the president?''' Miller said. ``The president has been waiting for the budget. This is the first Congress since 1974 that has no budget,'' he said, referring to the broad blueprint that is supposed to guide spending. ``This is a Congress that can't pass seven of its appropriations bills,'' he said, largely because of divisive splits among conservative and moderate Republicans. ||||| For the first time in decades, Congress and the White House negotiated tax and spending legislation this year with the budget in surplus. The result was chaos. The lawmakers were never able to agree on a budget resolution _ the framework into which all the tax and spending bills are supposed to fit. This had not happened since congressional budget procedures were established in 1974. Then, without the discipline of such an overall plan, the Senate and the House could not pass eight of the 13 spending bills needed to keep the government running. So the lawmakers had to stay in session more than a week longer than they had hoped. Finally, they lumped all eight bills together this week and announced an agreement. But the only way they could get this far was to resort to gimmicks. One was to designate $20 billion as ``emergency'' expenditures so that programs did not have to be cut elsewhere to offset the new spending. This will use up more than one-quarter of the anticipated budget surplus in the current fiscal year. Another gimmick extended the tax break for Individual Retirement Accounts to couples with incomes from $100,000 to $150,000. This will actually raise a small amount of revenue in the next five years _ the period covered by budget accounting _ but it will make the picture considerably worse in later years. As hard as it was to negotiate a budget in the bad old days of budget deficits, say the politicians involved, it was exponentially more difficult this year. At least in years past, there was a common goal. As much as they disagreed on policy and principle, they were all aiming at a reduction in the deficit. This year, some members of Congress wanted to use the surplus for a big tax cut. Others wanted to pay off the national debt. Others wanted to spend part of it on medical research, schools and weapons for the Pentagon. Others wanted to spend large sums on highways. Still others wanted to continue cutting government spending. And that was just among the Republicans. The Democrats had their own ideas about the budget, and President Clinton laid down his marker about saving the surplus until a way was found to shore up the Social Security system. ``In budget terms,'' said Robert Reischauer, a former director of the congressional budget office, ``this is like the end of the Cold War.'' There are other differences as well in the way things were negotiated with the budget in a surplus. In 1990, 1993 and 1995, when politicians staked their careers on striking a budget deal to lower the deficit, the fundamental question was how to divide up the bitter medicine of more taxes and less spending. Republicans, for the most part, opposed tax increases and favored cutting spending on social programs. Democrats wanted to raise taxes, especially on the rich, and protect social spending. In the end, balances were carefully drawn. But plenty of politicians _ President George Bush, to name one _ lost their jobs in the process. This year, with Democrats and Republicans alike claiming victory, the burning issue was how to parcel out the candy. Democrats got more money for education and farm assistance. Republicans got more money for the military and an extension of popular tax breaks for businesses. Some of the $20 billion that will eat into the surplus really will go for emergencies, like relief for victims of Hurricane Georges. But much of the money, like the $90 million that will pay for six new helicopters for the national police in Colombia to use in drug interdiction, was designated emergency spending simply because there was no other way to get it into the budget. For the politicians, the new way is more fun. It is hard to imagine that anyone will be voted out of office because of this year's budget. But that did not make it easier to reach an agreement. The other big difference is that the principal fights this year were not over money at all. They involved delicate policy issues like needle exchanges, contraception, global warming, immigration and the census. In Congress, there is no consensus on these matters. So the only way policy could be set was to wrap them into the giant spending bill. It may be more pleasant to debate policy than money. But it is probably harder to find a way to split the difference. As long as the surplus lasts, the lack of discipline that characterized the budget-writing this year is likely to continue. This is distressing to those devoted to controlling government spending. ``The temptation,'' said L. Ari Fleischer, spokesman for the House Ways and Means Committee, ``is to grab the loot and spend it.'' ||||| Struggling to meet their fourth deadline over the federal budget, congressional Republicans and White House officials wrestled Tuesday with their differences over education, staging events to demonstrate support for what has become the most public and politically high-stakes element of the budget battle. Negotiators met into the night to hash out their disagreements over aid for schools, the census and contraceptives. These were among the biggest issues that still separated the two sides as each tried to formulate a message to take home to voters for the Nov. 3 elections. On education, the issue that President Clinton has propelled to the forefront of the talks and on which Republicans do not want to appear recalcitrant, both sides have agreed to spend more than $1 billion but disagree over how to spend it. The president insists the money be spent on hiring 100,000 teachers across the country so that the average class can be reduced to 18 students. Republicans, railing against ``Beltway bureaucrats,'' say that local school districts should decide how the money is spent, whether it be for teachers or computers. The two sides remained apart on several ideological matters, including whether to allow federal health plans to cover contraceptives and whether to allow those few plans with religious affiliations to refuse to cover contraceptives not only on religious grounds but on moral grounds as well. And they also were split on how to conduct the census in the year 2000. This is one of the thorniest issues. It is not one that moves voters, but it is vital to both parties because it helps determine their relative strength in Congress. House Speaker Newt Gingrich and Erskine Bowles, the president's chief of staff and top negotiator, met for much of the day in the speaker's office, shuttling in and out of ante-rooms with their lieutenants but giving few clues about the nitty gritty details of their talks. They have given themselves another deadline of midnight Wednesday to wrap up about $500 billion-worth of spending items, but they could easily extend that deadline another day or two. They missed the Oct. 1 start of the fiscal year, providing temporary funding for the federal government through Oct. 9, then Oct. 12, then Wednesday. Some of the other central issues, such as financing for the International Monetary Fund, were all but nailed down, but neither side was ready to declare a final deal until all the other elements of the budget package are in place. ``We're down to splitting infinitives,'' Rep. Dick Armey of Texas, the Republican majority leader, said of approving funds for the international fund. As they worked through several issues, Republican leaders appeared to be calculating the differences in their own party that might sour a final deal when it arrives on the House floor _ more of a concern than on the Senate floor because the Senate has fewer differences among its Republicans and with the White House.

Budget negotiations between the White House and House Republicans were delayed on several issues. At issue were provisions that included requiring Federal Health Insurance providers to provide contraceptives to women as Well as a provision to build a road across a wildlife preserve in Alaska. The contraceptive issue faced an uncertain future while Clinton likely will veto the road. There is disagreement also on how to spend the funding on education. This year's budget discussions also have been hampered because it is the first time since budget procedures were established in 1974 that there has been a surplus, preventing agreement on a budget resolution.

A sticking point for White House and congressional budget negotiators has been the issue of how the 2000 census will be conducted, and the White House is finding itself negotiating on the issue as much with House Democrats as it is with the House Republican leaders. On Monday, White House negotiators, led by chief of staff Erskine Bowles, tried to determine whether Democrats would accept a deal to finance for six months the departments of State, Justice and Commerce, which oversees the Census Bureau. The deal would put off until next March the contentious issue of whether the next census would use statistical sampling to supplement traditional methods of counting people. Bowles told the group of Democrats that the House Republicans were willing to give on a number of outstanding issues that were stalling final agreement on the budget, but that they were digging in their heels when it came to financing the census for six months. The Democrats met in the office of Minority Leader Dick Gephardt. The rationale for the half-year financing is that by next March the Supreme Court is expected to rule on whether using sampling is legal or constitutional. The Supreme Court has already agreed to review two lower court rulings that said sampling would violate federal law. Oral arguments on the cases are set for November. But House Democrats balked at the idea of six months' financing for the census, arguing that even if the Supreme Court allowed sampling, the Republicans would be under no obligation to approve money for a census that included sampling. ``The general feeling among many Democrats was that even if we won the case, there would be a lot less leverage in March, especially if it was the only issue left to be debated,'' said a House Democratic official who insisted on anonymity. Democrats contend that now is the time to press the Republicans, while they want to complete work on the budget and go home to campaign. Rep. Lucille Roybal-Allard, D-Calif., who attended the meeting Monday, said, ``It was, sort of, this is where we are. We've been able to accomplish great things, what do you think? We made it very clear that unless the census was included, along with some other issues, like school construction, the deal wouldn't be acceptable.'' Statistical sampling would allow the Census Bureau to estimate populations that are difficult to count, and would have the largest effect on the counting of African-Americans in cities and blacks and Hispanics in rural areas, groups that are traditionally undercounted by the standard means. Republicans fear, and Democrats hope, that the method would raise the count of people living in traditionally Democratic areas, giving the party an advantage when new boundaries for election districts are drawn following the 2000 census. At Monday's meeting, the Democrats reminded administration officials that Clinton had promised that he would veto any legislation that restricted the Census Bureau's ability to conduct an accurate census. ``I can't think of any way that restricts the census more than not to fully fund it,'' said Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y. The willingness of House Democrats, including Gephardt, to press the president on the issue represents a realization of their leverage with Clinton, who will need all of their support in the coming impeachment inquiry. ``Gephardt is a major player now, and the irony is we helped make him that,'' said Rep. Christopher Shays, R-Conn., who supports the use of sampling in the census. The Democrats' position also indicates how little trust many have in the White House on this issue. The proposal to finance the departments of Commerce, Justice and State for six months is similar to one reached last November between Bowles and House Speaker Newt Gingrich. The idea then was that holding all three departments hostage in the census fight would place maximum pressure on all sides to work out their differences over sampling. But House Democrats were not consulted before that agreement was struck and later grumbled about it. At a meeting of the Democratic caucus Tuesday, Ms. Maloney briefed lawmakers on dealings with the White House and declared that Clinton had promised that he would hold firm on the census and that she believed him, a participant said. The statement was greeted with laughter. ``There is a certain level of suspicion because there have been times when we have been cut out,''said the House Democratic official. ``But I have to say, there hasn't been much evidence of that, this time.'' ||||| Struggling to meet their fourth deadline over the federal budget, congressional Republicans and White House officials wrestled Tuesday with their differences over education, the most politically high-stakes element of the budget battle. Negotiators ended a late-night session without resolving disagreements over not just education, but the census and contraceptives. These were among the biggest issues that still separated the two sides as each tried to formulate a message to take home to voters for the Nov. 3 elections. On education, the issue that President Clinton has propelled to the forefront and on which Republicans do not want to appear recalcitrant, both sides have agreed to spend more than $1 billion but not on how to spend it. The president insists that the money be spent to hire 100,000 teachers across the country so that the average class can be reduced to 18 students. Republicans, railing against ``Beltway bureaucrats,'' say that local school districts should decide how the money is spent, whether it be for teachers or computers. As the two sides broke Tuesday night, White House chief of staff Erskine Bowles, the president's top negotiator, emerged from the session saying: ``We don't have a deal. We made some good progress. The biggest issue, still, is the 100,000 teachers.'' He added: ``There are still some open issues'' upon which no agreement has been reached, but he sounded optimistic about a session scheduled for Wednesday morning. ``I think we've got a chance of wrapping up tomorrow,'' he said. The two sides remained apart on several ideological matters, including whether to allow federal health plans to cover contraceptives and whether to allow those few plans with religious affiliations to refuse to cover contraceptives not only on religious grounds but on moral grounds as well. They were also split on how to conduct the census in 2000, which is one of the thorniest issues. It is not one that moves voters, but it is vital to both parties because it helps determine their relative strength in Congress. House Speaker Newt Gingrich and Bowles met for much of the day in the speaker's office, shuttling in and out of ante-rooms with their lieutenants but giving few clues about the nitty-gritty details of their talks. They have given themselves another deadline of midnight Wednesday to wrap up about $500 billion worth of spending items, but they could easily extend that deadline another day or two. They missed having spending bills in place for the Oct. 1 start of the fiscal year, providing temporary financing for the federal government through Oct. 9, then Oct. 12, then Wednesday. Some of the other central issues, like financing for the International Monetary Fund, were all but nailed down, but neither side was ready to declare a final deal until all the other elements of the budget package were in place. ``We're down to splitting infinitives,'' House Majority Leader Dick Armey said of approving money for the IMF. As they worked through several issues, Republican leaders appeared to be calculating the differences in their own party that might sour a final deal when it arrives on the House floor _ more of a concern than the Senate floor because the Senate has fewer differences among its Republicans and with the White House. Some conservative Republicans said they were concerned over the emerging shape of the final package, particularly elements dealing with family planning and emergency spending. They say the president's proposals for emergency spending, on such items as the peacekeeping mission in Bosnia, fixing the year 2000 computer bug and providing relief to American farmers, will break the limits in last year's balanced-budget agreement. The administration said such money would come from corresponding cuts elsewhere in the budget, but conservatives say it comes from raiding the surplus. If Republican leaders cannot count on their conservatives, they will need support from Democrats to pass the final package. And Democrats on Tuesday expressed concern over some White House positions, on issues like the census and an apparent compromise with Republicans on aid for farmers. Rep. David McIntosh, R-Ind., a leader of House conservatives, said he believed Republican leaders were ceding too quickly to the White House. He said that the president appeared to be getting his way on some issues but that what he really seemed to be winning was the war of public relations. ``The president is getting what he wants; he's controlling the situation,'' McIntosh lamented. When Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott appears on television, McIntosh said, ``it's in reaction to the president.'' Nonetheless, McIntosh suggested that he could vote for a final accord. ``Most conservatives are holding out for a better deal than we're hearing,'' he said, ``but we'll probably give them the vote because we don't see a much better alternative happening if it goes down.'' Others were distressed, particularly about two contraceptive issues. One would require federal health plans to cover contraceptives. The other would bar overseas family-planning organizations from lobbying to change abortion laws in other countries. Rep. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., said he wanted to see the final language on the health plan measure. As it passed both the House and the Senate, it allowed for health plans with religious affiliation to decline to offer contraceptive coverage; Coburn wants plans to be able to refuse such coverage on moral grounds as well. The plan covers five specific types of contraception. Coburn said he wanted two of those _ Depo-Provera and intrauterine devices _ to be eliminated from coverage because he said they interfered with fertilization and were therefore considered to cause abortions. Democrats like Rep. Nita Lowey, D-N.Y., who introduced the contraceptive plan in the House, said she strongly objected to Coburn's position. She said that health plans based their decisions on what to offer on profits, not morals. The question is whether the White House will insist on keeping the contraceptive coverage in the final package and will oppose the moral exception. If the administration allows the moral exception, it could alienate some House Democrats. House Democrats are also worried about the direction the talks are taking on the census. This has always loomed as one of the biggest issues separating Democrats and Republicans. The results of a census help determine the future power of the two political parties. But the fact that the two sides are finally talking about it now indicates that they are covering the full range of budget matters that need to be resolved. The White House has proposed buying time on the matter by financing the Commerce, State and Justice departments only for five months. The Commerce Department contains the Census Bureau. White House officials said this would put off the nettlesome issue while allowing a resolution of the entire spending package, but House Democrats worry it would be a prelude to giving in to Republicans down the road. Republican leaders like the idea of postponing a decision but say that financing should be restricted only for the Census Bureau. On several touchy environmental issues that have prompted repeated veto threats from the White House, the two sides appeared to be opting for compromise over confrontation, with several disputes resolved. But a few particularly difficult issues remained under negotiation. A compromise was struck between the White House and Alaskan lawmakers on logging in the Tongass National Forest. But compromise still eluded them on the question of building a road through a wilderness refuge to connect two communities in Alaska. ||||| Some conservatives sounded notes of discord Friday over the federal spending agreement, but they also said they would probably vote for the $500 billion package because it boosted defense spending and provided aid to farmers. However, no one can vote on the package just yet, because it is not finished. The deal that President Clinton and Republican leaders hailed Thursday was a broad outline of areas of agreement on the final portion of the $1.7 trillion budget, not a written document. That is now being crafted by the chairmen of the spending committees and their aides, who said Friday that there were still disputes that needed to be resolved and that the final document could run to more than 3,000 pages. For example, still unresolved is a dispute over whether airlines can create a ``peanut-free'' zone to protect passengers who are allergic to peanuts. House Speaker Newt Gingrich and other members from Georgia, a major peanut-producing state, are fighting the proposal, which would force airlines to ban peanuts within three rows of someone with an allergy. Congress gave itself until midnight Tuesday to vote on the final bill, agreeing with President Clinton to a fifth extension of temporary financing to keep the government open. The budget was due Oct. 1, the start of the new fiscal year. The vote was initially expected Friday, but the bill is nowhere near to being written. Only a handful of top-level bargainers _ including Gingrich, Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott and White House chief of staff Erskine Bowles _ were in the room for the final deal. Excluded were the committee chairmen and the heads of the appropriation committees, who now must write the language that will put the deal into law. Almost everyone on Capitol Hill expects the budget to pass eventually, with the biggest defections coming from conservatives who object to the $20 billion taken from the surplus to address so-called emergencies and for the package's failure to offer voters a serious tax cut. The lag time before the bill is officially closed is making some conservatives nervous that more members will try to add provisions that will further expand a bill they already consider overly bloated. And some worry that once the hometown pork that is stuffed into the bill is publicly revealed, voters could put pressure on members not to support it. The elections are Nov. 3. But several conservatives said that despite these problems, they expected to support the bill anyway. Rep. Mark Souder, R-Ind., said: `Most of my friends, who are predominantly activist conservatives, are split about 50-50. If tax cuts were your primary thing, then you're unhappy, but many conservatives have a mixed agenda. My position is, hold the nose and vote yes. We have no tax cuts and far too much spending that I oppose, but that's the nature of compromise. Every member has a little different focus.'' Souder said he liked the extra money for defense spending, and he liked the price supports for farmers. Hog farmers in his district, whose biggest customers were Japan and China, had been hit hard by the collapse of Asian markets. Several Republicans said that the bill seemed skewed in favor of the Democrats. They cited two reasons: Clinton needed to curry favor with Democrats to shore up support if the House votes to impeach him, and Republican leaders feared that if they had stood up to Clinton, they might have forced a government shutdown and Republicans would be blamed. ``Clinton was buying votes,'' said Rep. David Hobson, R-Ohio. ``He was sucking up to the liberal Democrats so they would support him in impeachment.'' Rep. W.J. (Billy) Tauzin, R-La., said the leaders seemed motivated by a desire to avoid the political damage they incurred from the partial government shutdowns of 1995 and 1996. He also cited the president's need to placate the left by adding costly domestic programs. ``The combination of the lessons learned three years ago and the scandal on the president's side yielded the inevitable result, a budget that leans way to the left,'' Tauzin said. Still, he said he would probably support the bill. ``It won't be enthusiastically,'' he said. ``It won't be holding my nose either. I would have preferred to spend more of this money on a tax cut. I think we would have gotten a tax cut, but for the scandal. If the president had not been caught up with the scandal, he probably would have followed the Dick Morris strategy and moved towards the center.'' Gingrich said he recognized that some conservatives were wary of the agreement. But he sought to reassure them that the package served their interests. He cited a $9 billion increase in defense spending. And he noted that the Republicans had blocked several items, including needle-exchange programs in the District of Columbia, national education testing and U.S. contributions to a United Nations program that pays for family planning in China, which many in Congress object to because China has a policy of coercing abortions and forcing sterilization. Gingrich said the agreement was the best that could be achieved ``when you have a conservative Republican Congress and a liberal Democratic president.'' Some conservatives who had been especially critical were more understanding Thursday. Rep. David McIntosh, R-Ind., a leader of conservatives in the House, had denounced the bill earlier as a Great Society type of big-spending program. Friday, after a meeting of Republicans, he said, ``Our leadership found themselves in a bad situation and did a good job.'' A few remained outright hostile to the bill, as much for the hasty way in which it was cobbled together as for what it contained. Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, said: `I'm voting `no' unless something revolutionary happens between now and Tuesday. I think it's the process that gives the president the ability to stonewall until the very end and then hold us for ransom. The Republican leadership in the House and Senate did a good job of limiting the highway robbery, but it's still gone too far beyond the spending caps.'' Also angry at the rushed endgame was Rep. Gene Taylor, D-Miss., who took to the House floor and said he could not support the final bill. ``I'm going to urge my colleagues to vote `no,' '' Taylor said. ``We have stayed here this long. We can stay a little bit longer. And I am going to encourage my colleagues to continue to vote no until we are given adequate time to study the measure that is brought before us.'' ||||| Voting mainly on party lines on a question that has become a touchstone in the debate over development and preservation of wilderness, the Senate on Thursday approved a gravel road through remote wildlife habitat in Alaska. The road, barely 30 miles long, would slice across the edge of a wildlife refuge and wilderness area on the Aleutian Peninsula, where it would connect an isolated village called King Cove to a long-range air strip in the town of Cold Bay. Without the road, its backers say, about 700 residents of King Cove must continue to use unreliable air and boat service in emergencies, often risking dangerous winds and seas as they seek medical evacuation to Anchorage. Opponents of the road call the project an unjustifiable precedent that threatens the seasonal breeding grounds of protected migratory birds, and they say that improved air or sea service would be a better alternative. The vote Thursday, 59-38, was a victory for the state's congressional delegation. But with President Clinton likely to veto the measure, the final outcome may depend on whether its sponsors can insert the road proposal into a huge spending bill that is likely to emerge just before Congress heads home for the Nov. 3 elections. Three Republicans voted against the bill, and six Democrats voted for it. The Clinton administration has repeatedly warned that it will veto a big spending bill if it contains an array of anti-environmental provisions that are under consideration. Indeed, the White House seems to be itching for a partisan fight over environmental priorities. But while many Republicans in Congress still appear reluctant to engage in that broad fight, they were willing Thursday to cast their lot with the Senate's two powerful Alaskans, Ted Stevens and Frank Murkowski, both Republicans. A companion bill in the House, sponsored by Rep. Don Young of Alaska, also a Republican, has not come to the floor. Even Sen. John Chafee of Rhode Island, a leader of Republican environmentalists, voted for the road. Last February Chafee's staff had assembled a score of environmental lobbyists in his office to plan strategy for opposing the road, environmental advocates said Thursday. They speculated that the senator had changed his position out of deference to the power of Stevens, who as chairman of the Appropriations Committee exerts tremendous influence at a time when a dozen spending bills are in their final stages. A Chafee aide said Chafee voted reluctantly for the road after Alaska's senators convinced him of its merits. Stevens said in angry tones Thursday that two-thirds of Alaska's land was off limits to development and that vital health services were being denied to his state's residents. ``We can't use it without permission from some bureaucrat who is compelled by extreme environmentalists,'' he said. ``They are so extreme that they say this 330,000-acre Izembek refuge, the smallest wilderness in Alaska, is so sacrosanct that it can't move its border 60 feet.'' But Sen. Dale Bumpers, D-Ark., called the road project a dangerous precedent. ``Building a road through a wilderness in Alaska, no matter how short or how long, would be the first time in the nation we have voted deliberately to authorize a road through a wilderness area,'' Bumpers said. ``And once you go down that road, nobody knows where it is going to end.'' ||||| House and Senate negotiators agreed Thursday to require most federal health plans to cover prescription contraceptives for women, giving an unusual victory on Capitol Hill to advocates of abortion rights. But the future of the measure was in doubt because it was attached to a spending bill that includes a controversial provision regarding the Federal Election Commission. That provision could scuttle the spending bill, which would finance the Treasury Department and the Postal Service and which still must be approved by the House and Senate. The contraceptive measure would require the federal health plans, which affect 1.2 million female federal employees who are of child-bearing age, to cover the five methods of contraception that have been approved by the Food and Drug Administration for use in this country _ birth control pills, diaphragms, inter-uterine devices, Norplant and Depo-Provera. Currently, only 19 percent of federal health plans cover those methods. The House and Senate approved the contraceptive measure earlier this year. But the opponents of abortion were furious about the approval and persuaded Republican leaders to have negotiators reopen discussion on the matter. The cost of contraceptives has driven up the out-of-pocket cost of health care for women. And many male members of Congress seemed persuaded to support coverage of contraceptives for women, since almost all of the 285 federal health plans cover Viagra, the male impotency drug. Thursday, with pressure building to resolve the spending bills before Oct. 9, when temporary financing of the government expires, the negotiators agreed to include the contraceptive measure in their conference report on the $13.4 billion bill for the Treasury Department and Postal service. Rep. Nita Lowey, D-N.Y., who pushed the contraceptive measure through the House, hailed Thursday's agreement as the first major accomplishment by abortion rights advocates since the Republicans took control of Congress in 1994. She said the negotiators had agreed to include the measure because in an election year they did not want to be perceived as opposing contraception or be seen as rejecting a measure that had passed both the House and Senate. But many Democrats said the were upset that the bill contains a provision that is seen as interfering with the independence of the Federal Election Commission. That provision would require a four-vote majority among the seven federal election commissioners every four years to retain the general counsel and staff director. The provision is aimed at getting rid of Lawrence Noble, the current general counsel, who has investigated the campaign finance practices of groups like the Christian Coalition. The contraceptive measure is one of four related matters that have helped stall four spending bills. The three other bills that are stalled in part because of abortion-related matters include the agriculture bill, in which there is a dispute over whether the federal Food and Drug Administration should use taxpayer money to approve drugs like RU-486, which induce abortions. The foreign operations bill is also stalled over whether to finance international family planning programs that may also promote abortion, while the labor and health bill is delayed because of a provision that would block access of minors to contraception. Addressing the measure on insurance coverage for contraceptives, Helen Alvarez, a spokeswoman for the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, said that the bill was bad policy. She said contraception had failed to stem the number of abortions, teen-age pregnancies or out-of-wedlock births. ``Public-relations-wise, it's a good tactic for them,'' she conceded, ``but in terms of social policy, this is a failure.'' ||||| Some conservatives sounded notes of discord Friday over the federal spending agreement, but they also said they would probably vote for the $500 billion package because it boosted defense spending and provided aid to farmers. However, no one can vote on the package just yet, because it is not finished. The deal that President Clinton and Republican leaders hailed Thursday was a broad outline of areas of agreement on the final portion of the $1.7 trillion budget, not a written document. That is now being crafted by the chairmen of the spending committees and their aides, who said Friday that there were still disputes that needed to be resolved and that the final document could run to more than 3,000 pages. For example, still unresolved is a dispute over whether airlines can create a ``peanut-free'' zone to protect passengers who are allergic to peanuts. House Speaker Newt Gingrich and other members from Georgia, a major peanut-producing state, are fighting the proposal, which would force airlines to ban peanuts within three rows of someone with an allergy. Congress gave itself until midnight Tuesday to vote on the final bill, agreeing with President Clinton to a fifth extension of temporary financing to keep the government open. The budget was due Oct. 1, the start of the new fiscal year. The vote was initially expected Friday, but the bill is nowhere near to being written. Only a handful of top-level bargainers _ including Gingrich, Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott and White House chief of staff Erskine Bowles _ were in the room for the final deal. Excluded were the committee chairmen and the heads of the appropriation committees, who now must write the language that will put the deal into law. Almost everyone on Capitol Hill expects the budget to pass eventually, with the biggest defections coming from conservatives who object to the $20 billion taken from the surplus to address so-called emergencies and for the package's failure to offer voters a serious tax cut. The lag time before the bill is officially closed is making some conservatives nervous that more members will try to add provisions that will further expand a bill they already consider overly bloated. And some worry that once the hometown pork that is stuffed into the bill is publicly revealed, voters could put pressure on members not to support it. The elections are Nov. 3. But several conservatives said that despite these problems, they expected to support the bill anyway. Rep. Mark Souder, R-Ind., said: `Most of my friends, who are predominantly activist conservatives, are split about 50-50. If tax cuts were your primary thing, then you're unhappy, but many conservatives have a mixed agenda. My position is, hold the nose and vote yes. We have no tax cuts and far too much spending that I oppose, but that's the nature of compromise. Every member has a little different focus.'' Souder said he liked the extra money for defense spending, and he liked the price supports for farmers. Hog farmers in his district, whose biggest customers were Japan and China, had been hit hard by the collapse of Asian markets. ||||| Struggling to meet their fourth deadline over the federal budget, congressional Republicans and White House officials wrestled Tuesday with their differences over education, the most politically high-stakes element of the budget battle. Negotiators ended a late-night session without resolving disagreements over not just education, but the census and contraceptives. These were among the biggest issues that still separated the two sides as each tried to formulate a message to take home to voters for the Nov. 3 elections. On education, the issue that President Clinton has propelled to the forefront and on which Republicans do not want to appear recalcitrant, both sides have agreed to spend more than $1 billion but not on how to spend it. The president insists that the money be spent to hire 100,000 teachers across the country so that the average class can be reduced to 18 students. Republicans, railing against ``Beltway bureaucrats,'' say that local school districts should decide how the money is spent, whether it be for teachers or computers. As the two sides broke Tuesday night, White House chief of staff Erskine Bowles, the president's top negotiator, emerged from the session saying: ``We don't have a deal. We made some good progress. The biggest issue, still, is the 100,000 teachers.'' He added: ``There are still some open issues'' upon which no agreement has been reached, but he sounded optimistic about a session scheduled for Wednesday morning. ``I think we've got a chance of wrapping up tomorrow,'' he said. The two sides remained apart on several ideological matters, including whether to allow federal health plans to cover contraceptives and whether to allow those few plans with religious affiliations to refuse to cover contraceptives not only on religious grounds but on moral grounds as well. They were also split on how to conduct the census in 2000, which is one of the thorniest issues. It is not one that moves voters, but it is vital to both parties because it helps determine their relative strength in Congress. House Speaker Newt Gingrich and Bowles met for much of the day in the speaker's office, shuttling in and out of ante-rooms with their lieutenants but giving few clues about the nitty-gritty details of their talks. They have given themselves another deadline of midnight Wednesday to wrap up about $500 billion worth of spending items, but they could easily extend that deadline another day or two. They missed having spending bills in place for the Oct. 1 start of the fiscal year, providing temporary financing for the federal government through Oct. 9, then Oct. 12, then Wednesday. Some of the other central issues, like financing for the International Monetary Fund, were all but nailed down, but neither side was ready to declare a final deal until all the other elements of the budget package were in place. ``We're down to splitting infinitives,'' House Majority Leader Dick Armey said of approving money for the IMF. As they worked through several issues, Republican leaders appeared to be calculating the differences in their own party that might sour a final deal when it arrives on the House floor _ more of a concern than the Senate floor because the Senate has fewer differences among its Republicans and with the White House. Some conservative Republicans said they were concerned over the emerging shape of the final package, particularly elements dealing with family planning and emergency spending. They say the president's proposals for emergency spending, on such items as the peacekeeping mission in Bosnia, fixing the year 2000 computer bug and providing relief to American farmers, will break the limits in last year's balanced-budget agreement. The administration said such money would come from corresponding cuts elsewhere in the budget, but conservatives say it comes from raiding the surplus. If Republican leaders cannot count on their conservatives, they will need support from Democrats to pass the final package. And Democrats on Tuesday expressed concern over some White House positions, on issues like the census and an apparent compromise with Republicans on aid for farmers. Rep. David McIntosh, R-Ind., a leader of House conservatives, said he believed Republican leaders were ceding too quickly to the White House. He said that the president appeared to be getting his way on some issues but that what he really seemed to be winning was the war of public relations. ``The president is getting what he wants; he's controlling the situation,'' McIntosh lamented. When Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott appears on television, McIntosh said, ``it's in reaction to the president.'' Nonetheless, McIntosh suggested that he could vote for a final accord. ``Most conservatives are holding out for a better deal than we're hearing,'' he said, ``but we'll probably give them the vote because we don't see a much better alternative happening if it goes down.'' Others were distressed, particularly about two contraceptive issues. One would require federal health plans to cover contraceptives. The other would bar overseas family-planning organizations from lobbying to change abortion laws in other countries. Rep. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., said he wanted to see the final language on the health plan measure. As it passed both the House and the Senate, it allowed for health plans with religious affiliation to decline to offer contraceptive coverage; Coburn wants plans to be able to refuse such coverage on moral grounds as well. The plan covers five specific types of contraception. Coburn said he wanted two of those _ Depo-Provera and intrauterine devices _ to be eliminated from coverage because he said they interfered with fertilization and were therefore considered to cause abortions. Democrats like Rep. Nita Lowey, D-N.Y., who introduced the contraceptive plan in the House, said she strongly objected to Coburn's position. She said that health plans based their decisions on what to offer on profits, not morals. The question is whether the White House will insist on keeping the contraceptive coverage in the final package and will oppose the moral exception. If the administration allows the moral exception, it could alienate some House Democrats. House Democrats are also worried about the direction the talks are taking on the census. This has always loomed as one of the biggest issues separating Democrats and Republicans. The results of a census help determine the future power of the two political parties. But the fact that the two sides are finally talking about it now indicates that they are covering the full range of budget matters that need to be resolved. The White House has proposed buying time on the matter by financing the Commerce, State and Justice departments only for five months. The Commerce Department contains the Census Bureau. White House officials said this would put off the nettlesome issue while allowing a resolution of the entire spending package, but House Democrats worry it would be a prelude to giving in to Republicans down the road. Republican leaders like the idea of postponing a decision but say that financing should be restricted only for the Census Bureau. On several touchy environmental issues that have prompted repeated veto threats from the White House, the two sides appeared to be opting for compromise over confrontation, with several disputes resolved. But a few particularly difficult issues remained under negotiation. A compromise was struck between the White House and Alaskan lawmakers on logging in the Tongass National Forest. But compromise still eluded them on the question of building a road through a wilderness refuge to connect two communities in Alaska. ||||| Top-level budget negotiators for congressional Republicans and the White House concluded yet another bargaining session late Sunday afternoon with plans to resume talks on Monday morning and probably extend their midnight Monday deadline for another day or two. Both sides were amiable as they emerged from a two-hour session, but they had little to report and indicated that their relatively early departure, compared with the last three nights, should not be interpreted as a sign of crisis or of imminent peace in the budget talks. Sunday's discussions focused on education and President Clinton's request for $1.1 billion to hire 100,000 teachers, but aides said the bargainers did not delve into much detail and nothing was resolved. ``I think we made some real progress today, but we still have a significant difference in the area of education,'' said Erskine Bowles, Clinton's chief of staff and top negotiator, after Sunday's meeting. ``We're going to try to plow through that over the next two days.'' Asked how far apart the two sides were on education, Rep. Dick Armey of Texas, the Republican majority leader, replied: ``I don't know. We're not together.'' He said the two sides had made ``some progress, but not enough.'' The talks came during another day of escalated political confrontation as congressional Democrats and Republicans, painfully aware that they have three weeks until Election Day, tried to take advantage of the static budget situation. Congress has passed only six of the 13 required spending bills and are negotiating now with the White House on a final omnibus package that will contain the remaining seven bills and major issues including how to conduct the census in the year 2000, how much money to provide the International Monetary Fund and under what conditions it should be provided, and how much emergency money to provide for items like increased security at U.S. embassies around the world and for American farmers. Also to be resolved are a host of issues that have little to do with financing and more to do with ideology, including environmental matters, contraception and national student testing. Republicans said the president had been disengaged from the process, and they were irked at what they said was his swooping in at the 11th hour and pushing his education agenda in an apparently successful portrayal of himself as the guardian of that popular topic. Democrats countered that the Republican-led Congress had done nothing all year, and cast the Republicans as extremists for blocking the president's plea for more money to hire teachers and modernize schools. In fact, Republican bargainers said Saturday night that they would provide the money if local governments, not Washington, could decide how the money would be used. Armey was one of many who castigated the president for apparent disengagement, an indirect reminder that Clinton has been steeped in a sex scandal and is facing an impeachment inquiry in the House. The scant number of congressional Republicans who did not leave town for the weekend used the House floor to press this same message. ``What about the president?'' asked Rep. Tom DeLay of Texas, the majority whip. ``Maybe in Martha's Vineyard? Aspen? Camp David? Where is the president? I bet the American people don't know that he spent 152 days out of the 283 days this year fund raising, traveling and on vacation.'' Republicans said that Clinton had participated in 98 fund-raising events so far this year and that two events on Monday in New York, supporting the Senate campaign of Rep. Charles Schumer, would bring him to 100. Clinton said at the White House that he was ``prepared to do whatever it takes'' to reach a resolution over the spending bills, and dispatched his aides to Capitol Hill. He also said he would postpone from Monday morning until Monday afternoon his departure for his fund-raising tour in New York, and he canceled a fund-raising appearance in Florida. But as the high-level budget bargaining concluded Sunday afternoon, both sides agreed they would need to extend their deadline beyond midnight Monday, when temporary financing for the government expires for the third time since the Oct. 1 start of the fiscal year. Congressional Democrats struck back at the Republicans, saying they have held a slack schedule themselves. Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., said Congress had been in session only 108 days so far this year, an unusually abbreviated period and one consumed for more than a month by the drive to hold impeachment hearings on the president. Most Americans, Miller said, had worked more than 225 days. ``They say, `Where is the president?''' Miller said. ``The president has been waiting for the budget. This is the first Congress since 1974 that has no budget,'' he said, referring to the broad blueprint that is supposed to guide spending. ``This is a Congress that can't pass seven of its appropriations bills,'' he said, largely because of divisive splits among conservative and moderate Republicans. ||||| For the first time in decades, Congress and the White House negotiated tax and spending legislation this year with the budget in surplus. The result was chaos. The lawmakers were never able to agree on a budget resolution _ the framework into which all the tax and spending bills are supposed to fit. This had not happened since congressional budget procedures were established in 1974. Then, without the discipline of such an overall plan, the Senate and the House could not pass eight of the 13 spending bills needed to keep the government running. So the lawmakers had to stay in session more than a week longer than they had hoped. Finally, they lumped all eight bills together this week and announced an agreement. But the only way they could get this far was to resort to gimmicks. One was to designate $20 billion as ``emergency'' expenditures so that programs did not have to be cut elsewhere to offset the new spending. This will use up more than one-quarter of the anticipated budget surplus in the current fiscal year. Another gimmick extended the tax break for Individual Retirement Accounts to couples with incomes from $100,000 to $150,000. This will actually raise a small amount of revenue in the next five years _ the period covered by budget accounting _ but it will make the picture considerably worse in later years. As hard as it was to negotiate a budget in the bad old days of budget deficits, say the politicians involved, it was exponentially more difficult this year. At least in years past, there was a common goal. As much as they disagreed on policy and principle, they were all aiming at a reduction in the deficit. This year, some members of Congress wanted to use the surplus for a big tax cut. Others wanted to pay off the national debt. Others wanted to spend part of it on medical research, schools and weapons for the Pentagon. Others wanted to spend large sums on highways. Still others wanted to continue cutting government spending. And that was just among the Republicans. The Democrats had their own ideas about the budget, and President Clinton laid down his marker about saving the surplus until a way was found to shore up the Social Security system. ``In budget terms,'' said Robert Reischauer, a former director of the congressional budget office, ``this is like the end of the Cold War.'' There are other differences as well in the way things were negotiated with the budget in a surplus. In 1990, 1993 and 1995, when politicians staked their careers on striking a budget deal to lower the deficit, the fundamental question was how to divide up the bitter medicine of more taxes and less spending. Republicans, for the most part, opposed tax increases and favored cutting spending on social programs. Democrats wanted to raise taxes, especially on the rich, and protect social spending. In the end, balances were carefully drawn. But plenty of politicians _ President George Bush, to name one _ lost their jobs in the process. This year, with Democrats and Republicans alike claiming victory, the burning issue was how to parcel out the candy. Democrats got more money for education and farm assistance. Republicans got more money for the military and an extension of popular tax breaks for businesses. Some of the $20 billion that will eat into the surplus really will go for emergencies, like relief for victims of Hurricane Georges. But much of the money, like the $90 million that will pay for six new helicopters for the national police in Colombia to use in drug interdiction, was designated emergency spending simply because there was no other way to get it into the budget. For the politicians, the new way is more fun. It is hard to imagine that anyone will be voted out of office because of this year's budget. But that did not make it easier to reach an agreement. The other big difference is that the principal fights this year were not over money at all. They involved delicate policy issues like needle exchanges, contraception, global warming, immigration and the census. In Congress, there is no consensus on these matters. So the only way policy could be set was to wrap them into the giant spending bill. It may be more pleasant to debate policy than money. But it is probably harder to find a way to split the difference. As long as the surplus lasts, the lack of discipline that characterized the budget-writing this year is likely to continue. This is distressing to those devoted to controlling government spending. ``The temptation,'' said L. Ari Fleischer, spokesman for the House Ways and Means Committee, ``is to grab the loot and spend it.'' ||||| Struggling to meet their fourth deadline over the federal budget, congressional Republicans and White House officials wrestled Tuesday with their differences over education, staging events to demonstrate support for what has become the most public and politically high-stakes element of the budget battle. Negotiators met into the night to hash out their disagreements over aid for schools, the census and contraceptives. These were among the biggest issues that still separated the two sides as each tried to formulate a message to take home to voters for the Nov. 3 elections. On education, the issue that President Clinton has propelled to the forefront of the talks and on which Republicans do not want to appear recalcitrant, both sides have agreed to spend more than $1 billion but disagree over how to spend it. The president insists the money be spent on hiring 100,000 teachers across the country so that the average class can be reduced to 18 students. Republicans, railing against ``Beltway bureaucrats,'' say that local school districts should decide how the money is spent, whether it be for teachers or computers. The two sides remained apart on several ideological matters, including whether to allow federal health plans to cover contraceptives and whether to allow those few plans with religious affiliations to refuse to cover contraceptives not only on religious grounds but on moral grounds as well. And they also were split on how to conduct the census in the year 2000. This is one of the thorniest issues. It is not one that moves voters, but it is vital to both parties because it helps determine their relative strength in Congress. House Speaker Newt Gingrich and Erskine Bowles, the president's chief of staff and top negotiator, met for much of the day in the speaker's office, shuttling in and out of ante-rooms with their lieutenants but giving few clues about the nitty gritty details of their talks. They have given themselves another deadline of midnight Wednesday to wrap up about $500 billion-worth of spending items, but they could easily extend that deadline another day or two. They missed the Oct. 1 start of the fiscal year, providing temporary funding for the federal government through Oct. 9, then Oct. 12, then Wednesday. Some of the other central issues, such as financing for the International Monetary Fund, were all but nailed down, but neither side was ready to declare a final deal until all the other elements of the budget package are in place. ``We're down to splitting infinitives,'' Rep. Dick Armey of Texas, the Republican majority leader, said of approving funds for the international fund. As they worked through several issues, Republican leaders appeared to be calculating the differences in their own party that might sour a final deal when it arrives on the House floor _ more of a concern than on the Senate floor because the Senate has fewer differences among its Republicans and with the White House.

Whether to use the 1st surplus in decades for a tax cut, to pay off the national debt, or for new initiatives made the 1998 federal budget negotiations chaotic. The Oct 1 start of the fiscal year was extended 5 times. Major issues were census statistical sampling, federal health plan coverage of contraceptives regardless of religious affiliation, and school aid decisions by the federal gov't or local jurisdictions. Other issues included a Federal Election Commission provision, a road through an Alaskan wildlife refuge, and an airline peanut ban. Committees crafted the budget document after broad agreement was reached when 8 bills were lumped together.

A sticking point for White House and congressional budget negotiators has been the issue of how the 2000 census will be conducted, and the White House is finding itself negotiating on the issue as much with House Democrats as it is with the House Republican leaders. On Monday, White House negotiators, led by chief of staff Erskine Bowles, tried to determine whether Democrats would accept a deal to finance for six months the departments of State, Justice and Commerce, which oversees the Census Bureau. The deal would put off until next March the contentious issue of whether the next census would use statistical sampling to supplement traditional methods of counting people. Bowles told the group of Democrats that the House Republicans were willing to give on a number of outstanding issues that were stalling final agreement on the budget, but that they were digging in their heels when it came to financing the census for six months. The Democrats met in the office of Minority Leader Dick Gephardt. The rationale for the half-year financing is that by next March the Supreme Court is expected to rule on whether using sampling is legal or constitutional. The Supreme Court has already agreed to review two lower court rulings that said sampling would violate federal law. Oral arguments on the cases are set for November. But House Democrats balked at the idea of six months' financing for the census, arguing that even if the Supreme Court allowed sampling, the Republicans would be under no obligation to approve money for a census that included sampling. ``The general feeling among many Democrats was that even if we won the case, there would be a lot less leverage in March, especially if it was the only issue left to be debated,'' said a House Democratic official who insisted on anonymity. Democrats contend that now is the time to press the Republicans, while they want to complete work on the budget and go home to campaign. Rep. Lucille Roybal-Allard, D-Calif., who attended the meeting Monday, said, ``It was, sort of, this is where we are. We've been able to accomplish great things, what do you think? We made it very clear that unless the census was included, along with some other issues, like school construction, the deal wouldn't be acceptable.'' Statistical sampling would allow the Census Bureau to estimate populations that are difficult to count, and would have the largest effect on the counting of African-Americans in cities and blacks and Hispanics in rural areas, groups that are traditionally undercounted by the standard means. Republicans fear, and Democrats hope, that the method would raise the count of people living in traditionally Democratic areas, giving the party an advantage when new boundaries for election districts are drawn following the 2000 census. At Monday's meeting, the Democrats reminded administration officials that Clinton had promised that he would veto any legislation that restricted the Census Bureau's ability to conduct an accurate census. ``I can't think of any way that restricts the census more than not to fully fund it,'' said Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y. The willingness of House Democrats, including Gephardt, to press the president on the issue represents a realization of their leverage with Clinton, who will need all of their support in the coming impeachment inquiry. ``Gephardt is a major player now, and the irony is we helped make him that,'' said Rep. Christopher Shays, R-Conn., who supports the use of sampling in the census. The Democrats' position also indicates how little trust many have in the White House on this issue. The proposal to finance the departments of Commerce, Justice and State for six months is similar to one reached last November between Bowles and House Speaker Newt Gingrich. The idea then was that holding all three departments hostage in the census fight would place maximum pressure on all sides to work out their differences over sampling. But House Democrats were not consulted before that agreement was struck and later grumbled about it. At a meeting of the Democratic caucus Tuesday, Ms. Maloney briefed lawmakers on dealings with the White House and declared that Clinton had promised that he would hold firm on the census and that she believed him, a participant said. The statement was greeted with laughter. ``There is a certain level of suspicion because there have been times when we have been cut out,''said the House Democratic official. ``But I have to say, there hasn't been much evidence of that, this time.'' ||||| Struggling to meet their fourth deadline over the federal budget, congressional Republicans and White House officials wrestled Tuesday with their differences over education, the most politically high-stakes element of the budget battle. Negotiators ended a late-night session without resolving disagreements over not just education, but the census and contraceptives. These were among the biggest issues that still separated the two sides as each tried to formulate a message to take home to voters for the Nov. 3 elections. On education, the issue that President Clinton has propelled to the forefront and on which Republicans do not want to appear recalcitrant, both sides have agreed to spend more than $1 billion but not on how to spend it. The president insists that the money be spent to hire 100,000 teachers across the country so that the average class can be reduced to 18 students. Republicans, railing against ``Beltway bureaucrats,'' say that local school districts should decide how the money is spent, whether it be for teachers or computers. As the two sides broke Tuesday night, White House chief of staff Erskine Bowles, the president's top negotiator, emerged from the session saying: ``We don't have a deal. We made some good progress. The biggest issue, still, is the 100,000 teachers.'' He added: ``There are still some open issues'' upon which no agreement has been reached, but he sounded optimistic about a session scheduled for Wednesday morning. ``I think we've got a chance of wrapping up tomorrow,'' he said. The two sides remained apart on several ideological matters, including whether to allow federal health plans to cover contraceptives and whether to allow those few plans with religious affiliations to refuse to cover contraceptives not only on religious grounds but on moral grounds as well. They were also split on how to conduct the census in 2000, which is one of the thorniest issues. It is not one that moves voters, but it is vital to both parties because it helps determine their relative strength in Congress. House Speaker Newt Gingrich and Bowles met for much of the day in the speaker's office, shuttling in and out of ante-rooms with their lieutenants but giving few clues about the nitty-gritty details of their talks. They have given themselves another deadline of midnight Wednesday to wrap up about $500 billion worth of spending items, but they could easily extend that deadline another day or two. They missed having spending bills in place for the Oct. 1 start of the fiscal year, providing temporary financing for the federal government through Oct. 9, then Oct. 12, then Wednesday. Some of the other central issues, like financing for the International Monetary Fund, were all but nailed down, but neither side was ready to declare a final deal until all the other elements of the budget package were in place. ``We're down to splitting infinitives,'' House Majority Leader Dick Armey said of approving money for the IMF. As they worked through several issues, Republican leaders appeared to be calculating the differences in their own party that might sour a final deal when it arrives on the House floor _ more of a concern than the Senate floor because the Senate has fewer differences among its Republicans and with the White House. Some conservative Republicans said they were concerned over the emerging shape of the final package, particularly elements dealing with family planning and emergency spending. They say the president's proposals for emergency spending, on such items as the peacekeeping mission in Bosnia, fixing the year 2000 computer bug and providing relief to American farmers, will break the limits in last year's balanced-budget agreement. The administration said such money would come from corresponding cuts elsewhere in the budget, but conservatives say it comes from raiding the surplus. If Republican leaders cannot count on their conservatives, they will need support from Democrats to pass the final package. And Democrats on Tuesday expressed concern over some White House positions, on issues like the census and an apparent compromise with Republicans on aid for farmers. Rep. David McIntosh, R-Ind., a leader of House conservatives, said he believed Republican leaders were ceding too quickly to the White House. He said that the president appeared to be getting his way on some issues but that what he really seemed to be winning was the war of public relations. ``The president is getting what he wants; he's controlling the situation,'' McIntosh lamented. When Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott appears on television, McIntosh said, ``it's in reaction to the president.'' Nonetheless, McIntosh suggested that he could vote for a final accord. ``Most conservatives are holding out for a better deal than we're hearing,'' he said, ``but we'll probably give them the vote because we don't see a much better alternative happening if it goes down.'' Others were distressed, particularly about two contraceptive issues. One would require federal health plans to cover contraceptives. The other would bar overseas family-planning organizations from lobbying to change abortion laws in other countries. Rep. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., said he wanted to see the final language on the health plan measure. As it passed both the House and the Senate, it allowed for health plans with religious affiliation to decline to offer contraceptive coverage; Coburn wants plans to be able to refuse such coverage on moral grounds as well. The plan covers five specific types of contraception. Coburn said he wanted two of those _ Depo-Provera and intrauterine devices _ to be eliminated from coverage because he said they interfered with fertilization and were therefore considered to cause abortions. Democrats like Rep. Nita Lowey, D-N.Y., who introduced the contraceptive plan in the House, said she strongly objected to Coburn's position. She said that health plans based their decisions on what to offer on profits, not morals. The question is whether the White House will insist on keeping the contraceptive coverage in the final package and will oppose the moral exception. If the administration allows the moral exception, it could alienate some House Democrats. House Democrats are also worried about the direction the talks are taking on the census. This has always loomed as one of the biggest issues separating Democrats and Republicans. The results of a census help determine the future power of the two political parties. But the fact that the two sides are finally talking about it now indicates that they are covering the full range of budget matters that need to be resolved. The White House has proposed buying time on the matter by financing the Commerce, State and Justice departments only for five months. The Commerce Department contains the Census Bureau. White House officials said this would put off the nettlesome issue while allowing a resolution of the entire spending package, but House Democrats worry it would be a prelude to giving in to Republicans down the road. Republican leaders like the idea of postponing a decision but say that financing should be restricted only for the Census Bureau. On several touchy environmental issues that have prompted repeated veto threats from the White House, the two sides appeared to be opting for compromise over confrontation, with several disputes resolved. But a few particularly difficult issues remained under negotiation. A compromise was struck between the White House and Alaskan lawmakers on logging in the Tongass National Forest. But compromise still eluded them on the question of building a road through a wilderness refuge to connect two communities in Alaska. ||||| Some conservatives sounded notes of discord Friday over the federal spending agreement, but they also said they would probably vote for the $500 billion package because it boosted defense spending and provided aid to farmers. However, no one can vote on the package just yet, because it is not finished. The deal that President Clinton and Republican leaders hailed Thursday was a broad outline of areas of agreement on the final portion of the $1.7 trillion budget, not a written document. That is now being crafted by the chairmen of the spending committees and their aides, who said Friday that there were still disputes that needed to be resolved and that the final document could run to more than 3,000 pages. For example, still unresolved is a dispute over whether airlines can create a ``peanut-free'' zone to protect passengers who are allergic to peanuts. House Speaker Newt Gingrich and other members from Georgia, a major peanut-producing state, are fighting the proposal, which would force airlines to ban peanuts within three rows of someone with an allergy. Congress gave itself until midnight Tuesday to vote on the final bill, agreeing with President Clinton to a fifth extension of temporary financing to keep the government open. The budget was due Oct. 1, the start of the new fiscal year. The vote was initially expected Friday, but the bill is nowhere near to being written. Only a handful of top-level bargainers _ including Gingrich, Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott and White House chief of staff Erskine Bowles _ were in the room for the final deal. Excluded were the committee chairmen and the heads of the appropriation committees, who now must write the language that will put the deal into law. Almost everyone on Capitol Hill expects the budget to pass eventually, with the biggest defections coming from conservatives who object to the $20 billion taken from the surplus to address so-called emergencies and for the package's failure to offer voters a serious tax cut. The lag time before the bill is officially closed is making some conservatives nervous that more members will try to add provisions that will further expand a bill they already consider overly bloated. And some worry that once the hometown pork that is stuffed into the bill is publicly revealed, voters could put pressure on members not to support it. The elections are Nov. 3. But several conservatives said that despite these problems, they expected to support the bill anyway. Rep. Mark Souder, R-Ind., said: `Most of my friends, who are predominantly activist conservatives, are split about 50-50. If tax cuts were your primary thing, then you're unhappy, but many conservatives have a mixed agenda. My position is, hold the nose and vote yes. We have no tax cuts and far too much spending that I oppose, but that's the nature of compromise. Every member has a little different focus.'' Souder said he liked the extra money for defense spending, and he liked the price supports for farmers. Hog farmers in his district, whose biggest customers were Japan and China, had been hit hard by the collapse of Asian markets. Several Republicans said that the bill seemed skewed in favor of the Democrats. They cited two reasons: Clinton needed to curry favor with Democrats to shore up support if the House votes to impeach him, and Republican leaders feared that if they had stood up to Clinton, they might have forced a government shutdown and Republicans would be blamed. ``Clinton was buying votes,'' said Rep. David Hobson, R-Ohio. ``He was sucking up to the liberal Democrats so they would support him in impeachment.'' Rep. W.J. (Billy) Tauzin, R-La., said the leaders seemed motivated by a desire to avoid the political damage they incurred from the partial government shutdowns of 1995 and 1996. He also cited the president's need to placate the left by adding costly domestic programs. ``The combination of the lessons learned three years ago and the scandal on the president's side yielded the inevitable result, a budget that leans way to the left,'' Tauzin said. Still, he said he would probably support the bill. ``It won't be enthusiastically,'' he said. ``It won't be holding my nose either. I would have preferred to spend more of this money on a tax cut. I think we would have gotten a tax cut, but for the scandal. If the president had not been caught up with the scandal, he probably would have followed the Dick Morris strategy and moved towards the center.'' Gingrich said he recognized that some conservatives were wary of the agreement. But he sought to reassure them that the package served their interests. He cited a $9 billion increase in defense spending. And he noted that the Republicans had blocked several items, including needle-exchange programs in the District of Columbia, national education testing and U.S. contributions to a United Nations program that pays for family planning in China, which many in Congress object to because China has a policy of coercing abortions and forcing sterilization. Gingrich said the agreement was the best that could be achieved ``when you have a conservative Republican Congress and a liberal Democratic president.'' Some conservatives who had been especially critical were more understanding Thursday. Rep. David McIntosh, R-Ind., a leader of conservatives in the House, had denounced the bill earlier as a Great Society type of big-spending program. Friday, after a meeting of Republicans, he said, ``Our leadership found themselves in a bad situation and did a good job.'' A few remained outright hostile to the bill, as much for the hasty way in which it was cobbled together as for what it contained. Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, said: `I'm voting `no' unless something revolutionary happens between now and Tuesday. I think it's the process that gives the president the ability to stonewall until the very end and then hold us for ransom. The Republican leadership in the House and Senate did a good job of limiting the highway robbery, but it's still gone too far beyond the spending caps.'' Also angry at the rushed endgame was Rep. Gene Taylor, D-Miss., who took to the House floor and said he could not support the final bill. ``I'm going to urge my colleagues to vote `no,' '' Taylor said. ``We have stayed here this long. We can stay a little bit longer. And I am going to encourage my colleagues to continue to vote no until we are given adequate time to study the measure that is brought before us.'' ||||| Voting mainly on party lines on a question that has become a touchstone in the debate over development and preservation of wilderness, the Senate on Thursday approved a gravel road through remote wildlife habitat in Alaska. The road, barely 30 miles long, would slice across the edge of a wildlife refuge and wilderness area on the Aleutian Peninsula, where it would connect an isolated village called King Cove to a long-range air strip in the town of Cold Bay. Without the road, its backers say, about 700 residents of King Cove must continue to use unreliable air and boat service in emergencies, often risking dangerous winds and seas as they seek medical evacuation to Anchorage. Opponents of the road call the project an unjustifiable precedent that threatens the seasonal breeding grounds of protected migratory birds, and they say that improved air or sea service would be a better alternative. The vote Thursday, 59-38, was a victory for the state's congressional delegation. But with President Clinton likely to veto the measure, the final outcome may depend on whether its sponsors can insert the road proposal into a huge spending bill that is likely to emerge just before Congress heads home for the Nov. 3 elections. Three Republicans voted against the bill, and six Democrats voted for it. The Clinton administration has repeatedly warned that it will veto a big spending bill if it contains an array of anti-environmental provisions that are under consideration. Indeed, the White House seems to be itching for a partisan fight over environmental priorities. But while many Republicans in Congress still appear reluctant to engage in that broad fight, they were willing Thursday to cast their lot with the Senate's two powerful Alaskans, Ted Stevens and Frank Murkowski, both Republicans. A companion bill in the House, sponsored by Rep. Don Young of Alaska, also a Republican, has not come to the floor. Even Sen. John Chafee of Rhode Island, a leader of Republican environmentalists, voted for the road. Last February Chafee's staff had assembled a score of environmental lobbyists in his office to plan strategy for opposing the road, environmental advocates said Thursday. They speculated that the senator had changed his position out of deference to the power of Stevens, who as chairman of the Appropriations Committee exerts tremendous influence at a time when a dozen spending bills are in their final stages. A Chafee aide said Chafee voted reluctantly for the road after Alaska's senators convinced him of its merits. Stevens said in angry tones Thursday that two-thirds of Alaska's land was off limits to development and that vital health services were being denied to his state's residents. ``We can't use it without permission from some bureaucrat who is compelled by extreme environmentalists,'' he said. ``They are so extreme that they say this 330,000-acre Izembek refuge, the smallest wilderness in Alaska, is so sacrosanct that it can't move its border 60 feet.'' But Sen. Dale Bumpers, D-Ark., called the road project a dangerous precedent. ``Building a road through a wilderness in Alaska, no matter how short or how long, would be the first time in the nation we have voted deliberately to authorize a road through a wilderness area,'' Bumpers said. ``And once you go down that road, nobody knows where it is going to end.'' ||||| House and Senate negotiators agreed Thursday to require most federal health plans to cover prescription contraceptives for women, giving an unusual victory on Capitol Hill to advocates of abortion rights. But the future of the measure was in doubt because it was attached to a spending bill that includes a controversial provision regarding the Federal Election Commission. That provision could scuttle the spending bill, which would finance the Treasury Department and the Postal Service and which still must be approved by the House and Senate. The contraceptive measure would require the federal health plans, which affect 1.2 million female federal employees who are of child-bearing age, to cover the five methods of contraception that have been approved by the Food and Drug Administration for use in this country _ birth control pills, diaphragms, inter-uterine devices, Norplant and Depo-Provera. Currently, only 19 percent of federal health plans cover those methods. The House and Senate approved the contraceptive measure earlier this year. But the opponents of abortion were furious about the approval and persuaded Republican leaders to have negotiators reopen discussion on the matter. The cost of contraceptives has driven up the out-of-pocket cost of health care for women. And many male members of Congress seemed persuaded to support coverage of contraceptives for women, since almost all of the 285 federal health plans cover Viagra, the male impotency drug. Thursday, with pressure building to resolve the spending bills before Oct. 9, when temporary financing of the government expires, the negotiators agreed to include the contraceptive measure in their conference report on the $13.4 billion bill for the Treasury Department and Postal service. Rep. Nita Lowey, D-N.Y., who pushed the contraceptive measure through the House, hailed Thursday's agreement as the first major accomplishment by abortion rights advocates since the Republicans took control of Congress in 1994. She said the negotiators had agreed to include the measure because in an election year they did not want to be perceived as opposing contraception or be seen as rejecting a measure that had passed both the House and Senate. But many Democrats said the were upset that the bill contains a provision that is seen as interfering with the independence of the Federal Election Commission. That provision would require a four-vote majority among the seven federal election commissioners every four years to retain the general counsel and staff director. The provision is aimed at getting rid of Lawrence Noble, the current general counsel, who has investigated the campaign finance practices of groups like the Christian Coalition. The contraceptive measure is one of four related matters that have helped stall four spending bills. The three other bills that are stalled in part because of abortion-related matters include the agriculture bill, in which there is a dispute over whether the federal Food and Drug Administration should use taxpayer money to approve drugs like RU-486, which induce abortions. The foreign operations bill is also stalled over whether to finance international family planning programs that may also promote abortion, while the labor and health bill is delayed because of a provision that would block access of minors to contraception. Addressing the measure on insurance coverage for contraceptives, Helen Alvarez, a spokeswoman for the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, said that the bill was bad policy. She said contraception had failed to stem the number of abortions, teen-age pregnancies or out-of-wedlock births. ``Public-relations-wise, it's a good tactic for them,'' she conceded, ``but in terms of social policy, this is a failure.'' ||||| Some conservatives sounded notes of discord Friday over the federal spending agreement, but they also said they would probably vote for the $500 billion package because it boosted defense spending and provided aid to farmers. However, no one can vote on the package just yet, because it is not finished. The deal that President Clinton and Republican leaders hailed Thursday was a broad outline of areas of agreement on the final portion of the $1.7 trillion budget, not a written document. That is now being crafted by the chairmen of the spending committees and their aides, who said Friday that there were still disputes that needed to be resolved and that the final document could run to more than 3,000 pages. For example, still unresolved is a dispute over whether airlines can create a ``peanut-free'' zone to protect passengers who are allergic to peanuts. House Speaker Newt Gingrich and other members from Georgia, a major peanut-producing state, are fighting the proposal, which would force airlines to ban peanuts within three rows of someone with an allergy. Congress gave itself until midnight Tuesday to vote on the final bill, agreeing with President Clinton to a fifth extension of temporary financing to keep the government open. The budget was due Oct. 1, the start of the new fiscal year. The vote was initially expected Friday, but the bill is nowhere near to being written. Only a handful of top-level bargainers _ including Gingrich, Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott and White House chief of staff Erskine Bowles _ were in the room for the final deal. Excluded were the committee chairmen and the heads of the appropriation committees, who now must write the language that will put the deal into law. Almost everyone on Capitol Hill expects the budget to pass eventually, with the biggest defections coming from conservatives who object to the $20 billion taken from the surplus to address so-called emergencies and for the package's failure to offer voters a serious tax cut. The lag time before the bill is officially closed is making some conservatives nervous that more members will try to add provisions that will further expand a bill they already consider overly bloated. And some worry that once the hometown pork that is stuffed into the bill is publicly revealed, voters could put pressure on members not to support it. The elections are Nov. 3. But several conservatives said that despite these problems, they expected to support the bill anyway. Rep. Mark Souder, R-Ind., said: `Most of my friends, who are predominantly activist conservatives, are split about 50-50. If tax cuts were your primary thing, then you're unhappy, but many conservatives have a mixed agenda. My position is, hold the nose and vote yes. We have no tax cuts and far too much spending that I oppose, but that's the nature of compromise. Every member has a little different focus.'' Souder said he liked the extra money for defense spending, and he liked the price supports for farmers. Hog farmers in his district, whose biggest customers were Japan and China, had been hit hard by the collapse of Asian markets. ||||| Struggling to meet their fourth deadline over the federal budget, congressional Republicans and White House officials wrestled Tuesday with their differences over education, the most politically high-stakes element of the budget battle. Negotiators ended a late-night session without resolving disagreements over not just education, but the census and contraceptives. These were among the biggest issues that still separated the two sides as each tried to formulate a message to take home to voters for the Nov. 3 elections. On education, the issue that President Clinton has propelled to the forefront and on which Republicans do not want to appear recalcitrant, both sides have agreed to spend more than $1 billion but not on how to spend it. The president insists that the money be spent to hire 100,000 teachers across the country so that the average class can be reduced to 18 students. Republicans, railing against ``Beltway bureaucrats,'' say that local school districts should decide how the money is spent, whether it be for teachers or computers. As the two sides broke Tuesday night, White House chief of staff Erskine Bowles, the president's top negotiator, emerged from the session saying: ``We don't have a deal. We made some good progress. The biggest issue, still, is the 100,000 teachers.'' He added: ``There are still some open issues'' upon which no agreement has been reached, but he sounded optimistic about a session scheduled for Wednesday morning. ``I think we've got a chance of wrapping up tomorrow,'' he said. The two sides remained apart on several ideological matters, including whether to allow federal health plans to cover contraceptives and whether to allow those few plans with religious affiliations to refuse to cover contraceptives not only on religious grounds but on moral grounds as well. They were also split on how to conduct the census in 2000, which is one of the thorniest issues. It is not one that moves voters, but it is vital to both parties because it helps determine their relative strength in Congress. House Speaker Newt Gingrich and Bowles met for much of the day in the speaker's office, shuttling in and out of ante-rooms with their lieutenants but giving few clues about the nitty-gritty details of their talks. They have given themselves another deadline of midnight Wednesday to wrap up about $500 billion worth of spending items, but they could easily extend that deadline another day or two. They missed having spending bills in place for the Oct. 1 start of the fiscal year, providing temporary financing for the federal government through Oct. 9, then Oct. 12, then Wednesday. Some of the other central issues, like financing for the International Monetary Fund, were all but nailed down, but neither side was ready to declare a final deal until all the other elements of the budget package were in place. ``We're down to splitting infinitives,'' House Majority Leader Dick Armey said of approving money for the IMF. As they worked through several issues, Republican leaders appeared to be calculating the differences in their own party that might sour a final deal when it arrives on the House floor _ more of a concern than the Senate floor because the Senate has fewer differences among its Republicans and with the White House. Some conservative Republicans said they were concerned over the emerging shape of the final package, particularly elements dealing with family planning and emergency spending. They say the president's proposals for emergency spending, on such items as the peacekeeping mission in Bosnia, fixing the year 2000 computer bug and providing relief to American farmers, will break the limits in last year's balanced-budget agreement. The administration said such money would come from corresponding cuts elsewhere in the budget, but conservatives say it comes from raiding the surplus. If Republican leaders cannot count on their conservatives, they will need support from Democrats to pass the final package. And Democrats on Tuesday expressed concern over some White House positions, on issues like the census and an apparent compromise with Republicans on aid for farmers. Rep. David McIntosh, R-Ind., a leader of House conservatives, said he believed Republican leaders were ceding too quickly to the White House. He said that the president appeared to be getting his way on some issues but that what he really seemed to be winning was the war of public relations. ``The president is getting what he wants; he's controlling the situation,'' McIntosh lamented. When Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott appears on television, McIntosh said, ``it's in reaction to the president.'' Nonetheless, McIntosh suggested that he could vote for a final accord. ``Most conservatives are holding out for a better deal than we're hearing,'' he said, ``but we'll probably give them the vote because we don't see a much better alternative happening if it goes down.'' Others were distressed, particularly about two contraceptive issues. One would require federal health plans to cover contraceptives. The other would bar overseas family-planning organizations from lobbying to change abortion laws in other countries. Rep. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., said he wanted to see the final language on the health plan measure. As it passed both the House and the Senate, it allowed for health plans with religious affiliation to decline to offer contraceptive coverage; Coburn wants plans to be able to refuse such coverage on moral grounds as well. The plan covers five specific types of contraception. Coburn said he wanted two of those _ Depo-Provera and intrauterine devices _ to be eliminated from coverage because he said they interfered with fertilization and were therefore considered to cause abortions. Democrats like Rep. Nita Lowey, D-N.Y., who introduced the contraceptive plan in the House, said she strongly objected to Coburn's position. She said that health plans based their decisions on what to offer on profits, not morals. The question is whether the White House will insist on keeping the contraceptive coverage in the final package and will oppose the moral exception. If the administration allows the moral exception, it could alienate some House Democrats. House Democrats are also worried about the direction the talks are taking on the census. This has always loomed as one of the biggest issues separating Democrats and Republicans. The results of a census help determine the future power of the two political parties. But the fact that the two sides are finally talking about it now indicates that they are covering the full range of budget matters that need to be resolved. The White House has proposed buying time on the matter by financing the Commerce, State and Justice departments only for five months. The Commerce Department contains the Census Bureau. White House officials said this would put off the nettlesome issue while allowing a resolution of the entire spending package, but House Democrats worry it would be a prelude to giving in to Republicans down the road. Republican leaders like the idea of postponing a decision but say that financing should be restricted only for the Census Bureau. On several touchy environmental issues that have prompted repeated veto threats from the White House, the two sides appeared to be opting for compromise over confrontation, with several disputes resolved. But a few particularly difficult issues remained under negotiation. A compromise was struck between the White House and Alaskan lawmakers on logging in the Tongass National Forest. But compromise still eluded them on the question of building a road through a wilderness refuge to connect two communities in Alaska. ||||| Top-level budget negotiators for congressional Republicans and the White House concluded yet another bargaining session late Sunday afternoon with plans to resume talks on Monday morning and probably extend their midnight Monday deadline for another day or two. Both sides were amiable as they emerged from a two-hour session, but they had little to report and indicated that their relatively early departure, compared with the last three nights, should not be interpreted as a sign of crisis or of imminent peace in the budget talks. Sunday's discussions focused on education and President Clinton's request for $1.1 billion to hire 100,000 teachers, but aides said the bargainers did not delve into much detail and nothing was resolved. ``I think we made some real progress today, but we still have a significant difference in the area of education,'' said Erskine Bowles, Clinton's chief of staff and top negotiator, after Sunday's meeting. ``We're going to try to plow through that over the next two days.'' Asked how far apart the two sides were on education, Rep. Dick Armey of Texas, the Republican majority leader, replied: ``I don't know. We're not together.'' He said the two sides had made ``some progress, but not enough.'' The talks came during another day of escalated political confrontation as congressional Democrats and Republicans, painfully aware that they have three weeks until Election Day, tried to take advantage of the static budget situation. Congress has passed only six of the 13 required spending bills and are negotiating now with the White House on a final omnibus package that will contain the remaining seven bills and major issues including how to conduct the census in the year 2000, how much money to provide the International Monetary Fund and under what conditions it should be provided, and how much emergency money to provide for items like increased security at U.S. embassies around the world and for American farmers. Also to be resolved are a host of issues that have little to do with financing and more to do with ideology, including environmental matters, contraception and national student testing. Republicans said the president had been disengaged from the process, and they were irked at what they said was his swooping in at the 11th hour and pushing his education agenda in an apparently successful portrayal of himself as the guardian of that popular topic. Democrats countered that the Republican-led Congress had done nothing all year, and cast the Republicans as extremists for blocking the president's plea for more money to hire teachers and modernize schools. In fact, Republican bargainers said Saturday night that they would provide the money if local governments, not Washington, could decide how the money would be used. Armey was one of many who castigated the president for apparent disengagement, an indirect reminder that Clinton has been steeped in a sex scandal and is facing an impeachment inquiry in the House. The scant number of congressional Republicans who did not leave town for the weekend used the House floor to press this same message. ``What about the president?'' asked Rep. Tom DeLay of Texas, the majority whip. ``Maybe in Martha's Vineyard? Aspen? Camp David? Where is the president? I bet the American people don't know that he spent 152 days out of the 283 days this year fund raising, traveling and on vacation.'' Republicans said that Clinton had participated in 98 fund-raising events so far this year and that two events on Monday in New York, supporting the Senate campaign of Rep. Charles Schumer, would bring him to 100. Clinton said at the White House that he was ``prepared to do whatever it takes'' to reach a resolution over the spending bills, and dispatched his aides to Capitol Hill. He also said he would postpone from Monday morning until Monday afternoon his departure for his fund-raising tour in New York, and he canceled a fund-raising appearance in Florida. But as the high-level budget bargaining concluded Sunday afternoon, both sides agreed they would need to extend their deadline beyond midnight Monday, when temporary financing for the government expires for the third time since the Oct. 1 start of the fiscal year. Congressional Democrats struck back at the Republicans, saying they have held a slack schedule themselves. Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., said Congress had been in session only 108 days so far this year, an unusually abbreviated period and one consumed for more than a month by the drive to hold impeachment hearings on the president. Most Americans, Miller said, had worked more than 225 days. ``They say, `Where is the president?''' Miller said. ``The president has been waiting for the budget. This is the first Congress since 1974 that has no budget,'' he said, referring to the broad blueprint that is supposed to guide spending. ``This is a Congress that can't pass seven of its appropriations bills,'' he said, largely because of divisive splits among conservative and moderate Republicans. ||||| For the first time in decades, Congress and the White House negotiated tax and spending legislation this year with the budget in surplus. The result was chaos. The lawmakers were never able to agree on a budget resolution _ the framework into which all the tax and spending bills are supposed to fit. This had not happened since congressional budget procedures were established in 1974. Then, without the discipline of such an overall plan, the Senate and the House could not pass eight of the 13 spending bills needed to keep the government running. So the lawmakers had to stay in session more than a week longer than they had hoped. Finally, they lumped all eight bills together this week and announced an agreement. But the only way they could get this far was to resort to gimmicks. One was to designate $20 billion as ``emergency'' expenditures so that programs did not have to be cut elsewhere to offset the new spending. This will use up more than one-quarter of the anticipated budget surplus in the current fiscal year. Another gimmick extended the tax break for Individual Retirement Accounts to couples with incomes from $100,000 to $150,000. This will actually raise a small amount of revenue in the next five years _ the period covered by budget accounting _ but it will make the picture considerably worse in later years. As hard as it was to negotiate a budget in the bad old days of budget deficits, say the politicians involved, it was exponentially more difficult this year. At least in years past, there was a common goal. As much as they disagreed on policy and principle, they were all aiming at a reduction in the deficit. This year, some members of Congress wanted to use the surplus for a big tax cut. Others wanted to pay off the national debt. Others wanted to spend part of it on medical research, schools and weapons for the Pentagon. Others wanted to spend large sums on highways. Still others wanted to continue cutting government spending. And that was just among the Republicans. The Democrats had their own ideas about the budget, and President Clinton laid down his marker about saving the surplus until a way was found to shore up the Social Security system. ``In budget terms,'' said Robert Reischauer, a former director of the congressional budget office, ``this is like the end of the Cold War.'' There are other differences as well in the way things were negotiated with the budget in a surplus. In 1990, 1993 and 1995, when politicians staked their careers on striking a budget deal to lower the deficit, the fundamental question was how to divide up the bitter medicine of more taxes and less spending. Republicans, for the most part, opposed tax increases and favored cutting spending on social programs. Democrats wanted to raise taxes, especially on the rich, and protect social spending. In the end, balances were carefully drawn. But plenty of politicians _ President George Bush, to name one _ lost their jobs in the process. This year, with Democrats and Republicans alike claiming victory, the burning issue was how to parcel out the candy. Democrats got more money for education and farm assistance. Republicans got more money for the military and an extension of popular tax breaks for businesses. Some of the $20 billion that will eat into the surplus really will go for emergencies, like relief for victims of Hurricane Georges. But much of the money, like the $90 million that will pay for six new helicopters for the national police in Colombia to use in drug interdiction, was designated emergency spending simply because there was no other way to get it into the budget. For the politicians, the new way is more fun. It is hard to imagine that anyone will be voted out of office because of this year's budget. But that did not make it easier to reach an agreement. The other big difference is that the principal fights this year were not over money at all. They involved delicate policy issues like needle exchanges, contraception, global warming, immigration and the census. In Congress, there is no consensus on these matters. So the only way policy could be set was to wrap them into the giant spending bill. It may be more pleasant to debate policy than money. But it is probably harder to find a way to split the difference. As long as the surplus lasts, the lack of discipline that characterized the budget-writing this year is likely to continue. This is distressing to those devoted to controlling government spending. ``The temptation,'' said L. Ari Fleischer, spokesman for the House Ways and Means Committee, ``is to grab the loot and spend it.'' ||||| Struggling to meet their fourth deadline over the federal budget, congressional Republicans and White House officials wrestled Tuesday with their differences over education, staging events to demonstrate support for what has become the most public and politically high-stakes element of the budget battle. Negotiators met into the night to hash out their disagreements over aid for schools, the census and contraceptives. These were among the biggest issues that still separated the two sides as each tried to formulate a message to take home to voters for the Nov. 3 elections. On education, the issue that President Clinton has propelled to the forefront of the talks and on which Republicans do not want to appear recalcitrant, both sides have agreed to spend more than $1 billion but disagree over how to spend it. The president insists the money be spent on hiring 100,000 teachers across the country so that the average class can be reduced to 18 students. Republicans, railing against ``Beltway bureaucrats,'' say that local school districts should decide how the money is spent, whether it be for teachers or computers. The two sides remained apart on several ideological matters, including whether to allow federal health plans to cover contraceptives and whether to allow those few plans with religious affiliations to refuse to cover contraceptives not only on religious grounds but on moral grounds as well. And they also were split on how to conduct the census in the year 2000. This is one of the thorniest issues. It is not one that moves voters, but it is vital to both parties because it helps determine their relative strength in Congress. House Speaker Newt Gingrich and Erskine Bowles, the president's chief of staff and top negotiator, met for much of the day in the speaker's office, shuttling in and out of ante-rooms with their lieutenants but giving few clues about the nitty gritty details of their talks. They have given themselves another deadline of midnight Wednesday to wrap up about $500 billion-worth of spending items, but they could easily extend that deadline another day or two. They missed the Oct. 1 start of the fiscal year, providing temporary funding for the federal government through Oct. 9, then Oct. 12, then Wednesday. Some of the other central issues, such as financing for the International Monetary Fund, were all but nailed down, but neither side was ready to declare a final deal until all the other elements of the budget package are in place. ``We're down to splitting infinitives,'' Rep. Dick Armey of Texas, the Republican majority leader, said of approving funds for the international fund. As they worked through several issues, Republican leaders appeared to be calculating the differences in their own party that might sour a final deal when it arrives on the House floor _ more of a concern than on the Senate floor because the Senate has fewer differences among its Republicans and with the White House.

In 1998, for the first time in decades, the US budget negotiators faced a surplus. Both sides said this was harder than a deficit situation, but they finally spent $1.7 trillion. The last seven spending bills were the most difficult and finally were merged into one package. Controversial issues included health insurance paying for contraception, control of new education allocations, an Alaskan wilderness road, whether the 2000 census would include statistical sampling, and establishing an emergency fund. Conservatives felt the results favored the liberals, but both sides were satisfied and glad to finish before Election Day and avoid a government shutdown.

A sticking point for White House and congressional budget negotiators has been the issue of how the 2000 census will be conducted, and the White House is finding itself negotiating on the issue as much with House Democrats as it is with the House Republican leaders. On Monday, White House negotiators, led by chief of staff Erskine Bowles, tried to determine whether Democrats would accept a deal to finance for six months the departments of State, Justice and Commerce, which oversees the Census Bureau. The deal would put off until next March the contentious issue of whether the next census would use statistical sampling to supplement traditional methods of counting people. Bowles told the group of Democrats that the House Republicans were willing to give on a number of outstanding issues that were stalling final agreement on the budget, but that they were digging in their heels when it came to financing the census for six months. The Democrats met in the office of Minority Leader Dick Gephardt. The rationale for the half-year financing is that by next March the Supreme Court is expected to rule on whether using sampling is legal or constitutional. The Supreme Court has already agreed to review two lower court rulings that said sampling would violate federal law. Oral arguments on the cases are set for November. But House Democrats balked at the idea of six months' financing for the census, arguing that even if the Supreme Court allowed sampling, the Republicans would be under no obligation to approve money for a census that included sampling. ``The general feeling among many Democrats was that even if we won the case, there would be a lot less leverage in March, especially if it was the only issue left to be debated,'' said a House Democratic official who insisted on anonymity. Democrats contend that now is the time to press the Republicans, while they want to complete work on the budget and go home to campaign. Rep. Lucille Roybal-Allard, D-Calif., who attended the meeting Monday, said, ``It was, sort of, this is where we are. We've been able to accomplish great things, what do you think? We made it very clear that unless the census was included, along with some other issues, like school construction, the deal wouldn't be acceptable.'' Statistical sampling would allow the Census Bureau to estimate populations that are difficult to count, and would have the largest effect on the counting of African-Americans in cities and blacks and Hispanics in rural areas, groups that are traditionally undercounted by the standard means. Republicans fear, and Democrats hope, that the method would raise the count of people living in traditionally Democratic areas, giving the party an advantage when new boundaries for election districts are drawn following the 2000 census. At Monday's meeting, the Democrats reminded administration officials that Clinton had promised that he would veto any legislation that restricted the Census Bureau's ability to conduct an accurate census. ``I can't think of any way that restricts the census more than not to fully fund it,'' said Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y. The willingness of House Democrats, including Gephardt, to press the president on the issue represents a realization of their leverage with Clinton, who will need all of their support in the coming impeachment inquiry. ``Gephardt is a major player now, and the irony is we helped make him that,'' said Rep. Christopher Shays, R-Conn., who supports the use of sampling in the census. The Democrats' position also indicates how little trust many have in the White House on this issue. The proposal to finance the departments of Commerce, Justice and State for six months is similar to one reached last November between Bowles and House Speaker Newt Gingrich. The idea then was that holding all three departments hostage in the census fight would place maximum pressure on all sides to work out their differences over sampling. But House Democrats were not consulted before that agreement was struck and later grumbled about it. At a meeting of the Democratic caucus Tuesday, Ms. Maloney briefed lawmakers on dealings with the White House and declared that Clinton had promised that he would hold firm on the census and that she believed him, a participant said. The statement was greeted with laughter. ``There is a certain level of suspicion because there have been times when we have been cut out,''said the House Democratic official. ``But I have to say, there hasn't been much evidence of that, this time.'' ||||| Struggling to meet their fourth deadline over the federal budget, congressional Republicans and White House officials wrestled Tuesday with their differences over education, the most politically high-stakes element of the budget battle. Negotiators ended a late-night session without resolving disagreements over not just education, but the census and contraceptives. These were among the biggest issues that still separated the two sides as each tried to formulate a message to take home to voters for the Nov. 3 elections. On education, the issue that President Clinton has propelled to the forefront and on which Republicans do not want to appear recalcitrant, both sides have agreed to spend more than $1 billion but not on how to spend it. The president insists that the money be spent to hire 100,000 teachers across the country so that the average class can be reduced to 18 students. Republicans, railing against ``Beltway bureaucrats,'' say that local school districts should decide how the money is spent, whether it be for teachers or computers. As the two sides broke Tuesday night, White House chief of staff Erskine Bowles, the president's top negotiator, emerged from the session saying: ``We don't have a deal. We made some good progress. The biggest issue, still, is the 100,000 teachers.'' He added: ``There are still some open issues'' upon which no agreement has been reached, but he sounded optimistic about a session scheduled for Wednesday morning. ``I think we've got a chance of wrapping up tomorrow,'' he said. The two sides remained apart on several ideological matters, including whether to allow federal health plans to cover contraceptives and whether to allow those few plans with religious affiliations to refuse to cover contraceptives not only on religious grounds but on moral grounds as well. They were also split on how to conduct the census in 2000, which is one of the thorniest issues. It is not one that moves voters, but it is vital to both parties because it helps determine their relative strength in Congress. House Speaker Newt Gingrich and Bowles met for much of the day in the speaker's office, shuttling in and out of ante-rooms with their lieutenants but giving few clues about the nitty-gritty details of their talks. They have given themselves another deadline of midnight Wednesday to wrap up about $500 billion worth of spending items, but they could easily extend that deadline another day or two. They missed having spending bills in place for the Oct. 1 start of the fiscal year, providing temporary financing for the federal government through Oct. 9, then Oct. 12, then Wednesday. Some of the other central issues, like financing for the International Monetary Fund, were all but nailed down, but neither side was ready to declare a final deal until all the other elements of the budget package were in place. ``We're down to splitting infinitives,'' House Majority Leader Dick Armey said of approving money for the IMF. As they worked through several issues, Republican leaders appeared to be calculating the differences in their own party that might sour a final deal when it arrives on the House floor _ more of a concern than the Senate floor because the Senate has fewer differences among its Republicans and with the White House. Some conservative Republicans said they were concerned over the emerging shape of the final package, particularly elements dealing with family planning and emergency spending. They say the president's proposals for emergency spending, on such items as the peacekeeping mission in Bosnia, fixing the year 2000 computer bug and providing relief to American farmers, will break the limits in last year's balanced-budget agreement. The administration said such money would come from corresponding cuts elsewhere in the budget, but conservatives say it comes from raiding the surplus. If Republican leaders cannot count on their conservatives, they will need support from Democrats to pass the final package. And Democrats on Tuesday expressed concern over some White House positions, on issues like the census and an apparent compromise with Republicans on aid for farmers. Rep. David McIntosh, R-Ind., a leader of House conservatives, said he believed Republican leaders were ceding too quickly to the White House. He said that the president appeared to be getting his way on some issues but that what he really seemed to be winning was the war of public relations. ``The president is getting what he wants; he's controlling the situation,'' McIntosh lamented. When Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott appears on television, McIntosh said, ``it's in reaction to the president.'' Nonetheless, McIntosh suggested that he could vote for a final accord. ``Most conservatives are holding out for a better deal than we're hearing,'' he said, ``but we'll probably give them the vote because we don't see a much better alternative happening if it goes down.'' Others were distressed, particularly about two contraceptive issues. One would require federal health plans to cover contraceptives. The other would bar overseas family-planning organizations from lobbying to change abortion laws in other countries. Rep. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., said he wanted to see the final language on the health plan measure. As it passed both the House and the Senate, it allowed for health plans with religious affiliation to decline to offer contraceptive coverage; Coburn wants plans to be able to refuse such coverage on moral grounds as well. The plan covers five specific types of contraception. Coburn said he wanted two of those _ Depo-Provera and intrauterine devices _ to be eliminated from coverage because he said they interfered with fertilization and were therefore considered to cause abortions. Democrats like Rep. Nita Lowey, D-N.Y., who introduced the contraceptive plan in the House, said she strongly objected to Coburn's position. She said that health plans based their decisions on what to offer on profits, not morals. The question is whether the White House will insist on keeping the contraceptive coverage in the final package and will oppose the moral exception. If the administration allows the moral exception, it could alienate some House Democrats. House Democrats are also worried about the direction the talks are taking on the census. This has always loomed as one of the biggest issues separating Democrats and Republicans. The results of a census help determine the future power of the two political parties. But the fact that the two sides are finally talking about it now indicates that they are covering the full range of budget matters that need to be resolved. The White House has proposed buying time on the matter by financing the Commerce, State and Justice departments only for five months. The Commerce Department contains the Census Bureau. White House officials said this would put off the nettlesome issue while allowing a resolution of the entire spending package, but House Democrats worry it would be a prelude to giving in to Republicans down the road. Republican leaders like the idea of postponing a decision but say that financing should be restricted only for the Census Bureau. On several touchy environmental issues that have prompted repeated veto threats from the White House, the two sides appeared to be opting for compromise over confrontation, with several disputes resolved. But a few particularly difficult issues remained under negotiation. A compromise was struck between the White House and Alaskan lawmakers on logging in the Tongass National Forest. But compromise still eluded them on the question of building a road through a wilderness refuge to connect two communities in Alaska. ||||| Some conservatives sounded notes of discord Friday over the federal spending agreement, but they also said they would probably vote for the $500 billion package because it boosted defense spending and provided aid to farmers. However, no one can vote on the package just yet, because it is not finished. The deal that President Clinton and Republican leaders hailed Thursday was a broad outline of areas of agreement on the final portion of the $1.7 trillion budget, not a written document. That is now being crafted by the chairmen of the spending committees and their aides, who said Friday that there were still disputes that needed to be resolved and that the final document could run to more than 3,000 pages. For example, still unresolved is a dispute over whether airlines can create a ``peanut-free'' zone to protect passengers who are allergic to peanuts. House Speaker Newt Gingrich and other members from Georgia, a major peanut-producing state, are fighting the proposal, which would force airlines to ban peanuts within three rows of someone with an allergy. Congress gave itself until midnight Tuesday to vote on the final bill, agreeing with President Clinton to a fifth extension of temporary financing to keep the government open. The budget was due Oct. 1, the start of the new fiscal year. The vote was initially expected Friday, but the bill is nowhere near to being written. Only a handful of top-level bargainers _ including Gingrich, Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott and White House chief of staff Erskine Bowles _ were in the room for the final deal. Excluded were the committee chairmen and the heads of the appropriation committees, who now must write the language that will put the deal into law. Almost everyone on Capitol Hill expects the budget to pass eventually, with the biggest defections coming from conservatives who object to the $20 billion taken from the surplus to address so-called emergencies and for the package's failure to offer voters a serious tax cut. The lag time before the bill is officially closed is making some conservatives nervous that more members will try to add provisions that will further expand a bill they already consider overly bloated. And some worry that once the hometown pork that is stuffed into the bill is publicly revealed, voters could put pressure on members not to support it. The elections are Nov. 3. But several conservatives said that despite these problems, they expected to support the bill anyway. Rep. Mark Souder, R-Ind., said: `Most of my friends, who are predominantly activist conservatives, are split about 50-50. If tax cuts were your primary thing, then you're unhappy, but many conservatives have a mixed agenda. My position is, hold the nose and vote yes. We have no tax cuts and far too much spending that I oppose, but that's the nature of compromise. Every member has a little different focus.'' Souder said he liked the extra money for defense spending, and he liked the price supports for farmers. Hog farmers in his district, whose biggest customers were Japan and China, had been hit hard by the collapse of Asian markets. Several Republicans said that the bill seemed skewed in favor of the Democrats. They cited two reasons: Clinton needed to curry favor with Democrats to shore up support if the House votes to impeach him, and Republican leaders feared that if they had stood up to Clinton, they might have forced a government shutdown and Republicans would be blamed. ``Clinton was buying votes,'' said Rep. David Hobson, R-Ohio. ``He was sucking up to the liberal Democrats so they would support him in impeachment.'' Rep. W.J. (Billy) Tauzin, R-La., said the leaders seemed motivated by a desire to avoid the political damage they incurred from the partial government shutdowns of 1995 and 1996. He also cited the president's need to placate the left by adding costly domestic programs. ``The combination of the lessons learned three years ago and the scandal on the president's side yielded the inevitable result, a budget that leans way to the left,'' Tauzin said. Still, he said he would probably support the bill. ``It won't be enthusiastically,'' he said. ``It won't be holding my nose either. I would have preferred to spend more of this money on a tax cut. I think we would have gotten a tax cut, but for the scandal. If the president had not been caught up with the scandal, he probably would have followed the Dick Morris strategy and moved towards the center.'' Gingrich said he recognized that some conservatives were wary of the agreement. But he sought to reassure them that the package served their interests. He cited a $9 billion increase in defense spending. And he noted that the Republicans had blocked several items, including needle-exchange programs in the District of Columbia, national education testing and U.S. contributions to a United Nations program that pays for family planning in China, which many in Congress object to because China has a policy of coercing abortions and forcing sterilization. Gingrich said the agreement was the best that could be achieved ``when you have a conservative Republican Congress and a liberal Democratic president.'' Some conservatives who had been especially critical were more understanding Thursday. Rep. David McIntosh, R-Ind., a leader of conservatives in the House, had denounced the bill earlier as a Great Society type of big-spending program. Friday, after a meeting of Republicans, he said, ``Our leadership found themselves in a bad situation and did a good job.'' A few remained outright hostile to the bill, as much for the hasty way in which it was cobbled together as for what it contained. Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, said: `I'm voting `no' unless something revolutionary happens between now and Tuesday. I think it's the process that gives the president the ability to stonewall until the very end and then hold us for ransom. The Republican leadership in the House and Senate did a good job of limiting the highway robbery, but it's still gone too far beyond the spending caps.'' Also angry at the rushed endgame was Rep. Gene Taylor, D-Miss., who took to the House floor and said he could not support the final bill. ``I'm going to urge my colleagues to vote `no,' '' Taylor said. ``We have stayed here this long. We can stay a little bit longer. And I am going to encourage my colleagues to continue to vote no until we are given adequate time to study the measure that is brought before us.'' ||||| Voting mainly on party lines on a question that has become a touchstone in the debate over development and preservation of wilderness, the Senate on Thursday approved a gravel road through remote wildlife habitat in Alaska. The road, barely 30 miles long, would slice across the edge of a wildlife refuge and wilderness area on the Aleutian Peninsula, where it would connect an isolated village called King Cove to a long-range air strip in the town of Cold Bay. Without the road, its backers say, about 700 residents of King Cove must continue to use unreliable air and boat service in emergencies, often risking dangerous winds and seas as they seek medical evacuation to Anchorage. Opponents of the road call the project an unjustifiable precedent that threatens the seasonal breeding grounds of protected migratory birds, and they say that improved air or sea service would be a better alternative. The vote Thursday, 59-38, was a victory for the state's congressional delegation. But with President Clinton likely to veto the measure, the final outcome may depend on whether its sponsors can insert the road proposal into a huge spending bill that is likely to emerge just before Congress heads home for the Nov. 3 elections. Three Republicans voted against the bill, and six Democrats voted for it. The Clinton administration has repeatedly warned that it will veto a big spending bill if it contains an array of anti-environmental provisions that are under consideration. Indeed, the White House seems to be itching for a partisan fight over environmental priorities. But while many Republicans in Congress still appear reluctant to engage in that broad fight, they were willing Thursday to cast their lot with the Senate's two powerful Alaskans, Ted Stevens and Frank Murkowski, both Republicans. A companion bill in the House, sponsored by Rep. Don Young of Alaska, also a Republican, has not come to the floor. Even Sen. John Chafee of Rhode Island, a leader of Republican environmentalists, voted for the road. Last February Chafee's staff had assembled a score of environmental lobbyists in his office to plan strategy for opposing the road, environmental advocates said Thursday. They speculated that the senator had changed his position out of deference to the power of Stevens, who as chairman of the Appropriations Committee exerts tremendous influence at a time when a dozen spending bills are in their final stages. A Chafee aide said Chafee voted reluctantly for the road after Alaska's senators convinced him of its merits. Stevens said in angry tones Thursday that two-thirds of Alaska's land was off limits to development and that vital health services were being denied to his state's residents. ``We can't use it without permission from some bureaucrat who is compelled by extreme environmentalists,'' he said. ``They are so extreme that they say this 330,000-acre Izembek refuge, the smallest wilderness in Alaska, is so sacrosanct that it can't move its border 60 feet.'' But Sen. Dale Bumpers, D-Ark., called the road project a dangerous precedent. ``Building a road through a wilderness in Alaska, no matter how short or how long, would be the first time in the nation we have voted deliberately to authorize a road through a wilderness area,'' Bumpers said. ``And once you go down that road, nobody knows where it is going to end.'' ||||| House and Senate negotiators agreed Thursday to require most federal health plans to cover prescription contraceptives for women, giving an unusual victory on Capitol Hill to advocates of abortion rights. But the future of the measure was in doubt because it was attached to a spending bill that includes a controversial provision regarding the Federal Election Commission. That provision could scuttle the spending bill, which would finance the Treasury Department and the Postal Service and which still must be approved by the House and Senate. The contraceptive measure would require the federal health plans, which affect 1.2 million female federal employees who are of child-bearing age, to cover the five methods of contraception that have been approved by the Food and Drug Administration for use in this country _ birth control pills, diaphragms, inter-uterine devices, Norplant and Depo-Provera. Currently, only 19 percent of federal health plans cover those methods. The House and Senate approved the contraceptive measure earlier this year. But the opponents of abortion were furious about the approval and persuaded Republican leaders to have negotiators reopen discussion on the matter. The cost of contraceptives has driven up the out-of-pocket cost of health care for women. And many male members of Congress seemed persuaded to support coverage of contraceptives for women, since almost all of the 285 federal health plans cover Viagra, the male impotency drug. Thursday, with pressure building to resolve the spending bills before Oct. 9, when temporary financing of the government expires, the negotiators agreed to include the contraceptive measure in their conference report on the $13.4 billion bill for the Treasury Department and Postal service. Rep. Nita Lowey, D-N.Y., who pushed the contraceptive measure through the House, hailed Thursday's agreement as the first major accomplishment by abortion rights advocates since the Republicans took control of Congress in 1994. She said the negotiators had agreed to include the measure because in an election year they did not want to be perceived as opposing contraception or be seen as rejecting a measure that had passed both the House and Senate. But many Democrats said the were upset that the bill contains a provision that is seen as interfering with the independence of the Federal Election Commission. That provision would require a four-vote majority among the seven federal election commissioners every four years to retain the general counsel and staff director. The provision is aimed at getting rid of Lawrence Noble, the current general counsel, who has investigated the campaign finance practices of groups like the Christian Coalition. The contraceptive measure is one of four related matters that have helped stall four spending bills. The three other bills that are stalled in part because of abortion-related matters include the agriculture bill, in which there is a dispute over whether the federal Food and Drug Administration should use taxpayer money to approve drugs like RU-486, which induce abortions. The foreign operations bill is also stalled over whether to finance international family planning programs that may also promote abortion, while the labor and health bill is delayed because of a provision that would block access of minors to contraception. Addressing the measure on insurance coverage for contraceptives, Helen Alvarez, a spokeswoman for the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, said that the bill was bad policy. She said contraception had failed to stem the number of abortions, teen-age pregnancies or out-of-wedlock births. ``Public-relations-wise, it's a good tactic for them,'' she conceded, ``but in terms of social policy, this is a failure.'' ||||| Some conservatives sounded notes of discord Friday over the federal spending agreement, but they also said they would probably vote for the $500 billion package because it boosted defense spending and provided aid to farmers. However, no one can vote on the package just yet, because it is not finished. The deal that President Clinton and Republican leaders hailed Thursday was a broad outline of areas of agreement on the final portion of the $1.7 trillion budget, not a written document. That is now being crafted by the chairmen of the spending committees and their aides, who said Friday that there were still disputes that needed to be resolved and that the final document could run to more than 3,000 pages. For example, still unresolved is a dispute over whether airlines can create a ``peanut-free'' zone to protect passengers who are allergic to peanuts. House Speaker Newt Gingrich and other members from Georgia, a major peanut-producing state, are fighting the proposal, which would force airlines to ban peanuts within three rows of someone with an allergy. Congress gave itself until midnight Tuesday to vote on the final bill, agreeing with President Clinton to a fifth extension of temporary financing to keep the government open. The budget was due Oct. 1, the start of the new fiscal year. The vote was initially expected Friday, but the bill is nowhere near to being written. Only a handful of top-level bargainers _ including Gingrich, Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott and White House chief of staff Erskine Bowles _ were in the room for the final deal. Excluded were the committee chairmen and the heads of the appropriation committees, who now must write the language that will put the deal into law. Almost everyone on Capitol Hill expects the budget to pass eventually, with the biggest defections coming from conservatives who object to the $20 billion taken from the surplus to address so-called emergencies and for the package's failure to offer voters a serious tax cut. The lag time before the bill is officially closed is making some conservatives nervous that more members will try to add provisions that will further expand a bill they already consider overly bloated. And some worry that once the hometown pork that is stuffed into the bill is publicly revealed, voters could put pressure on members not to support it. The elections are Nov. 3. But several conservatives said that despite these problems, they expected to support the bill anyway. Rep. Mark Souder, R-Ind., said: `Most of my friends, who are predominantly activist conservatives, are split about 50-50. If tax cuts were your primary thing, then you're unhappy, but many conservatives have a mixed agenda. My position is, hold the nose and vote yes. We have no tax cuts and far too much spending that I oppose, but that's the nature of compromise. Every member has a little different focus.'' Souder said he liked the extra money for defense spending, and he liked the price supports for farmers. Hog farmers in his district, whose biggest customers were Japan and China, had been hit hard by the collapse of Asian markets. ||||| Struggling to meet their fourth deadline over the federal budget, congressional Republicans and White House officials wrestled Tuesday with their differences over education, the most politically high-stakes element of the budget battle. Negotiators ended a late-night session without resolving disagreements over not just education, but the census and contraceptives. These were among the biggest issues that still separated the two sides as each tried to formulate a message to take home to voters for the Nov. 3 elections. On education, the issue that President Clinton has propelled to the forefront and on which Republicans do not want to appear recalcitrant, both sides have agreed to spend more than $1 billion but not on how to spend it. The president insists that the money be spent to hire 100,000 teachers across the country so that the average class can be reduced to 18 students. Republicans, railing against ``Beltway bureaucrats,'' say that local school districts should decide how the money is spent, whether it be for teachers or computers. As the two sides broke Tuesday night, White House chief of staff Erskine Bowles, the president's top negotiator, emerged from the session saying: ``We don't have a deal. We made some good progress. The biggest issue, still, is the 100,000 teachers.'' He added: ``There are still some open issues'' upon which no agreement has been reached, but he sounded optimistic about a session scheduled for Wednesday morning. ``I think we've got a chance of wrapping up tomorrow,'' he said. The two sides remained apart on several ideological matters, including whether to allow federal health plans to cover contraceptives and whether to allow those few plans with religious affiliations to refuse to cover contraceptives not only on religious grounds but on moral grounds as well. They were also split on how to conduct the census in 2000, which is one of the thorniest issues. It is not one that moves voters, but it is vital to both parties because it helps determine their relative strength in Congress. House Speaker Newt Gingrich and Bowles met for much of the day in the speaker's office, shuttling in and out of ante-rooms with their lieutenants but giving few clues about the nitty-gritty details of their talks. They have given themselves another deadline of midnight Wednesday to wrap up about $500 billion worth of spending items, but they could easily extend that deadline another day or two. They missed having spending bills in place for the Oct. 1 start of the fiscal year, providing temporary financing for the federal government through Oct. 9, then Oct. 12, then Wednesday. Some of the other central issues, like financing for the International Monetary Fund, were all but nailed down, but neither side was ready to declare a final deal until all the other elements of the budget package were in place. ``We're down to splitting infinitives,'' House Majority Leader Dick Armey said of approving money for the IMF. As they worked through several issues, Republican leaders appeared to be calculating the differences in their own party that might sour a final deal when it arrives on the House floor _ more of a concern than the Senate floor because the Senate has fewer differences among its Republicans and with the White House. Some conservative Republicans said they were concerned over the emerging shape of the final package, particularly elements dealing with family planning and emergency spending. They say the president's proposals for emergency spending, on such items as the peacekeeping mission in Bosnia, fixing the year 2000 computer bug and providing relief to American farmers, will break the limits in last year's balanced-budget agreement. The administration said such money would come from corresponding cuts elsewhere in the budget, but conservatives say it comes from raiding the surplus. If Republican leaders cannot count on their conservatives, they will need support from Democrats to pass the final package. And Democrats on Tuesday expressed concern over some White House positions, on issues like the census and an apparent compromise with Republicans on aid for farmers. Rep. David McIntosh, R-Ind., a leader of House conservatives, said he believed Republican leaders were ceding too quickly to the White House. He said that the president appeared to be getting his way on some issues but that what he really seemed to be winning was the war of public relations. ``The president is getting what he wants; he's controlling the situation,'' McIntosh lamented. When Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott appears on television, McIntosh said, ``it's in reaction to the president.'' Nonetheless, McIntosh suggested that he could vote for a final accord. ``Most conservatives are holding out for a better deal than we're hearing,'' he said, ``but we'll probably give them the vote because we don't see a much better alternative happening if it goes down.'' Others were distressed, particularly about two contraceptive issues. One would require federal health plans to cover contraceptives. The other would bar overseas family-planning organizations from lobbying to change abortion laws in other countries. Rep. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., said he wanted to see the final language on the health plan measure. As it passed both the House and the Senate, it allowed for health plans with religious affiliation to decline to offer contraceptive coverage; Coburn wants plans to be able to refuse such coverage on moral grounds as well. The plan covers five specific types of contraception. Coburn said he wanted two of those _ Depo-Provera and intrauterine devices _ to be eliminated from coverage because he said they interfered with fertilization and were therefore considered to cause abortions. Democrats like Rep. Nita Lowey, D-N.Y., who introduced the contraceptive plan in the House, said she strongly objected to Coburn's position. She said that health plans based their decisions on what to offer on profits, not morals. The question is whether the White House will insist on keeping the contraceptive coverage in the final package and will oppose the moral exception. If the administration allows the moral exception, it could alienate some House Democrats. House Democrats are also worried about the direction the talks are taking on the census. This has always loomed as one of the biggest issues separating Democrats and Republicans. The results of a census help determine the future power of the two political parties. But the fact that the two sides are finally talking about it now indicates that they are covering the full range of budget matters that need to be resolved. The White House has proposed buying time on the matter by financing the Commerce, State and Justice departments only for five months. The Commerce Department contains the Census Bureau. White House officials said this would put off the nettlesome issue while allowing a resolution of the entire spending package, but House Democrats worry it would be a prelude to giving in to Republicans down the road. Republican leaders like the idea of postponing a decision but say that financing should be restricted only for the Census Bureau. On several touchy environmental issues that have prompted repeated veto threats from the White House, the two sides appeared to be opting for compromise over confrontation, with several disputes resolved. But a few particularly difficult issues remained under negotiation. A compromise was struck between the White House and Alaskan lawmakers on logging in the Tongass National Forest. But compromise still eluded them on the question of building a road through a wilderness refuge to connect two communities in Alaska. ||||| Top-level budget negotiators for congressional Republicans and the White House concluded yet another bargaining session late Sunday afternoon with plans to resume talks on Monday morning and probably extend their midnight Monday deadline for another day or two. Both sides were amiable as they emerged from a two-hour session, but they had little to report and indicated that their relatively early departure, compared with the last three nights, should not be interpreted as a sign of crisis or of imminent peace in the budget talks. Sunday's discussions focused on education and President Clinton's request for $1.1 billion to hire 100,000 teachers, but aides said the bargainers did not delve into much detail and nothing was resolved. ``I think we made some real progress today, but we still have a significant difference in the area of education,'' said Erskine Bowles, Clinton's chief of staff and top negotiator, after Sunday's meeting. ``We're going to try to plow through that over the next two days.'' Asked how far apart the two sides were on education, Rep. Dick Armey of Texas, the Republican majority leader, replied: ``I don't know. We're not together.'' He said the two sides had made ``some progress, but not enough.'' The talks came during another day of escalated political confrontation as congressional Democrats and Republicans, painfully aware that they have three weeks until Election Day, tried to take advantage of the static budget situation. Congress has passed only six of the 13 required spending bills and are negotiating now with the White House on a final omnibus package that will contain the remaining seven bills and major issues including how to conduct the census in the year 2000, how much money to provide the International Monetary Fund and under what conditions it should be provided, and how much emergency money to provide for items like increased security at U.S. embassies around the world and for American farmers. Also to be resolved are a host of issues that have little to do with financing and more to do with ideology, including environmental matters, contraception and national student testing. Republicans said the president had been disengaged from the process, and they were irked at what they said was his swooping in at the 11th hour and pushing his education agenda in an apparently successful portrayal of himself as the guardian of that popular topic. Democrats countered that the Republican-led Congress had done nothing all year, and cast the Republicans as extremists for blocking the president's plea for more money to hire teachers and modernize schools. In fact, Republican bargainers said Saturday night that they would provide the money if local governments, not Washington, could decide how the money would be used. Armey was one of many who castigated the president for apparent disengagement, an indirect reminder that Clinton has been steeped in a sex scandal and is facing an impeachment inquiry in the House. The scant number of congressional Republicans who did not leave town for the weekend used the House floor to press this same message. ``What about the president?'' asked Rep. Tom DeLay of Texas, the majority whip. ``Maybe in Martha's Vineyard? Aspen? Camp David? Where is the president? I bet the American people don't know that he spent 152 days out of the 283 days this year fund raising, traveling and on vacation.'' Republicans said that Clinton had participated in 98 fund-raising events so far this year and that two events on Monday in New York, supporting the Senate campaign of Rep. Charles Schumer, would bring him to 100. Clinton said at the White House that he was ``prepared to do whatever it takes'' to reach a resolution over the spending bills, and dispatched his aides to Capitol Hill. He also said he would postpone from Monday morning until Monday afternoon his departure for his fund-raising tour in New York, and he canceled a fund-raising appearance in Florida. But as the high-level budget bargaining concluded Sunday afternoon, both sides agreed they would need to extend their deadline beyond midnight Monday, when temporary financing for the government expires for the third time since the Oct. 1 start of the fiscal year. Congressional Democrats struck back at the Republicans, saying they have held a slack schedule themselves. Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., said Congress had been in session only 108 days so far this year, an unusually abbreviated period and one consumed for more than a month by the drive to hold impeachment hearings on the president. Most Americans, Miller said, had worked more than 225 days. ``They say, `Where is the president?''' Miller said. ``The president has been waiting for the budget. This is the first Congress since 1974 that has no budget,'' he said, referring to the broad blueprint that is supposed to guide spending. ``This is a Congress that can't pass seven of its appropriations bills,'' he said, largely because of divisive splits among conservative and moderate Republicans. ||||| For the first time in decades, Congress and the White House negotiated tax and spending legislation this year with the budget in surplus. The result was chaos. The lawmakers were never able to agree on a budget resolution _ the framework into which all the tax and spending bills are supposed to fit. This had not happened since congressional budget procedures were established in 1974. Then, without the discipline of such an overall plan, the Senate and the House could not pass eight of the 13 spending bills needed to keep the government running. So the lawmakers had to stay in session more than a week longer than they had hoped. Finally, they lumped all eight bills together this week and announced an agreement. But the only way they could get this far was to resort to gimmicks. One was to designate $20 billion as ``emergency'' expenditures so that programs did not have to be cut elsewhere to offset the new spending. This will use up more than one-quarter of the anticipated budget surplus in the current fiscal year. Another gimmick extended the tax break for Individual Retirement Accounts to couples with incomes from $100,000 to $150,000. This will actually raise a small amount of revenue in the next five years _ the period covered by budget accounting _ but it will make the picture considerably worse in later years. As hard as it was to negotiate a budget in the bad old days of budget deficits, say the politicians involved, it was exponentially more difficult this year. At least in years past, there was a common goal. As much as they disagreed on policy and principle, they were all aiming at a reduction in the deficit. This year, some members of Congress wanted to use the surplus for a big tax cut. Others wanted to pay off the national debt. Others wanted to spend part of it on medical research, schools and weapons for the Pentagon. Others wanted to spend large sums on highways. Still others wanted to continue cutting government spending. And that was just among the Republicans. The Democrats had their own ideas about the budget, and President Clinton laid down his marker about saving the surplus until a way was found to shore up the Social Security system. ``In budget terms,'' said Robert Reischauer, a former director of the congressional budget office, ``this is like the end of the Cold War.'' There are other differences as well in the way things were negotiated with the budget in a surplus. In 1990, 1993 and 1995, when politicians staked their careers on striking a budget deal to lower the deficit, the fundamental question was how to divide up the bitter medicine of more taxes and less spending. Republicans, for the most part, opposed tax increases and favored cutting spending on social programs. Democrats wanted to raise taxes, especially on the rich, and protect social spending. In the end, balances were carefully drawn. But plenty of politicians _ President George Bush, to name one _ lost their jobs in the process. This year, with Democrats and Republicans alike claiming victory, the burning issue was how to parcel out the candy. Democrats got more money for education and farm assistance. Republicans got more money for the military and an extension of popular tax breaks for businesses. Some of the $20 billion that will eat into the surplus really will go for emergencies, like relief for victims of Hurricane Georges. But much of the money, like the $90 million that will pay for six new helicopters for the national police in Colombia to use in drug interdiction, was designated emergency spending simply because there was no other way to get it into the budget. For the politicians, the new way is more fun. It is hard to imagine that anyone will be voted out of office because of this year's budget. But that did not make it easier to reach an agreement. The other big difference is that the principal fights this year were not over money at all. They involved delicate policy issues like needle exchanges, contraception, global warming, immigration and the census. In Congress, there is no consensus on these matters. So the only way policy could be set was to wrap them into the giant spending bill. It may be more pleasant to debate policy than money. But it is probably harder to find a way to split the difference. As long as the surplus lasts, the lack of discipline that characterized the budget-writing this year is likely to continue. This is distressing to those devoted to controlling government spending. ``The temptation,'' said L. Ari Fleischer, spokesman for the House Ways and Means Committee, ``is to grab the loot and spend it.'' ||||| Struggling to meet their fourth deadline over the federal budget, congressional Republicans and White House officials wrestled Tuesday with their differences over education, staging events to demonstrate support for what has become the most public and politically high-stakes element of the budget battle. Negotiators met into the night to hash out their disagreements over aid for schools, the census and contraceptives. These were among the biggest issues that still separated the two sides as each tried to formulate a message to take home to voters for the Nov. 3 elections. On education, the issue that President Clinton has propelled to the forefront of the talks and on which Republicans do not want to appear recalcitrant, both sides have agreed to spend more than $1 billion but disagree over how to spend it. The president insists the money be spent on hiring 100,000 teachers across the country so that the average class can be reduced to 18 students. Republicans, railing against ``Beltway bureaucrats,'' say that local school districts should decide how the money is spent, whether it be for teachers or computers. The two sides remained apart on several ideological matters, including whether to allow federal health plans to cover contraceptives and whether to allow those few plans with religious affiliations to refuse to cover contraceptives not only on religious grounds but on moral grounds as well. And they also were split on how to conduct the census in the year 2000. This is one of the thorniest issues. It is not one that moves voters, but it is vital to both parties because it helps determine their relative strength in Congress. House Speaker Newt Gingrich and Erskine Bowles, the president's chief of staff and top negotiator, met for much of the day in the speaker's office, shuttling in and out of ante-rooms with their lieutenants but giving few clues about the nitty gritty details of their talks. They have given themselves another deadline of midnight Wednesday to wrap up about $500 billion-worth of spending items, but they could easily extend that deadline another day or two. They missed the Oct. 1 start of the fiscal year, providing temporary funding for the federal government through Oct. 9, then Oct. 12, then Wednesday. Some of the other central issues, such as financing for the International Monetary Fund, were all but nailed down, but neither side was ready to declare a final deal until all the other elements of the budget package are in place. ``We're down to splitting infinitives,'' Rep. Dick Armey of Texas, the Republican majority leader, said of approving funds for the international fund. As they worked through several issues, Republican leaders appeared to be calculating the differences in their own party that might sour a final deal when it arrives on the House floor _ more of a concern than on the Senate floor because the Senate has fewer differences among its Republicans and with the White House.

After several deadline extensions, Congressional leaders and the White House agreed on an omnibus spending package, the final portion of the $1.7 trillion budget. It includes more money for education and defense, business tax breaks, and farm aid, as well as funds for Colombia to use in drug interdiction. To offset the new spending, the surplus will be tapped for $20 billion, to the ire of conservatives. This year, without the common goal of reducing the deficit, reaching agreement was very difficult. Policy provisions involving the 2000 census, contraception, and the Alaskan wilderness were also tied to the spending package and were hotly debated.

Armored personnel carriers were deployed Tuesday around the convention center where U.S. President Bill Clinton will address 1,500 Palestinian delegates next week. U.S. Secret Service agents have already arrived in Gaza to work with their Palestinian counterparts on how to protect Clinton during his first visit to Palestinian areas. ``There is cooperation with the American security people. We have our own plan. The Americans have their own procedures as well,'' said the Palestinian police chief, Ghazi Jabali. The Islamic militant group Hamas, which hopes to scuttle the accord, has been careful not to openly threaten Clinton. However, Hamas has carried out more than a dozen suicide bombings in Israel in an attempt to bring peace talks with Israel to a halt. On Monday, Clinton and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat are to address members of the Palestine National Council and delegates from other groups, at the Shawa Cultural Center in Gaza City. Traffic near the Shawa Center still flowed normally Tuesday, but plainclothes security as well as uniformed officers with M-17 and AK-47 assault rifles began patrolling in the vicinity. Streets around the center are to be closed days before the Clinton visit. Four armored personnel were parked at the corners of the convention center, with members of Arafat's elite bodyguard unit, known as Force 17, sitting on the vehicles. APCs were also deployed outside Arafat's guest house and near the Palestinian legislative council. Jabali said the APCs were part of a Palestinian security plan that has been presented to the Americans. U.S. security agents, in turn, have given their Palestinian counterparts sophisticated explosives detection equipment. ``The Palestinian police are ready to protect President Clinton here in Gaza or in Bethlehem,'' Jabali said, referring to Clinton's expected visit next Tuesday to the Church of the Nativity in the biblical West Bank town of Bethlehem In Jerusalem, Clinton's entourage of 1,200 people will take over the Jerusalem Hilton, at a cost of half a million dollars. The hotel boasts stunning views of Jerusalem's walled Old City and the slopes of the Judean Desert. ||||| Israel affirmed Friday that it will not withdraw troops in the West Bank unless the top Palestinian decision-making body holds a vote to annul clauses of the PLO charter calling for Israel's destruction. Just a day before U.S. President Bill Clinton's arrival, Israel also rejected a U.S. compromise on the release of Palestinian prisoners, an issue that has sparked riots in the West Bank. The Palestinians have said they would revoke the clauses only by acclamation, not by a vote, when the Palestine National Council meets on Monday in Clinton's presence. With its demand, Israel may be setting itself up for a showdown with Clinton whose visit to Israel and the Palestinian is ushering in the next stage of the Wye River land-for-security agreement he helped negotiate. Under the accord, the annulment of the offending provisions by the PNC is to clear the way for an Israeli troop pullback. Clinton is unlikely to declare the PNC has not completed its task because that would mean his high-profile visit has been a failure. However, Israeli officials said they would not drop their demand for a vote. ``They have to vote in the PNC,'' said Israeli government spokesman Moshe Fogel. Otherwise, he said, Israel will not turn over additional West Bank territory to the Palestinians because ``transfer of territory is irreversible.'' In Washington, deputy U.S. State Department spokesman James Foley was evasive on whether the United States expected a vote from the PNC. ``The procedures need to be clear enough that nullification has taken place,'' he said. A senior Palestinian official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the United States has not asked Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat to consider holding a vote. On Thursday, the Palestinians took an interim step when a smaller leadership body, the 124-member Palestinian Central Council, declared the charter clauses revoked. The 95 members present were asked whether they approved a letter in which Arafat informed Clinton that the charter clauses calling for Israel's destruction were null and void. In all, 81 voted in favor, seven against and seven abstained. Asked about the decision, Arafat would only say that ``it was a very important and constructive meeting.'' The Palestinian leader also said he hoped Clinton would exert pressure on Israel to keep its obligations under the Wye agreement. The Palestine Liberation Organization charter was drawn up three decades ago, long before Israel and the Palestinians started their peace process in 1993. The Palestinians say they took all the required steps to revoke the pertinent clauses at a PNC session in Gaza in 1996. However, Netanyahu has said the PNC never completed the job. During the Wye River talks, the Palestinians agreed in a compromise to invite PNC members and delegates from other groups to Gaza to hear Clinton and Arafat speak. The Wye accord says delegates should ``reaffirm'' the Arafat letter to Clinton, but does not specifically refer to a vote. Former Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres sided with the Palestinians on Friday. ``They did it once, they did it twice, they don't have to do it again,'' said Peres, who was prime minister during the PNC vote in 1996. Israel and the Palestinians have also accused each other of violating other elements of the Wye agreement. A key point of contention has been Israel's pledge to release 750 Palestinian prisoners in three stages by the end of January. The Palestinians have said Israel broke a promise to release prisoners held for anti-Israeli activities. Israel said it never made such a pledge, and accused the Palestinian Authority of incitement over the prisoner issue. Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said the United States offered a compromise, a trilateral committee to go over the list of prisoners one by one and determine who will be released. But Israeli Cabinet Secretary Danny Naveh said Friday such a proposal was unacceptable. ``Israel has not been offered such a compromise and there will not be such a compromise,'' Naveh said. On Friday, about 2,000 supporters of the Islamic militant Hamas movement marched through the West Bank town of Nablus to press for the release or prisoners. ``We want prisoners, not Clinton,'' the crowd chanted. At Jerusalem's Al Aqsa Mosque, Islam's third holiest site, the prayer leader, Yousef Abu Sneineh, spoke out sharply against the U.S.-brokered peace agreement. ``America supports a peace agreement that further reinforces the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian lands,'' he said. ||||| President Clinton will travel to Gaza next month to address Palestinian leaders, the White House said Friday. He is to speak at what the Palestinians are describing as a historic meeting to formally revoke anti-Israel clauses in the 1964 Palestinian charter. Israel demanded revocation of the clauses at U.S.-brokered negotiations last month that led to the latest land-for-peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians. As part of that settlement, reached at Wye, Md., Clinton agreed to travel to territory controlled by the Palestinian Authority to speak at the meeting of the Palestinian National Council, the de facto parliament. According to a schedule released Friday by the White House, Clinton will visit Gaza, the West Bank and Israel during a four-day trip that will begin on Dec. 12. He is to meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel and Yasser Arafat, the Palestinian leader, before returning to Washington on Dec. 15. Clinton administration officials said the White House had not yet decided whether Clinton would fly to the newly opened Gaza International Airport aboard Air Force One, given the symbolism of the president's jet landing on Palestinian soil with the trappings of a state visit. Officials said the White House was fearful of upsetting Israeli leaders who are worried that the president's planned visit to Gaza appears to be a step toward American recognition of a Palestinian state. The White House said the president would ``speak to the Israeli and Palestinian people about the importance of the Wye agreement and the need to continue to support the Middle East peace process.'' The meeting in Gaza on Dec. 14 is bound to be contentious, given that many prominent Palestinians have charged that the Wye agreement allows the Israeli government to backtrack on promises made to the Palestinians in their 1994 peace settlement. The Palestinians have insisted that they have already revoked clauses in the 1964 charter that called for Israel's destruction. In January, Arafat wrote to the White House, listing the anti-Israel provisions that he said had been annulled. But the letter did not satisfy the Israelis. And during the talks in Maryland last month, Arafat agreed to call a meeting of the national council to ``reaffirm'' the decision to revoke the clauses. In order to guarantee passage of a motion to annul the provisions, Arafat is being allowed under an agreement with the Israelis and the United States to pack the council meeting in Gaza with his loyalists, and to conduct the vote by a show of hands instead of a ballot. During a recent interview with Israeli television, Clinton brushed aside concerns that his visit to Gaza might be seen as a step toward U.S. recognition of a Palestinian state. ``That is not what I'm doing in going there,'' he said. ``I have tried strictly to adhere to the position of the United States that we would not take a position on any final status issue.'' He said he was traveling to Gaza at the recommendation of, among others, Netanyahu. ``The prime minister wanted me to go there and wanted us all to make this pitch,'' he said, adding that he would ask the Palestinian National Council ``to support the peace and to renounce the idea of animosity toward and opposition to the existence of the state of Israel, and instead embrace the path not only of peace but of cooperation.'' ||||| Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday accused Yasser Arafat of ``making a farce'' of the Wye River accords and said he would not agree to further troop withdrawals until a halt to anti-Israel violence. Netanyahu, in an interview with The Associated Press, said the Palestinians were emboldened to foment street riots and threaten to declare statehood because they believed they had the Clinton administration ``in their back pocket.'' ``The Palestinians are making a farce out of the Wye River accord. They think they have the United States in their back pocket,'' said the Israeli leader. ``As long as that is the case, they will not change their behavior.'' Netanyahu said he did not believe the United States was siding with the Palestinians, but his sharply worded remarks sent a strong signal that he would like President Bill Clinton to intervene and lower Palestinian expectations prior to his Dec. 12-15 trip. Palestinians claim it is Israel that has violated the summit agreement reached in October by not freeing jailed political activists, by confiscating West Bank land for roads and allowing Jewish settlers to seize hilltops for expansion. Ahmed Qureia, speaker of the Palestinian Legislative Council and the head of the peace team that negotiated the Oslo accords, told reporters Sunday ``all means of resistance'' was justified in opposing settler activity. Netanyahu, who rejected claims of settlement expansion as ``bunk,'' was interviewed in the Cabinet room after a meeting of his unruly coalition government, which rallied behind Netanyahu on his tough stance. But officials said Science Minister Silvan Shalom attacked him for being too generous to the Palestinians by agreeing to the Clinton visit next week to Gaza and the West Bank. ``We are not going to give up territory when there are violations of the agreement and attempts to get things that weren't achieved at Wye using violence,'' Netanyahu said. Israel has threatened to scrap the next Israeli troop pullback, which is scheduled for Dec. 18, three days after Clinton's departure. The United States has said it should go ahead as scheduled. Palestinians see the Clinton trip as implicit recognition of their struggle for statehood, even though Clinton has specifically said in an interview aired on Israel's Channel 2 television that it should not be read that way. Netanyahu made clear that he would be annoyed if Air Force One landed at the newly opened Palestinian airport in Gaza, which aides said would be viewed as a strong symbol of support for Palestinian demands for sovereignty. ``We will be very disappointed if that is the case. We've said to the United States that we don't think that is necessary,'' Netanyahu said of reports that Clinton's plane would land in Gaza. He said traveling by motorcade would be quicker and more politically considerate. ``Unless somebody wants to put a thumb in our eye, I think there are better ways to travel,'' Netanyahu said. In the interview, Netanyahu stressed that he opposed Palestinian statehood and demanded that Arafat stop threatening to declare independence on May 4, 1999, when the Palestinians maintain the Oslo accords expire. ``What must be is that Yasser Arafat retracts this open and incipient violation of the Oslo and Wye River accords and recommits himself to negotiating until we get white smoke, until we get a solution. That's the only way we'll get a real peace between Israel and the Palestinians,'' Netanyahu said. In a conciliatory speech in Sweden over the weekend, Arafat stressed that he sought a negotiated settlement and did not mention May 4 as a deadline. He also said any Palestinian state would not make alliances with states hostile to Israel _ one of Netanyahu's key concerns. The Israeli leader is also demanding that Arafat drop claims that Netanyahu promised at Wye to release 750 Palestinians jailed for anti-Israel attacks that resulted in bloodshed, rather than freeing car thieves and petty criminals. Each side has a different interpretation of the understanding regarding the prisoners. Netanyahu maintains he never agreed to free those with ``blood on their hands.'' ``It's high time that Yasser Arafat admits this was agreed upon and that he's not going to make demands on Israel, including the incitement of violence,...on a trumped-up charge, '' he said. ``Israel never promised to release murders at Wye, and it won't release them.'' The issue has been the focal point for a new wave of violent protests and demonstrations in the West Bank and a hunger strike that began Saturday by the 1,700 Palestinian inmates. Israel is also upset by statements that the nearly 600-member Palestinian National Council will not reaffirm in a vote that anti-Israel clauses in the Palestinian charter have been deleted. Netanyahu maintained that only 25 members out of hundreds who live abroad had been invited so far. Netanyahu quoted Clinton as telling him that the purpose of his visit was to ``personally make sure that they actually rescind this charter that calls for Israel's destruction.'' ||||| Less than a week before U.S. President Bill Clinton is to arrive for a visit meant to bolster a new Israeli-Palestinian peace accord, the two sides exchanged angry accusations Sunday over Jewish settlements and street clashes. Ahmed Qureia, speaker of the Palestinian parliament, warned of possible violence if Israel continues to expand settlements in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, where the Palestinians hope to establish a state. ``If settlement activity continues, then all means of resistance are open,'' Qureia, who is also known as Abu Ala, told reporters in the West Bank town of Ramallah. Since the signing of a land-for-security accord, Jewish settlers have accelerated the establishment of makeshift communities on West Bank hilltops, in an explicit bid to keep the land from being turned over to the Palestinians. Meanwhile, at a meeting of the Israeli Cabinet, ministers expressed dismay over an outbreak of street clashes between Palestinian demonstrators and Israeli troops in the West Bank. ``The Palestinians have been asked to immediately stop the violence and incitement to violence,'' the Cabinet said in a statement. At least two Palestinians were injured Sunday in a confrontation outside the Jewish settlement of Ariel in the northern West Bank. Demonstrators threw stones at Israeli troops, who responded with rubber bullets and tear gas. A day earlier, 27 Palestinians and three Israeli soldiers were injured in similar clashes throughout the West Bank. And three days before that, Israelis were horrified by television footage of an Israeli soldier being dragged from a car and beaten with chunks of concrete by a Palestinian mob. Israel says Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority is orchestrating the street fighting. The Palestinians deny that. The past week's protests grew out of an increasingly bitter dispute over Palestinian prisoners held by Israel. Israel last month freed 250 of 750 prisoners it is to release under the Wye accords, but most were criminals. The Palestinians are demanding that so-called security prisoners _ those being held for anti-Israel activity _ be released instead. Also Sunday, another quarrel was brewing over the scheduled meeting of the Palestinian National Council, the Palestinian parliament-in-exile, in the Gaza Strip during Clinton's visit. At the gathering, the PNC and other Palestinians in attendance are to reaffirm the nullification of clauses in their national charter that call for Israel's destruction. Israel has demanded that the Palestinians hold an actual vote at the meeting rather than simply proclaiming the charter changed, but the Palestinians on Sunday repeated their objections to that. ``They haven't the right to give us instructions,'' Arafat said Sunday as he returned to Gaza following a trip to Europe. Clinton's visit to Israel and the Palestinian lands, which is to begin Saturday, is meant to provide impetus to the U.S.-brokered peace accords and encourage both sides to stick to a timetable for compliance. But some commentators suggested the visit was proving a polarizing force instead. ``He is coming to promote the peace process... but his visit's only actual result is a sharpening of the differences,'' Yosef Lapid wrote in Sunday's editions of the Maariv newspaper. In Israel, increasing concern is being voiced over Clinton's planned visit to Gaza, the first ever by a sitting U.S. president. At Sunday's Israeli Cabinet meeting, a shouting match broke out over the issue, according to Israel radio. ``Who invited President Clinton to the Gaza Strip?'' Silvan Shalom, the science minister, reportedly yelled at Netanyahu. Netanyahu said it had been Clinton's idea, not his. The United States has repeatedly said the visit is not intended as an endorsement of Palestinian statehood, but the Palestinians see it as a powerful boost to their sovereignty hopes. Arafat adviser Ahmed Tibi said on Israeli television that the invitation for a Clinton visit came from Israel and was ``warmly welcomed'' by the Palestinians. ||||| In an atmosphere of political tension, U.S. President Clinton met Sunday with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a bid to put the troubled Wye River peace accord back on track. After getting together for breakfast in Clinton's hotel suite, the two leaders met at Netanyahu's office and planned to talk to reporters later. The president was sure to be asked about the impeachment drama unfolding in Washington. At a late-night arrival ceremony for Clinton Saturday, Netanyahu said he hoped the president's visit would ``contribute to true peace.'' Again, the Israeli leader accused the Palestinians of ignoring commitments in peace accords. Clinton is to meet with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat on Monday in the Gaza Strip. Thousands of police were deployed throughout Israel during the Clinton visit. At the hotel where Clinton is staying, 500 policemen were posted to guard the president and his 600-member delegation. Clinton's wife, Hillary, and their daughter, Chelsea, set out on their own schedule. Mrs. Clinton toured a school in a cooperative village of Jews and Palestinians, while Chelsea visited Jerusalem's Western Wall, Judaism's holiest site. Israeli Foreign Minister Ariel Sharon told reporters during a picture-taking session with Secretary of State Madeleine Albright that Israel ``has not left'' the Wye River agreement. ``We will not give up'' on the land-for-security accord, Sharon said. But, he added, ``it should be based on mutual reciprocity.'' About two hours before Air Force One landed Saturday night, the House Judiciary Committee approved a fourth article of impeachment against Clinton. The full House will vote on the impeachment articles next week. Israeli government spokesman Moshe Fogel was asked Sunday if the success of Clinton's visit would turn on the question of revoking the Palestinian Liberation Organization's founding charter. ``President Clinton played a very important role in the Wye Memorandum and its success, and I think that it's going to be very, very important that this visit show us at least a readiness on the part of the Palestinian Authority to move forward in peace,'' Fogel said. There was no letup in violence Sunday. Palestinian stone throwers clashed with Israeli troops and an Israeli high school student was stabbed and wounded by a Palestinian teen-ager. In his remarks at Clinton's airport arrival Saturday night, Netanyahu said the peace process is in danger. ``Mr. President,'' Netanyahu said, speaking in Hebrew, ``The truth has to be told. In recent weeks the Palestinians again constantly, systematically and intentionally violated all their commitments. We are not entitled, not able and not prepared to forgo fulfillment of those commitments.'' Netanyahu, who is facing political turmoil in his hard-line coalition government, said he could not accept ``a phony peace on paper'' which is ``not honored in practice.'' Since Clinton presided over its signing in Washington in October, the land-for-security agreement has hit one snag after another. Israel froze implementation of the accord altogether, accusing Arafat of violating the deal and inciting violent street protests. Clinton said the United States shares Israel's concerns about security. ``Peace is not simply an option among many but the only choice that can avert still more years of bloodshed, apprehension and sorrow,'' he said. ``That is why I'm here.'' He said ``both sides now must face the challenge of implementing Wye.'' Both Clinton and Netanyahu have a shaky political future. The Israeli leader is fighting for his political survival as parliament prepares for a no-confidence vote within two weeks. His coalition began to weaken after he and Arafat signed the Wye River Memorandum Oct. 23 agreeing to turn over 13 percent of West Bank territory to be met by Palestinian security measures. Netanyahu has said there would be no further troop withdrawals until West Bank rioting and violence ends. Israel and the Palestinians are also in bitter disagreement over procedures for revoking passages in the Palestinian charter calling for Israel's destruction and the release of Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails for militant or political acts against the Jewish state. On Monday, the president is to fly to the Palestinian-run Gaza Strip to be welcomed by Arafat with the trappings of a state visit. Clinton's visit to Gaza and his address to the Palestinian National Council is seen by some as a boost for dreams of Palestinian statehood. ``It implies de facto recognition of a Palestinian state,'' Ziyad Abu Ziyad, a member of the Palestinian legislative council, said in an interview Sunday. ||||| On a street newly littered with the debris of battle _ stones, spent tear gas canisters, charred remnants of half-burned tires _ a sodden Palestinian flag flaps in a fitful rain-laden wind outside a house in mourning. Inside, to the tinny recorded wail of Koranic verses, neighbors and relatives of the dead man _ a 21-year-old university student felled on the roof of his own home by an Israeli soldier's rubber-coated bullet _ sipped tiny cups of coffee left unsweetened to symbolize the bitter occasion. Some smoked, a few spoke quietly among themselves, but most simply sat in reflective silence. Among those in attendance on this day, the first of the traditional three days of family mourning, was Saeb Erekat, the chief peace negotiator for Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority. The dead youth, Nasr Erekat, was a cousin of his. Erekat stayed for a time, sitting amid clan elders in Arab headdresses and teen-age nephews in American-style athletic shoes, then slipped away for a meeting in connection with President Clinton's visit beginning this weekend. ``It's been very difficult,'' he said later, asked about carrying on his negotiating duties at such a time. ``I have a great sense of sorrow and sadness, a feeling of such loss. I hope God will enable me to use my grief to strengthen my determination for peace.'' The scene at the Erekat home, in the Arab village of Abu Dis on Jerusalem's eastern outskirts, drives home a central truth about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: on both sides of the divide, the political is also deeply personal. And that inescapability goes to the heart of the quarrel's intractability. In the glare of world attention, it is easy to forget that there are fewer people living in Israel and the Palestinian lands combined than there are in New York City. In the small and jostling confines of what few here choose to call the Holy Land, the conflict touches all. Everyone has a stake in it. Israelis fret daily over soldier sons on dangerous patrol in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, or shudder when they pass a sidewalk cafe once ripped by an Islamic militant's suicide bomb. Palestinian families struggle to keep alive the memories of fathers and brothers languishing in Israeli prisons, and chafe under the checkpoints and gunsights of Israeli troops. On both sides, the youngest soak up fear and anger along with their ABCs. And elders' memories of half a century past still rise to trouble the collective sleep: the shadow of the Holocaust for Israelis, the trauma of exile and dispossession for the Palestinians. Against this backdrop, amid a landscape little changed since biblical times, terrible Old Testament themes _ lamentation and retribution, the smiting of enemies and the sharpening of swords _ spring to life once again in any day's headlines. Now comes Clinton, this most American of presidents, one who has made Middle East peacemaking a kind of personal crusade, in hopes of halting what has become one of the century's most protracted blood feuds. Clinton is no stranger to these particular hatreds. Three years ago, in another winter season, he came here to bury Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, gunned down by a nationalist Jew who could not abide the terms of a Mideast agreement that called _ just as this latest accord does _ for Israel to cede West Bank land in exchange for peace with the Palestinians. On the occasion of this visit _ first intended to celebrate the Wye River accords signed seven weeks ago in Washington, now meant to salvage them _ all three of the principals are embattled. Clinton is under an impeachment cloud; Arafat is buffeted by furious Palestinian street protests and his own failing health, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's coalition government is hanging by a thread. The days leading up to Clinton's visit have been divisive ones, contriving somehow to simultaneously tap into both sides' greatest fears. In the West Bank's worst spasm of violence in months, Israelis watched windows of Israeli-plated cars shatter from stones thrown by angry youths, saw TV footage of a cringing Israeli soldier _ now facing court martial _ being beaten bloody by a Palestinian mob, heard Palestinian officials' exhortations for a new intefadeh, or uprising. Palestinians, for their part, listened in anger as Netanyahu announced the suspension of an upcoming Israeli troop pullback in the West Bank and tried vainly to halt Israeli bulldozers expanding Jewish settlements on land they claim as their own. Both sides _ to Palestinians' satisfaction, and Israel's dismay _ came to see the visit as an implicit acknowledgement of Palestinian statehood aspirations, despite increasingly desperate American efforts to avoid casting it in that light. Clinton's foray to the Gaza Strip, which is already under Palestinian rule, will be the first by a sitting American president. Palestinians intend to play on that symbolism for all it is worth, greeting him with the strains of their once-banned national anthem. In the mourning house in Abu Dis, though, the friends and relatives of Nasr Erekat had little to say about politics and statehood. They talked about Nasr instead. Amr Erekat, 27, recalled his disbelief as he cradled his dying cousin in his arms. His 14-year-old brother Taher spoke haltingly of the big brother he had looked up to. His childhood friend, Samir Abdel Salam, remembered wishing he had stuck to his studies as diligently as Nasr had. Saeb Erekat, the peace negotiator, could find neither lesson nor logic to his young cousin's death. ``It's senseless, this rhythm of bloodshed,'' he said. ``At these difficult times, you pray for one thing, for both sides: no more of it.'' ||||| The radical Islamic group Hamas on Monday denounced U.S. President Bill Clinton's upcoming visit to the Gaza Strip but carefully avoided making any threats against him. Hamas is, 2nd graf pvs ||||| Benjamin Netanyahu's refusal to move the peace process forward, which has frustrated President Bill Clinton and angered the Palestinians, may not be enough to save his government from collapse next week. Netanyahu on Wednesday briefed his Cabinet on Clinton's three-day visit and affirmed what he told the president a day earlier _ that he would not withdraw troops in the West Bank on Friday, as stipulated by the Wye River peace accord. Clinton had hoped, 3rd graf pvs ||||| Keeping a promise to Israel and the United States, Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat on Thursday convened senior officials and legislators to revoke clauses of the PLO founding charter calling for Israel's destruction. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, meanwhile, said he has ordered the Israeli army to deal with Palestinian riots with a ``firm hand.'' He added that he would not go ahead with a West Bank troop pullback, as promised under the Wye River peace agreement, unless Arafat met a list of demands. The West Bank has been swept by stone-throwing protests in recent days, and thousands of Palestinians marched Thursday in the funeral procession of a 17-year-old stone mason, Jihad Iyad, who was killed by Israeli army gunfire a day earlier. The violence raised concern that U.S. President Bill Clinton's visit to the region, which is to start late Saturday, is fomenting more unrest rather than calming the already tense situation. Israeli hard-liners, including Cabinet ministers, have said Clinton's visit is conferring statehood status on the Palestinian areas. On Thursday, signs reading ``Clinton go home'' were strung along the Tel Aviv-Jerusalem highway and on walls in Jerusalem. The most problematic moment of the Clinton visit will be his address Monday to the Palestine National Council, the Palestinians' parliament-in-exile, and other Palestinian groups, in Gaza City. Under the Wye agreement, the PNC is to reaffirm during this session an Arafat letter to Clinton which declares clauses of the PLO founding charter calling for Israel's destruction revoked. Israel insists a vote be taken by a show of hands, while the Palestinians say only approval by acclamation is required. Netanyahu said Thursday he will not settle for anything less than a vote, even if Clinton declares the PNC session a success without it. ``It is Israel which determines issues connected with its future,'' Netanyahu said when asked by Israel radio whether he would be ready to enter a showdown with Clinton over the issue. It is unlikely the U.S. president would side with Israel in such a dispute because it would mean that the main purpose of his visit, to usher in the next stage of the Wye agreement, had failed. Immediately after the PNC session, Israel is to transfer five percent of the West Bank from its sole control to joint jurisdiction. Netanyahu said last week he was freezing the pullback over what he claimed were systematic Palestinian violations of the peace accord. He reiterated Thursday that he would not change his decision unless Arafat publicly dropped plans to unilaterally declare a Palestinian state in May. The prime minister's critics have said he is seizing excuse after excuse to walk away from the agreement because he faces a very real threat from hard-liners in his coalition to bring down the government in the event of another troop withdrawal. The Palestinians, meanwhile, pressed ahead with implementing the accord. On Thursday, 98 members of the 124-member Palestinian Central Council met at Arafat's seaside headquarters to hold a vote on whether to approve the Arafat letter concerning the PLO charter. The meeting is an interim step, ahead of Monday's PNC session, and is stipulated by the Wye agreement. A simple majority of 63 members is required, and a vote was expected by Thursday evening. The council has not met for years and was revived specifically for Thursday's vote. It consists of PNC delegates, members of the Palestinian legislative council and the PLO Executive Committee, among others.

Clinton will visit Israel, Gaza and the West bank Dec. 12-15 as agreed in the Wye River accord. The days preceding his trip are filled with violence, unrest and divisiveness. Hamas denounces Clinton's trip, but makes no threats against him. Netanyahu says Arafat is "making a farce" of the Wye accord. The two sides disagree over its terms. The Israelis and Palestinians are troubled by violence, fear and loss. Clinton has impeachment troubles. Extra security is in place wherever Clinton will go. He hopes to salvage the Wye accord. However, Netanyahu continues to withdraw troops from the West Bank as stipulated in the agreement.

Armored personnel carriers were deployed Tuesday around the convention center where U.S. President Bill Clinton will address 1,500 Palestinian delegates next week. U.S. Secret Service agents have already arrived in Gaza to work with their Palestinian counterparts on how to protect Clinton during his first visit to Palestinian areas. ``There is cooperation with the American security people. We have our own plan. The Americans have their own procedures as well,'' said the Palestinian police chief, Ghazi Jabali. The Islamic militant group Hamas, which hopes to scuttle the accord, has been careful not to openly threaten Clinton. However, Hamas has carried out more than a dozen suicide bombings in Israel in an attempt to bring peace talks with Israel to a halt. On Monday, Clinton and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat are to address members of the Palestine National Council and delegates from other groups, at the Shawa Cultural Center in Gaza City. Traffic near the Shawa Center still flowed normally Tuesday, but plainclothes security as well as uniformed officers with M-17 and AK-47 assault rifles began patrolling in the vicinity. Streets around the center are to be closed days before the Clinton visit. Four armored personnel were parked at the corners of the convention center, with members of Arafat's elite bodyguard unit, known as Force 17, sitting on the vehicles. APCs were also deployed outside Arafat's guest house and near the Palestinian legislative council. Jabali said the APCs were part of a Palestinian security plan that has been presented to the Americans. U.S. security agents, in turn, have given their Palestinian counterparts sophisticated explosives detection equipment. ``The Palestinian police are ready to protect President Clinton here in Gaza or in Bethlehem,'' Jabali said, referring to Clinton's expected visit next Tuesday to the Church of the Nativity in the biblical West Bank town of Bethlehem In Jerusalem, Clinton's entourage of 1,200 people will take over the Jerusalem Hilton, at a cost of half a million dollars. The hotel boasts stunning views of Jerusalem's walled Old City and the slopes of the Judean Desert. ||||| Israel affirmed Friday that it will not withdraw troops in the West Bank unless the top Palestinian decision-making body holds a vote to annul clauses of the PLO charter calling for Israel's destruction. Just a day before U.S. President Bill Clinton's arrival, Israel also rejected a U.S. compromise on the release of Palestinian prisoners, an issue that has sparked riots in the West Bank. The Palestinians have said they would revoke the clauses only by acclamation, not by a vote, when the Palestine National Council meets on Monday in Clinton's presence. With its demand, Israel may be setting itself up for a showdown with Clinton whose visit to Israel and the Palestinian is ushering in the next stage of the Wye River land-for-security agreement he helped negotiate. Under the accord, the annulment of the offending provisions by the PNC is to clear the way for an Israeli troop pullback. Clinton is unlikely to declare the PNC has not completed its task because that would mean his high-profile visit has been a failure. However, Israeli officials said they would not drop their demand for a vote. ``They have to vote in the PNC,'' said Israeli government spokesman Moshe Fogel. Otherwise, he said, Israel will not turn over additional West Bank territory to the Palestinians because ``transfer of territory is irreversible.'' In Washington, deputy U.S. State Department spokesman James Foley was evasive on whether the United States expected a vote from the PNC. ``The procedures need to be clear enough that nullification has taken place,'' he said. A senior Palestinian official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the United States has not asked Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat to consider holding a vote. On Thursday, the Palestinians took an interim step when a smaller leadership body, the 124-member Palestinian Central Council, declared the charter clauses revoked. The 95 members present were asked whether they approved a letter in which Arafat informed Clinton that the charter clauses calling for Israel's destruction were null and void. In all, 81 voted in favor, seven against and seven abstained. Asked about the decision, Arafat would only say that ``it was a very important and constructive meeting.'' The Palestinian leader also said he hoped Clinton would exert pressure on Israel to keep its obligations under the Wye agreement. The Palestine Liberation Organization charter was drawn up three decades ago, long before Israel and the Palestinians started their peace process in 1993. The Palestinians say they took all the required steps to revoke the pertinent clauses at a PNC session in Gaza in 1996. However, Netanyahu has said the PNC never completed the job. During the Wye River talks, the Palestinians agreed in a compromise to invite PNC members and delegates from other groups to Gaza to hear Clinton and Arafat speak. The Wye accord says delegates should ``reaffirm'' the Arafat letter to Clinton, but does not specifically refer to a vote. Former Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres sided with the Palestinians on Friday. ``They did it once, they did it twice, they don't have to do it again,'' said Peres, who was prime minister during the PNC vote in 1996. Israel and the Palestinians have also accused each other of violating other elements of the Wye agreement. A key point of contention has been Israel's pledge to release 750 Palestinian prisoners in three stages by the end of January. The Palestinians have said Israel broke a promise to release prisoners held for anti-Israeli activities. Israel said it never made such a pledge, and accused the Palestinian Authority of incitement over the prisoner issue. Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said the United States offered a compromise, a trilateral committee to go over the list of prisoners one by one and determine who will be released. But Israeli Cabinet Secretary Danny Naveh said Friday such a proposal was unacceptable. ``Israel has not been offered such a compromise and there will not be such a compromise,'' Naveh said. On Friday, about 2,000 supporters of the Islamic militant Hamas movement marched through the West Bank town of Nablus to press for the release or prisoners. ``We want prisoners, not Clinton,'' the crowd chanted. At Jerusalem's Al Aqsa Mosque, Islam's third holiest site, the prayer leader, Yousef Abu Sneineh, spoke out sharply against the U.S.-brokered peace agreement. ``America supports a peace agreement that further reinforces the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian lands,'' he said. ||||| President Clinton will travel to Gaza next month to address Palestinian leaders, the White House said Friday. He is to speak at what the Palestinians are describing as a historic meeting to formally revoke anti-Israel clauses in the 1964 Palestinian charter. Israel demanded revocation of the clauses at U.S.-brokered negotiations last month that led to the latest land-for-peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians. As part of that settlement, reached at Wye, Md., Clinton agreed to travel to territory controlled by the Palestinian Authority to speak at the meeting of the Palestinian National Council, the de facto parliament. According to a schedule released Friday by the White House, Clinton will visit Gaza, the West Bank and Israel during a four-day trip that will begin on Dec. 12. He is to meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel and Yasser Arafat, the Palestinian leader, before returning to Washington on Dec. 15. Clinton administration officials said the White House had not yet decided whether Clinton would fly to the newly opened Gaza International Airport aboard Air Force One, given the symbolism of the president's jet landing on Palestinian soil with the trappings of a state visit. Officials said the White House was fearful of upsetting Israeli leaders who are worried that the president's planned visit to Gaza appears to be a step toward American recognition of a Palestinian state. The White House said the president would ``speak to the Israeli and Palestinian people about the importance of the Wye agreement and the need to continue to support the Middle East peace process.'' The meeting in Gaza on Dec. 14 is bound to be contentious, given that many prominent Palestinians have charged that the Wye agreement allows the Israeli government to backtrack on promises made to the Palestinians in their 1994 peace settlement. The Palestinians have insisted that they have already revoked clauses in the 1964 charter that called for Israel's destruction. In January, Arafat wrote to the White House, listing the anti-Israel provisions that he said had been annulled. But the letter did not satisfy the Israelis. And during the talks in Maryland last month, Arafat agreed to call a meeting of the national council to ``reaffirm'' the decision to revoke the clauses. In order to guarantee passage of a motion to annul the provisions, Arafat is being allowed under an agreement with the Israelis and the United States to pack the council meeting in Gaza with his loyalists, and to conduct the vote by a show of hands instead of a ballot. During a recent interview with Israeli television, Clinton brushed aside concerns that his visit to Gaza might be seen as a step toward U.S. recognition of a Palestinian state. ``That is not what I'm doing in going there,'' he said. ``I have tried strictly to adhere to the position of the United States that we would not take a position on any final status issue.'' He said he was traveling to Gaza at the recommendation of, among others, Netanyahu. ``The prime minister wanted me to go there and wanted us all to make this pitch,'' he said, adding that he would ask the Palestinian National Council ``to support the peace and to renounce the idea of animosity toward and opposition to the existence of the state of Israel, and instead embrace the path not only of peace but of cooperation.'' ||||| Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday accused Yasser Arafat of ``making a farce'' of the Wye River accords and said he would not agree to further troop withdrawals until a halt to anti-Israel violence. Netanyahu, in an interview with The Associated Press, said the Palestinians were emboldened to foment street riots and threaten to declare statehood because they believed they had the Clinton administration ``in their back pocket.'' ``The Palestinians are making a farce out of the Wye River accord. They think they have the United States in their back pocket,'' said the Israeli leader. ``As long as that is the case, they will not change their behavior.'' Netanyahu said he did not believe the United States was siding with the Palestinians, but his sharply worded remarks sent a strong signal that he would like President Bill Clinton to intervene and lower Palestinian expectations prior to his Dec. 12-15 trip. Palestinians claim it is Israel that has violated the summit agreement reached in October by not freeing jailed political activists, by confiscating West Bank land for roads and allowing Jewish settlers to seize hilltops for expansion. Ahmed Qureia, speaker of the Palestinian Legislative Council and the head of the peace team that negotiated the Oslo accords, told reporters Sunday ``all means of resistance'' was justified in opposing settler activity. Netanyahu, who rejected claims of settlement expansion as ``bunk,'' was interviewed in the Cabinet room after a meeting of his unruly coalition government, which rallied behind Netanyahu on his tough stance. But officials said Science Minister Silvan Shalom attacked him for being too generous to the Palestinians by agreeing to the Clinton visit next week to Gaza and the West Bank. ``We are not going to give up territory when there are violations of the agreement and attempts to get things that weren't achieved at Wye using violence,'' Netanyahu said. Israel has threatened to scrap the next Israeli troop pullback, which is scheduled for Dec. 18, three days after Clinton's departure. The United States has said it should go ahead as scheduled. Palestinians see the Clinton trip as implicit recognition of their struggle for statehood, even though Clinton has specifically said in an interview aired on Israel's Channel 2 television that it should not be read that way. Netanyahu made clear that he would be annoyed if Air Force One landed at the newly opened Palestinian airport in Gaza, which aides said would be viewed as a strong symbol of support for Palestinian demands for sovereignty. ``We will be very disappointed if that is the case. We've said to the United States that we don't think that is necessary,'' Netanyahu said of reports that Clinton's plane would land in Gaza. He said traveling by motorcade would be quicker and more politically considerate. ``Unless somebody wants to put a thumb in our eye, I think there are better ways to travel,'' Netanyahu said. In the interview, Netanyahu stressed that he opposed Palestinian statehood and demanded that Arafat stop threatening to declare independence on May 4, 1999, when the Palestinians maintain the Oslo accords expire. ``What must be is that Yasser Arafat retracts this open and incipient violation of the Oslo and Wye River accords and recommits himself to negotiating until we get white smoke, until we get a solution. That's the only way we'll get a real peace between Israel and the Palestinians,'' Netanyahu said. In a conciliatory speech in Sweden over the weekend, Arafat stressed that he sought a negotiated settlement and did not mention May 4 as a deadline. He also said any Palestinian state would not make alliances with states hostile to Israel _ one of Netanyahu's key concerns. The Israeli leader is also demanding that Arafat drop claims that Netanyahu promised at Wye to release 750 Palestinians jailed for anti-Israel attacks that resulted in bloodshed, rather than freeing car thieves and petty criminals. Each side has a different interpretation of the understanding regarding the prisoners. Netanyahu maintains he never agreed to free those with ``blood on their hands.'' ``It's high time that Yasser Arafat admits this was agreed upon and that he's not going to make demands on Israel, including the incitement of violence,...on a trumped-up charge, '' he said. ``Israel never promised to release murders at Wye, and it won't release them.'' The issue has been the focal point for a new wave of violent protests and demonstrations in the West Bank and a hunger strike that began Saturday by the 1,700 Palestinian inmates. Israel is also upset by statements that the nearly 600-member Palestinian National Council will not reaffirm in a vote that anti-Israel clauses in the Palestinian charter have been deleted. Netanyahu maintained that only 25 members out of hundreds who live abroad had been invited so far. Netanyahu quoted Clinton as telling him that the purpose of his visit was to ``personally make sure that they actually rescind this charter that calls for Israel's destruction.'' ||||| Less than a week before U.S. President Bill Clinton is to arrive for a visit meant to bolster a new Israeli-Palestinian peace accord, the two sides exchanged angry accusations Sunday over Jewish settlements and street clashes. Ahmed Qureia, speaker of the Palestinian parliament, warned of possible violence if Israel continues to expand settlements in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, where the Palestinians hope to establish a state. ``If settlement activity continues, then all means of resistance are open,'' Qureia, who is also known as Abu Ala, told reporters in the West Bank town of Ramallah. Since the signing of a land-for-security accord, Jewish settlers have accelerated the establishment of makeshift communities on West Bank hilltops, in an explicit bid to keep the land from being turned over to the Palestinians. Meanwhile, at a meeting of the Israeli Cabinet, ministers expressed dismay over an outbreak of street clashes between Palestinian demonstrators and Israeli troops in the West Bank. ``The Palestinians have been asked to immediately stop the violence and incitement to violence,'' the Cabinet said in a statement. At least two Palestinians were injured Sunday in a confrontation outside the Jewish settlement of Ariel in the northern West Bank. Demonstrators threw stones at Israeli troops, who responded with rubber bullets and tear gas. A day earlier, 27 Palestinians and three Israeli soldiers were injured in similar clashes throughout the West Bank. And three days before that, Israelis were horrified by television footage of an Israeli soldier being dragged from a car and beaten with chunks of concrete by a Palestinian mob. Israel says Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority is orchestrating the street fighting. The Palestinians deny that. The past week's protests grew out of an increasingly bitter dispute over Palestinian prisoners held by Israel. Israel last month freed 250 of 750 prisoners it is to release under the Wye accords, but most were criminals. The Palestinians are demanding that so-called security prisoners _ those being held for anti-Israel activity _ be released instead. Also Sunday, another quarrel was brewing over the scheduled meeting of the Palestinian National Council, the Palestinian parliament-in-exile, in the Gaza Strip during Clinton's visit. At the gathering, the PNC and other Palestinians in attendance are to reaffirm the nullification of clauses in their national charter that call for Israel's destruction. Israel has demanded that the Palestinians hold an actual vote at the meeting rather than simply proclaiming the charter changed, but the Palestinians on Sunday repeated their objections to that. ``They haven't the right to give us instructions,'' Arafat said Sunday as he returned to Gaza following a trip to Europe. Clinton's visit to Israel and the Palestinian lands, which is to begin Saturday, is meant to provide impetus to the U.S.-brokered peace accords and encourage both sides to stick to a timetable for compliance. But some commentators suggested the visit was proving a polarizing force instead. ``He is coming to promote the peace process... but his visit's only actual result is a sharpening of the differences,'' Yosef Lapid wrote in Sunday's editions of the Maariv newspaper. In Israel, increasing concern is being voiced over Clinton's planned visit to Gaza, the first ever by a sitting U.S. president. At Sunday's Israeli Cabinet meeting, a shouting match broke out over the issue, according to Israel radio. ``Who invited President Clinton to the Gaza Strip?'' Silvan Shalom, the science minister, reportedly yelled at Netanyahu. Netanyahu said it had been Clinton's idea, not his. The United States has repeatedly said the visit is not intended as an endorsement of Palestinian statehood, but the Palestinians see it as a powerful boost to their sovereignty hopes. Arafat adviser Ahmed Tibi said on Israeli television that the invitation for a Clinton visit came from Israel and was ``warmly welcomed'' by the Palestinians. ||||| In an atmosphere of political tension, U.S. President Clinton met Sunday with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a bid to put the troubled Wye River peace accord back on track. After getting together for breakfast in Clinton's hotel suite, the two leaders met at Netanyahu's office and planned to talk to reporters later. The president was sure to be asked about the impeachment drama unfolding in Washington. At a late-night arrival ceremony for Clinton Saturday, Netanyahu said he hoped the president's visit would ``contribute to true peace.'' Again, the Israeli leader accused the Palestinians of ignoring commitments in peace accords. Clinton is to meet with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat on Monday in the Gaza Strip. Thousands of police were deployed throughout Israel during the Clinton visit. At the hotel where Clinton is staying, 500 policemen were posted to guard the president and his 600-member delegation. Clinton's wife, Hillary, and their daughter, Chelsea, set out on their own schedule. Mrs. Clinton toured a school in a cooperative village of Jews and Palestinians, while Chelsea visited Jerusalem's Western Wall, Judaism's holiest site. Israeli Foreign Minister Ariel Sharon told reporters during a picture-taking session with Secretary of State Madeleine Albright that Israel ``has not left'' the Wye River agreement. ``We will not give up'' on the land-for-security accord, Sharon said. But, he added, ``it should be based on mutual reciprocity.'' About two hours before Air Force One landed Saturday night, the House Judiciary Committee approved a fourth article of impeachment against Clinton. The full House will vote on the impeachment articles next week. Israeli government spokesman Moshe Fogel was asked Sunday if the success of Clinton's visit would turn on the question of revoking the Palestinian Liberation Organization's founding charter. ``President Clinton played a very important role in the Wye Memorandum and its success, and I think that it's going to be very, very important that this visit show us at least a readiness on the part of the Palestinian Authority to move forward in peace,'' Fogel said. There was no letup in violence Sunday. Palestinian stone throwers clashed with Israeli troops and an Israeli high school student was stabbed and wounded by a Palestinian teen-ager. In his remarks at Clinton's airport arrival Saturday night, Netanyahu said the peace process is in danger. ``Mr. President,'' Netanyahu said, speaking in Hebrew, ``The truth has to be told. In recent weeks the Palestinians again constantly, systematically and intentionally violated all their commitments. We are not entitled, not able and not prepared to forgo fulfillment of those commitments.'' Netanyahu, who is facing political turmoil in his hard-line coalition government, said he could not accept ``a phony peace on paper'' which is ``not honored in practice.'' Since Clinton presided over its signing in Washington in October, the land-for-security agreement has hit one snag after another. Israel froze implementation of the accord altogether, accusing Arafat of violating the deal and inciting violent street protests. Clinton said the United States shares Israel's concerns about security. ``Peace is not simply an option among many but the only choice that can avert still more years of bloodshed, apprehension and sorrow,'' he said. ``That is why I'm here.'' He said ``both sides now must face the challenge of implementing Wye.'' Both Clinton and Netanyahu have a shaky political future. The Israeli leader is fighting for his political survival as parliament prepares for a no-confidence vote within two weeks. His coalition began to weaken after he and Arafat signed the Wye River Memorandum Oct. 23 agreeing to turn over 13 percent of West Bank territory to be met by Palestinian security measures. Netanyahu has said there would be no further troop withdrawals until West Bank rioting and violence ends. Israel and the Palestinians are also in bitter disagreement over procedures for revoking passages in the Palestinian charter calling for Israel's destruction and the release of Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails for militant or political acts against the Jewish state. On Monday, the president is to fly to the Palestinian-run Gaza Strip to be welcomed by Arafat with the trappings of a state visit. Clinton's visit to Gaza and his address to the Palestinian National Council is seen by some as a boost for dreams of Palestinian statehood. ``It implies de facto recognition of a Palestinian state,'' Ziyad Abu Ziyad, a member of the Palestinian legislative council, said in an interview Sunday. ||||| On a street newly littered with the debris of battle _ stones, spent tear gas canisters, charred remnants of half-burned tires _ a sodden Palestinian flag flaps in a fitful rain-laden wind outside a house in mourning. Inside, to the tinny recorded wail of Koranic verses, neighbors and relatives of the dead man _ a 21-year-old university student felled on the roof of his own home by an Israeli soldier's rubber-coated bullet _ sipped tiny cups of coffee left unsweetened to symbolize the bitter occasion. Some smoked, a few spoke quietly among themselves, but most simply sat in reflective silence. Among those in attendance on this day, the first of the traditional three days of family mourning, was Saeb Erekat, the chief peace negotiator for Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority. The dead youth, Nasr Erekat, was a cousin of his. Erekat stayed for a time, sitting amid clan elders in Arab headdresses and teen-age nephews in American-style athletic shoes, then slipped away for a meeting in connection with President Clinton's visit beginning this weekend. ``It's been very difficult,'' he said later, asked about carrying on his negotiating duties at such a time. ``I have a great sense of sorrow and sadness, a feeling of such loss. I hope God will enable me to use my grief to strengthen my determination for peace.'' The scene at the Erekat home, in the Arab village of Abu Dis on Jerusalem's eastern outskirts, drives home a central truth about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: on both sides of the divide, the political is also deeply personal. And that inescapability goes to the heart of the quarrel's intractability. In the glare of world attention, it is easy to forget that there are fewer people living in Israel and the Palestinian lands combined than there are in New York City. In the small and jostling confines of what few here choose to call the Holy Land, the conflict touches all. Everyone has a stake in it. Israelis fret daily over soldier sons on dangerous patrol in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, or shudder when they pass a sidewalk cafe once ripped by an Islamic militant's suicide bomb. Palestinian families struggle to keep alive the memories of fathers and brothers languishing in Israeli prisons, and chafe under the checkpoints and gunsights of Israeli troops. On both sides, the youngest soak up fear and anger along with their ABCs. And elders' memories of half a century past still rise to trouble the collective sleep: the shadow of the Holocaust for Israelis, the trauma of exile and dispossession for the Palestinians. Against this backdrop, amid a landscape little changed since biblical times, terrible Old Testament themes _ lamentation and retribution, the smiting of enemies and the sharpening of swords _ spring to life once again in any day's headlines. Now comes Clinton, this most American of presidents, one who has made Middle East peacemaking a kind of personal crusade, in hopes of halting what has become one of the century's most protracted blood feuds. Clinton is no stranger to these particular hatreds. Three years ago, in another winter season, he came here to bury Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, gunned down by a nationalist Jew who could not abide the terms of a Mideast agreement that called _ just as this latest accord does _ for Israel to cede West Bank land in exchange for peace with the Palestinians. On the occasion of this visit _ first intended to celebrate the Wye River accords signed seven weeks ago in Washington, now meant to salvage them _ all three of the principals are embattled. Clinton is under an impeachment cloud; Arafat is buffeted by furious Palestinian street protests and his own failing health, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's coalition government is hanging by a thread. The days leading up to Clinton's visit have been divisive ones, contriving somehow to simultaneously tap into both sides' greatest fears. In the West Bank's worst spasm of violence in months, Israelis watched windows of Israeli-plated cars shatter from stones thrown by angry youths, saw TV footage of a cringing Israeli soldier _ now facing court martial _ being beaten bloody by a Palestinian mob, heard Palestinian officials' exhortations for a new intefadeh, or uprising. Palestinians, for their part, listened in anger as Netanyahu announced the suspension of an upcoming Israeli troop pullback in the West Bank and tried vainly to halt Israeli bulldozers expanding Jewish settlements on land they claim as their own. Both sides _ to Palestinians' satisfaction, and Israel's dismay _ came to see the visit as an implicit acknowledgement of Palestinian statehood aspirations, despite increasingly desperate American efforts to avoid casting it in that light. Clinton's foray to the Gaza Strip, which is already under Palestinian rule, will be the first by a sitting American president. Palestinians intend to play on that symbolism for all it is worth, greeting him with the strains of their once-banned national anthem. In the mourning house in Abu Dis, though, the friends and relatives of Nasr Erekat had little to say about politics and statehood. They talked about Nasr instead. Amr Erekat, 27, recalled his disbelief as he cradled his dying cousin in his arms. His 14-year-old brother Taher spoke haltingly of the big brother he had looked up to. His childhood friend, Samir Abdel Salam, remembered wishing he had stuck to his studies as diligently as Nasr had. Saeb Erekat, the peace negotiator, could find neither lesson nor logic to his young cousin's death. ``It's senseless, this rhythm of bloodshed,'' he said. ``At these difficult times, you pray for one thing, for both sides: no more of it.'' ||||| The radical Islamic group Hamas on Monday denounced U.S. President Bill Clinton's upcoming visit to the Gaza Strip but carefully avoided making any threats against him. Hamas is, 2nd graf pvs ||||| Benjamin Netanyahu's refusal to move the peace process forward, which has frustrated President Bill Clinton and angered the Palestinians, may not be enough to save his government from collapse next week. Netanyahu on Wednesday briefed his Cabinet on Clinton's three-day visit and affirmed what he told the president a day earlier _ that he would not withdraw troops in the West Bank on Friday, as stipulated by the Wye River peace accord. Clinton had hoped, 3rd graf pvs ||||| Keeping a promise to Israel and the United States, Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat on Thursday convened senior officials and legislators to revoke clauses of the PLO founding charter calling for Israel's destruction. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, meanwhile, said he has ordered the Israeli army to deal with Palestinian riots with a ``firm hand.'' He added that he would not go ahead with a West Bank troop pullback, as promised under the Wye River peace agreement, unless Arafat met a list of demands. The West Bank has been swept by stone-throwing protests in recent days, and thousands of Palestinians marched Thursday in the funeral procession of a 17-year-old stone mason, Jihad Iyad, who was killed by Israeli army gunfire a day earlier. The violence raised concern that U.S. President Bill Clinton's visit to the region, which is to start late Saturday, is fomenting more unrest rather than calming the already tense situation. Israeli hard-liners, including Cabinet ministers, have said Clinton's visit is conferring statehood status on the Palestinian areas. On Thursday, signs reading ``Clinton go home'' were strung along the Tel Aviv-Jerusalem highway and on walls in Jerusalem. The most problematic moment of the Clinton visit will be his address Monday to the Palestine National Council, the Palestinians' parliament-in-exile, and other Palestinian groups, in Gaza City. Under the Wye agreement, the PNC is to reaffirm during this session an Arafat letter to Clinton which declares clauses of the PLO founding charter calling for Israel's destruction revoked. Israel insists a vote be taken by a show of hands, while the Palestinians say only approval by acclamation is required. Netanyahu said Thursday he will not settle for anything less than a vote, even if Clinton declares the PNC session a success without it. ``It is Israel which determines issues connected with its future,'' Netanyahu said when asked by Israel radio whether he would be ready to enter a showdown with Clinton over the issue. It is unlikely the U.S. president would side with Israel in such a dispute because it would mean that the main purpose of his visit, to usher in the next stage of the Wye agreement, had failed. Immediately after the PNC session, Israel is to transfer five percent of the West Bank from its sole control to joint jurisdiction. Netanyahu said last week he was freezing the pullback over what he claimed were systematic Palestinian violations of the peace accord. He reiterated Thursday that he would not change his decision unless Arafat publicly dropped plans to unilaterally declare a Palestinian state in May. The prime minister's critics have said he is seizing excuse after excuse to walk away from the agreement because he faces a very real threat from hard-liners in his coalition to bring down the government in the event of another troop withdrawal. The Palestinians, meanwhile, pressed ahead with implementing the accord. On Thursday, 98 members of the 124-member Palestinian Central Council met at Arafat's seaside headquarters to hold a vote on whether to approve the Arafat letter concerning the PLO charter. The meeting is an interim step, ahead of Monday's PNC session, and is stipulated by the Wye agreement. A simple majority of 63 members is required, and a vote was expected by Thursday evening. The council has not met for years and was revived specifically for Thursday's vote. It consists of PNC delegates, members of the Palestinian legislative council and the PLO Executive Committee, among others.

Despite concerns it might cause more unrest, President Clinton met in Israel separately with Prime Minister Netanyahu and Yasser Arafat to negotiate Wye Accord agreement terms. Israel is demanding revocation of anti-Israeli clauses in the 1964 Palestinian charter. Palestine is demanding Israel's release of Palestinian prisoners. Both sides are exchanging accusations over Israeli West Bank settlements and anti-Israeli violence. Hamas denounced Clinton's visit but avoided threats. US and Palestinian agents kept the Gaza area secure. In the end, Netanyahu, facing political turmoil, told President Clinton he would not remove his troops from the West Bank.

Armored personnel carriers were deployed Tuesday around the convention center where U.S. President Bill Clinton will address 1,500 Palestinian delegates next week. U.S. Secret Service agents have already arrived in Gaza to work with their Palestinian counterparts on how to protect Clinton during his first visit to Palestinian areas. ``There is cooperation with the American security people. We have our own plan. The Americans have their own procedures as well,'' said the Palestinian police chief, Ghazi Jabali. The Islamic militant group Hamas, which hopes to scuttle the accord, has been careful not to openly threaten Clinton. However, Hamas has carried out more than a dozen suicide bombings in Israel in an attempt to bring peace talks with Israel to a halt. On Monday, Clinton and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat are to address members of the Palestine National Council and delegates from other groups, at the Shawa Cultural Center in Gaza City. Traffic near the Shawa Center still flowed normally Tuesday, but plainclothes security as well as uniformed officers with M-17 and AK-47 assault rifles began patrolling in the vicinity. Streets around the center are to be closed days before the Clinton visit. Four armored personnel were parked at the corners of the convention center, with members of Arafat's elite bodyguard unit, known as Force 17, sitting on the vehicles. APCs were also deployed outside Arafat's guest house and near the Palestinian legislative council. Jabali said the APCs were part of a Palestinian security plan that has been presented to the Americans. U.S. security agents, in turn, have given their Palestinian counterparts sophisticated explosives detection equipment. ``The Palestinian police are ready to protect President Clinton here in Gaza or in Bethlehem,'' Jabali said, referring to Clinton's expected visit next Tuesday to the Church of the Nativity in the biblical West Bank town of Bethlehem In Jerusalem, Clinton's entourage of 1,200 people will take over the Jerusalem Hilton, at a cost of half a million dollars. The hotel boasts stunning views of Jerusalem's walled Old City and the slopes of the Judean Desert. ||||| Israel affirmed Friday that it will not withdraw troops in the West Bank unless the top Palestinian decision-making body holds a vote to annul clauses of the PLO charter calling for Israel's destruction. Just a day before U.S. President Bill Clinton's arrival, Israel also rejected a U.S. compromise on the release of Palestinian prisoners, an issue that has sparked riots in the West Bank. The Palestinians have said they would revoke the clauses only by acclamation, not by a vote, when the Palestine National Council meets on Monday in Clinton's presence. With its demand, Israel may be setting itself up for a showdown with Clinton whose visit to Israel and the Palestinian is ushering in the next stage of the Wye River land-for-security agreement he helped negotiate. Under the accord, the annulment of the offending provisions by the PNC is to clear the way for an Israeli troop pullback. Clinton is unlikely to declare the PNC has not completed its task because that would mean his high-profile visit has been a failure. However, Israeli officials said they would not drop their demand for a vote. ``They have to vote in the PNC,'' said Israeli government spokesman Moshe Fogel. Otherwise, he said, Israel will not turn over additional West Bank territory to the Palestinians because ``transfer of territory is irreversible.'' In Washington, deputy U.S. State Department spokesman James Foley was evasive on whether the United States expected a vote from the PNC. ``The procedures need to be clear enough that nullification has taken place,'' he said. A senior Palestinian official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the United States has not asked Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat to consider holding a vote. On Thursday, the Palestinians took an interim step when a smaller leadership body, the 124-member Palestinian Central Council, declared the charter clauses revoked. The 95 members present were asked whether they approved a letter in which Arafat informed Clinton that the charter clauses calling for Israel's destruction were null and void. In all, 81 voted in favor, seven against and seven abstained. Asked about the decision, Arafat would only say that ``it was a very important and constructive meeting.'' The Palestinian leader also said he hoped Clinton would exert pressure on Israel to keep its obligations under the Wye agreement. The Palestine Liberation Organization charter was drawn up three decades ago, long before Israel and the Palestinians started their peace process in 1993. The Palestinians say they took all the required steps to revoke the pertinent clauses at a PNC session in Gaza in 1996. However, Netanyahu has said the PNC never completed the job. During the Wye River talks, the Palestinians agreed in a compromise to invite PNC members and delegates from other groups to Gaza to hear Clinton and Arafat speak. The Wye accord says delegates should ``reaffirm'' the Arafat letter to Clinton, but does not specifically refer to a vote. Former Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres sided with the Palestinians on Friday. ``They did it once, they did it twice, they don't have to do it again,'' said Peres, who was prime minister during the PNC vote in 1996. Israel and the Palestinians have also accused each other of violating other elements of the Wye agreement. A key point of contention has been Israel's pledge to release 750 Palestinian prisoners in three stages by the end of January. The Palestinians have said Israel broke a promise to release prisoners held for anti-Israeli activities. Israel said it never made such a pledge, and accused the Palestinian Authority of incitement over the prisoner issue. Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said the United States offered a compromise, a trilateral committee to go over the list of prisoners one by one and determine who will be released. But Israeli Cabinet Secretary Danny Naveh said Friday such a proposal was unacceptable. ``Israel has not been offered such a compromise and there will not be such a compromise,'' Naveh said. On Friday, about 2,000 supporters of the Islamic militant Hamas movement marched through the West Bank town of Nablus to press for the release or prisoners. ``We want prisoners, not Clinton,'' the crowd chanted. At Jerusalem's Al Aqsa Mosque, Islam's third holiest site, the prayer leader, Yousef Abu Sneineh, spoke out sharply against the U.S.-brokered peace agreement. ``America supports a peace agreement that further reinforces the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian lands,'' he said. ||||| President Clinton will travel to Gaza next month to address Palestinian leaders, the White House said Friday. He is to speak at what the Palestinians are describing as a historic meeting to formally revoke anti-Israel clauses in the 1964 Palestinian charter. Israel demanded revocation of the clauses at U.S.-brokered negotiations last month that led to the latest land-for-peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians. As part of that settlement, reached at Wye, Md., Clinton agreed to travel to territory controlled by the Palestinian Authority to speak at the meeting of the Palestinian National Council, the de facto parliament. According to a schedule released Friday by the White House, Clinton will visit Gaza, the West Bank and Israel during a four-day trip that will begin on Dec. 12. He is to meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel and Yasser Arafat, the Palestinian leader, before returning to Washington on Dec. 15. Clinton administration officials said the White House had not yet decided whether Clinton would fly to the newly opened Gaza International Airport aboard Air Force One, given the symbolism of the president's jet landing on Palestinian soil with the trappings of a state visit. Officials said the White House was fearful of upsetting Israeli leaders who are worried that the president's planned visit to Gaza appears to be a step toward American recognition of a Palestinian state. The White House said the president would ``speak to the Israeli and Palestinian people about the importance of the Wye agreement and the need to continue to support the Middle East peace process.'' The meeting in Gaza on Dec. 14 is bound to be contentious, given that many prominent Palestinians have charged that the Wye agreement allows the Israeli government to backtrack on promises made to the Palestinians in their 1994 peace settlement. The Palestinians have insisted that they have already revoked clauses in the 1964 charter that called for Israel's destruction. In January, Arafat wrote to the White House, listing the anti-Israel provisions that he said had been annulled. But the letter did not satisfy the Israelis. And during the talks in Maryland last month, Arafat agreed to call a meeting of the national council to ``reaffirm'' the decision to revoke the clauses. In order to guarantee passage of a motion to annul the provisions, Arafat is being allowed under an agreement with the Israelis and the United States to pack the council meeting in Gaza with his loyalists, and to conduct the vote by a show of hands instead of a ballot. During a recent interview with Israeli television, Clinton brushed aside concerns that his visit to Gaza might be seen as a step toward U.S. recognition of a Palestinian state. ``That is not what I'm doing in going there,'' he said. ``I have tried strictly to adhere to the position of the United States that we would not take a position on any final status issue.'' He said he was traveling to Gaza at the recommendation of, among others, Netanyahu. ``The prime minister wanted me to go there and wanted us all to make this pitch,'' he said, adding that he would ask the Palestinian National Council ``to support the peace and to renounce the idea of animosity toward and opposition to the existence of the state of Israel, and instead embrace the path not only of peace but of cooperation.'' ||||| Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday accused Yasser Arafat of ``making a farce'' of the Wye River accords and said he would not agree to further troop withdrawals until a halt to anti-Israel violence. Netanyahu, in an interview with The Associated Press, said the Palestinians were emboldened to foment street riots and threaten to declare statehood because they believed they had the Clinton administration ``in their back pocket.'' ``The Palestinians are making a farce out of the Wye River accord. They think they have the United States in their back pocket,'' said the Israeli leader. ``As long as that is the case, they will not change their behavior.'' Netanyahu said he did not believe the United States was siding with the Palestinians, but his sharply worded remarks sent a strong signal that he would like President Bill Clinton to intervene and lower Palestinian expectations prior to his Dec. 12-15 trip. Palestinians claim it is Israel that has violated the summit agreement reached in October by not freeing jailed political activists, by confiscating West Bank land for roads and allowing Jewish settlers to seize hilltops for expansion. Ahmed Qureia, speaker of the Palestinian Legislative Council and the head of the peace team that negotiated the Oslo accords, told reporters Sunday ``all means of resistance'' was justified in opposing settler activity. Netanyahu, who rejected claims of settlement expansion as ``bunk,'' was interviewed in the Cabinet room after a meeting of his unruly coalition government, which rallied behind Netanyahu on his tough stance. But officials said Science Minister Silvan Shalom attacked him for being too generous to the Palestinians by agreeing to the Clinton visit next week to Gaza and the West Bank. ``We are not going to give up territory when there are violations of the agreement and attempts to get things that weren't achieved at Wye using violence,'' Netanyahu said. Israel has threatened to scrap the next Israeli troop pullback, which is scheduled for Dec. 18, three days after Clinton's departure. The United States has said it should go ahead as scheduled. Palestinians see the Clinton trip as implicit recognition of their struggle for statehood, even though Clinton has specifically said in an interview aired on Israel's Channel 2 television that it should not be read that way. Netanyahu made clear that he would be annoyed if Air Force One landed at the newly opened Palestinian airport in Gaza, which aides said would be viewed as a strong symbol of support for Palestinian demands for sovereignty. ``We will be very disappointed if that is the case. We've said to the United States that we don't think that is necessary,'' Netanyahu said of reports that Clinton's plane would land in Gaza. He said traveling by motorcade would be quicker and more politically considerate. ``Unless somebody wants to put a thumb in our eye, I think there are better ways to travel,'' Netanyahu said. In the interview, Netanyahu stressed that he opposed Palestinian statehood and demanded that Arafat stop threatening to declare independence on May 4, 1999, when the Palestinians maintain the Oslo accords expire. ``What must be is that Yasser Arafat retracts this open and incipient violation of the Oslo and Wye River accords and recommits himself to negotiating until we get white smoke, until we get a solution. That's the only way we'll get a real peace between Israel and the Palestinians,'' Netanyahu said. In a conciliatory speech in Sweden over the weekend, Arafat stressed that he sought a negotiated settlement and did not mention May 4 as a deadline. He also said any Palestinian state would not make alliances with states hostile to Israel _ one of Netanyahu's key concerns. The Israeli leader is also demanding that Arafat drop claims that Netanyahu promised at Wye to release 750 Palestinians jailed for anti-Israel attacks that resulted in bloodshed, rather than freeing car thieves and petty criminals. Each side has a different interpretation of the understanding regarding the prisoners. Netanyahu maintains he never agreed to free those with ``blood on their hands.'' ``It's high time that Yasser Arafat admits this was agreed upon and that he's not going to make demands on Israel, including the incitement of violence,...on a trumped-up charge, '' he said. ``Israel never promised to release murders at Wye, and it won't release them.'' The issue has been the focal point for a new wave of violent protests and demonstrations in the West Bank and a hunger strike that began Saturday by the 1,700 Palestinian inmates. Israel is also upset by statements that the nearly 600-member Palestinian National Council will not reaffirm in a vote that anti-Israel clauses in the Palestinian charter have been deleted. Netanyahu maintained that only 25 members out of hundreds who live abroad had been invited so far. Netanyahu quoted Clinton as telling him that the purpose of his visit was to ``personally make sure that they actually rescind this charter that calls for Israel's destruction.'' ||||| Less than a week before U.S. President Bill Clinton is to arrive for a visit meant to bolster a new Israeli-Palestinian peace accord, the two sides exchanged angry accusations Sunday over Jewish settlements and street clashes. Ahmed Qureia, speaker of the Palestinian parliament, warned of possible violence if Israel continues to expand settlements in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, where the Palestinians hope to establish a state. ``If settlement activity continues, then all means of resistance are open,'' Qureia, who is also known as Abu Ala, told reporters in the West Bank town of Ramallah. Since the signing of a land-for-security accord, Jewish settlers have accelerated the establishment of makeshift communities on West Bank hilltops, in an explicit bid to keep the land from being turned over to the Palestinians. Meanwhile, at a meeting of the Israeli Cabinet, ministers expressed dismay over an outbreak of street clashes between Palestinian demonstrators and Israeli troops in the West Bank. ``The Palestinians have been asked to immediately stop the violence and incitement to violence,'' the Cabinet said in a statement. At least two Palestinians were injured Sunday in a confrontation outside the Jewish settlement of Ariel in the northern West Bank. Demonstrators threw stones at Israeli troops, who responded with rubber bullets and tear gas. A day earlier, 27 Palestinians and three Israeli soldiers were injured in similar clashes throughout the West Bank. And three days before that, Israelis were horrified by television footage of an Israeli soldier being dragged from a car and beaten with chunks of concrete by a Palestinian mob. Israel says Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority is orchestrating the street fighting. The Palestinians deny that. The past week's protests grew out of an increasingly bitter dispute over Palestinian prisoners held by Israel. Israel last month freed 250 of 750 prisoners it is to release under the Wye accords, but most were criminals. The Palestinians are demanding that so-called security prisoners _ those being held for anti-Israel activity _ be released instead. Also Sunday, another quarrel was brewing over the scheduled meeting of the Palestinian National Council, the Palestinian parliament-in-exile, in the Gaza Strip during Clinton's visit. At the gathering, the PNC and other Palestinians in attendance are to reaffirm the nullification of clauses in their national charter that call for Israel's destruction. Israel has demanded that the Palestinians hold an actual vote at the meeting rather than simply proclaiming the charter changed, but the Palestinians on Sunday repeated their objections to that. ``They haven't the right to give us instructions,'' Arafat said Sunday as he returned to Gaza following a trip to Europe. Clinton's visit to Israel and the Palestinian lands, which is to begin Saturday, is meant to provide impetus to the U.S.-brokered peace accords and encourage both sides to stick to a timetable for compliance. But some commentators suggested the visit was proving a polarizing force instead. ``He is coming to promote the peace process... but his visit's only actual result is a sharpening of the differences,'' Yosef Lapid wrote in Sunday's editions of the Maariv newspaper. In Israel, increasing concern is being voiced over Clinton's planned visit to Gaza, the first ever by a sitting U.S. president. At Sunday's Israeli Cabinet meeting, a shouting match broke out over the issue, according to Israel radio. ``Who invited President Clinton to the Gaza Strip?'' Silvan Shalom, the science minister, reportedly yelled at Netanyahu. Netanyahu said it had been Clinton's idea, not his. The United States has repeatedly said the visit is not intended as an endorsement of Palestinian statehood, but the Palestinians see it as a powerful boost to their sovereignty hopes. Arafat adviser Ahmed Tibi said on Israeli television that the invitation for a Clinton visit came from Israel and was ``warmly welcomed'' by the Palestinians. ||||| In an atmosphere of political tension, U.S. President Clinton met Sunday with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a bid to put the troubled Wye River peace accord back on track. After getting together for breakfast in Clinton's hotel suite, the two leaders met at Netanyahu's office and planned to talk to reporters later. The president was sure to be asked about the impeachment drama unfolding in Washington. At a late-night arrival ceremony for Clinton Saturday, Netanyahu said he hoped the president's visit would ``contribute to true peace.'' Again, the Israeli leader accused the Palestinians of ignoring commitments in peace accords. Clinton is to meet with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat on Monday in the Gaza Strip. Thousands of police were deployed throughout Israel during the Clinton visit. At the hotel where Clinton is staying, 500 policemen were posted to guard the president and his 600-member delegation. Clinton's wife, Hillary, and their daughter, Chelsea, set out on their own schedule. Mrs. Clinton toured a school in a cooperative village of Jews and Palestinians, while Chelsea visited Jerusalem's Western Wall, Judaism's holiest site. Israeli Foreign Minister Ariel Sharon told reporters during a picture-taking session with Secretary of State Madeleine Albright that Israel ``has not left'' the Wye River agreement. ``We will not give up'' on the land-for-security accord, Sharon said. But, he added, ``it should be based on mutual reciprocity.'' About two hours before Air Force One landed Saturday night, the House Judiciary Committee approved a fourth article of impeachment against Clinton. The full House will vote on the impeachment articles next week. Israeli government spokesman Moshe Fogel was asked Sunday if the success of Clinton's visit would turn on the question of revoking the Palestinian Liberation Organization's founding charter. ``President Clinton played a very important role in the Wye Memorandum and its success, and I think that it's going to be very, very important that this visit show us at least a readiness on the part of the Palestinian Authority to move forward in peace,'' Fogel said. There was no letup in violence Sunday. Palestinian stone throwers clashed with Israeli troops and an Israeli high school student was stabbed and wounded by a Palestinian teen-ager. In his remarks at Clinton's airport arrival Saturday night, Netanyahu said the peace process is in danger. ``Mr. President,'' Netanyahu said, speaking in Hebrew, ``The truth has to be told. In recent weeks the Palestinians again constantly, systematically and intentionally violated all their commitments. We are not entitled, not able and not prepared to forgo fulfillment of those commitments.'' Netanyahu, who is facing political turmoil in his hard-line coalition government, said he could not accept ``a phony peace on paper'' which is ``not honored in practice.'' Since Clinton presided over its signing in Washington in October, the land-for-security agreement has hit one snag after another. Israel froze implementation of the accord altogether, accusing Arafat of violating the deal and inciting violent street protests. Clinton said the United States shares Israel's concerns about security. ``Peace is not simply an option among many but the only choice that can avert still more years of bloodshed, apprehension and sorrow,'' he said. ``That is why I'm here.'' He said ``both sides now must face the challenge of implementing Wye.'' Both Clinton and Netanyahu have a shaky political future. The Israeli leader is fighting for his political survival as parliament prepares for a no-confidence vote within two weeks. His coalition began to weaken after he and Arafat signed the Wye River Memorandum Oct. 23 agreeing to turn over 13 percent of West Bank territory to be met by Palestinian security measures. Netanyahu has said there would be no further troop withdrawals until West Bank rioting and violence ends. Israel and the Palestinians are also in bitter disagreement over procedures for revoking passages in the Palestinian charter calling for Israel's destruction and the release of Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails for militant or political acts against the Jewish state. On Monday, the president is to fly to the Palestinian-run Gaza Strip to be welcomed by Arafat with the trappings of a state visit. Clinton's visit to Gaza and his address to the Palestinian National Council is seen by some as a boost for dreams of Palestinian statehood. ``It implies de facto recognition of a Palestinian state,'' Ziyad Abu Ziyad, a member of the Palestinian legislative council, said in an interview Sunday. ||||| On a street newly littered with the debris of battle _ stones, spent tear gas canisters, charred remnants of half-burned tires _ a sodden Palestinian flag flaps in a fitful rain-laden wind outside a house in mourning. Inside, to the tinny recorded wail of Koranic verses, neighbors and relatives of the dead man _ a 21-year-old university student felled on the roof of his own home by an Israeli soldier's rubber-coated bullet _ sipped tiny cups of coffee left unsweetened to symbolize the bitter occasion. Some smoked, a few spoke quietly among themselves, but most simply sat in reflective silence. Among those in attendance on this day, the first of the traditional three days of family mourning, was Saeb Erekat, the chief peace negotiator for Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority. The dead youth, Nasr Erekat, was a cousin of his. Erekat stayed for a time, sitting amid clan elders in Arab headdresses and teen-age nephews in American-style athletic shoes, then slipped away for a meeting in connection with President Clinton's visit beginning this weekend. ``It's been very difficult,'' he said later, asked about carrying on his negotiating duties at such a time. ``I have a great sense of sorrow and sadness, a feeling of such loss. I hope God will enable me to use my grief to strengthen my determination for peace.'' The scene at the Erekat home, in the Arab village of Abu Dis on Jerusalem's eastern outskirts, drives home a central truth about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: on both sides of the divide, the political is also deeply personal. And that inescapability goes to the heart of the quarrel's intractability. In the glare of world attention, it is easy to forget that there are fewer people living in Israel and the Palestinian lands combined than there are in New York City. In the small and jostling confines of what few here choose to call the Holy Land, the conflict touches all. Everyone has a stake in it. Israelis fret daily over soldier sons on dangerous patrol in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, or shudder when they pass a sidewalk cafe once ripped by an Islamic militant's suicide bomb. Palestinian families struggle to keep alive the memories of fathers and brothers languishing in Israeli prisons, and chafe under the checkpoints and gunsights of Israeli troops. On both sides, the youngest soak up fear and anger along with their ABCs. And elders' memories of half a century past still rise to trouble the collective sleep: the shadow of the Holocaust for Israelis, the trauma of exile and dispossession for the Palestinians. Against this backdrop, amid a landscape little changed since biblical times, terrible Old Testament themes _ lamentation and retribution, the smiting of enemies and the sharpening of swords _ spring to life once again in any day's headlines. Now comes Clinton, this most American of presidents, one who has made Middle East peacemaking a kind of personal crusade, in hopes of halting what has become one of the century's most protracted blood feuds. Clinton is no stranger to these particular hatreds. Three years ago, in another winter season, he came here to bury Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, gunned down by a nationalist Jew who could not abide the terms of a Mideast agreement that called _ just as this latest accord does _ for Israel to cede West Bank land in exchange for peace with the Palestinians. On the occasion of this visit _ first intended to celebrate the Wye River accords signed seven weeks ago in Washington, now meant to salvage them _ all three of the principals are embattled. Clinton is under an impeachment cloud; Arafat is buffeted by furious Palestinian street protests and his own failing health, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's coalition government is hanging by a thread. The days leading up to Clinton's visit have been divisive ones, contriving somehow to simultaneously tap into both sides' greatest fears. In the West Bank's worst spasm of violence in months, Israelis watched windows of Israeli-plated cars shatter from stones thrown by angry youths, saw TV footage of a cringing Israeli soldier _ now facing court martial _ being beaten bloody by a Palestinian mob, heard Palestinian officials' exhortations for a new intefadeh, or uprising. Palestinians, for their part, listened in anger as Netanyahu announced the suspension of an upcoming Israeli troop pullback in the West Bank and tried vainly to halt Israeli bulldozers expanding Jewish settlements on land they claim as their own. Both sides _ to Palestinians' satisfaction, and Israel's dismay _ came to see the visit as an implicit acknowledgement of Palestinian statehood aspirations, despite increasingly desperate American efforts to avoid casting it in that light. Clinton's foray to the Gaza Strip, which is already under Palestinian rule, will be the first by a sitting American president. Palestinians intend to play on that symbolism for all it is worth, greeting him with the strains of their once-banned national anthem. In the mourning house in Abu Dis, though, the friends and relatives of Nasr Erekat had little to say about politics and statehood. They talked about Nasr instead. Amr Erekat, 27, recalled his disbelief as he cradled his dying cousin in his arms. His 14-year-old brother Taher spoke haltingly of the big brother he had looked up to. His childhood friend, Samir Abdel Salam, remembered wishing he had stuck to his studies as diligently as Nasr had. Saeb Erekat, the peace negotiator, could find neither lesson nor logic to his young cousin's death. ``It's senseless, this rhythm of bloodshed,'' he said. ``At these difficult times, you pray for one thing, for both sides: no more of it.'' ||||| The radical Islamic group Hamas on Monday denounced U.S. President Bill Clinton's upcoming visit to the Gaza Strip but carefully avoided making any threats against him. Hamas is, 2nd graf pvs ||||| Benjamin Netanyahu's refusal to move the peace process forward, which has frustrated President Bill Clinton and angered the Palestinians, may not be enough to save his government from collapse next week. Netanyahu on Wednesday briefed his Cabinet on Clinton's three-day visit and affirmed what he told the president a day earlier _ that he would not withdraw troops in the West Bank on Friday, as stipulated by the Wye River peace accord. Clinton had hoped, 3rd graf pvs ||||| Keeping a promise to Israel and the United States, Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat on Thursday convened senior officials and legislators to revoke clauses of the PLO founding charter calling for Israel's destruction. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, meanwhile, said he has ordered the Israeli army to deal with Palestinian riots with a ``firm hand.'' He added that he would not go ahead with a West Bank troop pullback, as promised under the Wye River peace agreement, unless Arafat met a list of demands. The West Bank has been swept by stone-throwing protests in recent days, and thousands of Palestinians marched Thursday in the funeral procession of a 17-year-old stone mason, Jihad Iyad, who was killed by Israeli army gunfire a day earlier. The violence raised concern that U.S. President Bill Clinton's visit to the region, which is to start late Saturday, is fomenting more unrest rather than calming the already tense situation. Israeli hard-liners, including Cabinet ministers, have said Clinton's visit is conferring statehood status on the Palestinian areas. On Thursday, signs reading ``Clinton go home'' were strung along the Tel Aviv-Jerusalem highway and on walls in Jerusalem. The most problematic moment of the Clinton visit will be his address Monday to the Palestine National Council, the Palestinians' parliament-in-exile, and other Palestinian groups, in Gaza City. Under the Wye agreement, the PNC is to reaffirm during this session an Arafat letter to Clinton which declares clauses of the PLO founding charter calling for Israel's destruction revoked. Israel insists a vote be taken by a show of hands, while the Palestinians say only approval by acclamation is required. Netanyahu said Thursday he will not settle for anything less than a vote, even if Clinton declares the PNC session a success without it. ``It is Israel which determines issues connected with its future,'' Netanyahu said when asked by Israel radio whether he would be ready to enter a showdown with Clinton over the issue. It is unlikely the U.S. president would side with Israel in such a dispute because it would mean that the main purpose of his visit, to usher in the next stage of the Wye agreement, had failed. Immediately after the PNC session, Israel is to transfer five percent of the West Bank from its sole control to joint jurisdiction. Netanyahu said last week he was freezing the pullback over what he claimed were systematic Palestinian violations of the peace accord. He reiterated Thursday that he would not change his decision unless Arafat publicly dropped plans to unilaterally declare a Palestinian state in May. The prime minister's critics have said he is seizing excuse after excuse to walk away from the agreement because he faces a very real threat from hard-liners in his coalition to bring down the government in the event of another troop withdrawal. The Palestinians, meanwhile, pressed ahead with implementing the accord. On Thursday, 98 members of the 124-member Palestinian Central Council met at Arafat's seaside headquarters to hold a vote on whether to approve the Arafat letter concerning the PLO charter. The meeting is an interim step, ahead of Monday's PNC session, and is stipulated by the Wye agreement. A simple majority of 63 members is required, and a vote was expected by Thursday evening. The council has not met for years and was revived specifically for Thursday's vote. It consists of PNC delegates, members of the Palestinian legislative council and the PLO Executive Committee, among others.

Security high for Clinton's visit to Gaza, part of the Wye Accord, as Palestinian leaders revoke a 1964 Israeli destruction clause. Israel claims Air Force One landing in Palestinian is sovereign recognition. It won't withdraw West Bank troops unless Palestinians formally vote to revoke the clause and violence stops. Palestine says Israel violated the Accord by improper prisoner releases, roadbuilding and settlement expansion. It warns of violence and there have been stone-throwing protests. Radical Islam group Hamas denounces the visit and the Accord. Clinton has made ending the long feud a crusade. Both Clinton and Netanyahu's leadership threatened.

Armored personnel carriers were deployed Tuesday around the convention center where U.S. President Bill Clinton will address 1,500 Palestinian delegates next week. U.S. Secret Service agents have already arrived in Gaza to work with their Palestinian counterparts on how to protect Clinton during his first visit to Palestinian areas. ``There is cooperation with the American security people. We have our own plan. The Americans have their own procedures as well,'' said the Palestinian police chief, Ghazi Jabali. The Islamic militant group Hamas, which hopes to scuttle the accord, has been careful not to openly threaten Clinton. However, Hamas has carried out more than a dozen suicide bombings in Israel in an attempt to bring peace talks with Israel to a halt. On Monday, Clinton and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat are to address members of the Palestine National Council and delegates from other groups, at the Shawa Cultural Center in Gaza City. Traffic near the Shawa Center still flowed normally Tuesday, but plainclothes security as well as uniformed officers with M-17 and AK-47 assault rifles began patrolling in the vicinity. Streets around the center are to be closed days before the Clinton visit. Four armored personnel were parked at the corners of the convention center, with members of Arafat's elite bodyguard unit, known as Force 17, sitting on the vehicles. APCs were also deployed outside Arafat's guest house and near the Palestinian legislative council. Jabali said the APCs were part of a Palestinian security plan that has been presented to the Americans. U.S. security agents, in turn, have given their Palestinian counterparts sophisticated explosives detection equipment. ``The Palestinian police are ready to protect President Clinton here in Gaza or in Bethlehem,'' Jabali said, referring to Clinton's expected visit next Tuesday to the Church of the Nativity in the biblical West Bank town of Bethlehem In Jerusalem, Clinton's entourage of 1,200 people will take over the Jerusalem Hilton, at a cost of half a million dollars. The hotel boasts stunning views of Jerusalem's walled Old City and the slopes of the Judean Desert. ||||| Israel affirmed Friday that it will not withdraw troops in the West Bank unless the top Palestinian decision-making body holds a vote to annul clauses of the PLO charter calling for Israel's destruction. Just a day before U.S. President Bill Clinton's arrival, Israel also rejected a U.S. compromise on the release of Palestinian prisoners, an issue that has sparked riots in the West Bank. The Palestinians have said they would revoke the clauses only by acclamation, not by a vote, when the Palestine National Council meets on Monday in Clinton's presence. With its demand, Israel may be setting itself up for a showdown with Clinton whose visit to Israel and the Palestinian is ushering in the next stage of the Wye River land-for-security agreement he helped negotiate. Under the accord, the annulment of the offending provisions by the PNC is to clear the way for an Israeli troop pullback. Clinton is unlikely to declare the PNC has not completed its task because that would mean his high-profile visit has been a failure. However, Israeli officials said they would not drop their demand for a vote. ``They have to vote in the PNC,'' said Israeli government spokesman Moshe Fogel. Otherwise, he said, Israel will not turn over additional West Bank territory to the Palestinians because ``transfer of territory is irreversible.'' In Washington, deputy U.S. State Department spokesman James Foley was evasive on whether the United States expected a vote from the PNC. ``The procedures need to be clear enough that nullification has taken place,'' he said. A senior Palestinian official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the United States has not asked Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat to consider holding a vote. On Thursday, the Palestinians took an interim step when a smaller leadership body, the 124-member Palestinian Central Council, declared the charter clauses revoked. The 95 members present were asked whether they approved a letter in which Arafat informed Clinton that the charter clauses calling for Israel's destruction were null and void. In all, 81 voted in favor, seven against and seven abstained. Asked about the decision, Arafat would only say that ``it was a very important and constructive meeting.'' The Palestinian leader also said he hoped Clinton would exert pressure on Israel to keep its obligations under the Wye agreement. The Palestine Liberation Organization charter was drawn up three decades ago, long before Israel and the Palestinians started their peace process in 1993. The Palestinians say they took all the required steps to revoke the pertinent clauses at a PNC session in Gaza in 1996. However, Netanyahu has said the PNC never completed the job. During the Wye River talks, the Palestinians agreed in a compromise to invite PNC members and delegates from other groups to Gaza to hear Clinton and Arafat speak. The Wye accord says delegates should ``reaffirm'' the Arafat letter to Clinton, but does not specifically refer to a vote. Former Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres sided with the Palestinians on Friday. ``They did it once, they did it twice, they don't have to do it again,'' said Peres, who was prime minister during the PNC vote in 1996. Israel and the Palestinians have also accused each other of violating other elements of the Wye agreement. A key point of contention has been Israel's pledge to release 750 Palestinian prisoners in three stages by the end of January. The Palestinians have said Israel broke a promise to release prisoners held for anti-Israeli activities. Israel said it never made such a pledge, and accused the Palestinian Authority of incitement over the prisoner issue. Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said the United States offered a compromise, a trilateral committee to go over the list of prisoners one by one and determine who will be released. But Israeli Cabinet Secretary Danny Naveh said Friday such a proposal was unacceptable. ``Israel has not been offered such a compromise and there will not be such a compromise,'' Naveh said. On Friday, about 2,000 supporters of the Islamic militant Hamas movement marched through the West Bank town of Nablus to press for the release or prisoners. ``We want prisoners, not Clinton,'' the crowd chanted. At Jerusalem's Al Aqsa Mosque, Islam's third holiest site, the prayer leader, Yousef Abu Sneineh, spoke out sharply against the U.S.-brokered peace agreement. ``America supports a peace agreement that further reinforces the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian lands,'' he said. ||||| President Clinton will travel to Gaza next month to address Palestinian leaders, the White House said Friday. He is to speak at what the Palestinians are describing as a historic meeting to formally revoke anti-Israel clauses in the 1964 Palestinian charter. Israel demanded revocation of the clauses at U.S.-brokered negotiations last month that led to the latest land-for-peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians. As part of that settlement, reached at Wye, Md., Clinton agreed to travel to territory controlled by the Palestinian Authority to speak at the meeting of the Palestinian National Council, the de facto parliament. According to a schedule released Friday by the White House, Clinton will visit Gaza, the West Bank and Israel during a four-day trip that will begin on Dec. 12. He is to meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel and Yasser Arafat, the Palestinian leader, before returning to Washington on Dec. 15. Clinton administration officials said the White House had not yet decided whether Clinton would fly to the newly opened Gaza International Airport aboard Air Force One, given the symbolism of the president's jet landing on Palestinian soil with the trappings of a state visit. Officials said the White House was fearful of upsetting Israeli leaders who are worried that the president's planned visit to Gaza appears to be a step toward American recognition of a Palestinian state. The White House said the president would ``speak to the Israeli and Palestinian people about the importance of the Wye agreement and the need to continue to support the Middle East peace process.'' The meeting in Gaza on Dec. 14 is bound to be contentious, given that many prominent Palestinians have charged that the Wye agreement allows the Israeli government to backtrack on promises made to the Palestinians in their 1994 peace settlement. The Palestinians have insisted that they have already revoked clauses in the 1964 charter that called for Israel's destruction. In January, Arafat wrote to the White House, listing the anti-Israel provisions that he said had been annulled. But the letter did not satisfy the Israelis. And during the talks in Maryland last month, Arafat agreed to call a meeting of the national council to ``reaffirm'' the decision to revoke the clauses. In order to guarantee passage of a motion to annul the provisions, Arafat is being allowed under an agreement with the Israelis and the United States to pack the council meeting in Gaza with his loyalists, and to conduct the vote by a show of hands instead of a ballot. During a recent interview with Israeli television, Clinton brushed aside concerns that his visit to Gaza might be seen as a step toward U.S. recognition of a Palestinian state. ``That is not what I'm doing in going there,'' he said. ``I have tried strictly to adhere to the position of the United States that we would not take a position on any final status issue.'' He said he was traveling to Gaza at the recommendation of, among others, Netanyahu. ``The prime minister wanted me to go there and wanted us all to make this pitch,'' he said, adding that he would ask the Palestinian National Council ``to support the peace and to renounce the idea of animosity toward and opposition to the existence of the state of Israel, and instead embrace the path not only of peace but of cooperation.'' ||||| Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday accused Yasser Arafat of ``making a farce'' of the Wye River accords and said he would not agree to further troop withdrawals until a halt to anti-Israel violence. Netanyahu, in an interview with The Associated Press, said the Palestinians were emboldened to foment street riots and threaten to declare statehood because they believed they had the Clinton administration ``in their back pocket.'' ``The Palestinians are making a farce out of the Wye River accord. They think they have the United States in their back pocket,'' said the Israeli leader. ``As long as that is the case, they will not change their behavior.'' Netanyahu said he did not believe the United States was siding with the Palestinians, but his sharply worded remarks sent a strong signal that he would like President Bill Clinton to intervene and lower Palestinian expectations prior to his Dec. 12-15 trip. Palestinians claim it is Israel that has violated the summit agreement reached in October by not freeing jailed political activists, by confiscating West Bank land for roads and allowing Jewish settlers to seize hilltops for expansion. Ahmed Qureia, speaker of the Palestinian Legislative Council and the head of the peace team that negotiated the Oslo accords, told reporters Sunday ``all means of resistance'' was justified in opposing settler activity. Netanyahu, who rejected claims of settlement expansion as ``bunk,'' was interviewed in the Cabinet room after a meeting of his unruly coalition government, which rallied behind Netanyahu on his tough stance. But officials said Science Minister Silvan Shalom attacked him for being too generous to the Palestinians by agreeing to the Clinton visit next week to Gaza and the West Bank. ``We are not going to give up territory when there are violations of the agreement and attempts to get things that weren't achieved at Wye using violence,'' Netanyahu said. Israel has threatened to scrap the next Israeli troop pullback, which is scheduled for Dec. 18, three days after Clinton's departure. The United States has said it should go ahead as scheduled. Palestinians see the Clinton trip as implicit recognition of their struggle for statehood, even though Clinton has specifically said in an interview aired on Israel's Channel 2 television that it should not be read that way. Netanyahu made clear that he would be annoyed if Air Force One landed at the newly opened Palestinian airport in Gaza, which aides said would be viewed as a strong symbol of support for Palestinian demands for sovereignty. ``We will be very disappointed if that is the case. We've said to the United States that we don't think that is necessary,'' Netanyahu said of reports that Clinton's plane would land in Gaza. He said traveling by motorcade would be quicker and more politically considerate. ``Unless somebody wants to put a thumb in our eye, I think there are better ways to travel,'' Netanyahu said. In the interview, Netanyahu stressed that he opposed Palestinian statehood and demanded that Arafat stop threatening to declare independence on May 4, 1999, when the Palestinians maintain the Oslo accords expire. ``What must be is that Yasser Arafat retracts this open and incipient violation of the Oslo and Wye River accords and recommits himself to negotiating until we get white smoke, until we get a solution. That's the only way we'll get a real peace between Israel and the Palestinians,'' Netanyahu said. In a conciliatory speech in Sweden over the weekend, Arafat stressed that he sought a negotiated settlement and did not mention May 4 as a deadline. He also said any Palestinian state would not make alliances with states hostile to Israel _ one of Netanyahu's key concerns. The Israeli leader is also demanding that Arafat drop claims that Netanyahu promised at Wye to release 750 Palestinians jailed for anti-Israel attacks that resulted in bloodshed, rather than freeing car thieves and petty criminals. Each side has a different interpretation of the understanding regarding the prisoners. Netanyahu maintains he never agreed to free those with ``blood on their hands.'' ``It's high time that Yasser Arafat admits this was agreed upon and that he's not going to make demands on Israel, including the incitement of violence,...on a trumped-up charge, '' he said. ``Israel never promised to release murders at Wye, and it won't release them.'' The issue has been the focal point for a new wave of violent protests and demonstrations in the West Bank and a hunger strike that began Saturday by the 1,700 Palestinian inmates. Israel is also upset by statements that the nearly 600-member Palestinian National Council will not reaffirm in a vote that anti-Israel clauses in the Palestinian charter have been deleted. Netanyahu maintained that only 25 members out of hundreds who live abroad had been invited so far. Netanyahu quoted Clinton as telling him that the purpose of his visit was to ``personally make sure that they actually rescind this charter that calls for Israel's destruction.'' ||||| Less than a week before U.S. President Bill Clinton is to arrive for a visit meant to bolster a new Israeli-Palestinian peace accord, the two sides exchanged angry accusations Sunday over Jewish settlements and street clashes. Ahmed Qureia, speaker of the Palestinian parliament, warned of possible violence if Israel continues to expand settlements in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, where the Palestinians hope to establish a state. ``If settlement activity continues, then all means of resistance are open,'' Qureia, who is also known as Abu Ala, told reporters in the West Bank town of Ramallah. Since the signing of a land-for-security accord, Jewish settlers have accelerated the establishment of makeshift communities on West Bank hilltops, in an explicit bid to keep the land from being turned over to the Palestinians. Meanwhile, at a meeting of the Israeli Cabinet, ministers expressed dismay over an outbreak of street clashes between Palestinian demonstrators and Israeli troops in the West Bank. ``The Palestinians have been asked to immediately stop the violence and incitement to violence,'' the Cabinet said in a statement. At least two Palestinians were injured Sunday in a confrontation outside the Jewish settlement of Ariel in the northern West Bank. Demonstrators threw stones at Israeli troops, who responded with rubber bullets and tear gas. A day earlier, 27 Palestinians and three Israeli soldiers were injured in similar clashes throughout the West Bank. And three days before that, Israelis were horrified by television footage of an Israeli soldier being dragged from a car and beaten with chunks of concrete by a Palestinian mob. Israel says Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority is orchestrating the street fighting. The Palestinians deny that. The past week's protests grew out of an increasingly bitter dispute over Palestinian prisoners held by Israel. Israel last month freed 250 of 750 prisoners it is to release under the Wye accords, but most were criminals. The Palestinians are demanding that so-called security prisoners _ those being held for anti-Israel activity _ be released instead. Also Sunday, another quarrel was brewing over the scheduled meeting of the Palestinian National Council, the Palestinian parliament-in-exile, in the Gaza Strip during Clinton's visit. At the gathering, the PNC and other Palestinians in attendance are to reaffirm the nullification of clauses in their national charter that call for Israel's destruction. Israel has demanded that the Palestinians hold an actual vote at the meeting rather than simply proclaiming the charter changed, but the Palestinians on Sunday repeated their objections to that. ``They haven't the right to give us instructions,'' Arafat said Sunday as he returned to Gaza following a trip to Europe. Clinton's visit to Israel and the Palestinian lands, which is to begin Saturday, is meant to provide impetus to the U.S.-brokered peace accords and encourage both sides to stick to a timetable for compliance. But some commentators suggested the visit was proving a polarizing force instead. ``He is coming to promote the peace process... but his visit's only actual result is a sharpening of the differences,'' Yosef Lapid wrote in Sunday's editions of the Maariv newspaper. In Israel, increasing concern is being voiced over Clinton's planned visit to Gaza, the first ever by a sitting U.S. president. At Sunday's Israeli Cabinet meeting, a shouting match broke out over the issue, according to Israel radio. ``Who invited President Clinton to the Gaza Strip?'' Silvan Shalom, the science minister, reportedly yelled at Netanyahu. Netanyahu said it had been Clinton's idea, not his. The United States has repeatedly said the visit is not intended as an endorsement of Palestinian statehood, but the Palestinians see it as a powerful boost to their sovereignty hopes. Arafat adviser Ahmed Tibi said on Israeli television that the invitation for a Clinton visit came from Israel and was ``warmly welcomed'' by the Palestinians. ||||| In an atmosphere of political tension, U.S. President Clinton met Sunday with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a bid to put the troubled Wye River peace accord back on track. After getting together for breakfast in Clinton's hotel suite, the two leaders met at Netanyahu's office and planned to talk to reporters later. The president was sure to be asked about the impeachment drama unfolding in Washington. At a late-night arrival ceremony for Clinton Saturday, Netanyahu said he hoped the president's visit would ``contribute to true peace.'' Again, the Israeli leader accused the Palestinians of ignoring commitments in peace accords. Clinton is to meet with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat on Monday in the Gaza Strip. Thousands of police were deployed throughout Israel during the Clinton visit. At the hotel where Clinton is staying, 500 policemen were posted to guard the president and his 600-member delegation. Clinton's wife, Hillary, and their daughter, Chelsea, set out on their own schedule. Mrs. Clinton toured a school in a cooperative village of Jews and Palestinians, while Chelsea visited Jerusalem's Western Wall, Judaism's holiest site. Israeli Foreign Minister Ariel Sharon told reporters during a picture-taking session with Secretary of State Madeleine Albright that Israel ``has not left'' the Wye River agreement. ``We will not give up'' on the land-for-security accord, Sharon said. But, he added, ``it should be based on mutual reciprocity.'' About two hours before Air Force One landed Saturday night, the House Judiciary Committee approved a fourth article of impeachment against Clinton. The full House will vote on the impeachment articles next week. Israeli government spokesman Moshe Fogel was asked Sunday if the success of Clinton's visit would turn on the question of revoking the Palestinian Liberation Organization's founding charter. ``President Clinton played a very important role in the Wye Memorandum and its success, and I think that it's going to be very, very important that this visit show us at least a readiness on the part of the Palestinian Authority to move forward in peace,'' Fogel said. There was no letup in violence Sunday. Palestinian stone throwers clashed with Israeli troops and an Israeli high school student was stabbed and wounded by a Palestinian teen-ager. In his remarks at Clinton's airport arrival Saturday night, Netanyahu said the peace process is in danger. ``Mr. President,'' Netanyahu said, speaking in Hebrew, ``The truth has to be told. In recent weeks the Palestinians again constantly, systematically and intentionally violated all their commitments. We are not entitled, not able and not prepared to forgo fulfillment of those commitments.'' Netanyahu, who is facing political turmoil in his hard-line coalition government, said he could not accept ``a phony peace on paper'' which is ``not honored in practice.'' Since Clinton presided over its signing in Washington in October, the land-for-security agreement has hit one snag after another. Israel froze implementation of the accord altogether, accusing Arafat of violating the deal and inciting violent street protests. Clinton said the United States shares Israel's concerns about security. ``Peace is not simply an option among many but the only choice that can avert still more years of bloodshed, apprehension and sorrow,'' he said. ``That is why I'm here.'' He said ``both sides now must face the challenge of implementing Wye.'' Both Clinton and Netanyahu have a shaky political future. The Israeli leader is fighting for his political survival as parliament prepares for a no-confidence vote within two weeks. His coalition began to weaken after he and Arafat signed the Wye River Memorandum Oct. 23 agreeing to turn over 13 percent of West Bank territory to be met by Palestinian security measures. Netanyahu has said there would be no further troop withdrawals until West Bank rioting and violence ends. Israel and the Palestinians are also in bitter disagreement over procedures for revoking passages in the Palestinian charter calling for Israel's destruction and the release of Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails for militant or political acts against the Jewish state. On Monday, the president is to fly to the Palestinian-run Gaza Strip to be welcomed by Arafat with the trappings of a state visit. Clinton's visit to Gaza and his address to the Palestinian National Council is seen by some as a boost for dreams of Palestinian statehood. ``It implies de facto recognition of a Palestinian state,'' Ziyad Abu Ziyad, a member of the Palestinian legislative council, said in an interview Sunday. ||||| On a street newly littered with the debris of battle _ stones, spent tear gas canisters, charred remnants of half-burned tires _ a sodden Palestinian flag flaps in a fitful rain-laden wind outside a house in mourning. Inside, to the tinny recorded wail of Koranic verses, neighbors and relatives of the dead man _ a 21-year-old university student felled on the roof of his own home by an Israeli soldier's rubber-coated bullet _ sipped tiny cups of coffee left unsweetened to symbolize the bitter occasion. Some smoked, a few spoke quietly among themselves, but most simply sat in reflective silence. Among those in attendance on this day, the first of the traditional three days of family mourning, was Saeb Erekat, the chief peace negotiator for Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority. The dead youth, Nasr Erekat, was a cousin of his. Erekat stayed for a time, sitting amid clan elders in Arab headdresses and teen-age nephews in American-style athletic shoes, then slipped away for a meeting in connection with President Clinton's visit beginning this weekend. ``It's been very difficult,'' he said later, asked about carrying on his negotiating duties at such a time. ``I have a great sense of sorrow and sadness, a feeling of such loss. I hope God will enable me to use my grief to strengthen my determination for peace.'' The scene at the Erekat home, in the Arab village of Abu Dis on Jerusalem's eastern outskirts, drives home a central truth about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: on both sides of the divide, the political is also deeply personal. And that inescapability goes to the heart of the quarrel's intractability. In the glare of world attention, it is easy to forget that there are fewer people living in Israel and the Palestinian lands combined than there are in New York City. In the small and jostling confines of what few here choose to call the Holy Land, the conflict touches all. Everyone has a stake in it. Israelis fret daily over soldier sons on dangerous patrol in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, or shudder when they pass a sidewalk cafe once ripped by an Islamic militant's suicide bomb. Palestinian families struggle to keep alive the memories of fathers and brothers languishing in Israeli prisons, and chafe under the checkpoints and gunsights of Israeli troops. On both sides, the youngest soak up fear and anger along with their ABCs. And elders' memories of half a century past still rise to trouble the collective sleep: the shadow of the Holocaust for Israelis, the trauma of exile and dispossession for the Palestinians. Against this backdrop, amid a landscape little changed since biblical times, terrible Old Testament themes _ lamentation and retribution, the smiting of enemies and the sharpening of swords _ spring to life once again in any day's headlines. Now comes Clinton, this most American of presidents, one who has made Middle East peacemaking a kind of personal crusade, in hopes of halting what has become one of the century's most protracted blood feuds. Clinton is no stranger to these particular hatreds. Three years ago, in another winter season, he came here to bury Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, gunned down by a nationalist Jew who could not abide the terms of a Mideast agreement that called _ just as this latest accord does _ for Israel to cede West Bank land in exchange for peace with the Palestinians. On the occasion of this visit _ first intended to celebrate the Wye River accords signed seven weeks ago in Washington, now meant to salvage them _ all three of the principals are embattled. Clinton is under an impeachment cloud; Arafat is buffeted by furious Palestinian street protests and his own failing health, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's coalition government is hanging by a thread. The days leading up to Clinton's visit have been divisive ones, contriving somehow to simultaneously tap into both sides' greatest fears. In the West Bank's worst spasm of violence in months, Israelis watched windows of Israeli-plated cars shatter from stones thrown by angry youths, saw TV footage of a cringing Israeli soldier _ now facing court martial _ being beaten bloody by a Palestinian mob, heard Palestinian officials' exhortations for a new intefadeh, or uprising. Palestinians, for their part, listened in anger as Netanyahu announced the suspension of an upcoming Israeli troop pullback in the West Bank and tried vainly to halt Israeli bulldozers expanding Jewish settlements on land they claim as their own. Both sides _ to Palestinians' satisfaction, and Israel's dismay _ came to see the visit as an implicit acknowledgement of Palestinian statehood aspirations, despite increasingly desperate American efforts to avoid casting it in that light. Clinton's foray to the Gaza Strip, which is already under Palestinian rule, will be the first by a sitting American president. Palestinians intend to play on that symbolism for all it is worth, greeting him with the strains of their once-banned national anthem. In the mourning house in Abu Dis, though, the friends and relatives of Nasr Erekat had little to say about politics and statehood. They talked about Nasr instead. Amr Erekat, 27, recalled his disbelief as he cradled his dying cousin in his arms. His 14-year-old brother Taher spoke haltingly of the big brother he had looked up to. His childhood friend, Samir Abdel Salam, remembered wishing he had stuck to his studies as diligently as Nasr had. Saeb Erekat, the peace negotiator, could find neither lesson nor logic to his young cousin's death. ``It's senseless, this rhythm of bloodshed,'' he said. ``At these difficult times, you pray for one thing, for both sides: no more of it.'' ||||| The radical Islamic group Hamas on Monday denounced U.S. President Bill Clinton's upcoming visit to the Gaza Strip but carefully avoided making any threats against him. Hamas is, 2nd graf pvs ||||| Benjamin Netanyahu's refusal to move the peace process forward, which has frustrated President Bill Clinton and angered the Palestinians, may not be enough to save his government from collapse next week. Netanyahu on Wednesday briefed his Cabinet on Clinton's three-day visit and affirmed what he told the president a day earlier _ that he would not withdraw troops in the West Bank on Friday, as stipulated by the Wye River peace accord. Clinton had hoped, 3rd graf pvs ||||| Keeping a promise to Israel and the United States, Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat on Thursday convened senior officials and legislators to revoke clauses of the PLO founding charter calling for Israel's destruction. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, meanwhile, said he has ordered the Israeli army to deal with Palestinian riots with a ``firm hand.'' He added that he would not go ahead with a West Bank troop pullback, as promised under the Wye River peace agreement, unless Arafat met a list of demands. The West Bank has been swept by stone-throwing protests in recent days, and thousands of Palestinians marched Thursday in the funeral procession of a 17-year-old stone mason, Jihad Iyad, who was killed by Israeli army gunfire a day earlier. The violence raised concern that U.S. President Bill Clinton's visit to the region, which is to start late Saturday, is fomenting more unrest rather than calming the already tense situation. Israeli hard-liners, including Cabinet ministers, have said Clinton's visit is conferring statehood status on the Palestinian areas. On Thursday, signs reading ``Clinton go home'' were strung along the Tel Aviv-Jerusalem highway and on walls in Jerusalem. The most problematic moment of the Clinton visit will be his address Monday to the Palestine National Council, the Palestinians' parliament-in-exile, and other Palestinian groups, in Gaza City. Under the Wye agreement, the PNC is to reaffirm during this session an Arafat letter to Clinton which declares clauses of the PLO founding charter calling for Israel's destruction revoked. Israel insists a vote be taken by a show of hands, while the Palestinians say only approval by acclamation is required. Netanyahu said Thursday he will not settle for anything less than a vote, even if Clinton declares the PNC session a success without it. ``It is Israel which determines issues connected with its future,'' Netanyahu said when asked by Israel radio whether he would be ready to enter a showdown with Clinton over the issue. It is unlikely the U.S. president would side with Israel in such a dispute because it would mean that the main purpose of his visit, to usher in the next stage of the Wye agreement, had failed. Immediately after the PNC session, Israel is to transfer five percent of the West Bank from its sole control to joint jurisdiction. Netanyahu said last week he was freezing the pullback over what he claimed were systematic Palestinian violations of the peace accord. He reiterated Thursday that he would not change his decision unless Arafat publicly dropped plans to unilaterally declare a Palestinian state in May. The prime minister's critics have said he is seizing excuse after excuse to walk away from the agreement because he faces a very real threat from hard-liners in his coalition to bring down the government in the event of another troop withdrawal. The Palestinians, meanwhile, pressed ahead with implementing the accord. On Thursday, 98 members of the 124-member Palestinian Central Council met at Arafat's seaside headquarters to hold a vote on whether to approve the Arafat letter concerning the PLO charter. The meeting is an interim step, ahead of Monday's PNC session, and is stipulated by the Wye agreement. A simple majority of 63 members is required, and a vote was expected by Thursday evening. The council has not met for years and was revived specifically for Thursday's vote. It consists of PNC delegates, members of the Palestinian legislative council and the PLO Executive Committee, among others.

Clinton traveled to the mid-East in December in an effort to energize the Wye agreement signed by Israel and Palestine. Problems immediately faced this accord, intended to trade Israeli territory for security. Questions remained on which prisoners should be released and what constituted a vote to revoke a 1964 call to destroy Israel. Jewish settlers continued to take more lands. Violence and demonstrations went on. The Israeli far right was angry. Clinton was facing impeachment hearings. History and hatred were too strong for him to succeed. Netanyahu finally refused to move the peace process forward, but probably still will be voted out of office.

Endeavour's astronauts connected the first two building blocks of the international space station on Sunday, creating a seven-story tower in the shuttle cargo bay. It was the first time that the Russian-built Zarya control module and the made-in-America Unity chamber had ever touched. It looked to be a perfect and, hopefully, long-lasting fit. ``We have capture of Zarya,'' commander Robert Cabana announced the moment the two pieces came together. ``Congratulations to the crew of the good ship Endeavour,'' replied Mission Control. ``That's terrific.'' The 240-mile-high construction job began two hours earlier with Nancy Currie's capture of Zarya (Russian for Sunrise) using the shuttle robot arm. ``We're halfway home,'' Cabana said. Then came the hard part: stacking the two giant cylinders in the cargo bay. The two station pieces are so big _ 77 feet from the tip of one to the tip of the other with a combined mass of 70,000 pounds _ that Currie and her crewmates had to rely on a computerized vision system and camera views, rather than direct line of sight. This was the first time such a ``blind'' docking had ever been attempted. Currie positioned the solar-winged Zarya, still on the end of the shuttle robot arm, several inches directly above Unity. It was slow going; she wanted and needed perfect alignment. Once she was sure she had it, Cabana fired Endeavour's thrusters, and the brief burst raised the shuttle and thereby Unity enough for the docking mechanisms on the two station components to snap together. The historical moment occurred above the South Pacific. The union _ intended to last the station's 15-year or more lifetime _ set the stage for a spacewalk by two astronauts on Monday to attach electrical connectors and cables between the two components. Mission Control thought Sunday's work might take hours longer than planned and gave the six astronauts plenty of time for the tasks. But everything occurred more or less when and how it was supposed to, aside from a piece of space junk that strayed too close. Before beginning their final approach to Zarya, the six astronauts had to steer clear of a chunk of a rocket launched last month from California. Mission Control ordered the pilots to fire the shuttle thrusters to put an extra three miles between Endeavour and the space junk, putting Endeavour a total of five miles from the orbiting debris. The smaller gap would have been ``probably a little too close for comfort,'' Mission Control said. The bigger worry, by far, was over Endeavour's pursuit and capture of Zarya, and its coupling with Unity. The shuttle's 50-foot robot arm had never before handled an object as massive as the 41-foot, 44,000-pound Zarya, a power and propulsion module that was launched from Kazakstan on Nov. 20. It will provide all of the necessary electricity and steering for the fledgling space station until a permanent control module can be launched next summer. Minutes after Zarya's capture, Cabana called down that two antennas on the module were still undeployed as Russian flight controllers had feared. The antennas must be fully deployed in order for Zarya's manual docking system to work; that system won't be needed before next summer, officials said. The only other problem was with a Zarya battery; the astronauts took up a replacement part. The 36-foot, 25,000-pound Unity, the first American-made component, will serve as a connecting passageway, or vestibule, for future modules. It was crucial that Zarya and Unity be joined; if they could not be connected with the robot arm, NASA would have sent out two spacewalking astronauts to manually fit them together. In all, three spacewalks are planned for Endeavour's 12-day flight, not only to hook up electrical connections between the two modules but to install handrails and other tools for future crews. The joined modules will be released from Endeavour once all of the work is completed. NASA estimates 43 more launches and 159 more spacewalks will be needed after this mission to assemble the entire orbiting complex. Once completed, the 16-nation space station will have a mass of 1 million pounds, be longer than a football field, and house up to seven astronauts and cosmonauts. ||||| Endeavour's astronauts connected the first two building blocks of the international space station on Sunday, creating a seven-story tower in the shuttle cargo bay. It was the first time that the Russian-built Zarya control module and the made-in-America Unity chamber had ever touched. It looked to be a perfect and, hopefully, long-lasting fit. ``We have capture of Zarya,'' commander Robert Cabana announced the moment the two pieces came together. ``Congratulations to the crew of the good ship Endeavour,'' replied Mission Control. ``That's terrific.'' The 240-mile-high construction job began two hours earlier with Nancy Currie's capture of Zarya (Russian for Sunrise) using the shuttle robot arm. ``We're halfway home,'' Cabana said. Then came the hard part: stacking the two giant cylinders in the cargo bay. The two station pieces are so big _ 77 feet from the tip of one to the tip of the other with a combined mass of 70,000 pounds _ that Currie and her crewmates had to rely on a computerized vision system and camera views, rather than direct line of sight. This was the first time such a ``blind'' docking had ever been attempted. Currie positioned the solar-winged Zarya, still on the end of the shuttle robot arm, several inches directly above Unity. It was slow going; she wanted and needed perfect alignment. Once she was sure she had it, Cabana fired Endeavour's thrusters, and the brief burst raised the shuttle and thereby Unity enough for the docking mechanisms on the two station components to snap together. The historical moment occurred above the South Pacific. It took several tries, however, for Zarya and Unity to be pulled tightly together. The docking ring between them would not retract properly; Mission Control quickly traced the problem to the attached robot arm and asked the crew to release its hold on the docked Zarya. That did the trick. The union _ intended to last the station's 15-year or more lifetime _ set the stage for a spacewalk by two astronauts on Monday to attach electrical connectors and cables between the two components. Mission Control thought Sunday's work might take hours longer than planned and gave the six astronauts plenty of time for the tasks. But everything occurred more or less when and how it was supposed to, aside from a piece of space junk that strayed too close. Before beginning their final approach to Zarya, the six astronauts had to steer clear of a chunk of a rocket launched last month from California. Mission Control ordered the pilots to fire the shuttle thrusters to put an extra three miles between Endeavour and the space junk, putting Endeavour a total of five miles from the orbiting debris. The smaller gap would have been ``probably a little too close for comfort,'' Mission Control said. The bigger worry, by far, was over Endeavour's pursuit and capture of Zarya, and its coupling with Unity. The shuttle's 50-foot robot arm had never before handled an object as massive as the 41-foot, 44,000-pound Zarya, a power and propulsion module that was launched from Kazakstan on Nov. 20. It will provide all of the necessary electricity and steering for the fledgling space station until a permanent control module can be launched next summer. Minutes after Zarya's capture, Cabana called down that two antennas on the module were still undeployed as Russian flight controllers had feared. The antennas must be fully deployed in order for Zarya's manual docking system to work; that system won't be needed before next summer, officials said. The only other problem was with a Zarya battery; the astronauts took up a replacement part. The 36-foot, 25,000-pound Unity, the first American-made component, will serve as a connecting passageway, or vestibule, for future modules. It was crucial that Zarya and Unity be joined; if they could not be connected with the robot arm, NASA would have sent out two spacewalking astronauts to manually fit them together. In all, three spacewalks are planned for Endeavour's 12-day flight, not only to hook up electrical connections between the two modules but to install handrails and other tools for future crews. The joined modules will be released from Endeavour once all of the work is completed. NASA estimates 43 more launches and 159 more spacewalks will be needed after this mission to assemble the entire orbiting complex. Once completed, the 16-nation space station will have a mass of 1 million pounds, be longer than a football field, and house up to seven astronauts and cosmonauts. ||||| Following a series of intricate maneuvers and the skillful use of the space shuttle Endeavour's robot arm, astronauts on Sunday joined the first two of many segments that will form the international space station. The shuttle and its crew of six snared the Russian-made Zarya control module after chasing it around the Earth in ever-closing orbits throughout the day. Less than an hour after a rendezvous 240 miles above the Earth shortly before 6 p.m., Lt. Col. Nancy Currie of the Army deftly used the 50-foot arm to grab the 40,000-pound cylinder as the craft passed above Russia and to slowly pull it toward the shuttle. Seeing Zarya up close, Col. Robert Cabana of the Marines, the shuttle commander, confirmed that two antennas had failed to deploy from the module following its launch from Kazakhstan on Nov. 20. There were earlier indications that the antennas, which will be used later by the station to manually assist spacecraft dockings, had not extended. Currie took almost two hours to painstakingly move Zarya above the American-made Unity docking port positioned in Endeavour's cargo bay. When the two pieces were aligned within inches of one another, Cabana fired small thruster rockets that raised the shuttle, allowing the modules to clamp together. The two station pieces, together measuring about 77 feet from end to end and having a combined mass of 70,000 pounds, are the first of 100 major components to be united in space over the next five years to form an orbiting outpost that would weigh almost a million pounds and span an area the size of two football fields. More than 40 additional missions by U.S. shuttles and Russian rockets will be used to haul all of the components and other supplies into orbit, and astronauts from both nations are to spend almost 1,800 hours doing spacewalks to assemble the entire structure. The spece station is expected to cost its partnership of 16 nations more than $40 billion just to construct. Bringing the pieces together is only the first step in mating them. A pair of astronauts are to make three spacewalks this week, the first on Monday, during which they will hook up electrical and communications cables, remove covers, attach handrails and perform other tasks to get the modules to work as one unit. The most difficult part of Sunday's mating of the $240 million Zarya to the $300 million Unity was bringing them together after the shuttle caught up with the Russian unit. Currie had to use the Canadian-built robot arm to place Zarya on top of Unity without being able to see where the pieces joined. Unity, raised in Endeavour's cargo bay on Saturday, is so large that it blocked Currie's view of the mating fixtures from the shuttle's windows. She used views from remote cameras and a computerized vision system built on the arm to estimate the relative positions of the two large segments. The computerized system examined markings on both modules, computed their relationship to one another using the marks and displayed the results on a laptop computer. ``We've never done anything like this before,'' Currie said before the flight, adding that she had practiced the difficult maneuver more than 100 times over the last two years. The flight of Endeavour, which took off from Cape Canaveral, Fla., last Friday, had gone according to plan until early Sunday, when mission control ordered the shuttle to change its orbit slightly to avoid a piece of space debris. Air Force space debris trackers noted that the shuttle was to pass within 1.6 miles of a spent stage of an American booster rocket launched last month. Although this was considered a safe distance, shuttle controllers decided to widen the separation to five miles as an extra precaution. ||||| Endeavour and its astronauts closed in Sunday to capture the first piece of the international space station, the Russian-made Zarya control module that had to be connected to the Unity chamber aboard the shuttle. Stacking the two giant cylinders 240 miles above the Earth was considered the most difficult part of the mission. The job fell to Nancy Currie, the shuttle crane operator who had deftly hoisted and repositioned Unity in the cargo bay on Saturday. The two station pieces are so big _ 77 feet from the tip of one to the tip of the other with a combined mass of 70,000 pounds _ that Currie and her crewmates were going to have to rely on a computerized vision system and camera views, rather than direct line of sight. Such a ``blind'' docking had never been attempted before. Mission Control gave the astronauts plenty of time for the tasks. ``The main thing I've tried to do for the last two years working on this flight is make sure we have time. We have margin on everything,'' said flight director Bob Castle. Before beginning their final approach to Zarya _ Russian for Sunrise _ the shuttle's six astronauts had to steer clear of a chunk of a rocket launched last month from California. Mission Control ordered the pilots to fire the shuttle thrusters to put an extra three miles between Endeavour and the space junk, putting Endeavour a total of five miles from the orbiting debris. The smaller gap would have been ``probably a little too close for comfort,'' Mission Control said. The bigger worry, by far, was over Endeavour's pursuit and capture of Zarya, and its coupling with Unity. The shuttle's 50-foot robot arm had never before been assigned to handle an object as massive as the 44,000-pound Zarya, a power and propulsion module that was launched from Kazakhstan on Nov. 20. It will provide all the necessary electricity and steering for the fledgling space station until a permanent control module can be launched next summer. The 36-foot, 25,000-pound Unity will serve as a connecting passageway, or vestibule, for future modules. In case Zarya and Unity could not be connected with the robot arm, two spacewalking astronauts would have to manually fit them together. The astronauts would be going out anyway Monday to attach electrical connectors and cables between the two components. In all, three spacewalks were planned for Endeavour's 12-day flight. NASA estimates 43 more launches and 159 more spacewalks will be needed after this mission to assemble the entire orbiting complex. Once completed, the 16-nation space station will have a mass of 1 million pounds, be longer than a football field, and house up to seven astronauts and cosmonauts. ||||| For the second day in a row, astronauts boarded space shuttle Endeavour on Friday for liftoff on NASA's first space station construction flight. ``Let's go do this,'' said commander Robert Cabana. ``Amen,'' replied a launch controller. Rain and cloudy skies were once again a threat. But NASA was confident the master alarm in Endeavour's cockpit would behave; it went off with just 4{ minutes to go in the countdown Thursday, forcing a delay. NASA has only five minutes or less each day to launch Endeavour in order to meet up with the first space station part, which was put in orbit two weeks ago by the Russians. The shuttle contains the second station component. The master alarm blared and red lights flashed just before the shuttle was to lift off early Thursday. By the time controllers traced the problem to a momentary drop in hydraulic pressure and decided to press ahead, it was too late _ they had missed the cutoff by a second or two. ``Sure, it's frustrating,'' said Bill Readdy, shuttle program director and a veteran shuttle commander. ``But we do things right. We do things by the book, and we're not going to cut any corners even if it means just shaving a second or two.'' The six astronauts crawled out of the shuttle, and two threw up their hands. Cabana held up his thumb and index finger a half-inch apart: ``We were that close.'' The problem was confined to one of Endeavour's three hydraulic pressure units. The pressure dropped just long enough to trigger the alarm, evidently because of a sensitive switch, then returned to normal. NASA engineers spent the day examining the problem, but found nothing wrong with any of the systems and were confident it would not reoccur. Endeavour's flight is already a year late because of a cash crunch in Russia, one of NASA's partners in building the international space station. The one-day delay cost NASA about $600,000, mostly in fuel and overtime pay. Aboard Endeavour is an American-made connecting passageway named Unity. The astronauts will use the shuttle robot arm to capture the Russian space station piece and attach it to Unity. Then, two spacewalkers will hook up all the electrical connections and cables between the two cylinders, and attach handrails and tools for future crews. Until the alarm sounded, it looked as though the weather would be the only problem. Rain and clouds moved in from the Atlantic 1{ hours before liftoff, but drifted away with minutes to spare. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and other dignitaries from around the world had gathered in the drizzle to see Endeavour and its crew off. ``Here we have 16 countries cooperating on a venture to the future,'' said Albright, who was expected back for Friday's attempt. ``This is a good investment.'' ||||| A last-minute alarm forced NASA to halt Thursday's launching of the space shuttle Endeavour, on a mission to start assembling the international space station. Another attempt for Endeavour and its crew of six astronauts is scheduled for Friday at 3:36 a.m. This was the first time in three years, and 19 flights, that a shuttle countdown had been stopped after the spaceship was fueled and the crew aboard the craft and ready to go. The uncommon delay prompted frowns and furrowed brows here, although officials stressed that it was entirely warranted. ``We want to err on the conservative side,'' Ralph Roe, launch director at the Kennedy Space Center, said at a news conference after the sudden halt of the countdown just 19 seconds before liftoff. Everything had been going smoothly for a rare nighttime launching, set for 3:58 on Thursday morning. The weather, forecast to be iffy, turned out to be fine, and the sky was alight with a nearly full moon. But the length of the so-called launching window was, as planned, unusually short _ only 10 minutes. That brevity was a result of Endeavour's having to rendezvous with a space-station part that Russia put into orbit last month. The show-stopper arose about four minutes before liftoff when the computer in the space shuttle set off a master alarm. Controllers studied the data and discovered a momentary pressure drop on one of the hydraulic systems that control the movements of the shuttle's engines and its rudder and other flight surfaces. Officials eventually decided that the pressure drop was insignificant, and they resolved to press ahead. But by then it was too late: time had run out for one of the procedures needed to keep the shuttle's fuel supercold. So the countdown was aborted just 19 seconds from blastoff. The six astronauts began to emerge from the shuttle an hour later and ultimately headed for bed to rest up for another attempt early Friday. ||||| WASHINGTON _ NASA and the Russian Space Agency have agreed to set aside a last-minute Russian request to launch an international space station into an orbit closer to Mir, officials announced Friday. While putting the new station closer to Russia's 12-year-old Mir station would make it easier to transfer equipment and supplies from the old outpost to the new one, the request came too late to be acted on, said Randy Brinkley, NASA's space station program manager. NASA was surprised last week when Russia's prime station contractor proposed the orbital position change just two-and-a-half weeks before launch of the first part of the new station. Delaying the Nov. 20 flight by 10 hours to match the orbits would have forced similar shifts in the subsequent assembly flights, and resulted in potentially unfavorable sun angles on the solar-powered station, engineers said. ``We have mutually concluded that it would not be prudent to make these changes,'' Brinkley said during a news conference held at the Johnson Space Center in Houston. ``It added technical complexity and risks to the mission that were not justified.'' The decision, which followed ``frank and candid'' discussions between the two partners, was not imposed by the United States, he said. ``The conclusions were mutual,'' Brinkley said. ``Both sides concluded that it did not make sense.'' The Russians, struggling to find money for their space program with their nation in economic collapse, had said they wanted to transfer thousands of pounds of newer equipment and scientific instruments from Mir as an economy move. However, some critics questioned the Russians' motives, wondering if the requested orbital change was part of plan to delay the decommissioning and destruction of Mir, which the Russians have agreed to do next summer. The Russians have so little money that the United States and other partners in the international station fear that money spent on Mir will prevent Russia from meeting its obligations with the new project. ``The Mir competes with the international space station for very critical resources and for funding,'' Brinkley said. NASA will consider ideas for salvaging Mir's research equipment to use on the international space station, he said, but only if it does not interfere with assembling the new station. The United States and 15 other nations plan to begin building the new station in orbit next week when the Russians launch a module that will supply power and propulsion during the early stages of the five-year construction period. The space shuttle Endeavor is to follow on Dec. 3 with the second station part, a U.S.-built connecting passageway that attaches to the first module. ||||| Endeavour's astronauts connected the first two building blocks of the international space station on Sunday, creating a seven-story tower in the shuttle cargo bay. It was the first time that the Russian-built Zarya control module and the made-in-America Unity chamber had ever touched. It looked to be a perfect and, hopefully, long-lasting fit. ``We have capture of Zarya,'' commander Robert Cabana announced the two pieces came together. ``Congratulations to the crew of the good ship Endeavour,'' replied Mission Control. ``That's terrific.'' The 240-mile-high construction job began two hours earlier with Nancy Currie's capture of Zarya (Russian for Sunrise) using the shuttle robot arm. ``We're halfway home,'' Cabana said. Then came the hard part: stacking the two giant cylinders in the cargo bay. The two station pieces are so big _ 77 feet from the tip of one to the tip of the other with a combined mass of 70,000 pounds _ that Currie and her crewmates had to rely on a computerized vision system and camera views, rather than direct line of sight. This was the first time such a ``blind'' docking had ever been attempted. Currie positioned the solar-winged Zarya, still on the end of the shuttle robot arm, several inches directly above Unity. It was slow going; she wanted and needed perfect alignment. Once she was sure she had it, Cabana fired Endeavour's thrusters, and the brief burst raised the shuttle and thereby Unity enough for the docking mechanisms on the two station components to snap together. The historical moment occurred above the South Pacific. The union _ intended to last the station's 15-year or more lifetime _ set the stage for a spacewalk by two astronauts on Monday to attach electrical connectors and cables between the two components. Mission Control thought Sunday's work might take hours longer than planned and gave the six astronauts plenty of time for the tasks. But everything occurred more or less when and how it was supposed to, aside from a piece of space junk that strayed too close. Before beginning their final approach to Zarya, the six astronauts had to steer clear of a chunk of a rocket launched last month from California. Mission Control ordered the pilots to fire the shuttle thrusters to put an extra three miles between Endeavour and the space junk, putting Endeavour a total of five miles from the orbiting debris. The smaller gap would have been ``probably a little too close for comfort,'' Mission Control said. The bigger worry, by far, was over Endeavour's pursuit and capture of Zarya, and its coupling with Unity. The shuttle's 50-foot robot arm had never before handled an object as massive as the 41-foot, 44,000-pound Zarya, a power and propulsion module that was launched from Kazakstan on Nov. 20. It will provide all of the necessary electricity and steering for the fledgling space station until a permanent control module can be launched next summer. Minutes after Zarya's capture, Cabana called down that two antennas on the module were still undeployed as Russian flight controllers had feared. The antennas must be fully deployed in order for Zarya's manual docking system to work; that system won't be needed before next summer, officials said. The only other problem was with a Zarya battery; the astronauts took up a replacement part. The 36-foot, 25,000-pound Unity, the first American-made component, will serve as a connecting passageway, or vestibule, for future modules. It was crucial that Zarya and Unity be joined; if they could not be connected with the robot arm, NASA would have sent out two spacewalking astronauts to manually fit them together. In all, three spacewalks are planned for Endeavour's 12-day flight, not only to hook up electrical connections between the two modules but to install handrails and other tools for future crews. The joined modules will be released from Endeavour once all of the work is completed. NASA estimates 43 more launches and 159 more spacewalks will be needed after this mission to assemble the entire orbiting complex. Once completed, the 16-nation space station will have a mass of 1 million pounds, be longer than a football field, and house up to seven astronauts and cosmonauts. ||||| The planet's most daring construction job began Friday as the shuttle Endeavour carried into orbit six astronauts and the first U.S.-built part of an international space station that is expected to cost more than $100 billion. After a last-minute alarm on the shuttle forced a postponement early Thursday, the launch went off flawlessly at 3:36 Friday morning, right on schedule. The night sky was clear, and the moon full. With a roar, Endeavour made its fiery ascent and briefly turned the Florida coastline from night to day. More than five minutes and 500 miles later, the spaceship's main engines could still be seen in the distance, twinkling like a new star. On their 12-day flight, Endeavour's astronauts are to locate a Russian part already in orbit, grasp it with the shuttle's robot arm and attach the new U.S. module. Wielding tools hundreds of miles above Earth, working methodically in the cold void, the astronauts will be starting a five-year assembly that is likely to make the construction of the Pyramids and the great cathedrals look like child's play. Construction of the station, which will be a research facility, will require an estimated 160 space walks, which, for safety reasons, will always be done by two people. When complete, the international space station, dominated by solar power arrays, will cover an area equal to that of two football fields. Modules of interconnected laboratories and living quarters for up to seven astronauts are to form a habitat equal to that of two 747 jetliners. The station's batteries alone, if lined up, would extend a half-mile. The project entails high risk, because of the technical difficulty of putting all this together in the unforgiving environment of space, along with the dangers inherent in flying the space shuttle to the construction site. The work is further complicated by international politics and worries about money. The Russians, whose participation in the partnership clinched the post-Cold War deal five years ago, are now a wild card. Moscow's economic and political woes have left Western officials unsure of its ability and willingness to come up with its share of money and technology. At the same time, the station's costs are rising, and its critics among scientists worry that its appetite for money will consume their own federal financing. The project's total cost is a subject of debate, but the most credible estimates now put the price of assembly and of operation for a decade, the station's estimated lifetime, at $110 billion. Of that, American taxpayers are to spend roughly $96 billion, and the project's 15 foreign partners about $14 billion. The station is intended to be a grand laboratory where, in the environment of weightlessness, investigators can develop new materials and new drugs and explore physiology's remaining mysteries, in part so that humans may someday know how to adapt for long space flight to other worlds. Friday, in any case, little was heard about the project but praise. ``Great show, Endeavour,'' mission control in Houston radioed to the six astronauts as the shuttle went into orbit. At the Florida spaceport, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright lauded the launching team and the new venture. ``That was truly, truly fantastic,'' she told the team after the liftoff. And it was important, she added, to have so many nations ``working together on the kinds of issues that the 21st century is going to be concerned with.'' ``So my congratulations to all of you,'' the secretary said. ``Stupendous work.'' The main cargo Thursday was the Unity module, the first U.S.-built station part. Small compared with the giants to come in three dozen shuttle flights during assembly, the unit is 18 feet long, weighs 13 tons and is to serve as a connecting hub for other modules. Saturday, one of the astronauts, Lt. Col. Nancy Currie of the Army, is to have the shuttle's robot arm hoist Unity from the payload bay and secure it to Endeavour's docking system, moving the unit from a horizontal to a vertical position. Then, Sunday, the astronauts are to rendezvous with the module known as Zarya, or Sunrise, which Russia launched into orbit from Kazakhstan on Nov. 20. Financed by the United States but built in Russia, Zarya, 41 feet long, is be a kind of tugboat for the embryonic station, furnishing power and propulsion as well as communication and rendezvous abilities. When Endeavour's payload bay is within 10 feet of Zarya, Colonel Currie is to reach out with the robot arm and pull the Russian module into position over Unity. The mechanical arm has never before moved anything so big. Zarya, while completely weightless in space, has 21 tons of mass. If mishandled, it can crush and kill. As Col. Currie holds Zarya steady, Endeavour's commander, Col. Robert Cabana of the Marine Corps, a veteran of three space flights, is to nudge the shuttle forward to join the two station pieces together. When mated with special attachments, Zarya and Unity will form the station's first element, 63 feet long and 78 feet wide out to the tips of the solar arrays. Starting Monday, a pair of space-walking astronauts are to hook up electrical connections and data cables between the units, attach antennas and install tools and handrails for future visitors. The builders will be Col. Jerry Ross of the Air Force, 50, and Dr. James Newman, 42, a physicist. Their series of three space walks will continue Wednesday and end Saturday, Dec. 12. As construction goes on outside, the astronauts inside Endeavour will be busy making preparations to enter the new station through a connecting tunnel and docking system. Next Thursday, the crew will enter the embryonic station for the first time, installing portable fans and lights. Friday they will again enter, to prepare for the arrival in 1999 of the next major element, the first one both built and financed by Russia. The other astronauts on Endeavour are its pilot, Maj. Frederick Sturckow of the Marine Corps, and a mission specialist, Sergei Krikalev of the Russian Space Agency. After separating from the new outpost, the crew is to bring Endeavour back to the Kennedy Space Center on Dec. 15, with the mission length just shy of 12 days. Gretchen McClain, NASA's director in Washington for the international space station, said in an interview here that its overall costs were actually small for individual Americans. Over its lifetime, she said, the annual cost will equal that of a pizza and a soft drink for each of the nation's 96 million taxpayers. U.S. costs for construction, she added, were $24 billion, and for operations through the year 2012 were $10.4 billion, for a total of $34.4 billion. Most experts outside the agency consider this figure ridiculously low because it ignores many billions of dollars spent in early development work as well as the cost of numerous shuttle flights, which run about $800 million apiece. ||||| Endeavour's astronauts connected the first two building blocks of the international space station on Sunday, creating a seven-story tower in the shuttle cargo bay. It was the first time that the Russian-built Zarya control module and the made-in-America Unity chamber had ever touched. It looked to be a perfect and, hopefully, long-lasting fit. ``We have capture of Zarya,'' commander Robert Cabana announced the moment the two pieces came together. ``Congratulations to the crew of the good ship Endeavour,'' replied Mission Control. ``That's terrific.'' The 240-mile-high construction job began two hours earlier with Nancy Currie's capture of Zarya (Russian for Sunrise) using the shuttle robot arm. ``We're halfway home,'' Cabana said. Then came the hard part: stacking the two giant cylinders in the cargo bay. The two station pieces are so big _ 77 feet from the tip of one to the tip of the other with a combined mass of 70,000 pounds _ that Currie and her crewmates had to rely on a computerized vision system and camera views, rather than direct line of sight. This was the first time such a ``blind'' docking had ever been attempted. Currie positioned the solar-winged Zarya, still on the end of the shuttle robot arm, several inches directly above Unity. It was slow going; she wanted and needed perfect alignment. Once she was sure she had it, Cabana fired Endeavour's thrusters, and the brief burst raised the shuttle and thereby Unity enough for the docking mechanisms on the two station components to snap together. The historical moment occurred above the South Pacific. It took several tries, however, for Zarya and Unity to be pulled tightly together. The docking ring between them would not retract properly; Mission Control quickly traced the problem to the attached robot arm and asked the crew to release its hold on the docked Zarya. That did the trick. The union _ intended to last the station's 15-year or more lifetime _ set the stage for a spacewalk by two astronauts on Monday to attach electrical connectors and cables between the two components. Mission Control thought Sunday's work might take hours longer than planned and gave the six astronauts plenty of time for the tasks. But everything occurred more or less when and how it was supposed to, aside from a piece of space junk that strayed too close. Before beginning their final approach to Zarya, the six astronauts had to steer clear of a chunk of a rocket launched last month from California. Mission Control ordered the pilots to fire the shuttle thrusters to put an extra three miles between Endeavour and the space junk, putting Endeavour a total of five miles from the orbiting debris. The smaller gap would have been ``probably a little too close for comfort,'' Mission Control said. The bigger worry, by far, was over Endeavour's pursuit and capture of Zarya, and its coupling with Unity. The shuttle's 50-foot robot arm had never before handled an object as massive as the 41-foot, 44,000-pound Zarya, a power and propulsion module that was launched from Kazakstan on Nov. 20. It will provide all of the necessary electricity and steering for the fledgling space station until a permanent control module can be launched next summer. Minutes after Zarya's capture, Cabana called down that two antennas on the module were still undeployed as Russian flight controllers had feared. The antennas must be fully deployed in order for Zarya's manual docking system to work; that system won't be needed before next summer, officials said. The only other problem was with a Zarya battery; the astronauts took up a replacement part. The 36-foot, 25,000-pound Unity, the first American-made component, will serve as a connecting passageway, or vestibule, for future modules. It was crucial that Zarya and Unity be joined; if they could not be connected with the robot arm, NASA would have sent out two spacewalking astronauts to manually fit them together. In all, three spacewalks are planned for Endeavour's 12-day flight, not only to hook up electrical connections between the two modules but to install handrails and other tools for future crews. The joined modules will be released from Endeavour once all of the work is completed. NASA estimates 43 more launches and 159 more spacewalks will be needed after this mission to assemble the entire orbiting complex. Once completed, the 16-nation space station will have a mass of 1 million pounds, be longer than a football field, and house up to seven astronauts and cosmonauts.

After discarding a suggested change of orbit, the Russian Space Agency went ahead with plans to launch its Zarya module of the international space station on Nov. 20, 1998. Although delayed for a day, U.S. plans to launch the space shuttle Endeavour carrying the U.S. module Unity and six astronauts were carried out on Dec. 4. The astronauts' job was to connect Unity with the already-orbiting Zarya as the first step in assembling 100 major components of the planned space station. Using the shuttle's 50-foot robot arm, the two modules were joined setting the stage for a spacewalk by two astronauts the next day to attach electrical connectors and cables.

Endeavour's astronauts connected the first two building blocks of the international space station on Sunday, creating a seven-story tower in the shuttle cargo bay. It was the first time that the Russian-built Zarya control module and the made-in-America Unity chamber had ever touched. It looked to be a perfect and, hopefully, long-lasting fit. ``We have capture of Zarya,'' commander Robert Cabana announced the moment the two pieces came together. ``Congratulations to the crew of the good ship Endeavour,'' replied Mission Control. ``That's terrific.'' The 240-mile-high construction job began two hours earlier with Nancy Currie's capture of Zarya (Russian for Sunrise) using the shuttle robot arm. ``We're halfway home,'' Cabana said. Then came the hard part: stacking the two giant cylinders in the cargo bay. The two station pieces are so big _ 77 feet from the tip of one to the tip of the other with a combined mass of 70,000 pounds _ that Currie and her crewmates had to rely on a computerized vision system and camera views, rather than direct line of sight. This was the first time such a ``blind'' docking had ever been attempted. Currie positioned the solar-winged Zarya, still on the end of the shuttle robot arm, several inches directly above Unity. It was slow going; she wanted and needed perfect alignment. Once she was sure she had it, Cabana fired Endeavour's thrusters, and the brief burst raised the shuttle and thereby Unity enough for the docking mechanisms on the two station components to snap together. The historical moment occurred above the South Pacific. The union _ intended to last the station's 15-year or more lifetime _ set the stage for a spacewalk by two astronauts on Monday to attach electrical connectors and cables between the two components. Mission Control thought Sunday's work might take hours longer than planned and gave the six astronauts plenty of time for the tasks. But everything occurred more or less when and how it was supposed to, aside from a piece of space junk that strayed too close. Before beginning their final approach to Zarya, the six astronauts had to steer clear of a chunk of a rocket launched last month from California. Mission Control ordered the pilots to fire the shuttle thrusters to put an extra three miles between Endeavour and the space junk, putting Endeavour a total of five miles from the orbiting debris. The smaller gap would have been ``probably a little too close for comfort,'' Mission Control said. The bigger worry, by far, was over Endeavour's pursuit and capture of Zarya, and its coupling with Unity. The shuttle's 50-foot robot arm had never before handled an object as massive as the 41-foot, 44,000-pound Zarya, a power and propulsion module that was launched from Kazakstan on Nov. 20. It will provide all of the necessary electricity and steering for the fledgling space station until a permanent control module can be launched next summer. Minutes after Zarya's capture, Cabana called down that two antennas on the module were still undeployed as Russian flight controllers had feared. The antennas must be fully deployed in order for Zarya's manual docking system to work; that system won't be needed before next summer, officials said. The only other problem was with a Zarya battery; the astronauts took up a replacement part. The 36-foot, 25,000-pound Unity, the first American-made component, will serve as a connecting passageway, or vestibule, for future modules. It was crucial that Zarya and Unity be joined; if they could not be connected with the robot arm, NASA would have sent out two spacewalking astronauts to manually fit them together. In all, three spacewalks are planned for Endeavour's 12-day flight, not only to hook up electrical connections between the two modules but to install handrails and other tools for future crews. The joined modules will be released from Endeavour once all of the work is completed. NASA estimates 43 more launches and 159 more spacewalks will be needed after this mission to assemble the entire orbiting complex. Once completed, the 16-nation space station will have a mass of 1 million pounds, be longer than a football field, and house up to seven astronauts and cosmonauts. ||||| Endeavour's astronauts connected the first two building blocks of the international space station on Sunday, creating a seven-story tower in the shuttle cargo bay. It was the first time that the Russian-built Zarya control module and the made-in-America Unity chamber had ever touched. It looked to be a perfect and, hopefully, long-lasting fit. ``We have capture of Zarya,'' commander Robert Cabana announced the moment the two pieces came together. ``Congratulations to the crew of the good ship Endeavour,'' replied Mission Control. ``That's terrific.'' The 240-mile-high construction job began two hours earlier with Nancy Currie's capture of Zarya (Russian for Sunrise) using the shuttle robot arm. ``We're halfway home,'' Cabana said. Then came the hard part: stacking the two giant cylinders in the cargo bay. The two station pieces are so big _ 77 feet from the tip of one to the tip of the other with a combined mass of 70,000 pounds _ that Currie and her crewmates had to rely on a computerized vision system and camera views, rather than direct line of sight. This was the first time such a ``blind'' docking had ever been attempted. Currie positioned the solar-winged Zarya, still on the end of the shuttle robot arm, several inches directly above Unity. It was slow going; she wanted and needed perfect alignment. Once she was sure she had it, Cabana fired Endeavour's thrusters, and the brief burst raised the shuttle and thereby Unity enough for the docking mechanisms on the two station components to snap together. The historical moment occurred above the South Pacific. It took several tries, however, for Zarya and Unity to be pulled tightly together. The docking ring between them would not retract properly; Mission Control quickly traced the problem to the attached robot arm and asked the crew to release its hold on the docked Zarya. That did the trick. The union _ intended to last the station's 15-year or more lifetime _ set the stage for a spacewalk by two astronauts on Monday to attach electrical connectors and cables between the two components. Mission Control thought Sunday's work might take hours longer than planned and gave the six astronauts plenty of time for the tasks. But everything occurred more or less when and how it was supposed to, aside from a piece of space junk that strayed too close. Before beginning their final approach to Zarya, the six astronauts had to steer clear of a chunk of a rocket launched last month from California. Mission Control ordered the pilots to fire the shuttle thrusters to put an extra three miles between Endeavour and the space junk, putting Endeavour a total of five miles from the orbiting debris. The smaller gap would have been ``probably a little too close for comfort,'' Mission Control said. The bigger worry, by far, was over Endeavour's pursuit and capture of Zarya, and its coupling with Unity. The shuttle's 50-foot robot arm had never before handled an object as massive as the 41-foot, 44,000-pound Zarya, a power and propulsion module that was launched from Kazakstan on Nov. 20. It will provide all of the necessary electricity and steering for the fledgling space station until a permanent control module can be launched next summer. Minutes after Zarya's capture, Cabana called down that two antennas on the module were still undeployed as Russian flight controllers had feared. The antennas must be fully deployed in order for Zarya's manual docking system to work; that system won't be needed before next summer, officials said. The only other problem was with a Zarya battery; the astronauts took up a replacement part. The 36-foot, 25,000-pound Unity, the first American-made component, will serve as a connecting passageway, or vestibule, for future modules. It was crucial that Zarya and Unity be joined; if they could not be connected with the robot arm, NASA would have sent out two spacewalking astronauts to manually fit them together. In all, three spacewalks are planned for Endeavour's 12-day flight, not only to hook up electrical connections between the two modules but to install handrails and other tools for future crews. The joined modules will be released from Endeavour once all of the work is completed. NASA estimates 43 more launches and 159 more spacewalks will be needed after this mission to assemble the entire orbiting complex. Once completed, the 16-nation space station will have a mass of 1 million pounds, be longer than a football field, and house up to seven astronauts and cosmonauts. ||||| Following a series of intricate maneuvers and the skillful use of the space shuttle Endeavour's robot arm, astronauts on Sunday joined the first two of many segments that will form the international space station. The shuttle and its crew of six snared the Russian-made Zarya control module after chasing it around the Earth in ever-closing orbits throughout the day. Less than an hour after a rendezvous 240 miles above the Earth shortly before 6 p.m., Lt. Col. Nancy Currie of the Army deftly used the 50-foot arm to grab the 40,000-pound cylinder as the craft passed above Russia and to slowly pull it toward the shuttle. Seeing Zarya up close, Col. Robert Cabana of the Marines, the shuttle commander, confirmed that two antennas had failed to deploy from the module following its launch from Kazakhstan on Nov. 20. There were earlier indications that the antennas, which will be used later by the station to manually assist spacecraft dockings, had not extended. Currie took almost two hours to painstakingly move Zarya above the American-made Unity docking port positioned in Endeavour's cargo bay. When the two pieces were aligned within inches of one another, Cabana fired small thruster rockets that raised the shuttle, allowing the modules to clamp together. The two station pieces, together measuring about 77 feet from end to end and having a combined mass of 70,000 pounds, are the first of 100 major components to be united in space over the next five years to form an orbiting outpost that would weigh almost a million pounds and span an area the size of two football fields. More than 40 additional missions by U.S. shuttles and Russian rockets will be used to haul all of the components and other supplies into orbit, and astronauts from both nations are to spend almost 1,800 hours doing spacewalks to assemble the entire structure. The spece station is expected to cost its partnership of 16 nations more than $40 billion just to construct. Bringing the pieces together is only the first step in mating them. A pair of astronauts are to make three spacewalks this week, the first on Monday, during which they will hook up electrical and communications cables, remove covers, attach handrails and perform other tasks to get the modules to work as one unit. The most difficult part of Sunday's mating of the $240 million Zarya to the $300 million Unity was bringing them together after the shuttle caught up with the Russian unit. Currie had to use the Canadian-built robot arm to place Zarya on top of Unity without being able to see where the pieces joined. Unity, raised in Endeavour's cargo bay on Saturday, is so large that it blocked Currie's view of the mating fixtures from the shuttle's windows. She used views from remote cameras and a computerized vision system built on the arm to estimate the relative positions of the two large segments. The computerized system examined markings on both modules, computed their relationship to one another using the marks and displayed the results on a laptop computer. ``We've never done anything like this before,'' Currie said before the flight, adding that she had practiced the difficult maneuver more than 100 times over the last two years. The flight of Endeavour, which took off from Cape Canaveral, Fla., last Friday, had gone according to plan until early Sunday, when mission control ordered the shuttle to change its orbit slightly to avoid a piece of space debris. Air Force space debris trackers noted that the shuttle was to pass within 1.6 miles of a spent stage of an American booster rocket launched last month. Although this was considered a safe distance, shuttle controllers decided to widen the separation to five miles as an extra precaution. ||||| Endeavour and its astronauts closed in Sunday to capture the first piece of the international space station, the Russian-made Zarya control module that had to be connected to the Unity chamber aboard the shuttle. Stacking the two giant cylinders 240 miles above the Earth was considered the most difficult part of the mission. The job fell to Nancy Currie, the shuttle crane operator who had deftly hoisted and repositioned Unity in the cargo bay on Saturday. The two station pieces are so big _ 77 feet from the tip of one to the tip of the other with a combined mass of 70,000 pounds _ that Currie and her crewmates were going to have to rely on a computerized vision system and camera views, rather than direct line of sight. Such a ``blind'' docking had never been attempted before. Mission Control gave the astronauts plenty of time for the tasks. ``The main thing I've tried to do for the last two years working on this flight is make sure we have time. We have margin on everything,'' said flight director Bob Castle. Before beginning their final approach to Zarya _ Russian for Sunrise _ the shuttle's six astronauts had to steer clear of a chunk of a rocket launched last month from California. Mission Control ordered the pilots to fire the shuttle thrusters to put an extra three miles between Endeavour and the space junk, putting Endeavour a total of five miles from the orbiting debris. The smaller gap would have been ``probably a little too close for comfort,'' Mission Control said. The bigger worry, by far, was over Endeavour's pursuit and capture of Zarya, and its coupling with Unity. The shuttle's 50-foot robot arm had never before been assigned to handle an object as massive as the 44,000-pound Zarya, a power and propulsion module that was launched from Kazakhstan on Nov. 20. It will provide all the necessary electricity and steering for the fledgling space station until a permanent control module can be launched next summer. The 36-foot, 25,000-pound Unity will serve as a connecting passageway, or vestibule, for future modules. In case Zarya and Unity could not be connected with the robot arm, two spacewalking astronauts would have to manually fit them together. The astronauts would be going out anyway Monday to attach electrical connectors and cables between the two components. In all, three spacewalks were planned for Endeavour's 12-day flight. NASA estimates 43 more launches and 159 more spacewalks will be needed after this mission to assemble the entire orbiting complex. Once completed, the 16-nation space station will have a mass of 1 million pounds, be longer than a football field, and house up to seven astronauts and cosmonauts. ||||| For the second day in a row, astronauts boarded space shuttle Endeavour on Friday for liftoff on NASA's first space station construction flight. ``Let's go do this,'' said commander Robert Cabana. ``Amen,'' replied a launch controller. Rain and cloudy skies were once again a threat. But NASA was confident the master alarm in Endeavour's cockpit would behave; it went off with just 4{ minutes to go in the countdown Thursday, forcing a delay. NASA has only five minutes or less each day to launch Endeavour in order to meet up with the first space station part, which was put in orbit two weeks ago by the Russians. The shuttle contains the second station component. The master alarm blared and red lights flashed just before the shuttle was to lift off early Thursday. By the time controllers traced the problem to a momentary drop in hydraulic pressure and decided to press ahead, it was too late _ they had missed the cutoff by a second or two. ``Sure, it's frustrating,'' said Bill Readdy, shuttle program director and a veteran shuttle commander. ``But we do things right. We do things by the book, and we're not going to cut any corners even if it means just shaving a second or two.'' The six astronauts crawled out of the shuttle, and two threw up their hands. Cabana held up his thumb and index finger a half-inch apart: ``We were that close.'' The problem was confined to one of Endeavour's three hydraulic pressure units. The pressure dropped just long enough to trigger the alarm, evidently because of a sensitive switch, then returned to normal. NASA engineers spent the day examining the problem, but found nothing wrong with any of the systems and were confident it would not reoccur. Endeavour's flight is already a year late because of a cash crunch in Russia, one of NASA's partners in building the international space station. The one-day delay cost NASA about $600,000, mostly in fuel and overtime pay. Aboard Endeavour is an American-made connecting passageway named Unity. The astronauts will use the shuttle robot arm to capture the Russian space station piece and attach it to Unity. Then, two spacewalkers will hook up all the electrical connections and cables between the two cylinders, and attach handrails and tools for future crews. Until the alarm sounded, it looked as though the weather would be the only problem. Rain and clouds moved in from the Atlantic 1{ hours before liftoff, but drifted away with minutes to spare. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and other dignitaries from around the world had gathered in the drizzle to see Endeavour and its crew off. ``Here we have 16 countries cooperating on a venture to the future,'' said Albright, who was expected back for Friday's attempt. ``This is a good investment.'' ||||| A last-minute alarm forced NASA to halt Thursday's launching of the space shuttle Endeavour, on a mission to start assembling the international space station. Another attempt for Endeavour and its crew of six astronauts is scheduled for Friday at 3:36 a.m. This was the first time in three years, and 19 flights, that a shuttle countdown had been stopped after the spaceship was fueled and the crew aboard the craft and ready to go. The uncommon delay prompted frowns and furrowed brows here, although officials stressed that it was entirely warranted. ``We want to err on the conservative side,'' Ralph Roe, launch director at the Kennedy Space Center, said at a news conference after the sudden halt of the countdown just 19 seconds before liftoff. Everything had been going smoothly for a rare nighttime launching, set for 3:58 on Thursday morning. The weather, forecast to be iffy, turned out to be fine, and the sky was alight with a nearly full moon. But the length of the so-called launching window was, as planned, unusually short _ only 10 minutes. That brevity was a result of Endeavour's having to rendezvous with a space-station part that Russia put into orbit last month. The show-stopper arose about four minutes before liftoff when the computer in the space shuttle set off a master alarm. Controllers studied the data and discovered a momentary pressure drop on one of the hydraulic systems that control the movements of the shuttle's engines and its rudder and other flight surfaces. Officials eventually decided that the pressure drop was insignificant, and they resolved to press ahead. But by then it was too late: time had run out for one of the procedures needed to keep the shuttle's fuel supercold. So the countdown was aborted just 19 seconds from blastoff. The six astronauts began to emerge from the shuttle an hour later and ultimately headed for bed to rest up for another attempt early Friday. ||||| WASHINGTON _ NASA and the Russian Space Agency have agreed to set aside a last-minute Russian request to launch an international space station into an orbit closer to Mir, officials announced Friday. While putting the new station closer to Russia's 12-year-old Mir station would make it easier to transfer equipment and supplies from the old outpost to the new one, the request came too late to be acted on, said Randy Brinkley, NASA's space station program manager. NASA was surprised last week when Russia's prime station contractor proposed the orbital position change just two-and-a-half weeks before launch of the first part of the new station. Delaying the Nov. 20 flight by 10 hours to match the orbits would have forced similar shifts in the subsequent assembly flights, and resulted in potentially unfavorable sun angles on the solar-powered station, engineers said. ``We have mutually concluded that it would not be prudent to make these changes,'' Brinkley said during a news conference held at the Johnson Space Center in Houston. ``It added technical complexity and risks to the mission that were not justified.'' The decision, which followed ``frank and candid'' discussions between the two partners, was not imposed by the United States, he said. ``The conclusions were mutual,'' Brinkley said. ``Both sides concluded that it did not make sense.'' The Russians, struggling to find money for their space program with their nation in economic collapse, had said they wanted to transfer thousands of pounds of newer equipment and scientific instruments from Mir as an economy move. However, some critics questioned the Russians' motives, wondering if the requested orbital change was part of plan to delay the decommissioning and destruction of Mir, which the Russians have agreed to do next summer. The Russians have so little money that the United States and other partners in the international station fear that money spent on Mir will prevent Russia from meeting its obligations with the new project. ``The Mir competes with the international space station for very critical resources and for funding,'' Brinkley said. NASA will consider ideas for salvaging Mir's research equipment to use on the international space station, he said, but only if it does not interfere with assembling the new station. The United States and 15 other nations plan to begin building the new station in orbit next week when the Russians launch a module that will supply power and propulsion during the early stages of the five-year construction period. The space shuttle Endeavor is to follow on Dec. 3 with the second station part, a U.S.-built connecting passageway that attaches to the first module. ||||| Endeavour's astronauts connected the first two building blocks of the international space station on Sunday, creating a seven-story tower in the shuttle cargo bay. It was the first time that the Russian-built Zarya control module and the made-in-America Unity chamber had ever touched. It looked to be a perfect and, hopefully, long-lasting fit. ``We have capture of Zarya,'' commander Robert Cabana announced the two pieces came together. ``Congratulations to the crew of the good ship Endeavour,'' replied Mission Control. ``That's terrific.'' The 240-mile-high construction job began two hours earlier with Nancy Currie's capture of Zarya (Russian for Sunrise) using the shuttle robot arm. ``We're halfway home,'' Cabana said. Then came the hard part: stacking the two giant cylinders in the cargo bay. The two station pieces are so big _ 77 feet from the tip of one to the tip of the other with a combined mass of 70,000 pounds _ that Currie and her crewmates had to rely on a computerized vision system and camera views, rather than direct line of sight. This was the first time such a ``blind'' docking had ever been attempted. Currie positioned the solar-winged Zarya, still on the end of the shuttle robot arm, several inches directly above Unity. It was slow going; she wanted and needed perfect alignment. Once she was sure she had it, Cabana fired Endeavour's thrusters, and the brief burst raised the shuttle and thereby Unity enough for the docking mechanisms on the two station components to snap together. The historical moment occurred above the South Pacific. The union _ intended to last the station's 15-year or more lifetime _ set the stage for a spacewalk by two astronauts on Monday to attach electrical connectors and cables between the two components. Mission Control thought Sunday's work might take hours longer than planned and gave the six astronauts plenty of time for the tasks. But everything occurred more or less when and how it was supposed to, aside from a piece of space junk that strayed too close. Before beginning their final approach to Zarya, the six astronauts had to steer clear of a chunk of a rocket launched last month from California. Mission Control ordered the pilots to fire the shuttle thrusters to put an extra three miles between Endeavour and the space junk, putting Endeavour a total of five miles from the orbiting debris. The smaller gap would have been ``probably a little too close for comfort,'' Mission Control said. The bigger worry, by far, was over Endeavour's pursuit and capture of Zarya, and its coupling with Unity. The shuttle's 50-foot robot arm had never before handled an object as massive as the 41-foot, 44,000-pound Zarya, a power and propulsion module that was launched from Kazakstan on Nov. 20. It will provide all of the necessary electricity and steering for the fledgling space station until a permanent control module can be launched next summer. Minutes after Zarya's capture, Cabana called down that two antennas on the module were still undeployed as Russian flight controllers had feared. The antennas must be fully deployed in order for Zarya's manual docking system to work; that system won't be needed before next summer, officials said. The only other problem was with a Zarya battery; the astronauts took up a replacement part. The 36-foot, 25,000-pound Unity, the first American-made component, will serve as a connecting passageway, or vestibule, for future modules. It was crucial that Zarya and Unity be joined; if they could not be connected with the robot arm, NASA would have sent out two spacewalking astronauts to manually fit them together. In all, three spacewalks are planned for Endeavour's 12-day flight, not only to hook up electrical connections between the two modules but to install handrails and other tools for future crews. The joined modules will be released from Endeavour once all of the work is completed. NASA estimates 43 more launches and 159 more spacewalks will be needed after this mission to assemble the entire orbiting complex. Once completed, the 16-nation space station will have a mass of 1 million pounds, be longer than a football field, and house up to seven astronauts and cosmonauts. ||||| The planet's most daring construction job began Friday as the shuttle Endeavour carried into orbit six astronauts and the first U.S.-built part of an international space station that is expected to cost more than $100 billion. After a last-minute alarm on the shuttle forced a postponement early Thursday, the launch went off flawlessly at 3:36 Friday morning, right on schedule. The night sky was clear, and the moon full. With a roar, Endeavour made its fiery ascent and briefly turned the Florida coastline from night to day. More than five minutes and 500 miles later, the spaceship's main engines could still be seen in the distance, twinkling like a new star. On their 12-day flight, Endeavour's astronauts are to locate a Russian part already in orbit, grasp it with the shuttle's robot arm and attach the new U.S. module. Wielding tools hundreds of miles above Earth, working methodically in the cold void, the astronauts will be starting a five-year assembly that is likely to make the construction of the Pyramids and the great cathedrals look like child's play. Construction of the station, which will be a research facility, will require an estimated 160 space walks, which, for safety reasons, will always be done by two people. When complete, the international space station, dominated by solar power arrays, will cover an area equal to that of two football fields. Modules of interconnected laboratories and living quarters for up to seven astronauts are to form a habitat equal to that of two 747 jetliners. The station's batteries alone, if lined up, would extend a half-mile. The project entails high risk, because of the technical difficulty of putting all this together in the unforgiving environment of space, along with the dangers inherent in flying the space shuttle to the construction site. The work is further complicated by international politics and worries about money. The Russians, whose participation in the partnership clinched the post-Cold War deal five years ago, are now a wild card. Moscow's economic and political woes have left Western officials unsure of its ability and willingness to come up with its share of money and technology. At the same time, the station's costs are rising, and its critics among scientists worry that its appetite for money will consume their own federal financing. The project's total cost is a subject of debate, but the most credible estimates now put the price of assembly and of operation for a decade, the station's estimated lifetime, at $110 billion. Of that, American taxpayers are to spend roughly $96 billion, and the project's 15 foreign partners about $14 billion. The station is intended to be a grand laboratory where, in the environment of weightlessness, investigators can develop new materials and new drugs and explore physiology's remaining mysteries, in part so that humans may someday know how to adapt for long space flight to other worlds. Friday, in any case, little was heard about the project but praise. ``Great show, Endeavour,'' mission control in Houston radioed to the six astronauts as the shuttle went into orbit. At the Florida spaceport, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright lauded the launching team and the new venture. ``That was truly, truly fantastic,'' she told the team after the liftoff. And it was important, she added, to have so many nations ``working together on the kinds of issues that the 21st century is going to be concerned with.'' ``So my congratulations to all of you,'' the secretary said. ``Stupendous work.'' The main cargo Thursday was the Unity module, the first U.S.-built station part. Small compared with the giants to come in three dozen shuttle flights during assembly, the unit is 18 feet long, weighs 13 tons and is to serve as a connecting hub for other modules. Saturday, one of the astronauts, Lt. Col. Nancy Currie of the Army, is to have the shuttle's robot arm hoist Unity from the payload bay and secure it to Endeavour's docking system, moving the unit from a horizontal to a vertical position. Then, Sunday, the astronauts are to rendezvous with the module known as Zarya, or Sunrise, which Russia launched into orbit from Kazakhstan on Nov. 20. Financed by the United States but built in Russia, Zarya, 41 feet long, is be a kind of tugboat for the embryonic station, furnishing power and propulsion as well as communication and rendezvous abilities. When Endeavour's payload bay is within 10 feet of Zarya, Colonel Currie is to reach out with the robot arm and pull the Russian module into position over Unity. The mechanical arm has never before moved anything so big. Zarya, while completely weightless in space, has 21 tons of mass. If mishandled, it can crush and kill. As Col. Currie holds Zarya steady, Endeavour's commander, Col. Robert Cabana of the Marine Corps, a veteran of three space flights, is to nudge the shuttle forward to join the two station pieces together. When mated with special attachments, Zarya and Unity will form the station's first element, 63 feet long and 78 feet wide out to the tips of the solar arrays. Starting Monday, a pair of space-walking astronauts are to hook up electrical connections and data cables between the units, attach antennas and install tools and handrails for future visitors. The builders will be Col. Jerry Ross of the Air Force, 50, and Dr. James Newman, 42, a physicist. Their series of three space walks will continue Wednesday and end Saturday, Dec. 12. As construction goes on outside, the astronauts inside Endeavour will be busy making preparations to enter the new station through a connecting tunnel and docking system. Next Thursday, the crew will enter the embryonic station for the first time, installing portable fans and lights. Friday they will again enter, to prepare for the arrival in 1999 of the next major element, the first one both built and financed by Russia. The other astronauts on Endeavour are its pilot, Maj. Frederick Sturckow of the Marine Corps, and a mission specialist, Sergei Krikalev of the Russian Space Agency. After separating from the new outpost, the crew is to bring Endeavour back to the Kennedy Space Center on Dec. 15, with the mission length just shy of 12 days. Gretchen McClain, NASA's director in Washington for the international space station, said in an interview here that its overall costs were actually small for individual Americans. Over its lifetime, she said, the annual cost will equal that of a pizza and a soft drink for each of the nation's 96 million taxpayers. U.S. costs for construction, she added, were $24 billion, and for operations through the year 2012 were $10.4 billion, for a total of $34.4 billion. Most experts outside the agency consider this figure ridiculously low because it ignores many billions of dollars spent in early development work as well as the cost of numerous shuttle flights, which run about $800 million apiece. ||||| Endeavour's astronauts connected the first two building blocks of the international space station on Sunday, creating a seven-story tower in the shuttle cargo bay. It was the first time that the Russian-built Zarya control module and the made-in-America Unity chamber had ever touched. It looked to be a perfect and, hopefully, long-lasting fit. ``We have capture of Zarya,'' commander Robert Cabana announced the moment the two pieces came together. ``Congratulations to the crew of the good ship Endeavour,'' replied Mission Control. ``That's terrific.'' The 240-mile-high construction job began two hours earlier with Nancy Currie's capture of Zarya (Russian for Sunrise) using the shuttle robot arm. ``We're halfway home,'' Cabana said. Then came the hard part: stacking the two giant cylinders in the cargo bay. The two station pieces are so big _ 77 feet from the tip of one to the tip of the other with a combined mass of 70,000 pounds _ that Currie and her crewmates had to rely on a computerized vision system and camera views, rather than direct line of sight. This was the first time such a ``blind'' docking had ever been attempted. Currie positioned the solar-winged Zarya, still on the end of the shuttle robot arm, several inches directly above Unity. It was slow going; she wanted and needed perfect alignment. Once she was sure she had it, Cabana fired Endeavour's thrusters, and the brief burst raised the shuttle and thereby Unity enough for the docking mechanisms on the two station components to snap together. The historical moment occurred above the South Pacific. It took several tries, however, for Zarya and Unity to be pulled tightly together. The docking ring between them would not retract properly; Mission Control quickly traced the problem to the attached robot arm and asked the crew to release its hold on the docked Zarya. That did the trick. The union _ intended to last the station's 15-year or more lifetime _ set the stage for a spacewalk by two astronauts on Monday to attach electrical connectors and cables between the two components. Mission Control thought Sunday's work might take hours longer than planned and gave the six astronauts plenty of time for the tasks. But everything occurred more or less when and how it was supposed to, aside from a piece of space junk that strayed too close. Before beginning their final approach to Zarya, the six astronauts had to steer clear of a chunk of a rocket launched last month from California. Mission Control ordered the pilots to fire the shuttle thrusters to put an extra three miles between Endeavour and the space junk, putting Endeavour a total of five miles from the orbiting debris. The smaller gap would have been ``probably a little too close for comfort,'' Mission Control said. The bigger worry, by far, was over Endeavour's pursuit and capture of Zarya, and its coupling with Unity. The shuttle's 50-foot robot arm had never before handled an object as massive as the 41-foot, 44,000-pound Zarya, a power and propulsion module that was launched from Kazakstan on Nov. 20. It will provide all of the necessary electricity and steering for the fledgling space station until a permanent control module can be launched next summer. Minutes after Zarya's capture, Cabana called down that two antennas on the module were still undeployed as Russian flight controllers had feared. The antennas must be fully deployed in order for Zarya's manual docking system to work; that system won't be needed before next summer, officials said. The only other problem was with a Zarya battery; the astronauts took up a replacement part. The 36-foot, 25,000-pound Unity, the first American-made component, will serve as a connecting passageway, or vestibule, for future modules. It was crucial that Zarya and Unity be joined; if they could not be connected with the robot arm, NASA would have sent out two spacewalking astronauts to manually fit them together. In all, three spacewalks are planned for Endeavour's 12-day flight, not only to hook up electrical connections between the two modules but to install handrails and other tools for future crews. The joined modules will be released from Endeavour once all of the work is completed. NASA estimates 43 more launches and 159 more spacewalks will be needed after this mission to assemble the entire orbiting complex. Once completed, the 16-nation space station will have a mass of 1 million pounds, be longer than a football field, and house up to seven astronauts and cosmonauts.

The International Space Station when completed will have a million pound mass and be longer than a football field. It will house up to seven space explorers. The initial assembly of space station components involves linking the US Unity, carried into space by the shuttle Endeavour, with the Russian Zarya. The Russians had asked for a different launch profile in order to be able to transfer equipment from its MIR station, but that was not possible. Endeavour astronauts successfully completed the complicated maneuvers to join the two space objects. NASA estimates that 43 more launches will be required to completely assemble the 16-nation space station.

Endeavour's astronauts connected the first two building blocks of the international space station on Sunday, creating a seven-story tower in the shuttle cargo bay. It was the first time that the Russian-built Zarya control module and the made-in-America Unity chamber had ever touched. It looked to be a perfect and, hopefully, long-lasting fit. ``We have capture of Zarya,'' commander Robert Cabana announced the moment the two pieces came together. ``Congratulations to the crew of the good ship Endeavour,'' replied Mission Control. ``That's terrific.'' The 240-mile-high construction job began two hours earlier with Nancy Currie's capture of Zarya (Russian for Sunrise) using the shuttle robot arm. ``We're halfway home,'' Cabana said. Then came the hard part: stacking the two giant cylinders in the cargo bay. The two station pieces are so big _ 77 feet from the tip of one to the tip of the other with a combined mass of 70,000 pounds _ that Currie and her crewmates had to rely on a computerized vision system and camera views, rather than direct line of sight. This was the first time such a ``blind'' docking had ever been attempted. Currie positioned the solar-winged Zarya, still on the end of the shuttle robot arm, several inches directly above Unity. It was slow going; she wanted and needed perfect alignment. Once she was sure she had it, Cabana fired Endeavour's thrusters, and the brief burst raised the shuttle and thereby Unity enough for the docking mechanisms on the two station components to snap together. The historical moment occurred above the South Pacific. The union _ intended to last the station's 15-year or more lifetime _ set the stage for a spacewalk by two astronauts on Monday to attach electrical connectors and cables between the two components. Mission Control thought Sunday's work might take hours longer than planned and gave the six astronauts plenty of time for the tasks. But everything occurred more or less when and how it was supposed to, aside from a piece of space junk that strayed too close. Before beginning their final approach to Zarya, the six astronauts had to steer clear of a chunk of a rocket launched last month from California. Mission Control ordered the pilots to fire the shuttle thrusters to put an extra three miles between Endeavour and the space junk, putting Endeavour a total of five miles from the orbiting debris. The smaller gap would have been ``probably a little too close for comfort,'' Mission Control said. The bigger worry, by far, was over Endeavour's pursuit and capture of Zarya, and its coupling with Unity. The shuttle's 50-foot robot arm had never before handled an object as massive as the 41-foot, 44,000-pound Zarya, a power and propulsion module that was launched from Kazakstan on Nov. 20. It will provide all of the necessary electricity and steering for the fledgling space station until a permanent control module can be launched next summer. Minutes after Zarya's capture, Cabana called down that two antennas on the module were still undeployed as Russian flight controllers had feared. The antennas must be fully deployed in order for Zarya's manual docking system to work; that system won't be needed before next summer, officials said. The only other problem was with a Zarya battery; the astronauts took up a replacement part. The 36-foot, 25,000-pound Unity, the first American-made component, will serve as a connecting passageway, or vestibule, for future modules. It was crucial that Zarya and Unity be joined; if they could not be connected with the robot arm, NASA would have sent out two spacewalking astronauts to manually fit them together. In all, three spacewalks are planned for Endeavour's 12-day flight, not only to hook up electrical connections between the two modules but to install handrails and other tools for future crews. The joined modules will be released from Endeavour once all of the work is completed. NASA estimates 43 more launches and 159 more spacewalks will be needed after this mission to assemble the entire orbiting complex. Once completed, the 16-nation space station will have a mass of 1 million pounds, be longer than a football field, and house up to seven astronauts and cosmonauts. ||||| Endeavour's astronauts connected the first two building blocks of the international space station on Sunday, creating a seven-story tower in the shuttle cargo bay. It was the first time that the Russian-built Zarya control module and the made-in-America Unity chamber had ever touched. It looked to be a perfect and, hopefully, long-lasting fit. ``We have capture of Zarya,'' commander Robert Cabana announced the moment the two pieces came together. ``Congratulations to the crew of the good ship Endeavour,'' replied Mission Control. ``That's terrific.'' The 240-mile-high construction job began two hours earlier with Nancy Currie's capture of Zarya (Russian for Sunrise) using the shuttle robot arm. ``We're halfway home,'' Cabana said. Then came the hard part: stacking the two giant cylinders in the cargo bay. The two station pieces are so big _ 77 feet from the tip of one to the tip of the other with a combined mass of 70,000 pounds _ that Currie and her crewmates had to rely on a computerized vision system and camera views, rather than direct line of sight. This was the first time such a ``blind'' docking had ever been attempted. Currie positioned the solar-winged Zarya, still on the end of the shuttle robot arm, several inches directly above Unity. It was slow going; she wanted and needed perfect alignment. Once she was sure she had it, Cabana fired Endeavour's thrusters, and the brief burst raised the shuttle and thereby Unity enough for the docking mechanisms on the two station components to snap together. The historical moment occurred above the South Pacific. It took several tries, however, for Zarya and Unity to be pulled tightly together. The docking ring between them would not retract properly; Mission Control quickly traced the problem to the attached robot arm and asked the crew to release its hold on the docked Zarya. That did the trick. The union _ intended to last the station's 15-year or more lifetime _ set the stage for a spacewalk by two astronauts on Monday to attach electrical connectors and cables between the two components. Mission Control thought Sunday's work might take hours longer than planned and gave the six astronauts plenty of time for the tasks. But everything occurred more or less when and how it was supposed to, aside from a piece of space junk that strayed too close. Before beginning their final approach to Zarya, the six astronauts had to steer clear of a chunk of a rocket launched last month from California. Mission Control ordered the pilots to fire the shuttle thrusters to put an extra three miles between Endeavour and the space junk, putting Endeavour a total of five miles from the orbiting debris. The smaller gap would have been ``probably a little too close for comfort,'' Mission Control said. The bigger worry, by far, was over Endeavour's pursuit and capture of Zarya, and its coupling with Unity. The shuttle's 50-foot robot arm had never before handled an object as massive as the 41-foot, 44,000-pound Zarya, a power and propulsion module that was launched from Kazakstan on Nov. 20. It will provide all of the necessary electricity and steering for the fledgling space station until a permanent control module can be launched next summer. Minutes after Zarya's capture, Cabana called down that two antennas on the module were still undeployed as Russian flight controllers had feared. The antennas must be fully deployed in order for Zarya's manual docking system to work; that system won't be needed before next summer, officials said. The only other problem was with a Zarya battery; the astronauts took up a replacement part. The 36-foot, 25,000-pound Unity, the first American-made component, will serve as a connecting passageway, or vestibule, for future modules. It was crucial that Zarya and Unity be joined; if they could not be connected with the robot arm, NASA would have sent out two spacewalking astronauts to manually fit them together. In all, three spacewalks are planned for Endeavour's 12-day flight, not only to hook up electrical connections between the two modules but to install handrails and other tools for future crews. The joined modules will be released from Endeavour once all of the work is completed. NASA estimates 43 more launches and 159 more spacewalks will be needed after this mission to assemble the entire orbiting complex. Once completed, the 16-nation space station will have a mass of 1 million pounds, be longer than a football field, and house up to seven astronauts and cosmonauts. ||||| Following a series of intricate maneuvers and the skillful use of the space shuttle Endeavour's robot arm, astronauts on Sunday joined the first two of many segments that will form the international space station. The shuttle and its crew of six snared the Russian-made Zarya control module after chasing it around the Earth in ever-closing orbits throughout the day. Less than an hour after a rendezvous 240 miles above the Earth shortly before 6 p.m., Lt. Col. Nancy Currie of the Army deftly used the 50-foot arm to grab the 40,000-pound cylinder as the craft passed above Russia and to slowly pull it toward the shuttle. Seeing Zarya up close, Col. Robert Cabana of the Marines, the shuttle commander, confirmed that two antennas had failed to deploy from the module following its launch from Kazakhstan on Nov. 20. There were earlier indications that the antennas, which will be used later by the station to manually assist spacecraft dockings, had not extended. Currie took almost two hours to painstakingly move Zarya above the American-made Unity docking port positioned in Endeavour's cargo bay. When the two pieces were aligned within inches of one another, Cabana fired small thruster rockets that raised the shuttle, allowing the modules to clamp together. The two station pieces, together measuring about 77 feet from end to end and having a combined mass of 70,000 pounds, are the first of 100 major components to be united in space over the next five years to form an orbiting outpost that would weigh almost a million pounds and span an area the size of two football fields. More than 40 additional missions by U.S. shuttles and Russian rockets will be used to haul all of the components and other supplies into orbit, and astronauts from both nations are to spend almost 1,800 hours doing spacewalks to assemble the entire structure. The spece station is expected to cost its partnership of 16 nations more than $40 billion just to construct. Bringing the pieces together is only the first step in mating them. A pair of astronauts are to make three spacewalks this week, the first on Monday, during which they will hook up electrical and communications cables, remove covers, attach handrails and perform other tasks to get the modules to work as one unit. The most difficult part of Sunday's mating of the $240 million Zarya to the $300 million Unity was bringing them together after the shuttle caught up with the Russian unit. Currie had to use the Canadian-built robot arm to place Zarya on top of Unity without being able to see where the pieces joined. Unity, raised in Endeavour's cargo bay on Saturday, is so large that it blocked Currie's view of the mating fixtures from the shuttle's windows. She used views from remote cameras and a computerized vision system built on the arm to estimate the relative positions of the two large segments. The computerized system examined markings on both modules, computed their relationship to one another using the marks and displayed the results on a laptop computer. ``We've never done anything like this before,'' Currie said before the flight, adding that she had practiced the difficult maneuver more than 100 times over the last two years. The flight of Endeavour, which took off from Cape Canaveral, Fla., last Friday, had gone according to plan until early Sunday, when mission control ordered the shuttle to change its orbit slightly to avoid a piece of space debris. Air Force space debris trackers noted that the shuttle was to pass within 1.6 miles of a spent stage of an American booster rocket launched last month. Although this was considered a safe distance, shuttle controllers decided to widen the separation to five miles as an extra precaution. ||||| Endeavour and its astronauts closed in Sunday to capture the first piece of the international space station, the Russian-made Zarya control module that had to be connected to the Unity chamber aboard the shuttle. Stacking the two giant cylinders 240 miles above the Earth was considered the most difficult part of the mission. The job fell to Nancy Currie, the shuttle crane operator who had deftly hoisted and repositioned Unity in the cargo bay on Saturday. The two station pieces are so big _ 77 feet from the tip of one to the tip of the other with a combined mass of 70,000 pounds _ that Currie and her crewmates were going to have to rely on a computerized vision system and camera views, rather than direct line of sight. Such a ``blind'' docking had never been attempted before. Mission Control gave the astronauts plenty of time for the tasks. ``The main thing I've tried to do for the last two years working on this flight is make sure we have time. We have margin on everything,'' said flight director Bob Castle. Before beginning their final approach to Zarya _ Russian for Sunrise _ the shuttle's six astronauts had to steer clear of a chunk of a rocket launched last month from California. Mission Control ordered the pilots to fire the shuttle thrusters to put an extra three miles between Endeavour and the space junk, putting Endeavour a total of five miles from the orbiting debris. The smaller gap would have been ``probably a little too close for comfort,'' Mission Control said. The bigger worry, by far, was over Endeavour's pursuit and capture of Zarya, and its coupling with Unity. The shuttle's 50-foot robot arm had never before been assigned to handle an object as massive as the 44,000-pound Zarya, a power and propulsion module that was launched from Kazakhstan on Nov. 20. It will provide all the necessary electricity and steering for the fledgling space station until a permanent control module can be launched next summer. The 36-foot, 25,000-pound Unity will serve as a connecting passageway, or vestibule, for future modules. In case Zarya and Unity could not be connected with the robot arm, two spacewalking astronauts would have to manually fit them together. The astronauts would be going out anyway Monday to attach electrical connectors and cables between the two components. In all, three spacewalks were planned for Endeavour's 12-day flight. NASA estimates 43 more launches and 159 more spacewalks will be needed after this mission to assemble the entire orbiting complex. Once completed, the 16-nation space station will have a mass of 1 million pounds, be longer than a football field, and house up to seven astronauts and cosmonauts. ||||| For the second day in a row, astronauts boarded space shuttle Endeavour on Friday for liftoff on NASA's first space station construction flight. ``Let's go do this,'' said commander Robert Cabana. ``Amen,'' replied a launch controller. Rain and cloudy skies were once again a threat. But NASA was confident the master alarm in Endeavour's cockpit would behave; it went off with just 4{ minutes to go in the countdown Thursday, forcing a delay. NASA has only five minutes or less each day to launch Endeavour in order to meet up with the first space station part, which was put in orbit two weeks ago by the Russians. The shuttle contains the second station component. The master alarm blared and red lights flashed just before the shuttle was to lift off early Thursday. By the time controllers traced the problem to a momentary drop in hydraulic pressure and decided to press ahead, it was too late _ they had missed the cutoff by a second or two. ``Sure, it's frustrating,'' said Bill Readdy, shuttle program director and a veteran shuttle commander. ``But we do things right. We do things by the book, and we're not going to cut any corners even if it means just shaving a second or two.'' The six astronauts crawled out of the shuttle, and two threw up their hands. Cabana held up his thumb and index finger a half-inch apart: ``We were that close.'' The problem was confined to one of Endeavour's three hydraulic pressure units. The pressure dropped just long enough to trigger the alarm, evidently because of a sensitive switch, then returned to normal. NASA engineers spent the day examining the problem, but found nothing wrong with any of the systems and were confident it would not reoccur. Endeavour's flight is already a year late because of a cash crunch in Russia, one of NASA's partners in building the international space station. The one-day delay cost NASA about $600,000, mostly in fuel and overtime pay. Aboard Endeavour is an American-made connecting passageway named Unity. The astronauts will use the shuttle robot arm to capture the Russian space station piece and attach it to Unity. Then, two spacewalkers will hook up all the electrical connections and cables between the two cylinders, and attach handrails and tools for future crews. Until the alarm sounded, it looked as though the weather would be the only problem. Rain and clouds moved in from the Atlantic 1{ hours before liftoff, but drifted away with minutes to spare. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and other dignitaries from around the world had gathered in the drizzle to see Endeavour and its crew off. ``Here we have 16 countries cooperating on a venture to the future,'' said Albright, who was expected back for Friday's attempt. ``This is a good investment.'' ||||| A last-minute alarm forced NASA to halt Thursday's launching of the space shuttle Endeavour, on a mission to start assembling the international space station. Another attempt for Endeavour and its crew of six astronauts is scheduled for Friday at 3:36 a.m. This was the first time in three years, and 19 flights, that a shuttle countdown had been stopped after the spaceship was fueled and the crew aboard the craft and ready to go. The uncommon delay prompted frowns and furrowed brows here, although officials stressed that it was entirely warranted. ``We want to err on the conservative side,'' Ralph Roe, launch director at the Kennedy Space Center, said at a news conference after the sudden halt of the countdown just 19 seconds before liftoff. Everything had been going smoothly for a rare nighttime launching, set for 3:58 on Thursday morning. The weather, forecast to be iffy, turned out to be fine, and the sky was alight with a nearly full moon. But the length of the so-called launching window was, as planned, unusually short _ only 10 minutes. That brevity was a result of Endeavour's having to rendezvous with a space-station part that Russia put into orbit last month. The show-stopper arose about four minutes before liftoff when the computer in the space shuttle set off a master alarm. Controllers studied the data and discovered a momentary pressure drop on one of the hydraulic systems that control the movements of the shuttle's engines and its rudder and other flight surfaces. Officials eventually decided that the pressure drop was insignificant, and they resolved to press ahead. But by then it was too late: time had run out for one of the procedures needed to keep the shuttle's fuel supercold. So the countdown was aborted just 19 seconds from blastoff. The six astronauts began to emerge from the shuttle an hour later and ultimately headed for bed to rest up for another attempt early Friday. ||||| WASHINGTON _ NASA and the Russian Space Agency have agreed to set aside a last-minute Russian request to launch an international space station into an orbit closer to Mir, officials announced Friday. While putting the new station closer to Russia's 12-year-old Mir station would make it easier to transfer equipment and supplies from the old outpost to the new one, the request came too late to be acted on, said Randy Brinkley, NASA's space station program manager. NASA was surprised last week when Russia's prime station contractor proposed the orbital position change just two-and-a-half weeks before launch of the first part of the new station. Delaying the Nov. 20 flight by 10 hours to match the orbits would have forced similar shifts in the subsequent assembly flights, and resulted in potentially unfavorable sun angles on the solar-powered station, engineers said. ``We have mutually concluded that it would not be prudent to make these changes,'' Brinkley said during a news conference held at the Johnson Space Center in Houston. ``It added technical complexity and risks to the mission that were not justified.'' The decision, which followed ``frank and candid'' discussions between the two partners, was not imposed by the United States, he said. ``The conclusions were mutual,'' Brinkley said. ``Both sides concluded that it did not make sense.'' The Russians, struggling to find money for their space program with their nation in economic collapse, had said they wanted to transfer thousands of pounds of newer equipment and scientific instruments from Mir as an economy move. However, some critics questioned the Russians' motives, wondering if the requested orbital change was part of plan to delay the decommissioning and destruction of Mir, which the Russians have agreed to do next summer. The Russians have so little money that the United States and other partners in the international station fear that money spent on Mir will prevent Russia from meeting its obligations with the new project. ``The Mir competes with the international space station for very critical resources and for funding,'' Brinkley said. NASA will consider ideas for salvaging Mir's research equipment to use on the international space station, he said, but only if it does not interfere with assembling the new station. The United States and 15 other nations plan to begin building the new station in orbit next week when the Russians launch a module that will supply power and propulsion during the early stages of the five-year construction period. The space shuttle Endeavor is to follow on Dec. 3 with the second station part, a U.S.-built connecting passageway that attaches to the first module. ||||| Endeavour's astronauts connected the first two building blocks of the international space station on Sunday, creating a seven-story tower in the shuttle cargo bay. It was the first time that the Russian-built Zarya control module and the made-in-America Unity chamber had ever touched. It looked to be a perfect and, hopefully, long-lasting fit. ``We have capture of Zarya,'' commander Robert Cabana announced the two pieces came together. ``Congratulations to the crew of the good ship Endeavour,'' replied Mission Control. ``That's terrific.'' The 240-mile-high construction job began two hours earlier with Nancy Currie's capture of Zarya (Russian for Sunrise) using the shuttle robot arm. ``We're halfway home,'' Cabana said. Then came the hard part: stacking the two giant cylinders in the cargo bay. The two station pieces are so big _ 77 feet from the tip of one to the tip of the other with a combined mass of 70,000 pounds _ that Currie and her crewmates had to rely on a computerized vision system and camera views, rather than direct line of sight. This was the first time such a ``blind'' docking had ever been attempted. Currie positioned the solar-winged Zarya, still on the end of the shuttle robot arm, several inches directly above Unity. It was slow going; she wanted and needed perfect alignment. Once she was sure she had it, Cabana fired Endeavour's thrusters, and the brief burst raised the shuttle and thereby Unity enough for the docking mechanisms on the two station components to snap together. The historical moment occurred above the South Pacific. The union _ intended to last the station's 15-year or more lifetime _ set the stage for a spacewalk by two astronauts on Monday to attach electrical connectors and cables between the two components. Mission Control thought Sunday's work might take hours longer than planned and gave the six astronauts plenty of time for the tasks. But everything occurred more or less when and how it was supposed to, aside from a piece of space junk that strayed too close. Before beginning their final approach to Zarya, the six astronauts had to steer clear of a chunk of a rocket launched last month from California. Mission Control ordered the pilots to fire the shuttle thrusters to put an extra three miles between Endeavour and the space junk, putting Endeavour a total of five miles from the orbiting debris. The smaller gap would have been ``probably a little too close for comfort,'' Mission Control said. The bigger worry, by far, was over Endeavour's pursuit and capture of Zarya, and its coupling with Unity. The shuttle's 50-foot robot arm had never before handled an object as massive as the 41-foot, 44,000-pound Zarya, a power and propulsion module that was launched from Kazakstan on Nov. 20. It will provide all of the necessary electricity and steering for the fledgling space station until a permanent control module can be launched next summer. Minutes after Zarya's capture, Cabana called down that two antennas on the module were still undeployed as Russian flight controllers had feared. The antennas must be fully deployed in order for Zarya's manual docking system to work; that system won't be needed before next summer, officials said. The only other problem was with a Zarya battery; the astronauts took up a replacement part. The 36-foot, 25,000-pound Unity, the first American-made component, will serve as a connecting passageway, or vestibule, for future modules. It was crucial that Zarya and Unity be joined; if they could not be connected with the robot arm, NASA would have sent out two spacewalking astronauts to manually fit them together. In all, three spacewalks are planned for Endeavour's 12-day flight, not only to hook up electrical connections between the two modules but to install handrails and other tools for future crews. The joined modules will be released from Endeavour once all of the work is completed. NASA estimates 43 more launches and 159 more spacewalks will be needed after this mission to assemble the entire orbiting complex. Once completed, the 16-nation space station will have a mass of 1 million pounds, be longer than a football field, and house up to seven astronauts and cosmonauts. ||||| The planet's most daring construction job began Friday as the shuttle Endeavour carried into orbit six astronauts and the first U.S.-built part of an international space station that is expected to cost more than $100 billion. After a last-minute alarm on the shuttle forced a postponement early Thursday, the launch went off flawlessly at 3:36 Friday morning, right on schedule. The night sky was clear, and the moon full. With a roar, Endeavour made its fiery ascent and briefly turned the Florida coastline from night to day. More than five minutes and 500 miles later, the spaceship's main engines could still be seen in the distance, twinkling like a new star. On their 12-day flight, Endeavour's astronauts are to locate a Russian part already in orbit, grasp it with the shuttle's robot arm and attach the new U.S. module. Wielding tools hundreds of miles above Earth, working methodically in the cold void, the astronauts will be starting a five-year assembly that is likely to make the construction of the Pyramids and the great cathedrals look like child's play. Construction of the station, which will be a research facility, will require an estimated 160 space walks, which, for safety reasons, will always be done by two people. When complete, the international space station, dominated by solar power arrays, will cover an area equal to that of two football fields. Modules of interconnected laboratories and living quarters for up to seven astronauts are to form a habitat equal to that of two 747 jetliners. The station's batteries alone, if lined up, would extend a half-mile. The project entails high risk, because of the technical difficulty of putting all this together in the unforgiving environment of space, along with the dangers inherent in flying the space shuttle to the construction site. The work is further complicated by international politics and worries about money. The Russians, whose participation in the partnership clinched the post-Cold War deal five years ago, are now a wild card. Moscow's economic and political woes have left Western officials unsure of its ability and willingness to come up with its share of money and technology. At the same time, the station's costs are rising, and its critics among scientists worry that its appetite for money will consume their own federal financing. The project's total cost is a subject of debate, but the most credible estimates now put the price of assembly and of operation for a decade, the station's estimated lifetime, at $110 billion. Of that, American taxpayers are to spend roughly $96 billion, and the project's 15 foreign partners about $14 billion. The station is intended to be a grand laboratory where, in the environment of weightlessness, investigators can develop new materials and new drugs and explore physiology's remaining mysteries, in part so that humans may someday know how to adapt for long space flight to other worlds. Friday, in any case, little was heard about the project but praise. ``Great show, Endeavour,'' mission control in Houston radioed to the six astronauts as the shuttle went into orbit. At the Florida spaceport, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright lauded the launching team and the new venture. ``That was truly, truly fantastic,'' she told the team after the liftoff. And it was important, she added, to have so many nations ``working together on the kinds of issues that the 21st century is going to be concerned with.'' ``So my congratulations to all of you,'' the secretary said. ``Stupendous work.'' The main cargo Thursday was the Unity module, the first U.S.-built station part. Small compared with the giants to come in three dozen shuttle flights during assembly, the unit is 18 feet long, weighs 13 tons and is to serve as a connecting hub for other modules. Saturday, one of the astronauts, Lt. Col. Nancy Currie of the Army, is to have the shuttle's robot arm hoist Unity from the payload bay and secure it to Endeavour's docking system, moving the unit from a horizontal to a vertical position. Then, Sunday, the astronauts are to rendezvous with the module known as Zarya, or Sunrise, which Russia launched into orbit from Kazakhstan on Nov. 20. Financed by the United States but built in Russia, Zarya, 41 feet long, is be a kind of tugboat for the embryonic station, furnishing power and propulsion as well as communication and rendezvous abilities. When Endeavour's payload bay is within 10 feet of Zarya, Colonel Currie is to reach out with the robot arm and pull the Russian module into position over Unity. The mechanical arm has never before moved anything so big. Zarya, while completely weightless in space, has 21 tons of mass. If mishandled, it can crush and kill. As Col. Currie holds Zarya steady, Endeavour's commander, Col. Robert Cabana of the Marine Corps, a veteran of three space flights, is to nudge the shuttle forward to join the two station pieces together. When mated with special attachments, Zarya and Unity will form the station's first element, 63 feet long and 78 feet wide out to the tips of the solar arrays. Starting Monday, a pair of space-walking astronauts are to hook up electrical connections and data cables between the units, attach antennas and install tools and handrails for future visitors. The builders will be Col. Jerry Ross of the Air Force, 50, and Dr. James Newman, 42, a physicist. Their series of three space walks will continue Wednesday and end Saturday, Dec. 12. As construction goes on outside, the astronauts inside Endeavour will be busy making preparations to enter the new station through a connecting tunnel and docking system. Next Thursday, the crew will enter the embryonic station for the first time, installing portable fans and lights. Friday they will again enter, to prepare for the arrival in 1999 of the next major element, the first one both built and financed by Russia. The other astronauts on Endeavour are its pilot, Maj. Frederick Sturckow of the Marine Corps, and a mission specialist, Sergei Krikalev of the Russian Space Agency. After separating from the new outpost, the crew is to bring Endeavour back to the Kennedy Space Center on Dec. 15, with the mission length just shy of 12 days. Gretchen McClain, NASA's director in Washington for the international space station, said in an interview here that its overall costs were actually small for individual Americans. Over its lifetime, she said, the annual cost will equal that of a pizza and a soft drink for each of the nation's 96 million taxpayers. U.S. costs for construction, she added, were $24 billion, and for operations through the year 2012 were $10.4 billion, for a total of $34.4 billion. Most experts outside the agency consider this figure ridiculously low because it ignores many billions of dollars spent in early development work as well as the cost of numerous shuttle flights, which run about $800 million apiece. ||||| Endeavour's astronauts connected the first two building blocks of the international space station on Sunday, creating a seven-story tower in the shuttle cargo bay. It was the first time that the Russian-built Zarya control module and the made-in-America Unity chamber had ever touched. It looked to be a perfect and, hopefully, long-lasting fit. ``We have capture of Zarya,'' commander Robert Cabana announced the moment the two pieces came together. ``Congratulations to the crew of the good ship Endeavour,'' replied Mission Control. ``That's terrific.'' The 240-mile-high construction job began two hours earlier with Nancy Currie's capture of Zarya (Russian for Sunrise) using the shuttle robot arm. ``We're halfway home,'' Cabana said. Then came the hard part: stacking the two giant cylinders in the cargo bay. The two station pieces are so big _ 77 feet from the tip of one to the tip of the other with a combined mass of 70,000 pounds _ that Currie and her crewmates had to rely on a computerized vision system and camera views, rather than direct line of sight. This was the first time such a ``blind'' docking had ever been attempted. Currie positioned the solar-winged Zarya, still on the end of the shuttle robot arm, several inches directly above Unity. It was slow going; she wanted and needed perfect alignment. Once she was sure she had it, Cabana fired Endeavour's thrusters, and the brief burst raised the shuttle and thereby Unity enough for the docking mechanisms on the two station components to snap together. The historical moment occurred above the South Pacific. It took several tries, however, for Zarya and Unity to be pulled tightly together. The docking ring between them would not retract properly; Mission Control quickly traced the problem to the attached robot arm and asked the crew to release its hold on the docked Zarya. That did the trick. The union _ intended to last the station's 15-year or more lifetime _ set the stage for a spacewalk by two astronauts on Monday to attach electrical connectors and cables between the two components. Mission Control thought Sunday's work might take hours longer than planned and gave the six astronauts plenty of time for the tasks. But everything occurred more or less when and how it was supposed to, aside from a piece of space junk that strayed too close. Before beginning their final approach to Zarya, the six astronauts had to steer clear of a chunk of a rocket launched last month from California. Mission Control ordered the pilots to fire the shuttle thrusters to put an extra three miles between Endeavour and the space junk, putting Endeavour a total of five miles from the orbiting debris. The smaller gap would have been ``probably a little too close for comfort,'' Mission Control said. The bigger worry, by far, was over Endeavour's pursuit and capture of Zarya, and its coupling with Unity. The shuttle's 50-foot robot arm had never before handled an object as massive as the 41-foot, 44,000-pound Zarya, a power and propulsion module that was launched from Kazakstan on Nov. 20. It will provide all of the necessary electricity and steering for the fledgling space station until a permanent control module can be launched next summer. Minutes after Zarya's capture, Cabana called down that two antennas on the module were still undeployed as Russian flight controllers had feared. The antennas must be fully deployed in order for Zarya's manual docking system to work; that system won't be needed before next summer, officials said. The only other problem was with a Zarya battery; the astronauts took up a replacement part. The 36-foot, 25,000-pound Unity, the first American-made component, will serve as a connecting passageway, or vestibule, for future modules. It was crucial that Zarya and Unity be joined; if they could not be connected with the robot arm, NASA would have sent out two spacewalking astronauts to manually fit them together. In all, three spacewalks are planned for Endeavour's 12-day flight, not only to hook up electrical connections between the two modules but to install handrails and other tools for future crews. The joined modules will be released from Endeavour once all of the work is completed. NASA estimates 43 more launches and 159 more spacewalks will be needed after this mission to assemble the entire orbiting complex. Once completed, the 16-nation space station will have a mass of 1 million pounds, be longer than a football field, and house up to seven astronauts and cosmonauts.

On Friday the shuttle Endeavor carried six astronauts into orbit to start building an international space station. The launch occurred after Russia and U.S. officials agreed not to delay the flight in order to orbit closer to MIR, and after a last-minute alarm forced a postponement. On Sunday astronauts joining the Russian-made Zarya control module cylinder with the American-made module to form a 70,000 pounds mass 77 feet long. NASA estimates 43 more launches and 159 more space walks are needed to assemble the complex. When completed the 16-nation space station will be longer than a football field. It will be used to study adaptation to space flight.

Endeavour's astronauts connected the first two building blocks of the international space station on Sunday, creating a seven-story tower in the shuttle cargo bay. It was the first time that the Russian-built Zarya control module and the made-in-America Unity chamber had ever touched. It looked to be a perfect and, hopefully, long-lasting fit. ``We have capture of Zarya,'' commander Robert Cabana announced the moment the two pieces came together. ``Congratulations to the crew of the good ship Endeavour,'' replied Mission Control. ``That's terrific.'' The 240-mile-high construction job began two hours earlier with Nancy Currie's capture of Zarya (Russian for Sunrise) using the shuttle robot arm. ``We're halfway home,'' Cabana said. Then came the hard part: stacking the two giant cylinders in the cargo bay. The two station pieces are so big _ 77 feet from the tip of one to the tip of the other with a combined mass of 70,000 pounds _ that Currie and her crewmates had to rely on a computerized vision system and camera views, rather than direct line of sight. This was the first time such a ``blind'' docking had ever been attempted. Currie positioned the solar-winged Zarya, still on the end of the shuttle robot arm, several inches directly above Unity. It was slow going; she wanted and needed perfect alignment. Once she was sure she had it, Cabana fired Endeavour's thrusters, and the brief burst raised the shuttle and thereby Unity enough for the docking mechanisms on the two station components to snap together. The historical moment occurred above the South Pacific. The union _ intended to last the station's 15-year or more lifetime _ set the stage for a spacewalk by two astronauts on Monday to attach electrical connectors and cables between the two components. Mission Control thought Sunday's work might take hours longer than planned and gave the six astronauts plenty of time for the tasks. But everything occurred more or less when and how it was supposed to, aside from a piece of space junk that strayed too close. Before beginning their final approach to Zarya, the six astronauts had to steer clear of a chunk of a rocket launched last month from California. Mission Control ordered the pilots to fire the shuttle thrusters to put an extra three miles between Endeavour and the space junk, putting Endeavour a total of five miles from the orbiting debris. The smaller gap would have been ``probably a little too close for comfort,'' Mission Control said. The bigger worry, by far, was over Endeavour's pursuit and capture of Zarya, and its coupling with Unity. The shuttle's 50-foot robot arm had never before handled an object as massive as the 41-foot, 44,000-pound Zarya, a power and propulsion module that was launched from Kazakstan on Nov. 20. It will provide all of the necessary electricity and steering for the fledgling space station until a permanent control module can be launched next summer. Minutes after Zarya's capture, Cabana called down that two antennas on the module were still undeployed as Russian flight controllers had feared. The antennas must be fully deployed in order for Zarya's manual docking system to work; that system won't be needed before next summer, officials said. The only other problem was with a Zarya battery; the astronauts took up a replacement part. The 36-foot, 25,000-pound Unity, the first American-made component, will serve as a connecting passageway, or vestibule, for future modules. It was crucial that Zarya and Unity be joined; if they could not be connected with the robot arm, NASA would have sent out two spacewalking astronauts to manually fit them together. In all, three spacewalks are planned for Endeavour's 12-day flight, not only to hook up electrical connections between the two modules but to install handrails and other tools for future crews. The joined modules will be released from Endeavour once all of the work is completed. NASA estimates 43 more launches and 159 more spacewalks will be needed after this mission to assemble the entire orbiting complex. Once completed, the 16-nation space station will have a mass of 1 million pounds, be longer than a football field, and house up to seven astronauts and cosmonauts. ||||| Endeavour's astronauts connected the first two building blocks of the international space station on Sunday, creating a seven-story tower in the shuttle cargo bay. It was the first time that the Russian-built Zarya control module and the made-in-America Unity chamber had ever touched. It looked to be a perfect and, hopefully, long-lasting fit. ``We have capture of Zarya,'' commander Robert Cabana announced the moment the two pieces came together. ``Congratulations to the crew of the good ship Endeavour,'' replied Mission Control. ``That's terrific.'' The 240-mile-high construction job began two hours earlier with Nancy Currie's capture of Zarya (Russian for Sunrise) using the shuttle robot arm. ``We're halfway home,'' Cabana said. Then came the hard part: stacking the two giant cylinders in the cargo bay. The two station pieces are so big _ 77 feet from the tip of one to the tip of the other with a combined mass of 70,000 pounds _ that Currie and her crewmates had to rely on a computerized vision system and camera views, rather than direct line of sight. This was the first time such a ``blind'' docking had ever been attempted. Currie positioned the solar-winged Zarya, still on the end of the shuttle robot arm, several inches directly above Unity. It was slow going; she wanted and needed perfect alignment. Once she was sure she had it, Cabana fired Endeavour's thrusters, and the brief burst raised the shuttle and thereby Unity enough for the docking mechanisms on the two station components to snap together. The historical moment occurred above the South Pacific. It took several tries, however, for Zarya and Unity to be pulled tightly together. The docking ring between them would not retract properly; Mission Control quickly traced the problem to the attached robot arm and asked the crew to release its hold on the docked Zarya. That did the trick. The union _ intended to last the station's 15-year or more lifetime _ set the stage for a spacewalk by two astronauts on Monday to attach electrical connectors and cables between the two components. Mission Control thought Sunday's work might take hours longer than planned and gave the six astronauts plenty of time for the tasks. But everything occurred more or less when and how it was supposed to, aside from a piece of space junk that strayed too close. Before beginning their final approach to Zarya, the six astronauts had to steer clear of a chunk of a rocket launched last month from California. Mission Control ordered the pilots to fire the shuttle thrusters to put an extra three miles between Endeavour and the space junk, putting Endeavour a total of five miles from the orbiting debris. The smaller gap would have been ``probably a little too close for comfort,'' Mission Control said. The bigger worry, by far, was over Endeavour's pursuit and capture of Zarya, and its coupling with Unity. The shuttle's 50-foot robot arm had never before handled an object as massive as the 41-foot, 44,000-pound Zarya, a power and propulsion module that was launched from Kazakstan on Nov. 20. It will provide all of the necessary electricity and steering for the fledgling space station until a permanent control module can be launched next summer. Minutes after Zarya's capture, Cabana called down that two antennas on the module were still undeployed as Russian flight controllers had feared. The antennas must be fully deployed in order for Zarya's manual docking system to work; that system won't be needed before next summer, officials said. The only other problem was with a Zarya battery; the astronauts took up a replacement part. The 36-foot, 25,000-pound Unity, the first American-made component, will serve as a connecting passageway, or vestibule, for future modules. It was crucial that Zarya and Unity be joined; if they could not be connected with the robot arm, NASA would have sent out two spacewalking astronauts to manually fit them together. In all, three spacewalks are planned for Endeavour's 12-day flight, not only to hook up electrical connections between the two modules but to install handrails and other tools for future crews. The joined modules will be released from Endeavour once all of the work is completed. NASA estimates 43 more launches and 159 more spacewalks will be needed after this mission to assemble the entire orbiting complex. Once completed, the 16-nation space station will have a mass of 1 million pounds, be longer than a football field, and house up to seven astronauts and cosmonauts. ||||| Following a series of intricate maneuvers and the skillful use of the space shuttle Endeavour's robot arm, astronauts on Sunday joined the first two of many segments that will form the international space station. The shuttle and its crew of six snared the Russian-made Zarya control module after chasing it around the Earth in ever-closing orbits throughout the day. Less than an hour after a rendezvous 240 miles above the Earth shortly before 6 p.m., Lt. Col. Nancy Currie of the Army deftly used the 50-foot arm to grab the 40,000-pound cylinder as the craft passed above Russia and to slowly pull it toward the shuttle. Seeing Zarya up close, Col. Robert Cabana of the Marines, the shuttle commander, confirmed that two antennas had failed to deploy from the module following its launch from Kazakhstan on Nov. 20. There were earlier indications that the antennas, which will be used later by the station to manually assist spacecraft dockings, had not extended. Currie took almost two hours to painstakingly move Zarya above the American-made Unity docking port positioned in Endeavour's cargo bay. When the two pieces were aligned within inches of one another, Cabana fired small thruster rockets that raised the shuttle, allowing the modules to clamp together. The two station pieces, together measuring about 77 feet from end to end and having a combined mass of 70,000 pounds, are the first of 100 major components to be united in space over the next five years to form an orbiting outpost that would weigh almost a million pounds and span an area the size of two football fields. More than 40 additional missions by U.S. shuttles and Russian rockets will be used to haul all of the components and other supplies into orbit, and astronauts from both nations are to spend almost 1,800 hours doing spacewalks to assemble the entire structure. The spece station is expected to cost its partnership of 16 nations more than $40 billion just to construct. Bringing the pieces together is only the first step in mating them. A pair of astronauts are to make three spacewalks this week, the first on Monday, during which they will hook up electrical and communications cables, remove covers, attach handrails and perform other tasks to get the modules to work as one unit. The most difficult part of Sunday's mating of the $240 million Zarya to the $300 million Unity was bringing them together after the shuttle caught up with the Russian unit. Currie had to use the Canadian-built robot arm to place Zarya on top of Unity without being able to see where the pieces joined. Unity, raised in Endeavour's cargo bay on Saturday, is so large that it blocked Currie's view of the mating fixtures from the shuttle's windows. She used views from remote cameras and a computerized vision system built on the arm to estimate the relative positions of the two large segments. The computerized system examined markings on both modules, computed their relationship to one another using the marks and displayed the results on a laptop computer. ``We've never done anything like this before,'' Currie said before the flight, adding that she had practiced the difficult maneuver more than 100 times over the last two years. The flight of Endeavour, which took off from Cape Canaveral, Fla., last Friday, had gone according to plan until early Sunday, when mission control ordered the shuttle to change its orbit slightly to avoid a piece of space debris. Air Force space debris trackers noted that the shuttle was to pass within 1.6 miles of a spent stage of an American booster rocket launched last month. Although this was considered a safe distance, shuttle controllers decided to widen the separation to five miles as an extra precaution. ||||| Endeavour and its astronauts closed in Sunday to capture the first piece of the international space station, the Russian-made Zarya control module that had to be connected to the Unity chamber aboard the shuttle. Stacking the two giant cylinders 240 miles above the Earth was considered the most difficult part of the mission. The job fell to Nancy Currie, the shuttle crane operator who had deftly hoisted and repositioned Unity in the cargo bay on Saturday. The two station pieces are so big _ 77 feet from the tip of one to the tip of the other with a combined mass of 70,000 pounds _ that Currie and her crewmates were going to have to rely on a computerized vision system and camera views, rather than direct line of sight. Such a ``blind'' docking had never been attempted before. Mission Control gave the astronauts plenty of time for the tasks. ``The main thing I've tried to do for the last two years working on this flight is make sure we have time. We have margin on everything,'' said flight director Bob Castle. Before beginning their final approach to Zarya _ Russian for Sunrise _ the shuttle's six astronauts had to steer clear of a chunk of a rocket launched last month from California. Mission Control ordered the pilots to fire the shuttle thrusters to put an extra three miles between Endeavour and the space junk, putting Endeavour a total of five miles from the orbiting debris. The smaller gap would have been ``probably a little too close for comfort,'' Mission Control said. The bigger worry, by far, was over Endeavour's pursuit and capture of Zarya, and its coupling with Unity. The shuttle's 50-foot robot arm had never before been assigned to handle an object as massive as the 44,000-pound Zarya, a power and propulsion module that was launched from Kazakhstan on Nov. 20. It will provide all the necessary electricity and steering for the fledgling space station until a permanent control module can be launched next summer. The 36-foot, 25,000-pound Unity will serve as a connecting passageway, or vestibule, for future modules. In case Zarya and Unity could not be connected with the robot arm, two spacewalking astronauts would have to manually fit them together. The astronauts would be going out anyway Monday to attach electrical connectors and cables between the two components. In all, three spacewalks were planned for Endeavour's 12-day flight. NASA estimates 43 more launches and 159 more spacewalks will be needed after this mission to assemble the entire orbiting complex. Once completed, the 16-nation space station will have a mass of 1 million pounds, be longer than a football field, and house up to seven astronauts and cosmonauts. ||||| For the second day in a row, astronauts boarded space shuttle Endeavour on Friday for liftoff on NASA's first space station construction flight. ``Let's go do this,'' said commander Robert Cabana. ``Amen,'' replied a launch controller. Rain and cloudy skies were once again a threat. But NASA was confident the master alarm in Endeavour's cockpit would behave; it went off with just 4{ minutes to go in the countdown Thursday, forcing a delay. NASA has only five minutes or less each day to launch Endeavour in order to meet up with the first space station part, which was put in orbit two weeks ago by the Russians. The shuttle contains the second station component. The master alarm blared and red lights flashed just before the shuttle was to lift off early Thursday. By the time controllers traced the problem to a momentary drop in hydraulic pressure and decided to press ahead, it was too late _ they had missed the cutoff by a second or two. ``Sure, it's frustrating,'' said Bill Readdy, shuttle program director and a veteran shuttle commander. ``But we do things right. We do things by the book, and we're not going to cut any corners even if it means just shaving a second or two.'' The six astronauts crawled out of the shuttle, and two threw up their hands. Cabana held up his thumb and index finger a half-inch apart: ``We were that close.'' The problem was confined to one of Endeavour's three hydraulic pressure units. The pressure dropped just long enough to trigger the alarm, evidently because of a sensitive switch, then returned to normal. NASA engineers spent the day examining the problem, but found nothing wrong with any of the systems and were confident it would not reoccur. Endeavour's flight is already a year late because of a cash crunch in Russia, one of NASA's partners in building the international space station. The one-day delay cost NASA about $600,000, mostly in fuel and overtime pay. Aboard Endeavour is an American-made connecting passageway named Unity. The astronauts will use the shuttle robot arm to capture the Russian space station piece and attach it to Unity. Then, two spacewalkers will hook up all the electrical connections and cables between the two cylinders, and attach handrails and tools for future crews. Until the alarm sounded, it looked as though the weather would be the only problem. Rain and clouds moved in from the Atlantic 1{ hours before liftoff, but drifted away with minutes to spare. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and other dignitaries from around the world had gathered in the drizzle to see Endeavour and its crew off. ``Here we have 16 countries cooperating on a venture to the future,'' said Albright, who was expected back for Friday's attempt. ``This is a good investment.'' ||||| A last-minute alarm forced NASA to halt Thursday's launching of the space shuttle Endeavour, on a mission to start assembling the international space station. Another attempt for Endeavour and its crew of six astronauts is scheduled for Friday at 3:36 a.m. This was the first time in three years, and 19 flights, that a shuttle countdown had been stopped after the spaceship was fueled and the crew aboard the craft and ready to go. The uncommon delay prompted frowns and furrowed brows here, although officials stressed that it was entirely warranted. ``We want to err on the conservative side,'' Ralph Roe, launch director at the Kennedy Space Center, said at a news conference after the sudden halt of the countdown just 19 seconds before liftoff. Everything had been going smoothly for a rare nighttime launching, set for 3:58 on Thursday morning. The weather, forecast to be iffy, turned out to be fine, and the sky was alight with a nearly full moon. But the length of the so-called launching window was, as planned, unusually short _ only 10 minutes. That brevity was a result of Endeavour's having to rendezvous with a space-station part that Russia put into orbit last month. The show-stopper arose about four minutes before liftoff when the computer in the space shuttle set off a master alarm. Controllers studied the data and discovered a momentary pressure drop on one of the hydraulic systems that control the movements of the shuttle's engines and its rudder and other flight surfaces. Officials eventually decided that the pressure drop was insignificant, and they resolved to press ahead. But by then it was too late: time had run out for one of the procedures needed to keep the shuttle's fuel supercold. So the countdown was aborted just 19 seconds from blastoff. The six astronauts began to emerge from the shuttle an hour later and ultimately headed for bed to rest up for another attempt early Friday. ||||| WASHINGTON _ NASA and the Russian Space Agency have agreed to set aside a last-minute Russian request to launch an international space station into an orbit closer to Mir, officials announced Friday. While putting the new station closer to Russia's 12-year-old Mir station would make it easier to transfer equipment and supplies from the old outpost to the new one, the request came too late to be acted on, said Randy Brinkley, NASA's space station program manager. NASA was surprised last week when Russia's prime station contractor proposed the orbital position change just two-and-a-half weeks before launch of the first part of the new station. Delaying the Nov. 20 flight by 10 hours to match the orbits would have forced similar shifts in the subsequent assembly flights, and resulted in potentially unfavorable sun angles on the solar-powered station, engineers said. ``We have mutually concluded that it would not be prudent to make these changes,'' Brinkley said during a news conference held at the Johnson Space Center in Houston. ``It added technical complexity and risks to the mission that were not justified.'' The decision, which followed ``frank and candid'' discussions between the two partners, was not imposed by the United States, he said. ``The conclusions were mutual,'' Brinkley said. ``Both sides concluded that it did not make sense.'' The Russians, struggling to find money for their space program with their nation in economic collapse, had said they wanted to transfer thousands of pounds of newer equipment and scientific instruments from Mir as an economy move. However, some critics questioned the Russians' motives, wondering if the requested orbital change was part of plan to delay the decommissioning and destruction of Mir, which the Russians have agreed to do next summer. The Russians have so little money that the United States and other partners in the international station fear that money spent on Mir will prevent Russia from meeting its obligations with the new project. ``The Mir competes with the international space station for very critical resources and for funding,'' Brinkley said. NASA will consider ideas for salvaging Mir's research equipment to use on the international space station, he said, but only if it does not interfere with assembling the new station. The United States and 15 other nations plan to begin building the new station in orbit next week when the Russians launch a module that will supply power and propulsion during the early stages of the five-year construction period. The space shuttle Endeavor is to follow on Dec. 3 with the second station part, a U.S.-built connecting passageway that attaches to the first module. ||||| Endeavour's astronauts connected the first two building blocks of the international space station on Sunday, creating a seven-story tower in the shuttle cargo bay. It was the first time that the Russian-built Zarya control module and the made-in-America Unity chamber had ever touched. It looked to be a perfect and, hopefully, long-lasting fit. ``We have capture of Zarya,'' commander Robert Cabana announced the two pieces came together. ``Congratulations to the crew of the good ship Endeavour,'' replied Mission Control. ``That's terrific.'' The 240-mile-high construction job began two hours earlier with Nancy Currie's capture of Zarya (Russian for Sunrise) using the shuttle robot arm. ``We're halfway home,'' Cabana said. Then came the hard part: stacking the two giant cylinders in the cargo bay. The two station pieces are so big _ 77 feet from the tip of one to the tip of the other with a combined mass of 70,000 pounds _ that Currie and her crewmates had to rely on a computerized vision system and camera views, rather than direct line of sight. This was the first time such a ``blind'' docking had ever been attempted. Currie positioned the solar-winged Zarya, still on the end of the shuttle robot arm, several inches directly above Unity. It was slow going; she wanted and needed perfect alignment. Once she was sure she had it, Cabana fired Endeavour's thrusters, and the brief burst raised the shuttle and thereby Unity enough for the docking mechanisms on the two station components to snap together. The historical moment occurred above the South Pacific. The union _ intended to last the station's 15-year or more lifetime _ set the stage for a spacewalk by two astronauts on Monday to attach electrical connectors and cables between the two components. Mission Control thought Sunday's work might take hours longer than planned and gave the six astronauts plenty of time for the tasks. But everything occurred more or less when and how it was supposed to, aside from a piece of space junk that strayed too close. Before beginning their final approach to Zarya, the six astronauts had to steer clear of a chunk of a rocket launched last month from California. Mission Control ordered the pilots to fire the shuttle thrusters to put an extra three miles between Endeavour and the space junk, putting Endeavour a total of five miles from the orbiting debris. The smaller gap would have been ``probably a little too close for comfort,'' Mission Control said. The bigger worry, by far, was over Endeavour's pursuit and capture of Zarya, and its coupling with Unity. The shuttle's 50-foot robot arm had never before handled an object as massive as the 41-foot, 44,000-pound Zarya, a power and propulsion module that was launched from Kazakstan on Nov. 20. It will provide all of the necessary electricity and steering for the fledgling space station until a permanent control module can be launched next summer. Minutes after Zarya's capture, Cabana called down that two antennas on the module were still undeployed as Russian flight controllers had feared. The antennas must be fully deployed in order for Zarya's manual docking system to work; that system won't be needed before next summer, officials said. The only other problem was with a Zarya battery; the astronauts took up a replacement part. The 36-foot, 25,000-pound Unity, the first American-made component, will serve as a connecting passageway, or vestibule, for future modules. It was crucial that Zarya and Unity be joined; if they could not be connected with the robot arm, NASA would have sent out two spacewalking astronauts to manually fit them together. In all, three spacewalks are planned for Endeavour's 12-day flight, not only to hook up electrical connections between the two modules but to install handrails and other tools for future crews. The joined modules will be released from Endeavour once all of the work is completed. NASA estimates 43 more launches and 159 more spacewalks will be needed after this mission to assemble the entire orbiting complex. Once completed, the 16-nation space station will have a mass of 1 million pounds, be longer than a football field, and house up to seven astronauts and cosmonauts. ||||| The planet's most daring construction job began Friday as the shuttle Endeavour carried into orbit six astronauts and the first U.S.-built part of an international space station that is expected to cost more than $100 billion. After a last-minute alarm on the shuttle forced a postponement early Thursday, the launch went off flawlessly at 3:36 Friday morning, right on schedule. The night sky was clear, and the moon full. With a roar, Endeavour made its fiery ascent and briefly turned the Florida coastline from night to day. More than five minutes and 500 miles later, the spaceship's main engines could still be seen in the distance, twinkling like a new star. On their 12-day flight, Endeavour's astronauts are to locate a Russian part already in orbit, grasp it with the shuttle's robot arm and attach the new U.S. module. Wielding tools hundreds of miles above Earth, working methodically in the cold void, the astronauts will be starting a five-year assembly that is likely to make the construction of the Pyramids and the great cathedrals look like child's play. Construction of the station, which will be a research facility, will require an estimated 160 space walks, which, for safety reasons, will always be done by two people. When complete, the international space station, dominated by solar power arrays, will cover an area equal to that of two football fields. Modules of interconnected laboratories and living quarters for up to seven astronauts are to form a habitat equal to that of two 747 jetliners. The station's batteries alone, if lined up, would extend a half-mile. The project entails high risk, because of the technical difficulty of putting all this together in the unforgiving environment of space, along with the dangers inherent in flying the space shuttle to the construction site. The work is further complicated by international politics and worries about money. The Russians, whose participation in the partnership clinched the post-Cold War deal five years ago, are now a wild card. Moscow's economic and political woes have left Western officials unsure of its ability and willingness to come up with its share of money and technology. At the same time, the station's costs are rising, and its critics among scientists worry that its appetite for money will consume their own federal financing. The project's total cost is a subject of debate, but the most credible estimates now put the price of assembly and of operation for a decade, the station's estimated lifetime, at $110 billion. Of that, American taxpayers are to spend roughly $96 billion, and the project's 15 foreign partners about $14 billion. The station is intended to be a grand laboratory where, in the environment of weightlessness, investigators can develop new materials and new drugs and explore physiology's remaining mysteries, in part so that humans may someday know how to adapt for long space flight to other worlds. Friday, in any case, little was heard about the project but praise. ``Great show, Endeavour,'' mission control in Houston radioed to the six astronauts as the shuttle went into orbit. At the Florida spaceport, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright lauded the launching team and the new venture. ``That was truly, truly fantastic,'' she told the team after the liftoff. And it was important, she added, to have so many nations ``working together on the kinds of issues that the 21st century is going to be concerned with.'' ``So my congratulations to all of you,'' the secretary said. ``Stupendous work.'' The main cargo Thursday was the Unity module, the first U.S.-built station part. Small compared with the giants to come in three dozen shuttle flights during assembly, the unit is 18 feet long, weighs 13 tons and is to serve as a connecting hub for other modules. Saturday, one of the astronauts, Lt. Col. Nancy Currie of the Army, is to have the shuttle's robot arm hoist Unity from the payload bay and secure it to Endeavour's docking system, moving the unit from a horizontal to a vertical position. Then, Sunday, the astronauts are to rendezvous with the module known as Zarya, or Sunrise, which Russia launched into orbit from Kazakhstan on Nov. 20. Financed by the United States but built in Russia, Zarya, 41 feet long, is be a kind of tugboat for the embryonic station, furnishing power and propulsion as well as communication and rendezvous abilities. When Endeavour's payload bay is within 10 feet of Zarya, Colonel Currie is to reach out with the robot arm and pull the Russian module into position over Unity. The mechanical arm has never before moved anything so big. Zarya, while completely weightless in space, has 21 tons of mass. If mishandled, it can crush and kill. As Col. Currie holds Zarya steady, Endeavour's commander, Col. Robert Cabana of the Marine Corps, a veteran of three space flights, is to nudge the shuttle forward to join the two station pieces together. When mated with special attachments, Zarya and Unity will form the station's first element, 63 feet long and 78 feet wide out to the tips of the solar arrays. Starting Monday, a pair of space-walking astronauts are to hook up electrical connections and data cables between the units, attach antennas and install tools and handrails for future visitors. The builders will be Col. Jerry Ross of the Air Force, 50, and Dr. James Newman, 42, a physicist. Their series of three space walks will continue Wednesday and end Saturday, Dec. 12. As construction goes on outside, the astronauts inside Endeavour will be busy making preparations to enter the new station through a connecting tunnel and docking system. Next Thursday, the crew will enter the embryonic station for the first time, installing portable fans and lights. Friday they will again enter, to prepare for the arrival in 1999 of the next major element, the first one both built and financed by Russia. The other astronauts on Endeavour are its pilot, Maj. Frederick Sturckow of the Marine Corps, and a mission specialist, Sergei Krikalev of the Russian Space Agency. After separating from the new outpost, the crew is to bring Endeavour back to the Kennedy Space Center on Dec. 15, with the mission length just shy of 12 days. Gretchen McClain, NASA's director in Washington for the international space station, said in an interview here that its overall costs were actually small for individual Americans. Over its lifetime, she said, the annual cost will equal that of a pizza and a soft drink for each of the nation's 96 million taxpayers. U.S. costs for construction, she added, were $24 billion, and for operations through the year 2012 were $10.4 billion, for a total of $34.4 billion. Most experts outside the agency consider this figure ridiculously low because it ignores many billions of dollars spent in early development work as well as the cost of numerous shuttle flights, which run about $800 million apiece. ||||| Endeavour's astronauts connected the first two building blocks of the international space station on Sunday, creating a seven-story tower in the shuttle cargo bay. It was the first time that the Russian-built Zarya control module and the made-in-America Unity chamber had ever touched. It looked to be a perfect and, hopefully, long-lasting fit. ``We have capture of Zarya,'' commander Robert Cabana announced the moment the two pieces came together. ``Congratulations to the crew of the good ship Endeavour,'' replied Mission Control. ``That's terrific.'' The 240-mile-high construction job began two hours earlier with Nancy Currie's capture of Zarya (Russian for Sunrise) using the shuttle robot arm. ``We're halfway home,'' Cabana said. Then came the hard part: stacking the two giant cylinders in the cargo bay. The two station pieces are so big _ 77 feet from the tip of one to the tip of the other with a combined mass of 70,000 pounds _ that Currie and her crewmates had to rely on a computerized vision system and camera views, rather than direct line of sight. This was the first time such a ``blind'' docking had ever been attempted. Currie positioned the solar-winged Zarya, still on the end of the shuttle robot arm, several inches directly above Unity. It was slow going; she wanted and needed perfect alignment. Once she was sure she had it, Cabana fired Endeavour's thrusters, and the brief burst raised the shuttle and thereby Unity enough for the docking mechanisms on the two station components to snap together. The historical moment occurred above the South Pacific. It took several tries, however, for Zarya and Unity to be pulled tightly together. The docking ring between them would not retract properly; Mission Control quickly traced the problem to the attached robot arm and asked the crew to release its hold on the docked Zarya. That did the trick. The union _ intended to last the station's 15-year or more lifetime _ set the stage for a spacewalk by two astronauts on Monday to attach electrical connectors and cables between the two components. Mission Control thought Sunday's work might take hours longer than planned and gave the six astronauts plenty of time for the tasks. But everything occurred more or less when and how it was supposed to, aside from a piece of space junk that strayed too close. Before beginning their final approach to Zarya, the six astronauts had to steer clear of a chunk of a rocket launched last month from California. Mission Control ordered the pilots to fire the shuttle thrusters to put an extra three miles between Endeavour and the space junk, putting Endeavour a total of five miles from the orbiting debris. The smaller gap would have been ``probably a little too close for comfort,'' Mission Control said. The bigger worry, by far, was over Endeavour's pursuit and capture of Zarya, and its coupling with Unity. The shuttle's 50-foot robot arm had never before handled an object as massive as the 41-foot, 44,000-pound Zarya, a power and propulsion module that was launched from Kazakstan on Nov. 20. It will provide all of the necessary electricity and steering for the fledgling space station until a permanent control module can be launched next summer. Minutes after Zarya's capture, Cabana called down that two antennas on the module were still undeployed as Russian flight controllers had feared. The antennas must be fully deployed in order for Zarya's manual docking system to work; that system won't be needed before next summer, officials said. The only other problem was with a Zarya battery; the astronauts took up a replacement part. The 36-foot, 25,000-pound Unity, the first American-made component, will serve as a connecting passageway, or vestibule, for future modules. It was crucial that Zarya and Unity be joined; if they could not be connected with the robot arm, NASA would have sent out two spacewalking astronauts to manually fit them together. In all, three spacewalks are planned for Endeavour's 12-day flight, not only to hook up electrical connections between the two modules but to install handrails and other tools for future crews. The joined modules will be released from Endeavour once all of the work is completed. NASA estimates 43 more launches and 159 more spacewalks will be needed after this mission to assemble the entire orbiting complex. Once completed, the 16-nation space station will have a mass of 1 million pounds, be longer than a football field, and house up to seven astronauts and cosmonauts.

Russia and NASA jointly decided against a Russian cost-cutting proposal to orbit the 2nd space station, a 16-country cooperative project, closer to Mir, citing complexity, risk, and bad sun angles. After 5 years of assembly, the research station will house 7 people. A 12-day shuttle mission will attach the US Unity module to the Russian Zarya, already in orbit. Thursday's launch was delayed by a pressure drop. A 2nd attempt Friday was perfect. Unity was attached to Zarya in a blind docking using cameras and computer images. Electrical and cable connections come next. Unity will serve as a passageway for future modules. Two Zarya antennas failed to deploy.

A fire turned a dance hall jammed with teen-age Halloween revelers into a deathtrap, killing 65 people and injuring 157 others in Sweden's second-largest city. The fast-spreading fire that broke out just a few minutes before midnight Thursday gutted the building and left rescuers facing a hideous scene that local rescue service leader Lennart Olin likened to a ``gas chamber.'' The cause of the fire had not been determined as of Friday evening. Although an estimated 400 people, most aged 13 to 18, were at the dance on the building's second floor, the facility had approval for a maximum capacity of 150, said Hans Carlsson, the detective leading the disaster investigation. The fire, at the facilities of the Macedonian Association local immigrant group, was the deadliest in modern Swedish history. In 1978, 20 people died in a fire at a hotel in the town of Boraas. Police said most victims choked to death on smoke and poisonous gases; 59 bodies were found at the scene and six others died later. Of the injured, 57 were in intensive care, said Sven Martinell, spokesman for the local medical authorities. The building did not have sprinklers and was not required to have them, officials said. The dance was attended mostly by immigrants or children of immigrants. Police said the dead or injured represented at least 19 nationalities, including Somalis, Ethiopians, Iraqis, Iranians and Swedes, along with people from current and former Yugoslavia and unspecified Latin American countries. The Macedonian Association, which rents space in the building, had in turn rented the facility out to others for the dance, Carlsson said. That person was not immdiately identified. Binan Atta was walking to the Macedonian Association when he saw the fire. He said he raced in and pulled to safety several people, including a friend. ``His clothes had burned off. His skin was red and bubbly,'' Atta said. ``Lots of kids were just screaming,'' he added at Hammarkullen Lutheran Church, where several dozen family and friends of victims gathered. ``I saw about 10 people in windows who just jumped. They didn't even look down'' beforehand. Fire officials were alerted at 11:43 p.m. (2243 GMT) Thursday and had a fire truck at the scene four minutes later, rescue workers said. The blaze was already consuming the building. The building had just two exits, one of which was blocked by fire, city police technician Stephen Holmberg was quoted as saying by the Swedish news agency TT. ``It was a panic,'' Goteborg police spokesman Bengt Staaf said, with youths trampling each other to get out, and other youths scuffling with police to get in and attempt to help friends. Olin said there were indications that the fire could have been set. ``The fact that it spread so fast indicates that it was not a normal fire,'' he said. Goteborg is about 500 kilometers (300 miles) southwest of the capital, Stockholm. The crowd in the second story of the building contained mostly 13 to 18 year olds celebrating Halloween and a holiday weekend. ``A night full of expectation, happiness over extra leave from school and high spirits in anticipation of a weekend was brutally and suddenly changed into a tragedy of incomprehensible dimensions,'' the Goteborg city council said in a statement. ``Goteborg is today a city in shock.'' Prime Minister Goeran Persson visited the fire site at midday and King Carl XVI Gustav made a statement of condolence. Jamal Fawz, 15, told TT that he was out on the dance floor when the blaze started with about 400 people inside. ``It looked like it started in the ceiling, and lamps and loudspeakers fell to the floor,'' he was quoted as saying. ``It was chaos. Everybody was trying to get out and people trampled on each other on the way to the exit. ... Others kicked out the windows and jumped out.'' Ambulances were called in from several nearby communities. The Goteborg rescue services also brought city buses into service to help transport the injured. Anna-Lisa Saar, a social worker at Oestra Hospital, where many of the victims were taken, said identifying many of them was difficult. ``Maybe you have teen-agers yourself and know how they are ... They maybe don't have their own identification, but have that of a friend who is a year older. Girls don't carry their identification on them, but in a bag and maybe that wasn't lying with the body,'' she said, according to TT. Goteborg has about 435,000 people. ||||| A fire turned a dance hall jammed with teen-age Halloween revelers into a deathtrap, killing 60 people and injuring 162 others in Sweden's second-largest city. Police earlier had reported 65 dead, but backed off that figure Friday evening. ''The earlier information that police gave out was wrong,'' Hans Carlsson, the lead detective in the case, told a news conference. The fast-spreading, 3rd graf pvs ||||| Forensic experts examining heavily burned bodies were able Saturday to identify more of the 60 young people who died in a dance hall fire, but the catastrophe's most tormenting question was still unanswered. How could it happen; what caused the flames that raced through a hall packed far beyond capacity, blocking one of the exits and forcing panicked teen-agers to flee down the one remaining staircase and leap out of second-story windows? ''As long as the technicians haven't established the cause of the fire, we don't know if it's arson or not,'' Goteborg chief prosecutor Ulf Noren said Saturday evening. Earlier in the day, Noren had said it was a ''50-50'' chance that the fire was arson, prompting wide speculation that authorities had tracked down new clues. But Noren later retracted the remark, saying he'd meant only that no possibilities were being excluded. As investigators worked to find the cause, examiners identified another 22 of the bodies, bringing the total to 40, and officials said 49 people were released from hospital. Of the 162 people who suffered non-fatal injuries in the Thursday night fire, 76 remain hospitalized. Most of the victims were immigrants or of immigrant parentage, from countries including Iraq, Iran, Somalia, Ethiopia and current and former Yugoslavia. The first call alerting authorities to the fire was made in heavily accented Swedish and that, combined with noise and the caller's distress, delayed the fire squads' response by several minutes. Per-Olof Ortarsen of Goteborg's emergency services line said the call was so hard to understand that it took three minutes for workers to figure out what was going on and where to send fire trucks. The first fire trucks and rescue squads were on the scene six minutes after the call was received, Ortarsen told a news conference. He and other officials declined to comment on whether a quicker response could have saved any of the mostly immigrant victims. But the minutes of delay felt endless to those caught in the terror of the fire and survivors have spoken angrily of what they saw as a slow and even obstructive response. ``No help. No police. No firemen,'' 17-year-old Zuhir Hersi, one of the disc jockeys at the bash said Friday, hours after the blaze exploded. ``Just kids helping kids.'' And once the squads arrived, the kids were then blocked from helping, they say. ``We could have saved more young people if only police hadn't stopped us,'' Mohanned Hussein was quoted as saying by the newspaper Expressen. On Saturday, hundreds of people stood quietly outside the gutted building amid flowers and candles as they attempted to come to grips with catastrophe. In the parking lot that a day before had been a tumult of ambulances and screams, mourners had laid a 30-meter-long (100-foot-long) pile of bouquets, candles and cards of remembrance. The cards' inscriptions were brief _ ``I will see you in heaven,'' ``We miss you'' _ and the people who stood reading them also had few words. ``I just wanted to show my sympathy. I think about them. There's nothing else we can do,'' said Caroline Ericsson, who didn't know any of the fire's victims. ''It's damn difficult,'' said Connie Mesfin, who said she lost a friend in the blaze. Lasse Gustafsson, a former Goteborg firefighter severely disfigured in an explosion, also came to the club site to try to show the victims' relatives and friends that spirit can help them pull through despair. ``I can't give them hope. Consolation is enough,'' he said, as people nearby cast uneasy glances at his scars. Many of those injured in the blaze may have to endure similar shocked looks the rest of their lives. Authorities say the explosive fire quickly raised the temperature in the hall to 600 degrees (1,100 F). The hall was packed far beyond its capacity. Licensed to hold a maximum of 150, the hall held at least 250 and perhaps as many as 400 when the fire hit. One of the two exit stairways was blocked by fire and there were conflicting statements from witnesses as to whether the fire came up the stairs from a lower level, or whether it spread there after breaking out in the second-floor rooms. The worst previous fire disaster in modern Sweden was in 1978 in Boraas, when 20 people died in a hotel fire. Goteborg, Sweden's second-largest city with about 435,000 people, is 500 kilometers (300 miles) southwest of Stockholm. ||||| A fire turned a dance hall jammed with teen-age Halloween revelers into a deathtrap, killing at least 60 people and injuring about 180 in Sweden's second-largest city. The fast-spreading fire completely gutted the building and left rescuers facing a hideous scene that local rescue service leader Lennart Olin likened to a ``gas chamber.'' Although an estimated 400 people, most aged 13 to 18, were at the dance on the building's second floor, the facility had approval for a maximum capacity of 150, said Hans Carlsson, the detective leading the disaster investigation. The fire, at the facilities of the Macedonian Association local immigrant group, was the deadliest in modern Swedish history. In 1978, 20 people died in a fire at a hotel in the town of Boraas. At a news conference Friday morning, police said most victims choked to death on smoke and poisonous gases; 59 bodies were found at the scene and the 60th victim died at a hospital, officials said. The dance apparently was attended mostly by immigrants or children of immigrant. Police said the list of injured included Somalis and people from current and former Yugoslavia. The Macedonian Association, which rents space in the building, had in turn rented the facility out to another person for the dance, Carlsson said. That person was not immdiately identified. Binan Atta was walking to the Macedonian Association when he saw the fire. He said he raced in and pulled to safety several people, including a friend. ``His clothes had burned off. His skin was red and bubbly,'' Atta said. ``Lots of kids were just screaming,'' he added at Hammarkullen Lutheran Church, where several dozen family and friends of victims gathered. ``I saw about 10 people in windows who just jumped. They didn't even look down'' beforehand. Fire officials were alerted at 11:43 p.m. (2243 GMT) Thursday and had a fire truck at the scene four minutes later, rescue workers said. The blaze was already consuming the building. The building had just two exits, one of which was blocked by fire, city police technician Stephen Holmberg was quoted as saying by the Swedish news agency TT. ``It was a panic,'' Goteborg police spokesman Bengt Staaf said, with youths trampling each other to get out, and other youths scuffling with police to get in and attempt to help friends. The cause of the fire was not immediately known, although officials said it apparently began with an explosion. Olin said there were indications that the fire could have been set. ``The fact that it spread so fast indicates that it was not a normal fire,'' he said. About 180 people were taken to hospitals with injuries, and about 20 were in intensive care. Seven of the most severely injured were taken by helicopter to burn clinics in other cities. Goteborg is about 500 kilometers (300 miles) southwest of the capital, Stockholm. The crowd in the second story of the building contained mostly 13 to 18 year olds celebrating Halloween and a holiday weekend. ``A night full of expectation, happiness over extra leave from school and high spirits in anticipation of a weekend was brutally and suddenly changed into a tragedy of incomprehensible dimensions,'' the Goteborg city council said in a statement. ``Goteborg is today a city in shock.'' Prime Minister Goeran Persson visited the fire site at midday and King Carl XVI Gustav made a statement of condolence. Jamal Fawz, 15, told TT that he was out on the dance floor when the blaze started with about 400 people inside. ``It looked like it started in the ceiling, and lamps and loudspeakers fell to the floor,'' he was quoted as saying. ``It was chaos. Everybody was trying to get out and people trampled on each other on the way to the exit. ... Others kicked out the windows and jumped out.'' Ambulances were called in from several nearby communities. The Goteborg rescue services also brought city buses into service to help transport the injured. Anna-Lisa Saar, a social worker at Oestra Hospital, where many of the victims were taken, said identifying many of them was difficult. ``Maybe you have teen-agers yourself and know how they are ... They maybe don't have their own identification, but have that of a friend who is a year older. Girls don't carry their identification on them, but in a bag and maybe that wasn't lying with the body,'' she said, according to TT. Goteborg has about 435,000 people. ||||| A fire turned a Swedish dance hall jammed with teen-age Halloween revelers into a deathtrap, killing at least 60 people and injuring about 180. ``It reminded me of the gas chambers at Auschwitz,'' local rescue service leader Lennart Olin said on national radio, describing the sight when rescuers first entered the building in Goteborg, a city of half a million people on the country's west coast. The fire was the deadliest in modern Swedish history since 1978, when 20 people died in the town of Boraas. ``We are still searching the building ... but so far we have found 60 dead,'' Goteborg police official Jan Edmundson said on national radio. At a news conference Friday morning, police said most victims choked to death on smoke and poisonous gases. The injured toll was lowered slightly to 180, but included seven people who needed treatment at emergency burn centers. Binan Atta was walking to the Macedonian Association when he saw the fire. He said he raced in and pulled to safety several people, including a friend. ``His clothes had burned off. His skin was red and bubbly,'' Atta said. ``Lots of kids were just screaming,'' he added at Hammarkullen Lutheran Church, where several dozen family and friends of victims gathered. ``I saw about 10 people in windows who just jumped. They didn't even look down'' beforehand. Fire officials were alerted at 11:43 p.m. (2243 GMT) Thursday and had a fire truck at the scene four minutes later, rescue workers said. The blaze was already consuming the two-story brick building. The dance was on the second floor. About 300 or 400 people were inside, police said. Many escaped on their own. Police rescued 40, and recovered 59 bodies. The 60th victim died at a hospital. ``It was a panic,'' Goteborg police spokesman Bengt Staaf said, with youths trampling each other to get out, and other youths scuffling with police to get in and attempt to help friends. The cause of the fire was not immediately known. ``What we know is that there was an explosion,'' Edmundson said. Olin said there were signs that the fire was set. ``The fact that it spread so fast indicates that it was not a normal fire,'' he said. The Swedish news agency TT reported 190 people were taken to hospitals with injuries, and about 20 were in intensive care. Seven of the most severely injured were taken by helicopter to burn clinics in other cities, the report said. Goteborg is about 500 kilometers (300 miles) southwest of the capital, Stockholm. The fire broke out about midnight (2300 GMT Thursday) in building of the local Macedonian Association, which organized the dance. The crowd in the second story of the building contained mostly 13 to 18 year olds celebrating Halloween and a holiday weekend. ``A night full of expectation, happiness over extra leave from school and high spirits in anticipation of a weekend was brutally and suddenly changed into a tragedy of incomprehensible dimensions,'' the Goteborg city council said in a statement. ``Goteborg is today a city in shock.'' Jamal Fawz, 15, told TT that he was out on the dance floor when the blaze started with about 400 people inside. ``It looked like it started in the ceiling, and lamps and loudspeakers fell to the floor,'' he was quoted as saying. ``It was chaos. Everybody was trying to get out and people trampled on each other on the way to the exit. ... Others kicked out the windows and jumped out.'' Ambulances were called in from several nearby communities. The Goteborg rescue services also brought city buses into service to help transport the injured. Olin said the rescue service inspected the building in April 1997 and ``fulfilled all possible demands as far as emergency exits and the possibility for fast evacuation.'' Anna-Lisa Saar, a social worker at Oestra Hospital, where many of the victims were taken, said identifying many of them was difficult. ``Maybe you have teen-agers yourself and know how they are ... They maybe don't have their own identification, but have that of a friend who is a year older. Girls don't carry their identification on them, but in a bag and maybe that wasn't lying with the body,'' she said, according to TT. Goteborg has about 435,000 people. ||||| Hundreds of teen-agers jammed into an upstairs hall planning to dance the night away, but by the time the sun rose Friday they were dead, clinging to life in hospitals or weeping in disbelief at a fire that killed 67 of them. Police said another 173 people were injured, 20 of them severely, in the explosive fire that engulfed the plain brick two-story building just before midnight Thursday and turned a boisterous disco dance into a screaming terror in a matter of moments. Bent metal bars on some of the hall's windows showed the panic-fueled strength that the teen-agers, many of them immigrants, exerted as they sought ways out of the hall, which with some 400 people inside was crowded to more than twice its legal capacity. Below the second-floor windows lay stray shoes, broken glass and bloody blankets used to wrap those who may or may not have lived. ``I've been crying all day. I haven't been able to sleep. I'm alive, so why should I sleep when my friends are dead,'' 17-year-old Alina Turk said as she stood outside the ruined building Friday afternoon. She said she had been at the dance and two male friends of hers died. Zuhir Hersi, the 17-year-old disc jockey at the bash, told of his ordeal in telegraphic bursts. ``Panic. No help. No police. No firemen. Only kids helping each other,'' he said from his bed in a Goteborg hospital. Although Hersi, like many of the youths at the dance, believes the police and firemen were slow, authorities said the first fire trucks were on the scene within five minutes of getting the alarm. But the fire spread so fast that even an instant response would likely have been too slow. The cause of the fire had not been determined as of Friday evening. Fire Brigade Engineer Bo Wahlstroem said the flames' quick, raging spread could indicate arson, or that the fire had burned undetected for a time before exploding. The fire destroyed the building, whose second floor, where the dance took place, was rented by the local Macedonian immigrant association in Sweden's second-largest city. The association had hired out the hall for the night to eight party arrangers, police said but declined to identify the arrangers. The crowd was mostly aged 13 to 18, witnesses said, and consisted mostly of immigrants or children of immigrant parents. Officials said the dead and injured were of 19 nationalities, including Somalis, Ethiopians, Iraqis, Iranians and Swedes, as well as people from the current and former Yugoslavia and unspecified Latin American countries. Identifying the dead was a wrackingly slow process, forcing relatives and friends exhausted with dread to wait for hours at hospitals. Some were able to make the wait in rooms off-limits to journalists, but many had to wait in corridors, crying and teen-agers hurry in and out of rooms as they looked for their pals. Only 14 bodies had been indentified by Friday evening. ``The identification is hard not only because of the burns but also because they have no driver's licenses or other documents _ they were so young,'' said Kerstin Einarsson of Sahlgrenska Hospital, the largest in the city of 435,000 some 500 kilometers (300 miles) west of Stockholm. The blaze, the worst fire disaster in Sweden's modern history, shocked a country renowned for its smooth calmness. King Carl XVI Gustaf, on a trip out of the country, sent a statement reassuring victims' relatives that ``all of us in Sweden feel great sympathy.'' Prime Minister Goeran Persson travelled from Stockholm to the fire site, first laying flowers outside and walking into the gutted wreck. ``The floor was full of shoes and boots, the same kind of boots my own children wear,'' he said. On Friday evening, about 1,500 mostly young people, came to the Goteborg Cathedral to try to assuage their grief and bewilderment at a memorial service. The youths were dressed in the same sort of hip-hop garb that the dance-goers had worn, but listened to delicate hymns instead of pounding disco. They wept, they embraced, and some looked around nervously, apparently not knowing how to behave in a church. ``I don't go to church. I'm a Muslim, but I don't go to prayers,'' said a young man who gave his name only as Sami. ``I'm accompanying my Christian friends. We lost someone. We're mourning _ that's all.'' ||||| A fire turned a Swedish dance hall jammed with teen-age Halloween revelers into a deathtrap, killing 60 people and injuring 155. The fast-spreading fire that broke out just a few minutes before midnight Thursday gutted the building and left rescuers facing a hideous scene that local rescue service leader Lennart Olin likened to a ``gas chamber.'' The cause of the fire had not been determined as of Friday evening. Although an estimated 400 people, most aged 13 to 18, were at the dance on the upper floor, the facility had approval for a maximum capacity of 150, Hans Carlsson, the detective leading the disaster investigation. The fire, at the facilities of the Macedonian Association local immigrant group, was the deadliest in modern Swedish history. In 1978, 20 people died in a fire at a hotel in the town of Boraas. Police said most victims choked to death on smoke and poisonous gases; 59 bodies were found at the scene and one other died later. Of the injured, at least 57 were in intensive care, according to Sven Martinell, spokesman for the local medical authorities. Police earlier had reported 65 dead, but backed off that figure Friday evening. ``The earlier information that police gave out was wrong,'' said Hans Carlsson, the lead detective in the case. The building, graf 5 pvs ||||| A fire turned a Swedish dance hall jammed with teen-age Halloween revelers into a deathtrap, killing at least 60 people and injuring about 180. The fast-spreading fire completely gutted the two-story building and left rescuers facing a hideous scene that local rescue service leader Lennart Olin likened to a ``gas chamber.'' Although an estimated 400 people, most aged 13 to 18, were at the dance on the upper floor, the facility had approval for a maximum capacity of 150, Hans Carlsson, the detective leading the disaster investigation. The fire, at the facilities of the Macedonian Association local immigrant group, was the deadliest in modern Swedish history since 1978, when 20 people died in the town of Boraas. On Friday, police said most victims choked to death on smoke and poisonous gases; 59 bodies were found at the scene, and the 60th victim died at a hospital, officials said. The injured included about 20 in serious condition. The dance apparently was attended mostly by immigrants or children of immigrants. Police said the list of injured included Somalis and people from current and former Yugoslavia. The Macedonian Association had rented the facility out for the dance, Carlsson said. That person was not immediately identified. Binan Atta was walking to the Macedonian Association when he saw the fire. He said he raced in and pulled to safety several people, including a friend. ``His clothes had burned off. His skin was red and bubbly,'' Atta said. ``Lots of kids were just screaming,'' he added at Hammarkullen Lutheran Church, where several dozen family and friends of victims gathered. ``I saw about 10 people in windows who just jumped. They didn't even look down'' beforehand. Fire officials were alerted at 11:43 p.m. (2243 GMT) Thursday and had a fire truck at the scene four minutes later, rescue workers said. The blaze was already consuming the brick building. About 300 or 400 people were inside, police said. Many escaped on their own. Police rescued 40. The Swedish news agency TT said the association had permission to have only 150 people in the facility. The building had just two exits, one of which was blocked by fire, city police technician Stephen Holmberg was quoted as saying by TT. ``It was a panic,'' Goteborg police spokesman Bengt Staaf said, with youths trampling each other to get out, and other youths scuffling with police to get in and attempt to help friends. The cause of the fire was not immediately known. ``What we know is that there was an explosion,'' Edmundson said. Olin said there were indications that the fire could have been set. ``The fact that it spread so fast indicates that it was not a normal fire,'' he said. About 180 people were taken to hospitals. Seven of the most severely injured were taken by helicopter to burn clinics in other cities, the report said. Goteborg is about 500 kilometers (300 miles) southwest of the capital, Stockholm. The dance was filled with teen-agers celebrating Halloween and a holiday weekend. ``A night full of expectation, happiness over extra leave from school and high spirits in anticipation of a weekend was brutally and suddenly changed into a tragedy of incomprehensible dimensions,'' the Goteborg city council said in a statement. ``Goteborg is today a city in shock.'' Prime Minister Goeran Persson visited the fire site at midday and King Carl XVI Gustav made a statement of condolence. Jamal Fawz, graf 19 pvs ||||| A panicky telephone call in poor Swedish was the first word that authorities got of a fire racing through a dance hall crowded with immigrant teen-agers, delaying fire squads' response to the blaze that killed 60 and injured 162, officials said Saturday. Per-Olof Ortarsen of Goteborg's emergency services line said the call was so hard to understand that it took three minutes for workers to figure out what was going on and where to send fire trucks. The first fire trucks and rescue squads were on the scene six minutes after the call was received, Ortarsen said at a news conference. He and other officials declined to comment on whether a quicker response could have saved any of the mostly immigrant victims. The minutes of delay felt endless to those caught in the terror of the fire and survivors have spoken angrily of what they saw as a slow and even obstructive response. ''No help. No police. No firemen,'' 17-year-old Zuhir Hersi, one of the disc jockeys at the bash, said Friday, hours after the blaze exploded. ''Just kids helping kids.'' And once the squads arrived, the kids were blocked from helping, they say. ''We could have saved more young people if only police hadn't stopped us,'' Mohanned Hussein was quoted as saying by the newspaper Expressen. On Saturday, hundreds of people stood quietly outside the gutted building amid flowers and candles as they attempted to come to grips with catastrophe. In the parking lot that a day before had been a tumult of ambulances and screams, mourners had laid a 30-meter-long (100-foot-long) pile of bouquets, candles and cards of remembrance. The cards' inscriptions were brief _ ``I will see you in heaven,'' ``We miss you'' _ and the people who stood reading them also had few words. ``I just wanted to show my sympathy. I think about them. There's nothing else we can do,'' said Caroline Ericsson, who didn't know any of the victims. For Lasse Gustavsson, having the right words wasn't as important as showing his face, severely disfigured in a fire. The former Goteborg firefighter lost his ears, his eyelids and most of his nose in a gas explosion. By showing up, he said, he wanted to show the victims' relatives and friends that spirit can help them pull through despair. ``I can't give them hope. Consolation is enough,'' he said, as people nearby cast uneasy glances at his scars. Many of those injured in the blaze may have to endure similar shocked looks the rest of their lives. Authorities say the explosive fire quickly raised the temperature in the overcrowded hall to 600 degrees (1,100 F). The cause of the fire that broke out just before midnight Thursday remains under investigation. Witness accounts have varied widely, with some reporting smoke coming from the cellar and others saying the fire appeared to start in the ceiling of the dance hall on the building's second floor. The fire's quick spread has prompted speculation that it could have been set, but officials also say the explosive spread could have been because the fire had been burning undetected for some time. What's known is that the hall was packed far beyond its capacity. Licensed to hold a maximum of 150, the hall held at least 250 and perhaps as many as 400 when the fire hit. The crowd was mostly teen-agers and mostly immigrants or children of immigrant parents. They had come for a dance organized by eight party-arrangers whom police have not identified; the hall was rented by the organizers from the local Macedonian immigrant association. Officials said the dead and injured were of 19 nationalities, including Somalis, Ethiopians, Iraqis, Iranians and Swedes, as well as people from the current and former Yugoslavia and unspecified Latin American countries. Identifying the dead was a wrackingly slow process, forcing relatives and friends already exhausted with dread to wait for hours at hospitals. Only 18 of the dead had been identified by midday Saturday. ``The identification is hard because they have no driver's licenses or other documents _ they were so young,'' said Kerstin Einarsson of Sahlgrenska Hospital, the largest in the city of 435,000 residents about 300 miles (500 kilometers) west of Stockholm. The worst previous Swedish fire disaster in modern history was in 1978 in Boraas, when 20 people died in a hotel fire. ||||| A fire turned a dance hall jammed with teen-age Halloween revelers into a deathtrap, killing 60 people and injuring 162 others in Sweden's second-largest city. Police earlier had reported 65 dead, but backed off that figure Friday evening. ''The earlier information that police gave out was wrong,'' Hand Carlsson, the lead detective in the case, told a news conference. The fast-spreading fire that broke out just a few minutes before midnight Thursday gutted the building and left rescuers facing a hideous scene that local rescue service leader Lennart Olin likened to a ``gas chamber.'' The cause of the fire had not been determined as of Friday evening. Although an estimated 400 people, most aged 13 to 18, were at the dance on the building's second floor, the facility had approval for a maximum capacity of 150, said Carlsson. The fire, at the facilities of the Macedonian Association local immigrant group, was the deadliest in modern Swedish history. In 1978, 20 people died in a fire at a hotel in the town of Boraas. Police said most victims choked to death on smoke and poisonous gases; 59 bodies were found at the scene and one other died later. Of the injured, at least 57 were in intensive care, according to Sven Martinell, spokesman for the local medical authorities. The building did not have sprinklers and was not required to have them, officials said. The dance was attended mostly by immigrants or children of immigrants. Police said the dead or injured represented at least 19 nationalities, including Somalis, Ethiopians, Iraqis, Iranians and Swedes, along with people from current and former Yugoslavia and unspecified Latin American countries. The Macedonian Association, which rents space in the building, had in turn rented the facility out to others for the dance, Carlsson said. That person was not immdiately identified. Binan Atta was walking to the Macedonian Association when he saw the fire. He said he raced in and pulled to safety several people, including a friend. ``His clothes had burned off. His skin was red and bubbly,'' Atta said. ``Lots of kids were just screaming,'' he added at Hammarkullen Lutheran Church, where several dozen family and friends of victims gathered. ``I saw about 10 people in windows who just jumped. They didn't even look down'' beforehand. Fire officials were alerted at 11:43 p.m. (2243 GMT) Thursday and had a fire truck at the scene four minutes later, rescue workers said. The blaze was already consuming the building. The building had just two exits, one of which was blocked by fire, city police technician Stephen Holmberg was quoted as saying by the Swedish news agency TT. ``It was a panic,'' Goteborg police spokesman Bengt Staaf said, with youths trampling each other to get out, and other youths scuffling with police to get in and attempt to help friends. Olin said there were indications that the fire could have been set. ``The fact that it spread so fast indicates that it was not a normal fire,'' he said. Goteborg is about 500 kilometers (300 miles) southwest of the capital, Stockholm. The crowd in the second story of the building contained mostly 13 to 18 year olds celebrating Halloween and a holiday weekend. ``A night full of expectation, happiness over extra leave from school and high spirits in anticipation of a weekend was brutally and suddenly changed into a tragedy of incomprehensible dimensions,'' the Goteborg city council said in a statement. ``Goteborg is today a city in shock.'' Prime Minister Goeran Persson visited the fire site at midday and King Carl XVI Gustav made a statement of condolence. Jamal Fawz, 15, told TT that he was out on the dance floor when the blaze started with about 400 people inside. ``It looked like it started in the ceiling, and lamps and loudspeakers fell to the floor,'' he was quoted as saying. ``It was chaos. Everybody was trying to get out and people trampled on each other on the way to the exit. ... Others kicked out the windows and jumped out.'' Ambulances were called in from several nearby communities. The Goteborg rescue services also brought city buses into service to help transport the injured. Anna-Lisa Saar, a social worker at Oestra Hospital, where many of the victims were taken, said identifying many of them was difficult. ``Maybe you have teen-agers yourself and know how they are ... They maybe don't have their own identification, but have that of a friend who is a year older. Girls don't carry their identification on them, but in a bag and maybe that wasn't lying with the body,'' she said, according to TT. Goteborg has about 435,000 people.

At least 60 teenagers were killed and another 160 were injured in a dance hall fire in Goteborg, Sweden, Sweden's second largest city. The fire was the worst in Sweden's modern history. At least 400 teenagers, attending a Halloween dance, were crammed into a facility meant to hold 150. The dance attendees were mostly immigrant children from representing 19 nationalities, including Somalia, Ethiopia, Iraq, Iran and former Yugoslavia. The cause of the fire, which quickly engulfed the two-story brick building is unknown as investigators continue to probe the ruins. Emergency help was delayed by about three minutes because of language difficulties.

A fire turned a dance hall jammed with teen-age Halloween revelers into a deathtrap, killing 65 people and injuring 157 others in Sweden's second-largest city. The fast-spreading fire that broke out just a few minutes before midnight Thursday gutted the building and left rescuers facing a hideous scene that local rescue service leader Lennart Olin likened to a ``gas chamber.'' The cause of the fire had not been determined as of Friday evening. Although an estimated 400 people, most aged 13 to 18, were at the dance on the building's second floor, the facility had approval for a maximum capacity of 150, said Hans Carlsson, the detective leading the disaster investigation. The fire, at the facilities of the Macedonian Association local immigrant group, was the deadliest in modern Swedish history. In 1978, 20 people died in a fire at a hotel in the town of Boraas. Police said most victims choked to death on smoke and poisonous gases; 59 bodies were found at the scene and six others died later. Of the injured, 57 were in intensive care, said Sven Martinell, spokesman for the local medical authorities. The building did not have sprinklers and was not required to have them, officials said. The dance was attended mostly by immigrants or children of immigrants. Police said the dead or injured represented at least 19 nationalities, including Somalis, Ethiopians, Iraqis, Iranians and Swedes, along with people from current and former Yugoslavia and unspecified Latin American countries. The Macedonian Association, which rents space in the building, had in turn rented the facility out to others for the dance, Carlsson said. That person was not immdiately identified. Binan Atta was walking to the Macedonian Association when he saw the fire. He said he raced in and pulled to safety several people, including a friend. ``His clothes had burned off. His skin was red and bubbly,'' Atta said. ``Lots of kids were just screaming,'' he added at Hammarkullen Lutheran Church, where several dozen family and friends of victims gathered. ``I saw about 10 people in windows who just jumped. They didn't even look down'' beforehand. Fire officials were alerted at 11:43 p.m. (2243 GMT) Thursday and had a fire truck at the scene four minutes later, rescue workers said. The blaze was already consuming the building. The building had just two exits, one of which was blocked by fire, city police technician Stephen Holmberg was quoted as saying by the Swedish news agency TT. ``It was a panic,'' Goteborg police spokesman Bengt Staaf said, with youths trampling each other to get out, and other youths scuffling with police to get in and attempt to help friends. Olin said there were indications that the fire could have been set. ``The fact that it spread so fast indicates that it was not a normal fire,'' he said. Goteborg is about 500 kilometers (300 miles) southwest of the capital, Stockholm. The crowd in the second story of the building contained mostly 13 to 18 year olds celebrating Halloween and a holiday weekend. ``A night full of expectation, happiness over extra leave from school and high spirits in anticipation of a weekend was brutally and suddenly changed into a tragedy of incomprehensible dimensions,'' the Goteborg city council said in a statement. ``Goteborg is today a city in shock.'' Prime Minister Goeran Persson visited the fire site at midday and King Carl XVI Gustav made a statement of condolence. Jamal Fawz, 15, told TT that he was out on the dance floor when the blaze started with about 400 people inside. ``It looked like it started in the ceiling, and lamps and loudspeakers fell to the floor,'' he was quoted as saying. ``It was chaos. Everybody was trying to get out and people trampled on each other on the way to the exit. ... Others kicked out the windows and jumped out.'' Ambulances were called in from several nearby communities. The Goteborg rescue services also brought city buses into service to help transport the injured. Anna-Lisa Saar, a social worker at Oestra Hospital, where many of the victims were taken, said identifying many of them was difficult. ``Maybe you have teen-agers yourself and know how they are ... They maybe don't have their own identification, but have that of a friend who is a year older. Girls don't carry their identification on them, but in a bag and maybe that wasn't lying with the body,'' she said, according to TT. Goteborg has about 435,000 people. ||||| A fire turned a dance hall jammed with teen-age Halloween revelers into a deathtrap, killing 60 people and injuring 162 others in Sweden's second-largest city. Police earlier had reported 65 dead, but backed off that figure Friday evening. ''The earlier information that police gave out was wrong,'' Hans Carlsson, the lead detective in the case, told a news conference. The fast-spreading, 3rd graf pvs ||||| Forensic experts examining heavily burned bodies were able Saturday to identify more of the 60 young people who died in a dance hall fire, but the catastrophe's most tormenting question was still unanswered. How could it happen; what caused the flames that raced through a hall packed far beyond capacity, blocking one of the exits and forcing panicked teen-agers to flee down the one remaining staircase and leap out of second-story windows? ''As long as the technicians haven't established the cause of the fire, we don't know if it's arson or not,'' Goteborg chief prosecutor Ulf Noren said Saturday evening. Earlier in the day, Noren had said it was a ''50-50'' chance that the fire was arson, prompting wide speculation that authorities had tracked down new clues. But Noren later retracted the remark, saying he'd meant only that no possibilities were being excluded. As investigators worked to find the cause, examiners identified another 22 of the bodies, bringing the total to 40, and officials said 49 people were released from hospital. Of the 162 people who suffered non-fatal injuries in the Thursday night fire, 76 remain hospitalized. Most of the victims were immigrants or of immigrant parentage, from countries including Iraq, Iran, Somalia, Ethiopia and current and former Yugoslavia. The first call alerting authorities to the fire was made in heavily accented Swedish and that, combined with noise and the caller's distress, delayed the fire squads' response by several minutes. Per-Olof Ortarsen of Goteborg's emergency services line said the call was so hard to understand that it took three minutes for workers to figure out what was going on and where to send fire trucks. The first fire trucks and rescue squads were on the scene six minutes after the call was received, Ortarsen told a news conference. He and other officials declined to comment on whether a quicker response could have saved any of the mostly immigrant victims. But the minutes of delay felt endless to those caught in the terror of the fire and survivors have spoken angrily of what they saw as a slow and even obstructive response. ``No help. No police. No firemen,'' 17-year-old Zuhir Hersi, one of the disc jockeys at the bash said Friday, hours after the blaze exploded. ``Just kids helping kids.'' And once the squads arrived, the kids were then blocked from helping, they say. ``We could have saved more young people if only police hadn't stopped us,'' Mohanned Hussein was quoted as saying by the newspaper Expressen. On Saturday, hundreds of people stood quietly outside the gutted building amid flowers and candles as they attempted to come to grips with catastrophe. In the parking lot that a day before had been a tumult of ambulances and screams, mourners had laid a 30-meter-long (100-foot-long) pile of bouquets, candles and cards of remembrance. The cards' inscriptions were brief _ ``I will see you in heaven,'' ``We miss you'' _ and the people who stood reading them also had few words. ``I just wanted to show my sympathy. I think about them. There's nothing else we can do,'' said Caroline Ericsson, who didn't know any of the fire's victims. ''It's damn difficult,'' said Connie Mesfin, who said she lost a friend in the blaze. Lasse Gustafsson, a former Goteborg firefighter severely disfigured in an explosion, also came to the club site to try to show the victims' relatives and friends that spirit can help them pull through despair. ``I can't give them hope. Consolation is enough,'' he said, as people nearby cast uneasy glances at his scars. Many of those injured in the blaze may have to endure similar shocked looks the rest of their lives. Authorities say the explosive fire quickly raised the temperature in the hall to 600 degrees (1,100 F). The hall was packed far beyond its capacity. Licensed to hold a maximum of 150, the hall held at least 250 and perhaps as many as 400 when the fire hit. One of the two exit stairways was blocked by fire and there were conflicting statements from witnesses as to whether the fire came up the stairs from a lower level, or whether it spread there after breaking out in the second-floor rooms. The worst previous fire disaster in modern Sweden was in 1978 in Boraas, when 20 people died in a hotel fire. Goteborg, Sweden's second-largest city with about 435,000 people, is 500 kilometers (300 miles) southwest of Stockholm. ||||| A fire turned a dance hall jammed with teen-age Halloween revelers into a deathtrap, killing at least 60 people and injuring about 180 in Sweden's second-largest city. The fast-spreading fire completely gutted the building and left rescuers facing a hideous scene that local rescue service leader Lennart Olin likened to a ``gas chamber.'' Although an estimated 400 people, most aged 13 to 18, were at the dance on the building's second floor, the facility had approval for a maximum capacity of 150, said Hans Carlsson, the detective leading the disaster investigation. The fire, at the facilities of the Macedonian Association local immigrant group, was the deadliest in modern Swedish history. In 1978, 20 people died in a fire at a hotel in the town of Boraas. At a news conference Friday morning, police said most victims choked to death on smoke and poisonous gases; 59 bodies were found at the scene and the 60th victim died at a hospital, officials said. The dance apparently was attended mostly by immigrants or children of immigrant. Police said the list of injured included Somalis and people from current and former Yugoslavia. The Macedonian Association, which rents space in the building, had in turn rented the facility out to another person for the dance, Carlsson said. That person was not immdiately identified. Binan Atta was walking to the Macedonian Association when he saw the fire. He said he raced in and pulled to safety several people, including a friend. ``His clothes had burned off. His skin was red and bubbly,'' Atta said. ``Lots of kids were just screaming,'' he added at Hammarkullen Lutheran Church, where several dozen family and friends of victims gathered. ``I saw about 10 people in windows who just jumped. They didn't even look down'' beforehand. Fire officials were alerted at 11:43 p.m. (2243 GMT) Thursday and had a fire truck at the scene four minutes later, rescue workers said. The blaze was already consuming the building. The building had just two exits, one of which was blocked by fire, city police technician Stephen Holmberg was quoted as saying by the Swedish news agency TT. ``It was a panic,'' Goteborg police spokesman Bengt Staaf said, with youths trampling each other to get out, and other youths scuffling with police to get in and attempt to help friends. The cause of the fire was not immediately known, although officials said it apparently began with an explosion. Olin said there were indications that the fire could have been set. ``The fact that it spread so fast indicates that it was not a normal fire,'' he said. About 180 people were taken to hospitals with injuries, and about 20 were in intensive care. Seven of the most severely injured were taken by helicopter to burn clinics in other cities. Goteborg is about 500 kilometers (300 miles) southwest of the capital, Stockholm. The crowd in the second story of the building contained mostly 13 to 18 year olds celebrating Halloween and a holiday weekend. ``A night full of expectation, happiness over extra leave from school and high spirits in anticipation of a weekend was brutally and suddenly changed into a tragedy of incomprehensible dimensions,'' the Goteborg city council said in a statement. ``Goteborg is today a city in shock.'' Prime Minister Goeran Persson visited the fire site at midday and King Carl XVI Gustav made a statement of condolence. Jamal Fawz, 15, told TT that he was out on the dance floor when the blaze started with about 400 people inside. ``It looked like it started in the ceiling, and lamps and loudspeakers fell to the floor,'' he was quoted as saying. ``It was chaos. Everybody was trying to get out and people trampled on each other on the way to the exit. ... Others kicked out the windows and jumped out.'' Ambulances were called in from several nearby communities. The Goteborg rescue services also brought city buses into service to help transport the injured. Anna-Lisa Saar, a social worker at Oestra Hospital, where many of the victims were taken, said identifying many of them was difficult. ``Maybe you have teen-agers yourself and know how they are ... They maybe don't have their own identification, but have that of a friend who is a year older. Girls don't carry their identification on them, but in a bag and maybe that wasn't lying with the body,'' she said, according to TT. Goteborg has about 435,000 people. ||||| A fire turned a Swedish dance hall jammed with teen-age Halloween revelers into a deathtrap, killing at least 60 people and injuring about 180. ``It reminded me of the gas chambers at Auschwitz,'' local rescue service leader Lennart Olin said on national radio, describing the sight when rescuers first entered the building in Goteborg, a city of half a million people on the country's west coast. The fire was the deadliest in modern Swedish history since 1978, when 20 people died in the town of Boraas. ``We are still searching the building ... but so far we have found 60 dead,'' Goteborg police official Jan Edmundson said on national radio. At a news conference Friday morning, police said most victims choked to death on smoke and poisonous gases. The injured toll was lowered slightly to 180, but included seven people who needed treatment at emergency burn centers. Binan Atta was walking to the Macedonian Association when he saw the fire. He said he raced in and pulled to safety several people, including a friend. ``His clothes had burned off. His skin was red and bubbly,'' Atta said. ``Lots of kids were just screaming,'' he added at Hammarkullen Lutheran Church, where several dozen family and friends of victims gathered. ``I saw about 10 people in windows who just jumped. They didn't even look down'' beforehand. Fire officials were alerted at 11:43 p.m. (2243 GMT) Thursday and had a fire truck at the scene four minutes later, rescue workers said. The blaze was already consuming the two-story brick building. The dance was on the second floor. About 300 or 400 people were inside, police said. Many escaped on their own. Police rescued 40, and recovered 59 bodies. The 60th victim died at a hospital. ``It was a panic,'' Goteborg police spokesman Bengt Staaf said, with youths trampling each other to get out, and other youths scuffling with police to get in and attempt to help friends. The cause of the fire was not immediately known. ``What we know is that there was an explosion,'' Edmundson said. Olin said there were signs that the fire was set. ``The fact that it spread so fast indicates that it was not a normal fire,'' he said. The Swedish news agency TT reported 190 people were taken to hospitals with injuries, and about 20 were in intensive care. Seven of the most severely injured were taken by helicopter to burn clinics in other cities, the report said. Goteborg is about 500 kilometers (300 miles) southwest of the capital, Stockholm. The fire broke out about midnight (2300 GMT Thursday) in building of the local Macedonian Association, which organized the dance. The crowd in the second story of the building contained mostly 13 to 18 year olds celebrating Halloween and a holiday weekend. ``A night full of expectation, happiness over extra leave from school and high spirits in anticipation of a weekend was brutally and suddenly changed into a tragedy of incomprehensible dimensions,'' the Goteborg city council said in a statement. ``Goteborg is today a city in shock.'' Jamal Fawz, 15, told TT that he was out on the dance floor when the blaze started with about 400 people inside. ``It looked like it started in the ceiling, and lamps and loudspeakers fell to the floor,'' he was quoted as saying. ``It was chaos. Everybody was trying to get out and people trampled on each other on the way to the exit. ... Others kicked out the windows and jumped out.'' Ambulances were called in from several nearby communities. The Goteborg rescue services also brought city buses into service to help transport the injured. Olin said the rescue service inspected the building in April 1997 and ``fulfilled all possible demands as far as emergency exits and the possibility for fast evacuation.'' Anna-Lisa Saar, a social worker at Oestra Hospital, where many of the victims were taken, said identifying many of them was difficult. ``Maybe you have teen-agers yourself and know how they are ... They maybe don't have their own identification, but have that of a friend who is a year older. Girls don't carry their identification on them, but in a bag and maybe that wasn't lying with the body,'' she said, according to TT. Goteborg has about 435,000 people. ||||| Hundreds of teen-agers jammed into an upstairs hall planning to dance the night away, but by the time the sun rose Friday they were dead, clinging to life in hospitals or weeping in disbelief at a fire that killed 67 of them. Police said another 173 people were injured, 20 of them severely, in the explosive fire that engulfed the plain brick two-story building just before midnight Thursday and turned a boisterous disco dance into a screaming terror in a matter of moments. Bent metal bars on some of the hall's windows showed the panic-fueled strength that the teen-agers, many of them immigrants, exerted as they sought ways out of the hall, which with some 400 people inside was crowded to more than twice its legal capacity. Below the second-floor windows lay stray shoes, broken glass and bloody blankets used to wrap those who may or may not have lived. ``I've been crying all day. I haven't been able to sleep. I'm alive, so why should I sleep when my friends are dead,'' 17-year-old Alina Turk said as she stood outside the ruined building Friday afternoon. She said she had been at the dance and two male friends of hers died. Zuhir Hersi, the 17-year-old disc jockey at the bash, told of his ordeal in telegraphic bursts. ``Panic. No help. No police. No firemen. Only kids helping each other,'' he said from his bed in a Goteborg hospital. Although Hersi, like many of the youths at the dance, believes the police and firemen were slow, authorities said the first fire trucks were on the scene within five minutes of getting the alarm. But the fire spread so fast that even an instant response would likely have been too slow. The cause of the fire had not been determined as of Friday evening. Fire Brigade Engineer Bo Wahlstroem said the flames' quick, raging spread could indicate arson, or that the fire had burned undetected for a time before exploding. The fire destroyed the building, whose second floor, where the dance took place, was rented by the local Macedonian immigrant association in Sweden's second-largest city. The association had hired out the hall for the night to eight party arrangers, police said but declined to identify the arrangers. The crowd was mostly aged 13 to 18, witnesses said, and consisted mostly of immigrants or children of immigrant parents. Officials said the dead and injured were of 19 nationalities, including Somalis, Ethiopians, Iraqis, Iranians and Swedes, as well as people from the current and former Yugoslavia and unspecified Latin American countries. Identifying the dead was a wrackingly slow process, forcing relatives and friends exhausted with dread to wait for hours at hospitals. Some were able to make the wait in rooms off-limits to journalists, but many had to wait in corridors, crying and teen-agers hurry in and out of rooms as they looked for their pals. Only 14 bodies had been indentified by Friday evening. ``The identification is hard not only because of the burns but also because they have no driver's licenses or other documents _ they were so young,'' said Kerstin Einarsson of Sahlgrenska Hospital, the largest in the city of 435,000 some 500 kilometers (300 miles) west of Stockholm. The blaze, the worst fire disaster in Sweden's modern history, shocked a country renowned for its smooth calmness. King Carl XVI Gustaf, on a trip out of the country, sent a statement reassuring victims' relatives that ``all of us in Sweden feel great sympathy.'' Prime Minister Goeran Persson travelled from Stockholm to the fire site, first laying flowers outside and walking into the gutted wreck. ``The floor was full of shoes and boots, the same kind of boots my own children wear,'' he said. On Friday evening, about 1,500 mostly young people, came to the Goteborg Cathedral to try to assuage their grief and bewilderment at a memorial service. The youths were dressed in the same sort of hip-hop garb that the dance-goers had worn, but listened to delicate hymns instead of pounding disco. They wept, they embraced, and some looked around nervously, apparently not knowing how to behave in a church. ``I don't go to church. I'm a Muslim, but I don't go to prayers,'' said a young man who gave his name only as Sami. ``I'm accompanying my Christian friends. We lost someone. We're mourning _ that's all.'' ||||| A fire turned a Swedish dance hall jammed with teen-age Halloween revelers into a deathtrap, killing 60 people and injuring 155. The fast-spreading fire that broke out just a few minutes before midnight Thursday gutted the building and left rescuers facing a hideous scene that local rescue service leader Lennart Olin likened to a ``gas chamber.'' The cause of the fire had not been determined as of Friday evening. Although an estimated 400 people, most aged 13 to 18, were at the dance on the upper floor, the facility had approval for a maximum capacity of 150, Hans Carlsson, the detective leading the disaster investigation. The fire, at the facilities of the Macedonian Association local immigrant group, was the deadliest in modern Swedish history. In 1978, 20 people died in a fire at a hotel in the town of Boraas. Police said most victims choked to death on smoke and poisonous gases; 59 bodies were found at the scene and one other died later. Of the injured, at least 57 were in intensive care, according to Sven Martinell, spokesman for the local medical authorities. Police earlier had reported 65 dead, but backed off that figure Friday evening. ``The earlier information that police gave out was wrong,'' said Hans Carlsson, the lead detective in the case. The building, graf 5 pvs ||||| A fire turned a Swedish dance hall jammed with teen-age Halloween revelers into a deathtrap, killing at least 60 people and injuring about 180. The fast-spreading fire completely gutted the two-story building and left rescuers facing a hideous scene that local rescue service leader Lennart Olin likened to a ``gas chamber.'' Although an estimated 400 people, most aged 13 to 18, were at the dance on the upper floor, the facility had approval for a maximum capacity of 150, Hans Carlsson, the detective leading the disaster investigation. The fire, at the facilities of the Macedonian Association local immigrant group, was the deadliest in modern Swedish history since 1978, when 20 people died in the town of Boraas. On Friday, police said most victims choked to death on smoke and poisonous gases; 59 bodies were found at the scene, and the 60th victim died at a hospital, officials said. The injured included about 20 in serious condition. The dance apparently was attended mostly by immigrants or children of immigrants. Police said the list of injured included Somalis and people from current and former Yugoslavia. The Macedonian Association had rented the facility out for the dance, Carlsson said. That person was not immediately identified. Binan Atta was walking to the Macedonian Association when he saw the fire. He said he raced in and pulled to safety several people, including a friend. ``His clothes had burned off. His skin was red and bubbly,'' Atta said. ``Lots of kids were just screaming,'' he added at Hammarkullen Lutheran Church, where several dozen family and friends of victims gathered. ``I saw about 10 people in windows who just jumped. They didn't even look down'' beforehand. Fire officials were alerted at 11:43 p.m. (2243 GMT) Thursday and had a fire truck at the scene four minutes later, rescue workers said. The blaze was already consuming the brick building. About 300 or 400 people were inside, police said. Many escaped on their own. Police rescued 40. The Swedish news agency TT said the association had permission to have only 150 people in the facility. The building had just two exits, one of which was blocked by fire, city police technician Stephen Holmberg was quoted as saying by TT. ``It was a panic,'' Goteborg police spokesman Bengt Staaf said, with youths trampling each other to get out, and other youths scuffling with police to get in and attempt to help friends. The cause of the fire was not immediately known. ``What we know is that there was an explosion,'' Edmundson said. Olin said there were indications that the fire could have been set. ``The fact that it spread so fast indicates that it was not a normal fire,'' he said. About 180 people were taken to hospitals. Seven of the most severely injured were taken by helicopter to burn clinics in other cities, the report said. Goteborg is about 500 kilometers (300 miles) southwest of the capital, Stockholm. The dance was filled with teen-agers celebrating Halloween and a holiday weekend. ``A night full of expectation, happiness over extra leave from school and high spirits in anticipation of a weekend was brutally and suddenly changed into a tragedy of incomprehensible dimensions,'' the Goteborg city council said in a statement. ``Goteborg is today a city in shock.'' Prime Minister Goeran Persson visited the fire site at midday and King Carl XVI Gustav made a statement of condolence. Jamal Fawz, graf 19 pvs ||||| A panicky telephone call in poor Swedish was the first word that authorities got of a fire racing through a dance hall crowded with immigrant teen-agers, delaying fire squads' response to the blaze that killed 60 and injured 162, officials said Saturday. Per-Olof Ortarsen of Goteborg's emergency services line said the call was so hard to understand that it took three minutes for workers to figure out what was going on and where to send fire trucks. The first fire trucks and rescue squads were on the scene six minutes after the call was received, Ortarsen said at a news conference. He and other officials declined to comment on whether a quicker response could have saved any of the mostly immigrant victims. The minutes of delay felt endless to those caught in the terror of the fire and survivors have spoken angrily of what they saw as a slow and even obstructive response. ''No help. No police. No firemen,'' 17-year-old Zuhir Hersi, one of the disc jockeys at the bash, said Friday, hours after the blaze exploded. ''Just kids helping kids.'' And once the squads arrived, the kids were blocked from helping, they say. ''We could have saved more young people if only police hadn't stopped us,'' Mohanned Hussein was quoted as saying by the newspaper Expressen. On Saturday, hundreds of people stood quietly outside the gutted building amid flowers and candles as they attempted to come to grips with catastrophe. In the parking lot that a day before had been a tumult of ambulances and screams, mourners had laid a 30-meter-long (100-foot-long) pile of bouquets, candles and cards of remembrance. The cards' inscriptions were brief _ ``I will see you in heaven,'' ``We miss you'' _ and the people who stood reading them also had few words. ``I just wanted to show my sympathy. I think about them. There's nothing else we can do,'' said Caroline Ericsson, who didn't know any of the victims. For Lasse Gustavsson, having the right words wasn't as important as showing his face, severely disfigured in a fire. The former Goteborg firefighter lost his ears, his eyelids and most of his nose in a gas explosion. By showing up, he said, he wanted to show the victims' relatives and friends that spirit can help them pull through despair. ``I can't give them hope. Consolation is enough,'' he said, as people nearby cast uneasy glances at his scars. Many of those injured in the blaze may have to endure similar shocked looks the rest of their lives. Authorities say the explosive fire quickly raised the temperature in the overcrowded hall to 600 degrees (1,100 F). The cause of the fire that broke out just before midnight Thursday remains under investigation. Witness accounts have varied widely, with some reporting smoke coming from the cellar and others saying the fire appeared to start in the ceiling of the dance hall on the building's second floor. The fire's quick spread has prompted speculation that it could have been set, but officials also say the explosive spread could have been because the fire had been burning undetected for some time. What's known is that the hall was packed far beyond its capacity. Licensed to hold a maximum of 150, the hall held at least 250 and perhaps as many as 400 when the fire hit. The crowd was mostly teen-agers and mostly immigrants or children of immigrant parents. They had come for a dance organized by eight party-arrangers whom police have not identified; the hall was rented by the organizers from the local Macedonian immigrant association. Officials said the dead and injured were of 19 nationalities, including Somalis, Ethiopians, Iraqis, Iranians and Swedes, as well as people from the current and former Yugoslavia and unspecified Latin American countries. Identifying the dead was a wrackingly slow process, forcing relatives and friends already exhausted with dread to wait for hours at hospitals. Only 18 of the dead had been identified by midday Saturday. ``The identification is hard because they have no driver's licenses or other documents _ they were so young,'' said Kerstin Einarsson of Sahlgrenska Hospital, the largest in the city of 435,000 residents about 300 miles (500 kilometers) west of Stockholm. The worst previous Swedish fire disaster in modern history was in 1978 in Boraas, when 20 people died in a hotel fire. ||||| A fire turned a dance hall jammed with teen-age Halloween revelers into a deathtrap, killing 60 people and injuring 162 others in Sweden's second-largest city. Police earlier had reported 65 dead, but backed off that figure Friday evening. ''The earlier information that police gave out was wrong,'' Hand Carlsson, the lead detective in the case, told a news conference. The fast-spreading fire that broke out just a few minutes before midnight Thursday gutted the building and left rescuers facing a hideous scene that local rescue service leader Lennart Olin likened to a ``gas chamber.'' The cause of the fire had not been determined as of Friday evening. Although an estimated 400 people, most aged 13 to 18, were at the dance on the building's second floor, the facility had approval for a maximum capacity of 150, said Carlsson. The fire, at the facilities of the Macedonian Association local immigrant group, was the deadliest in modern Swedish history. In 1978, 20 people died in a fire at a hotel in the town of Boraas. Police said most victims choked to death on smoke and poisonous gases; 59 bodies were found at the scene and one other died later. Of the injured, at least 57 were in intensive care, according to Sven Martinell, spokesman for the local medical authorities. The building did not have sprinklers and was not required to have them, officials said. The dance was attended mostly by immigrants or children of immigrants. Police said the dead or injured represented at least 19 nationalities, including Somalis, Ethiopians, Iraqis, Iranians and Swedes, along with people from current and former Yugoslavia and unspecified Latin American countries. The Macedonian Association, which rents space in the building, had in turn rented the facility out to others for the dance, Carlsson said. That person was not immdiately identified. Binan Atta was walking to the Macedonian Association when he saw the fire. He said he raced in and pulled to safety several people, including a friend. ``His clothes had burned off. His skin was red and bubbly,'' Atta said. ``Lots of kids were just screaming,'' he added at Hammarkullen Lutheran Church, where several dozen family and friends of victims gathered. ``I saw about 10 people in windows who just jumped. They didn't even look down'' beforehand. Fire officials were alerted at 11:43 p.m. (2243 GMT) Thursday and had a fire truck at the scene four minutes later, rescue workers said. The blaze was already consuming the building. The building had just two exits, one of which was blocked by fire, city police technician Stephen Holmberg was quoted as saying by the Swedish news agency TT. ``It was a panic,'' Goteborg police spokesman Bengt Staaf said, with youths trampling each other to get out, and other youths scuffling with police to get in and attempt to help friends. Olin said there were indications that the fire could have been set. ``The fact that it spread so fast indicates that it was not a normal fire,'' he said. Goteborg is about 500 kilometers (300 miles) southwest of the capital, Stockholm. The crowd in the second story of the building contained mostly 13 to 18 year olds celebrating Halloween and a holiday weekend. ``A night full of expectation, happiness over extra leave from school and high spirits in anticipation of a weekend was brutally and suddenly changed into a tragedy of incomprehensible dimensions,'' the Goteborg city council said in a statement. ``Goteborg is today a city in shock.'' Prime Minister Goeran Persson visited the fire site at midday and King Carl XVI Gustav made a statement of condolence. Jamal Fawz, 15, told TT that he was out on the dance floor when the blaze started with about 400 people inside. ``It looked like it started in the ceiling, and lamps and loudspeakers fell to the floor,'' he was quoted as saying. ``It was chaos. Everybody was trying to get out and people trampled on each other on the way to the exit. ... Others kicked out the windows and jumped out.'' Ambulances were called in from several nearby communities. The Goteborg rescue services also brought city buses into service to help transport the injured. Anna-Lisa Saar, a social worker at Oestra Hospital, where many of the victims were taken, said identifying many of them was difficult. ``Maybe you have teen-agers yourself and know how they are ... They maybe don't have their own identification, but have that of a friend who is a year older. Girls don't carry their identification on them, but in a bag and maybe that wasn't lying with the body,'' she said, according to TT. Goteborg has about 435,000 people.

A fire rapidly destroyed a Goteborg, Sweden dance hall as some 400 teenaged Halloween revelers jammed up while trying to evacuate. At least 60 died, mostly from smoke inhalation, and about 150 were injured. The actual capacity of the 2nd floor dance hall was 150. Forensic experts are having success identifying the burned bodies but the question of how the fire began is still unanswered. The blaze gutted the entire building owned by the Macedonian Association. Mostly immigrants attended the dance. The fire squads say they lost about six minutes while trying to respond to a call in poor Swedish. It is doubtful a quicker response would have made a difference.

A fire turned a dance hall jammed with teen-age Halloween revelers into a deathtrap, killing 65 people and injuring 157 others in Sweden's second-largest city. The fast-spreading fire that broke out just a few minutes before midnight Thursday gutted the building and left rescuers facing a hideous scene that local rescue service leader Lennart Olin likened to a ``gas chamber.'' The cause of the fire had not been determined as of Friday evening. Although an estimated 400 people, most aged 13 to 18, were at the dance on the building's second floor, the facility had approval for a maximum capacity of 150, said Hans Carlsson, the detective leading the disaster investigation. The fire, at the facilities of the Macedonian Association local immigrant group, was the deadliest in modern Swedish history. In 1978, 20 people died in a fire at a hotel in the town of Boraas. Police said most victims choked to death on smoke and poisonous gases; 59 bodies were found at the scene and six others died later. Of the injured, 57 were in intensive care, said Sven Martinell, spokesman for the local medical authorities. The building did not have sprinklers and was not required to have them, officials said. The dance was attended mostly by immigrants or children of immigrants. Police said the dead or injured represented at least 19 nationalities, including Somalis, Ethiopians, Iraqis, Iranians and Swedes, along with people from current and former Yugoslavia and unspecified Latin American countries. The Macedonian Association, which rents space in the building, had in turn rented the facility out to others for the dance, Carlsson said. That person was not immdiately identified. Binan Atta was walking to the Macedonian Association when he saw the fire. He said he raced in and pulled to safety several people, including a friend. ``His clothes had burned off. His skin was red and bubbly,'' Atta said. ``Lots of kids were just screaming,'' he added at Hammarkullen Lutheran Church, where several dozen family and friends of victims gathered. ``I saw about 10 people in windows who just jumped. They didn't even look down'' beforehand. Fire officials were alerted at 11:43 p.m. (2243 GMT) Thursday and had a fire truck at the scene four minutes later, rescue workers said. The blaze was already consuming the building. The building had just two exits, one of which was blocked by fire, city police technician Stephen Holmberg was quoted as saying by the Swedish news agency TT. ``It was a panic,'' Goteborg police spokesman Bengt Staaf said, with youths trampling each other to get out, and other youths scuffling with police to get in and attempt to help friends. Olin said there were indications that the fire could have been set. ``The fact that it spread so fast indicates that it was not a normal fire,'' he said. Goteborg is about 500 kilometers (300 miles) southwest of the capital, Stockholm. The crowd in the second story of the building contained mostly 13 to 18 year olds celebrating Halloween and a holiday weekend. ``A night full of expectation, happiness over extra leave from school and high spirits in anticipation of a weekend was brutally and suddenly changed into a tragedy of incomprehensible dimensions,'' the Goteborg city council said in a statement. ``Goteborg is today a city in shock.'' Prime Minister Goeran Persson visited the fire site at midday and King Carl XVI Gustav made a statement of condolence. Jamal Fawz, 15, told TT that he was out on the dance floor when the blaze started with about 400 people inside. ``It looked like it started in the ceiling, and lamps and loudspeakers fell to the floor,'' he was quoted as saying. ``It was chaos. Everybody was trying to get out and people trampled on each other on the way to the exit. ... Others kicked out the windows and jumped out.'' Ambulances were called in from several nearby communities. The Goteborg rescue services also brought city buses into service to help transport the injured. Anna-Lisa Saar, a social worker at Oestra Hospital, where many of the victims were taken, said identifying many of them was difficult. ``Maybe you have teen-agers yourself and know how they are ... They maybe don't have their own identification, but have that of a friend who is a year older. Girls don't carry their identification on them, but in a bag and maybe that wasn't lying with the body,'' she said, according to TT. Goteborg has about 435,000 people. ||||| A fire turned a dance hall jammed with teen-age Halloween revelers into a deathtrap, killing 60 people and injuring 162 others in Sweden's second-largest city. Police earlier had reported 65 dead, but backed off that figure Friday evening. ''The earlier information that police gave out was wrong,'' Hans Carlsson, the lead detective in the case, told a news conference. The fast-spreading, 3rd graf pvs ||||| Forensic experts examining heavily burned bodies were able Saturday to identify more of the 60 young people who died in a dance hall fire, but the catastrophe's most tormenting question was still unanswered. How could it happen; what caused the flames that raced through a hall packed far beyond capacity, blocking one of the exits and forcing panicked teen-agers to flee down the one remaining staircase and leap out of second-story windows? ''As long as the technicians haven't established the cause of the fire, we don't know if it's arson or not,'' Goteborg chief prosecutor Ulf Noren said Saturday evening. Earlier in the day, Noren had said it was a ''50-50'' chance that the fire was arson, prompting wide speculation that authorities had tracked down new clues. But Noren later retracted the remark, saying he'd meant only that no possibilities were being excluded. As investigators worked to find the cause, examiners identified another 22 of the bodies, bringing the total to 40, and officials said 49 people were released from hospital. Of the 162 people who suffered non-fatal injuries in the Thursday night fire, 76 remain hospitalized. Most of the victims were immigrants or of immigrant parentage, from countries including Iraq, Iran, Somalia, Ethiopia and current and former Yugoslavia. The first call alerting authorities to the fire was made in heavily accented Swedish and that, combined with noise and the caller's distress, delayed the fire squads' response by several minutes. Per-Olof Ortarsen of Goteborg's emergency services line said the call was so hard to understand that it took three minutes for workers to figure out what was going on and where to send fire trucks. The first fire trucks and rescue squads were on the scene six minutes after the call was received, Ortarsen told a news conference. He and other officials declined to comment on whether a quicker response could have saved any of the mostly immigrant victims. But the minutes of delay felt endless to those caught in the terror of the fire and survivors have spoken angrily of what they saw as a slow and even obstructive response. ``No help. No police. No firemen,'' 17-year-old Zuhir Hersi, one of the disc jockeys at the bash said Friday, hours after the blaze exploded. ``Just kids helping kids.'' And once the squads arrived, the kids were then blocked from helping, they say. ``We could have saved more young people if only police hadn't stopped us,'' Mohanned Hussein was quoted as saying by the newspaper Expressen. On Saturday, hundreds of people stood quietly outside the gutted building amid flowers and candles as they attempted to come to grips with catastrophe. In the parking lot that a day before had been a tumult of ambulances and screams, mourners had laid a 30-meter-long (100-foot-long) pile of bouquets, candles and cards of remembrance. The cards' inscriptions were brief _ ``I will see you in heaven,'' ``We miss you'' _ and the people who stood reading them also had few words. ``I just wanted to show my sympathy. I think about them. There's nothing else we can do,'' said Caroline Ericsson, who didn't know any of the fire's victims. ''It's damn difficult,'' said Connie Mesfin, who said she lost a friend in the blaze. Lasse Gustafsson, a former Goteborg firefighter severely disfigured in an explosion, also came to the club site to try to show the victims' relatives and friends that spirit can help them pull through despair. ``I can't give them hope. Consolation is enough,'' he said, as people nearby cast uneasy glances at his scars. Many of those injured in the blaze may have to endure similar shocked looks the rest of their lives. Authorities say the explosive fire quickly raised the temperature in the hall to 600 degrees (1,100 F). The hall was packed far beyond its capacity. Licensed to hold a maximum of 150, the hall held at least 250 and perhaps as many as 400 when the fire hit. One of the two exit stairways was blocked by fire and there were conflicting statements from witnesses as to whether the fire came up the stairs from a lower level, or whether it spread there after breaking out in the second-floor rooms. The worst previous fire disaster in modern Sweden was in 1978 in Boraas, when 20 people died in a hotel fire. Goteborg, Sweden's second-largest city with about 435,000 people, is 500 kilometers (300 miles) southwest of Stockholm. ||||| A fire turned a dance hall jammed with teen-age Halloween revelers into a deathtrap, killing at least 60 people and injuring about 180 in Sweden's second-largest city. The fast-spreading fire completely gutted the building and left rescuers facing a hideous scene that local rescue service leader Lennart Olin likened to a ``gas chamber.'' Although an estimated 400 people, most aged 13 to 18, were at the dance on the building's second floor, the facility had approval for a maximum capacity of 150, said Hans Carlsson, the detective leading the disaster investigation. The fire, at the facilities of the Macedonian Association local immigrant group, was the deadliest in modern Swedish history. In 1978, 20 people died in a fire at a hotel in the town of Boraas. At a news conference Friday morning, police said most victims choked to death on smoke and poisonous gases; 59 bodies were found at the scene and the 60th victim died at a hospital, officials said. The dance apparently was attended mostly by immigrants or children of immigrant. Police said the list of injured included Somalis and people from current and former Yugoslavia. The Macedonian Association, which rents space in the building, had in turn rented the facility out to another person for the dance, Carlsson said. That person was not immdiately identified. Binan Atta was walking to the Macedonian Association when he saw the fire. He said he raced in and pulled to safety several people, including a friend. ``His clothes had burned off. His skin was red and bubbly,'' Atta said. ``Lots of kids were just screaming,'' he added at Hammarkullen Lutheran Church, where several dozen family and friends of victims gathered. ``I saw about 10 people in windows who just jumped. They didn't even look down'' beforehand. Fire officials were alerted at 11:43 p.m. (2243 GMT) Thursday and had a fire truck at the scene four minutes later, rescue workers said. The blaze was already consuming the building. The building had just two exits, one of which was blocked by fire, city police technician Stephen Holmberg was quoted as saying by the Swedish news agency TT. ``It was a panic,'' Goteborg police spokesman Bengt Staaf said, with youths trampling each other to get out, and other youths scuffling with police to get in and attempt to help friends. The cause of the fire was not immediately known, although officials said it apparently began with an explosion. Olin said there were indications that the fire could have been set. ``The fact that it spread so fast indicates that it was not a normal fire,'' he said. About 180 people were taken to hospitals with injuries, and about 20 were in intensive care. Seven of the most severely injured were taken by helicopter to burn clinics in other cities. Goteborg is about 500 kilometers (300 miles) southwest of the capital, Stockholm. The crowd in the second story of the building contained mostly 13 to 18 year olds celebrating Halloween and a holiday weekend. ``A night full of expectation, happiness over extra leave from school and high spirits in anticipation of a weekend was brutally and suddenly changed into a tragedy of incomprehensible dimensions,'' the Goteborg city council said in a statement. ``Goteborg is today a city in shock.'' Prime Minister Goeran Persson visited the fire site at midday and King Carl XVI Gustav made a statement of condolence. Jamal Fawz, 15, told TT that he was out on the dance floor when the blaze started with about 400 people inside. ``It looked like it started in the ceiling, and lamps and loudspeakers fell to the floor,'' he was quoted as saying. ``It was chaos. Everybody was trying to get out and people trampled on each other on the way to the exit. ... Others kicked out the windows and jumped out.'' Ambulances were called in from several nearby communities. The Goteborg rescue services also brought city buses into service to help transport the injured. Anna-Lisa Saar, a social worker at Oestra Hospital, where many of the victims were taken, said identifying many of them was difficult. ``Maybe you have teen-agers yourself and know how they are ... They maybe don't have their own identification, but have that of a friend who is a year older. Girls don't carry their identification on them, but in a bag and maybe that wasn't lying with the body,'' she said, according to TT. Goteborg has about 435,000 people. ||||| A fire turned a Swedish dance hall jammed with teen-age Halloween revelers into a deathtrap, killing at least 60 people and injuring about 180. ``It reminded me of the gas chambers at Auschwitz,'' local rescue service leader Lennart Olin said on national radio, describing the sight when rescuers first entered the building in Goteborg, a city of half a million people on the country's west coast. The fire was the deadliest in modern Swedish history since 1978, when 20 people died in the town of Boraas. ``We are still searching the building ... but so far we have found 60 dead,'' Goteborg police official Jan Edmundson said on national radio. At a news conference Friday morning, police said most victims choked to death on smoke and poisonous gases. The injured toll was lowered slightly to 180, but included seven people who needed treatment at emergency burn centers. Binan Atta was walking to the Macedonian Association when he saw the fire. He said he raced in and pulled to safety several people, including a friend. ``His clothes had burned off. His skin was red and bubbly,'' Atta said. ``Lots of kids were just screaming,'' he added at Hammarkullen Lutheran Church, where several dozen family and friends of victims gathered. ``I saw about 10 people in windows who just jumped. They didn't even look down'' beforehand. Fire officials were alerted at 11:43 p.m. (2243 GMT) Thursday and had a fire truck at the scene four minutes later, rescue workers said. The blaze was already consuming the two-story brick building. The dance was on the second floor. About 300 or 400 people were inside, police said. Many escaped on their own. Police rescued 40, and recovered 59 bodies. The 60th victim died at a hospital. ``It was a panic,'' Goteborg police spokesman Bengt Staaf said, with youths trampling each other to get out, and other youths scuffling with police to get in and attempt to help friends. The cause of the fire was not immediately known. ``What we know is that there was an explosion,'' Edmundson said. Olin said there were signs that the fire was set. ``The fact that it spread so fast indicates that it was not a normal fire,'' he said. The Swedish news agency TT reported 190 people were taken to hospitals with injuries, and about 20 were in intensive care. Seven of the most severely injured were taken by helicopter to burn clinics in other cities, the report said. Goteborg is about 500 kilometers (300 miles) southwest of the capital, Stockholm. The fire broke out about midnight (2300 GMT Thursday) in building of the local Macedonian Association, which organized the dance. The crowd in the second story of the building contained mostly 13 to 18 year olds celebrating Halloween and a holiday weekend. ``A night full of expectation, happiness over extra leave from school and high spirits in anticipation of a weekend was brutally and suddenly changed into a tragedy of incomprehensible dimensions,'' the Goteborg city council said in a statement. ``Goteborg is today a city in shock.'' Jamal Fawz, 15, told TT that he was out on the dance floor when the blaze started with about 400 people inside. ``It looked like it started in the ceiling, and lamps and loudspeakers fell to the floor,'' he was quoted as saying. ``It was chaos. Everybody was trying to get out and people trampled on each other on the way to the exit. ... Others kicked out the windows and jumped out.'' Ambulances were called in from several nearby communities. The Goteborg rescue services also brought city buses into service to help transport the injured. Olin said the rescue service inspected the building in April 1997 and ``fulfilled all possible demands as far as emergency exits and the possibility for fast evacuation.'' Anna-Lisa Saar, a social worker at Oestra Hospital, where many of the victims were taken, said identifying many of them was difficult. ``Maybe you have teen-agers yourself and know how they are ... They maybe don't have their own identification, but have that of a friend who is a year older. Girls don't carry their identification on them, but in a bag and maybe that wasn't lying with the body,'' she said, according to TT. Goteborg has about 435,000 people. ||||| Hundreds of teen-agers jammed into an upstairs hall planning to dance the night away, but by the time the sun rose Friday they were dead, clinging to life in hospitals or weeping in disbelief at a fire that killed 67 of them. Police said another 173 people were injured, 20 of them severely, in the explosive fire that engulfed the plain brick two-story building just before midnight Thursday and turned a boisterous disco dance into a screaming terror in a matter of moments. Bent metal bars on some of the hall's windows showed the panic-fueled strength that the teen-agers, many of them immigrants, exerted as they sought ways out of the hall, which with some 400 people inside was crowded to more than twice its legal capacity. Below the second-floor windows lay stray shoes, broken glass and bloody blankets used to wrap those who may or may not have lived. ``I've been crying all day. I haven't been able to sleep. I'm alive, so why should I sleep when my friends are dead,'' 17-year-old Alina Turk said as she stood outside the ruined building Friday afternoon. She said she had been at the dance and two male friends of hers died. Zuhir Hersi, the 17-year-old disc jockey at the bash, told of his ordeal in telegraphic bursts. ``Panic. No help. No police. No firemen. Only kids helping each other,'' he said from his bed in a Goteborg hospital. Although Hersi, like many of the youths at the dance, believes the police and firemen were slow, authorities said the first fire trucks were on the scene within five minutes of getting the alarm. But the fire spread so fast that even an instant response would likely have been too slow. The cause of the fire had not been determined as of Friday evening. Fire Brigade Engineer Bo Wahlstroem said the flames' quick, raging spread could indicate arson, or that the fire had burned undetected for a time before exploding. The fire destroyed the building, whose second floor, where the dance took place, was rented by the local Macedonian immigrant association in Sweden's second-largest city. The association had hired out the hall for the night to eight party arrangers, police said but declined to identify the arrangers. The crowd was mostly aged 13 to 18, witnesses said, and consisted mostly of immigrants or children of immigrant parents. Officials said the dead and injured were of 19 nationalities, including Somalis, Ethiopians, Iraqis, Iranians and Swedes, as well as people from the current and former Yugoslavia and unspecified Latin American countries. Identifying the dead was a wrackingly slow process, forcing relatives and friends exhausted with dread to wait for hours at hospitals. Some were able to make the wait in rooms off-limits to journalists, but many had to wait in corridors, crying and teen-agers hurry in and out of rooms as they looked for their pals. Only 14 bodies had been indentified by Friday evening. ``The identification is hard not only because of the burns but also because they have no driver's licenses or other documents _ they were so young,'' said Kerstin Einarsson of Sahlgrenska Hospital, the largest in the city of 435,000 some 500 kilometers (300 miles) west of Stockholm. The blaze, the worst fire disaster in Sweden's modern history, shocked a country renowned for its smooth calmness. King Carl XVI Gustaf, on a trip out of the country, sent a statement reassuring victims' relatives that ``all of us in Sweden feel great sympathy.'' Prime Minister Goeran Persson travelled from Stockholm to the fire site, first laying flowers outside and walking into the gutted wreck. ``The floor was full of shoes and boots, the same kind of boots my own children wear,'' he said. On Friday evening, about 1,500 mostly young people, came to the Goteborg Cathedral to try to assuage their grief and bewilderment at a memorial service. The youths were dressed in the same sort of hip-hop garb that the dance-goers had worn, but listened to delicate hymns instead of pounding disco. They wept, they embraced, and some looked around nervously, apparently not knowing how to behave in a church. ``I don't go to church. I'm a Muslim, but I don't go to prayers,'' said a young man who gave his name only as Sami. ``I'm accompanying my Christian friends. We lost someone. We're mourning _ that's all.'' ||||| A fire turned a Swedish dance hall jammed with teen-age Halloween revelers into a deathtrap, killing 60 people and injuring 155. The fast-spreading fire that broke out just a few minutes before midnight Thursday gutted the building and left rescuers facing a hideous scene that local rescue service leader Lennart Olin likened to a ``gas chamber.'' The cause of the fire had not been determined as of Friday evening. Although an estimated 400 people, most aged 13 to 18, were at the dance on the upper floor, the facility had approval for a maximum capacity of 150, Hans Carlsson, the detective leading the disaster investigation. The fire, at the facilities of the Macedonian Association local immigrant group, was the deadliest in modern Swedish history. In 1978, 20 people died in a fire at a hotel in the town of Boraas. Police said most victims choked to death on smoke and poisonous gases; 59 bodies were found at the scene and one other died later. Of the injured, at least 57 were in intensive care, according to Sven Martinell, spokesman for the local medical authorities. Police earlier had reported 65 dead, but backed off that figure Friday evening. ``The earlier information that police gave out was wrong,'' said Hans Carlsson, the lead detective in the case. The building, graf 5 pvs ||||| A fire turned a Swedish dance hall jammed with teen-age Halloween revelers into a deathtrap, killing at least 60 people and injuring about 180. The fast-spreading fire completely gutted the two-story building and left rescuers facing a hideous scene that local rescue service leader Lennart Olin likened to a ``gas chamber.'' Although an estimated 400 people, most aged 13 to 18, were at the dance on the upper floor, the facility had approval for a maximum capacity of 150, Hans Carlsson, the detective leading the disaster investigation. The fire, at the facilities of the Macedonian Association local immigrant group, was the deadliest in modern Swedish history since 1978, when 20 people died in the town of Boraas. On Friday, police said most victims choked to death on smoke and poisonous gases; 59 bodies were found at the scene, and the 60th victim died at a hospital, officials said. The injured included about 20 in serious condition. The dance apparently was attended mostly by immigrants or children of immigrants. Police said the list of injured included Somalis and people from current and former Yugoslavia. The Macedonian Association had rented the facility out for the dance, Carlsson said. That person was not immediately identified. Binan Atta was walking to the Macedonian Association when he saw the fire. He said he raced in and pulled to safety several people, including a friend. ``His clothes had burned off. His skin was red and bubbly,'' Atta said. ``Lots of kids were just screaming,'' he added at Hammarkullen Lutheran Church, where several dozen family and friends of victims gathered. ``I saw about 10 people in windows who just jumped. They didn't even look down'' beforehand. Fire officials were alerted at 11:43 p.m. (2243 GMT) Thursday and had a fire truck at the scene four minutes later, rescue workers said. The blaze was already consuming the brick building. About 300 or 400 people were inside, police said. Many escaped on their own. Police rescued 40. The Swedish news agency TT said the association had permission to have only 150 people in the facility. The building had just two exits, one of which was blocked by fire, city police technician Stephen Holmberg was quoted as saying by TT. ``It was a panic,'' Goteborg police spokesman Bengt Staaf said, with youths trampling each other to get out, and other youths scuffling with police to get in and attempt to help friends. The cause of the fire was not immediately known. ``What we know is that there was an explosion,'' Edmundson said. Olin said there were indications that the fire could have been set. ``The fact that it spread so fast indicates that it was not a normal fire,'' he said. About 180 people were taken to hospitals. Seven of the most severely injured were taken by helicopter to burn clinics in other cities, the report said. Goteborg is about 500 kilometers (300 miles) southwest of the capital, Stockholm. The dance was filled with teen-agers celebrating Halloween and a holiday weekend. ``A night full of expectation, happiness over extra leave from school and high spirits in anticipation of a weekend was brutally and suddenly changed into a tragedy of incomprehensible dimensions,'' the Goteborg city council said in a statement. ``Goteborg is today a city in shock.'' Prime Minister Goeran Persson visited the fire site at midday and King Carl XVI Gustav made a statement of condolence. Jamal Fawz, graf 19 pvs ||||| A panicky telephone call in poor Swedish was the first word that authorities got of a fire racing through a dance hall crowded with immigrant teen-agers, delaying fire squads' response to the blaze that killed 60 and injured 162, officials said Saturday. Per-Olof Ortarsen of Goteborg's emergency services line said the call was so hard to understand that it took three minutes for workers to figure out what was going on and where to send fire trucks. The first fire trucks and rescue squads were on the scene six minutes after the call was received, Ortarsen said at a news conference. He and other officials declined to comment on whether a quicker response could have saved any of the mostly immigrant victims. The minutes of delay felt endless to those caught in the terror of the fire and survivors have spoken angrily of what they saw as a slow and even obstructive response. ''No help. No police. No firemen,'' 17-year-old Zuhir Hersi, one of the disc jockeys at the bash, said Friday, hours after the blaze exploded. ''Just kids helping kids.'' And once the squads arrived, the kids were blocked from helping, they say. ''We could have saved more young people if only police hadn't stopped us,'' Mohanned Hussein was quoted as saying by the newspaper Expressen. On Saturday, hundreds of people stood quietly outside the gutted building amid flowers and candles as they attempted to come to grips with catastrophe. In the parking lot that a day before had been a tumult of ambulances and screams, mourners had laid a 30-meter-long (100-foot-long) pile of bouquets, candles and cards of remembrance. The cards' inscriptions were brief _ ``I will see you in heaven,'' ``We miss you'' _ and the people who stood reading them also had few words. ``I just wanted to show my sympathy. I think about them. There's nothing else we can do,'' said Caroline Ericsson, who didn't know any of the victims. For Lasse Gustavsson, having the right words wasn't as important as showing his face, severely disfigured in a fire. The former Goteborg firefighter lost his ears, his eyelids and most of his nose in a gas explosion. By showing up, he said, he wanted to show the victims' relatives and friends that spirit can help them pull through despair. ``I can't give them hope. Consolation is enough,'' he said, as people nearby cast uneasy glances at his scars. Many of those injured in the blaze may have to endure similar shocked looks the rest of their lives. Authorities say the explosive fire quickly raised the temperature in the overcrowded hall to 600 degrees (1,100 F). The cause of the fire that broke out just before midnight Thursday remains under investigation. Witness accounts have varied widely, with some reporting smoke coming from the cellar and others saying the fire appeared to start in the ceiling of the dance hall on the building's second floor. The fire's quick spread has prompted speculation that it could have been set, but officials also say the explosive spread could have been because the fire had been burning undetected for some time. What's known is that the hall was packed far beyond its capacity. Licensed to hold a maximum of 150, the hall held at least 250 and perhaps as many as 400 when the fire hit. The crowd was mostly teen-agers and mostly immigrants or children of immigrant parents. They had come for a dance organized by eight party-arrangers whom police have not identified; the hall was rented by the organizers from the local Macedonian immigrant association. Officials said the dead and injured were of 19 nationalities, including Somalis, Ethiopians, Iraqis, Iranians and Swedes, as well as people from the current and former Yugoslavia and unspecified Latin American countries. Identifying the dead was a wrackingly slow process, forcing relatives and friends already exhausted with dread to wait for hours at hospitals. Only 18 of the dead had been identified by midday Saturday. ``The identification is hard because they have no driver's licenses or other documents _ they were so young,'' said Kerstin Einarsson of Sahlgrenska Hospital, the largest in the city of 435,000 residents about 300 miles (500 kilometers) west of Stockholm. The worst previous Swedish fire disaster in modern history was in 1978 in Boraas, when 20 people died in a hotel fire. ||||| A fire turned a dance hall jammed with teen-age Halloween revelers into a deathtrap, killing 60 people and injuring 162 others in Sweden's second-largest city. Police earlier had reported 65 dead, but backed off that figure Friday evening. ''The earlier information that police gave out was wrong,'' Hand Carlsson, the lead detective in the case, told a news conference. The fast-spreading fire that broke out just a few minutes before midnight Thursday gutted the building and left rescuers facing a hideous scene that local rescue service leader Lennart Olin likened to a ``gas chamber.'' The cause of the fire had not been determined as of Friday evening. Although an estimated 400 people, most aged 13 to 18, were at the dance on the building's second floor, the facility had approval for a maximum capacity of 150, said Carlsson. The fire, at the facilities of the Macedonian Association local immigrant group, was the deadliest in modern Swedish history. In 1978, 20 people died in a fire at a hotel in the town of Boraas. Police said most victims choked to death on smoke and poisonous gases; 59 bodies were found at the scene and one other died later. Of the injured, at least 57 were in intensive care, according to Sven Martinell, spokesman for the local medical authorities. The building did not have sprinklers and was not required to have them, officials said. The dance was attended mostly by immigrants or children of immigrants. Police said the dead or injured represented at least 19 nationalities, including Somalis, Ethiopians, Iraqis, Iranians and Swedes, along with people from current and former Yugoslavia and unspecified Latin American countries. The Macedonian Association, which rents space in the building, had in turn rented the facility out to others for the dance, Carlsson said. That person was not immdiately identified. Binan Atta was walking to the Macedonian Association when he saw the fire. He said he raced in and pulled to safety several people, including a friend. ``His clothes had burned off. His skin was red and bubbly,'' Atta said. ``Lots of kids were just screaming,'' he added at Hammarkullen Lutheran Church, where several dozen family and friends of victims gathered. ``I saw about 10 people in windows who just jumped. They didn't even look down'' beforehand. Fire officials were alerted at 11:43 p.m. (2243 GMT) Thursday and had a fire truck at the scene four minutes later, rescue workers said. The blaze was already consuming the building. The building had just two exits, one of which was blocked by fire, city police technician Stephen Holmberg was quoted as saying by the Swedish news agency TT. ``It was a panic,'' Goteborg police spokesman Bengt Staaf said, with youths trampling each other to get out, and other youths scuffling with police to get in and attempt to help friends. Olin said there were indications that the fire could have been set. ``The fact that it spread so fast indicates that it was not a normal fire,'' he said. Goteborg is about 500 kilometers (300 miles) southwest of the capital, Stockholm. The crowd in the second story of the building contained mostly 13 to 18 year olds celebrating Halloween and a holiday weekend. ``A night full of expectation, happiness over extra leave from school and high spirits in anticipation of a weekend was brutally and suddenly changed into a tragedy of incomprehensible dimensions,'' the Goteborg city council said in a statement. ``Goteborg is today a city in shock.'' Prime Minister Goeran Persson visited the fire site at midday and King Carl XVI Gustav made a statement of condolence. Jamal Fawz, 15, told TT that he was out on the dance floor when the blaze started with about 400 people inside. ``It looked like it started in the ceiling, and lamps and loudspeakers fell to the floor,'' he was quoted as saying. ``It was chaos. Everybody was trying to get out and people trampled on each other on the way to the exit. ... Others kicked out the windows and jumped out.'' Ambulances were called in from several nearby communities. The Goteborg rescue services also brought city buses into service to help transport the injured. Anna-Lisa Saar, a social worker at Oestra Hospital, where many of the victims were taken, said identifying many of them was difficult. ``Maybe you have teen-agers yourself and know how they are ... They maybe don't have their own identification, but have that of a friend who is a year older. Girls don't carry their identification on them, but in a bag and maybe that wasn't lying with the body,'' she said, according to TT. Goteborg has about 435,000 people.

A fire at an overcrowded dance hall in Goteborg, Sweden killed 60 and injured 180. Most victims were 13-18, immigrants covering 19 nationalities. The 2-story brick building was rated for 150 but held 400. Owned by the Macedonian Association, it had been rented out to 8 party arrangers for a Halloween dance, held on the 2nd floor. One of two exit stairways was blocked by fire. A panicky phone call in poor Swedish to authorities took 3 minutes to understand. Fire trucks were on the scene 6 minutes later. The explosive, fast-spreading fire reached 600C. It may have burned undetected for some time. Arson was a possibility but the cause remains undetermined.

A fire turned a dance hall jammed with teen-age Halloween revelers into a deathtrap, killing 65 people and injuring 157 others in Sweden's second-largest city. The fast-spreading fire that broke out just a few minutes before midnight Thursday gutted the building and left rescuers facing a hideous scene that local rescue service leader Lennart Olin likened to a ``gas chamber.'' The cause of the fire had not been determined as of Friday evening. Although an estimated 400 people, most aged 13 to 18, were at the dance on the building's second floor, the facility had approval for a maximum capacity of 150, said Hans Carlsson, the detective leading the disaster investigation. The fire, at the facilities of the Macedonian Association local immigrant group, was the deadliest in modern Swedish history. In 1978, 20 people died in a fire at a hotel in the town of Boraas. Police said most victims choked to death on smoke and poisonous gases; 59 bodies were found at the scene and six others died later. Of the injured, 57 were in intensive care, said Sven Martinell, spokesman for the local medical authorities. The building did not have sprinklers and was not required to have them, officials said. The dance was attended mostly by immigrants or children of immigrants. Police said the dead or injured represented at least 19 nationalities, including Somalis, Ethiopians, Iraqis, Iranians and Swedes, along with people from current and former Yugoslavia and unspecified Latin American countries. The Macedonian Association, which rents space in the building, had in turn rented the facility out to others for the dance, Carlsson said. That person was not immdiately identified. Binan Atta was walking to the Macedonian Association when he saw the fire. He said he raced in and pulled to safety several people, including a friend. ``His clothes had burned off. His skin was red and bubbly,'' Atta said. ``Lots of kids were just screaming,'' he added at Hammarkullen Lutheran Church, where several dozen family and friends of victims gathered. ``I saw about 10 people in windows who just jumped. They didn't even look down'' beforehand. Fire officials were alerted at 11:43 p.m. (2243 GMT) Thursday and had a fire truck at the scene four minutes later, rescue workers said. The blaze was already consuming the building. The building had just two exits, one of which was blocked by fire, city police technician Stephen Holmberg was quoted as saying by the Swedish news agency TT. ``It was a panic,'' Goteborg police spokesman Bengt Staaf said, with youths trampling each other to get out, and other youths scuffling with police to get in and attempt to help friends. Olin said there were indications that the fire could have been set. ``The fact that it spread so fast indicates that it was not a normal fire,'' he said. Goteborg is about 500 kilometers (300 miles) southwest of the capital, Stockholm. The crowd in the second story of the building contained mostly 13 to 18 year olds celebrating Halloween and a holiday weekend. ``A night full of expectation, happiness over extra leave from school and high spirits in anticipation of a weekend was brutally and suddenly changed into a tragedy of incomprehensible dimensions,'' the Goteborg city council said in a statement. ``Goteborg is today a city in shock.'' Prime Minister Goeran Persson visited the fire site at midday and King Carl XVI Gustav made a statement of condolence. Jamal Fawz, 15, told TT that he was out on the dance floor when the blaze started with about 400 people inside. ``It looked like it started in the ceiling, and lamps and loudspeakers fell to the floor,'' he was quoted as saying. ``It was chaos. Everybody was trying to get out and people trampled on each other on the way to the exit. ... Others kicked out the windows and jumped out.'' Ambulances were called in from several nearby communities. The Goteborg rescue services also brought city buses into service to help transport the injured. Anna-Lisa Saar, a social worker at Oestra Hospital, where many of the victims were taken, said identifying many of them was difficult. ``Maybe you have teen-agers yourself and know how they are ... They maybe don't have their own identification, but have that of a friend who is a year older. Girls don't carry their identification on them, but in a bag and maybe that wasn't lying with the body,'' she said, according to TT. Goteborg has about 435,000 people. ||||| A fire turned a dance hall jammed with teen-age Halloween revelers into a deathtrap, killing 60 people and injuring 162 others in Sweden's second-largest city. Police earlier had reported 65 dead, but backed off that figure Friday evening. ''The earlier information that police gave out was wrong,'' Hans Carlsson, the lead detective in the case, told a news conference. The fast-spreading, 3rd graf pvs ||||| Forensic experts examining heavily burned bodies were able Saturday to identify more of the 60 young people who died in a dance hall fire, but the catastrophe's most tormenting question was still unanswered. How could it happen; what caused the flames that raced through a hall packed far beyond capacity, blocking one of the exits and forcing panicked teen-agers to flee down the one remaining staircase and leap out of second-story windows? ''As long as the technicians haven't established the cause of the fire, we don't know if it's arson or not,'' Goteborg chief prosecutor Ulf Noren said Saturday evening. Earlier in the day, Noren had said it was a ''50-50'' chance that the fire was arson, prompting wide speculation that authorities had tracked down new clues. But Noren later retracted the remark, saying he'd meant only that no possibilities were being excluded. As investigators worked to find the cause, examiners identified another 22 of the bodies, bringing the total to 40, and officials said 49 people were released from hospital. Of the 162 people who suffered non-fatal injuries in the Thursday night fire, 76 remain hospitalized. Most of the victims were immigrants or of immigrant parentage, from countries including Iraq, Iran, Somalia, Ethiopia and current and former Yugoslavia. The first call alerting authorities to the fire was made in heavily accented Swedish and that, combined with noise and the caller's distress, delayed the fire squads' response by several minutes. Per-Olof Ortarsen of Goteborg's emergency services line said the call was so hard to understand that it took three minutes for workers to figure out what was going on and where to send fire trucks. The first fire trucks and rescue squads were on the scene six minutes after the call was received, Ortarsen told a news conference. He and other officials declined to comment on whether a quicker response could have saved any of the mostly immigrant victims. But the minutes of delay felt endless to those caught in the terror of the fire and survivors have spoken angrily of what they saw as a slow and even obstructive response. ``No help. No police. No firemen,'' 17-year-old Zuhir Hersi, one of the disc jockeys at the bash said Friday, hours after the blaze exploded. ``Just kids helping kids.'' And once the squads arrived, the kids were then blocked from helping, they say. ``We could have saved more young people if only police hadn't stopped us,'' Mohanned Hussein was quoted as saying by the newspaper Expressen. On Saturday, hundreds of people stood quietly outside the gutted building amid flowers and candles as they attempted to come to grips with catastrophe. In the parking lot that a day before had been a tumult of ambulances and screams, mourners had laid a 30-meter-long (100-foot-long) pile of bouquets, candles and cards of remembrance. The cards' inscriptions were brief _ ``I will see you in heaven,'' ``We miss you'' _ and the people who stood reading them also had few words. ``I just wanted to show my sympathy. I think about them. There's nothing else we can do,'' said Caroline Ericsson, who didn't know any of the fire's victims. ''It's damn difficult,'' said Connie Mesfin, who said she lost a friend in the blaze. Lasse Gustafsson, a former Goteborg firefighter severely disfigured in an explosion, also came to the club site to try to show the victims' relatives and friends that spirit can help them pull through despair. ``I can't give them hope. Consolation is enough,'' he said, as people nearby cast uneasy glances at his scars. Many of those injured in the blaze may have to endure similar shocked looks the rest of their lives. Authorities say the explosive fire quickly raised the temperature in the hall to 600 degrees (1,100 F). The hall was packed far beyond its capacity. Licensed to hold a maximum of 150, the hall held at least 250 and perhaps as many as 400 when the fire hit. One of the two exit stairways was blocked by fire and there were conflicting statements from witnesses as to whether the fire came up the stairs from a lower level, or whether it spread there after breaking out in the second-floor rooms. The worst previous fire disaster in modern Sweden was in 1978 in Boraas, when 20 people died in a hotel fire. Goteborg, Sweden's second-largest city with about 435,000 people, is 500 kilometers (300 miles) southwest of Stockholm. ||||| A fire turned a dance hall jammed with teen-age Halloween revelers into a deathtrap, killing at least 60 people and injuring about 180 in Sweden's second-largest city. The fast-spreading fire completely gutted the building and left rescuers facing a hideous scene that local rescue service leader Lennart Olin likened to a ``gas chamber.'' Although an estimated 400 people, most aged 13 to 18, were at the dance on the building's second floor, the facility had approval for a maximum capacity of 150, said Hans Carlsson, the detective leading the disaster investigation. The fire, at the facilities of the Macedonian Association local immigrant group, was the deadliest in modern Swedish history. In 1978, 20 people died in a fire at a hotel in the town of Boraas. At a news conference Friday morning, police said most victims choked to death on smoke and poisonous gases; 59 bodies were found at the scene and the 60th victim died at a hospital, officials said. The dance apparently was attended mostly by immigrants or children of immigrant. Police said the list of injured included Somalis and people from current and former Yugoslavia. The Macedonian Association, which rents space in the building, had in turn rented the facility out to another person for the dance, Carlsson said. That person was not immdiately identified. Binan Atta was walking to the Macedonian Association when he saw the fire. He said he raced in and pulled to safety several people, including a friend. ``His clothes had burned off. His skin was red and bubbly,'' Atta said. ``Lots of kids were just screaming,'' he added at Hammarkullen Lutheran Church, where several dozen family and friends of victims gathered. ``I saw about 10 people in windows who just jumped. They didn't even look down'' beforehand. Fire officials were alerted at 11:43 p.m. (2243 GMT) Thursday and had a fire truck at the scene four minutes later, rescue workers said. The blaze was already consuming the building. The building had just two exits, one of which was blocked by fire, city police technician Stephen Holmberg was quoted as saying by the Swedish news agency TT. ``It was a panic,'' Goteborg police spokesman Bengt Staaf said, with youths trampling each other to get out, and other youths scuffling with police to get in and attempt to help friends. The cause of the fire was not immediately known, although officials said it apparently began with an explosion. Olin said there were indications that the fire could have been set. ``The fact that it spread so fast indicates that it was not a normal fire,'' he said. About 180 people were taken to hospitals with injuries, and about 20 were in intensive care. Seven of the most severely injured were taken by helicopter to burn clinics in other cities. Goteborg is about 500 kilometers (300 miles) southwest of the capital, Stockholm. The crowd in the second story of the building contained mostly 13 to 18 year olds celebrating Halloween and a holiday weekend. ``A night full of expectation, happiness over extra leave from school and high spirits in anticipation of a weekend was brutally and suddenly changed into a tragedy of incomprehensible dimensions,'' the Goteborg city council said in a statement. ``Goteborg is today a city in shock.'' Prime Minister Goeran Persson visited the fire site at midday and King Carl XVI Gustav made a statement of condolence. Jamal Fawz, 15, told TT that he was out on the dance floor when the blaze started with about 400 people inside. ``It looked like it started in the ceiling, and lamps and loudspeakers fell to the floor,'' he was quoted as saying. ``It was chaos. Everybody was trying to get out and people trampled on each other on the way to the exit. ... Others kicked out the windows and jumped out.'' Ambulances were called in from several nearby communities. The Goteborg rescue services also brought city buses into service to help transport the injured. Anna-Lisa Saar, a social worker at Oestra Hospital, where many of the victims were taken, said identifying many of them was difficult. ``Maybe you have teen-agers yourself and know how they are ... They maybe don't have their own identification, but have that of a friend who is a year older. Girls don't carry their identification on them, but in a bag and maybe that wasn't lying with the body,'' she said, according to TT. Goteborg has about 435,000 people. ||||| A fire turned a Swedish dance hall jammed with teen-age Halloween revelers into a deathtrap, killing at least 60 people and injuring about 180. ``It reminded me of the gas chambers at Auschwitz,'' local rescue service leader Lennart Olin said on national radio, describing the sight when rescuers first entered the building in Goteborg, a city of half a million people on the country's west coast. The fire was the deadliest in modern Swedish history since 1978, when 20 people died in the town of Boraas. ``We are still searching the building ... but so far we have found 60 dead,'' Goteborg police official Jan Edmundson said on national radio. At a news conference Friday morning, police said most victims choked to death on smoke and poisonous gases. The injured toll was lowered slightly to 180, but included seven people who needed treatment at emergency burn centers. Binan Atta was walking to the Macedonian Association when he saw the fire. He said he raced in and pulled to safety several people, including a friend. ``His clothes had burned off. His skin was red and bubbly,'' Atta said. ``Lots of kids were just screaming,'' he added at Hammarkullen Lutheran Church, where several dozen family and friends of victims gathered. ``I saw about 10 people in windows who just jumped. They didn't even look down'' beforehand. Fire officials were alerted at 11:43 p.m. (2243 GMT) Thursday and had a fire truck at the scene four minutes later, rescue workers said. The blaze was already consuming the two-story brick building. The dance was on the second floor. About 300 or 400 people were inside, police said. Many escaped on their own. Police rescued 40, and recovered 59 bodies. The 60th victim died at a hospital. ``It was a panic,'' Goteborg police spokesman Bengt Staaf said, with youths trampling each other to get out, and other youths scuffling with police to get in and attempt to help friends. The cause of the fire was not immediately known. ``What we know is that there was an explosion,'' Edmundson said. Olin said there were signs that the fire was set. ``The fact that it spread so fast indicates that it was not a normal fire,'' he said. The Swedish news agency TT reported 190 people were taken to hospitals with injuries, and about 20 were in intensive care. Seven of the most severely injured were taken by helicopter to burn clinics in other cities, the report said. Goteborg is about 500 kilometers (300 miles) southwest of the capital, Stockholm. The fire broke out about midnight (2300 GMT Thursday) in building of the local Macedonian Association, which organized the dance. The crowd in the second story of the building contained mostly 13 to 18 year olds celebrating Halloween and a holiday weekend. ``A night full of expectation, happiness over extra leave from school and high spirits in anticipation of a weekend was brutally and suddenly changed into a tragedy of incomprehensible dimensions,'' the Goteborg city council said in a statement. ``Goteborg is today a city in shock.'' Jamal Fawz, 15, told TT that he was out on the dance floor when the blaze started with about 400 people inside. ``It looked like it started in the ceiling, and lamps and loudspeakers fell to the floor,'' he was quoted as saying. ``It was chaos. Everybody was trying to get out and people trampled on each other on the way to the exit. ... Others kicked out the windows and jumped out.'' Ambulances were called in from several nearby communities. The Goteborg rescue services also brought city buses into service to help transport the injured. Olin said the rescue service inspected the building in April 1997 and ``fulfilled all possible demands as far as emergency exits and the possibility for fast evacuation.'' Anna-Lisa Saar, a social worker at Oestra Hospital, where many of the victims were taken, said identifying many of them was difficult. ``Maybe you have teen-agers yourself and know how they are ... They maybe don't have their own identification, but have that of a friend who is a year older. Girls don't carry their identification on them, but in a bag and maybe that wasn't lying with the body,'' she said, according to TT. Goteborg has about 435,000 people. ||||| Hundreds of teen-agers jammed into an upstairs hall planning to dance the night away, but by the time the sun rose Friday they were dead, clinging to life in hospitals or weeping in disbelief at a fire that killed 67 of them. Police said another 173 people were injured, 20 of them severely, in the explosive fire that engulfed the plain brick two-story building just before midnight Thursday and turned a boisterous disco dance into a screaming terror in a matter of moments. Bent metal bars on some of the hall's windows showed the panic-fueled strength that the teen-agers, many of them immigrants, exerted as they sought ways out of the hall, which with some 400 people inside was crowded to more than twice its legal capacity. Below the second-floor windows lay stray shoes, broken glass and bloody blankets used to wrap those who may or may not have lived. ``I've been crying all day. I haven't been able to sleep. I'm alive, so why should I sleep when my friends are dead,'' 17-year-old Alina Turk said as she stood outside the ruined building Friday afternoon. She said she had been at the dance and two male friends of hers died. Zuhir Hersi, the 17-year-old disc jockey at the bash, told of his ordeal in telegraphic bursts. ``Panic. No help. No police. No firemen. Only kids helping each other,'' he said from his bed in a Goteborg hospital. Although Hersi, like many of the youths at the dance, believes the police and firemen were slow, authorities said the first fire trucks were on the scene within five minutes of getting the alarm. But the fire spread so fast that even an instant response would likely have been too slow. The cause of the fire had not been determined as of Friday evening. Fire Brigade Engineer Bo Wahlstroem said the flames' quick, raging spread could indicate arson, or that the fire had burned undetected for a time before exploding. The fire destroyed the building, whose second floor, where the dance took place, was rented by the local Macedonian immigrant association in Sweden's second-largest city. The association had hired out the hall for the night to eight party arrangers, police said but declined to identify the arrangers. The crowd was mostly aged 13 to 18, witnesses said, and consisted mostly of immigrants or children of immigrant parents. Officials said the dead and injured were of 19 nationalities, including Somalis, Ethiopians, Iraqis, Iranians and Swedes, as well as people from the current and former Yugoslavia and unspecified Latin American countries. Identifying the dead was a wrackingly slow process, forcing relatives and friends exhausted with dread to wait for hours at hospitals. Some were able to make the wait in rooms off-limits to journalists, but many had to wait in corridors, crying and teen-agers hurry in and out of rooms as they looked for their pals. Only 14 bodies had been indentified by Friday evening. ``The identification is hard not only because of the burns but also because they have no driver's licenses or other documents _ they were so young,'' said Kerstin Einarsson of Sahlgrenska Hospital, the largest in the city of 435,000 some 500 kilometers (300 miles) west of Stockholm. The blaze, the worst fire disaster in Sweden's modern history, shocked a country renowned for its smooth calmness. King Carl XVI Gustaf, on a trip out of the country, sent a statement reassuring victims' relatives that ``all of us in Sweden feel great sympathy.'' Prime Minister Goeran Persson travelled from Stockholm to the fire site, first laying flowers outside and walking into the gutted wreck. ``The floor was full of shoes and boots, the same kind of boots my own children wear,'' he said. On Friday evening, about 1,500 mostly young people, came to the Goteborg Cathedral to try to assuage their grief and bewilderment at a memorial service. The youths were dressed in the same sort of hip-hop garb that the dance-goers had worn, but listened to delicate hymns instead of pounding disco. They wept, they embraced, and some looked around nervously, apparently not knowing how to behave in a church. ``I don't go to church. I'm a Muslim, but I don't go to prayers,'' said a young man who gave his name only as Sami. ``I'm accompanying my Christian friends. We lost someone. We're mourning _ that's all.'' ||||| A fire turned a Swedish dance hall jammed with teen-age Halloween revelers into a deathtrap, killing 60 people and injuring 155. The fast-spreading fire that broke out just a few minutes before midnight Thursday gutted the building and left rescuers facing a hideous scene that local rescue service leader Lennart Olin likened to a ``gas chamber.'' The cause of the fire had not been determined as of Friday evening. Although an estimated 400 people, most aged 13 to 18, were at the dance on the upper floor, the facility had approval for a maximum capacity of 150, Hans Carlsson, the detective leading the disaster investigation. The fire, at the facilities of the Macedonian Association local immigrant group, was the deadliest in modern Swedish history. In 1978, 20 people died in a fire at a hotel in the town of Boraas. Police said most victims choked to death on smoke and poisonous gases; 59 bodies were found at the scene and one other died later. Of the injured, at least 57 were in intensive care, according to Sven Martinell, spokesman for the local medical authorities. Police earlier had reported 65 dead, but backed off that figure Friday evening. ``The earlier information that police gave out was wrong,'' said Hans Carlsson, the lead detective in the case. The building, graf 5 pvs ||||| A fire turned a Swedish dance hall jammed with teen-age Halloween revelers into a deathtrap, killing at least 60 people and injuring about 180. The fast-spreading fire completely gutted the two-story building and left rescuers facing a hideous scene that local rescue service leader Lennart Olin likened to a ``gas chamber.'' Although an estimated 400 people, most aged 13 to 18, were at the dance on the upper floor, the facility had approval for a maximum capacity of 150, Hans Carlsson, the detective leading the disaster investigation. The fire, at the facilities of the Macedonian Association local immigrant group, was the deadliest in modern Swedish history since 1978, when 20 people died in the town of Boraas. On Friday, police said most victims choked to death on smoke and poisonous gases; 59 bodies were found at the scene, and the 60th victim died at a hospital, officials said. The injured included about 20 in serious condition. The dance apparently was attended mostly by immigrants or children of immigrants. Police said the list of injured included Somalis and people from current and former Yugoslavia. The Macedonian Association had rented the facility out for the dance, Carlsson said. That person was not immediately identified. Binan Atta was walking to the Macedonian Association when he saw the fire. He said he raced in and pulled to safety several people, including a friend. ``His clothes had burned off. His skin was red and bubbly,'' Atta said. ``Lots of kids were just screaming,'' he added at Hammarkullen Lutheran Church, where several dozen family and friends of victims gathered. ``I saw about 10 people in windows who just jumped. They didn't even look down'' beforehand. Fire officials were alerted at 11:43 p.m. (2243 GMT) Thursday and had a fire truck at the scene four minutes later, rescue workers said. The blaze was already consuming the brick building. About 300 or 400 people were inside, police said. Many escaped on their own. Police rescued 40. The Swedish news agency TT said the association had permission to have only 150 people in the facility. The building had just two exits, one of which was blocked by fire, city police technician Stephen Holmberg was quoted as saying by TT. ``It was a panic,'' Goteborg police spokesman Bengt Staaf said, with youths trampling each other to get out, and other youths scuffling with police to get in and attempt to help friends. The cause of the fire was not immediately known. ``What we know is that there was an explosion,'' Edmundson said. Olin said there were indications that the fire could have been set. ``The fact that it spread so fast indicates that it was not a normal fire,'' he said. About 180 people were taken to hospitals. Seven of the most severely injured were taken by helicopter to burn clinics in other cities, the report said. Goteborg is about 500 kilometers (300 miles) southwest of the capital, Stockholm. The dance was filled with teen-agers celebrating Halloween and a holiday weekend. ``A night full of expectation, happiness over extra leave from school and high spirits in anticipation of a weekend was brutally and suddenly changed into a tragedy of incomprehensible dimensions,'' the Goteborg city council said in a statement. ``Goteborg is today a city in shock.'' Prime Minister Goeran Persson visited the fire site at midday and King Carl XVI Gustav made a statement of condolence. Jamal Fawz, graf 19 pvs ||||| A panicky telephone call in poor Swedish was the first word that authorities got of a fire racing through a dance hall crowded with immigrant teen-agers, delaying fire squads' response to the blaze that killed 60 and injured 162, officials said Saturday. Per-Olof Ortarsen of Goteborg's emergency services line said the call was so hard to understand that it took three minutes for workers to figure out what was going on and where to send fire trucks. The first fire trucks and rescue squads were on the scene six minutes after the call was received, Ortarsen said at a news conference. He and other officials declined to comment on whether a quicker response could have saved any of the mostly immigrant victims. The minutes of delay felt endless to those caught in the terror of the fire and survivors have spoken angrily of what they saw as a slow and even obstructive response. ''No help. No police. No firemen,'' 17-year-old Zuhir Hersi, one of the disc jockeys at the bash, said Friday, hours after the blaze exploded. ''Just kids helping kids.'' And once the squads arrived, the kids were blocked from helping, they say. ''We could have saved more young people if only police hadn't stopped us,'' Mohanned Hussein was quoted as saying by the newspaper Expressen. On Saturday, hundreds of people stood quietly outside the gutted building amid flowers and candles as they attempted to come to grips with catastrophe. In the parking lot that a day before had been a tumult of ambulances and screams, mourners had laid a 30-meter-long (100-foot-long) pile of bouquets, candles and cards of remembrance. The cards' inscriptions were brief _ ``I will see you in heaven,'' ``We miss you'' _ and the people who stood reading them also had few words. ``I just wanted to show my sympathy. I think about them. There's nothing else we can do,'' said Caroline Ericsson, who didn't know any of the victims. For Lasse Gustavsson, having the right words wasn't as important as showing his face, severely disfigured in a fire. The former Goteborg firefighter lost his ears, his eyelids and most of his nose in a gas explosion. By showing up, he said, he wanted to show the victims' relatives and friends that spirit can help them pull through despair. ``I can't give them hope. Consolation is enough,'' he said, as people nearby cast uneasy glances at his scars. Many of those injured in the blaze may have to endure similar shocked looks the rest of their lives. Authorities say the explosive fire quickly raised the temperature in the overcrowded hall to 600 degrees (1,100 F). The cause of the fire that broke out just before midnight Thursday remains under investigation. Witness accounts have varied widely, with some reporting smoke coming from the cellar and others saying the fire appeared to start in the ceiling of the dance hall on the building's second floor. The fire's quick spread has prompted speculation that it could have been set, but officials also say the explosive spread could have been because the fire had been burning undetected for some time. What's known is that the hall was packed far beyond its capacity. Licensed to hold a maximum of 150, the hall held at least 250 and perhaps as many as 400 when the fire hit. The crowd was mostly teen-agers and mostly immigrants or children of immigrant parents. They had come for a dance organized by eight party-arrangers whom police have not identified; the hall was rented by the organizers from the local Macedonian immigrant association. Officials said the dead and injured were of 19 nationalities, including Somalis, Ethiopians, Iraqis, Iranians and Swedes, as well as people from the current and former Yugoslavia and unspecified Latin American countries. Identifying the dead was a wrackingly slow process, forcing relatives and friends already exhausted with dread to wait for hours at hospitals. Only 18 of the dead had been identified by midday Saturday. ``The identification is hard because they have no driver's licenses or other documents _ they were so young,'' said Kerstin Einarsson of Sahlgrenska Hospital, the largest in the city of 435,000 residents about 300 miles (500 kilometers) west of Stockholm. The worst previous Swedish fire disaster in modern history was in 1978 in Boraas, when 20 people died in a hotel fire. ||||| A fire turned a dance hall jammed with teen-age Halloween revelers into a deathtrap, killing 60 people and injuring 162 others in Sweden's second-largest city. Police earlier had reported 65 dead, but backed off that figure Friday evening. ''The earlier information that police gave out was wrong,'' Hand Carlsson, the lead detective in the case, told a news conference. The fast-spreading fire that broke out just a few minutes before midnight Thursday gutted the building and left rescuers facing a hideous scene that local rescue service leader Lennart Olin likened to a ``gas chamber.'' The cause of the fire had not been determined as of Friday evening. Although an estimated 400 people, most aged 13 to 18, were at the dance on the building's second floor, the facility had approval for a maximum capacity of 150, said Carlsson. The fire, at the facilities of the Macedonian Association local immigrant group, was the deadliest in modern Swedish history. In 1978, 20 people died in a fire at a hotel in the town of Boraas. Police said most victims choked to death on smoke and poisonous gases; 59 bodies were found at the scene and one other died later. Of the injured, at least 57 were in intensive care, according to Sven Martinell, spokesman for the local medical authorities. The building did not have sprinklers and was not required to have them, officials said. The dance was attended mostly by immigrants or children of immigrants. Police said the dead or injured represented at least 19 nationalities, including Somalis, Ethiopians, Iraqis, Iranians and Swedes, along with people from current and former Yugoslavia and unspecified Latin American countries. The Macedonian Association, which rents space in the building, had in turn rented the facility out to others for the dance, Carlsson said. That person was not immdiately identified. Binan Atta was walking to the Macedonian Association when he saw the fire. He said he raced in and pulled to safety several people, including a friend. ``His clothes had burned off. His skin was red and bubbly,'' Atta said. ``Lots of kids were just screaming,'' he added at Hammarkullen Lutheran Church, where several dozen family and friends of victims gathered. ``I saw about 10 people in windows who just jumped. They didn't even look down'' beforehand. Fire officials were alerted at 11:43 p.m. (2243 GMT) Thursday and had a fire truck at the scene four minutes later, rescue workers said. The blaze was already consuming the building. The building had just two exits, one of which was blocked by fire, city police technician Stephen Holmberg was quoted as saying by the Swedish news agency TT. ``It was a panic,'' Goteborg police spokesman Bengt Staaf said, with youths trampling each other to get out, and other youths scuffling with police to get in and attempt to help friends. Olin said there were indications that the fire could have been set. ``The fact that it spread so fast indicates that it was not a normal fire,'' he said. Goteborg is about 500 kilometers (300 miles) southwest of the capital, Stockholm. The crowd in the second story of the building contained mostly 13 to 18 year olds celebrating Halloween and a holiday weekend. ``A night full of expectation, happiness over extra leave from school and high spirits in anticipation of a weekend was brutally and suddenly changed into a tragedy of incomprehensible dimensions,'' the Goteborg city council said in a statement. ``Goteborg is today a city in shock.'' Prime Minister Goeran Persson visited the fire site at midday and King Carl XVI Gustav made a statement of condolence. Jamal Fawz, 15, told TT that he was out on the dance floor when the blaze started with about 400 people inside. ``It looked like it started in the ceiling, and lamps and loudspeakers fell to the floor,'' he was quoted as saying. ``It was chaos. Everybody was trying to get out and people trampled on each other on the way to the exit. ... Others kicked out the windows and jumped out.'' Ambulances were called in from several nearby communities. The Goteborg rescue services also brought city buses into service to help transport the injured. Anna-Lisa Saar, a social worker at Oestra Hospital, where many of the victims were taken, said identifying many of them was difficult. ``Maybe you have teen-agers yourself and know how they are ... They maybe don't have their own identification, but have that of a friend who is a year older. Girls don't carry their identification on them, but in a bag and maybe that wasn't lying with the body,'' she said, according to TT. Goteborg has about 435,000 people.

Sweden's deadliest fire occurred on Halloween when a dance hall in Goteborg, filled with teenagers, burst into flames. The cause is not known, but the hall, approved for 150, contained as many as 400 and one of the two exits was blocked. Sixty were killed and between 150 and 173 injured. Most were immigrants or their children and represented 19 nationalities. Many felt the rescue was late. Rescuers said they had trouble understanding the first call, but were there in 6 minutes. Condolences came from Swedish authorities. A memorial service was held and a memory wall was growing. Although identifications are difficult, 40 of the dead have been identified.

The Philippine ambassador to Malaysia said Friday he was summoned to the Malaysian Foreign Ministry to explain his president's statements in support of dissident Anwar Ibrahim. Ambassador Jose Brillantes said in a radio interview from Kuala Lumpur that he was called Thursday after the Malaysian dissident's eldest daughter met Philippine President Joseph Estrada. ``They expressed their concern about what's happening and the statements coming out of the Philippines,'' Brillantes told radio station DZXL in Manila. Brillantes said he explained that following the 1986 ``people power'' revolt against the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos, Filipinos' react ``strongly'' to ``real and perceived violations of human rights.'' ``I just explained our culture to them,'' he said. Anwar was fired as deputy premier in September and later arrested, appearing in court with a black eye, bruises and a neck brace. He says he was beaten by security guards. Estrada has expressed support for Anwar, whom he considers a personal friend, and indicated he may not attend a summit of Asia Pacific Rim nations in Malaysia next month. He has also said Anwar should be held in house arrest during his upcoming trial on corruption and sexual misconduct charges. Anwar has denied the charges, calling them politically motivated. On Thursday, Estrada told Anwar's daughter, Nurul Izzah, to tell her father ``not to waver because he is fighting for a cause, the cause of the Malaysian people.'' He said, however, that his support is personal and moral and not meant to interfere in the internal problems of Malaysia. Brillantes said: ``The expression of personal opinion is allowed in our culture and it is not surprising for that to happen.'' He also said ``there is no connection'' between Anwar's case and the summit meeting in Malaysia of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation forum. ``We still consider, as expressed by our president, that APEC is important to us,'' he said. He did not say how the Malaysian officials reacted, but he said he was not reprimanded. Meanwhile, a group Philippine legislators said they plan to attend Anwar's trial, which opens Nov. 2. ``We feel that being observers to his trial will be our silent statement of our democratic aspirations for all Asia,'' the group said in a statement. ||||| Again bowing to Chinese pressure, Taiwan will send its chief economic planner to represent President Lee Teng-hui at November's Asian Pacific Economic Cooperation forum summit in Kuala Lumpur, the Foreign Ministry said Friday. Lee decided to send Chiang Pin-kung to the informal leaders summit on Nov. 17-18 after ``giving much thought'' to an invitation from Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, the ministry said. Presentation of an invitation to Lee by the host nation _ with the understanding that it will be politely refused _ is an annual formality that allows Taiwan to maintain a semblance of dignity and the host to avoid controversy with China. Beijing's threat to boycott APEC's annual meeting if Lee attends has forced him to send a stand-in every year since the inaugural summit in 1993. China claims Taiwan as a breakaway province and argues that only sovereign nations are allowed to send their heads of state. APEC groups Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, the Philippines, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand and the United States. Russia, Vietnam and Peru will join in November. ||||| In little more than a week, the world's leaders will converge on this businesslike city in the heart of Southeast Asia for the annual meeting of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation forum. They could hardly be meeting in a more provocative place. On Sept. 1, Malaysia discontinued trading in its currency, the ringgit, and imposed sweeping controls on the flow of capital in its stock and currency markets, particularly on investment from overseas. In doing so, the Malaysian prime minister, Mahathir Mohamad, in effect slammed the door on the global economy that President Clinton and the other leaders are coming here to champion. Mahathir's decision drew jeers from international investors and policy- makers, who warned that Malaysia was seeking a quick fix that would retard its desperately needed reforms and leave it the odd man out when Asia finally recovered from the regional malaise. Now, though, Mahathir's allies are marshaling new economic data that they say indicate that capital controls are breathing new life into the country's moribund economy. Malaysia's foreign reserves rose strongly in September, and there is anecdotal evidence that consumers are starting to spend again. ``It's nice to be able to say that since we adopted capital controls, the economy has improved,'' said Zainal Aznam Yusof, the deputy director of the Institute of Strategic and International Studies, a research organization here that helped draft the policies. ``But we want to see whether this is strongly sustainable.'' Critics said it was predictable that capital controls would be a short-term tonic to Malaysia's economy. Because the country is sheltered from the vagaries of capital flows and currency fluctuations, they said, the government had been able to ease interest rates and encourage consumer spending. Still, the mere fact that Malaysia's experiment has yielded some positive results guarantees that the issue will come up during the APEC meeting. With Mahathir leading the campaign, the cause of capital controls will have a fiery advocate who has a penchant for getting under the skin of Westerners. ``Mahathir is a very outspoken political leader,'' said Chia Yew Boon, an independent analyst in Singapore. ``There is no way the likes of Clinton or Jiang Zemin are going to be able to muzzle him,'' he added, referring to President Jiang of China. Policy-makers in the United States have expressed fears that if Malaysia's gambit is seen as successful, other economically weakened countries in the region, like Indonesia, might be tempted to try it. So far, Indonesian officials have said they would stick to the recovery plan devised by the International Monetary Fund, which stresses economic austerity and open markets. But officials in Japan have expressed some sympathy for Mahathir's policies, while Paul Krugman, an economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has advocated using them as an emergency measure. Yusof said recent events had vindicated Malaysia's contention that it needed to insulate itself from the ravages of the global financial system. He said the recent near-collapse of a prominent American hedge fund underscored how sudden flows of capital can have destructive consequences. The Long-Term Capital Management hedge fund, based in Greenwich, Conn., was nearly wrecked by a series of wrong bets on Treasury securities after the collapse of the economy in Russia prompted a flight of capital out of that country. ``The LTCM fiasco really provides a case study of what could go wrong in the global economy,'' Yusof said. With capital controls as protection, Yusof said Malaysia was picking up the pieces of its shattered economy. In addition to growing foreign reserves, he said Malaysia had improved its trade balance and revived consumer purchases of durable goods. Foreign investors have also not wholly abandoned Malaysia, as experts had predicted they would. While foreign direct investment fell in September _ to $142 million, from an average monthly rate of $321 million for the period from January through September _ it did not dry up completely. For every comforting statistic, though, the critics produce an alarming one. They said the increase in Malaysia's foreign reserves was merely due to the new capital restrictions, which stipulated that Malaysian currency held outside the country would be worthless unless repatriated by Sept. 30. The skeptics also noted that bank lending declined in September, despite several reductions in interest rates. So the consumers who are buying new cars and home appliances are merely dipping into their savings, which means the buying spree will end when their savings are depleted. ``The argument was that by imposing capital controls, you'd regain control over monetary policy, which would increase the supply of money and lessen the liquidity crunch,'' said K.S. Jomo, a professor of political economy at the University of Malaya here. ``But that's not happening.'' The biggest flaw in Malaysia's policy, Jomo and others said, is its timing. With the Asian crisis more than a year old, much of the foreign capital that was in the country has already gone. The critics said Mahathir had spooked would-be investors without even locking in the ones who used to be here. ``There is a case to be made for the temporary imposition of capital controls, but to avert a crisis, not to respond to one,'' Jomo said. In fact, other Asian currencies, like the Indonesian rupiah and the Thai baht, have actually rebounded since Malaysia suspended trading in its currency and fixed the exchange rate at 3.8 ringgit to the dollar. Analysts liken the situation to buying an insurance policy for a disaster that has come and gone. More important, the capital controls are slowing down much-needed corporate and banking reforms. The government's rescue of Renong, a major conglomerate with close ties to Mahathir, is going ahead, though some analysts predict the government will eventually scrap the much-criticized plan. The rescue of politically connected companies remains a tense issue here. On Monday, during the trial of Malaysia's former deputy prime minister, Anwar Ibrahim, on charges of corruption and sex-related crimes, Anwar angrily denied Mahathir's claim that he had approved the bailout. Anwar's sensational trial is a reminder that Mahathir's economic policies cannot be disentangled from politics. Malaysia's 72-year-old prime minister clashed with his former protege over how to respond to the Asian crisis, and he dismissed Anwar the day after imposing capital controls. During boom times, Mahathir won support for his policies by wrapping them in anti-foreigner language. In a speech on Monday, he attacked a familiar target, saying foreign currency traders ``are the cause of the currency turmoil,'' adding: ``They spread it worldwide. They precipitated the current recession in every country.'' But Mahathir's treatment of Anwar has stirred anger and sparked growing social unrest in Malaysia. With protesters chanting for reform on the usually orderly streets of this city, experts said Mahathir needed capital controls to work in order to soothe the country's agitated population. ``Things will heat up if the economy does not improve,'' said Chandra Muzaffar, a professor of political science at the University of Malaya. ``Then the whole question of Mahathir and his leadership will remain an issue.'' In that regard, at least, the leaders who converge on Kuala Lumpur in two weeks will be able to identify with their embattled host. ||||| The leaders of Malaysia's ruling party met Tuesday to discuss a replacement for ousted deputy prime minister Anwar Ibrahim, who faces trial next month in a case that will test the country's legal system. Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, 72, said last week he could ``drop dead'' at any time. But because of the large number of candidates for the deputy's job within the ruling United Malays National Organization, a decision was not expected quickly. The party leaders, who have been conducting a national campaign to explain to Malaysians why the popular Anwar was fired Sept. 2, will also confer on what to do now that the High Court judge has banned all comments on Anwar's guilt or innocence. The ruling coalition had scheduled a giant rally in the capital Saturday, aimed at drawing in the youth to whom Anwar's campaign of reform has the most appeal. Mahathir, who had heart bypass surgery in 1989, had groomed Anwar, 51, as his successor. But he fired his protege from his posts as deputy prime minister and finance minister on grounds he was morally unfit to lead. The two had differed over economic policy and Anwar has said Mahathir feared he was a threat to his 17-year rule. Anwar was also dumped from the ruling party, and after two weeks of nationwide rallies at which he called for government reform and Mahathir's resignation, he was arrested under a law that allows police to hold him indefinitely, and prevent him from seeing his family and lawyers. On Tuesday, Mahathir denounced demonstrators who had flocked by the thousands to the streets of downtown Kuala Lumpur in recent weeks, calling them part of a plot to topple the government. Baton-wielding riot police had dispersed the crowds with tear gas and water cannons, arresting more than 100 people. ``They decided that the government should be brought down through demonstrations, riots,'' the Bernama news agency quoted Mahathir as saying in Sarawak state on Borneo Island. He was expected to return to Kuala Lumpur later Tuesday to chair the UMNO meeting. After Anwar appeared in court with a black eye, bruised face, neck and arms, his case drew international attention, particularly from the presidents of the Philippines and Indonesia, who have raised the possibility they might not attend an 18-nation summit in Malaysia next month. The United States would downgrade President Bill Clinton's visit to Kuala Lumpur next month if Anwar continued to be mistreated, the Wall Street Journal quoted an official in Washington as saying. Clinton is scheduled to go to Malaysia for the meeting of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum. Wearing a neck brace Monday after a court-ordered hospital checkup, Anwar was ordered to stand trial Nov. 2 on four charges of abusing his powers to interfere with a police investigation. His trial is to halt on Nov. 14 and resume after the APEC meetings. He has pleaded innocent to all charges, including another corruption count and five charges of sodomy. He faces 14 years in prison and a fine on each corruption count and 20 years, plus whipping, on each sexual charge, if convicted. Anwar was arrested Sept. 20 under the Internal Security Act, which allows jail without trial. Under the same law, police also arrested 17 people considered Anwar associates and a risk to national security. As of Tuesday, 12 had been released. The UMNO supreme council was expected to prepare a list of top candidates for Anwar's job for Mahathir's final decision. The Star newspaper, which is close to the government, listed the favorites as Foreign Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi and Education Minister Najib Tun Razak. Other top contenders included Mahathir's confidant Daim Zainuddin, a former finance minister brought back into the Cabinet in June as ``special functions minister'' in charge of economic recovery. Rafidah Aziz, the international trade and industry minister, and Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah, a former finance minister, were also in the running. ||||| Indonesian President B.J. Habibie finds attending a summit of Asia-Pacific leaders ``difficult'' because of his concerns about the arrest of Malaysia's former deputy prime minister, a Thai newspaper reported Sunday. Asia-Pacific leaders are scheduled to meet next month in Malaysia for an annual economics meeting. Last week, Philippine President Joseph Estrada said he was considering not going to the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum because of Anwar Ibrahim's arrest. ``I'm very concerned over how my friend Anwar Ibrahim has been treated,'' Habibie was quoted as saying by the English-language newspaper The Nation. ``I'm concerned because people should not forget that Anwar Ibrahim had contributed a lot for the benefit of his country.'' Anwar is a charismatic politician who was once picked to be the successor to Malaysia's long-serving Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad. But he was suddenly fired by Mahathir on Sept. 2 after the two differed on economic policy. He then began speaking out against Mahathir and was arrested Sept. 20. Anwar has been accused of engaging in homosexual acts illegal under Malaysia law, but the charges are generally seen as a pretext for his political persecution. In a court appearance last week, Anwar's face was bruised and he said he had been beaten by police, heightening international attention to his case. ``Because of human rights involved _ and I think it is universal _ people should be given the chance to defend themselves,'' Habibie was quoted as saying in the interview conducted Saturday. ``People should not be tortured.'' Habibie said Anwar's dismissal should not have been based ``on things which had not been proven.'' On attending the APEC meeting, he said, ``It's difficult for me.'' But he said he would consult parliament, adding, ``I'm not coming personally but as the president of 211 million people of Indonesia.'' Like Estrada, Habibie served as his country's vice president when Anwar was deputy prime minister, making them counterparts on the international affairs circuit. ||||| The agenda might be global, but the menu will be Malaysian when world leaders meet next week for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum. Pacific Rim leaders, including U.S. President Bill Clinton, will sample local dishes at a luncheon planned for the end of their two-day summit. It's expected to be a hot affair. Spicy delicacies on the menu are satay kajang, a beef or chicken kebab in peanut sauce; ayam percik, chicken curry with chilies; soto ayam, a Malaysian chicken soup, and fried rice ``village-style,'' the Star newspaper reported in Monday editions. Desert will be simple: fresh tropical fruit, said Maleia Marsden, general manager of the Cyberview Lodge, where the leaders were expected to stay during the summit Nov. 17-18. APEC groups Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, the Philippines, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand and the United States. Russia, Vietnam and Peru will also join APEC this year. ||||| Top finance officials from 14 countries in the Asia-Pacific region advised Asia's battered economies on Sunday to adopt further reforms in their effort to restore stability. Among the necessary steps is for countries to restructure their economies and corporations to make them less susceptible to abuse by narrow political interests, the officials suggested. The deputy finance ministers and deputy central bank governors met for two days to review progress on the ``Manila Framework,'' an agreement reached last November that aims to promote regional economic stability. Many of Asia's economies have plunged into recession since that agreement. Collapsed currencies, weakened demand and higher unemployment now characterize a region that once boasted some of the world's highest economic growth rates. The worsening financial gloom is likely to dominate talks at next week's summit in Kuala Lumpur of leaders from the 18-nation Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum. The summit is to take place on Nov. 17-18. In a joint statement, the officials cited risks including slower global growth, with particular mention of Russia's worsening economy, and the need to speed up social programs to help the poor in the worst-hit countries. Stanley Fischer, deputy managing director of the International Monetary Fund, noted that some countries have already reformed their banking sectors. But he stressed the need for corporate restructuring as well. ``These are not easy things to do,'' he said. Meanwhile, Malaysia's most prominent dissident predicted that the country's prime minister would declare ``a state of emergency'' after the APEC meeting ends in Kuala Lumpur, a report said Sunday. Former Deputy Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim, now on trial on charges of corruption and sexual misconduct, made the warning in an interview with Monday's edition of Time magazine. Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad fired Anwar in September, saying he was morally unfit to lead, then had him expelled from Malaysia's ruling party. Anwar denies the allegations and says they were fabricated because Mahathir considered his popularity a threat to the prime minister's 17-year rule. ||||| After an unusual, one-on-one chat Tuesday night, the Philippine and Indonesian presidents were considering staying away from an Asia-Pacific summit in Malaysia to protest the treatment of their jailed friend Anwar Ibrahim. Both presidents have hinted they might not attend the meeting of the 18 Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation nations next month in the Malaysian capital out of concern for Anwar. The former deputy prime minister and finance minister of Malaysia was arrested Sept. 20 on corruption and illegal sex charges, then brought to court with a black eye and bruises. Philippine President Joseph Estrada told business and political leaders in Singapore on Tuesday that he had not made up his mind. Estrada called Anwar his friend and said, ``I think all of us here believe that due process and human rights should be respected.'' Indonesian President B.J. Habibie may also stay away, his foreign minister, Ali Alatas, said after the two new Southeast Asian leaders held a half-hour private meeting. If Habibie passes up APEC, Alatas said, it will be because ``he has difficulty leaving the country while there is no vice president, while there are so many problems to deal with.'' Habibie has already canceled a state visit to Malaysia, citing difficulties at home. The meeting was delayed for almost 90 minutes when a mechanical fault was discovered in one of two Indonesian helicopters that were to have flown Estrada and his entourage through heavy rain from Singapore. A ferry was chartered for the 45-minute sea journey. Habibie apologized when Estrada finally arrived at the Melia Panorama Hotel. Estrada replied, ``That's all right.'' The two men, who have each been in power less than five months, met alois June 30 inaugural speech to give the underclass a fairer share of the country's wealth. Habibie took office May 21, hours after his predecessor and mentor, Suharto, was forced from power after national protests and street riots over Indonesia's collapsing economy. ||||| A group of high-powered U.S. investors in Southeast Asia on Monday applauded efforts to perk up Thailand's staggering economy, saying they had been assured by top Thai officials that key economic reform packages will soon be approved. After meetings with Thai Cabinet members, including Prime Minister Chuan Leekpai, members of the U.S.-ASEAN Business Council said they were confident in the future of Thailand's economy and promised their companies would continue to invest here and elsewhere in the region. ``We would be quick as observers to applaud the aggressiveness of the reform packages that we see being proposed in front of your government today,'' said business council chairman George David, who is also chairman and CEO of United Technologies Corp. Thailand was hit hard by last year's Asian economic crisis, and the proposed economic reform legislation focuses on resolving the massive bad debt of private companies, which is hindering a recovery. ``This is very aggressive, good reform. It's very impressive,'' David said, adding that Finance Minister Tarrin Nimmanahaeminda promised Parliament would pass reform measures in ``months, not years.'' The U.S.-ASEAN Business Council is a private organization comprising about 300 U.S. companies with substantial investments in Southeast Asia. David said the five executives in the delegation represented dlrs 300 billion in assets. The council's lobbying efforts with the U.S. and Southeast Asian governments have concentrated on removing tariffs and other barriers to overseas trade. The delegation will travel to Kuala Lumpur for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum Nov. 14-18. David said free trade should be a focus of discussions among the government leaders attending. ``What I hope they will say at APEC is a very strong affirmation of the free-trade agenda and a very strong affirmation of the foreign direct investment agenda,'' he added. ||||| The last time the Asia-Pacific region held its annual summit to promote free trade, Japan's prime minister assured everyone that his economy wouldn't be the next victim of Asia's financial crisis. Canada, the host country, was criticized by some in Canada for cracking down on demonstrations against Suharto, Indonesia's iron-fisted ruler at the time. And President Bill Clinton, whose popularity and booming economy were the envy of the planet, joined everyone else in urging countries such as Thailand and South Korea to bite the bullet and comply with the tough economic reforms that the International Monetary Fund was demanding. My, how the challenges have grown, as the 21-nation Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum prepares for its November summit in Malaysia. Japan _ the world's second largest economy, and Asia's financial anchor _ is suffering through its worst recession since World War II, and that bad news cost Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto his job. Suharto, who ruled Indonesia for 32 years, was driven out of power by a violent, pro-democracy movement, and the world's fourth most populous country is in real trouble financially. Wall Street is now coping with a steep downturn. And even though Clinton has promised to attend the APEC meeting, some people wonder how he can do that while facing an impeachment inquiry back home, thanks to the Monica Lewinsky sex scandal. Worse still, Asia's economic crisis is showing signs of going global, and more and more economists are criticizing the IMF for the way it is handling its bailouts. Other well-respected economists are going even further, questioning whether a free-market philosophy doesn't leave some countries too vulnerable to the chaos of major market speculators. In fact, Malaysia isn't the only country trying self-defense mechanisms such as capital controls. Hong Kong recently spent a fortune investing in its stock market to ward off speculators. And Washington is trying to figure out what to do with hedge funds after watching its Federal Reserve help bail out a major one that was going under, and seeing the investments of others send the U.S. dollar into a tailspin against Japan's yen. Ironically, Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, who made one of his typical anti-free-market comments during last year's summit, probably could have opened this year's with an ``I told you so.'' But even he is having major domestic problems. Mahathir, 72, who is widely credited with creating modern Malaysia during his 17 years in power, dismissed Anwar Ibrahim, his expected successor, in an apparent dispute over how to battle the country's economic mess. Instead of stepping aside, Anwar launched a reform movement across Malaysia that quickly led to big rallies demanding that Mahathir step down. The prime minister used riot police to thwart the protests, and jailed Anwar, charging him with corruption and sex crimes, and scheduling his trial for Nov. 2. The trial will be interrupted during the Nov. 12-18 APEC meetings, but Mahathir's treatment of Anwar and his reform movement already have been criticized by APEC members such as Australia, Indonesia, the Philippines and the United States. President B.J. Habibie of Indonesia and Philippine President Joseph Estrada consider Anwar a friend, and Estrada won't say whether he plans to attend this year's APEC summit. John S. Wolf, the U.S. ambassador for APEC, recently acknowledged that it won't be easy for APEC members to meet in Malaysia as the Asian crisis ``ricochets around the world with no clear sign what will happen next.'' But he also said the leaders of the 21 APEC members should aim for a productive meeting. Wolf said such gatherings give members a chance to discuss IMF bailout strategies and the free-market philosophy, to resolve bilateral disputes, and to continue to reduce tariff rates to help struggling countries improve their exports. ``This has been a lousy year in general. It has affected all of us. It has set APEC back, and there is no silver bullet to solve the crisis right away,'' said Wolf. ``But we should welcome the chance to work together and to develop a sense of what's possible.'' So far, APEC has been criticized for doing little during the financial crisis. But next month it hopes to complete a plan that would lift trade barriers in nine key industries: environmental products and services, energy, fisheries, forestry, toys, jewelry, medical goods, chemical products and telecommunications. Besides the United States, APEC, which accounts for half of all global trade _ consists of these members: Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, the Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan and Thailand. During the Malaysia meeting, APEC also will include three new members: Russia _ one of the latest victims of the financial crisis _ Vietnam and Peru.

Prospects for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum scheduled for Nov. 14-18, 1998 in Malaysia were cast in doubt in September when the Malaysian Prime Minister fired and then arrested his deputy and expected successor who was very popular at home and abroad. Widespread demonstrations occurred in Malaysia while presidents of Indonesia and the Philippines spoke of skipping the APEC meeting. APEC also faced a gloomy financial picture with many of the region's economies mired in recession and high unemployment. On the way to the forum a group of high powered U.S. investors made a pep talk in Thailand, but prospects remained dim.

The Philippine ambassador to Malaysia said Friday he was summoned to the Malaysian Foreign Ministry to explain his president's statements in support of dissident Anwar Ibrahim. Ambassador Jose Brillantes said in a radio interview from Kuala Lumpur that he was called Thursday after the Malaysian dissident's eldest daughter met Philippine President Joseph Estrada. ``They expressed their concern about what's happening and the statements coming out of the Philippines,'' Brillantes told radio station DZXL in Manila. Brillantes said he explained that following the 1986 ``people power'' revolt against the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos, Filipinos' react ``strongly'' to ``real and perceived violations of human rights.'' ``I just explained our culture to them,'' he said. Anwar was fired as deputy premier in September and later arrested, appearing in court with a black eye, bruises and a neck brace. He says he was beaten by security guards. Estrada has expressed support for Anwar, whom he considers a personal friend, and indicated he may not attend a summit of Asia Pacific Rim nations in Malaysia next month. He has also said Anwar should be held in house arrest during his upcoming trial on corruption and sexual misconduct charges. Anwar has denied the charges, calling them politically motivated. On Thursday, Estrada told Anwar's daughter, Nurul Izzah, to tell her father ``not to waver because he is fighting for a cause, the cause of the Malaysian people.'' He said, however, that his support is personal and moral and not meant to interfere in the internal problems of Malaysia. Brillantes said: ``The expression of personal opinion is allowed in our culture and it is not surprising for that to happen.'' He also said ``there is no connection'' between Anwar's case and the summit meeting in Malaysia of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation forum. ``We still consider, as expressed by our president, that APEC is important to us,'' he said. He did not say how the Malaysian officials reacted, but he said he was not reprimanded. Meanwhile, a group Philippine legislators said they plan to attend Anwar's trial, which opens Nov. 2. ``We feel that being observers to his trial will be our silent statement of our democratic aspirations for all Asia,'' the group said in a statement. ||||| Again bowing to Chinese pressure, Taiwan will send its chief economic planner to represent President Lee Teng-hui at November's Asian Pacific Economic Cooperation forum summit in Kuala Lumpur, the Foreign Ministry said Friday. Lee decided to send Chiang Pin-kung to the informal leaders summit on Nov. 17-18 after ``giving much thought'' to an invitation from Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, the ministry said. Presentation of an invitation to Lee by the host nation _ with the understanding that it will be politely refused _ is an annual formality that allows Taiwan to maintain a semblance of dignity and the host to avoid controversy with China. Beijing's threat to boycott APEC's annual meeting if Lee attends has forced him to send a stand-in every year since the inaugural summit in 1993. China claims Taiwan as a breakaway province and argues that only sovereign nations are allowed to send their heads of state. APEC groups Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, the Philippines, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand and the United States. Russia, Vietnam and Peru will join in November. ||||| In little more than a week, the world's leaders will converge on this businesslike city in the heart of Southeast Asia for the annual meeting of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation forum. They could hardly be meeting in a more provocative place. On Sept. 1, Malaysia discontinued trading in its currency, the ringgit, and imposed sweeping controls on the flow of capital in its stock and currency markets, particularly on investment from overseas. In doing so, the Malaysian prime minister, Mahathir Mohamad, in effect slammed the door on the global economy that President Clinton and the other leaders are coming here to champion. Mahathir's decision drew jeers from international investors and policy- makers, who warned that Malaysia was seeking a quick fix that would retard its desperately needed reforms and leave it the odd man out when Asia finally recovered from the regional malaise. Now, though, Mahathir's allies are marshaling new economic data that they say indicate that capital controls are breathing new life into the country's moribund economy. Malaysia's foreign reserves rose strongly in September, and there is anecdotal evidence that consumers are starting to spend again. ``It's nice to be able to say that since we adopted capital controls, the economy has improved,'' said Zainal Aznam Yusof, the deputy director of the Institute of Strategic and International Studies, a research organization here that helped draft the policies. ``But we want to see whether this is strongly sustainable.'' Critics said it was predictable that capital controls would be a short-term tonic to Malaysia's economy. Because the country is sheltered from the vagaries of capital flows and currency fluctuations, they said, the government had been able to ease interest rates and encourage consumer spending. Still, the mere fact that Malaysia's experiment has yielded some positive results guarantees that the issue will come up during the APEC meeting. With Mahathir leading the campaign, the cause of capital controls will have a fiery advocate who has a penchant for getting under the skin of Westerners. ``Mahathir is a very outspoken political leader,'' said Chia Yew Boon, an independent analyst in Singapore. ``There is no way the likes of Clinton or Jiang Zemin are going to be able to muzzle him,'' he added, referring to President Jiang of China. Policy-makers in the United States have expressed fears that if Malaysia's gambit is seen as successful, other economically weakened countries in the region, like Indonesia, might be tempted to try it. So far, Indonesian officials have said they would stick to the recovery plan devised by the International Monetary Fund, which stresses economic austerity and open markets. But officials in Japan have expressed some sympathy for Mahathir's policies, while Paul Krugman, an economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has advocated using them as an emergency measure. Yusof said recent events had vindicated Malaysia's contention that it needed to insulate itself from the ravages of the global financial system. He said the recent near-collapse of a prominent American hedge fund underscored how sudden flows of capital can have destructive consequences. The Long-Term Capital Management hedge fund, based in Greenwich, Conn., was nearly wrecked by a series of wrong bets on Treasury securities after the collapse of the economy in Russia prompted a flight of capital out of that country. ``The LTCM fiasco really provides a case study of what could go wrong in the global economy,'' Yusof said. With capital controls as protection, Yusof said Malaysia was picking up the pieces of its shattered economy. In addition to growing foreign reserves, he said Malaysia had improved its trade balance and revived consumer purchases of durable goods. Foreign investors have also not wholly abandoned Malaysia, as experts had predicted they would. While foreign direct investment fell in September _ to $142 million, from an average monthly rate of $321 million for the period from January through September _ it did not dry up completely. For every comforting statistic, though, the critics produce an alarming one. They said the increase in Malaysia's foreign reserves was merely due to the new capital restrictions, which stipulated that Malaysian currency held outside the country would be worthless unless repatriated by Sept. 30. The skeptics also noted that bank lending declined in September, despite several reductions in interest rates. So the consumers who are buying new cars and home appliances are merely dipping into their savings, which means the buying spree will end when their savings are depleted. ``The argument was that by imposing capital controls, you'd regain control over monetary policy, which would increase the supply of money and lessen the liquidity crunch,'' said K.S. Jomo, a professor of political economy at the University of Malaya here. ``But that's not happening.'' The biggest flaw in Malaysia's policy, Jomo and others said, is its timing. With the Asian crisis more than a year old, much of the foreign capital that was in the country has already gone. The critics said Mahathir had spooked would-be investors without even locking in the ones who used to be here. ``There is a case to be made for the temporary imposition of capital controls, but to avert a crisis, not to respond to one,'' Jomo said. In fact, other Asian currencies, like the Indonesian rupiah and the Thai baht, have actually rebounded since Malaysia suspended trading in its currency and fixed the exchange rate at 3.8 ringgit to the dollar. Analysts liken the situation to buying an insurance policy for a disaster that has come and gone. More important, the capital controls are slowing down much-needed corporate and banking reforms. The government's rescue of Renong, a major conglomerate with close ties to Mahathir, is going ahead, though some analysts predict the government will eventually scrap the much-criticized plan. The rescue of politically connected companies remains a tense issue here. On Monday, during the trial of Malaysia's former deputy prime minister, Anwar Ibrahim, on charges of corruption and sex-related crimes, Anwar angrily denied Mahathir's claim that he had approved the bailout. Anwar's sensational trial is a reminder that Mahathir's economic policies cannot be disentangled from politics. Malaysia's 72-year-old prime minister clashed with his former protege over how to respond to the Asian crisis, and he dismissed Anwar the day after imposing capital controls. During boom times, Mahathir won support for his policies by wrapping them in anti-foreigner language. In a speech on Monday, he attacked a familiar target, saying foreign currency traders ``are the cause of the currency turmoil,'' adding: ``They spread it worldwide. They precipitated the current recession in every country.'' But Mahathir's treatment of Anwar has stirred anger and sparked growing social unrest in Malaysia. With protesters chanting for reform on the usually orderly streets of this city, experts said Mahathir needed capital controls to work in order to soothe the country's agitated population. ``Things will heat up if the economy does not improve,'' said Chandra Muzaffar, a professor of political science at the University of Malaya. ``Then the whole question of Mahathir and his leadership will remain an issue.'' In that regard, at least, the leaders who converge on Kuala Lumpur in two weeks will be able to identify with their embattled host. ||||| The leaders of Malaysia's ruling party met Tuesday to discuss a replacement for ousted deputy prime minister Anwar Ibrahim, who faces trial next month in a case that will test the country's legal system. Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, 72, said last week he could ``drop dead'' at any time. But because of the large number of candidates for the deputy's job within the ruling United Malays National Organization, a decision was not expected quickly. The party leaders, who have been conducting a national campaign to explain to Malaysians why the popular Anwar was fired Sept. 2, will also confer on what to do now that the High Court judge has banned all comments on Anwar's guilt or innocence. The ruling coalition had scheduled a giant rally in the capital Saturday, aimed at drawing in the youth to whom Anwar's campaign of reform has the most appeal. Mahathir, who had heart bypass surgery in 1989, had groomed Anwar, 51, as his successor. But he fired his protege from his posts as deputy prime minister and finance minister on grounds he was morally unfit to lead. The two had differed over economic policy and Anwar has said Mahathir feared he was a threat to his 17-year rule. Anwar was also dumped from the ruling party, and after two weeks of nationwide rallies at which he called for government reform and Mahathir's resignation, he was arrested under a law that allows police to hold him indefinitely, and prevent him from seeing his family and lawyers. On Tuesday, Mahathir denounced demonstrators who had flocked by the thousands to the streets of downtown Kuala Lumpur in recent weeks, calling them part of a plot to topple the government. Baton-wielding riot police had dispersed the crowds with tear gas and water cannons, arresting more than 100 people. ``They decided that the government should be brought down through demonstrations, riots,'' the Bernama news agency quoted Mahathir as saying in Sarawak state on Borneo Island. He was expected to return to Kuala Lumpur later Tuesday to chair the UMNO meeting. After Anwar appeared in court with a black eye, bruised face, neck and arms, his case drew international attention, particularly from the presidents of the Philippines and Indonesia, who have raised the possibility they might not attend an 18-nation summit in Malaysia next month. The United States would downgrade President Bill Clinton's visit to Kuala Lumpur next month if Anwar continued to be mistreated, the Wall Street Journal quoted an official in Washington as saying. Clinton is scheduled to go to Malaysia for the meeting of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum. Wearing a neck brace Monday after a court-ordered hospital checkup, Anwar was ordered to stand trial Nov. 2 on four charges of abusing his powers to interfere with a police investigation. His trial is to halt on Nov. 14 and resume after the APEC meetings. He has pleaded innocent to all charges, including another corruption count and five charges of sodomy. He faces 14 years in prison and a fine on each corruption count and 20 years, plus whipping, on each sexual charge, if convicted. Anwar was arrested Sept. 20 under the Internal Security Act, which allows jail without trial. Under the same law, police also arrested 17 people considered Anwar associates and a risk to national security. As of Tuesday, 12 had been released. The UMNO supreme council was expected to prepare a list of top candidates for Anwar's job for Mahathir's final decision. The Star newspaper, which is close to the government, listed the favorites as Foreign Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi and Education Minister Najib Tun Razak. Other top contenders included Mahathir's confidant Daim Zainuddin, a former finance minister brought back into the Cabinet in June as ``special functions minister'' in charge of economic recovery. Rafidah Aziz, the international trade and industry minister, and Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah, a former finance minister, were also in the running. ||||| Indonesian President B.J. Habibie finds attending a summit of Asia-Pacific leaders ``difficult'' because of his concerns about the arrest of Malaysia's former deputy prime minister, a Thai newspaper reported Sunday. Asia-Pacific leaders are scheduled to meet next month in Malaysia for an annual economics meeting. Last week, Philippine President Joseph Estrada said he was considering not going to the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum because of Anwar Ibrahim's arrest. ``I'm very concerned over how my friend Anwar Ibrahim has been treated,'' Habibie was quoted as saying by the English-language newspaper The Nation. ``I'm concerned because people should not forget that Anwar Ibrahim had contributed a lot for the benefit of his country.'' Anwar is a charismatic politician who was once picked to be the successor to Malaysia's long-serving Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad. But he was suddenly fired by Mahathir on Sept. 2 after the two differed on economic policy. He then began speaking out against Mahathir and was arrested Sept. 20. Anwar has been accused of engaging in homosexual acts illegal under Malaysia law, but the charges are generally seen as a pretext for his political persecution. In a court appearance last week, Anwar's face was bruised and he said he had been beaten by police, heightening international attention to his case. ``Because of human rights involved _ and I think it is universal _ people should be given the chance to defend themselves,'' Habibie was quoted as saying in the interview conducted Saturday. ``People should not be tortured.'' Habibie said Anwar's dismissal should not have been based ``on things which had not been proven.'' On attending the APEC meeting, he said, ``It's difficult for me.'' But he said he would consult parliament, adding, ``I'm not coming personally but as the president of 211 million people of Indonesia.'' Like Estrada, Habibie served as his country's vice president when Anwar was deputy prime minister, making them counterparts on the international affairs circuit. ||||| The agenda might be global, but the menu will be Malaysian when world leaders meet next week for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum. Pacific Rim leaders, including U.S. President Bill Clinton, will sample local dishes at a luncheon planned for the end of their two-day summit. It's expected to be a hot affair. Spicy delicacies on the menu are satay kajang, a beef or chicken kebab in peanut sauce; ayam percik, chicken curry with chilies; soto ayam, a Malaysian chicken soup, and fried rice ``village-style,'' the Star newspaper reported in Monday editions. Desert will be simple: fresh tropical fruit, said Maleia Marsden, general manager of the Cyberview Lodge, where the leaders were expected to stay during the summit Nov. 17-18. APEC groups Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, the Philippines, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand and the United States. Russia, Vietnam and Peru will also join APEC this year. ||||| Top finance officials from 14 countries in the Asia-Pacific region advised Asia's battered economies on Sunday to adopt further reforms in their effort to restore stability. Among the necessary steps is for countries to restructure their economies and corporations to make them less susceptible to abuse by narrow political interests, the officials suggested. The deputy finance ministers and deputy central bank governors met for two days to review progress on the ``Manila Framework,'' an agreement reached last November that aims to promote regional economic stability. Many of Asia's economies have plunged into recession since that agreement. Collapsed currencies, weakened demand and higher unemployment now characterize a region that once boasted some of the world's highest economic growth rates. The worsening financial gloom is likely to dominate talks at next week's summit in Kuala Lumpur of leaders from the 18-nation Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum. The summit is to take place on Nov. 17-18. In a joint statement, the officials cited risks including slower global growth, with particular mention of Russia's worsening economy, and the need to speed up social programs to help the poor in the worst-hit countries. Stanley Fischer, deputy managing director of the International Monetary Fund, noted that some countries have already reformed their banking sectors. But he stressed the need for corporate restructuring as well. ``These are not easy things to do,'' he said. Meanwhile, Malaysia's most prominent dissident predicted that the country's prime minister would declare ``a state of emergency'' after the APEC meeting ends in Kuala Lumpur, a report said Sunday. Former Deputy Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim, now on trial on charges of corruption and sexual misconduct, made the warning in an interview with Monday's edition of Time magazine. Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad fired Anwar in September, saying he was morally unfit to lead, then had him expelled from Malaysia's ruling party. Anwar denies the allegations and says they were fabricated because Mahathir considered his popularity a threat to the prime minister's 17-year rule. ||||| After an unusual, one-on-one chat Tuesday night, the Philippine and Indonesian presidents were considering staying away from an Asia-Pacific summit in Malaysia to protest the treatment of their jailed friend Anwar Ibrahim. Both presidents have hinted they might not attend the meeting of the 18 Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation nations next month in the Malaysian capital out of concern for Anwar. The former deputy prime minister and finance minister of Malaysia was arrested Sept. 20 on corruption and illegal sex charges, then brought to court with a black eye and bruises. Philippine President Joseph Estrada told business and political leaders in Singapore on Tuesday that he had not made up his mind. Estrada called Anwar his friend and said, ``I think all of us here believe that due process and human rights should be respected.'' Indonesian President B.J. Habibie may also stay away, his foreign minister, Ali Alatas, said after the two new Southeast Asian leaders held a half-hour private meeting. If Habibie passes up APEC, Alatas said, it will be because ``he has difficulty leaving the country while there is no vice president, while there are so many problems to deal with.'' Habibie has already canceled a state visit to Malaysia, citing difficulties at home. The meeting was delayed for almost 90 minutes when a mechanical fault was discovered in one of two Indonesian helicopters that were to have flown Estrada and his entourage through heavy rain from Singapore. A ferry was chartered for the 45-minute sea journey. Habibie apologized when Estrada finally arrived at the Melia Panorama Hotel. Estrada replied, ``That's all right.'' The two men, who have each been in power less than five months, met alois June 30 inaugural speech to give the underclass a fairer share of the country's wealth. Habibie took office May 21, hours after his predecessor and mentor, Suharto, was forced from power after national protests and street riots over Indonesia's collapsing economy. ||||| A group of high-powered U.S. investors in Southeast Asia on Monday applauded efforts to perk up Thailand's staggering economy, saying they had been assured by top Thai officials that key economic reform packages will soon be approved. After meetings with Thai Cabinet members, including Prime Minister Chuan Leekpai, members of the U.S.-ASEAN Business Council said they were confident in the future of Thailand's economy and promised their companies would continue to invest here and elsewhere in the region. ``We would be quick as observers to applaud the aggressiveness of the reform packages that we see being proposed in front of your government today,'' said business council chairman George David, who is also chairman and CEO of United Technologies Corp. Thailand was hit hard by last year's Asian economic crisis, and the proposed economic reform legislation focuses on resolving the massive bad debt of private companies, which is hindering a recovery. ``This is very aggressive, good reform. It's very impressive,'' David said, adding that Finance Minister Tarrin Nimmanahaeminda promised Parliament would pass reform measures in ``months, not years.'' The U.S.-ASEAN Business Council is a private organization comprising about 300 U.S. companies with substantial investments in Southeast Asia. David said the five executives in the delegation represented dlrs 300 billion in assets. The council's lobbying efforts with the U.S. and Southeast Asian governments have concentrated on removing tariffs and other barriers to overseas trade. The delegation will travel to Kuala Lumpur for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum Nov. 14-18. David said free trade should be a focus of discussions among the government leaders attending. ``What I hope they will say at APEC is a very strong affirmation of the free-trade agenda and a very strong affirmation of the foreign direct investment agenda,'' he added. ||||| The last time the Asia-Pacific region held its annual summit to promote free trade, Japan's prime minister assured everyone that his economy wouldn't be the next victim of Asia's financial crisis. Canada, the host country, was criticized by some in Canada for cracking down on demonstrations against Suharto, Indonesia's iron-fisted ruler at the time. And President Bill Clinton, whose popularity and booming economy were the envy of the planet, joined everyone else in urging countries such as Thailand and South Korea to bite the bullet and comply with the tough economic reforms that the International Monetary Fund was demanding. My, how the challenges have grown, as the 21-nation Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum prepares for its November summit in Malaysia. Japan _ the world's second largest economy, and Asia's financial anchor _ is suffering through its worst recession since World War II, and that bad news cost Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto his job. Suharto, who ruled Indonesia for 32 years, was driven out of power by a violent, pro-democracy movement, and the world's fourth most populous country is in real trouble financially. Wall Street is now coping with a steep downturn. And even though Clinton has promised to attend the APEC meeting, some people wonder how he can do that while facing an impeachment inquiry back home, thanks to the Monica Lewinsky sex scandal. Worse still, Asia's economic crisis is showing signs of going global, and more and more economists are criticizing the IMF for the way it is handling its bailouts. Other well-respected economists are going even further, questioning whether a free-market philosophy doesn't leave some countries too vulnerable to the chaos of major market speculators. In fact, Malaysia isn't the only country trying self-defense mechanisms such as capital controls. Hong Kong recently spent a fortune investing in its stock market to ward off speculators. And Washington is trying to figure out what to do with hedge funds after watching its Federal Reserve help bail out a major one that was going under, and seeing the investments of others send the U.S. dollar into a tailspin against Japan's yen. Ironically, Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, who made one of his typical anti-free-market comments during last year's summit, probably could have opened this year's with an ``I told you so.'' But even he is having major domestic problems. Mahathir, 72, who is widely credited with creating modern Malaysia during his 17 years in power, dismissed Anwar Ibrahim, his expected successor, in an apparent dispute over how to battle the country's economic mess. Instead of stepping aside, Anwar launched a reform movement across Malaysia that quickly led to big rallies demanding that Mahathir step down. The prime minister used riot police to thwart the protests, and jailed Anwar, charging him with corruption and sex crimes, and scheduling his trial for Nov. 2. The trial will be interrupted during the Nov. 12-18 APEC meetings, but Mahathir's treatment of Anwar and his reform movement already have been criticized by APEC members such as Australia, Indonesia, the Philippines and the United States. President B.J. Habibie of Indonesia and Philippine President Joseph Estrada consider Anwar a friend, and Estrada won't say whether he plans to attend this year's APEC summit. John S. Wolf, the U.S. ambassador for APEC, recently acknowledged that it won't be easy for APEC members to meet in Malaysia as the Asian crisis ``ricochets around the world with no clear sign what will happen next.'' But he also said the leaders of the 21 APEC members should aim for a productive meeting. Wolf said such gatherings give members a chance to discuss IMF bailout strategies and the free-market philosophy, to resolve bilateral disputes, and to continue to reduce tariff rates to help struggling countries improve their exports. ``This has been a lousy year in general. It has affected all of us. It has set APEC back, and there is no silver bullet to solve the crisis right away,'' said Wolf. ``But we should welcome the chance to work together and to develop a sense of what's possible.'' So far, APEC has been criticized for doing little during the financial crisis. But next month it hopes to complete a plan that would lift trade barriers in nine key industries: environmental products and services, energy, fisheries, forestry, toys, jewelry, medical goods, chemical products and telecommunications. Besides the United States, APEC, which accounts for half of all global trade _ consists of these members: Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, the Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan and Thailand. During the Malaysia meeting, APEC also will include three new members: Russia _ one of the latest victims of the financial crisis _ Vietnam and Peru.

Philippine and Indonesian presidents may not attend upcoming APEC summit in Malaysia due to Mahathir's arrest of Anwar. Malaysian leaders discuss replacement for Anwar. Philippine ambassador is asked to explain his president's support for Anwar. Issues at upcoming APEC summit will include the Asian economic crisis and IMF. Taiwan's president pressured by China to send representative. Mahathir's economic and political moves will be issues at the summit. World financial officials advise reform; topic likely to dominate talks. US-ASEAN delegation to attend; likes Thai economic efforts. APEC leaders to taste local Malaysian food at luncheon after summit.

The Philippine ambassador to Malaysia said Friday he was summoned to the Malaysian Foreign Ministry to explain his president's statements in support of dissident Anwar Ibrahim. Ambassador Jose Brillantes said in a radio interview from Kuala Lumpur that he was called Thursday after the Malaysian dissident's eldest daughter met Philippine President Joseph Estrada. ``They expressed their concern about what's happening and the statements coming out of the Philippines,'' Brillantes told radio station DZXL in Manila. Brillantes said he explained that following the 1986 ``people power'' revolt against the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos, Filipinos' react ``strongly'' to ``real and perceived violations of human rights.'' ``I just explained our culture to them,'' he said. Anwar was fired as deputy premier in September and later arrested, appearing in court with a black eye, bruises and a neck brace. He says he was beaten by security guards. Estrada has expressed support for Anwar, whom he considers a personal friend, and indicated he may not attend a summit of Asia Pacific Rim nations in Malaysia next month. He has also said Anwar should be held in house arrest during his upcoming trial on corruption and sexual misconduct charges. Anwar has denied the charges, calling them politically motivated. On Thursday, Estrada told Anwar's daughter, Nurul Izzah, to tell her father ``not to waver because he is fighting for a cause, the cause of the Malaysian people.'' He said, however, that his support is personal and moral and not meant to interfere in the internal problems of Malaysia. Brillantes said: ``The expression of personal opinion is allowed in our culture and it is not surprising for that to happen.'' He also said ``there is no connection'' between Anwar's case and the summit meeting in Malaysia of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation forum. ``We still consider, as expressed by our president, that APEC is important to us,'' he said. He did not say how the Malaysian officials reacted, but he said he was not reprimanded. Meanwhile, a group Philippine legislators said they plan to attend Anwar's trial, which opens Nov. 2. ``We feel that being observers to his trial will be our silent statement of our democratic aspirations for all Asia,'' the group said in a statement. ||||| Again bowing to Chinese pressure, Taiwan will send its chief economic planner to represent President Lee Teng-hui at November's Asian Pacific Economic Cooperation forum summit in Kuala Lumpur, the Foreign Ministry said Friday. Lee decided to send Chiang Pin-kung to the informal leaders summit on Nov. 17-18 after ``giving much thought'' to an invitation from Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, the ministry said. Presentation of an invitation to Lee by the host nation _ with the understanding that it will be politely refused _ is an annual formality that allows Taiwan to maintain a semblance of dignity and the host to avoid controversy with China. Beijing's threat to boycott APEC's annual meeting if Lee attends has forced him to send a stand-in every year since the inaugural summit in 1993. China claims Taiwan as a breakaway province and argues that only sovereign nations are allowed to send their heads of state. APEC groups Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, the Philippines, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand and the United States. Russia, Vietnam and Peru will join in November. ||||| In little more than a week, the world's leaders will converge on this businesslike city in the heart of Southeast Asia for the annual meeting of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation forum. They could hardly be meeting in a more provocative place. On Sept. 1, Malaysia discontinued trading in its currency, the ringgit, and imposed sweeping controls on the flow of capital in its stock and currency markets, particularly on investment from overseas. In doing so, the Malaysian prime minister, Mahathir Mohamad, in effect slammed the door on the global economy that President Clinton and the other leaders are coming here to champion. Mahathir's decision drew jeers from international investors and policy- makers, who warned that Malaysia was seeking a quick fix that would retard its desperately needed reforms and leave it the odd man out when Asia finally recovered from the regional malaise. Now, though, Mahathir's allies are marshaling new economic data that they say indicate that capital controls are breathing new life into the country's moribund economy. Malaysia's foreign reserves rose strongly in September, and there is anecdotal evidence that consumers are starting to spend again. ``It's nice to be able to say that since we adopted capital controls, the economy has improved,'' said Zainal Aznam Yusof, the deputy director of the Institute of Strategic and International Studies, a research organization here that helped draft the policies. ``But we want to see whether this is strongly sustainable.'' Critics said it was predictable that capital controls would be a short-term tonic to Malaysia's economy. Because the country is sheltered from the vagaries of capital flows and currency fluctuations, they said, the government had been able to ease interest rates and encourage consumer spending. Still, the mere fact that Malaysia's experiment has yielded some positive results guarantees that the issue will come up during the APEC meeting. With Mahathir leading the campaign, the cause of capital controls will have a fiery advocate who has a penchant for getting under the skin of Westerners. ``Mahathir is a very outspoken political leader,'' said Chia Yew Boon, an independent analyst in Singapore. ``There is no way the likes of Clinton or Jiang Zemin are going to be able to muzzle him,'' he added, referring to President Jiang of China. Policy-makers in the United States have expressed fears that if Malaysia's gambit is seen as successful, other economically weakened countries in the region, like Indonesia, might be tempted to try it. So far, Indonesian officials have said they would stick to the recovery plan devised by the International Monetary Fund, which stresses economic austerity and open markets. But officials in Japan have expressed some sympathy for Mahathir's policies, while Paul Krugman, an economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has advocated using them as an emergency measure. Yusof said recent events had vindicated Malaysia's contention that it needed to insulate itself from the ravages of the global financial system. He said the recent near-collapse of a prominent American hedge fund underscored how sudden flows of capital can have destructive consequences. The Long-Term Capital Management hedge fund, based in Greenwich, Conn., was nearly wrecked by a series of wrong bets on Treasury securities after the collapse of the economy in Russia prompted a flight of capital out of that country. ``The LTCM fiasco really provides a case study of what could go wrong in the global economy,'' Yusof said. With capital controls as protection, Yusof said Malaysia was picking up the pieces of its shattered economy. In addition to growing foreign reserves, he said Malaysia had improved its trade balance and revived consumer purchases of durable goods. Foreign investors have also not wholly abandoned Malaysia, as experts had predicted they would. While foreign direct investment fell in September _ to $142 million, from an average monthly rate of $321 million for the period from January through September _ it did not dry up completely. For every comforting statistic, though, the critics produce an alarming one. They said the increase in Malaysia's foreign reserves was merely due to the new capital restrictions, which stipulated that Malaysian currency held outside the country would be worthless unless repatriated by Sept. 30. The skeptics also noted that bank lending declined in September, despite several reductions in interest rates. So the consumers who are buying new cars and home appliances are merely dipping into their savings, which means the buying spree will end when their savings are depleted. ``The argument was that by imposing capital controls, you'd regain control over monetary policy, which would increase the supply of money and lessen the liquidity crunch,'' said K.S. Jomo, a professor of political economy at the University of Malaya here. ``But that's not happening.'' The biggest flaw in Malaysia's policy, Jomo and others said, is its timing. With the Asian crisis more than a year old, much of the foreign capital that was in the country has already gone. The critics said Mahathir had spooked would-be investors without even locking in the ones who used to be here. ``There is a case to be made for the temporary imposition of capital controls, but to avert a crisis, not to respond to one,'' Jomo said. In fact, other Asian currencies, like the Indonesian rupiah and the Thai baht, have actually rebounded since Malaysia suspended trading in its currency and fixed the exchange rate at 3.8 ringgit to the dollar. Analysts liken the situation to buying an insurance policy for a disaster that has come and gone. More important, the capital controls are slowing down much-needed corporate and banking reforms. The government's rescue of Renong, a major conglomerate with close ties to Mahathir, is going ahead, though some analysts predict the government will eventually scrap the much-criticized plan. The rescue of politically connected companies remains a tense issue here. On Monday, during the trial of Malaysia's former deputy prime minister, Anwar Ibrahim, on charges of corruption and sex-related crimes, Anwar angrily denied Mahathir's claim that he had approved the bailout. Anwar's sensational trial is a reminder that Mahathir's economic policies cannot be disentangled from politics. Malaysia's 72-year-old prime minister clashed with his former protege over how to respond to the Asian crisis, and he dismissed Anwar the day after imposing capital controls. During boom times, Mahathir won support for his policies by wrapping them in anti-foreigner language. In a speech on Monday, he attacked a familiar target, saying foreign currency traders ``are the cause of the currency turmoil,'' adding: ``They spread it worldwide. They precipitated the current recession in every country.'' But Mahathir's treatment of Anwar has stirred anger and sparked growing social unrest in Malaysia. With protesters chanting for reform on the usually orderly streets of this city, experts said Mahathir needed capital controls to work in order to soothe the country's agitated population. ``Things will heat up if the economy does not improve,'' said Chandra Muzaffar, a professor of political science at the University of Malaya. ``Then the whole question of Mahathir and his leadership will remain an issue.'' In that regard, at least, the leaders who converge on Kuala Lumpur in two weeks will be able to identify with their embattled host. ||||| The leaders of Malaysia's ruling party met Tuesday to discuss a replacement for ousted deputy prime minister Anwar Ibrahim, who faces trial next month in a case that will test the country's legal system. Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, 72, said last week he could ``drop dead'' at any time. But because of the large number of candidates for the deputy's job within the ruling United Malays National Organization, a decision was not expected quickly. The party leaders, who have been conducting a national campaign to explain to Malaysians why the popular Anwar was fired Sept. 2, will also confer on what to do now that the High Court judge has banned all comments on Anwar's guilt or innocence. The ruling coalition had scheduled a giant rally in the capital Saturday, aimed at drawing in the youth to whom Anwar's campaign of reform has the most appeal. Mahathir, who had heart bypass surgery in 1989, had groomed Anwar, 51, as his successor. But he fired his protege from his posts as deputy prime minister and finance minister on grounds he was morally unfit to lead. The two had differed over economic policy and Anwar has said Mahathir feared he was a threat to his 17-year rule. Anwar was also dumped from the ruling party, and after two weeks of nationwide rallies at which he called for government reform and Mahathir's resignation, he was arrested under a law that allows police to hold him indefinitely, and prevent him from seeing his family and lawyers. On Tuesday, Mahathir denounced demonstrators who had flocked by the thousands to the streets of downtown Kuala Lumpur in recent weeks, calling them part of a plot to topple the government. Baton-wielding riot police had dispersed the crowds with tear gas and water cannons, arresting more than 100 people. ``They decided that the government should be brought down through demonstrations, riots,'' the Bernama news agency quoted Mahathir as saying in Sarawak state on Borneo Island. He was expected to return to Kuala Lumpur later Tuesday to chair the UMNO meeting. After Anwar appeared in court with a black eye, bruised face, neck and arms, his case drew international attention, particularly from the presidents of the Philippines and Indonesia, who have raised the possibility they might not attend an 18-nation summit in Malaysia next month. The United States would downgrade President Bill Clinton's visit to Kuala Lumpur next month if Anwar continued to be mistreated, the Wall Street Journal quoted an official in Washington as saying. Clinton is scheduled to go to Malaysia for the meeting of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum. Wearing a neck brace Monday after a court-ordered hospital checkup, Anwar was ordered to stand trial Nov. 2 on four charges of abusing his powers to interfere with a police investigation. His trial is to halt on Nov. 14 and resume after the APEC meetings. He has pleaded innocent to all charges, including another corruption count and five charges of sodomy. He faces 14 years in prison and a fine on each corruption count and 20 years, plus whipping, on each sexual charge, if convicted. Anwar was arrested Sept. 20 under the Internal Security Act, which allows jail without trial. Under the same law, police also arrested 17 people considered Anwar associates and a risk to national security. As of Tuesday, 12 had been released. The UMNO supreme council was expected to prepare a list of top candidates for Anwar's job for Mahathir's final decision. The Star newspaper, which is close to the government, listed the favorites as Foreign Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi and Education Minister Najib Tun Razak. Other top contenders included Mahathir's confidant Daim Zainuddin, a former finance minister brought back into the Cabinet in June as ``special functions minister'' in charge of economic recovery. Rafidah Aziz, the international trade and industry minister, and Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah, a former finance minister, were also in the running. ||||| Indonesian President B.J. Habibie finds attending a summit of Asia-Pacific leaders ``difficult'' because of his concerns about the arrest of Malaysia's former deputy prime minister, a Thai newspaper reported Sunday. Asia-Pacific leaders are scheduled to meet next month in Malaysia for an annual economics meeting. Last week, Philippine President Joseph Estrada said he was considering not going to the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum because of Anwar Ibrahim's arrest. ``I'm very concerned over how my friend Anwar Ibrahim has been treated,'' Habibie was quoted as saying by the English-language newspaper The Nation. ``I'm concerned because people should not forget that Anwar Ibrahim had contributed a lot for the benefit of his country.'' Anwar is a charismatic politician who was once picked to be the successor to Malaysia's long-serving Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad. But he was suddenly fired by Mahathir on Sept. 2 after the two differed on economic policy. He then began speaking out against Mahathir and was arrested Sept. 20. Anwar has been accused of engaging in homosexual acts illegal under Malaysia law, but the charges are generally seen as a pretext for his political persecution. In a court appearance last week, Anwar's face was bruised and he said he had been beaten by police, heightening international attention to his case. ``Because of human rights involved _ and I think it is universal _ people should be given the chance to defend themselves,'' Habibie was quoted as saying in the interview conducted Saturday. ``People should not be tortured.'' Habibie said Anwar's dismissal should not have been based ``on things which had not been proven.'' On attending the APEC meeting, he said, ``It's difficult for me.'' But he said he would consult parliament, adding, ``I'm not coming personally but as the president of 211 million people of Indonesia.'' Like Estrada, Habibie served as his country's vice president when Anwar was deputy prime minister, making them counterparts on the international affairs circuit. ||||| The agenda might be global, but the menu will be Malaysian when world leaders meet next week for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum. Pacific Rim leaders, including U.S. President Bill Clinton, will sample local dishes at a luncheon planned for the end of their two-day summit. It's expected to be a hot affair. Spicy delicacies on the menu are satay kajang, a beef or chicken kebab in peanut sauce; ayam percik, chicken curry with chilies; soto ayam, a Malaysian chicken soup, and fried rice ``village-style,'' the Star newspaper reported in Monday editions. Desert will be simple: fresh tropical fruit, said Maleia Marsden, general manager of the Cyberview Lodge, where the leaders were expected to stay during the summit Nov. 17-18. APEC groups Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, the Philippines, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand and the United States. Russia, Vietnam and Peru will also join APEC this year. ||||| Top finance officials from 14 countries in the Asia-Pacific region advised Asia's battered economies on Sunday to adopt further reforms in their effort to restore stability. Among the necessary steps is for countries to restructure their economies and corporations to make them less susceptible to abuse by narrow political interests, the officials suggested. The deputy finance ministers and deputy central bank governors met for two days to review progress on the ``Manila Framework,'' an agreement reached last November that aims to promote regional economic stability. Many of Asia's economies have plunged into recession since that agreement. Collapsed currencies, weakened demand and higher unemployment now characterize a region that once boasted some of the world's highest economic growth rates. The worsening financial gloom is likely to dominate talks at next week's summit in Kuala Lumpur of leaders from the 18-nation Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum. The summit is to take place on Nov. 17-18. In a joint statement, the officials cited risks including slower global growth, with particular mention of Russia's worsening economy, and the need to speed up social programs to help the poor in the worst-hit countries. Stanley Fischer, deputy managing director of the International Monetary Fund, noted that some countries have already reformed their banking sectors. But he stressed the need for corporate restructuring as well. ``These are not easy things to do,'' he said. Meanwhile, Malaysia's most prominent dissident predicted that the country's prime minister would declare ``a state of emergency'' after the APEC meeting ends in Kuala Lumpur, a report said Sunday. Former Deputy Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim, now on trial on charges of corruption and sexual misconduct, made the warning in an interview with Monday's edition of Time magazine. Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad fired Anwar in September, saying he was morally unfit to lead, then had him expelled from Malaysia's ruling party. Anwar denies the allegations and says they were fabricated because Mahathir considered his popularity a threat to the prime minister's 17-year rule. ||||| After an unusual, one-on-one chat Tuesday night, the Philippine and Indonesian presidents were considering staying away from an Asia-Pacific summit in Malaysia to protest the treatment of their jailed friend Anwar Ibrahim. Both presidents have hinted they might not attend the meeting of the 18 Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation nations next month in the Malaysian capital out of concern for Anwar. The former deputy prime minister and finance minister of Malaysia was arrested Sept. 20 on corruption and illegal sex charges, then brought to court with a black eye and bruises. Philippine President Joseph Estrada told business and political leaders in Singapore on Tuesday that he had not made up his mind. Estrada called Anwar his friend and said, ``I think all of us here believe that due process and human rights should be respected.'' Indonesian President B.J. Habibie may also stay away, his foreign minister, Ali Alatas, said after the two new Southeast Asian leaders held a half-hour private meeting. If Habibie passes up APEC, Alatas said, it will be because ``he has difficulty leaving the country while there is no vice president, while there are so many problems to deal with.'' Habibie has already canceled a state visit to Malaysia, citing difficulties at home. The meeting was delayed for almost 90 minutes when a mechanical fault was discovered in one of two Indonesian helicopters that were to have flown Estrada and his entourage through heavy rain from Singapore. A ferry was chartered for the 45-minute sea journey. Habibie apologized when Estrada finally arrived at the Melia Panorama Hotel. Estrada replied, ``That's all right.'' The two men, who have each been in power less than five months, met alois June 30 inaugural speech to give the underclass a fairer share of the country's wealth. Habibie took office May 21, hours after his predecessor and mentor, Suharto, was forced from power after national protests and street riots over Indonesia's collapsing economy. ||||| A group of high-powered U.S. investors in Southeast Asia on Monday applauded efforts to perk up Thailand's staggering economy, saying they had been assured by top Thai officials that key economic reform packages will soon be approved. After meetings with Thai Cabinet members, including Prime Minister Chuan Leekpai, members of the U.S.-ASEAN Business Council said they were confident in the future of Thailand's economy and promised their companies would continue to invest here and elsewhere in the region. ``We would be quick as observers to applaud the aggressiveness of the reform packages that we see being proposed in front of your government today,'' said business council chairman George David, who is also chairman and CEO of United Technologies Corp. Thailand was hit hard by last year's Asian economic crisis, and the proposed economic reform legislation focuses on resolving the massive bad debt of private companies, which is hindering a recovery. ``This is very aggressive, good reform. It's very impressive,'' David said, adding that Finance Minister Tarrin Nimmanahaeminda promised Parliament would pass reform measures in ``months, not years.'' The U.S.-ASEAN Business Council is a private organization comprising about 300 U.S. companies with substantial investments in Southeast Asia. David said the five executives in the delegation represented dlrs 300 billion in assets. The council's lobbying efforts with the U.S. and Southeast Asian governments have concentrated on removing tariffs and other barriers to overseas trade. The delegation will travel to Kuala Lumpur for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum Nov. 14-18. David said free trade should be a focus of discussions among the government leaders attending. ``What I hope they will say at APEC is a very strong affirmation of the free-trade agenda and a very strong affirmation of the foreign direct investment agenda,'' he added. ||||| The last time the Asia-Pacific region held its annual summit to promote free trade, Japan's prime minister assured everyone that his economy wouldn't be the next victim of Asia's financial crisis. Canada, the host country, was criticized by some in Canada for cracking down on demonstrations against Suharto, Indonesia's iron-fisted ruler at the time. And President Bill Clinton, whose popularity and booming economy were the envy of the planet, joined everyone else in urging countries such as Thailand and South Korea to bite the bullet and comply with the tough economic reforms that the International Monetary Fund was demanding. My, how the challenges have grown, as the 21-nation Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum prepares for its November summit in Malaysia. Japan _ the world's second largest economy, and Asia's financial anchor _ is suffering through its worst recession since World War II, and that bad news cost Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto his job. Suharto, who ruled Indonesia for 32 years, was driven out of power by a violent, pro-democracy movement, and the world's fourth most populous country is in real trouble financially. Wall Street is now coping with a steep downturn. And even though Clinton has promised to attend the APEC meeting, some people wonder how he can do that while facing an impeachment inquiry back home, thanks to the Monica Lewinsky sex scandal. Worse still, Asia's economic crisis is showing signs of going global, and more and more economists are criticizing the IMF for the way it is handling its bailouts. Other well-respected economists are going even further, questioning whether a free-market philosophy doesn't leave some countries too vulnerable to the chaos of major market speculators. In fact, Malaysia isn't the only country trying self-defense mechanisms such as capital controls. Hong Kong recently spent a fortune investing in its stock market to ward off speculators. And Washington is trying to figure out what to do with hedge funds after watching its Federal Reserve help bail out a major one that was going under, and seeing the investments of others send the U.S. dollar into a tailspin against Japan's yen. Ironically, Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, who made one of his typical anti-free-market comments during last year's summit, probably could have opened this year's with an ``I told you so.'' But even he is having major domestic problems. Mahathir, 72, who is widely credited with creating modern Malaysia during his 17 years in power, dismissed Anwar Ibrahim, his expected successor, in an apparent dispute over how to battle the country's economic mess. Instead of stepping aside, Anwar launched a reform movement across Malaysia that quickly led to big rallies demanding that Mahathir step down. The prime minister used riot police to thwart the protests, and jailed Anwar, charging him with corruption and sex crimes, and scheduling his trial for Nov. 2. The trial will be interrupted during the Nov. 12-18 APEC meetings, but Mahathir's treatment of Anwar and his reform movement already have been criticized by APEC members such as Australia, Indonesia, the Philippines and the United States. President B.J. Habibie of Indonesia and Philippine President Joseph Estrada consider Anwar a friend, and Estrada won't say whether he plans to attend this year's APEC summit. John S. Wolf, the U.S. ambassador for APEC, recently acknowledged that it won't be easy for APEC members to meet in Malaysia as the Asian crisis ``ricochets around the world with no clear sign what will happen next.'' But he also said the leaders of the 21 APEC members should aim for a productive meeting. Wolf said such gatherings give members a chance to discuss IMF bailout strategies and the free-market philosophy, to resolve bilateral disputes, and to continue to reduce tariff rates to help struggling countries improve their exports. ``This has been a lousy year in general. It has affected all of us. It has set APEC back, and there is no silver bullet to solve the crisis right away,'' said Wolf. ``But we should welcome the chance to work together and to develop a sense of what's possible.'' So far, APEC has been criticized for doing little during the financial crisis. But next month it hopes to complete a plan that would lift trade barriers in nine key industries: environmental products and services, energy, fisheries, forestry, toys, jewelry, medical goods, chemical products and telecommunications. Besides the United States, APEC, which accounts for half of all global trade _ consists of these members: Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, the Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan and Thailand. During the Malaysia meeting, APEC also will include three new members: Russia _ one of the latest victims of the financial crisis _ Vietnam and Peru.

The coming Asian-Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting in Malaysia will open with most Asian countries still in dire economic straits. Thailand has made some reforms but reforms proposed by the International Monetary Fund have not been adopted by other nations. Malaysia, on the eve of the meeting, discontinued trading in its currency, viewed as a quick fix. Some world leaders, especially the presidents of the Philippines and Indonesia and also President Clinton, have second thoughts about attending the meeting because of Malaysia's arrest and treatment of former deputy Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim. He was charged with corruption and homosexual activity.

The Philippine ambassador to Malaysia said Friday he was summoned to the Malaysian Foreign Ministry to explain his president's statements in support of dissident Anwar Ibrahim. Ambassador Jose Brillantes said in a radio interview from Kuala Lumpur that he was called Thursday after the Malaysian dissident's eldest daughter met Philippine President Joseph Estrada. ``They expressed their concern about what's happening and the statements coming out of the Philippines,'' Brillantes told radio station DZXL in Manila. Brillantes said he explained that following the 1986 ``people power'' revolt against the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos, Filipinos' react ``strongly'' to ``real and perceived violations of human rights.'' ``I just explained our culture to them,'' he said. Anwar was fired as deputy premier in September and later arrested, appearing in court with a black eye, bruises and a neck brace. He says he was beaten by security guards. Estrada has expressed support for Anwar, whom he considers a personal friend, and indicated he may not attend a summit of Asia Pacific Rim nations in Malaysia next month. He has also said Anwar should be held in house arrest during his upcoming trial on corruption and sexual misconduct charges. Anwar has denied the charges, calling them politically motivated. On Thursday, Estrada told Anwar's daughter, Nurul Izzah, to tell her father ``not to waver because he is fighting for a cause, the cause of the Malaysian people.'' He said, however, that his support is personal and moral and not meant to interfere in the internal problems of Malaysia. Brillantes said: ``The expression of personal opinion is allowed in our culture and it is not surprising for that to happen.'' He also said ``there is no connection'' between Anwar's case and the summit meeting in Malaysia of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation forum. ``We still consider, as expressed by our president, that APEC is important to us,'' he said. He did not say how the Malaysian officials reacted, but he said he was not reprimanded. Meanwhile, a group Philippine legislators said they plan to attend Anwar's trial, which opens Nov. 2. ``We feel that being observers to his trial will be our silent statement of our democratic aspirations for all Asia,'' the group said in a statement. ||||| Again bowing to Chinese pressure, Taiwan will send its chief economic planner to represent President Lee Teng-hui at November's Asian Pacific Economic Cooperation forum summit in Kuala Lumpur, the Foreign Ministry said Friday. Lee decided to send Chiang Pin-kung to the informal leaders summit on Nov. 17-18 after ``giving much thought'' to an invitation from Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, the ministry said. Presentation of an invitation to Lee by the host nation _ with the understanding that it will be politely refused _ is an annual formality that allows Taiwan to maintain a semblance of dignity and the host to avoid controversy with China. Beijing's threat to boycott APEC's annual meeting if Lee attends has forced him to send a stand-in every year since the inaugural summit in 1993. China claims Taiwan as a breakaway province and argues that only sovereign nations are allowed to send their heads of state. APEC groups Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, the Philippines, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand and the United States. Russia, Vietnam and Peru will join in November. ||||| In little more than a week, the world's leaders will converge on this businesslike city in the heart of Southeast Asia for the annual meeting of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation forum. They could hardly be meeting in a more provocative place. On Sept. 1, Malaysia discontinued trading in its currency, the ringgit, and imposed sweeping controls on the flow of capital in its stock and currency markets, particularly on investment from overseas. In doing so, the Malaysian prime minister, Mahathir Mohamad, in effect slammed the door on the global economy that President Clinton and the other leaders are coming here to champion. Mahathir's decision drew jeers from international investors and policy- makers, who warned that Malaysia was seeking a quick fix that would retard its desperately needed reforms and leave it the odd man out when Asia finally recovered from the regional malaise. Now, though, Mahathir's allies are marshaling new economic data that they say indicate that capital controls are breathing new life into the country's moribund economy. Malaysia's foreign reserves rose strongly in September, and there is anecdotal evidence that consumers are starting to spend again. ``It's nice to be able to say that since we adopted capital controls, the economy has improved,'' said Zainal Aznam Yusof, the deputy director of the Institute of Strategic and International Studies, a research organization here that helped draft the policies. ``But we want to see whether this is strongly sustainable.'' Critics said it was predictable that capital controls would be a short-term tonic to Malaysia's economy. Because the country is sheltered from the vagaries of capital flows and currency fluctuations, they said, the government had been able to ease interest rates and encourage consumer spending. Still, the mere fact that Malaysia's experiment has yielded some positive results guarantees that the issue will come up during the APEC meeting. With Mahathir leading the campaign, the cause of capital controls will have a fiery advocate who has a penchant for getting under the skin of Westerners. ``Mahathir is a very outspoken political leader,'' said Chia Yew Boon, an independent analyst in Singapore. ``There is no way the likes of Clinton or Jiang Zemin are going to be able to muzzle him,'' he added, referring to President Jiang of China. Policy-makers in the United States have expressed fears that if Malaysia's gambit is seen as successful, other economically weakened countries in the region, like Indonesia, might be tempted to try it. So far, Indonesian officials have said they would stick to the recovery plan devised by the International Monetary Fund, which stresses economic austerity and open markets. But officials in Japan have expressed some sympathy for Mahathir's policies, while Paul Krugman, an economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has advocated using them as an emergency measure. Yusof said recent events had vindicated Malaysia's contention that it needed to insulate itself from the ravages of the global financial system. He said the recent near-collapse of a prominent American hedge fund underscored how sudden flows of capital can have destructive consequences. The Long-Term Capital Management hedge fund, based in Greenwich, Conn., was nearly wrecked by a series of wrong bets on Treasury securities after the collapse of the economy in Russia prompted a flight of capital out of that country. ``The LTCM fiasco really provides a case study of what could go wrong in the global economy,'' Yusof said. With capital controls as protection, Yusof said Malaysia was picking up the pieces of its shattered economy. In addition to growing foreign reserves, he said Malaysia had improved its trade balance and revived consumer purchases of durable goods. Foreign investors have also not wholly abandoned Malaysia, as experts had predicted they would. While foreign direct investment fell in September _ to $142 million, from an average monthly rate of $321 million for the period from January through September _ it did not dry up completely. For every comforting statistic, though, the critics produce an alarming one. They said the increase in Malaysia's foreign reserves was merely due to the new capital restrictions, which stipulated that Malaysian currency held outside the country would be worthless unless repatriated by Sept. 30. The skeptics also noted that bank lending declined in September, despite several reductions in interest rates. So the consumers who are buying new cars and home appliances are merely dipping into their savings, which means the buying spree will end when their savings are depleted. ``The argument was that by imposing capital controls, you'd regain control over monetary policy, which would increase the supply of money and lessen the liquidity crunch,'' said K.S. Jomo, a professor of political economy at the University of Malaya here. ``But that's not happening.'' The biggest flaw in Malaysia's policy, Jomo and others said, is its timing. With the Asian crisis more than a year old, much of the foreign capital that was in the country has already gone. The critics said Mahathir had spooked would-be investors without even locking in the ones who used to be here. ``There is a case to be made for the temporary imposition of capital controls, but to avert a crisis, not to respond to one,'' Jomo said. In fact, other Asian currencies, like the Indonesian rupiah and the Thai baht, have actually rebounded since Malaysia suspended trading in its currency and fixed the exchange rate at 3.8 ringgit to the dollar. Analysts liken the situation to buying an insurance policy for a disaster that has come and gone. More important, the capital controls are slowing down much-needed corporate and banking reforms. The government's rescue of Renong, a major conglomerate with close ties to Mahathir, is going ahead, though some analysts predict the government will eventually scrap the much-criticized plan. The rescue of politically connected companies remains a tense issue here. On Monday, during the trial of Malaysia's former deputy prime minister, Anwar Ibrahim, on charges of corruption and sex-related crimes, Anwar angrily denied Mahathir's claim that he had approved the bailout. Anwar's sensational trial is a reminder that Mahathir's economic policies cannot be disentangled from politics. Malaysia's 72-year-old prime minister clashed with his former protege over how to respond to the Asian crisis, and he dismissed Anwar the day after imposing capital controls. During boom times, Mahathir won support for his policies by wrapping them in anti-foreigner language. In a speech on Monday, he attacked a familiar target, saying foreign currency traders ``are the cause of the currency turmoil,'' adding: ``They spread it worldwide. They precipitated the current recession in every country.'' But Mahathir's treatment of Anwar has stirred anger and sparked growing social unrest in Malaysia. With protesters chanting for reform on the usually orderly streets of this city, experts said Mahathir needed capital controls to work in order to soothe the country's agitated population. ``Things will heat up if the economy does not improve,'' said Chandra Muzaffar, a professor of political science at the University of Malaya. ``Then the whole question of Mahathir and his leadership will remain an issue.'' In that regard, at least, the leaders who converge on Kuala Lumpur in two weeks will be able to identify with their embattled host. ||||| The leaders of Malaysia's ruling party met Tuesday to discuss a replacement for ousted deputy prime minister Anwar Ibrahim, who faces trial next month in a case that will test the country's legal system. Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, 72, said last week he could ``drop dead'' at any time. But because of the large number of candidates for the deputy's job within the ruling United Malays National Organization, a decision was not expected quickly. The party leaders, who have been conducting a national campaign to explain to Malaysians why the popular Anwar was fired Sept. 2, will also confer on what to do now that the High Court judge has banned all comments on Anwar's guilt or innocence. The ruling coalition had scheduled a giant rally in the capital Saturday, aimed at drawing in the youth to whom Anwar's campaign of reform has the most appeal. Mahathir, who had heart bypass surgery in 1989, had groomed Anwar, 51, as his successor. But he fired his protege from his posts as deputy prime minister and finance minister on grounds he was morally unfit to lead. The two had differed over economic policy and Anwar has said Mahathir feared he was a threat to his 17-year rule. Anwar was also dumped from the ruling party, and after two weeks of nationwide rallies at which he called for government reform and Mahathir's resignation, he was arrested under a law that allows police to hold him indefinitely, and prevent him from seeing his family and lawyers. On Tuesday, Mahathir denounced demonstrators who had flocked by the thousands to the streets of downtown Kuala Lumpur in recent weeks, calling them part of a plot to topple the government. Baton-wielding riot police had dispersed the crowds with tear gas and water cannons, arresting more than 100 people. ``They decided that the government should be brought down through demonstrations, riots,'' the Bernama news agency quoted Mahathir as saying in Sarawak state on Borneo Island. He was expected to return to Kuala Lumpur later Tuesday to chair the UMNO meeting. After Anwar appeared in court with a black eye, bruised face, neck and arms, his case drew international attention, particularly from the presidents of the Philippines and Indonesia, who have raised the possibility they might not attend an 18-nation summit in Malaysia next month. The United States would downgrade President Bill Clinton's visit to Kuala Lumpur next month if Anwar continued to be mistreated, the Wall Street Journal quoted an official in Washington as saying. Clinton is scheduled to go to Malaysia for the meeting of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum. Wearing a neck brace Monday after a court-ordered hospital checkup, Anwar was ordered to stand trial Nov. 2 on four charges of abusing his powers to interfere with a police investigation. His trial is to halt on Nov. 14 and resume after the APEC meetings. He has pleaded innocent to all charges, including another corruption count and five charges of sodomy. He faces 14 years in prison and a fine on each corruption count and 20 years, plus whipping, on each sexual charge, if convicted. Anwar was arrested Sept. 20 under the Internal Security Act, which allows jail without trial. Under the same law, police also arrested 17 people considered Anwar associates and a risk to national security. As of Tuesday, 12 had been released. The UMNO supreme council was expected to prepare a list of top candidates for Anwar's job for Mahathir's final decision. The Star newspaper, which is close to the government, listed the favorites as Foreign Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi and Education Minister Najib Tun Razak. Other top contenders included Mahathir's confidant Daim Zainuddin, a former finance minister brought back into the Cabinet in June as ``special functions minister'' in charge of economic recovery. Rafidah Aziz, the international trade and industry minister, and Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah, a former finance minister, were also in the running. ||||| Indonesian President B.J. Habibie finds attending a summit of Asia-Pacific leaders ``difficult'' because of his concerns about the arrest of Malaysia's former deputy prime minister, a Thai newspaper reported Sunday. Asia-Pacific leaders are scheduled to meet next month in Malaysia for an annual economics meeting. Last week, Philippine President Joseph Estrada said he was considering not going to the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum because of Anwar Ibrahim's arrest. ``I'm very concerned over how my friend Anwar Ibrahim has been treated,'' Habibie was quoted as saying by the English-language newspaper The Nation. ``I'm concerned because people should not forget that Anwar Ibrahim had contributed a lot for the benefit of his country.'' Anwar is a charismatic politician who was once picked to be the successor to Malaysia's long-serving Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad. But he was suddenly fired by Mahathir on Sept. 2 after the two differed on economic policy. He then began speaking out against Mahathir and was arrested Sept. 20. Anwar has been accused of engaging in homosexual acts illegal under Malaysia law, but the charges are generally seen as a pretext for his political persecution. In a court appearance last week, Anwar's face was bruised and he said he had been beaten by police, heightening international attention to his case. ``Because of human rights involved _ and I think it is universal _ people should be given the chance to defend themselves,'' Habibie was quoted as saying in the interview conducted Saturday. ``People should not be tortured.'' Habibie said Anwar's dismissal should not have been based ``on things which had not been proven.'' On attending the APEC meeting, he said, ``It's difficult for me.'' But he said he would consult parliament, adding, ``I'm not coming personally but as the president of 211 million people of Indonesia.'' Like Estrada, Habibie served as his country's vice president when Anwar was deputy prime minister, making them counterparts on the international affairs circuit. ||||| The agenda might be global, but the menu will be Malaysian when world leaders meet next week for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum. Pacific Rim leaders, including U.S. President Bill Clinton, will sample local dishes at a luncheon planned for the end of their two-day summit. It's expected to be a hot affair. Spicy delicacies on the menu are satay kajang, a beef or chicken kebab in peanut sauce; ayam percik, chicken curry with chilies; soto ayam, a Malaysian chicken soup, and fried rice ``village-style,'' the Star newspaper reported in Monday editions. Desert will be simple: fresh tropical fruit, said Maleia Marsden, general manager of the Cyberview Lodge, where the leaders were expected to stay during the summit Nov. 17-18. APEC groups Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, the Philippines, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand and the United States. Russia, Vietnam and Peru will also join APEC this year. ||||| Top finance officials from 14 countries in the Asia-Pacific region advised Asia's battered economies on Sunday to adopt further reforms in their effort to restore stability. Among the necessary steps is for countries to restructure their economies and corporations to make them less susceptible to abuse by narrow political interests, the officials suggested. The deputy finance ministers and deputy central bank governors met for two days to review progress on the ``Manila Framework,'' an agreement reached last November that aims to promote regional economic stability. Many of Asia's economies have plunged into recession since that agreement. Collapsed currencies, weakened demand and higher unemployment now characterize a region that once boasted some of the world's highest economic growth rates. The worsening financial gloom is likely to dominate talks at next week's summit in Kuala Lumpur of leaders from the 18-nation Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum. The summit is to take place on Nov. 17-18. In a joint statement, the officials cited risks including slower global growth, with particular mention of Russia's worsening economy, and the need to speed up social programs to help the poor in the worst-hit countries. Stanley Fischer, deputy managing director of the International Monetary Fund, noted that some countries have already reformed their banking sectors. But he stressed the need for corporate restructuring as well. ``These are not easy things to do,'' he said. Meanwhile, Malaysia's most prominent dissident predicted that the country's prime minister would declare ``a state of emergency'' after the APEC meeting ends in Kuala Lumpur, a report said Sunday. Former Deputy Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim, now on trial on charges of corruption and sexual misconduct, made the warning in an interview with Monday's edition of Time magazine. Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad fired Anwar in September, saying he was morally unfit to lead, then had him expelled from Malaysia's ruling party. Anwar denies the allegations and says they were fabricated because Mahathir considered his popularity a threat to the prime minister's 17-year rule. ||||| After an unusual, one-on-one chat Tuesday night, the Philippine and Indonesian presidents were considering staying away from an Asia-Pacific summit in Malaysia to protest the treatment of their jailed friend Anwar Ibrahim. Both presidents have hinted they might not attend the meeting of the 18 Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation nations next month in the Malaysian capital out of concern for Anwar. The former deputy prime minister and finance minister of Malaysia was arrested Sept. 20 on corruption and illegal sex charges, then brought to court with a black eye and bruises. Philippine President Joseph Estrada told business and political leaders in Singapore on Tuesday that he had not made up his mind. Estrada called Anwar his friend and said, ``I think all of us here believe that due process and human rights should be respected.'' Indonesian President B.J. Habibie may also stay away, his foreign minister, Ali Alatas, said after the two new Southeast Asian leaders held a half-hour private meeting. If Habibie passes up APEC, Alatas said, it will be because ``he has difficulty leaving the country while there is no vice president, while there are so many problems to deal with.'' Habibie has already canceled a state visit to Malaysia, citing difficulties at home. The meeting was delayed for almost 90 minutes when a mechanical fault was discovered in one of two Indonesian helicopters that were to have flown Estrada and his entourage through heavy rain from Singapore. A ferry was chartered for the 45-minute sea journey. Habibie apologized when Estrada finally arrived at the Melia Panorama Hotel. Estrada replied, ``That's all right.'' The two men, who have each been in power less than five months, met alois June 30 inaugural speech to give the underclass a fairer share of the country's wealth. Habibie took office May 21, hours after his predecessor and mentor, Suharto, was forced from power after national protests and street riots over Indonesia's collapsing economy. ||||| A group of high-powered U.S. investors in Southeast Asia on Monday applauded efforts to perk up Thailand's staggering economy, saying they had been assured by top Thai officials that key economic reform packages will soon be approved. After meetings with Thai Cabinet members, including Prime Minister Chuan Leekpai, members of the U.S.-ASEAN Business Council said they were confident in the future of Thailand's economy and promised their companies would continue to invest here and elsewhere in the region. ``We would be quick as observers to applaud the aggressiveness of the reform packages that we see being proposed in front of your government today,'' said business council chairman George David, who is also chairman and CEO of United Technologies Corp. Thailand was hit hard by last year's Asian economic crisis, and the proposed economic reform legislation focuses on resolving the massive bad debt of private companies, which is hindering a recovery. ``This is very aggressive, good reform. It's very impressive,'' David said, adding that Finance Minister Tarrin Nimmanahaeminda promised Parliament would pass reform measures in ``months, not years.'' The U.S.-ASEAN Business Council is a private organization comprising about 300 U.S. companies with substantial investments in Southeast Asia. David said the five executives in the delegation represented dlrs 300 billion in assets. The council's lobbying efforts with the U.S. and Southeast Asian governments have concentrated on removing tariffs and other barriers to overseas trade. The delegation will travel to Kuala Lumpur for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum Nov. 14-18. David said free trade should be a focus of discussions among the government leaders attending. ``What I hope they will say at APEC is a very strong affirmation of the free-trade agenda and a very strong affirmation of the foreign direct investment agenda,'' he added. ||||| The last time the Asia-Pacific region held its annual summit to promote free trade, Japan's prime minister assured everyone that his economy wouldn't be the next victim of Asia's financial crisis. Canada, the host country, was criticized by some in Canada for cracking down on demonstrations against Suharto, Indonesia's iron-fisted ruler at the time. And President Bill Clinton, whose popularity and booming economy were the envy of the planet, joined everyone else in urging countries such as Thailand and South Korea to bite the bullet and comply with the tough economic reforms that the International Monetary Fund was demanding. My, how the challenges have grown, as the 21-nation Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum prepares for its November summit in Malaysia. Japan _ the world's second largest economy, and Asia's financial anchor _ is suffering through its worst recession since World War II, and that bad news cost Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto his job. Suharto, who ruled Indonesia for 32 years, was driven out of power by a violent, pro-democracy movement, and the world's fourth most populous country is in real trouble financially. Wall Street is now coping with a steep downturn. And even though Clinton has promised to attend the APEC meeting, some people wonder how he can do that while facing an impeachment inquiry back home, thanks to the Monica Lewinsky sex scandal. Worse still, Asia's economic crisis is showing signs of going global, and more and more economists are criticizing the IMF for the way it is handling its bailouts. Other well-respected economists are going even further, questioning whether a free-market philosophy doesn't leave some countries too vulnerable to the chaos of major market speculators. In fact, Malaysia isn't the only country trying self-defense mechanisms such as capital controls. Hong Kong recently spent a fortune investing in its stock market to ward off speculators. And Washington is trying to figure out what to do with hedge funds after watching its Federal Reserve help bail out a major one that was going under, and seeing the investments of others send the U.S. dollar into a tailspin against Japan's yen. Ironically, Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, who made one of his typical anti-free-market comments during last year's summit, probably could have opened this year's with an ``I told you so.'' But even he is having major domestic problems. Mahathir, 72, who is widely credited with creating modern Malaysia during his 17 years in power, dismissed Anwar Ibrahim, his expected successor, in an apparent dispute over how to battle the country's economic mess. Instead of stepping aside, Anwar launched a reform movement across Malaysia that quickly led to big rallies demanding that Mahathir step down. The prime minister used riot police to thwart the protests, and jailed Anwar, charging him with corruption and sex crimes, and scheduling his trial for Nov. 2. The trial will be interrupted during the Nov. 12-18 APEC meetings, but Mahathir's treatment of Anwar and his reform movement already have been criticized by APEC members such as Australia, Indonesia, the Philippines and the United States. President B.J. Habibie of Indonesia and Philippine President Joseph Estrada consider Anwar a friend, and Estrada won't say whether he plans to attend this year's APEC summit. John S. Wolf, the U.S. ambassador for APEC, recently acknowledged that it won't be easy for APEC members to meet in Malaysia as the Asian crisis ``ricochets around the world with no clear sign what will happen next.'' But he also said the leaders of the 21 APEC members should aim for a productive meeting. Wolf said such gatherings give members a chance to discuss IMF bailout strategies and the free-market philosophy, to resolve bilateral disputes, and to continue to reduce tariff rates to help struggling countries improve their exports. ``This has been a lousy year in general. It has affected all of us. It has set APEC back, and there is no silver bullet to solve the crisis right away,'' said Wolf. ``But we should welcome the chance to work together and to develop a sense of what's possible.'' So far, APEC has been criticized for doing little during the financial crisis. But next month it hopes to complete a plan that would lift trade barriers in nine key industries: environmental products and services, energy, fisheries, forestry, toys, jewelry, medical goods, chemical products and telecommunications. Besides the United States, APEC, which accounts for half of all global trade _ consists of these members: Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, the Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan and Thailand. During the Malaysia meeting, APEC also will include three new members: Russia _ one of the latest victims of the financial crisis _ Vietnam and Peru.

A gloomy economic picture is facing Pacific-rim nations as they prepare for the Asian-Pacific economic summit in late November. The debates will focus on the global economy and reforms verses quick fixes such as capitol controls. Host Malaysia is in disarray over the firing, arrest and trial of the deputy prime minister, who has the support of the presidents of Indonesia and the Philippines. These men may not join the other 15 heads of state and the Taiwanese chief economic planner at the summit. Many fortunes, including Japan's and Clinton's, have fallen since the last meeting. Only good news is new reform plans in Thailand and a spicy, Malaysian lunch.

Taking a major step toward statehood, the Palestinians on Tuesday inaugurated Gaza International Airport, their first gateway to the world, with cheers, tears and an outpouring of patriotism. An Egypt Air plane was the first to land on the desert tarmac in the southern Gaza Strip at 8:30 a.m. (0630 gmt). But the emotional highlight was the touchdown of the first Palestinian Airlines plane, a Fokker 50. After landing, the pilot and co-pilot raised Palestinian flags high above their heads as they descended the stairway. A chant of ``Allahu Akbar,'' or God is Great, rose from of a crowd of thousands of Palestinians who had pushed their way onto the airfield to join the celebrations. ``You are a beautiful sight,'' Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat later told the Palestinian crew in the VIP lounge lavishly decorated with deep red Oriental carpets and wall mosaics. Throughout the morning, Arafat walked from the lounge to the tarmac seven times to greet planes from Egypt, Morocco, Jordan, Spain, the European Union and two Palestinian Airlines flights. ``This is a preparation for the declaration of the Palestinian state,'' Arafat said, smiling broadly and flashing a V sign. However, Israel continues to control the airspace and has the authority to shut down the airfield at any time. It will monitor arriving passengers and cargo, and can keep travelers or goods out if it considers them a danger to Israeli security. Disputes between Israel and the Palestinian Authority over security had delayed the airport opening for more than two years. In a sign of cooperation, Israeli and Palestinian security agents approached the Egypt Air jet together Tuesday and collected the passports of the passengers, including Egyptian Cabinet ministers and comedian Adel Imam, in white bags. Throughout the morning, there were spontaneous celebrations. As a police marching band played bagpipes, airport workers, policemen and Cabinet ministers held each other by their hands and danced in a circle. Some kissed and embraced their neighbors, others wiped away tears and several officers waved their rifles in the air. In one corner of the airfield, about 300 people gathered around a man and a boy riding mules that moved to the beat of drums. The dlrs 75 million airport will provide a boost to the troubled Palestinian economy, permitting the export of Palestinian flowers and farm produce that until now were shipped out via Israel, often with difficulties and delays. The airfield will also make it easier for Palestinians to travel abroad, although a majority of Gazans are probably too poor to be able to afford an air ticket. Until now, Palestinians wanting to fly abroad needed permission to enter Israel and fly out of Ben Gurion International airport near Tel Aviv. The other option was to travel by land to Jordan and catch flights there. Palestinians living in the West Bank still need a permit to cross Israel into Gaza to get to the airport. Travel is expected to become easier once a land route between the West Bank and Gaza opens next month. Israel's government does not permit Israelis to use the Palestinian airport, citing security reasons. However, Israeli Foreign Minister Ariel Sharon said Tuesday that this might change in the future. The opening of the airport was negotiated during last month's U.S.-sponsored Mideast summit near Washington. As part of the accord, Israel also withdrew troops in the northern West Bank last week and released 250 Palestinian prisoners. A Palestinian industrial park between Gaza and Israel is to open next month, while Israeli-Palestinian negotiations on a Palestinian seaport in Gaza are continuing. Gaza International, with the call letters LVGZ, was designed in an Oriental style with graceful arches and elaborate tiles imported from Morocco. The airport has one passenger terminal, a VIP lounge and a three-kilometer (two-mile)-long runway. A 1-meter (4-foot)-tall poster of Arafat hangs from the control tower wall. Palestine Airlines, with a small fleet that includes one Boeing 727, will begin direct flights to Jordan, Egypt and Saudi Arabia next week. In the first weeks, airport operations will have to rely on some improvisation. Major pieces of equipment, including the controls for the control tower, are still held up at the Israeli port of Ashdod. Tuesday's planes were guided to a safe landing by a portable control panel installed in a van. Despite its temporary shortcomings, many Palestinians consider the airport a big step toward independence. For those living in the small, overcrowded Gaza Strip, which is ringed by the Mediterranean on one side and by barbed wire on the other three, it may help ease the feeling of being trapped. ``Now we will be able to travel without the Israeli procedures that we usually must go through,'' said Khaled Salmeh, who studies economics at Gaza City University and plans to fly next month to Saudi Arabia, for a pilgrimage to Mecca. ||||| The first Palestinian commercial flight landed at Amman's Marka Airport on Saturday, inaugurating an air route between Jordan and the autonomous Gaza Strip. The Falcon F-50 short-haul plane carried 48 passengers, mostly Palestinian businessmen and students. The plane will return later in the day. Last weekend, the Palestinians inaugurated an airport in the Mediterranean city of Gaza under the U.S.-brokered Wye River accord which envisages Israel ceding more lands to the Palestinians in return for security guarantees. Jasser Ziyyad, director-general of the Jordanian Civil Aviation Authority, said Jordan agreed with the Palestinians earlier in the week on four weekly flights between them _ two by the Palestinian airline and two for Jordan. Meanwhile, Jordanian newspapers quoted unnamed Palestinian aviation officials as saying one more passenger plane will be added to the Palestinian fleet of three short-haul aircraft. It said the addition was necessary to transport an estimated 3,600 Palestinian Muslims who wish to travel to Saudi Arabia in early March to perform the annual pilgrimage to holy shrines in that country. ||||| Israeli security officials delayed two planes from taking off from the Palestinian airport on Wednesday, marking the latest tensions in a rare area of Israeli-Palestinian cooperation. ||||| Amid a flurry of last minute preparations, the fledgling Palestinian Authority prepared Thursday for a milestone on the road to maturity: its own airport. As part of the latest Mideast peace accord, Israeli and Palestinian officials were to sign a protocol for the airport Friday and Palestinian negotiators said Gaza International Airport would open Sunday. The airport has been nearly completed for months. On Thursday, officials added a few extra touches of yellow paint and fresh flowers. It was not clear who would be the first arrivals at the airport. Officials said Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat may travel by car to Egypt in order to fly into the airport. Others hinted the first international flight may be reserved for U.S. President Bill Clinton who is scheduled to visit Gaza in December. Egypt's Middle East News Agency said the first plane to land would be carrying Egypt's health minister and several doctors bearing medical supplies as gifts. Israel, which will oversee security at the airport, has forbidden its own citizens from using the airport initially, Israel's Channel 2 TV said. All flights, which must be approved by Israel in advance, would not be allowed to fly over Israeli airspace. After touring the airport Thursday, a U.S. official said more work was needed to be done before the airport was ready for Clinton. ``It may be a landing site for President Clinton, but we're not confirming,'' said the official who spoke on condition of anonymity. ``When you fly Air Force One, you're flying several planes and a lot of equipment,'' he said. The airport will be the first unfettered access route Palestinians will have out of the Gaza Strip. ||||| Amid a flurry of last minute preparations, the young Palestinian Authority prepared Thursday for a milestone on the road to maturity: its very own airport. As part of the latest Mideast peace accord, Israeli and Palestinian officials were to sign a protocol for the airport Friday and Palestinian negotiators said Gaza International Airport would open Sunday. The airport has been nearly completed for months but Thursday officials there added a few extra touches of yellow paint and fresh flowers. It was not clear who would be the first arrivals at the airport. Officials said Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat may travel by car to Egypt in order to fly into the airport. Others hinted the first international flight may be reserved for U.S. President Bill Clinton who is scheduled to visit Gaza in December. Egypt's Middle East News Agency said the first plane to land would be carrying Egypt's health minister and several doctors bearing medical supplies as gifts. Israel, which will oversee security at the airport, has forbidden its own citizens from using the airport initially, Israel's Channel 2 TV said. And all flights, which must be approved by Israel in advance, would not be allowed to fly over their airspace. After touring the airport Thursday, a U.S. official said more work needed to be done before the airport was ready for Clinton. ``It may be a landing site for President Clinton, but we're not confirming,'' said the official who spoke on condition of anonymity. ``When you fly Air Force One, you're flying several planes and a lot of equipment,'' he said. The airport will be the first unfettered access route Palestinians will have out of the Gaza Strip. ||||| Israel has threatened to close down the Palestinian-run Gaza airport over a security violation, an Israeli official said Tuesday, a move that could further undermine the already fragile peace process. Palestinian airport workers refused to allow Israeli security officials to check the identity of passengers who arrived on an Egyptian plane Sunday afternoon, most of whom worked for the Palestinian Authority, according to Civilian Airport Authority Director Nir Yarkoni. ``The Transportation Minister asked me to tell the Palestinians that if this continues, we won't allow the airport operate,'' he told The Associated Press. Yarkoni said he conveyed the message in a letter Monday to chairman of the Palestinian Civil Aviation Authority Brig. Gen. Fayez Zeidan. Zeidan was not immediately available for comment. Israel retains security control over flights arriving to Gaza International Airport. The airport's opening last month, stipulated by the accords brokered by U.S. President Bill Clinton at Wye River, Maryland in October, was hailed by Palestinians as a milestone toward independence and statehood. Since then, Israel has accused the Palestinians of failing to contain anti-Israel violence, and has frozen the accords. The Palestinians, in turn, accuse Israel of reneging on an agreement to release Palestinians jailed for anti-Israel activities. ||||| Israel has threatened to close down the Palestinian-run Gaza airport over a security violation, an Israeli official said Tuesday, a move that could further undermine the already fragile peace process. Palestinian airport workers refused to allow Israeli security officials to check the identity of passengers who arrived on an Egyptian plane Sunday afternoon, most of whom worked for the Palestinian Authority, according to Civilian Airport Authority Director Nir Yarkoni. ``The Transportation Minister asked me to tell the Palestinians that if this continues, we won't allow the airport operate,'' he told The Associated Press. Yarkoni said he conveyed the message in a letter sent Monday to chairman of the Palestinian Civil Aviation Authority Brig. Gen. Fayez Zeidan. Zeidan was not immediately available for comment. Israel retains security control over flights arriving to Gaza International Airport. The airport's opening last month, stipulated by the accords brokered by U.S. President Bill Clinton at Wye River, Maryland in October, was hailed by Palestinians as a milestone toward independence and statehood. Since then, Israel has accused the Palestinians of failing to contain anti-Israel violence, and has frozen the accords. The Palestinians, in turn, accuse Israel of reneging on an agreement to release Palestinians jailed for anti-Israel activities. ||||| The control tower is still without controls, the check-in counter has no computers and the runway can't function after dark for lack of flood lights. Despite such temporary shortcomings, Gaza International Airport is set to open Tuesday, aided by a little improvisation and a lot of patriotic pride. ``It's a glorious feeling of independence, a feeling that we are open to the world,'' said Fawzi Tabil, a Palestinian watching while workers painted white lines Monday on the tarmac in the southern Gaza Strip, close to the Egyptian border. Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat planned to be on hand Tuesday morning when a plane from Cairo carrying Egyptian officials becomes the first arrival. At half-hour intervals, six more planes are to come in from places such as Morocco and Spain. The European Union, which donated dlrs 38 million for equipment and training, is sending its Mideast envoy on a special plane. The airport opening had been held up for two years because of disputes between Israel and the Palestinian Authority over Israel's role in monitoring passengers and cargo. In the end, Israel will have a say over who and what is coming into the Gaza, but the Israeli monitors will operate discretely, behind one-way mirrors, as they do now at the Rafah and Allenby Bridge crossings into autonomous Palestinian areas. The airport protocol was signed last week, as part of the Wye River land-for-security deal between Israel and the Palestinians. Tomer Degani, a spokesman for the Israeli military government in Gaza, said periodic security closures, which bar Palestinians from entering Israel, would not effect the operation of the airport. He said Israel was inspecting certain gear such as X-ray machines and electro-magnet equipment for safety but that it wouldn't hold-up the airport from opening. The head of the Palestinian Civil Aviation Authority, Fayez Zeidan, was not available Monday for comment. For the time being, it will still be a bit of an adventure to fly out of Gaza International or to land there. Palestinian officials say the equipment for the control tower, the computers for the check-in counters and the flood lights are still at the Israeli port of Ashdod. Nir Yarkoni, a spokesman for Israel's Civil Aviation Authority, acknowledged delays in some of the equipment reaching Dahanieh but said he did not know the reasons. Degani, from the Israeli military government, said some equipment was being held up by customs. Portable control, 12th graf pvs ||||| Israeli security officials delayed two planes from taking off from the Palestinian airport on Wednesday, the latest tensions in a rare area of Israeli-Palestinian cooperation. A plane bound for Amman, Jordan was delayed for two hours over an Israeli demand that Palestinian officials inspect the luggage of a Palestinian passenger, Israel radio reported. The plane left with the passenger aboard, but without his luggage. Israeli officials also delayed a plane making a stopover from Saudi Arabia to Cairo, it said. Israeli airport security officials were not available for comment. Abdel Razek Yehia, a Palestinian official who helped negotiate the airport's opening, confirmed the delays. He said such differences did not undermine the peace process. ``Every day we have differences,'' he told The Associated Press. ``We are all doing all our best to continue the peace process.'' The airport's opening last month, stipulated by the accords brokered by U.S. President Bill Clinton at Wye River, Maryland in October, was hailed by Palestinians as a milestone toward independence and statehood. Israel retains security control over flights arriving at Gaza International Airport, and Palestinian security officials consult with their Israeli counterparts. Earlier this week, Israel threatened to close down the Gaza airport when Palestinian airport workers refused to allow Israeli security officials to check the identity of passengers who arrived on an Egyptian plane, most of whom worked for the Palestinian Authority. Palestinian officials said that Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and his entourage were aboard the plane in question, and that exempted the plane from Israeli security checks. Since Wye, Israel has accused the Palestinians of failing to contain anti-Israel violence, and has frozen the accords. The Palestinians, in turn, accuse Israel of reneging on an agreement to release Palestinians jailed for anti-Israel activities. ||||| Taking a major step toward statehood, the Palestinians on Tuesday inaugurated Gaza International Airport, their first gateway to the world, with cheers, tears and an outpouring of patriotism. An Egypt Air plane was the first to land on the desert tarmac in the southern Gaza Strip at 8:30 a.m. (0630 gmt). But the emotional highlight was the touchdown of the first Palestinian Airlines plane, a Fokker 50. After landing, the pilot and co-pilot raised Palestinian flags high above their heads as they descended the stairway. A chant of ``Allahu Akbar,'' or God is Great, rose from of a crowd of thousands of Palestinians who had pushed their way onto the airfield to join the celebrations. ``You are a beautiful sight,'' Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat later told the Palestinian crew in the VIP lounge lavishly decorated with deep red Oriental carpets and wall mosaics. Throughout the morning, Arafat walked from the lounge to the tarmac seven times to greet planes from Egypt, Morocco, Jordan, Spain, the European Union and two Palestinian Airlines flights. ``This is a preparation for the declaration of the Palestinian state,'' Arafat said, smiling broadly and flashing a V sign. However, Israel continues to control the airspace and has the authority to shut down the airfield at any time. It will monitor arriving passengers and cargo, and can keep travelers or goods out if it considers them a danger to Israeli security. Disputes between Israel and the Palestinian Authority over security had delayed the airport opening for more than two years. In a sign of cooperation, Israeli and Palestinian security agents approached the Egypt Air jet together Tuesday and collected the passports of the passengers, including Egyptian Cabinet ministers and comedian Adel Imam, in white bags. Throughout the morning, there were spontaneous celebrations. As a police marching band played bagpipes, airport workers, policemen and Cabinet ministers held each other by their hands and danced in a circle. Some kissed and embraced their neighbors, others wiped away tears and several officers waved their rifles in the air. In one corner of the airfield, about 300 people gathered around a man and a boy riding mules that moved to the beat of drums. The dlrs 75 million airport will provide a boost to the troubled Palestinian economy, permitting the export of Palestinian flowers and farm produce that until now were shipped out via Israel, often with difficulties and delays. The airfield will also make it easier for Palestinians to travel abroad, although a majority of Gazans are probably too poor to be able to afford an air ticket. Until now, Palestinians wanting to fly abroad needed permission to enter Israel and fly out of Ben Gurion International airport near Tel Aviv. The other option was to travel by land to Jordan and catch flights there. Palestinians living in the West Bank still need a permit to cross Israel into Gaza to get to the airport. Travel is expected to become easier once a land route between the West Bank and Gaza opens next month. Israel's government does not permit Israelis to use the Palestinian airport, citing security reasons. However, Israeli Foreign Minister Ariel Sharon said Tuesday that this might change in the future. The opening of the airport was negotiated during last month's U.S.-sponsored Mideast summit near Washington. As part of the accord, Israel also withdrew troops in the northern West Bank last week and released 250 Palestinian prisoners. A Palestinian industrial park between Gaza and Israel is to open next month, while Israeli-Palestinian negotiations on a Palestinian seaport in Gaza are continuing. Gaza International, with the call letters LVGZ, was designed in an Oriental style with graceful arches and elaborate tiles imported from Morocco. The airport has one passenger terminal, a VIP lounge and a three-kilometer (two-mile)-long runway. A 1-meter (4-foot)-tall poster of Arafat hangs from the control tower wall. Palestine Airlines, with a small fleet that includes one Boeing 727, will begin direct flights to Jordan, Egypt and Saudi Arabia next week. In the first weeks, airport operations will have to rely on some improvisation. Major pieces of equipment, including the controls for the control tower, are still held up at the Israeli port of Ashdod. Tuesday's planes were guided to a safe landing by a portable control panel installed in a van. Despite its temporary shortcomings, many Palestinians consider the airport a big step toward independence. For those living in the small, overcrowded Gaza Strip, which is ringed by the Mediterranean on one side and by barbed wire on the other three, it may help ease the feeling of being trapped. ``Now we will be able to travel without the Israeli procedures that we usually must go through,'' said Khaled Salmeh, who studies economics at Gaza City University and plans to fly next month to Saudi Arabia, for a pilgrimage to Mecca.

The Wye River Accord provided for an airport at Gaza, giving Palestinians their own airport with Israel in charge of security. Gaza International Airport opened on Nov. 24, 1998 with arrival of an Egypt Air flight, but the highlight was landing of the first Palestinian Airlines plane, greeted joyously by a celebrating crowd. Yasser Arafat was on hand to greet these and later flights. The airport was expected to provide stimulus to the Palestinian economy as well as facilitating Palestinians' travel abroad. Despite frequent "differences" between Palestinian and Israeli airport officials, the airport was still functioning at the end of the year.

Taking a major step toward statehood, the Palestinians on Tuesday inaugurated Gaza International Airport, their first gateway to the world, with cheers, tears and an outpouring of patriotism. An Egypt Air plane was the first to land on the desert tarmac in the southern Gaza Strip at 8:30 a.m. (0630 gmt). But the emotional highlight was the touchdown of the first Palestinian Airlines plane, a Fokker 50. After landing, the pilot and co-pilot raised Palestinian flags high above their heads as they descended the stairway. A chant of ``Allahu Akbar,'' or God is Great, rose from of a crowd of thousands of Palestinians who had pushed their way onto the airfield to join the celebrations. ``You are a beautiful sight,'' Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat later told the Palestinian crew in the VIP lounge lavishly decorated with deep red Oriental carpets and wall mosaics. Throughout the morning, Arafat walked from the lounge to the tarmac seven times to greet planes from Egypt, Morocco, Jordan, Spain, the European Union and two Palestinian Airlines flights. ``This is a preparation for the declaration of the Palestinian state,'' Arafat said, smiling broadly and flashing a V sign. However, Israel continues to control the airspace and has the authority to shut down the airfield at any time. It will monitor arriving passengers and cargo, and can keep travelers or goods out if it considers them a danger to Israeli security. Disputes between Israel and the Palestinian Authority over security had delayed the airport opening for more than two years. In a sign of cooperation, Israeli and Palestinian security agents approached the Egypt Air jet together Tuesday and collected the passports of the passengers, including Egyptian Cabinet ministers and comedian Adel Imam, in white bags. Throughout the morning, there were spontaneous celebrations. As a police marching band played bagpipes, airport workers, policemen and Cabinet ministers held each other by their hands and danced in a circle. Some kissed and embraced their neighbors, others wiped away tears and several officers waved their rifles in the air. In one corner of the airfield, about 300 people gathered around a man and a boy riding mules that moved to the beat of drums. The dlrs 75 million airport will provide a boost to the troubled Palestinian economy, permitting the export of Palestinian flowers and farm produce that until now were shipped out via Israel, often with difficulties and delays. The airfield will also make it easier for Palestinians to travel abroad, although a majority of Gazans are probably too poor to be able to afford an air ticket. Until now, Palestinians wanting to fly abroad needed permission to enter Israel and fly out of Ben Gurion International airport near Tel Aviv. The other option was to travel by land to Jordan and catch flights there. Palestinians living in the West Bank still need a permit to cross Israel into Gaza to get to the airport. Travel is expected to become easier once a land route between the West Bank and Gaza opens next month. Israel's government does not permit Israelis to use the Palestinian airport, citing security reasons. However, Israeli Foreign Minister Ariel Sharon said Tuesday that this might change in the future. The opening of the airport was negotiated during last month's U.S.-sponsored Mideast summit near Washington. As part of the accord, Israel also withdrew troops in the northern West Bank last week and released 250 Palestinian prisoners. A Palestinian industrial park between Gaza and Israel is to open next month, while Israeli-Palestinian negotiations on a Palestinian seaport in Gaza are continuing. Gaza International, with the call letters LVGZ, was designed in an Oriental style with graceful arches and elaborate tiles imported from Morocco. The airport has one passenger terminal, a VIP lounge and a three-kilometer (two-mile)-long runway. A 1-meter (4-foot)-tall poster of Arafat hangs from the control tower wall. Palestine Airlines, with a small fleet that includes one Boeing 727, will begin direct flights to Jordan, Egypt and Saudi Arabia next week. In the first weeks, airport operations will have to rely on some improvisation. Major pieces of equipment, including the controls for the control tower, are still held up at the Israeli port of Ashdod. Tuesday's planes were guided to a safe landing by a portable control panel installed in a van. Despite its temporary shortcomings, many Palestinians consider the airport a big step toward independence. For those living in the small, overcrowded Gaza Strip, which is ringed by the Mediterranean on one side and by barbed wire on the other three, it may help ease the feeling of being trapped. ``Now we will be able to travel without the Israeli procedures that we usually must go through,'' said Khaled Salmeh, who studies economics at Gaza City University and plans to fly next month to Saudi Arabia, for a pilgrimage to Mecca. ||||| The first Palestinian commercial flight landed at Amman's Marka Airport on Saturday, inaugurating an air route between Jordan and the autonomous Gaza Strip. The Falcon F-50 short-haul plane carried 48 passengers, mostly Palestinian businessmen and students. The plane will return later in the day. Last weekend, the Palestinians inaugurated an airport in the Mediterranean city of Gaza under the U.S.-brokered Wye River accord which envisages Israel ceding more lands to the Palestinians in return for security guarantees. Jasser Ziyyad, director-general of the Jordanian Civil Aviation Authority, said Jordan agreed with the Palestinians earlier in the week on four weekly flights between them _ two by the Palestinian airline and two for Jordan. Meanwhile, Jordanian newspapers quoted unnamed Palestinian aviation officials as saying one more passenger plane will be added to the Palestinian fleet of three short-haul aircraft. It said the addition was necessary to transport an estimated 3,600 Palestinian Muslims who wish to travel to Saudi Arabia in early March to perform the annual pilgrimage to holy shrines in that country. ||||| Israeli security officials delayed two planes from taking off from the Palestinian airport on Wednesday, marking the latest tensions in a rare area of Israeli-Palestinian cooperation. ||||| Amid a flurry of last minute preparations, the fledgling Palestinian Authority prepared Thursday for a milestone on the road to maturity: its own airport. As part of the latest Mideast peace accord, Israeli and Palestinian officials were to sign a protocol for the airport Friday and Palestinian negotiators said Gaza International Airport would open Sunday. The airport has been nearly completed for months. On Thursday, officials added a few extra touches of yellow paint and fresh flowers. It was not clear who would be the first arrivals at the airport. Officials said Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat may travel by car to Egypt in order to fly into the airport. Others hinted the first international flight may be reserved for U.S. President Bill Clinton who is scheduled to visit Gaza in December. Egypt's Middle East News Agency said the first plane to land would be carrying Egypt's health minister and several doctors bearing medical supplies as gifts. Israel, which will oversee security at the airport, has forbidden its own citizens from using the airport initially, Israel's Channel 2 TV said. All flights, which must be approved by Israel in advance, would not be allowed to fly over Israeli airspace. After touring the airport Thursday, a U.S. official said more work was needed to be done before the airport was ready for Clinton. ``It may be a landing site for President Clinton, but we're not confirming,'' said the official who spoke on condition of anonymity. ``When you fly Air Force One, you're flying several planes and a lot of equipment,'' he said. The airport will be the first unfettered access route Palestinians will have out of the Gaza Strip. ||||| Amid a flurry of last minute preparations, the young Palestinian Authority prepared Thursday for a milestone on the road to maturity: its very own airport. As part of the latest Mideast peace accord, Israeli and Palestinian officials were to sign a protocol for the airport Friday and Palestinian negotiators said Gaza International Airport would open Sunday. The airport has been nearly completed for months but Thursday officials there added a few extra touches of yellow paint and fresh flowers. It was not clear who would be the first arrivals at the airport. Officials said Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat may travel by car to Egypt in order to fly into the airport. Others hinted the first international flight may be reserved for U.S. President Bill Clinton who is scheduled to visit Gaza in December. Egypt's Middle East News Agency said the first plane to land would be carrying Egypt's health minister and several doctors bearing medical supplies as gifts. Israel, which will oversee security at the airport, has forbidden its own citizens from using the airport initially, Israel's Channel 2 TV said. And all flights, which must be approved by Israel in advance, would not be allowed to fly over their airspace. After touring the airport Thursday, a U.S. official said more work needed to be done before the airport was ready for Clinton. ``It may be a landing site for President Clinton, but we're not confirming,'' said the official who spoke on condition of anonymity. ``When you fly Air Force One, you're flying several planes and a lot of equipment,'' he said. The airport will be the first unfettered access route Palestinians will have out of the Gaza Strip. ||||| Israel has threatened to close down the Palestinian-run Gaza airport over a security violation, an Israeli official said Tuesday, a move that could further undermine the already fragile peace process. Palestinian airport workers refused to allow Israeli security officials to check the identity of passengers who arrived on an Egyptian plane Sunday afternoon, most of whom worked for the Palestinian Authority, according to Civilian Airport Authority Director Nir Yarkoni. ``The Transportation Minister asked me to tell the Palestinians that if this continues, we won't allow the airport operate,'' he told The Associated Press. Yarkoni said he conveyed the message in a letter Monday to chairman of the Palestinian Civil Aviation Authority Brig. Gen. Fayez Zeidan. Zeidan was not immediately available for comment. Israel retains security control over flights arriving to Gaza International Airport. The airport's opening last month, stipulated by the accords brokered by U.S. President Bill Clinton at Wye River, Maryland in October, was hailed by Palestinians as a milestone toward independence and statehood. Since then, Israel has accused the Palestinians of failing to contain anti-Israel violence, and has frozen the accords. The Palestinians, in turn, accuse Israel of reneging on an agreement to release Palestinians jailed for anti-Israel activities. ||||| Israel has threatened to close down the Palestinian-run Gaza airport over a security violation, an Israeli official said Tuesday, a move that could further undermine the already fragile peace process. Palestinian airport workers refused to allow Israeli security officials to check the identity of passengers who arrived on an Egyptian plane Sunday afternoon, most of whom worked for the Palestinian Authority, according to Civilian Airport Authority Director Nir Yarkoni. ``The Transportation Minister asked me to tell the Palestinians that if this continues, we won't allow the airport operate,'' he told The Associated Press. Yarkoni said he conveyed the message in a letter sent Monday to chairman of the Palestinian Civil Aviation Authority Brig. Gen. Fayez Zeidan. Zeidan was not immediately available for comment. Israel retains security control over flights arriving to Gaza International Airport. The airport's opening last month, stipulated by the accords brokered by U.S. President Bill Clinton at Wye River, Maryland in October, was hailed by Palestinians as a milestone toward independence and statehood. Since then, Israel has accused the Palestinians of failing to contain anti-Israel violence, and has frozen the accords. The Palestinians, in turn, accuse Israel of reneging on an agreement to release Palestinians jailed for anti-Israel activities. ||||| The control tower is still without controls, the check-in counter has no computers and the runway can't function after dark for lack of flood lights. Despite such temporary shortcomings, Gaza International Airport is set to open Tuesday, aided by a little improvisation and a lot of patriotic pride. ``It's a glorious feeling of independence, a feeling that we are open to the world,'' said Fawzi Tabil, a Palestinian watching while workers painted white lines Monday on the tarmac in the southern Gaza Strip, close to the Egyptian border. Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat planned to be on hand Tuesday morning when a plane from Cairo carrying Egyptian officials becomes the first arrival. At half-hour intervals, six more planes are to come in from places such as Morocco and Spain. The European Union, which donated dlrs 38 million for equipment and training, is sending its Mideast envoy on a special plane. The airport opening had been held up for two years because of disputes between Israel and the Palestinian Authority over Israel's role in monitoring passengers and cargo. In the end, Israel will have a say over who and what is coming into the Gaza, but the Israeli monitors will operate discretely, behind one-way mirrors, as they do now at the Rafah and Allenby Bridge crossings into autonomous Palestinian areas. The airport protocol was signed last week, as part of the Wye River land-for-security deal between Israel and the Palestinians. Tomer Degani, a spokesman for the Israeli military government in Gaza, said periodic security closures, which bar Palestinians from entering Israel, would not effect the operation of the airport. He said Israel was inspecting certain gear such as X-ray machines and electro-magnet equipment for safety but that it wouldn't hold-up the airport from opening. The head of the Palestinian Civil Aviation Authority, Fayez Zeidan, was not available Monday for comment. For the time being, it will still be a bit of an adventure to fly out of Gaza International or to land there. Palestinian officials say the equipment for the control tower, the computers for the check-in counters and the flood lights are still at the Israeli port of Ashdod. Nir Yarkoni, a spokesman for Israel's Civil Aviation Authority, acknowledged delays in some of the equipment reaching Dahanieh but said he did not know the reasons. Degani, from the Israeli military government, said some equipment was being held up by customs. Portable control, 12th graf pvs ||||| Israeli security officials delayed two planes from taking off from the Palestinian airport on Wednesday, the latest tensions in a rare area of Israeli-Palestinian cooperation. A plane bound for Amman, Jordan was delayed for two hours over an Israeli demand that Palestinian officials inspect the luggage of a Palestinian passenger, Israel radio reported. The plane left with the passenger aboard, but without his luggage. Israeli officials also delayed a plane making a stopover from Saudi Arabia to Cairo, it said. Israeli airport security officials were not available for comment. Abdel Razek Yehia, a Palestinian official who helped negotiate the airport's opening, confirmed the delays. He said such differences did not undermine the peace process. ``Every day we have differences,'' he told The Associated Press. ``We are all doing all our best to continue the peace process.'' The airport's opening last month, stipulated by the accords brokered by U.S. President Bill Clinton at Wye River, Maryland in October, was hailed by Palestinians as a milestone toward independence and statehood. Israel retains security control over flights arriving at Gaza International Airport, and Palestinian security officials consult with their Israeli counterparts. Earlier this week, Israel threatened to close down the Gaza airport when Palestinian airport workers refused to allow Israeli security officials to check the identity of passengers who arrived on an Egyptian plane, most of whom worked for the Palestinian Authority. Palestinian officials said that Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and his entourage were aboard the plane in question, and that exempted the plane from Israeli security checks. Since Wye, Israel has accused the Palestinians of failing to contain anti-Israel violence, and has frozen the accords. The Palestinians, in turn, accuse Israel of reneging on an agreement to release Palestinians jailed for anti-Israel activities. ||||| Taking a major step toward statehood, the Palestinians on Tuesday inaugurated Gaza International Airport, their first gateway to the world, with cheers, tears and an outpouring of patriotism. An Egypt Air plane was the first to land on the desert tarmac in the southern Gaza Strip at 8:30 a.m. (0630 gmt). But the emotional highlight was the touchdown of the first Palestinian Airlines plane, a Fokker 50. After landing, the pilot and co-pilot raised Palestinian flags high above their heads as they descended the stairway. A chant of ``Allahu Akbar,'' or God is Great, rose from of a crowd of thousands of Palestinians who had pushed their way onto the airfield to join the celebrations. ``You are a beautiful sight,'' Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat later told the Palestinian crew in the VIP lounge lavishly decorated with deep red Oriental carpets and wall mosaics. Throughout the morning, Arafat walked from the lounge to the tarmac seven times to greet planes from Egypt, Morocco, Jordan, Spain, the European Union and two Palestinian Airlines flights. ``This is a preparation for the declaration of the Palestinian state,'' Arafat said, smiling broadly and flashing a V sign. However, Israel continues to control the airspace and has the authority to shut down the airfield at any time. It will monitor arriving passengers and cargo, and can keep travelers or goods out if it considers them a danger to Israeli security. Disputes between Israel and the Palestinian Authority over security had delayed the airport opening for more than two years. In a sign of cooperation, Israeli and Palestinian security agents approached the Egypt Air jet together Tuesday and collected the passports of the passengers, including Egyptian Cabinet ministers and comedian Adel Imam, in white bags. Throughout the morning, there were spontaneous celebrations. As a police marching band played bagpipes, airport workers, policemen and Cabinet ministers held each other by their hands and danced in a circle. Some kissed and embraced their neighbors, others wiped away tears and several officers waved their rifles in the air. In one corner of the airfield, about 300 people gathered around a man and a boy riding mules that moved to the beat of drums. The dlrs 75 million airport will provide a boost to the troubled Palestinian economy, permitting the export of Palestinian flowers and farm produce that until now were shipped out via Israel, often with difficulties and delays. The airfield will also make it easier for Palestinians to travel abroad, although a majority of Gazans are probably too poor to be able to afford an air ticket. Until now, Palestinians wanting to fly abroad needed permission to enter Israel and fly out of Ben Gurion International airport near Tel Aviv. The other option was to travel by land to Jordan and catch flights there. Palestinians living in the West Bank still need a permit to cross Israel into Gaza to get to the airport. Travel is expected to become easier once a land route between the West Bank and Gaza opens next month. Israel's government does not permit Israelis to use the Palestinian airport, citing security reasons. However, Israeli Foreign Minister Ariel Sharon said Tuesday that this might change in the future. The opening of the airport was negotiated during last month's U.S.-sponsored Mideast summit near Washington. As part of the accord, Israel also withdrew troops in the northern West Bank last week and released 250 Palestinian prisoners. A Palestinian industrial park between Gaza and Israel is to open next month, while Israeli-Palestinian negotiations on a Palestinian seaport in Gaza are continuing. Gaza International, with the call letters LVGZ, was designed in an Oriental style with graceful arches and elaborate tiles imported from Morocco. The airport has one passenger terminal, a VIP lounge and a three-kilometer (two-mile)-long runway. A 1-meter (4-foot)-tall poster of Arafat hangs from the control tower wall. Palestine Airlines, with a small fleet that includes one Boeing 727, will begin direct flights to Jordan, Egypt and Saudi Arabia next week. In the first weeks, airport operations will have to rely on some improvisation. Major pieces of equipment, including the controls for the control tower, are still held up at the Israeli port of Ashdod. Tuesday's planes were guided to a safe landing by a portable control panel installed in a van. Despite its temporary shortcomings, many Palestinians consider the airport a big step toward independence. For those living in the small, overcrowded Gaza Strip, which is ringed by the Mediterranean on one side and by barbed wire on the other three, it may help ease the feeling of being trapped. ``Now we will be able to travel without the Israeli procedures that we usually must go through,'' said Khaled Salmeh, who studies economics at Gaza City University and plans to fly next month to Saudi Arabia, for a pilgrimage to Mecca.

On Tuesday, Palestinians celebrated the inauguration of the new Gaza International Airport as part of the latest Mideast peace accord. It will be the first unfettered access route Palestinians have ever had out of the Gaza Strip. An Egypt Air plane was the first to land, followed by an emotional touchdown of the first Palestinian plane. Palestinian leader Arafat greeted the crew and seven other planes. Saturday, a Palestinian flight inaugurated an air route between Gaza and Jordan. However, tensions developed when Israeli security officials delayed two planes from taking off when Palestinian workers refused to let them check a passenger's identity.

Taking a major step toward statehood, the Palestinians on Tuesday inaugurated Gaza International Airport, their first gateway to the world, with cheers, tears and an outpouring of patriotism. An Egypt Air plane was the first to land on the desert tarmac in the southern Gaza Strip at 8:30 a.m. (0630 gmt). But the emotional highlight was the touchdown of the first Palestinian Airlines plane, a Fokker 50. After landing, the pilot and co-pilot raised Palestinian flags high above their heads as they descended the stairway. A chant of ``Allahu Akbar,'' or God is Great, rose from of a crowd of thousands of Palestinians who had pushed their way onto the airfield to join the celebrations. ``You are a beautiful sight,'' Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat later told the Palestinian crew in the VIP lounge lavishly decorated with deep red Oriental carpets and wall mosaics. Throughout the morning, Arafat walked from the lounge to the tarmac seven times to greet planes from Egypt, Morocco, Jordan, Spain, the European Union and two Palestinian Airlines flights. ``This is a preparation for the declaration of the Palestinian state,'' Arafat said, smiling broadly and flashing a V sign. However, Israel continues to control the airspace and has the authority to shut down the airfield at any time. It will monitor arriving passengers and cargo, and can keep travelers or goods out if it considers them a danger to Israeli security. Disputes between Israel and the Palestinian Authority over security had delayed the airport opening for more than two years. In a sign of cooperation, Israeli and Palestinian security agents approached the Egypt Air jet together Tuesday and collected the passports of the passengers, including Egyptian Cabinet ministers and comedian Adel Imam, in white bags. Throughout the morning, there were spontaneous celebrations. As a police marching band played bagpipes, airport workers, policemen and Cabinet ministers held each other by their hands and danced in a circle. Some kissed and embraced their neighbors, others wiped away tears and several officers waved their rifles in the air. In one corner of the airfield, about 300 people gathered around a man and a boy riding mules that moved to the beat of drums. The dlrs 75 million airport will provide a boost to the troubled Palestinian economy, permitting the export of Palestinian flowers and farm produce that until now were shipped out via Israel, often with difficulties and delays. The airfield will also make it easier for Palestinians to travel abroad, although a majority of Gazans are probably too poor to be able to afford an air ticket. Until now, Palestinians wanting to fly abroad needed permission to enter Israel and fly out of Ben Gurion International airport near Tel Aviv. The other option was to travel by land to Jordan and catch flights there. Palestinians living in the West Bank still need a permit to cross Israel into Gaza to get to the airport. Travel is expected to become easier once a land route between the West Bank and Gaza opens next month. Israel's government does not permit Israelis to use the Palestinian airport, citing security reasons. However, Israeli Foreign Minister Ariel Sharon said Tuesday that this might change in the future. The opening of the airport was negotiated during last month's U.S.-sponsored Mideast summit near Washington. As part of the accord, Israel also withdrew troops in the northern West Bank last week and released 250 Palestinian prisoners. A Palestinian industrial park between Gaza and Israel is to open next month, while Israeli-Palestinian negotiations on a Palestinian seaport in Gaza are continuing. Gaza International, with the call letters LVGZ, was designed in an Oriental style with graceful arches and elaborate tiles imported from Morocco. The airport has one passenger terminal, a VIP lounge and a three-kilometer (two-mile)-long runway. A 1-meter (4-foot)-tall poster of Arafat hangs from the control tower wall. Palestine Airlines, with a small fleet that includes one Boeing 727, will begin direct flights to Jordan, Egypt and Saudi Arabia next week. In the first weeks, airport operations will have to rely on some improvisation. Major pieces of equipment, including the controls for the control tower, are still held up at the Israeli port of Ashdod. Tuesday's planes were guided to a safe landing by a portable control panel installed in a van. Despite its temporary shortcomings, many Palestinians consider the airport a big step toward independence. For those living in the small, overcrowded Gaza Strip, which is ringed by the Mediterranean on one side and by barbed wire on the other three, it may help ease the feeling of being trapped. ``Now we will be able to travel without the Israeli procedures that we usually must go through,'' said Khaled Salmeh, who studies economics at Gaza City University and plans to fly next month to Saudi Arabia, for a pilgrimage to Mecca. ||||| The first Palestinian commercial flight landed at Amman's Marka Airport on Saturday, inaugurating an air route between Jordan and the autonomous Gaza Strip. The Falcon F-50 short-haul plane carried 48 passengers, mostly Palestinian businessmen and students. The plane will return later in the day. Last weekend, the Palestinians inaugurated an airport in the Mediterranean city of Gaza under the U.S.-brokered Wye River accord which envisages Israel ceding more lands to the Palestinians in return for security guarantees. Jasser Ziyyad, director-general of the Jordanian Civil Aviation Authority, said Jordan agreed with the Palestinians earlier in the week on four weekly flights between them _ two by the Palestinian airline and two for Jordan. Meanwhile, Jordanian newspapers quoted unnamed Palestinian aviation officials as saying one more passenger plane will be added to the Palestinian fleet of three short-haul aircraft. It said the addition was necessary to transport an estimated 3,600 Palestinian Muslims who wish to travel to Saudi Arabia in early March to perform the annual pilgrimage to holy shrines in that country. ||||| Israeli security officials delayed two planes from taking off from the Palestinian airport on Wednesday, marking the latest tensions in a rare area of Israeli-Palestinian cooperation. ||||| Amid a flurry of last minute preparations, the fledgling Palestinian Authority prepared Thursday for a milestone on the road to maturity: its own airport. As part of the latest Mideast peace accord, Israeli and Palestinian officials were to sign a protocol for the airport Friday and Palestinian negotiators said Gaza International Airport would open Sunday. The airport has been nearly completed for months. On Thursday, officials added a few extra touches of yellow paint and fresh flowers. It was not clear who would be the first arrivals at the airport. Officials said Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat may travel by car to Egypt in order to fly into the airport. Others hinted the first international flight may be reserved for U.S. President Bill Clinton who is scheduled to visit Gaza in December. Egypt's Middle East News Agency said the first plane to land would be carrying Egypt's health minister and several doctors bearing medical supplies as gifts. Israel, which will oversee security at the airport, has forbidden its own citizens from using the airport initially, Israel's Channel 2 TV said. All flights, which must be approved by Israel in advance, would not be allowed to fly over Israeli airspace. After touring the airport Thursday, a U.S. official said more work was needed to be done before the airport was ready for Clinton. ``It may be a landing site for President Clinton, but we're not confirming,'' said the official who spoke on condition of anonymity. ``When you fly Air Force One, you're flying several planes and a lot of equipment,'' he said. The airport will be the first unfettered access route Palestinians will have out of the Gaza Strip. ||||| Amid a flurry of last minute preparations, the young Palestinian Authority prepared Thursday for a milestone on the road to maturity: its very own airport. As part of the latest Mideast peace accord, Israeli and Palestinian officials were to sign a protocol for the airport Friday and Palestinian negotiators said Gaza International Airport would open Sunday. The airport has been nearly completed for months but Thursday officials there added a few extra touches of yellow paint and fresh flowers. It was not clear who would be the first arrivals at the airport. Officials said Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat may travel by car to Egypt in order to fly into the airport. Others hinted the first international flight may be reserved for U.S. President Bill Clinton who is scheduled to visit Gaza in December. Egypt's Middle East News Agency said the first plane to land would be carrying Egypt's health minister and several doctors bearing medical supplies as gifts. Israel, which will oversee security at the airport, has forbidden its own citizens from using the airport initially, Israel's Channel 2 TV said. And all flights, which must be approved by Israel in advance, would not be allowed to fly over their airspace. After touring the airport Thursday, a U.S. official said more work needed to be done before the airport was ready for Clinton. ``It may be a landing site for President Clinton, but we're not confirming,'' said the official who spoke on condition of anonymity. ``When you fly Air Force One, you're flying several planes and a lot of equipment,'' he said. The airport will be the first unfettered access route Palestinians will have out of the Gaza Strip. ||||| Israel has threatened to close down the Palestinian-run Gaza airport over a security violation, an Israeli official said Tuesday, a move that could further undermine the already fragile peace process. Palestinian airport workers refused to allow Israeli security officials to check the identity of passengers who arrived on an Egyptian plane Sunday afternoon, most of whom worked for the Palestinian Authority, according to Civilian Airport Authority Director Nir Yarkoni. ``The Transportation Minister asked me to tell the Palestinians that if this continues, we won't allow the airport operate,'' he told The Associated Press. Yarkoni said he conveyed the message in a letter Monday to chairman of the Palestinian Civil Aviation Authority Brig. Gen. Fayez Zeidan. Zeidan was not immediately available for comment. Israel retains security control over flights arriving to Gaza International Airport. The airport's opening last month, stipulated by the accords brokered by U.S. President Bill Clinton at Wye River, Maryland in October, was hailed by Palestinians as a milestone toward independence and statehood. Since then, Israel has accused the Palestinians of failing to contain anti-Israel violence, and has frozen the accords. The Palestinians, in turn, accuse Israel of reneging on an agreement to release Palestinians jailed for anti-Israel activities. ||||| Israel has threatened to close down the Palestinian-run Gaza airport over a security violation, an Israeli official said Tuesday, a move that could further undermine the already fragile peace process. Palestinian airport workers refused to allow Israeli security officials to check the identity of passengers who arrived on an Egyptian plane Sunday afternoon, most of whom worked for the Palestinian Authority, according to Civilian Airport Authority Director Nir Yarkoni. ``The Transportation Minister asked me to tell the Palestinians that if this continues, we won't allow the airport operate,'' he told The Associated Press. Yarkoni said he conveyed the message in a letter sent Monday to chairman of the Palestinian Civil Aviation Authority Brig. Gen. Fayez Zeidan. Zeidan was not immediately available for comment. Israel retains security control over flights arriving to Gaza International Airport. The airport's opening last month, stipulated by the accords brokered by U.S. President Bill Clinton at Wye River, Maryland in October, was hailed by Palestinians as a milestone toward independence and statehood. Since then, Israel has accused the Palestinians of failing to contain anti-Israel violence, and has frozen the accords. The Palestinians, in turn, accuse Israel of reneging on an agreement to release Palestinians jailed for anti-Israel activities. ||||| The control tower is still without controls, the check-in counter has no computers and the runway can't function after dark for lack of flood lights. Despite such temporary shortcomings, Gaza International Airport is set to open Tuesday, aided by a little improvisation and a lot of patriotic pride. ``It's a glorious feeling of independence, a feeling that we are open to the world,'' said Fawzi Tabil, a Palestinian watching while workers painted white lines Monday on the tarmac in the southern Gaza Strip, close to the Egyptian border. Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat planned to be on hand Tuesday morning when a plane from Cairo carrying Egyptian officials becomes the first arrival. At half-hour intervals, six more planes are to come in from places such as Morocco and Spain. The European Union, which donated dlrs 38 million for equipment and training, is sending its Mideast envoy on a special plane. The airport opening had been held up for two years because of disputes between Israel and the Palestinian Authority over Israel's role in monitoring passengers and cargo. In the end, Israel will have a say over who and what is coming into the Gaza, but the Israeli monitors will operate discretely, behind one-way mirrors, as they do now at the Rafah and Allenby Bridge crossings into autonomous Palestinian areas. The airport protocol was signed last week, as part of the Wye River land-for-security deal between Israel and the Palestinians. Tomer Degani, a spokesman for the Israeli military government in Gaza, said periodic security closures, which bar Palestinians from entering Israel, would not effect the operation of the airport. He said Israel was inspecting certain gear such as X-ray machines and electro-magnet equipment for safety but that it wouldn't hold-up the airport from opening. The head of the Palestinian Civil Aviation Authority, Fayez Zeidan, was not available Monday for comment. For the time being, it will still be a bit of an adventure to fly out of Gaza International or to land there. Palestinian officials say the equipment for the control tower, the computers for the check-in counters and the flood lights are still at the Israeli port of Ashdod. Nir Yarkoni, a spokesman for Israel's Civil Aviation Authority, acknowledged delays in some of the equipment reaching Dahanieh but said he did not know the reasons. Degani, from the Israeli military government, said some equipment was being held up by customs. Portable control, 12th graf pvs ||||| Israeli security officials delayed two planes from taking off from the Palestinian airport on Wednesday, the latest tensions in a rare area of Israeli-Palestinian cooperation. A plane bound for Amman, Jordan was delayed for two hours over an Israeli demand that Palestinian officials inspect the luggage of a Palestinian passenger, Israel radio reported. The plane left with the passenger aboard, but without his luggage. Israeli officials also delayed a plane making a stopover from Saudi Arabia to Cairo, it said. Israeli airport security officials were not available for comment. Abdel Razek Yehia, a Palestinian official who helped negotiate the airport's opening, confirmed the delays. He said such differences did not undermine the peace process. ``Every day we have differences,'' he told The Associated Press. ``We are all doing all our best to continue the peace process.'' The airport's opening last month, stipulated by the accords brokered by U.S. President Bill Clinton at Wye River, Maryland in October, was hailed by Palestinians as a milestone toward independence and statehood. Israel retains security control over flights arriving at Gaza International Airport, and Palestinian security officials consult with their Israeli counterparts. Earlier this week, Israel threatened to close down the Gaza airport when Palestinian airport workers refused to allow Israeli security officials to check the identity of passengers who arrived on an Egyptian plane, most of whom worked for the Palestinian Authority. Palestinian officials said that Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and his entourage were aboard the plane in question, and that exempted the plane from Israeli security checks. Since Wye, Israel has accused the Palestinians of failing to contain anti-Israel violence, and has frozen the accords. The Palestinians, in turn, accuse Israel of reneging on an agreement to release Palestinians jailed for anti-Israel activities. ||||| Taking a major step toward statehood, the Palestinians on Tuesday inaugurated Gaza International Airport, their first gateway to the world, with cheers, tears and an outpouring of patriotism. An Egypt Air plane was the first to land on the desert tarmac in the southern Gaza Strip at 8:30 a.m. (0630 gmt). But the emotional highlight was the touchdown of the first Palestinian Airlines plane, a Fokker 50. After landing, the pilot and co-pilot raised Palestinian flags high above their heads as they descended the stairway. A chant of ``Allahu Akbar,'' or God is Great, rose from of a crowd of thousands of Palestinians who had pushed their way onto the airfield to join the celebrations. ``You are a beautiful sight,'' Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat later told the Palestinian crew in the VIP lounge lavishly decorated with deep red Oriental carpets and wall mosaics. Throughout the morning, Arafat walked from the lounge to the tarmac seven times to greet planes from Egypt, Morocco, Jordan, Spain, the European Union and two Palestinian Airlines flights. ``This is a preparation for the declaration of the Palestinian state,'' Arafat said, smiling broadly and flashing a V sign. However, Israel continues to control the airspace and has the authority to shut down the airfield at any time. It will monitor arriving passengers and cargo, and can keep travelers or goods out if it considers them a danger to Israeli security. Disputes between Israel and the Palestinian Authority over security had delayed the airport opening for more than two years. In a sign of cooperation, Israeli and Palestinian security agents approached the Egypt Air jet together Tuesday and collected the passports of the passengers, including Egyptian Cabinet ministers and comedian Adel Imam, in white bags. Throughout the morning, there were spontaneous celebrations. As a police marching band played bagpipes, airport workers, policemen and Cabinet ministers held each other by their hands and danced in a circle. Some kissed and embraced their neighbors, others wiped away tears and several officers waved their rifles in the air. In one corner of the airfield, about 300 people gathered around a man and a boy riding mules that moved to the beat of drums. The dlrs 75 million airport will provide a boost to the troubled Palestinian economy, permitting the export of Palestinian flowers and farm produce that until now were shipped out via Israel, often with difficulties and delays. The airfield will also make it easier for Palestinians to travel abroad, although a majority of Gazans are probably too poor to be able to afford an air ticket. Until now, Palestinians wanting to fly abroad needed permission to enter Israel and fly out of Ben Gurion International airport near Tel Aviv. The other option was to travel by land to Jordan and catch flights there. Palestinians living in the West Bank still need a permit to cross Israel into Gaza to get to the airport. Travel is expected to become easier once a land route between the West Bank and Gaza opens next month. Israel's government does not permit Israelis to use the Palestinian airport, citing security reasons. However, Israeli Foreign Minister Ariel Sharon said Tuesday that this might change in the future. The opening of the airport was negotiated during last month's U.S.-sponsored Mideast summit near Washington. As part of the accord, Israel also withdrew troops in the northern West Bank last week and released 250 Palestinian prisoners. A Palestinian industrial park between Gaza and Israel is to open next month, while Israeli-Palestinian negotiations on a Palestinian seaport in Gaza are continuing. Gaza International, with the call letters LVGZ, was designed in an Oriental style with graceful arches and elaborate tiles imported from Morocco. The airport has one passenger terminal, a VIP lounge and a three-kilometer (two-mile)-long runway. A 1-meter (4-foot)-tall poster of Arafat hangs from the control tower wall. Palestine Airlines, with a small fleet that includes one Boeing 727, will begin direct flights to Jordan, Egypt and Saudi Arabia next week. In the first weeks, airport operations will have to rely on some improvisation. Major pieces of equipment, including the controls for the control tower, are still held up at the Israeli port of Ashdod. Tuesday's planes were guided to a safe landing by a portable control panel installed in a van. Despite its temporary shortcomings, many Palestinians consider the airport a big step toward independence. For those living in the small, overcrowded Gaza Strip, which is ringed by the Mediterranean on one side and by barbed wire on the other three, it may help ease the feeling of being trapped. ``Now we will be able to travel without the Israeli procedures that we usually must go through,'' said Khaled Salmeh, who studies economics at Gaza City University and plans to fly next month to Saudi Arabia, for a pilgrimage to Mecca.

Gaza International Airport, the first Palestinian gateway to the world, opened on November 24 to celebrations, with Arafat greeting arrivals. The recent Wye Accords, signed between Israel and Palestine in the US, made the long-planned event possible. The Palestinian airlines began commercial flights on December 5 and looked forward to adding a fourth aircraft. While the Palestinians are running the airport, Israel approves all flights and monitors security. This cooperation could only lead to problems and by late December Israel was delaying flights and threatening to close the airport as violence continues elsewhere and the Accords appear to be doomed.

Taking a major step toward statehood, the Palestinians on Tuesday inaugurated Gaza International Airport, their first gateway to the world, with cheers, tears and an outpouring of patriotism. An Egypt Air plane was the first to land on the desert tarmac in the southern Gaza Strip at 8:30 a.m. (0630 gmt). But the emotional highlight was the touchdown of the first Palestinian Airlines plane, a Fokker 50. After landing, the pilot and co-pilot raised Palestinian flags high above their heads as they descended the stairway. A chant of ``Allahu Akbar,'' or God is Great, rose from of a crowd of thousands of Palestinians who had pushed their way onto the airfield to join the celebrations. ``You are a beautiful sight,'' Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat later told the Palestinian crew in the VIP lounge lavishly decorated with deep red Oriental carpets and wall mosaics. Throughout the morning, Arafat walked from the lounge to the tarmac seven times to greet planes from Egypt, Morocco, Jordan, Spain, the European Union and two Palestinian Airlines flights. ``This is a preparation for the declaration of the Palestinian state,'' Arafat said, smiling broadly and flashing a V sign. However, Israel continues to control the airspace and has the authority to shut down the airfield at any time. It will monitor arriving passengers and cargo, and can keep travelers or goods out if it considers them a danger to Israeli security. Disputes between Israel and the Palestinian Authority over security had delayed the airport opening for more than two years. In a sign of cooperation, Israeli and Palestinian security agents approached the Egypt Air jet together Tuesday and collected the passports of the passengers, including Egyptian Cabinet ministers and comedian Adel Imam, in white bags. Throughout the morning, there were spontaneous celebrations. As a police marching band played bagpipes, airport workers, policemen and Cabinet ministers held each other by their hands and danced in a circle. Some kissed and embraced their neighbors, others wiped away tears and several officers waved their rifles in the air. In one corner of the airfield, about 300 people gathered around a man and a boy riding mules that moved to the beat of drums. The dlrs 75 million airport will provide a boost to the troubled Palestinian economy, permitting the export of Palestinian flowers and farm produce that until now were shipped out via Israel, often with difficulties and delays. The airfield will also make it easier for Palestinians to travel abroad, although a majority of Gazans are probably too poor to be able to afford an air ticket. Until now, Palestinians wanting to fly abroad needed permission to enter Israel and fly out of Ben Gurion International airport near Tel Aviv. The other option was to travel by land to Jordan and catch flights there. Palestinians living in the West Bank still need a permit to cross Israel into Gaza to get to the airport. Travel is expected to become easier once a land route between the West Bank and Gaza opens next month. Israel's government does not permit Israelis to use the Palestinian airport, citing security reasons. However, Israeli Foreign Minister Ariel Sharon said Tuesday that this might change in the future. The opening of the airport was negotiated during last month's U.S.-sponsored Mideast summit near Washington. As part of the accord, Israel also withdrew troops in the northern West Bank last week and released 250 Palestinian prisoners. A Palestinian industrial park between Gaza and Israel is to open next month, while Israeli-Palestinian negotiations on a Palestinian seaport in Gaza are continuing. Gaza International, with the call letters LVGZ, was designed in an Oriental style with graceful arches and elaborate tiles imported from Morocco. The airport has one passenger terminal, a VIP lounge and a three-kilometer (two-mile)-long runway. A 1-meter (4-foot)-tall poster of Arafat hangs from the control tower wall. Palestine Airlines, with a small fleet that includes one Boeing 727, will begin direct flights to Jordan, Egypt and Saudi Arabia next week. In the first weeks, airport operations will have to rely on some improvisation. Major pieces of equipment, including the controls for the control tower, are still held up at the Israeli port of Ashdod. Tuesday's planes were guided to a safe landing by a portable control panel installed in a van. Despite its temporary shortcomings, many Palestinians consider the airport a big step toward independence. For those living in the small, overcrowded Gaza Strip, which is ringed by the Mediterranean on one side and by barbed wire on the other three, it may help ease the feeling of being trapped. ``Now we will be able to travel without the Israeli procedures that we usually must go through,'' said Khaled Salmeh, who studies economics at Gaza City University and plans to fly next month to Saudi Arabia, for a pilgrimage to Mecca. ||||| The first Palestinian commercial flight landed at Amman's Marka Airport on Saturday, inaugurating an air route between Jordan and the autonomous Gaza Strip. The Falcon F-50 short-haul plane carried 48 passengers, mostly Palestinian businessmen and students. The plane will return later in the day. Last weekend, the Palestinians inaugurated an airport in the Mediterranean city of Gaza under the U.S.-brokered Wye River accord which envisages Israel ceding more lands to the Palestinians in return for security guarantees. Jasser Ziyyad, director-general of the Jordanian Civil Aviation Authority, said Jordan agreed with the Palestinians earlier in the week on four weekly flights between them _ two by the Palestinian airline and two for Jordan. Meanwhile, Jordanian newspapers quoted unnamed Palestinian aviation officials as saying one more passenger plane will be added to the Palestinian fleet of three short-haul aircraft. It said the addition was necessary to transport an estimated 3,600 Palestinian Muslims who wish to travel to Saudi Arabia in early March to perform the annual pilgrimage to holy shrines in that country. ||||| Israeli security officials delayed two planes from taking off from the Palestinian airport on Wednesday, marking the latest tensions in a rare area of Israeli-Palestinian cooperation. ||||| Amid a flurry of last minute preparations, the fledgling Palestinian Authority prepared Thursday for a milestone on the road to maturity: its own airport. As part of the latest Mideast peace accord, Israeli and Palestinian officials were to sign a protocol for the airport Friday and Palestinian negotiators said Gaza International Airport would open Sunday. The airport has been nearly completed for months. On Thursday, officials added a few extra touches of yellow paint and fresh flowers. It was not clear who would be the first arrivals at the airport. Officials said Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat may travel by car to Egypt in order to fly into the airport. Others hinted the first international flight may be reserved for U.S. President Bill Clinton who is scheduled to visit Gaza in December. Egypt's Middle East News Agency said the first plane to land would be carrying Egypt's health minister and several doctors bearing medical supplies as gifts. Israel, which will oversee security at the airport, has forbidden its own citizens from using the airport initially, Israel's Channel 2 TV said. All flights, which must be approved by Israel in advance, would not be allowed to fly over Israeli airspace. After touring the airport Thursday, a U.S. official said more work was needed to be done before the airport was ready for Clinton. ``It may be a landing site for President Clinton, but we're not confirming,'' said the official who spoke on condition of anonymity. ``When you fly Air Force One, you're flying several planes and a lot of equipment,'' he said. The airport will be the first unfettered access route Palestinians will have out of the Gaza Strip. ||||| Amid a flurry of last minute preparations, the young Palestinian Authority prepared Thursday for a milestone on the road to maturity: its very own airport. As part of the latest Mideast peace accord, Israeli and Palestinian officials were to sign a protocol for the airport Friday and Palestinian negotiators said Gaza International Airport would open Sunday. The airport has been nearly completed for months but Thursday officials there added a few extra touches of yellow paint and fresh flowers. It was not clear who would be the first arrivals at the airport. Officials said Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat may travel by car to Egypt in order to fly into the airport. Others hinted the first international flight may be reserved for U.S. President Bill Clinton who is scheduled to visit Gaza in December. Egypt's Middle East News Agency said the first plane to land would be carrying Egypt's health minister and several doctors bearing medical supplies as gifts. Israel, which will oversee security at the airport, has forbidden its own citizens from using the airport initially, Israel's Channel 2 TV said. And all flights, which must be approved by Israel in advance, would not be allowed to fly over their airspace. After touring the airport Thursday, a U.S. official said more work needed to be done before the airport was ready for Clinton. ``It may be a landing site for President Clinton, but we're not confirming,'' said the official who spoke on condition of anonymity. ``When you fly Air Force One, you're flying several planes and a lot of equipment,'' he said. The airport will be the first unfettered access route Palestinians will have out of the Gaza Strip. ||||| Israel has threatened to close down the Palestinian-run Gaza airport over a security violation, an Israeli official said Tuesday, a move that could further undermine the already fragile peace process. Palestinian airport workers refused to allow Israeli security officials to check the identity of passengers who arrived on an Egyptian plane Sunday afternoon, most of whom worked for the Palestinian Authority, according to Civilian Airport Authority Director Nir Yarkoni. ``The Transportation Minister asked me to tell the Palestinians that if this continues, we won't allow the airport operate,'' he told The Associated Press. Yarkoni said he conveyed the message in a letter Monday to chairman of the Palestinian Civil Aviation Authority Brig. Gen. Fayez Zeidan. Zeidan was not immediately available for comment. Israel retains security control over flights arriving to Gaza International Airport. The airport's opening last month, stipulated by the accords brokered by U.S. President Bill Clinton at Wye River, Maryland in October, was hailed by Palestinians as a milestone toward independence and statehood. Since then, Israel has accused the Palestinians of failing to contain anti-Israel violence, and has frozen the accords. The Palestinians, in turn, accuse Israel of reneging on an agreement to release Palestinians jailed for anti-Israel activities. ||||| Israel has threatened to close down the Palestinian-run Gaza airport over a security violation, an Israeli official said Tuesday, a move that could further undermine the already fragile peace process. Palestinian airport workers refused to allow Israeli security officials to check the identity of passengers who arrived on an Egyptian plane Sunday afternoon, most of whom worked for the Palestinian Authority, according to Civilian Airport Authority Director Nir Yarkoni. ``The Transportation Minister asked me to tell the Palestinians that if this continues, we won't allow the airport operate,'' he told The Associated Press. Yarkoni said he conveyed the message in a letter sent Monday to chairman of the Palestinian Civil Aviation Authority Brig. Gen. Fayez Zeidan. Zeidan was not immediately available for comment. Israel retains security control over flights arriving to Gaza International Airport. The airport's opening last month, stipulated by the accords brokered by U.S. President Bill Clinton at Wye River, Maryland in October, was hailed by Palestinians as a milestone toward independence and statehood. Since then, Israel has accused the Palestinians of failing to contain anti-Israel violence, and has frozen the accords. The Palestinians, in turn, accuse Israel of reneging on an agreement to release Palestinians jailed for anti-Israel activities. ||||| The control tower is still without controls, the check-in counter has no computers and the runway can't function after dark for lack of flood lights. Despite such temporary shortcomings, Gaza International Airport is set to open Tuesday, aided by a little improvisation and a lot of patriotic pride. ``It's a glorious feeling of independence, a feeling that we are open to the world,'' said Fawzi Tabil, a Palestinian watching while workers painted white lines Monday on the tarmac in the southern Gaza Strip, close to the Egyptian border. Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat planned to be on hand Tuesday morning when a plane from Cairo carrying Egyptian officials becomes the first arrival. At half-hour intervals, six more planes are to come in from places such as Morocco and Spain. The European Union, which donated dlrs 38 million for equipment and training, is sending its Mideast envoy on a special plane. The airport opening had been held up for two years because of disputes between Israel and the Palestinian Authority over Israel's role in monitoring passengers and cargo. In the end, Israel will have a say over who and what is coming into the Gaza, but the Israeli monitors will operate discretely, behind one-way mirrors, as they do now at the Rafah and Allenby Bridge crossings into autonomous Palestinian areas. The airport protocol was signed last week, as part of the Wye River land-for-security deal between Israel and the Palestinians. Tomer Degani, a spokesman for the Israeli military government in Gaza, said periodic security closures, which bar Palestinians from entering Israel, would not effect the operation of the airport. He said Israel was inspecting certain gear such as X-ray machines and electro-magnet equipment for safety but that it wouldn't hold-up the airport from opening. The head of the Palestinian Civil Aviation Authority, Fayez Zeidan, was not available Monday for comment. For the time being, it will still be a bit of an adventure to fly out of Gaza International or to land there. Palestinian officials say the equipment for the control tower, the computers for the check-in counters and the flood lights are still at the Israeli port of Ashdod. Nir Yarkoni, a spokesman for Israel's Civil Aviation Authority, acknowledged delays in some of the equipment reaching Dahanieh but said he did not know the reasons. Degani, from the Israeli military government, said some equipment was being held up by customs. Portable control, 12th graf pvs ||||| Israeli security officials delayed two planes from taking off from the Palestinian airport on Wednesday, the latest tensions in a rare area of Israeli-Palestinian cooperation. A plane bound for Amman, Jordan was delayed for two hours over an Israeli demand that Palestinian officials inspect the luggage of a Palestinian passenger, Israel radio reported. The plane left with the passenger aboard, but without his luggage. Israeli officials also delayed a plane making a stopover from Saudi Arabia to Cairo, it said. Israeli airport security officials were not available for comment. Abdel Razek Yehia, a Palestinian official who helped negotiate the airport's opening, confirmed the delays. He said such differences did not undermine the peace process. ``Every day we have differences,'' he told The Associated Press. ``We are all doing all our best to continue the peace process.'' The airport's opening last month, stipulated by the accords brokered by U.S. President Bill Clinton at Wye River, Maryland in October, was hailed by Palestinians as a milestone toward independence and statehood. Israel retains security control over flights arriving at Gaza International Airport, and Palestinian security officials consult with their Israeli counterparts. Earlier this week, Israel threatened to close down the Gaza airport when Palestinian airport workers refused to allow Israeli security officials to check the identity of passengers who arrived on an Egyptian plane, most of whom worked for the Palestinian Authority. Palestinian officials said that Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and his entourage were aboard the plane in question, and that exempted the plane from Israeli security checks. Since Wye, Israel has accused the Palestinians of failing to contain anti-Israel violence, and has frozen the accords. The Palestinians, in turn, accuse Israel of reneging on an agreement to release Palestinians jailed for anti-Israel activities. ||||| Taking a major step toward statehood, the Palestinians on Tuesday inaugurated Gaza International Airport, their first gateway to the world, with cheers, tears and an outpouring of patriotism. An Egypt Air plane was the first to land on the desert tarmac in the southern Gaza Strip at 8:30 a.m. (0630 gmt). But the emotional highlight was the touchdown of the first Palestinian Airlines plane, a Fokker 50. After landing, the pilot and co-pilot raised Palestinian flags high above their heads as they descended the stairway. A chant of ``Allahu Akbar,'' or God is Great, rose from of a crowd of thousands of Palestinians who had pushed their way onto the airfield to join the celebrations. ``You are a beautiful sight,'' Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat later told the Palestinian crew in the VIP lounge lavishly decorated with deep red Oriental carpets and wall mosaics. Throughout the morning, Arafat walked from the lounge to the tarmac seven times to greet planes from Egypt, Morocco, Jordan, Spain, the European Union and two Palestinian Airlines flights. ``This is a preparation for the declaration of the Palestinian state,'' Arafat said, smiling broadly and flashing a V sign. However, Israel continues to control the airspace and has the authority to shut down the airfield at any time. It will monitor arriving passengers and cargo, and can keep travelers or goods out if it considers them a danger to Israeli security. Disputes between Israel and the Palestinian Authority over security had delayed the airport opening for more than two years. In a sign of cooperation, Israeli and Palestinian security agents approached the Egypt Air jet together Tuesday and collected the passports of the passengers, including Egyptian Cabinet ministers and comedian Adel Imam, in white bags. Throughout the morning, there were spontaneous celebrations. As a police marching band played bagpipes, airport workers, policemen and Cabinet ministers held each other by their hands and danced in a circle. Some kissed and embraced their neighbors, others wiped away tears and several officers waved their rifles in the air. In one corner of the airfield, about 300 people gathered around a man and a boy riding mules that moved to the beat of drums. The dlrs 75 million airport will provide a boost to the troubled Palestinian economy, permitting the export of Palestinian flowers and farm produce that until now were shipped out via Israel, often with difficulties and delays. The airfield will also make it easier for Palestinians to travel abroad, although a majority of Gazans are probably too poor to be able to afford an air ticket. Until now, Palestinians wanting to fly abroad needed permission to enter Israel and fly out of Ben Gurion International airport near Tel Aviv. The other option was to travel by land to Jordan and catch flights there. Palestinians living in the West Bank still need a permit to cross Israel into Gaza to get to the airport. Travel is expected to become easier once a land route between the West Bank and Gaza opens next month. Israel's government does not permit Israelis to use the Palestinian airport, citing security reasons. However, Israeli Foreign Minister Ariel Sharon said Tuesday that this might change in the future. The opening of the airport was negotiated during last month's U.S.-sponsored Mideast summit near Washington. As part of the accord, Israel also withdrew troops in the northern West Bank last week and released 250 Palestinian prisoners. A Palestinian industrial park between Gaza and Israel is to open next month, while Israeli-Palestinian negotiations on a Palestinian seaport in Gaza are continuing. Gaza International, with the call letters LVGZ, was designed in an Oriental style with graceful arches and elaborate tiles imported from Morocco. The airport has one passenger terminal, a VIP lounge and a three-kilometer (two-mile)-long runway. A 1-meter (4-foot)-tall poster of Arafat hangs from the control tower wall. Palestine Airlines, with a small fleet that includes one Boeing 727, will begin direct flights to Jordan, Egypt and Saudi Arabia next week. In the first weeks, airport operations will have to rely on some improvisation. Major pieces of equipment, including the controls for the control tower, are still held up at the Israeli port of Ashdod. Tuesday's planes were guided to a safe landing by a portable control panel installed in a van. Despite its temporary shortcomings, many Palestinians consider the airport a big step toward independence. For those living in the small, overcrowded Gaza Strip, which is ringed by the Mediterranean on one side and by barbed wire on the other three, it may help ease the feeling of being trapped. ``Now we will be able to travel without the Israeli procedures that we usually must go through,'' said Khaled Salmeh, who studies economics at Gaza City University and plans to fly next month to Saudi Arabia, for a pilgrimage to Mecca.

Israeli security officials delayed the take-off of two planes from Gaza International Airport, further straining the Mid-East peace process. Considered a milestone toward Palestinian autonomy, thousands cheered Gaza's opening in November. Though some equipment was still not installed, Palestinian planes as well as planes from Egypt and other nations landed on opening day and were met by Arafat. The airport's opening and the stipulation that Israel would control the airspace and monitor passengers were included in the U.S. brokered Wye River accord. Since Wye, however, Israel and the Palestinians have accused each other of failing to honor its provisions.

China's national soccer team could call back four players from overseas to boost its chances at the Asian Games in Thailand in December, an official newspaper reported Monday. Two of the players, Fan Zhiyi and Sun Jihai, play for Crystal Palace in the English First Division. Another, Yang Chen, plays in Germany, while Li Jinyu is with Nantes in France. Englishman Bob Houghton, who coaches the national team, said recalling Fan and Sun for the Asian Games would allow him to ``see if they can bring the things they have learned recently in England to the national team,'' the China Sports Daily said. Houghton also said that Yang, who plays in Frankfurt, ``very possibly could become an extremely important player in the national team,'' the newspaper reported. Li, who has not had many chances to play since his move to France, also ``is very willing to come back,'' the newspaper said. China and South Korea will both field their Asian Games teams at a friendly warm-up match Nov. 22, the newspaper said. The Asian Games are held every four years. ||||| Horses belonging to Iran's equestrian team will not be allowed to compete in next month's Asian Games because they failed to meet the requirements of the games' veterinary commission, the Thai organizers announced Thursday. The three horses originally came from Iran, but arrived in Thailand after a training period in the United States. They did not have the necessary health certificates guaranteeing that they are disease-free, said Siraya Chunekamrai, president of the Veterinary Commission for the games. This is the first Asian Games in which competitors have been allowed to bring their own horses from abroad. According to regulations, all participating horses had to be screened for a number of diseases before arriving in Thailand. Siraya said she felt sorry for the Iranian team because the problem resulted from ignorance of the rules. Iran is the only country that did not pass the requirements. ``They are the most beautiful horses of all,'' she said. ``I am so sorry for the team but cannot allow them to compete because it is against the rules and it might affect other horses' good health.'' There is only one Thai horse available on standby for the Iranians, as Thailand was not prepared for such a problem, Siraya said. ``If the Iranian team can borrow a couple of more horses from other participating countries, they still can compete,'' she said. There are 106 horses and 12 countries participating in the equestrian events. Most of the horses actually come from Europe and the United States. Thailand has provided a climate-controlled stable and field cleared of contaminants to help the horses become acclimatized to the tropical heat before the competition begins Dec. 8. Many of the horses are suffering stress from the journey here, but those from Asian countries are adjusting faster than those from cold countries, Siraya said. ||||| In rites building from low flares symbolizing dawn to a fiery cauldron lighting, Thailand's king opened the Asian Games Sunday night, giving Thais some respite from an economic crisis that once threatened the continent's Olympic-style event. King Bhumibol Adulyadej, the world's longest-reigning monarch, was upstaged slightly by Japan's Naoko Takahashi. In a marathon run in early morning, to avoid the worst of Bangkok's tropical heat, she won the games' first gold medal in a time just one minute off the world record. Her medal ceremony immediately preceded the official opening festivities for two weeks of competition among 6,000 athletes from 41 nations. In all, 377 gold medals are at stake in 36 sports, including Asian specialities such as kabaddi and sepak takraw. But the king not only made the key proclamation and released the royal pigeon, he also anointed a plaque for the Royal Main Stadium and composed some of the music. Songs written by the king, a talented jazz composer, were played by the Bangkok Symphony Orchestra. Thai officials who approached him at the ceremony did so on their knees. Others greeting the king included International Olympic Committee President Juan Antonio Samaranch. A cascade of fireworks in honor of his 71st birthday Saturday and dancers who prostrated themselves on the field welcomed the monarch to his seat in the royal box. Then came the athletes, starting with Cambodia and ending with the host Thai team. Saudi Arabia, which withdrew its team at the last minute, was represented by only a flag bearer. The Sri Lankan team was led by six dancers in bright costumes, who delighted the crowd in the 60,000-seat stadium with acrobatic maneuvers. Each team was led by a Thai beauty queen holding its signboard. After the parade, five of the women collapsed, and three were taken out on stretchers. A giant cauldron atop the stadium was lit by touching a torch to a smaller cauldron inside a model of a temple, which then was lifted on an elevator and sent an explosion of sparks into the games' flame receptacle. Outside the stadium before the ceremony, long lines of people waited to take photos of themselves in front of a plastic statue of the games' elephant mascot, ``Chai-yo.'' One, Sakchai Pungsrinon, a 30-year-old piping engineer, who paid 1,000 baht (dlrs 26) for his ceremonies ticket, said, ``Thailand has many problems. Asia also has many problems. For two weeks, maybe we can forget about all these problems.'' Several thousand people without tickets milled around outside, waving small Thai flags and waiting for a glimpse of the king. They also could watch the ceremony on a large television screen. Security measures included bomb-sniffing dogs. For the competing nations _ many sending reduced teams to ease the pinch of the Asian crisis _ the games are a proving ground for the 2000 Olympics in Sydney, Australia. ``It's not just getting a gold, it's getting a gold with a result that is close or at world standards,'' said Li Furong, deputy head of China's Asian Games delegation. ``The main target is the 2000 Olympics.'' Sunday's focus was more on pageantry, beginning with slightly built Prime Minister Chuan Leekpai leading off a torch relay at 9:09 a.m. (0209 GMT), reflecting popular belief that nine is a lucky number. Bhumibol is the ninth king of the current dynasty. The three-hour ceremonies featured 7,614 performers in lavishly produced acts with the theme ``Friendship Beyond Frontiers.'' Performers in ancient Thai garb paraded across the field, followed by people-drawn chariots. A martial arts display celebrated Asian unity, and hundreds of primary school students dressed in colorful outfits introduced the games' mascot. Parts of the ceremony were built around the Indian Ramayana epic, the basis for much of traditional Thai mythology, literature and performing and fine arts. The field became a swirl of giant snakes, swans, birds, angels, and other mystical creatures. Another performance celebrating the unity of Asia capped the show, with four large swan floats pulled to the middle of the field, each tethered to a giant balloon symbolizing the sun, moon, earth and a giant lotus. Fireworks burst overhead, searchlights played across the stadium and lasers split the darkness before the royal anthem concluded the program. The combined budget for the opening and closing ceremonies was 70 million baht (dlrs 1.94 million), including a large share of donated and at-cost labor _ part of Thailand's remedy for overcoming financial problems that hit the games. In warming up the audience before the ceremonies, a Thai comedian jested: ``If you're Saudi, raise your hand.'' Saudi Arabia withdrew from the games at the last minute, throwing some of the scheduling into disarray. It cited a national holiday and the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan, but many Thais saw the move as retaliation for the failure of Thai police to solve a number of serious crimes against Saudi citizens. ||||| Thailand showed its nearly complete facilities for the Asian Games to a tough jury Thursday _ the heads of the organizing committees from the 43 nations competing in the December event. Thailand won host rights for the quadrennial games in 1995, but setbacks in preparations led officials of the Olympic Council of Asia late last year to threaten to move the games to another country. They complained that the Thai organizers were behind in constructing facilities and had failed to keep them informed. It appeared that Thursday's tour was successful in reassuring everyone. ``We have a strong of sense of relief,'' said Abdul Muttaleb al-Ahmad, director general of the Kuwait-based Olympic Council of Asia and a frequent critic of Thailand's organizing committee. ``Everything is 99 percent completed.'' In a welcoming speech, Thai Deputy Prime Minister Bhichai Rattakul, also chairman of the Thai organizing committee, told delegation members to cast aside any doubts over whether the Dec. 6-20 games will be a success. ``I can hereby confirm that regardless of what Thailand has faced, we ... have tried to accommodate all requests for the 13th Asian Games,'' said Bhichai. Since the Thai organizers began their preparations, they have faced many difficulties, most of them resulting from the country's financial crisis, he said. But the country was able to pull it through, he added. ``This is an example of Asia's resiliency. We have financial problems in all of Asia but still we are able to prepare commendably,'' said Manuel Veguillas, head of the Philippine delegation. ``I am impressed,'' said Tu Mingde, secretary-general of China's Olympic Committee. ``The games will be a success.'' Still, Bangkok's infamous traffic jams did not go overlooked. ``My only concern now is the road construction leading to the site,'' said Kenji Ono from Japan. Construction workers are trying to ensure that the road leading to the stadium, including a flyover at a key intersection, will be completed on time for the games. The Olympic Council of Asia, meanwhile, is working with the Bangkok Organizing Committee to come up with a contingency plan in case of any possible emergency, said its director general, Muttaleb. ``You cannot really anticipate anything,'' he said, as he toured the main stadium of the Sports Authority of Thailand. ``Any venue can have a problem, such as electrical failure.'' ||||| Organizers of December's Asian Games have dismissed press reports that a sports complex would not be completed on time, saying preparations are well in hand, a local newspaper said Friday. Santiparb Tejavanija, deputy secretary of the Bangkok Asian Games Organizing Committee, said construction of the sports complex at the Muang Thong Thani housing estate is 95 percent complete and will be finished this month, the Bangkok Post reported. Liquidity problems at Bangkok Land, the company that owns the housing estate, threatened to prevent the company from finishing the complex in time for the Dec. 6-20 games. Deputy Prime Minister Bhichai Rattakul, who chairs the organizing committee, expressed doubt last month that the complex would be completed on time because of the financial problems. Santiparb told the Post the money problems had been overcome by shifting 200 million baht (dlrs 5 million) worth of credit guarantees from a project that had been scrapped to cover the construction cost of the complex. Preparations for the games have been plagued by political interference by previous governments, alleged corruption and incompetence. The decision to award the contract for the sports complex was controversial, with critics calling it an attempt to bail out the property developer's failed housing estate. Doubts over Thailand's ability to stage the games increased over the past year-and-a-half after the country entered its worst economic downturn in decades. The body governing the games threatened several times to award Asia's version of the Olympics to other countries, but Thailand argued that all would be ready by opening day. The Bangkok games are expected to attract more than 10,000 athletes from 43 nations. ||||| A snooker game between longtime Asian rivals India and Pakistan led to a flareup of tempers Sunday, showing a depth of differences that shocked Thai organizers and spectators at the Asian Games. India and Pakistan have fought three wars since becoming independent in 1947. A Thai referee's decision that India's Yashin Merchant had committed a foul during a decisive frame sparked a fierce debate with the referee that forced stoppage of play for 15 minutes. Merchant defeated Mohammad Saleh 5-4 after order was restored, but the incident not only violated the sport's strict etiquette, but showed the distrust between the two neighbors that often has spilled over into sports. The referee ruled that Merchant's white cue ball had first touched the black before hitting the target, red. Merchant protested. With the referee refusing to reverse his decision, Merchant sought help from the Indian team. Several Indian team members went to the playing arena, and one of them wrote a quick protest letter using the snooker table as a writing platform. Disgusted spectators viewed it as a breach of snooker etiquette. ``It does not look nice for grownup men wearing neckties to fight,'' said Pakistani team manager Shahnawaz Khan. ``We just watched the whole drama,'' he said. Pakistani team officials did not intervene, instead staying in their allocated seats. ``It was made very clear to everybody that a referee's decision will be final, but now that the Indians have lodged a formal complaint, we have also done so,'' Khan said. The Indian complaint, however, has no meaning now as Merchant has won. Indian officials were not available for comment. Tournament director Surasak Werapong said both complaints were thrown out because neither side paid the required dlrs 50 filing fee. The match was one of the first as snooker made its Asian Games debut in style, with elated officials greeting the opening with muffled clapping, in keeping with the sport's etiquette. A total of 19 countries are vying for 10 gold medals in snooker and billiards. The preliminary elimination rounds began Sunday. ``This is the brightest day for us,'' said Manmohanjit Singh, the Singapore-born president of the International Billiards and Snooker Federation, the sport's world governing body. ``This is indeed a high step and this will greatly help to make the sport more popular in Asia, which is coming up fast,'' said Singh, whose family migrated to Singapore from India several decades ago. With the addition of snooker, the Asian Games now have 36 sports. ||||| Saudi Arabia is considering sending a small team to the Bangkok Asian Games from which it pulled out unexpectedly this week, a Saudi official said Saturday. Saudi Arabia's top sports official, Prince Faisal bin Fahd, is studying a proposal by the Olympic Council of Asia to at least send a symbolic delegation to the Dec. 6-20 Games, said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity. The plea to reconsider was made by Sheik Ahmad al-Fahd al Sabah, president of the Olympic Council of Asia. Sheik Ahmad, a member of the Kuwaiti royal family, is a friend of Prince Faisal. Saudi Arabia's sudden announcement Wednesday that it is withdrawing its 105-member team shocked hosts Thailand, who remain skeptical about the official reasons offered. Saudi sports authorities said the Games conflicted with national centenary celebrations and the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. But observers point rather to Saudi anger at the failure of Thai authorities to solve two, decade-old criminal cases involving their nationals: the theft of dlrs 20 million worth of jewels from a Saudi prince and the murder of three Saudi diplomats in Bangkok. The cases are widely believed to involve people high up in the power hierarchy, who in Thailand rarely face prosecution. Saudi Arabia has in the past said relations would only be normalized when the two cases were solved. Thai newspapers reported Saturday that attempts to convince Saudi Arabia to participate in the upcoming 13th Asian Games have failed. Thai Olympic Committee Chairman Gen. Chettha Thanajaro told the Bangkok Post he sent a last-minute plea to his Saudi counterpart but has received no response. ``I have done my best. We have to respect their decision,'' he told the Post. The withdrawal has thrown the Games' schedules into disarray. ||||| Thai police have detained more than 300 beggars, most from neighboring countries, in a campaign to make Bangkok's streets safer for spectators and athletes arriving for the upcoming Asian Games, a senior police officer said Friday. Arrests were made throughout Bangkok during a four-day crackdown on panhandlers. About 100 of those detained were displayed Friday to local and foreign press at a detention center in Bangkok. ``Most come here because of economic hardship,'' said Maj. Gen. Chanvut Vajrabukka, deputy commissioner for the immigration police. ``There are some beggars, however, who are under control of gangsters. They could cause trouble for tourists and athletes.'' Other groups targeted by police in advance of the Asian Games are foreign criminal gangs believed to operate in Bangkok and other major cities in Thailand. The Asian Games will be held from the Dec. 6-20. ||||| For some teams, ``out of bounds'' at the Asian Games means more than just a line on a soccer field or basketball floor. That's because the host city offers the punchy mix of Viagra and notorious night life. The Pakistanis say all their athletes and officials for the games opening Sunday have been told not to even think of the wonder drug and ``night life ideas.'' The Indian team's solution is mandatory meetings for all athletes before bedtime. The Sri Lankan participants, who had to sign a code of conduct before coming to Bangkok, are being watched by an army brigadier with a track record of high discipline. The Chinese have done their homework on staying out of trouble. Thailand, especially the capital Bangkok, is known worldwide for its titillating night life. From taxi drivers to local tourist magazines distributed free at hotels, there are messengers aplenty to advertise massage parlors and escort services. Minutely detailed photo albums seek to arouse sensual fantasies. Estimates of the number of female sex workers in Thailand, a country of 60 million, range from more than 300,000 to 2 million. Under Thailand's drug rules, Viagra is not available in drug stores, but is sold only in hospital pharmacies with a prescription from a urologist, cardiologist, endocrinologist or psychiatrist for 400 baht (about dlrs 10) a dose. But there is a black market in the drug that might prove an attraction for some among the more than 15,000 athletes, officials and media personnel in Bangkok. ``No way,'' said Gurdayal Singh Mander, leader of the Indian contingent, when asked if there was a risk of lack in discipline. ``I believe no one will try anything silly in Bangkok. Even if they try, our watching system is watertight and we will know,'' said Mander, a former police officer. Indian officials in charge of various sports meet their athletes at 10 p.m. before bedtime at the Asian Games village. The Pakistanis have opted for trust and nationalism. ``Oh, Viagra,'' exclaimed Pakistani medical officer Yousef Baig. ``They know all about it and they know all about Bangkok. We have told them, don't break our trust and keep the good name of Pakistan flying high,'' Dr. Baig said. China has taken a similar approach. ``We don't treat them as kids, telling them don't do this, don't do that. We just told them to leave a good impression of Chinese athletes,'' said Li Furong, deputy head of the Chinese delegation. For the Sri Lankans, ``we have told them that they will not be allowed outside the games village until they finish their discipline,'' said Upali Bandaratillaka, a serving brigadier in the Sri Lankan army. ``Even if they want to go to shopping, one of us will accompany them,'' Bandaratillaka said. His deputy is a police officer. Host Thailand is stressing that sex isn't lurking around every corner. A ``Traditional Thai Massage Parlor'' has been opened at the games' village. ``Thai traditional massage is considered an art form,'' said Prarop Laovanich, secretary of the Asian Games Sub-Committee for Culture and Performance. ``A skilled masseur can cure ailments and muscular fatigue.'' And one must wear baggy white pajamas before a traditional Thai massage. ||||| Saudi Arabia's abrupt withdrawal from the Asian Games left organizers scrambling Thursday to change schedules and Thai diplomats mulling a decade of relations strained by jewel theft and the murder of diplomats. Bhichai Rattakul, deputy prime minister and president of the Bangkok Asian Games Organizing Committee, asked the Foreign Ministry to urge the Saudi government to reconsider withdrawing its 105-strong team. The games open Dec. 6. ``We're not sure if this is related to the Saudi jewel scandal,'' Bhichai told Thai radio. ``But regardless, we should not mix sports with politics.'' In a letter to the Thai prime minister's office, reported Thursday by Bangkok newspapers, Saudi sports authorities cited the looming Muslim holy month of Ramadan and national centenary celebrations as reasons for suddenly pulling out. But suspicion immediately arose that the real reason was the continued strain in relations since a Thai janitor stole precious jewelry from the palace of a Saudi prince in 1989 and fled home. Thai police recovered the jewels and returned them, but many were fakes _ leading the Saudis to conclude that corrupt officers and members of Thailand's power elite kept the loot. The real jewels have never been recovered. Tensions were aggravated in 1990 and 1991, when three Saudi diplomats were murdered in Bangkok. In retaliation, the Saudis barred new Thai guest workers and refused to renew the visas of the thousands already in the desert kingdom. The killings remain unsolved. Saudi Arabia has said relations would be normalized only when the two cases were solved. Kobsak Chutikul, a Foreign Ministry spokesman, said it would be understandable if Saudi Arabia pulls out because of Ramadan fasting. ``If there is any other reason behind this, such as the jewelry case and the murders, we will regret it very much because sports should be separated from politics,'' Kobsak said. Organizers noted that 10 other Muslim nations are sending teams. Suggestions were made that in the future, the Olympic Council of Asia should consider punishing last-minute withdrawals. Organizers need to hold new draws for both handball and basketball because of the pullout, but said the live television coverage schedule will not be affected. The withdrawal is expected to cost 30 million baht (dlrs 830,000) to cover the committee's expenses for organizing programs, accommodation and television schedules. They said they would consult with the council, which oversees the organization of the games, about the impact of the Saudi withdrawal. Officials, meanwhile, expressed shock over a brawl that erupted Tuesday during a friendly soccer match between Thailand and Qatar. The scoreless match was suspended without further play after players from both sides kicked, punched and body-slammed each other for about 10 minutes. Several suffered light injuries. ``As a host, surely the melee will have an impact on the image and reputation of Thailand,'' said Santiparb Tejavanija, chairman of the administrative committee. ``Nobody wanted that incident to happen.'' Officials said that forgiveness was a better option than punishment and that both sides would be admonished not to let a repeat brawl occur.

Despite concern that corruption, incompetence and financial failure would delay or prevent Thailand's ability to host the Asian Games, Bangkok was ready for the December 6 deadline. After an extravagant opening ceremony, the games went well despite a brief soccer brawl, a snooker game incident, the banning of Iran's equestrian team horses for not being disease free, and the withdrawal of Saudi Arabia over strained relations with Thailand. Thai police cleared the streets of beggars and criminals, and athletes were disciplined to avoid Bangkok's night life. China's recall of four soccer players from Europe is testimony of the importance of the games.

China's national soccer team could call back four players from overseas to boost its chances at the Asian Games in Thailand in December, an official newspaper reported Monday. Two of the players, Fan Zhiyi and Sun Jihai, play for Crystal Palace in the English First Division. Another, Yang Chen, plays in Germany, while Li Jinyu is with Nantes in France. Englishman Bob Houghton, who coaches the national team, said recalling Fan and Sun for the Asian Games would allow him to ``see if they can bring the things they have learned recently in England to the national team,'' the China Sports Daily said. Houghton also said that Yang, who plays in Frankfurt, ``very possibly could become an extremely important player in the national team,'' the newspaper reported. Li, who has not had many chances to play since his move to France, also ``is very willing to come back,'' the newspaper said. China and South Korea will both field their Asian Games teams at a friendly warm-up match Nov. 22, the newspaper said. The Asian Games are held every four years. ||||| Horses belonging to Iran's equestrian team will not be allowed to compete in next month's Asian Games because they failed to meet the requirements of the games' veterinary commission, the Thai organizers announced Thursday. The three horses originally came from Iran, but arrived in Thailand after a training period in the United States. They did not have the necessary health certificates guaranteeing that they are disease-free, said Siraya Chunekamrai, president of the Veterinary Commission for the games. This is the first Asian Games in which competitors have been allowed to bring their own horses from abroad. According to regulations, all participating horses had to be screened for a number of diseases before arriving in Thailand. Siraya said she felt sorry for the Iranian team because the problem resulted from ignorance of the rules. Iran is the only country that did not pass the requirements. ``They are the most beautiful horses of all,'' she said. ``I am so sorry for the team but cannot allow them to compete because it is against the rules and it might affect other horses' good health.'' There is only one Thai horse available on standby for the Iranians, as Thailand was not prepared for such a problem, Siraya said. ``If the Iranian team can borrow a couple of more horses from other participating countries, they still can compete,'' she said. There are 106 horses and 12 countries participating in the equestrian events. Most of the horses actually come from Europe and the United States. Thailand has provided a climate-controlled stable and field cleared of contaminants to help the horses become acclimatized to the tropical heat before the competition begins Dec. 8. Many of the horses are suffering stress from the journey here, but those from Asian countries are adjusting faster than those from cold countries, Siraya said. ||||| In rites building from low flares symbolizing dawn to a fiery cauldron lighting, Thailand's king opened the Asian Games Sunday night, giving Thais some respite from an economic crisis that once threatened the continent's Olympic-style event. King Bhumibol Adulyadej, the world's longest-reigning monarch, was upstaged slightly by Japan's Naoko Takahashi. In a marathon run in early morning, to avoid the worst of Bangkok's tropical heat, she won the games' first gold medal in a time just one minute off the world record. Her medal ceremony immediately preceded the official opening festivities for two weeks of competition among 6,000 athletes from 41 nations. In all, 377 gold medals are at stake in 36 sports, including Asian specialities such as kabaddi and sepak takraw. But the king not only made the key proclamation and released the royal pigeon, he also anointed a plaque for the Royal Main Stadium and composed some of the music. Songs written by the king, a talented jazz composer, were played by the Bangkok Symphony Orchestra. Thai officials who approached him at the ceremony did so on their knees. Others greeting the king included International Olympic Committee President Juan Antonio Samaranch. A cascade of fireworks in honor of his 71st birthday Saturday and dancers who prostrated themselves on the field welcomed the monarch to his seat in the royal box. Then came the athletes, starting with Cambodia and ending with the host Thai team. Saudi Arabia, which withdrew its team at the last minute, was represented by only a flag bearer. The Sri Lankan team was led by six dancers in bright costumes, who delighted the crowd in the 60,000-seat stadium with acrobatic maneuvers. Each team was led by a Thai beauty queen holding its signboard. After the parade, five of the women collapsed, and three were taken out on stretchers. A giant cauldron atop the stadium was lit by touching a torch to a smaller cauldron inside a model of a temple, which then was lifted on an elevator and sent an explosion of sparks into the games' flame receptacle. Outside the stadium before the ceremony, long lines of people waited to take photos of themselves in front of a plastic statue of the games' elephant mascot, ``Chai-yo.'' One, Sakchai Pungsrinon, a 30-year-old piping engineer, who paid 1,000 baht (dlrs 26) for his ceremonies ticket, said, ``Thailand has many problems. Asia also has many problems. For two weeks, maybe we can forget about all these problems.'' Several thousand people without tickets milled around outside, waving small Thai flags and waiting for a glimpse of the king. They also could watch the ceremony on a large television screen. Security measures included bomb-sniffing dogs. For the competing nations _ many sending reduced teams to ease the pinch of the Asian crisis _ the games are a proving ground for the 2000 Olympics in Sydney, Australia. ``It's not just getting a gold, it's getting a gold with a result that is close or at world standards,'' said Li Furong, deputy head of China's Asian Games delegation. ``The main target is the 2000 Olympics.'' Sunday's focus was more on pageantry, beginning with slightly built Prime Minister Chuan Leekpai leading off a torch relay at 9:09 a.m. (0209 GMT), reflecting popular belief that nine is a lucky number. Bhumibol is the ninth king of the current dynasty. The three-hour ceremonies featured 7,614 performers in lavishly produced acts with the theme ``Friendship Beyond Frontiers.'' Performers in ancient Thai garb paraded across the field, followed by people-drawn chariots. A martial arts display celebrated Asian unity, and hundreds of primary school students dressed in colorful outfits introduced the games' mascot. Parts of the ceremony were built around the Indian Ramayana epic, the basis for much of traditional Thai mythology, literature and performing and fine arts. The field became a swirl of giant snakes, swans, birds, angels, and other mystical creatures. Another performance celebrating the unity of Asia capped the show, with four large swan floats pulled to the middle of the field, each tethered to a giant balloon symbolizing the sun, moon, earth and a giant lotus. Fireworks burst overhead, searchlights played across the stadium and lasers split the darkness before the royal anthem concluded the program. The combined budget for the opening and closing ceremonies was 70 million baht (dlrs 1.94 million), including a large share of donated and at-cost labor _ part of Thailand's remedy for overcoming financial problems that hit the games. In warming up the audience before the ceremonies, a Thai comedian jested: ``If you're Saudi, raise your hand.'' Saudi Arabia withdrew from the games at the last minute, throwing some of the scheduling into disarray. It cited a national holiday and the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan, but many Thais saw the move as retaliation for the failure of Thai police to solve a number of serious crimes against Saudi citizens. ||||| Thailand showed its nearly complete facilities for the Asian Games to a tough jury Thursday _ the heads of the organizing committees from the 43 nations competing in the December event. Thailand won host rights for the quadrennial games in 1995, but setbacks in preparations led officials of the Olympic Council of Asia late last year to threaten to move the games to another country. They complained that the Thai organizers were behind in constructing facilities and had failed to keep them informed. It appeared that Thursday's tour was successful in reassuring everyone. ``We have a strong of sense of relief,'' said Abdul Muttaleb al-Ahmad, director general of the Kuwait-based Olympic Council of Asia and a frequent critic of Thailand's organizing committee. ``Everything is 99 percent completed.'' In a welcoming speech, Thai Deputy Prime Minister Bhichai Rattakul, also chairman of the Thai organizing committee, told delegation members to cast aside any doubts over whether the Dec. 6-20 games will be a success. ``I can hereby confirm that regardless of what Thailand has faced, we ... have tried to accommodate all requests for the 13th Asian Games,'' said Bhichai. Since the Thai organizers began their preparations, they have faced many difficulties, most of them resulting from the country's financial crisis, he said. But the country was able to pull it through, he added. ``This is an example of Asia's resiliency. We have financial problems in all of Asia but still we are able to prepare commendably,'' said Manuel Veguillas, head of the Philippine delegation. ``I am impressed,'' said Tu Mingde, secretary-general of China's Olympic Committee. ``The games will be a success.'' Still, Bangkok's infamous traffic jams did not go overlooked. ``My only concern now is the road construction leading to the site,'' said Kenji Ono from Japan. Construction workers are trying to ensure that the road leading to the stadium, including a flyover at a key intersection, will be completed on time for the games. The Olympic Council of Asia, meanwhile, is working with the Bangkok Organizing Committee to come up with a contingency plan in case of any possible emergency, said its director general, Muttaleb. ``You cannot really anticipate anything,'' he said, as he toured the main stadium of the Sports Authority of Thailand. ``Any venue can have a problem, such as electrical failure.'' ||||| Organizers of December's Asian Games have dismissed press reports that a sports complex would not be completed on time, saying preparations are well in hand, a local newspaper said Friday. Santiparb Tejavanija, deputy secretary of the Bangkok Asian Games Organizing Committee, said construction of the sports complex at the Muang Thong Thani housing estate is 95 percent complete and will be finished this month, the Bangkok Post reported. Liquidity problems at Bangkok Land, the company that owns the housing estate, threatened to prevent the company from finishing the complex in time for the Dec. 6-20 games. Deputy Prime Minister Bhichai Rattakul, who chairs the organizing committee, expressed doubt last month that the complex would be completed on time because of the financial problems. Santiparb told the Post the money problems had been overcome by shifting 200 million baht (dlrs 5 million) worth of credit guarantees from a project that had been scrapped to cover the construction cost of the complex. Preparations for the games have been plagued by political interference by previous governments, alleged corruption and incompetence. The decision to award the contract for the sports complex was controversial, with critics calling it an attempt to bail out the property developer's failed housing estate. Doubts over Thailand's ability to stage the games increased over the past year-and-a-half after the country entered its worst economic downturn in decades. The body governing the games threatened several times to award Asia's version of the Olympics to other countries, but Thailand argued that all would be ready by opening day. The Bangkok games are expected to attract more than 10,000 athletes from 43 nations. ||||| A snooker game between longtime Asian rivals India and Pakistan led to a flareup of tempers Sunday, showing a depth of differences that shocked Thai organizers and spectators at the Asian Games. India and Pakistan have fought three wars since becoming independent in 1947. A Thai referee's decision that India's Yashin Merchant had committed a foul during a decisive frame sparked a fierce debate with the referee that forced stoppage of play for 15 minutes. Merchant defeated Mohammad Saleh 5-4 after order was restored, but the incident not only violated the sport's strict etiquette, but showed the distrust between the two neighbors that often has spilled over into sports. The referee ruled that Merchant's white cue ball had first touched the black before hitting the target, red. Merchant protested. With the referee refusing to reverse his decision, Merchant sought help from the Indian team. Several Indian team members went to the playing arena, and one of them wrote a quick protest letter using the snooker table as a writing platform. Disgusted spectators viewed it as a breach of snooker etiquette. ``It does not look nice for grownup men wearing neckties to fight,'' said Pakistani team manager Shahnawaz Khan. ``We just watched the whole drama,'' he said. Pakistani team officials did not intervene, instead staying in their allocated seats. ``It was made very clear to everybody that a referee's decision will be final, but now that the Indians have lodged a formal complaint, we have also done so,'' Khan said. The Indian complaint, however, has no meaning now as Merchant has won. Indian officials were not available for comment. Tournament director Surasak Werapong said both complaints were thrown out because neither side paid the required dlrs 50 filing fee. The match was one of the first as snooker made its Asian Games debut in style, with elated officials greeting the opening with muffled clapping, in keeping with the sport's etiquette. A total of 19 countries are vying for 10 gold medals in snooker and billiards. The preliminary elimination rounds began Sunday. ``This is the brightest day for us,'' said Manmohanjit Singh, the Singapore-born president of the International Billiards and Snooker Federation, the sport's world governing body. ``This is indeed a high step and this will greatly help to make the sport more popular in Asia, which is coming up fast,'' said Singh, whose family migrated to Singapore from India several decades ago. With the addition of snooker, the Asian Games now have 36 sports. ||||| Saudi Arabia is considering sending a small team to the Bangkok Asian Games from which it pulled out unexpectedly this week, a Saudi official said Saturday. Saudi Arabia's top sports official, Prince Faisal bin Fahd, is studying a proposal by the Olympic Council of Asia to at least send a symbolic delegation to the Dec. 6-20 Games, said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity. The plea to reconsider was made by Sheik Ahmad al-Fahd al Sabah, president of the Olympic Council of Asia. Sheik Ahmad, a member of the Kuwaiti royal family, is a friend of Prince Faisal. Saudi Arabia's sudden announcement Wednesday that it is withdrawing its 105-member team shocked hosts Thailand, who remain skeptical about the official reasons offered. Saudi sports authorities said the Games conflicted with national centenary celebrations and the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. But observers point rather to Saudi anger at the failure of Thai authorities to solve two, decade-old criminal cases involving their nationals: the theft of dlrs 20 million worth of jewels from a Saudi prince and the murder of three Saudi diplomats in Bangkok. The cases are widely believed to involve people high up in the power hierarchy, who in Thailand rarely face prosecution. Saudi Arabia has in the past said relations would only be normalized when the two cases were solved. Thai newspapers reported Saturday that attempts to convince Saudi Arabia to participate in the upcoming 13th Asian Games have failed. Thai Olympic Committee Chairman Gen. Chettha Thanajaro told the Bangkok Post he sent a last-minute plea to his Saudi counterpart but has received no response. ``I have done my best. We have to respect their decision,'' he told the Post. The withdrawal has thrown the Games' schedules into disarray. ||||| Thai police have detained more than 300 beggars, most from neighboring countries, in a campaign to make Bangkok's streets safer for spectators and athletes arriving for the upcoming Asian Games, a senior police officer said Friday. Arrests were made throughout Bangkok during a four-day crackdown on panhandlers. About 100 of those detained were displayed Friday to local and foreign press at a detention center in Bangkok. ``Most come here because of economic hardship,'' said Maj. Gen. Chanvut Vajrabukka, deputy commissioner for the immigration police. ``There are some beggars, however, who are under control of gangsters. They could cause trouble for tourists and athletes.'' Other groups targeted by police in advance of the Asian Games are foreign criminal gangs believed to operate in Bangkok and other major cities in Thailand. The Asian Games will be held from the Dec. 6-20. ||||| For some teams, ``out of bounds'' at the Asian Games means more than just a line on a soccer field or basketball floor. That's because the host city offers the punchy mix of Viagra and notorious night life. The Pakistanis say all their athletes and officials for the games opening Sunday have been told not to even think of the wonder drug and ``night life ideas.'' The Indian team's solution is mandatory meetings for all athletes before bedtime. The Sri Lankan participants, who had to sign a code of conduct before coming to Bangkok, are being watched by an army brigadier with a track record of high discipline. The Chinese have done their homework on staying out of trouble. Thailand, especially the capital Bangkok, is known worldwide for its titillating night life. From taxi drivers to local tourist magazines distributed free at hotels, there are messengers aplenty to advertise massage parlors and escort services. Minutely detailed photo albums seek to arouse sensual fantasies. Estimates of the number of female sex workers in Thailand, a country of 60 million, range from more than 300,000 to 2 million. Under Thailand's drug rules, Viagra is not available in drug stores, but is sold only in hospital pharmacies with a prescription from a urologist, cardiologist, endocrinologist or psychiatrist for 400 baht (about dlrs 10) a dose. But there is a black market in the drug that might prove an attraction for some among the more than 15,000 athletes, officials and media personnel in Bangkok. ``No way,'' said Gurdayal Singh Mander, leader of the Indian contingent, when asked if there was a risk of lack in discipline. ``I believe no one will try anything silly in Bangkok. Even if they try, our watching system is watertight and we will know,'' said Mander, a former police officer. Indian officials in charge of various sports meet their athletes at 10 p.m. before bedtime at the Asian Games village. The Pakistanis have opted for trust and nationalism. ``Oh, Viagra,'' exclaimed Pakistani medical officer Yousef Baig. ``They know all about it and they know all about Bangkok. We have told them, don't break our trust and keep the good name of Pakistan flying high,'' Dr. Baig said. China has taken a similar approach. ``We don't treat them as kids, telling them don't do this, don't do that. We just told them to leave a good impression of Chinese athletes,'' said Li Furong, deputy head of the Chinese delegation. For the Sri Lankans, ``we have told them that they will not be allowed outside the games village until they finish their discipline,'' said Upali Bandaratillaka, a serving brigadier in the Sri Lankan army. ``Even if they want to go to shopping, one of us will accompany them,'' Bandaratillaka said. His deputy is a police officer. Host Thailand is stressing that sex isn't lurking around every corner. A ``Traditional Thai Massage Parlor'' has been opened at the games' village. ``Thai traditional massage is considered an art form,'' said Prarop Laovanich, secretary of the Asian Games Sub-Committee for Culture and Performance. ``A skilled masseur can cure ailments and muscular fatigue.'' And one must wear baggy white pajamas before a traditional Thai massage. ||||| Saudi Arabia's abrupt withdrawal from the Asian Games left organizers scrambling Thursday to change schedules and Thai diplomats mulling a decade of relations strained by jewel theft and the murder of diplomats. Bhichai Rattakul, deputy prime minister and president of the Bangkok Asian Games Organizing Committee, asked the Foreign Ministry to urge the Saudi government to reconsider withdrawing its 105-strong team. The games open Dec. 6. ``We're not sure if this is related to the Saudi jewel scandal,'' Bhichai told Thai radio. ``But regardless, we should not mix sports with politics.'' In a letter to the Thai prime minister's office, reported Thursday by Bangkok newspapers, Saudi sports authorities cited the looming Muslim holy month of Ramadan and national centenary celebrations as reasons for suddenly pulling out. But suspicion immediately arose that the real reason was the continued strain in relations since a Thai janitor stole precious jewelry from the palace of a Saudi prince in 1989 and fled home. Thai police recovered the jewels and returned them, but many were fakes _ leading the Saudis to conclude that corrupt officers and members of Thailand's power elite kept the loot. The real jewels have never been recovered. Tensions were aggravated in 1990 and 1991, when three Saudi diplomats were murdered in Bangkok. In retaliation, the Saudis barred new Thai guest workers and refused to renew the visas of the thousands already in the desert kingdom. The killings remain unsolved. Saudi Arabia has said relations would be normalized only when the two cases were solved. Kobsak Chutikul, a Foreign Ministry spokesman, said it would be understandable if Saudi Arabia pulls out because of Ramadan fasting. ``If there is any other reason behind this, such as the jewelry case and the murders, we will regret it very much because sports should be separated from politics,'' Kobsak said. Organizers noted that 10 other Muslim nations are sending teams. Suggestions were made that in the future, the Olympic Council of Asia should consider punishing last-minute withdrawals. Organizers need to hold new draws for both handball and basketball because of the pullout, but said the live television coverage schedule will not be affected. The withdrawal is expected to cost 30 million baht (dlrs 830,000) to cover the committee's expenses for organizing programs, accommodation and television schedules. They said they would consult with the council, which oversees the organization of the games, about the impact of the Saudi withdrawal. Officials, meanwhile, expressed shock over a brawl that erupted Tuesday during a friendly soccer match between Thailand and Qatar. The scoreless match was suspended without further play after players from both sides kicked, punched and body-slammed each other for about 10 minutes. Several suffered light injuries. ``As a host, surely the melee will have an impact on the image and reputation of Thailand,'' said Santiparb Tejavanija, chairman of the administrative committee. ``Nobody wanted that incident to happen.'' Officials said that forgiveness was a better option than punishment and that both sides would be admonished not to let a repeat brawl occur.

The Asian Games scheduled for Bangkok Dec. 6-20, 1998 were never a sure thing. Thailand was in economic doldrums and there was question whether the sports complex for the games would be completed in time. By late October, however, it was clear the games could take place. Thai police rounded up beggars who might intimidate spectators, but then in late November Saudi Arabia withdrew its teams and there was concern that athletes might be tempted by Bangkok's nightlife and the availability of Viagra. But on Dec. 6 the games opened as scheduled as 6,000 athletes from 41 nations competed, including a heated snooker match between India and Pakistan.

China's national soccer team could call back four players from overseas to boost its chances at the Asian Games in Thailand in December, an official newspaper reported Monday. Two of the players, Fan Zhiyi and Sun Jihai, play for Crystal Palace in the English First Division. Another, Yang Chen, plays in Germany, while Li Jinyu is with Nantes in France. Englishman Bob Houghton, who coaches the national team, said recalling Fan and Sun for the Asian Games would allow him to ``see if they can bring the things they have learned recently in England to the national team,'' the China Sports Daily said. Houghton also said that Yang, who plays in Frankfurt, ``very possibly could become an extremely important player in the national team,'' the newspaper reported. Li, who has not had many chances to play since his move to France, also ``is very willing to come back,'' the newspaper said. China and South Korea will both field their Asian Games teams at a friendly warm-up match Nov. 22, the newspaper said. The Asian Games are held every four years. ||||| Horses belonging to Iran's equestrian team will not be allowed to compete in next month's Asian Games because they failed to meet the requirements of the games' veterinary commission, the Thai organizers announced Thursday. The three horses originally came from Iran, but arrived in Thailand after a training period in the United States. They did not have the necessary health certificates guaranteeing that they are disease-free, said Siraya Chunekamrai, president of the Veterinary Commission for the games. This is the first Asian Games in which competitors have been allowed to bring their own horses from abroad. According to regulations, all participating horses had to be screened for a number of diseases before arriving in Thailand. Siraya said she felt sorry for the Iranian team because the problem resulted from ignorance of the rules. Iran is the only country that did not pass the requirements. ``They are the most beautiful horses of all,'' she said. ``I am so sorry for the team but cannot allow them to compete because it is against the rules and it might affect other horses' good health.'' There is only one Thai horse available on standby for the Iranians, as Thailand was not prepared for such a problem, Siraya said. ``If the Iranian team can borrow a couple of more horses from other participating countries, they still can compete,'' she said. There are 106 horses and 12 countries participating in the equestrian events. Most of the horses actually come from Europe and the United States. Thailand has provided a climate-controlled stable and field cleared of contaminants to help the horses become acclimatized to the tropical heat before the competition begins Dec. 8. Many of the horses are suffering stress from the journey here, but those from Asian countries are adjusting faster than those from cold countries, Siraya said. ||||| In rites building from low flares symbolizing dawn to a fiery cauldron lighting, Thailand's king opened the Asian Games Sunday night, giving Thais some respite from an economic crisis that once threatened the continent's Olympic-style event. King Bhumibol Adulyadej, the world's longest-reigning monarch, was upstaged slightly by Japan's Naoko Takahashi. In a marathon run in early morning, to avoid the worst of Bangkok's tropical heat, she won the games' first gold medal in a time just one minute off the world record. Her medal ceremony immediately preceded the official opening festivities for two weeks of competition among 6,000 athletes from 41 nations. In all, 377 gold medals are at stake in 36 sports, including Asian specialities such as kabaddi and sepak takraw. But the king not only made the key proclamation and released the royal pigeon, he also anointed a plaque for the Royal Main Stadium and composed some of the music. Songs written by the king, a talented jazz composer, were played by the Bangkok Symphony Orchestra. Thai officials who approached him at the ceremony did so on their knees. Others greeting the king included International Olympic Committee President Juan Antonio Samaranch. A cascade of fireworks in honor of his 71st birthday Saturday and dancers who prostrated themselves on the field welcomed the monarch to his seat in the royal box. Then came the athletes, starting with Cambodia and ending with the host Thai team. Saudi Arabia, which withdrew its team at the last minute, was represented by only a flag bearer. The Sri Lankan team was led by six dancers in bright costumes, who delighted the crowd in the 60,000-seat stadium with acrobatic maneuvers. Each team was led by a Thai beauty queen holding its signboard. After the parade, five of the women collapsed, and three were taken out on stretchers. A giant cauldron atop the stadium was lit by touching a torch to a smaller cauldron inside a model of a temple, which then was lifted on an elevator and sent an explosion of sparks into the games' flame receptacle. Outside the stadium before the ceremony, long lines of people waited to take photos of themselves in front of a plastic statue of the games' elephant mascot, ``Chai-yo.'' One, Sakchai Pungsrinon, a 30-year-old piping engineer, who paid 1,000 baht (dlrs 26) for his ceremonies ticket, said, ``Thailand has many problems. Asia also has many problems. For two weeks, maybe we can forget about all these problems.'' Several thousand people without tickets milled around outside, waving small Thai flags and waiting for a glimpse of the king. They also could watch the ceremony on a large television screen. Security measures included bomb-sniffing dogs. For the competing nations _ many sending reduced teams to ease the pinch of the Asian crisis _ the games are a proving ground for the 2000 Olympics in Sydney, Australia. ``It's not just getting a gold, it's getting a gold with a result that is close or at world standards,'' said Li Furong, deputy head of China's Asian Games delegation. ``The main target is the 2000 Olympics.'' Sunday's focus was more on pageantry, beginning with slightly built Prime Minister Chuan Leekpai leading off a torch relay at 9:09 a.m. (0209 GMT), reflecting popular belief that nine is a lucky number. Bhumibol is the ninth king of the current dynasty. The three-hour ceremonies featured 7,614 performers in lavishly produced acts with the theme ``Friendship Beyond Frontiers.'' Performers in ancient Thai garb paraded across the field, followed by people-drawn chariots. A martial arts display celebrated Asian unity, and hundreds of primary school students dressed in colorful outfits introduced the games' mascot. Parts of the ceremony were built around the Indian Ramayana epic, the basis for much of traditional Thai mythology, literature and performing and fine arts. The field became a swirl of giant snakes, swans, birds, angels, and other mystical creatures. Another performance celebrating the unity of Asia capped the show, with four large swan floats pulled to the middle of the field, each tethered to a giant balloon symbolizing the sun, moon, earth and a giant lotus. Fireworks burst overhead, searchlights played across the stadium and lasers split the darkness before the royal anthem concluded the program. The combined budget for the opening and closing ceremonies was 70 million baht (dlrs 1.94 million), including a large share of donated and at-cost labor _ part of Thailand's remedy for overcoming financial problems that hit the games. In warming up the audience before the ceremonies, a Thai comedian jested: ``If you're Saudi, raise your hand.'' Saudi Arabia withdrew from the games at the last minute, throwing some of the scheduling into disarray. It cited a national holiday and the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan, but many Thais saw the move as retaliation for the failure of Thai police to solve a number of serious crimes against Saudi citizens. ||||| Thailand showed its nearly complete facilities for the Asian Games to a tough jury Thursday _ the heads of the organizing committees from the 43 nations competing in the December event. Thailand won host rights for the quadrennial games in 1995, but setbacks in preparations led officials of the Olympic Council of Asia late last year to threaten to move the games to another country. They complained that the Thai organizers were behind in constructing facilities and had failed to keep them informed. It appeared that Thursday's tour was successful in reassuring everyone. ``We have a strong of sense of relief,'' said Abdul Muttaleb al-Ahmad, director general of the Kuwait-based Olympic Council of Asia and a frequent critic of Thailand's organizing committee. ``Everything is 99 percent completed.'' In a welcoming speech, Thai Deputy Prime Minister Bhichai Rattakul, also chairman of the Thai organizing committee, told delegation members to cast aside any doubts over whether the Dec. 6-20 games will be a success. ``I can hereby confirm that regardless of what Thailand has faced, we ... have tried to accommodate all requests for the 13th Asian Games,'' said Bhichai. Since the Thai organizers began their preparations, they have faced many difficulties, most of them resulting from the country's financial crisis, he said. But the country was able to pull it through, he added. ``This is an example of Asia's resiliency. We have financial problems in all of Asia but still we are able to prepare commendably,'' said Manuel Veguillas, head of the Philippine delegation. ``I am impressed,'' said Tu Mingde, secretary-general of China's Olympic Committee. ``The games will be a success.'' Still, Bangkok's infamous traffic jams did not go overlooked. ``My only concern now is the road construction leading to the site,'' said Kenji Ono from Japan. Construction workers are trying to ensure that the road leading to the stadium, including a flyover at a key intersection, will be completed on time for the games. The Olympic Council of Asia, meanwhile, is working with the Bangkok Organizing Committee to come up with a contingency plan in case of any possible emergency, said its director general, Muttaleb. ``You cannot really anticipate anything,'' he said, as he toured the main stadium of the Sports Authority of Thailand. ``Any venue can have a problem, such as electrical failure.'' ||||| Organizers of December's Asian Games have dismissed press reports that a sports complex would not be completed on time, saying preparations are well in hand, a local newspaper said Friday. Santiparb Tejavanija, deputy secretary of the Bangkok Asian Games Organizing Committee, said construction of the sports complex at the Muang Thong Thani housing estate is 95 percent complete and will be finished this month, the Bangkok Post reported. Liquidity problems at Bangkok Land, the company that owns the housing estate, threatened to prevent the company from finishing the complex in time for the Dec. 6-20 games. Deputy Prime Minister Bhichai Rattakul, who chairs the organizing committee, expressed doubt last month that the complex would be completed on time because of the financial problems. Santiparb told the Post the money problems had been overcome by shifting 200 million baht (dlrs 5 million) worth of credit guarantees from a project that had been scrapped to cover the construction cost of the complex. Preparations for the games have been plagued by political interference by previous governments, alleged corruption and incompetence. The decision to award the contract for the sports complex was controversial, with critics calling it an attempt to bail out the property developer's failed housing estate. Doubts over Thailand's ability to stage the games increased over the past year-and-a-half after the country entered its worst economic downturn in decades. The body governing the games threatened several times to award Asia's version of the Olympics to other countries, but Thailand argued that all would be ready by opening day. The Bangkok games are expected to attract more than 10,000 athletes from 43 nations. ||||| A snooker game between longtime Asian rivals India and Pakistan led to a flareup of tempers Sunday, showing a depth of differences that shocked Thai organizers and spectators at the Asian Games. India and Pakistan have fought three wars since becoming independent in 1947. A Thai referee's decision that India's Yashin Merchant had committed a foul during a decisive frame sparked a fierce debate with the referee that forced stoppage of play for 15 minutes. Merchant defeated Mohammad Saleh 5-4 after order was restored, but the incident not only violated the sport's strict etiquette, but showed the distrust between the two neighbors that often has spilled over into sports. The referee ruled that Merchant's white cue ball had first touched the black before hitting the target, red. Merchant protested. With the referee refusing to reverse his decision, Merchant sought help from the Indian team. Several Indian team members went to the playing arena, and one of them wrote a quick protest letter using the snooker table as a writing platform. Disgusted spectators viewed it as a breach of snooker etiquette. ``It does not look nice for grownup men wearing neckties to fight,'' said Pakistani team manager Shahnawaz Khan. ``We just watched the whole drama,'' he said. Pakistani team officials did not intervene, instead staying in their allocated seats. ``It was made very clear to everybody that a referee's decision will be final, but now that the Indians have lodged a formal complaint, we have also done so,'' Khan said. The Indian complaint, however, has no meaning now as Merchant has won. Indian officials were not available for comment. Tournament director Surasak Werapong said both complaints were thrown out because neither side paid the required dlrs 50 filing fee. The match was one of the first as snooker made its Asian Games debut in style, with elated officials greeting the opening with muffled clapping, in keeping with the sport's etiquette. A total of 19 countries are vying for 10 gold medals in snooker and billiards. The preliminary elimination rounds began Sunday. ``This is the brightest day for us,'' said Manmohanjit Singh, the Singapore-born president of the International Billiards and Snooker Federation, the sport's world governing body. ``This is indeed a high step and this will greatly help to make the sport more popular in Asia, which is coming up fast,'' said Singh, whose family migrated to Singapore from India several decades ago. With the addition of snooker, the Asian Games now have 36 sports. ||||| Saudi Arabia is considering sending a small team to the Bangkok Asian Games from which it pulled out unexpectedly this week, a Saudi official said Saturday. Saudi Arabia's top sports official, Prince Faisal bin Fahd, is studying a proposal by the Olympic Council of Asia to at least send a symbolic delegation to the Dec. 6-20 Games, said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity. The plea to reconsider was made by Sheik Ahmad al-Fahd al Sabah, president of the Olympic Council of Asia. Sheik Ahmad, a member of the Kuwaiti royal family, is a friend of Prince Faisal. Saudi Arabia's sudden announcement Wednesday that it is withdrawing its 105-member team shocked hosts Thailand, who remain skeptical about the official reasons offered. Saudi sports authorities said the Games conflicted with national centenary celebrations and the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. But observers point rather to Saudi anger at the failure of Thai authorities to solve two, decade-old criminal cases involving their nationals: the theft of dlrs 20 million worth of jewels from a Saudi prince and the murder of three Saudi diplomats in Bangkok. The cases are widely believed to involve people high up in the power hierarchy, who in Thailand rarely face prosecution. Saudi Arabia has in the past said relations would only be normalized when the two cases were solved. Thai newspapers reported Saturday that attempts to convince Saudi Arabia to participate in the upcoming 13th Asian Games have failed. Thai Olympic Committee Chairman Gen. Chettha Thanajaro told the Bangkok Post he sent a last-minute plea to his Saudi counterpart but has received no response. ``I have done my best. We have to respect their decision,'' he told the Post. The withdrawal has thrown the Games' schedules into disarray. ||||| Thai police have detained more than 300 beggars, most from neighboring countries, in a campaign to make Bangkok's streets safer for spectators and athletes arriving for the upcoming Asian Games, a senior police officer said Friday. Arrests were made throughout Bangkok during a four-day crackdown on panhandlers. About 100 of those detained were displayed Friday to local and foreign press at a detention center in Bangkok. ``Most come here because of economic hardship,'' said Maj. Gen. Chanvut Vajrabukka, deputy commissioner for the immigration police. ``There are some beggars, however, who are under control of gangsters. They could cause trouble for tourists and athletes.'' Other groups targeted by police in advance of the Asian Games are foreign criminal gangs believed to operate in Bangkok and other major cities in Thailand. The Asian Games will be held from the Dec. 6-20. ||||| For some teams, ``out of bounds'' at the Asian Games means more than just a line on a soccer field or basketball floor. That's because the host city offers the punchy mix of Viagra and notorious night life. The Pakistanis say all their athletes and officials for the games opening Sunday have been told not to even think of the wonder drug and ``night life ideas.'' The Indian team's solution is mandatory meetings for all athletes before bedtime. The Sri Lankan participants, who had to sign a code of conduct before coming to Bangkok, are being watched by an army brigadier with a track record of high discipline. The Chinese have done their homework on staying out of trouble. Thailand, especially the capital Bangkok, is known worldwide for its titillating night life. From taxi drivers to local tourist magazines distributed free at hotels, there are messengers aplenty to advertise massage parlors and escort services. Minutely detailed photo albums seek to arouse sensual fantasies. Estimates of the number of female sex workers in Thailand, a country of 60 million, range from more than 300,000 to 2 million. Under Thailand's drug rules, Viagra is not available in drug stores, but is sold only in hospital pharmacies with a prescription from a urologist, cardiologist, endocrinologist or psychiatrist for 400 baht (about dlrs 10) a dose. But there is a black market in the drug that might prove an attraction for some among the more than 15,000 athletes, officials and media personnel in Bangkok. ``No way,'' said Gurdayal Singh Mander, leader of the Indian contingent, when asked if there was a risk of lack in discipline. ``I believe no one will try anything silly in Bangkok. Even if they try, our watching system is watertight and we will know,'' said Mander, a former police officer. Indian officials in charge of various sports meet their athletes at 10 p.m. before bedtime at the Asian Games village. The Pakistanis have opted for trust and nationalism. ``Oh, Viagra,'' exclaimed Pakistani medical officer Yousef Baig. ``They know all about it and they know all about Bangkok. We have told them, don't break our trust and keep the good name of Pakistan flying high,'' Dr. Baig said. China has taken a similar approach. ``We don't treat them as kids, telling them don't do this, don't do that. We just told them to leave a good impression of Chinese athletes,'' said Li Furong, deputy head of the Chinese delegation. For the Sri Lankans, ``we have told them that they will not be allowed outside the games village until they finish their discipline,'' said Upali Bandaratillaka, a serving brigadier in the Sri Lankan army. ``Even if they want to go to shopping, one of us will accompany them,'' Bandaratillaka said. His deputy is a police officer. Host Thailand is stressing that sex isn't lurking around every corner. A ``Traditional Thai Massage Parlor'' has been opened at the games' village. ``Thai traditional massage is considered an art form,'' said Prarop Laovanich, secretary of the Asian Games Sub-Committee for Culture and Performance. ``A skilled masseur can cure ailments and muscular fatigue.'' And one must wear baggy white pajamas before a traditional Thai massage. ||||| Saudi Arabia's abrupt withdrawal from the Asian Games left organizers scrambling Thursday to change schedules and Thai diplomats mulling a decade of relations strained by jewel theft and the murder of diplomats. Bhichai Rattakul, deputy prime minister and president of the Bangkok Asian Games Organizing Committee, asked the Foreign Ministry to urge the Saudi government to reconsider withdrawing its 105-strong team. The games open Dec. 6. ``We're not sure if this is related to the Saudi jewel scandal,'' Bhichai told Thai radio. ``But regardless, we should not mix sports with politics.'' In a letter to the Thai prime minister's office, reported Thursday by Bangkok newspapers, Saudi sports authorities cited the looming Muslim holy month of Ramadan and national centenary celebrations as reasons for suddenly pulling out. But suspicion immediately arose that the real reason was the continued strain in relations since a Thai janitor stole precious jewelry from the palace of a Saudi prince in 1989 and fled home. Thai police recovered the jewels and returned them, but many were fakes _ leading the Saudis to conclude that corrupt officers and members of Thailand's power elite kept the loot. The real jewels have never been recovered. Tensions were aggravated in 1990 and 1991, when three Saudi diplomats were murdered in Bangkok. In retaliation, the Saudis barred new Thai guest workers and refused to renew the visas of the thousands already in the desert kingdom. The killings remain unsolved. Saudi Arabia has said relations would be normalized only when the two cases were solved. Kobsak Chutikul, a Foreign Ministry spokesman, said it would be understandable if Saudi Arabia pulls out because of Ramadan fasting. ``If there is any other reason behind this, such as the jewelry case and the murders, we will regret it very much because sports should be separated from politics,'' Kobsak said. Organizers noted that 10 other Muslim nations are sending teams. Suggestions were made that in the future, the Olympic Council of Asia should consider punishing last-minute withdrawals. Organizers need to hold new draws for both handball and basketball because of the pullout, but said the live television coverage schedule will not be affected. The withdrawal is expected to cost 30 million baht (dlrs 830,000) to cover the committee's expenses for organizing programs, accommodation and television schedules. They said they would consult with the council, which oversees the organization of the games, about the impact of the Saudi withdrawal. Officials, meanwhile, expressed shock over a brawl that erupted Tuesday during a friendly soccer match between Thailand and Qatar. The scoreless match was suspended without further play after players from both sides kicked, punched and body-slammed each other for about 10 minutes. Several suffered light injuries. ``As a host, surely the melee will have an impact on the image and reputation of Thailand,'' said Santiparb Tejavanija, chairman of the administrative committee. ``Nobody wanted that incident to happen.'' Officials said that forgiveness was a better option than punishment and that both sides would be admonished not to let a repeat brawl occur.

Despite economic problems and threats from the Asian Olympic Committee that it would move the games, Thailand was able to meet construction deadlines and open the 13th annual Asian Games to participants from 43 countries. The games have not been without controversy. In a surprise move, Saudi Arabia pulled its athletes from the games, probably in reprisal for a jewel theft and the murder of three of its diplomats. There was speculation that the Saudis would send a ceremonial delegation. National rivalries also were Apparent in a snooker game between India and Pakistan when an argument Arose following a disputed call.

China's national soccer team could call back four players from overseas to boost its chances at the Asian Games in Thailand in December, an official newspaper reported Monday. Two of the players, Fan Zhiyi and Sun Jihai, play for Crystal Palace in the English First Division. Another, Yang Chen, plays in Germany, while Li Jinyu is with Nantes in France. Englishman Bob Houghton, who coaches the national team, said recalling Fan and Sun for the Asian Games would allow him to ``see if they can bring the things they have learned recently in England to the national team,'' the China Sports Daily said. Houghton also said that Yang, who plays in Frankfurt, ``very possibly could become an extremely important player in the national team,'' the newspaper reported. Li, who has not had many chances to play since his move to France, also ``is very willing to come back,'' the newspaper said. China and South Korea will both field their Asian Games teams at a friendly warm-up match Nov. 22, the newspaper said. The Asian Games are held every four years. ||||| Horses belonging to Iran's equestrian team will not be allowed to compete in next month's Asian Games because they failed to meet the requirements of the games' veterinary commission, the Thai organizers announced Thursday. The three horses originally came from Iran, but arrived in Thailand after a training period in the United States. They did not have the necessary health certificates guaranteeing that they are disease-free, said Siraya Chunekamrai, president of the Veterinary Commission for the games. This is the first Asian Games in which competitors have been allowed to bring their own horses from abroad. According to regulations, all participating horses had to be screened for a number of diseases before arriving in Thailand. Siraya said she felt sorry for the Iranian team because the problem resulted from ignorance of the rules. Iran is the only country that did not pass the requirements. ``They are the most beautiful horses of all,'' she said. ``I am so sorry for the team but cannot allow them to compete because it is against the rules and it might affect other horses' good health.'' There is only one Thai horse available on standby for the Iranians, as Thailand was not prepared for such a problem, Siraya said. ``If the Iranian team can borrow a couple of more horses from other participating countries, they still can compete,'' she said. There are 106 horses and 12 countries participating in the equestrian events. Most of the horses actually come from Europe and the United States. Thailand has provided a climate-controlled stable and field cleared of contaminants to help the horses become acclimatized to the tropical heat before the competition begins Dec. 8. Many of the horses are suffering stress from the journey here, but those from Asian countries are adjusting faster than those from cold countries, Siraya said. ||||| In rites building from low flares symbolizing dawn to a fiery cauldron lighting, Thailand's king opened the Asian Games Sunday night, giving Thais some respite from an economic crisis that once threatened the continent's Olympic-style event. King Bhumibol Adulyadej, the world's longest-reigning monarch, was upstaged slightly by Japan's Naoko Takahashi. In a marathon run in early morning, to avoid the worst of Bangkok's tropical heat, she won the games' first gold medal in a time just one minute off the world record. Her medal ceremony immediately preceded the official opening festivities for two weeks of competition among 6,000 athletes from 41 nations. In all, 377 gold medals are at stake in 36 sports, including Asian specialities such as kabaddi and sepak takraw. But the king not only made the key proclamation and released the royal pigeon, he also anointed a plaque for the Royal Main Stadium and composed some of the music. Songs written by the king, a talented jazz composer, were played by the Bangkok Symphony Orchestra. Thai officials who approached him at the ceremony did so on their knees. Others greeting the king included International Olympic Committee President Juan Antonio Samaranch. A cascade of fireworks in honor of his 71st birthday Saturday and dancers who prostrated themselves on the field welcomed the monarch to his seat in the royal box. Then came the athletes, starting with Cambodia and ending with the host Thai team. Saudi Arabia, which withdrew its team at the last minute, was represented by only a flag bearer. The Sri Lankan team was led by six dancers in bright costumes, who delighted the crowd in the 60,000-seat stadium with acrobatic maneuvers. Each team was led by a Thai beauty queen holding its signboard. After the parade, five of the women collapsed, and three were taken out on stretchers. A giant cauldron atop the stadium was lit by touching a torch to a smaller cauldron inside a model of a temple, which then was lifted on an elevator and sent an explosion of sparks into the games' flame receptacle. Outside the stadium before the ceremony, long lines of people waited to take photos of themselves in front of a plastic statue of the games' elephant mascot, ``Chai-yo.'' One, Sakchai Pungsrinon, a 30-year-old piping engineer, who paid 1,000 baht (dlrs 26) for his ceremonies ticket, said, ``Thailand has many problems. Asia also has many problems. For two weeks, maybe we can forget about all these problems.'' Several thousand people without tickets milled around outside, waving small Thai flags and waiting for a glimpse of the king. They also could watch the ceremony on a large television screen. Security measures included bomb-sniffing dogs. For the competing nations _ many sending reduced teams to ease the pinch of the Asian crisis _ the games are a proving ground for the 2000 Olympics in Sydney, Australia. ``It's not just getting a gold, it's getting a gold with a result that is close or at world standards,'' said Li Furong, deputy head of China's Asian Games delegation. ``The main target is the 2000 Olympics.'' Sunday's focus was more on pageantry, beginning with slightly built Prime Minister Chuan Leekpai leading off a torch relay at 9:09 a.m. (0209 GMT), reflecting popular belief that nine is a lucky number. Bhumibol is the ninth king of the current dynasty. The three-hour ceremonies featured 7,614 performers in lavishly produced acts with the theme ``Friendship Beyond Frontiers.'' Performers in ancient Thai garb paraded across the field, followed by people-drawn chariots. A martial arts display celebrated Asian unity, and hundreds of primary school students dressed in colorful outfits introduced the games' mascot. Parts of the ceremony were built around the Indian Ramayana epic, the basis for much of traditional Thai mythology, literature and performing and fine arts. The field became a swirl of giant snakes, swans, birds, angels, and other mystical creatures. Another performance celebrating the unity of Asia capped the show, with four large swan floats pulled to the middle of the field, each tethered to a giant balloon symbolizing the sun, moon, earth and a giant lotus. Fireworks burst overhead, searchlights played across the stadium and lasers split the darkness before the royal anthem concluded the program. The combined budget for the opening and closing ceremonies was 70 million baht (dlrs 1.94 million), including a large share of donated and at-cost labor _ part of Thailand's remedy for overcoming financial problems that hit the games. In warming up the audience before the ceremonies, a Thai comedian jested: ``If you're Saudi, raise your hand.'' Saudi Arabia withdrew from the games at the last minute, throwing some of the scheduling into disarray. It cited a national holiday and the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan, but many Thais saw the move as retaliation for the failure of Thai police to solve a number of serious crimes against Saudi citizens. ||||| Thailand showed its nearly complete facilities for the Asian Games to a tough jury Thursday _ the heads of the organizing committees from the 43 nations competing in the December event. Thailand won host rights for the quadrennial games in 1995, but setbacks in preparations led officials of the Olympic Council of Asia late last year to threaten to move the games to another country. They complained that the Thai organizers were behind in constructing facilities and had failed to keep them informed. It appeared that Thursday's tour was successful in reassuring everyone. ``We have a strong of sense of relief,'' said Abdul Muttaleb al-Ahmad, director general of the Kuwait-based Olympic Council of Asia and a frequent critic of Thailand's organizing committee. ``Everything is 99 percent completed.'' In a welcoming speech, Thai Deputy Prime Minister Bhichai Rattakul, also chairman of the Thai organizing committee, told delegation members to cast aside any doubts over whether the Dec. 6-20 games will be a success. ``I can hereby confirm that regardless of what Thailand has faced, we ... have tried to accommodate all requests for the 13th Asian Games,'' said Bhichai. Since the Thai organizers began their preparations, they have faced many difficulties, most of them resulting from the country's financial crisis, he said. But the country was able to pull it through, he added. ``This is an example of Asia's resiliency. We have financial problems in all of Asia but still we are able to prepare commendably,'' said Manuel Veguillas, head of the Philippine delegation. ``I am impressed,'' said Tu Mingde, secretary-general of China's Olympic Committee. ``The games will be a success.'' Still, Bangkok's infamous traffic jams did not go overlooked. ``My only concern now is the road construction leading to the site,'' said Kenji Ono from Japan. Construction workers are trying to ensure that the road leading to the stadium, including a flyover at a key intersection, will be completed on time for the games. The Olympic Council of Asia, meanwhile, is working with the Bangkok Organizing Committee to come up with a contingency plan in case of any possible emergency, said its director general, Muttaleb. ``You cannot really anticipate anything,'' he said, as he toured the main stadium of the Sports Authority of Thailand. ``Any venue can have a problem, such as electrical failure.'' ||||| Organizers of December's Asian Games have dismissed press reports that a sports complex would not be completed on time, saying preparations are well in hand, a local newspaper said Friday. Santiparb Tejavanija, deputy secretary of the Bangkok Asian Games Organizing Committee, said construction of the sports complex at the Muang Thong Thani housing estate is 95 percent complete and will be finished this month, the Bangkok Post reported. Liquidity problems at Bangkok Land, the company that owns the housing estate, threatened to prevent the company from finishing the complex in time for the Dec. 6-20 games. Deputy Prime Minister Bhichai Rattakul, who chairs the organizing committee, expressed doubt last month that the complex would be completed on time because of the financial problems. Santiparb told the Post the money problems had been overcome by shifting 200 million baht (dlrs 5 million) worth of credit guarantees from a project that had been scrapped to cover the construction cost of the complex. Preparations for the games have been plagued by political interference by previous governments, alleged corruption and incompetence. The decision to award the contract for the sports complex was controversial, with critics calling it an attempt to bail out the property developer's failed housing estate. Doubts over Thailand's ability to stage the games increased over the past year-and-a-half after the country entered its worst economic downturn in decades. The body governing the games threatened several times to award Asia's version of the Olympics to other countries, but Thailand argued that all would be ready by opening day. The Bangkok games are expected to attract more than 10,000 athletes from 43 nations. ||||| A snooker game between longtime Asian rivals India and Pakistan led to a flareup of tempers Sunday, showing a depth of differences that shocked Thai organizers and spectators at the Asian Games. India and Pakistan have fought three wars since becoming independent in 1947. A Thai referee's decision that India's Yashin Merchant had committed a foul during a decisive frame sparked a fierce debate with the referee that forced stoppage of play for 15 minutes. Merchant defeated Mohammad Saleh 5-4 after order was restored, but the incident not only violated the sport's strict etiquette, but showed the distrust between the two neighbors that often has spilled over into sports. The referee ruled that Merchant's white cue ball had first touched the black before hitting the target, red. Merchant protested. With the referee refusing to reverse his decision, Merchant sought help from the Indian team. Several Indian team members went to the playing arena, and one of them wrote a quick protest letter using the snooker table as a writing platform. Disgusted spectators viewed it as a breach of snooker etiquette. ``It does not look nice for grownup men wearing neckties to fight,'' said Pakistani team manager Shahnawaz Khan. ``We just watched the whole drama,'' he said. Pakistani team officials did not intervene, instead staying in their allocated seats. ``It was made very clear to everybody that a referee's decision will be final, but now that the Indians have lodged a formal complaint, we have also done so,'' Khan said. The Indian complaint, however, has no meaning now as Merchant has won. Indian officials were not available for comment. Tournament director Surasak Werapong said both complaints were thrown out because neither side paid the required dlrs 50 filing fee. The match was one of the first as snooker made its Asian Games debut in style, with elated officials greeting the opening with muffled clapping, in keeping with the sport's etiquette. A total of 19 countries are vying for 10 gold medals in snooker and billiards. The preliminary elimination rounds began Sunday. ``This is the brightest day for us,'' said Manmohanjit Singh, the Singapore-born president of the International Billiards and Snooker Federation, the sport's world governing body. ``This is indeed a high step and this will greatly help to make the sport more popular in Asia, which is coming up fast,'' said Singh, whose family migrated to Singapore from India several decades ago. With the addition of snooker, the Asian Games now have 36 sports. ||||| Saudi Arabia is considering sending a small team to the Bangkok Asian Games from which it pulled out unexpectedly this week, a Saudi official said Saturday. Saudi Arabia's top sports official, Prince Faisal bin Fahd, is studying a proposal by the Olympic Council of Asia to at least send a symbolic delegation to the Dec. 6-20 Games, said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity. The plea to reconsider was made by Sheik Ahmad al-Fahd al Sabah, president of the Olympic Council of Asia. Sheik Ahmad, a member of the Kuwaiti royal family, is a friend of Prince Faisal. Saudi Arabia's sudden announcement Wednesday that it is withdrawing its 105-member team shocked hosts Thailand, who remain skeptical about the official reasons offered. Saudi sports authorities said the Games conflicted with national centenary celebrations and the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. But observers point rather to Saudi anger at the failure of Thai authorities to solve two, decade-old criminal cases involving their nationals: the theft of dlrs 20 million worth of jewels from a Saudi prince and the murder of three Saudi diplomats in Bangkok. The cases are widely believed to involve people high up in the power hierarchy, who in Thailand rarely face prosecution. Saudi Arabia has in the past said relations would only be normalized when the two cases were solved. Thai newspapers reported Saturday that attempts to convince Saudi Arabia to participate in the upcoming 13th Asian Games have failed. Thai Olympic Committee Chairman Gen. Chettha Thanajaro told the Bangkok Post he sent a last-minute plea to his Saudi counterpart but has received no response. ``I have done my best. We have to respect their decision,'' he told the Post. The withdrawal has thrown the Games' schedules into disarray. ||||| Thai police have detained more than 300 beggars, most from neighboring countries, in a campaign to make Bangkok's streets safer for spectators and athletes arriving for the upcoming Asian Games, a senior police officer said Friday. Arrests were made throughout Bangkok during a four-day crackdown on panhandlers. About 100 of those detained were displayed Friday to local and foreign press at a detention center in Bangkok. ``Most come here because of economic hardship,'' said Maj. Gen. Chanvut Vajrabukka, deputy commissioner for the immigration police. ``There are some beggars, however, who are under control of gangsters. They could cause trouble for tourists and athletes.'' Other groups targeted by police in advance of the Asian Games are foreign criminal gangs believed to operate in Bangkok and other major cities in Thailand. The Asian Games will be held from the Dec. 6-20. ||||| For some teams, ``out of bounds'' at the Asian Games means more than just a line on a soccer field or basketball floor. That's because the host city offers the punchy mix of Viagra and notorious night life. The Pakistanis say all their athletes and officials for the games opening Sunday have been told not to even think of the wonder drug and ``night life ideas.'' The Indian team's solution is mandatory meetings for all athletes before bedtime. The Sri Lankan participants, who had to sign a code of conduct before coming to Bangkok, are being watched by an army brigadier with a track record of high discipline. The Chinese have done their homework on staying out of trouble. Thailand, especially the capital Bangkok, is known worldwide for its titillating night life. From taxi drivers to local tourist magazines distributed free at hotels, there are messengers aplenty to advertise massage parlors and escort services. Minutely detailed photo albums seek to arouse sensual fantasies. Estimates of the number of female sex workers in Thailand, a country of 60 million, range from more than 300,000 to 2 million. Under Thailand's drug rules, Viagra is not available in drug stores, but is sold only in hospital pharmacies with a prescription from a urologist, cardiologist, endocrinologist or psychiatrist for 400 baht (about dlrs 10) a dose. But there is a black market in the drug that might prove an attraction for some among the more than 15,000 athletes, officials and media personnel in Bangkok. ``No way,'' said Gurdayal Singh Mander, leader of the Indian contingent, when asked if there was a risk of lack in discipline. ``I believe no one will try anything silly in Bangkok. Even if they try, our watching system is watertight and we will know,'' said Mander, a former police officer. Indian officials in charge of various sports meet their athletes at 10 p.m. before bedtime at the Asian Games village. The Pakistanis have opted for trust and nationalism. ``Oh, Viagra,'' exclaimed Pakistani medical officer Yousef Baig. ``They know all about it and they know all about Bangkok. We have told them, don't break our trust and keep the good name of Pakistan flying high,'' Dr. Baig said. China has taken a similar approach. ``We don't treat them as kids, telling them don't do this, don't do that. We just told them to leave a good impression of Chinese athletes,'' said Li Furong, deputy head of the Chinese delegation. For the Sri Lankans, ``we have told them that they will not be allowed outside the games village until they finish their discipline,'' said Upali Bandaratillaka, a serving brigadier in the Sri Lankan army. ``Even if they want to go to shopping, one of us will accompany them,'' Bandaratillaka said. His deputy is a police officer. Host Thailand is stressing that sex isn't lurking around every corner. A ``Traditional Thai Massage Parlor'' has been opened at the games' village. ``Thai traditional massage is considered an art form,'' said Prarop Laovanich, secretary of the Asian Games Sub-Committee for Culture and Performance. ``A skilled masseur can cure ailments and muscular fatigue.'' And one must wear baggy white pajamas before a traditional Thai massage. ||||| Saudi Arabia's abrupt withdrawal from the Asian Games left organizers scrambling Thursday to change schedules and Thai diplomats mulling a decade of relations strained by jewel theft and the murder of diplomats. Bhichai Rattakul, deputy prime minister and president of the Bangkok Asian Games Organizing Committee, asked the Foreign Ministry to urge the Saudi government to reconsider withdrawing its 105-strong team. The games open Dec. 6. ``We're not sure if this is related to the Saudi jewel scandal,'' Bhichai told Thai radio. ``But regardless, we should not mix sports with politics.'' In a letter to the Thai prime minister's office, reported Thursday by Bangkok newspapers, Saudi sports authorities cited the looming Muslim holy month of Ramadan and national centenary celebrations as reasons for suddenly pulling out. But suspicion immediately arose that the real reason was the continued strain in relations since a Thai janitor stole precious jewelry from the palace of a Saudi prince in 1989 and fled home. Thai police recovered the jewels and returned them, but many were fakes _ leading the Saudis to conclude that corrupt officers and members of Thailand's power elite kept the loot. The real jewels have never been recovered. Tensions were aggravated in 1990 and 1991, when three Saudi diplomats were murdered in Bangkok. In retaliation, the Saudis barred new Thai guest workers and refused to renew the visas of the thousands already in the desert kingdom. The killings remain unsolved. Saudi Arabia has said relations would be normalized only when the two cases were solved. Kobsak Chutikul, a Foreign Ministry spokesman, said it would be understandable if Saudi Arabia pulls out because of Ramadan fasting. ``If there is any other reason behind this, such as the jewelry case and the murders, we will regret it very much because sports should be separated from politics,'' Kobsak said. Organizers noted that 10 other Muslim nations are sending teams. Suggestions were made that in the future, the Olympic Council of Asia should consider punishing last-minute withdrawals. Organizers need to hold new draws for both handball and basketball because of the pullout, but said the live television coverage schedule will not be affected. The withdrawal is expected to cost 30 million baht (dlrs 830,000) to cover the committee's expenses for organizing programs, accommodation and television schedules. They said they would consult with the council, which oversees the organization of the games, about the impact of the Saudi withdrawal. Officials, meanwhile, expressed shock over a brawl that erupted Tuesday during a friendly soccer match between Thailand and Qatar. The scoreless match was suspended without further play after players from both sides kicked, punched and body-slammed each other for about 10 minutes. Several suffered light injuries. ``As a host, surely the melee will have an impact on the image and reputation of Thailand,'' said Santiparb Tejavanija, chairman of the administrative committee. ``Nobody wanted that incident to happen.'' Officials said that forgiveness was a better option than punishment and that both sides would be admonished not to let a repeat brawl occur.

Bangkok prepared for the 6000 athletes from 41 nations to compete in the Asian Games. Thai police detained more than 300 beggars to make the city's streets safer, but its notorious night life concerned some team managers. China considered recalling overseas soccer players to bolster chances at the Games. Saudi Arabia abruptly withdrew its 105-man team citing the approach of Ramadan but more likely for past grievances with the Thais. Later, they considered sending a "small team". The Iranian equestrian team's horses failed the vet's exam. The Thai King opened the Games with an elaborate ceremony. Rivals India and Pakistan argued during a snooker match.

The United States and Russia are ratcheting up the pressure on Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, warning that NATO airstrikes are inevitable unless he takes decisive action to end the crisis in Kosovo province. Fearing airstrikes, Yugoslav generals put the nation's air defense on high alert, but tried a belated compromise by moving some tanks and other heavy equipment out of Kosovo. A Western diplomat said up to 120 Yugoslav army armored vehicles, including tanks, have been pulled out. However, U.S. envoy Richard Holbrooke said Monday that the Kosovo situation remains critical despite a lull in fighting and the removal of some Yugoslav tanks and troops. Holbrooke spoke in Brussels, Belgium, en route to Belgrade to meet with Milosevic. ``We hope to make clear to president Milosevic and the people of Yugoslavia the extreme gravity of the situation,'' Holbrooke said after a meeting with NATO leaders. Holbrooke said he was told that NATO preparations continued unabated. ``At NATO, the planning for military action is serious, intense and sustained,'' he said. Serbian police and the Yugoslav army have routed separatist Kosovo Albanian rebels in the crackdown that began in late February. The conflict has killed hundreds _ most of them Albanian civilians _ and left more than 275,000 refugees. Kosovo is in southern Serbia, the main republic of Yugoslavia. Milosevic met Sunday with Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov and Defense Minister Igor Sergeyev, Serbian President Milan Milutinovic and Yugoslavia's top defense officials. The Russians are against using NATO force in Kosovo. However, Ivanov and Sergeyev said the airstrikes could occur ``if decisive measures are not immediately taken for a radical improvement of the situation,'' Foreign Ministry spokesman Vladimir Rakhmanin told the ITAR-Tass news agency. To avoid such an attack, Yugoslavia must end the hostilities, withdraw army and security forces, take urgent measures to overcome the humanitarian crisis, ensure that refugees can return home and take part in peace talks, he said. In Berlin, German Gen. Dieter Stoeckmann told German radio that NATO action could come ``within days.'' NATO's decision may depend on a report U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan is scheduled to present Monday to the Security Council on whether Yugoslavia is meeting U.N. demands. Serb authorities appeared ready for compromise by installing an interim government in the rebellious province in Serbia, the dominant republic in Yugoslavia. On Monday, Yugoslav Prime Minister Momir Bulatovic said the government had accepted a Russian proposal for the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe to investigate the crisis. Yugoslavia had repeatedly rejected such a mission until its membership in the 54-nation organization is restored. Bulatovic also claimed there was no longer any fighting in the secessionist, majority Albanian province. He said five of the 10 special police units had been removed from Kosovo and the others had been returned to barracks in the province. A Yugoslav statement said the nation's leaders wanted the Kosovo dispute solved peacefully, ``but in case we are attacked, we shall defend our country with all means.'' One option could be for parliament to declare a state of emergency _ a step which could lead to a general mobilization of all military-aged men. The head of Yugoslavia's other republic, Montenegro, on Monday urged Milosevic to accept all international demands and avert a NATO attack. ``We have to avert a clash with the whole world, a confrontation which we are bound to lose,'' Montenegro's pro-Western president, Milo Djukanovic, said in a statement. ||||| With the threat of NATO attack mounting, Yugoslavia's prime minister warned Monday the nation faces the ``imminent danger of war'' and claimed the government is taking steps to comply with international demands for peace in Kosovo. But NATO Secretary-General Javier Solana told reporters that the Alliance believed Yugoslavia had not yet met the conditions demanded by the U.N. Security Council. ``The reality coming to us is that the compliance is not yet in place,'' Solana said. ``As far as we are concerned, once again, I can tell you we are ready.'' In New York, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said ``systematic terror'' had been inflicted on Kosovo civilians within recent days and that Yugoslav forces were mostly responsible. But Annan said he did not ``have the means necessary to provide an independent assessment of compliance as required by the Security Council'' and suggested the 15 members may want to make their ``own judgement in this respect.'' Following a meeting with Solana in Brussels, Belgium, U.S. special envoy Richard Holbrooke said the situation in the southern Serbian province was as bad now as two weeks ago. Holbrooke said he would tell Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic of ``the extreme gravity of the situation.'' Sources speaking on condition of anonymity said Holbrooke arrived in Belgrade late Monday afternoon and was expected to meet Milosevic in the evening. ||||| The American envoy Richard Holbrooke met with President Slobodan Milosevic of Yugoslavia Monday night and according to American diplomats told him that he had to take further steps to pull back his military in Kosovo Province or face a NATO attack. Milosevic was also told, the diplomats said, that he had to insure that the roughly 250,000 ethnic Albanian refugees who have been forced to flee their homes in the fighting in the last six months be allowed to return home. Most of these refugees are reluctant to return because many of the Serb police officers who destroyed their homes and villages remain in the neighborhoods. After delivering his sternest message so far to Milosevic over the Kosovo conflict, Holbrooke said at a news conference that NATO's military plans for attacking Serbia were moving ahead on a ``serious, intense and sustained basis.'' Holbrooke's mission to Milosevic was described by the American diplomats as ``not a do or die trip,'' but they added, ``We're at a very serious juncture.'' Shortly after Holbrooke's meeting with Milosevic, the Yugoslav leader issued a defiant statement on Serbian television in which he said the ``threats of aggression'' outlined by Holbrooke represented ``a criminal act.'' Milosevic, who rarely comments about his meetings with foreign diplomats and whose tough words cast an unusually ominous tone, also said that Holbrooke's position constituted ``support for Albanian terrorists and not the Albanian people.'' Milosevic was apparently accusing Holbrooke of supporting the ethnic Albanian guerrillas of the Kosovo Liberation Army, who have been fighting to make the Serbian province of Kosovo an independent nation. The Yugoslav leader added that ``for more than seven days there have been no skirmishes or military action.'' An American diplomat familiar with the themes Holbrooke planned to stress to Milosevic said there had been no expectation that the American envoy would walk out Monday night with an agreement. Rather, the point was to underscore to the Yugoslav leader and make explicit what was expected of him. ``It was not quite an ultimatum,'' the diplomat said, ``but more a matter of what steps have to be taken to show compliance.'' The essence of Holbrooke's demands centered on issues outlined in a United Nations Security Council resolution of two weeks ago. The resolution ordered Milosevic to withdraw the extra army and police forces that were sent to Kosovo to deal with the guerrillas and to send back to their bases the military forces normally stationed in the province. So far, American diplomats said, Milosevic has withdrawn troops from the field but not all of them are in their barracks. Such a move is essential, American diplomats said, to create a conducive atmosphere for any possible negotiations on the future status of the province. The U.N. resolution also calls for a political solution. Holbrooke and the U.S. ambassador to Macedonia, Christopher Hill, discussed with Milosevic a political document drawn up by the State Department that calls for broad autonomy for Kosovo. Milosevic withdrew the autonomy in 1989 as he began his campaign of Serb nationalism. The countryside in central Kosovo has been eerily silent since last Thursday. The sound of artillery thuds and mortar rounds have been noticeably absent and the coils of white smoke that signified burning villages have vanished from the green hills and valleys. Police checkpoints are more relaxed and areas that were sealed off this time last week by the Yugoslav army are now open to the patrols of diplomatic monitors from the United States, European Union and Russia. These monitors, many of whom are former military officers, have reported that the Yugoslav army has ``stood down'' and that they have seen virtually no military action since late last week. There has been sporadic shooting, the monitors have reported. But this superficial calm is not good enough because the Serb military has the capacity to resume fighting very quickly, a NATO military officer said Monday. The officer added that a cease-fire in Kosovo is ``pretty much enacted.'' He also said that the ``trend toward compliance is positive.'' The interior ministry police must also reduce their presence around villages so that refugees who have fled have the confidence to return, the military officer said. Some interior ministry police officers had left the province, but not enough, he added. On the question of how badly damaged the KLA had been by the Yugoslav army's three-month offensive, the NATO officer said, ``It's a fair assessment that the KLA is dismantled but not destroyed.'' Holbrooke's first stop Monday was Brussels, where he met with the secretary-general of NATO, Javier Solana. On Tuesday he plans to travel to Pristina, the capital of Kosovo, where he is scheduled to meet with the ethnic Albanian leader Ibrahim Rugova to present the political proposal for the future status of Kosovo. He is expected back in Belgrade on Tuesday afternoon for another session with Milosevic. ||||| The United States and Russia are ratcheting up the pressure on President Slobodan Milosevic, warning that NATO airstrikes are inevitable unless he takes decisive action soon to end the humanitarian crisis in the southern Serbian province. Fearing airstrikes, Yugoslav generals put the nation's air defense on high alert, but tried a belated compromise by moving some tanks and other heavy equipment out of Kosovo. A Western diplomat said up to 120 Yugoslav army armored vehicles, including tanks, have been pulled out. In Brussels, Belgium, however, U.S. special envoy Richard Holbrooke told reporters Monday that the situation in Kosovo is as bad now as two weeks ago. Holbrooke is en route to Belgrade for a meeting with Milosevic. ``While the level of fighting (in Kosovo) may have abated temporarily, the capacity for its resumption is there,'' Holbrooke said after a meeting with NATO Secretary General Javier Solana and Supreme Allied Commander Europe Wesley K. Clark. ``The situation therefore remains fully as serious today as it was a week or two ago,'' he said. ``We hope to make clear to president Milosevic and the people of Yugoslavia the extreme gravity of the situation.'' On Sunday, Milosevic met with Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov and Defense Minister Igor Sergeyev, Serbian President Milan Milutinovic and Yugoslavia's top defense officials. The Russians are against using NATO force in Kosovo. However, Ivanov and Sergeyev said the airstrikes could occur ``if decisive measures are not immediately taken for a radical improvement of the situation,'' Foreign Ministry spokesman Vladimir Rakhmanin told the ITAR-Tass news agency. To avoid such an attack, Yugoslavia must end the hostilities, withdraw army and security forces, take urgent measures to overcome the humanitarian crisis, ensure that refugees can return home and take part in peace talks, he said. In Berlin, German Gen. Dieter Stoeckmann told German radio that NATO action could come ``within days.'' NATO's decision may depend on a report U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan is scheduled to present to the Security Council Monday on whether Yugoslavia is meeting U.N. demands. Serb authorities appeared ready for compromise by installing an interim government in the rebellious province in Serbia, the dominant republic in Yugoslavia. Serbian police and the Yugoslav army have routed separatist Kosovo Albanian rebels in the crackdown that began in late February. The conflict has killed hundreds _ most of them Albanian civilians _ and left more than 275,000 refugees. A Yugoslav statement said the nation's leaders wanted the Kosovo dispute solved peacefully, ``but in case we are attacked, we shall defend our country with all means.'' The government said Friday that the fighting had ended and blamed continuing violence on ethnic Albanian rebels, who are fighting for independence for the Serbian province. Although the United States and Europeans want an end to the fighting, they also oppose independence for the majority Albanian province, fearing that could destabilize other Balkan countries with Albanian populations. In the Kosovo capital Pristina, the KLA offered to help NATO forces if asked. KLA spokesman Jakup Krasniqi said in a statement published Monday by the Albanian language newspaper Bujku that ``we wish they (airstrikes) would become reality'' and ``we shall provide assistance... if it is asked of us.'' Krasniqi accused ethnic Albanian politicians of having ``given up on independence'' and having become ``the servants of the enemy,'' by agreeing to accept autonomy but not independence. Serbs reported two attacks Sunday on civilian cars by Albanian ``terrorists'' 25 miles (40 kilometers) south of Pristina, Kosovo's provincial capital. Elsewhere, a policeman was killed after stepping on a mine, the Serb Media Center said. The Kosovo Information Center, allied with the ethnic Albanians, reported heavy fighting between government forces and the guerrillas 25 miles (40 kilometers) southwest of Pristina. Ethnic Albanian political leaders have rejected the new interim government, which was drawn up without their participation. The council is composed of seven Serbs, five ethnic Albanians and the rest Turks and Muslims. Momentum for outside involvement has increased in the past week amid revelations of massacres of ethnic Albanian civilians in the forests of Kosovo. London's Sunday Telegraph reported that Britain is preparing troops and armored units for Kosovo, to be deployed in a post-airstrike peacekeeping role. The defense ministry refused to confirm or deny the report but repeated that Britain was ready to participate in a NATO attack. French Foreign Minister Hubert Vedrine met Sunday night with his British counterpart, Robin Cook, to discuss the situation in Kosovo, France's Foreign Ministry said. Vedrine and Secretary of State Madeleine Albright had a lengthy telephone conversation as well, the spokesman said. On Sunday, Human Rights Watch said both Milosevic's government and ethnic Albanian rebels have committed atrocities since the conflict began, but the government abuses were on a much greater scale. The report by the New York-based human rights organization says Milosevic has ``the primary responsibility for gross government abuses.'' ||||| BRUSSELS, Belgium (AP) _ U.S. special envoy Richard Holbrooke said Monday the military situation in Kosovo was as bad now as two weeks ago. Holbrooke said he will explain the ``extreme gravity of the situation'' when he meets Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic later Monday. Speaking after a meeting with NATO Secretary General Javier Solana and Supreme Allied Commander Europe Wesley K. Clark, Holbrooke said ``while the level of fighting (in Kosovo) may have abated temporarily, the capacity for its resumption is there.'' ``The situation therefore remains fully as serious today as it was a week or two ago,'' he told reporters before flying to Belgrade. He plans to meet with the Kosovan Albanian leaders on Tuesday. ``We hope to make clear to president Milosevic and the people of Yugoslavia the extreme gravity of the situation,'' he said. ||||| With NATO attacks said to be only days away, top U.S. envoy Richard Holbrooke delivered a last-minute warning Monday to Yugoslavia's president to halt his crackdown on ethnic Albanians in Kosovo or face airstrikes. But Slobodan Milosevic showed no signs of backing down. Following his meeting with Holbrooke, Milosevic's office issued a statement denouncing NATO threats as a ``criminal act'' that favored separatist ethnic Albanian guerrillas. The statement, broadcast by government television, said there had been no fighting in the Serbian province for the past seven days and that the crisis represented no threat to other countries in the southern Balkans. Holbrooke, the U.S. ambassador-designate to the United Nations, met with Milosevic for several hours late Monday after arriving from Brussels, Belgium, where he conferred with senior NATO officials. Holbrooke issued no statement after the meeting. Before boarding a plane for the Yugoslav capital, Belgrade, however, Holbrooke said conditions in the southern Serbian province had not improved since the alliance started two weeks ago to finalize plans for air raids to force Milosevic to halt his offensive against Kosovo Albanian separatists. Holbrooke said he planned to drive home to Milosevic ``the extreme gravity of the situation.'' Holbrooke negotiated the peace deal with Milosevic and other Balkan leaders that ended the 3 1/2 year Bosnian war in 1995. In Washington, U.S. President Bill Clinton expressed concern that Milosevic was ``playing the classic game of making false promises'' to avoid NATO military strikes. Clinton, in a telephone call with Russian President Boris Yeltsin, said Milosevic's compliance with U.N. demands ``must be verifiable, tangible and irreversible,'' press secretary Joe Lockhart said at the White House. ``What happens next depends on President Milosevic,'' Lockhart quoted the president telling the Russian leader, who has opposed the use of force against Moscow's longtime ally. As Holbrooke tried to resolve the crisis through negotiations, British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook said a decision on NATO military action was imminent. ``We are getting ready for NATO action and later this week we will expect a decision to be taken,'' Cook told reporters after a special session of the Cabinet called by Prime Minister Tony Blair. In Brussels, NATO officials said they were ready to launch airstrikes within hours of receiving an order to attack. If that first airstrike failed to deter Serb forces, a senior NATO official said on condition of anonymity, the alliance could unleash a ``fully fledged air campaign'' involving hundreds of planes. At the United Nations, Secretary-General Kofi Annan said Yugoslav forces had increased their attacks on Kosovo's ethnic Albanians even after a U.N. resolution demanded a cease-fire. In a widely anticipated report to the Security Council, Annan listed apparent violations of a Sept. 23 U.N. resolution, decried the ``appalling atrocities in Kosovo,'' and said it was ``clear beyond any reasonable doubt'' that Yugoslav forces were responsible for the bulk of them. The U.N. chief also said rebel forces of the Kosovo Liberation Army also were responsible for human rights violations, a charge the KLA quickly denied. NATO countries had been awaiting the U.N. chief's report to determine whether to use military force to stop the offensive on ethnic Albanians, who are seeking autonomy like they had until 1989, if not independence, from Yugoslavia. Albanians in the province outnumber Serbs 9-to-1. Despite Annan's unwillingness to declare Serb noncompliance, U.S. State Department spokesman James Foley said the Clinton administration believed Milosevic had not met the conditions laid down by the U.N. Security Council. Foley cited the absence of a formal cease-fire, the failure to arrange a meaningful dialogue with ethnic Albanian leaders and the continued presence of ``major army units'' in southeastern Kosovo near Albania's border. The European Union nations were divided Monday on whether to launch air strikes without U.N. Security Council backing. The EU foreign ministers, meeting in Luxembourg, agreed to tighten economic sanctions against Milosevic, but it was unlikely that stricter travel curbs for Yugoslav officials and freezing more Yugoslav assets abroad would be anything more than symbolic. Meanwhile, Yugoslavia's prime minister told an emergency session of parliament Monday that the country ``is faced with the imminent danger of war.'' Yugoslavia is comprised of dominant Serbia and smaller Montenegro. ``The threats are serious,'' Prime Minister Momir Bulatovic said. ``And I call on this parliament to conclude that Yugoslavia is faced with the imminent danger of war. Yugoslavia has to defend itself if it was attacked.'' One option was for parliament to declare a state of emergency _ a step toward a mobilization of all military-aged men. But the parliament voted to introduce the measure ``when the first bomb drops on our territory.'' In an attempt to head off NATO action, Bulatovic said the government had accepted a Russian proposal for an investigation by the 54-nation Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. Yugoslavia had repeatedly rejected such a mission to Kosovo until Yugoslav membership in the organization is restored. The prime minister also said there was no longer any fighting in Kosovo, which has 2 million residents. He said five of the 10 special police units had been removed from Kosovo and the others had been returned to their barracks in the province. One diplomat in Kosovo, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said there has been a significant redeployment of Yugoslav army troops out of Kosovo to other parts of Serbia, including a mechanized brigade that pulled out Sunday. Some army units remain in the field, and there is enormous fear that violence will resume, particularly among refugees, tens of thousands of whom are living in the hills and forests without shelter. ||||| With NATO attacks said to be only days away, top U.S. envoy Richard Holbrooke delivered an 11th-hour warning Monday to Yugoslavia's president to halt his crackdown on ethnic Albanians in Kosovo or face airstrikes. But there was no sign that Slobodan Milosevic was backing down. Following his meeting with Holbrooke, Milosevic's office issued a statement denouncing NATO threats as a ``criminal act'' which favored separatist ethnic Albanian guerrillas. The statement, broadcast by government television, said there had been no fighting in the Serbian province for the past seven days and that the crisis represented no threat to other countries in the southern Balkans. Holbrooke, the U.S. ambassador-designate to the United Nations, met with Milosevic for several hours late Monday after arriving from Brussels, Belgium, where he conferred with senior NATO officials. There was no statement from Holbrooke after the meeting. Before boarding a plane for Belgrade, however, Holbrooke said conditions in the southern Serbian province had not improved since the alliance started two weeks ago to finalize plans for air raids to force Milosevic to halt his offensive against Kosovo Albanian separatists. Holbrooke said he planned to drive home to Milosevic ``the extreme gravity of the situation.'' Holbrooke negotiated the peace deal with Milosevic and other Balkan leaders that ended the 3 and one-half year Bosnian war in 1995. In Washington, President Clinton expressed concern that Milosevic was ``playing the classic game of making false promises'' to avoid NATO military strikes. Clinton, in a telephone call with Russian President Boris Yeltsin, said Milosevic's compliance with U.N. demands ``must be verifiable, tangible and irreversible,'' press secretary Joe Lockhart said at the White House. ``What happens next depends on President Milosevic,'' Lockhart quoted the president telling the Russian leader, who has opposed the use of force against Moscow's longtime ally. As Holbrooke tried to resolve the crisis through negotiations, British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook said a decision on NATO military action was imminent. ``We are getting ready for NATO action and later this week we will expect a decision to be taken,'' Cook told reporters after a special session of the Cabinet called by Prime Minister Tony Blair. In Brussels, NATO officials said they were ready to launch airstrikes within hours of receiving an order to attack. If that first airstrike failed to deter Serb forces, a senior NATO official said on condition of anonymity, the alliance could unleash a ``fully fledged air campaign'' involving hundreds of planes. At the United Nations, Secretary-General Kofi Annan said Yugoslav forces had increased their attacks on Kosovo's ethnic Albanians even after a U.N. resolution demanded a cease-fire. In a widely anticipated report to the Security Council, Annan listed apparent violations of a Sept. 23 U.N. resolution, decried the ``appalling atrocities in Kosovo,'' and said it was ``clear beyond any reasonable doubt'' that Yugoslav forces were responsible for the bulk of them. The U.N. chief also said rebel forces of the Kosovo Liberation Army also were responsible for human rights violations, a charge the KLA quickly denied. NATO countries had been awaiting the U.N. chief's report to determine whether to use military force to stop the offensive on ethnic Albanians, who are seeking autonomy like they had until 1989, if not independence, from Yugoslavia. Albanians in the province outnumber Serbs 9-to-1. Despite Annan's unwillingness to declare Serb noncompliance, State Department spokesman James Foley said the Clinton administration believed Milosevic had not met the conditions laid down by the Security Council. Briefing reporters in Washington, Foley cited the absence of a formal cease-fire, the failure to arrange a meaningful dialogue with ethnic Albanian leaders and the continued presence of ``major army units'' in southeastern Kosovo near Albania's border. Meanwhile, Yugoslavia's prime minister told an emergency session of parliament Monday that the country ``is faced with the imminent danger of war.'' Yugoslavia is comprised of dominant Serbia and smaller Montenegro. ``The threats are serious,'' Prime Minister Momir Bulatovic said. ``And I call on this parliament to conclude that Yugoslavia is faced with the imminent danger of war. Yugoslavia has to defend itself if it was attacked.'' One option was for parliament to declare a state of emergency _ a step toward a mobilization of all military-aged men. But the parliament voted to introduce the measure ``when the first bomb drops on our territory.'' In an attempt to head off NATO action, Bulatovic said the government had accepted a Russian proposal for an investigation by the 54-nation Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. Yugoslavia had repeatedly rejected such a mission to Kosovo until Yugoslav membership in the organization is restored. The prime minister also said there was no longer any fighting in Kosovo, which has 2 million residents. He said five of the 10 special police units had been removed from Kosovo and the others had been returned to their barracks in the province. One diplomat in Kosovo, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said there has been a significant redeployment of Yugoslav army troops out of Kosovo to other parts of Serbia, including a mechanized brigade that pulled out Sunday. Some army units remain in the field, and there is enormous fear that violence will resume, particularly among refugees, tens of thousands of whom are living in the hills and forests without shelter. ||||| The United States and Russia are ratcheting up the pressure on President Slobodan Milosevic, warning that NATO airstrikes are inevitable unless he takes decisive action soon to end the humanitarian crisis in the southern Serbian province. Fearing airstrikes, Yugoslav generals put the nation's air defense on high alert, but tried a belated compromise by moving some tanks and other heavy equipment out of Kosovo. A Western diplomat said up to 120 Yugoslav army armored vehicles, including tanks, have been pulled out. In Brussels, Belgium, however, U.S. special envoy Richard Holbrooke told reporters Monday that the situation in Kosovo has not improved. Holbrooke is en route to Belgrade for a meeting with Milosevic. ``While the level of fighting (in Kosovo) may have abated temporarily, the capacity for its resumption is there,'' Holbrooke said after a meeting with NATO Secretary General Javier Solana and Supreme Allied Commander Europe Wesley K. Clark. ``The situation therefore remains fully as serious today as it was a week or two ago,'' he said. ``We hope to make clear to President Milosevic and the people of Yugoslavia the extreme gravity of the situation.'' On Sunday, Milosevic met with Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov and Defense Minister Igor Sergeyev, Serbian President Milan Milutinovic and Yugoslavia's top defense officials. The Russians are against using NATO force in Kosovo. However, Ivanov and Sergeyev said the airstrikes could occur ``if decisive measures are not immediately taken for a radical improvement of the situation,'' Foreign Ministry spokesman Vladimir Rakhmanin told the ITAR-Tass news agency. To avoid such an attack, Yugoslavia must end the hostilities, withdraw army and security forces, take urgent measures to overcome the humanitarian crisis, ensure that refugees can return home and take part in peace talks, he said. In Berlin, 7th graf pvs ||||| Under NATO threat to end his punishing offensive against ethnic Albanian separatists in Kosovo, President Slobodan Milosevic of Yugoslavia has ordered most units of his army back to their barracks and may well avoid an attack by the alliance, military observers and diplomats say. Milosevic, who on one hand is excoriated by Washington as the scourge of Kosovo yet on the other hand is treated as key to peace in Bosnia, acted as the European Union, NATO and the United Nations prepared for a review on Monday of possible military intervention. Russia stepped up its warnings against such action and dispatched its foreign and defense ministers on an unusually high-level mission to see the Yugoslav president Sunday in Belgrade. As he has so often, Milosevic appears to have bowed to foreign demands in the nick of time and yet still accomplished what he wanted. This weekend, foreign diplomatic observers in Kosovo reported that a ``military stand-down'' had taken place in the province, where Milosevic's forces have waged a fierce offensive against Albanian rebels. The observers said that except for segments of three brigades, most units of the Yugoslav army were ``home.'' The daily reports of the observer mission, made up of U.S., European Union and Russian military experts, are one of the key elements in helping Washington and European capitals decide whether Milosevic has met their demands for a cease-fire. By putting the army back in its barracks, sending some police units out of Kosovo and ordering an end to burning and looting of villages, Milosevic may well avoid a NATO attack, diplomats here and in Washington said. But at the same time, they acknowledge that while NATO looked the other way, he enjoyed a three-month license to overwhelm the Kosovo Liberation Army _ the rebel army fighting for independence for Kosovo and its ethnic Albanian majority _ and terrorize the rural civilian population that supports it. His military operation created more than 250,000 refugees, whom the Clinton administration is gearing up to take care of this winter through a variety of relief organizations. U.S. officials said they expected Richard Holbrooke, the U.S. envoy who dealt with Milosevic in negotiating an end to the war in Bosnia, to meet with him on Monday to discuss a political plan for Kosovo. The heart of the disagreement in Kosovo is between Serbia, Yugoslavia's principal republic, which insists on keeping Kosovo as a province, and the ethnic Albanians there who have chafed under Milosevic's repression since he stripped the province of virtual autonomy in 1989, and who now seek independence. The West, fearing the precedent that independence for Kosovo would set in other conflicts in the world, has been trying to mediate a middle course. In essence, diplomats said they believed that the plan Holbrooke will present to Milosevic calls for a three-year interim period leading to a status fairly close to the pre-1989 autonomy arrangement. Since the Kosovo conflict flared up in March, critics of Washington's policy toward Milosevic argue that he has been able to choreograph every move to suit his goal: pushing the Albanian population into submission with impunity. ``The United States and its allies have waited four months while he cleaned the clock of the Kosovo Liberation Army,'' said Morton Abramowitz, head of the International Crisis Group, a policy analysis organization, ``and taken three weeks to discuss military action, with the result that 500 Albanian villages were destroyed.'' Administration officials now acknowledge that when NATO failed to live up to its earlier threat in June to strike Serbia, Milosevic took advantage of the indecision and plunged ahead with an artillery and tank offensive against the lightly armed guerrilla forces, whose bedrock of popular support had helped win them effective control of large swaths of Kosovo territory, including key roads. While he was doing that, Milosevic skillfully managed a key requirement for Washington: he made sure that the war did not spill over into neighboring Albania and Macedonia, fragile countries in a traditionally volatile area. All along, the biggest fear in Washington has been that the Kosovo conflict would engulf neighboring countries and encourage Albania and the ethnic Albanian population in Macedonia to join the cause. Such a possibility raised the specter of a new Balkans conflict just three years after peace was secured in Bosnia. Milosevic catered to Washington's concern that the conflict be contained. The Yugoslav army mined Kosovo's borders with Macedonia and Albania, ensuring that few refugees could escape and limiting routes for arms supplies for the rebels. The Yugoslav leader also understood that Washington was unsure about how to deal with the disorganized Albanian political leadership in Kosovo and the unbending Kosovo Liberation Army, whose main chiefs were hardened emigres returned from Switzerland and Germany. For example, Holbrooke persuaded Milosevic to meet in May with Ibrahim Rugova, the top Albanian political leader in Kosovo, an encounter that turned out to be little more than a photo opportunity. For that procedural breakthrough, Holbrooke recommended the lifting of a ban on foreign investment in Serbia that had been put in place the month before. After meeting with Rugova, Milosevic stepped up his military operations in Kosovo, forcing Washington to reverse itself again and carry out the investment ban. In late June, Holbrooke met with two self-styled Kosovo guerrilla commanders in the province's western town of Junik but then broke off all contact. Clinton administration officials said at the time that they were concerned that NATO intervention would bolster the separatist forces. To try to put the best face on the situation, Washington worked with Moscow to get Milosevic to accept the presence of international monitors who would patrol Kosovo and report on military action. The monitors were slow in getting organized. By August, when the Yugoslav army, backed by the Serbian special police, were in full swing against the rebels and burning and looting villages in the process, the monitors found it difficult to gain access to the fighting. They drove up to roadblocks, knew something was going on from the sounds and the smoke, but could not be precise. In recent days as the tanks and artillery have withdrawn, access has improved, the monitors say. But there are some areas in central Kosovo around Likovac and Gornje Obrinje that the monitors have ruled off limits because of land mines on the roads. The mines are believed to have been planted by the guerrillas. Gornje Obrinje was the site of a massacre of 18 ethnic Albanian women, children and elderly people on Sept. 26. A British reporter who walked across fields into the village on Sunday said about 10 mortar shells, apparently from the Serbian police or the Yugoslav army, were fired at the village early Sunday afternoon. The Yugoslav army and police forces have been responsible for the vast majority of atrocities in the Kosovo conflict, said a report by New York-based group Human Rights Watch, released here on Sunday. The report said the rebels had also violated the laws of war by taking civilian hostages and carrying out summary executions. But the violations by the guerrillas were on a ``lesser scale'' than the government abuses, the author of the report, Fred Abrahams, concluded. The report focused on what it called a watershed in the conflict _ the attack by police forces on three ethnic Albanian villages in late February and early March in the Drenica region of central Kosovo. At least 83 people, including 24 women and children, were killed in the attack, which involved helicopters, artillery and armored personnel carriers. In the Yugoslav capital, Belgrade, which is a four-hour drive north through rolling countryside from Kosovo's capital of Pristina, Milosevic remains politically secure. That is in part, his domestic critics say, because diplomats like Holbrooke and the head of the U.N.refugee agency, Sadako Ogata, insist on going to see him, thus enhancing his stature. ||||| With the threat of NATO attack mounting, Yugoslavia's prime minister warned Monday the nation faces the ``immiment danger of war'' and claimed the government was taking steps to comply with international demands for peace in Kosovo. In New York, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said ``systematic terror'' had been inflicted on Kosovo civilians within recent days and that Yugoslav forces were mostly responsible. But Annan said he did not ``have the means necessary to provide an independent assessment of compliance as required by the Security Council'' and suggested the 15 members may want to make their ``own judgement in this respect.'' But U.S. special envoy Richard Holbrooke said the situation in the southern Serbian province was as bad now as two weeks ago. Holbrooke spoke in Brussels, Belgium en route to Belgrade, where he planned to drive home to Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic ``the extreme gravity of the situation.'' Meanwhile, Yugoslavia's prime minister told an emergency session of parliament Monday that the country ``is faced with the imminent danger of war.'' Kosovo is a province of Serbia, the main republic of Yugoslavia. ``The threats are serious,'' Prime Minister Momir Bulatovic said. ``And I call on this parliament to conclude that Yugoslavia is faced with the imminent danger of war. Yugoslavia has to defend itself if it was attacked.'' One option could be for parliament to declare a state of emergency _ a step which could lead to a general mobilization of all military-aged men. In an attempt to head off NATO action, Bulatovic said the government had accepted a Russian proposal for the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe to investigate the crisis. Yugoslavia had repeatedly rejected such a mission to Kosovo until Yugoslav membership in the 54-nation organization is restored. Bulatovic also claimed there was no longer any fighting in the rebellious, majority Albanian province. He said five of the 10 special police units had been removed from Kosovo and the others had been returned to barracks in the province. In Brussels, however, Holbrooke made clear that half-measures would not be enough to satisfy Washington and prevent a NATO attack. ``While the level of fighting may have abated temporarily, the capacity for its resumption is there,'' Holbrooke said after a meeting with NATO Secretary General Javier Solana and Supreme Allied Commander Europe Wesley K. Clark. ``The situation, therefore, remains fully as serious today as it was a week or two ago,'' he said. ``We hope to make clear to president Milosevic and the people of Yugoslavia the extreme gravity of the situation.'' Meanwhile, the head of Yugoslavia's other republic, Montenegro, called on Milosevic to accept all international demands and avert a NATO attack. ``We have to avert a clash with the whole world, a confrontation which we are bound to lose,'' Montenegro's pro-Western president, Milo Djukanovic, said in a statement. Djukanovic, a staunch Milosevic critic, called on the Yugoslav president to address the nation ``with an unambiguous message'' that he has accepted all U.N. resolutions and agreements he made with Russian President Boris Yeltsin. Djukanovic blamed Yugoslavia's problems on Milosevic's ``undemocratic regime.'' Fearing airstrikes, Yugoslav generals put the nation's air defense on high alert and moved some tanks and other heavy equipment out of Kosovo. A Western diplomat said up to 120 Yugoslav army armored vehicles, including tanks, have been pulled out. Belgrade had been counting on Russia to block any U.N.-sanctioned military moves by the Western Alliance. On Sunday, Milosevic met with Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov and Defense Minister Igor Sergeyev, Serbian President Milan Milutinovic and Yugoslavia's top defense officials. Although the Russians are against using NATO force in Kosovo, Ivanov and Sergeyev said the airstrikes could occur ``if decisive measures are not immediately taken for a radical improvement of the situation,'' Foreign Ministry spokesman Vladimir Rakhmanin told the ITAR-Tass news agency. To avoid such an attack, Yugoslavia must end the hostilities, withdraw army and security forces, take urgent measures to overcome the humanitarian crisis, ensure that refugees can return home and take part in peace talks, he said. In Berlin, German Gen. Dieter Stoeckmann told German radio that NATO action could come ``within days.'' Serb authorities appeared ready for compromise by installing an interim government in the rebellious province in Serbia, the dominant republic in Yugoslavia. Serbian police and the Yugoslav army have routed separatist Kosovo Albanian rebels in the crackdown that began in late February. The conflict has killed hundreds _ most of them Albanian civilians _ and left more than 275,000 refugees. Ethnic Albanians compromise 90 percent of the province's 2 million-strong population, and most favor independence or substantial self-rule. Momentum for outside involvement has increased in the past week amid revelations of massacres of ethnic Albanian civilians in the forests of Kosovo. Although the United States and Europeans want an end to the fighting, they also oppose independence for Kosovo, fearing that could destabilize other Balkan countries with Albanian populations. In the Kosovo capital Pristina, the KLA offered to help NATO forces if asked. KLA spokesman Jakup Krasniqi said in a statement published Monday by the Albanian language newspaper Bujku that ``we wish they (airstrikes) would become reality'' and ``we shall provide assistance... if it is asked of us.'' Krasniqi accused ethnic Albanian politicians of having ``given up on independence'' and having become ``the servants of the enemy,'' by agreeing to accept autonomy but not independence. Ethnic Albanian political leaders have rejected the new interim government, which was drawn up without their participation. The council is composed of seven Serbs, five ethnic Albanians and the rest Turks and Muslims.

On Oct. 4, 1998 Yugoslav President Milosevic ordered his forces in Kosovo back to their barracks. While supressing the Albanian independence movement they had massacred hundreds of civilians and left 275,000+ refugees. NATO threatened airstrikes unless hostilities ceased and peace talks began. U.S. envoy Holbrooke insisted that Milosevic pull all forces out of Kosovo. Milosevic called the NATO threat "a criminal act" and said Holbrooke aided Albanian terrorists. Russia also urged an end to hostilities, but the Yugoslavs denied any fighting and vowed to defend their country if attacked. Neither side budged as NATO seemed to wait for a U.N. decision.

The United States and Russia are ratcheting up the pressure on Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, warning that NATO airstrikes are inevitable unless he takes decisive action to end the crisis in Kosovo province. Fearing airstrikes, Yugoslav generals put the nation's air defense on high alert, but tried a belated compromise by moving some tanks and other heavy equipment out of Kosovo. A Western diplomat said up to 120 Yugoslav army armored vehicles, including tanks, have been pulled out. However, U.S. envoy Richard Holbrooke said Monday that the Kosovo situation remains critical despite a lull in fighting and the removal of some Yugoslav tanks and troops. Holbrooke spoke in Brussels, Belgium, en route to Belgrade to meet with Milosevic. ``We hope to make clear to president Milosevic and the people of Yugoslavia the extreme gravity of the situation,'' Holbrooke said after a meeting with NATO leaders. Holbrooke said he was told that NATO preparations continued unabated. ``At NATO, the planning for military action is serious, intense and sustained,'' he said. Serbian police and the Yugoslav army have routed separatist Kosovo Albanian rebels in the crackdown that began in late February. The conflict has killed hundreds _ most of them Albanian civilians _ and left more than 275,000 refugees. Kosovo is in southern Serbia, the main republic of Yugoslavia. Milosevic met Sunday with Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov and Defense Minister Igor Sergeyev, Serbian President Milan Milutinovic and Yugoslavia's top defense officials. The Russians are against using NATO force in Kosovo. However, Ivanov and Sergeyev said the airstrikes could occur ``if decisive measures are not immediately taken for a radical improvement of the situation,'' Foreign Ministry spokesman Vladimir Rakhmanin told the ITAR-Tass news agency. To avoid such an attack, Yugoslavia must end the hostilities, withdraw army and security forces, take urgent measures to overcome the humanitarian crisis, ensure that refugees can return home and take part in peace talks, he said. In Berlin, German Gen. Dieter Stoeckmann told German radio that NATO action could come ``within days.'' NATO's decision may depend on a report U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan is scheduled to present Monday to the Security Council on whether Yugoslavia is meeting U.N. demands. Serb authorities appeared ready for compromise by installing an interim government in the rebellious province in Serbia, the dominant republic in Yugoslavia. On Monday, Yugoslav Prime Minister Momir Bulatovic said the government had accepted a Russian proposal for the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe to investigate the crisis. Yugoslavia had repeatedly rejected such a mission until its membership in the 54-nation organization is restored. Bulatovic also claimed there was no longer any fighting in the secessionist, majority Albanian province. He said five of the 10 special police units had been removed from Kosovo and the others had been returned to barracks in the province. A Yugoslav statement said the nation's leaders wanted the Kosovo dispute solved peacefully, ``but in case we are attacked, we shall defend our country with all means.'' One option could be for parliament to declare a state of emergency _ a step which could lead to a general mobilization of all military-aged men. The head of Yugoslavia's other republic, Montenegro, on Monday urged Milosevic to accept all international demands and avert a NATO attack. ``We have to avert a clash with the whole world, a confrontation which we are bound to lose,'' Montenegro's pro-Western president, Milo Djukanovic, said in a statement. ||||| With the threat of NATO attack mounting, Yugoslavia's prime minister warned Monday the nation faces the ``imminent danger of war'' and claimed the government is taking steps to comply with international demands for peace in Kosovo. But NATO Secretary-General Javier Solana told reporters that the Alliance believed Yugoslavia had not yet met the conditions demanded by the U.N. Security Council. ``The reality coming to us is that the compliance is not yet in place,'' Solana said. ``As far as we are concerned, once again, I can tell you we are ready.'' In New York, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said ``systematic terror'' had been inflicted on Kosovo civilians within recent days and that Yugoslav forces were mostly responsible. But Annan said he did not ``have the means necessary to provide an independent assessment of compliance as required by the Security Council'' and suggested the 15 members may want to make their ``own judgement in this respect.'' Following a meeting with Solana in Brussels, Belgium, U.S. special envoy Richard Holbrooke said the situation in the southern Serbian province was as bad now as two weeks ago. Holbrooke said he would tell Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic of ``the extreme gravity of the situation.'' Sources speaking on condition of anonymity said Holbrooke arrived in Belgrade late Monday afternoon and was expected to meet Milosevic in the evening. ||||| The American envoy Richard Holbrooke met with President Slobodan Milosevic of Yugoslavia Monday night and according to American diplomats told him that he had to take further steps to pull back his military in Kosovo Province or face a NATO attack. Milosevic was also told, the diplomats said, that he had to insure that the roughly 250,000 ethnic Albanian refugees who have been forced to flee their homes in the fighting in the last six months be allowed to return home. Most of these refugees are reluctant to return because many of the Serb police officers who destroyed their homes and villages remain in the neighborhoods. After delivering his sternest message so far to Milosevic over the Kosovo conflict, Holbrooke said at a news conference that NATO's military plans for attacking Serbia were moving ahead on a ``serious, intense and sustained basis.'' Holbrooke's mission to Milosevic was described by the American diplomats as ``not a do or die trip,'' but they added, ``We're at a very serious juncture.'' Shortly after Holbrooke's meeting with Milosevic, the Yugoslav leader issued a defiant statement on Serbian television in which he said the ``threats of aggression'' outlined by Holbrooke represented ``a criminal act.'' Milosevic, who rarely comments about his meetings with foreign diplomats and whose tough words cast an unusually ominous tone, also said that Holbrooke's position constituted ``support for Albanian terrorists and not the Albanian people.'' Milosevic was apparently accusing Holbrooke of supporting the ethnic Albanian guerrillas of the Kosovo Liberation Army, who have been fighting to make the Serbian province of Kosovo an independent nation. The Yugoslav leader added that ``for more than seven days there have been no skirmishes or military action.'' An American diplomat familiar with the themes Holbrooke planned to stress to Milosevic said there had been no expectation that the American envoy would walk out Monday night with an agreement. Rather, the point was to underscore to the Yugoslav leader and make explicit what was expected of him. ``It was not quite an ultimatum,'' the diplomat said, ``but more a matter of what steps have to be taken to show compliance.'' The essence of Holbrooke's demands centered on issues outlined in a United Nations Security Council resolution of two weeks ago. The resolution ordered Milosevic to withdraw the extra army and police forces that were sent to Kosovo to deal with the guerrillas and to send back to their bases the military forces normally stationed in the province. So far, American diplomats said, Milosevic has withdrawn troops from the field but not all of them are in their barracks. Such a move is essential, American diplomats said, to create a conducive atmosphere for any possible negotiations on the future status of the province. The U.N. resolution also calls for a political solution. Holbrooke and the U.S. ambassador to Macedonia, Christopher Hill, discussed with Milosevic a political document drawn up by the State Department that calls for broad autonomy for Kosovo. Milosevic withdrew the autonomy in 1989 as he began his campaign of Serb nationalism. The countryside in central Kosovo has been eerily silent since last Thursday. The sound of artillery thuds and mortar rounds have been noticeably absent and the coils of white smoke that signified burning villages have vanished from the green hills and valleys. Police checkpoints are more relaxed and areas that were sealed off this time last week by the Yugoslav army are now open to the patrols of diplomatic monitors from the United States, European Union and Russia. These monitors, many of whom are former military officers, have reported that the Yugoslav army has ``stood down'' and that they have seen virtually no military action since late last week. There has been sporadic shooting, the monitors have reported. But this superficial calm is not good enough because the Serb military has the capacity to resume fighting very quickly, a NATO military officer said Monday. The officer added that a cease-fire in Kosovo is ``pretty much enacted.'' He also said that the ``trend toward compliance is positive.'' The interior ministry police must also reduce their presence around villages so that refugees who have fled have the confidence to return, the military officer said. Some interior ministry police officers had left the province, but not enough, he added. On the question of how badly damaged the KLA had been by the Yugoslav army's three-month offensive, the NATO officer said, ``It's a fair assessment that the KLA is dismantled but not destroyed.'' Holbrooke's first stop Monday was Brussels, where he met with the secretary-general of NATO, Javier Solana. On Tuesday he plans to travel to Pristina, the capital of Kosovo, where he is scheduled to meet with the ethnic Albanian leader Ibrahim Rugova to present the political proposal for the future status of Kosovo. He is expected back in Belgrade on Tuesday afternoon for another session with Milosevic. ||||| The United States and Russia are ratcheting up the pressure on President Slobodan Milosevic, warning that NATO airstrikes are inevitable unless he takes decisive action soon to end the humanitarian crisis in the southern Serbian province. Fearing airstrikes, Yugoslav generals put the nation's air defense on high alert, but tried a belated compromise by moving some tanks and other heavy equipment out of Kosovo. A Western diplomat said up to 120 Yugoslav army armored vehicles, including tanks, have been pulled out. In Brussels, Belgium, however, U.S. special envoy Richard Holbrooke told reporters Monday that the situation in Kosovo is as bad now as two weeks ago. Holbrooke is en route to Belgrade for a meeting with Milosevic. ``While the level of fighting (in Kosovo) may have abated temporarily, the capacity for its resumption is there,'' Holbrooke said after a meeting with NATO Secretary General Javier Solana and Supreme Allied Commander Europe Wesley K. Clark. ``The situation therefore remains fully as serious today as it was a week or two ago,'' he said. ``We hope to make clear to president Milosevic and the people of Yugoslavia the extreme gravity of the situation.'' On Sunday, Milosevic met with Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov and Defense Minister Igor Sergeyev, Serbian President Milan Milutinovic and Yugoslavia's top defense officials. The Russians are against using NATO force in Kosovo. However, Ivanov and Sergeyev said the airstrikes could occur ``if decisive measures are not immediately taken for a radical improvement of the situation,'' Foreign Ministry spokesman Vladimir Rakhmanin told the ITAR-Tass news agency. To avoid such an attack, Yugoslavia must end the hostilities, withdraw army and security forces, take urgent measures to overcome the humanitarian crisis, ensure that refugees can return home and take part in peace talks, he said. In Berlin, German Gen. Dieter Stoeckmann told German radio that NATO action could come ``within days.'' NATO's decision may depend on a report U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan is scheduled to present to the Security Council Monday on whether Yugoslavia is meeting U.N. demands. Serb authorities appeared ready for compromise by installing an interim government in the rebellious province in Serbia, the dominant republic in Yugoslavia. Serbian police and the Yugoslav army have routed separatist Kosovo Albanian rebels in the crackdown that began in late February. The conflict has killed hundreds _ most of them Albanian civilians _ and left more than 275,000 refugees. A Yugoslav statement said the nation's leaders wanted the Kosovo dispute solved peacefully, ``but in case we are attacked, we shall defend our country with all means.'' The government said Friday that the fighting had ended and blamed continuing violence on ethnic Albanian rebels, who are fighting for independence for the Serbian province. Although the United States and Europeans want an end to the fighting, they also oppose independence for the majority Albanian province, fearing that could destabilize other Balkan countries with Albanian populations. In the Kosovo capital Pristina, the KLA offered to help NATO forces if asked. KLA spokesman Jakup Krasniqi said in a statement published Monday by the Albanian language newspaper Bujku that ``we wish they (airstrikes) would become reality'' and ``we shall provide assistance... if it is asked of us.'' Krasniqi accused ethnic Albanian politicians of having ``given up on independence'' and having become ``the servants of the enemy,'' by agreeing to accept autonomy but not independence. Serbs reported two attacks Sunday on civilian cars by Albanian ``terrorists'' 25 miles (40 kilometers) south of Pristina, Kosovo's provincial capital. Elsewhere, a policeman was killed after stepping on a mine, the Serb Media Center said. The Kosovo Information Center, allied with the ethnic Albanians, reported heavy fighting between government forces and the guerrillas 25 miles (40 kilometers) southwest of Pristina. Ethnic Albanian political leaders have rejected the new interim government, which was drawn up without their participation. The council is composed of seven Serbs, five ethnic Albanians and the rest Turks and Muslims. Momentum for outside involvement has increased in the past week amid revelations of massacres of ethnic Albanian civilians in the forests of Kosovo. London's Sunday Telegraph reported that Britain is preparing troops and armored units for Kosovo, to be deployed in a post-airstrike peacekeeping role. The defense ministry refused to confirm or deny the report but repeated that Britain was ready to participate in a NATO attack. French Foreign Minister Hubert Vedrine met Sunday night with his British counterpart, Robin Cook, to discuss the situation in Kosovo, France's Foreign Ministry said. Vedrine and Secretary of State Madeleine Albright had a lengthy telephone conversation as well, the spokesman said. On Sunday, Human Rights Watch said both Milosevic's government and ethnic Albanian rebels have committed atrocities since the conflict began, but the government abuses were on a much greater scale. The report by the New York-based human rights organization says Milosevic has ``the primary responsibility for gross government abuses.'' ||||| BRUSSELS, Belgium (AP) _ U.S. special envoy Richard Holbrooke said Monday the military situation in Kosovo was as bad now as two weeks ago. Holbrooke said he will explain the ``extreme gravity of the situation'' when he meets Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic later Monday. Speaking after a meeting with NATO Secretary General Javier Solana and Supreme Allied Commander Europe Wesley K. Clark, Holbrooke said ``while the level of fighting (in Kosovo) may have abated temporarily, the capacity for its resumption is there.'' ``The situation therefore remains fully as serious today as it was a week or two ago,'' he told reporters before flying to Belgrade. He plans to meet with the Kosovan Albanian leaders on Tuesday. ``We hope to make clear to president Milosevic and the people of Yugoslavia the extreme gravity of the situation,'' he said. ||||| With NATO attacks said to be only days away, top U.S. envoy Richard Holbrooke delivered a last-minute warning Monday to Yugoslavia's president to halt his crackdown on ethnic Albanians in Kosovo or face airstrikes. But Slobodan Milosevic showed no signs of backing down. Following his meeting with Holbrooke, Milosevic's office issued a statement denouncing NATO threats as a ``criminal act'' that favored separatist ethnic Albanian guerrillas. The statement, broadcast by government television, said there had been no fighting in the Serbian province for the past seven days and that the crisis represented no threat to other countries in the southern Balkans. Holbrooke, the U.S. ambassador-designate to the United Nations, met with Milosevic for several hours late Monday after arriving from Brussels, Belgium, where he conferred with senior NATO officials. Holbrooke issued no statement after the meeting. Before boarding a plane for the Yugoslav capital, Belgrade, however, Holbrooke said conditions in the southern Serbian province had not improved since the alliance started two weeks ago to finalize plans for air raids to force Milosevic to halt his offensive against Kosovo Albanian separatists. Holbrooke said he planned to drive home to Milosevic ``the extreme gravity of the situation.'' Holbrooke negotiated the peace deal with Milosevic and other Balkan leaders that ended the 3 1/2 year Bosnian war in 1995. In Washington, U.S. President Bill Clinton expressed concern that Milosevic was ``playing the classic game of making false promises'' to avoid NATO military strikes. Clinton, in a telephone call with Russian President Boris Yeltsin, said Milosevic's compliance with U.N. demands ``must be verifiable, tangible and irreversible,'' press secretary Joe Lockhart said at the White House. ``What happens next depends on President Milosevic,'' Lockhart quoted the president telling the Russian leader, who has opposed the use of force against Moscow's longtime ally. As Holbrooke tried to resolve the crisis through negotiations, British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook said a decision on NATO military action was imminent. ``We are getting ready for NATO action and later this week we will expect a decision to be taken,'' Cook told reporters after a special session of the Cabinet called by Prime Minister Tony Blair. In Brussels, NATO officials said they were ready to launch airstrikes within hours of receiving an order to attack. If that first airstrike failed to deter Serb forces, a senior NATO official said on condition of anonymity, the alliance could unleash a ``fully fledged air campaign'' involving hundreds of planes. At the United Nations, Secretary-General Kofi Annan said Yugoslav forces had increased their attacks on Kosovo's ethnic Albanians even after a U.N. resolution demanded a cease-fire. In a widely anticipated report to the Security Council, Annan listed apparent violations of a Sept. 23 U.N. resolution, decried the ``appalling atrocities in Kosovo,'' and said it was ``clear beyond any reasonable doubt'' that Yugoslav forces were responsible for the bulk of them. The U.N. chief also said rebel forces of the Kosovo Liberation Army also were responsible for human rights violations, a charge the KLA quickly denied. NATO countries had been awaiting the U.N. chief's report to determine whether to use military force to stop the offensive on ethnic Albanians, who are seeking autonomy like they had until 1989, if not independence, from Yugoslavia. Albanians in the province outnumber Serbs 9-to-1. Despite Annan's unwillingness to declare Serb noncompliance, U.S. State Department spokesman James Foley said the Clinton administration believed Milosevic had not met the conditions laid down by the U.N. Security Council. Foley cited the absence of a formal cease-fire, the failure to arrange a meaningful dialogue with ethnic Albanian leaders and the continued presence of ``major army units'' in southeastern Kosovo near Albania's border. The European Union nations were divided Monday on whether to launch air strikes without U.N. Security Council backing. The EU foreign ministers, meeting in Luxembourg, agreed to tighten economic sanctions against Milosevic, but it was unlikely that stricter travel curbs for Yugoslav officials and freezing more Yugoslav assets abroad would be anything more than symbolic. Meanwhile, Yugoslavia's prime minister told an emergency session of parliament Monday that the country ``is faced with the imminent danger of war.'' Yugoslavia is comprised of dominant Serbia and smaller Montenegro. ``The threats are serious,'' Prime Minister Momir Bulatovic said. ``And I call on this parliament to conclude that Yugoslavia is faced with the imminent danger of war. Yugoslavia has to defend itself if it was attacked.'' One option was for parliament to declare a state of emergency _ a step toward a mobilization of all military-aged men. But the parliament voted to introduce the measure ``when the first bomb drops on our territory.'' In an attempt to head off NATO action, Bulatovic said the government had accepted a Russian proposal for an investigation by the 54-nation Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. Yugoslavia had repeatedly rejected such a mission to Kosovo until Yugoslav membership in the organization is restored. The prime minister also said there was no longer any fighting in Kosovo, which has 2 million residents. He said five of the 10 special police units had been removed from Kosovo and the others had been returned to their barracks in the province. One diplomat in Kosovo, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said there has been a significant redeployment of Yugoslav army troops out of Kosovo to other parts of Serbia, including a mechanized brigade that pulled out Sunday. Some army units remain in the field, and there is enormous fear that violence will resume, particularly among refugees, tens of thousands of whom are living in the hills and forests without shelter. ||||| With NATO attacks said to be only days away, top U.S. envoy Richard Holbrooke delivered an 11th-hour warning Monday to Yugoslavia's president to halt his crackdown on ethnic Albanians in Kosovo or face airstrikes. But there was no sign that Slobodan Milosevic was backing down. Following his meeting with Holbrooke, Milosevic's office issued a statement denouncing NATO threats as a ``criminal act'' which favored separatist ethnic Albanian guerrillas. The statement, broadcast by government television, said there had been no fighting in the Serbian province for the past seven days and that the crisis represented no threat to other countries in the southern Balkans. Holbrooke, the U.S. ambassador-designate to the United Nations, met with Milosevic for several hours late Monday after arriving from Brussels, Belgium, where he conferred with senior NATO officials. There was no statement from Holbrooke after the meeting. Before boarding a plane for Belgrade, however, Holbrooke said conditions in the southern Serbian province had not improved since the alliance started two weeks ago to finalize plans for air raids to force Milosevic to halt his offensive against Kosovo Albanian separatists. Holbrooke said he planned to drive home to Milosevic ``the extreme gravity of the situation.'' Holbrooke negotiated the peace deal with Milosevic and other Balkan leaders that ended the 3 and one-half year Bosnian war in 1995. In Washington, President Clinton expressed concern that Milosevic was ``playing the classic game of making false promises'' to avoid NATO military strikes. Clinton, in a telephone call with Russian President Boris Yeltsin, said Milosevic's compliance with U.N. demands ``must be verifiable, tangible and irreversible,'' press secretary Joe Lockhart said at the White House. ``What happens next depends on President Milosevic,'' Lockhart quoted the president telling the Russian leader, who has opposed the use of force against Moscow's longtime ally. As Holbrooke tried to resolve the crisis through negotiations, British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook said a decision on NATO military action was imminent. ``We are getting ready for NATO action and later this week we will expect a decision to be taken,'' Cook told reporters after a special session of the Cabinet called by Prime Minister Tony Blair. In Brussels, NATO officials said they were ready to launch airstrikes within hours of receiving an order to attack. If that first airstrike failed to deter Serb forces, a senior NATO official said on condition of anonymity, the alliance could unleash a ``fully fledged air campaign'' involving hundreds of planes. At the United Nations, Secretary-General Kofi Annan said Yugoslav forces had increased their attacks on Kosovo's ethnic Albanians even after a U.N. resolution demanded a cease-fire. In a widely anticipated report to the Security Council, Annan listed apparent violations of a Sept. 23 U.N. resolution, decried the ``appalling atrocities in Kosovo,'' and said it was ``clear beyond any reasonable doubt'' that Yugoslav forces were responsible for the bulk of them. The U.N. chief also said rebel forces of the Kosovo Liberation Army also were responsible for human rights violations, a charge the KLA quickly denied. NATO countries had been awaiting the U.N. chief's report to determine whether to use military force to stop the offensive on ethnic Albanians, who are seeking autonomy like they had until 1989, if not independence, from Yugoslavia. Albanians in the province outnumber Serbs 9-to-1. Despite Annan's unwillingness to declare Serb noncompliance, State Department spokesman James Foley said the Clinton administration believed Milosevic had not met the conditions laid down by the Security Council. Briefing reporters in Washington, Foley cited the absence of a formal cease-fire, the failure to arrange a meaningful dialogue with ethnic Albanian leaders and the continued presence of ``major army units'' in southeastern Kosovo near Albania's border. Meanwhile, Yugoslavia's prime minister told an emergency session of parliament Monday that the country ``is faced with the imminent danger of war.'' Yugoslavia is comprised of dominant Serbia and smaller Montenegro. ``The threats are serious,'' Prime Minister Momir Bulatovic said. ``And I call on this parliament to conclude that Yugoslavia is faced with the imminent danger of war. Yugoslavia has to defend itself if it was attacked.'' One option was for parliament to declare a state of emergency _ a step toward a mobilization of all military-aged men. But the parliament voted to introduce the measure ``when the first bomb drops on our territory.'' In an attempt to head off NATO action, Bulatovic said the government had accepted a Russian proposal for an investigation by the 54-nation Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. Yugoslavia had repeatedly rejected such a mission to Kosovo until Yugoslav membership in the organization is restored. The prime minister also said there was no longer any fighting in Kosovo, which has 2 million residents. He said five of the 10 special police units had been removed from Kosovo and the others had been returned to their barracks in the province. One diplomat in Kosovo, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said there has been a significant redeployment of Yugoslav army troops out of Kosovo to other parts of Serbia, including a mechanized brigade that pulled out Sunday. Some army units remain in the field, and there is enormous fear that violence will resume, particularly among refugees, tens of thousands of whom are living in the hills and forests without shelter. ||||| The United States and Russia are ratcheting up the pressure on President Slobodan Milosevic, warning that NATO airstrikes are inevitable unless he takes decisive action soon to end the humanitarian crisis in the southern Serbian province. Fearing airstrikes, Yugoslav generals put the nation's air defense on high alert, but tried a belated compromise by moving some tanks and other heavy equipment out of Kosovo. A Western diplomat said up to 120 Yugoslav army armored vehicles, including tanks, have been pulled out. In Brussels, Belgium, however, U.S. special envoy Richard Holbrooke told reporters Monday that the situation in Kosovo has not improved. Holbrooke is en route to Belgrade for a meeting with Milosevic. ``While the level of fighting (in Kosovo) may have abated temporarily, the capacity for its resumption is there,'' Holbrooke said after a meeting with NATO Secretary General Javier Solana and Supreme Allied Commander Europe Wesley K. Clark. ``The situation therefore remains fully as serious today as it was a week or two ago,'' he said. ``We hope to make clear to President Milosevic and the people of Yugoslavia the extreme gravity of the situation.'' On Sunday, Milosevic met with Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov and Defense Minister Igor Sergeyev, Serbian President Milan Milutinovic and Yugoslavia's top defense officials. The Russians are against using NATO force in Kosovo. However, Ivanov and Sergeyev said the airstrikes could occur ``if decisive measures are not immediately taken for a radical improvement of the situation,'' Foreign Ministry spokesman Vladimir Rakhmanin told the ITAR-Tass news agency. To avoid such an attack, Yugoslavia must end the hostilities, withdraw army and security forces, take urgent measures to overcome the humanitarian crisis, ensure that refugees can return home and take part in peace talks, he said. In Berlin, 7th graf pvs ||||| Under NATO threat to end his punishing offensive against ethnic Albanian separatists in Kosovo, President Slobodan Milosevic of Yugoslavia has ordered most units of his army back to their barracks and may well avoid an attack by the alliance, military observers and diplomats say. Milosevic, who on one hand is excoriated by Washington as the scourge of Kosovo yet on the other hand is treated as key to peace in Bosnia, acted as the European Union, NATO and the United Nations prepared for a review on Monday of possible military intervention. Russia stepped up its warnings against such action and dispatched its foreign and defense ministers on an unusually high-level mission to see the Yugoslav president Sunday in Belgrade. As he has so often, Milosevic appears to have bowed to foreign demands in the nick of time and yet still accomplished what he wanted. This weekend, foreign diplomatic observers in Kosovo reported that a ``military stand-down'' had taken place in the province, where Milosevic's forces have waged a fierce offensive against Albanian rebels. The observers said that except for segments of three brigades, most units of the Yugoslav army were ``home.'' The daily reports of the observer mission, made up of U.S., European Union and Russian military experts, are one of the key elements in helping Washington and European capitals decide whether Milosevic has met their demands for a cease-fire. By putting the army back in its barracks, sending some police units out of Kosovo and ordering an end to burning and looting of villages, Milosevic may well avoid a NATO attack, diplomats here and in Washington said. But at the same time, they acknowledge that while NATO looked the other way, he enjoyed a three-month license to overwhelm the Kosovo Liberation Army _ the rebel army fighting for independence for Kosovo and its ethnic Albanian majority _ and terrorize the rural civilian population that supports it. His military operation created more than 250,000 refugees, whom the Clinton administration is gearing up to take care of this winter through a variety of relief organizations. U.S. officials said they expected Richard Holbrooke, the U.S. envoy who dealt with Milosevic in negotiating an end to the war in Bosnia, to meet with him on Monday to discuss a political plan for Kosovo. The heart of the disagreement in Kosovo is between Serbia, Yugoslavia's principal republic, which insists on keeping Kosovo as a province, and the ethnic Albanians there who have chafed under Milosevic's repression since he stripped the province of virtual autonomy in 1989, and who now seek independence. The West, fearing the precedent that independence for Kosovo would set in other conflicts in the world, has been trying to mediate a middle course. In essence, diplomats said they believed that the plan Holbrooke will present to Milosevic calls for a three-year interim period leading to a status fairly close to the pre-1989 autonomy arrangement. Since the Kosovo conflict flared up in March, critics of Washington's policy toward Milosevic argue that he has been able to choreograph every move to suit his goal: pushing the Albanian population into submission with impunity. ``The United States and its allies have waited four months while he cleaned the clock of the Kosovo Liberation Army,'' said Morton Abramowitz, head of the International Crisis Group, a policy analysis organization, ``and taken three weeks to discuss military action, with the result that 500 Albanian villages were destroyed.'' Administration officials now acknowledge that when NATO failed to live up to its earlier threat in June to strike Serbia, Milosevic took advantage of the indecision and plunged ahead with an artillery and tank offensive against the lightly armed guerrilla forces, whose bedrock of popular support had helped win them effective control of large swaths of Kosovo territory, including key roads. While he was doing that, Milosevic skillfully managed a key requirement for Washington: he made sure that the war did not spill over into neighboring Albania and Macedonia, fragile countries in a traditionally volatile area. All along, the biggest fear in Washington has been that the Kosovo conflict would engulf neighboring countries and encourage Albania and the ethnic Albanian population in Macedonia to join the cause. Such a possibility raised the specter of a new Balkans conflict just three years after peace was secured in Bosnia. Milosevic catered to Washington's concern that the conflict be contained. The Yugoslav army mined Kosovo's borders with Macedonia and Albania, ensuring that few refugees could escape and limiting routes for arms supplies for the rebels. The Yugoslav leader also understood that Washington was unsure about how to deal with the disorganized Albanian political leadership in Kosovo and the unbending Kosovo Liberation Army, whose main chiefs were hardened emigres returned from Switzerland and Germany. For example, Holbrooke persuaded Milosevic to meet in May with Ibrahim Rugova, the top Albanian political leader in Kosovo, an encounter that turned out to be little more than a photo opportunity. For that procedural breakthrough, Holbrooke recommended the lifting of a ban on foreign investment in Serbia that had been put in place the month before. After meeting with Rugova, Milosevic stepped up his military operations in Kosovo, forcing Washington to reverse itself again and carry out the investment ban. In late June, Holbrooke met with two self-styled Kosovo guerrilla commanders in the province's western town of Junik but then broke off all contact. Clinton administration officials said at the time that they were concerned that NATO intervention would bolster the separatist forces. To try to put the best face on the situation, Washington worked with Moscow to get Milosevic to accept the presence of international monitors who would patrol Kosovo and report on military action. The monitors were slow in getting organized. By August, when the Yugoslav army, backed by the Serbian special police, were in full swing against the rebels and burning and looting villages in the process, the monitors found it difficult to gain access to the fighting. They drove up to roadblocks, knew something was going on from the sounds and the smoke, but could not be precise. In recent days as the tanks and artillery have withdrawn, access has improved, the monitors say. But there are some areas in central Kosovo around Likovac and Gornje Obrinje that the monitors have ruled off limits because of land mines on the roads. The mines are believed to have been planted by the guerrillas. Gornje Obrinje was the site of a massacre of 18 ethnic Albanian women, children and elderly people on Sept. 26. A British reporter who walked across fields into the village on Sunday said about 10 mortar shells, apparently from the Serbian police or the Yugoslav army, were fired at the village early Sunday afternoon. The Yugoslav army and police forces have been responsible for the vast majority of atrocities in the Kosovo conflict, said a report by New York-based group Human Rights Watch, released here on Sunday. The report said the rebels had also violated the laws of war by taking civilian hostages and carrying out summary executions. But the violations by the guerrillas were on a ``lesser scale'' than the government abuses, the author of the report, Fred Abrahams, concluded. The report focused on what it called a watershed in the conflict _ the attack by police forces on three ethnic Albanian villages in late February and early March in the Drenica region of central Kosovo. At least 83 people, including 24 women and children, were killed in the attack, which involved helicopters, artillery and armored personnel carriers. In the Yugoslav capital, Belgrade, which is a four-hour drive north through rolling countryside from Kosovo's capital of Pristina, Milosevic remains politically secure. That is in part, his domestic critics say, because diplomats like Holbrooke and the head of the U.N.refugee agency, Sadako Ogata, insist on going to see him, thus enhancing his stature. ||||| With the threat of NATO attack mounting, Yugoslavia's prime minister warned Monday the nation faces the ``immiment danger of war'' and claimed the government was taking steps to comply with international demands for peace in Kosovo. In New York, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said ``systematic terror'' had been inflicted on Kosovo civilians within recent days and that Yugoslav forces were mostly responsible. But Annan said he did not ``have the means necessary to provide an independent assessment of compliance as required by the Security Council'' and suggested the 15 members may want to make their ``own judgement in this respect.'' But U.S. special envoy Richard Holbrooke said the situation in the southern Serbian province was as bad now as two weeks ago. Holbrooke spoke in Brussels, Belgium en route to Belgrade, where he planned to drive home to Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic ``the extreme gravity of the situation.'' Meanwhile, Yugoslavia's prime minister told an emergency session of parliament Monday that the country ``is faced with the imminent danger of war.'' Kosovo is a province of Serbia, the main republic of Yugoslavia. ``The threats are serious,'' Prime Minister Momir Bulatovic said. ``And I call on this parliament to conclude that Yugoslavia is faced with the imminent danger of war. Yugoslavia has to defend itself if it was attacked.'' One option could be for parliament to declare a state of emergency _ a step which could lead to a general mobilization of all military-aged men. In an attempt to head off NATO action, Bulatovic said the government had accepted a Russian proposal for the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe to investigate the crisis. Yugoslavia had repeatedly rejected such a mission to Kosovo until Yugoslav membership in the 54-nation organization is restored. Bulatovic also claimed there was no longer any fighting in the rebellious, majority Albanian province. He said five of the 10 special police units had been removed from Kosovo and the others had been returned to barracks in the province. In Brussels, however, Holbrooke made clear that half-measures would not be enough to satisfy Washington and prevent a NATO attack. ``While the level of fighting may have abated temporarily, the capacity for its resumption is there,'' Holbrooke said after a meeting with NATO Secretary General Javier Solana and Supreme Allied Commander Europe Wesley K. Clark. ``The situation, therefore, remains fully as serious today as it was a week or two ago,'' he said. ``We hope to make clear to president Milosevic and the people of Yugoslavia the extreme gravity of the situation.'' Meanwhile, the head of Yugoslavia's other republic, Montenegro, called on Milosevic to accept all international demands and avert a NATO attack. ``We have to avert a clash with the whole world, a confrontation which we are bound to lose,'' Montenegro's pro-Western president, Milo Djukanovic, said in a statement. Djukanovic, a staunch Milosevic critic, called on the Yugoslav president to address the nation ``with an unambiguous message'' that he has accepted all U.N. resolutions and agreements he made with Russian President Boris Yeltsin. Djukanovic blamed Yugoslavia's problems on Milosevic's ``undemocratic regime.'' Fearing airstrikes, Yugoslav generals put the nation's air defense on high alert and moved some tanks and other heavy equipment out of Kosovo. A Western diplomat said up to 120 Yugoslav army armored vehicles, including tanks, have been pulled out. Belgrade had been counting on Russia to block any U.N.-sanctioned military moves by the Western Alliance. On Sunday, Milosevic met with Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov and Defense Minister Igor Sergeyev, Serbian President Milan Milutinovic and Yugoslavia's top defense officials. Although the Russians are against using NATO force in Kosovo, Ivanov and Sergeyev said the airstrikes could occur ``if decisive measures are not immediately taken for a radical improvement of the situation,'' Foreign Ministry spokesman Vladimir Rakhmanin told the ITAR-Tass news agency. To avoid such an attack, Yugoslavia must end the hostilities, withdraw army and security forces, take urgent measures to overcome the humanitarian crisis, ensure that refugees can return home and take part in peace talks, he said. In Berlin, German Gen. Dieter Stoeckmann told German radio that NATO action could come ``within days.'' Serb authorities appeared ready for compromise by installing an interim government in the rebellious province in Serbia, the dominant republic in Yugoslavia. Serbian police and the Yugoslav army have routed separatist Kosovo Albanian rebels in the crackdown that began in late February. The conflict has killed hundreds _ most of them Albanian civilians _ and left more than 275,000 refugees. Ethnic Albanians compromise 90 percent of the province's 2 million-strong population, and most favor independence or substantial self-rule. Momentum for outside involvement has increased in the past week amid revelations of massacres of ethnic Albanian civilians in the forests of Kosovo. Although the United States and Europeans want an end to the fighting, they also oppose independence for Kosovo, fearing that could destabilize other Balkan countries with Albanian populations. In the Kosovo capital Pristina, the KLA offered to help NATO forces if asked. KLA spokesman Jakup Krasniqi said in a statement published Monday by the Albanian language newspaper Bujku that ``we wish they (airstrikes) would become reality'' and ``we shall provide assistance... if it is asked of us.'' Krasniqi accused ethnic Albanian politicians of having ``given up on independence'' and having become ``the servants of the enemy,'' by agreeing to accept autonomy but not independence. Ethnic Albanian political leaders have rejected the new interim government, which was drawn up without their participation. The council is composed of seven Serbs, five ethnic Albanians and the rest Turks and Muslims.

Under threat of NATO attack, Milosevic orders back most army units. US envoy says situation is as grave as it was 2 weeks ago, despite temporary abatement of fighting. US and Russia increase pressure on Milosevic to end the humanitarian crisis in Kosovo or face NATO airstrikes. US envoy tells Milosevic to pull back his military and let Albanian refugees return home. Yugoslavia claims it is taking steps to comply with peace demands. However, NATO says that UN Security Council conditions have not yet been met. US envoy gives Milosevic last minute warning to halt ethnic crackdown in Kosovo. Milosevic calls NATO threat criminal act favoring guerrillas.

The United States and Russia are ratcheting up the pressure on Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, warning that NATO airstrikes are inevitable unless he takes decisive action to end the crisis in Kosovo province. Fearing airstrikes, Yugoslav generals put the nation's air defense on high alert, but tried a belated compromise by moving some tanks and other heavy equipment out of Kosovo. A Western diplomat said up to 120 Yugoslav army armored vehicles, including tanks, have been pulled out. However, U.S. envoy Richard Holbrooke said Monday that the Kosovo situation remains critical despite a lull in fighting and the removal of some Yugoslav tanks and troops. Holbrooke spoke in Brussels, Belgium, en route to Belgrade to meet with Milosevic. ``We hope to make clear to president Milosevic and the people of Yugoslavia the extreme gravity of the situation,'' Holbrooke said after a meeting with NATO leaders. Holbrooke said he was told that NATO preparations continued unabated. ``At NATO, the planning for military action is serious, intense and sustained,'' he said. Serbian police and the Yugoslav army have routed separatist Kosovo Albanian rebels in the crackdown that began in late February. The conflict has killed hundreds _ most of them Albanian civilians _ and left more than 275,000 refugees. Kosovo is in southern Serbia, the main republic of Yugoslavia. Milosevic met Sunday with Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov and Defense Minister Igor Sergeyev, Serbian President Milan Milutinovic and Yugoslavia's top defense officials. The Russians are against using NATO force in Kosovo. However, Ivanov and Sergeyev said the airstrikes could occur ``if decisive measures are not immediately taken for a radical improvement of the situation,'' Foreign Ministry spokesman Vladimir Rakhmanin told the ITAR-Tass news agency. To avoid such an attack, Yugoslavia must end the hostilities, withdraw army and security forces, take urgent measures to overcome the humanitarian crisis, ensure that refugees can return home and take part in peace talks, he said. In Berlin, German Gen. Dieter Stoeckmann told German radio that NATO action could come ``within days.'' NATO's decision may depend on a report U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan is scheduled to present Monday to the Security Council on whether Yugoslavia is meeting U.N. demands. Serb authorities appeared ready for compromise by installing an interim government in the rebellious province in Serbia, the dominant republic in Yugoslavia. On Monday, Yugoslav Prime Minister Momir Bulatovic said the government had accepted a Russian proposal for the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe to investigate the crisis. Yugoslavia had repeatedly rejected such a mission until its membership in the 54-nation organization is restored. Bulatovic also claimed there was no longer any fighting in the secessionist, majority Albanian province. He said five of the 10 special police units had been removed from Kosovo and the others had been returned to barracks in the province. A Yugoslav statement said the nation's leaders wanted the Kosovo dispute solved peacefully, ``but in case we are attacked, we shall defend our country with all means.'' One option could be for parliament to declare a state of emergency _ a step which could lead to a general mobilization of all military-aged men. The head of Yugoslavia's other republic, Montenegro, on Monday urged Milosevic to accept all international demands and avert a NATO attack. ``We have to avert a clash with the whole world, a confrontation which we are bound to lose,'' Montenegro's pro-Western president, Milo Djukanovic, said in a statement. ||||| With the threat of NATO attack mounting, Yugoslavia's prime minister warned Monday the nation faces the ``imminent danger of war'' and claimed the government is taking steps to comply with international demands for peace in Kosovo. But NATO Secretary-General Javier Solana told reporters that the Alliance believed Yugoslavia had not yet met the conditions demanded by the U.N. Security Council. ``The reality coming to us is that the compliance is not yet in place,'' Solana said. ``As far as we are concerned, once again, I can tell you we are ready.'' In New York, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said ``systematic terror'' had been inflicted on Kosovo civilians within recent days and that Yugoslav forces were mostly responsible. But Annan said he did not ``have the means necessary to provide an independent assessment of compliance as required by the Security Council'' and suggested the 15 members may want to make their ``own judgement in this respect.'' Following a meeting with Solana in Brussels, Belgium, U.S. special envoy Richard Holbrooke said the situation in the southern Serbian province was as bad now as two weeks ago. Holbrooke said he would tell Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic of ``the extreme gravity of the situation.'' Sources speaking on condition of anonymity said Holbrooke arrived in Belgrade late Monday afternoon and was expected to meet Milosevic in the evening. ||||| The American envoy Richard Holbrooke met with President Slobodan Milosevic of Yugoslavia Monday night and according to American diplomats told him that he had to take further steps to pull back his military in Kosovo Province or face a NATO attack. Milosevic was also told, the diplomats said, that he had to insure that the roughly 250,000 ethnic Albanian refugees who have been forced to flee their homes in the fighting in the last six months be allowed to return home. Most of these refugees are reluctant to return because many of the Serb police officers who destroyed their homes and villages remain in the neighborhoods. After delivering his sternest message so far to Milosevic over the Kosovo conflict, Holbrooke said at a news conference that NATO's military plans for attacking Serbia were moving ahead on a ``serious, intense and sustained basis.'' Holbrooke's mission to Milosevic was described by the American diplomats as ``not a do or die trip,'' but they added, ``We're at a very serious juncture.'' Shortly after Holbrooke's meeting with Milosevic, the Yugoslav leader issued a defiant statement on Serbian television in which he said the ``threats of aggression'' outlined by Holbrooke represented ``a criminal act.'' Milosevic, who rarely comments about his meetings with foreign diplomats and whose tough words cast an unusually ominous tone, also said that Holbrooke's position constituted ``support for Albanian terrorists and not the Albanian people.'' Milosevic was apparently accusing Holbrooke of supporting the ethnic Albanian guerrillas of the Kosovo Liberation Army, who have been fighting to make the Serbian province of Kosovo an independent nation. The Yugoslav leader added that ``for more than seven days there have been no skirmishes or military action.'' An American diplomat familiar with the themes Holbrooke planned to stress to Milosevic said there had been no expectation that the American envoy would walk out Monday night with an agreement. Rather, the point was to underscore to the Yugoslav leader and make explicit what was expected of him. ``It was not quite an ultimatum,'' the diplomat said, ``but more a matter of what steps have to be taken to show compliance.'' The essence of Holbrooke's demands centered on issues outlined in a United Nations Security Council resolution of two weeks ago. The resolution ordered Milosevic to withdraw the extra army and police forces that were sent to Kosovo to deal with the guerrillas and to send back to their bases the military forces normally stationed in the province. So far, American diplomats said, Milosevic has withdrawn troops from the field but not all of them are in their barracks. Such a move is essential, American diplomats said, to create a conducive atmosphere for any possible negotiations on the future status of the province. The U.N. resolution also calls for a political solution. Holbrooke and the U.S. ambassador to Macedonia, Christopher Hill, discussed with Milosevic a political document drawn up by the State Department that calls for broad autonomy for Kosovo. Milosevic withdrew the autonomy in 1989 as he began his campaign of Serb nationalism. The countryside in central Kosovo has been eerily silent since last Thursday. The sound of artillery thuds and mortar rounds have been noticeably absent and the coils of white smoke that signified burning villages have vanished from the green hills and valleys. Police checkpoints are more relaxed and areas that were sealed off this time last week by the Yugoslav army are now open to the patrols of diplomatic monitors from the United States, European Union and Russia. These monitors, many of whom are former military officers, have reported that the Yugoslav army has ``stood down'' and that they have seen virtually no military action since late last week. There has been sporadic shooting, the monitors have reported. But this superficial calm is not good enough because the Serb military has the capacity to resume fighting very quickly, a NATO military officer said Monday. The officer added that a cease-fire in Kosovo is ``pretty much enacted.'' He also said that the ``trend toward compliance is positive.'' The interior ministry police must also reduce their presence around villages so that refugees who have fled have the confidence to return, the military officer said. Some interior ministry police officers had left the province, but not enough, he added. On the question of how badly damaged the KLA had been by the Yugoslav army's three-month offensive, the NATO officer said, ``It's a fair assessment that the KLA is dismantled but not destroyed.'' Holbrooke's first stop Monday was Brussels, where he met with the secretary-general of NATO, Javier Solana. On Tuesday he plans to travel to Pristina, the capital of Kosovo, where he is scheduled to meet with the ethnic Albanian leader Ibrahim Rugova to present the political proposal for the future status of Kosovo. He is expected back in Belgrade on Tuesday afternoon for another session with Milosevic. ||||| The United States and Russia are ratcheting up the pressure on President Slobodan Milosevic, warning that NATO airstrikes are inevitable unless he takes decisive action soon to end the humanitarian crisis in the southern Serbian province. Fearing airstrikes, Yugoslav generals put the nation's air defense on high alert, but tried a belated compromise by moving some tanks and other heavy equipment out of Kosovo. A Western diplomat said up to 120 Yugoslav army armored vehicles, including tanks, have been pulled out. In Brussels, Belgium, however, U.S. special envoy Richard Holbrooke told reporters Monday that the situation in Kosovo is as bad now as two weeks ago. Holbrooke is en route to Belgrade for a meeting with Milosevic. ``While the level of fighting (in Kosovo) may have abated temporarily, the capacity for its resumption is there,'' Holbrooke said after a meeting with NATO Secretary General Javier Solana and Supreme Allied Commander Europe Wesley K. Clark. ``The situation therefore remains fully as serious today as it was a week or two ago,'' he said. ``We hope to make clear to president Milosevic and the people of Yugoslavia the extreme gravity of the situation.'' On Sunday, Milosevic met with Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov and Defense Minister Igor Sergeyev, Serbian President Milan Milutinovic and Yugoslavia's top defense officials. The Russians are against using NATO force in Kosovo. However, Ivanov and Sergeyev said the airstrikes could occur ``if decisive measures are not immediately taken for a radical improvement of the situation,'' Foreign Ministry spokesman Vladimir Rakhmanin told the ITAR-Tass news agency. To avoid such an attack, Yugoslavia must end the hostilities, withdraw army and security forces, take urgent measures to overcome the humanitarian crisis, ensure that refugees can return home and take part in peace talks, he said. In Berlin, German Gen. Dieter Stoeckmann told German radio that NATO action could come ``within days.'' NATO's decision may depend on a report U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan is scheduled to present to the Security Council Monday on whether Yugoslavia is meeting U.N. demands. Serb authorities appeared ready for compromise by installing an interim government in the rebellious province in Serbia, the dominant republic in Yugoslavia. Serbian police and the Yugoslav army have routed separatist Kosovo Albanian rebels in the crackdown that began in late February. The conflict has killed hundreds _ most of them Albanian civilians _ and left more than 275,000 refugees. A Yugoslav statement said the nation's leaders wanted the Kosovo dispute solved peacefully, ``but in case we are attacked, we shall defend our country with all means.'' The government said Friday that the fighting had ended and blamed continuing violence on ethnic Albanian rebels, who are fighting for independence for the Serbian province. Although the United States and Europeans want an end to the fighting, they also oppose independence for the majority Albanian province, fearing that could destabilize other Balkan countries with Albanian populations. In the Kosovo capital Pristina, the KLA offered to help NATO forces if asked. KLA spokesman Jakup Krasniqi said in a statement published Monday by the Albanian language newspaper Bujku that ``we wish they (airstrikes) would become reality'' and ``we shall provide assistance... if it is asked of us.'' Krasniqi accused ethnic Albanian politicians of having ``given up on independence'' and having become ``the servants of the enemy,'' by agreeing to accept autonomy but not independence. Serbs reported two attacks Sunday on civilian cars by Albanian ``terrorists'' 25 miles (40 kilometers) south of Pristina, Kosovo's provincial capital. Elsewhere, a policeman was killed after stepping on a mine, the Serb Media Center said. The Kosovo Information Center, allied with the ethnic Albanians, reported heavy fighting between government forces and the guerrillas 25 miles (40 kilometers) southwest of Pristina. Ethnic Albanian political leaders have rejected the new interim government, which was drawn up without their participation. The council is composed of seven Serbs, five ethnic Albanians and the rest Turks and Muslims. Momentum for outside involvement has increased in the past week amid revelations of massacres of ethnic Albanian civilians in the forests of Kosovo. London's Sunday Telegraph reported that Britain is preparing troops and armored units for Kosovo, to be deployed in a post-airstrike peacekeeping role. The defense ministry refused to confirm or deny the report but repeated that Britain was ready to participate in a NATO attack. French Foreign Minister Hubert Vedrine met Sunday night with his British counterpart, Robin Cook, to discuss the situation in Kosovo, France's Foreign Ministry said. Vedrine and Secretary of State Madeleine Albright had a lengthy telephone conversation as well, the spokesman said. On Sunday, Human Rights Watch said both Milosevic's government and ethnic Albanian rebels have committed atrocities since the conflict began, but the government abuses were on a much greater scale. The report by the New York-based human rights organization says Milosevic has ``the primary responsibility for gross government abuses.'' ||||| BRUSSELS, Belgium (AP) _ U.S. special envoy Richard Holbrooke said Monday the military situation in Kosovo was as bad now as two weeks ago. Holbrooke said he will explain the ``extreme gravity of the situation'' when he meets Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic later Monday. Speaking after a meeting with NATO Secretary General Javier Solana and Supreme Allied Commander Europe Wesley K. Clark, Holbrooke said ``while the level of fighting (in Kosovo) may have abated temporarily, the capacity for its resumption is there.'' ``The situation therefore remains fully as serious today as it was a week or two ago,'' he told reporters before flying to Belgrade. He plans to meet with the Kosovan Albanian leaders on Tuesday. ``We hope to make clear to president Milosevic and the people of Yugoslavia the extreme gravity of the situation,'' he said. ||||| With NATO attacks said to be only days away, top U.S. envoy Richard Holbrooke delivered a last-minute warning Monday to Yugoslavia's president to halt his crackdown on ethnic Albanians in Kosovo or face airstrikes. But Slobodan Milosevic showed no signs of backing down. Following his meeting with Holbrooke, Milosevic's office issued a statement denouncing NATO threats as a ``criminal act'' that favored separatist ethnic Albanian guerrillas. The statement, broadcast by government television, said there had been no fighting in the Serbian province for the past seven days and that the crisis represented no threat to other countries in the southern Balkans. Holbrooke, the U.S. ambassador-designate to the United Nations, met with Milosevic for several hours late Monday after arriving from Brussels, Belgium, where he conferred with senior NATO officials. Holbrooke issued no statement after the meeting. Before boarding a plane for the Yugoslav capital, Belgrade, however, Holbrooke said conditions in the southern Serbian province had not improved since the alliance started two weeks ago to finalize plans for air raids to force Milosevic to halt his offensive against Kosovo Albanian separatists. Holbrooke said he planned to drive home to Milosevic ``the extreme gravity of the situation.'' Holbrooke negotiated the peace deal with Milosevic and other Balkan leaders that ended the 3 1/2 year Bosnian war in 1995. In Washington, U.S. President Bill Clinton expressed concern that Milosevic was ``playing the classic game of making false promises'' to avoid NATO military strikes. Clinton, in a telephone call with Russian President Boris Yeltsin, said Milosevic's compliance with U.N. demands ``must be verifiable, tangible and irreversible,'' press secretary Joe Lockhart said at the White House. ``What happens next depends on President Milosevic,'' Lockhart quoted the president telling the Russian leader, who has opposed the use of force against Moscow's longtime ally. As Holbrooke tried to resolve the crisis through negotiations, British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook said a decision on NATO military action was imminent. ``We are getting ready for NATO action and later this week we will expect a decision to be taken,'' Cook told reporters after a special session of the Cabinet called by Prime Minister Tony Blair. In Brussels, NATO officials said they were ready to launch airstrikes within hours of receiving an order to attack. If that first airstrike failed to deter Serb forces, a senior NATO official said on condition of anonymity, the alliance could unleash a ``fully fledged air campaign'' involving hundreds of planes. At the United Nations, Secretary-General Kofi Annan said Yugoslav forces had increased their attacks on Kosovo's ethnic Albanians even after a U.N. resolution demanded a cease-fire. In a widely anticipated report to the Security Council, Annan listed apparent violations of a Sept. 23 U.N. resolution, decried the ``appalling atrocities in Kosovo,'' and said it was ``clear beyond any reasonable doubt'' that Yugoslav forces were responsible for the bulk of them. The U.N. chief also said rebel forces of the Kosovo Liberation Army also were responsible for human rights violations, a charge the KLA quickly denied. NATO countries had been awaiting the U.N. chief's report to determine whether to use military force to stop the offensive on ethnic Albanians, who are seeking autonomy like they had until 1989, if not independence, from Yugoslavia. Albanians in the province outnumber Serbs 9-to-1. Despite Annan's unwillingness to declare Serb noncompliance, U.S. State Department spokesman James Foley said the Clinton administration believed Milosevic had not met the conditions laid down by the U.N. Security Council. Foley cited the absence of a formal cease-fire, the failure to arrange a meaningful dialogue with ethnic Albanian leaders and the continued presence of ``major army units'' in southeastern Kosovo near Albania's border. The European Union nations were divided Monday on whether to launch air strikes without U.N. Security Council backing. The EU foreign ministers, meeting in Luxembourg, agreed to tighten economic sanctions against Milosevic, but it was unlikely that stricter travel curbs for Yugoslav officials and freezing more Yugoslav assets abroad would be anything more than symbolic. Meanwhile, Yugoslavia's prime minister told an emergency session of parliament Monday that the country ``is faced with the imminent danger of war.'' Yugoslavia is comprised of dominant Serbia and smaller Montenegro. ``The threats are serious,'' Prime Minister Momir Bulatovic said. ``And I call on this parliament to conclude that Yugoslavia is faced with the imminent danger of war. Yugoslavia has to defend itself if it was attacked.'' One option was for parliament to declare a state of emergency _ a step toward a mobilization of all military-aged men. But the parliament voted to introduce the measure ``when the first bomb drops on our territory.'' In an attempt to head off NATO action, Bulatovic said the government had accepted a Russian proposal for an investigation by the 54-nation Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. Yugoslavia had repeatedly rejected such a mission to Kosovo until Yugoslav membership in the organization is restored. The prime minister also said there was no longer any fighting in Kosovo, which has 2 million residents. He said five of the 10 special police units had been removed from Kosovo and the others had been returned to their barracks in the province. One diplomat in Kosovo, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said there has been a significant redeployment of Yugoslav army troops out of Kosovo to other parts of Serbia, including a mechanized brigade that pulled out Sunday. Some army units remain in the field, and there is enormous fear that violence will resume, particularly among refugees, tens of thousands of whom are living in the hills and forests without shelter. ||||| With NATO attacks said to be only days away, top U.S. envoy Richard Holbrooke delivered an 11th-hour warning Monday to Yugoslavia's president to halt his crackdown on ethnic Albanians in Kosovo or face airstrikes. But there was no sign that Slobodan Milosevic was backing down. Following his meeting with Holbrooke, Milosevic's office issued a statement denouncing NATO threats as a ``criminal act'' which favored separatist ethnic Albanian guerrillas. The statement, broadcast by government television, said there had been no fighting in the Serbian province for the past seven days and that the crisis represented no threat to other countries in the southern Balkans. Holbrooke, the U.S. ambassador-designate to the United Nations, met with Milosevic for several hours late Monday after arriving from Brussels, Belgium, where he conferred with senior NATO officials. There was no statement from Holbrooke after the meeting. Before boarding a plane for Belgrade, however, Holbrooke said conditions in the southern Serbian province had not improved since the alliance started two weeks ago to finalize plans for air raids to force Milosevic to halt his offensive against Kosovo Albanian separatists. Holbrooke said he planned to drive home to Milosevic ``the extreme gravity of the situation.'' Holbrooke negotiated the peace deal with Milosevic and other Balkan leaders that ended the 3 and one-half year Bosnian war in 1995. In Washington, President Clinton expressed concern that Milosevic was ``playing the classic game of making false promises'' to avoid NATO military strikes. Clinton, in a telephone call with Russian President Boris Yeltsin, said Milosevic's compliance with U.N. demands ``must be verifiable, tangible and irreversible,'' press secretary Joe Lockhart said at the White House. ``What happens next depends on President Milosevic,'' Lockhart quoted the president telling the Russian leader, who has opposed the use of force against Moscow's longtime ally. As Holbrooke tried to resolve the crisis through negotiations, British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook said a decision on NATO military action was imminent. ``We are getting ready for NATO action and later this week we will expect a decision to be taken,'' Cook told reporters after a special session of the Cabinet called by Prime Minister Tony Blair. In Brussels, NATO officials said they were ready to launch airstrikes within hours of receiving an order to attack. If that first airstrike failed to deter Serb forces, a senior NATO official said on condition of anonymity, the alliance could unleash a ``fully fledged air campaign'' involving hundreds of planes. At the United Nations, Secretary-General Kofi Annan said Yugoslav forces had increased their attacks on Kosovo's ethnic Albanians even after a U.N. resolution demanded a cease-fire. In a widely anticipated report to the Security Council, Annan listed apparent violations of a Sept. 23 U.N. resolution, decried the ``appalling atrocities in Kosovo,'' and said it was ``clear beyond any reasonable doubt'' that Yugoslav forces were responsible for the bulk of them. The U.N. chief also said rebel forces of the Kosovo Liberation Army also were responsible for human rights violations, a charge the KLA quickly denied. NATO countries had been awaiting the U.N. chief's report to determine whether to use military force to stop the offensive on ethnic Albanians, who are seeking autonomy like they had until 1989, if not independence, from Yugoslavia. Albanians in the province outnumber Serbs 9-to-1. Despite Annan's unwillingness to declare Serb noncompliance, State Department spokesman James Foley said the Clinton administration believed Milosevic had not met the conditions laid down by the Security Council. Briefing reporters in Washington, Foley cited the absence of a formal cease-fire, the failure to arrange a meaningful dialogue with ethnic Albanian leaders and the continued presence of ``major army units'' in southeastern Kosovo near Albania's border. Meanwhile, Yugoslavia's prime minister told an emergency session of parliament Monday that the country ``is faced with the imminent danger of war.'' Yugoslavia is comprised of dominant Serbia and smaller Montenegro. ``The threats are serious,'' Prime Minister Momir Bulatovic said. ``And I call on this parliament to conclude that Yugoslavia is faced with the imminent danger of war. Yugoslavia has to defend itself if it was attacked.'' One option was for parliament to declare a state of emergency _ a step toward a mobilization of all military-aged men. But the parliament voted to introduce the measure ``when the first bomb drops on our territory.'' In an attempt to head off NATO action, Bulatovic said the government had accepted a Russian proposal for an investigation by the 54-nation Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. Yugoslavia had repeatedly rejected such a mission to Kosovo until Yugoslav membership in the organization is restored. The prime minister also said there was no longer any fighting in Kosovo, which has 2 million residents. He said five of the 10 special police units had been removed from Kosovo and the others had been returned to their barracks in the province. One diplomat in Kosovo, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said there has been a significant redeployment of Yugoslav army troops out of Kosovo to other parts of Serbia, including a mechanized brigade that pulled out Sunday. Some army units remain in the field, and there is enormous fear that violence will resume, particularly among refugees, tens of thousands of whom are living in the hills and forests without shelter. ||||| The United States and Russia are ratcheting up the pressure on President Slobodan Milosevic, warning that NATO airstrikes are inevitable unless he takes decisive action soon to end the humanitarian crisis in the southern Serbian province. Fearing airstrikes, Yugoslav generals put the nation's air defense on high alert, but tried a belated compromise by moving some tanks and other heavy equipment out of Kosovo. A Western diplomat said up to 120 Yugoslav army armored vehicles, including tanks, have been pulled out. In Brussels, Belgium, however, U.S. special envoy Richard Holbrooke told reporters Monday that the situation in Kosovo has not improved. Holbrooke is en route to Belgrade for a meeting with Milosevic. ``While the level of fighting (in Kosovo) may have abated temporarily, the capacity for its resumption is there,'' Holbrooke said after a meeting with NATO Secretary General Javier Solana and Supreme Allied Commander Europe Wesley K. Clark. ``The situation therefore remains fully as serious today as it was a week or two ago,'' he said. ``We hope to make clear to President Milosevic and the people of Yugoslavia the extreme gravity of the situation.'' On Sunday, Milosevic met with Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov and Defense Minister Igor Sergeyev, Serbian President Milan Milutinovic and Yugoslavia's top defense officials. The Russians are against using NATO force in Kosovo. However, Ivanov and Sergeyev said the airstrikes could occur ``if decisive measures are not immediately taken for a radical improvement of the situation,'' Foreign Ministry spokesman Vladimir Rakhmanin told the ITAR-Tass news agency. To avoid such an attack, Yugoslavia must end the hostilities, withdraw army and security forces, take urgent measures to overcome the humanitarian crisis, ensure that refugees can return home and take part in peace talks, he said. In Berlin, 7th graf pvs ||||| Under NATO threat to end his punishing offensive against ethnic Albanian separatists in Kosovo, President Slobodan Milosevic of Yugoslavia has ordered most units of his army back to their barracks and may well avoid an attack by the alliance, military observers and diplomats say. Milosevic, who on one hand is excoriated by Washington as the scourge of Kosovo yet on the other hand is treated as key to peace in Bosnia, acted as the European Union, NATO and the United Nations prepared for a review on Monday of possible military intervention. Russia stepped up its warnings against such action and dispatched its foreign and defense ministers on an unusually high-level mission to see the Yugoslav president Sunday in Belgrade. As he has so often, Milosevic appears to have bowed to foreign demands in the nick of time and yet still accomplished what he wanted. This weekend, foreign diplomatic observers in Kosovo reported that a ``military stand-down'' had taken place in the province, where Milosevic's forces have waged a fierce offensive against Albanian rebels. The observers said that except for segments of three brigades, most units of the Yugoslav army were ``home.'' The daily reports of the observer mission, made up of U.S., European Union and Russian military experts, are one of the key elements in helping Washington and European capitals decide whether Milosevic has met their demands for a cease-fire. By putting the army back in its barracks, sending some police units out of Kosovo and ordering an end to burning and looting of villages, Milosevic may well avoid a NATO attack, diplomats here and in Washington said. But at the same time, they acknowledge that while NATO looked the other way, he enjoyed a three-month license to overwhelm the Kosovo Liberation Army _ the rebel army fighting for independence for Kosovo and its ethnic Albanian majority _ and terrorize the rural civilian population that supports it. His military operation created more than 250,000 refugees, whom the Clinton administration is gearing up to take care of this winter through a variety of relief organizations. U.S. officials said they expected Richard Holbrooke, the U.S. envoy who dealt with Milosevic in negotiating an end to the war in Bosnia, to meet with him on Monday to discuss a political plan for Kosovo. The heart of the disagreement in Kosovo is between Serbia, Yugoslavia's principal republic, which insists on keeping Kosovo as a province, and the ethnic Albanians there who have chafed under Milosevic's repression since he stripped the province of virtual autonomy in 1989, and who now seek independence. The West, fearing the precedent that independence for Kosovo would set in other conflicts in the world, has been trying to mediate a middle course. In essence, diplomats said they believed that the plan Holbrooke will present to Milosevic calls for a three-year interim period leading to a status fairly close to the pre-1989 autonomy arrangement. Since the Kosovo conflict flared up in March, critics of Washington's policy toward Milosevic argue that he has been able to choreograph every move to suit his goal: pushing the Albanian population into submission with impunity. ``The United States and its allies have waited four months while he cleaned the clock of the Kosovo Liberation Army,'' said Morton Abramowitz, head of the International Crisis Group, a policy analysis organization, ``and taken three weeks to discuss military action, with the result that 500 Albanian villages were destroyed.'' Administration officials now acknowledge that when NATO failed to live up to its earlier threat in June to strike Serbia, Milosevic took advantage of the indecision and plunged ahead with an artillery and tank offensive against the lightly armed guerrilla forces, whose bedrock of popular support had helped win them effective control of large swaths of Kosovo territory, including key roads. While he was doing that, Milosevic skillfully managed a key requirement for Washington: he made sure that the war did not spill over into neighboring Albania and Macedonia, fragile countries in a traditionally volatile area. All along, the biggest fear in Washington has been that the Kosovo conflict would engulf neighboring countries and encourage Albania and the ethnic Albanian population in Macedonia to join the cause. Such a possibility raised the specter of a new Balkans conflict just three years after peace was secured in Bosnia. Milosevic catered to Washington's concern that the conflict be contained. The Yugoslav army mined Kosovo's borders with Macedonia and Albania, ensuring that few refugees could escape and limiting routes for arms supplies for the rebels. The Yugoslav leader also understood that Washington was unsure about how to deal with the disorganized Albanian political leadership in Kosovo and the unbending Kosovo Liberation Army, whose main chiefs were hardened emigres returned from Switzerland and Germany. For example, Holbrooke persuaded Milosevic to meet in May with Ibrahim Rugova, the top Albanian political leader in Kosovo, an encounter that turned out to be little more than a photo opportunity. For that procedural breakthrough, Holbrooke recommended the lifting of a ban on foreign investment in Serbia that had been put in place the month before. After meeting with Rugova, Milosevic stepped up his military operations in Kosovo, forcing Washington to reverse itself again and carry out the investment ban. In late June, Holbrooke met with two self-styled Kosovo guerrilla commanders in the province's western town of Junik but then broke off all contact. Clinton administration officials said at the time that they were concerned that NATO intervention would bolster the separatist forces. To try to put the best face on the situation, Washington worked with Moscow to get Milosevic to accept the presence of international monitors who would patrol Kosovo and report on military action. The monitors were slow in getting organized. By August, when the Yugoslav army, backed by the Serbian special police, were in full swing against the rebels and burning and looting villages in the process, the monitors found it difficult to gain access to the fighting. They drove up to roadblocks, knew something was going on from the sounds and the smoke, but could not be precise. In recent days as the tanks and artillery have withdrawn, access has improved, the monitors say. But there are some areas in central Kosovo around Likovac and Gornje Obrinje that the monitors have ruled off limits because of land mines on the roads. The mines are believed to have been planted by the guerrillas. Gornje Obrinje was the site of a massacre of 18 ethnic Albanian women, children and elderly people on Sept. 26. A British reporter who walked across fields into the village on Sunday said about 10 mortar shells, apparently from the Serbian police or the Yugoslav army, were fired at the village early Sunday afternoon. The Yugoslav army and police forces have been responsible for the vast majority of atrocities in the Kosovo conflict, said a report by New York-based group Human Rights Watch, released here on Sunday. The report said the rebels had also violated the laws of war by taking civilian hostages and carrying out summary executions. But the violations by the guerrillas were on a ``lesser scale'' than the government abuses, the author of the report, Fred Abrahams, concluded. The report focused on what it called a watershed in the conflict _ the attack by police forces on three ethnic Albanian villages in late February and early March in the Drenica region of central Kosovo. At least 83 people, including 24 women and children, were killed in the attack, which involved helicopters, artillery and armored personnel carriers. In the Yugoslav capital, Belgrade, which is a four-hour drive north through rolling countryside from Kosovo's capital of Pristina, Milosevic remains politically secure. That is in part, his domestic critics say, because diplomats like Holbrooke and the head of the U.N.refugee agency, Sadako Ogata, insist on going to see him, thus enhancing his stature. ||||| With the threat of NATO attack mounting, Yugoslavia's prime minister warned Monday the nation faces the ``immiment danger of war'' and claimed the government was taking steps to comply with international demands for peace in Kosovo. In New York, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said ``systematic terror'' had been inflicted on Kosovo civilians within recent days and that Yugoslav forces were mostly responsible. But Annan said he did not ``have the means necessary to provide an independent assessment of compliance as required by the Security Council'' and suggested the 15 members may want to make their ``own judgement in this respect.'' But U.S. special envoy Richard Holbrooke said the situation in the southern Serbian province was as bad now as two weeks ago. Holbrooke spoke in Brussels, Belgium en route to Belgrade, where he planned to drive home to Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic ``the extreme gravity of the situation.'' Meanwhile, Yugoslavia's prime minister told an emergency session of parliament Monday that the country ``is faced with the imminent danger of war.'' Kosovo is a province of Serbia, the main republic of Yugoslavia. ``The threats are serious,'' Prime Minister Momir Bulatovic said. ``And I call on this parliament to conclude that Yugoslavia is faced with the imminent danger of war. Yugoslavia has to defend itself if it was attacked.'' One option could be for parliament to declare a state of emergency _ a step which could lead to a general mobilization of all military-aged men. In an attempt to head off NATO action, Bulatovic said the government had accepted a Russian proposal for the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe to investigate the crisis. Yugoslavia had repeatedly rejected such a mission to Kosovo until Yugoslav membership in the 54-nation organization is restored. Bulatovic also claimed there was no longer any fighting in the rebellious, majority Albanian province. He said five of the 10 special police units had been removed from Kosovo and the others had been returned to barracks in the province. In Brussels, however, Holbrooke made clear that half-measures would not be enough to satisfy Washington and prevent a NATO attack. ``While the level of fighting may have abated temporarily, the capacity for its resumption is there,'' Holbrooke said after a meeting with NATO Secretary General Javier Solana and Supreme Allied Commander Europe Wesley K. Clark. ``The situation, therefore, remains fully as serious today as it was a week or two ago,'' he said. ``We hope to make clear to president Milosevic and the people of Yugoslavia the extreme gravity of the situation.'' Meanwhile, the head of Yugoslavia's other republic, Montenegro, called on Milosevic to accept all international demands and avert a NATO attack. ``We have to avert a clash with the whole world, a confrontation which we are bound to lose,'' Montenegro's pro-Western president, Milo Djukanovic, said in a statement. Djukanovic, a staunch Milosevic critic, called on the Yugoslav president to address the nation ``with an unambiguous message'' that he has accepted all U.N. resolutions and agreements he made with Russian President Boris Yeltsin. Djukanovic blamed Yugoslavia's problems on Milosevic's ``undemocratic regime.'' Fearing airstrikes, Yugoslav generals put the nation's air defense on high alert and moved some tanks and other heavy equipment out of Kosovo. A Western diplomat said up to 120 Yugoslav army armored vehicles, including tanks, have been pulled out. Belgrade had been counting on Russia to block any U.N.-sanctioned military moves by the Western Alliance. On Sunday, Milosevic met with Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov and Defense Minister Igor Sergeyev, Serbian President Milan Milutinovic and Yugoslavia's top defense officials. Although the Russians are against using NATO force in Kosovo, Ivanov and Sergeyev said the airstrikes could occur ``if decisive measures are not immediately taken for a radical improvement of the situation,'' Foreign Ministry spokesman Vladimir Rakhmanin told the ITAR-Tass news agency. To avoid such an attack, Yugoslavia must end the hostilities, withdraw army and security forces, take urgent measures to overcome the humanitarian crisis, ensure that refugees can return home and take part in peace talks, he said. In Berlin, German Gen. Dieter Stoeckmann told German radio that NATO action could come ``within days.'' Serb authorities appeared ready for compromise by installing an interim government in the rebellious province in Serbia, the dominant republic in Yugoslavia. Serbian police and the Yugoslav army have routed separatist Kosovo Albanian rebels in the crackdown that began in late February. The conflict has killed hundreds _ most of them Albanian civilians _ and left more than 275,000 refugees. Ethnic Albanians compromise 90 percent of the province's 2 million-strong population, and most favor independence or substantial self-rule. Momentum for outside involvement has increased in the past week amid revelations of massacres of ethnic Albanian civilians in the forests of Kosovo. Although the United States and Europeans want an end to the fighting, they also oppose independence for Kosovo, fearing that could destabilize other Balkan countries with Albanian populations. In the Kosovo capital Pristina, the KLA offered to help NATO forces if asked. KLA spokesman Jakup Krasniqi said in a statement published Monday by the Albanian language newspaper Bujku that ``we wish they (airstrikes) would become reality'' and ``we shall provide assistance... if it is asked of us.'' Krasniqi accused ethnic Albanian politicians of having ``given up on independence'' and having become ``the servants of the enemy,'' by agreeing to accept autonomy but not independence. Ethnic Albanian political leaders have rejected the new interim government, which was drawn up without their participation. The council is composed of seven Serbs, five ethnic Albanians and the rest Turks and Muslims.

Yugoslav President Slbodan Milosevic does not appear to be complying completely with UN demands to withdraw his troops and stop anti-Albanian activity in Kosovo. U.S. special envoy Richard Holbrooke said the level of fighting may have abated but the situation is such that it could resume. The U.S. and Russia have ratcheted up pressure on Milosevic warning him of inevitable NATO air strikes. Yugoslavia claimed it "is faced with the imminent danger of war", will defend itself if attacked and called NATO's threats a "criminal act". Yugoslav generals put the nation's air defense on high alert then pulled some armored equipment out of Kosovo as a compromise.

The United States and Russia are ratcheting up the pressure on Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, warning that NATO airstrikes are inevitable unless he takes decisive action to end the crisis in Kosovo province. Fearing airstrikes, Yugoslav generals put the nation's air defense on high alert, but tried a belated compromise by moving some tanks and other heavy equipment out of Kosovo. A Western diplomat said up to 120 Yugoslav army armored vehicles, including tanks, have been pulled out. However, U.S. envoy Richard Holbrooke said Monday that the Kosovo situation remains critical despite a lull in fighting and the removal of some Yugoslav tanks and troops. Holbrooke spoke in Brussels, Belgium, en route to Belgrade to meet with Milosevic. ``We hope to make clear to president Milosevic and the people of Yugoslavia the extreme gravity of the situation,'' Holbrooke said after a meeting with NATO leaders. Holbrooke said he was told that NATO preparations continued unabated. ``At NATO, the planning for military action is serious, intense and sustained,'' he said. Serbian police and the Yugoslav army have routed separatist Kosovo Albanian rebels in the crackdown that began in late February. The conflict has killed hundreds _ most of them Albanian civilians _ and left more than 275,000 refugees. Kosovo is in southern Serbia, the main republic of Yugoslavia. Milosevic met Sunday with Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov and Defense Minister Igor Sergeyev, Serbian President Milan Milutinovic and Yugoslavia's top defense officials. The Russians are against using NATO force in Kosovo. However, Ivanov and Sergeyev said the airstrikes could occur ``if decisive measures are not immediately taken for a radical improvement of the situation,'' Foreign Ministry spokesman Vladimir Rakhmanin told the ITAR-Tass news agency. To avoid such an attack, Yugoslavia must end the hostilities, withdraw army and security forces, take urgent measures to overcome the humanitarian crisis, ensure that refugees can return home and take part in peace talks, he said. In Berlin, German Gen. Dieter Stoeckmann told German radio that NATO action could come ``within days.'' NATO's decision may depend on a report U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan is scheduled to present Monday to the Security Council on whether Yugoslavia is meeting U.N. demands. Serb authorities appeared ready for compromise by installing an interim government in the rebellious province in Serbia, the dominant republic in Yugoslavia. On Monday, Yugoslav Prime Minister Momir Bulatovic said the government had accepted a Russian proposal for the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe to investigate the crisis. Yugoslavia had repeatedly rejected such a mission until its membership in the 54-nation organization is restored. Bulatovic also claimed there was no longer any fighting in the secessionist, majority Albanian province. He said five of the 10 special police units had been removed from Kosovo and the others had been returned to barracks in the province. A Yugoslav statement said the nation's leaders wanted the Kosovo dispute solved peacefully, ``but in case we are attacked, we shall defend our country with all means.'' One option could be for parliament to declare a state of emergency _ a step which could lead to a general mobilization of all military-aged men. The head of Yugoslavia's other republic, Montenegro, on Monday urged Milosevic to accept all international demands and avert a NATO attack. ``We have to avert a clash with the whole world, a confrontation which we are bound to lose,'' Montenegro's pro-Western president, Milo Djukanovic, said in a statement. ||||| With the threat of NATO attack mounting, Yugoslavia's prime minister warned Monday the nation faces the ``imminent danger of war'' and claimed the government is taking steps to comply with international demands for peace in Kosovo. But NATO Secretary-General Javier Solana told reporters that the Alliance believed Yugoslavia had not yet met the conditions demanded by the U.N. Security Council. ``The reality coming to us is that the compliance is not yet in place,'' Solana said. ``As far as we are concerned, once again, I can tell you we are ready.'' In New York, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said ``systematic terror'' had been inflicted on Kosovo civilians within recent days and that Yugoslav forces were mostly responsible. But Annan said he did not ``have the means necessary to provide an independent assessment of compliance as required by the Security Council'' and suggested the 15 members may want to make their ``own judgement in this respect.'' Following a meeting with Solana in Brussels, Belgium, U.S. special envoy Richard Holbrooke said the situation in the southern Serbian province was as bad now as two weeks ago. Holbrooke said he would tell Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic of ``the extreme gravity of the situation.'' Sources speaking on condition of anonymity said Holbrooke arrived in Belgrade late Monday afternoon and was expected to meet Milosevic in the evening. ||||| The American envoy Richard Holbrooke met with President Slobodan Milosevic of Yugoslavia Monday night and according to American diplomats told him that he had to take further steps to pull back his military in Kosovo Province or face a NATO attack. Milosevic was also told, the diplomats said, that he had to insure that the roughly 250,000 ethnic Albanian refugees who have been forced to flee their homes in the fighting in the last six months be allowed to return home. Most of these refugees are reluctant to return because many of the Serb police officers who destroyed their homes and villages remain in the neighborhoods. After delivering his sternest message so far to Milosevic over the Kosovo conflict, Holbrooke said at a news conference that NATO's military plans for attacking Serbia were moving ahead on a ``serious, intense and sustained basis.'' Holbrooke's mission to Milosevic was described by the American diplomats as ``not a do or die trip,'' but they added, ``We're at a very serious juncture.'' Shortly after Holbrooke's meeting with Milosevic, the Yugoslav leader issued a defiant statement on Serbian television in which he said the ``threats of aggression'' outlined by Holbrooke represented ``a criminal act.'' Milosevic, who rarely comments about his meetings with foreign diplomats and whose tough words cast an unusually ominous tone, also said that Holbrooke's position constituted ``support for Albanian terrorists and not the Albanian people.'' Milosevic was apparently accusing Holbrooke of supporting the ethnic Albanian guerrillas of the Kosovo Liberation Army, who have been fighting to make the Serbian province of Kosovo an independent nation. The Yugoslav leader added that ``for more than seven days there have been no skirmishes or military action.'' An American diplomat familiar with the themes Holbrooke planned to stress to Milosevic said there had been no expectation that the American envoy would walk out Monday night with an agreement. Rather, the point was to underscore to the Yugoslav leader and make explicit what was expected of him. ``It was not quite an ultimatum,'' the diplomat said, ``but more a matter of what steps have to be taken to show compliance.'' The essence of Holbrooke's demands centered on issues outlined in a United Nations Security Council resolution of two weeks ago. The resolution ordered Milosevic to withdraw the extra army and police forces that were sent to Kosovo to deal with the guerrillas and to send back to their bases the military forces normally stationed in the province. So far, American diplomats said, Milosevic has withdrawn troops from the field but not all of them are in their barracks. Such a move is essential, American diplomats said, to create a conducive atmosphere for any possible negotiations on the future status of the province. The U.N. resolution also calls for a political solution. Holbrooke and the U.S. ambassador to Macedonia, Christopher Hill, discussed with Milosevic a political document drawn up by the State Department that calls for broad autonomy for Kosovo. Milosevic withdrew the autonomy in 1989 as he began his campaign of Serb nationalism. The countryside in central Kosovo has been eerily silent since last Thursday. The sound of artillery thuds and mortar rounds have been noticeably absent and the coils of white smoke that signified burning villages have vanished from the green hills and valleys. Police checkpoints are more relaxed and areas that were sealed off this time last week by the Yugoslav army are now open to the patrols of diplomatic monitors from the United States, European Union and Russia. These monitors, many of whom are former military officers, have reported that the Yugoslav army has ``stood down'' and that they have seen virtually no military action since late last week. There has been sporadic shooting, the monitors have reported. But this superficial calm is not good enough because the Serb military has the capacity to resume fighting very quickly, a NATO military officer said Monday. The officer added that a cease-fire in Kosovo is ``pretty much enacted.'' He also said that the ``trend toward compliance is positive.'' The interior ministry police must also reduce their presence around villages so that refugees who have fled have the confidence to return, the military officer said. Some interior ministry police officers had left the province, but not enough, he added. On the question of how badly damaged the KLA had been by the Yugoslav army's three-month offensive, the NATO officer said, ``It's a fair assessment that the KLA is dismantled but not destroyed.'' Holbrooke's first stop Monday was Brussels, where he met with the secretary-general of NATO, Javier Solana. On Tuesday he plans to travel to Pristina, the capital of Kosovo, where he is scheduled to meet with the ethnic Albanian leader Ibrahim Rugova to present the political proposal for the future status of Kosovo. He is expected back in Belgrade on Tuesday afternoon for another session with Milosevic. ||||| The United States and Russia are ratcheting up the pressure on President Slobodan Milosevic, warning that NATO airstrikes are inevitable unless he takes decisive action soon to end the humanitarian crisis in the southern Serbian province. Fearing airstrikes, Yugoslav generals put the nation's air defense on high alert, but tried a belated compromise by moving some tanks and other heavy equipment out of Kosovo. A Western diplomat said up to 120 Yugoslav army armored vehicles, including tanks, have been pulled out. In Brussels, Belgium, however, U.S. special envoy Richard Holbrooke told reporters Monday that the situation in Kosovo is as bad now as two weeks ago. Holbrooke is en route to Belgrade for a meeting with Milosevic. ``While the level of fighting (in Kosovo) may have abated temporarily, the capacity for its resumption is there,'' Holbrooke said after a meeting with NATO Secretary General Javier Solana and Supreme Allied Commander Europe Wesley K. Clark. ``The situation therefore remains fully as serious today as it was a week or two ago,'' he said. ``We hope to make clear to president Milosevic and the people of Yugoslavia the extreme gravity of the situation.'' On Sunday, Milosevic met with Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov and Defense Minister Igor Sergeyev, Serbian President Milan Milutinovic and Yugoslavia's top defense officials. The Russians are against using NATO force in Kosovo. However, Ivanov and Sergeyev said the airstrikes could occur ``if decisive measures are not immediately taken for a radical improvement of the situation,'' Foreign Ministry spokesman Vladimir Rakhmanin told the ITAR-Tass news agency. To avoid such an attack, Yugoslavia must end the hostilities, withdraw army and security forces, take urgent measures to overcome the humanitarian crisis, ensure that refugees can return home and take part in peace talks, he said. In Berlin, German Gen. Dieter Stoeckmann told German radio that NATO action could come ``within days.'' NATO's decision may depend on a report U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan is scheduled to present to the Security Council Monday on whether Yugoslavia is meeting U.N. demands. Serb authorities appeared ready for compromise by installing an interim government in the rebellious province in Serbia, the dominant republic in Yugoslavia. Serbian police and the Yugoslav army have routed separatist Kosovo Albanian rebels in the crackdown that began in late February. The conflict has killed hundreds _ most of them Albanian civilians _ and left more than 275,000 refugees. A Yugoslav statement said the nation's leaders wanted the Kosovo dispute solved peacefully, ``but in case we are attacked, we shall defend our country with all means.'' The government said Friday that the fighting had ended and blamed continuing violence on ethnic Albanian rebels, who are fighting for independence for the Serbian province. Although the United States and Europeans want an end to the fighting, they also oppose independence for the majority Albanian province, fearing that could destabilize other Balkan countries with Albanian populations. In the Kosovo capital Pristina, the KLA offered to help NATO forces if asked. KLA spokesman Jakup Krasniqi said in a statement published Monday by the Albanian language newspaper Bujku that ``we wish they (airstrikes) would become reality'' and ``we shall provide assistance... if it is asked of us.'' Krasniqi accused ethnic Albanian politicians of having ``given up on independence'' and having become ``the servants of the enemy,'' by agreeing to accept autonomy but not independence. Serbs reported two attacks Sunday on civilian cars by Albanian ``terrorists'' 25 miles (40 kilometers) south of Pristina, Kosovo's provincial capital. Elsewhere, a policeman was killed after stepping on a mine, the Serb Media Center said. The Kosovo Information Center, allied with the ethnic Albanians, reported heavy fighting between government forces and the guerrillas 25 miles (40 kilometers) southwest of Pristina. Ethnic Albanian political leaders have rejected the new interim government, which was drawn up without their participation. The council is composed of seven Serbs, five ethnic Albanians and the rest Turks and Muslims. Momentum for outside involvement has increased in the past week amid revelations of massacres of ethnic Albanian civilians in the forests of Kosovo. London's Sunday Telegraph reported that Britain is preparing troops and armored units for Kosovo, to be deployed in a post-airstrike peacekeeping role. The defense ministry refused to confirm or deny the report but repeated that Britain was ready to participate in a NATO attack. French Foreign Minister Hubert Vedrine met Sunday night with his British counterpart, Robin Cook, to discuss the situation in Kosovo, France's Foreign Ministry said. Vedrine and Secretary of State Madeleine Albright had a lengthy telephone conversation as well, the spokesman said. On Sunday, Human Rights Watch said both Milosevic's government and ethnic Albanian rebels have committed atrocities since the conflict began, but the government abuses were on a much greater scale. The report by the New York-based human rights organization says Milosevic has ``the primary responsibility for gross government abuses.'' ||||| BRUSSELS, Belgium (AP) _ U.S. special envoy Richard Holbrooke said Monday the military situation in Kosovo was as bad now as two weeks ago. Holbrooke said he will explain the ``extreme gravity of the situation'' when he meets Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic later Monday. Speaking after a meeting with NATO Secretary General Javier Solana and Supreme Allied Commander Europe Wesley K. Clark, Holbrooke said ``while the level of fighting (in Kosovo) may have abated temporarily, the capacity for its resumption is there.'' ``The situation therefore remains fully as serious today as it was a week or two ago,'' he told reporters before flying to Belgrade. He plans to meet with the Kosovan Albanian leaders on Tuesday. ``We hope to make clear to president Milosevic and the people of Yugoslavia the extreme gravity of the situation,'' he said. ||||| With NATO attacks said to be only days away, top U.S. envoy Richard Holbrooke delivered a last-minute warning Monday to Yugoslavia's president to halt his crackdown on ethnic Albanians in Kosovo or face airstrikes. But Slobodan Milosevic showed no signs of backing down. Following his meeting with Holbrooke, Milosevic's office issued a statement denouncing NATO threats as a ``criminal act'' that favored separatist ethnic Albanian guerrillas. The statement, broadcast by government television, said there had been no fighting in the Serbian province for the past seven days and that the crisis represented no threat to other countries in the southern Balkans. Holbrooke, the U.S. ambassador-designate to the United Nations, met with Milosevic for several hours late Monday after arriving from Brussels, Belgium, where he conferred with senior NATO officials. Holbrooke issued no statement after the meeting. Before boarding a plane for the Yugoslav capital, Belgrade, however, Holbrooke said conditions in the southern Serbian province had not improved since the alliance started two weeks ago to finalize plans for air raids to force Milosevic to halt his offensive against Kosovo Albanian separatists. Holbrooke said he planned to drive home to Milosevic ``the extreme gravity of the situation.'' Holbrooke negotiated the peace deal with Milosevic and other Balkan leaders that ended the 3 1/2 year Bosnian war in 1995. In Washington, U.S. President Bill Clinton expressed concern that Milosevic was ``playing the classic game of making false promises'' to avoid NATO military strikes. Clinton, in a telephone call with Russian President Boris Yeltsin, said Milosevic's compliance with U.N. demands ``must be verifiable, tangible and irreversible,'' press secretary Joe Lockhart said at the White House. ``What happens next depends on President Milosevic,'' Lockhart quoted the president telling the Russian leader, who has opposed the use of force against Moscow's longtime ally. As Holbrooke tried to resolve the crisis through negotiations, British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook said a decision on NATO military action was imminent. ``We are getting ready for NATO action and later this week we will expect a decision to be taken,'' Cook told reporters after a special session of the Cabinet called by Prime Minister Tony Blair. In Brussels, NATO officials said they were ready to launch airstrikes within hours of receiving an order to attack. If that first airstrike failed to deter Serb forces, a senior NATO official said on condition of anonymity, the alliance could unleash a ``fully fledged air campaign'' involving hundreds of planes. At the United Nations, Secretary-General Kofi Annan said Yugoslav forces had increased their attacks on Kosovo's ethnic Albanians even after a U.N. resolution demanded a cease-fire. In a widely anticipated report to the Security Council, Annan listed apparent violations of a Sept. 23 U.N. resolution, decried the ``appalling atrocities in Kosovo,'' and said it was ``clear beyond any reasonable doubt'' that Yugoslav forces were responsible for the bulk of them. The U.N. chief also said rebel forces of the Kosovo Liberation Army also were responsible for human rights violations, a charge the KLA quickly denied. NATO countries had been awaiting the U.N. chief's report to determine whether to use military force to stop the offensive on ethnic Albanians, who are seeking autonomy like they had until 1989, if not independence, from Yugoslavia. Albanians in the province outnumber Serbs 9-to-1. Despite Annan's unwillingness to declare Serb noncompliance, U.S. State Department spokesman James Foley said the Clinton administration believed Milosevic had not met the conditions laid down by the U.N. Security Council. Foley cited the absence of a formal cease-fire, the failure to arrange a meaningful dialogue with ethnic Albanian leaders and the continued presence of ``major army units'' in southeastern Kosovo near Albania's border. The European Union nations were divided Monday on whether to launch air strikes without U.N. Security Council backing. The EU foreign ministers, meeting in Luxembourg, agreed to tighten economic sanctions against Milosevic, but it was unlikely that stricter travel curbs for Yugoslav officials and freezing more Yugoslav assets abroad would be anything more than symbolic. Meanwhile, Yugoslavia's prime minister told an emergency session of parliament Monday that the country ``is faced with the imminent danger of war.'' Yugoslavia is comprised of dominant Serbia and smaller Montenegro. ``The threats are serious,'' Prime Minister Momir Bulatovic said. ``And I call on this parliament to conclude that Yugoslavia is faced with the imminent danger of war. Yugoslavia has to defend itself if it was attacked.'' One option was for parliament to declare a state of emergency _ a step toward a mobilization of all military-aged men. But the parliament voted to introduce the measure ``when the first bomb drops on our territory.'' In an attempt to head off NATO action, Bulatovic said the government had accepted a Russian proposal for an investigation by the 54-nation Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. Yugoslavia had repeatedly rejected such a mission to Kosovo until Yugoslav membership in the organization is restored. The prime minister also said there was no longer any fighting in Kosovo, which has 2 million residents. He said five of the 10 special police units had been removed from Kosovo and the others had been returned to their barracks in the province. One diplomat in Kosovo, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said there has been a significant redeployment of Yugoslav army troops out of Kosovo to other parts of Serbia, including a mechanized brigade that pulled out Sunday. Some army units remain in the field, and there is enormous fear that violence will resume, particularly among refugees, tens of thousands of whom are living in the hills and forests without shelter. ||||| With NATO attacks said to be only days away, top U.S. envoy Richard Holbrooke delivered an 11th-hour warning Monday to Yugoslavia's president to halt his crackdown on ethnic Albanians in Kosovo or face airstrikes. But there was no sign that Slobodan Milosevic was backing down. Following his meeting with Holbrooke, Milosevic's office issued a statement denouncing NATO threats as a ``criminal act'' which favored separatist ethnic Albanian guerrillas. The statement, broadcast by government television, said there had been no fighting in the Serbian province for the past seven days and that the crisis represented no threat to other countries in the southern Balkans. Holbrooke, the U.S. ambassador-designate to the United Nations, met with Milosevic for several hours late Monday after arriving from Brussels, Belgium, where he conferred with senior NATO officials. There was no statement from Holbrooke after the meeting. Before boarding a plane for Belgrade, however, Holbrooke said conditions in the southern Serbian province had not improved since the alliance started two weeks ago to finalize plans for air raids to force Milosevic to halt his offensive against Kosovo Albanian separatists. Holbrooke said he planned to drive home to Milosevic ``the extreme gravity of the situation.'' Holbrooke negotiated the peace deal with Milosevic and other Balkan leaders that ended the 3 and one-half year Bosnian war in 1995. In Washington, President Clinton expressed concern that Milosevic was ``playing the classic game of making false promises'' to avoid NATO military strikes. Clinton, in a telephone call with Russian President Boris Yeltsin, said Milosevic's compliance with U.N. demands ``must be verifiable, tangible and irreversible,'' press secretary Joe Lockhart said at the White House. ``What happens next depends on President Milosevic,'' Lockhart quoted the president telling the Russian leader, who has opposed the use of force against Moscow's longtime ally. As Holbrooke tried to resolve the crisis through negotiations, British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook said a decision on NATO military action was imminent. ``We are getting ready for NATO action and later this week we will expect a decision to be taken,'' Cook told reporters after a special session of the Cabinet called by Prime Minister Tony Blair. In Brussels, NATO officials said they were ready to launch airstrikes within hours of receiving an order to attack. If that first airstrike failed to deter Serb forces, a senior NATO official said on condition of anonymity, the alliance could unleash a ``fully fledged air campaign'' involving hundreds of planes. At the United Nations, Secretary-General Kofi Annan said Yugoslav forces had increased their attacks on Kosovo's ethnic Albanians even after a U.N. resolution demanded a cease-fire. In a widely anticipated report to the Security Council, Annan listed apparent violations of a Sept. 23 U.N. resolution, decried the ``appalling atrocities in Kosovo,'' and said it was ``clear beyond any reasonable doubt'' that Yugoslav forces were responsible for the bulk of them. The U.N. chief also said rebel forces of the Kosovo Liberation Army also were responsible for human rights violations, a charge the KLA quickly denied. NATO countries had been awaiting the U.N. chief's report to determine whether to use military force to stop the offensive on ethnic Albanians, who are seeking autonomy like they had until 1989, if not independence, from Yugoslavia. Albanians in the province outnumber Serbs 9-to-1. Despite Annan's unwillingness to declare Serb noncompliance, State Department spokesman James Foley said the Clinton administration believed Milosevic had not met the conditions laid down by the Security Council. Briefing reporters in Washington, Foley cited the absence of a formal cease-fire, the failure to arrange a meaningful dialogue with ethnic Albanian leaders and the continued presence of ``major army units'' in southeastern Kosovo near Albania's border. Meanwhile, Yugoslavia's prime minister told an emergency session of parliament Monday that the country ``is faced with the imminent danger of war.'' Yugoslavia is comprised of dominant Serbia and smaller Montenegro. ``The threats are serious,'' Prime Minister Momir Bulatovic said. ``And I call on this parliament to conclude that Yugoslavia is faced with the imminent danger of war. Yugoslavia has to defend itself if it was attacked.'' One option was for parliament to declare a state of emergency _ a step toward a mobilization of all military-aged men. But the parliament voted to introduce the measure ``when the first bomb drops on our territory.'' In an attempt to head off NATO action, Bulatovic said the government had accepted a Russian proposal for an investigation by the 54-nation Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. Yugoslavia had repeatedly rejected such a mission to Kosovo until Yugoslav membership in the organization is restored. The prime minister also said there was no longer any fighting in Kosovo, which has 2 million residents. He said five of the 10 special police units had been removed from Kosovo and the others had been returned to their barracks in the province. One diplomat in Kosovo, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said there has been a significant redeployment of Yugoslav army troops out of Kosovo to other parts of Serbia, including a mechanized brigade that pulled out Sunday. Some army units remain in the field, and there is enormous fear that violence will resume, particularly among refugees, tens of thousands of whom are living in the hills and forests without shelter. ||||| The United States and Russia are ratcheting up the pressure on President Slobodan Milosevic, warning that NATO airstrikes are inevitable unless he takes decisive action soon to end the humanitarian crisis in the southern Serbian province. Fearing airstrikes, Yugoslav generals put the nation's air defense on high alert, but tried a belated compromise by moving some tanks and other heavy equipment out of Kosovo. A Western diplomat said up to 120 Yugoslav army armored vehicles, including tanks, have been pulled out. In Brussels, Belgium, however, U.S. special envoy Richard Holbrooke told reporters Monday that the situation in Kosovo has not improved. Holbrooke is en route to Belgrade for a meeting with Milosevic. ``While the level of fighting (in Kosovo) may have abated temporarily, the capacity for its resumption is there,'' Holbrooke said after a meeting with NATO Secretary General Javier Solana and Supreme Allied Commander Europe Wesley K. Clark. ``The situation therefore remains fully as serious today as it was a week or two ago,'' he said. ``We hope to make clear to President Milosevic and the people of Yugoslavia the extreme gravity of the situation.'' On Sunday, Milosevic met with Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov and Defense Minister Igor Sergeyev, Serbian President Milan Milutinovic and Yugoslavia's top defense officials. The Russians are against using NATO force in Kosovo. However, Ivanov and Sergeyev said the airstrikes could occur ``if decisive measures are not immediately taken for a radical improvement of the situation,'' Foreign Ministry spokesman Vladimir Rakhmanin told the ITAR-Tass news agency. To avoid such an attack, Yugoslavia must end the hostilities, withdraw army and security forces, take urgent measures to overcome the humanitarian crisis, ensure that refugees can return home and take part in peace talks, he said. In Berlin, 7th graf pvs ||||| Under NATO threat to end his punishing offensive against ethnic Albanian separatists in Kosovo, President Slobodan Milosevic of Yugoslavia has ordered most units of his army back to their barracks and may well avoid an attack by the alliance, military observers and diplomats say. Milosevic, who on one hand is excoriated by Washington as the scourge of Kosovo yet on the other hand is treated as key to peace in Bosnia, acted as the European Union, NATO and the United Nations prepared for a review on Monday of possible military intervention. Russia stepped up its warnings against such action and dispatched its foreign and defense ministers on an unusually high-level mission to see the Yugoslav president Sunday in Belgrade. As he has so often, Milosevic appears to have bowed to foreign demands in the nick of time and yet still accomplished what he wanted. This weekend, foreign diplomatic observers in Kosovo reported that a ``military stand-down'' had taken place in the province, where Milosevic's forces have waged a fierce offensive against Albanian rebels. The observers said that except for segments of three brigades, most units of the Yugoslav army were ``home.'' The daily reports of the observer mission, made up of U.S., European Union and Russian military experts, are one of the key elements in helping Washington and European capitals decide whether Milosevic has met their demands for a cease-fire. By putting the army back in its barracks, sending some police units out of Kosovo and ordering an end to burning and looting of villages, Milosevic may well avoid a NATO attack, diplomats here and in Washington said. But at the same time, they acknowledge that while NATO looked the other way, he enjoyed a three-month license to overwhelm the Kosovo Liberation Army _ the rebel army fighting for independence for Kosovo and its ethnic Albanian majority _ and terrorize the rural civilian population that supports it. His military operation created more than 250,000 refugees, whom the Clinton administration is gearing up to take care of this winter through a variety of relief organizations. U.S. officials said they expected Richard Holbrooke, the U.S. envoy who dealt with Milosevic in negotiating an end to the war in Bosnia, to meet with him on Monday to discuss a political plan for Kosovo. The heart of the disagreement in Kosovo is between Serbia, Yugoslavia's principal republic, which insists on keeping Kosovo as a province, and the ethnic Albanians there who have chafed under Milosevic's repression since he stripped the province of virtual autonomy in 1989, and who now seek independence. The West, fearing the precedent that independence for Kosovo would set in other conflicts in the world, has been trying to mediate a middle course. In essence, diplomats said they believed that the plan Holbrooke will present to Milosevic calls for a three-year interim period leading to a status fairly close to the pre-1989 autonomy arrangement. Since the Kosovo conflict flared up in March, critics of Washington's policy toward Milosevic argue that he has been able to choreograph every move to suit his goal: pushing the Albanian population into submission with impunity. ``The United States and its allies have waited four months while he cleaned the clock of the Kosovo Liberation Army,'' said Morton Abramowitz, head of the International Crisis Group, a policy analysis organization, ``and taken three weeks to discuss military action, with the result that 500 Albanian villages were destroyed.'' Administration officials now acknowledge that when NATO failed to live up to its earlier threat in June to strike Serbia, Milosevic took advantage of the indecision and plunged ahead with an artillery and tank offensive against the lightly armed guerrilla forces, whose bedrock of popular support had helped win them effective control of large swaths of Kosovo territory, including key roads. While he was doing that, Milosevic skillfully managed a key requirement for Washington: he made sure that the war did not spill over into neighboring Albania and Macedonia, fragile countries in a traditionally volatile area. All along, the biggest fear in Washington has been that the Kosovo conflict would engulf neighboring countries and encourage Albania and the ethnic Albanian population in Macedonia to join the cause. Such a possibility raised the specter of a new Balkans conflict just three years after peace was secured in Bosnia. Milosevic catered to Washington's concern that the conflict be contained. The Yugoslav army mined Kosovo's borders with Macedonia and Albania, ensuring that few refugees could escape and limiting routes for arms supplies for the rebels. The Yugoslav leader also understood that Washington was unsure about how to deal with the disorganized Albanian political leadership in Kosovo and the unbending Kosovo Liberation Army, whose main chiefs were hardened emigres returned from Switzerland and Germany. For example, Holbrooke persuaded Milosevic to meet in May with Ibrahim Rugova, the top Albanian political leader in Kosovo, an encounter that turned out to be little more than a photo opportunity. For that procedural breakthrough, Holbrooke recommended the lifting of a ban on foreign investment in Serbia that had been put in place the month before. After meeting with Rugova, Milosevic stepped up his military operations in Kosovo, forcing Washington to reverse itself again and carry out the investment ban. In late June, Holbrooke met with two self-styled Kosovo guerrilla commanders in the province's western town of Junik but then broke off all contact. Clinton administration officials said at the time that they were concerned that NATO intervention would bolster the separatist forces. To try to put the best face on the situation, Washington worked with Moscow to get Milosevic to accept the presence of international monitors who would patrol Kosovo and report on military action. The monitors were slow in getting organized. By August, when the Yugoslav army, backed by the Serbian special police, were in full swing against the rebels and burning and looting villages in the process, the monitors found it difficult to gain access to the fighting. They drove up to roadblocks, knew something was going on from the sounds and the smoke, but could not be precise. In recent days as the tanks and artillery have withdrawn, access has improved, the monitors say. But there are some areas in central Kosovo around Likovac and Gornje Obrinje that the monitors have ruled off limits because of land mines on the roads. The mines are believed to have been planted by the guerrillas. Gornje Obrinje was the site of a massacre of 18 ethnic Albanian women, children and elderly people on Sept. 26. A British reporter who walked across fields into the village on Sunday said about 10 mortar shells, apparently from the Serbian police or the Yugoslav army, were fired at the village early Sunday afternoon. The Yugoslav army and police forces have been responsible for the vast majority of atrocities in the Kosovo conflict, said a report by New York-based group Human Rights Watch, released here on Sunday. The report said the rebels had also violated the laws of war by taking civilian hostages and carrying out summary executions. But the violations by the guerrillas were on a ``lesser scale'' than the government abuses, the author of the report, Fred Abrahams, concluded. The report focused on what it called a watershed in the conflict _ the attack by police forces on three ethnic Albanian villages in late February and early March in the Drenica region of central Kosovo. At least 83 people, including 24 women and children, were killed in the attack, which involved helicopters, artillery and armored personnel carriers. In the Yugoslav capital, Belgrade, which is a four-hour drive north through rolling countryside from Kosovo's capital of Pristina, Milosevic remains politically secure. That is in part, his domestic critics say, because diplomats like Holbrooke and the head of the U.N.refugee agency, Sadako Ogata, insist on going to see him, thus enhancing his stature. ||||| With the threat of NATO attack mounting, Yugoslavia's prime minister warned Monday the nation faces the ``immiment danger of war'' and claimed the government was taking steps to comply with international demands for peace in Kosovo. In New York, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said ``systematic terror'' had been inflicted on Kosovo civilians within recent days and that Yugoslav forces were mostly responsible. But Annan said he did not ``have the means necessary to provide an independent assessment of compliance as required by the Security Council'' and suggested the 15 members may want to make their ``own judgement in this respect.'' But U.S. special envoy Richard Holbrooke said the situation in the southern Serbian province was as bad now as two weeks ago. Holbrooke spoke in Brussels, Belgium en route to Belgrade, where he planned to drive home to Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic ``the extreme gravity of the situation.'' Meanwhile, Yugoslavia's prime minister told an emergency session of parliament Monday that the country ``is faced with the imminent danger of war.'' Kosovo is a province of Serbia, the main republic of Yugoslavia. ``The threats are serious,'' Prime Minister Momir Bulatovic said. ``And I call on this parliament to conclude that Yugoslavia is faced with the imminent danger of war. Yugoslavia has to defend itself if it was attacked.'' One option could be for parliament to declare a state of emergency _ a step which could lead to a general mobilization of all military-aged men. In an attempt to head off NATO action, Bulatovic said the government had accepted a Russian proposal for the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe to investigate the crisis. Yugoslavia had repeatedly rejected such a mission to Kosovo until Yugoslav membership in the 54-nation organization is restored. Bulatovic also claimed there was no longer any fighting in the rebellious, majority Albanian province. He said five of the 10 special police units had been removed from Kosovo and the others had been returned to barracks in the province. In Brussels, however, Holbrooke made clear that half-measures would not be enough to satisfy Washington and prevent a NATO attack. ``While the level of fighting may have abated temporarily, the capacity for its resumption is there,'' Holbrooke said after a meeting with NATO Secretary General Javier Solana and Supreme Allied Commander Europe Wesley K. Clark. ``The situation, therefore, remains fully as serious today as it was a week or two ago,'' he said. ``We hope to make clear to president Milosevic and the people of Yugoslavia the extreme gravity of the situation.'' Meanwhile, the head of Yugoslavia's other republic, Montenegro, called on Milosevic to accept all international demands and avert a NATO attack. ``We have to avert a clash with the whole world, a confrontation which we are bound to lose,'' Montenegro's pro-Western president, Milo Djukanovic, said in a statement. Djukanovic, a staunch Milosevic critic, called on the Yugoslav president to address the nation ``with an unambiguous message'' that he has accepted all U.N. resolutions and agreements he made with Russian President Boris Yeltsin. Djukanovic blamed Yugoslavia's problems on Milosevic's ``undemocratic regime.'' Fearing airstrikes, Yugoslav generals put the nation's air defense on high alert and moved some tanks and other heavy equipment out of Kosovo. A Western diplomat said up to 120 Yugoslav army armored vehicles, including tanks, have been pulled out. Belgrade had been counting on Russia to block any U.N.-sanctioned military moves by the Western Alliance. On Sunday, Milosevic met with Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov and Defense Minister Igor Sergeyev, Serbian President Milan Milutinovic and Yugoslavia's top defense officials. Although the Russians are against using NATO force in Kosovo, Ivanov and Sergeyev said the airstrikes could occur ``if decisive measures are not immediately taken for a radical improvement of the situation,'' Foreign Ministry spokesman Vladimir Rakhmanin told the ITAR-Tass news agency. To avoid such an attack, Yugoslavia must end the hostilities, withdraw army and security forces, take urgent measures to overcome the humanitarian crisis, ensure that refugees can return home and take part in peace talks, he said. In Berlin, German Gen. Dieter Stoeckmann told German radio that NATO action could come ``within days.'' Serb authorities appeared ready for compromise by installing an interim government in the rebellious province in Serbia, the dominant republic in Yugoslavia. Serbian police and the Yugoslav army have routed separatist Kosovo Albanian rebels in the crackdown that began in late February. The conflict has killed hundreds _ most of them Albanian civilians _ and left more than 275,000 refugees. Ethnic Albanians compromise 90 percent of the province's 2 million-strong population, and most favor independence or substantial self-rule. Momentum for outside involvement has increased in the past week amid revelations of massacres of ethnic Albanian civilians in the forests of Kosovo. Although the United States and Europeans want an end to the fighting, they also oppose independence for Kosovo, fearing that could destabilize other Balkan countries with Albanian populations. In the Kosovo capital Pristina, the KLA offered to help NATO forces if asked. KLA spokesman Jakup Krasniqi said in a statement published Monday by the Albanian language newspaper Bujku that ``we wish they (airstrikes) would become reality'' and ``we shall provide assistance... if it is asked of us.'' Krasniqi accused ethnic Albanian politicians of having ``given up on independence'' and having become ``the servants of the enemy,'' by agreeing to accept autonomy but not independence. Ethnic Albanian political leaders have rejected the new interim government, which was drawn up without their participation. The council is composed of seven Serbs, five ethnic Albanians and the rest Turks and Muslims.

Yugoslavia failed to comply with a U.N. resolution demanding that the forces sent to Kosovo to suppress the ethnic Albanian separatist uprising be withdrawn and is now threatened with NATO airstrikes. Though Milosevic moved some units from the Serbian province, U.S. special envoy Holbrooke called the situation serious. Russia, previously against a NATO attack, said the strikes could occur if steps aren't taken to end the crisis. Hundreds, mostly Albanian civilians, have been killed and thousands are refugees. While the U.S. and other nations want peace, they oppose Kosovo independence, fearing it could destabilize other Albanian-populated Balkan states.

Matthew Shepard, the gay college student who was kidnapped and severely beaten, died here Monday, five days after he was found unconscious on a Wyoming ranch where he had been left tied to a fence for 18 hours in near-freezing temperatures. His death, announced at Poudre Valley Hospital here, fanned the outrage that followed word of last week's attack, spawning nationwide vigils, producing a call for federal hate-crimes legislation from President Clinton and fueling debates over such laws in a host of Western states, including Wyoming, that have resisted them. From Denver to the University of Maryland, people turned out to honor the The slight, soft-spoken 21-year-old Shepard, a freshman at the University of Wyoming, who became an overnight symbol of anti-gay violence after he was found dangling from the fence by a passerby. Two men and two women have been charged in the case. The men were charged with attempted murder and are expected to face first-degree murder charges that could bring the death penalty. ``There is incredible symbolism about being tied to a fence,'' said Rebecca Isaacs, political director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force in Washington. ``People have likened it to a scarecrow. But it sounded more like a crucifixion.'' Gay leaders hope _ and Christian conservatives fear _ that Shepard's death will galvanize Congress and state legislatures to pass hate-crime legislation or broaden existing laws. Conservatives generally oppose such laws because they favor one group's rights over another. In the last two decades, 21 states and the District of Columbia have passed laws that increase penalties for crimes that are committed because of a person's race, religion, color, national origin, and sexual orientation. Another 19 states, including Colorado, do not include sexual orientation in their hate-crime laws. Ten states, including Wyoming, have no hate-crime laws at all. In Washington, Clinton responded to news of Shepard's death by urging Congress to pass the federal Hate Crimes Protection Act, which would make federal offenses of crimes based on sex, disability and sexual orientation. Wyoming has been one of the nation's holdouts, rejecting three hate crimes bills since 1994, most recently in February. But Monday, after Shepard's death, Gov. Jim Geringer appealed to lawmakers to reconsider their opposition. ``I ask for a collective suggestion for anti-bias, anti-hate legislation that can be presented to the Wyoming Legislature for their consideration in January,'' Geringer said. The governor met Monday morning with Dennis Shepard, the slain student's father, and said that the elder Shepard did not want his son's death to become ``a media circus'' and that ``we should not use Matt to further an agenda.'' Geringer said that Shepard's father also said: ``Don't rush into just passing all kinds of new hate-crimes laws. Be very careful of any changes and be sure you're not taking away rights of others in the process to race to this.'' Leaders of gay rights groups interviewed Monday said they would respect the family's privacy by not attending the burial in Casper, Wyo., on Saturday. But they added that they hoped the death would have an impact on legislators around the nation. ``Matthew's death, I hope, will bring about a better and deeper understanding of hate crime laws,'' said Elizabeth Birch, executive director of the Human Rights Campaign, a lesbian and gay rights group that has 250,000 members. ``Matthew's death may lead to an awakening in Wyoming and in the United States Congress as the need for this legislation.'' In 1996, 21 men and women were killed in the United States because of their sexual orientation, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, an Alabama group that tracks violence against minorities. According to the FBI, sexual orientation was a factor in 11.6 percent of the 8,759 hate crimes recorded in 1996. But Christian conservatives warn that gay leaders want to use Shepard's death to expand hate rights laws and to curtail freedom of speech. ``Hate crimes laws have nothing to do with perpetrators of violent crime and everything to do with silencing political opposition,'' said Steven Schwalm, an analyst with the Family Research Council, a Washington group dedicated to defending ``faith, family and freedom.'' ``It would criminalize pro-family beliefs,'' Schwalm said. ``This basically sends a message that you can't disagree with the political message of homosexual activists.'' Agreement came from John Paulk, who was featured this summer in a series of advertisements about how he and his wife, Anne, ``overcame'' homosexuality through religious conversion. ``We have every right to speak out against an agenda that is contrary to Biblical norms,'' said Paulk, who describes himself as a homosexuality specialist for Focus on the Family, a Christian group in Colorado Springs, Colo. ``Because we are standing up and opposing the homosexual agenda, we are being looked upon as advocating violence against homosexuals, when we categorically reject violence against homosexuals.'' Last Thursday, the Family Research Council unveiled a series of television advertisements that preach the ``healing'' of homosexuality through religious conversion. Gay leaders charge that these advertisements help create a hostile climate for homosexuals, a climate that can lead to violence. Hate crime laws that are on the books in 40 states have not impinged on freedom of speech, said Brian Levin, a criminal justice professor who directs the Center on Hate and Extremism at Stockton College, in Pomona, N.J. Instead, he said, hate crime laws send a clear message that society does not tolerate attacks on minorities. ``We want to deter the broken windows and simple assaults before they escalate,'' he said. Referring to murders of homosexuals, he added: ``These crimes are preventable. Offenders get emboldened if they are not punished the first time.'' Levin said that his research indicated that homosexuals suffered higher rates of violent crime than the population at large. He also said that roughly half of the people who attack homosexuals are male, aged 22 or younger. The two men charged in the killing of Shephard are both white, Russell Henderson, 21, and Aaron McKinney, 22. ``With other crimes, violence is a means to an end. With hate crimes, the violence becomes an unstoppable goal,'' Levin said. Shepard suffered a dozen cuts around the head, face and neck, as well as a massive blow to the back of his skull. ``Because their social stature in society, gays are often viewed as appropriate targets,'' Levin added. Citing the need for hate crime laws to send a clear message to gay bashers, Levin said: ``The discourse in society leaves many of these people to believe that what they are doing is socially acceptable.'' While some gay leaders saw crucifixion imagery in Shepard's death, others saw a different symbolism: the Old West practice of nailing a dead coyote to a ranch fence as a warning to future intruders. ``This University of Wyoming student was beaten and left to die, tied to a fence like an animal because he was honest and open about being gay,'' Beatrice Dorhn, legal director of the Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund, said Monday, ``Matthew Shepard's horrible suffering and death cannot be dismissed simply as the fault of deranged, isolated individuals. His attackers are among millions of Americans who constantly hear the message that gay people are not worthy of the most basic equal treatment,'' Ms. Dorhn said. ||||| On the same day Americans learned last week that Matthew Shepard, a 5-foot-2, 105-pound gay college student, had been tortured, strung up like an animal and left to die on a fence outside Laramie, Wyo., the Family Research Council was co-hosting a press conference in Washington. It was the latest salvo in a six-month campaign by the religious right, with the tacit, even explicit, approval of Republican leaders, to demonize gay people for political gain in this election year. This particular press conference was to announce a new barrage of ads _ a TV follow-up to a summer print campaign _ in which alleged former homosexuals who have ``changed'' implore others to do likewise ``through the power of Jesus Christ.'' The commercials, gooey in style, end with a slogan: ``It's not about hate ... It's about hope.'' But it's really about stirring up the fear that produces hate. If these ads were truly aimed at gay people, they wouldn't be broadcast at extravagant cost to the wide general audience reached by TV, and they wouldn't be trumpeted in Washington, insuring free national exposure, three weeks before Election Day. The ads themselves, despite the sugar-coating of ``hope,'' ooze malice. In one of them, homosexuality is linked to drug addiction and certain death by AIDS; all of them implicitly posit that homosexuality is itself a disease in need of a cure. Matthew Shepard has now been ``cured,'' that's for sure. As his uncle, R.W. Eaton, told The Denver Post, the 21-year-old Matt, who aspired to a career in diplomacy and human rights, was ``a small person with a big heart, mind and soul that someone tried to beat out of him.'' Of his nephew's shattered body Eaton said, ``It's like something you might see in war.'' And a war it is. Go to the Family Research Council's Web site and you will find a proud description of its readiness to ``wage the war against the homosexual agenda and fight to maintain the traditional meaning of `family.''' The head of the Family Research Council is Gary Bauer, a GOP power broker and putative presidential candidate, who disingenuously goes on talk shows to say that his organization hates no one and deplores violence. But if you wage a well-financed media air war in which people with an innate difference in sexual orientation are ceaselessly branded as sinful and diseased and un-American seekers of ``special rights,'' ground war will follow. It's a story as old as history. Once any group is successfully scapegoated as a subhuman threat to ``normal'' values by a propaganda machine, emboldened thugs take over. Two weeks after James Byrd was savagely dragged to his death from a pickup truck in Texas in June, I wrote a column about an ugly incident outside the GOP state convention in Fort Worth, where a mob threatened a group of gay Log Cabin Republicans who were protesting discriminatory treatment by their own party. The gay-bashers had been directly preceded by steady saber-rattling from Republican politicians: Sen. James Inhofe of Oklahoma had likened James Hormel, a gay nominee to an ambassadorship, to David Duke; Pat Robertson had wondered on TV if God might wreak havoc on Disney World for its ``Gay Days''; the Texas GOP spokesman had likened Log Cabin to the Ku Klux Klan. Just two days after this near-brush with violence in Fort Worth, Trent Lott was on TV seconding the religious right's condemnation of gay people as sinful and sick. A frightened gay Texas Republican who had been at the convention melee asked when I interviewed him then: ``Do you have to have someone hurt and beat up and dragged from a truck to stop this?'' Months later not even the murder in Laramie has moved Lott to apologize for his words, and still no major GOP leader dares take on its ``religious'' wing and its crusade against people like Matthew Shepard. In one of the new ads in that supposedly hate-free crusade, an ostensibly loving mother condemns her son for the ``bad choice'' of being gay. Is it that mother who speaks for American values, or is it Matthew's? ``Go home, give your kids a hug,'' Judy Shepard said in a message read by a tearful hospital spokesman who announced her child's death early Monday morning, ``and don't let a day go by without telling them you love them.'' ||||| Matthew Wayne Shepard, the gay student who was beaten in the dead of night, tied to a fence and left to die alone, was mourned at his funeral Friday by 1,000 people, including many who had never met him. ``Matt believed that if he had made one person's life better, he had succeeded,'' his cousin, the Rev. Anne Kitch, said in a homily that was carried beyond the packed pews of St. Mark's Episcopal Church, through a filled parish hall, across the street to a packed Presbyterian church and across Casper on an AM radio station. ``Judging from the world's response,'' she said, ``Matt will have made a difference in the lives of thousands.'' As the first snowstorm of the fall blanketed Casper, fresh flowers filled the red brick church here where Shepard had been baptized as a teen-ager and where he once wore the white robes of an Episcopal acolyte. ``There is an image that comes to mind when I reflect on Matt on that wooden cross rail fence,'' said the Rev. Royce Brown, the pastor of St. Mark's, in a eulogy. ``I replace that image with that of another man hung upon a cross. When I concentrate on that man, I can release the bitterness inside.'' Shepard, a 21-year-old freshman at the University of Wyoming, had dreamed of working one day for human rights. In death, he has become a national catalyst for a new drive to guarantee for gay people the right to physical safety. His death hit a nerve in the nation this week, eliciting dozens of candlelight vigils and rallies for tolerance, several statements of sadness from President Clinton, and a congressional resolution. Thursday, the House of Representatives passed by voice vote a resolution that condemned Shepard's killing as ``outrageous'' and that urged each member of Congress and every U.S. citizen ``to denounce this outrageous murder of another human being.'' In one of the largest rallies, about 1,000 people, including members of Congress of both parties, gathered on the steps of the Capitol in Washington to condemn Shepherd's killing and to urge passage of a federal bill that would add extra penalties to crimes motivated by a victim's sexual orientation, gender or disability. House Minority Leader Dick Gephardt urged passage of the bill, leading the crowd in a chant of ``Now! Now! Now.'' ``We will never forget the love that the world has shared with this kind, loving son,'' said Shepherd's father, Dennis, his father, outside Casper City Hall, as his mother, Judy, stood by, weeping. He said the family was ``touched beyond measure'' by ``the thousands of e-mail comments, Web-site messages, phone calls and cards offering help, consolation, sympathy and support.'' Before the funeral, about a dozen protesters, largely from Kansas and Texas, waved signs with anti-homosexual messages. But mourners stood in front of them, singing ``Amazing Grace'' and holding umbrellas to block the sight of the spectacle from friends and family members entering the church. On hearing of the protest, the Casper City Council held an emergency meeting Thursday night and unanimously passed an ordinance banning protests during funerals. Wyoming Gov. Jim Geringer had warned in advance that anti-gay protesters were ``just flat not welcome.'' The governor, a Republican, added, ``What we don't need is a bunch of wingnuts coming in.'' Shepard was born in Casper and attended elementary school, junior high and several years of high school and college here. With flags at Casper's public schools flying at half-staff Friday, many mourners were his old classmates. Others traveled here, one driving from as far away as New Jersey, out of a sense of solidarity. ``I've had a pit in my heart and my stomach since I heard this,'' said Steve Pietrangelo, who drove 300 miles to wait three hours in cold rain and snow to attend the funeral of a man he never met. ``I just wanted to pay my respects to him and his family.'' Touching people of all walks of life, Shepard's murder has elicited calls for tolerance of homosexuals from unexpected quarters. At the University of Wyoming this fall, football players will wear yellow and green stickers on their helmets in memory of Shepard. Organizers said that yellow signifies tolerance and green symbolizes peace. In Casper, a conservative city of 51,000, located in the heart of Wyoming's oil belt, tolerance has become the watchword. ``Prejudice against homosexuals is just as redneck as anti-black bias,'` The Casper Star-Tribune, Wyoming's largest newspaper, wrote in its main editorial on Sunday. ``Violence against our homosexual friends and neighbors has created a most un-American climate of fear in Wyoming and the rest of the nation.'' Monday, Jason Marsden, the newspaper's political reporter, wrote lovingly that, ``Matthew Shepard is still my friend, and not just because we are both members of the loose-knit community of gay people striving to make our way in this sometimes hostile place called Wyoming.'' ``Matt was very short and hard to hug,'' Marsden recalled of the young man who had grown up in Casper. ``But it was worth trying, because he'd hug you with everything in his little, fragile frame.'' In a week of spiritual reflection, Aaron Kreifels, the University of Wyoming freshman who found his battered classmate Oct. 7, attributed the chance discovery to ``God's plan.'' On that afternoon, Kreifels, an 18-year-old architectural engineering student, had nearly completed a rigorous six-mile ride on a mountain bike up and down Cactus Canyon, in public lands east of Laramie. Kreifels recalled in an interview Thursday his only mishap of the ride, ``I hit this big limestone rock and did one over the handlebars.'' Dusting himself off and looking around in the fading light of the day, Kreifels recalled, ``I noticed something out of my eye that looked like a scarecrow. I walked around the fence, and as I got closer, I noticed the hair.'' Shepard, his hands bound behind his back with a nylon cord and tied to a fence post, was lying on the ground, face up, unconscious. ``Sometimes I wonder why I found him alive, if he was going to die,'' Kreifels reflected, before traveling to spend this weekend at home with his parents in Grand Island, Neb. ``But I guess God wanted his parents to be with him.'' ||||| At first, the passing bicyclist thought the crumpled form lashed to a ranch fence was a scarecrow. But when he stopped, he found the burned, battered and nearly lifeless body of Matthew Shepard, an openly gay college student who had been tied to the fence 18 hours earlier. On Friday, the 22-year-old University of Wyoming student was in a coma in critical condition. At Albany County courthouse here, Russell Henderson, 21, and Aaron McKinney, 22, were arraigned on charges of kidnapping, aggravated robbery and attempted first-degree murder. Two women described as friends of the men, Kristen Leann Price, 18, and Chastity Vera Pasley, 20, have been charged as accessories after the fact to attempted first-degree murder. Shepard's friends said that he did not know his alleged tormentors. Laramie police say the primary motive was robbery, although court papers filed Friday indicate Shepard's homosexuality may also have been a factor. Shepard's friends call the attack a hate crime. ``He was very open about his sexuality,'' Tina LaBrie, an anthropology student here, said of her friend. ``I admired him for that because it is very courageous to be yourself even when others disagree.'' A few hours before he was beaten, Shepard, a slight 5-foot, 2-inch man who wore braces on his teeth, had attended a meeting of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgendered Association, said Walter Boulden, a friend of Shepard's. ``He was sitting at the bar, having a beer, when two men came up and talked to him,'' Boulden, a 46-year-old university lecturer of social work here, said today between tears. ``He indicated he was gay, and they said they were gay, too.'' ``Now, he is in a coma,'' continued Boulden, who visited his friend at a hospital in Fort Collins, Colo., on Thursday. ``I don't think anybody expects him to pull through.'' Shepard, who spoke Arabic and German, studied at a boarding school in Switzerland before moving back to the United States to attend the University of Wyoming, the alma mater of his father, an oil rig safety inspector in Saudi Arabia. Matthew Shepard was born in Casper, the capital of Wyoming's oil belt, and spent much of his youth there. But six weeks after returning to Wyoming and enrolling as a freshman here, Shepard fell into a depression, said Ms. Labrie and her husband, Phillip. Accustomed to life in Europe and Denver, this foreign language student who wanted to become a diplomat found himself living in this isolated city of 27,000 people. Set in a treeless landscape defined by barbed wire fences, grazing cattle and a busy freight railroad line, Laramie is a town where pickup trucks outnumber sport utility vehicles, where fall entertainment revolves around this Saturday's homecoming football game and the start of the hunting season in the nearby Medicine Bow mountains. Although Wyoming often bills itself as the ``equality state,'' in reference to its being the first state to give women the vote, the state legislature has repeatedly voted down hate crime legislation on the grounds that it would give homosexuals special rights. ``Wyoming is not really gay friendly,'' Marv Johnson, executive director of the Wyoming chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, said from Cheyenne. ``The best way to characterize that is by a comment a legislator made a few years back, when he likened homosexuals to gay bulls as worthless and should be sent to the packing plant.'' Shepard joined the campus gay association at the university within days. One of his favorite haunts was the Fireside Bar, which drew a mixed crowd of college students and rodeo cowboys, gays and straights. ``He definitely wasn't drunk when he came in,'' recalled the bartender, Matt Galloway. ``He wasn't drunk when he went out.'' Calvin Rerucha, the county attorney, charged in court documents today that McKinney and Henderson posed as homosexuals and lured Shepard out to McKinney's pickup truck just after midnight early Wednesday. Beating him inside the truck, the pair drove him one mile southeast to an isolated part of a new rural subdivision, the County Attorney's report charged. There, it said, the men tied their captive to a post-and-rail fence and pistol-whipped him with a .357 magnum ``while he begged for his life.'' Relatives said that Shepard also suffered burns on his body. After nearly beating the young man to death, Laramie Police Commander David O'Malley said, the assailants stole his wallet and shoes and left him tied to the fence. The police commander said that when his officers arrested the two men on Thursday, they found in McKinney's pickup truck a .357 magnum pistol covered with blood and Shepard's shoes and credit card. He said they found Shepard's wallet at McKinney's home. The police commander said that the two women helped the two men dump their bloody clothing, and that they reported hearing the men make anti-gay remarks. Ms. Pasley, a freshman art student at the university, lived with Henderson. Ms. Price lived with McKinney. The police did not say what the other three did for a living. On Friday, friends and Laramie residents struggled to understand the incident. Shepard, some said, may have felt a false sense of confidence because the local Gay Association completed plans on Tuesday night for ``Gay Awareness Week 1998.'' The weeklong series of events starts here Sunday with a local observance of ``National Coming Out Day'' and a lecture on Monday by Leslea Newman, the author of ``Heather Has Two Mommies,'' a book about lesbian families. ``If I were a homosexual in Laramie, I would hang low, very low,'' said Carla Brown, manager of the Fireside. ``Openly gay behavior is not only discouraged, it's dangerous.'' ||||| At first, the passing bicyclist thought the crumpled form lashed to a ranch fence was a scarecrow. But when he stopped, he found the burned, battered and nearly lifeless body of Matthew Shepard, an openly gay college student who had been tied to the fence 18 hours earlier. On Friday, the 22-year-old University of Wyoming student was in a coma in critical condition. At Albany County courthouse here, Russell Henderson, 21, and Aaron McKinney, 22, were arraigned on charges of kidnapping, aggravated robbery and attempted first-degree murder. Two women described as friends of the men, Kristen Leann Price, 18, and Chastity Vera Pasley, 20, have been charged as accessories after the fact to attempted first-degree murder. Shepard's friends said that he did not know his alleged tormentors. Laramie police say the primary motive was robbery, although court papers filed Friday indicate Shepard's homosexuality may also have been a factor. Shepard's friends call the attack a hate crime. ``He was very open about his sexuality,'' Tina LaBrie, an anthropology student here, said of her friend. ``I admired him for that because it is very courageous to be yourself even when others disagree.'' A few hours before he was beaten, Shepard, a slight 5-foot, 2-inch man who wore braces on his teeth, had attended a meeting of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgendered Association, said Walter Boulden, a friend of Shepard's. ``He was sitting at the bar, having a beer, when two men came up and talked to him,'' Boulden, a 46-year-old university lecturer of social work here, said today between tears. ``He indicated he was gay, and they said they were gay, too.'' ``Now, he is in a coma,'' continued Boulden, who visited his friend at a hospital in Fort Collins, Colo., on Thursday. ``I don't think anybody expects him to pull through.'' Shepard, who spoke Arabic and German, studied at a boarding school in Switzerland before moving back to the United States to attend the University of Wyoming, the alma mater of his father, an oil rig safety inspector in Saudi Arabia. Matthew Shepard was born in Casper, the capital of Wyoming's oil belt, and spent much of his youth there. But six weeks after returning to Wyoming and enrolling as a freshman here, Shepard fell into a depression, said Ms. Labrie and her husband, Phillip. Accustomed to life in Europe and Denver, this foreign language student who wanted to become a diplomat found himself living in this isolated city of 27,000 people. Set in a treeless landscape defined by barbed wire fences, grazing cattle and a busy freight railroad line, Laramie is a town where pickup trucks outnumber sport utility vehicles, where fall entertainment revolves around this Saturday's homecoming football game and the start of the hunting season in the nearby Medicine Bow mountains. Although Wyoming often bills itself as the ``equality state,'' in reference to its being the first state to give women the vote, the state legislature has repeatedly voted down hate crime legislation on the grounds that it would give homosexuals special rights. ``Wyoming is not really gay friendly,'' Marv Johnson, executive director of the Wyoming chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, said from Cheyenne. ``The best way to characterize that is by a comment a legislator made a few years back, when he likened homosexuals to gay bulls as worthless and should be sent to the packing plant.'' Shepard joined the campus gay association at the university within days. One of his favorite haunts was the Fireside Bar, which drew a mixed crowd of college students and rodeo cowboys, gays and straights. ``He definitely wasn't drunk when he came in,'' recalled the bartender, Matt Galloway. ``He wasn't drunk when he went out.'' Calvin Rerucha, the county attorney, charged in court documents today that McKinney and Henderson posed as homosexuals and lured Shepard out to McKinney's pickup truck. Beating him inside the truck, the pair drove him one mile southeast to an isolated part of a new rural subdivision, the County Attorney's report charged. There, it said, the men tied their captive to a post-and-rail fence and pistol-whipped him with a .357 magnum ``while he begged for his life.'' Relatives said that Shepard also suffered burns on his body. After nearly beating the young man to death, Laramie Police Commander David O'Malley said, the assailants stole his wallet and shoes and left him tied to the fence. The police commander said that when his officers arrested the two men on Thursday, they found in McKinney's pickup truck a .357 magnum pistol covered with blood and Shepard's shoes and credit card. He said they found Shepard's wallet at McKinney's home. The police commander said that the two women helped the two men dump their bloody clothing, and that they reported hearing the men make anti-gay remarks. Ms. Pasley, a freshman art student at the university, lived with Henderson. Ms. Price lived with McKinney. The police did not say what the other three did for a living. On Friday, friends and Laramie residents struggled to understand the incident. Shepard, some said, may have felt a false sense of confidence because the local Gay Association completed plans on Tuesday night for ``Gay Awareness Week 1998.'' The weeklong series of events starts here Sunday with a local observance of ``National Coming Out Day'' and a lecture on Monday by Leslea Newman, the author of ``Heather Has Two Mommies,'' a book about lesbian families. ``If I were a homosexual in Laramie, I would hang low, very low,'' said Carla Brown, manager of the Fireside. ``Openly gay behavior is not only discouraged, it's dangerous.'' ||||| Matthew Wayne Shepard, the gay student who was beaten in the dead of night, tied to a fence and left to die alone, was mourned at his funeral Friday by 1,000 people, including many who had never met him. ``Matt believed that if he had made one person's life better, he had succeeded,'' his cousin, the Rev. Anne Kitch, said in a homily that was carried beyond the packed pews of St. Mark's Episcopal Church, through a filled parish hall, across the street to a packed Presbyterian church and across Casper on an AM radio station. ``Judging from the world's response,'' she said, ``Matt will have made a difference in the lives of thousands.'' As the first snowstorm of the fall blanketed Casper, fresh flowers filled the red brick church here where Shepard had been baptized as a teen-ager and where he once wore the white robes of an Episcopal acolyte. ``There is an image that comes to mind when I reflect on Matt on that wooden cross rail fence,'' said the Rev. Royce Brown, the pastor of St. Mark's, in a eulogy. ``I replace that image with that of another man hung upon a cross. When I concentrate on that man, I can release the bitterness inside.'' Shepard, a 21-year-old freshman at the University of Wyoming, had dreamed of working one day for human rights. In death, he has become a national catalyst for a new drive to guarantee for gay people the right to physical safety. His death hit a nerve in the nation this week, eliciting dozens of candlelight vigils and rallies for tolerance, several statements of sadness from President Clinton, and a congressional resolution. Thursday, the House of Representatives passed by voice vote a resolution that condemned Shepard's killing as ``outrageous'' and that urged each member of Congress and every U.S. citizen ``to denounce this outrageous murder of another human being.'' In one of the largest rallies, about 1,000 people, including members of Congress of both parties, gathered on the steps of the Capitol in Washington to condemn the Shepherd's killing and to urge passage of a federal bill that would add extra penalties to crimes motivated by a victim's sexual orientation, gender or disability. House Minority Leader Dick Gephardt urged passage of the bill, leading the crowd in a chant of ``Now! Now! Now.'' ``We will never forget the love that the world has shared with this kind, loving son,'' said Shepherd's father, Dennis, his father, outside Casper City Hall, as his mother, Judy, stood by, weeping. He said the family was ``touched beyond measure'' by ``the thousands of e-mail comments, Web-site messages, phone calls and cards offering help, consolation, sympathy and support.'' Before the funeral, about a dozen protesters, largely from Kansas and Texas, waved signs with anti-homosexual messages. But mourners stood in front of them, singing ``Amazing Grace'' and holding umbrellas to block the sight of the spectacle from friends and family members entering the church. On hearing of the protest, Laramie's City Council held an emergency meeting Thursday night and unanimously passed an ordinance banning protests during funerals. Wyoming Gov. Jim Geringer had warned in advance that anti-gay protesters were ``just flat not welcome.'' The governor, a Republican, added, ``What we don't need is a bunch of wingnuts coming in.'' Shepard was born in Casper and attended elementary school, junior high and several years of high school and college here. With flags at Casper's public schools flying at half-staff Friday, many mourners were his old classmates. Others traveled here, one driving from as far away as New Jersey, out of a sense of solidarity. ``I've had a pit in my heart and my stomach since I heard this,'' said Steve Pietrangelo, who drove 300 miles to wait three hours in cold rain and snow to attend the funeral of a man he never met. ``I just wanted to pay my respects to him and his family.'' Touching people of all walks of life, Shepard's murder has elicited calls for tolerance of homosexuals from unexpected quarters. At the University of Wyoming this fall, football players will wear yellow and green stickers on their helmets in memory of Shepard. Organizers said that yellow signifies tolerance and green symbolizes peace. In Casper, a conservative city of 51,000, located in the heart of Wyoming's oil belt, tolerance has become the watchword. ``Prejudice against homosexuals is just as redneck as anti-black bias,'` The Casper Star-Tribune, Wyoming's largest newspaper, wrote in its main editorial on Sunday. ``Violence against our homosexual friends and neighbors has created a most un-American climate of fear in Wyoming and the rest of the nation.'' Monday, Jason Marsden, the newspaper's political reporter, wrote lovingly that, ``Matthew Shepard is still my friend, and not just because we are both members of the loose-knit community of gay people striving to make our way in this sometimes hostile place called Wyoming.'' ``Matt was very short and hard to hug,'' Marsden recalled of the young man who had grown up in Casper. ``But it was worth trying, because he'd hug you with everything in his little, fragile frame.'' In a week of spiritual reflection, Aaron Kreifels, the University of Wyoming freshman who found his battered classmate Oct. 7, attributed the chance discovery to ``God's plan.'' On that afternoon, Kreifels, an 18-year-old architectural engineering student, had nearly completed a rigorous six-mile ride on a mountain bike up and down Cactus Canyon, in public lands east of Laramie. Kreifels recalled in an interview Thursday that his only mishap of the ride, ``I hit this big limestone rock and did one over the handlebars.'' Dusting himself off and looking around in the fading light of the day, Kreifels recalled, ``I noticed something out of my eye that looked like a scarecrow. I walked around the fence, and as I got closer, I noticed the hair.'' Shepard, his hands bound behind his back with a nylon cord and tied to a fence post, was lying on the ground, face up, unconscious. ``Sometimes I wonder why I found him alive, if he was going to die,'' Kreifels reflected, before traveling to spend this weekend at home with his parents in Grand Island, Neb. ``But I guess God wanted his parents to be with him.'' ||||| Last Saturday morning, while Matthew Shepard lay comatose from a beating, a college homecoming parade passed a few blocks from his hospital bed in Fort Collins. Propped on a fraternity float was a straw-haired scarecrow, labeled in black spray paint: ``I'm Gay.'' Few people missed the message. Three days earlier, Shepard, a gay University of Wyoming freshman, was savagely beaten and tied to a ranch fence in such a position that a passerby first mistook him for a scarecrow. Tuesday, officials at Colorado State University reacted with outrage to the fraternity float, opening an investigation and disciplinary procedures against the fraternity, Pi Kappa Alpha. The fraternity chapter immediately suspended seven members and said they had acted independently. But in a week when candlelight vigils for Shepard were being held on campuses across the nation, the scarecrow incident highlighted how hostility toward gay people often flourishes in high schools and universities, gay leaders said Tuesday. ``People would like to think that what happened to Matthew was an exception to the rule but, it was an extreme version of what happens in our schools on a daily basis,'' said Kevin Jennings, executive director of the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network, a New York group dedicated to ending anti-gay bias in the schools. Shepard, a slightly built 21-year-old, died on Monday morning from the injuries suffered in the beating. He never regained consciousness after being discovered on the evening of Oct. 7, 18 hours after he was lashed to the fence. Two men, Russell Henderson, 21, and Aaron McKinney, 22, were arraigned late Monday night on first-degree murder charges. Their girlfriends, Chasity Pasley, 20, and Kristen Price, 18, have been arraigned as accessories after the fact. In response to the killing, about 50 candelight vigils were scheduled this week, from Texas to Vermont, from Wayne, Neb., to New York City. At the Poudre Valley Hospital in Fort Collins where Shepard was in intensive care for five days, his parents, Dennis and Judy Shepard, received about 6,000 electronic messages of condolences. Tuesday, when funeral arrangements were announced for Friday in Casper, Wyo., the hospital Web site received 30,000 hits an hour. Friends at the University of Wyoming in Laramie, Wyo., have set up The Matthew Shepard Memorial Fund to raise money to pressure the state legislature to pass anti-hate crime legislation. ``I see his name going down in gay history as a catalyst for renewed activism,'' said Matt Foreman, a former Wyomingite who directs Empire State Pride Agenda, a gay political organization in New York. From around the nation Tuesday, gay leaders stressed that campus homophobia is not restricted to college towns in the Rocky Mountain West. Last year, in a survey of almost 4,000 Massachusetts high school students, 22 percent of gay respondents said they skipped school in the past month because they felt unsafe at school, and 31 percent said they had been threatened or injured at school in the past year. These percentages were about five times greater than the percentages of heterosexual respondents. The survey was conducted at 58 high schools by the Massachusetts Department of Education. In a separate study of nearly 500 community college students in the San Francisco area, 32 percent of male respondents said they had verbally threatened gay people and 18 percent said they had physically threatened or assaulted gay people. The study was conducted this year by Karen Franklin, a forensic psychologist who is a researcher at the University of Washington. Surveys of gay college students conducted in the late 1980s at Yale University, Oberlin College, Rutgers University and Penn State found that 16 percent to 26 percent had been threatened with violence, and that 40 percent to 76 percent had been verbally harassed, said the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, a lobbying group based in Washington. Last year, a student group in Des Moines, Iowa, called Concerned Students, recorded hallway and classroom conversations at five high schools on 10 ``homophobia recording day.'' They estimated that the average Des Moines high school student hears about 25 anti-gay remarks every day. ``Nine out of 10 `teaching tolerance' courses weed out gays,'' Foreman said. ``There are a lot of people preaching anti-racism and anti-semitism. But it is still very much OK to make anti-gay jokes, to express anti-gay sentiments.'' In a survey of the nation's 42 largest school districts, 76 percent do not train teachers on issues facing gay students, and 42 percent do not have policies to protect students from discrimination based on sexual orientation, said the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network, which conducted the survey last month. In Fort Collins, while hospital officials struggled with an electronic avalanche of condolences, city police detectives were investigating a different kind of e-mail. On Monday, hours after Shepard's death, two gay organizations, the Rainbow Chorus and the Lambda Community Center, received identical messages applauding Shepard's murder. The messages closed with the words: ``I hope it happens more often.'' ||||| As a gay college student lay hospitalized in critical condition after a severe beating here, this small city, which bills itself as ``Wyoming's hometown,'' wrestled with its attitudes towards gay men. On Saturday, at the University of Wyoming's annual homecoming parade, ``Pistol Pete'' and his uniformed brass band were overshadowed by a larger group of marchers _ 450 people, many wearing yellow armbands and carrying signs in support of the 21-year-old student, Matthew Shepard, who suffered severe head injuries in the attack last week. ``Hate is not a Small Town Value _ No to Violence and Evil,'' read one sign, as watchers applauded. With passersby spontaneously joining the protest group, two women held another sign that read, ``No Hate Crimes in Wyoming.'' Two candlelight vigils were held Sunday night at churches near the campus. At the Poudre Valley Hospital in Fort Collins, Colo., where Shepard's health continued to deteriorate, the hospital has received so many flowers that nurses have started to distribute bouquets to other patients. A vigil at the hospital on Saturday evening drew about 500 people. ``We live in the Equality State,'' Shannon Rexroat wrote Friday in a special edition of the Branding Iron, the campus newspaper. Referring to Wyoming's pioneer heritage as the first state to grant women the right to vote, Ms. Rexroat, the campus newspaper's editor added: ``That means nothing to me anymore. We live in a state where a young man was brutally beaten because he is gay.'' But others recalled another side of ``Wyoming's hometown,''which has a population of more than 26,000. Jamie Lewis, another editor, said that on Friday he was handing out copies of the special edition when a passerby backed away from him and used an anti-gay epithet. Last week's brutal assault bubbled out of an ongoing climate of hostility toward gay men and lesbians, leaders of the local Unitarian church said in a letter published Sunday in the city's newspaper, The Laramie Daily Boomerang. ``This incident was atypical in its brutality, but not in its underlying motive,'' wrote Jeffrey Lockwood and Stephen Johnson. Gay people in Laramie, they wrote, ``are frequently assaulted with derision, intolerance, insult and hostility _ if not guns and ropes.'' Ric Turley, who dropped out of college here after one year in the 1970s, recalled driving here to see his family for Christmas in 1993 and seeing a vandalized billboard on the main highway. Under a brace of pistols, an advertising appeal for a state history museum had been changed, he said, from ``Shoot a Day or Two,'' to ``Shoot a Gay or Two.'' Turley, who is gay and said he only came out after he had left Wyoming, said that he immediately complained to the museum. But returning a month later, he found the message had not been erased. After complaining to the museum for a second time, he said he took a can of black spray paint and blotted out the word ``gay.'' ``It was this kind of complacency and apathy that allowed this to happen,'' he said of the beating in which two local men have been charged, Russell Henderson and Aaron McKinney. According to the local police and prosecutors, the two men lured Shepard out of a bar by saying they were gay. Then, the Laramie police say, the pair kidnapped Shepard, pistol-whipped him with a .357 Magnum and left him tied to a ranch fence for 18 hours until a passing bicyclist spotted Shepard, who was unconscious. On Sunday, the Laramie police said that McKinney had been arrested on Thursday at the same hospital in Fort Collins where Shepard was being treated. McKinney was being treated for a ``minor'' skull fracture unrelated to the fracas with Shepard, said Ben Fritzen, a Laramie police detective. President Clinton has condemned the attack, saying on Saturday, ``I was deeply grieved by the act of violence perpetrated against Matthew Shepard.'' Clinton urged Congress to pass the federal Hate Crimes Prevention Act, saying, ``There is nothing more important to the future of this country than our standing together against intolerance, prejudice and violent bigotry.'' Wyoming is one of 10 states that does not have a hate crime law. The latest attempt died in the state Legislature in Cheyenne in February. On Saturday, Wyoming's governor, Jim Geringer, said he was ``outraged and sickened'' by the attack. Here in Laramie, McKinney's father, Bill, also condemned the attack. His pickup truck was apparently used in the kidnapping. But he also complained about the massive attention by the national media. The national press ``blew it totally out of proportion because it involved a homosexual,'' McKinney told The Denver Post. `Had this been a heterosexual these two boys decided to take out and rob, this never would have made the national news.'' Shepard grew up in Casper until his sophomore year in high school, when his father, an oil rig safety engineer, was transferred to Saudi Arabia. The young man completed high school at a boarding school in Lugano, Switzerland, where he learned Italian and German. On Saturday, his parents, Dennis and Judy Shepard, released a statement from Fort Collins thanking ``the American public for their kind thoughts about Matthew.'' ``He is a trusting person who takes everybody at face value and he does not see the bad side of anyone,'' the Shepards wrote. ``He has always strongly felt that all people are the same, regardless of their sexual preference, race or religion.'' Noting that their son was born prematurely and that his ``life has often been a struggle,'' they added, ``He is physically short in stature, but we believe he is a giant when it comes to respecting the worth of others.'' ||||| Matthew Wayne Shepard, the gay student who was beaten in the dead of night, tied to a fence and left to die alone, was mourned at his funeral Friday by 1,000 people, including many who had never met him. ``Matt believed that if he had made one person's life better, he had succeeded,'' his cousin, the Rev. Anne Kitch, said in a homily that was carried beyond the packed pews of St. Mark's Episcopal Church, through a filled parish hall, across the street to a packed Presbyterian church and across Casper on an AM radio station. ``Judging from the world's response,'' she said, ``Matt will have made a difference in the lives of thousands.'' As the first snowstorm of the fall blanketed Casper, fresh flowers filled the red brick church here where Shepard had been baptized as a teen-ager and where he once wore the white robes of an Episcopal acolyte. ``There is an image that comes to mind when I reflect on Matt on that wooden cross rail fence,'' said the Rev. Royce Brown, the pastor of St. Mark's, in a eulogy. ``I replace that image with that of another man hung upon a cross. When I concentrate on that man, I can release the bitterness inside.'' Shepard, a 21-year-old freshman at the University of Wyoming, had dreamed of working one day for human rights. In death, he has become a national catalyst for a new drive to guarantee for gay people the right to physical safety. His death hit a nerve in the nation this week, eliciting dozens of candlelight vigils and rallies for tolerance, several statements of sadness from President Clinton, and a congressional resolution. Thursday, the House of Representatives passed by voice vote a resolution that condemned Shepard's killing as ``outrageous'' and that urged each member of Congress and every U.S. citizen ``to denounce this outrageous murder of another human being.'' In one of the largest rallies, about 1,000 people, including members of Congress of both parties, gathered on the steps of the Capitol in Washington to condemn Shepherd's killing and to urge passage of a federal bill that would add extra penalties to crimes motivated by a victim's sexual orientation, gender or disability. House Minority Leader Dick Gephardt urged passage of the bill, leading the crowd in a chant of ``Now! Now! Now.'' ``We will never forget the love that the world has shared with this kind, loving son,'' said Shepherd's father, Dennis, his father, outside Casper City Hall, as his mother, Judy, stood by, weeping. He said the family was ``touched beyond measure'' by ``the thousands of e-mail comments, Web-site messages, phone calls and cards offering help, consolation, sympathy and support.'' Before the funeral, about a dozen protesters, largely from Kansas and Texas, waved signs with anti-homosexual messages. But mourners stood in front of them, singing ``Amazing Grace'' and holding umbrellas to block the sight of the spectacle from friends and family members entering the church. On hearing of the protest, Laramie's City Council held an emergency meeting Thursday night and unanimously passed an ordinance banning protests during funerals. Wyoming Gov. Jim Geringer had warned in advance that anti-gay protesters were ``just flat not welcome.'' The governor, a Republican, added, ``What we don't need is a bunch of wingnuts coming in.'' Shepard was born in Casper and attended elementary school, junior high and several years of high school and college here. With flags at Casper's public schools flying at half-staff Friday, many mourners were his old classmates. Others traveled here, one driving from as far away as New Jersey, out of a sense of solidarity. ``I've had a pit in my heart and my stomach since I heard this,'' said Steve Pietrangelo, who drove 300 miles to wait three hours in cold rain and snow to attend the funeral of a man he never met. ``I just wanted to pay my respects to him and his family.'' Touching people of all walks of life, Shepard's murder has elicited calls for tolerance of homosexuals from unexpected quarters. At the University of Wyoming this fall, football players will wear yellow and green stickers on their helmets in memory of Shepard. Organizers said that yellow signifies tolerance and green symbolizes peace. In Casper, a conservative city of 51,000, located in the heart of Wyoming's oil belt, tolerance has become the watchword. ``Prejudice against homosexuals is just as redneck as anti-black bias,'` The Casper Star-Tribune, Wyoming's largest newspaper, wrote in its main editorial on Sunday. ``Violence against our homosexual friends and neighbors has created a most un-American climate of fear in Wyoming and the rest of the nation.'' Monday, Jason Marsden, the newspaper's political reporter, wrote lovingly that, ``Matthew Shepard is still my friend, and not just because we are both members of the loose-knit community of gay people striving to make our way in this sometimes hostile place called Wyoming.'' ``Matt was very short and hard to hug,'' Marsden recalled of the young man who had grown up in Casper. ``But it was worth trying, because he'd hug you with everything in his little, fragile frame.'' In a week of spiritual reflection, Aaron Kreifels, the University of Wyoming freshman who found his battered classmate Oct. 7, attributed the chance discovery to ``God's plan.'' On that afternoon, Kreifels, an 18-year-old architectural engineering student, had nearly completed a rigorous six-mile ride on a mountain bike up and down Cactus Canyon, in public lands east of Laramie. Kreifels recalled in an interview Thursday that his only mishap of the ride, ``I hit this big limestone rock and did one over the handlebars.'' Dusting himself off and looking around in the fading light of the day, Kreifels recalled, ``I noticed something out of my eye that looked like a scarecrow. I walked around the fence, and as I got closer, I noticed the hair.'' Shepard, his hands bound behind his back with a nylon cord and tied to a fence post, was lying on the ground, face up, unconscious. ``Sometimes I wonder why I found him alive, if he was going to die,'' Kreifels reflected, before traveling to spend this weekend at home with his parents in Grand Island, Neb. ``But I guess God wanted his parents to be with him.'' ||||| Matthew Shepard, the gay college student who was kidnapped and severely beaten, died here Monday, five days after he was found unconscious on a Wyoming ranch where he had been left tied to a fence for 18 hours in near-freezing temperatures. His death, announced at Poudre Valley Hospital here, fanned the outrage that followed word of last week's attack, spawning nationwide vigils, producing a call for federal hate-crimes legislation from President Clinton and fueling debates over such laws in a host of Western states, including Wyoming, that have resisted them. From Denver to the University of Maryland, people turned out to honor the The slight, soft-spoken 21-year-old Shepard, a freshman at the University of Wyoming, who became an overnight symbol of anti-gay violence after he was found dangling from the fence by a passerby. Russell Anderson, 21, and Aaron McKinney, 21, were charged with attempted murder and are expected to face first-degree murder charges that could bring the death penalty. Their girlfriends, Chastity Pasley, 21, and Kristen Price, 18, were charged as accessories. In Denver, mourners wrote messages on a graffiti wall as part of national Gay Awareness Week. In San Francisco, a giant rainbow flag that symbolizes the gay rights movement was lowered to half-staff in the Castro district. ``There is incredible symbolism about being tied to a fence,'' said Rebecca Isaacs, political director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force in Washington. ``People have likened it to a scarecrow. But it sounded more like a crucifixion.'' Police in Laramie, Wyo., where the beating took place, have said they believed robbery was the primary motive for the attack against Shepard, which occurred outside a bar in the town of 27,000. But investigators also said Shepard's sexuality may have been a factor. Police said Henderson and McKinney lured Shepard from the bar by saying they too were gay and one of their girlfriends said Shepard had embarassed one of the men by making a pass at him. Monday, police said that after leaving Shepard tied to the fence, the men returned to Laramie and picked a fight on a street corner with two Hispanic men, Emiliano Morales, 19, and Jeremy Herrera, 18. McKinney and Morales suffered head injuries in the brawl; McKinney was arrested when he sought treatment at the same hospital where Shepard died. Gay leaders hope _ and Christian conservatives fear _ that Shepard's death will galvanize Congress and state legislatures to pass hate-crime legislation or broaden existing laws. Conservatives generally oppose such laws because they favor one group's rights over another. In the last two decades, 21 states and the District of Columbia have passed laws that increase penalties for crimes that are committed because of a person's race, religion, color, national origin, and sexual orientation. Another 19 states, including Colorado, do not include sexual orientation in their hate-crime laws. Ten states, including Wyoming, have no hate-crime laws at all. In Washington, Clinton responded to news of Shepard's death by urging Congress to pass the federal Hate Crimes Protection Act, which would make federal offenses of crimes based on sex, disability and sexual orientation. Wyoming has been one of the nation's holdouts, rejecting three hate crimes bills since 1994, most recently in February. But Monday, after Shepard's death, Gov. Jim Geringer appealed to lawmakers to reconsider their opposition. ``I ask for a collective suggestion for anti-bias, anti-hate legislation that can be presented to the Wyoming Legislature for their consideration in January,'' Geringer said. The governor met Monday morning with Dennis Shepard, the slain student's father, and said that the elder Shepard did not want his son's death to become ``a media circus'' and that ``we should not use Matt to further an agenda.'' Geringer said that Shepard's father also said: ``Don't rush into just passing all kinds of new hate-crimes laws. Be very careful of any changes and be sure you're not taking away rights of others in the process to race to this.'' Leaders of gay rights groups interviewed Monday said they would respect the family's privacy by not attending the burial in Casper, Wyo., on Saturday. But they added that they hoped the death would have an impact on legislators around the nation. ``Matthew's death, I hope, will bring about a better and deeper understanding of hate crime laws,'' said Elizabeth Birch, executive director of the Human Rights Campaign, a lesbian and gay rights group that has 250,000 members. ``Matthew's death may lead to an awakening in Wyoming and in the United States Congress as the need for this legislation.'' In 1996, 21 men and women were killed in the United States because of their sexual orientation, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, an Alabama group that tracks violence against minorities. According to the FBI, sexual orientation was a factor in 11.6 percent of the 8,759 hate crimes recorded in 1996. But Christian conservatives warn that gay leaders want to use Shepard's death to expand hate rights laws and to curtail freedom of speech. ``Hate crimes laws have nothing to do with perpetrators of violent crime and everything to do with silencing political opposition,'' said Steven Schwalm, an analyst with the Family Research Council, a Washington group dedicated to defending ``faith, family and freedom.'' ``It would criminalize pro-family beliefs,'' Schwalm said. ``This basically sends a message that you can't disagree with the political message of homosexual activists.'' Agreement came from John Paulk, who was featured this summer in a series of advertisements about how he and his wife, Anne, ``overcame'' homosexuality through religious conversion. ``We have every right to speak out against an agenda that is contrary to Biblical norms,'' said Paulk, who describes himself as a homosexuality specialist for Focus on the Family, a Christian group in Colorado Springs, Colo. ``Because we are standing up and opposing the homosexual agenda, we are being looked upon as advocating violence against homosexuals, when we categorically reject violence against homosexuals.'' Last Thursday, the Family Research Council unveiled a series of television advertisements that preach the ``healing'' of homosexuality through religious conversion. Gay leaders charge that these advertisements help create a hostile climate for homosexuals, a climate that can lead to violence. Hate crime laws that are on the books in 40 states have not impinged on freedom of speech, said Brian Levin, a criminal justice professor who directs the Center on Hate and Extremism at Stockton College, in Pomona, N.J. Instead, he said, hate crime laws send a clear message that society does not tolerate attacks on minorities. ``We want to deter the broken windows and simple assaults before they escalate,'' he said. Referring to murders of homosexuals, he added: ``These crimes are preventable. Offenders get emboldened if they are not punished the first time.'' Levin said that his research indicated that homosexuals suffered higher rates of violent crime than the population at large. He also said that roughly half of the people who attack homosexuals are male, aged 22 or younger. ``With other crimes, violence is a means to an end. With hate crimes, the violence becomes an unstoppable goal,'' Levin said. Shepard suffered a dozen cuts around the head, face and neck, as well as a massive blow to the back of his skull. ``Because their social stature in society, gays are often viewed as appropriate targets,'' Levin added. Citing the need for hate crime laws to send a clear message to gay bashers, Levin said: ``The discourse in society leaves many of these people to believe that what they are doing is socially acceptable.'' While some gay leaders saw crucifixion imagery in Shepard's death, others saw a different symbolism: the Old West practice of nailing a dead coyote to a ranch fence as a warning to future intruders. ``This University of Wyoming student was beaten and left to die, tied to a fence like an animal because he was honest and open about being gay,'' Beatrice Dorhn, legal director of the Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund, said Monday, ``Matthew Shepard's horrible suffering and death cannot be dismissed simply as the fault of deranged, isolated individuals. His attackers are among millions of Americans who constantly hear the message that gay people are not worthy of the most basic equal treatment,'' Ms. Dorhn said.

1,000 people mourned Matthew Shepherd, the gay University of Wyoming student who was severely beaten and left to die tied to a fence. The crime sparked nationwide vigils and prompted President Clinton to call for federal hate-crimes legislation. In 19 states, including Colorado, sexual orientation is not included in hate-crime laws. Wyoming is one of 10 states with no hate-crime laws at all, but the governor appealed to lawmakers to reconsider their opposition. Christian conservatives argue that hate-crime laws restrict freedom of speech, while gay rights activists and others say these laws send a message that attacks on minorities will not be tolerated.

Matthew Shepard, the gay college student who was kidnapped and severely beaten, died here Monday, five days after he was found unconscious on a Wyoming ranch where he had been left tied to a fence for 18 hours in near-freezing temperatures. His death, announced at Poudre Valley Hospital here, fanned the outrage that followed word of last week's attack, spawning nationwide vigils, producing a call for federal hate-crimes legislation from President Clinton and fueling debates over such laws in a host of Western states, including Wyoming, that have resisted them. From Denver to the University of Maryland, people turned out to honor the The slight, soft-spoken 21-year-old Shepard, a freshman at the University of Wyoming, who became an overnight symbol of anti-gay violence after he was found dangling from the fence by a passerby. Two men and two women have been charged in the case. The men were charged with attempted murder and are expected to face first-degree murder charges that could bring the death penalty. ``There is incredible symbolism about being tied to a fence,'' said Rebecca Isaacs, political director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force in Washington. ``People have likened it to a scarecrow. But it sounded more like a crucifixion.'' Gay leaders hope _ and Christian conservatives fear _ that Shepard's death will galvanize Congress and state legislatures to pass hate-crime legislation or broaden existing laws. Conservatives generally oppose such laws because they favor one group's rights over another. In the last two decades, 21 states and the District of Columbia have passed laws that increase penalties for crimes that are committed because of a person's race, religion, color, national origin, and sexual orientation. Another 19 states, including Colorado, do not include sexual orientation in their hate-crime laws. Ten states, including Wyoming, have no hate-crime laws at all. In Washington, Clinton responded to news of Shepard's death by urging Congress to pass the federal Hate Crimes Protection Act, which would make federal offenses of crimes based on sex, disability and sexual orientation. Wyoming has been one of the nation's holdouts, rejecting three hate crimes bills since 1994, most recently in February. But Monday, after Shepard's death, Gov. Jim Geringer appealed to lawmakers to reconsider their opposition. ``I ask for a collective suggestion for anti-bias, anti-hate legislation that can be presented to the Wyoming Legislature for their consideration in January,'' Geringer said. The governor met Monday morning with Dennis Shepard, the slain student's father, and said that the elder Shepard did not want his son's death to become ``a media circus'' and that ``we should not use Matt to further an agenda.'' Geringer said that Shepard's father also said: ``Don't rush into just passing all kinds of new hate-crimes laws. Be very careful of any changes and be sure you're not taking away rights of others in the process to race to this.'' Leaders of gay rights groups interviewed Monday said they would respect the family's privacy by not attending the burial in Casper, Wyo., on Saturday. But they added that they hoped the death would have an impact on legislators around the nation. ``Matthew's death, I hope, will bring about a better and deeper understanding of hate crime laws,'' said Elizabeth Birch, executive director of the Human Rights Campaign, a lesbian and gay rights group that has 250,000 members. ``Matthew's death may lead to an awakening in Wyoming and in the United States Congress as the need for this legislation.'' In 1996, 21 men and women were killed in the United States because of their sexual orientation, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, an Alabama group that tracks violence against minorities. According to the FBI, sexual orientation was a factor in 11.6 percent of the 8,759 hate crimes recorded in 1996. But Christian conservatives warn that gay leaders want to use Shepard's death to expand hate rights laws and to curtail freedom of speech. ``Hate crimes laws have nothing to do with perpetrators of violent crime and everything to do with silencing political opposition,'' said Steven Schwalm, an analyst with the Family Research Council, a Washington group dedicated to defending ``faith, family and freedom.'' ``It would criminalize pro-family beliefs,'' Schwalm said. ``This basically sends a message that you can't disagree with the political message of homosexual activists.'' Agreement came from John Paulk, who was featured this summer in a series of advertisements about how he and his wife, Anne, ``overcame'' homosexuality through religious conversion. ``We have every right to speak out against an agenda that is contrary to Biblical norms,'' said Paulk, who describes himself as a homosexuality specialist for Focus on the Family, a Christian group in Colorado Springs, Colo. ``Because we are standing up and opposing the homosexual agenda, we are being looked upon as advocating violence against homosexuals, when we categorically reject violence against homosexuals.'' Last Thursday, the Family Research Council unveiled a series of television advertisements that preach the ``healing'' of homosexuality through religious conversion. Gay leaders charge that these advertisements help create a hostile climate for homosexuals, a climate that can lead to violence. Hate crime laws that are on the books in 40 states have not impinged on freedom of speech, said Brian Levin, a criminal justice professor who directs the Center on Hate and Extremism at Stockton College, in Pomona, N.J. Instead, he said, hate crime laws send a clear message that society does not tolerate attacks on minorities. ``We want to deter the broken windows and simple assaults before they escalate,'' he said. Referring to murders of homosexuals, he added: ``These crimes are preventable. Offenders get emboldened if they are not punished the first time.'' Levin said that his research indicated that homosexuals suffered higher rates of violent crime than the population at large. He also said that roughly half of the people who attack homosexuals are male, aged 22 or younger. The two men charged in the killing of Shephard are both white, Russell Henderson, 21, and Aaron McKinney, 22. ``With other crimes, violence is a means to an end. With hate crimes, the violence becomes an unstoppable goal,'' Levin said. Shepard suffered a dozen cuts around the head, face and neck, as well as a massive blow to the back of his skull. ``Because their social stature in society, gays are often viewed as appropriate targets,'' Levin added. Citing the need for hate crime laws to send a clear message to gay bashers, Levin said: ``The discourse in society leaves many of these people to believe that what they are doing is socially acceptable.'' While some gay leaders saw crucifixion imagery in Shepard's death, others saw a different symbolism: the Old West practice of nailing a dead coyote to a ranch fence as a warning to future intruders. ``This University of Wyoming student was beaten and left to die, tied to a fence like an animal because he was honest and open about being gay,'' Beatrice Dorhn, legal director of the Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund, said Monday, ``Matthew Shepard's horrible suffering and death cannot be dismissed simply as the fault of deranged, isolated individuals. His attackers are among millions of Americans who constantly hear the message that gay people are not worthy of the most basic equal treatment,'' Ms. Dorhn said. ||||| On the same day Americans learned last week that Matthew Shepard, a 5-foot-2, 105-pound gay college student, had been tortured, strung up like an animal and left to die on a fence outside Laramie, Wyo., the Family Research Council was co-hosting a press conference in Washington. It was the latest salvo in a six-month campaign by the religious right, with the tacit, even explicit, approval of Republican leaders, to demonize gay people for political gain in this election year. This particular press conference was to announce a new barrage of ads _ a TV follow-up to a summer print campaign _ in which alleged former homosexuals who have ``changed'' implore others to do likewise ``through the power of Jesus Christ.'' The commercials, gooey in style, end with a slogan: ``It's not about hate ... It's about hope.'' But it's really about stirring up the fear that produces hate. If these ads were truly aimed at gay people, they wouldn't be broadcast at extravagant cost to the wide general audience reached by TV, and they wouldn't be trumpeted in Washington, insuring free national exposure, three weeks before Election Day. The ads themselves, despite the sugar-coating of ``hope,'' ooze malice. In one of them, homosexuality is linked to drug addiction and certain death by AIDS; all of them implicitly posit that homosexuality is itself a disease in need of a cure. Matthew Shepard has now been ``cured,'' that's for sure. As his uncle, R.W. Eaton, told The Denver Post, the 21-year-old Matt, who aspired to a career in diplomacy and human rights, was ``a small person with a big heart, mind and soul that someone tried to beat out of him.'' Of his nephew's shattered body Eaton said, ``It's like something you might see in war.'' And a war it is. Go to the Family Research Council's Web site and you will find a proud description of its readiness to ``wage the war against the homosexual agenda and fight to maintain the traditional meaning of `family.''' The head of the Family Research Council is Gary Bauer, a GOP power broker and putative presidential candidate, who disingenuously goes on talk shows to say that his organization hates no one and deplores violence. But if you wage a well-financed media air war in which people with an innate difference in sexual orientation are ceaselessly branded as sinful and diseased and un-American seekers of ``special rights,'' ground war will follow. It's a story as old as history. Once any group is successfully scapegoated as a subhuman threat to ``normal'' values by a propaganda machine, emboldened thugs take over. Two weeks after James Byrd was savagely dragged to his death from a pickup truck in Texas in June, I wrote a column about an ugly incident outside the GOP state convention in Fort Worth, where a mob threatened a group of gay Log Cabin Republicans who were protesting discriminatory treatment by their own party. The gay-bashers had been directly preceded by steady saber-rattling from Republican politicians: Sen. James Inhofe of Oklahoma had likened James Hormel, a gay nominee to an ambassadorship, to David Duke; Pat Robertson had wondered on TV if God might wreak havoc on Disney World for its ``Gay Days''; the Texas GOP spokesman had likened Log Cabin to the Ku Klux Klan. Just two days after this near-brush with violence in Fort Worth, Trent Lott was on TV seconding the religious right's condemnation of gay people as sinful and sick. A frightened gay Texas Republican who had been at the convention melee asked when I interviewed him then: ``Do you have to have someone hurt and beat up and dragged from a truck to stop this?'' Months later not even the murder in Laramie has moved Lott to apologize for his words, and still no major GOP leader dares take on its ``religious'' wing and its crusade against people like Matthew Shepard. In one of the new ads in that supposedly hate-free crusade, an ostensibly loving mother condemns her son for the ``bad choice'' of being gay. Is it that mother who speaks for American values, or is it Matthew's? ``Go home, give your kids a hug,'' Judy Shepard said in a message read by a tearful hospital spokesman who announced her child's death early Monday morning, ``and don't let a day go by without telling them you love them.'' ||||| Matthew Wayne Shepard, the gay student who was beaten in the dead of night, tied to a fence and left to die alone, was mourned at his funeral Friday by 1,000 people, including many who had never met him. ``Matt believed that if he had made one person's life better, he had succeeded,'' his cousin, the Rev. Anne Kitch, said in a homily that was carried beyond the packed pews of St. Mark's Episcopal Church, through a filled parish hall, across the street to a packed Presbyterian church and across Casper on an AM radio station. ``Judging from the world's response,'' she said, ``Matt will have made a difference in the lives of thousands.'' As the first snowstorm of the fall blanketed Casper, fresh flowers filled the red brick church here where Shepard had been baptized as a teen-ager and where he once wore the white robes of an Episcopal acolyte. ``There is an image that comes to mind when I reflect on Matt on that wooden cross rail fence,'' said the Rev. Royce Brown, the pastor of St. Mark's, in a eulogy. ``I replace that image with that of another man hung upon a cross. When I concentrate on that man, I can release the bitterness inside.'' Shepard, a 21-year-old freshman at the University of Wyoming, had dreamed of working one day for human rights. In death, he has become a national catalyst for a new drive to guarantee for gay people the right to physical safety. His death hit a nerve in the nation this week, eliciting dozens of candlelight vigils and rallies for tolerance, several statements of sadness from President Clinton, and a congressional resolution. Thursday, the House of Representatives passed by voice vote a resolution that condemned Shepard's killing as ``outrageous'' and that urged each member of Congress and every U.S. citizen ``to denounce this outrageous murder of another human being.'' In one of the largest rallies, about 1,000 people, including members of Congress of both parties, gathered on the steps of the Capitol in Washington to condemn Shepherd's killing and to urge passage of a federal bill that would add extra penalties to crimes motivated by a victim's sexual orientation, gender or disability. House Minority Leader Dick Gephardt urged passage of the bill, leading the crowd in a chant of ``Now! Now! Now.'' ``We will never forget the love that the world has shared with this kind, loving son,'' said Shepherd's father, Dennis, his father, outside Casper City Hall, as his mother, Judy, stood by, weeping. He said the family was ``touched beyond measure'' by ``the thousands of e-mail comments, Web-site messages, phone calls and cards offering help, consolation, sympathy and support.'' Before the funeral, about a dozen protesters, largely from Kansas and Texas, waved signs with anti-homosexual messages. But mourners stood in front of them, singing ``Amazing Grace'' and holding umbrellas to block the sight of the spectacle from friends and family members entering the church. On hearing of the protest, the Casper City Council held an emergency meeting Thursday night and unanimously passed an ordinance banning protests during funerals. Wyoming Gov. Jim Geringer had warned in advance that anti-gay protesters were ``just flat not welcome.'' The governor, a Republican, added, ``What we don't need is a bunch of wingnuts coming in.'' Shepard was born in Casper and attended elementary school, junior high and several years of high school and college here. With flags at Casper's public schools flying at half-staff Friday, many mourners were his old classmates. Others traveled here, one driving from as far away as New Jersey, out of a sense of solidarity. ``I've had a pit in my heart and my stomach since I heard this,'' said Steve Pietrangelo, who drove 300 miles to wait three hours in cold rain and snow to attend the funeral of a man he never met. ``I just wanted to pay my respects to him and his family.'' Touching people of all walks of life, Shepard's murder has elicited calls for tolerance of homosexuals from unexpected quarters. At the University of Wyoming this fall, football players will wear yellow and green stickers on their helmets in memory of Shepard. Organizers said that yellow signifies tolerance and green symbolizes peace. In Casper, a conservative city of 51,000, located in the heart of Wyoming's oil belt, tolerance has become the watchword. ``Prejudice against homosexuals is just as redneck as anti-black bias,'` The Casper Star-Tribune, Wyoming's largest newspaper, wrote in its main editorial on Sunday. ``Violence against our homosexual friends and neighbors has created a most un-American climate of fear in Wyoming and the rest of the nation.'' Monday, Jason Marsden, the newspaper's political reporter, wrote lovingly that, ``Matthew Shepard is still my friend, and not just because we are both members of the loose-knit community of gay people striving to make our way in this sometimes hostile place called Wyoming.'' ``Matt was very short and hard to hug,'' Marsden recalled of the young man who had grown up in Casper. ``But it was worth trying, because he'd hug you with everything in his little, fragile frame.'' In a week of spiritual reflection, Aaron Kreifels, the University of Wyoming freshman who found his battered classmate Oct. 7, attributed the chance discovery to ``God's plan.'' On that afternoon, Kreifels, an 18-year-old architectural engineering student, had nearly completed a rigorous six-mile ride on a mountain bike up and down Cactus Canyon, in public lands east of Laramie. Kreifels recalled in an interview Thursday his only mishap of the ride, ``I hit this big limestone rock and did one over the handlebars.'' Dusting himself off and looking around in the fading light of the day, Kreifels recalled, ``I noticed something out of my eye that looked like a scarecrow. I walked around the fence, and as I got closer, I noticed the hair.'' Shepard, his hands bound behind his back with a nylon cord and tied to a fence post, was lying on the ground, face up, unconscious. ``Sometimes I wonder why I found him alive, if he was going to die,'' Kreifels reflected, before traveling to spend this weekend at home with his parents in Grand Island, Neb. ``But I guess God wanted his parents to be with him.'' ||||| At first, the passing bicyclist thought the crumpled form lashed to a ranch fence was a scarecrow. But when he stopped, he found the burned, battered and nearly lifeless body of Matthew Shepard, an openly gay college student who had been tied to the fence 18 hours earlier. On Friday, the 22-year-old University of Wyoming student was in a coma in critical condition. At Albany County courthouse here, Russell Henderson, 21, and Aaron McKinney, 22, were arraigned on charges of kidnapping, aggravated robbery and attempted first-degree murder. Two women described as friends of the men, Kristen Leann Price, 18, and Chastity Vera Pasley, 20, have been charged as accessories after the fact to attempted first-degree murder. Shepard's friends said that he did not know his alleged tormentors. Laramie police say the primary motive was robbery, although court papers filed Friday indicate Shepard's homosexuality may also have been a factor. Shepard's friends call the attack a hate crime. ``He was very open about his sexuality,'' Tina LaBrie, an anthropology student here, said of her friend. ``I admired him for that because it is very courageous to be yourself even when others disagree.'' A few hours before he was beaten, Shepard, a slight 5-foot, 2-inch man who wore braces on his teeth, had attended a meeting of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgendered Association, said Walter Boulden, a friend of Shepard's. ``He was sitting at the bar, having a beer, when two men came up and talked to him,'' Boulden, a 46-year-old university lecturer of social work here, said today between tears. ``He indicated he was gay, and they said they were gay, too.'' ``Now, he is in a coma,'' continued Boulden, who visited his friend at a hospital in Fort Collins, Colo., on Thursday. ``I don't think anybody expects him to pull through.'' Shepard, who spoke Arabic and German, studied at a boarding school in Switzerland before moving back to the United States to attend the University of Wyoming, the alma mater of his father, an oil rig safety inspector in Saudi Arabia. Matthew Shepard was born in Casper, the capital of Wyoming's oil belt, and spent much of his youth there. But six weeks after returning to Wyoming and enrolling as a freshman here, Shepard fell into a depression, said Ms. Labrie and her husband, Phillip. Accustomed to life in Europe and Denver, this foreign language student who wanted to become a diplomat found himself living in this isolated city of 27,000 people. Set in a treeless landscape defined by barbed wire fences, grazing cattle and a busy freight railroad line, Laramie is a town where pickup trucks outnumber sport utility vehicles, where fall entertainment revolves around this Saturday's homecoming football game and the start of the hunting season in the nearby Medicine Bow mountains. Although Wyoming often bills itself as the ``equality state,'' in reference to its being the first state to give women the vote, the state legislature has repeatedly voted down hate crime legislation on the grounds that it would give homosexuals special rights. ``Wyoming is not really gay friendly,'' Marv Johnson, executive director of the Wyoming chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, said from Cheyenne. ``The best way to characterize that is by a comment a legislator made a few years back, when he likened homosexuals to gay bulls as worthless and should be sent to the packing plant.'' Shepard joined the campus gay association at the university within days. One of his favorite haunts was the Fireside Bar, which drew a mixed crowd of college students and rodeo cowboys, gays and straights. ``He definitely wasn't drunk when he came in,'' recalled the bartender, Matt Galloway. ``He wasn't drunk when he went out.'' Calvin Rerucha, the county attorney, charged in court documents today that McKinney and Henderson posed as homosexuals and lured Shepard out to McKinney's pickup truck just after midnight early Wednesday. Beating him inside the truck, the pair drove him one mile southeast to an isolated part of a new rural subdivision, the County Attorney's report charged. There, it said, the men tied their captive to a post-and-rail fence and pistol-whipped him with a .357 magnum ``while he begged for his life.'' Relatives said that Shepard also suffered burns on his body. After nearly beating the young man to death, Laramie Police Commander David O'Malley said, the assailants stole his wallet and shoes and left him tied to the fence. The police commander said that when his officers arrested the two men on Thursday, they found in McKinney's pickup truck a .357 magnum pistol covered with blood and Shepard's shoes and credit card. He said they found Shepard's wallet at McKinney's home. The police commander said that the two women helped the two men dump their bloody clothing, and that they reported hearing the men make anti-gay remarks. Ms. Pasley, a freshman art student at the university, lived with Henderson. Ms. Price lived with McKinney. The police did not say what the other three did for a living. On Friday, friends and Laramie residents struggled to understand the incident. Shepard, some said, may have felt a false sense of confidence because the local Gay Association completed plans on Tuesday night for ``Gay Awareness Week 1998.'' The weeklong series of events starts here Sunday with a local observance of ``National Coming Out Day'' and a lecture on Monday by Leslea Newman, the author of ``Heather Has Two Mommies,'' a book about lesbian families. ``If I were a homosexual in Laramie, I would hang low, very low,'' said Carla Brown, manager of the Fireside. ``Openly gay behavior is not only discouraged, it's dangerous.'' ||||| At first, the passing bicyclist thought the crumpled form lashed to a ranch fence was a scarecrow. But when he stopped, he found the burned, battered and nearly lifeless body of Matthew Shepard, an openly gay college student who had been tied to the fence 18 hours earlier. On Friday, the 22-year-old University of Wyoming student was in a coma in critical condition. At Albany County courthouse here, Russell Henderson, 21, and Aaron McKinney, 22, were arraigned on charges of kidnapping, aggravated robbery and attempted first-degree murder. Two women described as friends of the men, Kristen Leann Price, 18, and Chastity Vera Pasley, 20, have been charged as accessories after the fact to attempted first-degree murder. Shepard's friends said that he did not know his alleged tormentors. Laramie police say the primary motive was robbery, although court papers filed Friday indicate Shepard's homosexuality may also have been a factor. Shepard's friends call the attack a hate crime. ``He was very open about his sexuality,'' Tina LaBrie, an anthropology student here, said of her friend. ``I admired him for that because it is very courageous to be yourself even when others disagree.'' A few hours before he was beaten, Shepard, a slight 5-foot, 2-inch man who wore braces on his teeth, had attended a meeting of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgendered Association, said Walter Boulden, a friend of Shepard's. ``He was sitting at the bar, having a beer, when two men came up and talked to him,'' Boulden, a 46-year-old university lecturer of social work here, said today between tears. ``He indicated he was gay, and they said they were gay, too.'' ``Now, he is in a coma,'' continued Boulden, who visited his friend at a hospital in Fort Collins, Colo., on Thursday. ``I don't think anybody expects him to pull through.'' Shepard, who spoke Arabic and German, studied at a boarding school in Switzerland before moving back to the United States to attend the University of Wyoming, the alma mater of his father, an oil rig safety inspector in Saudi Arabia. Matthew Shepard was born in Casper, the capital of Wyoming's oil belt, and spent much of his youth there. But six weeks after returning to Wyoming and enrolling as a freshman here, Shepard fell into a depression, said Ms. Labrie and her husband, Phillip. Accustomed to life in Europe and Denver, this foreign language student who wanted to become a diplomat found himself living in this isolated city of 27,000 people. Set in a treeless landscape defined by barbed wire fences, grazing cattle and a busy freight railroad line, Laramie is a town where pickup trucks outnumber sport utility vehicles, where fall entertainment revolves around this Saturday's homecoming football game and the start of the hunting season in the nearby Medicine Bow mountains. Although Wyoming often bills itself as the ``equality state,'' in reference to its being the first state to give women the vote, the state legislature has repeatedly voted down hate crime legislation on the grounds that it would give homosexuals special rights. ``Wyoming is not really gay friendly,'' Marv Johnson, executive director of the Wyoming chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, said from Cheyenne. ``The best way to characterize that is by a comment a legislator made a few years back, when he likened homosexuals to gay bulls as worthless and should be sent to the packing plant.'' Shepard joined the campus gay association at the university within days. One of his favorite haunts was the Fireside Bar, which drew a mixed crowd of college students and rodeo cowboys, gays and straights. ``He definitely wasn't drunk when he came in,'' recalled the bartender, Matt Galloway. ``He wasn't drunk when he went out.'' Calvin Rerucha, the county attorney, charged in court documents today that McKinney and Henderson posed as homosexuals and lured Shepard out to McKinney's pickup truck. Beating him inside the truck, the pair drove him one mile southeast to an isolated part of a new rural subdivision, the County Attorney's report charged. There, it said, the men tied their captive to a post-and-rail fence and pistol-whipped him with a .357 magnum ``while he begged for his life.'' Relatives said that Shepard also suffered burns on his body. After nearly beating the young man to death, Laramie Police Commander David O'Malley said, the assailants stole his wallet and shoes and left him tied to the fence. The police commander said that when his officers arrested the two men on Thursday, they found in McKinney's pickup truck a .357 magnum pistol covered with blood and Shepard's shoes and credit card. He said they found Shepard's wallet at McKinney's home. The police commander said that the two women helped the two men dump their bloody clothing, and that they reported hearing the men make anti-gay remarks. Ms. Pasley, a freshman art student at the university, lived with Henderson. Ms. Price lived with McKinney. The police did not say what the other three did for a living. On Friday, friends and Laramie residents struggled to understand the incident. Shepard, some said, may have felt a false sense of confidence because the local Gay Association completed plans on Tuesday night for ``Gay Awareness Week 1998.'' The weeklong series of events starts here Sunday with a local observance of ``National Coming Out Day'' and a lecture on Monday by Leslea Newman, the author of ``Heather Has Two Mommies,'' a book about lesbian families. ``If I were a homosexual in Laramie, I would hang low, very low,'' said Carla Brown, manager of the Fireside. ``Openly gay behavior is not only discouraged, it's dangerous.'' ||||| Matthew Wayne Shepard, the gay student who was beaten in the dead of night, tied to a fence and left to die alone, was mourned at his funeral Friday by 1,000 people, including many who had never met him. ``Matt believed that if he had made one person's life better, he had succeeded,'' his cousin, the Rev. Anne Kitch, said in a homily that was carried beyond the packed pews of St. Mark's Episcopal Church, through a filled parish hall, across the street to a packed Presbyterian church and across Casper on an AM radio station. ``Judging from the world's response,'' she said, ``Matt will have made a difference in the lives of thousands.'' As the first snowstorm of the fall blanketed Casper, fresh flowers filled the red brick church here where Shepard had been baptized as a teen-ager and where he once wore the white robes of an Episcopal acolyte. ``There is an image that comes to mind when I reflect on Matt on that wooden cross rail fence,'' said the Rev. Royce Brown, the pastor of St. Mark's, in a eulogy. ``I replace that image with that of another man hung upon a cross. When I concentrate on that man, I can release the bitterness inside.'' Shepard, a 21-year-old freshman at the University of Wyoming, had dreamed of working one day for human rights. In death, he has become a national catalyst for a new drive to guarantee for gay people the right to physical safety. His death hit a nerve in the nation this week, eliciting dozens of candlelight vigils and rallies for tolerance, several statements of sadness from President Clinton, and a congressional resolution. Thursday, the House of Representatives passed by voice vote a resolution that condemned Shepard's killing as ``outrageous'' and that urged each member of Congress and every U.S. citizen ``to denounce this outrageous murder of another human being.'' In one of the largest rallies, about 1,000 people, including members of Congress of both parties, gathered on the steps of the Capitol in Washington to condemn the Shepherd's killing and to urge passage of a federal bill that would add extra penalties to crimes motivated by a victim's sexual orientation, gender or disability. House Minority Leader Dick Gephardt urged passage of the bill, leading the crowd in a chant of ``Now! Now! Now.'' ``We will never forget the love that the world has shared with this kind, loving son,'' said Shepherd's father, Dennis, his father, outside Casper City Hall, as his mother, Judy, stood by, weeping. He said the family was ``touched beyond measure'' by ``the thousands of e-mail comments, Web-site messages, phone calls and cards offering help, consolation, sympathy and support.'' Before the funeral, about a dozen protesters, largely from Kansas and Texas, waved signs with anti-homosexual messages. But mourners stood in front of them, singing ``Amazing Grace'' and holding umbrellas to block the sight of the spectacle from friends and family members entering the church. On hearing of the protest, Laramie's City Council held an emergency meeting Thursday night and unanimously passed an ordinance banning protests during funerals. Wyoming Gov. Jim Geringer had warned in advance that anti-gay protesters were ``just flat not welcome.'' The governor, a Republican, added, ``What we don't need is a bunch of wingnuts coming in.'' Shepard was born in Casper and attended elementary school, junior high and several years of high school and college here. With flags at Casper's public schools flying at half-staff Friday, many mourners were his old classmates. Others traveled here, one driving from as far away as New Jersey, out of a sense of solidarity. ``I've had a pit in my heart and my stomach since I heard this,'' said Steve Pietrangelo, who drove 300 miles to wait three hours in cold rain and snow to attend the funeral of a man he never met. ``I just wanted to pay my respects to him and his family.'' Touching people of all walks of life, Shepard's murder has elicited calls for tolerance of homosexuals from unexpected quarters. At the University of Wyoming this fall, football players will wear yellow and green stickers on their helmets in memory of Shepard. Organizers said that yellow signifies tolerance and green symbolizes peace. In Casper, a conservative city of 51,000, located in the heart of Wyoming's oil belt, tolerance has become the watchword. ``Prejudice against homosexuals is just as redneck as anti-black bias,'` The Casper Star-Tribune, Wyoming's largest newspaper, wrote in its main editorial on Sunday. ``Violence against our homosexual friends and neighbors has created a most un-American climate of fear in Wyoming and the rest of the nation.'' Monday, Jason Marsden, the newspaper's political reporter, wrote lovingly that, ``Matthew Shepard is still my friend, and not just because we are both members of the loose-knit community of gay people striving to make our way in this sometimes hostile place called Wyoming.'' ``Matt was very short and hard to hug,'' Marsden recalled of the young man who had grown up in Casper. ``But it was worth trying, because he'd hug you with everything in his little, fragile frame.'' In a week of spiritual reflection, Aaron Kreifels, the University of Wyoming freshman who found his battered classmate Oct. 7, attributed the chance discovery to ``God's plan.'' On that afternoon, Kreifels, an 18-year-old architectural engineering student, had nearly completed a rigorous six-mile ride on a mountain bike up and down Cactus Canyon, in public lands east of Laramie. Kreifels recalled in an interview Thursday that his only mishap of the ride, ``I hit this big limestone rock and did one over the handlebars.'' Dusting himself off and looking around in the fading light of the day, Kreifels recalled, ``I noticed something out of my eye that looked like a scarecrow. I walked around the fence, and as I got closer, I noticed the hair.'' Shepard, his hands bound behind his back with a nylon cord and tied to a fence post, was lying on the ground, face up, unconscious. ``Sometimes I wonder why I found him alive, if he was going to die,'' Kreifels reflected, before traveling to spend this weekend at home with his parents in Grand Island, Neb. ``But I guess God wanted his parents to be with him.'' ||||| Last Saturday morning, while Matthew Shepard lay comatose from a beating, a college homecoming parade passed a few blocks from his hospital bed in Fort Collins. Propped on a fraternity float was a straw-haired scarecrow, labeled in black spray paint: ``I'm Gay.'' Few people missed the message. Three days earlier, Shepard, a gay University of Wyoming freshman, was savagely beaten and tied to a ranch fence in such a position that a passerby first mistook him for a scarecrow. Tuesday, officials at Colorado State University reacted with outrage to the fraternity float, opening an investigation and disciplinary procedures against the fraternity, Pi Kappa Alpha. The fraternity chapter immediately suspended seven members and said they had acted independently. But in a week when candlelight vigils for Shepard were being held on campuses across the nation, the scarecrow incident highlighted how hostility toward gay people often flourishes in high schools and universities, gay leaders said Tuesday. ``People would like to think that what happened to Matthew was an exception to the rule but, it was an extreme version of what happens in our schools on a daily basis,'' said Kevin Jennings, executive director of the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network, a New York group dedicated to ending anti-gay bias in the schools. Shepard, a slightly built 21-year-old, died on Monday morning from the injuries suffered in the beating. He never regained consciousness after being discovered on the evening of Oct. 7, 18 hours after he was lashed to the fence. Two men, Russell Henderson, 21, and Aaron McKinney, 22, were arraigned late Monday night on first-degree murder charges. Their girlfriends, Chasity Pasley, 20, and Kristen Price, 18, have been arraigned as accessories after the fact. In response to the killing, about 50 candelight vigils were scheduled this week, from Texas to Vermont, from Wayne, Neb., to New York City. At the Poudre Valley Hospital in Fort Collins where Shepard was in intensive care for five days, his parents, Dennis and Judy Shepard, received about 6,000 electronic messages of condolences. Tuesday, when funeral arrangements were announced for Friday in Casper, Wyo., the hospital Web site received 30,000 hits an hour. Friends at the University of Wyoming in Laramie, Wyo., have set up The Matthew Shepard Memorial Fund to raise money to pressure the state legislature to pass anti-hate crime legislation. ``I see his name going down in gay history as a catalyst for renewed activism,'' said Matt Foreman, a former Wyomingite who directs Empire State Pride Agenda, a gay political organization in New York. From around the nation Tuesday, gay leaders stressed that campus homophobia is not restricted to college towns in the Rocky Mountain West. Last year, in a survey of almost 4,000 Massachusetts high school students, 22 percent of gay respondents said they skipped school in the past month because they felt unsafe at school, and 31 percent said they had been threatened or injured at school in the past year. These percentages were about five times greater than the percentages of heterosexual respondents. The survey was conducted at 58 high schools by the Massachusetts Department of Education. In a separate study of nearly 500 community college students in the San Francisco area, 32 percent of male respondents said they had verbally threatened gay people and 18 percent said they had physically threatened or assaulted gay people. The study was conducted this year by Karen Franklin, a forensic psychologist who is a researcher at the University of Washington. Surveys of gay college students conducted in the late 1980s at Yale University, Oberlin College, Rutgers University and Penn State found that 16 percent to 26 percent had been threatened with violence, and that 40 percent to 76 percent had been verbally harassed, said the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, a lobbying group based in Washington. Last year, a student group in Des Moines, Iowa, called Concerned Students, recorded hallway and classroom conversations at five high schools on 10 ``homophobia recording day.'' They estimated that the average Des Moines high school student hears about 25 anti-gay remarks every day. ``Nine out of 10 `teaching tolerance' courses weed out gays,'' Foreman said. ``There are a lot of people preaching anti-racism and anti-semitism. But it is still very much OK to make anti-gay jokes, to express anti-gay sentiments.'' In a survey of the nation's 42 largest school districts, 76 percent do not train teachers on issues facing gay students, and 42 percent do not have policies to protect students from discrimination based on sexual orientation, said the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network, which conducted the survey last month. In Fort Collins, while hospital officials struggled with an electronic avalanche of condolences, city police detectives were investigating a different kind of e-mail. On Monday, hours after Shepard's death, two gay organizations, the Rainbow Chorus and the Lambda Community Center, received identical messages applauding Shepard's murder. The messages closed with the words: ``I hope it happens more often.'' ||||| As a gay college student lay hospitalized in critical condition after a severe beating here, this small city, which bills itself as ``Wyoming's hometown,'' wrestled with its attitudes towards gay men. On Saturday, at the University of Wyoming's annual homecoming parade, ``Pistol Pete'' and his uniformed brass band were overshadowed by a larger group of marchers _ 450 people, many wearing yellow armbands and carrying signs in support of the 21-year-old student, Matthew Shepard, who suffered severe head injuries in the attack last week. ``Hate is not a Small Town Value _ No to Violence and Evil,'' read one sign, as watchers applauded. With passersby spontaneously joining the protest group, two women held another sign that read, ``No Hate Crimes in Wyoming.'' Two candlelight vigils were held Sunday night at churches near the campus. At the Poudre Valley Hospital in Fort Collins, Colo., where Shepard's health continued to deteriorate, the hospital has received so many flowers that nurses have started to distribute bouquets to other patients. A vigil at the hospital on Saturday evening drew about 500 people. ``We live in the Equality State,'' Shannon Rexroat wrote Friday in a special edition of the Branding Iron, the campus newspaper. Referring to Wyoming's pioneer heritage as the first state to grant women the right to vote, Ms. Rexroat, the campus newspaper's editor added: ``That means nothing to me anymore. We live in a state where a young man was brutally beaten because he is gay.'' But others recalled another side of ``Wyoming's hometown,''which has a population of more than 26,000. Jamie Lewis, another editor, said that on Friday he was handing out copies of the special edition when a passerby backed away from him and used an anti-gay epithet. Last week's brutal assault bubbled out of an ongoing climate of hostility toward gay men and lesbians, leaders of the local Unitarian church said in a letter published Sunday in the city's newspaper, The Laramie Daily Boomerang. ``This incident was atypical in its brutality, but not in its underlying motive,'' wrote Jeffrey Lockwood and Stephen Johnson. Gay people in Laramie, they wrote, ``are frequently assaulted with derision, intolerance, insult and hostility _ if not guns and ropes.'' Ric Turley, who dropped out of college here after one year in the 1970s, recalled driving here to see his family for Christmas in 1993 and seeing a vandalized billboard on the main highway. Under a brace of pistols, an advertising appeal for a state history museum had been changed, he said, from ``Shoot a Day or Two,'' to ``Shoot a Gay or Two.'' Turley, who is gay and said he only came out after he had left Wyoming, said that he immediately complained to the museum. But returning a month later, he found the message had not been erased. After complaining to the museum for a second time, he said he took a can of black spray paint and blotted out the word ``gay.'' ``It was this kind of complacency and apathy that allowed this to happen,'' he said of the beating in which two local men have been charged, Russell Henderson and Aaron McKinney. According to the local police and prosecutors, the two men lured Shepard out of a bar by saying they were gay. Then, the Laramie police say, the pair kidnapped Shepard, pistol-whipped him with a .357 Magnum and left him tied to a ranch fence for 18 hours until a passing bicyclist spotted Shepard, who was unconscious. On Sunday, the Laramie police said that McKinney had been arrested on Thursday at the same hospital in Fort Collins where Shepard was being treated. McKinney was being treated for a ``minor'' skull fracture unrelated to the fracas with Shepard, said Ben Fritzen, a Laramie police detective. President Clinton has condemned the attack, saying on Saturday, ``I was deeply grieved by the act of violence perpetrated against Matthew Shepard.'' Clinton urged Congress to pass the federal Hate Crimes Prevention Act, saying, ``There is nothing more important to the future of this country than our standing together against intolerance, prejudice and violent bigotry.'' Wyoming is one of 10 states that does not have a hate crime law. The latest attempt died in the state Legislature in Cheyenne in February. On Saturday, Wyoming's governor, Jim Geringer, said he was ``outraged and sickened'' by the attack. Here in Laramie, McKinney's father, Bill, also condemned the attack. His pickup truck was apparently used in the kidnapping. But he also complained about the massive attention by the national media. The national press ``blew it totally out of proportion because it involved a homosexual,'' McKinney told The Denver Post. `Had this been a heterosexual these two boys decided to take out and rob, this never would have made the national news.'' Shepard grew up in Casper until his sophomore year in high school, when his father, an oil rig safety engineer, was transferred to Saudi Arabia. The young man completed high school at a boarding school in Lugano, Switzerland, where he learned Italian and German. On Saturday, his parents, Dennis and Judy Shepard, released a statement from Fort Collins thanking ``the American public for their kind thoughts about Matthew.'' ``He is a trusting person who takes everybody at face value and he does not see the bad side of anyone,'' the Shepards wrote. ``He has always strongly felt that all people are the same, regardless of their sexual preference, race or religion.'' Noting that their son was born prematurely and that his ``life has often been a struggle,'' they added, ``He is physically short in stature, but we believe he is a giant when it comes to respecting the worth of others.'' ||||| Matthew Wayne Shepard, the gay student who was beaten in the dead of night, tied to a fence and left to die alone, was mourned at his funeral Friday by 1,000 people, including many who had never met him. ``Matt believed that if he had made one person's life better, he had succeeded,'' his cousin, the Rev. Anne Kitch, said in a homily that was carried beyond the packed pews of St. Mark's Episcopal Church, through a filled parish hall, across the street to a packed Presbyterian church and across Casper on an AM radio station. ``Judging from the world's response,'' she said, ``Matt will have made a difference in the lives of thousands.'' As the first snowstorm of the fall blanketed Casper, fresh flowers filled the red brick church here where Shepard had been baptized as a teen-ager and where he once wore the white robes of an Episcopal acolyte. ``There is an image that comes to mind when I reflect on Matt on that wooden cross rail fence,'' said the Rev. Royce Brown, the pastor of St. Mark's, in a eulogy. ``I replace that image with that of another man hung upon a cross. When I concentrate on that man, I can release the bitterness inside.'' Shepard, a 21-year-old freshman at the University of Wyoming, had dreamed of working one day for human rights. In death, he has become a national catalyst for a new drive to guarantee for gay people the right to physical safety. His death hit a nerve in the nation this week, eliciting dozens of candlelight vigils and rallies for tolerance, several statements of sadness from President Clinton, and a congressional resolution. Thursday, the House of Representatives passed by voice vote a resolution that condemned Shepard's killing as ``outrageous'' and that urged each member of Congress and every U.S. citizen ``to denounce this outrageous murder of another human being.'' In one of the largest rallies, about 1,000 people, including members of Congress of both parties, gathered on the steps of the Capitol in Washington to condemn Shepherd's killing and to urge passage of a federal bill that would add extra penalties to crimes motivated by a victim's sexual orientation, gender or disability. House Minority Leader Dick Gephardt urged passage of the bill, leading the crowd in a chant of ``Now! Now! Now.'' ``We will never forget the love that the world has shared with this kind, loving son,'' said Shepherd's father, Dennis, his father, outside Casper City Hall, as his mother, Judy, stood by, weeping. He said the family was ``touched beyond measure'' by ``the thousands of e-mail comments, Web-site messages, phone calls and cards offering help, consolation, sympathy and support.'' Before the funeral, about a dozen protesters, largely from Kansas and Texas, waved signs with anti-homosexual messages. But mourners stood in front of them, singing ``Amazing Grace'' and holding umbrellas to block the sight of the spectacle from friends and family members entering the church. On hearing of the protest, Laramie's City Council held an emergency meeting Thursday night and unanimously passed an ordinance banning protests during funerals. Wyoming Gov. Jim Geringer had warned in advance that anti-gay protesters were ``just flat not welcome.'' The governor, a Republican, added, ``What we don't need is a bunch of wingnuts coming in.'' Shepard was born in Casper and attended elementary school, junior high and several years of high school and college here. With flags at Casper's public schools flying at half-staff Friday, many mourners were his old classmates. Others traveled here, one driving from as far away as New Jersey, out of a sense of solidarity. ``I've had a pit in my heart and my stomach since I heard this,'' said Steve Pietrangelo, who drove 300 miles to wait three hours in cold rain and snow to attend the funeral of a man he never met. ``I just wanted to pay my respects to him and his family.'' Touching people of all walks of life, Shepard's murder has elicited calls for tolerance of homosexuals from unexpected quarters. At the University of Wyoming this fall, football players will wear yellow and green stickers on their helmets in memory of Shepard. Organizers said that yellow signifies tolerance and green symbolizes peace. In Casper, a conservative city of 51,000, located in the heart of Wyoming's oil belt, tolerance has become the watchword. ``Prejudice against homosexuals is just as redneck as anti-black bias,'` The Casper Star-Tribune, Wyoming's largest newspaper, wrote in its main editorial on Sunday. ``Violence against our homosexual friends and neighbors has created a most un-American climate of fear in Wyoming and the rest of the nation.'' Monday, Jason Marsden, the newspaper's political reporter, wrote lovingly that, ``Matthew Shepard is still my friend, and not just because we are both members of the loose-knit community of gay people striving to make our way in this sometimes hostile place called Wyoming.'' ``Matt was very short and hard to hug,'' Marsden recalled of the young man who had grown up in Casper. ``But it was worth trying, because he'd hug you with everything in his little, fragile frame.'' In a week of spiritual reflection, Aaron Kreifels, the University of Wyoming freshman who found his battered classmate Oct. 7, attributed the chance discovery to ``God's plan.'' On that afternoon, Kreifels, an 18-year-old architectural engineering student, had nearly completed a rigorous six-mile ride on a mountain bike up and down Cactus Canyon, in public lands east of Laramie. Kreifels recalled in an interview Thursday that his only mishap of the ride, ``I hit this big limestone rock and did one over the handlebars.'' Dusting himself off and looking around in the fading light of the day, Kreifels recalled, ``I noticed something out of my eye that looked like a scarecrow. I walked around the fence, and as I got closer, I noticed the hair.'' Shepard, his hands bound behind his back with a nylon cord and tied to a fence post, was lying on the ground, face up, unconscious. ``Sometimes I wonder why I found him alive, if he was going to die,'' Kreifels reflected, before traveling to spend this weekend at home with his parents in Grand Island, Neb. ``But I guess God wanted his parents to be with him.'' ||||| Matthew Shepard, the gay college student who was kidnapped and severely beaten, died here Monday, five days after he was found unconscious on a Wyoming ranch where he had been left tied to a fence for 18 hours in near-freezing temperatures. His death, announced at Poudre Valley Hospital here, fanned the outrage that followed word of last week's attack, spawning nationwide vigils, producing a call for federal hate-crimes legislation from President Clinton and fueling debates over such laws in a host of Western states, including Wyoming, that have resisted them. From Denver to the University of Maryland, people turned out to honor the The slight, soft-spoken 21-year-old Shepard, a freshman at the University of Wyoming, who became an overnight symbol of anti-gay violence after he was found dangling from the fence by a passerby. Russell Anderson, 21, and Aaron McKinney, 21, were charged with attempted murder and are expected to face first-degree murder charges that could bring the death penalty. Their girlfriends, Chastity Pasley, 21, and Kristen Price, 18, were charged as accessories. In Denver, mourners wrote messages on a graffiti wall as part of national Gay Awareness Week. In San Francisco, a giant rainbow flag that symbolizes the gay rights movement was lowered to half-staff in the Castro district. ``There is incredible symbolism about being tied to a fence,'' said Rebecca Isaacs, political director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force in Washington. ``People have likened it to a scarecrow. But it sounded more like a crucifixion.'' Police in Laramie, Wyo., where the beating took place, have said they believed robbery was the primary motive for the attack against Shepard, which occurred outside a bar in the town of 27,000. But investigators also said Shepard's sexuality may have been a factor. Police said Henderson and McKinney lured Shepard from the bar by saying they too were gay and one of their girlfriends said Shepard had embarassed one of the men by making a pass at him. Monday, police said that after leaving Shepard tied to the fence, the men returned to Laramie and picked a fight on a street corner with two Hispanic men, Emiliano Morales, 19, and Jeremy Herrera, 18. McKinney and Morales suffered head injuries in the brawl; McKinney was arrested when he sought treatment at the same hospital where Shepard died. Gay leaders hope _ and Christian conservatives fear _ that Shepard's death will galvanize Congress and state legislatures to pass hate-crime legislation or broaden existing laws. Conservatives generally oppose such laws because they favor one group's rights over another. In the last two decades, 21 states and the District of Columbia have passed laws that increase penalties for crimes that are committed because of a person's race, religion, color, national origin, and sexual orientation. Another 19 states, including Colorado, do not include sexual orientation in their hate-crime laws. Ten states, including Wyoming, have no hate-crime laws at all. In Washington, Clinton responded to news of Shepard's death by urging Congress to pass the federal Hate Crimes Protection Act, which would make federal offenses of crimes based on sex, disability and sexual orientation. Wyoming has been one of the nation's holdouts, rejecting three hate crimes bills since 1994, most recently in February. But Monday, after Shepard's death, Gov. Jim Geringer appealed to lawmakers to reconsider their opposition. ``I ask for a collective suggestion for anti-bias, anti-hate legislation that can be presented to the Wyoming Legislature for their consideration in January,'' Geringer said. The governor met Monday morning with Dennis Shepard, the slain student's father, and said that the elder Shepard did not want his son's death to become ``a media circus'' and that ``we should not use Matt to further an agenda.'' Geringer said that Shepard's father also said: ``Don't rush into just passing all kinds of new hate-crimes laws. Be very careful of any changes and be sure you're not taking away rights of others in the process to race to this.'' Leaders of gay rights groups interviewed Monday said they would respect the family's privacy by not attending the burial in Casper, Wyo., on Saturday. But they added that they hoped the death would have an impact on legislators around the nation. ``Matthew's death, I hope, will bring about a better and deeper understanding of hate crime laws,'' said Elizabeth Birch, executive director of the Human Rights Campaign, a lesbian and gay rights group that has 250,000 members. ``Matthew's death may lead to an awakening in Wyoming and in the United States Congress as the need for this legislation.'' In 1996, 21 men and women were killed in the United States because of their sexual orientation, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, an Alabama group that tracks violence against minorities. According to the FBI, sexual orientation was a factor in 11.6 percent of the 8,759 hate crimes recorded in 1996. But Christian conservatives warn that gay leaders want to use Shepard's death to expand hate rights laws and to curtail freedom of speech. ``Hate crimes laws have nothing to do with perpetrators of violent crime and everything to do with silencing political opposition,'' said Steven Schwalm, an analyst with the Family Research Council, a Washington group dedicated to defending ``faith, family and freedom.'' ``It would criminalize pro-family beliefs,'' Schwalm said. ``This basically sends a message that you can't disagree with the political message of homosexual activists.'' Agreement came from John Paulk, who was featured this summer in a series of advertisements about how he and his wife, Anne, ``overcame'' homosexuality through religious conversion. ``We have every right to speak out against an agenda that is contrary to Biblical norms,'' said Paulk, who describes himself as a homosexuality specialist for Focus on the Family, a Christian group in Colorado Springs, Colo. ``Because we are standing up and opposing the homosexual agenda, we are being looked upon as advocating violence against homosexuals, when we categorically reject violence against homosexuals.'' Last Thursday, the Family Research Council unveiled a series of television advertisements that preach the ``healing'' of homosexuality through religious conversion. Gay leaders charge that these advertisements help create a hostile climate for homosexuals, a climate that can lead to violence. Hate crime laws that are on the books in 40 states have not impinged on freedom of speech, said Brian Levin, a criminal justice professor who directs the Center on Hate and Extremism at Stockton College, in Pomona, N.J. Instead, he said, hate crime laws send a clear message that society does not tolerate attacks on minorities. ``We want to deter the broken windows and simple assaults before they escalate,'' he said. Referring to murders of homosexuals, he added: ``These crimes are preventable. Offenders get emboldened if they are not punished the first time.'' Levin said that his research indicated that homosexuals suffered higher rates of violent crime than the population at large. He also said that roughly half of the people who attack homosexuals are male, aged 22 or younger. ``With other crimes, violence is a means to an end. With hate crimes, the violence becomes an unstoppable goal,'' Levin said. Shepard suffered a dozen cuts around the head, face and neck, as well as a massive blow to the back of his skull. ``Because their social stature in society, gays are often viewed as appropriate targets,'' Levin added. Citing the need for hate crime laws to send a clear message to gay bashers, Levin said: ``The discourse in society leaves many of these people to believe that what they are doing is socially acceptable.'' While some gay leaders saw crucifixion imagery in Shepard's death, others saw a different symbolism: the Old West practice of nailing a dead coyote to a ranch fence as a warning to future intruders. ``This University of Wyoming student was beaten and left to die, tied to a fence like an animal because he was honest and open about being gay,'' Beatrice Dorhn, legal director of the Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund, said Monday, ``Matthew Shepard's horrible suffering and death cannot be dismissed simply as the fault of deranged, isolated individuals. His attackers are among millions of Americans who constantly hear the message that gay people are not worthy of the most basic equal treatment,'' Ms. Dorhn said.

A passerby who found Matthew Shepard's nearly lifeless body tied to a fence outside Laramie, Wyoming at first thought it was a scarecrow. Matthew, an openly gay student at the University of Wyoming, had been kidnapped, brutally beaten and left to die in near freezing temperatures. Two men, Russell Henderson and Aaron McKinney were arrested on charges of kidnapping and attempted first degree murder. Two women, friends of the accused, were charged as accessories after the fact. Seeing this as a hate crime, gay-rights activists nationwide renewed efforts to get the Clinton Administration to pass hate-crime legislation.

Matthew Shepard, the gay college student who was kidnapped and severely beaten, died here Monday, five days after he was found unconscious on a Wyoming ranch where he had been left tied to a fence for 18 hours in near-freezing temperatures. His death, announced at Poudre Valley Hospital here, fanned the outrage that followed word of last week's attack, spawning nationwide vigils, producing a call for federal hate-crimes legislation from President Clinton and fueling debates over such laws in a host of Western states, including Wyoming, that have resisted them. From Denver to the University of Maryland, people turned out to honor the The slight, soft-spoken 21-year-old Shepard, a freshman at the University of Wyoming, who became an overnight symbol of anti-gay violence after he was found dangling from the fence by a passerby. Two men and two women have been charged in the case. The men were charged with attempted murder and are expected to face first-degree murder charges that could bring the death penalty. ``There is incredible symbolism about being tied to a fence,'' said Rebecca Isaacs, political director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force in Washington. ``People have likened it to a scarecrow. But it sounded more like a crucifixion.'' Gay leaders hope _ and Christian conservatives fear _ that Shepard's death will galvanize Congress and state legislatures to pass hate-crime legislation or broaden existing laws. Conservatives generally oppose such laws because they favor one group's rights over another. In the last two decades, 21 states and the District of Columbia have passed laws that increase penalties for crimes that are committed because of a person's race, religion, color, national origin, and sexual orientation. Another 19 states, including Colorado, do not include sexual orientation in their hate-crime laws. Ten states, including Wyoming, have no hate-crime laws at all. In Washington, Clinton responded to news of Shepard's death by urging Congress to pass the federal Hate Crimes Protection Act, which would make federal offenses of crimes based on sex, disability and sexual orientation. Wyoming has been one of the nation's holdouts, rejecting three hate crimes bills since 1994, most recently in February. But Monday, after Shepard's death, Gov. Jim Geringer appealed to lawmakers to reconsider their opposition. ``I ask for a collective suggestion for anti-bias, anti-hate legislation that can be presented to the Wyoming Legislature for their consideration in January,'' Geringer said. The governor met Monday morning with Dennis Shepard, the slain student's father, and said that the elder Shepard did not want his son's death to become ``a media circus'' and that ``we should not use Matt to further an agenda.'' Geringer said that Shepard's father also said: ``Don't rush into just passing all kinds of new hate-crimes laws. Be very careful of any changes and be sure you're not taking away rights of others in the process to race to this.'' Leaders of gay rights groups interviewed Monday said they would respect the family's privacy by not attending the burial in Casper, Wyo., on Saturday. But they added that they hoped the death would have an impact on legislators around the nation. ``Matthew's death, I hope, will bring about a better and deeper understanding of hate crime laws,'' said Elizabeth Birch, executive director of the Human Rights Campaign, a lesbian and gay rights group that has 250,000 members. ``Matthew's death may lead to an awakening in Wyoming and in the United States Congress as the need for this legislation.'' In 1996, 21 men and women were killed in the United States because of their sexual orientation, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, an Alabama group that tracks violence against minorities. According to the FBI, sexual orientation was a factor in 11.6 percent of the 8,759 hate crimes recorded in 1996. But Christian conservatives warn that gay leaders want to use Shepard's death to expand hate rights laws and to curtail freedom of speech. ``Hate crimes laws have nothing to do with perpetrators of violent crime and everything to do with silencing political opposition,'' said Steven Schwalm, an analyst with the Family Research Council, a Washington group dedicated to defending ``faith, family and freedom.'' ``It would criminalize pro-family beliefs,'' Schwalm said. ``This basically sends a message that you can't disagree with the political message of homosexual activists.'' Agreement came from John Paulk, who was featured this summer in a series of advertisements about how he and his wife, Anne, ``overcame'' homosexuality through religious conversion. ``We have every right to speak out against an agenda that is contrary to Biblical norms,'' said Paulk, who describes himself as a homosexuality specialist for Focus on the Family, a Christian group in Colorado Springs, Colo. ``Because we are standing up and opposing the homosexual agenda, we are being looked upon as advocating violence against homosexuals, when we categorically reject violence against homosexuals.'' Last Thursday, the Family Research Council unveiled a series of television advertisements that preach the ``healing'' of homosexuality through religious conversion. Gay leaders charge that these advertisements help create a hostile climate for homosexuals, a climate that can lead to violence. Hate crime laws that are on the books in 40 states have not impinged on freedom of speech, said Brian Levin, a criminal justice professor who directs the Center on Hate and Extremism at Stockton College, in Pomona, N.J. Instead, he said, hate crime laws send a clear message that society does not tolerate attacks on minorities. ``We want to deter the broken windows and simple assaults before they escalate,'' he said. Referring to murders of homosexuals, he added: ``These crimes are preventable. Offenders get emboldened if they are not punished the first time.'' Levin said that his research indicated that homosexuals suffered higher rates of violent crime than the population at large. He also said that roughly half of the people who attack homosexuals are male, aged 22 or younger. The two men charged in the killing of Shephard are both white, Russell Henderson, 21, and Aaron McKinney, 22. ``With other crimes, violence is a means to an end. With hate crimes, the violence becomes an unstoppable goal,'' Levin said. Shepard suffered a dozen cuts around the head, face and neck, as well as a massive blow to the back of his skull. ``Because their social stature in society, gays are often viewed as appropriate targets,'' Levin added. Citing the need for hate crime laws to send a clear message to gay bashers, Levin said: ``The discourse in society leaves many of these people to believe that what they are doing is socially acceptable.'' While some gay leaders saw crucifixion imagery in Shepard's death, others saw a different symbolism: the Old West practice of nailing a dead coyote to a ranch fence as a warning to future intruders. ``This University of Wyoming student was beaten and left to die, tied to a fence like an animal because he was honest and open about being gay,'' Beatrice Dorhn, legal director of the Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund, said Monday, ``Matthew Shepard's horrible suffering and death cannot be dismissed simply as the fault of deranged, isolated individuals. His attackers are among millions of Americans who constantly hear the message that gay people are not worthy of the most basic equal treatment,'' Ms. Dorhn said. ||||| On the same day Americans learned last week that Matthew Shepard, a 5-foot-2, 105-pound gay college student, had been tortured, strung up like an animal and left to die on a fence outside Laramie, Wyo., the Family Research Council was co-hosting a press conference in Washington. It was the latest salvo in a six-month campaign by the religious right, with the tacit, even explicit, approval of Republican leaders, to demonize gay people for political gain in this election year. This particular press conference was to announce a new barrage of ads _ a TV follow-up to a summer print campaign _ in which alleged former homosexuals who have ``changed'' implore others to do likewise ``through the power of Jesus Christ.'' The commercials, gooey in style, end with a slogan: ``It's not about hate ... It's about hope.'' But it's really about stirring up the fear that produces hate. If these ads were truly aimed at gay people, they wouldn't be broadcast at extravagant cost to the wide general audience reached by TV, and they wouldn't be trumpeted in Washington, insuring free national exposure, three weeks before Election Day. The ads themselves, despite the sugar-coating of ``hope,'' ooze malice. In one of them, homosexuality is linked to drug addiction and certain death by AIDS; all of them implicitly posit that homosexuality is itself a disease in need of a cure. Matthew Shepard has now been ``cured,'' that's for sure. As his uncle, R.W. Eaton, told The Denver Post, the 21-year-old Matt, who aspired to a career in diplomacy and human rights, was ``a small person with a big heart, mind and soul that someone tried to beat out of him.'' Of his nephew's shattered body Eaton said, ``It's like something you might see in war.'' And a war it is. Go to the Family Research Council's Web site and you will find a proud description of its readiness to ``wage the war against the homosexual agenda and fight to maintain the traditional meaning of `family.''' The head of the Family Research Council is Gary Bauer, a GOP power broker and putative presidential candidate, who disingenuously goes on talk shows to say that his organization hates no one and deplores violence. But if you wage a well-financed media air war in which people with an innate difference in sexual orientation are ceaselessly branded as sinful and diseased and un-American seekers of ``special rights,'' ground war will follow. It's a story as old as history. Once any group is successfully scapegoated as a subhuman threat to ``normal'' values by a propaganda machine, emboldened thugs take over. Two weeks after James Byrd was savagely dragged to his death from a pickup truck in Texas in June, I wrote a column about an ugly incident outside the GOP state convention in Fort Worth, where a mob threatened a group of gay Log Cabin Republicans who were protesting discriminatory treatment by their own party. The gay-bashers had been directly preceded by steady saber-rattling from Republican politicians: Sen. James Inhofe of Oklahoma had likened James Hormel, a gay nominee to an ambassadorship, to David Duke; Pat Robertson had wondered on TV if God might wreak havoc on Disney World for its ``Gay Days''; the Texas GOP spokesman had likened Log Cabin to the Ku Klux Klan. Just two days after this near-brush with violence in Fort Worth, Trent Lott was on TV seconding the religious right's condemnation of gay people as sinful and sick. A frightened gay Texas Republican who had been at the convention melee asked when I interviewed him then: ``Do you have to have someone hurt and beat up and dragged from a truck to stop this?'' Months later not even the murder in Laramie has moved Lott to apologize for his words, and still no major GOP leader dares take on its ``religious'' wing and its crusade against people like Matthew Shepard. In one of the new ads in that supposedly hate-free crusade, an ostensibly loving mother condemns her son for the ``bad choice'' of being gay. Is it that mother who speaks for American values, or is it Matthew's? ``Go home, give your kids a hug,'' Judy Shepard said in a message read by a tearful hospital spokesman who announced her child's death early Monday morning, ``and don't let a day go by without telling them you love them.'' ||||| Matthew Wayne Shepard, the gay student who was beaten in the dead of night, tied to a fence and left to die alone, was mourned at his funeral Friday by 1,000 people, including many who had never met him. ``Matt believed that if he had made one person's life better, he had succeeded,'' his cousin, the Rev. Anne Kitch, said in a homily that was carried beyond the packed pews of St. Mark's Episcopal Church, through a filled parish hall, across the street to a packed Presbyterian church and across Casper on an AM radio station. ``Judging from the world's response,'' she said, ``Matt will have made a difference in the lives of thousands.'' As the first snowstorm of the fall blanketed Casper, fresh flowers filled the red brick church here where Shepard had been baptized as a teen-ager and where he once wore the white robes of an Episcopal acolyte. ``There is an image that comes to mind when I reflect on Matt on that wooden cross rail fence,'' said the Rev. Royce Brown, the pastor of St. Mark's, in a eulogy. ``I replace that image with that of another man hung upon a cross. When I concentrate on that man, I can release the bitterness inside.'' Shepard, a 21-year-old freshman at the University of Wyoming, had dreamed of working one day for human rights. In death, he has become a national catalyst for a new drive to guarantee for gay people the right to physical safety. His death hit a nerve in the nation this week, eliciting dozens of candlelight vigils and rallies for tolerance, several statements of sadness from President Clinton, and a congressional resolution. Thursday, the House of Representatives passed by voice vote a resolution that condemned Shepard's killing as ``outrageous'' and that urged each member of Congress and every U.S. citizen ``to denounce this outrageous murder of another human being.'' In one of the largest rallies, about 1,000 people, including members of Congress of both parties, gathered on the steps of the Capitol in Washington to condemn Shepherd's killing and to urge passage of a federal bill that would add extra penalties to crimes motivated by a victim's sexual orientation, gender or disability. House Minority Leader Dick Gephardt urged passage of the bill, leading the crowd in a chant of ``Now! Now! Now.'' ``We will never forget the love that the world has shared with this kind, loving son,'' said Shepherd's father, Dennis, his father, outside Casper City Hall, as his mother, Judy, stood by, weeping. He said the family was ``touched beyond measure'' by ``the thousands of e-mail comments, Web-site messages, phone calls and cards offering help, consolation, sympathy and support.'' Before the funeral, about a dozen protesters, largely from Kansas and Texas, waved signs with anti-homosexual messages. But mourners stood in front of them, singing ``Amazing Grace'' and holding umbrellas to block the sight of the spectacle from friends and family members entering the church. On hearing of the protest, the Casper City Council held an emergency meeting Thursday night and unanimously passed an ordinance banning protests during funerals. Wyoming Gov. Jim Geringer had warned in advance that anti-gay protesters were ``just flat not welcome.'' The governor, a Republican, added, ``What we don't need is a bunch of wingnuts coming in.'' Shepard was born in Casper and attended elementary school, junior high and several years of high school and college here. With flags at Casper's public schools flying at half-staff Friday, many mourners were his old classmates. Others traveled here, one driving from as far away as New Jersey, out of a sense of solidarity. ``I've had a pit in my heart and my stomach since I heard this,'' said Steve Pietrangelo, who drove 300 miles to wait three hours in cold rain and snow to attend the funeral of a man he never met. ``I just wanted to pay my respects to him and his family.'' Touching people of all walks of life, Shepard's murder has elicited calls for tolerance of homosexuals from unexpected quarters. At the University of Wyoming this fall, football players will wear yellow and green stickers on their helmets in memory of Shepard. Organizers said that yellow signifies tolerance and green symbolizes peace. In Casper, a conservative city of 51,000, located in the heart of Wyoming's oil belt, tolerance has become the watchword. ``Prejudice against homosexuals is just as redneck as anti-black bias,'` The Casper Star-Tribune, Wyoming's largest newspaper, wrote in its main editorial on Sunday. ``Violence against our homosexual friends and neighbors has created a most un-American climate of fear in Wyoming and the rest of the nation.'' Monday, Jason Marsden, the newspaper's political reporter, wrote lovingly that, ``Matthew Shepard is still my friend, and not just because we are both members of the loose-knit community of gay people striving to make our way in this sometimes hostile place called Wyoming.'' ``Matt was very short and hard to hug,'' Marsden recalled of the young man who had grown up in Casper. ``But it was worth trying, because he'd hug you with everything in his little, fragile frame.'' In a week of spiritual reflection, Aaron Kreifels, the University of Wyoming freshman who found his battered classmate Oct. 7, attributed the chance discovery to ``God's plan.'' On that afternoon, Kreifels, an 18-year-old architectural engineering student, had nearly completed a rigorous six-mile ride on a mountain bike up and down Cactus Canyon, in public lands east of Laramie. Kreifels recalled in an interview Thursday his only mishap of the ride, ``I hit this big limestone rock and did one over the handlebars.'' Dusting himself off and looking around in the fading light of the day, Kreifels recalled, ``I noticed something out of my eye that looked like a scarecrow. I walked around the fence, and as I got closer, I noticed the hair.'' Shepard, his hands bound behind his back with a nylon cord and tied to a fence post, was lying on the ground, face up, unconscious. ``Sometimes I wonder why I found him alive, if he was going to die,'' Kreifels reflected, before traveling to spend this weekend at home with his parents in Grand Island, Neb. ``But I guess God wanted his parents to be with him.'' ||||| At first, the passing bicyclist thought the crumpled form lashed to a ranch fence was a scarecrow. But when he stopped, he found the burned, battered and nearly lifeless body of Matthew Shepard, an openly gay college student who had been tied to the fence 18 hours earlier. On Friday, the 22-year-old University of Wyoming student was in a coma in critical condition. At Albany County courthouse here, Russell Henderson, 21, and Aaron McKinney, 22, were arraigned on charges of kidnapping, aggravated robbery and attempted first-degree murder. Two women described as friends of the men, Kristen Leann Price, 18, and Chastity Vera Pasley, 20, have been charged as accessories after the fact to attempted first-degree murder. Shepard's friends said that he did not know his alleged tormentors. Laramie police say the primary motive was robbery, although court papers filed Friday indicate Shepard's homosexuality may also have been a factor. Shepard's friends call the attack a hate crime. ``He was very open about his sexuality,'' Tina LaBrie, an anthropology student here, said of her friend. ``I admired him for that because it is very courageous to be yourself even when others disagree.'' A few hours before he was beaten, Shepard, a slight 5-foot, 2-inch man who wore braces on his teeth, had attended a meeting of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgendered Association, said Walter Boulden, a friend of Shepard's. ``He was sitting at the bar, having a beer, when two men came up and talked to him,'' Boulden, a 46-year-old university lecturer of social work here, said today between tears. ``He indicated he was gay, and they said they were gay, too.'' ``Now, he is in a coma,'' continued Boulden, who visited his friend at a hospital in Fort Collins, Colo., on Thursday. ``I don't think anybody expects him to pull through.'' Shepard, who spoke Arabic and German, studied at a boarding school in Switzerland before moving back to the United States to attend the University of Wyoming, the alma mater of his father, an oil rig safety inspector in Saudi Arabia. Matthew Shepard was born in Casper, the capital of Wyoming's oil belt, and spent much of his youth there. But six weeks after returning to Wyoming and enrolling as a freshman here, Shepard fell into a depression, said Ms. Labrie and her husband, Phillip. Accustomed to life in Europe and Denver, this foreign language student who wanted to become a diplomat found himself living in this isolated city of 27,000 people. Set in a treeless landscape defined by barbed wire fences, grazing cattle and a busy freight railroad line, Laramie is a town where pickup trucks outnumber sport utility vehicles, where fall entertainment revolves around this Saturday's homecoming football game and the start of the hunting season in the nearby Medicine Bow mountains. Although Wyoming often bills itself as the ``equality state,'' in reference to its being the first state to give women the vote, the state legislature has repeatedly voted down hate crime legislation on the grounds that it would give homosexuals special rights. ``Wyoming is not really gay friendly,'' Marv Johnson, executive director of the Wyoming chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, said from Cheyenne. ``The best way to characterize that is by a comment a legislator made a few years back, when he likened homosexuals to gay bulls as worthless and should be sent to the packing plant.'' Shepard joined the campus gay association at the university within days. One of his favorite haunts was the Fireside Bar, which drew a mixed crowd of college students and rodeo cowboys, gays and straights. ``He definitely wasn't drunk when he came in,'' recalled the bartender, Matt Galloway. ``He wasn't drunk when he went out.'' Calvin Rerucha, the county attorney, charged in court documents today that McKinney and Henderson posed as homosexuals and lured Shepard out to McKinney's pickup truck just after midnight early Wednesday. Beating him inside the truck, the pair drove him one mile southeast to an isolated part of a new rural subdivision, the County Attorney's report charged. There, it said, the men tied their captive to a post-and-rail fence and pistol-whipped him with a .357 magnum ``while he begged for his life.'' Relatives said that Shepard also suffered burns on his body. After nearly beating the young man to death, Laramie Police Commander David O'Malley said, the assailants stole his wallet and shoes and left him tied to the fence. The police commander said that when his officers arrested the two men on Thursday, they found in McKinney's pickup truck a .357 magnum pistol covered with blood and Shepard's shoes and credit card. He said they found Shepard's wallet at McKinney's home. The police commander said that the two women helped the two men dump their bloody clothing, and that they reported hearing the men make anti-gay remarks. Ms. Pasley, a freshman art student at the university, lived with Henderson. Ms. Price lived with McKinney. The police did not say what the other three did for a living. On Friday, friends and Laramie residents struggled to understand the incident. Shepard, some said, may have felt a false sense of confidence because the local Gay Association completed plans on Tuesday night for ``Gay Awareness Week 1998.'' The weeklong series of events starts here Sunday with a local observance of ``National Coming Out Day'' and a lecture on Monday by Leslea Newman, the author of ``Heather Has Two Mommies,'' a book about lesbian families. ``If I were a homosexual in Laramie, I would hang low, very low,'' said Carla Brown, manager of the Fireside. ``Openly gay behavior is not only discouraged, it's dangerous.'' ||||| At first, the passing bicyclist thought the crumpled form lashed to a ranch fence was a scarecrow. But when he stopped, he found the burned, battered and nearly lifeless body of Matthew Shepard, an openly gay college student who had been tied to the fence 18 hours earlier. On Friday, the 22-year-old University of Wyoming student was in a coma in critical condition. At Albany County courthouse here, Russell Henderson, 21, and Aaron McKinney, 22, were arraigned on charges of kidnapping, aggravated robbery and attempted first-degree murder. Two women described as friends of the men, Kristen Leann Price, 18, and Chastity Vera Pasley, 20, have been charged as accessories after the fact to attempted first-degree murder. Shepard's friends said that he did not know his alleged tormentors. Laramie police say the primary motive was robbery, although court papers filed Friday indicate Shepard's homosexuality may also have been a factor. Shepard's friends call the attack a hate crime. ``He was very open about his sexuality,'' Tina LaBrie, an anthropology student here, said of her friend. ``I admired him for that because it is very courageous to be yourself even when others disagree.'' A few hours before he was beaten, Shepard, a slight 5-foot, 2-inch man who wore braces on his teeth, had attended a meeting of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgendered Association, said Walter Boulden, a friend of Shepard's. ``He was sitting at the bar, having a beer, when two men came up and talked to him,'' Boulden, a 46-year-old university lecturer of social work here, said today between tears. ``He indicated he was gay, and they said they were gay, too.'' ``Now, he is in a coma,'' continued Boulden, who visited his friend at a hospital in Fort Collins, Colo., on Thursday. ``I don't think anybody expects him to pull through.'' Shepard, who spoke Arabic and German, studied at a boarding school in Switzerland before moving back to the United States to attend the University of Wyoming, the alma mater of his father, an oil rig safety inspector in Saudi Arabia. Matthew Shepard was born in Casper, the capital of Wyoming's oil belt, and spent much of his youth there. But six weeks after returning to Wyoming and enrolling as a freshman here, Shepard fell into a depression, said Ms. Labrie and her husband, Phillip. Accustomed to life in Europe and Denver, this foreign language student who wanted to become a diplomat found himself living in this isolated city of 27,000 people. Set in a treeless landscape defined by barbed wire fences, grazing cattle and a busy freight railroad line, Laramie is a town where pickup trucks outnumber sport utility vehicles, where fall entertainment revolves around this Saturday's homecoming football game and the start of the hunting season in the nearby Medicine Bow mountains. Although Wyoming often bills itself as the ``equality state,'' in reference to its being the first state to give women the vote, the state legislature has repeatedly voted down hate crime legislation on the grounds that it would give homosexuals special rights. ``Wyoming is not really gay friendly,'' Marv Johnson, executive director of the Wyoming chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, said from Cheyenne. ``The best way to characterize that is by a comment a legislator made a few years back, when he likened homosexuals to gay bulls as worthless and should be sent to the packing plant.'' Shepard joined the campus gay association at the university within days. One of his favorite haunts was the Fireside Bar, which drew a mixed crowd of college students and rodeo cowboys, gays and straights. ``He definitely wasn't drunk when he came in,'' recalled the bartender, Matt Galloway. ``He wasn't drunk when he went out.'' Calvin Rerucha, the county attorney, charged in court documents today that McKinney and Henderson posed as homosexuals and lured Shepard out to McKinney's pickup truck. Beating him inside the truck, the pair drove him one mile southeast to an isolated part of a new rural subdivision, the County Attorney's report charged. There, it said, the men tied their captive to a post-and-rail fence and pistol-whipped him with a .357 magnum ``while he begged for his life.'' Relatives said that Shepard also suffered burns on his body. After nearly beating the young man to death, Laramie Police Commander David O'Malley said, the assailants stole his wallet and shoes and left him tied to the fence. The police commander said that when his officers arrested the two men on Thursday, they found in McKinney's pickup truck a .357 magnum pistol covered with blood and Shepard's shoes and credit card. He said they found Shepard's wallet at McKinney's home. The police commander said that the two women helped the two men dump their bloody clothing, and that they reported hearing the men make anti-gay remarks. Ms. Pasley, a freshman art student at the university, lived with Henderson. Ms. Price lived with McKinney. The police did not say what the other three did for a living. On Friday, friends and Laramie residents struggled to understand the incident. Shepard, some said, may have felt a false sense of confidence because the local Gay Association completed plans on Tuesday night for ``Gay Awareness Week 1998.'' The weeklong series of events starts here Sunday with a local observance of ``National Coming Out Day'' and a lecture on Monday by Leslea Newman, the author of ``Heather Has Two Mommies,'' a book about lesbian families. ``If I were a homosexual in Laramie, I would hang low, very low,'' said Carla Brown, manager of the Fireside. ``Openly gay behavior is not only discouraged, it's dangerous.'' ||||| Matthew Wayne Shepard, the gay student who was beaten in the dead of night, tied to a fence and left to die alone, was mourned at his funeral Friday by 1,000 people, including many who had never met him. ``Matt believed that if he had made one person's life better, he had succeeded,'' his cousin, the Rev. Anne Kitch, said in a homily that was carried beyond the packed pews of St. Mark's Episcopal Church, through a filled parish hall, across the street to a packed Presbyterian church and across Casper on an AM radio station. ``Judging from the world's response,'' she said, ``Matt will have made a difference in the lives of thousands.'' As the first snowstorm of the fall blanketed Casper, fresh flowers filled the red brick church here where Shepard had been baptized as a teen-ager and where he once wore the white robes of an Episcopal acolyte. ``There is an image that comes to mind when I reflect on Matt on that wooden cross rail fence,'' said the Rev. Royce Brown, the pastor of St. Mark's, in a eulogy. ``I replace that image with that of another man hung upon a cross. When I concentrate on that man, I can release the bitterness inside.'' Shepard, a 21-year-old freshman at the University of Wyoming, had dreamed of working one day for human rights. In death, he has become a national catalyst for a new drive to guarantee for gay people the right to physical safety. His death hit a nerve in the nation this week, eliciting dozens of candlelight vigils and rallies for tolerance, several statements of sadness from President Clinton, and a congressional resolution. Thursday, the House of Representatives passed by voice vote a resolution that condemned Shepard's killing as ``outrageous'' and that urged each member of Congress and every U.S. citizen ``to denounce this outrageous murder of another human being.'' In one of the largest rallies, about 1,000 people, including members of Congress of both parties, gathered on the steps of the Capitol in Washington to condemn the Shepherd's killing and to urge passage of a federal bill that would add extra penalties to crimes motivated by a victim's sexual orientation, gender or disability. House Minority Leader Dick Gephardt urged passage of the bill, leading the crowd in a chant of ``Now! Now! Now.'' ``We will never forget the love that the world has shared with this kind, loving son,'' said Shepherd's father, Dennis, his father, outside Casper City Hall, as his mother, Judy, stood by, weeping. He said the family was ``touched beyond measure'' by ``the thousands of e-mail comments, Web-site messages, phone calls and cards offering help, consolation, sympathy and support.'' Before the funeral, about a dozen protesters, largely from Kansas and Texas, waved signs with anti-homosexual messages. But mourners stood in front of them, singing ``Amazing Grace'' and holding umbrellas to block the sight of the spectacle from friends and family members entering the church. On hearing of the protest, Laramie's City Council held an emergency meeting Thursday night and unanimously passed an ordinance banning protests during funerals. Wyoming Gov. Jim Geringer had warned in advance that anti-gay protesters were ``just flat not welcome.'' The governor, a Republican, added, ``What we don't need is a bunch of wingnuts coming in.'' Shepard was born in Casper and attended elementary school, junior high and several years of high school and college here. With flags at Casper's public schools flying at half-staff Friday, many mourners were his old classmates. Others traveled here, one driving from as far away as New Jersey, out of a sense of solidarity. ``I've had a pit in my heart and my stomach since I heard this,'' said Steve Pietrangelo, who drove 300 miles to wait three hours in cold rain and snow to attend the funeral of a man he never met. ``I just wanted to pay my respects to him and his family.'' Touching people of all walks of life, Shepard's murder has elicited calls for tolerance of homosexuals from unexpected quarters. At the University of Wyoming this fall, football players will wear yellow and green stickers on their helmets in memory of Shepard. Organizers said that yellow signifies tolerance and green symbolizes peace. In Casper, a conservative city of 51,000, located in the heart of Wyoming's oil belt, tolerance has become the watchword. ``Prejudice against homosexuals is just as redneck as anti-black bias,'` The Casper Star-Tribune, Wyoming's largest newspaper, wrote in its main editorial on Sunday. ``Violence against our homosexual friends and neighbors has created a most un-American climate of fear in Wyoming and the rest of the nation.'' Monday, Jason Marsden, the newspaper's political reporter, wrote lovingly that, ``Matthew Shepard is still my friend, and not just because we are both members of the loose-knit community of gay people striving to make our way in this sometimes hostile place called Wyoming.'' ``Matt was very short and hard to hug,'' Marsden recalled of the young man who had grown up in Casper. ``But it was worth trying, because he'd hug you with everything in his little, fragile frame.'' In a week of spiritual reflection, Aaron Kreifels, the University of Wyoming freshman who found his battered classmate Oct. 7, attributed the chance discovery to ``God's plan.'' On that afternoon, Kreifels, an 18-year-old architectural engineering student, had nearly completed a rigorous six-mile ride on a mountain bike up and down Cactus Canyon, in public lands east of Laramie. Kreifels recalled in an interview Thursday that his only mishap of the ride, ``I hit this big limestone rock and did one over the handlebars.'' Dusting himself off and looking around in the fading light of the day, Kreifels recalled, ``I noticed something out of my eye that looked like a scarecrow. I walked around the fence, and as I got closer, I noticed the hair.'' Shepard, his hands bound behind his back with a nylon cord and tied to a fence post, was lying on the ground, face up, unconscious. ``Sometimes I wonder why I found him alive, if he was going to die,'' Kreifels reflected, before traveling to spend this weekend at home with his parents in Grand Island, Neb. ``But I guess God wanted his parents to be with him.'' ||||| Last Saturday morning, while Matthew Shepard lay comatose from a beating, a college homecoming parade passed a few blocks from his hospital bed in Fort Collins. Propped on a fraternity float was a straw-haired scarecrow, labeled in black spray paint: ``I'm Gay.'' Few people missed the message. Three days earlier, Shepard, a gay University of Wyoming freshman, was savagely beaten and tied to a ranch fence in such a position that a passerby first mistook him for a scarecrow. Tuesday, officials at Colorado State University reacted with outrage to the fraternity float, opening an investigation and disciplinary procedures against the fraternity, Pi Kappa Alpha. The fraternity chapter immediately suspended seven members and said they had acted independently. But in a week when candlelight vigils for Shepard were being held on campuses across the nation, the scarecrow incident highlighted how hostility toward gay people often flourishes in high schools and universities, gay leaders said Tuesday. ``People would like to think that what happened to Matthew was an exception to the rule but, it was an extreme version of what happens in our schools on a daily basis,'' said Kevin Jennings, executive director of the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network, a New York group dedicated to ending anti-gay bias in the schools. Shepard, a slightly built 21-year-old, died on Monday morning from the injuries suffered in the beating. He never regained consciousness after being discovered on the evening of Oct. 7, 18 hours after he was lashed to the fence. Two men, Russell Henderson, 21, and Aaron McKinney, 22, were arraigned late Monday night on first-degree murder charges. Their girlfriends, Chasity Pasley, 20, and Kristen Price, 18, have been arraigned as accessories after the fact. In response to the killing, about 50 candelight vigils were scheduled this week, from Texas to Vermont, from Wayne, Neb., to New York City. At the Poudre Valley Hospital in Fort Collins where Shepard was in intensive care for five days, his parents, Dennis and Judy Shepard, received about 6,000 electronic messages of condolences. Tuesday, when funeral arrangements were announced for Friday in Casper, Wyo., the hospital Web site received 30,000 hits an hour. Friends at the University of Wyoming in Laramie, Wyo., have set up The Matthew Shepard Memorial Fund to raise money to pressure the state legislature to pass anti-hate crime legislation. ``I see his name going down in gay history as a catalyst for renewed activism,'' said Matt Foreman, a former Wyomingite who directs Empire State Pride Agenda, a gay political organization in New York. From around the nation Tuesday, gay leaders stressed that campus homophobia is not restricted to college towns in the Rocky Mountain West. Last year, in a survey of almost 4,000 Massachusetts high school students, 22 percent of gay respondents said they skipped school in the past month because they felt unsafe at school, and 31 percent said they had been threatened or injured at school in the past year. These percentages were about five times greater than the percentages of heterosexual respondents. The survey was conducted at 58 high schools by the Massachusetts Department of Education. In a separate study of nearly 500 community college students in the San Francisco area, 32 percent of male respondents said they had verbally threatened gay people and 18 percent said they had physically threatened or assaulted gay people. The study was conducted this year by Karen Franklin, a forensic psychologist who is a researcher at the University of Washington. Surveys of gay college students conducted in the late 1980s at Yale University, Oberlin College, Rutgers University and Penn State found that 16 percent to 26 percent had been threatened with violence, and that 40 percent to 76 percent had been verbally harassed, said the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, a lobbying group based in Washington. Last year, a student group in Des Moines, Iowa, called Concerned Students, recorded hallway and classroom conversations at five high schools on 10 ``homophobia recording day.'' They estimated that the average Des Moines high school student hears about 25 anti-gay remarks every day. ``Nine out of 10 `teaching tolerance' courses weed out gays,'' Foreman said. ``There are a lot of people preaching anti-racism and anti-semitism. But it is still very much OK to make anti-gay jokes, to express anti-gay sentiments.'' In a survey of the nation's 42 largest school districts, 76 percent do not train teachers on issues facing gay students, and 42 percent do not have policies to protect students from discrimination based on sexual orientation, said the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network, which conducted the survey last month. In Fort Collins, while hospital officials struggled with an electronic avalanche of condolences, city police detectives were investigating a different kind of e-mail. On Monday, hours after Shepard's death, two gay organizations, the Rainbow Chorus and the Lambda Community Center, received identical messages applauding Shepard's murder. The messages closed with the words: ``I hope it happens more often.'' ||||| As a gay college student lay hospitalized in critical condition after a severe beating here, this small city, which bills itself as ``Wyoming's hometown,'' wrestled with its attitudes towards gay men. On Saturday, at the University of Wyoming's annual homecoming parade, ``Pistol Pete'' and his uniformed brass band were overshadowed by a larger group of marchers _ 450 people, many wearing yellow armbands and carrying signs in support of the 21-year-old student, Matthew Shepard, who suffered severe head injuries in the attack last week. ``Hate is not a Small Town Value _ No to Violence and Evil,'' read one sign, as watchers applauded. With passersby spontaneously joining the protest group, two women held another sign that read, ``No Hate Crimes in Wyoming.'' Two candlelight vigils were held Sunday night at churches near the campus. At the Poudre Valley Hospital in Fort Collins, Colo., where Shepard's health continued to deteriorate, the hospital has received so many flowers that nurses have started to distribute bouquets to other patients. A vigil at the hospital on Saturday evening drew about 500 people. ``We live in the Equality State,'' Shannon Rexroat wrote Friday in a special edition of the Branding Iron, the campus newspaper. Referring to Wyoming's pioneer heritage as the first state to grant women the right to vote, Ms. Rexroat, the campus newspaper's editor added: ``That means nothing to me anymore. We live in a state where a young man was brutally beaten because he is gay.'' But others recalled another side of ``Wyoming's hometown,''which has a population of more than 26,000. Jamie Lewis, another editor, said that on Friday he was handing out copies of the special edition when a passerby backed away from him and used an anti-gay epithet. Last week's brutal assault bubbled out of an ongoing climate of hostility toward gay men and lesbians, leaders of the local Unitarian church said in a letter published Sunday in the city's newspaper, The Laramie Daily Boomerang. ``This incident was atypical in its brutality, but not in its underlying motive,'' wrote Jeffrey Lockwood and Stephen Johnson. Gay people in Laramie, they wrote, ``are frequently assaulted with derision, intolerance, insult and hostility _ if not guns and ropes.'' Ric Turley, who dropped out of college here after one year in the 1970s, recalled driving here to see his family for Christmas in 1993 and seeing a vandalized billboard on the main highway. Under a brace of pistols, an advertising appeal for a state history museum had been changed, he said, from ``Shoot a Day or Two,'' to ``Shoot a Gay or Two.'' Turley, who is gay and said he only came out after he had left Wyoming, said that he immediately complained to the museum. But returning a month later, he found the message had not been erased. After complaining to the museum for a second time, he said he took a can of black spray paint and blotted out the word ``gay.'' ``It was this kind of complacency and apathy that allowed this to happen,'' he said of the beating in which two local men have been charged, Russell Henderson and Aaron McKinney. According to the local police and prosecutors, the two men lured Shepard out of a bar by saying they were gay. Then, the Laramie police say, the pair kidnapped Shepard, pistol-whipped him with a .357 Magnum and left him tied to a ranch fence for 18 hours until a passing bicyclist spotted Shepard, who was unconscious. On Sunday, the Laramie police said that McKinney had been arrested on Thursday at the same hospital in Fort Collins where Shepard was being treated. McKinney was being treated for a ``minor'' skull fracture unrelated to the fracas with Shepard, said Ben Fritzen, a Laramie police detective. President Clinton has condemned the attack, saying on Saturday, ``I was deeply grieved by the act of violence perpetrated against Matthew Shepard.'' Clinton urged Congress to pass the federal Hate Crimes Prevention Act, saying, ``There is nothing more important to the future of this country than our standing together against intolerance, prejudice and violent bigotry.'' Wyoming is one of 10 states that does not have a hate crime law. The latest attempt died in the state Legislature in Cheyenne in February. On Saturday, Wyoming's governor, Jim Geringer, said he was ``outraged and sickened'' by the attack. Here in Laramie, McKinney's father, Bill, also condemned the attack. His pickup truck was apparently used in the kidnapping. But he also complained about the massive attention by the national media. The national press ``blew it totally out of proportion because it involved a homosexual,'' McKinney told The Denver Post. `Had this been a heterosexual these two boys decided to take out and rob, this never would have made the national news.'' Shepard grew up in Casper until his sophomore year in high school, when his father, an oil rig safety engineer, was transferred to Saudi Arabia. The young man completed high school at a boarding school in Lugano, Switzerland, where he learned Italian and German. On Saturday, his parents, Dennis and Judy Shepard, released a statement from Fort Collins thanking ``the American public for their kind thoughts about Matthew.'' ``He is a trusting person who takes everybody at face value and he does not see the bad side of anyone,'' the Shepards wrote. ``He has always strongly felt that all people are the same, regardless of their sexual preference, race or religion.'' Noting that their son was born prematurely and that his ``life has often been a struggle,'' they added, ``He is physically short in stature, but we believe he is a giant when it comes to respecting the worth of others.'' ||||| Matthew Wayne Shepard, the gay student who was beaten in the dead of night, tied to a fence and left to die alone, was mourned at his funeral Friday by 1,000 people, including many who had never met him. ``Matt believed that if he had made one person's life better, he had succeeded,'' his cousin, the Rev. Anne Kitch, said in a homily that was carried beyond the packed pews of St. Mark's Episcopal Church, through a filled parish hall, across the street to a packed Presbyterian church and across Casper on an AM radio station. ``Judging from the world's response,'' she said, ``Matt will have made a difference in the lives of thousands.'' As the first snowstorm of the fall blanketed Casper, fresh flowers filled the red brick church here where Shepard had been baptized as a teen-ager and where he once wore the white robes of an Episcopal acolyte. ``There is an image that comes to mind when I reflect on Matt on that wooden cross rail fence,'' said the Rev. Royce Brown, the pastor of St. Mark's, in a eulogy. ``I replace that image with that of another man hung upon a cross. When I concentrate on that man, I can release the bitterness inside.'' Shepard, a 21-year-old freshman at the University of Wyoming, had dreamed of working one day for human rights. In death, he has become a national catalyst for a new drive to guarantee for gay people the right to physical safety. His death hit a nerve in the nation this week, eliciting dozens of candlelight vigils and rallies for tolerance, several statements of sadness from President Clinton, and a congressional resolution. Thursday, the House of Representatives passed by voice vote a resolution that condemned Shepard's killing as ``outrageous'' and that urged each member of Congress and every U.S. citizen ``to denounce this outrageous murder of another human being.'' In one of the largest rallies, about 1,000 people, including members of Congress of both parties, gathered on the steps of the Capitol in Washington to condemn Shepherd's killing and to urge passage of a federal bill that would add extra penalties to crimes motivated by a victim's sexual orientation, gender or disability. House Minority Leader Dick Gephardt urged passage of the bill, leading the crowd in a chant of ``Now! Now! Now.'' ``We will never forget the love that the world has shared with this kind, loving son,'' said Shepherd's father, Dennis, his father, outside Casper City Hall, as his mother, Judy, stood by, weeping. He said the family was ``touched beyond measure'' by ``the thousands of e-mail comments, Web-site messages, phone calls and cards offering help, consolation, sympathy and support.'' Before the funeral, about a dozen protesters, largely from Kansas and Texas, waved signs with anti-homosexual messages. But mourners stood in front of them, singing ``Amazing Grace'' and holding umbrellas to block the sight of the spectacle from friends and family members entering the church. On hearing of the protest, Laramie's City Council held an emergency meeting Thursday night and unanimously passed an ordinance banning protests during funerals. Wyoming Gov. Jim Geringer had warned in advance that anti-gay protesters were ``just flat not welcome.'' The governor, a Republican, added, ``What we don't need is a bunch of wingnuts coming in.'' Shepard was born in Casper and attended elementary school, junior high and several years of high school and college here. With flags at Casper's public schools flying at half-staff Friday, many mourners were his old classmates. Others traveled here, one driving from as far away as New Jersey, out of a sense of solidarity. ``I've had a pit in my heart and my stomach since I heard this,'' said Steve Pietrangelo, who drove 300 miles to wait three hours in cold rain and snow to attend the funeral of a man he never met. ``I just wanted to pay my respects to him and his family.'' Touching people of all walks of life, Shepard's murder has elicited calls for tolerance of homosexuals from unexpected quarters. At the University of Wyoming this fall, football players will wear yellow and green stickers on their helmets in memory of Shepard. Organizers said that yellow signifies tolerance and green symbolizes peace. In Casper, a conservative city of 51,000, located in the heart of Wyoming's oil belt, tolerance has become the watchword. ``Prejudice against homosexuals is just as redneck as anti-black bias,'` The Casper Star-Tribune, Wyoming's largest newspaper, wrote in its main editorial on Sunday. ``Violence against our homosexual friends and neighbors has created a most un-American climate of fear in Wyoming and the rest of the nation.'' Monday, Jason Marsden, the newspaper's political reporter, wrote lovingly that, ``Matthew Shepard is still my friend, and not just because we are both members of the loose-knit community of gay people striving to make our way in this sometimes hostile place called Wyoming.'' ``Matt was very short and hard to hug,'' Marsden recalled of the young man who had grown up in Casper. ``But it was worth trying, because he'd hug you with everything in his little, fragile frame.'' In a week of spiritual reflection, Aaron Kreifels, the University of Wyoming freshman who found his battered classmate Oct. 7, attributed the chance discovery to ``God's plan.'' On that afternoon, Kreifels, an 18-year-old architectural engineering student, had nearly completed a rigorous six-mile ride on a mountain bike up and down Cactus Canyon, in public lands east of Laramie. Kreifels recalled in an interview Thursday that his only mishap of the ride, ``I hit this big limestone rock and did one over the handlebars.'' Dusting himself off and looking around in the fading light of the day, Kreifels recalled, ``I noticed something out of my eye that looked like a scarecrow. I walked around the fence, and as I got closer, I noticed the hair.'' Shepard, his hands bound behind his back with a nylon cord and tied to a fence post, was lying on the ground, face up, unconscious. ``Sometimes I wonder why I found him alive, if he was going to die,'' Kreifels reflected, before traveling to spend this weekend at home with his parents in Grand Island, Neb. ``But I guess God wanted his parents to be with him.'' ||||| Matthew Shepard, the gay college student who was kidnapped and severely beaten, died here Monday, five days after he was found unconscious on a Wyoming ranch where he had been left tied to a fence for 18 hours in near-freezing temperatures. His death, announced at Poudre Valley Hospital here, fanned the outrage that followed word of last week's attack, spawning nationwide vigils, producing a call for federal hate-crimes legislation from President Clinton and fueling debates over such laws in a host of Western states, including Wyoming, that have resisted them. From Denver to the University of Maryland, people turned out to honor the The slight, soft-spoken 21-year-old Shepard, a freshman at the University of Wyoming, who became an overnight symbol of anti-gay violence after he was found dangling from the fence by a passerby. Russell Anderson, 21, and Aaron McKinney, 21, were charged with attempted murder and are expected to face first-degree murder charges that could bring the death penalty. Their girlfriends, Chastity Pasley, 21, and Kristen Price, 18, were charged as accessories. In Denver, mourners wrote messages on a graffiti wall as part of national Gay Awareness Week. In San Francisco, a giant rainbow flag that symbolizes the gay rights movement was lowered to half-staff in the Castro district. ``There is incredible symbolism about being tied to a fence,'' said Rebecca Isaacs, political director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force in Washington. ``People have likened it to a scarecrow. But it sounded more like a crucifixion.'' Police in Laramie, Wyo., where the beating took place, have said they believed robbery was the primary motive for the attack against Shepard, which occurred outside a bar in the town of 27,000. But investigators also said Shepard's sexuality may have been a factor. Police said Henderson and McKinney lured Shepard from the bar by saying they too were gay and one of their girlfriends said Shepard had embarassed one of the men by making a pass at him. Monday, police said that after leaving Shepard tied to the fence, the men returned to Laramie and picked a fight on a street corner with two Hispanic men, Emiliano Morales, 19, and Jeremy Herrera, 18. McKinney and Morales suffered head injuries in the brawl; McKinney was arrested when he sought treatment at the same hospital where Shepard died. Gay leaders hope _ and Christian conservatives fear _ that Shepard's death will galvanize Congress and state legislatures to pass hate-crime legislation or broaden existing laws. Conservatives generally oppose such laws because they favor one group's rights over another. In the last two decades, 21 states and the District of Columbia have passed laws that increase penalties for crimes that are committed because of a person's race, religion, color, national origin, and sexual orientation. Another 19 states, including Colorado, do not include sexual orientation in their hate-crime laws. Ten states, including Wyoming, have no hate-crime laws at all. In Washington, Clinton responded to news of Shepard's death by urging Congress to pass the federal Hate Crimes Protection Act, which would make federal offenses of crimes based on sex, disability and sexual orientation. Wyoming has been one of the nation's holdouts, rejecting three hate crimes bills since 1994, most recently in February. But Monday, after Shepard's death, Gov. Jim Geringer appealed to lawmakers to reconsider their opposition. ``I ask for a collective suggestion for anti-bias, anti-hate legislation that can be presented to the Wyoming Legislature for their consideration in January,'' Geringer said. The governor met Monday morning with Dennis Shepard, the slain student's father, and said that the elder Shepard did not want his son's death to become ``a media circus'' and that ``we should not use Matt to further an agenda.'' Geringer said that Shepard's father also said: ``Don't rush into just passing all kinds of new hate-crimes laws. Be very careful of any changes and be sure you're not taking away rights of others in the process to race to this.'' Leaders of gay rights groups interviewed Monday said they would respect the family's privacy by not attending the burial in Casper, Wyo., on Saturday. But they added that they hoped the death would have an impact on legislators around the nation. ``Matthew's death, I hope, will bring about a better and deeper understanding of hate crime laws,'' said Elizabeth Birch, executive director of the Human Rights Campaign, a lesbian and gay rights group that has 250,000 members. ``Matthew's death may lead to an awakening in Wyoming and in the United States Congress as the need for this legislation.'' In 1996, 21 men and women were killed in the United States because of their sexual orientation, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, an Alabama group that tracks violence against minorities. According to the FBI, sexual orientation was a factor in 11.6 percent of the 8,759 hate crimes recorded in 1996. But Christian conservatives warn that gay leaders want to use Shepard's death to expand hate rights laws and to curtail freedom of speech. ``Hate crimes laws have nothing to do with perpetrators of violent crime and everything to do with silencing political opposition,'' said Steven Schwalm, an analyst with the Family Research Council, a Washington group dedicated to defending ``faith, family and freedom.'' ``It would criminalize pro-family beliefs,'' Schwalm said. ``This basically sends a message that you can't disagree with the political message of homosexual activists.'' Agreement came from John Paulk, who was featured this summer in a series of advertisements about how he and his wife, Anne, ``overcame'' homosexuality through religious conversion. ``We have every right to speak out against an agenda that is contrary to Biblical norms,'' said Paulk, who describes himself as a homosexuality specialist for Focus on the Family, a Christian group in Colorado Springs, Colo. ``Because we are standing up and opposing the homosexual agenda, we are being looked upon as advocating violence against homosexuals, when we categorically reject violence against homosexuals.'' Last Thursday, the Family Research Council unveiled a series of television advertisements that preach the ``healing'' of homosexuality through religious conversion. Gay leaders charge that these advertisements help create a hostile climate for homosexuals, a climate that can lead to violence. Hate crime laws that are on the books in 40 states have not impinged on freedom of speech, said Brian Levin, a criminal justice professor who directs the Center on Hate and Extremism at Stockton College, in Pomona, N.J. Instead, he said, hate crime laws send a clear message that society does not tolerate attacks on minorities. ``We want to deter the broken windows and simple assaults before they escalate,'' he said. Referring to murders of homosexuals, he added: ``These crimes are preventable. Offenders get emboldened if they are not punished the first time.'' Levin said that his research indicated that homosexuals suffered higher rates of violent crime than the population at large. He also said that roughly half of the people who attack homosexuals are male, aged 22 or younger. ``With other crimes, violence is a means to an end. With hate crimes, the violence becomes an unstoppable goal,'' Levin said. Shepard suffered a dozen cuts around the head, face and neck, as well as a massive blow to the back of his skull. ``Because their social stature in society, gays are often viewed as appropriate targets,'' Levin added. Citing the need for hate crime laws to send a clear message to gay bashers, Levin said: ``The discourse in society leaves many of these people to believe that what they are doing is socially acceptable.'' While some gay leaders saw crucifixion imagery in Shepard's death, others saw a different symbolism: the Old West practice of nailing a dead coyote to a ranch fence as a warning to future intruders. ``This University of Wyoming student was beaten and left to die, tied to a fence like an animal because he was honest and open about being gay,'' Beatrice Dorhn, legal director of the Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund, said Monday, ``Matthew Shepard's horrible suffering and death cannot be dismissed simply as the fault of deranged, isolated individuals. His attackers are among millions of Americans who constantly hear the message that gay people are not worthy of the most basic equal treatment,'' Ms. Dorhn said.

A 22-year old gay University of Wyoming student was found beaten and left to die lashed to a fence. Two men were arraigned on kidnapping, robbery, and attempted murder charges (changed to murder after Shepard died) and two females were charged as accessories. Expressions of sympathy came from across the nation, including President Clinton and the crime was widely denounced. The savage nature of the crime renewed calls for enactment of hate-crimes legislation. The House passed a resolution calling the killing "outrageous". On the day Shepard died, the Family Research Council co-hosted a press conference to demonize gay people.

Matthew Shepard, the gay college student who was kidnapped and severely beaten, died here Monday, five days after he was found unconscious on a Wyoming ranch where he had been left tied to a fence for 18 hours in near-freezing temperatures. His death, announced at Poudre Valley Hospital here, fanned the outrage that followed word of last week's attack, spawning nationwide vigils, producing a call for federal hate-crimes legislation from President Clinton and fueling debates over such laws in a host of Western states, including Wyoming, that have resisted them. From Denver to the University of Maryland, people turned out to honor the The slight, soft-spoken 21-year-old Shepard, a freshman at the University of Wyoming, who became an overnight symbol of anti-gay violence after he was found dangling from the fence by a passerby. Two men and two women have been charged in the case. The men were charged with attempted murder and are expected to face first-degree murder charges that could bring the death penalty. ``There is incredible symbolism about being tied to a fence,'' said Rebecca Isaacs, political director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force in Washington. ``People have likened it to a scarecrow. But it sounded more like a crucifixion.'' Gay leaders hope _ and Christian conservatives fear _ that Shepard's death will galvanize Congress and state legislatures to pass hate-crime legislation or broaden existing laws. Conservatives generally oppose such laws because they favor one group's rights over another. In the last two decades, 21 states and the District of Columbia have passed laws that increase penalties for crimes that are committed because of a person's race, religion, color, national origin, and sexual orientation. Another 19 states, including Colorado, do not include sexual orientation in their hate-crime laws. Ten states, including Wyoming, have no hate-crime laws at all. In Washington, Clinton responded to news of Shepard's death by urging Congress to pass the federal Hate Crimes Protection Act, which would make federal offenses of crimes based on sex, disability and sexual orientation. Wyoming has been one of the nation's holdouts, rejecting three hate crimes bills since 1994, most recently in February. But Monday, after Shepard's death, Gov. Jim Geringer appealed to lawmakers to reconsider their opposition. ``I ask for a collective suggestion for anti-bias, anti-hate legislation that can be presented to the Wyoming Legislature for their consideration in January,'' Geringer said. The governor met Monday morning with Dennis Shepard, the slain student's father, and said that the elder Shepard did not want his son's death to become ``a media circus'' and that ``we should not use Matt to further an agenda.'' Geringer said that Shepard's father also said: ``Don't rush into just passing all kinds of new hate-crimes laws. Be very careful of any changes and be sure you're not taking away rights of others in the process to race to this.'' Leaders of gay rights groups interviewed Monday said they would respect the family's privacy by not attending the burial in Casper, Wyo., on Saturday. But they added that they hoped the death would have an impact on legislators around the nation. ``Matthew's death, I hope, will bring about a better and deeper understanding of hate crime laws,'' said Elizabeth Birch, executive director of the Human Rights Campaign, a lesbian and gay rights group that has 250,000 members. ``Matthew's death may lead to an awakening in Wyoming and in the United States Congress as the need for this legislation.'' In 1996, 21 men and women were killed in the United States because of their sexual orientation, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, an Alabama group that tracks violence against minorities. According to the FBI, sexual orientation was a factor in 11.6 percent of the 8,759 hate crimes recorded in 1996. But Christian conservatives warn that gay leaders want to use Shepard's death to expand hate rights laws and to curtail freedom of speech. ``Hate crimes laws have nothing to do with perpetrators of violent crime and everything to do with silencing political opposition,'' said Steven Schwalm, an analyst with the Family Research Council, a Washington group dedicated to defending ``faith, family and freedom.'' ``It would criminalize pro-family beliefs,'' Schwalm said. ``This basically sends a message that you can't disagree with the political message of homosexual activists.'' Agreement came from John Paulk, who was featured this summer in a series of advertisements about how he and his wife, Anne, ``overcame'' homosexuality through religious conversion. ``We have every right to speak out against an agenda that is contrary to Biblical norms,'' said Paulk, who describes himself as a homosexuality specialist for Focus on the Family, a Christian group in Colorado Springs, Colo. ``Because we are standing up and opposing the homosexual agenda, we are being looked upon as advocating violence against homosexuals, when we categorically reject violence against homosexuals.'' Last Thursday, the Family Research Council unveiled a series of television advertisements that preach the ``healing'' of homosexuality through religious conversion. Gay leaders charge that these advertisements help create a hostile climate for homosexuals, a climate that can lead to violence. Hate crime laws that are on the books in 40 states have not impinged on freedom of speech, said Brian Levin, a criminal justice professor who directs the Center on Hate and Extremism at Stockton College, in Pomona, N.J. Instead, he said, hate crime laws send a clear message that society does not tolerate attacks on minorities. ``We want to deter the broken windows and simple assaults before they escalate,'' he said. Referring to murders of homosexuals, he added: ``These crimes are preventable. Offenders get emboldened if they are not punished the first time.'' Levin said that his research indicated that homosexuals suffered higher rates of violent crime than the population at large. He also said that roughly half of the people who attack homosexuals are male, aged 22 or younger. The two men charged in the killing of Shephard are both white, Russell Henderson, 21, and Aaron McKinney, 22. ``With other crimes, violence is a means to an end. With hate crimes, the violence becomes an unstoppable goal,'' Levin said. Shepard suffered a dozen cuts around the head, face and neck, as well as a massive blow to the back of his skull. ``Because their social stature in society, gays are often viewed as appropriate targets,'' Levin added. Citing the need for hate crime laws to send a clear message to gay bashers, Levin said: ``The discourse in society leaves many of these people to believe that what they are doing is socially acceptable.'' While some gay leaders saw crucifixion imagery in Shepard's death, others saw a different symbolism: the Old West practice of nailing a dead coyote to a ranch fence as a warning to future intruders. ``This University of Wyoming student was beaten and left to die, tied to a fence like an animal because he was honest and open about being gay,'' Beatrice Dorhn, legal director of the Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund, said Monday, ``Matthew Shepard's horrible suffering and death cannot be dismissed simply as the fault of deranged, isolated individuals. His attackers are among millions of Americans who constantly hear the message that gay people are not worthy of the most basic equal treatment,'' Ms. Dorhn said. ||||| On the same day Americans learned last week that Matthew Shepard, a 5-foot-2, 105-pound gay college student, had been tortured, strung up like an animal and left to die on a fence outside Laramie, Wyo., the Family Research Council was co-hosting a press conference in Washington. It was the latest salvo in a six-month campaign by the religious right, with the tacit, even explicit, approval of Republican leaders, to demonize gay people for political gain in this election year. This particular press conference was to announce a new barrage of ads _ a TV follow-up to a summer print campaign _ in which alleged former homosexuals who have ``changed'' implore others to do likewise ``through the power of Jesus Christ.'' The commercials, gooey in style, end with a slogan: ``It's not about hate ... It's about hope.'' But it's really about stirring up the fear that produces hate. If these ads were truly aimed at gay people, they wouldn't be broadcast at extravagant cost to the wide general audience reached by TV, and they wouldn't be trumpeted in Washington, insuring free national exposure, three weeks before Election Day. The ads themselves, despite the sugar-coating of ``hope,'' ooze malice. In one of them, homosexuality is linked to drug addiction and certain death by AIDS; all of them implicitly posit that homosexuality is itself a disease in need of a cure. Matthew Shepard has now been ``cured,'' that's for sure. As his uncle, R.W. Eaton, told The Denver Post, the 21-year-old Matt, who aspired to a career in diplomacy and human rights, was ``a small person with a big heart, mind and soul that someone tried to beat out of him.'' Of his nephew's shattered body Eaton said, ``It's like something you might see in war.'' And a war it is. Go to the Family Research Council's Web site and you will find a proud description of its readiness to ``wage the war against the homosexual agenda and fight to maintain the traditional meaning of `family.''' The head of the Family Research Council is Gary Bauer, a GOP power broker and putative presidential candidate, who disingenuously goes on talk shows to say that his organization hates no one and deplores violence. But if you wage a well-financed media air war in which people with an innate difference in sexual orientation are ceaselessly branded as sinful and diseased and un-American seekers of ``special rights,'' ground war will follow. It's a story as old as history. Once any group is successfully scapegoated as a subhuman threat to ``normal'' values by a propaganda machine, emboldened thugs take over. Two weeks after James Byrd was savagely dragged to his death from a pickup truck in Texas in June, I wrote a column about an ugly incident outside the GOP state convention in Fort Worth, where a mob threatened a group of gay Log Cabin Republicans who were protesting discriminatory treatment by their own party. The gay-bashers had been directly preceded by steady saber-rattling from Republican politicians: Sen. James Inhofe of Oklahoma had likened James Hormel, a gay nominee to an ambassadorship, to David Duke; Pat Robertson had wondered on TV if God might wreak havoc on Disney World for its ``Gay Days''; the Texas GOP spokesman had likened Log Cabin to the Ku Klux Klan. Just two days after this near-brush with violence in Fort Worth, Trent Lott was on TV seconding the religious right's condemnation of gay people as sinful and sick. A frightened gay Texas Republican who had been at the convention melee asked when I interviewed him then: ``Do you have to have someone hurt and beat up and dragged from a truck to stop this?'' Months later not even the murder in Laramie has moved Lott to apologize for his words, and still no major GOP leader dares take on its ``religious'' wing and its crusade against people like Matthew Shepard. In one of the new ads in that supposedly hate-free crusade, an ostensibly loving mother condemns her son for the ``bad choice'' of being gay. Is it that mother who speaks for American values, or is it Matthew's? ``Go home, give your kids a hug,'' Judy Shepard said in a message read by a tearful hospital spokesman who announced her child's death early Monday morning, ``and don't let a day go by without telling them you love them.'' ||||| Matthew Wayne Shepard, the gay student who was beaten in the dead of night, tied to a fence and left to die alone, was mourned at his funeral Friday by 1,000 people, including many who had never met him. ``Matt believed that if he had made one person's life better, he had succeeded,'' his cousin, the Rev. Anne Kitch, said in a homily that was carried beyond the packed pews of St. Mark's Episcopal Church, through a filled parish hall, across the street to a packed Presbyterian church and across Casper on an AM radio station. ``Judging from the world's response,'' she said, ``Matt will have made a difference in the lives of thousands.'' As the first snowstorm of the fall blanketed Casper, fresh flowers filled the red brick church here where Shepard had been baptized as a teen-ager and where he once wore the white robes of an Episcopal acolyte. ``There is an image that comes to mind when I reflect on Matt on that wooden cross rail fence,'' said the Rev. Royce Brown, the pastor of St. Mark's, in a eulogy. ``I replace that image with that of another man hung upon a cross. When I concentrate on that man, I can release the bitterness inside.'' Shepard, a 21-year-old freshman at the University of Wyoming, had dreamed of working one day for human rights. In death, he has become a national catalyst for a new drive to guarantee for gay people the right to physical safety. His death hit a nerve in the nation this week, eliciting dozens of candlelight vigils and rallies for tolerance, several statements of sadness from President Clinton, and a congressional resolution. Thursday, the House of Representatives passed by voice vote a resolution that condemned Shepard's killing as ``outrageous'' and that urged each member of Congress and every U.S. citizen ``to denounce this outrageous murder of another human being.'' In one of the largest rallies, about 1,000 people, including members of Congress of both parties, gathered on the steps of the Capitol in Washington to condemn Shepherd's killing and to urge passage of a federal bill that would add extra penalties to crimes motivated by a victim's sexual orientation, gender or disability. House Minority Leader Dick Gephardt urged passage of the bill, leading the crowd in a chant of ``Now! Now! Now.'' ``We will never forget the love that the world has shared with this kind, loving son,'' said Shepherd's father, Dennis, his father, outside Casper City Hall, as his mother, Judy, stood by, weeping. He said the family was ``touched beyond measure'' by ``the thousands of e-mail comments, Web-site messages, phone calls and cards offering help, consolation, sympathy and support.'' Before the funeral, about a dozen protesters, largely from Kansas and Texas, waved signs with anti-homosexual messages. But mourners stood in front of them, singing ``Amazing Grace'' and holding umbrellas to block the sight of the spectacle from friends and family members entering the church. On hearing of the protest, the Casper City Council held an emergency meeting Thursday night and unanimously passed an ordinance banning protests during funerals. Wyoming Gov. Jim Geringer had warned in advance that anti-gay protesters were ``just flat not welcome.'' The governor, a Republican, added, ``What we don't need is a bunch of wingnuts coming in.'' Shepard was born in Casper and attended elementary school, junior high and several years of high school and college here. With flags at Casper's public schools flying at half-staff Friday, many mourners were his old classmates. Others traveled here, one driving from as far away as New Jersey, out of a sense of solidarity. ``I've had a pit in my heart and my stomach since I heard this,'' said Steve Pietrangelo, who drove 300 miles to wait three hours in cold rain and snow to attend the funeral of a man he never met. ``I just wanted to pay my respects to him and his family.'' Touching people of all walks of life, Shepard's murder has elicited calls for tolerance of homosexuals from unexpected quarters. At the University of Wyoming this fall, football players will wear yellow and green stickers on their helmets in memory of Shepard. Organizers said that yellow signifies tolerance and green symbolizes peace. In Casper, a conservative city of 51,000, located in the heart of Wyoming's oil belt, tolerance has become the watchword. ``Prejudice against homosexuals is just as redneck as anti-black bias,'` The Casper Star-Tribune, Wyoming's largest newspaper, wrote in its main editorial on Sunday. ``Violence against our homosexual friends and neighbors has created a most un-American climate of fear in Wyoming and the rest of the nation.'' Monday, Jason Marsden, the newspaper's political reporter, wrote lovingly that, ``Matthew Shepard is still my friend, and not just because we are both members of the loose-knit community of gay people striving to make our way in this sometimes hostile place called Wyoming.'' ``Matt was very short and hard to hug,'' Marsden recalled of the young man who had grown up in Casper. ``But it was worth trying, because he'd hug you with everything in his little, fragile frame.'' In a week of spiritual reflection, Aaron Kreifels, the University of Wyoming freshman who found his battered classmate Oct. 7, attributed the chance discovery to ``God's plan.'' On that afternoon, Kreifels, an 18-year-old architectural engineering student, had nearly completed a rigorous six-mile ride on a mountain bike up and down Cactus Canyon, in public lands east of Laramie. Kreifels recalled in an interview Thursday his only mishap of the ride, ``I hit this big limestone rock and did one over the handlebars.'' Dusting himself off and looking around in the fading light of the day, Kreifels recalled, ``I noticed something out of my eye that looked like a scarecrow. I walked around the fence, and as I got closer, I noticed the hair.'' Shepard, his hands bound behind his back with a nylon cord and tied to a fence post, was lying on the ground, face up, unconscious. ``Sometimes I wonder why I found him alive, if he was going to die,'' Kreifels reflected, before traveling to spend this weekend at home with his parents in Grand Island, Neb. ``But I guess God wanted his parents to be with him.'' ||||| At first, the passing bicyclist thought the crumpled form lashed to a ranch fence was a scarecrow. But when he stopped, he found the burned, battered and nearly lifeless body of Matthew Shepard, an openly gay college student who had been tied to the fence 18 hours earlier. On Friday, the 22-year-old University of Wyoming student was in a coma in critical condition. At Albany County courthouse here, Russell Henderson, 21, and Aaron McKinney, 22, were arraigned on charges of kidnapping, aggravated robbery and attempted first-degree murder. Two women described as friends of the men, Kristen Leann Price, 18, and Chastity Vera Pasley, 20, have been charged as accessories after the fact to attempted first-degree murder. Shepard's friends said that he did not know his alleged tormentors. Laramie police say the primary motive was robbery, although court papers filed Friday indicate Shepard's homosexuality may also have been a factor. Shepard's friends call the attack a hate crime. ``He was very open about his sexuality,'' Tina LaBrie, an anthropology student here, said of her friend. ``I admired him for that because it is very courageous to be yourself even when others disagree.'' A few hours before he was beaten, Shepard, a slight 5-foot, 2-inch man who wore braces on his teeth, had attended a meeting of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgendered Association, said Walter Boulden, a friend of Shepard's. ``He was sitting at the bar, having a beer, when two men came up and talked to him,'' Boulden, a 46-year-old university lecturer of social work here, said today between tears. ``He indicated he was gay, and they said they were gay, too.'' ``Now, he is in a coma,'' continued Boulden, who visited his friend at a hospital in Fort Collins, Colo., on Thursday. ``I don't think anybody expects him to pull through.'' Shepard, who spoke Arabic and German, studied at a boarding school in Switzerland before moving back to the United States to attend the University of Wyoming, the alma mater of his father, an oil rig safety inspector in Saudi Arabia. Matthew Shepard was born in Casper, the capital of Wyoming's oil belt, and spent much of his youth there. But six weeks after returning to Wyoming and enrolling as a freshman here, Shepard fell into a depression, said Ms. Labrie and her husband, Phillip. Accustomed to life in Europe and Denver, this foreign language student who wanted to become a diplomat found himself living in this isolated city of 27,000 people. Set in a treeless landscape defined by barbed wire fences, grazing cattle and a busy freight railroad line, Laramie is a town where pickup trucks outnumber sport utility vehicles, where fall entertainment revolves around this Saturday's homecoming football game and the start of the hunting season in the nearby Medicine Bow mountains. Although Wyoming often bills itself as the ``equality state,'' in reference to its being the first state to give women the vote, the state legislature has repeatedly voted down hate crime legislation on the grounds that it would give homosexuals special rights. ``Wyoming is not really gay friendly,'' Marv Johnson, executive director of the Wyoming chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, said from Cheyenne. ``The best way to characterize that is by a comment a legislator made a few years back, when he likened homosexuals to gay bulls as worthless and should be sent to the packing plant.'' Shepard joined the campus gay association at the university within days. One of his favorite haunts was the Fireside Bar, which drew a mixed crowd of college students and rodeo cowboys, gays and straights. ``He definitely wasn't drunk when he came in,'' recalled the bartender, Matt Galloway. ``He wasn't drunk when he went out.'' Calvin Rerucha, the county attorney, charged in court documents today that McKinney and Henderson posed as homosexuals and lured Shepard out to McKinney's pickup truck just after midnight early Wednesday. Beating him inside the truck, the pair drove him one mile southeast to an isolated part of a new rural subdivision, the County Attorney's report charged. There, it said, the men tied their captive to a post-and-rail fence and pistol-whipped him with a .357 magnum ``while he begged for his life.'' Relatives said that Shepard also suffered burns on his body. After nearly beating the young man to death, Laramie Police Commander David O'Malley said, the assailants stole his wallet and shoes and left him tied to the fence. The police commander said that when his officers arrested the two men on Thursday, they found in McKinney's pickup truck a .357 magnum pistol covered with blood and Shepard's shoes and credit card. He said they found Shepard's wallet at McKinney's home. The police commander said that the two women helped the two men dump their bloody clothing, and that they reported hearing the men make anti-gay remarks. Ms. Pasley, a freshman art student at the university, lived with Henderson. Ms. Price lived with McKinney. The police did not say what the other three did for a living. On Friday, friends and Laramie residents struggled to understand the incident. Shepard, some said, may have felt a false sense of confidence because the local Gay Association completed plans on Tuesday night for ``Gay Awareness Week 1998.'' The weeklong series of events starts here Sunday with a local observance of ``National Coming Out Day'' and a lecture on Monday by Leslea Newman, the author of ``Heather Has Two Mommies,'' a book about lesbian families. ``If I were a homosexual in Laramie, I would hang low, very low,'' said Carla Brown, manager of the Fireside. ``Openly gay behavior is not only discouraged, it's dangerous.'' ||||| At first, the passing bicyclist thought the crumpled form lashed to a ranch fence was a scarecrow. But when he stopped, he found the burned, battered and nearly lifeless body of Matthew Shepard, an openly gay college student who had been tied to the fence 18 hours earlier. On Friday, the 22-year-old University of Wyoming student was in a coma in critical condition. At Albany County courthouse here, Russell Henderson, 21, and Aaron McKinney, 22, were arraigned on charges of kidnapping, aggravated robbery and attempted first-degree murder. Two women described as friends of the men, Kristen Leann Price, 18, and Chastity Vera Pasley, 20, have been charged as accessories after the fact to attempted first-degree murder. Shepard's friends said that he did not know his alleged tormentors. Laramie police say the primary motive was robbery, although court papers filed Friday indicate Shepard's homosexuality may also have been a factor. Shepard's friends call the attack a hate crime. ``He was very open about his sexuality,'' Tina LaBrie, an anthropology student here, said of her friend. ``I admired him for that because it is very courageous to be yourself even when others disagree.'' A few hours before he was beaten, Shepard, a slight 5-foot, 2-inch man who wore braces on his teeth, had attended a meeting of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgendered Association, said Walter Boulden, a friend of Shepard's. ``He was sitting at the bar, having a beer, when two men came up and talked to him,'' Boulden, a 46-year-old university lecturer of social work here, said today between tears. ``He indicated he was gay, and they said they were gay, too.'' ``Now, he is in a coma,'' continued Boulden, who visited his friend at a hospital in Fort Collins, Colo., on Thursday. ``I don't think anybody expects him to pull through.'' Shepard, who spoke Arabic and German, studied at a boarding school in Switzerland before moving back to the United States to attend the University of Wyoming, the alma mater of his father, an oil rig safety inspector in Saudi Arabia. Matthew Shepard was born in Casper, the capital of Wyoming's oil belt, and spent much of his youth there. But six weeks after returning to Wyoming and enrolling as a freshman here, Shepard fell into a depression, said Ms. Labrie and her husband, Phillip. Accustomed to life in Europe and Denver, this foreign language student who wanted to become a diplomat found himself living in this isolated city of 27,000 people. Set in a treeless landscape defined by barbed wire fences, grazing cattle and a busy freight railroad line, Laramie is a town where pickup trucks outnumber sport utility vehicles, where fall entertainment revolves around this Saturday's homecoming football game and the start of the hunting season in the nearby Medicine Bow mountains. Although Wyoming often bills itself as the ``equality state,'' in reference to its being the first state to give women the vote, the state legislature has repeatedly voted down hate crime legislation on the grounds that it would give homosexuals special rights. ``Wyoming is not really gay friendly,'' Marv Johnson, executive director of the Wyoming chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, said from Cheyenne. ``The best way to characterize that is by a comment a legislator made a few years back, when he likened homosexuals to gay bulls as worthless and should be sent to the packing plant.'' Shepard joined the campus gay association at the university within days. One of his favorite haunts was the Fireside Bar, which drew a mixed crowd of college students and rodeo cowboys, gays and straights. ``He definitely wasn't drunk when he came in,'' recalled the bartender, Matt Galloway. ``He wasn't drunk when he went out.'' Calvin Rerucha, the county attorney, charged in court documents today that McKinney and Henderson posed as homosexuals and lured Shepard out to McKinney's pickup truck. Beating him inside the truck, the pair drove him one mile southeast to an isolated part of a new rural subdivision, the County Attorney's report charged. There, it said, the men tied their captive to a post-and-rail fence and pistol-whipped him with a .357 magnum ``while he begged for his life.'' Relatives said that Shepard also suffered burns on his body. After nearly beating the young man to death, Laramie Police Commander David O'Malley said, the assailants stole his wallet and shoes and left him tied to the fence. The police commander said that when his officers arrested the two men on Thursday, they found in McKinney's pickup truck a .357 magnum pistol covered with blood and Shepard's shoes and credit card. He said they found Shepard's wallet at McKinney's home. The police commander said that the two women helped the two men dump their bloody clothing, and that they reported hearing the men make anti-gay remarks. Ms. Pasley, a freshman art student at the university, lived with Henderson. Ms. Price lived with McKinney. The police did not say what the other three did for a living. On Friday, friends and Laramie residents struggled to understand the incident. Shepard, some said, may have felt a false sense of confidence because the local Gay Association completed plans on Tuesday night for ``Gay Awareness Week 1998.'' The weeklong series of events starts here Sunday with a local observance of ``National Coming Out Day'' and a lecture on Monday by Leslea Newman, the author of ``Heather Has Two Mommies,'' a book about lesbian families. ``If I were a homosexual in Laramie, I would hang low, very low,'' said Carla Brown, manager of the Fireside. ``Openly gay behavior is not only discouraged, it's dangerous.'' ||||| Matthew Wayne Shepard, the gay student who was beaten in the dead of night, tied to a fence and left to die alone, was mourned at his funeral Friday by 1,000 people, including many who had never met him. ``Matt believed that if he had made one person's life better, he had succeeded,'' his cousin, the Rev. Anne Kitch, said in a homily that was carried beyond the packed pews of St. Mark's Episcopal Church, through a filled parish hall, across the street to a packed Presbyterian church and across Casper on an AM radio station. ``Judging from the world's response,'' she said, ``Matt will have made a difference in the lives of thousands.'' As the first snowstorm of the fall blanketed Casper, fresh flowers filled the red brick church here where Shepard had been baptized as a teen-ager and where he once wore the white robes of an Episcopal acolyte. ``There is an image that comes to mind when I reflect on Matt on that wooden cross rail fence,'' said the Rev. Royce Brown, the pastor of St. Mark's, in a eulogy. ``I replace that image with that of another man hung upon a cross. When I concentrate on that man, I can release the bitterness inside.'' Shepard, a 21-year-old freshman at the University of Wyoming, had dreamed of working one day for human rights. In death, he has become a national catalyst for a new drive to guarantee for gay people the right to physical safety. His death hit a nerve in the nation this week, eliciting dozens of candlelight vigils and rallies for tolerance, several statements of sadness from President Clinton, and a congressional resolution. Thursday, the House of Representatives passed by voice vote a resolution that condemned Shepard's killing as ``outrageous'' and that urged each member of Congress and every U.S. citizen ``to denounce this outrageous murder of another human being.'' In one of the largest rallies, about 1,000 people, including members of Congress of both parties, gathered on the steps of the Capitol in Washington to condemn the Shepherd's killing and to urge passage of a federal bill that would add extra penalties to crimes motivated by a victim's sexual orientation, gender or disability. House Minority Leader Dick Gephardt urged passage of the bill, leading the crowd in a chant of ``Now! Now! Now.'' ``We will never forget the love that the world has shared with this kind, loving son,'' said Shepherd's father, Dennis, his father, outside Casper City Hall, as his mother, Judy, stood by, weeping. He said the family was ``touched beyond measure'' by ``the thousands of e-mail comments, Web-site messages, phone calls and cards offering help, consolation, sympathy and support.'' Before the funeral, about a dozen protesters, largely from Kansas and Texas, waved signs with anti-homosexual messages. But mourners stood in front of them, singing ``Amazing Grace'' and holding umbrellas to block the sight of the spectacle from friends and family members entering the church. On hearing of the protest, Laramie's City Council held an emergency meeting Thursday night and unanimously passed an ordinance banning protests during funerals. Wyoming Gov. Jim Geringer had warned in advance that anti-gay protesters were ``just flat not welcome.'' The governor, a Republican, added, ``What we don't need is a bunch of wingnuts coming in.'' Shepard was born in Casper and attended elementary school, junior high and several years of high school and college here. With flags at Casper's public schools flying at half-staff Friday, many mourners were his old classmates. Others traveled here, one driving from as far away as New Jersey, out of a sense of solidarity. ``I've had a pit in my heart and my stomach since I heard this,'' said Steve Pietrangelo, who drove 300 miles to wait three hours in cold rain and snow to attend the funeral of a man he never met. ``I just wanted to pay my respects to him and his family.'' Touching people of all walks of life, Shepard's murder has elicited calls for tolerance of homosexuals from unexpected quarters. At the University of Wyoming this fall, football players will wear yellow and green stickers on their helmets in memory of Shepard. Organizers said that yellow signifies tolerance and green symbolizes peace. In Casper, a conservative city of 51,000, located in the heart of Wyoming's oil belt, tolerance has become the watchword. ``Prejudice against homosexuals is just as redneck as anti-black bias,'` The Casper Star-Tribune, Wyoming's largest newspaper, wrote in its main editorial on Sunday. ``Violence against our homosexual friends and neighbors has created a most un-American climate of fear in Wyoming and the rest of the nation.'' Monday, Jason Marsden, the newspaper's political reporter, wrote lovingly that, ``Matthew Shepard is still my friend, and not just because we are both members of the loose-knit community of gay people striving to make our way in this sometimes hostile place called Wyoming.'' ``Matt was very short and hard to hug,'' Marsden recalled of the young man who had grown up in Casper. ``But it was worth trying, because he'd hug you with everything in his little, fragile frame.'' In a week of spiritual reflection, Aaron Kreifels, the University of Wyoming freshman who found his battered classmate Oct. 7, attributed the chance discovery to ``God's plan.'' On that afternoon, Kreifels, an 18-year-old architectural engineering student, had nearly completed a rigorous six-mile ride on a mountain bike up and down Cactus Canyon, in public lands east of Laramie. Kreifels recalled in an interview Thursday that his only mishap of the ride, ``I hit this big limestone rock and did one over the handlebars.'' Dusting himself off and looking around in the fading light of the day, Kreifels recalled, ``I noticed something out of my eye that looked like a scarecrow. I walked around the fence, and as I got closer, I noticed the hair.'' Shepard, his hands bound behind his back with a nylon cord and tied to a fence post, was lying on the ground, face up, unconscious. ``Sometimes I wonder why I found him alive, if he was going to die,'' Kreifels reflected, before traveling to spend this weekend at home with his parents in Grand Island, Neb. ``But I guess God wanted his parents to be with him.'' ||||| Last Saturday morning, while Matthew Shepard lay comatose from a beating, a college homecoming parade passed a few blocks from his hospital bed in Fort Collins. Propped on a fraternity float was a straw-haired scarecrow, labeled in black spray paint: ``I'm Gay.'' Few people missed the message. Three days earlier, Shepard, a gay University of Wyoming freshman, was savagely beaten and tied to a ranch fence in such a position that a passerby first mistook him for a scarecrow. Tuesday, officials at Colorado State University reacted with outrage to the fraternity float, opening an investigation and disciplinary procedures against the fraternity, Pi Kappa Alpha. The fraternity chapter immediately suspended seven members and said they had acted independently. But in a week when candlelight vigils for Shepard were being held on campuses across the nation, the scarecrow incident highlighted how hostility toward gay people often flourishes in high schools and universities, gay leaders said Tuesday. ``People would like to think that what happened to Matthew was an exception to the rule but, it was an extreme version of what happens in our schools on a daily basis,'' said Kevin Jennings, executive director of the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network, a New York group dedicated to ending anti-gay bias in the schools. Shepard, a slightly built 21-year-old, died on Monday morning from the injuries suffered in the beating. He never regained consciousness after being discovered on the evening of Oct. 7, 18 hours after he was lashed to the fence. Two men, Russell Henderson, 21, and Aaron McKinney, 22, were arraigned late Monday night on first-degree murder charges. Their girlfriends, Chasity Pasley, 20, and Kristen Price, 18, have been arraigned as accessories after the fact. In response to the killing, about 50 candelight vigils were scheduled this week, from Texas to Vermont, from Wayne, Neb., to New York City. At the Poudre Valley Hospital in Fort Collins where Shepard was in intensive care for five days, his parents, Dennis and Judy Shepard, received about 6,000 electronic messages of condolences. Tuesday, when funeral arrangements were announced for Friday in Casper, Wyo., the hospital Web site received 30,000 hits an hour. Friends at the University of Wyoming in Laramie, Wyo., have set up The Matthew Shepard Memorial Fund to raise money to pressure the state legislature to pass anti-hate crime legislation. ``I see his name going down in gay history as a catalyst for renewed activism,'' said Matt Foreman, a former Wyomingite who directs Empire State Pride Agenda, a gay political organization in New York. From around the nation Tuesday, gay leaders stressed that campus homophobia is not restricted to college towns in the Rocky Mountain West. Last year, in a survey of almost 4,000 Massachusetts high school students, 22 percent of gay respondents said they skipped school in the past month because they felt unsafe at school, and 31 percent said they had been threatened or injured at school in the past year. These percentages were about five times greater than the percentages of heterosexual respondents. The survey was conducted at 58 high schools by the Massachusetts Department of Education. In a separate study of nearly 500 community college students in the San Francisco area, 32 percent of male respondents said they had verbally threatened gay people and 18 percent said they had physically threatened or assaulted gay people. The study was conducted this year by Karen Franklin, a forensic psychologist who is a researcher at the University of Washington. Surveys of gay college students conducted in the late 1980s at Yale University, Oberlin College, Rutgers University and Penn State found that 16 percent to 26 percent had been threatened with violence, and that 40 percent to 76 percent had been verbally harassed, said the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, a lobbying group based in Washington. Last year, a student group in Des Moines, Iowa, called Concerned Students, recorded hallway and classroom conversations at five high schools on 10 ``homophobia recording day.'' They estimated that the average Des Moines high school student hears about 25 anti-gay remarks every day. ``Nine out of 10 `teaching tolerance' courses weed out gays,'' Foreman said. ``There are a lot of people preaching anti-racism and anti-semitism. But it is still very much OK to make anti-gay jokes, to express anti-gay sentiments.'' In a survey of the nation's 42 largest school districts, 76 percent do not train teachers on issues facing gay students, and 42 percent do not have policies to protect students from discrimination based on sexual orientation, said the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network, which conducted the survey last month. In Fort Collins, while hospital officials struggled with an electronic avalanche of condolences, city police detectives were investigating a different kind of e-mail. On Monday, hours after Shepard's death, two gay organizations, the Rainbow Chorus and the Lambda Community Center, received identical messages applauding Shepard's murder. The messages closed with the words: ``I hope it happens more often.'' ||||| As a gay college student lay hospitalized in critical condition after a severe beating here, this small city, which bills itself as ``Wyoming's hometown,'' wrestled with its attitudes towards gay men. On Saturday, at the University of Wyoming's annual homecoming parade, ``Pistol Pete'' and his uniformed brass band were overshadowed by a larger group of marchers _ 450 people, many wearing yellow armbands and carrying signs in support of the 21-year-old student, Matthew Shepard, who suffered severe head injuries in the attack last week. ``Hate is not a Small Town Value _ No to Violence and Evil,'' read one sign, as watchers applauded. With passersby spontaneously joining the protest group, two women held another sign that read, ``No Hate Crimes in Wyoming.'' Two candlelight vigils were held Sunday night at churches near the campus. At the Poudre Valley Hospital in Fort Collins, Colo., where Shepard's health continued to deteriorate, the hospital has received so many flowers that nurses have started to distribute bouquets to other patients. A vigil at the hospital on Saturday evening drew about 500 people. ``We live in the Equality State,'' Shannon Rexroat wrote Friday in a special edition of the Branding Iron, the campus newspaper. Referring to Wyoming's pioneer heritage as the first state to grant women the right to vote, Ms. Rexroat, the campus newspaper's editor added: ``That means nothing to me anymore. We live in a state where a young man was brutally beaten because he is gay.'' But others recalled another side of ``Wyoming's hometown,''which has a population of more than 26,000. Jamie Lewis, another editor, said that on Friday he was handing out copies of the special edition when a passerby backed away from him and used an anti-gay epithet. Last week's brutal assault bubbled out of an ongoing climate of hostility toward gay men and lesbians, leaders of the local Unitarian church said in a letter published Sunday in the city's newspaper, The Laramie Daily Boomerang. ``This incident was atypical in its brutality, but not in its underlying motive,'' wrote Jeffrey Lockwood and Stephen Johnson. Gay people in Laramie, they wrote, ``are frequently assaulted with derision, intolerance, insult and hostility _ if not guns and ropes.'' Ric Turley, who dropped out of college here after one year in the 1970s, recalled driving here to see his family for Christmas in 1993 and seeing a vandalized billboard on the main highway. Under a brace of pistols, an advertising appeal for a state history museum had been changed, he said, from ``Shoot a Day or Two,'' to ``Shoot a Gay or Two.'' Turley, who is gay and said he only came out after he had left Wyoming, said that he immediately complained to the museum. But returning a month later, he found the message had not been erased. After complaining to the museum for a second time, he said he took a can of black spray paint and blotted out the word ``gay.'' ``It was this kind of complacency and apathy that allowed this to happen,'' he said of the beating in which two local men have been charged, Russell Henderson and Aaron McKinney. According to the local police and prosecutors, the two men lured Shepard out of a bar by saying they were gay. Then, the Laramie police say, the pair kidnapped Shepard, pistol-whipped him with a .357 Magnum and left him tied to a ranch fence for 18 hours until a passing bicyclist spotted Shepard, who was unconscious. On Sunday, the Laramie police said that McKinney had been arrested on Thursday at the same hospital in Fort Collins where Shepard was being treated. McKinney was being treated for a ``minor'' skull fracture unrelated to the fracas with Shepard, said Ben Fritzen, a Laramie police detective. President Clinton has condemned the attack, saying on Saturday, ``I was deeply grieved by the act of violence perpetrated against Matthew Shepard.'' Clinton urged Congress to pass the federal Hate Crimes Prevention Act, saying, ``There is nothing more important to the future of this country than our standing together against intolerance, prejudice and violent bigotry.'' Wyoming is one of 10 states that does not have a hate crime law. The latest attempt died in the state Legislature in Cheyenne in February. On Saturday, Wyoming's governor, Jim Geringer, said he was ``outraged and sickened'' by the attack. Here in Laramie, McKinney's father, Bill, also condemned the attack. His pickup truck was apparently used in the kidnapping. But he also complained about the massive attention by the national media. The national press ``blew it totally out of proportion because it involved a homosexual,'' McKinney told The Denver Post. `Had this been a heterosexual these two boys decided to take out and rob, this never would have made the national news.'' Shepard grew up in Casper until his sophomore year in high school, when his father, an oil rig safety engineer, was transferred to Saudi Arabia. The young man completed high school at a boarding school in Lugano, Switzerland, where he learned Italian and German. On Saturday, his parents, Dennis and Judy Shepard, released a statement from Fort Collins thanking ``the American public for their kind thoughts about Matthew.'' ``He is a trusting person who takes everybody at face value and he does not see the bad side of anyone,'' the Shepards wrote. ``He has always strongly felt that all people are the same, regardless of their sexual preference, race or religion.'' Noting that their son was born prematurely and that his ``life has often been a struggle,'' they added, ``He is physically short in stature, but we believe he is a giant when it comes to respecting the worth of others.'' ||||| Matthew Wayne Shepard, the gay student who was beaten in the dead of night, tied to a fence and left to die alone, was mourned at his funeral Friday by 1,000 people, including many who had never met him. ``Matt believed that if he had made one person's life better, he had succeeded,'' his cousin, the Rev. Anne Kitch, said in a homily that was carried beyond the packed pews of St. Mark's Episcopal Church, through a filled parish hall, across the street to a packed Presbyterian church and across Casper on an AM radio station. ``Judging from the world's response,'' she said, ``Matt will have made a difference in the lives of thousands.'' As the first snowstorm of the fall blanketed Casper, fresh flowers filled the red brick church here where Shepard had been baptized as a teen-ager and where he once wore the white robes of an Episcopal acolyte. ``There is an image that comes to mind when I reflect on Matt on that wooden cross rail fence,'' said the Rev. Royce Brown, the pastor of St. Mark's, in a eulogy. ``I replace that image with that of another man hung upon a cross. When I concentrate on that man, I can release the bitterness inside.'' Shepard, a 21-year-old freshman at the University of Wyoming, had dreamed of working one day for human rights. In death, he has become a national catalyst for a new drive to guarantee for gay people the right to physical safety. His death hit a nerve in the nation this week, eliciting dozens of candlelight vigils and rallies for tolerance, several statements of sadness from President Clinton, and a congressional resolution. Thursday, the House of Representatives passed by voice vote a resolution that condemned Shepard's killing as ``outrageous'' and that urged each member of Congress and every U.S. citizen ``to denounce this outrageous murder of another human being.'' In one of the largest rallies, about 1,000 people, including members of Congress of both parties, gathered on the steps of the Capitol in Washington to condemn Shepherd's killing and to urge passage of a federal bill that would add extra penalties to crimes motivated by a victim's sexual orientation, gender or disability. House Minority Leader Dick Gephardt urged passage of the bill, leading the crowd in a chant of ``Now! Now! Now.'' ``We will never forget the love that the world has shared with this kind, loving son,'' said Shepherd's father, Dennis, his father, outside Casper City Hall, as his mother, Judy, stood by, weeping. He said the family was ``touched beyond measure'' by ``the thousands of e-mail comments, Web-site messages, phone calls and cards offering help, consolation, sympathy and support.'' Before the funeral, about a dozen protesters, largely from Kansas and Texas, waved signs with anti-homosexual messages. But mourners stood in front of them, singing ``Amazing Grace'' and holding umbrellas to block the sight of the spectacle from friends and family members entering the church. On hearing of the protest, Laramie's City Council held an emergency meeting Thursday night and unanimously passed an ordinance banning protests during funerals. Wyoming Gov. Jim Geringer had warned in advance that anti-gay protesters were ``just flat not welcome.'' The governor, a Republican, added, ``What we don't need is a bunch of wingnuts coming in.'' Shepard was born in Casper and attended elementary school, junior high and several years of high school and college here. With flags at Casper's public schools flying at half-staff Friday, many mourners were his old classmates. Others traveled here, one driving from as far away as New Jersey, out of a sense of solidarity. ``I've had a pit in my heart and my stomach since I heard this,'' said Steve Pietrangelo, who drove 300 miles to wait three hours in cold rain and snow to attend the funeral of a man he never met. ``I just wanted to pay my respects to him and his family.'' Touching people of all walks of life, Shepard's murder has elicited calls for tolerance of homosexuals from unexpected quarters. At the University of Wyoming this fall, football players will wear yellow and green stickers on their helmets in memory of Shepard. Organizers said that yellow signifies tolerance and green symbolizes peace. In Casper, a conservative city of 51,000, located in the heart of Wyoming's oil belt, tolerance has become the watchword. ``Prejudice against homosexuals is just as redneck as anti-black bias,'` The Casper Star-Tribune, Wyoming's largest newspaper, wrote in its main editorial on Sunday. ``Violence against our homosexual friends and neighbors has created a most un-American climate of fear in Wyoming and the rest of the nation.'' Monday, Jason Marsden, the newspaper's political reporter, wrote lovingly that, ``Matthew Shepard is still my friend, and not just because we are both members of the loose-knit community of gay people striving to make our way in this sometimes hostile place called Wyoming.'' ``Matt was very short and hard to hug,'' Marsden recalled of the young man who had grown up in Casper. ``But it was worth trying, because he'd hug you with everything in his little, fragile frame.'' In a week of spiritual reflection, Aaron Kreifels, the University of Wyoming freshman who found his battered classmate Oct. 7, attributed the chance discovery to ``God's plan.'' On that afternoon, Kreifels, an 18-year-old architectural engineering student, had nearly completed a rigorous six-mile ride on a mountain bike up and down Cactus Canyon, in public lands east of Laramie. Kreifels recalled in an interview Thursday that his only mishap of the ride, ``I hit this big limestone rock and did one over the handlebars.'' Dusting himself off and looking around in the fading light of the day, Kreifels recalled, ``I noticed something out of my eye that looked like a scarecrow. I walked around the fence, and as I got closer, I noticed the hair.'' Shepard, his hands bound behind his back with a nylon cord and tied to a fence post, was lying on the ground, face up, unconscious. ``Sometimes I wonder why I found him alive, if he was going to die,'' Kreifels reflected, before traveling to spend this weekend at home with his parents in Grand Island, Neb. ``But I guess God wanted his parents to be with him.'' ||||| Matthew Shepard, the gay college student who was kidnapped and severely beaten, died here Monday, five days after he was found unconscious on a Wyoming ranch where he had been left tied to a fence for 18 hours in near-freezing temperatures. His death, announced at Poudre Valley Hospital here, fanned the outrage that followed word of last week's attack, spawning nationwide vigils, producing a call for federal hate-crimes legislation from President Clinton and fueling debates over such laws in a host of Western states, including Wyoming, that have resisted them. From Denver to the University of Maryland, people turned out to honor the The slight, soft-spoken 21-year-old Shepard, a freshman at the University of Wyoming, who became an overnight symbol of anti-gay violence after he was found dangling from the fence by a passerby. Russell Anderson, 21, and Aaron McKinney, 21, were charged with attempted murder and are expected to face first-degree murder charges that could bring the death penalty. Their girlfriends, Chastity Pasley, 21, and Kristen Price, 18, were charged as accessories. In Denver, mourners wrote messages on a graffiti wall as part of national Gay Awareness Week. In San Francisco, a giant rainbow flag that symbolizes the gay rights movement was lowered to half-staff in the Castro district. ``There is incredible symbolism about being tied to a fence,'' said Rebecca Isaacs, political director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force in Washington. ``People have likened it to a scarecrow. But it sounded more like a crucifixion.'' Police in Laramie, Wyo., where the beating took place, have said they believed robbery was the primary motive for the attack against Shepard, which occurred outside a bar in the town of 27,000. But investigators also said Shepard's sexuality may have been a factor. Police said Henderson and McKinney lured Shepard from the bar by saying they too were gay and one of their girlfriends said Shepard had embarassed one of the men by making a pass at him. Monday, police said that after leaving Shepard tied to the fence, the men returned to Laramie and picked a fight on a street corner with two Hispanic men, Emiliano Morales, 19, and Jeremy Herrera, 18. McKinney and Morales suffered head injuries in the brawl; McKinney was arrested when he sought treatment at the same hospital where Shepard died. Gay leaders hope _ and Christian conservatives fear _ that Shepard's death will galvanize Congress and state legislatures to pass hate-crime legislation or broaden existing laws. Conservatives generally oppose such laws because they favor one group's rights over another. In the last two decades, 21 states and the District of Columbia have passed laws that increase penalties for crimes that are committed because of a person's race, religion, color, national origin, and sexual orientation. Another 19 states, including Colorado, do not include sexual orientation in their hate-crime laws. Ten states, including Wyoming, have no hate-crime laws at all. In Washington, Clinton responded to news of Shepard's death by urging Congress to pass the federal Hate Crimes Protection Act, which would make federal offenses of crimes based on sex, disability and sexual orientation. Wyoming has been one of the nation's holdouts, rejecting three hate crimes bills since 1994, most recently in February. But Monday, after Shepard's death, Gov. Jim Geringer appealed to lawmakers to reconsider their opposition. ``I ask for a collective suggestion for anti-bias, anti-hate legislation that can be presented to the Wyoming Legislature for their consideration in January,'' Geringer said. The governor met Monday morning with Dennis Shepard, the slain student's father, and said that the elder Shepard did not want his son's death to become ``a media circus'' and that ``we should not use Matt to further an agenda.'' Geringer said that Shepard's father also said: ``Don't rush into just passing all kinds of new hate-crimes laws. Be very careful of any changes and be sure you're not taking away rights of others in the process to race to this.'' Leaders of gay rights groups interviewed Monday said they would respect the family's privacy by not attending the burial in Casper, Wyo., on Saturday. But they added that they hoped the death would have an impact on legislators around the nation. ``Matthew's death, I hope, will bring about a better and deeper understanding of hate crime laws,'' said Elizabeth Birch, executive director of the Human Rights Campaign, a lesbian and gay rights group that has 250,000 members. ``Matthew's death may lead to an awakening in Wyoming and in the United States Congress as the need for this legislation.'' In 1996, 21 men and women were killed in the United States because of their sexual orientation, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, an Alabama group that tracks violence against minorities. According to the FBI, sexual orientation was a factor in 11.6 percent of the 8,759 hate crimes recorded in 1996. But Christian conservatives warn that gay leaders want to use Shepard's death to expand hate rights laws and to curtail freedom of speech. ``Hate crimes laws have nothing to do with perpetrators of violent crime and everything to do with silencing political opposition,'' said Steven Schwalm, an analyst with the Family Research Council, a Washington group dedicated to defending ``faith, family and freedom.'' ``It would criminalize pro-family beliefs,'' Schwalm said. ``This basically sends a message that you can't disagree with the political message of homosexual activists.'' Agreement came from John Paulk, who was featured this summer in a series of advertisements about how he and his wife, Anne, ``overcame'' homosexuality through religious conversion. ``We have every right to speak out against an agenda that is contrary to Biblical norms,'' said Paulk, who describes himself as a homosexuality specialist for Focus on the Family, a Christian group in Colorado Springs, Colo. ``Because we are standing up and opposing the homosexual agenda, we are being looked upon as advocating violence against homosexuals, when we categorically reject violence against homosexuals.'' Last Thursday, the Family Research Council unveiled a series of television advertisements that preach the ``healing'' of homosexuality through religious conversion. Gay leaders charge that these advertisements help create a hostile climate for homosexuals, a climate that can lead to violence. Hate crime laws that are on the books in 40 states have not impinged on freedom of speech, said Brian Levin, a criminal justice professor who directs the Center on Hate and Extremism at Stockton College, in Pomona, N.J. Instead, he said, hate crime laws send a clear message that society does not tolerate attacks on minorities. ``We want to deter the broken windows and simple assaults before they escalate,'' he said. Referring to murders of homosexuals, he added: ``These crimes are preventable. Offenders get emboldened if they are not punished the first time.'' Levin said that his research indicated that homosexuals suffered higher rates of violent crime than the population at large. He also said that roughly half of the people who attack homosexuals are male, aged 22 or younger. ``With other crimes, violence is a means to an end. With hate crimes, the violence becomes an unstoppable goal,'' Levin said. Shepard suffered a dozen cuts around the head, face and neck, as well as a massive blow to the back of his skull. ``Because their social stature in society, gays are often viewed as appropriate targets,'' Levin added. Citing the need for hate crime laws to send a clear message to gay bashers, Levin said: ``The discourse in society leaves many of these people to believe that what they are doing is socially acceptable.'' While some gay leaders saw crucifixion imagery in Shepard's death, others saw a different symbolism: the Old West practice of nailing a dead coyote to a ranch fence as a warning to future intruders. ``This University of Wyoming student was beaten and left to die, tied to a fence like an animal because he was honest and open about being gay,'' Beatrice Dorhn, legal director of the Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund, said Monday, ``Matthew Shepard's horrible suffering and death cannot be dismissed simply as the fault of deranged, isolated individuals. His attackers are among millions of Americans who constantly hear the message that gay people are not worthy of the most basic equal treatment,'' Ms. Dorhn said.

Two men in Wyoming kidnapped, robbed, and brutally beat a gay university student who died in a coma five days after the assault. The incident fanned public outrage. Hundreds in Laramie and on campuses across the nation demonstrated support to the student with marches and candlelight vigils. President Clinton responded to nationwide calls by urging Congress to pass the Federal Hate Crimes Protection Act. Gay leaders stressed that hostility towards gays, based on several surveys, flourishes in high schools and universities. By coincidence, on the day of the beating a religious right organization in Washington was announcing a barrage of TV ads aimed at gays.

It was not a voice mail message that Dr. Marilyn Rymer, a neurologist in Kansas City, Mo., would routinely delete, even as a registered Democrat. ``Speaker Newt Gingrich's office,'' it said, was calling to discuss a ``national leadership award.'' Dr. Rymer has won acclaim as the director of a prominent stroke-treatment center, but this proposition seemed particularly grand. When she returned the call, she said she was told she would also be named honorary chairman of an elite committee to advise Gingrich on legislation. Too good to be true? Well, Dr. Rymer would have to pay her own way if the committee should actually meet, and as an honorary committee chairman, she discovered, she would be a member of a committee composed entirely of honorary chairmen. And oh, the speaker wanted a donation of $500 to $1,000 to ``help our efforts,'' according to a transcript of a similar chat with another doctor, to elect a bigger Republican majority in the House of Representatives. With the approach of the midterm elections next month, it turns out that the National Republican Congressional Committee, which supports candidates for the House, has been sponsoring similar calls to tens of thousands of small-business owners, including doctors. With this and other fund-raising programs, the committee says it has amassed $62 million for the elections. But campaign finance watchdogs say the solicitations mark a new departure in political fund raising, one they call akin to the practices of marketing companies like the Publishers' Clearing House that hook consumers with visions of million-dollar windfalls to induce them to subscribe to magazines. By citing the speaker and promising celebrity and influence, they say, the calls are a bait-and-switch scheme to seize the attention of people who might otherwise hang up. Dr. Rymer says she was incensed. So was Dr. Stanley Turecki, a child and family psychiatrist in New York who votes as an independent and was also called. ``I was absolutely outraged,'' he said. ``Anybody else who would do that would fall into the category of consumer fraud.'' Kenneth Gross, a Washington lawyer who specializes in election law and represents both Democratic and Republican clients, said, ``I have never heard of that particular device.'' But it doesn't appear illegal, he said, adding, ``It's a fund-raising gimmick to get attention.'' Fred Wertheimer, president of Democracy 21, a nonprofit, nonpartisan advocate of campaign finance reform, said, ``This is a new version of caveat emptor _ buyer be damned instead of buyer beware.'' When businesses do it, he added, Congress orders investigations. ``But this isn't going to be investigated because it's members of Congress who are doing it.'' Todd Harris, a spokesman for the National Republican Congressional Committee, said that he had not heard of any complaints and that there was no intent to deceive. ``The national leadership award is a part of what we call donor and member fulfillment,'' Harris said. ``It's part of bringing them into the process. It's important that they be recognized for the support they give the party.'' ``There's no quid pro quo'' that people solicited could receive awards for past contributions, he added. What most peeves Drs. Rymer and Turecki is the message left with secretaries and answering machines invoking Gingrich's ``office'' and proposing the award. They say they envisioned a senior aide at a telephone in the speaker's chambers under the Capitol Dome. The calls, however, are not placed by aides to Gingrich, by any of his offices or by anyone in Washington. They are made by people with headsets and computers at the home of InfoCision Management Corp., a telemarketing firm and Congressional committee client in Akron, Ohio. On its Web page, InfoCision says its 1,400 employees operate 1,584 telephone lines and 9 phone centers. ``Every word in the script is approved by our clients,'' the company says on its Web site. ``Every conceivable objection is scripted with a powerful rebuttal.'' Besides telemarketing for businesses, said Jamie Blair, a supervisor at the center, ``we specialize in helping the Republican Party and conservative political groups.'' However far they are from Gingrich, the telemarketers are instructed to answer return calls with: ``Republican Congressional Committee, Newt Gingrich's office. May I help you?'' A doctor in Kansas City, Mo., who is a registered Republican and who declined to be named, dialed the Gingrich number (888-484-1644) left on answering machines and secretly recorded the ensuing discussion, which is legal in Missouri. ``We were asked to contact you on behalf of the speaker,'' says a woman who picked up the call and identified herself as Nancy. ``He is right now aggressively pushing legislation to cut taxes by as much as half, and he's also interested in legislation to cut capital gains to a single rate of 15 percent.'' To assure passage of the legislation, the speaker wants to increase his Republican majority, she says, adding, ``To help us do that, the speaker is pulling together a group of individuals such as yourself and is inviting you to be an honorary chairman on his advisory council.'' Nancy continues: ``There will be correspondence with the speaker, such as conference calls. It's a great way that he can get your input and thoughts on legislation that does concern you. Or maybe surveys or questionnaires.'' Later, Nancy says: ``As a member of his committee, you would be receiving from the speaker our national leadership award, which is really quite an honor. And to be honest, he will be asking each of our chairmen if they could help our efforts to increase our majority with a one-time contribution of $500 or $1,000. ``Now that would be used on the nationwide media campaign that Newt has undertaken to target those seats we really need. And as someone who I'm sure would also benefit from this, could I tell the speaker he could count on your help?'' The doctor demurs. ``I am a registered, you know, Republican in Kansas,'' she tells Nancy. ``Probably if I were to do something it would be to go through my own representative.'' Then the doctor tries to ascertain where Nancy is located. ``Is this congressman Gingrich's office that I'm talking to?'' the doctor asks. ``The speaker's office,'' says Nancy. ``This is the speaker's office.'' ``That I'm talking to,'' says the doctor, double-checking. ``Uh-huh,'' Nancy replies. The law prohibits political fund-raising calls from federal offices. Vice President Al Gore is under a Justice Department investigation for fund-raising calls he allegedly made from his office in the 1996 presidential campaign. But the calls can be made from just about anywhere else, including campaign offices. Harris said the calls are ``in no way related to the speaker's OFFICIAL office.'' He added: ``What is more important is not where the calls get routed. People are more interested in an award with the speaker's good name on it than whether the call gets routed to Washington or Ohio.'' Turecki disagrees. ``I see it as basic sleaze,'' he said. ||||| The last time George Voinovich ran for office, he won re-election as Ohio's governor with 72 percent of the vote, stunning even his most optimistic supporters and setting a 20th-century record for victory margins in Ohio politics. This year, Voinovich, a Republican who is barred from seeking a third term, is running again, this time for the Senate seat held by John Glenn, a Democrat who is retiring. And while there are few who expect Voinovich to repeat his electoral benchmark of four years ago, politicians of both parties generally acknowledge that he is well positioned to increase the Republican majority in the Senate. That has not prevented Voinovich's Democratic opponent, Mary Boyle, from undertaking a vigorous campaign. Ms. Boyle, a former commissioner in Cuyahoga County, which encompasses Cleveland, is crisscrossing the nation's seventh-most populous state in what she describes as a grass-roots campaign that, while operating on a comparative shoestring, has nonetheless attracted to her side nationally known Democrats _ President Clinton foremost among them _ on the campaign trail. Glenn, the former astronaut who is preparing to return to space this month at the age of 77, has not made an endorsement in the Senate race. Like many candidates this year, Ms. Boyle, 55, is campaigning hard on the issue of education, seeking to portray Voinovich, 61, as a lackluster steward who allowed the state's schools to decline. ``He promised to be the education governor,'' said Ms. Boyle. ``But after seven and a half years he has failed the students of this state.'' Her role in the campaign, she said, ``is to remind the people of the state of Ohio that George Voinovich made a promise and that he didn't deliver on it.'' Specifically, she discusses a decision last year by the Ohio Supreme Court that cited wide disparities in the quality of the state's schools and ruled unconstitutional the formula for funding them. She has also attacked her Republican opponent for supporting a proposal to raise the state's sales tax by one percent. Under that plan, half the additional funds would have been used for school improvement with the remainder earmarked for reducing property taxes. That statewide ballot initiative last May proved to be wildly unpopular, with about 80 percent of the voters opposing it. While the topics of taxes and education are hot ones this political season in Ohio, it is not clear that Ms. Boyle's emphasis on them has helped her campaign. Despite some narrowing in the opinion polls, she is still trailing Voinovich by 15 percentage points in some polls and as much as 20 points in others. There is also a sharp fund-raising disparity. Ms. Boyle, who is running her first statewide race and has widespread union support, has raised nearly $2 million so far, far less than the nearly $7 million Voinovich has taken in. Also, Voinovich, a former lieutenant governor, has been on statewide ballots five times over the last 20 years and thus is the better-known candidate. The electoral dynamics of Ohio are also aiding Voinovich. The northern half of the state, with its history of industrial, unionized cities, has a tradition of voting largely for Democratic candidates, while the southern tier of the state is considered more conservative and typically leans Republican. But Voinovich and Ms. Boyle share the same home terrain, depriving Ms. Boyle of the geographic advantage that often accompanies Democratic candidates. Indeed, as a boy, Voinovich once delivered newspapers to the Boyle home in the working-class Collinwood section of Cleveland. And Voinovich, a former mayor of Cleveland, has developed a reputation as a moderate Republican who works well with Democrats. Voinovich, while campaigning vigorously himself, is keeping a full schedule of official duties, assuming the role of the experienced, elected official. ``If I get into the Senate, I will probably know more about domestic policy than any member of the Senate,'' he said in an interview on Wednesday in Canton, sandwiched between a ribbon-cutting ceremony and a fund-raising reception at a vacuum cleaner museum. ``As mayor, I had my nose rubbed into the problems of urban America and was fairly successful in dealing with them. And, as governor, I have dealt with the problems of Medicaid, welfare and education. I'm the only person in the United States who has been president of the National League of Cities and chairman of the National Governors Association.'' To his opponent's charges on his record on education, Voinovich is dismissive. ``I'm probably the only Republican in the United States who has been endorsed by the Ohio Education Association and National Education Association,'' he said, adding that Ms. Boyle was a member of the state Legislature during the period cited in the Supreme Court ruling. ``Mary Boyle was vice chairman of the Ways and Means Committee and a member of the Democratic leadership during those years,'' Voinovich said. ``They did nothing to fix the buildings, they did nothing for technology and the urban school districts.'' Ms. Boyle, who has not yet begun to run campaign commercials on television, said her status as the underdog had ``allowed me to be more focused, more intense.'' Pausing after a campaign fund-raising breakfast with former Democratic Sen. Bill Bradley of New Jersey here on Wednesday, Ms. Boyle said: ``This has been a marathon and it's been pretty much uphill. But now, we're down to the last three miles. It's a tough race.'' ||||| White House officials and gay Democrats, concerned that the nation's largest gay and lesbian political organization is about to endorse Sen. Alfonse D'Amato for re-election, are intensely lobbying the group to try to shift its support to the Democratic challenger, Rep. Charles Schumer. Publicly, officials in the organization, the Human Rights Campaign, said they were still deliberating their position in the closely watched race, considered among the tightest in the nation. They said they would probably make an endorsement by Friday. But privately, organization officials and gay activists from both parties who have been monitoring the debate say the group is most likely to endorse D'Amato, a Republican seeking his fourth term. They also raised the possibility that the group would endorse both candidates, or remain neutral. If the group endorses D'Amato, said officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity, the endorsement would be based on three major factors: The group tends to favor incumbents, has been searching for allies among the Senate Republican majority and considers D'Amato's recent record on gay issues to be quite strong. An endorsement by the group, which is held in high regard by many gay and lesbian voters, could prove important in swinging voters to D'Amato in a tight race. It would also be a major symbolic victory for the senator, who has sought to recast himself as a centrist in recent years and could use the endorsement to build his standing among moderate swing voters. A D'Amato endorsement would also weaken Schumer's efforts to portray the incumbent as a right-wing extremist and would signify to many voters a fraying of the traditional Democratic coalition that has included black and gay voters, women and labor unions. The intensity of the debate surrounding the endorsement underscores the importance of the New York Senate race to Democrats across the nation, who see defeating D'Amato as one of their best opportunities to prevent the Republicans from gaining 60 seats in the Senate _ enough to stop a Democratic filibuster. The Republicans currently hold a 55-to-45 majority. ``There is sentiment in the community that if the Republicans get 60 votes, that Trent Lott will basically be in charge politically for the next two years,'' said David Mixner, a close friend of President Clinton's who is gay. He was referring to the Senate majority leader, who has called homosexuality a sin and likened it to kleptomania. Saturday, Schumer picked up his own endorsement from New York's largest gay and lesbian political organization, the Empire State Pride Agenda. Although the Human Rights Campaign is bipartisan, it has been very close to the Clinton administration, has many Democrats on its board and receives much of its money from Democratic contributors. Largely because of the group's strong Democratic ties, gay Democrats, New York liberals and White House officials are infuriated that it is even considering endorsing D'Amato, who also runs on the Right to Life and Conservative Party lines and often receives high ratings from the Christian Coalition, which typically opposes legislation on civil rights for gay people. Although the organization has been thought to be inching toward a D'Amato endorsement for months, the lobbying campaign for Schumer has picked up intensity in the last two weeks, driven partly by a growing sense that the race is now closer than ever. Democrats and advocates in both parties who support rights for gay people said that Vice President Al Gore, Hillary Rodham Clinton and Secretary for Health and Human Services Donna Shalala have made personal appeals to Human Rights Campaign officials urging them not to endorse D'Amato. White House officials said they did not know whether the three had made such appeals, and Human Rights Campaign officials declined to comment. Schumer met privately with the group's top officials last week to make one last pitch for the endorsement. Clinton administration officials have also been buttonholing the group's board members at every opportunity, from cocktail parties to fund-raisers, raising concerns about a D'Amato endorsement. Some New York advocates of civil rights for gay people have flooded the organization with phone calls, e-mail messages and letters. Democratic officials have been encouraging the group's major donors to express their opposition to D'Amato. People involved in the lobbying efforts said that at best, they are hoping the group will endorse both candidates, or make no endorsement at all. ``Chuck Schumer has been a strong supporter of issues that are important to gay communities,'' said a senior White House official who spoke on the condition of anonymity. ``The last thing that they should want to do is hurt the candidacy of someone who has been so supportive of their agenda.'' The Human Rights Campaign is considered the most influential gay and lesbian organization in Washington, with a national membership of 250,000 and an annual budget of more than $13 million. The group was created in the early 1980s in large part to counter the rise of the Christian right and Ronald Reagan. Paradoxically, D'Amato was first elected in the Reagan landslide of 1980 and remained a strong supporter of President Reagan. For D'Amato, who has aggressively courted gay voters, the endorsement would represent a crowning achievement in his efforts to reposition himself as a moderate. Since 1993, the senator has backed the right of gay citizens to serve in the military, sponsored legislation to prevent job discrimination against gay workers and opposed his own leadership's attempts to block the nominations of two openly gay men to positions in the Clinton administration. To gay supporters of D'Amato, an endorsement by the Human Rights Campaign would signify the political maturation of the gay electorate and help the organization insulate itself from accusations that it is too close to the Democratic Party. Those who support a D'Amato endorsement, including top officials within the Human Rights Campaign, contend that in the current political climate, where Congress is almost certain to remain under Republican control after November, gay people must build alliances with moderate Republicans. Human Rights Campaign officials also say their standing policy is to support friendly incumbents, even when their challengers have better voting records on gay issues. That is the case in New York, where Schumer's rating by the Human Rights Campaign has been consistently better than D'Amato's. Both men, however, have angered advocates of rights for gay people by voting for legislation that allows states to not recognize gay marriages. In a precedent widely cited by D'Amato supporters, the organization endorsed Sen. John F. Kerry, a Democrat, over the Republican challenger, William Weld, in the 1996 Massachusetts Senate race, even though Weld's record on gay rights was considered stronger. The move angered gay Republicans, who now contend that snubbing D'Amato would prove that the group is biased toward Democrats. But there is clearly a large number of Human Rights Campaign contributors and board members who strongly feel that endorsing D'Amato will permanently damage the group, particularly among women. They fear that abortion rights supporters will quit the group in droves because D'Amato has never wavered in his opposition to abortion during 18 years in Congress. Many New York gay activists would also be deeply upset if the group endorses D'Amato, whom they blame for installing the state Senate majority leader, Joseph Bruno, whom they consider to be strongly anti-gay. Matt Foreman, executive director of the Empire State Pride Agenda, cited D'Amato's role as ``the architect'' of the state Republican Party as a major reason the group endorsed Schumer. ``While he has criticized fellow Republicans in Washington for their intolerance, here at home, his own party's blatant discrimination is still the order of the day,'' Foreman said. For that reason, some White House officials say they think a Human Rights Campaign endorsement of D'Amato will be almost meaningless among gay voters. They contend that it might even hurt the senator among his conservative base. ``I don't think anybody will vote for Al D'Amato because of an HRC endorsement,'' said a White House aide who spoke on the condition of anonymity. ``But I think some people in the Right to Life Party and some upstate people are going to say, `Who is this guy and why should we vote for him?''' ||||| In other election years, Reps. David Price and Julia Carson would have had little in common other than that they were Democrats with relatively safe seats. Price is a centrist who has represented this high-tech district in North Carolina for all but 2 of the last 12 years, a political scientist who has taught at Duke and Yale. Mrs. Carson, fairly liberal, is a House freshman who worked her way up in politics from the grass roots, having been reared in poverty. But party officials who opened this election year with high hopes of recapturing the House are beginning to worry that Democratic incumbents like Price and Mrs. Carson share something else: greater-than-expected peril on Election Day. As in many congressional races, the biggest variable is the White House scandal, which has injected fear and uncertainty into campaigns around the country. Other Democratic incumbents who Republican officials cite as locked in contests that are more competitive than expected include Reps. Corrine Brown of Florida, Vic Snyder of Arkansas, Lois Capps and Ellen Tauscher of California, Martin Frost of Texas, Melvin Watt of North Carolina, John LaFalce of New York and Sander Levin of Michigan. Here in North Carolina's 4th Congressional District, Price, acknowledging that his own polls showed him in a tight race, said: ``This is a swing district that is sensitive to any tide or trend. It's something you think about a lot in connection with the president's troubles.'' The efforts of Price and Mrs. Carson to contain the Lewinsky debacle _ and their opponents' attempts to capitalize on it _ offer important clues suggesting how Clinton's problems are influencing the conduct of races around the country. Many Democrats are straddling a line that seems to shift a bit with every new scandal-related disclosure: they do not want to appear close to a president whose conduct embarrasses them, and yet, sensing the possibility of a public backlash against Republicans, they are weighing their words carefully and are wary of hopping on any impeachment bandwagon. And while publicly these Democrats express confidence that the scandal will have little impact on them, their campaigns are preparing for the worst by placing greater emphasis than ever on behind-the-efforts to prod their core constituencies to vote. In a reflection of the uncertainty that the Clinton scandal has cast even among Republicans, the challengers in the Price and Carson districts _ both are political novices seeking office for the first time _ have differing strategies: Tom Roberg, a computer executive in Raleigh who is taking on Price, has broadcast a television commercial exploiting the scandal. ``Tom Roberg has called for Bill Clinton's resignation,'' the narrator says. ``This is not the time to be silent, Price. Where do you stand?'' But in Indianapolis, Gary Hofmeister, a conservative jeweler challenging Mrs. Carson in Indiana's 10th Congressional District, is taking a more subtle approach: rather than mention the scandal directly, he notes as often as he can that ``Julia votes with Clinton almost 100 percent of the time.'' Asked why he was not much raising the scandal directly, Hofmeister said: ``Don't murder somebody when they're in the process of committing suicide. There would be a danger if we went overboard.'' The best evidence of the discomfort of both Price and Mrs. Carson is that when asked in separate interviews whether they would want Clinton to campaign in their districts, both said it would be impossible at this late date for the White House to schedule a visit. What if there was a sudden schedule change? Both paused, squirmed a bit and mustered answers that were hardly affirmative. ``Given the president's popularity, I doubt it will hurt me,'' Mrs. Carson said. And Price? ``I don't think that would be such a good idea,'' he said. ``I've never had a president campaign here, and I wouldn't want to start this time'' although he is eagerly welcoming Erskine Bowles, the president's chief of staff and a popular native son in North Carolina, to stump with him here this Sunday.) Making strategy for the stump is further complicated by anecdotal evidence that runs counter to Democratic fears and Republican hopes. In three days of campaign stops here in North Carolina and in Indianapolis, the scandal was rarely raised by any voter being courted by the candidates of either party. When a reporter asked about it, many voters said that as appalled as they were at Clinton's behavior, they had a hard time relating it to their decision on which way to vote in the congressional elections in five weeks. As Hofmeister walked through the parking lot outside a gun and knife show at the Indiana National Guard Armory in Indianapolis last Sunday, Billy Derringer, a 57-year-old machinist who is retired on disability, called him over to express outrage about the millions of dollars that had been spent to investigate Clinton. ``It's pathetic to spend all of our money,'' said Derringer, who identified himself as an independent. ``It shouldn't have gotten this far.'' Hofmeister tried his best to make the Republicans' case. ``There has to be rule of law,'' he said. Mrs. Carson said she hoped that Democrats and swing voters alike would become so fed up with the Lewinsky inquiry that the issue might even help her. To that end, she proudly informs audiences that she voted against making public the report delivered to the House by Kenneth Starr, the Whitewater independent counsel. ``I was one of 63 members of Congress who voted against putting all that filth on the Internet,'' she said, adding that Starr's inquiry had been ``a cruel hoax in terms of fiscal responsibility and accountability.'' The Carson campaign is counting on voters like Timothy Daly, a 38-year-old real estate executive who voted for a Republican two years ago but now favors Mrs. Carson. ``I'm pulling the Democratic ticket because I'm tired of it: the right side of the Republican Party is playing politics,'' Daly said. ``We'd like to see them go on with the people's business.'' Back here in the 4th District, Price has some reasons to be worried. He was first elected to the House in 1986 but, as a four-term incumbent, was ousted in the Republican sweep of 1994 (only to win his seat back two years later). In addition, the district was redrawn last year to include a large Durham section where voters do not know him well. Determined not to be a midterm casualty of Clinton once again, Price says he is waging the most vigorous get-out-the-vote ground campaign of his career. Rather than engage Roberg over the Clinton scandal, Price has begun broadcasting a television commercial that emphasizes his central issue: education. The congressman's advisers say they intentionally produced an advertisement that appears decidedly nonpolitical _ it features school children in a play _ in an effort to break through the television clutter about the scandal. But the Price campaign also has a weapon it is holding in reserve, in the event Roberg appears to be riding the Clinton scandal to advantage: the incumbent's advisers say they would not be timid about running commercials underscoring that he earned a divinity degree before getting his doctorate in political science. At a coffee with voters in a wealthy enclave of Raleigh the other night, Roberg opened his remarks by asserting that Clinton had ``lost the moral authority to lead.'' Yet none of those assembled asked him about the scandal; they were more concerned about the state's plans to build a highway near their neighborhood. ||||| In a cocoon of loyal and wealthy supporters, President Clinton said Friday that he must ``live with the consequences'' of his mistakes, although he contended that Democrats should take pride in the achievements of his presidency and take heart from its possibilities. Clinton has stopped apologizing for his conduct with Monica Lewinsky, but he has taken to making glancing, at times humble, references to it, before moving on to attack the Republican Congress as indifferent to Americans' needs. He did so Friday at a series of fund-raisers. In one deft sentence, he acknowledged his personal pain while claiming credit for the country's economic strength, making a compact appeal for both sympathy and support in an appearance earlier in the day in Cleveland. After thanking the gathered donors for the ``very kind personal things'' they had said to him, the president declared, ``If I had to do it all over again, every day, I would do it in a heartbeat, to see America where it is today as compared to six years ago.'' As the applause died away, Clinton continued, ``I want you to understand, too, that we all have to live with the consequences of our mistakes in life.'' He added with a chuckle: ``Most of us don't have to live with it in quite such a public way. But nobody gets out of life for free.'' To the music of a saxophone and a hammered dulcimer, Clinton raised about $200,000 over lunch in a private home in Cleveland for the Democratic Senate candidate in Ohio, Mary Boyle. Then he flew to Philadelphia to raise half a million dollars for the Democratic Party. By midsummer, the president's aides were delighted to have persuaded him to condense his fund-raising remarks to just 10 minutes of policy points and partisan jabbing. But as his troubles have grown and the mid-term elections have approached, his free-form remarks have become longer. In Cleveland on Friday, he spoke for 26 minutes and here on Friday evening he spoke for almost 20 minutes. These fund-raising visits have fallen into a pattern since Clinton's videotaped grand jury testimony on Aug. 17. He is lauded, applauded and embraced by his hosts and the donors. ``Mr. President, these are your friends here today,'' said Tony George, the host of the Cleveland event, offering the refrain of those who have played a similar role. But in Cleveland as elsewhere, protesters who were scattered along the president's motorcade route were reminders of calls for his resignation and impeachment, and of the mockery some are heaping upon his presidency. At a rally for the president outside city hall here Friday night a group of Teamsters chanted, ``two more years.'' Clinton's motorcade route was lined downtown with hundreds of people, some of them carrying supportive or condemnatory signs. After an impromptu shopping trip, during which he was greeted with shouts of ``We love you,'' Clinton told some donors at the beginning of an impassioned reprise of his Cleveland speech: ``I didn't even mind the protesters, that's the American way.'' But, he added, he preferred it when they were in the minority, ``and that seemed to be the case.'' As he rode into Cleveland, Clinton passed a billboard for a local radio station, WNCX. ``Lovin', touchin', squeezin','' it read, the words superimposed on a cartoon of the president with his arm over Ms. Lewinsky's shoulders, the Washington Monument beside them. The president left it to his aides on Friday to respond directly to the latest gusher of grand jury disclosures in Washington. Instead, in his remarks, Clinton spoke with pride of his record and with urgency about addressing the international economic crisis and the needs of struggling farmers and schoolchildren. As he typically does now before such partisan audiences, he also walked through his political calculation for the mid-term elections. Clinton said in Cleveland that Republicans had bragged privately to him about their prospects. ``They tell me, `Oh, we're going to do very well, Mr. President, in these mid-terms because we have so much more money than you do,''' and because Democrats who turned out to re-elect Clinton would not return to the polls in an off-year. That argument, of course, would also insulate Clinton from any blame for depressing the Democratic vote. But he often goes further than that, saying that his predicament could actually help the Democrats. Lower-income Democratic voters, he said, might not bother to vote in a typical election. ``The people that were good enough to serve you here at this event today, they've got a lot of hassles in their life,'' he said. But, he said, ``adversity is our friend,'' because it can overcome apathy and ``focus us on what is at issue here.'' What should be at issue, Clinton said, are his achievements and agenda and the Republicans' record, which he described harshly. ``What have they done?'' he asked in Cleveland. ``They killed the minimum wage increase for 12 million Americans. They killed campaign finance reform. They killed the tobacco reform legislation.'' ||||| Sen. Alfonse D'Amato, the New York Republican who is running for re-election, went to Manhattan's Grand Central Terminal the other morning to accept an award from mass-transit advocates. But the reporters who had gathered there showed little interest in the shiny train car at the senator's back. Instead, they repeatedly asked him how he would vote on an impeachment of President Clinton. ``Look, I'm not going to make any comment with respect to that subject matter,'' D'Amato responded. ``I am not just a citizen. I am a citizen-senator who may be called upon to make a decision.'' But D'Amato is something else as well: a candidate in what may be the tightest Senate race in the nation. And variations of his elliptical response can be heard in Senate races around the country, where both Republicans and Democrats are encountering similar questions. All of which suggests that after the House voted Thursday to authorize an impeachment inquiry, this year's 34 races for the U.S. Senate have become, beyond what they already were, the electoral equivalent of jury selection. If the House votes to impeach Clinton, the matter goes to the Senate, which must decide by a two-thirds majority whether to convict him and, thus, remove him from office. As a result, the Monica Lewinsky matter has suddenly injected a new disruptive force into the Senate contests. Voters, even those who support Clinton, expect their political leaders, Republican or Democratic, to renounce Clinton's behavior, and candidates have been doing that. But impeachment is another matter; most polls show the nation is against it. The danger for Senate candidates is that with impeachment now a real possibility, the debate may move beyond the president's behavior _ about which there is little disagreement _ to the more problematic issue of whether he should be removed from office. For most of the strategists involved in the races, there is little guidance on how to handle the impeachment issue. Advisers to candidates of both parties said in interviews last week that they were perplexed and worried, unsure what they can or should do on the issue to gain the advantage _ or guard against harm. ``I can't tell how this one is going to go,'' said Mike Russell, a spokesman for the Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee. ``This is a very surreal environment.'' Of the 34 Senate seats in play, 18 are held by Democrats and 16 by Republicans, who now hold 55 seats in all. Republicans would have to win 28 of the 34 races to produce the 67 votes necessary for conviction, assuming such a vote were to go along party lines. Only an electoral catastrophe for the Democrats, which seems almost unthinkable, could produce such a huge loss. Jennifer Duffy, who follows Senate races for the Cook Political Report, a nonpartisan newsletter, said that so far, at least, none of the Senate candidates has made an explicit appeal for votes based on how they would vote on a presidential jury. But she and others are wondering if this may be about to change. This is difficult ground to measure. One of the central questions of this political year has been how Clinton's dealings with Ms. Lewinsky might affect turnout. For a long time, politicians assumed that dispirited Democrats would stay home as a rebuke to Clinton, just as many Republicans did in November 1974, three months after President Richard M. Nixon resigned. But now some analysts wonder if the partisan fight in Congress last week might have the opposite effect among some Democrats. ``That's the problem,'' said Stuart Rothenberg, the editor of an independent political newsletter in Washington. ``It's not that we don't know, and that the politicians don't know, where the general public stands on impeachment. The problem is that we don't know where the electorate stands on impeachment.'' And asking voters to think ahead to an impeachment proceeding as they cast their ballots in a Senate race is, in the words of Stuart Stevens, a Republican consultant, ``a double bank-shot.'' Such strategies, he said, tend to work only with a small number of single-minded or sophisticated voters. Against that complicated backdrop, the prevailing thinking is that the use of the impeachment issue will vary from race to race, state to state and week to week, depending on the circumstances of the candidates and the composition of the electorate. If Democrats try to turn the image of Clinton in the dock to their advantage, it would be in states with a Democratic edge or with sizable numbers of black voters, who overwhelmingly support the president. In contests like those, it might well prove to be in the interest of a Democratic candidate to, as one consultant put it, sit down in front of a camera and tape an advertisement in which the candidate denounces the president's behavior but solemnly pledges to vote against impeachment. Strategists in both parties believe that kind of approach could prove effective. ``This is an issue where there is a huge disconnect between the elites and the public,'' said Fred Yang, a Democratic consultant with clients in Wisconsin and the Carolinas. That kind of Democratic strategy might emerge in California, New York, Illinois, Wisconsin, Washington and perhaps Arkansas. By contrast, Democrats in South Carolina, Georgia and Nevada would be less likely to oppose Clinton's impeachment. On the other side, Republican consultants are telling their candidates to stress Clinton's misdeeds and stay away from talk of impeachment. The last thing the party wants is to turn the Senate elections into a referendum on whether Clinton should be forced from office. ``The White House might think from the overall public numbers that maybe they would like to make this a referendum election,'' said Ed Goeas, a Republican pollster who is working in Senate races this year. ``Republicans certainly aren't going to let that happen.'' D'Amato responded to questions about Clinton with the language that Republican consultants have been suggesting to their candidates. ``When and if that matter comes to the Senate, I will decide on the facts that are presented to me at that time,'' D'Amato said. ``It would be very premature for me to suggest any course of action without it being referred. Because, indeed, we may be called upon to act as a jury of some kind.'' But Schumer, a member of the House Judiciary Committee, which is conducting the impeachment investigation, virtually embraced the issue. In a live telecast of the hearings, he said the president deserved a lesser punishment, such as censure or reprimand. And Schumer plans to campaign in New York on Monday with Clinton at his side. Schumer's media adviser, Hank Morris, seemed to suggest last week that impeachment will grow as an issue. ``Senator D'Amato claims he does not want to share his opinion with the people of New York,'' Morris said. ``And if he doesn't have an opinion, he's the only New Yorker who doesn't have an opinion.'' Asked if Schumer would raise the issue in a television commercial, Morris responded: ``We don't talk about what we're going to do. I wouldn't rule it in and I wouldn't rule it out.'' ||||| Nearly 60 years behind the times, the House voted Friday to condemn the Nazi-Soviet nonaggression pact of 1939. The measure, a nonbinding resolution, was brought to the floor by Rep. John Shimkus, R-Ill. He is of Lithuanian descent, has a pocket of Lithuanians in his hometown of Collinsville and wants to try to highlight his support for the Baltic states' past efforts against Soviet repression. Shimkus' measure is an example of how members of Congress are spending their time as they stand idle and wait for Republican leaders to reach agreement on spending bills with the White House, thus avoiding a government shutdown and allowing them to go home and campaign for the November elections. With time on their hands, many Republicans are using the House floor as their personal stage to elicit votes on topics that they can boast about to the folks back home. Most of these matters have little chance of finding their way into law, but members hope to turn them to their advantage on Election Day. There are plenty of other items whose sponsors hope will not attract attention. These tend to be special-interest matters that members hope will escape scrutiny in the rush to leave town. The sponsors of these measures now have the added advantage of the impeachment inquiry, which has been preoccupying Congress, the news media and the public and giving them cover to move their pet causes quietly into the gigantic omnibus package that Congress will eventually present to Clinton for signing. These quieter measures include one proposed by Mississippi's two senators, Trent Lott and Thad Cochran, both Republicans. They want agriculture export credits to buy chickens for Russia, which has bought the chickens but cannot pay for them. The chickens are from Mississippi. Democrats have little influence in the Republican-controlled Congress. But some Democrats are close enough to Republican leaders, and to Republican goals, that their measures are taken seriously. These include Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., the ranking Democrat on the national security subcommittee of the Appropriations Committee, who is pushing a measure to increase military pensions. Perhaps the best example of an attempt to force a vote for political advantage is a measure that would require minors to notify their parents if they are seeking contraceptives from federally funded family planning clinics. House leaders allowed the measure to be brought to the floor as a way to appease the more conservative members, who believe they have been shortchanged by the budget process. It passed the House by a vote of 224-200 but has almost no chance of becoming law. The Senate does not plan to take it up, and Clinton would almost certainly veto it. But Rep. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., said that votes like these were important because they put their sponsors' ideological foes on the record as opposing something that sounds reasonable, and that opposition can be used against them in the Nov. 3 election. ||||| It was a surprising scene three months ago when Dennis Rivera, one of New York City's most left-leaning labor leaders, was singing the praises of Sen. Alfonse M. D'Amato. Rivera, president of the largest union in New York City, praised D'Amato for persuading Trent Lott, the Senate majority leader, to support legislation that financed health coverage for hundreds of thousands of uninsured children. It looked as if Rivera's politically potent union might endorse D'Amato _ or at the very minimum stay neutral in this year's U.S. Senate race in New York. But on Monday, Rivera's 150,000-member union, 1199, the National Health and Human Service Employees union, endorsed Rep. Charles E. Schumer, D-N.Y., and thereby risked D'Amato's wrath. The endorsement is risky, labor leaders acknowledge, because angering this powerful senator could make him far less responsive to labor's needs when unions turn to him for help in the future if he is re-elected. Although it may seem illogical, two words go far to explain why Rivera's union backed Schumer: Monica Lewinsky. Largely as a result of the Lewinsky scandal, Democrats say they suddenly fear that the Republicans will gain a filibuster-proof, 60-seat majority in the Senate, where the Republicans have 55 seats to the Democrats' 45. For labor leaders like Rivera, the notion of a strong Republican majority is a nightmare. That fear has helped push other New York unions into Schumer's column, even though D'Amato had long courted them. Those unions include the teamsters' joint council in New York City and District Council 37, an umbrella group representing 120,000 municipal employees. Labor leaders say they fear that with a filibuster-proof Republican majority, the Senate would push through anti-union legislation, like recently defeated Republican proposals to curb labor's political spending and cut financing for the National Labor Relations Board. ``We are worried about legislation that will not allow the labor movement to survive into the next century,'' Rivera said. Alarmed that the Democrats will lose Senate seats in California, Illinois, Wisconsin, Nevada and South Carolina, Rivera's union concluded that it was worth backing Schumer. The decision, Rivera emphasized repeatedly, was not personal but was based on national considerations. ``Unfortunately, the leadership of the Republican Party at the national level in the person of Newt Gingrich and Trent Lott are not necessarily from the same culture as the Republicans of the Northeast,'' he said. ``They're far more conservative, far more anti-labor, far more anti-worker, far more pro-business. We fear that the Democratic Party faces irrelevance in the United States Senate if we go below 41 seats.'' Trying to avoid a rupture with D'Amato, Rivera praised him as ``an effective senator.'' The endorsement could be a boon for Schumer. Rivera's union and the teachers' union have labor's strongest political operations in New York. In addition, Schumer will get thousands of dollars from the local as well as use of its renowned phone banks, which can make 50,000 political calls a day. A spokesman for D'Amato said, ``Al D'Amato's proud that he's been endorsed by over 100 union federations and locals, representing more that 400,000 working men and women, and he'll continue his efforts on behalf of working middle class families.'' His labor endorsements include the New York City Patrolmen's Benevolent Association and the New York State Building and Construction Trades Council. Besides the backing of 1199, Schumer also received the endorsement of 1199's parent union, the Service Employees International Union, which has 350,000 members in New York State. Rivera _ who did not support D'Amato the last time he ran either _ announced the endorsements during the founding convention of the New York State Council of the service employees union. The convention packed Town Hall, and the new group aims to make the service employees a power to be reckoned with by bringing together a dozen union locals to forge a common political and legislative strategy. Earlier this year, 1199 merged with the service employees, and as part of that agreement, Rivera became head of the service employees in New York State. ||||| White House officials and gay Democrats, concerned that the nation's largest gay and lesbian political organization is about to endorse Sen. Alfonse D'Amato for re-election, are intensely lobbying the group to try to shift its support to the Democratic challenger, Rep. Charles Schumer. Publicly, officials in the organization, the Human Rights Campaign, said they were still deliberating their position in the closely watched race, considered among the tightest in the nation. They said they would probably make an endorsement by Friday. But privately, organization officials and gay activists from both parties who have been monitoring the debate say the group is most likely to endorse D'Amato, a Republican seeking his fourth term. They also raised the possibility that the group would endorse both candidates, or remain neutral. If the group endorses D'Amato, said officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity, the endorsement would be based on three major factors: The group tends to favor incumbents, has been searching for allies among the Senate Republican majority and considers D'Amato's recent record on gay issues to be quite strong. An endorsement by the group, which is held in high regard by many gay and lesbian voters, could prove important in swinging voters to D'Amato in a tight race. It would also be a major symbolic victory for the senator, who has sought to recast himself as a centrist in recent years and could use the endorsement to build his standing among moderate swing voters. A D'Amato endorsement would also weaken Schumer's efforts to portray the incumbent as a right-wing extremist and would signify to many voters a fraying of the traditional Democratic coalition that has included black and gay voters, women and labor unions. The intensity of the debate surrounding the endorsement underscores the importance of the New York Senate race to Democrats across the nation, who see defeating D'Amato as one of their best opportunities to prevent the Republicans from gaining 60 seats in the Senate _ enough to stop a Democratic filibuster. The Republicans currently hold a 55-to-45 majority. ``There is sentiment in the community that if the Republicans get 60 votes, that Trent Lott will basically be in charge politically for the next two years,'' said David Mixner, a close friend of President Clinton's who is gay. He was referring to the Senate majority leader, who has called homosexuality a sin and likened it to kleptomania. Saturday, Schumer picked up his own endorsement from New York's largest gay and lesbian political organization, the Empire State Pride Agenda. Although the Human Rights Campaign is bipartisan, it has been very close to the Clinton administration, has many Democrats on its board and receives much of its money from Democratic contributors. Largely because of the group's strong Democratic ties, gay Democrats, New York liberals and White House officials are infuriated that it is even considering endorsing D'Amato, who also runs on the Right to Life and Conservative Party lines and often receives high ratings from the Christian Coalition, which typically opposes legislation on civil rights for gay people. Although the organization has been thought to be inching toward a D'Amato endorsement for months, the lobbying campaign for Schumer has picked up intensity in the last two weeks, driven partly by a growing sense that the race is now closer than ever. Democrats and advocates in both parties who support rights for gay people said that Vice President Al Gore, Hillary Rodham Clinton and Secretary for Health and Human Services Donna Shalala have made personal appeals to Human Rights Campaign officials urging them not to endorse D'Amato. White House officials said they did not know whether the three had made such appeals, and Human Rights Campaign officials declined to comment. Schumer met privately with the group's top officials last week to make one last pitch for the endorsement. Clinton administration officials have also been buttonholing the group's board members at every opportunity, from cocktail parties to fund-raisers, raising concerns about a D'Amato endorsement. Some New York advocates of civil rights for gay people have flooded the organization with phone calls, e-mail messages and letters. Democratic officials have been encouraging the group's major donors to express their opposition to D'Amato. People involved in the lobbying efforts said that at best, they are hoping the group will endorse both candidates, or make no endorsement at all. ``Chuck Schumer has been a strong supporter of issues that are important to gay communities,'' said a senior White House official who spoke on the condition of anonymity. ``The last thing that they should want to do is hurt the candidacy of someone who has been so supportive of their agenda.'' The Human Rights Campaign is considered the most influential gay and lesbian organization in Washington, with a national membership of 250,000 and an annual budget of more than $13 million. The group was created in the early 1980s in large part to counter the rise of the Christian right and Ronald Reagan. Paradoxically, D'Amato was first elected in the Reagan landslide of 1980 and remained a strong supporter of President Reagan. For D'Amato, who has aggressively courted gay voters, the endorsement would represent a crowning achievement in his efforts to reposition himself as a moderate. Since 1993, the senator has backed the right of gay citizens to serve in the military, sponsored legislation to prevent job discrimination against gay workers and opposed his own leadership's attempts to block the nominations of two openly gay men to positions in the Clinton administration. To gay supporters of D'Amato, an endorsement by the Human Rights Campaign would signify the political maturation of the gay electorate and help the organization insulate itself from accusations that it is too close to the Democratic Party. Those who support a D'Amato endorsement, including top officials within the Human Rights Campaign, contend that in the current political climate, where Congress is almost certain to remain under Republican control after November, gay people must build alliances with moderate Republicans. Human Rights Campaign officials also say their standing policy is to support friendly incumbents, even when their challengers have better voting records on gay issues. That is the case in New York, where Schumer's rating by the Human Rights Campaign has been consistently better than D'Amato's. Both men, however, have angered advocates of rights for gay people by voting for legislation that allows states to not recognize gay marriages. In a precedent widely cited by D'Amato supporters, the organization endorsed Sen. John F. Kerry, a Democrat, over the Republican challenger, William Weld, in the 1996 Massachusetts Senate race, even though Weld's record on gay rights was considered stronger. The move angered gay Republicans, who now contend that snubbing D'Amato would prove that the group is biased toward Democrats. But there is clearly a large number of Human Rights Campaign contributors and board members who strongly feel that endorsing D'Amato will permanently damage the group, particularly among women. They fear that abortion rights supporters will quit the group in droves because D'Amato has never wavered in his opposition to abortion during 18 years in Congress. Many New York gay activists would also be deeply upset if the group endorses D'Amato, whom they blame for installing the state Senate majority leader, Joseph Bruno, whom they consider to be strongly anti-gay. Matt Foreman, executive director of the Empire State Pride Agenda, cited D'Amato's role as ``the architect'' of the state Republican Party as a major reason the group endorsed Schumer. ``While he has criticized fellow Republicans in Washington for their intolerance, here at home, his own party's blatant discrimination is still the order of the day,'' Foreman said. For that reason, some White House officials say they think a Human Rights Campaign endorsement of D'Amato will be almost meaningless among gay voters. They contend that it might even hurt the senator among his conservative base. ``I don't think anybody will vote for Al D'Amato because of an HRC endorsement,'' said a White House aide who spoke on the condition of anonymity. ``But I think some people in the Right to Life Party and some upstate people are going to say, `Who is this guy and why should we vote for him?''' ||||| The last time George Voinovich ran for office, he won re-election as Ohio's governor with 72 percent of the vote, stunning even his most optimistic supporters and setting a 20th-century record for victory margins in Ohio politics. This year, Voinovich, a Republican who is barred from seeking a third term, is running again, this time for the Senate seat held by John Glenn, a Democrat who is retiring. And while there are few who expect Voinovich to repeat his electoral benchmark of four years ago, politicians of both parties generally acknowledge that he is well positioned to increase the Republican majority in the Senate. That has not prevented Voinovich's Democratic opponent, Mary Boyle, from undertaking a vigorous campaign. Ms. Boyle, a former commissioner in Cuyahoga County, which encompasses Cleveland, is crisscrossing the nation's seventh-most populous state in what she describes as a grass-roots campaign that, while operating on a comparative shoestring, has nonetheless attracted to her side nationally known Democrats _ President Clinton foremost among them _ on the campaign trail. Glenn, the former astronaut who is preparing to return to space this month at the age of 77, has not made an endorsement in the Senate race. Like many candidates this year, Ms. Boyle, 55, is campaigning hard on the issue of education, seeking to portray Voinovich, 61, as a lackluster steward who allowed the state's schools to decline. ``He promised to be the education governor,'' said Ms. Boyle. ``But after seven and a half years he has failed the students of this state.'' Her role in the campaign, she said, ``is to remind the people of the state of Ohio that George Voinovich made a promise and that he didn't deliver on it.'' Specifically, she discusses a decision last year by the Ohio Supreme Court that cited wide disparities in the quality of the state's schools and ruled unconstitutional the formula for funding them. She has also attacked her Republican opponent for supporting a proposal to raise the state's sales tax by one percent. Under that plan, half the additional funds would have been used for school improvement with the remainder earmarked for reducing property taxes. That statewide ballot initiative last May proved to be wildly unpopular, with about 80 percent of the voters opposing it. While the topics of taxes and education are hot ones this political season in Ohio, it is not clear that Ms. Boyle's emphasis on them has helped her campaign. Despite some narrowing in the opinion polls, she is still trailing Voinovich by 10 percentage points in some polls and as much as 18 points in others. There is also a sharp fund-raising disparity. Ms. Boyle, who is running her first statewide race and has widespread union support, has raised nearly $2 million so far, far less than the nearly $7 million Voinovich has taken in. Also, Voinovich, a former lieutenant governor, has been on statewide ballots five times over the last 20 years and thus is the better-known candidate. The electoral dynamics of Ohio are also aiding Voinovich. The northern half of the state, with its history of industrial, unionized cities, has a tradition of voting largely for Democratic candidates, while the southern tier of the state is considered more conservative and typically leans Republican. But Voinovich and Ms. Boyle share the same home terrain, depriving Ms. Boyle of the geographic advantage that often accompanies Democratic candidates. Indeed, as a boy, Voinovich once delivered newspapers to the Boyle home in the working-class Collinwood section of Cleveland. And Voinovich, a former mayor of Cleveland, has developed a reputation as a moderate Republican who works well with Democrats. Voinovich, while campaigning vigorously himself, is keeping a full schedule of official duties, assuming the role of the experienced, elected official. ``If I get into the Senate, I will probably know more about domestic policy than any member of the Senate,'' he said in an interview on Wednesday in Canton, sandwiched between a ribbon-cutting ceremony and a fund-raising reception at a vacuum cleaner museum. ``As mayor, I had my nose rubbed into the problems of urban America and was fairly successful in dealing with them. And, as governor, I have dealt with the problems of Medicaid, welfare and education. I'm the only person in the United States who has been president of the National League of Cities and chairman of the National Governors Association.'' To his opponent's charges on his record on education, Voinovich is dismissive. ``I'm probably the only Republican in the United States who has been endorsed by the Ohio Education Association and National Education Association,'' he said, adding that Ms. Boyle was a member of the state Legislature during the period cited in the Supreme Court ruling. ``Mary Boyle was vice chairman of the Ways and Means Committee and a member of the Democratic leadership during those years,'' Voinovich said. ``They did nothing to fix the buildings, they did nothing for technology and the urban school districts.'' Ms. Boyle, who has not yet begun to run campaign commercials on television, said her status as the underdog had ``allowed me to be more focused, more intense.'' Pausing after a campaign fund-raising breakfast with former Democratic Sen. Bill Bradley of New Jersey here on Wednesday, Ms. Boyle said: ``This has been a marathon and it's been pretty much uphill. But now, we're down to the last three miles. It's a tough race.''

Acknowledging his mistakes, Clinton supports Democrat candidates and speaks at fundraisers. He backs Mary Boyle of Ohio in her bid for U.S. Senate. Democrat candidates try to limit the effect of the Lewinsky debacle on their campaigns. A N.Y. labor union backs Democrat Schumer to keep Republicans from gaining a 60-seat majority. Sen. D'Amato sidesteps queries about Clinton's impeachment on the campaign trail. A gay group may back D'Amato, the prospect of which is upsetting Democrats. House Republicans are using idle time to get votes on issues to help their campaigns. The National Republican Congressional Committee sponsors deceptive fundraising calls.

It was not a voice mail message that Dr. Marilyn Rymer, a neurologist in Kansas City, Mo., would routinely delete, even as a registered Democrat. ``Speaker Newt Gingrich's office,'' it said, was calling to discuss a ``national leadership award.'' Dr. Rymer has won acclaim as the director of a prominent stroke-treatment center, but this proposition seemed particularly grand. When she returned the call, she said she was told she would also be named honorary chairman of an elite committee to advise Gingrich on legislation. Too good to be true? Well, Dr. Rymer would have to pay her own way if the committee should actually meet, and as an honorary committee chairman, she discovered, she would be a member of a committee composed entirely of honorary chairmen. And oh, the speaker wanted a donation of $500 to $1,000 to ``help our efforts,'' according to a transcript of a similar chat with another doctor, to elect a bigger Republican majority in the House of Representatives. With the approach of the midterm elections next month, it turns out that the National Republican Congressional Committee, which supports candidates for the House, has been sponsoring similar calls to tens of thousands of small-business owners, including doctors. With this and other fund-raising programs, the committee says it has amassed $62 million for the elections. But campaign finance watchdogs say the solicitations mark a new departure in political fund raising, one they call akin to the practices of marketing companies like the Publishers' Clearing House that hook consumers with visions of million-dollar windfalls to induce them to subscribe to magazines. By citing the speaker and promising celebrity and influence, they say, the calls are a bait-and-switch scheme to seize the attention of people who might otherwise hang up. Dr. Rymer says she was incensed. So was Dr. Stanley Turecki, a child and family psychiatrist in New York who votes as an independent and was also called. ``I was absolutely outraged,'' he said. ``Anybody else who would do that would fall into the category of consumer fraud.'' Kenneth Gross, a Washington lawyer who specializes in election law and represents both Democratic and Republican clients, said, ``I have never heard of that particular device.'' But it doesn't appear illegal, he said, adding, ``It's a fund-raising gimmick to get attention.'' Fred Wertheimer, president of Democracy 21, a nonprofit, nonpartisan advocate of campaign finance reform, said, ``This is a new version of caveat emptor _ buyer be damned instead of buyer beware.'' When businesses do it, he added, Congress orders investigations. ``But this isn't going to be investigated because it's members of Congress who are doing it.'' Todd Harris, a spokesman for the National Republican Congressional Committee, said that he had not heard of any complaints and that there was no intent to deceive. ``The national leadership award is a part of what we call donor and member fulfillment,'' Harris said. ``It's part of bringing them into the process. It's important that they be recognized for the support they give the party.'' ``There's no quid pro quo'' that people solicited could receive awards for past contributions, he added. What most peeves Drs. Rymer and Turecki is the message left with secretaries and answering machines invoking Gingrich's ``office'' and proposing the award. They say they envisioned a senior aide at a telephone in the speaker's chambers under the Capitol Dome. The calls, however, are not placed by aides to Gingrich, by any of his offices or by anyone in Washington. They are made by people with headsets and computers at the home of InfoCision Management Corp., a telemarketing firm and Congressional committee client in Akron, Ohio. On its Web page, InfoCision says its 1,400 employees operate 1,584 telephone lines and 9 phone centers. ``Every word in the script is approved by our clients,'' the company says on its Web site. ``Every conceivable objection is scripted with a powerful rebuttal.'' Besides telemarketing for businesses, said Jamie Blair, a supervisor at the center, ``we specialize in helping the Republican Party and conservative political groups.'' However far they are from Gingrich, the telemarketers are instructed to answer return calls with: ``Republican Congressional Committee, Newt Gingrich's office. May I help you?'' A doctor in Kansas City, Mo., who is a registered Republican and who declined to be named, dialed the Gingrich number (888-484-1644) left on answering machines and secretly recorded the ensuing discussion, which is legal in Missouri. ``We were asked to contact you on behalf of the speaker,'' says a woman who picked up the call and identified herself as Nancy. ``He is right now aggressively pushing legislation to cut taxes by as much as half, and he's also interested in legislation to cut capital gains to a single rate of 15 percent.'' To assure passage of the legislation, the speaker wants to increase his Republican majority, she says, adding, ``To help us do that, the speaker is pulling together a group of individuals such as yourself and is inviting you to be an honorary chairman on his advisory council.'' Nancy continues: ``There will be correspondence with the speaker, such as conference calls. It's a great way that he can get your input and thoughts on legislation that does concern you. Or maybe surveys or questionnaires.'' Later, Nancy says: ``As a member of his committee, you would be receiving from the speaker our national leadership award, which is really quite an honor. And to be honest, he will be asking each of our chairmen if they could help our efforts to increase our majority with a one-time contribution of $500 or $1,000. ``Now that would be used on the nationwide media campaign that Newt has undertaken to target those seats we really need. And as someone who I'm sure would also benefit from this, could I tell the speaker he could count on your help?'' The doctor demurs. ``I am a registered, you know, Republican in Kansas,'' she tells Nancy. ``Probably if I were to do something it would be to go through my own representative.'' Then the doctor tries to ascertain where Nancy is located. ``Is this congressman Gingrich's office that I'm talking to?'' the doctor asks. ``The speaker's office,'' says Nancy. ``This is the speaker's office.'' ``That I'm talking to,'' says the doctor, double-checking. ``Uh-huh,'' Nancy replies. The law prohibits political fund-raising calls from federal offices. Vice President Al Gore is under a Justice Department investigation for fund-raising calls he allegedly made from his office in the 1996 presidential campaign. But the calls can be made from just about anywhere else, including campaign offices. Harris said the calls are ``in no way related to the speaker's OFFICIAL office.'' He added: ``What is more important is not where the calls get routed. People are more interested in an award with the speaker's good name on it than whether the call gets routed to Washington or Ohio.'' Turecki disagrees. ``I see it as basic sleaze,'' he said. ||||| The last time George Voinovich ran for office, he won re-election as Ohio's governor with 72 percent of the vote, stunning even his most optimistic supporters and setting a 20th-century record for victory margins in Ohio politics. This year, Voinovich, a Republican who is barred from seeking a third term, is running again, this time for the Senate seat held by John Glenn, a Democrat who is retiring. And while there are few who expect Voinovich to repeat his electoral benchmark of four years ago, politicians of both parties generally acknowledge that he is well positioned to increase the Republican majority in the Senate. That has not prevented Voinovich's Democratic opponent, Mary Boyle, from undertaking a vigorous campaign. Ms. Boyle, a former commissioner in Cuyahoga County, which encompasses Cleveland, is crisscrossing the nation's seventh-most populous state in what she describes as a grass-roots campaign that, while operating on a comparative shoestring, has nonetheless attracted to her side nationally known Democrats _ President Clinton foremost among them _ on the campaign trail. Glenn, the former astronaut who is preparing to return to space this month at the age of 77, has not made an endorsement in the Senate race. Like many candidates this year, Ms. Boyle, 55, is campaigning hard on the issue of education, seeking to portray Voinovich, 61, as a lackluster steward who allowed the state's schools to decline. ``He promised to be the education governor,'' said Ms. Boyle. ``But after seven and a half years he has failed the students of this state.'' Her role in the campaign, she said, ``is to remind the people of the state of Ohio that George Voinovich made a promise and that he didn't deliver on it.'' Specifically, she discusses a decision last year by the Ohio Supreme Court that cited wide disparities in the quality of the state's schools and ruled unconstitutional the formula for funding them. She has also attacked her Republican opponent for supporting a proposal to raise the state's sales tax by one percent. Under that plan, half the additional funds would have been used for school improvement with the remainder earmarked for reducing property taxes. That statewide ballot initiative last May proved to be wildly unpopular, with about 80 percent of the voters opposing it. While the topics of taxes and education are hot ones this political season in Ohio, it is not clear that Ms. Boyle's emphasis on them has helped her campaign. Despite some narrowing in the opinion polls, she is still trailing Voinovich by 15 percentage points in some polls and as much as 20 points in others. There is also a sharp fund-raising disparity. Ms. Boyle, who is running her first statewide race and has widespread union support, has raised nearly $2 million so far, far less than the nearly $7 million Voinovich has taken in. Also, Voinovich, a former lieutenant governor, has been on statewide ballots five times over the last 20 years and thus is the better-known candidate. The electoral dynamics of Ohio are also aiding Voinovich. The northern half of the state, with its history of industrial, unionized cities, has a tradition of voting largely for Democratic candidates, while the southern tier of the state is considered more conservative and typically leans Republican. But Voinovich and Ms. Boyle share the same home terrain, depriving Ms. Boyle of the geographic advantage that often accompanies Democratic candidates. Indeed, as a boy, Voinovich once delivered newspapers to the Boyle home in the working-class Collinwood section of Cleveland. And Voinovich, a former mayor of Cleveland, has developed a reputation as a moderate Republican who works well with Democrats. Voinovich, while campaigning vigorously himself, is keeping a full schedule of official duties, assuming the role of the experienced, elected official. ``If I get into the Senate, I will probably know more about domestic policy than any member of the Senate,'' he said in an interview on Wednesday in Canton, sandwiched between a ribbon-cutting ceremony and a fund-raising reception at a vacuum cleaner museum. ``As mayor, I had my nose rubbed into the problems of urban America and was fairly successful in dealing with them. And, as governor, I have dealt with the problems of Medicaid, welfare and education. I'm the only person in the United States who has been president of the National League of Cities and chairman of the National Governors Association.'' To his opponent's charges on his record on education, Voinovich is dismissive. ``I'm probably the only Republican in the United States who has been endorsed by the Ohio Education Association and National Education Association,'' he said, adding that Ms. Boyle was a member of the state Legislature during the period cited in the Supreme Court ruling. ``Mary Boyle was vice chairman of the Ways and Means Committee and a member of the Democratic leadership during those years,'' Voinovich said. ``They did nothing to fix the buildings, they did nothing for technology and the urban school districts.'' Ms. Boyle, who has not yet begun to run campaign commercials on television, said her status as the underdog had ``allowed me to be more focused, more intense.'' Pausing after a campaign fund-raising breakfast with former Democratic Sen. Bill Bradley of New Jersey here on Wednesday, Ms. Boyle said: ``This has been a marathon and it's been pretty much uphill. But now, we're down to the last three miles. It's a tough race.'' ||||| White House officials and gay Democrats, concerned that the nation's largest gay and lesbian political organization is about to endorse Sen. Alfonse D'Amato for re-election, are intensely lobbying the group to try to shift its support to the Democratic challenger, Rep. Charles Schumer. Publicly, officials in the organization, the Human Rights Campaign, said they were still deliberating their position in the closely watched race, considered among the tightest in the nation. They said they would probably make an endorsement by Friday. But privately, organization officials and gay activists from both parties who have been monitoring the debate say the group is most likely to endorse D'Amato, a Republican seeking his fourth term. They also raised the possibility that the group would endorse both candidates, or remain neutral. If the group endorses D'Amato, said officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity, the endorsement would be based on three major factors: The group tends to favor incumbents, has been searching for allies among the Senate Republican majority and considers D'Amato's recent record on gay issues to be quite strong. An endorsement by the group, which is held in high regard by many gay and lesbian voters, could prove important in swinging voters to D'Amato in a tight race. It would also be a major symbolic victory for the senator, who has sought to recast himself as a centrist in recent years and could use the endorsement to build his standing among moderate swing voters. A D'Amato endorsement would also weaken Schumer's efforts to portray the incumbent as a right-wing extremist and would signify to many voters a fraying of the traditional Democratic coalition that has included black and gay voters, women and labor unions. The intensity of the debate surrounding the endorsement underscores the importance of the New York Senate race to Democrats across the nation, who see defeating D'Amato as one of their best opportunities to prevent the Republicans from gaining 60 seats in the Senate _ enough to stop a Democratic filibuster. The Republicans currently hold a 55-to-45 majority. ``There is sentiment in the community that if the Republicans get 60 votes, that Trent Lott will basically be in charge politically for the next two years,'' said David Mixner, a close friend of President Clinton's who is gay. He was referring to the Senate majority leader, who has called homosexuality a sin and likened it to kleptomania. Saturday, Schumer picked up his own endorsement from New York's largest gay and lesbian political organization, the Empire State Pride Agenda. Although the Human Rights Campaign is bipartisan, it has been very close to the Clinton administration, has many Democrats on its board and receives much of its money from Democratic contributors. Largely because of the group's strong Democratic ties, gay Democrats, New York liberals and White House officials are infuriated that it is even considering endorsing D'Amato, who also runs on the Right to Life and Conservative Party lines and often receives high ratings from the Christian Coalition, which typically opposes legislation on civil rights for gay people. Although the organization has been thought to be inching toward a D'Amato endorsement for months, the lobbying campaign for Schumer has picked up intensity in the last two weeks, driven partly by a growing sense that the race is now closer than ever. Democrats and advocates in both parties who support rights for gay people said that Vice President Al Gore, Hillary Rodham Clinton and Secretary for Health and Human Services Donna Shalala have made personal appeals to Human Rights Campaign officials urging them not to endorse D'Amato. White House officials said they did not know whether the three had made such appeals, and Human Rights Campaign officials declined to comment. Schumer met privately with the group's top officials last week to make one last pitch for the endorsement. Clinton administration officials have also been buttonholing the group's board members at every opportunity, from cocktail parties to fund-raisers, raising concerns about a D'Amato endorsement. Some New York advocates of civil rights for gay people have flooded the organization with phone calls, e-mail messages and letters. Democratic officials have been encouraging the group's major donors to express their opposition to D'Amato. People involved in the lobbying efforts said that at best, they are hoping the group will endorse both candidates, or make no endorsement at all. ``Chuck Schumer has been a strong supporter of issues that are important to gay communities,'' said a senior White House official who spoke on the condition of anonymity. ``The last thing that they should want to do is hurt the candidacy of someone who has been so supportive of their agenda.'' The Human Rights Campaign is considered the most influential gay and lesbian organization in Washington, with a national membership of 250,000 and an annual budget of more than $13 million. The group was created in the early 1980s in large part to counter the rise of the Christian right and Ronald Reagan. Paradoxically, D'Amato was first elected in the Reagan landslide of 1980 and remained a strong supporter of President Reagan. For D'Amato, who has aggressively courted gay voters, the endorsement would represent a crowning achievement in his efforts to reposition himself as a moderate. Since 1993, the senator has backed the right of gay citizens to serve in the military, sponsored legislation to prevent job discrimination against gay workers and opposed his own leadership's attempts to block the nominations of two openly gay men to positions in the Clinton administration. To gay supporters of D'Amato, an endorsement by the Human Rights Campaign would signify the political maturation of the gay electorate and help the organization insulate itself from accusations that it is too close to the Democratic Party. Those who support a D'Amato endorsement, including top officials within the Human Rights Campaign, contend that in the current political climate, where Congress is almost certain to remain under Republican control after November, gay people must build alliances with moderate Republicans. Human Rights Campaign officials also say their standing policy is to support friendly incumbents, even when their challengers have better voting records on gay issues. That is the case in New York, where Schumer's rating by the Human Rights Campaign has been consistently better than D'Amato's. Both men, however, have angered advocates of rights for gay people by voting for legislation that allows states to not recognize gay marriages. In a precedent widely cited by D'Amato supporters, the organization endorsed Sen. John F. Kerry, a Democrat, over the Republican challenger, William Weld, in the 1996 Massachusetts Senate race, even though Weld's record on gay rights was considered stronger. The move angered gay Republicans, who now contend that snubbing D'Amato would prove that the group is biased toward Democrats. But there is clearly a large number of Human Rights Campaign contributors and board members who strongly feel that endorsing D'Amato will permanently damage the group, particularly among women. They fear that abortion rights supporters will quit the group in droves because D'Amato has never wavered in his opposition to abortion during 18 years in Congress. Many New York gay activists would also be deeply upset if the group endorses D'Amato, whom they blame for installing the state Senate majority leader, Joseph Bruno, whom they consider to be strongly anti-gay. Matt Foreman, executive director of the Empire State Pride Agenda, cited D'Amato's role as ``the architect'' of the state Republican Party as a major reason the group endorsed Schumer. ``While he has criticized fellow Republicans in Washington for their intolerance, here at home, his own party's blatant discrimination is still the order of the day,'' Foreman said. For that reason, some White House officials say they think a Human Rights Campaign endorsement of D'Amato will be almost meaningless among gay voters. They contend that it might even hurt the senator among his conservative base. ``I don't think anybody will vote for Al D'Amato because of an HRC endorsement,'' said a White House aide who spoke on the condition of anonymity. ``But I think some people in the Right to Life Party and some upstate people are going to say, `Who is this guy and why should we vote for him?''' ||||| In other election years, Reps. David Price and Julia Carson would have had little in common other than that they were Democrats with relatively safe seats. Price is a centrist who has represented this high-tech district in North Carolina for all but 2 of the last 12 years, a political scientist who has taught at Duke and Yale. Mrs. Carson, fairly liberal, is a House freshman who worked her way up in politics from the grass roots, having been reared in poverty. But party officials who opened this election year with high hopes of recapturing the House are beginning to worry that Democratic incumbents like Price and Mrs. Carson share something else: greater-than-expected peril on Election Day. As in many congressional races, the biggest variable is the White House scandal, which has injected fear and uncertainty into campaigns around the country. Other Democratic incumbents who Republican officials cite as locked in contests that are more competitive than expected include Reps. Corrine Brown of Florida, Vic Snyder of Arkansas, Lois Capps and Ellen Tauscher of California, Martin Frost of Texas, Melvin Watt of North Carolina, John LaFalce of New York and Sander Levin of Michigan. Here in North Carolina's 4th Congressional District, Price, acknowledging that his own polls showed him in a tight race, said: ``This is a swing district that is sensitive to any tide or trend. It's something you think about a lot in connection with the president's troubles.'' The efforts of Price and Mrs. Carson to contain the Lewinsky debacle _ and their opponents' attempts to capitalize on it _ offer important clues suggesting how Clinton's problems are influencing the conduct of races around the country. Many Democrats are straddling a line that seems to shift a bit with every new scandal-related disclosure: they do not want to appear close to a president whose conduct embarrasses them, and yet, sensing the possibility of a public backlash against Republicans, they are weighing their words carefully and are wary of hopping on any impeachment bandwagon. And while publicly these Democrats express confidence that the scandal will have little impact on them, their campaigns are preparing for the worst by placing greater emphasis than ever on behind-the-efforts to prod their core constituencies to vote. In a reflection of the uncertainty that the Clinton scandal has cast even among Republicans, the challengers in the Price and Carson districts _ both are political novices seeking office for the first time _ have differing strategies: Tom Roberg, a computer executive in Raleigh who is taking on Price, has broadcast a television commercial exploiting the scandal. ``Tom Roberg has called for Bill Clinton's resignation,'' the narrator says. ``This is not the time to be silent, Price. Where do you stand?'' But in Indianapolis, Gary Hofmeister, a conservative jeweler challenging Mrs. Carson in Indiana's 10th Congressional District, is taking a more subtle approach: rather than mention the scandal directly, he notes as often as he can that ``Julia votes with Clinton almost 100 percent of the time.'' Asked why he was not much raising the scandal directly, Hofmeister said: ``Don't murder somebody when they're in the process of committing suicide. There would be a danger if we went overboard.'' The best evidence of the discomfort of both Price and Mrs. Carson is that when asked in separate interviews whether they would want Clinton to campaign in their districts, both said it would be impossible at this late date for the White House to schedule a visit. What if there was a sudden schedule change? Both paused, squirmed a bit and mustered answers that were hardly affirmative. ``Given the president's popularity, I doubt it will hurt me,'' Mrs. Carson said. And Price? ``I don't think that would be such a good idea,'' he said. ``I've never had a president campaign here, and I wouldn't want to start this time'' although he is eagerly welcoming Erskine Bowles, the president's chief of staff and a popular native son in North Carolina, to stump with him here this Sunday.) Making strategy for the stump is further complicated by anecdotal evidence that runs counter to Democratic fears and Republican hopes. In three days of campaign stops here in North Carolina and in Indianapolis, the scandal was rarely raised by any voter being courted by the candidates of either party. When a reporter asked about it, many voters said that as appalled as they were at Clinton's behavior, they had a hard time relating it to their decision on which way to vote in the congressional elections in five weeks. As Hofmeister walked through the parking lot outside a gun and knife show at the Indiana National Guard Armory in Indianapolis last Sunday, Billy Derringer, a 57-year-old machinist who is retired on disability, called him over to express outrage about the millions of dollars that had been spent to investigate Clinton. ``It's pathetic to spend all of our money,'' said Derringer, who identified himself as an independent. ``It shouldn't have gotten this far.'' Hofmeister tried his best to make the Republicans' case. ``There has to be rule of law,'' he said. Mrs. Carson said she hoped that Democrats and swing voters alike would become so fed up with the Lewinsky inquiry that the issue might even help her. To that end, she proudly informs audiences that she voted against making public the report delivered to the House by Kenneth Starr, the Whitewater independent counsel. ``I was one of 63 members of Congress who voted against putting all that filth on the Internet,'' she said, adding that Starr's inquiry had been ``a cruel hoax in terms of fiscal responsibility and accountability.'' The Carson campaign is counting on voters like Timothy Daly, a 38-year-old real estate executive who voted for a Republican two years ago but now favors Mrs. Carson. ``I'm pulling the Democratic ticket because I'm tired of it: the right side of the Republican Party is playing politics,'' Daly said. ``We'd like to see them go on with the people's business.'' Back here in the 4th District, Price has some reasons to be worried. He was first elected to the House in 1986 but, as a four-term incumbent, was ousted in the Republican sweep of 1994 (only to win his seat back two years later). In addition, the district was redrawn last year to include a large Durham section where voters do not know him well. Determined not to be a midterm casualty of Clinton once again, Price says he is waging the most vigorous get-out-the-vote ground campaign of his career. Rather than engage Roberg over the Clinton scandal, Price has begun broadcasting a television commercial that emphasizes his central issue: education. The congressman's advisers say they intentionally produced an advertisement that appears decidedly nonpolitical _ it features school children in a play _ in an effort to break through the television clutter about the scandal. But the Price campaign also has a weapon it is holding in reserve, in the event Roberg appears to be riding the Clinton scandal to advantage: the incumbent's advisers say they would not be timid about running commercials underscoring that he earned a divinity degree before getting his doctorate in political science. At a coffee with voters in a wealthy enclave of Raleigh the other night, Roberg opened his remarks by asserting that Clinton had ``lost the moral authority to lead.'' Yet none of those assembled asked him about the scandal; they were more concerned about the state's plans to build a highway near their neighborhood. ||||| In a cocoon of loyal and wealthy supporters, President Clinton said Friday that he must ``live with the consequences'' of his mistakes, although he contended that Democrats should take pride in the achievements of his presidency and take heart from its possibilities. Clinton has stopped apologizing for his conduct with Monica Lewinsky, but he has taken to making glancing, at times humble, references to it, before moving on to attack the Republican Congress as indifferent to Americans' needs. He did so Friday at a series of fund-raisers. In one deft sentence, he acknowledged his personal pain while claiming credit for the country's economic strength, making a compact appeal for both sympathy and support in an appearance earlier in the day in Cleveland. After thanking the gathered donors for the ``very kind personal things'' they had said to him, the president declared, ``If I had to do it all over again, every day, I would do it in a heartbeat, to see America where it is today as compared to six years ago.'' As the applause died away, Clinton continued, ``I want you to understand, too, that we all have to live with the consequences of our mistakes in life.'' He added with a chuckle: ``Most of us don't have to live with it in quite such a public way. But nobody gets out of life for free.'' To the music of a saxophone and a hammered dulcimer, Clinton raised about $200,000 over lunch in a private home in Cleveland for the Democratic Senate candidate in Ohio, Mary Boyle. Then he flew to Philadelphia to raise half a million dollars for the Democratic Party. By midsummer, the president's aides were delighted to have persuaded him to condense his fund-raising remarks to just 10 minutes of policy points and partisan jabbing. But as his troubles have grown and the mid-term elections have approached, his free-form remarks have become longer. In Cleveland on Friday, he spoke for 26 minutes and here on Friday evening he spoke for almost 20 minutes. These fund-raising visits have fallen into a pattern since Clinton's videotaped grand jury testimony on Aug. 17. He is lauded, applauded and embraced by his hosts and the donors. ``Mr. President, these are your friends here today,'' said Tony George, the host of the Cleveland event, offering the refrain of those who have played a similar role. But in Cleveland as elsewhere, protesters who were scattered along the president's motorcade route were reminders of calls for his resignation and impeachment, and of the mockery some are heaping upon his presidency. At a rally for the president outside city hall here Friday night a group of Teamsters chanted, ``two more years.'' Clinton's motorcade route was lined downtown with hundreds of people, some of them carrying supportive or condemnatory signs. After an impromptu shopping trip, during which he was greeted with shouts of ``We love you,'' Clinton told some donors at the beginning of an impassioned reprise of his Cleveland speech: ``I didn't even mind the protesters, that's the American way.'' But, he added, he preferred it when they were in the minority, ``and that seemed to be the case.'' As he rode into Cleveland, Clinton passed a billboard for a local radio station, WNCX. ``Lovin', touchin', squeezin','' it read, the words superimposed on a cartoon of the president with his arm over Ms. Lewinsky's shoulders, the Washington Monument beside them. The president left it to his aides on Friday to respond directly to the latest gusher of grand jury disclosures in Washington. Instead, in his remarks, Clinton spoke with pride of his record and with urgency about addressing the international economic crisis and the needs of struggling farmers and schoolchildren. As he typically does now before such partisan audiences, he also walked through his political calculation for the mid-term elections. Clinton said in Cleveland that Republicans had bragged privately to him about their prospects. ``They tell me, `Oh, we're going to do very well, Mr. President, in these mid-terms because we have so much more money than you do,''' and because Democrats who turned out to re-elect Clinton would not return to the polls in an off-year. That argument, of course, would also insulate Clinton from any blame for depressing the Democratic vote. But he often goes further than that, saying that his predicament could actually help the Democrats. Lower-income Democratic voters, he said, might not bother to vote in a typical election. ``The people that were good enough to serve you here at this event today, they've got a lot of hassles in their life,'' he said. But, he said, ``adversity is our friend,'' because it can overcome apathy and ``focus us on what is at issue here.'' What should be at issue, Clinton said, are his achievements and agenda and the Republicans' record, which he described harshly. ``What have they done?'' he asked in Cleveland. ``They killed the minimum wage increase for 12 million Americans. They killed campaign finance reform. They killed the tobacco reform legislation.'' ||||| Sen. Alfonse D'Amato, the New York Republican who is running for re-election, went to Manhattan's Grand Central Terminal the other morning to accept an award from mass-transit advocates. But the reporters who had gathered there showed little interest in the shiny train car at the senator's back. Instead, they repeatedly asked him how he would vote on an impeachment of President Clinton. ``Look, I'm not going to make any comment with respect to that subject matter,'' D'Amato responded. ``I am not just a citizen. I am a citizen-senator who may be called upon to make a decision.'' But D'Amato is something else as well: a candidate in what may be the tightest Senate race in the nation. And variations of his elliptical response can be heard in Senate races around the country, where both Republicans and Democrats are encountering similar questions. All of which suggests that after the House voted Thursday to authorize an impeachment inquiry, this year's 34 races for the U.S. Senate have become, beyond what they already were, the electoral equivalent of jury selection. If the House votes to impeach Clinton, the matter goes to the Senate, which must decide by a two-thirds majority whether to convict him and, thus, remove him from office. As a result, the Monica Lewinsky matter has suddenly injected a new disruptive force into the Senate contests. Voters, even those who support Clinton, expect their political leaders, Republican or Democratic, to renounce Clinton's behavior, and candidates have been doing that. But impeachment is another matter; most polls show the nation is against it. The danger for Senate candidates is that with impeachment now a real possibility, the debate may move beyond the president's behavior _ about which there is little disagreement _ to the more problematic issue of whether he should be removed from office. For most of the strategists involved in the races, there is little guidance on how to handle the impeachment issue. Advisers to candidates of both parties said in interviews last week that they were perplexed and worried, unsure what they can or should do on the issue to gain the advantage _ or guard against harm. ``I can't tell how this one is going to go,'' said Mike Russell, a spokesman for the Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee. ``This is a very surreal environment.'' Of the 34 Senate seats in play, 18 are held by Democrats and 16 by Republicans, who now hold 55 seats in all. Republicans would have to win 28 of the 34 races to produce the 67 votes necessary for conviction, assuming such a vote were to go along party lines. Only an electoral catastrophe for the Democrats, which seems almost unthinkable, could produce such a huge loss. Jennifer Duffy, who follows Senate races for the Cook Political Report, a nonpartisan newsletter, said that so far, at least, none of the Senate candidates has made an explicit appeal for votes based on how they would vote on a presidential jury. But she and others are wondering if this may be about to change. This is difficult ground to measure. One of the central questions of this political year has been how Clinton's dealings with Ms. Lewinsky might affect turnout. For a long time, politicians assumed that dispirited Democrats would stay home as a rebuke to Clinton, just as many Republicans did in November 1974, three months after President Richard M. Nixon resigned. But now some analysts wonder if the partisan fight in Congress last week might have the opposite effect among some Democrats. ``That's the problem,'' said Stuart Rothenberg, the editor of an independent political newsletter in Washington. ``It's not that we don't know, and that the politicians don't know, where the general public stands on impeachment. The problem is that we don't know where the electorate stands on impeachment.'' And asking voters to think ahead to an impeachment proceeding as they cast their ballots in a Senate race is, in the words of Stuart Stevens, a Republican consultant, ``a double bank-shot.'' Such strategies, he said, tend to work only with a small number of single-minded or sophisticated voters. Against that complicated backdrop, the prevailing thinking is that the use of the impeachment issue will vary from race to race, state to state and week to week, depending on the circumstances of the candidates and the composition of the electorate. If Democrats try to turn the image of Clinton in the dock to their advantage, it would be in states with a Democratic edge or with sizable numbers of black voters, who overwhelmingly support the president. In contests like those, it might well prove to be in the interest of a Democratic candidate to, as one consultant put it, sit down in front of a camera and tape an advertisement in which the candidate denounces the president's behavior but solemnly pledges to vote against impeachment. Strategists in both parties believe that kind of approach could prove effective. ``This is an issue where there is a huge disconnect between the elites and the public,'' said Fred Yang, a Democratic consultant with clients in Wisconsin and the Carolinas. That kind of Democratic strategy might emerge in California, New York, Illinois, Wisconsin, Washington and perhaps Arkansas. By contrast, Democrats in South Carolina, Georgia and Nevada would be less likely to oppose Clinton's impeachment. On the other side, Republican consultants are telling their candidates to stress Clinton's misdeeds and stay away from talk of impeachment. The last thing the party wants is to turn the Senate elections into a referendum on whether Clinton should be forced from office. ``The White House might think from the overall public numbers that maybe they would like to make this a referendum election,'' said Ed Goeas, a Republican pollster who is working in Senate races this year. ``Republicans certainly aren't going to let that happen.'' D'Amato responded to questions about Clinton with the language that Republican consultants have been suggesting to their candidates. ``When and if that matter comes to the Senate, I will decide on the facts that are presented to me at that time,'' D'Amato said. ``It would be very premature for me to suggest any course of action without it being referred. Because, indeed, we may be called upon to act as a jury of some kind.'' But Schumer, a member of the House Judiciary Committee, which is conducting the impeachment investigation, virtually embraced the issue. In a live telecast of the hearings, he said the president deserved a lesser punishment, such as censure or reprimand. And Schumer plans to campaign in New York on Monday with Clinton at his side. Schumer's media adviser, Hank Morris, seemed to suggest last week that impeachment will grow as an issue. ``Senator D'Amato claims he does not want to share his opinion with the people of New York,'' Morris said. ``And if he doesn't have an opinion, he's the only New Yorker who doesn't have an opinion.'' Asked if Schumer would raise the issue in a television commercial, Morris responded: ``We don't talk about what we're going to do. I wouldn't rule it in and I wouldn't rule it out.'' ||||| Nearly 60 years behind the times, the House voted Friday to condemn the Nazi-Soviet nonaggression pact of 1939. The measure, a nonbinding resolution, was brought to the floor by Rep. John Shimkus, R-Ill. He is of Lithuanian descent, has a pocket of Lithuanians in his hometown of Collinsville and wants to try to highlight his support for the Baltic states' past efforts against Soviet repression. Shimkus' measure is an example of how members of Congress are spending their time as they stand idle and wait for Republican leaders to reach agreement on spending bills with the White House, thus avoiding a government shutdown and allowing them to go home and campaign for the November elections. With time on their hands, many Republicans are using the House floor as their personal stage to elicit votes on topics that they can boast about to the folks back home. Most of these matters have little chance of finding their way into law, but members hope to turn them to their advantage on Election Day. There are plenty of other items whose sponsors hope will not attract attention. These tend to be special-interest matters that members hope will escape scrutiny in the rush to leave town. The sponsors of these measures now have the added advantage of the impeachment inquiry, which has been preoccupying Congress, the news media and the public and giving them cover to move their pet causes quietly into the gigantic omnibus package that Congress will eventually present to Clinton for signing. These quieter measures include one proposed by Mississippi's two senators, Trent Lott and Thad Cochran, both Republicans. They want agriculture export credits to buy chickens for Russia, which has bought the chickens but cannot pay for them. The chickens are from Mississippi. Democrats have little influence in the Republican-controlled Congress. But some Democrats are close enough to Republican leaders, and to Republican goals, that their measures are taken seriously. These include Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., the ranking Democrat on the national security subcommittee of the Appropriations Committee, who is pushing a measure to increase military pensions. Perhaps the best example of an attempt to force a vote for political advantage is a measure that would require minors to notify their parents if they are seeking contraceptives from federally funded family planning clinics. House leaders allowed the measure to be brought to the floor as a way to appease the more conservative members, who believe they have been shortchanged by the budget process. It passed the House by a vote of 224-200 but has almost no chance of becoming law. The Senate does not plan to take it up, and Clinton would almost certainly veto it. But Rep. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., said that votes like these were important because they put their sponsors' ideological foes on the record as opposing something that sounds reasonable, and that opposition can be used against them in the Nov. 3 election. ||||| It was a surprising scene three months ago when Dennis Rivera, one of New York City's most left-leaning labor leaders, was singing the praises of Sen. Alfonse M. D'Amato. Rivera, president of the largest union in New York City, praised D'Amato for persuading Trent Lott, the Senate majority leader, to support legislation that financed health coverage for hundreds of thousands of uninsured children. It looked as if Rivera's politically potent union might endorse D'Amato _ or at the very minimum stay neutral in this year's U.S. Senate race in New York. But on Monday, Rivera's 150,000-member union, 1199, the National Health and Human Service Employees union, endorsed Rep. Charles E. Schumer, D-N.Y., and thereby risked D'Amato's wrath. The endorsement is risky, labor leaders acknowledge, because angering this powerful senator could make him far less responsive to labor's needs when unions turn to him for help in the future if he is re-elected. Although it may seem illogical, two words go far to explain why Rivera's union backed Schumer: Monica Lewinsky. Largely as a result of the Lewinsky scandal, Democrats say they suddenly fear that the Republicans will gain a filibuster-proof, 60-seat majority in the Senate, where the Republicans have 55 seats to the Democrats' 45. For labor leaders like Rivera, the notion of a strong Republican majority is a nightmare. That fear has helped push other New York unions into Schumer's column, even though D'Amato had long courted them. Those unions include the teamsters' joint council in New York City and District Council 37, an umbrella group representing 120,000 municipal employees. Labor leaders say they fear that with a filibuster-proof Republican majority, the Senate would push through anti-union legislation, like recently defeated Republican proposals to curb labor's political spending and cut financing for the National Labor Relations Board. ``We are worried about legislation that will not allow the labor movement to survive into the next century,'' Rivera said. Alarmed that the Democrats will lose Senate seats in California, Illinois, Wisconsin, Nevada and South Carolina, Rivera's union concluded that it was worth backing Schumer. The decision, Rivera emphasized repeatedly, was not personal but was based on national considerations. ``Unfortunately, the leadership of the Republican Party at the national level in the person of Newt Gingrich and Trent Lott are not necessarily from the same culture as the Republicans of the Northeast,'' he said. ``They're far more conservative, far more anti-labor, far more anti-worker, far more pro-business. We fear that the Democratic Party faces irrelevance in the United States Senate if we go below 41 seats.'' Trying to avoid a rupture with D'Amato, Rivera praised him as ``an effective senator.'' The endorsement could be a boon for Schumer. Rivera's union and the teachers' union have labor's strongest political operations in New York. In addition, Schumer will get thousands of dollars from the local as well as use of its renowned phone banks, which can make 50,000 political calls a day. A spokesman for D'Amato said, ``Al D'Amato's proud that he's been endorsed by over 100 union federations and locals, representing more that 400,000 working men and women, and he'll continue his efforts on behalf of working middle class families.'' His labor endorsements include the New York City Patrolmen's Benevolent Association and the New York State Building and Construction Trades Council. Besides the backing of 1199, Schumer also received the endorsement of 1199's parent union, the Service Employees International Union, which has 350,000 members in New York State. Rivera _ who did not support D'Amato the last time he ran either _ announced the endorsements during the founding convention of the New York State Council of the service employees union. The convention packed Town Hall, and the new group aims to make the service employees a power to be reckoned with by bringing together a dozen union locals to forge a common political and legislative strategy. Earlier this year, 1199 merged with the service employees, and as part of that agreement, Rivera became head of the service employees in New York State. ||||| White House officials and gay Democrats, concerned that the nation's largest gay and lesbian political organization is about to endorse Sen. Alfonse D'Amato for re-election, are intensely lobbying the group to try to shift its support to the Democratic challenger, Rep. Charles Schumer. Publicly, officials in the organization, the Human Rights Campaign, said they were still deliberating their position in the closely watched race, considered among the tightest in the nation. They said they would probably make an endorsement by Friday. But privately, organization officials and gay activists from both parties who have been monitoring the debate say the group is most likely to endorse D'Amato, a Republican seeking his fourth term. They also raised the possibility that the group would endorse both candidates, or remain neutral. If the group endorses D'Amato, said officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity, the endorsement would be based on three major factors: The group tends to favor incumbents, has been searching for allies among the Senate Republican majority and considers D'Amato's recent record on gay issues to be quite strong. An endorsement by the group, which is held in high regard by many gay and lesbian voters, could prove important in swinging voters to D'Amato in a tight race. It would also be a major symbolic victory for the senator, who has sought to recast himself as a centrist in recent years and could use the endorsement to build his standing among moderate swing voters. A D'Amato endorsement would also weaken Schumer's efforts to portray the incumbent as a right-wing extremist and would signify to many voters a fraying of the traditional Democratic coalition that has included black and gay voters, women and labor unions. The intensity of the debate surrounding the endorsement underscores the importance of the New York Senate race to Democrats across the nation, who see defeating D'Amato as one of their best opportunities to prevent the Republicans from gaining 60 seats in the Senate _ enough to stop a Democratic filibuster. The Republicans currently hold a 55-to-45 majority. ``There is sentiment in the community that if the Republicans get 60 votes, that Trent Lott will basically be in charge politically for the next two years,'' said David Mixner, a close friend of President Clinton's who is gay. He was referring to the Senate majority leader, who has called homosexuality a sin and likened it to kleptomania. Saturday, Schumer picked up his own endorsement from New York's largest gay and lesbian political organization, the Empire State Pride Agenda. Although the Human Rights Campaign is bipartisan, it has been very close to the Clinton administration, has many Democrats on its board and receives much of its money from Democratic contributors. Largely because of the group's strong Democratic ties, gay Democrats, New York liberals and White House officials are infuriated that it is even considering endorsing D'Amato, who also runs on the Right to Life and Conservative Party lines and often receives high ratings from the Christian Coalition, which typically opposes legislation on civil rights for gay people. Although the organization has been thought to be inching toward a D'Amato endorsement for months, the lobbying campaign for Schumer has picked up intensity in the last two weeks, driven partly by a growing sense that the race is now closer than ever. Democrats and advocates in both parties who support rights for gay people said that Vice President Al Gore, Hillary Rodham Clinton and Secretary for Health and Human Services Donna Shalala have made personal appeals to Human Rights Campaign officials urging them not to endorse D'Amato. White House officials said they did not know whether the three had made such appeals, and Human Rights Campaign officials declined to comment. Schumer met privately with the group's top officials last week to make one last pitch for the endorsement. Clinton administration officials have also been buttonholing the group's board members at every opportunity, from cocktail parties to fund-raisers, raising concerns about a D'Amato endorsement. Some New York advocates of civil rights for gay people have flooded the organization with phone calls, e-mail messages and letters. Democratic officials have been encouraging the group's major donors to express their opposition to D'Amato. People involved in the lobbying efforts said that at best, they are hoping the group will endorse both candidates, or make no endorsement at all. ``Chuck Schumer has been a strong supporter of issues that are important to gay communities,'' said a senior White House official who spoke on the condition of anonymity. ``The last thing that they should want to do is hurt the candidacy of someone who has been so supportive of their agenda.'' The Human Rights Campaign is considered the most influential gay and lesbian organization in Washington, with a national membership of 250,000 and an annual budget of more than $13 million. The group was created in the early 1980s in large part to counter the rise of the Christian right and Ronald Reagan. Paradoxically, D'Amato was first elected in the Reagan landslide of 1980 and remained a strong supporter of President Reagan. For D'Amato, who has aggressively courted gay voters, the endorsement would represent a crowning achievement in his efforts to reposition himself as a moderate. Since 1993, the senator has backed the right of gay citizens to serve in the military, sponsored legislation to prevent job discrimination against gay workers and opposed his own leadership's attempts to block the nominations of two openly gay men to positions in the Clinton administration. To gay supporters of D'Amato, an endorsement by the Human Rights Campaign would signify the political maturation of the gay electorate and help the organization insulate itself from accusations that it is too close to the Democratic Party. Those who support a D'Amato endorsement, including top officials within the Human Rights Campaign, contend that in the current political climate, where Congress is almost certain to remain under Republican control after November, gay people must build alliances with moderate Republicans. Human Rights Campaign officials also say their standing policy is to support friendly incumbents, even when their challengers have better voting records on gay issues. That is the case in New York, where Schumer's rating by the Human Rights Campaign has been consistently better than D'Amato's. Both men, however, have angered advocates of rights for gay people by voting for legislation that allows states to not recognize gay marriages. In a precedent widely cited by D'Amato supporters, the organization endorsed Sen. John F. Kerry, a Democrat, over the Republican challenger, William Weld, in the 1996 Massachusetts Senate race, even though Weld's record on gay rights was considered stronger. The move angered gay Republicans, who now contend that snubbing D'Amato would prove that the group is biased toward Democrats. But there is clearly a large number of Human Rights Campaign contributors and board members who strongly feel that endorsing D'Amato will permanently damage the group, particularly among women. They fear that abortion rights supporters will quit the group in droves because D'Amato has never wavered in his opposition to abortion during 18 years in Congress. Many New York gay activists would also be deeply upset if the group endorses D'Amato, whom they blame for installing the state Senate majority leader, Joseph Bruno, whom they consider to be strongly anti-gay. Matt Foreman, executive director of the Empire State Pride Agenda, cited D'Amato's role as ``the architect'' of the state Republican Party as a major reason the group endorsed Schumer. ``While he has criticized fellow Republicans in Washington for their intolerance, here at home, his own party's blatant discrimination is still the order of the day,'' Foreman said. For that reason, some White House officials say they think a Human Rights Campaign endorsement of D'Amato will be almost meaningless among gay voters. They contend that it might even hurt the senator among his conservative base. ``I don't think anybody will vote for Al D'Amato because of an HRC endorsement,'' said a White House aide who spoke on the condition of anonymity. ``But I think some people in the Right to Life Party and some upstate people are going to say, `Who is this guy and why should we vote for him?''' ||||| The last time George Voinovich ran for office, he won re-election as Ohio's governor with 72 percent of the vote, stunning even his most optimistic supporters and setting a 20th-century record for victory margins in Ohio politics. This year, Voinovich, a Republican who is barred from seeking a third term, is running again, this time for the Senate seat held by John Glenn, a Democrat who is retiring. And while there are few who expect Voinovich to repeat his electoral benchmark of four years ago, politicians of both parties generally acknowledge that he is well positioned to increase the Republican majority in the Senate. That has not prevented Voinovich's Democratic opponent, Mary Boyle, from undertaking a vigorous campaign. Ms. Boyle, a former commissioner in Cuyahoga County, which encompasses Cleveland, is crisscrossing the nation's seventh-most populous state in what she describes as a grass-roots campaign that, while operating on a comparative shoestring, has nonetheless attracted to her side nationally known Democrats _ President Clinton foremost among them _ on the campaign trail. Glenn, the former astronaut who is preparing to return to space this month at the age of 77, has not made an endorsement in the Senate race. Like many candidates this year, Ms. Boyle, 55, is campaigning hard on the issue of education, seeking to portray Voinovich, 61, as a lackluster steward who allowed the state's schools to decline. ``He promised to be the education governor,'' said Ms. Boyle. ``But after seven and a half years he has failed the students of this state.'' Her role in the campaign, she said, ``is to remind the people of the state of Ohio that George Voinovich made a promise and that he didn't deliver on it.'' Specifically, she discusses a decision last year by the Ohio Supreme Court that cited wide disparities in the quality of the state's schools and ruled unconstitutional the formula for funding them. She has also attacked her Republican opponent for supporting a proposal to raise the state's sales tax by one percent. Under that plan, half the additional funds would have been used for school improvement with the remainder earmarked for reducing property taxes. That statewide ballot initiative last May proved to be wildly unpopular, with about 80 percent of the voters opposing it. While the topics of taxes and education are hot ones this political season in Ohio, it is not clear that Ms. Boyle's emphasis on them has helped her campaign. Despite some narrowing in the opinion polls, she is still trailing Voinovich by 10 percentage points in some polls and as much as 18 points in others. There is also a sharp fund-raising disparity. Ms. Boyle, who is running her first statewide race and has widespread union support, has raised nearly $2 million so far, far less than the nearly $7 million Voinovich has taken in. Also, Voinovich, a former lieutenant governor, has been on statewide ballots five times over the last 20 years and thus is the better-known candidate. The electoral dynamics of Ohio are also aiding Voinovich. The northern half of the state, with its history of industrial, unionized cities, has a tradition of voting largely for Democratic candidates, while the southern tier of the state is considered more conservative and typically leans Republican. But Voinovich and Ms. Boyle share the same home terrain, depriving Ms. Boyle of the geographic advantage that often accompanies Democratic candidates. Indeed, as a boy, Voinovich once delivered newspapers to the Boyle home in the working-class Collinwood section of Cleveland. And Voinovich, a former mayor of Cleveland, has developed a reputation as a moderate Republican who works well with Democrats. Voinovich, while campaigning vigorously himself, is keeping a full schedule of official duties, assuming the role of the experienced, elected official. ``If I get into the Senate, I will probably know more about domestic policy than any member of the Senate,'' he said in an interview on Wednesday in Canton, sandwiched between a ribbon-cutting ceremony and a fund-raising reception at a vacuum cleaner museum. ``As mayor, I had my nose rubbed into the problems of urban America and was fairly successful in dealing with them. And, as governor, I have dealt with the problems of Medicaid, welfare and education. I'm the only person in the United States who has been president of the National League of Cities and chairman of the National Governors Association.'' To his opponent's charges on his record on education, Voinovich is dismissive. ``I'm probably the only Republican in the United States who has been endorsed by the Ohio Education Association and National Education Association,'' he said, adding that Ms. Boyle was a member of the state Legislature during the period cited in the Supreme Court ruling. ``Mary Boyle was vice chairman of the Ways and Means Committee and a member of the Democratic leadership during those years,'' Voinovich said. ``They did nothing to fix the buildings, they did nothing for technology and the urban school districts.'' Ms. Boyle, who has not yet begun to run campaign commercials on television, said her status as the underdog had ``allowed me to be more focused, more intense.'' Pausing after a campaign fund-raising breakfast with former Democratic Sen. Bill Bradley of New Jersey here on Wednesday, Ms. Boyle said: ``This has been a marathon and it's been pretty much uphill. But now, we're down to the last three miles. It's a tough race.''

In addition to the usual factors that prevail in Congressional elections, this year's is complicated by the uncertain effect of the impending impeachment of President Clinton. The president has admitted mistakes, but remains a popular campaigner for House Democrats. In the New York race between D'Amato and Schumer, both are seeking union and gay/lesbian endorsement. Republican Voinovich hopes to take the seat of retiring John Glenn in Ohio. A budget agreement between Republican congressional leaders and the White House is needed soon to avoid a government shutdown. A leadership award from Speaker Gingrich's office is merely a pitch for contributions.

It was not a voice mail message that Dr. Marilyn Rymer, a neurologist in Kansas City, Mo., would routinely delete, even as a registered Democrat. ``Speaker Newt Gingrich's office,'' it said, was calling to discuss a ``national leadership award.'' Dr. Rymer has won acclaim as the director of a prominent stroke-treatment center, but this proposition seemed particularly grand. When she returned the call, she said she was told she would also be named honorary chairman of an elite committee to advise Gingrich on legislation. Too good to be true? Well, Dr. Rymer would have to pay her own way if the committee should actually meet, and as an honorary committee chairman, she discovered, she would be a member of a committee composed entirely of honorary chairmen. And oh, the speaker wanted a donation of $500 to $1,000 to ``help our efforts,'' according to a transcript of a similar chat with another doctor, to elect a bigger Republican majority in the House of Representatives. With the approach of the midterm elections next month, it turns out that the National Republican Congressional Committee, which supports candidates for the House, has been sponsoring similar calls to tens of thousands of small-business owners, including doctors. With this and other fund-raising programs, the committee says it has amassed $62 million for the elections. But campaign finance watchdogs say the solicitations mark a new departure in political fund raising, one they call akin to the practices of marketing companies like the Publishers' Clearing House that hook consumers with visions of million-dollar windfalls to induce them to subscribe to magazines. By citing the speaker and promising celebrity and influence, they say, the calls are a bait-and-switch scheme to seize the attention of people who might otherwise hang up. Dr. Rymer says she was incensed. So was Dr. Stanley Turecki, a child and family psychiatrist in New York who votes as an independent and was also called. ``I was absolutely outraged,'' he said. ``Anybody else who would do that would fall into the category of consumer fraud.'' Kenneth Gross, a Washington lawyer who specializes in election law and represents both Democratic and Republican clients, said, ``I have never heard of that particular device.'' But it doesn't appear illegal, he said, adding, ``It's a fund-raising gimmick to get attention.'' Fred Wertheimer, president of Democracy 21, a nonprofit, nonpartisan advocate of campaign finance reform, said, ``This is a new version of caveat emptor _ buyer be damned instead of buyer beware.'' When businesses do it, he added, Congress orders investigations. ``But this isn't going to be investigated because it's members of Congress who are doing it.'' Todd Harris, a spokesman for the National Republican Congressional Committee, said that he had not heard of any complaints and that there was no intent to deceive. ``The national leadership award is a part of what we call donor and member fulfillment,'' Harris said. ``It's part of bringing them into the process. It's important that they be recognized for the support they give the party.'' ``There's no quid pro quo'' that people solicited could receive awards for past contributions, he added. What most peeves Drs. Rymer and Turecki is the message left with secretaries and answering machines invoking Gingrich's ``office'' and proposing the award. They say they envisioned a senior aide at a telephone in the speaker's chambers under the Capitol Dome. The calls, however, are not placed by aides to Gingrich, by any of his offices or by anyone in Washington. They are made by people with headsets and computers at the home of InfoCision Management Corp., a telemarketing firm and Congressional committee client in Akron, Ohio. On its Web page, InfoCision says its 1,400 employees operate 1,584 telephone lines and 9 phone centers. ``Every word in the script is approved by our clients,'' the company says on its Web site. ``Every conceivable objection is scripted with a powerful rebuttal.'' Besides telemarketing for businesses, said Jamie Blair, a supervisor at the center, ``we specialize in helping the Republican Party and conservative political groups.'' However far they are from Gingrich, the telemarketers are instructed to answer return calls with: ``Republican Congressional Committee, Newt Gingrich's office. May I help you?'' A doctor in Kansas City, Mo., who is a registered Republican and who declined to be named, dialed the Gingrich number (888-484-1644) left on answering machines and secretly recorded the ensuing discussion, which is legal in Missouri. ``We were asked to contact you on behalf of the speaker,'' says a woman who picked up the call and identified herself as Nancy. ``He is right now aggressively pushing legislation to cut taxes by as much as half, and he's also interested in legislation to cut capital gains to a single rate of 15 percent.'' To assure passage of the legislation, the speaker wants to increase his Republican majority, she says, adding, ``To help us do that, the speaker is pulling together a group of individuals such as yourself and is inviting you to be an honorary chairman on his advisory council.'' Nancy continues: ``There will be correspondence with the speaker, such as conference calls. It's a great way that he can get your input and thoughts on legislation that does concern you. Or maybe surveys or questionnaires.'' Later, Nancy says: ``As a member of his committee, you would be receiving from the speaker our national leadership award, which is really quite an honor. And to be honest, he will be asking each of our chairmen if they could help our efforts to increase our majority with a one-time contribution of $500 or $1,000. ``Now that would be used on the nationwide media campaign that Newt has undertaken to target those seats we really need. And as someone who I'm sure would also benefit from this, could I tell the speaker he could count on your help?'' The doctor demurs. ``I am a registered, you know, Republican in Kansas,'' she tells Nancy. ``Probably if I were to do something it would be to go through my own representative.'' Then the doctor tries to ascertain where Nancy is located. ``Is this congressman Gingrich's office that I'm talking to?'' the doctor asks. ``The speaker's office,'' says Nancy. ``This is the speaker's office.'' ``That I'm talking to,'' says the doctor, double-checking. ``Uh-huh,'' Nancy replies. The law prohibits political fund-raising calls from federal offices. Vice President Al Gore is under a Justice Department investigation for fund-raising calls he allegedly made from his office in the 1996 presidential campaign. But the calls can be made from just about anywhere else, including campaign offices. Harris said the calls are ``in no way related to the speaker's OFFICIAL office.'' He added: ``What is more important is not where the calls get routed. People are more interested in an award with the speaker's good name on it than whether the call gets routed to Washington or Ohio.'' Turecki disagrees. ``I see it as basic sleaze,'' he said. ||||| The last time George Voinovich ran for office, he won re-election as Ohio's governor with 72 percent of the vote, stunning even his most optimistic supporters and setting a 20th-century record for victory margins in Ohio politics. This year, Voinovich, a Republican who is barred from seeking a third term, is running again, this time for the Senate seat held by John Glenn, a Democrat who is retiring. And while there are few who expect Voinovich to repeat his electoral benchmark of four years ago, politicians of both parties generally acknowledge that he is well positioned to increase the Republican majority in the Senate. That has not prevented Voinovich's Democratic opponent, Mary Boyle, from undertaking a vigorous campaign. Ms. Boyle, a former commissioner in Cuyahoga County, which encompasses Cleveland, is crisscrossing the nation's seventh-most populous state in what she describes as a grass-roots campaign that, while operating on a comparative shoestring, has nonetheless attracted to her side nationally known Democrats _ President Clinton foremost among them _ on the campaign trail. Glenn, the former astronaut who is preparing to return to space this month at the age of 77, has not made an endorsement in the Senate race. Like many candidates this year, Ms. Boyle, 55, is campaigning hard on the issue of education, seeking to portray Voinovich, 61, as a lackluster steward who allowed the state's schools to decline. ``He promised to be the education governor,'' said Ms. Boyle. ``But after seven and a half years he has failed the students of this state.'' Her role in the campaign, she said, ``is to remind the people of the state of Ohio that George Voinovich made a promise and that he didn't deliver on it.'' Specifically, she discusses a decision last year by the Ohio Supreme Court that cited wide disparities in the quality of the state's schools and ruled unconstitutional the formula for funding them. She has also attacked her Republican opponent for supporting a proposal to raise the state's sales tax by one percent. Under that plan, half the additional funds would have been used for school improvement with the remainder earmarked for reducing property taxes. That statewide ballot initiative last May proved to be wildly unpopular, with about 80 percent of the voters opposing it. While the topics of taxes and education are hot ones this political season in Ohio, it is not clear that Ms. Boyle's emphasis on them has helped her campaign. Despite some narrowing in the opinion polls, she is still trailing Voinovich by 15 percentage points in some polls and as much as 20 points in others. There is also a sharp fund-raising disparity. Ms. Boyle, who is running her first statewide race and has widespread union support, has raised nearly $2 million so far, far less than the nearly $7 million Voinovich has taken in. Also, Voinovich, a former lieutenant governor, has been on statewide ballots five times over the last 20 years and thus is the better-known candidate. The electoral dynamics of Ohio are also aiding Voinovich. The northern half of the state, with its history of industrial, unionized cities, has a tradition of voting largely for Democratic candidates, while the southern tier of the state is considered more conservative and typically leans Republican. But Voinovich and Ms. Boyle share the same home terrain, depriving Ms. Boyle of the geographic advantage that often accompanies Democratic candidates. Indeed, as a boy, Voinovich once delivered newspapers to the Boyle home in the working-class Collinwood section of Cleveland. And Voinovich, a former mayor of Cleveland, has developed a reputation as a moderate Republican who works well with Democrats. Voinovich, while campaigning vigorously himself, is keeping a full schedule of official duties, assuming the role of the experienced, elected official. ``If I get into the Senate, I will probably know more about domestic policy than any member of the Senate,'' he said in an interview on Wednesday in Canton, sandwiched between a ribbon-cutting ceremony and a fund-raising reception at a vacuum cleaner museum. ``As mayor, I had my nose rubbed into the problems of urban America and was fairly successful in dealing with them. And, as governor, I have dealt with the problems of Medicaid, welfare and education. I'm the only person in the United States who has been president of the National League of Cities and chairman of the National Governors Association.'' To his opponent's charges on his record on education, Voinovich is dismissive. ``I'm probably the only Republican in the United States who has been endorsed by the Ohio Education Association and National Education Association,'' he said, adding that Ms. Boyle was a member of the state Legislature during the period cited in the Supreme Court ruling. ``Mary Boyle was vice chairman of the Ways and Means Committee and a member of the Democratic leadership during those years,'' Voinovich said. ``They did nothing to fix the buildings, they did nothing for technology and the urban school districts.'' Ms. Boyle, who has not yet begun to run campaign commercials on television, said her status as the underdog had ``allowed me to be more focused, more intense.'' Pausing after a campaign fund-raising breakfast with former Democratic Sen. Bill Bradley of New Jersey here on Wednesday, Ms. Boyle said: ``This has been a marathon and it's been pretty much uphill. But now, we're down to the last three miles. It's a tough race.'' ||||| White House officials and gay Democrats, concerned that the nation's largest gay and lesbian political organization is about to endorse Sen. Alfonse D'Amato for re-election, are intensely lobbying the group to try to shift its support to the Democratic challenger, Rep. Charles Schumer. Publicly, officials in the organization, the Human Rights Campaign, said they were still deliberating their position in the closely watched race, considered among the tightest in the nation. They said they would probably make an endorsement by Friday. But privately, organization officials and gay activists from both parties who have been monitoring the debate say the group is most likely to endorse D'Amato, a Republican seeking his fourth term. They also raised the possibility that the group would endorse both candidates, or remain neutral. If the group endorses D'Amato, said officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity, the endorsement would be based on three major factors: The group tends to favor incumbents, has been searching for allies among the Senate Republican majority and considers D'Amato's recent record on gay issues to be quite strong. An endorsement by the group, which is held in high regard by many gay and lesbian voters, could prove important in swinging voters to D'Amato in a tight race. It would also be a major symbolic victory for the senator, who has sought to recast himself as a centrist in recent years and could use the endorsement to build his standing among moderate swing voters. A D'Amato endorsement would also weaken Schumer's efforts to portray the incumbent as a right-wing extremist and would signify to many voters a fraying of the traditional Democratic coalition that has included black and gay voters, women and labor unions. The intensity of the debate surrounding the endorsement underscores the importance of the New York Senate race to Democrats across the nation, who see defeating D'Amato as one of their best opportunities to prevent the Republicans from gaining 60 seats in the Senate _ enough to stop a Democratic filibuster. The Republicans currently hold a 55-to-45 majority. ``There is sentiment in the community that if the Republicans get 60 votes, that Trent Lott will basically be in charge politically for the next two years,'' said David Mixner, a close friend of President Clinton's who is gay. He was referring to the Senate majority leader, who has called homosexuality a sin and likened it to kleptomania. Saturday, Schumer picked up his own endorsement from New York's largest gay and lesbian political organization, the Empire State Pride Agenda. Although the Human Rights Campaign is bipartisan, it has been very close to the Clinton administration, has many Democrats on its board and receives much of its money from Democratic contributors. Largely because of the group's strong Democratic ties, gay Democrats, New York liberals and White House officials are infuriated that it is even considering endorsing D'Amato, who also runs on the Right to Life and Conservative Party lines and often receives high ratings from the Christian Coalition, which typically opposes legislation on civil rights for gay people. Although the organization has been thought to be inching toward a D'Amato endorsement for months, the lobbying campaign for Schumer has picked up intensity in the last two weeks, driven partly by a growing sense that the race is now closer than ever. Democrats and advocates in both parties who support rights for gay people said that Vice President Al Gore, Hillary Rodham Clinton and Secretary for Health and Human Services Donna Shalala have made personal appeals to Human Rights Campaign officials urging them not to endorse D'Amato. White House officials said they did not know whether the three had made such appeals, and Human Rights Campaign officials declined to comment. Schumer met privately with the group's top officials last week to make one last pitch for the endorsement. Clinton administration officials have also been buttonholing the group's board members at every opportunity, from cocktail parties to fund-raisers, raising concerns about a D'Amato endorsement. Some New York advocates of civil rights for gay people have flooded the organization with phone calls, e-mail messages and letters. Democratic officials have been encouraging the group's major donors to express their opposition to D'Amato. People involved in the lobbying efforts said that at best, they are hoping the group will endorse both candidates, or make no endorsement at all. ``Chuck Schumer has been a strong supporter of issues that are important to gay communities,'' said a senior White House official who spoke on the condition of anonymity. ``The last thing that they should want to do is hurt the candidacy of someone who has been so supportive of their agenda.'' The Human Rights Campaign is considered the most influential gay and lesbian organization in Washington, with a national membership of 250,000 and an annual budget of more than $13 million. The group was created in the early 1980s in large part to counter the rise of the Christian right and Ronald Reagan. Paradoxically, D'Amato was first elected in the Reagan landslide of 1980 and remained a strong supporter of President Reagan. For D'Amato, who has aggressively courted gay voters, the endorsement would represent a crowning achievement in his efforts to reposition himself as a moderate. Since 1993, the senator has backed the right of gay citizens to serve in the military, sponsored legislation to prevent job discrimination against gay workers and opposed his own leadership's attempts to block the nominations of two openly gay men to positions in the Clinton administration. To gay supporters of D'Amato, an endorsement by the Human Rights Campaign would signify the political maturation of the gay electorate and help the organization insulate itself from accusations that it is too close to the Democratic Party. Those who support a D'Amato endorsement, including top officials within the Human Rights Campaign, contend that in the current political climate, where Congress is almost certain to remain under Republican control after November, gay people must build alliances with moderate Republicans. Human Rights Campaign officials also say their standing policy is to support friendly incumbents, even when their challengers have better voting records on gay issues. That is the case in New York, where Schumer's rating by the Human Rights Campaign has been consistently better than D'Amato's. Both men, however, have angered advocates of rights for gay people by voting for legislation that allows states to not recognize gay marriages. In a precedent widely cited by D'Amato supporters, the organization endorsed Sen. John F. Kerry, a Democrat, over the Republican challenger, William Weld, in the 1996 Massachusetts Senate race, even though Weld's record on gay rights was considered stronger. The move angered gay Republicans, who now contend that snubbing D'Amato would prove that the group is biased toward Democrats. But there is clearly a large number of Human Rights Campaign contributors and board members who strongly feel that endorsing D'Amato will permanently damage the group, particularly among women. They fear that abortion rights supporters will quit the group in droves because D'Amato has never wavered in his opposition to abortion during 18 years in Congress. Many New York gay activists would also be deeply upset if the group endorses D'Amato, whom they blame for installing the state Senate majority leader, Joseph Bruno, whom they consider to be strongly anti-gay. Matt Foreman, executive director of the Empire State Pride Agenda, cited D'Amato's role as ``the architect'' of the state Republican Party as a major reason the group endorsed Schumer. ``While he has criticized fellow Republicans in Washington for their intolerance, here at home, his own party's blatant discrimination is still the order of the day,'' Foreman said. For that reason, some White House officials say they think a Human Rights Campaign endorsement of D'Amato will be almost meaningless among gay voters. They contend that it might even hurt the senator among his conservative base. ``I don't think anybody will vote for Al D'Amato because of an HRC endorsement,'' said a White House aide who spoke on the condition of anonymity. ``But I think some people in the Right to Life Party and some upstate people are going to say, `Who is this guy and why should we vote for him?''' ||||| In other election years, Reps. David Price and Julia Carson would have had little in common other than that they were Democrats with relatively safe seats. Price is a centrist who has represented this high-tech district in North Carolina for all but 2 of the last 12 years, a political scientist who has taught at Duke and Yale. Mrs. Carson, fairly liberal, is a House freshman who worked her way up in politics from the grass roots, having been reared in poverty. But party officials who opened this election year with high hopes of recapturing the House are beginning to worry that Democratic incumbents like Price and Mrs. Carson share something else: greater-than-expected peril on Election Day. As in many congressional races, the biggest variable is the White House scandal, which has injected fear and uncertainty into campaigns around the country. Other Democratic incumbents who Republican officials cite as locked in contests that are more competitive than expected include Reps. Corrine Brown of Florida, Vic Snyder of Arkansas, Lois Capps and Ellen Tauscher of California, Martin Frost of Texas, Melvin Watt of North Carolina, John LaFalce of New York and Sander Levin of Michigan. Here in North Carolina's 4th Congressional District, Price, acknowledging that his own polls showed him in a tight race, said: ``This is a swing district that is sensitive to any tide or trend. It's something you think about a lot in connection with the president's troubles.'' The efforts of Price and Mrs. Carson to contain the Lewinsky debacle _ and their opponents' attempts to capitalize on it _ offer important clues suggesting how Clinton's problems are influencing the conduct of races around the country. Many Democrats are straddling a line that seems to shift a bit with every new scandal-related disclosure: they do not want to appear close to a president whose conduct embarrasses them, and yet, sensing the possibility of a public backlash against Republicans, they are weighing their words carefully and are wary of hopping on any impeachment bandwagon. And while publicly these Democrats express confidence that the scandal will have little impact on them, their campaigns are preparing for the worst by placing greater emphasis than ever on behind-the-efforts to prod their core constituencies to vote. In a reflection of the uncertainty that the Clinton scandal has cast even among Republicans, the challengers in the Price and Carson districts _ both are political novices seeking office for the first time _ have differing strategies: Tom Roberg, a computer executive in Raleigh who is taking on Price, has broadcast a television commercial exploiting the scandal. ``Tom Roberg has called for Bill Clinton's resignation,'' the narrator says. ``This is not the time to be silent, Price. Where do you stand?'' But in Indianapolis, Gary Hofmeister, a conservative jeweler challenging Mrs. Carson in Indiana's 10th Congressional District, is taking a more subtle approach: rather than mention the scandal directly, he notes as often as he can that ``Julia votes with Clinton almost 100 percent of the time.'' Asked why he was not much raising the scandal directly, Hofmeister said: ``Don't murder somebody when they're in the process of committing suicide. There would be a danger if we went overboard.'' The best evidence of the discomfort of both Price and Mrs. Carson is that when asked in separate interviews whether they would want Clinton to campaign in their districts, both said it would be impossible at this late date for the White House to schedule a visit. What if there was a sudden schedule change? Both paused, squirmed a bit and mustered answers that were hardly affirmative. ``Given the president's popularity, I doubt it will hurt me,'' Mrs. Carson said. And Price? ``I don't think that would be such a good idea,'' he said. ``I've never had a president campaign here, and I wouldn't want to start this time'' although he is eagerly welcoming Erskine Bowles, the president's chief of staff and a popular native son in North Carolina, to stump with him here this Sunday.) Making strategy for the stump is further complicated by anecdotal evidence that runs counter to Democratic fears and Republican hopes. In three days of campaign stops here in North Carolina and in Indianapolis, the scandal was rarely raised by any voter being courted by the candidates of either party. When a reporter asked about it, many voters said that as appalled as they were at Clinton's behavior, they had a hard time relating it to their decision on which way to vote in the congressional elections in five weeks. As Hofmeister walked through the parking lot outside a gun and knife show at the Indiana National Guard Armory in Indianapolis last Sunday, Billy Derringer, a 57-year-old machinist who is retired on disability, called him over to express outrage about the millions of dollars that had been spent to investigate Clinton. ``It's pathetic to spend all of our money,'' said Derringer, who identified himself as an independent. ``It shouldn't have gotten this far.'' Hofmeister tried his best to make the Republicans' case. ``There has to be rule of law,'' he said. Mrs. Carson said she hoped that Democrats and swing voters alike would become so fed up with the Lewinsky inquiry that the issue might even help her. To that end, she proudly informs audiences that she voted against making public the report delivered to the House by Kenneth Starr, the Whitewater independent counsel. ``I was one of 63 members of Congress who voted against putting all that filth on the Internet,'' she said, adding that Starr's inquiry had been ``a cruel hoax in terms of fiscal responsibility and accountability.'' The Carson campaign is counting on voters like Timothy Daly, a 38-year-old real estate executive who voted for a Republican two years ago but now favors Mrs. Carson. ``I'm pulling the Democratic ticket because I'm tired of it: the right side of the Republican Party is playing politics,'' Daly said. ``We'd like to see them go on with the people's business.'' Back here in the 4th District, Price has some reasons to be worried. He was first elected to the House in 1986 but, as a four-term incumbent, was ousted in the Republican sweep of 1994 (only to win his seat back two years later). In addition, the district was redrawn last year to include a large Durham section where voters do not know him well. Determined not to be a midterm casualty of Clinton once again, Price says he is waging the most vigorous get-out-the-vote ground campaign of his career. Rather than engage Roberg over the Clinton scandal, Price has begun broadcasting a television commercial that emphasizes his central issue: education. The congressman's advisers say they intentionally produced an advertisement that appears decidedly nonpolitical _ it features school children in a play _ in an effort to break through the television clutter about the scandal. But the Price campaign also has a weapon it is holding in reserve, in the event Roberg appears to be riding the Clinton scandal to advantage: the incumbent's advisers say they would not be timid about running commercials underscoring that he earned a divinity degree before getting his doctorate in political science. At a coffee with voters in a wealthy enclave of Raleigh the other night, Roberg opened his remarks by asserting that Clinton had ``lost the moral authority to lead.'' Yet none of those assembled asked him about the scandal; they were more concerned about the state's plans to build a highway near their neighborhood. ||||| In a cocoon of loyal and wealthy supporters, President Clinton said Friday that he must ``live with the consequences'' of his mistakes, although he contended that Democrats should take pride in the achievements of his presidency and take heart from its possibilities. Clinton has stopped apologizing for his conduct with Monica Lewinsky, but he has taken to making glancing, at times humble, references to it, before moving on to attack the Republican Congress as indifferent to Americans' needs. He did so Friday at a series of fund-raisers. In one deft sentence, he acknowledged his personal pain while claiming credit for the country's economic strength, making a compact appeal for both sympathy and support in an appearance earlier in the day in Cleveland. After thanking the gathered donors for the ``very kind personal things'' they had said to him, the president declared, ``If I had to do it all over again, every day, I would do it in a heartbeat, to see America where it is today as compared to six years ago.'' As the applause died away, Clinton continued, ``I want you to understand, too, that we all have to live with the consequences of our mistakes in life.'' He added with a chuckle: ``Most of us don't have to live with it in quite such a public way. But nobody gets out of life for free.'' To the music of a saxophone and a hammered dulcimer, Clinton raised about $200,000 over lunch in a private home in Cleveland for the Democratic Senate candidate in Ohio, Mary Boyle. Then he flew to Philadelphia to raise half a million dollars for the Democratic Party. By midsummer, the president's aides were delighted to have persuaded him to condense his fund-raising remarks to just 10 minutes of policy points and partisan jabbing. But as his troubles have grown and the mid-term elections have approached, his free-form remarks have become longer. In Cleveland on Friday, he spoke for 26 minutes and here on Friday evening he spoke for almost 20 minutes. These fund-raising visits have fallen into a pattern since Clinton's videotaped grand jury testimony on Aug. 17. He is lauded, applauded and embraced by his hosts and the donors. ``Mr. President, these are your friends here today,'' said Tony George, the host of the Cleveland event, offering the refrain of those who have played a similar role. But in Cleveland as elsewhere, protesters who were scattered along the president's motorcade route were reminders of calls for his resignation and impeachment, and of the mockery some are heaping upon his presidency. At a rally for the president outside city hall here Friday night a group of Teamsters chanted, ``two more years.'' Clinton's motorcade route was lined downtown with hundreds of people, some of them carrying supportive or condemnatory signs. After an impromptu shopping trip, during which he was greeted with shouts of ``We love you,'' Clinton told some donors at the beginning of an impassioned reprise of his Cleveland speech: ``I didn't even mind the protesters, that's the American way.'' But, he added, he preferred it when they were in the minority, ``and that seemed to be the case.'' As he rode into Cleveland, Clinton passed a billboard for a local radio station, WNCX. ``Lovin', touchin', squeezin','' it read, the words superimposed on a cartoon of the president with his arm over Ms. Lewinsky's shoulders, the Washington Monument beside them. The president left it to his aides on Friday to respond directly to the latest gusher of grand jury disclosures in Washington. Instead, in his remarks, Clinton spoke with pride of his record and with urgency about addressing the international economic crisis and the needs of struggling farmers and schoolchildren. As he typically does now before such partisan audiences, he also walked through his political calculation for the mid-term elections. Clinton said in Cleveland that Republicans had bragged privately to him about their prospects. ``They tell me, `Oh, we're going to do very well, Mr. President, in these mid-terms because we have so much more money than you do,''' and because Democrats who turned out to re-elect Clinton would not return to the polls in an off-year. That argument, of course, would also insulate Clinton from any blame for depressing the Democratic vote. But he often goes further than that, saying that his predicament could actually help the Democrats. Lower-income Democratic voters, he said, might not bother to vote in a typical election. ``The people that were good enough to serve you here at this event today, they've got a lot of hassles in their life,'' he said. But, he said, ``adversity is our friend,'' because it can overcome apathy and ``focus us on what is at issue here.'' What should be at issue, Clinton said, are his achievements and agenda and the Republicans' record, which he described harshly. ``What have they done?'' he asked in Cleveland. ``They killed the minimum wage increase for 12 million Americans. They killed campaign finance reform. They killed the tobacco reform legislation.'' ||||| Sen. Alfonse D'Amato, the New York Republican who is running for re-election, went to Manhattan's Grand Central Terminal the other morning to accept an award from mass-transit advocates. But the reporters who had gathered there showed little interest in the shiny train car at the senator's back. Instead, they repeatedly asked him how he would vote on an impeachment of President Clinton. ``Look, I'm not going to make any comment with respect to that subject matter,'' D'Amato responded. ``I am not just a citizen. I am a citizen-senator who may be called upon to make a decision.'' But D'Amato is something else as well: a candidate in what may be the tightest Senate race in the nation. And variations of his elliptical response can be heard in Senate races around the country, where both Republicans and Democrats are encountering similar questions. All of which suggests that after the House voted Thursday to authorize an impeachment inquiry, this year's 34 races for the U.S. Senate have become, beyond what they already were, the electoral equivalent of jury selection. If the House votes to impeach Clinton, the matter goes to the Senate, which must decide by a two-thirds majority whether to convict him and, thus, remove him from office. As a result, the Monica Lewinsky matter has suddenly injected a new disruptive force into the Senate contests. Voters, even those who support Clinton, expect their political leaders, Republican or Democratic, to renounce Clinton's behavior, and candidates have been doing that. But impeachment is another matter; most polls show the nation is against it. The danger for Senate candidates is that with impeachment now a real possibility, the debate may move beyond the president's behavior _ about which there is little disagreement _ to the more problematic issue of whether he should be removed from office. For most of the strategists involved in the races, there is little guidance on how to handle the impeachment issue. Advisers to candidates of both parties said in interviews last week that they were perplexed and worried, unsure what they can or should do on the issue to gain the advantage _ or guard against harm. ``I can't tell how this one is going to go,'' said Mike Russell, a spokesman for the Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee. ``This is a very surreal environment.'' Of the 34 Senate seats in play, 18 are held by Democrats and 16 by Republicans, who now hold 55 seats in all. Republicans would have to win 28 of the 34 races to produce the 67 votes necessary for conviction, assuming such a vote were to go along party lines. Only an electoral catastrophe for the Democrats, which seems almost unthinkable, could produce such a huge loss. Jennifer Duffy, who follows Senate races for the Cook Political Report, a nonpartisan newsletter, said that so far, at least, none of the Senate candidates has made an explicit appeal for votes based on how they would vote on a presidential jury. But she and others are wondering if this may be about to change. This is difficult ground to measure. One of the central questions of this political year has been how Clinton's dealings with Ms. Lewinsky might affect turnout. For a long time, politicians assumed that dispirited Democrats would stay home as a rebuke to Clinton, just as many Republicans did in November 1974, three months after President Richard M. Nixon resigned. But now some analysts wonder if the partisan fight in Congress last week might have the opposite effect among some Democrats. ``That's the problem,'' said Stuart Rothenberg, the editor of an independent political newsletter in Washington. ``It's not that we don't know, and that the politicians don't know, where the general public stands on impeachment. The problem is that we don't know where the electorate stands on impeachment.'' And asking voters to think ahead to an impeachment proceeding as they cast their ballots in a Senate race is, in the words of Stuart Stevens, a Republican consultant, ``a double bank-shot.'' Such strategies, he said, tend to work only with a small number of single-minded or sophisticated voters. Against that complicated backdrop, the prevailing thinking is that the use of the impeachment issue will vary from race to race, state to state and week to week, depending on the circumstances of the candidates and the composition of the electorate. If Democrats try to turn the image of Clinton in the dock to their advantage, it would be in states with a Democratic edge or with sizable numbers of black voters, who overwhelmingly support the president. In contests like those, it might well prove to be in the interest of a Democratic candidate to, as one consultant put it, sit down in front of a camera and tape an advertisement in which the candidate denounces the president's behavior but solemnly pledges to vote against impeachment. Strategists in both parties believe that kind of approach could prove effective. ``This is an issue where there is a huge disconnect between the elites and the public,'' said Fred Yang, a Democratic consultant with clients in Wisconsin and the Carolinas. That kind of Democratic strategy might emerge in California, New York, Illinois, Wisconsin, Washington and perhaps Arkansas. By contrast, Democrats in South Carolina, Georgia and Nevada would be less likely to oppose Clinton's impeachment. On the other side, Republican consultants are telling their candidates to stress Clinton's misdeeds and stay away from talk of impeachment. The last thing the party wants is to turn the Senate elections into a referendum on whether Clinton should be forced from office. ``The White House might think from the overall public numbers that maybe they would like to make this a referendum election,'' said Ed Goeas, a Republican pollster who is working in Senate races this year. ``Republicans certainly aren't going to let that happen.'' D'Amato responded to questions about Clinton with the language that Republican consultants have been suggesting to their candidates. ``When and if that matter comes to the Senate, I will decide on the facts that are presented to me at that time,'' D'Amato said. ``It would be very premature for me to suggest any course of action without it being referred. Because, indeed, we may be called upon to act as a jury of some kind.'' But Schumer, a member of the House Judiciary Committee, which is conducting the impeachment investigation, virtually embraced the issue. In a live telecast of the hearings, he said the president deserved a lesser punishment, such as censure or reprimand. And Schumer plans to campaign in New York on Monday with Clinton at his side. Schumer's media adviser, Hank Morris, seemed to suggest last week that impeachment will grow as an issue. ``Senator D'Amato claims he does not want to share his opinion with the people of New York,'' Morris said. ``And if he doesn't have an opinion, he's the only New Yorker who doesn't have an opinion.'' Asked if Schumer would raise the issue in a television commercial, Morris responded: ``We don't talk about what we're going to do. I wouldn't rule it in and I wouldn't rule it out.'' ||||| Nearly 60 years behind the times, the House voted Friday to condemn the Nazi-Soviet nonaggression pact of 1939. The measure, a nonbinding resolution, was brought to the floor by Rep. John Shimkus, R-Ill. He is of Lithuanian descent, has a pocket of Lithuanians in his hometown of Collinsville and wants to try to highlight his support for the Baltic states' past efforts against Soviet repression. Shimkus' measure is an example of how members of Congress are spending their time as they stand idle and wait for Republican leaders to reach agreement on spending bills with the White House, thus avoiding a government shutdown and allowing them to go home and campaign for the November elections. With time on their hands, many Republicans are using the House floor as their personal stage to elicit votes on topics that they can boast about to the folks back home. Most of these matters have little chance of finding their way into law, but members hope to turn them to their advantage on Election Day. There are plenty of other items whose sponsors hope will not attract attention. These tend to be special-interest matters that members hope will escape scrutiny in the rush to leave town. The sponsors of these measures now have the added advantage of the impeachment inquiry, which has been preoccupying Congress, the news media and the public and giving them cover to move their pet causes quietly into the gigantic omnibus package that Congress will eventually present to Clinton for signing. These quieter measures include one proposed by Mississippi's two senators, Trent Lott and Thad Cochran, both Republicans. They want agriculture export credits to buy chickens for Russia, which has bought the chickens but cannot pay for them. The chickens are from Mississippi. Democrats have little influence in the Republican-controlled Congress. But some Democrats are close enough to Republican leaders, and to Republican goals, that their measures are taken seriously. These include Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., the ranking Democrat on the national security subcommittee of the Appropriations Committee, who is pushing a measure to increase military pensions. Perhaps the best example of an attempt to force a vote for political advantage is a measure that would require minors to notify their parents if they are seeking contraceptives from federally funded family planning clinics. House leaders allowed the measure to be brought to the floor as a way to appease the more conservative members, who believe they have been shortchanged by the budget process. It passed the House by a vote of 224-200 but has almost no chance of becoming law. The Senate does not plan to take it up, and Clinton would almost certainly veto it. But Rep. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., said that votes like these were important because they put their sponsors' ideological foes on the record as opposing something that sounds reasonable, and that opposition can be used against them in the Nov. 3 election. ||||| It was a surprising scene three months ago when Dennis Rivera, one of New York City's most left-leaning labor leaders, was singing the praises of Sen. Alfonse M. D'Amato. Rivera, president of the largest union in New York City, praised D'Amato for persuading Trent Lott, the Senate majority leader, to support legislation that financed health coverage for hundreds of thousands of uninsured children. It looked as if Rivera's politically potent union might endorse D'Amato _ or at the very minimum stay neutral in this year's U.S. Senate race in New York. But on Monday, Rivera's 150,000-member union, 1199, the National Health and Human Service Employees union, endorsed Rep. Charles E. Schumer, D-N.Y., and thereby risked D'Amato's wrath. The endorsement is risky, labor leaders acknowledge, because angering this powerful senator could make him far less responsive to labor's needs when unions turn to him for help in the future if he is re-elected. Although it may seem illogical, two words go far to explain why Rivera's union backed Schumer: Monica Lewinsky. Largely as a result of the Lewinsky scandal, Democrats say they suddenly fear that the Republicans will gain a filibuster-proof, 60-seat majority in the Senate, where the Republicans have 55 seats to the Democrats' 45. For labor leaders like Rivera, the notion of a strong Republican majority is a nightmare. That fear has helped push other New York unions into Schumer's column, even though D'Amato had long courted them. Those unions include the teamsters' joint council in New York City and District Council 37, an umbrella group representing 120,000 municipal employees. Labor leaders say they fear that with a filibuster-proof Republican majority, the Senate would push through anti-union legislation, like recently defeated Republican proposals to curb labor's political spending and cut financing for the National Labor Relations Board. ``We are worried about legislation that will not allow the labor movement to survive into the next century,'' Rivera said. Alarmed that the Democrats will lose Senate seats in California, Illinois, Wisconsin, Nevada and South Carolina, Rivera's union concluded that it was worth backing Schumer. The decision, Rivera emphasized repeatedly, was not personal but was based on national considerations. ``Unfortunately, the leadership of the Republican Party at the national level in the person of Newt Gingrich and Trent Lott are not necessarily from the same culture as the Republicans of the Northeast,'' he said. ``They're far more conservative, far more anti-labor, far more anti-worker, far more pro-business. We fear that the Democratic Party faces irrelevance in the United States Senate if we go below 41 seats.'' Trying to avoid a rupture with D'Amato, Rivera praised him as ``an effective senator.'' The endorsement could be a boon for Schumer. Rivera's union and the teachers' union have labor's strongest political operations in New York. In addition, Schumer will get thousands of dollars from the local as well as use of its renowned phone banks, which can make 50,000 political calls a day. A spokesman for D'Amato said, ``Al D'Amato's proud that he's been endorsed by over 100 union federations and locals, representing more that 400,000 working men and women, and he'll continue his efforts on behalf of working middle class families.'' His labor endorsements include the New York City Patrolmen's Benevolent Association and the New York State Building and Construction Trades Council. Besides the backing of 1199, Schumer also received the endorsement of 1199's parent union, the Service Employees International Union, which has 350,000 members in New York State. Rivera _ who did not support D'Amato the last time he ran either _ announced the endorsements during the founding convention of the New York State Council of the service employees union. The convention packed Town Hall, and the new group aims to make the service employees a power to be reckoned with by bringing together a dozen union locals to forge a common political and legislative strategy. Earlier this year, 1199 merged with the service employees, and as part of that agreement, Rivera became head of the service employees in New York State. ||||| White House officials and gay Democrats, concerned that the nation's largest gay and lesbian political organization is about to endorse Sen. Alfonse D'Amato for re-election, are intensely lobbying the group to try to shift its support to the Democratic challenger, Rep. Charles Schumer. Publicly, officials in the organization, the Human Rights Campaign, said they were still deliberating their position in the closely watched race, considered among the tightest in the nation. They said they would probably make an endorsement by Friday. But privately, organization officials and gay activists from both parties who have been monitoring the debate say the group is most likely to endorse D'Amato, a Republican seeking his fourth term. They also raised the possibility that the group would endorse both candidates, or remain neutral. If the group endorses D'Amato, said officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity, the endorsement would be based on three major factors: The group tends to favor incumbents, has been searching for allies among the Senate Republican majority and considers D'Amato's recent record on gay issues to be quite strong. An endorsement by the group, which is held in high regard by many gay and lesbian voters, could prove important in swinging voters to D'Amato in a tight race. It would also be a major symbolic victory for the senator, who has sought to recast himself as a centrist in recent years and could use the endorsement to build his standing among moderate swing voters. A D'Amato endorsement would also weaken Schumer's efforts to portray the incumbent as a right-wing extremist and would signify to many voters a fraying of the traditional Democratic coalition that has included black and gay voters, women and labor unions. The intensity of the debate surrounding the endorsement underscores the importance of the New York Senate race to Democrats across the nation, who see defeating D'Amato as one of their best opportunities to prevent the Republicans from gaining 60 seats in the Senate _ enough to stop a Democratic filibuster. The Republicans currently hold a 55-to-45 majority. ``There is sentiment in the community that if the Republicans get 60 votes, that Trent Lott will basically be in charge politically for the next two years,'' said David Mixner, a close friend of President Clinton's who is gay. He was referring to the Senate majority leader, who has called homosexuality a sin and likened it to kleptomania. Saturday, Schumer picked up his own endorsement from New York's largest gay and lesbian political organization, the Empire State Pride Agenda. Although the Human Rights Campaign is bipartisan, it has been very close to the Clinton administration, has many Democrats on its board and receives much of its money from Democratic contributors. Largely because of the group's strong Democratic ties, gay Democrats, New York liberals and White House officials are infuriated that it is even considering endorsing D'Amato, who also runs on the Right to Life and Conservative Party lines and often receives high ratings from the Christian Coalition, which typically opposes legislation on civil rights for gay people. Although the organization has been thought to be inching toward a D'Amato endorsement for months, the lobbying campaign for Schumer has picked up intensity in the last two weeks, driven partly by a growing sense that the race is now closer than ever. Democrats and advocates in both parties who support rights for gay people said that Vice President Al Gore, Hillary Rodham Clinton and Secretary for Health and Human Services Donna Shalala have made personal appeals to Human Rights Campaign officials urging them not to endorse D'Amato. White House officials said they did not know whether the three had made such appeals, and Human Rights Campaign officials declined to comment. Schumer met privately with the group's top officials last week to make one last pitch for the endorsement. Clinton administration officials have also been buttonholing the group's board members at every opportunity, from cocktail parties to fund-raisers, raising concerns about a D'Amato endorsement. Some New York advocates of civil rights for gay people have flooded the organization with phone calls, e-mail messages and letters. Democratic officials have been encouraging the group's major donors to express their opposition to D'Amato. People involved in the lobbying efforts said that at best, they are hoping the group will endorse both candidates, or make no endorsement at all. ``Chuck Schumer has been a strong supporter of issues that are important to gay communities,'' said a senior White House official who spoke on the condition of anonymity. ``The last thing that they should want to do is hurt the candidacy of someone who has been so supportive of their agenda.'' The Human Rights Campaign is considered the most influential gay and lesbian organization in Washington, with a national membership of 250,000 and an annual budget of more than $13 million. The group was created in the early 1980s in large part to counter the rise of the Christian right and Ronald Reagan. Paradoxically, D'Amato was first elected in the Reagan landslide of 1980 and remained a strong supporter of President Reagan. For D'Amato, who has aggressively courted gay voters, the endorsement would represent a crowning achievement in his efforts to reposition himself as a moderate. Since 1993, the senator has backed the right of gay citizens to serve in the military, sponsored legislation to prevent job discrimination against gay workers and opposed his own leadership's attempts to block the nominations of two openly gay men to positions in the Clinton administration. To gay supporters of D'Amato, an endorsement by the Human Rights Campaign would signify the political maturation of the gay electorate and help the organization insulate itself from accusations that it is too close to the Democratic Party. Those who support a D'Amato endorsement, including top officials within the Human Rights Campaign, contend that in the current political climate, where Congress is almost certain to remain under Republican control after November, gay people must build alliances with moderate Republicans. Human Rights Campaign officials also say their standing policy is to support friendly incumbents, even when their challengers have better voting records on gay issues. That is the case in New York, where Schumer's rating by the Human Rights Campaign has been consistently better than D'Amato's. Both men, however, have angered advocates of rights for gay people by voting for legislation that allows states to not recognize gay marriages. In a precedent widely cited by D'Amato supporters, the organization endorsed Sen. John F. Kerry, a Democrat, over the Republican challenger, William Weld, in the 1996 Massachusetts Senate race, even though Weld's record on gay rights was considered stronger. The move angered gay Republicans, who now contend that snubbing D'Amato would prove that the group is biased toward Democrats. But there is clearly a large number of Human Rights Campaign contributors and board members who strongly feel that endorsing D'Amato will permanently damage the group, particularly among women. They fear that abortion rights supporters will quit the group in droves because D'Amato has never wavered in his opposition to abortion during 18 years in Congress. Many New York gay activists would also be deeply upset if the group endorses D'Amato, whom they blame for installing the state Senate majority leader, Joseph Bruno, whom they consider to be strongly anti-gay. Matt Foreman, executive director of the Empire State Pride Agenda, cited D'Amato's role as ``the architect'' of the state Republican Party as a major reason the group endorsed Schumer. ``While he has criticized fellow Republicans in Washington for their intolerance, here at home, his own party's blatant discrimination is still the order of the day,'' Foreman said. For that reason, some White House officials say they think a Human Rights Campaign endorsement of D'Amato will be almost meaningless among gay voters. They contend that it might even hurt the senator among his conservative base. ``I don't think anybody will vote for Al D'Amato because of an HRC endorsement,'' said a White House aide who spoke on the condition of anonymity. ``But I think some people in the Right to Life Party and some upstate people are going to say, `Who is this guy and why should we vote for him?''' ||||| The last time George Voinovich ran for office, he won re-election as Ohio's governor with 72 percent of the vote, stunning even his most optimistic supporters and setting a 20th-century record for victory margins in Ohio politics. This year, Voinovich, a Republican who is barred from seeking a third term, is running again, this time for the Senate seat held by John Glenn, a Democrat who is retiring. And while there are few who expect Voinovich to repeat his electoral benchmark of four years ago, politicians of both parties generally acknowledge that he is well positioned to increase the Republican majority in the Senate. That has not prevented Voinovich's Democratic opponent, Mary Boyle, from undertaking a vigorous campaign. Ms. Boyle, a former commissioner in Cuyahoga County, which encompasses Cleveland, is crisscrossing the nation's seventh-most populous state in what she describes as a grass-roots campaign that, while operating on a comparative shoestring, has nonetheless attracted to her side nationally known Democrats _ President Clinton foremost among them _ on the campaign trail. Glenn, the former astronaut who is preparing to return to space this month at the age of 77, has not made an endorsement in the Senate race. Like many candidates this year, Ms. Boyle, 55, is campaigning hard on the issue of education, seeking to portray Voinovich, 61, as a lackluster steward who allowed the state's schools to decline. ``He promised to be the education governor,'' said Ms. Boyle. ``But after seven and a half years he has failed the students of this state.'' Her role in the campaign, she said, ``is to remind the people of the state of Ohio that George Voinovich made a promise and that he didn't deliver on it.'' Specifically, she discusses a decision last year by the Ohio Supreme Court that cited wide disparities in the quality of the state's schools and ruled unconstitutional the formula for funding them. She has also attacked her Republican opponent for supporting a proposal to raise the state's sales tax by one percent. Under that plan, half the additional funds would have been used for school improvement with the remainder earmarked for reducing property taxes. That statewide ballot initiative last May proved to be wildly unpopular, with about 80 percent of the voters opposing it. While the topics of taxes and education are hot ones this political season in Ohio, it is not clear that Ms. Boyle's emphasis on them has helped her campaign. Despite some narrowing in the opinion polls, she is still trailing Voinovich by 10 percentage points in some polls and as much as 18 points in others. There is also a sharp fund-raising disparity. Ms. Boyle, who is running her first statewide race and has widespread union support, has raised nearly $2 million so far, far less than the nearly $7 million Voinovich has taken in. Also, Voinovich, a former lieutenant governor, has been on statewide ballots five times over the last 20 years and thus is the better-known candidate. The electoral dynamics of Ohio are also aiding Voinovich. The northern half of the state, with its history of industrial, unionized cities, has a tradition of voting largely for Democratic candidates, while the southern tier of the state is considered more conservative and typically leans Republican. But Voinovich and Ms. Boyle share the same home terrain, depriving Ms. Boyle of the geographic advantage that often accompanies Democratic candidates. Indeed, as a boy, Voinovich once delivered newspapers to the Boyle home in the working-class Collinwood section of Cleveland. And Voinovich, a former mayor of Cleveland, has developed a reputation as a moderate Republican who works well with Democrats. Voinovich, while campaigning vigorously himself, is keeping a full schedule of official duties, assuming the role of the experienced, elected official. ``If I get into the Senate, I will probably know more about domestic policy than any member of the Senate,'' he said in an interview on Wednesday in Canton, sandwiched between a ribbon-cutting ceremony and a fund-raising reception at a vacuum cleaner museum. ``As mayor, I had my nose rubbed into the problems of urban America and was fairly successful in dealing with them. And, as governor, I have dealt with the problems of Medicaid, welfare and education. I'm the only person in the United States who has been president of the National League of Cities and chairman of the National Governors Association.'' To his opponent's charges on his record on education, Voinovich is dismissive. ``I'm probably the only Republican in the United States who has been endorsed by the Ohio Education Association and National Education Association,'' he said, adding that Ms. Boyle was a member of the state Legislature during the period cited in the Supreme Court ruling. ``Mary Boyle was vice chairman of the Ways and Means Committee and a member of the Democratic leadership during those years,'' Voinovich said. ``They did nothing to fix the buildings, they did nothing for technology and the urban school districts.'' Ms. Boyle, who has not yet begun to run campaign commercials on television, said her status as the underdog had ``allowed me to be more focused, more intense.'' Pausing after a campaign fund-raising breakfast with former Democratic Sen. Bill Bradley of New Jersey here on Wednesday, Ms. Boyle said: ``This has been a marathon and it's been pretty much uphill. But now, we're down to the last three miles. It's a tough race.''

President Clinton's impeachment woes are causing problems for the approaching mid-term elections. The President stopped apologizing, saying he must "live with the consequences" of his mistakes, and urging democrats to take pride in his achievements. Democratic candidates hope to contain the Lewinsky debacle while trying to prevent a Republican majority in the Senate. In New York, the Human Rights Campaign may endorse both candidates. In Ohio, Republican Voinovich is in a crucial face-off with Democrat Mary Boyles. Republicans are using a bait-and-switch routine to earn funds from small business. Their House votes are on topics to boast about back home.

It was not a voice mail message that Dr. Marilyn Rymer, a neurologist in Kansas City, Mo., would routinely delete, even as a registered Democrat. ``Speaker Newt Gingrich's office,'' it said, was calling to discuss a ``national leadership award.'' Dr. Rymer has won acclaim as the director of a prominent stroke-treatment center, but this proposition seemed particularly grand. When she returned the call, she said she was told she would also be named honorary chairman of an elite committee to advise Gingrich on legislation. Too good to be true? Well, Dr. Rymer would have to pay her own way if the committee should actually meet, and as an honorary committee chairman, she discovered, she would be a member of a committee composed entirely of honorary chairmen. And oh, the speaker wanted a donation of $500 to $1,000 to ``help our efforts,'' according to a transcript of a similar chat with another doctor, to elect a bigger Republican majority in the House of Representatives. With the approach of the midterm elections next month, it turns out that the National Republican Congressional Committee, which supports candidates for the House, has been sponsoring similar calls to tens of thousands of small-business owners, including doctors. With this and other fund-raising programs, the committee says it has amassed $62 million for the elections. But campaign finance watchdogs say the solicitations mark a new departure in political fund raising, one they call akin to the practices of marketing companies like the Publishers' Clearing House that hook consumers with visions of million-dollar windfalls to induce them to subscribe to magazines. By citing the speaker and promising celebrity and influence, they say, the calls are a bait-and-switch scheme to seize the attention of people who might otherwise hang up. Dr. Rymer says she was incensed. So was Dr. Stanley Turecki, a child and family psychiatrist in New York who votes as an independent and was also called. ``I was absolutely outraged,'' he said. ``Anybody else who would do that would fall into the category of consumer fraud.'' Kenneth Gross, a Washington lawyer who specializes in election law and represents both Democratic and Republican clients, said, ``I have never heard of that particular device.'' But it doesn't appear illegal, he said, adding, ``It's a fund-raising gimmick to get attention.'' Fred Wertheimer, president of Democracy 21, a nonprofit, nonpartisan advocate of campaign finance reform, said, ``This is a new version of caveat emptor _ buyer be damned instead of buyer beware.'' When businesses do it, he added, Congress orders investigations. ``But this isn't going to be investigated because it's members of Congress who are doing it.'' Todd Harris, a spokesman for the National Republican Congressional Committee, said that he had not heard of any complaints and that there was no intent to deceive. ``The national leadership award is a part of what we call donor and member fulfillment,'' Harris said. ``It's part of bringing them into the process. It's important that they be recognized for the support they give the party.'' ``There's no quid pro quo'' that people solicited could receive awards for past contributions, he added. What most peeves Drs. Rymer and Turecki is the message left with secretaries and answering machines invoking Gingrich's ``office'' and proposing the award. They say they envisioned a senior aide at a telephone in the speaker's chambers under the Capitol Dome. The calls, however, are not placed by aides to Gingrich, by any of his offices or by anyone in Washington. They are made by people with headsets and computers at the home of InfoCision Management Corp., a telemarketing firm and Congressional committee client in Akron, Ohio. On its Web page, InfoCision says its 1,400 employees operate 1,584 telephone lines and 9 phone centers. ``Every word in the script is approved by our clients,'' the company says on its Web site. ``Every conceivable objection is scripted with a powerful rebuttal.'' Besides telemarketing for businesses, said Jamie Blair, a supervisor at the center, ``we specialize in helping the Republican Party and conservative political groups.'' However far they are from Gingrich, the telemarketers are instructed to answer return calls with: ``Republican Congressional Committee, Newt Gingrich's office. May I help you?'' A doctor in Kansas City, Mo., who is a registered Republican and who declined to be named, dialed the Gingrich number (888-484-1644) left on answering machines and secretly recorded the ensuing discussion, which is legal in Missouri. ``We were asked to contact you on behalf of the speaker,'' says a woman who picked up the call and identified herself as Nancy. ``He is right now aggressively pushing legislation to cut taxes by as much as half, and he's also interested in legislation to cut capital gains to a single rate of 15 percent.'' To assure passage of the legislation, the speaker wants to increase his Republican majority, she says, adding, ``To help us do that, the speaker is pulling together a group of individuals such as yourself and is inviting you to be an honorary chairman on his advisory council.'' Nancy continues: ``There will be correspondence with the speaker, such as conference calls. It's a great way that he can get your input and thoughts on legislation that does concern you. Or maybe surveys or questionnaires.'' Later, Nancy says: ``As a member of his committee, you would be receiving from the speaker our national leadership award, which is really quite an honor. And to be honest, he will be asking each of our chairmen if they could help our efforts to increase our majority with a one-time contribution of $500 or $1,000. ``Now that would be used on the nationwide media campaign that Newt has undertaken to target those seats we really need. And as someone who I'm sure would also benefit from this, could I tell the speaker he could count on your help?'' The doctor demurs. ``I am a registered, you know, Republican in Kansas,'' she tells Nancy. ``Probably if I were to do something it would be to go through my own representative.'' Then the doctor tries to ascertain where Nancy is located. ``Is this congressman Gingrich's office that I'm talking to?'' the doctor asks. ``The speaker's office,'' says Nancy. ``This is the speaker's office.'' ``That I'm talking to,'' says the doctor, double-checking. ``Uh-huh,'' Nancy replies. The law prohibits political fund-raising calls from federal offices. Vice President Al Gore is under a Justice Department investigation for fund-raising calls he allegedly made from his office in the 1996 presidential campaign. But the calls can be made from just about anywhere else, including campaign offices. Harris said the calls are ``in no way related to the speaker's OFFICIAL office.'' He added: ``What is more important is not where the calls get routed. People are more interested in an award with the speaker's good name on it than whether the call gets routed to Washington or Ohio.'' Turecki disagrees. ``I see it as basic sleaze,'' he said. ||||| The last time George Voinovich ran for office, he won re-election as Ohio's governor with 72 percent of the vote, stunning even his most optimistic supporters and setting a 20th-century record for victory margins in Ohio politics. This year, Voinovich, a Republican who is barred from seeking a third term, is running again, this time for the Senate seat held by John Glenn, a Democrat who is retiring. And while there are few who expect Voinovich to repeat his electoral benchmark of four years ago, politicians of both parties generally acknowledge that he is well positioned to increase the Republican majority in the Senate. That has not prevented Voinovich's Democratic opponent, Mary Boyle, from undertaking a vigorous campaign. Ms. Boyle, a former commissioner in Cuyahoga County, which encompasses Cleveland, is crisscrossing the nation's seventh-most populous state in what she describes as a grass-roots campaign that, while operating on a comparative shoestring, has nonetheless attracted to her side nationally known Democrats _ President Clinton foremost among them _ on the campaign trail. Glenn, the former astronaut who is preparing to return to space this month at the age of 77, has not made an endorsement in the Senate race. Like many candidates this year, Ms. Boyle, 55, is campaigning hard on the issue of education, seeking to portray Voinovich, 61, as a lackluster steward who allowed the state's schools to decline. ``He promised to be the education governor,'' said Ms. Boyle. ``But after seven and a half years he has failed the students of this state.'' Her role in the campaign, she said, ``is to remind the people of the state of Ohio that George Voinovich made a promise and that he didn't deliver on it.'' Specifically, she discusses a decision last year by the Ohio Supreme Court that cited wide disparities in the quality of the state's schools and ruled unconstitutional the formula for funding them. She has also attacked her Republican opponent for supporting a proposal to raise the state's sales tax by one percent. Under that plan, half the additional funds would have been used for school improvement with the remainder earmarked for reducing property taxes. That statewide ballot initiative last May proved to be wildly unpopular, with about 80 percent of the voters opposing it. While the topics of taxes and education are hot ones this political season in Ohio, it is not clear that Ms. Boyle's emphasis on them has helped her campaign. Despite some narrowing in the opinion polls, she is still trailing Voinovich by 15 percentage points in some polls and as much as 20 points in others. There is also a sharp fund-raising disparity. Ms. Boyle, who is running her first statewide race and has widespread union support, has raised nearly $2 million so far, far less than the nearly $7 million Voinovich has taken in. Also, Voinovich, a former lieutenant governor, has been on statewide ballots five times over the last 20 years and thus is the better-known candidate. The electoral dynamics of Ohio are also aiding Voinovich. The northern half of the state, with its history of industrial, unionized cities, has a tradition of voting largely for Democratic candidates, while the southern tier of the state is considered more conservative and typically leans Republican. But Voinovich and Ms. Boyle share the same home terrain, depriving Ms. Boyle of the geographic advantage that often accompanies Democratic candidates. Indeed, as a boy, Voinovich once delivered newspapers to the Boyle home in the working-class Collinwood section of Cleveland. And Voinovich, a former mayor of Cleveland, has developed a reputation as a moderate Republican who works well with Democrats. Voinovich, while campaigning vigorously himself, is keeping a full schedule of official duties, assuming the role of the experienced, elected official. ``If I get into the Senate, I will probably know more about domestic policy than any member of the Senate,'' he said in an interview on Wednesday in Canton, sandwiched between a ribbon-cutting ceremony and a fund-raising reception at a vacuum cleaner museum. ``As mayor, I had my nose rubbed into the problems of urban America and was fairly successful in dealing with them. And, as governor, I have dealt with the problems of Medicaid, welfare and education. I'm the only person in the United States who has been president of the National League of Cities and chairman of the National Governors Association.'' To his opponent's charges on his record on education, Voinovich is dismissive. ``I'm probably the only Republican in the United States who has been endorsed by the Ohio Education Association and National Education Association,'' he said, adding that Ms. Boyle was a member of the state Legislature during the period cited in the Supreme Court ruling. ``Mary Boyle was vice chairman of the Ways and Means Committee and a member of the Democratic leadership during those years,'' Voinovich said. ``They did nothing to fix the buildings, they did nothing for technology and the urban school districts.'' Ms. Boyle, who has not yet begun to run campaign commercials on television, said her status as the underdog had ``allowed me to be more focused, more intense.'' Pausing after a campaign fund-raising breakfast with former Democratic Sen. Bill Bradley of New Jersey here on Wednesday, Ms. Boyle said: ``This has been a marathon and it's been pretty much uphill. But now, we're down to the last three miles. It's a tough race.'' ||||| White House officials and gay Democrats, concerned that the nation's largest gay and lesbian political organization is about to endorse Sen. Alfonse D'Amato for re-election, are intensely lobbying the group to try to shift its support to the Democratic challenger, Rep. Charles Schumer. Publicly, officials in the organization, the Human Rights Campaign, said they were still deliberating their position in the closely watched race, considered among the tightest in the nation. They said they would probably make an endorsement by Friday. But privately, organization officials and gay activists from both parties who have been monitoring the debate say the group is most likely to endorse D'Amato, a Republican seeking his fourth term. They also raised the possibility that the group would endorse both candidates, or remain neutral. If the group endorses D'Amato, said officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity, the endorsement would be based on three major factors: The group tends to favor incumbents, has been searching for allies among the Senate Republican majority and considers D'Amato's recent record on gay issues to be quite strong. An endorsement by the group, which is held in high regard by many gay and lesbian voters, could prove important in swinging voters to D'Amato in a tight race. It would also be a major symbolic victory for the senator, who has sought to recast himself as a centrist in recent years and could use the endorsement to build his standing among moderate swing voters. A D'Amato endorsement would also weaken Schumer's efforts to portray the incumbent as a right-wing extremist and would signify to many voters a fraying of the traditional Democratic coalition that has included black and gay voters, women and labor unions. The intensity of the debate surrounding the endorsement underscores the importance of the New York Senate race to Democrats across the nation, who see defeating D'Amato as one of their best opportunities to prevent the Republicans from gaining 60 seats in the Senate _ enough to stop a Democratic filibuster. The Republicans currently hold a 55-to-45 majority. ``There is sentiment in the community that if the Republicans get 60 votes, that Trent Lott will basically be in charge politically for the next two years,'' said David Mixner, a close friend of President Clinton's who is gay. He was referring to the Senate majority leader, who has called homosexuality a sin and likened it to kleptomania. Saturday, Schumer picked up his own endorsement from New York's largest gay and lesbian political organization, the Empire State Pride Agenda. Although the Human Rights Campaign is bipartisan, it has been very close to the Clinton administration, has many Democrats on its board and receives much of its money from Democratic contributors. Largely because of the group's strong Democratic ties, gay Democrats, New York liberals and White House officials are infuriated that it is even considering endorsing D'Amato, who also runs on the Right to Life and Conservative Party lines and often receives high ratings from the Christian Coalition, which typically opposes legislation on civil rights for gay people. Although the organization has been thought to be inching toward a D'Amato endorsement for months, the lobbying campaign for Schumer has picked up intensity in the last two weeks, driven partly by a growing sense that the race is now closer than ever. Democrats and advocates in both parties who support rights for gay people said that Vice President Al Gore, Hillary Rodham Clinton and Secretary for Health and Human Services Donna Shalala have made personal appeals to Human Rights Campaign officials urging them not to endorse D'Amato. White House officials said they did not know whether the three had made such appeals, and Human Rights Campaign officials declined to comment. Schumer met privately with the group's top officials last week to make one last pitch for the endorsement. Clinton administration officials have also been buttonholing the group's board members at every opportunity, from cocktail parties to fund-raisers, raising concerns about a D'Amato endorsement. Some New York advocates of civil rights for gay people have flooded the organization with phone calls, e-mail messages and letters. Democratic officials have been encouraging the group's major donors to express their opposition to D'Amato. People involved in the lobbying efforts said that at best, they are hoping the group will endorse both candidates, or make no endorsement at all. ``Chuck Schumer has been a strong supporter of issues that are important to gay communities,'' said a senior White House official who spoke on the condition of anonymity. ``The last thing that they should want to do is hurt the candidacy of someone who has been so supportive of their agenda.'' The Human Rights Campaign is considered the most influential gay and lesbian organization in Washington, with a national membership of 250,000 and an annual budget of more than $13 million. The group was created in the early 1980s in large part to counter the rise of the Christian right and Ronald Reagan. Paradoxically, D'Amato was first elected in the Reagan landslide of 1980 and remained a strong supporter of President Reagan. For D'Amato, who has aggressively courted gay voters, the endorsement would represent a crowning achievement in his efforts to reposition himself as a moderate. Since 1993, the senator has backed the right of gay citizens to serve in the military, sponsored legislation to prevent job discrimination against gay workers and opposed his own leadership's attempts to block the nominations of two openly gay men to positions in the Clinton administration. To gay supporters of D'Amato, an endorsement by the Human Rights Campaign would signify the political maturation of the gay electorate and help the organization insulate itself from accusations that it is too close to the Democratic Party. Those who support a D'Amato endorsement, including top officials within the Human Rights Campaign, contend that in the current political climate, where Congress is almost certain to remain under Republican control after November, gay people must build alliances with moderate Republicans. Human Rights Campaign officials also say their standing policy is to support friendly incumbents, even when their challengers have better voting records on gay issues. That is the case in New York, where Schumer's rating by the Human Rights Campaign has been consistently better than D'Amato's. Both men, however, have angered advocates of rights for gay people by voting for legislation that allows states to not recognize gay marriages. In a precedent widely cited by D'Amato supporters, the organization endorsed Sen. John F. Kerry, a Democrat, over the Republican challenger, William Weld, in the 1996 Massachusetts Senate race, even though Weld's record on gay rights was considered stronger. The move angered gay Republicans, who now contend that snubbing D'Amato would prove that the group is biased toward Democrats. But there is clearly a large number of Human Rights Campaign contributors and board members who strongly feel that endorsing D'Amato will permanently damage the group, particularly among women. They fear that abortion rights supporters will quit the group in droves because D'Amato has never wavered in his opposition to abortion during 18 years in Congress. Many New York gay activists would also be deeply upset if the group endorses D'Amato, whom they blame for installing the state Senate majority leader, Joseph Bruno, whom they consider to be strongly anti-gay. Matt Foreman, executive director of the Empire State Pride Agenda, cited D'Amato's role as ``the architect'' of the state Republican Party as a major reason the group endorsed Schumer. ``While he has criticized fellow Republicans in Washington for their intolerance, here at home, his own party's blatant discrimination is still the order of the day,'' Foreman said. For that reason, some White House officials say they think a Human Rights Campaign endorsement of D'Amato will be almost meaningless among gay voters. They contend that it might even hurt the senator among his conservative base. ``I don't think anybody will vote for Al D'Amato because of an HRC endorsement,'' said a White House aide who spoke on the condition of anonymity. ``But I think some people in the Right to Life Party and some upstate people are going to say, `Who is this guy and why should we vote for him?''' ||||| In other election years, Reps. David Price and Julia Carson would have had little in common other than that they were Democrats with relatively safe seats. Price is a centrist who has represented this high-tech district in North Carolina for all but 2 of the last 12 years, a political scientist who has taught at Duke and Yale. Mrs. Carson, fairly liberal, is a House freshman who worked her way up in politics from the grass roots, having been reared in poverty. But party officials who opened this election year with high hopes of recapturing the House are beginning to worry that Democratic incumbents like Price and Mrs. Carson share something else: greater-than-expected peril on Election Day. As in many congressional races, the biggest variable is the White House scandal, which has injected fear and uncertainty into campaigns around the country. Other Democratic incumbents who Republican officials cite as locked in contests that are more competitive than expected include Reps. Corrine Brown of Florida, Vic Snyder of Arkansas, Lois Capps and Ellen Tauscher of California, Martin Frost of Texas, Melvin Watt of North Carolina, John LaFalce of New York and Sander Levin of Michigan. Here in North Carolina's 4th Congressional District, Price, acknowledging that his own polls showed him in a tight race, said: ``This is a swing district that is sensitive to any tide or trend. It's something you think about a lot in connection with the president's troubles.'' The efforts of Price and Mrs. Carson to contain the Lewinsky debacle _ and their opponents' attempts to capitalize on it _ offer important clues suggesting how Clinton's problems are influencing the conduct of races around the country. Many Democrats are straddling a line that seems to shift a bit with every new scandal-related disclosure: they do not want to appear close to a president whose conduct embarrasses them, and yet, sensing the possibility of a public backlash against Republicans, they are weighing their words carefully and are wary of hopping on any impeachment bandwagon. And while publicly these Democrats express confidence that the scandal will have little impact on them, their campaigns are preparing for the worst by placing greater emphasis than ever on behind-the-efforts to prod their core constituencies to vote. In a reflection of the uncertainty that the Clinton scandal has cast even among Republicans, the challengers in the Price and Carson districts _ both are political novices seeking office for the first time _ have differing strategies: Tom Roberg, a computer executive in Raleigh who is taking on Price, has broadcast a television commercial exploiting the scandal. ``Tom Roberg has called for Bill Clinton's resignation,'' the narrator says. ``This is not the time to be silent, Price. Where do you stand?'' But in Indianapolis, Gary Hofmeister, a conservative jeweler challenging Mrs. Carson in Indiana's 10th Congressional District, is taking a more subtle approach: rather than mention the scandal directly, he notes as often as he can that ``Julia votes with Clinton almost 100 percent of the time.'' Asked why he was not much raising the scandal directly, Hofmeister said: ``Don't murder somebody when they're in the process of committing suicide. There would be a danger if we went overboard.'' The best evidence of the discomfort of both Price and Mrs. Carson is that when asked in separate interviews whether they would want Clinton to campaign in their districts, both said it would be impossible at this late date for the White House to schedule a visit. What if there was a sudden schedule change? Both paused, squirmed a bit and mustered answers that were hardly affirmative. ``Given the president's popularity, I doubt it will hurt me,'' Mrs. Carson said. And Price? ``I don't think that would be such a good idea,'' he said. ``I've never had a president campaign here, and I wouldn't want to start this time'' although he is eagerly welcoming Erskine Bowles, the president's chief of staff and a popular native son in North Carolina, to stump with him here this Sunday.) Making strategy for the stump is further complicated by anecdotal evidence that runs counter to Democratic fears and Republican hopes. In three days of campaign stops here in North Carolina and in Indianapolis, the scandal was rarely raised by any voter being courted by the candidates of either party. When a reporter asked about it, many voters said that as appalled as they were at Clinton's behavior, they had a hard time relating it to their decision on which way to vote in the congressional elections in five weeks. As Hofmeister walked through the parking lot outside a gun and knife show at the Indiana National Guard Armory in Indianapolis last Sunday, Billy Derringer, a 57-year-old machinist who is retired on disability, called him over to express outrage about the millions of dollars that had been spent to investigate Clinton. ``It's pathetic to spend all of our money,'' said Derringer, who identified himself as an independent. ``It shouldn't have gotten this far.'' Hofmeister tried his best to make the Republicans' case. ``There has to be rule of law,'' he said. Mrs. Carson said she hoped that Democrats and swing voters alike would become so fed up with the Lewinsky inquiry that the issue might even help her. To that end, she proudly informs audiences that she voted against making public the report delivered to the House by Kenneth Starr, the Whitewater independent counsel. ``I was one of 63 members of Congress who voted against putting all that filth on the Internet,'' she said, adding that Starr's inquiry had been ``a cruel hoax in terms of fiscal responsibility and accountability.'' The Carson campaign is counting on voters like Timothy Daly, a 38-year-old real estate executive who voted for a Republican two years ago but now favors Mrs. Carson. ``I'm pulling the Democratic ticket because I'm tired of it: the right side of the Republican Party is playing politics,'' Daly said. ``We'd like to see them go on with the people's business.'' Back here in the 4th District, Price has some reasons to be worried. He was first elected to the House in 1986 but, as a four-term incumbent, was ousted in the Republican sweep of 1994 (only to win his seat back two years later). In addition, the district was redrawn last year to include a large Durham section where voters do not know him well. Determined not to be a midterm casualty of Clinton once again, Price says he is waging the most vigorous get-out-the-vote ground campaign of his career. Rather than engage Roberg over the Clinton scandal, Price has begun broadcasting a television commercial that emphasizes his central issue: education. The congressman's advisers say they intentionally produced an advertisement that appears decidedly nonpolitical _ it features school children in a play _ in an effort to break through the television clutter about the scandal. But the Price campaign also has a weapon it is holding in reserve, in the event Roberg appears to be riding the Clinton scandal to advantage: the incumbent's advisers say they would not be timid about running commercials underscoring that he earned a divinity degree before getting his doctorate in political science. At a coffee with voters in a wealthy enclave of Raleigh the other night, Roberg opened his remarks by asserting that Clinton had ``lost the moral authority to lead.'' Yet none of those assembled asked him about the scandal; they were more concerned about the state's plans to build a highway near their neighborhood. ||||| In a cocoon of loyal and wealthy supporters, President Clinton said Friday that he must ``live with the consequences'' of his mistakes, although he contended that Democrats should take pride in the achievements of his presidency and take heart from its possibilities. Clinton has stopped apologizing for his conduct with Monica Lewinsky, but he has taken to making glancing, at times humble, references to it, before moving on to attack the Republican Congress as indifferent to Americans' needs. He did so Friday at a series of fund-raisers. In one deft sentence, he acknowledged his personal pain while claiming credit for the country's economic strength, making a compact appeal for both sympathy and support in an appearance earlier in the day in Cleveland. After thanking the gathered donors for the ``very kind personal things'' they had said to him, the president declared, ``If I had to do it all over again, every day, I would do it in a heartbeat, to see America where it is today as compared to six years ago.'' As the applause died away, Clinton continued, ``I want you to understand, too, that we all have to live with the consequences of our mistakes in life.'' He added with a chuckle: ``Most of us don't have to live with it in quite such a public way. But nobody gets out of life for free.'' To the music of a saxophone and a hammered dulcimer, Clinton raised about $200,000 over lunch in a private home in Cleveland for the Democratic Senate candidate in Ohio, Mary Boyle. Then he flew to Philadelphia to raise half a million dollars for the Democratic Party. By midsummer, the president's aides were delighted to have persuaded him to condense his fund-raising remarks to just 10 minutes of policy points and partisan jabbing. But as his troubles have grown and the mid-term elections have approached, his free-form remarks have become longer. In Cleveland on Friday, he spoke for 26 minutes and here on Friday evening he spoke for almost 20 minutes. These fund-raising visits have fallen into a pattern since Clinton's videotaped grand jury testimony on Aug. 17. He is lauded, applauded and embraced by his hosts and the donors. ``Mr. President, these are your friends here today,'' said Tony George, the host of the Cleveland event, offering the refrain of those who have played a similar role. But in Cleveland as elsewhere, protesters who were scattered along the president's motorcade route were reminders of calls for his resignation and impeachment, and of the mockery some are heaping upon his presidency. At a rally for the president outside city hall here Friday night a group of Teamsters chanted, ``two more years.'' Clinton's motorcade route was lined downtown with hundreds of people, some of them carrying supportive or condemnatory signs. After an impromptu shopping trip, during which he was greeted with shouts of ``We love you,'' Clinton told some donors at the beginning of an impassioned reprise of his Cleveland speech: ``I didn't even mind the protesters, that's the American way.'' But, he added, he preferred it when they were in the minority, ``and that seemed to be the case.'' As he rode into Cleveland, Clinton passed a billboard for a local radio station, WNCX. ``Lovin', touchin', squeezin','' it read, the words superimposed on a cartoon of the president with his arm over Ms. Lewinsky's shoulders, the Washington Monument beside them. The president left it to his aides on Friday to respond directly to the latest gusher of grand jury disclosures in Washington. Instead, in his remarks, Clinton spoke with pride of his record and with urgency about addressing the international economic crisis and the needs of struggling farmers and schoolchildren. As he typically does now before such partisan audiences, he also walked through his political calculation for the mid-term elections. Clinton said in Cleveland that Republicans had bragged privately to him about their prospects. ``They tell me, `Oh, we're going to do very well, Mr. President, in these mid-terms because we have so much more money than you do,''' and because Democrats who turned out to re-elect Clinton would not return to the polls in an off-year. That argument, of course, would also insulate Clinton from any blame for depressing the Democratic vote. But he often goes further than that, saying that his predicament could actually help the Democrats. Lower-income Democratic voters, he said, might not bother to vote in a typical election. ``The people that were good enough to serve you here at this event today, they've got a lot of hassles in their life,'' he said. But, he said, ``adversity is our friend,'' because it can overcome apathy and ``focus us on what is at issue here.'' What should be at issue, Clinton said, are his achievements and agenda and the Republicans' record, which he described harshly. ``What have they done?'' he asked in Cleveland. ``They killed the minimum wage increase for 12 million Americans. They killed campaign finance reform. They killed the tobacco reform legislation.'' ||||| Sen. Alfonse D'Amato, the New York Republican who is running for re-election, went to Manhattan's Grand Central Terminal the other morning to accept an award from mass-transit advocates. But the reporters who had gathered there showed little interest in the shiny train car at the senator's back. Instead, they repeatedly asked him how he would vote on an impeachment of President Clinton. ``Look, I'm not going to make any comment with respect to that subject matter,'' D'Amato responded. ``I am not just a citizen. I am a citizen-senator who may be called upon to make a decision.'' But D'Amato is something else as well: a candidate in what may be the tightest Senate race in the nation. And variations of his elliptical response can be heard in Senate races around the country, where both Republicans and Democrats are encountering similar questions. All of which suggests that after the House voted Thursday to authorize an impeachment inquiry, this year's 34 races for the U.S. Senate have become, beyond what they already were, the electoral equivalent of jury selection. If the House votes to impeach Clinton, the matter goes to the Senate, which must decide by a two-thirds majority whether to convict him and, thus, remove him from office. As a result, the Monica Lewinsky matter has suddenly injected a new disruptive force into the Senate contests. Voters, even those who support Clinton, expect their political leaders, Republican or Democratic, to renounce Clinton's behavior, and candidates have been doing that. But impeachment is another matter; most polls show the nation is against it. The danger for Senate candidates is that with impeachment now a real possibility, the debate may move beyond the president's behavior _ about which there is little disagreement _ to the more problematic issue of whether he should be removed from office. For most of the strategists involved in the races, there is little guidance on how to handle the impeachment issue. Advisers to candidates of both parties said in interviews last week that they were perplexed and worried, unsure what they can or should do on the issue to gain the advantage _ or guard against harm. ``I can't tell how this one is going to go,'' said Mike Russell, a spokesman for the Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee. ``This is a very surreal environment.'' Of the 34 Senate seats in play, 18 are held by Democrats and 16 by Republicans, who now hold 55 seats in all. Republicans would have to win 28 of the 34 races to produce the 67 votes necessary for conviction, assuming such a vote were to go along party lines. Only an electoral catastrophe for the Democrats, which seems almost unthinkable, could produce such a huge loss. Jennifer Duffy, who follows Senate races for the Cook Political Report, a nonpartisan newsletter, said that so far, at least, none of the Senate candidates has made an explicit appeal for votes based on how they would vote on a presidential jury. But she and others are wondering if this may be about to change. This is difficult ground to measure. One of the central questions of this political year has been how Clinton's dealings with Ms. Lewinsky might affect turnout. For a long time, politicians assumed that dispirited Democrats would stay home as a rebuke to Clinton, just as many Republicans did in November 1974, three months after President Richard M. Nixon resigned. But now some analysts wonder if the partisan fight in Congress last week might have the opposite effect among some Democrats. ``That's the problem,'' said Stuart Rothenberg, the editor of an independent political newsletter in Washington. ``It's not that we don't know, and that the politicians don't know, where the general public stands on impeachment. The problem is that we don't know where the electorate stands on impeachment.'' And asking voters to think ahead to an impeachment proceeding as they cast their ballots in a Senate race is, in the words of Stuart Stevens, a Republican consultant, ``a double bank-shot.'' Such strategies, he said, tend to work only with a small number of single-minded or sophisticated voters. Against that complicated backdrop, the prevailing thinking is that the use of the impeachment issue will vary from race to race, state to state and week to week, depending on the circumstances of the candidates and the composition of the electorate. If Democrats try to turn the image of Clinton in the dock to their advantage, it would be in states with a Democratic edge or with sizable numbers of black voters, who overwhelmingly support the president. In contests like those, it might well prove to be in the interest of a Democratic candidate to, as one consultant put it, sit down in front of a camera and tape an advertisement in which the candidate denounces the president's behavior but solemnly pledges to vote against impeachment. Strategists in both parties believe that kind of approach could prove effective. ``This is an issue where there is a huge disconnect between the elites and the public,'' said Fred Yang, a Democratic consultant with clients in Wisconsin and the Carolinas. That kind of Democratic strategy might emerge in California, New York, Illinois, Wisconsin, Washington and perhaps Arkansas. By contrast, Democrats in South Carolina, Georgia and Nevada would be less likely to oppose Clinton's impeachment. On the other side, Republican consultants are telling their candidates to stress Clinton's misdeeds and stay away from talk of impeachment. The last thing the party wants is to turn the Senate elections into a referendum on whether Clinton should be forced from office. ``The White House might think from the overall public numbers that maybe they would like to make this a referendum election,'' said Ed Goeas, a Republican pollster who is working in Senate races this year. ``Republicans certainly aren't going to let that happen.'' D'Amato responded to questions about Clinton with the language that Republican consultants have been suggesting to their candidates. ``When and if that matter comes to the Senate, I will decide on the facts that are presented to me at that time,'' D'Amato said. ``It would be very premature for me to suggest any course of action without it being referred. Because, indeed, we may be called upon to act as a jury of some kind.'' But Schumer, a member of the House Judiciary Committee, which is conducting the impeachment investigation, virtually embraced the issue. In a live telecast of the hearings, he said the president deserved a lesser punishment, such as censure or reprimand. And Schumer plans to campaign in New York on Monday with Clinton at his side. Schumer's media adviser, Hank Morris, seemed to suggest last week that impeachment will grow as an issue. ``Senator D'Amato claims he does not want to share his opinion with the people of New York,'' Morris said. ``And if he doesn't have an opinion, he's the only New Yorker who doesn't have an opinion.'' Asked if Schumer would raise the issue in a television commercial, Morris responded: ``We don't talk about what we're going to do. I wouldn't rule it in and I wouldn't rule it out.'' ||||| Nearly 60 years behind the times, the House voted Friday to condemn the Nazi-Soviet nonaggression pact of 1939. The measure, a nonbinding resolution, was brought to the floor by Rep. John Shimkus, R-Ill. He is of Lithuanian descent, has a pocket of Lithuanians in his hometown of Collinsville and wants to try to highlight his support for the Baltic states' past efforts against Soviet repression. Shimkus' measure is an example of how members of Congress are spending their time as they stand idle and wait for Republican leaders to reach agreement on spending bills with the White House, thus avoiding a government shutdown and allowing them to go home and campaign for the November elections. With time on their hands, many Republicans are using the House floor as their personal stage to elicit votes on topics that they can boast about to the folks back home. Most of these matters have little chance of finding their way into law, but members hope to turn them to their advantage on Election Day. There are plenty of other items whose sponsors hope will not attract attention. These tend to be special-interest matters that members hope will escape scrutiny in the rush to leave town. The sponsors of these measures now have the added advantage of the impeachment inquiry, which has been preoccupying Congress, the news media and the public and giving them cover to move their pet causes quietly into the gigantic omnibus package that Congress will eventually present to Clinton for signing. These quieter measures include one proposed by Mississippi's two senators, Trent Lott and Thad Cochran, both Republicans. They want agriculture export credits to buy chickens for Russia, which has bought the chickens but cannot pay for them. The chickens are from Mississippi. Democrats have little influence in the Republican-controlled Congress. But some Democrats are close enough to Republican leaders, and to Republican goals, that their measures are taken seriously. These include Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., the ranking Democrat on the national security subcommittee of the Appropriations Committee, who is pushing a measure to increase military pensions. Perhaps the best example of an attempt to force a vote for political advantage is a measure that would require minors to notify their parents if they are seeking contraceptives from federally funded family planning clinics. House leaders allowed the measure to be brought to the floor as a way to appease the more conservative members, who believe they have been shortchanged by the budget process. It passed the House by a vote of 224-200 but has almost no chance of becoming law. The Senate does not plan to take it up, and Clinton would almost certainly veto it. But Rep. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., said that votes like these were important because they put their sponsors' ideological foes on the record as opposing something that sounds reasonable, and that opposition can be used against them in the Nov. 3 election. ||||| It was a surprising scene three months ago when Dennis Rivera, one of New York City's most left-leaning labor leaders, was singing the praises of Sen. Alfonse M. D'Amato. Rivera, president of the largest union in New York City, praised D'Amato for persuading Trent Lott, the Senate majority leader, to support legislation that financed health coverage for hundreds of thousands of uninsured children. It looked as if Rivera's politically potent union might endorse D'Amato _ or at the very minimum stay neutral in this year's U.S. Senate race in New York. But on Monday, Rivera's 150,000-member union, 1199, the National Health and Human Service Employees union, endorsed Rep. Charles E. Schumer, D-N.Y., and thereby risked D'Amato's wrath. The endorsement is risky, labor leaders acknowledge, because angering this powerful senator could make him far less responsive to labor's needs when unions turn to him for help in the future if he is re-elected. Although it may seem illogical, two words go far to explain why Rivera's union backed Schumer: Monica Lewinsky. Largely as a result of the Lewinsky scandal, Democrats say they suddenly fear that the Republicans will gain a filibuster-proof, 60-seat majority in the Senate, where the Republicans have 55 seats to the Democrats' 45. For labor leaders like Rivera, the notion of a strong Republican majority is a nightmare. That fear has helped push other New York unions into Schumer's column, even though D'Amato had long courted them. Those unions include the teamsters' joint council in New York City and District Council 37, an umbrella group representing 120,000 municipal employees. Labor leaders say they fear that with a filibuster-proof Republican majority, the Senate would push through anti-union legislation, like recently defeated Republican proposals to curb labor's political spending and cut financing for the National Labor Relations Board. ``We are worried about legislation that will not allow the labor movement to survive into the next century,'' Rivera said. Alarmed that the Democrats will lose Senate seats in California, Illinois, Wisconsin, Nevada and South Carolina, Rivera's union concluded that it was worth backing Schumer. The decision, Rivera emphasized repeatedly, was not personal but was based on national considerations. ``Unfortunately, the leadership of the Republican Party at the national level in the person of Newt Gingrich and Trent Lott are not necessarily from the same culture as the Republicans of the Northeast,'' he said. ``They're far more conservative, far more anti-labor, far more anti-worker, far more pro-business. We fear that the Democratic Party faces irrelevance in the United States Senate if we go below 41 seats.'' Trying to avoid a rupture with D'Amato, Rivera praised him as ``an effective senator.'' The endorsement could be a boon for Schumer. Rivera's union and the teachers' union have labor's strongest political operations in New York. In addition, Schumer will get thousands of dollars from the local as well as use of its renowned phone banks, which can make 50,000 political calls a day. A spokesman for D'Amato said, ``Al D'Amato's proud that he's been endorsed by over 100 union federations and locals, representing more that 400,000 working men and women, and he'll continue his efforts on behalf of working middle class families.'' His labor endorsements include the New York City Patrolmen's Benevolent Association and the New York State Building and Construction Trades Council. Besides the backing of 1199, Schumer also received the endorsement of 1199's parent union, the Service Employees International Union, which has 350,000 members in New York State. Rivera _ who did not support D'Amato the last time he ran either _ announced the endorsements during the founding convention of the New York State Council of the service employees union. The convention packed Town Hall, and the new group aims to make the service employees a power to be reckoned with by bringing together a dozen union locals to forge a common political and legislative strategy. Earlier this year, 1199 merged with the service employees, and as part of that agreement, Rivera became head of the service employees in New York State. ||||| White House officials and gay Democrats, concerned that the nation's largest gay and lesbian political organization is about to endorse Sen. Alfonse D'Amato for re-election, are intensely lobbying the group to try to shift its support to the Democratic challenger, Rep. Charles Schumer. Publicly, officials in the organization, the Human Rights Campaign, said they were still deliberating their position in the closely watched race, considered among the tightest in the nation. They said they would probably make an endorsement by Friday. But privately, organization officials and gay activists from both parties who have been monitoring the debate say the group is most likely to endorse D'Amato, a Republican seeking his fourth term. They also raised the possibility that the group would endorse both candidates, or remain neutral. If the group endorses D'Amato, said officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity, the endorsement would be based on three major factors: The group tends to favor incumbents, has been searching for allies among the Senate Republican majority and considers D'Amato's recent record on gay issues to be quite strong. An endorsement by the group, which is held in high regard by many gay and lesbian voters, could prove important in swinging voters to D'Amato in a tight race. It would also be a major symbolic victory for the senator, who has sought to recast himself as a centrist in recent years and could use the endorsement to build his standing among moderate swing voters. A D'Amato endorsement would also weaken Schumer's efforts to portray the incumbent as a right-wing extremist and would signify to many voters a fraying of the traditional Democratic coalition that has included black and gay voters, women and labor unions. The intensity of the debate surrounding the endorsement underscores the importance of the New York Senate race to Democrats across the nation, who see defeating D'Amato as one of their best opportunities to prevent the Republicans from gaining 60 seats in the Senate _ enough to stop a Democratic filibuster. The Republicans currently hold a 55-to-45 majority. ``There is sentiment in the community that if the Republicans get 60 votes, that Trent Lott will basically be in charge politically for the next two years,'' said David Mixner, a close friend of President Clinton's who is gay. He was referring to the Senate majority leader, who has called homosexuality a sin and likened it to kleptomania. Saturday, Schumer picked up his own endorsement from New York's largest gay and lesbian political organization, the Empire State Pride Agenda. Although the Human Rights Campaign is bipartisan, it has been very close to the Clinton administration, has many Democrats on its board and receives much of its money from Democratic contributors. Largely because of the group's strong Democratic ties, gay Democrats, New York liberals and White House officials are infuriated that it is even considering endorsing D'Amato, who also runs on the Right to Life and Conservative Party lines and often receives high ratings from the Christian Coalition, which typically opposes legislation on civil rights for gay people. Although the organization has been thought to be inching toward a D'Amato endorsement for months, the lobbying campaign for Schumer has picked up intensity in the last two weeks, driven partly by a growing sense that the race is now closer than ever. Democrats and advocates in both parties who support rights for gay people said that Vice President Al Gore, Hillary Rodham Clinton and Secretary for Health and Human Services Donna Shalala have made personal appeals to Human Rights Campaign officials urging them not to endorse D'Amato. White House officials said they did not know whether the three had made such appeals, and Human Rights Campaign officials declined to comment. Schumer met privately with the group's top officials last week to make one last pitch for the endorsement. Clinton administration officials have also been buttonholing the group's board members at every opportunity, from cocktail parties to fund-raisers, raising concerns about a D'Amato endorsement. Some New York advocates of civil rights for gay people have flooded the organization with phone calls, e-mail messages and letters. Democratic officials have been encouraging the group's major donors to express their opposition to D'Amato. People involved in the lobbying efforts said that at best, they are hoping the group will endorse both candidates, or make no endorsement at all. ``Chuck Schumer has been a strong supporter of issues that are important to gay communities,'' said a senior White House official who spoke on the condition of anonymity. ``The last thing that they should want to do is hurt the candidacy of someone who has been so supportive of their agenda.'' The Human Rights Campaign is considered the most influential gay and lesbian organization in Washington, with a national membership of 250,000 and an annual budget of more than $13 million. The group was created in the early 1980s in large part to counter the rise of the Christian right and Ronald Reagan. Paradoxically, D'Amato was first elected in the Reagan landslide of 1980 and remained a strong supporter of President Reagan. For D'Amato, who has aggressively courted gay voters, the endorsement would represent a crowning achievement in his efforts to reposition himself as a moderate. Since 1993, the senator has backed the right of gay citizens to serve in the military, sponsored legislation to prevent job discrimination against gay workers and opposed his own leadership's attempts to block the nominations of two openly gay men to positions in the Clinton administration. To gay supporters of D'Amato, an endorsement by the Human Rights Campaign would signify the political maturation of the gay electorate and help the organization insulate itself from accusations that it is too close to the Democratic Party. Those who support a D'Amato endorsement, including top officials within the Human Rights Campaign, contend that in the current political climate, where Congress is almost certain to remain under Republican control after November, gay people must build alliances with moderate Republicans. Human Rights Campaign officials also say their standing policy is to support friendly incumbents, even when their challengers have better voting records on gay issues. That is the case in New York, where Schumer's rating by the Human Rights Campaign has been consistently better than D'Amato's. Both men, however, have angered advocates of rights for gay people by voting for legislation that allows states to not recognize gay marriages. In a precedent widely cited by D'Amato supporters, the organization endorsed Sen. John F. Kerry, a Democrat, over the Republican challenger, William Weld, in the 1996 Massachusetts Senate race, even though Weld's record on gay rights was considered stronger. The move angered gay Republicans, who now contend that snubbing D'Amato would prove that the group is biased toward Democrats. But there is clearly a large number of Human Rights Campaign contributors and board members who strongly feel that endorsing D'Amato will permanently damage the group, particularly among women. They fear that abortion rights supporters will quit the group in droves because D'Amato has never wavered in his opposition to abortion during 18 years in Congress. Many New York gay activists would also be deeply upset if the group endorses D'Amato, whom they blame for installing the state Senate majority leader, Joseph Bruno, whom they consider to be strongly anti-gay. Matt Foreman, executive director of the Empire State Pride Agenda, cited D'Amato's role as ``the architect'' of the state Republican Party as a major reason the group endorsed Schumer. ``While he has criticized fellow Republicans in Washington for their intolerance, here at home, his own party's blatant discrimination is still the order of the day,'' Foreman said. For that reason, some White House officials say they think a Human Rights Campaign endorsement of D'Amato will be almost meaningless among gay voters. They contend that it might even hurt the senator among his conservative base. ``I don't think anybody will vote for Al D'Amato because of an HRC endorsement,'' said a White House aide who spoke on the condition of anonymity. ``But I think some people in the Right to Life Party and some upstate people are going to say, `Who is this guy and why should we vote for him?''' ||||| The last time George Voinovich ran for office, he won re-election as Ohio's governor with 72 percent of the vote, stunning even his most optimistic supporters and setting a 20th-century record for victory margins in Ohio politics. This year, Voinovich, a Republican who is barred from seeking a third term, is running again, this time for the Senate seat held by John Glenn, a Democrat who is retiring. And while there are few who expect Voinovich to repeat his electoral benchmark of four years ago, politicians of both parties generally acknowledge that he is well positioned to increase the Republican majority in the Senate. That has not prevented Voinovich's Democratic opponent, Mary Boyle, from undertaking a vigorous campaign. Ms. Boyle, a former commissioner in Cuyahoga County, which encompasses Cleveland, is crisscrossing the nation's seventh-most populous state in what she describes as a grass-roots campaign that, while operating on a comparative shoestring, has nonetheless attracted to her side nationally known Democrats _ President Clinton foremost among them _ on the campaign trail. Glenn, the former astronaut who is preparing to return to space this month at the age of 77, has not made an endorsement in the Senate race. Like many candidates this year, Ms. Boyle, 55, is campaigning hard on the issue of education, seeking to portray Voinovich, 61, as a lackluster steward who allowed the state's schools to decline. ``He promised to be the education governor,'' said Ms. Boyle. ``But after seven and a half years he has failed the students of this state.'' Her role in the campaign, she said, ``is to remind the people of the state of Ohio that George Voinovich made a promise and that he didn't deliver on it.'' Specifically, she discusses a decision last year by the Ohio Supreme Court that cited wide disparities in the quality of the state's schools and ruled unconstitutional the formula for funding them. She has also attacked her Republican opponent for supporting a proposal to raise the state's sales tax by one percent. Under that plan, half the additional funds would have been used for school improvement with the remainder earmarked for reducing property taxes. That statewide ballot initiative last May proved to be wildly unpopular, with about 80 percent of the voters opposing it. While the topics of taxes and education are hot ones this political season in Ohio, it is not clear that Ms. Boyle's emphasis on them has helped her campaign. Despite some narrowing in the opinion polls, she is still trailing Voinovich by 10 percentage points in some polls and as much as 18 points in others. There is also a sharp fund-raising disparity. Ms. Boyle, who is running her first statewide race and has widespread union support, has raised nearly $2 million so far, far less than the nearly $7 million Voinovich has taken in. Also, Voinovich, a former lieutenant governor, has been on statewide ballots five times over the last 20 years and thus is the better-known candidate. The electoral dynamics of Ohio are also aiding Voinovich. The northern half of the state, with its history of industrial, unionized cities, has a tradition of voting largely for Democratic candidates, while the southern tier of the state is considered more conservative and typically leans Republican. But Voinovich and Ms. Boyle share the same home terrain, depriving Ms. Boyle of the geographic advantage that often accompanies Democratic candidates. Indeed, as a boy, Voinovich once delivered newspapers to the Boyle home in the working-class Collinwood section of Cleveland. And Voinovich, a former mayor of Cleveland, has developed a reputation as a moderate Republican who works well with Democrats. Voinovich, while campaigning vigorously himself, is keeping a full schedule of official duties, assuming the role of the experienced, elected official. ``If I get into the Senate, I will probably know more about domestic policy than any member of the Senate,'' he said in an interview on Wednesday in Canton, sandwiched between a ribbon-cutting ceremony and a fund-raising reception at a vacuum cleaner museum. ``As mayor, I had my nose rubbed into the problems of urban America and was fairly successful in dealing with them. And, as governor, I have dealt with the problems of Medicaid, welfare and education. I'm the only person in the United States who has been president of the National League of Cities and chairman of the National Governors Association.'' To his opponent's charges on his record on education, Voinovich is dismissive. ``I'm probably the only Republican in the United States who has been endorsed by the Ohio Education Association and National Education Association,'' he said, adding that Ms. Boyle was a member of the state Legislature during the period cited in the Supreme Court ruling. ``Mary Boyle was vice chairman of the Ways and Means Committee and a member of the Democratic leadership during those years,'' Voinovich said. ``They did nothing to fix the buildings, they did nothing for technology and the urban school districts.'' Ms. Boyle, who has not yet begun to run campaign commercials on television, said her status as the underdog had ``allowed me to be more focused, more intense.'' Pausing after a campaign fund-raising breakfast with former Democratic Sen. Bill Bradley of New Jersey here on Wednesday, Ms. Boyle said: ``This has been a marathon and it's been pretty much uphill. But now, we're down to the last three miles. It's a tough race.''

In tight congressional and Senate races leading up to the Nov. 1998 elections, strategists and candidates were unsure how to deal with the Clinton/Lewinsky scandal. Though the President pointed to his record while stumping, many Democrats, embarrassed by his behavior, distanced themselves from him. With impeachment a possibility, the Senate races assumed even greater importance. While it was unlikely the Republicans would win enough Senate seats to remove the President, Democrats feared their opponents could gain a filibuster-proof, 60-seat majority. The NY senate race between Republican D'Amato and Schumer was one of the tightest in the nation.

Israel's Cabinet decided Friday to suspend indefinitely its ratification of the land-for-security agreement with the Palestinians. The decision came less than three hours after a car rigged with explosives blew up in an outdoor market in downtown Jersualem. Two people were killed and 21 others were wounded in the attack for which the Islamic militant group Hamas claimed responsibility. The Cabinet said it would not resume its debate or hold a vote on the accord until the Palestinian Authority has taken steps against terrorism. The Cabinet also said it would not resume the ratification process until Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat has clarified the procedure for revoking clauses in the PLO founding charter calling for Israel's destruction. The procedure is part of the Wye River agreement negotiated last month. However, Israelis and Palestinians have widely divergent interpretations of how the clauses should be rescinded. Israel says it should be done by a vote by the Palestine National Council. The Palestinians say a vote is not required. ||||| A defiant Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Saturday that Israel would continue to build Jewish neighborhoods throughout Jerusalem, including at a controversial site in the traditionally Arab sector of the city. ``We will build also in Har Homa as we will build in every part of Jerusalem,'' Netanyahu told a crowd of political supporters in Jerusalem, ``By 2000 there will be homes at Har Homa.'' Har Homa is the site of a planned Jewish neighborhood in traditionally Arab east Jerusalem. Groundbreaking at the site led to angry Palestinian protests and a breakdown of peace talks in March 1997. Netanyahu's Cabinet delayed action on the new peace accord following Friday's suicide bombing at a Jerusalem market, and his remarks about building on Har Homa may be seen as a provocation by the Palestinians at a politically sensitive moment. U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright expects Israel's Cabinet to ratify the new peace accord within a few days despite the market bombing, a television report said Saturday. ``The United States understands the delay by a day or two but expects the agreement to be approved soon,'' Albright told Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu by phone, Channel Two reported. The radical group Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility Saturday for the market bombing and vowed more attacks to try to block the new peace accord. ``This heroic operation is not the first and not going to be the last,'' the group said in a leaflet faxed to news organizations. ``We refuse any political agreement that would recognize the Zionist enemy.'' An Islamic Jihad official in the Syrian capital of Damascus confirmed that the group's leader Ramadan Abdullah Shallah claimed responsibility for Friday's bombing in an interview with the Paris-based Radio Monte Carlo. Palestinian security sources and the families of the dead bombers had already identified them as Islamic Jihad activists. At least half a dozen other Islamic activists have been rounded up since the bombing, the sources said. Palestinian political leaders said Israel should not use Friday's suicide bombing, which killed the two assailants and wounded 21 Israelis, as an excuse to stop the peace process. One of Israel's key demands is that the Palestinians do more to fight attacks by Islamic militants against Israeli targets. The Palestinians, however, said the two bombers had come from Israeli-controlled areas and that Israel thus bore at least part of the security responsibility for the attack. The Israeli military said it could not confirm the suicide bombers' identities and hometowns, but they were disclosed by Palestinian security officials and also reported by Palestinian media. One lived near the Anata refugee camp, north of Jerusalem, and the other lived in the West Bank village of Silat al Harithiya, outside the town of Jenin. Both families held so-called mourning houses on Saturday, but not actual funerals, since Israeli authorities still have their bodies. ``I didn't raise him to lose him like that,'' said Mohammed Zughayar, the 54-year-old father of Yusef Ali Mohammed Zughayar, 22. ``I'm proud, but I'm sad because I loved my son.'' The family of Suleiman Musa Dahayneh, 24, said he had been married for three months to Zughayar's sister, Basma. They met when she was visiting her brother, who was in prison with Dahayneh, the family said. At the market, some 200 observant Jews gathered Saturday night near the site of the bombing to offer prayers of thanks that no lives other than those of the assailants were lost. A ring of young men wearing skullcaps joined hands and danced, and rabbis spoke of the ``miracle'' that had saved those shopping in the market at the time of the attack. Although Hamas initially claimed responsibility through anonymous phone calls to the police for Friday's attack all sides now have agreed that it was Islamic Jihad that carried it out. ||||| On a warm, sunny morning last Friday, at the time he usually left for work at his family's produce store, Youssef Sughayer said goodbye to his grandmother for the last time and rode off to his death. Relatives say that the 21-year-old Palestinian from this village near Jerusalem showed no sign that he was heading for a suicide mission with his brother-in-law as part of a secret cell of Islamic Holy War. Their car-bomb blew apart two hours later in a Jerusalem market, killing both men and wounding 24 people. ``Don't grieve for me,'' he wrote in a farewell note, according to relatives who found it later. ``If you cry, cry with happiness that I'm a martyr. Don't serve bitter coffee, serve sweets. I'm going to Paradise.'' At the family's stone house outside Jerusalem on Sunday, visitors paying condolence calls were served sweet juice, not coffee, as Sughayer's relatives tried to make sense of what he had done. The young man, once an ace student, had come of age in Israeli prisons. Jailed for a year at age 15 for stoning Israeli cars during the riots of the Palestinian uprising, he was imprisoned again at 17, that time for three-and-a-half years for similar offenses and affiliation with Islamic Holy War. Relatives said he was an impressionable teen-ager, influenced by Islamic militants with whom he was jailed. Sughayer came out of prison more devout, and hardened by mistreatment at the hands of the Israelis, relatives said. His cellmates taught him the doctrine of holy war and about the glories of martyrdom, said an older brother, Samih Sughayer. ``They sowed it in his heart,'' he said. ``He wanted to be a martyr in the cause of God.'' But that reality, suddenly so clear Sunday, was not so apparent when Sughayer was freed seven months ago. ``He seemed normal,'' said his brother. ``He went to work at the grocery store, he finished his high school classes and he wanted to enroll in the university. He was supposed to take a driving test in a few days. If he was planning something, we didn't see it.'' He would stay up late at night after work, studying the Koran and praying, but he showed no outward signs of rage toward Israel. ``He would joke about things and say that whatever happens is God's will,'' said a brother-in-law, who insisted on anonymity. ``He was an easygoing guy.'' Last Thursday, Sughayer bought a battered red Fiat and parked it near his house. When someone at home asked about the car he said nothing, and family members assumed it was one of the stolen vehicles often found here. On Friday morning he left with the car, meeting his brother-in-law and old jail buddy, Suleiman Tahayneh, who came from his village near the West Bank town of Jenin. Tahayneh had his own score to settle with the Israelis. His leg had been amputated after he was shot in a confrontation with Israeli troops during the uprising, his relatives said. The Fiat was loaded with explosives, and the two men drove to the market. That evening, when concerned members of the Sughayer family gathered to await news of their missing relative, a man arrived and told them that he had sold his car to Youssef the previous day. It was a red Fiat, the same car they had seen near the house, and the same type of car that news reports said had exploded in the marketplace. At midnight, Israeli security forces raided the house and interrogated family members. The last, grim pieces of the puzzle fell into place. ``Up to the last minute on Thursday night we were talking together,'' said Sughayer's oldest brother, Ali, who worked with him past midnight at the produce store. ``He asked me about someone who had moved his hardware shop to another village, about how he was doing. Earlier we ate together, and we talked about giving charity to the poor. He wasn't nervous.'' ``He had plans for the future,'' Ali continued. ``Maybe the people in his group convinced him to do this, and he could not refuse. We did not expect this from him.'' ||||| A car rigged with explosives blew up Friday morning in Jerusalem's Mahane Yehuda market packed with Israelis shopping for the Jewish Sabbath, killing two people and wounding 21. The Islamic militant group Hamas, which has tried to stop the peace agreement, claimed responsibility, police said. In response to the attack, the Israeli cabinet suspended ratification of the Wye agreement until there ``is verification that the Palestinian authority is indeed fighting terrorism.'' The Israeli Cabinet also announced it will begin to build houses in the controversial Jewish settlement of Har Homa in east Jerusalem. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had held up the work in recent months in an apparent attempt to not disrupt negotiations with the Palestinians. Aides to Netanyahu were not immediately available for comment. The Cabinet ministers had just begun a second day of of talks on the peace agreement about a mile (kilometer) away from the entrance to the market and just meters (yards) from the site of a suicide bombing last year. In Friday's explosion, the rigged car, a red Fiat, blew up at about 9:45 a.m. (0745 GMT) at the entrance of Mahane Yehuda market, just meters (yards) away from the site of a suicide bombing in July 1997. Witnesses heard a series of small explosions. Yair Cohen, 43, said he was buying cookies when he saw a car driving slowly, with smoke coming out of the hood and exhaust pipes. ``People started to shout `car on fire.' After a while, we heard a blast, and something hit me in the stomach,'' said Cohen who was treated for minor injuries at Hadassah Hospital. The car was a mass of twisted metal sitting in the middle of the main intersection outside the market. Flames shot 100 feet (30 meters) in the air. A charred corpse, covered by a blanket, lay several meters away. Streams of soot-black water ran in the street. Another bare-legged body lay in the street, face down, in a pool of blood below the head. Rescue workers covered the body with sodden pieces of cardboard box and plastic shopping bags. ``There was hysteria, people were running,'' said Eliad Duan, an Israeli border policeman who was patrolling the market and was lightly injured. One heavy-set woman, apparently in shock, climbed into an ambulance, weeping. Three paramedics talked to her, persuading her that she did not need medical treatment, and after a few moments she climbed out of the vehicle again. Soldiers and police wearing plastic gloves held back the crowds. ``It's dangerous _ stay back!'' they shouted. Just a block away from the blast, shoppers went about their business. One young woman shopper said: ``We can't stop with what we are doing when this happens.'' Hassan Asfour, a Palestinian peace negotiator, said the Palestinian Authority condemned the attack. ``This is a crime and whoever commits this, hurts the interests of the Palestinian people.'' ||||| Israel's Cabinet announced within hours of a market bombing Friday that it will put off a vote indefinitely on whether to ratify the Wye River accord until Palestinians crack down further on terrorism. Israel radio said the 18-member Cabinet debate on the Wye River accord would resume only after Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority fulfilled all of its commitments under the agreement, including arresting Islamic militants. The Cabinet also insisted that Arafat convene the Palestinian National Council, a parliament in exile, to abrogate the Palestinian National Charter, which calls for Israel's destruction. The Israeli Cabinet had convened for a second day in an attempt to approve the Wye agreement. ``To our sorrow, since the Wye agreement ... there has been relentless terrorist attacks against Israeli citizens,'' according to a Cabinet statement read on the radio. Israel radio quoted officials saying the Cabinet would also decide to renew construction of the Har Homa neighborhood in the traditionally Arab sector of Jerusalem. Groundbreaking there in March 1997 led to a break-off in negotiations with the Palestinians. ||||| Setting the stage for a new quarrel over how to crack down on militants, Israel is demanding that the military wings of two radical Islamic groups be outlawed, while the Palestinian Authority insists it has already banned them. Implementation of the Israeli-Palestinian land-for-security accord, signed Oct. 23 in Washington, was to have begun this past week, but has hit various snags. Most recently, Israel's Cabinet put off a vote to ratify the accord after a suicide bombing Friday in Jerusalem that killed the two assailants and injured 21 Israelis. The radical group Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility. David Bar-Illan, a top aide to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, said Sunday that Israel expects Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat to formally outlaw the military wings of Islamic Jihad and the larger militant group Hamas. Hassan Asfour, a senior Palestinian official, said Hamas' military wing, Izeddine al Qassam, and the military wing of Islamic Jihad were outlawed by the Palestinian Authority in 1996. But Bar-Illan said the Palestinian legislature had never passed such a law. ``Why did Mr. Arafat agree in the Wye accord to outlaw them if he has already done it?'' he asked. The Wye memorandum states that the Palestinian Authority ``will inform the United States fully of the actions it has taken to outlaw all organizations (or wings of organizations, as appropriate) of a military, terrorist or violent character, and their support structure and to prevent them freedom of action in the areas under its jurisdiction.'' A Palestinian security official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said a joint Israeli-Palestinian meeting was held Saturday night to discuss security in the wake of Friday's attack. Participants included the head of the Palestinian intelligence, Amin Hindi, and the head of preventive security in the Gaza Strip, Mohammed Dahlan. The idea of outlawing Hamas and Islamic Jihad was brought up in the meeting and also proposed by Netanyahu to Arafat during a phone call, the official said. The Palestinians said they could ban activity by Hamas or Islamic Jihad that endangered either Israelis or Palestinians, but could not outlaw them outright as political movements. Friday's bombing led to finger-pointing by both sides. Israel said it showed Arafat's crackdown on terrorists had not been sweeping enough. The Palestinians, however, have also accused Israel of failing to take at least partial security responsibility for the attack, because both attackers came from Israeli-controlled areas, and had recently served time in Israeli jails. Israel as a rule is harshly critical of the Palestinian Authority's security efforts when attackers come from Palestinian-controlled areas or have been released from Palestinian prisons. On Sunday, Palestinian Justice Minister Freih Abu-Medein accused Netanyahu of using the blast as a pretext for delaying implementation of the peace accord. ``This attack is a gift to Mr. Netanyahu,'' Abu-Medein said. ``All the time he is praying to God to help him ... to escape from the agreement.'' Under the accord, Israel is to hand over another 13 percent of the territory in the West Bank to the Palestinians in exchange for various security steps. Israeli Defense Minister Yitzhak Mordechai predicted Sunday that the Israeli Cabinet would ratify the agreement in coming days. ``I estimate that the government will meet this week and will accept the decision of the majority (in favor of the agreement),'' he said. ||||| A defiant Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Saturday that Israel would continue to build Jewish neighborhoods throughout Jerusalem, including at a controversial site in the traditionally Arab sector of the city. ``We will build also in Har Homa as we will build in every part of Jerusalem,'' Netanyahu told a crowd of political supporters in Jerusalem, ``By 2000 there will be homes at Har Homa.'' Har Homa is the site of a planned Jewish neighborhood in traditionally Arab east Jerusalem, which Palestinians want to have as the capital of their hoped-for independent state. Groundbreaking at the site led to angry Palestinian protests and a breakdown of peace talks in March 1997. Netanyahu's Cabinet delayed action on the latest Israeli-Palestinian accord following Friday's suicide bombing at a Jerusalem market, and his remarks about building on Har Homa may be seen as a provocation by the Palestinians at a politically sensitive moment. U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright told Netanyahu by phone that she expects Israel's Cabinet to ratify the new peace accord within a few days despite the market bombing, Channel Two television reported Saturday. The radical group Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility Saturday for the market bombing and vowed more attacks to try to block the new peace accord. ``This heroic operation is not the first and not going to be the last,'' the group said in a leaflet faxed to news organizations. ``We refuse any political agreement that would recognize the Zionist enemy.'' An Islamic Jihad official in the Syrian capital of Damascus confirmed that the group's leader Ramadan Abdullah Shallah claimed responsibility for Friday's bombing in an interview with the Paris-based Radio Monte Carlo. Palestinian security sources and the families of the dead bombers had already identified them as Islamic Jihad activists. At least half a dozen other Islamic activists have been rounded up since the bombing, the sources said. Palestinian political leaders said Israel should not use Friday's suicide bombing, which killed the two assailants and wounded 21 Israelis, as an excuse to stop the peace process. One of Israel's key demands is that the Palestinians do more to fight attacks by Islamic militants against Israeli targets. The Palestinians, however, said the two bombers had come from Israeli-controlled areas and that Israel thus bore at least part of the security responsibility for the attack. The Israeli military said it could not confirm the suicide bombers' identities and hometowns, but they were disclosed by Palestinian security officials and also reported by Palestinian media. One lived near the Anata refugee camp, north of Jerusalem, and the other lived in the West Bank village of Silat al Harithiya, outside the town of Jenin. Both families held so-called mourning houses on Saturday, but not actual funerals, since Israeli authorities still have their bodies. ``I didn't raise him to lose him like that,'' said Mohammed Zughayar, the 54-year-old father of Yusef Ali Mohammed Zughayar, 22. ``I'm proud, but I'm sad because I loved my son.'' The family of Suleiman Musa Dahayneh, 24, said he had been married for three months to Zughayar's sister, Basma. They met when she was visiting her brother, who was in prison with Dahayneh, the family said. At the market, some 200 observant Jews gathered Saturday night near the site of the bombing to offer prayers of thanks that no lives other than those of the assailants were lost. A ring of young men wearing skullcaps joined hands and danced, and rabbis spoke of the ``miracle'' that had saved those shopping in the market at the time of the attack. Although Hamas initially claimed responsibility through anonymous phone calls to the police for Friday's attack all sides now have agreed that it was Islamic Jihad that carried it out. ||||| Blood and soot-blackened water ran in rivulets from the charred wreckage. A burly policeman bent to cover a bloodied corpse with whatever was at hand _ a sodden piece of cardboard, a plastic shopping bag. Two people were killed and at least 21 injured when an explosives-rigged car blew up Friday at Jerusalem's Mahane Yehuda market, only meters (yards) from the site of a suicide bombing 16 months ago. At police barricades set up along Jerusalem's busiest thoroughfare, soldiers and police held back crowds of people, some frantic about loved ones who had been shopping in the crowded market only hours before the start of the Jewish Sabbath. ``Please, please, is there a girl with red hair who is hurt?'' an older, heavyset woman said tearfully, trying to push her way past police. A young female soldier patted her arm consolingly. Some of the onlookers gave vent to fury over the new peace agreement, which was being debated by Israel's Cabinet even as the blast occurred. ``Death to Arabs! Death to Arafat!'' a small crowd of demonstrators shouted. Police tried to grab one of them, but he escaped into the crowd. The explosives-rigged car was a mass of twisted metal, with only the steering column intact. Next to the wreckage lay a completely charred body with stumps of arms and legs _ apparently that of the bomber. Witnesses said they heard a series of explosions. Although shop windows closest to the car were shattered, market stalls only a few more feet (yards) away were completely intact, and stacked with neat piles of bananas and onions. Eyewitness Yaakov Shlomo said initial, smaller blasts scared most onlookers away. ``When the big explosion went, there were already not that many people nearby,'' he said. ``That was a miracle from heaven.'' Shlomo Meir, a black-clad Orthodox Jew, was standing nearby when he heard a blast. When he tuirned he saw fire. ``It was terrible,'' he said, red-eyed. ``I thought, `Again!''' Only a block away, some stalls were still open and shoppers were buying produce. One woman, with almost maniacal determination, sorted through a pile of oranges. ``We can't stop what we're doing when this happens,'' she said grimly. By the police barricades, wearing bright-orange vests, stood a group of Orthodox Jewish volunteers who search scenes of accidents and attacks for body parts, in keeping with their religious belief that bodies must be buried intact. One young volunteer squinted down the street as his group waited for permission to begin its grisly task. ``It's hard, this work, but it's very important to us,'' he said. ||||| The militant Palestinian movement Islamic Holy War said Saturday that it carried out the suicide bombing in a Jerusalem market on Friday, which prompted arrests by the Palestinian Authority overnight. Palestinian officials said they had jailed several of the small but radical group's members from the West Bank, and raided and then shut down a nursery school linked to the organization in Bethlehem, which is controlled by the Palestinians. The two bombers who carried out Friday's attack, which led the Israeli Cabinet to suspend deliberations on the land-for-security accord signed with the Palestinians last month, were identified as members of Islamic Holy War from West Bank villages under Israeli security control. Ramadan Abdallah Shallah, the Damascus-based leader of Islamic Holy War, said ``martyrs'' from his movement had carried out the Jerusalem attack in response to Israel's settlement policy and ``Judaization'' of the West Bank. He spoke in an interview with Monte Carlo Radio, an Arabic station broadcasting from Paris that is widely listened to in the Middle East. A leaflet signed by the group and faxed to Reuters in Jerusalem said the ``heroic attack,'' in which 24 people were injured and the 2 bombers killed, had been carried out ``to confront the great conspiracy that aims to liquidate the Palestinian cause through the Oslo and Wye Plantation agreements of submission.'' Islamic Holy War and its counterpart, Hamas, have denounced as a sellout of Palestinian rights the 1993 Oslo self-rule accord and the latest agreement, known as the Wye Memorandum, named for the Wye Plantation in Maryland, where the deal was worked out with strenuous American mediation. Shallah's claim of responsibility from abroad contrasted with the muted response of Islamic Holy War's leadership in the Gaza Strip, which has reportedly given commitments to the Palestinian Authority to refrain from such attacks. ``We have no knowledge in the movement about the operation that occurred in Jerusalem,'' said Nafez Azzam, a senior leader of Islamic Holy War in Gaza. ``From its conditions we consider it likely that it was an individual effort.'' The Palestinian cabinet, in a statement issued after a meeting on Friday night, accused ``foreign forces'' of standing behind the attack. One cabinet member, who declined to be identified, pointed a finger at Iran, saying a search of one bomber's home had uncovered a letter he had written to the Iranian supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, expressing condolences for the recent killing of several Iranian diplomats in Afghanistan. Iran, which has backed militant Islamic groups opposed to the Arab-Israeli peace efforts, has denounced the Wye agreement, branding Yasser Arafat, the Palestinian leader, a traitor to the Palestinian cause. The Palestinian cabinet promised to crack down on the militants, who it said were jeopardizing the recovery of Palestinian land and hopes for statehood by giving Israel a pretext to postpone carrying out the Wye accord. The Israeli Cabinet suspended a meeting to ratify the agreement after the bombing, demanding that the Palestinians conduct an ``all-out war on terror.'' Israeli officials had no comment Saturday on the measures taken by the Palestinian Authority on Friday. The Wye agreement calls for an Israeli troop withdrawal from 13 percent more of the West Bank in exchange for specific Palestinian measures against violent militants. A Palestinian security official said several Islamic Holy War members were arrested in the West Bank on Friday night. Arrests were also reported in the Gaza Strip. Itaf Alayan, a supporter of the group who runs the Islamic Purity Nursery in Bethlehem, said Palestinian officers had raided the school and confiscated videotapes and educational cassettes before locking it up. The two bombers were identified as Youssef Zughayer, 21, from Anata, near Jerusalem, and his brother-in-law, Suleiman Tahayneh, 24, from Silat al-Harithiya, near the West Bank town of Jenin. Both had served time in Israeli jails and were known to be members of Islamic Holy War. ``We never thought he would do something like this,'' said Muhammad Zughayer, Youssef's father. ``We condemn such acts, but the only thing we can do now is to say may he rest in peace.'' ||||| The radical group Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility Saturday for the suicide bombing of a crowded Jerusalem market and promised more attacks to try to block the new peace accord. ``This heroic operation is not the first and not going to be the last,'' the group said in a leaflet faxed to news organizations. ``We refuse any political agreement that would recognize the Zionist enemy.'' The leaflet could not immediately be authenticated, but its style was consistent with that of past communications from the group. An Islamic Jihad official in the Syrian capital of Damascus confirmed that the group's leader Ramadan Abdullah Shallah claimed responsibility for Friday's bombing in an interview with the Paris-based Radio Monte Carlo. Palestinian security sources and the families of the dead bombers had already identified them as Islamic Jihad activists. At least half a dozen other Islamic activists have been rounded up since the bombing, the sources said. Although Hamas initially claimed responsibility through anonymous phone calls to the police, all sides now have agreed that it was Islamic Jihad that carried it out. There was no immediate explanation for the inaccurate claim, but the two groups have carried out attacks together in the past as part of their goal of stopping the peace process.

On Nov. 6, 1998 a suicide auto-bomb attack on a Jerusalem market killed two Palestinian "martyrs" and wounded 21 Israelis. Israel's cabinet immediately suspended consideration of the Wye peace agreement and the Prime Minister vowed to expand Jewish settlement in the Arab sector of Jerusalem. Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for the bombing and identified the Wye accord as its target. Israel called for outlawing Islamic Jihad and Hamas while the Palestinians accused Israel as using the bombing as a pretext for delaying implementation of Wye. The "martyrs", 21 and 24, were both alumni of Israeli jails.

Israel's Cabinet decided Friday to suspend indefinitely its ratification of the land-for-security agreement with the Palestinians. The decision came less than three hours after a car rigged with explosives blew up in an outdoor market in downtown Jersualem. Two people were killed and 21 others were wounded in the attack for which the Islamic militant group Hamas claimed responsibility. The Cabinet said it would not resume its debate or hold a vote on the accord until the Palestinian Authority has taken steps against terrorism. The Cabinet also said it would not resume the ratification process until Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat has clarified the procedure for revoking clauses in the PLO founding charter calling for Israel's destruction. The procedure is part of the Wye River agreement negotiated last month. However, Israelis and Palestinians have widely divergent interpretations of how the clauses should be rescinded. Israel says it should be done by a vote by the Palestine National Council. The Palestinians say a vote is not required. ||||| A defiant Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Saturday that Israel would continue to build Jewish neighborhoods throughout Jerusalem, including at a controversial site in the traditionally Arab sector of the city. ``We will build also in Har Homa as we will build in every part of Jerusalem,'' Netanyahu told a crowd of political supporters in Jerusalem, ``By 2000 there will be homes at Har Homa.'' Har Homa is the site of a planned Jewish neighborhood in traditionally Arab east Jerusalem. Groundbreaking at the site led to angry Palestinian protests and a breakdown of peace talks in March 1997. Netanyahu's Cabinet delayed action on the new peace accord following Friday's suicide bombing at a Jerusalem market, and his remarks about building on Har Homa may be seen as a provocation by the Palestinians at a politically sensitive moment. U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright expects Israel's Cabinet to ratify the new peace accord within a few days despite the market bombing, a television report said Saturday. ``The United States understands the delay by a day or two but expects the agreement to be approved soon,'' Albright told Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu by phone, Channel Two reported. The radical group Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility Saturday for the market bombing and vowed more attacks to try to block the new peace accord. ``This heroic operation is not the first and not going to be the last,'' the group said in a leaflet faxed to news organizations. ``We refuse any political agreement that would recognize the Zionist enemy.'' An Islamic Jihad official in the Syrian capital of Damascus confirmed that the group's leader Ramadan Abdullah Shallah claimed responsibility for Friday's bombing in an interview with the Paris-based Radio Monte Carlo. Palestinian security sources and the families of the dead bombers had already identified them as Islamic Jihad activists. At least half a dozen other Islamic activists have been rounded up since the bombing, the sources said. Palestinian political leaders said Israel should not use Friday's suicide bombing, which killed the two assailants and wounded 21 Israelis, as an excuse to stop the peace process. One of Israel's key demands is that the Palestinians do more to fight attacks by Islamic militants against Israeli targets. The Palestinians, however, said the two bombers had come from Israeli-controlled areas and that Israel thus bore at least part of the security responsibility for the attack. The Israeli military said it could not confirm the suicide bombers' identities and hometowns, but they were disclosed by Palestinian security officials and also reported by Palestinian media. One lived near the Anata refugee camp, north of Jerusalem, and the other lived in the West Bank village of Silat al Harithiya, outside the town of Jenin. Both families held so-called mourning houses on Saturday, but not actual funerals, since Israeli authorities still have their bodies. ``I didn't raise him to lose him like that,'' said Mohammed Zughayar, the 54-year-old father of Yusef Ali Mohammed Zughayar, 22. ``I'm proud, but I'm sad because I loved my son.'' The family of Suleiman Musa Dahayneh, 24, said he had been married for three months to Zughayar's sister, Basma. They met when she was visiting her brother, who was in prison with Dahayneh, the family said. At the market, some 200 observant Jews gathered Saturday night near the site of the bombing to offer prayers of thanks that no lives other than those of the assailants were lost. A ring of young men wearing skullcaps joined hands and danced, and rabbis spoke of the ``miracle'' that had saved those shopping in the market at the time of the attack. Although Hamas initially claimed responsibility through anonymous phone calls to the police for Friday's attack all sides now have agreed that it was Islamic Jihad that carried it out. ||||| On a warm, sunny morning last Friday, at the time he usually left for work at his family's produce store, Youssef Sughayer said goodbye to his grandmother for the last time and rode off to his death. Relatives say that the 21-year-old Palestinian from this village near Jerusalem showed no sign that he was heading for a suicide mission with his brother-in-law as part of a secret cell of Islamic Holy War. Their car-bomb blew apart two hours later in a Jerusalem market, killing both men and wounding 24 people. ``Don't grieve for me,'' he wrote in a farewell note, according to relatives who found it later. ``If you cry, cry with happiness that I'm a martyr. Don't serve bitter coffee, serve sweets. I'm going to Paradise.'' At the family's stone house outside Jerusalem on Sunday, visitors paying condolence calls were served sweet juice, not coffee, as Sughayer's relatives tried to make sense of what he had done. The young man, once an ace student, had come of age in Israeli prisons. Jailed for a year at age 15 for stoning Israeli cars during the riots of the Palestinian uprising, he was imprisoned again at 17, that time for three-and-a-half years for similar offenses and affiliation with Islamic Holy War. Relatives said he was an impressionable teen-ager, influenced by Islamic militants with whom he was jailed. Sughayer came out of prison more devout, and hardened by mistreatment at the hands of the Israelis, relatives said. His cellmates taught him the doctrine of holy war and about the glories of martyrdom, said an older brother, Samih Sughayer. ``They sowed it in his heart,'' he said. ``He wanted to be a martyr in the cause of God.'' But that reality, suddenly so clear Sunday, was not so apparent when Sughayer was freed seven months ago. ``He seemed normal,'' said his brother. ``He went to work at the grocery store, he finished his high school classes and he wanted to enroll in the university. He was supposed to take a driving test in a few days. If he was planning something, we didn't see it.'' He would stay up late at night after work, studying the Koran and praying, but he showed no outward signs of rage toward Israel. ``He would joke about things and say that whatever happens is God's will,'' said a brother-in-law, who insisted on anonymity. ``He was an easygoing guy.'' Last Thursday, Sughayer bought a battered red Fiat and parked it near his house. When someone at home asked about the car he said nothing, and family members assumed it was one of the stolen vehicles often found here. On Friday morning he left with the car, meeting his brother-in-law and old jail buddy, Suleiman Tahayneh, who came from his village near the West Bank town of Jenin. Tahayneh had his own score to settle with the Israelis. His leg had been amputated after he was shot in a confrontation with Israeli troops during the uprising, his relatives said. The Fiat was loaded with explosives, and the two men drove to the market. That evening, when concerned members of the Sughayer family gathered to await news of their missing relative, a man arrived and told them that he had sold his car to Youssef the previous day. It was a red Fiat, the same car they had seen near the house, and the same type of car that news reports said had exploded in the marketplace. At midnight, Israeli security forces raided the house and interrogated family members. The last, grim pieces of the puzzle fell into place. ``Up to the last minute on Thursday night we were talking together,'' said Sughayer's oldest brother, Ali, who worked with him past midnight at the produce store. ``He asked me about someone who had moved his hardware shop to another village, about how he was doing. Earlier we ate together, and we talked about giving charity to the poor. He wasn't nervous.'' ``He had plans for the future,'' Ali continued. ``Maybe the people in his group convinced him to do this, and he could not refuse. We did not expect this from him.'' ||||| A car rigged with explosives blew up Friday morning in Jerusalem's Mahane Yehuda market packed with Israelis shopping for the Jewish Sabbath, killing two people and wounding 21. The Islamic militant group Hamas, which has tried to stop the peace agreement, claimed responsibility, police said. In response to the attack, the Israeli cabinet suspended ratification of the Wye agreement until there ``is verification that the Palestinian authority is indeed fighting terrorism.'' The Israeli Cabinet also announced it will begin to build houses in the controversial Jewish settlement of Har Homa in east Jerusalem. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had held up the work in recent months in an apparent attempt to not disrupt negotiations with the Palestinians. Aides to Netanyahu were not immediately available for comment. The Cabinet ministers had just begun a second day of of talks on the peace agreement about a mile (kilometer) away from the entrance to the market and just meters (yards) from the site of a suicide bombing last year. In Friday's explosion, the rigged car, a red Fiat, blew up at about 9:45 a.m. (0745 GMT) at the entrance of Mahane Yehuda market, just meters (yards) away from the site of a suicide bombing in July 1997. Witnesses heard a series of small explosions. Yair Cohen, 43, said he was buying cookies when he saw a car driving slowly, with smoke coming out of the hood and exhaust pipes. ``People started to shout `car on fire.' After a while, we heard a blast, and something hit me in the stomach,'' said Cohen who was treated for minor injuries at Hadassah Hospital. The car was a mass of twisted metal sitting in the middle of the main intersection outside the market. Flames shot 100 feet (30 meters) in the air. A charred corpse, covered by a blanket, lay several meters away. Streams of soot-black water ran in the street. Another bare-legged body lay in the street, face down, in a pool of blood below the head. Rescue workers covered the body with sodden pieces of cardboard box and plastic shopping bags. ``There was hysteria, people were running,'' said Eliad Duan, an Israeli border policeman who was patrolling the market and was lightly injured. One heavy-set woman, apparently in shock, climbed into an ambulance, weeping. Three paramedics talked to her, persuading her that she did not need medical treatment, and after a few moments she climbed out of the vehicle again. Soldiers and police wearing plastic gloves held back the crowds. ``It's dangerous _ stay back!'' they shouted. Just a block away from the blast, shoppers went about their business. One young woman shopper said: ``We can't stop with what we are doing when this happens.'' Hassan Asfour, a Palestinian peace negotiator, said the Palestinian Authority condemned the attack. ``This is a crime and whoever commits this, hurts the interests of the Palestinian people.'' ||||| Israel's Cabinet announced within hours of a market bombing Friday that it will put off a vote indefinitely on whether to ratify the Wye River accord until Palestinians crack down further on terrorism. Israel radio said the 18-member Cabinet debate on the Wye River accord would resume only after Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority fulfilled all of its commitments under the agreement, including arresting Islamic militants. The Cabinet also insisted that Arafat convene the Palestinian National Council, a parliament in exile, to abrogate the Palestinian National Charter, which calls for Israel's destruction. The Israeli Cabinet had convened for a second day in an attempt to approve the Wye agreement. ``To our sorrow, since the Wye agreement ... there has been relentless terrorist attacks against Israeli citizens,'' according to a Cabinet statement read on the radio. Israel radio quoted officials saying the Cabinet would also decide to renew construction of the Har Homa neighborhood in the traditionally Arab sector of Jerusalem. Groundbreaking there in March 1997 led to a break-off in negotiations with the Palestinians. ||||| Setting the stage for a new quarrel over how to crack down on militants, Israel is demanding that the military wings of two radical Islamic groups be outlawed, while the Palestinian Authority insists it has already banned them. Implementation of the Israeli-Palestinian land-for-security accord, signed Oct. 23 in Washington, was to have begun this past week, but has hit various snags. Most recently, Israel's Cabinet put off a vote to ratify the accord after a suicide bombing Friday in Jerusalem that killed the two assailants and injured 21 Israelis. The radical group Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility. David Bar-Illan, a top aide to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, said Sunday that Israel expects Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat to formally outlaw the military wings of Islamic Jihad and the larger militant group Hamas. Hassan Asfour, a senior Palestinian official, said Hamas' military wing, Izeddine al Qassam, and the military wing of Islamic Jihad were outlawed by the Palestinian Authority in 1996. But Bar-Illan said the Palestinian legislature had never passed such a law. ``Why did Mr. Arafat agree in the Wye accord to outlaw them if he has already done it?'' he asked. The Wye memorandum states that the Palestinian Authority ``will inform the United States fully of the actions it has taken to outlaw all organizations (or wings of organizations, as appropriate) of a military, terrorist or violent character, and their support structure and to prevent them freedom of action in the areas under its jurisdiction.'' A Palestinian security official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said a joint Israeli-Palestinian meeting was held Saturday night to discuss security in the wake of Friday's attack. Participants included the head of the Palestinian intelligence, Amin Hindi, and the head of preventive security in the Gaza Strip, Mohammed Dahlan. The idea of outlawing Hamas and Islamic Jihad was brought up in the meeting and also proposed by Netanyahu to Arafat during a phone call, the official said. The Palestinians said they could ban activity by Hamas or Islamic Jihad that endangered either Israelis or Palestinians, but could not outlaw them outright as political movements. Friday's bombing led to finger-pointing by both sides. Israel said it showed Arafat's crackdown on terrorists had not been sweeping enough. The Palestinians, however, have also accused Israel of failing to take at least partial security responsibility for the attack, because both attackers came from Israeli-controlled areas, and had recently served time in Israeli jails. Israel as a rule is harshly critical of the Palestinian Authority's security efforts when attackers come from Palestinian-controlled areas or have been released from Palestinian prisons. On Sunday, Palestinian Justice Minister Freih Abu-Medein accused Netanyahu of using the blast as a pretext for delaying implementation of the peace accord. ``This attack is a gift to Mr. Netanyahu,'' Abu-Medein said. ``All the time he is praying to God to help him ... to escape from the agreement.'' Under the accord, Israel is to hand over another 13 percent of the territory in the West Bank to the Palestinians in exchange for various security steps. Israeli Defense Minister Yitzhak Mordechai predicted Sunday that the Israeli Cabinet would ratify the agreement in coming days. ``I estimate that the government will meet this week and will accept the decision of the majority (in favor of the agreement),'' he said. ||||| A defiant Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Saturday that Israel would continue to build Jewish neighborhoods throughout Jerusalem, including at a controversial site in the traditionally Arab sector of the city. ``We will build also in Har Homa as we will build in every part of Jerusalem,'' Netanyahu told a crowd of political supporters in Jerusalem, ``By 2000 there will be homes at Har Homa.'' Har Homa is the site of a planned Jewish neighborhood in traditionally Arab east Jerusalem, which Palestinians want to have as the capital of their hoped-for independent state. Groundbreaking at the site led to angry Palestinian protests and a breakdown of peace talks in March 1997. Netanyahu's Cabinet delayed action on the latest Israeli-Palestinian accord following Friday's suicide bombing at a Jerusalem market, and his remarks about building on Har Homa may be seen as a provocation by the Palestinians at a politically sensitive moment. U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright told Netanyahu by phone that she expects Israel's Cabinet to ratify the new peace accord within a few days despite the market bombing, Channel Two television reported Saturday. The radical group Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility Saturday for the market bombing and vowed more attacks to try to block the new peace accord. ``This heroic operation is not the first and not going to be the last,'' the group said in a leaflet faxed to news organizations. ``We refuse any political agreement that would recognize the Zionist enemy.'' An Islamic Jihad official in the Syrian capital of Damascus confirmed that the group's leader Ramadan Abdullah Shallah claimed responsibility for Friday's bombing in an interview with the Paris-based Radio Monte Carlo. Palestinian security sources and the families of the dead bombers had already identified them as Islamic Jihad activists. At least half a dozen other Islamic activists have been rounded up since the bombing, the sources said. Palestinian political leaders said Israel should not use Friday's suicide bombing, which killed the two assailants and wounded 21 Israelis, as an excuse to stop the peace process. One of Israel's key demands is that the Palestinians do more to fight attacks by Islamic militants against Israeli targets. The Palestinians, however, said the two bombers had come from Israeli-controlled areas and that Israel thus bore at least part of the security responsibility for the attack. The Israeli military said it could not confirm the suicide bombers' identities and hometowns, but they were disclosed by Palestinian security officials and also reported by Palestinian media. One lived near the Anata refugee camp, north of Jerusalem, and the other lived in the West Bank village of Silat al Harithiya, outside the town of Jenin. Both families held so-called mourning houses on Saturday, but not actual funerals, since Israeli authorities still have their bodies. ``I didn't raise him to lose him like that,'' said Mohammed Zughayar, the 54-year-old father of Yusef Ali Mohammed Zughayar, 22. ``I'm proud, but I'm sad because I loved my son.'' The family of Suleiman Musa Dahayneh, 24, said he had been married for three months to Zughayar's sister, Basma. They met when she was visiting her brother, who was in prison with Dahayneh, the family said. At the market, some 200 observant Jews gathered Saturday night near the site of the bombing to offer prayers of thanks that no lives other than those of the assailants were lost. A ring of young men wearing skullcaps joined hands and danced, and rabbis spoke of the ``miracle'' that had saved those shopping in the market at the time of the attack. Although Hamas initially claimed responsibility through anonymous phone calls to the police for Friday's attack all sides now have agreed that it was Islamic Jihad that carried it out. ||||| Blood and soot-blackened water ran in rivulets from the charred wreckage. A burly policeman bent to cover a bloodied corpse with whatever was at hand _ a sodden piece of cardboard, a plastic shopping bag. Two people were killed and at least 21 injured when an explosives-rigged car blew up Friday at Jerusalem's Mahane Yehuda market, only meters (yards) from the site of a suicide bombing 16 months ago. At police barricades set up along Jerusalem's busiest thoroughfare, soldiers and police held back crowds of people, some frantic about loved ones who had been shopping in the crowded market only hours before the start of the Jewish Sabbath. ``Please, please, is there a girl with red hair who is hurt?'' an older, heavyset woman said tearfully, trying to push her way past police. A young female soldier patted her arm consolingly. Some of the onlookers gave vent to fury over the new peace agreement, which was being debated by Israel's Cabinet even as the blast occurred. ``Death to Arabs! Death to Arafat!'' a small crowd of demonstrators shouted. Police tried to grab one of them, but he escaped into the crowd. The explosives-rigged car was a mass of twisted metal, with only the steering column intact. Next to the wreckage lay a completely charred body with stumps of arms and legs _ apparently that of the bomber. Witnesses said they heard a series of explosions. Although shop windows closest to the car were shattered, market stalls only a few more feet (yards) away were completely intact, and stacked with neat piles of bananas and onions. Eyewitness Yaakov Shlomo said initial, smaller blasts scared most onlookers away. ``When the big explosion went, there were already not that many people nearby,'' he said. ``That was a miracle from heaven.'' Shlomo Meir, a black-clad Orthodox Jew, was standing nearby when he heard a blast. When he tuirned he saw fire. ``It was terrible,'' he said, red-eyed. ``I thought, `Again!''' Only a block away, some stalls were still open and shoppers were buying produce. One woman, with almost maniacal determination, sorted through a pile of oranges. ``We can't stop what we're doing when this happens,'' she said grimly. By the police barricades, wearing bright-orange vests, stood a group of Orthodox Jewish volunteers who search scenes of accidents and attacks for body parts, in keeping with their religious belief that bodies must be buried intact. One young volunteer squinted down the street as his group waited for permission to begin its grisly task. ``It's hard, this work, but it's very important to us,'' he said. ||||| The militant Palestinian movement Islamic Holy War said Saturday that it carried out the suicide bombing in a Jerusalem market on Friday, which prompted arrests by the Palestinian Authority overnight. Palestinian officials said they had jailed several of the small but radical group's members from the West Bank, and raided and then shut down a nursery school linked to the organization in Bethlehem, which is controlled by the Palestinians. The two bombers who carried out Friday's attack, which led the Israeli Cabinet to suspend deliberations on the land-for-security accord signed with the Palestinians last month, were identified as members of Islamic Holy War from West Bank villages under Israeli security control. Ramadan Abdallah Shallah, the Damascus-based leader of Islamic Holy War, said ``martyrs'' from his movement had carried out the Jerusalem attack in response to Israel's settlement policy and ``Judaization'' of the West Bank. He spoke in an interview with Monte Carlo Radio, an Arabic station broadcasting from Paris that is widely listened to in the Middle East. A leaflet signed by the group and faxed to Reuters in Jerusalem said the ``heroic attack,'' in which 24 people were injured and the 2 bombers killed, had been carried out ``to confront the great conspiracy that aims to liquidate the Palestinian cause through the Oslo and Wye Plantation agreements of submission.'' Islamic Holy War and its counterpart, Hamas, have denounced as a sellout of Palestinian rights the 1993 Oslo self-rule accord and the latest agreement, known as the Wye Memorandum, named for the Wye Plantation in Maryland, where the deal was worked out with strenuous American mediation. Shallah's claim of responsibility from abroad contrasted with the muted response of Islamic Holy War's leadership in the Gaza Strip, which has reportedly given commitments to the Palestinian Authority to refrain from such attacks. ``We have no knowledge in the movement about the operation that occurred in Jerusalem,'' said Nafez Azzam, a senior leader of Islamic Holy War in Gaza. ``From its conditions we consider it likely that it was an individual effort.'' The Palestinian cabinet, in a statement issued after a meeting on Friday night, accused ``foreign forces'' of standing behind the attack. One cabinet member, who declined to be identified, pointed a finger at Iran, saying a search of one bomber's home had uncovered a letter he had written to the Iranian supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, expressing condolences for the recent killing of several Iranian diplomats in Afghanistan. Iran, which has backed militant Islamic groups opposed to the Arab-Israeli peace efforts, has denounced the Wye agreement, branding Yasser Arafat, the Palestinian leader, a traitor to the Palestinian cause. The Palestinian cabinet promised to crack down on the militants, who it said were jeopardizing the recovery of Palestinian land and hopes for statehood by giving Israel a pretext to postpone carrying out the Wye accord. The Israeli Cabinet suspended a meeting to ratify the agreement after the bombing, demanding that the Palestinians conduct an ``all-out war on terror.'' Israeli officials had no comment Saturday on the measures taken by the Palestinian Authority on Friday. The Wye agreement calls for an Israeli troop withdrawal from 13 percent more of the West Bank in exchange for specific Palestinian measures against violent militants. A Palestinian security official said several Islamic Holy War members were arrested in the West Bank on Friday night. Arrests were also reported in the Gaza Strip. Itaf Alayan, a supporter of the group who runs the Islamic Purity Nursery in Bethlehem, said Palestinian officers had raided the school and confiscated videotapes and educational cassettes before locking it up. The two bombers were identified as Youssef Zughayer, 21, from Anata, near Jerusalem, and his brother-in-law, Suleiman Tahayneh, 24, from Silat al-Harithiya, near the West Bank town of Jenin. Both had served time in Israeli jails and were known to be members of Islamic Holy War. ``We never thought he would do something like this,'' said Muhammad Zughayer, Youssef's father. ``We condemn such acts, but the only thing we can do now is to say may he rest in peace.'' ||||| The radical group Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility Saturday for the suicide bombing of a crowded Jerusalem market and promised more attacks to try to block the new peace accord. ``This heroic operation is not the first and not going to be the last,'' the group said in a leaflet faxed to news organizations. ``We refuse any political agreement that would recognize the Zionist enemy.'' The leaflet could not immediately be authenticated, but its style was consistent with that of past communications from the group. An Islamic Jihad official in the Syrian capital of Damascus confirmed that the group's leader Ramadan Abdullah Shallah claimed responsibility for Friday's bombing in an interview with the Paris-based Radio Monte Carlo. Palestinian security sources and the families of the dead bombers had already identified them as Islamic Jihad activists. At least half a dozen other Islamic activists have been rounded up since the bombing, the sources said. Although Hamas initially claimed responsibility through anonymous phone calls to the police, all sides now have agreed that it was Islamic Jihad that carried it out. There was no immediate explanation for the inaccurate claim, but the two groups have carried out attacks together in the past as part of their goal of stopping the peace process.

After a bombing in a Jerusalem market Fri., the Israeli Cabinet postponed indefinitely its vote on the Wye River peace accord. At first, Hamas claimed responsibility for attack in which 2 suicide bombers were killed and 24 people were hurt. On Sat. , Islamic Holy War (Islamic Jihad) took credit for attack, vowing more to block the accord. Israel would not debate or vote on the accord until Palestinians took steps to stop terrorism and outlaw military wings of radical groups. Israel intends to continue building homes in Jerusalem, including in Arab sector. One of the Palestinian suicide bombers had spent much of his teen years in Israeli prisons.

Israel's Cabinet decided Friday to suspend indefinitely its ratification of the land-for-security agreement with the Palestinians. The decision came less than three hours after a car rigged with explosives blew up in an outdoor market in downtown Jersualem. Two people were killed and 21 others were wounded in the attack for which the Islamic militant group Hamas claimed responsibility. The Cabinet said it would not resume its debate or hold a vote on the accord until the Palestinian Authority has taken steps against terrorism. The Cabinet also said it would not resume the ratification process until Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat has clarified the procedure for revoking clauses in the PLO founding charter calling for Israel's destruction. The procedure is part of the Wye River agreement negotiated last month. However, Israelis and Palestinians have widely divergent interpretations of how the clauses should be rescinded. Israel says it should be done by a vote by the Palestine National Council. The Palestinians say a vote is not required. ||||| A defiant Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Saturday that Israel would continue to build Jewish neighborhoods throughout Jerusalem, including at a controversial site in the traditionally Arab sector of the city. ``We will build also in Har Homa as we will build in every part of Jerusalem,'' Netanyahu told a crowd of political supporters in Jerusalem, ``By 2000 there will be homes at Har Homa.'' Har Homa is the site of a planned Jewish neighborhood in traditionally Arab east Jerusalem. Groundbreaking at the site led to angry Palestinian protests and a breakdown of peace talks in March 1997. Netanyahu's Cabinet delayed action on the new peace accord following Friday's suicide bombing at a Jerusalem market, and his remarks about building on Har Homa may be seen as a provocation by the Palestinians at a politically sensitive moment. U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright expects Israel's Cabinet to ratify the new peace accord within a few days despite the market bombing, a television report said Saturday. ``The United States understands the delay by a day or two but expects the agreement to be approved soon,'' Albright told Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu by phone, Channel Two reported. The radical group Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility Saturday for the market bombing and vowed more attacks to try to block the new peace accord. ``This heroic operation is not the first and not going to be the last,'' the group said in a leaflet faxed to news organizations. ``We refuse any political agreement that would recognize the Zionist enemy.'' An Islamic Jihad official in the Syrian capital of Damascus confirmed that the group's leader Ramadan Abdullah Shallah claimed responsibility for Friday's bombing in an interview with the Paris-based Radio Monte Carlo. Palestinian security sources and the families of the dead bombers had already identified them as Islamic Jihad activists. At least half a dozen other Islamic activists have been rounded up since the bombing, the sources said. Palestinian political leaders said Israel should not use Friday's suicide bombing, which killed the two assailants and wounded 21 Israelis, as an excuse to stop the peace process. One of Israel's key demands is that the Palestinians do more to fight attacks by Islamic militants against Israeli targets. The Palestinians, however, said the two bombers had come from Israeli-controlled areas and that Israel thus bore at least part of the security responsibility for the attack. The Israeli military said it could not confirm the suicide bombers' identities and hometowns, but they were disclosed by Palestinian security officials and also reported by Palestinian media. One lived near the Anata refugee camp, north of Jerusalem, and the other lived in the West Bank village of Silat al Harithiya, outside the town of Jenin. Both families held so-called mourning houses on Saturday, but not actual funerals, since Israeli authorities still have their bodies. ``I didn't raise him to lose him like that,'' said Mohammed Zughayar, the 54-year-old father of Yusef Ali Mohammed Zughayar, 22. ``I'm proud, but I'm sad because I loved my son.'' The family of Suleiman Musa Dahayneh, 24, said he had been married for three months to Zughayar's sister, Basma. They met when she was visiting her brother, who was in prison with Dahayneh, the family said. At the market, some 200 observant Jews gathered Saturday night near the site of the bombing to offer prayers of thanks that no lives other than those of the assailants were lost. A ring of young men wearing skullcaps joined hands and danced, and rabbis spoke of the ``miracle'' that had saved those shopping in the market at the time of the attack. Although Hamas initially claimed responsibility through anonymous phone calls to the police for Friday's attack all sides now have agreed that it was Islamic Jihad that carried it out. ||||| On a warm, sunny morning last Friday, at the time he usually left for work at his family's produce store, Youssef Sughayer said goodbye to his grandmother for the last time and rode off to his death. Relatives say that the 21-year-old Palestinian from this village near Jerusalem showed no sign that he was heading for a suicide mission with his brother-in-law as part of a secret cell of Islamic Holy War. Their car-bomb blew apart two hours later in a Jerusalem market, killing both men and wounding 24 people. ``Don't grieve for me,'' he wrote in a farewell note, according to relatives who found it later. ``If you cry, cry with happiness that I'm a martyr. Don't serve bitter coffee, serve sweets. I'm going to Paradise.'' At the family's stone house outside Jerusalem on Sunday, visitors paying condolence calls were served sweet juice, not coffee, as Sughayer's relatives tried to make sense of what he had done. The young man, once an ace student, had come of age in Israeli prisons. Jailed for a year at age 15 for stoning Israeli cars during the riots of the Palestinian uprising, he was imprisoned again at 17, that time for three-and-a-half years for similar offenses and affiliation with Islamic Holy War. Relatives said he was an impressionable teen-ager, influenced by Islamic militants with whom he was jailed. Sughayer came out of prison more devout, and hardened by mistreatment at the hands of the Israelis, relatives said. His cellmates taught him the doctrine of holy war and about the glories of martyrdom, said an older brother, Samih Sughayer. ``They sowed it in his heart,'' he said. ``He wanted to be a martyr in the cause of God.'' But that reality, suddenly so clear Sunday, was not so apparent when Sughayer was freed seven months ago. ``He seemed normal,'' said his brother. ``He went to work at the grocery store, he finished his high school classes and he wanted to enroll in the university. He was supposed to take a driving test in a few days. If he was planning something, we didn't see it.'' He would stay up late at night after work, studying the Koran and praying, but he showed no outward signs of rage toward Israel. ``He would joke about things and say that whatever happens is God's will,'' said a brother-in-law, who insisted on anonymity. ``He was an easygoing guy.'' Last Thursday, Sughayer bought a battered red Fiat and parked it near his house. When someone at home asked about the car he said nothing, and family members assumed it was one of the stolen vehicles often found here. On Friday morning he left with the car, meeting his brother-in-law and old jail buddy, Suleiman Tahayneh, who came from his village near the West Bank town of Jenin. Tahayneh had his own score to settle with the Israelis. His leg had been amputated after he was shot in a confrontation with Israeli troops during the uprising, his relatives said. The Fiat was loaded with explosives, and the two men drove to the market. That evening, when concerned members of the Sughayer family gathered to await news of their missing relative, a man arrived and told them that he had sold his car to Youssef the previous day. It was a red Fiat, the same car they had seen near the house, and the same type of car that news reports said had exploded in the marketplace. At midnight, Israeli security forces raided the house and interrogated family members. The last, grim pieces of the puzzle fell into place. ``Up to the last minute on Thursday night we were talking together,'' said Sughayer's oldest brother, Ali, who worked with him past midnight at the produce store. ``He asked me about someone who had moved his hardware shop to another village, about how he was doing. Earlier we ate together, and we talked about giving charity to the poor. He wasn't nervous.'' ``He had plans for the future,'' Ali continued. ``Maybe the people in his group convinced him to do this, and he could not refuse. We did not expect this from him.'' ||||| A car rigged with explosives blew up Friday morning in Jerusalem's Mahane Yehuda market packed with Israelis shopping for the Jewish Sabbath, killing two people and wounding 21. The Islamic militant group Hamas, which has tried to stop the peace agreement, claimed responsibility, police said. In response to the attack, the Israeli cabinet suspended ratification of the Wye agreement until there ``is verification that the Palestinian authority is indeed fighting terrorism.'' The Israeli Cabinet also announced it will begin to build houses in the controversial Jewish settlement of Har Homa in east Jerusalem. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had held up the work in recent months in an apparent attempt to not disrupt negotiations with the Palestinians. Aides to Netanyahu were not immediately available for comment. The Cabinet ministers had just begun a second day of of talks on the peace agreement about a mile (kilometer) away from the entrance to the market and just meters (yards) from the site of a suicide bombing last year. In Friday's explosion, the rigged car, a red Fiat, blew up at about 9:45 a.m. (0745 GMT) at the entrance of Mahane Yehuda market, just meters (yards) away from the site of a suicide bombing in July 1997. Witnesses heard a series of small explosions. Yair Cohen, 43, said he was buying cookies when he saw a car driving slowly, with smoke coming out of the hood and exhaust pipes. ``People started to shout `car on fire.' After a while, we heard a blast, and something hit me in the stomach,'' said Cohen who was treated for minor injuries at Hadassah Hospital. The car was a mass of twisted metal sitting in the middle of the main intersection outside the market. Flames shot 100 feet (30 meters) in the air. A charred corpse, covered by a blanket, lay several meters away. Streams of soot-black water ran in the street. Another bare-legged body lay in the street, face down, in a pool of blood below the head. Rescue workers covered the body with sodden pieces of cardboard box and plastic shopping bags. ``There was hysteria, people were running,'' said Eliad Duan, an Israeli border policeman who was patrolling the market and was lightly injured. One heavy-set woman, apparently in shock, climbed into an ambulance, weeping. Three paramedics talked to her, persuading her that she did not need medical treatment, and after a few moments she climbed out of the vehicle again. Soldiers and police wearing plastic gloves held back the crowds. ``It's dangerous _ stay back!'' they shouted. Just a block away from the blast, shoppers went about their business. One young woman shopper said: ``We can't stop with what we are doing when this happens.'' Hassan Asfour, a Palestinian peace negotiator, said the Palestinian Authority condemned the attack. ``This is a crime and whoever commits this, hurts the interests of the Palestinian people.'' ||||| Israel's Cabinet announced within hours of a market bombing Friday that it will put off a vote indefinitely on whether to ratify the Wye River accord until Palestinians crack down further on terrorism. Israel radio said the 18-member Cabinet debate on the Wye River accord would resume only after Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority fulfilled all of its commitments under the agreement, including arresting Islamic militants. The Cabinet also insisted that Arafat convene the Palestinian National Council, a parliament in exile, to abrogate the Palestinian National Charter, which calls for Israel's destruction. The Israeli Cabinet had convened for a second day in an attempt to approve the Wye agreement. ``To our sorrow, since the Wye agreement ... there has been relentless terrorist attacks against Israeli citizens,'' according to a Cabinet statement read on the radio. Israel radio quoted officials saying the Cabinet would also decide to renew construction of the Har Homa neighborhood in the traditionally Arab sector of Jerusalem. Groundbreaking there in March 1997 led to a break-off in negotiations with the Palestinians. ||||| Setting the stage for a new quarrel over how to crack down on militants, Israel is demanding that the military wings of two radical Islamic groups be outlawed, while the Palestinian Authority insists it has already banned them. Implementation of the Israeli-Palestinian land-for-security accord, signed Oct. 23 in Washington, was to have begun this past week, but has hit various snags. Most recently, Israel's Cabinet put off a vote to ratify the accord after a suicide bombing Friday in Jerusalem that killed the two assailants and injured 21 Israelis. The radical group Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility. David Bar-Illan, a top aide to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, said Sunday that Israel expects Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat to formally outlaw the military wings of Islamic Jihad and the larger militant group Hamas. Hassan Asfour, a senior Palestinian official, said Hamas' military wing, Izeddine al Qassam, and the military wing of Islamic Jihad were outlawed by the Palestinian Authority in 1996. But Bar-Illan said the Palestinian legislature had never passed such a law. ``Why did Mr. Arafat agree in the Wye accord to outlaw them if he has already done it?'' he asked. The Wye memorandum states that the Palestinian Authority ``will inform the United States fully of the actions it has taken to outlaw all organizations (or wings of organizations, as appropriate) of a military, terrorist or violent character, and their support structure and to prevent them freedom of action in the areas under its jurisdiction.'' A Palestinian security official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said a joint Israeli-Palestinian meeting was held Saturday night to discuss security in the wake of Friday's attack. Participants included the head of the Palestinian intelligence, Amin Hindi, and the head of preventive security in the Gaza Strip, Mohammed Dahlan. The idea of outlawing Hamas and Islamic Jihad was brought up in the meeting and also proposed by Netanyahu to Arafat during a phone call, the official said. The Palestinians said they could ban activity by Hamas or Islamic Jihad that endangered either Israelis or Palestinians, but could not outlaw them outright as political movements. Friday's bombing led to finger-pointing by both sides. Israel said it showed Arafat's crackdown on terrorists had not been sweeping enough. The Palestinians, however, have also accused Israel of failing to take at least partial security responsibility for the attack, because both attackers came from Israeli-controlled areas, and had recently served time in Israeli jails. Israel as a rule is harshly critical of the Palestinian Authority's security efforts when attackers come from Palestinian-controlled areas or have been released from Palestinian prisons. On Sunday, Palestinian Justice Minister Freih Abu-Medein accused Netanyahu of using the blast as a pretext for delaying implementation of the peace accord. ``This attack is a gift to Mr. Netanyahu,'' Abu-Medein said. ``All the time he is praying to God to help him ... to escape from the agreement.'' Under the accord, Israel is to hand over another 13 percent of the territory in the West Bank to the Palestinians in exchange for various security steps. Israeli Defense Minister Yitzhak Mordechai predicted Sunday that the Israeli Cabinet would ratify the agreement in coming days. ``I estimate that the government will meet this week and will accept the decision of the majority (in favor of the agreement),'' he said. ||||| A defiant Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Saturday that Israel would continue to build Jewish neighborhoods throughout Jerusalem, including at a controversial site in the traditionally Arab sector of the city. ``We will build also in Har Homa as we will build in every part of Jerusalem,'' Netanyahu told a crowd of political supporters in Jerusalem, ``By 2000 there will be homes at Har Homa.'' Har Homa is the site of a planned Jewish neighborhood in traditionally Arab east Jerusalem, which Palestinians want to have as the capital of their hoped-for independent state. Groundbreaking at the site led to angry Palestinian protests and a breakdown of peace talks in March 1997. Netanyahu's Cabinet delayed action on the latest Israeli-Palestinian accord following Friday's suicide bombing at a Jerusalem market, and his remarks about building on Har Homa may be seen as a provocation by the Palestinians at a politically sensitive moment. U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright told Netanyahu by phone that she expects Israel's Cabinet to ratify the new peace accord within a few days despite the market bombing, Channel Two television reported Saturday. The radical group Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility Saturday for the market bombing and vowed more attacks to try to block the new peace accord. ``This heroic operation is not the first and not going to be the last,'' the group said in a leaflet faxed to news organizations. ``We refuse any political agreement that would recognize the Zionist enemy.'' An Islamic Jihad official in the Syrian capital of Damascus confirmed that the group's leader Ramadan Abdullah Shallah claimed responsibility for Friday's bombing in an interview with the Paris-based Radio Monte Carlo. Palestinian security sources and the families of the dead bombers had already identified them as Islamic Jihad activists. At least half a dozen other Islamic activists have been rounded up since the bombing, the sources said. Palestinian political leaders said Israel should not use Friday's suicide bombing, which killed the two assailants and wounded 21 Israelis, as an excuse to stop the peace process. One of Israel's key demands is that the Palestinians do more to fight attacks by Islamic militants against Israeli targets. The Palestinians, however, said the two bombers had come from Israeli-controlled areas and that Israel thus bore at least part of the security responsibility for the attack. The Israeli military said it could not confirm the suicide bombers' identities and hometowns, but they were disclosed by Palestinian security officials and also reported by Palestinian media. One lived near the Anata refugee camp, north of Jerusalem, and the other lived in the West Bank village of Silat al Harithiya, outside the town of Jenin. Both families held so-called mourning houses on Saturday, but not actual funerals, since Israeli authorities still have their bodies. ``I didn't raise him to lose him like that,'' said Mohammed Zughayar, the 54-year-old father of Yusef Ali Mohammed Zughayar, 22. ``I'm proud, but I'm sad because I loved my son.'' The family of Suleiman Musa Dahayneh, 24, said he had been married for three months to Zughayar's sister, Basma. They met when she was visiting her brother, who was in prison with Dahayneh, the family said. At the market, some 200 observant Jews gathered Saturday night near the site of the bombing to offer prayers of thanks that no lives other than those of the assailants were lost. A ring of young men wearing skullcaps joined hands and danced, and rabbis spoke of the ``miracle'' that had saved those shopping in the market at the time of the attack. Although Hamas initially claimed responsibility through anonymous phone calls to the police for Friday's attack all sides now have agreed that it was Islamic Jihad that carried it out. ||||| Blood and soot-blackened water ran in rivulets from the charred wreckage. A burly policeman bent to cover a bloodied corpse with whatever was at hand _ a sodden piece of cardboard, a plastic shopping bag. Two people were killed and at least 21 injured when an explosives-rigged car blew up Friday at Jerusalem's Mahane Yehuda market, only meters (yards) from the site of a suicide bombing 16 months ago. At police barricades set up along Jerusalem's busiest thoroughfare, soldiers and police held back crowds of people, some frantic about loved ones who had been shopping in the crowded market only hours before the start of the Jewish Sabbath. ``Please, please, is there a girl with red hair who is hurt?'' an older, heavyset woman said tearfully, trying to push her way past police. A young female soldier patted her arm consolingly. Some of the onlookers gave vent to fury over the new peace agreement, which was being debated by Israel's Cabinet even as the blast occurred. ``Death to Arabs! Death to Arafat!'' a small crowd of demonstrators shouted. Police tried to grab one of them, but he escaped into the crowd. The explosives-rigged car was a mass of twisted metal, with only the steering column intact. Next to the wreckage lay a completely charred body with stumps of arms and legs _ apparently that of the bomber. Witnesses said they heard a series of explosions. Although shop windows closest to the car were shattered, market stalls only a few more feet (yards) away were completely intact, and stacked with neat piles of bananas and onions. Eyewitness Yaakov Shlomo said initial, smaller blasts scared most onlookers away. ``When the big explosion went, there were already not that many people nearby,'' he said. ``That was a miracle from heaven.'' Shlomo Meir, a black-clad Orthodox Jew, was standing nearby when he heard a blast. When he tuirned he saw fire. ``It was terrible,'' he said, red-eyed. ``I thought, `Again!''' Only a block away, some stalls were still open and shoppers were buying produce. One woman, with almost maniacal determination, sorted through a pile of oranges. ``We can't stop what we're doing when this happens,'' she said grimly. By the police barricades, wearing bright-orange vests, stood a group of Orthodox Jewish volunteers who search scenes of accidents and attacks for body parts, in keeping with their religious belief that bodies must be buried intact. One young volunteer squinted down the street as his group waited for permission to begin its grisly task. ``It's hard, this work, but it's very important to us,'' he said. ||||| The militant Palestinian movement Islamic Holy War said Saturday that it carried out the suicide bombing in a Jerusalem market on Friday, which prompted arrests by the Palestinian Authority overnight. Palestinian officials said they had jailed several of the small but radical group's members from the West Bank, and raided and then shut down a nursery school linked to the organization in Bethlehem, which is controlled by the Palestinians. The two bombers who carried out Friday's attack, which led the Israeli Cabinet to suspend deliberations on the land-for-security accord signed with the Palestinians last month, were identified as members of Islamic Holy War from West Bank villages under Israeli security control. Ramadan Abdallah Shallah, the Damascus-based leader of Islamic Holy War, said ``martyrs'' from his movement had carried out the Jerusalem attack in response to Israel's settlement policy and ``Judaization'' of the West Bank. He spoke in an interview with Monte Carlo Radio, an Arabic station broadcasting from Paris that is widely listened to in the Middle East. A leaflet signed by the group and faxed to Reuters in Jerusalem said the ``heroic attack,'' in which 24 people were injured and the 2 bombers killed, had been carried out ``to confront the great conspiracy that aims to liquidate the Palestinian cause through the Oslo and Wye Plantation agreements of submission.'' Islamic Holy War and its counterpart, Hamas, have denounced as a sellout of Palestinian rights the 1993 Oslo self-rule accord and the latest agreement, known as the Wye Memorandum, named for the Wye Plantation in Maryland, where the deal was worked out with strenuous American mediation. Shallah's claim of responsibility from abroad contrasted with the muted response of Islamic Holy War's leadership in the Gaza Strip, which has reportedly given commitments to the Palestinian Authority to refrain from such attacks. ``We have no knowledge in the movement about the operation that occurred in Jerusalem,'' said Nafez Azzam, a senior leader of Islamic Holy War in Gaza. ``From its conditions we consider it likely that it was an individual effort.'' The Palestinian cabinet, in a statement issued after a meeting on Friday night, accused ``foreign forces'' of standing behind the attack. One cabinet member, who declined to be identified, pointed a finger at Iran, saying a search of one bomber's home had uncovered a letter he had written to the Iranian supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, expressing condolences for the recent killing of several Iranian diplomats in Afghanistan. Iran, which has backed militant Islamic groups opposed to the Arab-Israeli peace efforts, has denounced the Wye agreement, branding Yasser Arafat, the Palestinian leader, a traitor to the Palestinian cause. The Palestinian cabinet promised to crack down on the militants, who it said were jeopardizing the recovery of Palestinian land and hopes for statehood by giving Israel a pretext to postpone carrying out the Wye accord. The Israeli Cabinet suspended a meeting to ratify the agreement after the bombing, demanding that the Palestinians conduct an ``all-out war on terror.'' Israeli officials had no comment Saturday on the measures taken by the Palestinian Authority on Friday. The Wye agreement calls for an Israeli troop withdrawal from 13 percent more of the West Bank in exchange for specific Palestinian measures against violent militants. A Palestinian security official said several Islamic Holy War members were arrested in the West Bank on Friday night. Arrests were also reported in the Gaza Strip. Itaf Alayan, a supporter of the group who runs the Islamic Purity Nursery in Bethlehem, said Palestinian officers had raided the school and confiscated videotapes and educational cassettes before locking it up. The two bombers were identified as Youssef Zughayer, 21, from Anata, near Jerusalem, and his brother-in-law, Suleiman Tahayneh, 24, from Silat al-Harithiya, near the West Bank town of Jenin. Both had served time in Israeli jails and were known to be members of Islamic Holy War. ``We never thought he would do something like this,'' said Muhammad Zughayer, Youssef's father. ``We condemn such acts, but the only thing we can do now is to say may he rest in peace.'' ||||| The radical group Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility Saturday for the suicide bombing of a crowded Jerusalem market and promised more attacks to try to block the new peace accord. ``This heroic operation is not the first and not going to be the last,'' the group said in a leaflet faxed to news organizations. ``We refuse any political agreement that would recognize the Zionist enemy.'' The leaflet could not immediately be authenticated, but its style was consistent with that of past communications from the group. An Islamic Jihad official in the Syrian capital of Damascus confirmed that the group's leader Ramadan Abdullah Shallah claimed responsibility for Friday's bombing in an interview with the Paris-based Radio Monte Carlo. Palestinian security sources and the families of the dead bombers had already identified them as Islamic Jihad activists. At least half a dozen other Islamic activists have been rounded up since the bombing, the sources said. Although Hamas initially claimed responsibility through anonymous phone calls to the police, all sides now have agreed that it was Islamic Jihad that carried it out. There was no immediate explanation for the inaccurate claim, but the two groups have carried out attacks together in the past as part of their goal of stopping the peace process.

A car bomb exploded prematurely near a busy Jerusalem market killing the two suicide bombers and injuring 21 Israelis. One of the Islamic Jihad "martyrs" had said he was "going to Paradise". The Israeli cabinet was meeting at the time of the explosion and they put off ratification of the Wye River "land for security" accord. The Islamic Jihad promises more attacks in hope of derailing the accord. The US expects, at least hopes, for ratification. PM Netanyahu vows to continue Jewish building in Jerusalem and Israel demanded that radical Islamic groups be outlawed. The Palestinian Authority condemned the attack and claimed to have already made some arrests

Israel's Cabinet decided Friday to suspend indefinitely its ratification of the land-for-security agreement with the Palestinians. The decision came less than three hours after a car rigged with explosives blew up in an outdoor market in downtown Jersualem. Two people were killed and 21 others were wounded in the attack for which the Islamic militant group Hamas claimed responsibility. The Cabinet said it would not resume its debate or hold a vote on the accord until the Palestinian Authority has taken steps against terrorism. The Cabinet also said it would not resume the ratification process until Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat has clarified the procedure for revoking clauses in the PLO founding charter calling for Israel's destruction. The procedure is part of the Wye River agreement negotiated last month. However, Israelis and Palestinians have widely divergent interpretations of how the clauses should be rescinded. Israel says it should be done by a vote by the Palestine National Council. The Palestinians say a vote is not required. ||||| A defiant Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Saturday that Israel would continue to build Jewish neighborhoods throughout Jerusalem, including at a controversial site in the traditionally Arab sector of the city. ``We will build also in Har Homa as we will build in every part of Jerusalem,'' Netanyahu told a crowd of political supporters in Jerusalem, ``By 2000 there will be homes at Har Homa.'' Har Homa is the site of a planned Jewish neighborhood in traditionally Arab east Jerusalem. Groundbreaking at the site led to angry Palestinian protests and a breakdown of peace talks in March 1997. Netanyahu's Cabinet delayed action on the new peace accord following Friday's suicide bombing at a Jerusalem market, and his remarks about building on Har Homa may be seen as a provocation by the Palestinians at a politically sensitive moment. U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright expects Israel's Cabinet to ratify the new peace accord within a few days despite the market bombing, a television report said Saturday. ``The United States understands the delay by a day or two but expects the agreement to be approved soon,'' Albright told Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu by phone, Channel Two reported. The radical group Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility Saturday for the market bombing and vowed more attacks to try to block the new peace accord. ``This heroic operation is not the first and not going to be the last,'' the group said in a leaflet faxed to news organizations. ``We refuse any political agreement that would recognize the Zionist enemy.'' An Islamic Jihad official in the Syrian capital of Damascus confirmed that the group's leader Ramadan Abdullah Shallah claimed responsibility for Friday's bombing in an interview with the Paris-based Radio Monte Carlo. Palestinian security sources and the families of the dead bombers had already identified them as Islamic Jihad activists. At least half a dozen other Islamic activists have been rounded up since the bombing, the sources said. Palestinian political leaders said Israel should not use Friday's suicide bombing, which killed the two assailants and wounded 21 Israelis, as an excuse to stop the peace process. One of Israel's key demands is that the Palestinians do more to fight attacks by Islamic militants against Israeli targets. The Palestinians, however, said the two bombers had come from Israeli-controlled areas and that Israel thus bore at least part of the security responsibility for the attack. The Israeli military said it could not confirm the suicide bombers' identities and hometowns, but they were disclosed by Palestinian security officials and also reported by Palestinian media. One lived near the Anata refugee camp, north of Jerusalem, and the other lived in the West Bank village of Silat al Harithiya, outside the town of Jenin. Both families held so-called mourning houses on Saturday, but not actual funerals, since Israeli authorities still have their bodies. ``I didn't raise him to lose him like that,'' said Mohammed Zughayar, the 54-year-old father of Yusef Ali Mohammed Zughayar, 22. ``I'm proud, but I'm sad because I loved my son.'' The family of Suleiman Musa Dahayneh, 24, said he had been married for three months to Zughayar's sister, Basma. They met when she was visiting her brother, who was in prison with Dahayneh, the family said. At the market, some 200 observant Jews gathered Saturday night near the site of the bombing to offer prayers of thanks that no lives other than those of the assailants were lost. A ring of young men wearing skullcaps joined hands and danced, and rabbis spoke of the ``miracle'' that had saved those shopping in the market at the time of the attack. Although Hamas initially claimed responsibility through anonymous phone calls to the police for Friday's attack all sides now have agreed that it was Islamic Jihad that carried it out. ||||| On a warm, sunny morning last Friday, at the time he usually left for work at his family's produce store, Youssef Sughayer said goodbye to his grandmother for the last time and rode off to his death. Relatives say that the 21-year-old Palestinian from this village near Jerusalem showed no sign that he was heading for a suicide mission with his brother-in-law as part of a secret cell of Islamic Holy War. Their car-bomb blew apart two hours later in a Jerusalem market, killing both men and wounding 24 people. ``Don't grieve for me,'' he wrote in a farewell note, according to relatives who found it later. ``If you cry, cry with happiness that I'm a martyr. Don't serve bitter coffee, serve sweets. I'm going to Paradise.'' At the family's stone house outside Jerusalem on Sunday, visitors paying condolence calls were served sweet juice, not coffee, as Sughayer's relatives tried to make sense of what he had done. The young man, once an ace student, had come of age in Israeli prisons. Jailed for a year at age 15 for stoning Israeli cars during the riots of the Palestinian uprising, he was imprisoned again at 17, that time for three-and-a-half years for similar offenses and affiliation with Islamic Holy War. Relatives said he was an impressionable teen-ager, influenced by Islamic militants with whom he was jailed. Sughayer came out of prison more devout, and hardened by mistreatment at the hands of the Israelis, relatives said. His cellmates taught him the doctrine of holy war and about the glories of martyrdom, said an older brother, Samih Sughayer. ``They sowed it in his heart,'' he said. ``He wanted to be a martyr in the cause of God.'' But that reality, suddenly so clear Sunday, was not so apparent when Sughayer was freed seven months ago. ``He seemed normal,'' said his brother. ``He went to work at the grocery store, he finished his high school classes and he wanted to enroll in the university. He was supposed to take a driving test in a few days. If he was planning something, we didn't see it.'' He would stay up late at night after work, studying the Koran and praying, but he showed no outward signs of rage toward Israel. ``He would joke about things and say that whatever happens is God's will,'' said a brother-in-law, who insisted on anonymity. ``He was an easygoing guy.'' Last Thursday, Sughayer bought a battered red Fiat and parked it near his house. When someone at home asked about the car he said nothing, and family members assumed it was one of the stolen vehicles often found here. On Friday morning he left with the car, meeting his brother-in-law and old jail buddy, Suleiman Tahayneh, who came from his village near the West Bank town of Jenin. Tahayneh had his own score to settle with the Israelis. His leg had been amputated after he was shot in a confrontation with Israeli troops during the uprising, his relatives said. The Fiat was loaded with explosives, and the two men drove to the market. That evening, when concerned members of the Sughayer family gathered to await news of their missing relative, a man arrived and told them that he had sold his car to Youssef the previous day. It was a red Fiat, the same car they had seen near the house, and the same type of car that news reports said had exploded in the marketplace. At midnight, Israeli security forces raided the house and interrogated family members. The last, grim pieces of the puzzle fell into place. ``Up to the last minute on Thursday night we were talking together,'' said Sughayer's oldest brother, Ali, who worked with him past midnight at the produce store. ``He asked me about someone who had moved his hardware shop to another village, about how he was doing. Earlier we ate together, and we talked about giving charity to the poor. He wasn't nervous.'' ``He had plans for the future,'' Ali continued. ``Maybe the people in his group convinced him to do this, and he could not refuse. We did not expect this from him.'' ||||| A car rigged with explosives blew up Friday morning in Jerusalem's Mahane Yehuda market packed with Israelis shopping for the Jewish Sabbath, killing two people and wounding 21. The Islamic militant group Hamas, which has tried to stop the peace agreement, claimed responsibility, police said. In response to the attack, the Israeli cabinet suspended ratification of the Wye agreement until there ``is verification that the Palestinian authority is indeed fighting terrorism.'' The Israeli Cabinet also announced it will begin to build houses in the controversial Jewish settlement of Har Homa in east Jerusalem. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had held up the work in recent months in an apparent attempt to not disrupt negotiations with the Palestinians. Aides to Netanyahu were not immediately available for comment. The Cabinet ministers had just begun a second day of of talks on the peace agreement about a mile (kilometer) away from the entrance to the market and just meters (yards) from the site of a suicide bombing last year. In Friday's explosion, the rigged car, a red Fiat, blew up at about 9:45 a.m. (0745 GMT) at the entrance of Mahane Yehuda market, just meters (yards) away from the site of a suicide bombing in July 1997. Witnesses heard a series of small explosions. Yair Cohen, 43, said he was buying cookies when he saw a car driving slowly, with smoke coming out of the hood and exhaust pipes. ``People started to shout `car on fire.' After a while, we heard a blast, and something hit me in the stomach,'' said Cohen who was treated for minor injuries at Hadassah Hospital. The car was a mass of twisted metal sitting in the middle of the main intersection outside the market. Flames shot 100 feet (30 meters) in the air. A charred corpse, covered by a blanket, lay several meters away. Streams of soot-black water ran in the street. Another bare-legged body lay in the street, face down, in a pool of blood below the head. Rescue workers covered the body with sodden pieces of cardboard box and plastic shopping bags. ``There was hysteria, people were running,'' said Eliad Duan, an Israeli border policeman who was patrolling the market and was lightly injured. One heavy-set woman, apparently in shock, climbed into an ambulance, weeping. Three paramedics talked to her, persuading her that she did not need medical treatment, and after a few moments she climbed out of the vehicle again. Soldiers and police wearing plastic gloves held back the crowds. ``It's dangerous _ stay back!'' they shouted. Just a block away from the blast, shoppers went about their business. One young woman shopper said: ``We can't stop with what we are doing when this happens.'' Hassan Asfour, a Palestinian peace negotiator, said the Palestinian Authority condemned the attack. ``This is a crime and whoever commits this, hurts the interests of the Palestinian people.'' ||||| Israel's Cabinet announced within hours of a market bombing Friday that it will put off a vote indefinitely on whether to ratify the Wye River accord until Palestinians crack down further on terrorism. Israel radio said the 18-member Cabinet debate on the Wye River accord would resume only after Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority fulfilled all of its commitments under the agreement, including arresting Islamic militants. The Cabinet also insisted that Arafat convene the Palestinian National Council, a parliament in exile, to abrogate the Palestinian National Charter, which calls for Israel's destruction. The Israeli Cabinet had convened for a second day in an attempt to approve the Wye agreement. ``To our sorrow, since the Wye agreement ... there has been relentless terrorist attacks against Israeli citizens,'' according to a Cabinet statement read on the radio. Israel radio quoted officials saying the Cabinet would also decide to renew construction of the Har Homa neighborhood in the traditionally Arab sector of Jerusalem. Groundbreaking there in March 1997 led to a break-off in negotiations with the Palestinians. ||||| Setting the stage for a new quarrel over how to crack down on militants, Israel is demanding that the military wings of two radical Islamic groups be outlawed, while the Palestinian Authority insists it has already banned them. Implementation of the Israeli-Palestinian land-for-security accord, signed Oct. 23 in Washington, was to have begun this past week, but has hit various snags. Most recently, Israel's Cabinet put off a vote to ratify the accord after a suicide bombing Friday in Jerusalem that killed the two assailants and injured 21 Israelis. The radical group Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility. David Bar-Illan, a top aide to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, said Sunday that Israel expects Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat to formally outlaw the military wings of Islamic Jihad and the larger militant group Hamas. Hassan Asfour, a senior Palestinian official, said Hamas' military wing, Izeddine al Qassam, and the military wing of Islamic Jihad were outlawed by the Palestinian Authority in 1996. But Bar-Illan said the Palestinian legislature had never passed such a law. ``Why did Mr. Arafat agree in the Wye accord to outlaw them if he has already done it?'' he asked. The Wye memorandum states that the Palestinian Authority ``will inform the United States fully of the actions it has taken to outlaw all organizations (or wings of organizations, as appropriate) of a military, terrorist or violent character, and their support structure and to prevent them freedom of action in the areas under its jurisdiction.'' A Palestinian security official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said a joint Israeli-Palestinian meeting was held Saturday night to discuss security in the wake of Friday's attack. Participants included the head of the Palestinian intelligence, Amin Hindi, and the head of preventive security in the Gaza Strip, Mohammed Dahlan. The idea of outlawing Hamas and Islamic Jihad was brought up in the meeting and also proposed by Netanyahu to Arafat during a phone call, the official said. The Palestinians said they could ban activity by Hamas or Islamic Jihad that endangered either Israelis or Palestinians, but could not outlaw them outright as political movements. Friday's bombing led to finger-pointing by both sides. Israel said it showed Arafat's crackdown on terrorists had not been sweeping enough. The Palestinians, however, have also accused Israel of failing to take at least partial security responsibility for the attack, because both attackers came from Israeli-controlled areas, and had recently served time in Israeli jails. Israel as a rule is harshly critical of the Palestinian Authority's security efforts when attackers come from Palestinian-controlled areas or have been released from Palestinian prisons. On Sunday, Palestinian Justice Minister Freih Abu-Medein accused Netanyahu of using the blast as a pretext for delaying implementation of the peace accord. ``This attack is a gift to Mr. Netanyahu,'' Abu-Medein said. ``All the time he is praying to God to help him ... to escape from the agreement.'' Under the accord, Israel is to hand over another 13 percent of the territory in the West Bank to the Palestinians in exchange for various security steps. Israeli Defense Minister Yitzhak Mordechai predicted Sunday that the Israeli Cabinet would ratify the agreement in coming days. ``I estimate that the government will meet this week and will accept the decision of the majority (in favor of the agreement),'' he said. ||||| A defiant Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Saturday that Israel would continue to build Jewish neighborhoods throughout Jerusalem, including at a controversial site in the traditionally Arab sector of the city. ``We will build also in Har Homa as we will build in every part of Jerusalem,'' Netanyahu told a crowd of political supporters in Jerusalem, ``By 2000 there will be homes at Har Homa.'' Har Homa is the site of a planned Jewish neighborhood in traditionally Arab east Jerusalem, which Palestinians want to have as the capital of their hoped-for independent state. Groundbreaking at the site led to angry Palestinian protests and a breakdown of peace talks in March 1997. Netanyahu's Cabinet delayed action on the latest Israeli-Palestinian accord following Friday's suicide bombing at a Jerusalem market, and his remarks about building on Har Homa may be seen as a provocation by the Palestinians at a politically sensitive moment. U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright told Netanyahu by phone that she expects Israel's Cabinet to ratify the new peace accord within a few days despite the market bombing, Channel Two television reported Saturday. The radical group Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility Saturday for the market bombing and vowed more attacks to try to block the new peace accord. ``This heroic operation is not the first and not going to be the last,'' the group said in a leaflet faxed to news organizations. ``We refuse any political agreement that would recognize the Zionist enemy.'' An Islamic Jihad official in the Syrian capital of Damascus confirmed that the group's leader Ramadan Abdullah Shallah claimed responsibility for Friday's bombing in an interview with the Paris-based Radio Monte Carlo. Palestinian security sources and the families of the dead bombers had already identified them as Islamic Jihad activists. At least half a dozen other Islamic activists have been rounded up since the bombing, the sources said. Palestinian political leaders said Israel should not use Friday's suicide bombing, which killed the two assailants and wounded 21 Israelis, as an excuse to stop the peace process. One of Israel's key demands is that the Palestinians do more to fight attacks by Islamic militants against Israeli targets. The Palestinians, however, said the two bombers had come from Israeli-controlled areas and that Israel thus bore at least part of the security responsibility for the attack. The Israeli military said it could not confirm the suicide bombers' identities and hometowns, but they were disclosed by Palestinian security officials and also reported by Palestinian media. One lived near the Anata refugee camp, north of Jerusalem, and the other lived in the West Bank village of Silat al Harithiya, outside the town of Jenin. Both families held so-called mourning houses on Saturday, but not actual funerals, since Israeli authorities still have their bodies. ``I didn't raise him to lose him like that,'' said Mohammed Zughayar, the 54-year-old father of Yusef Ali Mohammed Zughayar, 22. ``I'm proud, but I'm sad because I loved my son.'' The family of Suleiman Musa Dahayneh, 24, said he had been married for three months to Zughayar's sister, Basma. They met when she was visiting her brother, who was in prison with Dahayneh, the family said. At the market, some 200 observant Jews gathered Saturday night near the site of the bombing to offer prayers of thanks that no lives other than those of the assailants were lost. A ring of young men wearing skullcaps joined hands and danced, and rabbis spoke of the ``miracle'' that had saved those shopping in the market at the time of the attack. Although Hamas initially claimed responsibility through anonymous phone calls to the police for Friday's attack all sides now have agreed that it was Islamic Jihad that carried it out. ||||| Blood and soot-blackened water ran in rivulets from the charred wreckage. A burly policeman bent to cover a bloodied corpse with whatever was at hand _ a sodden piece of cardboard, a plastic shopping bag. Two people were killed and at least 21 injured when an explosives-rigged car blew up Friday at Jerusalem's Mahane Yehuda market, only meters (yards) from the site of a suicide bombing 16 months ago. At police barricades set up along Jerusalem's busiest thoroughfare, soldiers and police held back crowds of people, some frantic about loved ones who had been shopping in the crowded market only hours before the start of the Jewish Sabbath. ``Please, please, is there a girl with red hair who is hurt?'' an older, heavyset woman said tearfully, trying to push her way past police. A young female soldier patted her arm consolingly. Some of the onlookers gave vent to fury over the new peace agreement, which was being debated by Israel's Cabinet even as the blast occurred. ``Death to Arabs! Death to Arafat!'' a small crowd of demonstrators shouted. Police tried to grab one of them, but he escaped into the crowd. The explosives-rigged car was a mass of twisted metal, with only the steering column intact. Next to the wreckage lay a completely charred body with stumps of arms and legs _ apparently that of the bomber. Witnesses said they heard a series of explosions. Although shop windows closest to the car were shattered, market stalls only a few more feet (yards) away were completely intact, and stacked with neat piles of bananas and onions. Eyewitness Yaakov Shlomo said initial, smaller blasts scared most onlookers away. ``When the big explosion went, there were already not that many people nearby,'' he said. ``That was a miracle from heaven.'' Shlomo Meir, a black-clad Orthodox Jew, was standing nearby when he heard a blast. When he tuirned he saw fire. ``It was terrible,'' he said, red-eyed. ``I thought, `Again!''' Only a block away, some stalls were still open and shoppers were buying produce. One woman, with almost maniacal determination, sorted through a pile of oranges. ``We can't stop what we're doing when this happens,'' she said grimly. By the police barricades, wearing bright-orange vests, stood a group of Orthodox Jewish volunteers who search scenes of accidents and attacks for body parts, in keeping with their religious belief that bodies must be buried intact. One young volunteer squinted down the street as his group waited for permission to begin its grisly task. ``It's hard, this work, but it's very important to us,'' he said. ||||| The militant Palestinian movement Islamic Holy War said Saturday that it carried out the suicide bombing in a Jerusalem market on Friday, which prompted arrests by the Palestinian Authority overnight. Palestinian officials said they had jailed several of the small but radical group's members from the West Bank, and raided and then shut down a nursery school linked to the organization in Bethlehem, which is controlled by the Palestinians. The two bombers who carried out Friday's attack, which led the Israeli Cabinet to suspend deliberations on the land-for-security accord signed with the Palestinians last month, were identified as members of Islamic Holy War from West Bank villages under Israeli security control. Ramadan Abdallah Shallah, the Damascus-based leader of Islamic Holy War, said ``martyrs'' from his movement had carried out the Jerusalem attack in response to Israel's settlement policy and ``Judaization'' of the West Bank. He spoke in an interview with Monte Carlo Radio, an Arabic station broadcasting from Paris that is widely listened to in the Middle East. A leaflet signed by the group and faxed to Reuters in Jerusalem said the ``heroic attack,'' in which 24 people were injured and the 2 bombers killed, had been carried out ``to confront the great conspiracy that aims to liquidate the Palestinian cause through the Oslo and Wye Plantation agreements of submission.'' Islamic Holy War and its counterpart, Hamas, have denounced as a sellout of Palestinian rights the 1993 Oslo self-rule accord and the latest agreement, known as the Wye Memorandum, named for the Wye Plantation in Maryland, where the deal was worked out with strenuous American mediation. Shallah's claim of responsibility from abroad contrasted with the muted response of Islamic Holy War's leadership in the Gaza Strip, which has reportedly given commitments to the Palestinian Authority to refrain from such attacks. ``We have no knowledge in the movement about the operation that occurred in Jerusalem,'' said Nafez Azzam, a senior leader of Islamic Holy War in Gaza. ``From its conditions we consider it likely that it was an individual effort.'' The Palestinian cabinet, in a statement issued after a meeting on Friday night, accused ``foreign forces'' of standing behind the attack. One cabinet member, who declined to be identified, pointed a finger at Iran, saying a search of one bomber's home had uncovered a letter he had written to the Iranian supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, expressing condolences for the recent killing of several Iranian diplomats in Afghanistan. Iran, which has backed militant Islamic groups opposed to the Arab-Israeli peace efforts, has denounced the Wye agreement, branding Yasser Arafat, the Palestinian leader, a traitor to the Palestinian cause. The Palestinian cabinet promised to crack down on the militants, who it said were jeopardizing the recovery of Palestinian land and hopes for statehood by giving Israel a pretext to postpone carrying out the Wye accord. The Israeli Cabinet suspended a meeting to ratify the agreement after the bombing, demanding that the Palestinians conduct an ``all-out war on terror.'' Israeli officials had no comment Saturday on the measures taken by the Palestinian Authority on Friday. The Wye agreement calls for an Israeli troop withdrawal from 13 percent more of the West Bank in exchange for specific Palestinian measures against violent militants. A Palestinian security official said several Islamic Holy War members were arrested in the West Bank on Friday night. Arrests were also reported in the Gaza Strip. Itaf Alayan, a supporter of the group who runs the Islamic Purity Nursery in Bethlehem, said Palestinian officers had raided the school and confiscated videotapes and educational cassettes before locking it up. The two bombers were identified as Youssef Zughayer, 21, from Anata, near Jerusalem, and his brother-in-law, Suleiman Tahayneh, 24, from Silat al-Harithiya, near the West Bank town of Jenin. Both had served time in Israeli jails and were known to be members of Islamic Holy War. ``We never thought he would do something like this,'' said Muhammad Zughayer, Youssef's father. ``We condemn such acts, but the only thing we can do now is to say may he rest in peace.'' ||||| The radical group Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility Saturday for the suicide bombing of a crowded Jerusalem market and promised more attacks to try to block the new peace accord. ``This heroic operation is not the first and not going to be the last,'' the group said in a leaflet faxed to news organizations. ``We refuse any political agreement that would recognize the Zionist enemy.'' The leaflet could not immediately be authenticated, but its style was consistent with that of past communications from the group. An Islamic Jihad official in the Syrian capital of Damascus confirmed that the group's leader Ramadan Abdullah Shallah claimed responsibility for Friday's bombing in an interview with the Paris-based Radio Monte Carlo. Palestinian security sources and the families of the dead bombers had already identified them as Islamic Jihad activists. At least half a dozen other Islamic activists have been rounded up since the bombing, the sources said. Although Hamas initially claimed responsibility through anonymous phone calls to the police, all sides now have agreed that it was Islamic Jihad that carried it out. There was no immediate explanation for the inaccurate claim, but the two groups have carried out attacks together in the past as part of their goal of stopping the peace process.

The Wye River accord has not been implemented. As the Israeli cabinet was considering the agreement, Islamic Jihad militants exploded a car bomb in nearby Mahane Yehuda market. The cabinet suspended ratification of the agreement, demanding the Palestinian Authority take steps against terrorism. Further, after the bombing, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu announced the resumption of construction of a new settlement, Har Homa, in a traditionally Arab area east of Jerusalem. Israel also demands that Arafat outlaw the military wings of Islamic Jihad and Hamas. The attack injured 24 Israelis, but only the two assailants, Sughayer and Tahayneh, were killed.

Rep. Bob Livingston, who confessed to his colleagues Thursday night that he had had adulterous affairs, stunned the House chamber Saturday morning by saying in the impeachment debate on President Clinton that he would not serve as speaker and would quit Congress in six months. He urged the president to follow his example and quit, too. But at the White House, where calls for Clinton's resignation are derided as a Republican strategy, the president sent a spokesman into the driveway to urge Livingston to reconsider his resignation. Livingston stood in the well of the House he has served for two decades and called on Clinton to resign his office rather than force a trial in the Senate, drawing boos from his colleagues and cat-calls that he should quit instead. He then did just that. ``I must set the example that I hope President Clinton will follow,'' Livingston announced to a shocked and silent chamber in an act that left the Republican Party in total chaos just hours before the vote to impeach Clinton. The decision also left the party leaderless on the eve of the opening of the 106th Congress, when Republicans must govern with one of the narrowest majorities in history. Several Republicans, including Rep. Tom DeLay of Texas, the majority whip, somberly welcomed the news, suggesting it relieved them of an excruciating embarrassment. In lauding Livingston's move, DeLay said, ``He understood what this debate was all about _ it's about honor and decency and integrity and the truth, everything we honor in this country.'' But Democrats said they were aghast, and many _ including Clinton _ called on Livingston to reconsider his decision. ``Mr. Livingston's resignation was wrong,'' declared Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y. ``It is a surrender to a developing sexual McCarthyism. Are we going to have a new test if someone wants to run for public office _ are you now or have you ever been an adulterer?'' He called on the country to distinguish between sins and crimes. White House press secretary Joe Lockhart said Clinton was ``disappointed'' at the news of Livingston's plans and wished that he would reconsider. Lockhart said the president ``firmly believes that the politics of personal destruction in this town and this country has to come to an end.'' He reaffirmed that Clinton would not resign, saying: ``The president is going to do what's in the best interest of the country. It would be wrong to give in to this insidious politics of personal destruction.'' Livingston's announced resignation was all the more stunning for its disclosure in a process that could result in the president's removal from office. The speaker is second in line to the presidency, after the vice president. Newt Gingrich, the outgoing speaker, who was driven from the post after Republicans lost five seats in the November election, technically remains speaker until Jan. 6, when Livingston's election was to be ratified by the new Congress. But Gingrich has removed himself from the daily operations of the House at this extraordinary session and has begun to dismantle his office. Livingston's decision was said to be driven in part by the anger of a group of about a dozen conservatives in his party who were disillusioned that he had withheld news of his affairs from them. They had threatened to withhold their votes for him in the election in January that would formally make him speaker. He was also concerned about the pain caused to his family by further disclosures, some members said. They added that, not lost on many in his party, was the example he would set for the president by offering to resign his post now. DeLay, No. 3 in the House Republican leadership, is expected to fill the power vacuum at least temporarily, in deed if not in title, while the party regroups to find a new speaker. Many members quickly rallied around Rep. Dennis Hastert of Illinois. Hastert, one of DeLay's deputy whips who is well respected among his colleagues, had been promoted as a candidate for majority leader last month, but never mounted a campaign. Rep. Dick Armey of Texas only precariously held on to his majority-leader post last month and was not considered a likely candidate for speaker. He is expected to manage the reorganization, which Republican leaders have set for Jan. 4. Livingston met privately with his closest advisers Friday as the impeachment debate unfolded. Some of his colleagues believed he had made a mistake in disclosing Thursday night _ just as the House was moving into the divisive debate over impeachment _ that he had ``on occasion strayed from my marriage.'' He told Republican leaders late Thursday afternoon that Hustler magazine was going to expose his affairs early next year. Some leaders urged him to keep quiet, but his wife, Bonnie, encouraged him to tell his colleagues immediately, despite the momentous vote that was nearing on the floor. At that point Thursday night, Roll Call, a newspaper on Capitol Hill, reported on its Web site that Livingston was going to admit to the affairs and was going to offer to resign. In a closed-door meeting with his fellow Republicans, he did admit to the affairs but made no offer to step down, receiving three standing ovations instead. Thursday night, Livingston stated that he would ``not be intimidated by these efforts'' to exploit his past. But Friday he removed himself from public action and that night drew his closest advisers into his confidence. His aides said Saturday that they had no clue what was he was contemplating, and few other members were aware of his plans. Asked if he had any advance word, Rep. J.C. Watts of Oklahoma, a newly elected member of the Republican leadership, said: ``I had no idea.'' Asked if there had been internal party pressure on Livingston to resign, Rep. Harold Rogers, R-Ky., said: ``I didn't know about it if there was,'' but added, ``There were some members who were critical of it.'' As the leaders tried Saturday to hold the party together on and off the House floor, most Republicans stuck to their prepared scripts on the floor in favor of impeaching the president. But some began expressing their anguish. Rep. Henry Hyde, R-Ill., who admitted to his own adulterous affair earlier this year, said after Livingston's resignation: ``Those of us who are sinners must feel wretched today. Something is going on repeatedly that has to be stopped, and that is a confusion between private acts of infidelity and public acts.'' To much applause, Hyde declared: ``Congress has no business intruding into private acts.'' Republicans, indeed Livingston himself, had made this same distinction between Clinton's sexual indiscretions and Livingston's, saying that Clinton lied about his private acts and therefore abused the legal system and his powers. As Livingston said in his statement Thursday: ``These indiscretions were not with employees on my staff and I have never been asked to testify under oath about them.'' Democrats hoped that Livingston's seemingly drastic action would wake up the House to how poisoned the atmosphere had become and might prompt Republicans to reconsider the impeachment of Clinton. Rep. Paul Kanjorski, D-Pa., said, ``We are now starting to offer up sacrificial lambs to whatever terrible disease this is.'' In a stirring speech applauded even by some Republicans, Rep. Dick Gephardt of Missouri, the Democratic leader, praised Livingston as a ``worthy, good and honorable man'' and said his resignation was a grave mistake. ``It's a terrible capitulation to the negative political forces that are consuming our political system and our country,'' Gephardt said, adding that the events of the last few days showed ``life imitates farce.'' ``We need to stop destroying imperfect people at an unattainable altar of public morality,'' he said, urging his colleagues to ``step back from the abyss'' and reject resignation, impeachment and ``vicious self-righteousness.'' ||||| The New York Times said in an editorial for Sunday, Dec. 20: The Republicans' drive for a partisan impeachment based soley on party-line voting power rather than any sense of proportion produced an unexpected sideshow in the resignation of Rep. Bob Livingston from his role as future speaker of the House. Analysts on both sides of the struggle over President Clinton's future will point to Livingston's downfall as evidence of a generalized breakdown in legislative civility on Capitol Hill. Democrats will see a moral symmetry, depicting Livingston as a victim of the sexual puritanism he was wielding against Clinton. But the one thing that no one should fall for is Livingston's invitation to use his resignation as a model for resolving the crisis at the White House. Livingston's statement rocked Congress, but it should not shake the foundations of the somber constitutional process now underway. By lying under oath, Clinton made it necessary for the House to consider impeachment. The evidence convinced most Americans that the president should be censured, but not removed from office. Livingston allowed GOP partisans to block censure in the House. The result is that after Saturday's expected impeachment vote, after Livingston's unexpected announcement, the mission of the Senate remains the same. It must resist those Republicans who want to short-circuit the constitutional process with demands for resignation, and it must use the upcoming Senate trial as a forum for finding a censure commensurate with the president's personal dishonesty and offenses against the law. These require stern punishment but not removal from office. In undertaking this work, the Senate must also reassure the American people that a decisive wisdom at the core of our messy-looking political system has not melted down. In such distempered times, this is a shining opportunity for the Senate. Its members pride themselves on being the Republic's fire wall against presidential excess and the popular or partisan passions that sometimes seize the House of Representatives. No one can predict whether Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott will rise to the defining challenge of his career or whether he will surrender to the mean streak he acquired during 16 grumpy years as a minority member of the House. We would like to see Lott reach for a starring role in history. Lott's growling response to questions about censure is not encouraging. He may be right that the Constitution requires him to convene a trial, but nothing in that document prevents him from speedily guiding the Senate toward censure negotiations. Indeed, a simple majority vote _ 45 Democrats plus 6 cooperating Republicans _ can end the Senate trial at any time, clearing the way for introduction of the kind of censure resolution suggested by former Sen. Bob Dole. In an intriguing report on NBC, Tim Russert described discussions among a bipartisan group of senators about a censure that would involve some form of presidential confession, a fine and a joint congressional request that Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr not prosecute Clinton in the courts. If Lott refuses to allow a bipartisan search for censure, the burden will fall upon respected members like Joseph Lieberman on the Democratic side and Orrin Hatch for the Republicans. Through cooperation, they can guide the Senate toward a punishment that fixes Clinton in history as a president who lied under oath, but avoids the taint of partisan vengeance associated with the House impeachment vote. The Senate's historic reputation for prudence requires it to find appropriate punishment for a personally weak president who has damaged the rule of law, but not threatened the stability of the government. ||||| ``We are here to debate impeachment and should not be distracted from that,'' the minority whip, Rep. David Bonior, Democrat of Michigan, said during Saturday's House debate, in what leaped out as an impossible goal. It would have taken a kaleidoscopic television screen to capture the constantly shifting images competing for center stage: impeachment, Iraq, the resignation of Rep. Robert Livingston, the response from the White House. The months leading up to the impeachment of President Clinton had become a series of televised anticlimaxes, but the hours before the vote made up for that lack of drama. There were hardly enough shorthand terms or split screens to cover the activity. All the networks and cable channels carried the moment that unexpectedly set the tone, as Livingston, a Louisiana Republican, announced during the debate that he would not become House speaker. The commentators had been set to carry the congressional ratification of the inevitable vote, but suddenly the most plugged-in reporters were caught off guard. As Tim Russert said to Tom Brokaw on NBC, ``Tom, knock us all over.'' In the echo chamber that television news so often becomes, the shared mantra had been weightier in early morning. ``For only the second time in American history'' a president would be impeached, went the standard line. Yet despite all the pundits speculating and politicians telegraphing every move, no one had hinted at the Livingston resignation. The announcement was, as Brokaw put it, at least partly ``a political ploy,'' and the repercussions were immediate. Reporters began gathering word from Capitol Hill about candidates for the speaker's job, and the conversation moved to the next stage of the political tug of war. The Republicans used Livingston's resignation to say that the president should resign, too; the Democrats immediately countered with the idea that the president would stay and that Livingston should as well. That led to one of the less-expected split screens of the day, and it was not a bad choice. While Congress was debating, CNN showed anti-aircraft fire in Baghdad in one box. In the other, Joe Lockhart, Clinton's press secretary, stood in the White House driveway telling reporters that the president would like Livingston to reconsider his decision. There was more stateliness in the House than television usually offers, and one reason was purely visual. ``Keep in mind that we do not control the picture,'' Dan Rather said on CBS, explaining that the television cameras in Congress are provided by the House, not the individual networks. There was no way to roam and zoom in for reaction shots, as at a political convention. But the sense of history and decorum didn't last long at CBS. At noon, before the vote, CBS went to a football game, becoming the only network to leave the news coverage. CBS' corporate decision to try to have it both ways meant that Rather would break in with updates from Washington. ``I'll see you very soon,'' he said as he signed off the complete coverage, looking like a trouper. But he was in a position no news anchor should have been in on this day. He later announced impeachment votes on a split screen with the football game in progress in the upper part of the screen. On the other networks and cable channels, the vote itself literally happened in the background. As TV screens toted up the numbers of the electronically-cast vote, members of Congress milled around and chatted on the floor. Even the brief Democratic walkout after a motion to consider censure was defeated was thoroughly forecast. As the Democrats straggled down the steps of Congress, it looked curiously undramatic on television, though it probably made a better still photograph once they were all in place. And while the votes were in progress, the jockeying for the speaker's job heated up. ``We already have a presumptive leader,'' Gwen Ifill of NBC News said in midafternoon, naming Rep. Dennis Hassert, R-Ill., who had also been cited by the other networks as a likely candidate. If the political and military action had not intruded, it might have been more obvious that the debate on the House floor sent a message about vast divisions in politics and morality, signaling how deep a cultural fissure this crisis has opened. The impeachment, said Rep. Tom DeLay, R-Texas, was ``a debate about relativism vs. absolute truth.'' Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., contended that Congress had lost the ``distinction between sins and crimes,'' and argued against the ``sexual McCarthyism'' that has become prominent. And against the backdrop of the revelations of adultery that led to Livingston's resignation, Rep. Dick Gephardt, the minority leader, declared ``the politics of personal destruction has to end.'' But as all the jabbering and political posturing continued, as reporters raced to cover the president's statement about the impeachment and the latest briefings from the Pentagon, there was little time to focus on the profound cultural message beneath those rhetorical flourishes. ||||| Bob Livingston, the incoming speaker of the House, took no public role Friday as the debate unfolded on whether to impeach President Clinton. His previous 24 hours had been his most visible in the month since his party nominated him as speaker and perhaps the most excruciating in his public career: He spent most of the day in a chaotic procedural wrangle over the terms of Friday's debate; he ended it by telling his Republican colleagues that he had had extramarital affairs during his 20-year tenure in Congress. His disclosure followed an investigation by Larry Flynt, publisher of Hustler, the sex magazine, who said Friday at a news conference in Beverly Hills, Calif., that his publication had learned that Livingston had had adulterous affairs during the last 10 years. Flynt said earlier this year that he wanted to expose the ``hypocrisy'' of those in Washington who are investigating Clinton and in October offered $1 million to anyone who could prove they had had affairs with members of Congress. He said Friday that this larger investigation, to be published perhaps as soon as January, would reveal what he described as indiscretions of several other Republicans. He said he had no connection with the White House but that he had hired an investigative firm based in Washington and made up of former employees of the FBI and the CIA. He would not confirm whether the firm is Terry Lenzner's Investigative Group Inc., which has done work for the president's private lawyers. Livingston was unavailable to reporters Friday. He spent some time Friday morning sprawled in a chair in the back of the House chamber, listening to the debate over whether to impeach Clinton for lying about his own sexual indiscretions. Several colleagues knelt at Livingston's knee, whispered to him and patted him on the back. He spent most of the day in a private office off the chamber, avoiding the gauntlet of reporters who lay in wait for him between the House and his regular office across the street. The only word out of his aides was that the Navy had awarded contracts worth millions of dollars for ships to be built in his Louisiana district at the Avondale Shipyards. During Friday's debate, a handful of Democrats made only oblique allusions to human failures. For example, Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., said: ``Let he that has no sin cast the first stone. Who, who among us has not sinned?'' But no one said that Livingston's disclosure or the mild Democratic attempts to exploit it would influence their votes on impeachment. Rather, on the House floor and in hallway chitchat, Livingston's conduct seemed to be the last thing that either Republicans or Democrats wanted to talk about. ``Bob Livingston is a first-rate human being,'' said Rep. David Obey, D-Wis., who has worked closely and sparred with Livingston on the Appropriations Committee, in an interview. ``I will repeat what the nuns taught me at St. James a long time ago: We would all be a hell of a lot better off looking after our own souls rather than trying to evaluate somebody else's. None of us have any business even having an opinion on it.'' Even conservative Republicans seemed ready to overlook the disclosure. ``We're not going to say, `Bob, you can't be speaker because you violated your vows with your wife,''' said Rep. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C. Like many, including Livingston, Graham distinguished Livingston's conduct from Clinton's by saying that the president had ``trampled'' on the legal system whereas Livingston's behavior was strictly private. Despite Flynt's claims, many Republicans blamed the Clinton administration for smearing Livingston, although they offered no evidence. ``This isn't just happening on its own,'' said Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R- Calif. ||||| House Speaker-elect Robert L. Livingston presented a fresh note of shock to the impeachment debate against President Clinton on Thursday night as the Republican leader was forced to admit to his Republican colleagues that he had carried on adulterous affairs in his past. ``It has suddenly come to my attention that there are individuals working together with the media who are investigating my personal background in an effort to find indiscretions which may be exploitable against me and my party on the eve of the upcoming historic vote on impeachment,'' Livingston declared in a statement after appearing before a shocked House Republican conference to head off the disclosure as it surfaced in news reports. After hearing his admissions in a closed session, Livingston's colleagues gave him a standing ovation of support and said the question of his resigning had never arisen. ``My fate is in your hands,'' Livingston told the Republicans, according to lawmakers who were present. The debate over the president's fate would go forward, Republicans later insisted, drawing distinctions between the speaker-elect's revelations and the sex-and-mendacity scandal that has put Clinton on the brink of impeachment. The president is charged in an impeachment resolution with perjury and abuse of power in his attempt to hide sexual indiscretions. Democrats offered no immediate comment, but Republicans were braced to hear Livingston's admissions alluded to in the debate Friday by Democrats who have decried the investigation of the president as basically a partisan and unfair rummaging through his sex life. Livingston, saying he had sought spiritual counseling and had received the forgiveness of his family, noted he had several times told reporters during his campaign to become speaker that ``I was running for speaker, not sainthood.'' He added, ``There was a reason for those words.'' ``During my 33-year marriage to my wife, Bonnie, I have on occasion strayed from my marriage, and doing so nearly cost me my marriage and family,'' Livingston said in his brief prepared statement. But he attempted to draw a contrast with the allegations against the president, asserting: ``I want to assure everyone that these indiscretions were not with employees on my staff and I have never been asked to testify under oath about them.'' The disclosure of the speaker-elect's marital infidelities, disclosed in ``Rollcall,'' a Capitol Hill newspaper, sent a new jolt of uncertainty among lawmakers as they prepared for the momentous debate over the president's admitted misbehavior in office and whether he should be impeached and tried by the Senate. Rep. Henry Hyde, the Republican chairman of the House Judiciary Committee who is to bring the impeachment charges against the president, previously was cited by a magazine for an extra-marital affair in his past. Then, as on Thursday night, Republicans voiced suspicions that Democratic defenders of the president instigated media investigations in an effort to embarrass the Clinton's principal accusers. But no proof was offered as Republicans left their conference, facing the uncertainties of a debate that already promised to be bare-knuckled in its partisanship. Livingston left the conference surrounded by Capitol police, not taking questions from waiting reporters. His chief leadership aides immediately rallied in support. ``Some who would rather not struggle with this constitutional question continue to try to twist the debate into an unseemly investigation of private lives,'' said Rep. Dick Armey, the Republican majority leader. In its report on the internet Thursday night, Rollcall did not disclose its source but made an oblique reference to Hustler, the sex magazine. Larry Flint, publisher of Hustler, earlier this year advertised an offer of a $1 million bounty for information about e of members of Congress guilty of sexual indiscretions. ``It breaks your heart because we're all subject to human frailties,'' said Asa Hutchinson, R-Ark., as he left the conference. ``This is not a comfortable circumstance for anyone,'' he added, insisting the president and the speaker-elect presented two separate issues. ``We've got a duty to do under the Constitution.'' ||||| In the end, the will of the people meant nothing. Bob Livingston couldn't have been clearer about that. His mind and the minds of his followers were closed. Even as the bombing continued in Iraq and Americans from coast to coast were clamoring for an alternative to impeachment, even as his own adulterous past was being flushed out in the grotesque invasions of privacy that inevitably followed the relentlessly prurient pursuit of the president, even as the country began to contemplate the destructive effects of a lengthy and bitter Senate trial, the speaker-designate arrogantly and stupidly proclaimed: ``Let us disregard the outside influences.'' The radicals on the Hill would hear nothing but the echoes of their own fanaticism. Impeach! Impeach! And that continued even after the stunning announcement Saturday morning that Livingston would quit the House. Dismayed by the partisan stampede, Dick Gephardt, the Democratic leader, warned during the impeachment debate on Friday: ``In your effort to uphold the Constitution, you are trampling the Constitution.'' David Bonior, the Democratic whip, said: ``This is wrong. It is unfair. It is unjust. At a time when events in the world and the challenges at home demand that we stand united, censure is the one solution that can bring us together. To my colleagues across the aisle, I say let go of your obsession. Listen to the American people.'' But the voices of reason would not be heard. Livingston and his right-wing colleagues, the Tom DeLays, the Henry Hydes, the Bob Barrs, were on a mission of destruction and would not be denied. Ordinary Americans could cry out all they wanted. They could protest and demonstrate, send faxes and E-mails. It didn't matter. The right was on the march and democracy was on the run. Rep. Thomas Barrett, a Democrat from Wisconsin, tried to remind his Republican colleagues that the Constitution ``does not allow you to remove a president from office because you can't stand him.'' He was, of course, ignored. The Republicans will pay a huge price for their brazen, utterly partisan attempt to drag a president from the White House in defiance of the will of the people. The party's contempt for the voters was arrogantly but quite adequately summed up by Alan Simpson, the former senator from Wyoming, who said: ``The attention span of Americans is which movie is coming out next month and whether the quarterly report on their stock will change.'' If the voters are the dopes that Mr. Simpson thinks they are, then come 2000 everyone will have forgotten there was an impeachment crisis. But Rep. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., was probably closer to the truth when he said, ``I warn my colleagues that you will reap the bitter harvest of the unfair partisan seeds you sow today.'' One of the many strange events of the past couple of weeks was the way in which virtually all of the previously undecided Republicans, the so-called moderates, surrendered their independence and lined up like lackeys to follow the right wing's lead. All proclaimed loudly that they were voting on principle, but in fact it was an exercise in mass cowardice, exemplified by Rep. John McHugh of upstate New York. McHugh announced on Tuesday that he would vote for impeachment. But if his decision was based on principle, he had an odd way of expressing it. The Washington Post said McHugh appeared to have no stomach for a Senate conviction or removal of the president from office. Of his colleagues in the Senate, McHugh said, ``I, for one, would accept, even welcome, their mercy.'' In other words, let the Senate do the heavy constitutional lifting. McHugh may have wished out loud for mercy, but he clearly was too frightened of the right-wingers in the House to cast a compassionate vote himself. The GOP can no longer conceal that it is a party of extremists, of right-wing absolutists, a party out of step with the political and cultural orientation of most Americans. Bob Livingston may be leaving, but his arrogant comment can still serve as his party's slogan. ``Let us disregard the outside influences.'' Let us disregard the people. ||||| Rejecting a last-minute Democratic attempt to soften its action to censure, the House of Representatives moved to impeach President William Jefferson Clinton for perjury on Saturday and to call on the Senate to try him, convict him and remove him from office. But even before the vote, Republicans pressed another line of attack, demanding Clinton's resignation. Rep. Robert Livingston, nominated for speaker last month by his party, startled the House when he announced he would not run for speaker and would resign from the House after 21 years of service. He urged the president to ``heal the wounds that you have created. You, sir, may resign your post.'' Angry Democrats booed and shouted, ``You resign!'' Livingston continued, ``I can only challenge you in such fashion if I am willing to heed my own words.'' Apologizing again for extramarital affairs revealed two days ago, he said, ``I believe I had it in me to do a fine job. But I cannot do that job or be the kind of leader that I would like to be under current circumstances.'' Then he bolted from the House chamber, nearly knocking reporters and members down. (The House voted 228-206 to approve the first article of impeachment, accusing Clinton of committing perjury before a federal grand jury. The vote was announced at 1:24 p.m. EST, leaving the 42nd president to face trial in the Senate on whether he should be removed from office.) Clinton rejected the advice immediately. His spokesman, Joe Lockhart, said, ``The president has no intention of resigning.'' By calling on Livingston to reconsider, the president argued more broadly against resignation under fire. Perhaps speaking to both cases, Lockhart said, ``It would be wrong to give in to this insidious politics of personal destruction.'' Unless Clinton changes course, this would be only the second impeachment of a president in the 209-year history of the Republic, and the first since Andrew Johnson was acquitted in 1868. Sen. Trent Lott of Mississippi, the majority leader, has insisted that no bargaining over censure can prevent it from starting. But the Senate could halt a trial later as part of a deal. Considering the degree of partisanship displayed Saturday, assembling the two-thirds majority required under the Constitution for conviction is most unlikely. Sixty-seven votes would be required, and there are only 55 Republicans in the Senate, along with 45 Democrats. Four articles of impeachment before the House charged Clinton with perjury in lying about his affair with Monica Lewinsky to a federal grand jury here on Aug. 17. He was also charged with perjury in the Paula Jones sexual harassment suit, obstruction of justice and abuse of power. The Republican argument, over and over, was that Clinton had lied in denying having sexual relations with Ms. Lewinsky. Rep. Dick Armey of Texas, the majority leader, said, ``A nation of laws cannot be ruled by a person who breaks the law.'' Rep. Nancy Johnson of Connecticut said: ``There can be no justice without the truth. That is just profoundly so, and that is why perjury matters.'' Rep. Gerald Kleczka of Wisconsin began the Democrats' arguments by saying, ``What the president did was wrong, both personally and morally, but his acts did not threaten our democracy and thus do not rise to the level of impeachable offenses as defined by our founding fathers in our Constitution.'' Rep. Charles Schumer, New York's senator-elect, said: ``The rule of law requires that the punishment fit the crime. Allow us to vote for censure.'' Saturday's votes were the penultimate step in the most serious conflict between Congress and a president since Richard M. Nixon resigned in the face of impeachment and certain conviction on Aug. 9, 1974. But while that case spun out from a 1972 break-in at Democratic headquarters in the Watergate complex, this one began with a murky land deal in Arkansas in 1978. Through the efforts of Kenneth Starr, the independent counsel under the law enacted in the wake of Watergate, the investigation spread to examine Clinton's affair with a White House intern. All year it has preoccupied the capital despite an immense disconnect with public opinion; since the scandal became public in January, polls have shown that the public opposed impeachment and wanted the inquiry brought to an end. Even on Friday night, after a 13-hour debate, a CBS News Poll of 548 people showed that only 38 percent wanted their representative to vote for impeachment; 58 percent wanted a no vote. The conflict now enters uncharted seas, since the Nixon resignation cut the matter short and the Johnson trial occurred in a different America, with no nuclear weapons or cable television or public opinion polls. But the capital was still rife with confident speculation. Some guessed, or hoped, that the results of the recent poll, which showed increases in support for resignation as a way to spare the nation a trial in which Ms. Lewinsky and Linda Tripp would be star witnesses, would weaken Clinton's resolve. Others thought the Republicans, seeing dismal numbers in polls about their party's standing in the United States, would be the first to blink. With a majority in the Senate, they have the power to end a trial at any time after the Senate receives notice of impeachment on the day it convenes, Jan. 6, or the next day. But while Clinton has focused on the polls, and the CBS News survey showed that 64 percent still approve of his handling of his job as president, resignation could almost immediately subject him to criminal prosecution. And Republicans have steadfastly ignored the polls all year, and confronted them directly on Saturday. Representative J.C. Watts of Oklahoma, newly elected as chairman of the Republican caucus, said: ``What's popular isn't always right. You say polls are against this. Polls measure changing feelings, not steadfast principle. Polls would have rejected the Ten Commandments. Polls would have embraced slavery and ridiculed women's rights. ``You say we must draw this to a close. I say we must draw a line between right and wrong, not with a tiny fine line of an executive fountain pen, but with the big fat lead of a No. 2 pencil. And we must do it so every kid in America can see it. The point is not whether the president can prevail, but whether truth can prevail.'' Last weekend, when the Judiciary Committee recommended the four articles of impeachment, Clinton's side still hoped to prevail with the help of 20 to 30 Republican moderates who were uncommitted. As the week wore on, almost all of them broke against the president. One who did not, Rep. Christopher Shays of Connecticut, said Saturday: ``After Judge Starr's report to Congress in September, and his presentation to the Judiciary Committee in November, I concluded that impeachable offenses were not proven, and that the proven offenses were not impeachable. ``But the president's continued failure to come to grips with his actions, the sincerity and arguments of members of the Judiciary Committee from both sides of the aisle, the change of heart and conviction by members on my side of the aisle who originally opposed impeachment and who now support it, and the strong and powerful opinion of so many of my constituents who oppose my position and who wanted the president impeached caused me to rethink my position.'' He added: ``Yesterday morning, before I visited with the president, I concluded that my original position was the correct one, for me. I believe that the impeachable offenses have not been proven, and that the proven offenses are not impeachable.'' But Rep. Tom DeLay of Texas, who has led the Republican effort to force Clinton from office, dismissed his and other arguments as moral relativism. He began by praising Livingston: ``There is no greater American in my mind, at least today, than Bob Livingston, because he understood what this debate was all about. It was about honor and decency and integrity and the truth; everything that we honor in this country. It was also a debate about relativism vs. absolute truth.'' He continued, ``The president's defenders have said that the president is morally reprehensible, that he is reckless, that he has violated the trust of the American people, lessened their esteem for the office of president and dishonored the office which they have entrusted him, and that _ but that doesn't rise to the level of impeachment.'' Rep. Jose Serrano of New York said, ``My constituents don't hate Bill Clinton; they love him and they're praying for him right at this very moment. You may have the votes today to impeach him, but you don't have the American people. And let me tell you something, I grew up in the public housing projects of the South Bronx. I can see a bunch of bullies when I see them. The bullies get theirs, and you're going to get yours, too. Rep. Henry Hyde of Illinois, the Judiciary Committee chairman who brought the charges to the House floor, said the Congress and the American people needed to distinguish between private acts of infidelity and public acts by public officials. In Clinton's case, he said, the House was dealing with ``a serial violator of the oath who is the chief law-enforcement officer.'' He said that the Senate could be ``innovative and creative'' in deciding how best to punish Clinton, but that the House was bound by the Constitution to move ahead with articles of impeachment. ``Justice is so important to the most humble among us,'' Hyde said. ``Equal justice under the law _ that's what we're fighting for.'' Democrats, reading from the same Constitution, voiced diametrically opposite conclusions, and attacked the fairness of the proceedings that culminated Saturday. ``We're losing track of distinction between sins and crimes,'' said Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y. ``We're lowering the standards of impeachment. What the president has done is not a great and dangerous offense to the republic.'' Democrats also criticized Republicans for impeaching Clinton at the very moment that U.S. troops waged war against Iraq. ``Six days before Christmas our troops are in battle, and a lame-duck Congress is rushing to overthrow the commander in chief,'' said Rep. David Bonior of Michigan, the second-ranking House Democrat. The ghosts of Watergate hung over the House chamber. One Republican cited the parallels between the charges the House Judiciary Committee brought against Nixon 25 years ago, and the counts that the same committee brought to the House floor for affirmation on Saturday. ``Nixon cheated. He cheated the electoral system,'' said Rep. Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican on the Judiciary Committee. And now, Graham said, the full House is voting to impeach Clinton ``because we believe he committed crimes that result in cheating our judicial system.'' But most of the day's debate was firmly rooted in Clinton's effort to conceal his sexual affair with Monica Lewinsky. Rep. Bob Barr, a Georgia Republican on the Judiciary Committee who is one of Clinton's fiercest critics, held up copies of the U.S. Criminal Code, the Judiciary Committee's report on the impeachment inquiry and, finally, the Constitution, in defending his decision to impeach the president. ``Today, we rely on the three pillars of our society: the law itself, evidence and the Constitution,'' said Barr. ``There is no joy in upholding the law,'' Watts said. ``If we cannot see lawlessness, our children cannot recognize it. How can we tell our children honesty is the best policy when we don't demand it as a policy?'' But Democrats assailed the very premise on which the Republican majority built its impeachment case against Clinton. Rep. John Conyers Jr. of Michigan, the ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, assailed the four articles of impeachment, count by count, as unfounded by evidence and failing to rise to impeachment. He saved his most savage scorn for the final count, abuse of power. ``The majority has simply tried to dress up the perjury counts in the Watergate abuse-of-power language,'' Conyers said. ||||| The raw passions were such that the House Democrats did not to hesitate to bellow ``You resign! You resign!'' at Speaker-elect Robert Livingston when he called from the House floor for President Clinton to quit the White House in the face of certain impeachment. Shockingly, stunningly, Livingston did just that. He quit in one breathtaking utterance, as if flicking a trump card onto the heap of impeachment angst festering before his eyes in the debating chamber. In his one and only strategem in leading his fellow House Republicans, Livingston's decision struck Congress like a verbal bomb. Stunned Democrats saw their fury vaporized upon the instant. They had to stand, almost staggering to their feet, to join the Republicans in a prolonged, emotional ovation for Livingston and his undeniable self-sacrifice. As they stood, the Democrats sensed Livingston had most suddenly closed a trap on the president and his defenders. For, with the impeachment issue set to move to the Senate, Livingston, whose own marital indiscretions were now before the public to his obvious misery, chose to show how the question of a political leader's resignation was very much in play in this tumult-tossed city. ``I must set the example that I hope President Clinton will follow,'' Livingston declared, flabbergasting all attending the impeachment debate and the nation watching beyond. Livingston walked off the floor like the sheriff in some bullet-pocked political ``High Noon,'' discarding the leadership badge he had wrested from the earlier speaker-casualty, Newt Gingrich. In the corridor just beyond, a doorman shouted to a police officer: ``Livingston just resigned!'' ``What? What?'' came the reply from the officer, who obviously thought the momentous announcement would be about Clinton's impeachment, not Livingston's political self-immolation. Just so, the Democrats, already deep into bone-raw exhaustion after their long fight to save the president, grasped for bearings. ``It is a surrender to a developing sexual McCarthyism!'' declared Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., a leading presidential defender trying to rally Democrats around the argument that Livingston should not resign any more than President Clinton should quit under fire. But the Republicans were surging to the fore on the strength of Livingston's announcement, fighting tears as they rose to salute him as the ultimate political role model in the grueling impeachment process as it roared into the final minutes of debate. ``For some it is no longer good enough to make a mistake, to confirm that mistake and take the consequences of that mistake,'' said Tom DeLay, the Republican whip, his hands shaking, his eyes tearing as he addressed the House and sought to drive the example of Livingston all the way down Pennsylvania Avenue. ``He understood what this debate was all about _ honor, duty, integrity and the truth,'' said DeLay arguing that in one swift blow, Livingston had demonstrated himself to have been a far better speaker than Clinton has been a president. With something of the political elan the president showed in initiating the Iraq attack as his own impeachment loomed, House Republicans, battered in public opinion polls, had found a rocket's red glare of their own. ``I have hurt you all deeply and beg your forgiveness,'' Livingston told the House, the nation and his family as he announced retreat. Only moments before, Democrats openly hissed the man as Livingston firmly read his own judgment upon the president: ``Sir, you have done great damage to this nation over the past year.'' Presidential resignation was in order, he continued, and then came the shouts of ``You resign! You resign!'' And as Livingston closed the circle on his career, he stunned the place into a collective breath of disbelief and somehow almost threatened to reduce the dark historic issue before the House _ the impeachment of the president _ into a matter of anticlimax. ``They must not succeed,'' David Bonior, the Democratic whip said of the Republicans as he was given the task of refocusing the day on the misdeeds of the president, not the departure of the speaker. ``We are here to debate impeachment and should not be distracted from that,'' he declared. ``The only way we can stop this vicious cycle,'' Bonior cried out from the floor, ``is if we refuse to give into it, whether it is Bill Clinton or Bob Livingston.'' But the House was still reeling through the frenzied day as the fateful vote on the presidency approached and the notion of resignation licked about the capital city like a flame in a forest. ||||| It has gotten to the point where drastic action may be necessary. You know those movies about Ebola virus outbreaks, where the guys in sterile suits come in, seal off the area and completely irradiate it? They may have to do that to Washington. Just eradicate us and start from scratch. In a few, short days we have managed to make the terms ``surreal,'' ``bizarre,'' ``split-screen America,'' ``shocking,'' ``runaway train'' and ``politics of personal destruction'' useless cliches. We no longer govern here. We just roll around in the gutter wondering who's next in this sexual auto-de-fe. On Saturday morning, we had the surreal, shocking, bizarre, split-screen image of Bob Livingston, the speaker-elect, stepping down after his marital infidelities were revealed. ``We are all pawns on the chessboard,'' Livingston said, before asking the president to resign and then resigning himself. Livingston's rabid pursuit of the president, even as he hoped to hide his own dirty laundry, made him an avatar of hypocrisy in a capital rotting with hypocrisy. On Thursday night, when Livingston first confessed his sins to Republicans in hopes of keeping his hold on his post, his colleagues gave him a standing ovation. And after he made his surprise announcement Saturday, the Republicans gave him another ovation and stepped up to deliver encomiums to their lost speaker. ``One's self-esteem gets utterly crushed at times like this,'' sighed Henry Hyde, another tormenter of the president who also had to admit that he had succumbed to temptation. Tom DeLay, the jagged-edge exterminator who may next-up in the speaker roundelay, was choked up, praising the greatness of Livingston for understanding that this was ``a debate about relativism versus absolute truth.'' What could be more relative than a Republican who has hidden a lot of affairs trying to impeach a president for lying about his? Spurred by Larry Flynt's bounty for sinnuendo, the city was braced for more craziness. The Ship of Fools reached cruising speed on Friday evening, when we had the frightening scene of Republicans so crazed with hatred of the president that they were railroading through an impeachment even though the United States was at war with Iraq, even though the House chamber was mostly empty, even though Republicans were huddled in a glass house on the issue of sex and lies, and even though the White House was still pitching a tent and planning sleigh rides for a Winter Wonderland press party on Monday. (The White House was keeping the journalists quarantined outside this year, but encouraged them to bring their kids. To soak up some of that cozy family atmosphere, no doubt. Why are the Republicans so obsessed, when everyone in his right mind agrees that impeachment is an outlandishly over-the-top punishment for Clinton and a self-destructive course for the country? Because they genuinely hate the president. They think he's a dishonest, immoral, issue-stealing, selfish child of the '60s. They don't think they're going to pay a political price for this, and if they do, they don't care. It might be a great time to see a lot of combovers, but it's not a great time to see a lot of stature. The House debate was not history. It was just a more hideous version of ``The McLaughlin Group.'' While Republicans tried to draw the distinction that Clinton had perjured himself, they ignored that the president had been lured by the Starr-Jones attorney team into testifying on Monica Lewinsky. Ordinarily one would feel sorry for Livingston. But the Republicans have brought this sexual doomsday machine on themselves by focusing so single-mindedly on Clinton's sex life. The Republicans were so determined to do their high-tech lynching that they engaged in wacky role reversals. Many Republican hawks argued that Bill Clinton should not be bombing Saddam, claiming the timing was suspicious, even though they had hammered him for not bombing five weeks ago. In an incredibly unseemly display, Trent Lott, the majority leader, and former Bush national security adviser Brent Scowcroft and Bush Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger chimed in on the attack. There's too much hate here. And I hate it. ||||| The only thing certain now is uncertainty. The smart money shouts that President Clinton will never resign, and he concurs. The smart money argues that the Senate could not muster the 67 votes that would be needed to remove the wounded president from office, which would require the defection of 12 Democrats if all the Republicans stand against him. The smart money insists that someone will cut a deal to end all this. Maybe so. But the smarter money whispers, ``Remember.'' Remember that everyone in Washington, including Rep. Henry Hyde, R-Ill., chairman of the Judiciary Committee, said the House would never, ever, treat impeachment as a partisan issue. Wrong. Remember that all the pundits predicted Democratic losses in the midterm elections, and when the opposite happened, they said impeachment was dead. Twice wrong. And remember that in the New Year the nation may travel down a road it has never traveled before. One other president, Andrew Johnson of Tennessee, has been tried by the Senate, of course. But that happened in a different country _one with only 37 states, with primitive communications, with a simple economy based largely on agriculture, with only minimal commitments abroad. In the toxic politics of century's end in Washington, the inconceivable has become the commonplace. The wholly unanticipated announcement Saturday morning by Rep. Robert Livingston, R-La., that he would not serve as speaker and would resign from Congress, following his equally unanticipated disclosure on Thursday night of several extramarital affairs, only deepened the capital's profound sense of insecurity. The deadly sweep of the scythe of neo-puritanism appears unstoppable, at least for the moment, and Livingston's forthcoming resignation will increase the pressure on the president to do likewise. ``You've set before us an example,'' the leader of House Republican majority, Rep. Dick Armey of Texas, told Livingston Saturday. ``The example is that principle comes before power.'' The Democrats made the opposite point, arguing that the Livingston case showed how very wrong it was to savage people for personal pecaddillos. One transcendently important thing remains the same: Although surrounded by judicial trappings and presided over by the chief justice, trials of presidents are political processes, with power residing in the hands of elective politicians. In addition to narrow legal issues of guilt or innocence, they can weigh considerations of party, the nation's future, their own individual political well-being and almost anything else they care to weigh in reaching a verdict. The longer they took, the more numerous the call for resignation would probably be. Even before Saturday's epochal roll-calls, four of ten Americans interviewed in the latest New York Times/CBS News Poll said they thought the president should step down if he were to be indicted, despite the fact that a large majority voiced disapproval of the impeachment proceedings. What lies behind that seeming contradiction, of course, is the fear that Clinton, and the country with him, would be incapacitated. No one took Andrew Johnson very seriously after he escaped conviction by a single vote. But Clinton, a man of powerful will whose whole life has been a series of comebacks, has already embarked on an effort to show that he can do the nation's business. Richard Nixon clawed his way back to respectability after leaving the White House when no one thought he could; Clinton intends to re-establish his authority while still in office. He has one great advantage: Two-thirds of the American public continues to voice its approval of his political stewardship, whatever it thinks of him as a man. The president will press hard, despite his much-reduced leverage, for a deal on censure. Indeed, in as fine a piece of political irony as one could ask for, he has already sought to enlist former Sen. Bob Dole, the Republican he defeated in 1996, as an emissary to the Senate majority. The numbers are not unpromising: with the help of six Republicans, the 45 Democrats could end the trial at any time and pass a censure resolution that the House would surely take up. There are enough Republican moderates and sometime party-buckers to make that a plausible target. But the Republican leader in the Senate, Trent Lott of Mississippi, who has made his unwillingness to take the president's word plainly evident in recent days, is determined to fight such a trial-aborting arrangement. It is clear that Clinton's reputation has been stained forever, no matter what the Senate does. The spot will not out. History will remember this man who so coveted a glowing legacy not as an impresario of economic growth, not as the Moses who pointed the way to the 21st century, but as the second president ever to be impeached, if not as the first to be ousted. That harsh word, ``impeachment,'' will cling to his name as surely as ``Teapot Dome'' clings to Harding's and ``Depression'' to Hoover's. But he is not alone in having suffered grievous injury in the political avalanche that was shaken loose by the disclosure of Clinton's sexual relationship with a former White House intern, Monica Lewinsky. The Republicans' public support has shriveled to 40 percent in the new Times/CBS News poll, its lowest level in 14 years, and it could go lower once the fact of impeachment sinks in. Journalists are seen by many as jackals, indifferent to whatever personal suffering or national angst they may cause as long as they get the story, and none too concerned about accuracy. In fact, the whole political culture of the 1990s, with its criminalization of political conduct and its seeming indifference to important national and international issues, has fallen into disrepute with ordinary Americans. The last week seemed to crystallize the long-term decline in political civility. Republicans called Clinton a liar, even as he was committing American pilots to the skies over Iraq, and Democrats accused their rivals of conducting a political lynching or a political coup d'etat. Bipartisanship may have been the biggest victim of all. Party lines on Saturday's rolls calls held as firm as leg irons. Almost all of the Republicans who opposed impeachment did so not exclusively on legal principle but at least partly because of special political circumstances _ the Democratic majority in Rep. Constance Morella's district in the Maryland suburbs of Washington, for example, and the gratitude of Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., for Clinton's peacemaking in Ireland. It is hard to see who has emerged from it with reputation enhanced, except perhaps Hillary Rodham Clinton, staunch in the face of deception. If some of the threats and dire predictions uttered by House Democrats in recent days are to be taken at face value, the nation is entering upon an Era of Bad Feelings, the polar opposite of a second Era of Good Feelings, similar to that of the 1820s, that Clinton had hoped to preside over. Rep. Tom Sawyer, D-Ohio, compared Clinton on Friday to Sir Thomas More, executed for treason in 1535 because of his religious beliefs. He quoted More's words as an admonition for today: ``What you have hunted me for is not my actions but for the thoughts of my heart. It is a long road you have opened. God help the statesmen who walk your road.'' But amidst all the loose talk about permanent damage to this institution or that, remember: Things change with startling speed in modern American politics, and the institutions of American government have proved extraordinarily resilient. President Nixon, it was almost universally agreed in 1974, had weakened the American presidency for many decades to come. Nobody said that after eight years under Ronald Reagan, and that was only 15 years later.

House Speaker-elect Robert L. Livingston was forced to admit to his Republican colleagues his past adultery. This was forced by an investigation by Larry Flynt. When Livingston called for Clinton to quit, House Democrats yelled, "You resign"! Stunningly, he did. TV commentators were caught off guard. Livingston put pressure on Clinton to follow his example. The House moved to impeach Clinton and called on the Senate to try him. Livingston's downfall was said to show a breakdown in legislative civility. Those who want impeachment were called radicals and fanatics. Livingston's pursuit of Clinton was characterized as "rabid", showing his own hypocrisy.

Rep. Bob Livingston, who confessed to his colleagues Thursday night that he had had adulterous affairs, stunned the House chamber Saturday morning by saying in the impeachment debate on President Clinton that he would not serve as speaker and would quit Congress in six months. He urged the president to follow his example and quit, too. But at the White House, where calls for Clinton's resignation are derided as a Republican strategy, the president sent a spokesman into the driveway to urge Livingston to reconsider his resignation. Livingston stood in the well of the House he has served for two decades and called on Clinton to resign his office rather than force a trial in the Senate, drawing boos from his colleagues and cat-calls that he should quit instead. He then did just that. ``I must set the example that I hope President Clinton will follow,'' Livingston announced to a shocked and silent chamber in an act that left the Republican Party in total chaos just hours before the vote to impeach Clinton. The decision also left the party leaderless on the eve of the opening of the 106th Congress, when Republicans must govern with one of the narrowest majorities in history. Several Republicans, including Rep. Tom DeLay of Texas, the majority whip, somberly welcomed the news, suggesting it relieved them of an excruciating embarrassment. In lauding Livingston's move, DeLay said, ``He understood what this debate was all about _ it's about honor and decency and integrity and the truth, everything we honor in this country.'' But Democrats said they were aghast, and many _ including Clinton _ called on Livingston to reconsider his decision. ``Mr. Livingston's resignation was wrong,'' declared Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y. ``It is a surrender to a developing sexual McCarthyism. Are we going to have a new test if someone wants to run for public office _ are you now or have you ever been an adulterer?'' He called on the country to distinguish between sins and crimes. White House press secretary Joe Lockhart said Clinton was ``disappointed'' at the news of Livingston's plans and wished that he would reconsider. Lockhart said the president ``firmly believes that the politics of personal destruction in this town and this country has to come to an end.'' He reaffirmed that Clinton would not resign, saying: ``The president is going to do what's in the best interest of the country. It would be wrong to give in to this insidious politics of personal destruction.'' Livingston's announced resignation was all the more stunning for its disclosure in a process that could result in the president's removal from office. The speaker is second in line to the presidency, after the vice president. Newt Gingrich, the outgoing speaker, who was driven from the post after Republicans lost five seats in the November election, technically remains speaker until Jan. 6, when Livingston's election was to be ratified by the new Congress. But Gingrich has removed himself from the daily operations of the House at this extraordinary session and has begun to dismantle his office. Livingston's decision was said to be driven in part by the anger of a group of about a dozen conservatives in his party who were disillusioned that he had withheld news of his affairs from them. They had threatened to withhold their votes for him in the election in January that would formally make him speaker. He was also concerned about the pain caused to his family by further disclosures, some members said. They added that, not lost on many in his party, was the example he would set for the president by offering to resign his post now. DeLay, No. 3 in the House Republican leadership, is expected to fill the power vacuum at least temporarily, in deed if not in title, while the party regroups to find a new speaker. Many members quickly rallied around Rep. Dennis Hastert of Illinois. Hastert, one of DeLay's deputy whips who is well respected among his colleagues, had been promoted as a candidate for majority leader last month, but never mounted a campaign. Rep. Dick Armey of Texas only precariously held on to his majority-leader post last month and was not considered a likely candidate for speaker. He is expected to manage the reorganization, which Republican leaders have set for Jan. 4. Livingston met privately with his closest advisers Friday as the impeachment debate unfolded. Some of his colleagues believed he had made a mistake in disclosing Thursday night _ just as the House was moving into the divisive debate over impeachment _ that he had ``on occasion strayed from my marriage.'' He told Republican leaders late Thursday afternoon that Hustler magazine was going to expose his affairs early next year. Some leaders urged him to keep quiet, but his wife, Bonnie, encouraged him to tell his colleagues immediately, despite the momentous vote that was nearing on the floor. At that point Thursday night, Roll Call, a newspaper on Capitol Hill, reported on its Web site that Livingston was going to admit to the affairs and was going to offer to resign. In a closed-door meeting with his fellow Republicans, he did admit to the affairs but made no offer to step down, receiving three standing ovations instead. Thursday night, Livingston stated that he would ``not be intimidated by these efforts'' to exploit his past. But Friday he removed himself from public action and that night drew his closest advisers into his confidence. His aides said Saturday that they had no clue what was he was contemplating, and few other members were aware of his plans. Asked if he had any advance word, Rep. J.C. Watts of Oklahoma, a newly elected member of the Republican leadership, said: ``I had no idea.'' Asked if there had been internal party pressure on Livingston to resign, Rep. Harold Rogers, R-Ky., said: ``I didn't know about it if there was,'' but added, ``There were some members who were critical of it.'' As the leaders tried Saturday to hold the party together on and off the House floor, most Republicans stuck to their prepared scripts on the floor in favor of impeaching the president. But some began expressing their anguish. Rep. Henry Hyde, R-Ill., who admitted to his own adulterous affair earlier this year, said after Livingston's resignation: ``Those of us who are sinners must feel wretched today. Something is going on repeatedly that has to be stopped, and that is a confusion between private acts of infidelity and public acts.'' To much applause, Hyde declared: ``Congress has no business intruding into private acts.'' Republicans, indeed Livingston himself, had made this same distinction between Clinton's sexual indiscretions and Livingston's, saying that Clinton lied about his private acts and therefore abused the legal system and his powers. As Livingston said in his statement Thursday: ``These indiscretions were not with employees on my staff and I have never been asked to testify under oath about them.'' Democrats hoped that Livingston's seemingly drastic action would wake up the House to how poisoned the atmosphere had become and might prompt Republicans to reconsider the impeachment of Clinton. Rep. Paul Kanjorski, D-Pa., said, ``We are now starting to offer up sacrificial lambs to whatever terrible disease this is.'' In a stirring speech applauded even by some Republicans, Rep. Dick Gephardt of Missouri, the Democratic leader, praised Livingston as a ``worthy, good and honorable man'' and said his resignation was a grave mistake. ``It's a terrible capitulation to the negative political forces that are consuming our political system and our country,'' Gephardt said, adding that the events of the last few days showed ``life imitates farce.'' ``We need to stop destroying imperfect people at an unattainable altar of public morality,'' he said, urging his colleagues to ``step back from the abyss'' and reject resignation, impeachment and ``vicious self-righteousness.'' ||||| The New York Times said in an editorial for Sunday, Dec. 20: The Republicans' drive for a partisan impeachment based soley on party-line voting power rather than any sense of proportion produced an unexpected sideshow in the resignation of Rep. Bob Livingston from his role as future speaker of the House. Analysts on both sides of the struggle over President Clinton's future will point to Livingston's downfall as evidence of a generalized breakdown in legislative civility on Capitol Hill. Democrats will see a moral symmetry, depicting Livingston as a victim of the sexual puritanism he was wielding against Clinton. But the one thing that no one should fall for is Livingston's invitation to use his resignation as a model for resolving the crisis at the White House. Livingston's statement rocked Congress, but it should not shake the foundations of the somber constitutional process now underway. By lying under oath, Clinton made it necessary for the House to consider impeachment. The evidence convinced most Americans that the president should be censured, but not removed from office. Livingston allowed GOP partisans to block censure in the House. The result is that after Saturday's expected impeachment vote, after Livingston's unexpected announcement, the mission of the Senate remains the same. It must resist those Republicans who want to short-circuit the constitutional process with demands for resignation, and it must use the upcoming Senate trial as a forum for finding a censure commensurate with the president's personal dishonesty and offenses against the law. These require stern punishment but not removal from office. In undertaking this work, the Senate must also reassure the American people that a decisive wisdom at the core of our messy-looking political system has not melted down. In such distempered times, this is a shining opportunity for the Senate. Its members pride themselves on being the Republic's fire wall against presidential excess and the popular or partisan passions that sometimes seize the House of Representatives. No one can predict whether Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott will rise to the defining challenge of his career or whether he will surrender to the mean streak he acquired during 16 grumpy years as a minority member of the House. We would like to see Lott reach for a starring role in history. Lott's growling response to questions about censure is not encouraging. He may be right that the Constitution requires him to convene a trial, but nothing in that document prevents him from speedily guiding the Senate toward censure negotiations. Indeed, a simple majority vote _ 45 Democrats plus 6 cooperating Republicans _ can end the Senate trial at any time, clearing the way for introduction of the kind of censure resolution suggested by former Sen. Bob Dole. In an intriguing report on NBC, Tim Russert described discussions among a bipartisan group of senators about a censure that would involve some form of presidential confession, a fine and a joint congressional request that Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr not prosecute Clinton in the courts. If Lott refuses to allow a bipartisan search for censure, the burden will fall upon respected members like Joseph Lieberman on the Democratic side and Orrin Hatch for the Republicans. Through cooperation, they can guide the Senate toward a punishment that fixes Clinton in history as a president who lied under oath, but avoids the taint of partisan vengeance associated with the House impeachment vote. The Senate's historic reputation for prudence requires it to find appropriate punishment for a personally weak president who has damaged the rule of law, but not threatened the stability of the government. ||||| ``We are here to debate impeachment and should not be distracted from that,'' the minority whip, Rep. David Bonior, Democrat of Michigan, said during Saturday's House debate, in what leaped out as an impossible goal. It would have taken a kaleidoscopic television screen to capture the constantly shifting images competing for center stage: impeachment, Iraq, the resignation of Rep. Robert Livingston, the response from the White House. The months leading up to the impeachment of President Clinton had become a series of televised anticlimaxes, but the hours before the vote made up for that lack of drama. There were hardly enough shorthand terms or split screens to cover the activity. All the networks and cable channels carried the moment that unexpectedly set the tone, as Livingston, a Louisiana Republican, announced during the debate that he would not become House speaker. The commentators had been set to carry the congressional ratification of the inevitable vote, but suddenly the most plugged-in reporters were caught off guard. As Tim Russert said to Tom Brokaw on NBC, ``Tom, knock us all over.'' In the echo chamber that television news so often becomes, the shared mantra had been weightier in early morning. ``For only the second time in American history'' a president would be impeached, went the standard line. Yet despite all the pundits speculating and politicians telegraphing every move, no one had hinted at the Livingston resignation. The announcement was, as Brokaw put it, at least partly ``a political ploy,'' and the repercussions were immediate. Reporters began gathering word from Capitol Hill about candidates for the speaker's job, and the conversation moved to the next stage of the political tug of war. The Republicans used Livingston's resignation to say that the president should resign, too; the Democrats immediately countered with the idea that the president would stay and that Livingston should as well. That led to one of the less-expected split screens of the day, and it was not a bad choice. While Congress was debating, CNN showed anti-aircraft fire in Baghdad in one box. In the other, Joe Lockhart, Clinton's press secretary, stood in the White House driveway telling reporters that the president would like Livingston to reconsider his decision. There was more stateliness in the House than television usually offers, and one reason was purely visual. ``Keep in mind that we do not control the picture,'' Dan Rather said on CBS, explaining that the television cameras in Congress are provided by the House, not the individual networks. There was no way to roam and zoom in for reaction shots, as at a political convention. But the sense of history and decorum didn't last long at CBS. At noon, before the vote, CBS went to a football game, becoming the only network to leave the news coverage. CBS' corporate decision to try to have it both ways meant that Rather would break in with updates from Washington. ``I'll see you very soon,'' he said as he signed off the complete coverage, looking like a trouper. But he was in a position no news anchor should have been in on this day. He later announced impeachment votes on a split screen with the football game in progress in the upper part of the screen. On the other networks and cable channels, the vote itself literally happened in the background. As TV screens toted up the numbers of the electronically-cast vote, members of Congress milled around and chatted on the floor. Even the brief Democratic walkout after a motion to consider censure was defeated was thoroughly forecast. As the Democrats straggled down the steps of Congress, it looked curiously undramatic on television, though it probably made a better still photograph once they were all in place. And while the votes were in progress, the jockeying for the speaker's job heated up. ``We already have a presumptive leader,'' Gwen Ifill of NBC News said in midafternoon, naming Rep. Dennis Hassert, R-Ill., who had also been cited by the other networks as a likely candidate. If the political and military action had not intruded, it might have been more obvious that the debate on the House floor sent a message about vast divisions in politics and morality, signaling how deep a cultural fissure this crisis has opened. The impeachment, said Rep. Tom DeLay, R-Texas, was ``a debate about relativism vs. absolute truth.'' Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., contended that Congress had lost the ``distinction between sins and crimes,'' and argued against the ``sexual McCarthyism'' that has become prominent. And against the backdrop of the revelations of adultery that led to Livingston's resignation, Rep. Dick Gephardt, the minority leader, declared ``the politics of personal destruction has to end.'' But as all the jabbering and political posturing continued, as reporters raced to cover the president's statement about the impeachment and the latest briefings from the Pentagon, there was little time to focus on the profound cultural message beneath those rhetorical flourishes. ||||| Bob Livingston, the incoming speaker of the House, took no public role Friday as the debate unfolded on whether to impeach President Clinton. His previous 24 hours had been his most visible in the month since his party nominated him as speaker and perhaps the most excruciating in his public career: He spent most of the day in a chaotic procedural wrangle over the terms of Friday's debate; he ended it by telling his Republican colleagues that he had had extramarital affairs during his 20-year tenure in Congress. His disclosure followed an investigation by Larry Flynt, publisher of Hustler, the sex magazine, who said Friday at a news conference in Beverly Hills, Calif., that his publication had learned that Livingston had had adulterous affairs during the last 10 years. Flynt said earlier this year that he wanted to expose the ``hypocrisy'' of those in Washington who are investigating Clinton and in October offered $1 million to anyone who could prove they had had affairs with members of Congress. He said Friday that this larger investigation, to be published perhaps as soon as January, would reveal what he described as indiscretions of several other Republicans. He said he had no connection with the White House but that he had hired an investigative firm based in Washington and made up of former employees of the FBI and the CIA. He would not confirm whether the firm is Terry Lenzner's Investigative Group Inc., which has done work for the president's private lawyers. Livingston was unavailable to reporters Friday. He spent some time Friday morning sprawled in a chair in the back of the House chamber, listening to the debate over whether to impeach Clinton for lying about his own sexual indiscretions. Several colleagues knelt at Livingston's knee, whispered to him and patted him on the back. He spent most of the day in a private office off the chamber, avoiding the gauntlet of reporters who lay in wait for him between the House and his regular office across the street. The only word out of his aides was that the Navy had awarded contracts worth millions of dollars for ships to be built in his Louisiana district at the Avondale Shipyards. During Friday's debate, a handful of Democrats made only oblique allusions to human failures. For example, Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., said: ``Let he that has no sin cast the first stone. Who, who among us has not sinned?'' But no one said that Livingston's disclosure or the mild Democratic attempts to exploit it would influence their votes on impeachment. Rather, on the House floor and in hallway chitchat, Livingston's conduct seemed to be the last thing that either Republicans or Democrats wanted to talk about. ``Bob Livingston is a first-rate human being,'' said Rep. David Obey, D-Wis., who has worked closely and sparred with Livingston on the Appropriations Committee, in an interview. ``I will repeat what the nuns taught me at St. James a long time ago: We would all be a hell of a lot better off looking after our own souls rather than trying to evaluate somebody else's. None of us have any business even having an opinion on it.'' Even conservative Republicans seemed ready to overlook the disclosure. ``We're not going to say, `Bob, you can't be speaker because you violated your vows with your wife,''' said Rep. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C. Like many, including Livingston, Graham distinguished Livingston's conduct from Clinton's by saying that the president had ``trampled'' on the legal system whereas Livingston's behavior was strictly private. Despite Flynt's claims, many Republicans blamed the Clinton administration for smearing Livingston, although they offered no evidence. ``This isn't just happening on its own,'' said Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R- Calif. ||||| House Speaker-elect Robert L. Livingston presented a fresh note of shock to the impeachment debate against President Clinton on Thursday night as the Republican leader was forced to admit to his Republican colleagues that he had carried on adulterous affairs in his past. ``It has suddenly come to my attention that there are individuals working together with the media who are investigating my personal background in an effort to find indiscretions which may be exploitable against me and my party on the eve of the upcoming historic vote on impeachment,'' Livingston declared in a statement after appearing before a shocked House Republican conference to head off the disclosure as it surfaced in news reports. After hearing his admissions in a closed session, Livingston's colleagues gave him a standing ovation of support and said the question of his resigning had never arisen. ``My fate is in your hands,'' Livingston told the Republicans, according to lawmakers who were present. The debate over the president's fate would go forward, Republicans later insisted, drawing distinctions between the speaker-elect's revelations and the sex-and-mendacity scandal that has put Clinton on the brink of impeachment. The president is charged in an impeachment resolution with perjury and abuse of power in his attempt to hide sexual indiscretions. Democrats offered no immediate comment, but Republicans were braced to hear Livingston's admissions alluded to in the debate Friday by Democrats who have decried the investigation of the president as basically a partisan and unfair rummaging through his sex life. Livingston, saying he had sought spiritual counseling and had received the forgiveness of his family, noted he had several times told reporters during his campaign to become speaker that ``I was running for speaker, not sainthood.'' He added, ``There was a reason for those words.'' ``During my 33-year marriage to my wife, Bonnie, I have on occasion strayed from my marriage, and doing so nearly cost me my marriage and family,'' Livingston said in his brief prepared statement. But he attempted to draw a contrast with the allegations against the president, asserting: ``I want to assure everyone that these indiscretions were not with employees on my staff and I have never been asked to testify under oath about them.'' The disclosure of the speaker-elect's marital infidelities, disclosed in ``Rollcall,'' a Capitol Hill newspaper, sent a new jolt of uncertainty among lawmakers as they prepared for the momentous debate over the president's admitted misbehavior in office and whether he should be impeached and tried by the Senate. Rep. Henry Hyde, the Republican chairman of the House Judiciary Committee who is to bring the impeachment charges against the president, previously was cited by a magazine for an extra-marital affair in his past. Then, as on Thursday night, Republicans voiced suspicions that Democratic defenders of the president instigated media investigations in an effort to embarrass the Clinton's principal accusers. But no proof was offered as Republicans left their conference, facing the uncertainties of a debate that already promised to be bare-knuckled in its partisanship. Livingston left the conference surrounded by Capitol police, not taking questions from waiting reporters. His chief leadership aides immediately rallied in support. ``Some who would rather not struggle with this constitutional question continue to try to twist the debate into an unseemly investigation of private lives,'' said Rep. Dick Armey, the Republican majority leader. In its report on the internet Thursday night, Rollcall did not disclose its source but made an oblique reference to Hustler, the sex magazine. Larry Flint, publisher of Hustler, earlier this year advertised an offer of a $1 million bounty for information about e of members of Congress guilty of sexual indiscretions. ``It breaks your heart because we're all subject to human frailties,'' said Asa Hutchinson, R-Ark., as he left the conference. ``This is not a comfortable circumstance for anyone,'' he added, insisting the president and the speaker-elect presented two separate issues. ``We've got a duty to do under the Constitution.'' ||||| In the end, the will of the people meant nothing. Bob Livingston couldn't have been clearer about that. His mind and the minds of his followers were closed. Even as the bombing continued in Iraq and Americans from coast to coast were clamoring for an alternative to impeachment, even as his own adulterous past was being flushed out in the grotesque invasions of privacy that inevitably followed the relentlessly prurient pursuit of the president, even as the country began to contemplate the destructive effects of a lengthy and bitter Senate trial, the speaker-designate arrogantly and stupidly proclaimed: ``Let us disregard the outside influences.'' The radicals on the Hill would hear nothing but the echoes of their own fanaticism. Impeach! Impeach! And that continued even after the stunning announcement Saturday morning that Livingston would quit the House. Dismayed by the partisan stampede, Dick Gephardt, the Democratic leader, warned during the impeachment debate on Friday: ``In your effort to uphold the Constitution, you are trampling the Constitution.'' David Bonior, the Democratic whip, said: ``This is wrong. It is unfair. It is unjust. At a time when events in the world and the challenges at home demand that we stand united, censure is the one solution that can bring us together. To my colleagues across the aisle, I say let go of your obsession. Listen to the American people.'' But the voices of reason would not be heard. Livingston and his right-wing colleagues, the Tom DeLays, the Henry Hydes, the Bob Barrs, were on a mission of destruction and would not be denied. Ordinary Americans could cry out all they wanted. They could protest and demonstrate, send faxes and E-mails. It didn't matter. The right was on the march and democracy was on the run. Rep. Thomas Barrett, a Democrat from Wisconsin, tried to remind his Republican colleagues that the Constitution ``does not allow you to remove a president from office because you can't stand him.'' He was, of course, ignored. The Republicans will pay a huge price for their brazen, utterly partisan attempt to drag a president from the White House in defiance of the will of the people. The party's contempt for the voters was arrogantly but quite adequately summed up by Alan Simpson, the former senator from Wyoming, who said: ``The attention span of Americans is which movie is coming out next month and whether the quarterly report on their stock will change.'' If the voters are the dopes that Mr. Simpson thinks they are, then come 2000 everyone will have forgotten there was an impeachment crisis. But Rep. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., was probably closer to the truth when he said, ``I warn my colleagues that you will reap the bitter harvest of the unfair partisan seeds you sow today.'' One of the many strange events of the past couple of weeks was the way in which virtually all of the previously undecided Republicans, the so-called moderates, surrendered their independence and lined up like lackeys to follow the right wing's lead. All proclaimed loudly that they were voting on principle, but in fact it was an exercise in mass cowardice, exemplified by Rep. John McHugh of upstate New York. McHugh announced on Tuesday that he would vote for impeachment. But if his decision was based on principle, he had an odd way of expressing it. The Washington Post said McHugh appeared to have no stomach for a Senate conviction or removal of the president from office. Of his colleagues in the Senate, McHugh said, ``I, for one, would accept, even welcome, their mercy.'' In other words, let the Senate do the heavy constitutional lifting. McHugh may have wished out loud for mercy, but he clearly was too frightened of the right-wingers in the House to cast a compassionate vote himself. The GOP can no longer conceal that it is a party of extremists, of right-wing absolutists, a party out of step with the political and cultural orientation of most Americans. Bob Livingston may be leaving, but his arrogant comment can still serve as his party's slogan. ``Let us disregard the outside influences.'' Let us disregard the people. ||||| Rejecting a last-minute Democratic attempt to soften its action to censure, the House of Representatives moved to impeach President William Jefferson Clinton for perjury on Saturday and to call on the Senate to try him, convict him and remove him from office. But even before the vote, Republicans pressed another line of attack, demanding Clinton's resignation. Rep. Robert Livingston, nominated for speaker last month by his party, startled the House when he announced he would not run for speaker and would resign from the House after 21 years of service. He urged the president to ``heal the wounds that you have created. You, sir, may resign your post.'' Angry Democrats booed and shouted, ``You resign!'' Livingston continued, ``I can only challenge you in such fashion if I am willing to heed my own words.'' Apologizing again for extramarital affairs revealed two days ago, he said, ``I believe I had it in me to do a fine job. But I cannot do that job or be the kind of leader that I would like to be under current circumstances.'' Then he bolted from the House chamber, nearly knocking reporters and members down. (The House voted 228-206 to approve the first article of impeachment, accusing Clinton of committing perjury before a federal grand jury. The vote was announced at 1:24 p.m. EST, leaving the 42nd president to face trial in the Senate on whether he should be removed from office.) Clinton rejected the advice immediately. His spokesman, Joe Lockhart, said, ``The president has no intention of resigning.'' By calling on Livingston to reconsider, the president argued more broadly against resignation under fire. Perhaps speaking to both cases, Lockhart said, ``It would be wrong to give in to this insidious politics of personal destruction.'' Unless Clinton changes course, this would be only the second impeachment of a president in the 209-year history of the Republic, and the first since Andrew Johnson was acquitted in 1868. Sen. Trent Lott of Mississippi, the majority leader, has insisted that no bargaining over censure can prevent it from starting. But the Senate could halt a trial later as part of a deal. Considering the degree of partisanship displayed Saturday, assembling the two-thirds majority required under the Constitution for conviction is most unlikely. Sixty-seven votes would be required, and there are only 55 Republicans in the Senate, along with 45 Democrats. Four articles of impeachment before the House charged Clinton with perjury in lying about his affair with Monica Lewinsky to a federal grand jury here on Aug. 17. He was also charged with perjury in the Paula Jones sexual harassment suit, obstruction of justice and abuse of power. The Republican argument, over and over, was that Clinton had lied in denying having sexual relations with Ms. Lewinsky. Rep. Dick Armey of Texas, the majority leader, said, ``A nation of laws cannot be ruled by a person who breaks the law.'' Rep. Nancy Johnson of Connecticut said: ``There can be no justice without the truth. That is just profoundly so, and that is why perjury matters.'' Rep. Gerald Kleczka of Wisconsin began the Democrats' arguments by saying, ``What the president did was wrong, both personally and morally, but his acts did not threaten our democracy and thus do not rise to the level of impeachable offenses as defined by our founding fathers in our Constitution.'' Rep. Charles Schumer, New York's senator-elect, said: ``The rule of law requires that the punishment fit the crime. Allow us to vote for censure.'' Saturday's votes were the penultimate step in the most serious conflict between Congress and a president since Richard M. Nixon resigned in the face of impeachment and certain conviction on Aug. 9, 1974. But while that case spun out from a 1972 break-in at Democratic headquarters in the Watergate complex, this one began with a murky land deal in Arkansas in 1978. Through the efforts of Kenneth Starr, the independent counsel under the law enacted in the wake of Watergate, the investigation spread to examine Clinton's affair with a White House intern. All year it has preoccupied the capital despite an immense disconnect with public opinion; since the scandal became public in January, polls have shown that the public opposed impeachment and wanted the inquiry brought to an end. Even on Friday night, after a 13-hour debate, a CBS News Poll of 548 people showed that only 38 percent wanted their representative to vote for impeachment; 58 percent wanted a no vote. The conflict now enters uncharted seas, since the Nixon resignation cut the matter short and the Johnson trial occurred in a different America, with no nuclear weapons or cable television or public opinion polls. But the capital was still rife with confident speculation. Some guessed, or hoped, that the results of the recent poll, which showed increases in support for resignation as a way to spare the nation a trial in which Ms. Lewinsky and Linda Tripp would be star witnesses, would weaken Clinton's resolve. Others thought the Republicans, seeing dismal numbers in polls about their party's standing in the United States, would be the first to blink. With a majority in the Senate, they have the power to end a trial at any time after the Senate receives notice of impeachment on the day it convenes, Jan. 6, or the next day. But while Clinton has focused on the polls, and the CBS News survey showed that 64 percent still approve of his handling of his job as president, resignation could almost immediately subject him to criminal prosecution. And Republicans have steadfastly ignored the polls all year, and confronted them directly on Saturday. Representative J.C. Watts of Oklahoma, newly elected as chairman of the Republican caucus, said: ``What's popular isn't always right. You say polls are against this. Polls measure changing feelings, not steadfast principle. Polls would have rejected the Ten Commandments. Polls would have embraced slavery and ridiculed women's rights. ``You say we must draw this to a close. I say we must draw a line between right and wrong, not with a tiny fine line of an executive fountain pen, but with the big fat lead of a No. 2 pencil. And we must do it so every kid in America can see it. The point is not whether the president can prevail, but whether truth can prevail.'' Last weekend, when the Judiciary Committee recommended the four articles of impeachment, Clinton's side still hoped to prevail with the help of 20 to 30 Republican moderates who were uncommitted. As the week wore on, almost all of them broke against the president. One who did not, Rep. Christopher Shays of Connecticut, said Saturday: ``After Judge Starr's report to Congress in September, and his presentation to the Judiciary Committee in November, I concluded that impeachable offenses were not proven, and that the proven offenses were not impeachable. ``But the president's continued failure to come to grips with his actions, the sincerity and arguments of members of the Judiciary Committee from both sides of the aisle, the change of heart and conviction by members on my side of the aisle who originally opposed impeachment and who now support it, and the strong and powerful opinion of so many of my constituents who oppose my position and who wanted the president impeached caused me to rethink my position.'' He added: ``Yesterday morning, before I visited with the president, I concluded that my original position was the correct one, for me. I believe that the impeachable offenses have not been proven, and that the proven offenses are not impeachable.'' But Rep. Tom DeLay of Texas, who has led the Republican effort to force Clinton from office, dismissed his and other arguments as moral relativism. He began by praising Livingston: ``There is no greater American in my mind, at least today, than Bob Livingston, because he understood what this debate was all about. It was about honor and decency and integrity and the truth; everything that we honor in this country. It was also a debate about relativism vs. absolute truth.'' He continued, ``The president's defenders have said that the president is morally reprehensible, that he is reckless, that he has violated the trust of the American people, lessened their esteem for the office of president and dishonored the office which they have entrusted him, and that _ but that doesn't rise to the level of impeachment.'' Rep. Jose Serrano of New York said, ``My constituents don't hate Bill Clinton; they love him and they're praying for him right at this very moment. You may have the votes today to impeach him, but you don't have the American people. And let me tell you something, I grew up in the public housing projects of the South Bronx. I can see a bunch of bullies when I see them. The bullies get theirs, and you're going to get yours, too. Rep. Henry Hyde of Illinois, the Judiciary Committee chairman who brought the charges to the House floor, said the Congress and the American people needed to distinguish between private acts of infidelity and public acts by public officials. In Clinton's case, he said, the House was dealing with ``a serial violator of the oath who is the chief law-enforcement officer.'' He said that the Senate could be ``innovative and creative'' in deciding how best to punish Clinton, but that the House was bound by the Constitution to move ahead with articles of impeachment. ``Justice is so important to the most humble among us,'' Hyde said. ``Equal justice under the law _ that's what we're fighting for.'' Democrats, reading from the same Constitution, voiced diametrically opposite conclusions, and attacked the fairness of the proceedings that culminated Saturday. ``We're losing track of distinction between sins and crimes,'' said Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y. ``We're lowering the standards of impeachment. What the president has done is not a great and dangerous offense to the republic.'' Democrats also criticized Republicans for impeaching Clinton at the very moment that U.S. troops waged war against Iraq. ``Six days before Christmas our troops are in battle, and a lame-duck Congress is rushing to overthrow the commander in chief,'' said Rep. David Bonior of Michigan, the second-ranking House Democrat. The ghosts of Watergate hung over the House chamber. One Republican cited the parallels between the charges the House Judiciary Committee brought against Nixon 25 years ago, and the counts that the same committee brought to the House floor for affirmation on Saturday. ``Nixon cheated. He cheated the electoral system,'' said Rep. Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican on the Judiciary Committee. And now, Graham said, the full House is voting to impeach Clinton ``because we believe he committed crimes that result in cheating our judicial system.'' But most of the day's debate was firmly rooted in Clinton's effort to conceal his sexual affair with Monica Lewinsky. Rep. Bob Barr, a Georgia Republican on the Judiciary Committee who is one of Clinton's fiercest critics, held up copies of the U.S. Criminal Code, the Judiciary Committee's report on the impeachment inquiry and, finally, the Constitution, in defending his decision to impeach the president. ``Today, we rely on the three pillars of our society: the law itself, evidence and the Constitution,'' said Barr. ``There is no joy in upholding the law,'' Watts said. ``If we cannot see lawlessness, our children cannot recognize it. How can we tell our children honesty is the best policy when we don't demand it as a policy?'' But Democrats assailed the very premise on which the Republican majority built its impeachment case against Clinton. Rep. John Conyers Jr. of Michigan, the ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, assailed the four articles of impeachment, count by count, as unfounded by evidence and failing to rise to impeachment. He saved his most savage scorn for the final count, abuse of power. ``The majority has simply tried to dress up the perjury counts in the Watergate abuse-of-power language,'' Conyers said. ||||| The raw passions were such that the House Democrats did not to hesitate to bellow ``You resign! You resign!'' at Speaker-elect Robert Livingston when he called from the House floor for President Clinton to quit the White House in the face of certain impeachment. Shockingly, stunningly, Livingston did just that. He quit in one breathtaking utterance, as if flicking a trump card onto the heap of impeachment angst festering before his eyes in the debating chamber. In his one and only strategem in leading his fellow House Republicans, Livingston's decision struck Congress like a verbal bomb. Stunned Democrats saw their fury vaporized upon the instant. They had to stand, almost staggering to their feet, to join the Republicans in a prolonged, emotional ovation for Livingston and his undeniable self-sacrifice. As they stood, the Democrats sensed Livingston had most suddenly closed a trap on the president and his defenders. For, with the impeachment issue set to move to the Senate, Livingston, whose own marital indiscretions were now before the public to his obvious misery, chose to show how the question of a political leader's resignation was very much in play in this tumult-tossed city. ``I must set the example that I hope President Clinton will follow,'' Livingston declared, flabbergasting all attending the impeachment debate and the nation watching beyond. Livingston walked off the floor like the sheriff in some bullet-pocked political ``High Noon,'' discarding the leadership badge he had wrested from the earlier speaker-casualty, Newt Gingrich. In the corridor just beyond, a doorman shouted to a police officer: ``Livingston just resigned!'' ``What? What?'' came the reply from the officer, who obviously thought the momentous announcement would be about Clinton's impeachment, not Livingston's political self-immolation. Just so, the Democrats, already deep into bone-raw exhaustion after their long fight to save the president, grasped for bearings. ``It is a surrender to a developing sexual McCarthyism!'' declared Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., a leading presidential defender trying to rally Democrats around the argument that Livingston should not resign any more than President Clinton should quit under fire. But the Republicans were surging to the fore on the strength of Livingston's announcement, fighting tears as they rose to salute him as the ultimate political role model in the grueling impeachment process as it roared into the final minutes of debate. ``For some it is no longer good enough to make a mistake, to confirm that mistake and take the consequences of that mistake,'' said Tom DeLay, the Republican whip, his hands shaking, his eyes tearing as he addressed the House and sought to drive the example of Livingston all the way down Pennsylvania Avenue. ``He understood what this debate was all about _ honor, duty, integrity and the truth,'' said DeLay arguing that in one swift blow, Livingston had demonstrated himself to have been a far better speaker than Clinton has been a president. With something of the political elan the president showed in initiating the Iraq attack as his own impeachment loomed, House Republicans, battered in public opinion polls, had found a rocket's red glare of their own. ``I have hurt you all deeply and beg your forgiveness,'' Livingston told the House, the nation and his family as he announced retreat. Only moments before, Democrats openly hissed the man as Livingston firmly read his own judgment upon the president: ``Sir, you have done great damage to this nation over the past year.'' Presidential resignation was in order, he continued, and then came the shouts of ``You resign! You resign!'' And as Livingston closed the circle on his career, he stunned the place into a collective breath of disbelief and somehow almost threatened to reduce the dark historic issue before the House _ the impeachment of the president _ into a matter of anticlimax. ``They must not succeed,'' David Bonior, the Democratic whip said of the Republicans as he was given the task of refocusing the day on the misdeeds of the president, not the departure of the speaker. ``We are here to debate impeachment and should not be distracted from that,'' he declared. ``The only way we can stop this vicious cycle,'' Bonior cried out from the floor, ``is if we refuse to give into it, whether it is Bill Clinton or Bob Livingston.'' But the House was still reeling through the frenzied day as the fateful vote on the presidency approached and the notion of resignation licked about the capital city like a flame in a forest. ||||| It has gotten to the point where drastic action may be necessary. You know those movies about Ebola virus outbreaks, where the guys in sterile suits come in, seal off the area and completely irradiate it? They may have to do that to Washington. Just eradicate us and start from scratch. In a few, short days we have managed to make the terms ``surreal,'' ``bizarre,'' ``split-screen America,'' ``shocking,'' ``runaway train'' and ``politics of personal destruction'' useless cliches. We no longer govern here. We just roll around in the gutter wondering who's next in this sexual auto-de-fe. On Saturday morning, we had the surreal, shocking, bizarre, split-screen image of Bob Livingston, the speaker-elect, stepping down after his marital infidelities were revealed. ``We are all pawns on the chessboard,'' Livingston said, before asking the president to resign and then resigning himself. Livingston's rabid pursuit of the president, even as he hoped to hide his own dirty laundry, made him an avatar of hypocrisy in a capital rotting with hypocrisy. On Thursday night, when Livingston first confessed his sins to Republicans in hopes of keeping his hold on his post, his colleagues gave him a standing ovation. And after he made his surprise announcement Saturday, the Republicans gave him another ovation and stepped up to deliver encomiums to their lost speaker. ``One's self-esteem gets utterly crushed at times like this,'' sighed Henry Hyde, another tormenter of the president who also had to admit that he had succumbed to temptation. Tom DeLay, the jagged-edge exterminator who may next-up in the speaker roundelay, was choked up, praising the greatness of Livingston for understanding that this was ``a debate about relativism versus absolute truth.'' What could be more relative than a Republican who has hidden a lot of affairs trying to impeach a president for lying about his? Spurred by Larry Flynt's bounty for sinnuendo, the city was braced for more craziness. The Ship of Fools reached cruising speed on Friday evening, when we had the frightening scene of Republicans so crazed with hatred of the president that they were railroading through an impeachment even though the United States was at war with Iraq, even though the House chamber was mostly empty, even though Republicans were huddled in a glass house on the issue of sex and lies, and even though the White House was still pitching a tent and planning sleigh rides for a Winter Wonderland press party on Monday. (The White House was keeping the journalists quarantined outside this year, but encouraged them to bring their kids. To soak up some of that cozy family atmosphere, no doubt. Why are the Republicans so obsessed, when everyone in his right mind agrees that impeachment is an outlandishly over-the-top punishment for Clinton and a self-destructive course for the country? Because they genuinely hate the president. They think he's a dishonest, immoral, issue-stealing, selfish child of the '60s. They don't think they're going to pay a political price for this, and if they do, they don't care. It might be a great time to see a lot of combovers, but it's not a great time to see a lot of stature. The House debate was not history. It was just a more hideous version of ``The McLaughlin Group.'' While Republicans tried to draw the distinction that Clinton had perjured himself, they ignored that the president had been lured by the Starr-Jones attorney team into testifying on Monica Lewinsky. Ordinarily one would feel sorry for Livingston. But the Republicans have brought this sexual doomsday machine on themselves by focusing so single-mindedly on Clinton's sex life. The Republicans were so determined to do their high-tech lynching that they engaged in wacky role reversals. Many Republican hawks argued that Bill Clinton should not be bombing Saddam, claiming the timing was suspicious, even though they had hammered him for not bombing five weeks ago. In an incredibly unseemly display, Trent Lott, the majority leader, and former Bush national security adviser Brent Scowcroft and Bush Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger chimed in on the attack. There's too much hate here. And I hate it. ||||| The only thing certain now is uncertainty. The smart money shouts that President Clinton will never resign, and he concurs. The smart money argues that the Senate could not muster the 67 votes that would be needed to remove the wounded president from office, which would require the defection of 12 Democrats if all the Republicans stand against him. The smart money insists that someone will cut a deal to end all this. Maybe so. But the smarter money whispers, ``Remember.'' Remember that everyone in Washington, including Rep. Henry Hyde, R-Ill., chairman of the Judiciary Committee, said the House would never, ever, treat impeachment as a partisan issue. Wrong. Remember that all the pundits predicted Democratic losses in the midterm elections, and when the opposite happened, they said impeachment was dead. Twice wrong. And remember that in the New Year the nation may travel down a road it has never traveled before. One other president, Andrew Johnson of Tennessee, has been tried by the Senate, of course. But that happened in a different country _one with only 37 states, with primitive communications, with a simple economy based largely on agriculture, with only minimal commitments abroad. In the toxic politics of century's end in Washington, the inconceivable has become the commonplace. The wholly unanticipated announcement Saturday morning by Rep. Robert Livingston, R-La., that he would not serve as speaker and would resign from Congress, following his equally unanticipated disclosure on Thursday night of several extramarital affairs, only deepened the capital's profound sense of insecurity. The deadly sweep of the scythe of neo-puritanism appears unstoppable, at least for the moment, and Livingston's forthcoming resignation will increase the pressure on the president to do likewise. ``You've set before us an example,'' the leader of House Republican majority, Rep. Dick Armey of Texas, told Livingston Saturday. ``The example is that principle comes before power.'' The Democrats made the opposite point, arguing that the Livingston case showed how very wrong it was to savage people for personal pecaddillos. One transcendently important thing remains the same: Although surrounded by judicial trappings and presided over by the chief justice, trials of presidents are political processes, with power residing in the hands of elective politicians. In addition to narrow legal issues of guilt or innocence, they can weigh considerations of party, the nation's future, their own individual political well-being and almost anything else they care to weigh in reaching a verdict. The longer they took, the more numerous the call for resignation would probably be. Even before Saturday's epochal roll-calls, four of ten Americans interviewed in the latest New York Times/CBS News Poll said they thought the president should step down if he were to be indicted, despite the fact that a large majority voiced disapproval of the impeachment proceedings. What lies behind that seeming contradiction, of course, is the fear that Clinton, and the country with him, would be incapacitated. No one took Andrew Johnson very seriously after he escaped conviction by a single vote. But Clinton, a man of powerful will whose whole life has been a series of comebacks, has already embarked on an effort to show that he can do the nation's business. Richard Nixon clawed his way back to respectability after leaving the White House when no one thought he could; Clinton intends to re-establish his authority while still in office. He has one great advantage: Two-thirds of the American public continues to voice its approval of his political stewardship, whatever it thinks of him as a man. The president will press hard, despite his much-reduced leverage, for a deal on censure. Indeed, in as fine a piece of political irony as one could ask for, he has already sought to enlist former Sen. Bob Dole, the Republican he defeated in 1996, as an emissary to the Senate majority. The numbers are not unpromising: with the help of six Republicans, the 45 Democrats could end the trial at any time and pass a censure resolution that the House would surely take up. There are enough Republican moderates and sometime party-buckers to make that a plausible target. But the Republican leader in the Senate, Trent Lott of Mississippi, who has made his unwillingness to take the president's word plainly evident in recent days, is determined to fight such a trial-aborting arrangement. It is clear that Clinton's reputation has been stained forever, no matter what the Senate does. The spot will not out. History will remember this man who so coveted a glowing legacy not as an impresario of economic growth, not as the Moses who pointed the way to the 21st century, but as the second president ever to be impeached, if not as the first to be ousted. That harsh word, ``impeachment,'' will cling to his name as surely as ``Teapot Dome'' clings to Harding's and ``Depression'' to Hoover's. But he is not alone in having suffered grievous injury in the political avalanche that was shaken loose by the disclosure of Clinton's sexual relationship with a former White House intern, Monica Lewinsky. The Republicans' public support has shriveled to 40 percent in the new Times/CBS News poll, its lowest level in 14 years, and it could go lower once the fact of impeachment sinks in. Journalists are seen by many as jackals, indifferent to whatever personal suffering or national angst they may cause as long as they get the story, and none too concerned about accuracy. In fact, the whole political culture of the 1990s, with its criminalization of political conduct and its seeming indifference to important national and international issues, has fallen into disrepute with ordinary Americans. The last week seemed to crystallize the long-term decline in political civility. Republicans called Clinton a liar, even as he was committing American pilots to the skies over Iraq, and Democrats accused their rivals of conducting a political lynching or a political coup d'etat. Bipartisanship may have been the biggest victim of all. Party lines on Saturday's rolls calls held as firm as leg irons. Almost all of the Republicans who opposed impeachment did so not exclusively on legal principle but at least partly because of special political circumstances _ the Democratic majority in Rep. Constance Morella's district in the Maryland suburbs of Washington, for example, and the gratitude of Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., for Clinton's peacemaking in Ireland. It is hard to see who has emerged from it with reputation enhanced, except perhaps Hillary Rodham Clinton, staunch in the face of deception. If some of the threats and dire predictions uttered by House Democrats in recent days are to be taken at face value, the nation is entering upon an Era of Bad Feelings, the polar opposite of a second Era of Good Feelings, similar to that of the 1820s, that Clinton had hoped to preside over. Rep. Tom Sawyer, D-Ohio, compared Clinton on Friday to Sir Thomas More, executed for treason in 1535 because of his religious beliefs. He quoted More's words as an admonition for today: ``What you have hunted me for is not my actions but for the thoughts of my heart. It is a long road you have opened. God help the statesmen who walk your road.'' But amidst all the loose talk about permanent damage to this institution or that, remember: Things change with startling speed in modern American politics, and the institutions of American government have proved extraordinarily resilient. President Nixon, it was almost universally agreed in 1974, had weakened the American presidency for many decades to come. Nobody said that after eight years under Ronald Reagan, and that was only 15 years later.

House Speaker-elect Robert Livingston shocked his Republican colleagues in the midst of a Clinton impeachment debate by admitting to adulterous affairs during his Congressional tenure. He later urged Clinton to follow his example and resign that increased the fury of the impeachment debate. The House moved to impeach the President for perjury and called on the Senate to try him, convict him and remove him from office. Some who believe the debate shows the fanatical, partisan, and hateful side of Republican behavior, advise the Senate only to censure Clinton and thus avoid partisan vengeance. The issue deepens a cultural fissure and a sense of uncertainty.

Rep. Bob Livingston, who confessed to his colleagues Thursday night that he had had adulterous affairs, stunned the House chamber Saturday morning by saying in the impeachment debate on President Clinton that he would not serve as speaker and would quit Congress in six months. He urged the president to follow his example and quit, too. But at the White House, where calls for Clinton's resignation are derided as a Republican strategy, the president sent a spokesman into the driveway to urge Livingston to reconsider his resignation. Livingston stood in the well of the House he has served for two decades and called on Clinton to resign his office rather than force a trial in the Senate, drawing boos from his colleagues and cat-calls that he should quit instead. He then did just that. ``I must set the example that I hope President Clinton will follow,'' Livingston announced to a shocked and silent chamber in an act that left the Republican Party in total chaos just hours before the vote to impeach Clinton. The decision also left the party leaderless on the eve of the opening of the 106th Congress, when Republicans must govern with one of the narrowest majorities in history. Several Republicans, including Rep. Tom DeLay of Texas, the majority whip, somberly welcomed the news, suggesting it relieved them of an excruciating embarrassment. In lauding Livingston's move, DeLay said, ``He understood what this debate was all about _ it's about honor and decency and integrity and the truth, everything we honor in this country.'' But Democrats said they were aghast, and many _ including Clinton _ called on Livingston to reconsider his decision. ``Mr. Livingston's resignation was wrong,'' declared Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y. ``It is a surrender to a developing sexual McCarthyism. Are we going to have a new test if someone wants to run for public office _ are you now or have you ever been an adulterer?'' He called on the country to distinguish between sins and crimes. White House press secretary Joe Lockhart said Clinton was ``disappointed'' at the news of Livingston's plans and wished that he would reconsider. Lockhart said the president ``firmly believes that the politics of personal destruction in this town and this country has to come to an end.'' He reaffirmed that Clinton would not resign, saying: ``The president is going to do what's in the best interest of the country. It would be wrong to give in to this insidious politics of personal destruction.'' Livingston's announced resignation was all the more stunning for its disclosure in a process that could result in the president's removal from office. The speaker is second in line to the presidency, after the vice president. Newt Gingrich, the outgoing speaker, who was driven from the post after Republicans lost five seats in the November election, technically remains speaker until Jan. 6, when Livingston's election was to be ratified by the new Congress. But Gingrich has removed himself from the daily operations of the House at this extraordinary session and has begun to dismantle his office. Livingston's decision was said to be driven in part by the anger of a group of about a dozen conservatives in his party who were disillusioned that he had withheld news of his affairs from them. They had threatened to withhold their votes for him in the election in January that would formally make him speaker. He was also concerned about the pain caused to his family by further disclosures, some members said. They added that, not lost on many in his party, was the example he would set for the president by offering to resign his post now. DeLay, No. 3 in the House Republican leadership, is expected to fill the power vacuum at least temporarily, in deed if not in title, while the party regroups to find a new speaker. Many members quickly rallied around Rep. Dennis Hastert of Illinois. Hastert, one of DeLay's deputy whips who is well respected among his colleagues, had been promoted as a candidate for majority leader last month, but never mounted a campaign. Rep. Dick Armey of Texas only precariously held on to his majority-leader post last month and was not considered a likely candidate for speaker. He is expected to manage the reorganization, which Republican leaders have set for Jan. 4. Livingston met privately with his closest advisers Friday as the impeachment debate unfolded. Some of his colleagues believed he had made a mistake in disclosing Thursday night _ just as the House was moving into the divisive debate over impeachment _ that he had ``on occasion strayed from my marriage.'' He told Republican leaders late Thursday afternoon that Hustler magazine was going to expose his affairs early next year. Some leaders urged him to keep quiet, but his wife, Bonnie, encouraged him to tell his colleagues immediately, despite the momentous vote that was nearing on the floor. At that point Thursday night, Roll Call, a newspaper on Capitol Hill, reported on its Web site that Livingston was going to admit to the affairs and was going to offer to resign. In a closed-door meeting with his fellow Republicans, he did admit to the affairs but made no offer to step down, receiving three standing ovations instead. Thursday night, Livingston stated that he would ``not be intimidated by these efforts'' to exploit his past. But Friday he removed himself from public action and that night drew his closest advisers into his confidence. His aides said Saturday that they had no clue what was he was contemplating, and few other members were aware of his plans. Asked if he had any advance word, Rep. J.C. Watts of Oklahoma, a newly elected member of the Republican leadership, said: ``I had no idea.'' Asked if there had been internal party pressure on Livingston to resign, Rep. Harold Rogers, R-Ky., said: ``I didn't know about it if there was,'' but added, ``There were some members who were critical of it.'' As the leaders tried Saturday to hold the party together on and off the House floor, most Republicans stuck to their prepared scripts on the floor in favor of impeaching the president. But some began expressing their anguish. Rep. Henry Hyde, R-Ill., who admitted to his own adulterous affair earlier this year, said after Livingston's resignation: ``Those of us who are sinners must feel wretched today. Something is going on repeatedly that has to be stopped, and that is a confusion between private acts of infidelity and public acts.'' To much applause, Hyde declared: ``Congress has no business intruding into private acts.'' Republicans, indeed Livingston himself, had made this same distinction between Clinton's sexual indiscretions and Livingston's, saying that Clinton lied about his private acts and therefore abused the legal system and his powers. As Livingston said in his statement Thursday: ``These indiscretions were not with employees on my staff and I have never been asked to testify under oath about them.'' Democrats hoped that Livingston's seemingly drastic action would wake up the House to how poisoned the atmosphere had become and might prompt Republicans to reconsider the impeachment of Clinton. Rep. Paul Kanjorski, D-Pa., said, ``We are now starting to offer up sacrificial lambs to whatever terrible disease this is.'' In a stirring speech applauded even by some Republicans, Rep. Dick Gephardt of Missouri, the Democratic leader, praised Livingston as a ``worthy, good and honorable man'' and said his resignation was a grave mistake. ``It's a terrible capitulation to the negative political forces that are consuming our political system and our country,'' Gephardt said, adding that the events of the last few days showed ``life imitates farce.'' ``We need to stop destroying imperfect people at an unattainable altar of public morality,'' he said, urging his colleagues to ``step back from the abyss'' and reject resignation, impeachment and ``vicious self-righteousness.'' ||||| The New York Times said in an editorial for Sunday, Dec. 20: The Republicans' drive for a partisan impeachment based soley on party-line voting power rather than any sense of proportion produced an unexpected sideshow in the resignation of Rep. Bob Livingston from his role as future speaker of the House. Analysts on both sides of the struggle over President Clinton's future will point to Livingston's downfall as evidence of a generalized breakdown in legislative civility on Capitol Hill. Democrats will see a moral symmetry, depicting Livingston as a victim of the sexual puritanism he was wielding against Clinton. But the one thing that no one should fall for is Livingston's invitation to use his resignation as a model for resolving the crisis at the White House. Livingston's statement rocked Congress, but it should not shake the foundations of the somber constitutional process now underway. By lying under oath, Clinton made it necessary for the House to consider impeachment. The evidence convinced most Americans that the president should be censured, but not removed from office. Livingston allowed GOP partisans to block censure in the House. The result is that after Saturday's expected impeachment vote, after Livingston's unexpected announcement, the mission of the Senate remains the same. It must resist those Republicans who want to short-circuit the constitutional process with demands for resignation, and it must use the upcoming Senate trial as a forum for finding a censure commensurate with the president's personal dishonesty and offenses against the law. These require stern punishment but not removal from office. In undertaking this work, the Senate must also reassure the American people that a decisive wisdom at the core of our messy-looking political system has not melted down. In such distempered times, this is a shining opportunity for the Senate. Its members pride themselves on being the Republic's fire wall against presidential excess and the popular or partisan passions that sometimes seize the House of Representatives. No one can predict whether Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott will rise to the defining challenge of his career or whether he will surrender to the mean streak he acquired during 16 grumpy years as a minority member of the House. We would like to see Lott reach for a starring role in history. Lott's growling response to questions about censure is not encouraging. He may be right that the Constitution requires him to convene a trial, but nothing in that document prevents him from speedily guiding the Senate toward censure negotiations. Indeed, a simple majority vote _ 45 Democrats plus 6 cooperating Republicans _ can end the Senate trial at any time, clearing the way for introduction of the kind of censure resolution suggested by former Sen. Bob Dole. In an intriguing report on NBC, Tim Russert described discussions among a bipartisan group of senators about a censure that would involve some form of presidential confession, a fine and a joint congressional request that Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr not prosecute Clinton in the courts. If Lott refuses to allow a bipartisan search for censure, the burden will fall upon respected members like Joseph Lieberman on the Democratic side and Orrin Hatch for the Republicans. Through cooperation, they can guide the Senate toward a punishment that fixes Clinton in history as a president who lied under oath, but avoids the taint of partisan vengeance associated with the House impeachment vote. The Senate's historic reputation for prudence requires it to find appropriate punishment for a personally weak president who has damaged the rule of law, but not threatened the stability of the government. ||||| ``We are here to debate impeachment and should not be distracted from that,'' the minority whip, Rep. David Bonior, Democrat of Michigan, said during Saturday's House debate, in what leaped out as an impossible goal. It would have taken a kaleidoscopic television screen to capture the constantly shifting images competing for center stage: impeachment, Iraq, the resignation of Rep. Robert Livingston, the response from the White House. The months leading up to the impeachment of President Clinton had become a series of televised anticlimaxes, but the hours before the vote made up for that lack of drama. There were hardly enough shorthand terms or split screens to cover the activity. All the networks and cable channels carried the moment that unexpectedly set the tone, as Livingston, a Louisiana Republican, announced during the debate that he would not become House speaker. The commentators had been set to carry the congressional ratification of the inevitable vote, but suddenly the most plugged-in reporters were caught off guard. As Tim Russert said to Tom Brokaw on NBC, ``Tom, knock us all over.'' In the echo chamber that television news so often becomes, the shared mantra had been weightier in early morning. ``For only the second time in American history'' a president would be impeached, went the standard line. Yet despite all the pundits speculating and politicians telegraphing every move, no one had hinted at the Livingston resignation. The announcement was, as Brokaw put it, at least partly ``a political ploy,'' and the repercussions were immediate. Reporters began gathering word from Capitol Hill about candidates for the speaker's job, and the conversation moved to the next stage of the political tug of war. The Republicans used Livingston's resignation to say that the president should resign, too; the Democrats immediately countered with the idea that the president would stay and that Livingston should as well. That led to one of the less-expected split screens of the day, and it was not a bad choice. While Congress was debating, CNN showed anti-aircraft fire in Baghdad in one box. In the other, Joe Lockhart, Clinton's press secretary, stood in the White House driveway telling reporters that the president would like Livingston to reconsider his decision. There was more stateliness in the House than television usually offers, and one reason was purely visual. ``Keep in mind that we do not control the picture,'' Dan Rather said on CBS, explaining that the television cameras in Congress are provided by the House, not the individual networks. There was no way to roam and zoom in for reaction shots, as at a political convention. But the sense of history and decorum didn't last long at CBS. At noon, before the vote, CBS went to a football game, becoming the only network to leave the news coverage. CBS' corporate decision to try to have it both ways meant that Rather would break in with updates from Washington. ``I'll see you very soon,'' he said as he signed off the complete coverage, looking like a trouper. But he was in a position no news anchor should have been in on this day. He later announced impeachment votes on a split screen with the football game in progress in the upper part of the screen. On the other networks and cable channels, the vote itself literally happened in the background. As TV screens toted up the numbers of the electronically-cast vote, members of Congress milled around and chatted on the floor. Even the brief Democratic walkout after a motion to consider censure was defeated was thoroughly forecast. As the Democrats straggled down the steps of Congress, it looked curiously undramatic on television, though it probably made a better still photograph once they were all in place. And while the votes were in progress, the jockeying for the speaker's job heated up. ``We already have a presumptive leader,'' Gwen Ifill of NBC News said in midafternoon, naming Rep. Dennis Hassert, R-Ill., who had also been cited by the other networks as a likely candidate. If the political and military action had not intruded, it might have been more obvious that the debate on the House floor sent a message about vast divisions in politics and morality, signaling how deep a cultural fissure this crisis has opened. The impeachment, said Rep. Tom DeLay, R-Texas, was ``a debate about relativism vs. absolute truth.'' Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., contended that Congress had lost the ``distinction between sins and crimes,'' and argued against the ``sexual McCarthyism'' that has become prominent. And against the backdrop of the revelations of adultery that led to Livingston's resignation, Rep. Dick Gephardt, the minority leader, declared ``the politics of personal destruction has to end.'' But as all the jabbering and political posturing continued, as reporters raced to cover the president's statement about the impeachment and the latest briefings from the Pentagon, there was little time to focus on the profound cultural message beneath those rhetorical flourishes. ||||| Bob Livingston, the incoming speaker of the House, took no public role Friday as the debate unfolded on whether to impeach President Clinton. His previous 24 hours had been his most visible in the month since his party nominated him as speaker and perhaps the most excruciating in his public career: He spent most of the day in a chaotic procedural wrangle over the terms of Friday's debate; he ended it by telling his Republican colleagues that he had had extramarital affairs during his 20-year tenure in Congress. His disclosure followed an investigation by Larry Flynt, publisher of Hustler, the sex magazine, who said Friday at a news conference in Beverly Hills, Calif., that his publication had learned that Livingston had had adulterous affairs during the last 10 years. Flynt said earlier this year that he wanted to expose the ``hypocrisy'' of those in Washington who are investigating Clinton and in October offered $1 million to anyone who could prove they had had affairs with members of Congress. He said Friday that this larger investigation, to be published perhaps as soon as January, would reveal what he described as indiscretions of several other Republicans. He said he had no connection with the White House but that he had hired an investigative firm based in Washington and made up of former employees of the FBI and the CIA. He would not confirm whether the firm is Terry Lenzner's Investigative Group Inc., which has done work for the president's private lawyers. Livingston was unavailable to reporters Friday. He spent some time Friday morning sprawled in a chair in the back of the House chamber, listening to the debate over whether to impeach Clinton for lying about his own sexual indiscretions. Several colleagues knelt at Livingston's knee, whispered to him and patted him on the back. He spent most of the day in a private office off the chamber, avoiding the gauntlet of reporters who lay in wait for him between the House and his regular office across the street. The only word out of his aides was that the Navy had awarded contracts worth millions of dollars for ships to be built in his Louisiana district at the Avondale Shipyards. During Friday's debate, a handful of Democrats made only oblique allusions to human failures. For example, Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., said: ``Let he that has no sin cast the first stone. Who, who among us has not sinned?'' But no one said that Livingston's disclosure or the mild Democratic attempts to exploit it would influence their votes on impeachment. Rather, on the House floor and in hallway chitchat, Livingston's conduct seemed to be the last thing that either Republicans or Democrats wanted to talk about. ``Bob Livingston is a first-rate human being,'' said Rep. David Obey, D-Wis., who has worked closely and sparred with Livingston on the Appropriations Committee, in an interview. ``I will repeat what the nuns taught me at St. James a long time ago: We would all be a hell of a lot better off looking after our own souls rather than trying to evaluate somebody else's. None of us have any business even having an opinion on it.'' Even conservative Republicans seemed ready to overlook the disclosure. ``We're not going to say, `Bob, you can't be speaker because you violated your vows with your wife,''' said Rep. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C. Like many, including Livingston, Graham distinguished Livingston's conduct from Clinton's by saying that the president had ``trampled'' on the legal system whereas Livingston's behavior was strictly private. Despite Flynt's claims, many Republicans blamed the Clinton administration for smearing Livingston, although they offered no evidence. ``This isn't just happening on its own,'' said Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R- Calif. ||||| House Speaker-elect Robert L. Livingston presented a fresh note of shock to the impeachment debate against President Clinton on Thursday night as the Republican leader was forced to admit to his Republican colleagues that he had carried on adulterous affairs in his past. ``It has suddenly come to my attention that there are individuals working together with the media who are investigating my personal background in an effort to find indiscretions which may be exploitable against me and my party on the eve of the upcoming historic vote on impeachment,'' Livingston declared in a statement after appearing before a shocked House Republican conference to head off the disclosure as it surfaced in news reports. After hearing his admissions in a closed session, Livingston's colleagues gave him a standing ovation of support and said the question of his resigning had never arisen. ``My fate is in your hands,'' Livingston told the Republicans, according to lawmakers who were present. The debate over the president's fate would go forward, Republicans later insisted, drawing distinctions between the speaker-elect's revelations and the sex-and-mendacity scandal that has put Clinton on the brink of impeachment. The president is charged in an impeachment resolution with perjury and abuse of power in his attempt to hide sexual indiscretions. Democrats offered no immediate comment, but Republicans were braced to hear Livingston's admissions alluded to in the debate Friday by Democrats who have decried the investigation of the president as basically a partisan and unfair rummaging through his sex life. Livingston, saying he had sought spiritual counseling and had received the forgiveness of his family, noted he had several times told reporters during his campaign to become speaker that ``I was running for speaker, not sainthood.'' He added, ``There was a reason for those words.'' ``During my 33-year marriage to my wife, Bonnie, I have on occasion strayed from my marriage, and doing so nearly cost me my marriage and family,'' Livingston said in his brief prepared statement. But he attempted to draw a contrast with the allegations against the president, asserting: ``I want to assure everyone that these indiscretions were not with employees on my staff and I have never been asked to testify under oath about them.'' The disclosure of the speaker-elect's marital infidelities, disclosed in ``Rollcall,'' a Capitol Hill newspaper, sent a new jolt of uncertainty among lawmakers as they prepared for the momentous debate over the president's admitted misbehavior in office and whether he should be impeached and tried by the Senate. Rep. Henry Hyde, the Republican chairman of the House Judiciary Committee who is to bring the impeachment charges against the president, previously was cited by a magazine for an extra-marital affair in his past. Then, as on Thursday night, Republicans voiced suspicions that Democratic defenders of the president instigated media investigations in an effort to embarrass the Clinton's principal accusers. But no proof was offered as Republicans left their conference, facing the uncertainties of a debate that already promised to be bare-knuckled in its partisanship. Livingston left the conference surrounded by Capitol police, not taking questions from waiting reporters. His chief leadership aides immediately rallied in support. ``Some who would rather not struggle with this constitutional question continue to try to twist the debate into an unseemly investigation of private lives,'' said Rep. Dick Armey, the Republican majority leader. In its report on the internet Thursday night, Rollcall did not disclose its source but made an oblique reference to Hustler, the sex magazine. Larry Flint, publisher of Hustler, earlier this year advertised an offer of a $1 million bounty for information about e of members of Congress guilty of sexual indiscretions. ``It breaks your heart because we're all subject to human frailties,'' said Asa Hutchinson, R-Ark., as he left the conference. ``This is not a comfortable circumstance for anyone,'' he added, insisting the president and the speaker-elect presented two separate issues. ``We've got a duty to do under the Constitution.'' ||||| In the end, the will of the people meant nothing. Bob Livingston couldn't have been clearer about that. His mind and the minds of his followers were closed. Even as the bombing continued in Iraq and Americans from coast to coast were clamoring for an alternative to impeachment, even as his own adulterous past was being flushed out in the grotesque invasions of privacy that inevitably followed the relentlessly prurient pursuit of the president, even as the country began to contemplate the destructive effects of a lengthy and bitter Senate trial, the speaker-designate arrogantly and stupidly proclaimed: ``Let us disregard the outside influences.'' The radicals on the Hill would hear nothing but the echoes of their own fanaticism. Impeach! Impeach! And that continued even after the stunning announcement Saturday morning that Livingston would quit the House. Dismayed by the partisan stampede, Dick Gephardt, the Democratic leader, warned during the impeachment debate on Friday: ``In your effort to uphold the Constitution, you are trampling the Constitution.'' David Bonior, the Democratic whip, said: ``This is wrong. It is unfair. It is unjust. At a time when events in the world and the challenges at home demand that we stand united, censure is the one solution that can bring us together. To my colleagues across the aisle, I say let go of your obsession. Listen to the American people.'' But the voices of reason would not be heard. Livingston and his right-wing colleagues, the Tom DeLays, the Henry Hydes, the Bob Barrs, were on a mission of destruction and would not be denied. Ordinary Americans could cry out all they wanted. They could protest and demonstrate, send faxes and E-mails. It didn't matter. The right was on the march and democracy was on the run. Rep. Thomas Barrett, a Democrat from Wisconsin, tried to remind his Republican colleagues that the Constitution ``does not allow you to remove a president from office because you can't stand him.'' He was, of course, ignored. The Republicans will pay a huge price for their brazen, utterly partisan attempt to drag a president from the White House in defiance of the will of the people. The party's contempt for the voters was arrogantly but quite adequately summed up by Alan Simpson, the former senator from Wyoming, who said: ``The attention span of Americans is which movie is coming out next month and whether the quarterly report on their stock will change.'' If the voters are the dopes that Mr. Simpson thinks they are, then come 2000 everyone will have forgotten there was an impeachment crisis. But Rep. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., was probably closer to the truth when he said, ``I warn my colleagues that you will reap the bitter harvest of the unfair partisan seeds you sow today.'' One of the many strange events of the past couple of weeks was the way in which virtually all of the previously undecided Republicans, the so-called moderates, surrendered their independence and lined up like lackeys to follow the right wing's lead. All proclaimed loudly that they were voting on principle, but in fact it was an exercise in mass cowardice, exemplified by Rep. John McHugh of upstate New York. McHugh announced on Tuesday that he would vote for impeachment. But if his decision was based on principle, he had an odd way of expressing it. The Washington Post said McHugh appeared to have no stomach for a Senate conviction or removal of the president from office. Of his colleagues in the Senate, McHugh said, ``I, for one, would accept, even welcome, their mercy.'' In other words, let the Senate do the heavy constitutional lifting. McHugh may have wished out loud for mercy, but he clearly was too frightened of the right-wingers in the House to cast a compassionate vote himself. The GOP can no longer conceal that it is a party of extremists, of right-wing absolutists, a party out of step with the political and cultural orientation of most Americans. Bob Livingston may be leaving, but his arrogant comment can still serve as his party's slogan. ``Let us disregard the outside influences.'' Let us disregard the people. ||||| Rejecting a last-minute Democratic attempt to soften its action to censure, the House of Representatives moved to impeach President William Jefferson Clinton for perjury on Saturday and to call on the Senate to try him, convict him and remove him from office. But even before the vote, Republicans pressed another line of attack, demanding Clinton's resignation. Rep. Robert Livingston, nominated for speaker last month by his party, startled the House when he announced he would not run for speaker and would resign from the House after 21 years of service. He urged the president to ``heal the wounds that you have created. You, sir, may resign your post.'' Angry Democrats booed and shouted, ``You resign!'' Livingston continued, ``I can only challenge you in such fashion if I am willing to heed my own words.'' Apologizing again for extramarital affairs revealed two days ago, he said, ``I believe I had it in me to do a fine job. But I cannot do that job or be the kind of leader that I would like to be under current circumstances.'' Then he bolted from the House chamber, nearly knocking reporters and members down. (The House voted 228-206 to approve the first article of impeachment, accusing Clinton of committing perjury before a federal grand jury. The vote was announced at 1:24 p.m. EST, leaving the 42nd president to face trial in the Senate on whether he should be removed from office.) Clinton rejected the advice immediately. His spokesman, Joe Lockhart, said, ``The president has no intention of resigning.'' By calling on Livingston to reconsider, the president argued more broadly against resignation under fire. Perhaps speaking to both cases, Lockhart said, ``It would be wrong to give in to this insidious politics of personal destruction.'' Unless Clinton changes course, this would be only the second impeachment of a president in the 209-year history of the Republic, and the first since Andrew Johnson was acquitted in 1868. Sen. Trent Lott of Mississippi, the majority leader, has insisted that no bargaining over censure can prevent it from starting. But the Senate could halt a trial later as part of a deal. Considering the degree of partisanship displayed Saturday, assembling the two-thirds majority required under the Constitution for conviction is most unlikely. Sixty-seven votes would be required, and there are only 55 Republicans in the Senate, along with 45 Democrats. Four articles of impeachment before the House charged Clinton with perjury in lying about his affair with Monica Lewinsky to a federal grand jury here on Aug. 17. He was also charged with perjury in the Paula Jones sexual harassment suit, obstruction of justice and abuse of power. The Republican argument, over and over, was that Clinton had lied in denying having sexual relations with Ms. Lewinsky. Rep. Dick Armey of Texas, the majority leader, said, ``A nation of laws cannot be ruled by a person who breaks the law.'' Rep. Nancy Johnson of Connecticut said: ``There can be no justice without the truth. That is just profoundly so, and that is why perjury matters.'' Rep. Gerald Kleczka of Wisconsin began the Democrats' arguments by saying, ``What the president did was wrong, both personally and morally, but his acts did not threaten our democracy and thus do not rise to the level of impeachable offenses as defined by our founding fathers in our Constitution.'' Rep. Charles Schumer, New York's senator-elect, said: ``The rule of law requires that the punishment fit the crime. Allow us to vote for censure.'' Saturday's votes were the penultimate step in the most serious conflict between Congress and a president since Richard M. Nixon resigned in the face of impeachment and certain conviction on Aug. 9, 1974. But while that case spun out from a 1972 break-in at Democratic headquarters in the Watergate complex, this one began with a murky land deal in Arkansas in 1978. Through the efforts of Kenneth Starr, the independent counsel under the law enacted in the wake of Watergate, the investigation spread to examine Clinton's affair with a White House intern. All year it has preoccupied the capital despite an immense disconnect with public opinion; since the scandal became public in January, polls have shown that the public opposed impeachment and wanted the inquiry brought to an end. Even on Friday night, after a 13-hour debate, a CBS News Poll of 548 people showed that only 38 percent wanted their representative to vote for impeachment; 58 percent wanted a no vote. The conflict now enters uncharted seas, since the Nixon resignation cut the matter short and the Johnson trial occurred in a different America, with no nuclear weapons or cable television or public opinion polls. But the capital was still rife with confident speculation. Some guessed, or hoped, that the results of the recent poll, which showed increases in support for resignation as a way to spare the nation a trial in which Ms. Lewinsky and Linda Tripp would be star witnesses, would weaken Clinton's resolve. Others thought the Republicans, seeing dismal numbers in polls about their party's standing in the United States, would be the first to blink. With a majority in the Senate, they have the power to end a trial at any time after the Senate receives notice of impeachment on the day it convenes, Jan. 6, or the next day. But while Clinton has focused on the polls, and the CBS News survey showed that 64 percent still approve of his handling of his job as president, resignation could almost immediately subject him to criminal prosecution. And Republicans have steadfastly ignored the polls all year, and confronted them directly on Saturday. Representative J.C. Watts of Oklahoma, newly elected as chairman of the Republican caucus, said: ``What's popular isn't always right. You say polls are against this. Polls measure changing feelings, not steadfast principle. Polls would have rejected the Ten Commandments. Polls would have embraced slavery and ridiculed women's rights. ``You say we must draw this to a close. I say we must draw a line between right and wrong, not with a tiny fine line of an executive fountain pen, but with the big fat lead of a No. 2 pencil. And we must do it so every kid in America can see it. The point is not whether the president can prevail, but whether truth can prevail.'' Last weekend, when the Judiciary Committee recommended the four articles of impeachment, Clinton's side still hoped to prevail with the help of 20 to 30 Republican moderates who were uncommitted. As the week wore on, almost all of them broke against the president. One who did not, Rep. Christopher Shays of Connecticut, said Saturday: ``After Judge Starr's report to Congress in September, and his presentation to the Judiciary Committee in November, I concluded that impeachable offenses were not proven, and that the proven offenses were not impeachable. ``But the president's continued failure to come to grips with his actions, the sincerity and arguments of members of the Judiciary Committee from both sides of the aisle, the change of heart and conviction by members on my side of the aisle who originally opposed impeachment and who now support it, and the strong and powerful opinion of so many of my constituents who oppose my position and who wanted the president impeached caused me to rethink my position.'' He added: ``Yesterday morning, before I visited with the president, I concluded that my original position was the correct one, for me. I believe that the impeachable offenses have not been proven, and that the proven offenses are not impeachable.'' But Rep. Tom DeLay of Texas, who has led the Republican effort to force Clinton from office, dismissed his and other arguments as moral relativism. He began by praising Livingston: ``There is no greater American in my mind, at least today, than Bob Livingston, because he understood what this debate was all about. It was about honor and decency and integrity and the truth; everything that we honor in this country. It was also a debate about relativism vs. absolute truth.'' He continued, ``The president's defenders have said that the president is morally reprehensible, that he is reckless, that he has violated the trust of the American people, lessened their esteem for the office of president and dishonored the office which they have entrusted him, and that _ but that doesn't rise to the level of impeachment.'' Rep. Jose Serrano of New York said, ``My constituents don't hate Bill Clinton; they love him and they're praying for him right at this very moment. You may have the votes today to impeach him, but you don't have the American people. And let me tell you something, I grew up in the public housing projects of the South Bronx. I can see a bunch of bullies when I see them. The bullies get theirs, and you're going to get yours, too. Rep. Henry Hyde of Illinois, the Judiciary Committee chairman who brought the charges to the House floor, said the Congress and the American people needed to distinguish between private acts of infidelity and public acts by public officials. In Clinton's case, he said, the House was dealing with ``a serial violator of the oath who is the chief law-enforcement officer.'' He said that the Senate could be ``innovative and creative'' in deciding how best to punish Clinton, but that the House was bound by the Constitution to move ahead with articles of impeachment. ``Justice is so important to the most humble among us,'' Hyde said. ``Equal justice under the law _ that's what we're fighting for.'' Democrats, reading from the same Constitution, voiced diametrically opposite conclusions, and attacked the fairness of the proceedings that culminated Saturday. ``We're losing track of distinction between sins and crimes,'' said Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y. ``We're lowering the standards of impeachment. What the president has done is not a great and dangerous offense to the republic.'' Democrats also criticized Republicans for impeaching Clinton at the very moment that U.S. troops waged war against Iraq. ``Six days before Christmas our troops are in battle, and a lame-duck Congress is rushing to overthrow the commander in chief,'' said Rep. David Bonior of Michigan, the second-ranking House Democrat. The ghosts of Watergate hung over the House chamber. One Republican cited the parallels between the charges the House Judiciary Committee brought against Nixon 25 years ago, and the counts that the same committee brought to the House floor for affirmation on Saturday. ``Nixon cheated. He cheated the electoral system,'' said Rep. Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican on the Judiciary Committee. And now, Graham said, the full House is voting to impeach Clinton ``because we believe he committed crimes that result in cheating our judicial system.'' But most of the day's debate was firmly rooted in Clinton's effort to conceal his sexual affair with Monica Lewinsky. Rep. Bob Barr, a Georgia Republican on the Judiciary Committee who is one of Clinton's fiercest critics, held up copies of the U.S. Criminal Code, the Judiciary Committee's report on the impeachment inquiry and, finally, the Constitution, in defending his decision to impeach the president. ``Today, we rely on the three pillars of our society: the law itself, evidence and the Constitution,'' said Barr. ``There is no joy in upholding the law,'' Watts said. ``If we cannot see lawlessness, our children cannot recognize it. How can we tell our children honesty is the best policy when we don't demand it as a policy?'' But Democrats assailed the very premise on which the Republican majority built its impeachment case against Clinton. Rep. John Conyers Jr. of Michigan, the ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, assailed the four articles of impeachment, count by count, as unfounded by evidence and failing to rise to impeachment. He saved his most savage scorn for the final count, abuse of power. ``The majority has simply tried to dress up the perjury counts in the Watergate abuse-of-power language,'' Conyers said. ||||| The raw passions were such that the House Democrats did not to hesitate to bellow ``You resign! You resign!'' at Speaker-elect Robert Livingston when he called from the House floor for President Clinton to quit the White House in the face of certain impeachment. Shockingly, stunningly, Livingston did just that. He quit in one breathtaking utterance, as if flicking a trump card onto the heap of impeachment angst festering before his eyes in the debating chamber. In his one and only strategem in leading his fellow House Republicans, Livingston's decision struck Congress like a verbal bomb. Stunned Democrats saw their fury vaporized upon the instant. They had to stand, almost staggering to their feet, to join the Republicans in a prolonged, emotional ovation for Livingston and his undeniable self-sacrifice. As they stood, the Democrats sensed Livingston had most suddenly closed a trap on the president and his defenders. For, with the impeachment issue set to move to the Senate, Livingston, whose own marital indiscretions were now before the public to his obvious misery, chose to show how the question of a political leader's resignation was very much in play in this tumult-tossed city. ``I must set the example that I hope President Clinton will follow,'' Livingston declared, flabbergasting all attending the impeachment debate and the nation watching beyond. Livingston walked off the floor like the sheriff in some bullet-pocked political ``High Noon,'' discarding the leadership badge he had wrested from the earlier speaker-casualty, Newt Gingrich. In the corridor just beyond, a doorman shouted to a police officer: ``Livingston just resigned!'' ``What? What?'' came the reply from the officer, who obviously thought the momentous announcement would be about Clinton's impeachment, not Livingston's political self-immolation. Just so, the Democrats, already deep into bone-raw exhaustion after their long fight to save the president, grasped for bearings. ``It is a surrender to a developing sexual McCarthyism!'' declared Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., a leading presidential defender trying to rally Democrats around the argument that Livingston should not resign any more than President Clinton should quit under fire. But the Republicans were surging to the fore on the strength of Livingston's announcement, fighting tears as they rose to salute him as the ultimate political role model in the grueling impeachment process as it roared into the final minutes of debate. ``For some it is no longer good enough to make a mistake, to confirm that mistake and take the consequences of that mistake,'' said Tom DeLay, the Republican whip, his hands shaking, his eyes tearing as he addressed the House and sought to drive the example of Livingston all the way down Pennsylvania Avenue. ``He understood what this debate was all about _ honor, duty, integrity and the truth,'' said DeLay arguing that in one swift blow, Livingston had demonstrated himself to have been a far better speaker than Clinton has been a president. With something of the political elan the president showed in initiating the Iraq attack as his own impeachment loomed, House Republicans, battered in public opinion polls, had found a rocket's red glare of their own. ``I have hurt you all deeply and beg your forgiveness,'' Livingston told the House, the nation and his family as he announced retreat. Only moments before, Democrats openly hissed the man as Livingston firmly read his own judgment upon the president: ``Sir, you have done great damage to this nation over the past year.'' Presidential resignation was in order, he continued, and then came the shouts of ``You resign! You resign!'' And as Livingston closed the circle on his career, he stunned the place into a collective breath of disbelief and somehow almost threatened to reduce the dark historic issue before the House _ the impeachment of the president _ into a matter of anticlimax. ``They must not succeed,'' David Bonior, the Democratic whip said of the Republicans as he was given the task of refocusing the day on the misdeeds of the president, not the departure of the speaker. ``We are here to debate impeachment and should not be distracted from that,'' he declared. ``The only way we can stop this vicious cycle,'' Bonior cried out from the floor, ``is if we refuse to give into it, whether it is Bill Clinton or Bob Livingston.'' But the House was still reeling through the frenzied day as the fateful vote on the presidency approached and the notion of resignation licked about the capital city like a flame in a forest. ||||| It has gotten to the point where drastic action may be necessary. You know those movies about Ebola virus outbreaks, where the guys in sterile suits come in, seal off the area and completely irradiate it? They may have to do that to Washington. Just eradicate us and start from scratch. In a few, short days we have managed to make the terms ``surreal,'' ``bizarre,'' ``split-screen America,'' ``shocking,'' ``runaway train'' and ``politics of personal destruction'' useless cliches. We no longer govern here. We just roll around in the gutter wondering who's next in this sexual auto-de-fe. On Saturday morning, we had the surreal, shocking, bizarre, split-screen image of Bob Livingston, the speaker-elect, stepping down after his marital infidelities were revealed. ``We are all pawns on the chessboard,'' Livingston said, before asking the president to resign and then resigning himself. Livingston's rabid pursuit of the president, even as he hoped to hide his own dirty laundry, made him an avatar of hypocrisy in a capital rotting with hypocrisy. On Thursday night, when Livingston first confessed his sins to Republicans in hopes of keeping his hold on his post, his colleagues gave him a standing ovation. And after he made his surprise announcement Saturday, the Republicans gave him another ovation and stepped up to deliver encomiums to their lost speaker. ``One's self-esteem gets utterly crushed at times like this,'' sighed Henry Hyde, another tormenter of the president who also had to admit that he had succumbed to temptation. Tom DeLay, the jagged-edge exterminator who may next-up in the speaker roundelay, was choked up, praising the greatness of Livingston for understanding that this was ``a debate about relativism versus absolute truth.'' What could be more relative than a Republican who has hidden a lot of affairs trying to impeach a president for lying about his? Spurred by Larry Flynt's bounty for sinnuendo, the city was braced for more craziness. The Ship of Fools reached cruising speed on Friday evening, when we had the frightening scene of Republicans so crazed with hatred of the president that they were railroading through an impeachment even though the United States was at war with Iraq, even though the House chamber was mostly empty, even though Republicans were huddled in a glass house on the issue of sex and lies, and even though the White House was still pitching a tent and planning sleigh rides for a Winter Wonderland press party on Monday. (The White House was keeping the journalists quarantined outside this year, but encouraged them to bring their kids. To soak up some of that cozy family atmosphere, no doubt. Why are the Republicans so obsessed, when everyone in his right mind agrees that impeachment is an outlandishly over-the-top punishment for Clinton and a self-destructive course for the country? Because they genuinely hate the president. They think he's a dishonest, immoral, issue-stealing, selfish child of the '60s. They don't think they're going to pay a political price for this, and if they do, they don't care. It might be a great time to see a lot of combovers, but it's not a great time to see a lot of stature. The House debate was not history. It was just a more hideous version of ``The McLaughlin Group.'' While Republicans tried to draw the distinction that Clinton had perjured himself, they ignored that the president had been lured by the Starr-Jones attorney team into testifying on Monica Lewinsky. Ordinarily one would feel sorry for Livingston. But the Republicans have brought this sexual doomsday machine on themselves by focusing so single-mindedly on Clinton's sex life. The Republicans were so determined to do their high-tech lynching that they engaged in wacky role reversals. Many Republican hawks argued that Bill Clinton should not be bombing Saddam, claiming the timing was suspicious, even though they had hammered him for not bombing five weeks ago. In an incredibly unseemly display, Trent Lott, the majority leader, and former Bush national security adviser Brent Scowcroft and Bush Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger chimed in on the attack. There's too much hate here. And I hate it. ||||| The only thing certain now is uncertainty. The smart money shouts that President Clinton will never resign, and he concurs. The smart money argues that the Senate could not muster the 67 votes that would be needed to remove the wounded president from office, which would require the defection of 12 Democrats if all the Republicans stand against him. The smart money insists that someone will cut a deal to end all this. Maybe so. But the smarter money whispers, ``Remember.'' Remember that everyone in Washington, including Rep. Henry Hyde, R-Ill., chairman of the Judiciary Committee, said the House would never, ever, treat impeachment as a partisan issue. Wrong. Remember that all the pundits predicted Democratic losses in the midterm elections, and when the opposite happened, they said impeachment was dead. Twice wrong. And remember that in the New Year the nation may travel down a road it has never traveled before. One other president, Andrew Johnson of Tennessee, has been tried by the Senate, of course. But that happened in a different country _one with only 37 states, with primitive communications, with a simple economy based largely on agriculture, with only minimal commitments abroad. In the toxic politics of century's end in Washington, the inconceivable has become the commonplace. The wholly unanticipated announcement Saturday morning by Rep. Robert Livingston, R-La., that he would not serve as speaker and would resign from Congress, following his equally unanticipated disclosure on Thursday night of several extramarital affairs, only deepened the capital's profound sense of insecurity. The deadly sweep of the scythe of neo-puritanism appears unstoppable, at least for the moment, and Livingston's forthcoming resignation will increase the pressure on the president to do likewise. ``You've set before us an example,'' the leader of House Republican majority, Rep. Dick Armey of Texas, told Livingston Saturday. ``The example is that principle comes before power.'' The Democrats made the opposite point, arguing that the Livingston case showed how very wrong it was to savage people for personal pecaddillos. One transcendently important thing remains the same: Although surrounded by judicial trappings and presided over by the chief justice, trials of presidents are political processes, with power residing in the hands of elective politicians. In addition to narrow legal issues of guilt or innocence, they can weigh considerations of party, the nation's future, their own individual political well-being and almost anything else they care to weigh in reaching a verdict. The longer they took, the more numerous the call for resignation would probably be. Even before Saturday's epochal roll-calls, four of ten Americans interviewed in the latest New York Times/CBS News Poll said they thought the president should step down if he were to be indicted, despite the fact that a large majority voiced disapproval of the impeachment proceedings. What lies behind that seeming contradiction, of course, is the fear that Clinton, and the country with him, would be incapacitated. No one took Andrew Johnson very seriously after he escaped conviction by a single vote. But Clinton, a man of powerful will whose whole life has been a series of comebacks, has already embarked on an effort to show that he can do the nation's business. Richard Nixon clawed his way back to respectability after leaving the White House when no one thought he could; Clinton intends to re-establish his authority while still in office. He has one great advantage: Two-thirds of the American public continues to voice its approval of his political stewardship, whatever it thinks of him as a man. The president will press hard, despite his much-reduced leverage, for a deal on censure. Indeed, in as fine a piece of political irony as one could ask for, he has already sought to enlist former Sen. Bob Dole, the Republican he defeated in 1996, as an emissary to the Senate majority. The numbers are not unpromising: with the help of six Republicans, the 45 Democrats could end the trial at any time and pass a censure resolution that the House would surely take up. There are enough Republican moderates and sometime party-buckers to make that a plausible target. But the Republican leader in the Senate, Trent Lott of Mississippi, who has made his unwillingness to take the president's word plainly evident in recent days, is determined to fight such a trial-aborting arrangement. It is clear that Clinton's reputation has been stained forever, no matter what the Senate does. The spot will not out. History will remember this man who so coveted a glowing legacy not as an impresario of economic growth, not as the Moses who pointed the way to the 21st century, but as the second president ever to be impeached, if not as the first to be ousted. That harsh word, ``impeachment,'' will cling to his name as surely as ``Teapot Dome'' clings to Harding's and ``Depression'' to Hoover's. But he is not alone in having suffered grievous injury in the political avalanche that was shaken loose by the disclosure of Clinton's sexual relationship with a former White House intern, Monica Lewinsky. The Republicans' public support has shriveled to 40 percent in the new Times/CBS News poll, its lowest level in 14 years, and it could go lower once the fact of impeachment sinks in. Journalists are seen by many as jackals, indifferent to whatever personal suffering or national angst they may cause as long as they get the story, and none too concerned about accuracy. In fact, the whole political culture of the 1990s, with its criminalization of political conduct and its seeming indifference to important national and international issues, has fallen into disrepute with ordinary Americans. The last week seemed to crystallize the long-term decline in political civility. Republicans called Clinton a liar, even as he was committing American pilots to the skies over Iraq, and Democrats accused their rivals of conducting a political lynching or a political coup d'etat. Bipartisanship may have been the biggest victim of all. Party lines on Saturday's rolls calls held as firm as leg irons. Almost all of the Republicans who opposed impeachment did so not exclusively on legal principle but at least partly because of special political circumstances _ the Democratic majority in Rep. Constance Morella's district in the Maryland suburbs of Washington, for example, and the gratitude of Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., for Clinton's peacemaking in Ireland. It is hard to see who has emerged from it with reputation enhanced, except perhaps Hillary Rodham Clinton, staunch in the face of deception. If some of the threats and dire predictions uttered by House Democrats in recent days are to be taken at face value, the nation is entering upon an Era of Bad Feelings, the polar opposite of a second Era of Good Feelings, similar to that of the 1820s, that Clinton had hoped to preside over. Rep. Tom Sawyer, D-Ohio, compared Clinton on Friday to Sir Thomas More, executed for treason in 1535 because of his religious beliefs. He quoted More's words as an admonition for today: ``What you have hunted me for is not my actions but for the thoughts of my heart. It is a long road you have opened. God help the statesmen who walk your road.'' But amidst all the loose talk about permanent damage to this institution or that, remember: Things change with startling speed in modern American politics, and the institutions of American government have proved extraordinarily resilient. President Nixon, it was almost universally agreed in 1974, had weakened the American presidency for many decades to come. Nobody said that after eight years under Ronald Reagan, and that was only 15 years later.

During the Clinton impeachment debate in the House, Speaker-elect Bob Livingston declared that he would set an example for the president and resign from Congress over revelations of his marital infidelities. Republican demands that the president also resign were rejected by Democrats who also said that Livingston should not quit and that the Speaker-elect's resignation was, in the words of Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y), "a surrender to sexual McCarthyism". With the House vote to impeach, the president will face a Senate trial, but it is unlikely that 67 members will vote for conviction. The trial could be mercifully shortened, however, by a vote of censure.

Rep. Bob Livingston, who confessed to his colleagues Thursday night that he had had adulterous affairs, stunned the House chamber Saturday morning by saying in the impeachment debate on President Clinton that he would not serve as speaker and would quit Congress in six months. He urged the president to follow his example and quit, too. But at the White House, where calls for Clinton's resignation are derided as a Republican strategy, the president sent a spokesman into the driveway to urge Livingston to reconsider his resignation. Livingston stood in the well of the House he has served for two decades and called on Clinton to resign his office rather than force a trial in the Senate, drawing boos from his colleagues and cat-calls that he should quit instead. He then did just that. ``I must set the example that I hope President Clinton will follow,'' Livingston announced to a shocked and silent chamber in an act that left the Republican Party in total chaos just hours before the vote to impeach Clinton. The decision also left the party leaderless on the eve of the opening of the 106th Congress, when Republicans must govern with one of the narrowest majorities in history. Several Republicans, including Rep. Tom DeLay of Texas, the majority whip, somberly welcomed the news, suggesting it relieved them of an excruciating embarrassment. In lauding Livingston's move, DeLay said, ``He understood what this debate was all about _ it's about honor and decency and integrity and the truth, everything we honor in this country.'' But Democrats said they were aghast, and many _ including Clinton _ called on Livingston to reconsider his decision. ``Mr. Livingston's resignation was wrong,'' declared Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y. ``It is a surrender to a developing sexual McCarthyism. Are we going to have a new test if someone wants to run for public office _ are you now or have you ever been an adulterer?'' He called on the country to distinguish between sins and crimes. White House press secretary Joe Lockhart said Clinton was ``disappointed'' at the news of Livingston's plans and wished that he would reconsider. Lockhart said the president ``firmly believes that the politics of personal destruction in this town and this country has to come to an end.'' He reaffirmed that Clinton would not resign, saying: ``The president is going to do what's in the best interest of the country. It would be wrong to give in to this insidious politics of personal destruction.'' Livingston's announced resignation was all the more stunning for its disclosure in a process that could result in the president's removal from office. The speaker is second in line to the presidency, after the vice president. Newt Gingrich, the outgoing speaker, who was driven from the post after Republicans lost five seats in the November election, technically remains speaker until Jan. 6, when Livingston's election was to be ratified by the new Congress. But Gingrich has removed himself from the daily operations of the House at this extraordinary session and has begun to dismantle his office. Livingston's decision was said to be driven in part by the anger of a group of about a dozen conservatives in his party who were disillusioned that he had withheld news of his affairs from them. They had threatened to withhold their votes for him in the election in January that would formally make him speaker. He was also concerned about the pain caused to his family by further disclosures, some members said. They added that, not lost on many in his party, was the example he would set for the president by offering to resign his post now. DeLay, No. 3 in the House Republican leadership, is expected to fill the power vacuum at least temporarily, in deed if not in title, while the party regroups to find a new speaker. Many members quickly rallied around Rep. Dennis Hastert of Illinois. Hastert, one of DeLay's deputy whips who is well respected among his colleagues, had been promoted as a candidate for majority leader last month, but never mounted a campaign. Rep. Dick Armey of Texas only precariously held on to his majority-leader post last month and was not considered a likely candidate for speaker. He is expected to manage the reorganization, which Republican leaders have set for Jan. 4. Livingston met privately with his closest advisers Friday as the impeachment debate unfolded. Some of his colleagues believed he had made a mistake in disclosing Thursday night _ just as the House was moving into the divisive debate over impeachment _ that he had ``on occasion strayed from my marriage.'' He told Republican leaders late Thursday afternoon that Hustler magazine was going to expose his affairs early next year. Some leaders urged him to keep quiet, but his wife, Bonnie, encouraged him to tell his colleagues immediately, despite the momentous vote that was nearing on the floor. At that point Thursday night, Roll Call, a newspaper on Capitol Hill, reported on its Web site that Livingston was going to admit to the affairs and was going to offer to resign. In a closed-door meeting with his fellow Republicans, he did admit to the affairs but made no offer to step down, receiving three standing ovations instead. Thursday night, Livingston stated that he would ``not be intimidated by these efforts'' to exploit his past. But Friday he removed himself from public action and that night drew his closest advisers into his confidence. His aides said Saturday that they had no clue what was he was contemplating, and few other members were aware of his plans. Asked if he had any advance word, Rep. J.C. Watts of Oklahoma, a newly elected member of the Republican leadership, said: ``I had no idea.'' Asked if there had been internal party pressure on Livingston to resign, Rep. Harold Rogers, R-Ky., said: ``I didn't know about it if there was,'' but added, ``There were some members who were critical of it.'' As the leaders tried Saturday to hold the party together on and off the House floor, most Republicans stuck to their prepared scripts on the floor in favor of impeaching the president. But some began expressing their anguish. Rep. Henry Hyde, R-Ill., who admitted to his own adulterous affair earlier this year, said after Livingston's resignation: ``Those of us who are sinners must feel wretched today. Something is going on repeatedly that has to be stopped, and that is a confusion between private acts of infidelity and public acts.'' To much applause, Hyde declared: ``Congress has no business intruding into private acts.'' Republicans, indeed Livingston himself, had made this same distinction between Clinton's sexual indiscretions and Livingston's, saying that Clinton lied about his private acts and therefore abused the legal system and his powers. As Livingston said in his statement Thursday: ``These indiscretions were not with employees on my staff and I have never been asked to testify under oath about them.'' Democrats hoped that Livingston's seemingly drastic action would wake up the House to how poisoned the atmosphere had become and might prompt Republicans to reconsider the impeachment of Clinton. Rep. Paul Kanjorski, D-Pa., said, ``We are now starting to offer up sacrificial lambs to whatever terrible disease this is.'' In a stirring speech applauded even by some Republicans, Rep. Dick Gephardt of Missouri, the Democratic leader, praised Livingston as a ``worthy, good and honorable man'' and said his resignation was a grave mistake. ``It's a terrible capitulation to the negative political forces that are consuming our political system and our country,'' Gephardt said, adding that the events of the last few days showed ``life imitates farce.'' ``We need to stop destroying imperfect people at an unattainable altar of public morality,'' he said, urging his colleagues to ``step back from the abyss'' and reject resignation, impeachment and ``vicious self-righteousness.'' ||||| The New York Times said in an editorial for Sunday, Dec. 20: The Republicans' drive for a partisan impeachment based soley on party-line voting power rather than any sense of proportion produced an unexpected sideshow in the resignation of Rep. Bob Livingston from his role as future speaker of the House. Analysts on both sides of the struggle over President Clinton's future will point to Livingston's downfall as evidence of a generalized breakdown in legislative civility on Capitol Hill. Democrats will see a moral symmetry, depicting Livingston as a victim of the sexual puritanism he was wielding against Clinton. But the one thing that no one should fall for is Livingston's invitation to use his resignation as a model for resolving the crisis at the White House. Livingston's statement rocked Congress, but it should not shake the foundations of the somber constitutional process now underway. By lying under oath, Clinton made it necessary for the House to consider impeachment. The evidence convinced most Americans that the president should be censured, but not removed from office. Livingston allowed GOP partisans to block censure in the House. The result is that after Saturday's expected impeachment vote, after Livingston's unexpected announcement, the mission of the Senate remains the same. It must resist those Republicans who want to short-circuit the constitutional process with demands for resignation, and it must use the upcoming Senate trial as a forum for finding a censure commensurate with the president's personal dishonesty and offenses against the law. These require stern punishment but not removal from office. In undertaking this work, the Senate must also reassure the American people that a decisive wisdom at the core of our messy-looking political system has not melted down. In such distempered times, this is a shining opportunity for the Senate. Its members pride themselves on being the Republic's fire wall against presidential excess and the popular or partisan passions that sometimes seize the House of Representatives. No one can predict whether Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott will rise to the defining challenge of his career or whether he will surrender to the mean streak he acquired during 16 grumpy years as a minority member of the House. We would like to see Lott reach for a starring role in history. Lott's growling response to questions about censure is not encouraging. He may be right that the Constitution requires him to convene a trial, but nothing in that document prevents him from speedily guiding the Senate toward censure negotiations. Indeed, a simple majority vote _ 45 Democrats plus 6 cooperating Republicans _ can end the Senate trial at any time, clearing the way for introduction of the kind of censure resolution suggested by former Sen. Bob Dole. In an intriguing report on NBC, Tim Russert described discussions among a bipartisan group of senators about a censure that would involve some form of presidential confession, a fine and a joint congressional request that Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr not prosecute Clinton in the courts. If Lott refuses to allow a bipartisan search for censure, the burden will fall upon respected members like Joseph Lieberman on the Democratic side and Orrin Hatch for the Republicans. Through cooperation, they can guide the Senate toward a punishment that fixes Clinton in history as a president who lied under oath, but avoids the taint of partisan vengeance associated with the House impeachment vote. The Senate's historic reputation for prudence requires it to find appropriate punishment for a personally weak president who has damaged the rule of law, but not threatened the stability of the government. ||||| ``We are here to debate impeachment and should not be distracted from that,'' the minority whip, Rep. David Bonior, Democrat of Michigan, said during Saturday's House debate, in what leaped out as an impossible goal. It would have taken a kaleidoscopic television screen to capture the constantly shifting images competing for center stage: impeachment, Iraq, the resignation of Rep. Robert Livingston, the response from the White House. The months leading up to the impeachment of President Clinton had become a series of televised anticlimaxes, but the hours before the vote made up for that lack of drama. There were hardly enough shorthand terms or split screens to cover the activity. All the networks and cable channels carried the moment that unexpectedly set the tone, as Livingston, a Louisiana Republican, announced during the debate that he would not become House speaker. The commentators had been set to carry the congressional ratification of the inevitable vote, but suddenly the most plugged-in reporters were caught off guard. As Tim Russert said to Tom Brokaw on NBC, ``Tom, knock us all over.'' In the echo chamber that television news so often becomes, the shared mantra had been weightier in early morning. ``For only the second time in American history'' a president would be impeached, went the standard line. Yet despite all the pundits speculating and politicians telegraphing every move, no one had hinted at the Livingston resignation. The announcement was, as Brokaw put it, at least partly ``a political ploy,'' and the repercussions were immediate. Reporters began gathering word from Capitol Hill about candidates for the speaker's job, and the conversation moved to the next stage of the political tug of war. The Republicans used Livingston's resignation to say that the president should resign, too; the Democrats immediately countered with the idea that the president would stay and that Livingston should as well. That led to one of the less-expected split screens of the day, and it was not a bad choice. While Congress was debating, CNN showed anti-aircraft fire in Baghdad in one box. In the other, Joe Lockhart, Clinton's press secretary, stood in the White House driveway telling reporters that the president would like Livingston to reconsider his decision. There was more stateliness in the House than television usually offers, and one reason was purely visual. ``Keep in mind that we do not control the picture,'' Dan Rather said on CBS, explaining that the television cameras in Congress are provided by the House, not the individual networks. There was no way to roam and zoom in for reaction shots, as at a political convention. But the sense of history and decorum didn't last long at CBS. At noon, before the vote, CBS went to a football game, becoming the only network to leave the news coverage. CBS' corporate decision to try to have it both ways meant that Rather would break in with updates from Washington. ``I'll see you very soon,'' he said as he signed off the complete coverage, looking like a trouper. But he was in a position no news anchor should have been in on this day. He later announced impeachment votes on a split screen with the football game in progress in the upper part of the screen. On the other networks and cable channels, the vote itself literally happened in the background. As TV screens toted up the numbers of the electronically-cast vote, members of Congress milled around and chatted on the floor. Even the brief Democratic walkout after a motion to consider censure was defeated was thoroughly forecast. As the Democrats straggled down the steps of Congress, it looked curiously undramatic on television, though it probably made a better still photograph once they were all in place. And while the votes were in progress, the jockeying for the speaker's job heated up. ``We already have a presumptive leader,'' Gwen Ifill of NBC News said in midafternoon, naming Rep. Dennis Hassert, R-Ill., who had also been cited by the other networks as a likely candidate. If the political and military action had not intruded, it might have been more obvious that the debate on the House floor sent a message about vast divisions in politics and morality, signaling how deep a cultural fissure this crisis has opened. The impeachment, said Rep. Tom DeLay, R-Texas, was ``a debate about relativism vs. absolute truth.'' Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., contended that Congress had lost the ``distinction between sins and crimes,'' and argued against the ``sexual McCarthyism'' that has become prominent. And against the backdrop of the revelations of adultery that led to Livingston's resignation, Rep. Dick Gephardt, the minority leader, declared ``the politics of personal destruction has to end.'' But as all the jabbering and political posturing continued, as reporters raced to cover the president's statement about the impeachment and the latest briefings from the Pentagon, there was little time to focus on the profound cultural message beneath those rhetorical flourishes. ||||| Bob Livingston, the incoming speaker of the House, took no public role Friday as the debate unfolded on whether to impeach President Clinton. His previous 24 hours had been his most visible in the month since his party nominated him as speaker and perhaps the most excruciating in his public career: He spent most of the day in a chaotic procedural wrangle over the terms of Friday's debate; he ended it by telling his Republican colleagues that he had had extramarital affairs during his 20-year tenure in Congress. His disclosure followed an investigation by Larry Flynt, publisher of Hustler, the sex magazine, who said Friday at a news conference in Beverly Hills, Calif., that his publication had learned that Livingston had had adulterous affairs during the last 10 years. Flynt said earlier this year that he wanted to expose the ``hypocrisy'' of those in Washington who are investigating Clinton and in October offered $1 million to anyone who could prove they had had affairs with members of Congress. He said Friday that this larger investigation, to be published perhaps as soon as January, would reveal what he described as indiscretions of several other Republicans. He said he had no connection with the White House but that he had hired an investigative firm based in Washington and made up of former employees of the FBI and the CIA. He would not confirm whether the firm is Terry Lenzner's Investigative Group Inc., which has done work for the president's private lawyers. Livingston was unavailable to reporters Friday. He spent some time Friday morning sprawled in a chair in the back of the House chamber, listening to the debate over whether to impeach Clinton for lying about his own sexual indiscretions. Several colleagues knelt at Livingston's knee, whispered to him and patted him on the back. He spent most of the day in a private office off the chamber, avoiding the gauntlet of reporters who lay in wait for him between the House and his regular office across the street. The only word out of his aides was that the Navy had awarded contracts worth millions of dollars for ships to be built in his Louisiana district at the Avondale Shipyards. During Friday's debate, a handful of Democrats made only oblique allusions to human failures. For example, Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., said: ``Let he that has no sin cast the first stone. Who, who among us has not sinned?'' But no one said that Livingston's disclosure or the mild Democratic attempts to exploit it would influence their votes on impeachment. Rather, on the House floor and in hallway chitchat, Livingston's conduct seemed to be the last thing that either Republicans or Democrats wanted to talk about. ``Bob Livingston is a first-rate human being,'' said Rep. David Obey, D-Wis., who has worked closely and sparred with Livingston on the Appropriations Committee, in an interview. ``I will repeat what the nuns taught me at St. James a long time ago: We would all be a hell of a lot better off looking after our own souls rather than trying to evaluate somebody else's. None of us have any business even having an opinion on it.'' Even conservative Republicans seemed ready to overlook the disclosure. ``We're not going to say, `Bob, you can't be speaker because you violated your vows with your wife,''' said Rep. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C. Like many, including Livingston, Graham distinguished Livingston's conduct from Clinton's by saying that the president had ``trampled'' on the legal system whereas Livingston's behavior was strictly private. Despite Flynt's claims, many Republicans blamed the Clinton administration for smearing Livingston, although they offered no evidence. ``This isn't just happening on its own,'' said Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R- Calif. ||||| House Speaker-elect Robert L. Livingston presented a fresh note of shock to the impeachment debate against President Clinton on Thursday night as the Republican leader was forced to admit to his Republican colleagues that he had carried on adulterous affairs in his past. ``It has suddenly come to my attention that there are individuals working together with the media who are investigating my personal background in an effort to find indiscretions which may be exploitable against me and my party on the eve of the upcoming historic vote on impeachment,'' Livingston declared in a statement after appearing before a shocked House Republican conference to head off the disclosure as it surfaced in news reports. After hearing his admissions in a closed session, Livingston's colleagues gave him a standing ovation of support and said the question of his resigning had never arisen. ``My fate is in your hands,'' Livingston told the Republicans, according to lawmakers who were present. The debate over the president's fate would go forward, Republicans later insisted, drawing distinctions between the speaker-elect's revelations and the sex-and-mendacity scandal that has put Clinton on the brink of impeachment. The president is charged in an impeachment resolution with perjury and abuse of power in his attempt to hide sexual indiscretions. Democrats offered no immediate comment, but Republicans were braced to hear Livingston's admissions alluded to in the debate Friday by Democrats who have decried the investigation of the president as basically a partisan and unfair rummaging through his sex life. Livingston, saying he had sought spiritual counseling and had received the forgiveness of his family, noted he had several times told reporters during his campaign to become speaker that ``I was running for speaker, not sainthood.'' He added, ``There was a reason for those words.'' ``During my 33-year marriage to my wife, Bonnie, I have on occasion strayed from my marriage, and doing so nearly cost me my marriage and family,'' Livingston said in his brief prepared statement. But he attempted to draw a contrast with the allegations against the president, asserting: ``I want to assure everyone that these indiscretions were not with employees on my staff and I have never been asked to testify under oath about them.'' The disclosure of the speaker-elect's marital infidelities, disclosed in ``Rollcall,'' a Capitol Hill newspaper, sent a new jolt of uncertainty among lawmakers as they prepared for the momentous debate over the president's admitted misbehavior in office and whether he should be impeached and tried by the Senate. Rep. Henry Hyde, the Republican chairman of the House Judiciary Committee who is to bring the impeachment charges against the president, previously was cited by a magazine for an extra-marital affair in his past. Then, as on Thursday night, Republicans voiced suspicions that Democratic defenders of the president instigated media investigations in an effort to embarrass the Clinton's principal accusers. But no proof was offered as Republicans left their conference, facing the uncertainties of a debate that already promised to be bare-knuckled in its partisanship. Livingston left the conference surrounded by Capitol police, not taking questions from waiting reporters. His chief leadership aides immediately rallied in support. ``Some who would rather not struggle with this constitutional question continue to try to twist the debate into an unseemly investigation of private lives,'' said Rep. Dick Armey, the Republican majority leader. In its report on the internet Thursday night, Rollcall did not disclose its source but made an oblique reference to Hustler, the sex magazine. Larry Flint, publisher of Hustler, earlier this year advertised an offer of a $1 million bounty for information about e of members of Congress guilty of sexual indiscretions. ``It breaks your heart because we're all subject to human frailties,'' said Asa Hutchinson, R-Ark., as he left the conference. ``This is not a comfortable circumstance for anyone,'' he added, insisting the president and the speaker-elect presented two separate issues. ``We've got a duty to do under the Constitution.'' ||||| In the end, the will of the people meant nothing. Bob Livingston couldn't have been clearer about that. His mind and the minds of his followers were closed. Even as the bombing continued in Iraq and Americans from coast to coast were clamoring for an alternative to impeachment, even as his own adulterous past was being flushed out in the grotesque invasions of privacy that inevitably followed the relentlessly prurient pursuit of the president, even as the country began to contemplate the destructive effects of a lengthy and bitter Senate trial, the speaker-designate arrogantly and stupidly proclaimed: ``Let us disregard the outside influences.'' The radicals on the Hill would hear nothing but the echoes of their own fanaticism. Impeach! Impeach! And that continued even after the stunning announcement Saturday morning that Livingston would quit the House. Dismayed by the partisan stampede, Dick Gephardt, the Democratic leader, warned during the impeachment debate on Friday: ``In your effort to uphold the Constitution, you are trampling the Constitution.'' David Bonior, the Democratic whip, said: ``This is wrong. It is unfair. It is unjust. At a time when events in the world and the challenges at home demand that we stand united, censure is the one solution that can bring us together. To my colleagues across the aisle, I say let go of your obsession. Listen to the American people.'' But the voices of reason would not be heard. Livingston and his right-wing colleagues, the Tom DeLays, the Henry Hydes, the Bob Barrs, were on a mission of destruction and would not be denied. Ordinary Americans could cry out all they wanted. They could protest and demonstrate, send faxes and E-mails. It didn't matter. The right was on the march and democracy was on the run. Rep. Thomas Barrett, a Democrat from Wisconsin, tried to remind his Republican colleagues that the Constitution ``does not allow you to remove a president from office because you can't stand him.'' He was, of course, ignored. The Republicans will pay a huge price for their brazen, utterly partisan attempt to drag a president from the White House in defiance of the will of the people. The party's contempt for the voters was arrogantly but quite adequately summed up by Alan Simpson, the former senator from Wyoming, who said: ``The attention span of Americans is which movie is coming out next month and whether the quarterly report on their stock will change.'' If the voters are the dopes that Mr. Simpson thinks they are, then come 2000 everyone will have forgotten there was an impeachment crisis. But Rep. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., was probably closer to the truth when he said, ``I warn my colleagues that you will reap the bitter harvest of the unfair partisan seeds you sow today.'' One of the many strange events of the past couple of weeks was the way in which virtually all of the previously undecided Republicans, the so-called moderates, surrendered their independence and lined up like lackeys to follow the right wing's lead. All proclaimed loudly that they were voting on principle, but in fact it was an exercise in mass cowardice, exemplified by Rep. John McHugh of upstate New York. McHugh announced on Tuesday that he would vote for impeachment. But if his decision was based on principle, he had an odd way of expressing it. The Washington Post said McHugh appeared to have no stomach for a Senate conviction or removal of the president from office. Of his colleagues in the Senate, McHugh said, ``I, for one, would accept, even welcome, their mercy.'' In other words, let the Senate do the heavy constitutional lifting. McHugh may have wished out loud for mercy, but he clearly was too frightened of the right-wingers in the House to cast a compassionate vote himself. The GOP can no longer conceal that it is a party of extremists, of right-wing absolutists, a party out of step with the political and cultural orientation of most Americans. Bob Livingston may be leaving, but his arrogant comment can still serve as his party's slogan. ``Let us disregard the outside influences.'' Let us disregard the people. ||||| Rejecting a last-minute Democratic attempt to soften its action to censure, the House of Representatives moved to impeach President William Jefferson Clinton for perjury on Saturday and to call on the Senate to try him, convict him and remove him from office. But even before the vote, Republicans pressed another line of attack, demanding Clinton's resignation. Rep. Robert Livingston, nominated for speaker last month by his party, startled the House when he announced he would not run for speaker and would resign from the House after 21 years of service. He urged the president to ``heal the wounds that you have created. You, sir, may resign your post.'' Angry Democrats booed and shouted, ``You resign!'' Livingston continued, ``I can only challenge you in such fashion if I am willing to heed my own words.'' Apologizing again for extramarital affairs revealed two days ago, he said, ``I believe I had it in me to do a fine job. But I cannot do that job or be the kind of leader that I would like to be under current circumstances.'' Then he bolted from the House chamber, nearly knocking reporters and members down. (The House voted 228-206 to approve the first article of impeachment, accusing Clinton of committing perjury before a federal grand jury. The vote was announced at 1:24 p.m. EST, leaving the 42nd president to face trial in the Senate on whether he should be removed from office.) Clinton rejected the advice immediately. His spokesman, Joe Lockhart, said, ``The president has no intention of resigning.'' By calling on Livingston to reconsider, the president argued more broadly against resignation under fire. Perhaps speaking to both cases, Lockhart said, ``It would be wrong to give in to this insidious politics of personal destruction.'' Unless Clinton changes course, this would be only the second impeachment of a president in the 209-year history of the Republic, and the first since Andrew Johnson was acquitted in 1868. Sen. Trent Lott of Mississippi, the majority leader, has insisted that no bargaining over censure can prevent it from starting. But the Senate could halt a trial later as part of a deal. Considering the degree of partisanship displayed Saturday, assembling the two-thirds majority required under the Constitution for conviction is most unlikely. Sixty-seven votes would be required, and there are only 55 Republicans in the Senate, along with 45 Democrats. Four articles of impeachment before the House charged Clinton with perjury in lying about his affair with Monica Lewinsky to a federal grand jury here on Aug. 17. He was also charged with perjury in the Paula Jones sexual harassment suit, obstruction of justice and abuse of power. The Republican argument, over and over, was that Clinton had lied in denying having sexual relations with Ms. Lewinsky. Rep. Dick Armey of Texas, the majority leader, said, ``A nation of laws cannot be ruled by a person who breaks the law.'' Rep. Nancy Johnson of Connecticut said: ``There can be no justice without the truth. That is just profoundly so, and that is why perjury matters.'' Rep. Gerald Kleczka of Wisconsin began the Democrats' arguments by saying, ``What the president did was wrong, both personally and morally, but his acts did not threaten our democracy and thus do not rise to the level of impeachable offenses as defined by our founding fathers in our Constitution.'' Rep. Charles Schumer, New York's senator-elect, said: ``The rule of law requires that the punishment fit the crime. Allow us to vote for censure.'' Saturday's votes were the penultimate step in the most serious conflict between Congress and a president since Richard M. Nixon resigned in the face of impeachment and certain conviction on Aug. 9, 1974. But while that case spun out from a 1972 break-in at Democratic headquarters in the Watergate complex, this one began with a murky land deal in Arkansas in 1978. Through the efforts of Kenneth Starr, the independent counsel under the law enacted in the wake of Watergate, the investigation spread to examine Clinton's affair with a White House intern. All year it has preoccupied the capital despite an immense disconnect with public opinion; since the scandal became public in January, polls have shown that the public opposed impeachment and wanted the inquiry brought to an end. Even on Friday night, after a 13-hour debate, a CBS News Poll of 548 people showed that only 38 percent wanted their representative to vote for impeachment; 58 percent wanted a no vote. The conflict now enters uncharted seas, since the Nixon resignation cut the matter short and the Johnson trial occurred in a different America, with no nuclear weapons or cable television or public opinion polls. But the capital was still rife with confident speculation. Some guessed, or hoped, that the results of the recent poll, which showed increases in support for resignation as a way to spare the nation a trial in which Ms. Lewinsky and Linda Tripp would be star witnesses, would weaken Clinton's resolve. Others thought the Republicans, seeing dismal numbers in polls about their party's standing in the United States, would be the first to blink. With a majority in the Senate, they have the power to end a trial at any time after the Senate receives notice of impeachment on the day it convenes, Jan. 6, or the next day. But while Clinton has focused on the polls, and the CBS News survey showed that 64 percent still approve of his handling of his job as president, resignation could almost immediately subject him to criminal prosecution. And Republicans have steadfastly ignored the polls all year, and confronted them directly on Saturday. Representative J.C. Watts of Oklahoma, newly elected as chairman of the Republican caucus, said: ``What's popular isn't always right. You say polls are against this. Polls measure changing feelings, not steadfast principle. Polls would have rejected the Ten Commandments. Polls would have embraced slavery and ridiculed women's rights. ``You say we must draw this to a close. I say we must draw a line between right and wrong, not with a tiny fine line of an executive fountain pen, but with the big fat lead of a No. 2 pencil. And we must do it so every kid in America can see it. The point is not whether the president can prevail, but whether truth can prevail.'' Last weekend, when the Judiciary Committee recommended the four articles of impeachment, Clinton's side still hoped to prevail with the help of 20 to 30 Republican moderates who were uncommitted. As the week wore on, almost all of them broke against the president. One who did not, Rep. Christopher Shays of Connecticut, said Saturday: ``After Judge Starr's report to Congress in September, and his presentation to the Judiciary Committee in November, I concluded that impeachable offenses were not proven, and that the proven offenses were not impeachable. ``But the president's continued failure to come to grips with his actions, the sincerity and arguments of members of the Judiciary Committee from both sides of the aisle, the change of heart and conviction by members on my side of the aisle who originally opposed impeachment and who now support it, and the strong and powerful opinion of so many of my constituents who oppose my position and who wanted the president impeached caused me to rethink my position.'' He added: ``Yesterday morning, before I visited with the president, I concluded that my original position was the correct one, for me. I believe that the impeachable offenses have not been proven, and that the proven offenses are not impeachable.'' But Rep. Tom DeLay of Texas, who has led the Republican effort to force Clinton from office, dismissed his and other arguments as moral relativism. He began by praising Livingston: ``There is no greater American in my mind, at least today, than Bob Livingston, because he understood what this debate was all about. It was about honor and decency and integrity and the truth; everything that we honor in this country. It was also a debate about relativism vs. absolute truth.'' He continued, ``The president's defenders have said that the president is morally reprehensible, that he is reckless, that he has violated the trust of the American people, lessened their esteem for the office of president and dishonored the office which they have entrusted him, and that _ but that doesn't rise to the level of impeachment.'' Rep. Jose Serrano of New York said, ``My constituents don't hate Bill Clinton; they love him and they're praying for him right at this very moment. You may have the votes today to impeach him, but you don't have the American people. And let me tell you something, I grew up in the public housing projects of the South Bronx. I can see a bunch of bullies when I see them. The bullies get theirs, and you're going to get yours, too. Rep. Henry Hyde of Illinois, the Judiciary Committee chairman who brought the charges to the House floor, said the Congress and the American people needed to distinguish between private acts of infidelity and public acts by public officials. In Clinton's case, he said, the House was dealing with ``a serial violator of the oath who is the chief law-enforcement officer.'' He said that the Senate could be ``innovative and creative'' in deciding how best to punish Clinton, but that the House was bound by the Constitution to move ahead with articles of impeachment. ``Justice is so important to the most humble among us,'' Hyde said. ``Equal justice under the law _ that's what we're fighting for.'' Democrats, reading from the same Constitution, voiced diametrically opposite conclusions, and attacked the fairness of the proceedings that culminated Saturday. ``We're losing track of distinction between sins and crimes,'' said Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y. ``We're lowering the standards of impeachment. What the president has done is not a great and dangerous offense to the republic.'' Democrats also criticized Republicans for impeaching Clinton at the very moment that U.S. troops waged war against Iraq. ``Six days before Christmas our troops are in battle, and a lame-duck Congress is rushing to overthrow the commander in chief,'' said Rep. David Bonior of Michigan, the second-ranking House Democrat. The ghosts of Watergate hung over the House chamber. One Republican cited the parallels between the charges the House Judiciary Committee brought against Nixon 25 years ago, and the counts that the same committee brought to the House floor for affirmation on Saturday. ``Nixon cheated. He cheated the electoral system,'' said Rep. Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican on the Judiciary Committee. And now, Graham said, the full House is voting to impeach Clinton ``because we believe he committed crimes that result in cheating our judicial system.'' But most of the day's debate was firmly rooted in Clinton's effort to conceal his sexual affair with Monica Lewinsky. Rep. Bob Barr, a Georgia Republican on the Judiciary Committee who is one of Clinton's fiercest critics, held up copies of the U.S. Criminal Code, the Judiciary Committee's report on the impeachment inquiry and, finally, the Constitution, in defending his decision to impeach the president. ``Today, we rely on the three pillars of our society: the law itself, evidence and the Constitution,'' said Barr. ``There is no joy in upholding the law,'' Watts said. ``If we cannot see lawlessness, our children cannot recognize it. How can we tell our children honesty is the best policy when we don't demand it as a policy?'' But Democrats assailed the very premise on which the Republican majority built its impeachment case against Clinton. Rep. John Conyers Jr. of Michigan, the ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, assailed the four articles of impeachment, count by count, as unfounded by evidence and failing to rise to impeachment. He saved his most savage scorn for the final count, abuse of power. ``The majority has simply tried to dress up the perjury counts in the Watergate abuse-of-power language,'' Conyers said. ||||| The raw passions were such that the House Democrats did not to hesitate to bellow ``You resign! You resign!'' at Speaker-elect Robert Livingston when he called from the House floor for President Clinton to quit the White House in the face of certain impeachment. Shockingly, stunningly, Livingston did just that. He quit in one breathtaking utterance, as if flicking a trump card onto the heap of impeachment angst festering before his eyes in the debating chamber. In his one and only strategem in leading his fellow House Republicans, Livingston's decision struck Congress like a verbal bomb. Stunned Democrats saw their fury vaporized upon the instant. They had to stand, almost staggering to their feet, to join the Republicans in a prolonged, emotional ovation for Livingston and his undeniable self-sacrifice. As they stood, the Democrats sensed Livingston had most suddenly closed a trap on the president and his defenders. For, with the impeachment issue set to move to the Senate, Livingston, whose own marital indiscretions were now before the public to his obvious misery, chose to show how the question of a political leader's resignation was very much in play in this tumult-tossed city. ``I must set the example that I hope President Clinton will follow,'' Livingston declared, flabbergasting all attending the impeachment debate and the nation watching beyond. Livingston walked off the floor like the sheriff in some bullet-pocked political ``High Noon,'' discarding the leadership badge he had wrested from the earlier speaker-casualty, Newt Gingrich. In the corridor just beyond, a doorman shouted to a police officer: ``Livingston just resigned!'' ``What? What?'' came the reply from the officer, who obviously thought the momentous announcement would be about Clinton's impeachment, not Livingston's political self-immolation. Just so, the Democrats, already deep into bone-raw exhaustion after their long fight to save the president, grasped for bearings. ``It is a surrender to a developing sexual McCarthyism!'' declared Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., a leading presidential defender trying to rally Democrats around the argument that Livingston should not resign any more than President Clinton should quit under fire. But the Republicans were surging to the fore on the strength of Livingston's announcement, fighting tears as they rose to salute him as the ultimate political role model in the grueling impeachment process as it roared into the final minutes of debate. ``For some it is no longer good enough to make a mistake, to confirm that mistake and take the consequences of that mistake,'' said Tom DeLay, the Republican whip, his hands shaking, his eyes tearing as he addressed the House and sought to drive the example of Livingston all the way down Pennsylvania Avenue. ``He understood what this debate was all about _ honor, duty, integrity and the truth,'' said DeLay arguing that in one swift blow, Livingston had demonstrated himself to have been a far better speaker than Clinton has been a president. With something of the political elan the president showed in initiating the Iraq attack as his own impeachment loomed, House Republicans, battered in public opinion polls, had found a rocket's red glare of their own. ``I have hurt you all deeply and beg your forgiveness,'' Livingston told the House, the nation and his family as he announced retreat. Only moments before, Democrats openly hissed the man as Livingston firmly read his own judgment upon the president: ``Sir, you have done great damage to this nation over the past year.'' Presidential resignation was in order, he continued, and then came the shouts of ``You resign! You resign!'' And as Livingston closed the circle on his career, he stunned the place into a collective breath of disbelief and somehow almost threatened to reduce the dark historic issue before the House _ the impeachment of the president _ into a matter of anticlimax. ``They must not succeed,'' David Bonior, the Democratic whip said of the Republicans as he was given the task of refocusing the day on the misdeeds of the president, not the departure of the speaker. ``We are here to debate impeachment and should not be distracted from that,'' he declared. ``The only way we can stop this vicious cycle,'' Bonior cried out from the floor, ``is if we refuse to give into it, whether it is Bill Clinton or Bob Livingston.'' But the House was still reeling through the frenzied day as the fateful vote on the presidency approached and the notion of resignation licked about the capital city like a flame in a forest. ||||| It has gotten to the point where drastic action may be necessary. You know those movies about Ebola virus outbreaks, where the guys in sterile suits come in, seal off the area and completely irradiate it? They may have to do that to Washington. Just eradicate us and start from scratch. In a few, short days we have managed to make the terms ``surreal,'' ``bizarre,'' ``split-screen America,'' ``shocking,'' ``runaway train'' and ``politics of personal destruction'' useless cliches. We no longer govern here. We just roll around in the gutter wondering who's next in this sexual auto-de-fe. On Saturday morning, we had the surreal, shocking, bizarre, split-screen image of Bob Livingston, the speaker-elect, stepping down after his marital infidelities were revealed. ``We are all pawns on the chessboard,'' Livingston said, before asking the president to resign and then resigning himself. Livingston's rabid pursuit of the president, even as he hoped to hide his own dirty laundry, made him an avatar of hypocrisy in a capital rotting with hypocrisy. On Thursday night, when Livingston first confessed his sins to Republicans in hopes of keeping his hold on his post, his colleagues gave him a standing ovation. And after he made his surprise announcement Saturday, the Republicans gave him another ovation and stepped up to deliver encomiums to their lost speaker. ``One's self-esteem gets utterly crushed at times like this,'' sighed Henry Hyde, another tormenter of the president who also had to admit that he had succumbed to temptation. Tom DeLay, the jagged-edge exterminator who may next-up in the speaker roundelay, was choked up, praising the greatness of Livingston for understanding that this was ``a debate about relativism versus absolute truth.'' What could be more relative than a Republican who has hidden a lot of affairs trying to impeach a president for lying about his? Spurred by Larry Flynt's bounty for sinnuendo, the city was braced for more craziness. The Ship of Fools reached cruising speed on Friday evening, when we had the frightening scene of Republicans so crazed with hatred of the president that they were railroading through an impeachment even though the United States was at war with Iraq, even though the House chamber was mostly empty, even though Republicans were huddled in a glass house on the issue of sex and lies, and even though the White House was still pitching a tent and planning sleigh rides for a Winter Wonderland press party on Monday. (The White House was keeping the journalists quarantined outside this year, but encouraged them to bring their kids. To soak up some of that cozy family atmosphere, no doubt. Why are the Republicans so obsessed, when everyone in his right mind agrees that impeachment is an outlandishly over-the-top punishment for Clinton and a self-destructive course for the country? Because they genuinely hate the president. They think he's a dishonest, immoral, issue-stealing, selfish child of the '60s. They don't think they're going to pay a political price for this, and if they do, they don't care. It might be a great time to see a lot of combovers, but it's not a great time to see a lot of stature. The House debate was not history. It was just a more hideous version of ``The McLaughlin Group.'' While Republicans tried to draw the distinction that Clinton had perjured himself, they ignored that the president had been lured by the Starr-Jones attorney team into testifying on Monica Lewinsky. Ordinarily one would feel sorry for Livingston. But the Republicans have brought this sexual doomsday machine on themselves by focusing so single-mindedly on Clinton's sex life. The Republicans were so determined to do their high-tech lynching that they engaged in wacky role reversals. Many Republican hawks argued that Bill Clinton should not be bombing Saddam, claiming the timing was suspicious, even though they had hammered him for not bombing five weeks ago. In an incredibly unseemly display, Trent Lott, the majority leader, and former Bush national security adviser Brent Scowcroft and Bush Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger chimed in on the attack. There's too much hate here. And I hate it. ||||| The only thing certain now is uncertainty. The smart money shouts that President Clinton will never resign, and he concurs. The smart money argues that the Senate could not muster the 67 votes that would be needed to remove the wounded president from office, which would require the defection of 12 Democrats if all the Republicans stand against him. The smart money insists that someone will cut a deal to end all this. Maybe so. But the smarter money whispers, ``Remember.'' Remember that everyone in Washington, including Rep. Henry Hyde, R-Ill., chairman of the Judiciary Committee, said the House would never, ever, treat impeachment as a partisan issue. Wrong. Remember that all the pundits predicted Democratic losses in the midterm elections, and when the opposite happened, they said impeachment was dead. Twice wrong. And remember that in the New Year the nation may travel down a road it has never traveled before. One other president, Andrew Johnson of Tennessee, has been tried by the Senate, of course. But that happened in a different country _one with only 37 states, with primitive communications, with a simple economy based largely on agriculture, with only minimal commitments abroad. In the toxic politics of century's end in Washington, the inconceivable has become the commonplace. The wholly unanticipated announcement Saturday morning by Rep. Robert Livingston, R-La., that he would not serve as speaker and would resign from Congress, following his equally unanticipated disclosure on Thursday night of several extramarital affairs, only deepened the capital's profound sense of insecurity. The deadly sweep of the scythe of neo-puritanism appears unstoppable, at least for the moment, and Livingston's forthcoming resignation will increase the pressure on the president to do likewise. ``You've set before us an example,'' the leader of House Republican majority, Rep. Dick Armey of Texas, told Livingston Saturday. ``The example is that principle comes before power.'' The Democrats made the opposite point, arguing that the Livingston case showed how very wrong it was to savage people for personal pecaddillos. One transcendently important thing remains the same: Although surrounded by judicial trappings and presided over by the chief justice, trials of presidents are political processes, with power residing in the hands of elective politicians. In addition to narrow legal issues of guilt or innocence, they can weigh considerations of party, the nation's future, their own individual political well-being and almost anything else they care to weigh in reaching a verdict. The longer they took, the more numerous the call for resignation would probably be. Even before Saturday's epochal roll-calls, four of ten Americans interviewed in the latest New York Times/CBS News Poll said they thought the president should step down if he were to be indicted, despite the fact that a large majority voiced disapproval of the impeachment proceedings. What lies behind that seeming contradiction, of course, is the fear that Clinton, and the country with him, would be incapacitated. No one took Andrew Johnson very seriously after he escaped conviction by a single vote. But Clinton, a man of powerful will whose whole life has been a series of comebacks, has already embarked on an effort to show that he can do the nation's business. Richard Nixon clawed his way back to respectability after leaving the White House when no one thought he could; Clinton intends to re-establish his authority while still in office. He has one great advantage: Two-thirds of the American public continues to voice its approval of his political stewardship, whatever it thinks of him as a man. The president will press hard, despite his much-reduced leverage, for a deal on censure. Indeed, in as fine a piece of political irony as one could ask for, he has already sought to enlist former Sen. Bob Dole, the Republican he defeated in 1996, as an emissary to the Senate majority. The numbers are not unpromising: with the help of six Republicans, the 45 Democrats could end the trial at any time and pass a censure resolution that the House would surely take up. There are enough Republican moderates and sometime party-buckers to make that a plausible target. But the Republican leader in the Senate, Trent Lott of Mississippi, who has made his unwillingness to take the president's word plainly evident in recent days, is determined to fight such a trial-aborting arrangement. It is clear that Clinton's reputation has been stained forever, no matter what the Senate does. The spot will not out. History will remember this man who so coveted a glowing legacy not as an impresario of economic growth, not as the Moses who pointed the way to the 21st century, but as the second president ever to be impeached, if not as the first to be ousted. That harsh word, ``impeachment,'' will cling to his name as surely as ``Teapot Dome'' clings to Harding's and ``Depression'' to Hoover's. But he is not alone in having suffered grievous injury in the political avalanche that was shaken loose by the disclosure of Clinton's sexual relationship with a former White House intern, Monica Lewinsky. The Republicans' public support has shriveled to 40 percent in the new Times/CBS News poll, its lowest level in 14 years, and it could go lower once the fact of impeachment sinks in. Journalists are seen by many as jackals, indifferent to whatever personal suffering or national angst they may cause as long as they get the story, and none too concerned about accuracy. In fact, the whole political culture of the 1990s, with its criminalization of political conduct and its seeming indifference to important national and international issues, has fallen into disrepute with ordinary Americans. The last week seemed to crystallize the long-term decline in political civility. Republicans called Clinton a liar, even as he was committing American pilots to the skies over Iraq, and Democrats accused their rivals of conducting a political lynching or a political coup d'etat. Bipartisanship may have been the biggest victim of all. Party lines on Saturday's rolls calls held as firm as leg irons. Almost all of the Republicans who opposed impeachment did so not exclusively on legal principle but at least partly because of special political circumstances _ the Democratic majority in Rep. Constance Morella's district in the Maryland suburbs of Washington, for example, and the gratitude of Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., for Clinton's peacemaking in Ireland. It is hard to see who has emerged from it with reputation enhanced, except perhaps Hillary Rodham Clinton, staunch in the face of deception. If some of the threats and dire predictions uttered by House Democrats in recent days are to be taken at face value, the nation is entering upon an Era of Bad Feelings, the polar opposite of a second Era of Good Feelings, similar to that of the 1820s, that Clinton had hoped to preside over. Rep. Tom Sawyer, D-Ohio, compared Clinton on Friday to Sir Thomas More, executed for treason in 1535 because of his religious beliefs. He quoted More's words as an admonition for today: ``What you have hunted me for is not my actions but for the thoughts of my heart. It is a long road you have opened. God help the statesmen who walk your road.'' But amidst all the loose talk about permanent damage to this institution or that, remember: Things change with startling speed in modern American politics, and the institutions of American government have proved extraordinarily resilient. President Nixon, it was almost universally agreed in 1974, had weakened the American presidency for many decades to come. Nobody said that after eight years under Ronald Reagan, and that was only 15 years later.

As impeachment proceedings in the House approached a climax, House members were stunned by an admission from House Speaker elect Livingston that he was guilty of an adulterous affair. The admission follows disclosures by Hustler published Larry Flynn, who had offered one million dollars to anyone who could provide such information on a House or Senate member. Livingston's admission was met with a standing ovation by House members, as was his subsequent resignation. In resigning, Livingston called on President Clinton to do the same. Political pundits see the whole process as driven by partisan politics.

Russian space officials gave the first module of the international space station a routine tweak Saturday to push it into higher orbit, and convened a meeting on Earth to map out its future. Flight controllers fired one of the module's two maneuvering engines to raise it to an orbit about 230 kilometers (157 miles) in space, the station's public affairs office said. Russian Space Agency general director Yuri Koptev told reporters the maneuver was carried out ``with great accuracy,'' and the 24-ton core module was cruising through space without any problems. The module, called Zarya, or Sunrise, lifted off Friday from the Baikonur launchpad in Kazakstan into an initial orbit 200 kilometers (125 miles) above Earth. Zarya is to serve as a space tugboat in the early stages of the international project, providing propulsion, power and communications. It will fly alone for two weeks before a rendezvous with the American space shuttle Endeavour, which is to be launched Dec. 3 carrying the Unity connecting module. The international space station is a U.S.-led successor to Russia's Mir space station, and is being heralded by space officials as the vehicle for unprecedented international cooperation in space in the 21st century. The heads of the space agencies of the United States, Russia, Japan and Canada, along with the European Space Agency, met in Moscow on Saturday to discuss the project, the Interfax news agency reported. The space agency heads agreed on a schedule for future meetings and on holding a scientific conference on the project somewhere in Europe, at an unspecified date. Also Saturday, the head of Russia's Mission Control, Vladimir Lobachev, was quoted as saying that Russia would take the lead role in managing the international space station during its first five years. Previously, space officials have said the station would be jointly controlled from Moscow and Houston, with the U.S. space agency NASA taking a lead role. According to Interfax, Lobachev said it made sense for Russia to control the project because the Russian-built Zarya and a Russian-built service module would perform most of the life support and navigational functions for the station's first five years. ``Furthermore, Russian engineers are more experienced in this job and NASA officials are aware of this,'' he said. The space station is expected to cost at least dlrs 40 billion, of which the United States is expected to pay dlrs 24 billion. Russia's financing problems delayed the initial launch by a year, and some critics have said the station amounts to an expensive way for NASA to keep Russia's beleaguered space program alive. The station will serve as an orbital home for visiting astronauts and cosmonauts for at least 15 years. ||||| Endeavour's astronauts connected the first two building blocks of the international space station on Sunday, creating a seven-story tower in the shuttle cargo bay. It was the first time that the Russian-built Zarya control module and the made-in-America Unity chamber had ever touched. It looked to be a perfect and, hopefully, long-lasting fit. ``We have capture of Zarya,'' commander Robert Cabana announced the two pieces came together. ``Congratulations to the crew of the good ship Endeavour,'' replied Mission Control. ``That's terrific.'' The 240-mile-high construction job began two hours earlier with Nancy Currie's capture of Zarya (Russian for Sunrise) using the shuttle robot arm. ``We're halfway home,'' Cabana said. Then came the hard part: stacking the two giant cylinders in the cargo bay. The two station pieces are so big _ 77 feet from the tip of one to the tip of the other with a combined mass of 70,000 pounds _ that Currie and her crewmates had to rely on a computerized vision system and camera views, rather than direct line of sight. This was the first time such a ``blind'' docking had ever been attempted. Currie positioned the solar-winged Zarya, still on the end of the shuttle robot arm, several inches directly above Unity. It was slow going; she wanted and needed perfect alignment. Once she was sure she had it, Cabana fired Endeavour's thrusters, and the brief burst raised the shuttle and thereby Unity enough for the docking mechanisms on the two station components to snap together. The historical moment occurred above the South Pacific. The union _ intended to last the station's 15-year or more lifetime _ set the stage for a spacewalk by two astronauts on Monday to attach electrical connectors and cables between the two components. Mission Control thought Sunday's work might take hours longer than planned and gave the six astronauts plenty of time for the tasks. But everything occurred more or less when and how it was supposed to, aside from a piece of space junk that strayed too close. Before beginning their final approach to Zarya, the six astronauts had to steer clear of a chunk of a rocket launched last month from California. Mission Control ordered the pilots to fire the shuttle thrusters to put an extra three miles between Endeavour and the space junk, putting Endeavour a total of five miles from the orbiting debris. The smaller gap would have been ``probably a little too close for comfort,'' Mission Control said. The bigger worry, by far, was over Endeavour's pursuit and capture of Zarya, and its coupling with Unity. The shuttle's 50-foot robot arm had never before handled an object as massive as the 41-foot, 44,000-pound Zarya, a power and propulsion module that was launched from Kazakstan on Nov. 20. It will provide all of the necessary electricity and steering for the fledgling space station until a permanent control module can be launched next summer. Minutes after Zarya's capture, Cabana called down that two antennas on the module were still undeployed as Russian flight controllers had feared. The antennas must be fully deployed in order for Zarya's manual docking system to work; that system won't be needed before next summer, officials said. The only other problem was with a Zarya battery; the astronauts took up a replacement part. The 36-foot, 25,000-pound Unity, the first American-made component, will serve as a connecting passageway, or vestibule, for future modules. It was crucial that Zarya and Unity be joined; if they could not be connected with the robot arm, NASA would have sent out two spacewalking astronauts to manually fit them together. In all, three spacewalks are planned for Endeavour's 12-day flight, not only to hook up electrical connections between the two modules but to install handrails and other tools for future crews. The joined modules will be released from Endeavour once all of the work is completed. NASA estimates 43 more launches and 159 more spacewalks will be needed after this mission to assemble the entire orbiting complex. Once completed, the 16-nation space station will have a mass of 1 million pounds, be longer than a football field, and house up to seven astronauts and cosmonauts. ||||| The first piece of the international space station was orbiting Earth Friday, sprouting antennae and unfolding solar power panels as it awaited other segments, which will eventually grow into the largest orbital laboratory in history. The module, called Zarya from the Russian term meaning sunrise or dawn, took a flawless ride into space atop a three-stage Russian Proton booster rocket that lifted off at 1:40 a.m. Eastern time from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. The launching was witnessed by the heads of the space agencies of the 16 nations that are sponsoring the station, which will cost at least $40 billion to build over the next five years. Zarya, built in Russia with $240 million from the United States, is to be joined in two weeks by the first American module, a docking hub called Unity. The space shuttle Endeavour is to take off on Dec. 3 to rendezvous with Zarya and attach the two units. This is to be followed by 43 more flights by American and Russian rockets carrying more than 100 parts to be assembled in space to form a 900,000-pound research station housing up to seven astronauts. Daniel Goldin, the administrator of NASA, said at a news conference following the launching, ``Now we only have 44 launches to go, about 1,000 hours of space walks and countless problems.'' But because of all the partner nations trusting each other and working together, he said, ``the international space station is going to be a reality.'' Even as the new space station is coming together, questions continue about the fate of Russia's existing space laboratory, the 12-year-old Mir. Because of the collapse of the Russian economy, doubts that Russia can produce enough rockets and other equipment to support both projects led Russia to promise that it would abandon Mir and destroy the station by next summer. However, in recent weeks Russian officials have been lobbying to find ways to extend Mir's life. According to a report by the news agency Reuters, President Boris Yeltsin's space adviser, Yevgeny Shaposhnikov, said Friday he was preparing a number of proposals on extending Mir's life past the year 2000. Support for such options has been growing in recent weeks among Russian space officials, astronauts and nationalists, who see Mir as a symbol of Russian achievements in space. James Van Laak, NASA's deputy manager of operations for the space station, said Friday that the agency had not received any formal proposals about extending Mir's life. ``NASA would find such a proposal unacceptable if it has any measurable impact on the international space station,'' Van Laak said in a telephone interview from the Johnson Space Center in Houston, ``No one has any objection to Mir or keeping it operational if the Russians find a way to support both projects, but they have to demonstrate they can.'' Yuri Koptev, head of the Russian Space Agency, said the launching of Zarya, a 42,000-pound space tugboat that will supply power and propulsion in the early stages of station construction, was a needed vindication for the troubled Russian space program. ``The Russian space industry is alive and well and is perfectly able to fulfill all of its commitments on the international space station,'' Koptev said. ||||| A Russian Proton booster rocket carried the first part of the international space station into orbit Friday, heralding the start of a new era in international space colonization. Russian space officials and others cheered as ground control announced that the capsule had separated from its booster rocket and reached its first orbit at about 200 kilometers (125 miles) above the Earth. ``Success,'' shouted one exultant official some 10 minutes after the giant rocket blasted off and entered orbit. The heads of the space agencies of 16 nations participating in the project watched the lift-off from a distance of about 5 kilometers (3 miles). Strategic Rocket Forces troops who had prepared the launch were in underground bunkers to avoid poisoning by the highly toxic rocket fuel. Russian and U.S. officials said the launch was ``flawless'' and the module performed well during initial tests. They cautioned that much work remains to be done to get the ambitious space station project up and working. ``Now we only have 44 launches to go, about 1,000 hours of space walks and countless problems, but because of the trust and mutual respect ... the international space station is going to be a reality,'' NASA chief Daniel Goldin told a press conference after the launch. His Russian counterpart, Yuri Koptev, said the launch was a vital vindication for the troubled Russian space industry, proving it could play a major role in space operations. ``Today we made a truly epoch-making step to carry out this project. The Russian space industry is alive and well and is perfectly able to fulfill all of its commitments on the international space station,'' he said. The launch went smoothly, with the rocket soaring into the cloudy sky above the central Asian steppes. The huge roar of the rocket reverberated for dozens of kilometers (miles) across the empty plain around the base. The mood at the launch pad was tense before the launch, with space officials and workers anxiously making last-minute checks to ensure there were no problems. Solar power panels on the module were successfully deployed shortly after it reached its first orbit and all systems were working normally, officials said. The launch of the Russian cargo module, which had been delayed for more than a year, ushers in a new era of cooperation among former space-race rivals. Space officials expressed optimism that cooperation would further promote world stability following the end of the Cold War. ``We still have some contradictions, we still have combat missiles aimed at each other, but the predominant trend is the state of cooperation and doing things together,'' said Yuri Semyonov of Russia's Energia space company. The 12.4-meter (41.2-feet) Zarya, or Sunrise, was launched by a three-stage Proton booster rocket. Zarya is designed to serve as a space tugboat in the early stages of the project, providing propulsion, power and communications. Engineers finished final preparations early Friday for the liftoff of the 24-ton module. The rocket blasted off under cloudy skies and strong winds, and disappeared behind the clouds 40 seconds later. The international space station, the U.S.-led successor to Russia's beleaguered Mir, involves 16 nations and is due to be completed by 2004. It will consist of more than 100 elements that will take 45 assembly flights to complete. Russia's crucial participation has been hampered by the country's financial problems. The launch of the first segment was postponed repeatedly, mainly because the chronically broke Russian space agency couldn't afford to complete another part of the station that is to go up later. Zarya is to fly alone for two weeks before a rendezvous with the American space shuttle Endeavor, which is to be launched Dec. 3 carrying the Unity connecting module. The space station will not be inhabitable until at least early 2000, following the launch of a Russian crew module which is set to blast off next July or August. The space station is expected to cost at least dlrs 40 billion, with the United States planning to pay dlrs 24 billion. It will serve as an orbital home for visiting astronauts and cosmonauts for at least 15 years. Russia has repeatedly failed to meet deadlines for constructing the crew module, putting the whole project behind schedule. Having lost hope of getting promised government funds, the Russian space agency has sold research time on the station to NASA for dlrs 60 million to complete the segment. Russia rents the Baikonur launching pad from Kazakstan. ||||| Russian space experts were making final preparations Thursday at the Baikonur rocket base to launch the first component of a multibillion dollar international space station after a year of delay. Built by a Russian company and to be launched atop a Russian booster rocket, the 24-ton Zarya (Sunrise) control and cargo module is a U.S.-funded component of the station. It will serve as a space tugboat in the early stages of the project, providing propulsion, power and communications. The unmanned launch, set for 9:40 Moscow time (0640 GMT) Friday from Baikonur in Kazakhstan, has been delayed for one year mainly because of the cash-strapped Russian space agency's failure to complete another part of the station. ``After years of discussing, planning and replanning, we are about to launch hardware,'' Gretchen McClain, deputy associate administrator for the new station, said at a news conference earlier this week. ``We are ready to begin a project that will bring us into the millennium with women and men living and working in space permanently.'' Russian officials added their traditional note of superstition. ``It is not in the Russian tradition to preface a launch with ... some advance statements. I would like to knock on wood, which is rather common in the Russian tradition,'' said Alexander Krasnov, a deputy chief of Russian Space Agency's manned flight department. The station, involving 16 nations with the United States and Russia playing the biggest roles, will consist of more than 100 elements that will take 45 assembly flights to complete. It is due to be completed by 2004. The station will weigh 500 tons (more than a million pounds) and is expected to cost at least dlrs 40 billion, with the United States planning to pay dlrs 21 billion. It will serve as an orbital home for visiting astronauts and cosmonauts for up to 20 years. Zarya is to fly alone for two weeks before a rendezvous with the American space shuttle Endeavor, which is to be launched Dec. 3 carrying the Unity connecting module. The shuttle crew will attach the two modules together in three space walks, using the Endeavors robot arm. The 12.4-meter (41.2-feet) Zarya holds more than 6 tons of fuel in its 16 tanks and is capable of flying independently for 430 days. Its control system consists of 36 thrusters and two large engines for major orbital changes. It will be launched by a three-stage heavy-lift Proton booster rocket that would put Zarya into orbit in less than 10 minutes after the blastoff. In the ensuing days, the ground controllers will gradually adjust its orbit in preparation for the meeting with Endeavor. The space station will not be inhabitable until early 2000, following the launch of a Russian crew module which is set to blast off next July or August. Russia has repeatedly failed to meet deadlines for constructing the crew module, putting the whole project behind schedule. Having lost hope of getting the promised government funds, the Russian space agency has sold its early research time on the station to NASA for dlrs 60 million to complete the segment. Agency chief Yuri Koptev said that taking part in the new station is the only hope for the beleaguered Russian space industry, whose funding has collapsed since the Soviet collapse. The project would allow Russia to keep up to 80,000 jobs over the next 15 years. Koptev assailed some Russian space engineers who continue to insist that more money should be put into Russia's own battered 12-year old Mir space station to extend its lifetime instead of committing more funds to the new space outpost. ``The choice mustn't be determined by emotions. Some people are glued to one thing (Mir) and don't care about the rest,'' Koptev said at a recent news conference. ``We must proceed from the understanding of what would take us into the future, allow us to preserve our industry.'' The Russian Khrunichev company has earned over dlrs 200 million for building Zarya, whose design was based on earlier Soviet spacecraft, including some of the Mir's six modules. ||||| Two astronauts ventured back out on another spacewalk Wednesday to attach antennas to the international space station under construction nearly 250 miles above Earth. For the second time this week, Jerry Ross and James Newman floated out the hatch of the shuttle Endeavour to work on the seven-story, 35-ton station taking shape in the open cargo bay. Their No. 1 priority was to attach two 100-pound antennas to Unity, the American-made side of the space station. Their other job, time permitting, was trickier: trying to open a stuck antenna on Zarya, the Russian-built control module. The planned seven-hour spacewalk was not nearly as difficult or crucial as Monday night's outing, during which Ross and Newman hooked up 40 electrical connections between Zarya and Unity. The plan called for the men to lug two suitcase-size antennas about halfway up Unity and install them on opposite sides of the 36-foot cylinder. Once activated, the antennas will provide a direct, virtually uninterrupted communication link between Unity and NASA's Mission Control. Otherwise, U.S. flight controllers would have to rely on the sporadic coverage provided by Russian ground stations. The electronic and computer hookups for the antennas will be made inside Unity on Thursday, after the entire crew enters the orbiting station for the first time. Other spacewalking chores for Ross and Newman on Wednesday evening included erecting a sunshade over a computer mounted to the outside of Unity. Mission Control decided just before the spacewalk to let Newman take a crack at unjamming the Zarya antenna. Flight controllers urged caution. The antenna was rolled up on a spool, and engineers worried the 3-foot strip might pop open with enough force to hurt him if he got too close. Newman had a 10-foot grappling hook for the job. The antenna is one of two that failed to open properly following Zarya's Nov. 20 launch from Kazakstan. One more spacewalk is planned for Endeavour's 12-day mission: On Saturday, Ross and Newman will conduct a photo survey and take out a sack of tools that will be used by future station visitors. Newman also may try to unjam the other Zarya antenna. This was the sixth spacewalk for Ross during his 18-year NASA career, the most by an American, and the third for Newman. ||||| Endeavour's astronauts connected the first two building blocks of the international space station on Sunday, creating a seven-story tower in the shuttle cargo bay. It was the first time that the Russian-built Zarya control module and the made-in-America Unity chamber had ever touched. It looked to be a perfect and, hopefully, long-lasting fit. ``We have capture of Zarya,'' commander Robert Cabana announced the moment the two pieces came together. ``Congratulations to the crew of the good ship Endeavour,'' replied Mission Control. ``That's terrific.'' The 240-mile-high construction job began two hours earlier with Nancy Currie's capture of Zarya (Russian for Sunrise) using the shuttle robot arm. ``We're halfway home,'' Cabana said. Then came the hard part: stacking the two giant cylinders in the cargo bay. The two station pieces are so big _ 77 feet from the tip of one to the tip of the other with a combined mass of 70,000 pounds _ that Currie and her crewmates had to rely on a computerized vision system and camera views, rather than direct line of sight. This was the first time such a ``blind'' docking had ever been attempted. Currie positioned the solar-winged Zarya, still on the end of the shuttle robot arm, several inches directly above Unity. It was slow going; she wanted and needed perfect alignment. Once she was sure she had it, Cabana fired Endeavour's thrusters, and the brief burst raised the shuttle and thereby Unity enough for the docking mechanisms on the two station components to snap together. The historical moment occurred above the South Pacific. The union _ intended to last the station's 15-year or more lifetime _ set the stage for a spacewalk by two astronauts on Monday to attach electrical connectors and cables between the two components. Mission Control thought Sunday's work might take hours longer than planned and gave the six astronauts plenty of time for the tasks. But everything occurred more or less when and how it was supposed to, aside from a piece of space junk that strayed too close. Before beginning their final approach to Zarya, the six astronauts had to steer clear of a chunk of a rocket launched last month from California. Mission Control ordered the pilots to fire the shuttle thrusters to put an extra three miles between Endeavour and the space junk, putting Endeavour a total of five miles from the orbiting debris. The smaller gap would have been ``probably a little too close for comfort,'' Mission Control said. The bigger worry, by far, was over Endeavour's pursuit and capture of Zarya, and its coupling with Unity. The shuttle's 50-foot robot arm had never before handled an object as massive as the 41-foot, 44,000-pound Zarya, a power and propulsion module that was launched from Kazakstan on Nov. 20. It will provide all of the necessary electricity and steering for the fledgling space station until a permanent control module can be launched next summer. Minutes after Zarya's capture, Cabana called down that two antennas on the module were still undeployed as Russian flight controllers had feared. The antennas must be fully deployed in order for Zarya's manual docking system to work; that system won't be needed before next summer, officials said. The only other problem was with a Zarya battery; the astronauts took up a replacement part. The 36-foot, 25,000-pound Unity, the first American-made component, will serve as a connecting passageway, or vestibule, for future modules. It was crucial that Zarya and Unity be joined; if they could not be connected with the robot arm, NASA would have sent out two spacewalking astronauts to manually fit them together. In all, three spacewalks are planned for Endeavour's 12-day flight, not only to hook up electrical connections between the two modules but to install handrails and other tools for future crews. The joined modules will be released from Endeavour once all of the work is completed. NASA estimates 43 more launches and 159 more spacewalks will be needed after this mission to assemble the entire orbiting complex. Once completed, the 16-nation space station will have a mass of 1 million pounds, be longer than a football field, and house up to seven astronauts and cosmonauts. ||||| The first part of the international space station was smoothly orbiting Earth on Friday after a faultless launch that marked the start of a new age in space exploration and colonization. A Russian Proton booster rocket carried the module into its initial orbit 200 kilometers (125 miles) above the Earth and the unit was operating as planned, officials said. Russia's Zarya, or Sunrise, module is to fly alone for two weeks before a rendezvous with the American space shuttle Endeavour, which is to be launched Dec. 3 carrying the Unity connecting module. Space officials from 16 nations taking part in the project cheered as the rocket soared into the cloudy sky above the central Asian steppe from the Baikonur launch pad Friday _ a year later than planned. ``During the, pickup 4th pvs ||||| WASHINGTON _ NASA and the Russian Space Agency have agreed to set aside a last-minute Russian request to launch an international space station into an orbit closer to Mir, officials announced Friday. While putting the new station closer to Russia's 12-year-old Mir station would make it easier to transfer equipment and supplies from the old outpost to the new one, the request came too late to be acted on, said Randy Brinkley, NASA's space station program manager. NASA was surprised last week when Russia's prime station contractor proposed the orbital position change just two-and-a-half weeks before launch of the first part of the new station. Delaying the Nov. 20 flight by 10 hours to match the orbits would have forced similar shifts in the subsequent assembly flights, and resulted in potentially unfavorable sun angles on the solar-powered station, engineers said. ``We have mutually concluded that it would not be prudent to make these changes,'' Brinkley said during a news conference held at the Johnson Space Center in Houston. ``It added technical complexity and risks to the mission that were not justified.'' The decision, which followed ``frank and candid'' discussions between the two partners, was not imposed by the United States, he said. ``The conclusions were mutual,'' Brinkley said. ``Both sides concluded that it did not make sense.'' The Russians, struggling to find money for their space program with their nation in economic collapse, had said they wanted to transfer thousands of pounds of newer equipment and scientific instruments from Mir as an economy move. However, some critics questioned the Russians' motives, wondering if the requested orbital change was part of plan to delay the decommissioning and destruction of Mir, which the Russians have agreed to do next summer. The Russians have so little money that the United States and other partners in the international station fear that money spent on Mir will prevent Russia from meeting its obligations with the new project. ``The Mir competes with the international space station for very critical resources and for funding,'' Brinkley said. NASA will consider ideas for salvaging Mir's research equipment to use on the international space station, he said, but only if it does not interfere with assembling the new station. The United States and 15 other nations plan to begin building the new station in orbit next week when the Russians launch a module that will supply power and propulsion during the early stages of the five-year construction period. The space shuttle Endeavor is to follow on Dec. 3 with the second station part, a U.S.-built connecting passageway that attaches to the first module. ||||| Endeavour and its astronauts closed in Sunday to capture the first piece of the international space station, the Russian-made Zarya control module that had to be connected to the Unity chamber aboard the shuttle. Stacking the two giant cylinders 240 miles above the Earth was considered the most difficult part of the mission. The job fell to Nancy Currie, the shuttle crane operator who had deftly hoisted and repositioned Unity in the cargo bay on Saturday. The two station pieces are so big _ 77 feet from the tip of one to the tip of the other with a combined mass of 70,000 pounds _ that Currie and her crewmates were going to have to rely on a computerized vision system and camera views, rather than direct line of sight. Such a ``blind'' docking had never been attempted before. Mission Control gave the astronauts plenty of time for the tasks. ``The main thing I've tried to do for the last two years working on this flight is make sure we have time. We have margin on everything,'' said flight director Bob Castle. Before beginning their final approach to Zarya _ Russian for Sunrise _ the shuttle's six astronauts had to steer clear of a chunk of a rocket launched last month from California. Mission Control ordered the pilots to fire the shuttle thrusters to put an extra three miles between Endeavour and the space junk, putting Endeavour a total of five miles from the orbiting debris. The smaller gap would have been ``probably a little too close for comfort,'' Mission Control said. The bigger worry, by far, was over Endeavour's pursuit and capture of Zarya, and its coupling with Unity. The shuttle's 50-foot robot arm had never before been assigned to handle an object as massive as the 44,000-pound Zarya, a power and propulsion module that was launched from Kazakhstan on Nov. 20. It will provide all the necessary electricity and steering for the fledgling space station until a permanent control module can be launched next summer. The 36-foot, 25,000-pound Unity will serve as a connecting passageway, or vestibule, for future modules. In case Zarya and Unity could not be connected with the robot arm, two spacewalking astronauts would have to manually fit them together. The astronauts would be going out anyway Monday to attach electrical connectors and cables between the two components. In all, three spacewalks were planned for Endeavour's 12-day flight. NASA estimates 43 more launches and 159 more spacewalks will be needed after this mission to assemble the entire orbiting complex. Once completed, the 16-nation space station will have a mass of 1 million pounds, be longer than a football field, and house up to seven astronauts and cosmonauts.

NASA and the Russian Space Agency readied the first part of an international space station for launch from Baikonur base. They decided not to change the orbit of the Zarya module as Russia had requested. Zarya's Nov. 20 launch was a success. The Zarya module orbited Earth for 2 weeks before a rendezvous with U.S. shuttle Endeavor to join it to the Unity module. It was tweaked and working well. It will serve as a space tugboat. The first 2 building blocks of the international space station were successfully joined by Endeavor astronauts in the shuttle's open cargo bay. Endeavor astronauts made 2 of 3 planned spacewalks to work on the space station modules.

Russian space officials gave the first module of the international space station a routine tweak Saturday to push it into higher orbit, and convened a meeting on Earth to map out its future. Flight controllers fired one of the module's two maneuvering engines to raise it to an orbit about 230 kilometers (157 miles) in space, the station's public affairs office said. Russian Space Agency general director Yuri Koptev told reporters the maneuver was carried out ``with great accuracy,'' and the 24-ton core module was cruising through space without any problems. The module, called Zarya, or Sunrise, lifted off Friday from the Baikonur launchpad in Kazakstan into an initial orbit 200 kilometers (125 miles) above Earth. Zarya is to serve as a space tugboat in the early stages of the international project, providing propulsion, power and communications. It will fly alone for two weeks before a rendezvous with the American space shuttle Endeavour, which is to be launched Dec. 3 carrying the Unity connecting module. The international space station is a U.S.-led successor to Russia's Mir space station, and is being heralded by space officials as the vehicle for unprecedented international cooperation in space in the 21st century. The heads of the space agencies of the United States, Russia, Japan and Canada, along with the European Space Agency, met in Moscow on Saturday to discuss the project, the Interfax news agency reported. The space agency heads agreed on a schedule for future meetings and on holding a scientific conference on the project somewhere in Europe, at an unspecified date. Also Saturday, the head of Russia's Mission Control, Vladimir Lobachev, was quoted as saying that Russia would take the lead role in managing the international space station during its first five years. Previously, space officials have said the station would be jointly controlled from Moscow and Houston, with the U.S. space agency NASA taking a lead role. According to Interfax, Lobachev said it made sense for Russia to control the project because the Russian-built Zarya and a Russian-built service module would perform most of the life support and navigational functions for the station's first five years. ``Furthermore, Russian engineers are more experienced in this job and NASA officials are aware of this,'' he said. The space station is expected to cost at least dlrs 40 billion, of which the United States is expected to pay dlrs 24 billion. Russia's financing problems delayed the initial launch by a year, and some critics have said the station amounts to an expensive way for NASA to keep Russia's beleaguered space program alive. The station will serve as an orbital home for visiting astronauts and cosmonauts for at least 15 years. ||||| Endeavour's astronauts connected the first two building blocks of the international space station on Sunday, creating a seven-story tower in the shuttle cargo bay. It was the first time that the Russian-built Zarya control module and the made-in-America Unity chamber had ever touched. It looked to be a perfect and, hopefully, long-lasting fit. ``We have capture of Zarya,'' commander Robert Cabana announced the two pieces came together. ``Congratulations to the crew of the good ship Endeavour,'' replied Mission Control. ``That's terrific.'' The 240-mile-high construction job began two hours earlier with Nancy Currie's capture of Zarya (Russian for Sunrise) using the shuttle robot arm. ``We're halfway home,'' Cabana said. Then came the hard part: stacking the two giant cylinders in the cargo bay. The two station pieces are so big _ 77 feet from the tip of one to the tip of the other with a combined mass of 70,000 pounds _ that Currie and her crewmates had to rely on a computerized vision system and camera views, rather than direct line of sight. This was the first time such a ``blind'' docking had ever been attempted. Currie positioned the solar-winged Zarya, still on the end of the shuttle robot arm, several inches directly above Unity. It was slow going; she wanted and needed perfect alignment. Once she was sure she had it, Cabana fired Endeavour's thrusters, and the brief burst raised the shuttle and thereby Unity enough for the docking mechanisms on the two station components to snap together. The historical moment occurred above the South Pacific. The union _ intended to last the station's 15-year or more lifetime _ set the stage for a spacewalk by two astronauts on Monday to attach electrical connectors and cables between the two components. Mission Control thought Sunday's work might take hours longer than planned and gave the six astronauts plenty of time for the tasks. But everything occurred more or less when and how it was supposed to, aside from a piece of space junk that strayed too close. Before beginning their final approach to Zarya, the six astronauts had to steer clear of a chunk of a rocket launched last month from California. Mission Control ordered the pilots to fire the shuttle thrusters to put an extra three miles between Endeavour and the space junk, putting Endeavour a total of five miles from the orbiting debris. The smaller gap would have been ``probably a little too close for comfort,'' Mission Control said. The bigger worry, by far, was over Endeavour's pursuit and capture of Zarya, and its coupling with Unity. The shuttle's 50-foot robot arm had never before handled an object as massive as the 41-foot, 44,000-pound Zarya, a power and propulsion module that was launched from Kazakstan on Nov. 20. It will provide all of the necessary electricity and steering for the fledgling space station until a permanent control module can be launched next summer. Minutes after Zarya's capture, Cabana called down that two antennas on the module were still undeployed as Russian flight controllers had feared. The antennas must be fully deployed in order for Zarya's manual docking system to work; that system won't be needed before next summer, officials said. The only other problem was with a Zarya battery; the astronauts took up a replacement part. The 36-foot, 25,000-pound Unity, the first American-made component, will serve as a connecting passageway, or vestibule, for future modules. It was crucial that Zarya and Unity be joined; if they could not be connected with the robot arm, NASA would have sent out two spacewalking astronauts to manually fit them together. In all, three spacewalks are planned for Endeavour's 12-day flight, not only to hook up electrical connections between the two modules but to install handrails and other tools for future crews. The joined modules will be released from Endeavour once all of the work is completed. NASA estimates 43 more launches and 159 more spacewalks will be needed after this mission to assemble the entire orbiting complex. Once completed, the 16-nation space station will have a mass of 1 million pounds, be longer than a football field, and house up to seven astronauts and cosmonauts. ||||| The first piece of the international space station was orbiting Earth Friday, sprouting antennae and unfolding solar power panels as it awaited other segments, which will eventually grow into the largest orbital laboratory in history. The module, called Zarya from the Russian term meaning sunrise or dawn, took a flawless ride into space atop a three-stage Russian Proton booster rocket that lifted off at 1:40 a.m. Eastern time from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. The launching was witnessed by the heads of the space agencies of the 16 nations that are sponsoring the station, which will cost at least $40 billion to build over the next five years. Zarya, built in Russia with $240 million from the United States, is to be joined in two weeks by the first American module, a docking hub called Unity. The space shuttle Endeavour is to take off on Dec. 3 to rendezvous with Zarya and attach the two units. This is to be followed by 43 more flights by American and Russian rockets carrying more than 100 parts to be assembled in space to form a 900,000-pound research station housing up to seven astronauts. Daniel Goldin, the administrator of NASA, said at a news conference following the launching, ``Now we only have 44 launches to go, about 1,000 hours of space walks and countless problems.'' But because of all the partner nations trusting each other and working together, he said, ``the international space station is going to be a reality.'' Even as the new space station is coming together, questions continue about the fate of Russia's existing space laboratory, the 12-year-old Mir. Because of the collapse of the Russian economy, doubts that Russia can produce enough rockets and other equipment to support both projects led Russia to promise that it would abandon Mir and destroy the station by next summer. However, in recent weeks Russian officials have been lobbying to find ways to extend Mir's life. According to a report by the news agency Reuters, President Boris Yeltsin's space adviser, Yevgeny Shaposhnikov, said Friday he was preparing a number of proposals on extending Mir's life past the year 2000. Support for such options has been growing in recent weeks among Russian space officials, astronauts and nationalists, who see Mir as a symbol of Russian achievements in space. James Van Laak, NASA's deputy manager of operations for the space station, said Friday that the agency had not received any formal proposals about extending Mir's life. ``NASA would find such a proposal unacceptable if it has any measurable impact on the international space station,'' Van Laak said in a telephone interview from the Johnson Space Center in Houston, ``No one has any objection to Mir or keeping it operational if the Russians find a way to support both projects, but they have to demonstrate they can.'' Yuri Koptev, head of the Russian Space Agency, said the launching of Zarya, a 42,000-pound space tugboat that will supply power and propulsion in the early stages of station construction, was a needed vindication for the troubled Russian space program. ``The Russian space industry is alive and well and is perfectly able to fulfill all of its commitments on the international space station,'' Koptev said. ||||| A Russian Proton booster rocket carried the first part of the international space station into orbit Friday, heralding the start of a new era in international space colonization. Russian space officials and others cheered as ground control announced that the capsule had separated from its booster rocket and reached its first orbit at about 200 kilometers (125 miles) above the Earth. ``Success,'' shouted one exultant official some 10 minutes after the giant rocket blasted off and entered orbit. The heads of the space agencies of 16 nations participating in the project watched the lift-off from a distance of about 5 kilometers (3 miles). Strategic Rocket Forces troops who had prepared the launch were in underground bunkers to avoid poisoning by the highly toxic rocket fuel. Russian and U.S. officials said the launch was ``flawless'' and the module performed well during initial tests. They cautioned that much work remains to be done to get the ambitious space station project up and working. ``Now we only have 44 launches to go, about 1,000 hours of space walks and countless problems, but because of the trust and mutual respect ... the international space station is going to be a reality,'' NASA chief Daniel Goldin told a press conference after the launch. His Russian counterpart, Yuri Koptev, said the launch was a vital vindication for the troubled Russian space industry, proving it could play a major role in space operations. ``Today we made a truly epoch-making step to carry out this project. The Russian space industry is alive and well and is perfectly able to fulfill all of its commitments on the international space station,'' he said. The launch went smoothly, with the rocket soaring into the cloudy sky above the central Asian steppes. The huge roar of the rocket reverberated for dozens of kilometers (miles) across the empty plain around the base. The mood at the launch pad was tense before the launch, with space officials and workers anxiously making last-minute checks to ensure there were no problems. Solar power panels on the module were successfully deployed shortly after it reached its first orbit and all systems were working normally, officials said. The launch of the Russian cargo module, which had been delayed for more than a year, ushers in a new era of cooperation among former space-race rivals. Space officials expressed optimism that cooperation would further promote world stability following the end of the Cold War. ``We still have some contradictions, we still have combat missiles aimed at each other, but the predominant trend is the state of cooperation and doing things together,'' said Yuri Semyonov of Russia's Energia space company. The 12.4-meter (41.2-feet) Zarya, or Sunrise, was launched by a three-stage Proton booster rocket. Zarya is designed to serve as a space tugboat in the early stages of the project, providing propulsion, power and communications. Engineers finished final preparations early Friday for the liftoff of the 24-ton module. The rocket blasted off under cloudy skies and strong winds, and disappeared behind the clouds 40 seconds later. The international space station, the U.S.-led successor to Russia's beleaguered Mir, involves 16 nations and is due to be completed by 2004. It will consist of more than 100 elements that will take 45 assembly flights to complete. Russia's crucial participation has been hampered by the country's financial problems. The launch of the first segment was postponed repeatedly, mainly because the chronically broke Russian space agency couldn't afford to complete another part of the station that is to go up later. Zarya is to fly alone for two weeks before a rendezvous with the American space shuttle Endeavor, which is to be launched Dec. 3 carrying the Unity connecting module. The space station will not be inhabitable until at least early 2000, following the launch of a Russian crew module which is set to blast off next July or August. The space station is expected to cost at least dlrs 40 billion, with the United States planning to pay dlrs 24 billion. It will serve as an orbital home for visiting astronauts and cosmonauts for at least 15 years. Russia has repeatedly failed to meet deadlines for constructing the crew module, putting the whole project behind schedule. Having lost hope of getting promised government funds, the Russian space agency has sold research time on the station to NASA for dlrs 60 million to complete the segment. Russia rents the Baikonur launching pad from Kazakstan. ||||| Russian space experts were making final preparations Thursday at the Baikonur rocket base to launch the first component of a multibillion dollar international space station after a year of delay. Built by a Russian company and to be launched atop a Russian booster rocket, the 24-ton Zarya (Sunrise) control and cargo module is a U.S.-funded component of the station. It will serve as a space tugboat in the early stages of the project, providing propulsion, power and communications. The unmanned launch, set for 9:40 Moscow time (0640 GMT) Friday from Baikonur in Kazakhstan, has been delayed for one year mainly because of the cash-strapped Russian space agency's failure to complete another part of the station. ``After years of discussing, planning and replanning, we are about to launch hardware,'' Gretchen McClain, deputy associate administrator for the new station, said at a news conference earlier this week. ``We are ready to begin a project that will bring us into the millennium with women and men living and working in space permanently.'' Russian officials added their traditional note of superstition. ``It is not in the Russian tradition to preface a launch with ... some advance statements. I would like to knock on wood, which is rather common in the Russian tradition,'' said Alexander Krasnov, a deputy chief of Russian Space Agency's manned flight department. The station, involving 16 nations with the United States and Russia playing the biggest roles, will consist of more than 100 elements that will take 45 assembly flights to complete. It is due to be completed by 2004. The station will weigh 500 tons (more than a million pounds) and is expected to cost at least dlrs 40 billion, with the United States planning to pay dlrs 21 billion. It will serve as an orbital home for visiting astronauts and cosmonauts for up to 20 years. Zarya is to fly alone for two weeks before a rendezvous with the American space shuttle Endeavor, which is to be launched Dec. 3 carrying the Unity connecting module. The shuttle crew will attach the two modules together in three space walks, using the Endeavors robot arm. The 12.4-meter (41.2-feet) Zarya holds more than 6 tons of fuel in its 16 tanks and is capable of flying independently for 430 days. Its control system consists of 36 thrusters and two large engines for major orbital changes. It will be launched by a three-stage heavy-lift Proton booster rocket that would put Zarya into orbit in less than 10 minutes after the blastoff. In the ensuing days, the ground controllers will gradually adjust its orbit in preparation for the meeting with Endeavor. The space station will not be inhabitable until early 2000, following the launch of a Russian crew module which is set to blast off next July or August. Russia has repeatedly failed to meet deadlines for constructing the crew module, putting the whole project behind schedule. Having lost hope of getting the promised government funds, the Russian space agency has sold its early research time on the station to NASA for dlrs 60 million to complete the segment. Agency chief Yuri Koptev said that taking part in the new station is the only hope for the beleaguered Russian space industry, whose funding has collapsed since the Soviet collapse. The project would allow Russia to keep up to 80,000 jobs over the next 15 years. Koptev assailed some Russian space engineers who continue to insist that more money should be put into Russia's own battered 12-year old Mir space station to extend its lifetime instead of committing more funds to the new space outpost. ``The choice mustn't be determined by emotions. Some people are glued to one thing (Mir) and don't care about the rest,'' Koptev said at a recent news conference. ``We must proceed from the understanding of what would take us into the future, allow us to preserve our industry.'' The Russian Khrunichev company has earned over dlrs 200 million for building Zarya, whose design was based on earlier Soviet spacecraft, including some of the Mir's six modules. ||||| Two astronauts ventured back out on another spacewalk Wednesday to attach antennas to the international space station under construction nearly 250 miles above Earth. For the second time this week, Jerry Ross and James Newman floated out the hatch of the shuttle Endeavour to work on the seven-story, 35-ton station taking shape in the open cargo bay. Their No. 1 priority was to attach two 100-pound antennas to Unity, the American-made side of the space station. Their other job, time permitting, was trickier: trying to open a stuck antenna on Zarya, the Russian-built control module. The planned seven-hour spacewalk was not nearly as difficult or crucial as Monday night's outing, during which Ross and Newman hooked up 40 electrical connections between Zarya and Unity. The plan called for the men to lug two suitcase-size antennas about halfway up Unity and install them on opposite sides of the 36-foot cylinder. Once activated, the antennas will provide a direct, virtually uninterrupted communication link between Unity and NASA's Mission Control. Otherwise, U.S. flight controllers would have to rely on the sporadic coverage provided by Russian ground stations. The electronic and computer hookups for the antennas will be made inside Unity on Thursday, after the entire crew enters the orbiting station for the first time. Other spacewalking chores for Ross and Newman on Wednesday evening included erecting a sunshade over a computer mounted to the outside of Unity. Mission Control decided just before the spacewalk to let Newman take a crack at unjamming the Zarya antenna. Flight controllers urged caution. The antenna was rolled up on a spool, and engineers worried the 3-foot strip might pop open with enough force to hurt him if he got too close. Newman had a 10-foot grappling hook for the job. The antenna is one of two that failed to open properly following Zarya's Nov. 20 launch from Kazakstan. One more spacewalk is planned for Endeavour's 12-day mission: On Saturday, Ross and Newman will conduct a photo survey and take out a sack of tools that will be used by future station visitors. Newman also may try to unjam the other Zarya antenna. This was the sixth spacewalk for Ross during his 18-year NASA career, the most by an American, and the third for Newman. ||||| Endeavour's astronauts connected the first two building blocks of the international space station on Sunday, creating a seven-story tower in the shuttle cargo bay. It was the first time that the Russian-built Zarya control module and the made-in-America Unity chamber had ever touched. It looked to be a perfect and, hopefully, long-lasting fit. ``We have capture of Zarya,'' commander Robert Cabana announced the moment the two pieces came together. ``Congratulations to the crew of the good ship Endeavour,'' replied Mission Control. ``That's terrific.'' The 240-mile-high construction job began two hours earlier with Nancy Currie's capture of Zarya (Russian for Sunrise) using the shuttle robot arm. ``We're halfway home,'' Cabana said. Then came the hard part: stacking the two giant cylinders in the cargo bay. The two station pieces are so big _ 77 feet from the tip of one to the tip of the other with a combined mass of 70,000 pounds _ that Currie and her crewmates had to rely on a computerized vision system and camera views, rather than direct line of sight. This was the first time such a ``blind'' docking had ever been attempted. Currie positioned the solar-winged Zarya, still on the end of the shuttle robot arm, several inches directly above Unity. It was slow going; she wanted and needed perfect alignment. Once she was sure she had it, Cabana fired Endeavour's thrusters, and the brief burst raised the shuttle and thereby Unity enough for the docking mechanisms on the two station components to snap together. The historical moment occurred above the South Pacific. The union _ intended to last the station's 15-year or more lifetime _ set the stage for a spacewalk by two astronauts on Monday to attach electrical connectors and cables between the two components. Mission Control thought Sunday's work might take hours longer than planned and gave the six astronauts plenty of time for the tasks. But everything occurred more or less when and how it was supposed to, aside from a piece of space junk that strayed too close. Before beginning their final approach to Zarya, the six astronauts had to steer clear of a chunk of a rocket launched last month from California. Mission Control ordered the pilots to fire the shuttle thrusters to put an extra three miles between Endeavour and the space junk, putting Endeavour a total of five miles from the orbiting debris. The smaller gap would have been ``probably a little too close for comfort,'' Mission Control said. The bigger worry, by far, was over Endeavour's pursuit and capture of Zarya, and its coupling with Unity. The shuttle's 50-foot robot arm had never before handled an object as massive as the 41-foot, 44,000-pound Zarya, a power and propulsion module that was launched from Kazakstan on Nov. 20. It will provide all of the necessary electricity and steering for the fledgling space station until a permanent control module can be launched next summer. Minutes after Zarya's capture, Cabana called down that two antennas on the module were still undeployed as Russian flight controllers had feared. The antennas must be fully deployed in order for Zarya's manual docking system to work; that system won't be needed before next summer, officials said. The only other problem was with a Zarya battery; the astronauts took up a replacement part. The 36-foot, 25,000-pound Unity, the first American-made component, will serve as a connecting passageway, or vestibule, for future modules. It was crucial that Zarya and Unity be joined; if they could not be connected with the robot arm, NASA would have sent out two spacewalking astronauts to manually fit them together. In all, three spacewalks are planned for Endeavour's 12-day flight, not only to hook up electrical connections between the two modules but to install handrails and other tools for future crews. The joined modules will be released from Endeavour once all of the work is completed. NASA estimates 43 more launches and 159 more spacewalks will be needed after this mission to assemble the entire orbiting complex. Once completed, the 16-nation space station will have a mass of 1 million pounds, be longer than a football field, and house up to seven astronauts and cosmonauts. ||||| The first part of the international space station was smoothly orbiting Earth on Friday after a faultless launch that marked the start of a new age in space exploration and colonization. A Russian Proton booster rocket carried the module into its initial orbit 200 kilometers (125 miles) above the Earth and the unit was operating as planned, officials said. Russia's Zarya, or Sunrise, module is to fly alone for two weeks before a rendezvous with the American space shuttle Endeavour, which is to be launched Dec. 3 carrying the Unity connecting module. Space officials from 16 nations taking part in the project cheered as the rocket soared into the cloudy sky above the central Asian steppe from the Baikonur launch pad Friday _ a year later than planned. ``During the, pickup 4th pvs ||||| WASHINGTON _ NASA and the Russian Space Agency have agreed to set aside a last-minute Russian request to launch an international space station into an orbit closer to Mir, officials announced Friday. While putting the new station closer to Russia's 12-year-old Mir station would make it easier to transfer equipment and supplies from the old outpost to the new one, the request came too late to be acted on, said Randy Brinkley, NASA's space station program manager. NASA was surprised last week when Russia's prime station contractor proposed the orbital position change just two-and-a-half weeks before launch of the first part of the new station. Delaying the Nov. 20 flight by 10 hours to match the orbits would have forced similar shifts in the subsequent assembly flights, and resulted in potentially unfavorable sun angles on the solar-powered station, engineers said. ``We have mutually concluded that it would not be prudent to make these changes,'' Brinkley said during a news conference held at the Johnson Space Center in Houston. ``It added technical complexity and risks to the mission that were not justified.'' The decision, which followed ``frank and candid'' discussions between the two partners, was not imposed by the United States, he said. ``The conclusions were mutual,'' Brinkley said. ``Both sides concluded that it did not make sense.'' The Russians, struggling to find money for their space program with their nation in economic collapse, had said they wanted to transfer thousands of pounds of newer equipment and scientific instruments from Mir as an economy move. However, some critics questioned the Russians' motives, wondering if the requested orbital change was part of plan to delay the decommissioning and destruction of Mir, which the Russians have agreed to do next summer. The Russians have so little money that the United States and other partners in the international station fear that money spent on Mir will prevent Russia from meeting its obligations with the new project. ``The Mir competes with the international space station for very critical resources and for funding,'' Brinkley said. NASA will consider ideas for salvaging Mir's research equipment to use on the international space station, he said, but only if it does not interfere with assembling the new station. The United States and 15 other nations plan to begin building the new station in orbit next week when the Russians launch a module that will supply power and propulsion during the early stages of the five-year construction period. The space shuttle Endeavor is to follow on Dec. 3 with the second station part, a U.S.-built connecting passageway that attaches to the first module. ||||| Endeavour and its astronauts closed in Sunday to capture the first piece of the international space station, the Russian-made Zarya control module that had to be connected to the Unity chamber aboard the shuttle. Stacking the two giant cylinders 240 miles above the Earth was considered the most difficult part of the mission. The job fell to Nancy Currie, the shuttle crane operator who had deftly hoisted and repositioned Unity in the cargo bay on Saturday. The two station pieces are so big _ 77 feet from the tip of one to the tip of the other with a combined mass of 70,000 pounds _ that Currie and her crewmates were going to have to rely on a computerized vision system and camera views, rather than direct line of sight. Such a ``blind'' docking had never been attempted before. Mission Control gave the astronauts plenty of time for the tasks. ``The main thing I've tried to do for the last two years working on this flight is make sure we have time. We have margin on everything,'' said flight director Bob Castle. Before beginning their final approach to Zarya _ Russian for Sunrise _ the shuttle's six astronauts had to steer clear of a chunk of a rocket launched last month from California. Mission Control ordered the pilots to fire the shuttle thrusters to put an extra three miles between Endeavour and the space junk, putting Endeavour a total of five miles from the orbiting debris. The smaller gap would have been ``probably a little too close for comfort,'' Mission Control said. The bigger worry, by far, was over Endeavour's pursuit and capture of Zarya, and its coupling with Unity. The shuttle's 50-foot robot arm had never before been assigned to handle an object as massive as the 44,000-pound Zarya, a power and propulsion module that was launched from Kazakhstan on Nov. 20. It will provide all the necessary electricity and steering for the fledgling space station until a permanent control module can be launched next summer. The 36-foot, 25,000-pound Unity will serve as a connecting passageway, or vestibule, for future modules. In case Zarya and Unity could not be connected with the robot arm, two spacewalking astronauts would have to manually fit them together. The astronauts would be going out anyway Monday to attach electrical connectors and cables between the two components. In all, three spacewalks were planned for Endeavour's 12-day flight. NASA estimates 43 more launches and 159 more spacewalks will be needed after this mission to assemble the entire orbiting complex. Once completed, the 16-nation space station will have a mass of 1 million pounds, be longer than a football field, and house up to seven astronauts and cosmonauts.

Russia launched the first piece of the international space station into orbit a year after the originally scheduled date. The launch follows a last minute Russian request to change the orbit of the space station to put it closer to Mir. This request was set aside. Two weeks later, the U.S. carried the Unity chamber into orbit. U.S. astronauts aboard the Endeavor shuttle then joined the Unity chamber to the Russian Zarya control module. The resulting 7 story structure appeared to be a perfect fit. In a subsequent second space walk, the astronauts were to install antennas on the Unity chamber as well as to attempt to unjam a Russian antenna.

Russian space officials gave the first module of the international space station a routine tweak Saturday to push it into higher orbit, and convened a meeting on Earth to map out its future. Flight controllers fired one of the module's two maneuvering engines to raise it to an orbit about 230 kilometers (157 miles) in space, the station's public affairs office said. Russian Space Agency general director Yuri Koptev told reporters the maneuver was carried out ``with great accuracy,'' and the 24-ton core module was cruising through space without any problems. The module, called Zarya, or Sunrise, lifted off Friday from the Baikonur launchpad in Kazakstan into an initial orbit 200 kilometers (125 miles) above Earth. Zarya is to serve as a space tugboat in the early stages of the international project, providing propulsion, power and communications. It will fly alone for two weeks before a rendezvous with the American space shuttle Endeavour, which is to be launched Dec. 3 carrying the Unity connecting module. The international space station is a U.S.-led successor to Russia's Mir space station, and is being heralded by space officials as the vehicle for unprecedented international cooperation in space in the 21st century. The heads of the space agencies of the United States, Russia, Japan and Canada, along with the European Space Agency, met in Moscow on Saturday to discuss the project, the Interfax news agency reported. The space agency heads agreed on a schedule for future meetings and on holding a scientific conference on the project somewhere in Europe, at an unspecified date. Also Saturday, the head of Russia's Mission Control, Vladimir Lobachev, was quoted as saying that Russia would take the lead role in managing the international space station during its first five years. Previously, space officials have said the station would be jointly controlled from Moscow and Houston, with the U.S. space agency NASA taking a lead role. According to Interfax, Lobachev said it made sense for Russia to control the project because the Russian-built Zarya and a Russian-built service module would perform most of the life support and navigational functions for the station's first five years. ``Furthermore, Russian engineers are more experienced in this job and NASA officials are aware of this,'' he said. The space station is expected to cost at least dlrs 40 billion, of which the United States is expected to pay dlrs 24 billion. Russia's financing problems delayed the initial launch by a year, and some critics have said the station amounts to an expensive way for NASA to keep Russia's beleaguered space program alive. The station will serve as an orbital home for visiting astronauts and cosmonauts for at least 15 years. ||||| Endeavour's astronauts connected the first two building blocks of the international space station on Sunday, creating a seven-story tower in the shuttle cargo bay. It was the first time that the Russian-built Zarya control module and the made-in-America Unity chamber had ever touched. It looked to be a perfect and, hopefully, long-lasting fit. ``We have capture of Zarya,'' commander Robert Cabana announced the two pieces came together. ``Congratulations to the crew of the good ship Endeavour,'' replied Mission Control. ``That's terrific.'' The 240-mile-high construction job began two hours earlier with Nancy Currie's capture of Zarya (Russian for Sunrise) using the shuttle robot arm. ``We're halfway home,'' Cabana said. Then came the hard part: stacking the two giant cylinders in the cargo bay. The two station pieces are so big _ 77 feet from the tip of one to the tip of the other with a combined mass of 70,000 pounds _ that Currie and her crewmates had to rely on a computerized vision system and camera views, rather than direct line of sight. This was the first time such a ``blind'' docking had ever been attempted. Currie positioned the solar-winged Zarya, still on the end of the shuttle robot arm, several inches directly above Unity. It was slow going; she wanted and needed perfect alignment. Once she was sure she had it, Cabana fired Endeavour's thrusters, and the brief burst raised the shuttle and thereby Unity enough for the docking mechanisms on the two station components to snap together. The historical moment occurred above the South Pacific. The union _ intended to last the station's 15-year or more lifetime _ set the stage for a spacewalk by two astronauts on Monday to attach electrical connectors and cables between the two components. Mission Control thought Sunday's work might take hours longer than planned and gave the six astronauts plenty of time for the tasks. But everything occurred more or less when and how it was supposed to, aside from a piece of space junk that strayed too close. Before beginning their final approach to Zarya, the six astronauts had to steer clear of a chunk of a rocket launched last month from California. Mission Control ordered the pilots to fire the shuttle thrusters to put an extra three miles between Endeavour and the space junk, putting Endeavour a total of five miles from the orbiting debris. The smaller gap would have been ``probably a little too close for comfort,'' Mission Control said. The bigger worry, by far, was over Endeavour's pursuit and capture of Zarya, and its coupling with Unity. The shuttle's 50-foot robot arm had never before handled an object as massive as the 41-foot, 44,000-pound Zarya, a power and propulsion module that was launched from Kazakstan on Nov. 20. It will provide all of the necessary electricity and steering for the fledgling space station until a permanent control module can be launched next summer. Minutes after Zarya's capture, Cabana called down that two antennas on the module were still undeployed as Russian flight controllers had feared. The antennas must be fully deployed in order for Zarya's manual docking system to work; that system won't be needed before next summer, officials said. The only other problem was with a Zarya battery; the astronauts took up a replacement part. The 36-foot, 25,000-pound Unity, the first American-made component, will serve as a connecting passageway, or vestibule, for future modules. It was crucial that Zarya and Unity be joined; if they could not be connected with the robot arm, NASA would have sent out two spacewalking astronauts to manually fit them together. In all, three spacewalks are planned for Endeavour's 12-day flight, not only to hook up electrical connections between the two modules but to install handrails and other tools for future crews. The joined modules will be released from Endeavour once all of the work is completed. NASA estimates 43 more launches and 159 more spacewalks will be needed after this mission to assemble the entire orbiting complex. Once completed, the 16-nation space station will have a mass of 1 million pounds, be longer than a football field, and house up to seven astronauts and cosmonauts. ||||| The first piece of the international space station was orbiting Earth Friday, sprouting antennae and unfolding solar power panels as it awaited other segments, which will eventually grow into the largest orbital laboratory in history. The module, called Zarya from the Russian term meaning sunrise or dawn, took a flawless ride into space atop a three-stage Russian Proton booster rocket that lifted off at 1:40 a.m. Eastern time from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. The launching was witnessed by the heads of the space agencies of the 16 nations that are sponsoring the station, which will cost at least $40 billion to build over the next five years. Zarya, built in Russia with $240 million from the United States, is to be joined in two weeks by the first American module, a docking hub called Unity. The space shuttle Endeavour is to take off on Dec. 3 to rendezvous with Zarya and attach the two units. This is to be followed by 43 more flights by American and Russian rockets carrying more than 100 parts to be assembled in space to form a 900,000-pound research station housing up to seven astronauts. Daniel Goldin, the administrator of NASA, said at a news conference following the launching, ``Now we only have 44 launches to go, about 1,000 hours of space walks and countless problems.'' But because of all the partner nations trusting each other and working together, he said, ``the international space station is going to be a reality.'' Even as the new space station is coming together, questions continue about the fate of Russia's existing space laboratory, the 12-year-old Mir. Because of the collapse of the Russian economy, doubts that Russia can produce enough rockets and other equipment to support both projects led Russia to promise that it would abandon Mir and destroy the station by next summer. However, in recent weeks Russian officials have been lobbying to find ways to extend Mir's life. According to a report by the news agency Reuters, President Boris Yeltsin's space adviser, Yevgeny Shaposhnikov, said Friday he was preparing a number of proposals on extending Mir's life past the year 2000. Support for such options has been growing in recent weeks among Russian space officials, astronauts and nationalists, who see Mir as a symbol of Russian achievements in space. James Van Laak, NASA's deputy manager of operations for the space station, said Friday that the agency had not received any formal proposals about extending Mir's life. ``NASA would find such a proposal unacceptable if it has any measurable impact on the international space station,'' Van Laak said in a telephone interview from the Johnson Space Center in Houston, ``No one has any objection to Mir or keeping it operational if the Russians find a way to support both projects, but they have to demonstrate they can.'' Yuri Koptev, head of the Russian Space Agency, said the launching of Zarya, a 42,000-pound space tugboat that will supply power and propulsion in the early stages of station construction, was a needed vindication for the troubled Russian space program. ``The Russian space industry is alive and well and is perfectly able to fulfill all of its commitments on the international space station,'' Koptev said. ||||| A Russian Proton booster rocket carried the first part of the international space station into orbit Friday, heralding the start of a new era in international space colonization. Russian space officials and others cheered as ground control announced that the capsule had separated from its booster rocket and reached its first orbit at about 200 kilometers (125 miles) above the Earth. ``Success,'' shouted one exultant official some 10 minutes after the giant rocket blasted off and entered orbit. The heads of the space agencies of 16 nations participating in the project watched the lift-off from a distance of about 5 kilometers (3 miles). Strategic Rocket Forces troops who had prepared the launch were in underground bunkers to avoid poisoning by the highly toxic rocket fuel. Russian and U.S. officials said the launch was ``flawless'' and the module performed well during initial tests. They cautioned that much work remains to be done to get the ambitious space station project up and working. ``Now we only have 44 launches to go, about 1,000 hours of space walks and countless problems, but because of the trust and mutual respect ... the international space station is going to be a reality,'' NASA chief Daniel Goldin told a press conference after the launch. His Russian counterpart, Yuri Koptev, said the launch was a vital vindication for the troubled Russian space industry, proving it could play a major role in space operations. ``Today we made a truly epoch-making step to carry out this project. The Russian space industry is alive and well and is perfectly able to fulfill all of its commitments on the international space station,'' he said. The launch went smoothly, with the rocket soaring into the cloudy sky above the central Asian steppes. The huge roar of the rocket reverberated for dozens of kilometers (miles) across the empty plain around the base. The mood at the launch pad was tense before the launch, with space officials and workers anxiously making last-minute checks to ensure there were no problems. Solar power panels on the module were successfully deployed shortly after it reached its first orbit and all systems were working normally, officials said. The launch of the Russian cargo module, which had been delayed for more than a year, ushers in a new era of cooperation among former space-race rivals. Space officials expressed optimism that cooperation would further promote world stability following the end of the Cold War. ``We still have some contradictions, we still have combat missiles aimed at each other, but the predominant trend is the state of cooperation and doing things together,'' said Yuri Semyonov of Russia's Energia space company. The 12.4-meter (41.2-feet) Zarya, or Sunrise, was launched by a three-stage Proton booster rocket. Zarya is designed to serve as a space tugboat in the early stages of the project, providing propulsion, power and communications. Engineers finished final preparations early Friday for the liftoff of the 24-ton module. The rocket blasted off under cloudy skies and strong winds, and disappeared behind the clouds 40 seconds later. The international space station, the U.S.-led successor to Russia's beleaguered Mir, involves 16 nations and is due to be completed by 2004. It will consist of more than 100 elements that will take 45 assembly flights to complete. Russia's crucial participation has been hampered by the country's financial problems. The launch of the first segment was postponed repeatedly, mainly because the chronically broke Russian space agency couldn't afford to complete another part of the station that is to go up later. Zarya is to fly alone for two weeks before a rendezvous with the American space shuttle Endeavor, which is to be launched Dec. 3 carrying the Unity connecting module. The space station will not be inhabitable until at least early 2000, following the launch of a Russian crew module which is set to blast off next July or August. The space station is expected to cost at least dlrs 40 billion, with the United States planning to pay dlrs 24 billion. It will serve as an orbital home for visiting astronauts and cosmonauts for at least 15 years. Russia has repeatedly failed to meet deadlines for constructing the crew module, putting the whole project behind schedule. Having lost hope of getting promised government funds, the Russian space agency has sold research time on the station to NASA for dlrs 60 million to complete the segment. Russia rents the Baikonur launching pad from Kazakstan. ||||| Russian space experts were making final preparations Thursday at the Baikonur rocket base to launch the first component of a multibillion dollar international space station after a year of delay. Built by a Russian company and to be launched atop a Russian booster rocket, the 24-ton Zarya (Sunrise) control and cargo module is a U.S.-funded component of the station. It will serve as a space tugboat in the early stages of the project, providing propulsion, power and communications. The unmanned launch, set for 9:40 Moscow time (0640 GMT) Friday from Baikonur in Kazakhstan, has been delayed for one year mainly because of the cash-strapped Russian space agency's failure to complete another part of the station. ``After years of discussing, planning and replanning, we are about to launch hardware,'' Gretchen McClain, deputy associate administrator for the new station, said at a news conference earlier this week. ``We are ready to begin a project that will bring us into the millennium with women and men living and working in space permanently.'' Russian officials added their traditional note of superstition. ``It is not in the Russian tradition to preface a launch with ... some advance statements. I would like to knock on wood, which is rather common in the Russian tradition,'' said Alexander Krasnov, a deputy chief of Russian Space Agency's manned flight department. The station, involving 16 nations with the United States and Russia playing the biggest roles, will consist of more than 100 elements that will take 45 assembly flights to complete. It is due to be completed by 2004. The station will weigh 500 tons (more than a million pounds) and is expected to cost at least dlrs 40 billion, with the United States planning to pay dlrs 21 billion. It will serve as an orbital home for visiting astronauts and cosmonauts for up to 20 years. Zarya is to fly alone for two weeks before a rendezvous with the American space shuttle Endeavor, which is to be launched Dec. 3 carrying the Unity connecting module. The shuttle crew will attach the two modules together in three space walks, using the Endeavors robot arm. The 12.4-meter (41.2-feet) Zarya holds more than 6 tons of fuel in its 16 tanks and is capable of flying independently for 430 days. Its control system consists of 36 thrusters and two large engines for major orbital changes. It will be launched by a three-stage heavy-lift Proton booster rocket that would put Zarya into orbit in less than 10 minutes after the blastoff. In the ensuing days, the ground controllers will gradually adjust its orbit in preparation for the meeting with Endeavor. The space station will not be inhabitable until early 2000, following the launch of a Russian crew module which is set to blast off next July or August. Russia has repeatedly failed to meet deadlines for constructing the crew module, putting the whole project behind schedule. Having lost hope of getting the promised government funds, the Russian space agency has sold its early research time on the station to NASA for dlrs 60 million to complete the segment. Agency chief Yuri Koptev said that taking part in the new station is the only hope for the beleaguered Russian space industry, whose funding has collapsed since the Soviet collapse. The project would allow Russia to keep up to 80,000 jobs over the next 15 years. Koptev assailed some Russian space engineers who continue to insist that more money should be put into Russia's own battered 12-year old Mir space station to extend its lifetime instead of committing more funds to the new space outpost. ``The choice mustn't be determined by emotions. Some people are glued to one thing (Mir) and don't care about the rest,'' Koptev said at a recent news conference. ``We must proceed from the understanding of what would take us into the future, allow us to preserve our industry.'' The Russian Khrunichev company has earned over dlrs 200 million for building Zarya, whose design was based on earlier Soviet spacecraft, including some of the Mir's six modules. ||||| Two astronauts ventured back out on another spacewalk Wednesday to attach antennas to the international space station under construction nearly 250 miles above Earth. For the second time this week, Jerry Ross and James Newman floated out the hatch of the shuttle Endeavour to work on the seven-story, 35-ton station taking shape in the open cargo bay. Their No. 1 priority was to attach two 100-pound antennas to Unity, the American-made side of the space station. Their other job, time permitting, was trickier: trying to open a stuck antenna on Zarya, the Russian-built control module. The planned seven-hour spacewalk was not nearly as difficult or crucial as Monday night's outing, during which Ross and Newman hooked up 40 electrical connections between Zarya and Unity. The plan called for the men to lug two suitcase-size antennas about halfway up Unity and install them on opposite sides of the 36-foot cylinder. Once activated, the antennas will provide a direct, virtually uninterrupted communication link between Unity and NASA's Mission Control. Otherwise, U.S. flight controllers would have to rely on the sporadic coverage provided by Russian ground stations. The electronic and computer hookups for the antennas will be made inside Unity on Thursday, after the entire crew enters the orbiting station for the first time. Other spacewalking chores for Ross and Newman on Wednesday evening included erecting a sunshade over a computer mounted to the outside of Unity. Mission Control decided just before the spacewalk to let Newman take a crack at unjamming the Zarya antenna. Flight controllers urged caution. The antenna was rolled up on a spool, and engineers worried the 3-foot strip might pop open with enough force to hurt him if he got too close. Newman had a 10-foot grappling hook for the job. The antenna is one of two that failed to open properly following Zarya's Nov. 20 launch from Kazakstan. One more spacewalk is planned for Endeavour's 12-day mission: On Saturday, Ross and Newman will conduct a photo survey and take out a sack of tools that will be used by future station visitors. Newman also may try to unjam the other Zarya antenna. This was the sixth spacewalk for Ross during his 18-year NASA career, the most by an American, and the third for Newman. ||||| Endeavour's astronauts connected the first two building blocks of the international space station on Sunday, creating a seven-story tower in the shuttle cargo bay. It was the first time that the Russian-built Zarya control module and the made-in-America Unity chamber had ever touched. It looked to be a perfect and, hopefully, long-lasting fit. ``We have capture of Zarya,'' commander Robert Cabana announced the moment the two pieces came together. ``Congratulations to the crew of the good ship Endeavour,'' replied Mission Control. ``That's terrific.'' The 240-mile-high construction job began two hours earlier with Nancy Currie's capture of Zarya (Russian for Sunrise) using the shuttle robot arm. ``We're halfway home,'' Cabana said. Then came the hard part: stacking the two giant cylinders in the cargo bay. The two station pieces are so big _ 77 feet from the tip of one to the tip of the other with a combined mass of 70,000 pounds _ that Currie and her crewmates had to rely on a computerized vision system and camera views, rather than direct line of sight. This was the first time such a ``blind'' docking had ever been attempted. Currie positioned the solar-winged Zarya, still on the end of the shuttle robot arm, several inches directly above Unity. It was slow going; she wanted and needed perfect alignment. Once she was sure she had it, Cabana fired Endeavour's thrusters, and the brief burst raised the shuttle and thereby Unity enough for the docking mechanisms on the two station components to snap together. The historical moment occurred above the South Pacific. The union _ intended to last the station's 15-year or more lifetime _ set the stage for a spacewalk by two astronauts on Monday to attach electrical connectors and cables between the two components. Mission Control thought Sunday's work might take hours longer than planned and gave the six astronauts plenty of time for the tasks. But everything occurred more or less when and how it was supposed to, aside from a piece of space junk that strayed too close. Before beginning their final approach to Zarya, the six astronauts had to steer clear of a chunk of a rocket launched last month from California. Mission Control ordered the pilots to fire the shuttle thrusters to put an extra three miles between Endeavour and the space junk, putting Endeavour a total of five miles from the orbiting debris. The smaller gap would have been ``probably a little too close for comfort,'' Mission Control said. The bigger worry, by far, was over Endeavour's pursuit and capture of Zarya, and its coupling with Unity. The shuttle's 50-foot robot arm had never before handled an object as massive as the 41-foot, 44,000-pound Zarya, a power and propulsion module that was launched from Kazakstan on Nov. 20. It will provide all of the necessary electricity and steering for the fledgling space station until a permanent control module can be launched next summer. Minutes after Zarya's capture, Cabana called down that two antennas on the module were still undeployed as Russian flight controllers had feared. The antennas must be fully deployed in order for Zarya's manual docking system to work; that system won't be needed before next summer, officials said. The only other problem was with a Zarya battery; the astronauts took up a replacement part. The 36-foot, 25,000-pound Unity, the first American-made component, will serve as a connecting passageway, or vestibule, for future modules. It was crucial that Zarya and Unity be joined; if they could not be connected with the robot arm, NASA would have sent out two spacewalking astronauts to manually fit them together. In all, three spacewalks are planned for Endeavour's 12-day flight, not only to hook up electrical connections between the two modules but to install handrails and other tools for future crews. The joined modules will be released from Endeavour once all of the work is completed. NASA estimates 43 more launches and 159 more spacewalks will be needed after this mission to assemble the entire orbiting complex. Once completed, the 16-nation space station will have a mass of 1 million pounds, be longer than a football field, and house up to seven astronauts and cosmonauts. ||||| The first part of the international space station was smoothly orbiting Earth on Friday after a faultless launch that marked the start of a new age in space exploration and colonization. A Russian Proton booster rocket carried the module into its initial orbit 200 kilometers (125 miles) above the Earth and the unit was operating as planned, officials said. Russia's Zarya, or Sunrise, module is to fly alone for two weeks before a rendezvous with the American space shuttle Endeavour, which is to be launched Dec. 3 carrying the Unity connecting module. Space officials from 16 nations taking part in the project cheered as the rocket soared into the cloudy sky above the central Asian steppe from the Baikonur launch pad Friday _ a year later than planned. ``During the, pickup 4th pvs ||||| WASHINGTON _ NASA and the Russian Space Agency have agreed to set aside a last-minute Russian request to launch an international space station into an orbit closer to Mir, officials announced Friday. While putting the new station closer to Russia's 12-year-old Mir station would make it easier to transfer equipment and supplies from the old outpost to the new one, the request came too late to be acted on, said Randy Brinkley, NASA's space station program manager. NASA was surprised last week when Russia's prime station contractor proposed the orbital position change just two-and-a-half weeks before launch of the first part of the new station. Delaying the Nov. 20 flight by 10 hours to match the orbits would have forced similar shifts in the subsequent assembly flights, and resulted in potentially unfavorable sun angles on the solar-powered station, engineers said. ``We have mutually concluded that it would not be prudent to make these changes,'' Brinkley said during a news conference held at the Johnson Space Center in Houston. ``It added technical complexity and risks to the mission that were not justified.'' The decision, which followed ``frank and candid'' discussions between the two partners, was not imposed by the United States, he said. ``The conclusions were mutual,'' Brinkley said. ``Both sides concluded that it did not make sense.'' The Russians, struggling to find money for their space program with their nation in economic collapse, had said they wanted to transfer thousands of pounds of newer equipment and scientific instruments from Mir as an economy move. However, some critics questioned the Russians' motives, wondering if the requested orbital change was part of plan to delay the decommissioning and destruction of Mir, which the Russians have agreed to do next summer. The Russians have so little money that the United States and other partners in the international station fear that money spent on Mir will prevent Russia from meeting its obligations with the new project. ``The Mir competes with the international space station for very critical resources and for funding,'' Brinkley said. NASA will consider ideas for salvaging Mir's research equipment to use on the international space station, he said, but only if it does not interfere with assembling the new station. The United States and 15 other nations plan to begin building the new station in orbit next week when the Russians launch a module that will supply power and propulsion during the early stages of the five-year construction period. The space shuttle Endeavor is to follow on Dec. 3 with the second station part, a U.S.-built connecting passageway that attaches to the first module. ||||| Endeavour and its astronauts closed in Sunday to capture the first piece of the international space station, the Russian-made Zarya control module that had to be connected to the Unity chamber aboard the shuttle. Stacking the two giant cylinders 240 miles above the Earth was considered the most difficult part of the mission. The job fell to Nancy Currie, the shuttle crane operator who had deftly hoisted and repositioned Unity in the cargo bay on Saturday. The two station pieces are so big _ 77 feet from the tip of one to the tip of the other with a combined mass of 70,000 pounds _ that Currie and her crewmates were going to have to rely on a computerized vision system and camera views, rather than direct line of sight. Such a ``blind'' docking had never been attempted before. Mission Control gave the astronauts plenty of time for the tasks. ``The main thing I've tried to do for the last two years working on this flight is make sure we have time. We have margin on everything,'' said flight director Bob Castle. Before beginning their final approach to Zarya _ Russian for Sunrise _ the shuttle's six astronauts had to steer clear of a chunk of a rocket launched last month from California. Mission Control ordered the pilots to fire the shuttle thrusters to put an extra three miles between Endeavour and the space junk, putting Endeavour a total of five miles from the orbiting debris. The smaller gap would have been ``probably a little too close for comfort,'' Mission Control said. The bigger worry, by far, was over Endeavour's pursuit and capture of Zarya, and its coupling with Unity. The shuttle's 50-foot robot arm had never before been assigned to handle an object as massive as the 44,000-pound Zarya, a power and propulsion module that was launched from Kazakhstan on Nov. 20. It will provide all the necessary electricity and steering for the fledgling space station until a permanent control module can be launched next summer. The 36-foot, 25,000-pound Unity will serve as a connecting passageway, or vestibule, for future modules. In case Zarya and Unity could not be connected with the robot arm, two spacewalking astronauts would have to manually fit them together. The astronauts would be going out anyway Monday to attach electrical connectors and cables between the two components. In all, three spacewalks were planned for Endeavour's 12-day flight. NASA estimates 43 more launches and 159 more spacewalks will be needed after this mission to assemble the entire orbiting complex. Once completed, the 16-nation space station will have a mass of 1 million pounds, be longer than a football field, and house up to seven astronauts and cosmonauts.

After a year's delay Russia launched the first unit of the international space station, then pushed it to a higher orbit. Zarya will provide propulsion, power, and comms. US shuttle Endeavour made a blind docking with Zarya. Two spacewalks made electrical connections with Unity, which will serve as a passageway, attached its antennas and attempted to open a stuck Zarya antenna. A Russian cost-cutting proposal to orbit the station closer to Mir jointly vetoed. Russia promised to destroy Mir but now wants to extend its life. Russia sold early research time on the station to NASA to pay construction costs but claims the management lead for 1st 5 years.

Russian space officials gave the first module of the international space station a routine tweak Saturday to push it into higher orbit, and convened a meeting on Earth to map out its future. Flight controllers fired one of the module's two maneuvering engines to raise it to an orbit about 230 kilometers (157 miles) in space, the station's public affairs office said. Russian Space Agency general director Yuri Koptev told reporters the maneuver was carried out ``with great accuracy,'' and the 24-ton core module was cruising through space without any problems. The module, called Zarya, or Sunrise, lifted off Friday from the Baikonur launchpad in Kazakstan into an initial orbit 200 kilometers (125 miles) above Earth. Zarya is to serve as a space tugboat in the early stages of the international project, providing propulsion, power and communications. It will fly alone for two weeks before a rendezvous with the American space shuttle Endeavour, which is to be launched Dec. 3 carrying the Unity connecting module. The international space station is a U.S.-led successor to Russia's Mir space station, and is being heralded by space officials as the vehicle for unprecedented international cooperation in space in the 21st century. The heads of the space agencies of the United States, Russia, Japan and Canada, along with the European Space Agency, met in Moscow on Saturday to discuss the project, the Interfax news agency reported. The space agency heads agreed on a schedule for future meetings and on holding a scientific conference on the project somewhere in Europe, at an unspecified date. Also Saturday, the head of Russia's Mission Control, Vladimir Lobachev, was quoted as saying that Russia would take the lead role in managing the international space station during its first five years. Previously, space officials have said the station would be jointly controlled from Moscow and Houston, with the U.S. space agency NASA taking a lead role. According to Interfax, Lobachev said it made sense for Russia to control the project because the Russian-built Zarya and a Russian-built service module would perform most of the life support and navigational functions for the station's first five years. ``Furthermore, Russian engineers are more experienced in this job and NASA officials are aware of this,'' he said. The space station is expected to cost at least dlrs 40 billion, of which the United States is expected to pay dlrs 24 billion. Russia's financing problems delayed the initial launch by a year, and some critics have said the station amounts to an expensive way for NASA to keep Russia's beleaguered space program alive. The station will serve as an orbital home for visiting astronauts and cosmonauts for at least 15 years. ||||| Endeavour's astronauts connected the first two building blocks of the international space station on Sunday, creating a seven-story tower in the shuttle cargo bay. It was the first time that the Russian-built Zarya control module and the made-in-America Unity chamber had ever touched. It looked to be a perfect and, hopefully, long-lasting fit. ``We have capture of Zarya,'' commander Robert Cabana announced the two pieces came together. ``Congratulations to the crew of the good ship Endeavour,'' replied Mission Control. ``That's terrific.'' The 240-mile-high construction job began two hours earlier with Nancy Currie's capture of Zarya (Russian for Sunrise) using the shuttle robot arm. ``We're halfway home,'' Cabana said. Then came the hard part: stacking the two giant cylinders in the cargo bay. The two station pieces are so big _ 77 feet from the tip of one to the tip of the other with a combined mass of 70,000 pounds _ that Currie and her crewmates had to rely on a computerized vision system and camera views, rather than direct line of sight. This was the first time such a ``blind'' docking had ever been attempted. Currie positioned the solar-winged Zarya, still on the end of the shuttle robot arm, several inches directly above Unity. It was slow going; she wanted and needed perfect alignment. Once she was sure she had it, Cabana fired Endeavour's thrusters, and the brief burst raised the shuttle and thereby Unity enough for the docking mechanisms on the two station components to snap together. The historical moment occurred above the South Pacific. The union _ intended to last the station's 15-year or more lifetime _ set the stage for a spacewalk by two astronauts on Monday to attach electrical connectors and cables between the two components. Mission Control thought Sunday's work might take hours longer than planned and gave the six astronauts plenty of time for the tasks. But everything occurred more or less when and how it was supposed to, aside from a piece of space junk that strayed too close. Before beginning their final approach to Zarya, the six astronauts had to steer clear of a chunk of a rocket launched last month from California. Mission Control ordered the pilots to fire the shuttle thrusters to put an extra three miles between Endeavour and the space junk, putting Endeavour a total of five miles from the orbiting debris. The smaller gap would have been ``probably a little too close for comfort,'' Mission Control said. The bigger worry, by far, was over Endeavour's pursuit and capture of Zarya, and its coupling with Unity. The shuttle's 50-foot robot arm had never before handled an object as massive as the 41-foot, 44,000-pound Zarya, a power and propulsion module that was launched from Kazakstan on Nov. 20. It will provide all of the necessary electricity and steering for the fledgling space station until a permanent control module can be launched next summer. Minutes after Zarya's capture, Cabana called down that two antennas on the module were still undeployed as Russian flight controllers had feared. The antennas must be fully deployed in order for Zarya's manual docking system to work; that system won't be needed before next summer, officials said. The only other problem was with a Zarya battery; the astronauts took up a replacement part. The 36-foot, 25,000-pound Unity, the first American-made component, will serve as a connecting passageway, or vestibule, for future modules. It was crucial that Zarya and Unity be joined; if they could not be connected with the robot arm, NASA would have sent out two spacewalking astronauts to manually fit them together. In all, three spacewalks are planned for Endeavour's 12-day flight, not only to hook up electrical connections between the two modules but to install handrails and other tools for future crews. The joined modules will be released from Endeavour once all of the work is completed. NASA estimates 43 more launches and 159 more spacewalks will be needed after this mission to assemble the entire orbiting complex. Once completed, the 16-nation space station will have a mass of 1 million pounds, be longer than a football field, and house up to seven astronauts and cosmonauts. ||||| The first piece of the international space station was orbiting Earth Friday, sprouting antennae and unfolding solar power panels as it awaited other segments, which will eventually grow into the largest orbital laboratory in history. The module, called Zarya from the Russian term meaning sunrise or dawn, took a flawless ride into space atop a three-stage Russian Proton booster rocket that lifted off at 1:40 a.m. Eastern time from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. The launching was witnessed by the heads of the space agencies of the 16 nations that are sponsoring the station, which will cost at least $40 billion to build over the next five years. Zarya, built in Russia with $240 million from the United States, is to be joined in two weeks by the first American module, a docking hub called Unity. The space shuttle Endeavour is to take off on Dec. 3 to rendezvous with Zarya and attach the two units. This is to be followed by 43 more flights by American and Russian rockets carrying more than 100 parts to be assembled in space to form a 900,000-pound research station housing up to seven astronauts. Daniel Goldin, the administrator of NASA, said at a news conference following the launching, ``Now we only have 44 launches to go, about 1,000 hours of space walks and countless problems.'' But because of all the partner nations trusting each other and working together, he said, ``the international space station is going to be a reality.'' Even as the new space station is coming together, questions continue about the fate of Russia's existing space laboratory, the 12-year-old Mir. Because of the collapse of the Russian economy, doubts that Russia can produce enough rockets and other equipment to support both projects led Russia to promise that it would abandon Mir and destroy the station by next summer. However, in recent weeks Russian officials have been lobbying to find ways to extend Mir's life. According to a report by the news agency Reuters, President Boris Yeltsin's space adviser, Yevgeny Shaposhnikov, said Friday he was preparing a number of proposals on extending Mir's life past the year 2000. Support for such options has been growing in recent weeks among Russian space officials, astronauts and nationalists, who see Mir as a symbol of Russian achievements in space. James Van Laak, NASA's deputy manager of operations for the space station, said Friday that the agency had not received any formal proposals about extending Mir's life. ``NASA would find such a proposal unacceptable if it has any measurable impact on the international space station,'' Van Laak said in a telephone interview from the Johnson Space Center in Houston, ``No one has any objection to Mir or keeping it operational if the Russians find a way to support both projects, but they have to demonstrate they can.'' Yuri Koptev, head of the Russian Space Agency, said the launching of Zarya, a 42,000-pound space tugboat that will supply power and propulsion in the early stages of station construction, was a needed vindication for the troubled Russian space program. ``The Russian space industry is alive and well and is perfectly able to fulfill all of its commitments on the international space station,'' Koptev said. ||||| A Russian Proton booster rocket carried the first part of the international space station into orbit Friday, heralding the start of a new era in international space colonization. Russian space officials and others cheered as ground control announced that the capsule had separated from its booster rocket and reached its first orbit at about 200 kilometers (125 miles) above the Earth. ``Success,'' shouted one exultant official some 10 minutes after the giant rocket blasted off and entered orbit. The heads of the space agencies of 16 nations participating in the project watched the lift-off from a distance of about 5 kilometers (3 miles). Strategic Rocket Forces troops who had prepared the launch were in underground bunkers to avoid poisoning by the highly toxic rocket fuel. Russian and U.S. officials said the launch was ``flawless'' and the module performed well during initial tests. They cautioned that much work remains to be done to get the ambitious space station project up and working. ``Now we only have 44 launches to go, about 1,000 hours of space walks and countless problems, but because of the trust and mutual respect ... the international space station is going to be a reality,'' NASA chief Daniel Goldin told a press conference after the launch. His Russian counterpart, Yuri Koptev, said the launch was a vital vindication for the troubled Russian space industry, proving it could play a major role in space operations. ``Today we made a truly epoch-making step to carry out this project. The Russian space industry is alive and well and is perfectly able to fulfill all of its commitments on the international space station,'' he said. The launch went smoothly, with the rocket soaring into the cloudy sky above the central Asian steppes. The huge roar of the rocket reverberated for dozens of kilometers (miles) across the empty plain around the base. The mood at the launch pad was tense before the launch, with space officials and workers anxiously making last-minute checks to ensure there were no problems. Solar power panels on the module were successfully deployed shortly after it reached its first orbit and all systems were working normally, officials said. The launch of the Russian cargo module, which had been delayed for more than a year, ushers in a new era of cooperation among former space-race rivals. Space officials expressed optimism that cooperation would further promote world stability following the end of the Cold War. ``We still have some contradictions, we still have combat missiles aimed at each other, but the predominant trend is the state of cooperation and doing things together,'' said Yuri Semyonov of Russia's Energia space company. The 12.4-meter (41.2-feet) Zarya, or Sunrise, was launched by a three-stage Proton booster rocket. Zarya is designed to serve as a space tugboat in the early stages of the project, providing propulsion, power and communications. Engineers finished final preparations early Friday for the liftoff of the 24-ton module. The rocket blasted off under cloudy skies and strong winds, and disappeared behind the clouds 40 seconds later. The international space station, the U.S.-led successor to Russia's beleaguered Mir, involves 16 nations and is due to be completed by 2004. It will consist of more than 100 elements that will take 45 assembly flights to complete. Russia's crucial participation has been hampered by the country's financial problems. The launch of the first segment was postponed repeatedly, mainly because the chronically broke Russian space agency couldn't afford to complete another part of the station that is to go up later. Zarya is to fly alone for two weeks before a rendezvous with the American space shuttle Endeavor, which is to be launched Dec. 3 carrying the Unity connecting module. The space station will not be inhabitable until at least early 2000, following the launch of a Russian crew module which is set to blast off next July or August. The space station is expected to cost at least dlrs 40 billion, with the United States planning to pay dlrs 24 billion. It will serve as an orbital home for visiting astronauts and cosmonauts for at least 15 years. Russia has repeatedly failed to meet deadlines for constructing the crew module, putting the whole project behind schedule. Having lost hope of getting promised government funds, the Russian space agency has sold research time on the station to NASA for dlrs 60 million to complete the segment. Russia rents the Baikonur launching pad from Kazakstan. ||||| Russian space experts were making final preparations Thursday at the Baikonur rocket base to launch the first component of a multibillion dollar international space station after a year of delay. Built by a Russian company and to be launched atop a Russian booster rocket, the 24-ton Zarya (Sunrise) control and cargo module is a U.S.-funded component of the station. It will serve as a space tugboat in the early stages of the project, providing propulsion, power and communications. The unmanned launch, set for 9:40 Moscow time (0640 GMT) Friday from Baikonur in Kazakhstan, has been delayed for one year mainly because of the cash-strapped Russian space agency's failure to complete another part of the station. ``After years of discussing, planning and replanning, we are about to launch hardware,'' Gretchen McClain, deputy associate administrator for the new station, said at a news conference earlier this week. ``We are ready to begin a project that will bring us into the millennium with women and men living and working in space permanently.'' Russian officials added their traditional note of superstition. ``It is not in the Russian tradition to preface a launch with ... some advance statements. I would like to knock on wood, which is rather common in the Russian tradition,'' said Alexander Krasnov, a deputy chief of Russian Space Agency's manned flight department. The station, involving 16 nations with the United States and Russia playing the biggest roles, will consist of more than 100 elements that will take 45 assembly flights to complete. It is due to be completed by 2004. The station will weigh 500 tons (more than a million pounds) and is expected to cost at least dlrs 40 billion, with the United States planning to pay dlrs 21 billion. It will serve as an orbital home for visiting astronauts and cosmonauts for up to 20 years. Zarya is to fly alone for two weeks before a rendezvous with the American space shuttle Endeavor, which is to be launched Dec. 3 carrying the Unity connecting module. The shuttle crew will attach the two modules together in three space walks, using the Endeavors robot arm. The 12.4-meter (41.2-feet) Zarya holds more than 6 tons of fuel in its 16 tanks and is capable of flying independently for 430 days. Its control system consists of 36 thrusters and two large engines for major orbital changes. It will be launched by a three-stage heavy-lift Proton booster rocket that would put Zarya into orbit in less than 10 minutes after the blastoff. In the ensuing days, the ground controllers will gradually adjust its orbit in preparation for the meeting with Endeavor. The space station will not be inhabitable until early 2000, following the launch of a Russian crew module which is set to blast off next July or August. Russia has repeatedly failed to meet deadlines for constructing the crew module, putting the whole project behind schedule. Having lost hope of getting the promised government funds, the Russian space agency has sold its early research time on the station to NASA for dlrs 60 million to complete the segment. Agency chief Yuri Koptev said that taking part in the new station is the only hope for the beleaguered Russian space industry, whose funding has collapsed since the Soviet collapse. The project would allow Russia to keep up to 80,000 jobs over the next 15 years. Koptev assailed some Russian space engineers who continue to insist that more money should be put into Russia's own battered 12-year old Mir space station to extend its lifetime instead of committing more funds to the new space outpost. ``The choice mustn't be determined by emotions. Some people are glued to one thing (Mir) and don't care about the rest,'' Koptev said at a recent news conference. ``We must proceed from the understanding of what would take us into the future, allow us to preserve our industry.'' The Russian Khrunichev company has earned over dlrs 200 million for building Zarya, whose design was based on earlier Soviet spacecraft, including some of the Mir's six modules. ||||| Two astronauts ventured back out on another spacewalk Wednesday to attach antennas to the international space station under construction nearly 250 miles above Earth. For the second time this week, Jerry Ross and James Newman floated out the hatch of the shuttle Endeavour to work on the seven-story, 35-ton station taking shape in the open cargo bay. Their No. 1 priority was to attach two 100-pound antennas to Unity, the American-made side of the space station. Their other job, time permitting, was trickier: trying to open a stuck antenna on Zarya, the Russian-built control module. The planned seven-hour spacewalk was not nearly as difficult or crucial as Monday night's outing, during which Ross and Newman hooked up 40 electrical connections between Zarya and Unity. The plan called for the men to lug two suitcase-size antennas about halfway up Unity and install them on opposite sides of the 36-foot cylinder. Once activated, the antennas will provide a direct, virtually uninterrupted communication link between Unity and NASA's Mission Control. Otherwise, U.S. flight controllers would have to rely on the sporadic coverage provided by Russian ground stations. The electronic and computer hookups for the antennas will be made inside Unity on Thursday, after the entire crew enters the orbiting station for the first time. Other spacewalking chores for Ross and Newman on Wednesday evening included erecting a sunshade over a computer mounted to the outside of Unity. Mission Control decided just before the spacewalk to let Newman take a crack at unjamming the Zarya antenna. Flight controllers urged caution. The antenna was rolled up on a spool, and engineers worried the 3-foot strip might pop open with enough force to hurt him if he got too close. Newman had a 10-foot grappling hook for the job. The antenna is one of two that failed to open properly following Zarya's Nov. 20 launch from Kazakstan. One more spacewalk is planned for Endeavour's 12-day mission: On Saturday, Ross and Newman will conduct a photo survey and take out a sack of tools that will be used by future station visitors. Newman also may try to unjam the other Zarya antenna. This was the sixth spacewalk for Ross during his 18-year NASA career, the most by an American, and the third for Newman. ||||| Endeavour's astronauts connected the first two building blocks of the international space station on Sunday, creating a seven-story tower in the shuttle cargo bay. It was the first time that the Russian-built Zarya control module and the made-in-America Unity chamber had ever touched. It looked to be a perfect and, hopefully, long-lasting fit. ``We have capture of Zarya,'' commander Robert Cabana announced the moment the two pieces came together. ``Congratulations to the crew of the good ship Endeavour,'' replied Mission Control. ``That's terrific.'' The 240-mile-high construction job began two hours earlier with Nancy Currie's capture of Zarya (Russian for Sunrise) using the shuttle robot arm. ``We're halfway home,'' Cabana said. Then came the hard part: stacking the two giant cylinders in the cargo bay. The two station pieces are so big _ 77 feet from the tip of one to the tip of the other with a combined mass of 70,000 pounds _ that Currie and her crewmates had to rely on a computerized vision system and camera views, rather than direct line of sight. This was the first time such a ``blind'' docking had ever been attempted. Currie positioned the solar-winged Zarya, still on the end of the shuttle robot arm, several inches directly above Unity. It was slow going; she wanted and needed perfect alignment. Once she was sure she had it, Cabana fired Endeavour's thrusters, and the brief burst raised the shuttle and thereby Unity enough for the docking mechanisms on the two station components to snap together. The historical moment occurred above the South Pacific. The union _ intended to last the station's 15-year or more lifetime _ set the stage for a spacewalk by two astronauts on Monday to attach electrical connectors and cables between the two components. Mission Control thought Sunday's work might take hours longer than planned and gave the six astronauts plenty of time for the tasks. But everything occurred more or less when and how it was supposed to, aside from a piece of space junk that strayed too close. Before beginning their final approach to Zarya, the six astronauts had to steer clear of a chunk of a rocket launched last month from California. Mission Control ordered the pilots to fire the shuttle thrusters to put an extra three miles between Endeavour and the space junk, putting Endeavour a total of five miles from the orbiting debris. The smaller gap would have been ``probably a little too close for comfort,'' Mission Control said. The bigger worry, by far, was over Endeavour's pursuit and capture of Zarya, and its coupling with Unity. The shuttle's 50-foot robot arm had never before handled an object as massive as the 41-foot, 44,000-pound Zarya, a power and propulsion module that was launched from Kazakstan on Nov. 20. It will provide all of the necessary electricity and steering for the fledgling space station until a permanent control module can be launched next summer. Minutes after Zarya's capture, Cabana called down that two antennas on the module were still undeployed as Russian flight controllers had feared. The antennas must be fully deployed in order for Zarya's manual docking system to work; that system won't be needed before next summer, officials said. The only other problem was with a Zarya battery; the astronauts took up a replacement part. The 36-foot, 25,000-pound Unity, the first American-made component, will serve as a connecting passageway, or vestibule, for future modules. It was crucial that Zarya and Unity be joined; if they could not be connected with the robot arm, NASA would have sent out two spacewalking astronauts to manually fit them together. In all, three spacewalks are planned for Endeavour's 12-day flight, not only to hook up electrical connections between the two modules but to install handrails and other tools for future crews. The joined modules will be released from Endeavour once all of the work is completed. NASA estimates 43 more launches and 159 more spacewalks will be needed after this mission to assemble the entire orbiting complex. Once completed, the 16-nation space station will have a mass of 1 million pounds, be longer than a football field, and house up to seven astronauts and cosmonauts. ||||| The first part of the international space station was smoothly orbiting Earth on Friday after a faultless launch that marked the start of a new age in space exploration and colonization. A Russian Proton booster rocket carried the module into its initial orbit 200 kilometers (125 miles) above the Earth and the unit was operating as planned, officials said. Russia's Zarya, or Sunrise, module is to fly alone for two weeks before a rendezvous with the American space shuttle Endeavour, which is to be launched Dec. 3 carrying the Unity connecting module. Space officials from 16 nations taking part in the project cheered as the rocket soared into the cloudy sky above the central Asian steppe from the Baikonur launch pad Friday _ a year later than planned. ``During the, pickup 4th pvs ||||| WASHINGTON _ NASA and the Russian Space Agency have agreed to set aside a last-minute Russian request to launch an international space station into an orbit closer to Mir, officials announced Friday. While putting the new station closer to Russia's 12-year-old Mir station would make it easier to transfer equipment and supplies from the old outpost to the new one, the request came too late to be acted on, said Randy Brinkley, NASA's space station program manager. NASA was surprised last week when Russia's prime station contractor proposed the orbital position change just two-and-a-half weeks before launch of the first part of the new station. Delaying the Nov. 20 flight by 10 hours to match the orbits would have forced similar shifts in the subsequent assembly flights, and resulted in potentially unfavorable sun angles on the solar-powered station, engineers said. ``We have mutually concluded that it would not be prudent to make these changes,'' Brinkley said during a news conference held at the Johnson Space Center in Houston. ``It added technical complexity and risks to the mission that were not justified.'' The decision, which followed ``frank and candid'' discussions between the two partners, was not imposed by the United States, he said. ``The conclusions were mutual,'' Brinkley said. ``Both sides concluded that it did not make sense.'' The Russians, struggling to find money for their space program with their nation in economic collapse, had said they wanted to transfer thousands of pounds of newer equipment and scientific instruments from Mir as an economy move. However, some critics questioned the Russians' motives, wondering if the requested orbital change was part of plan to delay the decommissioning and destruction of Mir, which the Russians have agreed to do next summer. The Russians have so little money that the United States and other partners in the international station fear that money spent on Mir will prevent Russia from meeting its obligations with the new project. ``The Mir competes with the international space station for very critical resources and for funding,'' Brinkley said. NASA will consider ideas for salvaging Mir's research equipment to use on the international space station, he said, but only if it does not interfere with assembling the new station. The United States and 15 other nations plan to begin building the new station in orbit next week when the Russians launch a module that will supply power and propulsion during the early stages of the five-year construction period. The space shuttle Endeavor is to follow on Dec. 3 with the second station part, a U.S.-built connecting passageway that attaches to the first module. ||||| Endeavour and its astronauts closed in Sunday to capture the first piece of the international space station, the Russian-made Zarya control module that had to be connected to the Unity chamber aboard the shuttle. Stacking the two giant cylinders 240 miles above the Earth was considered the most difficult part of the mission. The job fell to Nancy Currie, the shuttle crane operator who had deftly hoisted and repositioned Unity in the cargo bay on Saturday. The two station pieces are so big _ 77 feet from the tip of one to the tip of the other with a combined mass of 70,000 pounds _ that Currie and her crewmates were going to have to rely on a computerized vision system and camera views, rather than direct line of sight. Such a ``blind'' docking had never been attempted before. Mission Control gave the astronauts plenty of time for the tasks. ``The main thing I've tried to do for the last two years working on this flight is make sure we have time. We have margin on everything,'' said flight director Bob Castle. Before beginning their final approach to Zarya _ Russian for Sunrise _ the shuttle's six astronauts had to steer clear of a chunk of a rocket launched last month from California. Mission Control ordered the pilots to fire the shuttle thrusters to put an extra three miles between Endeavour and the space junk, putting Endeavour a total of five miles from the orbiting debris. The smaller gap would have been ``probably a little too close for comfort,'' Mission Control said. The bigger worry, by far, was over Endeavour's pursuit and capture of Zarya, and its coupling with Unity. The shuttle's 50-foot robot arm had never before been assigned to handle an object as massive as the 44,000-pound Zarya, a power and propulsion module that was launched from Kazakhstan on Nov. 20. It will provide all the necessary electricity and steering for the fledgling space station until a permanent control module can be launched next summer. The 36-foot, 25,000-pound Unity will serve as a connecting passageway, or vestibule, for future modules. In case Zarya and Unity could not be connected with the robot arm, two spacewalking astronauts would have to manually fit them together. The astronauts would be going out anyway Monday to attach electrical connectors and cables between the two components. In all, three spacewalks were planned for Endeavour's 12-day flight. NASA estimates 43 more launches and 159 more spacewalks will be needed after this mission to assemble the entire orbiting complex. Once completed, the 16-nation space station will have a mass of 1 million pounds, be longer than a football field, and house up to seven astronauts and cosmonauts.

Jerry Ross and James Newman spacewalked to attach antennas to Unity, the American half of the first stage of the 16-nation space station. Unity will be a connecting passageway for other modules. The other portion of the fledgling station, the Russian- built and launched Zarya module, will provide power and propulsion to the facility. The successful launch of Zarya, which had been delayed over a year due to funding woes, was hailed by the Russian Space Agency head as proof that the Russian space industry "is perfectly able to fulfill all of its commitments on the international space station". Russia is scheduled to launch the crew module next year.

In stern judgments capping a decisive crackdown on dissidents, Chinese courts sentenced two prominent democracy campaigners to 13 and 11 years in prison Monday for trying to organize an opposition political party. The 13-year prison term given Xu Wenli after a 3 1/2-hour trial in Beijing was the longest for a Chinese dissident in three years. His colleague in the China Democracy Party, Wang Youcai, was sentenced to 11 years, in a verdict announced by a court in Hangzhou four days after his trial. Xu's conviction deprives the would-be opposition group of a potent organizer and the fractured dissident community at large of a strong and moderating voice. Xu remained defiant during his tightly controlled trial on subversion charges. He refused to answer questions from prosecutors and judges and responded only to those from his lawyer, the court-appointed attorney, Mo Shaoping, said. When the court asked if he would appeal, ``Xu Wenli said he would not appeal,'' Mo said, quoting his client as saying ``this is political persecution.'' Xu's daughter also criticized the verdict. ``All he wanted to do was to advocate free speech and make sure the party registers peacefully. But the government failed this test, and now my father has to go to jail again for it,'' said daughter Xu Jin, a graduate student at Boston University. Security forces have orchestrated a concerted crackdown, trampling China's slim legal safeguards to crush the China Democracy Party. In three weeks, at least 32 people have been detained or questioned and Xu, Wang and another leading member, Qin Yongmin, have been put on trial. All three were charged with trying to subvert China's Communist Party-led system. Xu and Qin were given less than four days to prepare their defenses. Last Thursday, Wang and Qin faced trials without legal counsel after police detained or scared off potential lawyers. No verdict has been announced in Qin's case. Judges in Beijing and Hangzhou found that Xu and Wang plotted subversion by founding branches of the China Democracy Party in both cities and accepting money from abroad, the official Xinhua News Agency said in a rare mention of dissident activities. The courts ruled the two should be ``severely punished'' as repeat offenders, Xinhua said in an indirect reference to their previous democracy campaigning. Wary of the China Democracy Party's appeal, scores of uniformed and plainclothes police sealed off Beijing's No. 1 Intermediate People's Court Monday for Xu's trial. Foreign reporters were kept 500 meters (yards) away from the building. Xu's wife was the only friend or family member given permission to watch the proceedings, along with an audience selected by court officials. She was escorted from her home to the courthouse by three plainclothes officers. Hours after the verdict, He Xintong still had not returned home nor had she contacted her daughter. Police detained at least two of Xu's democracy party colleagues and kept watch on the houses of others. ``Members of the China Democracy Party will struggle to the end for the realization of democracy,'' said Gao Hongmin, whose home was under surveillance. Gao, who helped Xu organize the party's Beijing branch, said authorities would not be able to arrest all the party's supporters. In just six months, the party attracted enough of a following to try to register branches in 14 provinces and cities. The U.S. government and exiled dissidents, many of whom supported the party's efforts, denounced the sentences and called for the dissidents' release. ``We are deeply disappointed with both the guilty verdict and the extremely harsh sentence given to Mr. Xu,'' said U.S. Embassy spokesman Bill Palmer. ``No individual should be arrested, tried or sentenced for exercising internationally recognized freedoms.'' Xu, 55, edited an underground journal in the Democracy Wall movement 20 years ago and spent 12 years in prison, mostly in solitary confinement. Since his parole ended last year, he has been behind-the-scenes advisor to a host of dissident activities. He supported Qin Yongmin, another Democracy Wall veteran, in setting up an independent human rights monitor and advised others to run for local legislative seats in Beijing. Xu became openly involved in the China Democracy Party in November. Wang Youcai, a student leader of the Tiananmen Square democracy demonstrations in 1989 and now 32, publicly declared the China Democracy Party's formation in June and said the group intended to challenge the Communist Party's 49-year ban on opposition politics. Police have sporadically detained supporters of the democracy party. The decisive move came on Nov. 30 as Chinese Communist Party leader Jiang Zemin returned from Japan, ending a busy two years of diplomatic forays. In a speech broadcast nationwide on Friday, Jiang warned against subversives trying to bring down the system and vowed never to copy Western democracy. To allay international criticism, China released a respected labor rights campaigner, Liu Nianchun, from 3 1/2 years in prison camps on Sunday and sent him into exile in the United States. ||||| German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer, who drew China's anger recently by meeting with exiled dissident Wei Jingsheng, said China's sentencing of two dissidents Monday was unacceptable and flouted an international treaty the country recently signed. ``The reaction of Chinese courts is totally unacceptable,'' Fischer said, calling for the dissidents' immediate release. ``The accused simply tried through peaceful means to exercise their right to free speech and assembly, which are guaranteed by China's constitution,'' and by the United Nations' International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights which China recently signed, Fischer said in a statement. Chinese courts sentenced dissidents Xu Wenli and Wang Youcai to 13 and 11 years for trying to organize an opposition political party. ||||| Six months after President Clinton traveled to Beijing and challenged China's leaders to move rapidly toward political reform, the administration's policy of engaging Beijing was called into question Monday when Chinese courts sentenced three of the nation's most prominent dissidents to long jail sentences. Critics of China on Capitol Hill and human rights groups said the tough prison terms were evidence of the failure of the administration's policy of encouraging trade and diplomatic ties with China in hopes of democratic reform. The dissidents _ Xu Wenli, who was sentenced Monday to 13 years in prison, Wang Youcai, who received an 11-year sentence, and Qin Yongming, who was reported to have received 12 years were charged with subversion. The State Department said it had received reports from sources it did not identify that a third leading democracy campaigner, Qin Yongmin, had been sentenced to 13 years in prison after a trial last week in the city of Wuhan. Relatives of Qin in China denied the reports, however, and said that his trial continued. Given Clinton's effusive praise for China's senior leaders during his trip to Beijing last summer, the administration found itself on the defensive Monday and harshly criticized the prison sentences, even as it continued to insist that the administration's policy of engagement was helping push Beijing toward democracy. James Foley, a State Department spokesman, said the United States ``deeply deplores'' the jail terms and called for the immediate release of the dissidents. ``These three men appear to have been involved in nothing more than efforts to form a new political party,'' he said. While condemning the prison sentences, Foley and other American officials were careful to note the administration's assessment that there had been progress in human rights in China, some of it linked to Clinton's meeting in Beijing with Chinese President Jiang Zemin. ``There had been improvements in the human rights situation in China, modest improvements,'' Foley said. The severe prison terms _ and other recent instances of harassment of democracy campaigners in China _ are ``steps backward in relationship to what had been an improved human rights performance,'' he said. Critics of the administration's China policy noted that the long prison sentences were handed out less than a week after Jiang delivered a pointed speech in Beijing in which he made clear that China's economic reforms were not a prelude to Western-style democracy. ``The Western mode of political systems must never be copied,'' he said, adding that those who challenged the Communist Party's supremacy would be crushed. Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., who has long been among China's harshest critics in Congress, said the prison sentences handed out to Xu and Wang were ``the clearest demonstration'' since the president's visit to China last summer of Beijing's ``true intentions regarding human rights.'' ``They are pathetic, really pathetic,'' she said of the administration. ``The administration can say what it wants, but it must know Monday that its policy on China is an embarrassment. What the Chinese have learned is that they have all the latitude in the world.'' Mike Jendrzejczyk, Washington director for Human Rights Group, said the jail terms were proof of the need for the administration to revise its China policy, which he described as ``almost entirely'' driven by the administration's desire to encourage trade. He said that while there had been some signs of progress in the human rights situation in China over the last year _ notably, China's agreement to sign international treaties on civil and economic rights _ the overall picture was bleak. ``On balance,'' he said, ``any progress China has made by allowing greater openness may have been canceled out by a more repressive attitude.'' Human Rights Watch, the largest American-based human rights group, called on the administration to consider postponing or canceling a planned visit to China early next year by Commerce Secretary William Daley and a high-level trade delegation as a protest over the prison sentences. ``That would get Beijing's attention,'' Jendrzejczck said. Other China experts and scholars insisted that the administration was right to continue its policy of engagement with China, and that there was reason to believe that political reform would follow economic reform, as Clinton has argued. Peter Rodman, a former Nixon and Reagan administration official now at the Nixon Center in Washington, said that ``the United States cannot control the evolution of a society as complex as China's.'' He said the harsh prison sentences given out Monday to the dissidents were to be expected, especially since Xu and Wang had been involved in trying to set up a political party to challenge the Communists. ``The pattern of this regime is that every once in a while, they ease up a bit and somebody goes too far and there's a crisis,'' he said. ``I don't think you can blame the United States for this crackdown, nor can you give us credit for any political reforms. On human rights, I just don't think there's much more we can do.'' ||||| China released a respected, but ailing labor rights campaigner from a prison work camp Sunday and immediately sent him into exile in the United States. Releasing Liu Nianchun appeared to be an attempt by the government to blunt international criticism over Monday's upcoming trial of prominent dissident Xu Wenli. Xu is the third leading member of a would-be opposition political party put on trial for subversion in a three-week crackdown that has seen at least 32 dissidents arrested or interrogated. Beijing police Sunday detained one of Xu's China Democracy Party colleagues, Zha Jianguo, to prevent him from attending the trial, Xu's wife said. Although pleased that Liu Nianchun was free, human rights groups decried the Chinese government's timing as manipulative. ``We don't want to give any credit to the Chinese government for this cynical game it is playing,'' said Xiao Qiang, director of New York-based Human Rights in China. After 3 1/2 years in prison, Liu was taken from the Tuanhe labor camp on the outskirts of Beijing, driven to the capital's airport and put on a Canadian Air flight, ultimately bound for New York, his mother and brother said. Accompanying Liu into exile was his wife, Chu Hailan, and their 11-year-old daughter, the family said. Liu Nianchun's release follows the same pattern China used in freeing its two most famous dissidents, Wei Jingsheng in Nov. 1997 and Wang Dan in April. Authorities released Liu on medical parole, exactly five months before the end of his prison term, provided he go into exile, said his brother and exiled democracy campaigner, Liu Qing. Liu Nianchun, 50, has been in ill-health for at least two years. In an exam authorities finally agreed to provide last month, doctors discovered Liu had tumors in his mouth, stomach and bowels, Liu Qing said. Like Wang and Wei, the United States and other Western governments have lobbied China to release Liu. Chinese leaders have been forcing well-known dissidents into exile throughout the 1990s, finding that once abroad they lose their influence among dissidents at home. In the only official comment on the release, the Xinhua News Agency reported that judicial departments took into account Liu's health and behavior in the labor camp in approving his parole for medical treatment. ``I am very happy for Liu Nianchun, but at the same time sending people directly from prison into exile is a type of human rights violation and persecution,'' Liu Qing said in a telephone interview from his home in New York's Brooklyn borough. Liu Nianchun was one of the most respected figures in the fractured, persecuted dissident community. His more than 3 1/2 years in prisons and labor camps was a sad illustration of the way China's Communist Party rulers punish people they deem a threat. Liu was imprisoned three times in the past 17 years. His last arrest came after he signed a petition calling for labor rights in May 1995. Liu was never put on trial. Fourteen months passed before his wife, Chu Hailan, first learned of his fate and whereabouts: a three-year spell in a labor camp in the frigid, remote northeast. His term was the maximum police may impose on criminal suspects without trial. Labor camp officials later extended Liu's sentence by a year for trying to escape, a charge Chu claimed was fabricated. Inside the labor camp, Liu once started a hunger strike to protest his treatment. He was beaten with cattle prods and confined to a room of 2 square meters (2 square yards) where he could only sit or stand. His wife endured police harassment, beatings and detentions in campaigning for his release. Chu was dragged away and hit by security forces when she tried to hand a letter to U.N. human rights chief Mary Robinson outside a Beijing hotel in September. ||||| Hours before China was expected to sign a key U.N. human rights treaty and host British Prime Minister Tony Blair, police hauled a prominent human rights campaigner in for questioning Monday. Qin Yongmin's latest run-in with the authorities came as he tried for the second time in a week to legally register a human rights monitoring group. Qin said a civil affairs official in the Hubei provincial capital of Wuhan accused him of engaging in illegal activities. The police came soon after he returned home. ``As I'm sending this statement, the Wuhan Public Security Bureau is again taking me away,'' Qin said in a hastily scrawled message on the bottom of the typed statement faxed to reporters. Qin, detained briefly two weeks ago, was questioned for about three hours before being released and threatened with prosecution if he persisted in trying to set up his China Human Rights Observer. Qin hoped the harassment would stop after China signs the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, but he said if local authorities don't observe the treaty ``we will unswervingly push ahead with protecting human rights to the last.'' China plans to sign the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights on Monday at the United Nations. By the time the ink is dry, Blair should be landing in Beijing on Tuesday morning for the first visit by a British prime minister in seven years. The treaty is supposed to guarantee freedoms of speech and assembly. But even after China signs, the treaty would not come into force until ratified by the legislature, which may attach reservations effectively nullifying some provisions. Blair has vowed to discuss differences over human rights with Chinese leaders. His visit has drawn appeals from dissidents and an international press freedom group urging him to persuade Chinese leaders to free political prisoners. In an open letter, three dissident said that while Chinese leaders say they respect human rights principles, in law and practice the government allows rights abuses and persecution of dissidents. Thousands of political prisoners are believed to remain in Chinese prisons, labor camps or detention centers, said the letter, a copy of which was released by the Hong Kong-based Information Center of Human Rights and Democratic Movement in China. The letter called for the release of Shi Binhai, a journalist who compiled a popular book on political change; Fang Jue, a businessman who called openly for political reform; and other imprisoned activists. Paris-based Reporters Without Borders urged Blair to call for the release of Gao Yu, Liu Xiaobo and Liu Jingsheng. The three are among 13 journalists imprisoned ``simply for attempting to practice their profession,'' it said in a statement. ||||| His friend and political mentor is jailed, robbing their budding opposition political party of its most potent organizer, but Zha Jianguo is not afraid. A bag packed with toothbrush, toothpaste and medicine lies ready at his Beijing home for the day Chinese police take him away. He has told police interrogators he expects to be jailed, likely for a few years less than the 13 given China Democracy Party leader Xu Wenli on Monday. ``Democracy is a process, and in that process a small number of people will be sacrificed,'' Zha, a 47-year-old former manager of a computer design company and vice chairman of the party's Beijing branch, told The Associated Press in an interview Thursday. ``We want to use our sacrifice to arouse the people, and we believe that sacrifice is worthwhile.'' With a mixture of defiance and cool clarity about the chances for success, Zha said he and other China Democracy Party members will continue organizing and campaigning for change. His tenacity holds despite the summary trials and harsh punishments for Xu, Wang Youcai and Qin Yongmin _ prominent party principals from the provinces who were sentenced to 11 and 12 years _ and despite threatening signs from the ruling Communist Party. Chinese President Jiang Zemin warned in a speech published Wednesday that political subversives threatened what he called China's fragile social order. ``Whenever any element that undermines stability raises its head, it must be resolutely nipped in the bud,'' Jiang said. Zha maintains that such tactics are unnecessary. In its manifestoes, the Democracy Party espoused peaceful means to target ``the undemocratic system, not the political power of the Communist Party.'' ``We believe elections held after the establishment of a democratic system should decide who has the power,'' said Zha. What many the world over consider democracy is legally subversive in China for threatening the Communist Party-led system. In the past month, authorities have arrested and convicted Xu, Qin and Wang and detained or interrogated at least 29 other party members. Police took Zha from his home Sunday afternoon and held him for nearly 24 hours to keep him from Xu's trial. Until the crackdown, the China Democracy Party distinguished itself from past attempts at opposition by its openness. Organizers publicly announced their intention to set up the party. They tried to register with authorities. Statements were faxed to foreign media and human rights groups to circumvent China's state-controlled media. Now, the party's members _ about 500 by Zha's count _ are being driven underground. Party members will concentrate on increasing ranks and will be more guarded in the use of telephones and faxes and their occasional meetings, Zha said. ``If Xu and the other two were the first round, then the second round is very likely and it will be bigger,'' Zha said. ``In such an unbalanced contest, we are forced to use more secretive means.'' The arrests of Xu, Wang and Qin deprive the party of its more influential members, Zha said. All had proven track records, Xu and Qin as dissident editors in the Democracy Wall era movement 20 years ago, Wang as a student leader of the Tiananmen Square democracy demonstrations in 1989. ``But from another aspect, this has strengthened the resolve of even more party members to struggle on,'' Zha said of the arrests. Zha got interested in politics as a radical youth, following Mao Tse-tung's appeals to go to the countryside in 1968. When he returned to Beijing in 1989, he marched in the Tiananmen protests and continued his activism. Friends introduced him to Xu Wenli in 1995. Having been released from prison two years before, Xu was still not openly involved in dissident politics, but he held court in his Beijing home to discuss China's future. ||||| The trials of three outspoken dissidents over, Communist Party leader Jiang Zemin signaled Wednesday that China will sustain a crackdown on dissent throughout next year. In his second hard-line speech in six days, Jiang vowed to crush any challenges to Communist Party rule and preserve social stability. He demanded that officials ``talk politics'' _ a euphemism for following party orders. The speech, to senior law enforcement officials, used uncompromising language heard less frequently over the past 18 months as Chinese leaders sought to improve relations abroad. Jiang's harsh tone punctuated the summary trials and convictions for subversion this week of three political critics who tried to form an opposition party. To underscore the party's intolerant mood, national newspapers ran brief accounts Tuesday and Wednesday of the 13-, 12- and 11-year prison terms given to Xu Wenli, Qin Yongmin and Wang Youcai. Dissidents are rarely mentioned by official media, and the reports served as a warning to China's 1.2 billion people. In the speech, reported by state television, Jiang said stability was crucial over the next year. He noted two key events on the political calendar: the 50th anniversary of Communist Party rule on Oct. 1 and China's recovery of the Portuguese colony of Macau on Dec. 20. ``We must strengthen the ideological and political education of officials and raise their awareness of and resistance to the sabotaging acts of hostile domestic and foreign forces,'' China Central Television quoted Jiang as saying. ``Whenever any element that undermines stability raises its head, it must be resolutely nipped in the bud.'' Jiang did not exclusively target political enemies. He likened their threat to that of white-collar and ordinary criminals and ticked off a list of potentially volatile problems _ inefficient state industries, legions of laid-off workers, stagnating farmers' incomes and corrupt officials. The emphasis on stability and warnings to those who would disrupt it were reminiscent of party pronouncements in the waning years of Jiang's mentor, Deng Xiaoping. After Deng died in 1997 and Jiang emerged victorious from a major party conclave, he projected a more confident image. Reform, not stability, were the bywords of the past year. Academic debates over the past year were the boldest in 10 years by China's relatively controlled standards. Party leaders too touted efforts to build a more comprehensive, predictable legal system and won praise from Western governments for signing U.N. rights treaties. ``Our active developments of foreign affairs has reached new achievements,'' Jiang said. ``Our country's stature has risen a step higher.'' By arresting and convicting Xu, Qin and Wang in less than three weeks, China trampled its own legal safeguards for criminal suspects and raised questions about its commitments to U.N. rights treaties it signed over the past 15 months. Despite the swift punishments given the three, dissidents have continued to campaign for justice. Four elder members of the dissident community sent a letter to U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan and U.N. human rights commissioner Mary Robinson calling on China to stop persecuting political critics and release political prisoners. ``We have experienced extreme disappointment, worry and shock'' over the long sentences given Xu, Qin and Wang and the recent detentions of several other Chinese, the four wrote in a letter dated Tuesday that was released by New York-based Human Rights in China on Wednesday. In addition, 214 dissidents in China planned a 100-day series of rotating 24-hour fasts beginning Thursday to protest the sentences, the Information Center of Human Rights and Democratic Movement in China reported Wednesday night. The fasts were to have begun with lawyer Wang Wenjiang, whom authorities prevented from representing Wang Youcai, and Wang Zechen in Liaoning province in northeastern China, but the two activists were detained by police Wednesday evening, the Hong Kong-based center said. The British ambassador in Beijing, Tony Galsworthy, and others delivered a protest message to the Chinese government demanding the immediate release of Xu, Qin and Wang, the Foreign Office in London confirmed on Wednesday. It was conveyed on behalf of the European Union, the United States, Canada and Norway. ||||| Trying to deflect foreign criticism of a crackdown on democracy campaigners, China sent a respected labor rights activist from jail into U.S. exile Sunday even as it prepared to put a prominent dissident on trial. Xu Wenli's trial Monday and his almost certain conviction would deprive a nascent opposition political party of a potent organizer and a moderate voice. He is the third and most influential leader in the China Democracy Party tried in a three-week campaign that has seen at least 32 members detained or questioned. For organizing the party and thereby challenging the ruling Communist Party, Xu, 55, is accused of subverting state power, a crime punishable by 10 years to life in prison. To prevent supporters from rallying outside Beijing's No. 1 Intermediate People's Court, police detained two of Xu's colleagues Sunday and kept watch on the homes of at least two others, friends and a Hong Kong-based rights group reported. As police moved against Xu's friends, labor rights campaigner Liu Nianchun was taken from a prison camp outside Beijing and, with his wife and daughter, was put on a plane to Canada and then New York, his first taste of freedom in more than 3 1/2 years. Authorities released Liu on medical parole five months before the end of his sentence provided he go abroad, said his brother, exiled democracy campaigner Liu Qing. His wife claimed for two years that Liu's health was worsening. But only last month did authorities grant a comprehensive exam. Doctors found tumors, perhaps cancerous, in the 50-year-old's mouth, stomach and bowels, Liu Qing said. The timing of Liu's exile and Xu's trial was the most brazen in a string of high-profile dissident releases calculated to influence Western governments. Human rights groups immediately denounced Liu's release as cynical and manipulative. ``The Chinese government continues to play hostage politics with no true commitment to international human rights standards,'' said Xiao Qiang of Human Rights in China, a New York-based lobbying group that Liu Qing heads. Over the past two years, as China tried to woo the West, Beijing signed two key U.N. rights treaties and won praise for bringing its spotty legal system closer to international standards. The ruling Communist Party relaxed some controls on dissenting views among academics. Xu Wenli and other dissidents saw opportunity in the more open atmosphere. Over the past six months, dissidents in 14 provinces and cities have tried to use Chinese laws to set up and register the China Democracy Party. In a sign of the opposition party's appeal, 205 dissidents from across China issued a petition Sunday calling for the immediate release of Xu and two other leaders, the Hong Kong-based Information Center of Human Rights and Democratic Movement in China reported. To wipe out the opposition movement, authorities have violated recently revised laws that are supposed to protect the rights of criminal suspects. They rushed Xu and fellow leader Qin Yongmin to trial with less than four days notice given to their families, instead of the 10 required by law. Qin and a third principal organizer, Wang Youcai, were also denied legal counsel. Police detained or scared off prospective lawyers, forcing the two to argue their own defenses in separate trials on Thursday. No verdicts have been announced. The Beijing court appointed Xu a lawyer, but his wife, He Xintong, suspects it is merely a formality in what she expects to be a show trial. ``He hasn't even read the whole indictment. How is he going to represent my husband?'' He Xintong said after talking with the lawyer and his aide. Authorities have turned down requests by Xu's colleagues to attend the trial, and He said she has been given one pass, for herself. Xu edited an influential dissident journal in the Democracy Wall movement 20 years ago and spent 12 years in prison, most of them in solitary confinement. Since his parole ended last year, Xu has played the role of elder adviser to dissidents. He became openly involved in the China Democracy Party in November, organizing the group's branch in Beijing and nearby Tianjin. Shortly before his arrest, he called on party members and exiled dissidents to convene a nationwide congress. ||||| By sentencing two of the country's most prominent democracy campaigners to long prison terms, China on Monday took its harshest steps yet in its current crackdown on organized political opposition. After a trial that lasted just three and a half hours, Xu Wenli _ at 55 the dean of the dissident movement, and a man who has already spent 12 years in prison for advocating democracy _ was sentenced to 13 years for ``subversion of state power.'' Xu's alleged crimes included helping to organize a new political party, calling for an end to Communist rule in interviews with foreign journalists, calling for independent labor unions and, prosecutors said, accepting $500 from a dissident abroad. He was defended by a lawyer who was appointed by the court just four days ago and met his client only once. Also sentenced Monday, to 11 years in prison, was Wang Youcai, 32, founder of the China Democracy Party, which has now been suppressed. Wang was tried on subversion charges on Thursday in a brief court session, with no defense lawyer, in the eastern city of Hangzhou. The punishment of a third veteran democracy campaigner, Qin Yongmin, 44, has not been announced. His trial began in the central city of Wuhan on Thursday and may reconvene on Tuesday, relatives said. A similarly long sentence is expected. Monday's sentences, which came just six months after President Clinton's visit to Beijing, where he publicly challenged China's leaders to move quickly toward political reform, were harshly criticized by the State Department. They also appeared to spell the effective end here of the China Democracy Party, which these three men, along with hundreds of lesser-known individuals, tried to organize in recent months. The long sentences also crushed the hopes of many liberal intellectuals here that China's warming relations with the United States in recent years and its signing of global treaties on human rights might bring a significant easing of political controls. Xu was tried Monday morning in the Beijing Intermediate Court. When after a brief recess the three-judge panel announced his 13-year sentence, Xu stood up and shouted, ``I protest!'' said his wife of 28 years, He Xintong. Then, said Ms. He and lawyers who were present, he shouted that the judges were unfair and that he would not appeal his case because the proceedings were illegitimate. With the sentencing of Xu, China's Communist government has silenced one of its most energetic and persistent critics, one who has given over his adult life to the cause of democracy. Xu first came to prominence during the Democracy Wall movement of the late 1970s, then served 12 years in prison, much of it in solitary confinement. In the last several months, sensing a new opportunity to speak out and making constant use of fax machines and e-mail, he and Qin tried to draw attention to China's obligations under two international covenants it has signed _ one on economic and cultural rights, and one on civil and political rights. In the face of several temporary detentions and stiff warnings, they continued their activities. Wang, in contrast, first became involved in dissident activities in 1989, while a graduate student in physics in Beijing, when he became a leader of the Tiananmen Square demonstrations. After the student movement was smashed by the army, he was on the most-wanted list, then was arrested and spent two years in prison. During Clinton's visit to China in June, Wang announced the formation of the China Democracy Party. Hundreds around the country, including Xu and Qin, began promoting the idea. But while the government has allowed somewhat freer discussion of political topics in universities and obscure journals in the last year, it has not allowed any challenges _ in print or in the form of organized groups _ to the principle of Communist Party rule. In a speech on Friday celebrating 20 years of economic reforms, the president and Communist Party chief, Jiang Zemin, emphasized the primacy of the party, saying, ``The Western mode of political systems must never be adopted.'' After learning of Monday's sentences, the American Embassy here, which has spent the last two years building improved relations between China and the United States, issued a strong condemnation of what it termed the ``deplorable decisions.'' ``We are deeply disappointed with both the guilty verdicts and the extremely harsh sentences,'' the statement said. ``No individual should be arrested, tried and sentenced for exercising internationally recognized freedoms, including those guaranteed in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which China has committed itself.'' Like Thursday's trials, both of which proceeded with no defense attorneys because prospective lawyers had been warned off by police or detained, Monday's proceeding showed that in cases involving security issues, police and courts could write their own rules. According to the criminal procedure law, defendants are to be notified at least 10 days before a trial, but Xu was told only four days ago that his trial would be Monday. His wife, who until Monday had not been allowed to contact him since his arrest on Nov. 30, was told three days ago. Under the law, defendants also have the right to a lawyer of their choice, but Xu was assigned a lawyer by the court late last week. Before Monday morning's trial, the lawyer, Mo Shaoping, saw his client only for one brief meeting, an associate of Mo's said. Xu's wife refused to meet the lawyer before the trial. ``Meeting him would be tantamount to cooperating with the whole charade,'' she said in a telephone interview this weekend. Responding to the accusations during Monday morning's trial, Xu's lawyer argued that Xu had engaged in the peaceful expression of his own views and that this could not amount to subversive activities against the state, an associate of the lawyer said. But in a decision that was clearly preordained, the court declared Xu guilty and sentenced him to spend what may be much of the rest of his life in prison. Born in 1943 in the southeastern province of Jiangxi, Xu was interested in politics even as a teen-ager, his wife said. In the 1960s, as an idealistic Marxist, he decided to get his learning in society rather than attend a university. He served in the navy for five years, then became an electrician with the Beijing railroad before becoming involved with the democracy movement and going to prison. On Monday afternoon, in a police station hours after the trial finished, Xu was allowed a half-hour with his wife. ``He told me he'd be able to handle the pain,'' she later recounted in a telephone interview. ``He said that this would give him time to think things over and calmly reflect on what has happened.'' Ms. He, who has been married to Xu since 1971, said she expected to see him in monthly visits to prison. The couple has a daughter, Xu Jin, who is a graduate student in fine arts at Boston University. In an earlier interview, soon after her husband was arrested on Nov. 30, Ms. He said Xu had told her, ``I can't change the way I am.'' If he received a long sentence, he told his wife, she should go on and enjoy her life. ``And if I die,'' Xu said as they parted that day, ``please plant a tree for me.'' ||||| German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer, who drew China's anger recently by meeting with exiled dissident Wei Jingsheng, said China's sentencing of two dissidents Monday was unacceptable and flouted an international treaty the country recently signed. ``The reaction of Chinese authorities is totally unacceptable,'' Fischer said, calling for the dissidents' immediate release. ``The accused simply tried through peaceful means to exercise their right to free speech and assembly, which are guaranteed by China's constitution,'' and by the United Nations' International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights which China recently signed, Fischer said in a statement. Chinese courts sentenced dissidents Xu Wenli and Wang Youcai to 13 and 11 years for trying to organize an opposition political party.

While China plans to sign the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights at the U.N., it is still harassing and arresting human rights campaigners. Three prominent leaders of the China Democratic Party were put to trial and sentenced to 11-, 12- and 13-year prison terms. Germany and the U.S. condemned the arrests. A labor rights activist was released and exiled to the U.S. to blunt any opposition to Communist rule. U.S. policy to encourage trade and diplomacy in hope of democratic reforms evidences failure, but the U.S. is continuing its policy of encouragement. Friends of jailed dissidents state that they will continue to campaign for change.

In stern judgments capping a decisive crackdown on dissidents, Chinese courts sentenced two prominent democracy campaigners to 13 and 11 years in prison Monday for trying to organize an opposition political party. The 13-year prison term given Xu Wenli after a 3 1/2-hour trial in Beijing was the longest for a Chinese dissident in three years. His colleague in the China Democracy Party, Wang Youcai, was sentenced to 11 years, in a verdict announced by a court in Hangzhou four days after his trial. Xu's conviction deprives the would-be opposition group of a potent organizer and the fractured dissident community at large of a strong and moderating voice. Xu remained defiant during his tightly controlled trial on subversion charges. He refused to answer questions from prosecutors and judges and responded only to those from his lawyer, the court-appointed attorney, Mo Shaoping, said. When the court asked if he would appeal, ``Xu Wenli said he would not appeal,'' Mo said, quoting his client as saying ``this is political persecution.'' Xu's daughter also criticized the verdict. ``All he wanted to do was to advocate free speech and make sure the party registers peacefully. But the government failed this test, and now my father has to go to jail again for it,'' said daughter Xu Jin, a graduate student at Boston University. Security forces have orchestrated a concerted crackdown, trampling China's slim legal safeguards to crush the China Democracy Party. In three weeks, at least 32 people have been detained or questioned and Xu, Wang and another leading member, Qin Yongmin, have been put on trial. All three were charged with trying to subvert China's Communist Party-led system. Xu and Qin were given less than four days to prepare their defenses. Last Thursday, Wang and Qin faced trials without legal counsel after police detained or scared off potential lawyers. No verdict has been announced in Qin's case. Judges in Beijing and Hangzhou found that Xu and Wang plotted subversion by founding branches of the China Democracy Party in both cities and accepting money from abroad, the official Xinhua News Agency said in a rare mention of dissident activities. The courts ruled the two should be ``severely punished'' as repeat offenders, Xinhua said in an indirect reference to their previous democracy campaigning. Wary of the China Democracy Party's appeal, scores of uniformed and plainclothes police sealed off Beijing's No. 1 Intermediate People's Court Monday for Xu's trial. Foreign reporters were kept 500 meters (yards) away from the building. Xu's wife was the only friend or family member given permission to watch the proceedings, along with an audience selected by court officials. She was escorted from her home to the courthouse by three plainclothes officers. Hours after the verdict, He Xintong still had not returned home nor had she contacted her daughter. Police detained at least two of Xu's democracy party colleagues and kept watch on the houses of others. ``Members of the China Democracy Party will struggle to the end for the realization of democracy,'' said Gao Hongmin, whose home was under surveillance. Gao, who helped Xu organize the party's Beijing branch, said authorities would not be able to arrest all the party's supporters. In just six months, the party attracted enough of a following to try to register branches in 14 provinces and cities. The U.S. government and exiled dissidents, many of whom supported the party's efforts, denounced the sentences and called for the dissidents' release. ``We are deeply disappointed with both the guilty verdict and the extremely harsh sentence given to Mr. Xu,'' said U.S. Embassy spokesman Bill Palmer. ``No individual should be arrested, tried or sentenced for exercising internationally recognized freedoms.'' Xu, 55, edited an underground journal in the Democracy Wall movement 20 years ago and spent 12 years in prison, mostly in solitary confinement. Since his parole ended last year, he has been behind-the-scenes advisor to a host of dissident activities. He supported Qin Yongmin, another Democracy Wall veteran, in setting up an independent human rights monitor and advised others to run for local legislative seats in Beijing. Xu became openly involved in the China Democracy Party in November. Wang Youcai, a student leader of the Tiananmen Square democracy demonstrations in 1989 and now 32, publicly declared the China Democracy Party's formation in June and said the group intended to challenge the Communist Party's 49-year ban on opposition politics. Police have sporadically detained supporters of the democracy party. The decisive move came on Nov. 30 as Chinese Communist Party leader Jiang Zemin returned from Japan, ending a busy two years of diplomatic forays. In a speech broadcast nationwide on Friday, Jiang warned against subversives trying to bring down the system and vowed never to copy Western democracy. To allay international criticism, China released a respected labor rights campaigner, Liu Nianchun, from 3 1/2 years in prison camps on Sunday and sent him into exile in the United States. ||||| German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer, who drew China's anger recently by meeting with exiled dissident Wei Jingsheng, said China's sentencing of two dissidents Monday was unacceptable and flouted an international treaty the country recently signed. ``The reaction of Chinese courts is totally unacceptable,'' Fischer said, calling for the dissidents' immediate release. ``The accused simply tried through peaceful means to exercise their right to free speech and assembly, which are guaranteed by China's constitution,'' and by the United Nations' International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights which China recently signed, Fischer said in a statement. Chinese courts sentenced dissidents Xu Wenli and Wang Youcai to 13 and 11 years for trying to organize an opposition political party. ||||| Six months after President Clinton traveled to Beijing and challenged China's leaders to move rapidly toward political reform, the administration's policy of engaging Beijing was called into question Monday when Chinese courts sentenced three of the nation's most prominent dissidents to long jail sentences. Critics of China on Capitol Hill and human rights groups said the tough prison terms were evidence of the failure of the administration's policy of encouraging trade and diplomatic ties with China in hopes of democratic reform. The dissidents _ Xu Wenli, who was sentenced Monday to 13 years in prison, Wang Youcai, who received an 11-year sentence, and Qin Yongming, who was reported to have received 12 years were charged with subversion. The State Department said it had received reports from sources it did not identify that a third leading democracy campaigner, Qin Yongmin, had been sentenced to 13 years in prison after a trial last week in the city of Wuhan. Relatives of Qin in China denied the reports, however, and said that his trial continued. Given Clinton's effusive praise for China's senior leaders during his trip to Beijing last summer, the administration found itself on the defensive Monday and harshly criticized the prison sentences, even as it continued to insist that the administration's policy of engagement was helping push Beijing toward democracy. James Foley, a State Department spokesman, said the United States ``deeply deplores'' the jail terms and called for the immediate release of the dissidents. ``These three men appear to have been involved in nothing more than efforts to form a new political party,'' he said. While condemning the prison sentences, Foley and other American officials were careful to note the administration's assessment that there had been progress in human rights in China, some of it linked to Clinton's meeting in Beijing with Chinese President Jiang Zemin. ``There had been improvements in the human rights situation in China, modest improvements,'' Foley said. The severe prison terms _ and other recent instances of harassment of democracy campaigners in China _ are ``steps backward in relationship to what had been an improved human rights performance,'' he said. Critics of the administration's China policy noted that the long prison sentences were handed out less than a week after Jiang delivered a pointed speech in Beijing in which he made clear that China's economic reforms were not a prelude to Western-style democracy. ``The Western mode of political systems must never be copied,'' he said, adding that those who challenged the Communist Party's supremacy would be crushed. Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., who has long been among China's harshest critics in Congress, said the prison sentences handed out to Xu and Wang were ``the clearest demonstration'' since the president's visit to China last summer of Beijing's ``true intentions regarding human rights.'' ``They are pathetic, really pathetic,'' she said of the administration. ``The administration can say what it wants, but it must know Monday that its policy on China is an embarrassment. What the Chinese have learned is that they have all the latitude in the world.'' Mike Jendrzejczyk, Washington director for Human Rights Group, said the jail terms were proof of the need for the administration to revise its China policy, which he described as ``almost entirely'' driven by the administration's desire to encourage trade. He said that while there had been some signs of progress in the human rights situation in China over the last year _ notably, China's agreement to sign international treaties on civil and economic rights _ the overall picture was bleak. ``On balance,'' he said, ``any progress China has made by allowing greater openness may have been canceled out by a more repressive attitude.'' Human Rights Watch, the largest American-based human rights group, called on the administration to consider postponing or canceling a planned visit to China early next year by Commerce Secretary William Daley and a high-level trade delegation as a protest over the prison sentences. ``That would get Beijing's attention,'' Jendrzejczck said. Other China experts and scholars insisted that the administration was right to continue its policy of engagement with China, and that there was reason to believe that political reform would follow economic reform, as Clinton has argued. Peter Rodman, a former Nixon and Reagan administration official now at the Nixon Center in Washington, said that ``the United States cannot control the evolution of a society as complex as China's.'' He said the harsh prison sentences given out Monday to the dissidents were to be expected, especially since Xu and Wang had been involved in trying to set up a political party to challenge the Communists. ``The pattern of this regime is that every once in a while, they ease up a bit and somebody goes too far and there's a crisis,'' he said. ``I don't think you can blame the United States for this crackdown, nor can you give us credit for any political reforms. On human rights, I just don't think there's much more we can do.'' ||||| China released a respected, but ailing labor rights campaigner from a prison work camp Sunday and immediately sent him into exile in the United States. Releasing Liu Nianchun appeared to be an attempt by the government to blunt international criticism over Monday's upcoming trial of prominent dissident Xu Wenli. Xu is the third leading member of a would-be opposition political party put on trial for subversion in a three-week crackdown that has seen at least 32 dissidents arrested or interrogated. Beijing police Sunday detained one of Xu's China Democracy Party colleagues, Zha Jianguo, to prevent him from attending the trial, Xu's wife said. Although pleased that Liu Nianchun was free, human rights groups decried the Chinese government's timing as manipulative. ``We don't want to give any credit to the Chinese government for this cynical game it is playing,'' said Xiao Qiang, director of New York-based Human Rights in China. After 3 1/2 years in prison, Liu was taken from the Tuanhe labor camp on the outskirts of Beijing, driven to the capital's airport and put on a Canadian Air flight, ultimately bound for New York, his mother and brother said. Accompanying Liu into exile was his wife, Chu Hailan, and their 11-year-old daughter, the family said. Liu Nianchun's release follows the same pattern China used in freeing its two most famous dissidents, Wei Jingsheng in Nov. 1997 and Wang Dan in April. Authorities released Liu on medical parole, exactly five months before the end of his prison term, provided he go into exile, said his brother and exiled democracy campaigner, Liu Qing. Liu Nianchun, 50, has been in ill-health for at least two years. In an exam authorities finally agreed to provide last month, doctors discovered Liu had tumors in his mouth, stomach and bowels, Liu Qing said. Like Wang and Wei, the United States and other Western governments have lobbied China to release Liu. Chinese leaders have been forcing well-known dissidents into exile throughout the 1990s, finding that once abroad they lose their influence among dissidents at home. In the only official comment on the release, the Xinhua News Agency reported that judicial departments took into account Liu's health and behavior in the labor camp in approving his parole for medical treatment. ``I am very happy for Liu Nianchun, but at the same time sending people directly from prison into exile is a type of human rights violation and persecution,'' Liu Qing said in a telephone interview from his home in New York's Brooklyn borough. Liu Nianchun was one of the most respected figures in the fractured, persecuted dissident community. His more than 3 1/2 years in prisons and labor camps was a sad illustration of the way China's Communist Party rulers punish people they deem a threat. Liu was imprisoned three times in the past 17 years. His last arrest came after he signed a petition calling for labor rights in May 1995. Liu was never put on trial. Fourteen months passed before his wife, Chu Hailan, first learned of his fate and whereabouts: a three-year spell in a labor camp in the frigid, remote northeast. His term was the maximum police may impose on criminal suspects without trial. Labor camp officials later extended Liu's sentence by a year for trying to escape, a charge Chu claimed was fabricated. Inside the labor camp, Liu once started a hunger strike to protest his treatment. He was beaten with cattle prods and confined to a room of 2 square meters (2 square yards) where he could only sit or stand. His wife endured police harassment, beatings and detentions in campaigning for his release. Chu was dragged away and hit by security forces when she tried to hand a letter to U.N. human rights chief Mary Robinson outside a Beijing hotel in September. ||||| Hours before China was expected to sign a key U.N. human rights treaty and host British Prime Minister Tony Blair, police hauled a prominent human rights campaigner in for questioning Monday. Qin Yongmin's latest run-in with the authorities came as he tried for the second time in a week to legally register a human rights monitoring group. Qin said a civil affairs official in the Hubei provincial capital of Wuhan accused him of engaging in illegal activities. The police came soon after he returned home. ``As I'm sending this statement, the Wuhan Public Security Bureau is again taking me away,'' Qin said in a hastily scrawled message on the bottom of the typed statement faxed to reporters. Qin, detained briefly two weeks ago, was questioned for about three hours before being released and threatened with prosecution if he persisted in trying to set up his China Human Rights Observer. Qin hoped the harassment would stop after China signs the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, but he said if local authorities don't observe the treaty ``we will unswervingly push ahead with protecting human rights to the last.'' China plans to sign the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights on Monday at the United Nations. By the time the ink is dry, Blair should be landing in Beijing on Tuesday morning for the first visit by a British prime minister in seven years. The treaty is supposed to guarantee freedoms of speech and assembly. But even after China signs, the treaty would not come into force until ratified by the legislature, which may attach reservations effectively nullifying some provisions. Blair has vowed to discuss differences over human rights with Chinese leaders. His visit has drawn appeals from dissidents and an international press freedom group urging him to persuade Chinese leaders to free political prisoners. In an open letter, three dissident said that while Chinese leaders say they respect human rights principles, in law and practice the government allows rights abuses and persecution of dissidents. Thousands of political prisoners are believed to remain in Chinese prisons, labor camps or detention centers, said the letter, a copy of which was released by the Hong Kong-based Information Center of Human Rights and Democratic Movement in China. The letter called for the release of Shi Binhai, a journalist who compiled a popular book on political change; Fang Jue, a businessman who called openly for political reform; and other imprisoned activists. Paris-based Reporters Without Borders urged Blair to call for the release of Gao Yu, Liu Xiaobo and Liu Jingsheng. The three are among 13 journalists imprisoned ``simply for attempting to practice their profession,'' it said in a statement. ||||| His friend and political mentor is jailed, robbing their budding opposition political party of its most potent organizer, but Zha Jianguo is not afraid. A bag packed with toothbrush, toothpaste and medicine lies ready at his Beijing home for the day Chinese police take him away. He has told police interrogators he expects to be jailed, likely for a few years less than the 13 given China Democracy Party leader Xu Wenli on Monday. ``Democracy is a process, and in that process a small number of people will be sacrificed,'' Zha, a 47-year-old former manager of a computer design company and vice chairman of the party's Beijing branch, told The Associated Press in an interview Thursday. ``We want to use our sacrifice to arouse the people, and we believe that sacrifice is worthwhile.'' With a mixture of defiance and cool clarity about the chances for success, Zha said he and other China Democracy Party members will continue organizing and campaigning for change. His tenacity holds despite the summary trials and harsh punishments for Xu, Wang Youcai and Qin Yongmin _ prominent party principals from the provinces who were sentenced to 11 and 12 years _ and despite threatening signs from the ruling Communist Party. Chinese President Jiang Zemin warned in a speech published Wednesday that political subversives threatened what he called China's fragile social order. ``Whenever any element that undermines stability raises its head, it must be resolutely nipped in the bud,'' Jiang said. Zha maintains that such tactics are unnecessary. In its manifestoes, the Democracy Party espoused peaceful means to target ``the undemocratic system, not the political power of the Communist Party.'' ``We believe elections held after the establishment of a democratic system should decide who has the power,'' said Zha. What many the world over consider democracy is legally subversive in China for threatening the Communist Party-led system. In the past month, authorities have arrested and convicted Xu, Qin and Wang and detained or interrogated at least 29 other party members. Police took Zha from his home Sunday afternoon and held him for nearly 24 hours to keep him from Xu's trial. Until the crackdown, the China Democracy Party distinguished itself from past attempts at opposition by its openness. Organizers publicly announced their intention to set up the party. They tried to register with authorities. Statements were faxed to foreign media and human rights groups to circumvent China's state-controlled media. Now, the party's members _ about 500 by Zha's count _ are being driven underground. Party members will concentrate on increasing ranks and will be more guarded in the use of telephones and faxes and their occasional meetings, Zha said. ``If Xu and the other two were the first round, then the second round is very likely and it will be bigger,'' Zha said. ``In such an unbalanced contest, we are forced to use more secretive means.'' The arrests of Xu, Wang and Qin deprive the party of its more influential members, Zha said. All had proven track records, Xu and Qin as dissident editors in the Democracy Wall era movement 20 years ago, Wang as a student leader of the Tiananmen Square democracy demonstrations in 1989. ``But from another aspect, this has strengthened the resolve of even more party members to struggle on,'' Zha said of the arrests. Zha got interested in politics as a radical youth, following Mao Tse-tung's appeals to go to the countryside in 1968. When he returned to Beijing in 1989, he marched in the Tiananmen protests and continued his activism. Friends introduced him to Xu Wenli in 1995. Having been released from prison two years before, Xu was still not openly involved in dissident politics, but he held court in his Beijing home to discuss China's future. ||||| The trials of three outspoken dissidents over, Communist Party leader Jiang Zemin signaled Wednesday that China will sustain a crackdown on dissent throughout next year. In his second hard-line speech in six days, Jiang vowed to crush any challenges to Communist Party rule and preserve social stability. He demanded that officials ``talk politics'' _ a euphemism for following party orders. The speech, to senior law enforcement officials, used uncompromising language heard less frequently over the past 18 months as Chinese leaders sought to improve relations abroad. Jiang's harsh tone punctuated the summary trials and convictions for subversion this week of three political critics who tried to form an opposition party. To underscore the party's intolerant mood, national newspapers ran brief accounts Tuesday and Wednesday of the 13-, 12- and 11-year prison terms given to Xu Wenli, Qin Yongmin and Wang Youcai. Dissidents are rarely mentioned by official media, and the reports served as a warning to China's 1.2 billion people. In the speech, reported by state television, Jiang said stability was crucial over the next year. He noted two key events on the political calendar: the 50th anniversary of Communist Party rule on Oct. 1 and China's recovery of the Portuguese colony of Macau on Dec. 20. ``We must strengthen the ideological and political education of officials and raise their awareness of and resistance to the sabotaging acts of hostile domestic and foreign forces,'' China Central Television quoted Jiang as saying. ``Whenever any element that undermines stability raises its head, it must be resolutely nipped in the bud.'' Jiang did not exclusively target political enemies. He likened their threat to that of white-collar and ordinary criminals and ticked off a list of potentially volatile problems _ inefficient state industries, legions of laid-off workers, stagnating farmers' incomes and corrupt officials. The emphasis on stability and warnings to those who would disrupt it were reminiscent of party pronouncements in the waning years of Jiang's mentor, Deng Xiaoping. After Deng died in 1997 and Jiang emerged victorious from a major party conclave, he projected a more confident image. Reform, not stability, were the bywords of the past year. Academic debates over the past year were the boldest in 10 years by China's relatively controlled standards. Party leaders too touted efforts to build a more comprehensive, predictable legal system and won praise from Western governments for signing U.N. rights treaties. ``Our active developments of foreign affairs has reached new achievements,'' Jiang said. ``Our country's stature has risen a step higher.'' By arresting and convicting Xu, Qin and Wang in less than three weeks, China trampled its own legal safeguards for criminal suspects and raised questions about its commitments to U.N. rights treaties it signed over the past 15 months. Despite the swift punishments given the three, dissidents have continued to campaign for justice. Four elder members of the dissident community sent a letter to U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan and U.N. human rights commissioner Mary Robinson calling on China to stop persecuting political critics and release political prisoners. ``We have experienced extreme disappointment, worry and shock'' over the long sentences given Xu, Qin and Wang and the recent detentions of several other Chinese, the four wrote in a letter dated Tuesday that was released by New York-based Human Rights in China on Wednesday. In addition, 214 dissidents in China planned a 100-day series of rotating 24-hour fasts beginning Thursday to protest the sentences, the Information Center of Human Rights and Democratic Movement in China reported Wednesday night. The fasts were to have begun with lawyer Wang Wenjiang, whom authorities prevented from representing Wang Youcai, and Wang Zechen in Liaoning province in northeastern China, but the two activists were detained by police Wednesday evening, the Hong Kong-based center said. The British ambassador in Beijing, Tony Galsworthy, and others delivered a protest message to the Chinese government demanding the immediate release of Xu, Qin and Wang, the Foreign Office in London confirmed on Wednesday. It was conveyed on behalf of the European Union, the United States, Canada and Norway. ||||| Trying to deflect foreign criticism of a crackdown on democracy campaigners, China sent a respected labor rights activist from jail into U.S. exile Sunday even as it prepared to put a prominent dissident on trial. Xu Wenli's trial Monday and his almost certain conviction would deprive a nascent opposition political party of a potent organizer and a moderate voice. He is the third and most influential leader in the China Democracy Party tried in a three-week campaign that has seen at least 32 members detained or questioned. For organizing the party and thereby challenging the ruling Communist Party, Xu, 55, is accused of subverting state power, a crime punishable by 10 years to life in prison. To prevent supporters from rallying outside Beijing's No. 1 Intermediate People's Court, police detained two of Xu's colleagues Sunday and kept watch on the homes of at least two others, friends and a Hong Kong-based rights group reported. As police moved against Xu's friends, labor rights campaigner Liu Nianchun was taken from a prison camp outside Beijing and, with his wife and daughter, was put on a plane to Canada and then New York, his first taste of freedom in more than 3 1/2 years. Authorities released Liu on medical parole five months before the end of his sentence provided he go abroad, said his brother, exiled democracy campaigner Liu Qing. His wife claimed for two years that Liu's health was worsening. But only last month did authorities grant a comprehensive exam. Doctors found tumors, perhaps cancerous, in the 50-year-old's mouth, stomach and bowels, Liu Qing said. The timing of Liu's exile and Xu's trial was the most brazen in a string of high-profile dissident releases calculated to influence Western governments. Human rights groups immediately denounced Liu's release as cynical and manipulative. ``The Chinese government continues to play hostage politics with no true commitment to international human rights standards,'' said Xiao Qiang of Human Rights in China, a New York-based lobbying group that Liu Qing heads. Over the past two years, as China tried to woo the West, Beijing signed two key U.N. rights treaties and won praise for bringing its spotty legal system closer to international standards. The ruling Communist Party relaxed some controls on dissenting views among academics. Xu Wenli and other dissidents saw opportunity in the more open atmosphere. Over the past six months, dissidents in 14 provinces and cities have tried to use Chinese laws to set up and register the China Democracy Party. In a sign of the opposition party's appeal, 205 dissidents from across China issued a petition Sunday calling for the immediate release of Xu and two other leaders, the Hong Kong-based Information Center of Human Rights and Democratic Movement in China reported. To wipe out the opposition movement, authorities have violated recently revised laws that are supposed to protect the rights of criminal suspects. They rushed Xu and fellow leader Qin Yongmin to trial with less than four days notice given to their families, instead of the 10 required by law. Qin and a third principal organizer, Wang Youcai, were also denied legal counsel. Police detained or scared off prospective lawyers, forcing the two to argue their own defenses in separate trials on Thursday. No verdicts have been announced. The Beijing court appointed Xu a lawyer, but his wife, He Xintong, suspects it is merely a formality in what she expects to be a show trial. ``He hasn't even read the whole indictment. How is he going to represent my husband?'' He Xintong said after talking with the lawyer and his aide. Authorities have turned down requests by Xu's colleagues to attend the trial, and He said she has been given one pass, for herself. Xu edited an influential dissident journal in the Democracy Wall movement 20 years ago and spent 12 years in prison, most of them in solitary confinement. Since his parole ended last year, Xu has played the role of elder adviser to dissidents. He became openly involved in the China Democracy Party in November, organizing the group's branch in Beijing and nearby Tianjin. Shortly before his arrest, he called on party members and exiled dissidents to convene a nationwide congress. ||||| By sentencing two of the country's most prominent democracy campaigners to long prison terms, China on Monday took its harshest steps yet in its current crackdown on organized political opposition. After a trial that lasted just three and a half hours, Xu Wenli _ at 55 the dean of the dissident movement, and a man who has already spent 12 years in prison for advocating democracy _ was sentenced to 13 years for ``subversion of state power.'' Xu's alleged crimes included helping to organize a new political party, calling for an end to Communist rule in interviews with foreign journalists, calling for independent labor unions and, prosecutors said, accepting $500 from a dissident abroad. He was defended by a lawyer who was appointed by the court just four days ago and met his client only once. Also sentenced Monday, to 11 years in prison, was Wang Youcai, 32, founder of the China Democracy Party, which has now been suppressed. Wang was tried on subversion charges on Thursday in a brief court session, with no defense lawyer, in the eastern city of Hangzhou. The punishment of a third veteran democracy campaigner, Qin Yongmin, 44, has not been announced. His trial began in the central city of Wuhan on Thursday and may reconvene on Tuesday, relatives said. A similarly long sentence is expected. Monday's sentences, which came just six months after President Clinton's visit to Beijing, where he publicly challenged China's leaders to move quickly toward political reform, were harshly criticized by the State Department. They also appeared to spell the effective end here of the China Democracy Party, which these three men, along with hundreds of lesser-known individuals, tried to organize in recent months. The long sentences also crushed the hopes of many liberal intellectuals here that China's warming relations with the United States in recent years and its signing of global treaties on human rights might bring a significant easing of political controls. Xu was tried Monday morning in the Beijing Intermediate Court. When after a brief recess the three-judge panel announced his 13-year sentence, Xu stood up and shouted, ``I protest!'' said his wife of 28 years, He Xintong. Then, said Ms. He and lawyers who were present, he shouted that the judges were unfair and that he would not appeal his case because the proceedings were illegitimate. With the sentencing of Xu, China's Communist government has silenced one of its most energetic and persistent critics, one who has given over his adult life to the cause of democracy. Xu first came to prominence during the Democracy Wall movement of the late 1970s, then served 12 years in prison, much of it in solitary confinement. In the last several months, sensing a new opportunity to speak out and making constant use of fax machines and e-mail, he and Qin tried to draw attention to China's obligations under two international covenants it has signed _ one on economic and cultural rights, and one on civil and political rights. In the face of several temporary detentions and stiff warnings, they continued their activities. Wang, in contrast, first became involved in dissident activities in 1989, while a graduate student in physics in Beijing, when he became a leader of the Tiananmen Square demonstrations. After the student movement was smashed by the army, he was on the most-wanted list, then was arrested and spent two years in prison. During Clinton's visit to China in June, Wang announced the formation of the China Democracy Party. Hundreds around the country, including Xu and Qin, began promoting the idea. But while the government has allowed somewhat freer discussion of political topics in universities and obscure journals in the last year, it has not allowed any challenges _ in print or in the form of organized groups _ to the principle of Communist Party rule. In a speech on Friday celebrating 20 years of economic reforms, the president and Communist Party chief, Jiang Zemin, emphasized the primacy of the party, saying, ``The Western mode of political systems must never be adopted.'' After learning of Monday's sentences, the American Embassy here, which has spent the last two years building improved relations between China and the United States, issued a strong condemnation of what it termed the ``deplorable decisions.'' ``We are deeply disappointed with both the guilty verdicts and the extremely harsh sentences,'' the statement said. ``No individual should be arrested, tried and sentenced for exercising internationally recognized freedoms, including those guaranteed in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which China has committed itself.'' Like Thursday's trials, both of which proceeded with no defense attorneys because prospective lawyers had been warned off by police or detained, Monday's proceeding showed that in cases involving security issues, police and courts could write their own rules. According to the criminal procedure law, defendants are to be notified at least 10 days before a trial, but Xu was told only four days ago that his trial would be Monday. His wife, who until Monday had not been allowed to contact him since his arrest on Nov. 30, was told three days ago. Under the law, defendants also have the right to a lawyer of their choice, but Xu was assigned a lawyer by the court late last week. Before Monday morning's trial, the lawyer, Mo Shaoping, saw his client only for one brief meeting, an associate of Mo's said. Xu's wife refused to meet the lawyer before the trial. ``Meeting him would be tantamount to cooperating with the whole charade,'' she said in a telephone interview this weekend. Responding to the accusations during Monday morning's trial, Xu's lawyer argued that Xu had engaged in the peaceful expression of his own views and that this could not amount to subversive activities against the state, an associate of the lawyer said. But in a decision that was clearly preordained, the court declared Xu guilty and sentenced him to spend what may be much of the rest of his life in prison. Born in 1943 in the southeastern province of Jiangxi, Xu was interested in politics even as a teen-ager, his wife said. In the 1960s, as an idealistic Marxist, he decided to get his learning in society rather than attend a university. He served in the navy for five years, then became an electrician with the Beijing railroad before becoming involved with the democracy movement and going to prison. On Monday afternoon, in a police station hours after the trial finished, Xu was allowed a half-hour with his wife. ``He told me he'd be able to handle the pain,'' she later recounted in a telephone interview. ``He said that this would give him time to think things over and calmly reflect on what has happened.'' Ms. He, who has been married to Xu since 1971, said she expected to see him in monthly visits to prison. The couple has a daughter, Xu Jin, who is a graduate student in fine arts at Boston University. In an earlier interview, soon after her husband was arrested on Nov. 30, Ms. He said Xu had told her, ``I can't change the way I am.'' If he received a long sentence, he told his wife, she should go on and enjoy her life. ``And if I die,'' Xu said as they parted that day, ``please plant a tree for me.'' ||||| German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer, who drew China's anger recently by meeting with exiled dissident Wei Jingsheng, said China's sentencing of two dissidents Monday was unacceptable and flouted an international treaty the country recently signed. ``The reaction of Chinese authorities is totally unacceptable,'' Fischer said, calling for the dissidents' immediate release. ``The accused simply tried through peaceful means to exercise their right to free speech and assembly, which are guaranteed by China's constitution,'' and by the United Nations' International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights which China recently signed, Fischer said in a statement. Chinese courts sentenced dissidents Xu Wenli and Wang Youcai to 13 and 11 years for trying to organize an opposition political party.

The US trade-driven policy of expanded ties encouraging Chinese democracy is questioned. China signed rights treaties and dissidents used new laws to set up China Democracy Party, but China violates the new laws by persecuting dissidents. It regularly frees activists from prison then exiles them so they lose local influence. It arrested an activist trying to register a rights monitoring group. CP leader Jiang's hard-line speech and publicity for activists sentenced to long prison terms signals a renewed Chinese crackdown. A rights activist expected to be sacrificed in the cause of democracy. Germany called China's sentencing of dissidents unacceptable.

In stern judgments capping a decisive crackdown on dissidents, Chinese courts sentenced two prominent democracy campaigners to 13 and 11 years in prison Monday for trying to organize an opposition political party. The 13-year prison term given Xu Wenli after a 3 1/2-hour trial in Beijing was the longest for a Chinese dissident in three years. His colleague in the China Democracy Party, Wang Youcai, was sentenced to 11 years, in a verdict announced by a court in Hangzhou four days after his trial. Xu's conviction deprives the would-be opposition group of a potent organizer and the fractured dissident community at large of a strong and moderating voice. Xu remained defiant during his tightly controlled trial on subversion charges. He refused to answer questions from prosecutors and judges and responded only to those from his lawyer, the court-appointed attorney, Mo Shaoping, said. When the court asked if he would appeal, ``Xu Wenli said he would not appeal,'' Mo said, quoting his client as saying ``this is political persecution.'' Xu's daughter also criticized the verdict. ``All he wanted to do was to advocate free speech and make sure the party registers peacefully. But the government failed this test, and now my father has to go to jail again for it,'' said daughter Xu Jin, a graduate student at Boston University. Security forces have orchestrated a concerted crackdown, trampling China's slim legal safeguards to crush the China Democracy Party. In three weeks, at least 32 people have been detained or questioned and Xu, Wang and another leading member, Qin Yongmin, have been put on trial. All three were charged with trying to subvert China's Communist Party-led system. Xu and Qin were given less than four days to prepare their defenses. Last Thursday, Wang and Qin faced trials without legal counsel after police detained or scared off potential lawyers. No verdict has been announced in Qin's case. Judges in Beijing and Hangzhou found that Xu and Wang plotted subversion by founding branches of the China Democracy Party in both cities and accepting money from abroad, the official Xinhua News Agency said in a rare mention of dissident activities. The courts ruled the two should be ``severely punished'' as repeat offenders, Xinhua said in an indirect reference to their previous democracy campaigning. Wary of the China Democracy Party's appeal, scores of uniformed and plainclothes police sealed off Beijing's No. 1 Intermediate People's Court Monday for Xu's trial. Foreign reporters were kept 500 meters (yards) away from the building. Xu's wife was the only friend or family member given permission to watch the proceedings, along with an audience selected by court officials. She was escorted from her home to the courthouse by three plainclothes officers. Hours after the verdict, He Xintong still had not returned home nor had she contacted her daughter. Police detained at least two of Xu's democracy party colleagues and kept watch on the houses of others. ``Members of the China Democracy Party will struggle to the end for the realization of democracy,'' said Gao Hongmin, whose home was under surveillance. Gao, who helped Xu organize the party's Beijing branch, said authorities would not be able to arrest all the party's supporters. In just six months, the party attracted enough of a following to try to register branches in 14 provinces and cities. The U.S. government and exiled dissidents, many of whom supported the party's efforts, denounced the sentences and called for the dissidents' release. ``We are deeply disappointed with both the guilty verdict and the extremely harsh sentence given to Mr. Xu,'' said U.S. Embassy spokesman Bill Palmer. ``No individual should be arrested, tried or sentenced for exercising internationally recognized freedoms.'' Xu, 55, edited an underground journal in the Democracy Wall movement 20 years ago and spent 12 years in prison, mostly in solitary confinement. Since his parole ended last year, he has been behind-the-scenes advisor to a host of dissident activities. He supported Qin Yongmin, another Democracy Wall veteran, in setting up an independent human rights monitor and advised others to run for local legislative seats in Beijing. Xu became openly involved in the China Democracy Party in November. Wang Youcai, a student leader of the Tiananmen Square democracy demonstrations in 1989 and now 32, publicly declared the China Democracy Party's formation in June and said the group intended to challenge the Communist Party's 49-year ban on opposition politics. Police have sporadically detained supporters of the democracy party. The decisive move came on Nov. 30 as Chinese Communist Party leader Jiang Zemin returned from Japan, ending a busy two years of diplomatic forays. In a speech broadcast nationwide on Friday, Jiang warned against subversives trying to bring down the system and vowed never to copy Western democracy. To allay international criticism, China released a respected labor rights campaigner, Liu Nianchun, from 3 1/2 years in prison camps on Sunday and sent him into exile in the United States. ||||| German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer, who drew China's anger recently by meeting with exiled dissident Wei Jingsheng, said China's sentencing of two dissidents Monday was unacceptable and flouted an international treaty the country recently signed. ``The reaction of Chinese courts is totally unacceptable,'' Fischer said, calling for the dissidents' immediate release. ``The accused simply tried through peaceful means to exercise their right to free speech and assembly, which are guaranteed by China's constitution,'' and by the United Nations' International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights which China recently signed, Fischer said in a statement. Chinese courts sentenced dissidents Xu Wenli and Wang Youcai to 13 and 11 years for trying to organize an opposition political party. ||||| Six months after President Clinton traveled to Beijing and challenged China's leaders to move rapidly toward political reform, the administration's policy of engaging Beijing was called into question Monday when Chinese courts sentenced three of the nation's most prominent dissidents to long jail sentences. Critics of China on Capitol Hill and human rights groups said the tough prison terms were evidence of the failure of the administration's policy of encouraging trade and diplomatic ties with China in hopes of democratic reform. The dissidents _ Xu Wenli, who was sentenced Monday to 13 years in prison, Wang Youcai, who received an 11-year sentence, and Qin Yongming, who was reported to have received 12 years were charged with subversion. The State Department said it had received reports from sources it did not identify that a third leading democracy campaigner, Qin Yongmin, had been sentenced to 13 years in prison after a trial last week in the city of Wuhan. Relatives of Qin in China denied the reports, however, and said that his trial continued. Given Clinton's effusive praise for China's senior leaders during his trip to Beijing last summer, the administration found itself on the defensive Monday and harshly criticized the prison sentences, even as it continued to insist that the administration's policy of engagement was helping push Beijing toward democracy. James Foley, a State Department spokesman, said the United States ``deeply deplores'' the jail terms and called for the immediate release of the dissidents. ``These three men appear to have been involved in nothing more than efforts to form a new political party,'' he said. While condemning the prison sentences, Foley and other American officials were careful to note the administration's assessment that there had been progress in human rights in China, some of it linked to Clinton's meeting in Beijing with Chinese President Jiang Zemin. ``There had been improvements in the human rights situation in China, modest improvements,'' Foley said. The severe prison terms _ and other recent instances of harassment of democracy campaigners in China _ are ``steps backward in relationship to what had been an improved human rights performance,'' he said. Critics of the administration's China policy noted that the long prison sentences were handed out less than a week after Jiang delivered a pointed speech in Beijing in which he made clear that China's economic reforms were not a prelude to Western-style democracy. ``The Western mode of political systems must never be copied,'' he said, adding that those who challenged the Communist Party's supremacy would be crushed. Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., who has long been among China's harshest critics in Congress, said the prison sentences handed out to Xu and Wang were ``the clearest demonstration'' since the president's visit to China last summer of Beijing's ``true intentions regarding human rights.'' ``They are pathetic, really pathetic,'' she said of the administration. ``The administration can say what it wants, but it must know Monday that its policy on China is an embarrassment. What the Chinese have learned is that they have all the latitude in the world.'' Mike Jendrzejczyk, Washington director for Human Rights Group, said the jail terms were proof of the need for the administration to revise its China policy, which he described as ``almost entirely'' driven by the administration's desire to encourage trade. He said that while there had been some signs of progress in the human rights situation in China over the last year _ notably, China's agreement to sign international treaties on civil and economic rights _ the overall picture was bleak. ``On balance,'' he said, ``any progress China has made by allowing greater openness may have been canceled out by a more repressive attitude.'' Human Rights Watch, the largest American-based human rights group, called on the administration to consider postponing or canceling a planned visit to China early next year by Commerce Secretary William Daley and a high-level trade delegation as a protest over the prison sentences. ``That would get Beijing's attention,'' Jendrzejczck said. Other China experts and scholars insisted that the administration was right to continue its policy of engagement with China, and that there was reason to believe that political reform would follow economic reform, as Clinton has argued. Peter Rodman, a former Nixon and Reagan administration official now at the Nixon Center in Washington, said that ``the United States cannot control the evolution of a society as complex as China's.'' He said the harsh prison sentences given out Monday to the dissidents were to be expected, especially since Xu and Wang had been involved in trying to set up a political party to challenge the Communists. ``The pattern of this regime is that every once in a while, they ease up a bit and somebody goes too far and there's a crisis,'' he said. ``I don't think you can blame the United States for this crackdown, nor can you give us credit for any political reforms. On human rights, I just don't think there's much more we can do.'' ||||| China released a respected, but ailing labor rights campaigner from a prison work camp Sunday and immediately sent him into exile in the United States. Releasing Liu Nianchun appeared to be an attempt by the government to blunt international criticism over Monday's upcoming trial of prominent dissident Xu Wenli. Xu is the third leading member of a would-be opposition political party put on trial for subversion in a three-week crackdown that has seen at least 32 dissidents arrested or interrogated. Beijing police Sunday detained one of Xu's China Democracy Party colleagues, Zha Jianguo, to prevent him from attending the trial, Xu's wife said. Although pleased that Liu Nianchun was free, human rights groups decried the Chinese government's timing as manipulative. ``We don't want to give any credit to the Chinese government for this cynical game it is playing,'' said Xiao Qiang, director of New York-based Human Rights in China. After 3 1/2 years in prison, Liu was taken from the Tuanhe labor camp on the outskirts of Beijing, driven to the capital's airport and put on a Canadian Air flight, ultimately bound for New York, his mother and brother said. Accompanying Liu into exile was his wife, Chu Hailan, and their 11-year-old daughter, the family said. Liu Nianchun's release follows the same pattern China used in freeing its two most famous dissidents, Wei Jingsheng in Nov. 1997 and Wang Dan in April. Authorities released Liu on medical parole, exactly five months before the end of his prison term, provided he go into exile, said his brother and exiled democracy campaigner, Liu Qing. Liu Nianchun, 50, has been in ill-health for at least two years. In an exam authorities finally agreed to provide last month, doctors discovered Liu had tumors in his mouth, stomach and bowels, Liu Qing said. Like Wang and Wei, the United States and other Western governments have lobbied China to release Liu. Chinese leaders have been forcing well-known dissidents into exile throughout the 1990s, finding that once abroad they lose their influence among dissidents at home. In the only official comment on the release, the Xinhua News Agency reported that judicial departments took into account Liu's health and behavior in the labor camp in approving his parole for medical treatment. ``I am very happy for Liu Nianchun, but at the same time sending people directly from prison into exile is a type of human rights violation and persecution,'' Liu Qing said in a telephone interview from his home in New York's Brooklyn borough. Liu Nianchun was one of the most respected figures in the fractured, persecuted dissident community. His more than 3 1/2 years in prisons and labor camps was a sad illustration of the way China's Communist Party rulers punish people they deem a threat. Liu was imprisoned three times in the past 17 years. His last arrest came after he signed a petition calling for labor rights in May 1995. Liu was never put on trial. Fourteen months passed before his wife, Chu Hailan, first learned of his fate and whereabouts: a three-year spell in a labor camp in the frigid, remote northeast. His term was the maximum police may impose on criminal suspects without trial. Labor camp officials later extended Liu's sentence by a year for trying to escape, a charge Chu claimed was fabricated. Inside the labor camp, Liu once started a hunger strike to protest his treatment. He was beaten with cattle prods and confined to a room of 2 square meters (2 square yards) where he could only sit or stand. His wife endured police harassment, beatings and detentions in campaigning for his release. Chu was dragged away and hit by security forces when she tried to hand a letter to U.N. human rights chief Mary Robinson outside a Beijing hotel in September. ||||| Hours before China was expected to sign a key U.N. human rights treaty and host British Prime Minister Tony Blair, police hauled a prominent human rights campaigner in for questioning Monday. Qin Yongmin's latest run-in with the authorities came as he tried for the second time in a week to legally register a human rights monitoring group. Qin said a civil affairs official in the Hubei provincial capital of Wuhan accused him of engaging in illegal activities. The police came soon after he returned home. ``As I'm sending this statement, the Wuhan Public Security Bureau is again taking me away,'' Qin said in a hastily scrawled message on the bottom of the typed statement faxed to reporters. Qin, detained briefly two weeks ago, was questioned for about three hours before being released and threatened with prosecution if he persisted in trying to set up his China Human Rights Observer. Qin hoped the harassment would stop after China signs the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, but he said if local authorities don't observe the treaty ``we will unswervingly push ahead with protecting human rights to the last.'' China plans to sign the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights on Monday at the United Nations. By the time the ink is dry, Blair should be landing in Beijing on Tuesday morning for the first visit by a British prime minister in seven years. The treaty is supposed to guarantee freedoms of speech and assembly. But even after China signs, the treaty would not come into force until ratified by the legislature, which may attach reservations effectively nullifying some provisions. Blair has vowed to discuss differences over human rights with Chinese leaders. His visit has drawn appeals from dissidents and an international press freedom group urging him to persuade Chinese leaders to free political prisoners. In an open letter, three dissident said that while Chinese leaders say they respect human rights principles, in law and practice the government allows rights abuses and persecution of dissidents. Thousands of political prisoners are believed to remain in Chinese prisons, labor camps or detention centers, said the letter, a copy of which was released by the Hong Kong-based Information Center of Human Rights and Democratic Movement in China. The letter called for the release of Shi Binhai, a journalist who compiled a popular book on political change; Fang Jue, a businessman who called openly for political reform; and other imprisoned activists. Paris-based Reporters Without Borders urged Blair to call for the release of Gao Yu, Liu Xiaobo and Liu Jingsheng. The three are among 13 journalists imprisoned ``simply for attempting to practice their profession,'' it said in a statement. ||||| His friend and political mentor is jailed, robbing their budding opposition political party of its most potent organizer, but Zha Jianguo is not afraid. A bag packed with toothbrush, toothpaste and medicine lies ready at his Beijing home for the day Chinese police take him away. He has told police interrogators he expects to be jailed, likely for a few years less than the 13 given China Democracy Party leader Xu Wenli on Monday. ``Democracy is a process, and in that process a small number of people will be sacrificed,'' Zha, a 47-year-old former manager of a computer design company and vice chairman of the party's Beijing branch, told The Associated Press in an interview Thursday. ``We want to use our sacrifice to arouse the people, and we believe that sacrifice is worthwhile.'' With a mixture of defiance and cool clarity about the chances for success, Zha said he and other China Democracy Party members will continue organizing and campaigning for change. His tenacity holds despite the summary trials and harsh punishments for Xu, Wang Youcai and Qin Yongmin _ prominent party principals from the provinces who were sentenced to 11 and 12 years _ and despite threatening signs from the ruling Communist Party. Chinese President Jiang Zemin warned in a speech published Wednesday that political subversives threatened what he called China's fragile social order. ``Whenever any element that undermines stability raises its head, it must be resolutely nipped in the bud,'' Jiang said. Zha maintains that such tactics are unnecessary. In its manifestoes, the Democracy Party espoused peaceful means to target ``the undemocratic system, not the political power of the Communist Party.'' ``We believe elections held after the establishment of a democratic system should decide who has the power,'' said Zha. What many the world over consider democracy is legally subversive in China for threatening the Communist Party-led system. In the past month, authorities have arrested and convicted Xu, Qin and Wang and detained or interrogated at least 29 other party members. Police took Zha from his home Sunday afternoon and held him for nearly 24 hours to keep him from Xu's trial. Until the crackdown, the China Democracy Party distinguished itself from past attempts at opposition by its openness. Organizers publicly announced their intention to set up the party. They tried to register with authorities. Statements were faxed to foreign media and human rights groups to circumvent China's state-controlled media. Now, the party's members _ about 500 by Zha's count _ are being driven underground. Party members will concentrate on increasing ranks and will be more guarded in the use of telephones and faxes and their occasional meetings, Zha said. ``If Xu and the other two were the first round, then the second round is very likely and it will be bigger,'' Zha said. ``In such an unbalanced contest, we are forced to use more secretive means.'' The arrests of Xu, Wang and Qin deprive the party of its more influential members, Zha said. All had proven track records, Xu and Qin as dissident editors in the Democracy Wall era movement 20 years ago, Wang as a student leader of the Tiananmen Square democracy demonstrations in 1989. ``But from another aspect, this has strengthened the resolve of even more party members to struggle on,'' Zha said of the arrests. Zha got interested in politics as a radical youth, following Mao Tse-tung's appeals to go to the countryside in 1968. When he returned to Beijing in 1989, he marched in the Tiananmen protests and continued his activism. Friends introduced him to Xu Wenli in 1995. Having been released from prison two years before, Xu was still not openly involved in dissident politics, but he held court in his Beijing home to discuss China's future. ||||| The trials of three outspoken dissidents over, Communist Party leader Jiang Zemin signaled Wednesday that China will sustain a crackdown on dissent throughout next year. In his second hard-line speech in six days, Jiang vowed to crush any challenges to Communist Party rule and preserve social stability. He demanded that officials ``talk politics'' _ a euphemism for following party orders. The speech, to senior law enforcement officials, used uncompromising language heard less frequently over the past 18 months as Chinese leaders sought to improve relations abroad. Jiang's harsh tone punctuated the summary trials and convictions for subversion this week of three political critics who tried to form an opposition party. To underscore the party's intolerant mood, national newspapers ran brief accounts Tuesday and Wednesday of the 13-, 12- and 11-year prison terms given to Xu Wenli, Qin Yongmin and Wang Youcai. Dissidents are rarely mentioned by official media, and the reports served as a warning to China's 1.2 billion people. In the speech, reported by state television, Jiang said stability was crucial over the next year. He noted two key events on the political calendar: the 50th anniversary of Communist Party rule on Oct. 1 and China's recovery of the Portuguese colony of Macau on Dec. 20. ``We must strengthen the ideological and political education of officials and raise their awareness of and resistance to the sabotaging acts of hostile domestic and foreign forces,'' China Central Television quoted Jiang as saying. ``Whenever any element that undermines stability raises its head, it must be resolutely nipped in the bud.'' Jiang did not exclusively target political enemies. He likened their threat to that of white-collar and ordinary criminals and ticked off a list of potentially volatile problems _ inefficient state industries, legions of laid-off workers, stagnating farmers' incomes and corrupt officials. The emphasis on stability and warnings to those who would disrupt it were reminiscent of party pronouncements in the waning years of Jiang's mentor, Deng Xiaoping. After Deng died in 1997 and Jiang emerged victorious from a major party conclave, he projected a more confident image. Reform, not stability, were the bywords of the past year. Academic debates over the past year were the boldest in 10 years by China's relatively controlled standards. Party leaders too touted efforts to build a more comprehensive, predictable legal system and won praise from Western governments for signing U.N. rights treaties. ``Our active developments of foreign affairs has reached new achievements,'' Jiang said. ``Our country's stature has risen a step higher.'' By arresting and convicting Xu, Qin and Wang in less than three weeks, China trampled its own legal safeguards for criminal suspects and raised questions about its commitments to U.N. rights treaties it signed over the past 15 months. Despite the swift punishments given the three, dissidents have continued to campaign for justice. Four elder members of the dissident community sent a letter to U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan and U.N. human rights commissioner Mary Robinson calling on China to stop persecuting political critics and release political prisoners. ``We have experienced extreme disappointment, worry and shock'' over the long sentences given Xu, Qin and Wang and the recent detentions of several other Chinese, the four wrote in a letter dated Tuesday that was released by New York-based Human Rights in China on Wednesday. In addition, 214 dissidents in China planned a 100-day series of rotating 24-hour fasts beginning Thursday to protest the sentences, the Information Center of Human Rights and Democratic Movement in China reported Wednesday night. The fasts were to have begun with lawyer Wang Wenjiang, whom authorities prevented from representing Wang Youcai, and Wang Zechen in Liaoning province in northeastern China, but the two activists were detained by police Wednesday evening, the Hong Kong-based center said. The British ambassador in Beijing, Tony Galsworthy, and others delivered a protest message to the Chinese government demanding the immediate release of Xu, Qin and Wang, the Foreign Office in London confirmed on Wednesday. It was conveyed on behalf of the European Union, the United States, Canada and Norway. ||||| Trying to deflect foreign criticism of a crackdown on democracy campaigners, China sent a respected labor rights activist from jail into U.S. exile Sunday even as it prepared to put a prominent dissident on trial. Xu Wenli's trial Monday and his almost certain conviction would deprive a nascent opposition political party of a potent organizer and a moderate voice. He is the third and most influential leader in the China Democracy Party tried in a three-week campaign that has seen at least 32 members detained or questioned. For organizing the party and thereby challenging the ruling Communist Party, Xu, 55, is accused of subverting state power, a crime punishable by 10 years to life in prison. To prevent supporters from rallying outside Beijing's No. 1 Intermediate People's Court, police detained two of Xu's colleagues Sunday and kept watch on the homes of at least two others, friends and a Hong Kong-based rights group reported. As police moved against Xu's friends, labor rights campaigner Liu Nianchun was taken from a prison camp outside Beijing and, with his wife and daughter, was put on a plane to Canada and then New York, his first taste of freedom in more than 3 1/2 years. Authorities released Liu on medical parole five months before the end of his sentence provided he go abroad, said his brother, exiled democracy campaigner Liu Qing. His wife claimed for two years that Liu's health was worsening. But only last month did authorities grant a comprehensive exam. Doctors found tumors, perhaps cancerous, in the 50-year-old's mouth, stomach and bowels, Liu Qing said. The timing of Liu's exile and Xu's trial was the most brazen in a string of high-profile dissident releases calculated to influence Western governments. Human rights groups immediately denounced Liu's release as cynical and manipulative. ``The Chinese government continues to play hostage politics with no true commitment to international human rights standards,'' said Xiao Qiang of Human Rights in China, a New York-based lobbying group that Liu Qing heads. Over the past two years, as China tried to woo the West, Beijing signed two key U.N. rights treaties and won praise for bringing its spotty legal system closer to international standards. The ruling Communist Party relaxed some controls on dissenting views among academics. Xu Wenli and other dissidents saw opportunity in the more open atmosphere. Over the past six months, dissidents in 14 provinces and cities have tried to use Chinese laws to set up and register the China Democracy Party. In a sign of the opposition party's appeal, 205 dissidents from across China issued a petition Sunday calling for the immediate release of Xu and two other leaders, the Hong Kong-based Information Center of Human Rights and Democratic Movement in China reported. To wipe out the opposition movement, authorities have violated recently revised laws that are supposed to protect the rights of criminal suspects. They rushed Xu and fellow leader Qin Yongmin to trial with less than four days notice given to their families, instead of the 10 required by law. Qin and a third principal organizer, Wang Youcai, were also denied legal counsel. Police detained or scared off prospective lawyers, forcing the two to argue their own defenses in separate trials on Thursday. No verdicts have been announced. The Beijing court appointed Xu a lawyer, but his wife, He Xintong, suspects it is merely a formality in what she expects to be a show trial. ``He hasn't even read the whole indictment. How is he going to represent my husband?'' He Xintong said after talking with the lawyer and his aide. Authorities have turned down requests by Xu's colleagues to attend the trial, and He said she has been given one pass, for herself. Xu edited an influential dissident journal in the Democracy Wall movement 20 years ago and spent 12 years in prison, most of them in solitary confinement. Since his parole ended last year, Xu has played the role of elder adviser to dissidents. He became openly involved in the China Democracy Party in November, organizing the group's branch in Beijing and nearby Tianjin. Shortly before his arrest, he called on party members and exiled dissidents to convene a nationwide congress. ||||| By sentencing two of the country's most prominent democracy campaigners to long prison terms, China on Monday took its harshest steps yet in its current crackdown on organized political opposition. After a trial that lasted just three and a half hours, Xu Wenli _ at 55 the dean of the dissident movement, and a man who has already spent 12 years in prison for advocating democracy _ was sentenced to 13 years for ``subversion of state power.'' Xu's alleged crimes included helping to organize a new political party, calling for an end to Communist rule in interviews with foreign journalists, calling for independent labor unions and, prosecutors said, accepting $500 from a dissident abroad. He was defended by a lawyer who was appointed by the court just four days ago and met his client only once. Also sentenced Monday, to 11 years in prison, was Wang Youcai, 32, founder of the China Democracy Party, which has now been suppressed. Wang was tried on subversion charges on Thursday in a brief court session, with no defense lawyer, in the eastern city of Hangzhou. The punishment of a third veteran democracy campaigner, Qin Yongmin, 44, has not been announced. His trial began in the central city of Wuhan on Thursday and may reconvene on Tuesday, relatives said. A similarly long sentence is expected. Monday's sentences, which came just six months after President Clinton's visit to Beijing, where he publicly challenged China's leaders to move quickly toward political reform, were harshly criticized by the State Department. They also appeared to spell the effective end here of the China Democracy Party, which these three men, along with hundreds of lesser-known individuals, tried to organize in recent months. The long sentences also crushed the hopes of many liberal intellectuals here that China's warming relations with the United States in recent years and its signing of global treaties on human rights might bring a significant easing of political controls. Xu was tried Monday morning in the Beijing Intermediate Court. When after a brief recess the three-judge panel announced his 13-year sentence, Xu stood up and shouted, ``I protest!'' said his wife of 28 years, He Xintong. Then, said Ms. He and lawyers who were present, he shouted that the judges were unfair and that he would not appeal his case because the proceedings were illegitimate. With the sentencing of Xu, China's Communist government has silenced one of its most energetic and persistent critics, one who has given over his adult life to the cause of democracy. Xu first came to prominence during the Democracy Wall movement of the late 1970s, then served 12 years in prison, much of it in solitary confinement. In the last several months, sensing a new opportunity to speak out and making constant use of fax machines and e-mail, he and Qin tried to draw attention to China's obligations under two international covenants it has signed _ one on economic and cultural rights, and one on civil and political rights. In the face of several temporary detentions and stiff warnings, they continued their activities. Wang, in contrast, first became involved in dissident activities in 1989, while a graduate student in physics in Beijing, when he became a leader of the Tiananmen Square demonstrations. After the student movement was smashed by the army, he was on the most-wanted list, then was arrested and spent two years in prison. During Clinton's visit to China in June, Wang announced the formation of the China Democracy Party. Hundreds around the country, including Xu and Qin, began promoting the idea. But while the government has allowed somewhat freer discussion of political topics in universities and obscure journals in the last year, it has not allowed any challenges _ in print or in the form of organized groups _ to the principle of Communist Party rule. In a speech on Friday celebrating 20 years of economic reforms, the president and Communist Party chief, Jiang Zemin, emphasized the primacy of the party, saying, ``The Western mode of political systems must never be adopted.'' After learning of Monday's sentences, the American Embassy here, which has spent the last two years building improved relations between China and the United States, issued a strong condemnation of what it termed the ``deplorable decisions.'' ``We are deeply disappointed with both the guilty verdicts and the extremely harsh sentences,'' the statement said. ``No individual should be arrested, tried and sentenced for exercising internationally recognized freedoms, including those guaranteed in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which China has committed itself.'' Like Thursday's trials, both of which proceeded with no defense attorneys because prospective lawyers had been warned off by police or detained, Monday's proceeding showed that in cases involving security issues, police and courts could write their own rules. According to the criminal procedure law, defendants are to be notified at least 10 days before a trial, but Xu was told only four days ago that his trial would be Monday. His wife, who until Monday had not been allowed to contact him since his arrest on Nov. 30, was told three days ago. Under the law, defendants also have the right to a lawyer of their choice, but Xu was assigned a lawyer by the court late last week. Before Monday morning's trial, the lawyer, Mo Shaoping, saw his client only for one brief meeting, an associate of Mo's said. Xu's wife refused to meet the lawyer before the trial. ``Meeting him would be tantamount to cooperating with the whole charade,'' she said in a telephone interview this weekend. Responding to the accusations during Monday morning's trial, Xu's lawyer argued that Xu had engaged in the peaceful expression of his own views and that this could not amount to subversive activities against the state, an associate of the lawyer said. But in a decision that was clearly preordained, the court declared Xu guilty and sentenced him to spend what may be much of the rest of his life in prison. Born in 1943 in the southeastern province of Jiangxi, Xu was interested in politics even as a teen-ager, his wife said. In the 1960s, as an idealistic Marxist, he decided to get his learning in society rather than attend a university. He served in the navy for five years, then became an electrician with the Beijing railroad before becoming involved with the democracy movement and going to prison. On Monday afternoon, in a police station hours after the trial finished, Xu was allowed a half-hour with his wife. ``He told me he'd be able to handle the pain,'' she later recounted in a telephone interview. ``He said that this would give him time to think things over and calmly reflect on what has happened.'' Ms. He, who has been married to Xu since 1971, said she expected to see him in monthly visits to prison. The couple has a daughter, Xu Jin, who is a graduate student in fine arts at Boston University. In an earlier interview, soon after her husband was arrested on Nov. 30, Ms. He said Xu had told her, ``I can't change the way I am.'' If he received a long sentence, he told his wife, she should go on and enjoy her life. ``And if I die,'' Xu said as they parted that day, ``please plant a tree for me.'' ||||| German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer, who drew China's anger recently by meeting with exiled dissident Wei Jingsheng, said China's sentencing of two dissidents Monday was unacceptable and flouted an international treaty the country recently signed. ``The reaction of Chinese authorities is totally unacceptable,'' Fischer said, calling for the dissidents' immediate release. ``The accused simply tried through peaceful means to exercise their right to free speech and assembly, which are guaranteed by China's constitution,'' and by the United Nations' International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights which China recently signed, Fischer said in a statement. Chinese courts sentenced dissidents Xu Wenli and Wang Youcai to 13 and 11 years for trying to organize an opposition political party.

After 2 years of wooing the West by signing international accords, apparently relaxing controls on free speech, and releasing and exiling three dissenters, China cracked down against political dissent in Dec 1998. Leaders of the China Democracy Party (CDP) were arrested and three were sentenced to jail terms of 11 to 13 years. The West, including the US, UK and Germany, reacted strongly. Clinton's China policy of engagement was questioned. China's Jiang Zemin stated economic reform is not a prelude to democracy and vowed to crush any challenges to the Communist Party or "social stability". The CDP vowed to keep working, as more leaders awaited arrest.

In stern judgments capping a decisive crackdown on dissidents, Chinese courts sentenced two prominent democracy campaigners to 13 and 11 years in prison Monday for trying to organize an opposition political party. The 13-year prison term given Xu Wenli after a 3 1/2-hour trial in Beijing was the longest for a Chinese dissident in three years. His colleague in the China Democracy Party, Wang Youcai, was sentenced to 11 years, in a verdict announced by a court in Hangzhou four days after his trial. Xu's conviction deprives the would-be opposition group of a potent organizer and the fractured dissident community at large of a strong and moderating voice. Xu remained defiant during his tightly controlled trial on subversion charges. He refused to answer questions from prosecutors and judges and responded only to those from his lawyer, the court-appointed attorney, Mo Shaoping, said. When the court asked if he would appeal, ``Xu Wenli said he would not appeal,'' Mo said, quoting his client as saying ``this is political persecution.'' Xu's daughter also criticized the verdict. ``All he wanted to do was to advocate free speech and make sure the party registers peacefully. But the government failed this test, and now my father has to go to jail again for it,'' said daughter Xu Jin, a graduate student at Boston University. Security forces have orchestrated a concerted crackdown, trampling China's slim legal safeguards to crush the China Democracy Party. In three weeks, at least 32 people have been detained or questioned and Xu, Wang and another leading member, Qin Yongmin, have been put on trial. All three were charged with trying to subvert China's Communist Party-led system. Xu and Qin were given less than four days to prepare their defenses. Last Thursday, Wang and Qin faced trials without legal counsel after police detained or scared off potential lawyers. No verdict has been announced in Qin's case. Judges in Beijing and Hangzhou found that Xu and Wang plotted subversion by founding branches of the China Democracy Party in both cities and accepting money from abroad, the official Xinhua News Agency said in a rare mention of dissident activities. The courts ruled the two should be ``severely punished'' as repeat offenders, Xinhua said in an indirect reference to their previous democracy campaigning. Wary of the China Democracy Party's appeal, scores of uniformed and plainclothes police sealed off Beijing's No. 1 Intermediate People's Court Monday for Xu's trial. Foreign reporters were kept 500 meters (yards) away from the building. Xu's wife was the only friend or family member given permission to watch the proceedings, along with an audience selected by court officials. She was escorted from her home to the courthouse by three plainclothes officers. Hours after the verdict, He Xintong still had not returned home nor had she contacted her daughter. Police detained at least two of Xu's democracy party colleagues and kept watch on the houses of others. ``Members of the China Democracy Party will struggle to the end for the realization of democracy,'' said Gao Hongmin, whose home was under surveillance. Gao, who helped Xu organize the party's Beijing branch, said authorities would not be able to arrest all the party's supporters. In just six months, the party attracted enough of a following to try to register branches in 14 provinces and cities. The U.S. government and exiled dissidents, many of whom supported the party's efforts, denounced the sentences and called for the dissidents' release. ``We are deeply disappointed with both the guilty verdict and the extremely harsh sentence given to Mr. Xu,'' said U.S. Embassy spokesman Bill Palmer. ``No individual should be arrested, tried or sentenced for exercising internationally recognized freedoms.'' Xu, 55, edited an underground journal in the Democracy Wall movement 20 years ago and spent 12 years in prison, mostly in solitary confinement. Since his parole ended last year, he has been behind-the-scenes advisor to a host of dissident activities. He supported Qin Yongmin, another Democracy Wall veteran, in setting up an independent human rights monitor and advised others to run for local legislative seats in Beijing. Xu became openly involved in the China Democracy Party in November. Wang Youcai, a student leader of the Tiananmen Square democracy demonstrations in 1989 and now 32, publicly declared the China Democracy Party's formation in June and said the group intended to challenge the Communist Party's 49-year ban on opposition politics. Police have sporadically detained supporters of the democracy party. The decisive move came on Nov. 30 as Chinese Communist Party leader Jiang Zemin returned from Japan, ending a busy two years of diplomatic forays. In a speech broadcast nationwide on Friday, Jiang warned against subversives trying to bring down the system and vowed never to copy Western democracy. To allay international criticism, China released a respected labor rights campaigner, Liu Nianchun, from 3 1/2 years in prison camps on Sunday and sent him into exile in the United States. ||||| German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer, who drew China's anger recently by meeting with exiled dissident Wei Jingsheng, said China's sentencing of two dissidents Monday was unacceptable and flouted an international treaty the country recently signed. ``The reaction of Chinese courts is totally unacceptable,'' Fischer said, calling for the dissidents' immediate release. ``The accused simply tried through peaceful means to exercise their right to free speech and assembly, which are guaranteed by China's constitution,'' and by the United Nations' International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights which China recently signed, Fischer said in a statement. Chinese courts sentenced dissidents Xu Wenli and Wang Youcai to 13 and 11 years for trying to organize an opposition political party. ||||| Six months after President Clinton traveled to Beijing and challenged China's leaders to move rapidly toward political reform, the administration's policy of engaging Beijing was called into question Monday when Chinese courts sentenced three of the nation's most prominent dissidents to long jail sentences. Critics of China on Capitol Hill and human rights groups said the tough prison terms were evidence of the failure of the administration's policy of encouraging trade and diplomatic ties with China in hopes of democratic reform. The dissidents _ Xu Wenli, who was sentenced Monday to 13 years in prison, Wang Youcai, who received an 11-year sentence, and Qin Yongming, who was reported to have received 12 years were charged with subversion. The State Department said it had received reports from sources it did not identify that a third leading democracy campaigner, Qin Yongmin, had been sentenced to 13 years in prison after a trial last week in the city of Wuhan. Relatives of Qin in China denied the reports, however, and said that his trial continued. Given Clinton's effusive praise for China's senior leaders during his trip to Beijing last summer, the administration found itself on the defensive Monday and harshly criticized the prison sentences, even as it continued to insist that the administration's policy of engagement was helping push Beijing toward democracy. James Foley, a State Department spokesman, said the United States ``deeply deplores'' the jail terms and called for the immediate release of the dissidents. ``These three men appear to have been involved in nothing more than efforts to form a new political party,'' he said. While condemning the prison sentences, Foley and other American officials were careful to note the administration's assessment that there had been progress in human rights in China, some of it linked to Clinton's meeting in Beijing with Chinese President Jiang Zemin. ``There had been improvements in the human rights situation in China, modest improvements,'' Foley said. The severe prison terms _ and other recent instances of harassment of democracy campaigners in China _ are ``steps backward in relationship to what had been an improved human rights performance,'' he said. Critics of the administration's China policy noted that the long prison sentences were handed out less than a week after Jiang delivered a pointed speech in Beijing in which he made clear that China's economic reforms were not a prelude to Western-style democracy. ``The Western mode of political systems must never be copied,'' he said, adding that those who challenged the Communist Party's supremacy would be crushed. Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., who has long been among China's harshest critics in Congress, said the prison sentences handed out to Xu and Wang were ``the clearest demonstration'' since the president's visit to China last summer of Beijing's ``true intentions regarding human rights.'' ``They are pathetic, really pathetic,'' she said of the administration. ``The administration can say what it wants, but it must know Monday that its policy on China is an embarrassment. What the Chinese have learned is that they have all the latitude in the world.'' Mike Jendrzejczyk, Washington director for Human Rights Group, said the jail terms were proof of the need for the administration to revise its China policy, which he described as ``almost entirely'' driven by the administration's desire to encourage trade. He said that while there had been some signs of progress in the human rights situation in China over the last year _ notably, China's agreement to sign international treaties on civil and economic rights _ the overall picture was bleak. ``On balance,'' he said, ``any progress China has made by allowing greater openness may have been canceled out by a more repressive attitude.'' Human Rights Watch, the largest American-based human rights group, called on the administration to consider postponing or canceling a planned visit to China early next year by Commerce Secretary William Daley and a high-level trade delegation as a protest over the prison sentences. ``That would get Beijing's attention,'' Jendrzejczck said. Other China experts and scholars insisted that the administration was right to continue its policy of engagement with China, and that there was reason to believe that political reform would follow economic reform, as Clinton has argued. Peter Rodman, a former Nixon and Reagan administration official now at the Nixon Center in Washington, said that ``the United States cannot control the evolution of a society as complex as China's.'' He said the harsh prison sentences given out Monday to the dissidents were to be expected, especially since Xu and Wang had been involved in trying to set up a political party to challenge the Communists. ``The pattern of this regime is that every once in a while, they ease up a bit and somebody goes too far and there's a crisis,'' he said. ``I don't think you can blame the United States for this crackdown, nor can you give us credit for any political reforms. On human rights, I just don't think there's much more we can do.'' ||||| China released a respected, but ailing labor rights campaigner from a prison work camp Sunday and immediately sent him into exile in the United States. Releasing Liu Nianchun appeared to be an attempt by the government to blunt international criticism over Monday's upcoming trial of prominent dissident Xu Wenli. Xu is the third leading member of a would-be opposition political party put on trial for subversion in a three-week crackdown that has seen at least 32 dissidents arrested or interrogated. Beijing police Sunday detained one of Xu's China Democracy Party colleagues, Zha Jianguo, to prevent him from attending the trial, Xu's wife said. Although pleased that Liu Nianchun was free, human rights groups decried the Chinese government's timing as manipulative. ``We don't want to give any credit to the Chinese government for this cynical game it is playing,'' said Xiao Qiang, director of New York-based Human Rights in China. After 3 1/2 years in prison, Liu was taken from the Tuanhe labor camp on the outskirts of Beijing, driven to the capital's airport and put on a Canadian Air flight, ultimately bound for New York, his mother and brother said. Accompanying Liu into exile was his wife, Chu Hailan, and their 11-year-old daughter, the family said. Liu Nianchun's release follows the same pattern China used in freeing its two most famous dissidents, Wei Jingsheng in Nov. 1997 and Wang Dan in April. Authorities released Liu on medical parole, exactly five months before the end of his prison term, provided he go into exile, said his brother and exiled democracy campaigner, Liu Qing. Liu Nianchun, 50, has been in ill-health for at least two years. In an exam authorities finally agreed to provide last month, doctors discovered Liu had tumors in his mouth, stomach and bowels, Liu Qing said. Like Wang and Wei, the United States and other Western governments have lobbied China to release Liu. Chinese leaders have been forcing well-known dissidents into exile throughout the 1990s, finding that once abroad they lose their influence among dissidents at home. In the only official comment on the release, the Xinhua News Agency reported that judicial departments took into account Liu's health and behavior in the labor camp in approving his parole for medical treatment. ``I am very happy for Liu Nianchun, but at the same time sending people directly from prison into exile is a type of human rights violation and persecution,'' Liu Qing said in a telephone interview from his home in New York's Brooklyn borough. Liu Nianchun was one of the most respected figures in the fractured, persecuted dissident community. His more than 3 1/2 years in prisons and labor camps was a sad illustration of the way China's Communist Party rulers punish people they deem a threat. Liu was imprisoned three times in the past 17 years. His last arrest came after he signed a petition calling for labor rights in May 1995. Liu was never put on trial. Fourteen months passed before his wife, Chu Hailan, first learned of his fate and whereabouts: a three-year spell in a labor camp in the frigid, remote northeast. His term was the maximum police may impose on criminal suspects without trial. Labor camp officials later extended Liu's sentence by a year for trying to escape, a charge Chu claimed was fabricated. Inside the labor camp, Liu once started a hunger strike to protest his treatment. He was beaten with cattle prods and confined to a room of 2 square meters (2 square yards) where he could only sit or stand. His wife endured police harassment, beatings and detentions in campaigning for his release. Chu was dragged away and hit by security forces when she tried to hand a letter to U.N. human rights chief Mary Robinson outside a Beijing hotel in September. ||||| Hours before China was expected to sign a key U.N. human rights treaty and host British Prime Minister Tony Blair, police hauled a prominent human rights campaigner in for questioning Monday. Qin Yongmin's latest run-in with the authorities came as he tried for the second time in a week to legally register a human rights monitoring group. Qin said a civil affairs official in the Hubei provincial capital of Wuhan accused him of engaging in illegal activities. The police came soon after he returned home. ``As I'm sending this statement, the Wuhan Public Security Bureau is again taking me away,'' Qin said in a hastily scrawled message on the bottom of the typed statement faxed to reporters. Qin, detained briefly two weeks ago, was questioned for about three hours before being released and threatened with prosecution if he persisted in trying to set up his China Human Rights Observer. Qin hoped the harassment would stop after China signs the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, but he said if local authorities don't observe the treaty ``we will unswervingly push ahead with protecting human rights to the last.'' China plans to sign the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights on Monday at the United Nations. By the time the ink is dry, Blair should be landing in Beijing on Tuesday morning for the first visit by a British prime minister in seven years. The treaty is supposed to guarantee freedoms of speech and assembly. But even after China signs, the treaty would not come into force until ratified by the legislature, which may attach reservations effectively nullifying some provisions. Blair has vowed to discuss differences over human rights with Chinese leaders. His visit has drawn appeals from dissidents and an international press freedom group urging him to persuade Chinese leaders to free political prisoners. In an open letter, three dissident said that while Chinese leaders say they respect human rights principles, in law and practice the government allows rights abuses and persecution of dissidents. Thousands of political prisoners are believed to remain in Chinese prisons, labor camps or detention centers, said the letter, a copy of which was released by the Hong Kong-based Information Center of Human Rights and Democratic Movement in China. The letter called for the release of Shi Binhai, a journalist who compiled a popular book on political change; Fang Jue, a businessman who called openly for political reform; and other imprisoned activists. Paris-based Reporters Without Borders urged Blair to call for the release of Gao Yu, Liu Xiaobo and Liu Jingsheng. The three are among 13 journalists imprisoned ``simply for attempting to practice their profession,'' it said in a statement. ||||| His friend and political mentor is jailed, robbing their budding opposition political party of its most potent organizer, but Zha Jianguo is not afraid. A bag packed with toothbrush, toothpaste and medicine lies ready at his Beijing home for the day Chinese police take him away. He has told police interrogators he expects to be jailed, likely for a few years less than the 13 given China Democracy Party leader Xu Wenli on Monday. ``Democracy is a process, and in that process a small number of people will be sacrificed,'' Zha, a 47-year-old former manager of a computer design company and vice chairman of the party's Beijing branch, told The Associated Press in an interview Thursday. ``We want to use our sacrifice to arouse the people, and we believe that sacrifice is worthwhile.'' With a mixture of defiance and cool clarity about the chances for success, Zha said he and other China Democracy Party members will continue organizing and campaigning for change. His tenacity holds despite the summary trials and harsh punishments for Xu, Wang Youcai and Qin Yongmin _ prominent party principals from the provinces who were sentenced to 11 and 12 years _ and despite threatening signs from the ruling Communist Party. Chinese President Jiang Zemin warned in a speech published Wednesday that political subversives threatened what he called China's fragile social order. ``Whenever any element that undermines stability raises its head, it must be resolutely nipped in the bud,'' Jiang said. Zha maintains that such tactics are unnecessary. In its manifestoes, the Democracy Party espoused peaceful means to target ``the undemocratic system, not the political power of the Communist Party.'' ``We believe elections held after the establishment of a democratic system should decide who has the power,'' said Zha. What many the world over consider democracy is legally subversive in China for threatening the Communist Party-led system. In the past month, authorities have arrested and convicted Xu, Qin and Wang and detained or interrogated at least 29 other party members. Police took Zha from his home Sunday afternoon and held him for nearly 24 hours to keep him from Xu's trial. Until the crackdown, the China Democracy Party distinguished itself from past attempts at opposition by its openness. Organizers publicly announced their intention to set up the party. They tried to register with authorities. Statements were faxed to foreign media and human rights groups to circumvent China's state-controlled media. Now, the party's members _ about 500 by Zha's count _ are being driven underground. Party members will concentrate on increasing ranks and will be more guarded in the use of telephones and faxes and their occasional meetings, Zha said. ``If Xu and the other two were the first round, then the second round is very likely and it will be bigger,'' Zha said. ``In such an unbalanced contest, we are forced to use more secretive means.'' The arrests of Xu, Wang and Qin deprive the party of its more influential members, Zha said. All had proven track records, Xu and Qin as dissident editors in the Democracy Wall era movement 20 years ago, Wang as a student leader of the Tiananmen Square democracy demonstrations in 1989. ``But from another aspect, this has strengthened the resolve of even more party members to struggle on,'' Zha said of the arrests. Zha got interested in politics as a radical youth, following Mao Tse-tung's appeals to go to the countryside in 1968. When he returned to Beijing in 1989, he marched in the Tiananmen protests and continued his activism. Friends introduced him to Xu Wenli in 1995. Having been released from prison two years before, Xu was still not openly involved in dissident politics, but he held court in his Beijing home to discuss China's future. ||||| The trials of three outspoken dissidents over, Communist Party leader Jiang Zemin signaled Wednesday that China will sustain a crackdown on dissent throughout next year. In his second hard-line speech in six days, Jiang vowed to crush any challenges to Communist Party rule and preserve social stability. He demanded that officials ``talk politics'' _ a euphemism for following party orders. The speech, to senior law enforcement officials, used uncompromising language heard less frequently over the past 18 months as Chinese leaders sought to improve relations abroad. Jiang's harsh tone punctuated the summary trials and convictions for subversion this week of three political critics who tried to form an opposition party. To underscore the party's intolerant mood, national newspapers ran brief accounts Tuesday and Wednesday of the 13-, 12- and 11-year prison terms given to Xu Wenli, Qin Yongmin and Wang Youcai. Dissidents are rarely mentioned by official media, and the reports served as a warning to China's 1.2 billion people. In the speech, reported by state television, Jiang said stability was crucial over the next year. He noted two key events on the political calendar: the 50th anniversary of Communist Party rule on Oct. 1 and China's recovery of the Portuguese colony of Macau on Dec. 20. ``We must strengthen the ideological and political education of officials and raise their awareness of and resistance to the sabotaging acts of hostile domestic and foreign forces,'' China Central Television quoted Jiang as saying. ``Whenever any element that undermines stability raises its head, it must be resolutely nipped in the bud.'' Jiang did not exclusively target political enemies. He likened their threat to that of white-collar and ordinary criminals and ticked off a list of potentially volatile problems _ inefficient state industries, legions of laid-off workers, stagnating farmers' incomes and corrupt officials. The emphasis on stability and warnings to those who would disrupt it were reminiscent of party pronouncements in the waning years of Jiang's mentor, Deng Xiaoping. After Deng died in 1997 and Jiang emerged victorious from a major party conclave, he projected a more confident image. Reform, not stability, were the bywords of the past year. Academic debates over the past year were the boldest in 10 years by China's relatively controlled standards. Party leaders too touted efforts to build a more comprehensive, predictable legal system and won praise from Western governments for signing U.N. rights treaties. ``Our active developments of foreign affairs has reached new achievements,'' Jiang said. ``Our country's stature has risen a step higher.'' By arresting and convicting Xu, Qin and Wang in less than three weeks, China trampled its own legal safeguards for criminal suspects and raised questions about its commitments to U.N. rights treaties it signed over the past 15 months. Despite the swift punishments given the three, dissidents have continued to campaign for justice. Four elder members of the dissident community sent a letter to U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan and U.N. human rights commissioner Mary Robinson calling on China to stop persecuting political critics and release political prisoners. ``We have experienced extreme disappointment, worry and shock'' over the long sentences given Xu, Qin and Wang and the recent detentions of several other Chinese, the four wrote in a letter dated Tuesday that was released by New York-based Human Rights in China on Wednesday. In addition, 214 dissidents in China planned a 100-day series of rotating 24-hour fasts beginning Thursday to protest the sentences, the Information Center of Human Rights and Democratic Movement in China reported Wednesday night. The fasts were to have begun with lawyer Wang Wenjiang, whom authorities prevented from representing Wang Youcai, and Wang Zechen in Liaoning province in northeastern China, but the two activists were detained by police Wednesday evening, the Hong Kong-based center said. The British ambassador in Beijing, Tony Galsworthy, and others delivered a protest message to the Chinese government demanding the immediate release of Xu, Qin and Wang, the Foreign Office in London confirmed on Wednesday. It was conveyed on behalf of the European Union, the United States, Canada and Norway. ||||| Trying to deflect foreign criticism of a crackdown on democracy campaigners, China sent a respected labor rights activist from jail into U.S. exile Sunday even as it prepared to put a prominent dissident on trial. Xu Wenli's trial Monday and his almost certain conviction would deprive a nascent opposition political party of a potent organizer and a moderate voice. He is the third and most influential leader in the China Democracy Party tried in a three-week campaign that has seen at least 32 members detained or questioned. For organizing the party and thereby challenging the ruling Communist Party, Xu, 55, is accused of subverting state power, a crime punishable by 10 years to life in prison. To prevent supporters from rallying outside Beijing's No. 1 Intermediate People's Court, police detained two of Xu's colleagues Sunday and kept watch on the homes of at least two others, friends and a Hong Kong-based rights group reported. As police moved against Xu's friends, labor rights campaigner Liu Nianchun was taken from a prison camp outside Beijing and, with his wife and daughter, was put on a plane to Canada and then New York, his first taste of freedom in more than 3 1/2 years. Authorities released Liu on medical parole five months before the end of his sentence provided he go abroad, said his brother, exiled democracy campaigner Liu Qing. His wife claimed for two years that Liu's health was worsening. But only last month did authorities grant a comprehensive exam. Doctors found tumors, perhaps cancerous, in the 50-year-old's mouth, stomach and bowels, Liu Qing said. The timing of Liu's exile and Xu's trial was the most brazen in a string of high-profile dissident releases calculated to influence Western governments. Human rights groups immediately denounced Liu's release as cynical and manipulative. ``The Chinese government continues to play hostage politics with no true commitment to international human rights standards,'' said Xiao Qiang of Human Rights in China, a New York-based lobbying group that Liu Qing heads. Over the past two years, as China tried to woo the West, Beijing signed two key U.N. rights treaties and won praise for bringing its spotty legal system closer to international standards. The ruling Communist Party relaxed some controls on dissenting views among academics. Xu Wenli and other dissidents saw opportunity in the more open atmosphere. Over the past six months, dissidents in 14 provinces and cities have tried to use Chinese laws to set up and register the China Democracy Party. In a sign of the opposition party's appeal, 205 dissidents from across China issued a petition Sunday calling for the immediate release of Xu and two other leaders, the Hong Kong-based Information Center of Human Rights and Democratic Movement in China reported. To wipe out the opposition movement, authorities have violated recently revised laws that are supposed to protect the rights of criminal suspects. They rushed Xu and fellow leader Qin Yongmin to trial with less than four days notice given to their families, instead of the 10 required by law. Qin and a third principal organizer, Wang Youcai, were also denied legal counsel. Police detained or scared off prospective lawyers, forcing the two to argue their own defenses in separate trials on Thursday. No verdicts have been announced. The Beijing court appointed Xu a lawyer, but his wife, He Xintong, suspects it is merely a formality in what she expects to be a show trial. ``He hasn't even read the whole indictment. How is he going to represent my husband?'' He Xintong said after talking with the lawyer and his aide. Authorities have turned down requests by Xu's colleagues to attend the trial, and He said she has been given one pass, for herself. Xu edited an influential dissident journal in the Democracy Wall movement 20 years ago and spent 12 years in prison, most of them in solitary confinement. Since his parole ended last year, Xu has played the role of elder adviser to dissidents. He became openly involved in the China Democracy Party in November, organizing the group's branch in Beijing and nearby Tianjin. Shortly before his arrest, he called on party members and exiled dissidents to convene a nationwide congress. ||||| By sentencing two of the country's most prominent democracy campaigners to long prison terms, China on Monday took its harshest steps yet in its current crackdown on organized political opposition. After a trial that lasted just three and a half hours, Xu Wenli _ at 55 the dean of the dissident movement, and a man who has already spent 12 years in prison for advocating democracy _ was sentenced to 13 years for ``subversion of state power.'' Xu's alleged crimes included helping to organize a new political party, calling for an end to Communist rule in interviews with foreign journalists, calling for independent labor unions and, prosecutors said, accepting $500 from a dissident abroad. He was defended by a lawyer who was appointed by the court just four days ago and met his client only once. Also sentenced Monday, to 11 years in prison, was Wang Youcai, 32, founder of the China Democracy Party, which has now been suppressed. Wang was tried on subversion charges on Thursday in a brief court session, with no defense lawyer, in the eastern city of Hangzhou. The punishment of a third veteran democracy campaigner, Qin Yongmin, 44, has not been announced. His trial began in the central city of Wuhan on Thursday and may reconvene on Tuesday, relatives said. A similarly long sentence is expected. Monday's sentences, which came just six months after President Clinton's visit to Beijing, where he publicly challenged China's leaders to move quickly toward political reform, were harshly criticized by the State Department. They also appeared to spell the effective end here of the China Democracy Party, which these three men, along with hundreds of lesser-known individuals, tried to organize in recent months. The long sentences also crushed the hopes of many liberal intellectuals here that China's warming relations with the United States in recent years and its signing of global treaties on human rights might bring a significant easing of political controls. Xu was tried Monday morning in the Beijing Intermediate Court. When after a brief recess the three-judge panel announced his 13-year sentence, Xu stood up and shouted, ``I protest!'' said his wife of 28 years, He Xintong. Then, said Ms. He and lawyers who were present, he shouted that the judges were unfair and that he would not appeal his case because the proceedings were illegitimate. With the sentencing of Xu, China's Communist government has silenced one of its most energetic and persistent critics, one who has given over his adult life to the cause of democracy. Xu first came to prominence during the Democracy Wall movement of the late 1970s, then served 12 years in prison, much of it in solitary confinement. In the last several months, sensing a new opportunity to speak out and making constant use of fax machines and e-mail, he and Qin tried to draw attention to China's obligations under two international covenants it has signed _ one on economic and cultural rights, and one on civil and political rights. In the face of several temporary detentions and stiff warnings, they continued their activities. Wang, in contrast, first became involved in dissident activities in 1989, while a graduate student in physics in Beijing, when he became a leader of the Tiananmen Square demonstrations. After the student movement was smashed by the army, he was on the most-wanted list, then was arrested and spent two years in prison. During Clinton's visit to China in June, Wang announced the formation of the China Democracy Party. Hundreds around the country, including Xu and Qin, began promoting the idea. But while the government has allowed somewhat freer discussion of political topics in universities and obscure journals in the last year, it has not allowed any challenges _ in print or in the form of organized groups _ to the principle of Communist Party rule. In a speech on Friday celebrating 20 years of economic reforms, the president and Communist Party chief, Jiang Zemin, emphasized the primacy of the party, saying, ``The Western mode of political systems must never be adopted.'' After learning of Monday's sentences, the American Embassy here, which has spent the last two years building improved relations between China and the United States, issued a strong condemnation of what it termed the ``deplorable decisions.'' ``We are deeply disappointed with both the guilty verdicts and the extremely harsh sentences,'' the statement said. ``No individual should be arrested, tried and sentenced for exercising internationally recognized freedoms, including those guaranteed in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which China has committed itself.'' Like Thursday's trials, both of which proceeded with no defense attorneys because prospective lawyers had been warned off by police or detained, Monday's proceeding showed that in cases involving security issues, police and courts could write their own rules. According to the criminal procedure law, defendants are to be notified at least 10 days before a trial, but Xu was told only four days ago that his trial would be Monday. His wife, who until Monday had not been allowed to contact him since his arrest on Nov. 30, was told three days ago. Under the law, defendants also have the right to a lawyer of their choice, but Xu was assigned a lawyer by the court late last week. Before Monday morning's trial, the lawyer, Mo Shaoping, saw his client only for one brief meeting, an associate of Mo's said. Xu's wife refused to meet the lawyer before the trial. ``Meeting him would be tantamount to cooperating with the whole charade,'' she said in a telephone interview this weekend. Responding to the accusations during Monday morning's trial, Xu's lawyer argued that Xu had engaged in the peaceful expression of his own views and that this could not amount to subversive activities against the state, an associate of the lawyer said. But in a decision that was clearly preordained, the court declared Xu guilty and sentenced him to spend what may be much of the rest of his life in prison. Born in 1943 in the southeastern province of Jiangxi, Xu was interested in politics even as a teen-ager, his wife said. In the 1960s, as an idealistic Marxist, he decided to get his learning in society rather than attend a university. He served in the navy for five years, then became an electrician with the Beijing railroad before becoming involved with the democracy movement and going to prison. On Monday afternoon, in a police station hours after the trial finished, Xu was allowed a half-hour with his wife. ``He told me he'd be able to handle the pain,'' she later recounted in a telephone interview. ``He said that this would give him time to think things over and calmly reflect on what has happened.'' Ms. He, who has been married to Xu since 1971, said she expected to see him in monthly visits to prison. The couple has a daughter, Xu Jin, who is a graduate student in fine arts at Boston University. In an earlier interview, soon after her husband was arrested on Nov. 30, Ms. He said Xu had told her, ``I can't change the way I am.'' If he received a long sentence, he told his wife, she should go on and enjoy her life. ``And if I die,'' Xu said as they parted that day, ``please plant a tree for me.'' ||||| German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer, who drew China's anger recently by meeting with exiled dissident Wei Jingsheng, said China's sentencing of two dissidents Monday was unacceptable and flouted an international treaty the country recently signed. ``The reaction of Chinese authorities is totally unacceptable,'' Fischer said, calling for the dissidents' immediate release. ``The accused simply tried through peaceful means to exercise their right to free speech and assembly, which are guaranteed by China's constitution,'' and by the United Nations' International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights which China recently signed, Fischer said in a statement. Chinese courts sentenced dissidents Xu Wenli and Wang Youcai to 13 and 11 years for trying to organize an opposition political party.

Xu Wenli, Wang Youchai, and Qin Yongmin, leading dissidents and prominent members of the China Democracy Party, were found guilty of subversion and sentenced to 13, 11, and 12 years in prison, respectively. Soon after the sentencing, China's president, Jiang Zemin, delivered speeches in which he asserted that Western political system must not be adopted and vowed to crush challenges to Communist Party rule. The harsh sentences and speeches signal a crackdown on dissent, but Zha Jianguo, another Democracy Party leader, says he will continue to push for change. Western nations condemned the sentences as violations of U.N. rights treaties signed by China.

Two yacht crew members are dead, three yachts remain missing and rescue resources were stretched to the limit Monday as huge seas and gale-force winds continued to batter the Sydney-to-Hobart race fleet. A helicopter rescue team flew to a spot about 50 nautical miles off the far south New South Wales town of Merimbula early Monday morning. Two crew found dead on the stricken 40-foot vessel Business Post Naiad were left behind while seven colleagues were winched aboard the helicopter and flown to Merimbula Hospital, he said. The deaths were confirmed by an Australian Search and Rescue Coordination Center spokesman in Canberra a short time later. Neither organization was able to say how the sailors died or give details on the injuries suffered by surviving crewmen. Three yachts remain missing and there was no sign of a sailor swept off the Sword of Orion when the boat rolled in wild seas on Sunday night. The missing boats are veteran cutter Winston Churchill, which sailed in the inaugural 1945 race, B-52 and Solo Globe Challenger. A major search involving Australia's navy continued Monday morning for those missing. Race spokesman Peter Campbell said it was not known how long the sailor washed overboard could survive in the water. ``It's supposition. We had John Quinn survive for 5 1-2 hours in 1993 and that was in the middle of the night in very severe conditions,'' Campbell said. Despite the horrendous conditions it was unlikely the race would be called off, he said. ``It does say in the instructions that it is the sole responsibility of the skipper of each yacht to decide whether he continues in the race or retires,'' he said. The Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA) has alerted all shipping in Bass Strait as high winds and huge seas smash into the remnants of the 115-boat fleet. An AMSA spokesman said they were alerted that the 30-foot Sydney yacht Sword of Orion had rolled in heavy seas near Gabo Island about 450 kilometers (280 miles) east of Melbourne. Several crewmen were injured including one with a broken leg. The yacht, which has a crew of 11, was halfway across Bass Strait when it overturned. The Navy sent a Sea King helicopter with night-vision and heat-seeking equipment to search the area and the frigate HMAS Newcastle was on its way to the area. Earlier, as winds gusting to 80 knots and seas of 35 feet caused havoc to the fleet, several rescues took place. A police helicopter rescued a yachtsman swept overboard when the Victorian yacht Kingurra was rolled over in huge seas 19 nautical miles south of Gabo Island. John Campbell, an American, was in the water for about 40 minutes and was suffering from hypothermia when he was winched to safety by senior constable Barry Barclay, who dropped into large swells to secure Campbell. A total of 37 yachts have been forced to retire from the 630-nautical-mile race, many having been dismasted or suffering injuries to crew. Meanwhile, American maxi Sayonara was narrowly ahead of last year's line winner Brindabella. Although the two were forced to reduce sail and cut speed, they were still well inside the race record for the 630-nautical-mile race of 2 days, 14 hours, seven minutes and 10 seconds set by German maxi Morning Glory in 1996. (djp) ||||| Gale-force winds and high seas battered yachts in the Sydney-to-Hobart race Monday, killing at least two crew members and leaving two yachts missing. The two dead were found on the 40-foot vessel Business Post Naiad, about 100 kilometers (60 miles) off the New South Wales state town of Merimbula, according to the Australian Search and Rescue Coordination Center (AusSAR) in Canberra. One of the missing yachts _ B-52 _ was found mid-morning Monday and was making its way towards Eden on the New South Wales coast, an AusSAR spokesman said. The nine crew on board were thought to be safe and the vessel was sailing unassisted. The spokesman said no word had been received on the fate of the Winston Churchill or the sailor swept from the deck of Sword of Orion on Sunday night. As of mid-morning Monday, he had been in the water for 15 hours. The yacht, which has a crew of 11, was halfway across Bass Strait when it overturned. The Navy sent a Sea King helicopter with night-vision and heat-seeking equipment to search the area and the frigate HMAS Newcastle was on its way to the area. Rescuers in more than 30 search aircraft were similarly unsure of the whereabouts and condition of Solo Globe and its crew. Seven others on board the Business Post Naiad were put aboard a helicopter and flown to Merimbula Hospital, the center said. The center was unable to identify the sailors, say how they died or give details on the injuries sustained by surviving crewmen. There were unconfirmed reports that one of the dead sailors was British. With winds gusting to 80 knots and seas swelling to 10 meters (35 feet), the race continued even as rescue teams searched for the three missing yachts. Race spokesman Peter Campbell said it was not known how long the sailor washed overboard could survive in the water. ``It's supposition,'' Campbell said. ``We had John Quinn survive for 5 1-2 hours in 1993 and that was in the middle of the night in very severe conditions.'' A police helicopter rescued a yachtsman swept overboard when Kingurra rolled over 35 kilometers (22 miles) south of Gabo Island. John Campbell, an American, was in the water for about 40 minutes and had hypothermia when he was taken to safety by Senior Constable Barry Barclay, who dropped into large swells to secure Campbell. Despite the conditions, Peter Campbell said it was unlikely the race would be called off. ``It does say in the instructions that it is the sole responsibility of the skipper of each yacht to decide whether he continues in the race or retires,'' he said. The Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA) alerted all shipping in Bass Strait as high winds and huge seas smash into the remnants of the 115-boat fleet. A total of 37 yachts have been forced out of the 1,160-kilometer (725-mile) race. Many lost their masts or have injured crew. The American maxi Sayonara was narrowly ahead of last year's winner, Brindabella. Although the two were forced to reduce sail and cut speed, they were still well inside the race record of 2 days, 14 hours, 7 minutes, 10 seconds, set by German maxi Morning Glory in 1996. ||||| British sailor Glyn Charles was missing and presumed drowned _ becoming the third fatality in the Sydney-to-Hobart yacht race _ while three others remained missing in rough seas after nightfall Monday. Robin Poke, a spokesman for the Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA), admitted it was unlikely the 33-year-old Charles could survive more than 24 hours at sea after being washed off Sword of Orion on Sunday night. ``He has been out there in 10-meter (30-feet) waves and 80-kilometer (50-mile) winds,'' Poke said Monday. ``He will be a superman if he makes it.'' Charles sailed in four Admiral's Cups and represented Britain in the Star Class at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics where he finished 11th. Two sailors died after gale-force winds and high seas battered the entrants. Four members from the veteran cutter Winston Churchill were winched to safety from a liferaft before dark Monday. Two more crew from the Winston Churchill were plucked from a second liferaft late Monday night, but three others who had been aboard the liferaft were still missing. ``We are unsure about what has happened to the other three, it appears they were washed out of the liferaft,'' a spokesman for the authority said. The two dead, both Australians, were found on the 40-foot vessel Business Post Naiad, about 100 kilometers (60 miles) off the New South Wales state town of Merimbula. The yacht's owner-skipper Bruce Guy and first-time race participant Phil Skeggs were killed. Guy suffered a heart attack during one of the two occasions the yacht rolled while Skeggs drowned when he was unable to free himself from a safety harness. Their bodies were left on board the boat but attempts were being made to recover them as soon as possible, rescue officials said. ``Dad loved sailing,'' said Bruce Guy's son Mark Guy. ``He loved the competition. He also loved a beer and a talk after the race. Dad simply loved life.'' Winston Churchill skipper Richard Winning was one of the four rescued. ``The worst thing of the whole affair was that after we got into the life raft and became separated from the others, the damned thing capsized twice on these great seas at night which is bloody frightening, let me tell you,'' Winning said. ``You have got four of us underneath this little canopy and the next thing is you are upside down. I wouldn't want to have spent another night out there.'' The first recorded death in the race, which started in 1945, was in 1984 when a 72-year-old yachtsman was washed overboard from Yahoo 2 and presumed drowned. In 1989, a 58-year-old man died from head injuries on the yacht Flying Colours after a 45-knot gale off the southern NSW coast snapped the boat's mast. AMSA spokesman David Gray said about 50 sailors had been winched to safety in this year's race. ``There's just many, many injuries on those yachts that got knocked down. A lot of them rolled over _ one rolled over twice,'' Gray said. ``They've got hand, leg, facial injuries, they really got pounded yesterday.'' American John Campbell was rescued by a police helicopter after being swerpt overboard when Kingurra rolled over 35 kilometers (22 miles) south of Gabo Island. Campbell was in the water for about 40 minutes and had hypothermia when he was taken to safety by Senior Constable Barry Barclay, who dropped into large swells to secure Campbell. ``I was definitely worried,'' Campbell told United States television in Seattle. ``There was a point I didn't think I was going to survive.'' ``(Barclay) came down into the water only about 5, 10 feet away from me and I swam to him pretty quickly. I just threw my arms into the harness and they hoisted me up.'' About half of the 115-yacht fleet have been forced out of the 1,160-kilometer (725-mile) race. The American maxi Sayonara was narrowly ahead of last year's winner, Brindabella, and expected to cross the line Tuesday. ||||| Leading maxi yachts Brindabella, Sayonara and Marchioness were locked in a three-way duel down the New South Wales state coast Saturday as the Sydney to Hobart fleet faced deteriorating weather. All three maxis reported in at the same latitude during Saturday night's positioning report when they were about 30 nautical miles south of Jervis Bay on the New South Wales south coast. American maxi Sayonara and Sydney boat Brindabella reported they were about 50 kilometers (30 miles) offshore while Marchioness was a couple of miles further inshore. In fourth spot was Australian maxi Wild Thing. The three leaders covered 105 nautical miles in the first 7 1-2 hours of the race. Propelled for the most part by favorable northerly breezes, the leaders rocketed along at an average speed of 14 knots in the first part of the 630-nautical-mile race to Hobart on the island state of Tasmania. The fast early pace put the leaders well on schedule to eclipse Morning Glory's 1996 race record but that was before the far tougher conditions forecast for overnight Saturday night. Morning Glory, a German maxi, broke the 21-year-old race record two years ago, arriving in Hobart 2 days, 14 hours, seven minutes and 10 seconds after she left Sydney. While the annual event started in friendly and favorable northeasterly breezes, the 115-strong fleet reported cloudier conditions as it moved down the coast. The yachts were bracing for a tough night with thunderstorms predicted ahead of a west-southwesterly change expected to lash the south coast by Sunday morning. Earlier, a crowd of around 300,000 people on the Sydney headlands and water witnessed the start of the annual blue water classic. Sayonara took the initial honors when she beat Brindabella though Sydney heads, but the 1997 line honors winner drew level when the American maxi's spinnaker blew out and had to be replaced. ||||| United States maxi Sayonara looks set to continue the foreign domination of line honors in Australia's famous Sydney to Hobart yacht race, which starts Saturday. Sayonara, raced by American computer billionaire Larry Ellison, has only been beaten once since it was launched in 1995 and is aiming for its second win in the 630 nautical mile bluewater classic. If the 80-footer beats the local boats home into Hobart, it will be third time in four years a foreign yacht has finished first. New Zealand Endeavour trumped the locals in 1992, Sayonara won in 1995 and German's Morning Glory set a race record of two days, 14 hours, seven minutes and 10 seconds the following year. Sayonara's rivals are expected to be last year's line honors winner Brindabella of Sydney and new Australian maxi Wild Thing. The contest for handicap honors appears more open, but there are many who believe Sayonara could become the sixth yacht to do the line honors and handicap double. Ellison believes unforeseen damage is the only major barrier to victory. ``She is a much more modern boat than Brindabella, if we don't break, we should beat Brindabella, we should beat anybody,'' Ellison said. ``If we hold together we should win the race, the question is if this boat comes through and pays us a favor we would just love to knock off the record.'' Ellison says Sayonara can knock half a day off Morning Glory's record given the right conditions. Brindabella's captain and owner George Snow believes a new record is possible. ``I think the front boats will be very close all the way down, which will be a great challenge,'' said Snow. ``We are well set up, we've got the best crew we've ever had and I think the boat is in great shape,'' Snow added. The race is tipped to start Saturday under freshening north easters with the prospect of showers and a thunder storm before a southerly change of around 25-30 knots later in the day. The southerly is expected to ease to 15-20 knots over Sunday before swinging back to the north on Monday with a west to south westerly change expected to move through Tasmania and Bass Strait on Tuesday when the first yacht is anticipated to finish. ||||| Gale-force winds and high seas battered yachts in Australia's Sydney-to-Hobart race Monday, killing at least two crew members and leaving three yachts missing. The two dead were found on the 40-foot (12-meter) vessel Business Post Naiad, about 60 miles (100 kilometers) off the New South Wales town of Merimbula, according to the Australian Search and Rescue Coordination Center in Canberra. Seven others on board were taken to a hospital by helicopter, the center said. The center was unable to identify the sailors, say how they died or give details on the injuries sustained by surviving crewmen. One of the missing yachts _ B-52 _ was found mid-morning Monday and was making its way toward Eden on the New South Wales coast, AusSAR said. The nine crew on board were thought to be safe and the vessel was sailing unassisted. With winds gusting to 90 mph (145 kph) and seas swelling to 35 feet (10 meters), the race continued even as rescue teams searched for the missing vessels. AusSAR said no word had been received on the fate of the Winston Churchill or the sailor swept from the deck of Sword of Orion on Sunday night. As of mid-morning Monday, he had been in the water for 15 hours. The yacht, which has a crew of 11, was halfway across Bass Strait when it overturned. The Navy sent a Sea King helicopter with night-vision and heat-seeking equipment to search the area and the frigate HMAS Newcastle was on its way to the area. The missing boats are veteran cutter Winston Churchill, which sailed in the inaugural 1945 race and Solo Globe Challenger. Despite the conditions, Race spokesman Peter Campbell said it was unlikely the race would be called off. ``It does say in the instructions that it is the sole responsibility of the skipper of each yacht to decide whether he continues in the race or retires,'' he said. A total of 37 yachts have been forced out of the 1,160-kilometer (725-mile) race. Many lost their masts or have injured crew. ||||| Gale-force winds and high seas battered yachts in Australia's Sydney-to-Hobart race Monday, killing at least two crew members and leaving three yachts missing. The two dead were found on the 40-foot (12-meter) vessel Business Post Naiad, about 60 miles (100 kilometers) off the New South Wales town of Merimbula, according to the Australian Search and Rescue Coordination Center in Canberra. Seven others on board were taken to a hospital by helicopter, the center said. The center was unable to identify the sailors, say how they died or give details on the injuries sustained by surviving crewmen. With winds gusting to 90 mph (145 kph) and seas swelling to 35 feet (10 meters), the race continued even as rescue teams searched for the missing vessels. There was no sign of a sailor swept off the Sword of Orion when the 30-foot (9-meter) boat rolled in wild seas Sunday night near Gabo Island, about 280 miles (450 kilometers) east of Melbourne. The yacht, which has a crew of 11, was halfway across Bass Strait when it overturned. Race spokesman Peter Campbell said it was not known how long the sailor could survive in the water. The missing boats are veteran cutter Winston Churchill, which sailed in the inaugural 1945 race; B-52; and Solo Globe Challenger. Despite the conditions, Campbell said it was unlikely the race would be called off. ``It does say in the instructions that it is the sole responsibility of the skipper of each yacht to decide whether he continues in the race or retires,'' he said. A total of 37 yachts have been forced out of the 1,160-kilometer (725-mile) race. Many lost their masts or have injured crew. ||||| A major search was under way in Bass Strait off Australia's southeast coast on Sunday night for an injured crewman swept overboard during the Sydney-to-Hobart yacht race. The Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA) said it had alerted all shipping in the Strait as high winds and huge seas smash into the remnants of the 115-boat fleet. The Australian Navy has sent a Sea King helicopter with night-vision and heat-seeking equipment to search the area and may send the frigate HMAS Newcastle into the area Monday morning morning from Sydney. An AMSA spokesman said they were alerted that the 13-meter Sydney yacht Sword of Orion had been rolled in the heavy seas, with several crewmen being injured, including the unidentified man lost overboard. Another crewman has a broken leg. The yacht, which has a crew of 11, was halfway across Bass Strait heading towards Hobart, capital of the island state of Tasmania and the finish line in the annual race. The ANSA spokesman said search conditions were ``atrocious.'' Earlier, as winds gusting to 80 knots and seas of 35 feet caused havoc to the fleet, several rescues took place. A police helicopter rescued a yachtsman swept overboard when the Victorian yacht Kingurra was rolled over in huge seas 19 nautical miles south of Gabo Island. John Campbell, an American, was in the water for about 40 minutes and was suffering from hypothermia when he was winched to safety by senior constable Barry Barclay, who dropped into 20-foot seas to secure Campbell. The Victorian state police Air Wing used an infra-red night vision system to find Campbell and the Navy Sea King is using the same equipment to try to find the man lost from Sword of Orion. Another helicopter lifted the entire crew of 12 from the dismasted VC Offshore Stand Aside. Several crew members were injured in the dismasting, with one losing several fingers and another suffering head injuries. A total of 37 yachts have been forced to retire from the 630-nautical-mile race, many having been dismasted or suffering injuries to crew. Meanwhile, American maxi Sayonara is narrowly ahead of last year's line winner Brindabella. Although the two were forced to reduce sail and cut speed, they were still well inside the race record for the 630-nautical-mile race of 2 days, 14 hours, seven minutes and 10 seconds set by German maxi Morning Glory in 1996. (djp) ||||| Two sailors died and 15 others were missing after gale-force winds and high seas battered yachts in the Sydney-to-Hobart yacht race Monday. ``There are two that have been confirmed deceased which is tragedy because in the 54-year history of the race I think there's only two people who have died in it before,'' said Australian Maritime Safety Authority spokesman David Gray. The two dead were found on the 40-foot vessel Business Post Naiad, about 100 kilometers (60 miles) off the New South Wales state town of Merimbula. Gray said Business Post Naiad owner-skipper Bruce Guy and first-time race participant Phil Skeggs were killed. Both men were from Launceston in northern Tasmania. Guy suffered a heart attack during one of the two occasions the yacht rolled, Gray said, while Skeggs drowned when he was unable to free himself from a safety harness. Their bodies were left on board the boat but attempts were being made to recover them as soon as possible. Race officials said Guy sailed in two previous Sydney to Hobart yacht races. Grave fears were held for the safety of the nine crew on missing cutter Winston Churchill, while contact has been lost with the five crew aboard Solo Globe. British sailor Glyn Charles was swept off the Sword of Orion on Sunday night when the boat rolled in wild seas. At 12:30 p.m. local time (0130 GMT) Monday Charles had been missing for about 17 hours. Race officials said Charles had sailed in four Admiral's Cups and represented Britain in the Star Class at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics where he finished 11th. Race spokesman Peter Campbell said it was not known how long Gray could survive in the water. ``It's supposition,'' Campbell said. ``We had John Quinn survive for 5 1-2 hours in 1993 and that was in the middle of the night in very severe conditions.'' Gray said about 56 sailors had been winched to safety. ``There's just many many injuries on those yachts that got knocked down. A lot of them rolled over _ one rolled over twice,'' Gray said. ``They've got hand, leg, facial injuries, they really got pounded yesterday.'' One of the missing yachts _ B-52 _ was found mid-morning Monday and was making its way towards Eden on the New South Wales coast. The nine crew on board were thought to be safe and the vessel was sailing unassisted. American John Campbell was rescued by a police helicopter after being swerpt overboard when Kingurra rolled over 35 kilometers (22 miles) south of Gabo Island. Campbell was in the water for about 40 minutes and had hypothermia when he was taken to safety by Senior Constable Barry Barclay, who dropped into large swells to secure Campbell. ``I was definitely worried,'' Campbell told United States television in Seattle. ``There was a point I didn't think I was going to survive.'' ``(Barclay) came down into the water only about 5, 10 feet away from me and I swam to him pretty quicky. I just threw my arms into the harness and they hoisted me up.'' At least 37 yachts have been forced out of the 1,160-kilometer (725-mile) race. The Australian Maritime Safety Authority alerted all shipping in Bass Strait as high winds and huge seas smash into the remnants of the 115-boat fleet. The American maxi Sayonara was narrowly ahead of last year's winner, Brindabella. Although the two were forced to reduce sail and cut speed, they were still well inside the race record of 2 days, 14 hours, 7 minutes, 10 seconds, set by German maxi Morning Glory in 1996. ||||| Two yacht crew members are dead, three yachts remain missing and rescue resources were stretched to the limit Monday as huge seas and gale-force winds continued to batter the Sydney-to-Hobart race fleet. A helicopter rescue team flew to a spot about 50 nautical miles off the far south New South Wales town of Merimbula early Monday morning. Two crew found dead on the stricken 40-foot vessel Business Post Naiad were left behind while seven colleagues were winched aboard the helicopter and flown to Merimbula Hospital, he said. The deaths were confirmed by an Australian Search and Rescue Coordination Center spokesman in Canberra a short time later. Neither organization was able to say how the sailors died or give details on the injuries suffered by surviving crewmen. Three yachts remain missing and there was no sign of a sailor swept off the Sword of Orion when the boat rolled in wild seas on Sunday night. The missing boats are veteran cutter Winston Churchill, which sailed in the inaugural 1945 race, B-52 and Solo Globe Challenger. A major search involving Australia's navy continued Monday morning for those missing. Race spokesman Peter Campbell said it was not known how long the sailor washed overboard could survive in the water. ``It's supposition. We had John Quinn survive for 5 1-2 hours in 1993 and that was in the middle of the night in very severe conditions,'' Campbell said. Despite the horrendous conditions it was unlikely the race would be called off, he said. ``It does say in the instructions that it is the sole responsibility of the skipper of each yacht to decide whether he continues in the race or retires,'' he said. The Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA) has alerted all shipping in Bass Strait as high winds and huge seas smash into the remnants of the 115-boat fleet. An AMSA spokesman said they were alerted that the 30-foot Sydney yacht Sword of Orion had rolled in heavy seas near Gabo Island about 450 kilometers (280 miles) east of Melbourne. Several crewmen were injured including one with a broken leg. The yacht, which has a crew of 11, was halfway across Bass Strait when it overturned. The Navy sent a Sea King helicopter with night-vision and heat-seeking equipment to search the area and the frigate HMAS Newcastle was on its way to the area. Earlier, as winds gusting to 80 knots and seas of 35 feet caused havoc to the fleet, several rescues took place. A police helicopter rescued a yachtsman swept overboard when the Victorian yacht Kingurra was rolled over in huge seas 19 nautical miles south of Gabo Island. John Campbell, an American, was in the water for about 40 minutes and was suffering from hypothermia when he was winched to safety by senior constable Barry Barclay, who dropped into large swells to secure Campbell. A total of 37 yachts have been forced to retire from the 630-nautical-mile race, many having been dismasted or suffering injuries to crew. Meanwhile, American maxi Sayonara was narrowly ahead of last year's line winner Brindabella. Although the two were forced to reduce sail and cut speed, they were still well inside the race record for the 630-nautical-mile race of 2 days, 14 hours, seven minutes and 10 seconds set by German maxi Morning Glory in 1996. (djp)

As contestants prepared for the 1998 running of Australia's 630 nautical mile Sydney-to-Hobart yacht race, the American maxi yacht Sayonara emerged as the favorite followed by Australia's Brindabella and Wild Thing. Winds of 15-30 knots were forecast. The first day of the race Brindabella and Sayonara led. By the end of the second day horrendous conditions had developed with gales reaching 80 knots and waves as high as 10 meters. By dusk of the third day three crewmen were dead, three missing, many injured and about half of the 115 yachts were forced out of the race. Sayonara was narrowly ahead of Brindabella and expected to reach Hobart the next day.

Two yacht crew members are dead, three yachts remain missing and rescue resources were stretched to the limit Monday as huge seas and gale-force winds continued to batter the Sydney-to-Hobart race fleet. A helicopter rescue team flew to a spot about 50 nautical miles off the far south New South Wales town of Merimbula early Monday morning. Two crew found dead on the stricken 40-foot vessel Business Post Naiad were left behind while seven colleagues were winched aboard the helicopter and flown to Merimbula Hospital, he said. The deaths were confirmed by an Australian Search and Rescue Coordination Center spokesman in Canberra a short time later. Neither organization was able to say how the sailors died or give details on the injuries suffered by surviving crewmen. Three yachts remain missing and there was no sign of a sailor swept off the Sword of Orion when the boat rolled in wild seas on Sunday night. The missing boats are veteran cutter Winston Churchill, which sailed in the inaugural 1945 race, B-52 and Solo Globe Challenger. A major search involving Australia's navy continued Monday morning for those missing. Race spokesman Peter Campbell said it was not known how long the sailor washed overboard could survive in the water. ``It's supposition. We had John Quinn survive for 5 1-2 hours in 1993 and that was in the middle of the night in very severe conditions,'' Campbell said. Despite the horrendous conditions it was unlikely the race would be called off, he said. ``It does say in the instructions that it is the sole responsibility of the skipper of each yacht to decide whether he continues in the race or retires,'' he said. The Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA) has alerted all shipping in Bass Strait as high winds and huge seas smash into the remnants of the 115-boat fleet. An AMSA spokesman said they were alerted that the 30-foot Sydney yacht Sword of Orion had rolled in heavy seas near Gabo Island about 450 kilometers (280 miles) east of Melbourne. Several crewmen were injured including one with a broken leg. The yacht, which has a crew of 11, was halfway across Bass Strait when it overturned. The Navy sent a Sea King helicopter with night-vision and heat-seeking equipment to search the area and the frigate HMAS Newcastle was on its way to the area. Earlier, as winds gusting to 80 knots and seas of 35 feet caused havoc to the fleet, several rescues took place. A police helicopter rescued a yachtsman swept overboard when the Victorian yacht Kingurra was rolled over in huge seas 19 nautical miles south of Gabo Island. John Campbell, an American, was in the water for about 40 minutes and was suffering from hypothermia when he was winched to safety by senior constable Barry Barclay, who dropped into large swells to secure Campbell. A total of 37 yachts have been forced to retire from the 630-nautical-mile race, many having been dismasted or suffering injuries to crew. Meanwhile, American maxi Sayonara was narrowly ahead of last year's line winner Brindabella. Although the two were forced to reduce sail and cut speed, they were still well inside the race record for the 630-nautical-mile race of 2 days, 14 hours, seven minutes and 10 seconds set by German maxi Morning Glory in 1996. (djp) ||||| Gale-force winds and high seas battered yachts in the Sydney-to-Hobart race Monday, killing at least two crew members and leaving two yachts missing. The two dead were found on the 40-foot vessel Business Post Naiad, about 100 kilometers (60 miles) off the New South Wales state town of Merimbula, according to the Australian Search and Rescue Coordination Center (AusSAR) in Canberra. One of the missing yachts _ B-52 _ was found mid-morning Monday and was making its way towards Eden on the New South Wales coast, an AusSAR spokesman said. The nine crew on board were thought to be safe and the vessel was sailing unassisted. The spokesman said no word had been received on the fate of the Winston Churchill or the sailor swept from the deck of Sword of Orion on Sunday night. As of mid-morning Monday, he had been in the water for 15 hours. The yacht, which has a crew of 11, was halfway across Bass Strait when it overturned. The Navy sent a Sea King helicopter with night-vision and heat-seeking equipment to search the area and the frigate HMAS Newcastle was on its way to the area. Rescuers in more than 30 search aircraft were similarly unsure of the whereabouts and condition of Solo Globe and its crew. Seven others on board the Business Post Naiad were put aboard a helicopter and flown to Merimbula Hospital, the center said. The center was unable to identify the sailors, say how they died or give details on the injuries sustained by surviving crewmen. There were unconfirmed reports that one of the dead sailors was British. With winds gusting to 80 knots and seas swelling to 10 meters (35 feet), the race continued even as rescue teams searched for the three missing yachts. Race spokesman Peter Campbell said it was not known how long the sailor washed overboard could survive in the water. ``It's supposition,'' Campbell said. ``We had John Quinn survive for 5 1-2 hours in 1993 and that was in the middle of the night in very severe conditions.'' A police helicopter rescued a yachtsman swept overboard when Kingurra rolled over 35 kilometers (22 miles) south of Gabo Island. John Campbell, an American, was in the water for about 40 minutes and had hypothermia when he was taken to safety by Senior Constable Barry Barclay, who dropped into large swells to secure Campbell. Despite the conditions, Peter Campbell said it was unlikely the race would be called off. ``It does say in the instructions that it is the sole responsibility of the skipper of each yacht to decide whether he continues in the race or retires,'' he said. The Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA) alerted all shipping in Bass Strait as high winds and huge seas smash into the remnants of the 115-boat fleet. A total of 37 yachts have been forced out of the 1,160-kilometer (725-mile) race. Many lost their masts or have injured crew. The American maxi Sayonara was narrowly ahead of last year's winner, Brindabella. Although the two were forced to reduce sail and cut speed, they were still well inside the race record of 2 days, 14 hours, 7 minutes, 10 seconds, set by German maxi Morning Glory in 1996. ||||| British sailor Glyn Charles was missing and presumed drowned _ becoming the third fatality in the Sydney-to-Hobart yacht race _ while three others remained missing in rough seas after nightfall Monday. Robin Poke, a spokesman for the Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA), admitted it was unlikely the 33-year-old Charles could survive more than 24 hours at sea after being washed off Sword of Orion on Sunday night. ``He has been out there in 10-meter (30-feet) waves and 80-kilometer (50-mile) winds,'' Poke said Monday. ``He will be a superman if he makes it.'' Charles sailed in four Admiral's Cups and represented Britain in the Star Class at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics where he finished 11th. Two sailors died after gale-force winds and high seas battered the entrants. Four members from the veteran cutter Winston Churchill were winched to safety from a liferaft before dark Monday. Two more crew from the Winston Churchill were plucked from a second liferaft late Monday night, but three others who had been aboard the liferaft were still missing. ``We are unsure about what has happened to the other three, it appears they were washed out of the liferaft,'' a spokesman for the authority said. The two dead, both Australians, were found on the 40-foot vessel Business Post Naiad, about 100 kilometers (60 miles) off the New South Wales state town of Merimbula. The yacht's owner-skipper Bruce Guy and first-time race participant Phil Skeggs were killed. Guy suffered a heart attack during one of the two occasions the yacht rolled while Skeggs drowned when he was unable to free himself from a safety harness. Their bodies were left on board the boat but attempts were being made to recover them as soon as possible, rescue officials said. ``Dad loved sailing,'' said Bruce Guy's son Mark Guy. ``He loved the competition. He also loved a beer and a talk after the race. Dad simply loved life.'' Winston Churchill skipper Richard Winning was one of the four rescued. ``The worst thing of the whole affair was that after we got into the life raft and became separated from the others, the damned thing capsized twice on these great seas at night which is bloody frightening, let me tell you,'' Winning said. ``You have got four of us underneath this little canopy and the next thing is you are upside down. I wouldn't want to have spent another night out there.'' The first recorded death in the race, which started in 1945, was in 1984 when a 72-year-old yachtsman was washed overboard from Yahoo 2 and presumed drowned. In 1989, a 58-year-old man died from head injuries on the yacht Flying Colours after a 45-knot gale off the southern NSW coast snapped the boat's mast. AMSA spokesman David Gray said about 50 sailors had been winched to safety in this year's race. ``There's just many, many injuries on those yachts that got knocked down. A lot of them rolled over _ one rolled over twice,'' Gray said. ``They've got hand, leg, facial injuries, they really got pounded yesterday.'' American John Campbell was rescued by a police helicopter after being swerpt overboard when Kingurra rolled over 35 kilometers (22 miles) south of Gabo Island. Campbell was in the water for about 40 minutes and had hypothermia when he was taken to safety by Senior Constable Barry Barclay, who dropped into large swells to secure Campbell. ``I was definitely worried,'' Campbell told United States television in Seattle. ``There was a point I didn't think I was going to survive.'' ``(Barclay) came down into the water only about 5, 10 feet away from me and I swam to him pretty quickly. I just threw my arms into the harness and they hoisted me up.'' About half of the 115-yacht fleet have been forced out of the 1,160-kilometer (725-mile) race. The American maxi Sayonara was narrowly ahead of last year's winner, Brindabella, and expected to cross the line Tuesday. ||||| Leading maxi yachts Brindabella, Sayonara and Marchioness were locked in a three-way duel down the New South Wales state coast Saturday as the Sydney to Hobart fleet faced deteriorating weather. All three maxis reported in at the same latitude during Saturday night's positioning report when they were about 30 nautical miles south of Jervis Bay on the New South Wales south coast. American maxi Sayonara and Sydney boat Brindabella reported they were about 50 kilometers (30 miles) offshore while Marchioness was a couple of miles further inshore. In fourth spot was Australian maxi Wild Thing. The three leaders covered 105 nautical miles in the first 7 1-2 hours of the race. Propelled for the most part by favorable northerly breezes, the leaders rocketed along at an average speed of 14 knots in the first part of the 630-nautical-mile race to Hobart on the island state of Tasmania. The fast early pace put the leaders well on schedule to eclipse Morning Glory's 1996 race record but that was before the far tougher conditions forecast for overnight Saturday night. Morning Glory, a German maxi, broke the 21-year-old race record two years ago, arriving in Hobart 2 days, 14 hours, seven minutes and 10 seconds after she left Sydney. While the annual event started in friendly and favorable northeasterly breezes, the 115-strong fleet reported cloudier conditions as it moved down the coast. The yachts were bracing for a tough night with thunderstorms predicted ahead of a west-southwesterly change expected to lash the south coast by Sunday morning. Earlier, a crowd of around 300,000 people on the Sydney headlands and water witnessed the start of the annual blue water classic. Sayonara took the initial honors when she beat Brindabella though Sydney heads, but the 1997 line honors winner drew level when the American maxi's spinnaker blew out and had to be replaced. ||||| United States maxi Sayonara looks set to continue the foreign domination of line honors in Australia's famous Sydney to Hobart yacht race, which starts Saturday. Sayonara, raced by American computer billionaire Larry Ellison, has only been beaten once since it was launched in 1995 and is aiming for its second win in the 630 nautical mile bluewater classic. If the 80-footer beats the local boats home into Hobart, it will be third time in four years a foreign yacht has finished first. New Zealand Endeavour trumped the locals in 1992, Sayonara won in 1995 and German's Morning Glory set a race record of two days, 14 hours, seven minutes and 10 seconds the following year. Sayonara's rivals are expected to be last year's line honors winner Brindabella of Sydney and new Australian maxi Wild Thing. The contest for handicap honors appears more open, but there are many who believe Sayonara could become the sixth yacht to do the line honors and handicap double. Ellison believes unforeseen damage is the only major barrier to victory. ``She is a much more modern boat than Brindabella, if we don't break, we should beat Brindabella, we should beat anybody,'' Ellison said. ``If we hold together we should win the race, the question is if this boat comes through and pays us a favor we would just love to knock off the record.'' Ellison says Sayonara can knock half a day off Morning Glory's record given the right conditions. Brindabella's captain and owner George Snow believes a new record is possible. ``I think the front boats will be very close all the way down, which will be a great challenge,'' said Snow. ``We are well set up, we've got the best crew we've ever had and I think the boat is in great shape,'' Snow added. The race is tipped to start Saturday under freshening north easters with the prospect of showers and a thunder storm before a southerly change of around 25-30 knots later in the day. The southerly is expected to ease to 15-20 knots over Sunday before swinging back to the north on Monday with a west to south westerly change expected to move through Tasmania and Bass Strait on Tuesday when the first yacht is anticipated to finish. ||||| Gale-force winds and high seas battered yachts in Australia's Sydney-to-Hobart race Monday, killing at least two crew members and leaving three yachts missing. The two dead were found on the 40-foot (12-meter) vessel Business Post Naiad, about 60 miles (100 kilometers) off the New South Wales town of Merimbula, according to the Australian Search and Rescue Coordination Center in Canberra. Seven others on board were taken to a hospital by helicopter, the center said. The center was unable to identify the sailors, say how they died or give details on the injuries sustained by surviving crewmen. One of the missing yachts _ B-52 _ was found mid-morning Monday and was making its way toward Eden on the New South Wales coast, AusSAR said. The nine crew on board were thought to be safe and the vessel was sailing unassisted. With winds gusting to 90 mph (145 kph) and seas swelling to 35 feet (10 meters), the race continued even as rescue teams searched for the missing vessels. AusSAR said no word had been received on the fate of the Winston Churchill or the sailor swept from the deck of Sword of Orion on Sunday night. As of mid-morning Monday, he had been in the water for 15 hours. The yacht, which has a crew of 11, was halfway across Bass Strait when it overturned. The Navy sent a Sea King helicopter with night-vision and heat-seeking equipment to search the area and the frigate HMAS Newcastle was on its way to the area. The missing boats are veteran cutter Winston Churchill, which sailed in the inaugural 1945 race and Solo Globe Challenger. Despite the conditions, Race spokesman Peter Campbell said it was unlikely the race would be called off. ``It does say in the instructions that it is the sole responsibility of the skipper of each yacht to decide whether he continues in the race or retires,'' he said. A total of 37 yachts have been forced out of the 1,160-kilometer (725-mile) race. Many lost their masts or have injured crew. ||||| Gale-force winds and high seas battered yachts in Australia's Sydney-to-Hobart race Monday, killing at least two crew members and leaving three yachts missing. The two dead were found on the 40-foot (12-meter) vessel Business Post Naiad, about 60 miles (100 kilometers) off the New South Wales town of Merimbula, according to the Australian Search and Rescue Coordination Center in Canberra. Seven others on board were taken to a hospital by helicopter, the center said. The center was unable to identify the sailors, say how they died or give details on the injuries sustained by surviving crewmen. With winds gusting to 90 mph (145 kph) and seas swelling to 35 feet (10 meters), the race continued even as rescue teams searched for the missing vessels. There was no sign of a sailor swept off the Sword of Orion when the 30-foot (9-meter) boat rolled in wild seas Sunday night near Gabo Island, about 280 miles (450 kilometers) east of Melbourne. The yacht, which has a crew of 11, was halfway across Bass Strait when it overturned. Race spokesman Peter Campbell said it was not known how long the sailor could survive in the water. The missing boats are veteran cutter Winston Churchill, which sailed in the inaugural 1945 race; B-52; and Solo Globe Challenger. Despite the conditions, Campbell said it was unlikely the race would be called off. ``It does say in the instructions that it is the sole responsibility of the skipper of each yacht to decide whether he continues in the race or retires,'' he said. A total of 37 yachts have been forced out of the 1,160-kilometer (725-mile) race. Many lost their masts or have injured crew. ||||| A major search was under way in Bass Strait off Australia's southeast coast on Sunday night for an injured crewman swept overboard during the Sydney-to-Hobart yacht race. The Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA) said it had alerted all shipping in the Strait as high winds and huge seas smash into the remnants of the 115-boat fleet. The Australian Navy has sent a Sea King helicopter with night-vision and heat-seeking equipment to search the area and may send the frigate HMAS Newcastle into the area Monday morning morning from Sydney. An AMSA spokesman said they were alerted that the 13-meter Sydney yacht Sword of Orion had been rolled in the heavy seas, with several crewmen being injured, including the unidentified man lost overboard. Another crewman has a broken leg. The yacht, which has a crew of 11, was halfway across Bass Strait heading towards Hobart, capital of the island state of Tasmania and the finish line in the annual race. The ANSA spokesman said search conditions were ``atrocious.'' Earlier, as winds gusting to 80 knots and seas of 35 feet caused havoc to the fleet, several rescues took place. A police helicopter rescued a yachtsman swept overboard when the Victorian yacht Kingurra was rolled over in huge seas 19 nautical miles south of Gabo Island. John Campbell, an American, was in the water for about 40 minutes and was suffering from hypothermia when he was winched to safety by senior constable Barry Barclay, who dropped into 20-foot seas to secure Campbell. The Victorian state police Air Wing used an infra-red night vision system to find Campbell and the Navy Sea King is using the same equipment to try to find the man lost from Sword of Orion. Another helicopter lifted the entire crew of 12 from the dismasted VC Offshore Stand Aside. Several crew members were injured in the dismasting, with one losing several fingers and another suffering head injuries. A total of 37 yachts have been forced to retire from the 630-nautical-mile race, many having been dismasted or suffering injuries to crew. Meanwhile, American maxi Sayonara is narrowly ahead of last year's line winner Brindabella. Although the two were forced to reduce sail and cut speed, they were still well inside the race record for the 630-nautical-mile race of 2 days, 14 hours, seven minutes and 10 seconds set by German maxi Morning Glory in 1996. (djp) ||||| Two sailors died and 15 others were missing after gale-force winds and high seas battered yachts in the Sydney-to-Hobart yacht race Monday. ``There are two that have been confirmed deceased which is tragedy because in the 54-year history of the race I think there's only two people who have died in it before,'' said Australian Maritime Safety Authority spokesman David Gray. The two dead were found on the 40-foot vessel Business Post Naiad, about 100 kilometers (60 miles) off the New South Wales state town of Merimbula. Gray said Business Post Naiad owner-skipper Bruce Guy and first-time race participant Phil Skeggs were killed. Both men were from Launceston in northern Tasmania. Guy suffered a heart attack during one of the two occasions the yacht rolled, Gray said, while Skeggs drowned when he was unable to free himself from a safety harness. Their bodies were left on board the boat but attempts were being made to recover them as soon as possible. Race officials said Guy sailed in two previous Sydney to Hobart yacht races. Grave fears were held for the safety of the nine crew on missing cutter Winston Churchill, while contact has been lost with the five crew aboard Solo Globe. British sailor Glyn Charles was swept off the Sword of Orion on Sunday night when the boat rolled in wild seas. At 12:30 p.m. local time (0130 GMT) Monday Charles had been missing for about 17 hours. Race officials said Charles had sailed in four Admiral's Cups and represented Britain in the Star Class at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics where he finished 11th. Race spokesman Peter Campbell said it was not known how long Gray could survive in the water. ``It's supposition,'' Campbell said. ``We had John Quinn survive for 5 1-2 hours in 1993 and that was in the middle of the night in very severe conditions.'' Gray said about 56 sailors had been winched to safety. ``There's just many many injuries on those yachts that got knocked down. A lot of them rolled over _ one rolled over twice,'' Gray said. ``They've got hand, leg, facial injuries, they really got pounded yesterday.'' One of the missing yachts _ B-52 _ was found mid-morning Monday and was making its way towards Eden on the New South Wales coast. The nine crew on board were thought to be safe and the vessel was sailing unassisted. American John Campbell was rescued by a police helicopter after being swerpt overboard when Kingurra rolled over 35 kilometers (22 miles) south of Gabo Island. Campbell was in the water for about 40 minutes and had hypothermia when he was taken to safety by Senior Constable Barry Barclay, who dropped into large swells to secure Campbell. ``I was definitely worried,'' Campbell told United States television in Seattle. ``There was a point I didn't think I was going to survive.'' ``(Barclay) came down into the water only about 5, 10 feet away from me and I swam to him pretty quicky. I just threw my arms into the harness and they hoisted me up.'' At least 37 yachts have been forced out of the 1,160-kilometer (725-mile) race. The Australian Maritime Safety Authority alerted all shipping in Bass Strait as high winds and huge seas smash into the remnants of the 115-boat fleet. The American maxi Sayonara was narrowly ahead of last year's winner, Brindabella. Although the two were forced to reduce sail and cut speed, they were still well inside the race record of 2 days, 14 hours, 7 minutes, 10 seconds, set by German maxi Morning Glory in 1996. ||||| Two yacht crew members are dead, three yachts remain missing and rescue resources were stretched to the limit Monday as huge seas and gale-force winds continued to batter the Sydney-to-Hobart race fleet. A helicopter rescue team flew to a spot about 50 nautical miles off the far south New South Wales town of Merimbula early Monday morning. Two crew found dead on the stricken 40-foot vessel Business Post Naiad were left behind while seven colleagues were winched aboard the helicopter and flown to Merimbula Hospital, he said. The deaths were confirmed by an Australian Search and Rescue Coordination Center spokesman in Canberra a short time later. Neither organization was able to say how the sailors died or give details on the injuries suffered by surviving crewmen. Three yachts remain missing and there was no sign of a sailor swept off the Sword of Orion when the boat rolled in wild seas on Sunday night. The missing boats are veteran cutter Winston Churchill, which sailed in the inaugural 1945 race, B-52 and Solo Globe Challenger. A major search involving Australia's navy continued Monday morning for those missing. Race spokesman Peter Campbell said it was not known how long the sailor washed overboard could survive in the water. ``It's supposition. We had John Quinn survive for 5 1-2 hours in 1993 and that was in the middle of the night in very severe conditions,'' Campbell said. Despite the horrendous conditions it was unlikely the race would be called off, he said. ``It does say in the instructions that it is the sole responsibility of the skipper of each yacht to decide whether he continues in the race or retires,'' he said. The Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA) has alerted all shipping in Bass Strait as high winds and huge seas smash into the remnants of the 115-boat fleet. An AMSA spokesman said they were alerted that the 30-foot Sydney yacht Sword of Orion had rolled in heavy seas near Gabo Island about 450 kilometers (280 miles) east of Melbourne. Several crewmen were injured including one with a broken leg. The yacht, which has a crew of 11, was halfway across Bass Strait when it overturned. The Navy sent a Sea King helicopter with night-vision and heat-seeking equipment to search the area and the frigate HMAS Newcastle was on its way to the area. Earlier, as winds gusting to 80 knots and seas of 35 feet caused havoc to the fleet, several rescues took place. A police helicopter rescued a yachtsman swept overboard when the Victorian yacht Kingurra was rolled over in huge seas 19 nautical miles south of Gabo Island. John Campbell, an American, was in the water for about 40 minutes and was suffering from hypothermia when he was winched to safety by senior constable Barry Barclay, who dropped into large swells to secure Campbell. A total of 37 yachts have been forced to retire from the 630-nautical-mile race, many having been dismasted or suffering injuries to crew. Meanwhile, American maxi Sayonara was narrowly ahead of last year's line winner Brindabella. Although the two were forced to reduce sail and cut speed, they were still well inside the race record for the 630-nautical-mile race of 2 days, 14 hours, seven minutes and 10 seconds set by German maxi Morning Glory in 1996. (djp)

Gale-force winds and high seas struck the 155 participants in Australia's Sydney to Hobart yacht race. One sailor, Glyn Charles, who was swept off the yacht Sword of Orion, is presumed drowned and two seamen on the Business Post Naiad were killed. Search and rescue efforts were stretched to the limit also as three yachts turned up missing. One yacht, the B-52 was found with the crew safe. Race organizers never considered canceling the race, claiming that the skippers controlled whether to stay in the race or drop out. A total of 37 yachts were forced out of the race, many of which had lost their masts.

Two yacht crew members are dead, three yachts remain missing and rescue resources were stretched to the limit Monday as huge seas and gale-force winds continued to batter the Sydney-to-Hobart race fleet. A helicopter rescue team flew to a spot about 50 nautical miles off the far south New South Wales town of Merimbula early Monday morning. Two crew found dead on the stricken 40-foot vessel Business Post Naiad were left behind while seven colleagues were winched aboard the helicopter and flown to Merimbula Hospital, he said. The deaths were confirmed by an Australian Search and Rescue Coordination Center spokesman in Canberra a short time later. Neither organization was able to say how the sailors died or give details on the injuries suffered by surviving crewmen. Three yachts remain missing and there was no sign of a sailor swept off the Sword of Orion when the boat rolled in wild seas on Sunday night. The missing boats are veteran cutter Winston Churchill, which sailed in the inaugural 1945 race, B-52 and Solo Globe Challenger. A major search involving Australia's navy continued Monday morning for those missing. Race spokesman Peter Campbell said it was not known how long the sailor washed overboard could survive in the water. ``It's supposition. We had John Quinn survive for 5 1-2 hours in 1993 and that was in the middle of the night in very severe conditions,'' Campbell said. Despite the horrendous conditions it was unlikely the race would be called off, he said. ``It does say in the instructions that it is the sole responsibility of the skipper of each yacht to decide whether he continues in the race or retires,'' he said. The Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA) has alerted all shipping in Bass Strait as high winds and huge seas smash into the remnants of the 115-boat fleet. An AMSA spokesman said they were alerted that the 30-foot Sydney yacht Sword of Orion had rolled in heavy seas near Gabo Island about 450 kilometers (280 miles) east of Melbourne. Several crewmen were injured including one with a broken leg. The yacht, which has a crew of 11, was halfway across Bass Strait when it overturned. The Navy sent a Sea King helicopter with night-vision and heat-seeking equipment to search the area and the frigate HMAS Newcastle was on its way to the area. Earlier, as winds gusting to 80 knots and seas of 35 feet caused havoc to the fleet, several rescues took place. A police helicopter rescued a yachtsman swept overboard when the Victorian yacht Kingurra was rolled over in huge seas 19 nautical miles south of Gabo Island. John Campbell, an American, was in the water for about 40 minutes and was suffering from hypothermia when he was winched to safety by senior constable Barry Barclay, who dropped into large swells to secure Campbell. A total of 37 yachts have been forced to retire from the 630-nautical-mile race, many having been dismasted or suffering injuries to crew. Meanwhile, American maxi Sayonara was narrowly ahead of last year's line winner Brindabella. Although the two were forced to reduce sail and cut speed, they were still well inside the race record for the 630-nautical-mile race of 2 days, 14 hours, seven minutes and 10 seconds set by German maxi Morning Glory in 1996. (djp) ||||| Gale-force winds and high seas battered yachts in the Sydney-to-Hobart race Monday, killing at least two crew members and leaving two yachts missing. The two dead were found on the 40-foot vessel Business Post Naiad, about 100 kilometers (60 miles) off the New South Wales state town of Merimbula, according to the Australian Search and Rescue Coordination Center (AusSAR) in Canberra. One of the missing yachts _ B-52 _ was found mid-morning Monday and was making its way towards Eden on the New South Wales coast, an AusSAR spokesman said. The nine crew on board were thought to be safe and the vessel was sailing unassisted. The spokesman said no word had been received on the fate of the Winston Churchill or the sailor swept from the deck of Sword of Orion on Sunday night. As of mid-morning Monday, he had been in the water for 15 hours. The yacht, which has a crew of 11, was halfway across Bass Strait when it overturned. The Navy sent a Sea King helicopter with night-vision and heat-seeking equipment to search the area and the frigate HMAS Newcastle was on its way to the area. Rescuers in more than 30 search aircraft were similarly unsure of the whereabouts and condition of Solo Globe and its crew. Seven others on board the Business Post Naiad were put aboard a helicopter and flown to Merimbula Hospital, the center said. The center was unable to identify the sailors, say how they died or give details on the injuries sustained by surviving crewmen. There were unconfirmed reports that one of the dead sailors was British. With winds gusting to 80 knots and seas swelling to 10 meters (35 feet), the race continued even as rescue teams searched for the three missing yachts. Race spokesman Peter Campbell said it was not known how long the sailor washed overboard could survive in the water. ``It's supposition,'' Campbell said. ``We had John Quinn survive for 5 1-2 hours in 1993 and that was in the middle of the night in very severe conditions.'' A police helicopter rescued a yachtsman swept overboard when Kingurra rolled over 35 kilometers (22 miles) south of Gabo Island. John Campbell, an American, was in the water for about 40 minutes and had hypothermia when he was taken to safety by Senior Constable Barry Barclay, who dropped into large swells to secure Campbell. Despite the conditions, Peter Campbell said it was unlikely the race would be called off. ``It does say in the instructions that it is the sole responsibility of the skipper of each yacht to decide whether he continues in the race or retires,'' he said. The Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA) alerted all shipping in Bass Strait as high winds and huge seas smash into the remnants of the 115-boat fleet. A total of 37 yachts have been forced out of the 1,160-kilometer (725-mile) race. Many lost their masts or have injured crew. The American maxi Sayonara was narrowly ahead of last year's winner, Brindabella. Although the two were forced to reduce sail and cut speed, they were still well inside the race record of 2 days, 14 hours, 7 minutes, 10 seconds, set by German maxi Morning Glory in 1996. ||||| British sailor Glyn Charles was missing and presumed drowned _ becoming the third fatality in the Sydney-to-Hobart yacht race _ while three others remained missing in rough seas after nightfall Monday. Robin Poke, a spokesman for the Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA), admitted it was unlikely the 33-year-old Charles could survive more than 24 hours at sea after being washed off Sword of Orion on Sunday night. ``He has been out there in 10-meter (30-feet) waves and 80-kilometer (50-mile) winds,'' Poke said Monday. ``He will be a superman if he makes it.'' Charles sailed in four Admiral's Cups and represented Britain in the Star Class at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics where he finished 11th. Two sailors died after gale-force winds and high seas battered the entrants. Four members from the veteran cutter Winston Churchill were winched to safety from a liferaft before dark Monday. Two more crew from the Winston Churchill were plucked from a second liferaft late Monday night, but three others who had been aboard the liferaft were still missing. ``We are unsure about what has happened to the other three, it appears they were washed out of the liferaft,'' a spokesman for the authority said. The two dead, both Australians, were found on the 40-foot vessel Business Post Naiad, about 100 kilometers (60 miles) off the New South Wales state town of Merimbula. The yacht's owner-skipper Bruce Guy and first-time race participant Phil Skeggs were killed. Guy suffered a heart attack during one of the two occasions the yacht rolled while Skeggs drowned when he was unable to free himself from a safety harness. Their bodies were left on board the boat but attempts were being made to recover them as soon as possible, rescue officials said. ``Dad loved sailing,'' said Bruce Guy's son Mark Guy. ``He loved the competition. He also loved a beer and a talk after the race. Dad simply loved life.'' Winston Churchill skipper Richard Winning was one of the four rescued. ``The worst thing of the whole affair was that after we got into the life raft and became separated from the others, the damned thing capsized twice on these great seas at night which is bloody frightening, let me tell you,'' Winning said. ``You have got four of us underneath this little canopy and the next thing is you are upside down. I wouldn't want to have spent another night out there.'' The first recorded death in the race, which started in 1945, was in 1984 when a 72-year-old yachtsman was washed overboard from Yahoo 2 and presumed drowned. In 1989, a 58-year-old man died from head injuries on the yacht Flying Colours after a 45-knot gale off the southern NSW coast snapped the boat's mast. AMSA spokesman David Gray said about 50 sailors had been winched to safety in this year's race. ``There's just many, many injuries on those yachts that got knocked down. A lot of them rolled over _ one rolled over twice,'' Gray said. ``They've got hand, leg, facial injuries, they really got pounded yesterday.'' American John Campbell was rescued by a police helicopter after being swerpt overboard when Kingurra rolled over 35 kilometers (22 miles) south of Gabo Island. Campbell was in the water for about 40 minutes and had hypothermia when he was taken to safety by Senior Constable Barry Barclay, who dropped into large swells to secure Campbell. ``I was definitely worried,'' Campbell told United States television in Seattle. ``There was a point I didn't think I was going to survive.'' ``(Barclay) came down into the water only about 5, 10 feet away from me and I swam to him pretty quickly. I just threw my arms into the harness and they hoisted me up.'' About half of the 115-yacht fleet have been forced out of the 1,160-kilometer (725-mile) race. The American maxi Sayonara was narrowly ahead of last year's winner, Brindabella, and expected to cross the line Tuesday. ||||| Leading maxi yachts Brindabella, Sayonara and Marchioness were locked in a three-way duel down the New South Wales state coast Saturday as the Sydney to Hobart fleet faced deteriorating weather. All three maxis reported in at the same latitude during Saturday night's positioning report when they were about 30 nautical miles south of Jervis Bay on the New South Wales south coast. American maxi Sayonara and Sydney boat Brindabella reported they were about 50 kilometers (30 miles) offshore while Marchioness was a couple of miles further inshore. In fourth spot was Australian maxi Wild Thing. The three leaders covered 105 nautical miles in the first 7 1-2 hours of the race. Propelled for the most part by favorable northerly breezes, the leaders rocketed along at an average speed of 14 knots in the first part of the 630-nautical-mile race to Hobart on the island state of Tasmania. The fast early pace put the leaders well on schedule to eclipse Morning Glory's 1996 race record but that was before the far tougher conditions forecast for overnight Saturday night. Morning Glory, a German maxi, broke the 21-year-old race record two years ago, arriving in Hobart 2 days, 14 hours, seven minutes and 10 seconds after she left Sydney. While the annual event started in friendly and favorable northeasterly breezes, the 115-strong fleet reported cloudier conditions as it moved down the coast. The yachts were bracing for a tough night with thunderstorms predicted ahead of a west-southwesterly change expected to lash the south coast by Sunday morning. Earlier, a crowd of around 300,000 people on the Sydney headlands and water witnessed the start of the annual blue water classic. Sayonara took the initial honors when she beat Brindabella though Sydney heads, but the 1997 line honors winner drew level when the American maxi's spinnaker blew out and had to be replaced. ||||| United States maxi Sayonara looks set to continue the foreign domination of line honors in Australia's famous Sydney to Hobart yacht race, which starts Saturday. Sayonara, raced by American computer billionaire Larry Ellison, has only been beaten once since it was launched in 1995 and is aiming for its second win in the 630 nautical mile bluewater classic. If the 80-footer beats the local boats home into Hobart, it will be third time in four years a foreign yacht has finished first. New Zealand Endeavour trumped the locals in 1992, Sayonara won in 1995 and German's Morning Glory set a race record of two days, 14 hours, seven minutes and 10 seconds the following year. Sayonara's rivals are expected to be last year's line honors winner Brindabella of Sydney and new Australian maxi Wild Thing. The contest for handicap honors appears more open, but there are many who believe Sayonara could become the sixth yacht to do the line honors and handicap double. Ellison believes unforeseen damage is the only major barrier to victory. ``She is a much more modern boat than Brindabella, if we don't break, we should beat Brindabella, we should beat anybody,'' Ellison said. ``If we hold together we should win the race, the question is if this boat comes through and pays us a favor we would just love to knock off the record.'' Ellison says Sayonara can knock half a day off Morning Glory's record given the right conditions. Brindabella's captain and owner George Snow believes a new record is possible. ``I think the front boats will be very close all the way down, which will be a great challenge,'' said Snow. ``We are well set up, we've got the best crew we've ever had and I think the boat is in great shape,'' Snow added. The race is tipped to start Saturday under freshening north easters with the prospect of showers and a thunder storm before a southerly change of around 25-30 knots later in the day. The southerly is expected to ease to 15-20 knots over Sunday before swinging back to the north on Monday with a west to south westerly change expected to move through Tasmania and Bass Strait on Tuesday when the first yacht is anticipated to finish. ||||| Gale-force winds and high seas battered yachts in Australia's Sydney-to-Hobart race Monday, killing at least two crew members and leaving three yachts missing. The two dead were found on the 40-foot (12-meter) vessel Business Post Naiad, about 60 miles (100 kilometers) off the New South Wales town of Merimbula, according to the Australian Search and Rescue Coordination Center in Canberra. Seven others on board were taken to a hospital by helicopter, the center said. The center was unable to identify the sailors, say how they died or give details on the injuries sustained by surviving crewmen. One of the missing yachts _ B-52 _ was found mid-morning Monday and was making its way toward Eden on the New South Wales coast, AusSAR said. The nine crew on board were thought to be safe and the vessel was sailing unassisted. With winds gusting to 90 mph (145 kph) and seas swelling to 35 feet (10 meters), the race continued even as rescue teams searched for the missing vessels. AusSAR said no word had been received on the fate of the Winston Churchill or the sailor swept from the deck of Sword of Orion on Sunday night. As of mid-morning Monday, he had been in the water for 15 hours. The yacht, which has a crew of 11, was halfway across Bass Strait when it overturned. The Navy sent a Sea King helicopter with night-vision and heat-seeking equipment to search the area and the frigate HMAS Newcastle was on its way to the area. The missing boats are veteran cutter Winston Churchill, which sailed in the inaugural 1945 race and Solo Globe Challenger. Despite the conditions, Race spokesman Peter Campbell said it was unlikely the race would be called off. ``It does say in the instructions that it is the sole responsibility of the skipper of each yacht to decide whether he continues in the race or retires,'' he said. A total of 37 yachts have been forced out of the 1,160-kilometer (725-mile) race. Many lost their masts or have injured crew. ||||| Gale-force winds and high seas battered yachts in Australia's Sydney-to-Hobart race Monday, killing at least two crew members and leaving three yachts missing. The two dead were found on the 40-foot (12-meter) vessel Business Post Naiad, about 60 miles (100 kilometers) off the New South Wales town of Merimbula, according to the Australian Search and Rescue Coordination Center in Canberra. Seven others on board were taken to a hospital by helicopter, the center said. The center was unable to identify the sailors, say how they died or give details on the injuries sustained by surviving crewmen. With winds gusting to 90 mph (145 kph) and seas swelling to 35 feet (10 meters), the race continued even as rescue teams searched for the missing vessels. There was no sign of a sailor swept off the Sword of Orion when the 30-foot (9-meter) boat rolled in wild seas Sunday night near Gabo Island, about 280 miles (450 kilometers) east of Melbourne. The yacht, which has a crew of 11, was halfway across Bass Strait when it overturned. Race spokesman Peter Campbell said it was not known how long the sailor could survive in the water. The missing boats are veteran cutter Winston Churchill, which sailed in the inaugural 1945 race; B-52; and Solo Globe Challenger. Despite the conditions, Campbell said it was unlikely the race would be called off. ``It does say in the instructions that it is the sole responsibility of the skipper of each yacht to decide whether he continues in the race or retires,'' he said. A total of 37 yachts have been forced out of the 1,160-kilometer (725-mile) race. Many lost their masts or have injured crew. ||||| A major search was under way in Bass Strait off Australia's southeast coast on Sunday night for an injured crewman swept overboard during the Sydney-to-Hobart yacht race. The Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA) said it had alerted all shipping in the Strait as high winds and huge seas smash into the remnants of the 115-boat fleet. The Australian Navy has sent a Sea King helicopter with night-vision and heat-seeking equipment to search the area and may send the frigate HMAS Newcastle into the area Monday morning morning from Sydney. An AMSA spokesman said they were alerted that the 13-meter Sydney yacht Sword of Orion had been rolled in the heavy seas, with several crewmen being injured, including the unidentified man lost overboard. Another crewman has a broken leg. The yacht, which has a crew of 11, was halfway across Bass Strait heading towards Hobart, capital of the island state of Tasmania and the finish line in the annual race. The ANSA spokesman said search conditions were ``atrocious.'' Earlier, as winds gusting to 80 knots and seas of 35 feet caused havoc to the fleet, several rescues took place. A police helicopter rescued a yachtsman swept overboard when the Victorian yacht Kingurra was rolled over in huge seas 19 nautical miles south of Gabo Island. John Campbell, an American, was in the water for about 40 minutes and was suffering from hypothermia when he was winched to safety by senior constable Barry Barclay, who dropped into 20-foot seas to secure Campbell. The Victorian state police Air Wing used an infra-red night vision system to find Campbell and the Navy Sea King is using the same equipment to try to find the man lost from Sword of Orion. Another helicopter lifted the entire crew of 12 from the dismasted VC Offshore Stand Aside. Several crew members were injured in the dismasting, with one losing several fingers and another suffering head injuries. A total of 37 yachts have been forced to retire from the 630-nautical-mile race, many having been dismasted or suffering injuries to crew. Meanwhile, American maxi Sayonara is narrowly ahead of last year's line winner Brindabella. Although the two were forced to reduce sail and cut speed, they were still well inside the race record for the 630-nautical-mile race of 2 days, 14 hours, seven minutes and 10 seconds set by German maxi Morning Glory in 1996. (djp) ||||| Two sailors died and 15 others were missing after gale-force winds and high seas battered yachts in the Sydney-to-Hobart yacht race Monday. ``There are two that have been confirmed deceased which is tragedy because in the 54-year history of the race I think there's only two people who have died in it before,'' said Australian Maritime Safety Authority spokesman David Gray. The two dead were found on the 40-foot vessel Business Post Naiad, about 100 kilometers (60 miles) off the New South Wales state town of Merimbula. Gray said Business Post Naiad owner-skipper Bruce Guy and first-time race participant Phil Skeggs were killed. Both men were from Launceston in northern Tasmania. Guy suffered a heart attack during one of the two occasions the yacht rolled, Gray said, while Skeggs drowned when he was unable to free himself from a safety harness. Their bodies were left on board the boat but attempts were being made to recover them as soon as possible. Race officials said Guy sailed in two previous Sydney to Hobart yacht races. Grave fears were held for the safety of the nine crew on missing cutter Winston Churchill, while contact has been lost with the five crew aboard Solo Globe. British sailor Glyn Charles was swept off the Sword of Orion on Sunday night when the boat rolled in wild seas. At 12:30 p.m. local time (0130 GMT) Monday Charles had been missing for about 17 hours. Race officials said Charles had sailed in four Admiral's Cups and represented Britain in the Star Class at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics where he finished 11th. Race spokesman Peter Campbell said it was not known how long Gray could survive in the water. ``It's supposition,'' Campbell said. ``We had John Quinn survive for 5 1-2 hours in 1993 and that was in the middle of the night in very severe conditions.'' Gray said about 56 sailors had been winched to safety. ``There's just many many injuries on those yachts that got knocked down. A lot of them rolled over _ one rolled over twice,'' Gray said. ``They've got hand, leg, facial injuries, they really got pounded yesterday.'' One of the missing yachts _ B-52 _ was found mid-morning Monday and was making its way towards Eden on the New South Wales coast. The nine crew on board were thought to be safe and the vessel was sailing unassisted. American John Campbell was rescued by a police helicopter after being swerpt overboard when Kingurra rolled over 35 kilometers (22 miles) south of Gabo Island. Campbell was in the water for about 40 minutes and had hypothermia when he was taken to safety by Senior Constable Barry Barclay, who dropped into large swells to secure Campbell. ``I was definitely worried,'' Campbell told United States television in Seattle. ``There was a point I didn't think I was going to survive.'' ``(Barclay) came down into the water only about 5, 10 feet away from me and I swam to him pretty quicky. I just threw my arms into the harness and they hoisted me up.'' At least 37 yachts have been forced out of the 1,160-kilometer (725-mile) race. The Australian Maritime Safety Authority alerted all shipping in Bass Strait as high winds and huge seas smash into the remnants of the 115-boat fleet. The American maxi Sayonara was narrowly ahead of last year's winner, Brindabella. Although the two were forced to reduce sail and cut speed, they were still well inside the race record of 2 days, 14 hours, 7 minutes, 10 seconds, set by German maxi Morning Glory in 1996. ||||| Two yacht crew members are dead, three yachts remain missing and rescue resources were stretched to the limit Monday as huge seas and gale-force winds continued to batter the Sydney-to-Hobart race fleet. A helicopter rescue team flew to a spot about 50 nautical miles off the far south New South Wales town of Merimbula early Monday morning. Two crew found dead on the stricken 40-foot vessel Business Post Naiad were left behind while seven colleagues were winched aboard the helicopter and flown to Merimbula Hospital, he said. The deaths were confirmed by an Australian Search and Rescue Coordination Center spokesman in Canberra a short time later. Neither organization was able to say how the sailors died or give details on the injuries suffered by surviving crewmen. Three yachts remain missing and there was no sign of a sailor swept off the Sword of Orion when the boat rolled in wild seas on Sunday night. The missing boats are veteran cutter Winston Churchill, which sailed in the inaugural 1945 race, B-52 and Solo Globe Challenger. A major search involving Australia's navy continued Monday morning for those missing. Race spokesman Peter Campbell said it was not known how long the sailor washed overboard could survive in the water. ``It's supposition. We had John Quinn survive for 5 1-2 hours in 1993 and that was in the middle of the night in very severe conditions,'' Campbell said. Despite the horrendous conditions it was unlikely the race would be called off, he said. ``It does say in the instructions that it is the sole responsibility of the skipper of each yacht to decide whether he continues in the race or retires,'' he said. The Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA) has alerted all shipping in Bass Strait as high winds and huge seas smash into the remnants of the 115-boat fleet. An AMSA spokesman said they were alerted that the 30-foot Sydney yacht Sword of Orion had rolled in heavy seas near Gabo Island about 450 kilometers (280 miles) east of Melbourne. Several crewmen were injured including one with a broken leg. The yacht, which has a crew of 11, was halfway across Bass Strait when it overturned. The Navy sent a Sea King helicopter with night-vision and heat-seeking equipment to search the area and the frigate HMAS Newcastle was on its way to the area. Earlier, as winds gusting to 80 knots and seas of 35 feet caused havoc to the fleet, several rescues took place. A police helicopter rescued a yachtsman swept overboard when the Victorian yacht Kingurra was rolled over in huge seas 19 nautical miles south of Gabo Island. John Campbell, an American, was in the water for about 40 minutes and was suffering from hypothermia when he was winched to safety by senior constable Barry Barclay, who dropped into large swells to secure Campbell. A total of 37 yachts have been forced to retire from the 630-nautical-mile race, many having been dismasted or suffering injuries to crew. Meanwhile, American maxi Sayonara was narrowly ahead of last year's line winner Brindabella. Although the two were forced to reduce sail and cut speed, they were still well inside the race record for the 630-nautical-mile race of 2 days, 14 hours, seven minutes and 10 seconds set by German maxi Morning Glory in 1996. (djp)

US-owned Sayonara, favored to win the Sydney-Hobart yacht race, set an early, fast lead. Weather deteriorated. In Bass Strait, boats rolled in heavy seas and crewmen were swept overboard. 37 yachts dropped from the race, with many dismasted and many crewmen injured. The race continued as winds gusted to 90 mph and seas swelled to 35 feet. Yachts Solo Globe and Winston Churchill went missing, as did B-52 which was later found. Business Post Naiad's owner died of a heart attach and a crewman drowned. Sword of Orion's Glyn Charles was presumed drowned after 24 hours overboard. Three other sailors remained missing. Sayonara maintained its lead.

Two yacht crew members are dead, three yachts remain missing and rescue resources were stretched to the limit Monday as huge seas and gale-force winds continued to batter the Sydney-to-Hobart race fleet. A helicopter rescue team flew to a spot about 50 nautical miles off the far south New South Wales town of Merimbula early Monday morning. Two crew found dead on the stricken 40-foot vessel Business Post Naiad were left behind while seven colleagues were winched aboard the helicopter and flown to Merimbula Hospital, he said. The deaths were confirmed by an Australian Search and Rescue Coordination Center spokesman in Canberra a short time later. Neither organization was able to say how the sailors died or give details on the injuries suffered by surviving crewmen. Three yachts remain missing and there was no sign of a sailor swept off the Sword of Orion when the boat rolled in wild seas on Sunday night. The missing boats are veteran cutter Winston Churchill, which sailed in the inaugural 1945 race, B-52 and Solo Globe Challenger. A major search involving Australia's navy continued Monday morning for those missing. Race spokesman Peter Campbell said it was not known how long the sailor washed overboard could survive in the water. ``It's supposition. We had John Quinn survive for 5 1-2 hours in 1993 and that was in the middle of the night in very severe conditions,'' Campbell said. Despite the horrendous conditions it was unlikely the race would be called off, he said. ``It does say in the instructions that it is the sole responsibility of the skipper of each yacht to decide whether he continues in the race or retires,'' he said. The Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA) has alerted all shipping in Bass Strait as high winds and huge seas smash into the remnants of the 115-boat fleet. An AMSA spokesman said they were alerted that the 30-foot Sydney yacht Sword of Orion had rolled in heavy seas near Gabo Island about 450 kilometers (280 miles) east of Melbourne. Several crewmen were injured including one with a broken leg. The yacht, which has a crew of 11, was halfway across Bass Strait when it overturned. The Navy sent a Sea King helicopter with night-vision and heat-seeking equipment to search the area and the frigate HMAS Newcastle was on its way to the area. Earlier, as winds gusting to 80 knots and seas of 35 feet caused havoc to the fleet, several rescues took place. A police helicopter rescued a yachtsman swept overboard when the Victorian yacht Kingurra was rolled over in huge seas 19 nautical miles south of Gabo Island. John Campbell, an American, was in the water for about 40 minutes and was suffering from hypothermia when he was winched to safety by senior constable Barry Barclay, who dropped into large swells to secure Campbell. A total of 37 yachts have been forced to retire from the 630-nautical-mile race, many having been dismasted or suffering injuries to crew. Meanwhile, American maxi Sayonara was narrowly ahead of last year's line winner Brindabella. Although the two were forced to reduce sail and cut speed, they were still well inside the race record for the 630-nautical-mile race of 2 days, 14 hours, seven minutes and 10 seconds set by German maxi Morning Glory in 1996. (djp) ||||| Gale-force winds and high seas battered yachts in the Sydney-to-Hobart race Monday, killing at least two crew members and leaving two yachts missing. The two dead were found on the 40-foot vessel Business Post Naiad, about 100 kilometers (60 miles) off the New South Wales state town of Merimbula, according to the Australian Search and Rescue Coordination Center (AusSAR) in Canberra. One of the missing yachts _ B-52 _ was found mid-morning Monday and was making its way towards Eden on the New South Wales coast, an AusSAR spokesman said. The nine crew on board were thought to be safe and the vessel was sailing unassisted. The spokesman said no word had been received on the fate of the Winston Churchill or the sailor swept from the deck of Sword of Orion on Sunday night. As of mid-morning Monday, he had been in the water for 15 hours. The yacht, which has a crew of 11, was halfway across Bass Strait when it overturned. The Navy sent a Sea King helicopter with night-vision and heat-seeking equipment to search the area and the frigate HMAS Newcastle was on its way to the area. Rescuers in more than 30 search aircraft were similarly unsure of the whereabouts and condition of Solo Globe and its crew. Seven others on board the Business Post Naiad were put aboard a helicopter and flown to Merimbula Hospital, the center said. The center was unable to identify the sailors, say how they died or give details on the injuries sustained by surviving crewmen. There were unconfirmed reports that one of the dead sailors was British. With winds gusting to 80 knots and seas swelling to 10 meters (35 feet), the race continued even as rescue teams searched for the three missing yachts. Race spokesman Peter Campbell said it was not known how long the sailor washed overboard could survive in the water. ``It's supposition,'' Campbell said. ``We had John Quinn survive for 5 1-2 hours in 1993 and that was in the middle of the night in very severe conditions.'' A police helicopter rescued a yachtsman swept overboard when Kingurra rolled over 35 kilometers (22 miles) south of Gabo Island. John Campbell, an American, was in the water for about 40 minutes and had hypothermia when he was taken to safety by Senior Constable Barry Barclay, who dropped into large swells to secure Campbell. Despite the conditions, Peter Campbell said it was unlikely the race would be called off. ``It does say in the instructions that it is the sole responsibility of the skipper of each yacht to decide whether he continues in the race or retires,'' he said. The Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA) alerted all shipping in Bass Strait as high winds and huge seas smash into the remnants of the 115-boat fleet. A total of 37 yachts have been forced out of the 1,160-kilometer (725-mile) race. Many lost their masts or have injured crew. The American maxi Sayonara was narrowly ahead of last year's winner, Brindabella. Although the two were forced to reduce sail and cut speed, they were still well inside the race record of 2 days, 14 hours, 7 minutes, 10 seconds, set by German maxi Morning Glory in 1996. ||||| British sailor Glyn Charles was missing and presumed drowned _ becoming the third fatality in the Sydney-to-Hobart yacht race _ while three others remained missing in rough seas after nightfall Monday. Robin Poke, a spokesman for the Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA), admitted it was unlikely the 33-year-old Charles could survive more than 24 hours at sea after being washed off Sword of Orion on Sunday night. ``He has been out there in 10-meter (30-feet) waves and 80-kilometer (50-mile) winds,'' Poke said Monday. ``He will be a superman if he makes it.'' Charles sailed in four Admiral's Cups and represented Britain in the Star Class at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics where he finished 11th. Two sailors died after gale-force winds and high seas battered the entrants. Four members from the veteran cutter Winston Churchill were winched to safety from a liferaft before dark Monday. Two more crew from the Winston Churchill were plucked from a second liferaft late Monday night, but three others who had been aboard the liferaft were still missing. ``We are unsure about what has happened to the other three, it appears they were washed out of the liferaft,'' a spokesman for the authority said. The two dead, both Australians, were found on the 40-foot vessel Business Post Naiad, about 100 kilometers (60 miles) off the New South Wales state town of Merimbula. The yacht's owner-skipper Bruce Guy and first-time race participant Phil Skeggs were killed. Guy suffered a heart attack during one of the two occasions the yacht rolled while Skeggs drowned when he was unable to free himself from a safety harness. Their bodies were left on board the boat but attempts were being made to recover them as soon as possible, rescue officials said. ``Dad loved sailing,'' said Bruce Guy's son Mark Guy. ``He loved the competition. He also loved a beer and a talk after the race. Dad simply loved life.'' Winston Churchill skipper Richard Winning was one of the four rescued. ``The worst thing of the whole affair was that after we got into the life raft and became separated from the others, the damned thing capsized twice on these great seas at night which is bloody frightening, let me tell you,'' Winning said. ``You have got four of us underneath this little canopy and the next thing is you are upside down. I wouldn't want to have spent another night out there.'' The first recorded death in the race, which started in 1945, was in 1984 when a 72-year-old yachtsman was washed overboard from Yahoo 2 and presumed drowned. In 1989, a 58-year-old man died from head injuries on the yacht Flying Colours after a 45-knot gale off the southern NSW coast snapped the boat's mast. AMSA spokesman David Gray said about 50 sailors had been winched to safety in this year's race. ``There's just many, many injuries on those yachts that got knocked down. A lot of them rolled over _ one rolled over twice,'' Gray said. ``They've got hand, leg, facial injuries, they really got pounded yesterday.'' American John Campbell was rescued by a police helicopter after being swerpt overboard when Kingurra rolled over 35 kilometers (22 miles) south of Gabo Island. Campbell was in the water for about 40 minutes and had hypothermia when he was taken to safety by Senior Constable Barry Barclay, who dropped into large swells to secure Campbell. ``I was definitely worried,'' Campbell told United States television in Seattle. ``There was a point I didn't think I was going to survive.'' ``(Barclay) came down into the water only about 5, 10 feet away from me and I swam to him pretty quickly. I just threw my arms into the harness and they hoisted me up.'' About half of the 115-yacht fleet have been forced out of the 1,160-kilometer (725-mile) race. The American maxi Sayonara was narrowly ahead of last year's winner, Brindabella, and expected to cross the line Tuesday. ||||| Leading maxi yachts Brindabella, Sayonara and Marchioness were locked in a three-way duel down the New South Wales state coast Saturday as the Sydney to Hobart fleet faced deteriorating weather. All three maxis reported in at the same latitude during Saturday night's positioning report when they were about 30 nautical miles south of Jervis Bay on the New South Wales south coast. American maxi Sayonara and Sydney boat Brindabella reported they were about 50 kilometers (30 miles) offshore while Marchioness was a couple of miles further inshore. In fourth spot was Australian maxi Wild Thing. The three leaders covered 105 nautical miles in the first 7 1-2 hours of the race. Propelled for the most part by favorable northerly breezes, the leaders rocketed along at an average speed of 14 knots in the first part of the 630-nautical-mile race to Hobart on the island state of Tasmania. The fast early pace put the leaders well on schedule to eclipse Morning Glory's 1996 race record but that was before the far tougher conditions forecast for overnight Saturday night. Morning Glory, a German maxi, broke the 21-year-old race record two years ago, arriving in Hobart 2 days, 14 hours, seven minutes and 10 seconds after she left Sydney. While the annual event started in friendly and favorable northeasterly breezes, the 115-strong fleet reported cloudier conditions as it moved down the coast. The yachts were bracing for a tough night with thunderstorms predicted ahead of a west-southwesterly change expected to lash the south coast by Sunday morning. Earlier, a crowd of around 300,000 people on the Sydney headlands and water witnessed the start of the annual blue water classic. Sayonara took the initial honors when she beat Brindabella though Sydney heads, but the 1997 line honors winner drew level when the American maxi's spinnaker blew out and had to be replaced. ||||| United States maxi Sayonara looks set to continue the foreign domination of line honors in Australia's famous Sydney to Hobart yacht race, which starts Saturday. Sayonara, raced by American computer billionaire Larry Ellison, has only been beaten once since it was launched in 1995 and is aiming for its second win in the 630 nautical mile bluewater classic. If the 80-footer beats the local boats home into Hobart, it will be third time in four years a foreign yacht has finished first. New Zealand Endeavour trumped the locals in 1992, Sayonara won in 1995 and German's Morning Glory set a race record of two days, 14 hours, seven minutes and 10 seconds the following year. Sayonara's rivals are expected to be last year's line honors winner Brindabella of Sydney and new Australian maxi Wild Thing. The contest for handicap honors appears more open, but there are many who believe Sayonara could become the sixth yacht to do the line honors and handicap double. Ellison believes unforeseen damage is the only major barrier to victory. ``She is a much more modern boat than Brindabella, if we don't break, we should beat Brindabella, we should beat anybody,'' Ellison said. ``If we hold together we should win the race, the question is if this boat comes through and pays us a favor we would just love to knock off the record.'' Ellison says Sayonara can knock half a day off Morning Glory's record given the right conditions. Brindabella's captain and owner George Snow believes a new record is possible. ``I think the front boats will be very close all the way down, which will be a great challenge,'' said Snow. ``We are well set up, we've got the best crew we've ever had and I think the boat is in great shape,'' Snow added. The race is tipped to start Saturday under freshening north easters with the prospect of showers and a thunder storm before a southerly change of around 25-30 knots later in the day. The southerly is expected to ease to 15-20 knots over Sunday before swinging back to the north on Monday with a west to south westerly change expected to move through Tasmania and Bass Strait on Tuesday when the first yacht is anticipated to finish. ||||| Gale-force winds and high seas battered yachts in Australia's Sydney-to-Hobart race Monday, killing at least two crew members and leaving three yachts missing. The two dead were found on the 40-foot (12-meter) vessel Business Post Naiad, about 60 miles (100 kilometers) off the New South Wales town of Merimbula, according to the Australian Search and Rescue Coordination Center in Canberra. Seven others on board were taken to a hospital by helicopter, the center said. The center was unable to identify the sailors, say how they died or give details on the injuries sustained by surviving crewmen. One of the missing yachts _ B-52 _ was found mid-morning Monday and was making its way toward Eden on the New South Wales coast, AusSAR said. The nine crew on board were thought to be safe and the vessel was sailing unassisted. With winds gusting to 90 mph (145 kph) and seas swelling to 35 feet (10 meters), the race continued even as rescue teams searched for the missing vessels. AusSAR said no word had been received on the fate of the Winston Churchill or the sailor swept from the deck of Sword of Orion on Sunday night. As of mid-morning Monday, he had been in the water for 15 hours. The yacht, which has a crew of 11, was halfway across Bass Strait when it overturned. The Navy sent a Sea King helicopter with night-vision and heat-seeking equipment to search the area and the frigate HMAS Newcastle was on its way to the area. The missing boats are veteran cutter Winston Churchill, which sailed in the inaugural 1945 race and Solo Globe Challenger. Despite the conditions, Race spokesman Peter Campbell said it was unlikely the race would be called off. ``It does say in the instructions that it is the sole responsibility of the skipper of each yacht to decide whether he continues in the race or retires,'' he said. A total of 37 yachts have been forced out of the 1,160-kilometer (725-mile) race. Many lost their masts or have injured crew. ||||| Gale-force winds and high seas battered yachts in Australia's Sydney-to-Hobart race Monday, killing at least two crew members and leaving three yachts missing. The two dead were found on the 40-foot (12-meter) vessel Business Post Naiad, about 60 miles (100 kilometers) off the New South Wales town of Merimbula, according to the Australian Search and Rescue Coordination Center in Canberra. Seven others on board were taken to a hospital by helicopter, the center said. The center was unable to identify the sailors, say how they died or give details on the injuries sustained by surviving crewmen. With winds gusting to 90 mph (145 kph) and seas swelling to 35 feet (10 meters), the race continued even as rescue teams searched for the missing vessels. There was no sign of a sailor swept off the Sword of Orion when the 30-foot (9-meter) boat rolled in wild seas Sunday night near Gabo Island, about 280 miles (450 kilometers) east of Melbourne. The yacht, which has a crew of 11, was halfway across Bass Strait when it overturned. Race spokesman Peter Campbell said it was not known how long the sailor could survive in the water. The missing boats are veteran cutter Winston Churchill, which sailed in the inaugural 1945 race; B-52; and Solo Globe Challenger. Despite the conditions, Campbell said it was unlikely the race would be called off. ``It does say in the instructions that it is the sole responsibility of the skipper of each yacht to decide whether he continues in the race or retires,'' he said. A total of 37 yachts have been forced out of the 1,160-kilometer (725-mile) race. Many lost their masts or have injured crew. ||||| A major search was under way in Bass Strait off Australia's southeast coast on Sunday night for an injured crewman swept overboard during the Sydney-to-Hobart yacht race. The Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA) said it had alerted all shipping in the Strait as high winds and huge seas smash into the remnants of the 115-boat fleet. The Australian Navy has sent a Sea King helicopter with night-vision and heat-seeking equipment to search the area and may send the frigate HMAS Newcastle into the area Monday morning morning from Sydney. An AMSA spokesman said they were alerted that the 13-meter Sydney yacht Sword of Orion had been rolled in the heavy seas, with several crewmen being injured, including the unidentified man lost overboard. Another crewman has a broken leg. The yacht, which has a crew of 11, was halfway across Bass Strait heading towards Hobart, capital of the island state of Tasmania and the finish line in the annual race. The ANSA spokesman said search conditions were ``atrocious.'' Earlier, as winds gusting to 80 knots and seas of 35 feet caused havoc to the fleet, several rescues took place. A police helicopter rescued a yachtsman swept overboard when the Victorian yacht Kingurra was rolled over in huge seas 19 nautical miles south of Gabo Island. John Campbell, an American, was in the water for about 40 minutes and was suffering from hypothermia when he was winched to safety by senior constable Barry Barclay, who dropped into 20-foot seas to secure Campbell. The Victorian state police Air Wing used an infra-red night vision system to find Campbell and the Navy Sea King is using the same equipment to try to find the man lost from Sword of Orion. Another helicopter lifted the entire crew of 12 from the dismasted VC Offshore Stand Aside. Several crew members were injured in the dismasting, with one losing several fingers and another suffering head injuries. A total of 37 yachts have been forced to retire from the 630-nautical-mile race, many having been dismasted or suffering injuries to crew. Meanwhile, American maxi Sayonara is narrowly ahead of last year's line winner Brindabella. Although the two were forced to reduce sail and cut speed, they were still well inside the race record for the 630-nautical-mile race of 2 days, 14 hours, seven minutes and 10 seconds set by German maxi Morning Glory in 1996. (djp) ||||| Two sailors died and 15 others were missing after gale-force winds and high seas battered yachts in the Sydney-to-Hobart yacht race Monday. ``There are two that have been confirmed deceased which is tragedy because in the 54-year history of the race I think there's only two people who have died in it before,'' said Australian Maritime Safety Authority spokesman David Gray. The two dead were found on the 40-foot vessel Business Post Naiad, about 100 kilometers (60 miles) off the New South Wales state town of Merimbula. Gray said Business Post Naiad owner-skipper Bruce Guy and first-time race participant Phil Skeggs were killed. Both men were from Launceston in northern Tasmania. Guy suffered a heart attack during one of the two occasions the yacht rolled, Gray said, while Skeggs drowned when he was unable to free himself from a safety harness. Their bodies were left on board the boat but attempts were being made to recover them as soon as possible. Race officials said Guy sailed in two previous Sydney to Hobart yacht races. Grave fears were held for the safety of the nine crew on missing cutter Winston Churchill, while contact has been lost with the five crew aboard Solo Globe. British sailor Glyn Charles was swept off the Sword of Orion on Sunday night when the boat rolled in wild seas. At 12:30 p.m. local time (0130 GMT) Monday Charles had been missing for about 17 hours. Race officials said Charles had sailed in four Admiral's Cups and represented Britain in the Star Class at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics where he finished 11th. Race spokesman Peter Campbell said it was not known how long Gray could survive in the water. ``It's supposition,'' Campbell said. ``We had John Quinn survive for 5 1-2 hours in 1993 and that was in the middle of the night in very severe conditions.'' Gray said about 56 sailors had been winched to safety. ``There's just many many injuries on those yachts that got knocked down. A lot of them rolled over _ one rolled over twice,'' Gray said. ``They've got hand, leg, facial injuries, they really got pounded yesterday.'' One of the missing yachts _ B-52 _ was found mid-morning Monday and was making its way towards Eden on the New South Wales coast. The nine crew on board were thought to be safe and the vessel was sailing unassisted. American John Campbell was rescued by a police helicopter after being swerpt overboard when Kingurra rolled over 35 kilometers (22 miles) south of Gabo Island. Campbell was in the water for about 40 minutes and had hypothermia when he was taken to safety by Senior Constable Barry Barclay, who dropped into large swells to secure Campbell. ``I was definitely worried,'' Campbell told United States television in Seattle. ``There was a point I didn't think I was going to survive.'' ``(Barclay) came down into the water only about 5, 10 feet away from me and I swam to him pretty quicky. I just threw my arms into the harness and they hoisted me up.'' At least 37 yachts have been forced out of the 1,160-kilometer (725-mile) race. The Australian Maritime Safety Authority alerted all shipping in Bass Strait as high winds and huge seas smash into the remnants of the 115-boat fleet. The American maxi Sayonara was narrowly ahead of last year's winner, Brindabella. Although the two were forced to reduce sail and cut speed, they were still well inside the race record of 2 days, 14 hours, 7 minutes, 10 seconds, set by German maxi Morning Glory in 1996. ||||| Two yacht crew members are dead, three yachts remain missing and rescue resources were stretched to the limit Monday as huge seas and gale-force winds continued to batter the Sydney-to-Hobart race fleet. A helicopter rescue team flew to a spot about 50 nautical miles off the far south New South Wales town of Merimbula early Monday morning. Two crew found dead on the stricken 40-foot vessel Business Post Naiad were left behind while seven colleagues were winched aboard the helicopter and flown to Merimbula Hospital, he said. The deaths were confirmed by an Australian Search and Rescue Coordination Center spokesman in Canberra a short time later. Neither organization was able to say how the sailors died or give details on the injuries suffered by surviving crewmen. Three yachts remain missing and there was no sign of a sailor swept off the Sword of Orion when the boat rolled in wild seas on Sunday night. The missing boats are veteran cutter Winston Churchill, which sailed in the inaugural 1945 race, B-52 and Solo Globe Challenger. A major search involving Australia's navy continued Monday morning for those missing. Race spokesman Peter Campbell said it was not known how long the sailor washed overboard could survive in the water. ``It's supposition. We had John Quinn survive for 5 1-2 hours in 1993 and that was in the middle of the night in very severe conditions,'' Campbell said. Despite the horrendous conditions it was unlikely the race would be called off, he said. ``It does say in the instructions that it is the sole responsibility of the skipper of each yacht to decide whether he continues in the race or retires,'' he said. The Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA) has alerted all shipping in Bass Strait as high winds and huge seas smash into the remnants of the 115-boat fleet. An AMSA spokesman said they were alerted that the 30-foot Sydney yacht Sword of Orion had rolled in heavy seas near Gabo Island about 450 kilometers (280 miles) east of Melbourne. Several crewmen were injured including one with a broken leg. The yacht, which has a crew of 11, was halfway across Bass Strait when it overturned. The Navy sent a Sea King helicopter with night-vision and heat-seeking equipment to search the area and the frigate HMAS Newcastle was on its way to the area. Earlier, as winds gusting to 80 knots and seas of 35 feet caused havoc to the fleet, several rescues took place. A police helicopter rescued a yachtsman swept overboard when the Victorian yacht Kingurra was rolled over in huge seas 19 nautical miles south of Gabo Island. John Campbell, an American, was in the water for about 40 minutes and was suffering from hypothermia when he was winched to safety by senior constable Barry Barclay, who dropped into large swells to secure Campbell. A total of 37 yachts have been forced to retire from the 630-nautical-mile race, many having been dismasted or suffering injuries to crew. Meanwhile, American maxi Sayonara was narrowly ahead of last year's line winner Brindabella. Although the two were forced to reduce sail and cut speed, they were still well inside the race record for the 630-nautical-mile race of 2 days, 14 hours, seven minutes and 10 seconds set by German maxi Morning Glory in 1996. (djp)

Before this year, only two deaths had occurred in the 54-year history of the Sydney-to-Hobart race. Since the start of this year's classic, Bruce Guy and Phil Skeggs from The Business Post Naiad have died, three from the Winston Churchill are missing, and Glyn Charles is presumed drowned after being washed overboard the Sword of Orion. Huge seas and gale-force winds have battered the 115-boat fleet, forcing at least 37 yachts to retire. Numerous crewmen have been rescued, including an American, John Campbell, who was swept overboard the Kingurra. The race, nevertheless, continued. American maxi Sayonara narrowly leads last year's winner, Brindabella.

The Yugoslav war crimes tribunal Monday acquitted a Muslim commander of war crimes against Bosnian Serb prisoners in 1992, but convicted three underlings in the first U.N. case dealing with anti-Serb atrocities. The Yugoslav war crimes tribunal cleared Zejnil Delalic, a Muslim, of responsibility for war crimes committed against Serb captives at a Bosnian government-run prison camp under his command. Prosecutor Grant Niemann said he would appeal Delalic's acquittal, and asked judges to keep him in custody pending the outcome of the appeal. The U.N. court convicted camp commander Zdravko Mucic, a Croat, of 11 war crimes and grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions because he oversaw guards who murdered nine Serbs and tortured six. Mucic smiled as he heard his sentence of seven years in prison read out. His conviction was the first by an international court on the basis of so-called ``command responsibility'' since post-World War II tribunals convicted Nazi and Japanese superiors for the crimes of their subordinates. ``Mr. Mucic was clearly derelict in his duty and allowed those under his authority to commit the most heinous of offenses, without taking any disciplinary action,'' said presiding Judge Adolphus Karibi-Whyte. Hazim Delic, a Muslim who served as Mucic's deputy, was found guilty of two murders and of raping two women as well as torturing other inmates. He was sentenced to 20 years. Esad Landzo, a Muslim guard, was convicted of three murders and the torture of at least three other inmates. He was jailed for 15 years. All four defendants had faced up to life imprisonment, the maximum punishment at the tribunal, which has no death penalty. Monday's verdicts ended a marathon 20-month trial that focused on the brutal mistreatment of the Bosnian Serbs, themselves blamed for the vast majority of the conflict's war crimes. During the trial _ the tribunal's longest to date involving 122 witnesses _ survivors described the campaign of terror unleashed against Serbs in the area. Inmates at the Celebici prison camp were beaten to death by guards wielding baseball bats, wooden planks and rifle butts, according to testimony. Others were set on fire, raped and forced to commit sexual acts with members of their own family. The 49-page indictment detailing atrocities at Celebici asserts that at least 14 prisoners were killed in 1992. One prisoner was beaten to death and had a Muslim party badge nailed to his head, a witness claimed. Yet a few witnesses also praised Delalic and Mucic for humanitarian gestures, such as getting food and clothing to some prisoners and releasing others. The tribunal, set up by the Security Council in 1993, has convicted only one other person following a trial _ Bosnian Serb Dusan Tadic, who was sentenced in May 1997 to 20 years for killing and torturing Muslims in 1992. Two other men have confessed to killing Muslims, handing the tribunal two more convictions while sparing it the need for trials. ||||| Hundreds of people gathered at Sarajevo airport on Saturday to welcome Zejnil Delalic, who was cleared of war crimes charges earlier this week after spending 980 days in jail of the international war crimes tribunal in The Hague. Delalic, a Muslim, was cleared of charges of war crimes committed in 1992 against Serb prisoners in the Muslim-led Bosnian Army prison camp Celebici near his hometown of Konjic. Three others involved in the same case were convicted and will serve prison terms at The Hague for crimes committed as camp guards. Delalic held up his verdict as he arrived and was first greeted by his family and then by many friends from Konjic, 50 kilometers (31 miles) south of Sarajevo, where a huge welcome party for him was planned. ``This is the book of 500 pages in which it says 12 times Delalic is not guilty,'' he told reporters. ``More important is that acts commited by some weren't ordered by officers of our Bosnian Army. These acts were qualified as acts of individuals that happened on a daily basis,'' he said. Edina Residovic, Delalic's lawyer, said she will seek compensation for wrongful imprisonment on behalf of Delalic, who spent almost three years in confinement. ||||| American and allied forces in Bosnia on Wednesday arrested a Bosnian Serb general who was charged with genocide by the international war crimes tribunal in a recent secret indictment. Maj. Gen. Radislav Krstic, arrested without incident in the American sector in northeast Bosnia, is the highest-ranking official to be seized so far, and the first serving military officer. He is accused of directing the attack on Srebrenica in 1995, one of the most chilling and influential events of the Bosnian war, when some 7,000 Bosnian Muslim men were marched off, presumably to their deaths, as U.N. peacekeepers stood by. The indictment of Krstic accuses him of having committed genocide during and after the fall of Srebrenica between July 11 and Nov. 1, 1995. He is indicted both in connection with ``direct personal involvement in the commission of these crimes'' as well as his command responsibility. He is also accused of murder and other crimes against humanity. Krstic was a colonel in 1995, and the deputy commander of the Drina battalion, but was promoted to general within days of the fall of Srebrenica. He is considered a close associate of the Bosnian Serb commander, Gen. Ratko Mladic, and the former Bosnian Serb leader, Radovan Karadzic, both of whom are wanted by the tribunal. And he is considered capable, if he is willing to testify, of implicating Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, who has not been indicted. Louise Arbour, chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, called Krstic ``a very significant military leader'' and said she was delighted with the arrest. The general was only indicted on Oct. 30, tribunal officials said, but the indictment was kept secret so there would be a better chance of a successful arrest. NATO Secretary-General Javier Solana warned that other war crimes suspects still at large ``should realize that they, too, will be brought to justice.'' James Rubin, the State Department spokesman, said that the arrest ``serves as a standing warning to those indicted for war crimes, who remain at large, that they will be held individually accountable for their actions.'' The Bosnian Serbs reacted angrily to the arrest, with the hardline Bosnian Serb president, Nikola Poplasen, saying that his government would now reduce contacts with NATO-led peacekeeping forces ``to the necessary minimum.'' Poplasen, who defeated a more moderate candidate backed by Washington in September elections, said the arrest of Krstic had ``embittered and upset'' the Bosnian Serbs and would harm the implementation of the Dayton agreement that ended the 1992-1995 Bosnian war. He said he would protest the arrest, and his remarks were later endorsed by parliament in a majority vote. A senior official of a NATO country called the arrest ``very good news'' and said it was ``a warning to Milosevic himself'' and others who have not been publicly indicted that ``the murders committed have not been forgotten.'' A Pentagon official said the arrest, the most important made in the American sector, ``was a sign that this is a continuing process.'' NATO-led peacekeeping troops have now arrested nine people wanted for war crimes in the former Yugoslavia, four of whom were the subject of sealed indictments. There have been numerous calls for the arrest of Mladic and Karadzic, the two most infamous men indicted, but they normally are accompanied by armed guards. NATO forces have never tried to arrest them, apparently fearing casualties and an angry public reaction from Bosnian Serbs. Officials say that both Mladic and Karadzic are believed to have left the Bosnian Serb Republic to live in Serbia, which is part of Yugoslavia and controlled by Milosvevic. Krstic, who was transferred to The Hague for trial, is the 35th suspect who has been taken there and the 26th person currently being held there. He is the commander of the Bosnian Serb 5th Corps and was arrested while traveling on the road to Bijelina. At the outset of the war in 1992, he was an officer of the Yugoslav Army, and like all senior Bosnian Serb officers, was transferred to the new Bosnian Serb force. In 1994, he lost a leg in a mine explosion. One Bosnian Serb official said in a telephone interview that, at the time, Krstic had responsibility for ``anti-terrorist units'' who were given some of the most difficult tasks. ``Srebrenica is a dark part of our history and people don't talk about it,'' the official said. ``But everyone believes it was the anti-terrorist units that were sent to do the killing.'' In Banja Luka on Wednesday, some members of the Bosnian Serb parliament protested the arrest, saying that Krstic was simply doing his job as a soldier. Ivo Daalder, a former Bosnia expert on the National Security Council, now with the Brookings Institution, said the arrest showed a new and promising coordination between the Tribunal and NATO troops, given the rapid arrest after the Oct. 30 indictment. He also said that the arrest of a serving officer for an important war crime would send an important message. Srebrenica was a key town in the Bosnian conflict. It was where the United Nations first made a stand in March 1993, when the commander of U.N. troops personally led a convoy of trucks to the surrounded town and promised the Bosnian Muslims there that Srebrenica would be a ``safe area'' and the United Nations would protect them. But in July 1995, the United Nations did not protect Srebrenica with air strikes, and peacekeeping troops watched as the Serbs marched in, separated Muslim men and women and marched the men off. ``Srebrenica signaled the massive failure of the West,'' said Daalder. ``It galvanized the United States and NATO to act.'' At a London conference later in July, NATO agreed to defend Gorazde and remaining safe areas with massive air strikes if necessary. After a mortar attack on the Sarajevo marketplace in late August, NATO air strikes began, signaling the last chapter of the war and leading to the American-brokered Dayton Accords. In Sarajevo Wednesday, an aide to the Bosnian Muslim member of the collective presidency, Alija Izetbegovic, praised the arrest. ``We welcome this action, hoping very soon that the time will come for Karadzic and Mladic to be brought to justice,'' said the aide, Mirza Jajric. The arrest took place as foreign ministers of the member countries of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe met in Oslo, Norway, to discuss the international effort to keep the peace in Kosovo, the southern Serbian province. Under a deal pressed on Milosevic in October, the organization will provide up to 2,000 civilians to monitor a cease-fire in Kosovo and to promote a political settlement there to give Kosovo enhanced autonomy. Macedonia's government Wednesday formally approved the basing of 1,700 NATO troops near its border with Kosovo. Those troops will be prepared to rush to the aid of the civilian monitors if necessary. ||||| The president of the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal harshly criticized Belgrade authorities anew for refusing to let U.N. investigators probe alleged atrocities in Kosovo. In a letter to the United Nations Security Council released Wednesday by the tribunal, presiding judge Gabrielle Kirk McDonald of the United States said the failure of Yugoslav officials to grant visas to investigators is ``an affront.'' ``The intentional and continuous refusal by the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia to comply with its clear and incontrovertible legal obligations to the tribunal is an affront to the Security Council and all law-abiding nations,'' she said. The Texas judge fired off the letter last Friday following the refusal of Belgrade authorities to allow tribunal Chief Prosecutor Louise Arbour of Canada and a team of investigators to visit Kosovo. McDonald asked the Security Council to impose ``measures which are sufficiently compelling to bring the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia into the fold of law-abiding nations.'' Hundreds of people, mostly ethnic Albanians, have been killed, and as many as 300,000 driven from their homes since February, when Serb forces began a crackdown on ethnic Albanian separatists in Kosovo. The tribunal wants to look into allegations of war crimes on both sides of the conflict. ||||| Yugoslavia must cooperate with the U.N. war crimes tribunal investigating alleged atrocities during the wars in Croatia and Bosnia, international legal experts meeting in Belgrade said Sunday. The meeting was the first international debate in Yugoslavia over the U.N. tribunal's work and the government's cooperation with it. The tribunal, established by the U.N. Security Council in 1993, sits in The Hague, Netherlands. Despite objections to the tribunal, Yugoslav authorities allowed the two-day discussions _ organized by the Belgrade-based, non-governmental Humanitarian Law Center _ to take place without any problems. State-run media largely ignored the event. Though there were some disagreements, participants in the discussions generally agreed that crimes against humanity cannot go unpunished. ``The indicted who are not in The Hague are at-large because of the refusal by Croatian and Yugoslav authorities to arrest and extradite them,'' said Mark Ellis, a lawyer and representative of the American Bar Association. Present-day Yugoslavia, consisting of Serbia and Montenegro, cooperates with the tribunal in cases where Serbs were the victims in Bosnia and Croatia, the two former republics that fought wars for their secession. But Yugoslavia has questioned the tribunal's jurisdiction and refuses to indict three army officers wanted for alleged war crimes in Croatia. Last week, it also refused to allow U.N. investigators to probe alleged atrocities in Serbia's southern Kosovo province where ethnic Albanian separatists are fighting government forces. ``The tribunal was founded to satanize Serbs,'' said Miodrag Mitic, a former legal adviser in Yugoslavia's foreign ministry. He said the U.N. court was influenced by powerful countries that dominate the international body. On Saturday, David Scheffer, the U.S. State Department's ambassador at-large for war crimes, demanded Yugoslavia's full cooperation. ||||| To his Muslim targets, Bosnian Serb Goran Jelisic was ``the face of genocide'' who once bragged that ``he had to kill 20 or 30 Muslims before his morning coffee.'' Opening a genocide trial Monday at the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal, U.N. prosecutor Terree Bowers said the 30-year-old mechanic used the nickname Adolf ``with a perverse pride in the genocidal symbolism it represented.'' Jelisic pleaded guilty in October to murdering 12 Muslims and Croats in and around the Serb-run Luka camp set up in Brcko, northern Bosnia, in May 1992. By trying him for genocide, prosecutors will be able to call evidence about the background of Jelisic's murders, including the involvement of more senior Serbs. The trial also will give survivors of his killing spree chance to tell their story in court. Bowers told a three-judge tribunal panel that Jelisic admitted in interviews with investigators to far more killings than the dozen to which he has pleaded guilty. Jelisic will be convicted of those murders and sentenced at the end of his trial, which is expected to last well into 1999. He faces a maximum sentence of life imprisonment. ``We will never be able to fix the exact number'' of victims, Bowers said. ``But if we are to believe even a small percentage of the totals which Goran Jelisic claimed, then his victims certainly number well over 100.'' As the trial began, judges were read excerpts of a psychological report which stated that Jelisic was mentally fit to stand trial but suffered a ``borderline personality disorder.'' Wearing a striped sweater and black jeans, Jelisic brought a laptop computer into court and took notes. When he wasn't writing, Jelisic sat slightly slumped in his chair, his head still, looking impassively around the courtroom. Jelisic's campaign of murder stands out _ even at a tribunal set up to deal exclusively with atrocities _ for its cold-bloodedness. ``Once Goran Jelisic even declined assistance from a guard, noting that he was still in `good form' even though he had killed over 60 people,'' Bowers told judges, citing statements made by witnesses due to testify later in the trial. ``To victims in Brcko, the face of genocide was the face of Goran Jelisic,'' he said. Bowers told the judges that Jelisic, who held no official rank, was released by Bosnian Serb authorities from jail, where he was serving three years for fraud, and sent to Brcko to murder Muslims. He told investigators that on his arrival in the town, which was of strategic importance to Bosnian Serbs, he was given a list of Muslim targets and ordered to kill as many as possible. Jelisic, Bowers said, seemed to relish the task. ``Witness testimony will also establish that Goran Jelisic was not a reluctant tool of the genocide who was being compelled by Serb authorities to act against his will,'' the U.S. prosecutor said. ``Quite to the contrary, the testimony will firmly establish that Goran Jelisic was an efficient and enthusiastic participant in the genocide.'' Set up in 1993, the U.N. court has convicted two Muslims, two Bosnian Croats and a Bosnian Serb of war crimes including murder, rape and torture, but it has yet to register a genocide conviction. An earlier genocide trial was halted when the defendant, Bosnian Serb Milan Kovacevic, died of a ruptured artery in his tribunal cell. ||||| He called himself the ``Serb Adolf,'' and his crimes were as chilling as his nickname. In a trial opening Monday at the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal, U.N. prosecutors were seeking to convince a three-judge panel that Goran Jelisic is guilty of genocide, the court's most serious offense. The 30-year-old former Bosnian Serb mechanic confessed in October to murdering 12 Muslims and Croats in 1992, astonishing many observers by reversing his earlier declarations of innocence. Although his guilty pleas mean an automatic conviction for war crimes and crimes against humanity _ and the likelihood of a maximum life sentence _ Jelisic has denied that the killing spree constituted genocide. By pressing on with a genocide trial, prosecutors will be able to call evidence about the background of Jelisic's murders, including the involvement of more senior Serbs. The trial also will give survivors of his ruthless campaign a chance to tell their story in court. To convict Jelisic of genocide, prosecutors must prove that the murders _ most of them carried out with close-range shots from an automatic pistol _ were part of a campaign intended to wipe out an entire ethnic group in the northern Bosnian town of Brcko. Jelisic, who was arrested in January by U.S. troops serving in the NATO force in Bosnia, has pleaded guilty to a total of 31 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity. The charges cover the murders as well as three beatings and the plundering of property. In entering those guilty pleas, Jelisic told the tribunal he wanted to ``cleanse my soul.'' He will officially be convicted of those charges during the genocide trial. Jelisic's victims were killed in or near the Serb-run Luka prison camp, a former port complex on the banks of the Sava River. Although most victims were men, Jelisic also clubbed one female inmate with a police baton and then fatally shot her. U.N. prosecutors say Jelisic identified himself to prisoners as the ``Serb Adolf,'' a reference to Hitler, and bragged about the number of Muslims he had killed. Set up in 1993, the U.N. court has convicted three Muslims, two Bosnian Croats and a Bosnian Serb of war crimes including murder, rape and torture, but it has yet to register a genocide conviction. An earlier genocide trial was halted when the defendant, Bosnian Serb Milan Kovacevic, died of a ruptured artery in his tribunal cell. ||||| The Yugoslav war crimes tribunal Monday acquitted a Muslim military commander of war crimes against Bosnian Serb prisoners in 1992, but convicted three underlings in the first U.N. case dealing with anti-Serb atrocities. The Yugoslav war crimes tribunal cleared Zejnil Delalic, a Muslim, of responsibility for war crimes committed against Serb captives at a Bosnian government-run prison camp under his command. Prosecutor Grant Niemann said he would appeal Delalic's acquittal, and asked judges to keep him in custody pending the outcome of the appeal. The U.N. court convicted camp commander Zdravko Mucic, a Croat, of 11 war crimes and grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions because he oversaw guards who murdered nine Serbs and tortured six. Mucic smiled as he heard his sentence of seven years in prison read out. His conviction was the first by an international court on the basis of so-called ``command responsibility'' since post-World War II tribunals convicted Nazi and Japanese superiors for the crimes of their subordinates. ``Mr. Mucic was clearly derelict in his duty and allowed those under his authority to commit the most heinous of offenses, without taking any disciplinary action,'' said presiding Judge Adolphus Karibi-Whyte. Hazim Delic, a Muslim who served as Mucic's deputy, was found guilty of two murders and of raping two women as well as torturing other inmates. He was sentenced to 20 years. Esad Landzo, a Muslim guard, was convicted of three murders and the torture of at least three other inmates. He was jailed for 15 years. All four defendants had faced up to life imprisonment, the maximum punishment at the tribunal, which has no death penalty. Monday's verdicts ended a marathon 20-month trial that focused on the brutal mistreatment of the Bosnian Serbs, themselves blamed for the vast majority of the conflict's war crimes. During the trial _ the tribunal's longest to date involving 122 witnesses _ survivors described the campaign of terror unleashed against Serbs in the area. Inmates at the Celebici prison camp were beaten to death by guards wielding baseball bats, wooden planks and rifle butts, according to testimony. Others were set on fire, raped and forced to commit sexual acts with members of their own family. The 49-page indictment detailing atrocities at Celebici asserts that at least 14 prisoners were killed in 1992. One prisoner was beaten to death and had a Muslim party badge nailed to his head, a witness claimed. Yet a few witnesses also praised Delalic and Mucic for humanitarian gestures, such as getting food and clothing to some prisoners and releasing others. The tribunal, set up by the Security Council in 1993, has convicted only one other person following a trial _ Bosnian Serb Dusan Tadic, who was sentenced in May 1997 to 20 years for killing and torturing Muslims in 1992. Two other men have confessed to killing Muslims, handing the tribunal two more convictions while sparing it the need for trials. ||||| Some of the closest combat in the half year of the Kosovo conflict, to the point of fighting room to room and floor to floor, occurred near this village six weeks ago, in the days before 21 women, children and elderly members of the Delijaj clan were massacred by Serbian forces, their mutilated bodies left strewn on the forest floor. Piecing together what happened, from surviving family members, ethnic Albanian separatist forces and official Serbian information, a story emerges of fierce guerrilla resistance to an onslaught by Serbian tanks, artillery and infantry. The Serbian forces fighting here appear to have suffered unusually heavy losses and, after the guerrillas finally fled, took revenge against the civilians, shooting women and children at close range as they tried to run away from their pursuers. According to relatives who found the bodies, Pajazit Delijaj, 65, was decapitated, his brain left on display on the ground. Hava Delijaj, 65, was shot and one of her feet cut with a knife so that it hung by a thread of skin. Young women and children who had run a few hundred yards up a rocky path were mowed down. Miraculously, a 6-week-old baby, Diturie, was found by her father alive in the clasp of her dead mother, Lumnije, 30, more than 24 hours after the killings. ``Blood was in her mouth and her mother's hand on the baby,'' said Imer Delijaj, the father, an avowed member of the Kosovo Liberation Army, the ethnic Albanian guerrilla force, who returned in uniform to discover the bodies. ``I moved her hand and at that moment she opened her eyes. I realized she was alive. I tried to clean the blood from her mouth and she put her tongue out.'' Several members of the Delijaj clan survived. Zejnije Delijaj, 39, who had cooked for the guerrillas at the family compound when they returned from fighting in the days before the massacre, recalled how she fled, crawling, falling, running and hiding in the woods as the Serbs shot at her. ``I could feel the dirt hitting me from the impact of the bullets,'' she said in an interview, her nose still bloodied from what she said was a heavy fall during her flight. ``First it was machine guns, then grenades, then cannon,'' she said. ``Every time I moved and they heard leaves rustling, they shot.'' The massacre of the Delijajs, whose forebears settled in the Drenica Valley about 150 years ago, was not the first in the conflict that ravaged the Serbian province between March and October and has now lulled into an uneasy truce. Indeed, the conflict between Serbian forces bent on keeping Kosovo in Serbia and guerrillas fighting for the independence of its heavily ethnic Albanian population first drew international attention with the massacre of the Jasari clan in early March by Serbian units at Prekaz, in central Kosovo. But the killing of the Delijajs, ranging from the paralyzed patriarch, Fazli, 94, who was burned in his bed, to the slaughter of Valmir, 18 months, who was found shot, is the most thoroughly documented so far. Human Rights Watch, a New York-based group, believes the knowledge gathered so far increases the possibility of prosecutions by the U.N. war crimes tribunal in The Hague, Netherlands. The Hague's prosecutors could also draw on the observations of diplomats, human rights monitors and reporters who saw the bodies scattered in the ravine where the victims were killed before they were buried in shallow graves in the clan's nearby compound. In other Kosovo massacres, bodies had been moved from the sites before they were seen by independent observers. Further, family members who survived the assault have described what they saw and the circumstances in the hills and valleys around Obrinje as the Serbs pushed forward early Saturday morning, Sept. 26, from their headquarters at Likovac, north of here. By then, the Albanian guerrillas had fled the area around the Delijaj compound, dispersing after what a senior commander of the Kosovo Liberation Army, Naim Maloku, termed particularly fierce combat with the Serbs. In the days before Sept. 26, he said, the guerrillas _ caught in a Serbian pincer movement _ had decided to fight rather than surrender. The fighting _ sometimes house to house, even room to room _ took an unusually heavy toll among the Serbs, said Maloku, a former officer in the Yugoslav army. He said he believed that it was those deaths the Serbs avenged with the massacre of the Delijajs. In other major attacks during the conflict, the guerrillas generally found an escape hatch. In Obrinje, led by another former officer of the Yugoslav army whom Maloku declined to name, the guerrillas fought, using land mines and rocket-propelled grenades. Maloku said he knew from a report made by rebel headquarters that at least 47 Serbian soldiers and police officers were killed in the fighting between here and Bajince, three miles east. ``We took weapons from 47 Serbs,'' he said. The state-controlled Serbian media center in Kosovo's capital, Pristina, said 10 Serbian police officers were killed in the fighting, including five reservists who died when their vehicle hit an antitank mine on Sept. 25. The announcement of 10 Serbs killed in one action is unusually high. The practice of taking violent revenge is a time-honored tradition in the Balkans. From 1991 to 1995, in the wars in Croatia and Bosnia, Serbs, Croats and, to a far lesser extent, the main victims, the Muslims, avenged World War II massacres and new blood feuds, driven into killing by leaders who exploited old conflicts to carve new fiefs for themselves as the old, Communist Yugoslavia collapsed. In this case, it appears, Serbian vengeance was visited upon the Delijajs. Survivors of the clan said they had feared an assault on their collection of mud and brick homes lining a rocky dirt track directly opposite the village of Likovac, the Serbs' base just a mile away. The Serbs had pushed the rebels out of Likovac in August and the guerrillas had established new headquarters around Bajince, six miles east of Obrinje. As the Serbs swept down from the nearby Cicavica Mountains, and up from the road that runs from Pristina to Klina, it was clear that Obrinje would be a target. Most women and children in the area had moved into Apple Valley, where more than 10,000 refugees had gathered outdoors, seeking safety in numbers. But Imer Delijaj, 38, said he decided that the ravine below his family compound would be a better hiding place. He said he believed the women, children and elderly would be spared if the Serbs found them. As the Serbs approached on foot the Saturday morning of the massacre, the last person to flee the compound itself was Bashkim Delijaj, 21, the youngest son of 94-year-old Fazli. Bashkim Delijaj said he had stayed behind to look after his bedridden father. ``The shelling started again at 7 a.m. on Saturday and I saw a tank convoy approaching, with infantry behind the tanks,'' Bashkim Delijaj recalled in an interview. ``I was smoking a cigarette when a grenade fell on the roof and from a hole in the gate I saw soldiers coming from about 30 meters away. They were in brown army uniforms, had huge knives or small axes. Many had beards.'' Bashkim Delijaj said he was unable to carry his father to safety, and did not have the courage to tell him what was happening. ``I told him I was getting the animals out of the barn,'' he said. He said he ran, hid, ran some more, and eventually received shelter from a farmer, all the time hearing shooting and shelling. When the firing had died down Monday morning, he returned to the compound and ran into Imer, still wearing his guerrilla uniform. They went to one of the houses and found Imer Delijaj's brother, Adem, 33, shot dead, his body sprawled on the ground in the rain, and the burned torso of Fazli. ``I looked in the window of our house and saw only the bones of my father, which looked like what we learned in biology class,'' he said. Together, the two men went to find out what had happened in the ravine. There they found the bodies. First, Ali, 65, who, Imer Delijaj said, had been cut through the neck with his own tobacco cutting knife. Then Pajazit, who had been decapitated in a makeshift tent, his brain placed between two foam mattresses. Then Hava, 65, who was sprawled near the tent. They moved on to find Jeton, Imer's 10-year-old son, and Imer's mother, Hamide, 60, not far away. Imer's sister-in-law, Luljeta, who was seven months pregnant, had been mutilated, he said. A little further up the ravine, Imer said he saw his wife, Lumnije, 30. He opened his wife's coat and found his 6-week-old baby girl, now 3 months old and recovering at a relative's home in Likovac. He said he tried to clean the baby and then put her under his jacket and walked a few feet further to find the bodies of his 4-year-old daughter, Menduhije, and two other young children, Donieta, 5, and Gentiana, 7. The corpses of other family members were found in the woods and two older men, Habib, 51, and Hysen, 53, were found the next morning, Imer said. On Oct. 3, the bodies of two missing teen-age girls, Mehane, 16, and Antigua, 13, were found in the bushes at the side of a road near an abandoned Serbian police compound. Later in the month, the body of Hajriz was found pushed down a well, close to the ravine. One uncle, Sharif, who was in the ravine, is still missing, presumed dead. Human Rights Watch, which has been documenting the Delijaj massacre, has described it as the most vicious of a pattern of attacks on civilians by the Serbs in the Kosovo conflict. (To a lesser extent, Albanian guerrillas also attacked Serbian civilians, forcing them from their homes, and allegedly carried out at least two massacres.) The evidence strongly indicates that the Gornje Obrinje killings were followed by conscious mutilations carried out after the victims were killed, a coming report by Human Rights Watch says. Delijaj family members have told Human Rights Watch monitors and others that they saw an ethnic Albanian police officer accompanying the Serbian police officers during the fighting. They believe that the police officer, who is posted at the nearby Glogovac police station, was used by the Serbian special police officers as a guide to the Obrinje area. This police officer, who is apparently one of a small group of ethnic Albanians officers who have remained loyal to the Serbs, could be an important witness for criminal investigators from the war-crimes tribunal in The Hague, according to human rights experts. ``The ethnic Albanian policeman could be an important witness to identifying the police and army units responsible for the atrocities,'' said Peter Boueckhart, a researcher for Human Rights Watch. ``It is vital that those who carried out these atrocities are prosecuted by the Hague tribunal.'' At the burned Delijaj compound in the last week, Imer Delijaj has been acting as the host of a wake which, following Albanian tradition, will last several weeks and began after family members returned from their hiding places in the woods. Color photographs of the youngest members of the family, and of Imer's mother and grandmother, have been mounted behind glass on a table outside the gate. A 30-year-old faded black and white picture of Fazli in a double-breasted suit stands apart, a sign of ultimate respect. An outsized Albanian flag with a black double-headed eagle on a red field is draped behind the table. Imer Delijaj's face seemed tense and his words were spare as he described his family's death. He did not express direct remorse for allowing his family to use a hiding place so close to the family compound, which for all practical purposes was an informal base for fighters. His lawyer, Bajram Krasniqi, who said he was eager to be helpful to investigators of the Hague tribunal, said in Pristina that he believed Imer Delijaj felt guilty for a faulty decision. Whether the tribunal will closely examine the case remains unclear. Slobodan Milosevic, the Yugoslav president, has issued only a handful of visas to investigators from the tribunal. Two investigators who were in Kosovo at the time of the massacre left six days later without visiting the site or contacting Krasniqi about the killings. Would Imer Delijaj seek revenge? As he sat on the floor of his living room with a group of male visitors, he replied: ``It's easy to answer. If I can see eye to eye with men I will fight them. But only with men in uniform and in a fair fight. If I see children with them, I will treat them like children all over the world. Children are children.'' ||||| In its first case to deal with atrocities against Serbs during Bosnia's civil war, a U.N. war crimes tribunal on Monday convicted three prison officials and guards, but acquitted a top military commander who oversaw the facility. The Yugoslav war crimes tribunal cleared Cmndr. Zejnil Delalic, of the Bosnian Muslim Army, of responsibility for war crimes committed at a government-run prison camp under his overall command. Prosecutor Grant Niemann of Australia said he would appeal Delalic's acquittal. Judges freed Delalic pending the outcome of the appeal. ``Let me thank you for a just and fair judgment,'' Delalic told the court. ``The judgment has even increased my trust in this institution.'' The tribunal convicted camp warden Zdravko Mucic, a Croat, of 11 war crimes and grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions because he oversaw guards who murdered nine Serbs and tortured six. Mucic, wearing dark sunglasses and a cross, smiled as he heard his sentence of seven years in prison. Tribunal Deputy Prosecutor Graham Blewitt of Australia said he was considering appealing Mucic's ``inadequate'' sentence. Mucic's conviction was the first by an international court on the basis of ``command responsibility'' since post-World War II tribunals convicted Nazi and Japanese superiors for the crimes of their subordinates. ``Mr. Mucic was clearly derelict in his duty and allowed those under his authority to commit the most heinous of offenses, without taking any disciplinary action,'' said presiding Judge Adolphus Karibi-Whyte of Nigeria. Monday's verdicts ended a marathon 20-month trial that focused on the brutal mistreatment of the Bosnian Serbs, themselves blamed for the vast majority of war crimes committed during the 3 1/2-year Bosnian conflict. During the trial _ the tribunal's longest to date involving 122 witnesses _ survivors described the campaign of terror unleashed against Serbs in the area. Inmates at the Celebici prison camp were beaten to death by guards wielding baseball bats, wooden planks and rifle butts, according to testimony. Others were set on fire, raped and forced to commit sexual acts with members of their own family. The 49-page indictment detailing atrocities at Celebici asserts that at least 14 prisoners were killed in 1992. One prisoner was beaten to death and had a Muslim party badge nailed to his head, a witness claimed. Yet a few witnesses also praised Delalic and Mucic, for humanitarian gestures, such as getting food and clothing to some prisoners and releasing others. Hazim Delic, a Muslim who served as deputy warden of the camp, was found guilty of two murders and of raping two women as well as torturing other inmates. He was sentenced to 20 years by Karibi-Whyte, who denounced rape as ``a despicable act which strikes at the very core of human dignity and physical integrity.'' Delic's defense attorney said he would likely appeal. Esad Landzo, a Muslim guard, was convicted of killing three prisoners and torturing at least three others and was sentenced to 15 years. His attorneys also are likely to appeal the conviction. All four defendants had faced up to life imprisonment, the maximum punishment at the tribunal, which has no death penalty. A charge against Delic and Mucic of plundering property was dismissed by the three-judge panel. Mucic also was cleared of responsibility for four murders and three cases of mistreatment or torture of prisoners. Delic was cleared of two murders, and of command responsibility for other killings at Celebici. He was also acquitted of three cases of torture. Landzo was cleared of one murder charge and one torture count. The tribunal, set up by the Security Council in 1993, has convicted only one other person following a trial _ Bosnian Serb Dusan Tadic, who was sentenced in May 1997 to 20 years for killing and torturing Muslims in 1992. Two other men have confessed to killing Muslims, handing the tribunal two more convictions without conduction trials.

The UN war crimes tribunal demands Yugoslavia's full cooperation in its investigations. It blasted Belgrade for refusing to let investigators probe alleged atrocities in Kosovo. The tribunal acquitted a Muslim commander, but convicted 3 underlings. The commander was greeted by hundreds at Sarajevo a irport on his return. Survivors say Serb forces in Kosovo took revenge against civilians for their battle losses. Trial begins for Bosnian Serb Jelisic, nicknamed "Serb Adolf," who boasted of many killings. He is accused of genocide, although he confessed to 12 killings. U.S. forces in Bosnia arrested a Serb general accused of genocide at Srebrenica.

The Yugoslav war crimes tribunal Monday acquitted a Muslim commander of war crimes against Bosnian Serb prisoners in 1992, but convicted three underlings in the first U.N. case dealing with anti-Serb atrocities. The Yugoslav war crimes tribunal cleared Zejnil Delalic, a Muslim, of responsibility for war crimes committed against Serb captives at a Bosnian government-run prison camp under his command. Prosecutor Grant Niemann said he would appeal Delalic's acquittal, and asked judges to keep him in custody pending the outcome of the appeal. The U.N. court convicted camp commander Zdravko Mucic, a Croat, of 11 war crimes and grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions because he oversaw guards who murdered nine Serbs and tortured six. Mucic smiled as he heard his sentence of seven years in prison read out. His conviction was the first by an international court on the basis of so-called ``command responsibility'' since post-World War II tribunals convicted Nazi and Japanese superiors for the crimes of their subordinates. ``Mr. Mucic was clearly derelict in his duty and allowed those under his authority to commit the most heinous of offenses, without taking any disciplinary action,'' said presiding Judge Adolphus Karibi-Whyte. Hazim Delic, a Muslim who served as Mucic's deputy, was found guilty of two murders and of raping two women as well as torturing other inmates. He was sentenced to 20 years. Esad Landzo, a Muslim guard, was convicted of three murders and the torture of at least three other inmates. He was jailed for 15 years. All four defendants had faced up to life imprisonment, the maximum punishment at the tribunal, which has no death penalty. Monday's verdicts ended a marathon 20-month trial that focused on the brutal mistreatment of the Bosnian Serbs, themselves blamed for the vast majority of the conflict's war crimes. During the trial _ the tribunal's longest to date involving 122 witnesses _ survivors described the campaign of terror unleashed against Serbs in the area. Inmates at the Celebici prison camp were beaten to death by guards wielding baseball bats, wooden planks and rifle butts, according to testimony. Others were set on fire, raped and forced to commit sexual acts with members of their own family. The 49-page indictment detailing atrocities at Celebici asserts that at least 14 prisoners were killed in 1992. One prisoner was beaten to death and had a Muslim party badge nailed to his head, a witness claimed. Yet a few witnesses also praised Delalic and Mucic for humanitarian gestures, such as getting food and clothing to some prisoners and releasing others. The tribunal, set up by the Security Council in 1993, has convicted only one other person following a trial _ Bosnian Serb Dusan Tadic, who was sentenced in May 1997 to 20 years for killing and torturing Muslims in 1992. Two other men have confessed to killing Muslims, handing the tribunal two more convictions while sparing it the need for trials. ||||| Hundreds of people gathered at Sarajevo airport on Saturday to welcome Zejnil Delalic, who was cleared of war crimes charges earlier this week after spending 980 days in jail of the international war crimes tribunal in The Hague. Delalic, a Muslim, was cleared of charges of war crimes committed in 1992 against Serb prisoners in the Muslim-led Bosnian Army prison camp Celebici near his hometown of Konjic. Three others involved in the same case were convicted and will serve prison terms at The Hague for crimes committed as camp guards. Delalic held up his verdict as he arrived and was first greeted by his family and then by many friends from Konjic, 50 kilometers (31 miles) south of Sarajevo, where a huge welcome party for him was planned. ``This is the book of 500 pages in which it says 12 times Delalic is not guilty,'' he told reporters. ``More important is that acts commited by some weren't ordered by officers of our Bosnian Army. These acts were qualified as acts of individuals that happened on a daily basis,'' he said. Edina Residovic, Delalic's lawyer, said she will seek compensation for wrongful imprisonment on behalf of Delalic, who spent almost three years in confinement. ||||| American and allied forces in Bosnia on Wednesday arrested a Bosnian Serb general who was charged with genocide by the international war crimes tribunal in a recent secret indictment. Maj. Gen. Radislav Krstic, arrested without incident in the American sector in northeast Bosnia, is the highest-ranking official to be seized so far, and the first serving military officer. He is accused of directing the attack on Srebrenica in 1995, one of the most chilling and influential events of the Bosnian war, when some 7,000 Bosnian Muslim men were marched off, presumably to their deaths, as U.N. peacekeepers stood by. The indictment of Krstic accuses him of having committed genocide during and after the fall of Srebrenica between July 11 and Nov. 1, 1995. He is indicted both in connection with ``direct personal involvement in the commission of these crimes'' as well as his command responsibility. He is also accused of murder and other crimes against humanity. Krstic was a colonel in 1995, and the deputy commander of the Drina battalion, but was promoted to general within days of the fall of Srebrenica. He is considered a close associate of the Bosnian Serb commander, Gen. Ratko Mladic, and the former Bosnian Serb leader, Radovan Karadzic, both of whom are wanted by the tribunal. And he is considered capable, if he is willing to testify, of implicating Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, who has not been indicted. Louise Arbour, chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, called Krstic ``a very significant military leader'' and said she was delighted with the arrest. The general was only indicted on Oct. 30, tribunal officials said, but the indictment was kept secret so there would be a better chance of a successful arrest. NATO Secretary-General Javier Solana warned that other war crimes suspects still at large ``should realize that they, too, will be brought to justice.'' James Rubin, the State Department spokesman, said that the arrest ``serves as a standing warning to those indicted for war crimes, who remain at large, that they will be held individually accountable for their actions.'' The Bosnian Serbs reacted angrily to the arrest, with the hardline Bosnian Serb president, Nikola Poplasen, saying that his government would now reduce contacts with NATO-led peacekeeping forces ``to the necessary minimum.'' Poplasen, who defeated a more moderate candidate backed by Washington in September elections, said the arrest of Krstic had ``embittered and upset'' the Bosnian Serbs and would harm the implementation of the Dayton agreement that ended the 1992-1995 Bosnian war. He said he would protest the arrest, and his remarks were later endorsed by parliament in a majority vote. A senior official of a NATO country called the arrest ``very good news'' and said it was ``a warning to Milosevic himself'' and others who have not been publicly indicted that ``the murders committed have not been forgotten.'' A Pentagon official said the arrest, the most important made in the American sector, ``was a sign that this is a continuing process.'' NATO-led peacekeeping troops have now arrested nine people wanted for war crimes in the former Yugoslavia, four of whom were the subject of sealed indictments. There have been numerous calls for the arrest of Mladic and Karadzic, the two most infamous men indicted, but they normally are accompanied by armed guards. NATO forces have never tried to arrest them, apparently fearing casualties and an angry public reaction from Bosnian Serbs. Officials say that both Mladic and Karadzic are believed to have left the Bosnian Serb Republic to live in Serbia, which is part of Yugoslavia and controlled by Milosvevic. Krstic, who was transferred to The Hague for trial, is the 35th suspect who has been taken there and the 26th person currently being held there. He is the commander of the Bosnian Serb 5th Corps and was arrested while traveling on the road to Bijelina. At the outset of the war in 1992, he was an officer of the Yugoslav Army, and like all senior Bosnian Serb officers, was transferred to the new Bosnian Serb force. In 1994, he lost a leg in a mine explosion. One Bosnian Serb official said in a telephone interview that, at the time, Krstic had responsibility for ``anti-terrorist units'' who were given some of the most difficult tasks. ``Srebrenica is a dark part of our history and people don't talk about it,'' the official said. ``But everyone believes it was the anti-terrorist units that were sent to do the killing.'' In Banja Luka on Wednesday, some members of the Bosnian Serb parliament protested the arrest, saying that Krstic was simply doing his job as a soldier. Ivo Daalder, a former Bosnia expert on the National Security Council, now with the Brookings Institution, said the arrest showed a new and promising coordination between the Tribunal and NATO troops, given the rapid arrest after the Oct. 30 indictment. He also said that the arrest of a serving officer for an important war crime would send an important message. Srebrenica was a key town in the Bosnian conflict. It was where the United Nations first made a stand in March 1993, when the commander of U.N. troops personally led a convoy of trucks to the surrounded town and promised the Bosnian Muslims there that Srebrenica would be a ``safe area'' and the United Nations would protect them. But in July 1995, the United Nations did not protect Srebrenica with air strikes, and peacekeeping troops watched as the Serbs marched in, separated Muslim men and women and marched the men off. ``Srebrenica signaled the massive failure of the West,'' said Daalder. ``It galvanized the United States and NATO to act.'' At a London conference later in July, NATO agreed to defend Gorazde and remaining safe areas with massive air strikes if necessary. After a mortar attack on the Sarajevo marketplace in late August, NATO air strikes began, signaling the last chapter of the war and leading to the American-brokered Dayton Accords. In Sarajevo Wednesday, an aide to the Bosnian Muslim member of the collective presidency, Alija Izetbegovic, praised the arrest. ``We welcome this action, hoping very soon that the time will come for Karadzic and Mladic to be brought to justice,'' said the aide, Mirza Jajric. The arrest took place as foreign ministers of the member countries of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe met in Oslo, Norway, to discuss the international effort to keep the peace in Kosovo, the southern Serbian province. Under a deal pressed on Milosevic in October, the organization will provide up to 2,000 civilians to monitor a cease-fire in Kosovo and to promote a political settlement there to give Kosovo enhanced autonomy. Macedonia's government Wednesday formally approved the basing of 1,700 NATO troops near its border with Kosovo. Those troops will be prepared to rush to the aid of the civilian monitors if necessary. ||||| The president of the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal harshly criticized Belgrade authorities anew for refusing to let U.N. investigators probe alleged atrocities in Kosovo. In a letter to the United Nations Security Council released Wednesday by the tribunal, presiding judge Gabrielle Kirk McDonald of the United States said the failure of Yugoslav officials to grant visas to investigators is ``an affront.'' ``The intentional and continuous refusal by the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia to comply with its clear and incontrovertible legal obligations to the tribunal is an affront to the Security Council and all law-abiding nations,'' she said. The Texas judge fired off the letter last Friday following the refusal of Belgrade authorities to allow tribunal Chief Prosecutor Louise Arbour of Canada and a team of investigators to visit Kosovo. McDonald asked the Security Council to impose ``measures which are sufficiently compelling to bring the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia into the fold of law-abiding nations.'' Hundreds of people, mostly ethnic Albanians, have been killed, and as many as 300,000 driven from their homes since February, when Serb forces began a crackdown on ethnic Albanian separatists in Kosovo. The tribunal wants to look into allegations of war crimes on both sides of the conflict. ||||| Yugoslavia must cooperate with the U.N. war crimes tribunal investigating alleged atrocities during the wars in Croatia and Bosnia, international legal experts meeting in Belgrade said Sunday. The meeting was the first international debate in Yugoslavia over the U.N. tribunal's work and the government's cooperation with it. The tribunal, established by the U.N. Security Council in 1993, sits in The Hague, Netherlands. Despite objections to the tribunal, Yugoslav authorities allowed the two-day discussions _ organized by the Belgrade-based, non-governmental Humanitarian Law Center _ to take place without any problems. State-run media largely ignored the event. Though there were some disagreements, participants in the discussions generally agreed that crimes against humanity cannot go unpunished. ``The indicted who are not in The Hague are at-large because of the refusal by Croatian and Yugoslav authorities to arrest and extradite them,'' said Mark Ellis, a lawyer and representative of the American Bar Association. Present-day Yugoslavia, consisting of Serbia and Montenegro, cooperates with the tribunal in cases where Serbs were the victims in Bosnia and Croatia, the two former republics that fought wars for their secession. But Yugoslavia has questioned the tribunal's jurisdiction and refuses to indict three army officers wanted for alleged war crimes in Croatia. Last week, it also refused to allow U.N. investigators to probe alleged atrocities in Serbia's southern Kosovo province where ethnic Albanian separatists are fighting government forces. ``The tribunal was founded to satanize Serbs,'' said Miodrag Mitic, a former legal adviser in Yugoslavia's foreign ministry. He said the U.N. court was influenced by powerful countries that dominate the international body. On Saturday, David Scheffer, the U.S. State Department's ambassador at-large for war crimes, demanded Yugoslavia's full cooperation. ||||| To his Muslim targets, Bosnian Serb Goran Jelisic was ``the face of genocide'' who once bragged that ``he had to kill 20 or 30 Muslims before his morning coffee.'' Opening a genocide trial Monday at the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal, U.N. prosecutor Terree Bowers said the 30-year-old mechanic used the nickname Adolf ``with a perverse pride in the genocidal symbolism it represented.'' Jelisic pleaded guilty in October to murdering 12 Muslims and Croats in and around the Serb-run Luka camp set up in Brcko, northern Bosnia, in May 1992. By trying him for genocide, prosecutors will be able to call evidence about the background of Jelisic's murders, including the involvement of more senior Serbs. The trial also will give survivors of his killing spree chance to tell their story in court. Bowers told a three-judge tribunal panel that Jelisic admitted in interviews with investigators to far more killings than the dozen to which he has pleaded guilty. Jelisic will be convicted of those murders and sentenced at the end of his trial, which is expected to last well into 1999. He faces a maximum sentence of life imprisonment. ``We will never be able to fix the exact number'' of victims, Bowers said. ``But if we are to believe even a small percentage of the totals which Goran Jelisic claimed, then his victims certainly number well over 100.'' As the trial began, judges were read excerpts of a psychological report which stated that Jelisic was mentally fit to stand trial but suffered a ``borderline personality disorder.'' Wearing a striped sweater and black jeans, Jelisic brought a laptop computer into court and took notes. When he wasn't writing, Jelisic sat slightly slumped in his chair, his head still, looking impassively around the courtroom. Jelisic's campaign of murder stands out _ even at a tribunal set up to deal exclusively with atrocities _ for its cold-bloodedness. ``Once Goran Jelisic even declined assistance from a guard, noting that he was still in `good form' even though he had killed over 60 people,'' Bowers told judges, citing statements made by witnesses due to testify later in the trial. ``To victims in Brcko, the face of genocide was the face of Goran Jelisic,'' he said. Bowers told the judges that Jelisic, who held no official rank, was released by Bosnian Serb authorities from jail, where he was serving three years for fraud, and sent to Brcko to murder Muslims. He told investigators that on his arrival in the town, which was of strategic importance to Bosnian Serbs, he was given a list of Muslim targets and ordered to kill as many as possible. Jelisic, Bowers said, seemed to relish the task. ``Witness testimony will also establish that Goran Jelisic was not a reluctant tool of the genocide who was being compelled by Serb authorities to act against his will,'' the U.S. prosecutor said. ``Quite to the contrary, the testimony will firmly establish that Goran Jelisic was an efficient and enthusiastic participant in the genocide.'' Set up in 1993, the U.N. court has convicted two Muslims, two Bosnian Croats and a Bosnian Serb of war crimes including murder, rape and torture, but it has yet to register a genocide conviction. An earlier genocide trial was halted when the defendant, Bosnian Serb Milan Kovacevic, died of a ruptured artery in his tribunal cell. ||||| He called himself the ``Serb Adolf,'' and his crimes were as chilling as his nickname. In a trial opening Monday at the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal, U.N. prosecutors were seeking to convince a three-judge panel that Goran Jelisic is guilty of genocide, the court's most serious offense. The 30-year-old former Bosnian Serb mechanic confessed in October to murdering 12 Muslims and Croats in 1992, astonishing many observers by reversing his earlier declarations of innocence. Although his guilty pleas mean an automatic conviction for war crimes and crimes against humanity _ and the likelihood of a maximum life sentence _ Jelisic has denied that the killing spree constituted genocide. By pressing on with a genocide trial, prosecutors will be able to call evidence about the background of Jelisic's murders, including the involvement of more senior Serbs. The trial also will give survivors of his ruthless campaign a chance to tell their story in court. To convict Jelisic of genocide, prosecutors must prove that the murders _ most of them carried out with close-range shots from an automatic pistol _ were part of a campaign intended to wipe out an entire ethnic group in the northern Bosnian town of Brcko. Jelisic, who was arrested in January by U.S. troops serving in the NATO force in Bosnia, has pleaded guilty to a total of 31 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity. The charges cover the murders as well as three beatings and the plundering of property. In entering those guilty pleas, Jelisic told the tribunal he wanted to ``cleanse my soul.'' He will officially be convicted of those charges during the genocide trial. Jelisic's victims were killed in or near the Serb-run Luka prison camp, a former port complex on the banks of the Sava River. Although most victims were men, Jelisic also clubbed one female inmate with a police baton and then fatally shot her. U.N. prosecutors say Jelisic identified himself to prisoners as the ``Serb Adolf,'' a reference to Hitler, and bragged about the number of Muslims he had killed. Set up in 1993, the U.N. court has convicted three Muslims, two Bosnian Croats and a Bosnian Serb of war crimes including murder, rape and torture, but it has yet to register a genocide conviction. An earlier genocide trial was halted when the defendant, Bosnian Serb Milan Kovacevic, died of a ruptured artery in his tribunal cell. ||||| The Yugoslav war crimes tribunal Monday acquitted a Muslim military commander of war crimes against Bosnian Serb prisoners in 1992, but convicted three underlings in the first U.N. case dealing with anti-Serb atrocities. The Yugoslav war crimes tribunal cleared Zejnil Delalic, a Muslim, of responsibility for war crimes committed against Serb captives at a Bosnian government-run prison camp under his command. Prosecutor Grant Niemann said he would appeal Delalic's acquittal, and asked judges to keep him in custody pending the outcome of the appeal. The U.N. court convicted camp commander Zdravko Mucic, a Croat, of 11 war crimes and grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions because he oversaw guards who murdered nine Serbs and tortured six. Mucic smiled as he heard his sentence of seven years in prison read out. His conviction was the first by an international court on the basis of so-called ``command responsibility'' since post-World War II tribunals convicted Nazi and Japanese superiors for the crimes of their subordinates. ``Mr. Mucic was clearly derelict in his duty and allowed those under his authority to commit the most heinous of offenses, without taking any disciplinary action,'' said presiding Judge Adolphus Karibi-Whyte. Hazim Delic, a Muslim who served as Mucic's deputy, was found guilty of two murders and of raping two women as well as torturing other inmates. He was sentenced to 20 years. Esad Landzo, a Muslim guard, was convicted of three murders and the torture of at least three other inmates. He was jailed for 15 years. All four defendants had faced up to life imprisonment, the maximum punishment at the tribunal, which has no death penalty. Monday's verdicts ended a marathon 20-month trial that focused on the brutal mistreatment of the Bosnian Serbs, themselves blamed for the vast majority of the conflict's war crimes. During the trial _ the tribunal's longest to date involving 122 witnesses _ survivors described the campaign of terror unleashed against Serbs in the area. Inmates at the Celebici prison camp were beaten to death by guards wielding baseball bats, wooden planks and rifle butts, according to testimony. Others were set on fire, raped and forced to commit sexual acts with members of their own family. The 49-page indictment detailing atrocities at Celebici asserts that at least 14 prisoners were killed in 1992. One prisoner was beaten to death and had a Muslim party badge nailed to his head, a witness claimed. Yet a few witnesses also praised Delalic and Mucic for humanitarian gestures, such as getting food and clothing to some prisoners and releasing others. The tribunal, set up by the Security Council in 1993, has convicted only one other person following a trial _ Bosnian Serb Dusan Tadic, who was sentenced in May 1997 to 20 years for killing and torturing Muslims in 1992. Two other men have confessed to killing Muslims, handing the tribunal two more convictions while sparing it the need for trials. ||||| Some of the closest combat in the half year of the Kosovo conflict, to the point of fighting room to room and floor to floor, occurred near this village six weeks ago, in the days before 21 women, children and elderly members of the Delijaj clan were massacred by Serbian forces, their mutilated bodies left strewn on the forest floor. Piecing together what happened, from surviving family members, ethnic Albanian separatist forces and official Serbian information, a story emerges of fierce guerrilla resistance to an onslaught by Serbian tanks, artillery and infantry. The Serbian forces fighting here appear to have suffered unusually heavy losses and, after the guerrillas finally fled, took revenge against the civilians, shooting women and children at close range as they tried to run away from their pursuers. According to relatives who found the bodies, Pajazit Delijaj, 65, was decapitated, his brain left on display on the ground. Hava Delijaj, 65, was shot and one of her feet cut with a knife so that it hung by a thread of skin. Young women and children who had run a few hundred yards up a rocky path were mowed down. Miraculously, a 6-week-old baby, Diturie, was found by her father alive in the clasp of her dead mother, Lumnije, 30, more than 24 hours after the killings. ``Blood was in her mouth and her mother's hand on the baby,'' said Imer Delijaj, the father, an avowed member of the Kosovo Liberation Army, the ethnic Albanian guerrilla force, who returned in uniform to discover the bodies. ``I moved her hand and at that moment she opened her eyes. I realized she was alive. I tried to clean the blood from her mouth and she put her tongue out.'' Several members of the Delijaj clan survived. Zejnije Delijaj, 39, who had cooked for the guerrillas at the family compound when they returned from fighting in the days before the massacre, recalled how she fled, crawling, falling, running and hiding in the woods as the Serbs shot at her. ``I could feel the dirt hitting me from the impact of the bullets,'' she said in an interview, her nose still bloodied from what she said was a heavy fall during her flight. ``First it was machine guns, then grenades, then cannon,'' she said. ``Every time I moved and they heard leaves rustling, they shot.'' The massacre of the Delijajs, whose forebears settled in the Drenica Valley about 150 years ago, was not the first in the conflict that ravaged the Serbian province between March and October and has now lulled into an uneasy truce. Indeed, the conflict between Serbian forces bent on keeping Kosovo in Serbia and guerrillas fighting for the independence of its heavily ethnic Albanian population first drew international attention with the massacre of the Jasari clan in early March by Serbian units at Prekaz, in central Kosovo. But the killing of the Delijajs, ranging from the paralyzed patriarch, Fazli, 94, who was burned in his bed, to the slaughter of Valmir, 18 months, who was found shot, is the most thoroughly documented so far. Human Rights Watch, a New York-based group, believes the knowledge gathered so far increases the possibility of prosecutions by the U.N. war crimes tribunal in The Hague, Netherlands. The Hague's prosecutors could also draw on the observations of diplomats, human rights monitors and reporters who saw the bodies scattered in the ravine where the victims were killed before they were buried in shallow graves in the clan's nearby compound. In other Kosovo massacres, bodies had been moved from the sites before they were seen by independent observers. Further, family members who survived the assault have described what they saw and the circumstances in the hills and valleys around Obrinje as the Serbs pushed forward early Saturday morning, Sept. 26, from their headquarters at Likovac, north of here. By then, the Albanian guerrillas had fled the area around the Delijaj compound, dispersing after what a senior commander of the Kosovo Liberation Army, Naim Maloku, termed particularly fierce combat with the Serbs. In the days before Sept. 26, he said, the guerrillas _ caught in a Serbian pincer movement _ had decided to fight rather than surrender. The fighting _ sometimes house to house, even room to room _ took an unusually heavy toll among the Serbs, said Maloku, a former officer in the Yugoslav army. He said he believed that it was those deaths the Serbs avenged with the massacre of the Delijajs. In other major attacks during the conflict, the guerrillas generally found an escape hatch. In Obrinje, led by another former officer of the Yugoslav army whom Maloku declined to name, the guerrillas fought, using land mines and rocket-propelled grenades. Maloku said he knew from a report made by rebel headquarters that at least 47 Serbian soldiers and police officers were killed in the fighting between here and Bajince, three miles east. ``We took weapons from 47 Serbs,'' he said. The state-controlled Serbian media center in Kosovo's capital, Pristina, said 10 Serbian police officers were killed in the fighting, including five reservists who died when their vehicle hit an antitank mine on Sept. 25. The announcement of 10 Serbs killed in one action is unusually high. The practice of taking violent revenge is a time-honored tradition in the Balkans. From 1991 to 1995, in the wars in Croatia and Bosnia, Serbs, Croats and, to a far lesser extent, the main victims, the Muslims, avenged World War II massacres and new blood feuds, driven into killing by leaders who exploited old conflicts to carve new fiefs for themselves as the old, Communist Yugoslavia collapsed. In this case, it appears, Serbian vengeance was visited upon the Delijajs. Survivors of the clan said they had feared an assault on their collection of mud and brick homes lining a rocky dirt track directly opposite the village of Likovac, the Serbs' base just a mile away. The Serbs had pushed the rebels out of Likovac in August and the guerrillas had established new headquarters around Bajince, six miles east of Obrinje. As the Serbs swept down from the nearby Cicavica Mountains, and up from the road that runs from Pristina to Klina, it was clear that Obrinje would be a target. Most women and children in the area had moved into Apple Valley, where more than 10,000 refugees had gathered outdoors, seeking safety in numbers. But Imer Delijaj, 38, said he decided that the ravine below his family compound would be a better hiding place. He said he believed the women, children and elderly would be spared if the Serbs found them. As the Serbs approached on foot the Saturday morning of the massacre, the last person to flee the compound itself was Bashkim Delijaj, 21, the youngest son of 94-year-old Fazli. Bashkim Delijaj said he had stayed behind to look after his bedridden father. ``The shelling started again at 7 a.m. on Saturday and I saw a tank convoy approaching, with infantry behind the tanks,'' Bashkim Delijaj recalled in an interview. ``I was smoking a cigarette when a grenade fell on the roof and from a hole in the gate I saw soldiers coming from about 30 meters away. They were in brown army uniforms, had huge knives or small axes. Many had beards.'' Bashkim Delijaj said he was unable to carry his father to safety, and did not have the courage to tell him what was happening. ``I told him I was getting the animals out of the barn,'' he said. He said he ran, hid, ran some more, and eventually received shelter from a farmer, all the time hearing shooting and shelling. When the firing had died down Monday morning, he returned to the compound and ran into Imer, still wearing his guerrilla uniform. They went to one of the houses and found Imer Delijaj's brother, Adem, 33, shot dead, his body sprawled on the ground in the rain, and the burned torso of Fazli. ``I looked in the window of our house and saw only the bones of my father, which looked like what we learned in biology class,'' he said. Together, the two men went to find out what had happened in the ravine. There they found the bodies. First, Ali, 65, who, Imer Delijaj said, had been cut through the neck with his own tobacco cutting knife. Then Pajazit, who had been decapitated in a makeshift tent, his brain placed between two foam mattresses. Then Hava, 65, who was sprawled near the tent. They moved on to find Jeton, Imer's 10-year-old son, and Imer's mother, Hamide, 60, not far away. Imer's sister-in-law, Luljeta, who was seven months pregnant, had been mutilated, he said. A little further up the ravine, Imer said he saw his wife, Lumnije, 30. He opened his wife's coat and found his 6-week-old baby girl, now 3 months old and recovering at a relative's home in Likovac. He said he tried to clean the baby and then put her under his jacket and walked a few feet further to find the bodies of his 4-year-old daughter, Menduhije, and two other young children, Donieta, 5, and Gentiana, 7. The corpses of other family members were found in the woods and two older men, Habib, 51, and Hysen, 53, were found the next morning, Imer said. On Oct. 3, the bodies of two missing teen-age girls, Mehane, 16, and Antigua, 13, were found in the bushes at the side of a road near an abandoned Serbian police compound. Later in the month, the body of Hajriz was found pushed down a well, close to the ravine. One uncle, Sharif, who was in the ravine, is still missing, presumed dead. Human Rights Watch, which has been documenting the Delijaj massacre, has described it as the most vicious of a pattern of attacks on civilians by the Serbs in the Kosovo conflict. (To a lesser extent, Albanian guerrillas also attacked Serbian civilians, forcing them from their homes, and allegedly carried out at least two massacres.) The evidence strongly indicates that the Gornje Obrinje killings were followed by conscious mutilations carried out after the victims were killed, a coming report by Human Rights Watch says. Delijaj family members have told Human Rights Watch monitors and others that they saw an ethnic Albanian police officer accompanying the Serbian police officers during the fighting. They believe that the police officer, who is posted at the nearby Glogovac police station, was used by the Serbian special police officers as a guide to the Obrinje area. This police officer, who is apparently one of a small group of ethnic Albanians officers who have remained loyal to the Serbs, could be an important witness for criminal investigators from the war-crimes tribunal in The Hague, according to human rights experts. ``The ethnic Albanian policeman could be an important witness to identifying the police and army units responsible for the atrocities,'' said Peter Boueckhart, a researcher for Human Rights Watch. ``It is vital that those who carried out these atrocities are prosecuted by the Hague tribunal.'' At the burned Delijaj compound in the last week, Imer Delijaj has been acting as the host of a wake which, following Albanian tradition, will last several weeks and began after family members returned from their hiding places in the woods. Color photographs of the youngest members of the family, and of Imer's mother and grandmother, have been mounted behind glass on a table outside the gate. A 30-year-old faded black and white picture of Fazli in a double-breasted suit stands apart, a sign of ultimate respect. An outsized Albanian flag with a black double-headed eagle on a red field is draped behind the table. Imer Delijaj's face seemed tense and his words were spare as he described his family's death. He did not express direct remorse for allowing his family to use a hiding place so close to the family compound, which for all practical purposes was an informal base for fighters. His lawyer, Bajram Krasniqi, who said he was eager to be helpful to investigators of the Hague tribunal, said in Pristina that he believed Imer Delijaj felt guilty for a faulty decision. Whether the tribunal will closely examine the case remains unclear. Slobodan Milosevic, the Yugoslav president, has issued only a handful of visas to investigators from the tribunal. Two investigators who were in Kosovo at the time of the massacre left six days later without visiting the site or contacting Krasniqi about the killings. Would Imer Delijaj seek revenge? As he sat on the floor of his living room with a group of male visitors, he replied: ``It's easy to answer. If I can see eye to eye with men I will fight them. But only with men in uniform and in a fair fight. If I see children with them, I will treat them like children all over the world. Children are children.'' ||||| In its first case to deal with atrocities against Serbs during Bosnia's civil war, a U.N. war crimes tribunal on Monday convicted three prison officials and guards, but acquitted a top military commander who oversaw the facility. The Yugoslav war crimes tribunal cleared Cmndr. Zejnil Delalic, of the Bosnian Muslim Army, of responsibility for war crimes committed at a government-run prison camp under his overall command. Prosecutor Grant Niemann of Australia said he would appeal Delalic's acquittal. Judges freed Delalic pending the outcome of the appeal. ``Let me thank you for a just and fair judgment,'' Delalic told the court. ``The judgment has even increased my trust in this institution.'' The tribunal convicted camp warden Zdravko Mucic, a Croat, of 11 war crimes and grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions because he oversaw guards who murdered nine Serbs and tortured six. Mucic, wearing dark sunglasses and a cross, smiled as he heard his sentence of seven years in prison. Tribunal Deputy Prosecutor Graham Blewitt of Australia said he was considering appealing Mucic's ``inadequate'' sentence. Mucic's conviction was the first by an international court on the basis of ``command responsibility'' since post-World War II tribunals convicted Nazi and Japanese superiors for the crimes of their subordinates. ``Mr. Mucic was clearly derelict in his duty and allowed those under his authority to commit the most heinous of offenses, without taking any disciplinary action,'' said presiding Judge Adolphus Karibi-Whyte of Nigeria. Monday's verdicts ended a marathon 20-month trial that focused on the brutal mistreatment of the Bosnian Serbs, themselves blamed for the vast majority of war crimes committed during the 3 1/2-year Bosnian conflict. During the trial _ the tribunal's longest to date involving 122 witnesses _ survivors described the campaign of terror unleashed against Serbs in the area. Inmates at the Celebici prison camp were beaten to death by guards wielding baseball bats, wooden planks and rifle butts, according to testimony. Others were set on fire, raped and forced to commit sexual acts with members of their own family. The 49-page indictment detailing atrocities at Celebici asserts that at least 14 prisoners were killed in 1992. One prisoner was beaten to death and had a Muslim party badge nailed to his head, a witness claimed. Yet a few witnesses also praised Delalic and Mucic, for humanitarian gestures, such as getting food and clothing to some prisoners and releasing others. Hazim Delic, a Muslim who served as deputy warden of the camp, was found guilty of two murders and of raping two women as well as torturing other inmates. He was sentenced to 20 years by Karibi-Whyte, who denounced rape as ``a despicable act which strikes at the very core of human dignity and physical integrity.'' Delic's defense attorney said he would likely appeal. Esad Landzo, a Muslim guard, was convicted of killing three prisoners and torturing at least three others and was sentenced to 15 years. His attorneys also are likely to appeal the conviction. All four defendants had faced up to life imprisonment, the maximum punishment at the tribunal, which has no death penalty. A charge against Delic and Mucic of plundering property was dismissed by the three-judge panel. Mucic also was cleared of responsibility for four murders and three cases of mistreatment or torture of prisoners. Delic was cleared of two murders, and of command responsibility for other killings at Celebici. He was also acquitted of three cases of torture. Landzo was cleared of one murder charge and one torture count. The tribunal, set up by the Security Council in 1993, has convicted only one other person following a trial _ Bosnian Serb Dusan Tadic, who was sentenced in May 1997 to 20 years for killing and torturing Muslims in 1992. Two other men have confessed to killing Muslims, handing the tribunal two more convictions without conduction trials.

Yugoslavia has cooperated with the UN War crimes tribunal in cases where Serbs were victims in Bosnia and Croatia, but has been slow to allow investigation of alleged atrocities in Kosovo. Serbs fighting there suffered losses to the guerillas and took revenge on civilians including women and children. The war crimes tribunal acquitted a Muslim military commander of war crimes against Bosnian Serb prisoners but convicted three underlings. A Bosnian Serb, known as "Serb Adolf", accused of genocide, admitted killing Muslims and Croats. Allied forces arrested a Bosnian Serb general charged with genocide and who could implicate Slobodan Milosevic.

The Yugoslav war crimes tribunal Monday acquitted a Muslim commander of war crimes against Bosnian Serb prisoners in 1992, but convicted three underlings in the first U.N. case dealing with anti-Serb atrocities. The Yugoslav war crimes tribunal cleared Zejnil Delalic, a Muslim, of responsibility for war crimes committed against Serb captives at a Bosnian government-run prison camp under his command. Prosecutor Grant Niemann said he would appeal Delalic's acquittal, and asked judges to keep him in custody pending the outcome of the appeal. The U.N. court convicted camp commander Zdravko Mucic, a Croat, of 11 war crimes and grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions because he oversaw guards who murdered nine Serbs and tortured six. Mucic smiled as he heard his sentence of seven years in prison read out. His conviction was the first by an international court on the basis of so-called ``command responsibility'' since post-World War II tribunals convicted Nazi and Japanese superiors for the crimes of their subordinates. ``Mr. Mucic was clearly derelict in his duty and allowed those under his authority to commit the most heinous of offenses, without taking any disciplinary action,'' said presiding Judge Adolphus Karibi-Whyte. Hazim Delic, a Muslim who served as Mucic's deputy, was found guilty of two murders and of raping two women as well as torturing other inmates. He was sentenced to 20 years. Esad Landzo, a Muslim guard, was convicted of three murders and the torture of at least three other inmates. He was jailed for 15 years. All four defendants had faced up to life imprisonment, the maximum punishment at the tribunal, which has no death penalty. Monday's verdicts ended a marathon 20-month trial that focused on the brutal mistreatment of the Bosnian Serbs, themselves blamed for the vast majority of the conflict's war crimes. During the trial _ the tribunal's longest to date involving 122 witnesses _ survivors described the campaign of terror unleashed against Serbs in the area. Inmates at the Celebici prison camp were beaten to death by guards wielding baseball bats, wooden planks and rifle butts, according to testimony. Others were set on fire, raped and forced to commit sexual acts with members of their own family. The 49-page indictment detailing atrocities at Celebici asserts that at least 14 prisoners were killed in 1992. One prisoner was beaten to death and had a Muslim party badge nailed to his head, a witness claimed. Yet a few witnesses also praised Delalic and Mucic for humanitarian gestures, such as getting food and clothing to some prisoners and releasing others. The tribunal, set up by the Security Council in 1993, has convicted only one other person following a trial _ Bosnian Serb Dusan Tadic, who was sentenced in May 1997 to 20 years for killing and torturing Muslims in 1992. Two other men have confessed to killing Muslims, handing the tribunal two more convictions while sparing it the need for trials. ||||| Hundreds of people gathered at Sarajevo airport on Saturday to welcome Zejnil Delalic, who was cleared of war crimes charges earlier this week after spending 980 days in jail of the international war crimes tribunal in The Hague. Delalic, a Muslim, was cleared of charges of war crimes committed in 1992 against Serb prisoners in the Muslim-led Bosnian Army prison camp Celebici near his hometown of Konjic. Three others involved in the same case were convicted and will serve prison terms at The Hague for crimes committed as camp guards. Delalic held up his verdict as he arrived and was first greeted by his family and then by many friends from Konjic, 50 kilometers (31 miles) south of Sarajevo, where a huge welcome party for him was planned. ``This is the book of 500 pages in which it says 12 times Delalic is not guilty,'' he told reporters. ``More important is that acts commited by some weren't ordered by officers of our Bosnian Army. These acts were qualified as acts of individuals that happened on a daily basis,'' he said. Edina Residovic, Delalic's lawyer, said she will seek compensation for wrongful imprisonment on behalf of Delalic, who spent almost three years in confinement. ||||| American and allied forces in Bosnia on Wednesday arrested a Bosnian Serb general who was charged with genocide by the international war crimes tribunal in a recent secret indictment. Maj. Gen. Radislav Krstic, arrested without incident in the American sector in northeast Bosnia, is the highest-ranking official to be seized so far, and the first serving military officer. He is accused of directing the attack on Srebrenica in 1995, one of the most chilling and influential events of the Bosnian war, when some 7,000 Bosnian Muslim men were marched off, presumably to their deaths, as U.N. peacekeepers stood by. The indictment of Krstic accuses him of having committed genocide during and after the fall of Srebrenica between July 11 and Nov. 1, 1995. He is indicted both in connection with ``direct personal involvement in the commission of these crimes'' as well as his command responsibility. He is also accused of murder and other crimes against humanity. Krstic was a colonel in 1995, and the deputy commander of the Drina battalion, but was promoted to general within days of the fall of Srebrenica. He is considered a close associate of the Bosnian Serb commander, Gen. Ratko Mladic, and the former Bosnian Serb leader, Radovan Karadzic, both of whom are wanted by the tribunal. And he is considered capable, if he is willing to testify, of implicating Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, who has not been indicted. Louise Arbour, chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, called Krstic ``a very significant military leader'' and said she was delighted with the arrest. The general was only indicted on Oct. 30, tribunal officials said, but the indictment was kept secret so there would be a better chance of a successful arrest. NATO Secretary-General Javier Solana warned that other war crimes suspects still at large ``should realize that they, too, will be brought to justice.'' James Rubin, the State Department spokesman, said that the arrest ``serves as a standing warning to those indicted for war crimes, who remain at large, that they will be held individually accountable for their actions.'' The Bosnian Serbs reacted angrily to the arrest, with the hardline Bosnian Serb president, Nikola Poplasen, saying that his government would now reduce contacts with NATO-led peacekeeping forces ``to the necessary minimum.'' Poplasen, who defeated a more moderate candidate backed by Washington in September elections, said the arrest of Krstic had ``embittered and upset'' the Bosnian Serbs and would harm the implementation of the Dayton agreement that ended the 1992-1995 Bosnian war. He said he would protest the arrest, and his remarks were later endorsed by parliament in a majority vote. A senior official of a NATO country called the arrest ``very good news'' and said it was ``a warning to Milosevic himself'' and others who have not been publicly indicted that ``the murders committed have not been forgotten.'' A Pentagon official said the arrest, the most important made in the American sector, ``was a sign that this is a continuing process.'' NATO-led peacekeeping troops have now arrested nine people wanted for war crimes in the former Yugoslavia, four of whom were the subject of sealed indictments. There have been numerous calls for the arrest of Mladic and Karadzic, the two most infamous men indicted, but they normally are accompanied by armed guards. NATO forces have never tried to arrest them, apparently fearing casualties and an angry public reaction from Bosnian Serbs. Officials say that both Mladic and Karadzic are believed to have left the Bosnian Serb Republic to live in Serbia, which is part of Yugoslavia and controlled by Milosvevic. Krstic, who was transferred to The Hague for trial, is the 35th suspect who has been taken there and the 26th person currently being held there. He is the commander of the Bosnian Serb 5th Corps and was arrested while traveling on the road to Bijelina. At the outset of the war in 1992, he was an officer of the Yugoslav Army, and like all senior Bosnian Serb officers, was transferred to the new Bosnian Serb force. In 1994, he lost a leg in a mine explosion. One Bosnian Serb official said in a telephone interview that, at the time, Krstic had responsibility for ``anti-terrorist units'' who were given some of the most difficult tasks. ``Srebrenica is a dark part of our history and people don't talk about it,'' the official said. ``But everyone believes it was the anti-terrorist units that were sent to do the killing.'' In Banja Luka on Wednesday, some members of the Bosnian Serb parliament protested the arrest, saying that Krstic was simply doing his job as a soldier. Ivo Daalder, a former Bosnia expert on the National Security Council, now with the Brookings Institution, said the arrest showed a new and promising coordination between the Tribunal and NATO troops, given the rapid arrest after the Oct. 30 indictment. He also said that the arrest of a serving officer for an important war crime would send an important message. Srebrenica was a key town in the Bosnian conflict. It was where the United Nations first made a stand in March 1993, when the commander of U.N. troops personally led a convoy of trucks to the surrounded town and promised the Bosnian Muslims there that Srebrenica would be a ``safe area'' and the United Nations would protect them. But in July 1995, the United Nations did not protect Srebrenica with air strikes, and peacekeeping troops watched as the Serbs marched in, separated Muslim men and women and marched the men off. ``Srebrenica signaled the massive failure of the West,'' said Daalder. ``It galvanized the United States and NATO to act.'' At a London conference later in July, NATO agreed to defend Gorazde and remaining safe areas with massive air strikes if necessary. After a mortar attack on the Sarajevo marketplace in late August, NATO air strikes began, signaling the last chapter of the war and leading to the American-brokered Dayton Accords. In Sarajevo Wednesday, an aide to the Bosnian Muslim member of the collective presidency, Alija Izetbegovic, praised the arrest. ``We welcome this action, hoping very soon that the time will come for Karadzic and Mladic to be brought to justice,'' said the aide, Mirza Jajric. The arrest took place as foreign ministers of the member countries of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe met in Oslo, Norway, to discuss the international effort to keep the peace in Kosovo, the southern Serbian province. Under a deal pressed on Milosevic in October, the organization will provide up to 2,000 civilians to monitor a cease-fire in Kosovo and to promote a political settlement there to give Kosovo enhanced autonomy. Macedonia's government Wednesday formally approved the basing of 1,700 NATO troops near its border with Kosovo. Those troops will be prepared to rush to the aid of the civilian monitors if necessary. ||||| The president of the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal harshly criticized Belgrade authorities anew for refusing to let U.N. investigators probe alleged atrocities in Kosovo. In a letter to the United Nations Security Council released Wednesday by the tribunal, presiding judge Gabrielle Kirk McDonald of the United States said the failure of Yugoslav officials to grant visas to investigators is ``an affront.'' ``The intentional and continuous refusal by the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia to comply with its clear and incontrovertible legal obligations to the tribunal is an affront to the Security Council and all law-abiding nations,'' she said. The Texas judge fired off the letter last Friday following the refusal of Belgrade authorities to allow tribunal Chief Prosecutor Louise Arbour of Canada and a team of investigators to visit Kosovo. McDonald asked the Security Council to impose ``measures which are sufficiently compelling to bring the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia into the fold of law-abiding nations.'' Hundreds of people, mostly ethnic Albanians, have been killed, and as many as 300,000 driven from their homes since February, when Serb forces began a crackdown on ethnic Albanian separatists in Kosovo. The tribunal wants to look into allegations of war crimes on both sides of the conflict. ||||| Yugoslavia must cooperate with the U.N. war crimes tribunal investigating alleged atrocities during the wars in Croatia and Bosnia, international legal experts meeting in Belgrade said Sunday. The meeting was the first international debate in Yugoslavia over the U.N. tribunal's work and the government's cooperation with it. The tribunal, established by the U.N. Security Council in 1993, sits in The Hague, Netherlands. Despite objections to the tribunal, Yugoslav authorities allowed the two-day discussions _ organized by the Belgrade-based, non-governmental Humanitarian Law Center _ to take place without any problems. State-run media largely ignored the event. Though there were some disagreements, participants in the discussions generally agreed that crimes against humanity cannot go unpunished. ``The indicted who are not in The Hague are at-large because of the refusal by Croatian and Yugoslav authorities to arrest and extradite them,'' said Mark Ellis, a lawyer and representative of the American Bar Association. Present-day Yugoslavia, consisting of Serbia and Montenegro, cooperates with the tribunal in cases where Serbs were the victims in Bosnia and Croatia, the two former republics that fought wars for their secession. But Yugoslavia has questioned the tribunal's jurisdiction and refuses to indict three army officers wanted for alleged war crimes in Croatia. Last week, it also refused to allow U.N. investigators to probe alleged atrocities in Serbia's southern Kosovo province where ethnic Albanian separatists are fighting government forces. ``The tribunal was founded to satanize Serbs,'' said Miodrag Mitic, a former legal adviser in Yugoslavia's foreign ministry. He said the U.N. court was influenced by powerful countries that dominate the international body. On Saturday, David Scheffer, the U.S. State Department's ambassador at-large for war crimes, demanded Yugoslavia's full cooperation. ||||| To his Muslim targets, Bosnian Serb Goran Jelisic was ``the face of genocide'' who once bragged that ``he had to kill 20 or 30 Muslims before his morning coffee.'' Opening a genocide trial Monday at the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal, U.N. prosecutor Terree Bowers said the 30-year-old mechanic used the nickname Adolf ``with a perverse pride in the genocidal symbolism it represented.'' Jelisic pleaded guilty in October to murdering 12 Muslims and Croats in and around the Serb-run Luka camp set up in Brcko, northern Bosnia, in May 1992. By trying him for genocide, prosecutors will be able to call evidence about the background of Jelisic's murders, including the involvement of more senior Serbs. The trial also will give survivors of his killing spree chance to tell their story in court. Bowers told a three-judge tribunal panel that Jelisic admitted in interviews with investigators to far more killings than the dozen to which he has pleaded guilty. Jelisic will be convicted of those murders and sentenced at the end of his trial, which is expected to last well into 1999. He faces a maximum sentence of life imprisonment. ``We will never be able to fix the exact number'' of victims, Bowers said. ``But if we are to believe even a small percentage of the totals which Goran Jelisic claimed, then his victims certainly number well over 100.'' As the trial began, judges were read excerpts of a psychological report which stated that Jelisic was mentally fit to stand trial but suffered a ``borderline personality disorder.'' Wearing a striped sweater and black jeans, Jelisic brought a laptop computer into court and took notes. When he wasn't writing, Jelisic sat slightly slumped in his chair, his head still, looking impassively around the courtroom. Jelisic's campaign of murder stands out _ even at a tribunal set up to deal exclusively with atrocities _ for its cold-bloodedness. ``Once Goran Jelisic even declined assistance from a guard, noting that he was still in `good form' even though he had killed over 60 people,'' Bowers told judges, citing statements made by witnesses due to testify later in the trial. ``To victims in Brcko, the face of genocide was the face of Goran Jelisic,'' he said. Bowers told the judges that Jelisic, who held no official rank, was released by Bosnian Serb authorities from jail, where he was serving three years for fraud, and sent to Brcko to murder Muslims. He told investigators that on his arrival in the town, which was of strategic importance to Bosnian Serbs, he was given a list of Muslim targets and ordered to kill as many as possible. Jelisic, Bowers said, seemed to relish the task. ``Witness testimony will also establish that Goran Jelisic was not a reluctant tool of the genocide who was being compelled by Serb authorities to act against his will,'' the U.S. prosecutor said. ``Quite to the contrary, the testimony will firmly establish that Goran Jelisic was an efficient and enthusiastic participant in the genocide.'' Set up in 1993, the U.N. court has convicted two Muslims, two Bosnian Croats and a Bosnian Serb of war crimes including murder, rape and torture, but it has yet to register a genocide conviction. An earlier genocide trial was halted when the defendant, Bosnian Serb Milan Kovacevic, died of a ruptured artery in his tribunal cell. ||||| He called himself the ``Serb Adolf,'' and his crimes were as chilling as his nickname. In a trial opening Monday at the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal, U.N. prosecutors were seeking to convince a three-judge panel that Goran Jelisic is guilty of genocide, the court's most serious offense. The 30-year-old former Bosnian Serb mechanic confessed in October to murdering 12 Muslims and Croats in 1992, astonishing many observers by reversing his earlier declarations of innocence. Although his guilty pleas mean an automatic conviction for war crimes and crimes against humanity _ and the likelihood of a maximum life sentence _ Jelisic has denied that the killing spree constituted genocide. By pressing on with a genocide trial, prosecutors will be able to call evidence about the background of Jelisic's murders, including the involvement of more senior Serbs. The trial also will give survivors of his ruthless campaign a chance to tell their story in court. To convict Jelisic of genocide, prosecutors must prove that the murders _ most of them carried out with close-range shots from an automatic pistol _ were part of a campaign intended to wipe out an entire ethnic group in the northern Bosnian town of Brcko. Jelisic, who was arrested in January by U.S. troops serving in the NATO force in Bosnia, has pleaded guilty to a total of 31 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity. The charges cover the murders as well as three beatings and the plundering of property. In entering those guilty pleas, Jelisic told the tribunal he wanted to ``cleanse my soul.'' He will officially be convicted of those charges during the genocide trial. Jelisic's victims were killed in or near the Serb-run Luka prison camp, a former port complex on the banks of the Sava River. Although most victims were men, Jelisic also clubbed one female inmate with a police baton and then fatally shot her. U.N. prosecutors say Jelisic identified himself to prisoners as the ``Serb Adolf,'' a reference to Hitler, and bragged about the number of Muslims he had killed. Set up in 1993, the U.N. court has convicted three Muslims, two Bosnian Croats and a Bosnian Serb of war crimes including murder, rape and torture, but it has yet to register a genocide conviction. An earlier genocide trial was halted when the defendant, Bosnian Serb Milan Kovacevic, died of a ruptured artery in his tribunal cell. ||||| The Yugoslav war crimes tribunal Monday acquitted a Muslim military commander of war crimes against Bosnian Serb prisoners in 1992, but convicted three underlings in the first U.N. case dealing with anti-Serb atrocities. The Yugoslav war crimes tribunal cleared Zejnil Delalic, a Muslim, of responsibility for war crimes committed against Serb captives at a Bosnian government-run prison camp under his command. Prosecutor Grant Niemann said he would appeal Delalic's acquittal, and asked judges to keep him in custody pending the outcome of the appeal. The U.N. court convicted camp commander Zdravko Mucic, a Croat, of 11 war crimes and grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions because he oversaw guards who murdered nine Serbs and tortured six. Mucic smiled as he heard his sentence of seven years in prison read out. His conviction was the first by an international court on the basis of so-called ``command responsibility'' since post-World War II tribunals convicted Nazi and Japanese superiors for the crimes of their subordinates. ``Mr. Mucic was clearly derelict in his duty and allowed those under his authority to commit the most heinous of offenses, without taking any disciplinary action,'' said presiding Judge Adolphus Karibi-Whyte. Hazim Delic, a Muslim who served as Mucic's deputy, was found guilty of two murders and of raping two women as well as torturing other inmates. He was sentenced to 20 years. Esad Landzo, a Muslim guard, was convicted of three murders and the torture of at least three other inmates. He was jailed for 15 years. All four defendants had faced up to life imprisonment, the maximum punishment at the tribunal, which has no death penalty. Monday's verdicts ended a marathon 20-month trial that focused on the brutal mistreatment of the Bosnian Serbs, themselves blamed for the vast majority of the conflict's war crimes. During the trial _ the tribunal's longest to date involving 122 witnesses _ survivors described the campaign of terror unleashed against Serbs in the area. Inmates at the Celebici prison camp were beaten to death by guards wielding baseball bats, wooden planks and rifle butts, according to testimony. Others were set on fire, raped and forced to commit sexual acts with members of their own family. The 49-page indictment detailing atrocities at Celebici asserts that at least 14 prisoners were killed in 1992. One prisoner was beaten to death and had a Muslim party badge nailed to his head, a witness claimed. Yet a few witnesses also praised Delalic and Mucic for humanitarian gestures, such as getting food and clothing to some prisoners and releasing others. The tribunal, set up by the Security Council in 1993, has convicted only one other person following a trial _ Bosnian Serb Dusan Tadic, who was sentenced in May 1997 to 20 years for killing and torturing Muslims in 1992. Two other men have confessed to killing Muslims, handing the tribunal two more convictions while sparing it the need for trials. ||||| Some of the closest combat in the half year of the Kosovo conflict, to the point of fighting room to room and floor to floor, occurred near this village six weeks ago, in the days before 21 women, children and elderly members of the Delijaj clan were massacred by Serbian forces, their mutilated bodies left strewn on the forest floor. Piecing together what happened, from surviving family members, ethnic Albanian separatist forces and official Serbian information, a story emerges of fierce guerrilla resistance to an onslaught by Serbian tanks, artillery and infantry. The Serbian forces fighting here appear to have suffered unusually heavy losses and, after the guerrillas finally fled, took revenge against the civilians, shooting women and children at close range as they tried to run away from their pursuers. According to relatives who found the bodies, Pajazit Delijaj, 65, was decapitated, his brain left on display on the ground. Hava Delijaj, 65, was shot and one of her feet cut with a knife so that it hung by a thread of skin. Young women and children who had run a few hundred yards up a rocky path were mowed down. Miraculously, a 6-week-old baby, Diturie, was found by her father alive in the clasp of her dead mother, Lumnije, 30, more than 24 hours after the killings. ``Blood was in her mouth and her mother's hand on the baby,'' said Imer Delijaj, the father, an avowed member of the Kosovo Liberation Army, the ethnic Albanian guerrilla force, who returned in uniform to discover the bodies. ``I moved her hand and at that moment she opened her eyes. I realized she was alive. I tried to clean the blood from her mouth and she put her tongue out.'' Several members of the Delijaj clan survived. Zejnije Delijaj, 39, who had cooked for the guerrillas at the family compound when they returned from fighting in the days before the massacre, recalled how she fled, crawling, falling, running and hiding in the woods as the Serbs shot at her. ``I could feel the dirt hitting me from the impact of the bullets,'' she said in an interview, her nose still bloodied from what she said was a heavy fall during her flight. ``First it was machine guns, then grenades, then cannon,'' she said. ``Every time I moved and they heard leaves rustling, they shot.'' The massacre of the Delijajs, whose forebears settled in the Drenica Valley about 150 years ago, was not the first in the conflict that ravaged the Serbian province between March and October and has now lulled into an uneasy truce. Indeed, the conflict between Serbian forces bent on keeping Kosovo in Serbia and guerrillas fighting for the independence of its heavily ethnic Albanian population first drew international attention with the massacre of the Jasari clan in early March by Serbian units at Prekaz, in central Kosovo. But the killing of the Delijajs, ranging from the paralyzed patriarch, Fazli, 94, who was burned in his bed, to the slaughter of Valmir, 18 months, who was found shot, is the most thoroughly documented so far. Human Rights Watch, a New York-based group, believes the knowledge gathered so far increases the possibility of prosecutions by the U.N. war crimes tribunal in The Hague, Netherlands. The Hague's prosecutors could also draw on the observations of diplomats, human rights monitors and reporters who saw the bodies scattered in the ravine where the victims were killed before they were buried in shallow graves in the clan's nearby compound. In other Kosovo massacres, bodies had been moved from the sites before they were seen by independent observers. Further, family members who survived the assault have described what they saw and the circumstances in the hills and valleys around Obrinje as the Serbs pushed forward early Saturday morning, Sept. 26, from their headquarters at Likovac, north of here. By then, the Albanian guerrillas had fled the area around the Delijaj compound, dispersing after what a senior commander of the Kosovo Liberation Army, Naim Maloku, termed particularly fierce combat with the Serbs. In the days before Sept. 26, he said, the guerrillas _ caught in a Serbian pincer movement _ had decided to fight rather than surrender. The fighting _ sometimes house to house, even room to room _ took an unusually heavy toll among the Serbs, said Maloku, a former officer in the Yugoslav army. He said he believed that it was those deaths the Serbs avenged with the massacre of the Delijajs. In other major attacks during the conflict, the guerrillas generally found an escape hatch. In Obrinje, led by another former officer of the Yugoslav army whom Maloku declined to name, the guerrillas fought, using land mines and rocket-propelled grenades. Maloku said he knew from a report made by rebel headquarters that at least 47 Serbian soldiers and police officers were killed in the fighting between here and Bajince, three miles east. ``We took weapons from 47 Serbs,'' he said. The state-controlled Serbian media center in Kosovo's capital, Pristina, said 10 Serbian police officers were killed in the fighting, including five reservists who died when their vehicle hit an antitank mine on Sept. 25. The announcement of 10 Serbs killed in one action is unusually high. The practice of taking violent revenge is a time-honored tradition in the Balkans. From 1991 to 1995, in the wars in Croatia and Bosnia, Serbs, Croats and, to a far lesser extent, the main victims, the Muslims, avenged World War II massacres and new blood feuds, driven into killing by leaders who exploited old conflicts to carve new fiefs for themselves as the old, Communist Yugoslavia collapsed. In this case, it appears, Serbian vengeance was visited upon the Delijajs. Survivors of the clan said they had feared an assault on their collection of mud and brick homes lining a rocky dirt track directly opposite the village of Likovac, the Serbs' base just a mile away. The Serbs had pushed the rebels out of Likovac in August and the guerrillas had established new headquarters around Bajince, six miles east of Obrinje. As the Serbs swept down from the nearby Cicavica Mountains, and up from the road that runs from Pristina to Klina, it was clear that Obrinje would be a target. Most women and children in the area had moved into Apple Valley, where more than 10,000 refugees had gathered outdoors, seeking safety in numbers. But Imer Delijaj, 38, said he decided that the ravine below his family compound would be a better hiding place. He said he believed the women, children and elderly would be spared if the Serbs found them. As the Serbs approached on foot the Saturday morning of the massacre, the last person to flee the compound itself was Bashkim Delijaj, 21, the youngest son of 94-year-old Fazli. Bashkim Delijaj said he had stayed behind to look after his bedridden father. ``The shelling started again at 7 a.m. on Saturday and I saw a tank convoy approaching, with infantry behind the tanks,'' Bashkim Delijaj recalled in an interview. ``I was smoking a cigarette when a grenade fell on the roof and from a hole in the gate I saw soldiers coming from about 30 meters away. They were in brown army uniforms, had huge knives or small axes. Many had beards.'' Bashkim Delijaj said he was unable to carry his father to safety, and did not have the courage to tell him what was happening. ``I told him I was getting the animals out of the barn,'' he said. He said he ran, hid, ran some more, and eventually received shelter from a farmer, all the time hearing shooting and shelling. When the firing had died down Monday morning, he returned to the compound and ran into Imer, still wearing his guerrilla uniform. They went to one of the houses and found Imer Delijaj's brother, Adem, 33, shot dead, his body sprawled on the ground in the rain, and the burned torso of Fazli. ``I looked in the window of our house and saw only the bones of my father, which looked like what we learned in biology class,'' he said. Together, the two men went to find out what had happened in the ravine. There they found the bodies. First, Ali, 65, who, Imer Delijaj said, had been cut through the neck with his own tobacco cutting knife. Then Pajazit, who had been decapitated in a makeshift tent, his brain placed between two foam mattresses. Then Hava, 65, who was sprawled near the tent. They moved on to find Jeton, Imer's 10-year-old son, and Imer's mother, Hamide, 60, not far away. Imer's sister-in-law, Luljeta, who was seven months pregnant, had been mutilated, he said. A little further up the ravine, Imer said he saw his wife, Lumnije, 30. He opened his wife's coat and found his 6-week-old baby girl, now 3 months old and recovering at a relative's home in Likovac. He said he tried to clean the baby and then put her under his jacket and walked a few feet further to find the bodies of his 4-year-old daughter, Menduhije, and two other young children, Donieta, 5, and Gentiana, 7. The corpses of other family members were found in the woods and two older men, Habib, 51, and Hysen, 53, were found the next morning, Imer said. On Oct. 3, the bodies of two missing teen-age girls, Mehane, 16, and Antigua, 13, were found in the bushes at the side of a road near an abandoned Serbian police compound. Later in the month, the body of Hajriz was found pushed down a well, close to the ravine. One uncle, Sharif, who was in the ravine, is still missing, presumed dead. Human Rights Watch, which has been documenting the Delijaj massacre, has described it as the most vicious of a pattern of attacks on civilians by the Serbs in the Kosovo conflict. (To a lesser extent, Albanian guerrillas also attacked Serbian civilians, forcing them from their homes, and allegedly carried out at least two massacres.) The evidence strongly indicates that the Gornje Obrinje killings were followed by conscious mutilations carried out after the victims were killed, a coming report by Human Rights Watch says. Delijaj family members have told Human Rights Watch monitors and others that they saw an ethnic Albanian police officer accompanying the Serbian police officers during the fighting. They believe that the police officer, who is posted at the nearby Glogovac police station, was used by the Serbian special police officers as a guide to the Obrinje area. This police officer, who is apparently one of a small group of ethnic Albanians officers who have remained loyal to the Serbs, could be an important witness for criminal investigators from the war-crimes tribunal in The Hague, according to human rights experts. ``The ethnic Albanian policeman could be an important witness to identifying the police and army units responsible for the atrocities,'' said Peter Boueckhart, a researcher for Human Rights Watch. ``It is vital that those who carried out these atrocities are prosecuted by the Hague tribunal.'' At the burned Delijaj compound in the last week, Imer Delijaj has been acting as the host of a wake which, following Albanian tradition, will last several weeks and began after family members returned from their hiding places in the woods. Color photographs of the youngest members of the family, and of Imer's mother and grandmother, have been mounted behind glass on a table outside the gate. A 30-year-old faded black and white picture of Fazli in a double-breasted suit stands apart, a sign of ultimate respect. An outsized Albanian flag with a black double-headed eagle on a red field is draped behind the table. Imer Delijaj's face seemed tense and his words were spare as he described his family's death. He did not express direct remorse for allowing his family to use a hiding place so close to the family compound, which for all practical purposes was an informal base for fighters. His lawyer, Bajram Krasniqi, who said he was eager to be helpful to investigators of the Hague tribunal, said in Pristina that he believed Imer Delijaj felt guilty for a faulty decision. Whether the tribunal will closely examine the case remains unclear. Slobodan Milosevic, the Yugoslav president, has issued only a handful of visas to investigators from the tribunal. Two investigators who were in Kosovo at the time of the massacre left six days later without visiting the site or contacting Krasniqi about the killings. Would Imer Delijaj seek revenge? As he sat on the floor of his living room with a group of male visitors, he replied: ``It's easy to answer. If I can see eye to eye with men I will fight them. But only with men in uniform and in a fair fight. If I see children with them, I will treat them like children all over the world. Children are children.'' ||||| In its first case to deal with atrocities against Serbs during Bosnia's civil war, a U.N. war crimes tribunal on Monday convicted three prison officials and guards, but acquitted a top military commander who oversaw the facility. The Yugoslav war crimes tribunal cleared Cmndr. Zejnil Delalic, of the Bosnian Muslim Army, of responsibility for war crimes committed at a government-run prison camp under his overall command. Prosecutor Grant Niemann of Australia said he would appeal Delalic's acquittal. Judges freed Delalic pending the outcome of the appeal. ``Let me thank you for a just and fair judgment,'' Delalic told the court. ``The judgment has even increased my trust in this institution.'' The tribunal convicted camp warden Zdravko Mucic, a Croat, of 11 war crimes and grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions because he oversaw guards who murdered nine Serbs and tortured six. Mucic, wearing dark sunglasses and a cross, smiled as he heard his sentence of seven years in prison. Tribunal Deputy Prosecutor Graham Blewitt of Australia said he was considering appealing Mucic's ``inadequate'' sentence. Mucic's conviction was the first by an international court on the basis of ``command responsibility'' since post-World War II tribunals convicted Nazi and Japanese superiors for the crimes of their subordinates. ``Mr. Mucic was clearly derelict in his duty and allowed those under his authority to commit the most heinous of offenses, without taking any disciplinary action,'' said presiding Judge Adolphus Karibi-Whyte of Nigeria. Monday's verdicts ended a marathon 20-month trial that focused on the brutal mistreatment of the Bosnian Serbs, themselves blamed for the vast majority of war crimes committed during the 3 1/2-year Bosnian conflict. During the trial _ the tribunal's longest to date involving 122 witnesses _ survivors described the campaign of terror unleashed against Serbs in the area. Inmates at the Celebici prison camp were beaten to death by guards wielding baseball bats, wooden planks and rifle butts, according to testimony. Others were set on fire, raped and forced to commit sexual acts with members of their own family. The 49-page indictment detailing atrocities at Celebici asserts that at least 14 prisoners were killed in 1992. One prisoner was beaten to death and had a Muslim party badge nailed to his head, a witness claimed. Yet a few witnesses also praised Delalic and Mucic, for humanitarian gestures, such as getting food and clothing to some prisoners and releasing others. Hazim Delic, a Muslim who served as deputy warden of the camp, was found guilty of two murders and of raping two women as well as torturing other inmates. He was sentenced to 20 years by Karibi-Whyte, who denounced rape as ``a despicable act which strikes at the very core of human dignity and physical integrity.'' Delic's defense attorney said he would likely appeal. Esad Landzo, a Muslim guard, was convicted of killing three prisoners and torturing at least three others and was sentenced to 15 years. His attorneys also are likely to appeal the conviction. All four defendants had faced up to life imprisonment, the maximum punishment at the tribunal, which has no death penalty. A charge against Delic and Mucic of plundering property was dismissed by the three-judge panel. Mucic also was cleared of responsibility for four murders and three cases of mistreatment or torture of prisoners. Delic was cleared of two murders, and of command responsibility for other killings at Celebici. He was also acquitted of three cases of torture. Landzo was cleared of one murder charge and one torture count. The tribunal, set up by the Security Council in 1993, has convicted only one other person following a trial _ Bosnian Serb Dusan Tadic, who was sentenced in May 1997 to 20 years for killing and torturing Muslims in 1992. Two other men have confessed to killing Muslims, handing the tribunal two more convictions without conduction trials.

Yugoslavia was told to cooperate with the UN War Crimes Tribunal whether Serbs were victims or accused. Belgrade refused visas to Kosovo atrocity investigators. Serbians took revenge on Kosovo civilians for heavy losses. Muslim commander Delalic was acquitted of anti-Bosnian Serb atrocities after 3 years and welcomed home. 3 of his underlings were convicted. Croat commander Mucic was convicted for permitting atrocities. "Serb Adolf" Goran Jelisic was freed from jail by Bosnian Serbs and told to go kill Muslims. He confessed to murdering 12. Maj. Gen. Krstic, a Bosnian Serb, is the first serving officer to be arrested. He directed the attack on Srebrenica.

The Yugoslav war crimes tribunal Monday acquitted a Muslim commander of war crimes against Bosnian Serb prisoners in 1992, but convicted three underlings in the first U.N. case dealing with anti-Serb atrocities. The Yugoslav war crimes tribunal cleared Zejnil Delalic, a Muslim, of responsibility for war crimes committed against Serb captives at a Bosnian government-run prison camp under his command. Prosecutor Grant Niemann said he would appeal Delalic's acquittal, and asked judges to keep him in custody pending the outcome of the appeal. The U.N. court convicted camp commander Zdravko Mucic, a Croat, of 11 war crimes and grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions because he oversaw guards who murdered nine Serbs and tortured six. Mucic smiled as he heard his sentence of seven years in prison read out. His conviction was the first by an international court on the basis of so-called ``command responsibility'' since post-World War II tribunals convicted Nazi and Japanese superiors for the crimes of their subordinates. ``Mr. Mucic was clearly derelict in his duty and allowed those under his authority to commit the most heinous of offenses, without taking any disciplinary action,'' said presiding Judge Adolphus Karibi-Whyte. Hazim Delic, a Muslim who served as Mucic's deputy, was found guilty of two murders and of raping two women as well as torturing other inmates. He was sentenced to 20 years. Esad Landzo, a Muslim guard, was convicted of three murders and the torture of at least three other inmates. He was jailed for 15 years. All four defendants had faced up to life imprisonment, the maximum punishment at the tribunal, which has no death penalty. Monday's verdicts ended a marathon 20-month trial that focused on the brutal mistreatment of the Bosnian Serbs, themselves blamed for the vast majority of the conflict's war crimes. During the trial _ the tribunal's longest to date involving 122 witnesses _ survivors described the campaign of terror unleashed against Serbs in the area. Inmates at the Celebici prison camp were beaten to death by guards wielding baseball bats, wooden planks and rifle butts, according to testimony. Others were set on fire, raped and forced to commit sexual acts with members of their own family. The 49-page indictment detailing atrocities at Celebici asserts that at least 14 prisoners were killed in 1992. One prisoner was beaten to death and had a Muslim party badge nailed to his head, a witness claimed. Yet a few witnesses also praised Delalic and Mucic for humanitarian gestures, such as getting food and clothing to some prisoners and releasing others. The tribunal, set up by the Security Council in 1993, has convicted only one other person following a trial _ Bosnian Serb Dusan Tadic, who was sentenced in May 1997 to 20 years for killing and torturing Muslims in 1992. Two other men have confessed to killing Muslims, handing the tribunal two more convictions while sparing it the need for trials. ||||| Hundreds of people gathered at Sarajevo airport on Saturday to welcome Zejnil Delalic, who was cleared of war crimes charges earlier this week after spending 980 days in jail of the international war crimes tribunal in The Hague. Delalic, a Muslim, was cleared of charges of war crimes committed in 1992 against Serb prisoners in the Muslim-led Bosnian Army prison camp Celebici near his hometown of Konjic. Three others involved in the same case were convicted and will serve prison terms at The Hague for crimes committed as camp guards. Delalic held up his verdict as he arrived and was first greeted by his family and then by many friends from Konjic, 50 kilometers (31 miles) south of Sarajevo, where a huge welcome party for him was planned. ``This is the book of 500 pages in which it says 12 times Delalic is not guilty,'' he told reporters. ``More important is that acts commited by some weren't ordered by officers of our Bosnian Army. These acts were qualified as acts of individuals that happened on a daily basis,'' he said. Edina Residovic, Delalic's lawyer, said she will seek compensation for wrongful imprisonment on behalf of Delalic, who spent almost three years in confinement. ||||| American and allied forces in Bosnia on Wednesday arrested a Bosnian Serb general who was charged with genocide by the international war crimes tribunal in a recent secret indictment. Maj. Gen. Radislav Krstic, arrested without incident in the American sector in northeast Bosnia, is the highest-ranking official to be seized so far, and the first serving military officer. He is accused of directing the attack on Srebrenica in 1995, one of the most chilling and influential events of the Bosnian war, when some 7,000 Bosnian Muslim men were marched off, presumably to their deaths, as U.N. peacekeepers stood by. The indictment of Krstic accuses him of having committed genocide during and after the fall of Srebrenica between July 11 and Nov. 1, 1995. He is indicted both in connection with ``direct personal involvement in the commission of these crimes'' as well as his command responsibility. He is also accused of murder and other crimes against humanity. Krstic was a colonel in 1995, and the deputy commander of the Drina battalion, but was promoted to general within days of the fall of Srebrenica. He is considered a close associate of the Bosnian Serb commander, Gen. Ratko Mladic, and the former Bosnian Serb leader, Radovan Karadzic, both of whom are wanted by the tribunal. And he is considered capable, if he is willing to testify, of implicating Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, who has not been indicted. Louise Arbour, chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, called Krstic ``a very significant military leader'' and said she was delighted with the arrest. The general was only indicted on Oct. 30, tribunal officials said, but the indictment was kept secret so there would be a better chance of a successful arrest. NATO Secretary-General Javier Solana warned that other war crimes suspects still at large ``should realize that they, too, will be brought to justice.'' James Rubin, the State Department spokesman, said that the arrest ``serves as a standing warning to those indicted for war crimes, who remain at large, that they will be held individually accountable for their actions.'' The Bosnian Serbs reacted angrily to the arrest, with the hardline Bosnian Serb president, Nikola Poplasen, saying that his government would now reduce contacts with NATO-led peacekeeping forces ``to the necessary minimum.'' Poplasen, who defeated a more moderate candidate backed by Washington in September elections, said the arrest of Krstic had ``embittered and upset'' the Bosnian Serbs and would harm the implementation of the Dayton agreement that ended the 1992-1995 Bosnian war. He said he would protest the arrest, and his remarks were later endorsed by parliament in a majority vote. A senior official of a NATO country called the arrest ``very good news'' and said it was ``a warning to Milosevic himself'' and others who have not been publicly indicted that ``the murders committed have not been forgotten.'' A Pentagon official said the arrest, the most important made in the American sector, ``was a sign that this is a continuing process.'' NATO-led peacekeeping troops have now arrested nine people wanted for war crimes in the former Yugoslavia, four of whom were the subject of sealed indictments. There have been numerous calls for the arrest of Mladic and Karadzic, the two most infamous men indicted, but they normally are accompanied by armed guards. NATO forces have never tried to arrest them, apparently fearing casualties and an angry public reaction from Bosnian Serbs. Officials say that both Mladic and Karadzic are believed to have left the Bosnian Serb Republic to live in Serbia, which is part of Yugoslavia and controlled by Milosvevic. Krstic, who was transferred to The Hague for trial, is the 35th suspect who has been taken there and the 26th person currently being held there. He is the commander of the Bosnian Serb 5th Corps and was arrested while traveling on the road to Bijelina. At the outset of the war in 1992, he was an officer of the Yugoslav Army, and like all senior Bosnian Serb officers, was transferred to the new Bosnian Serb force. In 1994, he lost a leg in a mine explosion. One Bosnian Serb official said in a telephone interview that, at the time, Krstic had responsibility for ``anti-terrorist units'' who were given some of the most difficult tasks. ``Srebrenica is a dark part of our history and people don't talk about it,'' the official said. ``But everyone believes it was the anti-terrorist units that were sent to do the killing.'' In Banja Luka on Wednesday, some members of the Bosnian Serb parliament protested the arrest, saying that Krstic was simply doing his job as a soldier. Ivo Daalder, a former Bosnia expert on the National Security Council, now with the Brookings Institution, said the arrest showed a new and promising coordination between the Tribunal and NATO troops, given the rapid arrest after the Oct. 30 indictment. He also said that the arrest of a serving officer for an important war crime would send an important message. Srebrenica was a key town in the Bosnian conflict. It was where the United Nations first made a stand in March 1993, when the commander of U.N. troops personally led a convoy of trucks to the surrounded town and promised the Bosnian Muslims there that Srebrenica would be a ``safe area'' and the United Nations would protect them. But in July 1995, the United Nations did not protect Srebrenica with air strikes, and peacekeeping troops watched as the Serbs marched in, separated Muslim men and women and marched the men off. ``Srebrenica signaled the massive failure of the West,'' said Daalder. ``It galvanized the United States and NATO to act.'' At a London conference later in July, NATO agreed to defend Gorazde and remaining safe areas with massive air strikes if necessary. After a mortar attack on the Sarajevo marketplace in late August, NATO air strikes began, signaling the last chapter of the war and leading to the American-brokered Dayton Accords. In Sarajevo Wednesday, an aide to the Bosnian Muslim member of the collective presidency, Alija Izetbegovic, praised the arrest. ``We welcome this action, hoping very soon that the time will come for Karadzic and Mladic to be brought to justice,'' said the aide, Mirza Jajric. The arrest took place as foreign ministers of the member countries of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe met in Oslo, Norway, to discuss the international effort to keep the peace in Kosovo, the southern Serbian province. Under a deal pressed on Milosevic in October, the organization will provide up to 2,000 civilians to monitor a cease-fire in Kosovo and to promote a political settlement there to give Kosovo enhanced autonomy. Macedonia's government Wednesday formally approved the basing of 1,700 NATO troops near its border with Kosovo. Those troops will be prepared to rush to the aid of the civilian monitors if necessary. ||||| The president of the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal harshly criticized Belgrade authorities anew for refusing to let U.N. investigators probe alleged atrocities in Kosovo. In a letter to the United Nations Security Council released Wednesday by the tribunal, presiding judge Gabrielle Kirk McDonald of the United States said the failure of Yugoslav officials to grant visas to investigators is ``an affront.'' ``The intentional and continuous refusal by the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia to comply with its clear and incontrovertible legal obligations to the tribunal is an affront to the Security Council and all law-abiding nations,'' she said. The Texas judge fired off the letter last Friday following the refusal of Belgrade authorities to allow tribunal Chief Prosecutor Louise Arbour of Canada and a team of investigators to visit Kosovo. McDonald asked the Security Council to impose ``measures which are sufficiently compelling to bring the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia into the fold of law-abiding nations.'' Hundreds of people, mostly ethnic Albanians, have been killed, and as many as 300,000 driven from their homes since February, when Serb forces began a crackdown on ethnic Albanian separatists in Kosovo. The tribunal wants to look into allegations of war crimes on both sides of the conflict. ||||| Yugoslavia must cooperate with the U.N. war crimes tribunal investigating alleged atrocities during the wars in Croatia and Bosnia, international legal experts meeting in Belgrade said Sunday. The meeting was the first international debate in Yugoslavia over the U.N. tribunal's work and the government's cooperation with it. The tribunal, established by the U.N. Security Council in 1993, sits in The Hague, Netherlands. Despite objections to the tribunal, Yugoslav authorities allowed the two-day discussions _ organized by the Belgrade-based, non-governmental Humanitarian Law Center _ to take place without any problems. State-run media largely ignored the event. Though there were some disagreements, participants in the discussions generally agreed that crimes against humanity cannot go unpunished. ``The indicted who are not in The Hague are at-large because of the refusal by Croatian and Yugoslav authorities to arrest and extradite them,'' said Mark Ellis, a lawyer and representative of the American Bar Association. Present-day Yugoslavia, consisting of Serbia and Montenegro, cooperates with the tribunal in cases where Serbs were the victims in Bosnia and Croatia, the two former republics that fought wars for their secession. But Yugoslavia has questioned the tribunal's jurisdiction and refuses to indict three army officers wanted for alleged war crimes in Croatia. Last week, it also refused to allow U.N. investigators to probe alleged atrocities in Serbia's southern Kosovo province where ethnic Albanian separatists are fighting government forces. ``The tribunal was founded to satanize Serbs,'' said Miodrag Mitic, a former legal adviser in Yugoslavia's foreign ministry. He said the U.N. court was influenced by powerful countries that dominate the international body. On Saturday, David Scheffer, the U.S. State Department's ambassador at-large for war crimes, demanded Yugoslavia's full cooperation. ||||| To his Muslim targets, Bosnian Serb Goran Jelisic was ``the face of genocide'' who once bragged that ``he had to kill 20 or 30 Muslims before his morning coffee.'' Opening a genocide trial Monday at the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal, U.N. prosecutor Terree Bowers said the 30-year-old mechanic used the nickname Adolf ``with a perverse pride in the genocidal symbolism it represented.'' Jelisic pleaded guilty in October to murdering 12 Muslims and Croats in and around the Serb-run Luka camp set up in Brcko, northern Bosnia, in May 1992. By trying him for genocide, prosecutors will be able to call evidence about the background of Jelisic's murders, including the involvement of more senior Serbs. The trial also will give survivors of his killing spree chance to tell their story in court. Bowers told a three-judge tribunal panel that Jelisic admitted in interviews with investigators to far more killings than the dozen to which he has pleaded guilty. Jelisic will be convicted of those murders and sentenced at the end of his trial, which is expected to last well into 1999. He faces a maximum sentence of life imprisonment. ``We will never be able to fix the exact number'' of victims, Bowers said. ``But if we are to believe even a small percentage of the totals which Goran Jelisic claimed, then his victims certainly number well over 100.'' As the trial began, judges were read excerpts of a psychological report which stated that Jelisic was mentally fit to stand trial but suffered a ``borderline personality disorder.'' Wearing a striped sweater and black jeans, Jelisic brought a laptop computer into court and took notes. When he wasn't writing, Jelisic sat slightly slumped in his chair, his head still, looking impassively around the courtroom. Jelisic's campaign of murder stands out _ even at a tribunal set up to deal exclusively with atrocities _ for its cold-bloodedness. ``Once Goran Jelisic even declined assistance from a guard, noting that he was still in `good form' even though he had killed over 60 people,'' Bowers told judges, citing statements made by witnesses due to testify later in the trial. ``To victims in Brcko, the face of genocide was the face of Goran Jelisic,'' he said. Bowers told the judges that Jelisic, who held no official rank, was released by Bosnian Serb authorities from jail, where he was serving three years for fraud, and sent to Brcko to murder Muslims. He told investigators that on his arrival in the town, which was of strategic importance to Bosnian Serbs, he was given a list of Muslim targets and ordered to kill as many as possible. Jelisic, Bowers said, seemed to relish the task. ``Witness testimony will also establish that Goran Jelisic was not a reluctant tool of the genocide who was being compelled by Serb authorities to act against his will,'' the U.S. prosecutor said. ``Quite to the contrary, the testimony will firmly establish that Goran Jelisic was an efficient and enthusiastic participant in the genocide.'' Set up in 1993, the U.N. court has convicted two Muslims, two Bosnian Croats and a Bosnian Serb of war crimes including murder, rape and torture, but it has yet to register a genocide conviction. An earlier genocide trial was halted when the defendant, Bosnian Serb Milan Kovacevic, died of a ruptured artery in his tribunal cell. ||||| He called himself the ``Serb Adolf,'' and his crimes were as chilling as his nickname. In a trial opening Monday at the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal, U.N. prosecutors were seeking to convince a three-judge panel that Goran Jelisic is guilty of genocide, the court's most serious offense. The 30-year-old former Bosnian Serb mechanic confessed in October to murdering 12 Muslims and Croats in 1992, astonishing many observers by reversing his earlier declarations of innocence. Although his guilty pleas mean an automatic conviction for war crimes and crimes against humanity _ and the likelihood of a maximum life sentence _ Jelisic has denied that the killing spree constituted genocide. By pressing on with a genocide trial, prosecutors will be able to call evidence about the background of Jelisic's murders, including the involvement of more senior Serbs. The trial also will give survivors of his ruthless campaign a chance to tell their story in court. To convict Jelisic of genocide, prosecutors must prove that the murders _ most of them carried out with close-range shots from an automatic pistol _ were part of a campaign intended to wipe out an entire ethnic group in the northern Bosnian town of Brcko. Jelisic, who was arrested in January by U.S. troops serving in the NATO force in Bosnia, has pleaded guilty to a total of 31 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity. The charges cover the murders as well as three beatings and the plundering of property. In entering those guilty pleas, Jelisic told the tribunal he wanted to ``cleanse my soul.'' He will officially be convicted of those charges during the genocide trial. Jelisic's victims were killed in or near the Serb-run Luka prison camp, a former port complex on the banks of the Sava River. Although most victims were men, Jelisic also clubbed one female inmate with a police baton and then fatally shot her. U.N. prosecutors say Jelisic identified himself to prisoners as the ``Serb Adolf,'' a reference to Hitler, and bragged about the number of Muslims he had killed. Set up in 1993, the U.N. court has convicted three Muslims, two Bosnian Croats and a Bosnian Serb of war crimes including murder, rape and torture, but it has yet to register a genocide conviction. An earlier genocide trial was halted when the defendant, Bosnian Serb Milan Kovacevic, died of a ruptured artery in his tribunal cell. ||||| The Yugoslav war crimes tribunal Monday acquitted a Muslim military commander of war crimes against Bosnian Serb prisoners in 1992, but convicted three underlings in the first U.N. case dealing with anti-Serb atrocities. The Yugoslav war crimes tribunal cleared Zejnil Delalic, a Muslim, of responsibility for war crimes committed against Serb captives at a Bosnian government-run prison camp under his command. Prosecutor Grant Niemann said he would appeal Delalic's acquittal, and asked judges to keep him in custody pending the outcome of the appeal. The U.N. court convicted camp commander Zdravko Mucic, a Croat, of 11 war crimes and grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions because he oversaw guards who murdered nine Serbs and tortured six. Mucic smiled as he heard his sentence of seven years in prison read out. His conviction was the first by an international court on the basis of so-called ``command responsibility'' since post-World War II tribunals convicted Nazi and Japanese superiors for the crimes of their subordinates. ``Mr. Mucic was clearly derelict in his duty and allowed those under his authority to commit the most heinous of offenses, without taking any disciplinary action,'' said presiding Judge Adolphus Karibi-Whyte. Hazim Delic, a Muslim who served as Mucic's deputy, was found guilty of two murders and of raping two women as well as torturing other inmates. He was sentenced to 20 years. Esad Landzo, a Muslim guard, was convicted of three murders and the torture of at least three other inmates. He was jailed for 15 years. All four defendants had faced up to life imprisonment, the maximum punishment at the tribunal, which has no death penalty. Monday's verdicts ended a marathon 20-month trial that focused on the brutal mistreatment of the Bosnian Serbs, themselves blamed for the vast majority of the conflict's war crimes. During the trial _ the tribunal's longest to date involving 122 witnesses _ survivors described the campaign of terror unleashed against Serbs in the area. Inmates at the Celebici prison camp were beaten to death by guards wielding baseball bats, wooden planks and rifle butts, according to testimony. Others were set on fire, raped and forced to commit sexual acts with members of their own family. The 49-page indictment detailing atrocities at Celebici asserts that at least 14 prisoners were killed in 1992. One prisoner was beaten to death and had a Muslim party badge nailed to his head, a witness claimed. Yet a few witnesses also praised Delalic and Mucic for humanitarian gestures, such as getting food and clothing to some prisoners and releasing others. The tribunal, set up by the Security Council in 1993, has convicted only one other person following a trial _ Bosnian Serb Dusan Tadic, who was sentenced in May 1997 to 20 years for killing and torturing Muslims in 1992. Two other men have confessed to killing Muslims, handing the tribunal two more convictions while sparing it the need for trials. ||||| Some of the closest combat in the half year of the Kosovo conflict, to the point of fighting room to room and floor to floor, occurred near this village six weeks ago, in the days before 21 women, children and elderly members of the Delijaj clan were massacred by Serbian forces, their mutilated bodies left strewn on the forest floor. Piecing together what happened, from surviving family members, ethnic Albanian separatist forces and official Serbian information, a story emerges of fierce guerrilla resistance to an onslaught by Serbian tanks, artillery and infantry. The Serbian forces fighting here appear to have suffered unusually heavy losses and, after the guerrillas finally fled, took revenge against the civilians, shooting women and children at close range as they tried to run away from their pursuers. According to relatives who found the bodies, Pajazit Delijaj, 65, was decapitated, his brain left on display on the ground. Hava Delijaj, 65, was shot and one of her feet cut with a knife so that it hung by a thread of skin. Young women and children who had run a few hundred yards up a rocky path were mowed down. Miraculously, a 6-week-old baby, Diturie, was found by her father alive in the clasp of her dead mother, Lumnije, 30, more than 24 hours after the killings. ``Blood was in her mouth and her mother's hand on the baby,'' said Imer Delijaj, the father, an avowed member of the Kosovo Liberation Army, the ethnic Albanian guerrilla force, who returned in uniform to discover the bodies. ``I moved her hand and at that moment she opened her eyes. I realized she was alive. I tried to clean the blood from her mouth and she put her tongue out.'' Several members of the Delijaj clan survived. Zejnije Delijaj, 39, who had cooked for the guerrillas at the family compound when they returned from fighting in the days before the massacre, recalled how she fled, crawling, falling, running and hiding in the woods as the Serbs shot at her. ``I could feel the dirt hitting me from the impact of the bullets,'' she said in an interview, her nose still bloodied from what she said was a heavy fall during her flight. ``First it was machine guns, then grenades, then cannon,'' she said. ``Every time I moved and they heard leaves rustling, they shot.'' The massacre of the Delijajs, whose forebears settled in the Drenica Valley about 150 years ago, was not the first in the conflict that ravaged the Serbian province between March and October and has now lulled into an uneasy truce. Indeed, the conflict between Serbian forces bent on keeping Kosovo in Serbia and guerrillas fighting for the independence of its heavily ethnic Albanian population first drew international attention with the massacre of the Jasari clan in early March by Serbian units at Prekaz, in central Kosovo. But the killing of the Delijajs, ranging from the paralyzed patriarch, Fazli, 94, who was burned in his bed, to the slaughter of Valmir, 18 months, who was found shot, is the most thoroughly documented so far. Human Rights Watch, a New York-based group, believes the knowledge gathered so far increases the possibility of prosecutions by the U.N. war crimes tribunal in The Hague, Netherlands. The Hague's prosecutors could also draw on the observations of diplomats, human rights monitors and reporters who saw the bodies scattered in the ravine where the victims were killed before they were buried in shallow graves in the clan's nearby compound. In other Kosovo massacres, bodies had been moved from the sites before they were seen by independent observers. Further, family members who survived the assault have described what they saw and the circumstances in the hills and valleys around Obrinje as the Serbs pushed forward early Saturday morning, Sept. 26, from their headquarters at Likovac, north of here. By then, the Albanian guerrillas had fled the area around the Delijaj compound, dispersing after what a senior commander of the Kosovo Liberation Army, Naim Maloku, termed particularly fierce combat with the Serbs. In the days before Sept. 26, he said, the guerrillas _ caught in a Serbian pincer movement _ had decided to fight rather than surrender. The fighting _ sometimes house to house, even room to room _ took an unusually heavy toll among the Serbs, said Maloku, a former officer in the Yugoslav army. He said he believed that it was those deaths the Serbs avenged with the massacre of the Delijajs. In other major attacks during the conflict, the guerrillas generally found an escape hatch. In Obrinje, led by another former officer of the Yugoslav army whom Maloku declined to name, the guerrillas fought, using land mines and rocket-propelled grenades. Maloku said he knew from a report made by rebel headquarters that at least 47 Serbian soldiers and police officers were killed in the fighting between here and Bajince, three miles east. ``We took weapons from 47 Serbs,'' he said. The state-controlled Serbian media center in Kosovo's capital, Pristina, said 10 Serbian police officers were killed in the fighting, including five reservists who died when their vehicle hit an antitank mine on Sept. 25. The announcement of 10 Serbs killed in one action is unusually high. The practice of taking violent revenge is a time-honored tradition in the Balkans. From 1991 to 1995, in the wars in Croatia and Bosnia, Serbs, Croats and, to a far lesser extent, the main victims, the Muslims, avenged World War II massacres and new blood feuds, driven into killing by leaders who exploited old conflicts to carve new fiefs for themselves as the old, Communist Yugoslavia collapsed. In this case, it appears, Serbian vengeance was visited upon the Delijajs. Survivors of the clan said they had feared an assault on their collection of mud and brick homes lining a rocky dirt track directly opposite the village of Likovac, the Serbs' base just a mile away. The Serbs had pushed the rebels out of Likovac in August and the guerrillas had established new headquarters around Bajince, six miles east of Obrinje. As the Serbs swept down from the nearby Cicavica Mountains, and up from the road that runs from Pristina to Klina, it was clear that Obrinje would be a target. Most women and children in the area had moved into Apple Valley, where more than 10,000 refugees had gathered outdoors, seeking safety in numbers. But Imer Delijaj, 38, said he decided that the ravine below his family compound would be a better hiding place. He said he believed the women, children and elderly would be spared if the Serbs found them. As the Serbs approached on foot the Saturday morning of the massacre, the last person to flee the compound itself was Bashkim Delijaj, 21, the youngest son of 94-year-old Fazli. Bashkim Delijaj said he had stayed behind to look after his bedridden father. ``The shelling started again at 7 a.m. on Saturday and I saw a tank convoy approaching, with infantry behind the tanks,'' Bashkim Delijaj recalled in an interview. ``I was smoking a cigarette when a grenade fell on the roof and from a hole in the gate I saw soldiers coming from about 30 meters away. They were in brown army uniforms, had huge knives or small axes. Many had beards.'' Bashkim Delijaj said he was unable to carry his father to safety, and did not have the courage to tell him what was happening. ``I told him I was getting the animals out of the barn,'' he said. He said he ran, hid, ran some more, and eventually received shelter from a farmer, all the time hearing shooting and shelling. When the firing had died down Monday morning, he returned to the compound and ran into Imer, still wearing his guerrilla uniform. They went to one of the houses and found Imer Delijaj's brother, Adem, 33, shot dead, his body sprawled on the ground in the rain, and the burned torso of Fazli. ``I looked in the window of our house and saw only the bones of my father, which looked like what we learned in biology class,'' he said. Together, the two men went to find out what had happened in the ravine. There they found the bodies. First, Ali, 65, who, Imer Delijaj said, had been cut through the neck with his own tobacco cutting knife. Then Pajazit, who had been decapitated in a makeshift tent, his brain placed between two foam mattresses. Then Hava, 65, who was sprawled near the tent. They moved on to find Jeton, Imer's 10-year-old son, and Imer's mother, Hamide, 60, not far away. Imer's sister-in-law, Luljeta, who was seven months pregnant, had been mutilated, he said. A little further up the ravine, Imer said he saw his wife, Lumnije, 30. He opened his wife's coat and found his 6-week-old baby girl, now 3 months old and recovering at a relative's home in Likovac. He said he tried to clean the baby and then put her under his jacket and walked a few feet further to find the bodies of his 4-year-old daughter, Menduhije, and two other young children, Donieta, 5, and Gentiana, 7. The corpses of other family members were found in the woods and two older men, Habib, 51, and Hysen, 53, were found the next morning, Imer said. On Oct. 3, the bodies of two missing teen-age girls, Mehane, 16, and Antigua, 13, were found in the bushes at the side of a road near an abandoned Serbian police compound. Later in the month, the body of Hajriz was found pushed down a well, close to the ravine. One uncle, Sharif, who was in the ravine, is still missing, presumed dead. Human Rights Watch, which has been documenting the Delijaj massacre, has described it as the most vicious of a pattern of attacks on civilians by the Serbs in the Kosovo conflict. (To a lesser extent, Albanian guerrillas also attacked Serbian civilians, forcing them from their homes, and allegedly carried out at least two massacres.) The evidence strongly indicates that the Gornje Obrinje killings were followed by conscious mutilations carried out after the victims were killed, a coming report by Human Rights Watch says. Delijaj family members have told Human Rights Watch monitors and others that they saw an ethnic Albanian police officer accompanying the Serbian police officers during the fighting. They believe that the police officer, who is posted at the nearby Glogovac police station, was used by the Serbian special police officers as a guide to the Obrinje area. This police officer, who is apparently one of a small group of ethnic Albanians officers who have remained loyal to the Serbs, could be an important witness for criminal investigators from the war-crimes tribunal in The Hague, according to human rights experts. ``The ethnic Albanian policeman could be an important witness to identifying the police and army units responsible for the atrocities,'' said Peter Boueckhart, a researcher for Human Rights Watch. ``It is vital that those who carried out these atrocities are prosecuted by the Hague tribunal.'' At the burned Delijaj compound in the last week, Imer Delijaj has been acting as the host of a wake which, following Albanian tradition, will last several weeks and began after family members returned from their hiding places in the woods. Color photographs of the youngest members of the family, and of Imer's mother and grandmother, have been mounted behind glass on a table outside the gate. A 30-year-old faded black and white picture of Fazli in a double-breasted suit stands apart, a sign of ultimate respect. An outsized Albanian flag with a black double-headed eagle on a red field is draped behind the table. Imer Delijaj's face seemed tense and his words were spare as he described his family's death. He did not express direct remorse for allowing his family to use a hiding place so close to the family compound, which for all practical purposes was an informal base for fighters. His lawyer, Bajram Krasniqi, who said he was eager to be helpful to investigators of the Hague tribunal, said in Pristina that he believed Imer Delijaj felt guilty for a faulty decision. Whether the tribunal will closely examine the case remains unclear. Slobodan Milosevic, the Yugoslav president, has issued only a handful of visas to investigators from the tribunal. Two investigators who were in Kosovo at the time of the massacre left six days later without visiting the site or contacting Krasniqi about the killings. Would Imer Delijaj seek revenge? As he sat on the floor of his living room with a group of male visitors, he replied: ``It's easy to answer. If I can see eye to eye with men I will fight them. But only with men in uniform and in a fair fight. If I see children with them, I will treat them like children all over the world. Children are children.'' ||||| In its first case to deal with atrocities against Serbs during Bosnia's civil war, a U.N. war crimes tribunal on Monday convicted three prison officials and guards, but acquitted a top military commander who oversaw the facility. The Yugoslav war crimes tribunal cleared Cmndr. Zejnil Delalic, of the Bosnian Muslim Army, of responsibility for war crimes committed at a government-run prison camp under his overall command. Prosecutor Grant Niemann of Australia said he would appeal Delalic's acquittal. Judges freed Delalic pending the outcome of the appeal. ``Let me thank you for a just and fair judgment,'' Delalic told the court. ``The judgment has even increased my trust in this institution.'' The tribunal convicted camp warden Zdravko Mucic, a Croat, of 11 war crimes and grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions because he oversaw guards who murdered nine Serbs and tortured six. Mucic, wearing dark sunglasses and a cross, smiled as he heard his sentence of seven years in prison. Tribunal Deputy Prosecutor Graham Blewitt of Australia said he was considering appealing Mucic's ``inadequate'' sentence. Mucic's conviction was the first by an international court on the basis of ``command responsibility'' since post-World War II tribunals convicted Nazi and Japanese superiors for the crimes of their subordinates. ``Mr. Mucic was clearly derelict in his duty and allowed those under his authority to commit the most heinous of offenses, without taking any disciplinary action,'' said presiding Judge Adolphus Karibi-Whyte of Nigeria. Monday's verdicts ended a marathon 20-month trial that focused on the brutal mistreatment of the Bosnian Serbs, themselves blamed for the vast majority of war crimes committed during the 3 1/2-year Bosnian conflict. During the trial _ the tribunal's longest to date involving 122 witnesses _ survivors described the campaign of terror unleashed against Serbs in the area. Inmates at the Celebici prison camp were beaten to death by guards wielding baseball bats, wooden planks and rifle butts, according to testimony. Others were set on fire, raped and forced to commit sexual acts with members of their own family. The 49-page indictment detailing atrocities at Celebici asserts that at least 14 prisoners were killed in 1992. One prisoner was beaten to death and had a Muslim party badge nailed to his head, a witness claimed. Yet a few witnesses also praised Delalic and Mucic, for humanitarian gestures, such as getting food and clothing to some prisoners and releasing others. Hazim Delic, a Muslim who served as deputy warden of the camp, was found guilty of two murders and of raping two women as well as torturing other inmates. He was sentenced to 20 years by Karibi-Whyte, who denounced rape as ``a despicable act which strikes at the very core of human dignity and physical integrity.'' Delic's defense attorney said he would likely appeal. Esad Landzo, a Muslim guard, was convicted of killing three prisoners and torturing at least three others and was sentenced to 15 years. His attorneys also are likely to appeal the conviction. All four defendants had faced up to life imprisonment, the maximum punishment at the tribunal, which has no death penalty. A charge against Delic and Mucic of plundering property was dismissed by the three-judge panel. Mucic also was cleared of responsibility for four murders and three cases of mistreatment or torture of prisoners. Delic was cleared of two murders, and of command responsibility for other killings at Celebici. He was also acquitted of three cases of torture. Landzo was cleared of one murder charge and one torture count. The tribunal, set up by the Security Council in 1993, has convicted only one other person following a trial _ Bosnian Serb Dusan Tadic, who was sentenced in May 1997 to 20 years for killing and torturing Muslims in 1992. Two other men have confessed to killing Muslims, handing the tribunal two more convictions without conduction trials.

Milosevic cooperates with the U.N. war crimes tribunal when Serbs are victims, but is an obstructionist when they are the accused. Officials, for example, limited U.N. investigators' access to Kosovo, where Serbs massacred 21 ethnic Albanian civilians of the Delijaj clan. Further, while U.S. and allied forces arrested Bosnian Serb General Krstic on genocide charges, other indicted, high-ranking Serb leaders are protected in Serbia. Meanwhile, in the first trial involving anti-Serb acts, a Muslim military commander was freed, but three prison camp officials were convicted. Also, in The Hague, the genocide trial of Goran Jelisic, the "Serb Adolf," has begun.

Brazil and the International Monetary Fund moved closer Tuesday to agreement on an expected dlrs 30 billion rescue package for the world's ninth-largest economy. A joint statement by the IMF and the Brazilian government said the two sides agreed Brazil should aim to reduce its budget deficit from an expected eight percent of gross domestic product to zero by 2000. The statement was issued after weekend talks between IMF officials and a Brazilian delegation headed by Pedro Parente, executive secretary of the Finance Ministry. Representatives of the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank took part in the talks. Both organizations as well as private banks are expected to contribute to the rescue package. Brazil is the latest country to be hit by the financial crisis that began 15 months ago in Asia and then spread to Russia. Brazil has lost about dlrs 25 billion in foreign currency reserves since August when Russia defaulted on its debts and sparked a new crisis of confidence in emerging market countries. If instability continues in Brazil it could affect Argentina, its main trading partner, and other Latin American economies. Despite the re-election of Fernando Henrique Cardoso for a second term as president and the announcement Oct. 8 that Brazil and the IMF had agreed on the broad outlines of a financial assistance package, investors continued to withdraw large sums of money from Brazil. Cardoso is preparing an emergency program of budget cuts to restore investor confidence and prevent a devaluation of the country's currency. Investors want Cardoso to outline the plans this week but he is expected to wait until after Sunday's second round of elections for state governors, whose support he needs for his budget cuts. The joint statement said the Brazil-IMF discussions ``were aimed at preparing the ground for prompt support by the international community, including the IMF, for the multi-year fiscal program to be announced soon by the Brazilian authorities, which will include new policy initiatives.'' The statement reiterated Brazil's goal of achieving a primary budget surplus of 2.6 percent of its gross domestic product in 1999, 2.8 percent in 2000 and 3.0 percent in 2001 which would '' fulfill the government target of stabilizing the ratio of net consolidated public sector debt to GDP by the year 2000.'' The two sides are to continue their talks ``with the objective of reaching early agreement,'' the statement said. ||||| There's no such thing as a free lunch any longer in Brazil, President Fernando Henrique Cardoso is telling government workers. No haircuts or phone calls, either. Eager to bolster the sagging economy, Cardoso wants to slash dlrs 19 billion (23.5 billion reals) from the budget deficit, and he's beginning by paring perks for the more than 2,000 workers at the presidential palace in Brasilia, the capital. Sure, it's not much when compared with a deficit of some dlrs 65 billion, or 7 percent of economic output. But as Cardoso readies a package of spending cuts and tax increases, he clearly wants to show Brazilians that economy starts at home. So goodbye to the afternoon courtesy snack of sandwiches, fruit and juice, a palace tradition. Three barber shops in the palace were closed, and the use of cellular phones and copiers was restricted. The price of a buffet offered employees for lunch was raised from dlrs 6 to dlrs 8.50 (7 reals to 10 reals). Cardoso himself has promised to travel less and more cheaply. On a trip to a summit in Portugal this month, he took a delegation of just eight, half the usual number. The savings at the palace could come to nearly dlrs 145,000 (170,000 reals) a month, said Nilson Rebello, chief administrator of the president's office. Cardoso, under pressure to repair an economy battered by the world financial turmoil, is expected to unveil the full scope of his deficit-cutting plan next week. It is believed to include a spate of new taxes on fuel, income, personal fortunes and bank transactions. The plan is part of a deal with the International Monetary Fund for a rescue package estimated at dlrs 30 billion. The money would strengthen and, hopefully, restore investor confidence in the world's ninth-largest economy, now at the center of the financial crisis buffeting developing nations for more than a year. Brazil already has agreed to annual targets to sharply reduce its deficit through the year 2001. On Wednesday, newspapers published a joint statement from Brazil and the IMF, although a final agreement hasn't been reached yet. Despite Cardoso's efforts, many Brazilians were less than impressed by the palace penny-pinching. The leftist Workers Party said the government was making a big deal of insignificant savings while it failed to cut other dubious projects, such as a dlrs 800,000 (1 million reals) moat being built around Congress to keep protesters from easily entering the building. The Globo TV network also suggested there still was plenty of fat to cut, citing government expenses for running shoes, Persian carpets and gold cufflinks, intended as presents for visiting dignitaries. Cardoso is counting on help from friendly state governors to control spending. But the governors, some facing runoff elections on Sunday, are promising pay raises and public works projects that could sink the austerity plan. In Brasilia, Joaquim Roriz has promised civil service raises, bonuses and new jobs that his opponent estimates would cost some dlrs 1 billion (1.2 billion reals). Roriz hasn't explained where the money would come from. In powerful Minas Gerais state, the government will almost certainly have to lay off workers _ the state payroll consumes 78 percent of the budget. To rein in the free-spending habits of provincial politicians, Cardoso reportedly wants to hold local governments to bimonthly limits on spending. Federal money would automatically be cut off if spending gets out of hand. ||||| The United States is preparing to commit U.S. taxpayer funds as part of a lending program of at least $30 billion to try to insulate Brazil, and with it the rest of Latin America, from the worst effects of the financial turmoil circling the globe, according to U.S. and foreign officials assembling the program. Details of the U.S. contribution, which is expected to total several billion dollars in direct aid or loan guarantees, have yet to be negotiated. But several congressional leaders have been alerted to the likelihood that the administration would have to act while Congress is in recess. This early warning from the administration reflects memories of how Congress erupted with objections and hearings in 1995 when President Clinton committed $20 billion in U.S. funds to the bailout of Mexico. But administration officials said last week that their early soundings indicate that members of Congress are deeply concerned about preventing an economic collapse in Latin America that would resound in the United States, and thus they expect few objections. The timing of an aid package for Brazil _ originally expected within the next few days _ is complicated by unexpected delays that have cropped up in dealing with the Brazilian government. The government of President Fernando Henrique Cardoso faces politically risky gubernatorial elections on Sunday, which may well determine whether Brazil can execute an austerity program that is the key condition for the loans it is concurrently negotiating with the International Monetary Fund. The biggest role in the rescue program for Brazil will be taken by the International Monetary Fund, which said last week that it would contribute at least $15 billion _ and appears to be under pressure from the United States to do even more. Another $9 billion or so will come from the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank, and the remainder from the United States and other major industrial nations. Germany and Japan, though, have been reluctant to take part, one U.S. official noted, suggesting that Latin America is chiefly Washington's problem, not their own. So far, U.S. officials working behind the scenes to organize the aid package have said nothing in public about the details of plans for a direct contribution to Brazil. ``Brazil is very important to the economic well-being of the region, the United States and the international community, and all of us are very much focused on seeing how we can be helpful,'' Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin said on Friday. But in a wide-ranging interview about the global economic turmoil, Rubin declined to say what strategy he would pursue in dealing with Brazil's problems and insisted that no decisions had been made about how the United States might contribute. But he discussed Brazil as an opportunity to engage in the kind of preventive financial diplomacy that President Clinton advocated in speeches to the IMF and the World Bank here three weeks ago. At the time, Clinton argued that the monetary fund should ``provide contingent finance to help countries ward off global financial contagion'' rather than wait for disaster to strike. Direct U.S. aid to Brazil would clearly send a symbolic message: that after a year of trying to manage the financial crisis through the monetary fund, the United States is now ready to put a limited amount of its own capital at risk to prevent further havoc _ not only for Brazil but to stop chaos spreading to Argentina, Mexico and other countries that are major U.S. trading partners. That would be a change of strategy. So far, the United States has operated almost entirely through international financial institutions, chiefly the IMF But it would also be a risky move for President Clinton, economically and politically. Even though Congress objected to the $20 billion in U.S. funds committed to the bailout of Mexico, it turned out that only $12 billion was ultimately needed, and it has since been paid back, with interest. But Rubin noted on Friday that ``it's a very different environment now.'' Other administration officials say they believe that there would be few objections in Congress to direct U.S. participation in a Brazil bailout. ``I think there are a lot more people in Congress who are now scared to death by what's been happening in the markets, and what could happen in their own districts,'' a White House official said last week, ``and they won't say much as long as they don't have to vote on it.'' By acting soon to stabilize Latin America, the administration is hoping to capitalize on two weeks of relative calm after the late-summer panic that engulfed Russia and, at its height, led to an outflow of a billion dollars a day from Brazil, for fear that it would be the next country forced to devalue its currency. Whether this calm marks the beginning of a turnaround or just another pause in the wildfires that have erupted since Thailand's currency crisis in July 1997 is a matter of considerable debate. But many experts cite the confluence of several events that have reassured jittery investors around the world: two successive interest-rate cuts in the United States, Japan's long-delayed move to prop up its banking system with $500 billion in taxpayer funds, and a steady strengthening of currencies in Thailand, Indonesia and South Korea, the first signs that investors may be preparing to return. Always circumspect when it comes to commenting publicly on markets, Rubin acknowledged that ``in the last several weeks there have been a number of significant, positive developments.'' But the former trader, burned during a 26-year career by many false market rallies, warned that ``serious issues remain'' and that ``it will take some time for the world to work its way out'' of what he has repeatedly called ``the most serious international financial disruption of the last 50 years.'' In fact, Rubin's aides are clearly nervous about the possibility of another outbreak that could set off a new round of panic, which has made it virtually impossible for many emerging-market countries to borrow money on world markets. ``Brazil and Japan are the two obvious tinderboxes,'' said Jeffrey Garten, dean of the Yale School of Management, who served as undersecretary of commerce for international affairs during Clinton's first term. ``In Brazil, the issue is whether the package that is coming together will really be big enough to deal with an exploding debt problem. And in Japan the question is whether there is real reform that goes along with the money.'' But after spending 18 months in negotiations with the Japanese, Rubin clearly senses that the United States has little leverage in Tokyo; its problems are chiefly rooted in political gridlock, not lack of resources. In Brazil, though, the United States has a better chance of buying time and influencing an economic reform program, as long as it does not appear to be dictating terms publicly to Cardoso and his team. But demonstrating economic support will probably require tapping the Exchange Stabilization Fund, created during the Roosevelt administration to help stabilize the dollar. The money is under Rubin's control, with presidential approval, and he reached into it to circumvent congressional objections to aiding Mexico in 1995. But the reaction was so strong _ for a time Congress restricted tapping the fund for international bailouts _ that Rubin has been extraordinarily cautious ever since. He committed $3 billion in a ``second line of defense'' in emergency aid programs for Indonesia and South Korea last year, but no money was ultimately dispersed to either country. U.S. officials said that South Korea did not need the extra help, and that the collapse of the Suharto government in Indonesia so changed the political scene there that it would be too risky to offer direct U.S. aid. In the bailout of Russia _ whose economy collapsed after President Boris Yeltsin abandoned an agreement to reform the economy and dismissed the leading reformers _ the United States offered no direct help. Those events set off a panicked exit by investors from all emerging markets, and greatly worsened Brazil's troubles. So far, Brazilian officials have successfully calmed the market by constantly talking about a forthcoming aid program from the IMF, convincing speculators that it would be dangerous to bet against the country. But at the same time, the Brazilian officials have maintained the pose that they do not really need the cash _ and are certainly in no hurry to get it. U.S. officials and top officials of the IMF are clearly nervous, worried that the longer the negotiations drag on, the greater will be the risk of Brazil being caught in another round of market turmoil. ``The Brazilians want everyone to think that it's all under control,'' said an investment banker involved in the talks. ``But the fact is that there's still a real risk that sometime in the next 18 months the government is going to be forced to devalue'' its currency, which is pegged to the dollar, but adjusts about 7.5 percent a year in a carefully controlled fall. To prevent a sudden devaluation, the Brazilian government has had to raise interest rates to more than 50 percent, choking off credit for most companies. Meanwhile, the country is slipping into recession. The aid would buy time for the Brazilians, but it is contingent on Cardoso's success in persuading the legislature to end huge deficits, chiefly through unpopular cuts in social spending. The first deputy managing director for the International Monetary Fund, Stanley Fischer, spent Friday in Brazil to review the country's austerity plan, which is expected to be announced after Sunday's elections but before the international package, to avoid the appearance that the global lender is dictating conditions to Brazil. ``Brazil has to do a lot,'' Fischer said last week before leaving on his trip. ``In return, I expect the international community will make a large contribution.'' ||||| Leaders from 19 Latin American nations, Spain and Portugal put finishing touches Saturday on an Ibero-American summit declaration warning of global recession unless action is taken to stabilize the international financial system. The draft declaration said recent financial market turmoil shows that adjustments must be made quickly ``to keep the difficulties affecting a few from becoming a crisis for all.'' The declaration addresses the world's seven richest nations. The Group of Seven is composed of the United States, Japan, Britain, Germany, France, Italy and Canada. The final declaration will be approved at Sunday's summit in this port city in northern Portugal. Brazilian President Fernando Henrique Cardoso said Saturday that Brazil and China, two of the world's largest economies, had become the ``dikes of resistance'' to global recession. Protecting their economies from the spreading economic turmoil, which is affecting more countries than at any time since the early 1980s, is key to world economic stability, he said. Brazil is Latin America's biggest economy and the eighth-largest in the world, and its economic collapse could take the rest of the continent with it. To halt Brazil's slide toward recession, Cardoso is preparing austerity measures including spending cuts, tax hikes and lower interest rates. The reforms would help Brazil qualify for an International Monetary Fund rescue package estimated at dlrs 30 billion. The IMF has put together bailout packages totaling dlrs 137 billion since the financial crisis struck Thailand 15 months ago and then spread from Asia to Russia. U.S. President Bill Clinton's administration, aware of the impact that a Latin American recession would have on the United States, has actively pushed the IMF and the World Bank to support Brazil after it was hit by investor flight. ||||| Latin American leaders flew Friday to Portugal for a weekend summit to figure out how they can shield their economies from the global financial crisis. Not since the early 1980s have so many countries been in recession, and the crisis now threatens to cripple Latin America's developing economies. An early arrival, Cuban President Fidel Castro, described the turmoil in world financial markets as the most important issue facing the world at the moment. ``I don't know if we are coming to the end of the world economic order. It will be interesting to know,'' the Cuban leader said at a hotel press conference shortly after his arrival for the annual Ibero-American summit. Emphasizing the scale of the threat, Castro said President Clinton was aware that ``if South America falls into crisis, it will be extended inevitably also to the United States,'' which is heavily involved in investments and loans in the region. Jittery investors have abruptly pulled cash out of Latin America with devastating effects on stock markets and currency reserves. The heads of state and government from Latin America, Spain and Portugal will explore measures to ward off the financial turmoil that already has devastated Asia and Russia. Stock markets also fell in Portugal and Spain, heavy investors in Latin America. The Latin American leaders must gauge the need for unpopular reforms of their public finances, including austerity packages which risk social unrest and political upheaval. A joint declaration will be signed Sunday in this ancient port city on the Douro River in northern Portugal. Diplomats said there was consensus on the form of the final statement. The declaration ``calls on the international community, and Group of Seven countries in particular, to take the necessary measures to promote stability in international financial markets, which is a necessary condition for sustained economic growth,'' said Luis Augusto Castro Neves, of the Brazilian Foreign Ministry. Latin America's leaders favor creating some kind of regulatory system for global financial transactions that would place controls on speculators, like measures to slow down the internatioal flow of money. They also want reforms that allow international financial institutions to head off crises rather than react to them with rescue packages. ``International institutions must be active in tackling crises like the recent one ... and contribute to stability,'' Portuguese Foreign Minister Jaime Gama said. ``Countries that have progressive policies should not be penalized, they should be given incentives,'' Gama added in reference to Latin American nations' efforts to modernize their economies. Brazil, the continent's largest economy and a potential bulwark against creeping recession, is waiting for news of a dlrs 30 billion bailout package from the International Monetary Fund. The presidents of the World Bank and InterAmerican Development Bank also were expected at the talks. The move by the U.S. Federal Reserve to cut interest rates Thursday revived Latin America's financial markets, but analysts expected the reprieve to be short-lived because of deep concerns about the continent's economic health. The recent economic troubles stemmed in part from the structural weaknesses of Latin American economies. A strike being waged by state employees in Colombia against a government austerity package offers a glimpse of the trouble that could arise if tough reforms are introduced. Brazil is drafting an austerity package that will hit public spending, especially social security. ||||| The Commerce Department on Tuesday provided a concrete measure of the effects of the global economic downturn on the American economy, reporting that the nation's trade deficit widened by $2.2 billion in August to $16.77 billion. That is the widest gap since the government recalculated the way it measures trade flows in 1992. It resulted from a decline in American exports and a sharp increase in what this country buys from abroad. So far this year, the trade deficit is running roughly 50 percent above last year's levels and is up to a projected $170 billion for the year, a gap that is expected to widen even further. One senior administration official who deals with economic issues, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Tuesday that internal projections suggest that the trade deficit in 1999 could reach $300 billion, a figure that he said ``will certainly cut into growth, and could well become a major political problem.'' Trade deficits carry with them both good and troubling signals about the economy. The current flood of imports is helping contain inflation to some of the lowest levels in decades. And while sales of American aircraft, computer chips and other goods are suffering, the weakening of the dollar on world markets in recent weeks may provide an end-of-the-year boost for American exporters. But at this moment of global upheaval, the biggest problem facing American companies is the inability of many nations and some large companies in Asia and Latin America simply to borrow money to make ordinary purchases. The result is such a freeze of economic activity that empty shipping containers are stacking up on American piers. And the effects are hurting everyone from Midwest farmers who can no longer send wheat to an impoverished Russia, to East Coast fishermen who are discovering that Japan's appetite for salmon and lobster has been ruined by the banking crisis. Among the most surprising elements of Tuesday's report is that more than a third of August's deficit was with one country that so far has managed to ward off the worst effects of the global troubles: China. Despite continued growth of the Chinese economy, exports to China have slowed dramatically and imports of Chinese-made goods have exploded, as the country desperately seeks to sell here goods that would ordinarily be sold elsewhere in Asia. That increased the monthly deficit with Beijing to $5.9 billion, levels previously only seen in trade with Japan. The Chinese _ besieged by floods, deeply troubled state-owned industries and an incipient banking crisis _ have signaled to the United States in recent weeks that they have little interest in any swift moves to open their markets further in return for entry into the World Trade Organization. That amounts to a major setback for President Clinton, who for three years has been using the negotiations over China's entry to the world body as the centerpiece of his effort to open China both economically and politically. Ostensible progress in this area has been cited by the administration until recently as one of the successes of the administration's China policy, but now officials say privately that the progress is evaporating. The decline in exports will trim the growth of the American economy, and it was one factor in the Federal Reserve's decision to lower interest rates two times in recent weeks. So administration officials were going out of their way Tuesday to portray the numbers as another warning sign, but not a crisis. ``While the United States remains strong and sound, the troubled condition of the global marketplace continue to strongly influence the U.S. trade balance,'' Commerce Secretary Williams Daley said in a statement Tuesday. After China, the biggest deterioration in the American trade balance in August came in Mexico, where the peso has weakened markedly as economic contagion has spread through Latin America. Exports to Mexico have remained unchanged. But imports from Mexico have increased markedly _ chiefly automobiles and automotive parts and telecommunications equipment _ as American manufacturers have taken advantage of the weakening currency. In contrast, America's trade surplus with Brazil, the latest focus of concern by the administration and the International Monetary Fund, barely budged from the same period a year ago. Normally, that would be cited as a sign of continued demand for American products in Latin America's largest economy, but there is fear it might be imperiled. The news comes as the United States and the IMF complete a bailout package of $30 billion or more for Brazil, intended to help it stave off the kind of economic troubles that have swept through Asia, Russia and several other nations. Tuesday the IMF and Brazil reached agreement on the country's fiscal targets for this year and next, a sign that the aid will likely be announced after elections in Brazil this weekend. But for all these potential problems, the rising trade deficit has barely caused a ripple on Capitol Hill. Because the rising level of imports does not appear to be triggering any unemployment here, the subject has barely come up in races for the House and Senate around the country. The only exception has been in regions where the steel industry is strong. The major steel companies have charged in recent weeks that Asian nations are dumping products on the American market at prices well below their costs. The Commerce Department has begun an inquiry. The Commerce Department's numbers showed that the deficit rose 15.3 percent to $16.77 billion in August, up from a revised figure of $14.55 billion in July. The department said that the resumption of production at General Motors Corp. after last summer's strike may have increased the size of the deficit's rise in August, as GM brought in parts from abroad. The deficit was the highest since the Commerce Department began a new method of tracking trade information in 1992. Exports, the department said, fell three tenths of 1 percent, to about $74.8 billion. Imports rose 2.2 percent to $91.6 billion. ||||| President Fernando Henrique Cardoso's efforts to repair the largest economy in Latin America may depend on the outcome of this weekend's gubernatorial elections. Cardoso wants to impose tough measures that would slash government spending and impose new taxes to try to halt the slide in Brazil's economy and restore investor confidence. But his plan, expected to be unveiled next week, must be approved by Congress, and state governors have enormous sway over local delegations. ``The influence governors have on their congressional blocs is overwhelming,'' said University of Sao Paulo political scientist Eduardo Kugelmas. Brazil has been caught up in the financial turmoil that began more than a year ago in Southeast Asia. As wary investors have fled its financial markets, Brazil's foreign reserves have fallen below dlrs 50 billion from dlrs 70 billion at the end of July. On Sunday, voters return to the polls for runoff elections in 12 states and in the Federal District of Brasilia. The outcome will likely determine how successful Cardoso is in getting Congress to approve his economic program, which is aimed at trimming the budget deficit. New income, fuel and bank transaction taxes are expected to be proposed. Kugelmas said opponents of the president stand a good chance of winning in four large states _ Sao Paulo, Minas Gerais, Rio de Janeiro and Rio Grande do Sul. ``If they win, the president will face a tough uphill battle,'' he said. Cardoso needs the governors' support not only in influencing the congressional delegations, but also in holding down their own spending. ``The problem is that none of the candidates in Sunday's elections ... wants to be identified with unpopular austerity measures,'' said Kugelmas. ``So they promise to spend more money on schools, hospitals and public work projects.'' Sao Paulo, Brazil's industrial and financial powerhouse, is perhaps the state most critical to the success of Cardoso's austerity plans. With more than 34 million inhabitants, nearly equal to the entire population of neighboring Argentina, it alone accounts for more than one-third of Brazil's economic output and 70 of the 513 congressional seats. While incumbent governor Mario Covas, a Cardoso ally who is seeking re-election, has committed himself to the austerity plan, Covas opponent Paulo Maluf is a question mark. ``If Maluf wins, he will use his victory as a launching pad to the presidency in 2003,'' Kugelmas predicted. ``And that means he will try to stay as far away as possible from any austerity measure.'' ||||| Caught in the middle of an economic crisis, many Brazilian factories fear they won't be able to pay their workers the mandatory year-end bonus. So they're considering paying with products instead of cash. Some workplaces have already offered their employees such things as hammers, nails, screws and bolts instead of the traditional cash bonus that normally is equivalent to one month's wage, said the head of Brazil's largest federation of trade unions. ``The idea is completely unacceptable,'' said Joao Antonio Felicio, secretary-general of the federation, which represents more than 2,000 unions and 19 million workers. ``We will recommend our unions reject such a preposterous proposal.'' But strapped for cash and punished by high interest rates and declining sales, factory owners may have no other choice, said Joseph Curi, president of the Sao Paulo State Association of Small Industries, which represents 110,000 factories that employ nearly 800,000 workers. ``Access to credit is almost impossible,'' Curi said. ``If banks and the government don't create some kind of emergency credit line, the only option many of our associates will have will be to use products to pay the bonus.'' Factories that produce clothes, shoes, food, toys and household appliances were ``the most enthusiastic about the idea,'' Curi said. Curi predicted even harsher times for Brazil with the belt-tightening austerity package newly re-elected President Fernando Henrique Cardoso is expected to announce Tuesday. The measures, aimed at curbing the country's ballooning budget deficit _ equal to about 7 percent of gross domestic product _ are expected to include spending cuts and, possibly, more taxes. ``There is a lot of talk of increasing taxes, which means less cash circulating in the market and more credit restrictions,'' Curi said. ``It is a shortsighted approach that will spell more recession and the collapse of many small factories.'' Brazil has been a major casualty of the global economic crisis, buffeted by loss of investor confidence and a strong outflow of capital. The country's foreign reserves have fallen below dlrs 50 billion, from dlrs 70 billion at the end of July. In an effort to prevent a collapse of the nation's currency, the real, and stem capital flight, interest rates were hiked to 50 percent a year. For union leader Felicio, the proposed product-for-cash swap ``is a clear sign of the despair the business sector is feeling because of the recessive economic policies'' brought by the Real Plan, the economic stabilization program put together in 1994 when Cardoso was finance minister. The plan succeeded in slashing inflation from 2,400 percent to almost zero today. But it also brought recession and unemployment, which now stands at almost 8 percent, the highest in a decade. ||||| Brazilian officials ended four days of meetings with representatives of the International Monetary Fund on Tuesday without living up to their public pledge to announce concrete measures to reduce government deficits. In Washington, Pedro Parente, executive secretary of the Brazilian Finance Ministry, offered only details on Brazil's plans for raising a primary account surplus over the next three years. With only five days to go before gubernatorial runoffs on Sunday, neither he nor President Fernando Henrique Cardoso, in Brasilia, said how the government planned to achieve the savings. Important allies of Cardoso are lagging behind in three key states, and despite the government promises, market analysts did not expect an announcement until after the elections. Instead, the strategy in Brasilia and Washington appeared to focus on reassuring the markets that work on cutting the deficit was going forward, without providing fodder for opponents in domestic elections. ``The discussions continue with the objective of reaching agreement soon on the detailed program,'' said a joint statement by the IMF and the Brazilian Finance Ministry. Because of Brazil's enormous deficits, the collapse of emerging markets has hit the nation particularly hard, draining foreign currency reserves and pushing the economy toward recession. Finance officials in Washington and around the world fear that a collapse of Brazil, because of its size and links to other economies, would worsen financial instability throughout the hemisphere. With 160 million people, Brazil represents the world's ninth-largest economy and is the financial engine of Latin America. Throughout the day, government officials met with Cardoso in Brasilia and were expected to fine-tune a three-year austerity package that Cardoso was to discuss with congressional party leaders on Wednesday morning. In Brasilia, officials said that among the measures being considered were a tax increase on financial transactions, to three-tenths of a percent from two-tenths of a percent, and extending the Fiscal Stabilization Fund, which sets aside 20 percent of all taxes collected for presidential discretionary spending. The fund was to have expired by 1999. Speaking in Washington, Parente said that Brazil would aim toward a surplus of 2.6 percent in 1999, 2.8 percent in 2000 and 3 percent in 2001. It had already been announced, at the end of the IMF's annual meeting in Washington two weeks ago that Brazil would have to reach a primary account surplus of 2.5 percent to 3 percent to qualify for IMF aid. The primary account covers government expenses, without interest payments on debt. Ernest Brown, senior economist for Latin America at Morgan Stanley Dean Witter, said signs that the Brazilian government and the IMF were moving closer to an aid package were reassuring, and that he did not expect much more than reassurance until next week. ``I call this the `We have a pope' scenario,'' Brown said. ``You're just going to hear that we have a pope, maybe see the white smoke rising,'' he said, ``and not figure out who the pope is until after the elections.'' ||||| There's no such thing as a free lunch any longer in Brazil, President Fernando Henrique Cardoso is telling government workers. No haircuts or phone calls, either. Eager to bolster the sagging economy, Cardoso wants to slash dlrs 19 billion from the budget deficit, and he's beginning by paring perks for the more than 2,000 workers at the presidential palace in Brasilia, the capital. Sure, it's not much when compared with a deficit of some dlrs 65 billion, or 7 percent of economic output. But as Cardoso readies a package of spending cuts and tax increases, he clearly wants to show Brazilians that economy starts at home. So goodbye to the afternoon courtesy snack of sandwiches, fruit and juice, a palace tradition. Three barber shops in the palace were closed, and the use of cellular phones and copiers was restricted. The price of a buffet offered employees for lunch was raised from dlrs 6 to dlrs 8.50. Cardoso himself has promised to travel less and more cheaply. On a trip to a summit in Portugal this month, he took a delegation of just eight, half the usual number. The savings at the palace could come to nearly dlrs 145,000 a month, said Nilson Rebello, chief administrator of the president's office. Cardoso, under pressure to repair an economy battered by the world financial turmoil, is expected to unveil the full scope of his deficit-cutting plan next week. It is believed to include a spate of new taxes on fuel, income, personal fortunes and bank transactions. The plan is part of a deal with the International Monetary Fund for a rescue package estimated at dlrs 30 billion. The money would strengthen and, hopefully, restore investor confidence in the world's ninth-largest economy, now at the center of the financial crisis buffeting developing nations for more than a year. Brazil already has agreed to annual targets to sharply reduce its deficit through the year 2001. On Wednesday, newspapers published a joint statement from Brazil and the IMF, although a final agreement hasn't been reached yet. Despite Cardoso's efforts, many Brazilians were less than impressed by the palace penny-pinching. The leftist Workers Party said the government was making a big deal of insignificant savings while it failed to cut other dubious projects, such as a dlrs 800,000 moat being built around Congress to keep protesters from easily entering the building. The Globo TV network also suggested there still was plenty of fat to cut, citing government expenses for running shoes, Persian carpets and gold cufflinks, intended as presents for visiting dignitaries. Cardoso is counting on help from friendly state governors to control spending. But the governors, some facing runoff elections on Sunday, are promising pay raises and public works projects that could sink the austerity plan. In Brasilia, Joaquim Roriz has promised civil service raises, bonuses and new jobs that his opponent estimates would cost some dlrs 1 billion. Roriz hasn't explained where the money would come from. In powerful Minas Gerais state, the government will almost certainly have to lay off workers _ the state payroll consumes 78 percent of the budget. To rein in the free-spending habits of provincial politicians, Cardoso reportedly wants to hold local governments to bimonthly limits on spending. Federal money would automatically be cut off if spending gets out of hand.

Latin leaders at Ibero-American summit explore ways to avoid economic turmoil and warn of likely global recession. Brazil President Cardoso will announce deficit-cutting austerity measures. Brazil and the IMF move closer to an agreement on a $30 billion rescue package. Cardoso readies his plan for spending cuts and tax increases as part of the IMF deal. He will unveil the full plan next week. The success of his economic efforts may depend on the outcome of upcoming gubernatorial elections. The Commerce Dept. measures the effects of global economic decline on the U.S. economy. The U.S. will give billions of taxpayer dollars to the Brazil-IMF rescue deal.

Brazil and the International Monetary Fund moved closer Tuesday to agreement on an expected dlrs 30 billion rescue package for the world's ninth-largest economy. A joint statement by the IMF and the Brazilian government said the two sides agreed Brazil should aim to reduce its budget deficit from an expected eight percent of gross domestic product to zero by 2000. The statement was issued after weekend talks between IMF officials and a Brazilian delegation headed by Pedro Parente, executive secretary of the Finance Ministry. Representatives of the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank took part in the talks. Both organizations as well as private banks are expected to contribute to the rescue package. Brazil is the latest country to be hit by the financial crisis that began 15 months ago in Asia and then spread to Russia. Brazil has lost about dlrs 25 billion in foreign currency reserves since August when Russia defaulted on its debts and sparked a new crisis of confidence in emerging market countries. If instability continues in Brazil it could affect Argentina, its main trading partner, and other Latin American economies. Despite the re-election of Fernando Henrique Cardoso for a second term as president and the announcement Oct. 8 that Brazil and the IMF had agreed on the broad outlines of a financial assistance package, investors continued to withdraw large sums of money from Brazil. Cardoso is preparing an emergency program of budget cuts to restore investor confidence and prevent a devaluation of the country's currency. Investors want Cardoso to outline the plans this week but he is expected to wait until after Sunday's second round of elections for state governors, whose support he needs for his budget cuts. The joint statement said the Brazil-IMF discussions ``were aimed at preparing the ground for prompt support by the international community, including the IMF, for the multi-year fiscal program to be announced soon by the Brazilian authorities, which will include new policy initiatives.'' The statement reiterated Brazil's goal of achieving a primary budget surplus of 2.6 percent of its gross domestic product in 1999, 2.8 percent in 2000 and 3.0 percent in 2001 which would '' fulfill the government target of stabilizing the ratio of net consolidated public sector debt to GDP by the year 2000.'' The two sides are to continue their talks ``with the objective of reaching early agreement,'' the statement said. ||||| There's no such thing as a free lunch any longer in Brazil, President Fernando Henrique Cardoso is telling government workers. No haircuts or phone calls, either. Eager to bolster the sagging economy, Cardoso wants to slash dlrs 19 billion (23.5 billion reals) from the budget deficit, and he's beginning by paring perks for the more than 2,000 workers at the presidential palace in Brasilia, the capital. Sure, it's not much when compared with a deficit of some dlrs 65 billion, or 7 percent of economic output. But as Cardoso readies a package of spending cuts and tax increases, he clearly wants to show Brazilians that economy starts at home. So goodbye to the afternoon courtesy snack of sandwiches, fruit and juice, a palace tradition. Three barber shops in the palace were closed, and the use of cellular phones and copiers was restricted. The price of a buffet offered employees for lunch was raised from dlrs 6 to dlrs 8.50 (7 reals to 10 reals). Cardoso himself has promised to travel less and more cheaply. On a trip to a summit in Portugal this month, he took a delegation of just eight, half the usual number. The savings at the palace could come to nearly dlrs 145,000 (170,000 reals) a month, said Nilson Rebello, chief administrator of the president's office. Cardoso, under pressure to repair an economy battered by the world financial turmoil, is expected to unveil the full scope of his deficit-cutting plan next week. It is believed to include a spate of new taxes on fuel, income, personal fortunes and bank transactions. The plan is part of a deal with the International Monetary Fund for a rescue package estimated at dlrs 30 billion. The money would strengthen and, hopefully, restore investor confidence in the world's ninth-largest economy, now at the center of the financial crisis buffeting developing nations for more than a year. Brazil already has agreed to annual targets to sharply reduce its deficit through the year 2001. On Wednesday, newspapers published a joint statement from Brazil and the IMF, although a final agreement hasn't been reached yet. Despite Cardoso's efforts, many Brazilians were less than impressed by the palace penny-pinching. The leftist Workers Party said the government was making a big deal of insignificant savings while it failed to cut other dubious projects, such as a dlrs 800,000 (1 million reals) moat being built around Congress to keep protesters from easily entering the building. The Globo TV network also suggested there still was plenty of fat to cut, citing government expenses for running shoes, Persian carpets and gold cufflinks, intended as presents for visiting dignitaries. Cardoso is counting on help from friendly state governors to control spending. But the governors, some facing runoff elections on Sunday, are promising pay raises and public works projects that could sink the austerity plan. In Brasilia, Joaquim Roriz has promised civil service raises, bonuses and new jobs that his opponent estimates would cost some dlrs 1 billion (1.2 billion reals). Roriz hasn't explained where the money would come from. In powerful Minas Gerais state, the government will almost certainly have to lay off workers _ the state payroll consumes 78 percent of the budget. To rein in the free-spending habits of provincial politicians, Cardoso reportedly wants to hold local governments to bimonthly limits on spending. Federal money would automatically be cut off if spending gets out of hand. ||||| The United States is preparing to commit U.S. taxpayer funds as part of a lending program of at least $30 billion to try to insulate Brazil, and with it the rest of Latin America, from the worst effects of the financial turmoil circling the globe, according to U.S. and foreign officials assembling the program. Details of the U.S. contribution, which is expected to total several billion dollars in direct aid or loan guarantees, have yet to be negotiated. But several congressional leaders have been alerted to the likelihood that the administration would have to act while Congress is in recess. This early warning from the administration reflects memories of how Congress erupted with objections and hearings in 1995 when President Clinton committed $20 billion in U.S. funds to the bailout of Mexico. But administration officials said last week that their early soundings indicate that members of Congress are deeply concerned about preventing an economic collapse in Latin America that would resound in the United States, and thus they expect few objections. The timing of an aid package for Brazil _ originally expected within the next few days _ is complicated by unexpected delays that have cropped up in dealing with the Brazilian government. The government of President Fernando Henrique Cardoso faces politically risky gubernatorial elections on Sunday, which may well determine whether Brazil can execute an austerity program that is the key condition for the loans it is concurrently negotiating with the International Monetary Fund. The biggest role in the rescue program for Brazil will be taken by the International Monetary Fund, which said last week that it would contribute at least $15 billion _ and appears to be under pressure from the United States to do even more. Another $9 billion or so will come from the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank, and the remainder from the United States and other major industrial nations. Germany and Japan, though, have been reluctant to take part, one U.S. official noted, suggesting that Latin America is chiefly Washington's problem, not their own. So far, U.S. officials working behind the scenes to organize the aid package have said nothing in public about the details of plans for a direct contribution to Brazil. ``Brazil is very important to the economic well-being of the region, the United States and the international community, and all of us are very much focused on seeing how we can be helpful,'' Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin said on Friday. But in a wide-ranging interview about the global economic turmoil, Rubin declined to say what strategy he would pursue in dealing with Brazil's problems and insisted that no decisions had been made about how the United States might contribute. But he discussed Brazil as an opportunity to engage in the kind of preventive financial diplomacy that President Clinton advocated in speeches to the IMF and the World Bank here three weeks ago. At the time, Clinton argued that the monetary fund should ``provide contingent finance to help countries ward off global financial contagion'' rather than wait for disaster to strike. Direct U.S. aid to Brazil would clearly send a symbolic message: that after a year of trying to manage the financial crisis through the monetary fund, the United States is now ready to put a limited amount of its own capital at risk to prevent further havoc _ not only for Brazil but to stop chaos spreading to Argentina, Mexico and other countries that are major U.S. trading partners. That would be a change of strategy. So far, the United States has operated almost entirely through international financial institutions, chiefly the IMF But it would also be a risky move for President Clinton, economically and politically. Even though Congress objected to the $20 billion in U.S. funds committed to the bailout of Mexico, it turned out that only $12 billion was ultimately needed, and it has since been paid back, with interest. But Rubin noted on Friday that ``it's a very different environment now.'' Other administration officials say they believe that there would be few objections in Congress to direct U.S. participation in a Brazil bailout. ``I think there are a lot more people in Congress who are now scared to death by what's been happening in the markets, and what could happen in their own districts,'' a White House official said last week, ``and they won't say much as long as they don't have to vote on it.'' By acting soon to stabilize Latin America, the administration is hoping to capitalize on two weeks of relative calm after the late-summer panic that engulfed Russia and, at its height, led to an outflow of a billion dollars a day from Brazil, for fear that it would be the next country forced to devalue its currency. Whether this calm marks the beginning of a turnaround or just another pause in the wildfires that have erupted since Thailand's currency crisis in July 1997 is a matter of considerable debate. But many experts cite the confluence of several events that have reassured jittery investors around the world: two successive interest-rate cuts in the United States, Japan's long-delayed move to prop up its banking system with $500 billion in taxpayer funds, and a steady strengthening of currencies in Thailand, Indonesia and South Korea, the first signs that investors may be preparing to return. Always circumspect when it comes to commenting publicly on markets, Rubin acknowledged that ``in the last several weeks there have been a number of significant, positive developments.'' But the former trader, burned during a 26-year career by many false market rallies, warned that ``serious issues remain'' and that ``it will take some time for the world to work its way out'' of what he has repeatedly called ``the most serious international financial disruption of the last 50 years.'' In fact, Rubin's aides are clearly nervous about the possibility of another outbreak that could set off a new round of panic, which has made it virtually impossible for many emerging-market countries to borrow money on world markets. ``Brazil and Japan are the two obvious tinderboxes,'' said Jeffrey Garten, dean of the Yale School of Management, who served as undersecretary of commerce for international affairs during Clinton's first term. ``In Brazil, the issue is whether the package that is coming together will really be big enough to deal with an exploding debt problem. And in Japan the question is whether there is real reform that goes along with the money.'' But after spending 18 months in negotiations with the Japanese, Rubin clearly senses that the United States has little leverage in Tokyo; its problems are chiefly rooted in political gridlock, not lack of resources. In Brazil, though, the United States has a better chance of buying time and influencing an economic reform program, as long as it does not appear to be dictating terms publicly to Cardoso and his team. But demonstrating economic support will probably require tapping the Exchange Stabilization Fund, created during the Roosevelt administration to help stabilize the dollar. The money is under Rubin's control, with presidential approval, and he reached into it to circumvent congressional objections to aiding Mexico in 1995. But the reaction was so strong _ for a time Congress restricted tapping the fund for international bailouts _ that Rubin has been extraordinarily cautious ever since. He committed $3 billion in a ``second line of defense'' in emergency aid programs for Indonesia and South Korea last year, but no money was ultimately dispersed to either country. U.S. officials said that South Korea did not need the extra help, and that the collapse of the Suharto government in Indonesia so changed the political scene there that it would be too risky to offer direct U.S. aid. In the bailout of Russia _ whose economy collapsed after President Boris Yeltsin abandoned an agreement to reform the economy and dismissed the leading reformers _ the United States offered no direct help. Those events set off a panicked exit by investors from all emerging markets, and greatly worsened Brazil's troubles. So far, Brazilian officials have successfully calmed the market by constantly talking about a forthcoming aid program from the IMF, convincing speculators that it would be dangerous to bet against the country. But at the same time, the Brazilian officials have maintained the pose that they do not really need the cash _ and are certainly in no hurry to get it. U.S. officials and top officials of the IMF are clearly nervous, worried that the longer the negotiations drag on, the greater will be the risk of Brazil being caught in another round of market turmoil. ``The Brazilians want everyone to think that it's all under control,'' said an investment banker involved in the talks. ``But the fact is that there's still a real risk that sometime in the next 18 months the government is going to be forced to devalue'' its currency, which is pegged to the dollar, but adjusts about 7.5 percent a year in a carefully controlled fall. To prevent a sudden devaluation, the Brazilian government has had to raise interest rates to more than 50 percent, choking off credit for most companies. Meanwhile, the country is slipping into recession. The aid would buy time for the Brazilians, but it is contingent on Cardoso's success in persuading the legislature to end huge deficits, chiefly through unpopular cuts in social spending. The first deputy managing director for the International Monetary Fund, Stanley Fischer, spent Friday in Brazil to review the country's austerity plan, which is expected to be announced after Sunday's elections but before the international package, to avoid the appearance that the global lender is dictating conditions to Brazil. ``Brazil has to do a lot,'' Fischer said last week before leaving on his trip. ``In return, I expect the international community will make a large contribution.'' ||||| Leaders from 19 Latin American nations, Spain and Portugal put finishing touches Saturday on an Ibero-American summit declaration warning of global recession unless action is taken to stabilize the international financial system. The draft declaration said recent financial market turmoil shows that adjustments must be made quickly ``to keep the difficulties affecting a few from becoming a crisis for all.'' The declaration addresses the world's seven richest nations. The Group of Seven is composed of the United States, Japan, Britain, Germany, France, Italy and Canada. The final declaration will be approved at Sunday's summit in this port city in northern Portugal. Brazilian President Fernando Henrique Cardoso said Saturday that Brazil and China, two of the world's largest economies, had become the ``dikes of resistance'' to global recession. Protecting their economies from the spreading economic turmoil, which is affecting more countries than at any time since the early 1980s, is key to world economic stability, he said. Brazil is Latin America's biggest economy and the eighth-largest in the world, and its economic collapse could take the rest of the continent with it. To halt Brazil's slide toward recession, Cardoso is preparing austerity measures including spending cuts, tax hikes and lower interest rates. The reforms would help Brazil qualify for an International Monetary Fund rescue package estimated at dlrs 30 billion. The IMF has put together bailout packages totaling dlrs 137 billion since the financial crisis struck Thailand 15 months ago and then spread from Asia to Russia. U.S. President Bill Clinton's administration, aware of the impact that a Latin American recession would have on the United States, has actively pushed the IMF and the World Bank to support Brazil after it was hit by investor flight. ||||| Latin American leaders flew Friday to Portugal for a weekend summit to figure out how they can shield their economies from the global financial crisis. Not since the early 1980s have so many countries been in recession, and the crisis now threatens to cripple Latin America's developing economies. An early arrival, Cuban President Fidel Castro, described the turmoil in world financial markets as the most important issue facing the world at the moment. ``I don't know if we are coming to the end of the world economic order. It will be interesting to know,'' the Cuban leader said at a hotel press conference shortly after his arrival for the annual Ibero-American summit. Emphasizing the scale of the threat, Castro said President Clinton was aware that ``if South America falls into crisis, it will be extended inevitably also to the United States,'' which is heavily involved in investments and loans in the region. Jittery investors have abruptly pulled cash out of Latin America with devastating effects on stock markets and currency reserves. The heads of state and government from Latin America, Spain and Portugal will explore measures to ward off the financial turmoil that already has devastated Asia and Russia. Stock markets also fell in Portugal and Spain, heavy investors in Latin America. The Latin American leaders must gauge the need for unpopular reforms of their public finances, including austerity packages which risk social unrest and political upheaval. A joint declaration will be signed Sunday in this ancient port city on the Douro River in northern Portugal. Diplomats said there was consensus on the form of the final statement. The declaration ``calls on the international community, and Group of Seven countries in particular, to take the necessary measures to promote stability in international financial markets, which is a necessary condition for sustained economic growth,'' said Luis Augusto Castro Neves, of the Brazilian Foreign Ministry. Latin America's leaders favor creating some kind of regulatory system for global financial transactions that would place controls on speculators, like measures to slow down the internatioal flow of money. They also want reforms that allow international financial institutions to head off crises rather than react to them with rescue packages. ``International institutions must be active in tackling crises like the recent one ... and contribute to stability,'' Portuguese Foreign Minister Jaime Gama said. ``Countries that have progressive policies should not be penalized, they should be given incentives,'' Gama added in reference to Latin American nations' efforts to modernize their economies. Brazil, the continent's largest economy and a potential bulwark against creeping recession, is waiting for news of a dlrs 30 billion bailout package from the International Monetary Fund. The presidents of the World Bank and InterAmerican Development Bank also were expected at the talks. The move by the U.S. Federal Reserve to cut interest rates Thursday revived Latin America's financial markets, but analysts expected the reprieve to be short-lived because of deep concerns about the continent's economic health. The recent economic troubles stemmed in part from the structural weaknesses of Latin American economies. A strike being waged by state employees in Colombia against a government austerity package offers a glimpse of the trouble that could arise if tough reforms are introduced. Brazil is drafting an austerity package that will hit public spending, especially social security. ||||| The Commerce Department on Tuesday provided a concrete measure of the effects of the global economic downturn on the American economy, reporting that the nation's trade deficit widened by $2.2 billion in August to $16.77 billion. That is the widest gap since the government recalculated the way it measures trade flows in 1992. It resulted from a decline in American exports and a sharp increase in what this country buys from abroad. So far this year, the trade deficit is running roughly 50 percent above last year's levels and is up to a projected $170 billion for the year, a gap that is expected to widen even further. One senior administration official who deals with economic issues, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Tuesday that internal projections suggest that the trade deficit in 1999 could reach $300 billion, a figure that he said ``will certainly cut into growth, and could well become a major political problem.'' Trade deficits carry with them both good and troubling signals about the economy. The current flood of imports is helping contain inflation to some of the lowest levels in decades. And while sales of American aircraft, computer chips and other goods are suffering, the weakening of the dollar on world markets in recent weeks may provide an end-of-the-year boost for American exporters. But at this moment of global upheaval, the biggest problem facing American companies is the inability of many nations and some large companies in Asia and Latin America simply to borrow money to make ordinary purchases. The result is such a freeze of economic activity that empty shipping containers are stacking up on American piers. And the effects are hurting everyone from Midwest farmers who can no longer send wheat to an impoverished Russia, to East Coast fishermen who are discovering that Japan's appetite for salmon and lobster has been ruined by the banking crisis. Among the most surprising elements of Tuesday's report is that more than a third of August's deficit was with one country that so far has managed to ward off the worst effects of the global troubles: China. Despite continued growth of the Chinese economy, exports to China have slowed dramatically and imports of Chinese-made goods have exploded, as the country desperately seeks to sell here goods that would ordinarily be sold elsewhere in Asia. That increased the monthly deficit with Beijing to $5.9 billion, levels previously only seen in trade with Japan. The Chinese _ besieged by floods, deeply troubled state-owned industries and an incipient banking crisis _ have signaled to the United States in recent weeks that they have little interest in any swift moves to open their markets further in return for entry into the World Trade Organization. That amounts to a major setback for President Clinton, who for three years has been using the negotiations over China's entry to the world body as the centerpiece of his effort to open China both economically and politically. Ostensible progress in this area has been cited by the administration until recently as one of the successes of the administration's China policy, but now officials say privately that the progress is evaporating. The decline in exports will trim the growth of the American economy, and it was one factor in the Federal Reserve's decision to lower interest rates two times in recent weeks. So administration officials were going out of their way Tuesday to portray the numbers as another warning sign, but not a crisis. ``While the United States remains strong and sound, the troubled condition of the global marketplace continue to strongly influence the U.S. trade balance,'' Commerce Secretary Williams Daley said in a statement Tuesday. After China, the biggest deterioration in the American trade balance in August came in Mexico, where the peso has weakened markedly as economic contagion has spread through Latin America. Exports to Mexico have remained unchanged. But imports from Mexico have increased markedly _ chiefly automobiles and automotive parts and telecommunications equipment _ as American manufacturers have taken advantage of the weakening currency. In contrast, America's trade surplus with Brazil, the latest focus of concern by the administration and the International Monetary Fund, barely budged from the same period a year ago. Normally, that would be cited as a sign of continued demand for American products in Latin America's largest economy, but there is fear it might be imperiled. The news comes as the United States and the IMF complete a bailout package of $30 billion or more for Brazil, intended to help it stave off the kind of economic troubles that have swept through Asia, Russia and several other nations. Tuesday the IMF and Brazil reached agreement on the country's fiscal targets for this year and next, a sign that the aid will likely be announced after elections in Brazil this weekend. But for all these potential problems, the rising trade deficit has barely caused a ripple on Capitol Hill. Because the rising level of imports does not appear to be triggering any unemployment here, the subject has barely come up in races for the House and Senate around the country. The only exception has been in regions where the steel industry is strong. The major steel companies have charged in recent weeks that Asian nations are dumping products on the American market at prices well below their costs. The Commerce Department has begun an inquiry. The Commerce Department's numbers showed that the deficit rose 15.3 percent to $16.77 billion in August, up from a revised figure of $14.55 billion in July. The department said that the resumption of production at General Motors Corp. after last summer's strike may have increased the size of the deficit's rise in August, as GM brought in parts from abroad. The deficit was the highest since the Commerce Department began a new method of tracking trade information in 1992. Exports, the department said, fell three tenths of 1 percent, to about $74.8 billion. Imports rose 2.2 percent to $91.6 billion. ||||| President Fernando Henrique Cardoso's efforts to repair the largest economy in Latin America may depend on the outcome of this weekend's gubernatorial elections. Cardoso wants to impose tough measures that would slash government spending and impose new taxes to try to halt the slide in Brazil's economy and restore investor confidence. But his plan, expected to be unveiled next week, must be approved by Congress, and state governors have enormous sway over local delegations. ``The influence governors have on their congressional blocs is overwhelming,'' said University of Sao Paulo political scientist Eduardo Kugelmas. Brazil has been caught up in the financial turmoil that began more than a year ago in Southeast Asia. As wary investors have fled its financial markets, Brazil's foreign reserves have fallen below dlrs 50 billion from dlrs 70 billion at the end of July. On Sunday, voters return to the polls for runoff elections in 12 states and in the Federal District of Brasilia. The outcome will likely determine how successful Cardoso is in getting Congress to approve his economic program, which is aimed at trimming the budget deficit. New income, fuel and bank transaction taxes are expected to be proposed. Kugelmas said opponents of the president stand a good chance of winning in four large states _ Sao Paulo, Minas Gerais, Rio de Janeiro and Rio Grande do Sul. ``If they win, the president will face a tough uphill battle,'' he said. Cardoso needs the governors' support not only in influencing the congressional delegations, but also in holding down their own spending. ``The problem is that none of the candidates in Sunday's elections ... wants to be identified with unpopular austerity measures,'' said Kugelmas. ``So they promise to spend more money on schools, hospitals and public work projects.'' Sao Paulo, Brazil's industrial and financial powerhouse, is perhaps the state most critical to the success of Cardoso's austerity plans. With more than 34 million inhabitants, nearly equal to the entire population of neighboring Argentina, it alone accounts for more than one-third of Brazil's economic output and 70 of the 513 congressional seats. While incumbent governor Mario Covas, a Cardoso ally who is seeking re-election, has committed himself to the austerity plan, Covas opponent Paulo Maluf is a question mark. ``If Maluf wins, he will use his victory as a launching pad to the presidency in 2003,'' Kugelmas predicted. ``And that means he will try to stay as far away as possible from any austerity measure.'' ||||| Caught in the middle of an economic crisis, many Brazilian factories fear they won't be able to pay their workers the mandatory year-end bonus. So they're considering paying with products instead of cash. Some workplaces have already offered their employees such things as hammers, nails, screws and bolts instead of the traditional cash bonus that normally is equivalent to one month's wage, said the head of Brazil's largest federation of trade unions. ``The idea is completely unacceptable,'' said Joao Antonio Felicio, secretary-general of the federation, which represents more than 2,000 unions and 19 million workers. ``We will recommend our unions reject such a preposterous proposal.'' But strapped for cash and punished by high interest rates and declining sales, factory owners may have no other choice, said Joseph Curi, president of the Sao Paulo State Association of Small Industries, which represents 110,000 factories that employ nearly 800,000 workers. ``Access to credit is almost impossible,'' Curi said. ``If banks and the government don't create some kind of emergency credit line, the only option many of our associates will have will be to use products to pay the bonus.'' Factories that produce clothes, shoes, food, toys and household appliances were ``the most enthusiastic about the idea,'' Curi said. Curi predicted even harsher times for Brazil with the belt-tightening austerity package newly re-elected President Fernando Henrique Cardoso is expected to announce Tuesday. The measures, aimed at curbing the country's ballooning budget deficit _ equal to about 7 percent of gross domestic product _ are expected to include spending cuts and, possibly, more taxes. ``There is a lot of talk of increasing taxes, which means less cash circulating in the market and more credit restrictions,'' Curi said. ``It is a shortsighted approach that will spell more recession and the collapse of many small factories.'' Brazil has been a major casualty of the global economic crisis, buffeted by loss of investor confidence and a strong outflow of capital. The country's foreign reserves have fallen below dlrs 50 billion, from dlrs 70 billion at the end of July. In an effort to prevent a collapse of the nation's currency, the real, and stem capital flight, interest rates were hiked to 50 percent a year. For union leader Felicio, the proposed product-for-cash swap ``is a clear sign of the despair the business sector is feeling because of the recessive economic policies'' brought by the Real Plan, the economic stabilization program put together in 1994 when Cardoso was finance minister. The plan succeeded in slashing inflation from 2,400 percent to almost zero today. But it also brought recession and unemployment, which now stands at almost 8 percent, the highest in a decade. ||||| Brazilian officials ended four days of meetings with representatives of the International Monetary Fund on Tuesday without living up to their public pledge to announce concrete measures to reduce government deficits. In Washington, Pedro Parente, executive secretary of the Brazilian Finance Ministry, offered only details on Brazil's plans for raising a primary account surplus over the next three years. With only five days to go before gubernatorial runoffs on Sunday, neither he nor President Fernando Henrique Cardoso, in Brasilia, said how the government planned to achieve the savings. Important allies of Cardoso are lagging behind in three key states, and despite the government promises, market analysts did not expect an announcement until after the elections. Instead, the strategy in Brasilia and Washington appeared to focus on reassuring the markets that work on cutting the deficit was going forward, without providing fodder for opponents in domestic elections. ``The discussions continue with the objective of reaching agreement soon on the detailed program,'' said a joint statement by the IMF and the Brazilian Finance Ministry. Because of Brazil's enormous deficits, the collapse of emerging markets has hit the nation particularly hard, draining foreign currency reserves and pushing the economy toward recession. Finance officials in Washington and around the world fear that a collapse of Brazil, because of its size and links to other economies, would worsen financial instability throughout the hemisphere. With 160 million people, Brazil represents the world's ninth-largest economy and is the financial engine of Latin America. Throughout the day, government officials met with Cardoso in Brasilia and were expected to fine-tune a three-year austerity package that Cardoso was to discuss with congressional party leaders on Wednesday morning. In Brasilia, officials said that among the measures being considered were a tax increase on financial transactions, to three-tenths of a percent from two-tenths of a percent, and extending the Fiscal Stabilization Fund, which sets aside 20 percent of all taxes collected for presidential discretionary spending. The fund was to have expired by 1999. Speaking in Washington, Parente said that Brazil would aim toward a surplus of 2.6 percent in 1999, 2.8 percent in 2000 and 3 percent in 2001. It had already been announced, at the end of the IMF's annual meeting in Washington two weeks ago that Brazil would have to reach a primary account surplus of 2.5 percent to 3 percent to qualify for IMF aid. The primary account covers government expenses, without interest payments on debt. Ernest Brown, senior economist for Latin America at Morgan Stanley Dean Witter, said signs that the Brazilian government and the IMF were moving closer to an aid package were reassuring, and that he did not expect much more than reassurance until next week. ``I call this the `We have a pope' scenario,'' Brown said. ``You're just going to hear that we have a pope, maybe see the white smoke rising,'' he said, ``and not figure out who the pope is until after the elections.'' ||||| There's no such thing as a free lunch any longer in Brazil, President Fernando Henrique Cardoso is telling government workers. No haircuts or phone calls, either. Eager to bolster the sagging economy, Cardoso wants to slash dlrs 19 billion from the budget deficit, and he's beginning by paring perks for the more than 2,000 workers at the presidential palace in Brasilia, the capital. Sure, it's not much when compared with a deficit of some dlrs 65 billion, or 7 percent of economic output. But as Cardoso readies a package of spending cuts and tax increases, he clearly wants to show Brazilians that economy starts at home. So goodbye to the afternoon courtesy snack of sandwiches, fruit and juice, a palace tradition. Three barber shops in the palace were closed, and the use of cellular phones and copiers was restricted. The price of a buffet offered employees for lunch was raised from dlrs 6 to dlrs 8.50. Cardoso himself has promised to travel less and more cheaply. On a trip to a summit in Portugal this month, he took a delegation of just eight, half the usual number. The savings at the palace could come to nearly dlrs 145,000 a month, said Nilson Rebello, chief administrator of the president's office. Cardoso, under pressure to repair an economy battered by the world financial turmoil, is expected to unveil the full scope of his deficit-cutting plan next week. It is believed to include a spate of new taxes on fuel, income, personal fortunes and bank transactions. The plan is part of a deal with the International Monetary Fund for a rescue package estimated at dlrs 30 billion. The money would strengthen and, hopefully, restore investor confidence in the world's ninth-largest economy, now at the center of the financial crisis buffeting developing nations for more than a year. Brazil already has agreed to annual targets to sharply reduce its deficit through the year 2001. On Wednesday, newspapers published a joint statement from Brazil and the IMF, although a final agreement hasn't been reached yet. Despite Cardoso's efforts, many Brazilians were less than impressed by the palace penny-pinching. The leftist Workers Party said the government was making a big deal of insignificant savings while it failed to cut other dubious projects, such as a dlrs 800,000 moat being built around Congress to keep protesters from easily entering the building. The Globo TV network also suggested there still was plenty of fat to cut, citing government expenses for running shoes, Persian carpets and gold cufflinks, intended as presents for visiting dignitaries. Cardoso is counting on help from friendly state governors to control spending. But the governors, some facing runoff elections on Sunday, are promising pay raises and public works projects that could sink the austerity plan. In Brasilia, Joaquim Roriz has promised civil service raises, bonuses and new jobs that his opponent estimates would cost some dlrs 1 billion. Roriz hasn't explained where the money would come from. In powerful Minas Gerais state, the government will almost certainly have to lay off workers _ the state payroll consumes 78 percent of the budget. To rein in the free-spending habits of provincial politicians, Cardoso reportedly wants to hold local governments to bimonthly limits on spending. Federal money would automatically be cut off if spending gets out of hand.

As Latin American nations gathered for the Ibero-American summit, there was general concern for the global economy. Most leaders attending warned that the downturn in the global economy could have dire consequences. The crisis facing Latin America has had an effect on the U.S. economy as exports declined as a result of the recession. Brazil's economy was especially hard hit and it has entered into talks with the IMF to secure loans needed to bolster its economy. The outcome of these talks could depend on the outcome of the Brazilian elections. In an effort to cuts its deficit, Brazil has cut back on the perks of government workers.

Brazil and the International Monetary Fund moved closer Tuesday to agreement on an expected dlrs 30 billion rescue package for the world's ninth-largest economy. A joint statement by the IMF and the Brazilian government said the two sides agreed Brazil should aim to reduce its budget deficit from an expected eight percent of gross domestic product to zero by 2000. The statement was issued after weekend talks between IMF officials and a Brazilian delegation headed by Pedro Parente, executive secretary of the Finance Ministry. Representatives of the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank took part in the talks. Both organizations as well as private banks are expected to contribute to the rescue package. Brazil is the latest country to be hit by the financial crisis that began 15 months ago in Asia and then spread to Russia. Brazil has lost about dlrs 25 billion in foreign currency reserves since August when Russia defaulted on its debts and sparked a new crisis of confidence in emerging market countries. If instability continues in Brazil it could affect Argentina, its main trading partner, and other Latin American economies. Despite the re-election of Fernando Henrique Cardoso for a second term as president and the announcement Oct. 8 that Brazil and the IMF had agreed on the broad outlines of a financial assistance package, investors continued to withdraw large sums of money from Brazil. Cardoso is preparing an emergency program of budget cuts to restore investor confidence and prevent a devaluation of the country's currency. Investors want Cardoso to outline the plans this week but he is expected to wait until after Sunday's second round of elections for state governors, whose support he needs for his budget cuts. The joint statement said the Brazil-IMF discussions ``were aimed at preparing the ground for prompt support by the international community, including the IMF, for the multi-year fiscal program to be announced soon by the Brazilian authorities, which will include new policy initiatives.'' The statement reiterated Brazil's goal of achieving a primary budget surplus of 2.6 percent of its gross domestic product in 1999, 2.8 percent in 2000 and 3.0 percent in 2001 which would '' fulfill the government target of stabilizing the ratio of net consolidated public sector debt to GDP by the year 2000.'' The two sides are to continue their talks ``with the objective of reaching early agreement,'' the statement said. ||||| There's no such thing as a free lunch any longer in Brazil, President Fernando Henrique Cardoso is telling government workers. No haircuts or phone calls, either. Eager to bolster the sagging economy, Cardoso wants to slash dlrs 19 billion (23.5 billion reals) from the budget deficit, and he's beginning by paring perks for the more than 2,000 workers at the presidential palace in Brasilia, the capital. Sure, it's not much when compared with a deficit of some dlrs 65 billion, or 7 percent of economic output. But as Cardoso readies a package of spending cuts and tax increases, he clearly wants to show Brazilians that economy starts at home. So goodbye to the afternoon courtesy snack of sandwiches, fruit and juice, a palace tradition. Three barber shops in the palace were closed, and the use of cellular phones and copiers was restricted. The price of a buffet offered employees for lunch was raised from dlrs 6 to dlrs 8.50 (7 reals to 10 reals). Cardoso himself has promised to travel less and more cheaply. On a trip to a summit in Portugal this month, he took a delegation of just eight, half the usual number. The savings at the palace could come to nearly dlrs 145,000 (170,000 reals) a month, said Nilson Rebello, chief administrator of the president's office. Cardoso, under pressure to repair an economy battered by the world financial turmoil, is expected to unveil the full scope of his deficit-cutting plan next week. It is believed to include a spate of new taxes on fuel, income, personal fortunes and bank transactions. The plan is part of a deal with the International Monetary Fund for a rescue package estimated at dlrs 30 billion. The money would strengthen and, hopefully, restore investor confidence in the world's ninth-largest economy, now at the center of the financial crisis buffeting developing nations for more than a year. Brazil already has agreed to annual targets to sharply reduce its deficit through the year 2001. On Wednesday, newspapers published a joint statement from Brazil and the IMF, although a final agreement hasn't been reached yet. Despite Cardoso's efforts, many Brazilians were less than impressed by the palace penny-pinching. The leftist Workers Party said the government was making a big deal of insignificant savings while it failed to cut other dubious projects, such as a dlrs 800,000 (1 million reals) moat being built around Congress to keep protesters from easily entering the building. The Globo TV network also suggested there still was plenty of fat to cut, citing government expenses for running shoes, Persian carpets and gold cufflinks, intended as presents for visiting dignitaries. Cardoso is counting on help from friendly state governors to control spending. But the governors, some facing runoff elections on Sunday, are promising pay raises and public works projects that could sink the austerity plan. In Brasilia, Joaquim Roriz has promised civil service raises, bonuses and new jobs that his opponent estimates would cost some dlrs 1 billion (1.2 billion reals). Roriz hasn't explained where the money would come from. In powerful Minas Gerais state, the government will almost certainly have to lay off workers _ the state payroll consumes 78 percent of the budget. To rein in the free-spending habits of provincial politicians, Cardoso reportedly wants to hold local governments to bimonthly limits on spending. Federal money would automatically be cut off if spending gets out of hand. ||||| The United States is preparing to commit U.S. taxpayer funds as part of a lending program of at least $30 billion to try to insulate Brazil, and with it the rest of Latin America, from the worst effects of the financial turmoil circling the globe, according to U.S. and foreign officials assembling the program. Details of the U.S. contribution, which is expected to total several billion dollars in direct aid or loan guarantees, have yet to be negotiated. But several congressional leaders have been alerted to the likelihood that the administration would have to act while Congress is in recess. This early warning from the administration reflects memories of how Congress erupted with objections and hearings in 1995 when President Clinton committed $20 billion in U.S. funds to the bailout of Mexico. But administration officials said last week that their early soundings indicate that members of Congress are deeply concerned about preventing an economic collapse in Latin America that would resound in the United States, and thus they expect few objections. The timing of an aid package for Brazil _ originally expected within the next few days _ is complicated by unexpected delays that have cropped up in dealing with the Brazilian government. The government of President Fernando Henrique Cardoso faces politically risky gubernatorial elections on Sunday, which may well determine whether Brazil can execute an austerity program that is the key condition for the loans it is concurrently negotiating with the International Monetary Fund. The biggest role in the rescue program for Brazil will be taken by the International Monetary Fund, which said last week that it would contribute at least $15 billion _ and appears to be under pressure from the United States to do even more. Another $9 billion or so will come from the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank, and the remainder from the United States and other major industrial nations. Germany and Japan, though, have been reluctant to take part, one U.S. official noted, suggesting that Latin America is chiefly Washington's problem, not their own. So far, U.S. officials working behind the scenes to organize the aid package have said nothing in public about the details of plans for a direct contribution to Brazil. ``Brazil is very important to the economic well-being of the region, the United States and the international community, and all of us are very much focused on seeing how we can be helpful,'' Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin said on Friday. But in a wide-ranging interview about the global economic turmoil, Rubin declined to say what strategy he would pursue in dealing with Brazil's problems and insisted that no decisions had been made about how the United States might contribute. But he discussed Brazil as an opportunity to engage in the kind of preventive financial diplomacy that President Clinton advocated in speeches to the IMF and the World Bank here three weeks ago. At the time, Clinton argued that the monetary fund should ``provide contingent finance to help countries ward off global financial contagion'' rather than wait for disaster to strike. Direct U.S. aid to Brazil would clearly send a symbolic message: that after a year of trying to manage the financial crisis through the monetary fund, the United States is now ready to put a limited amount of its own capital at risk to prevent further havoc _ not only for Brazil but to stop chaos spreading to Argentina, Mexico and other countries that are major U.S. trading partners. That would be a change of strategy. So far, the United States has operated almost entirely through international financial institutions, chiefly the IMF But it would also be a risky move for President Clinton, economically and politically. Even though Congress objected to the $20 billion in U.S. funds committed to the bailout of Mexico, it turned out that only $12 billion was ultimately needed, and it has since been paid back, with interest. But Rubin noted on Friday that ``it's a very different environment now.'' Other administration officials say they believe that there would be few objections in Congress to direct U.S. participation in a Brazil bailout. ``I think there are a lot more people in Congress who are now scared to death by what's been happening in the markets, and what could happen in their own districts,'' a White House official said last week, ``and they won't say much as long as they don't have to vote on it.'' By acting soon to stabilize Latin America, the administration is hoping to capitalize on two weeks of relative calm after the late-summer panic that engulfed Russia and, at its height, led to an outflow of a billion dollars a day from Brazil, for fear that it would be the next country forced to devalue its currency. Whether this calm marks the beginning of a turnaround or just another pause in the wildfires that have erupted since Thailand's currency crisis in July 1997 is a matter of considerable debate. But many experts cite the confluence of several events that have reassured jittery investors around the world: two successive interest-rate cuts in the United States, Japan's long-delayed move to prop up its banking system with $500 billion in taxpayer funds, and a steady strengthening of currencies in Thailand, Indonesia and South Korea, the first signs that investors may be preparing to return. Always circumspect when it comes to commenting publicly on markets, Rubin acknowledged that ``in the last several weeks there have been a number of significant, positive developments.'' But the former trader, burned during a 26-year career by many false market rallies, warned that ``serious issues remain'' and that ``it will take some time for the world to work its way out'' of what he has repeatedly called ``the most serious international financial disruption of the last 50 years.'' In fact, Rubin's aides are clearly nervous about the possibility of another outbreak that could set off a new round of panic, which has made it virtually impossible for many emerging-market countries to borrow money on world markets. ``Brazil and Japan are the two obvious tinderboxes,'' said Jeffrey Garten, dean of the Yale School of Management, who served as undersecretary of commerce for international affairs during Clinton's first term. ``In Brazil, the issue is whether the package that is coming together will really be big enough to deal with an exploding debt problem. And in Japan the question is whether there is real reform that goes along with the money.'' But after spending 18 months in negotiations with the Japanese, Rubin clearly senses that the United States has little leverage in Tokyo; its problems are chiefly rooted in political gridlock, not lack of resources. In Brazil, though, the United States has a better chance of buying time and influencing an economic reform program, as long as it does not appear to be dictating terms publicly to Cardoso and his team. But demonstrating economic support will probably require tapping the Exchange Stabilization Fund, created during the Roosevelt administration to help stabilize the dollar. The money is under Rubin's control, with presidential approval, and he reached into it to circumvent congressional objections to aiding Mexico in 1995. But the reaction was so strong _ for a time Congress restricted tapping the fund for international bailouts _ that Rubin has been extraordinarily cautious ever since. He committed $3 billion in a ``second line of defense'' in emergency aid programs for Indonesia and South Korea last year, but no money was ultimately dispersed to either country. U.S. officials said that South Korea did not need the extra help, and that the collapse of the Suharto government in Indonesia so changed the political scene there that it would be too risky to offer direct U.S. aid. In the bailout of Russia _ whose economy collapsed after President Boris Yeltsin abandoned an agreement to reform the economy and dismissed the leading reformers _ the United States offered no direct help. Those events set off a panicked exit by investors from all emerging markets, and greatly worsened Brazil's troubles. So far, Brazilian officials have successfully calmed the market by constantly talking about a forthcoming aid program from the IMF, convincing speculators that it would be dangerous to bet against the country. But at the same time, the Brazilian officials have maintained the pose that they do not really need the cash _ and are certainly in no hurry to get it. U.S. officials and top officials of the IMF are clearly nervous, worried that the longer the negotiations drag on, the greater will be the risk of Brazil being caught in another round of market turmoil. ``The Brazilians want everyone to think that it's all under control,'' said an investment banker involved in the talks. ``But the fact is that there's still a real risk that sometime in the next 18 months the government is going to be forced to devalue'' its currency, which is pegged to the dollar, but adjusts about 7.5 percent a year in a carefully controlled fall. To prevent a sudden devaluation, the Brazilian government has had to raise interest rates to more than 50 percent, choking off credit for most companies. Meanwhile, the country is slipping into recession. The aid would buy time for the Brazilians, but it is contingent on Cardoso's success in persuading the legislature to end huge deficits, chiefly through unpopular cuts in social spending. The first deputy managing director for the International Monetary Fund, Stanley Fischer, spent Friday in Brazil to review the country's austerity plan, which is expected to be announced after Sunday's elections but before the international package, to avoid the appearance that the global lender is dictating conditions to Brazil. ``Brazil has to do a lot,'' Fischer said last week before leaving on his trip. ``In return, I expect the international community will make a large contribution.'' ||||| Leaders from 19 Latin American nations, Spain and Portugal put finishing touches Saturday on an Ibero-American summit declaration warning of global recession unless action is taken to stabilize the international financial system. The draft declaration said recent financial market turmoil shows that adjustments must be made quickly ``to keep the difficulties affecting a few from becoming a crisis for all.'' The declaration addresses the world's seven richest nations. The Group of Seven is composed of the United States, Japan, Britain, Germany, France, Italy and Canada. The final declaration will be approved at Sunday's summit in this port city in northern Portugal. Brazilian President Fernando Henrique Cardoso said Saturday that Brazil and China, two of the world's largest economies, had become the ``dikes of resistance'' to global recession. Protecting their economies from the spreading economic turmoil, which is affecting more countries than at any time since the early 1980s, is key to world economic stability, he said. Brazil is Latin America's biggest economy and the eighth-largest in the world, and its economic collapse could take the rest of the continent with it. To halt Brazil's slide toward recession, Cardoso is preparing austerity measures including spending cuts, tax hikes and lower interest rates. The reforms would help Brazil qualify for an International Monetary Fund rescue package estimated at dlrs 30 billion. The IMF has put together bailout packages totaling dlrs 137 billion since the financial crisis struck Thailand 15 months ago and then spread from Asia to Russia. U.S. President Bill Clinton's administration, aware of the impact that a Latin American recession would have on the United States, has actively pushed the IMF and the World Bank to support Brazil after it was hit by investor flight. ||||| Latin American leaders flew Friday to Portugal for a weekend summit to figure out how they can shield their economies from the global financial crisis. Not since the early 1980s have so many countries been in recession, and the crisis now threatens to cripple Latin America's developing economies. An early arrival, Cuban President Fidel Castro, described the turmoil in world financial markets as the most important issue facing the world at the moment. ``I don't know if we are coming to the end of the world economic order. It will be interesting to know,'' the Cuban leader said at a hotel press conference shortly after his arrival for the annual Ibero-American summit. Emphasizing the scale of the threat, Castro said President Clinton was aware that ``if South America falls into crisis, it will be extended inevitably also to the United States,'' which is heavily involved in investments and loans in the region. Jittery investors have abruptly pulled cash out of Latin America with devastating effects on stock markets and currency reserves. The heads of state and government from Latin America, Spain and Portugal will explore measures to ward off the financial turmoil that already has devastated Asia and Russia. Stock markets also fell in Portugal and Spain, heavy investors in Latin America. The Latin American leaders must gauge the need for unpopular reforms of their public finances, including austerity packages which risk social unrest and political upheaval. A joint declaration will be signed Sunday in this ancient port city on the Douro River in northern Portugal. Diplomats said there was consensus on the form of the final statement. The declaration ``calls on the international community, and Group of Seven countries in particular, to take the necessary measures to promote stability in international financial markets, which is a necessary condition for sustained economic growth,'' said Luis Augusto Castro Neves, of the Brazilian Foreign Ministry. Latin America's leaders favor creating some kind of regulatory system for global financial transactions that would place controls on speculators, like measures to slow down the internatioal flow of money. They also want reforms that allow international financial institutions to head off crises rather than react to them with rescue packages. ``International institutions must be active in tackling crises like the recent one ... and contribute to stability,'' Portuguese Foreign Minister Jaime Gama said. ``Countries that have progressive policies should not be penalized, they should be given incentives,'' Gama added in reference to Latin American nations' efforts to modernize their economies. Brazil, the continent's largest economy and a potential bulwark against creeping recession, is waiting for news of a dlrs 30 billion bailout package from the International Monetary Fund. The presidents of the World Bank and InterAmerican Development Bank also were expected at the talks. The move by the U.S. Federal Reserve to cut interest rates Thursday revived Latin America's financial markets, but analysts expected the reprieve to be short-lived because of deep concerns about the continent's economic health. The recent economic troubles stemmed in part from the structural weaknesses of Latin American economies. A strike being waged by state employees in Colombia against a government austerity package offers a glimpse of the trouble that could arise if tough reforms are introduced. Brazil is drafting an austerity package that will hit public spending, especially social security. ||||| The Commerce Department on Tuesday provided a concrete measure of the effects of the global economic downturn on the American economy, reporting that the nation's trade deficit widened by $2.2 billion in August to $16.77 billion. That is the widest gap since the government recalculated the way it measures trade flows in 1992. It resulted from a decline in American exports and a sharp increase in what this country buys from abroad. So far this year, the trade deficit is running roughly 50 percent above last year's levels and is up to a projected $170 billion for the year, a gap that is expected to widen even further. One senior administration official who deals with economic issues, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Tuesday that internal projections suggest that the trade deficit in 1999 could reach $300 billion, a figure that he said ``will certainly cut into growth, and could well become a major political problem.'' Trade deficits carry with them both good and troubling signals about the economy. The current flood of imports is helping contain inflation to some of the lowest levels in decades. And while sales of American aircraft, computer chips and other goods are suffering, the weakening of the dollar on world markets in recent weeks may provide an end-of-the-year boost for American exporters. But at this moment of global upheaval, the biggest problem facing American companies is the inability of many nations and some large companies in Asia and Latin America simply to borrow money to make ordinary purchases. The result is such a freeze of economic activity that empty shipping containers are stacking up on American piers. And the effects are hurting everyone from Midwest farmers who can no longer send wheat to an impoverished Russia, to East Coast fishermen who are discovering that Japan's appetite for salmon and lobster has been ruined by the banking crisis. Among the most surprising elements of Tuesday's report is that more than a third of August's deficit was with one country that so far has managed to ward off the worst effects of the global troubles: China. Despite continued growth of the Chinese economy, exports to China have slowed dramatically and imports of Chinese-made goods have exploded, as the country desperately seeks to sell here goods that would ordinarily be sold elsewhere in Asia. That increased the monthly deficit with Beijing to $5.9 billion, levels previously only seen in trade with Japan. The Chinese _ besieged by floods, deeply troubled state-owned industries and an incipient banking crisis _ have signaled to the United States in recent weeks that they have little interest in any swift moves to open their markets further in return for entry into the World Trade Organization. That amounts to a major setback for President Clinton, who for three years has been using the negotiations over China's entry to the world body as the centerpiece of his effort to open China both economically and politically. Ostensible progress in this area has been cited by the administration until recently as one of the successes of the administration's China policy, but now officials say privately that the progress is evaporating. The decline in exports will trim the growth of the American economy, and it was one factor in the Federal Reserve's decision to lower interest rates two times in recent weeks. So administration officials were going out of their way Tuesday to portray the numbers as another warning sign, but not a crisis. ``While the United States remains strong and sound, the troubled condition of the global marketplace continue to strongly influence the U.S. trade balance,'' Commerce Secretary Williams Daley said in a statement Tuesday. After China, the biggest deterioration in the American trade balance in August came in Mexico, where the peso has weakened markedly as economic contagion has spread through Latin America. Exports to Mexico have remained unchanged. But imports from Mexico have increased markedly _ chiefly automobiles and automotive parts and telecommunications equipment _ as American manufacturers have taken advantage of the weakening currency. In contrast, America's trade surplus with Brazil, the latest focus of concern by the administration and the International Monetary Fund, barely budged from the same period a year ago. Normally, that would be cited as a sign of continued demand for American products in Latin America's largest economy, but there is fear it might be imperiled. The news comes as the United States and the IMF complete a bailout package of $30 billion or more for Brazil, intended to help it stave off the kind of economic troubles that have swept through Asia, Russia and several other nations. Tuesday the IMF and Brazil reached agreement on the country's fiscal targets for this year and next, a sign that the aid will likely be announced after elections in Brazil this weekend. But for all these potential problems, the rising trade deficit has barely caused a ripple on Capitol Hill. Because the rising level of imports does not appear to be triggering any unemployment here, the subject has barely come up in races for the House and Senate around the country. The only exception has been in regions where the steel industry is strong. The major steel companies have charged in recent weeks that Asian nations are dumping products on the American market at prices well below their costs. The Commerce Department has begun an inquiry. The Commerce Department's numbers showed that the deficit rose 15.3 percent to $16.77 billion in August, up from a revised figure of $14.55 billion in July. The department said that the resumption of production at General Motors Corp. after last summer's strike may have increased the size of the deficit's rise in August, as GM brought in parts from abroad. The deficit was the highest since the Commerce Department began a new method of tracking trade information in 1992. Exports, the department said, fell three tenths of 1 percent, to about $74.8 billion. Imports rose 2.2 percent to $91.6 billion. ||||| President Fernando Henrique Cardoso's efforts to repair the largest economy in Latin America may depend on the outcome of this weekend's gubernatorial elections. Cardoso wants to impose tough measures that would slash government spending and impose new taxes to try to halt the slide in Brazil's economy and restore investor confidence. But his plan, expected to be unveiled next week, must be approved by Congress, and state governors have enormous sway over local delegations. ``The influence governors have on their congressional blocs is overwhelming,'' said University of Sao Paulo political scientist Eduardo Kugelmas. Brazil has been caught up in the financial turmoil that began more than a year ago in Southeast Asia. As wary investors have fled its financial markets, Brazil's foreign reserves have fallen below dlrs 50 billion from dlrs 70 billion at the end of July. On Sunday, voters return to the polls for runoff elections in 12 states and in the Federal District of Brasilia. The outcome will likely determine how successful Cardoso is in getting Congress to approve his economic program, which is aimed at trimming the budget deficit. New income, fuel and bank transaction taxes are expected to be proposed. Kugelmas said opponents of the president stand a good chance of winning in four large states _ Sao Paulo, Minas Gerais, Rio de Janeiro and Rio Grande do Sul. ``If they win, the president will face a tough uphill battle,'' he said. Cardoso needs the governors' support not only in influencing the congressional delegations, but also in holding down their own spending. ``The problem is that none of the candidates in Sunday's elections ... wants to be identified with unpopular austerity measures,'' said Kugelmas. ``So they promise to spend more money on schools, hospitals and public work projects.'' Sao Paulo, Brazil's industrial and financial powerhouse, is perhaps the state most critical to the success of Cardoso's austerity plans. With more than 34 million inhabitants, nearly equal to the entire population of neighboring Argentina, it alone accounts for more than one-third of Brazil's economic output and 70 of the 513 congressional seats. While incumbent governor Mario Covas, a Cardoso ally who is seeking re-election, has committed himself to the austerity plan, Covas opponent Paulo Maluf is a question mark. ``If Maluf wins, he will use his victory as a launching pad to the presidency in 2003,'' Kugelmas predicted. ``And that means he will try to stay as far away as possible from any austerity measure.'' ||||| Caught in the middle of an economic crisis, many Brazilian factories fear they won't be able to pay their workers the mandatory year-end bonus. So they're considering paying with products instead of cash. Some workplaces have already offered their employees such things as hammers, nails, screws and bolts instead of the traditional cash bonus that normally is equivalent to one month's wage, said the head of Brazil's largest federation of trade unions. ``The idea is completely unacceptable,'' said Joao Antonio Felicio, secretary-general of the federation, which represents more than 2,000 unions and 19 million workers. ``We will recommend our unions reject such a preposterous proposal.'' But strapped for cash and punished by high interest rates and declining sales, factory owners may have no other choice, said Joseph Curi, president of the Sao Paulo State Association of Small Industries, which represents 110,000 factories that employ nearly 800,000 workers. ``Access to credit is almost impossible,'' Curi said. ``If banks and the government don't create some kind of emergency credit line, the only option many of our associates will have will be to use products to pay the bonus.'' Factories that produce clothes, shoes, food, toys and household appliances were ``the most enthusiastic about the idea,'' Curi said. Curi predicted even harsher times for Brazil with the belt-tightening austerity package newly re-elected President Fernando Henrique Cardoso is expected to announce Tuesday. The measures, aimed at curbing the country's ballooning budget deficit _ equal to about 7 percent of gross domestic product _ are expected to include spending cuts and, possibly, more taxes. ``There is a lot of talk of increasing taxes, which means less cash circulating in the market and more credit restrictions,'' Curi said. ``It is a shortsighted approach that will spell more recession and the collapse of many small factories.'' Brazil has been a major casualty of the global economic crisis, buffeted by loss of investor confidence and a strong outflow of capital. The country's foreign reserves have fallen below dlrs 50 billion, from dlrs 70 billion at the end of July. In an effort to prevent a collapse of the nation's currency, the real, and stem capital flight, interest rates were hiked to 50 percent a year. For union leader Felicio, the proposed product-for-cash swap ``is a clear sign of the despair the business sector is feeling because of the recessive economic policies'' brought by the Real Plan, the economic stabilization program put together in 1994 when Cardoso was finance minister. The plan succeeded in slashing inflation from 2,400 percent to almost zero today. But it also brought recession and unemployment, which now stands at almost 8 percent, the highest in a decade. ||||| Brazilian officials ended four days of meetings with representatives of the International Monetary Fund on Tuesday without living up to their public pledge to announce concrete measures to reduce government deficits. In Washington, Pedro Parente, executive secretary of the Brazilian Finance Ministry, offered only details on Brazil's plans for raising a primary account surplus over the next three years. With only five days to go before gubernatorial runoffs on Sunday, neither he nor President Fernando Henrique Cardoso, in Brasilia, said how the government planned to achieve the savings. Important allies of Cardoso are lagging behind in three key states, and despite the government promises, market analysts did not expect an announcement until after the elections. Instead, the strategy in Brasilia and Washington appeared to focus on reassuring the markets that work on cutting the deficit was going forward, without providing fodder for opponents in domestic elections. ``The discussions continue with the objective of reaching agreement soon on the detailed program,'' said a joint statement by the IMF and the Brazilian Finance Ministry. Because of Brazil's enormous deficits, the collapse of emerging markets has hit the nation particularly hard, draining foreign currency reserves and pushing the economy toward recession. Finance officials in Washington and around the world fear that a collapse of Brazil, because of its size and links to other economies, would worsen financial instability throughout the hemisphere. With 160 million people, Brazil represents the world's ninth-largest economy and is the financial engine of Latin America. Throughout the day, government officials met with Cardoso in Brasilia and were expected to fine-tune a three-year austerity package that Cardoso was to discuss with congressional party leaders on Wednesday morning. In Brasilia, officials said that among the measures being considered were a tax increase on financial transactions, to three-tenths of a percent from two-tenths of a percent, and extending the Fiscal Stabilization Fund, which sets aside 20 percent of all taxes collected for presidential discretionary spending. The fund was to have expired by 1999. Speaking in Washington, Parente said that Brazil would aim toward a surplus of 2.6 percent in 1999, 2.8 percent in 2000 and 3 percent in 2001. It had already been announced, at the end of the IMF's annual meeting in Washington two weeks ago that Brazil would have to reach a primary account surplus of 2.5 percent to 3 percent to qualify for IMF aid. The primary account covers government expenses, without interest payments on debt. Ernest Brown, senior economist for Latin America at Morgan Stanley Dean Witter, said signs that the Brazilian government and the IMF were moving closer to an aid package were reassuring, and that he did not expect much more than reassurance until next week. ``I call this the `We have a pope' scenario,'' Brown said. ``You're just going to hear that we have a pope, maybe see the white smoke rising,'' he said, ``and not figure out who the pope is until after the elections.'' ||||| There's no such thing as a free lunch any longer in Brazil, President Fernando Henrique Cardoso is telling government workers. No haircuts or phone calls, either. Eager to bolster the sagging economy, Cardoso wants to slash dlrs 19 billion from the budget deficit, and he's beginning by paring perks for the more than 2,000 workers at the presidential palace in Brasilia, the capital. Sure, it's not much when compared with a deficit of some dlrs 65 billion, or 7 percent of economic output. But as Cardoso readies a package of spending cuts and tax increases, he clearly wants to show Brazilians that economy starts at home. So goodbye to the afternoon courtesy snack of sandwiches, fruit and juice, a palace tradition. Three barber shops in the palace were closed, and the use of cellular phones and copiers was restricted. The price of a buffet offered employees for lunch was raised from dlrs 6 to dlrs 8.50. Cardoso himself has promised to travel less and more cheaply. On a trip to a summit in Portugal this month, he took a delegation of just eight, half the usual number. The savings at the palace could come to nearly dlrs 145,000 a month, said Nilson Rebello, chief administrator of the president's office. Cardoso, under pressure to repair an economy battered by the world financial turmoil, is expected to unveil the full scope of his deficit-cutting plan next week. It is believed to include a spate of new taxes on fuel, income, personal fortunes and bank transactions. The plan is part of a deal with the International Monetary Fund for a rescue package estimated at dlrs 30 billion. The money would strengthen and, hopefully, restore investor confidence in the world's ninth-largest economy, now at the center of the financial crisis buffeting developing nations for more than a year. Brazil already has agreed to annual targets to sharply reduce its deficit through the year 2001. On Wednesday, newspapers published a joint statement from Brazil and the IMF, although a final agreement hasn't been reached yet. Despite Cardoso's efforts, many Brazilians were less than impressed by the palace penny-pinching. The leftist Workers Party said the government was making a big deal of insignificant savings while it failed to cut other dubious projects, such as a dlrs 800,000 moat being built around Congress to keep protesters from easily entering the building. The Globo TV network also suggested there still was plenty of fat to cut, citing government expenses for running shoes, Persian carpets and gold cufflinks, intended as presents for visiting dignitaries. Cardoso is counting on help from friendly state governors to control spending. But the governors, some facing runoff elections on Sunday, are promising pay raises and public works projects that could sink the austerity plan. In Brasilia, Joaquim Roriz has promised civil service raises, bonuses and new jobs that his opponent estimates would cost some dlrs 1 billion. Roriz hasn't explained where the money would come from. In powerful Minas Gerais state, the government will almost certainly have to lay off workers _ the state payroll consumes 78 percent of the budget. To rein in the free-spending habits of provincial politicians, Cardoso reportedly wants to hold local governments to bimonthly limits on spending. Federal money would automatically be cut off if spending gets out of hand.

In an effort to stem the financial crisis in Brazil, the world's ninth largest economy and the financial engine of Latin America, U.S. officials have signaled a willingness to provide billions in direct aid. Brazil is also negotiating with the IMF for a $30 billion bail-out package. The agreement almost certainly includes unpopular austerity measures to trim the country's budget deficit. Brazil's crisis was triggered by Russia's default on loans followed by a strong outflow of capital. Meanwhile, the U.S. Commerce Department reported the nation's trade deficit rose $2.2 billion, indicating the U.S. has not been shielded from the global economic downturn.

Brazil and the International Monetary Fund moved closer Tuesday to agreement on an expected dlrs 30 billion rescue package for the world's ninth-largest economy. A joint statement by the IMF and the Brazilian government said the two sides agreed Brazil should aim to reduce its budget deficit from an expected eight percent of gross domestic product to zero by 2000. The statement was issued after weekend talks between IMF officials and a Brazilian delegation headed by Pedro Parente, executive secretary of the Finance Ministry. Representatives of the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank took part in the talks. Both organizations as well as private banks are expected to contribute to the rescue package. Brazil is the latest country to be hit by the financial crisis that began 15 months ago in Asia and then spread to Russia. Brazil has lost about dlrs 25 billion in foreign currency reserves since August when Russia defaulted on its debts and sparked a new crisis of confidence in emerging market countries. If instability continues in Brazil it could affect Argentina, its main trading partner, and other Latin American economies. Despite the re-election of Fernando Henrique Cardoso for a second term as president and the announcement Oct. 8 that Brazil and the IMF had agreed on the broad outlines of a financial assistance package, investors continued to withdraw large sums of money from Brazil. Cardoso is preparing an emergency program of budget cuts to restore investor confidence and prevent a devaluation of the country's currency. Investors want Cardoso to outline the plans this week but he is expected to wait until after Sunday's second round of elections for state governors, whose support he needs for his budget cuts. The joint statement said the Brazil-IMF discussions ``were aimed at preparing the ground for prompt support by the international community, including the IMF, for the multi-year fiscal program to be announced soon by the Brazilian authorities, which will include new policy initiatives.'' The statement reiterated Brazil's goal of achieving a primary budget surplus of 2.6 percent of its gross domestic product in 1999, 2.8 percent in 2000 and 3.0 percent in 2001 which would '' fulfill the government target of stabilizing the ratio of net consolidated public sector debt to GDP by the year 2000.'' The two sides are to continue their talks ``with the objective of reaching early agreement,'' the statement said. ||||| There's no such thing as a free lunch any longer in Brazil, President Fernando Henrique Cardoso is telling government workers. No haircuts or phone calls, either. Eager to bolster the sagging economy, Cardoso wants to slash dlrs 19 billion (23.5 billion reals) from the budget deficit, and he's beginning by paring perks for the more than 2,000 workers at the presidential palace in Brasilia, the capital. Sure, it's not much when compared with a deficit of some dlrs 65 billion, or 7 percent of economic output. But as Cardoso readies a package of spending cuts and tax increases, he clearly wants to show Brazilians that economy starts at home. So goodbye to the afternoon courtesy snack of sandwiches, fruit and juice, a palace tradition. Three barber shops in the palace were closed, and the use of cellular phones and copiers was restricted. The price of a buffet offered employees for lunch was raised from dlrs 6 to dlrs 8.50 (7 reals to 10 reals). Cardoso himself has promised to travel less and more cheaply. On a trip to a summit in Portugal this month, he took a delegation of just eight, half the usual number. The savings at the palace could come to nearly dlrs 145,000 (170,000 reals) a month, said Nilson Rebello, chief administrator of the president's office. Cardoso, under pressure to repair an economy battered by the world financial turmoil, is expected to unveil the full scope of his deficit-cutting plan next week. It is believed to include a spate of new taxes on fuel, income, personal fortunes and bank transactions. The plan is part of a deal with the International Monetary Fund for a rescue package estimated at dlrs 30 billion. The money would strengthen and, hopefully, restore investor confidence in the world's ninth-largest economy, now at the center of the financial crisis buffeting developing nations for more than a year. Brazil already has agreed to annual targets to sharply reduce its deficit through the year 2001. On Wednesday, newspapers published a joint statement from Brazil and the IMF, although a final agreement hasn't been reached yet. Despite Cardoso's efforts, many Brazilians were less than impressed by the palace penny-pinching. The leftist Workers Party said the government was making a big deal of insignificant savings while it failed to cut other dubious projects, such as a dlrs 800,000 (1 million reals) moat being built around Congress to keep protesters from easily entering the building. The Globo TV network also suggested there still was plenty of fat to cut, citing government expenses for running shoes, Persian carpets and gold cufflinks, intended as presents for visiting dignitaries. Cardoso is counting on help from friendly state governors to control spending. But the governors, some facing runoff elections on Sunday, are promising pay raises and public works projects that could sink the austerity plan. In Brasilia, Joaquim Roriz has promised civil service raises, bonuses and new jobs that his opponent estimates would cost some dlrs 1 billion (1.2 billion reals). Roriz hasn't explained where the money would come from. In powerful Minas Gerais state, the government will almost certainly have to lay off workers _ the state payroll consumes 78 percent of the budget. To rein in the free-spending habits of provincial politicians, Cardoso reportedly wants to hold local governments to bimonthly limits on spending. Federal money would automatically be cut off if spending gets out of hand. ||||| The United States is preparing to commit U.S. taxpayer funds as part of a lending program of at least $30 billion to try to insulate Brazil, and with it the rest of Latin America, from the worst effects of the financial turmoil circling the globe, according to U.S. and foreign officials assembling the program. Details of the U.S. contribution, which is expected to total several billion dollars in direct aid or loan guarantees, have yet to be negotiated. But several congressional leaders have been alerted to the likelihood that the administration would have to act while Congress is in recess. This early warning from the administration reflects memories of how Congress erupted with objections and hearings in 1995 when President Clinton committed $20 billion in U.S. funds to the bailout of Mexico. But administration officials said last week that their early soundings indicate that members of Congress are deeply concerned about preventing an economic collapse in Latin America that would resound in the United States, and thus they expect few objections. The timing of an aid package for Brazil _ originally expected within the next few days _ is complicated by unexpected delays that have cropped up in dealing with the Brazilian government. The government of President Fernando Henrique Cardoso faces politically risky gubernatorial elections on Sunday, which may well determine whether Brazil can execute an austerity program that is the key condition for the loans it is concurrently negotiating with the International Monetary Fund. The biggest role in the rescue program for Brazil will be taken by the International Monetary Fund, which said last week that it would contribute at least $15 billion _ and appears to be under pressure from the United States to do even more. Another $9 billion or so will come from the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank, and the remainder from the United States and other major industrial nations. Germany and Japan, though, have been reluctant to take part, one U.S. official noted, suggesting that Latin America is chiefly Washington's problem, not their own. So far, U.S. officials working behind the scenes to organize the aid package have said nothing in public about the details of plans for a direct contribution to Brazil. ``Brazil is very important to the economic well-being of the region, the United States and the international community, and all of us are very much focused on seeing how we can be helpful,'' Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin said on Friday. But in a wide-ranging interview about the global economic turmoil, Rubin declined to say what strategy he would pursue in dealing with Brazil's problems and insisted that no decisions had been made about how the United States might contribute. But he discussed Brazil as an opportunity to engage in the kind of preventive financial diplomacy that President Clinton advocated in speeches to the IMF and the World Bank here three weeks ago. At the time, Clinton argued that the monetary fund should ``provide contingent finance to help countries ward off global financial contagion'' rather than wait for disaster to strike. Direct U.S. aid to Brazil would clearly send a symbolic message: that after a year of trying to manage the financial crisis through the monetary fund, the United States is now ready to put a limited amount of its own capital at risk to prevent further havoc _ not only for Brazil but to stop chaos spreading to Argentina, Mexico and other countries that are major U.S. trading partners. That would be a change of strategy. So far, the United States has operated almost entirely through international financial institutions, chiefly the IMF But it would also be a risky move for President Clinton, economically and politically. Even though Congress objected to the $20 billion in U.S. funds committed to the bailout of Mexico, it turned out that only $12 billion was ultimately needed, and it has since been paid back, with interest. But Rubin noted on Friday that ``it's a very different environment now.'' Other administration officials say they believe that there would be few objections in Congress to direct U.S. participation in a Brazil bailout. ``I think there are a lot more people in Congress who are now scared to death by what's been happening in the markets, and what could happen in their own districts,'' a White House official said last week, ``and they won't say much as long as they don't have to vote on it.'' By acting soon to stabilize Latin America, the administration is hoping to capitalize on two weeks of relative calm after the late-summer panic that engulfed Russia and, at its height, led to an outflow of a billion dollars a day from Brazil, for fear that it would be the next country forced to devalue its currency. Whether this calm marks the beginning of a turnaround or just another pause in the wildfires that have erupted since Thailand's currency crisis in July 1997 is a matter of considerable debate. But many experts cite the confluence of several events that have reassured jittery investors around the world: two successive interest-rate cuts in the United States, Japan's long-delayed move to prop up its banking system with $500 billion in taxpayer funds, and a steady strengthening of currencies in Thailand, Indonesia and South Korea, the first signs that investors may be preparing to return. Always circumspect when it comes to commenting publicly on markets, Rubin acknowledged that ``in the last several weeks there have been a number of significant, positive developments.'' But the former trader, burned during a 26-year career by many false market rallies, warned that ``serious issues remain'' and that ``it will take some time for the world to work its way out'' of what he has repeatedly called ``the most serious international financial disruption of the last 50 years.'' In fact, Rubin's aides are clearly nervous about the possibility of another outbreak that could set off a new round of panic, which has made it virtually impossible for many emerging-market countries to borrow money on world markets. ``Brazil and Japan are the two obvious tinderboxes,'' said Jeffrey Garten, dean of the Yale School of Management, who served as undersecretary of commerce for international affairs during Clinton's first term. ``In Brazil, the issue is whether the package that is coming together will really be big enough to deal with an exploding debt problem. And in Japan the question is whether there is real reform that goes along with the money.'' But after spending 18 months in negotiations with the Japanese, Rubin clearly senses that the United States has little leverage in Tokyo; its problems are chiefly rooted in political gridlock, not lack of resources. In Brazil, though, the United States has a better chance of buying time and influencing an economic reform program, as long as it does not appear to be dictating terms publicly to Cardoso and his team. But demonstrating economic support will probably require tapping the Exchange Stabilization Fund, created during the Roosevelt administration to help stabilize the dollar. The money is under Rubin's control, with presidential approval, and he reached into it to circumvent congressional objections to aiding Mexico in 1995. But the reaction was so strong _ for a time Congress restricted tapping the fund for international bailouts _ that Rubin has been extraordinarily cautious ever since. He committed $3 billion in a ``second line of defense'' in emergency aid programs for Indonesia and South Korea last year, but no money was ultimately dispersed to either country. U.S. officials said that South Korea did not need the extra help, and that the collapse of the Suharto government in Indonesia so changed the political scene there that it would be too risky to offer direct U.S. aid. In the bailout of Russia _ whose economy collapsed after President Boris Yeltsin abandoned an agreement to reform the economy and dismissed the leading reformers _ the United States offered no direct help. Those events set off a panicked exit by investors from all emerging markets, and greatly worsened Brazil's troubles. So far, Brazilian officials have successfully calmed the market by constantly talking about a forthcoming aid program from the IMF, convincing speculators that it would be dangerous to bet against the country. But at the same time, the Brazilian officials have maintained the pose that they do not really need the cash _ and are certainly in no hurry to get it. U.S. officials and top officials of the IMF are clearly nervous, worried that the longer the negotiations drag on, the greater will be the risk of Brazil being caught in another round of market turmoil. ``The Brazilians want everyone to think that it's all under control,'' said an investment banker involved in the talks. ``But the fact is that there's still a real risk that sometime in the next 18 months the government is going to be forced to devalue'' its currency, which is pegged to the dollar, but adjusts about 7.5 percent a year in a carefully controlled fall. To prevent a sudden devaluation, the Brazilian government has had to raise interest rates to more than 50 percent, choking off credit for most companies. Meanwhile, the country is slipping into recession. The aid would buy time for the Brazilians, but it is contingent on Cardoso's success in persuading the legislature to end huge deficits, chiefly through unpopular cuts in social spending. The first deputy managing director for the International Monetary Fund, Stanley Fischer, spent Friday in Brazil to review the country's austerity plan, which is expected to be announced after Sunday's elections but before the international package, to avoid the appearance that the global lender is dictating conditions to Brazil. ``Brazil has to do a lot,'' Fischer said last week before leaving on his trip. ``In return, I expect the international community will make a large contribution.'' ||||| Leaders from 19 Latin American nations, Spain and Portugal put finishing touches Saturday on an Ibero-American summit declaration warning of global recession unless action is taken to stabilize the international financial system. The draft declaration said recent financial market turmoil shows that adjustments must be made quickly ``to keep the difficulties affecting a few from becoming a crisis for all.'' The declaration addresses the world's seven richest nations. The Group of Seven is composed of the United States, Japan, Britain, Germany, France, Italy and Canada. The final declaration will be approved at Sunday's summit in this port city in northern Portugal. Brazilian President Fernando Henrique Cardoso said Saturday that Brazil and China, two of the world's largest economies, had become the ``dikes of resistance'' to global recession. Protecting their economies from the spreading economic turmoil, which is affecting more countries than at any time since the early 1980s, is key to world economic stability, he said. Brazil is Latin America's biggest economy and the eighth-largest in the world, and its economic collapse could take the rest of the continent with it. To halt Brazil's slide toward recession, Cardoso is preparing austerity measures including spending cuts, tax hikes and lower interest rates. The reforms would help Brazil qualify for an International Monetary Fund rescue package estimated at dlrs 30 billion. The IMF has put together bailout packages totaling dlrs 137 billion since the financial crisis struck Thailand 15 months ago and then spread from Asia to Russia. U.S. President Bill Clinton's administration, aware of the impact that a Latin American recession would have on the United States, has actively pushed the IMF and the World Bank to support Brazil after it was hit by investor flight. ||||| Latin American leaders flew Friday to Portugal for a weekend summit to figure out how they can shield their economies from the global financial crisis. Not since the early 1980s have so many countries been in recession, and the crisis now threatens to cripple Latin America's developing economies. An early arrival, Cuban President Fidel Castro, described the turmoil in world financial markets as the most important issue facing the world at the moment. ``I don't know if we are coming to the end of the world economic order. It will be interesting to know,'' the Cuban leader said at a hotel press conference shortly after his arrival for the annual Ibero-American summit. Emphasizing the scale of the threat, Castro said President Clinton was aware that ``if South America falls into crisis, it will be extended inevitably also to the United States,'' which is heavily involved in investments and loans in the region. Jittery investors have abruptly pulled cash out of Latin America with devastating effects on stock markets and currency reserves. The heads of state and government from Latin America, Spain and Portugal will explore measures to ward off the financial turmoil that already has devastated Asia and Russia. Stock markets also fell in Portugal and Spain, heavy investors in Latin America. The Latin American leaders must gauge the need for unpopular reforms of their public finances, including austerity packages which risk social unrest and political upheaval. A joint declaration will be signed Sunday in this ancient port city on the Douro River in northern Portugal. Diplomats said there was consensus on the form of the final statement. The declaration ``calls on the international community, and Group of Seven countries in particular, to take the necessary measures to promote stability in international financial markets, which is a necessary condition for sustained economic growth,'' said Luis Augusto Castro Neves, of the Brazilian Foreign Ministry. Latin America's leaders favor creating some kind of regulatory system for global financial transactions that would place controls on speculators, like measures to slow down the internatioal flow of money. They also want reforms that allow international financial institutions to head off crises rather than react to them with rescue packages. ``International institutions must be active in tackling crises like the recent one ... and contribute to stability,'' Portuguese Foreign Minister Jaime Gama said. ``Countries that have progressive policies should not be penalized, they should be given incentives,'' Gama added in reference to Latin American nations' efforts to modernize their economies. Brazil, the continent's largest economy and a potential bulwark against creeping recession, is waiting for news of a dlrs 30 billion bailout package from the International Monetary Fund. The presidents of the World Bank and InterAmerican Development Bank also were expected at the talks. The move by the U.S. Federal Reserve to cut interest rates Thursday revived Latin America's financial markets, but analysts expected the reprieve to be short-lived because of deep concerns about the continent's economic health. The recent economic troubles stemmed in part from the structural weaknesses of Latin American economies. A strike being waged by state employees in Colombia against a government austerity package offers a glimpse of the trouble that could arise if tough reforms are introduced. Brazil is drafting an austerity package that will hit public spending, especially social security. ||||| The Commerce Department on Tuesday provided a concrete measure of the effects of the global economic downturn on the American economy, reporting that the nation's trade deficit widened by $2.2 billion in August to $16.77 billion. That is the widest gap since the government recalculated the way it measures trade flows in 1992. It resulted from a decline in American exports and a sharp increase in what this country buys from abroad. So far this year, the trade deficit is running roughly 50 percent above last year's levels and is up to a projected $170 billion for the year, a gap that is expected to widen even further. One senior administration official who deals with economic issues, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Tuesday that internal projections suggest that the trade deficit in 1999 could reach $300 billion, a figure that he said ``will certainly cut into growth, and could well become a major political problem.'' Trade deficits carry with them both good and troubling signals about the economy. The current flood of imports is helping contain inflation to some of the lowest levels in decades. And while sales of American aircraft, computer chips and other goods are suffering, the weakening of the dollar on world markets in recent weeks may provide an end-of-the-year boost for American exporters. But at this moment of global upheaval, the biggest problem facing American companies is the inability of many nations and some large companies in Asia and Latin America simply to borrow money to make ordinary purchases. The result is such a freeze of economic activity that empty shipping containers are stacking up on American piers. And the effects are hurting everyone from Midwest farmers who can no longer send wheat to an impoverished Russia, to East Coast fishermen who are discovering that Japan's appetite for salmon and lobster has been ruined by the banking crisis. Among the most surprising elements of Tuesday's report is that more than a third of August's deficit was with one country that so far has managed to ward off the worst effects of the global troubles: China. Despite continued growth of the Chinese economy, exports to China have slowed dramatically and imports of Chinese-made goods have exploded, as the country desperately seeks to sell here goods that would ordinarily be sold elsewhere in Asia. That increased the monthly deficit with Beijing to $5.9 billion, levels previously only seen in trade with Japan. The Chinese _ besieged by floods, deeply troubled state-owned industries and an incipient banking crisis _ have signaled to the United States in recent weeks that they have little interest in any swift moves to open their markets further in return for entry into the World Trade Organization. That amounts to a major setback for President Clinton, who for three years has been using the negotiations over China's entry to the world body as the centerpiece of his effort to open China both economically and politically. Ostensible progress in this area has been cited by the administration until recently as one of the successes of the administration's China policy, but now officials say privately that the progress is evaporating. The decline in exports will trim the growth of the American economy, and it was one factor in the Federal Reserve's decision to lower interest rates two times in recent weeks. So administration officials were going out of their way Tuesday to portray the numbers as another warning sign, but not a crisis. ``While the United States remains strong and sound, the troubled condition of the global marketplace continue to strongly influence the U.S. trade balance,'' Commerce Secretary Williams Daley said in a statement Tuesday. After China, the biggest deterioration in the American trade balance in August came in Mexico, where the peso has weakened markedly as economic contagion has spread through Latin America. Exports to Mexico have remained unchanged. But imports from Mexico have increased markedly _ chiefly automobiles and automotive parts and telecommunications equipment _ as American manufacturers have taken advantage of the weakening currency. In contrast, America's trade surplus with Brazil, the latest focus of concern by the administration and the International Monetary Fund, barely budged from the same period a year ago. Normally, that would be cited as a sign of continued demand for American products in Latin America's largest economy, but there is fear it might be imperiled. The news comes as the United States and the IMF complete a bailout package of $30 billion or more for Brazil, intended to help it stave off the kind of economic troubles that have swept through Asia, Russia and several other nations. Tuesday the IMF and Brazil reached agreement on the country's fiscal targets for this year and next, a sign that the aid will likely be announced after elections in Brazil this weekend. But for all these potential problems, the rising trade deficit has barely caused a ripple on Capitol Hill. Because the rising level of imports does not appear to be triggering any unemployment here, the subject has barely come up in races for the House and Senate around the country. The only exception has been in regions where the steel industry is strong. The major steel companies have charged in recent weeks that Asian nations are dumping products on the American market at prices well below their costs. The Commerce Department has begun an inquiry. The Commerce Department's numbers showed that the deficit rose 15.3 percent to $16.77 billion in August, up from a revised figure of $14.55 billion in July. The department said that the resumption of production at General Motors Corp. after last summer's strike may have increased the size of the deficit's rise in August, as GM brought in parts from abroad. The deficit was the highest since the Commerce Department began a new method of tracking trade information in 1992. Exports, the department said, fell three tenths of 1 percent, to about $74.8 billion. Imports rose 2.2 percent to $91.6 billion. ||||| President Fernando Henrique Cardoso's efforts to repair the largest economy in Latin America may depend on the outcome of this weekend's gubernatorial elections. Cardoso wants to impose tough measures that would slash government spending and impose new taxes to try to halt the slide in Brazil's economy and restore investor confidence. But his plan, expected to be unveiled next week, must be approved by Congress, and state governors have enormous sway over local delegations. ``The influence governors have on their congressional blocs is overwhelming,'' said University of Sao Paulo political scientist Eduardo Kugelmas. Brazil has been caught up in the financial turmoil that began more than a year ago in Southeast Asia. As wary investors have fled its financial markets, Brazil's foreign reserves have fallen below dlrs 50 billion from dlrs 70 billion at the end of July. On Sunday, voters return to the polls for runoff elections in 12 states and in the Federal District of Brasilia. The outcome will likely determine how successful Cardoso is in getting Congress to approve his economic program, which is aimed at trimming the budget deficit. New income, fuel and bank transaction taxes are expected to be proposed. Kugelmas said opponents of the president stand a good chance of winning in four large states _ Sao Paulo, Minas Gerais, Rio de Janeiro and Rio Grande do Sul. ``If they win, the president will face a tough uphill battle,'' he said. Cardoso needs the governors' support not only in influencing the congressional delegations, but also in holding down their own spending. ``The problem is that none of the candidates in Sunday's elections ... wants to be identified with unpopular austerity measures,'' said Kugelmas. ``So they promise to spend more money on schools, hospitals and public work projects.'' Sao Paulo, Brazil's industrial and financial powerhouse, is perhaps the state most critical to the success of Cardoso's austerity plans. With more than 34 million inhabitants, nearly equal to the entire population of neighboring Argentina, it alone accounts for more than one-third of Brazil's economic output and 70 of the 513 congressional seats. While incumbent governor Mario Covas, a Cardoso ally who is seeking re-election, has committed himself to the austerity plan, Covas opponent Paulo Maluf is a question mark. ``If Maluf wins, he will use his victory as a launching pad to the presidency in 2003,'' Kugelmas predicted. ``And that means he will try to stay as far away as possible from any austerity measure.'' ||||| Caught in the middle of an economic crisis, many Brazilian factories fear they won't be able to pay their workers the mandatory year-end bonus. So they're considering paying with products instead of cash. Some workplaces have already offered their employees such things as hammers, nails, screws and bolts instead of the traditional cash bonus that normally is equivalent to one month's wage, said the head of Brazil's largest federation of trade unions. ``The idea is completely unacceptable,'' said Joao Antonio Felicio, secretary-general of the federation, which represents more than 2,000 unions and 19 million workers. ``We will recommend our unions reject such a preposterous proposal.'' But strapped for cash and punished by high interest rates and declining sales, factory owners may have no other choice, said Joseph Curi, president of the Sao Paulo State Association of Small Industries, which represents 110,000 factories that employ nearly 800,000 workers. ``Access to credit is almost impossible,'' Curi said. ``If banks and the government don't create some kind of emergency credit line, the only option many of our associates will have will be to use products to pay the bonus.'' Factories that produce clothes, shoes, food, toys and household appliances were ``the most enthusiastic about the idea,'' Curi said. Curi predicted even harsher times for Brazil with the belt-tightening austerity package newly re-elected President Fernando Henrique Cardoso is expected to announce Tuesday. The measures, aimed at curbing the country's ballooning budget deficit _ equal to about 7 percent of gross domestic product _ are expected to include spending cuts and, possibly, more taxes. ``There is a lot of talk of increasing taxes, which means less cash circulating in the market and more credit restrictions,'' Curi said. ``It is a shortsighted approach that will spell more recession and the collapse of many small factories.'' Brazil has been a major casualty of the global economic crisis, buffeted by loss of investor confidence and a strong outflow of capital. The country's foreign reserves have fallen below dlrs 50 billion, from dlrs 70 billion at the end of July. In an effort to prevent a collapse of the nation's currency, the real, and stem capital flight, interest rates were hiked to 50 percent a year. For union leader Felicio, the proposed product-for-cash swap ``is a clear sign of the despair the business sector is feeling because of the recessive economic policies'' brought by the Real Plan, the economic stabilization program put together in 1994 when Cardoso was finance minister. The plan succeeded in slashing inflation from 2,400 percent to almost zero today. But it also brought recession and unemployment, which now stands at almost 8 percent, the highest in a decade. ||||| Brazilian officials ended four days of meetings with representatives of the International Monetary Fund on Tuesday without living up to their public pledge to announce concrete measures to reduce government deficits. In Washington, Pedro Parente, executive secretary of the Brazilian Finance Ministry, offered only details on Brazil's plans for raising a primary account surplus over the next three years. With only five days to go before gubernatorial runoffs on Sunday, neither he nor President Fernando Henrique Cardoso, in Brasilia, said how the government planned to achieve the savings. Important allies of Cardoso are lagging behind in three key states, and despite the government promises, market analysts did not expect an announcement until after the elections. Instead, the strategy in Brasilia and Washington appeared to focus on reassuring the markets that work on cutting the deficit was going forward, without providing fodder for opponents in domestic elections. ``The discussions continue with the objective of reaching agreement soon on the detailed program,'' said a joint statement by the IMF and the Brazilian Finance Ministry. Because of Brazil's enormous deficits, the collapse of emerging markets has hit the nation particularly hard, draining foreign currency reserves and pushing the economy toward recession. Finance officials in Washington and around the world fear that a collapse of Brazil, because of its size and links to other economies, would worsen financial instability throughout the hemisphere. With 160 million people, Brazil represents the world's ninth-largest economy and is the financial engine of Latin America. Throughout the day, government officials met with Cardoso in Brasilia and were expected to fine-tune a three-year austerity package that Cardoso was to discuss with congressional party leaders on Wednesday morning. In Brasilia, officials said that among the measures being considered were a tax increase on financial transactions, to three-tenths of a percent from two-tenths of a percent, and extending the Fiscal Stabilization Fund, which sets aside 20 percent of all taxes collected for presidential discretionary spending. The fund was to have expired by 1999. Speaking in Washington, Parente said that Brazil would aim toward a surplus of 2.6 percent in 1999, 2.8 percent in 2000 and 3 percent in 2001. It had already been announced, at the end of the IMF's annual meeting in Washington two weeks ago that Brazil would have to reach a primary account surplus of 2.5 percent to 3 percent to qualify for IMF aid. The primary account covers government expenses, without interest payments on debt. Ernest Brown, senior economist for Latin America at Morgan Stanley Dean Witter, said signs that the Brazilian government and the IMF were moving closer to an aid package were reassuring, and that he did not expect much more than reassurance until next week. ``I call this the `We have a pope' scenario,'' Brown said. ``You're just going to hear that we have a pope, maybe see the white smoke rising,'' he said, ``and not figure out who the pope is until after the elections.'' ||||| There's no such thing as a free lunch any longer in Brazil, President Fernando Henrique Cardoso is telling government workers. No haircuts or phone calls, either. Eager to bolster the sagging economy, Cardoso wants to slash dlrs 19 billion from the budget deficit, and he's beginning by paring perks for the more than 2,000 workers at the presidential palace in Brasilia, the capital. Sure, it's not much when compared with a deficit of some dlrs 65 billion, or 7 percent of economic output. But as Cardoso readies a package of spending cuts and tax increases, he clearly wants to show Brazilians that economy starts at home. So goodbye to the afternoon courtesy snack of sandwiches, fruit and juice, a palace tradition. Three barber shops in the palace were closed, and the use of cellular phones and copiers was restricted. The price of a buffet offered employees for lunch was raised from dlrs 6 to dlrs 8.50. Cardoso himself has promised to travel less and more cheaply. On a trip to a summit in Portugal this month, he took a delegation of just eight, half the usual number. The savings at the palace could come to nearly dlrs 145,000 a month, said Nilson Rebello, chief administrator of the president's office. Cardoso, under pressure to repair an economy battered by the world financial turmoil, is expected to unveil the full scope of his deficit-cutting plan next week. It is believed to include a spate of new taxes on fuel, income, personal fortunes and bank transactions. The plan is part of a deal with the International Monetary Fund for a rescue package estimated at dlrs 30 billion. The money would strengthen and, hopefully, restore investor confidence in the world's ninth-largest economy, now at the center of the financial crisis buffeting developing nations for more than a year. Brazil already has agreed to annual targets to sharply reduce its deficit through the year 2001. On Wednesday, newspapers published a joint statement from Brazil and the IMF, although a final agreement hasn't been reached yet. Despite Cardoso's efforts, many Brazilians were less than impressed by the palace penny-pinching. The leftist Workers Party said the government was making a big deal of insignificant savings while it failed to cut other dubious projects, such as a dlrs 800,000 moat being built around Congress to keep protesters from easily entering the building. The Globo TV network also suggested there still was plenty of fat to cut, citing government expenses for running shoes, Persian carpets and gold cufflinks, intended as presents for visiting dignitaries. Cardoso is counting on help from friendly state governors to control spending. But the governors, some facing runoff elections on Sunday, are promising pay raises and public works projects that could sink the austerity plan. In Brasilia, Joaquim Roriz has promised civil service raises, bonuses and new jobs that his opponent estimates would cost some dlrs 1 billion. Roriz hasn't explained where the money would come from. In powerful Minas Gerais state, the government will almost certainly have to lay off workers _ the state payroll consumes 78 percent of the budget. To rein in the free-spending habits of provincial politicians, Cardoso reportedly wants to hold local governments to bimonthly limits on spending. Federal money would automatically be cut off if spending gets out of hand.

In an effort to stem the financial crisis in Brazil, the world's ninth largest economy and the financial engine of Latin America, U.S. officials have signaled a willingness to provide billions in direct aid. Brazil is also negotiating with the IMF for a $30 billion bail-out package. The agreement almost certainly includes unpopular austerity measures to trim the country's budget deficit. Brazil's crisis was triggered by Russia's default on loans followed by a strong outflow of capital. Meanwhile, the U.S. Commerce Department reported the nation's trade deficit rose $2.2 billion, indicating the U.S. has not been shielded from the global economic downturn.

Jose Saramago became the first writer in Portuguese to win the Nobel Prize for Literature on Thursday. His personal delight was seconded by a burst of public elation in his homeland. Saramago, 75, and Portuguese said they were pleased the Swedish Academy had finally acknowledged the literary contribution of Portugal, a small country of 10 million people bordering Spain on Europe's southwestern Iberian Peninsula. ``It has taken all of this century to win a Nobel Prize for the Portuguese language,'' Saramago said at the Frankfurt Book Fair, speaking through an interpreter. Saramago, a soft-spoken man known for his hard-edged and iconoclastic views, said he shared the honor with his country and he hoped winning the prize would make Portugal and its language ``more visible and audible.'' ``I'm personally very happy for myself. I'm also happy for my country,'' he said at the Frankfurt Book Fair in Germany where he was engulfed by well-wishers offering roses. Back home, President Jorge Sampaio said the award was a cause for ``great collective satisfaction.'' Prime Minister Antonio Guterres said the award was ``above all a prize for Portugal and the Portuguese language'' which is spoken by 180 million worldwide, mostly in Brazil, but also in Portugal's five former colonies in Africa. Saramago's controversial opinions and atheistic outlook have frequently clashed with the establishment and the general public. Even on the day he won the prize, the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano attacked the Swedish Academy's choice, describing Saramago as an ``old-school communist'' who had a ``substantially antireligious vision.'' Undersecretary of State Sousa Lara was so upset by one of Saramago's novels in 1992 that he withdrew his name from Portugal's nominees for the European Literature Prize. At the time, Lara said Saramago's 1991 novel ``O Evangelho Segundo Jesus Cristo'' (The Gospel according to Jesus Christ) offended Portugal's Roman Catholic religious convictions and divided the country. The book describes a Christ who, subject to human desires, lives with Mary Magdalene and tries to back out of his crucifixion. ``I have not come to bring peace but the sword,'' said Saramago, an atheist, at the time. He retreated in disgust with his Spanish wife, Pilar del Rio, to his home in Lanzarote in Spain's Canary Islands. He has never courted the kind of fame offered by literary prizes, and his bluntness can sometimes offend. ``I am skeptical, reserved, I don't gush, I don't go around smiling, hugging people and trying to make friends,'' he once said. A gaunt man with wisps of white hair, Saramago was born in Azinhaga, a small town near Lisbon. From a poor family, he never finished university but continued to study part-time while supporting himself as a metalworker. His first novel, published in 1947 _ ``Terra do Pecado,'' or ``Country of Sin'' _ was a tale of peasants in moral crisis. It sold badly but won enough recognition to propel him from the welder's shop to a literary magazine. But for the next 18 years, Saramago, a communist who opposed the 41-year conservative dictatorship of Antonio Salazar, published only a few travel and poetry books while he worked as a journalist. He returned to fiction only after Salazar's regime was toppled by a military uprising in 1974. Since the 1980s, he has been one of Portugal's best-selling contemporary writers and his works have been translated into more than 20 languages. He first won critical acclaim abroad with his 1982 historical fantasy ``Memorial do Convento,'' published in English in 1988 as ``Baltasar and Blimunda.'' It is set during the Catholic-inspired inquisition and explores the war between individuals and organized religion, picking up Saramago's recurring theme of the loner struggling against authority. He is most frequently compared with Colombian writer Gabriel Garcia Marquez because his prose is often rooted in recognizable settings but at the same time tinged with magical elements. The Nobel citation praised his work that ``with parables sustained by imagination, compassion and irony continually enables us to apprehend an elusory reality.'' Saramago remains a prominent nonconformist through his regular newspaper and radio commentaries, though his views are always inspired by his deep concern for his fellow man. ``Blindness,'' his most recent book to be translated into English, is an unsettling allegory about the social meltdown as an inexplicable blindness sweeps through society. ``This blindness isn't a real blindness, it's a blindness of rationality,'' he said. ``We're rational beings but we don't behave rationally. If we did, there'd be no starvation in the world.'' In the 1989 ``The History of the Siege of Lisbon,'' a Lisbon proofreader mischievously inserts the word ``not'' into a text on the 12th century capture of the Portuguese capital from the Moors, thereby fictionally altering the course of European history with a stroke of his pen. Such historical and literary mischief are Saramago trademarks. In his 1986 book, ``The Stone Raft,'' the Iberian Peninsula snaps off from the rest of the European continent and floats off into the North Atlantic _ apparently in a metaphorical search for identity away from the standardizing nature of the European Union, of which Portugal and Spain are enthusiastic members. Saramago will receive the dlrs 978,000 prize on Dec. 10 in Stockholm. ||||| Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, who seems a perennial Nobel Peace Prize also-ran, could have won the coveted honor in 1978 had it not been for strict deadline rules for nominations. That prize was shared by Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin for signing the Camp David peace accords. However, the five-member Norwegian awards committee also wanted to honor Carter for brokering the pact, only to be foiled by their own rules. ``The Nobel committee wanted to give the prize to all three,'' said Geir Lundestad, the current committee's nonvoting secretary, said on Sunday. ``But Carter had not been nominated when the deadline ran out.'' Nominations postmarked by Feb. 1 are accepted for that year's prize. The committee can add it own nominations at its first meeting of the year, usually in early March. The Camp David accords were not signed until Sept. 17, 1978, about five weeks before that year's peace prize was annouCkuld not give him the prize, the Norwegian committee recognized in the 1978 awards citation ``the positive initiative taken by President Jimmy Carter.'' Lundestad said the committee, which works in deep secrecy in its five or six meetings a year, tried to find a loophole in the rules, which are overseen by the Swedish Nobel Foundation. The Nobel Prizes were endowed by Alfred Nobel, a Swedish industrialist whose 355 inventions included dynamite. In his 1895 will, Nobel endowed the prizes, and said the peace prize should be picked by a Norwegian committee and the rest by Swedish institutions. Lundestad said the committee turned to the Swedish Nobel Foundation for advice on Carter because it was a question of principle. Stig Ramel, a Swede who was then director of the Nobel Foundation, advised against breaking the rules, Lundestad said by telephone. Normally, the committee refuses to discuss past candidates in keeping with a strict policy of secrecy in which selection details are sealed for 50 years. Lundestad made an exception because Ramel revealed the Carter dilemma in his 1994 memoirs. Carter has repeatedly been nominated for the Nobel prize for his consistent and wide-ranging peace efforts. He is also among the 139 candidates for the prize being announced in Oslo on Friday. However, early speculation leans more toward someone involved in the Northern Ireland peace process, Czech President Vaclav Havel to mark the 30th anniversary of the Soviet invasion of his country, or a human rights activist to mark the 50th anniversary of the U.N. Human Rights Charter. While the committee wanted to honor Carter and could not, with hindsight some regretted the prize for other reasons. Four years after Begin won the prize, the Israeli prime minister ordered an invasion of southern Lebanon in which thousands of civilians died. Kare Kristiansen, who served on the peace prize committee from 1991 to 1994, once said that, had the committee waited, Begin probably would not have won. ||||| Three American pharmacologists were awarded the Nobel Prize on Monday for their surprising discoveries of how natural production of a gas, nitric oxide, can mediate a wide variety of bodily actions. Those include widening blood vessels, helping to regulate blood pressure, initiating erections, battling infections, preventing formation of blood clots and acting as a signal molecule in the nervous system. The prize, for physiology or medicine, went to Dr. Robert Furchgott, 82, of the State University of New York in Brooklyn; Dr. Louis Ignarro, 57, of the University of California at Los Angeles, and Dr. Ferid Murad, 62, of the University of Texas Medical School in Houston. The announcement of a significant phase of the discoveries by two of Monday's winners at a meeting in 1986 ``elicited an avalanche of research activities in many different laboratories around the world,'' said the Nobel committee at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, which makes the awards. Its citation said that the research had led to new treatments for treating heart and lung diseases, shock and impotence. Ignarro ``discovered the principle that led to the use of Viagra as an anti-impotency drug,'' said Dr. Sten Orrenius, a professor of toxicology at the Karolinska Institute. Nitric oxide starts the process by which blood vessels in the penis widen to produce an erection. Nitric oxide, a chemical relative of the anesthetic gas nitrous oxide, is better known as a common air pollutant formed when nitrogen burns, such as in automobile exhaust fumes. But scientists now know it is distributed widely in the body. The discoveries honored on Monday were made largely during the 1980s at a time when scientists knew that bacteria produced nitric oxide but did not think it was important in animals and humans. The award committee said that ``this was the first discovery that a gas can act as a signal molecule in the organism.'' The discovery was startling because ``nitric oxide is totally different from any other known signal molecule and so unstable that it is converted to nitrate and nitrite within 10 seconds.'' Recipients of the Nobel Prize, including some who have lobbied for it for years, often profess surprise on learning of their award. This year's winners were refreshingly candid. Furchgott said he had planned to sleep late on Monday, a holiday, but was awakened at 5:30 at his home in Hewlett, N.Y. He said that he knew that previous Nobel prize winners had nominated him for the award, but that he still was ``somewhat surprised'' to receive it. ``I guess I had some good friends voting,'' Furchgott said. He said he could not get back to sleep. Murad said he had ``pondered the odds and thought that maybe I could win the prize, if not now maybe in a couple of years.'' He described the award as the culmination of a career and said that ``when it happens, it's incredible.'' Ignarro was traveling in Italy. Dr. Gerald Levey, the dean of UCLA, said ``we actually anticipated this day for about four years now.'' The three 1998 winners never worked together, ``but we talked a lot of shop talk at meetings,'' Furchgott said. Dr. Valentin Fuster, the president of the American Heart Association and the head of cardiology at Mt. Sinai Hospital in Manhattan, said that ``the discovery of nitric oxide and its function is one of the most important in the history of cardiovascular medicine.'' Doctors have learned from the prize-winning research that in heart disease, the endothelium, or inner lining of arteries, makes less nitric oxide. Drugs like nitroglycerine, however, can help replenish stores of nitric oxide. Now, drug companies are trying to develop more powerful heart drugs based on newer knowledge of nitric oxide's role as a signal molecule. Researchers have also learned that nitric oxide produced in the endothelium rapidly spreads through cell membranes to the underlying muscle cells in arteries. Then it can shut off muscle contractions in the arteries, thus widening them and reducing blood pressure. Inhalation of nitric oxide gas has saved the lives of some people with certain lung diseases, particularly infants who have developed dangerously high pulmonary blood pressure. But regulating the amount of nitric oxygen inhaled is critical because too much can be lethal. Nitric oxide plays a harmful role in the collapse of the circulatory system, or shock, resulting from overwhelming microbial infections. Bacteria can release products that cause white blood cells to release enormous amounts of nitric oxide. As a result, blood pressure drops. Scientists are trying to develop drugs that can block production of nitric oxide in such infections. White blood cells also play a role in attacking cancerous cells. The gas can also induce a type of programmed cell death known as apoptosis. Scientists are studying nitric oxide's effects on the immune system to stop the growth of cancers. They are also exploring nitric oxide's possible role in regulating body temperature. Doctors are measuring the production of nitric oxide in the lungs and intestines to diagnose a number of ailments, including asthma and colitis, and are studying its role in menstruation. Nitric oxide formed in nerve cells spreads rapidly in all directions to activate cells in the vicinity and influence many functions, like behavior and the mobility of the intestinal tract. Nitric oxide is also being studied for its role in smell and memory. Nitric oxide's role is still unfolding; scientists have written thousands of scientific papers about it in recent years and have started a journal, Nitric Oxide. The Nobel committee cited Furchgott for performing in 1980 ``an ingenious experiment'' that showed that a drug, acetylcholine, widened blood vessels only if the inner layer, or endothelium, was intact. Furchgott concluded that blood vessels widen because the endothelial cells produce a signal molecule that he called EDRF, for endothelium-derived relaxing factor, which relaxes smooth muscle cells in blood vessels. Furchgott's findings ``led to a quest to identify the factor,'' the citation said. (OPTIONAL TRIM CAN BEGIN HERE) The citation did not refer to an accident in Furchgott's laboratory that played a major role in his discoveries. In 1995, in the Annual Review of Pharmacology and Toxicology, Furchgott wrote that on May 5, 1978, in the first of a series of planned experiments on arteries from a rabbit, a technician did not follow directions correctly. The technician performed one step of the experiment before instead of after he was supposed to wash out a drug used in an earlier phase of the experiment. Furchgott expected that the arteries would contract. Instead, they relaxed. It was the first time he had seen the drugs under study produce such a reaction, and he used the insight to plan additional experiments. Furchgott omitted the technician's name in that paper and in another in 1996 in the Journal of the American Medical Association. On Monday, he said David Davidson was the technician. (OPTIONAL TRIM ENDS HERE) The committee cited Ignarro for concluding in 1986, from ``a brilliant series of analyses'' conducted independently of Furchgott, that EDRF was identical to nitric oxide. Furchgott said he and Ignarro made the announcement at the same symposium in 1986 at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., but the papers were not published until 1998. Murad was cited for work conducted over the years while he worked at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, Stanford University in Palo Alto, Calif., and Abbott Laboratories in Illinois. Murad said he felt fortunate to have heard Furchgott report his early work on EDRF in 1980. Murad showed that a gas could regulate important cellular functions and studied how nitroglycerin and related heart drugs led to the release of nitric oxide. (OPTIONAL TRIM CAN BEGIN HERE) In his early training at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Murad worked in the laboratory of Dr. Theodore Rall, who also trained another Nobel prize winner, Dr. Alfred Gilman of the University of Texas Southwestern in Dallas. Gilman said in an interview that he believed Rall, now retired and living in Charlottesville, Va., was the first scientist to have trained two Nobel Prize winners. In addition, Rall worked with Dr. Earl Sutherland, who also won a Nobel Prize. In his early reseach years, Murad worked on a chemical known as cyclic guanosine monophosphate, which later turned out to be critical in the nitric oxide story. Murad's trainees referred to the early work as ``dumping experiments'' because all they could do in the laboratory at the time was crudely add various hormones and agents to slices of tissue, cell cultures. It took years to develop the more refined techniques that led to the understanding of nitric oxide's many roles in the body. But for many years, most of the scientific community was skeptical of the ability of a free radical like nitric oxide to activate an enzyme, Murad said in 1996 when he and Furchgott shared the Albert Lasker basic medical research award. (OPTIONAL TRIM ENDS HERE) The Nobel Prizes were created by the will of Alfred Nobel, whose invention of dynamite involved the use of nitroglycerine. The award committee noted an odd twist to this year's award. When Nobel developed chest pain from heart disease, it said, he refused to take the nitroglycerine his doctor prescribed because he knew it caused headache. Nobel dismissed nitroglycerine's benefit in the relief of chest pain. Nobel died in 1896. The prize that the three scientists will share is now worth $938,000. ||||| When Alfred Nobel wrote the directions establishing a literature prize in his name, he chose an unclear word and scratched out a few letters. Questions about the prize have engaged and piqued the literary world ever since. A new chapter in the mystery will be written Thursday, when the Swedish Academy announces this year's winner of the world's most prestigious prize for writers. The prize focuses intense media attention on the Swedish capital and the clamor of journalists generally drowns out a question: Why does the world care so much about the literary choices of a handful of people in a quiet and remote country? Does the Nobel Prize really recognize the best? When asked that question, Swedish Academy permanent secretary Sture Allen smiled and said ``Look at the list of prizewinners!'' The answer obscures as much as it clarifies. On one hand, the Nobel Prize has recognized world-renowned writers such as Isaac Bashevis Singer and brought little-known wonders to light, such as Wislawa Szymborska. But the prize arguably also has honored the mediocre, heaping attention on those who would have been more fairly served by obscurity. Among them is the winner of the first prize in 1901, Sully Prudhomme. That choice was denounced by Sweden's leading literary light, August Strindberg, and a group of Swedes sent a letter to Leo Tolstoy apologizing for the Academy's slight in not choosing him. Arguments over the Academy's choices are inevitable, considering the instructions they were given. Nobel's will says the prize should recognize literature that works ``in an ideal direction.'' What, exactly, he meant by ``ideal** is unclear and the Academy's choices have reflected the confusion. The Academy has chosen to interpret the word to apply to works ranging from the good-hearted charm of Szymborska's poetry to the crushing hopelessness of Samuel Beckett's writings. When Nobel wrote the word ``ideal'' _ in Swedish ``idealisk** _ he superimposed the last couple of letters over previous one. Allen was so curious to understand Nobel's thoughts that he engaged a forensic expert to try to find out what the earlier letters were. The expert succeeded _ to a point. He found that the first word Nobel wrote was ``idealirad,'' a word that doesn't exist. Despite the inclarity around the edges, Allen said he is confident that the Academy's choices bolster Nobel's core idea that ``literature would be the basis for some kind of progress.'' About this year's choice, he won't say more than that: the Academy is bound to keep its deliberations secret. But observers love to speculate on who might win, even who's on the shortlist for the prize, this year worth 7.6 million kronor (about dlrs 974,000). Names that freuqently come up in the guessing include V.S. Naipaul, China's Bei Dao and Pa Kin, American poet John Ashbery, and Jose Saramago of Portugal. ||||| There's room for a few more names on a 20th century honor roll of writers, and one will be added this week when the Swedish Academy announces the latest Nobel Literature laureate. Who is chosen and why stimulates animated conversation with readers as well as academics, critics and the authors themselves. This year's winner _ or, possibly, winners _ will be announced Thursday, the Academy disclosed Tuesday. ``The joke you hear is that it goes to people you never heard of,'' said Ian Jack, editor of London-based Granta literary magazine. But the Nobel, awarded most every year since 1901, also shines a light, usually deservedly, on wonderful writers few people have read, he added. His favorites include Trinidad-born V.S. Naipaul, though he's convinced Naipaul probably won't win because of his ``dark ... pessimistic'' and often scathing portrayals of post-colonial African culture. The academy keeps its deliberations secret. Who is considered seriously, even who's nominated, isn't disclosed. A writer's nationality, by the terms of the prize founder Alfred Nobel's will, is supposed to be irrelevant. Two can share the prize, though the last time that happened was 1974. Winners are expected to personally receive it: awards are not given posthumously. Looking at the process from afar, Harold Bloom, a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, said the award committee has an unsettling record of selections that are ``nationally 'correct' and politically 'correct.''' The winners list is prestigious, he concedes, but by no means uniformly lustrous. ``Absolutely not! Outrageously not,'' he said in a telephone interview from New York. ``They include all kinds of fifth-raters. ... James Joyce never got one, for heaven's sake. Neither did Marcel Proust.'' Bloom's U.S. favorites include Cormac McCarthy, author of ``Blood Meridian''; Philip Roth, author of ``American Pastoral''; and John Ashbery, ``the best living poet.'' A review of recent winners may foreshadow this year's laureate. Seven of the past 10 were men _ does that favor a woman? Two of the past three were poets _ does that favor a prose writer? Four of the past 10 wrote in English, and the last three laureates are European. In comparison, only three Asian writers have ever won. ``Bei Dao is a personal favorite of mine,'' said Abe Harumasa, editor-in-chief of the Japanese literary magazine Bungei. ``The choice could be interpreted as being motivated partly by politics,'' given the poet's association with China's democracy movement, ``but it's clear he's a wonderful poet.'' Minoru Takeuchi, a professor of Chinese literature at Japan's prestigious Kyoto University, cited novelists Pa Kin and Xie Bing Xin as worthy. The latter is known for her portrayals of the struggles of Chinese women. China, which translates and publishes the works of many Nobel winners, ``desperately'' wants its first laureate, he added. Spain's Nobel hopes are pinned on Francisco Ayala, 92, winner of this year's renowned Prince of Asturias prize, said Jose Maria Martinez Cachero, an author, university professor and secretary of the jury that selected Ayala. Other presumed Latin candidates are Peru-born Mario Vargas Llosa, a member of the 200-year-old Royal Spanish Language Academy, Martinez Cachero said, and Portugal's Jose Saramago, whose works have been translated into more than 20 languages. For his part, Saramago, 75, said in a recent Associated Press interview that he's weary of speculation that this year, once again, he might win. ``Let's not get into that,'' he said. ``I just write.'' ||||| Three American researchers on Monday won the Nobel Medicine Prize for discovering how nitric oxide acts as a signal molecule in the cardiovascular system, a breakthrough with applications ranging from hardening of the arteries to impotence. The prestigious prize went to Robert F. Furchgott, Louis J. Ignarro and Ferid Murad. Furchgott is a pharmacologist at the State University of New York in Brooklyn, Ignarro is at University of California-Los Angeles and Murad is at the University of Texas Medical School in Houston. The citation by the Karolinska Institute said ``it was a senation that the simple, common air pollutant (nitric oxide), which is formed when nitrogen burns ... could exert important functions in the organism. '' Because of the research, ``we know today that nitric oxide acts as a signal molecule in the nervous system, as a weapon against infections and as a regulator of blood pressure.'' ``Signal transmission by a gas that is produced by one cell, penetrates through membranes and regulates the function of another cell represents an entirely new principle,'' the citation said. Understanding how nitric oxide transmits the signals has sparked research on a wide range of new drugs, including those that can be used in the treatment of heart problems, artherosclerosis, shock and impotence. The prize amount of 7.6 million kronor (dlrs 978,000) is divided equally among the three. Last year, the prize went to Stanley B. Prusiner of the University of California at San Francisco for his discovery of prions, the rogue proteins identified as causing Mad Cow Disease. Winners generally aren't known outside the medical community, although the list of laureates contains a few familiar names including Ivan Pavlov, tuberculosis pioneer Robert Koch, and DNA researchers Francis Crick and James Watson. Generally, they are researchers who have made discoveries that sound small on paper but carry large consequences. Among other well-known names to receive the prize is David Baltimore, although he shared the prize in 1975, long before becoming one of the world's most visible AIDS researchers. Alan Cormack of the United States and Sir Godfrey Hounsfield may not be familiar names, but what they won the prize for in 1979 is a term known by most patients: computer-assisted tomography _ or CAT scan. The medicine prize was the second of the six Nobels to be announced this year. Last Thursday, the literature prize went to Portuguese novelist Jose Saramago. The physics and chemistry prizes will be announced Tuesday, the economics prize on Wednesday and the peace prize on Friday. All the announcements are in Stockholm, except for the peace prize which is given in Oslo, Norway. The prizes are presented on Dec. 10, the anniversary of the death of Alfred Nobel, the industrialist and inventor of dynamite whose will established the prizes. ||||| Robert F. Furchgott, Louis J. Ignarro and Ferid Murad of the United States on Monday won the Nobel Medicine Prize. They were given the prize for their discoveries concerning nitric oxide as a signaling molecule in the cardiovascular system, according to the citiation from the Karolinska lnstitute. Furchgott is a pharmacologist at the State University of New York in Brooklyn, Ignarro is at University of California-Los Angeles and Murad is at the University of Texas Medical School in Houston. The citation said ``it was a senation that the simple, common air pollutant (nitric oxide), which is formed when nitrogen burns ... could exert important functions in the organism. '' Because of the research, ``we know today that nitric oxide acts as a signal molecule in the nervous system, as a weapon against infections and as a regulator of blood pressure.'' The prize amount of 7.6 million kronor (dlrs 978,000) is divided equally among the three. Last year, the prize went to Stanley B. Prusiner of the University of California at San Francisco for his discovery of prions, the rogue proteins identified as causing Mad Cow Disease. Winners generally aren't known outside the medical community, although the list of laureates contains a few familiar names including Ivan Pavlov, tuberculosis pioneer Robert Koch, and DNA researchers Francis Crick and James Watson. Generally, they are researchers who have made discoveries that sound small on paper but carry large consequences. Among other well-known names to receive the prize is David Baltimore, although he shared the prize in 1975, long before becoming one of the world's most visible AIDS researchers. Alan Cormack of the United States and Sir Godfrey Hounsfield may not be familiar names, but what they won the prize for in 1979 is a term known by most patients: computer-assisted tomography _ or CAT scan. The medicine prize was the second of the six Nobels to be announced this year. Last Thursday, the literature prize went to Portuguese novelist Jose Saramago. The physics and chemistry prizes will be announced Tuesday, the economics prize on Wednesday and the peace prize on Friday. All the announcements are in Stockholm, except for the peace prize which is given in Oslo, Norway. The prizes are presented on Dec. 10, the anniversary of the death of Alfred Nobel, the industrialist and inventor of dynamite whose will established the prizes. ||||| Portuguese novelist Jose Saramago, whose capricious vision includes a section of Europe breaking off and floating out to sea, on Thursday was named the winner of the 1998 Nobel Literature Prize. In its citation, the Swedish Academy said it gave the award to Saramago for work that ``with parables sustained by imagination, compassion and irony continually enables us to apprehend an elusory reality.'' Saramago, 75, wrote his breakthrough novel in 1982, ``Baltasar and Blimunda.'' Perhaps his best-known work is ``The Stone Raft,'' in which the Iberian Peninsula breaks off from Europe for supernatural reasons and floats off into the Atlantic. That device allows him to comment ironically ``about the authorities and politicians, perhaps especially about the major players in power politics.'' Saramago's exuberant imagination and playfulness have made him one of Portugal's most popular contemporary novelists, and his works have been translated into more than 20 languages. In ``Blindness,'' his most recent work to be translated into English, a nameless man in a nameless country suddenly goes blind, and the affliction quickly spreads through the country _ grim tale of social collapse. In 1991's ``The Gospel According to Jesus Christ,'' God and the devli negotiate about evil, and Jesus tries to back out of his crucifixion. ``Saramago's idiosyncratic development of his own resonant style of fiction gives him a high standing ... he invokes tradition in a way that in the current state of things can be described as radical,'' the Academy said in the citation for the 7.6-million kronor (dlrs 978,000 prize). Saramago (pronounced sah-rah-MAH-go) is the fourth consecutive European to win the prestigious prize, and the first laureate to write in Portuguese. He had long been seen as one of the strongest potential candidates for the prize and the frequent media queries about his prospects contrasted with his quiet personality. ``I am skeptical, reserved, I don't gush, I don't go around smiling, hugging people, trying to make friends,'' he told The Associated Press in a recent interview. ``I just write.'' Saramago on Thursday had planned to leave Frankfurt, Germany, _ where he was attending the international book fair _ for his home in the Canary Islands. But Portuguese state radio said he was taken off the plane before departure and driven back to the fair, where a crowd wa waiting for him. The literature prize is one of five established by Alfred Nobel, the Swedish industrialist and inventor of dynamite. The prizes have been awarded since 1901; a sixth prize, in economics, was started in 1969. According to the terms of Nobel's will, the literature prize is to recognize writing that works ``in an ideal direction.'' How to interpret that term has been widely debated. The Nobel Prize over the years has been given to writers with world-views stretching from the bleak futility of Samuel Beckett's works to the vivid epics of Iceland's Halldor Laxness. The prize even has gone occasionally to writers who did not work in fiction or poetry, notably Winston Churchill and Bertrand Russell. Last year's prize went to Dario Fo, the Italian playwright whose work combines gut-busting comedy with acid social and political commentary. The 1996 winner was the Polish poet Wislawa Szymborska, as shy and delicate and Fo is boisterous. The Swedish Academy does not reveal who was nominated or who it considered on its shortlist. Nominations can be made by previous laureates, professors of history and literature, members of the Academy and presidents of some national authors' organizations. The Nobel Prize in Medicine winner will be announced Oct. 12, the physics and chemistry winners on Oct. 13, the economics laureate on Oct. 14 and the peace prize on Occt. 16. All the prize announcements are in Stockholm, except for the peace prize which is given in Oslo, Norway. All the prizes are presented on Dec. 10, the anniversary of Nobel's death. ||||| Jose Saramago, a 75-year-old Portuguese writer who took up literature relatively late in life and whose richly imaginative novels soon won him a following of loyal readers across Europe and vocal admirers in the United States, was awarded this year's Nobel Prize in Literature Thursday by the Swedish Academy in Stockholm. A tall, balding man whose large, tinted glasses often give him a mien of severity, Saramago is the first Portuguese-language writer _ and one of the first card-carrying Communists _ to become a Nobel Literature laureate. He is also the fourth successive European to win the prize, after Italy's Dario Fo in 1997, Poland's Wislawa Szymborska in 1996 and Ireland's Seamus Heaney in 1995. In its citation Thursday, the Swedish Academy praised Saramago ``who with parables sustained by imagination, compassion and irony continually enables us once again to apprehend an elusory reality.'' Although Saramago discounts the influence of Latin American ``magical realism'' on his work, his novels often use the supernatural, allegorical, paradoxical and irrational as ways of addressing complex questions of faith and existence. Many of his novels are set against a backdrop of political or historical events, but it is his unwavering concern for individual fate that gives his fiction its distinctive voice and independent character. His best-known books, all published in the United States, are ``Baltasar and Blimunda,'' ``The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis,'' ``The Stone Raft'' and ``The History of the Siege of Lisbon.'' His latest book available in English, ``Blindness,'' in which all but one of his characters mysteriously become blind, was described as his ``symphonic new novel'' by Andrew Miller in The New York Times Book Review on Sunday. ``There is no cynicism and there are no conclusions, just a clear-eyed and compassionate acknowledgment of things as they are, a quality than can only honestly be termed as wisdom,'' Miller, himself a novelist, wrote. ``We should be grateful when it is handed to us in such generous measures.'' Saramago learned of his award Thursday at Frankfurt airport, where he was preparing to fly home via Madrid to Lanzarote in the Canary Islands after attending the Frankfurt Book Fair. Earlier this week, he participated in a round-table of Portuguese writers on the topic, ``Why I am still a Communist.'' He immediately returned to the fair where he was received with cheers and bouquets of roses. ``I am personally very happy for myself,'' he said. ``I am also happy for my country.'' Later he told a news conference: ``The Portuguese language had to wait 100 years for this. There have to be ways and means of protecting the language so that it does not become a museum, but is something that is alive. The writer's role is to protect it and work with it.'' The award was also celebrated in Lisbon, where President Jorge Sampaio described it as ``recognition of Portuguese culture,'' while the local Communist leader, Carlos Carvalho, saw it as a credit to his own party. ``As a member of our party,'' he noted solemnly, ``Saramago makes a great contribution to our ideals and to the struggle for social change.'' The laureate's fiction, though, is never overtly political. Saramago, whose body of work includes poetry, essays, plays and a journal as well as 10 novels, is unusual for having emerged as a major literary figure only at the age of 60. His novels have since been translated into 30 languages, selling particularly well in Portugal, Brazil, Spain, Italy and Germany. While he has not been well known in the United States, his novels have always been critically well received there. For all his late blooming, though, Saramago long dreamed of becoming a writer. Born into a family of rural laborers and raised in Lisbon, he was forced by poverty to leave school while a teen-ager and learn the trade of car mechanic. Yet he managed to publish a small novel at the age of 25. Later, he found work at a Lisbon publishing company, but the oppressive and censorial atmosphere of the Salazar dictatorship discouraged him from writing. It was only after Portugal's April 1974 revolution that Saramago felt free to find his voice. A member of the Portuguese Communist Party since 1969, he served as editor of a Lisbon newspaper, Diario de Noticias, during an 18-month period when the left looked likely to seize power in Portugal. But an anti-Communist backlash in November 1975 forced him out of the newspaper and he began translating French texts into Portuguese to make ends meet. In the late 1970s, he also turned to novels, publishing three in succession in 1977, 1978 and 1980. But it was in 1982, with ``Baltasar and Blimunda'' (``Memorial do Convento'' in Portuguese), that he achieved his international breakthrough. ``This is a rich, multifaceted and polysemous text that at the same time has a historical, a social and an individual perspective,'' the Swedish Academy noted Thursday. ``The insight and wealth of imagination to which it gives expression is characteristic of Saramago's work as a whole.'' Set in 18th-century Portugal during the Inquisition, the book tells of the baroque efforts of a war veteran, Baltasar, and a visionary, Blimunda, to escape to the heavens aboard a flying machine powered by human wills captured by the hypersensory Blimunda. This fantastic story takes place against the very real background of the tortuous construction of the massive Mafra Convent by thousands of men held in the grip of the Inquisition. When the novel was published in the United States in 1987, Irving Howe acclaimed it as ``brilliant'' in The New York Times Book Review. ``Mr. Saramago is constantly present as a voice of European skepticism, a connoisseur of ironies,'' Howe wrote. ``I think I hear in his prose echoes of Enlightenment sensibility, caustic and shrewd.'' In his next novel, ``The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis,'' which is also a homage to the great Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa, who appears in it as a ghost, Saramago sets his story in the early years of the Salazar dictatorship, with the tale following the romantic and sexual misadventures of a poet-physician. Writing in The New York Times, Herbert Mitgang called it ``a rare, old-fashioned novel _ at once lyrical, symbolic and meditative.'' Saramago, whose sense of literary freedom is evident in his unconventional punctuation and conflicting use of tenses, sought a different form of freedom in ``The Stone Raft,'' where he imagines the confusion unleashed when the Iberian peninsula suddenly breaks free from the rest of Europe and begins drifting toward the New World and threatens to collide with the Azores. To the delight of Britons, Gibraltar is left behind. Unsurprisingly, the bitter satire, ``The Gospel According to Jesus Christ,'' proved controversial, with God shown as using the innocently human Jesus to create a religion that has spawned violence and intolerance. When a Lisbon jury picked the book as Portugal's entry for a 1992 European literary prize, the country's conservative government vetoed the choice as blasphemous. It was then that Saramago decided to leave his small, crowded apartment in Lisbon for the relative solitude of Lanzarote. ``The History of the Siege of Lisbon,'' published in the United States last year, is a whimsical tale set in motion by the decision of a humble proofreader at a publishing house to insert the word ``not'' into a key passage in a standard history of Portugal. With this ``lunatic creative act,'' as Edmund White put it in The New York Times Book Review, he ``totally derails the national saga'' by affirming that the crusaders did not in fact help liberate 12th-century Lisbon from Moorish occupation. White ended his July 1997 review with a prescient remark. ``Word has it that Saramago is overdue for a Nobel Prize,'' he noted. ``No candidate has a better claim to lasting recognition than this novelist.'' With the recent publication of ``Blindness'' in the United States, only Saramago's latest novel, ``Todos os Nomes,'' or ``All the Names'' still awaits translation into English. In the tradition of Andre Gide and Julian Green, though, he has now embarked on his journals. The fourth volume of these ``Cadernos de Lanzarote'' was just published in Lisbon. Saramago will receive his Nobel Prize, worth the equivalent of $967,500 this year, at a ceremony in Stockholm on Dec. 10. ||||| A day after winning the Nobel Prize for literature, Portuguese novelist Jose Saramago insisted that while he was delighted to win the award, it could just as easily have gone to many other Portuguese writers. ``I'm not the only one who deserved it'', said the first Portuguese-language author to obtain the prestigious award. ``There have been other Portuguse authors, like Fernando Pessoa, whose work would justify 1,000 Nobels'' Speaking at a packed press coference in Madrid, Saramago joked about how he heard he had won the prize from German air hostess at Frankfurt airport as he waited for a flight home to Spain's Canary Islands. The news left the 75-year-old writer no choice but to leave the airport and return to the city's book fair to meet the press and public. ``At that moment I was over the moon and returning to the book fair the only thing I was worried about was that the whole thing was an error,'' said Saramago. Dismissing the Vatican paper's disapproval Thursday of his achievment, Saramago, a known atheist, quipped that he was aware that ``the Pope had been among the jury, I wouldn't have won the prize.'' ``The Vatican is easily upset'', said Saramago, ``I think that the Vatican should keep its mind on its prayers and leave people alone''. Meanwhile in Portugal, where Saramago is scheduled to arrive on Tuesday, the delight at the Swedish Academy's award for Saramago was reflected in the daily papers, with even the country's three daily sports papers ample space to the event. The two leading dailies, Publico and Diario de Noticias, gave over their entire front pages to Saramago. Lisbon City Hall rushed out posters saying ``Congratulations Jose Saramago'' which were hung up around the capital during the night. Saramago was born into a poor, illiterate family in Azinhaga, a small town near Lisbon. He never finished university but continued to study part-time while supporting himself as a metalworker. ``Nothing in my life would have led one to think I'd win the Nobel Prize'', said Saramago. ``I wasn't born to win the Nobel. I didn't have my own books until I was 18.'' His first novel, published in 1947 _ ``Terra do Pecado,'' or ``Country of Sin'' _ was a tale of peasants in moral crisis. For the next 18 years, Saramago, a communist who opposed the 41-year conservative dictatorship of Antonio Salazar, published only a few travel and poetry books while he worked as a journalist. He returned to fiction only after Salazar's regime was toppled by a military uprising in 1974. Since the 1980s, his works have been translated into more than 20 languages. Regarding the future, Saramago said the book he is currently working on will be called ``The Cavern'' and deals with a modern version of myth of Plato and the cave.

One of those mentioned for the 1998 Nobel Literature Prize was Jose Saramago, Portuguese writer, atheist and Communist. Saramago was weary of hearing again that this year he might win. But this time he did, much to the delight of Portugal, but not to the Vatican. In speculation on the Peace Prize it came out that only a strict deadline rule denied Jimmy Carter the 1978 prize. The 1998 Medicine Prize went to three American pharmacologists, Robert Furchgott, Louis Ignarro and Ferid Murad for their discovery of the role of nitric oxide in the nervous and cardiovascular systems, one of the most important discoveries in the history of cardiovascular medicine.

Jose Saramago became the first writer in Portuguese to win the Nobel Prize for Literature on Thursday. His personal delight was seconded by a burst of public elation in his homeland. Saramago, 75, and Portuguese said they were pleased the Swedish Academy had finally acknowledged the literary contribution of Portugal, a small country of 10 million people bordering Spain on Europe's southwestern Iberian Peninsula. ``It has taken all of this century to win a Nobel Prize for the Portuguese language,'' Saramago said at the Frankfurt Book Fair, speaking through an interpreter. Saramago, a soft-spoken man known for his hard-edged and iconoclastic views, said he shared the honor with his country and he hoped winning the prize would make Portugal and its language ``more visible and audible.'' ``I'm personally very happy for myself. I'm also happy for my country,'' he said at the Frankfurt Book Fair in Germany where he was engulfed by well-wishers offering roses. Back home, President Jorge Sampaio said the award was a cause for ``great collective satisfaction.'' Prime Minister Antonio Guterres said the award was ``above all a prize for Portugal and the Portuguese language'' which is spoken by 180 million worldwide, mostly in Brazil, but also in Portugal's five former colonies in Africa. Saramago's controversial opinions and atheistic outlook have frequently clashed with the establishment and the general public. Even on the day he won the prize, the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano attacked the Swedish Academy's choice, describing Saramago as an ``old-school communist'' who had a ``substantially antireligious vision.'' Undersecretary of State Sousa Lara was so upset by one of Saramago's novels in 1992 that he withdrew his name from Portugal's nominees for the European Literature Prize. At the time, Lara said Saramago's 1991 novel ``O Evangelho Segundo Jesus Cristo'' (The Gospel according to Jesus Christ) offended Portugal's Roman Catholic religious convictions and divided the country. The book describes a Christ who, subject to human desires, lives with Mary Magdalene and tries to back out of his crucifixion. ``I have not come to bring peace but the sword,'' said Saramago, an atheist, at the time. He retreated in disgust with his Spanish wife, Pilar del Rio, to his home in Lanzarote in Spain's Canary Islands. He has never courted the kind of fame offered by literary prizes, and his bluntness can sometimes offend. ``I am skeptical, reserved, I don't gush, I don't go around smiling, hugging people and trying to make friends,'' he once said. A gaunt man with wisps of white hair, Saramago was born in Azinhaga, a small town near Lisbon. From a poor family, he never finished university but continued to study part-time while supporting himself as a metalworker. His first novel, published in 1947 _ ``Terra do Pecado,'' or ``Country of Sin'' _ was a tale of peasants in moral crisis. It sold badly but won enough recognition to propel him from the welder's shop to a literary magazine. But for the next 18 years, Saramago, a communist who opposed the 41-year conservative dictatorship of Antonio Salazar, published only a few travel and poetry books while he worked as a journalist. He returned to fiction only after Salazar's regime was toppled by a military uprising in 1974. Since the 1980s, he has been one of Portugal's best-selling contemporary writers and his works have been translated into more than 20 languages. He first won critical acclaim abroad with his 1982 historical fantasy ``Memorial do Convento,'' published in English in 1988 as ``Baltasar and Blimunda.'' It is set during the Catholic-inspired inquisition and explores the war between individuals and organized religion, picking up Saramago's recurring theme of the loner struggling against authority. He is most frequently compared with Colombian writer Gabriel Garcia Marquez because his prose is often rooted in recognizable settings but at the same time tinged with magical elements. The Nobel citation praised his work that ``with parables sustained by imagination, compassion and irony continually enables us to apprehend an elusory reality.'' Saramago remains a prominent nonconformist through his regular newspaper and radio commentaries, though his views are always inspired by his deep concern for his fellow man. ``Blindness,'' his most recent book to be translated into English, is an unsettling allegory about the social meltdown as an inexplicable blindness sweeps through society. ``This blindness isn't a real blindness, it's a blindness of rationality,'' he said. ``We're rational beings but we don't behave rationally. If we did, there'd be no starvation in the world.'' In the 1989 ``The History of the Siege of Lisbon,'' a Lisbon proofreader mischievously inserts the word ``not'' into a text on the 12th century capture of the Portuguese capital from the Moors, thereby fictionally altering the course of European history with a stroke of his pen. Such historical and literary mischief are Saramago trademarks. In his 1986 book, ``The Stone Raft,'' the Iberian Peninsula snaps off from the rest of the European continent and floats off into the North Atlantic _ apparently in a metaphorical search for identity away from the standardizing nature of the European Union, of which Portugal and Spain are enthusiastic members. Saramago will receive the dlrs 978,000 prize on Dec. 10 in Stockholm. ||||| Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, who seems a perennial Nobel Peace Prize also-ran, could have won the coveted honor in 1978 had it not been for strict deadline rules for nominations. That prize was shared by Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin for signing the Camp David peace accords. However, the five-member Norwegian awards committee also wanted to honor Carter for brokering the pact, only to be foiled by their own rules. ``The Nobel committee wanted to give the prize to all three,'' said Geir Lundestad, the current committee's nonvoting secretary, said on Sunday. ``But Carter had not been nominated when the deadline ran out.'' Nominations postmarked by Feb. 1 are accepted for that year's prize. The committee can add it own nominations at its first meeting of the year, usually in early March. The Camp David accords were not signed until Sept. 17, 1978, about five weeks before that year's peace prize was annouCkuld not give him the prize, the Norwegian committee recognized in the 1978 awards citation ``the positive initiative taken by President Jimmy Carter.'' Lundestad said the committee, which works in deep secrecy in its five or six meetings a year, tried to find a loophole in the rules, which are overseen by the Swedish Nobel Foundation. The Nobel Prizes were endowed by Alfred Nobel, a Swedish industrialist whose 355 inventions included dynamite. In his 1895 will, Nobel endowed the prizes, and said the peace prize should be picked by a Norwegian committee and the rest by Swedish institutions. Lundestad said the committee turned to the Swedish Nobel Foundation for advice on Carter because it was a question of principle. Stig Ramel, a Swede who was then director of the Nobel Foundation, advised against breaking the rules, Lundestad said by telephone. Normally, the committee refuses to discuss past candidates in keeping with a strict policy of secrecy in which selection details are sealed for 50 years. Lundestad made an exception because Ramel revealed the Carter dilemma in his 1994 memoirs. Carter has repeatedly been nominated for the Nobel prize for his consistent and wide-ranging peace efforts. He is also among the 139 candidates for the prize being announced in Oslo on Friday. However, early speculation leans more toward someone involved in the Northern Ireland peace process, Czech President Vaclav Havel to mark the 30th anniversary of the Soviet invasion of his country, or a human rights activist to mark the 50th anniversary of the U.N. Human Rights Charter. While the committee wanted to honor Carter and could not, with hindsight some regretted the prize for other reasons. Four years after Begin won the prize, the Israeli prime minister ordered an invasion of southern Lebanon in which thousands of civilians died. Kare Kristiansen, who served on the peace prize committee from 1991 to 1994, once said that, had the committee waited, Begin probably would not have won. ||||| Three American pharmacologists were awarded the Nobel Prize on Monday for their surprising discoveries of how natural production of a gas, nitric oxide, can mediate a wide variety of bodily actions. Those include widening blood vessels, helping to regulate blood pressure, initiating erections, battling infections, preventing formation of blood clots and acting as a signal molecule in the nervous system. The prize, for physiology or medicine, went to Dr. Robert Furchgott, 82, of the State University of New York in Brooklyn; Dr. Louis Ignarro, 57, of the University of California at Los Angeles, and Dr. Ferid Murad, 62, of the University of Texas Medical School in Houston. The announcement of a significant phase of the discoveries by two of Monday's winners at a meeting in 1986 ``elicited an avalanche of research activities in many different laboratories around the world,'' said the Nobel committee at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, which makes the awards. Its citation said that the research had led to new treatments for treating heart and lung diseases, shock and impotence. Ignarro ``discovered the principle that led to the use of Viagra as an anti-impotency drug,'' said Dr. Sten Orrenius, a professor of toxicology at the Karolinska Institute. Nitric oxide starts the process by which blood vessels in the penis widen to produce an erection. Nitric oxide, a chemical relative of the anesthetic gas nitrous oxide, is better known as a common air pollutant formed when nitrogen burns, such as in automobile exhaust fumes. But scientists now know it is distributed widely in the body. The discoveries honored on Monday were made largely during the 1980s at a time when scientists knew that bacteria produced nitric oxide but did not think it was important in animals and humans. The award committee said that ``this was the first discovery that a gas can act as a signal molecule in the organism.'' The discovery was startling because ``nitric oxide is totally different from any other known signal molecule and so unstable that it is converted to nitrate and nitrite within 10 seconds.'' Recipients of the Nobel Prize, including some who have lobbied for it for years, often profess surprise on learning of their award. This year's winners were refreshingly candid. Furchgott said he had planned to sleep late on Monday, a holiday, but was awakened at 5:30 at his home in Hewlett, N.Y. He said that he knew that previous Nobel prize winners had nominated him for the award, but that he still was ``somewhat surprised'' to receive it. ``I guess I had some good friends voting,'' Furchgott said. He said he could not get back to sleep. Murad said he had ``pondered the odds and thought that maybe I could win the prize, if not now maybe in a couple of years.'' He described the award as the culmination of a career and said that ``when it happens, it's incredible.'' Ignarro was traveling in Italy. Dr. Gerald Levey, the dean of UCLA, said ``we actually anticipated this day for about four years now.'' The three 1998 winners never worked together, ``but we talked a lot of shop talk at meetings,'' Furchgott said. Dr. Valentin Fuster, the president of the American Heart Association and the head of cardiology at Mt. Sinai Hospital in Manhattan, said that ``the discovery of nitric oxide and its function is one of the most important in the history of cardiovascular medicine.'' Doctors have learned from the prize-winning research that in heart disease, the endothelium, or inner lining of arteries, makes less nitric oxide. Drugs like nitroglycerine, however, can help replenish stores of nitric oxide. Now, drug companies are trying to develop more powerful heart drugs based on newer knowledge of nitric oxide's role as a signal molecule. Researchers have also learned that nitric oxide produced in the endothelium rapidly spreads through cell membranes to the underlying muscle cells in arteries. Then it can shut off muscle contractions in the arteries, thus widening them and reducing blood pressure. Inhalation of nitric oxide gas has saved the lives of some people with certain lung diseases, particularly infants who have developed dangerously high pulmonary blood pressure. But regulating the amount of nitric oxygen inhaled is critical because too much can be lethal. Nitric oxide plays a harmful role in the collapse of the circulatory system, or shock, resulting from overwhelming microbial infections. Bacteria can release products that cause white blood cells to release enormous amounts of nitric oxide. As a result, blood pressure drops. Scientists are trying to develop drugs that can block production of nitric oxide in such infections. White blood cells also play a role in attacking cancerous cells. The gas can also induce a type of programmed cell death known as apoptosis. Scientists are studying nitric oxide's effects on the immune system to stop the growth of cancers. They are also exploring nitric oxide's possible role in regulating body temperature. Doctors are measuring the production of nitric oxide in the lungs and intestines to diagnose a number of ailments, including asthma and colitis, and are studying its role in menstruation. Nitric oxide formed in nerve cells spreads rapidly in all directions to activate cells in the vicinity and influence many functions, like behavior and the mobility of the intestinal tract. Nitric oxide is also being studied for its role in smell and memory. Nitric oxide's role is still unfolding; scientists have written thousands of scientific papers about it in recent years and have started a journal, Nitric Oxide. The Nobel committee cited Furchgott for performing in 1980 ``an ingenious experiment'' that showed that a drug, acetylcholine, widened blood vessels only if the inner layer, or endothelium, was intact. Furchgott concluded that blood vessels widen because the endothelial cells produce a signal molecule that he called EDRF, for endothelium-derived relaxing factor, which relaxes smooth muscle cells in blood vessels. Furchgott's findings ``led to a quest to identify the factor,'' the citation said. (OPTIONAL TRIM CAN BEGIN HERE) The citation did not refer to an accident in Furchgott's laboratory that played a major role in his discoveries. In 1995, in the Annual Review of Pharmacology and Toxicology, Furchgott wrote that on May 5, 1978, in the first of a series of planned experiments on arteries from a rabbit, a technician did not follow directions correctly. The technician performed one step of the experiment before instead of after he was supposed to wash out a drug used in an earlier phase of the experiment. Furchgott expected that the arteries would contract. Instead, they relaxed. It was the first time he had seen the drugs under study produce such a reaction, and he used the insight to plan additional experiments. Furchgott omitted the technician's name in that paper and in another in 1996 in the Journal of the American Medical Association. On Monday, he said David Davidson was the technician. (OPTIONAL TRIM ENDS HERE) The committee cited Ignarro for concluding in 1986, from ``a brilliant series of analyses'' conducted independently of Furchgott, that EDRF was identical to nitric oxide. Furchgott said he and Ignarro made the announcement at the same symposium in 1986 at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., but the papers were not published until 1998. Murad was cited for work conducted over the years while he worked at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, Stanford University in Palo Alto, Calif., and Abbott Laboratories in Illinois. Murad said he felt fortunate to have heard Furchgott report his early work on EDRF in 1980. Murad showed that a gas could regulate important cellular functions and studied how nitroglycerin and related heart drugs led to the release of nitric oxide. (OPTIONAL TRIM CAN BEGIN HERE) In his early training at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Murad worked in the laboratory of Dr. Theodore Rall, who also trained another Nobel prize winner, Dr. Alfred Gilman of the University of Texas Southwestern in Dallas. Gilman said in an interview that he believed Rall, now retired and living in Charlottesville, Va., was the first scientist to have trained two Nobel Prize winners. In addition, Rall worked with Dr. Earl Sutherland, who also won a Nobel Prize. In his early reseach years, Murad worked on a chemical known as cyclic guanosine monophosphate, which later turned out to be critical in the nitric oxide story. Murad's trainees referred to the early work as ``dumping experiments'' because all they could do in the laboratory at the time was crudely add various hormones and agents to slices of tissue, cell cultures. It took years to develop the more refined techniques that led to the understanding of nitric oxide's many roles in the body. But for many years, most of the scientific community was skeptical of the ability of a free radical like nitric oxide to activate an enzyme, Murad said in 1996 when he and Furchgott shared the Albert Lasker basic medical research award. (OPTIONAL TRIM ENDS HERE) The Nobel Prizes were created by the will of Alfred Nobel, whose invention of dynamite involved the use of nitroglycerine. The award committee noted an odd twist to this year's award. When Nobel developed chest pain from heart disease, it said, he refused to take the nitroglycerine his doctor prescribed because he knew it caused headache. Nobel dismissed nitroglycerine's benefit in the relief of chest pain. Nobel died in 1896. The prize that the three scientists will share is now worth $938,000. ||||| When Alfred Nobel wrote the directions establishing a literature prize in his name, he chose an unclear word and scratched out a few letters. Questions about the prize have engaged and piqued the literary world ever since. A new chapter in the mystery will be written Thursday, when the Swedish Academy announces this year's winner of the world's most prestigious prize for writers. The prize focuses intense media attention on the Swedish capital and the clamor of journalists generally drowns out a question: Why does the world care so much about the literary choices of a handful of people in a quiet and remote country? Does the Nobel Prize really recognize the best? When asked that question, Swedish Academy permanent secretary Sture Allen smiled and said ``Look at the list of prizewinners!'' The answer obscures as much as it clarifies. On one hand, the Nobel Prize has recognized world-renowned writers such as Isaac Bashevis Singer and brought little-known wonders to light, such as Wislawa Szymborska. But the prize arguably also has honored the mediocre, heaping attention on those who would have been more fairly served by obscurity. Among them is the winner of the first prize in 1901, Sully Prudhomme. That choice was denounced by Sweden's leading literary light, August Strindberg, and a group of Swedes sent a letter to Leo Tolstoy apologizing for the Academy's slight in not choosing him. Arguments over the Academy's choices are inevitable, considering the instructions they were given. Nobel's will says the prize should recognize literature that works ``in an ideal direction.'' What, exactly, he meant by ``ideal** is unclear and the Academy's choices have reflected the confusion. The Academy has chosen to interpret the word to apply to works ranging from the good-hearted charm of Szymborska's poetry to the crushing hopelessness of Samuel Beckett's writings. When Nobel wrote the word ``ideal'' _ in Swedish ``idealisk** _ he superimposed the last couple of letters over previous one. Allen was so curious to understand Nobel's thoughts that he engaged a forensic expert to try to find out what the earlier letters were. The expert succeeded _ to a point. He found that the first word Nobel wrote was ``idealirad,'' a word that doesn't exist. Despite the inclarity around the edges, Allen said he is confident that the Academy's choices bolster Nobel's core idea that ``literature would be the basis for some kind of progress.'' About this year's choice, he won't say more than that: the Academy is bound to keep its deliberations secret. But observers love to speculate on who might win, even who's on the shortlist for the prize, this year worth 7.6 million kronor (about dlrs 974,000). Names that freuqently come up in the guessing include V.S. Naipaul, China's Bei Dao and Pa Kin, American poet John Ashbery, and Jose Saramago of Portugal. ||||| There's room for a few more names on a 20th century honor roll of writers, and one will be added this week when the Swedish Academy announces the latest Nobel Literature laureate. Who is chosen and why stimulates animated conversation with readers as well as academics, critics and the authors themselves. This year's winner _ or, possibly, winners _ will be announced Thursday, the Academy disclosed Tuesday. ``The joke you hear is that it goes to people you never heard of,'' said Ian Jack, editor of London-based Granta literary magazine. But the Nobel, awarded most every year since 1901, also shines a light, usually deservedly, on wonderful writers few people have read, he added. His favorites include Trinidad-born V.S. Naipaul, though he's convinced Naipaul probably won't win because of his ``dark ... pessimistic'' and often scathing portrayals of post-colonial African culture. The academy keeps its deliberations secret. Who is considered seriously, even who's nominated, isn't disclosed. A writer's nationality, by the terms of the prize founder Alfred Nobel's will, is supposed to be irrelevant. Two can share the prize, though the last time that happened was 1974. Winners are expected to personally receive it: awards are not given posthumously. Looking at the process from afar, Harold Bloom, a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, said the award committee has an unsettling record of selections that are ``nationally 'correct' and politically 'correct.''' The winners list is prestigious, he concedes, but by no means uniformly lustrous. ``Absolutely not! Outrageously not,'' he said in a telephone interview from New York. ``They include all kinds of fifth-raters. ... James Joyce never got one, for heaven's sake. Neither did Marcel Proust.'' Bloom's U.S. favorites include Cormac McCarthy, author of ``Blood Meridian''; Philip Roth, author of ``American Pastoral''; and John Ashbery, ``the best living poet.'' A review of recent winners may foreshadow this year's laureate. Seven of the past 10 were men _ does that favor a woman? Two of the past three were poets _ does that favor a prose writer? Four of the past 10 wrote in English, and the last three laureates are European. In comparison, only three Asian writers have ever won. ``Bei Dao is a personal favorite of mine,'' said Abe Harumasa, editor-in-chief of the Japanese literary magazine Bungei. ``The choice could be interpreted as being motivated partly by politics,'' given the poet's association with China's democracy movement, ``but it's clear he's a wonderful poet.'' Minoru Takeuchi, a professor of Chinese literature at Japan's prestigious Kyoto University, cited novelists Pa Kin and Xie Bing Xin as worthy. The latter is known for her portrayals of the struggles of Chinese women. China, which translates and publishes the works of many Nobel winners, ``desperately'' wants its first laureate, he added. Spain's Nobel hopes are pinned on Francisco Ayala, 92, winner of this year's renowned Prince of Asturias prize, said Jose Maria Martinez Cachero, an author, university professor and secretary of the jury that selected Ayala. Other presumed Latin candidates are Peru-born Mario Vargas Llosa, a member of the 200-year-old Royal Spanish Language Academy, Martinez Cachero said, and Portugal's Jose Saramago, whose works have been translated into more than 20 languages. For his part, Saramago, 75, said in a recent Associated Press interview that he's weary of speculation that this year, once again, he might win. ``Let's not get into that,'' he said. ``I just write.'' ||||| Three American researchers on Monday won the Nobel Medicine Prize for discovering how nitric oxide acts as a signal molecule in the cardiovascular system, a breakthrough with applications ranging from hardening of the arteries to impotence. The prestigious prize went to Robert F. Furchgott, Louis J. Ignarro and Ferid Murad. Furchgott is a pharmacologist at the State University of New York in Brooklyn, Ignarro is at University of California-Los Angeles and Murad is at the University of Texas Medical School in Houston. The citation by the Karolinska Institute said ``it was a senation that the simple, common air pollutant (nitric oxide), which is formed when nitrogen burns ... could exert important functions in the organism. '' Because of the research, ``we know today that nitric oxide acts as a signal molecule in the nervous system, as a weapon against infections and as a regulator of blood pressure.'' ``Signal transmission by a gas that is produced by one cell, penetrates through membranes and regulates the function of another cell represents an entirely new principle,'' the citation said. Understanding how nitric oxide transmits the signals has sparked research on a wide range of new drugs, including those that can be used in the treatment of heart problems, artherosclerosis, shock and impotence. The prize amount of 7.6 million kronor (dlrs 978,000) is divided equally among the three. Last year, the prize went to Stanley B. Prusiner of the University of California at San Francisco for his discovery of prions, the rogue proteins identified as causing Mad Cow Disease. Winners generally aren't known outside the medical community, although the list of laureates contains a few familiar names including Ivan Pavlov, tuberculosis pioneer Robert Koch, and DNA researchers Francis Crick and James Watson. Generally, they are researchers who have made discoveries that sound small on paper but carry large consequences. Among other well-known names to receive the prize is David Baltimore, although he shared the prize in 1975, long before becoming one of the world's most visible AIDS researchers. Alan Cormack of the United States and Sir Godfrey Hounsfield may not be familiar names, but what they won the prize for in 1979 is a term known by most patients: computer-assisted tomography _ or CAT scan. The medicine prize was the second of the six Nobels to be announced this year. Last Thursday, the literature prize went to Portuguese novelist Jose Saramago. The physics and chemistry prizes will be announced Tuesday, the economics prize on Wednesday and the peace prize on Friday. All the announcements are in Stockholm, except for the peace prize which is given in Oslo, Norway. The prizes are presented on Dec. 10, the anniversary of the death of Alfred Nobel, the industrialist and inventor of dynamite whose will established the prizes. ||||| Robert F. Furchgott, Louis J. Ignarro and Ferid Murad of the United States on Monday won the Nobel Medicine Prize. They were given the prize for their discoveries concerning nitric oxide as a signaling molecule in the cardiovascular system, according to the citiation from the Karolinska lnstitute. Furchgott is a pharmacologist at the State University of New York in Brooklyn, Ignarro is at University of California-Los Angeles and Murad is at the University of Texas Medical School in Houston. The citation said ``it was a senation that the simple, common air pollutant (nitric oxide), which is formed when nitrogen burns ... could exert important functions in the organism. '' Because of the research, ``we know today that nitric oxide acts as a signal molecule in the nervous system, as a weapon against infections and as a regulator of blood pressure.'' The prize amount of 7.6 million kronor (dlrs 978,000) is divided equally among the three. Last year, the prize went to Stanley B. Prusiner of the University of California at San Francisco for his discovery of prions, the rogue proteins identified as causing Mad Cow Disease. Winners generally aren't known outside the medical community, although the list of laureates contains a few familiar names including Ivan Pavlov, tuberculosis pioneer Robert Koch, and DNA researchers Francis Crick and James Watson. Generally, they are researchers who have made discoveries that sound small on paper but carry large consequences. Among other well-known names to receive the prize is David Baltimore, although he shared the prize in 1975, long before becoming one of the world's most visible AIDS researchers. Alan Cormack of the United States and Sir Godfrey Hounsfield may not be familiar names, but what they won the prize for in 1979 is a term known by most patients: computer-assisted tomography _ or CAT scan. The medicine prize was the second of the six Nobels to be announced this year. Last Thursday, the literature prize went to Portuguese novelist Jose Saramago. The physics and chemistry prizes will be announced Tuesday, the economics prize on Wednesday and the peace prize on Friday. All the announcements are in Stockholm, except for the peace prize which is given in Oslo, Norway. The prizes are presented on Dec. 10, the anniversary of the death of Alfred Nobel, the industrialist and inventor of dynamite whose will established the prizes. ||||| Portuguese novelist Jose Saramago, whose capricious vision includes a section of Europe breaking off and floating out to sea, on Thursday was named the winner of the 1998 Nobel Literature Prize. In its citation, the Swedish Academy said it gave the award to Saramago for work that ``with parables sustained by imagination, compassion and irony continually enables us to apprehend an elusory reality.'' Saramago, 75, wrote his breakthrough novel in 1982, ``Baltasar and Blimunda.'' Perhaps his best-known work is ``The Stone Raft,'' in which the Iberian Peninsula breaks off from Europe for supernatural reasons and floats off into the Atlantic. That device allows him to comment ironically ``about the authorities and politicians, perhaps especially about the major players in power politics.'' Saramago's exuberant imagination and playfulness have made him one of Portugal's most popular contemporary novelists, and his works have been translated into more than 20 languages. In ``Blindness,'' his most recent work to be translated into English, a nameless man in a nameless country suddenly goes blind, and the affliction quickly spreads through the country _ grim tale of social collapse. In 1991's ``The Gospel According to Jesus Christ,'' God and the devli negotiate about evil, and Jesus tries to back out of his crucifixion. ``Saramago's idiosyncratic development of his own resonant style of fiction gives him a high standing ... he invokes tradition in a way that in the current state of things can be described as radical,'' the Academy said in the citation for the 7.6-million kronor (dlrs 978,000 prize). Saramago (pronounced sah-rah-MAH-go) is the fourth consecutive European to win the prestigious prize, and the first laureate to write in Portuguese. He had long been seen as one of the strongest potential candidates for the prize and the frequent media queries about his prospects contrasted with his quiet personality. ``I am skeptical, reserved, I don't gush, I don't go around smiling, hugging people, trying to make friends,'' he told The Associated Press in a recent interview. ``I just write.'' Saramago on Thursday had planned to leave Frankfurt, Germany, _ where he was attending the international book fair _ for his home in the Canary Islands. But Portuguese state radio said he was taken off the plane before departure and driven back to the fair, where a crowd wa waiting for him. The literature prize is one of five established by Alfred Nobel, the Swedish industrialist and inventor of dynamite. The prizes have been awarded since 1901; a sixth prize, in economics, was started in 1969. According to the terms of Nobel's will, the literature prize is to recognize writing that works ``in an ideal direction.'' How to interpret that term has been widely debated. The Nobel Prize over the years has been given to writers with world-views stretching from the bleak futility of Samuel Beckett's works to the vivid epics of Iceland's Halldor Laxness. The prize even has gone occasionally to writers who did not work in fiction or poetry, notably Winston Churchill and Bertrand Russell. Last year's prize went to Dario Fo, the Italian playwright whose work combines gut-busting comedy with acid social and political commentary. The 1996 winner was the Polish poet Wislawa Szymborska, as shy and delicate and Fo is boisterous. The Swedish Academy does not reveal who was nominated or who it considered on its shortlist. Nominations can be made by previous laureates, professors of history and literature, members of the Academy and presidents of some national authors' organizations. The Nobel Prize in Medicine winner will be announced Oct. 12, the physics and chemistry winners on Oct. 13, the economics laureate on Oct. 14 and the peace prize on Occt. 16. All the prize announcements are in Stockholm, except for the peace prize which is given in Oslo, Norway. All the prizes are presented on Dec. 10, the anniversary of Nobel's death. ||||| Jose Saramago, a 75-year-old Portuguese writer who took up literature relatively late in life and whose richly imaginative novels soon won him a following of loyal readers across Europe and vocal admirers in the United States, was awarded this year's Nobel Prize in Literature Thursday by the Swedish Academy in Stockholm. A tall, balding man whose large, tinted glasses often give him a mien of severity, Saramago is the first Portuguese-language writer _ and one of the first card-carrying Communists _ to become a Nobel Literature laureate. He is also the fourth successive European to win the prize, after Italy's Dario Fo in 1997, Poland's Wislawa Szymborska in 1996 and Ireland's Seamus Heaney in 1995. In its citation Thursday, the Swedish Academy praised Saramago ``who with parables sustained by imagination, compassion and irony continually enables us once again to apprehend an elusory reality.'' Although Saramago discounts the influence of Latin American ``magical realism'' on his work, his novels often use the supernatural, allegorical, paradoxical and irrational as ways of addressing complex questions of faith and existence. Many of his novels are set against a backdrop of political or historical events, but it is his unwavering concern for individual fate that gives his fiction its distinctive voice and independent character. His best-known books, all published in the United States, are ``Baltasar and Blimunda,'' ``The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis,'' ``The Stone Raft'' and ``The History of the Siege of Lisbon.'' His latest book available in English, ``Blindness,'' in which all but one of his characters mysteriously become blind, was described as his ``symphonic new novel'' by Andrew Miller in The New York Times Book Review on Sunday. ``There is no cynicism and there are no conclusions, just a clear-eyed and compassionate acknowledgment of things as they are, a quality than can only honestly be termed as wisdom,'' Miller, himself a novelist, wrote. ``We should be grateful when it is handed to us in such generous measures.'' Saramago learned of his award Thursday at Frankfurt airport, where he was preparing to fly home via Madrid to Lanzarote in the Canary Islands after attending the Frankfurt Book Fair. Earlier this week, he participated in a round-table of Portuguese writers on the topic, ``Why I am still a Communist.'' He immediately returned to the fair where he was received with cheers and bouquets of roses. ``I am personally very happy for myself,'' he said. ``I am also happy for my country.'' Later he told a news conference: ``The Portuguese language had to wait 100 years for this. There have to be ways and means of protecting the language so that it does not become a museum, but is something that is alive. The writer's role is to protect it and work with it.'' The award was also celebrated in Lisbon, where President Jorge Sampaio described it as ``recognition of Portuguese culture,'' while the local Communist leader, Carlos Carvalho, saw it as a credit to his own party. ``As a member of our party,'' he noted solemnly, ``Saramago makes a great contribution to our ideals and to the struggle for social change.'' The laureate's fiction, though, is never overtly political. Saramago, whose body of work includes poetry, essays, plays and a journal as well as 10 novels, is unusual for having emerged as a major literary figure only at the age of 60. His novels have since been translated into 30 languages, selling particularly well in Portugal, Brazil, Spain, Italy and Germany. While he has not been well known in the United States, his novels have always been critically well received there. For all his late blooming, though, Saramago long dreamed of becoming a writer. Born into a family of rural laborers and raised in Lisbon, he was forced by poverty to leave school while a teen-ager and learn the trade of car mechanic. Yet he managed to publish a small novel at the age of 25. Later, he found work at a Lisbon publishing company, but the oppressive and censorial atmosphere of the Salazar dictatorship discouraged him from writing. It was only after Portugal's April 1974 revolution that Saramago felt free to find his voice. A member of the Portuguese Communist Party since 1969, he served as editor of a Lisbon newspaper, Diario de Noticias, during an 18-month period when the left looked likely to seize power in Portugal. But an anti-Communist backlash in November 1975 forced him out of the newspaper and he began translating French texts into Portuguese to make ends meet. In the late 1970s, he also turned to novels, publishing three in succession in 1977, 1978 and 1980. But it was in 1982, with ``Baltasar and Blimunda'' (``Memorial do Convento'' in Portuguese), that he achieved his international breakthrough. ``This is a rich, multifaceted and polysemous text that at the same time has a historical, a social and an individual perspective,'' the Swedish Academy noted Thursday. ``The insight and wealth of imagination to which it gives expression is characteristic of Saramago's work as a whole.'' Set in 18th-century Portugal during the Inquisition, the book tells of the baroque efforts of a war veteran, Baltasar, and a visionary, Blimunda, to escape to the heavens aboard a flying machine powered by human wills captured by the hypersensory Blimunda. This fantastic story takes place against the very real background of the tortuous construction of the massive Mafra Convent by thousands of men held in the grip of the Inquisition. When the novel was published in the United States in 1987, Irving Howe acclaimed it as ``brilliant'' in The New York Times Book Review. ``Mr. Saramago is constantly present as a voice of European skepticism, a connoisseur of ironies,'' Howe wrote. ``I think I hear in his prose echoes of Enlightenment sensibility, caustic and shrewd.'' In his next novel, ``The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis,'' which is also a homage to the great Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa, who appears in it as a ghost, Saramago sets his story in the early years of the Salazar dictatorship, with the tale following the romantic and sexual misadventures of a poet-physician. Writing in The New York Times, Herbert Mitgang called it ``a rare, old-fashioned novel _ at once lyrical, symbolic and meditative.'' Saramago, whose sense of literary freedom is evident in his unconventional punctuation and conflicting use of tenses, sought a different form of freedom in ``The Stone Raft,'' where he imagines the confusion unleashed when the Iberian peninsula suddenly breaks free from the rest of Europe and begins drifting toward the New World and threatens to collide with the Azores. To the delight of Britons, Gibraltar is left behind. Unsurprisingly, the bitter satire, ``The Gospel According to Jesus Christ,'' proved controversial, with God shown as using the innocently human Jesus to create a religion that has spawned violence and intolerance. When a Lisbon jury picked the book as Portugal's entry for a 1992 European literary prize, the country's conservative government vetoed the choice as blasphemous. It was then that Saramago decided to leave his small, crowded apartment in Lisbon for the relative solitude of Lanzarote. ``The History of the Siege of Lisbon,'' published in the United States last year, is a whimsical tale set in motion by the decision of a humble proofreader at a publishing house to insert the word ``not'' into a key passage in a standard history of Portugal. With this ``lunatic creative act,'' as Edmund White put it in The New York Times Book Review, he ``totally derails the national saga'' by affirming that the crusaders did not in fact help liberate 12th-century Lisbon from Moorish occupation. White ended his July 1997 review with a prescient remark. ``Word has it that Saramago is overdue for a Nobel Prize,'' he noted. ``No candidate has a better claim to lasting recognition than this novelist.'' With the recent publication of ``Blindness'' in the United States, only Saramago's latest novel, ``Todos os Nomes,'' or ``All the Names'' still awaits translation into English. In the tradition of Andre Gide and Julian Green, though, he has now embarked on his journals. The fourth volume of these ``Cadernos de Lanzarote'' was just published in Lisbon. Saramago will receive his Nobel Prize, worth the equivalent of $967,500 this year, at a ceremony in Stockholm on Dec. 10. ||||| A day after winning the Nobel Prize for literature, Portuguese novelist Jose Saramago insisted that while he was delighted to win the award, it could just as easily have gone to many other Portuguese writers. ``I'm not the only one who deserved it'', said the first Portuguese-language author to obtain the prestigious award. ``There have been other Portuguse authors, like Fernando Pessoa, whose work would justify 1,000 Nobels'' Speaking at a packed press coference in Madrid, Saramago joked about how he heard he had won the prize from German air hostess at Frankfurt airport as he waited for a flight home to Spain's Canary Islands. The news left the 75-year-old writer no choice but to leave the airport and return to the city's book fair to meet the press and public. ``At that moment I was over the moon and returning to the book fair the only thing I was worried about was that the whole thing was an error,'' said Saramago. Dismissing the Vatican paper's disapproval Thursday of his achievment, Saramago, a known atheist, quipped that he was aware that ``the Pope had been among the jury, I wouldn't have won the prize.'' ``The Vatican is easily upset'', said Saramago, ``I think that the Vatican should keep its mind on its prayers and leave people alone''. Meanwhile in Portugal, where Saramago is scheduled to arrive on Tuesday, the delight at the Swedish Academy's award for Saramago was reflected in the daily papers, with even the country's three daily sports papers ample space to the event. The two leading dailies, Publico and Diario de Noticias, gave over their entire front pages to Saramago. Lisbon City Hall rushed out posters saying ``Congratulations Jose Saramago'' which were hung up around the capital during the night. Saramago was born into a poor, illiterate family in Azinhaga, a small town near Lisbon. He never finished university but continued to study part-time while supporting himself as a metalworker. ``Nothing in my life would have led one to think I'd win the Nobel Prize'', said Saramago. ``I wasn't born to win the Nobel. I didn't have my own books until I was 18.'' His first novel, published in 1947 _ ``Terra do Pecado,'' or ``Country of Sin'' _ was a tale of peasants in moral crisis. For the next 18 years, Saramago, a communist who opposed the 41-year conservative dictatorship of Antonio Salazar, published only a few travel and poetry books while he worked as a journalist. He returned to fiction only after Salazar's regime was toppled by a military uprising in 1974. Since the 1980s, his works have been translated into more than 20 languages. Regarding the future, Saramago said the book he is currently working on will be called ``The Cavern'' and deals with a modern version of myth of Plato and the cave.

Announcement of the Nobel Prize awards always generates great interest. The prize for literature has always been one to receive varying responses. Past selections have been praised, questioned, or even written off as politically or nationally "correct". This year's winner is 75-year old Jose Saramago, the first Portuguese language writer to win. It is the fourth straight year that a European won. The Peace Prize always receives critical response. Then President Carter would have shared the 1978 Prize with Sadat and Begin, except for a missed deadline. The 1998 Nobel for medicine was awarded to three US researchers for discoveries with nitric oxide.

Jose Saramago became the first writer in Portuguese to win the Nobel Prize for Literature on Thursday. His personal delight was seconded by a burst of public elation in his homeland. Saramago, 75, and Portuguese said they were pleased the Swedish Academy had finally acknowledged the literary contribution of Portugal, a small country of 10 million people bordering Spain on Europe's southwestern Iberian Peninsula. ``It has taken all of this century to win a Nobel Prize for the Portuguese language,'' Saramago said at the Frankfurt Book Fair, speaking through an interpreter. Saramago, a soft-spoken man known for his hard-edged and iconoclastic views, said he shared the honor with his country and he hoped winning the prize would make Portugal and its language ``more visible and audible.'' ``I'm personally very happy for myself. I'm also happy for my country,'' he said at the Frankfurt Book Fair in Germany where he was engulfed by well-wishers offering roses. Back home, President Jorge Sampaio said the award was a cause for ``great collective satisfaction.'' Prime Minister Antonio Guterres said the award was ``above all a prize for Portugal and the Portuguese language'' which is spoken by 180 million worldwide, mostly in Brazil, but also in Portugal's five former colonies in Africa. Saramago's controversial opinions and atheistic outlook have frequently clashed with the establishment and the general public. Even on the day he won the prize, the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano attacked the Swedish Academy's choice, describing Saramago as an ``old-school communist'' who had a ``substantially antireligious vision.'' Undersecretary of State Sousa Lara was so upset by one of Saramago's novels in 1992 that he withdrew his name from Portugal's nominees for the European Literature Prize. At the time, Lara said Saramago's 1991 novel ``O Evangelho Segundo Jesus Cristo'' (The Gospel according to Jesus Christ) offended Portugal's Roman Catholic religious convictions and divided the country. The book describes a Christ who, subject to human desires, lives with Mary Magdalene and tries to back out of his crucifixion. ``I have not come to bring peace but the sword,'' said Saramago, an atheist, at the time. He retreated in disgust with his Spanish wife, Pilar del Rio, to his home in Lanzarote in Spain's Canary Islands. He has never courted the kind of fame offered by literary prizes, and his bluntness can sometimes offend. ``I am skeptical, reserved, I don't gush, I don't go around smiling, hugging people and trying to make friends,'' he once said. A gaunt man with wisps of white hair, Saramago was born in Azinhaga, a small town near Lisbon. From a poor family, he never finished university but continued to study part-time while supporting himself as a metalworker. His first novel, published in 1947 _ ``Terra do Pecado,'' or ``Country of Sin'' _ was a tale of peasants in moral crisis. It sold badly but won enough recognition to propel him from the welder's shop to a literary magazine. But for the next 18 years, Saramago, a communist who opposed the 41-year conservative dictatorship of Antonio Salazar, published only a few travel and poetry books while he worked as a journalist. He returned to fiction only after Salazar's regime was toppled by a military uprising in 1974. Since the 1980s, he has been one of Portugal's best-selling contemporary writers and his works have been translated into more than 20 languages. He first won critical acclaim abroad with his 1982 historical fantasy ``Memorial do Convento,'' published in English in 1988 as ``Baltasar and Blimunda.'' It is set during the Catholic-inspired inquisition and explores the war between individuals and organized religion, picking up Saramago's recurring theme of the loner struggling against authority. He is most frequently compared with Colombian writer Gabriel Garcia Marquez because his prose is often rooted in recognizable settings but at the same time tinged with magical elements. The Nobel citation praised his work that ``with parables sustained by imagination, compassion and irony continually enables us to apprehend an elusory reality.'' Saramago remains a prominent nonconformist through his regular newspaper and radio commentaries, though his views are always inspired by his deep concern for his fellow man. ``Blindness,'' his most recent book to be translated into English, is an unsettling allegory about the social meltdown as an inexplicable blindness sweeps through society. ``This blindness isn't a real blindness, it's a blindness of rationality,'' he said. ``We're rational beings but we don't behave rationally. If we did, there'd be no starvation in the world.'' In the 1989 ``The History of the Siege of Lisbon,'' a Lisbon proofreader mischievously inserts the word ``not'' into a text on the 12th century capture of the Portuguese capital from the Moors, thereby fictionally altering the course of European history with a stroke of his pen. Such historical and literary mischief are Saramago trademarks. In his 1986 book, ``The Stone Raft,'' the Iberian Peninsula snaps off from the rest of the European continent and floats off into the North Atlantic _ apparently in a metaphorical search for identity away from the standardizing nature of the European Union, of which Portugal and Spain are enthusiastic members. Saramago will receive the dlrs 978,000 prize on Dec. 10 in Stockholm. ||||| Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, who seems a perennial Nobel Peace Prize also-ran, could have won the coveted honor in 1978 had it not been for strict deadline rules for nominations. That prize was shared by Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin for signing the Camp David peace accords. However, the five-member Norwegian awards committee also wanted to honor Carter for brokering the pact, only to be foiled by their own rules. ``The Nobel committee wanted to give the prize to all three,'' said Geir Lundestad, the current committee's nonvoting secretary, said on Sunday. ``But Carter had not been nominated when the deadline ran out.'' Nominations postmarked by Feb. 1 are accepted for that year's prize. The committee can add it own nominations at its first meeting of the year, usually in early March. The Camp David accords were not signed until Sept. 17, 1978, about five weeks before that year's peace prize was annouCkuld not give him the prize, the Norwegian committee recognized in the 1978 awards citation ``the positive initiative taken by President Jimmy Carter.'' Lundestad said the committee, which works in deep secrecy in its five or six meetings a year, tried to find a loophole in the rules, which are overseen by the Swedish Nobel Foundation. The Nobel Prizes were endowed by Alfred Nobel, a Swedish industrialist whose 355 inventions included dynamite. In his 1895 will, Nobel endowed the prizes, and said the peace prize should be picked by a Norwegian committee and the rest by Swedish institutions. Lundestad said the committee turned to the Swedish Nobel Foundation for advice on Carter because it was a question of principle. Stig Ramel, a Swede who was then director of the Nobel Foundation, advised against breaking the rules, Lundestad said by telephone. Normally, the committee refuses to discuss past candidates in keeping with a strict policy of secrecy in which selection details are sealed for 50 years. Lundestad made an exception because Ramel revealed the Carter dilemma in his 1994 memoirs. Carter has repeatedly been nominated for the Nobel prize for his consistent and wide-ranging peace efforts. He is also among the 139 candidates for the prize being announced in Oslo on Friday. However, early speculation leans more toward someone involved in the Northern Ireland peace process, Czech President Vaclav Havel to mark the 30th anniversary of the Soviet invasion of his country, or a human rights activist to mark the 50th anniversary of the U.N. Human Rights Charter. While the committee wanted to honor Carter and could not, with hindsight some regretted the prize for other reasons. Four years after Begin won the prize, the Israeli prime minister ordered an invasion of southern Lebanon in which thousands of civilians died. Kare Kristiansen, who served on the peace prize committee from 1991 to 1994, once said that, had the committee waited, Begin probably would not have won. ||||| Three American pharmacologists were awarded the Nobel Prize on Monday for their surprising discoveries of how natural production of a gas, nitric oxide, can mediate a wide variety of bodily actions. Those include widening blood vessels, helping to regulate blood pressure, initiating erections, battling infections, preventing formation of blood clots and acting as a signal molecule in the nervous system. The prize, for physiology or medicine, went to Dr. Robert Furchgott, 82, of the State University of New York in Brooklyn; Dr. Louis Ignarro, 57, of the University of California at Los Angeles, and Dr. Ferid Murad, 62, of the University of Texas Medical School in Houston. The announcement of a significant phase of the discoveries by two of Monday's winners at a meeting in 1986 ``elicited an avalanche of research activities in many different laboratories around the world,'' said the Nobel committee at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, which makes the awards. Its citation said that the research had led to new treatments for treating heart and lung diseases, shock and impotence. Ignarro ``discovered the principle that led to the use of Viagra as an anti-impotency drug,'' said Dr. Sten Orrenius, a professor of toxicology at the Karolinska Institute. Nitric oxide starts the process by which blood vessels in the penis widen to produce an erection. Nitric oxide, a chemical relative of the anesthetic gas nitrous oxide, is better known as a common air pollutant formed when nitrogen burns, such as in automobile exhaust fumes. But scientists now know it is distributed widely in the body. The discoveries honored on Monday were made largely during the 1980s at a time when scientists knew that bacteria produced nitric oxide but did not think it was important in animals and humans. The award committee said that ``this was the first discovery that a gas can act as a signal molecule in the organism.'' The discovery was startling because ``nitric oxide is totally different from any other known signal molecule and so unstable that it is converted to nitrate and nitrite within 10 seconds.'' Recipients of the Nobel Prize, including some who have lobbied for it for years, often profess surprise on learning of their award. This year's winners were refreshingly candid. Furchgott said he had planned to sleep late on Monday, a holiday, but was awakened at 5:30 at his home in Hewlett, N.Y. He said that he knew that previous Nobel prize winners had nominated him for the award, but that he still was ``somewhat surprised'' to receive it. ``I guess I had some good friends voting,'' Furchgott said. He said he could not get back to sleep. Murad said he had ``pondered the odds and thought that maybe I could win the prize, if not now maybe in a couple of years.'' He described the award as the culmination of a career and said that ``when it happens, it's incredible.'' Ignarro was traveling in Italy. Dr. Gerald Levey, the dean of UCLA, said ``we actually anticipated this day for about four years now.'' The three 1998 winners never worked together, ``but we talked a lot of shop talk at meetings,'' Furchgott said. Dr. Valentin Fuster, the president of the American Heart Association and the head of cardiology at Mt. Sinai Hospital in Manhattan, said that ``the discovery of nitric oxide and its function is one of the most important in the history of cardiovascular medicine.'' Doctors have learned from the prize-winning research that in heart disease, the endothelium, or inner lining of arteries, makes less nitric oxide. Drugs like nitroglycerine, however, can help replenish stores of nitric oxide. Now, drug companies are trying to develop more powerful heart drugs based on newer knowledge of nitric oxide's role as a signal molecule. Researchers have also learned that nitric oxide produced in the endothelium rapidly spreads through cell membranes to the underlying muscle cells in arteries. Then it can shut off muscle contractions in the arteries, thus widening them and reducing blood pressure. Inhalation of nitric oxide gas has saved the lives of some people with certain lung diseases, particularly infants who have developed dangerously high pulmonary blood pressure. But regulating the amount of nitric oxygen inhaled is critical because too much can be lethal. Nitric oxide plays a harmful role in the collapse of the circulatory system, or shock, resulting from overwhelming microbial infections. Bacteria can release products that cause white blood cells to release enormous amounts of nitric oxide. As a result, blood pressure drops. Scientists are trying to develop drugs that can block production of nitric oxide in such infections. White blood cells also play a role in attacking cancerous cells. The gas can also induce a type of programmed cell death known as apoptosis. Scientists are studying nitric oxide's effects on the immune system to stop the growth of cancers. They are also exploring nitric oxide's possible role in regulating body temperature. Doctors are measuring the production of nitric oxide in the lungs and intestines to diagnose a number of ailments, including asthma and colitis, and are studying its role in menstruation. Nitric oxide formed in nerve cells spreads rapidly in all directions to activate cells in the vicinity and influence many functions, like behavior and the mobility of the intestinal tract. Nitric oxide is also being studied for its role in smell and memory. Nitric oxide's role is still unfolding; scientists have written thousands of scientific papers about it in recent years and have started a journal, Nitric Oxide. The Nobel committee cited Furchgott for performing in 1980 ``an ingenious experiment'' that showed that a drug, acetylcholine, widened blood vessels only if the inner layer, or endothelium, was intact. Furchgott concluded that blood vessels widen because the endothelial cells produce a signal molecule that he called EDRF, for endothelium-derived relaxing factor, which relaxes smooth muscle cells in blood vessels. Furchgott's findings ``led to a quest to identify the factor,'' the citation said. (OPTIONAL TRIM CAN BEGIN HERE) The citation did not refer to an accident in Furchgott's laboratory that played a major role in his discoveries. In 1995, in the Annual Review of Pharmacology and Toxicology, Furchgott wrote that on May 5, 1978, in the first of a series of planned experiments on arteries from a rabbit, a technician did not follow directions correctly. The technician performed one step of the experiment before instead of after he was supposed to wash out a drug used in an earlier phase of the experiment. Furchgott expected that the arteries would contract. Instead, they relaxed. It was the first time he had seen the drugs under study produce such a reaction, and he used the insight to plan additional experiments. Furchgott omitted the technician's name in that paper and in another in 1996 in the Journal of the American Medical Association. On Monday, he said David Davidson was the technician. (OPTIONAL TRIM ENDS HERE) The committee cited Ignarro for concluding in 1986, from ``a brilliant series of analyses'' conducted independently of Furchgott, that EDRF was identical to nitric oxide. Furchgott said he and Ignarro made the announcement at the same symposium in 1986 at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., but the papers were not published until 1998. Murad was cited for work conducted over the years while he worked at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, Stanford University in Palo Alto, Calif., and Abbott Laboratories in Illinois. Murad said he felt fortunate to have heard Furchgott report his early work on EDRF in 1980. Murad showed that a gas could regulate important cellular functions and studied how nitroglycerin and related heart drugs led to the release of nitric oxide. (OPTIONAL TRIM CAN BEGIN HERE) In his early training at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Murad worked in the laboratory of Dr. Theodore Rall, who also trained another Nobel prize winner, Dr. Alfred Gilman of the University of Texas Southwestern in Dallas. Gilman said in an interview that he believed Rall, now retired and living in Charlottesville, Va., was the first scientist to have trained two Nobel Prize winners. In addition, Rall worked with Dr. Earl Sutherland, who also won a Nobel Prize. In his early reseach years, Murad worked on a chemical known as cyclic guanosine monophosphate, which later turned out to be critical in the nitric oxide story. Murad's trainees referred to the early work as ``dumping experiments'' because all they could do in the laboratory at the time was crudely add various hormones and agents to slices of tissue, cell cultures. It took years to develop the more refined techniques that led to the understanding of nitric oxide's many roles in the body. But for many years, most of the scientific community was skeptical of the ability of a free radical like nitric oxide to activate an enzyme, Murad said in 1996 when he and Furchgott shared the Albert Lasker basic medical research award. (OPTIONAL TRIM ENDS HERE) The Nobel Prizes were created by the will of Alfred Nobel, whose invention of dynamite involved the use of nitroglycerine. The award committee noted an odd twist to this year's award. When Nobel developed chest pain from heart disease, it said, he refused to take the nitroglycerine his doctor prescribed because he knew it caused headache. Nobel dismissed nitroglycerine's benefit in the relief of chest pain. Nobel died in 1896. The prize that the three scientists will share is now worth $938,000. ||||| When Alfred Nobel wrote the directions establishing a literature prize in his name, he chose an unclear word and scratched out a few letters. Questions about the prize have engaged and piqued the literary world ever since. A new chapter in the mystery will be written Thursday, when the Swedish Academy announces this year's winner of the world's most prestigious prize for writers. The prize focuses intense media attention on the Swedish capital and the clamor of journalists generally drowns out a question: Why does the world care so much about the literary choices of a handful of people in a quiet and remote country? Does the Nobel Prize really recognize the best? When asked that question, Swedish Academy permanent secretary Sture Allen smiled and said ``Look at the list of prizewinners!'' The answer obscures as much as it clarifies. On one hand, the Nobel Prize has recognized world-renowned writers such as Isaac Bashevis Singer and brought little-known wonders to light, such as Wislawa Szymborska. But the prize arguably also has honored the mediocre, heaping attention on those who would have been more fairly served by obscurity. Among them is the winner of the first prize in 1901, Sully Prudhomme. That choice was denounced by Sweden's leading literary light, August Strindberg, and a group of Swedes sent a letter to Leo Tolstoy apologizing for the Academy's slight in not choosing him. Arguments over the Academy's choices are inevitable, considering the instructions they were given. Nobel's will says the prize should recognize literature that works ``in an ideal direction.'' What, exactly, he meant by ``ideal** is unclear and the Academy's choices have reflected the confusion. The Academy has chosen to interpret the word to apply to works ranging from the good-hearted charm of Szymborska's poetry to the crushing hopelessness of Samuel Beckett's writings. When Nobel wrote the word ``ideal'' _ in Swedish ``idealisk** _ he superimposed the last couple of letters over previous one. Allen was so curious to understand Nobel's thoughts that he engaged a forensic expert to try to find out what the earlier letters were. The expert succeeded _ to a point. He found that the first word Nobel wrote was ``idealirad,'' a word that doesn't exist. Despite the inclarity around the edges, Allen said he is confident that the Academy's choices bolster Nobel's core idea that ``literature would be the basis for some kind of progress.'' About this year's choice, he won't say more than that: the Academy is bound to keep its deliberations secret. But observers love to speculate on who might win, even who's on the shortlist for the prize, this year worth 7.6 million kronor (about dlrs 974,000). Names that freuqently come up in the guessing include V.S. Naipaul, China's Bei Dao and Pa Kin, American poet John Ashbery, and Jose Saramago of Portugal. ||||| There's room for a few more names on a 20th century honor roll of writers, and one will be added this week when the Swedish Academy announces the latest Nobel Literature laureate. Who is chosen and why stimulates animated conversation with readers as well as academics, critics and the authors themselves. This year's winner _ or, possibly, winners _ will be announced Thursday, the Academy disclosed Tuesday. ``The joke you hear is that it goes to people you never heard of,'' said Ian Jack, editor of London-based Granta literary magazine. But the Nobel, awarded most every year since 1901, also shines a light, usually deservedly, on wonderful writers few people have read, he added. His favorites include Trinidad-born V.S. Naipaul, though he's convinced Naipaul probably won't win because of his ``dark ... pessimistic'' and often scathing portrayals of post-colonial African culture. The academy keeps its deliberations secret. Who is considered seriously, even who's nominated, isn't disclosed. A writer's nationality, by the terms of the prize founder Alfred Nobel's will, is supposed to be irrelevant. Two can share the prize, though the last time that happened was 1974. Winners are expected to personally receive it: awards are not given posthumously. Looking at the process from afar, Harold Bloom, a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, said the award committee has an unsettling record of selections that are ``nationally 'correct' and politically 'correct.''' The winners list is prestigious, he concedes, but by no means uniformly lustrous. ``Absolutely not! Outrageously not,'' he said in a telephone interview from New York. ``They include all kinds of fifth-raters. ... James Joyce never got one, for heaven's sake. Neither did Marcel Proust.'' Bloom's U.S. favorites include Cormac McCarthy, author of ``Blood Meridian''; Philip Roth, author of ``American Pastoral''; and John Ashbery, ``the best living poet.'' A review of recent winners may foreshadow this year's laureate. Seven of the past 10 were men _ does that favor a woman? Two of the past three were poets _ does that favor a prose writer? Four of the past 10 wrote in English, and the last three laureates are European. In comparison, only three Asian writers have ever won. ``Bei Dao is a personal favorite of mine,'' said Abe Harumasa, editor-in-chief of the Japanese literary magazine Bungei. ``The choice could be interpreted as being motivated partly by politics,'' given the poet's association with China's democracy movement, ``but it's clear he's a wonderful poet.'' Minoru Takeuchi, a professor of Chinese literature at Japan's prestigious Kyoto University, cited novelists Pa Kin and Xie Bing Xin as worthy. The latter is known for her portrayals of the struggles of Chinese women. China, which translates and publishes the works of many Nobel winners, ``desperately'' wants its first laureate, he added. Spain's Nobel hopes are pinned on Francisco Ayala, 92, winner of this year's renowned Prince of Asturias prize, said Jose Maria Martinez Cachero, an author, university professor and secretary of the jury that selected Ayala. Other presumed Latin candidates are Peru-born Mario Vargas Llosa, a member of the 200-year-old Royal Spanish Language Academy, Martinez Cachero said, and Portugal's Jose Saramago, whose works have been translated into more than 20 languages. For his part, Saramago, 75, said in a recent Associated Press interview that he's weary of speculation that this year, once again, he might win. ``Let's not get into that,'' he said. ``I just write.'' ||||| Three American researchers on Monday won the Nobel Medicine Prize for discovering how nitric oxide acts as a signal molecule in the cardiovascular system, a breakthrough with applications ranging from hardening of the arteries to impotence. The prestigious prize went to Robert F. Furchgott, Louis J. Ignarro and Ferid Murad. Furchgott is a pharmacologist at the State University of New York in Brooklyn, Ignarro is at University of California-Los Angeles and Murad is at the University of Texas Medical School in Houston. The citation by the Karolinska Institute said ``it was a senation that the simple, common air pollutant (nitric oxide), which is formed when nitrogen burns ... could exert important functions in the organism. '' Because of the research, ``we know today that nitric oxide acts as a signal molecule in the nervous system, as a weapon against infections and as a regulator of blood pressure.'' ``Signal transmission by a gas that is produced by one cell, penetrates through membranes and regulates the function of another cell represents an entirely new principle,'' the citation said. Understanding how nitric oxide transmits the signals has sparked research on a wide range of new drugs, including those that can be used in the treatment of heart problems, artherosclerosis, shock and impotence. The prize amount of 7.6 million kronor (dlrs 978,000) is divided equally among the three. Last year, the prize went to Stanley B. Prusiner of the University of California at San Francisco for his discovery of prions, the rogue proteins identified as causing Mad Cow Disease. Winners generally aren't known outside the medical community, although the list of laureates contains a few familiar names including Ivan Pavlov, tuberculosis pioneer Robert Koch, and DNA researchers Francis Crick and James Watson. Generally, they are researchers who have made discoveries that sound small on paper but carry large consequences. Among other well-known names to receive the prize is David Baltimore, although he shared the prize in 1975, long before becoming one of the world's most visible AIDS researchers. Alan Cormack of the United States and Sir Godfrey Hounsfield may not be familiar names, but what they won the prize for in 1979 is a term known by most patients: computer-assisted tomography _ or CAT scan. The medicine prize was the second of the six Nobels to be announced this year. Last Thursday, the literature prize went to Portuguese novelist Jose Saramago. The physics and chemistry prizes will be announced Tuesday, the economics prize on Wednesday and the peace prize on Friday. All the announcements are in Stockholm, except for the peace prize which is given in Oslo, Norway. The prizes are presented on Dec. 10, the anniversary of the death of Alfred Nobel, the industrialist and inventor of dynamite whose will established the prizes. ||||| Robert F. Furchgott, Louis J. Ignarro and Ferid Murad of the United States on Monday won the Nobel Medicine Prize. They were given the prize for their discoveries concerning nitric oxide as a signaling molecule in the cardiovascular system, according to the citiation from the Karolinska lnstitute. Furchgott is a pharmacologist at the State University of New York in Brooklyn, Ignarro is at University of California-Los Angeles and Murad is at the University of Texas Medical School in Houston. The citation said ``it was a senation that the simple, common air pollutant (nitric oxide), which is formed when nitrogen burns ... could exert important functions in the organism. '' Because of the research, ``we know today that nitric oxide acts as a signal molecule in the nervous system, as a weapon against infections and as a regulator of blood pressure.'' The prize amount of 7.6 million kronor (dlrs 978,000) is divided equally among the three. Last year, the prize went to Stanley B. Prusiner of the University of California at San Francisco for his discovery of prions, the rogue proteins identified as causing Mad Cow Disease. Winners generally aren't known outside the medical community, although the list of laureates contains a few familiar names including Ivan Pavlov, tuberculosis pioneer Robert Koch, and DNA researchers Francis Crick and James Watson. Generally, they are researchers who have made discoveries that sound small on paper but carry large consequences. Among other well-known names to receive the prize is David Baltimore, although he shared the prize in 1975, long before becoming one of the world's most visible AIDS researchers. Alan Cormack of the United States and Sir Godfrey Hounsfield may not be familiar names, but what they won the prize for in 1979 is a term known by most patients: computer-assisted tomography _ or CAT scan. The medicine prize was the second of the six Nobels to be announced this year. Last Thursday, the literature prize went to Portuguese novelist Jose Saramago. The physics and chemistry prizes will be announced Tuesday, the economics prize on Wednesday and the peace prize on Friday. All the announcements are in Stockholm, except for the peace prize which is given in Oslo, Norway. The prizes are presented on Dec. 10, the anniversary of the death of Alfred Nobel, the industrialist and inventor of dynamite whose will established the prizes. ||||| Portuguese novelist Jose Saramago, whose capricious vision includes a section of Europe breaking off and floating out to sea, on Thursday was named the winner of the 1998 Nobel Literature Prize. In its citation, the Swedish Academy said it gave the award to Saramago for work that ``with parables sustained by imagination, compassion and irony continually enables us to apprehend an elusory reality.'' Saramago, 75, wrote his breakthrough novel in 1982, ``Baltasar and Blimunda.'' Perhaps his best-known work is ``The Stone Raft,'' in which the Iberian Peninsula breaks off from Europe for supernatural reasons and floats off into the Atlantic. That device allows him to comment ironically ``about the authorities and politicians, perhaps especially about the major players in power politics.'' Saramago's exuberant imagination and playfulness have made him one of Portugal's most popular contemporary novelists, and his works have been translated into more than 20 languages. In ``Blindness,'' his most recent work to be translated into English, a nameless man in a nameless country suddenly goes blind, and the affliction quickly spreads through the country _ grim tale of social collapse. In 1991's ``The Gospel According to Jesus Christ,'' God and the devli negotiate about evil, and Jesus tries to back out of his crucifixion. ``Saramago's idiosyncratic development of his own resonant style of fiction gives him a high standing ... he invokes tradition in a way that in the current state of things can be described as radical,'' the Academy said in the citation for the 7.6-million kronor (dlrs 978,000 prize). Saramago (pronounced sah-rah-MAH-go) is the fourth consecutive European to win the prestigious prize, and the first laureate to write in Portuguese. He had long been seen as one of the strongest potential candidates for the prize and the frequent media queries about his prospects contrasted with his quiet personality. ``I am skeptical, reserved, I don't gush, I don't go around smiling, hugging people, trying to make friends,'' he told The Associated Press in a recent interview. ``I just write.'' Saramago on Thursday had planned to leave Frankfurt, Germany, _ where he was attending the international book fair _ for his home in the Canary Islands. But Portuguese state radio said he was taken off the plane before departure and driven back to the fair, where a crowd wa waiting for him. The literature prize is one of five established by Alfred Nobel, the Swedish industrialist and inventor of dynamite. The prizes have been awarded since 1901; a sixth prize, in economics, was started in 1969. According to the terms of Nobel's will, the literature prize is to recognize writing that works ``in an ideal direction.'' How to interpret that term has been widely debated. The Nobel Prize over the years has been given to writers with world-views stretching from the bleak futility of Samuel Beckett's works to the vivid epics of Iceland's Halldor Laxness. The prize even has gone occasionally to writers who did not work in fiction or poetry, notably Winston Churchill and Bertrand Russell. Last year's prize went to Dario Fo, the Italian playwright whose work combines gut-busting comedy with acid social and political commentary. The 1996 winner was the Polish poet Wislawa Szymborska, as shy and delicate and Fo is boisterous. The Swedish Academy does not reveal who was nominated or who it considered on its shortlist. Nominations can be made by previous laureates, professors of history and literature, members of the Academy and presidents of some national authors' organizations. The Nobel Prize in Medicine winner will be announced Oct. 12, the physics and chemistry winners on Oct. 13, the economics laureate on Oct. 14 and the peace prize on Occt. 16. All the prize announcements are in Stockholm, except for the peace prize which is given in Oslo, Norway. All the prizes are presented on Dec. 10, the anniversary of Nobel's death. ||||| Jose Saramago, a 75-year-old Portuguese writer who took up literature relatively late in life and whose richly imaginative novels soon won him a following of loyal readers across Europe and vocal admirers in the United States, was awarded this year's Nobel Prize in Literature Thursday by the Swedish Academy in Stockholm. A tall, balding man whose large, tinted glasses often give him a mien of severity, Saramago is the first Portuguese-language writer _ and one of the first card-carrying Communists _ to become a Nobel Literature laureate. He is also the fourth successive European to win the prize, after Italy's Dario Fo in 1997, Poland's Wislawa Szymborska in 1996 and Ireland's Seamus Heaney in 1995. In its citation Thursday, the Swedish Academy praised Saramago ``who with parables sustained by imagination, compassion and irony continually enables us once again to apprehend an elusory reality.'' Although Saramago discounts the influence of Latin American ``magical realism'' on his work, his novels often use the supernatural, allegorical, paradoxical and irrational as ways of addressing complex questions of faith and existence. Many of his novels are set against a backdrop of political or historical events, but it is his unwavering concern for individual fate that gives his fiction its distinctive voice and independent character. His best-known books, all published in the United States, are ``Baltasar and Blimunda,'' ``The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis,'' ``The Stone Raft'' and ``The History of the Siege of Lisbon.'' His latest book available in English, ``Blindness,'' in which all but one of his characters mysteriously become blind, was described as his ``symphonic new novel'' by Andrew Miller in The New York Times Book Review on Sunday. ``There is no cynicism and there are no conclusions, just a clear-eyed and compassionate acknowledgment of things as they are, a quality than can only honestly be termed as wisdom,'' Miller, himself a novelist, wrote. ``We should be grateful when it is handed to us in such generous measures.'' Saramago learned of his award Thursday at Frankfurt airport, where he was preparing to fly home via Madrid to Lanzarote in the Canary Islands after attending the Frankfurt Book Fair. Earlier this week, he participated in a round-table of Portuguese writers on the topic, ``Why I am still a Communist.'' He immediately returned to the fair where he was received with cheers and bouquets of roses. ``I am personally very happy for myself,'' he said. ``I am also happy for my country.'' Later he told a news conference: ``The Portuguese language had to wait 100 years for this. There have to be ways and means of protecting the language so that it does not become a museum, but is something that is alive. The writer's role is to protect it and work with it.'' The award was also celebrated in Lisbon, where President Jorge Sampaio described it as ``recognition of Portuguese culture,'' while the local Communist leader, Carlos Carvalho, saw it as a credit to his own party. ``As a member of our party,'' he noted solemnly, ``Saramago makes a great contribution to our ideals and to the struggle for social change.'' The laureate's fiction, though, is never overtly political. Saramago, whose body of work includes poetry, essays, plays and a journal as well as 10 novels, is unusual for having emerged as a major literary figure only at the age of 60. His novels have since been translated into 30 languages, selling particularly well in Portugal, Brazil, Spain, Italy and Germany. While he has not been well known in the United States, his novels have always been critically well received there. For all his late blooming, though, Saramago long dreamed of becoming a writer. Born into a family of rural laborers and raised in Lisbon, he was forced by poverty to leave school while a teen-ager and learn the trade of car mechanic. Yet he managed to publish a small novel at the age of 25. Later, he found work at a Lisbon publishing company, but the oppressive and censorial atmosphere of the Salazar dictatorship discouraged him from writing. It was only after Portugal's April 1974 revolution that Saramago felt free to find his voice. A member of the Portuguese Communist Party since 1969, he served as editor of a Lisbon newspaper, Diario de Noticias, during an 18-month period when the left looked likely to seize power in Portugal. But an anti-Communist backlash in November 1975 forced him out of the newspaper and he began translating French texts into Portuguese to make ends meet. In the late 1970s, he also turned to novels, publishing three in succession in 1977, 1978 and 1980. But it was in 1982, with ``Baltasar and Blimunda'' (``Memorial do Convento'' in Portuguese), that he achieved his international breakthrough. ``This is a rich, multifaceted and polysemous text that at the same time has a historical, a social and an individual perspective,'' the Swedish Academy noted Thursday. ``The insight and wealth of imagination to which it gives expression is characteristic of Saramago's work as a whole.'' Set in 18th-century Portugal during the Inquisition, the book tells of the baroque efforts of a war veteran, Baltasar, and a visionary, Blimunda, to escape to the heavens aboard a flying machine powered by human wills captured by the hypersensory Blimunda. This fantastic story takes place against the very real background of the tortuous construction of the massive Mafra Convent by thousands of men held in the grip of the Inquisition. When the novel was published in the United States in 1987, Irving Howe acclaimed it as ``brilliant'' in The New York Times Book Review. ``Mr. Saramago is constantly present as a voice of European skepticism, a connoisseur of ironies,'' Howe wrote. ``I think I hear in his prose echoes of Enlightenment sensibility, caustic and shrewd.'' In his next novel, ``The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis,'' which is also a homage to the great Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa, who appears in it as a ghost, Saramago sets his story in the early years of the Salazar dictatorship, with the tale following the romantic and sexual misadventures of a poet-physician. Writing in The New York Times, Herbert Mitgang called it ``a rare, old-fashioned novel _ at once lyrical, symbolic and meditative.'' Saramago, whose sense of literary freedom is evident in his unconventional punctuation and conflicting use of tenses, sought a different form of freedom in ``The Stone Raft,'' where he imagines the confusion unleashed when the Iberian peninsula suddenly breaks free from the rest of Europe and begins drifting toward the New World and threatens to collide with the Azores. To the delight of Britons, Gibraltar is left behind. Unsurprisingly, the bitter satire, ``The Gospel According to Jesus Christ,'' proved controversial, with God shown as using the innocently human Jesus to create a religion that has spawned violence and intolerance. When a Lisbon jury picked the book as Portugal's entry for a 1992 European literary prize, the country's conservative government vetoed the choice as blasphemous. It was then that Saramago decided to leave his small, crowded apartment in Lisbon for the relative solitude of Lanzarote. ``The History of the Siege of Lisbon,'' published in the United States last year, is a whimsical tale set in motion by the decision of a humble proofreader at a publishing house to insert the word ``not'' into a key passage in a standard history of Portugal. With this ``lunatic creative act,'' as Edmund White put it in The New York Times Book Review, he ``totally derails the national saga'' by affirming that the crusaders did not in fact help liberate 12th-century Lisbon from Moorish occupation. White ended his July 1997 review with a prescient remark. ``Word has it that Saramago is overdue for a Nobel Prize,'' he noted. ``No candidate has a better claim to lasting recognition than this novelist.'' With the recent publication of ``Blindness'' in the United States, only Saramago's latest novel, ``Todos os Nomes,'' or ``All the Names'' still awaits translation into English. In the tradition of Andre Gide and Julian Green, though, he has now embarked on his journals. The fourth volume of these ``Cadernos de Lanzarote'' was just published in Lisbon. Saramago will receive his Nobel Prize, worth the equivalent of $967,500 this year, at a ceremony in Stockholm on Dec. 10. ||||| A day after winning the Nobel Prize for literature, Portuguese novelist Jose Saramago insisted that while he was delighted to win the award, it could just as easily have gone to many other Portuguese writers. ``I'm not the only one who deserved it'', said the first Portuguese-language author to obtain the prestigious award. ``There have been other Portuguse authors, like Fernando Pessoa, whose work would justify 1,000 Nobels'' Speaking at a packed press coference in Madrid, Saramago joked about how he heard he had won the prize from German air hostess at Frankfurt airport as he waited for a flight home to Spain's Canary Islands. The news left the 75-year-old writer no choice but to leave the airport and return to the city's book fair to meet the press and public. ``At that moment I was over the moon and returning to the book fair the only thing I was worried about was that the whole thing was an error,'' said Saramago. Dismissing the Vatican paper's disapproval Thursday of his achievment, Saramago, a known atheist, quipped that he was aware that ``the Pope had been among the jury, I wouldn't have won the prize.'' ``The Vatican is easily upset'', said Saramago, ``I think that the Vatican should keep its mind on its prayers and leave people alone''. Meanwhile in Portugal, where Saramago is scheduled to arrive on Tuesday, the delight at the Swedish Academy's award for Saramago was reflected in the daily papers, with even the country's three daily sports papers ample space to the event. The two leading dailies, Publico and Diario de Noticias, gave over their entire front pages to Saramago. Lisbon City Hall rushed out posters saying ``Congratulations Jose Saramago'' which were hung up around the capital during the night. Saramago was born into a poor, illiterate family in Azinhaga, a small town near Lisbon. He never finished university but continued to study part-time while supporting himself as a metalworker. ``Nothing in my life would have led one to think I'd win the Nobel Prize'', said Saramago. ``I wasn't born to win the Nobel. I didn't have my own books until I was 18.'' His first novel, published in 1947 _ ``Terra do Pecado,'' or ``Country of Sin'' _ was a tale of peasants in moral crisis. For the next 18 years, Saramago, a communist who opposed the 41-year conservative dictatorship of Antonio Salazar, published only a few travel and poetry books while he worked as a journalist. He returned to fiction only after Salazar's regime was toppled by a military uprising in 1974. Since the 1980s, his works have been translated into more than 20 languages. Regarding the future, Saramago said the book he is currently working on will be called ``The Cavern'' and deals with a modern version of myth of Plato and the cave.

1998's Nobel prize for literature went to a Portuguese for the 1st time, imaginative novelist Jose Saramago, long a candidate. Portugal celebrated but the Vatican called him a communist and anti-religious. The meaning of Nobel's advice to honor "literature that works in an ideal direction" is unclear. 3 Americans won in medicine for 1980s discoveries concerning nitric oxide's function in the body, which sparked new research. Nobel nominations are secret. Prizes are awarded on Dec. 10th, the day of Nobel's death, all in Stockholm except the Peace prize in Oslo. The 1978 committee wanted to give the Peace Prize to Jimmy Carter but missed its own deadline.

Jose Saramago became the first writer in Portuguese to win the Nobel Prize for Literature on Thursday. His personal delight was seconded by a burst of public elation in his homeland. Saramago, 75, and Portuguese said they were pleased the Swedish Academy had finally acknowledged the literary contribution of Portugal, a small country of 10 million people bordering Spain on Europe's southwestern Iberian Peninsula. ``It has taken all of this century to win a Nobel Prize for the Portuguese language,'' Saramago said at the Frankfurt Book Fair, speaking through an interpreter. Saramago, a soft-spoken man known for his hard-edged and iconoclastic views, said he shared the honor with his country and he hoped winning the prize would make Portugal and its language ``more visible and audible.'' ``I'm personally very happy for myself. I'm also happy for my country,'' he said at the Frankfurt Book Fair in Germany where he was engulfed by well-wishers offering roses. Back home, President Jorge Sampaio said the award was a cause for ``great collective satisfaction.'' Prime Minister Antonio Guterres said the award was ``above all a prize for Portugal and the Portuguese language'' which is spoken by 180 million worldwide, mostly in Brazil, but also in Portugal's five former colonies in Africa. Saramago's controversial opinions and atheistic outlook have frequently clashed with the establishment and the general public. Even on the day he won the prize, the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano attacked the Swedish Academy's choice, describing Saramago as an ``old-school communist'' who had a ``substantially antireligious vision.'' Undersecretary of State Sousa Lara was so upset by one of Saramago's novels in 1992 that he withdrew his name from Portugal's nominees for the European Literature Prize. At the time, Lara said Saramago's 1991 novel ``O Evangelho Segundo Jesus Cristo'' (The Gospel according to Jesus Christ) offended Portugal's Roman Catholic religious convictions and divided the country. The book describes a Christ who, subject to human desires, lives with Mary Magdalene and tries to back out of his crucifixion. ``I have not come to bring peace but the sword,'' said Saramago, an atheist, at the time. He retreated in disgust with his Spanish wife, Pilar del Rio, to his home in Lanzarote in Spain's Canary Islands. He has never courted the kind of fame offered by literary prizes, and his bluntness can sometimes offend. ``I am skeptical, reserved, I don't gush, I don't go around smiling, hugging people and trying to make friends,'' he once said. A gaunt man with wisps of white hair, Saramago was born in Azinhaga, a small town near Lisbon. From a poor family, he never finished university but continued to study part-time while supporting himself as a metalworker. His first novel, published in 1947 _ ``Terra do Pecado,'' or ``Country of Sin'' _ was a tale of peasants in moral crisis. It sold badly but won enough recognition to propel him from the welder's shop to a literary magazine. But for the next 18 years, Saramago, a communist who opposed the 41-year conservative dictatorship of Antonio Salazar, published only a few travel and poetry books while he worked as a journalist. He returned to fiction only after Salazar's regime was toppled by a military uprising in 1974. Since the 1980s, he has been one of Portugal's best-selling contemporary writers and his works have been translated into more than 20 languages. He first won critical acclaim abroad with his 1982 historical fantasy ``Memorial do Convento,'' published in English in 1988 as ``Baltasar and Blimunda.'' It is set during the Catholic-inspired inquisition and explores the war between individuals and organized religion, picking up Saramago's recurring theme of the loner struggling against authority. He is most frequently compared with Colombian writer Gabriel Garcia Marquez because his prose is often rooted in recognizable settings but at the same time tinged with magical elements. The Nobel citation praised his work that ``with parables sustained by imagination, compassion and irony continually enables us to apprehend an elusory reality.'' Saramago remains a prominent nonconformist through his regular newspaper and radio commentaries, though his views are always inspired by his deep concern for his fellow man. ``Blindness,'' his most recent book to be translated into English, is an unsettling allegory about the social meltdown as an inexplicable blindness sweeps through society. ``This blindness isn't a real blindness, it's a blindness of rationality,'' he said. ``We're rational beings but we don't behave rationally. If we did, there'd be no starvation in the world.'' In the 1989 ``The History of the Siege of Lisbon,'' a Lisbon proofreader mischievously inserts the word ``not'' into a text on the 12th century capture of the Portuguese capital from the Moors, thereby fictionally altering the course of European history with a stroke of his pen. Such historical and literary mischief are Saramago trademarks. In his 1986 book, ``The Stone Raft,'' the Iberian Peninsula snaps off from the rest of the European continent and floats off into the North Atlantic _ apparently in a metaphorical search for identity away from the standardizing nature of the European Union, of which Portugal and Spain are enthusiastic members. Saramago will receive the dlrs 978,000 prize on Dec. 10 in Stockholm. ||||| Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, who seems a perennial Nobel Peace Prize also-ran, could have won the coveted honor in 1978 had it not been for strict deadline rules for nominations. That prize was shared by Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin for signing the Camp David peace accords. However, the five-member Norwegian awards committee also wanted to honor Carter for brokering the pact, only to be foiled by their own rules. ``The Nobel committee wanted to give the prize to all three,'' said Geir Lundestad, the current committee's nonvoting secretary, said on Sunday. ``But Carter had not been nominated when the deadline ran out.'' Nominations postmarked by Feb. 1 are accepted for that year's prize. The committee can add it own nominations at its first meeting of the year, usually in early March. The Camp David accords were not signed until Sept. 17, 1978, about five weeks before that year's peace prize was annouCkuld not give him the prize, the Norwegian committee recognized in the 1978 awards citation ``the positive initiative taken by President Jimmy Carter.'' Lundestad said the committee, which works in deep secrecy in its five or six meetings a year, tried to find a loophole in the rules, which are overseen by the Swedish Nobel Foundation. The Nobel Prizes were endowed by Alfred Nobel, a Swedish industrialist whose 355 inventions included dynamite. In his 1895 will, Nobel endowed the prizes, and said the peace prize should be picked by a Norwegian committee and the rest by Swedish institutions. Lundestad said the committee turned to the Swedish Nobel Foundation for advice on Carter because it was a question of principle. Stig Ramel, a Swede who was then director of the Nobel Foundation, advised against breaking the rules, Lundestad said by telephone. Normally, the committee refuses to discuss past candidates in keeping with a strict policy of secrecy in which selection details are sealed for 50 years. Lundestad made an exception because Ramel revealed the Carter dilemma in his 1994 memoirs. Carter has repeatedly been nominated for the Nobel prize for his consistent and wide-ranging peace efforts. He is also among the 139 candidates for the prize being announced in Oslo on Friday. However, early speculation leans more toward someone involved in the Northern Ireland peace process, Czech President Vaclav Havel to mark the 30th anniversary of the Soviet invasion of his country, or a human rights activist to mark the 50th anniversary of the U.N. Human Rights Charter. While the committee wanted to honor Carter and could not, with hindsight some regretted the prize for other reasons. Four years after Begin won the prize, the Israeli prime minister ordered an invasion of southern Lebanon in which thousands of civilians died. Kare Kristiansen, who served on the peace prize committee from 1991 to 1994, once said that, had the committee waited, Begin probably would not have won. ||||| Three American pharmacologists were awarded the Nobel Prize on Monday for their surprising discoveries of how natural production of a gas, nitric oxide, can mediate a wide variety of bodily actions. Those include widening blood vessels, helping to regulate blood pressure, initiating erections, battling infections, preventing formation of blood clots and acting as a signal molecule in the nervous system. The prize, for physiology or medicine, went to Dr. Robert Furchgott, 82, of the State University of New York in Brooklyn; Dr. Louis Ignarro, 57, of the University of California at Los Angeles, and Dr. Ferid Murad, 62, of the University of Texas Medical School in Houston. The announcement of a significant phase of the discoveries by two of Monday's winners at a meeting in 1986 ``elicited an avalanche of research activities in many different laboratories around the world,'' said the Nobel committee at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, which makes the awards. Its citation said that the research had led to new treatments for treating heart and lung diseases, shock and impotence. Ignarro ``discovered the principle that led to the use of Viagra as an anti-impotency drug,'' said Dr. Sten Orrenius, a professor of toxicology at the Karolinska Institute. Nitric oxide starts the process by which blood vessels in the penis widen to produce an erection. Nitric oxide, a chemical relative of the anesthetic gas nitrous oxide, is better known as a common air pollutant formed when nitrogen burns, such as in automobile exhaust fumes. But scientists now know it is distributed widely in the body. The discoveries honored on Monday were made largely during the 1980s at a time when scientists knew that bacteria produced nitric oxide but did not think it was important in animals and humans. The award committee said that ``this was the first discovery that a gas can act as a signal molecule in the organism.'' The discovery was startling because ``nitric oxide is totally different from any other known signal molecule and so unstable that it is converted to nitrate and nitrite within 10 seconds.'' Recipients of the Nobel Prize, including some who have lobbied for it for years, often profess surprise on learning of their award. This year's winners were refreshingly candid. Furchgott said he had planned to sleep late on Monday, a holiday, but was awakened at 5:30 at his home in Hewlett, N.Y. He said that he knew that previous Nobel prize winners had nominated him for the award, but that he still was ``somewhat surprised'' to receive it. ``I guess I had some good friends voting,'' Furchgott said. He said he could not get back to sleep. Murad said he had ``pondered the odds and thought that maybe I could win the prize, if not now maybe in a couple of years.'' He described the award as the culmination of a career and said that ``when it happens, it's incredible.'' Ignarro was traveling in Italy. Dr. Gerald Levey, the dean of UCLA, said ``we actually anticipated this day for about four years now.'' The three 1998 winners never worked together, ``but we talked a lot of shop talk at meetings,'' Furchgott said. Dr. Valentin Fuster, the president of the American Heart Association and the head of cardiology at Mt. Sinai Hospital in Manhattan, said that ``the discovery of nitric oxide and its function is one of the most important in the history of cardiovascular medicine.'' Doctors have learned from the prize-winning research that in heart disease, the endothelium, or inner lining of arteries, makes less nitric oxide. Drugs like nitroglycerine, however, can help replenish stores of nitric oxide. Now, drug companies are trying to develop more powerful heart drugs based on newer knowledge of nitric oxide's role as a signal molecule. Researchers have also learned that nitric oxide produced in the endothelium rapidly spreads through cell membranes to the underlying muscle cells in arteries. Then it can shut off muscle contractions in the arteries, thus widening them and reducing blood pressure. Inhalation of nitric oxide gas has saved the lives of some people with certain lung diseases, particularly infants who have developed dangerously high pulmonary blood pressure. But regulating the amount of nitric oxygen inhaled is critical because too much can be lethal. Nitric oxide plays a harmful role in the collapse of the circulatory system, or shock, resulting from overwhelming microbial infections. Bacteria can release products that cause white blood cells to release enormous amounts of nitric oxide. As a result, blood pressure drops. Scientists are trying to develop drugs that can block production of nitric oxide in such infections. White blood cells also play a role in attacking cancerous cells. The gas can also induce a type of programmed cell death known as apoptosis. Scientists are studying nitric oxide's effects on the immune system to stop the growth of cancers. They are also exploring nitric oxide's possible role in regulating body temperature. Doctors are measuring the production of nitric oxide in the lungs and intestines to diagnose a number of ailments, including asthma and colitis, and are studying its role in menstruation. Nitric oxide formed in nerve cells spreads rapidly in all directions to activate cells in the vicinity and influence many functions, like behavior and the mobility of the intestinal tract. Nitric oxide is also being studied for its role in smell and memory. Nitric oxide's role is still unfolding; scientists have written thousands of scientific papers about it in recent years and have started a journal, Nitric Oxide. The Nobel committee cited Furchgott for performing in 1980 ``an ingenious experiment'' that showed that a drug, acetylcholine, widened blood vessels only if the inner layer, or endothelium, was intact. Furchgott concluded that blood vessels widen because the endothelial cells produce a signal molecule that he called EDRF, for endothelium-derived relaxing factor, which relaxes smooth muscle cells in blood vessels. Furchgott's findings ``led to a quest to identify the factor,'' the citation said. (OPTIONAL TRIM CAN BEGIN HERE) The citation did not refer to an accident in Furchgott's laboratory that played a major role in his discoveries. In 1995, in the Annual Review of Pharmacology and Toxicology, Furchgott wrote that on May 5, 1978, in the first of a series of planned experiments on arteries from a rabbit, a technician did not follow directions correctly. The technician performed one step of the experiment before instead of after he was supposed to wash out a drug used in an earlier phase of the experiment. Furchgott expected that the arteries would contract. Instead, they relaxed. It was the first time he had seen the drugs under study produce such a reaction, and he used the insight to plan additional experiments. Furchgott omitted the technician's name in that paper and in another in 1996 in the Journal of the American Medical Association. On Monday, he said David Davidson was the technician. (OPTIONAL TRIM ENDS HERE) The committee cited Ignarro for concluding in 1986, from ``a brilliant series of analyses'' conducted independently of Furchgott, that EDRF was identical to nitric oxide. Furchgott said he and Ignarro made the announcement at the same symposium in 1986 at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., but the papers were not published until 1998. Murad was cited for work conducted over the years while he worked at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, Stanford University in Palo Alto, Calif., and Abbott Laboratories in Illinois. Murad said he felt fortunate to have heard Furchgott report his early work on EDRF in 1980. Murad showed that a gas could regulate important cellular functions and studied how nitroglycerin and related heart drugs led to the release of nitric oxide. (OPTIONAL TRIM CAN BEGIN HERE) In his early training at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Murad worked in the laboratory of Dr. Theodore Rall, who also trained another Nobel prize winner, Dr. Alfred Gilman of the University of Texas Southwestern in Dallas. Gilman said in an interview that he believed Rall, now retired and living in Charlottesville, Va., was the first scientist to have trained two Nobel Prize winners. In addition, Rall worked with Dr. Earl Sutherland, who also won a Nobel Prize. In his early reseach years, Murad worked on a chemical known as cyclic guanosine monophosphate, which later turned out to be critical in the nitric oxide story. Murad's trainees referred to the early work as ``dumping experiments'' because all they could do in the laboratory at the time was crudely add various hormones and agents to slices of tissue, cell cultures. It took years to develop the more refined techniques that led to the understanding of nitric oxide's many roles in the body. But for many years, most of the scientific community was skeptical of the ability of a free radical like nitric oxide to activate an enzyme, Murad said in 1996 when he and Furchgott shared the Albert Lasker basic medical research award. (OPTIONAL TRIM ENDS HERE) The Nobel Prizes were created by the will of Alfred Nobel, whose invention of dynamite involved the use of nitroglycerine. The award committee noted an odd twist to this year's award. When Nobel developed chest pain from heart disease, it said, he refused to take the nitroglycerine his doctor prescribed because he knew it caused headache. Nobel dismissed nitroglycerine's benefit in the relief of chest pain. Nobel died in 1896. The prize that the three scientists will share is now worth $938,000. ||||| When Alfred Nobel wrote the directions establishing a literature prize in his name, he chose an unclear word and scratched out a few letters. Questions about the prize have engaged and piqued the literary world ever since. A new chapter in the mystery will be written Thursday, when the Swedish Academy announces this year's winner of the world's most prestigious prize for writers. The prize focuses intense media attention on the Swedish capital and the clamor of journalists generally drowns out a question: Why does the world care so much about the literary choices of a handful of people in a quiet and remote country? Does the Nobel Prize really recognize the best? When asked that question, Swedish Academy permanent secretary Sture Allen smiled and said ``Look at the list of prizewinners!'' The answer obscures as much as it clarifies. On one hand, the Nobel Prize has recognized world-renowned writers such as Isaac Bashevis Singer and brought little-known wonders to light, such as Wislawa Szymborska. But the prize arguably also has honored the mediocre, heaping attention on those who would have been more fairly served by obscurity. Among them is the winner of the first prize in 1901, Sully Prudhomme. That choice was denounced by Sweden's leading literary light, August Strindberg, and a group of Swedes sent a letter to Leo Tolstoy apologizing for the Academy's slight in not choosing him. Arguments over the Academy's choices are inevitable, considering the instructions they were given. Nobel's will says the prize should recognize literature that works ``in an ideal direction.'' What, exactly, he meant by ``ideal** is unclear and the Academy's choices have reflected the confusion. The Academy has chosen to interpret the word to apply to works ranging from the good-hearted charm of Szymborska's poetry to the crushing hopelessness of Samuel Beckett's writings. When Nobel wrote the word ``ideal'' _ in Swedish ``idealisk** _ he superimposed the last couple of letters over previous one. Allen was so curious to understand Nobel's thoughts that he engaged a forensic expert to try to find out what the earlier letters were. The expert succeeded _ to a point. He found that the first word Nobel wrote was ``idealirad,'' a word that doesn't exist. Despite the inclarity around the edges, Allen said he is confident that the Academy's choices bolster Nobel's core idea that ``literature would be the basis for some kind of progress.'' About this year's choice, he won't say more than that: the Academy is bound to keep its deliberations secret. But observers love to speculate on who might win, even who's on the shortlist for the prize, this year worth 7.6 million kronor (about dlrs 974,000). Names that freuqently come up in the guessing include V.S. Naipaul, China's Bei Dao and Pa Kin, American poet John Ashbery, and Jose Saramago of Portugal. ||||| There's room for a few more names on a 20th century honor roll of writers, and one will be added this week when the Swedish Academy announces the latest Nobel Literature laureate. Who is chosen and why stimulates animated conversation with readers as well as academics, critics and the authors themselves. This year's winner _ or, possibly, winners _ will be announced Thursday, the Academy disclosed Tuesday. ``The joke you hear is that it goes to people you never heard of,'' said Ian Jack, editor of London-based Granta literary magazine. But the Nobel, awarded most every year since 1901, also shines a light, usually deservedly, on wonderful writers few people have read, he added. His favorites include Trinidad-born V.S. Naipaul, though he's convinced Naipaul probably won't win because of his ``dark ... pessimistic'' and often scathing portrayals of post-colonial African culture. The academy keeps its deliberations secret. Who is considered seriously, even who's nominated, isn't disclosed. A writer's nationality, by the terms of the prize founder Alfred Nobel's will, is supposed to be irrelevant. Two can share the prize, though the last time that happened was 1974. Winners are expected to personally receive it: awards are not given posthumously. Looking at the process from afar, Harold Bloom, a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, said the award committee has an unsettling record of selections that are ``nationally 'correct' and politically 'correct.''' The winners list is prestigious, he concedes, but by no means uniformly lustrous. ``Absolutely not! Outrageously not,'' he said in a telephone interview from New York. ``They include all kinds of fifth-raters. ... James Joyce never got one, for heaven's sake. Neither did Marcel Proust.'' Bloom's U.S. favorites include Cormac McCarthy, author of ``Blood Meridian''; Philip Roth, author of ``American Pastoral''; and John Ashbery, ``the best living poet.'' A review of recent winners may foreshadow this year's laureate. Seven of the past 10 were men _ does that favor a woman? Two of the past three were poets _ does that favor a prose writer? Four of the past 10 wrote in English, and the last three laureates are European. In comparison, only three Asian writers have ever won. ``Bei Dao is a personal favorite of mine,'' said Abe Harumasa, editor-in-chief of the Japanese literary magazine Bungei. ``The choice could be interpreted as being motivated partly by politics,'' given the poet's association with China's democracy movement, ``but it's clear he's a wonderful poet.'' Minoru Takeuchi, a professor of Chinese literature at Japan's prestigious Kyoto University, cited novelists Pa Kin and Xie Bing Xin as worthy. The latter is known for her portrayals of the struggles of Chinese women. China, which translates and publishes the works of many Nobel winners, ``desperately'' wants its first laureate, he added. Spain's Nobel hopes are pinned on Francisco Ayala, 92, winner of this year's renowned Prince of Asturias prize, said Jose Maria Martinez Cachero, an author, university professor and secretary of the jury that selected Ayala. Other presumed Latin candidates are Peru-born Mario Vargas Llosa, a member of the 200-year-old Royal Spanish Language Academy, Martinez Cachero said, and Portugal's Jose Saramago, whose works have been translated into more than 20 languages. For his part, Saramago, 75, said in a recent Associated Press interview that he's weary of speculation that this year, once again, he might win. ``Let's not get into that,'' he said. ``I just write.'' ||||| Three American researchers on Monday won the Nobel Medicine Prize for discovering how nitric oxide acts as a signal molecule in the cardiovascular system, a breakthrough with applications ranging from hardening of the arteries to impotence. The prestigious prize went to Robert F. Furchgott, Louis J. Ignarro and Ferid Murad. Furchgott is a pharmacologist at the State University of New York in Brooklyn, Ignarro is at University of California-Los Angeles and Murad is at the University of Texas Medical School in Houston. The citation by the Karolinska Institute said ``it was a senation that the simple, common air pollutant (nitric oxide), which is formed when nitrogen burns ... could exert important functions in the organism. '' Because of the research, ``we know today that nitric oxide acts as a signal molecule in the nervous system, as a weapon against infections and as a regulator of blood pressure.'' ``Signal transmission by a gas that is produced by one cell, penetrates through membranes and regulates the function of another cell represents an entirely new principle,'' the citation said. Understanding how nitric oxide transmits the signals has sparked research on a wide range of new drugs, including those that can be used in the treatment of heart problems, artherosclerosis, shock and impotence. The prize amount of 7.6 million kronor (dlrs 978,000) is divided equally among the three. Last year, the prize went to Stanley B. Prusiner of the University of California at San Francisco for his discovery of prions, the rogue proteins identified as causing Mad Cow Disease. Winners generally aren't known outside the medical community, although the list of laureates contains a few familiar names including Ivan Pavlov, tuberculosis pioneer Robert Koch, and DNA researchers Francis Crick and James Watson. Generally, they are researchers who have made discoveries that sound small on paper but carry large consequences. Among other well-known names to receive the prize is David Baltimore, although he shared the prize in 1975, long before becoming one of the world's most visible AIDS researchers. Alan Cormack of the United States and Sir Godfrey Hounsfield may not be familiar names, but what they won the prize for in 1979 is a term known by most patients: computer-assisted tomography _ or CAT scan. The medicine prize was the second of the six Nobels to be announced this year. Last Thursday, the literature prize went to Portuguese novelist Jose Saramago. The physics and chemistry prizes will be announced Tuesday, the economics prize on Wednesday and the peace prize on Friday. All the announcements are in Stockholm, except for the peace prize which is given in Oslo, Norway. The prizes are presented on Dec. 10, the anniversary of the death of Alfred Nobel, the industrialist and inventor of dynamite whose will established the prizes. ||||| Robert F. Furchgott, Louis J. Ignarro and Ferid Murad of the United States on Monday won the Nobel Medicine Prize. They were given the prize for their discoveries concerning nitric oxide as a signaling molecule in the cardiovascular system, according to the citiation from the Karolinska lnstitute. Furchgott is a pharmacologist at the State University of New York in Brooklyn, Ignarro is at University of California-Los Angeles and Murad is at the University of Texas Medical School in Houston. The citation said ``it was a senation that the simple, common air pollutant (nitric oxide), which is formed when nitrogen burns ... could exert important functions in the organism. '' Because of the research, ``we know today that nitric oxide acts as a signal molecule in the nervous system, as a weapon against infections and as a regulator of blood pressure.'' The prize amount of 7.6 million kronor (dlrs 978,000) is divided equally among the three. Last year, the prize went to Stanley B. Prusiner of the University of California at San Francisco for his discovery of prions, the rogue proteins identified as causing Mad Cow Disease. Winners generally aren't known outside the medical community, although the list of laureates contains a few familiar names including Ivan Pavlov, tuberculosis pioneer Robert Koch, and DNA researchers Francis Crick and James Watson. Generally, they are researchers who have made discoveries that sound small on paper but carry large consequences. Among other well-known names to receive the prize is David Baltimore, although he shared the prize in 1975, long before becoming one of the world's most visible AIDS researchers. Alan Cormack of the United States and Sir Godfrey Hounsfield may not be familiar names, but what they won the prize for in 1979 is a term known by most patients: computer-assisted tomography _ or CAT scan. The medicine prize was the second of the six Nobels to be announced this year. Last Thursday, the literature prize went to Portuguese novelist Jose Saramago. The physics and chemistry prizes will be announced Tuesday, the economics prize on Wednesday and the peace prize on Friday. All the announcements are in Stockholm, except for the peace prize which is given in Oslo, Norway. The prizes are presented on Dec. 10, the anniversary of the death of Alfred Nobel, the industrialist and inventor of dynamite whose will established the prizes. ||||| Portuguese novelist Jose Saramago, whose capricious vision includes a section of Europe breaking off and floating out to sea, on Thursday was named the winner of the 1998 Nobel Literature Prize. In its citation, the Swedish Academy said it gave the award to Saramago for work that ``with parables sustained by imagination, compassion and irony continually enables us to apprehend an elusory reality.'' Saramago, 75, wrote his breakthrough novel in 1982, ``Baltasar and Blimunda.'' Perhaps his best-known work is ``The Stone Raft,'' in which the Iberian Peninsula breaks off from Europe for supernatural reasons and floats off into the Atlantic. That device allows him to comment ironically ``about the authorities and politicians, perhaps especially about the major players in power politics.'' Saramago's exuberant imagination and playfulness have made him one of Portugal's most popular contemporary novelists, and his works have been translated into more than 20 languages. In ``Blindness,'' his most recent work to be translated into English, a nameless man in a nameless country suddenly goes blind, and the affliction quickly spreads through the country _ grim tale of social collapse. In 1991's ``The Gospel According to Jesus Christ,'' God and the devli negotiate about evil, and Jesus tries to back out of his crucifixion. ``Saramago's idiosyncratic development of his own resonant style of fiction gives him a high standing ... he invokes tradition in a way that in the current state of things can be described as radical,'' the Academy said in the citation for the 7.6-million kronor (dlrs 978,000 prize). Saramago (pronounced sah-rah-MAH-go) is the fourth consecutive European to win the prestigious prize, and the first laureate to write in Portuguese. He had long been seen as one of the strongest potential candidates for the prize and the frequent media queries about his prospects contrasted with his quiet personality. ``I am skeptical, reserved, I don't gush, I don't go around smiling, hugging people, trying to make friends,'' he told The Associated Press in a recent interview. ``I just write.'' Saramago on Thursday had planned to leave Frankfurt, Germany, _ where he was attending the international book fair _ for his home in the Canary Islands. But Portuguese state radio said he was taken off the plane before departure and driven back to the fair, where a crowd wa waiting for him. The literature prize is one of five established by Alfred Nobel, the Swedish industrialist and inventor of dynamite. The prizes have been awarded since 1901; a sixth prize, in economics, was started in 1969. According to the terms of Nobel's will, the literature prize is to recognize writing that works ``in an ideal direction.'' How to interpret that term has been widely debated. The Nobel Prize over the years has been given to writers with world-views stretching from the bleak futility of Samuel Beckett's works to the vivid epics of Iceland's Halldor Laxness. The prize even has gone occasionally to writers who did not work in fiction or poetry, notably Winston Churchill and Bertrand Russell. Last year's prize went to Dario Fo, the Italian playwright whose work combines gut-busting comedy with acid social and political commentary. The 1996 winner was the Polish poet Wislawa Szymborska, as shy and delicate and Fo is boisterous. The Swedish Academy does not reveal who was nominated or who it considered on its shortlist. Nominations can be made by previous laureates, professors of history and literature, members of the Academy and presidents of some national authors' organizations. The Nobel Prize in Medicine winner will be announced Oct. 12, the physics and chemistry winners on Oct. 13, the economics laureate on Oct. 14 and the peace prize on Occt. 16. All the prize announcements are in Stockholm, except for the peace prize which is given in Oslo, Norway. All the prizes are presented on Dec. 10, the anniversary of Nobel's death. ||||| Jose Saramago, a 75-year-old Portuguese writer who took up literature relatively late in life and whose richly imaginative novels soon won him a following of loyal readers across Europe and vocal admirers in the United States, was awarded this year's Nobel Prize in Literature Thursday by the Swedish Academy in Stockholm. A tall, balding man whose large, tinted glasses often give him a mien of severity, Saramago is the first Portuguese-language writer _ and one of the first card-carrying Communists _ to become a Nobel Literature laureate. He is also the fourth successive European to win the prize, after Italy's Dario Fo in 1997, Poland's Wislawa Szymborska in 1996 and Ireland's Seamus Heaney in 1995. In its citation Thursday, the Swedish Academy praised Saramago ``who with parables sustained by imagination, compassion and irony continually enables us once again to apprehend an elusory reality.'' Although Saramago discounts the influence of Latin American ``magical realism'' on his work, his novels often use the supernatural, allegorical, paradoxical and irrational as ways of addressing complex questions of faith and existence. Many of his novels are set against a backdrop of political or historical events, but it is his unwavering concern for individual fate that gives his fiction its distinctive voice and independent character. His best-known books, all published in the United States, are ``Baltasar and Blimunda,'' ``The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis,'' ``The Stone Raft'' and ``The History of the Siege of Lisbon.'' His latest book available in English, ``Blindness,'' in which all but one of his characters mysteriously become blind, was described as his ``symphonic new novel'' by Andrew Miller in The New York Times Book Review on Sunday. ``There is no cynicism and there are no conclusions, just a clear-eyed and compassionate acknowledgment of things as they are, a quality than can only honestly be termed as wisdom,'' Miller, himself a novelist, wrote. ``We should be grateful when it is handed to us in such generous measures.'' Saramago learned of his award Thursday at Frankfurt airport, where he was preparing to fly home via Madrid to Lanzarote in the Canary Islands after attending the Frankfurt Book Fair. Earlier this week, he participated in a round-table of Portuguese writers on the topic, ``Why I am still a Communist.'' He immediately returned to the fair where he was received with cheers and bouquets of roses. ``I am personally very happy for myself,'' he said. ``I am also happy for my country.'' Later he told a news conference: ``The Portuguese language had to wait 100 years for this. There have to be ways and means of protecting the language so that it does not become a museum, but is something that is alive. The writer's role is to protect it and work with it.'' The award was also celebrated in Lisbon, where President Jorge Sampaio described it as ``recognition of Portuguese culture,'' while the local Communist leader, Carlos Carvalho, saw it as a credit to his own party. ``As a member of our party,'' he noted solemnly, ``Saramago makes a great contribution to our ideals and to the struggle for social change.'' The laureate's fiction, though, is never overtly political. Saramago, whose body of work includes poetry, essays, plays and a journal as well as 10 novels, is unusual for having emerged as a major literary figure only at the age of 60. His novels have since been translated into 30 languages, selling particularly well in Portugal, Brazil, Spain, Italy and Germany. While he has not been well known in the United States, his novels have always been critically well received there. For all his late blooming, though, Saramago long dreamed of becoming a writer. Born into a family of rural laborers and raised in Lisbon, he was forced by poverty to leave school while a teen-ager and learn the trade of car mechanic. Yet he managed to publish a small novel at the age of 25. Later, he found work at a Lisbon publishing company, but the oppressive and censorial atmosphere of the Salazar dictatorship discouraged him from writing. It was only after Portugal's April 1974 revolution that Saramago felt free to find his voice. A member of the Portuguese Communist Party since 1969, he served as editor of a Lisbon newspaper, Diario de Noticias, during an 18-month period when the left looked likely to seize power in Portugal. But an anti-Communist backlash in November 1975 forced him out of the newspaper and he began translating French texts into Portuguese to make ends meet. In the late 1970s, he also turned to novels, publishing three in succession in 1977, 1978 and 1980. But it was in 1982, with ``Baltasar and Blimunda'' (``Memorial do Convento'' in Portuguese), that he achieved his international breakthrough. ``This is a rich, multifaceted and polysemous text that at the same time has a historical, a social and an individual perspective,'' the Swedish Academy noted Thursday. ``The insight and wealth of imagination to which it gives expression is characteristic of Saramago's work as a whole.'' Set in 18th-century Portugal during the Inquisition, the book tells of the baroque efforts of a war veteran, Baltasar, and a visionary, Blimunda, to escape to the heavens aboard a flying machine powered by human wills captured by the hypersensory Blimunda. This fantastic story takes place against the very real background of the tortuous construction of the massive Mafra Convent by thousands of men held in the grip of the Inquisition. When the novel was published in the United States in 1987, Irving Howe acclaimed it as ``brilliant'' in The New York Times Book Review. ``Mr. Saramago is constantly present as a voice of European skepticism, a connoisseur of ironies,'' Howe wrote. ``I think I hear in his prose echoes of Enlightenment sensibility, caustic and shrewd.'' In his next novel, ``The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis,'' which is also a homage to the great Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa, who appears in it as a ghost, Saramago sets his story in the early years of the Salazar dictatorship, with the tale following the romantic and sexual misadventures of a poet-physician. Writing in The New York Times, Herbert Mitgang called it ``a rare, old-fashioned novel _ at once lyrical, symbolic and meditative.'' Saramago, whose sense of literary freedom is evident in his unconventional punctuation and conflicting use of tenses, sought a different form of freedom in ``The Stone Raft,'' where he imagines the confusion unleashed when the Iberian peninsula suddenly breaks free from the rest of Europe and begins drifting toward the New World and threatens to collide with the Azores. To the delight of Britons, Gibraltar is left behind. Unsurprisingly, the bitter satire, ``The Gospel According to Jesus Christ,'' proved controversial, with God shown as using the innocently human Jesus to create a religion that has spawned violence and intolerance. When a Lisbon jury picked the book as Portugal's entry for a 1992 European literary prize, the country's conservative government vetoed the choice as blasphemous. It was then that Saramago decided to leave his small, crowded apartment in Lisbon for the relative solitude of Lanzarote. ``The History of the Siege of Lisbon,'' published in the United States last year, is a whimsical tale set in motion by the decision of a humble proofreader at a publishing house to insert the word ``not'' into a key passage in a standard history of Portugal. With this ``lunatic creative act,'' as Edmund White put it in The New York Times Book Review, he ``totally derails the national saga'' by affirming that the crusaders did not in fact help liberate 12th-century Lisbon from Moorish occupation. White ended his July 1997 review with a prescient remark. ``Word has it that Saramago is overdue for a Nobel Prize,'' he noted. ``No candidate has a better claim to lasting recognition than this novelist.'' With the recent publication of ``Blindness'' in the United States, only Saramago's latest novel, ``Todos os Nomes,'' or ``All the Names'' still awaits translation into English. In the tradition of Andre Gide and Julian Green, though, he has now embarked on his journals. The fourth volume of these ``Cadernos de Lanzarote'' was just published in Lisbon. Saramago will receive his Nobel Prize, worth the equivalent of $967,500 this year, at a ceremony in Stockholm on Dec. 10. ||||| A day after winning the Nobel Prize for literature, Portuguese novelist Jose Saramago insisted that while he was delighted to win the award, it could just as easily have gone to many other Portuguese writers. ``I'm not the only one who deserved it'', said the first Portuguese-language author to obtain the prestigious award. ``There have been other Portuguse authors, like Fernando Pessoa, whose work would justify 1,000 Nobels'' Speaking at a packed press coference in Madrid, Saramago joked about how he heard he had won the prize from German air hostess at Frankfurt airport as he waited for a flight home to Spain's Canary Islands. The news left the 75-year-old writer no choice but to leave the airport and return to the city's book fair to meet the press and public. ``At that moment I was over the moon and returning to the book fair the only thing I was worried about was that the whole thing was an error,'' said Saramago. Dismissing the Vatican paper's disapproval Thursday of his achievment, Saramago, a known atheist, quipped that he was aware that ``the Pope had been among the jury, I wouldn't have won the prize.'' ``The Vatican is easily upset'', said Saramago, ``I think that the Vatican should keep its mind on its prayers and leave people alone''. Meanwhile in Portugal, where Saramago is scheduled to arrive on Tuesday, the delight at the Swedish Academy's award for Saramago was reflected in the daily papers, with even the country's three daily sports papers ample space to the event. The two leading dailies, Publico and Diario de Noticias, gave over their entire front pages to Saramago. Lisbon City Hall rushed out posters saying ``Congratulations Jose Saramago'' which were hung up around the capital during the night. Saramago was born into a poor, illiterate family in Azinhaga, a small town near Lisbon. He never finished university but continued to study part-time while supporting himself as a metalworker. ``Nothing in my life would have led one to think I'd win the Nobel Prize'', said Saramago. ``I wasn't born to win the Nobel. I didn't have my own books until I was 18.'' His first novel, published in 1947 _ ``Terra do Pecado,'' or ``Country of Sin'' _ was a tale of peasants in moral crisis. For the next 18 years, Saramago, a communist who opposed the 41-year conservative dictatorship of Antonio Salazar, published only a few travel and poetry books while he worked as a journalist. He returned to fiction only after Salazar's regime was toppled by a military uprising in 1974. Since the 1980s, his works have been translated into more than 20 languages. Regarding the future, Saramago said the book he is currently working on will be called ``The Cavern'' and deals with a modern version of myth of Plato and the cave.

Jose Saramago is the first Portuguese-language writer and one of few communists to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. He is widely acclaimed for his imaginative allegories. Three American researchers, Robert Furchgott, Louis Ignarro, and Ferid Murad, shared the 1998 Nobel Prize for Medicine for discovering how nitric oxide acts as a signal molecule in the cardiovascular system. Their research led to new treatments for heart and lung diseases, shock, and impotence. The deliberations surrounding the awards are secret; however, Stig Ramel, a former director of the Nobel Foundation, revealed the committee wanted Jimmy Carter to share the 1978 peace prize.